Today on the emergence of dirt podcast number 37. Do you know your race as a product? Well, it is. Your race is a time sensitive exclusive product. They can only be experienced the 1 time is offered. You miss it. You miss the experience of the product. Until maybe next year. Maybe there'll be another race, but there will never be another race like the 1 you missed. This is the product created by race promotion.
However, when it comes to selling this product, we sell it like we're trying to give people a secret passcode. Do you know the secret passcode? Do your hipster club hidden beneath the bike shop? If you're lucky enough to figure out the code, maybe you'll manage to get registered. But what about those that are not lucky enough to figure out the code? How many of those racers do you fail to reach? Here's a clue to solve that code. On a race take, go stand in the parking lot of your venue. Then count the number of parking spaces that are empty
just before the starting gun. Then calculate, missed opportunity, equals what you need to not go broke over empty spaces times 10, solve for x. Welcome to The Merchants of Dirt Podcast, recreational engineering for a better outdoor life. And now your host, Kyle Bondo,
Welcome, and thank you for joining me for the Merchants of DIRT Podcast. I am Kyle Bondo, your re recreational engineer, your merchant of DIRT, and your coach for helping you learn how to build a race or an outdoor business from start to finish. My goal is to teach you the art and science behind race production, race direction, and give you those those business skills that maybe you didn't get the first time around.
So the goal here, of course, is that so you can have the tools and the strategies and the processes So you can take your vision of what you wanna build from start to finish. And maybe even earn a little bunny on the side. Wouldn't that be great? It'd be great to actually build a career
off of just doing stuff outside, that would be awesome. So that's my hope for you. And if you're new to the Merchant Center podcast, welcome aboard. And of course, of course, if you're new, if you're not new, you already know who's sitting next to me. But if you are new, I'd like to introduce my cohost, Mister Murphy. Now, Mister Murphy, he's not real. He's my imaginary friend, if you would. But Mister Murphy, he's not a giant rabbit. No, Mister Murphy is that guy who's always looking to expose the weakness in your planning.
Of course, to wreck everything that you built. And That makes us not really like him, do we? We do not like Mister Murphy. But what Mister Murphy does is teach us teach us how to make better events. That's a good thing. So we like Mister Murphy around because he'll help expose all those gaps, all those problems you have in an event, and we want that because that's how we learn.
We learn because we fall down, we get back up. That's how we learn. So by learning what we do and what not to do when it comes to building that next event or next off road race, Mister Murphy is here to remind us that we don't quite know everything, and that we're always willing to learn to how to do it better. So today, we're standing in that parking lot. We're standing in that parking lot looking at all those empty spots and wondering
why aren't they full? Why am I not having a problem parking cars? That's a great problem you wanna have in an event. You wanna have your parking lot so full. You gotta figure out in some new place to park cars. There's just not enough places for people. You're just so full. You're at your maximum capacity. Now that is truly an event that you wanna have. That means a couple things. First, it means that you broke even.
And every every promoter wants to break even, because you don't wanna build a race and lose money. But it also means that you got the message out, that your marketing efforts are working. And this is a struggle that most race promoters, race directors, business owners, outdoor enthusiasts. Anyone who's producing an event This is a problem that they all have because they wanna get the word out. And I see a struggle happen with race promoters because of this.
They they go on to Facebook, and I'm guilty of this too. So I'm coming from experience. They're coming from seeing a race where nobody showed up. Okay. Nobody's Maybe that's not fair. 20 people to a mountain bike race that I wanted a 100 at. Get 20 people. I think it was actually 22, you know, getting dick technical.
Now everyone had fun. It was a good event because it was no competition. So podiums all over the place, and people like to win, especially if you're like the back of a pack kind of eraser. But as a race promoter, That 22 people, that mean we that means I lost money. I put in all the time, all the effort, 3 months worth of planning, permits insurance even had officials there from USA Cycling. I had to pay all those people.
So at the end of the day, 22 people for a race that cost them maybe 30 bucks ahead. I didn't make a whole lot of money. Because you're gonna pay the park too. On top of that, they take 15% gross. Boom. So when you when you're thinking about, I need to get the word out. I need to get people at this this race. I really wanna feel this parking lot full of people. Well, Today, I wanna talk to you about a strategy
for doing that. Now, we all know social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter with the word out there. But I find that on social media that a lot of people say they're coming or even worse on Facebook is the the interest button. You get that I'm interested in your event. That sounds really cool. And then on race day, no 1 shows up. Or even trail maintenance day or fun ride day, or what? Let's go hike in the in the mountains day or pick your event. Let's go rafting day. Let's go canoeing day.
35, 100, 200 people are interested. But who shows up? Who actually pays the fee? Who actually helps you breakeven. Yeah. That doesn't translate. The translation between going and interested and even in the people who say they're going on Facebook isn't really that they're going. They think they're going. But usually, it's 2 or 3 days later, they go, oh, that was on Saturday. Dude, totally forgot.
I'll get you next year or I'll get you your next event. Which is fine. People have, you know, life happens when you're making other plans. But those are the kind of things that as a as a motor or someone who's trying to to produce an event that you're trying to gauge and understand, hey, who's gonna show up? Now you may have things that are contingent upon that. So especially like in the Venture Racing world. You have to make maps.
How many maps do you make? Orienteering has this problem too. How many maps do I print? Printing is not free. You can't just do this in your in your basement unless, of course, you've got like this giant printing machine and some people do. There are some orienting clubs that have access to some pretty good printing, but paper costs money and cost money. And there there there there there someone paid for that somewhere. You don't sprint maps for free. What about registration packets?
What about BIB numbers? What about T shirts? Know a lot of race promoters out there and event producers who like the t shirt idea, who like to to put all the sponsors in the back, big old logo of the of the race in the front. Well, how many do you order? What size is the order? What about the venue? Some venues have a maximum capacity. Maybe you pick the tiny venue because because you have tiny events.
Maybe the opposite problem is you don't know how many people are coming, and then all of a sudden race day, a ton of people show up. You weren't prepared for that. This is this is a a problem. Every event management person suffers with is turnout.
I didn't even say political people and solve this problem. How many people are gonna come vote for me? That's a huge problem. Turnout. How do you get the people to come? How do you get the word out that I have an event? Like I said before, social media, of course. Right? But then you have the the gold fashion ones. Email.
So, hopefully, they came on your website. They signed up for your newsletter or maybe your your notification service. And now you send them an email. How many of those people show up? What? Big old email list where every time I send it out, maybe 10% of the people open the actual email. Some people unsubscribe. That's not that's not reassuring. So you have that problem. So what else kind of thing? You get you get paper cars and parking lots with flyers.
I've done that for several events. Or the event the main venue we're gonna have it at, produce us a little tiny, 5 by, a 3 and a half flyer, and put it in everyone's windshield. Does that work? Don't know. It's hard to judge how people can't hear mint. Of course, you could put out a survey. How did you get here? We could ask people, hey. How'd you find our event? A lot of people just already know about it. Word-of-mouth because
They're coming to the event, not the 1st annual version of that event. They're coming to the 5th, the 6th, the 10th, friend of a friend, friend of another friend. That gives me to my last point, which is word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth marketing probably is not only the most trusted, but the easiest way for someone to spread the word when it comes to
previous customers telling other people about your event. Is it easy for the promoter to get word-of-mouth? No. That's incredibly hard because you have to produce a good event for the people actually showed up. And then they go tell 2 friends and they tell 2 friends and so on and so on. That's the theory of word-of-mouth marketing. But, realistically, word-of-mouth marketing is something it's it's kind of ingrained in something called impressions. And this is seeing something a number of times.
Now, Facebook ads tried to help you do this kind of thing where if you could buy some ads, you can hit people who have certain keywords in their posts or who write about certain keywords or who live in a certain geographic area. You can play get that area with ads. So as they're scrolling through their Facebook feed, Boom. Your event pops up in the middle there. Maybe they'll link on it. Maybe they'll see if they're interested. That's 1 way to get impressions.
Instagram's another way. Is having photos of your event, maybe Instagram ads to talk about your event coming up. There might be a way to say, get his impressions. Maybe it's that flyer they found on your their windshield, and they threw that flyer into the side their their car put in glove box.
Maybe when they get pulled over for a parking ticket or for a speeding ticket, they open the glove box, pull their insurance. They find that flyer that they shoved in there. They'll never see again because that's where people put stuff they wanna forget about, maybe that produces some impressions. So there's all these ways to get out there. There's all these ways to be found. There's all these ways to be to to put the word out. But none of it guarantees people showing up. So impressions matter.
You wanna be everywhere or you want to be perceived as being everywhere. And how many impressions does this take? How many times does someone have to see an event or know about an event? Before they decide that maybe they wanna go to it? Well, if you think about it, the the data says 17 to 20 now. It's a it's a really big number. So you have to be everywhere. Well, today, let's talk about 1 of those places to be. And this is kind of a a strategy
that I've seen come in places that you may not actually expect to be at. Because as a race promoter you're thinking, I want my race to be day number 1. I wanna advertise my race to everybody. I wanna be on social media. I wanna be at the park. I wanna be on the flyer. I wanna have the website. I want people talking about it. I wanna be telling people about it. Go to the bike shops. Go to the coffee shops. I want all my stuff out there. But have you thought about other people's events?
And this is the concept. Of going to another event and pimping your event at their event. And he's saying, okay, Kyle. That sounds kinda squirmy. I'm not sure I'm I'm very comfortable with that. They hear me out on this. I wanna teach you a marketing technique called the roadshow. Now the roadshow is a simple concept. You're going to attempt to break your race out of obscurity by announcing your event at other events. The only way to make sure that more of your current average
racers hear about your events and get the word out. The only 1 way to get the word out in the racing world is to announce yourself. This means by taking your products to your customers. When we talked about all the different ways you can do that, But why not go where customers are actually participating in an event a style of event that you're about to produce? Basically, you're enjoying this person's product. Maybe you'll enjoy mine too.
Okay. Many razors never hear about it. Never get the opportunity to visit you. So you need to introduce them to your product by going to where they can't help but see it. So this requires you to do a very scary thing. And I know as a race promoter or a race director that that you wanna do everything from the comfort of your own home. Unfortunately, you're gonna have to leave your house. I know. Terrifying. Hang in there, it's gonna be okay. Kyle's gonna walk you through this. Alright?
K? Why don't I keep Kyle calling my talking to myself in the 3rd person? I'm gonna walk you through this. Cheese. I guess, stop doing that. You have to leave your house. You have to leave your hometown. You might have to take your product on the on the road. I know it is an off road person. You don't wanna go on the road, but you're gonna have to take it on the road. To bring people off the road.
Yeah. You quote me on that. Right? Hence, the roadshow. Okay? So retailers are always in search for more buyers. Now this requires retailers to do a very obvious thing. And we're talking about people who sell things like coffee or sell things like appliances or mattresses. Or bikes. Let's just talk about bikes. People do bikes dealers trying to sell bikes.
Okay. They do an obvious thing. They go where their customers are. They sell products that they often travel to from trade show to trade show or even occasionally to conventions to meet thousands of potential customers. Now if you're selling a bike, if you're Kona, or your trek, or your Cannondale, or you're specialized, do you just put out a website and say, hey. I make some bikes. And then hopefully, some bike retailers will show up and go, I like your bike. I will hold it in my store.
You think that's how that happens? It's not how it happens. They go to conferences where they have all the latest bikes out and retailers show up and say, you know what? I want a 1000 of those and a 1000 of those. And that's how they decide. And specifically, with bike companies, with bike actually bike shops, It can get very personal. It becomes like an Apple PC kind of thing, where 1 shop is niner in track, and that's what they do. And another shop is Kona
Giant, and that's what they do. And another shop is specialized, and that's what they do. And never the Twain shall meet. They might have some, like, lower, smaller brands and they mix in there depending what deals they get, depending what year it is, depending how well they're selling. But a lot of shops you'll you'll you probably know this specialize in certain things. They cater to a certain brand of bike.
But in order to do that, they had to go out and find those people they had to go out and find the people that would wanna cater to their bike. Bike shops, ebb and flow. Sometimes they'll start carrying a different brand. Maybe they'll move to a new brand. Maybe they like the out the upcoming brand. They have to go find new product because their customers
maybe they're not in the specialized anymore. Maybe they're not in the truck anymore. Might need a new brand to show up to kind of fill out some of the gaps they have. Maybe their marketele, maybe they find out that a lot of their customers were in their fifties sixties. Maybe they don't want full suspension race bikes. They had to figure out, like, hybrids. And trail bikes. So they need to find
different bikes. And they and bike manufacturers know this. They go to conventions. They go to conferences. They go to places where they sell bikes. They go and take their bikes on roadshows. They go do what's called demos. And they go to all the different areas, and they set up in a park, and they partner with maybe 1 of their the bike shops that they're associated with, and they get people to ride. Ride their bike. And the result,
well, they're they they have a compelling of product. They find buyers. It's simple. And this could be done with your events too. When applied to races and off road events, the roadshow concept is about taking your race promotion directly to the customers of your race, this means camping out at other events where it where any other product or sponsor would do. Like, they've got a tent for Trek. They got a tent for Shimano. And now you have a tent for your event.
And bike manufacturers, shoe stores, food vendors, they can do it, why not you? However, you don't wanna do this hatton hand and come off as like a beggar. Please. Come to my bed. Please. Please. I have some more food. More. You need to approach this as any equal partner or sponsor would and build a relationship based on mutual interests. So now I'm getting into the permission part of this. You don't wanna just be, like, set up in the parking lot. And say, hey. I got an event too, dudes.
If the race promoter of that event doesn't know you're there, I can get ugly real quick. So you need to first pick several big races that are within about a hundred mile radius of your event. You need to keep it local. You want the local people to come to your event. Right? And then you want to consider events that are similar to your event, they may not be in direct competition. So maybe you're a mountain bike racer, and you wanna do mountain bike racing
in a promoter. You're a mountain bike promoter. There's an adventure race. Winter racing isn't a really direct competitor with mountain biking, but you have to mountain biking in a venture racer. Maybe event erasers like the mountain bike, or maybe there's an orienteering event. Maybe orienteering people wanna come to your event. Or maybe trail runners. Maybe you're an adventure race promoter and you want people to come to your event. Maybe you go and hang out at the orienteering event.
It's kinda similar. So that's the concept. The idea is to hit enough big races to give your preregistration a good enough boost. So I've got a couple key strategies about this. So just to give you so right now, you should have an overall concept when talking about the roadshow. When this list in hand, you start to see which races will let you do, 1 of the things about to talk about, 1 of these kind of sponsorships.
But think about that. Just kind of think about it. You're looking for events that you can partner with to help people find you to explain your event, to show off your event, and get people to think about preregistering for your event, by just coming to your table. So you're not asking them to go to a website. You're not asking them to find you on Facebook. You're not asking them to pull the flyer off their windshield.
They walk up to you and say, what's this? It's a mountain bike race. Oh, I like mountain bike racing. Yeah. Great. Sign here. I'll send you some information. It's that simple. And you're at some place or people are already doing cool stuff. That's the concept. That's the road show. It's by going to other big events. And announcing yourself. Now, let's get into some tactics on how that happens. Okay. Let's get into kind of the kind of the thinking that goes into building a roadshow. Attempt.
And we're gonna get to 3 they've got 3 of these to think about. The first 1 is become a sponsor. The second 1 is be a new source for volunteers. And the third is be a racer among racers. These are kind of the 3 approaches that you wanna put in mind when you're thinking about roadshow, you know,
what do you call it? Where you're trying to put yourself into the mindset of what goals you're looking for when you're actually going to find a place to have a roadshow, to actually put a tent up, to have a booth, you know, be the booth guy, the booth gal, to bring your message to other people at another event. So the first, let's go to number 1, become a sponsor. Ask if you can participate in their event as a sponsor.
Now this is this is when you're thinking about going to big races because most big races have some sort of sponsorship agreement that might require you to pay a small figure donation to set up a tent next to the red to their registration. So you can buy your way in. And, of course, an event,
bigger events, you know, put together this this kind of coalition of sponsors help pay for their events. And big events don't just, you know, we just want to stroke a check. The magic stacks of money laying around in their money vault. Now they have sponsors just like you do. So your small race You may put 2 or 3 sponsors together and have enough. Big races, just that times 3 or 4, depending on the size of the event. Someone donated money somewhere. So you have to think about
being 1 of those donation people, and it might be as small as a hundred bucks. Maybe 200 bucks. You think about it. You put a little money aside on a or on the next race. You can use that money. You know, think about this. Why would I wanna pay a hundred bucks or 200 bucks? To go set up a tenant, someone else's race. That doesn't sound smart. Well, what if you got 10 racers to register for your race because of that?
And let's say, for the sake of argument, each razor's registration's 50 bucks. What's 50 times 10? Okay, for your people math challenge out there like me. That's 500 bucks. So $500 I made off of informing 10 people about my race. I spent 200. That's not a bad return on investment. Spend 2, got 5, made 3. Not bad.
Think about that. If your goal is 10 people, And that's a really achievable goal is just to convince 10 people that you exist. You may talk to a hundred people all day long. Just to just to get 10 people to show up to your smaller race, could make the difference even breaking even or going, you know, going broke. So when you think about the cost, consider how much it would cost you to advertise on Facebook or magazines or on other websites.
If the cost of being a sponsor, cost you only 200 bucks at that space and those 10 racers actually register and you make your money back, Beats just about any kind of advertising. This is how being a sponsor of someone else's race can prove to be worth the effort. Maybe even go as far as provide free registration to some of the winners of the bigger race to 1 of the category prizes where, you know,
first place in this category. Maybe you're a maybe because you're mountain bike racer. Maybe you you pick maybe they have a category that's that's you know, junior class or maybe you're looking for the pro guys. Maybe you're looking for the mid packer guys, the master's class. You know, maybe you're looking for whatever kind of and it this works for any event is you can say, 1st place for this event wins free registration to Kyle's race.
They can announce that. So not only not only are you a tent at the race, a sponsor, maybe your logo goes on their t shirt, Now you're get announced as and the winner of Kyle's race. First place is Mister Murphy. Because Mister Murphy wins everything. Right? Yeah. So Mister Murphy wins the prize. They announce your race. He gets free and treated your race. And people go, wow, Mister Murphy's going to that you got that wet race prize? I wanna go to that race because I wanna be like Mister Murphy.
Okay. Maybe this movie is a bad example. Okay. Bob Smith, Tom Black, whatever. Right? GI Jane. We could pick any name. Doesn't matter. The point is, now you have a tent, people see you, your sponsor, People know you're a sponsor. Now you're kinda connected to other things. You could be a sponsor to another event, and now you're connected kinda by, you know, but it's sponsorship osmosis. And now they're announcing you. These are this is advertising. You cannot pay enough for.
That's how you connected. That's how becoming a sponsor can can add to your promotion. You can offer you kind of your to be in the big races, you they could even put you on their social media, on their website. They could be converting your market materials just by simply adding a couple hundred bucks to their sponsorship, you now have this opportunity to have them share with their people. With their email list, with their social network. Now does this always work? You know, it might
Let's just put that in there. It might. And I say that because is flyers working for you? Is Facebook ads working for you? Is your email contact list working for you? Is talking to people on the trail working for you? And if if you say it is, I would challenge you with this question.
How do you know Now if 10 people show up to my booth at an event and sign my list with their email address, and then on registration, on start line, and I see those 10 people on my start list, I know for a fact where they came from. I know. I know how many people that I talked to that event showed up if they asked for information, if I got their contact information. I can correlate those 2 pieces of data. Into knowing
that this paid off for me. Now, it could also mean all these other people found out of my event who didn't talk to me. That's the nicest, the fringe benefit of just being the impression. I'm here. I'm at the podium. I'm on the t shirt. They see me on the website. Now they see my Facebook ad. Now they find my website. Now they find me on the registration site. Now I've connected. With enough impressions
where they go, I really I should really go to that race. I bet you're just gonna be a lot of cool people there. I'm gonna have a lot of fun. I like that trail. That's how you do that. That's the that's the thought process. And being a sponsor helps promote that. It's a little bit money forward for a huge payoff in the back end. That ROI is is something you can measure. And that's the key. And I talk about this in a lot of episodes, especially on wreckingyear.com.
I talk about the ability to measure success. You can't goals don't exist if you can't measure them. You know, I wanna feel good in 2018. That's not a measurable goal. Did I feel good in 2017? Yeah. There were some days I felt great. There were some days I didn't. Does that overall mean I felt great for 2017? I don't know. See, that's not a measurable goal.
Now, if I wrote down every day, the goal was if I feel good right now in this check this box and I can go and count those boxes. Now I can find out that I felt good a 180 days and not good 90 days. So more or less. On average, I felt better in 2017 than I didn't feel good. That's a measurable goal. This is the same concept. You collect people's information. You get people interested.
If they take a flyer or they come to your booth, get collect their email address. How's any more information? Hey. I'll contact you because people are on the go. They're busy. They can walk up and give their email address, and you just send them stuff. 1 simple email. Hey. Remember me? My event? And if that email address shows back up on your registration, Bingo. You've made a connection. That's how that works. That's gonna do the second 1. Be a new source be a new source for volunteers.
Now if paying for a space is not in your budget, and if the fees are really too high. And there are some big events, and we'll get into that in a little bit about you could really spend a lot of have to spend a lot of money in order to get in some of these big because they know that there's that you sponsoring their event gives you a benefit. And they're already starting to bank on. Well, if you want that benefit, you're gonna have to pay for it.
So that could kinda work back and go against you, and we'll get into that a little bit. But you can try to convince them to let you be let you in by offering volunteers to their event. Now this is your access to your friends, maybe even if you have a staff, as a team of volunteers is sweeten the deal. If you're not volunteering for the sake of volunteering, you're volunteering a exchange for a space to promote your race, to their customers during the event.
Your instance, bringing your street team into their event to pimp your event during their event. But you you come with the understanding. Right? When you get this opportunity, you need to be the friendliest volunteers in the world because a bad volunteer doesn't make a great ambassador. Okay. This includes, you know, it this includes with your team of volunteers, you want to select the people that are happy energetic and very forward.
Let me say that again. Happy, energetic, very forward. Don't bring. The e ores and the gloom gusses were just like, you know, no offense to Gus. Gus is a great guy. No. I'm talking about the guys. We're like, you know, oh, everything sucks. Everything's so oh, you guys can't believe. This mocha is, like, not stirred, and I am so upset.
That guy. You you say, leave him at home. No. You want the hey, everybody. How you doing? This is cradle of this. Phrase. Go. Racers. Go. Go. Go. You got this. You don't keep battling. That person, you want the the super fan. You want the cheerleader. You want people who are so energetic that you wanna punch them in the face. Not literally. But you know the kind of people I'm talking about. These are people who get the 6 in the morning and they're just like, yes. Yes.
I am not 1 of those people. I am a night owl. That's just I'm sorry. The Navy broke me of the being up early thing. But some people, they didn't get broken, and that was the people you wanna find. Those energetic people who are just always positive.
And in fact, there is even some thinking, total sidebar, that you are who you surround yourself with. If you wanna be energetic and you wanna be happy and you wanna be very forward, surround yourself with those kind of people because they'll help you be that kind of person. You can't help but become a little bit more happy, a little more energetic going around those people. You can't.
I I challenge you. To go spend a week with energetic people like that and see what happens. See what kinda week you have. You might find yourself, you know, out of the doldrums. I told this to a lot to to my to my my vet friends too, especially some of my vet friends who were like, you know, you saw some saw some things and did some stuff and wouldn't recommended that kind of stuff. By hang around with people who are super happy and super positive
because it has an impact on their life. It makes them see the different side. It's not you know, my glasses have to empty and my glasses have full or who took a drink. Instead, these are the kind of people that are like, you know, oh, look, I'm thirsty and here's some water.
Mean, your approach life like that. If you can surround yourself with those kind of people, and and coming back to my point, you'll have a group of volunteers or a group of even give you their staff. Okay? Sometimes you gotta pay for people. Sorry. Just, you know, you you you are employing somebody. That payment you're giving them they help out with your races, helps pay for their mortgage and their car payment and their cell phone bill or whatever. Right? So you're you know, it's not a you know, you know, I was like, I have a staff and I'm not a slaves.
You have a group of people who are who are who support you and want you to be successful. And in turn, you support them want to be don't want them to be successful too. You can bring them along. You know, as a project, tell them, hey, look, I I really need the promotion of this race or this event. I really need people to show up. I'll pay you 10 bucks an hour if you come help volunteer if this other race with me. It doesn't even they don't other races you have to know.
Right? Because this is a work between you. And them not you in the big race. So you show up with this big group of happy energetic and forward positive people. And just like during the trade show or conference, having
good looking people in your tent can't hurt either. Now, of course, this is a total superficial, and some people would be like, you know, well, Well, they're gonna be good looking. I'm sorry. The beautiful people run the world on certain places, and everyone knows this. And when it comes to selling things, sometimes you gotta have the, you know, the attractive person upfront. And this is guy or gal. I'm not sexist. You have a good looking guy and a good looking girl doesn't matter.
It can't hurt. And the key thing about your volunteers is that you haven't sometimes, I would even say I would even say that energy and positive attitude makes people look attractive. That's just me. Okay? You know? Yeah. You might be pretty, but if you have crappy attitude, I'm not interested. Right? But if you're positive and you're very energetic, that is so infectious.
That is what people connect to. That energy, that's what they're connecting to. Not if you have perfect skin or your nose is puritan. Or, you know, your hair is perfect. No. It's that energy. And that's the kind of thing that can't hurt. That's the kind of thing. When I say when I say volunteers, that are, I guess you could say, attractive? Did they, you know, kind of bring the people in? Like, oh, hey. Check him out. Check her out. No. I'm talking about energy. People who are positive,
but not like, you know, shoving it down your throat. They don't wanna back off. You know? They're they're they're responsible with their energy. They're just blasting in everybody. But you get the idea. And the key is to bring those rep those volunteers that represent your company in the best possible way, and that's that's the takeaway is you're looking for ambassadors. And they should be wearing your brand name on their shirts. It'll show up to someone else's event.
And, I mean, sometimes they make you aware of their volunteer shirt, and that's fine. But you don't have to wear it all the time. Okay? There's plenty of marketing materials and free swag, and all the race details need to be memorized with these people. They know where it's gonna be, when it's gonna be, how much it's gonna be, what it's called, they know everything. You pre you pre game these guys in gals.
So you absolutely need to do this as much as you can for for the host race so that you can leave a great impression. You don't wanna show up and just be pimping your race the entire time and not supporting them
because it's a pit pro quo. You're there to support their race. So when you're in you're present and you're supporting their race, you're supporting their race. But when you're talking to people on the sidelines, If you're milling around the parking lot, if you're over by, you know, wherever one's kinda like already done racing, that's when you got the opportunity to say, hey, there's another race going on. You can change shirts. You can move around. So this is this is kind of the juxtaposition you you give yourself. As you show up with your positive energetic volunteers,
You're totally involved in being present in their race and make their race successful. And then as a benefit, you get to mingle around with their customers after the fact. And pimp your race. That's kinda how that works. Okay? So don't forget that the reason you're there to help their race out is so you can market your race to. But don't do it during their race. Let them have their day in the system than sunlight. Let them have
their race be awesome. And be a be a be a factor in making their race awesome or their event awesome. And then you get that sidebar networking kind of thing in the back. That the race room is gonna be okay with because you helped make their race awesome. You were present. K? That's that's number 2. Now number 3, and this 1 you have to you have to work with me on this 1 because some not everyone who does races is a racer. But sometimes being on the inside is better than standing on the sidelines.
So when you're in the mix of other racers, you get a chance to hear and see things you would not normally be privy to as a spectator. And many large events have beginners or master's categories that are not competing for top placement. So think about using your race entry, as a means to place your own tent up at the race area. So this is kind of the the the brand ambassador as the volunteer concept translated into a brand ambassador as the racer.
Now I'm wearing a kit. Now I'm wearing a shirt. Now I'm wearing my next races thing. And for a small fee, you get a chance to show up and show off your business with a branded pop up deck because that's where all the other racers for that event are are at. The branded race jersey, your post or pre race t shirt. And the added advantage of the strategy is you have now at all access past to the actual customers
who you can have no doubt are in here, Tracy. We'll spend money on doing it because there's and they're right in the middle of these these people.
You don't need to be pushy. No worries. You don't need to be hang hang on flowers. It's not like you. Or flyers. You don't need to be, like, sitting in the you know, like, you know, pile you up. You know? Now, Kat, 3 beginners at this line. Oh, hey, everybody. Hey. How are you doing? Hey. Hey, did you hear about my race? My race is coming? No. No. No. No. No. You don't do that at all. That's bad. You gotta manners. You know, manners, meeketh the man. Right? See if it matters.
So you need to do what's called passive pitching. Now passive pitching is finding a subtle way to work your next race into normal race to race conversation. Now, what's a better in than what you're wearing? You're wearing the kit, so So 1 day in the near future, I hope to have the merchants of dirt race kit,
you know, presented by a Rechinir. And I'm gonna have my merchants of dirt kit, the big old shovel on it. And then on the front of these, it merges a dirt, and it's gonna be all green, cool, and white, and all that. And people would come up and be like, you know, hey, man. It's going on. Hey. It's pretty cool. Yeah. We're in this race. It'd be cool. Hey, merch is dirt. What's that? Oh, that's my podcast.
You should come listen to it. Oh, I will, man. Hey. Find me the parking lot. Let me know about it. I will. I know I got a card for you. I can give you later. That sounds awesome. That's passive. That's passive conversation. The person's looking at my kit and interested in it. I didn't say, hey. Are you interested in race promotion and podcasting? No. I didn't do that at all. So that's the kind of way you wanna kind of approach this. This is the good old fashioned word-of-mouth advertising.
This is real simple marketing without all the pushiness. You let let them tell you that they're seeking on the races and you just go, oh, I just happen to know about 1 and it just so happens it's your race.
Right? You could even offer you know, and when you're talking to people in other locations, you know, when the race is over, you can you can see business cards and say, hey, man, I got this you know, because I just talked to this special promo code, only for you. You know, it could be true. You could only have a few of them, or maybe you just give it to everyone, and you just use it as kinda like the n. Like, you're special man. You get a promo code.
And that's that's how you can connect to people being a racer. I've already decided to use it. The strategy is designed to leave the person with this impression of exclusivity. I guess that's the word of the day. Exclusivity. You can walk up to him and give him the promo code and say, hey. Only for you, man. You get the promo code. No 1 else has the promo code. Yeah. That's cuts. That's marketing. Hey, everyone feels special.
And they're all they're all feeling special with the same promo code. But it doesn't matter because you're giving someone you're giving someone a benefit. You're saying here, If you sign it for my raise, I will give you something special. And that is how you create a relationship and career connection. Especially in this kind of concept, you may only get to talk to 2 or 3 people. You may only give they'd be able to give out 2 or 3 business cards.
But you gotta set your goal. What's your goal? If goal's 10, then you need to connect with 10 people. If your goal is anybody, then three's could. Right? Because you're not measuring it. We go back to measures.
K. It's a very personal way of ruining your race. 1 race for the time, 1 race for the time. Now being a race for interrace, talking to the racers gives you direct access to customers who are also looking for product that you give out that you do. So you will get the opportunity to talk to a lot of people. But also, you need to stay clear of angering the ongoing the actual race promoter themselves.
It's not mass advertising. You're not papering the parking lot with flyers that no 1 reads. You paid your registration fee, and you're allowed to talk to other races before, during and after event. That's what your registration fee allows you. So so no 1 can stop you from doing word-of-mouth advertising, especially when it's a 1 on 1 race promotion. They don't and it doesn't gander Big returns.
This is why I made this the third 1. Doesn't cater big returns. So use this to your advantage when you are on the road as a racer. At other races. I think about that. So the first first 1 is a sponsor, is I am overtly advertising my race at your race. That's it. I showed up just to advertise. 2nd, I'm volunteering. I'm putting work into your race that now when I'm pimping my race in the back end,
you know, you're not upset about it. And we we don't when we're very open about this, I'm not hiding that from anybody. As a racer in a race talking to people about other races, I don't need to really ask permission for that because now I'm talking to other racers. I just conversation. Hey, either there's this race coming up, you know, in January. You should come to it. It'll be fun. Yeah. I'm a promoter. It's gonna be great. Total total about board.
But you're not, you know, walking up to the podium
and saying, you know, hey, do you mind if I borrow the microphone for a minute. Hey. I'm Kyle, and I have this race coming up everybody. Just wanna let you know. Hope you can come. It'll be great. I'll have the flyers over there. It'd be awesome. Back to you. I'm gonna let you finish your podium and everything, but let me tell you about my race. Now, that is the wrong approach. Now, unless you know the race promoter and they're totally okay with that, Kansas are, they're not.
So use the suit advantage when you're on the road as a racer, when you're doing very long 1, Word-of-mouth, very, very almost intimate kind of thing. Make your roadshow part of your of your of your racing schedule, make it part of your your approach to talking to the people because you need to have of course, I can go back to other episodes or anything. You need to actually have a race to promote.
You shouldn't be thinking, I'm gonna build a race. I'm gonna be super awesome. I'm gonna have everything together. And then I'm gonna go onto the road and promote it. No. You're gonna have You're gonna have all that already. I'm gonna have all these races set up. I'm gonna do all these races. I know I'm gonna do. And while I am building these races, I should be out promoting as well. It's not a finish the race, then go promote. It's promotion and race development at the same time. Okay?
Which is why you need to build these kind of thinking into your promotion schedule. You need to plan on attending each event. Well in advance of your event in order to generate enough time for razors to add this to your delivery schedule. So right now right now, there's the it started to taper down, the season started starting to end. And there's preseason's gonna start picking up here, and already people started to release their calendars. Of what's going on. And think about
your, you know, you kind of like your your 90 degree angle other events that you could go to to pimp your race at. And think about how you can contact those as a race promoters and start thinking about. Okay. Is this a race broker I need to bring volunteers to? Is this a big event that I can put a tent at? Is this a race I wanna participate in that I can talk to people and then have enough lead time for that. Okay? This in turn will help generate the buzz.
You support that you know, you wanna support that breakeven registration target. You you wanna get those fenceitters to commit to you. You know, plus, you're also kinda building good relationships with other promoters. You you create some long standing marketing channels that could benefit your race some time because
they may may try and do the same thing. They might be going, how do I promote my race? Oh my god. No one's showing up. Oh my god. I have supposed to have 200 people. I'm not gonna break even. I only have 5. I'm panicking. Now you become a channel back. They know, oh, Kyle's got an event. Can I come to give flyers to people at your event? Absolutely, dude. It becomes this pit pro quo. Yeah. We're all competitors. Yeah. We're all competing for the same people.
But as long as we're not having our races the same day, it's okay because you know, you have racers who make that decision. Your customers make that decision of what they wanna go to and what they don't wanna go to. And there are some promoters. You're gonna be perfectly okay with having them promoted to your race. Any other promoters you're gonna meet? You'd be like, no way, dude. You're jerk, and I don't want you to even near my race.
Sorry. That's just the nature of the business. It's not personal. It's business. Right? Worse's head kinda thing. But there are other risk promoters? You're gonna find, they're just those are delightful people. They're just fun to be around. They're just nice people. I could name 5 month top of my head. They're super nice people. If they ask me, if they wanted to come promote at my race,
not a problem. I wanna promote at my website, not a problem. Want me to pimp them on my on my show? Not a problem. But the other race promoters that I'd be like, mm-mm. Sorry, dude. That's just the nature of the business, and you'll learn this as you go along. You'll learn this by building these relationships. So don't be afraid to get out of your house and go on the road and find these people. Because remember convincing 1 racer at a time to give your race a yes is better than a 100 mabies.
Better than the interested button on Facebook. This is this is the concept of taking your your race or your event on the road. This is the roadshow, is you're gonna have to go out to where people are That's the concept. That's the idea. So as you're noodling through that, I'm gonna tell me in the in the next segment, I'm gonna talk about how
an example of putting this into practice and kind of like where this thinking goes. Because I had the experience of promoting at a big race and I I want to share that experience with you in the next segment to kinda understand that that there are some of these concepts Have a price tag, and the big races know that.
So on the next minute, I'll walk you through the steps. You need to consider when putting your roadshow together for the big race, stopburgers, and some understanding of the gotchas that can happen in that. Alright. Putting the roadshow into practice is something that you need to consider for a while. You need to, like, to put your brain into overdrive to kinda consider it. Does the return on investment be ROI? Some business terms in there actually
gives you something that you can you can use. And what do I mean by that? Well, if you spend a ton of money in a big event, and you get no registration, could that break the bank? If you're a small event, you don't want to spend a ton of money on a on a sponsorship type environment that gives you nothing in return. Now, some big events don't deliver what they say they're gonna deliver. That they don't
they don't pimp you like you want to be pimp Like, you should be they don't they don't they don't take you to the dance, like they say. And they don't they don't they don't take you out on the dance floor. They leave you sitting in the chair of the punch bowl.
And some big events are like that. Some big events think that they are the big cheese. And although you gave us a few bucks, Yeah. You can go over the little tent row over there, and that's great and all. But other than that, stay away from my erasers. And they have this attitude, and you understand some big events have this attitude. And it's unfortunate because I think big events should be turn around helping little guys out. Because
where do their razors come from? I guess they maybe they don't care or maybe they like, you know, well, the champion people are gonna ride at the top anyway. They're gonna come to our event because they're champions, and we get all the good people. And thanks for putting on races that help build champions, but We don't care about you anymore. That's that's that's Kyle. That's my personal opinion about how big racers kinda feel and their kind of attitude.
It's not not everyone involved, so this is not a blanket statement. You know, like, all people involved in GMV events are jerks. No. But there is this kind of, I guess, this aloofness. You know? I guess if you're if you're into JRR Tolkien, is they're, like, the high elves, you know, like, you know, we're the most evolved form of elf. Yeah. Sorry. You're not. First off, no offense. This is just a race. Right? You're not doing world hunger. You're not, you know, you're not sending guys to Mars.
Okay? You're racing. So let's let's back down that little high horse a little bit. Number 2, you wouldn't be a big event if little events didn't happen. So I'm all about given back, all about about helping helping other folks out. And that's the whole point of this podcast is helping folks out. Is giving you knowledge that no 1 else is gonna tell you about and showing, you know, lifting the curtain and showing you the guy behind the scenes, moving all the levers isn't really a wizard.
These are the kind of things that I like to show you. So that's given back to you. Big events. Now, I don't feel that way. And it's unfortunate. So
but if you find a big event that does, I'd like to know about it. I'm sure they're out there. I'm sure there's some big events. I have some examples of big events that have been on that, and I've got about 80 other examples of big events that could care less what you brought to the table, unless you're the top build person, unless you're, like, you know, Subaru or the tracker or 1 of those big type, you know, the number of zeros into the sponsorship check, they don't care you exist.
So just know that going in that a big event's gonna have a kind of an attitude. Okay? So if you're prepared for that, it won't be a culture shock. Okay? So for this example, number 10, we're being part of the vendor space during the the USA Cycling Mountain Bike Nationals. Now this is the event I recently got to participate in. As a as a coach. So in full disclosure, I am a volunteer coach for the George Mason University Cycling Club. We are a huge program,
firstly level program that's got oh, yeah. I wish I have that. No. It's not that. We got, like, 5 racers. They're really dedicated people. We have we ebb and flow depending on seasons. I'm a volunteer coach, which translates into no money. So I'm not getting paid. I do this kind of my heart.
I helped start this club when I went to Jordan Mason University, so this is my way of giving back. Right? That kind of more of a general manager than a coach. We do some coaching, but gotta go to Montana for the USA mount in my my championships. K? Which is kind of a cool thing. But this is based off of last year. So last year, the mountain bike championships was in Snow Shoe in West Virginia. Okay? So we're talking about some some past experiences.
Did I Montana was a weird place It was very different. There were some vendors there, but not a lot. Not like snow shoes. Snow shoes seem to have more item. It's hard to tell. The way they set these things up, it's really hard to tell. But let's just let's just go with the example. Okay? So this is a rare opportunity where you can show off your race portfolio or your racing services in front of what they say is 30,000
3 1000 attendees. Okay? Now there's a big difference between a collegiate nationals which is in Montana, and then mountain bike nationals, which is the snowshoe. Mountain bike nationals is the big wigs, the everybody's. I'm talking about the hardcore racers smaller of the country. It is easily
3, 4 times bigger than a collegiate event. Collegiate events are tiny little things. Which is surprising to me. I would think the collegiate wouldn't be huge, and the nationals would be smaller. And then, of course, Olympics would be even the smallest. I guess it doesn't work that way. Kinda like but I'm thinking about football. As my example,
is that there's all these high school teams, and then there's all these colleges, but there's only so many colleges, and then for colleges, you go to minor leagues in pro or or what do they call it? The Canadian leagues or indoor, and then the pro. And pro is, of course, the elite, which is the smallest group of football players. Versus you go you don't like the pyramid there at the top. I would think mountain bike nationals or collegiate would be bigger than the actual mountain. Not true.
Surprising. Okay. So there you go. You learn something. So anyway, 3000 people there. Sure. Okay. You know? County people is a science and kind of an art. Let's just go with 3000. Okay. So what does it take to get a spot as a vendor at their expo, at a championship event? Now, the concept that they have at nationals is they have like the Tent City or Vendor Row, where they put all the different
the vendors in a certain area. There's like a like an aisle you can go down. And see all of it. Now, if you've ever been to to Now, here in Washington DC, we have the Marine Corps Marathon or the army, 10 miler, They have this, like, tent city where all the people are at, and there's huge tents of all sorts of products and the the the military recruiters are there. And there's people all that are selling shoes and are selling goos and bottles and shirts.
It's just it's chaos, but it's where all the vendors live. And you pay a premium price to get in there. Well, same thing with this kind of thing. Alright? So first, to get into this kind of thing, you need to have a vendor application. So you have to start with this piece of paper where you have to pick the size of your space. So if you're a for profit business, I mean, you can pick like a 10 by 10 space for like 300 bucks. This means you get a 10 by 10 pop up canopy You know?
Which course is gonna cost you, like, a $100, you know, if you don't have 1. Now if you're a race promoter, obviously, you probably have 5 of them. 3 of them are destroyed because the wind threw them or someone didn't know how to fold them correctly is sitting in your garage. But for 300 bucks, you get a 10 by 10 spot. You pop up a little tent. That's pretty good. Okay. So let's let's, you know, for us, as people who do the math at home, let's just run the tally. Okay? Let's pretend you have nothing. Pretend you have this event, you haven't bought anything, you wanna go to you wanna sponsor your events, you have nothing. Okay? So $300 space, $100 10. Okay? 400 bucks. K? What if you wanna brand it? Right? Brandon 1's gonna cost you much more, but we'll stay off the shelf. You know, went down to
to Walmart or the open box store. Got ourselves a $100 pop up tent, and we're we're good to go. Okay? So really a little more down the application. You should discover that any 10 or canopy you bring requires you to have £50 weighted bags on the legs. Woah. Those exist? Yeah. You learn about those when your first hand goes flying off into the distance. So you have that. Okay. So let's pick up. We got £200 of sand.
Some parachute cord to tie it all down. It's gonna cost you about 50 bucks. Alright. We're at 450 now. And then what if you need to decide that you need to decide on the application if you need power or not. Well, that's interesting. What if you're running a computer or a tablet? You decide that you actually do. Well, if you wanna have power though, that's an extra $75. You'd be kidding me. Right? Okay. So now we're what 4525. Okay. So it has but power has a catch.
All your val if there's a vendor, you need to bring your own extension cords. Right? And, of course, you need not the short little ones or not the ones you can buy at CBS, the little, you know, the ones that that cause fires. No. You need a heavy duty 50 footer. If you want electricity. Okay. Well, you can go down to 1 of the hardware stores and get that for 25 bucks. Alright. So now we're at 5.50, I think. Okay.
Don't don't challenge my math. Just stay with me. Alright. 550, roughly right there. Alright? Then you need a place to stay. Okay. So now we're at Snow Shoe Mountain in West Virginia in a place to stay. So, of course, they have a resort there. Right? And you can stay there, of course. When you have an event, usually you get a discount code. That's $79 a night plus tax.
But the event doesn't want you to split early. They want you to stay. They want you to be there early, and then they want you to stay the whole week. Of the event. Because if you leave early, they're gonna charge you an extra 75 bucks. So we you need to decide really quick how much time you wanna dedicate
to influencing these people. Remember, we're talking about impressions, so they're gonna walk by your tent. Then you're gonna walk by your tent. You're gonna walk by your tent. Maybe walk up and say, what's this event about? Maybe not. Maybe you just walk keep walking, and no 1 comes comes to them and talks to you talks to you. Maybe you're like, this is and that's a bust. I spent 550 bucks plus $79 a night. I'm out of here. Nope. That's a $75 charge, my friend. Bang.
K? So you need to be so the whole week, that means from Monday to Sunday, that's a 6th night reservation. Now, of course, you get 20% off for lodging because that's the event venue. Right? That's still 6 nights is still $474. Yeah. Mine is at 20%. We get at, what, 379. So don't forget, West Virginia has a 6% lodging tax. Yeah. Woo hoo. Go government. That's another 23 bucks. So our lodging total is about $402. So if we add this let's just round it down, right, 400 even. We make so $400
to stay. That's just to find some place to sleep. And I sleep in your car in the parking lot, because Nova Mountain, you know, winter well, it's just in the summer. Is is not pleasant. West Virginia in the summer is super sticky and gross, and you don't wanna do that. K? So right now you're looking, you wanna stay in some place that has air conditioning. So 950 bucks. That's it. You think? Not so fast, my friend. Because don't forget the man.
You need a seller's permit for the state of West Virginia. If you wanna sell t shirts or logos or you wanna, like, you wanna pass out, you know, if you're if you're just Or if you're just going to pass that information, you're okay. You're just gonna pass that information. Hey, come over race. You're gonna race. You're not selling anything? You don't need a seller from me, but what if you wanna, like, sell swag? What if the way you bring people into your tent is you have a really cool t shirt
or a really cool bottle or some sort of paraphernalia or some sort of swag you wanna sell. To bring people to your tent. So they go, what's this about? And now they're walking around your brand, the the brand or the event on their bottle that'll remind them later, the sign up for your race. Alright? Well, that's gonna require you to get a West Virginia state settlers permit because you're probably not from West Virginia.
You're not from, like like, my better half, which is is is from West Virginia, but she hasn't lived there in, you know, 20 some odd years. So she's not technically a West Virginia resident. So because you're not a West Virginia resident and the event is in West Virginia, you have to buy this this seller from it. Now, I don't Sounds like a giant pain for 30 bucks. That's how much it costs. It's just 30 bucks. It's no big deal. But the speed of government means you to have this thing in your hand
before the event. So if you decide to show up that morning and they say, where's your sellers permit and you say, I don't have 1, they say we'll go get 1. By the time the event's over, you might have an impeller's permit. Now that won't work out, will it? So you have to know you need impeller's permit. So that 30 bucks could cost you the entire event that you already paid for upfront. Boom. That would be really painful, wouldn't it? Okay? Next,
they wanna make sure that your tent doesn't burn everybody else's tent down. That's right. You're gonna need insurance. This is or it's not like an event. I'll buy it self, isn't it? It's almost like all you need is a course and you're ready to rock. So you don't have a choice of not getting this. You have to have USA Cycle requires you to have at least a minimum of general liability coverage. Okay?
Well, let's go to to my friends out there. You know? This is not an endorsement. Just happen to be what I know of. Right? Is State Farm Insurance. To meet the general coverage, the minimal amount of coverage is roughly about 500 bucks a year. This is general liability coverage. This is in case my car smashes into you or not my car That's separate insurance. But if my car runs into your tent, that would be general liability.
That might be something weird. But how about I walk over to your venue and I flip your table I smash her tent and I punch you in the face. That can be general liability even though punch you in the face is a gross negligence. So or it could be assault.
So let's let's take the punch out. Right? I flipped your table over. I wrecked your tent. It's general liability. Or my tent starts to fire and burns your tent down. That's general liability. You know? Not really my fault. You know, I daisy chained a bunch of power strips and, you know, oops, like, crowd sapphire. This is the kind of covers it protects that. You have to have this.
Now you can't just, like, call up State Farm and say, hey, I would like some general liability coverage, and they say, well, here's a pure deal. Here you go. No. You gotta go and yeah. You gotta go down. You gotta go signs of papers. You have to pay. You have to do all this. You have to do this before the event. So you really have to usually sorry. That's real $500 a year.
And this is the only event you're gonna attend, and it could cost you less. You could do like a per event 1. But chances are, you might wanna do more in 1 of these, and not all insurance companies provide a a 1 time policy.
So this should be something you you should have this for your business anyway. If you're running a business, if you're if, you know, like, this is a whole another podcast. If you're running a business, you should have general liability insurance in the first place. Just just to cover your your basis for any kind of weird stuff that can happen. On top of a insurance policy that a sanctioning will give you, you need to have a general liability for just business purposes.
This is this is all sorts of I mean, it covers weird all sorts of weird stuff. Right? So you may already have this. But if you don't, You probably need to really consider about getting that. Right? So let's say you don't have it. Let's say you decide to start the policy today, because you're gonna go you're gonna go to this event. Right? Excuse me. This will cost you roughly 500 bucks. Okay? So to where are we at now? Okay?
A minimal amount you need to reserve a 10 by 10 space. Occupied that space during all 6 days of the event. Have a place to sleep, That's gonna cost another 6 days. We'll cost you approximately $1500. And that is before you actually do anything with the space. 1500 bucks to get in the door. Now that you know the cost, it's time to do something with that space. So you have to really be committed. $1500
the space. You need to think about, okay, that's just the space. That's just lodging the space. Power permits. Some insurance. That's just for the space. If I don't do anything about space that can kick back that money, to my event? I just spent $1500 for nothing. You don't wanna do that. So now let's actually let's now we have this this opportunity. How do we do something with that? How do we how do we make the $1500 for that space or the expense?
How do we make our money back? Well, first, you should probably have something ready to sell or hand out for that kind of money. Definitely need some swag. In order to do this properly, you're gonna need some additional gear too. I mean, you think you're done spending money? You're not. Okay? So hopefully,
You have most of the stuff since some of the gear really kinda comes from racing. This is an advantage you have as being a race director, a race rotor. So you kinda have this stuff laying around. Right? You're gonna have access to these kind of things. Because your space is gonna need staff. You're gonna need some people man in it. Are you gonna be there 8 hours a day? For 6 days. You might, but that's gonna be kinda tired. We have to go to the bathroom. You don't always do eat.
Don't you don't beat it by yourself? That'd be horrible. You leave, and that's when the person walks up with, oh, man. I was gonna show all my friends. This race, bitch weren't here. You don't want that. So you're gonna need some staff. Right? You're gonna need some some booth guys and some booth babes to help bring in the all the energetic people hand out stuff. Right? You're gonna need a table. Definitely gonna want a table. Right? They're not gonna give you a table. Gonna need some chairs to sit in. You won't be standing the entire time, or maybe you do. But maybe you're not. Maybe while the race is going on, no one's in the tent city, what are you gonna do?
K? You're gonna need a backdrop, branded and not pan branded. Remember your pop up tent? It's got no walls. Maybe you need a wall that has like the brand on it. That'd be kinda nice. You need to maybe a set of polo shirts for your staff look all kind of branded with your logo on it. That'd be kinda classy. Maybe you're gonna need a laptop or a tablet. Because you're gonna collect all those email addresses.
I mean, you could have a clipboard with a piece of paper on it, but but when I get a tablet, you can, like, click even more than just an email address. Or show them past events or show them videos or maybe even have like a 30 or 40 inch display because you're already paying for power, to show a video or a slideshow of people having a blast at your past events.
And then business cards. About your 500 business cards you can get from Moo or from Vista Prince for I mean, they're advertising, like, all that freaking time. You can get 1 of those or maybe even race flyers. You wanna have, like, stack flyers to hand out some takeaways. So this this is you know, this this has a a wide range depending on what you plan to do with the vent in the next 6 days.
Because that's just that's just showing off your event. That's not selling anything. That's not doing anything like that. So what do you plan on doing? What is your marketing goal for this event? You start thinking about what is it you want out of this? What would you consider success? Are you just informing razors about your race? Are you selling t shirts or some branded gear that's a promotion? Are you just collecting email addresses?
Are you just gonna send promotional emails to people who sign up? What's your goal? What does it you wanna do? And you should have this lockdown before you take the time to spend the money to attend an event like this. Look at this another way by asking yourself, what do you need to happen for this effort to be considered a success? That is the key takeaway. What do you consider success? Do you guys spend 1500 bucks plus some extra? You need to start thinking about what
ROI? What return on investment would be considered a a success? What would be considered a win? What do you have What do you have to have on the last day to make it worth your while? I think about that. What if the 1st 5 days are a bust? What's the big push? What's the thing you need to do to really up your game? To make it worth your while. On your last day, you didn't make anybody contacting.
Do you guerrilla campaign? You start talking to people? Maybe you haven't been in 10th the entire time. Or maybe you need to think about before you end this event. See, again, you start war gaming this, you start to think about, okay, I could have somebody in the lobby of the hotel. They get someone in the parking lot. I can have, you know, the street teams walking around. You know, ask me about your race. I can have peep spectators ring in the bell with my logo everywhere.
I mean, I could really kind of passively be marketing the people as they come zip and buy on their bikes. There's all sorts of places I can ring a cow bell at. Okay? And what is the dollar amount in sales that you need to generate to make this worth your while? And is that number of email addresses that you send promotional information about? For your race going to get you that number. I mean, how many people you're gonna have to what do they say in sales?
100 cold calls equals 5 meetings equals 1 sale. That's the math. You talk to some marketing people. That's the math for how that works. A hundred times you try to sell somebody, you might 5 people that will listen. And now those 5 people, 1 person might buy something. That is a big, big funnel. You think about it. That 100 down to 1 is really big. So you have to decide this going in
that this has not become you just sitting under the pop up canopy for 6 days watching people walk by because that's not how this worked. It doesn't work like that. You can't sit there and hope people will come up and talk to you. You need to be engaging. And not only be engaging, you can't just be like, you know, you know,
Tell me. Come see him on my race. Call me over here. Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah. No. You need to bring. You need to have to unfortunately, here's the word. You need a gimmick. You need to have some sort of catch. Some sort of way for people to go, what's that?
And that could I mean, we would we would talk to that, but all that stuff. You know, it's promotional items. That's people in the booth who are very energetic. That's TV displays. All things like that. But maybe you need to do something more. Maybe they start thinking, out of the booth. Outside. I always sit outside the box, can you believe that? But, no, it's outside the booth. You don't know, just because they say, this is the spot you can be, and this doesn't mean you have to stay there.
There's a line to the restrooms. Maybe there's a bunch of porta potties. Go stay on the porta potty line. Talk to people. Hang up business cards. People on the parking lot fixing their bikes. Go up and talk them. Ask them about their bike. Ask them how much racing they do where they're from. Go into the lobby and see people who are just sitting around waiting for stuff or bored or go talk to spectators.
You know, there's all just the people there who, like, they they brought their wives and their husbands and their family and their kids and their parents and their friends. Go pimp the spectators about your event. If you've got some free swag, go give it away. Don't just wait for people to come through your booth. Be aggressive. Maybe I guess that's my point right there. Be aggressive.
Be aggressive. Be aggressive. Be aggressive. There you go. See me. A little a little going on there too. So when it comes to $1500, minimal costs for a space and event, for something like USA cycling, for the mash. Nah. This is a mountain bike. No. It'll jam in chips. You need a marketing plan for what you plan to do in the event. You need to have a return on investment for what you consider worth the expense. And you need some goals.
Because if you can make those goals, you'll consider it a success and you'll feel better about the expense as well. So that's the takeaway for that. So If you plan on doing a big event and plan on promoting a big event, know that those realities exist and know those expenses can happen. But if you were prepared, you're aggressive, you have a marketing plan, you have some contingency plans and you have some goals and some easily, I mean, goals are things that we can achieve,
then you could be successful at promoting your race at a bigger race. And now you know. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Merchant Center podcast. Hope you just got something out of this. I hope this was entertaining to you. And I really hope that these lessons and this knowledge helps influence your marketing plan or your production plan or your strategy so that you can help build better events and better races.
And I really like to hear from you. You know, give me some feedback on what you thought about this. If you have any other questions, maybe there's something I didn't cover, you would really like to hear me cover. Just email me at merchantsadirt atgmail.com. And and I read all those and so send that information to me and maybe I'll even make an episode out of it. Also, Yeah. Short question. Short questions are great. Hit me up at mergersadirt on Twitter, and
I'll answer back. Know, I like the short questions, but if you have a long question, just let me know. And we'll get we'll get to get an I will. I'll get an answer to you. You know, it's because it's me and Mister Murphy here. Right? Me and Mister Murphy, we we do all the answering. Right? I'd love to have Mister Murphy do all the answering, but, unfortunately, he doesn't exist. Yeah. I know. It's a big shocker. You're like, what? Mister Murphy doesn't exist. Yeah. He doesn't exist.
Anyway, you know, send me a short question there. Long questions at [email protected]. Or you can go on the website too of contact form. A bunch of different ways to subscribe. I'd love to use this scribe. I've got a new button on there too for Android users. So if you're an Android user and you wanna subscribe the show, just go to merchandisinger.com, click on the Android user, and it goes to an Android Subscription
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and click on my Patreon button. And what that is is it's a way for you to give back to the show. To to help me motivate to motivate me, of course, to produce more content, to maybe produce specialized content, and and do some things that that are just for Patreon subscribers as well because I don't make any money on this show. There is no big trick factory team sponsorships. I don't get any of that stuff. You know, I'm around then, I'll get some product that I'll get donated
for a race because I do a lot of I do a lot of race to party, some races. I do a lot of race directing for other races and local stuff. You know, it's like my laboratory, keep my skills sharp, and improve some concepts. But that's that's it. There's there's no there's no big check at the end of of in the beach episode. At least not yet. Maybe maybe a year or so from now, we'll see what happens. But right now
Patreon is a great way if you wanna you wanna get back to the show. I'd love for you to to get back to this show. You know? And That is
that is kind of the ways to get in touch with me and would contact me, and I'd love to hear from you. And I wanna thank you. I just wanna thank you for being a listener. This is 37 episodes in, and I'm still having fun with this. This is the kind of thing that I heard at at at DC podcast last month. Which was, if you're not having fun anymore, then you shouldn't be doing this anymore. I still have fun doing this. I still love talking about these topics. I have a whole lot more to say.
And I'm I'm expanding my horizons. You know, maybe, you know, not just racing, but just outdoor business in general is kind of like where I'm going. I'll have some more information about that into future episodes. But for now, thank you for being here. Thank you for being a listener. Thank you for choosing the Marriott. If you're at the very end of this podcast,
then you are a hardcore list ner, and I love it, and thank you for being here. And I really appreciate you. And I hope to to see you see you. Hope to I am. To have you on the next episode of the Burglar podcast, hopefully, it'll as I get my groove back in, it'll we'll start being consistent with our release Until then, go start better races. Take care. I had an idea for merch as a dirt podcast t shirts that said hashtag getting kinda dirty, and they only come in triple x.