Today, in the merchandiser podcast episode number 18, in this episode, I'm gonna help you understand how to set up your location development strategy. Strategy that could be more important than the race itself. Why? Because there's only 3 things that matter in race location, and that, of course, is location, location, location. Today's episode is also brought to you by the number 7 as in the 7 venue areas you need to have in every single 1 of your races.
To control customer flow, reduce customer confusion, and show your customers just how organized you really are. Let's roll. Thank you for joining me for the merchandiser podcast. I am Kyle Bondo, your professional recognier and race business coach. And I'm here to make the art and science behind building, promoting, and directing offered races. Simple and understandable.
Along with me is like 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 immersesadirt.com. And if you're new to the merchiserv podcast, welcome aboard. I hope you're hungry today because today we're gonna be talking about McDonald's. No. Not the secret meaning behind to all beef, patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, honestly.
Like, you believe that after all those years, it's still in my head. I'm sure there are some advertising executives in New York right now, high fiving each other because I remember that. Although there's something about the big back that just makes you feel like a kid again. Now, when I say we're gonna talk about McDonald's, I'm talking about McDonald's strategy. It's like, how can McDonald's strategy have anything to do with race promotion? Well, if you guessed by the intro,
we're gonna talk about location. We're talking about venues today. And in particular, the strategy behind the success of McDonald's, and how you can use that strategy to improve your own races. The inventor of McDonald's, Rakerock, had a very unique view of venue. He once ended the secret to success
was not how you made the burger or the people who served the food. Although those were important factors. In fact, Mister Crock would say, that he wasn't even in the hamburger business at all, but rather in the real estate business. This is the major part of the 2016 movie, the founder,
that stars Michael Keaton as Ray Crock. In fact, that movie, I think, is still in the theaters down down the street from here. If not, I'm sure it's gonna be on Netflix. Sooner or later, see that movie and see what his vision of franchising really was. And to him, location was more than a factor of his of his success, it was a reason McDonald is now the largest food chain in the world. Without successful locations, McDonald's, may have never become the popular franchise that it is today.
The same is true with the development of a sports venue. A prime location for your event needs to be 3 things. It needs to be accessible to your customers. It needs to be useful to the offer discipline that you are participating in and it needs to be far enough away to be considered country, but close enough to the city. This is why the location development is 1 of the most important processes in event management.
And, of course, you hear me say a lot, the most important. They're all important. You can never really can't really do 1 without the answer. But location has a very special place. It is also why the location of your vent just like the location of McDonald's for Ray Crock. It's often more important than the sales of that event. Then the event itself, sales have a impact based on your location. If your location is too far away,
your sales may suffer. If your location is too close, to certain other areas, your sales may suffer. But if you don't find that Goldilocks zone, the place well, like I said, far enough way to begin certain country, but close enough to the city. Sales can be heavily impacted by the location of your event. And that is the beginning of your location development strategy. So let's get into this. The 1st phase of any location development strategy is an understanding of 3 key issues.
And what are those? The amount of property you need to conduct your event is number 1. That kinda makes sense, doesn't it? You can't hold a 5 mile run on a park that is barely a 100 square feet. Not gonna happen. Right? Unless you're doing a 1000 little circles. I mean, sure. You could probably hold a trail run on a little tiny park like that. But it'd be really silly. But maybe maybe you're into silly. Chances are though
you want something a little bigger. So the amount of property is definitely gonna be a key factor. Number 2. What features your event requires to be successful? So if you're into mountain biking and your entire course is flat, That might not be a successful race for you unless
that is a key factor in what your race is. There's some cycle cross races slash mountain bike races that do gravel rides. Flat is okay. Rolling hills is okay. But if you're doing a truly technical challenging race for off road racing, You don't want if you don't want some hills, you don't want some water crossings, you don't want some some rocks, those features become part of your success. So you don't wanna find those.
And the third is how you turn that locations into a venue. There are plenty of locations, great trails, great features. Man, they are hard to get to. And not only are they hard to get to, I can't find parking. I have to go pee in the woods, worse if I got if I got women with me, who are gonna go pee in the woods because that's that's a bigger deal for for the ladies. You have a lake location that has a venue that's got no power. You have no cell phone service?
Some of those locations are not good venues. That depends on the kind of race you're doing, of course. If you're doing a hardcore like 18 hour or 24 hour venture race. Some of those ventures those those venues are going to be ideal for that kind of race. If you're doing a 5 mile trail run, no. The revenue is not gonna work,
but maybe it will. So let's not take anything off the table. Let's just note that those 3 things. The amount of property you need you need to have features that makes it make it successful, and something you can turn into an actual venue. And I and I interchange those words because a location is a opportunity. A venue is a produced area.
And that's a very distinct It's a very good distinction you need to understand. A location, plenty of parks, plenty of property, plenty of areas out there are locations. I can find locations all over the place that I would love to do racing in. However, few of those are gonna actually turn into a venue where I can actually sell tickets to get people to come race and actually held a race.
There's a distinction there. So understand what that is. Alright. Since we're focused on off road race promotion, obviously, we need a good sized chunk of property. So we're looking for a park with roughly like 500 to a 1000 square acres of land with a good
network of single track, fire roads, natural use trails, misses off for a racing after all. Right? I mean, with without these mixes, your course design may encounter significant difficulties creating a course that is both interesting and challenging. Plus, if depending on the discipline you're you're promoting your promotion companies focused on, You need enough of the trailer network to prevent dog legs,
2 way traffic, and simplistic features. You know what? People are like coming really close. There's a couple races have been to where they had to run surveyors tape to the middle of a trail because 1 leg of the trail crossed the other leg of the trail. Now, if you're trying really hard to stop people from cheating,
that's a hard place. That's a hard place to to to manage. You gotta have to put someone there. So things like that you wanna avoid. So you're looking for those places that you can can weed that stuff out. To a traffic is a nightmare. You do not want to wait traffic, especially on narrow trails, it's gonna cause confusion. Additionally, the size of the property may also limit the number of racers that you can have participate in the type of event, distance that you desire.
So if you want to vent that the 10 mile trail run, or a 50 mile trail run or a hundred mile trail run or a marathon mountain bike race, you're gonna need the bigger piece of property. No 1 wants to try to fit a course into a park that lays 3 miles a trail. Nor do they want to choose a location they can only accommodate parking for 10 cars. The feature of the location also requires some thought. Take for instance.
Okay. There's the most popular mountain bike trails in Northern Virginia as a place called Fountainhead Regional Park. Fountainhead has by far the best single track mount by trails around, but 90% of those trails are connected to a series of 1 way traffic loops. These these trails are mountain bike only, and they prevent trail running
without, you know, it could be some negotiation with the park manager maybe and get trailer on there, but they prevent any kind of trail running or any kind of hiking on those trails. It's mountain bike only. And there are other trails that you you can use, but you can't not use those if you do a mountain biking. Mountain biking could only go in those trails. Right? So the loops also make other kinds of events like gravity and mountain bike orienteering, very difficult.
And then there is the difficulty level. Mount Fountainhead is a mountain bike park reserve for intermediate riders due to its technical and often tedious terrain. While some riders would find the park to be a fantastic venue for mountain biking, most riders new to the sport might not have such a good experience. So could you imagine hosting a mountain bike race in a park that contains several hills so technical that they have their own names. Okay. You have to understand.
Hills with names are always a bad sign. Not to say that any other kind of off road event could be held there. In fact, several other, like, off road triathlon and event races have successfully been promoted to Fountainhead. However, this venue is most likely not the location designed to accommodate new or beginner racers for mountain biking. That being said, It is a fantastic location for trail running.
Just so happens, the park is kind of bipolar in its use. While 1 area of the park is exclusively designed for mountain biking, The remaining 2 thirds of the park is perfect for trail races. In fact, they just opened some trails for mountain bikers too that are now joint mountain bikers and trail runners, and even horse use.
So this is the research you need to do by any given park. When a park appears to be too difficult to accommodate 1 kind of discipline, you have to also consider other disciplines that it could be good for. So this leads us into deciding your location evaluation process. The next phase phase of your location development strategy is understanding what roles that you need to fill before evaluating your location.
Ideally, you need to have a defined role for how you will scout the location, how you plan the location layout, and how you will set your courses on. Seems pretty obvious. You're gonna go find the little area. You're going to map out a location layout and how you would plan to use the area. And then fee if you can fit a course into that. K. These can be filled by 3 different individuals in your organization, or have all the rules achieved in 1 person. Now use the word role there.
This is not necessarily mean a job title or this person is the only thing they can do or you need a person for doing this. These are specific roles and functions within your company, within your race promotion business, or within just, you know, sometimes just you that you have to think about because they're very distinct different functions. And roles and responsibilities that you need to take care of. When doing a location development strategy?
So regardless of your process, the importance of these specific roles are as follows. The first is how you will scout your location. This is the location scout role and is responsible for discovering potential locations for events. This is by typically researching visiting, exploring, and documenting potential of each
local, regional, and national park, private property location, and public real estate venue area, what have you. The primary objective of this role is determine if a particular location can support a specific event based on 3 primary criteria. 1, does it have an allowable use and or tolerance for what you plan on doing there. 2, is there a significant trail network? And 3, racer and spectator accessibility. We kinda talked about that a little bit accessibility.
Is there parking? Is there bathrooms? Significant trailer work? I mean, is it just loose? Is there a network? Allowable or tolerance. Do they even allow mountain bikes there? Do they even allow trail rooms there? This is the kind of criteria you need to consider when you need to go find these locations. So what's the second 1? How you will plan a venue layout. So now you're gonna change the location into a venue. So now you are
planning. So you wouldn't found a location. Now you wanna see if you can turn into a venue. This is what they call the venue planner role. And you are responsible for locating the venue specific areas that can serve as the central location for registration timings, hard and finished inspector viewing. And we'll get into that in the second half of this podcast. We'll talk about the 7 venue areas. But just know that it's the the spaddling of things that you need to be consider, determine
how how participants will enter an exit location, how they're gonna find the park, are there bathrooms located or possible portal bathrooms that you'll gonna need to be 15. Is there any need for security where emergency medical service is gonna be located? If they're not on location, how are they gonna get there? How trash is collected and disposed of, and how many staff or volunteers gonna need to support it. I mean, the big, huge
If you have a 10 mile course or the 10 mile course goes 5 miles out, you may have to figure out how to get staff and volunteers to that 5 mile point. What were you doing? What? 5 laps of 2 miles? Well, no, that's a smaller venue and maybe you don't need people that much. You can repeat locations. These are the kind of things you consider. Right? The primary objective of this role to focus on where all customer interactions will take place before and after the race course. Pretty simple.
So now that you've you've scouted the location and you've kinda laid out the venue, now it's time to see whether or not a course can be developed there. So how will you set your course design? This is the course designer role and is responsible for locating venue specific areas that and serves the primary race course. What areas can and cannot be accessed during the event and identifying risky and or dangerous property features?
The course designer is focused primarily on the race course layout, the flow, the direction, and they have to determine 3 key things as well. Where are racers gonna start and finish? That's very important. Where they should and should not be in the park during the event? This is some vate races that have been to have certain parts of highways and road. You cannot travel on. It's just too dangerous.
Etcetera, etcetera. You have to know where those part those places are. And how to best control the number 3, how to best control the outcomes by limiting the route choice near specific features. So this may be you taking certain obstacles or things that are too difficult to navigate out of play. For your venue, or maybe it's limiting the route choice to a specific feature to where you're forcing them to have to travel that feature. In 1 particular race, there is a a hill that is a monster.
And I forget the name of it. It's at what? Rocky Gap State Park. It's in the back 40 travels the power lines, the gas lines, trip the hill. It's like a e gun's revenge or e something something something that he Yeah. Good show broke up. And
you have to during this during this particular race, it was a team of 3 of us. Had to take our mountain bikes up that hill. It took us 50 minutes to get to the top, 50 minutes to get to the top. It was brutal. It was a long line of people all hiking up that hill. And it was a monster. That hill was placed there on purpose because there was a checkpoint at the top of that hill you had to get to. Now you could have taken the trail
they've taken you miles out of the way to get up there or you take that hill in particular. And the race promoter specifically wanted that feature to be part of the race. Why? Because I still remember it. Years later, I still remember that hill. And those are the kind of things you wanna consider when you're doing course design. Are features that you want to be part of the experience of your racers. So if you're a fan of the merchandiser podcast, I'm also a software developer.
So the last step should be no surprise to you when I say documenting your research for future use. Documentation is a key, especially in software development. Been to a lot of projects where documentation was nonexistent. Same thing when racing. Anytime you do a strategy, anytime you do something that involves you collecting research and collecting data you need to document. So the final phase of your location event strategy should be documentation.
Each role provides you with a a specific product that will become critical to your event manager process. This. The location scout will help you develop a list of properties you can and cannot support various styles or types of courses. That's gonna be all your scouting efforts. It's gone would be about about parks that are nice and will be fun to visit in great places to take your kids.
Loudly for racing. And you're gonna find parks that are just unbelievably barren in wasteland, but, man, they make fantastic racehorses. You're gonna find all those everywhere. Right? You're gonna find the rerace courses that hire. They're beautiful and fantastic. No bathrooms. That's fine. Porta potty, so you start to adjust. So you start to think about a criteria for ranking these different venues.
Now this will enable you to weed out locations that do not provide you with the necessary resources before you ever have to worry about using them. Having a list of locations, and all their available feature aids you the you the venue planner in determining if the location is even impossible for your event.
So you go from the scout, finding every single property you can think of because you never know when a property could potentially become maybe it's bad for mountain biking, but fantastic for trail running or fantastic for a triathlon or fantastic for a canoe race or fantastic for a off school race. You'd never know. So you keep this giant list of venues within your, let's say, a hundred mile air radius. From where your base of operation is.
That's just a rule of thumb. You could be longer, you could shorter depending on how how far you're really willing to travel. So for each location, the venue planner role should then provide some kind of ranking based on whether or not it can support a course of x size. So now you're starting to think about how big of course is. Well, that venue can support a 5 mile trail run, but that venue can support the 50 mile train run. Desert is does not have power. Well, do I need a generator in gas?
Does it not does it or does it not have public bathrooms? Can I get by with porta potties? Does it or does it not have parking? Is it alongside of the road? Is it is it got a giant parking lot? Is it is it not is it is it not packed on the weekends? I mean, that's rough to have a trail. I have a race on Saturday morning. Ready to go. All the racers lined up. And there's 4000 tourists there or local people come in other houses that walk their dogs. Walk their little kids and strollers.
It's really hard to have a mountain bike or interior race when the trail is packed full of people smoking cigarettes and be bopping along to their their headphones or walking their 14 dogs or they got 3 little kids, a little tiny bikes everywhere. That's a recipe for disaster. Did you know that was there? Well, if you did your venue scouting, your venue scout on days, which might have that kind of participation of local people. You should probably do that. Go on off days. Go on weekends.
Do your research. What you come up with is a rate list that allow you the venue planner role to put more time and effort into locations that are more suitable for racing first. The remaining locations that are missing something or that require the venue planning to develop some kind of workaround. You save that for a later time. You want your top venues at you want your top locations, your their their potential venues, at the top of the list. And the workarounds,
you put those towards the bottom. This is equally true with the course designer. Working with the scout and the planner roles, the course designers should know which locations can support a course and flow racers without overwhelming the area. In working in unison with the with the planner, the course designer can also figure out where the best spectator locations will be. Where the danger areas are likely to need attention, and how to best utilize staff and volunteers.
When your event is hard pressed on manpower, course designer can be used in determining how many people are needed in each given course design. So if you know how many people you have, a course designer can tailor a course to match your need? What do you mean by that? Well, let's say I have 5 miles of trails, but I only have 3 volunteers. Well, I could abbreviate the trail to make it a 2 mile loop and make them do it 3 times.
Or 2 and a half. If I wanna be specific on 5, but it's a o and 5 ish. I can do 3 laps. 2 miles of course. I can put 3 people on 3 corners of a course that's only 2 miles long and manage it quite well. I'd probably find other race raise volunteers along the way to help me fill them in gaps. But if I can't do the whole 5 miles, a race a course designer, we depreciate the course. See, I got a ton of volunteers that maybe I can add trail. I didn't plan on adding.
Maybe rather than 2 loops, I do 1 loop with that extra piece of trail. I've got that cool hill in it. So once you've achieved these 3 phases of your venue of your Outlook, your venue layout with your location, development strategy, you should have a good idea of what properties can support your races, and it should inform you of what resources are available at each location and what courses you can potentially finalize for your next race.
And that's the whole point to this, is figuring out all the parks and locations that are around you that you could potentially use for racing. And then ranking it so that you understand which ones are the best for racing, which ones are okay for racing, which ones are not so good for racing. Then you pair this with an understanding of your competitors and which parks that they're using.
And then you have a good idea that if you go to put a permit in if you remember from our conversation last week, if you go to put a permit in and someone has already taken that date from you at that particular park, you've got a whole list of venues that you can shift to. Or maybe that race doesn't have to be at that park. Maybe it could be at a different park, a different property, a different location.
This the advantage of having this on hand is when you submit those permits for those particular places you want. If you've done enough research, you already know which competitors are snooping around those areas or which competitors have races at those parks. So it gives you a quick reference for when you need to pivot away from that location to another location and what the repercussions are of doing that. And after a while, if you're doing it in 1
geographic area long enough, you're gonna get a pretty good idea on what's a good park and what's not a good park. And what property managers are better to work with than others. And what places have better anatomies than than other locations?
You're gonna figure that out. And sometimes it's gonna be better to buy porta potties and bring a generator because it's gonna allow you to go to places that other places that other people can't go. And you're gonna learn these things as you go down this list. And what happens, the idea of this is if you can do location scouting for a particular area, and you can do venue layouts and you need courses on a particular area, you could then pick up your race business
and go to another place that you've never been to before and uses these same strategies and this same process to recon and plan and course design a whole brand new area that may never have seen racing ever before, and those places exist. Like I said, about documentation, write these things down. Write this process down.
Because, say, you change jobs, and you have to treat the transfer to another location, or you have to move because you you have to be read your kids, or you need to get in the military, transfer to another location. This is the kind of thing that if you have this written down, the process for scouting, for planning, for doing course design can be used, you can pick it up, and go anywhere
and do it again. Do it to a go to a place you've never been before. And by just using this simple process, have a good understanding of what local area parks you could use to start your racing all over again. And that is the fundamental process behind the location development strategy. What else is fundamental? A good cup of coffee. But when your good cup of coffee meets with tragedy, you need to take pause and be thankful for your blessings. Now if you're a fan of the merch distributor podcast,
you've heard me mention Rick's roasters before. Sean and Kaylee Rick's are it's a veteran owned roasting company in Stafford, Virginia, just north of where I live in Fredericksburg, makes great coffee. They sell locally to the to butcher shops and some of the farmer's markets around here. It's a great local coffee. They sell the the hotels. They got cake cups. They got the whole 9 yards. A small little business. I think my house might be bigger than their their facility,
which isn't saying much. But great people great products and they helped me out with a race last year, so I like to pay it forward and and give them the free promos every now and then. Because I I I believe in their product, and I think that's when you do in a promo, that's that's what you need to do. You don't do promos for people you don't believe in. And I believe in Sean and Keely and Joel and Rick's roasters. Well, the other day, they had a fire in their warehouse.
It wasn't a very big fire, but it was enough to to take notice, you know, their distribution is gonna be disrupted for a little while, where they get the paperwork all taken care of and, you know, But the good thing is no 1 got hurt, which is very, very thankful no 1 got hurt. But when you have a fire in a small business, I mean, that can be devastating,
especially when your profit margins are are small because you're just growing your your company and you're just trying to get your feet underneath you. And then boom, you have a delay because of something just you cannot control. So because they had a fire, they they kind of, you know, they They're thinking about the important things.
But, yeah, the coffee was disrupted. Yeah. The roaster may have got damaged. Yeah. They made some damage. You know, insurance will cover some of that stuff, but everyone's safe. So count your blessings. Everyone's safe. When you think about think about your new think about your small company, your your pieces of the company that are irreplaceable, those are your people. People are irreplaceable, and Rick's roasters is is no different, but their people are irreplaceable.
You know? You can replace roasters. You can replace beans. You can replace buildings. Just can't replace people. So 1st and foremost, everyone was okay, which is awesome. But now they're kind of an alert. Yeah, they're gonna be, you know, they're gonna they're gonna survive. They're they're they're a tough little, robust little company. But I wanna reach out to my audience and say, I would love for you guys and gals to to help out Rick's roasters in this in this time of need.
Now if you're not no. Don't know who Rick's roasters is. I've mentioned them a couple times on podcasts. Ricks versus cover company is in Stafford, Virginia. It's a veteran owned company, started by Shaun Kelley Ricks. And
They have dozens of hand selected blends, some of the best coffee there is. My favorite is a coffee blend called the 4 horsemen. And have often asked, why do you like the forespoon? I don't know why people ask me all the time. It's called the forespoon. What's not the like about that? Right? But they have they have created something very special with this company. So please support my local favorite, Rick's Russo's coffee company. By visiting their website, rixgrocers.com.
That's rix with an s and roasters with an s.com. Visit them online and help out this little company get back on its feet. Because I think that I think it's important to get to these small companies to reach out to them. And not only that is their coffee is awesome. You will not be disappointed.
I gave this coffee when I when I got a bunch of coffee from them. I gave it away as a as a prize for a mountain bike race we did last year, people were still talking about it. That was months ago. People were still saying, oh my gosh, that bourbon coffee was fantastic. So you're not gonna be disappointed. They make great coffee. And right now, I mean, they could use they could use a boost. I mean, fire disrupted them greatly. They'll recover, but get my hand. Reach out to them.
Go to ricks roasters.com. Again, that's ricks with an ass roasters with an ass.com. And give them a hand. I mean, even if you provide us a $10 back coffee, $10 back coffee will help them out immensely, especially if if everyone did that, then they could recover from this fire very quickly because, man, disrupting my full horseman coffee is not gonna be not gonna be cool.
So they say it's gonna be fine. They're recovering. A lot of paperwork to do. Everyone got out of safe, but a fire is a fire. So give them a hand. Again, that's ricksroasters.com. And Tom Kyle sent you. You know, it'll be cool to hear that some of my listeners showed up in order to copy I'd love to find out about that. That would be awesome. So thank you very much for taking take a little bit of time to to talk to you about that. Today's podcast is brought to you by the number 7.
7 swans of swimming. 7 colors of the rainbow. 7 days of the week. 7, the number Mister Murphy likes to roll. 4 b at the craps table in Vegas. What's up with that, Mister Murphy? Come on. No. But today, it's going to be the 7 venue areas that every race needs. Boom. Boom. Alright. I digress. Facial layouts are important to a successful to be to a success of your event, obviously.
You need to have your venue laid out correctly. Not only do you need to have it all in the necessary areas in place to be effective, to effectively direct your race, but you'll need to make sure your customer flow makes sense. And that everyone knows where to go. Sounds pretty logical. The goal is to make sure everyone knows where to go and not make your customers have to think about it.
Now take that it's a heart for a minute. Not make your customers ever think. How many times have you set up a racer? They're set up a race. And someone's asked you where x is. Or, oh, to sign a waiver. So what does your venue need? How do you keep your venue layout simple? Your customer flows logical? And how do you go to to make it so people don't have to think? You have to go a long way to showing everyone that you know what you're doing. When you set this up this way.
So it depends on what kind of race you're promoting, but most races have the following venue layouts. And your race is probably not gonna be different. And the 7 of those are pretty simple. 1 parking, 2 registration, 3 starting line, 4, viewing area, 5 finish line, 6 timing, 7 awards podium. We're gonna break each 1 of these down 1 by 1. So you have a good understanding of what each what each venue area requires.
And as I as I go through this, you're gonna You're probably gonna have a couple moments. They didn't really consider these 7 venue areas. Let's get into this to number 1, which is parking. If you don't have good parking or your parking is far away, it could be an issue with your customers. However, parking is 1 of those things that racers tend to forgive. Provided it's easy to find, it's controlled, you have actually someone there, an orange vest,
and not too far away. I mean, 500 yards from registration is fine. 3 miles is not because someone's always gonna forget something and have to go back to their car. And if it's 3 miles away, that's too dang far. And customers need to know how to get to where you want them in the park. So you should probably have a sign at the main interest of the park. Place it near the major intersections. It goes a long way to getting people to the event on time.
Same goes to where you want them to be specific to specifically park their vehicles. Or wear parking is off limits. You know, although signs and cones and survey tapes and snow fencing and even barricades can be very helpful. When you try to guide people to the correct areas, you kinda wanna put parking volunteers there. So you make parking a nonissue.
And these volunteers should be easy to spot, you know, the orange vests with us. Even direction sticks and should not be shy to tell people where they should and should not park. So take control of your parking. Parking is kind of your your first impression that your racer's gonna have or your event. So make it count, make it professional, park cars in an orderly fashion. Number 2, registration. Registration in the first place a customer will need to visit when they come to your race.
So if parking is your first impression, registration is your second impression. This area typically includes stations for forms and waivers, cashier, BID number assignments, if you're goody bag, you're swag, you're still in the swag handout. So this is an important area. You don't wanna hide any part of it. For example, don't put the forms of waivers far away or off to the side if you want the customers to see them as they approach.
Making a customer go back to the waiver table because you hit it does not make you look good. 1 solution is to put your forms and waivers. In the table right in their way. Make them have to walk around it to get to the next area. That way, when they come up and ask you, hey. We're the waivers. You point to the table is walked around. Sometimes placing a volunteer to direct customers as the approach is another tactic that helps keep the flow nice orderly.
That way, they don't have to worry about avoiding the waiver table. There's a volunteer right there saying, hey, welcome to the event. Here's your first stop. The waiver. The same would go for registration setups that require customers to pay before they get their BIN numbers. Don't put bib numbers on the left side of the table and the cash box on the right, making customers cross over each other. Left to right registration areas just makes sense. So don't get creative.
If you have a registration step logically, the flow should align with what you need your customers to do and and in order the way you need them to do it. It may seem like common sense. But moving your customers from area to area in 1 common direction works to keep registration from getting overwhelmed.
And you've all been to a race where registrations are overwhelmed. Where preregistration was on 1 side and nonregistration for race days on the other side cash boxes in the middle, and t shirts were on a table far away, and the waivers were someplace else. So we all know a race where registrations been like that. So don't do your own races that way. Think about this in advance.
You also find that by this logical setup, we'll stop most of the silly questions and prevent someone from jumping the line. This is the people not paying or forgetting to pay. This reduces the chance of confusion. So you increase customer satisfaction that way, but you also increase your your data validity.
And what do I mean by that? Well, the person who's actually paying for the race that registers for the race that gets their BIB number and goes into the race is actually the person you have on a piece of paper versus the person who forgot the waiver or forgot to register who just walked on the course, someone gave him a big number and you have no clue this person is. Right? That's your data. You wanna keep your data clean. Right?
So because Race corrosion has a lot to do with reputation, a registration set up as orderly, logical, and well defined makes you and your event look professional. Wouldn't that be nice? And looking professional will make your customers come back, which is the key. So if parking is your first impression,
that they understand that you actually have things that are control because that'll be the first time they say they they encounter you. So you better put someone up there in parking who represents you and your your race the way you want them to. Registration's the second. And registration's kind of where where some racers will make their final judgment on whether or not they're coming back.
So make the people there, happy smiley people too. Right? You could probably go on reckoner.com and read my blog post about the Disney approach where you call every gust you know, every customer, a guest.
And you put the smiling people up front. There are a lot of the lot of strategies to this. Right now, we're just talking about having the area. You better have a registration area, and you better be a pop up tent with a young lady sitting cross leg, riding on the back of the of the of the waiver form to do registration pin and ink style who it doesn't even a member of the race to begin with. They're an actual racer, but the racing people didn't show up in time.
Yeah. I'm I'm looking at you collegiate people. Don't be like that. Be professional. Have your stuff together. Show up early. Be prepared. Look like you know what you're doing. Have a registration area. Pass smiling people at it. Pretty simple. Number 3. Starting line. Think about where everyone will start. I know.
I where does he come up with this stuff? Right? When racers start, they'll need to be staged in a cluster around the starting line. So they can be organized in the categories and launched the correct waves in appropriate time. Just like every race you've ever been to, there's gonna be age categories, there's gonna be disciplined categories, In mountain bike racing, it's single speeds, and then the master's class, and then the beginners, and
even in trail running. A lot of times, so men go, the women go, age groups go, children go. This club faster won't form until just minutes before the wave is launched. So you'll need to be to be located between registration and starting line. In order to gather everybody up. This way, racers that have to run back to the car to the parking area can form up in the staging area and not disrupt the launch of each wave. Usually, the race director
will be on hand to give each wave a last minute brief about the race, start the race clock, and start each wave. Other volunteers can help work your staging area by keeping the categories organized, checking to make sure everyone has a Bib number, answering any questions, racers might have the course, etcetera. The staging
and start line does not need to be in the same area as the finish line. You say that again. The staging and start line does not need to be the same as the finish line, but it should not be more than the hundred yards away from each other. To kind of keep it in the sandwiched in this little area. Having the finish line far away from the starting line only serves to make racers and spectators frustrated. When both areas are right next to each other, spectators
don't have to travel, and racers know where the spectators are going to be. Placing 1 or the other far away only makes you and your race look unorganized and poorly planned. Do yourself a favor. And keep them in the same area. Not only will customers appreciate the convenience, but it allows you to keep all your gear in 1 area too, and all your gear in 1 area is easy to secure and quicker to pick up when you're all done.
There's a particular race that I went to with the starting line was a segue or a prologue into the actual racing course. And then you did lapse of the racing course, and then that was the finish. And then you just toggled on back. That's no fun. Who's gonna see you do the lap? That means the spectators have to walk half a in order to get to the place where the loop starts. Poor design. Don't do it that way. Keep start and finish, like, not next to each other, but close. So spectators
don't have to go very far. Pretty simple. So that goes on to number 4. This is the area where spectators gather to watch the race near the finish line. It needs to be set up in a way to prevent spectators from impacting those racers still on the course. You wanna keep them out of the way, but allow them the most visibility to finish line. Now this only works for certain races. I mean, you want cheering and photos
for the to be to be the normanist area. But if you do it too far away from the action, spectators are here to become bored, or they're gonna go find their own viewing area, and that could cause problems. So you need to put your viewing area wide enough area to allow everyone to see the finish. But make it clear the zone ends and where the course begins. This is the key position for 1 of your volunteers.
And their presence alone will make the spectators obey the boundaries and keep off the course. A good viewing area will need to be accessible to spectators as possible. This includes access to bathrooms and parking because no 1 wants to walk a mile to see a race, nor do they want to walk a mile to be. So if Grandpa Grandpa come, a little giant, Missusi, and the stroller,
you don't want them to have to travel a great distance to see little Zachary or little Amber Emily crossed the finish line. Just binks. See, all this is common sense. None of this should be a big surprise. If this is a surprise to you, then
I got plenty of blog posts and lots of podcasts for you to to review to make your race you know, build better races. That's the whole point. Right? Alright. Number 5, finish line. Think about wherever 1 will finish. When braces finish, they tend to cluster around the finish line and cheer on their friends, talk with spectators, exchange, war stories, and other races, this cluster gets densed quick, especially the the middle pack racers starts to finish.
You start adding up racers in a big area. You have other racers coming across finish line, you're gonna have a problem. So to make sure you can move finishers away from timing, And into an area better suited for gathering, you need to channel these customers through the finish using cones or a tape, signs,
you know, create that Disneyland effect. Channels are excellent way to flow racers into a gathering area while keeping spectators and all nuggers out of the way. The same volunteer is keeping spectators off the course. You can use them here to make sure racers exit the course correctly.
Especially wanna keep away from timing. 1 of the hardest things about timing is having a group of people standing there, telling their war stories, telling about their the struggles and challenges on the race course, while people are trying to call out bib numbers, timers are trying to record those bib numbers. Because a lot of these rigs are not gonna be chip timed and super high-tech. Or talking paper and pen timing or computer spreadsheet timing or some application timing. So they need to hear this stuff. They need to be concentrating on their jobs. They don't need someone like coming up and asking them, you know, who's in 26 place. Hey. Do you know what position I got? You know, they need to be you keep that zone very clear. And post someone there, scurry people off to
an area where they can go and and socialize. So this leads to number 6, timing. This one's obvious. You need timing to make the race.
A race without timing. This is just a good day of the woods. Now that being said, the timing team needs to be right on the finish line. And that's it. That part is easy to consider. The part of that is not easy is figuring out the distance between the finish line and the timing team and the viewing zone. These 3 areas are very close to each other and it is there a proximity that causes the problem? And I just kinda talked about that a minute ago. Your timing errors be quiet so the timers can, well, you know, prime.
Spectators do not want to be quiet, and racers want to know how well they did before anyone, you know, in the official results are posted. This makes a timing area paradox of quiet thinkers constantly being interrupted by loud crowds of instant racers. The solution put the timing area on 1 side of the finish line and the viewing area on the other side of the finish line. This creates a natural boundary the course itself between quiet timing and noisy spectators.
It won't prevent all distractions, but it will reduce them. Racers will still approach from behind the timers and try to peek over the screens over the shoulders and the screens. Inspectors will try to start up conversation with the timers nothing more than curiosity or boredom. So if these distractions get too bad, sometimes it helps to place the volunteer to bounce Christian Astros and Chattie Kathy's,
but you need to be considering that because every race has this problem now for number 7. This is the awards podium. When the race is over, it's time to present the awards. Just like with registration,
start finish lines, viewing areas, and timing awards should be close to everything. It's typical to post the final results the final results next to the podium. This allows out of the way spot for racers to check and agree or disagree because there's gonna be plenty of that with the results and a great place for the announcer to present. With small events, a sound system is not always feasible, leaving announcer's,
you know, if they yell out results or you yell at the crowd. But yelling isn't the best, you know, when it's not the best option, But everyone located close by, it will be easy for racers to hear their names being called out. And what happens a lot of times with awards is some of these racers, they don't stick around anyway. So you're only gonna get the tops. They're gonna show up, but you never know. Sometimes you get big crowds.
So keep it nice and packed. If you have to yell over, you can yell over them. If not, if you got a sound system, use a sound system. Okay. Not too surprising. The fact that most mid and back and back of the pack of racers don't stick around for the awards, So this can make your word ceremony crowd much smaller than the actual race crowd. Makes it easy to announce winners without being drowned out by the rowdy race announcer. Usually, back of the finish line, viewing area is an excellent place to put the podium. But another ideal place is the awards podium is near the place that most customers came to in the first place and that's registration.
This places the exit to parking directly behind everyone. Now why is that important? Why would you think that the awards platform and the podium being right next to the exit where the parking is? That's because it'll make it easy for everyone to start heading back to the cars and the race is over
because you are guiding the flow. You're flowing people in from cars registration to start and finish and timing to spec the areas, back to results, to awards and podiums, and then back to their cars, and send them on their way. Go home. You don't have to go home, which can't stay here. That's the whole point of having registering the podium in that area because they'll be close to their cars. They won't wanna come over to timing. They won't wanna come over to start and finish. And hopefully, if you've got this organized correctly, you're already picking that stuff up before you're doing awards. You already have team members out there sweeping the course. You already have timing closing down once they've got a total head count, and all the results results are posted. And you put the podium over where the cars are and you just you're you're gently nudging
your customers along the way. So the 7 venues again, parking, registration, starting line, viewing area, finish line, timing, and awards podium. Like I said before, if you keep the venue layout simple in your more flow's logical, you'll go a long way to showing everyone that you'd know what you're doing, and that's how you build reputation. Those are the 7 key things you need to have. Now can you have other things? Sure. You can have vendors.
You could have water stations. You could have a med tent. You could have maybe a place where food is at, you could have sound, you have stage, where you have musicians, you could have other things that that might be something I haven't thought of. So your venues can be greatly different, but fees are the 7 that you need to have. And now for some final thoughts. The beginnings of your location development strategy will require you to do some work. Take that work seriously.
And put some effort around scouting good locations. Make sure you include all the features your event requires so that you can be successful. If it has some amenities that can help you offset your costs like bathrooms and powers, make sure you're looking at those with particular interests. Once you have a good set,
Of locations picked out, you need to turn it into a venue by laying out where the parking, the registration, the starting line, the viewing area, the finish line, the timing and awards podium are gonna go. This will go on to be an effective way to keep your race and your customers flowing to the right places at the right times. Confused customers make upset customers. Upset customers are often not return customers. They say that again. Upset customers are not return customers.
Always make your venue layouts simple and make your customers flow as logically as possible. Allow your venue design to help you achieve your rate your race direction goals and not make your customers have to think. Thankfully, a lot of parks are set up this way to where parking moves on into an area
to assemble, which moves on to the actual trail. So that can help you out by finding those locations. A customer that doesn't have to think about where to go is a happy customer. And it has a happy customer can become a returning customer or with the Disney approach, in 1 of my blog posts, a lifelong customer, which is what you're aiming for. And now you know. In my next episode, this may seem elementary.
But the major event in course design is to physically walk the thing. Course design is just as much a physical job as it is mental. And that means getting out into the wild and seeing things with your own 2 eyes. Don't miss the next episode on course design strategies. That and more on the next Merchants of DIRT podcast.
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