Welcome to the Merchant of DIRT Podcast episode number 2. Thank you for joining me for the Merchants Adirt podcast. This is your insider's guide to practical recreational engineering, where I teach you the art and science of building, promoting, and directing off road races. I'm your host, professor Russell Rechinier and Race Motor Kyle Bondo. Coming up in this episode, I'm going to detail the top 5 things I wish I knew before I got to off road racing.
And more importantly, how you can avoid having to learn them the hard way. When you decide to build a race, you discover just how alone you are. I mean, I like tuning a car or creating a web app or even planning a barbecue, there is very little information on how to build a race on the Internet. I mean, sure. There are a few blog posts out there. They give you some of the highlights. But
do they really tell you the ins and outs? The answer is no. I mean, you might find some good ones about 5 k's. You know? In fact, most race promotion information that I've found on the Internet is about 5 k's. And if you're building a trail run or a mountain bike race,
does a 5 k really do a unique good you know, that information, some of it might be valid. Most of it, however, is not. You would have thought there would be other people out there interested in in building races would release some of their content to to kind of explain this to the world. We just consider how many different offer races are held each and every weekend. Are there any good guides? Not really. Are there any good tips? But far and few between lessons learned,
they don't seem to exist. And unless you're trying to build a marathon for 30,000 runners, you're gonna be hard pressed to find anything even remotely resembling the things you need to understand for off road racing. And if you listen to my my my podcast before this, you know that that's the whole reason I started merchandising dirt. I mean, rickenair.com is all about providing you that information that is not out there. Because no one's sharing this.
And that really, really baffled me is, why is no 1 sharing this? So while getting, you know, advice for a national marathon race or from a national marathon race director can give you some highlights. It's akin to Starting a software company after hearing Bill Gatespeak or Steve Jobspeak. You know, you can go to a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates Conference
and go, oh, yeah, I can I can build an iPhone 7 piece k? Right? No. Not at all. So you listen to a marathon race director talk about how he builds 30,000 person running events. Are you gonna be able to go build your 30 person running event off that? Chances are, you're not gonna need 40 porta potties. Right? So, sure, you're gonna have some insights. And sure, it may inspire you to follow in the footsteps, but
Can you really start a company based on these kind of big picture ideas? The answer is still. No. I mean, good advice. But it's not stuff you can actually use in an actual race, you know, especially 1 that does not include pavement. So during my first race, and during my 2nd race and my 3rd and my 4th and my 5th and kinda get the idea. I learned the art of race building the hard way. And this little thing that you may be aware of called trial and error. And trial and error is not fun.
There is the trial part, this may work, and the air part, this may not work. Chances are a lot of things don't work. It's a lot like being Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. Only my Yoda is Mister Murphy. We'll talk about Mister Murphy, my cohost. Just like Yoda tells Luke, do or do not, there is no try. My experience was based entirely on the philosophy of doing and in doing, I found out quickly
what not to do again. Hence, the do not parts, and you learn that the do not only comes after you understand do didn't work. So Luke was lucky to have someone to teach him how to do what he thought was the impossible. So remember that alone part I mentioned a few minutes ago, sometimes you have to try a bunch of stuff to see what works with your own 2 eyes.
And there is no 1 there to tell you what to do or do not, and that's the part of offered racing that is really difficult, especially for people just starting out. So let's make that let's make that suck less. Let's make that experience a little less painful. Today, I'm gonna tell you about the 5 things I wish I knew before I started building races. And I hope these 5 situations help you avoid my cohost, Mister Murphy. And it it would certainly help you avoid several figurative, although
they don't feel figurative. Financial and emotional punches to the face. I mean, race promotion should be fun. I mean, what other job requires you to work outside and build operational activities all day for people to come and, you know, smiling faces and everyone have a good time. I mean, race promotion is that is that fun element And if you have to do trial and error, it takes the fun right out of it. So I'm gonna try to make your race promotional race promoter's journey more enjoyable.
By sharing with you these 5 these 5 things that have made my journey a challenge. So counting backwards from 5, The very first 1, you will never have plenty of time. This 1 should be a no brainer, but it is is something that many race promoters fail at, and it's called time management. I mean, procrastination will drown you. Race The race production business is a very time intensive kind of business. There are things that have to happen, and if they don't happen,
things go very wrong. It's not that it requires every waking moment of your time is successful, but it's that there is a a time requirement to every part of it. And that Time cannot be cheated. I mean, time is the only resource you can't you can't purchase. You either use it or lose it. So for example, your permits have to be turned in months in advance. Park managers will always, and I mean, always tell you know when you show up with a permit 2 weeks before a race. Now side note,
not always true depending on what kind of park it is. Sometimes, especially if you have a relationship with parks, you might be able to sneak in a permit. But As a rule, park managers will tell you no, especially national parks. Forget national parks. 2 months in advance, minimum. So you can't go on go back and unwind the clock. And get that time back. Why are you waiting to get your permits in so late? I mean, these are the kind of things that will definitely make your life difficult.
Race plan comes with this huge tight commitment as well. There's venue layouts, courses designed, insurance to buy, equipment to set up, regularly registration to sell,
Sponsors to find, awards to find, volunteers to convince, the list goes on and on and on and on. And I found the time needed to go into organizing all these things before a race, to be the hardest thing to get straight. I mean, you can manage yourself by lists, but if you don't know what's coming up, you can't put it on your list. So you may overlook this when building your first race, simply because you just don't know what you need to do. And, boy, there's the time requirement
for each step add up quick. I mean, there is a cost to your own time to consider. But the time commitment always comes to the cost that is invisible to you at first. I mean, think about it.
What is your time worth? I mean, if you don't know, the sake of argument, let's do some math. If you think of yourself as an employee of your own race production efforts, and you imagine, let's say as an employee, you get paid $10 an hour. Pretty nice easy round numbers. Right? So how much money is your salary gonna cost you for your race approaching company to work your race? So let's say you work 10 hours a week to your race.
K? That's 40 hours a month with me so far. K? And you work your race for about 4 months. So you serve 4 months in advance, 10 hours a week, for 40 hours a week at $10 an hour. Okay? 4 times 40 is a 160 hours worth of work. That's for 4 months. At $10 an hour, a 160 hours is what? $1600. So your own labor Your first race is already $1600
of your own time. If it was worth $10 an hour now, you and I both know, that if you have a day job, most professions, if you're working professional, you know that you make way more than $10 an hour. K? The average mean income in the United States is somewhere around, what, $53,000 a year.
That that's more than $10 an hour. So which realistically means that if you put your real time involved in that for what you really wanna get paid, what actually really cost you money. And here on the East Coast, in the Washington DC metro area, the the average cost of living here is not cheap. So if you realistically wanted to build a company in some of these in, like, major metro areas, It puts your time investment cost, you'll in the 3 to $5000
amount amount. And in some respects, it could be as much as you know, 6 to 9 depending on where you live. So all that's just for planning a race is you have to make any money. Would you know do you need to pay yourself before you're doing races? Putting much of a business if you get paid doing it. Right?
How can you ever think about quitting your day job and doing racing full time? If you never think about how much time your time is really worth. I mean the truth is you can't. You can't quit your day job if you don't pay yourself. And if you don't consider what the cost is that you need to consider when it comes to actually
putting your time into that they bet you're a race. So your time is this resource you can't afford to waste, and your time has a value associated with it that you should not ignore and here's the lesson I learned from this. Only through managing your time with techniques and processes actually at work, I mean, in the sense, not doing
different things every single time being efficient, those kind of things. Your your hope of being profitable is very, very small. So there's a huge cost to wasting your time on things that do not work. Okay. So number 4, the number 4, is you must stay humble. Why don't we make that? I mean, I once thought race building was going to be easy. I used to see things like, oh, it doesn't seem that hard. I expected to build a race and have a ton of riders show up and make a bucket of cash.
And quit my day job, and that would be that. And I really thought my first race, you know, would be the launching point of successful race, you know, production company, and would grow super fast. And I expected the end of my 1st year that I would have this race production empire. I could be able to quit my day job and be, you know, be self sufficient and, you know, that would be and then he lived happily ever after. And that was completely delusional.
And why was it illegal? Because my first race was a mountain bike race, and 30 riders show up to it. It made absolutely no money. And that was heartbreaking. And I'd be lying to you if it didn't think about quitting right then and there. I mean, put all this time and all this effort and all this energy into this race to have 30 people show up. You know? But it taught me a very important lesson. That I set my expectations way too high.
There's nothing wrong with a race that brings in 3 riders or 3 racers or 30 paddlers.
However, what is wrong is planning, budgeting, and spending real money on a race that could that really was designed for 200 riders and only have 30 riders show up. I didn't understand analytics. I didn't understand how preridge numbers worked. I didn't understand, you know, how to market myself correctly. I'd understand how to that I was the 1 responsible for selling my race. So the same lesson applies to all races, to all types of disciplines. If you plan to spend the amount of money that would accommodate 200 participants and you only get 30, you will feel the pain. But if you plan for 50 and only get 30, Well, that's not too bad. Right? And oh, by the way, those 30 writers really had a great time. I mean, I provided them a fantastic
in the event. They received all the trimmings of big race and didn't have to share with anybody. Most of the people who showed up got podium, I had food, we had a sound system, an announcement, and the generator, and it only was yeah. It was fantastic. For them. Yeah. For me, it wasn't wasn't that great. At least for my pocketbook as far as an experience goes. Now those 3 people went on to become, in a way, brand ambassadors
next time I had a race, some a lot of those people showed back up, and they brought their friends. So there is, you know, there is a icing on the cake, sort of speaking. It's silver lining, if you would, In the beginning though,
it didn't feel like that. So it was awesome customer service. I mean, how many customers for life of that race? But it was really tough on my pride. I really had to swallow a lot of a lot of humble pie, eat a lot of crow, Because you have to understand that there is a risk in this business, just with any business, that this might not work out for you.
I mean, most race race approaching companies go out of business the 1st year. I mean, just think just normal small business statistics, 1 and 3 fail in the 1st year. Right? Well, with racing, it's like 1 and 2. Most races do not make their money back, the money they put into it. And a lot of these people, I mean, there are those you know, you probably meet those guys every now and then. He's like, you know, oh, I just do this for the racing. You know, I do this to get back community. And some of those guys actually do that great. They got a full time job. They're they're retired. They do their own thing. That's awesome.
But this is a business. And a lot of people go into this business to run a business, which means you have to make money. If you don't make money, you go out of business. I don't care if you're not profit or for profit. If you don't make money, you don't stay in business very long. So at the time, I didn't know why only 3 races showed up. I didn't know about marketing per registration in sales. I was lucky
I was able to recover, at least financially, for my first mistake. There's this line in this movie called Fila Dreams, starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones. It's great line goes in like this. If you build it, they will come. And I call this the field of dreams delusion. I don't know if I if I made that up. Myself or it's I've heard it somewhere. But the field of dreams delusion is a real thing.
It's the expectation that if you create something awesome, that by simple virtue of its awesomeness, people will flock to it. Guess what? You can build something awesome, but they won't come. I mean, do you wanna know how a real to really protect yourself from the crushing result of your own overconfidence, it's really easy. It kinda starts with this 1st principle of Praful racing. You need to keep small.
Small races are the best kind of races to start your career, and that's kinda how I started Recognire. Is you gotta start small. You can't shoot for the big the the cheap seats, like first time up to bat. You have to think small first and build
slowly. You know, there's some business logic to the stacking the bricks. Same concept here. You gotta start small and work up. Okay? Can you build a race that is only meant for 50 riders? You can, and it wouldn't cost you all that much to do either. The advantage of small races allows you to learn to flow, do some experiments, and keep your cost down. I mean, it would also give you a satisfying confidence boost, especially if you say that you successfully directed your first race.
I mean, going all out on your first race is too risky. Head your bets by creating a small race that you can control, and then add that experience to your next race. Add add more experience to your next race. Add, you know, if you don't have music, the first couple races, that's fine. Do you music the next couple races? You don't have food? No. Maybe your race doesn't have food. Maybe you wanna add it. Add it to your next race.
But build off of some confidence boosters is starting off small. The slow and steady growth may not mean may not be what you expected to do when you first started down this path. But the lessons I learned by going too big too soon was a nice visit from Mister Murphy, who came and really hit me over the head. So if you build small races on purpose, you protect yourself from overcommitting. And from losing control of your race. And in the end result,
we'll be a race that you'll be confident of. And you keep your expectations at a certain level. You'll also Consider that as success, and successes in this business are important. Building that confidence is important. Right? Number 3, and what I wish I'd I'd learned before I start to build races is understanding repeatable systems. A big part of race building is figuring out how to do something right and then how not to forget how you did it.
I mean, you only wanna learn once, and you wanna be able to repeat it without having to figure out how you did it the first time. And when you understand this simple concept, then and only then can you begin to teach these steps to someone else? So why is this not sound like common sense? Well, here's the problem. When I first started building races, I didn't know the difference between what I would use again and what I would only use once.
I mean, for example, the process of of applying for permits The first time I've I built a race brief, I had everything in it, all the bells and whistles of how I would run the race from the opening registration to saying goodbye. To the last race we're hitting home. I put a ton of work into building this race brief, thinking that I gonna impress the park manager. Well, turns out the park manager really liked the details of the permit,
but didn't need to do all that stuff. Total over When I got to my second permit, I did the exact opposite. I put very little information to the permit, and that permit got denied. So when I got to my 3rd permit, I finally figured out what certain park managers wanted to see. I mean, 3 tries out of 2 when it comes to 3 permits, was difficult. And having Woody and I messed up my entire planning process,
which means I had to start all over again. But this is the kind of pain I wanna hope to help you avoid. I mean, the lessons learned here is that you first need to write everything down. I mean, you cannot get away from that. You need to write down what works, what doesn't work, and keep it in your Raykesbury Building Journal. That you constantly review. I mean, the the simple technique here is write things down. Each activity, each thought, each idea, each plan, each failure,
to write it down. What works? What doesn't work? And keep really building this race building journal. That's so you can constantly review it. And by writing down each activity, in your race building, on your race building journey, you start to learn how things happen. What things work for you in your race? In my journal, I learned what not to do again. I learned what race what park managers wanted to hear and what other park managers didn't wanna hear.
So that's the kind of pain you you definitely wanna avoid. And each 1 of my entries details kind of a key process that I would have forgotten the next race, the next season, and the journal becomes with the baseline for figuring out how to build your version of the race. Your journal also becomes a huge time saver when it comes to just recalling steps that came after another. I mean, don't underestimate
the Race Building Journal. I mean, some steps cannot happen until other steps have happened, and sometimes the sequence is very complex. For example, you can't order BIB numbers until you know how many categories you have because that would be a waste of money. Or advertise your race, deliver permit is approved. I mean, nothing worse than having people sign up for a race, for a permit that gets denied.
I mean, you don't have to write down every step you need to perform, like, send your email campaign out to your racers about coming to your race using, I don't know, something like Mailchimp. But you need to at least write down that you did it and that there is a step there. I mean, searching and relearning information is a huge waste of time. So You don't want to do that over and over again.
Additionally, having to relearn the complicated steps of your process will become 1 of the 100 things that will cause you to drop something. There's only 1 of you. Can you can you do it all? At first, you might be able to. Over time as your races get bigger and more complex, you're going to need help. Can you teach the way of You are building your race to someone else. Here's another huge thing about the journal. But this is how you have to approach your race building journal.
You must start writing down your steps as if you're going to pass on to someone who'd never done it before. I mean, this is a scary thought, isn't it? Building the process that you can share. I mean, could you imagine having your race run without you being there? I mean, take that to consideration for a minute. It should be 1 of your goals. You should be trying to work yourself out of a job. Because of the owner of the company, you shouldn't be also the director of the company.
You should eventually be able to have someone else be the director. But you can't teach that person. You can't tell that person how to direct your race or how to run registration or how to set up a course. If you can't write it down and articulate it yourself. So that's why your goals of working yourself out of a job is so that you don't have to guess what comes next, and then you can share that to someone else who they don't have to guess what comes next.
It's almost your personal guide to building races. You wanna be able to share it to your team. Your friends, anyone interested in helping you build your race. You want, of course, their input on how to refine this so you can repeat it over our again. You wanna hear their point of view on why they think maybe that doesn't work. Maybe there's an Alberta way. This feedback, this this kind of collaboration, is a huge part of building your repeatable system.
And that repeatable system is something that you will be able to teach someone the first time, and then they go away to someone else. You teach over all tears. You save yourself all that hair by writing it down for the sole purpose of being able to share it. Okay. So now there's only there's only 2 left. So let's get to the let's get the the nitty gritty ones. Here's the ones So we start to this is top 5, so you know the here comes the big ones. Right? So number 2 is that
this is this is a huge 1. And some of you may not may not embrace this right away, but you have to understand this point. My number 2 thing I wish I learned before I start doing races is that you must always be selling. And I hate selling. I hated selling for the very beginning. I like the idea of someone else selling a race. But that is not what you can do in race promotion.
If you told me that 50% of the race promotion if race production was selling your race, I mean, I had paid more attention in in marketing, marketing classes, and and people who do marketing. Because most repain most race promoters will tell you that you have to be a salesman it comes to getting people to come to your race. And I found that to be very true. However, they a lot of people won't tell you how they get people to come to the race. You know? Isn't that something? The
the sound for some reason, race brokers think that the actual promotion part of the race some kind of trade secret. Well, here we go. Your time for secrets time, secrets time. I'm gonna here tell you right now. The truth of selling your race is this no different than selling anything else. That's it. That's the secret. You know? Sorry. Didn't mean to make it sound anticlimactic. Right?
But get this. If you have a good product and a means to convince people of the valued product, people will buy it. And this is true for anything else you buy. It's isn't it? Well, the same goes for races. The same principles of the market for buying things you go to Walmart to buy or go to Target. The same principles to get to you to buy those kind of things. The same principles are selling your race. Okay? You can find enough people to come to your race. And your race can be successful.
And this seems simple enough, but the, of course, the devil's in the details, selling your race for, you know, the fun and promotion part is an all encompassing job that never ends. You need a venue. You need to be able to convince a park manager that your event will be good for his report. You need stuff for your race. You need to be able to convince a sponsor. The sponsor of your event will help their business too.
Don't have enough staff to fill positions. You need to be able to convince volunteers to go up their time and actually help you out. The selling never ends, and it's not just money. In fact, the never 1 job of race promoter is to sell, not direct, to sell the race. Building a race is simple next to selling a race and convincing someone to come to your race. That's why you need to spend most of your time on selling and less time on building.
That's the repeatable system, remember. Build a race. Build a system. Name. You apply the system in any park, in any trail. Selling, however, constantly changing monster. And you also need to you know, you you do this in your writing too. Can't just be selling just by word-of-mouth. You need to be able to write this stuff down.
You know, I had no idea how much writing was gonna be involved race promotion. It is a lot of writing. You need to be able to convince people not only through your sales pitches and through through, you know, pitch person in person conversations. You need to convince people on your website, convince people in email, social media, You know, there's endless proposals. You spend countless hours riding and rewriting and honing the sales pitch into a consistent message.
You know, I spent way too much time building my rays and very little time selling it in the very beginning. And remember my example from 4 of the 30 people showing up, because I didn't sell it right. There's a big lesson learned here in that that in that field of dreams, delusion that you have to you have to that You have to resist that than not wanting to sell your race. They will not come unless you tell them to come. Multiple times, every day, early and often.
Repeat. Repeat. I mean, some marketers will tell you that to sell a product it takes 17 to 20 interactions or impressions
before they'll go, oh, maybe that's a good idea. And there's there's plenty of marketing history out there that talks about the first time you see a product. They're like, hey, whatever. And then, like, the 5th time they see it, they're like, you know, oh, that's a product. And then, like, the 10th time they say, well, that product is similar to another product you're then 15th time. It's like, oh my gosh. That product is is better or better. And then the 20th time, it's like, I have to have that product.
That's the psyche of someone who goes through that. Same thing with racing. K. In a way, every part of your race requires some sort of cells. And it's your job to get it good at selling, and it's sooner rather than later. You need to tell them about your race. You need to tell them email and Facebook and go with their go to where they're at and flyers and websites and it's just constant constant constant. Alright. Listen to the top 4 things. I wish I'd known before I built my 1st race.
Though it's been quite a painful list of lessons, unfortunately, that these are painful for me, of course. Hopefully, if you haven't done any of these, these Not so not so painful for you. But here is the number 1 thing. Here is the number 1 thing that I learned, that I wish I'd known before I built my race, and it goes just like this. You are the only 1 who will care, period. Just you. I mean, this is your race, and you were the only 1
who gives any kind of care about if it gets built, if it happens, if people show up, I mean, let's face it. You are the only 1 who will care if it gets built in the first place. And if you don't work on it, don't wanna work on it. Who's gonna who's gonna pick up this like, oh, yeah. Kyle, he couldn't work on his race today. But you know when? I'll go help out, do his race. I mean, you might find a friend like that, but that's a rare friend friend. You better give him a Christmas gift.
If you take a break, nothing gets done. You have to set the standard for how your race gets run. You have to set the standard for how your staff will behave. What experience you want your races to have. So it goes about saying, when it comes to your race, you will or you will not get it done. No 1 else will put the same amount of passion and effort into your race like you will. And if you give up your race dies. For now,
you honor your race. I mean, eventually, you wanna teach others to build your race, so you take that step back. I mean, you wanna be able to again, like we talked about with the race journal, you wanna work yourself out of a job so you can teach people to do a job just like you would teach any other employees. And get them to run your races, and you become the the overseer, the business runner, the entrepreneur. But for right now, when you're first starting out, you're it. You are your race.
But even you will still even have to be involved to make sure things have done the way you want them done. There is the vision and image of you want to you want to project and you need to make sure that gets projected all the time. You mark the constant Compass for where the direction of your company will go.
And hopefully, 1 day in this distant future, when you're big enough, you can start to enjoy some of the perks that come with how, you know, with with caring about how your races get built. And you may tell us, well, what perks are those? Well, freedom, of course, number 1. We talk about freedom. Working yourself out of that job. I mean, becoming your own boss. Now quit those grueling day jobs, you know, be able to coast during the winter months.
But you can only have those perks if you actually build the race promotion business that a functions like a business and makes profit. If you don't build your foundation first, your time management, your repeatable systems, your sales machine, we there is no freedom. You have to build it. Let me go back to field the dreams delusion. There is a part of that field's dream thing you need to think about. If you build it, they will come. Well, the if you build a part is a huge part of that.
If they build it, you may be able to add in there. If you build it and you sell it correctly, they will come. Maybe that's the the feel the dream delusional culinary. But the number 1 thing I wish I knew and this is, again, this is a big secret. No 1 will share with you. Is you have to want to build this thing into a business. 1 off races make real money. Your goal to design a system that'll eventually remove you from having to be there For every day, work is all great.
However, in order to do that, you need to know it goes into a race promotion business. You have to care about the details. You have to care about the small, tiny pieces of how each system is created and be able to share that. You have to build your races into a business that works. And you have to know that the goal from the very beginning is for you to work yourself out of a job but you have to care. You have to do it. You have to be the 1 in charge. No 1 else will do this for you.
And if you believe that, if you're understanding that, if you embrace that, then Everything else is easy. The other 5 steps are easy. That's just part of your system. This is part of going into actually building this. But you have to have the drive, the motivation, and the understanding that you're the only 1 is gonna care. If you don't care, it's over. I mean, I hear Starbucks is hiring, so
there's other jobs to go have. This job's not for you. If you don't care, you know, there's other jobs to have. I mean, this business is only for people who actually actually care to get this business running. That's how you make a profit. That's how you make a difference. That's how you impact people's lives. That's how you build a company. So you actually have to care. So that's it. Number 1, number I wish I knew before it, is that no one's gonna care for me. There's no accountability.
It's just me. I'm the only 1 that's picked myself off the ground, does myself off. And get back on a horse. And now you know. If you learn something from this and you wanna learn more, I have a few things I would love for you to do right now. 1st, go to my website, wreckingyear.com/join
and drop your email in the box. And that way, I can tell you when new episodes are coming out, And, yeah, when my new blog posts are coming out as well. 2nd, I wanna hear back from you about this episode. Did you learn something useful? Is there something I could do to make it better? Or is there a topic maybe within race promotion that you would like me to cover? If so,
Twitter is always the best way to get a hold of me. I'm at Reconneering, which is Reconneering with an ING at the end, or the new 1, which is merchants and dirt, no spaces. Hit me up on either 1 of those, and we'll see about your topic being in 1 of our future emergency drip podcast episodes. 3rd most important. If you like this episode, I would love for you to go to the emergency drip podcast page on iTunes and give me a quick review a 5 star rating.
I am the recognator, Kyle Bondo. Thank you for listening to The Merchants Group podcast. I hope you take what you have learned today and go weave idle into Epic.