Welcome to the Merchant of DIRT Podcast episode number 3. Thank you for joining me for the mergers at Herb gas. This is your insider's guide to practical recreational engineering, where I teach you the art and science of building, promoting, and directing offered races. I'm your host, professional recognier, and race promoter Kyle Wondo. Coming up in this episode, I'm gonna guide you through the creation of something every race per owner needs before they decide to go into business.
And that is of vision. The title of this episode is your 1st strategic vision quest. And if you thought the title meant this episode is about going out and finding your spirit animal? Well, you're partially right. By the way, I think my spirit animal is a red fox. Only say this because they seem to follow me around every time I'm on the trail. But,
alas, this is not that kind of episode. Now the vision I think you're ready for is the 1 that helps you figure out where you see yourself in the future. Think about that for a minute. The future. I mean, this future is not necessarily focused on your family, friends, and livelihood. And it could conclude those things. But This is about your race promotion future. That's what I wanna talk about today. It's the self you see when you think about creating events.
My mother would say, that a proper vision quest, you know, could produce similar results, but you won't need to do any sweat lodge understand the kind of vision I want you to create. Spirit quests, revivals, and walkabouts have their place. Overall, I want you to walk away with after this episode is done is a process for thinking up a simple vision that you can use to guide you and push you towards something really great.
We'll rethink we'll rethink your whole life another day. So let's get started with just coming up with a vision. Okay. So I hear you saying out there. What's all this vision talk about, Kyle? Well, the kind of vision I want you to build is is a a special name, and it's called a strategic vision. Now what you're thinking? Strategic vision, that sounds hard. No worries. The kind of vision know, this kind of vision, is used to help you build
your 1st race or maybe even your 1st race project company. It begins with understanding the what is strategic vision is and what it's used for. So the simplest definition of strategic vision is this. It's a specific view of the future used to inform and guide your goals and objectives in the present. That's it. So, yeah, it's not scary at all. It's how and where you see yourself and your race or your race is when it's complete.
It is also the connection you have with your event that will allow you to visualize what kind of experience you want someone to have when they encounter it. Or you'd be it physical, it emotional, spiritual, you know, whatever experience they have, your challenge is to understand that connection and build a race that will achieve that experience. But how do you go from visualizing the experience you want your racers to have to actually creating a strategic vision to guide you?
Well, that's a great question. So this is the the podcast that hopefully will answer that question. The creation is your your strategic vision comes in 3 steps. It is captured perfectly in this neat little sports psychology saying, that goes something like this. If you see it and you can believe it, you can achieve it. Say it with me. If you can see it, and you can believe it, you can achieve it.
You've probably heard the same the same before or seen it written on a gem wall or had someone recited to while you were doing 600 litter kicks. Yeah. That's a story for another time. But regardless, you're going to use it as a framework to build your vision. So let's kind of let's kind of dissect that saying, if you see it and you can believe it, you can achieve it into its parts and understand kind of the
depth that that saying has connected to it. So let's start with the first part. You know, step 1 is seeing it. So in seeing it, we now now here comes the the spiritual stuff, you know, the the deep thinking stuff. So, okay. Now, I want you to I want you to meditate, or just have a moment, a quiet moment to just think for yourself. I mean, however you wanna think about it, I want you to take the next few minutes and find a quiet place.
Go shut off all distractions. Turn off your phone. Turn off the Internet. No more email. Turn off the TV. You know, just be still for a minute and and just kinda take this in. And if you need to, you might even wanna put on some melon music in the back ground, go to your happy place, whatever it takes, they haven't been into yourself. And if you need to, pause this for a while and turn it back on when you're ready. Okay. I'll wait. Ready? Okay. First, I want you to close your eyes.
Now take a deep breath. Slowly let it out. Good. Now I want you to consider why you are doing this. Why do you want to produce off road races. Think about it. Okay? Holding on to the why. I want you to now see your 1st race. See those smiling faces. See all the fun they're having. Now take yourself into the future. Take yourself 1 year after your race. What does that look like? What does success in 1 year look like to you? Can you see it?
Can you see your 1st year of successful races already in your belt? That is your first glimpse into what the future could be. Now take another deep breath. And count backwards from 3 with me. Ready. 321. Now open your eyes. Okay. Not so hard, was it? Not exactly the spiritual journey into the spirit animal world or sweat watches. So sweat lodges. Right? For some of you, this might have been a bit uncomfortable, and I I totally I totally understand that.
But I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say, that most of you could see your race promotion business in 1 year. Maybe even could give this some time as far out as 3 years maybe even 5 years, taking a long look inside your own desire of why you wanna create events will help you begin to conceptualize the path you will need to take to get there. Meanwhile,
if you do see any talking animals while your eyes are closed, Try to listen to what they have to say, but please do remember that an animals don't really talk. So anything you hear, take it with your grain of salt. Okay. Back to our walkabout or our meditation or our silent moment, you know, whatever we're gonna call it. Okay. Eyes closed again. Ready? Deep breath. Okay. Here we go again. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to put on a race in the first place?
Why do you want to build a race promotion company? Is it fame, power, stacks of money? What is driving you down the race promotion path? Need some help, putting this in words. Okay. When I close my eyes, I see my vision as a desire to make a difference in people's wise. You may have the same vision. It's not a bad vision to have. To be an effective race promoter, You have to, at some level, wanna make an impact on people and not just manage the mechanics of a race.
I mean, race promotion is a people first business. You don't like people, you might want to think about getting out now. But if you're like me and you wanna see your events have this physical, emotional, or maybe even a spiritual impact people's lives. You need to see yourself in that people first role. Are your eyes still closed? Good. Try to visualize yourself out exploring trails all day.
Getting exercise while you work, marking race courses, and dreaming up new amazing places to explore and challenge people. You see yourself doing those things? Perfect. Now, try to imagine the people that will come and visit you in that place. What are they doing? What kind of experiences are they having? What are they what are they saying to you? Are they having fun? Do you see them giving you smiling faces? High fives as they finish or telling you thank you before they had home.
If you can visualize those things, you're 1 step closer to building something that can achieve those reactions. Now time to come back. Ready? Deep breath. Getting backwards from 3 again. 321. There we go. Eyes open. Welcome back. Doing okay? Good. Kinda remember what you saw while you were in your happy place. You need to go go back and listen to it again. Take a few moments and work through this step.
K. You know, think of the questions. Think the answers those questions. Explore what you want people to experience when they come to your race. Once you have an idea of what this is. You're going to need to write it down. Yes. I know. Homework. Wonderful. Right? I graduated high school, graduated college. I'm doing homework again. That this is the kind of homework that you need to do. You need to work on your company. Work on your on your race promotion business.
So if you gotta write it down and you're like, oh, Moi, what am I gonna do? Here are some examples. K? So k. Kyle's got you covered. Alright? So here we go. Here's some examples. Quote, I want to challenge mountain bike riders to see how many laps they can do in 12 hours. Quote, I wanna create a course that takes racers up and over mountain. That'd be pretty cool. Quote, I wanna have a festival that takes up the whole weekend with both casual activities and stage races.
Maduro. Quote, I want to be the host to the best of the best in a championship event I create. Quote, I want to establish an annual picnic or folks from all around come and explore the trails as a group. Now, all these are valid, but they have nothing to do with your vision. Your vision is just that yours. It's something only you can have. It is personal to you that no 1 else can take that away from you. But you have to conceptualize it, then you have to write it down.
Because if you don't give your vision form, it will be difficult to share it with those willing to help you realize it. So remember the mantra. Here we go. And the people said, if you can see it, and you can believe it, you can achieve it. Alright. That's that's the see it part. Now let's go into the believe it part. Now let's put some structure around your vision. Look back at what you wrote down. For the sake of this step, we'll use the off road racing example that I am very familiar with.
This is the 12 hour endurance event. In this case, we'll focus on the event has its design to see how many laps racers can do in 12 hours. It was a very popular mountain biking. But like this example because you can substitute mountain biking with trail running or even event erasing very easily. So let's continue. This seems to be
it's gonna be a big event. I mean, having races do 12 hours means you're gonna have staff on hand before and after the event, and you're probably gonna be finished in the dark depending on how a year you do this event. It will lots of racers going to in front transitions, tents, cars, and restrooms all day long. That's a large undertaking. And if you've never built a race like this before,
it's a, you know, it's kind of a big deal. But that's what the point of decision size. We're focusing on your vision. Now, your vision is to see the 12 hour event as you're in goal to your effort. And what do we mean by that? The event, and your vision is what you need to build up to. Not create your you know, not create first time out. Using the 12 hour race example, as you're in goal, you need to break it down into believable events that will lead you to a final goal.
The 12 hour race is a lot to handle. So what about 6? About 3 hours. About 1 hours. A 1 hour race is not that big. You know, by working backwards from your vision, you can start to see how you could progress your vision's goal over time. When just like most people start working out for their race that they wanna finish, you know, going exercising and getting fit to, you know, give her best possible effort to race. I mean, you don't sign up for something this huge you know, like a marathon,
your first time out. Your first race is not gonna be that big. At least I hope you don't make your race that big. Start with something small, you know, like a 3 mile trail run, you know, the 5 k in the woods, you know, and work towards the big race. Mean, follow the same, you know, and follow the same pattern. The key is believing you can achieve your vision is to work to it incrementally.
You know what that means? That means piece by piece, chunk by chunk. So a slip breaker are are 12 hour examples. 12 hour race is very ambitious goal, if you wanna achieve in a year. You start making something small like a 2 hour race local park, and then you graduate to the 4 hour race. Maybe you do 2 2 hour races, Maybe you have beginners and juniors go first. Maybe you have a a third race, which is half your goal. You do the, you know, the 6 hour event.
You give your taste of what the goal feels like without having it was only doing half the challenge. Maybe your 4th race, you start building up to that. You do a couple more chance. And so on and so forth until you work your way up to 12 her bent. And in the in the achieve a part, we'll go into a very big detail. But right now, just kinda get an idea that you don't wanna do it all once. You wanna do it in pieces incrementally. That is how you break down your vision into believable chunks.
I mean, the big vision is too big to believe in right now. You need just a loop part of the big vision to work with, just the chunk of it, then another chunk, then 2 chunks, and fit them together into a big chunk. Until you have enough chunks of your big vision in place to make your big vision now seem. Not so big anymore. When you think about your vision again, working backwards, what are the chunks?
Do you think between you and your big vision? What are the ones that start between where you're now and where you wanna be in the future? What do you think are the necessary events that need to happen before you can call your big vision complete. Where do you see it all beginning? Does it start with your first race? What does your first race look like? Can you see it? Can you see that first step? If you can, write it down. Then think of the next chunk. What comes next?
What would you like to come next? Write that down. And that's what comes after the first 1. The important you know, is important to have a conversation yourself yourself about when you wanna see your big and come true.
Yes. You know, I'm really kinda talking about talking to yourself. It's okay. People do it all the time. It's just when you answer yourself, that's when you have a problem. Okay? But talk to yourself. Think back to the 12 hour race example. You give it down 1 year as your time goal that spans between your first step and the completion of Big Vision. However,
That might not be a realistic amount of time. You might discover 6 months down the path that your big vision will actually take multiple years to achieve. And that's okay. Don't freak out. The path to your vision might have steps along the way that take longer than others. You can't know what the future will hold. Each step is an educated guess.
And what it will take to reach a big vision might not be what you thought it was 6 months ago. So instead of making it harder yourself, work backwards from your big vision goal to where you think you should begin. Plenty of visions, you know, even in other industries, not just race further. Span 3 to 5 years.
The goal is to have a vision that you can believe in, and you can organize yourself around, and that you can achieve because it's the bite sized chunks that look doable because your vision needs to be believable. Do you think the first time race promoter's vision to host a 1000 race championship event within 3 months of starting the business is believable? No. The vision is delusional. It's not believable. And the vision that is not believable
is certainly gonna fail. So don't sabotage your efforts. Before you can begun, give yourself enough time to complete each step towards your big vision and lay it out in a believable plan that you think you can achieve. Is your first time race broker's vision to tell us the champion event within 3 years of starting your business believable? Yeah. That's pretty believable. That sounds like a very possible big vision. So make your vision believable.
It's very important to your success. Remember, you have to believe it. Make it something that you believe in. You know, and the race promoter said, if you can see it and you can believe it, you can achieve it. Alright. So that's see it. That's believe it. Now the achieve it part. Here's where the rubber meets the road. Right? Where the shoe meets the trail or the boat, the paddle meets the water,
ski meets the snow. Yeah. Okay. I can go on forever. Anyway, achieve it. Step 3. Your big achievement plan. Okay? With your believable vision before you, you now have the formula for creating the specific goals to what makes it all achievable. It is your job now to define what those goals are. Once you have a defined goals, you should lay out your path to your vision. I mean, some goals can be grouped together. And when we group these together, we like to call them milestones.
Yeah. I like the big things in the yard, big flat round things, the milestone. So like hosting your 1st race. And these are the sort of goals that can be considered a milestone. But once you have your race, you know, once your race finished, and you achieve that milestone. You lay off milestones out to form a path, and this path is has a destination.
You'll never gonna believe what the destination is. Yeah. Okay. You already guessed it. It's your vision. Remember that The vision is where you're going. It's your destination. So if your first race is the first milestone, then there's a whole bunch of other milestones that lead up to that you know, 1000 race or 1000 member race championship event you wanna have in 3 years.
But what are those stones? I mean, like Dorothy from the laser of Oz following the yellow brick road, your road is made on milestones. And if you lay all these milestones out on a piece of paper, It would kind of form a map. Right? Well, the word we like to use in business. Is a road map. And this road map would have an arrow on it that says in big bold letters you are here. So on the other side of that road map would be another big arrow, and that would say vision achieve. Gieved.
So what's in between those 2 arrows? You guessed it, milestones, full of goals and objectives that you need to complete, to get from the you are here to the vision achieved. So where is your your heart you are here, Arrow? What do you think your first mile stone is. What is your first goal? How about your first step to your first goal? If you know what that is, Start there.
You've already come up with a vision. You've already know what you think you or where you think you want to go, what you want to do, and how you want to do it. And you have the beginnings of a road map to how to get to where you want to go. The only thing left is here to articulate what each of those milestones are that you need to create to get there. And roughly when those events need to happen. Remember that's the believable part. That would be a lot of good information after fingertips.
If knew where to start. So do you? Do you know where the start is? I remember saying that goes if you don't know where the start where the start is, start at the beginning. Okay. Actually, the real saying is by Lewis Carroll, you know, author of Alice on Wonderland. And he said, begin to the beginning, and go till you come to the end, then stop. I'm a bigger fan of another quote, from Alice to the looking glass that goes, sometimes it believes many of 6 impossible things before breakfast.
Finding the beginning an impossible thing? No. It is not an impossible thing. But sometimes, you need a guide to get you to the beginning that path. You still don't know where that is? No worries. You're not alone. Plenty of first time race promoters have a difficult time finding the beginning. That first stone in your road map is hard to set. Which is 1 of the main reasons I founded Rechinir and started doing this podcast, Merchants of your podcast. I wanna help you achieve that vision.
Are you ready to know where to begin? So like Lewis Carroll recommends, let's begin at the beginning by asking yourself the following questions. What is your name? What is your quest. What is the airborne velocity of a coconut laden swallow? Okay. Maybe not those questions. My geek flag flying there. But there's a greater truth to those questions from any Python that is appropriate to finding out where to start. And I think it's the what is your request?
Or an off road racing terms, what kind of off road racing are you into? What kind of off road racing company do you wanna build. I mean, if you thought about that for you know, you think you know, it's gonna be you kinda you think about it. That's a that vision stuff we talked about at the beginning, but you really need to be thinking about that. Are you in the trail running? Or maybe you're an event eraser. You're an event erasing? How about mountain biking?
I mean, what is your discipline of choice when it comes to offer a racing? I mean, picking that kind of racist Flynn that you wanna base your entire off road racing company can be tricky. Mostly because your passion for wanting to do this is based upon a combination of factors that are hard to explain. What kind of factors? The squishy kind. Yeah. Yeah. Squishy.
Those elements of your desire, love, and attraction to a sport discipline that make you enjoy it, obsess over it, exhale on it before any other. Simply put, It is the sport discipline you identify with the most. You need an example? Okay. Try this on for size. When someone and ask you, what kind of race are you? What do you tell them? Do you say, oh, a mountain biker? Or do you probably state, oh, a trail runner? Or do you love to look on people's faces when you tell them you're an event eraser?
Yeah. Mainly because they go, what's that? Maybe you like the conversation that starts with your road guys when you ask why you cycle cross. Yeah. I love that 1 too. Whatever passion, it's your passion. You have a very personal reason for why you enjoy the races you enjoy. But can you build a race or race approaching company off your passion? Short answer is, absolutely. In fact, It is your passion for that kind of racing that will help you build races that you'd wanna race yourself.
You have all the intimate knowledge of why you like the particular race discipline, and that knowledge gives you an edge over other race promoters when it comes to course design and marketing. You know, why does it give you an edge? And if it's not obvious to you, I mean, by being a fan of the racist 1, you already know what the other racers expect in a good course and where to find them when you need to sell it. That sounds like a pretty good edge.
But make nose a mistake, your passion is an advantage. Not this, not just No. Let me correct that. Not an advantage. It's a great advantage to have. It will help you keep going when building races gets hard. Unfortunately, it will. And be the main reason that you go from building a hobby to building a race promotion business. And that is where you start. That's where you start. You start with your passion, the race discipline that gets you excited about racing.
If you have a passion behind your vision, then you have a huge advantage when it comes to achieve leaving it. Your passion will push you towards a primary discipline, your starting point, an offer written discipline that you love. When you know that, what discipline you're going to focus on, it frees you to do all sorts of new things. It is the launching point to discovering your mission. Yes.
Some people thought, where's the mission? I knew you're getting the mission, Kyle. Well, here we are. We're at mission. You know, that's that business work. Mission. Mission and vision always people get always screwed up with that, but it's really simple. Mission is the why you weren't business in the first place. That's it. Vision is where you wanna go. Mission is why you're doing it. Everything else is how you get there. Maybe to build the kind of race, you would love to race.
The realization of your mission, your reason for being a business is where you start. It seems simple. Right? Okay. Consider this. Say you love trail running. Not just any kind of trail running, but those trails, you know, the kind of trails that include long distances, you know, kind of rails races I'm talking Alright? So I might call these Ultra Trail runs. But for now, longer the better. Right? Now work this into your mission of your offer raising business.
You love long distance trail running. So the mission of your off road racing business will be design plan and direct the best trail running races in Virginia. It just happens. I live in Virginia. So in Virginia. Yeah. Interstate, whatever you live. Right? Or country. Or whatever you decide to set up, you know, where you decide to set up shop. But that's it. That's your mission. Go back through this podcast and consider
our running mantra. Remember, if you can see it and you can believe it, you can achieve it. Using what you've already learned, let's do 1 last exercise to see how it all fits together. Are you ready? So this is where we're gonna have to pull it all together. So we understand vision. We understand our mantra, see it, believe it, achieve it. And we know our mission is the business that we are in. Right? Okay. So using everything we learned, let's say
You can see now we use the thing example. You can see a trail running event in this in the future. You know, it's a big 1. I'd be big. Western States mile endurance run big. It is, you know, being held in 1 of the biggest parks in your state. It's sold out in 45 minutes with when preregistration opened online, and it's sold over 500 riding runners showing up from all over the country.
Now That's pretty big. Right? You're standing at the starting line, looking at the sea of excited travelers, and you're just, wow. You're ecstatic. That is a vision, a achieved. And can you see it? Can you imagine this as a possible vision? If you're still with me, let's translate that into what comes next. To believe that you can build that kind of event, we work backwards from our big event. So what would half of that be? Well, hundred mile endurance run, divided in half is 50 miles.
That seems really big too. But if you cut 50 miles in half, you get 25. Okay. Now we're talking close to like trail mirror marathon. Right? That's what? 26.3 or something like that. 26.1. I mean, marathons are big in road running. So imagine and try rail? Pretty big too. Right? Okay. So it's still too big. So what's half of that? That's a half marathon. Right? 13.1 Miles. Seems kinda manageable. I mean, compared to a hundred miles. So now we're gonna get in there. But what's half of 13.1?
6 and a half miles? Round down, maybe 5 miles. Right? 5 miles is a good distance. Not too sure, not too long? There are plenty of local parks that have enough trail to weave 5 a 5 mile course out. Right? So we make our 100 mile big endurance run vision believable. We decide that our first milestone, our first goal will be design, plan, and direct a 5 mile trail run. A 5 mile trail run is very achieved football. That's where your start would be.
Deciding that you are going to remote a 5 mile trail run. That's it. Because from the first race, you'll have a second race. And a third and a 4th and a 10th. You start working the other direction in the side, you will promote 10, 5 miles races in your 1st major season. You'll do 5 in the spring and 5 in the fall. Okay. So you get the summer off. Now good for you. And Christmas off. You don't get the whole or, you know, a lot of people like to run-in the snow,
you know, unless you're 1 of those states with snow shoe running. Yeah. That is a thing. So maybe you decide to add the 10 mile trail run course option to your existing 5 mile runs later in the year. To see, you know, get a gauge of to see where the interest lies in the longer races. Then in your 2nd year, you start hosting a half marathon distance. The end of your season with a big race of that season, you know, your first trail marathon.
And if all goes well at those events, you choose to use your 3rd year promote your 1st 50 mile race. You keep all the 5, 10, half in full marathon courses and add the 50 mile endurance run, As a new addition, your 4th year you spend adding a second or even a third 50 mile trail running course. Maybe you use each 50 mile run as part of a 3 race seer frees in the last run as a championship event.
You know, then in your 5th year of trail running promotion, you pull out the crown jewel that is your vision, your first hundred mile endurance run. Your vision complete. By seeing yourself doing your 1st 100 mile endurance race in the future, you have a target to base your mile on work or the milestone work on. If you take that vision, work backwards until you find your starting point, then from point, you start working forwards into believable chunks until you arrive at your revision again.
In this example, your starting point was a simplified model trail run. But once you landed on that, as your you are here location on your road map, the milestones you lay out before you established a realistic and achievable 5 year plan for achieving your vision. And that's how you do it. If you can see it and you can believe it, you can achieve it. So have a vision.
Decide where to start, build your 1st race, make it real, then build your next race based upon the milestones of your road map, and the mission to what kind of races you're gonna build rinse and repeat, grow, expand, and then realize your vision. If you can see it, you can believe it, and you can achieve it. And now you know, That was a lot to take in, you know, the vision talk and some of that kind of deep thinking and thought exercises are kinda tough sometimes.
But You made it. You made it all the way to the to the end of that. And so this podcast is 1 of those great things. You can go back and listen to it again and again. Kind of put those pieces together to build to build your strategic vision. So I'm really interested to know that if you learn something from that, and you want to learn more, more stuff like this, then I have a few things I want you to do right now. You know, first is go to brickinear.com/join, and drop your email in the box.
And that way, I can tell you when new episodes are coming out. And second, I really wanna hear back from you about this episode. Did you learn something useful? Is there something that I can do to make better? And I would certainly love to hear about your race promotion pains that you have and things that maybe you would like me to cover in future episodes. If so, I'm on Twitter at merchants of dirt.
No spaces. Merchants of dirt on Twitter. You know, and and drop me a tweet. Let me know what you what you think what you're thinking about. I'd be I'd love to hear from listeners and definitely will take your your topics and consideration on future episodes. 3rd and most important. If you love this, if you you loved what the Merchant Reserve Pork podcast has given you today, I'd love for you to go to the versions of our podcast on iTunes and give me a quick review and free trial rating.
I have several buttons all over my or my website at merchants of dirt, pot merchants of dirt.com. And I have links to iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play Music, you know, wherever. And give you that 5 star rating. That'd be fantastic. I would love that. And I'd love to hear your view. Didn't know what to what to say. And you know if I if the review is good enough, I'll even talk about it in a future episode. I am the Rechinir Kyle Bondu. Thank for listening to The Burchaser Podcast.
And I hope you take what you learned today and go weave Idyll into Ebony. Until next.