by Kristin Swartzlander | Nov 3, 2016 | Mindset, Thoughts and Rants
In a sport that’s so focused on winning, you rarely hear talk about being average. Average is no one’s goal. Very few people get into racing thinking that after enough time and practice and investment, they will peak at ‘average’. With Carl Bowser, I am fortunate to own and be a part of a race team that’s considered ‘successful’ and winning on our stage. Because of that, we often get asked for advice from new racers or people looking to get into the sport. I find that, in a year of major changes, I’ve been giving the same advice over and over again: Embrace being average. Because I’m not the speed guru, my advice applies to the rest of your life, not what happens on the track. But keep in mind: it’s often the rest of your life that determines what happens on the track. The average racer – those of us who don’t have someone else paying the bills – has to figure out how to make racing happen. It’s no secret that racing takes money, time, energy and relationships that are solely dedicated to racing. When I’m asked how we have the money or time or energy or relationships to put a successful team in the pits, my answer is this: we make big choices. And one of those choices is to make sacrifices and embrace being average in the rest of our lives. To make our racing life happen financially, we’ve made decisions over the past four years that others probably wouldn’t. We sold our house to free up equity. We now have a small mortgage on a house with a garage. We...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Aug 11, 2016 | Thoughts and Rants
With the untimely passing of Bryan Clauson this week, it just doesn’t feel right to talk about the tactics of building a good racing program. As one of our own in the sprint car world, Bryan’s death has hit us hard. So, this week, I want to let go of the sponsorship, marketing and branding tactics and talk about something a little bit more personal: how Bryan influenced our lives and work. When the news was confirmed, both Carl and I searched for what to say. For me, it felt like it wasn’t my place to make it about me. But saying nothing – not sharing what he and his fiance Lauren unknowingly gifted us – didn’t feel right either. Finally, Carl told me to share what I had written that morning in my personal journey, as private and imperfect (and illegible) as it might be. Here’s what I wrote: “If we ever start to wonder if what we do matters, we should take a look at the life of Bryan Clauson. Our home is crushed today for his home. So much of our journey has been influenced by his. He was an inspiration not just to Carl as a racer, but as a person. He and Lauren inspired our business and the life that we have been working hard and sacrificing for. When we have had to dig deep to make decisions and take risks that were scary to us or those around us, it was BC and Lauren that we modeled. It is devastating to think that the path we have scraped and clawed to walk behind them...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jun 10, 2016 | Mindset, Racing Sponsorship, Thoughts and Rants
One of the questions that Carl and I both get asked frequently is: how do you make racing your full-time living? Right now, I’m putting together a post on how teams make money (hint: hired drivers with 401(k)’s are the exception, not the rule, and those race track checks don’t exactly pay the bills), and today, I want to address just one aspect of that answer: We treated it like a business even before it was one. And when I say ‘it’, I’m referring not just our race team. We took everything that aligns with making racing our full-time job seriously before we were required to by our commitments, including this blog, our personal finances, our health, and much more. It’s very easy to say: ‘when you get to X turning point, you’ll do Y.’ When my only job is racing, I’ll have the time and energy to: work out every day, have multiple cars built and lettered, take opportunities for rides outside of my own team, travel to races outside of my region, have a professional crew and appearance, structure my team financially as a business, create apparel and promotional materials, promote myself online and in the community, and, find and activate sponsorships. Your mind needs that assurance that it’s okay for you not to be doing those things until X happens. You’re already tapped out. You’re already putting in too many hours. You’re already spending too much money. You won’t have the time and energy to do any of the ‘extras’ until you go full-time. Except, I’ve found that doing those things before your team is a business...
by Kristin Swartzlander | May 20, 2016 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Motorsports Marketing for Tracks, Teams and Businesses, Racing Social Media, Racing Sponsorship, Thoughts and Rants
In my line of work, I get to see a lot of marketing. From flyers on windshields to social media updates – yep, that’s marketing even if you’re only selling your own image – we come across thousands of marketing messages each and every day. And we all know that there are people or companies who get it right, and people who’s marketing falls flat. It’s not wrong. It’s just there. And we aren’t buying what there is(n’t) selling. Good marketing determines quite a bit of success in racing. They might post gate times and ticket prices, or results on race night, just like everyone else. And, even though you might not be sure why, something is missing. It’s the story. We racing people are practical. We talk prices. We talk times. We talk weights and pressures and RPMs. And sometimes we forget that we do it all for a reason that has nothing to do with making a shiny thing go faster. We are too close to the details to see the bigger picture. And that bigger picture is how we market ourselves, as drivers, and teams, and tracks, and event promoters. Yes, it’s important to know how to tweet, and to actually do that. But to think you’re going to build a fan base just by putting up results, gate times and ticket prices is a big mistake. And it’s where I see many racing businesses – frankly, businesses in many markets – fall flat. Want to nurture a new fan relationship? Want to create a new customer? Tell me why you race. Tell me what you love about the...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 18, 2016 | Racing Social Media, Thoughts and Rants
This week, I got to travel to Florida to speak at the RPM Promoter’s Workshops. My presentation was on social media, and how tracks can use Facebook in particular to succeed in promoting their events. It was fun to get to talk to a lot of tracks who were more interested and active on social media than even a year ago, and hear about their insights. And some promoters even got up and shared the results they’d gotten based on my training or advice with the nearly two hundred other promoters in the room, which meant more to me than any of them know. Social media was definitely hotter topic than last year, and there was one topic that was particularly popular among those who are still unsure about social media’s place in the sport or are outraged by what some tracks are doing. They came to me through two questions: What do you think of the controversial ‘social media policies’ that some tracks are adopting, banning or fining those who share negative opinions about the track on social media? What do you think of industry members – fans, teams, media and tracks – who criticize the sport on social media? I loved taking part in these discussions – mostly because they were asking the questions in the first place. Most of those asking knew that social media was a powerful tool, had heard the arguments of those who fear the effects of social media and were open to a discussion on the opposing side, which was very exciting to me. Some were even looking for tips on what to say to their peers who supported...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Dec 24, 2015 | Thoughts and Rants
I’m tired, friends. In fact, I’m borderline exhausted. And I’m pretty thankful for that, because I can chalk up this lack of brain function to a whirlwind of a year. A whirlwind of a year that I have you all to thank for. So much has changed since one year ago, and I would never have guessed how it has played out. In 2015, I worked with more than 25 race tracks and close to 30 drivers and teams, conquered my fear of public speaking did 3 speaking engagements, wrote 59 blog posts, welcomed nearly 200 sponsorship seekers into our free DirtyMouth Sponsorship Success Community, reached more than 300 racing promoters, helped produce a very successful 2nd annual Dirt Classic, created the first in a series of workshops to help racers achieve their dreams, supported our own race team and marketing partners in finding success on and off the the track and watched Carl Bowser’s first television commercial hit the air waves, and so much more. Whew. I still didn’t even realize how much has happened, along with things I can’t even talk about yet, until I started writing that! I bet you’d experience the same if you took a few moments to reflect on your year – surprise and gratefulness. In fact, I wrote a post last year about what you need to do before you move into the new year, with your new motivation and your new goals: count the successes you’ve had this year. It’s still relevant. Read it. It’s so easy to move on without taking stock of how far you’ve come and how much you’ve learned. I know – I work...
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