Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Here's How You Get a Racing Sponsor!
Transcript
- 0:00Hello everyone and welcome back to Kenny.
- 0:03Conversation brought to you by Jags, the leader in the high
- 0:07performance aftermarket car parts.
- 0:09Remember to go to jags.com for everything you need to fix your
- 0:14vehicle up. I get asked all the time.
- 0:19My kid is 8 years old, he's won 10 championships.
- 0:24How do we get a sponsorship? I am so excited to announce
- 0:30introduce a dear friend of mine, Doug Bland, who has just come
- 0:34out with your answer, erasersguide.com sponsorship in
- 0:40the digital age. Doug Bland, welcome to Kenny
- 0:43Conversation. Thanks for having me, Kenny.
- 0:46How's everything going? I'm in St.
- 0:48Louis, MO, and everything's going so good for me.
- 0:52I tell everybody Doug, I'm living my best life.
- 0:54But I like what you have in the background there.
- 0:58Where? Where are you talking to us
- 1:00from? I'm in San Antonio, TX.
- 1:03That's why after COVID hit moved down here, you know, obviously
- 1:08all the sporting events were shut down when COVID hit and my,
- 1:11so my Arena Football League team up in Illinois, I had to shut it
- 1:15down for for a year and a half. So I came down to San Antonio to
- 1:18work on a couple projects and kind of fell in love with it and
- 1:21didn't go back and hired some more people up there to run the
- 1:24football team. And so I'm, I'm a permanent
- 1:27resident of San Antonio now. San Antonio, boy, there's a
- 1:30that's a legendary city. So you just mentioned it.
- 1:35You are in Arena football and we're going to have Charlie
- 1:39Marlow. This is something new that we've
- 1:42been doing lately. It's kind of like, you know, I
- 1:45snapped my fingers in Charlie and myself.
- 1:48We're going to introduce you, and there's no better way to
- 1:51introduce you than this way. You worked for the great Rodger
- 1:55Penske at the California Speedway.
- 1:58And Charlie, let's drop that picture in right now here.
- 2:01Here is Doug and in Victory Lane somewhere around the California
- 2:07Speedway. I don't think there's any better
- 2:10way to introduce you, Doug. When Rodger Penske hires you,
- 2:14you were hired for marketing at California Speedway.
- 2:19Just tell me a little bit about your experience in marketing.
- 2:23Yeah, it was, it was a great experience for me.
- 2:26At the time when I met Roger, I was actually working for a music
- 2:30festival company in Southern California selling sponsorships
- 2:33for for the music festivals. We did a few sporting events and
- 2:37stuff too, like rodeos and things like that, but mainly
- 2:39music festivals. But, you know, growing up around
- 2:42racing my whole life, you know, I always wanted to find out how
- 2:45I could get into it, you know. And they just had announced that
- 2:48Roger was going to build a California Speedway out in
- 2:50Fontana. And that was in 1994.
- 2:53And I went to the inaugural Brickyard 400.
- 2:55And a friend of mine that worked for Yates had got me a garage
- 3:00pass. And ironically, I run right into
- 3:03Roger Penske actually leaving the restroom in Gasoline Alley
- 3:06right there. And it was my shot.
- 3:09So I just introduced myself to him, told him that I sell
- 3:11sponsorships in Southern California.
- 3:13I just heard that they, you know, are going to be building
- 3:15the Speedway out in Fontana. And I would love to be a part of
- 3:17it. And that I've been around racing
- 3:18my whole life. And, you know, and so he pulled
- 3:21out his business card. He wrote on the back of it.
- 3:23Les Richter was on the name on the back of it.
- 3:25And he says, when you get back to California next weekend, he
- 3:27goes or next week, you call this man, you tell him I talk to you
- 3:30and that, you know, to, to, to listen to what you had to say,
- 3:34basically. So about a year and a half
- 3:36later, I got a phone call from Greg Penske, you know, basically
- 3:40offered me coming for an interview and then offered me
- 3:43the job. So it was, it was a great
- 3:45experience and learning from Roger and Greg and Les Richter
- 3:48and you know, all the great people even with NASCAR
- 3:52obviously was involved heavily with that time and IndyCar and
- 3:55it was, it was a lot of great things I got to learn.
- 3:58And probably the most important thing was the professionalism of
- 4:02the Penske organization and how to present yourself and, and
- 4:05basically, you know, always coming from a power of, of
- 4:08strength position and, and being creative because you're only
- 4:12limited to your creativity when it comes to this marketing and
- 4:14sponsorship programs. All right.
- 4:16So we've laid the platform out. We've let everybody know that
- 4:20you're somebody you just didn't show up, you paid your dues, you
- 4:24work for the great Rodger Penske Arena football and I know that
- 4:29you have a much broader background and that's that's why
- 4:33you're on Kenny conversation. Well, let's get right to it.
- 4:38I know a thing or two about finding sponsorship, but I like
- 4:43where you're coming from because we are in a new world.
- 4:47erasersguide.com, that's where everybody goes.
- 4:52But what I really like is how you said sponsorship in the
- 4:57digital age. We are in a new world and my kid
- 5:02now this is we're having fun right now.
- 5:05This is what I hear all the time.
- 5:07Doug. Hey, Kenny Wallace, I see you
- 5:10get those sponsorships. My kid is going to be the next
- 5:13Kyle Larson. Then I say, well, does he talk?
- 5:17Do you sell product? Do you network?
- 5:21So I'm going to say one more thing and I'm going to let you
- 5:23have the ball a little bit. You met Rodger Penske, you put
- 5:28yourself out there, you stopped and talked to him.
- 5:32So to me, that's already already the very first thing you do.
- 5:36So everything I just said, talk to me about this new digitaler,
- 5:42talk to me about networking and how to start out.
- 5:48Yeah, so the game has changed, Kenny.
- 5:49I mean, obviously you and I shared a sponsor at one point
- 5:52when I used to own the extreme dirt car series and stack of two
- 5:55with you had the same sponsor and and that was a networking
- 5:58deal where I met Bob Acafinto on a on an airplane one day.
- 6:01You know, so it, it's the networking element is never
- 6:05going to change the game of what we do as far as trying to find
- 6:09marketing partnerships. But what has changed is the what
- 6:12these sponsors are looking for back in the day, you know, just
- 6:15having your logo on a car and, and trying to show them the
- 6:18Joyce Julis report of look how much time my logo was on the on
- 6:22TV and all that kind of stuff. Those days are, are gone.
- 6:25I mean, we, we have a, a new, I mean, there, there's some value
- 6:29still to that, but it's all about the eyeballs and it's all
- 6:31about social media. It's all about the number of
- 6:33clicks, it's about the number of views.
- 6:35It's about how people can engage with the product, how they can
- 6:39interact with their customers. I mean, it's, everything has
- 6:42changed because of social media. It's changed because of digital
- 6:46platforms. It just these, these sponsors
- 6:49are looking for more. They're always looking for more,
- 6:53but they're, they can, one thing you couldn't do back in the day
- 6:56is you couldn't justify or come back and say, look how much
- 7:00value you got for this because it was so vague, right?
- 7:03In today's world, you can say, hey, this video that we did of,
- 7:07of my race or my interview after my race, this received X amount
- 7:10of views, you know, 32 million views.
- 7:13That's something you can quantify directly to a sponsor
- 7:15and, and show them exactly what took place.
- 7:18And, and that's what they're all want to do.
- 7:20They want to see analytics. They want to see, you know, give
- 7:23me proof of what took place, you know, and, and with social media
- 7:27and you know, my links in my bio or, or, you know, click, click
- 7:31For more information on the bottom of my video.
- 7:34That would take them to a page where they can purchase the
- 7:36product you're talking about. You know, it's, it's all about
- 7:40the number of eyeballs that you can generate.
- 7:41And it doesn't matter if you're a, a go Kart racer, you know, a
- 7:45dirt track racer, a late model dirt or late model asphalt guy,
- 7:48a road racer, everyone has to utilize this digital age to get
- 7:54to the next step. And, and you can build that up
- 7:58and not be a superstar. Because I mean, look at some of
- 8:01these people that are just killing it in, in this Mr.
- 8:04Beast. And these kind of people, they
- 8:05started out as just nerdy kids in their mom's basement, right?
- 8:09And now they have millions of viewers.
- 8:11We have a bigger start when you're an athlete because you
- 8:13already have a platform, you're, you're already some of the
- 8:15people want to talk to you because you do something that
- 8:18that they don't do. And that's drive a race car or,
- 8:21you know, or you're a professional athlete or a
- 8:23college athlete or whatever the situation is.
- 8:25But pertaining to us, it's obviously driving race cars and
- 8:28everybody wants to know about what it's like to do it.
- 8:31And, and the today's fan, they're all about the kind of
- 8:36peel back the curtain and see the behind the scenes look of
- 8:39what's happening in the in the sport, right.
- 8:42You do a very good job of that talking about live from the
- 8:45garage area. You know, this is the breaking
- 8:46news, you know, but but when when you are an athlete or a
- 8:50driver, that's what you have to do in today's world, Kenny, you,
- 8:54you have to build your platform and build your program in a
- 8:57digital world because that's where you're going to get that
- 9:00money. You'll never have to worry about
- 9:01sponsorships and ever if you start have a million followers
- 9:04on on YouTube because every new content you come out with that
- 9:08people are willing to pay money and that will fund your racing
- 9:11program to do basically whatever you want to do and to build your
- 9:14way all the way up to the Cup series if that's what it takes.
- 9:18That's really good stuff and I want to comment on it.
- 9:20Then I want you to respond. First thing I'm going to do is
- 9:25show and tell. And this is what we do when we
- 9:27go into the office, marketing office and, you know, show
- 9:33whoever's involved, you know, vice president of marketing, if
- 9:37for some reason the CEO is there, which doesn't happen very
- 9:39much. But two weeks ago, the NASCAR
- 9:44world was kind of rocked a little bit.
- 9:46Adam Stern came out and said #1 social media person in all of
- 9:52NASCAR, Tony Bridinger, everybody's like, what?
- 9:57So now this is where show and tell comes.
- 10:01OK, you see that? OK, OK, that girl runs ARCA, 2.1
- 10:08million followers. I don't care how she did it.
- 10:14She and I'm commenting on what you're saying.
- 10:16I like your product. Erasersguide.com and here's why.
- 10:23Years ago there was a picture and it showed all these men and
- 10:28ladies on this train and they all had, they all had this
- 10:32newspaper and, and, and you probably seem to me and, and,
- 10:36and everybody was like this. Everybody was like this, OK,
- 10:42same story. Now we're like this.
- 10:44So people have had a problem feeling guilty.
- 10:49Oh, I I shouldn't be on social media.
- 10:52You know what I tell them get over your guilt.
- 10:55This is now the news, the new newspaper.
- 10:57I just did a little play right there and and that's why I
- 11:01really like your digital age and I just showed you about Tony.
- 11:04We're going to have her own Kenny conversation.
- 11:07So you got the kid that's winning everything.
- 11:10He won't talk. Daddy says you got to talk or
- 11:13else you better be Kyle Larson. What's the first thing that your
- 11:17racersguide.com. What is it got in it that can
- 11:21guide these these racers, even the ones that are 30 years old?
- 11:27It's, it's exactly what it says. It's a guide.
- 11:28So it takes you step by step on on essentially what these
- 11:32sponsors are looking for. Kenny, what you know what to do
- 11:36first set up set up this account and use how to use artificial
- 11:39intelligence, which is a is a big AI is a huge thing right now
- 11:43and it helps you helps you build sponsorship proposals.
- 11:46It shows you demographics that you're trying that specific
- 11:49sponsors might be looking for how to build your platforms on
- 11:52all your different social medias.
- 11:55You know it. It basically tells you from from
- 11:57A-Z how to how to utilize the digital age and, and use the
- 12:02leverage of what we've got in front of us.
- 12:04I mean, it's, it's more exciting now than it ever has been.
- 12:07Because you know, I think if you look at my book when you see it,
- 12:11my first sponsorship proposal, Kenny, when when I was 13 years
- 12:14old, I was a BMX racer and, you know, being around racing, I
- 12:18knew that that they sponsored Daryl Waltz of Gatorade did
- 12:20right. So I'm on my, in my living room
- 12:23on a typewriter, typing out a letter to Gatorade about, you
- 12:26know, 'cause I just had one of national event.
- 12:28And so I was thinking, hey, if I had Gatorade on my jersey, you
- 12:31know, that you guys could sponsor me.
- 12:33I looked up their address, sent it to them and about, I don't
- 12:36know, probably two months later, I get this letter back from the
- 12:38C, the CMO saying, you know, thank you for your interest.
- 12:41So we understand, you know, about Darrell Waltrip and blah,
- 12:43blah, blah, but essentially never came to anything.
- 12:45But that was my first experience of doing throwing myself out
- 12:48there. I mean, you have to do this.
- 12:50I mean, this is what you have to do.
- 12:52And, and this, this book basically tells you step by step
- 12:55what to do first, what to do second, what to do 3rd and, and
- 12:58how to leverage all these amazing tools that we have at
- 13:01our, at our fingertips. You know, I mean, like I said
- 13:04earlier, is people want to see the behind the scenes of what's
- 13:08going on. That this Netflix thing that
- 13:09just happened with NASCAR. It basically does it, it shows,
- 13:13it makes these guys that we see as superstar, you know, NASCAR
- 13:16athletes and and it makes them like just a normal guy because
- 13:20they see them sitting on their couch at home with their
- 13:22girlfriend or their wife. And you know, but it also sees
- 13:24them going to the track and flying and all the kind of
- 13:26stuff. But a local dirt racer, when
- 13:28you're, when you're working on that car until midnight on a
- 13:31Thursday night to get it ready for Friday night's race, you got
- 13:33to go to your nine to five the next day and, you know, leave
- 13:36early so you can get to the hauler and go back to the track
- 13:39and drive 3 hours to the race. I mean, that's interesting stuff
- 13:42that people want to see. And, and believe it or not, you
- 13:46can build a following over this stuff.
- 13:48I mean, this Haley Deegan girl, I mean, you know, she had a,
- 13:51granted, she had a famous dad to start with, right?
- 13:54But she started as a little like 7-8 year old girl racing these
- 13:57little dirt go karts and, you know, kept building up her, her
- 14:00following and the reason she has a ride right now.
- 14:03I mean, yes, she's won races and she's probably a pretty
- 14:06talented, you know, driver, but it's because those sponsors want
- 14:09to see those clicks. And that's that's the bottom
- 14:12line. Why she has the money to race is
- 14:14because she done a great job building up her social media and
- 14:17building up her her platform because that she has something
- 14:20of value that those sponsors want to see.
- 14:23We're going to go somewhere. I don't want to give everything
- 14:27away, but you have the racers guide.com.
- 14:30I keep repeating it, but we know something that is so fresh, so
- 14:35new. I have my pulse on everything
- 14:38just like you do NASCAR, Rodger, Penske, everybody's using it in
- 14:44the underworld right now. And I'm sure you're going to
- 14:46touch on it, $65 a month, a year.
- 14:51So we just put there, it is the legendary logo.
- 14:55We're going to use Chat Smith. That's what all the big boys are
- 14:59using now. Automatic AI writes your press
- 15:04releases. It does everything better than a
- 15:06human can do until this is illegal.
- 15:11Now I know all about this because I'm very up to date
- 15:14because that's what I do. But we do know that Rodger
- 15:16Penske, the Penske Corporation, Hendrick, all the big boys are
- 15:21using Chat Smith. That's a, that's an upgrade
- 15:25without me going any deeper. Just touch on that and I know
- 15:29the racersguide.com is going to have it, but talk a little bit
- 15:32about AI and this chat. Smith is so big in the the the
- 15:37business world now. Yeah, there's, there's probably
- 15:40five or six different, you know, artificial intelligence
- 15:44platforms that you can use. There's some of them that are
- 15:47obviously free ChatGPT, perplexity.
- 15:50I mean, there's I have a list in the book of all the different
- 15:52ones that you can use, but they're all pretty much, I don't
- 15:56want to say they're all the same, but you have to know how
- 16:00to use it for it to be beneficial to you.
- 16:03You you have to know how to prompt it and what to say to it
- 16:07to get the results back that are going to be effective for you.
- 16:11You know, say you, you want to come up with the script ideas
- 16:15for your YouTube, your YouTube channel that for your race team,
- 16:19right? You can you and you got a
- 16:24basically tell a story to the computer of who you are, what
- 16:28you do and and then it builds this this little, you know,
- 16:33guide that tells you who you are.
- 16:35So you say, hey, I'm Kenny Wallace, former NASCAR driver.
- 16:38Now I'm a dirt late or dirt modified driver.
- 16:41You know, we're going to run the the UMP summer Nationals and I
- 16:44want to come up with five script ideas for videos leading up to
- 16:48the first race of the summer nationals.
- 16:50Ask me any question you may need to better write these scripts.
- 16:55So you type that in and it'll spit back out.
- 16:58Kenny, we need to know about this.
- 17:00What are the dates of these races?
- 17:01What I mean it'll come back and you write back.
- 17:03OK, the first race is that you know, LaSalle Speedway and you
- 17:09can write all the stuff back and then it says, OK, I might need
- 17:11one more question to ask you. It'll ask you one more question.
- 17:14You answer it and then next thing you know, there's 10 pages
- 17:17of things. It'll tell you of ideas for
- 17:20script ideas and it'll. And then if you want to go a
- 17:22step further, please write me a script of shots, you know, shot
- 17:29camera shots that I will need for this video and, and a script
- 17:32to go off of for this video #1 and it'll print out video #1
- 17:37everything you would need to do. Kenny Wallace riding the driving
- 17:40the first summer Nationals, 5 races or whatever it might be.
- 17:43So you, if you don't know how to speak to it, you're not going to
- 17:46get the great results. And we talk about that in the
- 17:48book about how to properly set up the questions that are needed
- 17:54to get the results back that they're going to be beneficial
- 17:56for you. Yeah, really, really good stuff,
- 17:59Doug. OK, so how do we go about
- 18:03purchasing erasersguide.com? You know, it's like here we are,
- 18:08I'm 60 years old, I don't know what I'm doing.
- 18:10Tell me how I go about finding this.
- 18:13So you used to go to the website erasersguide.com.
- 18:16We actually have a special right now we're given both the auto
- 18:21audio book and the, the e-book, I think for $69.00.
- 18:25So for, for the price of a couple pit passes, Kenny, you
- 18:28can go to school and get an education on your livelihood if
- 18:32you, if you want to be a race car driver.
- 18:34And at the end of the day, you know, I've driven race cars and
- 18:37I've always paid out of my pocket if I didn't have a
- 18:39sponsor, but I usually always had a sponsor, right?
- 18:41Because this is what we do. But you know, at the end of the
- 18:44day, if, if you don't find something that's coming out of
- 18:46your pocket. And another thing that I have in
- 18:48the book, Kenny, that's a really cool thing.
- 18:50It's called affiliate marketing. And there's a lot of people that
- 18:53that know about affiliate marketing, but leveraging
- 18:56affiliate marketing with your sponsor program is a whole
- 18:59another platform that people never even thought of before.
- 19:02Because with all the tools that we have with Twitter or X and
- 19:08Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, we, we can link these
- 19:12posts that we do revolving around our racing program.
- 19:16And if you don't have somebody paying you money for a
- 19:18sponsorship that's saying here here's 20 grand for you to race
- 19:21this year, or, you know, to be on your quarter panel, then what
- 19:24you need to do is you find the right affiliate because there's
- 19:27plenty of affiliate platforms on there.
- 19:28It's highlighted in the book of different ones from Commission
- 19:31Junction to ClickBank. You know, there's a, there's a
- 19:33ton of them. You find one that fits your
- 19:35program the best and that pays a really good Commission.
- 19:38Then you put that on your car and you do that on all your
- 19:41posts and you get a percentage of every sale of that product
- 19:44that comes through your platform because there's a there's an ID
- 19:47code basically that's linked to you personally.
- 19:50OK, so say you do a big video on the, the tire controversy.
- 19:54You know that they're talking about now the tire soaking in
- 19:56the dirt late models, which obviously you know, I've been
- 19:58involved with that long time. But you, you do a video on that
- 20:03and you have maybe it's a sniffer product or some kind of
- 20:06product that's affiliated with this story that you're doing
- 20:10right? And you put that link, Hey, the
- 20:12link's in the bio. If you want to get one of these
- 20:14products say. You get a million views on this
- 20:17thing and 1% of those people buy that product and the product's
- 20:19$200.00. That could generate enough
- 20:21revenue right there to be a sponsorship for the whole entire
- 20:24season. Wow, you bring up such good
- 20:26information. We'll look.
- 20:28Let's end it like this. Doug.
- 20:31I have a lot of kids that are very, very boring.
- 20:36They cannot speak. They cannot talk.
- 20:40What do you say to the family that the kid cannot put 2 words
- 20:47together? But I got to represent a
- 20:49company, you know? What do we tell the parents?
- 20:53Where do we send the kids to learn how to speak?
- 20:56What do we do with the kids that got to overcome being shy?
- 21:00They're wonderful. They're wonderful children, but
- 21:02they can't talk 'cause they're scared to death.
- 21:05What do we do? I think that you just got to go
- 21:09do it. I mean, I'm sure there's, you
- 21:11know, Dale Carnegie courses and that kind of stuff you can learn
- 21:14to speak and you know, that type of stuff.
- 21:16But at the end of the day, it's just putting yourself out there
- 21:18and doing it. You got you got to, you know,
- 21:20get motivated because if you're really serious about racing and
- 21:23you know how much it costs to do it in today's world, then you
- 21:26don't have a future in this sport unless you got money to to
- 21:28do it, because it's not like we're playing basketball or
- 21:31football where all you need is the the ball behind me here to
- 21:34go practice your skill. You I mean, you could do it on I
- 21:37racing, I guess, but at the end of the day, you're going to have
- 21:39to get behind the wheel of a car and and show what you can do,
- 21:42And that takes money to do it. I mean, it takes you got to have
- 21:44the tools, the the tow truck, the trailer, the car.
- 21:48I mean, it's, it's a huge proposition to get into this
- 21:50stuff. Thank you so much, Mr. Doug
- 21:52Bland. OK, everybody listen.
- 21:54Go to erasersguide.com. Erasersguide.com this is the
- 22:00start of the digital age. It's been around.
- 22:04We are behind. We got to catch up.
- 22:06We've done talked about NASCAR, Penske, Rick Hendrick,
- 22:11everybody's using the new way of finding sponsorship.
- 22:16Doug, we want to tell everybody that we are in podcast form so
- 22:21you can listen this one all the way to work.
- 22:23And if it's just a little too long, you can listen to this on
- 22:26the way back. We are on iTunes and Spotify.
- 22:31Doug, thank you so much for being on Kenny Conversation.
- 22:34I appreciate it, Herma. Look forward to seeing you this
- 22:37summer somewhere. All right, everybody, we got
- 22:39them in. We got them lined up.
- 22:42Janica Patrick just called. She's coming soon.
- 22:45Until then, we have Erica Enders.
- 22:47We have a lot of people in the pipeline until the next kind of
- 22:51Kenny conversation. We'll see you next time.