There’s a time to produce and a time to promote.

Without one, it’s really tough to successfully do the other.

You might not see it directly as a racer – in theory you can do the work of building a fast race car and win races without ever promoting.

But that’s just theory. How many successful racers do you know that pay the bills just by winning races?

I don’t know any at all. Purse structures don’t support that model.

Without some level of promotion, you can’t pay for your racing, except for out of your own pocket. (Which I would also argue makes you a successful person, not necessarily a successful racer. Nothing – nothing at all – wrong with that. But recognize the distinction.)

Successful racers pay for their programs off the track with apparel sales, sponsorship packages, product partnerships and more.

And how do they do that? Promotion.

You can’t sell tickets to your race track, t-shirts or sponsorship packages for your race team, and race car parts or shock dyno services for your racing business if no one knows who you are, what you do and why they should want to be a part of that.

You can’t pay the bills without promotion.

But here’s the catch you’ve probably already considered– you can’t promote without producing. At least, not for long.

If all you do is promote your race track but you don’t do the work, you won’t continue to sell tickets. Twitter won’t find your fans working restrooms. You can’t make promises to marketing partners without doing the work. You can’t tell people about your speed shop if you don’t have any parts.

You can’t promote without doing the work.

We all need to find that balance between production and promotion. There will definitely be times when you’re doing more work than promoting. That’s probably your offseason, actually. And there are probably times when you’re doing more promoting than producing.

Overall, though, you need to be promoting at least as much as you’re producing if you want people to know, like and trust you.

In the end, it’s you, not just your work, that they’re buying anyway. 

xo.
Kristin