Small Businesses are Vulnerable to Racing Drivers - Don't Blow it
I’m buzzing off the back of a few drivers landing hits with sponsors over the last few days. In each case the magic ingredient is personality and character that sponsors feel compelled to back, align with, and support.
Now, if you feel like you don’t have a particularly impactful personality or character - you are wrong. If you are a racing type then you have it. You’ll see what I mean as this article unfolds.
It’s Lonely at the Top
Entrepreneurs, who are your targets (especially local ones) are usually very single-minded and driven individuals. They handle risk and pressure every day - but for our purposes the most important thing is that they are lonely.
They might not be suffering from it, because they are flat-out on their mission, but they are always despairing about the lack of like-minded people around them.
They look at their employees and see a lack of drive, lack of focus and ambition.
Instead what they see every day is lots of entitlement mentality and mild to overt hostility toward them. If you are a successful entrepreneur, generally people feel like you owe them something because it’s not fair that you have it all.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, that’s the situation they are in. Bitterness and resentment towards them is normal, and the entrepreneurs start to feel disdain towards just about everyone they deal with.
This loneliness and feeling of disdain for everyone around them makes them very vulnerable to you!
When I first accelerated down the straight at Rye House on my first day in a kart I felt like I was transformed into a god. I didn’t quite realise that transformation also made me look at non-driver types as an altogether lower species. At age ten I became a very particular kind of snob - I don’t think I have recovered.
To You, I am Sacred
That’s how I approached the idea of sponsorship. I felt like I really was a saint-like figure, and anyone who was honoured by my blessing needs to put their hand in their pocket and fund my racing - especially the loaded among the flock!
Now, full disclosure, deep down I still do think that drivers are indeed a higher type, but with very important modifications.
Anyway, the raw aristocratic mindset I had got me nowhere of course.
If I could have been honest with the letter I wrote they would have said this, and I suspect it’s what we all want to say, really:
Dear Rich Bastard,
You have money that you don't need because you are a loser, I am a god and need it. The money is nothing to you anyway, you’ve got so much - what is twenty grand to you, my god what is wrong with you?!! I can put stickers on, Jeeez, what else do you want, jam on it?!?!
Cheque or bank transfer is fine.
And that’s how 99.9% of sponsorship proposals read to business owners when they translate the actual intent. That’s because they are treated like that every day, by almost everyone - and they need that like they need a hole in the head. Straight in the bin, or more likely a fob off.
