Thursday, September 30, 2010

Courting The Sponsors

The team has been planning for awhile for a bigger season and I've been really busy doing research of writing a proper proposal as all my current sponsors have been received through word of mouth and connections so things were a lot easier but for 2011 we could be running as many as three racing programs, so this could involve some serious money and support.

Courting the sponsors is like dating, the sponsors are always a little skeptical when they start sponsoring you but once you've proven your worth and loyalty, it is like a match made in heaven and could be come a very long standing marriage. This is kind of how I am with Toyota and Toyota Racing Development. Coming from a Toyota family, I have pretty much owned nothing but Toyotas and when I started racing guess what I ran? A Toyota Camry until I got more serious and then bought a limited-production Toyota Corolla, which has taken me to 14 consecutive championships between 2007 and 2010.

What three cars am I likely to be racing in 2010? I don't know but I know all two or three are going to be a Toyota of some sort.

The sponsors we have talked to that are interested in supporting our programs have asked use to turn in a formal proposal, which is what I'm doing now.

Keep reading as 2011 looks its going to an incredibly crazy and chaotic year if all our sponsor deal go through and we put ink to the paper.

Friday, September 3, 2010

The Kev Master's Naming Origins

We get asked all the time how did The Kev Master name originate. Urban legend has it that the man thinks very highly of himself. NOT TRUE!

I have a niece and her mom is a very strict Catholic, so she has a tough time communicating with her parents about problems at school, with friends and romances with boys, something her mom basically said that she was to have no romantic relationships with until she went off to college, which most of us know is almost impossible with the television and internet giving kids all sorts of ideas. She would talk to me about her problems and issues and I would always offer her my advise, help and support since I'm about six years older than her. Its a big difference when you're 13 and you've got a 19 year old uncle to help you along and guide you down the right path.

I don't remember when this happened but all I know was that she was in middle of a lover's triangle of some sort when he best friend and her both liked the same guy and I taught her how to make choice between her friend and the guy and the set of decision criterion she had to use in evaluating her decision.

When she got that problem solved, she said, "You are my favorite Kev Master!" and that is exactly how the name Kev Master came about. It evolved into The Kev Master when I started using the Microsoft Messenger and there was an option to put username, I previously went by The Engineer when I was in engineering school but since then I had become a business major and The Engineer no longer seemed relevant.

The claim to fame for The Kev Master was not initially racing but a deal-finding website where users posted their deals and The Kev Master simply had a knack for creating insane deal and an insane amount of them at the time while making himself available for users to consult on the deals he and other users created. The Kev Master's distinctness became apparent when he started posting in the fourth person, which a user described as talking in the third person on the internet. This persona combine with his community-friendliness propelled The Kev Master into the most famous personality on the website.

When we decided to attack the national circuit in 2007, based on the internet popularity of The Kev Master, it was natural that the team became The Kev Master Racing. The internet popularity had gone a good way to help us publicize our events and generate interest when we were a rookie team in 2007. It was very successful year for us as we ended that year winning six championship, which helped us garner a lot of attention from our sponsors and allowed us to court more potential sponsors.

I have to say that we would have never come this far without our sponsors. Our first year sponsors that have stayed on with us are Toyota Racing Development (TRD), Hoosier Tires, Polymer Dynamics (PolyDyn), Raptor Racing, Firestone Auto Care and Eagle Heights Church. People always wonder why is a church sponsoring a race team. The truth is that they allow us to use their parking to do our baseline setup testing and we have constituted that as a sponsorship because they have allowed us a testing luxury few teams our size have.