TBD: So, what lessons could other events learn from your success?

Gabe: If you're an event promoter out there, and you want to put on a bike race, really commit to the level of a race that you're doing and do those details well. Make your touch points with your athletes super good. Start with some foundational touch points that you don't need money to execute against like communications. Then you can step up your initial communications with signage. Don't try to emulate something massive if you don't have the budget to do so. If you have $10,000 to put a bike race on, just be cool with where you're at and do it really, really well. Just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean you have a good event. Just because we have branding, a really rad start/finish, and 10 photographers on staff for an event doesn't make us a good event. What makes us a great event is the fact that we're thinking about that interaction in March with the athletes. That's the most significant difference for me between different events. If you want to be big, if you're going to be massive, you have to hit those touch points, don't just throw a bunch of money at it.

Kacey: This isn't necessarily a criticism of any promoters; I think a lot of promoters do certain things because it's just the way it's always been done. And fighting against that in the cycling community is tough. In my opinion, a lot of people worry so much about prize money; they feel like people aren't going to show up if they don't have prize money. But sometimes that ends up being like $100, split five ways – and I'm like, "Let's take those $300 that you're giving to three low-level categories, or amateurs or masters or whatever -- take that $300 and just print a couple little pieces of branding and some signage to help people know where to park, so their experience starts out being a good one." Enhance that experience a little bit, and everybody has a better time. So, you know, for us at Radsport, we decided not to have prize money for the Category 3/4 race. Do we take some flak from the 3s and 4s? Sure, we do. My way of consolation is that we give primes, so there's some cash for them to win. But then they come up to us afterward, and they're like "Wow!" And I'm like, "Yeah, this is why we don't pay prize money – because guess what, all this branding, this course, all these police, it costs a lot of money."