We were lucky to catch up with Sean Casey recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sean, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

Motorsports as an industry is challenging to find profit in. The costs are high, payoffs, even for winning, are never enough to cover the cost of entry. Sponsorship is crucial for sustainable profit generation, but really effective sponsorship is mostly reserved for the highest levels of motorsports, and very challenging to find at club level.

Despite this, and being a club level racing team, we have managed to turn a small profit, which gets reinvested into the business. Mostly this is from operating as efficiently as possible and keeping costs lows. We also find success in maintaining a realistic cost structure and paying careful attention to providing a solid customer experience for those racers who buy seat team in our endurance racecar.

Sponsorship is talked about frequently in the industry, and many people, even those in the industry, focus on “give me money and we’ll put a sticker on the car and give you exposure.” This usually ends in disappointment for both parties. The businesses with money to spend on sponsorship are big enough to not need “exposure” and businesses small enough to need exposure, can’t afford to sponsor. At least in this structure. However, a smart approach to sponsorship is to look at it as being a marketing service, with a goal of providing a minimum of a three-to-one or even four-to-one return on investment (ROI). Even a relatively new company may be able to afford spending some money on marketing if they know they will earn money back.

Fetterhund Motorsports maintains a few sponsorship deals that are well aligned to the ROI we can provide, and our five-year business plan includes strategies on how to improve our ability to provide these services.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the co-owner of Fetterhund Motorsports. We are a club level endurance racing team that races all around the United States. We were a national championship contender in our 2023 season, and working to repeat that in our current 2024 season. We also participate in track-day events and car shows. Our team values sportsmanship and helping others and believes those are necessary components to truly find value in competitive success.

We have two different elements to our business. The first is, naturally, our racing. We offer a competitive and fun atmosphere for racing drivers to buy seat time and be part of our team for single events or a whole season. The majority of our revenue is from this service. The vast majority of our customers become repeat customers, to the extent that we are evaluating the best way to expand our operations to provide more opportunities. Part of our racing business is driving instructing and coaching as well, we recently purchased another vehicle that will be dedicated to this purpose.

The second element to our business is marketing services. This ties into sponsorship, but it much more than that. Any business that we engage with, we view them as business partners and work to ensure they are successful and see a solid return on their investment in us. Their money may help us race, but in return we help make business connections, event hospitality, experiences, and help them make more money than they spend on us. Anything less would not be fair to them. Supporting a motorsports team is not a charity, and must not be treated by a team as one.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Attention to detail, consistency, resilience, and working to do the right thing (even if it hurt short-term profit). As a club level racing team, expectations can often be low. However, we based our approach on mimicking what top-level teams do. We make sure our car was well sorted, with the care and attention to the performance and safety of the car obvious to all but the most casual of observers. We have had customers/team-members go race with other teams, including teams with much better funding and top-level motorsports involvement, and return to us telling us how well our car was setup, and how detailed we were in comparison. This has allowed us to race against and beat some of these top-level professional teams in competition.

Consistency has helped people know and see what we stand for and know if they work with us, we will deliver on what we promise or make it right if circumstances prevent it from happening. Customers and partners should always know what you stand for.

Resilience is built into our “never give up” approach. In motorsports, dealing with failure is a constant. Parts break and unexpected things happen. It is the nature of the sport. I have seen teams and driver have one thing go wrong and pack it up and go home. Our approach is that if we have the resources needed, we can and will get back on the track and provide the services we promised.

And if we can’t? Then we make it right. Sometimes it is hard for a business to refund monies, especially when funding is tight, but if a customer was treated right, they will give you another shot, and they will tell others that you can be trusted. This helps drive repeat and new business. Doing the right thing is doing good business.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Trust your people, value their input, and let them shine. One of the easiest ways to destroy the effectiveness of a team is to micromanage everything they do, and don’t accept their input or ignore it. If someone is on your team that you don’t trust to accomplish the mission and you find no value in their ideas, you need to reflect on if they are either the right fit for the team, or if you have trouble letting go. Many business owners will spare no expense in hiring the right staff, but then stifle them with their own inability to let go. The business is their heart and soul and trusting someone else with it is uncomfortable and risky. However, by letting your team know that you trust them and value them, they will also make the business part of them and will pour everything they can into making it a success. If you let your people shine, they will become the stars that keep the passion for your business alive.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.fetterhundmotorsports.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fetterhundmotorsports/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fetterhundmotorsports/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fetterhundmotorsports
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fetterhund
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@fetterhundmotorsports
  https://app.hookit.com/members/seancasey/

Image Credits

Tom Beers
Sam Miner
Kurt Roussell
Tracie Villalpando