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What
a Long, Strange Trip It's Been The behind the scenes stuff you never knew about CompetitionPlus.com by Bobby Bennett, Jr.
I was 18 years old when I traded an IHRA
official’s son photos of his racecar for a “pirated” press pass
that allowed me to get on the starting line and shoot photos during the
1985 Fallnationals in Bristol, Tenn. I was hooked and would do anything
to go to the races from that point. The actual Competition Plus idea began in 1986. 19
years old, and married with a daughter, I began asking the magazines if
I could have the opportunity to write for them and take pictures. Every
one I contacted told me, “Send us some published work.” a
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It really pissed me off. I wanted to get out there
and get to the top just so I could show these jerks. I went and borrowed $1500 from the bank. I created
a 40-page black and white magazine (sportsman only) because I was too
poor to have any color. I literally almost worked myself to death and
sold my subscription list to another local magazine. I felt like a
failure, but, my goal had been attained. I was able to freelance now. By
the way, my first article made the cover of SS&DI. By the way, it
was on an obscure bracket racer named Scotty Cannon. But, as I said, that experience with Competition Plus left me feeling somewhat like a failure. a
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FRUSTRATION,
FLATULANCE AND THE PROMISED LAND Fast forward to 1999, and a somewhat successful
career of freelancing behind me, and I can tell you how Competition Plus
rose from the ashes of a burned out career. I pretty much had my life tied up in IHRA writing
for peanuts for Drag Review – their magazine, and covering any PR
client that would remotely pay their bills. My self esteem was low and I
was worried as to how I was going to make it. The IHRA had just hired
their fourth editor in two years and I was in the midst of being
financially downtrodden. The new editor at Drag Review was a guy that fit
the bill as a total jerk. I didn’t like it, but I felt trapped. I had
to do what I had to do. Sometimes a straw can break a camel’s back and
it did within a month of his hire. I was writing 1,000 word race
coverage and he told me at $100, I was overpaid.
This is the same guy that would eventually become
my friend and later come to work for me when he lost his job at the
IHRA. This was also the same guy that would end up nearly causing me to
get my butt kicked, sued and attacked by Shirley Muldowney for
disparaging remarks made in a column – but I’ll get into that later. I could see the writing on the wall for my
association with Drag Review. The new editor made some moves that
potentially were going to cost me a lot of money...well to me it seemed
like a lot of money. I mentioned my disgust to a high-ranking official
of the sanctioning body and he told me, “If you don’t like being
part of our team…you can just get out.” I thought to myself, he screamed that really loud.
And, the more I thought of it…he was right. It cut to the bone and
hurt, yet it motivated me.
Things couldn’t have gotten much lower for me.
Here I was working at the Norwalk Press Room (a pop tent just on the
other side of the guardrail – 100-feet from 250+ mph Top Fuelers). A
rain storm had just blown through the day before sending all my client
press kits whirling around and I had just lost it in a profanity laced
tirade. The self-esteem continued to dwindle. So what’s a
man to do when he’s down like that with a quickly dimming future? Well
if you’re me, and a person that makes it through life flying by the
seat of your pants, you make the absurd decision to build a magazine for
the Internet. And just to think, just four months earlier Jeff
Burk, a former editor at Super Stock magazine had asked if I would be
interested in coming along with him to create a website venture he was
proposing. I told him I didn’t know, but I would think about it.
He’ll deny it, but we were at Cordova on the starting line when he
asked me. I never followed up. a
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USE
YOUR SKILLS YOUNG MAN About that same time, I had been an avid internet
surfer for about three or four years and had a pretty good grasp of how
it worked. The thing that really disappointed me was the lack of any
drag racing websites. Just two months earlier, an html wiz had suggested
to me that I should take all of my drag racing stories and put them
online in a magazine format. Remembering my earlier publishing
experience, I quickly reeled off the comment, “Are you crazy as hell?
There ain’t no way.” Two months later, I asked him if he was still
interested. He obliged. I haphazardly drew up a battle plan and a
design. He built it up.
On September 15, 1999, we launched the first issue
to 187 visitors in the first week. Our original designer and myself had
become friends through an Internet chat room. You know…the kind where
fat chicks and married men go looking for love? I also met another person that would be very
instrumental in helping to grow CompetitionPlus.com. I had met another
gentleman in that same chat room that went under the nickname
“Geezer.” This person, Roger Richards, was well known for his
wedding photography, but was well talented in golf. He joined the staff
for issue #2. In those days, I set my magazine up on a bi-weekly
basis to basically go head-to-head with Drag Review, just online. It
covered just IHRA. However, it didn’t take long to see that the IHRA
had no interest in pushing my new endeavor. A few of them expected me to
fall on my face. To be honest, I thought I was going to fall too. But, I
never quit. It didn’t take long for me to see how tough of a
gig this was.
For the first two issues, no one got paid at all.
The more we worked at it and the more I found it nearly impossible to
sell these ads just before the Dot Com crash. The more my designer
became disgusted and threatened to quit, the more I realized that Issue
#3 would be my last unless I paid him from that point on. I took what
meager ad revenue I had coming in and added some of my paltry freelance
salary to maintain his participation. I borrowed money from friends, sold a few things
and did without just to keep it going. I did what I had to do. In the early part of the 2000 season, I met a
gentleman named Brian Wood, who would ask me if I would allow him to
write for us. That was a change. I had someone that was actually
interested in writing for me. Brian’s only comment was that he wanted
to do it for the promise of a bright future. But, that future began to
dim to the point that by June of 2000, I was nearly bankrupt. I had
called every favor I had - there was just no money whatsoever.
a
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SKILLS? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING BUSINESS SKILLS I had become friends with a gentleman named Paul
Trussell who would soon prove to be an invaluable business teacher. I
was a terrible businessman. I wanted to make friends, not money. It had
almost run me broke. I recalled Paul had told me once in the early
stages, “If you need any investors or anything, I’d like to see you
make this thing work.”
I had resisted the notion because I believed in the
project and when it hit paydirt, I wanted to be the sole owner and not
have to answer to anyone. But, this was the point of no other choice.
Either, I swallowed my pride or we were done. I called Paul one day and let him know, “You
remember that offer you made me? I might be interested.” Paul and I met the next day and he asked me what
this magazine meant to me. Without thinking, I uttered, “I’d rather
be dead if I couldn’t do this.” He convinced me that this was the stupidest thing
he’d ever heard, but he would teach me to be a better businessman.
Still, I was submerged in personal depression and even though I was able
to somewhat pay the bills, I felt I had done nothing more than put a
band-aid on a bullet wound. My life spiraled down and while the magazine
seemed to be doing somewhat better – I wasn’t. You hear the term, sometimes you can’t see the
forest for the trees and that was the case for me. We were bringing in
almost 30,000 – 40,000 readers a month. But, that nearly doubled overnight due to an
unfortunate incident. If hindsight is 20/20, I would just as soon to
have lost that traffic increase to not have had happen what happened.”
MONITOR
THE COLUMNS, DUMMY What happened is that I had a guy writing a column
for me that really didn’t care for Shirley. We had developed a steady
readership that was based on the motto that we would tell it like it is.
I can still remember the night. I had worked for
about 17 hour days for two days in a row. He sent the column to me and I
merely ran it through spell check and sent it on to my designer. I could
never have envisioned the stuff in this column that appeared. I just wanted to get the issue done. So the next
day that the new issue goes up, I get this call. It’s Phil Burgess at
the NHRA and he’s asking, “Bobby, why would you put something like
that up?” I asked him what he was talking about as I thought for a
moment…I hadn’t made disparaging remarks about the NHRA…so what
did I do wrong? Then he told me I needed to read this column. My jaw hit
the floor and I knew immediately that we had made the biggest mistake in
our life. I immediately called my designer and told him to
pull that column, which he did, but it was too late.
Shirley had already seen it. And she was
mad…understandably so. It didn’t take long for her to call my house. I
was out of town at the time, but when I got home, there was a message
waiting for me. I expected it. I didn’t want to make that call, but I
knew I had to. It was the right thing to do, and even though I hadn’t
written it myself, I was very much responsible. I walked out of my house into my yard and there was
my dad, standing outside. My dad didn’t have a lot of book smarts, but
he knew a lot about life. He had a hard life growing up in those
old-school depression days. I explained my plight to him and he
basically looked at me and said, “Son, I love you…but you gotta do
the right things in life. If you’ve wronged someone, you have to make
it right.” I called and apologized and said that I had no
excuse, while I hadn’t written the thing, I was still responsible. I
was willing to accept whatever punishment was to come my way. But,
believe it or not, by the end of that conversation, Shirley actually
accepted my apology. “It’s funny how things can come full circle,
earlier this year, I ran into Shirley at E-town and she asked me how I
was doing. She also made a point to let me know that we were doing a
good job.” a
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CHANGE
WILL DO YOU GOOD Moving on to better days of the magazine, we
brought in Rod Burke to design a new look for CompetitionPlus.com. By
that time, we had gotten into promoting pre-season events and earlier
that year the IHRA had adopted our test session as the official event
for the IHRA. Funny how these things come full circle isn’t it? In 2002, the magazine began to undergo a series of
changes for our survival. In the first three volumes of the magazine, we
produced a new issue every other week. We also brought on Brian Wood as
a full-time editor and I relinquished my role as the editor to him and
slipped into the role of publisher. But, by 2003, six months of being in the red
financially, we had to make some tough decisions. Nearly 80 issues, we
had produced by this format – but the time had come to change the way
we did business. My staff had grown weary of posting “old”
results and getting scooped on news reports by other entities that
didn’t believe in sticking to a regimented magazine format.
In March of 2003, I had to make the decision to go
to a monthly format with the promise of updating the news and dirt
section daily. But, that still wasn’t enough. Just one month earlier,
I had toyed with the idea of same day coverage and pit notes that
reached where no one else could. Immediately, the idea began to inspire
an increase in traffic. However, we all got tired of looking at the same
cover photo lasting a month. Then we went to a weekly cover story
format, which gave us more time to research better stories. It was just a continual evolution. Instead of
selling ads to major companies, I wanted to educate them on how to make
the Internet work for them all the while learning from them how to
better impress companies with our product. OUR
BIGGEST FANS In the midst of all this, my dad was diagnosed with
terminal cancer. He had been my best friend and one of the best helpers
that made my office run smoothly. At 69, he’d been retired for four
years.
“When we would go cover races and come home,
he’d always ask me if we won. I always reminded him that I didn’t
race. He would say, “I know that.” Did you get any good stories and
I would respond, “Oh yeah.” He’d then let me know that was the
same as winning the race. “I can remember the first race coming home after
he died. He used to sit on this row of chairs at the bottom of the
escalator at the airport. It was pretty tough to the first event after
he had died. I could have sworn I saw him waiting. He was one of the
largest fans we had on this magazine even though his reading skills
weren’t that great. He used to ask me to read a lot of it to him.” The sad part of it all is that Roger also lost his
dad several months later. a
d v e r t i s e m e n t ENHANCING
THE PRODUCT We now have the most comprehensive new parts
section, updated almost daily.
I learned how to talk to an advertiser and show
them how they have a great company and how we could make it even better.
I used to try to sell them on how much I loved the sport. Mike Ashley, a
Pro Modified racer and very close friend, taught me how to be a better
salesman and how to better market what we had.” This year, we added same day photo galleries thanks
to the hard work of Roger. I guess you could say this has been a long road to
get to where we are at. We’re not getting rich, but that’s not the
reason we got into this to begin with. We got into it because we love
it, plain and simple. Tell me someone who gets into drag racing
expecting to get rich and I’ll show you someone that is smoking crack. Rich is the exhilaration that one gets when they
get to live the dream that like we’re able to do every day.
HE
WHO DOESN’T LAUGH AT FIRST, USUALLY GETS THE LAST LAUGH After the first season was complete (1999), I asked
Bill Bader, IHRA President, why he never supported me in our first year.
Bill then responded by saying that they had a deal working with
GoRacing.com and he didn’t want to mess it up. Call me cocky or whatever you want, before I
thought about it, I responded, “Bill don’t you understand that we
will be bigger than them by next year?” Bill laughed so hard that I held the phone from my
ear and heard him. I closed the conversation and reminded him,
“Bill, Jaws was a baby fish once.” Four months later, I got a tip that GoRacing.com
was getting ready to go belly-up in their normal capacity. When it came
to pass, I called Bill and asked him, “You still laughing?”
THE
FAST AND FURIOUS
True story…when the movie “The Fast and the
Furious” came out, we did an editorial blasting it…I got a phone
call as I was walking through O’Hare Airport in Chicago and it was a
reporter from MSNBC wanting to interview me as someone opposed to the
movie. Right off of the bat…the first question…
"Mr. Bennett…does this street racing stuff really exist or is
that a myth?" I responded, “Myth? Why don’t you ask that
question to the man on Long Island who just buried his wife and kid
because their mini-van was struck by two cars illegal street
racing?" IRONIC Funny thing is, we’ve covered every IHRA event
since 1999 and every NHRA one since 2000, yet we’ve never won the
media award for either. a
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PUTTING
THEM IN THEIR PLACE In the first full year of the magazine, I got a
call from Bader regarding an article that he said was very slanted
towards the NHRA side. He took all the stuff real personal. He was just ripping me up one side and down the
other. He wouldn’t even give me a chance to talk. I remembered
visiting his track and seeing the “Bill Bader Promise”. It read,
“If there’s a problem, please let us know and we’ll resolve the
situation to your satisfaction."
Finally, I had enough and fired back. "Mr.
Bader, I now have to get on a plane from Phoenix, I will investigate
this matter and resolve it to your satisfaction.” That stopped him cold and he couldn’t do a thing
but laugh. TWO
MAGAZINES The funny thing is that we could have two
magazines. One with the stuff we could print and another one full of the
stuff I couldn’t print. FUTURE
PLANS My dream is to have at least fifty Internet
magazines with a full staff promoting each. Hey, you never know. Five
years ago, where we are at now was a dream back then. I can only imagine
where it will be in the next five years. It’s been a strange trip, I
promise you.
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As
young as I can remember, I never dreamed of driving a race car half as
much as I dreamed of one day serving as the editor of Super Stock &
Drag Illustrated. I skipped college and scored a job in the same textile
mill as my dad, but it didn’t take long to figure out this was a far
cry from my childhood fantasy. I absolutely hated the direction my life
was headed, but I eased that feeling of no future by going to the drag
strip on the weekends.
© Competitionplus 2004