A week ago I wrote here about an idea we'd had, and I'll be honest — I wasn't sure it would work.
My son Ethan is 14, from Walsall, and racing Junior Rotax at PF International in his hardest season yet. We were £6,000 short of getting him through the last three race weekends of the year. Rather than go back to the businesses who'd already put £34,000 into his season, we built something called The Wall of #41: a chequered flag made of 41 squares on his website, each one £150.
Seven days later, 21 of those squares have gone. The page itself only went live on Tuesday. The wall is already more than half full.
Who has stepped up
These are the businesses currently on Ethan's wall:
Plus a number of individuals — family, friends and people who simply follow the racing and wanted their name on the flag. A square's a square, and they all count the same.
What strikes me looking at that list is how few of them had to be persuaded. Most said yes within a day. One is a business run by someone I placed in a job years ago, who now has a company of his own. Another is a recruiter I compete with for the same roles, who bought a square anyway.
That is what a local network actually looks like when it decides to do something.
Where the money has gone
Straight into the racing, and nowhere else. Entry fees, tyres, fuel, engine hours and the costs of getting a kart and a 14-year-old to a national circuit three more times this season. The wall has covered one of the remaining weekends outright and made a serious dent in the second.
Twenty squares are left, which is £3,000 — and that is the difference between Ethan finishing his debut Junior Rotax season properly and stopping two rounds early.
What a square gets you
On the numbers, I'd rather give you the honest ones than the flattering ones: Ethan's channels generate close to 500,000 views a month from a following of around 14,000.
His content travels a long way beyond his own audience, which is the figure that actually matters if you're paying for exposure. Growth is up 49% this year.
For a one-off £150, a dedicated post to that audience costs less than a day of paid social advertising — and it comes with a story your customers and staff will actually want to share.
The page is live
I pitched the idea to ADS Creative Solutions on Friday. It was live by the Tuesday of this week, and it looks superb. You can see exactly who is on the wall, which squares are left, and how close we are:
ethanguestracing.co.uk/wall-of-41/
Twenty left
When the last square goes, the flag is complete — a chequered flag you can only finish by having people on it. I rather like that as an idea, and I'd love to see it done before Ethan's next race weekend.
If you'd like one, get in touch and I'll send an invoice and reserve it. Send over your logo, your website address and a line about what you do, and you're on the wall the same day.
Twenty squares. £150 each. Let's finish the flag.
— Steve Guest, Ethan Guest Racing
