Primary sponsors often receive the accolades for their contribution to motorsports, but it’s the numerous, smaller entities that, when combined, complete the funding process. Here, we provide a view from the sponsor’s seat with Andrew Norman of Colibri Capital.

The business side of racing is never easy. It takes a tremendous amount of money to run at any kind of professional level, and the number of zeroes keeps getting longer the higher you go. To make ends meet, drivers and teams typically need sponsorship. But getting and keeping sponsors is an entirely separate skill from piloting any kind of race car, and not every aspiring driver or team is good at it. No one knows how many world-class drivers have been denied the chance to shine at the highest levels of racing because of finances, but it’s a big number.

That’s why we sat down with Andrew Norman of Colibri Capital in Bellevue, Washington. We met Norman somewhat by chance at the IndyCar Grand Prix of Portland and learned that he’s a sponsor of Benjamin Pedersen, driver of the No. 55 IndyCar for AJ Foyt Racing. Pedersen raced his rookie year in IndyCar in 2023 after finishing as a top-five driver in IndyNXT in 2021 and 2022, with previous F3 and F4 experience dating back to 2016.

Pedersen finished the 2023 IndyCar season in 27th place, with no wins, podiums, Top 10s, or pole positions. Yet the cost to field his car is not materially different from the cost to field the series champion’s car. We wanted to dive in with Norman to ask about what draws a sponsor to spend precious marketing budget to back a driver, and what it takes to keep them coming back. What we learned was how a new generation of motorsports enthusiasts can band together to become involved in racing at a much higher level than they could ever expect to achieve individually.

PRI: Before we get into racing, give me your elevator pitch. What does Colibri Capital do in the world?

Norman: We are a financial planning, investment management, and protection business. We build custom financial plans for individuals, families, businesses; write custom financial plans; and then we align investments in insurance products to meet the stated objectives of a client.

PRI: Okay, that doesn’t scream motorsports like, say, STP or Champion Spark Plugs. What brought you to the idea of sponsoring a racing driver?

Norman: We have a passion for motorsports, and during COVID-19 lockdowns, when traditional methods of engaging with clients went away, we created a “stay on track” campaign and began working with Global Racing Group and Benjamin Pedersen when he was in IndyNXT. Over the years that relationship has expanded and our relationship with Benjamin has grown. Initially we started all this as a passion project, and it’s escalated over time.

PRI: Your relationship with Benjamin Pedersen is organic, but what would you look for in a driver or team to consider sponsorship?

Norman: Given the nature of our work, we’re looking for consistency and predictability, and someone who we feel can represent our brand well as an advocate. As it relates to Benjamin in particular, he’s levelheaded, he’s very consistent, and has been over the years. He really focuses on doing the very best he can with what he’s got. He’s also a hometown, homegrown driver from Seattle, like us. So when it comes to market activation, we have a lot of clients who are motorsports fans because you tend to end up doing business in the areas that you’re passionate about.

PRI: It’s a big jump from being passionate about motorsports to backing an IndyCar driver. This isn’t really typical, is it?

Norman: Sometimes financial advisors are passionate about wine, and they do a lot of events at vineyards, and there are advisors who are passionate about beer, and they go to Oktoberfest. For us it’s been motorsports, and we are actively involved because we learned about Benjamin and his IndyNXT pursuits. We saw press and articles about him, and that’s how it all came about.

PRI: Does Benjamin do appearances or other activities away from the track?

Norman: Earlier this year we did a celebration with Avants car club, and we had Benjamin as a guest. The celebration was for all of the volunteers and all of the partners of Avants. We did it at a private car collection. Benjamin came out and was a guest speaker and said hello to everybody and introduced himself. It made it a lot easier that he’s from the Pacific Northwest, so he knew where he was going, and all of the logistics were fairly straightforward. But he lives in Indianapolis now, so he had to hop on a flight. We took care of that.

PRI: Let’s talk about the unique way your small company gets together a bigger check for sponsorship. How do you come up with the money?

Norman: Well, Ameriprise is a big Fortune 500 company. We’re part of Ameriprise, but as Colibri Capital we have our own brand and our own practice. Our view was that we wanted to do something innovative where other advisors might be interested to piggyback on it. Because Ameriprise is a national firm, there are advisors in other regional markets who have expressed interest in doing something similar to what we’re doing or participating in what we’re doing. We’ve created this pathway where we got approval for community relations, and we got approval for brand standards from Ameriprise. So now we’re in this effort to create a list of advisors who would like to join us for the 2024 season.

All of this stuff takes a lot longer when the budgets get bigger. But if you imagine that there are 10,000 advisors at Ameriprise, if 100 of them want to participate in a program like this, then all of a sudden you have created an economy of scale. If each interested advisor kicks in $25,000 to the sponsorship, then we’ve got a $2.5 million racing budget. We’re not there yet, of course. It’s going to take some time. But we’ve got the pieces of the puzzle in place. I’m doing the heavy lifting of talking to advisors all across the country who have questions about how it works and what they can do with it.

What’s different about our approach is that it truly is a grassroots effort. We’re not asking our corporate marketing department to write a big check, because this is something that’s very new and historically not something where they have an allocated budget. That doesn’t mean it will never happen, but what’s new about it is that I’m having conversations with advisors one-on-one, and each advisor who wants to join tells his or her colleagues about it. Then when we have 25 or 50 people, it starts to spread like wildfire. More people hear about it, and more people want to participate.

PRI: This column is read by people who wake up in the morning wondering how they can fund their racing operation. They’ve been told a million times that there has to be return on investment. How can a driver or team provide that return, and how much return do sponsors expect to get?

Norman: For the advisors in the short term, the way that we’ve utilized it is we’ve had weekends where we’ve hosted trackside hospitality. We have hosted hospitality at the Indy 500, the Indy GP, the Portland GP, and we have participated in team activities at Thermal and at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

If we have a suite at the race, that’s not overwhelmingly cost-prohibitive. I think for the weekend it’s a couple hundred dollars per person. In our industry, we’re heavily regulated on how much we can spend. So you have to keep a log of who you’ve invited, and who participates, and how many people came, because there are protocols we have to follow within our industry. It’s very strict. We manage all of that.

Then we have our partnership with Avants where they piggyback on our weekend. A lot of times clients will just come on Sunday for the race. Then you’ve got tickets for Friday and Saturday, and we share those with other regional people and businesses who might become clients. Then we’ve had all these other ideas about how we could activate around sponsorships, because not everybody has access to a race. We’ve created grassroots marketing efforts for people who are remote.

We are now working on a national campaign allowing advisors all across the country to participate in the 2024 season. The aim is to create unique content such as advertising that we can all share, and since there are races all across the country, there are unique opportunities for others outside our PNW (Pacific Northwest) market to activate in a way previously thought to be impossible. We want to share this experience with everyone. If 50 to 100 of us pool resources, we can do something magical.

PRI: But getting back to return on investment, how do you pencil out whether this sponsorship was a net benefit for your company?

Norman: The economy of it really is to build meaningful relationships with our clients. Meaningful relationships with clients normally lead to repeat business, it leads to client retention, and it leads to introductions to new people. So our goal is to share our passion for motorsports with other people. That usually translates into new business. There’s no promise or guarantee that it will, but historically it has. We have brought people to our events over the years, and we’ve built wonderful relationships with them, and that’s meant great things for repeat business and has allowed us to maintain business over time. Of course, we never go into these things thinking that we’re going to have some massive ROI. We’re doing it with the intent to do innovative, meaningful things to build meaningful relationships with our clients, and then see what grows from there.

The message to our clients is that we’re a team practice, just like motorsports is a team sport. Racing really simulates so much of what we do because teamwork is important. The work that every person does is important, and the team really matters. That’s why I love it so much, and that’s why we stuck with it.

PRI: Do you think other potential sponsors could “crowdsource” a significant sponsorship by aggregating smaller amounts from many individuals?

Norman: Normally these deals happen between a corporate marketing department and the team representative. We’ve been actively working with team representatives and trying to say, “Look, this is something that we’re working very hard from the other way, from the grassroots basis.” It’s been really encouraging because when I talk to other advisors, they want to participate. Advisors in Tennessee, California, Oregon, Texas, and in other regional markets. It’s approaching race sponsorship from the bottom up. I’ve been the champion of this, but I’d say not everybody’s crazy enough to do it.

PRI: Do you think this would work for other professional groups or business organizations? If it works for financial advisors, could it work for realtors, attorneys, plumbers, oil change shops, or any other business?

Norman: I think it is scalable, so long as there’s someone who is willing to champion the process. There’s no compensation for that part. I don’t get paid to do this. I’m doing it because I want to sponsor a race car, and I want to do innovative marketing. Then I want to take this innovative, groundbreaking marketing to other advisors who want to participate.

Now, there are protocols that we have to follow. There are brand standards we have to follow. There are rules we have to follow. So my goal is to eliminate all the red tape and do all of the heavy lifting and create a pathway for advisors who want to do innovative marketing to piggyback with us. We are doing fun, cool, interesting things with our clients, and they might want to do the same things with their clients. That usually leads to deeper, more meaningful relationships, and that’s usually good for business. There is no actual metric that says, “If I do this, then that will be the outcome.” A lot of marketing is just doing the things that you’re passionate about and then having faith that the business will come. And thankfully, over the years, that’s the way it’s worked out for us.

PRI: It definitely sounds like there’s a faith-based element to your plan, but here you are with your name on the side of an IndyCar. Not the biggest name on the car, but you’re there. Is that enough?

Norman: We’re a small boutique practice in the Pacific Northwest, so we don’t have an unlimited racing budget. We might have an IndyNXT budget, but we don’t have an IndyCar budget. So the goal was to take this to other folks and create this kind of groundswell because everyone who sees what we’re doing immediately falls in love with it and wants to do it. It’s a visceral reaction.

I think in the long term, if a lot of us do this and it works for other advisors the way that it’s worked for us, then I think it will catch the attention of other people who will want to replicate this idea. That’s really what we’re shooting for. We’re really trying to rally a group of professionals, and we’re working with some marketing folks to spread the word and to share what we’re doing, and that other people can join us and piggyback with us, too. We’ve created a tiered approach at three different price points for advisors who want to participate in the sponsorship marketing program.

Where we hope to continue to find success is on the activation and engagement side of sponsorship. For us, it’s not enough to simply have the brand or logos on the car. Strengthening existing relationships and building new ones can happen anywhere, but we really enjoy having that happen at the race track.