The Sh!t No One Tells You About Privateering
Privateering: one bike, one rider, and one slightly ambitious idea that you can build a career without a team around you. Sounds romantic, right?
Welcome to the logistical, emotional, and financial minefield.
Please do hit ‘Subscribe’ to receive these emails straight to your inbox.
1. There’s a lot of responsibility.
Let’s kill the myth early, privateering isn’t full freedom, it’s full responsibility.
Yes, you get to choose your calendar. But you also chase sponsors, book flights, find host housing, fix your bike, and write pitch decks every year to keep the dream alive.
You’re the rider, coach, content creator, accountant, and team boss all on the same day. The freedom is real, but it comes with more tabs open than your brain can handle.
Remember those days on the road when you had a DS or a mechanic? Those are long gone.
2. Racing is the easy bit
When I was on the road, racing was the most stressful part. You didn’t have to think about anything but the start line. Bike not working? There’s a mechanic. How far away is the race? You get a text with what time to be at the car. The list goes on.
But here’s the catch as a privateer: every race is a performance review.
There’s no teammate to work for if you’re not quite feeling right. There’s no ‘job’ to do if you’re just coming back from injury. When you’re a privateer, there’s no hiding on the results sheet. It’s all about you, every single race day.
3. You’re not owed anything
Being fast isn’t enough.
Brands want identity, story, and value. You’re not just racing anymore, you’re this weird middle ground of influencer and bike racer. You need to know your USP, how to sell it, and what it’s worth.
Nobody is owed anything in this sport.
4. Budgeting is brutal
It costs a lot of money to exist as a privateer. My race season, which covers the US, Europe, and a semi-reasonable living wage, comes in around £50,000.
Most of that £50k is taken up by the ever-growing expense list. It’s everything you don’t think about: health insurance, bottles, rental cars, excess baggage fees, flights, airport hotels, race entries, coaching, physio, spare parts…
My life is built on spreadsheets that I make in the off-season. I’ll guess-timate what I think I’ll need, and that’ll be the dollar amount I chase. Once the season kicks off, I’m constantly keeping an eye on the budget, when invoices are due and what I can afford to do.
Of course, there’s always a hidden expense that crops up.
There’s an argument that privateers should have jobs too. It’s a very valid argument, however, it’s impossible to have a full-time job, perform as an athlete, hit all of the sponsor targets, travel, and not have Maggie want to kill me. Trust me, I tried last year.
I’ve also learned a valuable lesson about cash flow in my three years as a privateer.
5. and nobody talks about it
Nobody talks about money in privateering. Amongst friends, there will be some whispers about what certain brands are paying, but cards are mostly kept close to their chests. I think this is because people don’t want others to ‘steal’ sponsors, or maybe it’s because they don’t want fellow racers to know if a brand has under or overpaid them.
I think gravel and privateering as a whole would be in a much better place if people talked about, at least ballpark, what they are paid.
At the moment, you have those in the upper echelons of gravel, think those with their fancy campervan conversions. Everyone sees those people at the top and thinks gravel is a one-way ticket to a big salary. Then, there’s reality. There’s the ‘middle class’ of people scraping by, or the class of people not being paid at all.
Please refer to point #3 here ‘You are not owed anything’, I stand by that, but I still think it’s good to share more on finances.
5. You live in transit
You’re constantly living in the gaps, between host houses, airports, rental cars and races. From the start of race season in March to the end of October, you’re always on the go.
You know which airline has the best bike policy. You know the exact size rental car that you’ll need, and you have this innate ability to find your way through any airport.
There’s an amazing part to living in transit. You get to see amazing places and witness all the different parts of life. Maybe one week I’m staying with the Lydics in Boulder having their world-class paella, and the next I’m camping in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon.
6. You’ll miss focusing on performance
Remember when all you had to do was train, eat, rest, and race? Yeah, that’s gone.
Privateering pulls your attention in a hundred directions, content, logistics, brand comms, taxes, transport, gear fixes, contract negotiations, emotional damage and so on.
Performance becomes just one of the many open tabs.
You’ll be mid-interval, thinking about a reel you have to post. You’ll be at dinner before a race, answering an email about shipping delays on equipment.
This is something I miss so dearly. While I love the business side of racing, I crave just being able to focus on performance and nothing else. I never stopped caring about performance, it’s just I never get to only care about it.
7. When it works, it’s magic
When everything clicks, when you feel good on the bike, when the story hits home, and someone messages you, it all feels worth it.
You win that time-trial, or find yourself in some amazing place. Those are the moments you remind yourself that it’s all worth it, you remind yourself that this all happens because you race a bike and took a risk on yourself.
I often get asked about life as a privateer. I’m far from having figured it out. My word of warning to everyone is always to cost it out before you commit. Bike racing is expensive, especially if it’s a part of your income.
Always try to sign two-year contracts, it’s the stress off your shoulders. Always add a 20% buffer into any budget that you make - trust me.
I’ve got plenty more bits of advice for privateers. Any questions on this, let me know and I’ll try to answer them.
While you’re here…
I’ve added a paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but, for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch. Your contributions allow me to do that.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joelaverick
The following brands are racing partners of mine which allow me to do cool stuff.