The start of a new quarter is one of my favorite times of the year!

Not because of the calendar, but because it’s a chance to pause, review what’s been working, fix what’s not, and make sure we’re headed in the right direction.

Years ago, I didn’t have a system for any of this. I wasn’t making huge financial mistakes (I don’t think?), but I honestly didn’t know where our money was going, whether we were making progress toward our financial goals, or how to confidently show sponsors the value we were providing.

Today, every quarter starts with the same four reviews.

The first two are focused on financial health. The third is one of the most valuable things you can do to retain sponsors. And the fourth? It’s the easiest one of all and the one that saves me the most time!

Here’s exactly what I review every quarter:

1. Review Your Personal Net Worth

This probably sounds like something only wealthy people do, but it has become one of the best habits I’ve built.

Once every quarter, I open a spreadsheet and update every major financial account we have.

That includes:

• Personal bank accounts
• Business bank accounts
• Credit cards
• Loans
• Property values
• Vehicle values
• Investment accounts
• Retirement accounts
• Any unpaid taxes (self-employed, yay!)

I organize everything into two categories: assets and liabilities. Once everything is updated, I can instantly see our current net worth and compare it to previous quarters.

The entire process takes about 30 minutes.

One thing I intentionally don’t do is check these numbers every week. Outside of normal bookkeeping, I don’t want to become obsessed with daily market fluctuations or temporary changes. Looking once per quarter gives me enough information to know whether we’re moving toward our long-term goals without getting distracted by short-term noise.

2. Complete Your Business Bookkeeping

Next comes the less exciting—but equally important—part.

Every quarter I make sure our books are completely caught up in QuickBooks.

That means:

• Reconciling all bank accounts
• Paying outstanding bills for products, shirts, stickers, etc.
• Recording deposits and contingency payouts
• Reviewing our balance sheets
• Making sure everything is categorized correctly

It’s not glamorous work, trust me, but clean books make every business decision easier. Whether you’re planning next season’s racing budget, or simply preparing for tax time, you’ll be thankful you stayed on top of it and didn’t wait until the end of the year trying to rush and completely forgetting why you paid for a certain part.

3. Build Quarterly Reports for Every Sponsor

If you already have sponsors—even if it’s just one or two product only partners—this is the habit I’d encourage you to start immediately!!

One of the biggest mistakes I see racers make is only communicating with sponsors when they need something. This is typically at the end of the year, like at the PRI Show, when the racer wants to renew their contract but has never talked to their contact since the previous show. (Please don’t be like this!)

Quarterly reports completely change that relationship. And they’re not as difficult as you may think!

For the past several years, I’ve created an individual report for each of our team’s sponsor. Every company receives information that’s specific to their partnership instead of a generic recap that’s sent to everyone.

My reports typically include:

• Race results from the quarter
• Current points standings for each driver
• Screenshots of media coverage where their logo is visible (the more the better!)
• Pictures from any displays or activations
• Results from every social media post featuring/mentioning that sponsor
• Earned Media Value (EMV) for those posts
• Upcoming race schedule
• An overview of our current partner lineup

This allows sponsors to quickly understand exactly what they’ve received from the partnership and what opportunities are coming next, within a 10-12 page PDF that they can glance at within 30 seconds and get a good understanding of what we’ve provided for them.

What is Earned Media Value?

Earned Media Value (EMV) is an estimate of what your sponsor would have paid to receive similar exposure through advertising on social media.

Instead of simply saying, “I made six Instagram posts and they got X number of views,” you can show the estimated advertising value those posts generated by saying “During Q2, I featured your brand in six Instagram posts that generated $9,800 in Earned Media Value, putting our partnership on track for a nearly 5:1 return on your sponsorship investment.”

Is EMV a perfect measurement? No.

But when combined with an ROI it helps tell a much stronger business story than follower count ever could.

Remember, sponsors don’t just invest because you have followers.

They invest because they expect a return.

Your quarterly report should make that return as easy to understand as possible!

4. Let Autofluencer Do the Heavy Lifting

This used to be my least favorite part of each quarter….

I’d spend hours scrolling through social media, opening every single post, copying analytics into spreadsheets, figuring out which sponsor appeared in each post, calculating totals, completely guessing what a $ value was, and trying to build pretty reports manually.

Now?

It takes a fraction of the time.

With a new software called Autofluencer, which was built specifically for sponsored drivers, teams, and automotive content creators, I simply tell the platform which sponsors I want to track. From there, it automatically:

• Detects sponsor mentions
• Organizes posts into sponsor-specific campaigns
• Tracks post performance
• Calculates Earned Media Value
• Creates a visual reporting dashboard
• Highlights your top-performing content

When it’s time to build my quarterly sponsor presentations, most of the work is already done!

I either use screenshots directly from the dashboard or pull the data into my own presentation.

Instead of spending an entire evening, or 2, updating spreadsheets and PowerPoints, I can spend that time brainstorming new content, preparing for the next race, building stronger relationships with our sponsors, or going to the gym.

For me, this has easily been the biggest time-saver in my entire admin tasks!

Here’s a direct screenshot of what it looks like for us, and our Q2 results:

Here’s Your Quarterly Checklist

As we kick off the new quarter, here’s my challenge for you:

• Update your personal net worth.
• Finish your bookkeeping and reconcile your accounts.
• Create a quarterly report for every sponsor you have.
• Set up automatic sponsor tracking inside Autofluencer.

You can create a free Autofluencer account and track two sponsors forever at no cost.

If you have more than two partners, upgrading is only $19 per month and unlocks additional reporting features that make sponsor management even easier.

If you’re serious about growing and retaining sponsorships, it’s one of the best investments you can make, not just because of the data it provides, but because of the time it saves you!

Quarterly reviews aren’t just about looking backward.

They’re about making smarter decisions for the next three months and staying in touch with your partners who have invested their time, money, and products into you.

Spend a couple of hours reviewing where you’ve been, and you’ll head into the next quarter with more confidence, better organization, and a stronger story to tell your sponsors.