Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Wilkerson.
Hi Kevin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My story starts sitting in my dorm room at the University of Alabama. I got a phone call from the campus newspaper’s sports editor (we were taking a creative writing class together) asking me to cover a swim meet that day. When I told him I knew nothing about swimming he said, “oh don’t worry. They have a big meet the next week so if they win it’s a good tuneup and if they lose, they were looking ahead.” And thus began my writing career.
I continued as a staff sports writer for that award-winning student paper, became sports editor of the yearbook and then began what I thought would be long career as a sports writer. That lasted about 5 1/2 years when, going nowhere at the Savannah News-Press despite having won an AP award for investigative journalism, I received a Sports Illustrated with a surfer on the cover. I decided I was going to California!
That turned out to be the move of my life. Supported by my parents, who were not thrilled that I was moving across the country but wanted the best for me regardless of my location, I moved to L.A. I quickly got a job at a PR agency that did a lot of sports and then moved onto a bigger agency that specialized in automotive PR. Eventually, I broke out on my own, spent seven years as the Advance PR Representative of the PPG IndyCar World Series, picked up a few other clients and started a lifestyle website based on my work travels.
Today, I am in San Diego, still cranking away on the website – PubClub.com – doing freelance writing for other blogs, am the Public Relations Director for San Diego-based Positraction, Inc,, and filling in any free time as a tour guide for Another Side Tours. I am also on the marketing board for the San Diego Professional Tour Guides Association.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road from that college dorm room to San Diego has been a lot smoother than I would have envisioned had you told me about my journey back then. Once I got established, I found it easy to get PR work; people would just call me. My sister said I was lucky but I told her that “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” My experiences made me prepared for new challenges.
That hasn’t changed but the road suddenly went from flat and straight to an uphill struggle full of bumps on the side of a cliff. PR projects went away due to circumstances well beyond my control, the phone quit ringing and Google changed its algorithm for ranking websites, which took me from the top of most searches to the bottom of the first page or worse, causing revenue to plummet.
I was saved by a man named Bob Gold at a boutique Southern California PR agency, Bob Gold & Associates. I had walked into his office one day to introduce myself and while he did not have any openings at that time he was impressed enough to recommend me to Rob Wynne, who employed me on a part-time basis. I later worked for Bob for a few months while one of his staffers was on maternity leave. Despite my sudden struggles, I still believed in myself and it paid off by being bold enough to walk through a door and that led to employment.
A couple years later I relocated to San Diego and did the same thing – just walked into an office. It was at Another Side Tours and I had me another job. I had also kept in touch with a connection from my earlier agency days, Lynne Arciero, who has a successful marketing company, Positraction, and she eventally brought me on board to handle PR for her clients.
At the same time, I kept hammering away on PubClub.com to the point that, while it’s not back to its original half-million page views a month, it is approaching a respectable 50K. I have also launched a live video podcast based on the content of the site, PubClub LIVE!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a communicator. That means I write, do Public Relations and am pretty good behind a microphone. I do have a good gift of gab and that comes in handy in all aspects of communications. It helps in being a good tour guide, too.
Being a sports writer got me into press boxes around the South. I covered college football games at Alabama, Clemson, South Carolina and Auburn. I also covered a couple of NFL games and later the NBA when I freelanced for AP Sports in L.A. The best experience, however, was covering high school sports because there’s nobody to hand you stat sheets. When the newspaper reporter shows up to a game, he (or she) suddenly becomes the official statistician. And you better get it right. That alone sets me apart from most other writers.
The PR career has sent me all over North America. I loved the Advance PR assignments for the IndyCar (later Champ Car) series. I arranged advance driver days for major stars (Helio Castroneves, Mario and Michael Andretti and many others). I really enjoyed working with media to suggest story ideas and making sure they got those stories. And when that great gig ended, I was hired by Procon Leisure marketing to do PR for the Miss Grand Prix pageants. Today, I am back in racing as the Creative Editor and Lead Writer for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
PubClub.com, which I started in 2001 making it one of the first websites on the Internet (few people even knew what a website was then!), has taken me around the world. Just prior to this interview, I spent two weeks in Croatia as part of an international journalists trip hosted by Visit Croatia, the country’s tourism board. While in Europe, I also spent time in London and Paris. I have also been to Switzerland three times on press FAM trips and on my own to the Greek Islands, Hawaii, Key West and even back to school at the University of Alabama. At each location, I immerse myself into the destination so I can write content that provides the kind of information that locals know. There’s no AI-generated content; it’s all “boots on the ground” work.
What does success mean to you?
My defination of success is achieving a goal you set for yourself. And then maintaining or exceeding that goal. It can also be accomplishing something you never thought was possible or even imagined.
As an example of the latter, when I was in Savannah, GA, I turned on the TV one Saturday afternoon to see Toyota Celicas racing down a palm tree-lined street in Southern California. There were sailboats on the water and the Queen Mary in the background. Dan Gurney was one of the drivers. I stood still for several minutes and said to myself, “I sure would like to go to that event someday.”
Well it was the Pro-Celebrity race at the Long Beach Grand Prix and as it turns out, I have been very heavily involved in the Grand Prix for many years. I thought about that this year when I was in the press room wearing a staff shirt. Wow. I call that a success, even though it was initally more of a thought than a goal. It goes to show you that if you work hard and do well and are respected then you can do things and be placees that you never imagined were possible.
Pricing:
- • Sponsored Posts: $175-300
- • PR & Writing Rates: Hourly or retainer, depending on the scale of the project. Contact for details.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.pubclub.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pubclub/
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pubclubber
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-wilkerson-3711555/
- Twitter: https://x.com/barblogger
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/pubclub
- Other: http://www.facebook.com/pubclublive
Image Credits
All photos are from PubClub.com
