Business Lessons Learned From 25 Years of Racing Motorcycles
4. Look Way Ahead of Where You Are When racing, it’ s important to not live in the moment. If you do, you will crash. In desert racing, especially, the terrain is constantly in a state of change. Look beyond what is immediately in front of you. Businesses, now more than ever, are faced with a landscape that is quickly evolving. Be ready for what you will soon encounter.
5. You Need a Great Team I’ ve never won a race by myself. I always surrounded myself with a diverse group of people that had four key attributes: excellent skills, unwavering ambition, uncompromising integrity and a perfect cultural fit. In business, you can fix everything with money, except one thing: the people. To win in business, you must surround yourself with a great team.
6. Have Honest Self-Awareness When I was racing motorcycles, I knew what my strengths and weaknesses were. Because of honest self-awareness, I knew what situations would be difficult for me and what part of the track I could make up ground. When you have honest self-awareness, you know what you need to spend more time on improving and where you should be applying your strengths.
7. Know When to Charge Ahead and When to Take It Slow When I raced Enduros, I learned that, unlike desert races( a go-as-fast-as-you-can race), Enduros required me to not only know when to roll on the throttle, but also when to slow down for the technical parts of the course. In business, we’ re faced with the same situations. It’ s important to know when it makes sense to take a moment and slow down the tempo for situations that require more finesse. This ties in with being omni-aware.
8. Have People That Support You In 1983, I crashed hard. I broke my right femur in five places, broke off the femoral neck on my left hip and broke my left collar bone. Had it not been for my closest friends and family supporting me while on the mend, I don’ t know that I would’ ve ever climbed back on another motorcycle. I did, eventually, with excitement. In business, failure is always a possibility, but it’ s never fatal if you have a great support team to help you get going again.
9. Commitment is Essential Desert racing is a tough, long, exhausting marathon. The races can be anywhere from a short, 100-mile race to the intimidating Baja 1000. To be successful and finish – finishing the Baja 1000 is considered a victory in itself – the race, you and everyone on your team must be committed to the entire process.
10. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable I didn’ t choose desert racing because I thought it would be easy. In fact, it was quite the contrary. I wanted the challenge. Business is wrought with days of despair and agony. Business owners learn to get used to being uncomfortable and know that, in the long run, it’ s worth it. I have a saying above my desk that reads:“ Comfort is the enemy of progress.” Every difficult day that I have, I read it and it gives me a bit of solace so that I can muster up the willpower to press on.
11. Celebrate the Small Things I won a very small amount of the races that I entered. Two of my proudest moments came from races that I barely finished. It was those races that inspired me to keep racing more. In business, as in life, it’ s all an infinite game of averages. If you have more good days than bad, you’ re winning. Make sure to keep things in perspective and always celebrate the small things. It’ s those celebrations that keep everyone in the game.
12. Be Prepared“ Success is when preparation meets opportunity.” Entering the race gave me“ opportunity” to win. Being prepared improved my odds considerably. In business, we must always review our processes, systems and people to improve the likelihood of having more winning days than losing. Always think, if someone wanted to put me out of business, what would they have to do to be successful? Ask your people what you, as a team, need to be better prepared and improve your odds of winning.
13. Know What Plateau You Want to Compete On In racing, there are three classes; there’ s beginner, novice and expert. When deciding to enter a race, it’ s the rider’ s job to assess their skills and risk-tolerance to know in which level to compete. A beginner should compete against other beginners to build confidence and learn what skills are needed to move up the ranks. Running a business is no different. All businesses find themselves plateauing at some point. It is very important to decide whether to stay at the current plateau or move on to the next advanced class. Business leaders know that to move up and compete with the big dogs, it’ ll involve additional resources. The leader must summon the moxie to get way outside of their comfort zone, because that’ s how the big dogs play. continued on page 56
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