Success Is Determined Before You Start

In racing, business and life, success is determined before you ever start.  What do I mean by this?  Steven Covey in his famous Seven Habits book said to "Begin with the end in mind".  He was right.

If you don't read the entire book though, you might skip a few steps.  Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with Tyler Tadevic of TruSpeed Motorsports.  Tyler and Team Owner Rob Morgan had just returned from the Rolex 24 hours at Daytona.  A race nearly 3000 miles from their home turf.

Winning Daytona is an amazing feat.  Just finishing is a major accomplishment for any racing team.

Tyler and I spend nearly an hour talking about the race, and looking at the car.  The car that TruSpeed entered came home a total loss.  The engine was hanging on by a thread, even though no one could see it.  If you grabbed the alternator you could shake the engine.  Several parts of the car were missing due to contact with other cars and stationary objects as well.  It looked like one tired pony.

Tyler was beaming and with good reason.  TruSpeed left their home in Orange County's Costa Mesa and headed east with one goal.  Finish.  Tyler and Rob were smart enough to recognize the height of the challenge they were undertaking and set a goal that was just out of reach for many teams.

56 teams started the race at the 2013 24 hour race at Daytona, and not all of them finished.  Even experienced teams couldn't make it the entire 24 hours.  Daytona is a shining example of why endurance racing is different.

TruSpeed is probably best known for Driver Patrick Longs record winning season in 2011.  Those are "sprints" according to Tyler.  Daytona is a marathon.

TruSpeed didn't finish Daytona by showing up and racing.  They started planning long before getting to the track and analyzed every decision based on the one goal.  Finish the race on the track.

The method that Tyler Tadevic and Rob Morgan used to put together the right plan with the right car and the right drivers to finish Daytona works in business and marketing too.  When you have a single target like "Finish the race on the track" or "Be the best Pizza Place", you can look at everything you do and very quickly and effectively see if it is working or not.

When I say this applies to everything I mean everything your business does.  If you are a plumber who specializes in being the fastest and lowest cost water softener installer, you can quickly look at your trucks, your email campaign, your direct mail post cards and your website and say "does this say we are the best water softener guys period?".  If not dump it and start again until everything you do reflects your one thing.

What is your single mission for this year, or what is your business target?  does your advertising say that?  Ask potential customers to make sure, because we all tend to see what we want to see, not what we are really doing.

May The Best Car Win.

If you have been watching anything on the news, you know that Chrysler and GM are still in deep trouble.  Ford has been buoyed by the fact that they didn't take any government money and they picked a great CEO.  A comment that I didn't think made sense during the congressional hearings came from a GM exec that is no longer at GM because President Obama had him removed.  He said something to the effect of “Our problem isn't that we don't build good cars, it is that we build cars to good.”

Race Time ReVisit

This is a repost from my old blog, and is fitting since we just lost two drivers for the Race February 20-21, if you know anyone, send them to www.rustbucketracers.org for more.

This weekend was a nearly perfect ending to four months of work and preparation.  You see, nearly four months ago we were accepted as a team in the 24 hours of LeMons Houston race.  When I found out about the race, it looked like a fun way to race cars like I had in high school and college.  The premise is simple, buy a car for $500 and make it safe to race.  That's it, then you go race.

Since the event is so long and fatiguing, a minimum of four drivers and up to six per team are allowed.  I came up with a theme, game plan and car plan.  I decided to attempt to race a $500 diesel and after 5 weeks of looking only found one Mercedes 300SD.    The idea of a turbo diesel running on WVO or waste vegetable oil seemed like a great way to start out in this race.