So You Wanna Be A Champion
It has finally happened. Middle of the winter, racer are just thinking of getting going here in the Pacific NW where it has been cold and wet, and I have no real current news to share this week. Last week movies and that was fun, banquets haven’t started yet (thank goodness – except for the Conference banquet way back in November), and Daytona is still a few weeks off. So let’s talk about you and what you want and what your plans and goals are.
Are you a goal setter? If not let me encourage you to at least be a person who writes out a “To Do List” on a regular basis and then works the list. This way you will be always moving forward. I’d be wealthy today if I had kept all the money I’ve spent on personal development books. But in another way I’d be much poorer as a person and this racing business that I love would have gone away a long time ago. So I set goals, built plans, executed as best as I could and kept on keeping on through good times and survived bad times. What did happen is that I’ve become the person I am today as a result. Set some goals, build a plan and then follow it as best you can. Along the way cool things will happen. You’ll meet some wonderful people, you’ll challenge yourself, you overcome obstacles that you never thought you could overcome, you’ll succeed where you really didn’t think you could and you have a lot of fun along the way.
Remember the 1960’s classic movie, “Patton?” If you saw it you’ll never forget the opening 10 or 11 minutes. You remember, the scene where General George S. Patton, dressed in full military dress and all his medals, comes out on the stage to address the men in the audience. One of his great lines addresses their concern that they might be afraid to go into battle. To that he says, “When your grandchildren ask you what you did in the great war, you won’t have to say, Well I shoveled Shit in Louisiana.” So when your grandchildren ask if you ever raced a car, or worked on a race car, or crewed or worked turns or whatever around the race track, you’ll have a story to two to tell that they will never forget.
A saying used a lot lately is the one attributed to Woody Allen. “80% of success in life is just showing up.” So to be successful in racing get your car out to the track and go racing or if that doesn’t work for whatever reason, come out and help a friend or volunteer. This whole conversation this week was prompted by my efforts to get speaker for our 22nd annual High Performance Racing Seminar. I’ve dealt with more flaky racers in the past few days than you can imagine. Flaky? What th’ is ole Andy talking about? I’m talking professional racers who have beautiful websites and great stories about how good they are and what great drivers they are and what great product sponsors they are BUT….they don’t return or acknowledge emails, they have no phone numbers listed and in short they are mostly self-centered drivers who think they are a better racer than you because somehow they knew somebody somewhere that got them in a race car. A few years ago we had Tommy Kendall come and speak. Four time Trans-Am champion, IMSA GTU champion. Tommy returns calls. Tommy is a champion.
So you want a sponsor, go ask and follow up. If you build a website, and a contact page, follow up on every email and every call. You’ll be way ahead of most of your competitors. Let me tell you a story about my buddy, Dapper Don Kitch. Many of you know him as the founder and owner of the ProFormance Racing School. He has a Rolex Watch for winning his class at the 24 Hours of Daytona, he has raced at Le Mans and done a lot of racing after starting in Conference in a 240Z. Don is not the best race car driver in the world. Don is one of the hardest working, outrageous hustling guys I’ve ever met. No one out works or out hustles Don and it shows. An average sort of racer with above average passion and work ethic and he has a Rolex watch. You want to succeed in this sport above where you are today? Try a little hustle. I’ll tell you this right now, you will be ahead of at least 4 Pro drivers I’ve tried to contact in the last two weeks.
Alright, I lied about news. Tonight I was on a call set up by Scott “The Spell Checker” Faris with the Marketing team from the Low Car Count meeting back in November. This committee has started work to help everyone increase marketing to increase car counts in the NW in 2017. I also spoke to members of 2 of the other 3 groups and everyone is starting to move forward. So we will see some great results in 2017 because of a number of hardworking, caring individuals. Progress is being made.
Let’s end with a book recommendation. Grit -The Power of Passion and Perseverance by
Angel Duckworth. This #1 bestseller is about the secret of outstanding achievement.
That’s it for this week. I, like so many have been sick this past week and I’m out of energy. I’ll have it back next week. Make my day and register today for our 22nd annual seminar. You’ll be glad you did. Just go to www.armadilloracing.com.