The alignment of business and motorsport

We’ve included an extract from the podcast below:

I’ve got another quote here. “You’ve got to crash to get better.” Why do you have to crash to get better in both motorsport and business?

I don’t really think you need to crash to get better. I guess, what’s the definition of crash? I don’t think you need to go broke in business to be a great business person, but I guess we are talking here about risk. You don’t have to have contact in a motor race, write off your car and possibly hurt yourself to learn. In fact, in some ways for an extended period that could easily lead to you keeping a greater margin for error than what you need. I think you need to definitely creep up on things and you need to start to feel things slip away and you need to be smart enough to know when enough’s enough. And so, do you need to crash? No. Do you need to almost crash? Indefinitely, absolutely.

Have you crashed before?

In which part?

Both.

Yes. Yeah, definitely.

And what did you learn from those crashes?

In business, when I say crash, I’ve definitely had chapters and the times where there’s been a line in the sand. I’ve learned when possibly one chapter needs to be closed or is closed, that there is a need for patience and a need for some degree of contemplation before you find that next chapter. Some people just have one single chapter from a teenager through to retirement, but whilst I’ve had property there as a continuous thread in my life, there has been a number of chapters. And there’s been a couple of times along the way with whether it’s success of a business or divorce for that matter where yeah, I think there’s something to be said for taking stock.

The quality of the people that you, as I said, that you hang around, that you align yourself with. It’s just like what you want for your teenage kids as your kids start to mature past being infants and start to build a social network.But you do realise that the influence from their friends is at some point, probably sooner rather than later, going to start to exceed the influence of yourself as a parent. And it’s the same in business. If you choose to align yourself for the wrong people, you are going to pay a long price and probably a deep price. And some of these situations take too long to unwind themselves for. We’ve only got so many decades to really enjoy the journey of business. So definitely the quality of people obviously taking the learnings and as you get older and more mature, hopefully you’re starting to lose some of that defensiveness or self-righteousness and realising that your success and your journey is very much a product of your own personal decisions, I think it’s important to really be clear on what you do best.

And many people have found themselves in a negative situation by possibly just believing they’re stronger than what they are in more things and what they are. Whereas I think I’ve come to understand what I’m best at and where I need to strap on help or where I just shouldn’t be at all. And having said that, we still find ourselves in a high-risk industry. That’s important to me even though I don’t really identify with it in terms of at the front of my mind. Obviously, some degree of risk and adrenaline is important for me to enjoy a journey. I’m just not turned on by widgets being made in a factory as much as that could be a fantastic business and possibly a more consistent business, I do need calculated risk. But more and more it does need to be very calculated and very informed and underpinned by, as I said, by sticking to your knitting, sticking to what you do best, where you do it best and who you do it best with.