What Makes a Winner?
“Quitters never win and winners never quit.” My Father told me that many times in life when I was ready to give up. Those words kept me moving forward. We all see this in successful people.
One person that embodies this to me is Eric Hancock. He’s the owner of Evolution Racing Concepts. He’s the humble builder of Conversions for the Traxxas Slash and others to turn it from an Off-road R/C to a dirt oval race car. Eric was a manager at oil and gas company when his whole division was shut down. Facing uncertainty and risk he chose to finish what he started decades ago. Eric went back to college in his late 40’s. He fought hard with true grit to conquer calculus. Today he is a proud graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management. That’s winning in my book. I have great respect for anyone who will get up after being kicked down and continue the fight.
“Winning” The definition is gaining, resulting in, or relating to victory in a contest or competition. For my purposes here – winning means meeting a long-sought-after goal. It means working at something that is important to you and accepting setbacks, even failures. It means tweaking, fixing and redoing if necessary and still moving on. It means not giving up. It means sticking to something until the outcome is excellence.
Do you have true grit? Perseverance and passion to attain long-term goals? It also entails working long and hard toward a personal goal regardless of disappointments, setbacks, plateaus, and even failures along the way. People with grit approach a problem or goal as a marathon, not a sprint. Short bursts of intensity don’t do it. Successful people are committed for the long haul. What distinguishes those who are successful is stamina. They’re the kind of people who set very long-term goals for themselves and don’t let anything get them off their path. They know that quitting and repeatedly starting over is not a recipe for success. They often have been doing what they’ve been doing since they were quite young. It turns out working long and hard really does matter
. “Making Yourself a Winner” The lesson is that hard work often does pay off .If you define “hard” as going for something very long-term. It’s not enough to work hard for short amounts of time or to reach intermediate goals. It means setting your sights on something you can be passionate about for a very long time, regardless of whether there are immediate rewards. Grit and determination matter. If you want to be wildly successful in your racing program, what it takes is discipline, follow-through and focus on something you are really passionate about – plus being on the lookout for opportunity. Winners never do quit.
I wanted to buy my son a competitive race car so he would have the tools to be successful on the R/C racetracks here in Tennessee. I wanted my son to understand that with the right tools, grit, and determination winning will follow. I learned of Eric’s story on RC dirt oval podcast. With that story in mind, I was able to find a Proline Pro 2 with the ERC conversion ready to race at a local track called Battlefield R/C Speedway. An old friend of mine sold me the ERC and all the tools I need to race competitively. I was so excited; we now have the tools, now we needed the practice and experience. I was hoping we had the grit and determination.
One of the greatest wins, I have ever experienced was when my son drove to victory lane at Little Indy R/C Speedway in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We were running Mod SCLM and he was so fast he lapped me in the first few laps of the race. My car was damage so I pulled off the track. His mother (God rest her soul) and I watch him from the sidelines standing proud as he set the track record in his class that day. It was so awesome to see his success.