What Racing Cars Taught Me About Staying Legal in Business

A confession: I am into Formula 1.

And why wouldn’t I be? The best of the best get together to enjoy speed, adrenaline and show off what they have been working on in the past few months.

The best drivers are there, the best cars are there and the best car engineers are there.

Now, enough with sharing. I realized something about racing cars and businesses the other day while watching a race on the sports channel.

A Formula 1 race is much like staying legal in business.

It just hit me – staying legal in business and making it through the race was all the same thing.

Here is how I figured:

The best cars are ready for the race. Everything is set, petrol and electronics working, new tires, check-up done.

And they go, and it’s beautiful because everything works perfectly. But then that thing happens – they don’t wait until there is an issue, they stop every other lap and get a check-up. You know how they pull over and a bunch of mechanics head to the car to change the tires and check the oil?

This is how racing cars and staying legal in business are the same.

If you want to finish the race in one piece, you need your regular legal health check-up. If the best racing cars are doing it, it only seems logical. They don’t wait until a problem occurs; they use a preemptive strategy to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

In Formula 1 racing, mistakes are unacceptable because they can become very very costly. They can even cost a life.

In business, you shouldn’t allow things to come to a legal mistake as well. Because when it’s already there, a mistake can be as costly as a racing car. It might be the end of your business.

Racing cars get a full check-up and new tires every other lap because mechanics and driver know that an issue that is not caught on time can turn into a deadly problem.

The same rule applies to your business – a small legal issue lies in silence and doesn’t bother you much until it turns into a massive and expensive problem. And then it’s too late.

With legal business issues, there are mostly two stages:

1)    It’s not a problem yet

2)    It’s a problem I don’t have any idea how to solve

The trick is to conduct regular legal health checks and identify things that are not problems yet but might become one. In this way you make sure you get to the finish line.  

This is how I see business – like a long race and at each lap business owners need to conduct a thorough legal health check-up. Otherwise, legal problems might surprise you when you are speeding up the final success line and get you out of the race forever.

Don’t let that happen – learn from Formula 1 drivers – get legally checked up on time and avoid problems before they even become issues. Click here for get your Legal Health Check Up.