To Finish First You Must First Finish

Now in my eighties, I met scores of famous people within the motorcycle and car racing world and became lifelong friends with many of them. I'd work and professionally road race for the Honda, Yamaha, and Bridgestone factory teams, win national championships for two of them, and be associated with Bombardier, maker of Ski-Doo snowmobiles and Sea-Doo watercraft when they undertook the development and manufacture of the Can-Am, a North American off-road motorcycle to challenge the Japanese. I'd also spend forty-years importing Bombardier-Rotax racing engines from Austria. I'd do motorcycle development projects for several other manufacturers and even a motorcycle project for General Motors, then the largest corporation the world had ever known. I'd win the Baja 500 off-road car race for another automobile manufacturer, American Motors, on a team sponsored by film star James Garner, with teammate Bob Bondurant, a former Formula 1 race car driver. But all that was yet to come and in no way could I have portended what excitement, success, and personal notoriety lay ahead in my then-young life. I'd become living proof that the United States was truly the land of opportunity. If one was prepared to be dedicated and work hard, almost any dream could come true.

This book fills an important gap in the history of top-level motor racing during the historic era of the 1960s and 70s. The author was at the center of it all, first as Sir Jack Brabham's right-hand man during his leadership of the Cooper team, and later when he formed his own Brabham Racing Organization. Subsequently, when Phil Kerr joined his great friend Bruce McLaren, to become joint managing director of an ever expanding company, which was to achieve unrivalled success in Can-Am racing as well as being at the forefront of Formula One, he and his colleagues had to cope with the tragedy of the founder's untimely death while testing a Can-Am car at Goodwood. The author's description of how the shattered team was saved and ultimately restored by the bravery of Bruce's co-driver Denny Hulme, already sidelined by agonizing burns to his hands, is a poignant highlight of his story. Includes a balanced mix of racing and off-duty pictures, many being seen for the first time and 15 reproductions of paintings by the renowned artist Michael Turner.

Go for the win! Achieve excellence and be better than you’ve ever been! In his years as a professional ice-skater, Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton learned to embrace the mind-set of working hard to “beat” the competition. But it seems competition has gotten a bad rap these days. We’ve bought into the belief that it is unfair to participants to rank performance. Yet competition is in fact a good thing because it’s about working toward excellence. Finish First is a wake-up call for business leaders, entrepreneurs, spouses, parents, and even students to stop settling for mediocre and begin to revitalize their intrinsic will to achieve excellence and go for the win. Most of us feel we were made for something more, but we’re often afraid to allow ourselves to be competitive because we think our finishing first might somehow rob others of their chance to shine. This book encourages the hidden potential, the champion within all of us, to come out—which eventually brings our family, marriage, career, business, and the world around us the greatest possible good.

"Finish Strong" is more than a catchphrase—it's an attitude For years, athletes, business innovators, and ambitious people of all descriptions have described their primary strategy with just two words. Two words that unlock the passion and accountability in every endeavor: Finish Strong. Sales leader, inventor, and entrepreneur Dan Green demonstrates that "Finish Strong" is the key catalyst for personal achievement in this collection of courageous stories. Through dozens of timeless examples of people who have embraced finishing strong personally, professionally, and spiritually, you will learn how to commit to yourself and unlock a higher level of accomplishment. Whether you're surfing in shark infested waters, starting a new business in your fifties, or trying to perform your job at the highest level, you can draw on the inspiration in this book and blow your goals away!

Practical tactics to grow your willpower, stop procrastination, focus like a laser, and achieve whatever you set your mind to. Following through and finishing what you start- more valuable skills than you realize. They are a combination of traits that enables you to create the life you want - without having to compromise or wait. The alternative is a status quo that you’re stuck in. Is your life a series of unfinished tasks and intentions? That stops now. Finish What You Start is a unique deep dive into the psychology and science of accomplishment, productivity, and getting things done. It takes a thorough look why we are sometimes stuck, and gives detailed, step by step solutions you can start using today. Every phase of finishing and following through is covered, and even productivity pros will be able to learn something new. Above all else, this is a guide to understanding your brain and instincts better for optimal results. Channel massive productivity and mental toughness. Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with dozens of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience. Resist distractions, de-motivation, temptations, laziness, and excuses. •The surprising motivations that push us past obstacles. •How daily rules and a manifesto can help you achieve. •Valuable and insightful mindsets to view productivity from entirely new lights. Seize self-control and finally accomplish your big and small goals. •The science and tactics to beating procrastination easily. •Focus and willpower pitfalls you are probably committing at this very moment. •How to beat distractions, remain focused, stay on task, and get to what matters - consistently. Transform your life through productive habits and avoiding mental traps.

The companies that win today understand the importance of having systems in place to provide exemplary service, making people a priority over products, putting the client experience at the top of the list and valuing relationships over technology. Successful businesses approach the future with an attitude of high touch over high tech. Nice Guys Finish First provides stories, lessons, concrete takeaways and action items. The reader will go beyond finding out why nice guys finish first and discover how to be successful using the lessons provided. The book walks the reader down a path to becoming a student of Sandler's system: Invest, Inspire and Execute. The chapters break the system down into smaller pieces, guiding the reader through practical application and lessons about leadership, technology, consistency, trust and empowerment. In addition, the book examines the importance of developing a culture of happiness, creating a positive attitude, effectively dealing with failure, managing a better life and mistakes to avoid on the road to success.

In No Dribbling the Squid, armchair athletes--and anyone who enjoys tales of the strange and unusual--get a front-row seat at some of the world's most mind-blowing feats of strength, endurance, and eccentricity. Here are profiles of more than 70 fringe, far-fetched, and frightening sports, all featured in up-close-and-personal photos. With everything from wayward warfare (Japanese mudflinging, team snowball fighting, professional shin kicking) to displaced races (swamp soccer, outhouse racing, underwater cycling, or elephant polo), to toe- and finger-wrestling, chess boxing, extreme mountain unicycling, spitting and hurling contests, city-wide brawls, and recess games gone grown-up, there's something here to tickle any competitor's freaky streak.

“ ...When the idea of this book was first suggested to me, although I had no misgivings as to the interest of its subject for myself and those immediately concerned, I had some misgiving as to my ability to make it interesting to the general reader. I may say that this misgiving is by no means abated now that I see the finished result of my labours. But I felt a very earnest wish, which will be understood by those who have ever been in the thick of any exciting or momentous experience, to preserve, if only for my own satisfaction, some record of the early days of the motor-car in England and my own experiences in connection therewith, and to reconstruct some of the events of those exciting days before my impression of them should become blurred. In this way my book may perhaps come some day to have an interest of its own, when the world shall have forgotten that the thing we call the Motor Movement ever had a beginning ...” Charles Jarrott - September, 1906. (Charles Jarrott was an English racing car driver. He won the 1902 Circuit des Ardennes race and competed in the 1903 and 1904 Gordon Bennett Cup races.)