Speaker 1:
Welcome to today’s episode of David vs Goliath, a podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem Business Software, a three time Inc. 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve, and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam Degraide.
Adam Degraide:
Hey, everyone. Are you ready to ride the bullet? Because that’s exactly what we’re going to do today on this episode of David vs Goliath, brought to you by automatemysocial.com, where you can automate up to 100% of your business’s social media, the creation, the scheduling, the posting, the strategy, everything’s automated. Track it, save thousands, get better results, take the test drive today at automatemysocial.com. Be sure to visit us online at davidvsgoliathpodcast.com, where you can also subscribe to get our newsletter from time to time and also apply to be on the podcast. Well, we are so grateful today to continue on this episode with Bob Tasca this week’s episode. Last week we learned a ton from Bob, and this week we’re going to discover what it means to ride the bullet. Let’s get to it. Here’s Bob Tasca.
I’ve been waiting for two weeks to talk to you about this, Bob. One of the fifth smooth stone I tell businesses they have to have is courage. So you think about the story of David and Goliath, Bob. I don’t even know if you know this or not, but he was offered Saul’s armor. So David is going to go fight this giant. Saul, the king at the time, says, “Hey, you can’t go out there dress like a shepherd boy, put this armor on, grab the sword.” He’s like, “Nah, I don’t need that. I’m going to go down by the river.” He grabs five smooth stones, and that’s where I came up with plans, people, tools, process, and the last stone, which is the one I believed slayed Goliath is a stone called courage.
It took a ton of courage for your grandfather to start his business. It took a lot of courage for your dad and uncles and you and your cousins and everyone that continued it on to take over those successful businesses. But it sure of heck takes a lot of courage to get into that NHRA drag race car and fly like the wind. Tell people what that is like. I want you to think back to the first time you got in there, tell us that story.
Bob Tasca:
Yeah. Well, I don’t know if the word is courage or crazy, Adam. One of the two, I guess, but no, I think it fuels my passion. I’m a competitive guy and all I think about is competing and winning at the highest level in drag racing, which my grandfather did back in the ’60s, and I was fascinated about the stories about what they did. Win on Sunday, sell on Monday was a phrase that my grandfather quoted, and to get the opportunity to actually be able to live my dream and drive a Nitro Funny Car for Ford Motor Company-
Adam Degraide:
That’s like serious … you can’t just drive down the street and get nitro fuel, can you?
Bob Tasca:
No, no. It’s pretty regulated, but it’s intense. I tell people it’s pulling the trigger of a gun and riding the bullet. It’s a very violent, violent experience of acceleration and deceleration. We’ll pull over six and a half Gs of acceleration and over seven Gs, negative seven Gs, when the parachutes come out. So it’s a 13 plus G swing from hitting the throttle to when the parachutes come out and it’s no mistakes. It’s a sport that if you blink, you lose. I think that’s the most-
Adam Degraide:
You literally don’t blink. I was watching a video of yours online on the YouTube where you said that for that three and a half, four seconds, you can’t breathe.
Bob Tasca:
No. The
Adam Degraide:
The G-forces put so much pressure on your ribcage and lungs that it literally-
Bob Tasca:
It compresses your lungs inside your chest. You can feel the air come out of your mouth and then the chutes come out and you hit the parachutes, it’s like trying to eject you through the windshield and it compresses your chest and you get out of the car … I remember I had a friend of mine say, “Bob, you look a little ridiculous getting out of the car.” I said, “What do you mean?” “You’re all out of breath, you’re moving …” He goes, “You just drove for three seconds. How could you possibly be out of breath?” I started laughing, I said, “Well, truthfully, your adrenaline’s rising. You can’t breathe and you’re accelerating.” The acceleration rate in the car … I put it in perspective, I think people can relate to this, zero to 60 in a Shelby GT 500 Mustang, really, really, really fast car, about 3.2 seconds.
Adam Degraide:
Yep.
Bob Tasca:
Zero to 60 in a Nitro Funny Car, half second. 0.5.
Adam Degraide:
Oh my gosh, it’s unbelievable.
Bob Tasca:
Zero to a hundred in 0.8 of a second, and then we’ll start to cover a football field every half second. The acceleration rate on the car is extraordinary, but for me, I don’t know anything else on the planet that really gets my competitive juices flowing more [inaudible 00:05:33].
Adam Degraide:
Oh, I see it. I watch you on TV. I see, see you do it. Now I’ve also know that your mom’s a nervous wreck when she watches it. You actually blew up once and I saw that and my heart skipped a beat. I’m like, “Oh God, please make sure he is okay.” You literally blew up in the car. What did that feel like?
Bob Tasca:
I’ve done that, unfortunately, a couple times. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s a 11,000 horsepower engine that’s inches away from you. It’s in front of you, not behind you and when things go wrong, it can be catastrophic. I think it goes back to everything that you heard in the last two episodes about team and people. I’m blessed with an unbelievably dedicated group of men that work on this race car and I get in it and people say, “Well, what’s going through your mind?” I’ll never forget, after a big explosion, there was a Ford executive there and the car came back totally destroyed, and my guys were thrashing and he looked at me and goes, “Bob, what are they doing?” I said, “Well, they’re fixing the car, but why are they working so fast?” I said, “Because in 35 minutes I’m going to go do it again.”
He went, “You’re going to do it again? You just blew up. You just set yourself on fire. You’re going to get back in that car?” I said, “Yeah, I’m going to get back in that car, hopefully in 32 minutes.” He goes, “Well, how can you do it? What are you going to think about?” I said, “Trust me.” I said, “When you believe in your team,” and in this example, you have your life in their hands.
Adam Degraide:
That’s right.
Bob Tasca:
“When you truly believe in your team, the only thing I’m thinking about when I’m sitting in that race car, the only thing, is win it. It’s win it.” It’s the only thing I’m thinking about and that’s the level of commitment and focus that you have to go out there and compete in the sport that I love to compete in.
Adam Degraide:
This is going so fantastic. We do have to take a quick break from a corporate sponsor, but don’t forget. The link to the original interviews, episodes five and episode six of David vs Goliath, are in the description. Check them out. Here’s a special message from automatemysocial.com.
Speaker 1:
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Bob Tasca:
People have asked me the question, “What’s it like to drive a Nitro Funny Car?” For me, it’s a privilege. It’s a tremendous privilege to be one of the handful of people on the planet that get to do it, and then to represent sponsors like Ford Motor Company and Motorcraft that I’ve grown up with as a kid, it’s an unbelievable priv privilege to be able to do it and represent the Ford fans. They love me when we win. They love me when you lose. They love me when I’m on fire, although they don’t get too close when that happens. But it’s really cool to be able to do this around the country and get to meet so many awesome Ford dealers that come out and support me. It’s a whole lot of fun and looking forward to closing this year out strong and who knows, maybe we’ll get that championship.
Adam Degraide:
You never know, man. That’s why you’re out there to win. I mean, that’s kind of why you’re there. In closing, Bob, so people listening to this, I mean, first of all have to be inspired and motivated. I know that I am, so thank you so much for spending so much time with us today in David vs Goliath, because this has just been wonderful. I want you to think of that man or that woman right now that has a small business. They’re either having success or mild success or maybe even some difficult times. What final advice would you give for them in growing their business, the one little secret or the one nugget that you’d want them to leave from this podcast?
Bob Tasca:
For me is work ethic. Just don’t give up. Don’t give up, keep working. Keep working hard. Keep working the plan. Just keep working. Don’t give up. I mean, when you give up, it’s over. For me, I went a lot of years losing in racing, a lot of years struggling, struggling, and you just keep digging. You just keep working. Ask the right people, the right questions. This podcast is just a great place to come to listen to successful people. And the challenges. I think back to … I think it’s something Michael Jordan said on one of the videos, I’m not going to quote him exactly, but he’s always been an inspiration of mine. He said, “They got it all wrong. They got it all wrong with me. They showed all my successes, they showed all my wins, they showed all my championships. They didn’t show the heartache and they didn’t show the struggles, and they didn’t show the hours of work that I had to put in. They didn’t show that. They just showed all the highlights.”
That’s what it is with business. Business isn’t a highlight reel every day. There’s a lot of struggles, there’s a lot of challenges, and I think the businesses that really succeed are the ones that don’t give up. They believe in their plan and they work each and every day passionately, passionately, towards making it a success. It’s great to be on here, Adam. I wish all your viewers all the success in the world and hopefully we can do this again.
Adam Degraide:
Bob, it has been so awesome. As you say, never give up, never surrender. You can’t win if you’re not there, folks. You can’t win if you’re not there. You can’t have a great day if you don’t get out of bed and you can’t have a successful company if you’re not willing to work for it.
That interview is awesome. I literally am so grateful for these shorter episodes. We’re back to a full episode next week, a brand new one, which will be a lot of excitement. But I really believe that highlighting what we’ve learned and the wisdom we’ve been given from some amazing business leaders over the last couple of years here on David vs Goliath cannot be ignored and must be revisited from time to time. Hopefully you feel the same way. Be sure to subscribe, like, share, tweet it, link it, share it, whatever you can do. We appreciate it. We love the fact that you tune in every week here to the David vs Goliath podcast. I want to thank you, the watchers and listeners, and have an awesome day. We’ll see you next week.
