My Blog
My Blog
Something From Nothing
It occurs to me quite often, based on comments I overhear or read online sometimes, that many assume that Jason and I have always had money, and that we just happened to be in short-course racing and off-road because that’s just where we always were.
This couldn’t be any farther from the truth, actually. Both of us are first generation racers and off-road enthusiasts, meaning we are the first people in our family to get into the sport of racing off-road. I wasn’t raised in off-road. I wasn’t raced in a racing family. My family was the norm - you know, parent’s working regular jobs, me going to school. Weekends were for doing chores and working on the yard, and sometimes they were for four-wheeling in the mountains behind our house, or when I was really little, heading to the lake in our old boat.
I started riding on a whim at 29, and Jason pretty much just bought a quad and decided to go racing - about the same time I did. We met that way - early on in both our racing careers, with no money to speak of - just a driving need to somehow make it to the track for the next race, no matter what.
I raced stock stuff because I couldn’t buy anything better at first. Then I could slowly upgrade, but still had to save and worry about where my next entry fee was coming from.
At this point, I was a divorced mother of two, going through quite a bit of post-divorce drama and thrived on the one day a week I could put my life on the starting line and get my adrenaline fix that would carry me through the next week of stress and reality.
So that’s how we started out.....Jason was a Porsche technician and I worked as a Warranty Clerk. Then Jason started his business out of the garage of our first house (the house we still live in, btw), and a year later, without any capital and just a lot of determination to succeed, we opened our shop in Chandler and took the leap of faith.
The customers came, word of Jason’s work was spread via word-of-mouth, and 10 years later, we are a well established, thriving ATV/UTV Performance shop with a good name in the industry.
As for racing, over the past 10 years I have started at the bottom and raced, worked, and wrecked my way to where I am now.....I have met some key people along the way that helped to put me in front of even more key people, and just in our regular business dealings I have been able to meet and get to know a ton of great business owners, who have seen value in advertising their products through my race program. Winning races has helped a lot, but even before the wins, I had companies put their faith in me because they saw potential in what we were trying to accomplish.
So, no......it hasn’t always been this way for me. This whole racing part of my life is all still relatively new, although I can’t imagine living in a “non-racing” world ever again.
March 31, 2015