When you’re behind the wheel of a race car moving 160 miles an hour, there’s no room for ego, excuses, or noise. The car doesn’t care who you are, what you’ve built, or how much money you make. It only responds to truth — precision, focus, and respect.
That’s what I mean when I say, “Being in a race car is like Buddhism at 160 miles an hour.” It centers you. It strips everything away until only your discipline, presence, and purpose remain.
Recently, I had the chance to share that experience with my friend Tobi Lütke, the founder and CEO of Shopify, during the Petit Le Mans endurance race at Road Atlanta. We recorded an episode of my podcast, Money & Wealth, right there at the track surrounded by the roar of engines, the smell of rubber, and the hum of excellence in motion.
And what we found was simple: the racetrack and the boardroom speak the same language.
Every Race Team Is a Business
Each trailer in the paddock is its own LLC — complete with a P&L statement, insurance, sponsors, and supply chains. Racing is entrepreneurship at its purest form: high risk, high focus, high accountability.
As Tobi pointed out, his team of engineers monitors real-time data — telemetry lines moving like heartbeats on a screen — to make instant adjustments. It’s a masterclass in feedback and iteration. That’s something every business can learn from.
“Latency makes everything hard to relate to,” Tobi told me. “The faster you get feedback, the faster you improve.”
Speed, in leadership, doesn’t come from motion alone. It comes from clarity.
The Power of Smooth
There’s an old saying in racing: You can’t win a race in the first corner, but you can lose it there.
It’s a reminder that strategy and patience will always beat panic and speed.
In life and business, we tend to oversteer — jerking the wheel when things feel uncertain. But great drivers, like great leaders, stay smooth. They focus on the long game, on alignment, not chaos. Smooth is fast.
Faith, Focus, and Fear
In endurance racing, especially at night, you can’t always see what’s ahead. You have to trust that the road is still there, that your preparation holds, that your team has your back.
That’s faith in motion. It’s the same in business and life. Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s what you do in spite of it. When I first got in a race car, I was terrified. But fear is proof of growth. You can’t evolve without being uncomfortable.
Constant Improvement
In racing, there’s a theoretical “perfect lap” no human will ever achieve. The gap between that and your actual lap time is the sum of your imperfections.
But the beauty of it? You get to go again. Another lap, another chance to improve.
That’s what leadership really is — a loop of learning, feedback, and refinement.
As Tobi said near the end of our conversation:
“Try to do hard things surrounded by friends.”
That’s the essence of leadership. Build something that challenges you, that scares you a little, and that makes you better with every lap.
🎧 Listen to the full episode:
Money & Wealth with John Hope Bryant
“The Secrets of Racing with Shopify’s Tobi Lütke” — available now on the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio.