The Phoenix Principle is not just for big or old companies.  Any business, even small and family owned ones, can greatly increase their success using The Phoenix principle.  And a great all-American example of this is NASCAR and the phenomenal growth it has achieved.  (Read more about the success of NASCAR here.)

Forty years ago stock car racing was tied closely to blue collar guys with a set of wrenches and a desire to drive faster than the cops would allow – without getting caught.  When we went to watch stock cars on hot nights you got muscled-up street cars driven with a fair bit of abandon.  Most races were interspersed with local beauty pagents, and more than an occasional demolition derby.  Sometimes you wondered if you came for the races, or for the crashes.  A good time to watch, but not the stuff of big business.  Not, at least, until the France family decided to try some new things. 

The elder Mr. France realized that by linking all these fans to sponsors there could be money in this sport.  As long as anyone could drive, the purse would be low and the competition would be less than stellar.  So he didn’t start with cars, instead he started buiding his own tracks, where the environment could be safe and he could control who got on the track and what they drove.  Then he helped good drivers find sponsors who would pay for the cars in exchange for advertising.  Using personalities like Richard Petty, France slowly took stock car racing from broken down Pontiacs ready for the salvage yard (and modified cars coming from Detroit’s auto companies) into the world of Winston Cup Racing.  And big money brought faster cars, better drivers and more fans.  All of these ideas born of his family’s imagination and a relentless effort to find ways to get the winning purses up.

Now, his son Brian France is continuing to innovate.  It’s no longer Winston Cup – with ties to cigarettes, the South, and old fashioned notions of stock car racing.  Now its the Nextel Cup with ties to being national, technology, and innovation.  And he truly understands the importance of recognizing Challenges and breeding White Space.  As he said "The time to make changes in my view is when you don’t have to.  If you’ve got a situation where you have to change, that’s a much tougher environment.  You get more momentum when you don’t have to change."  Now those are great words of advice for businesses seeking growth and long-term success.

Did you know that NASCAR racing is the second most watched television sport in the U.S.?  (Surpassed only by the NFL).   But if you go to the track (owned by France, don’t forget) you get even more.  Attendees can actually get visuals from inside the car – see the race like the driver does – while getting real time stats on the race.  And Mr. France is constantly pushing for changes in cars, including recently allowing Toyota to race on what has long been considered the asphalt dedicated to "big American iron." Why?  Well, after all, have you seen "The Fast and the Furious"?  All those young fans are driving a very different "hot car" than I grew up with – and they want to see on the track what they get in and drive home!  It’s all part of trying new things, seeing what will work, and moving forward.

Seventy-Five years ago America’s sport was baseball.  Babe Ruth and Joe Dimaggio, then Mickey Mantle and Roger Marris dominated our lives.  Now, it’s a much more competitive world for athletic entertainment.  Football, basketball, and hockey have all become major U.S. sports.  Every four years the World Cup of soccer gets more U.S. fans as the children of "soccer moms" grow up.  Golf has seen another emergence as Tiger Woods has reinvigorated watchers.  It would have been easy for stock car racing to simply become a niche like watching billiards, darts or horseshoe pitching.  But it’s not.  And it’s not because this family-owned business recognized the Challenges which existed in attracting fans, Disrupted itself by constantly seeking out new sponsors and new competitive dynamics, and never stopped using White Space to find a better Success Formula that would help it grow.

The opportunity exists for any family-owned company to be long-lived and highly successful.  And if you follow the model of the France family you could find your business very successful indeed.  It’s not about vision and dedication.  It’s about experimenting, feeling paranoid about competition, and never stopping the use of White Space to find a better Success Formula.