The green flag dropped at the Nelson Ledges race track on a lovely summer morning.
It had rained the night before, giving the asphalt track a luster, but today the sun was out and temperatures were to reach the high 70s. Perfect race weather, Kathryn Lyle thought.
Lyle was approaching the first turn at about 90 mph in her white BMW M-Coupe when a black Camaro two cars over clumsily shot past another driver on the right. The Camaro’s tires snagged a slippery edge on the inside curve of the track and the driver lost control. His car struck Lyle’s on the right, sending her car headfirst into the tire wall on the other side of the track, then more than 20 feet in the air, somersaulting until the car landed on its top.
But that’s not what Lyle remembers.
“There was water everywhere,” Lyle says, now sitting comfortably in the office of her downtown Chagrin Falls office. “The tire wall had collected all this rain water from the night before, and when I hit it — boom!”
Lyle emerged from the accident with a sore neck but was otherwise uninjured. More than anything, she was angry about the extensive damage to her car. She wanted to have a “talk” with that Camaro driver.
“He must have had the ‘red mist,'” Lyle says. “That’s a racing term.”
The red mist is that shot of adrenaline you feel in competition. It’s that determination to win at almost any cost. It’s that voice in your head telling you to push yourself, don’t back off.
“This red mist washes over your eyes,” Lyle says. “All you can see is how to get to the finish line, and nothing else matters.”
Lyle, a CPA, business consultant and president of Lyle & Associates, says the red mist helps her not only on the race track, but also in business. The key, however, is to stay in control.
“This guy was falling behind and tried to pass with two wheels in the grass,” Lyle says, still bristling. “It was a bad choice on his part. You don’t try to win the race at the start. You have to finish to win.”
Lyle got involved in auto racing through a college boyfriend, although she professes a lifelong fascination with cars. The couple drove down to Macon, Ga., to pick up his uncle’s Datsun 2000 racing car and bring it to Cincinnati, where they were going to school. Lyle was in the pit crew, while her boyfriend raced in local Sports Car Club of America races.
Her love of racing lasted longer than her love of the boyfriend.
“When the relationship was over, I wasn’t in the position to go driving myself, so I got into flagging at the race track,” she says. “I went to a BMW Car Club driving school back in 1982, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool. You can do this with a street car and it’s almost like racing.'”
Eventually, Lyle’s racing expertise surpassed that of her instructors, and it was time to put her car up against others in a wheel-to-wheel race.
“At driving school, there are no official lap times kept, so everybody lies about their times,” Lyle says. “I can tell you how fast I went, and it’s whether you believe me or not, there’s no proof. In a race, there’s official timing and scoring, it’s there for everybody to see.”
Lyle races almost every week when the weather’s suitable. Luckily, tax time, her busiest time of the year, is the worst weather for racing. After April 15, she puts on her white fireproof Nomex racing suit and safety helmet for races in Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado.
“It’s a real adrenaline rush,” she says. “It’s very much a physical and mental challenge. You forget everything else you’re doing when you’re out there. It’s the total opposite of what I do at work.”
Lyle reconsiders the statement.
“I guess it’s an adrenaline rush, too, when you help people achieve a breakthrough or help someone to see something a better way, a different way,” she says. “What I like about accounting is the challenge of trying to help people manage their companies. It’s all a challenge if you look at it that way.”
Lyle started her firm in July 1989 with three clients, who are still with her: An electronics manufacturer in Cincinnati, an entertainment services provider in Beachwood and an insurance executive who lives in Chagrin Falls. She honed her approach to business consulting in her early days as a corporate accountant for one of the Big Five accounting firms, which was the Big Eight at the time.
“I was the client’s financial VP for a fee, kind of outsourcing,” she says. “It was a new concept at the time. We were trying to get inside the company and help the owner grow his business, whatever that took.”
When she moved to Chagrin Falls, she admits her firm’s growth was slow at first.
“I grew in spurts,” she says. “It was slow because I didn’t know how to go about it. You can’t go around and knock on people’s doors and ask if they need any help. It took a while to get rolling.”
Her auto racing hobby, however, unearthed some unexpected business opportunities.
“A client in Cincinnati I met through the car club,” she says. “I have a tire dealer who’s a client that called me because they knew me from the track, and I have a bed and breakfast client near Mid-Ohio (race track) because I stay there when I’m down there for races.”
By 1994, Lyle had 250 clients and three employees. Today, she has more than 800 clients and seven employees.
If there is anything she has learned from both racing and business, it’s that you’ve got to plan. In racing, Lyle has to prepare her car days in advance. If she has a fresh set of tires, she has to drive on them for several laps, then let them sit for two days to a week before they’ll be ready for a race.
In business, preparation is just as important.
“Too many people get involved in a business because they know how to make something, or they get downsized out of job and they have a skill and they decide that they’re never going to get fired again,” she says. “They just create a job for themselves. They take any customer that comes in the door. They give away business just to get business, where if I’m talking with a start-up, the first thing I try to figure out is the end strategy.”
After preparing, Lyle drives test laps to get to know the track. In business, she says, you have to know the market if you want to compete.
“I had a client who wanted to sell $6,000 wedding dresses, but she had no idea if there was a market for them in the area,” Lyle says. “Are we on trend where there are more or less of these being sold? I’m thinking less, but let’s find out. Let’s get the facts and figures.”
Just as Lyle performs maintenance on her car, she demands her clients conduct performance reviews for employees and update policies and procedures. This is usually the most tedious — but one of the most important — parts of running a business.
“It’s a real boring subject for most entrepreneurs,” she admits. “But if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, is anyone going to be able to step into your shoes and carry on if your plan isn’t in writing and up-to-date?”
In every race, Lyle faces at least 50 other cars on the track and has to be ready for the most erratic driver or changes in race conditions. In business, she tells her clients be prepared for unexpected changes.
“What if your biggest customer leaves you?” she says. “What if you ship a bunch of defective parts and they all get sent back? You’ve got to be able to react.”
After she crosses the finish line, Lyle studies the in-car videotape to see where she can improve next time. It’s the same in business, she says. Even if you’ve landed the big client or finished a project, there are always areas that can be improved upon.
“Customers come and go,” she says. “The business owner always has to be looking ahead, improving the product, renewing patents for proprietary products, buying the better equipment to improve efficiency. There’s never a shortage of things to do.” How to reach: Lyle & Associates CPA, (440) 247-1178
