Amanda & Matt Harper with Flyin’ Wrench Motorsports

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning, and today’s episode is brought to you in part by our Community Partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending Capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Mainstreet warriors.org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc. please go check them out at diesel. David. Dot com you guys are in for a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Flyin’ Wrench Motorsports, Amanda and Matt Harper. How are y’all doing?

Amanda Harper: Hello.

Matt Harper: Doing great.

Stone Payton: This conversation has been in the works for some time now.

Amanda Harper: I know well over a year.

Stone Payton: I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners mission,purpose. What is it that you guys really are out there trying to do for our community?

Matt Harper: You know, we started this shop basically by accident, out of necessity. It was something that we did. A friend of mine, him and I were working at a local shop years and years ago. We tried to create a better work environment for the people that work for us, because our environment then was not so great. Maybe calm tempers down a little bit while working on cars late at night in the cold? Um, but build a better work environment for the people that work for us and in turn offer a better service for the people that come to our shop.

Stone Payton: And so have you always been a mechanic that’s been your career path?

Matt Harper: Pretty much, yeah, since I graduated high school.

Stone Payton: Amanda, how did you get roped into all this?

Amanda Harper: I married a mechanic. My background is operations, so I stand more on the on the operations side of the business for sure. Standard operating procedures is my thing. Numbers, KPIs. He loves hearing that. That’s his favorite.

Stone Payton: Where’d you learn about all that?

Amanda Harper: I’ve been in the corporate industry for a very long time, and the way corporate treats individuals isn’t the greatest, honestly. So creating an atmosphere where it’s people development is definitely what we wanted to do.

Matt Harper: Corporate gets a bad rap because corporate things work great, but corporate doesn’t always work so great.

Amanda Harper: People become a number. Yeah.

Matt Harper: So there’s a very hard or very fine line between those. I hear my guys every once in a while. It’s like, you know, one of the things we love about this shop is it’s not very corporate. We don’t. It’s laid back, it’s relaxed. I’m like, yeah, but we still have to do these things. If we don’t, one person misses something that hurts another person. It slows the process down. So finding a mix between those two is is tough. And the bigger you get, the more people you get, the more corporate you have to be. A little in some sense, I think.

Amanda Harper: We just got to change the words. Like instead of saying KPIs, you could just say like key lines.

Matt Harper: That word anymore.

Matt Harper: I was on my way to work this morning and someone said that on the radio. I was like, you.

Amanda Harper: Got a twitch, didn’t you? You were like, oh.

Matt Harper: I’ll be like, home.

Stone Payton: Well, let’s dive into the recruiting, the selection, the development. I know it’s always been a challenge for me. I am horrible, I have a tendency to hire in my own image, believe everything the first interview says, you know, and I’m sure I’m a good cheerleader, right? But I’m a horrible interviewer for a job.

Matt Harper: I was there for years.

Amanda Harper: So he just started his own business.

Stone Payton: So what have you learned about recruiting, selecting and and cultivating that culture that you’re describing?

Matt Harper: I think the number one thing that I look for, because we get a lot of candidates, we’re currently hiring now. We get a lot of candidates that and we’ll get on. Indeed, I’ll get everything from someone who has never worked on a car but saw the word technician, and they may work on HVAC to people that have tons of experience. But if the person doesn’t fit into our family, if their personality is not, what would fit into our personality, in our personality of our family, or, you know, those kinds of things matter. If you, you know, you can hire somebody with tons of experience and, and tons of of good work ethic and all that is great. But if they don’t gel well with the other employees, if it’s not, if it’s not a family style environment for us, they wind up on the outside of the group. You know, it’s they’re the third wheel, if you will. And so that’s the hardest part. I found tons of of candidates that that fit the bill on paper. But like some of the things we ask in an interview, it’s like, you know, tell us about your tools. Tell us about your experience. All right. So what do you like to do for fun on the weekend?

Amanda Harper: Yeah. Who are you? Yeah. Honestly? Yeah.

Matt Harper: Who are you? You know, what do you do for fun? What? Do you like to go on vacation? Are you married? What are you. What is your wife like to do when y’all go on vacation? Where does she like to go? You’d be surprised how many people, how different people are. Even though we do the same things, how different people are. And and candidates are really looking for that too. They’re looking for somebody to to have a home and not just be a number. They want to be invested in.

Amanda Harper: Yeah. I mean, and so do we. Like as people. Everybody wants to be invested, right? You’re never too old to continue learning. And I think people get in their own way of that, especially if they’ve been in the business for so long. Any business, not just automotive, right. Any business at all. If you are blinded and think you know everything, you’re never going to continue moving forward. I don’t know everything. I am continuing to learn something. I don’t know everything about KPIs and SOPs. As much as I’d love to think I do, I know I don’t, and I’m continuing education all the time, so I think that’s just something to always remember. There’s an ever evolving education door that everybody needs to remember for sure.

Stone Payton: So would you advocate in some circumstances? And maybe you do this at your shop having potential candidates visit with your existing staff?

Amanda Harper: Oh yeah. I mean, we always walk them around the entire shop when they come in interview. We want them to see everybody and meet everybody and. Yeah. And to see what they would find themselves involved in.

Stone Payton: Right. Yeah.

Matt Harper: I think I think you’ve got to give somebody a tour. Yeah. Let them see the place that they potentially are going to work at. They may walk in the back and be like, this place is a dump. I don’t want to work here. Well, they may walk back and be like, this place is way too clean. I’m not clean enough for that. So now, you know, expose those problems on day one and find a solution for them. Or, you know, and I get a lot of I get so many candidates that will apply. They’ll come in for an interview and they’ll tell you how excited they are to be there and how excited they are for this opportunity. And the whole time you can read it on their face. This is the like, they don’t even want to do this job anymore. Like I’m working. You just hear like, you know, I work on cars for a living. What’s your favorite thing about them? I don’t even really like working on cars. What do you like to do? Oh, man. I really wanted to go to school to be a CPA. Why aren’t you doing that? Why are you. Why are you working on cars? You know. Don’t come. Why are you so miserable doing the thing that you basically set up to do for your life? You know, this is your chosen career path. If you made a bad choice, change it. Make a different choice. Do something different.

Stone Payton: So what’s the most rewarding about the work for you guys at this point? What’s the most fun about it for y’all?

Matt Harper: I feel probably a little different than most shops owners or mechanics, as you will. Yeah, I figured out a long time ago that for me it was about building cars or about fixing things. So I, you know, I used to buy cars years ago. I would buy a car, fix it, drive it, and then as soon as I got through fixing it, I get bored with it, so I’d sell it. And so I always seem to have that one car that just sits around. You tinker with it. And then. And I realize now that the reason I haven’t finished it, because I know if I finish the thing, I’ll get bored with it and sell it. Right now. I have something to do to it. You know, it’s just like, I don’t want to say, like, saving cars, but I have saved cars that were probably long beyond savable, and it probably shouldn’t have been saved. It probably spent more money than I should have, saving them maybe even lost a little money doing it. But it was the fun of of saving the car or building that car, or fixing something that maybe someone else couldn’t fix. Uh, it’s just just a challenge in that in itself.

Stone Payton: Now, before we went on air, I tried to schedule an oil change for my old hunting truck. But you guys have chosen a niche. Tell me more about that choice, how you arrived there and how you try to meet that. Meet that market.

Matt Harper: You know, I always joke European cars stay broke the most, so it’s not true. Of course cars break. They’re just. They’re planned obsolescence is is part of the planning of building a car. They design a car. If if automotive manufacturers didn’t want cars to break, they would build cars in a way where they broke less. Some of the stuff we see, it’s almost like, you know, they planned it to leak oil. They, you know, they designed this gasket to fail over a certain amount of time. Uh, second source markets fixing things that first source couldn’t fix, you know, in the design process with, with unlimited budgets. Um, we chose European cars. That’s what I drove in high school. I had my first car was a BMW. I bought an old raggedy BMW from a friend, drove it. A guy ran a stop sign, wrecked. It, started. We fixed it in my backyard, in my garage, and then sent it over and had it painted and started driving it again. And then another guy hit it, and it was then it was done from there. So, uh, it’s the story of my life, right?

Amanda Harper: Um, he’s like, oh, I feel like this is meant to be.

Matt Harper: Even back in high school, you know, this is what I was doing. So European cars just kind of stuck. Tooling is a little different. European cars have different types of you know, that you use metric tools and you use special tools. And we just built up a good variety of specialty tools. Timing tools, um, you know, a good assortment of tools in our, in our own tool boxes. So it’s not to say that we can’t work on a Ford, but you need different some different tools for Fords. And they have their own inherent problems that we’re just not geared for. Yeah. So there was a time when I probably could have done both, but now the shop is so geared towards European and like exotics and things like that that what like for your truck, for example, comes in. I’m not saying we’re lost, but you’re lost. You know, it’s like it’s like the, the wrench in the, in the cog. You know, we need it’d be in the way we’d never get it done. Well, I can tell you.

Stone Payton: Everything I know about the auto mechanic business. You could stick in your eye and still see out. But I will say from the professional services world Coaches, Consultants, my experience has been the niche year. Often the better, you know, and you really get to be known as an expert in that field, you know, title sponsor for the community partner program. Diesel David I mean, he’s the diesel guy, right? And everybody and everybody.

Matt Harper: Truck to him. Yeah. There you go.

Amanda Harper: We definitely.

Matt Harper: Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Harper: Dave is our guy.

Matt Harper: Yeah. All right.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a shop like yours with a niche like that, do you have to get out there and shake the trees? Is it more referral based? What’s that?

Amanda Harper: Well, yeah, especially since we looked closed since our shop, you know, was boarded up from the guy not knowing our parking.

Matt Harper: So that was a Ford Chevrolet.

Amanda Harper: I think that was the Chevrolet.

Matt Harper: Those domestic trucks really cause problems, right? Exactly. So that guy parked his truck inside my office? Um, literally in my office. Yeah.

Amanda Harper: And then the roof came.

Matt Harper: Off, and then it left a giant hole in the front of the building. So we boarded it up and got insurance involved, and we’re looking at other things. I got a contractor over, and then about 20 days later, we had a big microburst storm that came through downtown Woodstock. Oh, yeah.

Stone Payton: Yeah, I remember I remember the pressure.

Matt Harper: From that storm came right through the hole in the front of the building and got under the roof and lifted it up and dropped it over in the shell station parking lot. It really is a.

Amanda Harper: Whole new meaning of raise the roof like it was just like the whole.

Matt Harper: Thing. Yeah. So all intact. The building had a drop ceiling, so that collected all the water and dispersed it evenly amongst everything in the building. Oh, my. Yeah. Got everything.

Stone Payton: And that’ll take the wind out of your sails.

Matt Harper: No kidding.

Stone Payton: Literally. I mean, what do you even do the morning you see that or the day you see?

Matt Harper: Uh, well, we spent the first, I’d say, six hours putting tarps on the building. Yeah. Those last. If anybody’s ever had a tarp, a roof or hasn’t had a tarp, a roof, tarps last about 30 days. Uh, that’s about it. After that, they start to deteriorate, come apart, die, and then the water leaks start all over again. And if you’ve ever deal with insurance, insurance likes to buy tarps once. Uh, yeah, but it takes about 90 to 120 days to get a roof on. So it’s kind of a little catch 22 there. They don’t want to pay for it the first time. They definitely don’t want to pay for it twice or three times. But they also want to take too long to get the roof on to where you need to tarp the roof 3 or 4 times. Yeah. Um, after that, we operated under a 20 by a 20 foot tent. A ten by 20 tent. So you kept it going?

Stone Payton: You still.

Matt Harper: Were. Yeah, we were open.

Amanda Harper: We were operational.

Matt Harper: Yeah, we were open.

Amanda Harper: We just didn’t have a lobby and we didn’t look open.

Matt Harper: Yeah. It just, you know, the front of the building looked closed.

Stone Payton: Oh my goodness. In the dictionary, there must be a picture of you two under the word resilience. Oh my God.

Matt Harper: Prayer.

Amanda Harper: Lots and lots of prayer.

Matt Harper: Wow. So for a couple of weeks we operated under that tent. We had a mobile office delivered, which is about the size of this studio. And four of us operated out of that for a year. Yeah. In the parking lot.

Amanda Harper: Good lord. I went to every networking meeting, um, in the area. Um, just to make sure everybody knew we were open and available. Please refer to us. I know we look closed, but we are open. Facebook was Facebook and Instagram and social media. All of that was definitely a target marketing base for something I was concentrating on wholeheartedly. To grow that and make sure people understood that we were open. We’re available. Um.

Stone Payton: Man, I never thought about it from that perspective. You weren’t just out there trying to get new business as an established shop. You just got to you got to let people know that you’re open.

Matt Harper: Just that we’re open. Wow. Literally go into survival mode because. Yeah, I can’t tell you how many people that I would meet say, you know, at Kwik Trip. And I’m like, yeah, I got to shop right at the top of the hill. We can take care of it. And they pull in, they’re like, oh, I thought this place was closed. Yeah. So many, so many.

Amanda Harper: Yeah. Even when I went to the meetings, they’d be like, oh, I thought you guys were closed. I was like, no, no, we’re open, we’re open.

Matt Harper: Please.

Amanda Harper: Please come.

Stone Payton: Now, how has the community responded during that that that recent time of unpleasantness.

Matt Harper: You know, we were we were in this building for six months. We had just moved in in January of the year of that year. We had our ribbon cutting, just had a ribbon cutting, and mayor truck kissed the place in June. Roof comes off in July. But and when I didn’t expect was several businesses, local businesses, um, several friends. Just people. We met at Ypo and some of the other, other groups just showed up one day. They were like, we got boxes. We brought some tape, we brought bubble wrap, uh, and we brought breakfast. Oh, man. Just started helping us wipe things down, clean them, pack them and put them in a box. We bought a a 40 foot shipping container and had it put in at the end of the building and would just pack a box, tape it up, write what’s in it, walk it down to the end, put it in the building. Wow. It was amazing, you know? Yeah. Machines that were, you know, decimated by water. They would clean them, wipe them down, get them as clean as we could possibly get them, and then roll them down there, and we put them in the building, and some of that stuff’s still in there, and some of the stuff that we haven’t figured out what to do with yet is, you know, it’s a great time to declutter, especially when everything turns into clutter. Um, we cleaned it out. Decluttered it. Uh, what’s left down there now is some, you know, some stuff that needs maybe need some repairs or probably needs to go in the garbage at this point. But people from all over the community just showed up like I was, you know, we were just like, yeah, we’re we’re going to be over there this weekend cleaning. And then 4 or 5, six people showed up.

Amanda Harper: It really proved to us that we made such the right move of where where we were in Cartersville to downtown Woodstock. Yeah, because we were questioning life, honestly.

Matt Harper: After all of that. Someone does not want us to be here. I was like, what?

Amanda Harper: God? Huh?

Stone Payton: But that makes me feel even greater. And of course, I have had I haven’t had the tragedy, but I have experienced the, the, the positive side of this community. They they have just been so embracing Ypo young professionals at Woodstock, the Woodstock Business Club all. And I mean just the community in general, business owners here in this community. I mean, it’s a very collaborative, supportive bunch.

Matt Harper: It really.

Amanda Harper: Is.

Matt Harper: It really is. It is.

Amanda Harper: And like every business, it’s and it’s not even competition. It’s collaboration. It really is.

Matt Harper: And we’ve met we’ve met friends from other shops that when we first moved in here, we didn’t see them as, like, enemies, you know. But you see them, it’s like they’re the competition. Right, right. And then here, two weeks ago, we went and had dinner with them. Nice. I mean, it’s yeah, we just happened to meet them at a, at a function we were at, and we talked for a few minutes and then we went and had dinner together. Um, talking about Lauren and Billy from Alpha and Omega. Oh, man.

Stone Payton: You’re not going to meet two finer people then? Oh, yeah. But you don’t.

Matt Harper: Know people when you just. You don’t think of them as people. You think of them as other shops. Right? Right. We’re all just people running a business trying to, you know, make a living and. Right.

Amanda Harper: Human.

Matt Harper: Yeah. It’s not like any shop’s going to get all the cars. There’s so many broken cars out there. So many.

Amanda Harper: Cars. Yeah. Need help and honest. And the thing is, is meeting them and getting to know honest automotive shops, too, so that we can refer to each other is so great, too.

Matt Harper: It is. Right.

Amanda Harper: Because you. I don’t want to say there’s bad ones out there, but honestly, some shops out there have bad reputations, so it’s good to know good ones so that we can all know each other and and refer to each other.

Matt Harper: Anybody that thinks running an automotive shop is easy, it’s not. No. There’s a lot of challenges. Um, and some shops get a bad reputation for doing things the right way, you know? A perfect example is that if you bring. You said something earlier, you said I got an old hunting truck, and I want to get it looked at, but I don’t want to spend any money on it. Right. Don’t find.

Stone Payton: Anything wrong with.

Matt Harper: It. Anything wrong? So if I told you there was $10,000 worth of stuff that was wrong with your truck? The general stigmata. In the in the in the in the in the community is that I took it in for an oil change, and they told me I needed $10,000 worth of stuff. They’re trying to rip me off. Well, what if I didn’t tell you anything was wrong with it? And you’d left out of here and it broke down in the middle of the interstate. You got an accident? Mhm. Then you want to blame me for not telling you? So if I don’t tell you, it’s my fault. And if I tell you it’s my fault. But the reality is, the right thing to do is to tell you what’s wrong with the car and let you make an educated decision on what you need to do and what’s best for you your vehicle, your finances, your personal life. It’s my job to tell you what if I find something that’s so dangerous that you didn’t know was there, like, you know, wheels about to come off the truck or, you know, axle is about to fall out of it, or driveshaft is about to fall out of it, or something that could get you hurt.

Amanda Harper: Right, right. Great example is my dad’s car. Yeah. Oh my.

Matt Harper: God. Her dad. Her dad brought us a car from. From Miami. He drove here from Miami. And I get it here. And the front left corner of the car. The strut, the shock, the control arm. It’s all loose. It’s all about. He just drove 500 miles and it had.

Amanda Harper: Arteck was like, no, I need you to come out here and see this because I can’t make this up. And it had this screwdriver stuck in it.

Matt Harper: Yeah. Someone had a bolt was missing. They stuck a screwdriver through it. Oh, my. It zip tied it in place down in Miami, where those shops get a bad reputation because the workmanship. But like. Yeah. So, you know, I get people sometimes like, this is what your car needs. These are the things you could do now that it really needs. And these are things you can postpone. But this is I’m giving you information. I’m not telling you how to.

Stone Payton: And that’s what I would want. And it really is old beat up truck. And I don’t drive that far. But I would want to know about anything that’s really needs to do. And then you can say, okay, and let’s build a plan or you know what, your budget come in next month and we’ll, you know, the next time it.

Amanda Harper: Has to be done.

Matt Harper: What doesn’t have to be done?

Amanda Harper: Yeah, it’s up to.

Matt Harper: You how many times we’ve done a free inspection and the customer took the car and went over to CarMax. Traded it in. I don’t make any money if I if I tell you that, but if I don’t tell you that and you get hurt, I’m at the very least I’m going to feel really bad because I missed something. Sure. Did I not tell you? Because now, are you thinking that we’re not going to tell you if your car’s broken? We’d rather tell you. And you go trade the car in and maybe you go buy something other than the Euro car. And so you are no longer a customer of ours anymore, right? But you’re still here and you’re still driving a car, and you’re still going to work every day and you’re safe. And two, I’ve had plenty of times where someone’s brought me a car. I’ve given them an estimate. They’re like, yeah, I’m not going to fix this thing. And they go trade it in at a car lot. And then three months later, the new owner of that car drives it in and goes, yeah, I need a bunch of stuff. So I want to get it fixed. There you go. And it winds up back at the shop.

Matt Harper: Anyway, um, I just would I just think it’s, it’s a thing in our industry that people think that shops are taking advantage of them by giving them these high bills, but and maybe some shops are too expensive and maybe they charge too much, but that’s that’s in the individual shop. But I would rather tell you what’s wrong with the car and you make an educated decision rather than say, hey, you need $1,500 for stuff, and then next month you still need another $1,500 for stuff, and the next month, oh, you need a right right stuff. And all of a sudden you’ve spent $25,000 on a car and that happens to we will fix things and then other things will break. But I always tell you everything we find on it, right? The whole car. Because I don’t want you to find out. What if I fix $1,500 for stuff? You get on the street to another shop and they write it for five grand worth of stuff. You’re going to think I missed it. Right now. We’re incompetent. So that’s a tough that’s a tough choice. It’s a tough battle. Uh, and some people don’t see it.

Stone Payton: Well, I don’t think for you it is a tough choice. I think you’ve already made the tough choice. Or you’ve established the discipline. You’re going to take the high road, you’re going to provide the information, and then you’re also if if that other five grand doesn’t have to happen today, you know, help you build a plan, maybe.

Matt Harper: Tough choice is not the right word, but it’s right if I don’t do it, I have to live with that. If I do that and you yell at me, you know, you come in and I tell you that, and you yell at my staff and you leave and you’re angry and you leave us a negative review. I have to live with that, too, you know? We have to. We have to experience that. Deal with it. And that’s happened. We’ve we’ve literally had a customer escorted off the property by sheriffs. Well, the car never even made it on our lot. They came in to ask a question. We gave them an answer. They didn’t like the answer. They argued with us. You know, we were just like, hey, this is what it is. And it turned out the car was never even there. We never even got to see the car. Um, it’s and we’ve been called names and told, you know, people are tough. But, you know, I think in the end, it’s just people don’t want to get bad news. I don’t want to be the person that my job is to basically give people bad news all day, every day. Yeah. Not great.

Stone Payton: But no, Amanda, you also have to have all these systems in place to execute on on what Matt is trying to do. So you you’ve got to have systems where you can get the parts at a decent price in a reasonable time and all that is that is that you and your part of the business or.

Amanda Harper: Well, that’s something we’ve all been doing together as a team, actually, because we’ve as we’ve been growing, it’s like we need to get these systems in place. So and it’s funny.

Matt Harper: Because those systems you put them in place when you’ve got three people, right, right. You hire two more people. Right now the systems have to change, right? Right. But then you need more people.

Amanda Harper: Need to know how to do.

Matt Harper: It. So, so okay.

Amanda Harper: You know what I mean.

Matt Harper: Systems evolve. So everything is constantly evolving. It’s a lot of moving pieces in an automotive shop, especially a bigger shop, if you got 1 or 2 people in your two bays, two lifts, those were the easy times. There was a time where it was just me and my technician. Right. He’s he’s been there with us for well over ten years. I just hey, this car needs this. Okay, here’s what it needs. All right, Mike, fix it. It was just two people. I mean, you can just open the door and yell out there to him.

Amanda Harper: No, it’s not like that.

Matt Harper: Now there’s communications that have to happen. He’s 500ft away. There’s parts have to get brought in inventory, and they got to get to him. So yeah, I want him traveling up here to get them. So. Yeah, we literally have a system in place to get the parts from our parts room to the technician. And then I have another tech that’s another 150ft away. So these guys could literally spend the whole day just walking back and forth with the keys and parts. Right.

Amanda Harper: And then hiring another tech is what we’re looking for. And that’s a whole nother.

Matt Harper: Yeah 150. All right.

Stone Payton: But it’s a new day now. The shop is all nice and shiny and we’re ready to go. And we got tell us, tell us the current state of affairs. We have.

Amanda Harper: A lobby.

Matt Harper: It’s so. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And there’s no more mold. I know. Does it smell like mildew? It doesn’t. It doesn’t rain inside. And there are no vehicles currently parked inside our lobby.

Amanda Harper: And hopefully everyone continues to know where the parking lot is.

Matt Harper: Yeah, we joked, because at one time, the way the lobby was laid out, it was a little bigger than what we needed for a lobby, and we had joked, we’re going to hit somebody like, we should put one of the race cars in the lobby. And I’m like, I don’t want any more cars inside the building. We’re past that now.

Stone Payton: All right, so where exactly are you and where is the parking lot? Because you’re close. You’re not far from where we’re sitting right now. Right.

Amanda Harper: Right on the corner of 92 and Main Street. Oh, wow. Right across the Sam’s Club. Yeah.

Matt Harper: This used to be the old Edwards Tire building. Okay. For years and years and years. 1952 the building was built. Aha! And it’s been added on to and added on to. But we are next door to the shell, uh, direct, basically across the street from Burger King and right before Sam’s Club.

Stone Payton: Oh, yeah. And are we going to cut the ribbon again or throw a party or have margarita Mondays? What are we doing.

Amanda Harper: This Thursday at 3:00? We are going to be cutting that ribbon again just to celebrate and just show appreciation. A little sober bar’s going to be there.

Stone Payton: Oh, Britney and her. Oh, yeah. Isn’t she just wonderful?

Matt Harper: I love her.

Amanda Harper: Yeah, it’s her birthday today. Happy birthday Britain.

Stone Payton: Happy birthday.

Matt Harper: Yeah. All of our. I think I was talking to Dave. I think Dave Diesel Dave is going to come by. So we got a lot of people, you know, it’s we joked like it’s our grand Regrand opening, but it’s really a good opportunity. Just we had so many people from the city, I’d go in to get a permit for something. It’s like, yeah, how’s the shop going down there? I saw they, you know, they’re working on this and working on that. I’m like, I’ve never been in a city where I felt like everyone was watching you. Yeah, I don’t mean, like, in a bad way. No, not a bad way. We’d get a sign put up and I’d go down. I was like, here’s my sign permit, and I just want to drop this thing off. I was like, oh, yeah, the sign looked amazing. I saw it the other day and I’m like, I’m turning the permit in, you know? And yeah, the inspector would come by to look at the concrete. He’s like, yeah, yeah, I came by the other day. You had so many cars out here. It looks really good. You know, like everyone’s watching this building and everyone’s got a an interest in what’s going on and what’s happening here. So to have all these people, everybody that can just come by and hang out for a little bit, you ain’t got to stay all day. There will be some food and drinks there. And just to say thanks to everybody that that helped us.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Well I’ll find my way there. It’s too hot to hunt, so, you know, I would come anyway, especially if Britney’s going to be there. She made me a nonalcoholic Manhattan or something at another event not too long ago.

Matt Harper: Mocktails are amazing, aren’t they?

Amanda Harper: They really are.

Stone Payton: And she’s just such a great person. Now she’s got a little retail spot up in canton.

Amanda Harper: I know I went and saw. It’s so.

Matt Harper: Beautiful. Yeah, she went by. What was that? Sunday? Yeah, I had to work.

Stone Payton: Um, I was hunting that day. That’s why I wasn’t there.

Amanda Harper: That’s okay. I purchased enough for everybody.

Matt Harper: Oh, thank.

Stone Payton: You for that. So I don’t know when or how you two would find the time, but I’m going to ask anyway. Interest, pursuits, hobbies, passions outside the scope of your work. You know, my listeners clearly know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you guys have a tendency to nerd out about and kind of get away for a little bit.

Matt Harper: Racing? Yeah. There used to be a time when I had all this extra time to do things. Um, still do stuff with. I do. I do race cars. Um, I do endurance racing, so that’s a lot of fun. Oh, wow. We race old BMW. Now, where do.

Stone Payton: You go to do the race?

Matt Harper: So we just went to Mid-Ohio, which is a fantastic facility. Okay. Um, we do tracks like road Atlanta. Daytona. Wow. Barber motorsports park. We race at Sebring here at the end of the year. Mhm. Um, a lot of great tracks, a lot of road racing. Uh, most of our races are either seven, eight, 14 or even there are some 24 hour races.

Amanda Harper: Yeah. We can’t get away from cars.

Stone Payton: I can see that.

Matt Harper: Yeah. So for fun, I like to do is leave the shop, take a lot of tools with me and get back in the car. Break a car and then fix on it in a very short amount of time so that we can go break it some more.

Stone Payton: What a marvelous escape from the day to day grind of running a shop.

Amanda Harper: It’s such a stress relief.

Matt Harper: Yeah. We love. We love to go to universal. Uh, her her dad lives in Miami, and we’re we’re here. So that’s where I’m from. Orlando is kind of our halfway point where we can meet up and see him and and hang out for a little bit, and we just went last week. We took a couple days off and went down there for that, so.

Stone Payton: Oh, neat. Is there a new rule that he has to have any automobile that he drives up to see you? He has to have it inspected before he leaves.

Matt Harper: Well, he has a couple of Euro cars, so. Yeah.

Amanda Harper: It really I always tell him I was like, first off, you’re not allowed to go to. That shop any ever again. Never.

Matt Harper: Yeah. He’ll call me. He’ll be like, this shop’s going to. Give me a price. Here’s what they told me. It’s going to cost. I’ll look at it. I’m like. Yeah, it’s not so bad. It looks pretty good. Just.

Amanda Harper: Just make sure you look and. There’s no screwdrivers left in there.

Stone Payton: All right, before we wrap, I’d love it if we could leave our listeners with a couple. Of pro tips. So many directions. We could take this on resilience, on getting a business off the. Off the ground on recruiting, selecting, developing, building that culture. But let’s just leave them with. A little something they can they can chew on. Because a lot of our listeners are business owners. Or aspiring entrepreneurs.

Matt Harper: You know, I heard I heard I was listening to a radio podcast thing. This morning with Mark Cuban. And he said something about starting businesses. The hardest thing. To do in starting a business is making the decision to start a business. Mhm. Every day is a challenge. If you have a job, every day is a challenge. There’s challenges in your job. There are challenges in your hobbies. There are challenges in anything you do. So the hardest decision to make or the hardest thing to do is make the decision to actually do it.

Amanda Harper: I think that comes back around to getting out of your own way.

Matt Harper: Yeah. Sometimes, um, I, you know, I would love to say that I built a business and I did, but I had there was there’s so many people that have helped in so many ways along the way. Those people are drawn to you. If you’re doing things the right way and you’re making good decisions and you’re honest about how you do your work, those kinds of like the people that came and helped us, we didn’t ask them to help us. They came and helped us because they saw what we were going through, and they believed in what we were doing. Yeah, and that’s if you’re honest about what you do and that people, those people will come into your life when you need them to.

Amanda Harper: Authenticity. Yeah. For sure. Just be you. Yeah.

Stone Payton: It’s a lot easier to remember if you can just be you. Yes. Yes.

Matt Harper: I mean, sometimes you forget. That’s it’s business will do that. You know you will. You’ll get so caught up in the day to day and what you’re doing. And you know, we got to make some money and we got to have money for payroll. And we got to get this car out, or we got to do this. But, you know, sometimes you just got to close the door, take 10s and remember, you know, this is your chosen thing. You chose this. So how do you make it better for you, better for your people and better for your customers?

Stone Payton: Amen. All right. What’s the best way for people to learn more? It sounds like there’s a little bit of a social media presence. Let’s make sure they know where the shop is. But I just want people to be able to tap into your work, and I want them to I want people to meet you guys, so whatever is appropriate. Contact info.

Amanda Harper: Well, all of our social media is flying. Wrench Motorsports. No g no g f l.

Matt Harper: Y I n Flying Motorsports. We’re on Facebook, we’re on TikTok, we’re on Instagram. We’re probably other places I can’t remember.

Amanda Harper: And then our websites. Flying wrench. Com. Yep. Um, we also have a newsletter. So everybody can sign up for that as well. Uh, yeah. We’re just excited to be in Woodstock. And we really appreciate everybody. And we just want to thank everybody.

Stone Payton: Well, we’re excited to have you. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Keep up the good work. Congratulations on the momentum. It’s it’s been a real delight having you guys on the show this morning. And if you come.

Matt Harper: By to visit, just park outside. Yes.

Amanda Harper: Please. God, please.

Matt Harper: Please, please. We don’t have a lot of parking spaces left right now, but just anywhere you want outside the building.

Stone Payton: Fantastic. Alright, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Amanda and Matt Harper with Flying Wrench Motorsports and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.