Racebox: Outside the Box
Join us for a look into the daily life of Racebox! Here on our Podcast we will be discussing anything from tuning, to builds, to even our own personal lives. This is a raw and unhinged look into all things Racebox!
Racebox: Outside the Box
Outside the Box: Ep 6 Hussain and Mo Talk Business
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Personal relationships and business growth - a delicate balance we all strive to achieve. Join Hussain and Mo as they openly discuss our struggles, sacrifices, and how we maintain this equilibrium at Racebox. Learn from our experience on the importance of delegation, building a team that shares your enthusiasm, and unplugging when necessary. As we reflect on our journey, we invite you to join us in future plans. Discover how we plan to expand into different platforms while keeping true to our core values. After all, growth is not just about scaling up, but also maintaining the quality of service that makes customers come back for more.
Running a Tuning Shop
Speaker 1I'm trying, you can leave now. I mean, mo have private time. You're dismissed. I'm fingering his shoulders.
Speaker 2It's the pen pocket.
Speaker 1It's a pen pocket.
Speaker 2All right, let's get to it.
Speaker 1Hello, all right. No, for real, though. You guys see this. This is why I love these new polos.
Speaker 2They're just highlighters and pens. I can just do this when I need someone's attention.
Speaker 1You just stick my fingers in and I say hey, let's go, and then I make them follow me. You're stretching the form of you, okay, sorry, okay. Anyway, you guys should buy your new polos. Welcome back to the podcast. We finally figured out mics, I think.
Speaker 2I think they sound a lot more crispy. Yeah, I think I think this is like actual podcast material now. Yeah, XLR mics.
Speaker 1Yeah, shout out to Ivan my q60 rs. He's a good customer of ours, good friend. He told me a while ago to buy those yamaha mg 10x u board and I bought it and then chadong didn't install it because he sucks, and so it sat there under his desk for two months. Yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was definitely two months.
Speaker 1So what does chadong do? I don't know honestly man, I feel like chadong is where parts come to die, like we order things from my car for your car, for shop cars. They just sit around they just sit around and then like a year later like hey, do you order that for the car, where is it? And then I wonder why we have bad profitability. Blame chadong, chadong and Anna.
Speaker 2Yeah, the gen z's man. Do we? Do we bundle moonshine into that too, because he's technically gen z?
Speaker 1Yeah, moonshine, tunes hard.
Speaker 2He does send a lot of emails per day.
Speaker 1He's also bricked up on sending guys emails. I'm telling you facts.
Speaker 2You guys got to stop sending him instagram dms or tuning support. So, mean, alex, have this thing and it's called.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, this is the first time you're on the podcast, so now they get to hear from mo's perspective.
Speaker 2So I this my first name is mo, Uh well full name is moi.
Speaker 1He got mad at me that I only put mo on there and I'm like you, never introduce yourself as anything but mo.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's just easier. I mean, I just even to friends. I'll just say mo.
Speaker 1My exact words were if I introduced myself as ho, I would have put ho on my. I would hope not, but but I don't anyways um.
Speaker 2I'm mo. A lot of you guys interact with me through if you guys call race box, you guys dms on instagram, facebook. A lot of the interactions you have with race box are from me, uh, so I run pretty much the sales. Instagram. Social media is chadong, of course, so he makes the post, creates the reels, instagram stuff, but any kind of Actually, comments is still done through chadong. So he, he does the comments and ticktocks, but a lot of anything like the business side of things is is done through me.
Speaker 1So Mo's like my right hand man. A lot of times when you guys message me and I'm like, oh yeah, I call the shop. I have no intention of answering the phone. Yeah, I'm like, if you're listening, you probably already know this. If I gave you the shop number and I said, oh yeah, I call us anytime, I never intended on answering the phone call.
Speaker 1I meant on sending you to mo because mo's fantastic. I mean he's a saint with you guys. Like I listened to some of the calls when he's like at the office and he has it on speaker phone, I'm just like Jesus christ, like I would have hung up or told you all of a long time before mo does so yeah, I mean so he's uh, when he does that, he's not punning you guys off, it's just more of like kind of streamlined communication customer service reply I don't want you to think that you're not taking care of which is true, I mean I'm not.
Speaker 1It's. Truthfully though I'm not punning you off the thing is, if I went to do whatever you asked me, I would likely get in the middle of something else and forget it when I send it off to mo. I know that it's going to get done.
Speaker 2It's just cleaner. So, from the start to then, interaction, just keep things working.
Speaker 1Yeah, the only one who has trouble with that is still moonshine, that's what yeah? That's how we got on this topic. Yeah, yeah, you guys, dm moonshine and then he feels the need to like take care of you, right then and there and then it complicates things.
Speaker 2It does. So we have this thing with moonshine. We call it 10 before 10, so I want him to send 10 emails before 10, but he's busy with like instagram dms, facebook dms looking at comments and like I'm like man, if you just direct them to your email, you would just be able to get to things quicker.
Speaker 1It used to be that we'd walk in and moonshine would be like responding to you guys on his dms for the first like two hours, and then the poor guy would stay here till eight and we're sitting there one.
Speaker 2Why is this?
Speaker 1guy working so late and he was because he was spending way too much time in your dm stuff. So yeah, we've tried to streamline that for you. So don't think of it as us not caring as much. It's actually us caring more because, if you think about it, we have to invest a lot of money to have a team like this. So more people that work together on this, the better service you all get.
Speaker 2He could technically ignore dms. Like a lot of other tuning and motorsports companies, they'll all you and play their bio like no dms, with little what's the logo would like. It crosses it out Like just saying restricted. I understand, yeah, the x.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, it's actually a great segue into what this podcast is about. So I guess a lot of times people ask Well, with regard to the podcast in specific, they've been asking us to talk about what it's like to run a tuning shop and how the journey has been, and and that that's a great segue into it is I think we've done a pretty good job of not becoming that shop that's like hey, we're not accessible anywhere. About email, you know, there's there's companies that say don't instagram dms, right.
Speaker 2Or just email.
Speaker 3It's email only and like.
Speaker 1They don't even allow you to call. I mean, we allow you guys to instagram dm, we allow you guys to call us, we allow you guys to text us, we allow you guys to email us Without you guys to facebook dms and like, even if I get a facebook dm. So if you've dm'd me, you'll notice a lot of times I'll respond weeks later because I just there's so many dms on my personal account. But even then I will always make an effort and like I'm probably the worst one, but that's if you're contacting me, it means you didn't try any of the other channels, right? But most of the time when I get to it, they've already spoken to somebody before then right oh fantastic it worked out.
Speaker 1But yeah, I don't know any other company that that is as big as we are and as does as much volume as we do and still allows this level of personalized service. So I think that's probably been the largest challenge of running the shop.
Speaker 2It is and I'm, I can tell you that, like, our response time, depending on the communication method, is going to vary. I'll tell you like calling is the best way. I don't answer every single call but I do call you guys back. So if you guys notice that Some of you will call a couple times in a row and like we'll get back to you sometimes later, but calling is by far usually the best way Email as well. So let's say phone and email is probably the best way to get a hold of us.
Speaker 1What about text messages? How do you, how do you feel about the text messages that come in?
Speaker 2texting us a little bit. I don't like texting as much I would. I'd still prefer even Instagram and Facebook over texting. Why is that? I'm just like texting on a phone that you don't have access to all the tools that we use. Yeah, I feel like Instagram and then if, especially if I have to like, find their social media accounts later, right, it felt like we're tagging them on something. Right, it's easy because I already have a conversation history and I can see them right email to. I just have a long conversation. It's just easier. I'm on a desktop computer. It's like a small mobile phone, so we do have people that do text us, but it's much smaller than like Facebook, instagram. Email email is probably a big one for us. To the after phone calls, it's going to be email, fair enough.
Speaker 1Yeah, best way to reach me is usually email. That's the one that I get back to, but then, yeah, I feel like we do. I do a disservice where I continuously like Will still try and respond to people who DM us and then it ends up hurting us in the end because it's like, well, who's saying can you please stop, bro, please, because could you get to?
Speaker 2it later, or what?
Speaker 1It's. I think it reinforces that. You can still message me that way and then, like, once in a while, there will be people who get it right, like they get a response immediately and then. So for those people, I notice a lot of times that they will then start messaging me Without even waiting for a response from you guys. Yeah, like you know, there's a couple guys that message me.
Speaker 1I like, so we have like a little, we have our Microsoft Teams, what we use for like our internal Chatting and all that, and so I'll randomly DM them, like on a Sunday, like you know why the is this guy messaging me so much? And then we'll talk about it and, it'll, you know, come back Like oh, yeah, well, you always respond to him, so he's going to keep messaging you. Yeah, it makes sense. I'm like, if I got a response this way, I'm going to keep trying it, you know exactly.
Speaker 1But then like, on one hand I could, you know, I don't want to become like I was like no, don't you know, direct all your inquiries to our email, so it's difficult. I don't know if we can ever get away from it because it just wouldn't feel right to tell people like hey, don't DM me Right unless I deactivate my Facebook which. I guess I could, so I think.
Speaker 2Another big part of the reason why we decided to make ourselves available, like through all the different communication methods, because Hussein and I, like we've been on the opposite side of the things. Right, it's how we first met.
Speaker 1Yeah, the.
Speaker 2Q50 tuning platform. So Just like a lot of the experience that we've had is we know how it is to be the customer. You know, him and I both started you started this platform on the Q50 and At the time when I first met you I had a Q50 red sport and so just having the experiences with tuners at the time and I even just the Q50. I mean, like him and I, we've been car guys like all over life and I mean I think more of it, more than me to be quite honest.
Speaker 1I mean, I really only got into cars with the Q50 right, like I liked cars.
Speaker 2You were modern, your Integra back in the day, yeah, but I never really dealt with the vendors.
Speaker 1But I don't have money to buy shit from features. I was buying stuff from, like you know, craigslist, like meeting up random sketchy dudes, feel like random Integra price. But I remember we talked back and they were like, oh, wouldn't it be so cool to run our own like shop and yeah parts, and like I think we literally said we'd offer such better service than these companies. I think you were like you're either ordering coilovers or something at that point, and you were so frustrated with the service and communication.
Speaker 1That's yeah, so it's. It's been like our goal to have good communication and always maintain that response time. Yeah.
Speaker 2I think we've done, especially as a team has gotten bigger. Yeah, like from tuning side of things, orders. I mean Chidong and Anna take care of all the orders. Took that off of Alex's plate and then, when I came onto the company, three years ago I took off all the communication, yeah plates. Yeah, it used to be just moonshine and I. Yeah, and it's funny though.
Speaker 1I feel like we're busier than ever. Like you know, I almost sometimes miss the days when it was just me out of my apartment. It just seems simpler.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, I feel like with the volume and that's with any business when you grow it, it's you obviously invest in the personnel, you invest in your staff, make it bigger and bigger, but as revenue grows, it's like your profits go down and you feel like you're putting in more work for less, even though it's not true, obviously, I mean the business still grows, but it's. It's difficult, man, I mean I don't know like if, if we were to start again, would you do anything different three years in? Would you have laid it out differently? What aspect?
Speaker 2Anything, anything you'd change about how?
Speaker 1we started off like things that are so difficult for us to change, now that that we can't do, would you have changed anything about? How we started up the business. I think the ways that you implemented Like different stages of our business processes.
Reflection on Shop Organization and Accountability
Speaker 2I think we're at the right time. I honestly like right now, in retrospect, looking back at it, I couldn't say hey, I think we should cut it those differently. I think it all came in stages when there was needed, you know, like when adding personnel, changing a process. So I mean nothing comes to mind honestly, it's nice of you to say that there's a few things I would change.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean if I sat there and I thought about it for a long time, I guess.
Speaker 2I guess I think about this a lot. So yeah, I, I would change a few things.
Speaker 1I mean, it was very disorganized when I started out, but it's because it was just me. So I feel like I could have done better If I had planned it out. But I'm not very much a planner, so I don't know if that's fair to say, because like, yeah, I would change it, but that's not me. Especially with the way we executed this shop, I think I kind of jumped in head first and I should have started with a sort of a Smaller space.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's pretty big shop. Yeah, I think I was like very drawn in by the location.
Speaker 1I mean it's super cool to be like, hey, we're right next to the shop Houston, right, I can people ask where are you? It's like you know we're right here.
Speaker 3We get, we get a lot of people that see us when they drive.
Speaker 1I mean Dan Rue, like just yeah, just to us now. Yeah, he's like oh, hey guys.
Speaker 2What's up right, so it's cool to have that.
Speaker 1I think, realistically, the shop space could have been much better planning and it would have made your life and Shadong and Ronnie and now Marcus and Anna's life a lot better if the shop space and we had a, we had a more Dedicated space for everything, right, because, like, if you ever walk into our shop, I mean the office space if we let you in the back, is like, yeah, it's the office space, but like it's also storage for every damn thing that comes to the shop.
Speaker 1It's a mixed environment, right, and so I feel like it kind of messes with it, like there should be a dedicated like okay, this is the shipping and receiving room. This is where I'm going to be Shipping and receiving this is where customers and we have such a big customer area that's unnecessary.
Speaker 2We do like.
Speaker 1The original goal is to have like a showroom for all of our cars, but the reality of it is when you have shop cars, they're either always out or they're broken broken. I mean, the only time it's hard parked ever is if it's if it needs work, right.
Speaker 3So like wait for something.
Speaker 1When the Supra breaks a drive shaft, it sits outside. When the z right now broke the diff, it just sits outside right, or my old queue, for example, any of those cars. So then it's like, well, we don't need that right. So, going back, I would go for a much more streamlined Office space where I would have had Even if it wasn't so large, I think what we do if we had like a. So this is a 6,000 square foot shop total, right with everything, if we even had half that space, but it was better organized.
Speaker 2We would be more efficient. It's tough, though, to find that kind of setup. It is, and be in a location that you want it to be.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it's not something I would have known never having run a shop right like this. A lot of people might not know, but like this was just straight up, I've Kind of most that I've run this by the seat of my pants Like I don't. You know, I'm not like I didn't read up on how to run a business, I didn't read self-help, I didn't go to a TED talk. You know, I didn't have any like business experience before, right, I worked in a small business and I also worked in corporate. So I I'm very, very well attuned to the differences on how you should treat your staff. Right, the small business mentality is a lot better.
Speaker 1Everybody, I never want to become corporate because small businesses can always offer they offer a better life for, you know, for their staff. For one thing, I think right, we're more flexible. Yeah, you don't have, like, the corporate benefits you don't get to flex about. Oh, I work at this big, cool corporate company, right, but then your actual day-to-day life is a lot better. And I think when you work in a small business, you get to see all aspects of things which I think a lot of people enjoy, versus like, hey, you're doing this one small task for this multi-million, you know and you're so far away from what the company's goals are.
Speaker 1Yeah, at least here we all, we're all aligned right. But then, um, on the flip side of that, it's also like you don't want to be a corporate person to your customers and and I think that's been that that kind of drives all of us here where we're always trying to not be that guy. So when we I mean even now, when we sit, I think a lot of what drives this company Will think, well, okay, what would we do if we were a customer? Right, like a perfect example. I Don't want to name names, don't want to make it specific either, so this is kind of hard. But we have a customer who is tuned by us, that has had his car built by a couple different shops now and he's always DMing us and he's and he's a really nice guy.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's a cute customer, okay.
Speaker 1Hey, you probably know I'm talking about. He's really nice guy, really sweet, and he's just. He's so nice to the point where he doesn't Want to call out anybody. But then he waits like years, his cars now at the second shop Trying to get fixed. And he's been even this shop who promised that oh, we will not be like the last guys, and they built a whole reputation and we are not those guys. They're doing the same thing to him.
Speaker 1I'm talking about Yep and it's like, and he's telling me, he's like oh, I don't want to. You know, I don't want to be negative about it, I don't want to go hurting someone's reputation. I'm like, well, listen, if it were me, right, like on the flip side, I would want you to do that to me, like if you were not getting. Imagine we had a customer who had paid us in advance, right, big build all of that, and we're just not even not even that. We're slow and taking forever. We're just not even replying to him yeah.
Speaker 1I'd be like man If you had gone a week without communication from me and there was no real reason. And even if there was a reason, I would want you to go fucking post about it.
Speaker 1Yeah right because you should be accountable, and I think that's the problem in the industry in general is that shops are not accountable. Right, and I know on the flip side there's a lot of times like men, we there was a customer a long time ago where, again, I can't get into details because you guys will know who it is but we messed up, took a car earlier than we should have it sat around for a while, we got it ready. There was problems, not due to ours, with a parts failures and then, you know, just to avoid a customer, basically trash talking us when we were so early in our development for shopping.
Speaker 2Yeah, man.
Starting and Running a Business
Speaker 1I dumped 28k into that car just to keep the customer happy of my own money, right, and I think those are things you need to maintain like a successful business. I think a lot of times people get into a business and they think you know well, no one else would do that, why should I?
Speaker 1right, Can't think about that yeah you can't be like oh well, no one else does it, so I shouldn't. Like I got into this to be a disruptor. You know I hate using buzzwords like that, but I don't know how else to describe it Like we, we definitely are different from every other shop. I mean and that's not to say there aren't other good shops like us, right, we align ourselves with other shops that offer this kind of service. But At some point you're like all right, well, this is the industry. This is what everybody hates about it. If I want to get into this and, you know, Become big and gain popularity things differently.
Speaker 2Yeah, how do we?
Speaker 1do things. How do we do right? By every single person that comes, and the thing is, you're not always gonna be able to do right. No, there's been people that we've gone way above and beyond for and we're like you know what, it's just not happening.
Speaker 2So they should be business to what we do.
Speaker 1Yeah, but you know, you know it's great about that. Even some of those people they've gone, they've been mad at us, they've gone out and then they've come back and apologize.
Speaker 3I'm like hey.
Speaker 1I was wrong. You guys are not as bad as I made you seem. Can we work it out Right? And we don't hold grudges, man, it's not like that. It's, at the end of the day, like we're all in this for business, wrong, this for the same reason, right. So it's still hard, though I won't lie like I.
Speaker 1We refunded some people recently and I'm like, oh you you know, there's so many other reasons why you could be having that problem, but you're not worth You're not worth a the hassle that you're putting us through right, because if we spend two hours on the phone arguing with you, that's two hours that we're not responding to other customers.
Speaker 1Yeah right, and then also like the potential blowout from it, where there's a lot of misinformation, anyone, it's very easy for people to convince people otherwise, and so, yeah, I I don't really know what the structure of this podcast is like. Are we just kind of talking about what it's like to run a shop?
Speaker 3Is that what people wanted? Can somebody ask me, how do you start a business like this? How do you like Just start from the beginning, like how do you get this started?
Speaker 1I mean, all right, so I'm gonna have, we're gonna, after all of that, we're like what, 20 minutes into this? Let's, let's start with some actual questions, right, yeah, so all right. So you guys probably heard Chidong. I think it does pick up on the mic, did you hear yourself? Okay, perfect. So how do we get into this? Realistically, man it? It truly was as simple as I Didn't like the, I didn't like the responses I received from other shops and I wanted to tune my Q 50 and I just truly thought I could do it better.
Speaker 1So if you ever get yourself in that situation, you think you can do something better and you can provide a better service. Believe in yourself and do it Like that. That's the biggest thing. I had people who believed in me. I mean, obviously I had Mo and other friends like, yeah, man, do it right. But like I was working for my cousin at the time and he's the one who got me, he believed me. He said hey, I'm gonna front you on this, just do it. I think you'd be really good at it, right.
Speaker 1So I hope that if you're ever in that position, you have people around you who support you to do things like that and can push you in. But if you ever think like, hey, there's, there's something missing here, I can do better, let me take a shot at it. Man, the worst thing you can do is fail. I got lucky in that my first shot at it it worked out, you know, but it could have not. I could have. I think we've experienced some of those Failures like later on, but initially it was a nice start for me and so and don't have expectations. I think a lot of people get into a business and like, oh well, have we even ever set a revenue goal?
Speaker 2We have set revenue goal, but I think you yourself have had expectations on like what we should be doing as a shop and that's like tuning. See that the tuning things aside. Yeah, it's not possible about the actual work that we have.
Speaker 1I think those expectations came later, though, in the start. Did we ever have like when it was just tuning in some parts? No, I have expectations, no right.
Speaker 2No, so the marker was always do better than the year before. Yeah right, so we had revenue numbers from that. Yeah, your only competition is yourself, right?
Speaker 1And so you also have to be in kind of a blessed position to do that. Though, like I was lucky enough that when I started this business I had, you know, decent enough savings of my own, and then you know, I have my wife to rely on, I have family, I wasn't in a position where the business was. You know, it was like if I didn't do it I was gonna sink in my personal life, right. So I was able to start it off small. So the best way, I guess, is, if you want to start a business, do it in your free time.
Speaker 2Yeah, don't quit your day job.
Speaker 1Yeah, I. I, while I was tuning, I think even once I had moonshine working for me, I was still doing a full-time day job. Yeah, I worked for about a year About 16 to 17 hours a day, where I'd work my eight hour day job, go home and work another eight to nine hours on the business.
Speaker 2There's a lot of people in this industry that do that, like tuners that don't have a day job. Yeah, there's a local Hellcat turner for God. His name like ZF something.
Speaker 1He does pretty good, right? Yeah, he does, so he has a full-time IT gig yeah in the evenings he tunes Hellcat's yeah, I think, I think you'll find a lot of people are like that and it tuning kind of lends itself to that. I don't know if all businesses can. I know there's a lot of businesses that require substantial investment right, so you can't.
Speaker 1I mean, if you're asking me about how to start a shop, I Can only tell you from the perspective of being a tuner first right, like I didn't, I didn't take out any loans, I didn't borrow any money from anyone, I didn't substantially invest. I did invest a quite a bit of my own money, but that came after the tuning side of the business was already up. I don't think I'm like an authority on, like all small businesses, right, I think I can tell you in this one very.
Speaker 1So this is how it worked out for me, right. And you could apply this to other things that don't require significant investment. You know, I can think of stuff like reselling parts, right, like you buy and sell it at a smaller amount Not a small amount in small quantities, right? Like, okay, I'm gonna post this up on a, on a sales board or something, or you make a craft at home that you sell, but any, any work that you produce that does not require a lot of Well, a doesn't require overhead, right. And then doesn't require a lot of a lot of investments to begin with.
Speaker 1But I think most things that are Business to customer can be done like that, where you start off small, like a. You know a good example like baking, right, if you like baking and you want to start selling cupcakes, I know a lot of people who start. You know they start selling cakes from home, they bake in their free time and then they just grow in popularity and then it kind of grows into a business for them, right. But I think what I can tell you is how to grow, how to really get yourself out there. I mean, to date we don't market. I think we run Google ads now, yeah, I don't know how helpful they are. I think I've boosted like two posts on Instagram ever no sponsored ads for Instagram, and you know no sponsored ads.
Speaker 1We don't actively advertise. I mean we're not on Facebook. Like, hey, come to race back. I mean, yes, of course there are people who are like you know, you ask what, where should I get to? And people will come in and say, I'm right, but outside of the people that are currently under my employee, we don't pay anybody to go say that for us. We don't make. And even the people in my employee we're not on the race box. You'll never see them make a post me like, hey, we're the best, come to us right. Like, yeah, we do. We post our stuff on Instagram, yeah, but there's no like active marketing, right. And the only reason that has worked for me is that when before I got into tuning, I would like to say that I was a well-known member of the community. So, like you know, I guess baking is another example. I'm sure there's Facebook groups about baking. I'm sure there's local classifieds for baking. Right, get well known. Go to a farmer's market, get your name out there first, right before you try and sell any kind of product.
Speaker 1I think a lot of people want they want to just sell something right off the bat and that's hard and specifically in the auto industry I found a lot of people, even friends of mine, that have tuning shows like hey man, like I can't seem to break out of this right, like I can't grow. I'm like dude. I used to tune for basically free. I mean, I think, some of my prices when I used to run like specials back in the day. We're like $700 for a full tune ecutech kit.
Speaker 2You're cheap.
Speaker 1That's. I mean that that was basically the cost of the ecutech stuff at the time, right I. And so it's like you got to be willing to do that to see if people value your, your work, right. Like, even if you're just breaking even on your cost, you're still growing your business because people are knowing You're getting your product out there, getting your name out there, right, and that's how it started. Right now, the downside of that is that, yes, you would come back like, well, my buddy paid you 700 bucks a year ago. Why can't I get that price? And I'm like, well, man, you should have gotten in at the ground.
Speaker 1I don't know, what you want me to tell you, right? I mean, you're coming to me now because I've got, you know, x amount of customers and all these good reviews, so there's a reason you come to me now. Back then I didn't, so they took a chance on me, so they got a good deal. Yeah, right, but I think you have to be willing to do that.
Speaker 2It helps having that popularity. You know there's so many other. Yeah, big examples small businesses, large businesses, where they have a following and it could be from like a different market, right, second, completely, and they decide to like start something. Yeah right, so with you it related, right, you know, in the Q community, and then you want to do tuning and they produce great examples and like we don't spend any money on Marketing, but our marketing is our customers is our customer experiences that we have yeah.
Speaker 2So when customers are happy about something like, hey, I had a really good experience, a race box they're gonna talk about it yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, and and that's a really good point a lot of the money that I invested into customers that like Maybe didn't deserve it on a personal level, it stopped them from doing the opposite. Right, because you will. People will always be more likely to say a negative thing than a positive thing about your business because everything goes good. They're not motivated to go say anything unless you ask them, which we don't right. So then it's like alright, so a lot of that was kind of like a marketing expense. I have to just write it off. I'm like well, this is saving us from negative marketing, right, whether or not it is your fault or not, I think a lot of the harder person was also letting go of the ego man, like not not being egotistical about him.
Speaker 1Like well, you know I'm right, so I am gonna be steadfast on this and not compromise, and I'm unwilling to bend on this customers always right. Yeah, it sounds silly, but yeah.
Speaker 1You know, if you want to look at really big examples, look at Amazon. Amazon sucks. Now I'll say that. Right, but this is this is so many years later. But I remember when Amazon first like started doing their like big two-day shipping ice. Live in Vermont, in like a small I mean every town in Vermont is small but I was in like one of the larger size towns in Vermont. It was s6 junction. If anybody knows, it's probably like 20,000 people. Maybe this is 2007 or 2008 that's one prime today came out.
Speaker 1I think it came out of 2009, okay, yeah, sometime around then. So or maybe 2010, but it was. It was when I was in high school. I remember that and I remember and I was like yo, two-day shipping on UPS to Vermont. It was unheard of like when you ordered online back then, but we used to wait a week, two weeks, for anything to come right and then and then Amazon's customer service back then was fantastic.
Speaker 1Like I remember, I had a Nokia phone that it Broke due to no like defect of the phone, it just broke. And they were like well, we'll just ship you a new one, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's not Amazon's fault at all.
Navigating Business Growth and Financial Considerations
Speaker 1It's not Amazon's fault and I wasn't even rude about it, I wasn't anything. But I was like, hey, it kind of sucks. I bought a phone from you and, you know, a year later it fails. And this was back when we didn't change phones every year. So you know, it actually mattered to me. And yeah, like that's just one example, I have so many examples of back in the day of Amazon, just like going above and beyond for anything like, oh, your package came in damage.
Speaker 1Yeah boom, I don't even care, we don't. They didn't want to see it like. Here's a new one. Oh, your package came late. Boom, refund.
Speaker 2I kind of had that experience.
Speaker 1now I was on, you know, no, I don't man, I mean we nowadays, like you order, like a today delivery, it comes two days later. Whatever like, I feel like the average lead time to get stuff on Amazon now Order is worse than when I had the two-day shipping and UPS right and and now Amazon kind of tells you to go yourself like for example, we, with you know, with the baby we're buying a bunch of stuff for the baby.
Speaker 1Sometimes, you know, we buy it. We're like, actually this isn't useful, let's return it. Right, it's like, oh, this, you know, like we bought like a bottle brush and we realized that it didn't actually come in handy. We never even used it. Like it just sits there. So like, score, turn it. Amazon doesn't give you the refunds anymore. You have to call in like. There's been so many times when I've had to be like hey, where's refund? The shit was returned.
Speaker 1Yeah and they'll be like oh yeah, sorry, it's on the way now. So you know that's them now. But they built the. Amazon is only so big now because of the crazy customer service they had actually like they offered a service that no one else did.
Speaker 1They took Billions of dollars in losses for so many years and then they turned a profit right. Luckily, I didn't have to take billions of dollars in losses, but I busted my ass for not a lot of money early on, right, but it was to show that, hey, this is what I have to offer. Once you've established the value of your product, then you can start growing the business. Right, I didn't write off the bat, invest in a massive website. I didn't. Go ahead and buy myself a fancy car. I didn't. You know a lot of people like the first sign of success. They see it like oh boom, let me go flex.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean by our yeah, let me go show you when how successful I am. And, yeah, to a certain extent, show extent. Showboating works, I mean in this industry especially. I think if I drove you know like, for example, no one's gonna come to us a tune An R8 unless I myself have a twin turbo R8.
Speaker 2Yeah, now we have some examples. Oh, we have some examples of somebody who trusted us with their twin turbo R8, right, but that helps.
Speaker 1But if you do that from the start, before you have anything, you're just gonna drive yourself into debt and we've seen that with so many shops that have popped up and gone away. People who overpromise, under deliver and then they work off customer money and then, when it comes around to the time, the customers like, hey, where the car? Yeah, they don't have the parts, then have the money and the car has been sitting there.
Speaker 2There's delicate balance of you know the saying gonna spend money to make money. Yeah, so I think some people take it too far right.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's also. It's very, very similar to how people use credit cards, right? Like, oh well, I have access to it, let me use it. And then you end up in, like you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Where you got it? You got to know that. Alright, if I'm spending anything right now, I can't be working on borrowed money, like if I owe Very simple, just accounts, payables, account receivables right, like, every business should have that.
Speaker 1Even if you're just one guy, you should have these numbers written down or somewhere in your head or something, so you know that when you go purchase something, you are not taking money that is not yours or that is for work that you were paid in advance that is not completed. Right, that's that's how a lot of these shops fail. And then, once you get to the point where you've got a good income coming in, then you think, what, okay, is this enough to sustain myself if I quit my day job? And At that point, when it is, or when it's very close, you quit your day job. You invest all of your time into the business.
Speaker 1Yeah and then, as far as I'm concerned for for me, I was not so Caught up on, oh, I'm making so much money on every tune. Let me keep doing this to myself, right, like I knew, very simply, I was making more money the first year that I started tuning, when it was just me and Alex was doing Instagram. Then I am now personally. Right now, we're not talking about the business I'm gonna run me, I'm talking about my personal livelihood. It was way more money, way less stress, all of that right, but that's very short-sighted. If you, it's fine. Some people want to stay like that, like you want, and I know a lot of tuners are like that, actually, and there's nothing wrong.
Speaker 2We're choosing about who they pick yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, they're picky about who they choose, yeah.
Speaker 2Choosy to pick, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1Anyway, it's okay. So they're picky about who they tune and they only take in as many as they need because they're like okay, I get this amount of tunes and it was so simple back then. I remember that I'm like, oh man, if I tune like five customers this week, oh, I'm gonna buy myself some sick.
Speaker 3It right.
Speaker 1It was fantastic because I had no overhead. You know, I didn't. I didn't have to worry about anyone else's livelihood yeah so that's one thing you should really consider.
Speaker 1When you get to that point where it's just you, you're doing one, you're ready to take this full time. Is that what you want? Because of business, it's so funny. I I feel bad sometimes and I know I am very close to my cousin helped me start this who I used to work for. His names Yusuf, and, and you know I'll text them.
Speaker 1Sometimes I'll be like dude, you know, like, oh, moonshine will do some stupid. And I'll be like, oh, my god, I remember when I did this to you. I'm so sorry, right. Like I finally know how it feels. Or like you know, when I have to deal with a customer that you know you guys were too nice to, and now I'm caught up, I'm like, oh, or you know we rarely overpromise, but sometimes, like you know, it happens. Sometimes you say something will happen and it doesn't. And I've got them, I got to go fix this and all of those little things. Man, like If you are not ready and I don't know if you can ever be ready like I didn't know how bad it was until I started it, but you should at least know if you're the kind of personality who's gonna be able to take it like.
Speaker 1Once you go from just you to having staff and growing your business, it's great because on paper you look really cool, like I think everybody thinks that you know. I Me, who saying is like hella wealthy and hella rich now, because all of my employees drive cool ass cars. That's not how that works. I mean, if I was a, if I was a big corporation, sure maybe I'd be like you know, a CEO making like 10 times what these guys make, but it's just not how it works. Right?
Speaker 1I gave up a lot of my personal stuff for the business to grow, because I want this to be a sustainable thing in the future. And then you think about is this where I want you know my daily income to come, or is this something that I'm building? Right, and if you're building for a future, then you got to be ready to sacrifice a lot of it, and that's that's where the next step comes. And that's when you used to go and I, so I had saved up in the first year of tuning out of my apartment. I remember I used to get it oh, covid, apartment tuners, yeah there were some other tuners and like big shops.
Speaker 1Who don't even tune on the platform anymore because they're too sucked. But they used to talk shit and we go. He doesn't have a dino, he's never tuned on a dino, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And I had I mean I had access to dino's. You don't have to own a dino to use one. But anyway, I was an apartment tuner and then I'm like all right, I have. You know, without getting into too many specifics like this is the internet, so I know people will run with it.
Speaker 1So I had you know enough money saved up them like, all right, let's invest in a business, right, like an actual physical shop space. And I remember asking Alex, hey, would you value having a place to come into work? And he, he really pushed for it.
Speaker 2You ever a moonshine was excited.
Speaker 1He was like, bro, I want a place to go into work. You, fantastic, let's do it. I was like, okay, fine, let's, let's get a place right. And then I, other than this, you know, I looked at there's there was an old Used Porsche dealer that used to restore Porsches as well. It was on 59 and fondre Okay, we're all the body shops and stuff.
Speaker 2I had an expensive bro.
Speaker 1This was a 28,000 square foot facility. Yeah, okay, I don't know what I was thinking even looking at it, but the rent was insane. It was $14,000.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm glad we're not there.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, we. Can you imagine how much we'd have laying around if we were there, churros?
Speaker 1I guess, Churros like broad, have my own office, yeah, but but I looked at that. I looked at a couple other 6,000, 7,000 square foot places out that a couple 10,000, and then this was I want to end up. And the only reason I ended up here Was I looked at it. I said, well, this already kind of has. If you've been to our shop you know We've got the. When you enter is that it's like in quadrants. Essentially you have like a quarter of it. It's not really a quarter, but like one quadrant is the customer area showroom, one quadrant is the office, one quadrant is a shop and then you have a little dining room. That is.
Speaker 2Is this back area bigger or smaller than the front area? I think it's smaller, it's definitely smaller she was because you, I can't work out there.
Speaker 1You know I wish it was as well. Yes, yes, these are regrets. Yeah these are things that I would do differently, so I Think. The showroom is bigger than the shop. Listen man, I know these things. Okay, I pay for this. I air-condition this whole place, which is mostly empty and unusable to us, but you go around the front space we could always just move out of here, which is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1But anyway. So I was like, fine, let's do it. So I, you know I got ready to invest all the money into rent, into desks, into everything right, and I, At that point is when I wish I'd asked for help. I think that's that's one thing that I should have done. Better is I should have relied on Friends and even reached out to other businesses to ask how it should have been done, because at that point I could have taken a step to redo it, because it's a lot harder now for us to move out of here. Then it is for us to have found that originally. If I, if I taking the time to plan and think about it right.
Speaker 2I blame moonshine for his eagerness.
Speaker 1I blame moonshine for his eagerness, but also part of that is me. A lot of times I value getting it done over Over having it done perfectly right, and there's a fine balance between that. I mean, a really good example is Chidon this morning was really pissing me off Because last week I asked him to make like two or three logos right, or maybe it was like five or ten logos whatever because we need to add the b48, tuning it, and the BMW. It's really difficult because the b58 and b48 are used across so many various models. Well, that with our race mode tuning page, where we go by the car and the model, it's not very easy to do right, because you have to have like 20. But I'm like you know what, fuck it, it's a lot of work. Just get it done, though, because then at least we can upload it right. And then this morning he's like bro, but like why do we have to do it that way? Why don't? And then I was like I was. I was getting so frustrated and I took a step back to think I'm like why am I getting so mad right now?
Customer Service in a Growing Business
Speaker 1And it was one of those times where I'm like no, I just value getting this done. I don't really care about how, how perfect it looks. I need somewhere where people can go, and that was kind of that's the thought when I got the shop is like I need some more people can go. This works. I don't have to build it out, I don't have to invest money in getting all the partitions up and all this stuff. Let's just do it and it worked out okay. I think we didn't do terrible. People like the shop. They think it's really cool when they walk in. I think it's a nice looking shop. I think when customers walk into the showroom they think we're a lot bigger than you know. I guess it's like idea of Grandeur like oh damn.
Speaker 1They gave me all this space to sit.
Speaker 3Yeah, it is, it works.
Speaker 1I think it works in our favor, but could be really like you know, like half the size and it's still be Okay and helps.
Speaker 2So those customers are spending 10 20,000 with us, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1I think it ends up, you know, when people ask like, oh well, if I leave my car, where is it gonna be? Like, hey, it's gonna be right here. Man, we got, we got all this face. Look, I'm gonna lock all the cars right, locked up inside. And yeah, we parked customer cars in all the time normally. So Mason's car was awesome to his most recent GTR, yeah. Um, we should put the TSX in there once you guys wrap it, not TSX, sorry, rsx, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1As we showed to Justin from Street Science anyone. So, yeah, it was like, alright, well, let's, let's get something going right, and I think when you're in the start stages of a small business or a small shop, get something going is more important than get it done perfectly. I know a lot of people who get stuck in the planning phase, yeah, and they can never execute because while they were planning and planning their, their costs to get into it grew so high that Eventually, like you know what I don't want to do- it analysis, paralysis.
Speaker 1What analysis? Paralysis analysis paralysis.
Speaker 2Just you know you're you're trying to make a decision like the example that you're giving. And you're stuck with all the different choices you're making. You're just kind of stuck there, not actually Acting on it.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah so at that stage it was like important to act. Yeah, so my advice would be if you get to that point, just go forward with it. You know, take your time. Obviously don't jump into it.
Speaker 1Take maybe go forward, but like, yeah, take a little more time than I did you know, ask people, ask advice from friends and family and experts, and and be willing, if you don't have friends, and be willing to pay people who do this for a living, like for their time. You know, I think I think the worst thing you can do is is Devalue another person's time, whether it's your employees, whether it's another business You're going to for help, anything like that right, and then get it set up and then after that, once you have all your groundwork laid out and everything, all that matters is that you keep your quality, because it focused on what got you the business in the first place.
Speaker 1Yeah and that that's what we focus on. You know, and you know I don't know if justice listens to this podcast or not, it's. I'm still waiting for you to tell me what we did wrong. Bro, like that stuff, people don't think we care. If you tell me that, hey, I've heard that. You know he said something like I just wish you guys would go back to your roots and go back to how you were.
Speaker 3And I asked him. I asked him to.
Speaker 1I mean, it might not, but I asked him to you know, expand on that. He didn't tell me anything. I'm like, hey, if you have someone who's coming through the legitimate complaint, please let me know because we address them. You guys know I come down on you guys hard for like sometimes, when it's not even your fault, I'm like, hey, why did this customer have a bad experience, right? Yeah, and they're like very few. If we want percentages wise, I could just be that guy who's like, well, it's only 1% who are unsatisfied. So whatever, but I've always strived for 100% satisfaction with every single person that we work.
Speaker 2If you look at Three years ago, right, and what? Instagram three years ago was like 4000 followers right, yeah we're at 16 and a half. Mm-hmm. Change our phone calls, emails, text message, all that increased and I'm not sure how much of that you check. But our.
Speaker 2Largely, has stayed the same. Like I try to like, especially on the weekends, I try to get away from it, not respond by the guy. I still do respond to that. So I Think our quality of customer service and I even just customer service, just people asking questions, like tuning right. So if you buy a tune from us, we're still, I'd say. If you ask moonshine, I'd say about 90% of customers get a response within one business day, which what it was three years ago. That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 1All right, I was actually worse when it was just me, because I couldn't do. You know, I would sometimes miss and I'm okay, 48 hours right, which is why we have 24 to 48 hours. But yeah, I mean, we focused on our quality and that's proven for us, right, like we've grown. But then you still have people who don't think we're doing we're doing, right by them and I guess I'm never yeah.
Speaker 1I'm never gonna please all of you guys, right, but, like, even to this day, I value the quality of the interaction. It's not even the quality I mean. Of course it's the quality of the tune, right, and of course it's the quality of the work that's done on the car. That that's that's a given like. That should not be. Oh, we do really good quality tuned, so everything else will come with it, right, you can have the best work and the best Everything in the world, but if your customer experience is not good, you're gonna, you're gonna fit a lot, a lot of shops.
Speaker 2They feel like because of my work speaks for itself. Everything else can fall, yeah, but it doesn't just fall.
Speaker 1Your work should speak for itself. That's fantastic. You should be a master of your craft. You should aim to have the best tunes, the best you know, service work, the best products, the best, everything right. But none of that matters if your customer service is not there. Yeah, and that's that. I think that is the major point, that at least in the in the performance tuning and aftermarket industry is where I see, I see people failing and like I Almost feel like a fraud, even now talking about it right, because I who am I.
Speaker 1I've been a shop for three years, right, I'm sure people have watching yeah, but we have some experience. We have some, sure, but you know the people who could sit here like man I've been doing for ten years and they're rolling their eyes. I'll see you at ten, at the ten-year mark, see how you're doing. And, sure, maybe, maybe I will become like that. We don't know right, but I can tell you until now this is what we've done and it's worked for us. Beyond that, I don't have advice, man, other than like.
Speaker 2Don't let it do it.
Speaker 1Yeah, just do it really like a Nike, Just do it yeah don't quit your day job.
Speaker 1Yeah, and and get a good team of people around you. Man, I, this shop would not be what it is without the team that I have and value the people around you. You know I, my life would be significantly worse if I had high turnover at race box. It's like my employees kept leaving, you know, and they're like, hey man, I had a better opportunity elsewhere and like to avoid that. You have to actually care about the people that work for you. I mean, I'm lucky I'm surrounded by friends so that the caring comes naturally right and you can. You know you, you tune into them like hey man, what you know is the job working for you. Is this working for your lifestyle? Do you need any adjustments made and be flexible? You know I, I could have been the guys like, nope, I want everyone here every day at 830 and you don't leave till 630. You don't get a lunch break.
Speaker 1You know a lot of shops do that yeah and they think that because they work on cool cars, people are just gonna stay.
Speaker 2Right, that's not enough.
Speaker 1You want people to stay, you got to show them their value. But, yeah, build a good team and sometimes it's hard, you know. Sometimes you misjudge character and then be graceful when it doesn't work either. You know, don't, don't hold grudges and all that either. If things don't work out, they don't work out, you know, there's always another way. Everyone, everyone's gonna find their way through anyway. So, yeah, I don't know. Is there any other specific questions people had about, about how you balance your personal life and business?
Speaker 3because this business is your life. Yeah, that's something I struggle with.
Struggles and Trade-Offs of Business
Speaker 1A lot more now, because before, when it was my life, it was okay. You know I was newly married. My wife was. She still is really chill, but you know she was more chill back then. I think because she's like well, he's starting his business right, and I think everyone you have to have an understanding partner.
Speaker 1If you're, if you're you know, if you're married or seeing someone like, Without a supportive partner, this it doesn't work. Like if you have someone who's like oh, I don't understand why you spent all this time there and they don't see the vision and the greater you know your, your greater path forward it you're gonna either your relationship is gonna fill, the business is gonna fill. But I was lucky in that my wife was very supportive. But For myself now I'm like well, I don't want this to be my life anymore. Right, like I was back in the day you'd see me on my phone at home just responding to Facebook comments, always on the groups, always doing this, and I just can't do that anymore. The balance comes after. I think I don't think there is a balance when you're starting off a business. There wasn't for me. It was like I said 16 hours, so where in those 16 hours did I have time for my wife you know I didn't.
Speaker 1And I apologize to her many times in the future and I think back to her. I'm like wow, that's really you know, you moved in to a new city and I was just busy doing this, you know. So it's stuff you learn later. But I think if you're going to start a business, you've got to be prepared for that. There is no balance until you get to the point where you have a team who can help you, like now, because the load is shared across all of us. I would like to think we all have a pretty good work-life balance. Mo probably has the least of it, to be quite honest, because he's always answering you guys and I see it sometimes, like you know, even me I'll like think of stuff randomly and I'll put it in the teams chat and then Mo will respond like bro, why are you? Why are you responding to me at like 11 o'clock on a Saturday?
Speaker 3You know, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1But, it's.
Speaker 2You know it's hard, it's hard I mean, what's your take on it? So for me it's like, it's like a personality trait, so like if Hussein messaged me with something work-related Saturday afternoon, I'll be thinking about it. Right, I'm a person that, like, I try to do the hardest things in the day first and then before I can relax. Right, if I was to have a person in school that I would come home and before I play video games or did anything, I would knock out all my homework.
Speaker 3Jesus, I'm nervous yeah.
Speaker 2When I was like hardcore into like war, the warcraft, I was in high school.
Speaker 1You do homework before playing, while I would.
Speaker 2No, I do you want to further, I would spend lunch doing homework right On the way back when I take a bus. I would do homework then and then I finished anything else. I would do that before I did anything, so it was just like a personality trait for me.
Speaker 1Well, I used to do my homework in homeroom or like right before the teacher came in for that class.
Speaker 2I mean, it was easy enough, right Done.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2Yeah, so that makes sense though.
Speaker 1But see then then. So most told me like, hey bro, like I've asked him why, and he said, well, if you send it to me, I'm going to do it, it's be on my mind. I can't stop because my mind doesn't stop either, because the business is on. That's actually a good point no matter how much balance you have, you are never away from your business. I don't have a fleeting moment ever where I'm not worried about how these guys are doing at the shop.
Speaker 2Even on vacation.
Speaker 1Even on vacation, I'm always and like they will tell me bro, just uninstall the, don't message us. I can't, I can't stay away. I'll install an all message and I'll just be like hey, what's going on, guys? You know like it's. It's very hard. I don't know any business owner that has good work life balance in that regard we're like you can just disassociate from the business, unless you're so far away from data yeah, right, Usually, unless bigger companies operations manager right, Exactly yeah.
Speaker 1Exactly and like that would be. The goal for me is to get I mean, I've discussed this with Mo. He knows this is like to grow the business to the point where I can truly have time away from it and just not worry, but it's so connected on me I mean, even to this day people request hey, will Hussein tune my car?
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1I've said this on the podcast before you're better off with Alex tuning your car man, it's just he.
Speaker 1How do I say this? He has less distractions. His job is purely to tune your car. Yeah, my job is to tune some cars and then also run this place, take care of everybody here's livelihood, make sure customers are happy, follow the whole process. There's a lot more on my plate than there was on Alex's. So if you have Alex tuning your Q 50, you are in good hands Right Eventually with the B 58, when we're doing pretty good. We've tuned about 60 B 58s this year on ecutech, which is decent, because it's hard to get people in ecutech. I want to teach that to someone else, so you know I can pass that on and they can grow it, just like Alex grew the Q 50 tuning for me. But yeah, my eventual goal would be to kind of get to that point where this place is run.
Speaker 2I think it's also tough. So even if you do hire operations manager someone, just overlook the business you also. That person has to care as much about the business as you, right? So that's never going to happen.
Speaker 1Like you are probably the closest I will get to someone caring about the business as me, but I know for a fact that you will never care about it as much as me. Yeah, things different, it's different yeah it's never going to happen, right Like and that is the hardest part, actually.
Speaker 2And nothing I can say or do to tell you.
Speaker 1No, yeah, and it's not. It's not like a character flaw of yours.
Speaker 1If you had your own business, you would be the same way, right, and it's like that is the hardest part about owning a business and knowing that no one else is going to do it like you would, and then you have to be OK with letting that go. And that's something I'm probably not the best at, still, because sometimes I still get the urge to come back hey guys, why'd you handle it this way, right? Like there's times when I read an email and I type something I'm like no, just leave it.
Speaker 2Yeah, they did it. Wait for the result. You hop an email chain hey, what's going on here? Yeah, I'm sure that's so annoying.
Speaker 1I mean, I'm like that annoying. I was like bro, give me an update what's going on here. What you know. It's like without context to write like. I'll see one thing. One email and I'll be like that's not right Let me go in and tell them. I said you read them in emails yeah.
Speaker 1I'll be like, hey, bro, do this like this next time and like it's not, it's not good. I should be better about trusting you guys because while, yeah, like physically you might not be able to have that same attachment and care for the business that I do, that doesn't mean you're doing a bad job, right, and that doesn't mean that there's the outcomes going to be any different. Just because I stress more doesn't automatically make the outcome better. It's. It's more of a, it's more of like a downside of being a business owner that you just have to deal with you. Yes, you will never know. No one else will ever stress as much about your business, but they'll probably still get you the same outcome, or they'll be within like point, five percent of the same outcome, if you want to quantify right, and that's OK.
Speaker 2Yeah, you take that point five percent that you would have maybe gotten if you manage 100 percent by yourself, but you're getting that mental piece that has space yes worrying about on a Saturday or Sunday evening and thinking about something so exactly yeah. Yeah, it's trade off, and what are you willing to give?
Speaker 1Yes, yeah, it is, it's a trade off and then it's it's. It's also trade off for what you want in life, like, I think, ideally. I don't know. My next step in growth is how does it work when you manage two businesses, how does it work when you manage three, four, five and you grow like that, right, like what do you do?
Speaker 1If you, if you worry, like I wonder, I wonder, I'd like to pick the brain of, like a CEO who didn't start the business, who was just hired, like you know, someone, someone owns the company, the owner is gone. How does that owner feel? And how does the CEO feel? Right, like what? What is the relationship there? Does the CEO care as much about as a CEO just care about profits and is purely monetarily motivated? It's? These are things that I would like to learn, you know, and I think it's probably something that just comes with experience, because I'm not going down the corporate ladder again. That didn't work out for me. I hated corporate. I was never built for corporate, you know. I guess I just got to try it out.
Speaker 1But yeah, that that's where do you see race box in five years and ten years, jesus Christ, you know versus that's a really good question and one I don't have an answer for because, like I said at the start, like I said at the start of this, I am not a planner.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Business Growth and Future Plans Cogitation
Speaker 1I have to be quite honest. I have a. It sounds cheesy. I have a really strong faith in God, so when I started this, I felt like it was handed to me. Every year has been a blessing. I run this by the seat of my pants, and so far, my intuition and God has not led me wrong. So I don't know where it's going to be in five years, man, and I don't know where it's going to be in 10 years. I'll be happy with wherever it is in five or 10 years, though, because that's what's meant for me. That's that's how I personally feel. It's cheesy as hell, but I really don't have an answer for that. Man. Like, there are things that I'd like to see. There's, like you know, growth goals and all this kind of stuff, but concrete wise, like what it's going to look like, how much money we're going to be making, what our turnover is going to be, what kind of customers we're going to have I got no clue. What would you like to see in five or 10?
Speaker 2years, five years, I think, from like a customer facing aspect. I want us to keep expanding different platforms and not just tuning a bunch of platforms just to say that we just did it. Us like be proficient Right Like today. We made an Instagram story about B9. I'm so excited about that, yeah, so stuff like that is kind of like, you know, force induction, six cylinders, right yeah, so just expanding into other platforms and getting really, I want to do those fricking the new Dodge.
Speaker 1The Hurricanes, oh the Hurricanes yeah, I want to get my hands on one of those, yeah.
Speaker 2So stuff like that. I really like the TLX motors. What's? The drive train called in the TLX type S motors.
Speaker 1You should know.
Speaker 3I'm a pilot in turbo. What's the code?
Speaker 1Is it on Hyundai or is it KTUNER?
Speaker 3KTUNER released a base not for B-conoption. It's still in beta, yeah, so stuff like that.
Speaker 1We'll mess with that when it comes out, because I have an all wheel drive too right, they are.
Speaker 3KTUNER is small enough, I think if you, your child might actually see you and see your turn, because I think only one or two tuners have access to data.
Speaker 1KTUNER, if you see this, yeah, yeah, Hook it up, bro, that'd be, awesome.
Speaker 3I don't know. I have heard next things about the customer service when it comes to like, when you reach out for like, natural, like important stuff.
Speaker 1They might want us to have a TLX shop car. Yeah, we have too many shop cars, right?
Speaker 3now the one person I know he has one personally, so yeah, well, we'll wait then We'll wait for someone to come up with support for it.
Speaker 1And then what about for you and the growth of the company?
Speaker 3And what do you feel?
Speaker 1Mo is like the de facto manager. To be quite honest, he is kind of like the COO, if you were ever to have a name like that. I kind of pass on everything to do with the day to day with Mo. I'm like, hey, schedule this, do that right. I handle more of the admin and business side stuff. So where do you see it with with Alex, all the employees and everyone I mean?
Speaker 2without sitting here and deep thought and like thinking about it, just take our current setup and just multiply it. Right. So the tuning support platform, the shop side of things, while remain consistent right, because that's what we talked about earlier in the podcast is, as you see, these companies get bigger, things start to fall wayside in terms of quality. That they do for a tuning side of things, service, wise communication All that starts like pretty much go down the drain right.
Speaker 2So, it's like expand while keeping the same of what we value and why you started the business in the first place, keeping those values consistent throughout our expansion.
Speaker 1Grow the teams as the business grows. Yeah, don't, don't get over encumbered. So I guess we can end it on this. If, today, you were to say, hey, these are the places where I need more personnel, regardless of cash flow, regardless of whether the business can afford it, what would you change with the staffing?
Speaker 2To like fire.
Speaker 1No, yeah, you'd love that. No, yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't have a lot of sad people today.
Speaker 2I'm kidding.
Speaker 1Well, in terms of, if you to predict for the growth in the current current capacity that we are at now, what would you add or what would you change in terms of personnel and resources?
Speaker 2If the cash flow was there, it would be expanding to different platforms, whether that's buying the shop car or investing into current shop cars, so we can expand that because you think, personnel wise, we're good for the current capacity or the current quantity of tunes. I think we are because we all bust our ass at the end of the day. So it's it's not like we come in at nine o'clock and we check it out at five pm, like we're done, like that's not how any of us work.
Speaker 1Yeah, I will say one thing these guys were not not we're. They're not always the most efficient at their jobs, but there is no doubt in my mind that every single one of these guys will bust their ass to get a job done. Yeah, so that's my answer. Cool, give me money so we can buy shop cars.
Speaker 2A TLX type S.
Speaker 1TLX type S. You dope Offer me money for our existing shop cars so I can get other shop cars like the RSX. When are we seeing the RSX on video? Yeah, why. Why is there no video about the RSX Chadon, or pictures? Do people even know we have one?
Speaker 2I mean it's missing.
Speaker 3I'm still figuring out how to put stuff together. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1Wow At Chadon and in the comments we have Chadon. Where's the RSX? Hold them accountable.
Speaker 3It's actually very expensive to do what we want to do correctly, but you said you don't want to do this correctly. You want to do it cheap.
Speaker 1I want to do it ghetto, but I don't know. I want a three seconds, 60 to 130, the most ghetto way possible.
Speaker 3It's not going to happen in a ghetto way.
Speaker 1What if we sell it and get an FRS or no?
Speaker 3The F820 or F824 will blow up before you even sell it.
Speaker 1Yeah what if we build it and do a full, full send track? You know how many people are on those freaking road courses with moonshine where they run these cars. You get so many customers for road course no they keep the engine stock.
Speaker 3They do, that's all suspension.
Speaker 2They don't, though Sometimes they don't. And their class limits don't even allow it.
Speaker 3They like like the more super guys they know most of those guys keep the stock. Did you know Ecotech's top?
Speaker 1Yes, Did you know Ecotech's top two platforms?
Speaker 2that they sell.
Speaker 1No, no, the GR86 and the VQs. Those are the top selling. We should be on the F820. We've been out for a long period.
Speaker 3F820s and F824s is what we should be in. But no, but here's the F820, it's better to be in the car with GBL. So I don't know how. I don't know how I've never seen Ecotech on FRS, because the car is cheaper and easier to use. Shop BRZ. I think they're right.
Speaker 1Let's do a shop BRZ. Let's do a Gen 2 BRZ. Those look sick too, they look good.
Speaker 3I know that, f8204. Yeah, yeah, that's a new gen, right yeah.
Speaker 1All right, let's sell the RSA. Let's get an F8204. Get a WRS. The RECs are nice. I like the RECs.
Speaker 2It has the better version of F8204.
Speaker 3Yeah, Because it's meant to be boosted.
Speaker 2Ecotech tunes Right. Ecotech is supported.
Speaker 3You see, with stock, turbo and all the mods of Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike Molly he got a lot to run.
Speaker 2He's in the tens.
Speaker 3Stock everything, stock turbo and just 85.
Speaker 2We're not stocking everything. Stock turbo yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's pretty surprising. That is pretty impressive. Mike is a good tuner. Well, he came from.
Speaker 3Seagul, so you know he's a good tuner. Yeah, his name is STI Mike, right, yeah?
Speaker 1he's still an OG STI tuner. Yeah, okay, that's where we're going to end it, goodbye.
Speaker 3Say bye, mo, bye. You got to kiss him tonight. There you go, people like that the first time we did it. Oh God, so weird, oh my gosh Okay.