Empowering Leadership and Family Legacy With Reed Parman of Big Chief Tire

Reed Parman is the President and Owner of Big Chief Tire, a company specializing in tire sales and auto services with five locations in Jacksonville, Florida. Big Chief Tire was founded in 1961, and Reed’s leadership has helped maintain its reputation for excellent customer service and long-term employee retention. Reed grew up in the tire business, starting by changing tires as a teenager, and has been instrumental in modernizing the company by implementing a digital inspection process to enhance customer transparency.

In this episode…

The automotive industry can be challenging for consumers to navigate, especially with the growth of large chain stores. How can a smaller business stand out and build customer loyalty?

According to Reed Parman of Big Chief Tire, transparency is key to building trust with customers. This includes using digital inspections to provide visual evidence of necessary repairs and clearly communicate the overall health of the customer’s vehicle. Building relationships with customers is another important factor, which can be achieved by having tenured employees who provide consistent and reliable service.

On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge talks with Reed about the history of Big Chief Tire, a family-owned business founded in 1961. He shares how his family has shaped the company’s culture and values, emphasizing the importance of empowering employees and creating a family-like atmosphere. Reed discusses the challenges and rewards of running a multi-generational business and highlights Big Chief Tire’s commitment to transparency and customer relationships as key differentiators in a competitive market.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• [01:55] How Reed Parman got his start in the tire business as a teenager
• [03:08] Why having the right people in the right seats is important
• [05:16] The origin of Big Chief Tire through a handshake deal
• [06:38] Reed reveals how his great-grandmother saved the family business
• [12:31] How empowerment impacts Reed’s leadership style
• [15:41] Differentiating Big Chief Tire from competitors with transparency and trust
• [20:07] Transitioning from handwritten orders to a digital system
• [26:55] Reed shares a touching story of family and business resilience

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Reed Parman on LinkedIn
• Big Chief Tire 
• Jared Kugel on LinkedIn
• Tire Agent 
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

Quotable Moments:

• “It’s a huge undertaking to make sure that you have the right people in the right seats.”
• “When there’s trust in the automotive customer relationship, it changes everything.”
• “If he supports me this much, it’s got to be a good idea.”
• “Our goal is to develop relationships and customers for life.”
• “Our people are our story.”

Action Steps:

1. Focus on talent placement: Placing the right people in the right seats can boost morale and productivity, addressing the challenge of inefficiency in operations.
2. Empower and trust employees: Empowering team members fosters innovation and confidence, which can lead to better decision-making and a strong organizational culture.
3. Prioritize transparency with customers: Implementing practices such as digital inspections can build trust with customers by differentiating from less personable competitors.
4. Recognize and retain long-serving employees: Maintaining a stable and experienced workforce can be crucial for sustaining business success and continuity.
5. Adapt and innovate tech: Streamline operations and improve accuracy, meeting the challenge of keeping up with industry advancements.

• Big Chief Tire
• Gain Traction Podcast
• Mike Edge
• Reed Parman

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now, let’s get started with the show.

Mike:

Hello, folks. Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast. I am Mike Edge, your host. Today’s guest is Reed Parman, owner of Big Chief Tire with five locations in Jacksonville, Florida. But before we get started, this podcast is brought to you by Tread Partners, the leading digital marketing agency for the tire and auto repair operations that have five to hundreds of locations. Multi-location shops facing enormous challenges. Tread Partners gets it. Don’t waste time and money with marketing agencies that don’t specialize in this space. Get with Tread Partners today, and make your marketing predictable and profitable. If you have 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 shops, contact Tread Partners.

To learn more visit treadpartners.com. As you guys know, I always like to mention a past guest, recently I had… I want to encourage you to listen to a podcast I did with Jared Kugel of Tire Agent, one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the country. They specialize in selling tires online, and they actually make great relationships with existing standing operations that don’t sell online. It’s a pretty cool operation. Check them out. You can learn more about them at tireagent.com. Well, I’ll tell you what, Reed, I feel like this is a long time in the coming. Me and you talked over the last several years. I’m glad you’ve decided to be on Gain Traction. Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast.

Reed:

Yeah. Mike, thanks so much for having me on today. I’m excited to talk shop with you.

Mike:

Yeah. Well, your history, the story… Look, we all love independence, and you guys are truly an independent being in business since 1961. But before we get to that, tell us a little bit about yourself? Because you grew up in the tire business, correct?

Reed:

I did. I did. I started changing tires when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. Through my teenage years, through the summers, I would do a lot of just working in the warehouse, that sort of thing. Then when I graduated high school in 2004, my dad put me out in the shop and said, “Hey, man. You really need to learn how to be a presence in the shop.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t very skilled that way, so he brought me inside pretty quickly and said, “I need to use this guy for his brain and not his hands pretty quick.”

Mike:

He knew where talent was. Right? Or knew how to use talent. Right?

Reed:

Yeah. He could figure that out.

Mike:

Did you ever have to sweep the floors?

Reed:

Oh, yeah. It’s still a pastime of mine is sweeping the floors for sure.

Mike:

You could handle that part. Right?

Reed:

Yeah. I was pretty good at that. Mom taught me well there.

Mike:

Well, that’s an example your dad teaching you, “Okay, you belong here, son, not there.” But that probably empowers you a lot in understanding how to hire and deal with people as well. You’re not, “Hey, man, you got talent, but I need you over here versus there,” and not afraid to maybe make that call learning from your dad’s example.

Reed:

Yeah. It is a huge, huge undertaking to make sure that you have the right people in the right seats. It’s something that is constantly something that we’re analyzing within our company, making sure that we don’t have somebody that’s good at sales but not that great of a technician doing technician work and vice versa. That was definitely the example with me. My dad, he wanted me to learn the shop and really have a good presence in the shop. It just was just an area that I wasn’t gifted, and sales was an area that I was gifted. He figured that out and we have to do that every single day for sure.

Mike:

I love it. Let’s talk about who’s Big Chief?

Reed:

Yeah. Big Chief, it’s… A lot of people… We get that question asked a lot. My great-grandfather was a chief in the Navy, so he retires in probably in the late ’50s, ’58, 59, and starts working for a tire… It’d actually sell tires and televisions. The location where I am today, where our main location still is, was a shop. Again, back in the day I guess you just sold whatever if you had that business license, and so they sold tires and televisions-

Mike:

I just got to jump in here. That is true entrepreneurship right there.

Reed:

For sure.

Mike:

Tires and televisions. Let’s just… Whatever we got to do to put bread on the table. Right?

Reed:

That’s it. My grandfather was just working for a guy there. My grandfather had a real, real gift of salesmanship. I didn’t know my… It’s my great-grandfather. I didn’t know him super well. He passed away when I was much younger, but had a real gift for salesmanship. Ultimately he had sold more tires and televisions then the guy could afford to pay him. The guy he was working for could afford to pay him. As was the case back in the day, they had a quick handshake and said, “Hey, listen, you just take the business and let’s just call it even.” That was when Big Chief was opened. That was in August of 1961 that they made that handshake deal and Big Chief Tire was born that day.

Mike:

That’s awesome. Did he just decide to call it Big Chief then too?

Reed:

Yeah. Again, he got some advice. The story that’s passed down to me was that he asked around, “What should I call my tire business?” Again, he’s a retired chief in the Navy, and the only advice he got was don’t put your last name on it. He thought about, okay, well how do I identify myself without putting my name on it?” And settled on Big Chief.

Mike:

Man, that’s cool. Tell us about… I noticed it looked like your grandmother was involved too, or great-grandmother.

Reed:

Yeah. My great-grandfather, as many great salespeople are, wasn’t a great business person. My great-grandmother, she just swore off any part of this. Again, these are all stories passed down to me, but she didn’t want anything to do with the business because she thought it was a bad idea, and she thought he should get a different job. He’s drowning at work. He’s making all these sales, doing all this great business, but drowning on the business side of things. She comes in and saves the day shortly after he opened, probably sometime within that first year. She was an accountant by trade. Really smart woman. Really did our books until she passed away and the mid-90s.

Mike:

Man, that’s incredible. What a great story though. She didn’t want to get involved, but then obviously she fit. That’s a great fit with a true salesman, and then have an accountant behind you that can keep it all organized. Right?

Reed:

Well, yeah. My grandfather… That my great-grandfather. My grandfather, who was 20 at the time, he had gone away to college and decided it wasn’t the route for him. He was a car guy. Unlike what he passed down to his grandson, he was a mechanic. My great-grandfather who was the salesperson, my grandmother who was the person, and my grandfather who was the car guy. It was just a really good fit. Really good marriage, and I think a very, very large reason for our early success.

Mike:

No doubt. All right. As you progressed in this business yourself, did you always know you’re going to be in it? Or did you ever have one of those timeframes where you said, “Man, I’m going to go try something else,” or, “I’m not going to be in the family…” You know what I’m saying?

Reed:

Yeah. No. My dad used to always say, and I echo my dad’s sentiments of, he never had a real job and neither have I. No, I… Actually the story behind me being here is I had… In high school, so I went to a private Christian high school, and I had a Bible teacher who took a lot of interest in me. One day he keeps me behind class and he says, “Reed, I want to talk to you about your future.” I’m like, “Man, I’m 16. All I’m thinking about is are we going to win the football game on Friday night?” He says, “I want to talk to you about your future.”

I said, “Yeah, Mr. Taylor. I’d love to tell you about what my thoughts are.” He said, “Well, do you know what you’re going to do?” I said, “No, sir. I’m 16. I don’t have any idea what I’m going to do.” He says, “Well, have you thought about the family business?” I said, “Well, yeah. Sure. I think that’s likely that I might end up there.” He starts talking me through teaching me how to make a decision more than just, “Hey, let’s just fly by the seat of our pants,” which is probably okay for a 16-year-old to an extent. He starts talking me through it. He talks to me about the business and he says… Throughout that year we have a lot of conversations like this, and really started to understand… My dad did not love the tire business.

Mike:

Okay.

Reed:

He would tell you that if he was close enough to you… My dad passed away a few years ago, and tires are in my blood. Tires were never… My dad did not feel like tires were in his blood. He felt like he was forced into doing this. It was the expectation, the oldest son of the family, you were going to go work in the tire business. He didn’t really have a choice. My dad would definitely have told you that. I recognized that even as a 16, 17-year-old, through these conversations with my Bible teacher, I recognized that my dad had probably a greater calling on his life.

I always told my dad that he should have been a pastor. Ultimately that’s what I told my Bible teacher is like, “I feel like if I go work in the family business, my dad might have some more time to do what he’s great at, which is people.” My dad was really great with people and had a heart for church and for ministry and things like that. Ultimately he was able to do some of those things. As I got in the business, Dad was able to back out and do some of those passions. I definitely think my Bible teacher in high school definitely helped steer that ship for sure.

Mike:

That’s awesome. You said something to me before the recording here that your dad did a great job of empowering you. I think not just in this industry, but people I’ve met throughout my life, that you can see where sometimes it’s hard for somebody that’s been in the main seat, decision maker, whatever, to start empowering their kids to take over. Then they don’t, or when they have to they’re not very good at it, but your dad was you said very good at just putting you in positions where you had to start making decisions and he held you accountable. Is that pretty accurate?

Reed:

It was his greatest attribute as a leader was trusting me with decisions, empowering me to make those decisions, supporting me through bad decisions. I joked with somebody one time, I think I actually said this at his funeral. I said, “If I would’ve come to my dad’s office and said, ‘Dad, I think we need to stop selling tires and start selling donuts,’ he would’ve been like, ‘Let’s try it.'” Even though he knew it was a bad decision, even though he knew it was a mistake, that was the way my dad supported you was it gave you confidence. If he supports me this much, it’s got to be a good idea. When my dad passed away… My dad, like I told you, and some people listening may know, my dad passed away in a car accident.

He was delivering tires when he was passed away. It was three years ago, and it was obviously tragic and miss him every single day. Think about him constantly. What I don’t have is the regret of, “Oh, no. I was in over my head drowning also.” I think that was the position my dad got put in when his dad passed away in 2001. His dad, my grandfather, had been the decision maker and he had held onto all the decisions, so my dad got put in this position of now it’s your time to make decisions. My dad would tell you he wasn’t quite ready for it because he was used to having one person make all the decisions. I believe that that’s why my dad was so empowering was because he felt like that was a weakness of his dad’s, of my grandfather’s, leadership. I think that’s the correction that he made. It changed my life. The way he empowered changed my life for sure.

Mike:

It always amazes me how experiences is always the best teacher. Even if you might have a bad experience, again, you may teach your kids something that’ll prevent them from having that same experience.

Reed:

Absolutely.

Mike:

That’s really, really cool. I love the fact that he did that early and the willingness to let you fail. That’s the biggie right there if he’s willing to let you make a mistake. Correct it. Well, that goes to the fact that when I looked at your website and I read the About Us, one thing that stood out to me was the fact that, man, you guys had or you have a lot of people with a lot of tenure. You don’t have a lot of turnover for key positions. I don’t know how many you said that you’ve retired that had 40 plus years. But that’s a big number to keep people that long, man, and that means that you probably empowered them.

Reed:

Yeah. We have a Hall of Fame, I think is what you’re referencing on the website.

Mike:

Yeah.

Reed:

Those are on the walls of most of our shops. We’re getting them on all our shops, but they’re on the walls of most of our shops. It’s just the people who built the organization. People that didn’t have the last name Parman who were every bit as responsible for building this organization as anybody with a last name Parman. Yeah. We have been very lucky to have people… Even currently, I told you, we retired three 40-year employees in a five-year span, non-family, and still have several that are over 20 years, a few that are over 25.

We do have a lot of tenure. It definitely speaks to empowering people. That is a passion of ours is helping people grow. Having somebody work their way up the chain of command. Our general manager is one of my favorite stories in all of the tire industry. He was a Cuban immigrant who got picked up back in the early ’90s. Got sent to Guantanamo Bay. Ended up on our doorstep not knowing a word of English. That was 27 years ago. He’s now the general manager of our company and has just the most incredible story. But yeah, our people are our story for sure.

Mike:

I love that. Well, it also… Going into the fact that I think one of the things you said that sets you apart, and I think you guys mentioned this on your website, is just the fact that you realized… You were in Jacksonville, Florida, a booming metropolis. I remember when they picked up the NFL team. That was a big deal for Jacksonville. But when you guys through your existence and everything, you realized, okay, we’re dealing with a lot of big box stores now. We’ve got a lot of competition that’s moved in. You had mentioned to me that, “Okay. There’s a stigma in this industry whether you like it or not, it just is.” I think some of it comes from the fact that consumers have a lot of lack of knowledge. When you have a lack of knowledge, you’re just naturally skeptical, but you guys focus on transparency.

Reed:

Yeah. Well, first you mentioned the Jaguars, which is a really sore subject right now. No, but so Jacksonville is a huge city. Really in the last 10 years there’s been so much consolidation in our market that it leaves us as the only small, medium-sized business around. I’m a small business advocate, I believe in small business. I think generally speaking a small business does a better job than a large business, but there are certainly some ways in which large businesses do a great job, but I think in our industry specifically transparency is just a problem. If you Google the headlines for this big box or this big box and the thing that happened. There’s all centered around a lack of transparency. That’s where we believe we can really be different and really be better. We focus… One of our big things is the digital inspection. If you come in to our location you’re not going to get a traditional paper inspection where Joe in the back has told you that you need breaks.

You’re going to get that visual evidence of this is what you need. Then you’re also going to get the visual evidence of these are all the things that check out, great. Right? Because we just want to give a health check on your car. We believe it’s our obligation, our responsibility to give you that. We want to do it in a very transparent way. In a way that is trustworthy. In a way that is going to earn your trust not just today when we’re maybe trying to capture a sale, but also throughout your journey. That’s the other big thing with us is we want a customer… Our goal is to develop relationships and customers for life. We talk about the hedgehog principle of what do we do well? What do we do so well that we can combat the big guys with? We view our hedgehog as people, both customers and employees. We feel like that’s the one thing that we can do better than the big stores can and the chain stores can. We’re going to do it with our customers through building relationships centered around their car. Right?

Mike:

Well, and it’s really cool because part of that equation is what we just talked about. If you have tenured employees and they’re at the counter and I say, “I’m a customer of yours. I will walk in one of your stores and I keep seeing Joe behind the sales counter, I get to become friends with Joe. I know Joe takes care of me, and Joe does the DVI inspection with me and walks me through whatever I need.” Eventually, trying to… We’ve talked about this before, but you’re just trying to create that customer that throws their keys on the counter and says, “Hey, call me and let me know what’s up.”

Reed:

Yeah.

Mike:

Yeah.

Reed:

Yeah. When there’s trust in the relationship and the automotive customer relationship, when the foundation is trust, it changes everything because they don’t… Again, our goal is to always be super fair, a competitive price. But a lot of our customers, they’re not going to shop every place in town because they know we’re going to take care of them, and we’re going to treat them right, and we’re going to do it at a good price.

Mike:

Nobody has time to shop that long anyway. Let’s get real. When they have a problem, they want it fixed. They want somebody they can trust. The only way sometimes you can find out if you can trust somebody is you got to go through the fire with them, and you just got to give them a shot. If you guys take care of them, they’ll be back. Hey, you mentioned to me that you have a story that you wanted to share that embodies the whole family environment of your organization as well. Do you want to go [inaudible 00:19:09]-

Reed:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You had originally asked if there was a funny story, and I was trying to think through a funny story through my tire business. I had a couple, but none that really I was really passionate about. But one story in particular that I will share with you, and it’s not funny. It gets a little sad, but it has a happy ending. One of the things I noticed when I came into the business… I graduated college in ’08, and that’s when I was full-time in the tire business. It was about that time that it occurred to me how antiquated our point of sale system was, and by point of sale system I mean the handwritten work orders that we were still using. Literally some of the people that have been in the tire for a long time will remember the tire boxes that we use to keep our inventory on our index cards. Right? We were still doing that in 2008.

Mike:

I want to almost want to applaud you for that. You’re maybe one of the longest holdouts.

Reed:

Again, it came down to my dad just drowning. His dad passed away, and then the business has just… He’s just barely surviving, and so didn’t have the time to do that. When I came to the business he tasked me with innovate. Right? That’s what he tasked me with. Figure out how to get better. Embarrassingly, this story, we can fast-forward to 2011 because nothing happened from ’08 to 2011. I guess I was just trying to get my feet wet and figure out what I was doing, and dad said, “Hey, Reed. I want to go to SEMA. Let’s find a point of sale software.” I was like, “Okay, that sounds like a great idea.” We go to SEMA in November 2011. Didn’t a point of sale system, but select one early on March, April of 2012. We found a partner that we still work with today, great company, and we select them in 2012. I think it’s March or April.

At that point, my wife’s due with our third child. She’s due November I think the date’s like the 20th, 24th, something like that is our due date. Our fiscal year begins October 1st. Dad and I, we’re like, “Yeah. It makes perfect sense. We’ll start the new point of sale system on our fiscal year.” In the meantime, we were doing all the background work of preloading… Because again, when you’re not going from one point of sale to another, you’re having to really build everything. It was a really time-consuming project. Probably from March, April, whenever we selected, till October, whenever we were going live, I probably spent 35 hours a week just working on this project. It really took almost most of my time. I was the one heading it up. I was the one spearheading the project.

September 30th, a Sunday, and we decided we were going to have all our administrative team come in on Sunday, get a good solid close out. October 1st, it was just new stuff, let’s move forward, which was a Monday. We come in. We have all our team. The only Sunday in history that we’ve ever been open. We have all our team. We get everything done. That night I go home and as per usual on Sunday night in the Parman household there’s a football game on. My wife looks at me and she goes, “Hey, Reed. I’m in labor.” I would like to tell you that my first thought was, “Oh my goodness, my daughter who’s not due until November 20th and it’s October 1st, and we’re having all these other complications with pregnancy.” I would love to tell you that the dad that I am and the heart for my kids and my family my very first thought is that, but it’s not. My very first thought is you can’t be in labor. I’ve got to launch a project tomorrow morning.

Mike:

That’s the man in us. We’re always planning. We got things that are lined up. Right? That’s just the way it is.

Reed:

Anytime I tell this story, I always tell… Certainly no offense to women who go into false labor many times because I’ve never been pregnant. I don’t know what that’s like, but I know that happens a lot, but that was not my history with my wife. My wife, we’ve had three daughters and three times she’s told me she was in labor and three times she’s been in labor. I knew when she said, “I’m in labor,” it was go time. Anyway, so we get to the hospital and unfortunately, again, like I said, there’s some sadness to this story and certainly some passion wrapped up in this story. We get to the hospital and immediately they’re like, “We’ve got to stop labor. She’s not ready.” My daughter had had a bunch of complications previously. There was a lot of things going on, and they were like, “We can’t have this baby. It’s not safe right now.”

Anyway, so it is probably five o’clock in the morning on the 1st, the day we’re launching the new point of sale system. Again, there are other people who know how to use this, but I am like 90% the person in charge of this. My sister and my cousin who still work with Big Chief today with me, they have some knowledge. But they have knowledge to like, “Hey, Reed, what do I do here?” They don’t have knowledge like, “Hey, let me do this on my own.” Anyway, so it’s probably 5:30 in the morning and the nurse comes in. They’ve stopped labor. They’ve got labor completely stopped, and I said, “I hate to be this guy, but I’m just trying to get an idea of what do you feel like the next 24 hours look like?” I said, “My number one priority is this girl and my wife, but if we’re going to be… If there’s not anything going on, I have an obligation at work that I need to help with if I can.” My wife is super supportive.

She understood how important of a job this was. She understands the importance of taking care of our family and that sort of thing. There was no… She wasn’t upset at all or bothered by it at all. The nurse is like, “Reed, we’ve got this. There’s nothing going to happen for the next 48 hours with this child. If you need to go take care of some work, go take care of some work. Give me your cell phone number. We’ll call you if anything happens.” I go to work. I get there 6:30, 7 o’clock, and we’re starting to get things rolling and getting the new point of sale put together. I get a phone call from my wife. This is probably like 8:30 now. It’s probably been there for an hour and a half or so, and we’re very close to the hospital. I get a phone call and it’s my wife. On the other end, she’s just sobbing.

My wife, I’ve seen her cry three times. My wife, she’s tough, and she’s just sobbing. I said, “Joy, what’s going on?” I could hardly hear what she’s saying, but I make out the words that she said. She’s told me the doctor just came in and he said, “Kennedy’s probably not going to make it.” At that point I just looked at somebody and I was like, “I just have to leave.” At that point [inaudible 00:26:04] forget about everything else. I get to the hospital 15 minutes later, and obviously hated not being there for my wife to support her through that, to support each other through that. Again, very happy ending. She’s delivered. She’s super healthy. Way more healthy than they expected. She has open heart surgery later on through some complications, but we just celebrated her 12th birthday at Disney World last week. 12 years later, she’s doing great. Fantastic. Really happy ending. But when I think about my time in the tire business, that’s the story that really just… It just shows. It’s just the proof of what a family business is and how much it affects the whole family.

Mike:

Totally. That’s a great story. Wow. Couldn’t have been a bigger moment in the family life, the direct family life, and then as well as the business life. You’re making momentous change here. Monumental change I mean, and they both collide at the same time.

Reed:

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike:

But honestly I compliment you, it sounds like you handled it perfectly as best as you could. That’s all you can do under the circumstances, but I’m happy to hear that your little girl’s doing phenomenal. Kennedy’s her name?

Reed:

She’s fantastic. Kennedy. Yeah.

Mike:

That’s awesome.

Reed:

She’s just turned 12. Yeah.

Mike:

That’s awesome. Well, on a lighter note, what’s your favorite movie of all time?

Reed:

Favorite movie? It’s an easy one for me. It’s a Wonderful Life.

Mike:

Why is that?

Reed:

Again, when you lose a parent and a close friend the way I did, I think everything in your life… I was 36, 37 when dad passed away. 35 I guess. He was… Again, Dad was 59. We were just the best of friends, and I think everything in my life is shaped from that moment. That was his favorite movie. I had never watched it. I was 35 years old. I had never seen It’s a Wonderful Life. I sat down with my, at the time, 11-year-old. Not Kennedy, but my middle. I sat down with my middle the year after my dad passed.

He passed away in October. This is two months later. It’s just an emotional… I could feel my dad in the movie. Dad is a lot like the main character in the movie. He’s very sacrificial, giving of himself, just a lot… I can really relate to why Dad related so much, and just the importance of family and friends. That movie just really talks about how important family is, and how important friends are, and how much we matter. Sometimes we might think that how would life be any different without… That’s the whole premise of the movie is how would life be any different without me?

Mike:

Yes.

Reed:

You can see how crazy that whole town changes based on whether or not he lived or not.

Mike:

Well, it’s one of those movies that I don’t think I will each time, but every time towards the end I get a little teary-eyed. I get a little emotional with it because it’s so cool to recognize the fact that this guy who didn’t think he was that important… He wanted to be a big shot. He had that big… “I’m going to lasso the moon,” all that stuff. He had his buddy that went on in the plastics business when that was starting out, and that was huge. He didn’t think he had done anything for himself, but then that angel, Terrence… Wasn’t his name Terrence?

Reed:

Terrence. Yep.

Mike:

Yeah. He lets him know that basically this is what happens without you and… Yeah. It’s a great movie. Great movie. It really puts things in perspective around Christmastime too. It’s all about God, family and your friends, and put it all in perspective. That’s [inaudible 00:29:51]-

Reed:

Yeah. I think we all have that story. I think all of us make impacts in people’s lives that sometimes we don’t see. I think it’s just a beautiful message, just a beautiful… It’s my daughter… My middle daughter and I, it’s our tradition every year. She’s a teenager now. She’s hardcore teenager now, but it’s the one night of the year I know I’m getting her curled up next to me watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

Mike:

Well, she’ll always have that good memory with you, and that’ll be a connector. That’s a strong connector. That’s a great story. Well, man, I got to tell you it’s been a pleasure having you on here. I really appreciate you coming on.

Reed:

Yeah. No, it’s been great. I’ve really enjoyed it, Mike.

Mike:

Well, before I let you go, folks, I want to give a shout-out. I want to encourage you, the audience in particular, to learn more about the WTSBC, the Wheel, Tire, Suspension, & Brake Council of SEMA. They’re always looking for new and solid members, and so you might be asking yourself, “Why WTSBC?” Well, the Wheel, Tire, Suspension, & Brake Council is dedicated to industry growth, advocacy and connecting individuals and companies within the aftermarket segment of the wheel, tire, suspension and brake industry. To become a part of it or to learn more about it, just go to our website. I’m going to put a link on our website at Gain Traction podcast. Then you could also contact Council Director Nicole Bradle at (909) 323-2149. That’s Nicole at (909) 323-2149. Again, Reed, thanks a bunch for being part of the podcast.

Reed:

Yeah. Thanks, Mike, I appreciate you having me.

Mike:

To all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of the podcast. We are grateful for you. If you would like to recommend a guest to me, please email me at [email protected]. Till next time, be safe and have a great day.

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