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Danny Smith is the CEO of Same Day Auto Repair. With a background in the auto industry that spans over 28 years, Danny’s career began in high school, working for Chevrolet and steadily advancing through various roles. Despite his family not being in the industry, Danny’s strong work ethic and determination led him to master different aspects of the business, leading to the bold decision to venture into entrepreneurship. Today, as the head of his own shop, Danny navigates the complexities of tax laws, insurance liabilities, and business management.
In this episode…
Can a commitment to creating an extraordinary workplace culture lead to waiting lists of job applicants? Can a workplace philosophy that keeps employees thriving positively impact customer service as well?
According to Danny Smith, prioritizing the well-being of his team directly influences the quality of customer service at Same Day Auto Repair. The ingredients of a top-notch culture include Christmas parties featuring unique themes and substantial bonuses. By creating an environment where employees feel valued and motivated, Danny says it instills a dedication that translates into a superior customer experience.
On this episode of Gain Traction, Danny engages in a dynamic conversation with host Mike Edge. They delve into Danny’s rich history in the auto industry and explore his transition from hands-on car repairs to managing a successful business. He discusses the unique philosophy that sets his shop apart, with a focus on customer service, employee well-being, and the pursuit of consistent growth goals.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Danny Smith talks about the evolution of his career, from hands-on car repairs to business management
- The significance Danny places on creating a positive workplace environment and culture
- How work atmosphere can positively affect customer service
- How Christmas parties with substantial bonuses can enhance team performance
- Why Danny works not just for money but for the satisfaction of helping customers
- How the point system at Same Day Auto Repair is intricately tied to employee training and performance bonuses
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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 will be Danny Smith, owner of Same Day Auto Repair and Tire Pros.
But before we get started, this episode is brought to you by Tread Partners. Tread Partners is a tire and auto repair digital marketing agency with the sole focus of working with tire and auto repair shops that have five or more locations. If you want to be the best, you’ve got to hire the best. Tread does four things really well, websites, SEO, BPC, and IP targeting. These tools, when used correctly, generate fantastic results by putting more cars in your bays. To learn more, visit treadpartners.com.
Also, folks, I’d like to encourage you, if you haven’t already, to listen to a previous guest I’ve recently had, Jeff Mullersman, Midwest sales director for ATTURO Tires. You can check it out at gaintractionpodcast.com. Jeff’s just a… Man, we just had a great interview, very humorous, and he’s got a ton of tire experience, been in the industry a long time, and has a funny story as well. So, tune into that one. It’s on gaintractionpodcast.com.
As I mentioned in my introduction, our guest today is Danny. He’s owner-operator of Same Day Auto Repair and Tire Pros, with seven locations in Oklahoma, primarily around the Tulsa area.
Danny, welcome to the Gain Traction podcast. Glad to have you.
Danny:
Glad to be here.
Mike:
So, you’ve got a long history in the auto industry, and let’s kind of start from the beginning. When did you get started? How old were you when you fell in love with cars or tires, et cetera?
Danny:
I got started just right there in the high school deal. I worked for 12 years for Chevrolet, worked in the dealership world, automotive technician, did everything that you can imagine. I learned a little bit about how the pay scale was, and the transmission guy made more than the engine guy, so I learned how to do transmissions, and then next thing you know, the drive builder guy made more money than the transmission guy, so I learned how to do that. They introduced me to the flat rate hour, and somebody explained it to me, where you get… The harder you work, the more you make, and boy, when they taught me that, you’re in control of your own destiny. So yeah, I took off [inaudible 00:02:44].
Mike:
So this was in high school though, but your family wasn’t in the industry at all?
Danny:
No, my dad was an engineer, and mom was a stay-at-home mom, so she didn’t… We got by. We were pretty poor, I would say, but I never knew it. We never knew. As a child growing up, you didn’t know where our status was, but we got by and did well.
Mike:
That’s funny you say that, because I’ve got kids, and I can remember giving them gifts when they’re younger. And there’s no exaggeration in this. Sometimes when the… I’m talking about when they were really young. They were more interested in the box, the big box something came in, than what was in the box. Kids don’t know.
Danny:
I do that with my grandkids, a bottle of pop, a bottle cap, a rubber band, and a paper clip, and they’ll play for hours.
Mike:
So anyway, you’re in high school. And I didn’t mean to sidetrack. I’m good at that though. And you started recognizing where you could make money, and you just start learning each aspect of the business.
Danny:
Yeah, I never shied away from work. I got that work ethic from my father, and so I wasn’t ever afraid to work. When they introduced me to the ability to control your own pay by however hard you wanted to work, with the flat rate hour, that was, okay, I’ll be the first one there and last one to leave, because I could really rock and roll. And I did that for a long time, and I worked at some dealers, and then I went to work directly for General Motors. And I worked on… I still worked in the dealership on cars, but I was the person that was working on the car whenever somebody was mad, like they were going to… You’re have to buy it back, you know what I mean?
Mike:
Yeah. The real troubled ones.
Danny:
I went to a troubled dealer as a technician, and then I worked on those cars. Now, it wasn’t like I was some kind of genius or anything like that. It was more of a, I didn’t have any pressure on me, and it was a different set of eyes looking at it. And usually they were simple, easy repairs. But that’s how that went. I did that for a few years, and then I went and I worked at a couple troubled dealers that are in my hometown, so I wore their uniform, and I abided by their rules, and you were guilty by association.
And so I thought that I could do a better job and less money and I could build a company maybe that I wanted to work for. And so I left that industry and went into business myself. That was probably the most difficult and hardest decision of anything I’ve ever done in my life. And I did it, and the first thing I realized is I would’ve fired my butt a long time ago. Because you’re a little late coming in, or you took a little long lunch, or something like that. I never realized how much people relied upon me and my job. So it really changed my perception, because then I got to see it from a different aspect. I was telling a customer that I would have something done in a certain time, and I was there to help them, and then if my guy didn’t show up, I was thinking, man, I was that guy. So I learned a little bit about myself, and then I also learned a little bit about what it takes to be in business.
Mike:
Yeah, no, and that’s a lot of wisdom there, I can tell, talking, because of your experience, but to be able to look at yourself internally and recognize from your past and then your current employees, et cetera, that, yeah, I know where that guy is, but I’ve got to train him up, or have that thought process of been there, done that.
Danny:
Oh yeah. I started in a small shop that I rented, and it was just me. And then I had a good friend of mine that worked at the Chevy dealer, and he would work at night for the extra money, and then I got started and did some fleet accounts and what have you and stuff like that, and got that going, and that went broke, and they didn’t pay you.
Mike:
Oh, that’s brutal. Yes.
Danny:
I’m the old… I have lived it, and I’m just a car mechanic that had to learn how to be a business. I’ve been doing it 28 years now. We did almost 50,000 cars last year, I believe.
Mike:
That’s awesome.
Danny:
I have a hundred employees. It’s nuts. I spend my time… I don’t work on cars anymore. I haven’t worked on cars in quite a while. Now I spend all my time on tax laws and insurance liabilities and exposure and-
Mike:
All that fun stuff. Yeah.
Danny:
Oh yeah. It’s a complete different avenue.
Mike:
Now, when you say insurance, do you guys provide good insurance to your employees, or how’s that work?
Danny:
So you’re going to touch on a subject that’s going to open up a long conversation. So everywhere I go, I hear the same thing, we can’t find any help, we can’t hire any help. And so I don’t have that problem. I have a waiting list of people to come to work. And I’m going… I’ll share with you, because the world needs to know it. I don’t have anything to hide on this particular deal.
So I have two different philosophies in business. One of them is I’m going to take care of the customer. All my whole job here is to help them. And my second one is, I need to make sure that the environment and the culture that my guys are working for is as good or better than anything that could possibly be available. And so he noticed I didn’t say anything about working for money. I don’t work for money. Money comes, stuff like that. So I developed a culture years ago, because I wanted my place to be everything that I wanted to work for, right? I’ve said that.
Mike:
Right. Yeah.
Danny:
So my wife can go to the bathroom in any of my shops.
Mike:
Oh yeah, I get you. I get what you’re saying.
Danny:
There’s not very many… I can’t think of hardly any of them that anybody would do that. They have to keep it clean and stuff like that. If it’s already clean, nobody wants to be the person that leaves the fingerprint or anything like that. I have a store that’s next to a McDonald’s, and people will throw their trash out of their car onto the ground. And so the guys just, they didn’t get it. And I say, “You know what? Clean this parking lot up and make it spotless. Because nobody wants to be the first one.” And then what happens? As soon as we clean it up, it stopped. Very seldom does it happen. But if it’s already trashed, it’s easy. You know what I mean?
Mike:
Yeah.
Danny:
So anyways, excuse me. I pay… Well, I have bonus programs everybody is a part of. We have a point system that I developed where the more training you go to, the more points you could gain. And at the end of the year, we don’t have Christmas bonuses, we have performance bonuses, and you’re guaranteed to get something at our Christmas party. Our Christmas parties are epic.
Mike:
I love that.
Danny:
We have entertainment come in, whether it be magician. Last year was magician. We’ve had hypnotists come in and hypnotized guys. [inaudible 00:10:47]. My Christmas parties are epic, and everybody talks about it.
Mike:
So basically everybody makes the Christmas party.
Danny:
Yeah, we have, it’s a theme. And so every year’s a theme where they dress up as something. Last year’s was hippies, so we had it at a big casino. And you take a hundred employees and their wives, girlfriends, or significant others. That ends up being 200 people. And you take on a handful of [inaudible 00:11:13], and support personnel and stuff like that, and you have another 30 or so and you end up with a party of 250 people. It’s a lot. It’s a lot to take [inaudible 00:11:21].
Mike:
That’s a good party though.
Danny:
Yeah, but we develop our rebate program and our incentives that we get from our vendors. We put that in a Christmas fund, and we give a bunch of that away, majority of it, sometimes all of it.
Mike:
That’s awesome. So like your tire rebate stuff, you give some of that away?
Danny:
All of it.
Mike:
Oh, man. That’s cool. That’s cool.
Danny:
So last year, our Christmas party, we gave away $176,000.
Mike:
Oh my gosh.
Danny:
So we do this in two different ways. There is a cash bonus that they get, but it’s not cash. It is an Amazon gift card. The reason I do this that way is, if you give somebody cash, they’re just going to go pay a bill or something like that.
Mike:
You’re right.
Danny:
This a personal bonus for their performance, for their work. So I want to give them something that they have to go buy something for themselves.
Mike:
Yeah, so they enjoy it, so they enjoy it and actually have what the prize is or the gift is, yeah.
Danny:
So years ago we did Bass Pro cards, and then of course as you get larger and larger and larger, not everybody fishes or hunts or anything like that, so we just started doing the Amazon gift cards. And then we do that, and then we have games that we play at the party, and then I write a Christmas story every year. And when I write the Christmas story, everybody has a gift in their hand, and we call it [inaudible 00:12:56] Family Christmas. And I write it, and every time I say to the right, right or left, they have to pass it to the left or the right. And we do that where everybody has a gift in our hand, and we do this back and forth, and then as they mess up, we have to start the story over again. It’s a lot of fun.
Mike:
That’s cool.
Danny:
And at the end of the day… So in the background on the stage is iPhones, iPads, big screen TVs, Blackstone grills, just all kinds of stuff that the girls in the offices gather up throughout the year. And then everybody’s gift has a number in it. They open it up, and they go match it up, and that’s what they get, along with their Christmas [inaudible 00:13:40]. So our Christmas parties are pretty epic. That’s just a small part of the culture that we build.
Mike:
That’s awesome though. So when do you do the Christmas party? Like a month in advance of Christmas or…
Danny:
Yeah, usually it’s the first Saturday in December. And we moved it. I think next year’s is, I think it’s the second Saturday. I think December 1st, I think, is the first Saturday. And our venue was booked already for that, so we had to move it to the following. But we do that, and as a matter of fact, this next year is the first year ever that they’re doing red carpet. That’s what all, everybody wanted to do, was the red carpet. So they’re all going to get all glammed up and [inaudible 00:14:27].
Mike:
Really? That’s awesome. Well, it’s cool that you’re doing something different. Give them another experience.
Danny:
Yeah, we’ve done the ’30s theme, we’ve done the ’40s, we’ve done the ’60s, we did the hippies last year.
Mike:
It’s kind of cool that you do… Actually, it’s really cool that you do a theme with it, so it’s not like everybody just shows up kind of Christmas party. This has got a theme to it where in an aspect, it’s kind of like a Halloween costume or whatever. It makes it fun.
Danny:
It makes it so fun. And the thing that I am the most proud of is we have about 90% participation. Generally, everybody is dressed up in some form. There is always a handful that don’t, but generally they’re ones that probably haven’t worked here for very long. I have a big core group of my people that have been with me for more than 10 years. On your 10-year anniversary, you get a $5,000 cash check, and you get an additional week’s paid vacation.
Mike:
Dang.
Danny:
[inaudible 00:15:32]. So we do that. Everybody’s birthday is celebrated at shops. So if your birthday comes up, you’re going to get a birthday cake. A grown man generally hasn’t had a birthday cake since he was probably 13, 14 years old, because Mama took care of him. But as a grown man, your birthday cakes are pretty much over with. And you come to work here, you don’t know it, but on your birthday, you’re going to get a birthday cake, and we’re going to take your picture, and we’re going to put it all over social media and everything else. And you would not believe such a small gesture is a big thing in your culture. We recognize…
Mike:
Yeah. Because paying what, 30 bucks for a cake maybe or something like that, and you just-
Danny:
Oh, yeah, it’s not much, yeah.
Mike:
Not much, yeah. Just to say thank you.
Danny:
We’ve got the bakery, they pretty much keep them in stock for us, and then all they do is put names on them. Because when you have a hundred people, it’s somebody’s birthday every other day.
Mike:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Danny:
And then we do that.
Mike:
I love your philosophy though. You’ve really got it nailed down in the sense that, hey, once we get you, we don’t want to lose you. We don’t want you even thinking about going anywhere else. This is a family now. And why would you? You guys have some great, it sounds like great parties, but just constant recognition and then growth, like you said, the training, the point system. I’m fascinated by that. So how’d you come up with that? On your own? Did you take tidbits away from other people that you had read about or heard, or did you just-
Danny:
Well, for years we did a Christmas bonus. And that’s a gift. And that’s done. Well, in my opinion, that’s not what it’s about. I’m not giving anything to you. You earned it. So we don’t have a way to do profit sharing in our company because we have so many different pay scales. We have some people that are on commission. We have some people that are on flat rate. We have some people that are salary. And there’s just really not a way where you could X out a set of profit and say, “Hey, we’re going to share this, a percentage of this amount of money, and then we’re going to divide it amongst the troops.” Well, then you’ve got guys that worked for you for 25 years. You’ve got guys that worked for you for six months. So how do you do that? So I’ve always done it by tenure and status. If you have a guy that makes 150 grand a year, his $100 bonus, it’s not going to do him any good. You know what I mean? So they’re tiered, and they go accordingly. Well, then a few years back, I just, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the fact that people were talking about it as a Christmas bonus and stuff like that. And I was like, they’re missing the boat. It’s not a Christmas bonus. They earned it.
I gave away two $10,000 bonuses at our Christmas party this year. We had two guys. We had a deal at the Christmas party. I always announce our status of the company and where we’re going, what my goal is for the next year. And everybody knows this is what I’m trying to do. So I put them at ease, especially during the COVID, of our status of the company and how strong or how weak we are, so everybody knows, you know what I mean? And then I also put out what we’re going to try to do for the following year. And our goal is always 20%. We want to do 20% growth every year, and we’ve done that seven years in a row.
Mike:
Congratulations.
Danny:
I didn’t do it. Don’t get me… It’s not me.
Mike:
I got you.
Danny:
So these guys put in the time and effort and energy and stuff like that. So if the company’s doing well, and they all know we’re doing 20% every year or 18% or 23% or whatever the case may be, no matter what you do, people are always going to say, “Well, man, where’s my part?” You know what I mean? “I’m working my butt off of this company.”
If you work for 25 years at, say, American Airlines or one of these big companies, your 25-year anniversary is [inaudible 00:19:43], about all you’re going to get. You might get a watch maybe, or I’ve seen some companies give out a plaque or something like that, but they don’t owe you anything. They paid you. That’s what they owed you is what they paid you. Well, I kind of do it a little different now. You know what I mean?
So I’ve got a guy that has worked for me for 24 years, and his health has gotten not the greatest. I’ve known him… I worked with him at Chevrolet for a long time, and he quit fishing. He sold his boat, and he doesn’t do a whole lot. And I know he wants to go fishing because he’s got brand new grandkids. And it wasn’t even Christmastime, but we bought him a boat. The company bought him a boat.
Mike:
Really?
Danny:
And I mean, for gosh sakes, the guy worked for me for 25 years, 24 years. He’s still working for me now. I wasn’t real sure if he was going to make it to his 25th because he really needs to retire. [inaudible 00:20:48]. But he’s not in the greatest of shape. You know what I mean?
Mike:
Yeah.
Danny:
So hey, here, take this old boat. Go and enjoy your time with your grandkids and stuff like that. I’ve asked him, “Are you ready to retire?” And he goes, “No, I’ve got to still work.” Okay. So he’s got a two-year goal in his mind. I just wasn’t sure if he was going to make it, because his wife retired, and so I figured when she retired, he would, too.
And anyway, at the Christmas party, I stood up there and said, we had a couple of guys that were pretty close to selling a million dollars in sales. And I said, you know what? It’s the first one that… Hey, you done let my mouth run away sometimes. First one of you guys that gets to the million dollars, I’ll give you a $10,000 bonus.
So that’s a pretty lofty goal. And then about July, Dan is my right-hand guy, Dan Combs, Dan come to me, and he says, “Hey, we’ve got two or three guys that are going for that deal.” And they went, and we video the deal, and they went and rewound the video, and it was, “You said the first one that got there.” And I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “Well, they’re in a heck of a race.” He goes, “It’s like $3,000 or $4,000 separated. They’re in [inaudible 00:22:02].”
Mike:
Oh my gosh.
Danny:
And I said, “Really?” He goes, “Okay.” He goes, “What are you going to do?” “I don’t know, and so we’ll address it when he gets closer.” Well, come October, two of them were within $3,000 or $4,000 of each other, and they were at the 800,000 mark, and he was like, “They’re in separate stores, so it’s really cool that they’re that close together.” And the other one, he had fell off a little bit, and he says, “I think they’re both going to make it.” And he goes, “What do you think?” And I said, “I’m going to write them both a check.” And he goes, “Both of them?” I said, “Dan, they sold a million dollars worth of stuff. Heck yeah I’m going to write them a check.” So we gave away two $10,000 bonuses, and we gave away a boat. My wife’s like, “Really?” I said, “Yep.” I said, “But listen to me. It takes $10,000 to $15,000 to onboard a brand new employee.”
All righty? So we had 22 new jobs developed in, or 22 to 23, 22 new positions. So if you hired, and we did, we hired about 45 to 50 people. So 25 people didn’t make the cut. They were hired, and they just didn’t make it. So if the guy training the guy, let’s just say he makes over $10,000 a month, and he trains him for two weeks on our point of sale system and our culture and how we do things, and then for two weeks, he works with another guy that makes about $10,000 a month. So to get established and stuff like that, he hasn’t produced a dime, but we spent 10 grand on training him with the salaries of the two guys that are training him, because they’re not producing anything because they’re focused on training this guy. Then I also paid that guy some kind of money for his first month of being here, which is probably going to be at least $3,000, maybe $4,000. So I’ve got 13 grand in him, and I had 25 of them not make it. You know what I mean? So we really work on our system and our process to get that to where that doesn’t happen, but I still spend a half a million dollars on people that are not even here.
Mike:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:24:43]. But that puts it in perspective, the way you got it broken down, and then it gives you the perspective of why you want to be so good and fair and open and generous to everybody that you have. That way… Danny, the way I look at it, too, and correct me if I’m wrong, but man, it removes a lot of headache from you when you get people that care.
Danny:
Yeah. So it self-polices. So if I have such a great place to work… And nobody wants to get up in the morning and just be miserable, “I hate going to work.” Hopefully I don’t have that. I’m sure I have maybe one or two of these oil changers or tire guys that have a life expectancy of a short period of time. We try to take those guys and find the guy that wants to work, and we have a training program within the company so they can get a chance to move up into the technicians, and we try to build our own technicians. So we’re doing all that as we can, but there are still going to be a handful of turnover there. Even your oil change tire guys that are making $15 to $20 an hour, the turnover on that is still expensive, because they go a month without actually producing any amount of money. And if you’re paying them a couple to 3, 2 grand a month, and you’re paying the guy standing next to him, basically half of his salary is going towards training that guy. So you end up with $3,000 or $4,000 per person in training, just on a lower end level.
And on a service manager or service advisor, it’s 10 to 15, 18 grand of investment and training into that person. So I have decided that I can give away a couple of $10,000 bonuses and a boat and these parties that cost us this much and everything else, and it behooves me 10 times on my bottom line. And then if I do have a bad hire, and it happens, there’s people that have character flaws that get through your system that you don’t know about, and they might be a hack, or they might be lazy or whatever, and they do a really poor job, or they don’t put all the parts on the car that they said they did or something like that. And I don’t have to worry about it ever getting out the door, because my guys are watching, they’re self-policing, because they don’t want somebody to damage what they got.
Mike:
That’s awesome. That’s beautiful.
Danny:
If you have a job that you love, if somebody comes in and jeopardizes it, they’re going to go to fight. I don’t even have to worry about it.
Mike:
Yeah, the company’s become their baby, too, right? They care about it.
Danny:
I’ve had oil changers come and say, “We need to fire that oil changer.” And I was like, “Okay, why?” You know what I mean? And, “Because, man, he’s just not even [inaudible 00:27:36].” And I say, “Okay.” So that’s just one side of my business.
Mike:
No, I got it. I got it. But well, we’ve run up on our time here, but I’ve got to ask you a couple of real tough questions. You got a funny story you can share with our audience? I do a little segment called “Make us Laugh.” Anything happen in the shop or that you can tell us, keep it clean, type thing?
Danny:
Yeah. We had a person break into the shop a couple of years ago, Thanksgiving. And I was on a hunting trip in Texas. So I’m down on a [inaudible 00:28:11], and it’s nighttime, of course, and I get the phone call that [inaudible 00:28:16] one of the shops. So we have camera systems. And so I’m looking at the cameras and talking to the police, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there’s a guy in the shop.” You know what I mean? I said, “Oh, this is not a false alarm. This is a real deal.”
And so this guy’s just walking around in the shop. He wasn’t stealing anything. And then he goes around, and he puts on a uniform of one of the guys and a hat. And I was like, “Okay, so I guess he’s going to impersonate somebody.” And then the shop is full of cars. So this shop’s got 19 bays. So there’s 19 cars inside the shop, because we bring them in at night. And he decides that he’s going to steal this particular car, which was the worst car in the whole shop, and all of them got the keys in.
Mike:
But he selected the worst-looking one?
Danny:
Yeah, it was a beater with a heater. And that particular car had a blown up motor in it. That’s why it was there. We were going to replace the motor.
Mike:
This is like live TV for you, live TV for you.
Danny:
Yeah [inaudible 00:29:19] the police. And of course, they’re trying to gather how they’re going to, plan of attack, and what they’re going to do. And they’re waiting to see what this guy’s going to do. So the guy starts this car. We were shocked that it even started. Because you’ve got to remember, I’ve got three or four of my guys that are with me that we’re hunting together.
Mike:
So everybody’s shocked. How did he get it started?
Danny:
Yeah, he drives through the door.
Mike:
Oh my God.
Danny:
And we have locks on the inside of the doors. So he just drives through this glass door. Anyway, I couldn’t believe the car even ran. So he goes around the building, and then he can’t get out of the building because we have gates, and they’re log chained up and everything else. So he drives back into the building in this car, over the crunched up garage door, and goes right back into the bay where it was at. And he gets out. And I’m on the phone with the cops, like, “Get him before he tears anything else up.” Anyway, he jumps the fence, and they come in the front, and he goes out the back, and he gets away. And mind you, there was at least 30 police officers. Well, I was pretty upset. I was like, “He got away.”
Mike:
How’d y’all miss him? Yeah.
Danny:
About a few minutes, and they called me back, and they said, “Hey, we caught him. We’re going to bring him into your shop and put him in front of that camera so you can identify him.” I said, “Well, he’s got Jim’s shirt on, and he has a [inaudible 00:30:36] on, and he has Nike shoes.” Anyway, they bring him and put him in front of this camera. Now, mind you, I’d watched this guy for probably 10, maybe even 15 minutes on cameras. And our cameras are really, really good.
Mike:
Crystal clear [inaudible 00:30:51], yeah.
Danny:
I could see him really good. Well, that guy that they brought up in front of the camera, that was him. Man, they beat that guy to a pulp. He was resisting arrest and trying to fight and everything else, and his eyes were swelled shut.
Mike:
Oh my gosh. No, that’s a great story. That’s like, you got to watch… I hate that it was your own store, but it’s like one of those cop shows where you’re watching dumb criminals or something like that.
Danny:
Oh, it was, yeah. And he was of course on the meth or whatever.
Mike:
Something, yeah. Yeah. Well, another question I got for you. I love that story. What’s a favorite hobby of yours? What do you do when you’re not working?
Danny:
Oh gosh. So I drive sprint cars, which are winged dirt race cars.
Mike:
That’s the wing on top, right?
Danny:
Yeah. So they have… Oh, they’re about 800 horsepower, 900 horsepower, and may weigh about 1200 pounds.
Mike:
Nice.
Danny:
So I’ve been doing that for 30 plus years. I’m almost too old to be doing it anymore, but…
Mike:
I wasn’t going to say that. I was about to ask you, what’s the average age of those racers?
Danny:
Well, my youngest son is doing it as well, and so I still go and do that. I still have… I’ve got a lot of try in me still. My wife asked me all the time, she goes, “How much longer are we going to do this?” I have plates and screws in my neck from it.
Mike:
Oh, nice.
Danny:
We’ve taken some pretty bad crashes throughout our lives, but we win a lot of races.
Mike:
That’s fun. Well, Danny, I can’t thank you enough for being part of gaining Traction podcast. It’s been a pleasure.
Danny:
Appreciate your time and effort.
Mike:
Yeah. So to all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of our podcast. If you’d like to recommend a guest, please do so. You can email me at [email protected]. Until next time, be safe and have a great day.
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