Perseverance and staying true to core values are essential elements for any business to become successful. But along the way,  difficult obstacles and failures are unavoidable. How can we turn these challenges into stepping stones for growth and improvement?

In this episode, I have Tim Shaffer, Co-Founder and CEO of SearchTires. We discuss the importance of supporting local brick-and-mortar businesses and the model he created to help consumers find the best local prices on car tires. Tim shares how he learned from early mistakes to build a simple, user-friendly platform that solves a real consumer need. Tune in, and learn more!

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Overcoming Failure to Find Success with Tim Shaffer

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidotes in the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things I’ve alluded to in some of my past episodes is this idea of four barriers to success and when I talk about these four barriers, there’s other versions of it, I generally think of awareness, action, persistence, and then, of course, dealing with some kind of a setback or dealing with some kind of a failure often, people oftentimes have to readjust. My guest today is Tim Shaffer, he’s the founder and CEO of SearchTires and has a really interesting story about kind of implementing all of that to go after a specific niche, a specific corner of our business world that he feels really passionate about.

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Tim, welcome to the program.

 

Thanks for having me, Stephen. Look forward to it.

 

Definitely. Now, let’s start out with SearchTires. So, first, obviously, when I talk about this awareness action and then persistence or sacrifice and then failure, the first thing is awareness and action so what made you decide that you wanted to start a business on your own and then what made you decide that searching for tire prices was going to be the objective of your business? 

 

I come from a tire background. I worked in corporate America for 15 years in that background. Late 2009, I was in Colorado and I’ll never forget it, I was in a hot tub and I was skiing and another guy behind me was talking about Kayak because Kayak just came out and how he found flights on Kayak or something or something, and I’m thinking I’m in the tire business, why don’t we have something where people can look online, agnostically, at all the prices and then pick the place they want to go to? And so that’s how I came up with, so that was the awareness that we really need a tool like this because it helps people save money and more and more as the prices go up. The average price of tires is $700 a set and we save people an average of $180 a set of tires. So, I wanted to implement that even back then, but then the next step you’re talking to is the big step. I have the idea, how do I go do it? Because you’re afraid. It’s like, holy moly, this is a great idea, how do I overcome the fear of coming out of corporate America, which is a lot of work, but the stability is there, compared to on your own, so I inevitably built this kind of out in the background while I was working, and, in 2012, I went out on my own and started to – started on this project, I should say.

 

Yeah. So, one of the interesting things that people often talk about is niching in businesses and one of the areas where I see this manifest a lot is, of course, when people talk about their target audience and a target audience like, okay, I’m here to serve, you can use traditional demographics or, increasingly, people use psychographics, but your niching seems to be less about who you’re selling to in the sense of I’m looking for people that have this psychographic experience, the person that, I don’t know, goes golfing and watches certain programs on TV and more the micro niche within the human experience in that you didn’t go and try to tackle, say, all auto parts or all transportation or something huge. You stuck with tires. What made that successful? And does the idea of niching work the same way with respect to who and what?

 

Yeah, that’s a very good question. So, a couple things. At the same time I went out and I did this, started on this project, I also started a marketing company for marketing other things, not just tires because I knew I needed to have income while I was building this out. So I actually left and started a couple businesses at the same time and the one business was able to support the other one. So, in saying that, with the with the tire industry, why it’s attractive to me because it’s something that I know very well and I’ve seen it in action for so many years. I know directly how I can impact people every day. So the niche is everybody who buys tires, which, by the way, is 360 million people a year, it’s $58.8 billion market, so that’s the market size but that’s not what I’m passionate about, I’m passionate about – the funny thing is that I don’t sell anything. I’m a price comparison thing and we derive no money from it. It costs me money to do it but I think it’s a valuable tool to have people save money. Now, that being said, people are probably thinking right now, you can’t do it for free the whole time and that’s right, yes, that is correct, so the thing that we do have that’s not pointed to any specific person name, phone numbers or anything, we do collect data. So, you’re making model of cars, what kinds of tires and different sections they’re selling. Now that’s the valuable part of the business, And, again, it’s agnostic so I can support every retailer and I can support every tire. It depends on what they want. I’m just going to give them what they’re looking for and then they make the selections themselves. So, that’s kind of how I’ve come to this point because I don’t know if you want to get into it now but there is a failure aspect to this before I’m where I’m at now. 

 

Yeah, and so that’s like the next two in that four-step model is after awareness, this is what I want to do, taking action, that hard step you said before, then there’s the sacrifice of I’m going to put some energy into it, I’m going to give up something else, some kind of a short-term pleasure, usually, and then, finally, there’s that overcoming some sort of failure, well, some form of setback could be more general. So, you had your experience where you started this company as well as several others. Yeah, what went down that kind of made you have to go over those last couple of hurdles?

If you’re passionate, you’re resilient. You can make it. It’s for sure. I mean, it’s the resilience part, and you’re going to have failure. Anybody that doesn’t have failure, that’s just not realistic. So, in the first iteration of the SearchTires, I had another iteration I come up with, I built it all out, spent all this time and a lot of money building this iteration out and I launched it in 2013. I had all kind of press, all in the tire magazines, I got a bunch of retailers to sign up, and, in two years, it failed. And it failed because I was trying to please the customer and the retailer. I was trying to please both. And it’s kind of hard to go for two ways. So it kind of worked but it was really never going to have the success long term so, basically, I shut it down. I shut it down 2016, kept marketing what I’m doing, and then I come out with a new iteration of SearchTires where I said I’m clearly just going to help the consumer and the local brick and mortar. What I mean by local brick and mortar is that these e-tailers have jumped into the market. They’ve taken 12 percent of this market and they ship tires to local tire shops to install them so what they’re doing is they’re taking that money away from the retailer that’s paying for community taxes, they’re paying for rent, they’re paying for local people to hire, Little League baseball teams and all that stuff, so they’re essentially taking that gap up so what I did is I said, well, I want to come up with something that’s driving it back to where someone can look for a tire and go get it put on today. They don’t have to wait to ship them, none of that stuff. They go get it done today in their local community. And so that’s why I call it the community-based platform. And since we did this and we launched this, we launched it nationwide probably a little over a year ago, the people that have taken onto it, it’s phenomenal. I look at it, the growth and stuff like that, it’s super exciting, I’m super passionate about and I get to help people save money. At the same time, local retailers get the up as well as get the customers and, now, we’re getting ready to go into a next iteration that’s going to be even better and we’re going to put more behind it because we can, and it’s just going to help more people. And I always tell people that in my career as an entrepreneur, I’ve really been an entrepreneur off and on since I’ve been 15 or 16 but I went to work for corporate America, but I’ll just say this, resilience is part of it, failure is going to be part of it, but never chase money. It’s always the worst thing.

I always say that I’m just trying to build the best product I can. If I build the best product I can, the byproduct will be money. Share on X

But that’s not what you concentrate on. You concentrate on building it to help people. It’s like that one guy from McDonald’s that says convenience will never go out of style. So if you’re creating something for convenience for someone, that’s going to be the best thing. 

 

So, speaking from where you are now, are you glad that your first iteration of your business failed so that you could kind of reassert that and come up with something that really seems to match your values around bringing back that community retailer and being a responsible member of the community with your platform?

 

One hundred percent. If I didn’t have that failure, I would not have known how to pivot and make it right, because if it would have been even remotely good, I would have still been going down the wrong path of what I really wanted to do but what I want to do in my head, it wasn’t on the screen and so it gave me the chance to step back, take in the failure, because it doesn’t feel good, and then reevaluate, like we know this is popular, what are the steps that I took that was not the right steps? How can I fix that? And then that took four and a half years. I thought about it every single day. But after four and a half years, I said, hey, I think I got it, we’re going to do this. And since late 2021, that’s what we’ve done. We’ve been building this out and it’s been successful and it’s growing and growing. And it’s not an overnight success but it is a passion that I love to have and I love helping people and I love the responses we get from people. Our net promoter scores super high. The stickiness is great. And the bottom line is I get to help people, which I’m passionate about, I love people, and I get help brick and mortar retailers who pay the bills and they have employees and they employ people to do what they do. So I’m really happy with both of that.

 

So, if we were to look back at 2013 and think back to that first iteration, what do you think was missing from that? Is there something that you could look back on and say, “I wasn’t assertive on this, I wasn’t thinking on this”?

 

Yeah. What it was was I was trying to help people and monetize at the same time. The platform was a little invasive. Instead of now, they just look for something and they pick it and they go do it and the deal is only one thing, in that iteration, they pick someone and then they fill out a form and I get it and send it to the retailer and try to say, “Hey, that lead is X amount of dollars. You owe me for that lead,” and then it turns into a struggle. It had good parts of it but that part of it was awful and invasive to people. A lot of people did it, but, I mean – and then you have to fight with people about getting paid for the lead and it just turned into just something like, you know, this ain’t going to work. 

 

Oh, that can really be a challenge. And we talked about it not being an overnight success and I’ve heard a lot of people argue and I generally agree with this that there are very, very exceedingly few examples of overnight successes. And, in most cases, what you observe doesn’t really take into account the however many thousands of hours of thinking, ideation, work, sweat that went into it because you didn’t know that person was doing it. So with that four and a half years that you went through between when you started and kind of churning it, overcoming that failure of the first iteration and then rethinking, what kept you through both mentally as well as obviously resource wise?

 

Yeah, well, fortunate enough, we still had the marketing companies that we started before. So, in that iteration, that’s what taught me what customers really wanted because, in marketing, you always do testing on what people are engaged with and, through that process, it was able to let me know that it didn’t matter what I think was important, it matters what I put on the field and the customers’ thought was important. So, literally, it’s testing and letting them make the decisions. And once I was able to overcome that, because when you’re an entrepreneur, you think you have a great idea and you think you have a path for it, it’s not always the right path so you have to be – I call it open to instruction. And when you test this stuff, then you see what the customers really want and then when you implement that, that’s when it wins because in the tire business, it’s so funny, 2 percent of the people want to know really a lot about it but most people want to know how much, how long, and where you at. That’s all they want to know. So I’m providing them that but also I’m providing them with the other stuff if they want it too. But, I mean, the average person on our site is on our site for 4 minutes and 11 seconds. We’re blue ocean, by the way. Before this, you have to go to five or six websites, get frustrated, “I don’t know if that tire’s the same,” but the most shocking thing that I will tell people that will shock people, no matter where you’re at or where I’m at, there is tire retailers in this area that are less than two miles away from each other and they have the same tire but that tire is $100 more a tire at one place than the other place because they don’t have the correct data to make a decision to make it, like I don’t think they’re doing it on purpose, they just don’t have that data and that’s what we’re trying to flow down to the people like, “Hey, this is the data and this is what you need to do,” so that’s the data side of it. But it’s shocking, though, when people see that, they’re like, in a true lifetime agnostic price comparison site, that’s pretty powerful. 

 

It is really powerful, and it’s funny that you originally mentioned Kayak, because I think of the same thing when I think of people choosing flights. People are generally thinking of a couple things. They’re thinking of, obviously, they know what airport they’re leaving out of, what airport they’re arriving at, but it’s a similar simplistic calculation for a lot of people to think, “Okay, how much is the flight? Is it nonstop or is there a layover somewhere, which can be really annoying, and how close is it to the time when I want to depart, the time when I want to leave?” and I think we all kind of synthesize those three or four things together the same way it is with tires, how close to home is it, when’s it going to come to me, and how much does it cost.

 

Tires, by the time they figure out they need tires, most people don’t plan for it. I mean, the average tire purchase is made within 72 hours so once they find out they need tires, within 72 hours, because you really don’t have a choice, and a lot of people aren’t looking at their tires. So for us to be able to provide a pathway for them to save money, what I’m passionate about is that there’s someone that you may not know of that’s in your community that I’m going to show you on the site, you’re going to say, “Wow, I didn’t know they had that. I’m gonna go get the tires there.” 

 

And you talk a bit about the impact businesses have on their community and I think people oftentimes think of a lot of businesses that aren’t really thinking about a lot of businesses that are simply only thinking about profit. In your view, what does a business owe their community, if anything? Or is it just a nicer kind of icing on the cake if you have a successful business and then you can also have a positive impact on the community around you? 

 

Yeah, I think it’s inherent in local brick and mortar. I call them brick and mortar businesses. So even if it’s a big, if it’s Firestone, Goodyear, it doesn’t matter, Discount Tire, it doesn’t matter who the big ones are, they’re still employing local people. They’re the same ones that sponsor local Little League teams or volleyball teams and all that stuff so it’s inherent that they are involved in that market, and so that’s why I call them brick and mortar because the bottom line is and why I’m passionate about this, if online e-tailer, I call them online e-tailers, if they continue to sell tires and they continue to build market share, they’re going to put these people out of business. And guess what? If they put them out of business, they don’t have no one to install their tires. It’s dysfunctional. It’s like you can’t have both. 

 

So it sounds like what you’re saying is it’s not a sustainable business model even though it’s taken off over the recent two, three decades or so. 

 

There is a place for people to have specialty tires that they need. I’m not saying it’s not a thing for some people. ATVs, all that kind of stuff, really cool. But I’m saying for the person that found out that they need tires today at their shop, they need to be able to go somewhere, compare them to tires, save 180 bucks, and go get them put on today. It doesn’t matter where you do it, we just like you to do it locally within your communities and save money at the same time. That’s the service we provide. And it’s like Alex Hormozi says, he says, and I thought about this a lot in the second iteration,

...you got to build something that’s so simple to use that people would feel stupid not to use it. Share on X

So you talk about the impact of your business and you talk about saving people money. What role does the impact on time have? Because I need to tell you one thing, I am sick as fuck to be 100 percent honest, of long, drawn-out research of things on the internet, which it seems like increasingly more and more things that you have to do just take you there. And so it feels like there’s a powerful aspect of it when you say the 4 minutes and 11 seconds is that people, I think, unless you’re one of those real gear heads or with the ATVs as you were discussing, people generally want to be over and done with the process as quick as possible and back on the road driving like normal. 

 

Yeah. And you know what the second most pain point in the United States is besides people doing their taxes?

 

What?

 

Buying tires. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “All right, I’m gonna go buy some tires for my car.” No one does that. They’re like, “Oh my god, I have to go get tires for my car.” So what my goal is, and I’ve seen it over the years, so what I’m passionate about is I can make this easy for them. They go on and they look, and then they can click to call, they can click for directions, or they can click to go to the website to schedule an appointment. That’s what we do. We’re the source of the source. We put it all out there, let you make the decision. And, again, it’s like you said, no one wants to shop for four or five hours for tires and have it in the back of your mind. When they need tires, they want to go to a place, look, compare them against everybody else, “That’s the tire I want,” get all the information, make an appointment, and go get it put on. Done. 

 

Yeah. I mean, I can’t imagine that many people at this point in time, summer of 2024, that are still in the phase or they’re excited about the idea of online shopping for more things than they’re already doing in their day to day lives. 

 

We could have sold tires online and do it, but I said, no, our differentiators and why we’re blue ocean is because I don’t want to sell anything. I want to provide the information to the consumer to make the best decision they can today and go get them put on. Our bounce rate is like 15 percent, which is unheard of. So, our engagement rate is like, our net promoter score is like 9.8. So –

 

And right quick, just so the audience is oriented to this, what are you referring to when you say bounce rate?

 

So bounce rate, a good bounce rate for most people is 60 percent. That means if someone clicks on your site, 60 percent of them will say, “Oh, I didn’t mean to go there,” and then they jump out. They jump off your site. So we’re at like 15 percent, so when people go to our site, it’s generally an engaged site. Fifteen percent is really unheard of in the market. But you think about it though, the people that are going to our site is someone that needs tires. In my head, it’s like, well, if they need tires, they go to our site, all they have to do is put in the year, make, and model or the size and then they’re going to see all the shops that have it and the prices, click on a tire, and then next screen shows them where it’s at and then they can click – it’s a three-step process, it’s really simple. So when all of it’s set, like I told you, 4 minutes and 11 seconds, so in that time, that average time, it’s efficient, save some time, save some money, and it makes them, in their mind, say, “Hey, I really shopped. I got the best deal.” So if a wife or a husband task one or the other to get their tires, someone could go on our site and say, “Oh, honey, I already got that done. Let’s go put them on.” It’s like, what do you mean? In five minutes you have it done? Because someone is used to going longer. So that’s the advantage of it. It doesn’t take up a lot of your time to do it. 

 

And is there some aspect of your personality or your interests, your values, that makes you really attuned to the human experience? Because I think we’ve all seen a lot of websites and seen a lot of shopping, buying things experiences that don’t seem to really take any of this into account and it’s just a chaotic mess of some kind. 

Yeah. So, first and foremost, I’m really a people person. I’ve traveled a bit when I was young, I was fortunate enough to, but the biggest thing is I grew up in a small community of 1,600 people and when I was 15 years old, I moved from a community of 1,500 people to Boca Raton, Florida, which was a cultural shock for me. It ended up being the best thing for me. But I think the best thing that people can do is like, I’m a people person, I love to talk to people, get different versions of everything, and I like the agnostic role of it and I genuinely want to help other people.

I think that’s the best thing in the world. I mean, for me, it makes me feel good, it gives me a sense of accomplishment, and it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. I mean, if I could create a better way to help someone shop or do anything, I think that’s a great thing to do, no matter who or what it is, what businesses it is, I think that’s the first and foremost thing for me, that’s what makes me passionate about it, it makes me – I feel like I have a personal relationship with everybody that goes to site because I’m able to put that out there and let them save money and get things done efficiently and go on with their day and not have to worry about it. 

 

Now, if we were to step back and think of long term, think of the entire history of business, do you believe that helping others is an essential, a core component of what a business is and what a business should be? 

 

Yeah, I believe that, absolutely. But everything that’s done really well has always usually been helping people. That’s the businesses – that’s the business that I’m pulled to, right? I’m pulled to businesses like that, and I think there’s other businesses that do really well, but if you look at the foundation of most of them, it is about helping people and that’s what helps them grow. And then you got to be a good steward of the people that you’ve attracted and make sure you keep your integrity and you don’t go down a road that I’ve seen other people go on, because that does happen in some businesses so you got to keep your core values aligned with your customer or your consumers. 

 

Now, thinking to the future, because I think there are a lot of people that are concerned right now around businesses that haven’t been helping people, whether it be because of some sort of trickery or some sort of ill-advised regulation, stamping out competition, excessive mergers, whatever, do you think going forward, as people become more aware of who they’re doing business with, especially some of the younger generations out there now, that businesses that stay true to that core value of what they want to serve the world with, with your example being I’m bringing to the world a quick, easy way to get the best possible price in your local community for your tires, will inherently start doing better than the businesses that we’ve seen that may have lost their way?

 

Yeah, yes, I believe that, and I’m going to tell you why I believe that, and I’ve given a lot of thought to this as well. And I think, when I grew up, people look at the product was helping people, right? I mean, they would look at the product. But now, the way the younger generation is now, they want the product to help them but also there’s so much information on the web and stuff like that, a lot of them are going to research who the CEO is and what his values are. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I think more people are attuned to not just the product, and some people are, but there’s more inquisitive people and there’s so much information on the web right now that someone will research your company and see did he do anything boneheaded that I don’t like, then I’m not going to support his company. I mean, I think that the element is out there, right? I think that, more now than ever, I mean, so I think that the way I do things, I’ve always been transparent, open. Even the pricing, that’s what we call it. Transparency is trust. It’s the same way, I’m an open book the same way.

’I'm not perfect by any way, shape, or form, but I did the best I could and I maintained my integrity and do it the best way I can. That’s all I can do. Share on X

Now, this reminds me of an old movie, some of you might not be old enough to remember it but there was this movie out there called Tommy Boy back in, I think, 1996, and I remember one of the main characters, some Zalinsky Auto Parts guy, would always say on screen, “I make parts for the American working man because that’s who I am and that’s what I care about,” and then, of course, you find out that behind the scenes, he’s really just all about money. So, is that kind of the example of the type of person who maybe before all this information was readily available to everyone would kind of go by and everyone just floats by and be like, “Oh, he looks like a nice guy,” but, nowadays, people would find out and expose something like that?

 

I believe that 100 percent. I mean – that was Dan Aykroyd, by the way. I believe that companies were able to act in a totally different way. It probably ended when the internet started to pop up and probably in the 2005, 2006 is it really started to turn. Seventies, eighties, nineties, I mean, they could pretty much have carte blanche. And if you look through things on corporate companies on things that CEOs and other people in the companies, you’re going to find a lot of nefarious acts happened in that time. I think you just have to be better now. I think you do. I mean, a lot of that stuff’s out there and there’s some companies that are old and you’re never going to find the information, but the newer companies that are up and coming, like myself and stuff like that, I think you need to stand up and answer the questions, and when you’re asked, you answer and answer truthfully. That’s what I do. I go on a ton of podcasts and that’s what I like. I want to share my story. I want to inspire other people to the, “Hey, yeah, it’s scary. It’s scary to start anything, but you’re in control of your own destiny and if it’s a good idea, invest in yourself.” Because corporate companies, just the big corporate companies nowadays are just totally different than they used to be. I mean, my dad worked for IBM as an engineer for years and he got an early retirement package that was great but no one’s going to see the packages anymore, and I believe it. So it’s just different. The atmosphere is different. There’s just different regulations, different costs and all this. And I just like it easy. I wanted to create an easy platform for people to use, I’m passionate about it, and, yeah, let me help people and chips fall where they fall. 

 

Now, with the transparency thing, there are some people who, on the flip side, are a little bit concerned that some people have treated it almost akin to a witch hunt, where someone’s combing through someone’s tweets from 2009, which is not relevant, you know what I mean? As opposed to looking at, say, the overall picture. Do you think now that we’re kind of reaching, finding a way to synthesize all this into a proper equilibrium where we are looking for the bad actors, we are looking for the people that really kind of have been doing some shady stuff, but we’ve kind of knocked off some of this, “Oh, one bad tweet, one word mispronounced or misused and we’re gonna try to sink your whole company”?

 

Yeah. Yeah. I believe that that happens now and all I can say is that everybody makes mistakes, all of us. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, there’s a certain time when we make mistakes, and luckily for me that I’m older, I don’t really know how to use social media that good, I’m only on Facebook, I don’t even do Twitter or any of that stuff. I believe that second chances should be out there. Depends on, obviously, how bad it was and what was said. But I just think that I look for the best in people and, what you said, I say this, the way some of society is now that really bothers me, my pain point is that some people look for the negative in the positive all the time. They’re not looking for the positive side of it. They see it and they’re like, “Oh, there’s something wrong. Let me go look for the negative,” and then they try to tear it down. I mean, even if the guy saves 20,000 people, like you said, “Oh, there was a tweet 10 years ago where he said that he didn’t like people.” Obviously, he does, he helped a thousand people. I mean, so I would say take it with a grain of salt because we never know what’s inside of other people’s heads. I mean, we don’t know how their days are going. We don’t know what’s going on in their lives. It’s like I always say, I was always taught as I was growing up, there’s seasons of life, right? You go through different seasons of life, and sometimes them seasons, you can be an idiot. Then the next season, you can be – and judge me as a whole group, not as just the one season. That’s what I would say. 

 

Yeah, there is a way to dig a little bit deeper and hopefully get to know someone a little bit more than just one bullet point or one surface level impression before making a judgment on that person. 

 

Yeah, because I look at myself and I say a 20-year-old me would say something totally different than stuff I would say now. I mean, but that’s part of growing up and learning and experiences and all the stuff that we have, and living this beautiful thing we call life. I mean, you get to go through it and learn more and be more empathetic, more humble, less ego. I mean, when you’re young and you’re like that, I mean, I was an athlete so I was really competitive, which, on the other hand, that makes you proud of ego, all that stuff comes into play, and, yeah, I would just say let’s let them make their mistakes when they’re young, like we all did, and let’s try to be forgiving of that and judge them for the people that they become and not a few things they said. God knows when I was 12 through 20, I probably not said some – I wasn’t the most perfect person. I mean, I like to think mostly I was, but you’re young, you say dumb things. 

 

Yeah, everyone does something dumb. 

 

Yeah. 

 

Now, I’ve heard the term brick and mortar as well and I’ve always thought of brick and mortar maybe a little bit literally in that brick and the mortar is what makes up the physical building and meaning contrasting a company that has a storefront with a business that’s primarily doing business through online, something more data oriented, Google and Amazon or something like that. I think during the pandemic, we had a brief view of what the world without brick and mortar, where everything was done online looked like and a lot of people did not love it. But you also talk a bit about how there are still some things, you talk about the specialty person with the ATV and stuff like that where you’re going to want to access online because you’re going to need to access everything around the world. Do you think that we, going forward, can find this equilibrium between the capabilities of the internet and the capabilities of doing business online through large companies like Amazon and the local brick and mortar store that you expressed is still very important to our community with sponsoring the baseball teams and cleanup projects and all that type of stuff?

 

Yeah. I think that in the case of Amazon and some other companies, it is a good convenience for people to save time. I mean, I remember when I was in corporate America, I worked 12- to 14-hour days so that would have been a convenience for me that would help me spend more time with my family. So I think there’s good and bad parts of it, but I still think that, for me, the way I was raised, I like to get out and meet the people that are going to do the work on my car or do those things, and not necessarily go back and meet the mechanic but talk to the people that are explaining it to me face to face. I think it’s a very cold experience when someone says, when you buy tires online, or anything that is service oriented, and you get it shipped to a retailer, and then you go down there, because I’m going to tell you this, a lot of people don’t think this but retailers aren’t exactly happy to see you since you bought the tires online and they’re going to get to install them for you. It’s like, “Yeah, we’ll help you, but we had the tires here and we could have done it.” And, again, it goes back to that’s the differences of how people are. I think the younger generations are more apt to do it, but I like, even now, I was in the business forever, but the people that changed my whole are the same people that changed mine all the time. I roll out there, I know the people, shake their hands. I mean, I like that. Some people don’t like that type of business but I always say people buy from people. People don’t buy from brands, they buy from people. I mean, especially, people that have been around longer, that are older, we don’t necessarily buy from companies, we buy from people. Now, there’s some companies we buy from but most of all, I think we like to know like the person that sells me my house. If I’m going to buy a house, I’m going to call her and then she’s going to – I’m going to tell her what I want, she’s going to find that house for me. And that’s the way I am. I like that because we’ve already built up the camaraderie between us and she already know what we think. Some of that goes lost. I think you want that warm relationship in certain things you do in your life, and there’s certain things that when you’re buying a roll of toilet paper, it’s not as big deal, but certain things, the big events in your life, you want to – I think that you want to have that person that you trust helping you. And that’s the way I’ve used SearchTires, the comments to me is like I’m the person that’s helping people save money because, right now, in our day and age, $180, $111 to $180, that’s a lot of money. That’s a water bill, an electric bill, and groceries and stuff like that. And being in the business, tires are usually not thought of. I mean, when you tell someone they need tires, they’re in shock, and then the average price is $700.

 

I need to check myself a bit on this in that every time I read an article that says that some slight majority, 54 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and those are the people to whom $180 or a sudden expense of $700 can suddenly bring back some shock. Now, one of the experiences I have buying tires, oftentimes, is a recommended service from an auto mechanic that I do my regular auto changes with. Is that a group of people that you engage with as well, they’re probably going to want to be the ones to supply the tires?

 

Yeah, and that’s why we do what we do. We’re showing the tires that they have at their store in any city. We do city, state, zip code, nationwide, we have the search, we can search for anything, and it goes down to your level within two miles of where you’re at and it shows you the people that have the tires in stock for you to get it. And as far as the additional services, some people don’t look at it this way, but I’ll just explain it real quickly. They have a duty when they pull your car in if they see other things wrong, they don’t have a duty to come and try to hard press you to sell anything, but they have a duty to let you know, “Hey, this is what we see on your vehicle,” just to bring you in the loop of knowing something. I mean, if your brakes are completely gone, they have a duty to tell you that, “Hey, your brakes are low.” They look out your safety and I think a lot of it gets overlooked. A lot of them, in the auto business, they’ve been looked at as there’s some not so good people out there and that’s what’s ruining it for a lot of people, but I think, all in all, if it’s presented correctly, I think that they’re really just trying to help people out. Again, it’s like, “Hey, maybe you don’t need breaks now but within 5,000 miles, you need to get it in here and let’s get the brakes,” and let people plan ahead. So they should give them something like a roadmap of like, I think it’s required, suggested, and then preventative maintenance. I mean, you can category and then three policies and show it to someone and people then can make their own decision to do that. 

 

And if that $700 purchase is coming up and someone’s living close to or around that paycheck to paycheck range, they can figure out how they’re going to come up with that $700, say, 5,000 miles, which would be five months, if we take the 1,000-mile-a-month average in the US and say, “Okay, over five months, if I can find a way to put $100 aside every month, I can get to the place where I can absorb this expense.” 

 

And that’s a good point. That’s how you know when you’re in a good brick and mortar shop is that when you’re doing your oil exchange, they’ll come to you and they’ll say, “Hey, your tire’s down to 4/32”.” So, 2/32” is legally bald but that 4/32” gives you time, right? You can say, okay, depending on your driving habits, with four to six months, I need to buy tires, and then they show you the prices and prices may alter a little bit, like on our new iteration, we have an up and down thing, but, overall, you’ll know how much you’re probably going to spend and then you can plan for it, because that’s the most scary thing with anything in life, really, but even car repairs is a big one because most people need to drive back and forth to work so finding out that you need tires immediately and you need to come out of pocket $700 – it’s $700, some sets can be up to $1,200. I mean, that’s a lot of money for people to come up with. 

 

It’s not something a lot of people have laying around. I mean, if that statistic is right about how many people live paycheck to paycheck or how many people can’t afford a $4,000 expense, I’m not remembering the exact title of all these articles but they are pretty shocking when you see how many people –

 

I’ve seen that too. It is shocking. It’s scary. And these things that come up that they weren’t planning for, I mean, it could essentially take food off the table. I mean, I worked in shops for years when I was coming to the business and there’s people literally been crying and they can’t get tires and their tires are bald and they had babies in their cars. You want to provide the solution and you want to try to help them as best you can and then when that – you can get people involved in the community that you can help out with that, like some people I’ve seen help with, but a lot of times it’s calling your brother, mother, calling friends and family. It doesn’t make anyone feel good but we need to make sure they’re safe. 

 

And then it sounds like you’re also arguing that brick and mortar stores, especially local community stores, are just more likely to care about you as a person and understand like, okay, you’re in this circumstance or maybe it’s a different circumstance where some people have plenty of money to spend on the tire but they are very, very short on time. I’m thinking about people who’ve moved up a level or two in the corporate ladder, stuff like that. And that’s a whole another consideration, accommodation, or anyone else’s circumstances. There’s going to be so many different ways in which people kind of just need a little consideration. 

 

In my stores, I built up a lot of trust with customers. Some customers are just put their head in the door and throw me the keys and say, “Hey, do the oil change and take care of whatever it needs,” gone. They just leave. But there’s other customers that need that support, and going back to the brick and mortar, I would say this, the brick and mortar, to me, can be a relationship type of business. Can be, I’m not saying everybody is, but for e-tailers that sell to people and ship them online, that’s a transaction. That’s a transactional relationship. It has nothing to do with you’re not going to call someone and hang out with them and talk to them while your tires are getting put on and find out – look, it’s a transaction to me and, again, there’s a time and place for all that stuff, but for the local connection with your local store owners, I mean, when I ran a store in Boca Raton, one of the first stores I ran, within six months, I knew most of the customer base and they would come in, look for me by name, wasn’t always happy, but I would have to come out and talk to them and I built up quite a following just because of just wanting to take care of their needs and being able to, if they needed other stuff, we could time it out over a time basis where they can do it. So you build that stuff up over a period of time, and it feels good when you have that relationship. I mean, for me, it felt good to have that relationship with my customers. Now, when I’m grocery shopping, it didn’t feel as good because I got to ask a bunch of questions, but you take it all in.

 

All right, and then to go back through these four barriers, the four steps we need to, in order to go through it, anyone else listing maybe going through some combination of those, what do you think people need at each stage of the way and is it a lot of the same things about resiliency and certain personalities, curiosity, as people go through, what makes someone aware of what they want, what makes someone ready to actually act, to take some sort of action, and what makes someone the type of person that’s going to, first of all, make the sacrifices they need to make in order to make the business something that’s going to actually succeed and then persevere and learn the right lessons through the inevitable failure or setback?

 

Well, for me, a lot of it is about being a self starter if you want to have your business. So I have this growing my skill set kind of thing that I have that I do daily. It’s a daily thing for me, and I think for most entrepreneurs, they all have their little things that they do but there’s a few things that I would hit on. Consistent practice. Practice what you’re passionate about. Get it from varying sources. Seek feedback from people, not just your friends. Seek it from people that are not necessarily are going to give you the feedback that you want but you need that. Stay updated in your industry. Know what’s going on at all times. That’s the thing. Learn actively. You got to put aside, like I spend an hour every day learning something random. It may not have to do with tires but it just, if you keep your brain moving, you learn actively. And also multiple resources. Again, it goes back to getting it from different sources. The way our society is today, there’s so many sources. Try to get a diverse source. And like you said, curiosity. Curiosity is a big one. You got to remain curious the whole time. And then, of course, you have to be organized in what you do all the time. Most importantly, you have to stay inspired. I mean, I’m inspired every day when I wake up because I know I’m helping people and that might not be the driver for some people but I’m just saying you got to stay inspired. The final point, I think, is, as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, I can think of 10 different things I have in my mind right now where I could help each other, but that’s not helpful. You have to find your North Star, like me, it’s SearchTires, and you have to remain passionate and stay focused on that, because everybody’s not Elon Musk.

So it’s an everyday loop for me. And I know some people say how they run their business. I would never tell people different things they need to do. I mean, I’m up at 4:30 in the morning every day so that 4:30 until eight o’clock in the morning gives me, ’til 8 a.m., gives me that time where no one else is blowing up my phone or anything like that. I really get to do that, so I think that’s important. But it’s not for everybody, right? They could do it later at night too. 

 

Yeah. And what do you do when you get thrown off of your north star for any reason in life?

 

Going down the rabbit hole? 

 

Yeah.

 

I like shiny new things. I journal every night for me and I’m not saying it’s for everybody, but I journal every night, and then on Saturday mornings, when I get up early, I don’t have a lot with my company and I’ll review the last week and I can immediately tell, I just reviewed the hot spots of my journaling, and I go, oh, whoa, I’m going –

 

Oh yeah, yeah.

 

I have to rein myself back in. So it’s by self reflection and by journaling. Now, other people probably have other methods of doing it, but, for me, I think it really comes out in my writing every night that I see. I’m like, why am I talking so much about this? That’s not what I do.

 

Definitely. Well, Tim, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, for telling your story about not being an overnight success but learning your lesson from your initial failure and creating a business that really does inspire you, continue to inspire you, and continues to serve the things and the people that you care about. 

 

Yep. I appreciate it, Stephen. I feel great about sharing the story and if anyone has any questions, I’m always open if you want to reach out to me, and I look forward to coming back sometime in the future and telling you more.

 

Definitely. And right quick, what will be the best way for someone who has questions to reach out to you?

 

Just contact me on my email address. It’s tim@searchtires.com. I respond to all my emails, by the way, and I don’t have a cluttered up email box.

 

So tim@searchtires.com and, of course, if you’re looking for tires, it would be searchtires.com, right? 

 

That’s correct, searchtires.com. Get you what you need.

 

If you want tires served in your local community from a brick and mortar shop. I would also like to thank everyone out there who’s listening, for tuning in, for continuing to tune into Action’s Antidotes, and continuing to have your mind open to different ideas, different ways to orient your work, your life, your businesses, and different considerations from people who have acted upon and moved upon their passions.

 

Important Links:

• Tim  on LinkedIn
• SearchTires

 

About Tim Shaffer

Tim is the CEO & Co-Founder of SearchTires.com