Hurray! In a few days I will celebrate five years as a small business owner. I often believe I have made it over the hump, but I know enough to never become complacent when moving forward. I hear a lot about “Living the Dream,” but there are some days I wish I had a boss to dump stuff on, weekends and vacation days, and was back on a “Direct Deposit” plan. But yeah, mostly, things are working out the way I had hoped.

While the automobile restoration business may not move at the speeds of the high tech industry, it certainly doesn’t remain static. Marque values fluctuate, the economy ebbs and flows, projects explode, regulations change, and costs and taxes never go down. These are all things I found I needed to pay attention to in order to stay current.

Without a doubt, I have been blessed with talented employees and grateful customers which have allowed us to deliver exceptional cars and grow our reputation as a place to bring work to if you want it done properly. It would be far easier to provide “good enough” work, even when you know it should be superior quality. By delivering best quality, I have found few things more satisfying than having people comment in superlatives when they see our work in person.

“Good enough” wouldn’t get us the same reactions, and won’t be enough to sustain the future reputation of Sport and Specialty which began twenty plus years ago. Without any snide comments from my friends who may playfully disagree, the good news is I’m still young and enthusiastic enough to do this for quite a while.

It’s been an interesting trip in making the move from hobbyist to professional. I am keenly aware of the slippery slope of losing your passion once your passion becomes your livelihood. I have found that an important part of staying passionate, is being passionate. You must also, work, race, and play with others who share your love of vintage sports and collector cars. Without the support of my circle of
long time car friends I might never have even tried this move. I have also been extremely fortunate to have developed new friendships with some of the nicest, most helpful, and sincerely genuine folks ever.

So, basically, I need my talented employees, valued customers, and wonderful friends and family to accept my profound thanks for your support and loyalty over these past five years. I’m looking forward to our new projects and next adventures! I can’t wait to see what the next five bring.

We’ll continue to grow, and I’ll continue to have fun…..All aboard!

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I was honored to be interviewed by Cars Yeah’s Mark Greene, “an incurable automotive enthusiast interviewing successful automotive entrepreneurs who live a lifestyle around their passion for automobiles” for his latest podcast.

You can find the full podcast on his Cars Yeah website where he asked me questions from how and why I bought Sport and Specialty, to what are my favorite cars, and finished with, “If you were a car, what would you be?” I’m pretty sure you won’t guess my answer on that one.

Full disclosure: Mark gave me some of the questions ahead of time so it made for a smooth discussion about classic cars, classic car business, and how I spend my time around all of these incredible machines. While you’re there check out some of his other podcasts, he’s had some really interesting interviews.

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Last weekend we pulled the trigger and launched the latest iteration of the Sport and Specialty website. All of the digital switches fell into place and with a sigh of relief a year’s worth of effort came to fruition. We had put together a simpler site earlier this year, but we quickly became frustrated with the limitations we had to live with.

Over the summer we got really busy with basic business things and the racing season consumed much of our “free” time. Finally in October we got serious again and put our shoulders into getting the new site up and running.

With content strategist Bill Oakes at the keyboard and me looking at the big picture, I believe we came up with a really nice site. Our goal was to not only tell the story of Sport and Specialty, but to also allow for more individual and ongoing interactions with the classic sports car community. We will be posting my blogs, free classified ads, marque club events and schedules, racing events, offer interesting products, and who knows what else.

My goal is to also post an ongoing series of articles regarding assessing values, approaching restoration work (or not), and any interesting things I find in my travels. I will give a heads-up through Facebook on both my personal and the Sport and Specialty pages when new items are posted. I’m excited about the various fun, educational and interesting ways we can put this site to use.

I bought a ton of storage so we can publish new pictures and archive past events and features. So please, bookmark www.sportandspecialty.com and keep me on my toes.

Remember, we love to host club outings and show off our work! Simply reach out, our phone number (815-629-2717) and my email address is all over our new website. Hope to see you soon!!

So, what are you waiting for? Take a look through all of the sections:

• The new homepage – Where it all starts
• About Us – Meet the crew and hear about our history
• Our Work – The eye-candy we all like to browse, broken down by category
  • In the Shop
  • On the Road
  • On the Track
• Vintage Racing – We love racing, you’ll love the cars
• Buy and Sell – New to the site! A Place for our customers to find and sell their treasures
• John’s Garage – A place for John to share his opinions and store his stuff

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