Episode 20: How Bill Snow Built Multiple Successful Businesses by Finding His White Space

When you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to something else. And when I approach situations like that, I realize, okay, I'm just saying no to this so I can do something that's going to get me closer to my ultimate goal.

Bill Snow is a successful entrepreneur, a franchise developer and a podcast host. He balances multiple ventures and I am very excited to have him on the podcast today. Bill, thank you for your time.

It's great to be here, Chrissy.

Yeah. So can you tell me a little bit about the businesses and the podcast that you have?

Oh, boy. Yes. So business wise, I'm part of the Radair Complete Car Care organization and we franchise automotive repair businesses. I became a franchisee 11 years ago, now have one and a half stores. So I co own, half, own a store with another gentleman. And five years ago I jumped on the franchise side of our business. So looking to help our existing franchisees and then also look for new franchisees to open up, we spun off a performance shop at our Wycliffe location. So we track, prep cars and get them ready for racing. And then the podcast is late to grid and we share the motorsports journeys of people that have gone and done things on track just to inspire others that want to follow in their footsteps.

Nice. So I'd like to jump back into your entrepreneurial journey, if that's okay. So your entrepreneurial journey began with a frustrating experience on a family vacation that you've shared with me, and it led to a profound shift in your thinking about car repair. So before we get to the specifics of Rad Air, can we revisit that aha moment if it's not too traumatic for you.

It's not. We still talk about it quite a bit. And you know, it was in the seventh grade, I remember that I was like, I really want to own a business someday. I just, I thought I was going to own a boat dealership actually.

Okay.

And you know, as time went on, graduated, got an undergrad degree, got my mba, went in the corporate world, did all that kind of thing and I had this itch to correct, you know, connect some passions. First off cars and motorsports, but then also business. And you know, maybe it'd be a side hustle, maybe it'd be a full time job. Anyway, started to develop a business plan for that, you know, corporate life, family life kind of things collect dust. The business plan was collecting dust. Anyways, we are taking a family vacation. Our first beach vacation. It's 2012. We're driving from Cleveland, Ohio down to north topsail, and an hour from the beach, we start to break down. The vehicle's overheating. It's 100 degrees outside. We're cranking the heat because that's what you do to cool a car down. You crank the heat. Acts like a secondary radiator. Windows are open. Kids are like, what's going on? You know, Anyways, turns out, you know, we had to have the vehicle towed the rest of the way and found a great shop in town. And I was just eating it up, sitting in that shop, because I kind of knew I wanted to be doing something like this.

And.

And turns out someone put the wrong antifreeze in our car. I'm not a mechanic. Yeah, I work on our race cars, and I tinker here and there, but I never serviced my wife's vehicle. And we're sitting on the beach, and I told my wife, if this is happening to us and this being poor car care, it's happening to other people. We got to go back to Cleveland and make car care better. That's what we did. Dusted off the business plan, kind of converted it more to a consumer business, and here we are 11 years later.

Okay, so, you know, many entrepreneurs don't have a straight path to success. It's a challenge. Your story involves several ventures, including Atomic Auto Sports. So I'd like to explore some of those things with you. What were some of the initial hurdles or setbacks that you encountered in those early days, especially as you're going and transforming the car industry and car repair?

Yeah, time management's the big one. Entrepreneurs want to do it all. We don't want to say no. We want to be the one that's there. We don't want the fear of missing out. And the big thing is, just what do I need to focus in on? In those early years, I said yes to a lot of things I shouldn't have said yes to. You know, yes to volunteer opportunities, yes to jobs that didn't yield us a whole lot of profit. Probably lost money on those, you know, trying different things. I actually said yes to expansion way too early. The building I'm in, I had the opportunity to acquire some more space in, and I said, yeah, I'll grow into it. Well, I shouldn't have. I should have weighed in on that. I should have waited till I was busting at the seams to get that other. But entrepreneurs, well, we might miss out. I should probably act on it now. But then also realizing where the market opportunity is. So, you know, things like what type of Equipment we should buy and when based on the market demands. And you mentioned Atomic Auto Sports. You know, ever since I opened my shop, we would have people that knew me from racing and motorsports saying, hey, can you. Now that you have a shop, can you help me with some of this stuff?

Yeah.

And it got. It's growing, so we actually had to kind of spin it off. We used to do it under the Raid Air name in Wycliffe, and the marketing became a little confusing because people are like, why are you a race shop? Are you a regular shop? So we put it underneath the Atomic Auto Sports name just to market it differently. And it's got a fun vibe to it that people are starting to realize and say, okay, these are the guys I want to be working with for. For my race car stuff.

Yeah, go slow, be patient, say no. Those are so hard for entrepreneurs. I agree with you.

They really are. And until you can realize. And here's a good piece of advice, when you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to something else. And when I approach situations like that, I realize, okay, I'm just saying no to this so I can do something that's going to get me closer to my ultimate goal.

I like that. So let's talk a bit about transparency in relationships, because Radair stands out for its commitment to transparency and customer relationships, especially the work that you've done in growing your business. So can you give us some concrete examples of how you implement those principles into your daily operations? Just for those other entrepreneurs who are starting to figure out, you know, how do I build relationships? How do I build transparency? Oftentimes, some of us that are new to entrepreneurship get in because we don't like rules and we don't like having to be told what to do. So how do you build? We don't want to be questioned. So transparency sometimes seems a little bit different, kind of counterintuitive to what we want to do. So can you share some wisdom there?

Sure, yeah. I'll approach it from the consumer side first. And then there's actually a. A good portion of transparency that needs to be out with your team as well.

Perfect.

Yeah. So on the consumer side, what we've done over time is we're always honest and up front. So when you bring your vehicle to us, we're setting expectations about when you're going to hear from us, when the vehicle is going to be looked at, when you might even possibly get it back. Depending upon what we found. We also use digital vehicle inspections. So I don't know if you've ever been the recipient of one of those, but while your car's at the shop, you actually get a text message with a link and you can see pictures and videos of all the good things on your car, all the average things and then all the broken things. It gives, it gives you the consumer confidence that, okay, I thought something was wrong, now I see something wrong. I can trust the people sending this to me. We've actually moved to online estimating as well. So I can text you an estimate. You could see the breakdown of every single thing we're talking about. You know, as soon as you get that phone call from a shop, you're going through, oh my gosh, you know, do I have the budget for this? Does this really need to be done? What are they telling me? I don't understand. After that phone call, when you get that text message, you can then look at it and say, well, you know, maybe I can do the wiper blades myself. I'll say no to that. But man, I cannot change those brakes. I'm going to say yes to that. So you have a good idea of how it's moving through. We also have automation that sends you updates as your car is going through the shop. Hey, it's been assigned to a technician. We're waiting on parts, whatever the case might be. And then of course, there's the follow up, just, hey, your car's ready to go. We're here till 5:30. When would you like to pick it up? That's the technical side of it. The other is just having that conversation with you as a consumer, but more so as a person. We always want our team to approach things with empathy so we understand where you're coming from, understand how you use the car, be honest and upfront. And we back it with a fix for life warranty as well. So if that option's available for your repairs, you're gonna know that it's fixed for life and you won't have to fix it again. Which is, again, a little bit of confidence that, all right, these folks are standing behind their work on the team side. The more that we can share with our teams about what's happening, why it's happening, what the future is, the, the more engaged and inspired they'll be to do their best for you. So, you know, a little bit long winded with the transparency, but the more we talk, the more we share, the more we communicate, the less likelihood that we're going to have an issue with either a consumer, customer, client, or with one of our team members.

I like that. And I think it's universal. So whether you're working with vehicles or you're working in it, or like us working in HR and insurance, the ability to take the customer through the life cycle, giving them the understanding as opposed to them just standing out there and waiting, being in the unknown, not thinking, okay, how much is this going to cost me? What do I need to do? How much more time? I know for me as a consumer, oftentimes time is more important, so how long am I going to be waiting? Or if there's a status update in between? So I think you've given some really good insight to how different business owners can take that and make it transferable to their business. So thank you.

Sure.

Yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about time management and prioritization. So you do a lot of different things. You wear a lot of many hats. And so I want to know specifically, what are your tools and techniques for making sure that things get done when they need to get done, but then also you're managing your time effectively, giving attention to the things that really need it.

Yeah. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs run the fire. You know, what's burning, what needs to get done now, what's urgent, whether it's important or not. You're always running to what's urgent. And I. I can't wait till the minute I figure out how to effectively balance this. But here's how I'm getting through and it all gets done. My wife might argue otherwise, but, you know, I used. I used to carry up until a quarter ago, up until about, I think I stopped using October. I used to keep a daily planner.

Okay.

Every quarter, it would have to dos, and it would have my schedule, and I would take meeting notes in it. And I stopped that because it was creating so much anxiety about what I had to get done that day. I wasn't focusing on the big things. I'm more relaxed. I'm actually getting more done. Without a daily to do list now, stuff still gets done.

How are you doing this? Because you say, I got rid of my planner and I just got a major anxiety attack of like, oh, my gosh, like, my planner's like, two feet from me, and I have to touch it right now because I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack.

Our store. Our store folks, when I go and visit, they would say, oh, Bill's got his bible, because I never was without it. What I've gone to is more calendar scheduling. Okay, so what Gets scheduled, gets done. And if I could, you know, if I know that I need to send an email out to our race team, for example, I have that time blocked and that's how I'm going to do it. That acts as my to do list. Sure. Email acts as a little bit like a to do list as well. As long as we're prioritizing it, not the person sending us the email. But I went from then scheduling my time on what I had to do as opposed to putting together a list and then trying to get that list to fit into what I have scheduled. And another thing I've done is just be more aware long term what's happening. So long term could be a bunch of different things, but here I'm talking about what does the month look like. And for the first time ever, my wife and I are starting to look at the whole year of what we're doing. When's the family vacation? When do we have race day scheduled? When are. When's Atomic Autosports hosting events that we need to be aware of the calendar. But let's go back to looking at just the month and sort of a long term as entrepreneurs. We're looking at tomorrow, we're looking at later today. We need to be looking out a week, a month, a quarter, and making sure that everything's fitting in there. Because we never put enough white space on our calendar. And I call it white space. That's where we need to be thinking. That's just the, okay, you know, Christy and Josh talk to me all about this AI stuff. When will I have time to actually think about it and contemplate it. And then that's where the white space so. And constantly moving the pieces of the calendar as well, you know, saying, you know what, I gotta move this so I can do something else or I gotta delete this. This isn't part of the big focus.

Yeah, I see you. On the larger calendar piece, we do something in our house called free days, Focus days. And so free days are. We're not talking about work, we're not doing work. Focus days are the. It is the things that we need to do specifically on the business. And we have those buffer days kind of in between. So we look through as someone who has smaller kids that are still in high school, junior high. We have a large family calendar. So it kind of looks like a war room in my husband's office as to like is everyone at any given time and so planning. So I encourage you, as you're starting to look further out, get Yourself a huge calendar. It's really helpful.

Yes. You know, guys, there's something else I was going to share about calendar and it just left me. Oh, I know what it is. One thing I'm really trying to do is when I get home, I put do not disturb on the phone so I can be in the right mind for my family. And we're emptying answers right now, but you're going all day and sometimes at the end of the day is a good time to kind of decompress. Let me follow up on a couple quick things. But yet your spouse or your partner is like, okay, they're home. I have them.

Yes. I'm going to word vomit everything that happened.

Yes. So that's a good thing. And I guess one last thing on making sure that the right things are getting done. I've also recently taken a look at where am I doing my work physically? Okay. A lot of times I'll go to my shop and that's not the best place for me to get my work done because guess what happens? People want to share updates with me about cars in the shop. I don't need to know about those. People want to share, you know, client says, hey, is Bill here? I haven't seen him in a while. I want to step in and say hi, Yeah, I think he's here. You know, not that I don't want to see people, but there's things that we need to get done for the team, for our company and have that block. So I would encourage your listeners too to look at where am I doing my work and is that the best place?

Yeah. So where. I've got questions for you on that because I have my staff knows now, but I have a super secret co working space where I don't work from home because I'll get distracted if I do and I don't always go into the office. So I will go to my super secret co working space that may be in Cuyahoga Falls and get things done. Where do you go for you? Is it, is it home? Is it a coffee shop? What's the best place that you found for productivity?

I love coffee shops.

Okay.

Small business, locally owned coffee shops. One is, there's a fun vibe in there. Usually you look around, there's other people doing the same thing. There's just something about that. Nobody knows where I am. Maybe the phone's on do not disturb and you can just sort of plow through some work. Being empty nesters. Working from home isn't a big interruption with things people Aren't getting off the school bus. And we used to have a nice franchise office that we weren't using enough. And that was a great little hideout because, again, I was there by myself, working constantly looking for the place. Sometimes it's just my truck, you know?

Yes, I understand. Yeah, I work from the car sometimes, too. I take a lot of meetings from the car.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about burnout, because you're kind of indicating ways to kind of prevent burnout. But I want to know, what steps do you take personally and professionally to continue to ensure that you don't burn out? And what are those signs for you when you know, oh, I may be getting close to hitting the wall? How do you keep yourself in guardrails? Because I know as an entrepreneur, I can work 20 hours a day if I really want to, but eventually it's gonna cause a problem for me. So can you share some of your wisdom around burnout?

Yeah. Believe it or not. Others indicating that, hey, what's wrong? You look tired. You look cranky.

Oh, I hate those questions.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah, like, what's wrong?

Yeah, you look really awful today. It's like, thank you. I love you, too.

So that's unfortunately one indication. The other is just when the level of frustration gets to a point where it's your only focus and you're trying to think, why am I so frustrated? And it's because you have so many balls in the air, you're afraid to drop one, and you just keep plugging along. And at some point, we all have to realize that the work's still going to be there tomorrow. So, you know, deal with it and just take. Take whatever attention you need right now. So one of the things I talk about with some folks is self care. So what are you doing as an entrepreneur for self care? For me, I enjoy working out. And I work out with one of my daughters twice a week. She's still at Cleveland State. So I'll. In the mornings, we'll go work out. I have a peloton. I enjoy outdoor running when the weather's nice. Kayaking, mountain biking. I don't do it enough. That's just a great way. The other way for me is just finding something I enjoy doing. And a lot of times that's just tinkering, whether it's on an old motorcycle, my race car, and it's just me. It's a little bit of three doors down or creed playing in the background and no interruptions, just working with my hands. So for the listeners Find out what you enjoy doing, if it's something to get some endorphins going with exercise or just being alone and doing your craft.

Nice. So, talking about things that you enjoy doing, I'd like to pivot to your podcast, if that's okay.

Sure.

So you've got Late to Grid showcases your passion for motorsports and business, and I would like to know how that passion in that podcast has directly or indirectly benefited you as an entrepreneur in your business, and then also, I guess on the personal side, having things that you enjoy.

Yeah. So I, you know, we're in season five, and it was one of those things I kicked around for years of doing. And I'm so glad I just took the leap because if it failed, then I would know, hey, I did it and it didn't work. But maybe some people call it a failure, I don't know. But I get a lot of compliments at the track and it's helped me professionally. I didn't realize this. People would listen to it and then be like, oh, I live close to Wycliffe. He has a shop in Wycliffe. I'm going to have him work on my car. That was not the original intent to use it as a marketing service, but it's turned out that way. And the other benefit personally, is I learn from each and every guest some tip or trick how they've gotten faster. I now have a date myself, a Rolodex full of phone numbers of people I can call me. Hey, remember we talked about data? I have a question about the data system on my car and how I could be using it better. Do you have a few minutes? I have those relationships now and then also, it's just given me some more visibility in the motorsports community. So when I do go to a track, not a ton of people, but a small handful at an event will say, hey, listen to your podcast. And I always respond back, so you're my listener. Just a little funny joke there, but I really enjoy it. And I don't know how much longer will. We'll keep doing it, but as long as people keep still listening and want to share their stories, we'll keep it rolling.

Wow. I was going to ask you questions about like, metrics and value and how you feel, but you've already. You just answered all of them. Just it's. It's relationship and building connections and it seems to self surprise you occasionally when people are connected to you that you didn't even realize, so.

Oh, yeah, yeah. And it serves a purpose in our community. Everyone Has a podcast now, right?

Yes, as evidenced by what we're doing right now.

Yeah, and it's just, it's one little way to share someone's story that wouldn't have been otherwise told.

So what's your long term vision? I mean, entrepreneur, podcast host, continuing to grow and develop as a leader? What's your world domination strategy?

Where you want to go, the ultimate goal is to own a sports car racing team. So there's a series called IMSA. It's the premier sports car racing organization in the U.S. i want to own a team. And the way we get there is we get there by growing radiator complete car care, you know, making that a national brand. That's the ultimate goal. We're starting small here in Ohio and then also growing Atomic Autosports. And when I talk about that, I'm not talking about just growing the company, talking about growing our teams as well. So having a good robust team around us that can get us there. We have a small race team now, Radar Racing, where we do endurance racing all over the Midwest. Matter of fact, we're racing at Daytona at the end of March. And that's been a good way to give our employees something else to do other than just work on cars. Well, that race team could be the foundation for an IMSA team that I might go buy or acquire or even start from scratch. That's the long term plan.

You have big goals, big plans.

I do. And even if we never get there, the goal is to get there. But even if we get close, then we're better off than where we were.

Bill, I appreciate the time that you've given me today and given our listeners, I have one last question. It's the question that we tend to always wrap up with, and that is, you know, as our listeners are striving to improve their businesses, what is the one thing that you would like to share with them to Help them get 1% and 1% better in their business today?

Figure out who's in your room and make sure it's the right people. So we surround ourselves with hopefully like minded people. So the people you're surrounding yourself with, are they making you better? Are they your coaches? Are they your fans? Are they giving you what you need or are they taking away from you? And sometimes we make decisions to do business with people that we're friends with or we don't want to, you know, ruin a relationship and not do business with them. But at the end of the day, if they're not the right people to be helping you grow, then you need to get them out of your room and get the right people in there. And everything we talked about today is a result of me having the right people around me, whether it's family, advisors, attorneys. And I've had to make some tough decisions and tell some friends we're not doing business anymore. So that's the 1%. If you have the right people doing the right things with you, I think your business is going to grow 1% each day.

Wow. Phil, thank you for your time today. Thank you for the wisdom for our listeners. We'll make sure to check out the Late to Grid podcast as well as connect to all the things that you would like us to connect to with Rad Air, Complete Car Care and the Socials and Atomic Autosports. Thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it. Thank you.

Ra.