Mike Melton (speaker) advises strongly against opening a tire shop without prior experience. He recommends working at an existing tire shop for a few years, learning all aspects of the business (customer hospitality, load ratings, hiring), and finding a mentor if you have capital but lack experience. He warns inexperienced owners are likely to face operational chaos and bankruptcy.
Can you open a tire shop with no experience? My answer to that is I recommend you never to open a tire shop if you don't have any experience. I'm going to tell you why. Say you have no experience and all your guys, they just decide not to show up one day. Well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to run the front? Who's going to change the tires? If you don't have any experience, you are going to have a cluster. Don't ever do it. So if you don't have any experience, I suggest you going to another tire shop. Get you a couple years up under your belt, learn everything. I mean, you have to be obsessed if you really want to open a tire shop. You've got to be obsessed with learning everything about the business. I mean, you got to know it like the back of your hand, inside and out. Because if not, if you open a tire shop without any experience, you are going to go bankrupt. This is a fact. So definitely get you some experience under there. You got to know anything and everything about the business, especially hospitality, how to take care of customers, how to take care of any issues. You got to understand load ratings. There's a lot of stuff to understand before you open that business. And make sure you have a mentor. If you don't have any experience and you got the money, have you a mentor that'll mentor you along the way so that you hire the correct people in your organization?
