Building From the Ground Up
Hi Friends!
About a year ago, I was involved in the car and motorcycle component of a major annual event in downtown Phoenix. While seated behind the booth for one of the events sponsors, I was approached by a young man and his father with an idea for a product. Together, the two of them had constructed prototypes, sourced materials and outlined a loose manufacturing process but didn’t really know where to go from there. I took a minute, gave them the outline of a strategy and then over the next couple weeks, proceeded to help point them in the right direction on a handful of things.
Fast forward a few months later, and they are setting up with car shows, auction companies (shout out to Worldwide Auctioneers in particular) and are well on their way.
Earlier this week, my friendly neighborhood UPS guy knocked on my door with a package. Inside was an incredible, original, diorama-inspired display featuring the 1954 world champion and Isle of Man TT winning 500cc Gilera ridden by Geoff Duke. The return address listed Hanging Cars as the sender.
To say that this beautiful little tribute to one of my favorite motorcycles ever was impressive would be an understatement. The layout is great, craftsmanship top notch and materials fantastic. These guys really put together something cool with this and whether you’re into bikes, supercars, American classics, European sports cars, whatever, they can most assuredly build you something really cool.
The product still isn’t the most impressive part of the story however. The most incredible thing for me is the fact that this amazing 15-year-old kid and his dad created this and then got it off the ground together.
In addition to clearly acknowledging and building the baseline required to even start a process like this, what he’s passing on to his son includes the following:
Manufacturing/sourcing materials
Product design
Desktop publishing and creative software
Digital marketing
Event marketing
E-commerce
Contracts and negotiations
Shipping and receiving
Accounting
Legal
Networking
Sales
Research and development
(Plus, plus, plus, plus…)
Almost all of these things are actual life skills that are necessary to accomplish virtually anything in the world today. None of this stuff happens without the influencing party having open lines of communication and being available enough to not only be a listener, but offer things that are worth listening to.
Over the last month or so, both the New York Times and CBS News have run significant, widely read/watched stories regarding the problems that young men are now facing in America and it appears like this finally might be an issue that we’re collectively allowed to talk about at least somewhat openly.
Now, I’m not going to dive into all the social media toxic waste that surrounds this issue (and as much as we don’t want to admit it, sometimes that toxic waste reflects a lot of really real frustration….), but I will say this: My DMs on Instagram are generally a pretty wide open situation and they are largely filled with young men who are clearly struggling to find direction.
They’re not coming to me and asking about how to talk to girls or how to kill lion with a spear or sell crypto on a yacht bro or any of the other dumb things that are mostly assumed by the various authorities on what men are allegedly struggling with. Almost all of them are just simply looking for somebody to interact with them. They want me to look at and acknowledge car photographs they took, they want me to mutually laugh with them at memes that they find funny or interesting and a lot of times they just want to know that somebody on the other end of something, somewhere knows that they’re alive.
My point is, there’s levels to this stuff and in a lot of cases, we’re missing the base, bottom line of it entirely. Nobody’s even checking on a lot of these kids and we can’t build young businessmen and leaders unless we address that first.
Over the course of this heinous migration, I’ve learned a lot of statistics about this newsletter. For example I know that nearly 90% of this newsletter’s readers are men and of that, nearly 80% are over the age of 40 years old. I also know, that based on my DMs, my experience when I attend car events and everything else, that regardless of what certain commentators may tell you, young people are still very much interested in cars.
We’ve got a unique opportunity here. Most of us are in a position to where we are involved in or have knowledge of cool cars in some capacity or another. This is a very easy gateway to providing somebody that may not already be receiving it, the opportunity to connect, get acknowledged and to be heard.
I’m not saying this is a situation where you need to go down to your local boys and girls club and volunteer to be a mentor tomorrow (although, if you’ve got the bandwidth, it’s probably not a bad idea). What I’m saying is, take the time to have the conversation when you’re out with your car or when somebody comments on one of your posts or sends you an unsolicited message. As I’m finding, that may be as little as it takes provide a major experience for somebody. Ultimately, guys like the father and son at Hanging Cars are the goal, but everybody’s got to start somewhere and we can’t build more young men like this unless we start doing that first.
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge