ne of the great things about running a small business is the opportunity it provides to meet people — and in the car industry, they come from all walks of life. A big part of my customer base throughout the 1980s was enthusiasts who wanted a really top-quality finish on their pride and joy, but also a lot of them were just regular mom and pop-type folks who needed to get their family car touched up or repainted. As a young bloke in my twenties, I painted cars for school teachers, and shop owners, and freezing workers; for the middleclass, the rich, and for motorcycle gang members. This in itself was a valuable life lesson and perhaps why, throughout my entire adult life, I’ve never judged books by their covers. There were a couple of times, I’m not proud to say, as a young guy with a young family and a struggling business, that I was so desperate to receive outstanding payment for jobs I’d done that I carried a baseball bat during my late-night visits to encourage my debtors to do the right thing. The one
