We were lucky to catch up with THOMAS MESLOH recently and have shared our conversation below.

THOMAS, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Who is your hero and why? What lessons have you learned from them and how have they influenced your journey?

My Hero is my father. He was a man that also owned his own business and is who taught me everything I know about being ethical, fair, and smart. I never took over his company because he made me want to try and do something myself just as he did and he gave me the knowledge I needed to do it. He always gave me advice when i needed it, but never hand fed me how to go about something. I learned how to always treat people with respect, to never think of people as a number or paycheck, and never be unfair with money. Even when going to business school I didn’t actually learn anything because i was already naturally doing them because of how he raised and taught me. His company still runs even through his passing and I want mine to be the same and give my son the same opportunity he gave me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a very fun loving, but very mathematical person. We keep our shop very light and upbringing. Customer always say it is a pleasure to work with us because we pride ourselves on the knowledge of what we do. We off Automotive vinyl wrapping, window tinting paint protection film, ceramic coatings, detailing, paint corrections, paint chip fixing, windshield protection films, and commercial vinyl installs. I got into this because I always had a love of cars, got into doing body work on big rigs for around 4 years, started doing my own detailing and vinyl wrapping myself for friends in my garage and then worked for another ceramic coating shop which i basically ran entirely. After that i decided to do everything myself with the help of a great friend and we both went to tint training, paint protection film training and learned everything else ourselves and we have never stopped growing. We have found that in our industry and our area our biggest asset is our personalities, knowledge, fairness, and quality. We know many of the other shops in our area and get a huge amount of customers from them because of random issues they have had with the other shops. We focus on our quality and don’t charge extra for perfection. We charge a fair amount for our time and we don’t upcharge on materials a huge amount. We stay extremely transparent and we truly have a passion for doing what we do. Even in our hiring process we are very picky with who works with us because they have the same mindset. For myself I also like to keep my team happy and take of them like they are my family. The entire shop has a hand in all decisions we make and we work together to grow together because a team that works well together will put out a much higher quality job for our customers and a team that is there for a paycheck only.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I met my business partner when i was doing body work on big rigs and he was a Cornwell tool truck driver that came by every week. I would always get on and talk for a minute about whatever and we became friends. I mentioned one day that I wanted to do my own detailing business at some point and one random day he asked if he needed funding and he would totally start it with me. To which we did all of the paperwork and I already had all of the equipment so we formed Prestigious Auto Styling. The idea was that he was going to do all of the computer work and sales and I would run the shop and do all of the manual labor. Unfortunately that quickly went south because after an entire year he didn’t get us any jobs except for 1. I was working a full time job at the same time so i could keep afloat and I ended up quitting that job due to a horrible boss and I decided to take on the entire company by myself with the help of a previous employee from another shop I managed. Within a week I had built a website, set up payroll, set up a scheduling company, and already had an inflow of customers to support myself and my other employee. My partner would come by and then leave and never actually helped so it got to a point where we were paying him just to have his name on the owner page so In a nice way I asked to buy his half of the company since I just wanted to do it myself to which he respectfully agreed. We parted ways and are still friends, but my other employee is still with me and we continue to grow.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

So far our most effective strategy has been word of mouth. It is most easy when we do full color change vinyl wraps because we change the entire look of someone’s car and they tell many people about it. We don’t do a huge amount of advertising and we do stay about a month out on scheduling consistently. We do a very high quality job and then if there is issues we immediately take care of our customers without question. People will even leave us reviews purely based on the phone conversation just because of how informative, knowledgeable, and transparent we are. this area of industry has many many gray areas where people can get a hood pulled over their head and we cant stand that type of business so we keep everything out in the open and give everyone the best information to guide them where they want to go with a project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://prestigiousautostyling.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prestigiousautostyling/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PrestigiousAutoStyling/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/prestigious-auto-styling-sparks-2