We recently connected with Matt Thurston and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Matt, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I got my first body shop job at the age of 19. It was fun and cool because I grew up with a car loving father and I was into cars. That summer job turned into a 30 year career and at the age of 49 I was ready to do something new. After being a car guy all my life and moving to a small town that had a very strong car classic car culture, I wanted to do something on that path. That’s how Chop Shop Hair Garage was born. In this town I always found it difficult to find a place where I could just walk in on my lunch break and get a haircut. It was clear that this was a problem I could solve while attracting all the guys who were like me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Changing careers and starting a business at the age of 50 is no easy task! Our business model is simple. Provide a great service at a reasonable price. The service itself is nothing extraordinary as there are many businesses doing it. The difference here is that we have a cool automotive theme and we actually take walk ins. In fact the number one thing people ask when they call is do you take walk ins? YES! We do. It’s taken a few years to really build an awesome team like ours. They are very talented and committed to providing a great service and building relationship with our clients. This has always been very important to me and they work really hard to meet that expectation.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I learned a very valuable lesson and I learned it the hard way. When we first opened, Neither my wife nor myself were licensed to cut hair. It was our intention to hire stylists to work for us and we would run the business side of things and handle checking customers in and out. Then, the COVID shutdown happened. We hung in there and waited until we had a reopen date and were excited to get back to work. Unfortunately our employees didn’t share that excitement. They didn’t come back! Now what?? It was like starting over. We were able to hire 2 stylists to help us reopen and then I made a call to the local beauty school where we knew the owners. At 52 years old I was a grown man in a sea of 20 something women! Yes, I was in beauty school. It wasn’t the worst thing and after 6 months of hard work I was a licensed stylist! It was the best thing I had done and now I work in the shop full time as a leader and fully booked stylist with a long list of clients.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

This has been easy for me. I treat my team with great respect and make sure they understand we are a team. I involve them in decisions, purchases and generally keep them informed of how we’re doing as a company. I also treat them to outings and events for more team building fun. I provide them with anything they need to make their job easier. They know they can come to me with anything and that helps keep communication open.

Contact Info:

• Website: chopshophairgarage.com
• Facebook: Chop Shop Hair Garage