We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Richard Tomlin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Richard below.

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

My story, I’m sure is not unlike many in the automotive world, I just don’t share it often, what started as a hobby, became a lifelong obsession and business. I began racing in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), the largest automotive racing club in the world. Over the years I built and rebuilt my 1985 BMW E30 constantly improving it for racing, and I was seeing good results on the track, which quickly caught the attention of other drivers. Soon after other racers were coming to me asking me to tune, service, and race prep their cars.

My experience in Autocross took me across the country, racing around cones for time, as a decent driver with a well-prepared car, I did well on the national Autocross circuit. While racing was my passion, my day job was offshore drilling, the offshore lifestyle meant I would work for 14 days out at sea and 14 days back at home, that time on shore is where I laid the foundation for Apex Auto Works, I opened a small shop at my home and would sometimes arrive back from 14 days at sea to have eight cars in cue for race prep. It was at that point that it felt like it was becoming a real business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Having been racing for over 25 years now and working with cars in one form or another my whole life, I personally love making people’s automotive dreams come true. Be that restoring a family heirloom that brings grown men to tears upon seeing our work, to simply adding race car numbers to a 16-year-old’s car at their first race. We get to share in those moments with our customers and many times help them achieve lifelong dreams or promises to themselves.

For our racing customers, it can range from a local Autocross parking lot, club racing, or even ground-up builds for international road races like the Chihuahua Express in Mexico. We build roll cages that are built to strict specifications and are the last line of defense for drivers in the event of a crash while racing. Roll cages are something I take very seriously, studying the latest in requirements from the FIA and even spending time dissecting crashed race cars to see how we can improve cage design using that real-world data. Lots of cages look good on paper but seeing what works and, more importantly, what did not work helps us build better cages. A friend of mine, who was racing at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in 2012 went off the side of the mountain, while we didn’t build that cage it was a major learning experience since I had inspected the car for the race. It changed the way we built cars and Apex Auto Works has built over a dozen cars for the two men who went off that mountain, which to me says a lot about the quality of our cages. Now 12 years later cage design is still evolving with the goal of making racing as safe as possible.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Starting out as a side hustle mostly helping friends, I was vastly undercharging for my services. It took me years to establish pricing that was fair for the quality of work we are providing, and it is honestly still one of my biggest challenges. When your experience is worth more than your time, pricing your experience is sometimes harder to explain to your customers who are just comparing quotes. We might cost more, but it will be done right, and if you are a racer, your car will pass tech inspection. Learning to balance the comradery of motorsports and business is a hard line to walk, nearly all of my closest friends are also customers. Building cars that are for many of our customer’s toys is very different from a shop that is doing general automotive repair and it comes with its own unique set of challenges.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Honestly, I was late to using social media for marketing, many have pointed out that I made a mistake avoiding it for so long and I tend to agree with them, sometimes. I started sharing my work via my personal Facebook page, while we do have a business page now, my personal page is where most of my customers follow and interact. The algorithms and strategy feel a little like Voodoo, but my content reaches my core audience and that works for my business. Focusing on my niche is important because it is a small community in the world of racing and custom car builds. I get the most engagement from funny videos of friends and me wasting time at the shop or travel, stories of my failures, and pictures of me learning from those failures. Sharing authentically, I believe, is the main reason I have seen success on social media I try to share something daily, but with so many projects it isn’t always easy some days.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.facebook.com/ApexAutoWorks/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apexautoworks/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.tomlin.9
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfp6vQr99t1VL3f5JHa4cpdOsNUbl4K3b
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/ApexAutoWorks/ Wrench Rally Hands-On Driving Academy

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