Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Holly Pezzano. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Holly , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I’ve been around the car scene for a long time. I’ve pretty much worked in every facet of the industry- detailing, lube shops, performance shops, dealerships, body shops, OEM and aftermarket parts and accessories… When I wasn’t working, I ran car clubs, organized events like shows and mountain runs and helped run one of the largest community street car drag races in the Southeast.
I took a break from the car scene for a while when my son was born but missed being part of the community. When I tried to plug back in, I couldn’t really find the kind of space I was looking for so I figured that if I can’t find it, I’ll build it myself. To that end, Shift Atlanta was born in 2019. This organization exists to be the antithesis of the gatekeeper in the car community. We share news, articles and information all geared to help enthusiasts do more with their cars with confidence. I also stared Shift Women which endeavors to do the same thing for women enthusiasts regardless if they’re just getting started or they are seasoned mechanics or race car drivers. The point is for the people with knowledge to share it with others that want it and for all of us to try new things together.
Over the years of running this community, the questions we were asked most frequently were insurance related. People wanted to know if they could protect their cars if they decided to go to the track or if they had modified their cars, what should they do if their insurance company found out or what would happen if the car was stolen? Realizing that there weren’t many agents out there that could answer those questions is what got us to start doing the research ourselves. Eventually, I decided that being able to offer things like track day insurance through Shift Atlanta would be super helpful so I went out and got my insurance license. It wasn’t long before we figured out how to get the more things done and Traction Insurance was born. High horsepower cars, race cars, track cars, highly modified street cars – these are all things most agents shy away from but we are built around. There is an underserved gap in this hobby market that starts with things like a 67 chevy that only gets driven on special occasions and people full blown race teams. We know this space well because we are right in the middle of it ourselves.

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?

Traction insurance is an insurance brokerage that is specifically designed around helping car enthusiasts solve insurance problems. This can range from people with fast cars that want to see what they can do on the race track and those that track all the time to street driven show cars like stanced cars or lowriders. We also do a lot of work with customer’s car collections, exotics, purpose built race cars that are not street legal, right hand drive Japanese imports, kit cars and open cockpit cars like Arial Atoms and everything in between.
There is a re-occurring horror story we hear all the time from car people that goes something like “I have a standard issue street car that I’ve modified for track use including safety gear like a roll cage and a brake upgrade, but when my car was stolen my insurance company only gave met the value of the standard issue street car!”. This is a sad (but preventable!) story but it means that you need an insurance agent who knows the value of what you have beyond what it says on paper.

What we want most for our customers is to feel secure in the fact that their car is truly covered. When you are paired with the right insurance company, going to the track isn’t going to get you dropped, adding more modifications doesn’t have to mean your car is undervalued and true collectors market value can be sought in case of total loss. It sounds like somewhat of a luxury but it isn’t. Most of our customers are surprised to find that this kind of insurance can actually be less expensive than the standard alternative.

Our entire team is made of serious car enthusiasts, when you work with us, you don’t have to explain what is special about your car or why it’s so important to you to protect it properly- we get it. We work hard to find the right fit at the right price and if we can’t get it done for you, we’ll tell you who likely can. We want to be a resource and don’t mind answering questions- just don’t be surprised if when you call if we want to talk about your car for 10 minutes. Sure, not everyone wants to chit chat with their insurance agent, but that’s what makes us different. Talking cars, tracks and racing are our favorite things We firmly believe dealing with insurance doesn’t have to suck. While of course we can get things done quickly as the situation warrants, we don’t want to be just another thoughtless transaction, we here to ride along while our customers fulfill their dreams and carry out their hobbies with confidence.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I started my first business when I was 19. I’ve helped build or run businesses in some capacity since then. I had been focused on running an organization called Homefield Equity that in essence, traded business consulting and management expertise for equity. This gave us an ability to give back into the start up scene and offer help (and sometimes funding) to new organizations that were often cash strapped but otherwise had great ideas and growth potential. It was under the Homefield Equity umbrella that I invested into my own concepts, Shift Atlanta and Traction Insurance.

Sometimes you have an idea, plan the growth strategy and execution in a formulaic way but every once in a while, a business idea takes you along for the ride. That is sort of what happened with Traction. Initially, offering an insurance product seemed like a decent revenue stream for Shift Atlanta but once we got out in the marketplace and discovered how sincere the need was, we started adding more products and expanding. We grew 250% our first year. What started as an idea for a specific product that solved one issue became an entire business dedicated to solving challenges with a broad range of specialty products. This “hobby” is now a fully scaling business that is available in 17 states with a continued steep growth trajectory.
This growth is was made possible because we listened to our customers and what the market was telling us it needed and were uniquely positioned to act on it.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

For the longest time, working in mostly male dominated industries I felt like I needed to blend in or be invisible. I got to the point that I felt like that in order to be a part of it all, I needed to stay small, not call attention to myself and contribute in a way that was disproportional to my status in order to just be accepted.

In 2014 or so, I was accepted into a women’s business accelerator called Launchpad2x. The woman who ran this organization was former military and a fortune 50 business leader who took up as much space as she damn well pleased. In my professional career, there is a distinct before and after and being a part of this program was the catalyst. As I rethought my communication style, my thought processes and how I presented my business, I realized how much I was getting in my own way. The only person that needed to accept me, was me and I didn’t like how small I was at all.

I had to learn to speak up (even when I wasn’t sure), take what I needed (instead of waiting for it to be offered) and be a whole lot bolder. I don’t apologize for being somewhere that someone doesn’t expect me to be anymore and I sure don’t care if you accept me being there or not. I have no interest in being ego centric, rude or disrespectful to anyone but I’m done asking for permission, it’s time to ask forgiveness as needed. I’m here to make things better, I may get it wrong sometimes but you know what? My failure is still worth more than someone else’s lack of effort. We’ll just keep going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tractionins.com
• Instagram: @tractioninsurance
• Facebook: Traction / Shift Brokers By Traction
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/tractionins

Image Credits

N/A all were taken or created by us.