We were lucky to catch up with John Light recently and have shared our conversation below.

John, 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.

Our company Evans Coolant makes and sells waterless engine coolant. All the other products out there are water-based since the beginning, since 1860. I’m mentioning this because the question is how I came up with the product. I didn’t, my father did in the mid 1980s. A friend was trying to redesign a cooling system to work better, but my father looked at it, the whole system, and recognized that the coolant itself is a component that can be upgraded. He searched through chemistry books looking for a fluid that had the proper characteristics such as boiling point, freeze point, corrosion resistance, low vapor pressure, and cost. I think the lesson here is to not take other people’s conclusions to be infallible. People had all assumed that water was the base starting point for a coolant for over 120 years, but questioning that assumption was the key to a revolution.

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

I didn’t start out thinking I would work in the family business and there was no expectation from others that I would. I love motorcycles and have been riding since I was eight. I started racing when I was nineteen and that lasted for fifteen years. Towards the last few years, I started selling the coolant at the track, to local shops, and on Ebay. There wasn’t really a place for me or even a salesman at the company at that time, it was being run by different management than it is today; although I did become one of their top dealers. After the settlement of a lengthy lawsuit against a manufacturer for theft of trade secrets, the company received some funding and I was hired in among some other marketing and sales personnel. I recommended that we develop a powersports coolant for motorcycles, ATVs, and UTVs and became the head of that division. It’s been a long ten years, but over that time I managed to secure distribution, build a strong network of proponents in racing, have the coolant installed in new machines on the manufacturing line, and it’s now used by factory race teams around the world including HRC Honda.

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

You can’t let people run your business for you without continuing to be a very active part of the decisions. Years ago, the company had money to spend and it was decided that we needed a marketing agency to really push the brand forward. It would make sense that an agency has the education and experience necessary to grow sales to the next level. That might work for products that are more regular, but our coolant is technical and the market isn’t the general public. If you don’t know how things work in an industry, it’s easy to make mistakes and it’s doubly painful to pay others to makes those mistakes for you. I happened to walk in on a conversation about a new flier that was about to go to print. They had a beautiful picture of a race team on the front and I asked where they got the picture. They’d bought it from an image company, but weren’t happy when I told them that team was sponsored by a competitor and we’d look foolish using it in our promotions. I ended up taking a picture of a random racer at a track that fit the color/layout of the brochure and that worked well, but they were ready to go ahead with the original image without asking me. There are other examples of times when I should have spoken up or put my foot down and didn’t, and we are still suffering from those mistakes. If it doesn’t feel right or seem like the right thing to do, act on that intuition! Earlier is better, but anytime is better than never.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

We’ve had various sources of new clients over the years. We were sponsors of the NHRA drag racing series for some years and that brought in a good group of motorheads who need our coolant to keep their modified cars cool, but that was also pretty expensive. Social media is good, but it can be challenging to keep up with and with the time it takes, isn’t free. I think our best source of new customers is simply word of mouth. It helps that the coolant solves real problems that people have, performs as we say it does, and has a lot of technical data to back it up, but I think a big aspect is that we don’t have to pump it up in a marketing sense. People appreciate honesty, being able to talk to someone at the company, and sharing a solution to a problem with their friends.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.evanscoolant.com
• Instagram: @evanspowersport
• Facebook: evanspowersport
• Linkedin: John Light
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC_gshuKaCw