We recently connected with Larry Witherspoon Jr and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Larry thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things small businesses can do, in our view, is to serve underserved communities that are ignored by giant corporations who often are just creating mass-market, one-size-fits-all solutions. Talk to us about how you serve an underserved community.

In my youth, I learned many lessons about opportunity. My parents sacrificed to send me to private school rather than public school. My private school education was very challenging as I played sports as well. It wasn’t uncommon for me to fall asleep while studying, wake up early for school due to the long commute, and then practice till after dark. I learned the fruits of hard work and camaraderie with my classmates and teammates.

Many of my classmates came from more affluent backgrounds. I learned how to navigate social economic classes as part of my family lived in housing projects when I was growing up. I wouldn’t have built these relationships with my classmates if I had attended my local public schools. I’ve leveraged the ability to network and relationships into employment opportunities and the founding of the Automotive Training Center.

We serve young people who come from backgrounds that don’t afford them the same opportunities I was given. Without opportunity and access is it very difficult to overcome the challenges some of our students face. We help our students understand the gifts and talents they already possess. We also provide an employment opportunity and access to our network. Our students graduate with newfound technical skills, confidence in themselves, and the opportunities to be successful.

Larry, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

The Automotive Training Center started initially as an idea. In 2012, I had just moved to an inner-city Atlanta neighborhood and was struck by how many young men I was meeting that had been to or were headed to prison. I was upset by this trend and wanted to do something to help these young men.
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio in a middle class family and went to private school. I also grew up watching my father mentor young men at an inner-city high school and work part-time at a juvenile detention home. But even with being surrounded by positive influences I still ended up in legal trouble and narrowly missed going to prison as a young adult. I fell back on the experiences and support I had growing up and decided to make a change to live a positive life.

When I started to meet young men in Atlanta and started to understand their risk for incarceration I knew that most of them did not have the same support network I was afforded. How much harder would it be for them to overcome these circumstances without support? Nearly impossible was the answer.

So I combined my passion for these young men and women with my life-long love of cars and the Automotive Training Center was born at the end of 2014. I met Shawn McHargue, co-founder, shortly after and we decided to build the organization dedicated to training and finding employment for at-risk youth.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Most non-profit organizations that do similar work to the Automotive Training Center were started with seed funding or by an already established organization that branches into automotive training. Automotive repair/training is an extremely capital intensive field. The enormous costs associated with this type of training is the reason that most organizations are started with seed funding. However, ATC was founded without seed funding and as a stand-alone organization. We were generously granted a small amount of funds from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to start our organization. We used this funding to purchase a tool box with tools and a trailer to transport the tools as we didn’t have a physical location yet. We would take young people from the neighborhood with us to repair vehicles at the customers’ homes.

We had to come up with creative ways to fund ATC in the early days of the organization. We started charging customers for repairs because it was the only way to generate revenue before there wasn’t consistent grant funding at the beginning. We also found that repairing customer vehicles was the best way we found to train our students who graduate and are primarily employed at dealership repair facilities. As an entry-level automotive repair technician our graduates are expected perform tasks efficiently and effectively. They are able to practice repetition and speed at our training facility that prepares them for employment after graduation. We are pleased with this training model and the added benefit that it provides slightly over 40% of the revenue generated every year.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Word-of-mouth is the absolute best way to grow a customer base. At the Automotive Training Center, we pride ourselves on excellent customer service. We have many repeat customers who also refer their friends and family to get their cars repaired as well. Our bookings are generally always full and we only do a small amount of online advertising.

Contact Info:

• Website: AutomotiveTrainingCenter.org
• Instagram: @autotrainingcenter
• Facebook: autotrainingcenter