We were lucky to catch up with Tyler Copenhaver-Heath recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Tyler thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
One of the best things I’ve ever heard in relation to business or life is Steve Jobs speech to Standford. He speaks of seemingly unrelated occurrences in his life that at the time didn’t have anything to do with eachother. But looking backward you could see how they actually came together to create Apple. Bad things happen in life. In my business career I’ve dealt with a fire burning down a location. Robberies, lawsuits employee issues and more. You ask yourself sometimes why me? Until all this comes together. All the pain of starting with a couple thousand dollars and growing a multimillion dollar business while feeling like everyone and everything is out to take it away. Small business is the workhorse of the American economy. When I look back at all those things that happened I realize it’s all come together to equal my newest endeavor. Glaive. Glaive is the big brother for small business. I know first hand how hard it can be for a small business and I want to help others with this dream.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
While working on a degree in biochemistry I started flipping classic cars. This later would become Apex Customs. Having almost no money to start my business I moved into a rat infested building and truly lived the bootstrap life. 120 hour weeks and extreme budgets would lead to the founding of a nationally recognized brand. Some of our more notable clients were the NFL, Rolling Stones, WWE and many more.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In January of 2020 we had huge plans for the year. This was to be the best one yet. We had large clients knocking at our door the offer of a partnership with a famous vehicle manufacturer and more work than we could hire for. Two weeks into the year a fire would take down a location. As I was dealing with the fire and our absolutely ruthless insurance company a letter comes. Failure to garnish an employee and a summons to court. The date was when I was to be in Peru for a school trip finishing up my MBA. I called the court told them this person didn’t even work for us but I would be happy to show for court, could they please switch the date for when I would be in town. We were told to file a motion which was approved by the court and I left for my trip. While in Peru covid hit world changing status and I would make an apocalypse appearing mad dash to the airport. Taking one of the last flights out before being trapped there. Upon my return home. Another letter from the court. I had lost the failure to garnish for failure to appear. The 75k owed to the plaintiff was now owed by my company. You see failure to garnish can be placed onto the employer. Not only had the court messed up my change of date it found me liable for someone whom did not even work for me. 5k in lawyers later the case was dismissed. The next day we were robbed. They had hit the parts storage area of our closed down location. I was already fighting with our insurance company over the fire and now we had a robbery. And just when I was wrapping my head around all of this we got hit again. Another robbery this time our secondary parts storage area. Now we were contending with two robbery’s a fire and the new covid world making proper business anyone’s guess. But surely this had to be it for hits for awhile? But alas our work vehicle was now missing…you guessed it we were robbed again. Through all this I was determined to wake each day ready to face it. It did feel overwhelming but I knew showing this to my employees would not help anything. We must solve the problems and keep going. The world throws this stuff at you and you can’t control it. But you can control your work ethic and attitude.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I do a lot of consulting these days. This is the number one question I get. I used a couple grand in savings. It was not near enough and looking back it was quite insane to even try with so little. But the bright side is having almost no money forces you the be resourceful. I see too many companies immediately spend thousands on fancy offices and non essentials. I think access to a lot of capital can be a bad thing at times. The best businesses I feel start as side hustles. You’re on a budget, you get to test the waters and the organic growth will take your business as far as it’s supposed to go.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Tyleruriah
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylercopenhaver
• Twitter: Tyleruriah