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

Alright, Tyler thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I used to have a regular job and to me, I don’t know that I could do it again now that I have started my own business. Having the creative freedom to implement my company agendas is such an empowering responsibility. I have never felt more motivated and more in tune with myself than I have while running my own business. Don’t get me wrong, the stress that comes with that freedom is also very heavy. Between paying employees, keeping customers happy and maintaining a work/life balance with my family, there is a much heavier weight on me. However, I feel that it is more manageable than the stress I experienced at my regular job. I do think about it sometimes as I am always a planner. If things simply stop working at my business, I have to do something to make money for my family. However, I am a firm believer in manifestation and I am ensuring it never comes to that.

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?

I grew up on the farm and out of necessity to keep the farm running, we worked on machines a lot. I was able to get a great understanding of how things worked from a very age. I had a ton of different influences in my life that brought me to where I am today and some of those influences were important people in my life. So important that I named my company after some of them. I have a very strong design background within my family so I have been able to pair that with my mechanical understanding to provide one-off custom car builds for my clients. I love what I do but what I love most is the looks on client’s faces when they come to see their projects. It seriously makes me feel accomplished when I see them so happy. At GKR, we strive for authenticity and simply being genuine. We maintain that day in and day out and it is something we will always hang our hat on. It may cost us clicks in today’s social media world but we will never do anything fake to simply get more clicks. If we are being silly, it is absolutely genuine!

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Yah, my side hustle did actually turn into the business I run today. I grew up loving machines and as I got closer to age 16 of life, cars really started to take the lead as my passion towards machines. Sorry tractors, I still love you. I was always innovating ways to improve my first car on the cheap. Adding power, making it look cooler, etc. I was aways thinking about design. As I started to have a little extra money, I would rebuild parts of cars on the side. It turned into working on full cars in my shop until 1am after my kids went to sleep. That was my ultimate test. If I still enjoyed working on cars after putting that type of commitment into it, I felt I was ready. Well, I absolutely loved it so I made the jump!

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

I very much value my relationships with clients. I use the word relationship very specifically, as well. That is exactly what it is to me. It is genuine and real connections. To deliver the very expensive product that we deliver, I have to really know the client. They may want a certain exterior color or fabric on their seats but what do they really want out of the car and the experience of building the car. Even further, what do they want after they have the car delivered. I simply build a relationship with my clients so we trust each other and can start to understand each other that much better. Relationships are all about communication so you know that is top priority for me!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.GKRmotorcars.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gkr_motor_cars/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GKRmotorcars
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gkr-motor-cars
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@gkrmotorcars494

Image Credits
Schaefer Photography