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Ready to discover the secret behind 18 years of unstoppable growth? It all starts with belief, grit, and the courage to do things better. This isn’t just another business story—it’s a masterclass in resilience and innovation.
In this video, we’re sitting down with Simon Locke, the visionary founder of Pace Auto Werks, who has not only built a successful business but has continually redefined it to stay ahead of the curve.
From the humble beginnings of a workshop set up out of necessity, Simon and his wife have transformed their business into a powerhouse in the auto industry. This journey is packed with invaluable lessons on entrepreneurship, customer service, and the importance of constant evolution.
Simon shares candid insights on what it takes to succeed—like why belief in yourself is non-negotiable, how to turn challenges into stepping stones, and the critical role of refreshing your brand to avoid fading into the background.
By the end of this video, you’ll walk away with actionable strategies to not only start but sustain and grow your business, ensuring you stay relevant in an ever-changing market. If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, this is a conversation you can’t afford to miss.
The Interview with Simon Locke
Key Takeaways
- Believe in Yourself: Simon emphasises that belief in yourself is the foundation of success in business. Without it, sustaining a business is nearly impossible.
- Continuous Improvement: The need to refresh and evolve your business is crucial. Staying stagnant means blending into the background, making it essential to constantly innovate and adapt.
- Customer Service is King: Providing good service and value for money remains at the core of Pace Auto Werks’ success. Building trust with customers is pivotal for long-term growth.
- Empower Your Team: Simon highlights the importance of hiring good people and then giving them the autonomy to excel in their roles. Micromanaging can stifle productivity and creativity.
- Brand Evolution: Refreshing the business’s face every 10 years is critical to staying relevant and avoiding the risk of becoming obsolete in a competitive market.
- Collaborative Success: Strong partnerships, like the one with Optimise Online, play a vital role in sustaining and growing the business, showcasing the power of collaboration.
- Handling Challenges: Simon shares that challenges are inevitable, but facing them head-on and working collaboratively to resolve issues is key to maintaining a healthy work environment and business growth.
The Script from the Video
Simon Locke
If you don’t believe in yourself, don’t start a business because you’ll never succeed.
Calum Maxwell
Do the best you can. Rise to the challenges.
Simon Locke
If you don’t refresh the business, you disappear into the landscape.
[Intro Ends]
Simon Locke
I’m Simon Locke. I’m the owner of Pace Auto Werks. Together with my wife we started this business about 18 years ago and we’ve gone from strength to strength every year since.
Calum Maxwell
What inspired you to start Pace Auto Werks? What is the founding story?
Simon Locke
I needed a job. We’d finished running a service station for 9 years, my wife and I, and I ran the workshop and she ran the front end of the business. And after that the lease was up and decided to try some different things and I went to work for a dealership. I lasted about 3 months because they were just criminally disorganised. I came home to Kim one night and I said we can do it better than this. Let’s set up a workshop. And lo and behold about a week later I was doing a timing belt for a friend of mine and I got a phone call from another friend, somebody in the apartments where they live, owned the 4, as it was then, Pace Motors and they were going to close one up because they’d been unlucky trying to sell it. So I went down there, quickly went down there and had a look, came home, took some photos, discussed it with Kim, checked our finances and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. We started there and it was in late 2006.
Calum Maxwell
It’s been a ride, been a journey.
Simon Locke
It has been quite a ride, yeah.
Calum Maxwell
So the inspiration was we can do this better.
Simon Locke
I just said to Kim, you know the service is still king. If we give people good service, good value for money, we can do this.
Calum Maxwell
I love the belief in yourself.
Simon Locke
Yeah, well you have to. If you don’t believe in yourself, don’t start a business because you won’t succeed, you know. It’s pretty simple,
Calum Maxwell
Very simple.
Simon Locke
I remember telling you that many years ago.
Calum Maxwell
For the viewers at home, Simon was a big instigator and helped drive my inspiration to start Optimise Online. He is our longest client, but not our oldest client.
Simon Locke
Okay, there is a difference.
Calum Maxwell
What is the core mission of Pace Auto Werks and how do you aim to empower the people you work with through your services?
Simon Locke
Good customer service and good value for money and try and make some money out of it at the end of it, you know, which is not always easy. It’s an ever evolving thing and you know, we started this business just as the internet was starting to really take hold and it’s constantly evolving all the time and you have to stay across that. It’s imperative that we have a team like your team with us. This is why we go and have our quarterly meetings. We’ll call them meetings for now.
Calum Maxwell
Thank you so much. Like I love being an integral part of your business, myself and my team. It’s invaluable to hear you say that it’s all about good service, good value and looking after the customer. I know firsthand as a consumer that sometimes we feel like we’re being mistreated or taken advantage of. We do spend time looking for what we can do, how we can do it and can we do it ourselves versus looking for a business or a brand that is trusted. So I think that it shines through in what you do. Focused on good service and good value and just looking after the customer at the end of the day because you have such an amazing repeat customer base. Amazing stuff, Simon. Really is.
Simon Locke
No, thank you, Calum. And look, yeah, you’re part of our teams or our business’s success as well.
Calum Maxwell
The extension to the team.
Simon Locke
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It is an integral part of the business.
Calum Maxwell
I’ve always felt that way. Definitely.
Simon Locke
Good. As to the second half of that original question, how do I inspire the people around me? The one thing I can say is when you employ good people, you have to let them get on with what they do. Not try to micromanage them in any way. When they’ve got a problem, they’ll come to you and that’s when you put your heads together and sort it out. If you try and do it any other way, it will end in disaster and you won’t retain good staff.
Calum Maxwell
Pace Auto Werks is such a strong brand. What key elements or strategies did you focus on to build such a strong brand identity?
Simon Locke
You just kind of go to work every day and try and do everything as well as you possibly can. Don’t let any issues fester.
Calum Maxwell
Be the best you can be. When issues arise, you’re looking at and addressing them and working with the clients.
Simon Locke
Clients or staff. You might have two staff members that aren’t getting on for some reason or that something’s happened in the workshop that they disagree upon. There’s an array of issues that can evolve when you have several people working in a close environment.
Calum Maxwell
We live on top of each other at work.
Simon Locke
Well, we do. We do. And then you get to know the people you work with better than half your family.
Calum Maxwell
We spend so much time at work.
Simon Locke
When you have employees over many years, that just happens whether you like it or not. With staff, we have a Christmas lunch, a big Christmas lunch each year and we all look forward to it. And all the wives are involved. Everybody kind of gets to know one another on a personal level. And of course, we don’t talk any shop. That’s number one rule at those luncheons and nobody talks shop. We just get to know one another and that kind of helps the balance back at work.
Calum Maxwell
How has your brand evolved in your journey and what were some significant milestones?
Simon Locke
There’s an old saying in business, if you’re not movingforward, you go backwards. There’s no standing still. And I tried standing still for a coupleof months. It didn’t work. You have to keep moving forward. With our industry, there’s a lot oftechnology that’s constantly evolving. So you’re always on a learning curve. We did a rebrandingabout 10 years ago now. Just changed all the logo and all the way you project the business.
My dad once said, bless him, that if you don’t refresh the business face, at least every 10 years, you disappear into the landscape. And it’s very true. We’re now, again, 10 years later, looking to redo the face of the business because you can’t afford to disappear into the landscape. Otherwise, you will disappear completely.
Calum Maxwell
That’s an invaluable insight.
Simon Locke
Yeah, it’s a good one, isn’t it?
Calum Maxwell
What are the values that come through in the team, in the business, working with clients?
Simon Locke
Get it done, make money out of it and go home. I think you can kind of disappear up your own backside trying to analyse things too much. Just do what you do and do it as well as you can.
Calum Maxwell
Do the best you can, rise to the challenges, customer focused, looking to provide value.
Simon Locke
Yes, certainly. Always doing all those things.
Calum Maxwell
Can you share with us how your brand values are reflected in your daily operations and culture?
Simon Locke
After 30 years in business, it just happens.
Calum Maxwell
It’s ingrained.
Simon Locke
It is. And it’s not something that we analyse.
Calum Maxwell
It’s interesting when we went through actually clarifying what our values are and giving them words and meaning. They were already there. We didn’t just go, okay, this is our value and we’re going to put it on a board and job done. We actually went through six weeks, five workshops, four hours apiece as a team. And when we finally got to the end of it and actually clarified what our values were, we looked at the board and went, that’s just, that’s what we’ve always done. It’s just instilled in us.
Simon Locke
I don’t know if you can change much of it though. You either have that within yourself and your staff. If you try and create it or put it in there somehow, it would be very difficult.
Calum Maxwell
You can’t.
Simon Locke
People have to be on the same page.
Calum Maxwell
A hundred percent. And it’s those values that we look for when we’re recruiting new team. I’ve gone through the learning mistakes of employing the wrong person who I thought, okay, they sort of aligned. Maybe they haven’t really had all of our values instilled. And because of it, it caused friction.
Simon Locke
Sure. It will do.
Calum Maxwell
And that’s probably been a valuable piece of the puzzle to actually clarify what our values are. Because now we’ve identified them. We can look for them in those that we want to work with and work around.
Simon Locke
We’re kind of in a position where staff are hard to find these days. Good, talented, productive, career-orientated technicians. And retaining good staff over long periods of time is a real trick. It’s not just about pay. There is a lot of other factors involved in it. I just let people do what they do. And they come to me when they’ve got a problem. Otherwise they know what to do. And they know that I trust them to get on with the job and do a good job. And I’ll be there whenever they need me.
Calum Maxwell
Autonomy and support, two amazing things. I think we just found a couple more values.
Simon Locke
Well, I think we did.
Calum Maxwell
What do you feel are the critical factors that have led Pace Auto Werks to be such a success?
Simon Locke
I’m lucky enough to have a very driven wife that’s a workaholic. She just totally loves what she does. She’s largely responsible for everything that we’ve achieved as well. Probably more so than me. We reached a point where it was not burnout, but it was same, same Groundhog Day kind of thing. So we changed it around. And I did the early shifts for the first 10 years, but she’s been doing them for the last few. That’s been a really good move. It’s really hard to put your finger on exactly what makes it grow and develop. It’s just do what you do and do it as well as you can and head down, bum up and go for it.
Calum Maxwell
From what I’ve learned today, it’s the right people, the right attitude, the right partnership.
Simon Locke
Yeah.
Calum Maxwell
I couldn’t agree with you more. Every time I walk through that door, Kim is just so bubbly and full of laughter.
Simon Locke
And we’re still married.
Calum Maxwell
Count your lucky stars?
Simon Locke
Well, this afternoon anyway, you better check with her.
Calum Maxwell
Thank you so much, Simon, for making the time today, sharing your story and insights. It’s been invaluable and it has been an absolute pleasure and privilege working with you for the last 10 plus years.
Simon Locke
No problem, mate. The feeling’s mutual.
