I've Always Been a Builder: What Baseball Cards, Mixtapes, and the Automotive Industry Taught Me About Business

An imagined young Tracy Myers in eighth grade in 1985, using a double cassette deck boom box and homemade antenna to record and sell mixtapes, one of his earliest entrepreneurial ventures.

Some entrepreneurs start businesses. Others have been building things their entire lives without realizing it.

If you had asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I probably wouldn't have said entrepreneur, business owner, or automotive dealer.

Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have known what any of those words meant.

But looking back, I realize I've always been a builder.

Long before I owned a car dealership in Winston-Salem, long before WrestleCade Weekend, AML Wrestling, speaking engagements, or books, I was building things. I was building businesses, relationships, systems, and communities without realizing that was what I was doing.

The first clues showed up in elementary school.

My First Business Was Baseball Cards

Like a lot of kids in the 1970s and 1980s, I collected baseball cards. But somewhere along the way, collecting turned into something else.

It seemed perfectly logical to me that if I had a card someone else wanted, I could sell it to them or trade it for a card I wanted more. I didn't know the terms "supply and demand" or "market value." I certainly wasn't studying economics.

I was simply solving problems.

Someone had something I wanted.

I had something they wanted.

A deal was made.

Looking back, I realize I was learning lessons about negotiation, value, and customer service years before I ever sold my first vehicle.

The Mixtape Business of 1985

By the time I reached eighth grade in 1985, rap music was just beginning to work its way into the mainstream. The problem was that I lived in a small town, and finding the newest music wasn't exactly easy.

Then I discovered something important.

On Friday nights, if I positioned the antenna on my boom box just right and wrapped a little aluminum foil around it, I could pull in the mix show on WPEG out of Charlotte.

My boom box had a double cassette deck.

Opportunity had just introduced itself.

Every week I would buy a three-pack of 60-minute blank cassette tapes from the department store for 99 cents. I'd record the show on both sides of the tape and make copies.

At first, I gave away a few copies to friends.

Then something happened.

People started talking about them.

Soon I was taking advance orders.

By the time my middle school eventually shut down my little side business, I was pre-selling around fifteen tapes every week at three dollars each.

My hard cost was thirty-three cents for the cassette tape and whatever my time was worth.

Seventy-five dollars a week was serious money for an eighth grader in 1985.

More importantly, I learned a lesson that has followed me for the rest of my life:

If you can provide value, solve a problem, or give people access to something they want but can't easily get themselves, there will almost always be an opportunity to build something meaningful.

Building Never Really Stops

Looking back now, I wasn't selling baseball cards.

I wasn't selling mixtapes.

I was building.

I was building relationships with customers. I was building demand through word of mouth marketing. I was building systems that allowed me to produce and deliver a product efficiently. I was building trust with people who knew they could count on me to deliver what I promised.

Those lessons eventually followed me into the automobile business.

Over the years, I've had the opportunity to build dealerships, brands, teams, events, partnerships, and communities. Some of those projects succeeded beyond anything I could have imagined. Others provided lessons that were far more valuable than the money they cost me.

Both types of experiences matter.

Why the Automotive Industry Is Home

I've been fortunate enough to live in a lot of different worlds over the years.

I've worked in automotive retail, promoted professional wrestling events, written books, spoken at conferences across the country, and consulted with businesses in a variety of industries.

Every one of those experiences has enriched my life and taught me something valuable.

But the older I get, the more I realize my people are in the automotive business.

This industry has provided opportunities for my family for generations. It has introduced me to mentors, lifelong friendships, incredible employees, and customers who became family.

The automobile business has allowed me to help people solve transportation problems that often affect every other area of their lives, from employment opportunities to family responsibilities and financial stability.

That's meaningful work.

The Next Fifty Years

As time goes on, I expect I'll slowly begin stepping away from some of the other worlds I've been fortunate enough to participate in so I can invest even more time, energy, and resources back into the automotive industry that has given so much to me and my family.

My goal is simple.

I want to spend the next fifty years helping build better businesses, better leaders, better workplaces, and a stronger automotive industry than the one I inherited.

Because the truth is, builders never really stop building.

The projects may change.

The industries may change.

The seasons of life may change.

But the wiring rarely does.

I've always been a builder.

And if history is any indication, I probably always will be.