Tire Pros dealer aims to mentor women

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Whitney Moore, co-owner of G.L. Moore Tire Pros & Automotive in Springfield, has worked in the tire business for 18 years with her father as her mentor.

Now she wants to assist other women who could use a mentor to help them succeed in their tire and automotive careers.

As a member of the Tire Pros National Dealer Council (where she represents the Midwest region) and the Council for Tire Pros, she recently developed a group called Women of Tire Pros to support owners and employees of Tire Pros franchises.

The group started up during the chaos of the pandemic, so meetings and communications have been virtual, but the Women of Tire Pros is planning an event during the franchisor's national conference in October.

"I really love the support not only from Tire Pros staff but the ATD (American Tire Distributors) staff in helping me develop and support this program," she said.

"I think there are so many different avenues that we are all excited about of where to take this. We've talked about recruiting and how do we get more women in. One of the things is we want to be a dealer support, helping dealers with remodeling or training or how to handle women (customers). ...

"And the big one I also really love is mentorship. When I first started, there weren't very many women and I kind of had to navigate myself," she said. "So we're trying to partner with some of the newer women coming into the industry with some of the ladies that have been around for a long time to kind of navigate and help.

"It's a wider range. We're not only trying to bring in technicians, service writers, sales staff, office staff, I even really want to bring in spouses, even if they are not active owners, even if they don't have a lot to do with the shop. I want them to be a part of this group for a support system as well."

Right now the group has 30 members (employees, franchisee owners and a few Tire Pros staff), but Ms. Moore said she hopes to add members after the national conference.

"I've had so many phone calls and text messages with women wanting to get involved," Ms. Moore said.

One of the goals of the new group is to also encourage more women to join the male-dominated industry.

"That's actually one of the things we're working on in Women of Tire Pros is how to recruit more women. We're hoping to work with some groups that have some recruitment tools already in place and maybe do some features with women. ...

"I think what a lot of women don't understand is it is very lucrative and it can be a very promising career to be in the automotive and tire industry. We want to put that message out there to women, that you can make really good money, you can actually develop a career. …

"We really want to showcase that there are opportunities. One of the things that is especially true for Tire Pros is so many of the Tire Pros locations are family-owned, so we really understand family."

Ms. Moore is quite experienced in running a family business. She is the third-generation owner of her family's tire dealership, which was founded 51 years ago by her great-uncle, who passed the business to her father, who retired in April.

She started working at the dealership while she was attending college. She said she grew to love the business slowly and decided to make it her career.

Being a woman tire dealer presents advantages and challenges, Ms. Moore said.

"I've really seen the advantage of being able to change perceptions, not only for my customers — giving them the ability to not just see men as the only ones that are capable of discussing their automotive needs, discussing tires with them — but also my employees," she said.

"I definitely do think my female customers have appreciated walking in the door and having another woman talk to them. And some of the skills I've been able to pass along to my staff as far as how to approach, not even just women, but just how to approach people differently. Everybody is different and how to be able to kind of have an array of skill sets to approach people has been something that I think having a woman in this industry is helpful for."

Unfortunately, there are still residual stereotypes and instances of lack of respect, whether from customers, vendors or employees, but she said the attitudes have improved over the years.

She said she has been attending vendor meetings for 19 years and in the early years there were very few women there. Now she said there is a good mixture of men and women who are involved in the business.

"In general, it's getting better and better all the time," she said.

"One thing that always has been really important to me is I want to have equality because of my skill sets, because of what I bring to the table and just because of my gender. I want to be seen as capable because I'm good at what I do and I know what I'm talking about, not just because I'm a female," Ms. Moore said.

G.L. Moore Tire has 13 employees, and Ms. Moore said she has tried to foster a family atmosphere in the workplace.

"I always tell my guys: Family comes first. If your kid gets sick and you need to leave or you've got to take care of something, it's going to be tough, but at the end of the day, that's your kid, that's your family, that's what you got to take care of. Unlike a lot of industries, ours is very much family-oriented and that can be very advantageous for women," she said.

"If an employee needs to bring their child to work, we have toys in the break room and they can sit back there, and they don't have to worry about missing work," she said.

The benefit of being an independent business owner is, "I can make rules regarding flexible work schedules, as long as I make them fair for everybody," she said.

For example, the dealership used to start working on cars at 7:30 a.m. weekdays, but since some of her employees had to drop their children off at school in the morning, she moved the work schedule to 8 a.m.

Likewise, when a father had to pick up his children from school in the afternoons, she said she made a schedule so the employee could pick up his children and then come back to work.

"I've had guys who have split custody, so maybe every other week they have to (work) later or leave earlier. I do everything I can because at the end of the day, family is the most important," Ms. Moore said, adding that this flexibility "absolutely" has helped with employee retention.

"I always tell my guys if I could pay them a million dollars an hour, I would. There's a lot of things I can't do, unfortunately. We all know those challenges in this industry. But the little things I can do is to be more flexible and understanding.

"I always give my guys the benefit of the doubt and fortunately I haven't had an issue of being taken advantage of. I think that comes from empowering your employees. When you give them that respect, they appreciate it."

Ms. Moore said she's taken a mixed approach of at times "being one of the guys" and bringing a little feminine touch to the business.

"One of the big things that I think helped me in my career when I came into the shop was I wanted to earn their respect. I didn't want them to just see me as the owner's daughter and future boss. I wanted to earn their respect.

"So I would go out into the shop, and I still go out in the shop, and talk to them, see what's going on, see the challenges, and what things I can do to help them," she said, but she added, "I definitely have worked on ways to bring a feminine touch.

"For example when I have employees that have issues, men tend to not want to talk things out and sometimes they can let it go, sometimes they can't. I'm a woman, I like to talk. So when we have any kind of little issues, I usually try to (get them to) separate, cool off. 'Let's talk about it, let's work it out.'"

Ms. Moore also likes to celebrate her employees — be it anniversaries, birthdays, birth of a child, wedding or whatever is going on in their lives.

"I think typically men would say, 'Oh, that's not a big deal,' but I think they enjoy showing up and their toolboxes are decorated, or surprising everyone with a lunch or giving them the day off or something like that. I think that's a feminine approach to it," she said.

One thing Ms. Moore said she wished she had done differently when she started in the business was to spend more time in the shop.

"I learned the business from the back end, inside the accounting and office side and ownership side. Over the past few years I've definitely stepped out in the shop a lot more, to really try to understand what it takes to run the business from all perspectives, so I can get that big overview and not do the micromanaging."

Her tips for running a success business?

"I would say first and foremost, take care of the people, whether that's your customers or employees, and the money will come. If you focus on taking care of people first, everything else will follow suit."

She said she also tries to avoid micromanaging.

"I think that's a huge one for our industry. I always say tire dealers tend to be like firemen. They want to run around and put out little fires everywhere. So avoiding that, avoiding all the micromanaging and really entrusting and empowering your employees. ...

"Employees tend to care more when they are a part of the solution and engaged — really giving them that trust and empowerment. Since I hired them to do a job, I believe that they can do it and that I'm here to give them the resources to do that job to the best of their ability and provide solutions where I can."

She also advocates communication with her employees and trying to make the workplace a little fun, too.

"I tell my guys if it was fun, it would be called fun. It's work. But it doesn't mean you can't have some fun because, if you think about it, you probably spend more time with each other in the shop than you do with your own family, which is why I try to be flexible.

"There are ways to make it fun. And that also kind of lightens the mood for the customers as well," she said.