Jordan Watson ran National Speed, a venture-backed speed shop in Wilmington, North Carolina, that did installation, dyno tuning and retail parts. In 2016 he sat down with host Reid Lunde to explain a goal most shop owners would call crazy. He wanted to build the first national chain of speed shops, with locations across the country, so enthusiasts anywhere could expect fair and consistent treatment.
Jordan did not found the company. George Taylor started it in 2007 with the idea of a speed shop standardized enough to scale. Jordan came in behind the sales counter. In 2012 he and George Taylor III took over running it.
The episode is a close look at how a speed shop can be run like a system. Jordan talked about quoting every part up front, building an in-house labor time database, paying every employee a salary, tracking metrics daily, and picking new markets by car culture. Here is what he said and what a shop owner can take from it.
Quote the whole job before the car shows up
National Speed had a performance consultant whose only job was to handle inquiries. Phone calls, walk-ins, emails and social media messages all went to him. Jordan called it an assisted buy more than selling. The consultant figured out what the customer actually needed and then planned the job properly.
Jordan said many speed shops write a ticket with one line for labor and one line for a turbo kit and figure out the rest as they go. That ruins the schedule, takes longer than promised and costs more than the customer expected. National Speed did the opposite. If a 2010 Camaro was coming in for a cam job, they knew it needed 28 components, and the quote listed them. The customer knew what to expect, the shop knew how to slot the job on the schedule, and every part was on hand before the car arrived.
Reid pushed back. The guy down the street quotes $1,500 for a cam install that honestly costs $2,500 once you add springs, seals and retainers. Jordan leaned into the gap. He told customers the other shop would be cheaper and explained why. Their quote would have less detail, and they probably would not stand behind the work. National Speed fixed anything related to its work, even a month later. Then he dared them to get the other quote and take a tour of the other shop.
As long as you can help them feel confident that the extra amount is actually worth it, that's all you have to do. It's all trust.
He said about 80% of the time customers could not imagine going anywhere else. He called competing on price a race to zero, and the shop would not do a $500 cam install on an F-body.
Build your own labor time database
Book times from OE-style systems like ALLDATA were a starting point. National Speed kept its own searchable database of what it charged for each performance installation, with notes for the technician. Jordan's example was a downpipe on an Evo. The book says 1.6 hours. The shop's database said four hours, because three bolts are going to break when you separate the downpipe from the turbo housing.
It also held the shortcuts that let a tech beat book time on certain jobs. The shop kept base maps for calibration on the platforms it saw most, from GM and Ford to Mitsubishi, Subaru and Nissan. Jordan also spent six months, 12 to 16 hours a day, building a PIES-compliant parts database for the cars they worked on most. That cut quoting time and tuning time.
Salary instead of flat rate, with fanatical tracking
Every position at National Speed was salaried. Jordan said that raised eyebrows every time he told people. His reasoning was that performance work is not general repair. Nothing fits, everything is custom, and an installer makes a hundred decisions on one job. If a tech is paid for an eight-hour install, his incentive is to hit the deadline. Jordan wanted the tech to make the best call for the customer without his pay taking a hit when the job ran over.
Salary did not mean nobody watched the numbers. Jordan called the shop fanatical about metrics. The shop tracked each tech's progress against the billable time sold on each job, so everyone knew when the runway was ending. Marketing, sales and even purchasing efficiency were tracked daily, and the general manager owned the metrics.
Results were public. A weekly meeting reviewed the past week's shop performance, and someone who kept missing their numbers would end up in a conversation. Jordan said the point was to support people, and nobody was threatened. He also said the shop did not tolerate C players.
Hire for personality and train the skills
Jordan said National Speed hired differently from any shop he had talked to. Candidates went through a series of assessments to check personality fit for the specific role. A consultant, a general manager, a technician and a calibrator each need a different personality, and the shop spent time defining the requirements for each.
Speed shop experience did not matter much. If a candidate had 80% of what the role needed, the shop could train the other 20%. At the time, the only person on the team who had ever worked in a speed shop was the general manager, Adam Kennedy. None of the technicians had. They came in with good baseline skills, got trained, and did well quickly.
Jordan admitted he was good at designing a system and bad at working inside one. Adam, who was process-driven, offset that.
Picking markets by car culture
National Speed planned to open its second location in Richmond, Virginia, at the end of that year. The five-year goal was 40 locations. Jordan expected the first few stores to take a big chunk of that time, with the rest opening in parallel once the process was down.
When he talked to franchising and market-selection firms, they talked about demographics. Jordan only cared about what share of the people in a market are car people. He built his own model using population, disposable income by age range and average cars per household, plus his shop's own historic revenue per customer. Then he layered in what he called psychographics, such as a monthly Cars and Coffee or a road course or drag strip nearby. The model returned 52 markets where he thought the shop could succeed.
His proof was Wilmington itself. The metro area had only about 330,000 people and the city just over 100,000, and he described it as a poor market. Even so, the shop ran a standing three- to four-month backlog with three technicians, was booked weeks out on the dyno, and was outgrowing its 8,600 square foot building. Richmond had about three times the population and a big car culture.
From a broken 300ZX to the sales counter
Jordan bought a Z32 300ZX at 15 with lawn-mowing money. On day two the timing belt broke and every valve hit the pistons. He borrowed tools, learned as he went, and eventually sold the car and broke even. He moved to cheap Hondas built in the backyard and called the years from 2003 to 2009 his college. He nearly failed high school, and family told him there was no career in cars.
George Taylor heard his name around town and interviewed him in his living room. For his first six months Jordan was sure he would be fired any day. After he lost his temper early on, George told him to act professionally or be gone. Jordan started learning from successful business people in Wilmington.
It's not a matter of how strong you are. It's a matter of how quickly you get up.
His reading pick was The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. He was also excited that HP Tuners now covered Ford and Dodge, so the shop could tune most domestic vehicles in one system for about a $100 credit.
Key takeaways
- Quote every part and every hour before the car arrives. Accurate quotes protect the schedule, the margin and the customer's trust.
- Keep your own labor time notes. Book time misses the broken bolts and the shortcuts your techs already know.
- If you pay salary instead of flat rate, track billable time against sold time daily so everyone knows where they stand.
- Hire for personality and baseline skill, then train the rest for the specific role.
- Do not compete on price. Explain the difference in your quote and invite the customer to compare.
- Expect the plan to be wrong. Keep the business moving forward and learn from each miss.
Running a systematized shop with My Shop Assist
Jordan's shop worked because quotes were detailed, every job was planned before it started, and hours were measured against what was sold. My Shop Assist is built for that kind of shop. You can build estimates with every part and task, order parts with purchase orders, have techs clock time to each task, and compare actual hours to quoted hours on every job. Zones and a kanban board show where every car is, and checklists keep the process the same no matter who does the work. See how it fits performance and race shops.
If you want to see your own numbers the way Jordan saw his, start a free 30-day trial.
