Andrew and Tanor Banks are the 20-something husband-and-wife duo behind Performance Wraps. The vehicle treatments offer endless customization options for individuals and businesses alike.
“It’s removable as well. So on the commercial side, you can draw all the attention possible on the wrap, then 5 to 8 years later, cycle the truck,” Andrew explained. “Just pull it off, and now you can sell a white van to the next contractor.”
Two years ago, Andrew was one of the first business owners to win the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce’s Winsupply Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence.
That success was hard-earned, he and Tanor share in the latest episode of our “I Am an Entrepreneur” video series.
When Tanor moved back to Ohio to join Andrew in the business, he was sleeping on a futon at the shop. But they don’t regret the sacrifices or mistakes they made along the way.
“I essentially lost everything and hit rock bottom,” Andrew said. “In the grand scheme of life, I didn’t have much to lose. It was brutal. I lost everything. But in hindsight, I would have much rather lost absolutely everything and learned my lessons from 20 to 24 than from 50 to 54.”
“I didn’t know it was called entrepreneurship in the beginning, but I’ve always had a fascination with business,” Andrew recalls.
In the first grade, his mom packed honey buns in his lunchbox. He quickly discovered honey buns were a hot commodity. So at the lunch table, he’d sell the snacks, or trade them for someone to do his homework.
By 16, he’d harnessed that entrepreneurial spirit to launch his first business, a lawn care company. While he was mowing, he would listen to audio books and podcasts about various business topics.
“I didn’t listen to music, I studied,” he said.
He briefly went to college to study engineering. But he discovered that he didn’t want to be an engineer — he wanted to run the company that hired engineers.
One day, he was at Performance Wraps to pick up a vehicle he’d had lettered for his lawn care business, and the owner mentioned wanting to retire.
“I was young, naive, I don’t even think I could legally drink yet. I ended up buying the business,” Andrew said.
But he hadn’t asked any of the right questions. What he thought would be a $50K deal to buy the business ultimately cost him about five times that, he said. And then he discovered the business had been hemorrhaging money.
“The one thing I always tried to make sure I had paid, or at least negotiated on terms, was my rent,” he recalled. “I knew if I lost my building, I lost the business, and that’s my only shot and a prayer to get out of this thing, was the for this business to actually succeed. So yeah, that’s how I ended up on the futon. I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
Tanor first met Andrew in a high school business class. She believed it would never be relevant, but her mom made her take it anyway. She and Andrew dated, but after graduation, she left to attend college in Alabama.
“I was working at a five-star hotel, but I just didn’t want to be in the hospitality industry,” she said. “So I was talking to Andrew one day, he’s struggling, I don’t know what to do, so I was like, do you want some help? And he showed up two weeks later with a moving truck.”
Her one condition was that she wouldn’t sleep on the futon at the shop. And technically she didn’t — though she eventually found herself sleeping in an RV in the shop.
“We used to mow all day, and then when the sun went down, we would wrap all night, so that was how we used to pull the 100+ hour weeks very easily,” she said.
Something had to give, and in the end, it was Andrew’s lawn care business.
“Well, if you know anything about lawn care companies in general, it is impossible to get people to show up to work every day,” Andrew said. “We wrote down a pros and cons list of both businesses, and the only pro to lawn care was that I get to work outside and I get a tan, so that was not worth keeping.”
They attempted to sell the business, but in the end, they just sold off the mowers and liquidated the assets.
“We pretty much got pennies on the dollar of what it was worth, but it was a pretty big lesson learned,” Andrew said.
But the hard work and lessons learned paid off. Today, Andrew and Tanor own their shop, their home, and a couple rental properties.
“[Entrepreneurship] sucks, like it’s rough. Don’t look at the highlight reels and the Gary Vs and the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos, where they are now,” Andrew said. “Look at where they were when they started, the work ethic and the resiliency and everything else that they had to have to get going.”
Even now that the business is steadily growing, the couple still doesn’t clock out that often, Tanor said.
“Even when we have date night and go out to dinner, we like strategizing the business,” she said. “It’s just so much our life right now.”
But the disputes follow them home less now — in large part thanks to a sheet of paper that hangs on the shop wall.
“We even show our whole team,” Tanor said. “We swap roles a lot, and so it gets confusing, they don’t know who to go to. So every three months it’s like, here’s our new roles.”
Her only regret is embarking on her entrepreneur journey with a lack of confidence, she said.
“I went into this at about 21 years old, and obviously as a female. And I just felt like I didn’t belong in the business space,” Tanor said. “My only regret is thinking I wasn’t worthy of owning a business for absolutely no reason at all.”
For Andrew, it’s all about the rapid growth.
“We’re going to get to the top, and we’re going to be there,” he said. “That’s going to be incredibly boring for me. Maybe it’s five years, maybe it’s 50 years from now, but it’ll be time to train my replacement and move on to say, the cupcake shop, and let’s make that the biggest and best thing. Who knows?”
We’re Andrew and Tanor Banks, and we are entrepreneurs.
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There’s no one way to be an entrepreneur.
You don’t have to look a certain way, operate in a particular industry, or pursue specific education. You don’t have to grow up in a particular household, or spend your free time nurturing any particular hobbies — entrepreneurs grow from all walks of life.
In this series, entrepreneurs, founders, and small business owners from across the Dayton Region share their individual stories to break down pervading stereotypes about who can or can’t be an entrepreneur.
They proudly declare, “I Am an Entrepreneur” — and you can be, too.
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