How I Got Here with Greg Stumpff

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This is the latest in a weekly feature called “How I Got Here,” where I ask people in NASCAR about the journeys to their current jobs. Each interview is recorded as a podcast but is also transcribed on JeffGluck.com. Up next: Greg Stumpff, founder of helmet painting company Off Axis Paint.

You design helmets for a variety of drivers. Who are some of the drivers you’ve worked with?

Well, Martin Truex Jr., Cup champion. We got him a couple years ago. Honestly the whole Truex family, we do them. Justin Allgaier has been with me for a long time. Ryan Reed. Joey Logano was part of it for awhile.

We do 30 to 40 drivers between the three series now. And we’re very personal, so it’s a lot of personality and things to remember about certain individuals. Because when I do these, I don’t want to just throw a sponsor on the helmet. I want to make it something the driver loves and is part of them. They don’t really get a whole lot of say in the firesuits or the cars or anything else, so the helmet is kind of the one thing these drivers can be part of. So I try to make it very personal. That’s why I’m at the track a lot of times, because it’s cool to see your friends run and to see your stuff on the track.

I visited your shop, and you have a nice, big place where you make the helmets, and you guys even pull all-nighters to make these helmets sometimes.

A lot of times. It’s right there in North Carolina, in Mooresville, and it’s right next to a bunch of race shops. When things happen very quickly, which they do in NASCAR a lot — “Oh, we need this sponsor on a helmet by Friday” — we can usually pull that off. And there’s not a lot of shops that can do that, so that’s kind of our blessing and our curse, I guess. It’s a lot of long nights, but we can crank out helmets in our shops because I have a great group of guys who love doing what they do. As long as I keep the work coming in, they’ll probably stay with me.

Your success didn’t just happen suddenly. How did you get your start?

It’s kind of weird, you know? It’s not really one of those occupations where you take a test in high school and it says, “You’re going to be a doctor” or “You’re going to be a veterinarian.” Helmet painter is not really on the list. So honestly, I didn’t really know it was a job until early in high school, when I started looking at designers like Troy Lee. Even then, I didn’t know there was a career path. Those guys were so big and it was so far out of reach, (I thought) there’s no way I could ever make it that far.

This is when you were in Missouri?

Yeah, I was in Missouri. Dirt central. That’s why I’m good friends with Allgaier and Tyler Reddick, because I come from the same dirt background.

Out of high school, I worked on a dirt Late Model team. I traveled all over the country. Like every dirt track — you name it, I’ve probably been to it and scraped that mud off the car. There was a lot of downtime when you travel like that, so I started taking some helmets home on the weekdays and I’d them back on the weekends and make a little side money. I was like, “Alright, this is not bad.” Then I started realizing sponsors will actually pay to get this stuff done; it’s not just the drivers.

I literally got on Facebook — Twitter hadn’t really taken over yet — and I just started messaging every driver on there. I got one hit: J.J. Yeley. And he said, “Hey man, I want you to paint my helmet. I’m in Talladega.” We were actually there racing a dirt race, so I went over and met him. I was like, “Wow, this is a Cup guy. I’m big time now.” And he was like a start-and-park back in the day, you know? But I was just pumped to even see my driver’s name on TV.

So you essentially didn’t have any contacts at all and were starting completely from scratch?

Zero. I was going to websites and looking through every roster of K&N, ARCA, Trucks, Cup and finding their website, finding their Facebook. Back in the day, a lot of drivers ran their own personal Facebook because the (social media) PR hadn’t taken off yet. So I would get messages back like, “Hey man, I’ve already got a guy who paints my stuff” and Yeley was the first one who actually messaged me back and said, “I want you to paint my stuff.”

And your offer was, “I’ll just do it free for exposure” or what?

Free, or paying for materials. I wasn’t asking for a lot. “Give me credentials into the racetrack so I can meet more people.” Then I met my buddy Skip Flores — he changes tires on (Ryan) Blaney’s car. He was working at Stewart-Haas and running the Field Fillers (group of racing friends who raced karts) back then. So that’s how I got in with (Corey) LaJoie and (Brandon) McReynolds and all of that group back in the day.

They were like, “Why aren’t you in North Carolina?” I looked into it, and there’s no real helmet painters in Concord or Mooresville or anything like that. I’m like, “That’s not a bad idea. There’s nothing holding me back in Missouri. The dirt program, I don’t really want to scrape mud off Late Models my whole life.” I love dirt racing, but it’s not really a great career path for a worker. So I put all of my stuff in a U-Haul, moved 15 hours out to the East Coast and never really looked back.

So where did you live once you arrived? Where did you work?

A friend of mine had a bedroom with a couch, basically, and she said, “I’ll charge you $100 a month to live there.” I said, “That’s perfect. I’m never going to be there if I have a shop.” I met a hauler driver and he’s like, “I’ve got a storage unit and it’s a pretty good size. I’ve got some cars in there. Just move some stuff around and you can paint.” So I had no paint booth or anything — just a box of paint, and I made it work. And it was in Troutman, so it wasn’t even close to Mooresville.

I didn’t know anyone there, so it was pretty easy to work all hours of the night. I was going to these race shops and acting bigger than I was. Like they had no idea I was working out of a storage unit, spraying with plastic hanging around a little box.

But I kept on doing stuff. People loved my work and the more I traveled to the track, the more people I met. I kept getting bigger shops, adding more people on (to help paint). I would start getting way too overwhelmingly busy — kind of like we are now. I never really put out, “Hey, we’re hiring” or “bring an application,” but I just found these guys along the way. And it’s actually worked better that way, because they’re coming to me and wanting to do the job.

We’re a very tight group of guys. I get paint shops asking all the time, “How does your shop work? You have the perfect formula.” Honestly, it’s just because I have the best guys in the world working for me.

There’s a great chemistry, it sounds like.

So a lot of helmet painters — not to name any names — you see one guy at the forefront of the business but there might be two to 10 guys back at the shop painting all these helmets. They don’t get the recognition I think they need. So my guys, they do a helmet from start to finish. It never gets passed around. One guy will start it and finish it, and then he’ll put his signature on the back.

Say John Hunter Nemechek or Matt Crafton comes in. Well, the same guy paints his helmets every time. So you actually get a bond with the driver. That’s something we do because we’re in North Carolina. People don’t just email back and forth, they can physically stop in and talk to us, and it makes our job a lot easier.

You give your guys a lot of responsibility and are building them up. You’re not threatened by the possibility they might want to start their own thing?

Honestly, it’s a lot more work to start a helmet shop than people might realize. There are certain state laws you have to abide by with the paint, and paint is just expensive by itself. To have all the best equipment and any tool you need at your fingertips like at our shop, that’s key. If they were to go out and start by themselves, it would be a lot of work to try and come up to our level, I guess.

I’m not stopping anybody that wants to do that, but with the guys and how we work with our chemistry, I don’t think anybody would want to do that. Hopefully it doesn’t happen.

I’ve always wondered about people moving to North Carolina and starting a shop down the street or something, but that’s why I’m so personal with everyone. Loyalty is a big thing with these younger drivers, and if I can keep them from K&N to Trucks, all the way to Cup, then that would be really cool to see them go through the ranks like that.

It sounds like you’ve learned a lot about the personal touch. What else learned from being a business owner and a boss?

I feel like I’m still learning. I never went to college for business or anything like that. I have a lot of good mentors on the corporate side with money and invoices and how to do certain things, talk to certain people. I’m really lucky to know the owner of Bass Pro (Johnny Morris) because he’s from my hometown, so he gives me a lot of tips. He built his business from a bait shop in the back of a liquor store to the empire it is now.

So when you have guys like that in your corner, or somebody like Sam Bass, who talks to me quite a bit on the art side of it, you can’t really go wrong. You’ve got all-star people who are a dial away on your phone.

I’ve learned a lot. Made a lot of mistakes. But those guys help me to say, “I made this mistake 20 years ago. Don’t make it.”

So you can’t be afraid to ask for help or humble yourself in that way, I suppose?

Not at all. I call Sam quite often to go to lunch with him and say, “Let me run this by you.” He’s kind of in a position now where he’s not doing as much artwork and he can take the time to help us out. I think he sees a lot of himself in us — starting out and really being passionate about artwork. It’s not just a business to me where we’re making money painting helmets. I really enjoy watching Tyler Reddick beat Elliott Sadler at the line in Daytona and going to victory lane. Like it’s the coolest thing in the world to see your friends win races and have your helmets on.

So you’ve said the shop is basically a family with the drivers. How much have those tight-knit relationships played into your success?

I’d say that’s 100 percent of it. It’s not just doing good artwork, it’s the personality side of it. I joke around and say we have a KBM/TRD day care, because all those kids will come in there. They either go to the go-kart track or come to Off Axis. Which is cool with me, because I enjoy hanging out with those kids.

There’s not a lot of people in this garage who can probably walk into any hauler they want to and sit down and have a conversation with anybody without going through a PR person or whatever. So that’s really cool. I just feel like they respect me as somebody they can talk to.

Honestly, I get the most text messages after races of (drivers) wanting other drivers’ numbers, because they know I kind of know everyone and I won’t be afraid to give it out. It’s either “I want to congratulate that person” or “I’m angry at that person,” so I kind of learn from that and stay out of any drama I can.

What advice would you give others who have seen what you’ve accomplished and want to be the next you?

Just come work at Off Axis. We’ve got plenty of helmets to paint. If you’re good, come on over.

Honestly, keep doing it every day. I go back to my old high school a lot and talk to art kids there, and they think it’s the coolest thing in the world when I bring in a helmet and say, “This thing won Daytona and it’s been on TV.” They think, “There’s no way I can get to that level,” but I was in the same spot as them — barely graduating high school and not knowing what I was going to do with my life after leaving that place.

So anybody young, just pick up an air brush or markers or a pottery wheel — whatever you’re into — and just put your head down and keep doing it. Don’t worry about what other people say — like “Oh, you suck.” I still don’t think I’m that good, but I wasn’t good at all when I first started. So that’s just from working long hours and perfecting your craft. It’s like any of these drivers: They didn’t start out in NASCAR, they started out in go-karts. As long as you’re moving forward and getting better every day, I think you can do pretty much whatever you want to do.

For creative types, what’s the most important element about the job?

In NASCAR, it’s deadlines. That’s the biggest thing. We have never missed a deadline, and I’ve been in North Carolina almost six years now. You might have two days to get a 40-hour helmet done, but as long as you make that deadline, you are gold to any of these teams. Having the shop right there in North Carolina and not having to ship stuff back and forth, if you can get it done quick and have it look good, that’s the biggest thing.

Don’t be lazy. There’s a lot of helmet painters who give us a bad name and say, “Oh, you don’t wake up until noon and start your day late and that’s why you work until 2 a.m.” No. We start the day at 8:30 or 9 every morning and we leave when we’re done. We don’t just clock out at 5 and say we’ll do it tomorrow.

In NASCAR, it never stops. People think we have three months off for the offseason, but honestly that’s when we work the hardest. Before Homestead is even over, we’re already starting Daytona stuff.

Any final words or advice for people reading?

Just hard work, man. As long as you work hard and are passionate about what you’re doing, then you’ll make any goal you can put out there for yourself.