Meet Bill Mahoney

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bill Mahoney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Bill, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

As a performative artistic type of person who has worked in the entertainment industry for 20 years before changing professions, one would think that creativity would be second nature. Well it is, and second and a half nature is critical thinking. Critical thinking can be the hall monitor. The second guessing that says maybe bungeed strawberry pickers moving along a zipwire is not such a splendid idea. Even if one could sell tickets to such an event at a high premium. This is the problem, the struggle, creativity has in everyone to break out into the air and onto the scene, page, product line. The good news is that creativity can and sometimes Must be used to both get us into trouble and get us out of the same trouble through the ubiquitous phrase – Creative means-. It is also one of our greatest survival instincts shared with almost every living thing on earth – Adaptability.

In 2009 the FM radio station that I had worked for for over a decade switched formats and let go all of the talent and production teams. This meant I had to find new work. While I still had nearly a year of severance pay, I felt like I still had a lot of creativity to offer. The problem was where to direct it? Many of us periphery talent and production people from the radio station decided to start a Podcasting Company called Hot Talk LA. We had a very creative idea to do a sort of reality lifestyle L.A. entertainment, and plenty of people who could create and distribute lots of content. The one thing we didnt have was a sales strategy beyond internet advertising. At the time, 2010, internet advertising barely covered the cost of the server housing the content. So after a year and a half of producing great content we closed up shop and split ways. In this instance we should have done more critical thinking to come up with a consensus on a business plan. So even though we had creative content we had no workable creative plans to fund it, thus ending the creativity. In order to stay creative one needs creative funding ideas to help one adapt to the changing advertising landscapes.

Curiosity. At this point you are probably thinking – hey this creativity thing seems more like an affliction. I was hoping this guy was going to advise me to breathe or take a walk or a drive-. Oh those are still good things to do to clear your mind and start anew, but I would describe creativity in simple terms as being Curious about everything. It is a natural instinct to external stimuli that we can use to harvest successful accomplishments. Assessing what those accomplishments are can take patience. For instance, In 2015 I left another Sports radio production job because it wasnt creative enough. I was very interested in getting back into films and decided to executive produce an independent movie a friend of mine had written and was going to direct. After the four months of blocking, crewing up, casting, and filming, there was the independent film festival tour applying and attending. It was all new, but being interested in starting something new inspired me to research every aspect of the job. The curiosity to see what others had accomplished and how they did it consumed me. As a hobby I have always fallen back on collecting unusual vintage Subarus. So I began to split more of my time. As I continued to go to more car shows like Monterey Car week, I began to get a lot more curious about automobiles as functional works of art. Curiosity meets Adaptability-

It dawned on me that these pre WW II Delahayes and Duesenbergs were as interesting an event to me as a movie. Similar timelines too. A vintage car goes from raising funds, to plans, to a type of production in getting the vehicle looking and running in tip top shape, then there is the Showing, and during an auction there is a sale. Or after winning an award a higher priced sale. This process is just like in the business of movie production. So on the false assumption that the L.A. Olympics would be in 2024 (they are actually in 2028 which gives me more time to get the collection ready) in 2018 I decided to gather as many weird Subarus and Subaru predecessors as I could to rent out to Corporate events during the Olympics. During that time I met a man named Subaru Dan. He has been my mentor while I learn about valve timing, suspension geometry, cams, Cranks, bearings, torque converters, flywheels and clutches. During the pandemic I hired a young assistant who wanted to learn about automobiles to help with repairs of my fleet. He shares the same curiosity and drive to learn as much as possible about these cars as I do, and has also learned a lot from Subaru Dan. My assistant José now is a fabricator, lead mechanic, and is able to diagnose problems without asking Dan or me. What I learned was to gather as many people who are on the same page as far as a career path and that will increase your creativity and productivity. Curiosity plus Adaptability plus a Cooperative effort produced even more creativity.

So now I need to start making money to pay for the creativity and get Subaru Dan in on the plan. After nearly a decade of sharing a love of Subaru cars Subaru Dan and I decided to start an automobile repair shop with Dan managing the shop with an expertise and creativity unchallenged for Subarus. What Dan, José, and I all share is the idea that when someone states – such and such cant be done- we are compelled to take that phrase as a challenge akin to Shakelford wanting to cross the South Pole. So far in our third month we are covering our costs at the repair shop, and in L.A., José and I are beginning to learn about forming body panels, fenders, hoods, quarter panels for vintage Subarus, Hondas, Borgwards, and Fiats. Our funding is secure, my team is on the same page, Critical thinking, adaptability, curiosity and a team with a similar drive is the key to our creative success. Whats more, once the Vintage Borgwards and Subarus are finished, we can begin to do more Social media video content around promoting it, bringing the creativity full circle from my start in entertainment.

So lastly I will share what Harry Shearer told me when I asked him to sign his book after an interview. Its just one word. Okay one word after Curiosity, Adaptability, Critical Thinking, and Harmony, but it does encompass all of these words and it is the most critical to sustaining creativity. I will leave you with Perseverence-

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Somehow I find myself being a bit of a unicorn. I was adopted into a very loving family at a very young age. The odd and unusual has always attracted me. I dont avoid the pop culture, but find myself getting very distracted by the peculiar things. Hockey was my favorite spectator sport, so my interests usually involve solitary behaviors that can be done in public or in conjunction with other like mindeds. I was a poet and I currently ride an Electric Unicycle to and from work or parties when I am not driving weirdo micro cars.

Right now I love cars. I love their stories. I can pay $3 to go into a car salvage yard and have hours of fun just looking at all the cars. Not just the cars, but how the owners set up their driving experiences. The ubiquitous cheerios in the crevices of the backseat of the family vehicles and the empty condiment packs, leftover paraphernalia containers of the single youth, the business cards and stationary as well as cologne and breath mints of the business salesperson all speak to me. Is the vehicle whether a car or a truck or van an extension of our homes or of ourselves?

If you think about it, cars are the first personal machines most every person alive in the USA since the 1950 has interfaced with. There was no one born since 1950 that has not at one time spent a fair amount of time in a vehicle and I would submit that 99% of them have owned or at least rented one. Nearly a fifth of your waking hours are spent in them if you own them, and on long road trips are as much a companion as a horse. My interests are about the story of Subaru in America and a little bit before that.

Right now I have 9.5 Subaru 360s, one of them an autoclutch, 3 FF1’s, three BRATs, an XT6, SVX, a few racers, several Turbocharged 80’s Subarus, a few Borgwards, a Vespa 400 car, a Messerschmidtt tandem seater, and a Fiat 600 with a few more surprises. I want to tell the story of Subaru from Borgward to today’s Subarus. How the business began, stayed competitive, and kept adapting to the demands of the market and the consumers.

Currently while refurbishing the fleet of Subarus I have trained a kid mechanic who is now a first class engine builder and promising fabricator. We are popping out body panels and learning to make fenders and other body parts from scratch. We are racing to absorb as much experience from the older generation of bodymen before they check out. I am sure this is too much information. Along with my shop called the Subaru Coop (rhymes with hoop) I am partnered with a good friend in a Shop in Arizona called Whiskey Row Automotive. We believe in being honest to the customer and only doing honest work. Dan backs up all his work with his own personal warranty.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think I answered this question extremely well in the first essay. I would say Creativity, Adaptability and Perseverance are the three qualities that I lean heavily on. I am also not too proud to back out of a mistake and claim it for what it is. A learning experience. It is best to keep learning experiences at a bargain rate, but sometimes you learn more when you pay more. Best to keep the learning costs down though. Everyone has a different rubric for determining costs.
Try to think of your career path as a wide hallway with a lot of doors of opportunity. Then look for that hallway and avoid narrow hallways with very few doors of opportunity. Try to keep your options open and adapt to the environment. Your life is like the weather in Cape Cod. If you dont like it, just keep doing what you are doing. The weather will probably change. Then you can too.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

Bill Bryson’s “the history of nearly everything”. In it he refers to an element called Einsteinium. It is so rare that at its most ambundant there were only 13 molecules, and today there are maybe 9. If you are different, rare, unusual, not like everybody else, strange, queer, you still have as much right to an existence as Einsteinium, a molecule named after one of the smartest physicists our country has ever known.

Bill Bryson’s books reveal the fact that nooks can be entertaining and informative and a whole lot better than nearly any other form of entertainment if written properly. His books made me continue to read for entertainment. His phraseology is infectious and you do not remain the same human after reading his books. He enlightens you. Find your Bill Bryson.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: ThesubaruCoop

Image Credits

William Mahoney