Hotmail‘American Chopper’ star sobers up, starts over
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Two years after getting sober, I built my own shop. John Grosso still worked for me, but he was no longer my partner. He was just an employee. I tried to reach out to him. I would say, “Listen, John, if I can do it, anybody can do it.” I thought I could get through to him. I drank with this guy for 10 years. In fact, I drank harder than he did. He would go to a couple of AA meetings, get sober for a week, and then start drinking again. It finally got to a point where he was still coming to work drunk. Eventually, I had to say, “You can't come here, you can't be drinking, and you can't be drunk.” I told him, “Either get sober or you have to leave.”
He chose to leave. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but it was a sign of my own personal growth in my sobriety. John moved to Florida and went to work for my brother-in-law again, but he came back to Orange County about six months later. He was dying. His liver was gone. A few months later, he died. He was just 35. That's an interesting number: 35. Only one in 35 people end up staying sober. I guess I was one of the lucky ones — and still am.
I was sober, I was thinking straight, focused and driven, but I still shunned partnerships. That's because I realized that when I was drinking, the alcohol and the drugs blurred my vision. But being with a partner who doesn't share your vision can do the same thing. That's why I don't do partnerships. Not then, not now.
But as my business took off like never before, I realized that I couldn't do everything on my own. Two years after getting sober, I bought a piece of property on Stone Castle Road in Rock Tavern, New York, and built a new shop. I also started diversifying. The residential work was slowing down, so I moved into commercial work. I became a fabricator, started to develop relationships with contractors, and accumulated quite a bit of work. Again, it's about realizing that I had choices. I wasn't locked into just one type of business.
Because I was now thinking clearly, I had the good sense to make the building about twice as big as it needed to be at the time. I say “at the time” because in the span of just a few years, I ended up tripling the size of the facility and renting another building down the street. As my business grew and diversified, I went from just four employees to more than 70. And it's all because I was sober, thinking clearly, and driven. More importantly, I was able to take that drive that was always there and apply it in a positive way. Before, my drive was put into just showing up for work. “What can be wrong with me?” I used to think. “I get up and go to work every day.” But a lot of energy was being wasted.
Now, I don't want you to finish this chapter by thinking that all of my experiences with partnerships have been bad. That's simply not true. My issue is exclusively with having a partner inside the business. I don't want someone who, as a partner, has the same input as me into the direction and growth of the company. I'm totally against those kinds of partnerships, for all the reasons I've listed so far.
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Ted Doering had a company in Newburgh, New York, called V-Twin Manufacturing. Back then, he was selling custom and vintage motorcycle parts out of his barn. When I needed a part, I would walk into his place — he'd have a piece of straw in his mouth, the floor was nothing but packed dirt — and we'd bargain for parts. Today, he's one of the largest distributors of aftermarket motorcycle parts in the world.
Initially, Ted didn't like the fact that I was going to take his parts — like a gas tank — and cut them up to make them look the way I wanted. But we eventually became friends. More than that, he was an early mentor. Ted was the guy I would reach out to when I would build bikes in my basement for myself, long before I started Orange County Choppers. He was the guy who would point me in the right direction in terms of the parts I needed to build the bike I wanted to create. And because he carried a lot of vintage parts I needed to customize the old-style bikes I liked back then, he was a great partner. I could go into his place and build a whole '57 chopper out of parts. In short, Ted Doering was my first successful business partner.
In the 1970s, I wanted to build a panhead chopper with a Patogh frame, an old-school bike for myself. We'd start at the rear tire and work our way all the way up to the front end. He walked me through the whole thing. That's how I started building the early old-style bikes. Eventually, I didn't need Ted anymore. I had built so many bikes that I could figure it out myself. But he was a good partner and supplied me with most of what I needed in the early days.
From these humble beginnings, I built Orange County Choppers. While it's a hugely successful business, it wouldn't exist without the passion I have for motorcycles. And after having just read the previous chapter, you'll be surprised where I got my passion for customizing old motorcycles.
Excerpted with permission from the publisher, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., from "The Ride of a Lifetime," by Paul Teutul, Sr. © 2009 by Paul Teutul, Sr.
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