Lucas Foust:
All right. I'm here with Trisha. Trisha, how do you say your last name?
Trisha Spoelder:
Spoelder.
Lucas Foust:
Spoelder. It's Trisha Spoelder with Swissdetail, and Trisha and Swissdetail are our business of the month here at Foust Law Office. I just want to get to know a little bit about you, Trisha. I have the same question I ask at every jury trial of all of my jurors and people in all focus groups, but I'm going to ask you to do this. Setting your faith and family aside, just setting that aside and your business, what's the passion in your life, Trisha? What gets you out of bed?
Trisha Spoelder:
Well, it's... Sorry. Hi.
Brian:
Hi. Brian.
Trisha Spoelder:
Oh, Brian. Yes. Thank you so much.
Brian:
Sorry. [crosstalk 00:00:54].
Trisha Spoelder:
No, worries. I'll call...
Lucas Foust:
Okay. Back on here with Trisha. What's the passion in your life, Trisha?
Trisha Spoelder:
So, first off, thanks so much for having us because we're really honored to be business of the month for the magazine you're doing. That's really exciting. Well, our passion, mine and my husband Greg's, it's cars, very surprising. He likes to say we live and breathe cars, and I like to say we have OCD. We have an obsessive car disorder.
Trisha Spoelder:
So, we work on cars on days, and on the weekends we drive our classic cars, or we fix classic cars, or we go to car shows. When we take a vacation, we'll go somewhere where there's more cars, where we have museums and things to see. So, for us, life really turns around the wheel of cars.
Lucas Foust:
How'd you get involved and interested in cars? Tell us a little about yourself. Where'd you grow up? How'd you get interested in cars? How did this all start?
Trisha Spoelder:
So, I grew up in Switzerland, and where that passion for cars comes from is not really clear because my family is a family of accountants. I'm an accountant by trade. That's what I learned. That's my business degree, but my husband's a certified mechanic. So, Greg has the whole education also from Switzerland being a mechanic, and we met at US car swap meets in Switzerland. We met over the passion for cars, and nobody in my family understands. But that's fine.
Trisha Spoelder:
Yeah. We seven years ago made that big leap to come to the US to have our own business. We were just looking for some sort of car business, and detailing just stood out that there was a lack of good quality detailers. There were plenty of good mechanic shops out there, and I'm glad we're detailing because that's where I can help the most where my strong suit leads. I'm not that much of a mechanic myself. That's what I have a husband for.
Lucas Foust:
Trisha, well that's great. Trisha, if you had to pick one car, one classic American-made car, that's the only car you could drive from here on out, what would it be?
Trisha Spoelder:
So, I call it my soulmate car. I do own my dream car. It's a '62 Impala SS. That is-
Lucas Foust:
A '62 Impala. Why a '62 Impala? I mean, you have '57 Chevy is a classic one, different Fords.
Trisha Spoelder:
... I don't know. It's just I have a connection with that vehicle. I also have a '55 Bel Air, and it's a nice car, absolutely. But it doesn't make my heartbeat that much faster than that '62 Impala. Something about the design, something about how it handles, for an old car especially, it's just something that speaks to me. Yeah. There's different cars that everybody likes. It's like, "What's your favorite card?" That depends.
Trisha Spoelder:
I like trucks, and I like this. There's one in any category that I can basically find something that I really love about them, but my '62 Impala, I got that for Mother's Day last year, actually from my dearest husband. That's my soulmate car. That's the car I want to have that I'd like to drive, and we're working on getting it roadworthy right now.
Lucas Foust:
Oh, fantastic. So, tell us this, if you would. How'd you happen Bozeman?
Trisha Spoelder:
So, that's a really coincidental story, and it's one that starts with where love takes you. We're a family business. So, there's my husband, Greg, his sister, Pam, and me. Pam was actually the first one to move to Bozeman because she fell in love with a Bozemanite; and she came here, got married, and stayed. We came to see her, visit, take vacations here; and we just fell in love with Montana and couldn't resist moving here, too. So we followed her.
Lucas Foust:
Great. Well, what do you like most about running your business, Trisha, your small business there?
Trisha Spoelder:
Well, loving most is just really having that responsibility, basically. It's working for ourselves. We've always been going above and beyond in any job we had, all of us, the three of us that run this together as a family; and it was just the logical step to go and be our own bosses. We're not really in the car cleaning business. We're more in the selling happiness business because that's that wow factor, that expression on people's faces when they see their car, what we could turn it into. That's so rewarding. That's so awesome.
Trisha Spoelder:
That's the biggest reward for our job is really making people happy and having that opportunity and doing that on our terms, not being owned by a dealership or somebody else telling us what to do or how to do things. We set the rules, and we set the bar high. That's what makes us stand out because we love cars. We treat every car as if it's our own, and we want to be able to do that, to not cut corners. That's just the only way to do it, to still have your own business.
Lucas Foust:
So, let me ask this of you. Were visiting here. It's September 1st of 2020. How has the world changed since March in the COVID situation and your business?
Trisha Spoelder:
We are lucky that we are part of transportation. So, when the whole lockdown started, we were able and allowed to stay open because we're part of an essential business. We had in spring focused mainly on helping out first responders and healthcare workers, making sure their vehicles were safe to drive when everybody else was stay in home. Then when everything eased up, we also picked up our pace, again. Nothing's more essential than cleaning and disinfecting, and that's what we're doing well.
Trisha Spoelder:
What we're trained in is a health hazard. We've always had equipment and training for dealing with bloodstains in cars or mice in cars or molds, things like that are a health hazard that need special training, and now just with COVID, every car is treated that way. So, we have additional disinfection protocols and things. We're working a little bit on a slower capacity just to have enough time for all those vehicles because of the added disinfectant time that it needs. But overall, summer's been really busy, and we're grateful that we can provide that important service to people that don't have the means to clean their own cars so that they feel safe and out there.
Trisha Spoelder:
Especially everybody who is working with the elderly or caring for others, all the DoorDashers and deliveries and Uber's and just people going to work because you're out and about. You're in stores. You're picking up things. you're dropping things off. Every now and then a car needs cleaning, and that's what we do best, and that's what we're here for and what we've been doing.
Trisha Spoelder:
Yeah. We were really busy the last three months, so we're grateful for that. Our crew was happy to be here and help out where they can. Yeah. It's been a bit strange. It's been a bit different. There are more protocols in a place like for everybody else, but overall, it's exactly what we do. We clean things, so it's our market.
Lucas Foust:
All right. Trisha, thank you so much for taking the time, and congratulations on being our business of the month. We really appreciate it. We've listed your website on our website, and they'll be linked back over. Thank you very much, Trisha.
Trisha Spoelder:
Thank you so much. It was nice chatting with you, Lucas. Take care.
Lucas Foust:
Thank you. Take care.