32 Quotes by Richard Rawlings

I like the art of making money more than the money.

You see the hair and the clothes, I look flamboyant. But I'm not the guy with the lake house and the boat. I don't own a home, or a plane. Really, all I want in life is beer in the fridge and a hot rod.

We've stayed with the business and even though we have the arguments and disagreements that eight guys in a building trying to do a job would have, we try to keep that off the cameras because it's too much drama. Really what it is is we have eight guys who are having fun doing what they do.

Getting a TV show and getting on to Discovery was the main goal when I started the company in 2004.

I went dead broke - twice! - trying to get Gas Monkey up and going. And when I say broke, I mean sleeping on my sister's couch and can't pay-the-rent type broke.

We said we could do a full episode - find the car, build it, complete it and shoot it - in two weeks.

I want people to come to town and come by the shop and buy a T-shirt, then go by the bar-and-grill and have a hamburger or go hear some music. I want to be a destination - the destination.

My style is very hands-on. I own everything we do or the vast majority of everything we do. I don't do a lot of letting people just use my name like a lot of people in my position would do.

That's been the secret to 'Gas Monkey': Move fast. I opened the first restaurant within a year and a half. Most people wait five years. I always move quickly, and in today's market, no matter what you're in, you can recover from a mistake faster than you can recover from not doing.