Dan The Road Trip Guy

Keys To Prosperity: Affordable Wheels, Real Impact

• Dan • Season 4 • Episode 92

Share episode

Get in Touch with Dan by Texting Now

What if a car isn’t just a car, but a turning point? I sat down with Changing Gears founders and leaders Joel Bokelman and Amanda Sinclair to unpack how a “Habitat for Cars” model turns reliable transportation into access to jobs, better pay, safer schedules, and the freedom to plan a future. It’s a practical, human approach to poverty that blends restored donated vehicles, half-price repairs, and a four-week technician training program into lasting mobility.

Joel shares the spark: a love of cars, a heart for empowering help, and the moment a volunteer gig grew into a mission. We break down the three core programs—vehicle purchase with zero-interest loans, repair and maintenance at half cost, and a hands-on tech training pathway that launches lube and tire tech careers. With partners like CityLink Center and Smart Money providing wraparound support, the model delivers real results: 353 cars sold with a 95% loan completion rate, 63 training graduates with 53 job placements, and a 68% one-year retention rate in the field.

The stories bring it home. Lakweila overcame a stolen car mid-training, bought an affordable vehicle, graduated, landed a dealership role, and paid off her car early—then celebrated with a joy drive to Hocking Hills. Carrie’s “Little Betty Blue” helped her step into a better job and a new home; years later she bought a new car and passed the Honda to her daughter. We connect these moments to the bigger picture: in Greater Cincinnati, only five percent of jobs are reachable by bus within an hour, but with a car it’s 99 percent. Those extra hours each day can mean rest, homework, a second shift, or simply peace.

We also look ahead. Changing Gears is looking to expand through new partner organizations across the city and building an affiliate playbook so communities elsewhere can launch their own transportation solutions. Along the way, Amanda’s reminder to celebrate the small wins and Joel’s belief that “God doesn’t call the equipped; he equips the called” anchor the work in courage and gratitude. Want in? Donate a vehicle, support the mission, or join the pedal-powered fun at the Changing Gears Grand Prix.

If this story moved you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help more people find it. Your voice helps fuel the next mile.

You can find Changing Gears at https://www.changing-gears.org. If you are in the Cincinnati area, come out to Changing Gears on Thursday October 30th at 4:30 to celebrate their new graduates. 

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to the show, Joel. Amanda.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much for having us, Dan.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you here.

SPEAKER_00:

And thanks for coming out to Changing Gears.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, well, what a pleasure to be here. I've never been here. This is going to be really different than my normal beautiful facility right here in Cincinnati.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. And fun to show you the garage where all the magic happens.

SPEAKER_02:

Hey Amanda, take uh take a minute. Tell us who you are.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So I'm Amanda Sinclair. I am the development director here at Changing Gears, almost three years in and loving loving every minute of it. From Cincinnati, been here all my life, married two amazing high-energy boys. We have lots of fun road trips every day. I found out about this place through crossroads and City Link. My original interview for the job was not the right fit. I apparently I showed up for an interview for the the tow truck driver role, which you can't see me, your audience can't see me right now, but I'm about five one, one and a half. Thank you very much. And my foot would probably not reach that pedal if I was trying to see over the hood of the truck. So that was fun. And Joel and I met and had a great conversation. Realized that wasn't the right role. Time went on. About a year or so later, we reconnected and I got to jump in at the development position I'm in now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. They found a tow truck driver.

SPEAKER_00:

Found a toe truck driver whose feet reach the pedal. Praise God.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's great. Thank you. And uh Joel? Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much for having us. Um Joel Backelman. Uh my wife and I founded Changing Gears. I get to serve as the executive director now, did a little bit of everything. I was the tow truck driver at one point. And so love getting to do everything, but now uh getting to lead an awesome team here as we're trying to accomplish our mission. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Car background?

SPEAKER_01:

Always loved anything to do with cars. I'm not a technician. I studied engineering, was doing something else, and then uh God opened up this opportunity to do changing gears, to start changing gears. But no, not formally. That was a car background.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we'll dive into the story in a little bit. This is Dan the Road Trip guy. First question is always what was your first car?

SPEAKER_00:

All right. I had to get some clarification on this, but my first car was an S10 Chevy from my Uncle Bubba in Bristol, Tennessee. I know. Uncle Bubba from Tennessee makes sense, right?

SPEAKER_04:

It makes a lot of sense because I'm from the Kentucky Tennessee border.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so you get it. So I was on the hunt for a great little truck when I was in high school. He found it for me, drove it up to Cincinnati, and I spent the few years I got to drive that amazing truck with my windows rolled down and my country music blaring. It was a really good time. It was slightly vintage, had kind of like that vintage vibe to it, but ran pretty well until the transmission went out.

SPEAKER_02:

Automatic or stick?

SPEAKER_00:

Automatic.

SPEAKER_02:

This is why she thought she could drive a tow truck.

SPEAKER_00:

I had a truck at one point and it went really well. Yeah. We were we were a good pair.

SPEAKER_01:

How about you, Joel? First car? I was a hand-me-down. It was a 1986 Toyota Corolla. Okay. SR5. It was from uh my aunt and then my brother and then me. Awesome car, light, small, rear-wheel drive, manual transmission. Turned out these things actually got pretty popular when drifting became a thing. Sure. And and I think uh my family basically gave it away. Man, I would have loved to have kept that car. Just keep that alive instead of having just given it away. That car actually got me into doing some work on cars. Sure. Because it was, you know, I'd take it to get the oil change and thought, well, I could do that. Yeah. So then that just started in the driveway, and that was pre-Youtube. So you kind of had to do a little more research, figuring things out, but that was a lot of fun. It's funny, I the car had like rust all over it and stuff on the wheel wells, but I would still wax it and just have to like wax around the rust. But I love that car, the flip-up headlights. Yeah, it was great. But one point the fuel door fell off, and I just couldn't handle that. Like driving around, so you know, the fuel door's gone, but you see the gas cap, and I just thought it just had to be fixed. So I um wandered into a scrapyard down here on Eastern Avenue, one of I think it was Jack's Auto Parts or something, and I didn't know anything. So I just walk in and kind of grumpy guy at the counter is like, yeah, just you know, you go head over this direction. And so I walk over there. I'm looking at stacks of cars. I mean, I'm probably 17, 18 years old, just wandering around this thing. I couldn't believe I found a 1986 Toyota Corolla in the stack, and it had the fuel door on it. And I was like, that's that's it, that's what I need. So I look at it and just had two screws holding the thing in, but I didn't I didn't know you needed to bring tools with you to this thing. So I go back up to the counter and I'd say, Hey, how's um can I borrow a screwdriver? And he's like, Well, I'll sell you one. So I said, I'll be back. So I went home, got my own tools to come back down, took it off. It was a different color though. Um, so this is my first body work where I sanded it down and found some paint. It didn't match, but it was at least red. It was close enough. That was my first kind of like just getting into what it meant to figure things out on a car for yourself and just kind of do some stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

So good stories, good stories. Love those first car stories. Any epic road trips, Amanda?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I would say my most epic road trip would be from the Denver, Colorado Airport to Grand Junction, Colorado. It is a three-hour drive through the mountains, which is a little windy, a little tricky, but it's just the most beautiful drive you could ever go on. And you see big horn sheep, and they come right up to the road. And my boys were on the lookout for the bighorn sheep. My husband's got his eyes on the road, and I'm just taking it all in. It's like God's country out there with the mountains, the beautiful sky, every now and then a like a water feature, animals. It's amazing. It's also wild having the boys in the back seat, four and seven, just loving life, like living their best life on this drive. So that just brings so much joy.

SPEAKER_02:

How about you, Joel? Epic road trip.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm trying to decide. I've got a got a few of them. I think probably the one I'll talk about go out to the mountains as well. It's kind of a road trip and a road trip. A couple years ago, my family had an opportunity. We did an 18-day RV trip out west. And so that was pretty epic. I got three daughters, load everybody up, load everything, and and and headed out. We drove through, uh, and this is a big 32-foot class A RV. Yeah. I'm driving. Yeah. Marnie didn't drive at all. It was, you know, at first it was white knuckle the whole way, and then after you drive it for a few weeks, a couple weeks, you get pretty comfortable moving the thing around. But we drove out Kansas City, visit some friends, and and make our way, and we go to Breckenridge, and then from there we went up the Grand Tetons and back around. So it's just incredible. But one of my favorite parts is we stopped in Breckinridge and we stayed there for a few days. We actually rented a Jeep Wrangler while we were there. Jeeps have a special place in my heart, and especially when you can take all the doors and everything off. And so we rented this, and I was like kind of nervously asked, like, So do you mind if we take the top off? Or the and he was like, Hey, just bring it back the way it is right now. You can do whatever you want. I was like, Yes, we're in.

unknown:

I didn't do that.

SPEAKER_01:

So we went went back to the RV park and we took top off and took the whole thing, hard top off, and and then we were able to drive up through a pass. And I mean, that's having my family in a Jeep on top of a mountain. Yeah, like that's just a special place. Yes, there you go. There you go. But then we uh had some friends who were uh over in Vale while we were there, and we said, well, let's go over there. So we got to drive this Jeep from Breckenridge to Vale, top off and everything, and it was just incredible. So it's kind of like a doubling up there, but that that's probably top for me.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, good, thank you all. So, Joel, we're sitting here in Changing Gears office, downtown Cincinnati. Yeah. Didn't know about you all until a mutual friend introduced Amanda and I. Take us on the journey. How did Changing Gears come to be?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's it's a long story, but it's a it's a good one. Of you know, I was working a regular job, I studied chemical engineering, was out doing field service work in the metal recycling business. So we actually cutting cars up and recycling them. It was around the time our oldest daughter was born, realized I was working so hard at something, and it just wasn't fulfilling. And if I was going to be spending that amount of time working that hard and away from my family, it had to be something I was more passionate about. Luckily, through our church, we were in a small group of guys, and we came upon this book, and we're like 25 years old at this time. We came across this book called Halftime by Bob Buford. Sure. And it's meant for 40-year-old guys, you know. So we always joke, look, hopefully, it was a quarter life crisis and not a midlife crisis that we were going through. But in this book, it kind of talks about, you know, trying to find out what's next and it encourages, they called it seismic testing, kind of sticking your toe in the water to see what else could be out there. Uh, I always love math and science. And so I thought maybe I'll be a high school science teacher, could coach some sports or something too, it'd be great. I volunteered one time at kids' club at our church in the fifth and sixth grade room and said, no, that is that is not for me. Uh so that was quick. But then at the same time, uh ministry called Wheels was getting started up at our church. I went and volunteered there for the first time and just fell in love. I mean, they they were operating, operating out of an old, it's called Moser Dodge dealership and just loved it. What they were doing was fixing up cars and giving them away to folks. Piece of me of so I always love cars and love the freedom that cars bring. But I also love, I always love helping people, but especially when it's an empowering help, when it's it's helping someone in a way that they can help themselves. And I always love the habitat model. One time I was I was headed out to a site in in Denver, Colorado, my previous job, reading a book uh by my one of my favorite teaching pastors, his name is Greg Boyd. He's got a church in Minneapolis, uh, reading this book, and he was saying so much of Jesus' ministry was meeting needs. When ran out of wine, he made wine. He had to feed 5,000. He fade when people were lonely, he hung out with them. So what if more Christ followers just did that? Just looking out the window of this plane and well, what does that mean for me? I've always loved cars, love anything to do with them, love helping people. And and the the idea came up, why isn't there something like habitat for cars? And that was December 2006. All the way through, we still talk about ourselves as habitat for cars. I love their model of that skin in the game model that uh led on a journey of working up the courage to tell my wife, I thought I might be able to turn this volunteer thing into a job and what this would look like, and and and just going on this path of seeing asking enough questions, who's doing this? Why is it, why is it not happening? I even took a few classes at Cincinnati State, so I had took a little bit just to get some information, but um that's really what started the path of heading down this. And then there were some years getting ready until we finally opened up here and in 2013 was the year that we officially got started. And had a few daughters in there, so a lot going on.

SPEAKER_02:

12 years ago. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So take a few minutes and tell us how changing gears operates. You mentioned Habitat for Humanity. Tell us how that relates to cars.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So when we got started, we started with the mission. It's our mission today of empowering people who are working towards prosperity by providing affordable transportation solutions. We do that, we have three programs that are all very empowering. We have our vehicle purchase program where we uh restore donated cars and then we sell those at half off with a no-interest loan. Uh, I was just looking this up. We've we've sold 353 cars and we have over a 95% loan completion rate. That's in part and in large part due to the work with our collaborative partners at CityLink Center and Smart Money, where they do the financial training. That's our purchase program. We have our repair program where it's half off repairs and maintenance for people that already owned a car or bought a car from us so they can keep that car running. And then we, our newest program is our technician training program. And this is for people who want to start a career in the automotive industry. It's a four-week program getting the basics so they can start as a lube and tire technician. Okay. It's kind of just in a dealership world, there's kind of lach, lube tech, and then you kind of grow from there. In four weeks, we can show folks how to work safely in a shop, get really fast at oil changes and all the tire stuff, and then they can start as a lube and tire technician. Then once they get into the dealership, they have access to all the free training that's there from the manufacturers and they can really grow their careers from there. And when did that start? That started in 2021. Some fun stuff there. We've had just looking at this, we had 73 people start, 63 uh graduates of that program, and 53 get started in jobs in the field. And then most important is we have a 68% one year or greater retention rate in the field. So it means that they're advancing in their careers, usually starting$17,$18 an hour and growing from there.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and do you stay in contact with your graduates then to see how it's going?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's one of the things that makes the program special. Eric Dallas are kind of he's he's over, leads the tech training program. He's the instructor, but also I would say that retention piece, he goes out to the to the sites to visit graduates and check on them how they're doing. And we really want to make sure that there's not some small thing that prevents someone from getting to a year on the job. And then there's other ways that they stay in touch as well. But um, it's real special to go on the site and see, and even more fun when he's able to like go to one dealership and there's a few of our graduates there. So they're kind of starting to collect at at certain dealerships and grow from there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

People are just driving by and going, oh, that looks like a repair shop, or uh, I can buy a car there. How does that where do the clients come from?

SPEAKER_01:

It's all of our clients, um, you know, one of our big values around changing gears is collaboration. So all of our clients come through a collaborative partner. It allows us to focus on removing transportation barriers or workforce development training, and then knowing that our clients then have access to all the necessary wraparound services to really move from poverty to prosperity. Our main partner is a place called City Link Center. And uh, we really kind of came to life together. Uh CityLink Center has all the all the services that are necessary for someone, what and then also a lot of different training programs. So, in addition to our technician training program, they've got training programs in culinary construction, IT, medical, and so hopefully we can remove some transportation barriers for folks that are starting in those careers. Something we're excited to do is we're we're now in a place where we're gonna be able to start growing and serving clients from additional partner organizations. Over the past year, we've added four new additional partners. The similarity is that they are providing those wraparound services. We just want to be the transportation solution. Sure. And so we're expanding to be able to serve clients throughout the city. Beautiful building we're in. How long have you been here? This building we moved in in 2021. Okay. We kind of pilot tested our tech training uh program in our old facility, which is actually right next door, and but it didn't have the space we're sitting now. Uh it needed it needed some classroom space, some multi-purpose room space so you can have the the classroom portion and then go right out to the garage and have a lot of garage portion as well. And so in the garage, we used to have three lifts. In this shop, we've got seven. And so that way we've got room to have the students out in the shop while we've got all of our other operations going on as well.

SPEAKER_00:

The old building was was all cinder block, barely any windows, no AC. That's where I had my first interview. Thankful for that first interview because I got to kind of see the before and after. Yeah. And now it's been totally flipped into a brand new building.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm surprised actually that we were can able to convince people to come work for us looking back at that old building.

SPEAKER_04:

I sweat a lot in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, uh, and it's fun uh for a lot a majority of our staff still knows that. Kind of different when we hire people now and they don't know the old building and where we come from. And I mean, this is a nice new, beautiful building. It's always great for where we got, yeah, grateful where we got started.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you share a few what we would say success stories and how that's worked out?

SPEAKER_00:

Our clients are what keep us going, right? Um, we love to celebrate around here. That is one of our core values. We do pay attention to the success stories and they give us life. Our clients give us so much, so much life. One in particular stands out to me. Her name is Laquela. She was a tech training student over a year ago. Biggest smile on her face, like that you've ever seen. Brought so much energy to her class. I think she was in one of our first classes of six students. Usually our our tech training classes were about three to four students, and we decided to take it up a notch and have six, and she was part of one of those original classes. A couple weeks into her training, her car got stolen. So she had no way to get to training. We were able to sell her a car. So then now she's a tech training student, a a purchase client. She's now been on her job a year. So she over a year, she's coming for repairs for that car that she bought here. So she's been a one of one of those amazing clients that's been part of each program. She's so good at knowing who's around her, what's around her, staying in touch, and not only asking for help when she needs it, but encouraging everyone around her. When I'm whenever I'm around this girl, I my day just gets better. She paid off her car early. Eventually, that car had its last day. At that point, she already had her finances in order. She had figured out a lot of life. She's she's hungry to to figure things out, and and she's doing it that same day, or the next day, the dealership that she works at was able to get her in a new car. She was so excited. We I have a wonderful picture of her on the head of her car celebrating this victorious moment. That day she drove to Hawking Hills. She said, Oh my gosh, I've never had a car where I thought I could drive that far. And so she went to scope it out and had planned a trip to go back the following weekend to take a break, to enjoy and cruise in her new car. That girl inspires me so much. I think without even knowing it, inspires everyone she runs into. So Aquala for me just stands out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, our I mentioned our mission, but our our vision is as we help each other, people have the freedom to accomplish their dreams. And we know it's not owning a car helps with that, but it's that real freedom to be able to travel, to go, to go be out in nature and to go see those things. Like obviously, there's lots of you know, people might want a car and a house, but really they want to host a barbecue with their family and have their family come over. And so it's these these are the the real thing that people want to accomplish. We ask a lot of our clients, what's your why? What's your why, especially in our tech training program? And it's that's the kind of stuff they want. And that's what's gonna keep keep them working hard.

SPEAKER_02:

So well, and you you know, you're not only getting people in a car, you you're helping get people to jobs.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I've always said if you want to fix poverty, low income, you have to have jobs.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. In in Cincinnati, we got a we got a big poverty problem. About one in four are in poverty, and we got a big transportation problem. So we the and shocker, they are connected. There's a stat we share a lot that in in in Greater Cincinnati, only five percent of jobs are accessible in less than an hour if you're on public transportation. With a car, it's 99%. And I always asterisk this with we are we love public transportation and we want more and more of it. It's there's a lot of cool stuff happening with it. We want people to be able to get where they gotta go, however that is. But especially when you're working your out of poverty, it's not just getting to work, it's also getting the grocery store, getting kids to to school to access health care. It's all of these things that are that are necessary.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's interesting you mentioned that because I was just thinking about it. We have uh a young man we're friends with, didn't have a car, he worked, he lived in Newport, he worked at Amazon, Hebron. Yeah, yes, we left public transportation too. I rode the bus for a number of years, that was cool. Yeah, uh, but it is very difficult to get from point A to point B in Cincinnati. Yeah, and he he would spend an hour and a half trying to get to Hebron. That's one way. And then he got off at like two o'clock in the morning. Now I gotta pay for an Uber to get home. Well, that's not cheap.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

What you're doing. I mean, you when you have a car and it's running, you just take it for granted.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you're you're nailing so many of the things, it's the the time. So think about that. Even even if the bus was running on the way home, it's three hours on a bus versus it's probably a half-hour car ride. So we're talking about saving two hours a day. Yeah. Imagine if I was like, Dan, here's two hours more for you to do whatever you want today. Yeah. And so it's just then giving the clients the freedom to do whatever it is. Sometimes it's get more rest so you can be a better parent. It's awesome to see what they're doing. Love Laquela story. I one that that I was just sharing, I love this because you see the power of our purchase program was a woman named Carrie back in 2018. She bought a car from us, bought a Honda Accord. It was a 2007 Honda Accord, uh, blue, and she named it Little Betty Blue. And uh at the time she was limited to working jobs she could walk to. But with this car, she was able to get a better job, get a better paying job. She was able to move out. She was um staying with her parents at the time, but able to move out. So her and her daughters had a place of their own. Little Betty Blue kept kept running. Uh, she paid it off a year later. So we got fun celebration photos with her and her title. But most fun is this year she sends us a picture and it's her in front of a brand new Toyota Corolla. And so she, Little Betty Blue had been kept running. Uh, she took great care of it. Uh now she's able to buy a new car. Wow. Uh, but she actually kept Little Betty Blue and was able to give that to her daughter. So then now her daughter has the freedom of transportation. This generational impact that you can see when when a parent has a car, what that frees up for their family and what they can do. It's just fun to see that that long-term impact. Here's a question.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know if you can answer or not. You mentioned happen to have for humanity, they're not just in Cincinnati. Changing gears is here in Cincinnati. Big vision.

SPEAKER_00:

Great question.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you must be listening in. Yeah, great, great question. Had this incredible thing, and I can only attribute it to God's abundance and coming in at the right time. And right around our 10-year anniversary, we got connected with a foundation that wanted to look at replicating something like changing gears uh down in Texas. And they kind of said, What's your appetite for replication? We say, Well, that'd be cool. And we've had different people come to us at different times and ask that, but our hearts really for Cincinnati. There's so much more to do in Cincinnati. And so it before we think about replication, we we gotta figure out how to grow here. And they said, Well, what if we do both? I said, Oh, that sounds fun. Sure, why not? Over the past two years, we've really been looking at expansion and replication. And expansion looks like serving clients from additional partners. We want to we want anybody in Cincinnati, if they have a transportation barrier, we want to be able to help them. So, in the same way that Habitat helps all over, and then we're starting to look at replication. A line I use a lot is like, we're building this plane as we're flying it. Sure. And so you just think, oh, I don't know, this is just what we do. But now we're trying to build our playbook of this is this is how we run. And it's like, oh, we've actually learned a lot over the past 12 years. Our our plan is to get all of our processes and our playbook together so that we could help people or an organization in different cities start something that looks like changing gears through an affiliate network model. Yeah. You know, we know Cincinnati, we know the needs and the opportunities and the relationships that are there. But if we would try to start something in Indianapolis or any Kansas City, anywhere, we don't, we're we're disconnected from that. So we're not gonna go after a franchise model or a wholly owned model, but we find places that that are looking for something like this, and then we can equip them to get started. So and then be able to learn from each other because other organizations that get started, they're gonna learn stuff that we we haven't. And so how do we make ourselves better? And so it's really fun to see how this uh expansion and replication kind of feed each other. Sure. And it'll make us better at serving our clients. Well, yeah. Thanks for sharing that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so more to come, Dan. This might become a you know a quarterly event. Yeah. I'm enjoying this sitting here in a car place, you know. This is great. If you could leave my listeners with some life advice on how to live a better life or serve people, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00:

This goes along with our core values. I've already talked about this, but celebrate the small stuff. That's that's my advice. That's kind of an Amina Sinclair quote, but it it goes along with joy comes to us in the ordinary moments, which is something Brene Brown says and shares out with everybody. You don't want to miss the celebration, you don't want to miss the joy looking for the extraordinary when the good stuff is right in front of us.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow, thank you. Joel, you have any advice?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this one was really important for me. And it's that God doesn't call the equipped, he equips the called. That has been something that has been a thousand percent true for me through this whole thing. I I didn't know what I was doing at all. I talk about like we'd I'd never managed anybody, let alone hire somebody, or you know, and when we got started and kind of building this team, but God continues to equip when when you do this. So piece for me in that is like that means you got to be connected to God. So you can you can hear that. Usually that means through community. So, you know, finding community that makes you better to help process that and then leaning in and taking some risks. And when you get I saw this recently, when you have there's an equation, our good friend Corey Carlson, give a shout-out to him and his his podcast and his his work with Win at Home First, but it was community plus getting out of your comfort zone equals breakthrough. And I've seen that when you just get out from from where you're comfortable and you've got the community to support you. That's when really special things happen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you. So we don't want to leave until we know how can people find changing gears?

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. We would love to have anyone who wants to come, come out to Changing Gears, visit us Thursday, October 30th. We're having a big celebration for our tech training students of this October class. There's four of them, and all of our alumni. So there's gonna be a great panel, there's gonna be good food and drinks and just being in community. So that's here at Changing Gears in the west end of Cincinnati at 4:30. I think it goes till 6 or 6:30. Dan, you're coming, right? I'll be here. All right. So that's number one. Come out and see us. We'd love to celebrate with anyone that wants to join. That's a crowd full of supporters, friends, community. It's it's a great time. Join us. There's other ways to the address here. 2015 Central Ave. You can also look at us, look us up at changing-gears.org for all sorts of information. Another other great ways to get involved would be through vehicle donations. That's a huge way we fundraise around here. And some of the donated vehicles we receive, we're able to restore and get ready to sell to clients. Kind of the dream when someone donates a vehicle to us, how cool would it be if this went to a client? And sometimes that does happen. Joel and Marnie just sold their minivan to a client last spring and the spring, which was really cool. But we take any and every vehicle donation. Every vehicle donation helps support our mission. We're able to restore these cars, sell them in auction, sometimes scrap a car or two. It's all funding that helps our neighbors in need and helps us get to do uh what we do. You can also obviously hop on the website for a financial donation. We're always accepting those as well.

SPEAKER_03:

Can't miss that.

SPEAKER_00:

And there's opportunities on the website to follow us. On LinkedIn is where we post a lot. We're on Instagram, Facebook, and you can sign up for the newsletter.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Which which I write once a month. And it's a great read if I don't say so myself.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, one question. Yes. So if I donate a car, do you show up in the tow truck?

SPEAKER_00:

Hey, I haven't driven it yet. Joel, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02:

Come on, Joel. She's gonna have to. I did a ride-along.

SPEAKER_00:

I've done some ride-alongs. Yeah. And I'm quite the conversationalist, so that's fun. I'll come say hi if it's requested. But for safety purposes, we'll let Junior do the driving. He's really good at hooking up the cart in the back as well. Haven't tried it yet.

SPEAKER_02:

Anything else you want to leave us with?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, we gotta mention the Changing Gears Grand Prix.

SPEAKER_02:

And so this is a I did see that on the website. Yeah, plus being a racing guy. I'm like, Grand Prix, what is this?

SPEAKER_00:

Annual fundraiser.

SPEAKER_01:

It's our annual fundraising event. We wanted to have a fundraisers event that kind of, I don't know, embody changing gears. And so it is maybe a little biased, but I think a really fun fundraising event. Uh set up a track at a hangar. In Lunkin, at Lunkin Airport. And we race these pedal carts that are meant for kids, but adults fit on them.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And then it's also a costume contest for the teams. So we get teams of four who are doing a relay race around this indoor track. Okay. It's an incredibly fun, even if you're not a racer, like just to watch what's happening. Because competitiveness comes out in people once they once they get on the cart. May 16th, 2026. So mark your calendars.

SPEAKER_00:

Sign up for that newsletter.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Yes. Well, this has been a pleasure for me. Uh to be here. Yes. It's been awesome. I'm so thankful we got linked up and got to do this. So we'll do it again. Uh we're gonna hold you to that. Thanks, Dan.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks so much for having us, Dan.

Head Shot

Dan Neal

Host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.