“For as Long as I Remember”
I’ve been an entrepreneur as long as I can remember. I remember being in first and second grade selling magazines, newspapers, candles and all that type of thing. It was always fun for me. It wasn’t so much the money part of it. It was the fact that you were providing something to someone that they really seemed to enjoy.
Although an entrepreneur at heart, Terry spent more than two decades of his life working in education. During his last decade in education, he saw education budgets continually tightening. In his role as a supervisor, he had to make many tough decisions. “I had cut budgets for eight of the past ten years and I’d cut enough people that the only person left to cut was my position,” Terry said. “I decided enough was enough and if I was going to go broke, I was going to do it on my own terms.”
Pursuing His Goals
So, In 2012, he decided to pursue his goals of entrepreneurship. With the support of his wife, Tammie, he launched Fast GraphiX. The business was born out of Terry’s passion for racing cars. He knew racing was not a money maker, but he found a way to monetize his passion through a business that designed and printed flashy decals for the racecars he loved.
He found a used vinyl cutting machine and the software to run it. With the help of his son, Terry taught himself how to use the software and began printing decals for his own race car.
“Friends saw my car and wanted me to do theirs,” he said. “Pretty soon I was doing cars for friends of friends and it just kind of blew up from there.”
Fast GraphiX is a niche business that serves customers throughout the midwest, including Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Canada. In addition to their graphics business, the Blacklances also operate a U-Haul business.
A New Location
In 2020, they moved the business from the shop located at their home to a new location on the north side of town. The new facility provides ample space for them to serve customers, house their digital printing equipment, and service their U-Haul customers. “We enjoy our new building a lot,” Tammie said. “Our counter traffic is up a lot,” Terry added.
In addition to printing race car decals, they print all types of custom printing, including other types of decals, t-shirts, caps, mugs, and other items.
Terry and Tammie are great partners in business. The friendship this husband-wife entrepreneurial duo shares and their mutual commitment to making the business a success are an inspiration to all who know them.
For more information on Fast GraphiX, visit their website.
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