Dani Butler on Marketing Butler Tire, the Cars He's Owned, and Starting Over

Dani Butler ran marketing for Butler Tire, the Atlanta tire and wheel business his family founded and ran for about 50 years. On the show, Grant Brewer introduces him as Dani Friedman, aka Dani Butler. Many people in the Atlanta car scene know him from his years at Butler Tire.

Grant and Dani met around 2013 over Dani’s C63 AMG. On this episode Dani talks about bringing a 50-year-old family brand onto social media, the cars he has owned since, and the new business he is trying to get off the ground.

From South Africa to Peachtree Industrial

Dani grew up in South Africa. His family had been in the US since 1978, and after years of visits he moved to Atlanta in 1997, at 20. He says he wasn’t plugged in back home the way he could be here, no matter how hard he worked. His uncle Mel gave him the terms on arrival: “Cut your hair, change the way you dress, get a job, and we can talk.”

Within three days he had a job as an installer at American Radio on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, doing stereos, security systems, and leather conversions. Later, in car stereo, he realized that without his own capital he would earn $60,000 for the rest of his life. He quit, taught himself HTML and Macromedia Flash, and opened a web development company the day before the dot-com crash. They cold-called businesses out of the Yellow Pages, starting at A. When website templates made building a site easy, he moved into search marketing and lead generation, because driving traffic was still hard.

He has been in Atlanta for going on 28 years. Every time he flies back in, he says, he gets butterflies.

Bringing Butler Tire’s marketing in-house

About 18 years ago, Dani posted a photo of a car Butler Tire had done on Facebook and watched the engagement roll in. He asked Mel to let him run the company’s social media. Mel came back with a bigger offer: run the whole marketing department, which Butler had been outsourcing. There were five interviews first, family or not.

Within a few months Dani told the family the hard version: “if we don’t adapt, this brand’s going to die.” Their customers were getting older. Social media was how Butler Tire would reach younger drivers and stay with them through college and their first jobs, so it would be their brand when they could afford the cars. He still doesn’t think likes equal sales. He thinks presence does.

Change came slowly, the way it does in a family business. When he started, Butler Tire had four or five channels: billboards, Yellow Pages, newspaper, and radio. He added one channel at a time, measured it, showed the family the results, and moved to the next. By the time he left there were somewhere between 13 and 16.

The Lamborghinis got the likes. What kept the doors open was four tires, brakes, suspension, and alignment, so each channel was aimed at a different kind of customer, including the daily driver.

Every client paid

Butler Tire worked with plenty of athletes and celebrities. Dani says they were more demanding than typical clients, and every one of them paid. “We never ever gave anything away for free.”

He is prouder of a different kind of story. A friend named Corey once called one of the stores asking if Butler sold used tires. It didn’t, really. Corey had an old Lexus on four mismatched wheels and not much money. Dani found a take-off tire with some life left and told him to come in. Corey became a lifelong friend. He’s married now with a family, plays golf with Dani, and hand-built one of the best Eleanor replicas Dani has ever seen with his dad.

The wildest wheel jobs stuck with him too. One customer from Dubai ordered a fully custom set of Asanti wheels that came to $26,000. And the shop once put spinners with Falcons logos on the four-wheeler Freddy the Falcon rode onto the field.

An E46 M3, three AMGs, and the right 911

Dani’s list of cars reads like a short history of what he learned about fit.

• E46 M3. In his opinion, outside of a GT4, the most perfectly balanced car there is. He put 100,000 miles on it. “I would buy that car a hundred times over.”
• E92 M3. A manual in mineral white. He calls that gearbox the worst transmission ever made.
• 2012 C63 AMG coupe. A YouTube cold start of the 6.2-liter V8 sold him. He later sold it with 21,000 miles to a woman he passed on his commute every morning, who had asked for first option, for about $22,000 to $23,000. In 2020 he tried to buy it back. Her price was $50,000, and she had added about 3,000 miles.
• C63 Edition 1. A matte gray car Grant found for him while Grant was at Motorcars of Atlanta.
• AMG GT C. Early in COVID, a dealer was asking roughly $145,000 to $148,000 for a nearly new one. Dani offered $110,000, left his number, and told them to call when they were desperate. Two days later: $112,000, shipped.
• Audi R8 V10. He bought it in Chattanooga and drove home through construction for four and a half to five hours. At 6’4”, he could not feel his hips when he got out. He sold it after six months.
• 992 GT3. One drive in his cousin Craig’s 992.1 GT3 did it. He bought a manual with the comfort seats he calls fat-man seats, not buckets.

His rule for all of them: “A car has to look like it’s moving when it’s standing still.”

Today he dailies a 992.1 GTS in Ice Gray Metallic, on 1886 wheels and adjustable KW springs, with a tune. He bought it with 500 miles. Almost two years later it has about 6,000. He wanted a 911 he could put miles on without feeling bad, and the GTS fits that exactly.

On a mountain drive Grant organized for a group of 911 owners, Dani was in his GT3 on upgraded wheels and tires, pushing hard. Grant passed him in a stock Carrera S. Dani still has the video.

Starting over without the Butler name

The family sold Butler Tire in 2022, when an offer came that they couldn’t turn down and his uncle was ready to retire. Dani stayed until the end of 2023 and found that corporate life wasn’t for him. A contract kept him out of the car business for two years. That ended this past November, and since then he has been back at car shows and around the community.

In the meantime he has done marketing and branding consulting for a wealth management firm and written a business plan for his own location, built on everything he loved about Butler and everything they wanted to do but couldn’t. Starting from nothing, after a 50-year-old name, has been humbling. He finally understands why his old business partner was so strict about expenses.

He also had a heart attack at 41. He says it changed how he sees everything. He used to want to be rich. Now he wakes up grateful for another day.

Rapid fire

• Dream three-car garage: a Ferrari 355 Spider, a Range Rover, and a Rolls-Royce Spectre, which he’d love even more with a combustion engine.
• The car that represents him: a 911.
• Trend that needs to disappear: stance. He appreciates every corner of car culture and still can’t understand wearing out tires every 2,000 miles. If he opens a new shop, he’d still love to be your tire shop.

Watch the full episode

The full conversation with Dani Butler is above and on YouTube.

When Dani walked into The Ride Lounge, the first thing he noticed was how much work it takes to build a place like it. The founders spent four years finding a building that would work. The result is car storage in Atlanta built for enthusiasts, with a private lounge, climate-controlled bays in Peachtree Corners and Midtown, and a community that shows up for nights like this one. Schedule a private tour.