James Maher has known for some time he has some big shoes to fill.

Maher, the son of James Maher, former injected Funny Car champion and founder of Good Vibrations Motorsports, has been stepping into the lead role of the company his father founded back in 1989 in the garage of the family's home.

Maher, 29, is a millennial and is determined to uphold the family's legacy while representing a generation he believes many of the older demographic doesn't understand.

"I just think there's a gap there," Maher said. "I think that there's a gap between the generations, each one, and it's harder and harder to connect with the next gap. Hopefully, in my generation, I want to be that bridge to build the gap. Hey, we can all work together. We can build this thing.

"The way you guys communicated back then might not be how these guys communicate, but we've got to learn and continually grow. They had to work with what they had back then, and it's just learning how we can connect the dots.

"I think there's a great opportunity out there for these guys, and there's a whole bunch. There's YouTube out there. These guys didn't have YouTube. And so they're like, 'Well, what's YouTube?" And it's like, "Well, YouTube's a great way for people to learn."

"This is how they are learning. You guys read books. This is them." And it's just, you got to look at it from a different perspective and sometimes take a step back and realize they have it, and you just got to be willing to connect with them on the way that they're learning and growing with them."

Maher believes it was his father's passion for ensuring his son learned to live life the way he was raised, which left an indelible mark that carries on today.

"I think that my dad was pretty hard on me like his dad was hard on him, and I think it's all for the good," Maher explained. "I look at it as he wants the best for me. And when I learned that and took a step back and realized he means all well, I've never felt any disrespect there. We've always had a really good mutual ground, and yes, it gets heated sometimes, but we both take a step back and realize where we messed up.

"He's willing to apologize, and that, to me, is a huge thing if anything goes wrong. Sometimes, guys hold grudges, and it doesn't work out. I think if you're willing to step up and realize, 'hey, I made a mistake, or I'm sorry, and I was wrong,' which are hard to come by nowadays, but those are those big things.

"We've just been able to grow and understand and respect each other. There's things that he wants done a certain way, and I've learned to respect that. When the time comes, I'll voice my opinion afterwards of, 'Hey, this is what I thought how I wanted and how I thought it should have been done."

Maher said his father's teaching has been invaluable in creating a seamless family business transition.

"Every week goes by, the more I learn," Maher said. "I don't think there's a day goes by that I don't learn anything. So it's just little by little, a little more responsibility here and there and just try to take each step along the way as an opportunity to grow and learn. And thankful for every opportunity he's ever given me."

Maher's biggest challenge is finding help to keep the family business operating on an upward trajectory. Following the pandemic, finding and keeping good help has been problematic throughout the industry.

"We're looking for a couple of guys to join the team and just come on board in our shipping, receiving, and sales and tech area," Maher said. If anyone's interested, they can come on by, and no experience is needed. We just train them as they come in, and just need to be there every day and be willing to work."

What kind of person is Maher looking to hire?

"Anyone that's interested in learning a little bit about mechanical fuel injection supercharging," Maher said. "We'll teach them in-house everything we know little by little. And usually, they start in shipping and receiving, pulling parts and getting familiar, getting their hands on things. As they get familiar with it, we give them more of the technical things of how they work together. We don't just take web orders that come in. We look at each order individually, process them, and we find things that don't work together. We try to correct them before they go out the door, and we teach all our guys that. So they really don't need much experience."

Maher fell in love with the industry early in life, and the right person can fall in love with the atmosphere his dad has created at Good Vibrations.

"I think if you've got to go do something every day, hopefully, it's something you enjoy doing," Maher said. "So if coming to work and learning and playing with some car parts and getting to play around and learn about how they work together goes with it, this might be the right job for you."

As Maher sees it, it's been perfect for him.