I own 36 auto shops but never fixed a car in my life | 307

Most people think they need to be technical founder (aka mechanic) to own a technical business (aka auto repair shop) 

But I've never fixed a car in my life yet somehow I own 36 shops

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Transcript

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Most people think that you have to be a mechanic to own an auto repair business. Yet I own 36 shops and have never fixed a car in my life. And I'm going to show you why that may be my biggest unfair advantage. We think about the origins of this. Go back way, way in time, and you've got blacksmiths, right? And you have a somebody who starts as a blacksmith apprentice, he learns the trade, eventually he goes off and starts his own blacksmith business, right? Same for carpenters, same for like every other technical trade. It was done by technical founders. And for many, many years, obviously that was like the only way it could work. But nowadays, you don't have to be technical to own a technical business. You can be the person who assembles the team, who has the vision, who gets the money together, who runs everything else and puts the right players into place. Think about football teams, right? I'm a big Philadelphia Eagles fan. We got Howie Roseman, our GM. Now, Howie's a Howie's a small guy. He's probably not that much taller or bigger than me. I doubt he's played a lick of football himself, except for maybe back in Pee-Wees or something. Yet he has assembled world champ world-class championship teams, right? Year after year. And he can't play football, right? But he can spot the talent. He can get them on board. He can get the right people in the right place and they have the vision and they can build an amazing team. And I like to think of myself in a very similar role as the owner. And it's that I am not responsible for fixing the cars, but I need to find the people who are. So let's dive into it here. Number one, one of the best benefits of it is that you because I don't have the technical skills, I am forced to have systems that work. Okay? So for example, if I could just go and save the day, and I was a really great mechanic, then like if somebody quit, well, guess what? Like I could just go and turn wrenches that day and that week and that month and maybe even that year. Because that was what is required to do. But the challenge is like you only have two hands, and there's only only so many hours in a day, and at a certain point, like you reach this capacity of what you can personally do. And because I don't have that skill or or that desire, I mean, I'm I'm I am actually pretty handy. I I could I could do it, I just you know choose not to. And it it forces me instead to focus on hiring, right? To focus on creating a system to attract and retain quality people. Now, in our business, that is very great mechanics, but you may be in a plumbing business. So it's it's plumbers or it's roofers or it's even salespeople. Like you may be in a business that requires a lot of sales and maybe you can't sell yourself. That doesn't mean you're gonna wither over and die. It just means that like you need to go out and find people who can do it. And so because I don't have the ability just to jump in and do it myself, I have to get good at finding those people. I have to get good at retaining them, creating a culture that people want to be a part of, all of that, right? But but here's the thing that that skill is extremely scalable in terms of the systems that I have to create and and execute to hire a single mechanic. Can be used to hire three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty. There's over 150 mechanics that work for us today. And to do that, you create systems. And I'm talking about systems, and it's really just like you have a duplicated process, right? So for me, many years ago, I created interview sheets that helped me know if someone knew what they were talking about or not. Now keep in mind, I worked in the stores for six years before I became uh the owner, and I could tell you every single part of a car. I can tell you what it is, why it broke, approximate cost of how long, uh, how how much it will cost to fix it, how long it'll take it, the skill several required. Like, just because I'm not technical in terms of like I'm not gonna be the one replacing the radiator, doesn't mean that I'm a complete idiot or I'm completely ignorant to what it takes. I can spot talent, I can interview a mechanic and tell you if that guy is good or not. I can tell you if I think they're gonna work on the team from a culture basis. Like, just just don't confuse not being technical with being uh somebody who doesn't like care or is like oblivious to it. Some people like hear me talk about this thing and they're like, oh, so many people must pull wool over your eyes, and like they get around you and you have no idea what they're talking about. Like it's a foreign language. And the truth is, like, that's not true at all. And that uh I have actually gotten very good at at doing it. And so this is this is what we do, right? It's like I have an interview sheet, and back in the day, there'd be certain questions. Like I had, for example, a check engine like code with a specific code, and you know, I knew what it meant. I wanted to know if they knew what it meant, and then I knew what would be the proper way to diagnose that problem and to identify what the issue is. And so if they gave me the answer, for example, uh, I told them it was a P301 code. Now, you you're probably not on auto, so it doesn't really matter, but like it's a it's a misfire in cylinder number one. And let's say it's a four-cylinder car, and I'd ask them, okay, well, how would you go about diagnosing this? What do you think it could be? And what they should say is it's you know, it could be a couple different things. It could be the spark plug, it could be the coil. What they would do is just like swap the coil from one to two and then clear it and see if it comes back. If if it moves to number two, right, then we know that the problem is probably the coil is misfiring because it moved. If it doesn't, then it could be the spark plug. If we change the spark plug and it still doesn't move, then we know it could be something else, right? It could be a problem with that cylinder itself, right? Super simple, makes sense. Like, and I would I would want to know and hear the confidence to which they can answer the technical question that I know the answer for. And in the beginning, maybe I didn't know the answer, but I learned it. Like, like you have to be able to learn this kind of thing. And so that was the first process. The other part I would do would be just understand how much money they have in tools. Like a great mechanic invests a lot of money in tools. If they carry around like a like a like a tool bag or some husky thing they can buy for like 500 bucks as their like starting toolkit, they're probably entry level, right? No shame on that. Just listen, they are what they are. If they own a$50,000 box and they have$100,000 worth of tools, chances are they're a pretty darn good mechanic, otherwise, they wouldn't have made enough money to invest in those tools and they certainly wouldn't know how to use them. So that's part of the process that you would go and and and do this if you're looking to get into a technical business. The other part of it is that they're gonna test you, right? Like when I walked in or I bought new stores at the time when like I'm the guy like interfacing with everybody, yeah, we'd hire new people and they they'd test me all the time. They would tell me things fail that that I knew maybe didn't, and and they would try to get away with things. And if I was ignorant to that, I would look like a complete idiot, and then they would know that they can get uh you know, they could take advantage of me, essentially. But didn't didn't let that happen, right? Because I I knew about it. Also, like having some other guys on your team that you can reach out to is a big part of it. So if I didn't know something or I had trouble at one store and I knew there was a mechanic at another store, like we could bring him in to diagnose the problem. Or if I had a question, I could send it to him and I'd get the answer and like we could work through it. And so business is a team sport, and it's not about you having all the answers. In fact, if you're really serious about scaling it, you can't have all the answers. You can't do everything. Like you were limited by your capacity. And the more that you can focus on creating systems, the easier it will be to scale your company. For us, there are four systems that I focus on, and I'm not gonna talk about all of them today, but like if you subscribe and you listen to more of my stuff, you will hear about them. And number one, we have an ownership system. This is like how we think as owners, right? Like the things that we deal with, the things we approach, how we view, even this whole conversation is like could I even get into a business that is a technical business with me out with not being a technical founder? And if you believe in yourself and you are organized and you know you can do it, then yeah, like totally possible. Then you have to have a cash management system. How we money comes in, money goes out, savings, taxes, all the things. Otherwise, like you're gonna run out of business. And so you could be the best mechanic in the world, but like if you don't have a strong system for managing cash in your business, it doesn't matter. Then you've got to have a people system. We touched on this a little bit, but like talk about hiring, developing culture, training ship, training, leadership. Like you have to have these things in place, otherwise, people aren't gonna want to work for you a long time and you're gonna have a lot of instability, and then you're not gonna be able to build this foundation because it's weak. All right. And finally, you have to have a growth system. If you're truly serious about growing, you have to have a systematic way to identify new locations, to know when is it time to grow, when is it time to double down on what you got, when is it time to sell even and go reverse because something's a distraction from keeping what's truly um, you know, that that your true skills are. And so those are all the factors that I'm gonna look at. And that ownership is not about doing one thing. It's not about being the apprentice to the blacksmith and then owning your own black ship shop. It's about being the architect, the person who has all the blueprints, who has all the systems, but then more importantly, is the one who can execute on them. Because, you know, you could you could read all the AI crap in the world that tells you how to how to create systems and how to execute and how to hold people accountable and how to do X, Y, and Z, but like none of that matters if you can't actually do it. And that's what is challenging. That's where people get stuck, that's what holds people back, is they can't get out of their own head, they can't make those hires that they need to, they can't get them to stay. And it's not about the technical stuff at all, right? It's it's not. It's about you having confidence in your ability to put these things into place and to build teams that technical people want to be part of. And that's that's a lot of what I help people with inside my eight-figure franchisee uh coaching program is we have owners from every industry, right? We have owners from senior care, uh in in home services, in painting, in roofing, in plumbing. We have sports guys, we have fitness guys, we've got um salons, you know, we have all these different industries, and it's it's really funny because you think that like uh it's so different in like home services or spas or salons or fitness or whatever in auto. But at the end of the day, like we all have the same exact problems. And the only thing that is different is the end, is the little bit of delivery at the end, the 10%. But up to that point, how do we how do we do all the things I just talked about? Man, it's it's identical. And that's the best part about owning a business. And the thing that I really excites me is once you can learn this skill, the skill of being a business owner, the skill of of cash management and marketing and leads and sales and and people and hiring and development, all this stuff. Once you can learn that skill, it is duplicatable no matter what you choose to do in life. Whether you say, hey, I'm gonna make the business I have today as big as I can go, or I'm gonna pivot, I want to move, I want to sell, I want to move into something else. Uh, I'm gonna or I'm gonna double down on what I got, and I'm gonna expand this thing as big as I can go. It's the same things over and over again. And it's really nice that those are less things you have to focus on, right? Versus every single thing is completely different. You'd be it'd be really hard. So if there's anything I can do, if you have any questions, throw me them on Instagram. Uh that's where I'm hanging out these days. I'm really trying to grow there. And if you enjoy this, you want to hear more, make sure you subscribe. I'm gonna be putting on a lot more episodes. I want to give you kind of an unfiltered look, and I'll see you then. Cheers.