From One Shop to a Regional Auto Empire With Brian Bates of EAS Tire & Auto

Episode 175

Brian Bates

EAS Tire & Auto

Brian Bates is the President and Founder of EAS Tire & Auto, a growing chain of auto repair shops with 21 locations in the Denver metro area. After serving in the military, Brian entered the automotive industry, eventually opening his first shop in 2004. His company has expanded rapidly through strategic acquisitions and a partnership with Straightaway, a group that empowers shop owners to scale while retaining operational control. With a passion for people development and leadership, Brian is focused on building a company culture rooted in growth, excellence, and support.

In this episode…

The auto repair industry is undergoing rapid consolidation, leaving many independent shop owners wondering how to grow or exit successfully. As lending tightens and operational demands rise, new partnership models offer a path forward for owners who aren’t ready to walk away. How can independent shop owners grow strategically while protecting their financial futures?

According to Brian Bates of EAS Tire & Auto, the key lies in building partnerships that provide resources without stripping autonomy. Through his collaboration with Straightaway, Brian has scaled his operations significantly while maintaining influence over day-to-day decisions. This hybrid approach allows owners to retain equity, reduce risk, and gain access to shared expertise and better buying power.

On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge welcomes Brian for a conversation about military discipline, business growth, partnering with Straightaway, and the art of betting on yourself. Brian shares how his team evaluates acquisitions, why leadership development matters, and how he uses subtle cues such as paint quality to decide which cars are worth working on.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:37] Brian Bates’ military background and how it set the foundation for his career
[05:46] Transitioning from the military to auto repair and dealership work
[07:50] Growing from one shop to 21 stores in under 20 years
[08:13] How Straightaway helps shop owners stay active in their businesses
[13:09] Why strength in numbers matters in the tire and auto repair industry
[16:45] Options for shop owners to take chips off the table without fully exiting
[24:17] Brian’s favorite hobbies and lifestyle in Colorado
[34:00] Using paint quality as a success indicator for filtering out unprofitable repairs

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“Success is never owned, it’s rented — and the rent is due daily.”
“The best tenant I ever had was me — I always paid the rent and fixed things on time.”
“Straightaway isn’t about pushing owners out — it’s about giving them more support to grow.”
“Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn, but both are part of the fun.”
“The bus really has an unlimited amount of seats, especially if I do my job right.”

Action Steps:

Explore partnership models: Shop owners should investigate opportunities that allow for shared growth and retained control.
Reevaluate your lending strategy: Understand your borrowing limits with banks and SBA and consider private capital alternatives.
Create a system to identify unprofitable work: Use simple heuristics such as paint quality and vehicle condition to avoid jobs that drain resources.
Develop internal leadership pipelines: Invest in training and growth opportunities for younger team members to future-proof your business.
Bet on yourself: When making big decisions, trust your instincts and experience to drive your next phase of growth.

Transcript

00:02
Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast where we feature top tire and auto repair professionals, shop owners, industry executives and thought leaders and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.

00:18
Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business. I am Mike Edge, your host. Today we have a great guest. We have Brian Bates, president and founder of EAS Tire and Auto with 21 stores in the Denver metro area. But before we begin, let me tell you who our sponsor is. Tread Partners. Tread Partners is a digital marketing agency that specializes in SEO and PPC marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations. Down to five locations. You can waste a lot of money and a lot of time trying to master the art and science of PPC digital marketing. Get a professional review of your PPC structure and strategy from an agency that only works in this industry.

01:02
Let Tread Partners take a look under the PPC marketing hood for you today. Contact tread partners@tread partners.com you guys know I like to mention a past guest. My past guest shout out for today is Gus Herlong, President and CEO of Palmetto Garage Works in South Carolina. He was tire businesses humanitarian of the year 2024. Great podcast, great conversation. You can find it@gaintraction podcast.com so Brian Bates, welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast.

01:35
Thanks for having me out, Mike.

01:37
Yeah, very excited about this. You guys have grown a lot and I want to talk a little bit about straight away and your relationship with straightaway. But before we begin, let’s talk about where you started because you got out of high school from what I remember, and went straight to the military, Is that right?

01:54
Yeah, yeah, that’s correct. Yeah, I got out of high school and didn’t really have a whole lot of direction where I wanted to go as far as college. You know, didn’t know what I wanted to be and my brother was in the military and he really enjoyed it and so I decided to go into it and see what it was all about and to earn some money for college. Because even if I did have direction, it would have been a little bit tough for me to be able to finance college. So did that. Yeah.

02:25
But hold on a second. You also had a dad that was in Vietnam and had grandfather in World War II.

02:30
Yeah.

02:31
That’s a special accomplishment within a family. That’s awesome.

02:34
Yeah. Yeah. My grandfather, he was on aircraft carrier in the Pacific. My dad was a tank commander in Vietnam. Had an uncle that was in the navy in Vietnam. A couple other Relatives that were in that era and then got some cousins that also were in the military, served in different capacities and you know, a nephew in law. So I’ve got a ton of. Yeah, I mean, we have a proud heritage in our family of, you know, serving our country and, you know, really proud of that and it served me well also. Right. You know, it gave me a springboard for college. It allowed me to go see, you know, part of the world. Fortunately, I, I was never in any combat or conflict like that.

03:25
Just kind of came in right after the first Gulf War and left right before the second Gulf War. And then, you know, my wife and I, we spent a few years in Germany, had a son while were over there, Married my wife just as I joined the military. So just gave us an opportunity to build some stability and get on our footing, you know, get our footing under us as a family. So. Well, that was.

03:52
You guys got to experience life in Germany right out of the gate together. I mean, you just had each other kind of makes it.

03:59
Yeah, yeah, it was a, it was an experience. Just because I think normally when you get married, you have family support and, you know, friends and whatnot. And went over to Germany and had to, you know, make some new friends and our family, you know, calls back then were like a dollar ten a minute, so I forgot about that.

04:19
You’re right.

04:21
It’s kind of that old, that movie where. Or that ad commercial where the guy says, I want to make a collect call and what’s the name? He had a boy. It’s. Or attababy, It’s a boy. And the guy declines it. It’s like, oh, what was that? His wife says, what was that? Oh, oh, you know, Joe had a baby, It’s a boy. But yeah, that’s what it was like, is just kind of like, hey, look, just want to let you know we’re doing great. Five minutes, were done. But yeah, I forgot about all that.

04:52
But, you know, just. I’m going on a tangent here, but it is funny to look back because you remember we would make. Whether it was family, friends or whatever, and you’d be like, all right, this long distance, I gotta let you go.

05:02
Yeah, yeah, you know, long. We used to have long distance just across town. You know, a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, A lot of people that haven’t. Didn’t grow up in that time. But that was like, I, I think like 7 cents a minute if we crossed over into, you know, like 15 miles away. So. And my wife, she had a. She had one of those party. The party phones where three households had the same line. And, you know, you had to. If it rang, you had to answer it, you know, and if you’re calling out, somebody else was on it, you had to wait for them to get it off the phone. And I mean, just. I just remember.

05:39
I just remember the. The battles that we would have growing up. I grew up with seven kids, and so we had, you know, everybody’s. Everybody’s waiting for somebody else to get off the phone to call their significant, you know, girlfriend or whoever it might be.

05:53
Yeah, a hot squeeze. Yeah.

05:55
Yeah, that’s too funny. Wow. I digress. But anyway, you’re over in Germany and you. You spent time there and then you guys made your way back.

06:03
Yeah, yeah, made our way back. Decided I was going to get a degree in what at the time I was really interested in finance. And then got a job at a dealership working on cars, you know, and been, you know, taking car classes when I was a high school student and worked on cars. And, you know, my. My dad taught me how to work on cars. My brother, older brother. So it just kind of worked out that I got a job at the dealership and worked there for about 8 years. Got my degree in 2000 and worked my way up from the. The PDI guy ripping plastic off cars as they come in new, all the way up to being the shop foreman in about six years and.

06:46
And then decided after I got my degree, worked there for a couple of years and decided to buy the shop in my neighborhood and go out on my own. So bought that shop in 2004, then bought another shop in 2011. Bought the first one was an ongoing shop. The second two were empty buildings. So kind of cut my teeth on those. And then that was 2011, 2014. And then in 2020 is about ready to buy some more stores. Had hired a general manager and he. He was pretty experienced, had worked, you know, had been the area manager of 24 Penske’s when that was a thing back in the early 2000s. Owned his own shop, worked for other people that had successful shops. And so we decided to give, you know, to grow our company in 2020.

07:44
We were about ready to buy a shop right in February. And, you know, Covid happened. So that got put off for a year. But in 21, we bought three stores. In 22, we bought three stores. In 23, we bought three more stores. And that’s about the time we partnered with Straightaway and since then, we’ve brought on nine more stores after partnering with Straightaway. So.

08:08
So that’s. That’s. That’s some great growth. That’s awesome to hear. But let’s. Let’s talk on Straightaway real quick. I had John Teddy on. Y’all call him jt. Tell us about that and why you made that decision. And also, what I like about it straight away has a little bit different angle. It’s not like they. It’s an all or none. It doesn’t have to be all or none. In other words.

08:28
Right, in the sense of, like, just walking away or.

08:33
Yeah. Pushing you out the door and saying goodbye.

08:36
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. We. What we started seeing in 2021, and then it started really hitting 22, is that we ran into a. A lending wall with banks and the sba. You can only borrow so much from them. And then we also saw the interest rates starting to skyrocket. So we. Me and a few of my friends, were meeting on a regular basis, and we decided to start really looking into private. Private money, private capital. And just what that’s all about. It’s a little bit of a different game, but it has a ton of advantages. And we. We decided, rather than individually trying to go into that area of the. Of the market, that we would pull our shops together and start presenting them to private investors, you know, office.

09:32
Private office, private investors and private equity, and just see what sort of interest they would have in, you know, helping us grow by funding us, but also, you know, sharing a piece of that pie, you know, in the success. And there’s a lot of interest in it because we had 43 shops cumulatively. So we started interviewing quite a few people between all three of those areas and really liked what Straightaway had that we really aligned with a lot of their, the way they thought about running business, how they ran their business, and how they would be involved in, you know, helping us out and partnering with us. So in April 23, we, you know, closed the deal and created a partnership between straightaway, which is O2, which is sponsored by O2, but straightaway is the company that we built and. And us. So.

10:32
So O2, you know, funds us. And then straight away is the company that we formed that actually, you know, is the living, breathing operation. You know, we do have the. You know, we hired John Teddy, so it was kind of fun, right, Is that, you know, we needed a CEO, so we. We were able to hire the CEO. You know, the. The investment company did not hire John He, I mean, in the end, they, you know, they have to approve everything because we’re all board members now for the board and the investment company has the majority of the voting shares. And so we all agreed that John Teddy was going to be our CEO. So he’s. A lot of people would say, well, he’s your boss. And it’s, you know, it’s not really the way we think of it.

11:20
We feel like, hey, he has a job to do for us and he needs to really guide that area and make sure that we’re all, you know, supported fully. And that’s mainly what his job is to support us and to help us understand, you know, where we’re going. Well, where we’re not, we’re all very motivated. So it’s not like, you know, hey, Brian, you need to, you know, get off the couch and get to work or you’re not working hard or something like that. We don’t have those problems. It’s all about how we’re going to reach our goals and the best path and whatnot. So, so yeah, we’ve hired John Teddy, We’ve hired a CFO, we’ve hired a marketing officer, some VPs in other areas, training VP, marketing VP and some financial planners and analysis. And we’ve got recruiters.

12:12
So it’s been a whirlwind over the last few years, but man, it’s been, it’s just been fun as heck.

12:17
That’s awesome. Well, I think. And I met Angie Cox. Is she your cmo?

12:22
No, she’s our marketing vp. Okay. Yeah. Cameron Chirkanoff or Kirchenov or something. It’s got, it’s got a name that I haven’t learned yet, but Cameron, she’s our chief marketing officer.

12:37
Gotcha.

12:37
So. So yeah, it’s a, A ton of really sharp people and tons of talent and tons of support. I mean, we’re on the front lines running our business much the same as we did before we partnered with O2, but just with a lot more support and horsepower under the hood.

12:56
Well, and you guys, I mean, it’s kind of a. I don’t know if this right way of saying it, but it’s kind of like a little bit of safety in numbers. You’re growing to build up market share, but you’re also gives you buying power, etc. You want to talk about that a little bit? Like what straightaway brings to like a new member let’s say somebody’s out there that even Straightaway is thinking about or somebody’s thinking about straightaway right now because you guys have approached them how to, what are the key factors of why they should be part of Straightaway?

13:26
Yeah, you know, it’s unique in the sense. You kind of mentioned all or none a little bit earlier, but really Straightaway is interested in get partnering with people that still want to stay in the game. There’s a lot of people that we talk to that they still got some Runway left, but they’d like to, you know, be a part of something a little bit bigger and have the benefits of the strength in numbers. We can, you know, we’re definitely able to negotiate some service benefits, some pricing benefits, national, you know, partnerships with, whether it’s tire oil marketing, I mean, just all those things that everybody that runs a small business deals with on a regular basis. And so it is nice to do that.

14:17
And then we’ve got people that manage that, you know, and, or advise us on how to make that work in our area. So we’re not having to spend, you know, a ton of time outside of the business working with, doing research or trying to, you know, do a, you know, a trial and error sort of approach towards marketing or oil or something. Hey, let’s try this. Now that doesn’t work. Let’s try this. So it’s, that’s been super beneficial and we’ve, we’ve also had the support of growth in the sense that we’ve got a couple of business developers that they’re the ones talking to people that are potential sellers and these are the people that we’re bringing up underneath our brand. So these are generally people that are walking away the, from the business they want to leave.

15:08
And, and so rather than us having to look into the financials and have, you know, meetings and do the due diligence, all that sort of stuff, they take that off our plate. So our biggest job as brand presidents is to take care of the people that are, that are on our team and to make sure that, you know, the ship is, you know, heading in the right direction and deal with any sort of problems. And, and the biggest thing really is developing people. I mean, that’s our, you know, that’s where my passion is. Right.

15:39
I mean, I just love the fact that we’ve been able to get in this position and I’ve, I think it’s a unique opportunity to really develop and Give people opportunities, especially younger, you know, and after being in this business for a while, there’s not too many people in the business that are older than I am. But yeah, you start looking at these 20, 40 year olds and they’re super talented and they’re looking for opportunities. So it’s great to be able to bring opportunities to them and teach them and develop them. Versus hey, look, you know, we can only grow so big. And yeah, seats are taken on the bus. You know, the bus really has an unlimited amount of seats right now, especially if I do my job well, right.

16:25
And create more opportunities and growth and scale the, my market the way that I want.

16:31
Well, that’s what seems really cool. You guys have an opportunity obviously for technicians and folks that just getting into the business, they can look on, look into this and realize, you know, I’ve got a future here. And it’s not just at this one location. I can grow, I can, you know, improve myself through professional development, etc. But the other side is the owners that want to, like you said, they got a little Runway left. Well, they, if I’m not mistaken, they can still keep some form of ownership, but get a lot of their chips off the table.

17:02
Yeah, exactly. You know, there’s some, you know, really good books out there, but one of the books that I read that I really liked was the author said, hey, look, if you’re invested into something more than you should be, then you really need to, as you start approaching retirement, you need to make sure that you secure that. And I think the word or the calculation he gave was take your age plus the amount of investment you have in a certain area. So let’s say you’re hunting most of your retirement. Everything is in your business. So you have say, 95% of that in there. And then take your age. So if you’re 50, you add those two together so you get 145.

17:52
He’s, he said that if you’re over 125, if that number is over 125, you need to divest because you’re getting close to retirement and all your eggs are in one basket. So what this allows you to do is to say, hey, look, I want to continue to grow because sometimes that’s the only option is like, okay, well I’ve got to sell my business and maybe see if I can get into real estate or just invest, you know, in the markets or something like that. But what I found is a Lot of people in this industry really being in the industry. And that was true for myself and the other four founders of Straightaway.

18:27
And we didn’t, you know, were at this unique opportunity where we could sell our business to a lot of people that wanted to buy them and retire, or we could, you know, continue on and keep running the business. But then, you know, if something really bad happens, you don’t have that time to recover like we did when were in our 20s or 30s. So now you’re kind of caught in this quagmire. It’s like, I don’t want to retire, but I don’t want to put my, you know, retirement at risk. So what this does is you just, you know, basically turn the value of the business into shares and decide how many shares you want to sell to the investment company. And so those are your chips off the table.

19:08
But then the rest you continue to, you know, have invested in the equity of that company. And, and then as that investment gets recapped and turned over, then you get those dividends, and it’s pretty lucrative as well. So you get the best of both worlds as well.

19:25
And right now, I mean, you’re, you’re after you even after you get your chips off the table. It sure seems like the way the math’s working right now and the way you guys are expanding, I mean, the, maybe even the small share you kept could one day equal the size that you’ve already cashed in on.

19:39
Oh, yeah, no, that’s, that’s true. And that’s, you know, it’s a little bit of a uncertainty, but, you know, I’ve always bet on myself. Right. So it is a bet on yourself and the other people on the team. I, I, you know, in my 20s, I was renting a couple of homes and, man, the tenants were really running me through the ringer. And then I, when I bought my first business, I, I sold the houses and I put them into the business and bought the building. And, and I realized that the best tenant I ever had was me. I always made the rent payment. I always fix things. The place always looked good, you know, all those things that you would hope a tenant would do.

20:28
Yeah, I never called myself at one in the morning to, you know, complain about the pilot light going out on the hot water heater or something. But, but yeah, you know, you reminded.

20:39
Me of a story I got to tell you real quick because I Think you’ll appreciate it. So I had to go to our little dump transfer site near. Not too far, a few miles from our house. It’s just a place where you can dump things in a big dumpster and they haul it to the dump. But I run into this guy, and he’s got this big trailer backed up there. And I could tell he’s just ticked. And I’m like, hey, how you doing, buddy? Or whatever. And he’s. And I’m just. This day just sucks. I mean, he’s just complaining. Whatever. I said, what’s up? He goes, do you rent houses? I said, no. He goes, well, I do. And he said, I’m about to sell all of them. And I said, what’s the problem? He goes, just, the tenants have had, man.

21:13
He goes, I can’t. I can’t get a good one. He said, it just driving me crazy. Tear the heck out of him. And he’s just throwing all this stuff, like, I guess it was stuff that had been destroyed or they’re redoing this house or whatever. But it was. It just. It was one of those alarm bells because I got a lot of friends that have rentals and. And I hear that sometimes. And some. Some people get lucky. Right? But this guy was. It should have been like. It could have. It could have been on a reality TV show. His. I wish I had, like, a go cam, because his was actually pleasant to me. But his expressions and the way he was working was just total frustration, you know?

21:46
Oh, yeah. That dream turns into a nightmare real quick if you’re not careful.

21:51
Yeah. I mean, and I could tell he had several. But it was just like, I’m selling everything I’ve done.

21:58
Yeah. Yeah. So when I. When I got into, you know, into business, that’s what I. I said. Yeah. You know, I’m the best tenant I’ve ever had. And. And you bet on yourself. And this is much the same as that. You know, if you’re. Put your money into, you know, an investment, which is really what this is, that, you know, I’ll bet on myself. You know, I would rather bet on me than try to figure out what Apple’s doing or Amazon or, you know, some penny stock or whatever. You just, you know, I know what’s going on, and I know we’re going to be successful, and we’ve got a team full of winners on board. So it’s. It’s fun.

22:37
That’s awesome. Well, that’s the way my mentor was. He never. He. He had done extremely well in life. And he said, I just. I just bet on myself. I don’t bet on anybody else, and I don’t. He goes, and I don’t give monetary advice to anybody because everybody has to figure out their own path, and I don’t know enough about your business or whatever. I can give you. He used to tell me, he goes, I can give you questions to ask, I can give you things to think about, but I’m never going to give advice to tell you this is what you ought to do. You’ve got to figure that out. You know, you’re right.

23:05
Yeah, that’s. That’s what I’ve loved about running my own business, is that, you know, you get to enjoy the benefits of doing things right and the burdens of, you know, when you make a mistake. And, you know, John Maxwell says, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn and spend a lot of time learning. But I’ve also spent a lot of time winning, too. So I. I think it’s fun on both ends.

23:30
I think it was. I mentioned his name earlier. He was past guest, Gus Herlong. He said that he’s got a PhD in making mistakes. I mean, you know, and he said, that’s part of it. And he gave me. What was the. Oh. Oh. He gave me another. Effort never dies. The word end. He goes, it’s not over until you want it to be over. So he goes, you know, end is nothing. Ends. It’s just effort never dies. Just keep going, you know. And anyway, it was. It was one of those, you just. You learn from your mistakes, and you got to be willing to make mistakes.

24:07
Yeah. Yeah. In business, there’s the difference between the chicken and pig and breakfast. Have you ever heard of that?

24:12
No, tell me.

24:13
Yeah, so the chickens involved and the pigs committed. So if you’re an employee, you’re the chicken. If you’re the business owner, you’re the pig. Right.

24:24
Oh, that is awesome.

24:25
Going back.

24:26
That’s awesome. Well, on a side note, just tell everybody a little bit more about you. What’s a hobby you like to do?

24:33
You know, I’ve got a few hobbies. You know, you and I were talking a little bit earlier. Just had a grandson. My. Well, I didn’t have it, but my daughter did. But he’s. He’s mine.

24:43
That’s right.

24:45
But, you know, I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time always, you know, spend a lot of time with my family, doing things, but looking forward to spending a lot time with him. But we. We like to go boating and Water skiing. We are in Colorado, so we kind of get the best of both worlds when it comes to skiing. Putting, you know, putting the sticks on. We can put them on in the summer and the winter, so. Yeah. Been skiing for 40 years, and this year I hurt myself for the first time and broke my arm. So that. That kind of brought that hobby to an end there prematurely for the season.

25:25
That happened about six weeks ago, and coming off of a double black diamond, and I think I got a little too confident coming out to the flat and got ahead of my skis and. And hit the ground pretty hard, so. So, yeah, you know, that’s. That’s kind of my. My hobby situation. Of course, being in Colorado, you know, we like to mountain bike and hunt and, you know, hike and fish and all that sort of stuff, so it’s a great place to be if. Outdoors. For sure.

25:55
For sure. Well, that’s awesome. Just curious, is there, like a code or a favorite quote you have or something that you guys like to live by?

26:03
Yeah, you know, I have a. A few that some aren’t. Aren’t family friendly, but one of. One of the quotes that I really love is that success is never owned. It’s rented, and the rent is due daily, so. Heard that before.

26:23
I like that.

26:24
Yeah, I love that. Because I feel like a lot of people, as they grow in their careers and they. They. They hit a level of success, then they have this mentality that they, you know, that. That they should have an easier job or that if they show up, they should be paid just for showing up, that sort of thing. And. And I would disagree.

26:50
Right.

26:50
The. The further you go along in your career, the challenges may be different, but in my experiences, they’ve always been more difficult. Right. It’s never been that, hey, now that I’ve, you know, now that I’m not having to work on the cars and fix them myself now, it’s easy. Easier. You know, I look back on those days, it’s difficult to work on cars, for sure. But I wouldn’t say it’s any less difficult to. To own a shop or to. Oh, no, own several shops or whatnot. Right. It’s just, you know, it’s challenging and.

27:27
No, that’s interesting. I had an uncle one time that said this to me. I guess he. When he was right out of school, he had dug. He had gone to the military, too, but this was like 19, late 1940s, early 50s. He had dug ditches for pipelines. And he said, you know, you go home, you put a hard Day’s work in, you get paid, you go home, drink some beer, wake up the next day and do it all over again. And then. And he ended up being a successful business guy with a couple companies and real estate properties and things like that. He goes, sometimes he goes, I think the greatest days of my life was when I was dug ditches. He goes, I had less headaches and it was a lot simpler, you know, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

28:03
Not that, not that you don’t want ambition and things like that, but I think I get what you’re saying about just. You get a whole new set of headaches. I mean, every time you take on responsibility, you get. You just. You’re getting. You get more responsibilities, which means more consequences to decisions.

28:20
Yeah. No, life. Life is turmoil and challenge. And, you know, I think the best lives lived have been the ones that have been difficult lives. Right. I mean, you know, somebody that says, oh, man, I had an easy life and everything was handed to me. There’s no joy in that.

28:39
Now you. It’s kind of like the. I love the quote from Teddy Roosevelt, you know, being in the arena, you know, the whole thing.

28:47
Yeah, the critic. Yeah.

28:48
Yeah. There’s a lot of critics out there, but there’s very few people that step in the arena and put their chips on the table and willing to take.

28:55
It all on and learn the joy of victory and the agony of defeat. Right, yeah, both of those are, I feel like, you know, emotions and experiences that, you know, everybody should. Should have the privilege of experiencing. Right. And if it’s only the joy of victory, then, you know, it doesn it as fun as if, you know, you’ve experienced defeat over and over again and then finally have victory. Kind of like, you know, Lincoln, he. If you read his biography, he was largely a failure all the way up until he was elected president. You know, had a nervous breakdown, had a business that failed, lost bids to the Senate several times, and I mean, just kept at it. Kept at it. And then, you know, in his, what, late 50s, early 60s, he gets elected the president considered one of the. The best president.

29:50
That’s a, That’s a great example. And I’ll tell you another one we use around here as Kentuckians is Colonel Sanders.

29:57
Yeah, I was thinking that, too. Yeah, him and the McDonald’s guy, Ray Kroc. Right, Both of those. Yeah.

30:03
I mean, they had tons of failures. And, and actually, I think Colonel Sanders didn’t do anything until he was like, 65. I mean, you know, but he just kept plugging, you know, and not a.

30:15
Finished product over six feet under.

30:16
That’s it. That, that’s good stuff. Well, I tell you what, I was gonna ask you too, if you got a memorable story for us. Anything that stands out to you about your work life, Anything you share with us?

30:30
Yeah, you know, we, we bought a business in our neighborhood that was ongoing on our first, my wife and I, on our first store. And were going through a heck of a time because we realized that some of the vehicles that we’re working on really, we shouldn’t be working on them. They weren’t profitable. They, you know, they ended up, you know, just being mainly old clunkers that pulling a string on a sweater, I mean, just create more problems than you fix a lot of times when you open the hood. And so we, I was trying to come up with a formula like how do I know? Or how should I determine whether we’re going to bring a car in or not? Because were losing money on some of the cars were working on and making money on others.

31:23
And I thought, well, I’d heard of people saying, well, we don’t work on any cars that are over like 15 or 20 years old, right. And then I started looking in the parking lot and there was a lot of them were older than that we were working on. And you know, people in the neighborhood that either, you know, just really kept up on their cars and they were, you know, still investing good money and they’re in great shape or you know, collectors, that sort of thing that, you know, just needed, they didn’t need to be restored, but need tune ups and fix oil leaks, things like that. And I thought, nah, we would have to get, turn those jobs down. And as a new business, you know, every dollar counts.

31:59
So then I started looking and I thought, what do all the cars in the parking lot have in common? The ones that I don’t think that we should be working on. Right. And then it dawned on me is that the ones that we really were making money on, like their paint jobs were pretty decent. And the ones that we should probably be turning away, those paint jobs were awful, right? I mean, they just had, you know, crushed fenders, rust panels that didn’t match, you know, that sort of thing. And so we never really turned anybody away. But what we did is we just said, you know, hey, look, if we’re. Because what we’ve been doing up to that point is, hey, your car needs 500 worth of work. Oh, man, is there any way you could, you know, help me out and blah.

32:45
And so then we, you know, being a new business owner, it’s like, okay, well, you know what? I’ll tell you what, I could probably, you know, maybe buy some value line parts and, you know, I’ll knock a little bit off of it, you know, to earn you as a customer, that sort of thing. And then all of a sudden, then you’re married to it and you’re not making really profit. Plus you’re trying to fix all these things that you’re getting blamed for that, you know, you took a connector off and the connector, you know, fell apart on you. So we just said, well, you know, rather than discounting those cars because they. They, you know, were really in poor shape and it was tough investing, you know, justifying investing money. And we.

33:20
We increased the price of those either 50 to, you know, double what we would normally charge for a car that was in good shape. And, and generally what happened was the person would say, holy cow, that’s a lot of money. My car’s not worth spending that kind of money on. And then we just say, yeah, you’re right. Did you want to come pick it up? Or, you know, and. And every once in a while, somebody would say, yeah, no, go ahead and fix it. And then at that point, we knew were making a good profit and we could cover, you know, things that would break as a result of just, you know, the nature of, you know, pulling a car apart and put it back together. So it worked out both ways. But that was, you know, that was my way of.

34:01
Of really filtering out those cars and putting them into categories of. Well, I mean, working on that. It’s just paint.

34:07
Yeah. And then you just gotta. You gotta figure out a way to quit losing money with these people that are gonna keep blaming you for their problems. Right. I mean. Yeah, like you said, you’re pulling a thread off a sweater just leads to more threads.

34:23
Well, that’s tough because, I mean, I think, you know, one of the questions we ask people when we’re interviewing them to come work at the company is what do you know, what do you like about the automotive industry? What, you know, how did you get into this? What do you. What do you enjoy about being in the auto repair industry? And the ones that we really like are the ones that say, you know, I just love helping people. I love, you know, the. The whole process, you know, getting somebody through a difficult situation, doing something for somebody that they can’t do on Their own. So. And I feel like most business owners are geared that way. Right. They got into it because they just, you know, really enjoyed working on things. But then you can help other people.

35:06
And so it’s fun to help other people. And. And you take that to a business level, and it’s tough to have somebody that really needs your help to say, you know, hey, look, you know, I’m going to draw a hard line here. But at some point, you got to also realize that you’ve got a lot of people that are counting on you. You know, your family, the people that are working in your company. You got a responsibility to make sure that they can earn a good living, and you do that by running a healthy business and whatnot. So. So it is. It is tough to say, you know, really, you know, these are the customers that we don’t really want to work with.

35:40
But on the other side, you know, you’ve got to make sure that you’re building something to help the people that, you know, you should be helping with. Us.

35:48
Yeah. In some way, though, you may even be helping them because they got to realize that they’re dealing with the limb, and that’s just not gonna. It’s not gonna change. Yeah.

35:56
Time to move on.

35:57
Yeah. Let that old beater go.

36:00
Yeah. Yeah.

36:01
Well, I gotta tell you, Brian, I really appreciate you being on the podcast. It’s been a pleasure.

36:06
Well, yeah, thanks for having me on, man. It’s. It’s been great. It’s, you know, it’s. It’s springtime, Summer’s around the. Around the bend, so, you know, looking forward to it. But, yeah, you know, you got such a great podcast, and it’s an honor to be on, and it’s great meeting you and just, you know, talking shop for a little while.

36:23
Yeah, it’s been fun. So, real quick, you want to give folks that are listening, dealers that are listening, thinking about they’re at that. That point in their life where they got some Runway or whatever is the best place to go is the. The website for straightaway.

36:37
Yeah, yeah, you can go to go straightaway.com, you know, and even if you look up straightaway, tire and auto, you’ll. You’ll find that real easy on a Google search or whatnot. And there’s a form to fill out. And, you know, I’m sure that, you know, if you’re looking to reach out to anybody, that form will be returned very quickly. But, you know, great group of guys and just, you know, we are definitely looking to, you know, grow the company and looking for like minded people that, you know, fit in that into that category of wanting to stay with the business and work with a group of professionals that are having a good time, winning and real serious about, you know, running a solid business.

37:22
That’s well said. Thanks Brian. So to all our listeners, thank you for being part of the podcast. As always, we’re very grateful for you. If you would like to find more podcasts like this, please Visit Gain Traction podcast.com We will see you again soon from Gain Traction. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.

Contents hide

1 In this episode…

1.1 Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

1.2 Resources mentioned in this episode:

1.2.1 Quotable Moments:

1.2.2 Action Steps: