How To Build a Culture While Scaling Fast With Logan Leslie of Main Street Auto

Logan Leslie is the Founder and CEO of Main Street Auto, a fast-growing network of tire and auto repair shops across the United States. After serving over eight years in the military, Logan pursued a joint law and business degree, which laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial ventures. He launched Main Street Auto in 2021, starting with a single location and scaling to nearly 100 shops in under four years. Logan is also a passionate advocate for hiring veterans, building culture, and redefining leadership in the blue-collar business world.

In this episode…

The tire and auto repair industry is evolving rapidly as new players apply business and acquisition strategies once reserved for tech startups. Yet, scaling in this space demands deep respect for shop culture, community ties, and the legacy of independent owners. How can business leaders grow without losing the heart of what makes local shops special?

According to Logan Leslie of Main Street Auto, it starts with humility, intentional leadership, and honoring the legacy of every shop acquired. By targeting well-run businesses just outside of urban cores and retaining what’s already working, Main Street Auto has managed to grow without compromising quality or community connections. Logan also emphasizes the importance of hiring veterans and trusting your instincts when it comes to leadership and talent.

On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge welcomes Logan for a conversation about entrepreneurship, buying and scaling auto shops, hiring veterans, and leading with culture. Logan shares the lessons he’s learned from the military, past business failures, and how he grew his company from one location to nearly 100 in under four years. He also discusses the unique challenges of maintaining operational excellence during rapid expansion and building a mission-driven team from the ground up.

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

• [02:28] How military service influenced Logan Leslie’s entrepreneurial mindset
• [05:15] Why Logan built his own company instead of joining someone else’s
• [07:44] Avoiding culture loss while growing rapidly
• [10:01] The strategy behind selecting shop locations for acquisition
• [11:57] What should shop owners prepare if they’re considering selling?
• [13:46] Why shop owner involvement can hurt valuations and how to fix it
• [18:15] How Logan evaluates non-traditional candidates for corporate roles
• [25:35] The role of failure in entrepreneurial success

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Logan Leslie on LinkedIn 
• Main Street Auto 
• Veteran’s Trust 
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What To Do About It by Michael Gerber
• SEMA
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

Quotable Moments:

• “Entrepreneurship is never easy, but building something from scratch lets you shape the culture.”
• “Veterans often leave the service with incredible leadership skills that don’t show up on a resumé.”
• “Our goal isn’t to change what works — it’s to support and scale it.”
• “Failure is a great teacher; if you’re not failing, you’re not moving fast enough.”
• “Every vehicle on the road could be one of our customers — that’s a sacred responsibility.”

Action Steps:

1. Preserve shop culture post-acquisition: Retain what makes each auto shop special when integrating into a larger company.
2. Hire veterans into leadership roles: Don’t just look at resumes — look for character, responsibility, and service-driven leadership.
3. Vet potential buyers as partners: Shop owners should develop general managers and build independence before selling.
4. Use SBA loans for smart growth: Leverage government financing to acquire your first or next business.
5. Define your failure threshold: Accept and quantify risk as a natural part of scaling and entrepreneurship.

• Gain Traction Podcast
• Logan Leslie
• Main street Auto
• Mike Edge
• Tread Partners

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. 

00:19
Hey folks. Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business. I am Mike Ed. Your host Logan Leslie, founder and CEO of Main Street Auto, is our guest today. Before we begin, this episode is brought to you by Tread Partners. Tread Partners is the leading digital marketing agency that specializes in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations, down to five locations. Get a professional review of your digital marketing structure from an agency that works exclusively in this industry. Let Tread Partners take a look under your digital marketing hood today. To find out more, visit treadpartners.com you guys know I like to do a past guest shout out. My past guest shout out today is Mike Spagnola, President and CEO of sema. 

01:03
If you have not already, please check out that podcast@gaintraction podcast.com Logan this long time in the making. Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast. 

01:13
Thanks Mike. 

01:14
Yeah, appreciate you being here. So just give us a little background about yourself, where you’re originally from and where’d you go school and kind of how’d you grow up? Did you always know you wanted to be in the automotive sector? 

01:26
Sure. 

01:27
Yeah, for sure. So I’m from Connecticut from a pretty blue collar background. Two brothers, we all went in the military right after 9, 11 and so I enlisted in high school, went in the military, did about eight and a half years on active duty. 

01:41
Wow. 

01:42
When I left active I, I went to college so on the GI Bill and then went to a joint law and business program. Along that way learned, you know, had multiple roles in different businesses and got to get a little bit of a business education. So when I graduated from that started my company which wasn’t originally automotive but we got into it. No, no real experience in the industry. But I love cars and I, I definitely love the people in the industry. Is very, you know, it kind of reminds me of some of the guys and gals I serve with in the military. 

02:13
Yeah. 

02:14
So launch this business in 2021. 

02:17
Man. That’s awesome. You guys have grown a ton too. Well, first of all, thanks for your service. I think that’s awesome. I always like to ask people how much does the military help you in your business career? 

02:28
Well, a lot. I would say it’s a lot of the military stuff isn’t directly doesn’t Directly translate, but it’s, you know, you learn about accountability and leadership and discipline and spotting talent and working with people and dealing with hardship, and so all things very important as you. You know, generally in business, but. But particularly in entrepreneurship, when you’re. When you build something, yeah, you’re gonna. 

02:50
Have your downs, for sure. Did anybody influence you the most in the military? Anybody stand out to you? 

02:56
Yeah, I had a number of leaders early in my career. I mean, I was an enlisted guy, so I started. Started as a private, you know, the very bottom rung. And, you know, some. Some of those early mentors had, you know, multiple combat deployments. You know, that as I was growing up in. In the 101st Airborne was my first unit. 

03:14
Oh, so you were at Fort Campbell? 

03:16
I was at Fort Campbell, yeah. 

03:17
All right. So I don’t know if we made. I made this aware to you. I’m in Kentucky, so. Yeah, I’m up on the Ohio river, so. Yeah, I know Fort Campbell well. 

03:26
I spent many years there. 

03:28
Oh, wow. That’s a cool base. It’s big. 

03:30
Yeah, yeah. It’s a lot of good times in Nashville on a station there. 

03:34
Oh, yeah, I bet. I mean, I always go down little rabbit holes, but my. My son plays high school football, and we. We play Fort Campbell, so I’ve been on that. They’re pretty intense about their football. 

03:44
Do they have a good team? 

03:46
It depends. Every. At Fort Campbell, it always depends on the general. If he wants a good team, he’ll. He’ll make sure that he has people on base to have, you know, talented kids around the country and build. It does build morale, though. I mean, like, they’ve had. I know, one year, they won it three years in a row, the state, and then now they’re a little bit down because it’s not their focus. But, yeah, they’re. They’re always a very good, competitive team, and we like going down there. I mean, the people were great, right? 

04:11
Yeah. 

04:12
Small world. 

04:13
Yeah. 

04:14
But, yeah, go ahead, though. So you. You were in the military, and you’ve learned a lot from different mentors. Obviously, you got taste. Nashville, while you were there. That’s. That’s always fun. 

04:25
It was a lot smaller back there. 

04:27
In it, wasn’t it, though? I mean, that’s crazy how much it’s grown. It’s insane. I mean, like, I plan my trips to go south around when I’ve got to go through Nashville now. I mean, that’s. That’s if I’m driving, you know what I’m saying? So it’s like. Or if I was going to come see you in Atlanta, there’s. I will definitely make sure that I’m going there like through there at like 5:30 in the morning, you know what I mean? Or way after that, you know, it’s a mess, man, but you’re used to it. You’re in Atlanta. 

04:53
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Atlanta. Nashville has nothing on Atlanta. 

04:57
No, I was about to say, I don’t even know why I’m complaining. It’s too, it’s its own world. But so you got to the business side and then you knew what you wanted to do. So lead me into Main Street a little bit. 

05:15
Sure. So what I wanted to do was I wanted to build my own company and I think I would have been a good fit in a lot of different jobs. But across those years, interning over the summer didn’t really find a culture that clicked. And so the only way to really drive a corporate culture is to make it your own thing and start from scratch. And it’s not easy, but that’s one of the reasons that I was drawn to auto is just the culture and the people. It’s just a really good fit for my personality and who I like to work with. So I knew I needed to build something. I like deals. I like know, building teams and having big teams and you know, teaching leadership over management and things like that. 

06:03
So started with the idea of auto and the idea was always try to build a really strong company and you could either put up new shops and new places or you can acquire shops. Chose to, chose to pick the acquisition route. In 2021, it was just me in my garage and we, you know, I raised a little bit of money. I didn’t have any money and almost pretty much almost went bankrupt trying to build a business from nothing and raised a little bit of money from some close friends of mine. Used SBA, the Small Business Administration loan, which was 90% of the purchase price of the first business, and bought a great shop just south of Atlanta that first year. Bought another shop a couple miles away in Henry county by the end of the year. 

06:50
So we, you know, in the first year we had two locations and there’s some really strong talent in those shops that I started using on the, like the corporate side to try to find new deals. Yeah, try to build a company around it, you know. 

07:03
Man, that’s awesome because what are you guys up to in total number right now? Shops? 

07:08
We’re just shy of a Hundred right now. 

07:10
That’s. That’s awesome. I mean, that’s a lot of growth inside of what, four years or less? 

07:15
Yeah, yeah, the majority of it was probably the last two years, I’d say. Yeah. 

07:18
But it probably. Yeah, go ahead. Probably took you a little bit to get the team together. 

07:21
It took a little bit to get it rolling. Yeah. Our growth right now is, Is huge. And the only way we can do it is we have a. We have a very strong team on the corporate side, about 65 or so people now, full executive team. So when you’re growing that quickly, you. It’s easy to take your eye off the ball and on making, you know, making the company great. Yeah, you see that with other businesses that, you know, particularly private equity, they’re trying to do acquisitions, and they really take their eye off the ball on the culture and the procedures and making a really excellent company underneath it. And that’s the balance that I think we’ve struck pretty well. 

07:58
That’s awesome. Well, you said something earlier, too, that I couldn’t agree with more. Like, you know, I’ve had different opportunities in life or whatever, and I was in the tire business and left it for a little bit. But I came back because I, I mean, you can’t find better salt of the earth people. Straightforward. I mean, and I think this is a testimony to the character of this guy I’m going to mention. But I’ve interviewed Mike Graber, he’s president of Toyotar, and I thought it was just interesting how he said, well, what brought him back? He had left for a short stint as well. And he said what brought him back was the people. 

08:30
He said, man, he goes, and he’s sitting here, he’s president of the company, and he says, and it’s not corporate, you know, it just doesn’t have that corporate vibe wherever you go. And what’s cool about it, too, is I feel like you’re always just 2 degrees away from, you know, that old cliche, you’re 6 degrees away from anybody in the world. I feel like in the tire space, you’re 2 degrees. You do know somebody that’s going to know somebody. 

08:50
Yeah, for sure. 

08:51
You know, and it’s in the, the industry as a whole, I think, has a lot of just solid, good people in it. 

08:57
Yeah. And that’s. And we’re just talking about the people in the business. I mean, the customers, too, are, you know, you touch customers. Like everybody, right. Everybody needs their car fixed and you’re helping them. You’re helping them big time. You’re providing a service they absolutely need often. And if you mess that up, you put them at risk. So it’s just, there’s something really sacred about that with our customers versus other businesses where, you know, other businesses, customers are maybe, you know, a segment of the population or another business. There’s something very special about, you know, fixing people’s vehicles, you know, everybody in the community and having that. 

09:31
I mean, for argument’s sake, every vehicle you see or you pass could be a. Technically be a customer. 

09:38
Yeah. 

09:38
I mean, at one of your shops, I mean that’s just, it’s just the reality of the business. But it’s. Yeah, it’s a very, and it’s a very grounded business. So we’re talking about the people and everything. But. So where’s, I’m just curious, where’s Main Street’s focus today? Like what, so what are you guys like going into further into 25. I know we’re through quarter one now, but, you know, what’s the goal this year? And then. And, and further out. 

10:01
Yeah. So. Well, well back kind of what we focused on. So we are buying, we’re buying usually one off businesses, so we’ve purchased a couple at a time from a seller. But we really focused on the really strong large shops that have been in communities for a long time. And, and we try not to, you know, we do our best not to break what’s special about those shops. So. And there’s a balance there because as a company. Right. And trying to make everything standardized, if you go too far in that direction, then you kind of break what’s special about what you’re buying. And if you go too far into the other direction, like you don’t really have a company, you just have a bunch of shops. 

10:38
And, and so we focus on, on those deals, the ones that are in these communities for a long time and try to preserve that. At every one of our shops, we want to do the full suite of services. And so if it’s in a Mission county or something, we’ll do a $15 mission if. And then all the way to the other end of the spectrum. So full engine swaps, transmission swaps. We try to, we’re rolling out a tire program at every store, so typically we’ll find shops that just don’t sell tire. And we try to get a tire program going. 

11:07
Yeah. 

11:08
If we if we buy a shop that’s heavy tire, we’ll try to supplement that with more general service or heavy line work. But the approach is, you know, you have big chains and you have other big ones that focus one thing. 

11:21
Yeah. 

11:21
And you’ve seen that in quick lube or alignment. You haven’t really seen anybody take the approach of trying to do the whole thing. 

11:29
Yeah. 

11:29
And you know, and it’s challenging because it’s, that’s a lot to manage, but that’s been our approach. 

11:34
That’s awesome. So like, when you look at a dealer, what do you, what are you particularly looking for, let’s say, because I mean, I know our audience is dealers. Who’s listening and watching today? If someone’s sitting out there and they’re, you know, I don’t know my exit strategy yet, but you know, it’s something I’m thinking about and where, where should their thought process go about, you know, Main Street? 

11:57
Yeah. So we have like pretty general size requirements. So it needs to be a pretty decent sized shop. Typically around a million of revenue is kind of the on the small side. 

12:07
Yeah. 

12:08
Or that’s about what would get us excited to start looking at a particular deal. If it’s heavy tire, then it would need to be a little more on the revenue side just because, you know, we know those margins are a little tighter. 

12:18
Yeah. 

12:19
And if it’s a really strong shop, we can and have dipped down even smaller than that. We typically don’t buy things that are in a, like right downtown in a metro area, although we’re starting to do more of that. We love the, like the rural areas right. Outside of population centers. And then we, what we really dial in on is how involved is the owner in the business. And you know, so sizing kind of helps with that because if you’re a certain size, then you know, we see less of that involvement. If It’s a shop that’s 500, 000 revenue, very high chance that if that seller comes out of the business, there’s not much left over. 

12:58
Yeah. 

12:59
And so that’s a challenge that I think a lot of sellers have or you know, shop owners, as they’re thinking through an exit strategy is what we see is the people that own these shops, they love the work. Right. They love the people, they love the customers. And. 

13:10
Yeah. 

13:10
So of Course they’re going to be really involved in the business and they have to ask themselves, like, if I’m trying to sell this thing, no one’s, you know, no one’s going to pay top dollar for it if I, if I’m really crucial to the business. So, and so we’ll give this advice to, to sellers that we like. It’s like, hey, we just can’t, we just can’t buy it and then it just falls apart. So really invest in a general manager. Really put, you know, really put the effort into developing that person. All those great customer relationships that you have. And you’re probably talking to the, all your customers on your personal phone, like try to transition those to that guy. And so it stays with the business when you leave. And after that, the rest of it is just, is. Is not. 

13:51
There’s not a lot of variation after that. I mean, we’ll look at tire mix and margins and things like that. But if it’s a strong shop with a good reputation and there’s a really clear path for us to replace the seller and it’s in our general size, like, you know, we’re usually pretty interested. 

14:06
Well, I remember the guy that asked me this, how we got introduced was the guy that asked me about his two stores where shooty said I introduced him to a group that introduced him to you guys. But I think you guys had him stick around for a little bit because his name was connected to the, the front of the building. So I think that was probably just to help out the transition. 

14:26
Yeah. So we do that very rarely have. We have. We purchased a shop and had the seller stay on the business because most cases they want to retire. 

14:35
Yeah. 

14:35
And so we’re offering that opportunity. In some cases, if the seller wants to be involved it. We still won’t keep them as the GM of that store. And really it’s because we have our playbook and there are things that we will change and it’s a little that works for us. And if you have a guy that’s been running it and it’s their baby running for 30 years, oftentimes the slightest change they have some heartburn. We try to avoid that. 

15:03
You’re hurting his baby. I mean, you know, that’s what he’s thinking. 

15:05
Yeah. 

15:05
And so we’ll take those guys and we’ll make them, you know, we have lots of opportunities to make them either a regional manager over 10 stores or we’ll use them somewhere else in the business in the training and development team or fleet sales or something like that. 

15:20
I think you guys, I don’t know if this is accurate. I felt like you guys left him around more like a consultant than anything. He didn’t have to work it as hard, but he was there just to answer questions or. 

15:29
Well, yeah, so we’ll do that with, with every deal. It’s like, okay, if something pops up and we need your help, like, we would, we would like for you to, to be clear on the. 

15:39
Front end, tell us where the keys are. The back room. Right. 

15:42
So, yeah, and usually it’s like a, it’s like we see this a lot where I mentioned that relationships are with a customer and it’s on their personal cell. So. So even if, you know, nine times out of 10 or 199 times out of 100, these guys want to be helpful. They want, they want us to be successful. They want us to. Their business to be successful. But if they’re sitting on a beach with a couple million event count, like it’s answering the phone all day long is not something they’re going to want to do. So. Yeah, seems like that. 

16:10
Well, and I agree with you. I mean, I think most of them would want to see it succeed, so they’re there to help anyway. I mean, it’s just their natural inclination. And the people that I’ve met in this business, it’s, that’s, that seems to be everybody’s kind of, you know, core. They care, and that’s what you like about it. And they care about their community. They don’t want the business to fail. So talk about your connection with veterans. I know that’s a big part just based on your own experience, but I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you guys, I got to meet Mike Burke on your staff and I got to introduce him to a previous guest I’ve had on the podcast, the Veterans Trust. 

16:48
And it sounds like they’re talking, but I always like to give a good shout out to the Veterans Trust. It’s a really cool organization. But tell us about what you guys are doing there. 

16:57
Yeah, so very pro veteran. Generally, I think veterans leave the service and the job market isn’t quite there for them. And because it’s a hard thing to translate if you don’t really know the community. So you have people that have accomplished quite a bit and you know, they’re young and they’ve. But if you look at their career history today. They’ve had a lot of responsibility, a lot of experience, and if you can’t translate that in the job market, then they can’t really walk into a level of seniority that would be appropriate. And so that was really theory behind the first business that I started, which wasn’t this one, and, you know, prove that out. But that business didn’t really get off the ground for other reasons. And we were trying to hire veterans to run businesses basically. 

17:42
And that would have worked great if we could find businesses to buy in this industry. It’s a little, it’s a little tougher to do that because it’s more technical. 

17:50
Yeah. 

17:51
And typically a tech from the military is, has worked on Diesel and you know, it’s not always experience that could be directly kind of carried over in this, on the, on our shops. So on the tech side, we do have a number of veterans. We try to hire for them and everything, but typically they weren’t technicians or mechanics in the military. On the corporate team, we really, we really take chances on people. 

18:15
Yeah. 

18:15
Because that’s really, that’s what I’m talking about is taking chances on people. It’s, it’s, hey, your resume doesn’t fully kind of align with what the job posting is. But I’m just, I just know that you have all these great skills that don’t come through on your resume. So we’re going to take a shot, a chance on it and see if it’s a good fit. Mike, I had, I’m still on the reserves, and so I met at a senior level and Mike came out of a unit at Fort Benning and were at a commander’s conference and he was a brigade command sergeant major, was a very senior and met him a couple of years back and he didn’t even know he was retiring, but thought, hey, I want this guy on my team. You know, you just have a great feel about him. 

18:55
It turned out he was retiring, so I hired him right after retirement as our chief of staff. And it’s worked, you know, it’s worked great. And we have a number of veterans on the corporate team where that dynamic has played out really well. 

19:06
I think that’s awesome. I mean, there’s, and, you know, what are your, like, criteria, like when you look for something. I got, I just got a phone call earlier today and it was one of those preliminary calls I do for a podcast and a guy was talking about hiring and he Gave me a couple of things. You know, he looks for enthusiasm, he looks for attitude. He looks for moral character and work ethic. Those are his big four right there. He said, I can size you up real quick. He said, I’ve been doing this 35 years. And he said, I tell every employee, you know, if can’t handle any of that, he goes, I even tell him, look, if I catch you stealing, lying or cheating, he said, you gone, there’s just, I don’t tolerate it. 

19:41
He goes, because I don’t do that to my customers. I don’t want that in here. And. But he said, but I also pay the most. I know I pay the most in my area. And he goes, and I do that for a reason. Because I want a stack of applications here, you know, and people competing to work in my shops. And I just thought it was pretty cool. And I was just wanting to know, do you kind of have those same criteria for pillars of hiring? 

20:03
Yeah, I haven’t put it, I haven’t like broken it down into a framework like that. But that’s like, it’s like in my head. 

20:08
Yeah. 

20:09
So whenever I hire, it’s now it’s like senior corporate people. And I tell this story frequently where I’ll. I use LinkedIn Recruiter. I don’t get any money from them, but like love LinkedIn recruiter. I’ve never used a headhunter. And so we’ll put out a job posting. We’ll usually get, you know, for any job posting, we’ll get a couple hundred applicants and I’ll do, I’ll just stack up 15 minute phone calls on Zoom and sometimes I’ll do them all day long. So I’ll do like dozens in one day. And my. And what I’m trying to get to is do I want to have this person come in the office for like a two hour real interview or really dig into stuff and stacked. 

20:48
And what I’m kind of filtering for is, are those things which you can’t really get in an interview, but is fit gonna be there? Are they gonna match our culture? Do they feel like a good guy? Can I, you know, does my spidey sense tell me that I can’t trust this guy? And you do that enough, you start trusting it, you start trusting. 

21:05
Your gut and your spidey senses, don’t you? 

21:07
Yeah. 

21:07
Yeah. 

21:07
And I’ll be ruthless on the time too, because if it’s, if we’re two minutes in and it’s like, I’m not feeling it for this guy. Then I won’t do the polite thing and waste both of our time. For 13 more minutes I’ll say like, this is going to work and like move on to the next one and then an in person interview. It’s, it’s a lot of that. It’s, you know, usually it’s not too hard to meet the threshold for the skills that we’re looking for. Yeah, like, that’s not the hard part. You find people all day long with the skills that you need. It’s what you mentioned is really 90% of it. And you can never tell. Even if you do a five hour interview, you’re never going to tell until they’re in the role. 

21:45
No, I know. That’s the weird, that’s the hard part about this whole life in general. Right? I mean, you know, like it’s, you don’t know people, number one. I don’t think you know people until you go through adversity with them. Right. I mean, unfortunately, I mean, it’s just, that’s where you find loyalty or, you know, how committed you are if there’s a problem, you know, And I tell my kids all the time, I got a five and I’m, you know, you have to be that guy that cares. And I can’t, no one can teach you how to care more or, you know, to give a crap is what I call it. You know, you gotta have the I give a crap, you know, and that’s. And you can’t find that out in the interview, unfortunately, because, I mean, you’re just talking. 

22:26
Yeah, I mean, I have some really senior guys on the board that have been in business doing big stuff for 30, 40 years and they always tell me the best they’ve seen is 50, like on a really, you know, on hiring. Like if you are hiring a bunch of people and 50 of them work out and 50 don’t, that’s kind of the average. Now we have a much better outcome than that. Like on our senior team, it’s been 100, we’ve had 100 hit rate. But, but hearing that feedback from guys that have been doing a lot longer than me, it proves your point. Like, you just never really know and you shouldn’t. Like, here’s the other thing I think about is hit rate. So perfection. Everybody knows you can’t achieve perfection. 

23:07
The thing, the thing is you should have an acceptable level of failure and know it in your head on anything you do. Because if you’re, for example, hiring, if you. If you do hire people and you. You don’t have a failure rate, then you’re probably moving too slow or you’re not hiring fast. 

23:23
That’s a great. 

23:24
You’re not taking good risks. So it’s just being clear on, like, what that. And that’s everything. If I tell my team here we need to accomplish this, I’ll literally say, like, you know, it’s not 100%. So, like, 20 is the failure rate. And if you’re in there, that means you’re moving just fast enough and taking just the amount of risk. And anything more is like, you’re taking too much risk. Anything less, like, move faster, you know. 

23:46
That’S a. I like, I like that a lot. But you mentioned something like hit rate, and it just makes me think of baseball. I’m a baseball fan, and I always like to tell my kids, especially my sons, look, man, failure is part of it. And if you fail seven out of 10 times, you’re going to the hall of Fame. Yeah, that’s right. It’s an amazing. But I think that ratio for being a good hitter is a great life lesson, because all my boys have played baseball, but they’ve also played other sports, and they hate failure just like anybody else. But that’s what’s great about sports, is you teach them how to. I don’t want to say you teach them how to lose. You teach them how to improve based on that and realize how. 

24:26
I think one of the problems in our society today is that we don’t teach kids that, you know, it’s okay to fail. We keep acting like everything’s gonna be perfection, and if you don’t, then you’re just basically screwed. And the reality is, no, the key is, do you get back up and do you move forward? Do you fix it? Do you learn from it? Because you’re going to fail. You’re going to fail more times than you’re successful. And it’s. It’s just. It’s just life. I mean, you know, and you got to deal with that. And I. I think I like your approach. Understanding there is going to be a failure rate. Then. Then I like how you qualified it. Like, if you’re not failing enough, you’re moving too slow. 

25:01
Yeah, right. 

25:02
And if you’re failing too much, you’re going too fast, probably. 

25:05
Yeah. I mean, I failed on. I had two business ventures prior to this fail. And. And I’m convinced, and my mentors Are convinced that if. If I hadn’t been through that, then this wouldn’t be as successful as it is now. And, you know, it’s just like you. That’s where you learn the most is when you. We’re talking two different things, right? Like, there’s a failure rate on moving quickly and doing stuff, but like, in life, yeah, you learn most from your big fails, and then, oh, yeah, hopefully pick yourself up, learn something, don’t make a mistake again. Then you’re more equipped to be successful on the next time. 

25:35
My mom came from a very entrepreneurial family, but she’s. She’s always said this. She’s suffering a pine knot, but she just said, hey, it doesn’t matter if you fail. It’s just if you get up or not, and you’re only down for as long as you want to stay down, you know, and she just always had that attitude. And my dad did, too. But I mean, my mom’s family, they were all entrepreneurs. And, you know, and I, you know, you get older and you recognize some of the failures they had, because you. You don’t see that when you’re a kid. You don’t know that they had these failures or whatever. But then when you hear about them, you’re like, crap, man. You know, that’s. That’s wild. I mean, I’m. I’m pretty young for my granddad, but he lived through the Great Depression. 

26:10
He ended up being successful in business, and then, you know, he had a child, died an early age and things like that. And you had all these things that happened. And. But, you know, when I knew him, I mean, hey, he was successful, you know, but by gosh, I mean, when you look back on the life, you’re like, holy cow, eighth grade education. You know what I’m saying? 

26:25
Well, just tying it back to what we do. It’s, you know, entrepreneurship. And you hear about, like, the Zuckerbergs, the world that dropped out of college and are young and are successful, you know, businesses, that’s very rare. And, and honestly, like, if you’re. If you’re a shop owner and you put a stake in the ground and built a shop and built it up to, you know, a million or more of revenue, and it’s. And it’s, you know, consistently profitable. Huge success, like, in the world of entrepreneurship and like, the world generally, like, huge win and like, you know, and we. We recognize that and hopefully. And I think people that listen that have those shops, they should recognize that’s a. That’s A big thing. And like a guy like Zuckerberg or any of these tech entrepreneurs couldn’t do that. 

27:08
And, and we can’t do that. We don’t start shops. Like, we would probably not be great at it. And so it’s a very unique skill set. And, you know, it should be. They congratulate it, you know. 

27:17
Oh, yeah, no, that’s awesome that you recognize that. Yeah, entrepreneurship. There’s, There’s a book out, I read it years ago, but it made more sense to me than any, I’m going to say any book on a business level. But it was called the E. Myth by Michael Gerber. I don’t know if you heard of it. But anyway, basically, Michael lets you know straight up front, he’s very callous, but he’s like, look, 95% of businesses that start are going to fail within the first five years. Are you ready to move forward? And you’re like, oh my gosh. You know, he goes, well, the problem is, he goes, people don’t know themselves. 

27:45
And he uses this example of a lady that liked to bake, and she always grew up baking with her aunt or grandmother, and they made great pastries, all these things, and that’s what she loved to do. That was a hobby. But then she tried to turn it into business. He goes, but there’s the difference. He said, she didn’t understand that she was a technician. She was great at one thing, but now all of a sudden she put herself into running a business and that man into managing people, and she was terrible at it. And he uses this example all the way through book. But it was a great eye opener in regards to understanding how to look at yourself. 

28:16
Am I a technician or do I like to be in an, you know, in an executive role where I’m managing multiple things at one time? Or is. Is my skill set really, you know, being the best technician going out and, you know, requiring the. The best money I can get as being what I’m good at and what I like doing every day, you know, and when she got into the bake or the business side, man, she just, she hated it. She hated the whole business. And here she was growing up that loved. Does that make sense, though? 

28:40
Yeah, it’s important. It’s important to know that by yourself, because I do. I think a lot of people don’t know. They’re not honest themselves about where their best fit is and they try to force something and it doesn’t work. And it’s, it never would have worked because it’s not the best for you. 

28:54
Yes, well, and I think we have this personality in our culture that we sit there and we’ll go, hey, dude, you’re good at fixing cars. You owe. You ought to open a shop. Well, that doesn’t mean you ought to open a shop at all, you know, and. But yeah, it’s that. That’s great discussion, but where do you Let’s. I know I want to ask you this, and I know we’re wrapping up, but if somebody wanted to get a hold of Main Street Auto, say they listen to this podcast, what’s the next step? 

29:25
Yeah, you can directly email me Logan S. Auto.com. We have, you know, we have a website, ms.auto.com. That’s, that’s the fastest way. I’m on LinkedIn, so people reach out to me on LinkedIn all the time. I always, you know, if it’s like, not a spam guy, then I’ll respond. I always respond. That would probably be the most efficient way. 

29:46
Great. So give us that email one more time. 

29:50
It’s Logan. L O G A N S Auto dot com. 

29:54
All right, folks, so that’s. You’re getting the guy that’s founder of the company, and he’s open to talking to you if you want to talk about, you know, your future in the business. And that doesn’t mean that you got to sell today either. I mean, I think you understand that’s a long process, but you probably have long conversations with people that last months, if not years. 

30:12
Years. We’ve recently acquired shops that. We started the conversation years ago. 

30:17
That’s awesome. 

30:17
Yeah. 

30:18
Or. And some of those, we walked in and the guys said, no way. I would never sell. And then, you know, and then they, you know, and then they do. 

30:26
I would say. I would say it’d be a problem if you walked in and they say, sure, here’s the key. 

30:31
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. 

30:35
Anyway, well, Logan, I’m really glad you came on the podcast. Thank you for being our guest today. 

30:39
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me, Mike. 

30:41
All right, to all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of the podcast. If you’d like to listen to more podcasts like this, please visit gaintraction podcast.com. See you next time on Gain Traction. 

30:53
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.