Secrets to Scaling Your Auto Service Business With Joe Tomarchio Jr. of FOCUS Investment Banking

Joe Tomarchio Jr. is a Managing Director at FOCUS Investment Banking, specializing in helping auto service businesses scale and prepare for acquisition. Before joining FOCUS, Joe co-founded and scaled a 26-location tire and auto service chain, generating over $50M in revenue before selling it to Monro. With over 65 major acquisitions under his belt, he is one of the most seasoned professionals in the industry. Joe now consults for private equity firms and dealers seeking exponential growth or strategic exits.

In this episode…

Auto service businesses often undervalue their labor, hurting profitability and employee retention. Many operators struggle with hiring because they don’t charge enough to offer competitive wages or create appealing work environments. How can owners realign their pricing and culture to build a more sustainable and attractive operation?

According to Joe Tomarchio Jr., who leads strategic growth initiatives for FOCUS Investment Banking, the key lies in charging what you’re worth and investing that revenue into your team. By adjusting labor rates and responding rapidly to cost increases, Joe helped transform underperforming stores into profitable ones. His four-pillar hiring approach, focused on attitude, enthusiasm, work ethic, and moral compass, fosters loyalty, high standards, and accountability.

On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge welcomes Joe for a discussion about strategic pricing, acquisitions, and creating a workplace where technicians and staff want to stay. Joe shares his leadership principles, anecdotes from his time at Monro, and actionable advice for shop owners looking to grow, sell, or survive in today’s competitive market.

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

• [02:04] The journey from one store in Baltimore to a $50M tire and auto service empire
• [06:22] Why Joe Tomarchio Jr. focused solely on acquisitions for the last 8 years at Monro
• [08:05] The link between low labor rates and hiring challenges in auto shops
• [09:15] Why paying employees well is essential for customer satisfaction and retention
• [15:06] Joe’s customer service philosophy: empower frontline staff with $500 autonomy
• [16:50] Why allowing employees to make mistakes is crucial for growth
• [18:01] The four pillars Joe used for hiring: enthusiasm, attitude, work ethic, and moral compass
• [29:26] Joe’s current work at FOCUS Investment Banking helping dealers grow or exit

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Joe Tomarchio Jr. on LinkedIn
• FOCUS Investment Banking 
• Richard Balan on LinkedIn
• Raven Truck Accessories
• Robert Gross obituary 
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

Quotable Moments:

• “If you can’t charge enough, you can’t pay enough — and then you can’t retain the right people.”
• “Pay more, but demand more. I strive for perfection and settle for excellence.”
• “To beat me, you have to eat me. If I haven’t won, the war isn’t over.”
• “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys — and monkeys don’t deliver superior service.”
• “I know the top 10% and the bottom 10% of my team. Guess which one you don’t want to be?”

Action Steps:

1. Raise your labor rates now: Don’t wait for inventory to turn — adjust pricing as soon as costs increase.
2. Invest in your team: Pay above market rate to attract and retain top technicians and managers.
3. Screen for character, not just skill: Use the four pillars — attitude, enthusiasm, work ethic, and moral compass — as your hiring filter.
4. Empower store managers: Give them financial autonomy to resolve customer issues quickly and effectively.
5. Lead from the field: Spend time in your stores to connect with employees and understand operational challenges firsthand.

• Focus Investment Banking
• Gain Traction Podcast
• Joe Tomarchio Jr
• 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. 

00:10
Leaders and share their inspiring stories. 

00:13
Now let’s get started with the show. 

00:19
Hey folks, welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast. I’m Mike Edge with the Gain Traction Podcast and I’ve got Joe Tamarchio Jr. With us today. And I gotta tell you, I have never done this before, but I do a preliminary call with all my guests. It usually lasts about 10 or 15 minutes. Joe and I lasted two hours. I mean when I say we hit it off, Joe, we hit it off. But before we get. Let me, let me read this little sponsorship from Tread Partners. 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. And I highly recommend you let Tread Partners look under your digital marketing hood today. 

01:06
And to learn more, visit treadpartners.com My past guest shout out today is for Richard Balin with Raven Truck Accessories which is part of the Trail Tire Group out of Alberta, Canada. Very cool organization. I actually went up there to see him and loved it. So you can find out that you can listen to that podcast or at gain traction podcast.com all right, so Joe, let’s continue this long conversation because I know you and I could talk all day, but we’ve got a little. I got a place I want to take this today and it gets into hiring. 

01:38
But you have an incredible history that, I mean you owned a lot of stores but then you’ve done so much since then and you’ve been involved in mergers, acquisitions and you found so many things that stores can do, right, that are just sitting there for them. But just for the sake of the audience, just give them a little bit about who you are and how you got in this business to begin with. 

02:02
Well, sure, I’ve been in this business since a young man. My partner, who is still my partner today in real estate, but is my brother Fred who’s six years older than I. We started out with one store in a semi tough neighborhood in West Baltimore. 

02:19
Okay. 

02:19
And we did everything, Mike. I mean we soldier the tires, mounted and balanced them. Then there was a lot of white walls and raised white letters. We washed them, we did everything. Slowly but surely we built debt from that one store. Humble beginning to 26 full service tire and auto service centers doing 51 million in revenue in $2004. Which would be, I don’t know, 80 to 100 million today if you do a time money value. We owned out of the 26 stores. We owned 10 of the stores. The real estate they were including two that were in shopping centers. We sold the business in 2004 to Monroe. Back then they were called Monroe Muffler Break. Now they’re called Monroe Inc. 

03:09
And after we consummated the deal with them and everything was done, the CEO at the time was a gentleman named Rob Gross, who actually became a great friend of mine. And unfortunately he passed away not too long ago. 

03:25
Sorry. 

03:26
He said to me, I bought your business. Now how do I get you? I’m like, get me, I’m out. I’m going to go play with the real estate, right? Because that’s what my brother liked doing. And I was the operator, you know, of mainly the tire business. So anyway, long story short, he greenmailed me to death and. And I can be bought or at least back then I could be bought, you know, because I was young. And I told him I’d give him six months to see if I could tolerate him and publicly traded World and whether he could tolerate me. Well, that was 19 years later. I went through five CEOs at Monroe. My deal with him is I only reported to the CEO. 

04:15
I’ll be damned if I was going to be trained, somebody that I had to report to because that wasn’t happening. Monroe treated me exceptional. They treated me beyond exceptional, quite frankly. All five CEOs treated me exceptional. And I’m still in contact with several of them to this day. In fact, one’s a friend of mine and an investment partner in a car dealership that I’m involved in. So great time. Towards the end I ran the store, ran all their stores up until about boy, about eight years ago. 

04:54
Okay. 

04:55
And I just got tired of planes, trains and automobiles. And quite frankly, how you had to played a game for the quarter. In the publicly traded world, you literally sacrifice your future. Because I’m an entrepreneur. So yeah, doing that to me was insanity. But I played the game and I benefited by it. But I just couldn’t take that kind of alert. 

05:20
It was always short term, short sighted. Yeah. 

05:23
I can’t even tell you know, they would eat their children to make a quarter. And I benefited by it. I’m not, I’m going to tell you, I was the executive vice president and I benefited by it, but I didn’t care for it. So I said to him, look, my contracts come and do. I’m going to, you know, I’m not going to renew, but I’m either going to go into consulting. Okay. Or, you know, I could stay with you. Focused on the acquisitions, and they’re like, no, no. We. We want you to stay here with us. So I went part time and I focused. For the last eight years that I was there, I was strictly acquisitions, although I was acquisitions from literally the first six months I was there till the time I left, I was involved in 65 major acquisitions. 

06:11
And at Monroe, anything less than five stores, we didn’t count as an acquisition. They were just Brownfield stores that were going to rebrand. 

06:19
Joe, that’s. That’s extremely impressive. I mean, you got to have as much or more experience than anybody in the acquisitions space in this industry with that kind of record in a short period of time. 

06:31
People that are more knowledgeable, I would say, than I. I would say the Sbarro brothers. 

06:37
Well, yeah, they would. 

06:40
And I’m friends with Steve, and I know Dave very well, and my hat’s off to him. They’ve done a fabulous job. But, yeah, I. I’ve seen a lot of PNL statements in my time. I’ve seen a lot of what people do, right? And believe me, I’ve seen a lot of, like, this is insanity. But. And we’ll go into that. 

07:01
Well, let me lead it here. You know, one of the things we talked about in the preliminary call that caught my attention. I mean, we talked about everything. I know that, but. But one of the things that was really important to. To me was I always hear from dealers, right? I mean, that’s our listening audience and everybody struggles on the hiring side and whatnot. And you said something to me that was just. It’s not that I haven’t heard it before, but you made it so much more clear. But it’s. People don’t charge enough, and that leads to their hiring problems and being able to pay people. Let’s, let’s talk about that, because I think you opened my eyes to a lot. And you’ve seen so much. You’ve seen so much. 

07:42
You have seen so many acquisitions that you knew right when you went in not charging enough. And then you knew how to fix the problem quickly. I mean, obviously, I’m not saying that day, but you knew how to address it to where it was going to be resolved quickly enough. Because, hey, you gotta pay your people enough if you want good people. 

08:03
One thing my brother and I were pretty darn good at Is. And I tried to express this to people. I do consulting, and I’ve done. The last two years, I’ve done consulting for private equity firms. You know, I was involved in some consulting with, on dos, on Conrad’s, and several others with private equity. And, you know, you. You see that they don’t charge enough. These are the same people, with hardly an exception, that are complaining that they can’t hire. And the first thing I tell them is, let me see your turnover report. And usually their turnover is unbelievable. So I say to them, it appears to me you don’t have a trouble, you don’t have a problem hiring, you have a problem retaining. So what is that? 

08:51
And usually the big one, there’s a lot of, you know, other reasons, but usually the big one is they didn’t pay very well. And what I found out, my brother and I found out after being in business about 10 years, I’ll be honest with you, we had to find out the hard way, too, is when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. 

09:12
Yeah. 

09:12
And monkeys do not deliver superior customer performance. They do not deliver the value that the customer is looking for. And if you can’t pay people well, you can’t retain them. And they don’t look at it as. As a career. So the biggest thing I usually find is they’re not charging enough. And the number one thing, if you say, well, Joe, what is it? Out of all the different things that a dealer sells that they don’t charge enough on, number one is their labor rate. Yeah. They just, they feel they got to be exponentially lower than the car dealer, which I find absurd because I say to them, a car dealer, as a rule, let’s say it’s a Honda dealer, I have a Mazda, I’m invested in a Mazda dealer. 

09:59
Let’s say it’s a Mazda dealer, all those technicians are working on is Mazdas from sunup to sundown. Now, don’t get me wrong, you got a used car department, they work on some other vehicles other than Maz, but predominantly they’re working on Mazda. At a traditional tire dealer, we’re working on anything and everything from an Audi to a Yugo. God forbid if someone still owns one. Okay, all right. But everything in between. So in my opinion, and I express this all this time, all the time, to this day, my technicians, they’re not equal to the car dealers than the car dealers. 

10:35
Yeah. 

10:35
So why would I charge substantially less than a car dealer? That’s insanity. That’s what I call stinking thinking. Okay, so, okay, you Want to be competitive, I get it. I’m all about being competitive. But you don’t need to give the value of the services that you have away. So if you can’t charge enough, you can’t pay enough. And what I was going to say to you, I kind of jumped over things. One of the things my brother and I were really good at is any time were hit with a price increase, I didn’t care what it was on. It could have been wheel weights went up. It could have been our gas and electric bill. You know, they had a 3% rate increase. We found a way immediately to overcome that expense immediately. Not. I’ll give you another one. Not three months later. 

11:24
I’m sitting here talking to a tire dealer. I would never mention who. And talking about. I said, you were just hit with price increases. Right? Right. I said, when are you implementing the price increases? He goes, oh, I turn my inventory about four times a year, so I won’t increase my tire prices for 90 days. I said, are you insane? You increase them now. He’s like, well, I lose business. Lose 2% of your 2%, maybe of the bottom feeders that you probably don’t want anyway. Meanwhile, you collected on the 98% whatever the price increase was, 6%, 8%, whatever it may be. 

12:07
Yeah. 

12:08
And the smart ones, when you show it to them and you do the math, not that you want to lose 2% of your business. You don’t. But what’s the worst case that could happen? Mike, you know what? You’re a great customer. I’m going to give you an extra discount, you know, to overcome that lousy 2% that are the bottom feeders. 

12:28
Okay? 

12:29
Because trust me, soon, as soon as your competitors. A dollar less, they’re going across the street. Is the guy you guy or gal you really want? I do, quite frankly. Okay. So, you know, I want to get paid for the value I offer. I felt that we delivered superior service because I had superior technicians, I had superior sales and management personnel because I was the place that people wanted to work because I paid more. Now, I want to tell you this, Mike, and I think you got a taste of me. I’m not a pushover. I pay more, I demand more. 

13:08
Right. We talk, we talked about, like, you want people lined up to work there because they know the reputation is. I get it better here. 

13:15
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I pay more, but I demand more. Okay? So I strive for perfection. I’ll settle for excellence. I pay more. I demand more of you. I expect you to, you know, to be not late. Late drives me crazy. Okay? That just says that you’re disrespectful of everybody else’s time. I expect you to treat our number one asset, which is our customer, like you would treat your mother. Notice I didn’t say your wife like you would treat your mother. Okay. Because nobody wants to treat their mother bad, but I’ve seen people treat their wives bad and vice versa, too. Just so we know, okay? So, I mean, I want you to focus on our number one asset. I again. And my guys, I used to have a nickname. Like, one of the many nicknames. 

14:05
I had some pretty derogatory nicknames, but one of my nicknames was 1-800-get-t, get it free. And the reason is I used to tell my guys and gals, customer gets to me. I don’t care how they get to me. They could catch me at a. At a baseball game. They could catch me at a funeral. They could catch me at a. At a Brits. They could catch me wherever they’re catching. And they got a complaint to tell you, whatever it takes, I’m going to make it right and bill it back to your store. Okay? So you can be the hero for a lot less, because I’m going to give it away because I don’t care. And I’m going to say to them, you know, Mike, what’s it going to take to make you happy and retain you as a Mr. Tire customer for life? 

14:49
Whatever you told me, Mike, I want two tires for free. I want a free alignment. I want one and a half. No problem. You got it, Mike. You got it. Is that going to retain you as a Mr. Tire customer for life? You’d look at me go. And I’d shake my head like this. 

15:02
Yeah. Talking. Yeah. Yes. Right? Yeah. 

15:05
And you’re like, yeah, yeah, Absolutely. That’d be great. You got it. Take care of her. Okay. And I didn’t make you wait in line behind everybody else. 

15:15
Yeah. 

15:16
You’ve been there before. You got an issue. You got put first in line. And if another customer said anything about it, I said, look, sir, I apologize for putting him in front, but he’s already been here. He’s already waited. He had an issue. This is how we would. We would give you the same courtesy. We’re taking care of the situation now. It’s unfair for him to wait again. He already waited once done, okay? And that’s how I wanted it handled. And back in the day, I mean, I gave my store managers and it don’t sound like a lot today, but you got to remember, we sold our business 21 years ago so they had up to $500 to solve a customer problem. I don’t. Call me. I don’t want to know. Handle it. 

15:57
Now, if it’s over 500 bucks 21 years ago, I guess that’d be like a thousand bucks today, right? 

16:02
Close. Yeah. 

16:04
Yeah. I mean, 800 to $1,000. Okay. Now you pick up the phone and ask for some direction. Now, with that being said, if I saw someone being egregious about giving stuff away, that sent my antenna up. Okay? And then you’re violating. You’re violating my. One of my four pillars, which is the moral compass. And I promote you to customer. 

16:29
I love it, though. No, I totally do. And I love the. I love the fact, though, that you. You created an environment, though, that people wanted to work in, too, because you told me the other day that you would also. Hey, I got to allow my people to make mistakes, too, and learn from them. 

16:43
Oh, absolutely. 

16:44
You know, and that’s a good place to be. Like, you’re not going to get browbeat, and I’m giving you a cushion. I’m giving you money to play with. I’m giving you just to. To do your job so that I don’t have to be involved in every store at the same time. 

16:57
So we had four pillars of hiring, and I’ll. I’ll explain that to you, but let me talk to you about the mistake kind of thing. We’re all human. We all make mistakes. No problem. I get it. And I’m there to support you and show you the errors of your ways. Okay. However, because remember, I told you I’m not a pushover if you make the same mistake over and over. You’re telling me one of three things. One, you’re two times too stupid to understand. That’s one. Two, you just don’t give a damn. Three, you did it with malice and forethought, meaning you did it deliberately. 

17:36
Yeah. 

17:36
Any one of those three can’t work with me. 

17:39
Yeah. 

17:40
And that doesn’t make you a bad person. That just makes you NFL. Not for long. You’re. I promote you to customer. I still want you to buy from me. I just don’t want you to be associated with my company. Okay. Real simple. 

17:53
Yeah, no, but you got to have those clear lines. But, you know, I mean, I. No, I. I differ with you. I mean, I think the malicious guy is definitely somebody you don’t even want. 

18:01
To have around, and they’re out there, my friend. Trust me. 

18:05
Yeah, absolutely. But your four pillar. The four pillars that you have. I remember one of them being enthusiasm. Right. In. In. In the hiring process. Yeah. 

18:14
Well, what I. What I tried to entrench in my. My senior management. And by the way, back in the Mr. Tire days when we had 26 stores, there was no one that got mar. Got promoted or hired as a manager, assistant manager, until they went through me. They. I was the last interview. Okay. But here was the deal. And so I had four things. Enthusiasm, attitude. I could pick those two up in an interview. You can too. 

18:46
Yep. 

18:46
Okay. And some people confuse attitude and enthusiasm. They think they’re the same. They’re not the same because you could be an enthusiast, you can be an enthusiastic knucklehead. Okay? It doesn’t mean I want you working for me. 

19:01
And I think. I think we agreed on this one. Attitude is the guy that I can’t teach. I give a crap. I mean, he just naturally has. I care in his attitude. 

19:11
Mike, I am totally convinced and I get into arguments about this to this day that the four things I’m going to mention, you cannot teach. You cannot teach. Now, you can put a collar on them, you can put a fence around them with razor ribbon or barbed wire or electricity, but you cannot teach these things. You could make it punitive for someone to step outside. Okay. Or violate these four pillars, but that you. Either you’re either born with it or you’re not. And so it’s. It’s enthusiasm, it’s attitude. I could pick them up immediately in an interview. The next one, which I would not know, would take maybe a week, a month at the very most, is work ethic. 

19:54
I agree. 

19:54
Are you a clock watcher? Are you the type of person that says that’s not my job? Are you looking to volunteer instead of disappear? There’s a difference between volunteer and disappear. 

20:06
And you’re right, you can’t. You can’t pick that one up until they get into the. The m. Mix. That’s just the way it goes, right? Yep. 

20:13
Don’t. So those three immediately. And the fourth one, which there was this one, there was no. And if you talk to people that have worked with me, reported to me, they will tell you I was animal about this. And, and this was. This was. There was no exception. I was black, white. Yes. No, Right. Wrong. And that’s a moral compass. You tell the truth, even if it hurts. Okay? No lying, no cheating, no stealing from the company, from an employee, from a customer, from a vendor. And if you violated that, I didn’t want to hear that. This was the first time. No, no. It was the first time you got caught. 

20:53
Yeah. 

20:54
Okay. Not your first time. And that is something I never tolerated. So now how do I get these people? First of all, you got to have a good interviewing process. We did psychological profile testing. I got to tell you, if you get the right test, it is very helpful. Is it 100%? No. But it will give you some insight on what you’re dealing with. Okay. Especially it gives you insight on the intellect because you’d be surprised. Okay. And that doesn’t mean that they’re highly educated. That means they have a natural intellect. They’re. They’re autodidacts. They’re self taught. They want to learn. Okay. And they’re open minded to it. So, you know, having a good hiring process and paying more than your competitors are paying. Okay. Notice I didn’t say equal to. I said more than your competitors are paying. Because here’s the deal. 

21:52
And this is especially important with technicians. You know, we all used to tease why technicians had wheels on their toolboxes. Right. Because they could roll them across the street and get a job from the, from your competitor. And there’s a lot of truth to that. Okay. So knowing that, I wanted to make sure that they knew that. Yeah, you can do that. You can roll your toolbox across the street. You’re going to make less money. Yeah, no doubt about it. And you’re not going to be treated as well and go for it. Okay? 

22:22
Yeah. 

22:22
And it happened. And usually the guys that did and it gals, there wasn’t as many, but that rolled their toolboxes across the street because they didn’t like my four pillars. Okay. Or they violated it, or they just didn’t want to live with, you know. The other one was cleanliness. I didn’t want to walk into a store and it’d be dirty. 

22:42
I went crazy. Amen. Yeah. 

22:44
Or the bathroom. I was nuts about that. Okay. So you didn’t want to deal with that. You didn’t want to live with that. You roll across the street. You know what found that? A lot of times they beg to come back. 

22:56
Yeah. 

22:56
Or they were working for Firestone this month, merchants next month, good year the month after that. Is that the guy or gal I want? No, that’s not the guy or gal I want. 

23:11
And the fact that you actually have four pillars set in place that everybody knows, including the person that left, then it’s almost like it’s self fulfilling. You don’t belong because you’re not willing to follow the four pillars. And it actually helps clean itself up. It’s kind of like. It’s like your clarity when you’re clear. I always say clarity is charity. You know, sometimes people think that people with glue. Real, real clarity can be. They seem. Well, he seems abrasive or whatever. No, he’s not abrasive. He’s real clear. And I think that’s more charitable because everybody wants to know. That’s one thing I could say about my dad. My dad was extremely humorous guy, but he had a lot of clarity, raising five boys and two girls. And. And. And we knew. We knew our boundaries with him because we knew his clarity. 

23:56
He never had immense words. You didn’t have to know where he stood to the point where even when he died, I had people come to the funeral home and they. Then I’m talking great friends of his will say, I’m going to tell you something about your dad. You never had to wonder where he stood on anything. 

24:11
Bingo. And my brother was the same way. My brother was actually. How do I say this? I have a little filter. My. My brother, I love him dearly. Still my partner today. In fact, I was just on the phone with him prior to this call. He has no filter. He has none. Okay? He. But he’s fabulous. He’s great. And he’ll give you the shirt off his back. 

24:35
Yeah. 

24:36
You violate those four pillars. I mean, he wants to hunt you down in the daytime with a flashlight. Okay. To hang your head on his wall. All right. I’m just happy to get rid of you. 

24:47
That’s right. That’s funny. But you know what? It’s so interesting. I was at a family wedding this past weekend, and an older cousin was there, and a high school buddy happened to be there, and they had never known each other, never met. And I introduced them. I said, you know what I love about both of you guys? Both of them are loyal, too. They’re great. But I said, you guys are the most unfiltered people I know in my life. I mean, to the point where they’ll say something sometime, and you’re like, I’m moving on. You know? But. But what’s great about them is you never had to worry about what they were thinking or where they were standing. And people genuinely like them because they’re not going to B.S. You. They don’t. They don’t. There’s no sugar coating it. 

25:30
But at the same time, they love people. And if you can see that. You could see their great qualities. They got incredible qualities. Hell, they’ll stand up for you. They’ll go to fight for you. But they might say something that, you know, that you and I. I don’t know about you, but I might be a little more tamed about. And I’m like. I don’t know if I would have put it that way, but. 

25:50
So, Mike, let me. Let me say something else to you that I find that a lot of larger dealers forget about, because there’s a lot of sharp operators out there. Don’t get me wrong. I spent without exaggeration, if you said to me, joe, give me a week in the life of Joe Tamarchio as an entrepreneur. I tried doing this at Monroe. It was. It was virtually impossible. Okay. I did move the needle a little bit, but not substantial. I spent about half my time as a glorified HR manager, psychiatrist, psychologist, family counselor, financial advisor. That’s what I spent, about 50% of my time. 

26:37
Yeah. 

26:38
And I was in my stores all the time. You know, I didn’t try to dictate behind a desk. It’s important, don’t get me wrong, to be in the office, you know, look at reports, analyze, inspect what you expect. But I had to be out there in the field, and I got to know each and every one of the people pretty darn well. Okay? All my top technicians, I knew. I knew their family. Same thing with all my managers and sale and assistant managers, the sales guys, some of the tire changers, not so much. But as they moved up, you know, one of the things I used to say. And I used to say this at Monroe all the time, look, I can’t. I don’t know all of you. It’s impossible. Okay? But I respect what you do and the hard work that you deliver. 

27:26
However, let me just tell you this. I know the top 10%, and I know the bottom 10%. Guess which ones you don’t want to be Easy enough. Okay. Because I’m going to give you all the help you never wanted. 

27:39
Yeah. Yeah. 

27:41
Okay. You understand what I mean by that? 

27:43
Yeah. You’re giving support all the time, and. And you’re showing that you care about being in the field. I think that’s a very. That’s indicative of. Of caring is. 

27:52
Is at Monroe, I tried to do that. It was difficult because, yeah, were in 27 states, but I was on the road a lot. In fact, our CEO at the time, Rob Gross, used to say to me, you need to take next week off. And I’M like, well, I gotta go here, you know, because we just bought these stores and I want to be in these stores and, you know, get them to drink the Kool Aid and then. 

28:14
Absolutely, Joe. No, I, I, I love where we gone on this, but before we close out here, I, I, I, I want people to know a little bit more about you. What, what’s a code mantra or kind of a quote that you live by? 

28:30
Well, I have a mantra and you’re going to tell when I say it that I’ve said it God knows how many times. And if you look and I actually have it in writing because somebody told me you need to make a poster of it, which I’m considering doing. So it’s real simple. You got to be consistent, persistent, relentless, redundant, with perseverance each time, every time, all the time. To beat me, you have to eat me. If I haven’t won, the war isn’t over. Winners find the way and losers find an excuse or hire a lawyer to have one forum be a winner. 

29:02
You have said that a few times. 

29:04
And I have said that a few times. 

29:06
I want that in writing, if you don’t mind. I’ll send it to you. Thank you. 

29:10
I will send it to you. But now, Mike, I’m working with Focus Investment Banking. 

29:16
Right. 

29:16
We represent sellers. When I say sellers, they don’t necessarily would be selling. We can, we have ways of private capital to, you know, to if they want to grow exponentially. We also have over 100 private equity firms that we deal with. We only represent sellers or dealers that, you know, that want to grow their business exponentially. That’s what I’m doing now. 

29:41
Well, we’ve had Giorgio and Michael. Michael’s retired now, but we’ve had both of them on the podcast in the past. But great group, great organization. But one of the things that was, you know, I got educated on was you’re not just helping someone sell. You could help somebody just improve their business for the day that they want to. And that could be, wait, you don’t have to put a date on that. It just be down the road. 

30:05
I some of the people that want a number for their business that their business doesn’t justify because we all want to get paid for sweat equity that’s not on the balance sheet. Right, Right. So one of the things I have done is shown them you want to get paid X, you need to deliver this number. And let me give you some ideas of how to do it. And I’m telling you, the number one thing is raise your damn labor rate. That would be uno. Number one. Okay. And number two, when you get hit with a price increase, I said it earlier. Find a way to pass that price increase on immediately. And also, always have an eye on reducing expense. And here’s my brother and I’s rule for reducing expense. If it was seamless to the customer, reduce the expense of me. 

30:59
I like it. 

31:00
There is no. Just do it. Okay? Now, if it wasn’t seamless to the customer, you know, then you got to spend some more time on how you’re going to position the product or merchandise it. 

31:12
That’s awesome. Joe, you’ve given some great advice today. I can’t thank you enough for being part of this podcast. I think in a nutshell, you have given us some really good golden nuggets. And a lot of the dealers that tell me that, listen, they look for these kind of nuggets. So I really appreciate you coming on. 

31:28
You got it, Mike. And you’re a pleasure to talk to. I love it. 

31:30
All right, well, I appreciate it. To all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of the podcast. You know, we love you. You can always find more podcasts like this at gain traction podcast.com Till next time, we’ll see you on Gain Traction. Be careful out there. 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.