The Greatest Story
Our lives are woven from stories—those we hear, read, and tell ourselves, shaping our future and potential. Often, just one story can pivot us from a downward spiral to a transformative paradigm shift.
Our struggles are rooted in the stories we choose to believe. It's a delicate balance between being realistic and maintaining hope. Unfortunately, many people end up abandoning their dreams.
"The Greatest Story" exists to bring to light the untold stories that energize individuals, families, and communities. Our podcast delivers empowering messages, urging you to discover your purpose and unlock your potential, inspiring you to craft your own success story. Welcome to "The Greatest Story Podcast."
The Greatest Story
#19 – The Story of Wayne Timble, Founder of Auburn Auto Doctors
What drives a small-town kid to become a successful business owner? Meet Wayne, a lifelong Auburn, CA resident whose journey from selling lemonade to running a successful auto shop and gun store will inspire and surprise you. Wayne shares how he overcame challenges, changed his mindset from scarcity to abundance, and the importance of community in his success. Hear how his love for racing and skiing keeps him grounded. Don't miss Wayne's tips on balancing multiple businesses and the surprising strategies that led to his success.
Auburn Auto Doctors
All you really need to do to have a successful business is have good people who can take care of your customers how they should be taken care of, and everything else will work itself out. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's it. When I was in college, I observed that our education system doesn't really teach entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1:I think all of us that own businesses have a little bit of control freak in us and we're in a type A personality we want to control everything in every aspect.
Speaker 1:We want it done our way, and I think that at some point you have to be willing to realize that, even though you're going to find the right people, they're probably not going to do it your way. They might do it a little different way Sometimes. You need to have your processes and procedures locked in, and this is the way we do it. They're the right people. You got to be able to give them the leash to be able to operate at their level, that they can be able to operate and let them show you that they can do what they said they could and not micromanage them either. We need more people to continue to chase their dreams and believe in what they can do, continue to make Auburn as vibrant as it is. I think the city of Auburn has been really good to work with. If there's one frustration I could say it's the government and some of the bureaucracy and how they can kind of really hold up some of progress.
Speaker 2:Wayne, we talked a couple times here and there. I've been seeing you all over on all these different events in Auburn, california, but never really got to know, you never heard your background, how you got started, how you came up here to Auburn. So for myself and for the guests who are going to be watching this, if you can start with talking a little bit about your background, Sure, I was born in Auburn actually, so I've been here for a while, grew up here.
Speaker 1:It's obviously a little bit of a different town than when I grew up. It's a little busier. I was never really necessarily into cars. I always felt like I wanted. I always feel like I had that entrepreneur spirit and mentality, even growing up like probably as early as maybe 12.
Speaker 2:Selling lemonade and stuff.
Speaker 1:No, my first job actually. I was really into baseball and stuff like that and so I found out that you could like umpire baseball and softball games like t-ball. You know, younger I was 12 obviously.
Speaker 1:So it was like six, seven, eight year olds. I borrowed $150 from my mom for the chest protector and the face mask and the little thing to count balls and strikes and outs, and I did that. People weren't very nice to a 12-year-old kid, so I made it just long enough to pay my mom back and then that was the end of that career. Well, you paid her back.
Speaker 2:So that's a good start.
Speaker 1:I paid her back and yeah, I think that was the end of that career. You paid her back, so that's good and um, yeah, I think that was kind of how stuff started. Um, I had little things I had tried and done as like side jobs as I'd had jobs um ended up, uh, I did parts for a lot of years at the part store um management, you know and learned the parts part of automotive again, I raced a little bit. So I did work on stuff a little bit and had some of that knowledge. What about in?
Speaker 2:school. Were you like a straight, a student?
Speaker 1:no, no, um, I feel like if I really applied myself I'm sure I could have been, but there were parts of school that really intrigued me and there was other parts that kind of was boring. Was math your thing? Math I was good at. Yeah, I'm definitely good at math, you know, not really art or English or some of those. I like history. So there were some I liked or didn't like. But it's like if the teacher or the subject lost my attention, like I would say A's and B's I got good grades, but not like I would slack a little bit or procrastinate or just little things like that I didn't put in the effort that I probably could have or should have.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. There's a commonality between all the people most people that I know who are in business entrepreneurs. They're never that A plus student in class.
Speaker 1:I was never.
Speaker 2:I think my grades were sometimes A's, the rest of them were B's and sometimes C's.
Speaker 1:A, C might have slipped in there a little bit too. Probably early I went to Sierra College, a little community college, right out of high school. I didn't know what I wanted to do and, you know, possibly there might have even been one that I had to do like a no credit early drop because it wasn't looking good, you know, possibly there might have even been one that I had to do like a no credit early drop because it wasn't looking good, you know. But for the most part, like I really enjoy learning and educating myself, If it's something I really enjoy or want to learn, I will sign up for a class, fly somewhere, whatever it takes right to like educate myself and make sure that I'm as knowledgeable as possible on what I'm doing that's right.
Speaker 2:You told me you you went somewhere recently um what was that conference?
Speaker 1:yeah, I go to a lot of different stuff. Um probably most recently that we might have talked about, um, there was a big training conference in tennessee and, um, I closed down the auto shop and we actually took the whole shop out there. So there's eight us, including me, that we all went out there. Really good team building and training, you know, we kind of we did some fun stuff, but we also it was three days of classes and everybody picked stuff that they wanted, so that was a good time.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of training personally. I think that's something that has helped to, you know, elevate me to where I'm at now. I mean, I don't even know that I'm. I don't feel like I'm anything special or that, you know, I do.
Speaker 1:I look at other people that are in business and I go, wow, you know, I wish I could be there someday, and that's, I think, a big thing. That's helped me is just networking, knowing people like you, other people I've seen on your podcast and community, people that I feel like are where I want to be or where I'm going, and it just helps me to keep chasing the carrot, you know, and like pushing to see what's really possible, and what I found, is like the more you push and it's crazy what you can really achieve when you put your mind to it and decide like this is what I'm going to do and you know, most of us are capable of some pretty amazing things, you know yeah, that's the reality and you know the fact that you just said that you have humility, and in business that's what it takes.
Speaker 2:You know, because the people that always, you know, boast and are prideful. Unfortunately, that thing really gets them sooner or later, you know. So that's one thing that I noticed about the people that I've met. You know, all over the place. You know, here in auburn, a lot of them are, you know, they, they're, they have humility, they're low to the ground but well-grounded, but very, very successful. So you're growing up in Auburn, this is the place that you're like. You know, I'm just going to keep my roots here, and what is it about Auburn that really kept you here?
Speaker 1:So I think you know, growing up, auburn was even way smaller of a town. There was like nothing really to do here. So I feel like in school everybody would just talk about like can't wait till I get out of high school and get out of Auburn and do something different. I had kids pretty early on. I was 21 when I had two twin daughters, and so you know it's very interesting Pretty early on. I was 21 when I had two twin daughters, and so you know it's very interesting.
Speaker 1:I feel like once you have a family or other things to kind of think about, like my priorities changed at that point. Right, so what I didn't like about Auburn and how slow it was and there wasn't much stuff to do, I feel like once you have a family or you become a parent, or that becomes a thing that you start thinking about. Um, you know it, to me Auburn is like the best place that you can live. I mean, like there's certain things about California that you know I could. I wish it was a little different. Um, but I've been to plenty of other states and there's nothing like California. And especially when you're talking about where we live in Auburn, I mean there's just nothing like it. So, you know, at that point I really found a love for Auburn. And then I've been here, like I said, forever, and so once I started the business, being a part of the community was important. So that's something I did. Pretty early on, I joined the chamber and, you know, started meeting people and networking and it was good for me, right.
Speaker 1:It's been something that, again, it's given me people to look up to and, like I said, the carrot to chase. Even though we all run different businesses, it's nice to be able to talk to somebody and you realize, like you know, we all have different problems, but running a business typically involves problems and fixing them, no matter what business yeah, they're very, very common, for sure, totally so.
Speaker 2:Would you say that you are you the one who kind of stumbled on the business. Uh, or now you're running two businesses, correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so how that came about, it's an interesting story. I started with a buddy of mine had left the dealership and him and I talked and I kind of convinced him like, hey, we should split this shop. And it's across from actually where my shop is currently at. Right now it was just one bay. I think it was like $800 a month. We were splitting it.
Speaker 1:He worked during the day and I was working at night and just kind of getting little side jobs from the auto parts store and customers that would come in and want their stuff worked on. And, um, after maybe a year that another friend of mine who was a technician, um, he had wanted to potentially start something up and I thought, well, hey, maybe we can do this together. In the middle I worked about 12 years in auto parts. In between there another local shop had kind of headhunted me to do some service advising. I'd never done that before. But they just thought, hey, you're pretty sharp, you could probably do this. And I learned a lot from them in three years. I think they were doing some coaching at the time. Some of the stuff. I didn't necessarily like how they did stuff, but it wasn't my business. But again, I really like to just learn and listen. So, like over three years, if there's one thing they did, it was run a very good business and I learned what profit margin was, how much you needed to make to have a successful business. I didn't know everything, but enough to get me started at least, and so when the opportunity came, we worked for probably two years Myself and at the time it was a friend of mine, rick.
Speaker 1:We're not partners anymore, but still friends. He's a good guy. We both started working nights and weekends, put every dollar we made like back into the business. It wasn't really a business, but we'll call it a business. We were buying equipment and everything that we needed. So about two years in we thought, all right, we have enough that we could maybe do this, and a spot opened up across the street, which is where we're at now, and so we leased it, quit my job I had maybe three months worth of paid time off between vacation, sick, this, that, whatever and we both quit our jobs and said, hey, hopefully we can make it work in three months because that's what we have to live off of. It was pretty rough the first six months.
Speaker 1:We ran a good business for about four years, and then we kind of wanted to go different directions. He wanted to work on classic cars and do more customization and stuff like that, and so he went and did that. I bought his half of the business and then it was kind of a reboot. And so he went and did that. I bought his half of the business and then it was kind of a reboot, and that was about four years in. So kind of an interesting story too, because at that point we had some employees technicians and they'd either gotten let go or quit, and so we were really down to myself, a service advisor, and my business partner, rick, who was working on the cars, and I basically bought a business that didn't have any technicians to work on cars.
Speaker 1:So it's not a story. I even really tell too much. It's kind of funny, you know. So yeah, four years in, I had a business with about 80-something reviews, maybe something, 70-something reviews, good reviews, and a phone number, and I, like it was, either do that or I'm going to do something else, and I figured I already had a good enough start. I made it work. So I had a buddy of mine that was doing mobile mechanic and he was tired of that. So I brought him in the timing was good, brought in another guy shortly after that. That actually still works for me today and it's been a process. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 2:Would you say that sometimes it really helps when you are put in situations where it's like you have no other options. Think you have to.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, I think that I don't really deal with too much anxiety myself, like I pretty much like I process stuff, I don't stress too much, I look at everything. I mean it is what it is and you got to fix the problem, and I just try to stay calm and figure out what's the best way we can fix it and go from there right.
Speaker 2:Were you always like that or did you learn this as?
Speaker 1:you. You know, I think I've always kind of been like that. I've never been somebody that's overly stressed or had anxiety or anything like that. But I could tell you that when I was taking over the business and when I was faced with that, that was a new feeling that I'd never really had. Um, that it was like what if this fails, right? Like what's this going to look like for me and the community? And all these things that probably even weren't important at the time but were still stressing me out, or things that I was like letting get in my head.
Speaker 1:And it was a scary time because, again, like I was trying to, in my mind, the business was like my business partner was the one that was working on the cars right, like my business partner was the one that was working on the cars right, and I was the one who was, um, more of the the front of house, the service advisor, managing the business, bookkeeping, you know all that stuff and um, yeah, I was like how am I going to find somebody to work on cars? This is like the identity of the business, right, but in reality that's really not the case, um, and we kind of worked past that, but that was really the first time that I found coaching, um and I, I knew that I needed to do something a little bit different, um, or get some help, because what I was doing wasn't gonna like. We were bootstrapping it and making it because there was two of us that complimented each other really well and we could get it done, but that method wasn't going to work anymore moving forward. So, you know, I found out a company that did some coaching and, um, the price was right to kind of get in there and that started, I think, a big change in myself too. But the business and I already knew a lot, but I I didn't. What I didn't know, I think, was even more, and you don't even realize it right until you keep going and make mistakes and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So was the coaching uh business, were they, did they have experience in this specific industry?
Speaker 1:yeah, so uh, and that was obviously a big help too. I think, if I could recommend, I would recommend coaching to anybody, right? If you're a business, right, personal too, probably. But I think if you're running a business, in my experience most people who start a business, especially in the trades, it's somebody who is extremely good at that trade, whether it's construction, plumbing, auto repair, guns, it doesn't matter. Typically, that person is not very good at business, right, and so that's like the disconnect, and so you're very good at what you do and maybe taking care of customers, but you're probably not good at making money and making that profitable and being able to have the time off you need everything right.
Speaker 1:It's the whole bundle of stuff that you have to figure out in all these businesses, and so this was a industry-specific coaching company. There was about 15 to 20 other shop owners. It was a California group that we started in. Every three months we would meet up and we would go to somebody's shop, stay at a hotel, visit their shop. We'd kind of critique it, talk numbers, marketing, all these different things. One of the biggest things with that was that I realized I wasn't alone, right, like when you talk to people, even people that you know, and you ask them hey, how's business going? What's the standard answer that you get every time?
Speaker 2:It's good.
Speaker 1:Business is good. It's great, right, and the reality of it is. Is it always great? Probably not right. Most of the time it's probably not, and so it's really hard to figure out, like are they doing okay, Are they not doing okay? I feel like I'm struggling and everyone I talk to says business is awesome and they have no problems.
Speaker 2:What am I doing wrong?
Speaker 1:And so that was my first eye opener. That was like I'm not the only person that's struggling, and in fact, now I'm talking to 15 or 20 other shop owners that are having the same problem that I've had, or they've had it in the past, or they're talking about some problem that I haven't even had, and, lo and behold, I would have that down the road at some point too, and so that was a big help. Just being able to talk to these people, who are now my friends, and the information that we share because we're not competition in town is just invaluable, right, I mean um, and being able to hopefully not make mistakes that you know potentially other people are making those mistakes and it just helps to shorten that process yeah absolutely get to the next level.
Speaker 1:So, um, definitely, and I'm on my third different coaching company now in the nine years probably, and, um, all of them have been awesome. Uh, they've just been a little bit different and it's something that, um, I've needed different parts, different things at different parts of my journey yeah, where I'm at, I was just recently talking to a roofing guy.
Speaker 2:He owns a pretty big roofing company here locally and he told me that they have, for example, different brackets, right, so if you are making, let's say, up to $5 million worth of sales per year, you're in this breath bracket. If you're trying to get to 10, then everything that you've been doing up until five million is not gonna be the same, right, as if you're trying to grow right and scale and stuff. Totally is that kind of the same with?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean I think that, um, yeah, I mean I, you know, there's a sweet spot, at least in the auto shop industry, where you know a lot of guys will run maybe a two technician, one guy, really small shop. Or, like I have four technicians plus an oil change guy and two advisors in the shop plus some support. So I think that each step there's like that process right, do you hire the people and then get the cars, or do you get the cars and the people and you have to figure out how to build it. At some point it becomes a massive enough operation. At least I think in my industry that, um, it's more profitable if you start expanding to new locations versus trying to grow like one mega store that's relying on you and you have all your eggs in that basket and it's easier to run that small to medium-sized store and replicate that a few times than try to have one mega store that you're doing everything from one location and you start getting with. You know you got now you're trying to run who I don't know, 40 or 50 cars, 60 cars through somewhere a day, like that's a lot to be handling. So, um, you know again, I think every business is different again. That's why I like talking to people in different industries. Some things transfer over a little bit, some don't marketing you Marketing. You know some things do, some don't. So is your goal to open up other shops or that's not really where you….
Speaker 1:You know, it's funny because if you asked me a year ago I would say no way, like one is enough for me. It's a crazy business sometimes, like cars are crazy, it's just a…. It's very complicated, it's very technical. I mean you almost have to be… An electrician. That's well beyond electrical knowledge of like home electrical. I mean very, very, very intricate wiring diagrams. Most cars today probably have anywhere from 20 to 40 computer modules the radio, the engine, the transmission, the door lock I mean everything right. There's so many different modules and they all talk to each other, wiring between everything. You almost have to be like a computer scientist to work on cars plus be able to actually have all these tools. It's a tough industry.
Speaker 1:With that being said, I think that one of the things with coaching and training and I have other people in my current group that have multiple stores and I think that it's just gone to show me what's truly possible. If it's something that I want to do down the road. I'm trying to get through the expansion on my current property right now but I feel like once that's done, that's going to kind of be what that shop is and I'm going to build that up to what it can be for that shop comfortably and I probably would pursue down the road maybe some other opportunities if a shop came available. I think ideally further down towards Rockland Roseville, somewhere that's a little more populated. I don't know that I'd want to go east to Colfax. I mean, it's just more people is just more beneficial when we're talking expansion.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. So what exactly is your role right now, now that you've been running this shop for how long? About 13 years? Wow, 13 years. So would you say that you're at a point where, if you have to, you can leave for a couple weeks and things are running and you don't really have to be too much involved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't technically have a manager right now. I do have a lot of very, very good staff. I probably have the best staff right now that I've ever had. They're all very self-motivated. They're a team player, right. I mean, everybody wants to win together. Somebody needs help, they're going to get help, and so just that whole mentality and just how we operate as a group, Is it a little smoother.
Speaker 1:If I'm there, yeah, I can usually make decisions that maybe they wouldn't make. But I leave for time periods, vacation, conferences, training, whatever needs to happen, and they do a great job. And I have one employee at the gun store. She does a great job and I kind of bounce back and forth between the two depending on how's busy who needs help. Ideally, I thought I would have both businesses at that new property by now and that would make my life a lot easier to bounce back and forth between the two. But ideally the auto shop is very, very close to not needing me there on a daily basis. Probably it's almost to that point where it doesn't. Sometimes I feel like I'm even more in the way and.
Speaker 1:I hinder productivity sometimes and the gun shop is very much the same. Megan does a great job. Sometimes things are a little smoother when I'm there, just because it's extra help and knowledge, but it's not something that I'm usually needed there and we're almost ready for another employee there as well. So kind of working on trying to expand some of that and grow that, especially in the new location, has been really good for that over the last year.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you were doing the auto shop and then you got into the gun shop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so what happened is I can't remember one of the big events that caused guns to go kind of out of stock. My parents were never really into guns or hunting or anything. It wasn't something that was really around our family very much. But you know, boy Scouts shoot little guns. Here and there Friends would have guns that I'd go shooting on occasion and during one of those periods I started getting into guns and guns were very hard to find. So I went around, I visited the two local stores that we had. It was very weird. It's something I've never experienced except like in gun stores. There it's like 50 50.
Speaker 1:I feel like I go into a lot of gun stores just because I like guns and check them out and see what people have and everybody has a little different mix of stuff, use stuff. Sometimes you never know what you find and, um, sometimes you walk in and it's a very pleasant experience. They're nice, they're friendly, they want you know it's it's just good. About half the time I feel like there's a very weird condescending, not very helpful. Um, I'm better than you, just a really weird mentality I felt the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah I.
Speaker 1:You just feel that at certain gun stores and I don't understand it, but I've never experienced that, and gun store seems to be the only business that you could treat people like that, and they'll still come spend money, because they would not do that if I treated them like that at auto repair. I'm guessing if you treated your clients like that purchasing homes or selling homes they would not stick around either, and so it's just very weird, and so that was a little bit off-putting and I realized that this was a business that I would never get into. A retail business, to be honest with you, I would. Personally, it's just not my forte. I feel like it's very low margins, cutthroat. You're dealing with Amazons and Ebays and all these places that just make it so hard for you to just make 10 cents on every product you're selling, right, but what I learned about guns was that you can't just go on Amazon and order a gun and have it shipped to your house. It has to go through a dealer.
Speaker 1:I thought you know I could do a retail business, I like guns, I could do this, and if it has to go through me, then I feel like at least I have like something that I'll always be able to make some money to like pay some of the overhead, and initially when I started it, it wasn't really to have a business, it was more just like for myself. Again, I wasn't too impressed with some of the options and some of the people that I had met as far as stores, and I thought at this point at the auto shop I'd expanded into three bays, I guess we'll call it, and each bay that I had taken over had its own office. So the first one was the customer waiting area. The next one we took over was kind of my office, and then we took over this third one and it was like I don't know, maybe 300 square feet of space that I thought, well, I can turn this into a office. And so I went to the county.
Speaker 1:Technically might not have quite been zoned for it. I figured out what it needed, what I needed to do to be zoned correctly, and like we got it all worked out and I got its own little separate address and like I've always been good at working the angles to do what I got to do to get something done, and so I was able to get my license and open it up, and initially it was just for myself and friends. And then, like word of mouth kind of started to spread as like hey, this guy's over here, he can take care of you, he can find stuff, and, um, I just started offering the same customer service that I want as a consumer and then I try to offer to people at my auto shop and it really just kind of grew from there into this whole separate business that I really didn't want or or need you know, but the truth is I really do enjoy guns and I enjoy gun people.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's a totally. When somebody comes to my auto shop and they give me a thousand dollars for their car, it's not a bad experience, but it's not a like fantastic experience that they that the consumer, typically loves right. Um, now, when you're coming to the gun store and you're handing me a thousand dollars and then you come pick up your brand new gun that you really want, like you know, that's something that it's, it's a luxury spend, right, and so, um, I'm usually dealing with happy customers. We become friends almost immediately. It's a great, it's nice to be in that business, versus sometimes, I love the auto business too, but it can beat you down a little bit. Sometimes You're dealing with frustrated customers. Sometimes it's maintenance, and they know about it, but a lot of times it's a breakdown or an unexpected repair, and it's usually not $100. You know it's hundreds or in the thousands, and a lot of times you're not prepared and nobody's happy, right, so it's a different customer.
Speaker 2:You know, it kind of reminded me like one time I was getting an oil change in one of my cars and I used to go to this place. Every time the same guy came out, greeted me, you know, and he was really nice guy, I think there was a family-owned business. And one time I pull up there completely different people and you know the guy's yelling like drive in here, you know, kind of showing me where to park, and then I said I just wanted to get get an oil change because that's all I needed, you know, and I needed to be on my way. So I'm sitting there, the guy comes up and he starts, um, telling me, all right, we check this and this and this, and looks like you're gonna need this, you know. And then and he's like, so it is like almost like making me like agree to it.
Speaker 2:I'm like no, not, no, not right now, you know. And then he comes back. Like three times he came back and tried to like sell me on another filter or on some other tune up, you know. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like this is a completely different experience, like I don't remember getting that from the other guy, if he would ever tell me to do something or that I need something else fixed. It would be like legitimate you know, I would trust right, you know and the trust had already been there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like he's already earned your trust. So at this point, if he does tell you that you need something, you believe it and you're more prone to do it because the trust has been built where this guy's first time you've ever met him and he wants to replace everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I just I didn't feel right, like I'm like yeah, I don't think I'm gonna ever come here again, because I just I don't like that, and I think people feel that 100 so I understand that you know upselling. You know as a business there's always that upselling component where you like, you know it's, it's a good business practice. But it also with this like it has to make sense of course there there's definitely a line.
Speaker 1:Um, obviously I'm big on maintenance on cars. I can tell you from doing this now for 13, 14 years. You know you, you can do it two ways, right. You're either going to maintain your car and you're going to have less breakdowns, or you're going to not maintain it and it's going to break down. You know, I had this conversation with a customer who was actually a little bit upset and I don't even mind talking about it.
Speaker 1:You know, we did an oil change. We do a good courtesy inspection. We call it a digital inspection. We take pictures of anything we might find that's wrong. You know we're really comprehensive and, again, I'm big on education. So that's a big component of us is.
Speaker 1:You know, if I'm going to tell you your car needs something, we're going to educate you on why you need it, why it's important, and we're going to give you the option. I'm not going to hard sell you. You know everyone's an adult and they have their own budget and their own way they want to take care of a car and how long they want to keep a car. So all we try to do is educate and let the customer make the best decision for them, whatever that is, you know. And so he had a Dodge Ram. It was like a 2016, I want to say, with about 70,000 miles, had been pretty good about oil changes, but no transmission service, no differentials, like nothing else had been serviced except for his oil changes in a timely manner. And so we said, listen, like you've got a truck, like and what a lot of manufacturers will do when they're selling cars, they're all rated on cost of ownership and it's usually through about a hundred or 110,000 miles. And so when Edms or Kelley Blue Book or a lot of these are rating these cars and determining what is the cost of ownership, they factor in all these oil changes and maintenance and all these things, right. So when they're factoring in up to 100,000 miles, it's very convenient that a major service that your car might need a timing belt is at 105, right, that's the service interval, because now that doesn't get fact, a timing belt is at 105, right, that's the service interval, because now that doesn't get factored into the cost of ownership, right, that's your maintenance. So what a lot of manufacturers have gone to is extended oil change intervals. On a lot of Europeans it'll be 10,000, maybe even 15,000 on some. That's crazy to me.
Speaker 1:A lot of manufacturers have gone to what they consider lifetime transmission fluid. You don't need to change your transmission fluid anymore, you just change it when you replace the transmission. The problem is, I see transmissions that maybe would have gone 150 or 200,000 miles, that I'm replacing in some of these cars with 60, 70, 80,000 miles that have never had a transmission service. And so the customer was upset because we recommended services that he felt like were not good recommendations and that when he talks to the dealer, the dealer says these are lifetime fluids. And so, you know, we had a conversation and he still didn't necessarily agree.
Speaker 1:And again, that's always everybody's prerogative, right. But I can tell you from experience that a transmission service might be $200, $300, $400, maybe even $500. On the truck, a transmission is usually $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000 or more. And if we're talking about doing a transmission service, we recommend them in the modern vehicles every $50,000 to $60,000, even if you were doing it every $30,000 at the cost of hundreds, right, I mean, it is way more beneficial. And so, again, we just try to educate and let people know, right, like this is kind of what's going on. This is why some of these are recommended or not recommended, and this is why we feel it's important you know, and again, everyone's going to make their own decisions and do their own research.
Speaker 1:You know I prefer to do the maintenance, and but if you want to not do the maintenance and wait till it needs the repair, I'll do the repair too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so going to when we were talking about certain you know values and stuff. Were you brought up, when you growing up with certain values that you kind of brought them in into your business and in your company, in the auto shop and in the gun store? Are there certain values and principles that you, you and all of your employees, kind of know about and follow religiously, or how? How is that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think that, um, I think to answer that question the best, I don't know that me, like, my experience probably my negative experience, whether as an employee or as a consumer have shaped how I want to treat my customers. Like, no matter what, um, I'm not perfect. We're not perfect either, right, I'll have an unhappy customer from time to time. I think what separates us from maybe others is that to me, the customer experience is the most important thing. If I don't have a good customer experience for that customer and they don't come back like what's the point? You know, the customer experience has to be number one, and so one of the things that came up in training, maybe like a year ago, was like I I don't know what they called it, but it was like a circle, right? It's like and I talked to my staff about this you know, my job is to take care of my employees and treat them like they need to be treated to operate at the highest level. My employee's responsibility is to take care of the customer at the highest level possible, and if those two things happen, the customer will continue to take care of me in the business and then we just continue that circle, right? I like that, and so I think that that has been the most important to me. And there's people like I know Reese Browning was on here just how he operates his business and how he handles employees and customers I mean, he's been a mentor of mine too, oh yeah, and customers, I mean he's been a mentor of mine too, and you know, just that's my thing. Right Is no matter what the business is.
Speaker 1:I think if you always put yourself in the customer's shoes and if a customer is upset, there's sometimes that I don't even feel like we did anything wrong. It was just a weird set of circumstances. You know, I've refunded a customer's bill where I felt like, you know we weren't't wrong, but could we have done something different? Yeah, and did the customer not have the greatest experience because of that? Yeah, and I want every customer to be happy. So I'll always do whatever I can to make sure that the customer experience is good and that they're happy, within my power. It doesn't always happen, but we do a pretty good job of making it happen most of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, have you heard of this? I'm hearing this more and more often and this is something that I've been kind of thinking about lately, because I'm also not involved in just one business. You know, we have a real estate brokerage, we flip houses, we build new homes Now I'm doing the podcast. You know, and then I just also bought a franchise. I don't know if I told you about this I like it.
Speaker 2:I have my hands full, but sometimes I hear from people who are well-experienced. You know they're like. You know it's hard to run multiple businesses at the same time. It's hard to run multiple businesses at the same time and you're not going to be able to reach that kind of level of success when you're so spread. You know, yeah, you being in multiple businesses. What do you think about that? I think there's some truth to that?
Speaker 1:I think that there is absolutely. You know, could I potentially make more money if I didn't have the gun store and I put my time into another auto shop and I already have all this foundation and everything ready? Could I maybe do that still and still scale that business and still scale the automotive or the gun store? I think so and I think that in past I've let myself have excuses for why I need to. To like, the gun store has kind of always been the one that's. It's just kind of the side step, the redheaded stepchild, so you say, or whatever it is. It's always kind of been something that's there when the time is right and it's the right market conditions. A lot of money can be made and I keep the overhead low.
Speaker 1:But I think that maybe in the last year that's one thing I would say that's held me back as a business person and maybe how I was raised.
Speaker 1:I think that for a long time I've ran my businesses with a scarcity mentality and I've made money by running tight books and keeping expenses low and that's how I maximize profit. I have done so much better in the last year, being able to finally switch my mentality to an abundance mentality and just realize that, like, at some point you have to take some chances and you have to spend a little money and you have to trust that you can hire the right people who are going to be able to see your vision and see that through. Because I can, no way I could do what I do right now without the team of people that I have in place at the auto shop and at the gun store. It's been a little crazy right now because I've got we're a little shorthanded at the auto shop. I've got another guy that's going to start, another employee that we're adding, just cause we're so busy we're we're just everybody's getting really stressed and you know, we're, we're, we're producing um again.
Speaker 1:I have some friends that own some shops too, and other parts of the country, like we're producing out of a four bay, four lifts, four technicians, um, what some of my friends are producing out of 10 bay shops with five or six technicians and 10 lifts, um, and so we're really squeezing everything out of we can, out of our current location. We need more space. I'm trying to get this new building done um, and we're just like busting out at the seams, so, um, you know, I I'm trying. I don't even know what the original question was. I got lost on the tangent.
Speaker 2:No, I'm talking about, like running multiple businesses and you were talking about previously the scarcity and the abundance.
Speaker 1:And having trust that those people also I think all of us that own businesses have a little bit of control freak in us and we're in a type A personality we want to control everything in every aspect.
Speaker 1:We want it done our way, and I think that at some point you have to be willing to realize that, even though you're going to find the right people, they're probably not going to do it your way. They might do it a little different way Sometimes. You need to have your processes and procedures locked in and this is the way we do it and you know. But you also need to. If they're the right people, you got to be able to give them the leash to be able to operate at their level, that they can be able to operate, and let them show you that they can do what they said they could, and not micromanage them either. You, you know. So I think that has been something that's you know finally getting to a comfortable spot where I can really trust that the people that I've hired, that we've trained together and educated, and trust the process, that they can do what they need to do. Have you heard of Alex Hermosi?
Speaker 2:I haven't, okay. Well, he's an entrepreneur, his company is called Acquisitioncom and I mean, he's this guy. He's always wearing a tank top, shorts, beard. He's all over YouTube, okay.
Speaker 2:I'll have to check it out, yeah he's doing a lot of business consulting and all of his content on YouTube is all about business consulting and all of his content on YouTube is all about business. And he was telling a story about he was meeting with this company that was going to buy his business and there at this table, the company's team they got their people, that they brought some of their executives.
Speaker 1:And this is his coaching company, or a different business that he has.
Speaker 2:I think it was a business. He was basically coaching gyms, okay. So I think his company was called Gym Launch and they were helping out gyms grow, scale and get more members in and all that. So he was at a point where he wanted to sell the business and he said, when I was at the table, he's, he's telling the stories. Like we're sitting at the table and I bring some of my guys and these guys that are buying this business they're bringing, they brought their guys and he's like I just observed, like the questions that they're asking, how they're responding, everything that's happening right here at this meeting. And then he's like, yeah, that's why these guys are this many billion dollar company. Is it because of that? So for him, like that meeting, like he realized that sometimes there's not a big difference between let's say you need an employee the difference between $80,000 a year salary compared to $100,000, right, but that $20,000 difference can be massive.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, because just what you can in terms of like production and what you can do in your company that can be like 5x or 10x right.
Speaker 1:I mean I can tell you with 100% certainty I have. I told you I have two advisors in my office right At the beginning of the year and from last year. But at the beginning of the year we had one of our worst months in a while and it was a slower time period and I could make a lot of excuses for why it was. But, um, I had an underperforming employee, great person fitting great with the team just wasn't truly the right person for that position, right, um, a few months later and I looked and I and I've been interviewing and hiring and I probably talked to 50 plus people. So I'm getting better and better and better. Right, you just put in the reps and you get better as you go. And you know, I started to realize, like the flags that I didn't see before with other people. And so I my wife actually a lover, a her even more for this right, but a truly game changer in my business.
Speaker 1:We did what we call Indeed hunting, indeed fishing. You know, Indeed has been probably the best thing for most businesses to find people and whatnot. We started looking out for somebody, so he didn't even apply. We actually found him that he had had an application updated. We reached out to him hey, are you interested? It turned out that he was at a point where a little bit of a weird spot and he was maybe ready for a change. And I mean, my business did double what it did last month than what it did in January Because of him, not because of, but that was one significant change that allowed the rest of my team to really operate at their full potential. It was the one missing piece and I'm probably paying him right.
Speaker 1:You know, like, honestly, my advisors are on commission, so like there is an hourly because it's California and whatever, but my technicians are flat rate, so there is an hourly component, but they're also on a billable hours and all four of them are awesome technicians and they're hungry and billable hours, and all four of them are awesome technicians and they're hungry and they want to bill hours and as much as I can feed them, they're like you know, they want it, they want it bad, you know, and those are the people that I've tried to hire over the years, like I've tried to continue to keep hiring better and better and hungrier, and my office same thing.
Speaker 1:Right, I've got them on commission and they wouldn't have it any other way because they're hungry and they love to sell, they love building relationships and you know, organically I've got the right people and they have elevated themselves to the level of what they can operate at peak potential and that's where we're at now. But I didn't realize that even until March of this year, how much having the right people makes a difference. And even if it is like I paid my advisor more than I paid any advisor this last month, but he earned it right, like he sold it, and he's just paid a percentage of his sales and he earned every bit of that and I couldn't be happier to pay out my biggest paycheck that I've paid in the history of my business. You know, um, and, and he's happy, I'm happy. We're all working through little challenges of you know, operating at this level, but, um, the people man. I think all the stuff we've talked about, in any business, the biggest challenge and the biggest reward is the people.
Speaker 2:Exactly. That's so true. So when we started the conversation, you praised this community, Auburn but is there anything about Auburn that you think you would like to see changed or improved?
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot has changed since I've joined the chamber 12, 13 years ago. I think that Auburn as a community is there's a lot of younger entrepreneurs younger than me, right that I'm starting to see come around and open up shops and chase their dreams. And that's what I would say is just we need more people to continue to chase their dreams and believe in what they can do and continue to make Auburn as vibrant as it is. I think the city of Auburn has been really good to work with. If there's one frustration I could say it's the government and some of the bureaucracy and how they can kind of really hold up some of progress. And you know again, like I mean, I'm certainly not rich. Or you know, like have a ton of money that just hanging around that I can burn, and it's hard as a business owner when you're trying to grow and you're trying to expand stuff and you're spending a lot of money and time going through that government red tape and I'm sure, especially as you know, opening up a retail storefront type of business now and I'm sure there was plenty of that involved in, in trying to get that open right and yeah, well, I, I'm not doing it here but in alvarado hills, but, but it's the same thing almost
Speaker 2:anywhere you go, it doesn't matter where you go In certain counties and cities, it's even worse 100%.
Speaker 1:I'm lucky that the city of Auburn is. They are aware of that. They understand that there are certain things that you just can't get around and I think that they are very much open to doing what they can within the guidelines of the law and being reasonable to try to help where they can. You know the local business person, at least in that aspect. So I'm thankful that the property that I did buy is in the city of Auburn and just in general, I think I've been in Auburn my whole life. The community as a whole is just an amazing community. Everybody's willing to help people. I mean, I've never been in a community like this and I think it just makes me want to give back and you know the people. I mean I wouldn't have my businesses and I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it wasn't for the community of Auburn. And again, I just I like to give back and, where I can, and help out and continue that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So, besides you running multiple businesses, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 1:I would say my two hobbies outside of making money, because I love that. I like to race cars so I do dirt track racing, circle track um placerville, marysville are kind of the local ones, but I've raced a lot of other places around california and a couple in nevada um so how fast, how fast, um most of what we're doing is quarter mile.
Speaker 1:I have raced closer to a half mile, maybe three-eighths mile, I would say we could probably get upwards of maybe 80 or 90 miles an hour. I would say at the track we're running mostly in the car, I'm running maybe 50 or 60. But we're talking about you're in a banked dirt track. You know you're in a banked dirt track. So at 60 miles an hour you're basically pitching it sideways and throwing a U-turn for the next, you know, straightaway in corner. So it's a lot of fun. I have a lot of fun doing that and in the wintertime I like to go to the mountains and ski, that's something that.
Speaker 1:I did a little bit when I was a kid and a buddy of mine, and I started picking it back up again maybe seven or eight years ago and so it kind of works out well, like racing is my summertime hobby and I can only do it in the summertime and skiing is my wintertime hobby and, um, so those are my two things that when I need a break and I need just a change of scenery and clear my head both those things just a change of scenery and clear my head Both those things. Being up in the mountains obviously absolutely clears my head pretty well. And, um, racing is something that when you're in the car on the track you have to be so focused and in the zone that like any stress, any BS that's going on, it's like it all. There's no choice but to push all that out and like, for that period you're just focused and afterwards it's just something I enjoy so much. I'm usually refreshed and clear my head and I really enjoy training. You know, as far as business goes, every three months our group gets together, we go to a conference. I'm getting ready to go in two more weeks back to Tennessee, but every three months, you know, any business I think can wear you down a little bit and beat you up a little bit and so being able to go reconnect with my fellow shop owner friends and we kind of all talk about things that have gone good and bad, and you know, it's really nice and that kind of recharges the batteries I usually try to take. I used to take so much information. I try to change too much but I try to take one to three items, depending on how in-depth they are, and like those are my action items that I try to make sure I get done between that and the next meeting. And just again, continual improvements, chipping away. Right now I'm really trying to put everything in place that will allow me to fully step away from the business by the end of the year and I'm really focusing on things that are going to allow me to scale down the road. So like moving my payroll and workers comp and some of those kinds of things health insurance, all into one company that handles those under one umbrella. It might save me a few bucks down the road. Right now it's a little more of an expense, but when I go to open another location, potentially down the road, but when I go to open another location, potentially down the road, the foundation will be set that I can open another store and I don't now have to go, do all these other things to run a multi-store operation. The foundational work is and ready to go and, again, that's not something that I have to do at one store, but I'm using this time to set that foundation so that when I get to that next step, if it comes, I it might, I'm ready to go and when the deal comes, you know, really in this year, action I've always been an actionable person.
Speaker 1:I do research a lot too, but I don't research myself into not making a decision. You know, I research enough to is it yes or no? And I try to really be decisive and make the decision and pull the trigger, so to say, and move on. And risk taker maybe I don't know. I'm okay with that. It's an educated risk, usually a calculated risk. Sometimes you got to take the risk, sometimes it doesn't always work out, but a lot of times it does Everything's risk. I've heard this. It is.
Speaker 2:Somebody says like like hey, you wake up in the morning. As soon as you get out of your bed, everything is risk. It is, you get in your car, it's risk yeah, you know so that's that. That's very smart that you're taking care of that. Uh, being proactive um, if you watch some of my podcasts, I always ask a guest to share a story that had a big impact in their life. Can you recall?
Speaker 1:something. I think we already touched on it a little bit, but I think it was the time period when I was taking over the shop by myself and, again, I wasn't going to be the one fixing cars. So I spent some money and bought my partner out of this business and I had a phone number and some reviews and a lease, but nobody to actually fix the cars. And I think that I've always had self-confidence to agree. Again, I really try not to be cocky or, but I believe in myself, I believe in my abilities and I think there was definitely some doubt, and sometimes doubt creeps in on certain things, you know, if you allow it to creep in and I think that that was something that really changed me, that showed me that like, if I can take an automotive repair shop that's been running for four years and and buy my partner out who's a technician, and I can take an automotive repair shop that's been running for four years and buy my partner out who's a technician, and I can hire somebody who's a technician, and I mean sometimes when I tell this story, people ask me they're like wait, you like basically rebooted this repair shop and you're not the technician, like that sounds crazy. And even looking back on it, it was pretty crazy, you know, to think about it. But I think that that was the thing that really probably changed me.
Speaker 1:And even then, even after then, I think I still had a little bit of self-doubt and, like, I knew I was a good owner and I knew that I ran a decent business. But I think there was always still some self-doubt about like, well, I'm not the best technician in Auburn, so why would somebody want to come to me versus somebody that's an owner operator, that's like a really good technician and he owns his own shop. But I think, as time went on and you know I love getting reviews from customers and I mean I we have I don't know close to 500 reviews on Google, almost, I think, 4.9 stars, and it's like I mean considering have I don't know close to 500 reviews on Google, almost I think, 4.9 stars, and it's like I mean considering being an auto repair business and customers aren't always happy. I take pride in that. You know that we have a lot of happy customers.
Speaker 1:And I think that when I look at that, that's what really makes me happy. And again, circling back on customers and the experience is just really learning that All you really need to do to have a successful business is have good people who can take care of your customers how they should be taken care of, and everything else will work itself out over time. That's it. You can really do any business you want to do if you can find good people and take care of those people, and those people will take care of customers.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the reasons why I wanted to start this podcast was because, when I was in college, I observed that our education system doesn't really teach entrepreneurship. You know, that's a whole other podcast, I know.
Speaker 1:But I kind of just wanted to touch on this because I was watching these teachers.
Speaker 2:They would teach a subject and it's all theory. There was never anything in practice. So they can go down how to be a manager, how to run a company, but if they never ran a company, they're not going to give you the insight, the actual practical things.
Speaker 1:The school of hard knocks, those you know, the actual, practical things right, the school of hard knocks.
Speaker 2:So if you, let's say, this podcast, if there is someone who is out there who's thinking about starting their own business whether it's in service or a product, whatever right Is there any book recommendation or something that you would recommend them to study or learn?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, what is it? I would say. If I had to do one Okay, and you were starting a new business, it would be the E-Myth Revisited. I just feel like that is again, it goes back to the customer experience. Again, it goes back to the customer experience.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I remember so clearly from that book is he talks about McDonald's a lot, and McDonald's, in my opinion, is not anything that you know. Why do people go to McDonald's? Is it because it's the best food? Is it because the most healthy food? Like? Why do you go to McDonald's? It's because, if you don't like, why do you go to mcdonald's? It's because, if you don't know where else you want to go, you know that you can go to any mcdonald's and it's going to be exactly the same as the mcdonald's wherever else you went. Right, and that's probably something that they do better than anybody else on the planet.
Speaker 1:Consistency, consistency and sops right, standard planet Consistency. Consistency and SOPs right, standard operating procedures. They can hire almost anybody and bring them into their system, no matter their skill level, their level of common sense right, they can literally hire anybody off the street and their systems are so locked in that they can make it happen right, anybody can come into their system. My business isn't that good, I don't know about your business, but I think the more that you can take any business and try to strive for that, that's what will allow you to scale is being able to have that. And again, they talk a lot about the customer experience and making sure that that's good, and so I think that would be. If there's a book, that would probably be the book that I would recommend. Also, join your local chamber or networking group. Talk to as many other business owners as you can find. That's where the real knowledge is. And even better, if you can find somebody in your own field, even better, because the knowledge that they're going to share is going to be even more valuable because they're already in that industry.
Speaker 1:And what I found is most business people that are successful and the people that you probably want to talk to are more than willing to share any information that you want to discuss and share. You just have to ask. I agree with that and and that's a big thing that I think people are either afraid to do or, for whatever reason, it doesn't happen again. Hey, how's your business going? It's great. Never been better, man, you know, and that's usually not the case.
Speaker 1:And so I think that if we could maybe remove some of that stigma too, of people that own businesses just being real with other business owners and say, hey, like yeah, I'm struggling with this right now, like I'm not really understanding my P and L, like I need to. That's understandable, right. Like you're a plumber, Nobody taught you how to read a P&L. You know what I mean. At some point you got to figure it out if you want to be successful. But, like, how do I know if you don't know how to read a P&L? If you tell me things are awesome, you know what I'm saying. And so I think it's just being willing to ask for help. The more that I've been open to asking for help and receiving that from people, it just has accelerated what I've been doing even quicker than trying to do it on my own.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, you know. Yeah, absolutely you know. Then there is this thing where a lot of people are afraid to ask. They're afraid what the other person may think. You know they may think low of you, like who are you to come and ask me? You know, and usually the people who you want to approach, they're, they're usually, they're never like that. And the ones once I realized that I always found courage to come up to someone, no matter what, even like I, you know, people would be surprised who actually responded to my DMs on Instagram, for example or LinkedIn and Twitter, right, you know, and all I had to do is just like find the courage to type a message, totally Like what's the worst that can happen, exactly.
Speaker 1:That they're not going to respond.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you know, I think that's a really good point that you bring up.
Speaker 1:Bring up Like I, I spent a good portion of my life worrying about what other people think, not just in business, but personally. Um, if I do this, what is this person going to think about me? And that's so detrimental, you know, to have that mentality, um, and I've been guilty of that for so many years, and even maybe, like just into the last few years of my life, have I really started to get myself out of that bubble of like I don't care what people think about me, like I know what I am doing and how it makes me feel or why I'm doing it, and I don't need somebody to put their stamp of approval that this is okay for me to do it. Like, if I know it's right and I feel it's right or it's best for me maybe it's not even best and it's wrong you know I'm going to do it and I really don't. I mean, I take everybody into consideration, what they say, but I trust in myself more than anything these days.
Speaker 1:And that's paying dividends as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes I think, like how much is there missed opportunity and potential that's never realized, because someone is just sitting there and afraid and thinking that, oh, I'm not going to do this because this person is going to think this of me and there is just an illusion, it's, it's a, it's a narrative, that is only in here. It's not even real. People just make up this reality for themselves. So, wayne, thank you so much for this.
Speaker 1:I really, really appreciate it. I appreciate you having me, too, enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much and, by the way, if somebody wants to come visit you, tell them how they can find you, your shops, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:Auburn Auto Doctors. Auburnurn auto doctorscom. Uh, you can schedule in real time. We have some really cool technology that we have available so you can go on our website. You can call. Again, I have some of the best, most friendly people in the industry. They'll answer the phone when you call. Um same thing at the gun store it's Auburn guns and ammo. Um, if you're familiar with Auburn, it's at the iconic statue property on Auburn Ravine. And yeah, again, just we like to take care of people. I love first-time people at the gun store or the auto shop, but again, just we love meeting people taking care of people. If you need gun help or car help, you know that's where you can find me. Awesome, thank you so much.
