100 - Next-Gen Success: Opportunities for Young Leaders in the Automotive Industry with Raven Harris

100 - Next-Gen Success: Opportunities for Young Leaders in the Automotive Industry with Raven Harris

August 14th, 2024 - 00:58:27

 

Show Summary:

In this webinar, Raven Harris, a successful Euro shop owner in Simi Valley, California, will share his journey and insights on how the industry is evolving and the vital role young talent plays in its future. We will explore the diverse career paths available, from technicians and managers to aspiring shop owners, and discuss the skills and mindset needed to thrive in these roles.

Key Takeaways:

1. Attracting & Retaining Young Talent: Understand the importance of attracting young professionals to your shop and the strategies to do so effectively.
2. Exploring Opportunities: Discover the diverse career paths available for young individuals in the automotive industry, making it an excellent time to enter the field.
3. Fulfilling Industry Demand: Gain insights on how many shops are actively seeking technicians and the potential this creates for young professionals.
4. Developing Inexperienced Talent: Explore strategies to attract top talent and develop young, inexperienced individuals into key employees or even future shop owners.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Raven Harris, German Auto Specialist

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:19] - Raven describes his Air Force experience maintaining C-17 aircraft and how it parallels his current role as a shop owner.

[00:04:52] - He shares a late-night repair story that demonstrates his problem-solving mindset under pressure.

[00:08:17] - Raven explains how he rebranded the “oil change” into an “oil service” and doubled his revenue from that service line.

[00:10:03] - He outlines his decision to pursue business acquisition over real estate and how he found his first shop.

[00:13:34] - Raven breaks down the creative financing structure he used to purchase a $1.4M shop with only $70K out-of-pocket.

[00:18:09] - Since working with a coach from The Institute, his ARO jumped from $750 to $1,250, with a goal of hitting $1,500.

[00:21:29] - Raven discusses tracking ARO, AWRO, and close ratios - and how he uses these metrics to drive performance.

[00:26:22] - He shares why European repair shops offer a high-margin opportunity and how brand perception plays into value.

[00:36:45] - Raven talks about mentorship, learning from other multi-shop owners, and using recruiters to find top-tier talent.

[00:52:10] - Despite year-one challenges, from theft to lawsuits, Raven’s resilience and belief in solving problems helped him thrive.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?

Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSWDNzgsLwg

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

 

Links & Resources: 

• Want to learn more? Click Here
• Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
• See The Institute's events list: Click Here
• Want access to our online classes? Click Here

________________________________________

 

Jimmy Lea: Welcome. Good afternoon, friends. Glad you are here with us as we start this webinar. I'm super excited for our guest today as we talk about that next generation that's going to take over and that next generation of success going to be streaming into our industry, the automotive aftermarket.

Jimmy Lea: Those of you who are here, we're talking about the next generation of success and the success that they are going to have in this industry, the automotive aftermarket. And I'm super excited to be the host for you today. As we talk to specifically Raven Harris is the owner of German auto specialists up in Simi Valley, California.

Jimmy Lea: He is running a phenomenal shop there doing a great job with his technicians, with his his business. And one more shout out here, Raven for Craig Zale joining from Lucas, Texas. Craig, you're awesome. I've been to Craig's shop a couple of times too which is awesome. And I've been to Jeff's shop, which was the old shop.

Jimmy Lea: Jeff's now in a new shop. So Raven, thank you for joining. Glad to have you with us as we're talking about German auto specialists. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for taking some time to talk to us today. I'm excited to talk to you because of your background.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, for sure. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. Hey, you're welcome. You're in the Air Force and you worked on the C 10. 

Raven Harris: C 17 aircraft, correct. 

Jimmy Lea: C 17 aircraft. My father was also in the Air Force, and he worked on the control panel for airplanes. I'm trying to remember which one. The big bomber airplane back in the Vietnam era.

Jimmy Lea: Huh? Maybe a little after the B 52, maybe? That sounds right. That sounds right. Yeah, I have to find out from my dad. I'll get back to you and let you know because you're on the C 17. And what is the C 17? What do you, what did you do? 

Raven Harris: It's like the workhorse cargo jet of the Air Force. So, basically they just send missions, drop packages all over the world and we maintain those.

Jimmy Lea: So this was the big mama jamba, like the size of a football airplane, football field, airplane 

Raven Harris: one smaller than the largest one we have, which is the C five. Right. So you can actually fit a C 17 inside of the C five, but the C 17, the most capable because it's just large enough that it can actually take big missions, but it's just small enough that it's still maneuverable and you can get it around and land on shorter runways.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. That's very cool. When I was in Las Vegas, I had an office very near Nellis Air Force Base. And I would tell you, I would swear to you, there was a C 17 or a big massive cargo type plane that went over the top of our office. You couldn't hear yourself think it was so Loud. 

Raven Harris: Right, right. Yeah. No, those things get crazy.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and even the stealth bomber that came over, not the stealth fighter, but the stealth bomber came over our office once. It was past us. The noise came, but phenomenal situation to have happen. Just crazy. So what did you do on the C 10s or are you a mechanic? 

Raven Harris: Yes, actually I was a mechanic in the air force, but the official title is crew chief.

Raven Harris: So basically I'm like a general doctor of the aircraft. So I'll find the problem and I'll call someone else out to fix it. So kind of similar to what I'm doing now. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. I've got a story from my grandfather. He worked in the commercial airlines. He was also a technician. 

Raven Harris: Okay. 

Jimmy Lea: Tell me a story about a situation where you got called in to fix something.

Jimmy Lea: They had spent a day or two trying to fix it. And here you jump in. With your team and have it fixed very, in a very short amount of time. You got any examples like that? 

Raven Harris: Yeah, just a few times. Usually it's going to be engine related problems. So we come across some engine problems when the first team of crew chiefs couldn't come out.

Raven Harris: Then it's in second team, just some. The team is a little bit more specialized and we work with the Jets crew to go ahead and get that knocked out and Jets crew. They're definitely specialize in just engine. So they had called over my team pretty late in the night. We were working night shift and they're probably about 12 hours into the job and they seem to be stuck on this portion of the, the aircraft where the jet the engine is supposed to have the stress reversers where the thrust reversers are going to help stop and break the engine. So basically what it does is it takes the the airflow right and pushes it out towards the back of the engine. But when you're using the thrust reversers going to take that airflow and blow it back towards the front of the plane.

Raven Harris: And that way it actually helps slow down the aircraft. And so the thrust reversers were broken and they were doing 12 hours and they were ready to go home. So we came in second shift and I got ahead, went ahead and knocked it out. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice, nice. My, my grandfather that worked in as a technician on large commercial aircrafts, always as a technician said, people want to underestimate us.

Jimmy Lea: They want to say, Oh, you work with your hands. Oh you're a wrench. Oh, you just turn wrenches. You're not very smart. Well, this is the smartest thing that I have ever heard of. They called him on Christmas day. Jim, we're having a problem. I'm named after grandpa and dad and me and then my son. Jim, we're having a problem.

Jimmy Lea: Can't get this fixed. We've been working on it for a day and a half, but we know you can get it fixed. We just can't get fuel from the tank into the engine. And he says, it's Christmas day. I'm here with my family having a great time. Thank you. I'll be there in a day or two, right? I mean, after Christmas, they said no.

Jimmy Lea: We've got people here. They're in San Francisco. They're on the, they're in the airport. They need to get home. It's their Christmas as well. He says, all right, well, I'll tell you what I, if you guarantee me. Three. Triple pay. Triple pay. Guaranteed. No matter how long it takes me to fix the job or not, I want a full guaranteed full eight hours.

Jimmy Lea: They said yes. He went in, fixed it within 30 minutes, 45 minutes. On his way out, the manager's like, no way no, I'm not going to pay you triple pay for eight hours. You were here for 30 minutes. And somebody from the C suite was coming along and said, you're going to pay him. Thank you very much, Jim. Have Merry Christmas.

Jimmy Lea: Goodbye. Go home. And the plane was able to take off. The families got home technicians. I Large respect for technicians and the ability to make things run and make things work. It's a very specialized skill set and you, thank you for your service. Thank you for what you've done for the Air Force and thank you for.

Jimmy Lea: Keeping us safe and at home. Appreciate that. 

Raven Harris: Well, it's funny. That story reminds me of this lesson. My first coach at the Institute would always tell me is like, you have to understand price versus value. Right. And you'd always give me a similar story about like, he was a lawyer. And there was a train that had I think it was like this carrying potatoes or something like that.

Raven Harris: And the train got stuck and it wasn't able to cross over some certain border. And you know, they were calling all these lawyers trying to figure out how we can get this train across this border. And they called in what was it, they called in the instructor, my lawyer or my instructor, the lawyer, and they asked him how can we get this situation resolved?

Raven Harris: And he's like, all right, well, you're going to have to pay me a certain amount. And so he charged him, like, I think three times his normal rate but he was the only one who could get it done. And so he got it done probably in like just a few hours from a couple phone calls, but he's the only one who had that ability.

Raven Harris: So. You know, there's price and then there's the value. And so the value definitely outweighed the price at that moment. 

Jimmy Lea: So, Oh, that's a beautiful situation now. And I've heard that story may have translated into your business as well. When you started with the Institute, you had an oil change and now it's an oil service.

Jimmy Lea: What can you tell me about that? Yeah. 

Raven Harris: Yeah. That's a great segue actually. So, I was looking for opportunities to be able to increase my ARO. And so, my average ticket price needed to go up. And so I figured if I'm going to raise the average, I need to raise the lowest ticket item that I have in the shop.

Raven Harris: Instead of doing an oil change, I swapped over to what we like to call an oil service where we'll do an oil change, but we've added a few bells and whistles to help the customer just get more longevity out of the old chain. So we'll go ahead and we'll add in some we added this almost like a degreaser that goes inside of the engine and we run it for 15 minutes and it pulls all the oil, all the gunk out.

Raven Harris: And then. After we flush the oil, then we put new oil in and then we run it. And then we'll usually add an additive on top of that. So, instead of just the basic oil change, now we tell them we don't do all changes, we do oil services, right? So it's a full service. You're going to get more mileage out of this oil change.

Raven Harris: And we were able to double the price from one 50 per oil change to 300.

Jimmy Lea: 300. 

Raven Harris: Yep. So that's about our lowest job you can get in the shop, 300, 350, depending on how many tons of oil. 

Jimmy Lea: Dude, congratulations. That's awesome. 

Raven Harris: I know, it's cool. 

Jimmy Lea: That is super cool. Oh, and a shout out to your coach with the Institute. Shout out to Kevin for helping us to understand the difference between value and cost.

Jimmy Lea: You're providing a tremendous amount of value. Oh, I love that. Okay. So let's go back into the beginning. You're in the air force, you get out of the air force, you're getting ready. Get into the automotive industry. What motivated you that direction to get into the automotive? Why not stay in a commercial and in a commercial flights flight mechanic?

Jimmy Lea: Sure. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, I'm not sure how well this response is gonna fit with the general mechanic, but me, I was just actually I used to buy real estate while I was in the air force and started buying rental properties. I'm doing the math and I'm like, all right, it's going to take me about 100 houses before I can get financial freedom.

Jimmy Lea: So maybe there's a better opportunity. So I started looking into business acquisition. I'm like, Hey, you know what, I could actually go out there and buy a business. Instead of start one. And so I had this kind of idea in my head and I just started studying up on the process. How can I buy a business?

Jimmy Lea: What type of companies are out there? What's a good business to buy? What are the prices? And after I started teaching myself some evaluation I just told myself, you know what, I could do it. So I moved back home to California where I'm from. I'm living in Los Angeles and I started looking just about an hour and a half radius away from where I'm at in Hollywood.

Jimmy Lea: So, spent some time, took me about, let's say two months to find the business, but it took me another six months to close on it, right. Through negotiations and things like that. But I finally came across a European auto repair shop and kind of checked all the boxes for me. And so I knew that this would be a good opportunity going forward.

Jimmy Lea: I just took a risk on myself. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. And that's awesome, man. Congratulations for doing real estate while you were still in the service. I, and I agree with you this, buy it versus build it. There's a book. Yeah. Say it again. I didn't build. Yes. I've been reading this book. This is a really good book. My brother turned me onto it.

Jimmy Lea: He's looking at buying this metal fabrication company. And so he's looking at buy it instead of. Build it from the ground up a phenomenal idea. So the get into this concept because here you are just out of the air force. You find a company, it takes you two months to find it. It takes you six months to buy it.

Jimmy Lea: What is the financial

Jimmy Lea: makeup look like for buying a business? What did that look like for you? 

Raven Harris: Well, I knew that I wanted to find a business doing between 500, 000 and a million dollars in EBITDA. And so that's just a fancy financial term for saving profit. And with that I knew that if the company was less than 500, 000 in profit, most likely I couldn't hire a good management team in place.

Raven Harris: And also I wouldn't have enough meat on the bone to just have that barrier of safety. Because in my mind, and from what I've seen, usually in business is that the larger companies are usually safer, right? It's a lot easier to go from 100, 000 to zero than it is to go from a million dollars to zero, right?

Raven Harris: You got some more space in there. So I was looking for a business that had a decade of history that had great reviews. The shop where I had it, when I found it, it was doing about 500 five star reviews. So probably the greatest reviews for any repair shop that I've seen. Ever, right. And so, you know, there was a lot of tells that told me this company was going to be profitable and that it was going to be a good opportunity.

Raven Harris: And so, the business ended up doing about 600, 000 in profit every year. And I paid a 2. 3 X multiple came out to like 1. 4 million total. Okay. Yeah. And I can get into more about like how I broke that down through some creative financing and some different structures, but it's up to you guys. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Cause here you are looking at a company at a business and it's a profitable business and clearly somebody wants to get out, somebody wants to get in and I'm glad that you were able to get in there and you know, and you understand the financial model of what you're looking at so that you're able to get into it.

Jimmy Lea: What does it take to get a loan? For 1. 4 million. 

Raven Harris: Sure. Yeah. So, I guess he's gonna take some creativity and some good credit. I'd say if you got those two things, you could probably make it happen. And so, what I did is I was able to get about a million dollars financed through the SBA. And so, the SBA said, okay, we'll give you a million dollars on this business, but the seller said, I want 1.

Raven Harris: 4. I said, okay, that still fits within my evaluation criteria because I knew that without getting too technical, basically if you pay anything over a three and a half X multiple on payment, right? And so what a multiple is you're going to multiply that EBITDA or that profit by a certain number.

Raven Harris: And so anything over three and a half, what happens is your debt to income ratio becomes too high. And so banks won't loan on those types of businesses. So I knew I needed to buy a business. And well below three, because even three was too high for my threshold. It was like you know, almost like 50, 50.

Raven Harris: Like if I make a hundred thousand, 50 goes back towards debt and 50 goes to me, you know, and I just thought that's not enough breathing room. So I needed to get it way below three. And you know, once he said 1. 4, I knew that was doable. But another thing is the business was making a lot of cash.

Raven Harris: Right. And so because it was making a lot of cash on the taxes, those taxes weren't necessarily reporting all of that cash. And so what I needed to do was I needed some one proof, right, that the cash was there. And so I kind of just did that through some investigative journalism, right, just kind of looking at how busy was the shop.

Raven Harris: What's the card count? What's the average ticket price? And I was able to work backwards from there and say, okay, so this business has definitely done this revenue and their profit margins are definitely this number. So I can say that they have me that cash, even though they didn't report it on their taxes, but the bank said, Hey, we'll only go ahead and loan you on what we can see on the taxes.

Raven Harris: And that was about a three X on 300, 000. So for the other 300, 000. There, which was basically that extra 400, 000 of that 400, 000 back to the seller. So what I told him, what we'll do is I said listen, what we can do is I can set you up with a seller note and I'll pay you that 400, 000 over the next five years.

Raven Harris: And so we broke it down to where in the first year I pay about 40 percent of the note. And then over the last four years, I pay about 15 to 20%. And so. With that, I was also able to get my down payment from the bank because they said, Hey, you need to come in at 10 percent for the SBA. Oh, but now that the seller is holding about 30 percent of the total purchase price as a note, we'll actually lower from 10 percent to five.

Raven Harris: So I was able to buy the business for about 70, 000 out of my own pocket. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I was going to say you're about 70. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's phenomenal. Congratulations. So when did this all happen? I mean, is this like. Yesterday? Is it last year? Two years ago? Three years ago? How far in are you? Sure, yeah.

Jimmy Lea: So, 

Raven Harris: I guess technically now I'm just over a year and a half. We're right at the year and a half mark. Baby! Last February I got started. So, First year was taking all my lessons, taking them to the chin, and it was a lot to learn, figuring it out. I remember I went to this what was it?

Raven Harris: I went to this event for the parts authority where they send everyone to Cancun. Right. And so it's like a networking event for all the mechanic shops. And if you sell a certain amount of parts, they'll send you. So I went over there and I'm talking to some other guys who own shops and they're telling me like, yeah, you know what?

Raven Harris: I've got like, seven shops. I'm like, how'd you do that? And they're like, Oh, you know what? I got a coach. I was like, really? I was like, wait a minute, like a light bulb moment. I was like, why am I not doing that? I should just go get information for people who already have it. Right. So 

Jimmy Lea: they've been there, they done it.

Jimmy Lea: They've got the t shirt and the scars and the hat. They can show you the direction. Carry on. Okay. Keep going. 

Raven Harris: So that was basically it. I was kind of fumbling around in the dark, figuring things out. Just staying afloat really. But once I realized I should just get coaching and just speed through the rest of the way I just kind of went online and I found you guys and, you know, I saw your podcast and you guys had great information.

Raven Harris: I had auto leap at the time. So, you know, they would always have the podcast with Cecil and then You know, I just went for it and you know, everything my coach told me, I just took action as soon as possible. So he told me something on Monday, it'd be in the shop by Tuesday. 

Jimmy Lea: Dude, dude you're a model student, bro.

Jimmy Lea: That's freaking awesome. You know, I, here I was going to pontificate on Michael Jordan and, you know, Phil Jackson and you know, every professional athlete even has a coach, right. And, but you're the ideal student. So you get with the institute, you get with Kevin's your coach. What have you seen?

Jimmy Lea: What's the results that you have seen that has happened for you and your shop? 

Raven Harris: Sure. Yeah. So, definitely there's been much more order to the process than there was before we've been able to increase our ARO from 750 per ticket to about 1250 per ticket. And some months I get closer to the 13, but the goal is to get to 15.

Raven Harris: So I'm pushing it. And what else are some of the things I think that finding a good team as well, and what that team looks like maybe made everything, you know, night and day difference. So between those few factors pretty much set up at this point. So. 

Jimmy Lea: You know, so what does your team look like right now?

Jimmy Lea: Who is on your team? What does that look like? 

Raven Harris: Yeah. So I've got one lead technician and then three mechanics and one like intern type mechanic. Right. So I'd say, 

Jimmy Lea: is it an apprentice or is it, what's an intern? 

Raven Harris: Yeah, exactly. So, just really some high schooler came by and said he wanted to learn how to do oil changes and inspections.

Raven Harris: And we said, you know, we got a job for you, you know, shut up. Yeah, so it was a good opportunity for both of us because getting those inspections knocked out allows my guys to just kind of focus on, you know, changing parts and the money making opportunities. So, you know, and that's happened a few times that like high school is coming in and out.

Raven Harris: I just wanna learn inspections and oil changes and simple stuff so they could do to their car. So it's been working out. And then I have two service advisors in the front, and then me and I have an assistant. 

Jimmy Lea: And you have an assistant, okay. Yep. So, so your understanding of your financial model.

Jimmy Lea: I, I would say that's pretty well dialed in. What advice would you give others that are looking at their finances? How can they understand it better? What advice would you give them? 

Raven Harris: Sure. Yeah. So, I guess if it comes down to auto repair shop advice or just finances. Which one would you say?

Jimmy Lea: Do the finances first and then we'll go to the other one. 

Raven Harris: Okay. I think it's definitely important to what I did is I got a fractional CFO. Right. And so instead of a bookkeeper I found a chief financial officer and he works on like a billion dollar company. And then my small one, cause he does a part time and sick retired.

Raven Harris: So he's just. Kind of doing me a favor, but you can find people like that all over. They're called fractional CFOs. So it's like having a CFO for your company, but he only works part time, but that's really all you need because auto repair shops are pretty simple. You're doing the same things every week.

Raven Harris: Not too many moving parts. And so once you get set up. Then they could kind of look over your numbers. And what I do is I meet with my CFO every Tuesday and we go through my profit and loss statement and my balance sheet, and we kind of see what's going on in the business. And because I'm able to see it every week, I'm able to keep track of what's going on.

Raven Harris: And so, that's on the kind of the financial side, but on the shop number side, I'll look at you know, the close ratio, the ARO and the AWRO. And so the reason I looked at those numbers the most is because. If I see that the AWRO, right, which is the total ticket price that we give to the customer, that tells me how well are we doing inspections.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. To find that out too. So people understand ARO and ARWO. 

Raven Harris: Yeah. So if you have the air it was an AWRO, right. 

Jimmy Lea: Actual 

Raven Harris: I'm not even sure about the full term. I just know what it means. 

Jimmy Lea: ARO 

Jimmy Lea: is your average repair order. 

Raven Harris: Yeah. The ARO is average repair order. AWRO. I'm not sure. I just know it's the total ticket price.

Jimmy Lea: Average 

Jimmy Lea: written repair order 

Raven Harris: repair order. Yeah. So the average written repair order you just get to say, what did my guys find on the inspection? Right. Yes. How much did they present to the customer? Right. And for my service advisors to sell, right. Yes. So I know that my service advisors have a 50 to 60 percent close ratio, right?

Raven Harris: So what that tells me is that with a 50 to 60 percent close, the more I can present the customer, the more money I can make, right? So I keep that AWRO high, right? I try to get my guys to go for 3, 000 worth of work because they'll close on 50%. Right. Which is 1, 500. And that would put me at the ARO, the average ticket price of 1, 500.

Raven Harris: Right. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. I love it. 

Raven Harris: So look at those numbers. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Now, also, we're talking about things that are necessary or needed on the vehicle, or it's a future item. This isn't selling work just to sell work. This isn't Painting shocks on a Ferrari. This is proper. Your shocks are seeping, weeping.

Jimmy Lea: Here's a picture DVI shows it. So there's a question coming in from Chris, his question about your intern. How do you know if the intern can spot an issue, recommend it, escalate it and move it up to the more experienced techs? How does the, your intern know the problems or issues if he's not a Trained mechanic or trained technician.

Raven Harris: Yeah. So, well, they're always going to get a lot of training before we just let them start looking at cars because that's the, my AWR was zero pretty quick if we just took whatever they found in our beginning. And so, what we'll do is we'll train them up and we use the tech metric. So we go through inspections with the.

Raven Harris: DVI digital vehicle inspection, and I've got a 60 point inspection where I can basically go step by step. They go ahead and they look over every part. And so my lead technician will show them, all right, for the brakes, this is what you're looking at. You're going to measure them with this. You're going to check the calipers.

Raven Harris: They're going to throw on look at the rotors. You're going to look for rust and all these things. So they have all this criteria for each step and they go down. At the end of the day it's really just a checklist that they can follow the checklist and follow orders. They can find problems. So, it's not necessarily that they know how to fix it or even that they know what the problem is, but they can alert us to the fact that, Hey, there's something going on here.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Oh, I love it. I love it. And also I say that. A technician, an intern and even an apprentice knows when something is worn, torn, frayed or broken, cracked, leaping, leaking, seeping, you can see those things and they just need to understand that when you see this, document it, then the more experienced technician can look at it and say, okay, yeah, that's an issue or okay, that's an issue, but not yet, maybe next visit.

Jimmy Lea: We can take care of that, 

Raven Harris: right? So they kind of bring it to the attention of someone who is more qualified. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. All right So let's go now for the young entrepreneur looking to Buy a shop purchase a shop look at a shop. How what advice would you give them in?

Jimmy Lea: Evaluating a shop or a business? 

Raven Harris: Sure. You asked me i'm definitely going to say go euro, right? European is going to be one of the best and the reason why is there's a specific Benefit to this model, right? If you have European and that's it, the margins are higher, right? So you're going to have higher quality customer usually with more expendable funds and more willing to do higher ticket repairs on their car.

Raven Harris: Right. And so what that means is that you're not going to have to fight over, do you have the lowest oil change in the area? Right. Because they are already, what they already have the expectations set by the brand, right? So BMW, Mercedes. Porsche, Ferrari, they already, when they buy the car, they know, hey, this is not going to be an affordable, reliable vehicle to give you from A to Z.

Raven Harris: It's just going to 

Jimmy Lea: It's not a 

Jimmy Lea: grocery getter? 

Raven Harris: Right. I mean, they use it for that. Definitely hundred percent. That's what most of our customers are using it for to pick up the kids in soccer practice. But it's, you know, just the outward representation of themselves. They want to they feel as though they're more of a higher quality individual, you know, they put into their car, they care about it.

Raven Harris: They care about their appearance, how they look, things like that. And so those type of customers, they expect a higher quality service, but that also means a higher price. Yes. 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. So, so you your advice is definitely look European, but even regardless, even if it's Toyota, Lexus or it's all domestic or it's all Asian vehicles or whatever your mix is gonna be.

Jimmy Lea: Your evaluation holds true to all of it. 

Raven Harris: A hundred percent. Definitely. I mean, so usually what you'll see is that you'll see a shop that's the same doing all Japanese cars. They're going to have margins. Closer to 20 percent on the bottom line. So if it's doing a hundred thousand dollars, you'll get 20 grand at the year in your pocket.

Raven Harris: Right. And so, that, that could be definitely still a great opportunity if you buy the business large enough, right. Because you know, a smaller business it's making a hundred thousand, right. And you only get to keep 20. It's not going to be worth your time. You will got to go for something larger, but any business any auto repair shop can do those 20 percent margins.

Raven Harris: That's basically standard, especially if you get the coaching, you know. It's a numbers, right? 20 percent is basically the standard. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and here's something interesting, Graven, as I go around the country, most shops that I go and visit okay, this isn't that broad of a brush. A lot of shops that I go to, not all of them, a lot of them are in the three to 4 percent net profit, 

Raven Harris: right?

Jimmy Lea: They're alive, they're breathing, they're one hiccup away, one problem away, one lawsuit away from closing the doors because that three and 4 percent net. That's pretty tough. 

Jimmy Lea: Those 

Jimmy Lea: shops that are in coaching that I've been to across the country. Okay. There's been one, one shop I've gone to that did not have coaching at the time, but he did come from coaching.

Jimmy Lea: He was able to implement everything and kept it going. And that's the hard thing, right? To be consistent and can keep it going. He kept it going. So most shops that are in some sort of a coaching training situation are 20 percent plus 20 percent net plus. 

Raven Harris: And I think that's why the opportunity is so big because there's so many shops out there, right?

Raven Harris: With these low margins. And so when you buy a business, you're buying it based off their numbers, right? You're not buying it based off what you can do with it. So you can look at a business and say, Alright, like today, if I wouldn't do a shop based off my time being in the company, I've learned what I should look for when I'm going to buy another shot.

Raven Harris: So I'm actually in the process of buying a second auto repair shop now, another one out in closer to the beach. And so, with that, I know that there's certain criteria that I'm going to look for that even if the business isn't profitable, I can put my management style in place. I can use my numbers.

Raven Harris: I can say I could take What my shop is doing here, and I can duplicate it, copy and paste it onto another location because I already know how the systems ran. So if it's running at three, 4 percent margins, I'll get it up to 20 percent if it's a domestic, and I'll get it up to 30 percent if it's European.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. So I've got a Question coming in from Alex. And I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this question or not the way he's asking. He says, what's the best route in a cost perspective to access information, to diagnose and repair Euro products without purchasing the excessively priced right from the OE with a subscription besides pro demand all data identifics and the advice for him.

Raven Harris: He's trying to figure out how to not use all that. Is that what I'm getting? 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, he's trying to figure out how to fix euros without getting the euro software. 

Raven Harris: Okay. Well, what I did is I just reached out to another shop owner and I told him let's split the cost of all data. So I still use it, but Oh, nice.

Raven Harris: Because he could have multiple users. So I told him, I think it's like 200 bucks. I sent him 100 bucks a month to get access to that. There's also some other, there's a website for BMWs called new TIS, N E W T I S. It's not even an American platform. I think it's like under a Russian name because BMW keeps shutting it down.

Raven Harris: But you can pay like 50 to get access to that. And it's called like newtist. ru. And you, once you get access it's got basically all the documentation and word data for BMW specific. So it's good stuff. It's got like, exact repair orders and how to remove parts and put them back together.

Raven Harris: It's got part numbers. It's got everything in there. So newtist. ru if you're a Beamer guy. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice nice. So, thanks for talking about that. And Alex has more questions. Maybe you and Alex can connect after or something like that. But back to the shop and your shop that you've got. Are you looking at expanding?

Jimmy Lea: You talked about being able to rubber stamp your 20 percent or 30 percent and take it over to other shops. Where are you at with that? 

Raven Harris: Yeah. So, basically the beginning of this year, I was still figuring out, I was like, okay, what do I want to do forward? You know, I got a management team in place. I go into my shop about once every two weeks, go say what's up to the guys, make sure everything's working order and pick up some cash.

Raven Harris: And, you know, I'm on my way. And so I'm like, you know what, I think I could probably just go ahead and do this again because it's working out for me. So, I started just basically getting back online similar to how I did for my first business. I just went to businessesforsell. com and another website called Axial and reaching out to old brokers that I had been in contact with before.

Raven Harris: And you can find them just through internet searches, you know, and so I give them a call. I tell them what I'm looking for. I'm looking for an auto repair shop in Southern California. I'm looking for it to do over 500, 000 a year in EBITDA or profit. And I wanted to have at least 10 years experience with some good reviews and I would take the rest from there.

Raven Harris: And then they'll usually send me a list of people. I'll reach out. I'll tell the the owners. Hey, I usually do purchase businesses for between two and four X multiple. And would you be interested in selling or be thought about retiring or something like that? 

Jimmy Lea: Interesting. You know, that's a great way is just even to search all the euro shops in your hour and a half radius, walk in and say, Hey, I'm looking to talk to the owner.

Raven Harris: Yeah. And if that doesn't work for you, if you want to move with some speed, you can also write a letter. To all the like five star reviewed euro shops in your area and sign them, right? So you can type out the letters, sign them, and then send them out through the mail. And you can probably send out like a couple hundred letters in a day.

Raven Harris: That'll save you some time from driving. And the close ratio on that is about a four to 5 percent callback. So if you send out 200 letters, you should get about eight calls back. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that, that'd be nice. That'd be nice. Yeah, there was a gentleman that I know of in, in California, San Francisco Bay Area, and he kept in touch with a lot of the shops around his area.

Jimmy Lea: Take them to lunch, take them to breakfast, play in the long play, because he wanted to buy their company, wanted to buy their business. And it got to a point where one of them was like, okay, well, that's it I'm done, you know, here's the price. And as they were negotiating the deal, The gentleman passed away, so now he's working with the wife in trying to purchase this business.

Jimmy Lea: This is what we were looking at. This is what we had agreed on. Are you still interested in selling to me? And he was able to get it for a pretty dang good price. And it was the price that the previous owner had agreed on that they came to terms and they were actually able to make a deal.

Jimmy Lea: So, yeah, I love that you're expanding the kingdom, if you will, expanding the walls, expanding your reach and your influence in the industry. That's awesome. Let's make sure that we make something really clear here that we are not propagating theft of information. We're not propagating going around any OEs.

Jimmy Lea: If you're in the Euro business, in the Euro industry, you definitely want to have that proper information, the proper tools. It takes those proper tools. So I've been to quite a few shops that every single line of vehicle has a specialty tool. And so they'll have all the Volvo tools. They'll have all the Saab tools because that's what they work on.

Raven Harris: Yeah. Yeah. That would be crazy. 

Jimmy Lea: In that Euro industry, you've got all the BMW tools, all the Mercedes tools, because they're not the same, right? They are different, right? You've got to make sure you have the right tools to diagnose the right vehicles. 

Raven Harris: Yeah, at the end of the day you're going to be using it so much.

Raven Harris: It's worth the investment. It doesn't make sense to try to get around it. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And make friends with those domestic shops down the street from you, Raven. Cause they might have a Euro card that they ought not be working on and they could bring it to you. Yeah. That's a great way of doing that as well.

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Okay. So want to give a shout out to, you have a mentor in the industry. Bob. Tell me about Bob. 

Raven Harris: Yeah. So, actually I came out to to an event. What was it? The marketing event you guys threw 2023. 

Jimmy Lea: Mars, 

Jimmy Lea: the Mars conference. 

Raven Harris: So I was there and we were going over some of the social media portions and while they were doing that I was out in the lobby talking to the owner of wicked file, which is Bob, and he was telling me about his software so wicked file basically allows you to track your invoices for parts, your returns your credits.

Raven Harris: And it puts it all under one platform. So you can actually see what's going on. Okay. Did you get the credit for this part? Was this part returned? What happened when you ordered this part, but it didn't make it onto the RO. It was a part of stolen by an employee. You did it disappear. What happened?

Raven Harris: Right. And so, this kind of, you know, Handles everything from from beginning to end when it comes down to parts. And so I was just asking him a ton of questions, trying to figure it out. And as we talk more, he was just giving me more information, just generally about opening up shops and how to manage it.

Raven Harris: He's got about 10 shops himself. And so, he's the one who kind of gave me the idea to just keep going with getting more shops. Cause one of the issues that I had come across is, Hey, it's hard to find mechanics. I don't know if I want to double down on buying more shops, if I run into some issues.

Raven Harris: So, He let me know that he was doing something similar what I was doing, which is just reaching out through headhunters, and they'll go out and find them for you. You know, you have to pay a little bit of a premium to be able to hire these people to find good employees. But from what I've been able to see, it's definitely been worth it.

Raven Harris: And so I'm not really spending any money, any time to go out and do it, but I just paid him the money and they're usually bringing in really Eight players. And so of the two or three people they bought in, they've been really good in my shop. Start players immediately. So, definitely been worth it.

Raven Harris: And if they're able to do it for one shop, they can definitely do it for more. And so, you know, those few tips that Bob had given me were really helpful. And I ended up getting his number and I still talk to him to this day. And you know, we just kind of chat business and whenever I need some help on wiki file or whatever, he'll pick up and tell me what's going on.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. And I've heard some horror stories where shops have paid shipping on a part two, three, four times because they kept getting an invoice. So they just kept, they would just pay it. And here it adds up a lot and wicked file. What a phenomenal program. What a phenomenal software to help you as a shop owner, make sure that you are.

Jimmy Lea: Charging for the parts. You are getting on the invoice. You are getting on the repair order. Your technicians we trust them that they're the best, but you know, occasionally 

Jimmy Lea: parts go missing. 

Jimmy Lea: We don't want that. 

Raven Harris: Even if you're doing a great job for sure, there's no way you can catch it, like the things that we could fire catches.

Raven Harris: Are like so minuscule that you would have to be have a full time parts person. They would have to be here documents side by side every single document, the statements credits everything would have to be like you'd have to line it all up. No one's doing that I can guarantee it you know there's somebody looking over it.

Raven Harris: But no one's going to be able to catch it like Wicked Fowl can. So it's almost mandatory, I'd say at this point, especially if you're doing over a million. Less than a million you can manage to get a couple losses in parts throughout the year because things slip through the cracks. But over a million, it's definitely something you need to be looking at.

Jimmy Lea: Well, you heard it here from Raven. If you're over a million, you need Wicked Fowl. Their commission's in the mail, the check's in the mail, Raven. Hey, you know what? And I just drew a parallel between something you said earlier and something you just said now, those companies, those businesses that are at a million, there's a lot more runway or there's a lot more ladder to come down before you hit zero versus a hundred thousand to hit zero, same thing with your shops, if you have two, three, four, five, 10, 20, 30 shops, you've got a lot more.

Jimmy Lea: Available to you that you could move a technician here within, if you've got that group, if you've got a solid foundation, and if you're treating your people extremely well, they love you they recruit for you. Now your commissions to those headhunters, while it was absolutely warranted needed necessary in the beginning.

Jimmy Lea: Now your word of mouth is drawing in all those technicians, building the kingdom even further. 

Raven Harris: Came to the same conclusion. You figured it out. It's like, the bigger you go, it's almost like the safer, you know, it seems more risky, but you know, you're looking at it from the wrong perspective, you know, the larger the company, you know, if you have a small shop, right.

Raven Harris: And you are, you're a service advisor and you have two mechanics, right? One day, one of your mechanics calls out sick. 50 percent of your workload just disappeared overnight because your mechanic just called out sick, right? So you can only 50 percent capacity, right? And most likely they weren't even working at 100 percent capacity.

Raven Harris: So now you're like at 20 or 30 percent capacity, right? Because no one's 100 percent efficient all the time. Yeah. That's if you just have one shop, right? But let's say you have a large shop or you have multiple shops. You have one manager, he manages multiple shops and you can move mechanics around, like you said, and you can share information and you can maybe even share tools and parts and get things faster.

Raven Harris: Oh, I have the spare part over here. We can get it to you. Things like that. So, the business gets more efficient and more profitable the larger goes and you actually deter from risk. If you're a larger company versus a small one. 

Jimmy Lea: I love that. I love that. Let's talk about you talk about your mentor.

Jimmy Lea: You talk about your coaches. We also, you have interns, you have apprentices that have now come into your shop. Are you looking at expanding that program? Are you looking at giving back to your apprentices, expanding that program? What does that look like for you 

Raven Harris: currently? I mean, it's definitely something that I've been thinking about trying to get a full program put together, but it's so hit and miss with finding people, especially the younger guys they come in and then they, you know, they want to go back to school or they want to change careers or something like that.

Raven Harris: So, you know, we give them opportunities when they come by, but we haven't been doing the outreach for that so far. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. You know, there are some apprentice programs that are already established. They're already. for having me. Bye. approved with the federal workforce, even the state of California, to where there are grants you can apply for 50 percent of their pay is paid by the federal workforce.

Jimmy Lea: And then you're covering the other half. There are a lot of programs out there that are already done established. So the groundwork Maybe easier for you than creating it all from scratch. 

Raven Harris: Y'all have to check that out. 

Jimmy Lea: Definitely. I know Napa has one, I know world pack has one. I know ASCCA has one. Are you familiar with ASCCA?

Raven Harris: No.

Jimmy Lea: It's the 

Jimmy Lea: association in California, specifically in California. So I need to connect you with Rocky and David. David Kousa is up in San Francisco area, Rocky is down in Santa Ana area. These guys they have a, it's a phenomenal association for California and it specifically looks after you as a shop owner.

Raven Harris: That's cool. Definitely. 

Jimmy Lea: What opportunities would you see that are available to younger generations? What opportunities are out there? 

Raven Harris: Well, when it comes to shop owning or just just in life? 

Jimmy Lea: All the above talk about life first. And then we can talk about shop owning a shop. 

Raven Harris: Yeah. So, I chose a European auto repair as my first business acquisition, but I just think the time now for buying companies the time is great.

Raven Harris: It's a perfect storm. I'd say there's a lot of baby boomers are looking to retire. And they usually have no succession plan. There's no successor to anyone to take their place once they're gone. And so there's going to be a huge wall transfer of people who either going to shut their doors because they're not going to work anymore.

Raven Harris: They don't have anyone to take over or they're going to be trying to sell. And so either way, that's an opportunity for you to get out there and take over a business that's already. Got decades of experience. It's already been making money and you can go and add some technology, add some hard work, some grit, some new energy to the business and make a good life for yourself.

Raven Harris: So the American dream is still out there if you're looking through acquisition. So I'm a big proponent of acquisition for people of all ages. But if you're young, you know, that should stop you. I was 23 when I found German, I was specialist. 

Jimmy Lea: 23. How old are you now? Raven just turned 26. Happy birthday.

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. So what does the future look like for you, Raven? We're going to get back on a podcast a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. What is your future? What does that look like for you? 

Raven Harris: Sure. So, right now I'm looking for a couple more auto repair shops. Maybe within the next year I'll have two more would be the goal.

Raven Harris: Maybe two every year for the next five years. After that, I've built up a size where either I will merge with another company that has like five or maybe I will sell it to a private equity company that would basically take my five shops or 10 shops and they'll do the merging for me right with another 10 and they'll move me up where I'll take a small equity position, maybe 30%.

Raven Harris: And then the rest I'll take as cash and then they'll go and roll it up to the next group and I'll get a little cut of this slice of that one as well. That could be one opportunity, but I really do like the industry and I do like owning an auto repair shop. I think it's a great cash flowing business. So another option is I'm actually going to another event, but one of the coaches that I was working with basically told me that I can take a company public if I make a certain amount of money and he basically gave me a book on how to do it.

Raven Harris: So. If I do get to the, let's say 10 shops in the next five years, maybe I keep them all and I take the company public and it trades on the NASDAQ. And you know, I'm able to just borrow against my shares and live off that that income. 

Jimmy Lea: That'd be phenomenal. So you were gonna retire when you are 32 years old?

Raven Harris: Yeah, something like that. Between 30 and 35 . The thing is like knowing me, if I was to have some big payday at the end where I like, I exit for, you know, here some, here's something interesting that I think people would like to know, is that if you go multiple shop it's the growth of the valuation is linear or not non-linear.

Raven Harris: So what happens is. You buy a shop for, you know, let's say two X, two to three X multiple. But you combine it with five other shops, right? And now you're not trading for two to three times profit anymore. You're trading for five to six, right? And if you can get to 5 million in EBITDA per year, you can actually sell that company for eight times, right?

Raven Harris: So for 5 million a year, you can have a 40 million exit. 

Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. 

Raven Harris: Numbers just get astronomical after a while. And so if I was able to buy let's say. Five more shops. Right. And then I combined them with a friend of mine who's got three shops and we put it together. We say we're all under one automotive group, right?

Raven Harris: And now we're at 5 million a year in EBITDA. Well, then we sell it to the next guy and we have a 40 million exit. And then I would take that 40 million and go buy 20 more shops. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I love it. I love it. And you know, the Institute, when we merged with Michael Smith, Hertzberg and Smith Institute now has that program where you can take your.

Jimmy Lea: Five shops combined with another, as soon as you have 30 rooftops it's ready. It's prime. It's ready for private equity acquisition. So yeah, we Raven, when you get there, we've got some guys in the. Institute that are looking to get to that 10, looking for the PE and the buyout. We've got other guys that are looking to get to the 50 and the hundred and then take it to PE, which that's of course, then an even bigger payout, a bigger payout day.

Raven Harris: Yeah that's the big one. 50 to 100 is kind of like the 

Jimmy Lea: goal, I'd say. That's a lot of shops. That's awesome. And you can do it, dude. You absolutely can do it for sure. Okay. Talk about Brian Bates and what he did. Yeah we did have you heard about What Michael did with Brian Bates. So, Michael set up a program in the Denver area and these shop owners, they all came together and they got to a point where they had 40 or so rooftops and they were ready to go, they took it to.

Jimmy Lea: P. E. and they got a lot more than the street value. Instead of only getting three to four to five times EBITDA, they're up in the eight to nine times EBITDA. Super successful. They, these guys are continuing to grow. They continue to go. Now that happened a year ago, March. So it's very recent past.

Jimmy Lea: It's very recent history. All right. Well, one last final question here coming in from Alex. His question is about expanding his kingdom. Would you recommend going with a lease and Alex, I want to make sure I say, ask this question, right? I have a successful shop, but I want to expand the footprint.

Jimmy Lea: Would you think lease and start fresh with the same name umbrella or buy an existing to have a foundation in the area of for some expansion? What would your advice be there, Raven? 

Raven Harris: So, the question is what I buy the 

Jimmy Lea: business, change the name, keep the business name, and just continue to expand the business.

Raven Harris: Yeah, so, it really just depends you know, how well is it 

Jimmy Lea: working. 

Raven Harris: For example, my company, I just kept the name because everyone in Simi Valley knows German Auto Specialists. It's been there for a decade and it was passed down between the seller's father before him. So it's just been around for a while.

Raven Harris: People know the name. It's got great reviews. You want to, you don't want to mess with the Google analytics too much, right? So I just kept it. But I think if I was to go and acquire more, what I would probably do is I would. Change the name to gas automotive group, right? So German auto specialist is gas automotive group, right?

Raven Harris: Interesting. Play on words and I think that it still allows me to acquire other shops that may not be German, right? So that'd be one of the things if I was to go and buy a Japanese repair shop. It does make sense to call it German auto specialist, but if I call it you know, gas automotive that, that gives me a little bit more leverage to, to move things around.

Raven Harris: And so I think it really just depends on the situation, how you want to attack the strategy, how you want to acquire. But name is important. If you're just going to buy one business, it's better to probably just to keep the one that's already got the brand recognition. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And if they're close.

Jimmy Lea: It makes sense to switch it out. But I've also heard of shops that kept and they own three shops in town. They're all competitors. People get upset at this shop. So now they're going over here. They get upset at them. So now they're going over here. They don't understand that it's all owned by the same guy, but nevermind.

Jimmy Lea: It's all good. 

Raven Harris: Like I said, it really just depends. There's no, I mean, I've asked the same question. I was trying to figure it out. Does it make sense to have it all under one name, one brand? There's definitely a lot of benefits to it, but like, like we just discussed there's also other strategies you can use by having different names.

Raven Harris: So, 

Jimmy Lea: oh yeah. 

Raven Harris: One thing too, that I do want to mention though, I don't know if we're about to get out there is that, you know, in my first year of running the company, it definitely was a struggle. So I know at this point, it's basically just me. Telling you, you know, it's great. Everything works out. But year one, I was basically working at the shop 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and I was doing more work on the weekends.

Raven Harris: Right? So, I signed myself up for that. I knew that it was going to be tough. I knew that I'm not a mechanic by trade on BMWs, Mercedes, you know, I was working on C 17 aircraft. So, the learning curve was huge, right? I didn't know anything about ordering parts. I didn't know anything about being a service advisor, making sales, but I had the determination to learn.

Raven Harris: So, yeah. And I knew that my strong suit was the financial. So as long as I could keep my numbers in order, and I could keep track of that I can basically handle everything else. And so, that only comes through repetition and practice, and really, you know, a lot of self belief that you can get it done.

Raven Harris: But anyone can do it. You know, I didn't you know, I was in college, but I dropped out to come by a business. So it's not that you need a Ivy League degree to get it done. It's just that you need to spend the time. You know, I was listening to podcasts every day. I was you know, getting coaching and things like that.

Raven Harris: And It really wasn't until I found a good team right behind me that allowed me to really step out of the business and instead of working in the business, I'm working on the business now. And so I think that there's a few lessons that I had to learn the hard way for sure throughout year one. It's just one of those things like you're in business like you got to figure it out.

Raven Harris: You know, I've had basically everything they could have went wrong did you know they did. I had an employee who crashed my shuttle van. It got completely totaled. You know, it stepped out. I had to go to a conference and the second I landed on the plane, my employees are calling me like, Oh, we crashed the shuttle van.

Raven Harris: It's gone. So that's 20, 20, 000 out the window. They have never paid me back for it because, you know, the title was held by the bank. And then I had an employee steal from me when I bought the shop. I inherited some drama between the previous owner and his competitor across the street. They were leaving bad reviews on my site.

Raven Harris: I got sued multiple times. I've been in and out of court, let's say three or four times now. Just customers who they thought that they deserved some money or some sort of Some sort of repayment for whatever service you know, that they did, they may or may not have got for me. Haven't lost any in court, thankfully.

Raven Harris: So, you know, I've always been on the right side of you know, those, but, you know, everything that could have happened year one, I've hired an alcoholic who's driving. I had no idea that I found out he was an AA. I had to let him go on the spot. So there's something wrong that could have happened in a business.

Raven Harris: It happened to be all in on year one. So I definitely learned every lesson along the way. And I'm sure there's thousands more. But I say all that to say that every time something like that would happen where I'm like, I couldn't find employees, you know, the revenue dropped in half. I just wasn't figuring it out.

Raven Harris: I just never gave up. And I saw that there was always a way forward. It's like, Hey, you know what? Things are tough, but I know what I need to do. Right? And so what I did is I adopted a mindset that said that problems are your friend. Right? And so what happens is you see every problem as an issue, right?

Raven Harris: Like, Oh, you know what? I can't find good employees. Then you will never get it right. It's always going to be something in the way of, Hey, I just can't find good employees. I can't find anyone to help me. You know, this business model sucks. This and that. And what I ended up doing was saying, Hey, you know what, this is an opportunity if I can figure out how to find good employees.

Raven Harris: My business will beat all of the competitors. Right. So I'm like, wow, what a great opportunity for me now, because I don't see it as a problem. I see it as an opportunity. So like, what a great opportunity for me to go out there and see that you know, there's this huge issue for all shops, right? It's not just not just mine.

Raven Harris: And if I'm the one who can solve it, right, I'm the one guy in the game who actually has the keys, then that puts me ahead of everyone else in the game. And on top of that, yeah. It just makes my life a whole lot easier. And, you know, the, after that, the profits are infinite. So those are all things I had to like learn and figure out along the way.

Raven Harris: If you get a coach sooner, you might have to, you might be able to skip some of that. And if you get a good team, you know, right from the beginning, those are some of the things that you might be able to skip, but I'm glad for my lessons. I just want to throw that out there that you know, it's not that easy, but it can be done and it's definitely worth it.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, dude, that, that's an awesome way to wrap this up. I thank you for adopting the mindset of friendship. You've made friends with your problems and your opportunities. You've adopted the mantra of keep moving forward. I totally agree with that. You can keep moving forward and keep moving through it.

Jimmy Lea: You're going to get there. You're going to make it happen. So dude, you are awesome, Raven. Thank you very much. I look forward to many years of success of your success and opportunities for us to get together again and talk about the next opportunities that have become your friends. 

Raven Harris: Yeah, for sure.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much. With that, we're out of here. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. My good friend, Raven Harris, German Auto Specialists soon to be known as gas automotive. Thank you.