Hometown Holdco: Geography as Moat

That was the reason we were told. And he ended up leaving. So that was incredibly.

Yeah, that was when I didn't sleep for 48 hours. We stepped into an industry that while it has a simple business model of, you know, we're a Factory of parts and labor and that's it. And you know, this is what's wrong with your car.

You know, this is a, also a complex system that we run with the lifts and the amount of inventory and all of those things. And so it was, it was quite a transition. He did give us three weeks, which was nice, and we ended up hiring some great guys and we made it through.

But I think that we spoke with Adam Markley who, you know, obviously is a guest of the show and whatnot. And I think that this is not an uncommon thing in businesses. And I think that like Matthew said, you can't hang your hat on one trait of a business.

Those six things that we outlined have to be present going forward too. Um, and potentially it was meant to be. I think that, you know, it, we have enough distance from it now to be like, okay, we made it through and you know, it's, it's probably for the better.

Yeah. I think one thing also is, you know, it's, it's a very common theme and this is maybe a hot take, but everybody says, you know, for the first six to 12 months you shouldn't do anything with the business, let it run. And we heard that and we wanted to make a couple small tweaks because there was just some low hanging fruit that wasn't going to change much.

We have changed just about everything now and it has been, but we've just communicated with the team. We're extremely transparent about everything. Ask them about the pros and cons of switching and if they have any ideas, they come to us or we re implement them.

I think having that previous operator, he was the spoke, everything went through him. Without him, the business couldn't run. And we've, you know, you tear that out, everything kind of crumbles.

So we were able to kind of give everybody a little bit more, you know, ownership over their particular role and build a system where if anybody's sick, anybody's out, this business is still going. It's all system based. Everything can be picked up, everything's tracked, everything.

Yeah. And I think the guys feel really good about it. We've had some internal feedback that people just feel better here than they ever have. It's really like, it's, it's, you know, we're intimidated coming in working with these mechanics and they are family now.

Like, we absolutely love these guys. They're the most interesting and smartest people in the world. They, they're, they're total geniuses and just good guys.