Curiosity turned into craftsmanship, and craftsmanship turned into leadership. Jason Brennan, owner of Fine Tune Automotive with three locations across Illinois and Northwest Indiana, shares how a lifelong habit of taking things apart evolved into building a scalable, people-centered auto repair business.

This episode of Leading Edge: Standing at the Crossroads dives into the realities of growing from one shop to multiple locations, including the financial discipline, people challenges, leadership mistakes, and mindset shifts required to scale without losing trust or culture. Jason opens up about learning business management the hard way, letting go of day-to-day control, and making pivotal leadership decisions that reshaped his team and company.

From earning trust with technicians, navigating acquisitions, and redefining success beyond store count, this conversation offers honest insight into what it takes to build a business that develops people and leaves a lasting legacy in the automotive repair industry.

Thinking about growth, leadership, or the legacy you are building as a shop owner? Meet with Michael Smith for a leadership and legacy strategy conversation: https://theinstitute.zohobookings.com/#/Executive-Owner-Strategy-Session

Host(s):

Kent Bullard, COO of The Institute

Michael Smith, Chief Strategy Officer at The Institute

Guest(s):

Jason Brennan, owner of Fine Tune Auto

Show Highlights:

[00:01:49] - Jason Brennan says his lifelong habit of taking things apart shaped everything that followed.

[00:03:37] - Jason realized the real reward wasn’t fixing cars, but watching his employees succeed.

[00:05:30] - Jason admits his biggest mistake was assuming technical skill meant business readiness.

[00:06:07] - Jason explains the non-technical skills that changed the trajectory of his company.

[00:08:18] - After 18 years in one shop, Jason shares what finally made expansion feel possible.

[00:13:54] - Jason planned for worst-case scenarios before opening the second location.

[00:19:28] - Jason recounts the day a key manager never showed up, forcing him to step in.

[00:25:46] - A tense shop meeting became the turning point that rebuilt trust and culture.

[00:39:10] - Jason compares acquiring a running shop to changing an airplane engine mid-flight.

[01:15:21] - Jason defines success by the people who grow alongside him.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xJ4MYecafck

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Kent Bullard: Welcome to the Institute's Leading Edge Crossroads podcast, where we examine the decisions, the crucial decisions that professionals make as they shape industries, drive careers, inspire thought leadership, and ultimately build lasting legacies. I'm Kent Bullard and I'm joined with my esteemed colleague Michael Smith.

Kent Bullard: And today we have a wonderful guest, Jason Brennan.

Michael Smith: Hi Jason.

Jason Brennan: Good morning.

Kent Bullard: Jason, would you please introduce yourself?

Jason Brennan: I'm Jason Brennan, owner of Fine Tune Auto. We've got three locations in Northwest Indiana, in Chicago, and I'm happy to be here with you guys.

Kent Bullard: We're very happy to have you. We've got an, I know, a phenomenal discussion ahead of us.

Kent Bullard: Those of you who are listening to this, either on the podcast or if you're looking at our website, if you have questions, I mean, it's very important to us that this is an open dialogue, that we're able to communicate what we talk about in this podcast with a greater audience. So if you have questions, if you have comments, we'd love to see those in the comment section down below.

Kent Bullard: If you do enjoy the content that we cover today, please like and share. 'cause it helps the algorithm and it also helps spread these valuable lessons to a greater audience. Again, we're all about helping the industry and raising the bar for everyone and we thank you for doing that. So let's jump right into the questions then.

Kent Bullard: Let's start with number one. What originally brought you to this industry and what inspired you to commit to this industry?

Jason Brennan: That's a really good question. The things that brought me to the industry were, you know, I came from a background a technician background, and I cannot. Right. I thought about this on the way in this morning because I knew you were gonna ask me a question like that.

Jason Brennan: So I thought, okay what really? Why did I do this? And

Michael Smith: what the heck was I thinking? Right?

Jason Brennan: I cannot remember a time when I wasn't taking something apart, repairing it, or trying to figure out how it worked in my whole entire life. So from a technical perspective or, you know, from a technical background, I think that's where it came from.

Jason Brennan: Just the curiosity about how things worked. I had to know how they worked. I took my toys apart when I was a kid. I think that's a similar story. You probably hear from a lot of a lot of people who started in the industry as technicians. So that was fun to me. It was more fun to take things apart and figure out how they worked than it was to play with them to me.

Jason Brennan: So, so, so that led to. Led me into a career where I could get paid to do that. Only I had to. I was responsible for making sure they worked when I was done at that point. So, you know, and so that's what inspired me to get into the industry was just I wanted a good career and doing something I loved and I knew that I could do that.

Jason Brennan: Fixing cars. And the other part of your question, I think was what caused me to want to stay. What's causing me to stay committed? Why am I committed? You know? I just ended up really loving it. You know, I ended up becoming a shop owner. I ended up starting to shop and you know, it, it, at first it was technical stuff, you know, I was really interested in the cars, doing a lot of diagnostics, building transmissions, whatever, you know, all the technical stuff.

Jason Brennan: And then I evolved into a, I. Into a service advisor and learned how to, you know, learn sales and learn how to communicate well with customers. And I'm still learning how to communicate with people the best that I can. 'Cause that's a, that's almost an art form, I think. But and then I became an owner and I and that's when I really, when one of my commitment really locked in, at first I was just like, man, what did I get myself into here?

Jason Brennan: But then the more I learned, the more I liked it. And what keeps me committed is is being able to be part of and facilitating the success of my employees. That's really the, it's the thing I like the most about it. There's other things that keep me committed, like the, you know, good service we provide to customers.

Jason Brennan: And the fact that I enjoy the actual the. What am I trying to say? The business that we're in I like all the, I like all the aspects of it, you know, the technical aspect and the customer service aspect. It's all fun to me. But the biggest thing is, the biggest thing that keeps me committed is that I can go to work and witness employees succeeding and becoming their best, the best they can be.

Kent Bullard: I, I'm curious 'cause I want to dive a little deeper, you know, to this I took things apart to see how they worked and I had to put 'em back together. You took that approach with toys and then vehicles. Did you bring that same mentality when it came to your business?

Jason Brennan: Oh, that's a real good question. Not at first because I didn't realize I needed to, and that was part of the reason why I struggled for years.

Jason Brennan: I didn't realize I underestimated the maybe even dismissed the, the fact that I needed to have business management knowledge in order successfully run an auto repair shop. I thought I had already learned enough as a technician that I could, well, I could fix cars so I can, I could just run a business automatically.

Jason Brennan: And that wasn't true. So

Michael Smith: what

Jason Brennan: were your,

Michael Smith: what were your biggest surprises? What were your biggest discoveries? Ooh, I don't know enough about that. What were the, what were a handful of topics you discovered?

Jason Brennan: The biggest one I'm still learning the most about, I think is what makes people tick. What do they want and how can I give it to 'em?

Jason Brennan: And how can we communicate that to each other so that we can make that happen? And that, that's something that, that I'm always working. I don't think I'll ever be done working on that, but you know, financial management. Forecasting, budgeting, how to read a p and l and a balance sheet. How to set key performance indicators and monitor them how to and how to affect them to keep where you need 'em to be.

Jason Brennan: All kinds of stuff, you know, that's just, yeah. Good list. Those are the main things, I think. Yeah.

Michael Smith: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Kent Bullard: How long did you see, 'cause obviously you went to multiple locations and you put this focus on, well now deconstructing and putting the business back together to, to see how it worked.

Kent Bullard: How long did you play in that realm of just the single location and did you think that there was, like, that was gonna be it or were you always kind of planning that there was gonna be more than just the one location?

Jason Brennan: At first. When I wrote a I wrote a business plan when I applied for a loan early on in, in our business.

Jason Brennan: And it, it did include a a mission statement that included multiple locations. But I think that was more for, at the time I wasn't sure if I'm not sure I was being ho honest with that mission statement. I put that I wanted to have multiple locations, but I'm not sure if I had the confidence that a that I'd actually be able to do it.

Jason Brennan: I thought it'd be nice, but I wasn't sure if it was gonna happen.

Kent Bullard: It's funny, what we tend to write down tends to come true. Right. So he hadn't intended it.

Michael Smith: See what you did to

Jason Brennan: yourself.

Michael Smith: Right.

Jason Brennan: Maybe it just happened because I wrote it down. I'm not sure, but there you

Michael Smith: go.

Jason Brennan: I forgot what your question was, but,

Kent Bullard: it was, how did, was there a point in time or how long? Oh, because obviously you're working in the one location. Yeah. How long was that your world, like, perspective wise? 18. 18 years. 18 years.

Michael Smith: And what happened to make the second shop momentum start to move? What, what shifted? Now it's time. Now I can do it.

Michael Smith: Right.

Jason Brennan: So I hadn't known anybody who owned multiple locations. And I was in a, in the in the gear performance group, used to be called Bottom Line Impact Group. I was in, in the, in my business group with the institute. And I started some of my colleagues already had multiple locations and some of them had opened a second or third or whatever more locations since I met them.

Jason Brennan: And as I. As I got to learn more about how they, you know, kinda walk with them on that path, so to speak. I kind of, I realized that that, you know, it gave me confidence that I could do it, and it gave me some ideas about how to do it. I was involved in the m and a group with Michael Smith for a while, and I got to see about a lot about how that goes from growth to all the way to exit strategy and everything.

Jason Brennan: That was pretty cool to be able to see that. And anyway, so, so I just kind of observed I observed some of my colleagues doing it and I thought, well, I, there's no reason why I shouldn't do that. And I only had one shop, so I thought and I had gotten it to the point where it ran, for the most part, it could run without me there.

Jason Brennan: I was there most of the time anyway, but. That's just 'cause I like to work, honestly. I, but honestly, I've, those people were so good at doing their jobs that I didn't really need to be there. I almost felt like I was getting in the way sometimes, or I was going to work and just sitting in front of my computer looking for things to do.

Jason Brennan: And I thought, well, you know, it was kinda like I think it's time I knew the general concept of how to do it and I knew it was time to do it because my business could run without me there.

Michael Smith: So you headed southeast from your first location to northwest Indiana, right? What was that? That's a strategic decision.

Michael Smith: What,

Jason Brennan: right.

Michael Smith: How did you process that? How'd you come to that conclusion?

Jason Brennan: Well, the Northwest India, Mar Indiana market has been growing. In the last, I would say the last 10 years it, especially in the last 10 years, the Northwest Indian market has get been getting bigger and population, well, I don't know if it's been getting better population wise, bigger population wise, but I know that the demographics of the people who are moving into Northwest Indiana seem to be the ideal demographics for us.

Jason Brennan: And so I thought, well, it's good demographics. The Northwest Indiana region seems to be generally favorable to, you know, bi business friendly, I should say. They seem to be business friendly over here. So, those are some of the, a couple of the reasons why I chose that area. And, you know, we're in the, where we are in Illinois, we're in Southeastern Cook County.

Jason Brennan: Our Lansing stores in Southeastern Cook County, so we're right in the border. Anyway.

Kent Bullard: I'm curious, just going back to your research, did you work with an a company to find that data to make those decisions? Or was this more of a hunch that you knew the area that you felt as though that's what that area was growing into?

Jason Brennan: I did some research online on my own. I didn't hire any company or anything. Probably would've been a good idea, but I didn't do that. What I did do though was lived in the area for most of my life. So that's, I mean, you know, like I said, we're right in the border. I now live in northwest Indiana.

Jason Brennan: I used to live in Homewood, Illinois. That's just on the other side of the border pretty much. So I had been, I. Just throughout my daily life, you know, I've been, had been around both south suburban Cook County and Northwest Indiana both. And I knew people who had moved there shopped there, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Jason Brennan: So I can kind of kinda get a good feel about what the demographics are in the area by just doing that and then can back, you know, you can back that up with research online.

Kent Bullard: I love that. So was there apprehension? So once you've got the idea in your head, Hey, I think it's time to ex expand and crow things are running really smoothly now, they don't necessarily need me.

Kent Bullard: I think it's time to to move on. What was some of your greatest concerns or fears about taking that next step? Or did you not have any?

Jason Brennan: No, I, it's definitely had some concerns. Anybody that doesn't have any concerns about expanding their business is probably setting themselves up for failure.

Jason Brennan: They, you should always have some concerns, at least, maybe not fears, but, you know, be be careful with it. Yeah, there were financial concerns. I wasn't sure what the, I wasn't sure exactly what the, what how much cash reserves I needed to do it. So I had to put pencil and pencil paper, or I guess keyboard to spreadsheet or whatever you want to say to ed, do some math to figure out what I needed.

Jason Brennan: I had to talk to some other guys in the industry and ask them what they thought I should have in the bank in order to be, in order to not jeopardize my first shop. In the process of expanding in the event that we didn't have the business to make a profit, and, you know how long I basically planned on us losing money for a whole year.

Jason Brennan: I, I could have, I had enough, I'm pretty conservative when it comes to spending and saving and things and the risks I take. So I, you know, I think I had enough cash where I could have lost money for three years at the second store before I decided to pull the trigger on it, just because I wanted to be that stable.

Jason Brennan: I wanted to be very stable. So, because you never know what's gonna happen. So I thought, you know, one of my, one of my concerns or maybe fears, I guess, is well, what happens if we have another recession or something happens in the economy beyond our control and I open my second shop, and then my third, and then my second first store sales and gross profit declines below a level of profitability.

Jason Brennan: Right after I open the second one, I'm losing money at both. That could happen. It didn't happen, thank God, but it could have.

Michael Smith: So you were super well prepared financially and that gave you peace, right. To be able to have mm-hmm. Some of the confidence to do this. You mentioned earlier that the human components, you know, some of your greatest learning has been in that and still kind of the leading edge of what you're building.

Michael Smith: When you made the second acquisition, what were your, what was your thinking going into it with regard to first leadership and team, and second, with regard to customers, and then how did that carry over to further thinking with store three? That unknown human fuzzy stuff, right? How did you handle that?

Jason Brennan: So, so what you're asking is what did I the human aspect things?

Michael Smith: Yeah. Going into it, what you were thinking, then you did it and you learn more. And then what did you take into store three from the second shop that made the third one hopefully a little easier. Yeah, the human stuff, the hard stuff, right?

Michael Smith: The stuff we question, we spent so much time talking about.

Jason Brennan: Well, I knew, yeah, you're right. And I get it. So I knew that it you know, I knew that the, once I knew that once I had a financial formula for success and a business model and SOPs, all that kind of stuff that was repeatable or that should in theory be repeatable in a slightly different market then everything relies on a after that.

Jason Brennan: I think most of the businesses success relies on the ability to attract and retain the people who can execute that business model. So super important. And so knowing that I. Did recruit in advance before I didn't have much time to open the second store. It was a store that was closed for a month already, I believe it was before I, I had found out about it through a friend in the industry and store had been closed for a month already.

Jason Brennan: And I thought, well, it, the value of the bi, the value of the business diminishes. The longer I leave it closed. The more customers who come there and find out it's closed, the less customers I start with. Mm-hmm. When I take over. So

Michael Smith: were there any employees still attached to that closed business or did you have to start from scratch?

Jason Brennan: They, there were none attached. There were no, there was nobody currently working there, but there were two guys who had two technicians who'd already left and found other jobs who really had enjoyed working at the Hobert Indiana shop that I was able to get to come back. And they're still with us.

Jason Brennan: They really liked it. They live in the area. They didn't wanna leave, but the place was closing. So they, you know, they did. And I got 'em both to come back with the help of the old owner. So thanks to Keith Sweeney for that one. He he gave me the connection there and he gave me their phone numbers. I called him, he put in a good word for me.

Jason Brennan: He said, Hey, I think you should talk to this guy. And I got those two guys to come back and they're doing well here. So that was really key. Ha having two good techs to start with was really great. And then I did recruit a store manager and hire a store manager. He accepted my po my offer and we got 'em all onboarded and everything in advance.

Jason Brennan: And then as we were doing facility improvements it took another whole month before we, we actually opened. So, during that month we re, anyway, during that month we recruited him. He didn't show up on his first day of work. So that was something I had experienced before. So it wasn't, you know, I hate to say it, but it wasn't really that shocked.

Jason Brennan: He forgot to

Kent Bullard: mark it on his calendar. That's what, that's really what happened. That didn't set the alarm, didn't have it on his calendar.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. I called him and I said, Hey, where are you? You know, and he goes, well, I decided to stay where I'm at. I forgot to tell you that. Sorry. You know, so, and this guy was a service director at a service manager at a dealership.

Jason Brennan: And they had talked him into staying. Maybe it wasn't the right thing for him. I can't blame him for that, but it would've been nice for me to know that. So anyway, I wrote service and ran the shop for about three months on my own. Before I hired a, before I was able to find a qualified person to come in and train to run the store.

Jason Brennan: And I think, let's see. I ended up having a total of three store managers come in and I had to let him go for various different reasons before I found the guy that is currently our store manager at the Hobert shop. So

Kent Bullard: I have

Jason Brennan: different people issues.

Kent Bullard: I'm curious to know, 'cause I mean it's definitely a different place you're in when you're going, when you're at one location and then moving to three locations.

Kent Bullard: What do you think some of the key mindset shifts you had to make in order to make that happen from just one location to three locations?

Jason Brennan: So one of the key mind mindset shifts I had to make was. Which I believe that I made before I decided to expand beyond one location was that the business needed to not rely on me for, in, in any daily operations aspect.

Jason Brennan: Except maybe phone calls and answering questions. You know, so, so I was just like, I was conservative cash wise to make sure I was prepared. I was also conservative that way. I guess you'd call it conservative too, because I kind of overemphasized that concept and I in the sense that I, you know, proved it to myself by, you know, e even like, like I said earlier, I went to work every day, but then before I opened a second shop and I had already been talking to people, talking to everybody, saying, Hey, I want to, I wanna buy or open a second location if you know anybody look to retire or.

Jason Brennan: Who runs a good shop or whatever let me know send me their number or them my number, connect us. And that was already starting to happen. So before I decided to pull the trigger on anything, I purposely stayed home and worked on house projects, went and did a, you know, even if I was at the store, I might be doing a painting something or fixing a piece of equipment or whatever.

Jason Brennan: And just purposely removing myself from daily operations while keeping the ability to still jump back in if I needed to. And I was actually surprised at how when I conveyed my to my people at the Lansing store, what I was trying to do, I was surprised at their reaction. I shouldn't have been.

Jason Brennan: 'cause they were all really good people. But I thought, well, this is gonna take a while. We're gonna have to work a lot of bugs out. But really, they just stepped up to the plate and did their jobs the best they could. And they had equated to me not it, it didn't take very long. To prove to myself that was, that I was able to not be involved in the daily operation there if I needed to be somewhere else.

Michael Smith: Alright. Thank you for sharing that, that mindset shift, and we've talked about this in this industry over and over about working in versus on the business, and that, that mindset shift you made to put yourself in a position not to be in it and just to be available to work on it, that's a huge cognitive leap given the technical levels that we most come, mostly come into ownership from.

Michael Smith: So thank you for sharing that. That's a huge, that's a huge topic for folks to consider.

Kent Bullard: I think a lot of people don't understand that if you're sitting there, you know, the, being the one that. Cranks the lever. It's really hard to go do that in multiple locations. 'cause now you're not just saying, I've got, okay, I'm just gonna do more.

Kent Bullard: But you literally have to double the amount of work that you're doing at that if you don't change how you're doing it. 'cause your input has to equal a higher output.

Michael Smith: Sure. And it's sort of a compelling, or it's interesting to be the person that they bring all of their, you know, problem solving questions to, Hey boss, can I ask you a question?

Michael Smith: And there's a little ego that goes along with that. Yeah. Why don't you do this? Oh, okay. Thanks. Right. And all of a sudden when you pull yourself out, or, you know, in the process in the middle is, well, what do you think you should do? You know, kind of a thing. All of a sudden you realize they can do it on their own and they actually like doing it on their own and then they're happier doing it on their own.

Michael Smith: And it's like, huh, this worked pretty well. And they're right. You know? Yeah.

Jason Brennan: You're a hundred percent right Michael. And, thinking back. That is something I did. I did ask that question a lot. What do you think we should do here? What do you think the right thing to do is? And that was, that's a good way to, to train people, I think to be more independent is to ask those kinds of questions.

Jason Brennan: And

Michael Smith: the downside to this too, Jason, is later on, they're like, Hey, stop helping me, but I have an idea. Yeah. I don't want to hear it. Right. It's like, okay. Right. That's fine. Just make it work.

Jason Brennan: That could happen. It could, yeah, it could happen too.

Michael Smith: Yeah.

Jason Brennan: I love it.

Michael Smith: I love it.

Jason Brennan: But letting people know there, there was a point in time where I remember I had a, there was a, we had a shop meeting.

Jason Brennan: We were having a shop meeting at the shop in Lansing, and we've been having problems, with that I created with people with technicians thinking I was looking over their shoulder too much and telling 'em how to do their jobs. And they really didn't. They were experienced certified technicians.

Jason Brennan: They didn't need to be told how to do their job. They just needed to be allowed to do their job. But then I felt that I didn't I felt that they didn't want to be held accountable, which was true in some cases. They some of 'em, you know, may maybe didn't want to be held a hundred percent accountable to the outcome of the repairs that they were doing.

Jason Brennan: So I kind of felt like I was stuck. I had it like there was a catch 22 there. I have to get involved because if I don't, then the technician who's doing the repair isn't gonna want to be held accountable to the outcome of the repair. So I just need to make sure it doesn't go wrong. That was the wrong approach.

Jason Brennan: So eventually I figured out what the right approach was, and we had a shop meeting where it was almost like a mutiny, I think, you know, where everybody in the whole shop called me out in public and said you're looking over our shoulder all the time. You're telling us what to do. We don't like that.

Jason Brennan: It's really a, it was almost a toxic environment, I think, because of that kind of thing. And so I, I just said to him, all right, you guys wanna, you know, you're right. I shouldn't be getting involved in these repairs. You know what you're doing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make you a deal right now. I'm gonna just trust you to do your jobs.

Jason Brennan: But I don't want to be, I don't want to hear I don't want to get any flack about or hear any, you know, I want to hear your opinions, but I don't want to get a bunch of pushback when I try to make a change in the business operationally or growth wise. Or equipment wise or anything that we've already discussed, or maybe it's not your department, so we haven't discussed it, but any of these decisions I make, I just want you guys to trust me to make the right decision.

Jason Brennan: And I'm gonna make mistakes just like you guys do sometimes, but I need you to trust me as your leader to take us to the right direction. And if you can do that for me, then I will trust you to do your jobs and I will hold you accountable to the outcome and you can hold me accountable to the outcome you know, 'cause the outcome.

Jason Brennan: If I don't do things right, I is, you know, outcome. The outcome if you don't do something right, is a, could be a pretty bad situation as far as a car repair goes, or a customer service situation if you're a service advisor. But the outcome. Of, of me making a wrong decision could be really great, or it could be really catastrophic as far as, you know, destroying the whole business or making the business super successful.

Jason Brennan: So believe me, I have a lot, I know that we had that, I have a lot in the line with my decision, so I take 'em seriously. I know you guys too do too. And that's the deal that was the deal we made and that was a turning point in that shop.

Michael Smith: Yeah, I wanna reflect on that, Jason. I don't want that to go by the folks that are listening.

Michael Smith: You made a huge cultural pivot with that meeting. I mean, the idea that you came to conclude that the masters don't want you to tell them what to do, which is absolute psychology, right? It's like we're good at what we do and all we're gonna, when we ask you for help, come give it to us. If we don't leave us alone.

Michael Smith: It's very much of a master's mentality, and the fact that you are willing as a master to give them the grace to have that space and then say to them, this is about trust, and make that a topic culturally. And then they feel trusted and you asked them to give you trust back, and then you developed a brand, you, your relationship pivoted in that meeting.

Michael Smith: You guys adopted a new way of having a relationship together. And I love your reflection. It was a turning point and it's worked out, right? Once you trusted them and they trusted you, they're, they took off and did their jobs and you didn't have to help 'em. You know, the results have shown, right?

Michael Smith: So I, I just didn't want that to go by folks about what a moment that was in the development of your company and what a massively good decision you made to let go boss, right? You let go, you gave it back to him and said, okay, I'm gonna trust you. I will leave you alone. I was trying to help, but I'll leave you alone, let you do your thing.

Michael Smith: And then they ran with it, which is fantastic, right?

Jason Brennan: It's, yeah. Thank you for pointing that out. That 'cause I didn't think of it in terms of mastery back then. I didn't even know anything about that. You know who I can, who I owe that. I had been dealing with those issues for a while, and then it came up in a meeting where I had to deal with it on the spot.

Jason Brennan: But I had been talking to my dad about it. He owned a plumbing company. I helped him build growing up. And and honestly, I, if he's listening, I apologize in advance, dad, if you're listening, but his company had a horrible culture, but it's and it wasn't on purpose. He's a great guy, super nice guy.

Jason Brennan: But it was really a, what we call old school, I guess, you know, and just do your job and I'll do my job and we'll all just be quiet and do our job. That was their cult, their whole entire culture. And that's it. But when I brought to his attention that people had I had the feeling that they were, people were unhappy that I was telling 'em how to do their jobs and get too involved.

Jason Brennan: He said something to me like, well, nobody likes to be told how to do their job. And that. Or guys that are good at what they're doing. Like he was, I think we were talking about plumbers. He said, well, yeah, when I was a plumber, I didn't like people telling me how to do plumbing. That's why I went to code school and all this other stuff.

Jason Brennan: I, I knew what I was doing. Could kind of feel like an insult when you're trying to help somebody. Sometimes to them it could be perceived as an insult.

Michael Smith: Yeah, you're right on. That's exactly what it's perceived as. It's like, don't you, it raises these intuitive natural questions, don't you trust me, first of all, and secondly mm-hmm.

Michael Smith: Do you question my skills? Do you think I can't figure this out if you leave me alone and you're not saying any of that. You're not saying a single one of those things you're actually trying to help. Right. But that's not how it's processed on the receiving end. So gr great conversation and kudos to dad.

Michael Smith: What a great comment. 'cause he is right on Works for plumbers, works for carpenters, works for business people too. I mean, it's white collar, blue collar people. It's human. It's human. Yeah. And it's wonderful story. So thank you for that. That was great. And thanks dad. So

Kent Bullard: I have to commend you on your attention to preparation before you made some of these steps, you know, you you leveraged a lot of your assets, you know, looking at people, looking at the financial aspect of it.

Kent Bullard: What do you think some of your strongest assets were as you were building and expanding, and what were some of the assets you were surprised to discover could be leveraged as you were expanding?

Jason Brennan: Strongest assets and ones I discovered, I guess I would say that honestly the mo, the biggest asset was the people we had in place already because that was what allowed me to even do it at all.

Jason Brennan: I wouldn't be, I wouldn't have been able to expand the business without the people we had there. And I made sure that everybody. That, that, you know, I wouldn't have done it if I didn't feel like everybody who worked for me at the time was somebody I would never wanna replace or lose. And that they would all work as a team to help each other and help me fulfill our mission, you know, or and allow us to expand.

Jason Brennan: So biggest asset, I guess, is the team that we had at the time and still have most of

Jason Brennan: yeah, so, so, and then assets we discovered, I think I had been working since I had been working partially remote before the expansion. Partly outta convenience and partly because, or inefficiency, and partly because I wanted to test my ability to not be there and have the operations run well.

Jason Brennan: I had developed ways of. Ways of not having to be there, ways to work remote. So leveraging technology, you know, zoom like the, like we're doing now, we're on a, we're on an electronic meeting, we're on a Zoom meeting or a podcast, whatever it is. So being able to, you know, being able to work from my car if I had to, or a cell phone or a laptop or whatever remotely.

Jason Brennan: I had sort of already set that up and I didn't realize, I didn't even realize how well that would work until I was at the second store all the time and didn't really need to drive all over the place to bring people, pieces of paper or whatever. So I guess just leveraging the technology that we had in place.

Kent Bullard: I like that you kind of had to think of new ways of doing things and, you know, circumstance. Thankfully kind of pushed you to try some of these new things, but I think it's interesting, you know, as you go to expand, I always talk about input versus output. You know, you wanna be able to change your input so you have a much greater output.

Kent Bullard: Right. And right. That, that is, I think part of the challenge you have to overcome is thinking I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do two times the work I'm gonna do two times the better choices or better work. So they, you have a much higher outcome. I'm curious to know leveraging those assets and kind of expanding, what was one of the, because you're essentially developing a new way of doing things, right?

Kent Bullard: What was one of the biggest developmental challenges you faced as you shifted into this growth strategy?

Jason Brennan: That's a good one. I guess.

Jason Brennan: Developmental challenges. I don't know if it's a, you know, what you would define as a developmental challenge, but I might just be, I might be developmentally challenged in general. I don't know. But

Kent Bullard: that

is

Kent Bullard: not, I wanna clarify that as now what I'm, then you can go in there if

Michael Smith: you want to, but I wouldn't go there to fire you.

Jason Brennan: Anyway, you know, I went back to work a lot more hours. I had, I'll tell you one thing that was hard, it was that I went from working at one point in my career a hundred hours a week. 'cause I was doing everything the wrong way and had to subsidize my wrong ways of doing things and mistakes with my extra, with extra time personally.

Jason Brennan: And then I then I got used to working like anywhere from like 20 to 30 hours a week. I felt like I was only working 20, 30 hours a week. I was probably working 40 hours a week, but it was not necessarily, you know, not very stressful because I would just make my own schedule and do my own thing and not have a whole lot that I had to commit to.

Jason Brennan: Could have days off whenever I needed to or wanted to without a lot of notice. And then I went back to, for a short period of time, you know, there was like a month of 80 to a hundred hour weeks again.

Michael Smith: Which is interesting too, 'cause you shift, your mindset has shifted away from being in the business, but you make an acquisition and in the case of the way you did the first acquisition or the second shop, right?

Michael Smith: You had to go back into it. You were right back at the front counter again. You're right back into the store management role again, which was, you know.

Jason Brennan: Exactly. And I think the answer to Kent's question is I've never opened a second store and I, it was so long ago that I, that when I started the first one, you know it was kind of a slow organic growth.

Jason Brennan: Thing I started as a tech. It was just me. I had a few piece of equipment and I grew it slowly and it had, I had done that over the course of 18 years, so I didn't have a checklist or anything of what I needed to do. I didn't even remember everything I did. So when I went into opening a second shop, I tried to prepare and make checklists and all that stuff.

Jason Brennan: And I, you know, back to assets, one of the assets I think I biggest assets is colleagues, friends in the business. I got some checklists from them and some advice from them, but I still went, you know, every situation's different though. So when I went into it, you're right, Michael, I was right back into the operation, running the store while I was trying to finish remodeling and stuff.

Jason Brennan: And things didn't go as planned. I wanted to open up right away. I had a really good technician who started before we opened with me. That was an, that was another big asset. He came in and totally, you know, he did, he just, I didn't need to tell him what to do a lot. He just kind of knew how the shop needed to be set up to run for maximum success.

Jason Brennan: So, anyway, him and I were here before we opened and after we opened just nonstop reorganizing facility, improving setting up computer, we were still setting up computers and putting stuff together, you know, after we had already opened. So it was kind of. It was kind of messy the way we did it, but it worked.

Jason Brennan: So,

Michael Smith: yeah you cleaned it up. So let me just go forward now you've got store one, 18 years, store two, intense, quick, open, build it, learn the hard way. Now you go to store three. Just give us a quick overview of was that the best of both worlds? Was did it look like one or two, something brand new? What did you do?

Michael Smith: It was, what did you step in next? Right. So

Jason Brennan: that was, yeah, it was a little it went a little smoother. Okay. It, well, it went a lot smoother actually. Okay. So it was a a purchase from a guy retiring. That one never closed. It's remained open the whole time. That was a little bit of a challenge.

Jason Brennan: That was a different challenge than the one that was already closed. I had a little bit of time to do whatever I could have chosen when to reopen. I was able to choose when to reopen that store. The third one, I came in with better checklists. Better conversations with the current owner and kind of, I felt like I was, I definitely was more prepared.

Jason Brennan: I had a whole plan laid out to how I wanted to do it, but the biggest challenge there was I had never taken over a store that was, you know, running. It's kind of when when people were a would ask me how it was going in the first couple or three weeks or month or whatever, I would say, well, it's it's kinda like trying to change the engine of an airplane that's still in the middle, still in, in the air.

Jason Brennan: You know, it's because it, had they had all paper repair orders. They didn't use computer well, they sort of used computers. They had a secretary that would recreate handwritten repair orders in the computer in Mitchell. So that was kind of weird. The owner would write service in the shop. He had a big long desk in the shop and his desk was standing in front of that desk.

Jason Brennan: That was his job all day in the shop with impact wrenches going and everything. And since we weren't able to close it, or we didn't wanna close it, I should say, for any long period of time, for really any period of time that we, that's how we operated for, you know, I worked with him alongside him and my store manager, myself and my store manager worked alongside him for probably about a month, I would say so.

Jason Brennan: Right. We always, we knew going into it that we're gonna wanna. Implement all of our technology and systems there, but it was almost like we had to run like two systems simultaneously. It was really chaotic because there were repair orders that were all on paper and different, you know, notes highlighted with different colors that we didn't know what they meant and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Jason Brennan: And then we, you know, any new repair orders were started in tech metric. So it was kind of, it was kind of hard because we had all these clipboards with repair orders on 'em, floating around, and we had repair orders in the system, and they are in tech metrics. So we never knew where it was, whether it was, you know, people would, we'd forget.

Jason Brennan: Wa was this one in Tech Metric or is that a handwritten clipboard one and then, or is it maybe both? A little bit of, you know, a little bit of both. Right. It was just. Crazy.

Michael Smith: Did you manage to crazy keep the team through this? Did the team stay? Because that's quite a transition on the fly, right? We did.

Michael Smith: You're changing wings and engines while you're up in the air, and that's stressful on the people that were dialed into the old model too. Right. How'd you do with that? How did, how'd you do it though?

Jason Brennan: It was well, that would've liked to have conversations with the employees before, and I would've pushed harder for that if I had to do it again.

Jason Brennan: If I, or when we do it again before the transaction occurred, right before we bought the place, before we sealed the deal, and a couple things that went wrong, I didn't push hard enough for, 'cause it really would, there would've been no bad effect I don't think if I came in and talked to the employees before the deal was inked and the old owner was afraid to do it.

Jason Brennan: I didn't push him to do it. But I should have pushed a little harder for that. So anyway, how it went is I came in there one day and the owner said, Hey, this is the new owner. I'm selling the place to him, but I'm gonna be around for a while to help make sure transition goes.

Jason Brennan: Okay. And then I met all the guys and talked to him and they were pretty nervous at first, which is to be expected. I think it's understandable. So, I was there every day, so I was able to continually have conversations with them. I made sure I did a, you know, one-on-one intro meeting between me and them.

Jason Brennan: And, so it was, but it was pretty chaotic. 'cause I was doing all that stuff. Trying to answer your question, I kept everybody, we did let one guy go after a while, but we kept everybody from day one. And so,

Michael Smith: so the guy that went was released on your terms? Not them running out the front door.

Michael Smith: Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Jason Brennan: Right. He was attacked. We used, decided to let 'em go and

Michael Smith: yeah. Not your kind of tech, right? Mm-hmm.

Jason Brennan: Right. Yeah. So, so it so we were dealing with that. I was aware that would be a pretty disastrous if everybody just walked out. Mm-hmm.

Michael Smith: Yeah,

Jason Brennan: somebody, it

Michael Smith: can be

Jason Brennan: somebody else I know in the industry and

Michael Smith: they, I was gonna say, we have a friend that did that Right.

Michael Smith: Day one, nobody was in the shop. It's like, oh, that's not what you all said, but okay. How'd customers move through store two and store three? How did you do both of those transitions? The customer side, you bought an, a dead one that people used to drive by and stop at. Did how, you know, how'd you go back after that market?

Michael Smith: And then how did the owner maybe help you with the second one? What, how did you try to lose as few customers in the third one too? Because this is fascinating case studies, right?

Jason Brennan: It's a good question. So the first acquisition, so our second store, we I drafted a letter kind of an intro letter from me, no, actually it was an intro letter from the old owner.

Jason Brennan: I showed it to him and said, Hey, what do you think about this? And it basically said, Hey thanks for being a customer for, shoot, I think it was 20, 25 years or something. He had the place, maybe 30 even. Thanks for being a customer for years. I just wanna let you introduce you to the new owner. I'm retiring and this the new owner and it had both of our pictures on it.

Jason Brennan: And we used to do some of our own mailers. So that one we did old school, we just, we got the customer list out of the customer out of Mitchell, printed it off put 'em on envelopes and we have a little folding machine. We just printed these things on eight and a half by 11 paper. And it was kind of a, like I said, just an intro, introducing the new owner letter, give him a chance, he's a good guy, blah, blah, blah.

Jason Brennan: And then I had him sign it. He said, yeah, that sounds real good. So he signed it and we folded 'em up, mailed 'em out to all the existing customers and. It worked out really well. We put a coupon in there too. Mm-hmm. You know, so,

Michael Smith: Can I just reflect style wise, that was a very familiar kind of a thing rather than a big old fancy, you know, multicolor shiny advertising looking thing.

Michael Smith: It was a letter, you know, it's a folded letter from the two owners saying, Hey, we care about you guys. Come back, we'll take care of you. Give us a try. I love that. Very familiar. I'm not surprised it worked.

Jason Brennan: Yeah.

Michael Smith: So that's really good.

Jason Brennan: Yeah, it was really well received. People, I was surprised at the response.

Jason Brennan: We didn't track it, but I was here every day and we get a lot of phone calls.

Michael Smith: Fantastic. Fantastic.

Jason Brennan: From that letter.

Michael Smith: Yeah. So the second

Jason Brennan: one, one just, people stopped by. The second one's

Michael Smith: rolling. Oh, I'm sorry, brother. Go ahead. I didn't mean to get in the way, so,

Jason Brennan: yeah. People even stopped by. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Brennan: They, based on that letter, they came by and said, Hey, I just wanted to meet you. You're the new guy, and. It was kind of cool.

Michael Smith: Yeah,

Jason Brennan: that is cool. So that's, so they just, our normal deployed our normal marketing strategy that we already used at the other store with the same web company. And that took a while to get off the ground.

Jason Brennan: That was something unexpected. I was thinking, well, let's do this, these Google ad words, that's our main new customer acquisition marketing method. And I took it for granted that our Lansing campaign was working real well. And then the guys, they were like, well, congratulations. Yeah, we'll do your campaign for you.

Jason Brennan: But, and then when I asked 'em, well, how long before it. Becomes, you know, reaches max maximum effectiveness. 'cause they had brought up the fact that it takes time to build a Google AdWords campaign. That just doesn't happen overnight. They do research and they do testing and they make changes and then they just repeat that process and they said, oh, well, between three to six months, you know, I'm like, well, I went, oh, that's not good.

Jason Brennan: You know,

Michael Smith: is there

Jason Brennan: any way to make it one to

Michael Smith: two months? Is there,

Jason Brennan: They really did a good job. That's good. That's that. They did, they exceeded expectations. Good. But it did take a while and we did have to do and still are doing mailers. To supplement that. So, and then you're, so go ahead.

Jason Brennan: You were gonna ask a question

Michael Smith: about, oh no, I was just gonna say thank you for all that. That's a rich information base. What did you do differently with the store that was already underway? Now you've got customers that are maybe even the next day driving in to the driveway expecting their carter be repaired by the old owner.

Michael Smith: Right. How'd you, how did you handle that one? It's a different model. So,

Jason Brennan: That one, yeah, it was interesting 'cause there was yeah, the re repairs were in the store never closed. So, you know, I walked in and the secretary, we did have a secretary credit. So I take back what I said earlier. We didn't keep everybody, there was a secretary who actually was kind of becoming the face of the business.

Jason Brennan: She would talk to customers, take their key, receive their keys, give 'em their invoices. The owner would be the one who would talk to about repairs, but she was the one they saw when they came in and picked up their car. So, she decided she didn't like the ownership change and just, I never got to meet her.

Jason Brennan: She just decided she wouldn't come back to work. That's once she found out it was being, well, that's,

Michael Smith: that's tough. That's the face of the business at that point. That's a tough one to lose. So

Jason Brennan: yeah, ki kind of, you know, a lot of the owners or a lot of the customers knew the bill the owner, but a lot of 'em also like the secretary.

Jason Brennan: And so I got a lot of questions about it. Where's the secretary? Where is she? Where is she? And you know, oh, it's too bad she's not here. I like working with her, but I just reassured people, my, myself and the manager I hired to work there, just re reassured people that we would take good care of 'em and.

Michael Smith: Were you sitting at

Jason Brennan: the

Michael Smith: front

Jason Brennan: desk

Michael Smith: at that point? Did you take that role and you were the new face at the front?

Jason Brennan: Well, it was myself and the manager. I hired both and the new manager too.

Michael Smith: Yeah. There you go. Okay.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. Awesome. So,

Michael Smith: yep,

Jason Brennan: we were and he didn't last too long. I ended up but I didn't have to go through four total people, you know, and in Hobert it was, you know, three people, and then the fourth one stuck in the Crown Point store.

Jason Brennan: It was one person, and then the second guy stuck, Hey, the next

Michael Smith: store, it'll be a first time stick. Right? I hope

Jason Brennan: so.

Kent Bullard: I'm curious to know, because a lot of this has to do with managing people, right? So you've got the dynamic of there's people already in existence, they already have relationships with the customers.

Kent Bullard: There, there's also what people do I not have that I do need and I'm curious to know what your thoughts are or what your, needs are when you're looking for people at this point. So you've been through a few different managers. What's one of those, one of the key things you're looking for in a manager as you're expanding and growing?

Kent Bullard: So you're going out to the to the interviewing part of it. What characteristics are you looking for?

Jason Brennan: Well, ideally, that's a good question. I, ideally, I'd like to, you know, unless the fourth store we acquire has a good existing manager, which would be nice if I was gonna have to just hire a new manager, I'd like to promote someone from within my company, one of my assistant managers.

Jason Brennan: I'd like to we run two people on the counter at all of our shops. A manager and an assistant manager. And the assistant managers are supposed to learn to be able to run the store when the manager's not there. So they're. They're gearing up and training to become a manager if they want to.

Jason Brennan: They don't have to, but if they want to and they've gained the skills necessary, then they're able to be promoted. You know, they're definitely gonna be considered for promotion to store manager, either when we acquire a store or somebody else moves to a different store and now they're the manager there.

Jason Brennan: So, you know, that's the first thing I'd do. But if I have to hire if I have to, and I have had to just hire a store manager off the street, that's a good question. I'm not sure if I have the right answer. 'cause it didn't work out in the first shot for me any of the times. But if they've run a store before an auto repair shop before, that'd definitely be a plus.

Jason Brennan: Well,

Kent Bullard: maybe they were, well, I guess so. Another way you could ask this is. What are some of the reasons, and not to get personal, I don't wanna get personal for these people, but what were some of the underlying reasons why that manager didn't work out? Because then you can kind of say, well, okay, that's something I don't want for the next one.

Jason Brennan: I think that some of the reasons they didn't work out is their expectations. Were not, you know, really properly aligned with the reality of the situation. And that could be that could be my fault for not setting the expectation or making them, you know, making it clear to them what the situation was really gonna look like.

Jason Brennan: So the, you know, one guy we had who came in from a dealership had the right personality type, I think, and the right characteristics, but he ultimately I think he expected. This was in the Hobert shop. I, you know, he, I think he expected it to grow a lot faster. He was a little overconfident, I believe, in his ability to grow the store to a level where he'd be making the kind of income that he thought he should make in a short amount of time.

Jason Brennan: And then I think he underestimated just, he just underestimated the amount of work that it was gonna be to help me grow the store from. The level where it was when we bought it, where it needed to be. So,

Michael Smith: got Jason. Jason, can I grab onto a couple things that you said here that are super important.

Michael Smith: Why? And I want to cut some slack for you, for everybody listening to you too. You know, you took the blame, I guess, in a way for expecta expectations setting with him that you could make it more clear what it was really gonna feel like. And I just wanna cut you some slack as your friend, right? And somebody who knows a lot about folks that doing what you're doing, there's more unknown when you buy a new store than you wished.

Michael Smith: There was there, and no matter how prepared you are, how many checklists you have, there's a whole bunch of wrinkles in there that no, no due diligence process can be thorough enough to figure out. And so all of the projections are theoretical. And I'm not trying to, you know, put too much risk in here, but it's not as easy as it looks.

Michael Smith: And, you know, to cut us all some slack, it's difficult to say this is the pathway that we've, you know, we have 90% assurance. It's got you get into it and stuff starts popping and somebody you didn't expect to quits and a whole wave of customers leave for reasons nobody would've ever seen coming and all kinds of crazy stuff like that.

Michael Smith: So I, you know, there's lessons you've learned. I don't want to get by for people. It's in, it's awesome. It's your character that you took the blame for that, but man, is it hard to figure something out that you're doing for the first time with so many moving variables? And that's maybe one of the characteristics I just wanted to catch on the way by was part of the expectations that they might have is that, hey, this is the best we can do.

Michael Smith: To see what we think is gonna happen, but we're gonna have to be flexible. You know, we're gonna have to be resilient and persevere for a few months until we really do figure out how to dial this in. And it may not look like this. Are you okay with that? And if they say yes then at least that you have that door open that they don't get frustrated because it wasn't what I expected it to be.

Michael Smith: Right. Because you kind of set that up in your conversation in the first place. So,

Kent Bullard: and this is where yeah. Humility and grace come into play. You know, Jason, you were talking earlier about the hours that you worked. Right? And just bringing this to this point I wrote, I drew a diagram here.

Kent Bullard: 'cause I was looking at I thought it was interesting you said I worked a hundred hours because I didn't know how to run the, this shop. At that point I didn't have these competencies. And then I finally got it dialed in and I was working less. And then I took on a new challenge and then I ended up working.

Kent Bullard: More again. And I mean, this follows the mastery path, the mastery model a lot. And I think it's the same thing with these managers or the people that you elevate into these positions. You know, if you're hiring from within, is that yeah, there's gonna be things you don't know and it's gonna be difficult and hard and you gotta give some grace to allow for the time and the space to learn those competencies.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. Yeah. Really when we think of what, you know, with what, back to what Michael said for a second actually about setting expectations and the fact that we really don't know we can set, we can set goals or we can talk about a, in an ideal scenario or a likely scenario, but we don't know actually what's gonna happen.

Jason Brennan: Exactly what's gonna happen and how it's gonna look and feel, and, I did do that with the, I did. Now that I think about it, I did tell this guy exactly what you said, you know, or sort of what you said, that we don't know exactly what's gonna happen. It's, you know, might be a little rocky at times.

Jason Brennan: Your base pay is a pay that you told me that you can live on this pay. Well that's good because it might happen for a month, or it might have to be that way for eight months. We don't know how long it's gonna take to grow the store to where you can make more money, you know, your desired pay as opposed to your base pay.

Jason Brennan: And I think this guy was just a little overconfident and, or a little, maybe, just whatever you wanna say. But with that part, one lesson I learned. From that particular guy managing the store was that I, he had been doing well and then he got demotivated when things weren't going the way that he thought they should.

Jason Brennan: We had a really good month and then followed by a really slow month, and that's when he got demotivated. And I actually was, I had been ignoring my Lansing store, which was fine I guess, but really just, they did need me for a few things here and there, and I just couldn't give them any time. So once I got that guy, once that guy got, that manager, got his feet in the ground in her second shop, I ended up, you know, going, once I felt like he had his feet in the ground, I went back to Lansing and spent a bunch of time there repairing some equipment and things like that because I realized we had never, that, I just always did it and we never assigned it to anybody or had any procedures or processes in place for equipment maintenance.

Jason Brennan: And since everybody was. No, nobody wanted to bother me. I found out that I think it was like a, at the six month point of me hardly ever being there, I found out that there's a bunch of broken stuff and that I, that no one was telling me about. So, one of the techs called me, he goes, Hey I hate to bother you, but this thing's broke.

Jason Brennan: I think it was one of the sleds on the alignment rack was broken. And then he said, well, yeah, and by the way, also the tire machine doesn't work right. We have to keep, you know,

Kent Bullard: well

Jason Brennan: we're at it. Here's

Kent Bullard: another thing on list,

Jason Brennan: you know, I was wondering should we call someone to fix this stuff or are you gonna stop by and help us with it or what?

Jason Brennan: And a lot of it just fell apart from lack of maintenance. 'cause I wasn't there and I never put together a shop maintenance checklist or a procedure. So we now have that in all the stores. But I spent like a month. Myself. 'cause I thought I was able to, I really shouldn't have, but I spent like a month fixing and refurbishing replacing stuff and then developing a maintenance checklist and assigning it to people.

Jason Brennan: And then by the time I got back to the hobert shop, the second store, I found out that pretty much the whole time I had been gone, the leadership in the second store, which was the manager, had been super discouraged and even started undermining the company and telling people that he thought, giving people his opinions about where he thought the place was headed, which is nowhere good.

Jason Brennan: And it's not gonna work out here. I don't think this growth plan's gonna work. I'm not, maybe you should. He even told one of my techs that maybe he should start looking for a job elsewhere. This was all happening while I was gone for that mostly gone for that one month period of time. So I walked into it and figured, and luckily I have a part-time guy that works for me who does helps with operations management and recruiting.

Jason Brennan: Max is his name. He's the one who figured he was there more than I was and he clued me in on it and he goes, Hey, when you get back here, we got some problems to deal with. And then one of my techs was already out had already gotten job offers by the time I caught wind that any of this kind of stuff had occurred and we were able to keep 'em.

Jason Brennan: But morale, yeah, close call. Morale was super in the dumpster and I had to come in, myself and Max both had to come in and bring that back up. We had to fire both the manager and the assistant manager. They were kind of cohorts in the, the eing of the shop.

Michael Smith: Mm-hmm.

Jason Brennan: And

Michael Smith: You have so many rich experiences, Jason, and you know a couple, I just wanna catch on the way by.

Michael Smith: As you scaled, you've developed the ability to grow from within. And this idea that people can career path with you and grow and stay and do more and achieve and be recognized and take on more, very much of a human development path that's satisfying to people. And it means that as you do that, you know, the fourth store, the fifth store, the sixth store, you have a capacity not to have to go outside and bring in people that and I'll just say this, don't have the trust in you and the system because they come from the outside.

Michael Smith: And when you groom 'em from the inside and people know your character and trust you in the system and know when something goes wrong that it's gonna get fixed, right? The patience, I mean, the demonstration of this is the patience that your team gave to you in trust, just to not even you know, it's being the beloved type owner that you are.

Michael Smith: They don't wanna let you down. They know you're busy. They don't call. But the other side of that is the fact that, you know, they're not gonna blow their lives up. At some point somebody finally says, okay, maybe we should just call 'em and let 'em know, and then you're running and fix it, right? And again, one more thing is you scale.

Michael Smith: Just these are lessons that you've learned that are magnificent to share. As you continue to scale, you might have somebody other than you as the new store landing receiver, right? Somebody who drops in, who's a super. Internally developed, knows the fine tuned way can go to the new store, make sure the transitions occur, and you're not lost in that system, right?

Michael Smith: Because you're the only guy historically that could do that. But now you have a scalable model where you can have a, an expert follow you through the new transactions. And all of this is just fantastic lessons and stories that you're sharing. And I just wanna catch some of this on the way by you.

Michael Smith: You've really learned a lot in the way you've gone through this. And it's, and thank you for sharing all that. It's great experiences and you've mastered a lot, even in the solutions. The way you've solved them is full of rich culture building concepts too. So thank you for this. Jason. You're, I really like watching you go.

Michael Smith: It's great stuff.

Kent Bullard: So it's, thanks Michael. It's a lot of, evidence of patience and persistence and growth in your leadership. And I think that's where I wanna take the conversation a little bit is to look at, you know, how have you grown as a leader between, you know, your early career and the first location, and then now where you're up to three locations.

Jason Brennan: So could you, I'm sorry, can

Kent Bullard: you repeat that? How has your leader, how do you feel or what are the ways that your leadership has changed or evolved over the years?

Jason Brennan: Oh yeah, man, I'll tell you a lot. It's sometimes I learn by, unfortunately, I'm one of those kind of guys that learns by mistakes a lot.

Jason Brennan: So that's why I have so many of these stories. And I, but you know what when you're a better leader, you make less mistakes like that less of those kinds of mistakes. So I, there was a huge incentive for me to grow as a leader and, one of the, one of the biggest incentives was was just realizing that man when I re, when I realized that a lot of the, a lot of the problems I was having was due to poor, were due to poor leadership.

Jason Brennan: I really wanted to learn. So I started as the kind of, the phases I went through was I started kind of like your traditional old school boss. That was how I viewed leadership. It used to,

Kent Bullard: well,

Jason Brennan: yeah, well, yeah, my dad and people who I'd worked for as a technician, you know, usually, and any of the places I worked, you tried not to talk to the boss.

Jason Brennan: 'cause if you're talking to the boss, that means there was some kind of problem and, you know, it that was the culture I came from. So that was how I led. And it, it used to work. It was just never a good idea. Even if it worked, I don't think it was great. It doesn't work anymore. 'cause we have a technician shortage and for various other reasons, people just they won't put up with that kind of positional leadership mentality anymore and stay working for you.

Jason Brennan: They'll just leave and find somebody else to work for. So I couldn't have continued doing that even if I wanted to, but I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore. So I would just tell people what to do and expect 'em to do it like I would do if I was somebody's employee. And it didn't happen. Then I evolved into more of a, kind of a learning mode and I made a bunch of mistakes there too.

Jason Brennan: I maybe gave people too much slack or became too close friends with 'em, and I was just figuring out how to, how do I. I was thinking to myself, how do I how do I tell people things in a nicer way than just saying, just do this? And I thought that was all it was about was just how I said it to 'em.

Jason Brennan: Maybe they didn't like the way that I said it, or maybe I needed them to ask 'em more nicely or something. And really, that wasn't all that's good to do, but that's not what it was all about either. What it really I think became is, and some of it I went to Michael Smith's leadership intensive a couple of years ago, I think it was, and all the things I'd been experimenting, the style of leadership or style of management that I had been experimenting with, all kind of came together in my mind when I took Michael Smith's class read some books, you know, and among other things.

Jason Brennan: And then kind of understood that people are. People are all different. They might perceive the way that you say things to them in different ways. They're looking for the good employees, or I should say employee ideal employees. They're looking for some kind of career path to mastery. And if we can give that to them and convey that we're giving that to them, and ask them what it, what they, what it is that they actually want out of their career, and align our company's goals with their goals so that we all succeed together, then then they'll, you know, they'll wanna, people want to go to battle for you and do what you need 'em to do when they understand that it's good for everybody.

Jason Brennan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And,

Michael Smith: and Jason and you and they bring their own energy to it. You're Bri Yeah. They wanna it, they're not, they do it because they wanna do it. Yeah.

Jason Brennan: Not 'cause you told 'em to do

Michael Smith: it. Right. You're not bribing them, you're not threatening them, you're not cajoling them. They come to work with their own motivation because you're all going in the same direction, which is powerful.

Kent Bullard: So I'm cur I wanna know, if you could go back to young Jason before a lot of these challenges and pursuits that you've had what's the one lesson that you would want young Jason to know? Yeah, great question.

Jason Brennan: That's a good question.

Michael Smith: Depends on how far back leadership wise. Yeah. Back in the fifth grade or I'm

Jason Brennan: just, yeah, sorry.

Jason Brennan: If I think back to the beginning of my, the beginning of a business ownership I don't know if there's one, one that I can really. Point to, to say that's the one that would've made my life a lot easier. But there's a few main ones. Don't open a business if you don't, if you don't have any, at least some basic accounting and some business management principles.

Jason Brennan: And don't go into business under capitalize. I would've told myself that, you know, have a business plan, get some industry expertise involved, get some basic basic business management and accounting training that, that, that should have done that first, you know, would've made my life a lot easier.

Jason Brennan: I probably would've shaved I probably realistically could have shaved, you know, seven to 10 years off of the time it's taken to get to the point where we are now. 'cause I think the first seven to 10 years we just spent spinning our wheels and doing the wrong stuff. So,

Kent Bullard: what now at the stage of your personal professional growth, how do you define success?

Jason Brennan: Well, that's, it's a hard one. I I thought about that a lot too recently because I've been thinking, because people always ask me, well, where so you're gonna buy another shop pretty soon or build one? Or, what are you gonna do? And then I tell 'em that my goal is to have 10 by 2030, and still gonna do that.

Jason Brennan: But I, so I start thinking to myself as I'm getting asked these questions, is that my goal is, does that mean I'm successful when I get to 10 stores? Or and am I not successful now because I haven't, you know, in a, I guess the what's that cliche? It's not about the. It's about the journey, not the destination or something.

Jason Brennan: It's kind of a, I've been thinking about that old cliche phrase a lot more lately and thinking that I need to redefine what the, what success means to me. So I'm not exactly sure, but I know it's not, when I hit 10 stores, that's not the definition of success to me anymore. It used to be if you just wanted to say, well, what does it mean to be successful?

Jason Brennan: Well, when I'm done with this plan, then I get to 10 stores, that means I'm successful. Well, that mentality could cause some people to think that they're not successful because they haven't achieved that goal yet. And that's not necessarily the case, probably not the case. But that's the way that I've felt before I, I've had those feelings and I think that comes from.

Jason Brennan: You know, driving myself too hard over the years and maybe being a little too self-critical. So, I'm redefining what success means to me and part of what it means, I know for sure is what I said earlier about facilitating the growth of other people. It's it just makes me happy to see, and I feel successful when I do that.

Jason Brennan: So that's definitely one of the things that defines success in my mind, is that I'm helping other people who achieve their goals and that they are, they're happy to come to work every day. They have a job they like to do, and that's something that I'm helping with, or I'm part a big part of so the number of people I guess I, I guess you could say the more people feel fulfilled in their careers and rise to the top, the more successful I am.

Jason Brennan: That's for sure.

Michael Smith: Great

Kent Bullard: answer.

Michael Smith: Great answer.

Kent Bullard: So I, I want to end with this question. Michael, do you have any other questions?

Michael Smith: No, I was thinking of the last question and how, this is such a segue into that last question.

Kent Bullard: I think we're kind of making our way to this point. You know, what's the legacy that you hope to leave at the end of all of this?

Michael Smith: When all the dust settles, right? Yeah.

Jason Brennan: Well, yeah I've been thinking about that a lot too. When all dust settles and, you know, someday I'm sailing off into the sunset or probably still working on a car, 'cause I like doing that. Whatever I'm doing, whatever that is, whatever it is that I'm doing at the time, I like people to think man, that guy was a really great guy to work for.

Jason Brennan: It's too bad he is not my boss anymore. You know, that's just the general thoughts and feelings I like people to have about me and that. We really built a good thing together and I'd like to see that still continue. I'd like to see that even when I retire someday and pass along the torch to someone else to run the business I'm leaving them with a good, a really good solid foundation for even more growth.

Jason Brennan: And I'd like to see that, that that we don't lose the family aspect, the family feel to our business where, you know, people help each other because they know that's the right thing to do. And by helping each other and helping customers in the process, we make money and everybody's happy.

Jason Brennan: I like to see that kind of thing. Continue.

Michael Smith: Yeah. Let just take

Jason Brennan: Yeah. Pass beyond me.

Michael Smith: Yeah. Follow on question about the company the community legacy impact that the company might leave, what would be a note that you'd like to have the, how does the community see it when you've built it the way you wanted and handed it off to the next steward?

Michael Smith: Right. What would you like them to see when they look at the company?

Jason Brennan: I'd like to see that, I'd like them to view us as a place where they can a place they can trust that they can rely on. And that we're making a positive impact on the community. Not just, we're not just here to be here or to make some money or whatever it is.

Jason Brennan: We're here to that we care about the community. And I would like, so I guess in a nutshell, I would like to leave the. A leave off in a way that. When, let's say whoever takes over for me someday, wants to build a fine tuned auto location in a town that has never had one. They welcome us in with open arms and say, great where do you want to put your shop?

Jason Brennan: That's, we love to have you here. That's how I'd like to be viewed by the community.

Michael Smith: Fantastic. Jason, fantastic. I

Kent Bullard: love that

this

Kent Bullard: has been such a. Phenomenally enriching conversation. Jason, you've shared a ton of experience and I know that there's a lot of people out there listening who have, are either currently dealing with this or they're gonna deal with these issues, thinking about it.

Kent Bullard: And you've given them some reassurance and some insight on how to approach these problems. Thank you so much for being here. Truly. Listeners, if you have questions or comments for us or for Jason, obviously make sure that you join the conversation because we'd love to, to have you a part of this.

Kent Bullard: And ask them down in the comments below. If you enjoyed the content here, please like and share. 'cause it helps the algorithm gets it promoted out there. So again, we spread this information and help uplift the industry. And if you want more information about the institute and what we do you can find that at we are the institute.com.

Kent Bullard: Jason, thank you so much for being here.

Michael Smith: Thank you, Jason. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for having me. It's good to see you, my friend. You're welcome.