From Shop Floor to Franchise Success: Trevor Jones on Systems, Scaling & Selling

Jeff: [00:00:07] Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner’s Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way. This isn’t about a polished success story on the Company “About Us” page; it’s about the real story behind the business—the pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you’ll sit down with the owners who’ve been in the trenches, built something meaningful, and lived to tell the tale. Whether you’re starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there’s a seat at the Owner’s Roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights.

Hello, and welcome to Owner’s Roundtable. Today at the table is Trevor Jones, former owner of Badlands Collision Group and current Corporate Director and Head of Training for Driven Brands. Today, we are going to cover a wide range of topics, from partnership and franchise agreements to existential exit crises in the Walmart parking lot. Join Trevor and I as we discuss his journey to earning a seat at the Owner’s Roundtable. Happy to have you on the podcast. I’m interested to get into all kinds of things. You and I have had very many business discussions over the years, but I thought to start off with, do you want to tell the listeners who haven’t known you as long as I have a little bit about yourself and how you originally got to be an owner of Badlands Collision Group?
Trevor: [00:01:51] Started repairing cars, actually in high school. Worked into being a journeyman auto body technician, then a shop foreman into shop manager, then met up with a guy with a crazy wild idea and we bought the shop that I was working at and continued to grow that to a three-store multi-store operator, which is what created Badlands Collision Group. And then shortly after we kind of hit that as a peak for me, anyhow. I decided to sell out my half to my partner. Just wanted different things, right? Which is all good. And currently I am Director of Franchise Success for Driven Brands, which means I work with franchisees on their improvements, operationally mostly. But yeah, supporting those franchisees, mostly in the education and training side.
Jeff: [00:02:42] I’m eager to ask you about that, because you’re the one of the few people I know that have been both a franchisee and worked with a franchisor. And I think there’s things probably to learn on both sides of the fence. So we’ll come back around to that. But before we get into that, I want to take back to the early the crazy guy with the idea. So you’re working on cars. You’re the shop foreman. How did it go to be, oh, well, we should buy this place and make it happen.

Trevor: [00:03:20] Well, it’s kind of a unique story in that I was managing, basically managing the location for an absent owner. Right? Which, as business owners, we all dare to dream, right? So I was the, I guess, the key man there. I ran the shop, did everything that needed to be done. And at the time, there was a location down the street that went under. I got to know my business partner at the time, because he was left to deal with some of the fallout from that, which I was just down the street. So I was an easy access to helping deal with that. And he approached me one day after a few months, I kind of working at arm’s length on, hey, we should buy this. What do you think? That’s how that all started from fixing cars in high school to buying a business. Yeah.
Jeff: [00:04:16] So you just went back into your Scrooge McDuck pile of money and just took it and bought the business? It was just an easy peasy situation, right?
Trevow: [00:04:25] Well, no, there’s always some stressful pieces to that, right? There’s little, little bits. And first is obviously the financing side. I was able to ultimately remortgage my house for the funds I needed, which I think happens a lot. Right?
Jeff: [00:04:42] Yeah, I think a lot of people, that’s the first source where most people’s wealth is concentrated early in their life.
Trevor: [00:04:46] Yeah. You’re grabbing that equity that you’ve built over the years. So that was that. And I wasn’t very old, so there wasn’t a whole lot of equity, but there was enough. And then the next part is figuring out that the business partnership and making sure that’s all structured properly, which was, those would probably be the two biggest stressful pieces about it. Probably the fact that it was a fully operating, functioning, profitable business at the time took that stress off of it, I guess. We weren’t like after a greenfield, right? Like that’s bricks and mortar, brand new, all that sort of thing. We had that history there.
Jeff: [00:05:30] So did you guys spend a lot of time up front ironing out how the partnership was going to work? Because I end up talking to a lot of guys. We’re like, ah, we’ll figure out the partnership thing later and sometimes it gets a little sticky later. Did you guys saw a lot of that stuff out upfront?
Trevor: [00:05:35] Well, I think we were in a unique position in that a lot of business partnerships start with friends who try to figure out how to be business partners. We were business partners, just trying to figure out how to be friends. And so it was always about the business. That was first and foremost. So I think that’s kind of got a unique motivation to it there. Once we agreed on a share split and that sort of thing, the rest come pretty easy. I think if there’s one thing that I recommend to have in a partnership agreement is a shotgun clause, so that if you ever decide or somebody decides they want to buy you or vice versa, you’ve got a way to keep that equitable.
Jeff: [00:06:27] It makes a lot of sense. And I think for a lot of people, you make a good point. Most people get into business with their friends, but that’s not necessarily a good fit for offsetting their skills. And I think it’s, you know, people and you’re comfortable with them. And some people jump into a partnership agreement to realize, you know, a year later that, oh, this actually doesn’t fit well. This person isn’t bringing the… I gave up a chunk of the company. I’m not really getting the offsetting value because I didn’t make a good pick. But you got you guys did it a different way where it was all about the fit first, right?
Trevor: [00:07:03] Yeah, yeah. I think maybe that would have just been as much luck as anything else, I guess. That we were I wouldn’t say polar opposites, but we brought different things to the table. I think that’s what made it successful. That was 11 years, I think just over 11 years we were in business together and the business was doing quite well while growing. We went from one location to three. So you’ve got to be open about talking about who’s going to do what and who’s going to bring what to the business, because that’s all still needs to be talked about, because the last thing you need is to feel like you’re the one carrying the load. Right? That breeds resentment and then your contempt, and then you’re down a long, scary road, right? And there’s different avenues to help with that. Business coaching such as yours and that sort of thing. Right? Which we definitely took advantage of that sort of thing. Definitely helps throughout that process because that’s, that could be detrimental too, right? It’s a relationship and you’re together with them more than you probably are with your spouse or significant other. Right?
Jeff: [00:08:16] Do you have any recommendations you’d give somebody that is looking at starting a partnership with somebody? Like, what kind of questions do you think you should ask a potential partner before you sign on the dotted line?
Trevor: [00:08:30] That’s a loaded question, right? I think a lot of it’s that relationship first and your comfort level with that person you’re going into business with. You’ve both got to be ready to have an open and honest conversation about what you want out of the business, because you may want different things out of the business. And that’s where it ended. I shouldn’t say it like it ended. That’s how it wrapped up for me and my business partner is we got to the point we wanted different things. So if you don’t build in an avenue to be able to do that, that’s where things can happen.
Jeff: [00:09:06] Having the ability to have a two way conversation about uncomfortable things. And not ignoring it until it becomes a lot of anger and resentment is a big thing between partnerships that fail and partnerships that go the distance.
Trevor: [00:09:20] That was a lot easier to do as a single store operator. Quite often we would have tailgate meetings, right? Because we would just be in the shop, drop a tailgate, sit down and have a conversation. When we moved into multiple locations where we would be in different cities, that was hard to do. Yeah, that was hard to do.
Jeff: [00:09:34] Awesome. Well, can we turn a little bit to your love of developing processes to keep organized? I know when you guys started out, it was actually a much smaller shop and you kept buying the spaces beside you in the business condo you were in and knocking down walls so you could add more bays. And I think that was in part because you, instead of making the business rely on you, you built a lot of systems to automate a lot of that stuff. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Trevor: [00:09:59] Yeah, I think a lot of it was born out of the desire to not deal with the emotion of issues. So if you can build a system and a process that really helps remove that. It’s just like this is the system we got to follow. It’s how you feel about it… we can talk about changing the system, but it just doesn’t make sense unless the system still works and it gets us to the outcome that we need. But usually, like if there’s a system in steps, it makes it so much easier for everybody. Right? And I remember this clear as day. We were kind of getting to the capacity of that location where square footage wise and sales wise and all that sort of stuff. We added a damage appraiser, and he had worked for us for a couple of weeks, and he’d been around the industry for a long time. Anyhow, he says to me the one day, he’s like, I’ve never worked in a shop this busy with this least amount of stress. And to me, that was the feather in the hat. That was the goal. So I was like, well, I achieved that, I guess, right? And that’s what processes and systems. And if you don’t have that, growth is almost out of the question. If you’ve got to be there to make the decisions on the daily for your single store, what are you going to do? You can’t be in three places at once or two places at once. You gotta have those systems in place to manage it. And even if you have somebody good in there to support in your absence, it’s having some guideposts for them is going to help you measure their success as well.
Jeff: [00:011:45] A story you told me once that changed the way I thought about business was you told me how you’d figured out that because there weren’t enough brooms in the shop, guys were spending, on average, 45 minutes a day walking around looking for a broom so they could clean up. And brooms were pretty cheap. So everybody got a broom, and there was a mark on the wall where the broom went back after you were done using it.
Trevor: [00:12:03] Yeah. That’s… To me that just, it just makes sense, right? I guess if you don’t want a clean facility, I just don’t worry about it. But if clean and organized and efficient, because that’s what those two things bring you is efficiency, go buy some extra brooms. Also another thing on that same same sort of thing, cardboard recycling. Yeah, we just kind of pick up the little things because it’s always about the little things. We could have that cardboard recycling bin emptied twice a week or once a week or whatever. And if we paid the technicians to flatten all the cardboard, we could maybe cut that down to once every two weeks. Dumping the bin is cheap compared to what you would pay a technician to crush cardboard. So you’ve got to watch where you’re spending your money. You know what? Just throw it in there. I’ll pay the truck to come and pick it up again, because it’s a lot cheaper than paying somebody an hourly wage just to flatten cardboard.
Jeff: [00:13:03] Well, that’s one thing I love about the way you think about businesses. A lot of people get fixated on big, shiny objects, and they’re trying to build these big, elaborate systems to run the businesses. But sometimes it’s really simple things. It’s the brooms. It’s like, oh, it’s cheaper to pay them to dump the cardboard more often. One of the things you told me, I actually think I was complaining about cardboard and how my staff wouldn’t take out the cardboard on a regular basis, and you’re like, well, is there a sign that says how often to take out the cardboard? Like, no, put a sign up that says that the cardboard goes out on Tuesdays and Thursdays and see if that fixes the problems. And it did. That was the only thing I did was print and laminate a sign. Stuck it on the door. Despite the fact that I told them repeatedly for weeks to take it out, the sign that was reminding them every time they walked by it fixed the problem. And it’s the simple things that make a huge difference.
Trevor: [00:13:51] Yep, those two things that you just mentioned, that continually talking about it as well as the visual cues, they’re not mutually exclusive, right? They go hand in hand. You have to have that conversation, and you have to put that visual stimulus in place to kind of make it happen. It’s why you put a shadow on the wall where you hang the broom just so it’s easy to see that the broom is not where it’s supposed to be.
Jeff: [00:14:18] Right? Yes. Well, there’s a shadow that’s not filled.
Trevor: [00:14:22] A shadow. And I think that that becomes human nature. Maybe it’s just me and and just kind of wanting everything where it’s supposed to be. But I think there’s human nature to just like, you want to set it back in place, right? You want to fill that void that there should be a broom in.
Jeff: [00:14:38] And once you make that, that something has a place, then it’s easier for people to follow that system. Whereas when it’s like, just clean up after yourself. Well, you shouldn’t have to explain to somebody to put a broom in a reasonable spot, but once it has a spot, it’s a lot easier for them to follow along.
Trevor: [00:14:54] Well, when you have things like that, and then all of a sudden you bring in a new staff, do you think you need to tell them where to hang the brooms? That’s pretty self-evident on where that goes. Yeah. And then the same thing with that, like you talked about a sign for the garbage. Do you think you need to tell a new person when the cardboard goes out? No. They’ll figure it. Yeah, it becomes a, they learn by osmosis on some of that. Don’t count on it. But it just makes that stage a lot easier. Right? Of onboarding.
Jeff: [00:15:27] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One of my other pet peeves about building systems is sometimes people will build a system and then never check to see if anybody ever followed it. And then they’re like, well, nobody ever does the systems that I designed. So there’s no point in designing systems. Like, well, if you never check that it actually happened, why would anybody else care?
Trevor: [00:15:49] Yeah. Yep. I’ve definitely been involved in a lot of, I call it, it’s got a different names, value stream mapping or whatever that is. Been through a lot of that workflow process. And then you go back a year later and nobody’s cracked that process open again. And I think sometimes we get in our own way and then we make that too detailed, like try to be too stringent on the steps and the rules. You want to have them in place. You want to have the guideposts, but you want to make sure the goal is set and that you’re achieving the goal. And if you’re achieving the goal in a slightly modified way, is that really that bad? A little flexibility in the system. And the analogy, the way I had it explained to me is and maybe humour me a little bit here is what’s five plus four? Okay. What’s six plus three? Okay. We just got to the same place two different ways, and neither one was wrong. Yeah. So you’ve got to be able to, like, make sure you’re, yeah, you’re being flexible enough that it’s hitting, you’re hitting your goals. Oh, that’s okay. Without being detrimental to somebody else. One person, one team takes a shortcut. And all of a sudden somebody, another team has to pick up the slack. That’s no good.
Jeff: [00:17:05] Flexibility, but not liquid.
Trevor: [00:17:09] Yes. Exactly. Exactly.
Jeff: [00:17:10] Awesome. All right, well, let’s get into the franchise thing. So you’re a franchisee for 11 years. What was that like? And now you’ve gone to the dark side and you’re working for a franchise owner. Should we call it the dark side? It’s not the dark side. It’s a different kind of business.
Trevor: [00:17:29] Well, I’ve heard it called the dark side before, too.
Jeff: [00:17:31] Yeah.
Trevor: [00:17:32] Sure. And I think sometimes it’s a little bit different in that, I think a lot of employees for a franchisor, like a corporate staff, they end up going the other way, right? They go and open up a location and be a franchisee on that side. Going from the franchisee side to the franchisor is probably a little backwards in that respect. So differences… national conferences were a lot more fun as a franchisee. But they’re designed to be a lot more. That’s the customer, the franchisor. Right? It’s designed for them. It’s for their education. It’s their support. It’s for their celebration for what they’ve done for the over the year, right? So, it makes sense in that, working for the franchisor, It’s my job to help make sure that that’s being achieved for them that time. And I guess my view, especially with the role I have now and focusing mostly on education and training, I don’t think I’ve had a better time at work. It’s something I truly enjoy. I get to work with the stores on improvement and in process and bringing them new information. Or maybe it’s just recapping and regurgitating what’s already out there, but a refresh on it. It’s only been a few months in this particular role, but it’s been great. Yeah.
Jeff: [00:18:59] When you first signed the franchise agreement, did you understand what you were getting yourself into, or was there like some learning a few years later like, oh, that’s what that clause means?
Trevor: [00:19:08] I don’t think there was any surprises there. And every franchisor has their FDD and there’s certain rules and different provinces and there’s franchise law and all that. So you’ve got to make sure you’re understanding it. But for me, it was a lot of trust at that time. And knowing that this is what I need or we need for this business to grow. So it was like, close my eyes and sign for the most part, right? As I got older and stuff and looked at other franchises and opportunities and that sort of thing, I think I spent a lot more scrutiny on it, but for that first one, it was just because I had remortgaged the house. It was like, all in, right? In for a penny, in for a pound. I’m not stopping here. This is not oh, gee, I’m not signing this. I’m going to try it on my own. No, that wasn’t an option. Yeah.
Jeff: [00:20:04] Just the cost of doing business.
Trevor: [00:20:07] It’s what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Sink or swim?
Jeff: [00:20:10] Well, I think there’s some, like, there’s some great franchises out there that have been around for a long, long time, like Driven Brands and CarStar brand. And they’re established and they continually are actively working on the brand. But I think some people get into franchise agreements where they don’t necessarily… they think that because it’s a franchise, it’s a well-run business. But sometimes if it’s a smaller franchise where there’s only 20 or 30 locations, sometimes they can lose focus. Like even the franchisor gets tired and stops revising the system to update it. And I think a lot of people find themselves trapped in franchises because they don’t do their due diligence on the franchise itself to see, like, what is the plan to keep this fresh and going? I’m not sure if you’ve ever talked to any other franchisees that have struggled with, especially smaller franchises there.
Trevor: [00:20:58] Yeah. I guess something that’s a little bit different from on the collision repair side and maybe the franchise in that, it was more of a conversion licensing as much as anything. It’s a little bit different than like a straight up retail franchise. Right? And operationally across the country, there is a lot of differences on how facilities need to operate. When you’re dealing with B.C., Saskatchewan, and Manitoba as having public insurance, there’s different rules that have to be followed and played there, and operationally, the steps within that are changed compared to your Alberta, Ontario, and Atlantic. And then Quebec has its own, it’s its own little island too, in that it has other it’s not government insurance, but it’s more heavily government regulated. So from a franchise standpoint, that flexibility piece, there is that built into it. Right? The locations and I think coming on as a franchisee all those years ago, it was still my business. The biggest thing that we had to contend with is making sure we were branding compliant, and of course, doing the job right. That goes without saying, right? That was kind of the biggest thing. Hey, you’re reporting and all those other little things that come along with it, but not so heavy-handed as maybe you might think of some of the big brands you see out there in the retail space or food service and that sort of thing. Because for what we do, we’re not baking bread. It’s not as a repeatable operation as that.
Jeff: [00:22:53] It’s not two pickles and one tablespoon of mustard and thou shalt do it exactly like this with no differentiation.
Trevor: [00:23:02] So it’s actually and when you think about it, it’s in the remanufacturing space is really what it is. You drop your cell phone, you can send it away and have it remanufactured or go buy a refurbished one or something like that, so it’s more on that. You get some of this damage and you refurbish it back to prior condition. So it’s a little bit different than that repeatable common thing, right? Yeah.
Jeff: [00:23:27] Because you don’t know how it’s going to be broken. It’s going to be broken in a different way every single time. So that level of systematization is pretty hard.
Trevor: [00:23:34] Exactly, exactly. Yeah. You can have identical situations, but the outcomes might be totally different when I think of collision damage, right?
Jeff: [00:23:46] That makes a lot of sense. Taking you back to when you were working with your partner. How did you kind of make sure you stayed in good communication? Did you have, like, regular partner meetings or, like, how did you… just kind of casual conversations or how did you deal with that?
Trevor: [00:24:01] Yeah. Well, I think just like with any relationship, like it’s not all blue sky, right? You have challenges. You have to be ready to deal with those. You have to be open about it. And sometimes that’s hard. A lot of times that’s hard, right? For me, if I could just write a system and a process to avoid that, I would be all over it. But that doesn’t always work, right? So, you know, I don’t know that I’ve got a silver bullet for that. But when you recognize that there’s animosity, somebody needs to put their hand up, right? You gotta be open to hearing in case it’s the other person that puts their hand up.
Jeff: [00:24:44] Be open to that. So it’s a segue from that if I can ask. So when you decided, all right, I’m done with this, was it like the Navy Seals? Did you go ring a bell? And then he knew that it was time to have that discussion. Or how did that part go?
Trevor: [00:24:57] For a long time, it was just rattling around in my head before it was ever vocalized or talked about with anybody. Right? So certain frustrations come up and it’s, when you don’t see a way out, I guess, then maybe it’s time to get out. There’s a lot there. But no, it wasn’t ringing a bell like I’m done. But there are a lot of conversations. And then we finally brought we brought in and it was, it was a business coach. And then, of course, the franchisor at that point, too. Right? You’ve got to get that involvement. And because the way we structured the business to begin with, that was all done in like 30 days. Rip the Band-Aid off. Right? Because right in the partnership agreement, we had agreed at that time we would rely on the franchisor for the valuation. And then when you got the shotgun clause in there, if you don’t agree with that valuation of what that person’s offering you, you can turn that around on them pretty quick. So those two things kind of balanced off well. There’s a little bit of back and forth, but for the most part that was the big nuts and bolts were taken care of. It was just those little, little things we had to iron out, but that wasn’t too bad.
Jeff: [00:26:16] What about the day after you’re like, okay, that’s done. Then what happened?
Trevor: [00:26:21] So something happened to me and I wasn’t ready for it. I was walking through the Walmart, picking up some groceries. Just a few little, little things. I realized I wasn’t a body shop owner anymore, and I wasn’t part of a body shop. I wasn’t a manager. I wasn’t a body technician. I wasn’t any of that. And I think that was a little bit of an existential crisis. It was just like, oh, what am I now? And mostly a lot of that was because I wasn’t going to anything. I had options, but options aren’t the same as plans, right? So, I had options, but I didn’t know what that was going to be. So yeah, it was a, it was a bit of an aha moment. And we spend, even though we were in business for 11 years, we were going to remember I worked there for 13 years prior to that. So that one location was 24 years of my life, and I had felt just as connected to it before I owned it as I did when I owned it. So it was kind of a realization that I didn’t know was going to happen. Yeah.
Jeff: [00:27:39] But just like a chunk of your identity is just gone. Like you’re missing an arm, right?
Trevor: [00:27:43] Yeah, yeah. Totally gone. Totally gone. I identified with that for so long. What do I identify with now?
Jeff: [00:27:50] For a lot of guys, they don’t see that one coming because they’re so focused on the transition and the exit planning. And I mean, that’s one of the reasons that some people do bring in an exit planner, because when you have somebody ask you those questions like, who are you without your business? Well, it’s a little easier to digest that when you still have that business versus when you’re walking through the Walmart parking lot and have that realization. Right?
Trevor: [00:28:13] Exactly, exactly. I’m sure. And although we’ve never talked about it, I’m sure there was a little bit of that same sort of thing on the other side because it’s like.
Jeff: [00:28:23] Oh, I’ll just get Trevor to… oh, I guess I won’t be doing it, man. Yeah. Yeah.
Trevor: [00:28:29] So, I’m sure there was a realization the other way too, is this. Yeah.
Jeff: [00:28:34] I think that’s a lot of people who don’t run businesses don’t realize how much like it is you. Like, you are your business. It is you. And you start to have that as part of your personality. And when that business goes away, that’s actually, I think, why a lot of people have trouble selling their businesses is they’re scared of what’s on the other side of that. It’s a hard thought to have. I know that was, I sold my last business, even though I had some kind of a plan when I was going, it was still like, oh, nobody’s phoning me for anything. I’m not that guy anymore. And I even knew it was coming. I still had a problem with it.
Trevor: [00:29:10] Well, that’s. Well, I think in both scenarios, we both, we didn’t just know it was coming. We asked for it. And yeah. And it still hit us hard. That was an interesting realization for sure.
Jeff: [00:29:24] What did you do to kind of get through that? Did you start exploring your own hobbies? Did you start looking for other things to do with your time or what did you do?
Trevor: [00:29:31] Yeah, I guess for a lot of it, I just let life happen to me for a little bit. I had that opportunity. So yeah, that was, just wasn’t long after that, I got the tap on the shoulder for a corporate role within a few days.
Jeff: [00:29:48] So you didn’t have to ruminate for very long.
Trevor: [00:29:51] Not very long, and I did. I did think about it because it’s like, do I want to try to get into something else and whatever? Because even at that night, I was only, I was only like 45. So yeah, I had lots of time to do lots of stuff. Right? So it took a little bit of time to decide that because it did involve a relocation. But just like, let’s go for it. And that’s what I went for in that. And so did that for like eight years before I kind of changed things again. But that could be another story.
Jeff: [00:30:33] Another story for another day.
Trevor: [00:30:35] Yes.
Jeff: [00:30:36] Yeah. Appreciate you sharing that. So we’ve covered a lot of ground today. Is there anything if you had to go back and give some advice to your younger self. Is there something you’d like to travel back in time and tell to new business owner Trevor?
Trevor: [00:30:51] Or I think about it, the more I would say I wouldn’t change a thing. Thirty-year-old me would be pretty envious of current me. Let me put it that way.
Jeff: [00:30:59] It worked out.
Trevor: [00:31:00] It worked out? Yeah, it worked out. Have faith and trust and just keep pushing forward, I guess. Don’t give up. No matter whether you’re staying or going or or any of that. Just, you’re going to have bad days, you’re going to have bad days, you’re going to get into arguments, you’re going to disagree because you’re just dealing with a lot of different people. But just keep moving forward.
Jeff: [00:31:24] Was there a moment that you remember where you’re like, oh, I don’t know if this is going to work out. This was maybe… like, was there a moment of doubt that you had to overcome along the way that you specific when you remember?
Trevor: [00:31:35] I think all I think all along the way. Right? It’s, you get… I wouldn’t call it self self-doubt. Maybe a little bit of second guessing. I wish I was the kind of guy that would just move forward and then never think twice about it. But owning the business is was still like thinking, it was, was that the right choice? It could have gone bad, right? That’s… If you keep moving forward, I don’t think that’ll happen, but yeah. And even, like selling, you start that existential crisis. Right? A little bit of just like, who am I now? Was that the right decision? And then any of that sort of piece. I’ve always kind of liked maybe not second guess, but reevaluate the decision after it’s made. Was that right? And I think any time I compare that to maybe business on its own, you want to reevaluate your steps and have a look to see if you need to renavigate where you’re going?
Jeff: [00:32:41] Are we still headed to where I thought we were headed? You’re checking your compass?
Trevor: [00:32:46] Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes you’ve got to look. Yeah. That’s what KPIs are, right? It’s a look in the rear view mirror and you need that to know where you’re going. So I think it’s important.
Jeff: [00:32:59] I would agree for sure. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and visit with us and tell a few stories. I’m sure at some point I’ll convince you to come on and tell some more stories at another point.
Trevor: [00:33:10] Yeah, yeah. We could get into a lot more details. Might be a little more boring, though, so. Yeah.
Jeff: [00:33:17] But there’s always something to learn. But thanks very much.
Trevor: [00:33:21] And I guess that’s maybe the one thing we never talked about. And all of that, the 11 years of ownership and then even doing now. And that’s the funnel on the way.
Jeff: [00:33:34] Yeah. Is it an enjoyable experience?
Trevor: [00:33:36] It is. It’s all a learning experience. The frustration, the aggravation, the happy times like all that. Yeah. Wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Jeff: [00:33:46] If you learned one lesson along the way, let’s end with that. What’s the one lesson you learned that you wouldn’t have learned by not running a business?
Trevor: [00:33:53] I would say relationships. I think that would be the one thing that it really helped me solidify. If I’d have remained a technician on the shop floor, that’s who I would be, right? I wouldn’t get outside of that. And that’s who I was, right? I fixed cars. That’s what I identified as. And it just took a little bit of pushing myself, as well as faith from others that I could do more than that. Does that kinda answer that question?
Jeff: [00:34:27] That’s awesome. I mean, I think business is a lot more about relationships than people think when they first get into it. They think it’s about a product or a service. But in the end, in the long-term, it tends to be a lot about developing long term relationships with both customers and staff and business partners and bankers and everybody else along the way.
Trevor: [00:34:50] Yeah. That’s… There again, I’m going to put my personal beliefs in here, because I don’t think golf is as popular as it is, because people like walking around chasing a little white ball.
Jeff: [00:35:03] You’re not wrong.
Trevor: [00:35:05] Business conversations. It’s the relationships. It’s those things you build along the way. And that’s no different than anything else. Breakfast meeting with other business types. Is it a Toastmasters? Whatever it is, you’re building those relationships and that’s what helps you in business.
Jeff: [00:35:23] Awesome. I agree. Well, thanks for sharing a little relationship time with us here at The Owner’s Roundtable. That’s all for us here at The Owners Roundtable. Thanks for pulling up a seat. And don’t forget to like and subscribe so you don’t miss out on great success stories, misadventures, lessons, and advice.