Hello Everyone, this is my first post but I do come here a couple times a week to read and learn from others. First I want to introduce myself, I am 51 years old and have owned 3 businesses in the last 27 years. The first 2 were retail general auto repair shops. The first I started when I was 24 and all I wanted to do was be my own boss and work on cars. I quickly learned that it was a LOT harder running a business than fixing cars (I was a certified master auto tech so the fixing cars part was not an issue). I soon learned that I needed to hire people but that required a whole different skill set that I had not yet developed. That business lasted 3 years and I was able to just close it down without being in debt when I wanted out. I then moved to Atlanta and started another auto repair business after about 2 years of working for some high end shops and banking some money. The second shop did very well as I hired people as soon as I needed them and paid good. In a few years I had a 10 bay shop doing well over 1 million a year with quite a few really great employees (I was the manager and no longer worked on cars in any capacity). The more I studied business I figured out that an independent auto repair shop was really not the business I wanted to be in as the upside was fairly limited and great auto techs are SUPER hard to find and cost a lot and I was totally dependant on them for the business to survive. I was at a crossroads as the next step was to buy my own property and building and grow to the next level (10 year commitment and a lot of money) or sell the business and get into something else. I chose to sell the business and move out of Atlanta. I found a buyer for the business, sold my home and moved to the Ozarks in Arkansas. I then started a vintage auto salvage business (I have been a vintage musclecar person my whole life and have quite a bit of contacts as well as multiple cars featured in magazines). The barrier to entry in this business is very strong as the inventory required to make it is in the several hundred thousand dollar range at the minimum. I have been able to acquire quite a bit of inventory over the last 13 years I have been open and my major challenge is getting it listed on the internet for sale. I have been selling on ebay for a long time and have a super solid reputation there. I also have a website www.stevesparts.com that I really have not done a lot with. I do have an ecommerce section on that website but it is not yet active as I have not loaded inventory into it yet. I do get calls every day from people looking for parts and sell a lot over the phone. I have read the Millionaire Fastlane several times and realize the key to this is getting my inventory up on our website in ecommerce fashion and hiring someone to do all the listing on ebay as well as the website. I just hired a great guy to help with all the part pulling and packaging and have been talking to another about internet listing so it looks like things are moving forward.
Thanks for reading my post and I will post as this progresses, Steve
Thanks for reading my post and I will post as this progresses, Steve
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