Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett, joined here by Greg Smith, who's an Exit member and runs his own mobile bike repair business.
Speaker: Welcome to the show, Greg.
Speaker: Glad to be here.
Speaker: Good to have you.
Speaker: Now, so I want to talk to you about the business, but I want to start with a little bit about your story.
Speaker: You were doxxed a couple weeks ago, just like I was, but you're self-employed.
Speaker: So has anything changed for you?
Speaker: Have people stopped getting their bikes fixed as a consequence of, you know, you being a monster online?
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: Like I, it might've been just a gift from God or something, but the week I got doxxed and well, everyone was yelling at me and
Speaker: Chris Walsh, Old classmates from middle school were yelling at me and Facebook messenger I was getting a lot more business than I normally got that time of year, I think, maybe some people were like what is this guy i'm going to go give him some work but um.
Speaker: Chris Walsh, No, it hasn't really affected my business I got one bad review with no explanation, I think that might have been related.
Speaker: But no, even my very liberal customers, they've still given me phone calls to come out and work.
Speaker: It doesn't really transfer that much, the canceling to what I've experienced in my real life.
Speaker: I mean, on the internet, I've had all types of mean comments from people that live in the city or around here saying they'll never use my services again and all that.
Speaker: But it hasn't.
Speaker: really affected me that I've been able to notice.
Speaker: I'm sure someone out there is like, I'm not using him again, but I haven't noticed.
Speaker: Yeah, but like your days are still full.
Speaker: I mean, so one of the things that's interesting about that is most people I feel like who are upset about cancel culture, which is kind of a boomer term anyway, but like, and that's the type of person that calls it that cancel culture.
Speaker: They tend to view it as like stirring up outrage and like popular disapproval.
Speaker: But the fact that, I mean, I watched the amount of attention you got.
Speaker: You got an enormous amount of attention online.
Speaker: You were in like every little newspaper in Utah.
Speaker: It felt like
Speaker: their website had some piece on Greg Smith, the bike guy.
Speaker: And the fact that that materialized into like one negative review, that suggests to me that the people who are doing this understand that it's not really about like popular opinion.
Speaker: It's not really targeted at the public.
Speaker: And this is something I've been thinking about ever since it happened to me.
Speaker: It's about targeting like the HR department at a corporation.
Speaker: And so a guy like you
Speaker: who's not subject to an HR department, even though you do have like Google reviews that are, that are probably important to your business.
Speaker: It just doesn't materialize that way because, because there's not a centralized point of attack.
Speaker: They can't, they can't muster enough to make a difference.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's ridiculous.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like my doxing was unique.
Speaker: I think like
Speaker: I don't know about you, but like, I doubt you have just random people from middle school knowing about your situation, you know?
Speaker: Like, no, not as far as it just like blew up.
Speaker: I had friends from college that are, you know, they're, they're liberals, like atheist agnostics now.
Speaker: And they, they're messaging me jokes like, Oh, Greg, you've gone and done it now.
Speaker: What did you get into?
Speaker: Like, they know I don't have any malice towards anyone.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: what's scary about it is, is like the, the right, like, I know where they're going to stop.
Speaker: They're going to stop it.
Speaker: I don't want gay stuff being brought up in church and in seminary buildings and in classrooms.
Speaker: And like these other people that are attacking me, I don't know where their, their end goal is, you know, like 10 years ago, I kind of was like, who cares if gays get married?
Speaker: Like, I don't, I don't really care about this culture war.
Speaker: I just, I don't know where their end is.
Speaker: So I've kind of,
Speaker: over the last decade, I've kind of just switched teams to where I know, I know where these people are going to take this.
Speaker: I don't know where they're taking it.
Speaker: Like they're attacking me
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's just kind of gotten out of hand, I think.
Speaker: And so you just sort of have to draw a line like like I because I don't know the trajectory here.
Speaker: I'm just going to we're just not going to go any further.
Speaker: And I think it's I definitely have the shared experience.
Speaker: I didn't have as many people find out about it independently as maybe you did.
Speaker: And I think maybe that's because you have much more of your much more of the media attention and much more of your sort of social world is local.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whereas, you know, I grew up in lots of different places.
Speaker: I have friends from all over and my sort of doxing was one article in The Guardian, which is an English, you know, publication.
Speaker: Like, so, you know, whatever.
Speaker: But I did, you know, because I got fired, unlike you, every time someone asks me, like, how's it going?
Speaker: How's work?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That starts the conversation, like, well, how work is going is I got fired.
Speaker: Well, why'd you get fired?
Speaker: Well, and then you have to do the whole rigmarole.
Speaker: But the sense in which it is the same is everybody that I've talked to has been like, well, you don't hate anybody.
Speaker: That's ridiculous.
Speaker: And I've been like, yes, thank you.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And so, yeah, and again, convincing human beings is not the point.
Speaker: The point is to trigger this mechanistic response.
Speaker: So how does your exit look?
Speaker: Like if you could pick and organize sort of your departure from Babylon any way you wanted to, where would you want to end up?
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Like four years ago, five years ago, me and my wife moved to Colorado Springs because her parents lived out there and it was great mountain biking and whatnot.
Speaker: And I started my business out there and it was really successful.
Speaker: We can talk about that later.
Speaker: But I had meth addicts in the ravine below my house and I didn't live in like a super bad neighborhood.
Speaker: And then we just started traveling.
Speaker: where are we going to raise kids?
Speaker: I don't want to raise kids here.
Speaker: So we looked all over Utah and Idaho and Wyoming, and we were just looking at all these little communities.
Speaker: And we stumbled on North Ogden, Utah, which I wanted to be able to bike from my house and our house budget was under 200,000.
Speaker: So that like ruled out the Salt Lake area and most Utah County.
Speaker: And we just kind of stumbled up here and I love it.
Speaker: I live a block away from the mountains and I'm able to kind of,
Speaker: whatever happens in the world, I'm pretty sure my little neighborhood town is going to be going to be all right.
Speaker: If I had unlimited funds, I'd move to a two acre or an acre lot.
Speaker: But I feel like I've kind of been working on my exit for quite a bit, starting my own business and and moving here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so that answer your question?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you, so a lot of people that I talked to, they're picturing cabin in the woods, compound, something like that.
Speaker: You're, you're like, I mean, you want like two acres.
Speaker: You want to be like in the suburbs.
Speaker: You want to be in that community.
Speaker: Is that, is that right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like a community that's actually a community, you know, a lot of suburbs seem scary because you don't know anyone next to you.
Speaker: I've watched and listened to some prepper podcasts and they're like the farmland that's next to the cities is not where you want to go.
Speaker: If you're, you know, going to the mountains or something, because when people get hungry, they'll just run out to you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, I would like, I have been looking at property, um, like 30 minutes away from me in the mountains, but, uh,
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think I'm just a safe here, you know, just be kind of fun to have some, a bit more land, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it,
Speaker: I think people really need to focus on like, what's the social cohesion of the area you're planning on moving to?
Speaker: Like, yes.
Speaker: And do they even want you there now?
Speaker: Like, I don't know.
Speaker: So my folks moved to central Texas and they were pretty like normie, regular, like two income type people.
Speaker: And they
Speaker: they didn't fit in and like my little brother didn't enjoy farm life and it like it wasn't a fit for like who they were and so they just sort of had to leave and and go back to you know a place where they're more comfortable and I think that's I think that's yeah valid is like you know what kind of culture are you moving into and like
Speaker: you're not going to be, nobody's going to be totally self-sufficient.
Speaker: So even if you get like the 10 acre lot with the water and with everything it needs, if you don't have a community, you're going to be kind of out of luck.
Speaker: And besides which, like while you're waiting for the world to burn down, like your wife and your kids are going to be really lonely and you're not going to have the friendships that you want.
Speaker: And yeah, so I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for living somewhere where there's people who,
Speaker: get what you're about and where they're close enough to be reachable.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like we adopted our daughter and we got two days heads up that we were going to take her home from the hospital.
Speaker: This was like 17 months ago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And my neighborhood, it was right.
Speaker: It was during the April COVID lockdown.
Speaker: So no one had anything to do.
Speaker: They, they all found out that the Smiths are getting a baby and he's coming in two days.
Speaker: And we got,
Speaker: like 10 plastic bins of clothes and diapers and all this stuff.
Speaker: And it's like, we had like 30 people give us things, you know?
Speaker: And you can't just buy that by like popping down somewhere, you know?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So I think stuff, I think the social...
Speaker: Social cohesion is something people should be paying attention to when they're choosing for an exit.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And those of us, I mean, those of us in the church, you know, we moved into a new ward for our first two babies.
Speaker: And we had sort of a ready-made group of sort of middle-aged to elderly folks who had disposable income and were really interested in helping us out and threw us a baby shower.
Speaker: And like that social weft still like exists.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: for the church and you can kind of just pop into it to some extent still.
Speaker: But I think those, I think that's weakening.
Speaker: I think, I think we're having to, I think we're having to be more conscious about building those things rather than just sort of assuming that they'll be there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think, I think where I live, it's, it's the activity rates is one of the best in the church, but
Speaker: Also, I love my business and being this mobile bike repair business because I get to know a lot of my neighbors that aren't LDS and I get to have social relationships with them and know what's going on with them.
Speaker: I get to go over to their house and talk with them.
Speaker: So I feel like I have more connections than most.
Speaker: I'm not just in the little...
Speaker: ward bubble, church bubble.
Speaker: Like I know, I know people that who aren't, you know, going to church.
Speaker: And it's, yeah, it's, it's good to have a home base, but it's good to also get outside of that home base.
Speaker: I'm trying to do the same thing with, with what we're doing here at exit.
Speaker: I'm trying to use,
Speaker: my job as an excuse to like get to know what people are into and like what their hustle is, what like, how do they build their business?
Speaker: Who do they know in the area?
Speaker: And it's been a lot of fun so far, just learning a ton about people and what's possible.
Speaker: So that's a good way to get started.
Speaker: Tell me about how you got started with the bike repair business in Colorado Springs, because bikes are pretty simple machines.
Speaker: And so why do people come to you instead of just, you know, YouTube?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how did I get started?
Speaker: I'm going to go, I guess I'll go way back.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: My friends in like middle school, they loved playing Xbox and I can't play Xbox.
Speaker: I'd like look at the screen and think I was someone else and I was doing a good job.
Speaker: So I just go ride my bikes on Saturday down to Salt Lake from South Jordan.
Speaker: You know, I had to learn how to fix them up.
Speaker: And then my senior year after I graduated, before I went on my mission, I just started going to DI, picking up bikes, just kind of giving them a really crappy tune up.
Speaker: and selling them on Craigslist KSL in the evenings.
Speaker: I'd sell like one or two bikes a day.
Speaker: I was making like $100 a day, you know, working like three hours.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah, it was right before the economic crash.
Speaker: So people were giving away pretty good bikes to thrift stores for $20.
Speaker: And I could sell them very easily for $150, $100.
Speaker: it's a lot harder to go nowadays to swing that, but, uh, that's kind of how I got started.
Speaker: Oh, because there's, there's not, people don't donate 10 year old bikes that cost them 700 bucks anymore.
Speaker: You know, for some reason, 2007 people just had money to throw away and they'd, it'd be like a 99 giant with rock shocks and it would be a DI for 20 bucks.
Speaker: Right now you couldn't find a 2009 giant for 20 bucks at a,
Speaker: DI, no one would even donate it to DI right now.
Speaker: I wonder if e-commerce has picked things clean, if you've got flippers sort of actively looking and trolling those thrift stores.
Speaker: Yeah, it's probably raised the prices because it's, I mean, after I came home from my mission, it was, I just went out on a mission for six months.
Speaker: The next summer, I was like, I got a sweet job.
Speaker: I'm going to do this.
Speaker: And then like I went and there was nothing.
Speaker: It was, it was the 2008 crash.
Speaker: Like there was nothing.
Speaker: I was like, this sucks.
Speaker: I made like four grand last summer doing this.
Speaker: So that's kind of how I got started.
Speaker: And then I was a teacher's assistant for a mountain bike course while I was going to UVU and
Speaker: He started a bike shop and I helped him get his bike shop started, just working as a grunt.
Speaker: Then I moved down to St.
Speaker: George and no bike shop would hire me because it was the economic downturn.
Speaker: So I just was like, screw it.
Speaker: I'm gonna just take out a Craigslist ad.
Speaker: I'll fix bikes out of my Volvo wagon.
Speaker: So I started doing mobile bike repair in 2010, 2011.
Speaker: And I had hardly any tools.
Speaker: I had just a few tubes.
Speaker: And I'd get calls, I'd go out, like I'd get one job a day or so.
Speaker: And then, and then I did the bike.
Speaker: I started working in bike shops soon after I tried that out.
Speaker: And then we moved down to Colorado Springs.
Speaker: That was like seven years after I tried, after I was doing the mobile repair in St.
Speaker: George.
Speaker: And I had this idea.
Speaker: I was only making $13 an hour at this autism school.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was like, what on earth am I going to do?
Speaker: I want a family.
Speaker: I don't make any money.
Speaker: And I was like, well, I know how to fix bikes.
Speaker: And then at that time, like four years ago, these mobile bike repair businesses, franchises were popping up.
Speaker: And I was like, I did that out of the Volvo.
Speaker: And now people are doing it out of sprinter vans.
Speaker: And I was like, I could do this.
Speaker: I can make money.
Speaker: I'll do this.
Speaker: I got to do something.
Speaker: So it wasn't like,
Speaker: At the time, it wasn't like, I want to exit so I don't get fired for my rants online.
Speaker: No, no, of course.
Speaker: I was a pretty normal guy back then.
Speaker: It was just like, I can't go to, I'm not going to go get my master's.
Speaker: I need to make a living.
Speaker: And all I really know how to do is fix bicycles.
Speaker: So this is what we got to do.
Speaker: So did you consider signing on a dotted line with a franchise or was it always going to be independent?
Speaker: Yeah, me and my dad, he helped me get the business started.
Speaker: We were really considering it.
Speaker: And we read through the franchise agreements and
Speaker: You know, I'm kind of scatterbrained, but I can read contracts pretty good.
Speaker: And it just was super predatory.
Speaker: It was an awful contract.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: They just wanted like 10% gross.
Speaker: And then you couldn't just order things from a distributor.
Speaker: You had to order.
Speaker: You had to send in an order request to the franchise.
Speaker: And then the franchise would order from the distributor.
Speaker: and mark it up 12 percent yeah and one of the people they make their money they make their money on inventory yeah and uh one of the sad things about the bike industry is the margins are awful they're only at like 30 percent right now on like bikes and goods and stuff they used to be a keystone markup when i started working in the industry 10 years ago so like you're only going to make like a
Speaker: 18% profit on the products you order in from your franchisor.
Speaker: Like it's just, I mean, and then people always want a deal too.
Speaker: So like they usually expect they get their sales tax paid for something.
Speaker: It's like, you're not making any money.
Speaker: And that franchise has gone under now and all 50 of the vans, they franchises they sold have gone under.
Speaker: And then there was another franchise that was a little bit pricier.
Speaker: And I think half of their vans have closed up.
Speaker: It's just, it's not a franchisable business model, especially the way they've done it.
Speaker: They operated.
Speaker: Well, because like, what are you really buying?
Speaker: If you're the customer for the franchise, you're kind of buying, I guess, the wrap on the van, like just the brand.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: That's not a good deal.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: I think there's things that could be profitable in this space, like mentoring and helping people get the businesses started up.
Speaker: But it's too low of an operating revenue.
Speaker: It's too low of an operating profit to have a franchise owner and an employee.
Speaker: You're only working on one bike at a time.
Speaker: It's not like you're at McDonald's and you can sell
Speaker: hundreds of dollars worth of stuff in an hour.
Speaker: It's human scale, which I think in one sense that protects you from being sort of having your job automated or industrialized away.
Speaker: Like, you know, because if there's like a really hyper-efficient, hyper-scaled way to do your business,
Speaker: then someone's going to turn it into an Amazon type operation and it's going to be some giant mega corp running it.
Speaker: But if it's something that's really hard to do that too, then you've got some security.
Speaker: So like there's pros and cons, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amazon actually tried to do my business and I was a contract employee for them.
Speaker: They do assemblies and bike repair that you could book online and they closed it up like a year and a half ago.
Speaker: they couldn't do it because their whole entire business model is race to the bottom on pricing and they do that and then people like me who like want to make a living would stop doing bike repairs and then they'd get just some random guy who assembles barbecue grills to do the work and then people would complain and so they they had to close up they weren't able to figure it out i mean yeah that's uh
Speaker: kind of a hidden advantage there for you.
Speaker: And so back to, back to this question of like, it's, it's pretty simple.
Speaker: So why, why don't people just do it themselves?
Speaker: Why, why do people come to you?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like sometimes I think people just want to have me come over to their house and chat with them and talk bikes.
Speaker: Like, I think there's a good portion of my customer base who they could do it.
Speaker: but they just like having someone coming over and talking.
Speaker: What do they want to talk about?
Speaker: Also, a lot of my good regular customers are moms.
Speaker: Oh, I can rant about anything with anyone about, you know, when I was running for city council, I'd had people wanting to talk to me about politics.
Speaker: I had some people that were like, I'm running for city council in plain city.
Speaker: And like, they'd act like they hadn't heard that I was running for council.
Speaker: And they'd like, I need my flat tires repaired.
Speaker: So we just talk.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: Talk bikes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're like a bike geisha.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I kind of think sometimes I'm like a barber.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Barber is much more macho than a geisha.
Speaker: People don't necessarily need to get their hair cut every two weeks, but they kind of like it.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Um, I, you know, I, I imagine also if, if you're, if you're the type of person that's buying, you know, a $1,500, $2,000 bike, maybe you just don't like, there's almost like a status in like, I'm going to, I'm going to solve this problem with money instead of trying to learn how to fix it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also like, there's just sort of a fear of like screwing it up.
Speaker: Like, I don't want to, I don't want to break my nice bike.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And there's a ton of, I think just in general, there's a ton of money in attempting to do things other people are scared to do.
Speaker: And maybe you started on your own, like, you know, you're talking about you sort of fixed your own bike and got your head around that.
Speaker: And we're doing the fix and flip thing.
Speaker: So you weren't like messing up anybody else's property.
Speaker: And then once you got good at that, you were able to move on to, you know, this business.
Speaker: And I think, yeah, there's lots of opportunity for people that are willing to sort of get their hands dirty.
Speaker: Yeah, like the people too scared to touch and the status thing.
Speaker: When I started this business in Colorado Springs, I had more business in six months of opening just from the start in Colorado Springs than it took me two years to get in Utah over here in Ogden.
Speaker: I think that's because the culture here is like really self-reliant and figure it out and they like to be frugal.
Speaker: Yeah, which is which is good as a culture, but it's also like, man, I it would be a whole lot easier to run this business in Colorado Springs.
Speaker: I know, guys, there's two vans in Colorado Springs and there's you could have another two vans operating in Colorado Springs and there wouldn't be a problem.
Speaker: You know, yeah, I see a lot of people really, really screw up their bikes here.
Speaker: It costs them a lot of money.
Speaker: Are there other parts of the country where like where they call easier or harder to operate?
Speaker: Yeah, there's, I mean, it's seasonal here.
Speaker: So I, it falls off the cliff for about six months out of the year, which is fine, I guess.
Speaker: I mean, I get to do other projects and things, but like if you lived in Arizona or, or Vegas or, you know, California, Texas,
Speaker: certain areas you could you could have a lot more stable stable income yeah i gotta think if it's a mix of the culture of self-reliance plus having tons of disposable income plus being sunny all year round uh it seems like this this business would be just really profitable in a place like california yeah yeah and like carlota springs
Speaker: It's mountains, but I would go mountain biking at 10,000 feet in January just because the way the snow melts and then they have 60 degree days in January and February randomly.
Speaker: Then they'll have like three feet of snow the next week.
Speaker: But yeah, it depends on the area.
Speaker: But there's some guys that make pretty good living in Florida doing this.
Speaker: Yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker: So if you were to start this business up, if you had to do it today from nothing, what scale would you start it at?
Speaker: Like, would you be just like a fix a flat guy and come over in the station wagon?
Speaker: Or would you say, I'm going to go ahead and start this with a van and a full setup and I'm going to do full service?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it depends on where your proficiency is at, on where you should start.
Speaker: You know, you could, if you're pressed for cash and you're like a poor college student and you don't know a whole lot about bikes, you could literally just spend a week figuring out how to change every single tire you can find.
Speaker: And you could just advertise flat tire repairs for 20 bucks.
Speaker: If you've worked in the bike shops and you kind of have a knowledge, but you don't have a ton of money, I would sell whatever car I had and get a truck or a van that was really used and just start it up.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it depends on the proficiency and how much time you want to give into it.
Speaker: How long does it take to go from being a fix-a-flat type of person to being able to do, like, full service, where you're not really going to run into a problem on a bike that you kind of are stumped by?
Speaker: I think it depends how fast you learn, but, like, I still...
Speaker: I've been working on bikes for over 10 years.
Speaker: You know, I probably working full time in bike shops and for myself, like seven years.
Speaker: And there's still things I come across that I don't, I don't quite understand.
Speaker: You think it's easy, but like I talked to car mechanics, I work on car mechanics, mountain bikes.
Speaker: It was like with a car, the alternator, you just, you, you unscrew the bolts and you put it back in.
Speaker: And on the bike, it's like,
Speaker: it's just so much more temperamental.
Speaker: Like the thing, one bolt just might need to be tightened to half a turn more the bearing.
Speaker: Like it gets, it gets pretty complicated.
Speaker: Because it's, because it's mechanical.
Speaker: Like it's, it's, you're, you're actually manipulating the, the touching moving parts.
Speaker: Whereas in a car, a lot of it is sort of you're plugging sockets into other sockets and things like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you do that on a bike, but like,
Speaker: derailers can be bent and you can, you have to learn how to like bend them back and you have to learn how to bend back derailer hangers.
Speaker: Like, but like, I mean, when I was 18 and I was fixing bikes that were beat up at DI, I wasn't giving them a, a bike shop quality tune up before I sold them, but like they worked, people test wrote them before they bought them.
Speaker: They still chose to buy them for the price that I had them at, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So it takes, I would say if you're wrenching for two years, then you'd have enough experience.
Speaker: If that's like what you're focused on and you're really trying really hard.
Speaker: If you're like have a high IQ and really good problem solving skills, maybe a year of wrenching in a bike shop and like being super observant on how things work could get you the experience you need.
Speaker: Wow, that's a steeper learning curve than I would have expected.
Speaker: That's surprising.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's like, I changed the brake pads on my truck the other day, and it was super simple.
Speaker: You just push out the brake pads, and then you put the fluid back in, and it's like, that's super easy.
Speaker: But like on a bike, there's like these, I hate them so much.
Speaker: They're the SRAM brakes, or the elixir brakes, and you have to pump them five times, and then you have to like,
Speaker: you have to put the piston out and you have to turn the knob on the bottom and you have to squirt the pist.
Speaker: You have to, I'm not even making sense explaining it, but like it gets, it gets really complicated.
Speaker: And like everything, there's like 20 different brake disc brake companies and every single disc brake has a different bleed procedure.
Speaker: So, I mean, the higher end stuff, it gets, it gets a bit complicated.
Speaker: Like I was working at a bike shop.
Speaker: I don't want to say which one,
Speaker: But like these guys, they had three bike shops and they were all run by brothers and the dad started the first bike shop.
Speaker: And the shop I worked at, they didn't have anyone that knew how to bleed a disc brake.
Speaker: So they'd have to have the guy from the other city over, drive over once or twice a month and bleed the disc brakes that were in for service because none of them had figured out how to do it yet.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I mean, I'm pretty sure they know how to do it now.
Speaker: I hope, but like that's, I mean, it gets, it gets complicated with, and maybe that, maybe that's another partial answer to like, maybe my question about like, why don't people just go to YouTube?
Speaker: Maybe that's just kind of a stupid question.
Speaker: Cause like, it's actually a lot harder than.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can, people, people go to YouTube and like, I get comments probably every other week.
Speaker: Like I tried to do this on YouTube and I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker: I mean, they, they kind of solve it.
Speaker: Then there was just one little thing that you can't catch.
Speaker: It's a,
Speaker: bike repair is very weird the uh not to get all tactical but like the derailleur and the chain and the cogs that is the lightest thing they like they've done all types of studies and done gear like if they should have gearboxes it's the lightest most efficient way to move a wheel but it's very very finicky like and so is it more about like there could be all types of issues that come up um
Speaker: sorry, is it more about like, like book learning, like figuring out exactly the procedure, or is it more about sort of knowing how far you can wrench it, knowing the feel like, like, is it, is it more art or science?
Speaker: So I think it's more art and that's how I learned.
Speaker: There's a bike repair school in Colorado Springs and they like to say,
Speaker: bike repair isn't an art.
Speaker: It's a science.
Speaker: So there's this big debate about it, but like I've met bike mechanics that graduated from the bike repair school and they're not the best bike mechanics.
Speaker: Just kind of getting in there and figuring it out is I think the way to, to really learn how to do it.
Speaker: I mean, if you're starting a business and you want to learn bike repair, I'm, I'm sure the bike repair schools teach you enough to get, to get your feet wet and kind of learn how to,
Speaker: learn how to work on them and i've i've considered going to a bike repair school to become a wheel builder but for me i i think i'm a pretty good bike mechanic and i'm i'm quite a bit faster than than most bike mechanics i know i'm faster at solving the problems and getting through a bike i think that's from just getting the art of it down yeah what what does it cost to go to bike school like what kind of time commitment
Speaker: I think it's like, you can do a crash course of two weeks and it's like four grand or five grand.
Speaker: When we were starting my business, I'd worked as, I'd worked, I knew everything I needed to know to run the business.
Speaker: But my dad, he's like, he started his own business doing infrared scanning and he went to this infrared scanning school program and it helped him market.
Speaker: So he was thinking, you should go to the Barnett's because it's in Colorado Springs.
Speaker: You should do it.
Speaker: And I'm like, I don't need to do it.
Speaker: It's a waste of my money.
Speaker: But I mean, that is like, that is a, that's a pretty steep fee for, for that business.
Speaker: That's, that's surprising, but I guess people are paying it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, I think they get, I think they get a lot of their business through like REIs and those like corporate, corporate chains.
Speaker: They'll send, they'll send mechanics down there, but I'm not quite sure how the business operates.
Speaker: I've just, I just looked into it when I was starting the business.
Speaker: And then I was like,
Speaker: Dad, this isn't worth my money.
Speaker: Maybe I should do the wheel building, but just the typical mechanic stuff isn't... Yeah, and I wonder if that's kind of a CYA thing for the corporations where they're like... It's sort of like a college degree, how it weeds people out.
Speaker: And so it's like a way to... It's a way to like paywall the job.
Speaker: I think it's...
Speaker: it's kind of it's kind of a subversion and I don't like it I uh I uh there's this professional bicycle mechanics association and I joined it and the guy who's running it was in one of the Facebook groups for bike mechanics and I mean over the last three years it just got more and more progressive they started doing like minority bike mechanics scholarships and I don't have a problem with
Speaker: with like doing that, but I could tell that the point of the organization was to try to make a professional organization that would like, you can't get a job if you're not part of professional bicycle mechanics and you haven't taken the authorization test.
Speaker: Like I could tell they were trying to, I mean, I'm not really a libertarian, but I guess I am because it kind of,
Speaker: I told them two years ago, I don't wanna be a member anymore.
Speaker: I don't wanna pay $70 a year for this.
Speaker: And they didn't cancel my subscription.
Speaker: And then like last year I had to call up my credit card and say like, stop sending money to these people.
Speaker: I don't wanna be a part of this.
Speaker: Cause I like that bike repair is not a licensed thing.
Speaker: I like that there's not like a, I like that people can just learn how to do it.
Speaker: And it's survival of the fittest.
Speaker: It's like, who's the best bike mechanic you know?
Speaker: But yeah, there's people in the industry that are trying to change it with licenses and education and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, and if they can make that...
Speaker: If they can make that a matter of law, like, you know, there's places where you have to have a license to be like a hairstylist.
Speaker: And it's pure, it's pure regulatory capture.
Speaker: It's just about the people who run these professional organizations want to, they want power.
Speaker: They want, they want, they want political control of that industry and it draws that type.
Speaker: And so you do see the...
Speaker: things that really have nothing to do with bike repair sort of infesting that professional organization.
Speaker: And then if that organization becomes dominant, then they can sort of bully people like you in a way that they otherwise couldn't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like what's sad about these professional licenses, like the hairdresser stuff in Utah, they got rid of it and it was just like, they just ripped the bandaid off this year and said no more licenses to do hair.
Speaker: And what's sad is like the people that get these hair licenses, they're not like making hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, they, they took in, they took on debt.
Speaker: They went to the school.
Speaker: And like, I told my local senator guy, like, this is good, but like, you need, could you phase it?
Speaker: Like, say, starting in four years, there won't be any, like, so you're not hurting these people that got duped into it.
Speaker: that's another tangent, but, uh, yeah, no, it's always, once it gets, once it gets set up, it's really hard to break.
Speaker: So like, I'm like, I don't want to be part of an organization that it seems like that's what they're wanting to set up.
Speaker: And they, they act like it's, it's career security for the people joining the membership.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: I can go get jobs.
Speaker: I don't need this license.
Speaker: I just was trying to be part of the community.
Speaker: Yeah, and it is hard to dislodge them because it's like they're sort of holding a gun to the head of those people that paid in and signed up and are now sort of dependent on their ecosystem, their protection to survive.
Speaker: And yeah, it's pretty sinister.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't like it.
Speaker: So what kind of equipment is involved involved in your business?
Speaker: Do you keep like a big inventory of replacement parts?
Speaker: It sounds like there are so many different types of bike that that's maybe not feasible.
Speaker: So you just, you just have to like diagnose the problem and then you're like, well, you need this part.
Speaker: I'll be back in a couple of weeks.
Speaker: So I figure when I don't have the part in the van that I'm just going to break even on the job.
Speaker: So I try to have all the parts I can possibly have inside the van.
Speaker: With COVID, it's really sucked because the inventory is gone and I don't have the parts and I'm not going to order parts on Amazon without any markup just so they sit in the van.
Speaker: So sometimes lately I've had to buy parts on Amazon and then I have to come back out.
Speaker: I try to have all the tubes I need, all the chains, all the chain sizes that there are, grips, just kind of those usual wear and tear, and then cheaper shifters and cheaper derailers, because they break more often and they're more common.
Speaker: I don't stock like the $100 derailers and the $100 shifters.
Speaker: And like I can, I can not have that in my stock and order it.
Speaker: and I'll still make a good amount of money and it won't be a wash.
Speaker: But like, if I don't have the 14 inch tube in stock and I have to go back home or order it and come back out and the job was only a $50 job, you know.
Speaker: Oh, so you don't charge for material on top of labor.
Speaker: You just have a flat labor fee.
Speaker: So I have labor fees.
Speaker: My minimum labor fee to come out is 55, but I have that because I have such a large area.
Speaker: The people that all my regulars around like two mile radius know I'm not going to charge them 55 to come out and fix a flat, but I will if it's 10 miles away, 15 miles away, I'm going to charge my minimum fee to come out.
Speaker: But so I have a minimum fee.
Speaker: I have a pre-ride adjust, which is $55.
Speaker: I have a basic tune-up and that's 65 and then I have a full tune-up and that's 80.
Speaker: And when I started the business, I tried to do like alacarte, I'm pronouncing that right.
Speaker: Like a brake adjust is $15 and a derailleur adjust is 15 and I'd try to price things out or I could do an hourly rate and it confuses people and it cost me money.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: It's a lot cheaper just to say, oh, this is a basic tune-up.
Speaker: Keep the menu simple.
Speaker: I get a lot of phone calls and they're like, I need your full tune-up.
Speaker: But almost no one needs a full tune-up.
Speaker: I could make a lot more money if I was just dishonest and told people, oh, you want a full tune-up?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You give me $85, even though I only did $60 worth of work.
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: I give them the, I ring them up as a basic tune-up.
Speaker: A full tune-up's when you like take apart the fork
Speaker: And you put in new grease and you take apart the wheels and you put a new grease inside the hubs.
Speaker: That's gotta be a huge draw for you reputationally, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: I'm, I'm maybe I'm too, too honest, straightforward.
Speaker: It's kind of why I'm doing what I'm doing instead of selling bikes.
Speaker: It's like, I had such a hard time selling bikes at bike shop when I worked in bike shops.
Speaker: people would say oh do i need this i'm like no you don't need that like why would you need that you don't need that just get this two thousand dollar bike what are you talking about yeah does it does it take like is it just like allen wrenches and ratchets like a basic set or is there like a lot of weird bikey tools you got to keep on hand um if you want to just get into it not for like basic services you could do it with like
Speaker: $200 worth of tools.
Speaker: I think I probably have, I probably have like $4,000 worth of tools in my van.
Speaker: And wow.
Speaker: Cause I have all the specialty tools and, and all and power tools and, and all types.
Speaker: And I have, I have like a $500 air compressor that runs on batteries.
Speaker: My pump head cost me $150.
Speaker: It's just to inflate the tires.
Speaker: Like when you're doing it day in, day out, these cheap pump heads, even if they're like $50, you know, a bicycle pump, they bust, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So stuff adds up.
Speaker: But to get into it and just to make some money on the side, you could do it with 300 bucks.
Speaker: I mean, I think I spent 150, 200 bucks buying a tool.
Speaker: cabinet and, and just the little tools I needed to do it out of my Volvo 10 years ago.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, so you, you can, you can do it at any scale you want.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like you, you mentioned a little bit about the range of like what you offer, what types of jobs are the most profitable?
Speaker: Um, type of jobs that are the most profitable are repeat customers.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: repeat customers and then just yearly customers I think are the type of people I want like mostly moms there are some guys that call me I would say 70% of my work is moms contacting me you really are a geisha huh no it's just their home the kids they want their kids bikes fixed the dad's off doing whatever working
Speaker: um okay man i respect the grind i respect the hustle that's fine but uh yeah people who don't people who don't put up too much of fuss um not my best customers don't have very super high-end bikes like when i started this business i bought in i brought in five bike demos from a high-end bike mountain bike company called gorilla gravity and i thought i was going to market to
Speaker: I thought my target market was going to be high end mountain bike and road bikers that want, that want fast service and they want to look at their bike getting fixed and they want all this, but I figured out those super high end target customers, they really like going into a bike shop to look at bikes, you know, if they're going to pay for service.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: My best customers are just, they have bikes that range from like $500 to $2,000 and almost none of them have bikes over the $2,000 price point and they go out probably a dozen, 20 times a year.
Speaker: Like they go out enough that their bikes break, but not enough that they're going to learn how to fix them or like
Speaker: Just kind of just like active families is probably my target.
Speaker: Active families with decent mountain bikes, but not like super obsessive.
Speaker: If they get super obsessive, then they can be kind of, they want the shop.
Speaker: And then also they can kind of be a pain to deal with.
Speaker: Like if they have like a $6,000 bike, they know how to do a lot.
Speaker: And then they only call you when they're really, really stumped.
Speaker: So I mean, I have the $6,000 bike.
Speaker: I'm that type of person.
Speaker: you know, so I get along with them.
Speaker: I like talking bikes with them.
Speaker: Um, but they're not like the best, most profitable customers.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: So as far as like your costs, it's basically just like gas and time and maybe a little bit of consumables in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or are there other costs?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Operating expenses is pretty low.
Speaker: Like if you can get approved for a car loan, you know, a new car loan, you can get approved for a new van, a used van loan, you know?
Speaker: Um, I have,
Speaker: I have liability insurance and commercial van insurance and a PO box for them to ship, to ship my products to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Advertising website.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What do you spend on ads?
Speaker: Um, so advertising is interesting.
Speaker: So my first year here in Ogden, a, uh,
Speaker: kids go around and they sell coupon books sure and they're pretty good coupon books they're like 40 pages thick he offered to put me in the coupon book for a thousand bucks it gets printed out to 70 000 people and uh it did great the first year i was like getting a tune-up at least once a week from this coupon book um so people say direct mail and these print ads are awful nowadays but
Speaker: You know, I got more business from that than anything I've done.
Speaker: The next year, it was like almost non-existent though.
Speaker: So it was very weird.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know why I got so much business when I ran the ad the first time.
Speaker: Maybe I think, I think probably the kids, the people who were interested in my business contacted me that first year and then their kids got the coupon book again and didn't make them use me or not.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Marketing's weird.
Speaker: I live on a busy street and I would say 60, 70% of my business is from them seeing me on my street.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: It is a busy street.
Speaker: You have to, to go skiing and stuff.
Speaker: You have to, you have to go up my street.
Speaker: Like they just see your van and it's wrapped up and that's, and that's how they know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They say they, it's so funny.
Speaker: Like at least half the time I'm going to a bike ride.
Speaker: I go to a bike repair job and they're looking at the bike and we're having small talk and they're like, so do you live on blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: I'm not going to say the, say my address in this podcast, but, um, and I'm like, yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And they're like, okay, yeah, we saw you.
Speaker: We see your van out there all the time.
Speaker: humans are funny.
Speaker: It's like the first thing that they want to talk about is I know where you live.
Speaker: You're at my house.
Speaker: I know where your house is.
Speaker: It's kind of funny.
Speaker: So, so that's how you market it is.
Speaker: I mean, it's sort of, it's just sort of letting people find you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Does that fill your dance card basically?
Speaker: I also have the Google, I also have a Google business listing and I'm on Facebook and Instagram and I get customers through there too.
Speaker: And I think I get,
Speaker: I mean, you have to have those types of things set up to get people to contact you.
Speaker: I used to have my address on my business listing.
Speaker: And then some drunk guy at 10 o'clock at night tried to kick in my door to get his tire fixed.
Speaker: So I took off my address after that.
Speaker: That's wild.
Speaker: So, so is this, is this business scalable?
Speaker: How would you go about moving up when your workday is full?
Speaker: So we just did a, we just did a call with a trash bin washing business.
Speaker: And the way this guy scaled his business was he, you know, he built the truck for himself so that he could start washing bins.
Speaker: And then he just started selling the trucks along with the business model.
Speaker: He started like,
Speaker: essentially exporting the business model by selling the truck itself.
Speaker: And so is there a way to sort of package and distribute this business model?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I know quite a bit, not just what we've talked about, getting a business started up and running.
Speaker: I think it would just kind of be a knowledge base
Speaker: mentor-based business where there's weekly things I assign people to do to get the business up and going and things that they could watch out for.
Speaker: Like when we started this business, I probably wasted at least $15,000 on things I did not need to get or pay for.
Speaker: And when you start a business,
Speaker: like I started in Colorado Springs.
Speaker: There was a lot of networking events and I can say no to people, but like there's, there's a lot of people wanting to sell you accountants and all these types of things and you don't need them.
Speaker: But like when you're starting a business, you get nervous and you're like, do I need an accountant?
Speaker: Do I need this?
Speaker: Do I need that?
Speaker: Like maybe I should like the bike industry.
Speaker: Like I, when I started my business,
Speaker: I was like, I need liability insurance for my bike repair business.
Speaker: So I contacted some people that fix bikes and they're like, oh, go to this guy.
Speaker: He specializes in insurance for bike repair.
Speaker: And my van and my business insurance was like, it was like 550 a month.
Speaker: And I spent, so like, it was an absurd amount.
Speaker: And then I finally called a commercial progressive people and they were like,
Speaker: we can get that all done for you for 180 a month.
Speaker: It's like, wow.
Speaker: There's just things like that.
Speaker: That's like, you need to watch out for.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just having a sensei who has your interests.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So I think there's no business to be made in like getting second vans.
Speaker: I mean, you can, but like I was, I was talking to a mobile glass repair guy and he was telling me,
Speaker: his friend owned a glass repair shop and he hadn't been into the shop in like six months.
Speaker: And the guy was doing like 10 windshields a day and four of them were in cash and he was just pocketing all the cash.
Speaker: And it's kind of negative, but like, if, if I have a second van and he's just out there doing stuff, why isn't he just going to go get his own van?
Speaker: how honest is he going to be?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I mean, it's hugely at risk.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it takes, it takes a, it takes a special type of person to want to do this job.
Speaker: You know, I'm talking to customers while I'm working on their bikes.
Speaker: How many car mechanics do you know would let you watch them while they change out your brake pads or your transmission and chat with you?
Speaker: You know, it's a multitasking, but it's also kind of a character thing.
Speaker: not everyone is cut out for this type of work.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, so that would be the way to export it instead of,
Speaker: instead of hiring someone and buying another van, you can sell that person, the business with the consulting, like you're saying, and that, that kind of gets out and gets around the trust issue and sort of puts the ball in their court.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So would you ever consider moving up to like a brick and mortar bike shop or are you pretty much comfortable with the mobile outfit?
Speaker: I'm, I'm very comfortable with mobile, you know, um,
Speaker: you can make pretty good money in a day's worth of work.
Speaker: You just add a tune-up takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and you can, you can add that up.
Speaker: But every year or two, I get kind of high.
Speaker: I want a bike shop.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I love what I do.
Speaker: I love working outside, going to people's houses, but there's just kind of that feeling like, Oh, well, everyone else has a bike shop and I could do it, but then it's a whole bigger time commitment.
Speaker: It's something I think about every year, seriously, though.
Speaker: Because you do get stalled out.
Speaker: And maybe because of how much of the business is dependent on your personality, maybe getting into sort of the content game where you're teaching people how to fix their bikes and also sort of teaching people how to run this business.
Speaker: Maybe that's a draw that sort of
Speaker: reflects not only your knowledge of this industry, but also like your personality and the fact that people find you funny and interesting and want to be around you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's kind of what I'm going to tinker around with in this off season this year.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, if you live in the Ogden area,
Speaker: go check out swiftfixbike.com.
Speaker: Otherwise, this has been a great conversation.
Speaker: And I think we should get some folks calling up Greg and trying to be his Padawan learner and learn how to do the mobile bike business.
Speaker: You down for that, Greg?
Speaker: You down for some students?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah, send them my way.
Speaker: Right on.
Speaker: This has been awesome.
Speaker: Thanks for your time, man.
Speaker: No problem.
