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The WebWell Podcast, Episode 15 - "Disruptive Vehicle Repair with Farhad Ghafarzade"
23 Plays11 months ago
In this episode of the WebWell Podcast, we are graced with the fascinating story of Farhah Ghafarzade, the visionary behind Green Drop Garage.
Starting from humble beginnings, living on a boat and working on a shoestring budget, Farhad's journey is nothing short of inspirational. He shares how Green Drop Garage, an eco-friendly car repair shop in Portland, has redefined the auto service industry.
Farhad discusses the unique aspects of the business, from converting cars to run on vegetable oil to offering car care classes and embracing a membership model. He explains how Green Drop's commitment to the environment extends beyond just car repairs, highlighting their carbon-neutral practices and community involvement.
We also explore Farhad's venture into real estate and how his innovative approach is influencing the Portland landscape. Join us for an enlightening conversation about entrepreneurship, environmental consciousness, and the power of trust in business.
Learn more about Farhad and the Green Drop Garage visit www.greendropgarage.com. Don't forget to follow Farhad on Instagram @farhadpdx!
Follow us wherever you listen to podcasts!! We'd also love to hear what you think... please share your questions and comments with webwell@cascadewebdev.com
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the WebWell Podcast brought to you by Cascade Web Development. All right, welcome back to the WebWell Podcast. I am Simon, your host, along with Ben McKinley. We are here joined with Farhad. I'm excited to learn more about him and what he's up to. And I'm just going to leave the intro for him up to Ben.
00:00:32
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, thank you, Simon. Thank you Farhad for joining us today.
Meeting Farhad and Brooklyn Anecdote
00:00:36
Speaker
As I reflect on this podcast, I think back to the first time we met was on a best practices trip to Brooklyn, New York, I believe. Walked the mean streets there for a number of days and took in some really cool interviews and learn more about how they operate. Of course, as you can imagine, he got many people on the street considering, assuming that he was George Clooney.
00:01:00
Speaker
Not the case at all. And then later on we went to the Wallau Mountains. Far from it. Then we found ourselves in a very different location not long after that.
Backcountry Adventures and Friendship
00:01:14
Speaker
in the Wallowa Mountains, back country skiing. Farhad had not done a lot of that and he was coming off of having newborns at home. So there was a crash course into the back country, some great memories made there. And I think that just created an incredible foundation where we've gone on over the past many years and shared a lot of great experiences together. So it's really a pleasure of mine to bring in an esteemed entrepreneur and community member here in Portland, as well as a close friend Farhad. And Farhad, please do help me in the audience with your last name.
00:01:45
Speaker
Uh, it's pronounced Kafforzadeh. Kafforzadeh. Thank you very much. Kafforzadeh. Yeah. Hey, by the way, so that Wallowa trip, uh, we went, you know, hot skiing for a week. I had a newborn and I was running a fever. He had called me the last minute. I'm like, yeah. And it turns out like of all the people that I knew on that trip, I knew you, like you were one of the people that I knew less than like Christian Orion.
00:02:13
Speaker
They never thought of me. So thank you for thinking of me. They didn't invite me. You did. And that was the one and done. You guys are definitely, what's the next thing? You guys are the chargers, your group. I think I'm about 10 years younger than you guys, but I was impressed with the skill and stamina that you guys exhibited out in the back country. I was trying to keep up
00:02:41
Speaker
a little bit. That was a lot of fun. A lot of fun indeed. But hopefully we can get you back out there with us again. Well, wonderful. So Farhad, I really enjoyed hearing your story over the years.
00:02:51
Speaker
You know, it's, and I guess what we like to do with our podcast is start off by just inviting our guests to share some of their backstory.
Farhad's Iranian-American Upbringing
00:02:58
Speaker
And I think yours is increasingly unique. Cause you're actually born and raised Portland guy. And, and it seems like in our melting pot, um, that becomes less and less the case. So if you don't mind taking a couple of minutes, maybe just kind of reflect back on, on your early Portland years. And, um, yeah, share, share a little bit about that backstory that led you towards up to college perhaps. Yeah.
00:03:21
Speaker
Well, first off, I was born in Evanston, Illinois. So my dad was a grad student at Northwestern. And when I was one, my dad had graduated and got his first job at Portland State as a professor so that we moved to Beaverton. So I can't claim Portland. I have to claim Beaverton. Close enough. Close enough. So I mean, for me, I mean, I guess that the unique,
00:03:50
Speaker
Parts of the story that might be formative would be that I have immigrant parents. So I'm first generation in the US. I was born in the US, but parents up until probably the early 90s were expecting to move back to Iran. They came here for education purposes. They weren't fleeing anything. They thought they could go back to Iran and live there amongst the rest of our family. My parents have a lot of brothers and sisters back in Iran.
00:04:20
Speaker
And so I was raised Iranian. I learned English when I was six or seven. I was raised in an expat community of 50 or so other people.
Early Technical Interests
00:04:30
Speaker
And most of those families growing up were my, the parents were my de facto aunts and uncles, because my real ones were in Iran. I'd see them very occasionally in phone calls. Don't do it justice back then with a little kid who doesn't really know them that well. I'd visited Iran, we visited a few times,
00:04:49
Speaker
You know, for the day-to-day with people that we, my parents' friends here, the expect community here. And most of them were also grad students at some point. And they met, a lot of them had met my dad because they were his students, grad students. So the stock of unions that I grew up around were all electrical.
00:05:15
Speaker
Uh, or computer science type people, electrical engineers for computer science. And my dad was a PhD computer science. And he was, you know, he was a professor for a lot of master students that were, and I come in from Iran. Um, so those are the people that I grew up with, which makes a difference because that stock of, uh, uh, a group of friends tend to look at the world differently.
00:05:42
Speaker
So I remember my early days were really much more technical. I had, when I was like eight, I had one of those electronic project boards with a bunch of resistors, capacitors, and circuits, and I'd make my circuits with those little springs and connect the, kind of anything together. So I enjoyed all those things and, you know,
00:06:01
Speaker
You know, my dad was fixing things around the house. He was pretty technically, you know, he, my dad was someone who could fix anything with, you know, five tools, a cheater pipe, a flathead screwdriver, a small box of sockets from Pay Impact, if you remember Pay Impact back in the day. And the mother of them all, the crescent, the crescent
00:06:23
Speaker
press a wrench, the adjustable wrench. So it could go from this big down to this big. So with some leverage, with a cheater pipe, we could get anything done on the car and around the house. And my dad prided himself not only on fixing things, but doing them in a half way. And I asked him one day, I said, why don't you start to see other people using the right tools?
00:06:47
Speaker
He goes, well, in Iran, I didn't learn how to use the right tool. I learned how to make the right tool. You make things work. Which was years later, it really served me well in terms of just the mindset, how to approach things.
Cultural and Educational Background
00:07:05
Speaker
It's not about having the right tool. It's about managing with what you've got and getting it to work, which is kind of cool.
00:07:17
Speaker
So that was my long rambling intro. I think a lot of the influences in my early life through culture, Iranian culture, I learned English, probably five or six years old, something like that, six or seven, somewhere around there. And I can still speak the language. People know I'm from the US, I live in the US, I can still speak it, but people from Iran know that it's not authentically from where my family is from. So that was a big part of it.
00:07:48
Speaker
I don't know what your, I forgot what your question was, but that's the answer I have for you. Yeah. Just a little backstory on, on Farhad and some of those early days. That's a great story. Uh, and now you found yourself going to college at UC Santa Cruz. Is that right? I'm a slug. Yeah. UC Santa Cruz, you know, out of high school, I'll give you a quick kind of backstory on high school two things that might influence the discussion later on. I mean, I played water polo. I was on the water polo team for,
00:08:19
Speaker
all through high school and did well, you know, in high school. And I got to college, I played water polo. And in high school, I was all state, you know, I was top 10 in the state. Get to California in Santa Cruz. Got cut from the team the first year. And then, like, I think the second year I tried out, just barely made it. I'm on the end of the bench. And I loved it. It didn't matter. I enjoyed it. So, yeah, I played water polo from high school.
00:08:48
Speaker
I'll say I played in college, but I could probably count the minutes I played in the water and the game on one or two hands. But also in high school, I was active in leadership. So I think I was class president one year and did all the student body things as well. But out of high school, I wanted to get out of the state. Usually growing up in Portland, you want to get out to Arizona, California somewhere warm. You kind of back then you want to get out. And especially playing water polo, California is the
00:09:16
Speaker
hallowed grounds. We swam in indoor pools, dead outdoor pools. I liked to surf. I learned how to surf and had Oswald West State Park in Oregon at short time. So I wanted to surf. So in Santa Cruz, the other thing that was really important to me later on was that it was near my family in San Francisco. It was a one hour drive, hour and a half drive to San Francisco. So my aunt and cousins and uncle lived out there.
00:09:46
Speaker
I chose Santa Cruz over Oregon State or UofL and I absolutely loved it. When you say family, was that blood family or was that again?
00:10:01
Speaker
No, this one was blood. So I had my aunt on my dad's side, my dad's sister. I called her husband my uncle, but it's her husband. But growing up, San Francisco was one of those special places we got to go on a road trip with the family. So over the years, you know, those were the ones that we got closest to because they were in the US. My dad had six brothers and sisters, and my mom has three brothers and sisters.
00:10:29
Speaker
My mom said we're all in Iran, and my dad said everyone but my aunt back then was in Iran. They've also migrated to the West back then, yeah. And tell us how many siblings you have Farhad? I've got two brothers. I'm the oldest of three kids. We're two years apart, or there's two years different between all of us, so I'm the oldest of the two.
00:10:54
Speaker
Wonderful, right on. And now when you say you're a slug, you mean it. Tell us about, tell us about your, yeah. The thing, okay, well, so a few things in college, I was on the water polo team. I tried to swim. I was on the swim team. I hated swimming, but I did it. I did it until I stopped. And then there was an ad in the,
00:11:19
Speaker
the school newspaper, the bottom corner of like the backside or the back then it was like wantage or classified or something. The UC Santa Cruz banana slug was looking for help. So I went and tried out. I think I was one of the only ones who tried out because I got the, pretty quickly she called me and she said, you know, you got it. Here's the costume. Good luck. It was, so I was a slug for two years and no one else. So, you know, 2000.
00:11:49
Speaker
Was it 2003 or 2005? I was the UC Santa Cruz banana slug official. And yeah, that was a fun job. I really enjoyed that. And Ben, I think I was telling you, like the costume itself is like 50 pounds. It's this bulbous like just foam big thing. And so your eyes are where the mouth is. The eyes are up here. So you're tall.
00:12:15
Speaker
The shoes are oversized, like they're like clown shoes. But then it's funny, like no one knows it's me, but then people would come up to me and try to find out who it is and be like, this guy's got big feet. I'm like, they're not that big. And I learned some kind of tricks. So I could tilt my head up a little bit and grab someone's drink. Usually someone I knew in the crowd, I grabbed their water and drink through the netting of the slug's mouth, right?
00:12:42
Speaker
And people would think that was really funny. So one time I did that, I grabbed someone's water and I took a big swing. Well, they had snuck vodka into the game in a water bottle. So here I am, doubled over at the game. Everyone was just laughing at me. So the other thing about the snuck costume was that I could do a one-handed pushup. I could slam dunk a basketball. I could dance like the mani. I could put up everyone.
00:13:08
Speaker
with the costume on, but with the costume off, couldn't do any of those. It's like the cape, like you get a rush in front of everyone. So yeah, I really enjoyed that. So yeah. Well, humor seems to be a big part of your shtick. And I can imagine cruising around and getting everyone fired up at sporting events and otherwise would
00:13:33
Speaker
certainly support that path towards some of the world famous dad jokes that you're now very well known for. Including, are you still doing dad jokes as one of the possible voicemail selections on the company phone line? Yes. Now, if you call Green Drop, you get my voice first. My Ray Romano voice comes on. Hey, you're welcome to Green Drop.
00:13:59
Speaker
you know, for whatever location press 1 to. But if you press 5, you get the dad joke of the day. Now, I need to be better about updating it. But there's always a dad joke available. So if you're feeling down, call the shop, option 5, you can skip past my long little, hey, welcome to Green Drop, just press 5, and it'll route you to the pre-recorded dad joke. And I call it dad joke of the day. I need to be better about updating it. But you get the dad joke.
00:14:26
Speaker
Fantastic. And I'm guessing you were honing your dad joke skills far before fatherhood actually hit? I'm that kind of guy. And I actually, it's, and my friends say this too, like, it's less about the joke, it's more about the reaction. And the more eye rolled or grown you get, the better, right? And it might be word plays or whatever else, like, you know? Oh, I know.
00:14:56
Speaker
And I do that at home with the family and I got kids. I got, you know, not my seven and nine year old, both kind of roll their eyes and groan when I see them too. So I know I'm winning when that happens. And she, mom, I'm like, you know, pretty well, she actually physically gets agitated with my really bad jokes. And, you know, I shouldn't be proud of that, but I'm proud of it.
00:15:23
Speaker
Because it's less about the joke, more about the reaction. She'll still laugh, but she's like, I shouldn't be laughing. I'm still like, so, so yeah, I do a lot of dad jokes. That's beautiful. Well, so Farhad, and coming out of college, I think this can kind of shift us back towards sort of the business realm, but coming out of college, if I'm not mistaken, you are considering a track towards med school and found yourself pouring beer and importing
00:15:53
Speaker
large SUVs and converting them. Is that right? Tell us a little bit about kind of how that kind of came about. Yeah. Yeah. So it's close. So I graduated college and my senior year I was studying for dental school at that point. I was pre-med. I did molecular biology,
Career Shift from Dentistry to Car Conversions
00:16:14
Speaker
studied that. So I said either, you know, medical or dental and, you know,
00:16:18
Speaker
Dental seemed more efficient. It's four years, not eight, you know, four years plus presidency, all that. And in college, a couple of things happened. One, I spent one summer working with a dentist. So nice guy, you know, middle-aged guy was sitting in his dental practice, had three assistants. And so I asked him, hey, can I, you know, help you out once in our shadow?
00:16:47
Speaker
So I go and shower one Monday and he was really excited that there was someone that who cared about what he did. He said, Hey, you can shadow me, but why don't you just help me? I'll pay you. You know, it's minimum wage. I'll pay you and you can be one of my assistants and you'll learn a lot. I said, sure. So, you know, I started dressing like him and talking like him and.
00:17:08
Speaker
And I learned a lot that summer and I could do it. I enjoyed it. The dentist, it was a very, it was a good summer. I really enjoyed it. I worked 40 hours a week every day. But the other thing that had happened around the same time or just a little earlier was that I had a car that ran on vegetable oil in college. Now I want to in college buy a car because you couldn't go surfing. I wanted to go surf, but you couldn't go with a bus. You can't get, you're not allowed to surfboard on the bus in Santa Cruz.
00:17:39
Speaker
So I wanted a car. Cars are expensive. Gas is expensive. So I said, oh, I heard about this new thing that someone's doing that they convert cars that are not vegetable oil. And the dining halls have a lot of vegetable oil. And they get rid of it. And I put up on it and bought a kit. Well, let me step back on. I first had to find a car. And I saw this car on Craigslist.
00:18:08
Speaker
for about like a thousand bucks, which is already a really good deal. Like this old Mercedes diesel, like a 1981 Mercedes 240D. I bought that, long story short, this might be for another conversation, but I got that car for $400, okay? Still shiny. And I named that car Fidel because it was very reliable and it looked like a Cuban dictator car. So glad that I converted the vegetable oil.
00:18:37
Speaker
So all summer, I'm commuting to, this is Watsonville now to work at a dental office. I'm commuting on vegetable oil. I'd go to San Francisco, visit my aunt and cousins on the weekends. And I was full on into, you know, getting my,
00:18:54
Speaker
finishing up college and then going to UCSF. That was my goal. Go to UCSF, UC San Francisco, dental school, come out as a dentist, and then go back and work with that dentist who wanted me to say, come back, work with me, and then whenever you retire, you buy my practice from me, you'll be set. It'll be a great life, right?
00:19:11
Speaker
And that seemed great. And I remember one time, you know, I go to San Francisco over the weekend and I would go to Berkeley from San Francisco on Saturday and Sunday to go study at the Kaplan test prep center in Berkeley. And one night I'm studying in San Francisco and my cousin sits next to me and she's older. I mean, my cousin's about, she was kind of in the middle of her career. I was about, I think 15 years older than him.
00:19:41
Speaker
And she's a physician. She's a physician at San Francisco general, um, loves her job, but she goes, do you really want to be a dentist? And I said, no. And she said, why are you studying to be a dentist? And I said, you're right. Close my books. I had just studied, I paid for the captain course. I was two weeks away from taking the test. I was one quarter away from graduating molecular biology. And, you know, nine months after working with the dentist and just had everything lined up, had a letter of recommendation, everything.
00:20:12
Speaker
And I was doing pretty well on the practice test. I had paid for the test at the end. So that was like the first, one of the first things in my life. I made a commitment to go against something that was pretty for sure thing. So I, you know, I drive back to, I remember that I drive back to Santa Cruz standing up by the water and I call my dad, you know, on my flip phone, my first cell phone I had gotten. Dad, I'm not going to go to dental school.
00:20:37
Speaker
And my dad's like, that's a pretty supportive guy. He's like, why don't you just take the test and then, and then if you don't want to, don't go, but take the, you already paid for it, take the test. And I said, no, cause if I take the test and I do well, it's valid for a couple of years. And he leaves the door open and I'm like, I'm just shutting that door. And if I want to, I'll read, study and take the test when I want to. And he said, you're making a mistake. And I said, that's what I'm going to do. And that's what set off this whole chain of events where, you know, I went back to Portland.
00:21:05
Speaker
You know, went back home, stayed with my dad. And I had a car that ran on vegetable oil. So I said, I need to start to make some money and I don't have a real job. So I posted ads on Craigslist. Hey, I'll convert your car to run on vegetable oil. People started calling me and started converting people's cars to vegetable oil.
00:21:26
Speaker
The only advantage I had over like other people who were doing it better than me was that I had nothing to lose. I wasn't a mechanic with a real professional life ahead of me stepping, doing something on the side that can vegetable convergence. I was a wide eyed college grad with nothing to lose. So I'm converting people's carbs to vegetable oil.
00:21:47
Speaker
Portland, California, people would call me. I would drive down to like Humboldt County and convert someone's vehicle and stay with them for a day or two. It was a fun time. I met a lot of good people. With the Crescent Ranch in hand? I upgraded slightly, but yes, Crescent Ranch is still in my toolbox. Simon, you froze. Is that a high five or? No, I was saying five tools. You had five tools with... Oh, five tools. I didn't say like five minutes or something like that.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, I still didn't have that many tools, but I got good at engineering the systems. They're all custom. So yada, yada, yada. I was doing that and I bought a book to live on. I financed the boat. It was cheaper to finance a boat in 2007 than to rent an apartment in town. Because when you go to the bank, you tell them you make a lot of money when you really don't because this is pre Dodd-Frank, all that stuff.
00:22:43
Speaker
So I'm like, yeah, yeah, make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Give me my boat loan. They give me a boat loan. I never missed a payment, but I was converting cars to run
Starting a Business and Financial Challenges
00:22:50
Speaker
a vegetable. I had no real income, no tax return type income. But when times got tough, as they usually do, I got worried and I found a job at this new eco brew pub opening up. I saw the ad on the boat when I was really desperate to do something.
00:23:12
Speaker
Um, cause vegetable oil conversions, a good month was like two conversions. Okay. Cause they each take like 40 to 60 hours and a lot of prep time and all that. A bad month is when you do one. So it's pretty slim margin, but actually two things happen. One, I got really spooked and scared. Like, what do I do? I have a boat now. I have a mortgage. I don't know what to do. And I remember actually the first person I talked to about this was the guy who, uh, sold me the boat maybe about six months prior.
00:23:43
Speaker
So I had him on the boat. He was a great guy. Um, kind of one of those, uh, more, uh, stern, his ex military. And I said, you know, I'm sitting with Robert on the boat. Like how's the boat doing? I'm like, it's great, but you know, times are getting hard. I don't know what to do. Like this is really hard. I was complaining to him and he gets really quiet.
00:24:03
Speaker
And then he roars, it's supposed to be hard. You think it's supposed to be easy? You bought a boat. Like, what are you doing? You want me to buy it back from you? Cause I love this boat. I'll buy it back from you. I said, I'm not done with the boat. Well then, then he gets really quiet. He goes, here you are trying to take these shiny apples off the top of the tree. You got a conversion. It brings you in a couple thousand bucks. Okay. He goes, you keep missing these big apples.
00:24:30
Speaker
But look around on the ground. There's a bunch of apples that fell off the tree. They're half rotted, but half thin. Pick up an apple, cut off the bad part, eat the good part, get some energy. Then you build a ladder. And then with that ladder, you get the shiny apples at the top. Wow. What are you saying is eat, grow and do something for consistent, less money, but consistent. Then I got online and I searched for my for service part and I found
00:25:00
Speaker
You know, I want that for this new eco-brew pub. I go, I could be a server. So I go up there and I interview. And of course I didn't get offered the server position. I had no experience. I got offered the busser position. So here I am college grad, I'm a busser at a brewery. Tell my parents, they go, you're a busser at a bar. I go, at a brewery. And so, you know, I worked my way up. I became a server and a bartender, but one of the big breaks came when I converted to Christian. The owners,
00:25:30
Speaker
vehicle to run on vegetable oil. Around the same time the Portland Monthly did this big story on me. Two page spread on this eco freak. I think it was October 2007 or 2008 issue. And it's a one page picture, one full page of me standing under the car, converting it to vegetable oil in this one page story.
00:25:52
Speaker
Funny thing is the guy who wrote that story is still one of our customers today. But some people started calling me to convert to card of vegetable oil and a mechanic found me. He goes, hey, I want to learn conversions with you. And I said, great, you do the conversions and maybe I can find more customers so you can do more. And I can, you know, that's where the split happened between service and production. And then he goes, well, I can also do brakes and engine work and all that stuff. I go, huh?
00:26:16
Speaker
I just remember one night it clicked with me. I was on my boat about midnight, one o'clock in the morning after working out long shift at Hopworks. So I'd work at Hopworks in the afternoon evening, and I'd work all day on cars. Working on the cars would pay off my student debt, and in the evening, you know, Hopworks would pay for my living. And I said, what about a business plan? I remember I downloaded a business plan from the Oregon Secretary of State website.
00:26:44
Speaker
you know, just a generic car repair shop business plan. So remember that night I didn't go to sleep. I read a paragraph. I understood the paragraph. I deleted the paragraph and I rewrote it with my words. And that's how I learned how to run a business because then I would get to like the break even. I go, Oh, here's how finance works. Oh, expense is this, you know? So I would do all of that. So I wrote my business plan in 2009, summer of 2009 and shopped it to all the banks.
00:27:14
Speaker
and people that I could think of. 2009. Tough times. Well, I was 26. The questions they would ask is, do you have any cash? No, I have student debt. Do you have an asset like a home? No, I have a boat. Your business plan is for an eco-friendly car repair shop modeled after like new seasons that teaches car care classes and converts cars to run on vegetable oil as well. Not really.
00:27:44
Speaker
what we're looking for, and it's 2009, no one's really lending. Want me to keep going on this? I can go through this whole arc if it's of value to you. So I was really bummed. All the banks basically laughed at me. They were nice, but they weren't going to fund a 26-year-old. Plus, only now do I realize, or later on, I realize banks don't fund business ventures. That's not the place. You don't go get, not as a 26-year-old.
00:28:13
Speaker
This was like just some zero to one kind of a thing. It's not a dank finance thing. I figured out how to finance it after I went to a friend's wedding in Oceanside, Oceanside, Oregon, back to California. And I was, you know, it was an overnight. You know, you stayed there overnight, but my roommate was randomly assigned to me or we were assigned to each other. But I was assigned Jeanette Caden. I was roommates with Jeanette.
00:28:43
Speaker
Jeanette started Tinshed on Alberta Street. That really cool breakfast brunch spot that also lets you have your dog on the patio. Have you guys been to Tinshed? No. Oh, Tinshed. Yes. Tinshed. Tinshed on Alberta. Yeah. So after the wedding, it's like 10 o'clock at night. I'm on top bunk, bottom bunk. And I'm like, Jeanette, Tinshed is so cool. I'm trying to start my shop. All the banks are laughing at me. How did you do it?
00:29:12
Speaker
She said, screw the banks. We start attention on credit cards. She had her and her partner. She and her partner. So they just click with me. I go, huh, OK. But then I go, Jeanette, what if you didn't make it? What if you have credit card debt? We are conditioned that credit card debt is bad, right? It's 30%. She goes, yeah, what happens? I go, I can go bankrupt. She goes, or you go back to bartending. I was a bartender at that point.
00:29:42
Speaker
because you go back to bartending and pay it down over a couple of years. I go, okay, you're right. So like the next day I committed, I'm like, okay, I'm going to max out my one credit card. It was like a $30,000 visa.
00:29:59
Speaker
Cause up until then I would take their cash advances that they would offer for free, right? Like zero percent for like three months. And then we'll, you know, rake you over the cold after three months. But what I would do is I'd buy a car, convert it to vegetable oil, sell it, pay off the principal and a month. I was really good with that. So before they knew what hit them, I maxed out the 30, I was, I planned on doing the $30,000. So sorry, let me back a moment, plan on $30,000. And then what happened is I needed a place to, to,
00:30:27
Speaker
to really flourish, because I was renting this small little shop, but I wanted to go big. And I saw this nice building that what used to be the Recyclerie, the Recyclerie was moving out, a bike shop on 9th and Madison that don't. And I was lucky, that's a different tangential story, but I got lucky with that lease, and the landlord allowed me to move in without any financial backing.
00:30:54
Speaker
And I actually sold my boat and I lived in the shop and I maxed out my credit card before they knew what hit them. So I had like, you know, sub low 500s credit score for a few years, because I maxed out my credit card. I could just pay the minimum payment every month and just interest only and lived in my shop. So I worked a hundred hours a week. Hop works full time, nights and weekends and all day in the shop.
00:31:22
Speaker
And I lived there for almost two years until I could kind of get enough to rent my first apartment after that. Wow. Man, that's some pretty inspirational. I love that story about the apple tree. That's really cool and a really cool reminder for a lot of folks that have delusions of what it looks like to start something from nothing.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, a small step forward is really, I think that a consistent step forward in what you're doing. Like you, I feel like a lot of us get paralyzed by analyzing too much or I heard this over and over throughout the years, I'd go to like these meetups, like they used to be green drinks and all these other entrepreneur meetups. And I remember,
00:32:18
Speaker
I would be amongst a bunch of people who had great ideas. I remember this one lady, she had an idea to make dog cookies. The way you get the cookie tubes at the store, like the dough, she's like, I want to do that for dogs. I'm just waiting for the right time. And I go, that's actually not a bad idea. Like, why don't you start? She's like, oh, the market's not right. And all these things. I started hearing this from a lot of people, like the market's not right. I'm waiting for the right time.
00:32:45
Speaker
And I'm like, and I was very lucky that at 26, 27, I'm like, it's never the right time.
Green Drop Garage's Eco-friendly Mission
00:32:52
Speaker
It's never the right time. You never get married at the right time. You never have kids at the right time. You never start a business at the right time. You create the right time because it's the right time because you've chosen to do it, not because the world has said yes. And you know, and I get other people like talk about like macro economic conditions. I go.
00:33:12
Speaker
Like you're starting their own business. Like there's no macro. You need to find 20 customers right now. And they're like, it doesn't matter what the macro is. It's, do you have 20 customers around you? And that's it. And you know, my parents were very worried for me early on. And I remember I had one, they were very worried, but very supportive. I was very lucky that they were so supportive, but I had one, uh, one person in my life that said, you, uh,
00:33:38
Speaker
It was like just after Obama had been inaugurated or whatever, it was the first year, and they were dialing back some tax that was for eco-friendly businesses or something. He cited that. He goes, he's doing this. Take your money and run. I advise you. He said, I advise you to take your money and run and you will get a real job. And even then I laughed at him. I was like, one, I never asked you for the advice.
00:34:02
Speaker
And two, because of some macroeconomic thing that affects large businesses, you're telling me that I can't find a few customers that I could do better for them than the repair shop down the street. And then someone else is like, what if you fix their car and their brakes fail? Like you'll be screwed. Like that's why you shouldn't start a business. I said, well, there's insurance for that and we have our processes, but others are doing it. Like those aren't reasons not to. So there's a lot of people who find reasons not to do something. And I feel like there's,
00:34:33
Speaker
I wanted to find one reason to do something and not really pay attention to the reasons not to. Let's say, let's fast forward a bunch of years, right? It sounds like full on living on a boat, a shoestring budget, credit card, working at a brewery, like living the dream as far as I'm concerned. I grew up working at bike shops.
00:34:59
Speaker
kind of live in that same lifestyle to some extent. But let's fast forward. Why don't you, you mentioned it and Ben mentioned it, green drop. What is green drop now? And then maybe even a step further, I, I stocked the website. What's what makes green drop really unique in the Portland area or, or just in the car mechanic space?
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah. Well, first off, don't judge our website. We're redoing it. So we'll have a fresh website by the new year. It's a little dated. I think for car repair, it's awesome. For like regular people, it's not so great. But the question, what is Green Drop? I started Green Drop as an eco-friendly car repair shop.
00:35:49
Speaker
that fixes cars, converts cars to vegetable oil, and also teaches car care classes in the evening. We wanted to empower people as well. I thought that'd be a fun model. And again, I think I mentioned earlier in the interview, the new season's model where I didn't want to be converting people's, just converting people's cars to run on vegetable oil because the market's limited on that. I wanted to have regular people with regular Subarus or cars.
00:36:18
Speaker
to come in for a regular service on a regular interval, right? So we did everything from oil chain to on up. We still do all three, just not as we don't, so it's a smaller percentage. I thought I'd do vegetable oil conversions would be about 30% of our revenue. Repairs would be like 70% and car care classes would just be break even, like it's almost a free thing. It's something for the community.
00:36:45
Speaker
We do 99.9% repairs and maybe one or two conversions at this point. And actually, I think it's even more environmentally friendly because fixing a regular car that's on the road is we can do 10 of those for every one conversion. 10 of them being 10 or 20% more eco-friendly than one home run of a vegetable conversion. So singles and doubles are a sub-home run win the game.
00:37:16
Speaker
So what Green Drop is, it's a B corporation where eco-biz certified. So we're the most certified eco-friendly car repair shop in the country at this point. Wow. What that means is that the practices that we employ, like we're still a car repair shop. So I'm not, I'm not here saying we're, we're saving the world. We're just making it, we're just less shitty than another repair shop basically. Right. So we, uh, I mean,
00:37:45
Speaker
A lot of the oils we use are re-refined motor oil, so it's actually recycled, but it still meets specifications. We just pay more for it. Low VOC and enzyme-based cleaners. We're actually carbon neutral. We don't count it like we should, but we're carbon neutral in that we buy wind power, we offset
00:38:07
Speaker
all the emissions that we cannot get away from, like we have to burn natural gas to heat up our shops. We have to take cars on test drives. We offset those with carbon credits to bring ourselves to a net neutral. We also do a lot of, you know, we're involved in the community. We have various board positions that are represented by green drought staff. We give back. So all these things that kind of build up those B Corporation points.
00:38:33
Speaker
So it's evolved and now actually our official mission is to make car care suck less. Car care sucks less for the customer and how they consume car care. And I'll get into that in a second. It sucks less for the staff because they feel like humans, not cogs in the machine. They're paid better. They're taking care of more. Our benefits are in line with like, again, I was, I like new season's model. So that type of a model.
00:39:03
Speaker
Our staff is well taken care of and all that, and we try to make them happy. And it sucks less for the environment. It's not good for the environment. It sucks less. We're not here. We can't make it good. Good is electric trains on steel rail, okay? But if you've got to drive a car, we're here for you, okay?
00:39:22
Speaker
Now, with respect to car care, stocking less. When we started in the early days, it was about environmental and service. You know, of course, everyone has good service. Everyone says they have good service. We try to make cars exceptional where we, you know what? Like Les Schwab has free beef with your tires.
00:39:40
Speaker
We would have free vegetables with your oil change, right? Just the Portland way of doing it. We, you know, all these little, we connect with various Portland organizations like the Toyota Lab, the worst day of the year ride. We'd be at all those farmer's markets.
00:39:57
Speaker
buy local things like trinkets, like most repair shops have chop skis that go out. We would buy like some woodworker would cut out like a thousand logos for us and we'd give them off to customers, things like that. So, you know, service wise and environmental wise, we were better and different. But the next big thing happened, I think maybe about six years after, five, six years after I started the company.
00:40:26
Speaker
Which kind of makes sense because about five years in is when you hit your 10,000 hours, you become an expert on the first thing, right? Because you work about 2000 hours a year, 10,000 hours. The next big inflection point for the company, while we try to hold true to our initial values and keep growing on them linearly, meaning we keep, every year we do better, but it's not this exponential quantum leap. It was the membership. So,
00:40:55
Speaker
There used to be, or not used to, I'm sorry, for car repair or anything, even in your industry. In general, you multiply the number of hours it takes to do a job by your labor rate, and you add the cost of goods, cost of parts, maybe a little market, and then that's your sale price. So cost plus, right? So here's your cost, here's your sell, and your margin's right here.
00:41:22
Speaker
Well, I remember I was learning more and more about software as a service, SaaS. And I said, well, software as a service, I used to be like, you know, Microsoft Word, you buy it for 200 bucks. They hold a few features back. A year later, they give you the patch that upgrades it. They play this stupid game where they try to get you to buy more.
00:41:40
Speaker
Now it's 10 bucks a month. You get a Microsoft office, their incentivize to just do a good job and just keep it running. Okay. So the service of software was being sold. So I thought, why not do crass car repair as a service? And I love the acronym too. So what I did was I looked at, I started talking about it with people, but I'm like, I hate the Jiffy lube experience where, and we have to play that game too. If we want an oil change, someone coming in for an oil change,
00:42:11
Speaker
The dirty little secret of the industry is the oil changes are breakeven at best paying 50 to 80 bucks for oil change. You break even. Okay. So they have to sell you something on a commission basis to a high pressure. It's about selling you stuff. Cool. And that's why no one trusts.
00:42:30
Speaker
But then here we are, your car comes into the shop or like, you do need that air filter. You do need this thing that you can condition to say no, but you really need it. And here we are spending five, 10 minutes of our customer time talking about like a $20 air filter that we make a margin on. Sure. I said, I'm tired of selling these low, these high margin, low, low perceived value things. Let's just give it away. So I said, why don't we charge $15 a month?
00:42:59
Speaker
Which is a pretty good deal. And it's unlimited. And instead of looking at it as a per customer cost plus, I looked at it as a portfolio. If we have thousands of customers paying the same revenue, my job is to keep my costs in line while my top line is consistent. So we look at it on a per month basis. How many oil changes can we do per month? And then you could see how many memberships you can sell because each person comes in once every three months on average.
00:43:30
Speaker
So, you know, we added some features and said, you know, hey, for all the basic stuff, the oil chains, the wipers, the bulbs, the quick code scan, things that keep you from coming into the shop. If you're part of the club, you just come in for free. We don't charge. You could be an Uber driver. You can come in a hundred times a year if you really drive that much. We got you. And the model is like an Amazon Prime where that free shipping type thing makes you stick to the company.
00:43:57
Speaker
Now, everything else that we do above that, like tires, like brakes, belts, things like that, we charge. So what happened is that, well, first off, when I implemented that program, most of my upper management quit or was made to quit early in the first six months because they didn't believe in it. They said, you're giving away services because the typical oil change after the upsells, close to a hundred bucks per invoice. Okay. With the membership.
00:44:27
Speaker
Three times $15 is $45. So it's less than half. Like we're getting less than half the revenue for the same job. You're running us into the ground. You're crazy basically. Actually I got that from all my managers who knew more than I did and were at least a decade older than me at that point. I was a pretty young shop owner. And I stuck to my guns and so they left and the new people who came in really saw what we were doing. So now we have thousands of members
00:44:57
Speaker
And that membership was key to keeping us afloat during COVID. We lost like 2% during COVID. 2% of members canceled. The rest of them stayed on, right? And they're part of a club and we serve them on the lower level, but then they stay at a higher rate. They convert over to things like tires, like brakes, because as long as we actually do good, then over time, like if you go to a mechanic,
00:45:27
Speaker
the same mechanic, meaning one that can do everything. And they say your tires are fine. Then the next time you come in, they go, your tires are fine, but in six months, probably need to replace them. And then by the time it comes to replace them,
00:45:40
Speaker
You built trust as they didn't sell you tires when you didn't need them. So when you do need them, you have that trust. So essentially buying their trust or we're buying their not trust, but we're buying their commitment to us. And we build that trust by being trustworthy. And over time they buy more from us. We're their only shop. We're getting all of the car repair and not just one section.
00:46:07
Speaker
Like Les Schwab has tires and batteries. There's a reason they never get into anything else. Jiffy Loop only does oil change and basic things. There's a reason they don't get into anything else. Even Costco, good price on tires. They don't do an alignment on the tires, on the car.
00:46:24
Speaker
Because all of these, if you go past their little niche, it costs them more. They worry about their margins. They specialize in one thing. The problem is that in this world, service providers need to be full service. Gone are the days where your dad would go to the muffler shop and then the brake shop and then the oil chain shop and then the tire shop. Your time is valuable. You need a one-stop shop.
00:46:53
Speaker
Incidentally, just in the market, to make a short story long, is we used to have bakers, butchers, convenience store, grocers, right? Now we have a supermarket. And even 7-Eleven is losing market share to New Seasons, Whole Foods for grab and go. Everything that's a service base, something that you have to do not that you want to do, is starting to generalize and do everything in one stop because you value your time.
00:47:23
Speaker
Funny thing is the opposite is happening with things that you want to do. Like meaning, if you want to go to a restaurant now, and if there's more than eight things on the menu,
00:47:31
Speaker
the restaurant suspect, because they're doing too many things. They just do one thing really well. There used to be the general gym. You do everything. Now there's CrossFit, barbell, kettlebell, bar, bar three, climb, whatever. You're specializing in things that are desirable or things that are fun or elective. You, everything is becoming very narrow and niche.
00:47:56
Speaker
things that you have to do, not things that you want to do are becoming all inclusive like cars. Like you want to go to one stop shop for your medical and one stop shop for your supermarket and one stop, you know, all those things. So that's my rambling answer to your quick question. But that's what Green Drop is. The membership is really that next key. Going back to Green Drop.
00:48:20
Speaker
Well, no, that's super interesting. Ben and I lament over our car issues and having to change oil and all that nonsense. But I love the idea of a membership. Ben, you changed the oil into Tesla? Not so much. Not that one. That's a much bigger story, Farhad, but we'll talk about that some other time.
00:48:44
Speaker
But the idea, like you said it, I was waiting for the word, but you said it right at the end, trust, right? I think that is a key part to the old school quote, car mechanic, where like, if I get a call from my mechanic and he says, you need to do this,
00:49:01
Speaker
I'm thinking, yep, he said so because he, like you said, also told me last time, I don't need to do this thing, right? It's building that trust. I like that. How did, how did real estate end up turning into part of the portfolio, as you said? Oh, through trust, of course. That was accidental, honestly.
Real Estate and Economic Participation
00:49:28
Speaker
I got really lucky in that I found a few good people who helped me through this whole process. And I got lucky that, you know, I hit, I had a business that would occupy the real estate that we purchased. So I didn't, I wasn't an investor looking for a tenant. I was a tenant looking to buy the building that I was in. And I had just some good help along the way. But, you know, I got into real estate, I think 2000,
00:49:57
Speaker
13, 14, something like that. But we bought our first building that we occupy. And just our growth strategy for the next few buildings was purchasing. So I used SBA to purchase those buildings. So I mean, there's an element of luck in it as well.
00:50:23
Speaker
But I'm trying to think of what can I tell you about owning the commercial real estate that we do? Because there's two types of buildings that my wife and I own now. Of course, there's our home home that we got. We bought that.
00:50:44
Speaker
There's the buildings that Green Drop occupies, which is kind of not a no-brainer, but it's like, if you can find a way to own the building, then your lease payments become mortgage payments, you build equity, it's good over time, that's cool. And I got lucky, our buildings were in the central east side, and the central east side has historically done pretty well in terms of equity growth, value of the building has increased. And that's helped fund our company growth, because we could use some of that equity in the refinance to grow.
00:51:15
Speaker
to invest back in the company. But lately, in the last couple of years, I've been lucky that there were some buildings that were not going to be occupied by green truck, but I had enough knowledge of the game and enough confidence in myself and the ability to make it happen. So made it happen. So
00:51:43
Speaker
Yeah, there's a couple, but I guess this year we took over two buildings. I mean, I acquired two buildings. And it was really exciting. One of them I'm really excited about is across the street from our first location. So Green Drop Garage on 9th and Madison. There's a building across the street. Long story short was the owner passed away and her family sold it to me.
00:52:07
Speaker
And it was a disaster of a building and it was a blight on the neighborhood. That's where people would camp and people would squat behind that shipping containers that were on the parking lot and people would hide behind it and do whatever they do. So we took it and renovated it earlier this year. And it's 13,000 square feet, but we have some awesome tenants in there now. Brothers Apothecary, they're a CBD tea manufacturer and they do some
00:52:38
Speaker
work out mushrooms, not the psychedelic kind, but the lion's mane, that class of mushroom. And they put in various mediums like gummies and things like that. But they're manufacturing out of there. So we have people producing. There's probably a dozen people manufacturing. And we've got a woodworker and we have another, someone who engineers turbines and things like that.
00:53:07
Speaker
And what was really cool about that building is that we took it from it being storage, no one occupying it, nothing. And the highest or the easiest way to success was to keep it as storage. I could fix it up, but then just rent it out of storage. But instead we invested in it and fix it up. We redid a lot of the building, put a lot into it. And we have makers, fixers and doers in the building, which is really cool. We get to, you know, I get to have a building that has people doing something in it. And you know,
00:53:38
Speaker
And Simon, you haven't been important for a bit like you're in Spokane. Is that right? Yep. Yeah. So do you remember the OMFG building when you're going over the Burnside Bridge? It says long live the wild card misfits and dabblers. Yep. Yeah. So there's that sign there. And that always graded on me because a wild card misfit and dabbler is someone who is.
00:54:04
Speaker
Meaning they're just being and it's kind of selfish. You're dabbling. That's cool. That's what I did as a kid. But when I grew up, I started making fixing and doing.
00:54:16
Speaker
And that's what we have on our side. So as a response to that in the same font, in the same color scheme, which is black and white, I have long lived the makers, fixtures, and doers. On my building, when you're driving over the Hawthorne Bridge, you'll see that when you're going towards the Hawthorne Bridge. Because those are constructive adjectives. You're considering the customer, not yourself. When you dabble, you don't think about anyone but yourself. Being a wild card is just being like there's nothing constructive about it. That's old Portland. That's Portland where people came to retire.
00:54:46
Speaker
Well, or whatever. The young people came to retire. That's what Fred Armisen said. 2012. Circle 2012. That's all cool. I've been there. I was that. I was that person. But now, you know, with all the complaints about Portland getting expensive, all that other stuff, it's actually a good time because you now have to actually do something of value and trade that value for a living to make it work in Portland. It was actually too easy back then. You could do anything and it would work.
00:55:15
Speaker
So I feel like a lot of us that may be complaining about, you know, someone moved my cheese in Portland, like it's getting harder. Well, make something for someone who values it, right? You actually have to consider your market. You can't just be, you have to do something as well. It sounds like something that Yoda would say, you can't just be, you must do. But anyway, that's one of my buildings. I keep going on tangent side. That's one of our buildings. And we just took over another 30,000 square foot space.
00:55:44
Speaker
close to where your rail yard or your rail cars were actually overlooking where the rail cars were. So right against the OMSI industrial district. And that's a really fun project as well. Well, really cool to see you investing in that neighborhood that Cascade had operated out of for the better part of our life, you know, both in the Ford building and 11th and division as well as in the rail cars now the last 10 years. And now we're more remote, but really exciting. And I think we can also link your, your,
00:56:14
Speaker
Let me get the words right here. Angry Love Letter to PDX, where you highlight some more of these things in detail about inviting people to set up the plate. And as Wyden and Kennedy said, Portland is what you make it. So I definitely was inspired by that message. And Farah, I think that's probably a pretty good place for us to wrap things up here today. You've really given us some cool inspiration on your experience, your story. And I've really, really appreciated your
00:56:42
Speaker
what felt to me sometimes contrarian approach to real estate during the pandemic and in this last year, feeling bold and confident and moving forward with a vision of what the future could look like instead of sort of waiting around for someone else to make those moves and eliminate some of the risks. So I think Portland owes you a debt of gratitude as well as self-peace.
00:57:07
Speaker
Then a grit of data to almost make sense. Data to there we go. It all comes around. It all comes around. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, but yeah, I don't think it's well, one, that's really nice of you to say that I was inviting people. I was, I was just angry and wrote that and telling them like, you know, quit whining, basically. So there's another, another letter forthcoming at some point in the near future.
00:57:33
Speaker
Um, but I think, I guess it goes back to how I started Raindrop. You know, people say, wait, you know, it's time. He's not right. Well, they're cycles. And actually when everyone's running away from things like this is when you, if you step in, this is not altruistic. I'm not doing, I mean, I love my city. I can call it my city. I love my city, but it's not about that. I want to do good, but doing that is how you become successful.
00:58:02
Speaker
Not why. I'm not here because it's just doing good. I'm also here because I want to invest. I want to see a return on my investment. I want to take care of my family. So it's not about this altruism. It's that I feel like I set up a game to where it's win-win, and then I take those risks when others aren't on some of these things.
00:58:25
Speaker
And I'm not unique, there's a lot of other people doing that. I mean, you'll talk to Ryan, if you haven't already. Ryan took a massive risk with his flagship Northwest. And there's some others who are doing some interesting things in Portland. So it's not all about altruism, it's about just setting the game up right. And then you play to win, but when you win, others win too. And that's how, it's not extractive, it's like this abundance mentality where
00:58:53
Speaker
You can do that and get your return and have people employed and have someone else to win, basically, as a result of you winning. But I appreciate it. And it's always fun doing things like this, like the podcast and all that. And I'm sorry if I rambled too much because I think I may under sometimes on my stories.
00:59:15
Speaker
Makes a job easy on Simon and myself, so we thank you. And now Farhad, I believe I'd like to recommend your newsletter if that's still something you're active with, but what are some other ways in which people can follow along, keep tabs on what Farhad's thinking and doing? Well, I'm getting better at it, but I have an Instagram with dozens of followers at Farhad PDX. And so I will be like, oh, I got a follower.
00:59:44
Speaker
Oh, and it's not a bot? That'll be amazing. So if I get a follower, that'd be cool. Green Drop Garage is the other one. And our newsletter is one where I have included just customers and family and friends. You can sign up for the newsletter on our website at greendropgarage.com. I think maybe I should be posting some of that stuff in another arena because I have a lot. Most of my energy goes into my newsletters that are anything but car repair to our customers.
01:00:11
Speaker
For car repair customers, they get nothing about car repair. It's everything about what's going on in my mind about whatever. I feel like I'm an Andy Rooney at some point. A less angry Andy Rooney. I'm just writing my opinion.
01:00:28
Speaker
Yeah. Well, this has reminded me, I need to get on that because it's been recommended to me by many of our friends along the way. And, uh, those are, those are thoughts that I, I like to digest. So far. And I want to thank you for your time and, uh, boy, the way this conversation went and some of the stuff that we left off, I think we're probably going to be hitting you up again at some point to do a follow-up and, uh, feel back the layers on from other aspects. So yeah, thanks again for joining us. Look forward to it. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Brad.
01:01:00
Speaker
you