Adam Pitale, One Clean Classic at a Time

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0:36Coming up today on this episode of Ford Mustang, the Early Years Podcast. Looking back now, I have the incredible gift, the total blessing, of having been able to be in the right zone, in a place where I can help people achieve excellent results on their cars. And then moving forward, I was able to help people get into the detailing business. You know, we teach a detailing school called the Shine Academy.

1:08I was polished. We've taught hundreds and hundreds of fasts over the years. Oh, it's great. Well, people want to get out of their – people love detailing their cars, right? And then they got a nine-to-five, and they're under a fluorescent light in the office, right? And they're like, this sucks. Yeah. I don't want to be here. I don't – this is not what – I don't think God wanted me to be here. I think I needed to be somewhere else. And it's like, yeah, but I love detailing my car. It's like, me too. I go out in the garage, and I disappear for hours. My wife's like, hello?

1:42Welcome to the Ford Mustang First Generation The Early Years Podcast. Every week, we will have conversations with collectors, experts, weekend warriors, and those in the know when it comes to first-generation ponies. Start your engines, and let's go. Hey, podcast community. I was going to say Ford Mustang community, but this is actually going to air on a number of different podcasts that we have because of the fun story that I'm about to share of Adam Batali. Adam is the founder of Adam's Polishes, which is a global brand in car cleaning and detailing products.

2:19You'll enjoy this conversation that I had with Adam. We went from his office to an emergency call that he had from someone in his family to pick his son up from school, so he jumped into the car. So we go from the office to the car to outside, so you'll hear the transition of the technology there. So don't let that detract you from this really fun conversation. Whether you are or are not a car person, this is a really great conversation. Adam goes through an inventory of some of the cars that he has, maybe gets into some of the details of those cars.

2:53So if you're not a car person for that part, just bear with it for just a couple of minutes because he does come and share his final couple of stories after we talk about his inventory of cars. He talks about some of the lessons that he's learned in business and in life, in hiring and in firing. So check out this episode with Adam Batali from Adam's Polishes. You'll really enjoy this conversation. Thanks for being here. Another episode. All right, welcome back to the podcast. How, Adam, have we not met until now? And only then via coincidence.

3:24Mustangs, F-100s, a laundry list of acquaintances in common. I'm excited to chat with you. Before I let you even say a word, let me tell my audience about you a little bit how this happened. So Adam Batali, he's the kind of guy who's been obsessed with making things shine since he was a kid, literally starting by cleaning and polishing bikes pre-teen and not the pre-teens that we're talking about, just the bikes, the bikes of pre-teens. That obsession has led to a hustle, then a business, and eventually into what we know now as Adam's Polishes. He launched the business back in 2000 in California, not from some grand plan,

3:57but because, just like all of us, he needed to make a living and figured there had to be a better way to keep things clean and looking perfect. So today, Adam's built a global brand around the same mindset, a little obsessive, a little unconventional, but completely driven by doing things better than good enough. He's the guy who'd rather wash a forklift or a classic Ford than keep it dirty. And that pretty much tells you everything about Adam that you need to know, except that's also how he shows up in business. Now, I coincidentally connected with Adam when I saw his recently selling a classic Ford truck on Marketplace on Facebook,

4:29which I must admit and share, I really wanted, but I'm so glad somebody else bought it, because the last thing either one of us has needed was a new project. So Adam, that's all I've prepared for this conversation. I'm excited to chat with you. Welcome to the podcast, my friend. It's such a small world, huh? Car enthusiasm brings people together in so many ways. It's crazy. Well, I saw this, and I hope you don't mind if I use some numbers here for a second. I saw a classic Ford that was priced below what I thought it should go for.

4:59You know, normally, you know, a 60s or 70s-something in really good shape is going to be in the $10,000, $12,000 range. You priced it well below that. And then I looked at where you were, and I said, oh, he's in Idaho. Of course, that's why he's doing it, because I'm in California, and everything's freaking, you know, $12,000, $16,000, $20,000 for those things. So we just connected, coincidentally, I just said, I think I started the conversation with great price, it's going to sell. And I didn't realize, had you had it for sale for a very long time?

5:29You know, longer than I wanted to, for sure. I had it for sale for probably maybe a month. Yeah, and you don't want it hanging out there that long, because then people start to see the same thing over and over again, and they're like, what's wrong with it? What's wrong? Did you have many, many, like, tire kickers come to you or anybody? Oh, yeah. Sure, we had tire kickers, we had people that were excited about it, people like, oh, you know, the original Patina paint, this is a 1971 F100, two-wheel drive, blue, you know, blue, and then the sides were white, right?

6:00So, and the paint was almost all original, which is nice, you know, but it's got a lot of eyeball to it. However, the problem with it was it had some mechanical issues that needed to be resolved, and it had some rust, you know, a little bit of rust that needed to be resolved. And I was, you know, I ended up with this truck quite by accident. It was one of the guys that helped me build this car wash. I built a car wash here in, just outside of Eagle, Idaho, Boise. And basically, the general contractor brought this little truck over to me and said,

6:36Adam, I'm in trouble, and my transmission's out. And this was right in the middle of building our car wash. And I said, buddy, I love this guy. In fact, the craziest story, this guy named Shane, he used to own Ballpark Pizza, which is this killer little pizza place, kind of where I grew up in Southern California. He had one in Laguna Niguel, one in San Juan Capistrano. And like half my buddies that I went to high school with delivered pizzas during high school for this guy, Shane, in Ballpark Pizza.

7:08Anyway, fast forward, he ends up moving to Idaho. He starts a little pizza place here. And then the pizza place ends up, you know, having some issues, goes out of business. He starts working as a general contractor. And he's working on my car wash. His truck, you know, the transmission blows up. It's got probably, you know, it says 20,000 miles on it. It's probably been over like 10 times. It's probably got millions of miles on it, literally.

7:34So anyway, so I said, you know, let's get you right. Let's get you fixed up. I go, you're just a great guy, and I have so much history with you. I'll be happy to help you. So this is a year and a half ago. I went ahead and paid to have the transmission rebuilt. Right. Through my local car guys here, which is called Restoration Rods. They do work on all my cars, and they're just great. So I put a new, you know, we pulled the transmission out, sent it in, had it rebuilt, put it back in the truck. And fast forward a year, you know, we're well open now. He brings me the truck caked in mud and says, hey, by the way, I have just been pulled out of the mud in a rather meaningful way.

8:12Hey, and I need to blast all this mud off this truck. And what I'm going to do is hopefully not get stuck in the mud. He's working on these rural new home construction projects, and there's so much mud there. They're just absolutely just caked in mud. He gets stuck in the mud every time he goes out there. So he gets pulled out with a skid steer, drives the truck in here. We blast all the mud off for him. Away he goes, right? Well, fast forward, he then ends up coming back again, like three days later, stuck in the mud.

8:49He couldn't pull out, and he's in trouble. I said, okay, that's great. Now, he's like, I really need to get a four-wheel drive truck. And I said, yeah, you actually really do. Right, I was going to suggest that. 71, and, you know, you get stuck more than a couple of times. You think, maybe I shouldn't take this truck to work anymore. How many times do you want to get yanked out of the mud by a tractor, right? Right. So, anyway, it was enough times, and he ended up bringing it back. So, and I had a shop truck that I had bought from somebody that walked up and said, hey, I want my truck detailed. I'm going to sell it.

9:19I said, okay, hey, great. Let's just go ahead and give you, why don't you use my truck while we do this? So he took our loaner truck, which is our shop truck, which is like an 06 F-150, four-wheel drive. And he took it for, you know, two hours while we cleaned his truck up. He comes back and he's like, oh, I love this truck. It's so nice. I'm like, well, yeah, compared to what you're driving, it's got all the creature comforts. It has a heater. His truck didn't have a heater. Right. Like nothing. So he ends up saying, would you trade me trucks? Like, what would you tell me that my truck's worth?

9:51And so we looked it up, and it was worth like five grand in the condition it was in, which needed everything. Right. So I said, tell you what, let's just, you give me five grand plus your truck, you can have our truck, and it'll just be good. You know, he did a great job on our car wash. I knew I was doing him a solid. As soon as I owned this truck, I end up having to put loads of money into it. Because this guy is just one of those guys that just doesn't, deferred maintenance doesn't bother him. Understood. My last two trucks I bought at a song and dance, well, well under, I'm going to say

10:23well under $5,000, but I ended up putting 10 into both of them. There is no freaking way I'm selling either one of those and making any money. So that's why in that picture I sent you, I have three trucks sitting in my front yard. I love them all, but hell, these things are, so anyway, so you got this truck, you ended up putting a whole bunch of money into it, and it just saddled marketplace for a while. Just out there. You know, renew listing, renew listing, renew listing every couple, every little bit. I know that story. So anyway, to make a long story longer, it went from $12,000, because I put $8,000 into

10:54it, by the way. Right. And it went from $12,000, thinking I might get close to break-even, down to $11,000, down to $10,000, down to $9,000. And finally, it sold for $8,000, and it's now back in California. I wanted that truck so bad, and I would have bought it. First of all, you were a nice guy right out of the gate, because I look through the Facebook marketplace almost every day, and I always send to somebody that is priced right, and I think is a clean truck. I send them a note. It says, priced right, it's going to sell fast. And I'm hoping that that, to a certain degree, gave you whatever motivation or inspiration

11:26that you needed. But I always feel like everybody's got a truckle marketplace. They're dealing with so many jerks and spammers and everything else. So I was happy that you sold it. I so wanted that truck. And then I started asking questions, and you're like, yeah, I started this little car cleaning. I forget how you said it. And I'm like, wait a minute. Adam from Adam's Polishes? I mean, Adam Battaglia, I have your shit in my garage. At least a half a dozen of your products in my garage. God bless you. Thank you. I know that you go.

11:57I've watched a bunch of podcasts that you've been on. I know you spend most of your time telling your life story and all of that. I did not want to make you duplicate any of that stuff. I just wanted to share with everybody that, man, I was fanboy. And when I saw who you were and then how connected I am to your products, especially the foaming car wash, it's like my favorite product by far. That makes washing fun, doesn't it? It does. It really does. And you know, in addition to the look and the good fun that the foam creates, it smells nice, too.

12:28Oh, that's huge. You know, when I first started, when I first started, you know, nothing smelled good. All polishes smelled like petroleum. All soaps just had no smell in it. It needed, you know, everything needed something. And yet all these chemicals, they worked OK. They did not smell OK. They were difficult to use. And when we first started, you know, I was I was using a lot of chemicals. We were actually when we first started making chemicals, we started detailing for Coca-Cola.

12:59We did all the trucks in Southern California and one plant in Las Vegas. That was thirty four hundred vehicles and we had to get them done every twenty four months. So we're using tons of chemical. And the fact was using stuff that smelled bad and that you smell bad after using it all night. You ended up with a really a tremendously horrible odor. And you're just so sick of smelling stuff all night. Right. Yeah. So we started using this stuff and we started having the chemical manufacturers that are helping us mix different chemicals together, add scent and colors.

13:35So so you're you're dealing with the manufacture of these chemicals and you're trying to make the the the soap smell better or the product smell better. And what was that? What was the secret to that? Is that why? How come no one had done that before you? Turtle wax did not do a good job with that. It's crazy, right? No one ever did it. It was like it was just not a thing. People did not add fragrance to chemicals. And so we requested it. We said, listen, you know, we're using this soap and we're using a ton of a degreaser and the degreaser has a really nasty, heavy smell.

14:06Like what would it cost if we were to add like just a little bit of scent to sort of mask the nasty, you know, the natural nasty smell to it? Oh, well, I don't think it would cost very much. Maybe it cost, you know, ten dollars for a fifty five gallon drum. I'm like, soul, right. Put this put the scent in it, you know. So we did. And then we started scenting the compounds, the polishes, the wax. And people kept commenting because, you know, I'm selling we're detailing for Coca-Cola all night, right?

14:37Four p.m. We get to a Coke plant. We set up and we detail from 4 p.m. Until 4 a.m. All night. And then on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, we're at the Orange County Swap Meet in Costa Mesa, California. And we're selling this stuff, right? We're selling the products that we keep. We keep coming up with the products all night, right? We devise chemicals working on Coke trucks because we've got like this massive, like, let's take a lab, right? You're constantly polishing and detailing and you're like, this doesn't work very good. Neither does this. Neither does this. Let's improve this in this way.

15:07Let's improve that chemical in this way. Let's improve this, you know, sponge. Let's find something that can spread the dressing on the tires without, you know, letting so much seep into the cracks and sling down the side of the truck. Like, there's always some improvement to make. So we basically improved and developed and thought about how to make things better all night. And then we sold them on the weekends at the Swap Meet at the Orange County Marketplace, which, you know, was the largest Swap Meet, I think, in the country for so many years. It was, you know, from the 70s that had been going on.

15:39I love that. I mean, you were like A-B testing before it was like a thing. And you were doing all of this experimenting and innovating right in the field. But even before you had Coca-Cola, though, take us back just a teeny – for just a quick second. Coca-Cola was like you landed the 800-pound gorilla. There had to be a lot of onesie-twosies. You know, I have a guy, Oscar, that pulls up to my next-door neighbor, and he might have a half a dozen neighbors that use him for card detailing. But he's not expanding to a global brand like Adam's Polishes.

16:11What in your brain said, number one, I can do this, and then I can scale this, and then I can fucking blow this up? At what point did that happen? Well, you know, I give glory. I do give a lot of glory to God because, I mean, there's no way this would just be natural. Like I was just a car detailer. I was a bicycle detailer when I was 10. You know, I cleaned bicycles. My mom started dating a cyclist. I detailed his bicycle. He goes to work. He's a doctor at Allergan Pharmaceuticals, this huge Allergan – huge pharmaceutical company.

16:43And he tells all of his people at his – and there's 200 people on the bike club. And then they suddenly are all – my mom is bringing home her Volvo wagon. It's filled with bikes every day. They come home, hey, I need my pedal. I need my, you know, my toe straps. You know, these would be leather. And they get crunchy and nasty after they get wet. They just turn into rocks. I need those replaced. I need my chain replaced. My derailers are all messed up. So anyway, it was just one of those things where I just was able to get a lot of customers through a very organic and accidental way in bicycle detailing.

17:20And then fast forward maybe a year into washing the neighbor's car, then washing the next neighbor's car, then washing the next neighbor's. And I just kept washing everyone's car. And, you know, I'm 10, 11, 12 now. By the time I'm 13, 14 years old, I've got a pretty cool little washing and waxing business. You know, detailing – I don't even remember ever hearing the word detailing. Right. Yeah, wash and wax. I mean, that was – a detail was if you wash your car and wax it and vacuum it out, you know, you armor all the dash, right?

17:52That's a detail. Right, right. And back then, I don't even – I don't think that the word detail was something that ever entered my mind. And it wasn't something that I focused on. But it was very good revenue for every day after school. I'd come home and wash another neighbor's car. And when I was 14, this kid, John Hodge, he lives around the corner from me. He's always driving by and seeing me wash cars because I washed them in my driveway a lot. And he'd come over and he'd end up helping me. He worked at a local pizza place. You know, he'd sell pizzas over at the pizza place.

18:22He'd make pizzas. And John and I became fast friends. And then customers were able to start getting mobile detailing done because we would use John Hodge's VW book. We'd throw the vacuum in the back seat, you know, some towels up in the frunk, you know, the little trunk in the front. And, you know, so we ended up doing some mobile detailing. Fast forward, you know, I turned 16 and ended up with a little – like one of those little Mitsubishi van. Kind of looks like a toaster. Yeah, I remember.

18:50And I was doing a lot of detailing. And then realized that I'm spending a lot of time driving to one person's house for one car or two cars. And I'm not doing as much detailing as I am driving. You know, again, Southern California, even back in the 80s, there were still a decent amount of traffic. Like, so I started going after limousine companies. And limousine companies were really in need of regular care. They needed to be washed, like, every day because every day they had a new customer. And most of them were black. Most limousines were black. There were some white ones.

19:21And then, you know, the white tops would look all crunchy. They'd look – you know, there's dirt in the grain of the vinyl. So they'd be scrubbed out really well. Right. The hubcaps, you know, the wire hubcaps, they needed to be thoughtfully cleaned. So I knew how to do that stuff. So I figured it out. And I started mixing chemicals on the limousines. The limousines was the beginning of mixing existing chemicals together to save steps. So if I had to compound something once, fine. But if I had to compound it twice or polish, you know, if I had to compound, buff all the scratches out, and then polish it, and then wax it, that would add a meaningful amount of time to that effort.

20:01So I really was trying to save time. And, you know, at that point, it was the first time I, you know, I had still John working for me that I ended up hiring a couple other kids. And, I mean, meanwhile, you know, I'm in high school. Nothing was more expensive. Even the most expensive chemical in the world was cheaper than paying man hours. You know? Yeah, of course. Because there's always – there's nothing more expensive than paying a dude to do work. Right. So I started combining a polish and a compound on the same pad and then mixing pads and changing pads and trying to do things.

20:34Because, again, I had a lot of these limousines to do. I went and did a free detail for every limousine company in the area. And there's Lake Forest Limousine. That was the main one. Randy Tooker was his name. And he still is just a great guy. I know him well. I still keep in touch with him. I met him in 1987, the year I turned 16. Anyway, started doing his limousines, and he had, like, six or eight of them. And another guy – but it seems like something about limousines – limousine owners and cocaine went really hand-in-hand. Like, these guys, they went into business. They bought all these limousines, probably on credit.

21:06They ended up with a cocaine problem. And then their cars were suddenly gone, and you'd show up to go detail their cars. And there's a lock on the gate and a notice in the door saying, we seized your property. Call this number to schedule your court appearance, you know. So anyway, there was – so I ended up really – you know, I did all – I did a free car for all five of the big limousine companies in Orange County. I got all five of them to say yes because, of course, they want a free detail. Of course. But then after probably a year, one easily rose to the top and was the most legitimate.

21:38That was Lake Forest limousines. I was working for Randy and detailing his limousines all the time, and he'd come out there and talk to me. And we'd sit there and talk about, you know, what do you think about this hubcap? Does this hubcap look close – cleaner than that hubcap? Do you think that this one has a little bit more cloud to it? How about the – how about the black paint? Do you think that this one is deeper and richer than the black paint on that panel? You're on a mission, man. Yeah, because he was really thoughtful like that, you know, really a very, you know, very thoughtful operator. He wanted his cars perfect, you know.

22:11Anyway, he would help, and I'd stand back. I'd look. I'd stand back and look, and I'd be like, you know what? I do think that that one's better. He's like, yeah. I go, cool. So we start combining chemicals to make it faster and better. And better. And that just – well, that was sort of the beginning of that. And then there was this guy named Der Dave. Der Dave, this is funny enough, Der, like Der is the in German, okay? Got it, okay. Der Dave had a whole product line called Der Shiny Stuff. D-E-R Shiny Stuff.

22:43You can't make this shit up. You can't make this up. He was – he operated out of the Porsche dealership in San Juan Capistrano, which was called Billy Yates Porsche Volkswagen. And in this Volkswagen dealership, Dave would go bottle his special polishes and waxes that were, you know, I would say imported from Germany. Maybe they were made in Commerce City, Colorado. But with an intentional, you know, intent from Germany, right?

23:17Designed in Germany. Designed in Germany, yeah. At least in, you know, thought out in Germany. Right, thought out in Germany. Yeah. Or thought out while having German dreams. Maybe so. You know, maybe not quite in Germany, but he saw that there was a market for German marketed products. So he started doing this, and he started selling it. And that Volkswagen Porsche dealership happened to be very close to where I was living. Yeah. So I could ride my bike there and get new products.

23:49And that was just a great way for me to get products. And he would provide me different chemicals, and I'd buy stuff from him, and it was great. But there were some things he just didn't have, and that's when I would go, you know, combining other people's stuff. Did you have any idea what you had your hands on? I mean, you know, in retrospect, everything is easy. You know, Monday morning quarterback is always like, yeah, hell, he's going to kick from the, you know, the 60-yard line or whatever it is. And, of course, because he kicked the field goal. He kicked it from 80 yards out. How the hell did he do that?

24:19You had all of the makings. And I want to talk about attitude in a second, too, because, you know, one of the things I immediately noticed in our communication through Facebook Messenger before we discovered, or I discovered who you were. I'm still nobody. You're still somebody. Come on. You're definitely somebody. Was your attitude and your positivity. And we will chat about that in a second. But I want to share, like, how and when did you realize that you were into something that you really could scale?

24:53I mean, you could get the Coca-Cola trucks. You could take a brand national. You could take it international. When did that all gel in your head? You know, it's funny. You know, looking back, the most perspective you have, right? Of course, you look back. Like you say, Monday morning quarterback is the easiest time for total clarity, right? You have total clarity Monday morning. Right. How's the game? How did the game go? How did it end? You know, what was the greatest play you ever made? What was the one you missed?

25:20I cannot help but to give glory to God and just say, hey, you know, sometimes a door gets got slammed in my face that I thought this was the door. I'm walking through this door. This is where I'm going. I'm going to be taking over my dad. My dad had vocational colleges. So he was an educator. He took people off welfare, trained them in an entry-level job. And he took them and then did job placement. And I thought for sure, El Dorado Colleges, which was his business, I was going to be taking over El Dorado Colleges. And I was for sure going to be the next big shot at El Dorado Colleges taking over.

25:53And I was doing this. This detailing thing was just a gig to get me through. Right. You know, elementary school, junior high school, high school. And I went to USC and all through USC, I took on loads of debt and detailed loads of cars and finished with a lot of debt. But it would have been worse had I not detailed cars. I did realize that things that I thought were going to happen, that I was sure that I was going to be the next big, big shot and the next big vocational college owner, you know.

26:24So it didn't happen. Yeah. You know, again, I would say God slammed that door shut in my face. And I was like, bang. And all my buddies, all my fraternity brothers and everything, they were so, they were already, they had such a nice tailwind. They're going into the family business, established large family businesses with a nice tailwind. You just, all you got to do is jump in the driver's seat. The car's already rolling. You don't even need to know how to put the car in gear. The car's in gear. The car's in third gear. You don't even need to worry about putting first, second, and third.

26:55You just go into third. Right. Well, that didn't happen. And I ended up with a very different calling, a different reality.

27:05Your video stopped. I don't know if you're still there. I see we are frozen right now. Yeah, that's okay. As long as your audio keeps going, it's okay with me. Do we have a world that's working? We have a world. Hey, I don't know. Have you ever taken any type of sales training? You know, when I was 15, my dad took me to the Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. Right. And that was meaningful. That was a very meaningful time. All these people were big industrial, you know, they're leaders in each of their fields.

27:40And here I am, a car detailer, and I had one employee. I'm 15. My employee was 16. And, you know, but I had a cool little thing going. But I saw the value to that. Absolutely. And the only reason I asked you about sales training was because, I don't know if you ever heard of Sandler Sales or if you ever had anybody on your team that was trained through Sandler Sales, but there's this Sandler program. Well, my dad was Dave Sandler, the guy that created the system.

28:10And think about, you know, there's 200, maybe 300 franchises of his organization across the world. And all I could think about when I was in college, like, this is going to be the best thing ever. I'm going to go into Sandler Sales. I'm Dave Sandler's son. I'm going to be able to do sales training. I love selling. I love building relationships. I always won the Positive Attitude Award among the five kids. You know, I was always the guy that wanted, my dad's going to bring me into the business. And my parents got divorced. Oh, no. And with that went all of my aspirations to take over the business because she, the next wife, son, ended up taking over Sandler Sales.

28:49No. How? That stinks. Talk about sucky. Talk about really horrible. Yeah. But also, and I want to use your words, too, glory be to God, because glory, God had other plans for me. Yes. And my dad kept saying, I want you to make it on your own. And all I kept hearing was, I like this kid better than you. That's all I kept hearing. And I don't mean to bring this interview down at all. But when your dad or when the situation resulted in you not being the king of VoTech schools and all of these all over the country, as soon as you said that, all I thought about was, you're telling my story right now.

29:29And while you have built a global brand, this is great. I feel like, wow, what amazing amount of successes I feel like I've had in spite of the fact that, I mean, I could have taken it and gone completely in the dumper and just completely led a life of drugs, depression, all this stuff. That why not? Why not? Why didn't he pick me? Why, you know, all of that. But I feel like it drove me to want to be more successful. I wanted to teach him a lesson in the worst way. Yes. So I appreciate you sharing that story because totally relatable.

30:03And who in our audience is the same way? You think your life is all lined up or you got all these great plans and then, you know, you want to make God laugh, you tell him your plans. Yeah. It's so true. I mean, you are dead right. And I'll tell you that, that door getting slammed in your face, hindsight was probably fabulous for you because had you gone into an established organization, rigid, you would have just been walking down this corridor that people have been walking down that corridor for years and years before you, you know, and I've come to understand how big companies operate.

30:37And I don't like big companies at all. I'm with you. I don't like it, you know? So how long? So you were born in 71 then, if I did my math correctly. So I was born in 64. So I got a few years on you. But I have to tell you that, you know, what's interesting about it is that I've loved and I think that I feel like you, even though I'm sure there's been heartache along the way and growing things and not getting exactly the goals that you wanted to. But, you know, we always pivot and redesign and go in a different direction. Success is a squiggly line.

31:07It's not a straight line. And I feel like you arrived because you had the mindset that you don't care how you get there. You just know you're going to get there. I feel like that might have been your path also because you seem to be the kind of guy that just is always a positive, happy, feeling fortunate, feeling very, you know, good about what's coming in your life as well. You know, let's see if I can push end on this. Not cool. You know, it's funny.

31:38I feel super blessed that I have been able to do what I really feel called to do for a living. Detailing was something that became very natural for me. I'm super OCD. I like things perfect. It's really hard to make things perfect. If you're not that sort of almost crazy, weird kind of way, you have to be that weird kind of person to have that, to excel at something like detailing, right?

32:10If you're just okay, you're just a generalist, well, you might not be a detailer. Maybe you should do something that's less perfection, you know, oriented. But I feel that my calling was clear in that, you know, looking back again, always hindsight's perfect. You know, I feel like God slammed some doors. He opened to others, recognized that, hey, me working outdoors, good. Me working indoors under fluorescent lights, bad. You know, me staring at a computer screen all day, bad.

32:43You know, like that was not, I did not get any fulfillment from that at all. And that was not a calling that was clearly cut out for me. And good, you know, I don't want it. But I think that, you know, looking back now, I have the incredible gift, the total blessing of having been able to be in the right zone in a place where I can help people achieve excellent results. On their cars.

33:13And then moving forward, I was able to help people get into the detailing business, you know, through, we teach a detailing school called the Shine Academy. I don't spoil it. We've taught hundreds and hundreds of classes over the years. Oh, it's great. Well, people want to get out of their, people love detailing their cars, right? And then they got a nine to five and they're under a fluorescent light in the office, right? And they're like, this sucks. Yeah. I don't want to be here. I don't, this is not what I, I don't think God wanted me to be here. I think I needed to be somewhere else.

33:44And it's like, yeah, but I love detailing my car. It's like me too. I go out in the garage and I disappear for hours. My wife's like, hello. It's so funny you say that because it's, it's not even about, you haven't even gotten into, we haven't discussed yet. We will, the mechanics, you know, of course, turning wrenches and just having fun under the hood. You know, I think right before this, I was fixing a fuel leak that I have on my 73, replacing the, the little inline filter. And before that I was doing something with the carb on another truck. And then my new license plates came for one of my trucks. I'm always, my room in my house is the garage.

34:17I'm very surprised that my, my studio is not in my garage with all the cool, you know, power finale around me, but it is, it is so fun that you've had a chance to be able to have fun. You know, you're not really in the car cleaning business and I'm sure you are aware of this. You're in the people business and you just happen to clean cars as a part of it because the attitude that you bring to your business and to your team, I'm sure is, is pretty infectious in a good way. Well, again, blessing, total blessing. And it's, it's neat to be in a, in your sweet spot, right?

34:49You know, cause a lot of people have a tough time finding their sweet spot and sometimes it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to decide I'm going to focus on my strengths. I'm going to focus on what I'm good at because I can tell you a big long list of stuff that I suck at and, and I don't, I shouldn't do it for a living. You know, like I should not sell apartment buildings. I tried that job after college, you know, I should not cold call people and try to get them to loosen up and give me a apartment building listing. Cause I'm apparently I can't take rejection very well on the phone. I want to tell people, no, that's you, you know, you never go into sales to get your needs met.

35:23My dad always said, he said, you go in there to, to go to the bank. That is the only reason that you go into selling you're, you're in a business where you get to bring your passion forward and you're probably the same kind of guy. And I know this is how I am. And if you're in our listening audience of any of the number of shows that we're going to release this on, if you're the kind of guy that is a, loves to fill out like a checklist, like after you've done something like tasks, check it off. I take it to the next level. If there's something that's on, that's not on my list that becomes a task, I write it down and I check it off just so I have something to check off. Yeah. I don't have any, isn't it?

35:55No piles. I'm not a pile guy. My girlfriend, totally a pile lady. She can have a huge pile on her desk in the kitchen. Vitamin supplements, all this stuff. My desk is a skating rink and it looks like just in your looking in your environment, just from behind you, it looks like you're pretty neat and tidy kind of guy. Yeah. Well, you're sitting here in my office right now. I should show you my, how cool this is. We got, we got ourselves a pretty cool Porsche artwork. That's my daughter's senior projects up there. I've got Porsche signs. I've got all kinds of stuff. And yes, I definitely like things nice and tidy, you know?

36:28And of course our ass polishes needs to be. Check you out, man. Check you out. Yeah. I'm with you. And that's again, you're an OCD person. I'm an OCD person. I never thought I was though. You know, I'm just the kind of, I just like things so that they're in order. I don't want my schedule jammed with 17 appointments in a day. Cause that only kills me brain wise, but I need a nice little buffer between, between my appointments. That's also, I need my, my, your girlfriend tells you that you're OCD. I guarantee you. I'm sure there's no doubt. There's no doubt. My, my car, I always say, Hey, I'm sorry. It's so dirty.

36:59Somebody gets in it and there's like a Kleenex box. It's like not squared up to the, uh, to the, uh, the doorframe or something like that. Oh, you're, you're a classic OCD, the real deal. Yeah. But I don't know that I would be, um, uh, clinically OCD. I just think from a business perspective, this is how I like things to be, uh, to be done. I was running through a couple of ideas with some of my friends. I have a buddy of mine. I'm in, um, Ojai, California, just south of Santa Barbara. A buddy of mine lives in, in LA closer to LAX. He knows everything about cars. He, you know, he's, he's got the engine lift.

37:34I know if a guy's got an engine lift at his house that he, he knows what he's doing. I was saying to him, Hey, we gotta have, let's come up. Cause I love like doing the interior work. I love replacing dash and doing all the instruments and, you know, tidying up the, the, uh, the, uh, interior and all that. And I said, we should have like a truck or a Mustang camp. You know, there's guys that want to be able to even change their oil, but aren't sure and aren't confident enough to do it. Or maybe they just never learned just to have a camp, like a, a long weekend in either Southern California or somewhere that's easy to get to what the weather is nice.

38:0710 months of the year. Have you, so it sounds like you do something like that with your, with your school. Is that what you do or what do you do? Yeah, we do. Absolutely. Yeah. That's what the shine Academy is, is very much that people want to know. How do I make my car perfect? Some people are there because they want to make their daily driver or their show car or whatever. Perfect. And they just love it. They want to take their skills to the next level. Um, I think we have 10 students. We try to cap it at 10 and we almost always fill the classes. Um, we do them at one. We do them at our Denver location. Then we do them at our Scottsdale location.

38:38Then we do them, uh, at our, so Denver Scottsdale Anaheim. So we do, and we kind of do like every, every month we do it at one of those three locations. So, and we do, so we do them all four times a year. I think I got it. I think I got to make it to the, do you go, or is it just your guys? Oh, I go, I, I go, uh, I go probably three or four times a year. So I don't, I don't go to all, all of them, but I, I, I go at least, um, at least quarterly. I got to figure out how I can get to, to, to one of your camps. I'd love to be able to sit in on it and, uh, actually like I, like I have the need to learn how to do, I don't know anything about, uh, you know, preserving a patina or anything like that.

39:16And, and nowadays with everybody, you know, um, what's it called that, that, that patina polish or I can't remember that, whatever it is. I saw that stuff. You like you clear coat over the patina to try to make, keep it patina. Right. So it, so I never knew that. I just thought, I just thought trucks just continue to rust. I didn't know if there's actually something that you could do on that. So poppy's patina, that's right. That's right. Yeah. So it's very cool to see that people can take care of their, I'm learning about the mechanics of the car, wanting to keep it on the road and enjoy it and, you know, replacing the brakes and doing the, you know, the distributor and all the, and changing fan belts and all that stuff.

39:54I mean, not towed to totally difficult stuff, but the whole idea of just keeping the car, not only running well, but looking really well on the outside too, for these old survivors, like I have, that's really important. So talk to our listing audience, uh, just about some of that, you know, fun stuff that's going on in the world of, of preserving classics. Oh, so I, well, first of all, I'm a huge enthusiast of old original paint and old original paint. A lot of times, if you're, if you're dealing with paint from the sixties and seventies and even early eighties, uh, you have single stage paint, single stage paint is just the color of the car sprayed on it or the truck.

40:32And then that's it. They don't put clear coat on it. And when it oxidizes, you know, if it's an orange truck, you walk up to it and you rub your fingers across it, boom, you got orange on all, all four of your fingers. You know what I mean? You swipe across it. It's white. You got white fingertips, right? Oxidizes like that. Polishing the oxidation off and, um, and getting that to glow that, that old original paint absolutely glows. Like on that blue truck that you were looking at that I sold, we polished that thing within an inch of his life. It looked great. Really nice. Considering the paint was as old as me, right?

41:04That thing shined pretty well. And so I'm, I love old, old paint. Old German paint is some of the, some of the best, you know, you really get killer like old Mercedes paint, old Porsche paint, single stage. You can buff it and it just comes glowing, but old Ford paint really comes back. I've got two 73 Broncos. I have an orange one and a yellow one. And my orange one is I bought from the original owner and it's the original paint from 1973. And it is just orange and it was just absolutely oxidized. And he drove it at 140,000 miles on it.

41:34And he reckoned he had at least a hundred thousand of those off road. Wow. So it was beat up. I had to, I had to pull the body off, but all new suspension, all new drive train, all new everything. Cause it was just so beat, but the body was so gloriously patinaed, you know, the batteries had blown at two batteries, the right side of the hood, you know, and the left side of the hood had been etched and just mangled by when each of those batteries blew up at one point, battery acid went over and stained it. And it looked horrible when I, until it'd be polished out and it looks glorious. Now it just, uh, just a kiss of just, Oh no, that looks, I can't believe what a horrible thing, but Oh, what a wonderful ad to this patina on this truck.

42:11Yeah. So, but bringing back old original paint is one of the most satisfying things you can do in car care in detailing. If you've got, you know, I remember seeing your trucks. I kind of feel like one was white colonial white or, um, yeah, Wimbledon white, Wimbledon white. Um, the one was like blue, lunar green and whatever 73 green that, uh, that Ford had is, it was on the third one and my Mustang, you haven't even seen something like that. Exactly. Anyway, bringing those paints back, they come back so nice. They look amazing. So you polish those thoughtfully

42:46and carefully. Um, and, uh, and, and you can bring them back and they look great. So, so Adam had to, had to take another emergency call, you know, when you, when you live in Idaho and you're a thousand miles from anything, you, uh, you have to, uh, you have to do what you got to do. So I think he's going to pick up his kid at school right now. Is that right? That's exactly right. So my daughter, we have a, um, pickleball game with her and her boyfriend. And, uh, she had to go meet with her young life leader. Young life is a Christian, uh, club for kids.

43:19And she had to go meet with her young life leader. And then apparently the meeting, meeting was long and it's all the way back. Our kids' school is on the other side of town. So I'm going to be driving to the other side of town to go grab my kid Enzo from the, uh, school and talk to you because it's 20 minutes away. So that just adds, adds a little 20 minute buffer to our, to our deal, but it's going to make my video less, less awesome because

43:49Yeah, that's all right. We're an audio podcast anyway. So everything, no problem. All right. So where, where were we, what were we talking about? We were, we were onto, do you remember? Um, let's see. We were talking about What were we talking about? We just spaced, we were talking about, uh, positive attitude, uh, making plans. Um, we already went through, uh, whatever we can just, we can just pick, we can just pick up anywhere from, from here. Talking about cars. We're talking about, Oh yeah. We're okay. So we were talking about

44:20under the hood and paint. Yeah. Paint. Exactly. Paint. And how awesome, um, how awesome great paint is and how great it is to remove oxidation from a, um, from a vehicle that's got, uh, old school, original single stage paint. Cause it is awesome. It is such a nice victory to restore that, that great old paint. It just looks so good when you're done. So, uh, I started

44:54restoring, you know, working on old paint and making old paint. Awesome. Long, long time ago. And it's just been something that it's one of those, you're polished aluminum. Like when you're polishing aluminum, it just slowly comes back to like looking like Chrome. I have a, uh, I have a, a 30 foot airstream in my backyard that we use as a, uh, as a, as a guest house and I've never polished it because I don't, I've heard so many nightmare stories about people polishing it to mirror finish. And then you never, you never can stop doing it. You have to always get it,

45:25get it that good. Um, you're right by the way. Um, yeah, once you do it, once you do it to perfection, the absolute goal is to clear coat it. Oh, that's an interesting idea. You, you get it to perfection and then you have it clear coated in that'll maintain that that look for a long time. So that's the, that's the magic thing. If you just polish it and buff it and make it perfect, well then the elements are, are never kind. Right. Right. Well, this thing is great. It's a, it's a 1977 and I, I love it's the, it's called the, the sovereign, the, uh, land

45:57yacht. Yeah. So we just use it as a permanent install in our backyard. We built a deck off of it in a little covered area. So when, when family comes, we don't have a huge house. We live in Southern California. We have a big lot, but a small house. So we don't want everybody to be on top of each other when they come to visit. So we, we got this little thing, this Airstream and it has been, what a, what a great, it's, it kind of makes me feel like it's just another one like a classic cars and trucks just sitting in my backyard as a, as a guest house. That's so cool. Yeah. I think that's a, that's a, that's a very groovy way to add a spare room

46:32to your house. Good for you. That's a great way. Agreed. Vintage, vintage. Cool. It goes along with your shtick to the old Fords. The old, have you, have you hooked up the old truck to the old Airstream? You know what I want to do? I know what I want to do is I want to get an old Ford truck just to hang out in the backyard. There doesn't even matter if it has an engine or a transmission, just put it right in front of that Airstream. It would be the coolest experience. And for, I probably could pick up one for like 2,500 bucks somewhere. Well, I know for a hundred percent, you can pick one up for eight grand. Cause I sold one that had all the stuff working. You could have pulled the engine, the transmission

47:07out of it in the heater and, uh, uh, new tires. You could have pulled all that stuff off of it. The problem is that when I see a truck that's, you know, that's got the engine and transmission, and even if it's not working well, I want to, I want to fix it to get it back on the road again. I don't ever want to see it in a scrapyard. So for me, I'd have to buy one that was already de-engined and de-transmission so that I wouldn't want to, wouldn't even want to think about putting an engine and a transmission into it. That's a good way to think about it. Yeah. You want to, you want, you want to keep as many of these things on the road as possible. I feel that way about old air-cooled Porsches.

47:39I love, I love these old cars that are built so well. And you see one that's kind of rotting away. You're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that can be saved. I know. I could totally be saved. Well, we all want to save our, our machines that what was, what was right in front of that Airstream. It was a 1954, uh, eight N tractor that I had for about a year and a half. I bought it at a, a, uh, a state sale, but somebody wanted to pay me way too much money to buy it from me. So I'm like, okay, I don't, I don't need this tractor. I wanted to buy another truck at any, at any point. So wait, so let's, let's spend another

48:12couple of minutes talking about what, what is in your driveway other than, uh, the, the truck that you just sold on marketplace. So now what do you got in your driveway? Oh boy. Um, I was counting the titles in my title folder the other day. So I've got 20 vehicles. Oh Jesus. So there's a lot, a lot of vehicles and that's a problem. You know, I, I sold 10 last year, so I'm, I'm better. I'm a lot better than I was, but I still have a ways to go. Um, yeah, I sold a 66 Shelby GT three 50 last year, uh, sold

48:44an 89, uh, speedster Porsche speedster. And then I sold an 89 turbo. Um, I sold my 71, uh, F two 50, which was on bring a trailer, which if you look me up on bring a trailer, my name at this point is Adams polishes, but it's about to be Adams motors because I need to keep those two entities. Yeah. Separated. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, um, anyway, that, that is a, uh, those are some that I got rid of. I got rid of

49:15some more. Well, not what you got rid of. I want to hear what you still have. That's what everybody wants to know. They want to know what, before, before you go there though, uh, GT three 50, um, do you feel like they're overvalued? I think that there's a valuation is a little high on those things. They are really high, you know, and I think that everything is a little off right now, to be honest, a lot of the market's soft, you know, real estate markets, a little bit soft. The car market is definitely soft. So there's a sort of a time and a place to sell a

49:45car. And if right now you don't have to sell your car, you should hold onto your car because you're going to get less for it today than you will. Hopefully when this one, you know, we've got a war going on, we got, we got high interest rates. There's a lot of things that make, um, you know, for soft car sales. So, um, GT three fifties there, there are so few of them and it's such a wonderful car. Um, one of my dear friends, his name is Colin Comer. If you look up Colin Comer, he is the guy to, um, Shelby end up. Yeah. He's one of the guys that, that one of the main authors

50:21on Shelby. Yeah. I actually had a chance to meet Colin. I interviewed him on our Mustangs on a mission, um, show probably about, uh, two years ago. And I do remember he was quite, quite a good guy. I'm glad that you're, uh, glad that you're buddies with him. And well, yeah, we've been buddies for a long time. So to know Colin, basically, as soon as you are able to buy a $350,000 Mustang, you buy one because if you're, cause Colin's like, okay, listen, Adam, I think I found the car for you. You know, I found it. It's going to be, uh, you know, exactly what

50:53you wanted. And you know, you kind of tell, tell him about what you're thinking and whatever I was thinking, bottom line, I did end up, uh, with a, with the Shelby GT, GT three, 50, a 66 mind. We ended up putting a Paxton supercharger on, which was made it a monster. So such a beast. Um, and I enjoyed it. However, I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed driving the similar year, the 67, uh, Porsche 911 S I really like how tight and light that

51:25car was. It was much, much more enjoyable to drive the light. Um, the light little, uh, little Porsche. I just love the light, the lightweight little Porsche. It's just so much more fun to drive and, and going around corners. I love it going around. You know, I just, I just really enjoyed that car more. So the, uh, the Mustang sat the Porsches, um, the Porsche got driven more. So, um, anyway,

51:57so that, that's my story on the, on the Shelby. Yeah. But you know, everybody's got a, everybody's got a Mustang story and not everybody's got a Porsche story. So I'm going to, I'm going to defend the port, the, uh, the, uh, Mustang owners and the Mustang enthusiasts in our audience, which is everybody, by the way. Oh, I, in my very first car, by the way, it was a 65, uh, 289 three-speed automatic, um, Mustang. So my, it was my dad's car that became my car. So I, I have Mustang, I have Mustang in my blood and I, and I started there, you know, whenever you start, whatever your first car was, you'll kind of, I think all of us will

52:29always have that in our blood. Well, I was always jealous of the guys in the high school parking lot that had their old Mustangs, 65s and 66s. And I ended up getting, when I moved here to California in 2018, uh, the first year I moved here, I got a 65, uh, uh, uh, 289 convertible in blue. And I love it sitting in my garage right now. It's the only, it's the only vehicle I have that has like seven covers over it. Cause I don't want to, I don't want anything to ever happen to it.

52:55Hey man. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I remember you saw me a picture of that thing. I think you saw a picture of it. That's it. That's it. I, uh, I had a similar car to you, so that was it. But, uh, I love the Mustangs. I do. And you know, the Broncos, so I've got two Broncos remaining. I had five and I have two now. I have two 73s. I have a 73 totally restored, uh, you know, factory fenders, everything stock. And then I bought that from one of my good customers. I bought an 07. So I've had it for a really long time. And then I've got another 73,

53:28which is a cut fenders, you know, set up for off-roading all original orange paint, which is that paint that I was talking about earlier, which I love. Yeah. So nice. And that, that sucker is, uh, is just wonderful. You know, just such a beautiful patina mobile. I keep it up at our lake house here in McCall, Idaho, and it is just awesome. So I've got those two, those two Broncos, the 9-11 S Aga blue. If you look up Aga blue, A-G-A blue, it is one of the

54:00creamiest, creamiest blues in the world. It is so great. And I saw it at Cars and Coffee in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I looked at them. It's like, Oh, this car is speaking to me. I look in the car on the floor is a four cell sign. And the guy's name is, you know, whatever, for, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I call Cliff. So I call Cliff and I'm like, Cliff, I'm standing next to your car. He's like, well, I'm standing across from it. Comes over, talks to me. Uh, I

54:31ended up taking the car for a drive and the 67 was the first year for the 9-11 S and it is just an amazing light. It's just so light back when Porsches were very light. And, and the S added to horsepower, that little horsepower pounds per horsepower was the ratio was, was spot on. You know, you really had a reasonable amount of horsepower, uh, even in those days, you know, for the weight of the car. And it was just great. So, uh, Aga blue, a 1978, uh, Porsche 9-11 Targa, the

55:079-11 Targa, uh, was the car that my mom's boyfriend drove when I was in high school. Parents got divorced when I was like 10. So she started dating a guy and he had a, he had an 84 Targa and, oh, I love the car. I love that car. Just what a driving experience, you know, not in 78 and it went through to think 84 or something like that. And then it turned, turned into just the Carrera, but right here, I'll

55:39call right back. You'll hear me as I make this, this, this very limited coverage area, uh, corner. I can hear you. So anyway, the idea, you still got me? Yep. I got you. The idea around the Targa. As soon as someday I'm going to end up with one of those. And this car was, is the color is cashmere, which is like butterscotch. So it's this creamy, creamy seventies color, butterscotch with, um, with, you know, uh,

56:12with Brown interior. And it's just beautiful. And I love that car. And it's got, it's got a completely built motor and it was owned by the original owner was the guy I bought it from his son. His son was 70 when I bought it from him. And he was actually one of the engineers for elephant racing who, who does some of the best suspension components for Porsches. Amazing. So he used, he used this car for like his, his test mule and he just tested every single potential suspension component on it. And it is so dialed like the engineer, the most anal engineer ever

56:48did everything possible to make this car wonderful. And he did it, man. His name is Greg Lyons out of San Jose, California. Awesome guy. So I was blessed enough to buy his car and it's probably my favorite. And then the newer, um, good. Now you got, you go keep, keep going. I like it. You're telling the inventory. I might have to cut some of the, uh, the poor stuff out since we have a Ford audience here, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, um, the other, the other, uh, the last one is a Safari. I've got a 1970, 79, uh, Porsche

57:19911, which I turned it into an off-roader. So it's lifted. It's, uh, lifted four inches. It's got, uh, snow tires on it of all things. And it's got a built motor. It's got a, um, completely off-road setup suspension and it is just ready to be driven in the winter. It's been ready. It's, it's snow worthy. It's everything worthy. And it's like, it's a little bit of a beater. I bought it out of Canada and it was rough and which was the one that I decided to make, um, you know, the beater, the winter beater. And that's what it is. So it's, what's the

57:51next on your buy list. If you had to buy another car, cause you know, you're, you know, it's like potato chips. You can't just have 20 and you need a few more. Oh my gosh. You're so right. You know, I never thought that I would fit in a Ford GT, the Ford GT and I'm the 0506 Ford GT, right? They, I sat in one and, um, and I'm like, this is so amazing. I remember when they came out, you know, my, my little Adam's polishes was five years old. So I was nowhere near able to buy one. That's when they were a hundred grand, you know, they were cheap, uh,

58:25compared to what they are now, right now they're 400 grand. But anyway, this car, I went, I sat in it and the door closes and it goes halfway over your head, right? The two doors meet in the middle. So that the side of the door, I closed the door. I had a hat on in the, in the, you know, that little tiny, a little button on the top of your, your baseball cap. Yeah. Yeah. The door slammed into that onto my head, dug that into my head and cut my head. And I was bleeding and I was

58:56like, I don't need this car. Right. Right. The heck with that. I am over it. No, thanks. No way. I'm not getting one of these. So I said, screw it. Well, of course that was, you know, $250,000 ago. Right. Cause now of course they've accelerated in value a whole bunch. Well, then I got a buddy who did one and he's like, Oh, all you got to do is pull out these two things. You lower the seat four inches or three and a half inches. And then you're, you're golden. I'm like, huh. Wish I would have known that a little while ago. Yeah. That would have been

59:29a cool thing to, so is that on your, is that on your wish list or is this cool car that husband is. So is that on your wish list or is that in your, you know, I think, yeah, yeah. I think that's on the wish list. That that's on the wish list, a Porsche 914 six, which is a little tiny, the 914, everyone hated them initially. And then they're suddenly warming up to them. They put a six cylinder motor in that cool car and talk about weight, you know, power to weight ratio is crazy. You know, really a neat, a neat car. And then I think, I think another car that I would do,

1:00:01you know, I've got a 62 Corvette Restomod, so it's got an LS3 and a six speed Tremec. I kind of want to do that only I want to do that with, with an old board convertible. And, and, and I'm thinking that, you know, there's a couple of different models through the years that, that sort of interest me, but there's a couple of different models that, that I would do that with and maybe even a hard top, but something that's Restomod because I want cars to drive well. And

1:00:35I really, really despise overheating. You know what I mean? I can't stand overheating. And I've, I've overheated a lot of times in my life. You know, I've puked, I've puked more than I want to admit. And I don't want to puke anymore. I'm done puking. I don't want, you know, the LS3 for, you know, or the coyote motor, what a wonderful motor. So I feel like, um, a coyote powered six speed manual, uh, old school car with like maybe a roadster shop chassis, something that's so that

1:01:09it's tight. It's on coil overs. That's kind of how the LS3 Corvette that we have is it's a joy to drive. It never pukes. It has ice cold air conditioning. Those are, those are nice attributes. Do you know a car that doesn't puke? Do you have the capacity at your, do you have a lift at your house? Oh yeah. Yep. Okay. So having a lift at your house gives you the unfair advantage over us poor folk that, that don't have any ability to other than, other than buying a creeper. I have no other way to get under my, that's why I buy trucks. They're a lot higher off the ground. I can do a lot more work

1:01:42on, on those things, but have you considered, or maybe you have, and maybe you've already done it. Have you built your own? Built my own lift? No, not your own lift. You built your own car. So you take all the components of the things that you want. Yeah. Well, I did the, I did the, uh, the Corvette, the Corvette my dad bought in 1985. So I wasn't quite 16 and, um, and I drove the wheels off it as a stock car. And then we took it apart to restore it. And then ended up realizing that it had been wrecked. It had a front clip from a 61 Corvette. It had like a station wagon transmission in it or

1:02:13something. You know, the motor was all wrong. So we decided let's make it into a resto mod. So we did, we did that. We built the car. We, you know, we went and bought a great motor. I found an aftermarket chassis, uh, you know, and then I rebuilt it again, uh, three or four years ago and changed it from the sort of the C4 chassis C4 suspension Corvette, which was, you know, the, the trans, uh, you know, transverse mounted leaf springs to coil overs and put wheelwood brakes on it and stuff. So it kind of did it twice, but, um, yeah, no, I, I would build a,

1:02:44I would build a car. Yeah, I would. I think, uh, I think I'd build something fun. Talk to, uh, talk to those in our community that are, that are business builders also. So you've, you've seen full circle, you've seen, you know, things go from, from, uh, thin to really thick to, to fat and feeling good about it. What is something, and I know you kind of, um, you remind me of a guy that would live a life of no regrets. You probably do what you want to, because that's the only way to have fun and enjoy life is in, and to get to success. But if there's something out there that's just

1:03:16couldn't put your finger on that, you wanted to be able to be, uh, you know, to go for, but you didn't quite get there, what's a regret that you may have had, or maybe a lesson that you've learned through the lack of regrets that you've had already that you wanted to share with our audience? Like, are you thinking like cars I should have bought? Nah, I think let's move on to business. We, I think everybody in our audience probably has, uh, has, has cars galore. Just talk about the business for a second. Okay. Um, yeah, you know, I've had some amazing people come and go

1:03:48into our company and get out of our company. And some of the most awesome people made some really major, uh, lateral moves. We had advances in our company and you know, when I was younger and less mature, I don't think that I recognized how valuable the input of those really critical people was. And I think that I discounted or dismissed, uh, to some extent, uh, some people's value and how

1:04:21just critically important they were to our brand and our business. And, uh, you know, one guy was, uh, Mike Wilson, this guy, Mike Wilson, such a wonderful guy. He ended up, um, moving on to go do something else. And I said, listen, I want you in my business. I really, really want you in my business. And he was like, listen, Adam, I just can't do it. You know, I got a family to feed and I could have made it worth his while, but I didn't. And I, and I knew that, uh, he's just his work ethic, his, his faith and the way he was with customers, he was magic. And then his daughter

1:04:55ended up working for us and she was magic. And I kept her on the team for a long, long time. And she was amazing. Uh, another guy, Dylan von Kleist, this guy that was just really amazing with chemicals, with understanding detailing, with having to articulate while, why you need to use a certain process to achieve a given result. He was magic at that. And I should have gone further to, to, with, to keep those people. And I should have done more to, I, it would have been uncomfortable for me to stretch, to pay them what they wanted at that point. It would have been uncomfortable for me to

1:05:28buy them a company car. And I know that hindsight, I could have done all of those things and it would have paid dividends. You know, the interesting thing about it is, and I can remember when we brought on, I own a podcast production company. The, the interesting thing is we brought on an operations manager and we paid her at that time, even just 10 years ago, $40,000, which in today's world is not a lot of money when it comes to income, but we were paying 40 grand to somebody before we were even bringing home a paycheck, because we knew the importance of having somebody

1:05:59that really understands the, the structure, the systems, the processes in place, had we been able to keep her, my partner and I, you know, you said something earlier and I so, uh, you know, can relate to it. If I find myself in a spreadsheet or if I find myself building a, a system or a process, I know I'm in the wrong place. I want to do exactly what I'm doing is having great conversations and building relationships with people. That for me is, is, uh, is King. So I totally understand what you're saying. Oh, it's, it's, it's huge. And you get the right people, you know, it's like, you know, um,

1:06:31there's a whole, there's a whole bunch of, uh, you know, the EOS, right. The entrepreneurial, uh, yeah, organizational system, you know, it's a, it's a big, it's a whole thing. Right. And, you know, you get the right people on the bus, you get the wrong people off the bus and then you get the people on the bus that you want to keep. And then you put those people in the right seats on the bus and that's it. And you're constantly playing chess with that, right. You're constantly trying to get the right people, uh, you know, both onto the bus and then into the right seats on the bus. And I think that's probably, if I was to look back, I should have, you know, as an, a really immature,

1:07:05I mean, I think guys, you know, now I have a daughter, right. She's about to graduate high school. And my wife, my wife's 13 years younger than me, but she's still more mature than me. I think that we are not the same, a level of maturity as our female counterparts in a lot of ways. No doubt. And, uh, and I was very immature to start, you know, and I, and I was, you know, you know, I don't think I've ever been a huge ego guy, but I was, I was immature and I, and I didn't, I didn't give credit where credit was due. Um, the other thing was, I think if I was to give one more,

1:07:37uh, shoulda, woulda, coulda. Yeah. Um, I, when I knew that people were wrong for the organization, I knew it in my heart that they were wrong, but they were still adding value, but the, their, their values were wrong. They were adding value to the company, but their integrity was off or their, their value system was off. And I just kept them on there, even though I knew that they were not, they did not have faith. They did not have the same character that I hoped that my key people would

1:08:12have. And I left them in the company. And as a result, um, that, that didn't help the overall integrity of our brand. Um, I think, I think that I should have, I should have changed, uh, dismissed some of those people. It's like they say, be, uh, you know, slow to hire and quick to fire, right? You've heard that before. It's hard because they're people, you know, they're people. And even though you made the wrong, the wrong hire or right at the time, but not right for your culture.

1:08:43When you started to really ask, you know, scale your business, you, uh, they were still people. It's still hard to fire somebody. Oh, it is. It is hard to fire people. And I, you know, you hate firing people, especially when you know, people have payments, you know, people have payments. Who doesn't, who doesn't have payments? Everybody that's working for you. You know, you're the entrepreneur. You were probably the C student. I was the C and D student that hires all the A people to work with me because I can't, I'm not as smart as them, but I know how to run a business. Oh, it's so true. It's so true. You know, it's funny. I, um, in college, you know,

1:09:20I went to USC, you know, went to the business school there and, uh, and it was great. And, uh, I got in a lot of debt, you know, I don't, I'm not, not bragging about that certainly. Um, but my, uh, my, uh, my teacher, one of the guys that came in, he was this huge mogul, this major business mogul. He was just coming as a guest speaker. He came in and he said, uh, okay, anybody here, and this is, this is in the, in the lecture hall, right? So there's probably 500 people in a lecture hall at a university. So, all right, anybody here, an A student, anyone here, an A student,

1:09:52you know, some hands went up, heck, come on, stand up. Let's give you guys a round of applause. Great. You know, I know where this is going. Congratulations. You guys are A students. That's so great. You know, God bless you. That's, that's amazing. All right. Anybody have a B student, you know? Okay. Anybody a B student? No, no B students. Um, okay. Well, okay. Oh yeah, you are. Okay, great. Stand up. Let's give you guys a great big round of applause. Um, and, uh, okay, great. There they go. Round of applause. Okay. Now how about the C students? Is anyone here just a C student? And

1:10:24you just, you just, you're just stuck on a C and you just, that's the way it is. That's the way you are. Um, great. All right. So listen, here's what we're going to do. I want everyone else to take