[00:00] Bryan Hyde: Welcome to the Phoenix Business Brief podcast. I'm Bryan Hyde, and today I'm joined by Javan Coughlin. He is one of the— he's the owner and the founder of FloorJack Auto Repair. And we're going to be joined actually by, by a partner of yours in the business. But Javan, welcome to the program, and let's get a little bit of background on you about who you are and what you do, and then let's talk about your business. [00:24] Javen Coughlin: All right, um, my name is Jamie Cogman. I've been, uh, turning wrenches for a little over 10 years now. Uh, how I kind of got started was a good friend of mine had an old classic car, and I asked my parents if I could get one, and they said, uh, sure, as long as it runs. So I had to learn to keep it running pretty quick. But, uh, a little bit more of my background, I'm 29 years old, about to turn 30. This is my first business. Recently became a multiple business owner, but that's a whole nother story. But yeah, what else about me? I mean, that's really it. [01:02] Brady Gibson: Went to— [01:03] Javen Coughlin: was born and raised here in Arizona. I was born in Lake Havasu City, raised here in North Peoria. So I'm pretty familiar with the north side of town here in Northwest Valley. Yeah, lived here for 20-something years. [01:17] Bryan Hyde: You know, Wrenching on cars, I feel like, you know, on the one hand, you've got job security as long as people have places to go and vehicles to take them because they're always going to need repairs. But talk to me a little bit about crossing that threshold from just, you know, I'm wrenching on cars because it's fun and I'm good at it. And now I'm starting to recognize, hey, there's actually some money to be made. When did you decide this is enough that I am willing to, you know, go all in and start a business? [01:44] Javen Coughlin: So growing up, I always wanted to be a business owner. I didn't really realize what that was going to look like. On a very small scale, my mom cuts hair, so she's always kind of been self-employed. My dad worked in retail forever, so he was the complete opposite end of being a business owner. But I first started wrenching about 18, like I said, and I always kind of just started progressing more and more towards that goal of being a business owner. And then I ended up purchasing a house with a shop in the backyard. And about, what was it, 3 years after that, I finally had enough business where I was working. I was working all week at work and then working all weekend at home. And finally I had— I just said, let's do it. I jumped ship and kind of made it work ever since. You know, the first 3 years are always a pretty big struggle. So yeah, that's, that's where we're at now. [02:39] Bryan Hyde: So what kind of training did you get along the way? [02:41] Javen Coughlin: Or is, is this the kind of work where you can pick up a lot of it simply I am a do it to learn it type of person or a see to learn type of person. But I did go to automotive tech school called UTI down here in Avondale. I went there and then I also apprenticed under a master mechanic in a General Motors dealership, a Buick dealership to be exact, for about 9 months where I learned some of my general skills. And then since then, that was a little or close to or a little over 10 years ago. [03:15] Bryan Hyde: And that's when you started to learn how to do it? [03:17] Javen Coughlin: since then, it's just kind of been trial by fire. You just learn every day. Technology in the auto industry is always changing, so it's constantly hands-on. [03:26] Bryan Hyde: Javen, when you were— you mentioned that you, you know, you were working with a shop there, um, behind your house, and you noticed business picking up. Did there come a point where it became clear that, um, you know, doing this as a side job or a side hustle at home, uh, was no longer tenable? If you were going to do it, you're going to have to do something You know, more, more full-time? [03:46] Javen Coughlin: Yeah, so I was, like I said, working all week and then working every weekend. So it was 6 to 7 day work weeks, which was getting quite exhausting. And it kind of got to the point where my, my job that I was doing at that time— I was a mechanic for our construction company, so it was very tasking. It was minimum 50 hours a week working, whether it was 115 degrees outside or 20 degrees outside. which it doesn't get here, but I had to travel for that job so that I was working in the snow sometimes. That job, we were coming up on another summer and I said, you know what? My shop in my backyard has air conditioning. I'm done here. And I've always kind of been a do-it-my-own-way kind of guy. So that job, I think the reason why I lasted there as long as I did, 'cause I was traveling. When I was on the road, I was my own boss. And then I kind of quit traveling, came home, and about 6 months later, Didn't really want to listen to anybody else. So I, yeah, I kind of said, you know what, this is the time. I had a good, good hand of cards, some might say, to, to go ahead and jump ship. I, you know, my shop was in my backyard. I had roommates living with me, helped paying rent and stuff like that. So it kind of all worked out. [04:59] Bryan Hyde: So talk to us a little bit about the transition into a commercial space. How, how hard is that to accomplish? I mean, it seems like there's a lot of, you know, T's to cross and I's to dot when you Yeah, well, the first hardest part to accomplish is it's about $50 grand a year. [05:17] Javen Coughlin: So that, that was tough. Um, yeah, I didn't have it. You know, I would talk to some people I knew that were more successful in business than I am, maybe ever will be. And they asked me, they're like, well, do you have the extra money? I'm like, no. So they were like, well, then you can't really do it. I was like, I don't really have a choice. It's either do it or kind of shut down my business, more or less. So I jumped ship and I jumped ship from my house. I moved up here to this spot and kind of just worked as hard as I possibly could. If there was work to do, I did it, whether that was good or a bad thing. We're getting to a point where we can kind of be a little bit more choosy, but back then it was saying yes to anything I could just to keep busy and keep the doors open. I probably lost money for over a year, or broke even, I should say, um, up until this past summer, really. [06:13] Bryan Hyde: So let's take a moment here and describe FloorJack Auto Repair. Tell me a little bit about your shop, about what you do, and the area that you serve. [06:23] Javen Coughlin: All right, FloorJack Auto Repair, we can actually kind of go back to the origin of the name FloorJack. It was actually FloorJack Speed, but long story short, we changed it to FloorJack Auto, and FloorJack kind of came from I was 16, 17, 18 years old, didn't have anywhere to work on cars but my parents' driveway. Obviously, all we used is floor jacks, so that was kind of where that came from. But now we have lifts, thank God. But we service up here in the North Phoenix area. Mostly, a lot of our customers are from this North Phoenix to Northwest Peoria area. Um, we're trying to venture out into kind of the whole top side of the 101 here, trying to hone in on all that customer base. Um, I feel like that was a 2-part question. I missed part of it. What was the other part? [07:11] Bryan Hyde: Um, just was, was wondering, you know, as, as you got into, you know, the, the shop, what, uh, what was, what was the, what were some of the biggest challenges in, in getting in there? I'm, I mean, you mentioned the, the cost for commercial space, man, that, that's considerable. Um, what about tools and stuff? I mean, I, I hear legendary stories about how expensive and mechanic tools and, and basically shop tools are. Um, are there any in particular that, uh, that are, you know, essential to do the kind of work that you do, but also, uh, you know, fairly costly to, to get in place? [07:45] Javen Coughlin: Yeah, totally. So the, you know, the lifts that we lift the cars up with are minimum like $5,000 apiece. Um, those are very costly. I have 2 of them that I thank God I have kind of Being kind of born and raised in this area, I know a lot of people down from my auto shop teacher in high school to other shop owners around town. So whenever there's kind of a fire sale going on, I kind of hear through the grapevine. So I bought a lot of my stuff secondhand, which has really helped us in the beginning. We're kind of getting to the point where we need to start buying new because we need the quality and the longevity of the newer, of buying something new. But the main, the main feat and hurdle that's very expensive is second to the building is our, is our scan tools and scan tools and AC machines. Those are the top 2. Like a decent, a decent buy once, cry once scan tool nowadays is going to run you $10,000. [08:42] Bryan Hyde: Wow. [08:42] Javen Coughlin: So yeah, and that's to do more and no scan, no one scan tool does everything great. You can't, you need, you know, you need to buy this brand to talk to European cars, you need to buy this brand to talk to American cars, so on and so forth. So there's many a shop in town that have over $100,000 worth of scan tools. We're— we only have one right now. We're looking to buy our second one here pretty shortly. But yeah, that's, that's where that is. [09:07] Bryan Hyde: It sounds like there's a lot of changes within the industry that you have to keep up with. How do you keep repairs affordable for your customers? [09:18] Javen Coughlin: So we very much like to use the OEM parts, but if we cannot, we will go aftermarket. I mean, being in this business for 10+ years using aftermarket parts the entire time, you kind of find out what works and what doesn't. So we kind of go through that talking point with the customer, be like, hey, for this repair specifically, we have to go OEM or we're pretty much not gonna do it. Or this repair, you know what? We can go ahead and go with this aftermarket part and save us some costs in the repair. And we have a pretty competitive labor rate compared to the rest of the town pretty much. Right now, we're about $175 an hour on average. So that's about right in the mid-range. We're going to try and stay there for as long as we can. But once we start getting up into a lot of that more expensive tooling and working on more expensive vehicles, you know, that cost tends to rise up because we got to pay for— I mean, I just signed up for a subscription today that's $120 a year that I'll probably use once or twice a year. But you need— when you need it, you need it, you know. [10:30] Bryan Hyde: I was looking at some of the customer reviews on your website and, you know, the ones who are saying, look, I highly recommend you know, your shop, it always seems to come back to they feel like you are honest with them. [10:45] Brady Gibson: Right. [10:45] Bryan Hyde: And I'd like you to talk a little bit about, you know, what does it take to establish yourself as an honest mechanic? All of us have probably encountered mechanics, you know, in our lifetime who, you know, planted seeds or maybe recommended work that maybe wasn't necessary. You know, when a person doesn't understand, you know, the mechanics of the vehicle they're driving, that would be an easy thing to do. Talk to me about how you build that relationship with the customers. to where they trust you? [11:12] Javen Coughlin: So for a long time, I was the, uh, the face and the person talking to the customers all the time, but we couldn't— I couldn't find a trustworthy mechanic to work for me. So we just, uh, recently switched kind of roles, and you guys will meet Brady here in a minute, but we just switched roles to where I'm in the back most of the time and he's up front talking to the customers. Now, if a customer wants to talk to me directly, they're more than welcome to, But where I'm leading to is I built that trust through being the person touching their car and being the person talking to them. A lot of my customers, I, I, it's kind of the slow way to grow, but I've gotten most of my customers just from pure word of mouth. So I feel like once you get a word of mouth referral from someone, when they show up, they already kind of have a little bit more of a level of trust. And we, we try and send pictures, explanations. I'll send, I've been known to send videos pointing at things, trying to show customers and explain to them what's going on. Now, if they're having a hard time, because I do understand it's almost like speaking a different language, even being raised in Arizona, I can't really speak much Spanish. Best I can do is order a burrito usually. But yeah, so if I'm talking to somebody and they're really not getting it, I'll try my best with videos and other things like that. And if it comes to the point where they're just not understanding, which usually doesn't happen, usually I can explain it to the best of my ability, but some people just may need to hear it a different way. So that's where Brittany could come in and maybe explain to them a little different since Sometimes I get a little too technical with it. [12:43] Bryan Hyde: And let's, let's take this opportunity to have you introduce us to Brady Gibson. Tell us about, about his role in your operation. [12:50] Javen Coughlin: All right. Yeah, for sure. Here's Brady. It's just audio. Here's Brady. We just brought him on about 6 months ago. He's now an equity partner in the company. So, yeah, here he is. [13:03] Brady Gibson: Hey, Brian. [13:03] Bryan Hyde: Brady, good to meet you. Talk to me a little bit about, about the experience, you know, from, from your side of of the wrench, you know, as you're working with, with floorjackauto.com. Tell me, what do you, what do you like best about the role you play in, in keeping people's vehicles going? [13:22] Brady Gibson: That's a little bit of a tough question. I would say in this position, I would say the most, the best part of it for me is the freedom. It's really us being able to kind of direct it how we want to go and do what we know is best for the vehicle, best for the customer. Um, it's just being able to not be kind of told what to do and stick to a script that's not always the best for the customer or the vehicle. But honestly, with that too, we just love having that level of transparency with people. It goes miles. [13:47] Bryan Hyde: And I want to ask you too about, you know, for some people, you know, who are not familiar with what goes into repair and mechanicking and so forth, you know, yeah, you know, they're fixing cars, but it's more than that. And I'd love to get your feedback on, you know, we all have troubles in life, but car troubles, man, that is That is probably our least favorite one because it affects so many aspects of our lives when we have it. What kind of feedback do you like to get from your customers when they've brought a vehicle into you and you get the problem solved and they're ready to drive away? What are they telling you? [14:22] Brady Gibson: A lot of the times when it comes to a pressure situation, as far as timeframe, we just— our turnaround time is what's really important to us. Obviously, like you said, when we've seen plenty of that, when people have car troubles, in some cases it puts their whole life at a standstill. They can't go to work. They got to call Uber, spend extra money here and there that they don't want to spend. So in this case, it's nice to be able to get a quick turnaround and get them back on the road. Um, because we, like I said, we've seen so many scenarios where it's, yeah, quite literally putting their life to a stop. [14:52] Bryan Hyde: And, and talk to us a little bit about your background. Where, where did you learn your skills? [14:57] Brady Gibson: I was working in, uh, that driveway that Javen was talking about. I was working right there next to him. [15:05] Bryan Hyde: And talk to me a little bit about the responsibilities now that you carry as you're now an equity partner with Javen. How has that changed? Has that changed how you approach your job? [15:15] Brady Gibson: Oh, 100%. I think that I've had a bit of a transition from the first day I got here to now. It's just a different— it's a change of pace coming from the companies that I was at. And I was working at big-name automotive places here in the Valley. But it's just been a change of pace, um, the responsibilities like that too. So just little stuff here and there that I like to be involved in that I wasn't involved with my other businesses and stuff like that. But it's been pretty eye-opening, uh, to say the least. Um, it's a lot of work. [15:44] Bryan Hyde: And Javen, I'm going to ask you, uh, for people who may be hearing about Floor Jack Auto Repair for the first time, what's, what's the biggest takeaway you would want them to, to carry away from this conversation that we're having? What would you want them to know about your business? [16:01] Javen Coughlin: Well, our new tagline is, uh, 4Jack Auto Repair, where we care. And I just, I can't put enough emphasis on that. We have— I'll give you an example we had yesterday. Um, I wasn't too sure I was going to be in the mood for this interview, to be honest with you, but I, uh, just got the car fixed right now. I got a, I got a car finished up at about 3 o'clock yesterday and it wouldn't start. And it took us till about 10 o'clock today to figure out why. We had a very tiny broken wire And a very hard-to-find place. But I got home last night, ate dinner, relaxed for the evening, woke up at about midnight, and all I could think about was this truck that we couldn't get to start. Took a hard time to go back to bed. And when I say we care, that's what I mean. I mean, it bothers me to my core when stuff doesn't go right and stuff goes bad for these customers. We've paid for I don't know what to make things right for our customers, and we're willing to do that time and time again just to Put honesty back into the business and trustworthiness and the craftsmanship where I touched your vehicle last and something may or may not have gone wrong, and I can prove it's my fault or it's not my fault. And if I can prove that it's not my fault, heck, half the time we'll still fix it for free and get their vehicle towed in and all that anyway, just to keep them happy. And we're here to hold our customers for the long term, not just to make a quick buck off of them. [17:26] Bryan Hyde: And that does require a little bit more of a farsighted approach, doesn't it? [17:31] Javen Coughlin: Yeah, very much so. I mean, I've even noted, like, I've thought back to 10 years ago when I started in this industry and I got into, you know, little snippet arguments with my service advisors or whatever at the dealership. And I think back on them now and I'm like, man, I really, I was in the wrong. But I was, you know, that was 10 years ago when I wasn't familiar with the business and how the back end of the operation works. It's 2 different things you got to do. Being able to wrench is one thing, but communication with the customer and all that stuff is a whole nother thing. And that's what I— that's what I found out after 3 years I wasn't the best at, you know. So that's why we brought Brady on, and now he can really handle that. Um, but I'm still there to talk to the people if they want to talk to me. [18:12] Bryan Hyde: So when it comes to, to customers getting a hold of you, talk to me about how can— how can they book appointments? Is it just a matter of, you know, walk-ins? Or— it looks like— it looks like you actually have a pretty easy online way for, for them to reach out to you? [18:27] Javen Coughlin: Yeah, so our easiest way to book is just to call. Um, Brady or me myself has the phone on us at all times. Uh, we can get you on the schedule right away. If you don't feel like calling, you can go to the website floorjackauto.com and you can book online right there through our portal. That'll pull up our schedule and all of our availabilities. I think you can book 24 hours in advance, or it has to be at least 24 hours in advance. For, uh, your appointments. And then you can also pick exactly what you want or just write us a little note and tell us what's going on, and then we'll reach back, we'll reach out to you and just get further information and confirmation. Um, those are the 2 easiest ways to book. [19:04] Bryan Hyde: Okay. And, and Brady, I just want to ask you, is there anything that, uh, as we wrap this up, is there any takeaway you'd like our listeners to, to take away from this conversation regarding FloorJack Auto Repair? [19:17] Brady Gibson: No, I would more so just reiterate kind of what Javen said. You know, he came from the dealership side of it and got to see the OEM dealer side of the mechanic world. And for me, I came from, you know, independent big brand companies and it's just been, it's been nice doing it on our own. And like he said, providing that trust, transparency to these people. I mean, coming from where I came from to here, it's a night and day difference. People have their guard down right away and they trust everything that you're telling them and rightfully so because like Javen said, the thoroughness, the attentiveness to the vehicles, everything like that. I mean, the care really is there, you know what I mean? And that can be, from what we hear from a lot of customers, that can be the hardest thing to find in the mechanic shop is somebody who just genuinely cares. And if you have somebody underneath the hood of your vehicle who doesn't care, I can only tell you the can of worms that can be opened up there. So. [20:08] Bryan Hyde: Again, we've been talking with Javen Coughlin and also Brady Gibson there with FloorJack Auto Repair. And guys, thank you so much for joining us today on the Phoenix Business Brief podcast. [20:19] Brady Gibson: Brian, thank you so much for your time. [20:20] Javen Coughlin: Yes, thank you, sir. Appreciate it.