Title: Driving Success: JC Fawcett on Building Washington’s Top Driving School
Guest: JC Fawcett
Peter: My guest is JC Fawcett. He is the president of Defensive Driving School headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, and if I’m not mistaken, the biggest driving school in the area. Does that sound right, JC?
JC: Yes. Believe we are the largest school in the state of Washington.
Peter: Today, we’re going to talk about your business, your successes, and what philosophies you’ve developed along the way. Can you share the story behind the founding of Defensive Driving School?
JC: Sure. My father operated a property management business. I think it was 1989 that he bought bought this new building that he moved into, and then this building happened to have a tenant in it that was a driving school. And that went on fine for for several years, and then this driving school ended up closing down. The it wasn’t because it was from a lack of customers, but the the previous owner had a had a cocaine problem.
And so all the revenue was going out faster than it was coming in.
Peter: Going up somebody’s nose.
JC: Exactly. And so the business ended up ended up closing down. My father had made arrangements with the the former owner to purchase some of his cars, and and he agreed and he hired the instructors, and he started his own driving school with the, in a sense, the skeleton that was already there. And so he had had two instructors. He altered their curriculum a little bit, but essentially got started that way.
And this was, I believe, in around ’95 in that range. At at the time, I was going to school. I I was I was taking classes at Everett Community College. And in fact, I just happened to be taking a business class, and I got very interested in business while taking this class. It just fascinated me.
I’d figured that I probably wouldn’t make a very good employee, and so I should try to do my own thing. And at that point, I figured I would probably follow my father’s footsteps by by also getting into real estate. And so I just figured out that’s what I was gonna do. And and then while I was taking this business class, I got interested in following and working with him in that in that company. And so I expressed some interest there, and I was helping out a little bit.
I was continuing to go into school. By this time, I was now taking classes at the University of Washington Bothell campus. And then one day, I was studying the library there. This is before I had a cell phone. This is when you still had to find things based on road signs and things like that.
And I’m in the library studying, and I’m at and all and my parents walk in. I I like, oh my gosh. I’m thinking, what what on earth is going on? Why would they why would my parents they’d never been to the campus before. Then all of a sudden, here they are.
They just happened to find me. Again, pre cell phone. So
Peter: That’s amazing.
JC: They said, hey. There’s this driving school for sale in Bellevue. Let’s go check it out. So we did. So I rode down there with them, and we met with the owner who was wanting to get out of the business.
Again, the business wasn’t doing bad, but the owner hadn’t been hadn’t been paying taxes. And there the both the state as well as the IRS were were threatening closure if bills weren’t if bills weren’t paid. And so the the owner we purchased it from had only had it for about a year, maybe a year and a half. And she was a a former instructor, and the owner before that who had it for quite some time was retiring and was looking for someone to to sell it to, and so sold it to to one of the employees on terms, of course, and because she didn’t have the cash to And make it that didn’t yeah. That that ended up not working out.
We ended up we did end up I I did eventually meet the person, and we had made our preview with the owner that we bought that we would pay a certain sum to him, which wasn’t wasn’t as much as was originally owed, but we did that. We also ended up satisfying the both the state and the IRS to get them back to get them to back off. And while we were at the time this happened, this was in the nineties. And for people who are Seattle fans, this was the time when or as we back out, Seattle Seahawk fans. And this was a time when when Paul Allen was had purchased a one year option to buy the Seahawks.
And that one year option was so that he could give time for King County to build a stadium. He would then finalize his contract and buy the team. But if they didn’t, then he would pull out. So he had a one year contract to operate the Seattle Seahawks while this got figured out. And and thinking about that, I was thinking the same thing with the driving school.
Okay. Let’s run this while we’re working out while we’re negotiating with both the state and the IRS as well as some other vendors. There were car payments. There were there were payments on a copier that back then copiers cost a lot more than they cost now. And and there there were a few others that a few other bills that that they were behind on.
I believe at the time, they they owed something around $40,000. This was this would have been in the mid nineties when that was worth quite a bit more than
Peter: Yeah.
JC: Than it is now. And we were able to we were able to negotiate with both the feds and the state as well as other vendors. And we ended up settling all those together. I think we we settled for about for some reasons, twenty two thousand is sticking out in my mind. So so we almost were able to negotiate half because we weren’t we were only gonna do it if we could get that number down to a manageable number.
And we didn’t put in any we didn’t really put a lot of money into it until we we had all these agreements in place, and then we we put that we put that money. Yeah. Once we had everything in writing that, yep, we will take this, we will take this, and we will take that, then boom. Alright. Wow.
Then we made the deal. And I’d I happened I’d had some inheritance that was really from my technically, it was from my father, but my father had had it was inheritance that he had from his from his parents that he passed on to me as a kind of a tax maneuver, not just me, but all of my siblings. So I was able to at at the time, my my father came up with half. I was able to come up with half as a college student to to make that happen. So then we got into that business together back in 1997 is when we that deal.
Peter: So you had the business that he started from the leftovers of the cocaine person and then this other. So is that when you guys came up with the name, or did one of them have a name that you just adopted?
JC: Yeah. One one of them one of them had a name. It was called Kirchner Driving School. It actually been in the area for a long time. I’ve seen
Peter: that name. Yeah. I recall.
JC: And then the business that we took over in Bellevue was called Seattle Driving School, and, that actually has a that that has roots back to 1945, which is actually the oldest driving school in the state of Washington.
Peter: Oh, wow. Cool. You’re not even out of college yet, and you’ve already got this business going concern that you’re
JC: Yeah. I I can’t early on, I felt like it was playing monopoly, but with real money from the standpoint of where the stakes are when you make decisions to whether or not to replace your cars and sink a lot of money into a new car, for example. And just the the same way you’ve we’ve land on boardwalk. Do I do I pluck the money down to to put a hotel on this, which will take a lot of capital? And and is this gonna work out in the long term?
And, hopefully, I can keep up in the meantime, losing a big chunk of money to make this happen. So I I felt like that’s what it felt like, and that’s what I described at the time to to several people who who also asked that same question because, yeah, I was 24 at the time in operating a a company.
Peter: Wow. This sounds like fun. So fast forward to today, how many locations do y’all have?
JC: So we we control 16 locations. We also have some licensees, which between all of us, I I think we’re around 30.
Peter: Got it. All in the state of Washington.
JC: Correct.
Peter: That’s pretty amazing. Thinking back to when you got started there, what were some of the the biggest challenges that you faced? When was the first time you said, oh, wow. This is this is maybe a little more than a board game?
JC: Yeah. I felt like there’s a lot that I had to learn very quick. There’s a lot of things I thought I knew as far as I thought I knew a lot about driving schools. Well, come to find out I knew nothing about driving school and had to learn. We’re regulated by different government agencies and working with the regulators who say things have to be this way and seeing that, well, okay, that’s not quite how it’s been operating and then getting aligned with those.
And then sometimes also dealing with government regulators who also didn’t who played by their own rules. In other words, there are RCWs, stands for the revised code of Washington, and WACS, the Washington Administrative Code, that guide how we are supposed to operate our business. And there are and there were certain regulators who would take things to a they would interpret things that were vague and and come up with their own interpretations of that. And then having to work with them initially, I just took everything they said as gospel. But then as I started to interact with other driving school owners and we’ve and learned about, well, some this person pushed back and called him on it and was able to succeed.
And so I I over over a period of of of several years, I became more and more familiar with with the guidelines and exactly how we were supposed to do it. And I was able to there are times when someone might say something that, nope. That’s not right. Why where show me where show me where it says that I have to do this. I get it that that some other schools have, and I get it that that you’ve seen it operate this way, but no, that’s not not we’re not required to do that.
And you need when you’re gonna come if you’re gonna come say that I’m doing something wrong, and you decide that you need to show me where it says that. Nice. And, yeah, after a few years, I wasn’t, I wasn’t intimidated to to push back.
Peter: Right. Well, yeah, that’s got to be pretty intimidating if you if you just take stuff at rote, and then you realize, oh, it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way or it’s not necessarily that way. And then but if you get it wrong, you could potentially be in a lot of trouble too. So how did you go from two locations to three locations?
JC: So I think the in the overall scheme of things, my father also owned a building in Snohomish, and he expanded his driving school. So it started in so he started in Everett, and and then he opened up another location in Snohomish. And I think around that same time, I had also opened up a location in Issaquah. And so we were then at four locations. And then we had the opportunity to then then defensive driving school, I learned through the grapevine, was having some financial struggles.
I had met the owner a couple times before, and so I reached out to him and said, hey. I I hear you’re you’re shutting down. You’re closing up shop. And he what he was yeah. He was trying to close down.
He was trying to finish up the students that that he had. And and I expressed, hey. Well, what is there something we can possibly work out where we could perhaps take over? Yeah. We’ll hire you.
And so that ended up happening. And so we we took over defensive driving school. Similar situation where we were negotiating with landlords. They had three locations at the time. We were negotiating with with the state, for back owed money and and also car, yeah, car payments.
And so we’re negotiating with multiple parties. Yeah. He was gonna throw in the towel because all the, you know, these debts were coming due. Ironically, he also had made an arrangement with their previous owners to buy the company on terms. And so it was just all it was all overwhelming and coming down.
And when you’re in a position where you’re like, okay. We are considering taking over this company, and we will give you 50¢ on the dollar of was, can we do this? People will negotiate as opposed to I can stand stand firm and get nothing on the call. So we were able to work that out, and and now we had seven locations between Seattle driving schools, two locations. Harbor driving school, that was the name that my father’s real estate company was called Harbor Group Properties, and so he called it Harbor Driving School.
And so and then we had Defensive Driving School. So now we had now we were operating three companies, and then the plan was, okay. We’re gonna consolidate these. And we felt like defensive had the best name, and so we we chose to go with that one, and then we consolidated the seven locations into one one company. We were actually pretty confident though in our negotiations because it worked before.
Peter: You had a playbook,
JC: Right. Right. And and we knew that they had the ability to negotiate.
Peter: That’s important. Yeah. That’s certainly important. What’s been your kind of your growth rate? I I know some of your locations are owned and then others are affiliates.
Has there been any one that’s grown faster than the other, or is it just organic? How has that how has that happened?
JC: Nothing’s been planned. Okay. I remember at one point thinking when I had two locations, I felt like, okay. If for for whatever reason, the numbers I had been approached to do TV commercials, and they were very expensive. Of course, this is in a period where that was you had the Yellow Pages, you had the Seattle Times, and you had you could go broadcast TV.
I felt like we would need to have, again, a six if we had six locations, I felt like that would make sense. And, again, I don’t know that my math was any good at that time, but that’s what I felt. And although that never did happen, I I never did advertise on broadcast TV. We did radio for a period, but couldn’t really gauge measurable results, and so we discontinued it. And when I say gauging measurable results, that’s hard to do.
I have yet to find the the magic solution to turning on a turning on the advertising campaign that will work when I need it to work, and then I turn it off when I don’t because we’re a very seasonal business where we are the summer, we’re busier than we wanna be. We have a it takes weeks or sometimes a month for people to get on our calendar to to do lessons. Every all the kids are wanting to do it during the summertime, and weather’s nice, and that’s a good time to learn to drive. Yeah. So we have tried many different ways to from promotions to discounts to try and encourage more people to to enroll in in the off season.
We just have yet to find that that that magic faucet that you can turn on by putting marketing dollars into and then turn it off when when you don’t need it anymore. Yep. At one point, we controlled as many as 24, locations, and we grew through there were some other driving schools that we we stepped in and helped out. There were in certain cases, we actually we actually paid for a good operating driving school. And and so we just grew, and and sometimes we just randomly open up locations on our own.
And so at one point, we were as high as 24 locations as I mentioned. And then we had six of those locations were part of the Sears driving school. In 2008, we we took over a fledgling Sears driving school. At the time, they had one location, and then we we ended up expanding it to six locations. And and then we had 18 defensive locations, and then we ended up the Sears stores that we were in ended up shutting down.
So we we completely got out of Sears, and then that we also had some locations on the Kitsap Peninsula. At one point, we had we had four locations. We closed one. One of the instructors out there was interested in starting the zone. Said, was there any chance that that I could maybe take that that closing location over?
And and I came back, and I said, would you be interested in taking over the three other Yeah. Applications? And after, yeah, after some thought and and talks, we ended up selling to to he and his wife who are doing wonderfully, doing far better than we did because we were managing those locations from from from the East Side and having a local having someone who’s local to that area able to really hone in on on that market, they’re doing wonderfully. It’s been a great success story.
Peter: With respect to the overall philosophy or kind of is what it is you do, how would you describe what you all do? What is the service you’re providing?
JC: Yeah. We provide people the opportunity to gain their freedom. Not having a car, not being able to drive that in this area, that puts a lot of limitations on your ability to get around. In bigger cities, you’ve got public transportation where you can get from really wherever you wanna go in the city affordably as well as efficiently. And that’s just not the case in the Seattle area.
And when I talk about the Seattle area, I spend most of my time on the East Side. But even in Seattle, the public transportation, it’s doable, not as efficient as other parts of the world. And definitely once you get out of Seattle, you’re relying on bus schedules and or friends for rides. It doesn’t it’s not that great. So it’s a no brainer.
You need a you need to get your license in order to have that that freedom of mobility. Yeah. And we help people you guys, what do we do? We help people get that mobility through the through giving them lessons, through administering the state test to get the license.
Peter: Got it. So that obviously changed since the time I took driving school where we all had to go to the state license or the testing facility for the state and take the written test, take the driving test. I don’t know if we had to do the written test there, but I know we had yeah. I’m pretty sure we did. And then we got to do the driving.
JC: Let me see if this sparks your memory a little bit because I I remember this very well. Anytime you had to go into the department of licensing, and this would have been for me in the late eighties, you would go in. This is before they even had a number. They would have lot they would have colored lines that I think they had yellow, red, blue, green. And depending on what you needed, you would stand in that line.
And I and when did I go in? When everyone else did, which is on a Saturday when I wasn’t in school. And and I, with my brother, would would stand there and wait, and you would be standing easily an hour. I wanna say two hours in line. You’re just watching all the lines.
Guys, like, green light’s moving faster than the, you know, this yellow light I’m in. And so that was I I remember experiencing that in Evertz in the late eighties. And I think one for some reason, I also don’t remember why I had to make so many trips, but there were this period, I remember on one one time, I think this was a I had to I don’t remember. I took the knowledge test twice, and I think for some reason, one of the times I took the knowledge test was I I was doing it during the week, And I walk in, was like, are you kidding me? There’s no one here.
It might have been 01:00 on a Wednesday afternoon. Yeah. It’s like, wow. This is not what I’m accustomed to. But, of course, now that’s got much better.
Nowadays, the in 2000, the Department of Licensing expanded the the ability for driving schools to be third party proctors for both the knowledge and the skills test. And prior to this, I would sometimes have students, especially in the summertime, who were trying to get a driving appointment, I’m sorry, a driving test for the state, and they would have to wait up to six weeks to get an appointment. And that that was also frustrating for us as a driving school because here you are. You’re working with a student. You’re getting them up to where they need to be to be ready to pass that test.
They go make the appointment, and it’s not for six weeks. Well, they’re ready. And waiting six weeks, they’re gonna lose some skills if they’re not practicing because in many cases, unlike teenagers who have the ability to practice with their parents, many of the adult students we taught, that was their only opportunity to practice with them. Was when they’re taking lessons with us. And so in in several cases, even though they’re ready, they’re having to take a lesson, like, every couple weeks just to just to keep their their skill sets sharp.
Sometimes if it’s in the busy season, we would even struggle to get them in. So the back yeah. Now you can get a test. If you’re looking for a test, I can get you a test in this week. And even in our peak summer season, we if you’re willing to go to a different location, there’s likely gonna be an opening somewhere within seven days.
Peter: Nice.
JC: And that was just unheard of prior to prior to driving schools being able to proctor the knowledge and skills test.
Peter: Yep. My recollection of driving school was at my high school where we actually had driving instructors as like, they taught math and driving, or they were part of the faculty.
JC: Yeah. My driver’s ed teacher was an English teacher.
Peter: So I recall simulators that were completely dorky, that weren’t realistic, where you sat in a room where they had the film on the front of the room and then they had mirrors or something. I can’t remember the whole thing. We sat there and pretended to drive cars. It was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done. Fast forward to today.
Take me through what a modern student is going to experience.
JC: You brought up simulators. We happen to have a simulator, and it works for a lot of things. It’s still if you’re a student that can go out and practice with a parent, that can be just as effective. What we find our simulator is good for is working with students who may have some anxiety about getting behind the wheel of a car. One of the the cool things we can do in a simulator is we can do multiple freeway merges back to back.
On a driving lesson, if we’re doing a freeway session with a student, we strive for a minimum of four exits and and on ramps. And but but, typically, it’s gonna be between four and six of those along with some high speed lane changes and and interacting with traffic. In a simulator, we can do that so quickly in in a an hour session. We can yeah. We we we can do over 30 merges, multiple lane chain when I say multiple, maybe 30 lane changes.
There there’s just so many things you can do. And the and, of course, the lane changes are done with the lane changes as well as merges. It changes every time. The cars that you’re interacting with are doing different things every time. So it’s never the same scenario.
Sometimes there’s light traffic, sometimes they’re heavy, sometimes you really gotta tie in that gap to be able to blend in, on a merge. So it’s a wonderful tool. And we yeah. For students who have some who have anxiety or just are nervous about driving, we like to put them in one of these, it it puts them in a lot of different scenarios and and they can get done they accomplish a lot in a little period of time.
Peter: Yeah. That’s good to know. So I recall from a recent conversation you and I had that most, if not all, of your lessons are now Zoom or remote. Not the driving side, obviously, but a lot of the knowledge side. You wanna talk about that a little bit?
JC: Sure. The during the during the pandemic, we were allowed to go from live classrooms to live Zoom or not necessarily Zoom, but whatever video platform you you wanna do. I I just generically refer to it as Zoom. But you you’re able to Zoom do live Zoom classes. It’s not self paced online learning.
It’s you are actually working with a live teacher where you can ask questions, and they can and they they will respond. And and so that was that happened during the pandemic. After the pandemic, they enabled us to continue to to go with that format for the classroom. And, of course, the behind the wheel lessons, those are also those have always been yeah. In person is
Peter: not We don’t get to do
JC: an Xbox. There’s not an alternative way that. That’s true. There there would be. Yeah.
You could do some video games, but, no, they still require, a live instructor for for the driving portion. So, yeah, the classroom, though, is done on Zoom.
Peter: And that sounds like there’s some massive benefits to that.
JC: Right. From a cost effective standpoint, we now can offer more classes more frequently per location compared to what we’re able to do before, and there’s little chance of us having to cancel a class because of low enrollments where that might might before have happened, but because now we’re able to share that classroom with different locations, different locations can be on that same Zoom. And so that works out. It works out great. The other thing we’re able to do is before when we have multiple locations and multiple instructors, we would have to work with everybody, all of our instructors.
Some were stronger at teaching classroom and some that might not have been their forte. And so we’re now able to pick the people that are really good at the technology of Zoom and really good with interacting with students and focus on those as our classroom teachers because, of course, they can they don’t have to be confined to one particular spot. They can be any anywhere in teaching that Zoom class.
Peter: That’s great. And then I remember you mentioned that the time savings for the parents, for example, can be pretty significant.
JC: Yep. Absolutely. So we have a format where there are five behind the wheel sessions and seventeen two hour classroom sessions. So that’s gonna total actually, there’s six, if you count the observations. So so you’ve got six behind the wheel sessions you have to come to, 17 classroom sessions.
So that totals 23 trips round trips. So that you would have to come, drop someone off, you know, and then run errands or whatever, and then come back and pick them up. And, you know, now that’s down to essentially six sessions that that they need to do. So the inconvenience for parents who that’s just under the assumption that it works out with their schedule. Right?
A parent is able to take them to and from, class. Well, now the parent might have a job, might have other activities on a particular night. Well, the student can can just log in at home and do the Zoom. And our obviously, the you you could make an argument, well, the students aren’t engaged as much. And I would say that the that’s certainly a possibility.
It’s more easier to it’s easy if if you’re a classroom teacher. If a student’s got their cell phone out to, hey. Put it away versus if if they’re doing it remotely. But for the students who are there to learn and who are eager, we actually feel our format now is improved over over what it would have been in the classroom.
Peter: Yeah. I can see that. Well, and the other thing is now that whatever we want to call this video calling or Zoom or whatever, it’s such a natural thing to do. Let’s look back in 2020 when we all started jumping on board. It took a little while to figure it out.
Now these kids are, what are they, average age, like 15, 16 ish, 17. This is the way they’ve learned, at least for a portion of their formative years. From 12, 11, they just know how to do it now.
JC: Right. Yeah. That we we don’t really have an issue with, at least a a large issue with students being able to figure out the technology. Our bigger issue is is our teachers keeping up with the technology, and the students tend to pick it up. They don’t need you you don’t need to give them direction.
They they already know.
Peter: Outside of your run of the mill, I don’t wanna minimize what you do, your day to day driving school, what other types of classes are you all teaching?
JC: Everything we do has to do with with driving classes. In addition to the classes that help people learn the basics of how to drive, we have an eight hour course that that is used for people who need insurance discounts as well as some people are looking to get a ticket dismissed. We don’t have that automatic feature in our state like some other states do, but sometimes someone will get a ticket from outside the outside the state of Washington, and they’ll they’ll come here and they’ll and the, court where they receive the ticket and we’ll waive their let them take this course and not and and essentially have the ticket go away. So we have that. We also have another there’s a four hour online courses for people who receive moving violations in a single year in the state of Washington.
That’s about a year and a half old now that people have to do that. And then we also we have a course for people who wanna take the take who are planning on taking the knowledge test. It will help them go through the driver’s guide and ask some questions throughout the throughout the tutorials and help them prepare to to pass that.
Peter: You mentioned that you have some options for folks that are I don’t know what the right term is, high functioning people on the spectrum. You have some special options for them as well.
JC: Yeah. We’ve recently developed some courses for both adults as well as teens who might otherwise not think that the drive is a possibility just because of the different disabilities that they may have or just need more time. And so, yeah, we also have some programs that almost feature like a concierge service where you’re gonna get a lot more time to do things. You’re gonna get a lot more personalized attention. You get one on one testing for both the well, in the for the state knowledge test and then also some situations where we make some accommodations for the classroom testing as well as well as give more time to get everything complete.
So yeah. So we’ve got for for people who are nervous about driving, we’ve got programs for people in that in that situation.
Peter: Couple other things I wanna talk about is as a leader, you’re president of the company and entrepreneur, how do you foster personal growth and continuous learning with your team?
JC: Well, I’d love to say that we do regular continuing education to keep them updated with the latest and greatest. And we the there there are those opportunities that actually are required to the state of Washington requires they get so many continuing education hours every every time they renew their license. We also have company means. Do a we do a lot of training with we send out a lot of memos and about clarifying things. And then when we train them up front, we we try to empower our instructors with the tools that they need to successfully interact with the students they have.
So not only do we want them to be great teachers, we want them to be empathetic and put yourself in their shoes. This is a skill that someone’s learning for the very first time, and that’s not gonna you can’t get frustrated with someone who is doing their best to try and figure this out. And but I think the hard part is that sometimes you’ll have students who pick it, like, you you tell them something once, and they remember it. And you show them something once, and they and they remember it, and they do it well. And then others, it takes more time and to try and foster a an attitude of or a culture to be patient and to be trying to do the best job that you can for that student in the moment so that they see their driving lesson as a success.
Peter: Would you say you have a particular philosophy? It sounds like empathy and trying to put yourself in the other person’s shoes is a big part of it. Are there any other sort of I would imagine safety is a massive concern as well.
JC: Right. The you reminded me of a, I think it’s a Volvo commercial that and Volvo, as you may know, is typically on the cutting edge of safety with their cars. They people will pay a premium for those safety products. But I think Volvo had a commercial that, stuck with me that said the the the most important safety feature in the car is the driver, and I definitely am a a strong believer of that. Yeah.
One of the things that we attempt to go above and beyond what what is necessary to pass a driving test because honestly, the driving test in the state of Washington is not that hard. You can pass it with not a lot of practice. I’ve been in The UK on a I was on a trip to to study the The UK model and some of the differences. In The UK, most people who go for their license test wouldn’t even think to to attempt their test with less than fifty hours of practice with a private lessons with a with an instructor. For someone who has never driven before, we typically find that we can get them ready for the state license test in probably twelve to fifteen average to fifteen hours on average for someone who has never driven before and has no ability to practice in between.
So over in The UK, they wouldn’t even think about it without fifty.
Peter: What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own business?
JC: I I think be open to learning and realize you’re gonna make mistakes, and that’s just how you grow. And so you have to take risks, but try to take calculated risks. So where you where the probability of success is greater, I I tend to not do things that are long shots. We’ve our growth has been slow and steady. In fact, we’ve even contracted where, again, at one point, we were at 24 locations.
Now we’re at now we’re at 16. And there have been times in my in my career as a as a driving school owner where I’ve been thinking, yeah, I wanna expand and grow. And but with more growth comes more problems. And I’m not very good at at delegating. There’s a lot that I do delegate, but I’m not I’m not one who wants to have all of a sudden a 100 locations just because I know what it takes to I I know what I know what I’m dealing with 16 locations.
And so to have that kind of to develop the patterns and the guidelines and the training for every step along that way. For me, I don’t I’ve not been able to make that leap and attempt to have a a chain of management and then management under them and then maybe even another layer of management to to run the kind of operation it take to to grow a gargantuan company. And so I’ve been I’ve been careful in where we expand. I’ve I’m content. When I say content, it’s I I with the responsibility that that I have, this is about where I’m at.
Now I could be I’m probably missing some when I say I’m missing something, if I had the right person and and and I had the right trust that I could entrust that person to just let me walk away and let them grow the company and, yeah, maybe that’s out there. I’ve not yet been able to make that that leap, and so I’m somewhat content with the size that we’re at right now. The the other thing is I’m also a very hands on boss. I so just before our appointment, I was you may have noticed I logged in about a minute late to our Zoom session. I was coming from another location to cover another instructor who couldn’t make their appointment.
So I went taught a taught a lesson. And
Peter: Okay.
JC: I want them I I try to if someone’s sick or if they call out, if I’m not if I don’t have a conflict, I’m gonna try and keep that appointment because I don’t want, I just I don’t like I we have expectations when we make appointments with people that they need to be there. And if they’re not, they they we will charge them. They will lose their lesson if they are if they don’t make it or if they’re late, they’re gonna if they’re fifteen minutes late, they’re gonna lose fifteen minutes of the lesson. And so I don’t like being in a position where we are we also potentially could be guilty of the same thing. It certainly has happened.
And but as much as possible, I’m gonna try and I’m gonna act in the way that I expect our customers to act with us when it comes to setting appointments. I use that as an example. There’s just a lot of things that I that I’m very hands on. The instructor if there’s a problem with with a vehicle, if the instructor’s sick, many cases, they’re calling my cell phone. My family has trouble when we’re on vacation.
When I say trouble, they’re used to it. But but, yeah, they hear me on the phone a lot. We’ll be in we’ll be in Disneyland, and I’m on my phone talking to someone. Good thing good thing it’ll be a long queue to went for a particular ride, but there’s a business I’m able to conduct while traveling. And that certainly happened.
I maybe at some point, I hope to be able to be in a position where I can do that and actually just turn off my phone, but I’m not there yet.
Peter: What are your personal passions and interests?
JC: I I enjoy playing pickleball. I love
Peter: Don? Think Love it.
JC: When the weather’s nice and and once I’ve had a chance to power wash my sport court, I love I love playing pickleball with my family. I’ll see if I as of last summer, I was still the family champion. My my younger son is getting better and better. Actually, sometimes he does beat me, but I think I beat him two times at three last year. But he’s a year older now, so we’ll see how long that continues.
Peter: Sounds like family is really important as well.
JC: Oh, yeah.
Peter: JC, I really appreciate your time today. This has been a wide ranging conversation, very interesting, and it’s so cool to hear about the business and how you got started and where you’ve taken it. And here’s to many more years of success.
JC: Thank you.
Peter: Thanks for listening to this episode of Biz and Life Done Well with Peter Wilson. You can subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most of the other popular podcast platforms. Please tell your friends about us and leave us a review so even more people will find out about us. Thanks again. We’ll see you soon.
