The Mechanica Show · Episode 2

Craig & Cory Boorman: Never Trust a Leader Without a Limp

Craig and Cory Boorman own Computune Certified Auto Repair in Provo, Utah. They met at BYU, wrote letters through two missions, and built their shop the hard way: a handshake deal that fell apart, two weeks to move a whole shop, a building they overpaid for, and a crew that stole from them. In Episode 2 of The Mechanica Show, they tell Del Lee what those years taught them.

Del LeePublished September 28, 2026

Episode 2 · 41:50 · Presented by Mechanica · Watch on YouTube

Key takeaways

Get it in writing. Craig made a handshake deal to buy a vacant brake shop in South Provo. Within three months they were doing double its best month ever. Then the owner decided not to sell, and nothing was on paper.
Use professionals. A real estate agent the family knew told them their first Provo building was worth what they were paying. They paid $500,000 for it and sold it for about $300,000, which Craig puts at almost double its worth. Now they use a business broker and a business attorney, and they have people go over every lease.
Stay off month-to-month leases. In Springville a landlord gave them two weeks to move the whole shop. Years later, when their next landlord offered month to month, they started looking right away and bought the business at their current location in 2014.
Maybe don't start a shop. Craig's advice now is to find one that's already going and buy it, with a broker.
Owning a shop is its own profession. Craig's great-uncle's garage in Provo ran for 60 years. The mechanic who bought it ran it into the ground in two and a half.
The right team matters. Touring six shops in Denver doing 10 times their numbers showed them what to change. Their crew at the time dug in their heels over new software and processes, so they brought in new people.
Never trust a leader without a limp. Pick coaches who run shops themselves and have come back from failure.

The episode also covers the employee on work release who got them through the week their whole crew quit.

Chapters

Each timestamp opens the video on YouTube at that point.

In Craig and Cory's words

"Never trust a leader without a limp."

Craig Boorman, quoting a saying from their coaching group

"He thought he could run a shop from under the hood of a car. You can't."

Craig Boorman, on the mechanic who bought his great-uncle's garage

"That's the joy in owning a business."

Cory Boorman, on the customers and employees they've met over the years

Related on the blog

Cory describes a one-man shop in their coaching group that hired help and now has its own service advisor. Should I hire another service advisor? works through when that hire pays for itself.
Their shop manager now tells people when their average quote falls under the shop's minimum. The average repair order entry explains how that number is figured and why owners watch it.
The Denver owners walked them through their numbers. Start with what an hour of your shop's time is worth, using the effective labor rate calculator.
Cory remembers the hundreds of books they once used to look up labor time. Where does book time come from? covers who publishes those times and why two guides can disagree on the same job.

About Craig, Cory and Computune

Craig and Cory Boorman own Computune Certified Auto Repair in Provo, Utah. Craig started out at 13, working after school at his great-uncle's garage in Provo. Cory still does much of the shop's bookkeeping and payroll, and she builds the reports its manager works from.

Computune Certified Auto Repair: website and Facebook

About the show

The Mechanica Show sits down with Utah auto shop owners, inside their shops, to hear how they built them. Del Lee hosts, and Mechanica presents it. Every episode is listed on The Mechanica Show page. If you run a shop in Utah with a story like Craig and Cory's, send the show a message on Instagram.

Transcript

The edited cut of the conversation, lightly cleaned up for reading, from 2:24 through 38:02. The opening and closing conversation are in the video.

Growing up around his great-uncle's garage

Del: Had you worked on cars a lot prior to your mission? How did you end up?

Craig: Prior to my mission? Actually, there used to be a shop right over here where the hospital outpatient center is. And that was started by my uncle in 1943. My great uncle, I should say.

Cory: It was called Boyer's. My

Craig: grandma's brother, and it was called Boyer's Garage. I lived with my grandma for a year when I was a teenager, and I would go down there, because she lived here in Provo, I would go down to work a couple days a week, just after school. Cool. So I was 13, and that's kind of where I got my start. Cool. We always worked on our cars growing up, and then after my mission, I worked at Jiffy Lube, and then a couple other places, Before I ended up running a shop for, you know, the one that's across the street from Wendy's?

It's Cougar Tire now? Yep, yep. So I was there before that was built. It was a two-bay Texaco station. Okay. And it was highly profitable, but it was old and, you know, everything. The owner of that had 13 other stores that were convenience stores and gas stations. Cool. And we decided, because that was his most profitable location, that we would build the shop there, And that's the one that's there now.

And I ran that for like three and a half years as the manager, before I started my shop.

Del: Cool.

Managing someone else's shop

Del: Why were you singled out as the guy to be the manager?

Craig: Well, I don't know. I saw the ad, and I was the assistant manager at Lube Dock in Orem. And then I went, and I was the quick service manager for the Rick Warner dealerships. Cool. I set up their, for BMW, Nissan, Lincoln, Mercury, set up their quick service program, and they didn't have anything, and that was, that was hard to get them to change, you know? Yeah. But that's where I was when I saw the opportunity there, and as it turns out, it's, I guess you'd call him my uncle, my, my, my uncle married his daughter.

So they, you know, there's kind of a family connection there. Okay, yeah. But anyway, the previous manager had taken the whole crew, except for one person, and went and started his own shop. Yep. And so that's the situation I walked into. But luckily, that one person that was left acted as a mentor to me. He was a veteran of the industry, had mastered tech, and so he really showed me the ropes, and that got me up to where I was doing okay as the manager.

I made a lot of money for him over there. That's great.

Del: And then, were you working throughout that time?

Cory: During that time that he was down there at that shop, we actually had our oldest. I graduated from BYU in social work. I hadn't started with the state of Utah when my son was born. I took off about six months, and then I started as a caseworker. I did foster care and in-home services for the state of Utah, and I was in the Payson office, and so I did that for, oh, about three and a half, four years, and then when we started our own business, then I came in and started working with Craig, but yeah, during that time, I was also working,

Del: yeah. So,

Deciding to open their own shop

Del: What were the discussions like when you were thinking about opening your guys' own shop, and what that would be like?

Craig: Do you remember having discussions about that?

Cory: We had a whiteboard. It's about this big, and we had made goals when we were first married. One of the goals was to own our own business. One of the goals was to, of course, have a family. One of the goals was to own rental properties, to own our own home. Within five years, we had all of those. Wow. And those, so writing down the goals, we realized.

And we did that. We

Craig: did every one of them. Every single one

Cory: of them, yeah. Within the first five years. We actually

Craig: were looking at, I mean, we weren't necessarily going into auto repair, that's where I was working, but we looked at, we went to a business broker, and we looked at everything from Subway sandwich to yogurt shop, camera store.

Cory: Hair salon. Hair

Craig: salon, yeah. We looked at a bunch of different businesses.

Cory: Cool.

Craig: And decided to just start our own from scratch instead.

Del: Yeah, that's pretty crazy.

Cory: And

Del: what was it like in those first couple weeks, first month, first year? Starting

Craig: out? That first year, wow, that was rough.

Del: So you decided you wanted to start your own shop, and then what? What did you do next? Did you go find a location?

Craig: It kind of, I don't know, because I was already looking, and I was aware of a shop here in South Provo that they had, it was just vacant. Like the place, it had a store there, it was a breaks only kind of store, and they had been shut down for a couple weeks. So I was already aware of that, that was vacant over there, and there was a sign on the door for customers to call.

So, and then the owner of the shop where I was, just kind of out of the blue, informed me that he had decided to replace my assistant manager with another guy, and he didn't talk to me about it. And I was a mature, I guess, but I was upset by that. For one, because my pay was largely dependent on the profitability of the shop, because I had a bonus, and I felt like, you know, I'd already interviewed the guy that he wanted to, I felt like we wouldn't be able to make a profit, you know, and so my pay was gonna go down significantly, and so I told them, yeah, don't replace my assistant just yet, you know, and I went and found out what the deal was on the shop, and then just put in my two weeks notice.

Yeah, cool.

A handshake deal that fell apart

Del: So you went forward with the shop, and what was it like in the first little bit?

Craig: And the deal I made with them was to buy the business. And they said, well, we're gonna need to get the paperwork then to find out, you know, so we can, what the value of it is, so you can buy it. And he said, but you're welcome to get it up and running in the meantime, and then, you know, once we get that done, you can just hit the ground running, you know, so that's what we did.

And I actually, you know, I really got into, you know, they had some flyers there. They were expired and all that, but I just blacked out the expiration on them and went all over and put them on everybody's doors and on their cars, you know, tried to draw up business, and within three months, we were doing double the best month they ever had. Cool. And he got greedy and decided he wasn't going to sell it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, we

Cory: didn't have anything in writing. Yeah, it

Craig: wasn't in writing yet. So, then what happened?

Two weeks to get out

Craig: I ended up leaving that situation and found another one. And that was in Springville. It was a five-bay shop, and we took over two bays on the end of it. Got that up and running, spent a lot of time and money on advertising and everything, and it was going well. And we were there for probably about a year, and I had acquired building plans for a five-bay shop So I talked that owner into building us a five-bay shop on the same property.

And they did. They got halfway into it and ran out of money. And by then I had taken over four bays out of that five-bay shop. And he basically, we had gone month to month after that first year on the lease because we were going to, you know, sign a lease on the new building when it started. It was done. But anyway, he said, well, your month is up in two weeks.

You've got to get out. Because they

Cory: needed to come back in to make money to pay for the building. Yeah,

Craig: he ran out of money, and he was going to go bankrupt if he didn't get us out of there so he could use the shop to make money.

Cory: Which makes sense, you know.

Del: Yeah, but I mean, really tough.

Craig: Yeah, it was really tough. So, now we're, you know, had two weeks to move and start over again. What

Del: were you guys thinking and feeling like?

Craig: You know, the problem I had then is that I reacted, you know, the only thing you really have in life sometimes is just use your reaction to what happens, and I chose to get angry about it and upset, and, you know, that really hampers your ability to deal with the situation and your judgment, so, but, you know, we were up against the wall,

Buying a building in Provo (and overpaying)

Craig: So I found a shop back up here in Provo, and on that one, it was a It was a three-bay shop right on the corner of 3rd South University, really nice. It used to be a gas station, so nice location, and so we actually ended up buying that one. We had to put like $60,000 down on it and bought it, and we were there for 10 years. And on that deal, we basically overpaid for it, because we were in a situation where we had, it was either that or, you know, We didn't have options, so we took it, and the real estate guy assured us, oh yeah, it's worth what you're paying, and in 10 years, it'll be worth a million dollars, and we paid $500K for it, and then paid it down to about $300K, which is what we ended up having to sell it for when we left there, so I guess the story of that, that's the first year, is get things in writing.

Cory: Get things in writing.

Craig: I used professionals, like, you know, whether it be a business broker, which I should have done on that first deal, real estate agent that we trust, you know, when I bought that shop. Shouldn't have

Cory: just taken his word for it. He was, you know, someone that family knew, and we trusted him because of that. Right. And, yeah. Yeah,

Craig: we paid almost double what that was actually worth. That's

Cory: fine, you know, it's fine. You learn, but the lesson

Craig: is, you know, make sure, like, get a business attorney, you know, use a business broker, you know, have people go over your lease, and don't get yourself in a position where you're vulnerable like we did, where we were month to month on that, and you just, you know, we trusted people too much. We trusted people at the Mr. Break, at the, you know, place in Springville, so that was my Now you're just trusting people without verifying, so

Cory: that's what we got out of that whole experience, is that we now use professionals, and we make sure to get things in writing, and we don't have that level of trust that we used to have, you know, even if we know them.

Craig: Totally. Yeah, and I wouldn't jump like I did off, you know, I should have worked with the owner of the business, I was the manager, figure things out, you know, And talk to them instead of just deciding, I'm not here, you know? Because that, in the long term, would have been a much better opportunity, I think, just to stay there. I could have owned it, you know, actually, but anyway.

Del: So, I mean, what happened after you left that location?

Craig: So, we were there for 10 years, then we moved to a much bigger shop, just a block away on 400 South.

Del: Did you realize,

The bank's amortization mistake

Del: When did you realize that you overpaid for the property?

Craig: It was our bank. We thought it was on a 20-year amortization. Yeah. And they randomly, like seven years into it, basically said, we messed up your amortization schedule. It's supposed to be paid off in 15 years, so we're gonna have to increase your payment. And it was quite a bit. It was like $1,800 a month, you know.

Cory: Yeah. More.

Craig: More. And we did that for three and a half years, and it just, you know. It wasn't supportable. And at the same time,

A turn lane, and buying the shop down the street

Craig: Utah came and took a turn lane off the side of our property, because we were right on the corner, and so now we're cramped on our parking, and there's just no room to grow, and we did as best we could with the space we had, but we decided to move, because that other place was, you know, we were in a, like, what was that thing, maybe 2,000 square foot, 1,800, it was less than 2,000 square foot building, we moved to a building that's It was 18,000 square feet, you know, just a block away, and it was less per month on the monthly payment.

Wow, yeah. We didn't own it, but we signed a five-year lease on it, sold out of the shop that we had, took the loss, but, and then we were there for five years, and then Provo City owned that one, actually, and their plan was to develop it for apartment buildings, and they said, you know, after our five years was up, that we could, They would stay month to month, but they didn't know how long it was going to be until they'd tear it down and build the apartments.

And I was like, yeah, after our previous experience, being a month to month, I'm not going to wait around. So we started immediately looking, and we found the location where we are, and we bought the business that was there. We moved ours and combined the two, and that turned out to be a really good business decision for us. We've been there for 12 years now?

Cory: 14. No, sorry.

Craig: Just 12.

Cory: You're right, 12. We bought it in 2014.

Craig: The reason that worked out so well is because both of us had all the equipment, you know, we had a mission machine, we had a line machine, we had lifts, so we were able to sell all the extra stuff, which paid for the move, and the owner did an owner finance deal for us on the business, and so it It basically paid for itself, because, you know, they added half a million a year to our sales.

Del: Yeah, that's great, yeah. Cool,

Almost giving up, then a coaching group

Del: And how are things going today? Maybe I'll ask two things, like what's, so you're 12 years in, what's going really well, what do you guys feel like you're kind of, like, crushing, and what are some of, like, the hardest things for you guys right now?

Craig: Well, about three years ago, we got into a business management coaching program to teach us, and it's specific for auto repair, so they specialize in, you know, and there's thousands, thousands and thousands of shops that they're, you know, so they know what works. I had actually got to a point where, before that, a few years ago, I was like, you know, nobody really makes good money in this industry, you know?

I didn't know anybody here in Provo that was really doing as well as I wanted to be. You know, my uncle's shop, which is the reason I got into it all, was doing really well, but, you know, I've been there for 60-something years. Other than that, you know, I didn't know I didn't know anybody, so I just thought this is maybe a dead industry, this isn't the right one to be in, you know, and I picked the wrong, you know, and that's how I was feeling, but once we got into this, and it was kind of like, I'll give it another shot, you know, maybe there's things I can learn, you know, because it's always about, if you know enough, then you can do it, right?

So, I got into this coaching, she went along reluctantly.

Cory: Very reluctantly.

Del: Why were you reluctant to do it?

Cory: Because we had done other programs,

Del: and

Cory: it had been, I felt, like a waste of money.

Del: Yeah.

Craig: But this one has turned out to be really good, and you know the process you go through of, you know, you start out as basically an employee or a technician in the business, then you move to be an entrepreneur, which is what I did. I go start my own thing, and then you're like a manager. And then moved to being a leader, you know, and that's kind of where we're at right now.

The next step is to just be able to step back and be an owner. Own

Cory: an asset.

Craig: It's an asset that pays you, you don't have to work there. It's like the guy I worked for when I was the manager. He never once set foot in that place. He didn't really, and that was one of the things I was disappointed about, He didn't really give me the mentoring, the coaching. I didn't learn from him like I wanted to, because he was obviously a very successful businessman, but that's what I took for granted was, even though he didn't work there, you know, because he didn't work there, I assumed, well, I hired everybody that's here.

I did all the marketing. I've managed the whole operation, and it's been very profitable, so I'm gonna go do it for myself, but what I didn't But what I took for granted was, you know, he's like the king of Provo. He's the president of the country club. Everybody knows him. Everybody knows that's his shop. They go there, and these are all the wealthy people that have money. And I just, you know, took it for granted that these people just show up and they spent money.

But it was because of what I did. So anyway, yeah, the community involvement he had and the reputation that he had and everything else really is a huge part of why that business was there and successful, even though he never worked there, so that's what I'm working on now

Cory: is... Making that switch

Craig: from

Cory: working in the business, managing it,

Craig: to

Cory: leading it.

Craig: And we're pretty much at that point already that we aren't there all the time. We have people to run it for us, and so now instead of just leadership, it's becoming the owners.

Del: Yeah, so you're kind of like halfway between leadership and ownership right now. Yeah,

Cory: and that's what this organization has taught us, is how to make that transition, because we couldn't see it

Del: for so many years. Yeah,

Craig: as soon as I joined that, you know,

The Denver shop tour

Craig: The first thing we did was this shop tour, where I went to Denver, and we went through six different shops, and met the owners, talked about their numbers, and it was just absolutely mind-blowing. It's like, these people are doing 10 times what I'm doing, and they've only been in business for four or five years, you know?

Cory: Learning the skills and the things that they were doing to help us streamline our business.

Craig: It's one thing to learn those things and know what you need to do, but getting a team together and getting them to do it, that's the leadership part that we've been doing for a few years. The team we had wasn't the right team to do it. They just dug in their heels, and we had to get new software, just all our processes and systems, everything, and they were like, well, why should I do all this extra work?

I'm not getting paid more. I was like, well, you will, you know, if you do this, I promise, it'll work, you know, but they just, anyway, so we had to get new people. Everybody's different. And that was hard,

Del: but yeah. Cool.

From leader to owner: trust and systems

Del: Is there something that's like most difficult about moving from that leadership to owner?

Craig: Yeah, just the mentality of, you know, feeling like I am everything to the business, and being able to transfer that to somebody else, and trust them to do it, and not micromanage them, and you know.

Cory: That goes back to our earliest experiences with Trust,

Craig: and

Cory: that if we're not watching,

Craig: we've had lots of things happen. The crew at that 3rd South Place steal a lot of money.

Cory: So, putting the systems in place so that that can happen, so that we're comfortable stepping back, so that we can still keep an eye on things without micromanaging it or being involved in the minute-by-minute things, which we've always done, or we have done for many years. Because we're paranoid.

Craig: And what it is now is just a few hours a week of training. And the idea is, I speak one-to-many, not one-to-one. The one-to-one is for the manager of the shop. He's going to go to the individuals and say, hey, your average quote isn't up to our minimum. Or you're not meeting this expectation, or whatever, that's his job now.

Cory: He's responsible for the numbers that we give him. We say, these are your, this is where we want you to be. Now you're responsible to get everybody up to that, instead of trying to do that ourselves. Yeah, and

Craig: we could, you know, and that's what we've done. You know, I was out in the shop fixing cars or, you know, helping in the front office. She was mostly in the front office. You know, she's not there now. She's just, you know, she does still a lot of the paperwork, bookkeeping, payroll, and

Cory: all this

Craig: different stuff. I

Cory: create the reports that he manages, the manager.

Craig: Yep, really cool. Yeah, we've been able to get her out of there. I'm not fixing cars anymore. We've got people in place. It's been, you know, a huge, everything's running more smoothly. Huge transition that we've made.

How to tell a good coaching group from a bad one

Del: Do you have any advice or tips on how to tell a good peer group from a bad one, because you've had bad experiences, you went into this last one reluctantly. Do you have any advice on that? The biggest

Craig: difference is the fact that these coaches that we have are successful shop owners. They are actually running shops. They're not salespeople, they're not hired to do it, and they're not just teaching out a theory, they're doing it.

Cory: We call ourselves the executive mastermind. We meet weekly on a Zoom call. We talk about problems that we're having, and people who have had the experience and have learned from it and know teach those of us that are going through it, and vice versa. And it's fantastic, actually, the opportunity. And then we go quarterly, we go and we have a big conference, and we have breakout sessions, and people who will teach those breakout sessions that have They've mastered that particular, you know, topic that they're teaching, and so quarterly, I mean, as you're going to BYU, so I'm assuming you're LDS, it's like general conference for us, like we get to the point where we're like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do, and so those conferences are just like what general conference is, it's just a new lease on, okay, all right, I can do this, I've got something I can work on, and so, yeah.

So we go, we go every three, three months. So

Del: really cool. Cool. Yeah.

What's next: a second location

Del: So kind of looking forward, like even outside of the business, like, what are you guys hoping to, you know, like, what do you want life to look like in the next couple years, like as you make that transition from

Craig: later? Probably within the next six months, we'll be looking at our second location. And this should be fully dialed in. Yeah. That's one of them. And being able to run that, even a couple of stores, similar to what that owner did, where he had 14 locations. He had the Texaco distribution, all this stuff, but he didn't have to be there. And that freed him up to be the president of the Country Club, to be involved in the community.

He had people that oversaw all those businesses, even for him.

Del: Yeah, really cool.

Cory: I don't think we answered that question that you had, like you were asking, you know, about someone, I'm sorry, I can't remember, it was someone going into this, or something like that.

Del: Oh yeah, let's see, was it a little while ago?

Cory: It was just before.

Del: It was advice for someone who needs to know between a good and bad coaching, because that made a big difference for you guys. I think we did answer that. Yeah, I think you did, but it's also a good question. You've been at it for a couple of years, you've seen a lot of things, had a lot of experiences. Would you recommend that someone go open a shop after having experienced everything that you have?

Craig: If they do, it's like I was saying though,

A great mechanic isn't a business owner

Craig: You start out as a technician, then you get this entrepreneur, kind of like the E-Myth book. You decide you're going to be an entrepreneur, then you start taking those other steps past that. So if you're at that stage, or you want to be an entrepreneur, you've got to realize that a business owner is a totally different profession than whatever it is. You know, like, I'm not a mechanic.

I didn't start out as that. I was managing a shop for somebody else, but, you know, people assume, because I have an auto repair shop, that that's what I am. And a lot of people in our industry start out as a mechanic. In fact, that's what happened to my uncle's shop that was there for 60 years, because I didn't take it, so he ended up selling it to one of his mechanics.

He was a great mechanic, but within two and a half years, he had run that into the ground, went out of business, bankrupt, lost all of his investors' money, his money, his marriage. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. You couldn't have a better opportunity than that shop that existed then, but he thought he could run a shop from under the hood of a car. You can't.

That's why finding good coaching for your industry-specific is huge, because there's so much you've got to learn about that there's no way you could know.

Cory: And this group has such a myriad of different types of shop owners. We had a shop owner in our group, who literally was a one-man. He was the only one, but he was there. He was there to learn, and within three or four months of that first conference that I got to know him, he had hired someone, and now he's got his own service advisor, and he's slowly moving that direction, and that's a good coaching company, is showing the steps of how to get from point A to point B, and that's what we have found with this group.

Now, there are lots of industry, you know, there's lots of, I think, mentors out there in all the industries,

Never trust a leader without a limp

Cory: And so when you do look at a coaching group, you need to know, is this just a business graduate who says, you need to do this, this, and this? Or have they actually done it? Can they say, you need to do this, because I did it, and it worked? There is a lot to be said for the experience, having experienced it themselves, and seeing it working in their own shop, or their own business, or whatever.

I look at these Fortune 500 companies, and these men that own those, and I know that they had masterminds. They had those executive masterminds that helped them get to where they are, and taught them how to get there, and the mentors, and they surrounded themselves with those kinds of people, and I think that's the key, is surrounding yourself with people who are like-minded, who are entrepreneurial-minded, and who, and you know, they may have failed, and some, and failure is a good lesson, you know?

Well, and

Craig: that's one of the things they say in our coaching group, is they say, you know, never trust a leader without a limp.

Cory: It's

Craig: like, you know, if they haven't been through some real struggle and difficulty, or even failure, and come back from it,

Cory: you know. You don't want to listen to them. Yeah. They aren't the right ones.

Craig: Really cool.

Cory: So, we believe that, firmly, for sure.

Craig: So, yeah, other than that, like I was saying with the, you know, having other professionals, if you're looking at starting a business,

Don't start a shop, buy one

Craig: Maybe don't start one. Maybe find one you can buy that's already going, but use a business broker. You know, because a lot of these business owners have a lot of pie in the sky. They don't recognize the actual real value of their business. They think it's worth a lot more or whatever, but if you get a broker involved, everything's done legally, it's transferred properly.

Cory: Paperwork's done correctly,

Craig: filed correctly. And the value is going to be correct. You don't end up with that situation.

Cory: Totally worth the broker fees, the attorney fees. Somebody can get greedy and just back out on it

Craig: or whatever. Right. Cool.

Del: Okay, I think I have two more questions for you guys. One is,

The employee on work release

Del: Do you have any funny stories with customers or anything? No, there's probably a hundred. I don't know.

Cory: You know, working in the auto industry, you meet all types of people. You meet characters. And so, yeah, we have wonderful customers, long-time customers who, you know, we just smile when they come in, because they are, they're characters, and we just love them, you know, because they're just so fun.

Craig: Not necessarily a funny story, but he's a very funny guy. He's one of these characters. But there was a time where, when our son died, when these employees were stealing from us, we had started a second store, and it was only a block away. And he was working at that store. The reason he was working there, he came one day, and he was obviously on drugs. He was kind of a hobo, whatever.

And I didn't even want to let him in the shop, because he looked at, you know, he's like, is there anything I can do to earn 20 bucks? I was like, well, you could clean up our parking lot, you know, because I didn't want to have him come in and steal something, and so he actually did a great job. He cleaned the whole thing, got all the weeds, everything, and made it look great out there, so I gave him more money than what he was asking for, and next time I hear from him, he's calling from the county jail, and he said he got picked up for the drugs, and he has a great story, but I won't tell that, but But anyway, so he's off the drugs, because they test him weekly, and the only way he can get out of there is on work release.

So he was calling to ask if he could come to our shop and work on work release. I was like, well, I guess he can't be on drugs. I know him now, so I trust him enough.

Cory: Yeah, he's a hard worker.

Craig: And I said, all right, you can come here and just do work release. So he was working there, and the reason that we closed that second location? Because our first store, everybody there was just stealing. So they all quit after she started looking into what was going on. So that Monday, nobody was there. No employees. So we had to close the second store, and basically bailed the first store out and keep it open.

He bailed us out. I mean, he was amazing. Because his sense of humor, his just sunny attitude, always smiling, laughing, his gratitude for life, everything, was just infectious, and that got us through that hard time.

Cory: He's our character.

Craig: So

Cory: now he's our customer, because he's now on disability because of the effects of his previous activities, and active in the church, works in the temple. He's amazing. But he comes in, he's driving his convertible, and he has letters, and he's always got some funny saying, because he's bald, and so because he's got a convertible, he puts stickers on his head, so that it burns a tan, and so every time he comes in, I'm like, okay, what's the saying this week, you know?

Anyway, and he's so fun, and just so lovely, and we just love him, and yeah, so he's one of our characters. That's awesome.

Craig: Yeah, that was a great story. I mean, he literally was the only person I had left, and, you know, he was the right person. That's what we needed, so.

Del: Yeah, that's crazy. The one person you could trust was the person who just got out of jail.

Cory: The person who was still at work release, I think, even at that point, maybe. He was only in for

Craig: like a month, but, you know, yeah, he's always been so grateful to us for providing that opportunity for him, and we've been, the same thing, grateful to him for

Cory: helping us out, when we needed him as well. Keeping

Craig: us cheerful through all that.

Cory: So yeah,

Why they do it

Cory: The people that we've met in all this time that we've had this business, our customers, our employees, that's the joy in owning a business. I

Craig: mean, that's the best part of the business, is being able to help people. And, you know, we've had this even recently, but we've had people that, it seems like because it's cars, you know, that's like the last thing they have, you know, sometimes, and, you know, there's been some amazing opportunities where we were in a position to help people, so.

Sources

The Mechanica Show, Episode 2: the full recording on YouTube (every figure and quote on this page)official

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