From 1950s Searcher to Billionaire: The Remarkable Journey of Les Schwab

I heard this today on the Founders Podcast. Les Schwab takes over a tire business and has never changed a tire in his life. It was too good not to share.

Here's the excerpt...

"This is now Les at 33. Remember, he wanted to be an entrepreneur since he was 16. He doesn't do it until he is 33. He says I was now 33 years old and still wanted to go into business of my own. Money was the main thing holding me up.

So his brother-in-law winds up making some money in the timber industry, right? So he says my brother-in-law told me to find a business and he would help me finance it. That was all I needed.

[00:26:09] And I started to look seriously as I knew the time was running out. I believed if he didn't get started in business at a fairly young age, you would get into a rut and never make the big decision to jump. There was a tire business for sale in Prineville. So this is going to be the very first Les Schwab tire company right here. He winds up getting a loan, let's see. The price of the shop was $11,000 plus inventory, let's call it, $15,000, okay? I've seen other people analyze this and they said, he did it for $3,500, that's not accurate. I mean the book it says. The price of the shop was $11,000. So it says I thought the tire business had a future.

Remember, he doesn't know anything about the business though. But again, this is why I go back to like having a belief. You can't just have a false belief. I don't mean be cocky or be confident, and I do the work to like necessary to justify that. But what he did -- having a career now -- sorry, working essentially full-time since he was 15 years old, now he is 33, okay, so for 18 years. Like he knew he could learn -- like he didn't know anything about the newspaper delivery business, learned that. Didn't know anything about working -- and then he winds up working inside for the actual newspapers.

Didn't know anything about -- it was like I don't know anything about tire business I want to figure it out. So he says, I thought the tire business had a future. I remember telling my wife, I thought I was a salesman, that's an understatement, a pretty good one. Again, it's an understatement. And maybe that ability could be used in the tire business. It was a hard knuckle busting, dirty work. I got $11,000 from my brother-in-law, sold my home, and borrowed on my life insurance. Altogether, I raised $3,500. So what's that? Just under -- just shy of $15,000. Okay? Now, this is -- he talks about his first day in business. This is the first sentence on the first day. I had never fixed the flat tire in my life. He had no experience with tires whatsoever, okay? But from a very early age, he thought a lot about business because I told you he constantly analyzed. He is like why are they making the decision they make, that so weird."


Full podcast: https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/###-###-#### /senra-les-schwab-pride-in-performance?tab=transcript