Coastline's Pivot From Self-Driving To Driver's Ed with Nigel Tunnacliffe

0:01Light that spark fire nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down Coastline's pivot from self-driving to driver's ed. To drop these value bombs, I brought Nigel Tannacliff into EO Fire Studios. Nigel is the co-founder and CEO of Coastline Academy, the nation's largest driving school. Coastline operates in over 2 ,000 cities and towns and has earned more than 130 ,000 five-star reviews. Today, we'll talk about mission-first business, failing fast, learning faster, opportunity in the ordinary, technology and offline worlds, and oh, so much more.

0:37And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Nigel and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward.

1:18Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Nigel, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? Thank you. And hello, Fire Nation. I think the thing that is surprising about building a growing business is it seems like it gets easier when you have a lot of support around you, but it stays hard and it just becomes different. And so the grind is still the grind all the way to the end. The grind is still the grind. And we're talking about today, Fire Nation, a pivot from self-driving to driver's ed and what that looks like.

2:05So I want to start, Nigel, by talking about mission-first businesses. I mean, you've built your company around purpose before profit. What does it really mean to build a mission-first company? And how does that drive better results in the long run in your experience, in your opinion? Yeah, there's a couple of ways. First of all, when we started Coastline, we actually didn't know what we were going to do. What we decided, though, is that we were going to build a company around the mission of eradicating car crashes. and what really helped about having that focus is we cycled through a lot of different ideas about how we were actually going to make money in the business and what product we were going to offer.

2:51But having that mission anchoring us through all of those decisions really helped keep us focused and avoid just having a wide open set of distractions. Secondly, when people join a company, they want to believe in something. If the purpose of your business is to make money, it's really hard to attract folks that get super fired up about that. And so having something that is just hugely audacious and really aligning for people for whom car crashes have touched their lives in some way really helps us find great people that are going to stick with us and do the hard work. Now, Nigel, I want to talk about failing fast, but learning faster.

3:44I mean, you're a big believer in failing fast. Maybe tell that story about failing fast and then share why is embracing failure such a powerful growth accelerator for entrepreneurs? We could have been really dogmatic about the first idea that we had for this business. Um, but because we maintained an open mind and, and really focused on trying to prove ourselves wrong, instead of trying to prove ourselves right, we found our way to something that really worked. And so to tell that story, uh, the first product that we, we decided we were going to build that we quit our jobs to, uh, to, to create and put out into the world was a physical, uh, adaptive cruise control product.

4:30It was something you would install in your car and it would add safety features like braking warnings, lane departure warnings, and adaptive cruise control. It was this really cool piece of tech that we were super excited about. And we could have just poured everything into just going to market with this thing that we thought was awesome. But instead, we focused on every week talking to at least 10 potential customers as we were developing the product and trying to understand how does this fit into your life? How do you think about road safety? How do you think about your kids learning to drive and would they use this product, et cetera?

5:11And throughout all of those conversations, while we were building the product in parallel, we learned really quickly that most people don't buy things to add to their car after the fact. It's a very niche market, even more niche for people who are focused on safety rather than making their car stereo sound sweet or whatever. And so by going into it, trying to disprove our hypothesis, trying to prove ourselves wrong, we found that road to failure really quickly. and because of that, it gave us the time to try so many more things and to explore so many more directions that we could go. If we had failed more slowly, we would have eaten up all of our savings and, you know, just had to go back to getting a job.

6:07Fire Nation, this really does go to that just reality that, you know what, if you're out there, if you're trying stuff and if you're failing fast, but you're learning from that failure, you can pivot, you can adjust. And there's always potentially opportunity in the ordinary. And that's what I want to talk about next, Nigel, is that opportunity in the ordinary, because you've said some of the best opportunities are actually hiding right now in quote unquote, boring businesses. So why do you think the unsexy industries often deliver the biggest wins? I think it's because a lot of people starting out on their entrepreneurial journey, they, they try to think about, oh, it would be so cool if I built X, right.

6:55And it's, and that's great for the ego to think, oh man, I could build the next Facebook or whatever, Uber. But most people aren't going to do that. You know, there's only, you know, one or two of those massive opportunities in a decade. And, but there are thousands of opportunities in the less sexy corners of entrepreneurship where you just look at problems that impact a huge number of people, but it's not something that you tell somebody at a party and they think, wow, that's awesome. And I think it's in those corners of entrepreneurship that there's so much more opportunity, not just to build a great business, but to impact a lot of people's lives.

7:52And if you just, I mean, if you look at driving education, for most people, once you have your driver's license, you don't think about driver's education ever again in your life. And certainly that was the case with me. You know, I didn't set out to build a driving education company. I discovered it along the way as we were learning from all of these user interviews and And trying to zoom in on if it's not this first product we are building, what could it be? What are the problems that the same set of people are facing? How else can we impact collisions on the roads? That we just heard story after story from people about not having their needs met in learning to drive.

8:39And through that, we were able to uncover this huge opportunity. There's never a national driving school. Why not? I think there's a whole lot of reasons and happy to talk about those. But the key point is if you focus in on any area where, you know, the business is, the industry is sort of still operating in the past, there's something there. And I think that's such a more fruitful place to start an entrepreneurial journey than that really kind of sexy, big, you know, Uber for X type of opportunity. And for me, Fire Nation, this is why it's so important and just underscores the importance of being in the game, playing the game, waking up every day, putting in the reps.

9:35because guess what? Nigel had to be in the game to discover this opportunity. He wouldn't have just woken up and been like, this is the thing I'm going to do. Like he had to be in the game, talk to people, get feedback. The best ideas and successes I've had in 13 years at Entrepreneurs on Fire is from doing just that. I have not come up with my multiple, multi-seven figure businesses and my products and my services. My conversations have is speaking with individuals, getting their feedback, finding out what their biggest challenge, struggle, and obstacle is in creating the number one solution to that problem in a growing industry.

10:11That's the key. And we're going to be talking about technology in offline worlds, hiring and training as strength, and to owe so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business, and they are also our featured partner, high level. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, High Level is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM all rolled up into one powerful white label solution.

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12:32Nigel, we're back and I want to talk about technology in offline worlds. I mean, a lot of your work happens in spaces that aren't traditionally digital. Where does technology actually fit when your business is mostly offline? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, if you think about the driving school that most people grew up with, it's a single location. It's two, three, five cars and instructors. And maybe you go there, you sit in a classroom, you fill out a piece of paper, you go into the car with the instructor who's also at that location. And it really is possible to run that business on paper, Google Calendar, a couple of spreadsheets, etc.

13:22It's the explosion of complexity when you go from that single location and a handful of cars to dozens of locations, multiple states, hundreds of cars. And managing all of that, you don't want to just replicate one manager per five instructors like you have in a very small business. And so that's where software really comes in and plays a role in managing the logistics of scale, creating a delightful customer experience where they can come and book a lesson online and have the instructor come and pick them up at their house and have everything that happens in the back end just be automatic. where it's certainly helpful for a small business, but it's not necessary.

14:16It becomes necessary for every business operating at scale. So I want to talk about hiring and training as strength because, Najla, you've turned hiring and training into core business strengths of yours, where, let's be honest, usually it's a weakness for most companies. What's your process for building teams that don't just work, but win together. If you look at what we actually provide to our customers, you know, there's a lot of detail and supporting systems and online courses and everything. But the thing that differentiates us and the thing that somebody is paying the most for who's our customer, it's a driving instructor that's going to work with them to develop their skills and confidence to be a safe and confident driver for life.

15:06And, you know, that's, you know, to do that at scale, it has to be a strength because if we're not good at finding those people and and getting them excited about doing this important work and giving them the skills they need in order to be a great instructor, we're not going to have a great product. And so I would just bring it back to the mission. It is so much more exciting for somebody who cares about supporting their community, who cares about education, who cares about road safety, to join a company that is mission driven and is out there primarily to make the road safer. that's a lot more attractive than saying, hey, here's a job.

15:53You're going to make X. Here's your hours. Here's all the work that you're going to need to put in. And guess what? You're going to be sitting with somebody who doesn't yet know how to drive and you're going to be driving a car together. That's just not as exciting. And so bringing it back to the mission first really helps us find those great people. And then we need to have really good process around attracting hundreds of people, bringing them through our training process and having them be ready to get out there and teach amazing lessons. I mean, Fire Nation, at the end of the day, you have to remember how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

16:35And if you're going to expect somebody to wake up every single day and by every day, pretty much five days a week, and go into a job where there's no soul, no mission, no purpose. You think they're gonna be nearly as happy as somebody that's waking up saying, you know what? I'm making this world a better place. I'm doing something that I believe in. I know the mission because it's clear and I'm a part of making this mission become a reality. That's powerful. Now, Nigel, I wanna talk about growth by acquisition because you've also expanded through acquisitions. So what is your playbook for spotting the right opportunities and making sure deals fuel growth, not, let's be honest, what often happens, chaos.

17:14When we started Coastline, I was such a strong believer in the fact that we were going to do this all ourselves, that we had all these great ideas, we were going to change how the industry operates, and we're just going to do the very best job ourselves. What I discovered along the way is that there's so many great instructors out there, and they're probably not going to come and work for us because they're super happy doing what they're doing. They work for an owner that cares about them. They get to teach siblings and cousins and eventually, you know, basically people in their own community.

17:53So they're really happy doing that. And we also just have this as an industry, you know, there's so many folks who've been doing this for 30 plus years and their retirement age. And driving school is not a sexy business. It's not something that kids of owners are super excited to get involved with in most cases. And so there's just this gap of what happens next for these retirement age owners. And so we try to have hundreds of conversations with people who are not yet ready to retire, but are getting to that point so that we can build that relationship and we can basically create a schedule of when we acquire additional schools so that there's a kind of a pacing to it.

18:47We're not doing so much at one time that those people who are then joining Coastline through an acquisition get put into this chaotic environment. You know, it's stressful to even though you're doing the same job every day, there's a lot of systems change. You're going to have a new manager. There's a lot of uncertainty that comes with that. And so we need to be able to have the time to show these folks that a lot of the things they already love are going to stay the same. And there's going to be some things that are going to make their jobs easier or better. You know, health insurance and time off and a support system outside of just the one owner and all these kinds of things.

19:34And so if we tried to bite off too much too quickly, then yeah, it creates that kind of chaos. And so a big part of it is pacing. And another big part of it is really understanding that going through an acquisition is stressful, not just for me as a leader doing the acquisition, but for all the people who are impacted. And so we need to take the time to support them in that transition. Nigel, let's bring this home because Fire Nation, they're listening and they admire what you've built and maybe they want to build something lasting. We're talking mission driven, resilient, scalable. What would you say is the one mindset they need to master first?

20:20One of the things I would not change for anything is that in the first two years of running Coastline, I was both leading the company and teaching driving lessons and training instructors and talking to customers, you know, people who just call into our 1-800 number. And doing that really helped me build the foundation for what it takes to do all the jobs at Coastline and how to make the systems work for everybody. it can also be a trap because the more you spend doing that kind of work the less capacity and mind space that you have to build the systems that allow you to build a huge and enduring business and so I think you have to know how to do the job that is the business that you're building and also extract yourself out of the day-to-day in order to actually work on the business.

21:22Nigel, if Fire Nation is listening and they want to connect with you, they want to learn more about what you have going on, what would your call to action to our listeners be today? Yeah, you can check us out at coastlineacademy.com. We're on all of the socials and LinkedIn. feel free to follow, connect Nigel Tunnicliffe and I'm just, you can find me on LinkedIn. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with NT and JLD today so keep up the heat. And for links to everything that we talked about visit eofire.com. Just type Nigel in the search bar.

22:03The show notes page will pop right up. And Nigel, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Awesome. Thanks for having me on. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Nigel for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for entrepreneurs on fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest. I'll catch you there or on the flip side.

22:40Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward. Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more.