Charging Ahead: One Man's Electric Ride to Entrepreneurship with Lee McDowell

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i am super pumped today i've got lee mcdowell with us and um yeah i can't wait to hear his story it's got to be pretty cool so lee welcome to the podcast and tell us a little bit about your business and your company and yourself You got it. Thanks for having me, Bill. It's an honor. So I'm Lee McDowell. I'm the CEO and founder of Car Charger Specialist. We are an electrical contractor in the home base is in Georgia in the Gainesville area. But we have recently expanded up into the North Carolina region, into the Asheville surround, Charlotte, Raleigh.

1:27We're kind of all up through North Carolina. And we are a contractor that exclusively focuses on electric vehicle charging station infrastructure for residential fleet and commercial applications. um so tell us tell just just to clarify what's the difference between residential and commercial fleet installations so residential like let's say you go buy a tesla right yep um evs are really great uh when it comes to like efficiency and operating cost if you have a charger installed at your house, right? So when you buy an EV, if you have the means, if you install what's called a level two charger at your house, then you can charge your car in just a few hours.

2:26Like you just charge at night. And if you can think about it, it's kind of like your iPhone or your smartphone. phone, you just plug it in at night and then it works all day. Then you don't really think about it for the most part. Um, and you plug it back in at night and it works the whole day. And that's how an electric vehicle is. And some days you might have super busy days, right? Where you have to plug your phone in, in the middle of the day. If you're, let's say if you're like a busy guy on the phone the whole day, a sales guy or something. But in that case, you just stop at a, um, level three charger, which is really designed for like commercial use.

3:05So that's kind of that commercial application is, is those level three chargers are meant for when you're on the road traveling and those charges will charge you up in about 15, 20 minutes on average. So we do both of those things. So that's the residential and commercial side. And then there's a fleet side where you You might have a warehouse with 10 delivery trucks and we would go put some chargers in at your warehouse. So when all those trucks return home at night, they charge up. And we actually, it's kind of neat. We have a fleet of our own EVs. So we do our installations out of Rivian service trucks.

3:48Nice. We have an electric fleet. and that kind of A cuts down on operating cost and B all of my technicians whether they have an EV or not they have to deal with electric vehicles every day so that's in a nutshell what we do like big picture yeah but the residential side of things for us is kind of it's where we make the biggest impact because we um we instruct new ev owners on the all the ins and outs of ev ownership um and it's it's really fun for us because they get home with a brand new car they are aware that the expense is upcoming of installing their charger so it's not a surprise to them and we get get in the car with them and show them how to how to take a road trip Disney World if they want to.

4:40Or for like Tesla owners, you can make your car make fart noises. You know, it's kind of silly, but it's fun to get in there with them. So yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah. No, that's pretty cool. So how did you, did you start it with that in mind or were you in like an, had an electrical contracting business and then, or how did you get, how did you make the leap, I guess? So I, when I was growing up, I was taught to go to college and don't be a loser like the construction guys, like do good in school. Yeah, right. It turns out, my parents were exactly right. I did not do good in school and went to college, didn't know what I wanted to do.

5:23And one summer I came home and my uncle cleat had a uh he worked for a large electrical contractor in in atlanta and he hired me for a summer job and it's supposed to be temporary but um i started doing some like apprentice work just as a summer helper and i loved it i just had never been exposed to it um so what i did is i went through the ibew um apprenticeship school yep and um even though as a bad college student. I was a really good electrical student. So I decided that's what I wanted to do. And I wanted to get into leadership and management. And I was with this company, England and Stubbs here in Atlanta.

6:10They're a large union contractor. I was with them for 13 years. And when I left, I was a general foreman over multimillion dollar projects. So big tenant build outs, data centers, hospitals, stuff like that. That was our specialty. And it was great. And I was making great money. But as your listeners may know, there is a skilled labor shortage that is very serious. And it's not just in the Atlanta region. It's national. It's a big issue. Yep. So what happens to us tradesmen is we end up working very long hours because the contract does not care how long you have to work. It just has a completion date.

6:59So I was working 80, 90 hour weeks often, and it wasn't really a big deal until I had kids. and um at the time when i was working on those hours i also had a sweet torch red so it's a 2014 c7 corvette z51 beautiful it was an awesome car i'm a big car guy i've had corvettes and mustangs my whole life and um but after i had my first kid i just didn't drive it very much anymore. It was expensive, especially just for a toy that sat in the garage. So I sold it and I thought I could get by with my little Corolla that I bought and I just couldn't handle it. I needed the speed. I needed a four-door car that was fast and it left me with a Dodge Hellcat charger.

7:59That's what I was looking at and a buddy of mine told me about the tesla model 3 performance and at the time i thought evs were super lame you know like it was just for environment like environmentalist type folks right yep but i went and drove that model 3 performance and it absolutely blew me away like the instant torque was amazing it was very comfortable it would drive normal if you wanted it to or it is zero to 60 in three seconds flat. Yep. So I bought it and Tesla, notoriously, their customer service is not great. When you go like pick up your car, they don't explain anything to you. I didn't know anything about how to charge it or anything.

8:45So I had to do all my research and I ended up buying my level two charger. I installed it. And at the time I didn't think much about it. but I went through a bout at work for about three months where I was working 90 plus hour weeks. And I was gone before my kids got up each day and I was home after they were asleep. And that was, I mean, that was seven days a week for three months straight. And I had hair before all that started, believe it or not. And I was super stressed and I just had this daydream one day of putting those chargers in. I already had my contractor's license. I made sure to go ahead and get that in case I wanted to do something on my own.

9:31And that idea popped in my head and I told my wife about it and she basically said, well, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to do something with it or not? So that was all I needed. So I formed up the LLC. I got the general liability insurance and I just started advertising on Angie's list to start and I would go install a charger on nights and weekends and I made a deal with myself that once I was making enough money to match my take my take-home pay from England and Stubbs that I would leave and start it full-time and it only took four weeks. Wow four weeks yeah

10:18yeah so yeah that was uh i left that company in december of 21 and i worked out of the back of my tesla in the back of our jeep wrangler for a few months until i could buy a van and i worked out of the van by myself for a few more months and um hired my first guy in 22 in April. It was just us for about a year. And after we like figured out the processes and everything, we, um, we really started hiring and expanding. And, um, now we have 11 employees. We're on track. We should do a little over 3 million in revenue this year. Nice. cleared just around two last year so we're growing at a nice pace and um we're expanding from the atlanta market we're we're pretty saturated in the in the residential piece of the atlanta market right now so we're expanding into um like we're working in ashville right now and um greenville south carolina is the next target for us so nice yep Good.

11:34Those are good targets. I like it. I like it. Yeah, man. So let me ask you some business questions here. If you had to start over from square one in business, what would you do differently? I wouldn't be afraid to seek investment.

11:54It's something that I was really uncomfortable with, and you kind of hear horror stories. I was like, deal's gone bad. But I didn't consider that if somebody is willing to invest in you, they're your partner. They don't want to see you fail, right? And for me, I'm just, we're still bootstrapped right now, but we're getting ready to get some stuff kind of tightened up on our back end to seek some investment partners. um i didn't realize cash flow i i didn't understand the way cash flow worked um until i'd say really this year when it comes to like expansion and taking stair stepping and things and yep having some having some capital available um really removes a lot of the roadblocks that cash flow cycles put in your way.

12:53Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so there's a lot of ways to get capital, but that's so you're considering some outside investment at this point. I actually have one other thing that I'll talk about. My first hire was a guy I'd worked with in the past, and him taking that leap of faith to come work with me meant the world. but I, I gifted him equity. I would not do that again. It, it made things very complicated. Um, as far as accountability and certain things, um, as we grew. Right. So I, I let him go, um, a few months back, but it was, it cost me dearly. It was very hard to do, but the cost and, and the stress.

13:51Yeah. That's a good, yeah, that's a good, yeah, You're probably better off just paying them well. So, uh, yeah, it's a good, it's a good thing. So those are good. Those are good learnings. What are the, what other big learnings have you, have you had as a, as an owner and an employer since you started the business? Compensation packages or everything. The, the way those things are structured for each tier of employment, is very important. So for example, paying us as a service business, paying your employees hourly makes accounting very easy. But it only incentivizes employees to be less efficient.

14:40So that's one thing. So that's a big lesson.

14:49I would say, and there's a lot of lessons learned, but just keeping your book straight, that's super important.

15:03All the accounting, and then I wouldn't say it's a lesson learned, but it's a lesson that everybody, I think, needs to hear. Nobody cares about you, man. You're by yourself. Nobody cares. So don't be afraid to put yourself out there because like if you bomb, if you get asked to do a speaking engagement and you do a bad job, nobody's going to remember. Right. They only remember the noteworthy things. And I think that's a skill set that I have where I'm just shameless. And it's allowed me to do a lot of things that never my life that I think I'd be able to do. Yeah, that's a good that's a good one.

15:48Because you're right, they're too focused on themselves to care about what you're doing. You know, if it can help them, great. If they can't, they're there. So what are some common misconceptions about running a business that you've, and how do you deal with them? Well, when you're the founder, I think everybody kind of assumes that you're getting paid the most. Right? It's so true. It's so true. I remember my first business, everybody thought I was rich. Yeah. So, yeah, all the employees thought, well, Bill's rich. He owns the business. So, yeah, it's funny. I think I'm sitting in there counting the money, right?

16:26Right. Yep. I am counting the money because I'm making sure we can make payroll and pay our insurance and invest in growth. But it doesn't just trickle into my pockets, right? Right. Um, like my, my technicians make more than me, you know, on W2. So I think that's a big thing. Um, it wasn't hard for, I mean, it's hard work, but if you're used to working hard, business ownership isn't impossible. I like that one. I like that one. If you're used to working hard, business ownership is just hard work. So I love it. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. So what do you attribute your growth to?

17:21Partnerships. So for us, like I'll give a Tesla as a good case study.

17:30we on our residential business and our commercial we we have about 60 percent of our leads that come in direct through tesla where we're referred directly from tesla and it's not a one-way street we we have been very successful in getting tesla out in front of the culture of people and i'll explain more on that when we come talk about the race event yeah but we have um we go to tesla dealerships and educate like on when people get their cars we go and help instruct them on we we cover the fill those gaps that i discovered when i bought Tesla. We educate people on battery storage systems, on solar, on all of that kind of stuff.

18:23And so like that partnership has been huge for us. And there's a lot more like that. If you're getting 60 % of your leads from a partner, that's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, definitely diversify. Don't make it at 90 % of your leads. That's another lesson learned. Last year, Elon fired the whole charging team off of an argument with the boss of the charging team. So instead of firing just that one person, he eliminated every contact that I had built relationships instantly at Tesla. Unbelievable. And it hurt. so bad. But it's because we had way too many eggs in the Tesla basket. Right. Right. So that's how, I mean, luckily we pulled through it, but now, hey, don't do that again.

19:23Right. You need multiple partners. Yeah. There are a lot of other EVs out there. So at this point, and it's just getting even more. So I like it. So you do have an event coming up that we want to talk about. And since you mentioned it, let's go ahead and deal with it now. I got a couple other questions for you, but yeah, tell us about, tell us about the event you got going on. So our event is called silent thunder. So to give a little background, if you couldn't tell already, I'm a huge car nut. So I've, I've found a tray that I'm good at and then a service that's revolving around cars. So it's business ownership's awesome for me because I genuinely enjoy it.

20:09and I like racing cars. I like taking cars on the racetrack and doing road racing, autocross events, all that good stuff. And I had an idea last year to host an event called Silent Thunder where half of the cars on the track were electric and half were gas. I personally have both. I race my Tesla and I have a Miata race car. And then I have this kit car called a goblin. It's the most rowdy thing you've ever seen in your life. And it's gas and shoots fireballs. So I like both things. And I find that in the culture, people have to pick a side. EVs have become very politicized. So the EV people hang out together and the gas people hang out together, but they don't really make sense.

20:59So last year's event was really good. It was a road race. But it was, we were fortunate to have Tesla and Rivian and BMW sponsor the event. But because of the style of the race, there wasn't, it wasn't very spectator friendly. So this year we decided to move it to a like oval track. So you have actual stadium seating. This venue sits 7 ,000 people. And that way for all of our our sponsors, they'll actually drive business. So it's, um, it's on August 23rd this year. We have, um, Cadillac as our, as our title sponsor. We have Tesla, Rivian and BMW also as our like second tier sponsors. And the first two hours of the event, well, our spectators can come down and get in the best new vehicles from all these brands.

21:59and ride along in their autocross course. Sweet. So we have professional drivers coming to drive these sponsor-provided vehicles. And let's say you want to ride in the new quad-motor Rivian R1S. It does 0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds. It's insane. You can get in that car and experience what it feels like to do that and the handling characteristics. And then you can go get a Cadillac CT5V Blackwing, which is a 700 horsepower twin turbo V8 Cadillac four-door, and also go through the autocross course and experience that. So that's kind of the idea for the first part of the show is letting people get in these sponsored cars and actually experiencing like a high-performance driving style.

22:50and it's something i don't know of any other event that lets you do that and the idea is to get people in these cars so they can make an informed purchase decision if they're in the market sweet so when is the event august 23rd august 23rd great and it's where at um caffeine and octane uh lanier raceway in brazelton georgia lanier raceway brazelton georgia okay cool It's from 12 to 9. And if people want to come or get tickets or however, whatever, what's the, is there a. Visit SilentThunderEvents.com. SilentThunderEvents.com. All right, we'll put that in the show notes. SilentThunderEvents.com.

23:37We'll have gas versus electric autocross. We're going to have professional drifters there to put on a show and do ride-alongs. And the main event is oval track drag racing. So that is where two cars line up side by side and hammer it and go around the circle. It's a third mile track. So it's a pretty long oval. Yeah. They go two times around the oval as fast as they can. And the first one to go across the finish line advances. Yeah, that sounds cool. It's going to be really cool. Yeah, it sounds cool. So, all right. That's awesome. I think that's a cool event that's promoting. I love that it's letting you live in the worlds you want to hang out in, electrical and cars.

24:23So I love that as a thing. Which brings up the next question, which is, in your previous job, it didn't sound like you had too much balance between your personal life and your business life. How are you doing that now? How are you balancing your personal life and your business life now? I do my best. I, I'm always working now. Like I get up about three 30 each day and I have a few hours to myself where I work out and, uh, nobody needs me. But right now, especially leading up to this event. Um, I mean, it's, it's Monday through Sunday we're working. Um, but I do my best. I try to get in an hour, hour or two with the kids.

25:18We do dinner together every night, all that kind of stuff. I took them to their first day of school today. Sweet. But I, I'm definitely not spending as much time as I'd like to, um, with the family, but that's just part of business ownership. Um, Yeah, well, it can be or it can. It depends on how you want to design the business. So, yeah, I mean, you're working on that piece right now. There are tradeoffs for sure, for sure at all. What comes in the way? Yeah, absolutely. Sure. A hundred percent.

25:57So what do you look, I mean, you've hired 11, well, you got 11 employees now. So what qualities do you look for in employees and how do you foster a positive work environment? So I hire, believe it or not, I don't require a ton of experience, particularly for our residential side. I can train someone to do that job in about three months with no experience. but I can't train attitude and work ethic. So what I look for when I do my first interview, how do they shake my hand? Do they look at me in the eyes? Are they smiling? Were they there on time, right? Were they there early? And I make a habit to go by their car and take a little peek inside the car.

26:58peeking into somebody's car will tell you a lot about them so those are some those are some metrics I hire off of for new guys

27:12yeah I'd say that's that's really the main thing if I'm looking for experienced guys I'm going to have more qualifying questions things like that but just in general that's the biggest thing because if you don't have that that good attitude you're just not going to work out yeah yeah hire for attitude and teach skills is a great way to go about it so what do you wish you had known or that somebody had told you before you went into business

27:53i wish i had done it sooner i think i i didn't have the direction but um

28:05i just wish i wish i had known that i i could have you know sooner um

28:15it's hard to say i mean i that's good you know like my dad owned my dad owned businesses throughout his career and uh now he works for somebody and you know i think when you grow up you look at your parents and you think they know everything right and like even though his own businesses is he gave me some good pointers to start out, but past the initial like setup stages, you're, it's, you're, you control your destiny. It's, it's all in the decisions you make. And, um, you know, I don't, I really don't know if someone had given me a mentorship prior to this, you know, I don't think we'd be where we are today.