Les Schwab

“In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management job by working up.”

“Humans have this embedded innate and very strong desire that if you do me a favor, I feel the need to repay you. That person is going to the Les Schwab tire center and they're going to buy their tires from them.”

“A company starts, it grows, and as it grows, more and more of the decision-making tends to move up to the main office. And this is one hell of a big mistake. The decision-making should be always be made at the lowest possible level. Give your manager the autho…”

“In 1966, I made a big decision. I decided to go straight independent to buy tires like safe way buys groceries to buy the best possible tire, good quality and at the lowest possible price. This was a major move at that time and no one had tried it before.”

“Extreme success is likely to be caused by some combination of the following factors. Number one, extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables. Number two, adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success often in a non-linear …”

“If you want to read one book that will demonstrate really shrewd compensation systems and a whole chain of small businesses, read the autobiography of Les Schwab. Who has a bunch of these tire shops all over the Northwest. And he made a huge fortune in one of …”

“Each store operates as a separate entity and each store operates as a separate business. The store employees share only in the profits of the store they work in.”

“At year's end, I had a 150,000 dollars in sales. The man I bought the business from did 32,000 per year in sales the year before.”

“The fifth generation, his fifth generation just sold the company to a private equity firm for a rumored three billion dollars.”

“And so he, this is, he creates the very first tire showroom.”

“He wind up turning down Buffett earlier in his career. He winds up turning down Michelin tire. They wanted to buy the company and turns out KKR tried to buy the company as well.”

“Our store managers make more than our office people.”

“In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside, nor have we ever hired an assistant manager directly to do that job. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires.”

“One benefit, one unexpected benefit of sharing profits with employees, less theft from within.”

“It's possible that you can know more about something than anyone else, and it gives you a massive edge. It makes me think of that one of the main themes in this excellent talk that the investor Bill Gurley gave, which is called Running Down a Dream, How to Sur…”

“I think their three top executives all had a heart attack, including him.”

“In our 34 years of business, we have never hired a manager from the outside. Every single one of our more than 250 managers and assistant managers started at the bottom changing tires. They have all earned their management job by working up.”

“Charlie spends a lot of time talking about this idea of like, you can analyze. I love his surfing model. Cause he'll go and analyze like, why was Sam Walton so successful? Why was Les Schwab so successful? Why was the founder of national cash register so succe…”

“He had this brilliant incentive systems where he would share profits with 50% of the profits with each of the employees who worked in each store.”