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

0:29
Bill Gilliland: Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs.
0:33
Bill Gilliland: I am super pumped.
0:34
Bill Gilliland: Today.
0:35
Bill Gilliland: I've got Lee McDowell with us and, yeah, I can't wait to hear his story.
0:40
Bill Gilliland: It's got to be pretty cool.
0:41
Bill Gilliland: So, Lee, welcome to the podcast and tell us a little bit about your business and your company and yourself.
0:58
Lee McDowell: You got it.
0:58
Lee McDowell: Thanks for having me, bill.
0:59
Lee McDowell: It's an honor.
1:00
Lee McDowell: So I'm Lee McDowell.
1:00
Lee McDowell: I'm the CEO and founder of Car Charger Specialist.
1:02
Lee McDowell: We are a electrical contractor and 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, we're kind of all up through in North Carolina and we are a contractor that exclusively focuses on electric vehicle charging station infrastructure for residential fleet and commercial applications.
1:39
Bill Gilliland: So just to clarify what's the difference between residential and commercial fleet installations?
1:46
Lee McDowell: So residential, like, let's say, you go buy a Tesla, right, yep.
1:49
Lee McDowell: So residential, like, let's say, you go buy a Tesla, right, yep.
1:52
Lee McDowell: Evs are really great when it comes to efficiency and operating costs If you have a charger installed at your house, right.
2:02
Lee McDowell: So when you buy an EV, if you have the means, if you install a um what's called a level two charger at your house, then you can charge your car in just a few hours.
2:18
Lee McDowell: Um, like, you just charge at night and if you can think about it, it's kind of like your iPhone or your, your smartphone.
2:26
Lee McDowell: You just plug it in at night and then it works all day.
2:29
Lee McDowell: Then you don't really think about it for the most part, um, and you plug it back in at night and then it works all day.
2:32
Lee McDowell: Then you don't really think about it for the most part, and you plug it back in at night and it works the whole day.
2:35
Lee McDowell: And that's how an electric vehicle is.
2:38
Lee McDowell: And some days you might have super busy days right when you have to plug your phone in in the middle of the day.
2:43
Lee McDowell: Let's say, if you're like a busy guy on the phone the whole day, a sales guy or something, sales guy or something but in that case you just stop at a level three charger which is really designed for like commercial use.
2:57
Lee McDowell: So that's kind of that commercial application 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.
3:09
Lee McDowell: So we do both of those things.
3:12
Lee McDowell: So that's the residential and commercial side.
3:15
Lee McDowell: And then there's a fleet side where 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 they charge up and we actually um, it's kind of neat we have a fleet our of our own evs, so we do our installations out of rivian service trucks.
3:40
Lee McDowell: So we have an electric fleet, um, 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.
3:52
Lee McDowell: So that's in a nutshell what we do like big picture.
3:59
Lee McDowell: But the residential side of things.
4:01
Lee McDowell: For us is kind of it's where we make the biggest impact, because we instruct new EV owners on all the ins and outs of EV ownership and it's really fun for us because they get home with a brand new car.
4:19
Lee McDowell: They are aware that the expense is upcoming of installing their charger, so it's not a surprise to them and we get in the car with them and show them how to take a road trip to Disney World if they want to.
4:32
Lee McDowell: Or 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.
4:43
Bill Gilliland: So yeah, that's pretty cool.
4:45
Bill Gilliland: So how did you, did you start it with that in mind?
4:48
Bill Gilliland: Or were you in like an, in like an electrical contracting business, and then, or how did you get?
4:54
Bill Gilliland: How did you make the leap?
4:55
Bill Gilliland: I guess?
4:57
Lee McDowell: So I, when I was growing up, I was taught to go to college and don't be a loser like the construction guys.
5:05
Lee McDowell: Like, do good in school.
5:06
Lee McDowell: Yeah right, it turns out my parents were exactly right.
5:10
Lee McDowell: I did not do good in school and um went to college, didn't know what I wanted to do and one summer I um came home and my uncle, cleat, had a uh.
5:21
Lee McDowell: 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.
5:29
Lee McDowell: But I started doing some like apprentice work, just as a summer helper and I loved it.
5:36
Lee McDowell: I just had never been exposed to it.
5:38
Lee McDowell: So what I did is I went through the IBEW apprenticeship school and even though I was a bad college student, I was a really good electrical student.
5:50
Lee McDowell: College student.
5:51
Lee McDowell: I was a really good electrical student.
5:53
Lee McDowell: 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 Stubs, here in Atlanta.
6:02
Lee McDowell: They're a large union contractor.
6:04
Lee McDowell: I was with them for 13 years and when I left I was a general foreman over um multimillion dollar projects so big tenant build outs, um data centers, hospitals, stuff like that.
6:18
Lee McDowell: That was our specialty and it was great.
6:22
Lee McDowell: Um and I was making great money.
6:26
Lee McDowell: 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.
6:37
Lee McDowell: It's a big issue.
6:39
Lee McDowell: 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.
6:53
Lee McDowell: So I was working 80, 90 hour weeks often and it wasn't really a big deal until I had kids and um.
7:09
Lee McDowell: At the time when I was working on those hours, I also had a sweet torch red.
7:11
Lee McDowell: So it's a 2014 c7 corvette z51 beautiful, it was an awesome car.
7:17
Lee McDowell: I'm a big car guy.
7:18
Lee McDowell: 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.
7:27
Lee McDowell: It was expensive, um, especially just for a toy that sat in the garage.
7:31
Lee McDowell: 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.
7:41
Lee McDowell: I needed the speed.
7:45
Bill Gilliland: I needed a four-door car.
7:46
Lee McDowell: That was fast and it left me with a Dodge Hellcat charger.
7:51
Lee McDowell: That'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 environmentalist type folks.
8:04
Bill Gilliland: Right Yep.
8:06
Lee McDowell: But I went and drove that Model 3 performance and it absolutely blew me away, like the instant torque was amazing.
8:13
Lee McDowell: It was very comfortable.
8:15
Lee McDowell: It would drive normal if you wanted it to, or it is zero to 60 in three seconds flat, yep, um.
8:21
Lee McDowell: So I bought it and in tesla, notoriously, um, their customer service is not great.
8:29
Lee McDowell: When you go, like, pick up your car, they don't explain anything to you.
8:34
Lee McDowell: I didn't know anything about how to charge it or anything.
8:38
Lee McDowell: So I had to do all my research and I ended up buying my level two charger.
8:42
Lee McDowell: I installed it and at the time I didn't think much about it.
8:48
Lee McDowell: But I went through about 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.
9:03
Lee McDowell: 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.
9:13
Lee McDowell: I already had my contractor's license.
9:17
Lee McDowell: I made sure to go ahead and get that in case I wanted to do something on my own, and 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?
9:31
Lee McDowell: Are you going to do something with it or not?
9:32
Lee McDowell: So that was all I needed.
9:35
Lee McDowell: 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-home pay from England Stubs, that I would leave and start it full-time.
10:02
Lee McDowell: And it only took four weeks.
10:05
Lee McDowell: Wow, four weeks, yeah, yeah yeah, so yeah, that was uh.
10:12
Lee McDowell: 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 and 22 in April.
10:34
Lee McDowell: 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.
10:49
Lee McDowell: We're on track.
10:52
Lee McDowell: We should do a little over $3 million in revenue this year, cleared just around $2 million last year.
10:59
Lee McDowell: We're growing at a nice pace.
11:01
Lee McDowell: We're expanding from the Atlanta market.
11:08
Lee McDowell: We're pretty saturated in the residential piece of the Atlanta market right now.
11:12
Lee McDowell: We're pretty saturated in the residential piece of the Atlanta market right now.
11:14
Lee McDowell: So we're expanding into like we're working in Asheville right now and Greenville, south Carolina, is the next target for us.
11:24
Bill Gilliland: Nice, yep, good, those are good targets.
11:27
Bill Gilliland: I like it.
11:28
Bill Gilliland: I like it.
11:29
Lee McDowell: Yeah, man.
11:32
Bill Gilliland: So let me ask you some business questions here.
11:33
Bill Gilliland: What if you had to start over from square one in business?
11:36
Bill Gilliland: What would you do differently?
11:39
Lee McDowell: I wouldn't be afraid to seek investment.
11:42
Lee McDowell: It's something that I was really uncomfortable with, and you kind of hear horror stories of like deals gone bad, but I didn't consider that if somebody is willing to invest in you, um, they're your partner, they don't want to see you fail, right, right, and for me I'm just we're still bootstrapped right now, but we're we're getting ready to to get some stuff kind of tightened up on our back end to seek some investment partners.
12:16
Lee McDowell: I didn't realize cash flow.
12:22
Lee McDowell: I didn't understand the way cash flow worked until I'd say, really this year, when it comes to like expansion and stair-stepping and things, yep, and having some capital available really removes a lot of the roadblocks that cash flow cycles put in your way.
12:45
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, Okay, yeah.
12:48
Bill Gilliland: So there's a lot of ways to get capital, so you're considering some outside investment at this point to uh to scale.
12:55
Lee McDowell: I actually have one other thing that I'll talk about.
12:57
Lee McDowell: Um, my first, my first hire was a guy I'd worked with in the past and, uh, him taking that leap of faith to come work with me meant the world, but I, I gifted him equity.
13:15
Lee McDowell: I would not do that again.
13:19
Lee McDowell: It made things very complicated as far as accountability and certain things as we grew Right, so I let him go a few months back, but it was.
13:36
Lee McDowell: It cost me dearly.
13:37
Lee McDowell: It was very hard to do, but the cost and the stress, yeah, yeah.
13:45
Bill Gilliland: That's a good, yeah, that's a good lesson.
13:47
Bill Gilliland: You're probably better off just paying them well.
13:48
Bill Gilliland: So, yeah, it's a good, it's a good thing.
13:52
Bill Gilliland: So those are good, those are good learnings.
13:55
Bill Gilliland: What are the?
13:56
Bill Gilliland: What other big learnings have you?
13:58
Bill Gilliland: Have you had as a, as an owner and an employer since you started the business?
14:04
Lee McDowell: Compensation packages are everything.
14:06
Lee McDowell: The way those things are structured for each tier of employee is very important.
14:13
Lee McDowell: So, for example, you know, paying us as a service business, paying your employees hourly, makes accounting very easy, but it only incentivizes employees to be less efficient.
14:30
Lee McDowell: Um, so that's, that's one thing, so that's, that's a big lesson.
14:38
Lee McDowell: Um, I would say, um, and there's a lot of lessons learned.
14:47
Lee McDowell: Uh, but just just keeping your book straight, that's super important, all the accounting.
14:57
Lee McDowell: And then I wouldn't say it's a lesson learned, but it's a lesson that everybody, I think needs to hear.
15:10
Lee McDowell: Nobody cares about you, man Like no, you're by yourself, Nobody cares.
15:35
Bill Gilliland: No-transcript because you're right, they're too focused on themselves to care about what you're doing.
15:46
Bill Gilliland: You know if it can help them, great If they can't do that.
15:49
Bill Gilliland: So what are some common misconceptions about running a business that you've, and how do you deal with them?
15:59
Lee McDowell: Well, when you're the founder, I think everybody kind of assumes that you're that you're getting paid the most right, it's so true, it's so true.
16:08
Bill Gilliland: I remember my first business.
16:10
Bill Gilliland: Everybody thought I was rich, you know.
16:13
Bill Gilliland: Employees thought, well, bill's rich, he owns the business.
16:17
Lee McDowell: I think I'm sitting in there counting the money.
16:18
Lee McDowell: I am counting the money because I'm making sure we can make payroll and pay our insurance and invest in growth.
16:27
Lee McDowell: But it doesn't just trickle into my pockets.
16:30
Lee McDowell: My technicians, it doesn't just trickle into my pockets, right, right, like my technicians make more than me, you know, on W2.
16:39
Lee McDowell: So I think that's a big thing.
16:43
Lee McDowell: It wasn't hard for me.
16:47
Lee McDowell: I mean, it's hard work, but if you're used to working hard, business ownership isn't impossible.
16:52
Bill Gilliland: I like that one, I like that one, I like that one.
16:56
Bill Gilliland: If you're used to working hard, business ownership is just hard work.
16:59
Bill Gilliland: So I love it, yeah, I love it, yeah, I love it.
17:03
Bill Gilliland: So what do you attribute your growth to?
17:09
Lee McDowell: Partnerships, partnerships.
17:14
Lee McDowell: So for us I'll give a Tesla as a good case study we, on our residential business and our commercial, we have about 60% of our leads that come in direct through Tesla, where we're referred directly from Tesla and it's not a one-way street.
17:38
Lee McDowell: 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.
17:51
Lee McDowell: 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.
18:03
Lee McDowell: We cover that, fill those gaps that I discovered when I bought my tesla.
18:08
Lee McDowell: We educate people on battery storage systems, on solar, on all that kind of stuff and um.
18:18
Bill Gilliland: 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.
18:28
Bill Gilliland: That's a that's a big yeah definitely diversify.
18:34
Lee McDowell: Don't make it at 90% of your leads.
18:36
Lee McDowell: That's another lesson learned.
18:39
Lee McDowell: 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.
18:59
Lee McDowell: And it hurt so bad.
19:02
Lee McDowell: Um, but it's because we had way too many eggs in the Tesla basket, Right, Right.
19:09
Lee McDowell: So that's how I mean.
19:11
Lee McDowell: Luckily we, we pulled through it, but now hey, don't do that again.
19:12
Lee McDowell: Right, Right.
19:12
Lee McDowell: So that's how I mean.
19:13
Lee McDowell: Luckily we, we pulled through it, but now hey, don't do that again.
19:15
Lee McDowell: Right, yeah.
19:16
Bill Gilliland: There are other, there are a lot of other EVs out there.
19:19
Bill Gilliland: So at this point and it's just getting even more so I like it.
19:24
Bill Gilliland: So, um, 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.
19:31
Bill Gilliland: I got a couple other questions for you, but, um, yeah, tell us about, tell us about the event you got going on.
19:39
Lee McDowell: So our event's called Silent Thunder.
19:40
Lee McDowell: Um, so, to give a little background, if you couldn't tell already, I'm a huge car nut.
19:47
Lee McDowell: Um, so I've I've found a trade that I'm good at and then a service that's revolving around cars, so it's business.
19:57
Lee McDowell: Ownership is awesome for me because I I genuinely enjoy it and I like racing cars, I like taking cars on the racetrack and doing road racing.
20:06
Lee McDowell: Um, autocross events, all that good stuff.
20:09
Lee McDowell: Autocross events, all that good stuff.
20:16
Lee McDowell: 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.
20:20
Lee McDowell: I personally have both.
20:22
Lee McDowell: I race my Tesla and I have a Miata race car, and then I have this kit car called a Goblin.
20:30
Lee McDowell: It's the most rowdy thing you've ever seen in your life and it's gas and shoots fireballs.
20:35
Lee McDowell: So I like both things and I find that in the culture people have to pick a side.
20:42
Lee McDowell: 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.
20:51
Lee McDowell: So last year's event was really good.
20:53
Lee McDowell: It was a road race, um, but it was.
20:56
Lee McDowell: We were fortunate to have tesla and ribbing and bmw sponsor the event but because of the style of the race, there wasn't.
21:05
Lee McDowell: It wasn't very spectator friendly, so this year we decided to move it to an oval track.
21:14
Lee McDowell: You have actual stadium seating.
21:16
Lee McDowell: This venue sits 7,000 people.
21:23
Lee McDowell: That way, for all of our sponsors, they'll actually drive business.
21:29
Lee McDowell: It's on August 23rd this year.
21:31
Lee McDowell: We have Cadillac as our title sponsor.
21:35
Lee McDowell: We have Tesla, rivian and BMW also as our second tier sponsors.
21:41
Lee McDowell: We have a lot of other companies.
21:43
Lee McDowell: In the first two hours of the event our spectators can come down and get in the best new vehicles from all these brands and ride along in their autocross course.
21:55
Lee McDowell: So we have professional drivers coming to drive these sponsor-provided vehicles.
22:01
Lee McDowell: And let's say, you want to ride in the new quad motor Rivian R1S.
22:06
Lee McDowell: It does 0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds.
22:09
Lee McDowell: It's insane.
22:10
Lee McDowell: You can get in that car and experience what it feels like to do that and the handling characteristics.
22:17
Lee McDowell: And then you can go get in 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.
22:32
Lee McDowell: 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 and 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.
22:56
Bill Gilliland: Sweet, so when is the event?
22:58
Lee McDowell: August 23rd.
23:00
Bill Gilliland: August 23rd, great and it's where.
23:04
Lee McDowell: At Caffeine and Octane.
23:05
Lee McDowell: Lanier Raceway in Brazelton Georgia.
23:06
Lee McDowell: Lanier Raceway in Brazelton Georgia.
23:10
Bill Gilliland: Lanier Raceway, Brazelton, Georgia.
23:11
Bill Gilliland: Okay, cool.
23:13
Lee McDowell: It's from 12 to 9.
23:14
Bill Gilliland: And if people want to come or get tickets or however, whatever, what's the?
23:19
Bill Gilliland: Is there a?
23:20
Lee McDowell: Visit SilentThunderEventscom.
23:23
Bill Gilliland: SilentThunderEventscom.
23:25
Bill Gilliland: All right, we'll put that in the show notes.
23:26
Bill Gilliland: Silentthundereventscom.
23:27
Bill Gilliland: All right, we'll put that in the show notes.
23:28
Lee McDowell: SilentThunderEventscom.
23:29
Lee McDowell: We'll have Gas vs 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.
23:40
Lee McDowell: So that is where two cars line up side by side and hammer it and go around the circle.
23:46
Lee McDowell: It's a third-mile track.
23:47
Lee McDowell: It's a third mile track, so it's a pretty long oval.
23:50
Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
23:50
Lee McDowell: You go two times around the oval as fast as they can, and the first one to go across the finish line advances.
23:56
Bill Gilliland: Sweet yeah.
23:58
Lee McDowell: That sounds cool.
23:59
Lee McDowell: It's going to be really cool.
24:00
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, it sounds cool.
24:01
Bill Gilliland: So all right back to back to that's awesome.
24:04
Bill Gilliland: I think that's a cool event that's promoting.
24:07
Bill Gilliland: I love that.
24:10
Bill Gilliland: It's letting you live in the worlds you want to hang out in electrical and cars so I love that as a thing.
24:18
Bill Gilliland: 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.
24:27
Bill Gilliland: How are you doing that now?
24:29
Bill Gilliland: How are you balancing your personal life and your business life now?
24:34
Lee McDowell: I do my best.
24:35
Lee McDowell: I'm always working.
24:39
Lee McDowell: Now I get up about 3.30 each day and I have a few hours to myself where I work out and nobody needs me.
24:56
Lee McDowell: But right now, especially leading up to this event I mean it's Monday through Sunday we're working, but I do my best.
25:07
Lee McDowell: I try to get in an hour hour or two with the kids.
25:10
Lee McDowell: We do dinner together every night, all that kind of stuff.
25:12
Lee McDowell: I took them to their first day of school today Sweet.
25:16
Lee McDowell: But I'm definitely not spending as much time as I'd like to with the family.
25:24
Lee McDowell: But that's just part of business ownership.
25:29
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, well, it can be or it can.
25:32
Bill Gilliland: It depends on how you want to design the business.
25:33
Bill Gilliland: So, yeah, I mean you're working on that piece right now.
25:37
Bill Gilliland: There there are, there are trade-offs for sure, for sure what comes in waves.
25:42
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, absolutely Sure, A hundred percent.
25:44
Bill Gilliland: So what do you look?
26:03
Bill Gilliland: I mean, you've hired 11, well, you got 11 employees now.
26:04
Lee McDowell: So what qualities do you look for in employees and how do you foster a positive work environment?
26:07
Lee McDowell: So I hire, believe it or not.
26:09
Lee McDowell: Um, I don't require a ton of experience.
26:11
Lee McDowell: Um, particularly for our residential side.
26:15
Lee McDowell: Um, I can train someone to do that job in about three months with no experience, but I can't train attitude and work ethic.
26:27
Lee McDowell: So what I look for when I do my first interview how do they shake my hand?
26:33
Lee McDowell: Do they look at me in the eyes?
26:35
Lee McDowell: Are they smiling?
26:38
Lee McDowell: Were they there on time?
26:39
Lee McDowell: Right, were they?
26:40
Lee McDowell: Were they there early?
26:45
Lee McDowell: And I make a habit to go by their car and take a little peek inside the car.
26:56
Lee McDowell: Peeking into somebody's car will tell you a lot about them.
26:58
Lee McDowell: So those are some metrics I hire off of for new guys.
27:06
Lee McDowell: Yeah, I'd say that's really the main thing.
27:09
Lee McDowell: 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 good attitude, you're just not going to work out.
27:26
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, hire for attitude and teach skills is a great way to go about it.
27:31
Bill Gilliland: So what do you wish you had known, or that somebody had told you before you went into business?
27:45
Lee McDowell: I wish I'd done it sooner.
27:46
Lee McDowell: I wish I had done it sooner.
27:49
Lee McDowell: I think I I didn't have the direction, but, um, I just wish, I wish I had known that I, I could have you know sooner.
28:03
Lee McDowell: Um, it's hard to say.
28:09
Lee McDowell: I mean, I, that's good.
28:12
Lee McDowell: You know, like, my dad owned.
28:13
Lee McDowell: 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 he's on businesses.
28:31
Lee McDowell: He gave me some good pointers to start out, but, past the initial like set up stages, you're, it's you're, you control your destiny.
28:43
Lee McDowell: It's, it's all in the decisions you make.
28:46
Lee McDowell: 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.
28:58
Lee McDowell: Um, I think having the agency to just do what you think is right and what you want to do is important in business ownership.
29:12
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, you got to do it.
29:14
Bill Gilliland: You can't, you can't, you can't.
29:16
Bill Gilliland: Nobody can do your pushups for you.
29:17
Bill Gilliland: So they can give you some advice on how to do a pushup, but you know I always say you can't, I always say you can't swim.
29:25
Bill Gilliland: You know you got to swim your own laps.
29:29
Lee McDowell: You always want someone to.
29:30
Lee McDowell: It's the thing like still today.
29:32
Lee McDowell: It's like if I encounter a problem, you go into panic oh, I need to get this person to do this thing.
29:38
Lee McDowell: And like it doesn't.
29:41
Lee McDowell: It oftentimes doesn't work out that way.
29:43
Lee McDowell: You just got to suck it up, buttercup, figure it out.
29:46
Lee McDowell: Doesn't work out that way.
29:47
Lee McDowell: You just got to suck it up, buttercup, figure it out.
29:48
Lee McDowell: I mean, you know.
29:49
Lee McDowell: I mean, I think for entrepreneurs, that's probably par for the course Um, especially with AI.
30:03
Lee McDowell: Ai is a big topic.
30:04
Lee McDowell: If we have time to talk about um later on, I'd really like a chance to encourage people to use these new tools that are available right now.
30:12
Lee McDowell: It's been great for us.
30:15
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, so how are you using AI?
30:20
Lee McDowell: I've used AI to completely build websites.
30:22
Lee McDowell: I've used it in almost every aspect of our business, from marketing and image generation to video creation, to business plans and direction, to strategies on how to deal with tough challenges.
30:39
Lee McDowell: To advise me, um, like a lawyer and an accountant, I've I've I've fired two companies that I.
30:53
Lee McDowell: I have fired two companies this year that I used to pay recurring monthly fees of thousands and thousands of dollars, and I've been able to cut them loose because I can accomplish with AI and and less time than it would take me to email them about my vision and what I want.
31:17
Bill Gilliland: Sure.
31:19
Lee McDowell: It's.
31:19
Bill Gilliland: It's an incredible yeah, it's a great time saver.
31:21
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, that's how we use it too.
31:23
Bill Gilliland: I use it a lot to get started on things.
31:26
Bill Gilliland: It's a it's a pretty interesting thing.
31:28
Bill Gilliland: So, um, we've got the website for the race.
31:32
Bill Gilliland: What's the best way for people to get a hold of you or your company if they're interested in what you have to offer?
31:40
Lee McDowell: You can call us.
31:41
Lee McDowell: Phone number is 404-520-7349,.
31:45
Lee McDowell: Or you can reach out direct um 5, 2, 0, 7, 3, 4, 9.
31:47
Lee McDowell: Or you can reach out direct um at installations, at car charger specialistscom.
31:52
Lee McDowell: It's with the S at the end, um.
31:56
Lee McDowell: Those are the best ways you can find us on um all the socials to uh YouTube, instagram, facebook, um.
32:03
Lee McDowell: Just just look up car charger specialist, you'll find us there.
32:06
Bill Gilliland: Perfect, perfect, perfect.
32:09
Bill Gilliland: So is there anything else you'd like to tell the world, or our, your audience?
32:17
Lee McDowell: Yeah, it comes to AI, man, our economy is about to go through a crazy, a crazy change.
32:22
Lee McDowell: Um, if, if you have a job that requires sitting in front of the computer all day, you better get with it.
32:30
Lee McDowell: Um, these tools are just, they're advancing so quickly.
32:34
Lee McDowell: Um, I don't know how.
32:37
Lee McDowell: I'm not, I'm not really sure how we're gonna, um, as as an economy, function through this paradigm shift, but I think next year, in 2026, 27, we're going to see a ton of layoffs and we're going to have to get creative as a society on how to combat these things.
33:00
Lee McDowell: So, not to be it's not a doomsday, but no, it's not.
33:07
Lee McDowell: Start figuring out how to work with the tools and not.
33:11
Lee McDowell: It's coming, whether you like it or not.
33:14
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, a hundred percent.
33:14
Bill Gilliland: Yeah, it's just like every great technological change that we've seen.
33:18
Bill Gilliland: It's just happening faster in this generation than it did in the past generations, but it's happened over and over and over again.
33:28
Bill Gilliland: These things are not new and we'll be fine.
33:33
Bill Gilliland: We'll be fine.
33:34
Bill Gilliland: Hey look, this has been great.
33:35
Bill Gilliland: This has been a crazy good interview.
33:37
Bill Gilliland: I appreciate it.
33:38
Bill Gilliland: I look forward to talking more.
33:43
Lee McDowell: Got it.
33:43
Lee McDowell: Thanks, Bill.
33:44
Bill Gilliland: Pleasure.
33:45
Bill Gilliland: Thank you, hey, and until next time.
33:47
Bill Gilliland: All the best, you got it, man.