Episode 2 – Supercharging Your Business

Brian Davis 00:05
Thanks, Jerry, thanks for coming in. Man, Yeah, my pleasure, yeah, of course, of course. So give us a little bit of overview of exactly what it is that Martin Superchargers does.

Jerry Martin 00:17
What we do is we do service and repair on superchargers. So street rods, drag race, boat stuff, basically. What we’ll do is we’ll get the unit in, evaluate it, fix what needs to get done. Usually, we try and sell a repolish and stuff like that, and just get it finished and send it back to the customer. So yeah, so

Brian Davis 00:37
I’m sure that there’s a lot of people that know exactly what a supercharger is, but when I first started working with you, I had no idea, like, what a supercharger was. Well, could you give, like, a brief I

Jerry Martin 00:49
can give you a very simple answer. A supercharger is a glorified wind pump. That’s what it is, because the equation is, the more air, the more fuel, the more horsepower you can make. So that’s what it does. It sits on top of a manifold that’s on top of the engine block, and it basically it spins, and as it rotates, it grabs air from the top and it pushes it through the manifold into the motor. So you put more fuel to it, more air, you can make more horsepower. So it basically just sucks air in, yep, as it turns, it drives, it drives air in through the supercharger and in through the block. So that’s

Brian Davis 01:21
fascinating. Yeah,

Jerry Martin 01:22
it’s pretty cool. That’s

Brian Davis 01:23
super cool. So how’d you get involved with superchargers? You guys, you guys, like, pretty much specialize in supercharger. Yes,

Jerry Martin 01:29
that’s all we do is like root style supercharger, which is that there’s no, there’s a lot of different kinds of superchargers, but that’s the one that we are specific about working on. So the way that I got involved with it, that I worked for a company I worked for in early fuel injection years ago, and I was running machines there. And I’ve always told people, I’m not a machinist. I’ve been in the machining industry for 30 years, but I’m not a machinist. So anyways, I worked over there, and I was running machines, and I was working and I’m like, Man, I could, I can run this shop, you know? And I talked to some people over there, and they, they never really gave me the opportunity. I like stuff that goes fast, and that’s why I like supercharges, because they make stuff go faster. So can we back

Brian Davis 02:13
up?

Jerry Martin 02:13
Sure

Brian Davis 02:13
just a little bit? Yeah, it’s like, when you’re saying I could run this shop, like, what is it that you’re what is it that you’re seeing about the way that the shop is run? Well, it’s kind of like bringing that out.

Jerry Martin 02:22
I don’t know, for me, it’s more of a drive for years. It’s, I think it’s just a personality that God’s given me. I I like to run things, you know, looking around like I said I wanted to make fuel pumps. I wanted to make the injector hats. But then that opportunity never came about. So I was like, well, in my head, I’m thinking, I can run this shop. So that’s what I was kind of wanting to do. I’m like, I can do this, I can do that and but I just didn’t have that opportunity. So,

Brian Davis 02:46
so it was, it like, looking around and saying, like, I I’d be capable of doing this stuff. Yeah, it was, at least in my head, I thought it was capable, like, of, like, one, like, “I want to be running the shop,” yeah,

Jerry Martin 02:56
yeah. I wanted to. Because there was, you know, there’s a lot of, a lot of thought that goes into, you know, making these things run right? And I wanted to learn those things so but, you know, didn’t have the opportunity. I talked to the people who who ran the place, and they were like, Oh, you need to put in your time. And you know, I’d worked there three years, and I know that that wasn’t a long time, but still, it’s like, I’m like, I think I can do more than what I’m doing, because I was just running machines. And like, I don’t want to do that. I want to do that. So the way that I got into the supercharger, part of it is a friend of mine from church, owned the blower shop, and I just, he was looking for somebody. He was looking for a shipping guy. So my I’ll do whatever, just want to get my foot in the door. So I, I went over and talked to him, and he hired me to do shipping. So I did, and after, you know, a few weeks, I just started doing more and more. By the time I got done that was, I was building superchargers. I was the lead guy over there doing that, teaching other people how to do it, running that shop at the same time. And, you know, that’s kind of just where we kept going was further and further. So I built them for about eight years, you know. And I like that aspect of it, but I still the part of managing the shop was more of what I wanted to do. So more customer relation, you know, trying to get business in so I could feed it to the guys that work for me, yeah,

Brian Davis 04:19
stuff like that. So dealing more with the people, yeah, dealing less with the mechanics and the machines, dealing more with the people. So when you first got your job over at the blower shop, what was your motivation? You started in shipping, I did, and then you said, in the matter of weeks, right? Like you started,

Jerry Martin 04:36
it didn’t take long, because

Brian Davis 04:38
not more responsibility, yeah, what was the motivation. Like to continue.

Jerry Martin 04:42
Like I said, I like things to go fast, yeah. And the fuel injection part of it makes them go fast. And the blower is really what makes it go fast, because you can that thing’s not going to move without that big wind pump on top of that. That’s

Brian Davis 04:55
what you were excited about. That’s yeah, what you wanted to be a part of, yeah, wow, yeah,

Jerry Martin 04:59
there’s. Little things, because you go, there’s a drag boat race years ago, and I have it on my Instagram. And if you, if you watch it, I built the blower that’s on that boat. The thing runs 269 miles an hour, you know, in like, four seconds. It’s nuts, yeah. But if you watch that, first time I saw it, I’m like, I built that thing. That’s pretty cool. That

Brian Davis 05:21
is. So that is, that’s totally cool. So you’re at the blower shop, okay, and but you’re still not, you’re getting experience, you’re building them. You are now transitioning into more of a manager, and now you’re dealing with customers, so now you’re dealing more with people. So how do you how do you go from that to now, owning your own shop, running your own shop? Sure,

Jerry Martin 05:48
the way that occurred was they decided to move out of state. They wanted me to go, which I appreciate, but we had lived there for a little while, and it wasn’t really where I wanted to go back to. So when they left, what I did is I actually went to, I went to the March meet up in Bakersfield. It’s a nostalgia drag race. And I had a conversation with the guys who own Good Vibrations Motorsports. Okay, they they knew me from the blower shop working there, but not, not to the point where they would like, Oh, this guy’s a good guy. So anyways, I went and I talked to them, and I told them, I said, Hey, just want to let you know I worked at a blower shop. Worked there for about 13 years that at that point I started, I’m like, I’m going to I’m staying here in California, and I’m want to do my own business. So if you guys have any blower work, I’d appreciate you sending it to me. So God was good, because they only went off of my word. And I know that God orchestrated all of that, because they didn’t know me from Adam, yeah, so they just took my word for whatever I said. I talked to the owner, Jim, and he’s like, he’s like, we’ll definitely send you work. And I’m like, that’s great. I was really excited because I really had no credibility. But they they were, they trusted me. So I was like, okay, you know, so I’ve had a really good relationship with good vibrations. And then over the last year, the blower shop actually is sending all of their repair work to me. Now because they’re no longer doing blower repairs, that’s

Brian Davis 07:18
amazing, yeah, so they move out of state. You pick up a good client, yep. And then a couple years later, now they’re sending you.

Jerry Martin 07:26
They’re actually, they’re recommending me. So if you call them, yeah, they’re like, Hey, call Jerry over at Martin supercharger. He’ll take care of you.

Brian Davis 07:32
That’s awesome. Ben, yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s great place. It’s exciting. So like, walk me through what, the growth of your business has looked like like over the past two years? I mean, there you were. You wanted to start your own thing. Okay, you landed your first client. They said that they were going to start sending you work. So what did it look like to actually start making those repairs and setting up, setting up your business?

Jerry Martin 07:58
You know, in my head, I thought I could do this, and we were able to, but as you go, I still tell people nowadays, I really don’t feel like I know what I’m doing, because I don’t really figure I’m a business owner, you know, I do own a business, but I I just, I’m just a regular guy trying to, you know, make ends meet, you know, and who’s enjoy what I’m doing. Like, what do you think a business owner is supposed to look, I don’t know, professional, you know, wearing a suit and tie, suit and tie, yeah, of course. You know, not, not somebody who’s swinging a hammer in a shop, you know. So,

Brian Davis 08:31
yeah, doing the work. Yeah.

Jerry Martin 08:33
We started, you know, I didn’t have anywhere to work on the supercharger, so I have a guy that works for me. His name is Juan, and he is the we actually were started working out of his garage in Sylmar is where we started. So after about a year, after that, my day job, I worked for Jay Pierson. So he leased me some space over in the corner of his shop. And I was very thankful for that. So that allowed me to actually bring more work in, which was good. So, and then Jay had recently moved in the last year to a new shop, and he he told me, he’s like, Well, I don’t have room for you anymore. So I’m like, okay, so I My hand was kind of forced. I’m like, I have to go find somewhere to to land all my stuff. Because I had a couple machines, I had a press, I had a bunch of parts. I can’t I don’t have no any room at my house. So we, you know, I looked around, God was good, opened up a door for a small shop in town. And that’s where we’ve been since August of last year.

Brian Davis 09:31
So that’s awesome, man. How did that? How did that feel? Like, how did getting getting into your own space? Like, how did, how did that transform your business. Well,

Jerry Martin 09:41
it actually, it definitely opened up a lot of just, you know, I want, I want to present, present things. Well, you know, if people come to the shop, I want them to see like this guy looks like he knows what he’s doing. You know, I try and keep my shop, you know, organized. You know, I know Jay does a lot of Lean stuff. And. I was giving crap for it, but, you know, I understand the concept, you know. And you know, for me, I

Brian Davis 10:06
are you starting to implement that stuff in your own shop?

Jerry Martin 10:09
Oh yeah, I have it’s, it’s been good because over at jay’s shop, we’ve hired a couple of more people, and it allows me to actually think more about what I’m doing, as opposed to just trying to get it done. And I’ve told Jay that, you know, but we still go back and forth on the Lean thing. So it’s kind of funny, of course, man, but yeah, with with my shop, it’s just, it’s allowed me to, kind of allow have people come to my shop, you know, and say, Hey, you come over here and we can talk and figure out what you get. You know, you have going on, bring your stuff over.

Brian Davis 10:39
So do you have a lot of local customers? That are showing up to your door? I

Jerry Martin 10:43
do, yeah, we have, I’m gonna say probably, maybe about half of our business at this point is in California, or at least mostly on the West Coast. Obviously, a lot of people back east at this point, they’re, you know, it buried in snow. So they’re sending their stuff because it’s, you know, preventative maintenance for them, like, Oh, My boat’s in dry dock, so I’m going to send my stuff now that way, when I want to go back on the water, when everything thaws out, I can get back on there and it’s ready to go. So, yeah, I mean, we’ve, well, we I do have a lot of local customers. So

Brian Davis 11:13
yeah, so you’re in your new place. How different does the business look? Is Juan still working with you. What does it look like? Kind of like on a day to day, or maybe week by week, sure,

Jerry Martin 11:25
day to day is more of like I’m working during the day with Jay, and he’s he’s really good, allowing me to take phone calls and stuff like that. So I keep my phone on me all the time, and I talk to customers throughout the day, whenever they call. And you know, I appreciate that he allows me to do that so and then I’ll work my normal day job, and then after work, I’ll go over to my shop for about two or three hours, and then work till like five or six at night, and then I’ll go home. So we do that most the days of the week. In the last since the beginning of the year, actually, I’ve been taking one day a week off, so I’m working for Jay 4 days a week, and I’m working at my shop two days, like Friday and Saturday, we’ll say. So it’s been good. I’m very thankful we can afford it financially. You know, part of it is I’m thankful that I’m not eating off of this yet, like I was telling you before, but I’m excited about where it’s going, you know, because it’s, it’s getting more and more busy. I mean, to the point where I have to take a day off, it kind of makes me nervous. But for me, it’s like, even like, with the shop, God keeps opening these doors up, and I have to just, I have to take a chance, you know? I mean, you have your own business, and it’s like, I’m sure that’s scary. At some point, you got guys working for you too. And you’re like, you kind of feel obligated to make sure that you know you have work coming in, but God’s the one who brings to work, so I’m very thankful, um, how he’s continues to provide for this stuff. So it’s fun. I like, I like what I do in both places. I like what I do.

Brian Davis 12:55
Yeah. So do you see, do you see that maybe it’ll you’ll transition into two days at your shop, three days.

Jerry Martin 13:06
Well, this this day, this week. It was, yeah, I took your vacation that yesterday to to do some stuff, and I have today off, so, but yeah, I think so. I mean, as long as Jay’s good with that, which, like I said, I’m thankful that he’s, he’s he’s a really good boss, because he’s very he wants me to succeed. And that’s very unusual, because, you know, normally, your boss is like, No, you need to focus on what you’re doing here, not what you’re doing somewhere else. You can do that on your own time, but don’t do it on my time. And he’s not that way, which I am so thankful for. You know, in over in the last year, I’ve bought a CNC machine, so now, as of yesterday, we’re actually machining front covers, uh, my own front covers.

Brian Davis 13:48
That’s awesome.

Jerry Martin 13:48
Yeah, it is, it’s great. I mean, I have a lot of good people around me. That’s, that’s why God is. God brings the business, and he’s the one who takes care of us, um, but he’s put a lot of good people around me, like, even, like, with you and your business, you know, and Jay and Alex and Juan and good vibrations and the blower shop. My wife is a huge part of our business. It’s like, I That’s why I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing. I’m just being blessed by stuff that’s around me. I got, I got a lot of good people around me, yeah? So just like going with the flow, yeah, pretty much. Okay, like, they

Brian Davis 14:21
said, This is what we got today. Well, it’s funny, like, with anything, you know, I

Jerry Martin 14:24
like drag racing. So if you watch these guys, like, at the track, and they get interviewed, and they’re like, hey, you know, you know what’s going on with this? And he’s like, You know what? I just, I’m just the guy that gets to drive this thing. And that’s kind of how I feel at this point, because I have a lot of people around me that are doing a lot of the work too. It’s like, I’m not, I’m not a programmer, so I hire somebody to help me, you know, or I don’t want to do all of this work because I’m trying to get business in. So I’ll give Juan the work, because I know he knows what he’s doing. So my wife does the, some of the books, you know, I’m just trying to get. People in, you know, to send their stuff in, and I have, God’s been really good. I have a weird reputation. I guess that I’m, I guess I’m popular, I don’t know, yeah, just, just a regular guy trying to run a business. Yeah,

Brian Davis 15:18
that’s awesome. Yeah, it is, like, it’s, it’s a big deal to have people around you that it’s huge you could trust Yeah, and that they they could just run with whatever it is that they have to do. And everybody together collectively can do much more than Yeah, what any of one of us individually could do. Oh,

Jerry Martin 15:37
yeah, yeah. Jay had mentioned to me a couple weeks ago, he was like, he’s like, I wish that I would have hired people like, sooner. He’s like, I didn’t. He’s like, I was doing everything. I was machining, and then I would stop at this time, and I’d pack everything, and then I’d take it to the UPS driver, chasing the UPS driver down. You know, it’s like, I can, I don’t want to do all those things. I really don’t, you know, I mean, they keep trying to get me to become a machinist, and it’s like, at some point I’m going to learn some of these things. I know. That I know that, but that’s not where I’m strong at, you know, I like talking to the customers, and I have no problem building them either. Like I I can do that too, and I did it for a long time. So that’s something that I have been doing lately because of the volume that we’ve been doing. But, you know, I mean, long term, I’d love to teach my kids it. You know, let I need somebody else to swing a hammer. I’m getting too old do all this. So, yeah,

Brian Davis 16:24
definitely. And also, the more people that you get involved, I mean, the the easier it is. Well, not necessarily the easier it is, but it just it gives you the bandwidth that you need in order to scale, yeah.

Jerry Martin 16:36
I mean, and that’s kind of the goal. I mean, people have asked me, you’re like, Well, are you planning on doing this full time? And I’m like, I don’t know. I mean, it kind of scares me. It does just because I I had never really thought I’d be at this point in my mind, I thought I could do all this, but now I’m actually doing it, which is a little it’s different and it’s scary. But I mean, I as long as God keeps bringing the business and the doors keep opening up for doing these things. I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep moving forward. You know, the awesome thing too, is, like, with my business, there’s no debt on my business. I own everything. That’s great. I bought the machine out, right? All the stuff that’s in the shop is mine. So if I had to do something to where I had to liquidate everything, I could do it, and I won’t owe anybody anything. So, yeah, I like being debt free,

Brian Davis 17:23
yeah, minimizes your risks. Yeah, yeah, you’re not as exposed. No, yeah, that’s good, man. That’s a good place to be. So what have been some of the main challenges you’ve kind of faced over these past couple of years? There

Jerry Martin 17:37
really haven’t been a whole lot just learning different things, I guess, you know, like I told you, I don’t really consider myself a businessman, but obviously with business, there’s a lot of logistics and taxes and and other stuff that you have to look at that normally you don’t really think about, because your your boss takes care of that, you know. But now, now I’m that guy that I have to try and figure out what we need to do and when we need to do it, and how much we can spend, and stuff like that. I mean, I wouldn’t say it doesn’t keep me up at night. I don’t worry about it. I’m more excited about how things are going in the future of this. So, I mean, I don’t, I don’t really see any debt. I haven’t had any downside as of yet with this. Yeah, it’s fun, because I like it, you know, I like, I like making stuff go fast, and it’s, it’s fun, yeah,

Brian Davis 18:25
yeah. So it’s less, like work,

Jerry Martin 18:27
it pretty much, yeah. But, I

Brian Davis 18:28
mean, you said the Kate, she’s doing all the books, Oh, yeah. So all that, all that paperwork stuff, yeah, you don’t have to deal with that, yeah?

Jerry Martin 18:36
I mean, I do some of it, but, you know, but she does all the computer stuff. I mean, I’m in the process of just maybe getting a computer down at my shop and, you know, getting some more stuff just to get it set up to, you know, at some point where I need to move forward with a bigger shop, then I actually have the, I have all those things in place so that make it a little bit easier in transition.

Brian Davis 18:56
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So what do you what do you think, uh, Martin Superchargers is going to look like next year. I mean, last year, before we started rolling, you were saying that, what was it? You had quadrupled?

Jerry Martin 19:10
Yeah, we were up 300% Yeah, prior, yeah, which was insane. Just God was really good. I don’t know what it looks like, and I don’t ever want to presume, yeah, because I don’t know. But this year has already been really good to the first couple of months, so I don’t know if we could do the same thing again this year. I’m have to rethink at the end of next year, like, what are we going to do? I don’t know. You know, as as things keep growing, then I’ll address it at that point. But I, like I said, I just don’t want to, I’m not going to presume on on God and the stuff that he continues to do, you know, I don’t want to go get a big shop, because I don’t need that right now. Yeah, where I’m at is exactly where I need to be. I mean, it’s, I’m getting more and more stuff in there just because, you know, I’m buying more more machines and stuff like that. Yeah, but I’m okay where I’m at right now, you know, just take it one day at

Brian Davis 20:04
a time. Yeah, that’s all we can do, man, all we can do. Yeah, I’m very excited about the future, though, even when we make plans, like, there’s no guarantee that’s what’s going to happen. Oh, I know. Like, we have no idea, you know, I know we just went through all this covid stuff, yeah. I mean, nobody was planning for that, yeah, nobody was planning for it. Oh, somebody might have been. You never know. Some people were probably planning for it, probably, yeah. But all of us that were subjected to it, yeah, exactly, you know, we weren’t

Jerry Martin 20:29
playing for Yeah, yeah. But it was crazy, because last year was all that stuff that was going on. It’s like that was my best journey and as a business, yeah? So I don’t know. It

Brian Davis 20:40
seemed like that was the way, at least the business owners that I’ve talked to, it was either the worst year that they’ve ever had, or it was the best year, yeah, they’ve ever had, yep. So it’s really interesting then, but that’s exciting, dude. I’m excited for you. Thanks. I appreciate your help. Yeah, definitely. So if there was one thing that you were going to tell this to somebody that is thinking about starting a business or thinking about taking that risk? What would be that little nugget that you might tell them, plan

Jerry Martin 21:11
for it, you know, just, you know, like I said, I really don’t consider myself a business guy, but if I’d have been able to tell myself a few years ago, like, this is what you should have done, you know, maybe moving forward. You know, I just would have probably planned a few more things ahead of time. You know, try and put some other things in place before they needed, not necessarily, before they needed to get done. But, you know, if you see things moving that direction, plan as much as you can, you know,

Brian Davis 21:41
and what is, what’s the value that you see in that plan? That

Jerry Martin 21:45
way, I could have been more prepared and a little more set up than than I was currently when we started, you know? So because I mean things, things are good now, but I’m still, I’m still looking down the road. I always am looking forward. I don’t want to just stay in where I’m at now. I’m always looking I want to further the business. That’s what I invest in, you know, the money that we make, because this is, you know, a side business. The money that I make goes right back into the business. I save everything, and the money that I do spend is back on what we need for the shop. So I want that. I want the business to be successful, and for me, that’s investing back into it, you know, not going on vacation because of this or, yeah, you know, we made some money. It’s like, I don’t, I don’t want to do that. I don’t need to do that. I’m very content with where we are, you know, as a family. So

Brian Davis 22:38
awesome, man. Yeah, well, I think this next year is going to be huge for you. I

Jerry Martin 22:42
pray that’s the case. I do. Yeah,

Brian Davis 22:43
I do. We’ll have to have you back and you can tell us all about it, oh, man,

Jerry Martin 22:47
that would be that would be good to do. I would be excited about

Brian Davis 22:50
that. If anybody wants to see what you’re up to, where would be some good places that they could connect with Martin superchargers?

Jerry Martin 22:57
you can go on Instagram, @martinsuperchargers, obviously, we have a website, so martinsuperchargers.com you can call me if you got a supercharger you need to work on. That’s not a problem, too. I can give you the phone number if you want, awesome.

Brian Davis 23:11
Yeah, rattle it off.

Jerry Martin 23:12
Okay, it’s 805-587-6981.

Brian Davis 23:16
There we go. There. Everybody’s gonna get their superchargers taken care of. Yeah?

Jerry Martin 23:20
Busy. Busy.

Brian Davis 23:21
That’s what we do. So we do awesome. Thanks. Jerry,

Jerry Martin 23:24
my pleasure. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate your time. Of

Brian Davis 23:26
course, of course.