The Place

Finding the building that would eventually become Car Decor is another story by itself. We found a great location at the intersection of 55 and 10, the two major roads in LA. It was in horrible shape. Sunand spent almost four months getting it cleaned up and painted. I wish I could show you all the before picture. We only have the after pictures. It was a dump before and we have now transformed it into a palace.

I can see how one persons hard work can turn around an entire area. After we came and spend all this money fixing up this building, other people have now rented the other run down buildings to start businesses of their own. I have such pride when I drive into our business and see how we have changed the street from a run down seedy area to a safe and pristine area for businesses to grow and flourish. Sometimes it really does take just one person to change the future of a city or an area. For Bangalore it was Narayan Murthy of Infosys and Amiz Premji of Wipro. They single-handedly have changed Banaglore into the city that it is now. For our little section of town it was Car Decor that has changed the street into the prosperous area it is now.

The First Month

Nerve wracking is saying it kindly. We spent a million dollars building a place and getting it ready. We had the greatest and best equipment. We felt we had the best people. Still sitting and waiting for customers to walk in, is incredibly nerve wracking.

We basically had a few big customers in which we were able to bill $50,000 for the first month, but nervous is an understatement. In the second month we started making friends and advertising and slowly but surely our business is now a success.

This is just a start of the blog. We will explain all the equipment and why we bought what we did. We will explain our cost cutting measure initially to conserve cash flow.

There is a lot more coming so keep watching.

The Investment

Sunand came to me and told me that we would need to invest about $1,000,000 together and that he would be willing to give me 20% equity for $200,000. I was thrilled about the idea and also very excited about the prospects.

There were other people that want to invest with us, Sunand's Uncle and other relatives, Dr. Lokanath, a close friend of both of ours. But we turned them all down. We felt that it was going to be successful from the beginning and he we wanted to own the whole business ourselves.

This reminds me of the story of Michael Flatley. Michael was a big success with River Dance, but the show was owned by a company in which Michael had no ownership stake and he wanted to open his own show and invited a lot of big investors to present his idea and to raise money for Lord of the Dance. When all the big investors jumped at the chance to invest in Lord of the Dance, Michael decided that if professional investors were so eager to invest in his show, then he would invest the whole money himself and own the show 100%. Lord of the Dance and Michael Flattley's other shows have gone on to be billion dollars enterprises.

This was Sunand's and my situation, everybody we told about the idea wanted to invest with us. But in the end we both invested cash into the business ourselves.

The Idea

Sunand had been floundering in life. He was qualified as a doctor. Did he really want to work all those hours. Doctoring is a profession in which if you are not part of the top 20% than you will work like a dog makeing only $150,000-$200,000 per year.

If you part of the 20% than you have a chance to make more then $500,000.

Sunand dropped Vinnie at Kaiser Permanente Hospital for her residency interview. Since he had a few hours he figured he would go get an oil change on his C class Mercedes.

He walked into Car Decor in LA. This was quite simply one of the most fortuitous moments of Sunand's life.

Here he met Dheer Naidu, another doctor that had been able to walk away from the profession and make his passion into a business. Like Sunand, Dheeru also had finished his Radiology residency and simply decided that he did not want to sit in a small room reading x-ray films his whole life.

He took the risk and took all his life savings and opened a fabulous facility for performance tuning of Mercedes. It took him three years to be truly successful, monetarily, but he had been successful from day one, when he walked away from a comfortable life of a radiologist and pursued his dream of working with Mercedes.

Sunand found someone to emulate and work under. Take a lesson here kids. Try and find someone you admire and see if you can work under him and learn from him. Having a mentor is one of the most important life achievements you can have.

Sunand worked under and for Car Decor for one and a half year. There was no pay. Most of the days were 12 hour days. It was hard work, but Sunand loved it. He listened, learned and then went home and read even more about cars and how to fix them.

He learned where Dheeru made mistakes. He learned what worked in the car business. He learned not just how to fix cars, but how to deal with customers, billing systems for a car business and so many other lessons you can only learn on the job.

Finally after one year of working he came to me to ask me about the idea of opening his own facility in Houston. I jumped at the chance to invest in Car Décor not just because of the idea, which was great, but because of the person. Sunand is most passionate and knowledgeable person I have even met when talking about high performance cars.

Here is another life lessons kids. Always invest in the management. A great idea will never work without people you trust to make that idea a success. Always, and I say it again, always invest in the person and not simply a business because it sounds great.