We recently connected with Marvin Lee and have shared our conversation below.

Marvin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

It takes defining what success is to you, to be successful. If you cannot identify what the desired outcome or your vision is, then how can you expect to take steps in reaching that goal. The mom and pop coffee shop has found success if they define their success to humbly serve the neighborhood with one store, have the best sourced coffee, and close up shop by 3 PM. In contrast, if the goal is to have 1o retail outlets and 100 employees but you are only at 5 then success has not yet been reached. Your vision of success is a detailed roadmap and North Star that will guide you to success. The first step towards success is defining and visualizing what success is to you,

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Birds Auto Detail depicts the story of standing out and being #1 in a highly saturated and competitive space. We take tremendous pride in having over 1500+ five star reviews on Yelp/Google. One of the compliments we get the most is that our communication is top notch. Old school foundational practices such as picking up the phone within 3 rings, responding to email and online inquiries in a timely fashion and training our staff to thoroughly explain our scope of work and what to expect on site is something we don’t take for granted. We are also aware of the fact that most people aren’t car enthusiasts and so we have tailored our menu of services to be as simple and universally customer friendly as possible. We like to use the In N Out example; simple menu, quality and consistent goods for a fair and reasonable price. Simple common sense customer service, attention to detail and consistency is the recipe for our success! Teamwork makes the dream work, shout out to my team!

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

I’ve had my business for sale, which ultimately ended up in only selling equity share. The lesson I learned is to keep track of all your data and numbers. Top line revenue, itemized expense/payroll, and bottom line paints the story of the business. You can “say” last year was a record year or you can “show” that last year was a record year, if you can’t prove it then it’s not true. Documentation beats conversation every day. Same thing with your database or customer list, your repeat customers are the goodwill that you built. These are the people that love you and advocate for you, these are the people you can market to and ultimately these are the people you can monetize when you are ready to sell. A CRM or a “customer resource management” system will be your best friend.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My business partner(s) are all childhood friends. Some say to never do business with family or friends and I’m sure it can be good advice to some, but I believe that they can also be the best people to do business with if your vision, work ethic and values align. There has to be complete trust and transparency and a lot of communication. When you do business with friends, it makes company dinners and retreats that much more worthwhile.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.birdsdetail.com
• Instagram: @birdsdetail
• Yelp: Birds Auto Detail and Ceramic Coatings, Birds Detail (Santa Monica)

Image Credits

David Seo, Kathy Park