Why did Jiffy Lube take off?
Local gas stations were closing, taking [car service] bays off the market. We saw Jiffy Lube as a new technology. Environmental concerns [about oil disposal] and an aging population meant there were fewer do-it-yourselfers. Q: What was your role in that startup? A: We bought a mom-and-pop operation called Jiffy Lube in Ogden, Utah. I moved out to Ogden and started changing oil. I tell students all the time: “You gotta learn how to change oil—you have to understand your business.” I wrote the operations manual, which was critical in allowing us to replicate the model. Q: What did you learn from that? A: It doesn’t matter how big your company is, you work your rear end off. It is a false assumption that a smaller business is less risky than a larger one because it is more controllable. You end up having gaps because there’s not enough scale and critical mass to have a team. Teams do better than individuals. Q: Jiffy Lube ran into problems. Why? A: We were doing so well, we started having
