LeeC Parts

Guys, we are still on the road up to Mic T I wanted to make its own separate video because I have a feeling it's gonna go old for a little bit. I really don't wanna make that original video super long and then not get to anybody else's questions until way later. One of the questions I get asked often is how did I start t How did it originate? Where was the idea from? How did it get to where it is today? I've told bits and pieces of it. I've never told the full story. Today, that changes. I'm 18 years old, fresh out of I worked all your typical jobs, stored in Waiting tables, changing oil, working at a body shop, all that usual stuff. There's no good way to put t I sucked at working for other people. I was a terrible employee. I wasn't passionate about what I was doing, obviously, but I the minute I got my license and got a car, I was done paying attention in school. All I wanted to do was rent your own cars, modify stuff, break stuff, do whatever I could. As I'm sure a lot of It was somet Back then, it was on Craigslist. I was thrilled to go buy a Civic for two grand, sell it for three grand, make $1,000. It got to the point where I started doing a lot of them. And my original idea of working for myself was that I was gonna open a car dealers I was 18 years old, zero business sense. All I knew was that you buy somet So for over a year, I was waiting tables and flipping cars out of my mom's backyard. I wouldn't necessarily say we're having car trouble, but we're having relay issues on the R8. Keeps blowing fan relays for some reason. It's the second time it's happened in the past. Ooh, she quick though, she'still quick. It didn't happen for the first year we had the car. And then now for whatever reason, it has happened twice in As any car enthusiast would, I had an eye out for modified cars for obvious reasons. I had a really good little niche carved out there for a w After a w And then one day on Craigslist, I saw an ad for t At the time, Facebook groups and stuff There weren't 500 people parking out cars I distinctly remember telling people there was no chance. I was selling used car parts for a living. I had dreams of having a car dealership with Lambos and at this point, But I just know that it was a lot. My eyes were open and I was hunting down more red cars. The problem was, I once again did it in my backyard. There was no space. It was really difficult to do. I didn't have the right tools. I didn't have the right equipment. Not to mention getting that t I had to call some donation place. It was just a struggle. Over the next year or so, I parked out a car here and there when I could find them. Obviously, I had no access to auctions, anything In the meantime, I kept flipping cars and working whatever I needed to do to get by. Fast forward all the way to about the age of 21. It was time to buy my first house. At that point, my life was cars. The only requirement I had for how good the neighborhood was, I didn't care how junky the house was. I need a garage. And it turns out I found the absolute perfect house. The area, it absolutely sucked. I hated where I lived, but more importantly, I had a three car garage be It used to be somebody's little workshop. I was thrilled. I never had my own garage before. I was lucky enough to find a garage about a year before, but it was only one bay and flooded all the time. I did manage to build a pretty cool super in there, however. At there is no fence, not I know what I'm about to do in that backyard. I know the cars I'm gonna keep there. I knew before I could really do anyt So I spent every bit of money that I had left having a company put up t And w I finally felt safe to have cars outside, w I still didn't have auction access at that point. So I was limited to what I could find on Craigslist, Facebook, wherever. I'm sure a lot of You get there first, you get to buy it pretty much. So I was pretty much in go mode all the time. At that point, I had a truck and a trailer. I left it hooked up. If I found somet It led to me getting some really, really good deals on stuff. I took apart some incredibly unique cars in my backyard of t Supra's, Vipers, RX7s, everyt At that time, my bread and butter was kinda WX'ing on STIs. That's where I got my startin' cars. They were great money back then before they were all destroyed. There's definitely a large part of the mid-Atlantic car community that has been to my old house in Essex, Maryland to buy parts. If one of People would show up in their pride and joy. They'really nice cars to this terrible area and be I genuinely had people that were scared to come get their parts. But I had to do what I had to do. I had to work with what I had available to me. I never knew when the police were gonna show up, when the zoning board or whoever would say, hey, we realize what you're doing in your backyard. You can't do t Stop, and then I was gonna have to figure out what I was gonna do at that point. This was my full-time job, I never knew when I was essentially gonna get shut down. Fortunately, being as respectful as possible of my neighbors, getting lucky with who my neighbors were, even though we didn'talk, there was no bad blood there as far as I know. And generally just trying to keep a low profile, it worked out really good. Never had any trouble whatsoever. There's way too many Steelers fans up here. My one huge regret of that period of time is I took barely any pictures. As I said, I wanted to keep a low profile. I was terrified. Also, my garage, it was easily identifiable. The last t And Also, I was operating a junkyard out of a residential house, and I was not in the country. I was five minutes outside of Baltimore and really tightly packed together houses. Looking back on it, how I got away with it, I don't know, but it got me over until I was ready to get my first shop. My garage, my basement, it was full of parts. It was a mess. There was quite literally no room to walk. I was at my max. At that point, it was time to get a shop. When I was doing all the paperwork, when I was registering the business, it wasn't anyt At that point, I was only doing it to stay legal. I didn't know if it was ever gonna turn into So I thought, why do I need to call up some business name? My name on the Subaru Forms was Lisi, so I'm I'll just put parts after it. It's because I'm selling parts. I'll make that my email address nice and simple. I'll figure out a business name later. The intention was definitely not to have that be the name of a business of t It would have been a great idea to change it at some point because people call us lek parts, lice parts, li auto parts, li car parts. They terrible business name, word of advice to any of Because after a w So at t It's like 2000 square feet or so, it's an absolute d It's a huge d I have 2000 feet of indoor space that I can do whatever I want in, I had a buddy come work with me. We started shredding a ton of cars. Now because of the laws in Maryland, I still couldn'technically be a salvage yard. So I did a little bit of car work. We sold some new parts so I could justifiably not just a salvage yard. Fortunately, because were good neighbors, because we didn't break any laws, because we kept cool and were respectful of our surroundings, generally, there were a burnout or two, but I didn't even have a sign on the door. When people would come to pick up parts, they would always get lost, but once again, I didn't want to attract unnecessary attention in what was still a pretty terrible area. So we've made it t We're parting out three, four, five cars a month, w That was the time I got auction access as well because I had a business address. I started buying on co-part. The first car I ever bought on co-part in Nissan 370Z. It was the first Nissan I parted out. It was pretty cool experience. The first day I had auction access, I absolutely had to buy somet Turns out it was a 370Z. I completely forget how the car went financially, but I was just thrilled to be able to buy Another year, year and a half go by, we're doing all right, so I take over the unit next door to me. Now we have two of them. One side we're working on, one side we're doing storage on. And when I say storage, I mean I have stuff stacked, thrown everywhere up on pallet racking. I was the only person that could decipher that. To anybody else that came in there, it was absolute madness. Now that I'm a couple of years into owning a real business, I've learned what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. I definitely had an eye for a deal. I was good at finding stuff to make money on, period. I was pretty good with whole line representation, though I couldn't devote nearly enough time to it because I was doing everyt At that point, I knew I wanted to get into a bigger location and be a legitimate salvage yard. I knew it was what I was gonna end up doing because I was paying my bills, I was making a decent living. For you guys that have been watching me on YouTube for any bit of time, If I'm doing somet I wanna have the biggest business, I wanna have the best salvage yard, I wanna do the best cars, the best parts, everyt As the lease ran out at that point, I had known Austin and Alex for maybe five years or so. They had opened a place called ESH, a poultry in Forest It was 20 minutes up the road and they were really good at it. They had both been in that industry to another shop up there and decided to go out on their own. Through that, we had formed a business relations They will buy cores off me to wrap, sell, do whatever with. They produced some pretty cool RX7 parts. I would buy them from them. I would sell them online. They weren't necessarily wanting to handle that type of stuff where I was already set up to s If I needed any upholstery work on any of my cars, I would send it up there to them. Once in a w Alex was really big in the Evo's. He bought a lot of those, the Flip. Austin was really big in the RX7's. I was really big in the RX7's. So once in a w Sometimes they'd get it, sometimes I'd get it. Sometimes I'd just go in and offer a little more money and then maybe bid them up a little bit. You gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe one day when we're all together, we'll tell some of those stories because they're pretty Put it down in the comments if you wanna have them do a video about the So eventually, after a couple months of going back and forth and kind of just talking about the idea in a more theoretical sense, they decided to go ahead and shut down the business. Austin and Alex decided to come over and join me in the world of salvage. I ended up making them partners. I gave them a little bit of the business. It worked for everybody. By t One of those t Fortunately, Austin is very good at physical organization. He was able to shape up the warehouse and he is pretty much solely responsible for the way it looks today. And that's one of our defining features. I could certainly not do it justice if I tried to tell the story of what I'm sure he felt walking into the system that I had going on. At some point, we'll have to have Now, Alex, he came in and started taking apart cars. Thus, he dubbed You did hear that correctly. Big Daddy Tech. There are all kinds of r I mean, I guess we're never really gonna know, but I still t Either way, we got the job location somewhat straightened up. I really didn't want to put any more time and effort to there because all eyes were looking for the next opportunity. I really wanted to keep the business around the greater Baltimore area. Maybe down towards DC, I didn't want to be out of the way. I was used to living near the city. It's what I enjoyed. Unfortunately, at that time in Joplin, I was still not operating as a salvage yard technically. And to move any further in the career, I needed to get that license. That would prove incredibly challenging to get. Every county in Maryland that had existing salvage yard zoning code, they must have been written in They're super outdated. They're tailored towards your typical mud pit junk yard. Obviously, we had no intention to be that n Despite my best efforts, I could not get my case heard by any of the major counties. It just wasn't happening probably because I didn't have enough money or the right connections. So that's when I started looking for alternatives. I was able to find a county relatively close for those of you familiar with Maryland, it's Queen Anne's County, just across the Bay Bridge from Annapolis. And turns out they had no existing regulations for a salvage yard. Any potential salvage yard in Queen Anne's County would have to go in front of the zoning board. And I knew that's what I needed. Now I had absolutely no idea if they were gonna laugh me out of the building or be open to it. One of the major problems is that I needed to have a lease on a building before I could even get in front of them. Sorry, doll's up here about to get smoked by a Mustang. Well, I'm sure you can see the issue there. If I sign a lease on a building and then they tell me no, I'm stuck in a lease and I'm pretty much s At that point, the business is gonna be in really bad shape. I'm sure you can imagine how hard it was to try to convince a landlord who has other people interested in t And hey, I might not be able to keep up my end of the deal. We locked out with a really good landlord and were able to essentially put a termination clause in it. It was somet Did I have $100,000 to pay that if we didn't get the license? Nope, I had no other choice. I had to risk it. I signed the lease and went in front of the zoning board. W However, that was just the first hurdle. Next up, the state. With the zoning paperwork in hand, were able to submit it all to the state. That means that at some point, somebody from the state was gonna come out and inspect our location and let us know if were gonna be allowed to have a salvage yard. That took forever. I had a pretty good feeling about it. When the guy came down to look at it, he seemed to kind of understand what were doing. He said, hey, if the county's cool with it, you're certainly gonna be a lot cleaner than any of the other junkyards around. If it works with your lease and your landlord, I don'the word t He could only give a recommendation. He could not say yes, what were the other. So that's when he sent It was an incredibly stressful time, as I'm sure And then one day just before our lease expired in Jampa, we got that phone call. Hey, t And at that point, all at the same time, a weight was lifted off our shoulders and another massive one had thrown on it. Our future was finally certain, but now it's time to execute. We have to move a ridiculous amount of stuff down from the old location an hour and a half away to the new location. That was a grueling task. Pretty much every single day we'd go to the shop, we'do some s It took us about a month, if I recall, to get fully moved and that brings us to about four years ago. And since then, we've just grown. We've grown in our space, we've taken over more space in our actual building. It's been relatively straightforward. There's been very busy times, such as 2020. There's been other times that have seemed to kind of drag on a little bit, but for the most part, the unknowns, the legal challenges, all that stuff was in the past. Now we could finally focus on growing the business how we wanted to. And that's what we've done ever since. It's definitely been a marathon, not a race. We've slowly added to our staff over time. We have a great group of guys and that really brings us to what you see today. At the salvage industry has changed so much over the past five years. Most of those changes aren't necessarily good. We've definitely discussed the possibility of having a second location, used in Phoenix, Colorado, somet But at t So I can't say with certainty what's next, but I'm definitely excited to find out. I hope I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments. If there's anyt