ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This is our first official podcast show by the school founders Joshua Gray and William Agnew. Josh and Will reintroduce themselves after being on an educational hiatus for the past 2 years while they built a market leading Mobility Reverse Logistics company.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:
How they each got involved in Cell Phone Repair, why they chose the model and where they see the industry going.
AskWill+Josh 001 EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Will: All right, all right, all right, all right, guys welcome to the show. This is our first episode of the Ask Will and Josh Show. My name is William Agnew, I’ve got my co-pilot over here Mr. Joshua Gray.
Josh: What’s going on guys?
Will: What’s going on guys? I’m a little excited about this Josh.
Josh: Me too. It’s been a long time in the making man.
Will: It has been.
Josh: It has been a couple of years since we’ve been off. For a while we were doing webinars every month.
Will: Man, we were putting out some content.
Josh: We were putting out a lot of content back then.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: We kind of removed ourselves, to kind of reengaged and deeper engaged into the business of what we actually do.
Will: Actually, we like to say we went going back to school.
Josh: Yes, exactly, that’s exactly what we did. We went back, started some new businesses, learned this industry a little bit deeper and that will be in number four, and now we’re on our journey to reeducate and help you guys learn how to fish better than we did before.
Will: Yeah, it feels like we’re getting back in front of the classroom.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: You know what I mean?
Josh: Actually, that is, that’s the truth man, because we’ve been so far removed now, you know.
Will: Yes.
Josh: With the blessings of what we’ve been able to be at and at the business kind of runs without us having to be a part of day in and day out..
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: For better or for worse, some things, you know.
Will: Well, there are some things you can’t control, right?
Josh: Some things we can’t control yeah, but we’ll be improving some things as well.
Will: For sure, for sure.
Josh: But you know it’s a big focus now, it does feel good to be back.
Will: It does feel good to be back, and it feels good to be talking to you guys again. Actually, we always say this like Josh and I have been knowing each other for quite some time. We’ve actually been in business together for almost 10 years now.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: And we’ve been having basically a 10 year conversation up until this point, and basically the way I look at it and I know Josh kind of feels this way too is like the only difference between what we’re doing now that you guys see us doing right here, right now is we’re having the conversation with you guys.
Josh: Right.
Will: We’re bringing you guys into the fold, into our day to day conversations pretty much.
Josh: Right
Will: Right? And so, what we talk about, I mean we have some debates, we have some agreements, we have some
Josh: Frustrations
Will: We have some frustrations. I mean we get it in and this is every day.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: This is every day. Yeah.
Josh: Literally it’s a roller coaster daily, literally.
Will: It is. It is.
Josh: Celebrations to frustrations to everything in between.
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: And again we said like we’re going back to school, but we feel like I think what Josh and I realize and if most of you guys know our story, I mean some of you guys may know our story, I mean if you don’t, we’ll get into that in a little bit later, but it’s been a journey for us, and in this journey we literally took some time off to really understand kind of what we said before to get a better understanding of what we did not understand.
Josh: Right.
Will: And we were at this point than we thought we knew more than we really knew.
Josh: Right.
Will: Because it was all, the thing about this mobility industry is it is huge.
Josh: It is multi-faceted.
Will: I mean it’s huge.
Josh: There is a lot of size to this thing, and I think we have known a lot, but we just knew one side of it.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Right, we didn’t know the other sides that we just embarked on and learned over the last several years.
Will: Exactly, and we see a lot of people like that too.
Josh: Right.
Will: Actually the majority of people we actually meet are specific to one aspect of the industry.
Josh: It’s a niche inside of a niche.
Will: Exactly, exactly, and I can say the thing that we can’t bring to the table now that we do bring to the table that I feel really really good about, is we’ve done this thing from beginning, we started with repair business back in 2008. Where I think, in my opinion I think maybe what, 80%, 90% of people who get into this industry kind of get in through repairs, probably.
Josh: Right, right.
Will: Yeah, yeah.
Josh: Is that you or me?
Will: That’s you or me.
Josh: Oh that’s you.
Will: Oh that’s me. ()
Josh: Yeah, and that’s really what it is. Most people do come into the business through repair, so to kind of back up and let you guys know, so this is our first official episode of the Ask Will and Josh Show.
Will: Yes.
Josh: This show is really going to be for you.
Will: It is. It is.
Josh: So, it’s going to be heavily focused on mobility repairs, cellphone repairs, since this is what we do, that’s what the vehicle we chose, that’s our niche in the industry.
Will: It is.
Josh: But inside of that there are a lot of different things that we talk about, right, things that we’ve learned through the years that make us who we are and help us help you from developing your teams to developing yourself to really understanding entrepreneur, entrepreneurialism, right?
Will: Right, exactly.
Josh: I am a little tongue tied right there.
Will: Yeah, yeah, it’s lost.
Josh: It has been a long week too.
Will: That’s what happens.
Josh: There’s a lot going on.
Will: You got to shake that dusk off Josh.
Josh: Yeah, yeah and exactly and we’re rusty. We’re rusty, but this is what we do day in and day out.
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: So really this is all about sharing that journey with you guys and helping you wherever you might be in your journey.
Will: Absolutely. And I think what we should do from people who don’t know us, so you guys who do know us again we’ve been off the map a little bit, we’re back, right? But for you who don’t know us, for you guys who don’t know us, again we’ve been in this business for 10 years, and what we want to do is just kind of give you guys a little bit of an understanding of why do you need to listen to us, why would you want to listen to us, I mean even if you don’t need to, why would you want to, why do we feel like we should be talking to you guys.
Josh: Right.
Will: And I think it’s important for us to put that out there to help you guys understand like who are these guys and why should I be listening to these guys? And so Josh if you want I’ll just go ahead and give you the mic and let you kind of tell, give your readers digest of your story, how you actually got into this.
Josh: Yeah, yeah. It’s a long story, so if you don’t know me, you might not have heard this before, even if you do maybe you didn’t know all the aspects of it, but I’m going to try and keep it really short and I get a little long winded when I start talking about my past.
Will: It is what it is.
Josh: And I got a lot of years behind me now, so the past is longer, right? There’s a lot more to talk about. But I’ve been a serial entrepreneur for over two decades now.
Will: Right.
Josh: You know from everything from a record company to real estate to I mean I started literally off, when I was a teenager I started cutting grass back in Hawaii and did that.
Will: Yeah, for sure.
Josh: And had helped some of my, my friends at the time helped me with the grass business, so I was just talking to my wife about that the other night, kind of how I got started in this journey and it went back as early as then. Went into the corporate world for a little bit which actually was a blessing. I didn’t really know I did the thing that they always say to do is go to school, get a good job and all of that, but it just never felt right, and I don’t know why, but it just never felt like it was the right fit for me. But I did learn a lot actually working for a fortune 500 company and really seeing what it is to have a powerful corporate culture and to be a part of a team from basically at the engineering level all the way up into more of a management level.
So it taught me a lot about teams and development and running efficient companies, so anyways. Through all of that I ended up landing in cellphone repair back in around 2008 or so, ended up because it was just a hard time in my life back then.
Will: Right.
Josh: I was doing real estate for many many years up to that point, and the way I was doing real estate is I was using, I did use OPM, other’s people money, but a lot of back then I was fortunate enough to be able to use my money in some deals as well.
Will: Right.
Josh: So I was doing that especially because I was getting pretty leveraged into a lot of different deals, I was buying single family properties, fixing them up, keeping them as rentals, fixing them up, turning around and selling them just depending on what it was for each deal. Got to a place where I just couldn’t do it not just because of what was going on in the market, but also because in my personal life. My wife had decided that she wanted to go a different direction at that time, and man it was just a, it was a big blow financially, a big blow emotionally, combined that with everything that was going in the market, it was a really a tough time in my life.
Will: Right.
Josh: And then I was looking for a new path, I kind of stumbled into a buddy of mine, Orio.
Will: Shout out to Oreo.
Josh: Shout out to Oreo.
Will: Shout out to Oreo, I hope he’s listening.
Josh: He put me on my path, he was a college buddy of mine.
Will: This guy owes you some money Oreo.
Josh: I don’t know, but let’s not go that far.
Will: I’ll let him.
Josh: Let’s not go that far.
Josh: To this day actually you met Oreo to this day still do some things together.
Will: Right.
Josh: Nothing but love for my dude man, we’ve known each other for many decades, but had lost touch there for a while because I moved to Arizona, he had stayed in Dallas, right.
Will: Right.
Josh: And after I graduated college we stayed in touch, but I didn’t get to see him that often. Well, I decided to come take a trip to clear my mind, so I came back to Dallas for like a month and a half. Just to hang out with family, and just kind of figure out where I was going, went and met up with Orio to talk about a deal he was trying to bring me in on which was reggae tone music and that’s his passion.
Will: Yes.
Josh: Right? And what he loves.
Will: Yes.
Josh: And he knew that I had a little capital to work with and he was trying to put a team together to be able to do something. It was really exciting now looking back on it actually it was a really exciting path that we could went down together as well. I just don’t speak Spanish, so I don’t really know the music that well.
Will: Right.
Josh: I didn’t understand it, right?
Will: Right.
Josh: I knew it sounded good.
Will: You felt it.
Josh: I felt it.
Will: Yeah, yeah.
Josh: But it all kind of started to feel the same and I don’t understand the market. So, I don’t feel comfortable with it.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: But the funny thing is I remember we were sitting around actually one night we got some Wingstop, lemon peppered wings, right from Wingstop.
Will: Oh my God.
Josh: We were sitting there eating this lemon peppered wing, right, and he had brought over one of his artists that was on his label at the time and we were just sitting around talking and figuring things out, and I just happened to look back in the corner and there was a stack of phones.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: And I am saying what are you doing with all of these phones? It was odd because it just didn’t fit in to anything else that he had in his house. literally it was a big like a double stack all the way to the ceiling of phones.
Will: I mean that’s hard to miss.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: A big stack of phones.
Josh: It really stood out, right?
Will: Yeah.
Josh: To the point to where I interrupted our conversation, I was like what are you doing with all of these phones?
Will: And this is back in, this is back in?
Josh: 2008.
Will: 2008.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: So that was a long time ago.
Will: The phone was hot then? It was like iPhone?
Josh: iPhones and Blackberries, man.
Will: iPhones and Blackberries?
Josh: A lot of Blackberries and stuff, so.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: He got to kind of telling me how he was doing this on the side.
Will: Right.
Josh: His passion was this music thing.
Will: Sure.
Josh: But he was doing this on the side to raise capital to be able to do this, right? So, as he was explaining it to me, I was like oh man, there might be something there.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: I couldn’t sleep that night. I got home.
Will: That was your moment, that was your moment.
Josh: Yeah. I got home and I’m like man, there is something to this.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Right and I couldn’t put my finger on it. So I started doing some research and literally within a week I was in the business man, I was fully in, because it just made sense to me and it fit everything that I was looking for. I could get in with not having to risk a whole lot of capital back then.
Will: Yeah, I was just about to ask you. What are the things that made you, so you slept on it?
Josh: Yeah.
Will: Obvious you slept on it, but what is that thing that spoke to you that said this is exactly why this opportunity is great for me?
Josh: Straight away, so first thing I went out and I started doing research on suppliers, right? What does it look like, how easy is to get parts and what are the profit margins really look like.
Will: Right.
Josh: And I was fortunate enough that I had a friend that was in the business, so he was schooling me on to where to go to get parts back then, right where he was buying parts.
Will: Right.
Josh: So I just did the math.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Right? I’m like okay, how much are you charging on Craigslist, he’s charging 100 bucks to fix a phone.
Will: Right.
Josh: Right? And I would do the math, oh you’re getting the part for 25, 30 bucks.
Will: Right.
Josh: Man, it’s 20, 30 minutes worth of work, I’m like this ain’t bad and for me I wasn’t looking at it from a perspective of Josh is going to do the repairs.
Will: Right.
Josh: I’m looking at it from a perspective of
Will: Scalability.
Josh: Yeah, scalability?
Will: For sure.
Josh: part two was yes, the margins look healthy, let me look at the competition.
Will: Right.
Josh: Like it was non-existent.
Will: Yes.
Josh: There was really nobody there. What’s scary looking back because it could have been that there was no demand for this, right?
Will: Right.
Josh: But just what I had seen with my own eyes made sense, right?
Will: Yes.
Josh: And the fact that it was actually it was a market of place for you to get parts.
Will: Well, this guy, your friend, right?
Josh: Yeah. He makes good money doing it man.
Will: He had phones to the ceiling, so you knew it
Josh: He was caught, he was behind like he couldn’t catch up, that’s how big the demand was.
Will: Right.
Josh: He said literally he was getting 20, 30 calls a day.
Will: Jesus.
Josh: Off Craigslist man.
Will: Yeah, yeah.
Josh: So it just made sense that’s why I was doing research, right?
Will: Yeah, off Craigslist.
Josh: So that was part two of what it was for me, because I wanted not only something that it looked like it had good margin, it was a growing industry, right?
Will: Yeah.
Josh: The smartphones really just started to come in, back then I () palm trio bro to tell you how old this was.
Will: How old, it was the flip phone era, right?
Josh: It was still flip phones back then. The razor was hot.
Will: The razor was hot, right?
Josh: Right. The razor was hot.
Will: I don’t know if you guys remember the razor.
Josh: Yeah, man, the V3 Razor.
Will: Oh my God, it was sexy. That was a sexy phone back in the day. Everybody wanted that phone.
Josh: But the smartphones were really just starting to take off, and I had the palm because I was doing stuff with my real estate and it made sense because I could access lockboxes, I could do a lot of cool things.
Will: Yes.
Josh: That you couldn’t do with the razors, right?
Will: Yes.
Josh: But nobody really had adoption of those types of phones back then.
Will: Yes.
Josh: But I can kind of see a trend where there was something that is going to change. I don’t know man, I’ve always kind of fortunate enough to see trends.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: And patterns, and for me it was one of those things where I just seen man like this is going to be a huge industry, it was already existent, but really non-existent from a retail aspect of it.
Will: And your technical background, you had a technical background.
Josh: And it was a perfect fit too, right?
Will: Yeah, made sense.
Josh: Because I understood the technology, right?
Will: Right.
Josh: It wasn’t anything for me to really be able to take these things apart and start to really understand how they operate and it was pretty straight forward.
Will: I mean you worked for fortune 500 technical company.
Josh: () yeah, I mean I’m a field service engineer, so this is like this is nothing to me. I was working on a million dollars’ worth of equipment and running teams.
Will: Exactly.
Josh: This is a 100 dollar handset or whatever it was back then.
Will: Right.
Josh: It’s nothing.
Will: It’s nothing.
Josh: Right?
Will: Nothing but something.
Josh: Right, exactly and I knew it was, but I knew there was something there.
Will: Right.
Josh: So anyways, readers digest version, dove in with both feet, opened a store and I’m like man, I’m going to take over the world, I’m going to build this franchise.
Will: I remember you telling me, I remember you telling me, I remember we took a trip to Vegas and it was me, you and the homeboys.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: And we went to Vegas and I had
Josh: The crew, shout out to the crew too.
Will: Yeah, shout out to the crew, shout out to the fellows back in Phoenix. And I remember me and you knew each other but we didn’t really know each other.
Josh: Yeah, we didn’t spend time like that when we were on this business.
Will: But we were cool. Yeah, yeah, we had close friends, friend’s social friends.
Josh: Yeah, we always got together, always hung out like couple times a month we do all get together and shoot pool
Will: And I remember you telling me very specifically, I still remember it to this day you are like man, I could tell you were excited about it, it was a transition in your life, and I just remember you hey man, I got this opportunity, I’m doing this thing, I’m getting into this, and to me it was so far and even me being, because we worked at the same place, right?
Josh: Right.
Will: Same company, and so the fortune 500 company technology company, and I just saw in you there was a transition and I saw you were very excited about it, but I couldn’t understand it, so I didn’t feel it.
Josh: Right.
Will: I didn’t feel it, I didn’t see it at the time.
Josh: Right.
Will: You know what I mean? Because that thing you got to experience ().
Josh: Yeah, and it was fresh too, because I remember when we took the trip to Vegas together, the store literally had only been open for like 6 to 8 weeks.
Will: Right.
Josh: It really wasn’t open that long yet, but I had already seen literally the day we opened doors, we were profitable from day one.
Will: Right.
Josh: So I had already seen where we were going and I knew like this is going to be some something here.
Will: From day one, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Will: It was like hey, we just got to scale it up. It was all about scalability.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: Because it made sense.
Josh: Right.
Will: It totally made sense. Supply and demand, it just made total sense.
Josh: Right.
Will: And where devices were going with the glass, right?
Josh: Exactly.
Will: That made it even more sense.
Josh: Yeah, back then it was still plastic screens and different things, you know.
Will: It was still plastic screen. But you could see it coming.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: You could see it coming for sure.
Josh: Way ahead man. So, that’s actually how I ended up in this space in the first part, and it’s interesting because I actually to your point and I’ll let your tell your story, but that night I don’t think me and you really started doing business together in mobility, it still was like several months had passed after we hung out in Vegas that weekend, right?
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: It didn’t click with you yet.
Will: Yeah, absolutely. Actually I was still with the company that we both worked for probably another I would say at least maybe 6, 7 months. I mean I was on the down end of it.
Josh: Right.
Will: Down turn of it, and actually you know what, I might be mistaken I think I was done. But what I did do I mean in my story, just to tell you guys a little bit of my story just to kind of jump ahead, I downsized because I did not want to go back to corporate America.
Josh: Right.
Will: So what I did is, I had the option like I’d been working for corporate America, I did really well, I had a little bit of money saved, so what I wanted to do was just take my time and figure out what it was I wanted to do without rushing back into it, right?
Josh: Right.
Will: And so what I did is I very logically and very
Josh: Methodically.
Will: Methodically, I down sized, right, so I could stretch out that money, right?
Josh: Right.
Will: And take my time and so I was out of work for about a year or two, I think looking forward the opportunity that you had already mentioned before but I didn’t know that was the opportunity.
Josh: Right.
Will: And I like to refer to it as my Ace moment, and I kind of tell this story, I told this story to Josh before, but my Ace moment, if any of you guys know the movie, it’s kind of an urban classic, it’s called Paid In Fulll, there was a guy on that show by the name of Ace Boogie. Ace Boogie was a, he was kind of the square guy to the rest of the fellows. The other fellows were like hustlers in the street, they were street hustlers, and Ace Boogie was, he was kind of a straight, his mom raised him right, so he didn’t get into the street, he was kind of that guy. So, he used to work at the laundry, and one day he was doing laundry, he was going to pick laundry up and he ran into this guy who was a drug dealer basically and he was to connect, his name was Lulu, and anyway he had gotten Lulu’s clothes, taken them back to the laundry and he found a big rock of cocaine, he knew what it was because he was from the hood, right?
Josh: Right.
Will: But he didn’t know drugs, but he knew what it was.
Josh: He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it.
Will: Yeah, he didn’t do it.
Josh: But he knew about it.
Will: But he knew about it and so he took it back to Lulu being the honorable guy he is, he was like hey you left something, and Lulu said hey, it’s not mine, it’s yours, as a matter of fact go tell your friends about it. So, it was neither there Ace, he took it back and he put it in his pocket, he kind of sat on it for a couple of days he thought about it, again he used to see the guys hustling in the street, so he wanted the cause, he wanted to know the stops, the firs all of those things, but he really didn’t understand the hustle, he didn’t have the hustle in him at that point.
And then what happened was he was going up to his building, he was going to his building, he was going up to his apartment and one of the guys who used to buy from one of the dealers in his apartment asked him if he had some work, and the guy he had normally bought from had been arrested, so Ace kind of thought about this thing, and he was like well I got some drugs in my pocket let me see how this works out. So he literally gave the guy the crack, cocaine.
Josh: Right.
Will: Whatever it was, the cocaine, and it was at that moment he gave him the whole thing and he gave him way too much, and as a matter of fact he gave him way too much, but it wasn’t even about that. The parallel is and why I call it my Ace moment is because that is the exact moment when Ace realized there was an addiction to that product.
Josh: Right.
Will: Right? That people had an addiction to that product.
Josh: Right.
Will: And there was opportunity to capitalize on that addiction.
Josh: Right.
Will: Now, I’m not a fan of drug dealing. I just use this story to make a point, because it’s almost parallel to exactly what happened to me when I walked into your store that day.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: Right? Because Me and Josh like we said we have met before, he had mentioned that he was doing this and about 8 months later I had introduced him to a guy who wanted to meet him because he wanted to do some business with him, and I said I’ll take you to see Josh, I know this guy that owns a cellphone repair store, and so I took him in and when I went in it just so happens that that day this lady walked in while I was waiting, we waited about 40 minutes, because it was busy that day, and this lady walked in and she literally said this, this was my Ace moment, this was my Ace moment, she said I am so glad you guys are here. I broke my phone three times this week and you guys fixed it every time.
And it was at that moment where I had my Ace moment when I realized there’s an addiction to this thing. This lady was happy to be paying to get her phone fixed.
Josh: Right.
Will: She was happy, she was happy that she said it, I’m glad you guys are here, I’ve broken my phone three times and you guys fixed it every time. And it was then I went oh, my goodness, there is something here.
Josh: Well, part of two of that is what I always remember too.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Because that day I couldn’t get to you, we’re supposed to meet at like I think you and George showed up around like noon.
Will: Yes.
Josh: 12 to 12:30 and the store opened at 10.
Will: Yes.
Josh: But a lot of times the first couple of hours were just to allow the technicians to kind of get caught up on work from the day before, right?
Will: Right, yeah.
Josh: For whatever it was, parts coming in or whatever. And we didn’t usually start getting busy until around lunch time.
Will: Right.
Josh: And it just so happened you came in right at surge period, and I remember you telling a story how you were sitting on couch and I had you on ice, not purposely it’s because we were busy, right?
Will: You’re busy, yeah. You didn’t have a time.
Josh: So I couldn’t get to you quite yet.
Will: Yeah, for sure.
Josh: So I had you on ice for like 40 minutes.
Will: It was a business meeting anyway, so you had to have time to have to take ().
Josh: Right, to do the take away and keep the focus, right?
Will: Yeah, for sure.
Josh: And my partner I think who had stepped out or something like that at the time. So anyways, but I had you sitting there for like 40 minutes until I could get to you, and I remember you saying like the door was swinging and we had that chime on the door that would go ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: And then you heard ging dong changing to chaching, chaching. And the whole purpose of the meeting in your mind it shifted from that point. So we went from that activation () that you guys were talking about, right?
Will: Absolutely, absolutely.
Josh: And it ended up turning into, it was like I think you came back like a couple of days later. You went and sat on it, you hit me up and you showed back up, we got lunch and we started putting something together.
Will: And you guys got to understand I was at this point in my life where I was searching, like I didn’t want to go back to corporate America, I was making close to six figures a year, I had a graduate degree, a master’s degree, I thought I had the American dream. And a lot of people and some of you guys listening might feel that way too like man, I thought this is what I wanted, but when I got there I realized it didn’t fulfill me.
Josh: Right.
Will: And that’s what it was, so I was taking time off and I was really searching for what I wanted to do, and I literally was working at Target. Guys, I was working at Target on the late night stacking boxes with a master’s degree and when I went into apply for that job, people were looking at me like I was actually crazy.
Josh: Overqualified.
Will: Yeah, what in the head, what is going on with you? I mean is that hard, is times that hard. I was like no, I just don’t want to commit to something that I don’t want to do until I understand exactly what it is that I want to do.
Josh: Right.
Will: And so this thing was like, like if it could fall in my lap like it was like it fell, right, like you talk about things falling in your lap or things being the perfect timing for you, right? And I do believe that a lot of everything is like timing, right? Someone of you guys might be hearing what we’re talking about right now and it might be the perfect time for you to hear this message.
Josh: Right.
Will: You know what I mean?
Josh: Right.
Will: Things happen like that, for real.
Josh: That’s true man.
Will: And so that happens for me, and so the reader’s digest of that is 10 years later, right, we’ve done quite a bit of stuff and I think it’s a great transition to talk about what we have accomplished.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: So that’s all we’ve accomplished?
Josh: And to kind of back it up, right, so, if you’ve known us for a while you know us probably through Cellular Repair School.
Will: Right.
Josh: Right? So, Cellular Repair School was founded several years after actually the retail stores were running, right? And it was because there was a gap in the marketplace, right? And what I had known is I wanted to franchise, in my mind one of the most important things to a franchise is your ability to develop your people and give support, right?
Will: ().
Josh: It was completely lacking in the industry, it was completely lacking, it was gone.
Will: Yes.
Josh: So I said hey, let’s start a school. It just so happened William is like a dean, like literally he was teaching classes.
Will: Right.
Josh: And in fact as you were doing that for a while.
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: You were teaching classes at ITT. So you had a lot of experience as an instructor, right? And brought you in and taught you the mobility side of stuff, I mean we jumped off and decided to offer classes to the public while we were honing, the whole purpose was actually to hone-in how to train our own franchisees in the franchise that we are going to develop.
Will: Exactly.
Josh: Completely fell in love with the teaching and decided that we fell out of love with franchising.
Will: Yes.
Josh: In this industry I just don’t, for me personally I didn’t feel that it was necessary.
Will: Right.
Josh: I’m not hating on any franchises that are out there, there are some good ones, but a lot of them are kind of unnecessary, right?
Will: Right.
Josh: And for me that wasn’t the route that I wanted to go, we wanted to be more on to teach a man to fish as opposed to give a man a fish.
Will: For sure, no regrets by the way, no regrets.
Josh: Zero regrets on that.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: And that’s what we did. We put more of a focus on the education through Cellular Repair School and built the first online training platform for cellphone repairs, it has been a fun journey since then.
Will: Man, I’m telling you like you said, I agree with you 100%, no regrets. I actually think that we would have limited ourselves as far as development, as far as what we wanted to accomplish and we’ll get to that next the why we do it, it’s a great Segway to why we do it.
Josh: Right.
Will: But I think based on why we do what we do and what we’re trying to bring to you guys right now and bring to this industry and the mission and the purpose and all of those things we have, it was the perfect decision for us to make to get into the education part, because one thing your going to hear me and Josh talk about consistently over and over and over and over is the importance of understanding people. It’s the importance of people development, it’s the importance of self-awareness, it’s the importance of everything that has to do with communicating, right, and finding value in people. And I think that’s the thing that has gotten us the most success especially with the education piece, right?
Josh: For sure.
Will: It literally was like it prepared us, right, to get to where we are today and be able to do what we do today which is offer, right, this offering of giving back to this industry, right?
Josh: Right, right. And again honestly at the end of the day that’s what we’re hoping to accomplish with the show. You’re going to see it’s an informal environment for us, right?
Will: For sure.
Josh: This is something that we’re doing really just to kind of give back and educate and help people on your journeys no matter where you are in your journey
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Whether you haven’t decided to take the leap into this business or any business for a matter of fact.
Will: Right.
Josh: Or if you are already in this business, we’re going to really kind of shed light on some of the dark areas of this business to help you be more successful.
Will: Exactly.
Josh: Because now we’ve been down the rabbit hole guys, that’s where we’ve been for the last two and a half years. From spending a lot of time in China, to dealing with the supply chain, to working with the tier one carriers, we do work for the carriers today.
Will: Yes.
Josh: In all sorts of different levels and capacities, so I can truly say now that I feel like we actually know all aspects of this business compared to where we used to be, where it was just the retail side.
Will: Right.
Josh: Now we know the wholesale, the retail, the parts supply chain.
Will: Right.
Josh: The carrier side, the insurance game.
Will: Yes.
Josh: Literally the whole from the rural to the ().
Will: And there is so much opportunity
Josh: Yeah.
Will: There is so much opportunity and that’s one thing we often see, is we often see people who get caught up in just one aspect and not really open to, even not open or don’t fully understand or are aware of all the possibilities that this industry holds that can be unlocked and you can benefit from.
Josh: That’s right.
Will: And so we wanted to bring that awareness to you guys also, because we want you to be able to capitalize in the right way. We don’t want anyone to (), the thing about this industry is it’s so mega huge, it’s so, and we’re just talking, we’re not talking just national, we’re talking international.
Josh: Internationally. Internationally, yeah.
Will: This is a world demand and that’s why I say like
Josh: And in developing countries like man, it’s amazing to see some of the things we see in third world countries.
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: Right now on the repair fronts and where technology is going for those guys, it’s changing their lives.
Will: It is.
Josh: It’s changing lives.
Will: It is, it is and it’s a lot of opportunity guys, a lot of opportunity, we continue to see it, we’ve seen it for the past 10 years, we continue to see it, and I think that’s a great Segway into why we do it. What is our purpose? What is our mission? What do we’re trying to bring to this industry by doing this Josh? What are we trying to, what is our, what is the thing we want people to jump on board with us and kind of feel where we are coming from and where we’re going?
Josh: I think and actually it’s kind of multi-tiered. There are a lot of different things, right, especially we want to use this vehicle that we’re creating now, the podcast and the videos. We used to do this a lot actually several years ago. We used to do, we were the only ones, right?
Will: Yes.
Josh: That were doing videos on YouTube and webinars, we used to do live webinars every month.
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: Where we did free education every month.
Will: Yes.
Josh: To whoever wanted to come and attend and we had hundreds of people, 700, 800 people, I think the very last webinar we had, we had well over a thousand live on that webinar.
Will: Yeah, for sure. We used to do it.
Josh: And we’d been out of the game for two and a half years, because we went back to school, right?
Will: Yes.
Josh: We’ve been building basically the largest cellphone screen refurbishing company in the US, doing it specifically for the carriers and large insurance companies, and it has been a fun journey on the last couple of years really learning this business. So now the goal is, is to really help standardize things. Man, you know like the problem that I’ve seen and we’ve always seen this, but I see it so differently now and you know this better than anybody.
Will: Right.
Josh: Is there are a lot of shady things that happen in this business. It’s still a gray market, which is why I think it’s funny that when you talk about the Ace moment, right?
Will: Right.
Josh: Because there’s parallels that run with the drug game from what I see what happens in this business.
Will: For sure.
Josh: At the end of the day, I don’t condone drugs or anything like that.
Will: But the parallel is?
Josh: It’s a business man.
Will: It’s a product, right?
Josh: It’s a business, legal or illegal, whatever it is a business.
Will: Yes, yes, yeah.
Josh: You have entrepreneurs and some real entrepreneurs that do that.
Will: They are supply and demand.
Josh: Exactly. And the demand for the product and the way things operate there actually could be a lot of parallels and in this space it’s still so wild west that a lot of real shady things happen.
Will: Yes.
Josh: And a lot of people get taken advantage of, there’s a lot of people who get stolen from and
Will: Which is what we hate to see.
Josh: Yeah, it’s really bad man. I see people struggling, putting their life savings and blood, sweat and tears in this businesses and they’re failing and they don’t even know why.
Will: Yeah, a lot of it is ignorance. A lot of it is that they are not aware.
Josh: They don’t know what they don’t know
Will: Yeah, they just don’t know.
Josh: Right?
Will: Yeah.
Josh: And you think that it is the way it was. A perfect example and not to get too deep on this, right? So, where I want to use this channel for though is is really to shed light and to educate you guys, so you can ask us questions and we can be accessible because we’ve been a little unaccessible over the last several years, but I want to make sure that we’re here to share our knowledge with you to help you wherever you are. Again, one of the things that I’ve seen time and time again though is, even for us back when we were doing retail stores, is we thought that oh we’re buying OEM parts and this is the part, we didn’t even know what we were getting, right?
Will: Right.
Josh: And we’re literally pawning junk onto our customers thinking that it’s good quality.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Not knowing, right?
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Because the game is so shady that people sell you things that are not what they seem.
Will: Yes.
Josh: Right? And until you know, you don’t know.
Will: You don’t know.
Josh: Right?
Will: So until you know, you think it is.
Josh: Right.
Will: Right?
Josh: You don’t know any different.
Will: We used to go, I mean and this was our ignorance which is the reason why we actually felt the need to go back to school in a sense, is because we and I think everybody starts here, it’s the wisdom of experience, right? Because a lot of times you don’t know until you, Josh can you hit that okay for real quick? A lot of times you don’t know until you do know, right? And that is time and experience, that’s the only thing that is going to give you that.
So, it goes back to what I was saying before about going down the education route. With going down to education row really helped us understand is that we didn’t know some of the things that we needed to know.
Josh: Right.
Will: Right? And so it forced us, it literally forced us to take the time, right? To say hold it Nelly, hold up, hold up, hold up, let’s not spread and let’s not be a part of the problem, let’s be a part of the solution.
Josh: Right.
Will: Let’s go figure it out.
Josh: And create a real solution.
Will: A real solution. Let’s understand it, let’s got figure it out, let’s go to China, right? Let’s go build some businesses and search some higher tier customers and understand supply chain and understand part validation and understand all of these things.
Josh: Right.
Will: Right? That we’re going to be talking about, and that you guys need to know that’s going to change grading, that’s going to change your perspective not only that, change your business and change this industry for the better, right?
Josh: That’s right.
Will: So I think that sums up in a nutshell why we are doing this, because we’ve seen the dark side.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: It’s like we’ve seen the dark side, we’ve seen the mountain top, right?
Josh: Right.
Will: And we understand that the mountain top is a lot better for everybody and we understand that this industry is so diverse and so multi-faceted, there is so much opportunity for everybody to participate and everybody to do really well without, and what happens, I really want to say this, and what happens when it’s not done properly, it’s not done, it’s just like any other industry it puts a, when a customer is the end customer, the end user is either taking advantage of or lied to or is not happy for reasons beyond their control, it puts a black eye on the entire industry.
Josh: That’s right.
Will: The entire industry.
Josh: That’s right.
Will: And that’s what we don’t, we’ve been in this thing too long, we have too much passion for it.
Josh: I see it happening, I’ve said, over the last several years too I see it happening where more and more retail operators are really struggling man. Guys are going out of business right now, right? With the introduction of the copy screens.
Will: Yes.
Josh: And lack of quality control and people again not knowing what they are buying, it’s literally like overdosing on cut drugs man, you know what I mean?
Will: Right.
Josh: Because these guys are taking this stuff not knowing and they’re going OD and their businesses are dying literally.
Will: Yes.
Josh: So for us we want to help change that.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: Right? There are just so many things that are basic that can be done smarter and better with the right information, with the right knowledge.
Will: Yes, for sure. So, I think episode 1.
Josh: Episode 1, yeah, again, what was our point? Really just to reintroduce you guys to us. If you haven’t known us, if you do definitely go to cellularrepairschool.com, check out some of our old videos, check out our YouTube channel.
Will: Yes.
Josh: We’ve been around for a long time putting out a lot of content for sure
Will: many years.
Josh: This is just episode 1 to reintroduce ourselves after the silence.
Will: Right.
Josh: Because it’s been silent, we wanted to tell you where we are, but we’re going to be doing this over series of podcasts and videos to get deeper and deeper into that and then start getting into real meat and potatoes on how to put some impactful things in your life and your business that can change things for the better.
Will: Absolutely. You guys can go and follow us on Facebook, we’re on Facebook at Cellular Repair School. Also, we’re at Ask WillandJosh on Instagram, you can just go say hi.
Josh: Yeah, introduce yourself.
Will: Yeah, introduce
Josh: Exactly.
Will: Yeah, exactly, because we’re going to be taking questions. One part of this show that we’re going to be doing in the future is we’re going to be actually taking questions from your guys.
Josh: Yeah, live call ins.
Will: Live call ins, because we know you guys got a lot of questions and we’re here to close those gaps, we want to answer those questions for you guys. So it’s going to be a fun ride, I’m excited about it, this is episode 1. I think you guys should know, for you guys that didn’t know us maybe you know us a little bit better now, for you guys who were asking where we went, I hope you guys understand that now, right?
Josh: Right.
Will: We had to reeducate ourselves and we did it for not only ourselves, we did it for the industry and we did it for you guys. We’re really passionate and we’re really transparent about that, and we really wanted to let you guys know that we represent, we rep for this industry, we rep for this industry, and hopefully you understand why we do what we do now.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: And in later episodes we’re going to be hitting I think Josh, I think this format works, what do you think?
Josh: Yeah, I think so. Obviously I’ll be curious to hear from you.
Will: Yes.
Josh: You tell us what you’d like to see and whether this works or not. I know this one we’re not getting it to meet, a lot of times I always go back to when we’re doing webinars and everybody wants to see that meet like oh how do you fix this or how do you solve this one particular problem and blah, blah, blah, so I will say that this is isn’t really the platform for that.
Will: Yes.
Josh: If you want that sort of stuff, you go to school for that.
Will: Yeah, you can go to school.
Josh: Right.
Will: cellularrepairschool.com
Josh: This is mostly like high level thinking.
Will: Yes
Josh: Strategy.
Will: Yes
Josh: Industry information.
Will: Yes
Josh: And really teaching you how to be a smarter better entrepreneur.
Will: Yes, development guys, self-awareness, self-development, business development.
Josh: Yeah, how to develop your teams.
Will: Yeah, how to develop your teams. All of that is what we found to be really important and then you add the skills to that and you can’t be stopped.
Josh: Right.
Will: So that’s kind of what it is and again if you do want to go get the skills, cellularrepairschool.com is always open, ready and available to serve you guys in any way that you need it. And you’ll be learning more about what we have to offer.
Josh: Yeah.
Will: Because we’ll be changing that also and ()
Josh: Yeah and there’s a lot of changes coming.
Will: Yeah.
Josh: There are a lot of changes coming. A lot of what we’ve learned throughout the years is being built into new platforms that we have and we’re excited to be sharing all these things with you guys that are really going to make the difference in your lives.
Will: Absolutely. So Josh, I think
Josh: Let’s close it up.
Will: Let’s close it. Let’s go ahead and host a little toast to episode 1.
Josh: Episode 1 in the can.
Will: In the can. It’s good to be back.
Josh: Break the spell of silence.
Will: Exactly. It’s good to be back with you guys. Just to hear our voices is good, and to hear you guys in a future talk to us and talk back to us and tell us what you need, what you want, what you’re looking for.
Josh: I’m excited.
Will: I am totally.
Josh: I’m excited. You know what one of the things that I used to love so much back when we were involved in day to day operations in the school was the feedback that we would get, and in literally, taking the phone calls, being in touch with our students and getting that.
Will: Yes.
Josh: And now I still hear, you still hear things, but it’s not we don’t always directly interact because now it’s coming through out team more than anything else.
Will: Exactly. Exactly.
Josh: So, I’m excited to be back in touch with you personally.
Will: Absolutely.
Josh: And to share how I feel about things and really to hear what you’re struggling with and how we can help.
Will: Absolutely. All right. So, we’re going to sign it off.
Josh: Let’s go.
Will: All right, we’ll see you guys in the next one. Ask WillandJosh Show, we’ll see you on the next one.
Josh: Thank you for joining us.
Will: Thank you for joining us guys. See you next time.
