CONVERSATIONS WITH CARROLL PODCAST FT. MPH CLUB CO-FOUNDER LIRAM SUSTIEL

Nolan Carroll, a father, entrepreneur, philanthropist, fashion enthusiast & NFL player who has played for the Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Dallas Cowboys sits with Liram Sustiel, Co-Founder of mph club for another episode of his podcast show “Conversations with Carroll”. They chat about being able to do what you love for a living and raising the bar in both experiences and in life.

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Nolan: This has been a long awaited thing and I’m happy that you’re here because I think people need to hear a different side of a standard. I’m always talking about standards and how you’re supposed to be held accountable. And I’m here with Lee, who is the owner of mph. And man, like I said, I don’t normally get excited about you know, I have my mom here. I have my homeboy, my other homeboys. But you, my friend, like, every time I see you, it’s always it’s just I’m always reminded of a standard and how you’re supposed to do things. And he’s the owner of a mph, a rental car company. It’s even more than a rental car company. I think it’s a membership club, and that’s how you treat it. So I definitely am appreciative of you being here. And it was really getting to talk about just you and I want to highlight what you do and and how you do it. So just tell me a little bit about yourself to everybody and you know, we can just go from there.

Lee: Of course. I appreciate it. Thanks. I mean, it’s an honor to be here is well over done. And we should have done this a long time ago . But, you know, pretty much all. I’m Lee, one of the owners of mph club. Like you mentioned, it’s an exotic car rental company and we try to stick to only high end cars, high end brands, people that don’t really comprehend that it’s available for rent. And that’s the beautiful part about it. People you know, get birthday gifts out of the way, bucket list, things out of the way. And just a lot of production companies use our services too sometimes and weddings. And the best part of my business is I get such big smiles when people walk in the front door because they’re so excited, you know, the cars they sell themselves. At the end of the day, my job is just to process you, Pretty much.

Nolan: But you guys, you do it differently, though, like I’ve seen, I’ve been down in South Florida for about ten years now and I’ve seen rental car companies. It’s flashy, it’s dashy. Let’s put it in front of as many people as we can to get noticed. You guys do it On the other side. You were more prestigious, your private, and you deal with a lot of high end people, but you don’t gloat about it. It’s the respect factor. There is the privacy there. You’ve had people from Floyd Mayweather to the Baby to Logan Paul to Man, Bad bunny, has some cars in his video. You guys have been all over the place. So can you explain kind of your minds and your standard and why you wanted it to be different from everybody else?

Lee: Yeah, definitely, man. We started about eight years ago, and when we first got into the industry, we didn’t want to just be a car rental company. I thought that was a very cheesy just to even talk about it, because it actually goes way back to my passion. When I first started, I was like ten years old and I grew a passion to these exotic cars. And an early age, I had the blessings of actually meeting Brett David before you told me about. And I’ll tell the story by him real quick So it leads up to the point. I remember when I was like ten years old at my sister’s school because they went to the same school together at the time and there was a talent show and this kid was breakdancing and she was singing. It was cute at the time, you know, but me and him clicked because I was into breakdancing at the time as well.

Nolan: Really?

Lee: Not happening anymore more, I will break my back now

Nolan: What if I ask you?

Lee: No, no.

Lee: But yeah, he was break dancing, which was pretty cool. I was getting into that at the time. And it’s funny because he ironically had a broken hand at a time and he was like doing a couple of moves here and there, whatever. He made it happen. But that was the point, We became we clicked real quick. We became good friends right there And then and when it was all over, we all leaving. His dad picked him up in a purple diablo and coincidentally, I had that same exact purple diablo picture on my bedroom over my bed as a poster. And I was looking like, this is a real thing. This is like a spaceship, like UFO. It’s my first time seeing a diablo. Like, it’s just insane. And so we got in the car, he left and I was blown away. We already had we made plans to meet up the next day. And when I met him the next day, the car was in the driveway and I saw it again. I was actually able to sit in and touch a unicorn. Yeah. And I was hanging out with his dad and telling me about it and Brad and I’m sure we became friends. And just over the years I was exposed to all these amazing cars because of the dealership that he has. And my passion was there before. But now I was able to actually physically touch the cars and play with them. And so my passion went to a whole another level. I got educated on all the vehicles, the brands, the history, things that people don’t really understand unless you spent some time in research and it was just delivered to me. Yeah. So as you can imagine, over time, the passion and all that knowledge grew over time. And I became a little older over time. I wanted to somehow get in the industry and I saw an opportunity when I was at the time working with my father. I’m a little geeky deep down inside. I build websites.

Nolan: Oh really?

Lee: Optimized websites. That’s my thing. I live behind a computer screen.

Nolan: All right.

Lee: So I was watching my father and my father need help with his website. So I helped them, obviously, as my father and optimize this website. And I was doing pretty good. Then he called me one day complaining that the phone is ringing off the hook. What the hell Did you do what was going on here and I’m like, good work that’s working. So that means that over time I was working with my father for a while and I decided to somehow shift because I was working from home.

I was working in my underwear every single day, waking up a 12 o’clock in the afternoon because my hours are complete. It was good, life was good, and it’s a little different, but it got a little boring because the only thing I did is I worked out and worked on my laptop all day long. That’s all I was doing. So I wanted to somehow get involved with my passion and that’s in the cars. And I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to step on my boy’s toes by open up a dealership. And that’s that’s now what people do. So I kept on picking his brain and we couldn’t really come to a decision what to do and kept on talking about it. And he sees how passionate I am. And one day it was just brought to my attention that people rented these cars. So I asked Bret Hey are you interested in doing these rentals. He goes ” Hell Fuck NO.” Can I curse you, by the way?

Nolan: Go ahead. You’re fine.

Lee: He goes, “Hell no, that’s not me, That’s all you. Maybe, you should look into that.” And then the next day I researched it for a while and realized I was a huge demand for high-end exotic car rentals. And I built the whole facade and said, you know what, let me build a fake website, fake pictures just generate leads and see if the demand is actually there. And I’d be doing it for a while, did it for like six months and realize, holy shit, demand is really there. There’s a lot of leads coming in, a lot of phone calls, a lot of people actually complaining that nobody’s calling me back because I didn’t know what to do with the people. It was a fake facade at the time. So I was trying to see if I maybe sell the leads or whatnot. And then I got together with Stoss and then we both dissect this idea for a while. We literally put together a very detailed business plan, about one hundred twenty pages. And it took us a couple of months to put it together before we even spent a single dollar. We just put a lot of our time and effort into it.

So this whole concept existed a year before we even thought of the name. That’s amazing. So we had the concept, we had the business plans and then we finally grew some balls and bought our first Lamborghini Giardo. That was our first car. We got together about the car. We started the company. We opened up at Opelika airports. We wanted to be there because we realized the people that want these type of vehicles fly private. The best private airport here in Miami, South Florida, technically is a block executive airport. So we strategically stage ourselves there. And over time, we rented cars a couple of times here and there. A couple of small transactions went smooth, cool. We get the things either way because we’re still learning as we go along. I never had anything to do with it. There’s a whole another world for me, but I’m dealing with my passion, which I enjoyed every day, waking out of bed, putting a smile on my face because I’m about to jump in a Lamborghini and go to work. And it was awesome.

So, yeah, we rented the cars a couple of times and we did one client. I’ll never forget this. His name is Williams. He’s still our client till today. He rented the car for a month, a whole month! With that paycheck that he gave us, for that month, We went straight to the dealership and bought a Ferrari. That was our second car. Oh yeah, just double down. And next, you know, every two months we would just add Another car. Another car. Another car. Another car.

Nolan: Yeah, yeah. You’re smart. And most people look at that check and Oh, let’s go buy this, let’s buy that Let’s go here. Let’s go there. You guys.

Lee: We were still building the company. I went back to the business, drawing board and see how else can we expand. What else can we do? And yeah, over time that just grew and grew and grew and ironic. And he actually just rented a car to Will a week ago. So it’s pretty funny.

Nolan: That’s cool man. As far as the name, mph, it’s probably the most iconic thing ever because when you get into your vehicle, you see it all the time. So how were you guys able to come up with that name? Like, what was your thought process when you were trying to look for a name? How are we going to do this? How are we going to stand out? We have a business plan. We have what we want to do with the process and the experience. But now it’s the name. So how did you guys get to the name?

Lee: Are you sure you wanna hear the names before? You know, the garage toys, luxury rental like crazy. I’m all about optimizing the website. And specifically, I wanted keywords for the domain, for the website. So I wanted to go there and I was like, no, no way. But we got to do something cool, something slick, like, you know, we got to meet in the middle somehow. We got to figure this out and then, you know, met him. I don’t smoke that often, but we did that time, smoked a little bit because we were stumbling like for a month, going back and forth for names. Yeah, So we smoked a little bit, went down to where I live at the time I had a marina. So we chilled in the marina and my girlfriend was with us and Stoff was here. We’re throwing ideas back and forth, back and forth thought they were sticking and then somebody threw what about like a mile per hour? He goes, he says, what about the mile per hour? And then I threw in club she tweaked it and tweaked it, next you know, for like ten minutes we’re going back and forth and we just shortened it and “mph club” and we all just THING it was right there.

Nolan: The power of marijuana.

Lee: Bro, It was like one o’clock in the morning. I jumped up from the marina, ran upstairs, went to my laptop, immediately started researching. That’s OK. That’s a good name. Started looking. OK, cool. Cool. Got all the social media platforms, got everything locked in. Fuck the domain. Seventy-five hundred dollars. We had a budget at the time. Yeah, that’s not in the budget. Seventy-five hundred dollars for a fucking URL? It’s expensive. So we’ve been going back and forth. I am asking the guy. Hey, are you even interested in selling the domain and you know, what is your lowest offer. And he stayed firm. 7500. Take it or leave it homie. The next day me and him meets us just got together fucking let’s do it. We’ll make it happen. We bought the domain and right there and then I just went to work. Start optimizing the website, transferring all the old data that we had and the old side of the fake facade and start growing and continue dissecting the business plan in. So ironic because we executed that business plan. It was a three year business. We executed it to the T within three years, that’s amazing. I look at it like this is unbelievable. It’s amazing. We’re both blown away by it, but so bought the domain.

We immediately registered the company as a trademark, which is also a nice chunk of change at the time. So we did all the important things first to lock it in and then we have a name. Now we actually talk to people about it to see if that maybe could help us invest into the company, maybe grow it, because it was not cheap to get our first Lamborghini. I went from a Lexus GS, which is, you know, signing drivers to a two hundred fifty thousand dollar car and banks looking like you were smoking crack when you put 50 percent down. I can’t afford that. So we went to Brett after like a week of locking everything in. And I pitched in the idea. I said, this is what we’re doing, this is the name and this is the concept and this is what we’re going to be. And this is the cars. And he looks at me. Brother the name is Dog Shit. What are you talking about like, No, man, you broke my heart when you telling this, because I’m building up the whole hype and then the end, I say, all right, this is the name mph club. You should call it the luxury lifestyles and la tois something like that. What’s wrong with you, Mike bro I am already ten grand. And he goes, What do you mean? About the domain? I got it registered. I got a trademark.

Nolan: Oh, yeah, you’re committed to it. You’re like, oh this is the name.

Lee: was ready to tattoo it on my forehead. I’m ready to go. So he could too change his vibe. And you realize you were on a mission. And he’s like, I see the hustle I respect and I’m going help you guys with whatever I can. He did he helped me a lot at the beginning of the company, which is a really big thing. So we started growing the company and just it was not easy. I ain’t gonna lie man. First couple of years we’re getting punched left and right man. There’s a couple of incidents we learned the hard way. There’s a couple of things that we went through and we had to jump these hurdles and we weren’t even profitable for the first three years. That means that we’re not making money from this business now. It’s costing us money every month to keep afloat. But it was fun, I didn’t care. I could have done it for free, but I was doing it every day. And yeah, that’s pretty much like the beginning of it. The idea and how it grew and manifested.

Nolan: You all went through all that. I just kind of saw the end product. And it’s funny because we were just talking about in my store that was in South Beach, and I was off for Washington and I was across the street and I would always see these guys’, Lambos, Ferraris, Urus’s just everything I could hear it. I’m just thinking, man, these people are what how much are they spending them like a day on these things? I would just research twenty three hundred bucks a day just to drive up and down the street? And I have my car like at the time and I had before this I had the Ferrari and then I had a seven twenty. I mean I still got it. That has a couple other things. I’m just every time I’m in the store I just see these cars back and forth. It’s like, man, if somebody is out there, some company is out there utilizing these people’s money and time just to be back and forth. So I started thinking, how can I get into this? But I don’t want to be on South Beach with that crowd because those guys are just they’re bad. They they wreck your car, no down payments. You just sign and drive like you’re saying, and then they do whatever they want, disrespecting the cars.

So it wasn’t until, I think August I was about to go to China and my brother sent me a D.M. of mph club. And I looked at em like, who is this? What are these guys? And he said, Man, I think you should try it. And you have all these cars in the driveways. Honestly, I have them in the driveway and I would just drive my truck and I started thinking, let me find a way to utilize some type of business platform other than the business that I have to make money for myself on the side. And I was reluctant for a little bit. And then it was I don’t know what clicked in my head. It was just let me talk to these guys, see where it goes, talk to you and Alex and Stoss came. And right when I started talking to them, I knew how professional you guys were. And that’s when I feel comfortable saying, let me just try this the first one, see how it goes. And I was blown away just from the professionalism. You guys letting me know, hey, right now, this time, this is a mileage. These are not necessarily the people because I don’t care about the people. But you’ve been very professional. Whatever. You’re not out there joyriding all the time. You’re not trying to, you know, pick up chicks or go to dinners. I mean, that’s fine. You do that. But you guys tell me, hey, look, we’re going to do this and this. I have no problems with that. So for me to see that. I was blown away, and I tell you, every time I come to your office, I’m just like, man, this is how it’s supposed to be done. I don’t think people , you can see it on the website, but when you see it in person, just from where you’re placed, what you’re doing is definitely a level up and people need to see it more. Man, I know you guys have a YouTube channel. I know you’re starting to roll that out a little bit more as far as the cars and and going through explaining to everybody what you have. And you have some pretty awesome…I’m not even going to lie. What is your favorite car that you have right now? You have to pick one.

Lee: This is one of the questions I am asked all the time. So I can’t it’s not fair. I can give you…

Nolan: The top three?

Lee: No, so this is the thing. It’s like me asking you, what’s your favorite child? You can’t.

Nolan: I got one, I only got one

Lee: Ok, well I have forty plus. Ok, so one my favorite car for this month. That’s what I turned it into.

Nolan: What’s your favorite car for this month.

Lee: All right. So we recently just added 812.

Nolan: Yes, I’ve seen it. Oh my God. That is amazing.

Lee: Before that I loved the Phantom. OK, Phantom’s Big Boy car.

Nolan: What month is that though. What month was that?

Lee: Ok, and that’s stayed for a couple of months. But the a12 man, that car is just it’s a classy Ferrari. It’s not your douche bag. Look at me. No, no this is a classy a12. Superfans is insane. Insane.

Nolan: I love that one because it’s along the family line of the 599, like the 599 and then it kind of went away. Then they have f12, you know f2l tdf and then you had a12.

Lee: Yeah.

Nolan: They had a couple of one offs, but ultimately that’s where all the front end . That’s what I asked you cuz It’s like, man, do you want another. It was like now we got one. I’m like, oh OK. And they had the Bugatti.

Lee: That was oh that was insane. So yeah we build a company, we bought the cars and then a couple of years after running it we realized, OK, we need to tweak this a little bit. There’s something here because people were coming up to us say, hey, I want to give you my car to put in the program like no, we buy our cars. Yeah. So we didn’t want to we didn’t know how that works. After researching and looking into it and this is definitely doable if you meet the qualifications and we both agree on terms. Yeah, we can definitely make this happen. So we ruled out the membership program.

So what we did is people like yourself who have vehicles, you know, we give you the opportunity of putting your car in our program and we rent it out and we make money together, taking on the cars. But these are very unique cars and unique relationships that we build. We don’t really do it with everybody. It’s not as you go by competition. Yeah. You got your way into this is not a simple thing, but that that shifted a whole company big time. Instead of being heavy capital into the business, I was actually able to relieve some of the stress off of my credit, my name and also the amount of inventory we could get. Now, we literally doubled within one year because of inventory, because I was capped at one point, I just kept ongoing. You know, my name holds so much weight. But eventually, if I had your name or his name or his name, it just grows and grows. So our inventory grew and that was phenomenal. It changed our business. And we released this about a year and a half ago and interest groups started a year and a half ago. I thought, oh, you have been with us about a year, right?

Nolan: Yeah. I didn’t know was when that’s when it had started.

Lee: Yeah. You’re one of the first people I’ll never forget it as I was planning on going to Greece and my girlfriend, you were going to China and I wanted to meet with you, but you were leaving and I was leaving. So we’ll have to meet somehow. I’m coordinating ng this whole thing with you and then Stoss and Alex is going to meet up with you. And I’m in Greece doing this…

Nolan: While you remember that.

Lee: Yeah, that’s right. I’m at the gym with my girlfriend working out and we talk to you.

Nolan: And when I hang up on my baby and the whole story, what happened? That’s awesome. I am so excited cause I wanted that phantom.

Nolan: I had no idea I was the first one. I was like.

Lee: No, not the first one. You were the first couple.

Nolan: Yeah, OK.

Lee: We had a couple of people in the car with the program and then you got the fan I want your fan of when you posted one picture on Instagram.

Nolan: I saw. Yeah. Yeah. So I want pictures.

Lee: I want that car. Yeah. Not because it’s one of one of my favorite cars because it is, it’s a beautiful car, it’s McLaren but it’s also a very popular car. And to be told I never told you this yet, but that car got me in front of amazing people. Man. I met the owner of WhatsApp because of that car. I met the owners of ridiculous companies all over the world, amazing celebrities, Floyd Mayweather

Nolan: Oh, yeah.

Lee: These are people that I was able to connect to because of that specific car. No one has that car in there. Nobody. So it was able to put me in front of amazing people. And I had a great relationship with them and helped me expand the company with other things that we’re working on. Oh, well, I’ve written that in a minute, but.

Nolan: So, yeah, I didn’t even know that I’m shook. I’m glad I was able to help with that. Yeah. I also saw two and I want to bring that up during Super Bowl. Describe the rap on the phantom. I think you were doing it for Shaquille. Tribute for Kobe to Shaquille during his Funhouse House event. Explain that. Because I remember you told me I think I asked you for the car. You’re like hey, somebody wanted the car which you didn’t tell me who and they wanted to get it wrapped, but then you showed me and I was like, oh, OK, this is fine.

Lee: I knew by then you already trusted our judge. But you do your thing and I love it.

Nolan: No, I never every time I ask if my car is available, when you guys say no, I never like doing it, I’ll just take my shirt and go somewhere. I don’t, I don’t mind it because I, I’d much rather see the business grow. And I’ve seen what you guys done because I’ve been around you. You haven’t hit anything for me. You haven’t misplaced anything. You haven’t crashed my car. You haven’t done those things. You do it right. And you’re very selective.

Lee: And if God forbid bout those happens Then we take care of it.

Nolan: I got total coverage too,

Lee: Insurance.

Nolan: But I know you guys are very selective on who gets the car. You’re not just trying to rent it out to everyone. So that trust was built over time. So any time something happens or I can’t get a car, that’s fine. I’d much rather your business do well because it would just sit here if it wasn’t. So definitely for that just I mean, like I said, the trust is there. So I never I never questioned that.

Lee: The month of February was a big blur to me. It was. So sometimes we get like a big thing that happens in a week. We get too excited. We talk about it for the whole week, bro. I couldn’t have a moment of excitement for more or less more than ten minutes and February. I mean, Shaquille O’Neal cool an hour later. Oh, I mean, for me with a cool an hour later. Oh we just we were sold out an hour later. Oh, you got three more cars in the program an hour later, Larry. But we have just amazing things going on. And then we got punched in the face by the corona virus. You know, it’s funny, but we got this man February’s phenomenal week Super Bowl in Miami. So we were sold out, but literally to every single client that we were sold out to was a famous person or celebrity or an athlete. We had a future. We had. The list goes on. Shaquille O’Neal was really cool. That was an honor. I’m a huge fan of Shaq, so we all are. He’s a great human being. He’s an amazing person. Shook his hand like this is crazy.

So his manager reached out to us and they wanted something was like impossible. They wanted the car. They wanted to rap it. Unfortunate because of what happened to Kobe Bryant. They wanted to do some sort of tribute for Kobe where he has Shaq’s funhouse.. And how can I make something fun and also respectful because it’s so fresh. It just happened. You know, I got together with metro raps and they’re phenomenal. They designed the whole thing. I got to give credit to that because they really pulled it off and I was blown away, by the way they design. The problem is that they called me on Thursday and they want the car on Friday. Come on, guys. First of all, the is out with a client. Yeah, that’s the first problem. Second problem is to wrap something takes about three days not to respectfully do it. Right. It takes about three days and. I’m a huge fan of Shaq, so I’m like, I got to make this happen. You reach out to the client who had the kind of time and I threw out an offer to him that he couldn’t refuse or switching cars with him. So he’s like, I’m here with my wife and my two kids, and you’re about to offer me a sports car with two seats. From him, I made it happen, I mean, I grabbed the car, I personally went to go pick up the car from the climb because I wanted to make sure that he’s okay with it. I know he’s disappointed. It’s a two-car, two-seater. But I made it happen when he was happy.

Nolan: Happy for a good cause.

Lee: It was it was. and at the end I sent him pictures and videos and the like. That’s awesome. Cool for you. So I hooked him up with the future rental, which next time, because a town he will get hooked up again. But I took the car and went straight to Metro reps, sat down with the designer, tweaked the whole design back and forth for hours, sat down with the owner and asked for a favor that he’s never done before. Keep the shop open for twenty-four hours until this car is done. I need this car back in my position at 9 am to go deliver it to Shaquille O’Neal. Bro, We were really so short on time that we made it happen when I was, umm… whenI went to go back to Metro wraps to pick up the Phantom, I was really like they were finishing touches on the car. When I got to go, I got to go. And I’m pushing the last couple of bubbles out of the paint. Just do it. Let’s go. Let’s go. Jump in. The car drove straight to the production, waited for three minutes. Shaq pulls up and so we wait in the side. Now, I know the front entrance is on the other side and we’re supposed to meet him there. All the cameras and everything is there. But like, I wanted to meet him in the front and just talk to him first and then put the car there so he can make his appearance. He comes in and he looks at the car and you go, wow! He looks around and walks on the whole car. Nice job. Who did this? Looks to me like you’re doing a good job.

Nolan: I always do it. When I saw those pictures, I was how long it takes you to do it? One day I was like, yeah, I got guys that if you try to do one today, they say, no, that’s impossible.

Lee: I gotta get a big shout out to my metro raps for making that happen, man.

Nolan: The whole thing looks nice. I wouldn’t even normally if somebody saw their car, I was like, what? What the fuck is this? I look like I got Kobe on my car. I’m not driven. This is cool. Like, this is dope. You know, it was I mean, like you said, it just happened. So nobody really knew how to react and what to do and how to.

Lee: And it came classy, wasn’t cheesy?

Nolan: Not at all, no. The whole thing was nice. I know. I wish I could have seen it in person.

Lee: Also. Yeah. So the second that was done, we had to drive the car to the office, unwrap it and go deliver it to another client. Yeah, it was a busy week man, as the said, but for those, for the three or four days a super weekend honestly I was working 24/7I barely slept maybe three, four hours and I just, just to get to sleep in and go back to work. I was slammed with that.

Nolan: That propelled you guys for and I want to get into that with COVID because I remember when I came to the office in March and we were talking about it and we were kind of discussing, well me and Stoff we’re talking about he brought something up that just triggered in my mind. He said whoever can make it out of this is going to be forever strong down the road like it’s a renaissance is going on and only the strong are going to survive. And when he said it, I was with I was with Anthony and Andrew and I looked at him. I was like, man, that’s right. There is a motivation that I wanted to hear because that propelled me to basically make all this. But at the same time, I saw you guys still doing your thing. So how were you able to shift your mindset knowing that stuff’s getting canceled left or right? Because I could hear it in your voices. You just like shit. We don’t know how to stop this. Like one thing. It was what the concerts that were going on rolling loud.

Lee: And then we had Gumball 3000.

Nolan: I remember that. Yeah, I remember that.

Lee: And it was a huge deal for us. They postponed to next year, unfortunately,

Nolan: But you still have it. All right.

Lee: Yes. They move into next year.

Nolan: You’re good. Yeah. So what about F1 races too? Because I know you guys.

Lee: They also got postponed to as well.

Nolan: So as long as it’s still there, you’re still there

Lee: It’s happening next year. Yeah. But it could happen this year and next year, whatever it is.

Nolan: But how were you able to look at the whole situation, analyze it, prepare for it and then say this is what we’re going to do. It’s still going to be it wasn’t business as usual, but you guys still made it work. So how were you able to overcome that stuff?

Lee: said it perfectly, man. Whoever comes out of this becomes stronger. And that’s exactly what happened. Because when COVID first happened, to be honest, I was a little nervous. I like I don’t know what’s going on. We’re heading into our market territories. Nobody knew what the hell is going on. And I called every single manager. I spoke to everybody. I told them, listen, guys, is a unique situation. If you want to can pick up your vehicles, hold onto it, will communicate as we go along. We don’t really have a game plan for these six months, but we have a game for a week. Yeah, I’m not going more than a week, one week at a time. Yeah. And our business did drop by like 80 percent, 90 percent for the two months of awkwardness that we were all home. Technically, we were still working cars here and there, but not the volume that we used to have. And all the employees were dealing with it, helping us out with whatever we can.

So the majority of the fleet, probably 60 percent of the fleet, went back to the owners until further notice. And then once we opened back up, we went back into the swing of things like nothing ever happened. That’s Florida for you, unfortunately. It wasn’t supposed to, but it happened. I can’t complain about that was a good thing for us. I called all the owners to bring you cars back, we’re back in business like nothing ever happened. OK, so that was funny. We took a forty five sixty day break. Yeah, pretty much. And and then slowly, slowly crawling out of this right now as we speak. But I see the light at the end tunnel. I see us going back to the way we used to run operations. And it is what it is, you know, it’s coronavirus, really. It’s not it’s not our fault, unfortunately.But ironically enough, a couple of competitors in the industry. Unfortunately, we went out of business because of this, you know, and everybody financially set for this. It is a big girl which kind of benefited us. I hate to say it was like a blessing in disguise, because couple of competitors went out of business , I end up taking all the inventory and put it in my inventory. So now they are my partners.

Nolan: So how many cars you have now? You have 40?

Lee: Yeah, we’re OK. So when we had thirty-nine cars right before COVID and we went out almost like 11 cars.

Nolan: Really?

Lee: Yeah. Because we sent all the cars back. Two months later COVID ended, then we bought all the cars, now we are creeping up to almost 40.

Nolan: Ok, because I remember you guys had a couple of mine. I took mine for like two weeks and I felt uncomfortable. I was like, oh, let me bring it back. But I mean, that’s I didn’t know. That’s cool. But it shows how you guys are thinking, how you’re progressing. You’re not just worried about the now moment. Like you said, you planned your weeks out and then came this plan a month out. Now that we understand what’s going on

Lee: We went to a skeleton crew. We reduce overhead immediately and just stay on top of everything and make sure. And I want to make sure everyone’s safe. First of all, what’s really weird is I had to, like, restructure our whole car wash department now. Yeah, that was a whole new game. Our car wash is about twenty-five dollars a car like eighty-five dollars a car because we have the steam clean Every car with the detail, every car, the handles, the steering wheel. It’s a lot more different things now. So it is what it is. We have to implement them and we are.

Nolan: That’s cool man. So what is next for MPH? What is your vision and what do you see this doing now that you guys are somewhat you’re the staple in the south. I think you are because you’re in by the Fontainebleau . You get the Fontainebleau aviation, you’re at all the most luxurious hotels like people don’t realize kind of the stronghold, the grid that you have in South Florida. So what is your vision for what’s next for you and yourself?

Lee: Yeah, I have a couple of personal goals for mph I’d like to umm… so due to COVID we went back to the drawing board. I was home and just like I said, there was not too much to do, so I researched what else can we do what’s the other source of income we can do. This is a time for me to reinvest myself into the company structure and a couple of things. Internally we had a couple of things that were old school, you know; and this is a time where I was able to for example, one of them was our website. A website there is a range of about seven, eight years of the business. But, during COVID I was full time working on my website.

Nolan: Yeah.

Lee: So we recently went live with a new website, so…

Nolan: I know it looks very good.

Lee: Thanks.

Nolan: I, I like it.

Lee: So we recently went live and that was the big shift because it was is not that simple to just transfer our old website to a new one. It was a big migration, I have five people in my team working on this full time for almost six months.

Nolan: Wow.

Lee: So you can imagine how much our cost is, that’s not cheap.

Nolan: Yeah.

Lee: So um that being said, that’s what I did for the downtime. Just restructure everything within the business and negotiate a lot of anything that I can, merchant services, leases, everything I can, I restructure everything and save money. Then, after that, I put together a game plan for the next five years.

Nolan: What’s what’s the game plan?

Lee: Right now we have about eight locations in Florida between Orlando, South Florida, Miami. My goal is to open up a couple more locations in other states because we’re not only in Florida.

Nolan: Yeah.

Lee: the furthest one is one Orlando, which we do very well there. I’m looking to open a one in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, for example. I have a couple of potential help that I can get there. So those are next big goal for 2021. My goal is to open at least four or five more locations across America and there is a lot more to it; I also went mostly digital. So we have our YouTube channel now which is monetized and we’re able to grow another arm of revenue from that because of the cool content we produce, informational information. So yeah, we do a lot of cool content on social media, the website, restructuring everything and then open up more locations. That’s the main goal for the next couple of years.

Nolan: I love it, man. That’s the goal is expansion franchise. I know you. That was an idea. But I didn’t I didn’t harp on it too much. I didn’t know. But to see it I think is possible just because of how you guys do things and you’re not trying to just spread yourself there, your are calculated with what you’re doing. You explained that you want to go to Orlando, Atlanta, you kind of want to drift over. So I’m impressed, man. I appreciate that. If other people aren’t and they want to be haters and shoot, they got to deal with me because I’m not a hater. I honestly appreciate everything that you not only do for me, but what you guys are doing for the company, what you’re doing for other people that are involved in the club, too. This isn’t just a rental car company. This is more of a membership. Like you said, this is a club where you take care of people and you want to make sure you’re doing successfully with everybody that’s included and, you know. I appreciate you coming on here on the show, talking with me and catching up a little bit man into those other guys, Alex and Stoss and everybody else at mph. Tell them I say hello tell them enjoy the weekend man and I appreciate them as well. So, thank you for coming on man.

Lee: Definitely, of course, man.

CONVERSATIONS WITH CARROLL PODCAST FT. MPH CLUB CO-FOUNDER LIRAM SUSTIEL

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