Building a Business with People: Eric Johnson on Arnold Motor Supply’s Partnership Culture

Anthony Codispoti (06:07.533)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote and today’s guest is Eric Johnson, president and managing partner at Arnold Motor Supply. Founded in 1927, it’s headquartered in Spencer, Iowa and focuses on wholesale automotive parts distribution.

They have nearly 80 locations across the upper Midwest and follow a unique partnership structure that makes employees part owners. This promotes a strong sense of loyalty and teamwork. Under Eric’s leadership, Arnold Motors Supply has flourished and Eric’s promotion to president and managing partner in January of 2021 stands as a major milestone. With a BS in economics and finance from Northwestern College,

In an MS in Information Systems from Dakota State University, Eric brings a blend of financial and technical expertise to the table. He has guided the organization to strengthen its partnership program, helping employees share in the company’s success. He also draws on a track record of uniting cross-functional teams and fostering new ways to improve service delivery. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Adback Benefits Agency.

where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cashflow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, back to our guest today, the president of Arnold Motors Supply.

Anthony Codispoti (08:06.08)
Eric Johnson, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Eric M Johnson (08:09.687)
Well, thanks for having me. I look forward to the opportunity to talk to you.

Anthony Codispoti (08:13.484)
All right. So before we get into talking about the company, I want to hear a little bit about your origin story. What first sparked your journey in this industry and what moments made you realize this was your calling along the way?

Eric M Johnson (08:28.001)
Yeah. So it is, it’s kind of an interesting story. I’m surrounded in this industry, you know, we are automotive. Everything is primarily about making either cars run, tractors run, trucks run. You know, it’s a very automotive focused, although we do get into commercial vehicles and other things. And I am not that. So I’m surrounded by car guys and I don’t really have, I,

get picked on frequently for my lack of mechanical skills by my colleagues and coworkers. So, you know, it’s not like I always dreamt of working in the automotive industry. Really, it was more reluctance. They had a coworker, former coworker of mine from way back who came to work for this company and they had an opening that I was kind of

in alignment with that I might be a good fit for. They kept coming after me and trying to recruit me to come here. And really it was the company and the partnership culture more so than the industry that ultimately got me to decide to to leave what I was doing. I had a good job that I enjoyed and wasn’t looking at all. But, you know, in hindsight, one of the smartest things I ever did was coming over here. But it is almost like I was.

fighting against coming here and I’m glad that I finally gave in. But it really is the company, not the industry.

Anthony Codispoti (09:58.198)
So, yeah, not a car, guys. That wasn’t what drew you in. What was it about the company itself then that drew you in?

Eric M Johnson (10:07.403)
Well, know, the the partnership is a, you know, unique, I’d always kind of had this entrepreneurial kind of interest in entrepreneurship, you know, going all the way back through my education, business education. You know, there’s a lot of people who take the courses I was taking that are entrepreneurial minded. But yet I always never really found that right niche to.

become an entrepreneur and you know, maybe I was a little more risk averse than what a typical entrepreneur would be. So this was a unique opportunity to have some ownership stake in something and it really turned out to be a very good fit. So to me, it was really about the partnership and the ownership aspect of

Anthony Codispoti (10:56.402)
So is it set up as an ESOP, an employee stock opportunity?

Eric M Johnson (10:59.136)
It’s actually a limited liability partnership. So, you you typically think of a LLP as maybe a group of dentists or a group of lawyers in an office where there’s four partners. And in our case, we’re not aware of a limited liability partnership anywhere near our scope anywhere. We have hundreds of partners and it’s so it’s a really kind of unique.

set up. it in some ways functions similar to an ASOP, except there’s no stock. It’s all truly partnership, where all of our equity is pooled and then profits are distributed based on what percentage of total equity each of us have.

Anthony Codispoti (11:44.088)
Maybe without nerding out too much. Can you break down? Do you understand a little bit more the differences between the two setups?

Eric M Johnson (11:51.97)
Well, in some ways, you know, the as a partnership, the entity doesn’t pay taxes is one way of looking at it. So we’re not a corporation where the, you know, the corporation is a entity from a tax perspective. So in the case of a partnership, all the profits just flow through to the partners. And then we are all individually self-employed, essentially. And so we are.

paying the taxes as hundreds of individuals and there are no corporate taxes.

Anthony Codispoti (12:23.992)
So our employees, are they still W2? And then they get the profits on top of that.

Eric M Johnson (12:29.453)
So we because we we do have W-2 employees. So, you know, we have close let’s just call it a thousand for round numbers who work here. And in again, round numbers, let’s say 700 would be a W-2 employee and 300 would be a K-1 and no different than if you were any other self-employed. So we do quarterly estimates and, just like

a farmer or a guy who does has a construction business and is truly self-employed.

Anthony Codispoti (13:02.934)
This is fascinating. I’m somewhat familiar with these hops. I’m not really familiar with this structure.

Eric M Johnson (13:07.957)
No, and again, we’re not aware of anyone else structured like us, but it really does create what I think is a very powerful dynamic for the company.

Anthony Codispoti (13:21.496)
Say more about that. Kind of what was the, I don’t know, the inspiration for putting this in place whenever it was and

Eric M Johnson (13:25.569)
Yeah. So you go all the way back to our beginning in 1927. Mr. Arnold was a big proponent of getting equity into the hands of his managers, other people who were around him. actually had a meeting in the 30s with JCPenney from obviously the JCPenney Corporation. And JCPenney had also modeled this. I don’t know much about

what it looked like in the early days of JCPenney, but every store manager had some equity and was paid basically off the bottom line of their own store. And that really reinforced Mr. Arnold’s. He was already thinking in those terms, but after that conversation with JCPenney, he really solidified that. And so the company moved. It originally was

founded as a corporation, but very quickly moved to become a partnership. And then we restructured it 25-ish years ago into a limited liability partnership just to make sure that partners were a little more protected in case of some catastrophic lawsuit or something so that no one’s personal equity was at stake.

Anthony Codispoti (14:47.574)
And so what do you think the knock-on effect is for the company? How do you guys benefit as a larger organization?

Eric M Johnson (14:53.44)
I think all the way from the beginning, we have been able to attract better talent because of the ownership aspect of it. And because even I think beyond what would be true with an ESOP, you are a direct recipient of the fruit of your labor and

the your neighbor’s labor. You know, we’re all working for each other at a level that is not true at other places I’ve been. So I think it’s a very unique structure. I really like to, you know, we are also very fortunate in the size of the company that we are that we’re big enough, again, roughly a thousand employees. We’re big enough to offer a lot of opportunities and things, but we’re not some corporate

behemoth that, you I pretty much know most everyone that works for us. It’s pretty easy for people to be close. know, I actually everybody gets a birthday card from me, which yeah, in some cases I know them, you know, very superficially. I’ll admit that. But, you know, I know most of them by name. You know, know their face and know something about them. So.

Anthony Codispoti (15:57.024)
All thousand people. Wow.

Eric M Johnson (16:21.015)
You know, it’s certainly different than some large corporations where, you know, I worked in a place once where I was in the corporate office with the CEO for four and a half years and never saw him one time in the same building. So, you know, we tried not to be that. And so I really like the size of this company, but the the ownership structure.

I do think is very unique. I think, you know, Mr. Arnold made that conscious decision and yeah, it probably cost him some early returns by letting partners in. But I think, you you, you, you, that’s a sacrifice that I think paid off in the long run because he was able to attract such good talent and really made the company what it is.

Anthony Codispoti (17:07.288)
So Eric, we’re recording this interview in January of 2025. You guys are two years away from your centennial birthday, 100 years coming up. It started in 1927. Aside from sort of this unique partnership structure, what are some other interesting things about the story of the company itself, Motors?

Eric M Johnson (17:28.321)
Well, if you think back to, you know, what was the, and this kind of goes into, actually wrote a book about the beginning of the company a dozen years ago, because it, as I dug into this and my intent was never to write a book, was just to, because it was kind of an interesting story and I was curious. But when you think of, you know, Iowa rural, when, when he was starting,

this business, there wasn’t even paved roads into Spencer yet. So, you you think this is a different world than what we live in today. And automotive was the next big thing. It wasn’t super established at any point. lot of people still didn’t own a car when he started this business. And, you know, so then you also think about.

immediately after he’s starting, have 1929, you have the Great Depression, which then rolls right into World War II. you know, so he did a lot of growth through the Depression and through World War II was really the foundation of the company. And it grew very well. He made some really good, aggressive decisions in the face of depression, which, you know, seems a little bit counterintuitive.

But it really is a fascinating story of him reacting well to what was going on, him having a little bit of good foresight. And, you know, he was a visionary on what was going to happen with the internal combustion engine in general and how it was going to impact agriculture, how it was going to impact transportation of goods. you know, he very early on, and again, keep going back to the point of

By bringing in people as owners with him, he did a fantastic job of solidifying the foundation very early and a lot of success.

Anthony Codispoti (19:30.53)
What were some of those early aggressive moves that he made? Was he acquiring similar companies? Was he getting into new product lines?

Eric M Johnson (19:35.97)
Yeah, well, early on, there was no acquisition today. All of our growth is is almost almost exclusively acquisition. But at that point, there really wasn’t other mature people to acquire. So it was all going into a community and renting a building, putting some inventory in there and starting to take care of customers. There’s someone and I don’t know who somewhere back in the probably the 60s.

had the foresight to save a lot of documentation, newspaper clippings, things from the very beginning of the company. I also had the privilege of meeting our first employee who was 102 years old at the time and sat down with her for hours upon hours. Now she’s passed away since, but I’m so grateful for the opportunity to meet her and

Her memory of those early events was just amazing. And so I learned so much about what was the business climate like in the 20s and 30s and what were some of the challenges they faced. So, yeah, it’s really a fascinating story about the beginning.

Anthony Codispoti (20:52.812)
What’s the name of the book and where can people find it?

Eric M Johnson (20:55.13)
The book is called You Build a Business with People. It’s available on Amazon. It’s available on Audible. So it’s, you know, I haven’t thought about it too much again. You know, it’s 12 years old at this point, but it the title comes from that’s kind of Mr. Arnold’s famous slogan, his saying is that you don’t build a building. You don’t build a business with buildings of brick and stone. You build it with people and that.

pretty much summarizes who he was as a leader, very people-focused, kind of ahead of his time probably in that regard.

Anthony Codispoti (21:33.322)
I was going to say, you know, I wasn’t around back then, but from what I can remember studying, that was not really the common approach to business. was more harsh. was more, you know, top down kind of a thing. Yeah.

Eric M Johnson (21:42.199)
No.

Eric M Johnson (21:45.836)
Yep. Yep. Much more command and control. And, you know, he was a strong leader. He certainly, you know, was not it was not a democracy. was he was the boss. But he did it in a way that was much more people centric than I think in almost any other business, at least based, again, my perception is the same as yours of what things would have looked like in typical 1920s.

Anthony Codispoti (22:15.288)
Okay, so now tell us about the products and services that Arnold offers and how it sets you guys apart from competition.

Eric M Johnson (22:20.683)
Okay. Yeah. So we are mostly selling wholesale to other businesses. So, you know, if you’re going to do a break job on your own car, you’re probably not going to come to us. You’re more likely going to go to one of the big box retailers. But if you’re going to take it in and have a technician do work on it, more than likely, your technician is going to get the stuff from us.

So we are big in the automotive space. also commercial vehicles. Agriculture, obviously, is big in most of our footprint. So geographically, we’re through Nebraska, through Iowa, with a little bit into Minnesota, Illinois, and Missouri. So a lot of ag in that footprint, a lot of trucks. But we’ll do tools, equipment. We’ll do repair parts, both.

engine and undercar, you know, anything that you would need for, you know, we don’t sell tires, but outside of that, pretty much anything else that you would typically need to either do replacement parts on the vehicle or the tools or equipment needed to do the repair. So that pretty much is what we do. The reason that we’re a little different from most of our competition is if you think of

the cost of that technician who’s working on your vehicle. He’s got a couple constraints when you pull your car in and tell him you’ve got a rattle in the front or whatever you might have. One, your expectation is going to be that you’re going to get the car back tonight. And two is he’s got a pretty expensive set of tools, equipment and employees. And so as soon as he rolls your car into that bay,

The dollar signs are chinging up as he, you know, so what he needs is someone to be able to get the right part to him as quickly as possible. And that’s really where we thrive is fast and accurate delivery. So a lot of what we do is really predicated on predictive analysis of what parts are most likely to fail and

Eric M Johnson (24:44.654)
try to get them in the right places so that they’re close to where the failure is going to occur, which is obviously a little bit of a probability problem is what it boils down to. So we know things like how many Toyota forerunners are registered in a certain zip code and what the failure rate on a water pump on that vehicle is. So we can do some predictive analysis on.

what is likely to fail. Because at the end of the day, that’s really the trick of our business is having the right inventory in the right place.

Anthony Codispoti (25:22.55)
That’s fascinating. Where do you get that information?

Eric M Johnson (25:26.613)
A lot of it is available. Experian is a big source for us. There are also some specific to our industry, some data consolidators that will pool a lot of the reports of repair diagnostic information and help us to make some of those predictions. We also are part of a larger

buying group that so, basically our industry, the big four wouldn’t be names that everyone would know. AutoZone, Advanced, O’Reilly and Napa. And then from there, there’s a pretty big gap to everyone else. So we’re something like 12, 13. But again, order magnitude 100 times smaller than AutoZone. So we will join forces with

50 other companies like us and we’ll pool our resources to do some, you know, maybe we don’t have the budget to do a an information technology project that keeps us on on equal footing with some of the big four. And it also helps us with buying power, but it also helps us by pooling our data. We have a much bigger data warehouse available to us to

again, do a lot of these predictive analysis type things.

Anthony Codispoti (26:59.064)
So you’ve partnered with some of the smaller auto supply companies like yourself to build out this tech. And so a lot of these folks that you’re probably not competing with because they’re in different geographies are using the same tech infrastructure. I’m looking at your website here. For example, you may know that there’s 50 Toyota 4Runners in a 20-mile radius of store number one in Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Eric M Johnson (27:10.135)
Correct.

Eric M Johnson (27:13.954)
Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (27:26.392)
You may know that there’s a hundred of them within a 20-mile radius of the Lake, Iowa store. So that tells you what parts to stock in each of those locations. Am I understanding that right?

Eric M Johnson (27:37.687)
Correct. Yep, that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. A lot more data-driven than I would have even guessed prior to coming into this industry.

Anthony Codispoti (27:41.708)
That’s fascinating.

Anthony Codispoti (27:49.592)
So this kind of setup was in place, because I know you’ve got a background in information systems, but this setup was already in place before you kind of came into this role.

Eric M Johnson (27:55.054)
Yes. Yeah, mean, I think we’ve done a lot in this space over the past four years to really, in fact, we brought a mathematician in three years ago to help us with some of the algorithms that we do. Because again, it’s basically a giant probability problem is what we’re dealing with.

So that, we’ve done some things there. We’ve done some software things to leverage those algorithms to help us to understand is this part becoming more popular? Is it becoming less popular? Basically, every replacement part follows the classic bell curve as, you know, the the vehicles that it fits, you know, start to come into the prime retirement, you know, repair age pretty soon.

you know, eventually they start to get taken to the scrap heap and they’re off the road. And so the parts that go with them follow that same curve. And one of the biggest challenges is to understand is this part gaining popularity, losing popularity. And so we’ve done a lot of work in that regard here in the last couple of years.

Anthony Codispoti (29:09.74)
So you’ve got a client that’s one of these auto repair shops and they’ve got a customer who pulls in, they’re like, I need part X, Y, Z. Are they getting on the phone and asking you guys to courier it over same day or how does that work?

Eric M Johnson (29:23.627)
Yeah, so it’s going to be 50-50 in rough numbers. They’re going to jump on our website and place the order or pick up the phone and call us. In more urban areas, it’s going to be more web based. In the more rural areas, it’s going to be more phone based. But in general, know, rough number 50-50. And then we have about 500 vehicles of our own that we will run either a hot shot straight to you to bring it.

or will have a pre-established route that they know that if they get that order placed by 10 a.m., they’ll have it by 1130 and they can schedule their repairs accordingly.

Anthony Codispoti (30:06.242)
So you said that like me, a guy off the street probably isn’t likely to be your customer. Could I be? Could I walk into one of your locations?

Eric M Johnson (30:13.985)
absolutely. Yep. Virtually every one of our store has a counter and, you know, we will sell. It’s not going to be as cheap. Our labor costs are higher because we do have a more experienced and talented workforce. And so that’s the primary reason why people would tend to go elsewhere because they can save money by.

You know, no different than you’re going to buy something cheaper at Walmart than you are at a boutique salon. But you know what?

Anthony Codispoti (30:47.928)
And you say it’s a counter, so I’m not going in and sort of browsing the shelves. I’m coming up at them.

Eric M Johnson (30:51.66)
Now, you know, for the most part, you have everything is so specific to the vehicle, to the year, the make, the model, the engine. You know, you can’t just walk up to a shelf and find the piece that you need. You really have to have a lot of cataloging data for most of it. Now, you know, some things, if it’s a chemical or oil, those kind of things are a little more generic. But even that has become.

a lot more even simple things that used to be simple like antifreeze are a lot more vehicle specific today than they were 20 years ago. So it’s very difficult. You really have to know what you’re doing and you have to have access to data in a lot of cases to get the correct thing for the vehicle.

Anthony Codispoti (31:38.552)
Let’s talk about growth strategies, Eric. You mentioned earlier that most of your growth now is coming through acquisitions. So are you acquiring other smaller mom and pop kind of parts shops? Is that how it works?

Eric M Johnson (31:52.046)
Yeah, so typically what we’ll do and there are still in our part of the country, probably more so than most, there are still a fair number of independently owned auto parts stores. I think on the coasts, they have probably gone away more quickly than they have in the middle part of the country just because competition is fierce and it’s difficult to to stand alone today. But

For example, CarQuest, a lot of, you you might be familiar with seeing CarQuest branded stores somewhere in your area, and they’re owned by Advanced Auto Parts. Advanced is closing about 700 locations across the country. And so a lot of these independent CarQuests are have been buying from Advanced for 40 years, and now all of a sudden they’re going to be cut off. And so, you know, they’re looking for another

source. so we will approach them one of two ways. One is, you know, from our warehouse, we will just sell you parts. But in a lot of those cases, it’s, you know, maybe someone in their 50s, they’re starting to think about an exit strategy, maybe they don’t have a son in the business that they plan to pass it on to. And so, you know, they’re looking for a way to get cash out of the business. And that’s kind of our ideal scenario.

I basically sum it up by saying that we could buy a building and throw inventory in it anywhere at any time, and that would be easy and we would fail. What really sets us apart is we will find the, the Bob’s auto parts in the small town, Nebraska, and everybody knows Bob. Bob knows everybody. And we will approach Bob and say, we want you to stay on, manage the store for us.

We will now own it, but you still do what you do except we’ll take care of the headache part, the human resources, the payroll, the stuff that he probably didn’t like doing anyway. you you keep the same local people that you have, the relationship that you have, give us five, 10 years before you retire. And at that point we will have built up that next manager. And that’s our recipe for success because it’s really all about people.

Eric M Johnson (34:16.273)
When we go to acquire these, we acquire just like anything else, you’re trying to figure out what are the assets worth, how much revenue do we think we can generate and what’s our return on investment. All of that goes into the calculation, but at the end of the day, it’s really the people that where the value is. And so that’s what we’re looking for is that that local guy who really has a lot of knowledge, has a lot of respect in the in the community.

and is ready for some sort of an exit strategy.

Anthony Codispoti (34:49.349)
Why do you think Arnold’s sees value in these locations where who did you say it was Napa or advanced auto parts? This advance is selling them and doesn’t see the value there

Eric M Johnson (34:56.636)
It was advanced, yeah.

Well, I think part of it is simply geography because we have a distribution point in Omaha. have we’re creating another distribution point now further west in Nebraska. We can service them more economically. So, you know, I don’t think there’s any magic crystal ball that we have, but I do also think that we are better at that part of.

the business than advances. Advances is very good at what they do, which tends to be more retail oriented. And I just think we’re better at operating the more wholesale where our customer is a business. That’s just our sweet spot. And I think we’re better at it than they are and therefore can, you know, but I think in a lot of cases, it’s just simple efficiency of where we’re located closer and can deliver better.

So, you know, it’s a mixture of both just fortunate location, but also I think it more aligns with our sweet spot than theirs.

Anthony Codispoti (36:03.18)
Are you guys, would you say that you’re in aggressive growth period now since there’s a lot of these locations that are closing?

Eric M Johnson (36:09.417)
I would say that aggressive is probably not the right term. We are cautious about, you know, again, as because we’re a partnership, we are self-funded, so we aren’t going out to private equity. We aren’t, you know, selling stock to the public. So it’s our money that’s on the line. So, you know, we don’t want to get out over our skis, so to speak.

become overextended. you know, I think we’re cautious about not just snapping up an opportunity. You know, in some ways you can almost fall victim to the fear of missing out syndrome of, if we don’t buy this store, somebody else will. And we kind of have the mindset of, well, if somebody else wants it, that’s fine, because it might not be right perfect for us. And maybe there’s a better opportunity for us. So I would say that we’re growing on a nice, comfortable pace where

couple stores a year. We actually just picked up about a dozen a year and a half ago, which is the most that we’ve done at once in since 1999. So that was a big one. But for the most part, that’s not normal. We are usually adding one or two at a time and taking it slowly, cautiously, making sure that we get that shored up before, you you use the military analogy of an army can

can outpace its supply line, and we don’t want to do

Anthony Codispoti (37:38.368)
So you guys have been around almost 100 years, but I’m already hearing examples of innovation that continues to happen. I’m curious, Eric, if there are other examples that we haven’t already talked about that would be fun to explore.

Eric M Johnson (37:54.008)
Yeah. So, you know, I think part of it, because of my background in technology, I do have an affinity for data-driven decisions. So we do use data for a lot. But e-commerce is another thing, you know, especially during the pandemic years, we saw a real big spike in e-commerce in our space, people, you know, going online to order.

automotive parts. And so we purchased a business that was 100 % e-commerce a couple of years ago. And I think we were lacking in that area. Didn’t have enough internal expertise to really build it ourselves. And so we went out and bought a business, which has been very helpful for us, kind of got us jump started into a lot more e-commerce.

than what we were doing. And when I say e-commerce, we’ve always for a long time been doing business to business e-commerce where, you know, we’re behind a log in and you’re going to our site because you have a relationship with us. I’m talking business to consumer e-commerce, which we hadn’t done really at all prior to this acquisition. So, you know, that’s another example of trying to make sure that we’re staying with and ahead of when possible.

the times and the trends in the industry and in the market.

Anthony Codispoti (39:24.436)
Is there such a thing as doing like your own private label branded products in this space?

Eric M Johnson (39:30.412)
Yeah, so we do have not us as Arnold Motor Supply, but us with the larger group that that we compete against. And so, you know, the the big four will have some of their private label. Duralast Gold would be an example of one. And so we own McPherson, for example, McPherson Strots would be a brand that is owned by our group. And so we can private.

label that nobody else will have it in our geographic footprint. Typically, I mean, there are other Alliance members that we do compete with head to head, but for the most part, you know, we kind of have our geography where we stand alone. So, yeah, we do put a fair amount into those brands. And that’s definitely a part of our our market strategy.

Anthony Codispoti (40:26.818)
I’m gonna guess there isn’t really the opportunity or the desire to take these products onto a marketplace platform like Amazon.

Eric M Johnson (40:35.958)
We do some things on Amazon, but, you know, the core of our business is delivering it fast. you know, Amazon is all about who’s the cheapest. So we try not to, you know, we don’t want our differentiator to be price. You know, that’s just kind of a I think for any business, a smart approach whenever possible.

Anthony Codispoti (40:37.356)
You do some of that.

Eric M Johnson (41:05.661)
You don’t want price to be the reason somebody buys from you. You want it to be service or something else. So, yes, we do do some things in Amazon eBay Motors, but not it’s not significant. Now, there are some of our peers who are willing to accept those smaller margins for the volume that comes with it. And they do play much more heavily than we do in the Amazon type space.

And you can make up for lower margins with volume. you know, volume does cure a lot of ills. You can typically buy better when you’re buying higher volume. And so you hope you make up for what you’re not making on the Amazon sales with your more traditional sales. But we don’t play in that space very heavily at all. Usually in our case, it’s maybe some extra inventory that we have or some things that we’re trying to sell down of and we’ll

use it more of as a place to liquidate.

Anthony Codispoti (42:07.552)
Eric, behind every success is a philosophy and you’ve mentioned the idea of there has to be a better way as a guiding principle. Can you talk more about this and maybe even describe a specific moment where this mindset led to an innovation or a breakthrough?

Eric M Johnson (42:25.645)
Sure. Yeah, think, you know, personally, that is probably sums me up better than any other phrase that I can come up with is I just am and you know, I guess it’s a little bit of a two-edged sword in the sense that I’m never satisfied. There’s always, you know, and that can be a little dangerous too. And, sometimes you just have to step, you know, stop and smell the roses, if you will. And

you know, celebrate the fact that you had a success instead of saying, okay, that was great, but we can do better. So, you I think you have to be a little cautious there to find the middle ground, but, you know, I’ll go back to, we did a customer survey, I think four years ago, where we went through the exercise of let’s define what we think success looks like to our customers.

And then let’s find out how they actually define success and look for gaps in a either we think what they want and we’re wrong, or we know what they want, but we’re failing to deliver it. So we went through that exercise. And one of the things that we discovered was we were starting to gain the reputation of our people are better in terms of finding that.

hard to find thing or answering that difficult question. And so people were using us for the challenge difficult. I’m trying to restore a 1963 Massey Ferguson tractor and I need a whatever. But they weren’t calling us for just the basic. 2019 F-150 that there are hundreds of thousands of on the road.

And that’s where your bread and butter is, is on those repeat brake pads for a Ford pickup. You’re going to sell a whole lot of those for every refurbished job on an old tractor. So we recognize that we were failing a little bit in our having the right inventory on the shelf. And it was taking too long, too many times. Somebody had to wait until tomorrow.

Eric M Johnson (44:45.922)
to get a common part from us. So we put a lot of, and that goes into the exercise we did with the mathematician. I think that’s a case of listening to what are your customers saying and grabbing onto that kind of tenacious, we can do better, we’re going to find a better way. so even that math project I was talking about earlier is a perfect example of we’ve

We can do better at this. And I think it’s been very successful.

Anthony Codispoti (45:21.334)
And obviously you’ve got the data that sort of informs that decision, right? Because you could see, we’ve had X number of customers request this specific part and 80 % of them had to wait, you 1.2 days, something like that. And you’re like, I bet if, and then, you know, certain percentage of them canceled the order or they just didn’t come to us because they know it’s going to take them long.

Eric M Johnson (45:36.417)
Right. Yep.

Eric M Johnson (45:43.64)
Right. Yeah. And that’s the deadly part is you don’t know when they’ve stopped asking, you know, and especially when you’re ordering, you know, and you go back in time, everything we sold is either somebody coming into the store or calling us on the phone. And so you establish those relationships and you hear them asking for, I need a water pump for a 1997 F 250.

we don’t have that. I better get it. But in today’s world, so much of that is online. We don’t even know that they were looking for it. We just didn’t sell it because someone else did. And that’s scary. I mean, that’s dangerous in our world. So, you know, we recognize that we can’t just rely on anecdotal, I talked to the customer and this is the third time this month somebody has needed this and I didn’t get it because they’re not calling us anymore.

And so we had to be proactive about identifying what don’t we have that we should.

Anthony Codispoti (46:49.528)
Interesting. We’ve talked a little bit about employee loyalty already, Eric. And you guys have this innovative partnership structure in place. I’m curious to hear if there are other initiatives that you’ve put in place that you think have helped recruit and retain good folks.

Eric M Johnson (47:09.517)
Yes, so we do an employee survey every year. We typically get about a 70 % plus response rate, which is pretty good, you know, relative to what other companies get. I would like to have it higher than that, but, you know, I’m happy with, you know, 70, 72%. We typically score extremely well.

for the most part, our scores get better every year. We recently were recognized as one of the four best scoring large employers in the state of Iowa. And, you know, that’s not by accident. It’s because we are very intentional about paying attention to the feedback we’re getting. For an example, a couple of years ago, the

The point on which we scored the lowest was the statement, my manager helps me learn and grow. So we put a lot of focus into, managers, what types of things, you know, so we did like situational leadership in terms of, you know, put managers through a situational leadership training. We looked for what skills are necessary, both from a

you know, soft skills, for example, you know, like leadership type training. But we also looked at how can we arm our people to be technically proficient in answering questions about this type of sensor or, you know, this new technology that’s coming into the automotive space. So we tried to look at both sides of that coin in terms of training people, both with

technical skills about the products that we sell, but also more soft skills in terms of, you know, just how to sell, how to interact with customers, how to manage people, those kinds of things. you know, we definitely pay a lot of attention to that survey. And I’d say that’s another key piece of how we’re able to recruit and retain.

Anthony Codispoti (49:27.082)
Eric, growth often comes from our biggest challenges. I’d be curious to hear about a serious challenge that you had to overcome, either business life or personal life, what you did to work through that, and some lessons learned coming out the other side.

Eric M Johnson (49:42.766)
Yep. So hands down, the biggest challenge that I have faced and we as a company have faced happened seven months ago. We were hit with a flood. so right here where I’m sitting in our corporate office, the same building at the other end of the building is our primary distribution center for the whole company. And across the street is our flagship store where

know, customers would come in where we do deliveries from. All of that was swamped in the flood. So we had millions of dollars of damage in loss here in the distribution center. And the store across the street is about five feet lower than the distribution center. And so it was completely destroyed, basically. Structurally, the building was intact, but

we had to basically got everything across the street. what that looked like here was we were no power. So we had this flood happen on a Saturday. And it was late Sunday before the water receded enough that we could physically get back into the building. And it was just heartbreaking.

to see the devastation of millions of dollars of stuff just gone, destroyed. So, I mean, it wasn’t gone, it was laying on the floor and scattered in the aisles. And so, you we had to respond, we had to respond quickly. And so for the first several days, we had no power. you know, we had people, first thing we had to do is make sure, is it even safe?

Can we be in the building? Is there any electrical thing we have to deal with? What about air quality? What about, you know, slip fall? Because the ground was just covered with the remnants of the flood. So that was, could have been overwhelming. You know, at some level, looking back on it, I think we just focused on what we had to do.

Eric M Johnson (52:02.911)
And we didn’t think so much about the magnitude of what was ahead of us. And we just took it one hour at a time. But, for those first several days, we said we had no power. So we’re running around with lights attached to our heads in in the dark, trying to start to throw things away, because that was the first thing we had to do was just go through the entire distribution center and throw away everything that was damaged. Well.

Anthony Codispoti (52:27.198)
Everything. Nothing was salvageable.

Eric M Johnson (52:30.173)
Everything, because it was only a couple feet deep. So, you you picture a warehouse full of shelves, 165,000 square feet full of shelves. Everything on higher shelves was OK. Everything on the bottom was pretty much destroyed. There were a few things that we could dry off and salvage, but, you know, anything that’s been submerged, certainly any electronic thing. You know, there were some things as if it’s a, you know, a plastic jug of oil.

while you can dry that off and it’s fine. But for the most part, anything on the bottom was lost. So our first, we just went through the entire place and started hauling product to the pits where the loading docks, just throwing it off the pit. And then we’d come with tractors and haul it to the curb and just made a mountain of inventory that had been swamped. Then we had to come behind that. so now everything’s covered in sewage.

river water and who knows what chemicals that had spilled, all of that. So we had to go through then and get that mitigated and pressure wash everything and clean all that up. And then you’ve had the issue of all the moisture and the water and the humidity. And so then we had to extract as much water as we could. you know, it was so overwhelming that literally

I went home at one point and just laid down on the floor and cried because it was just so much loss. And while this is going on, we had roughly 40 employees whose homes had been one level or another damaged from minor damage to had to evacuate to things collapsing. And so it was just.

It was overwhelming. was physically overwhelming because we were just working nonstop. It was emotionally overwhelming because you’re looking at all these suffering people. was mentally overwhelming because of your answering questions and making decisions on such a rapid fire. did we make them all right? Absolutely not. There’s all kinds of things that in hindsight we would have done differently.

Eric M Johnson (54:51.935)
One of the biggest, most obvious ones that I learned very quickly was I had not done nearly a good enough job of getting to know some of the key people in our community that when all of a sudden there’s no power or there’s no sewer or there’s a road issue or, know, I didn’t have good enough relationships with some of those local people that I should have.

And that cost us days early on when I’m trying to figure out who do I even call when everyone else in the entire community is also trying to call? How do I get a cell phone number of the guy in charge or some of those kind of things? So we went from complete devastation to shipping product in 17 days. Yeah. And we had to because we had the entire company

depends on this is the heart. It pumps the blood of inventory to 80 locations. And without that, they would starve. So, you know, we we had to figure it out. you know, this is kudos to the people in the outlying locations because they were getting creative. They were figuring out truck routes on their own to pull from one store to another store. I mean, it was.

Anthony Codispoti (55:55.329)
Wow.

Eric M Johnson (56:14.921)
It was a, and the best analogy that I can say to describe what we did as leaders that was the most successful was taking charge, but not taking control. And what I mean by that is, you know, I talked about the, that we have to dispose of inventory, then we have to pressure wash and clean everything. Then we have to dry everything. So three steps.

easy to articulate. These are the three things we’re doing. We’re doing them in this order. We’re starting at this end of the building. We’re going that way. You figure out the rest. So, you know, it could have very quickly become a bottleneck if if I was trying to control all that. So, you know, it I think the key in a situation like that is to take charge and not take control that, you know, people had to get clear, concise direction.

but they couldn’t have micromanagement. And I think that’s how we were able to go from complete chaos to 17 days later when we loaded those trucks up and it was beautiful to see what they were able to accomplish that fast.

Anthony Codispoti (57:34.872)
And I’m going to guess the fact that you guys have attracted so much great talent through that innovative partnership setup that we described at the beginning of the episode. It probably really shined in this situation.

Eric M Johnson (57:48.704)
Unquestionably. And, you know, we all recognize that this is my life savings and Bob, who’s standing next to me shoulder to shoulder with me, it’s his life savings, too. And so we’re in this together and we’re going to figure this out. And even those of us who aren’t partners, you know, their livelihoods are at stake. And I think there is a somewhat contagious because so many of us are partners.

and we act like it’s ours because it is, that kind of carries over into the people who haven’t become partners. And in some cases, they’ve opted not to just because they don’t want the risk associated with it or the tax headache of being self-employed. But yet they kind of just get that sense from the rest of us. You talk about ownership thinking is a popular book from several years back.

We have ownership thinking because it’s real. We’re owners. without that, I don’t think we turned this thing around in 17 days. Now, it was nowhere near done. mean, actually, this seven months ago, Wednesday was seven months ago, and we just had the grand reopening at the store on Saturday. So, you know, it was a long process to really get things back. But

It was, I mean, it could have been catastrophic. could have something like that. According to FEMA, know, statistics would indicate that about 40 % of businesses would fail within 12 months of an event like this. And, you know, we won’t fail and because we can’t, we can’t let that happen. So it just, we just won’t do it.

Anthony Codispoti (59:36.76)
Eric, going back to some of the early days when this first happened, I’ll call them the darkest days, when you admitted you came home and were so overwhelmed at one point you just laid down on the floor and cried. What was it that got you through that time? For some people, in ultimate moments of crisis, there’s family members, there’s friends, there’s mentors, there’s faith. What was your go-to to…

Eric M Johnson (01:00:03.713)
Yeah, well, you just kind of named them. I would say the biggest thing for me was my faith. I am a strong Christian believer. And, you know, I think that really gives you something, an anchor, you know, to hold on to. I have a really good family connection, you know, with my parents, my

kids, my wife. And, you know, so there was a lot of encouragement coming from there. I also think one of the biggest things for me personally was one of the best pieces of advice that my predecessor gave me during kind of the ramp up as he was getting ready to retire and I was going to move into this role. So I was with the company for a dozen years before moving into the

the chief executive role or president or whatever you want to call it. We’re not big on titles here, but one of the biggest, best pieces of advice that he gave me was the need to have a peer group that, you can people who are in a similar role that because you, you don’t have that anymore within the company. You know, when, when you’re the president or when you’re the CEO or whatever, you know, when you’re in that chief executive spot, it’s kind of a lonely spot.

internally. And so I did also have a really good group of guys that it’s through an organization called Ignite Christian Business and it’s, you know, peer groups and we were getting together every week. And so that also was a big thing that I could, you know, bring to those guys.

here’s something that I’m thinking about, I’m struggling with this, what do you think? Do you know anybody who’s got this expertise? All of those kind of questions that, yeah, it’s great that my wife is supportive and it’s great that I’ve got all these other things, but they aren’t going to know who to call with a warehouse distribution question. So that was also a big piece. yeah, Faith family and that peer group to me were the biggest things to.

Eric M Johnson (01:02:27.073)
But yeah, I mean, I don’t, I’m not an emotional person, but to get to the point where all I could do was lay on the floor in my house and cry. I mean, that has never happened to me before. I hope it never happens to me again, but it was so overwhelming.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:44.864)
Yeah. you know, and I think those are the, the breaking points that not enough people talk about, most people have been through, they’ve been to that point, and they felt broken and overwhelmed and they don’t know what to do. So I’m grateful that you gave voice to your own experience there. And, and I think the other helpful thing, you know, I hear a lot of that, people lean on their faith, people lean on their families. And then I think another thing that doesn’t, get enough credit is the benefit of peer groups.

Eric M Johnson (01:03:14.807)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:14.966)
Right. Cause like you’re saying when you’re at the top of a relatively good sized company and almost a thousand employees, you know, good for you for making it there, Eric, but now it’s kind of lonely, right? There’s a, you know, you can’t pal around with everybody, you know, like you used to, and you know, kind of go internally for that support. So to have folks who are in similar positions, different companies that it, that’s a really great support system to be able to tap into.

Eric M Johnson (01:03:40.365)
Yeah, no, I agree. I wish that I hadn’t needed to lean on it, but I’m glad it was there when I did. So, yes.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:47.082)
No. Eric, if you were going to recommend one resource, a book, a podcast, a course, something along those lines for our listeners, what would it be?

Eric M Johnson (01:04:00.683)
That is a tough question and I think I have to answer it with a little bit of a caveat. I would say that there is one book that I use more than anything else that has really helped me to navigate being a relatively new CEO in a pretty good sized company and actually you can probably see it over my shoulder, Traction by Gina Wickman.

the entrepreneurial operating system, it really has done a good job of, think it does two things for me. One is it creates an organizational structure. In fact, I have it right here in this drawer, our vision traction organizer that goes through and talks about here’s big picture, what we’re working on. Here’s more granular, what we’re working on. Here’s who’s responsible for each of these pieces. So it really helps me to keep all that organized.

And then it also creates a good communication vehicle because what we then do is we have kind of a simplified version of the vision traction organizer that we publish on our intranet and anybody in the company can see it at any time. So they understand also here’s the big picture where we think will be for revenue, what our KPIs are that we’re continuing to measure. And here’s the 10 or 12 projects that we’re working on right now.

So I think from a running a business, being an executive type thing, that would be the biggest one in terms of personal development. I, I can’t pick one. I’d have to say there’s three. And again, I think all three of them are over my shoulder. Yeah. So John C. Maxwell has a couple of one is today matters.

Another one is Talent is Never Enough. And there is a book by Bob Chapman called Everybody Matters. And those three personally had probably the most impact on, you know, kind of maybe smoothing some of the rough edges that I had that needed to be dealt with moving into a leadership role like this.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:25.504)
Any daily rituals that have become kind of a cornerstone of your day and helpful to you in setting your path?

Eric M Johnson (01:06:33.473)
You know, I do try to have a pretty calm morning. try to, you know, spend some time and for me, I read some Bible verses in the morning, try to get centered. You know, my personality tends to want to go a little too fast, maybe. And, you know, I…

Left to my own inclinations, I would be too task-centric, too focused on accomplishing the next task and maybe not enough presence with the people around me, which is where I think having Mr. Arnold, someone I never met, but having him as almost a mentor in the sense of you build a business with people. I also…

We’ll walk through the building and the distribution center and back to, know, knowing people by name, make a point of doing the good mornings and the, you know, how’s everything look today? How are the orders from last night? You know, just get a general sense of in this building, you know, what is the pulse of everything? Now this is only one building out of 80. That’s something that this year I’ve really.

struggled with because the flood was so overwhelming and demanded so much time. I haven’t had the opportunity to get out into our other locations like I normally would. So now that things are returning to normalcy, I have a spreadsheet that I maintain that records my visits to our other locations so I can keep track of when I was there last, know, what types of things we talked about so that I make sure that

things don’t fall through the cracks. You somebody raises an issue. It’s, you know, the last thing that you want to be is the leader that pops in and says, what can I do to help? And they give you three things and then you forget the three things and you don’t do any of them. You know, pretty soon they’re going to stop answering the questions. So, you know, I am pretty meticulous about visiting locations. You know, that’s not a daily thing, but it is something I think is important.

Eric M Johnson (01:08:50.273)
to get a pulse of what’s going on in the trenches.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:55.51)
And so let’s use that. go to 80 stores over the course of, don’t know how long that takes you, maybe a year or two or three. Okay. And yeah, each store is telling you, Hey, yeah, we’ve got these three problems. Maybe it’s five or 10. What do you, as the leader of this thousand person company going to do to try to help them with each of those problems? Do you have sort of like a, a chief of staff or somebody that you can kind of delegate to and say,

Eric M Johnson (01:09:00.513)
Couple of years. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (01:09:21.836)
Hey, we need to help with these couple of things. How does that work in a practical sense?

Eric M Johnson (01:09:24.225)
Yeah. So typically what I will do is when I go into a location, you know, there’s going to be a mixture of people there who I’ve met and who I haven’t met. I will freely admit that sometimes I screw that up and I have met someone and I forgot that I did. And so I, you know, I just own it and say, sorry, you know, I, I, it’s been a while since I was here. I apologize. And that, and that happens more often than it should.

But if it’s a relatively new employee, I always ask the question, where did you come from before? You know, thank you for being here. I like to thank people for things a lot. And I always ask the question, in a lot of cases, they’ve come from a competitor. So, you know, that gives me the opportunity to ask the question. what do you like better about us? But I always ask the inverse of that and say, okay, what don’t we do as well as they did?

And that one, you a lot of times people are reluctant to answer that question. And I will say too, that, you know, before I was in this role, I would go into a store and could have a rapport with people and I would get different answers than I get today. Which makes me a little bit sad, frustrated in the sense that when you have the president title, it does change the way people respond.

And at some level, that’s good and that’s healthy. But, you know, I guess I would encourage people who are on the other side of that equation, you still have to tell your leader, be honest, just tell them the truth. And if they don’t want to hear it, well, maybe you need to work for a different leader. But, you know, that’s valuable. When you’re leading an organization and you’re asking those kind of questions, don’t just tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me what’s real. And then, you know, what I do is I look for trends.

So, you know, if one person is mad because this screen on the computer is green and it should be blue, okay, you know, there’s not much I can do about that. But if I keep asking the question and I keep getting the answer that says, well, when we were at so-and-so, I used to work at O’Reilly’s and they did a better job on training me on this. And then I hear that three more times. Okay, now that’s not it. That’s now a trend.

Eric M Johnson (01:11:47.49)
we can deal with that. So yeah, we have a executive team and we get together as an executive team once a month. And we will talk through, here’s some things that maybe we need to focus on. This is not just me saying, here’s what I think we need, but they’re also, and then we build our vision traction organizer from these meetings to say, okay, what are the things that we need to work on? And so maybe back to the, got good training.

And I miss that. So now we will talk and say, OK, how do we address that? What can we do to solve that issue? We’ll put that down on the VTO. We’ll assign it to someone and we’ll report back on it for a period of weeks or months until we have some resolution on it. it seems to work pretty well.

More than not, it’s coming from, so, you know, we have a vice president of store operations. So he is much more closely in touch with the stores than I am. He’s in them every day. So more than likely, he’s going to be the one hearing a store specific thing. And then we’ve got a vice president of distribution. And so, you know, he’s going to probably have a better pulse on we need to do something with truck routes or whatever it might be. So we, you know, we do that once a month and that’s what then

feeds into our organizer of the projects that we need to tackle next.

Anthony Codispoti (01:13:16.088)
That makes a lot of sense. can’t take every single piece of feedback that every single employee at every location is giving you and try to act on it. You have to look for what those patterns are and then evaluate, you know, are these worth acting on? You know, is there something that we could do to improve on?

Eric M Johnson (01:13:20.971)
Right.

Eric M Johnson (01:13:29.601)
Yeah. You know, I do try to at least they’ll follow up with, you know, somebody will ask a question about whatever it is. I will try to make a note of it and either shoot an email back to their manager after I find an answer, you know, again, back to that idea of if I keep asking and then I keep doing nothing with their response, pretty soon they’re going to stop responding. So I do try to even if the answer is we can’t do that.

I try to at least say here’s why we can’t do that. So yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:03.008)
Understanding the why is so important. Yeah. I just got one more question for you, Eric, but before I ask it, want to do two things. Everyone listening today, I know that you love today’s content. Please hit the share, like, subscribe, follow button on your favorite podcast app so you can continue getting great episodes like this. Eric, I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you and follow your story. And I think you’ve told us that that is your LinkedIn profile, which we will share.

in the show notes here, but if somebody can’t wait and they’re listening to the audio version of this, if you search for Eric Johnson and Arnold Motors Supply, you should find him on LinkedIn. So.

Eric M Johnson (01:14:41.729)
Yeah, one of the downsides to having the last name Johnson is I’m difficult to find because there’s tens of thousands of us out there. But yes, you should be able to find me on LinkedIn.

Anthony Codispoti (01:14:52.664)
All right. Okay, so last question is we look to the future here, Eric, what exciting changes do you see coming to the industry?

Eric M Johnson (01:15:02.595)
this industry really is in a very interesting place right now. You you look at, can’t watch TV without seeing electric vehicle commercials. So, you know, I think we’re going to see multiple power trains coming into the commercial and small vehicle space. I don’t think electric is going to be the long-term answer to the extent that a lot of the experts do.

I think we’re going to see a mixture of hydrogen and combination, hybrid, internal combustion, electric. You I think we’re going to see a lot more mixture of powertrain than what maybe some of the experts would predict. The other thing that’s really happening that has a lot of potential in this industry is a lot of the, it’s starting with the advanced driver assist systems.

things like adaptive cruise and lane departure warnings and some of those things that are slowly moving us towards more and more autonomous vehicle type things. And again, I think we’re quite a ways away from autonomous vehicle. Truly, I just get in and punch in a destination and read the newspaper while it takes me there. But a lot of the sensors and even the paint that we are.

putting on vehicles and some of the infrastructure that is going into surrounding the vehicles, roadways, signage. There’s really some interesting things I think that are happening. You we’re not Jetsons flying cars, but there is a lot of change happening. And it’s exciting when you’re in this industry because every one of those changes is an opportunity. And so I think…

multiple power trains, electrification, hybrid, hydrogen, all those things, and all of the sensors and the driver assist things that keep us safer and kind of help with the augmented reality even. I think there’s a lot of exciting things coming into this industry, especially for companies that are forward thinking enough to not just want to sell spark plugs and…

Eric M Johnson (01:17:19.175)
know, the stuff that we’ve sold for 100 years. So I think we’re well positioned there and it’s exciting.

Anthony Codispoti (01:17:25.592)
So I’m a guy who’s on the periphery of the car industry. I see headlines and whatnot. And right, it makes me think that everything’s going to fully electric vehicles. So I’d like to hear just kind of quickly, what are you seeing? What is your sense on the inside of it? Why am I not hearing more about hydrogen, but you think this is part of the future plan?

Eric M Johnson (01:17:48.098)
Yeah, I think, you know, hydrogen tends to be getting more traction in the commercial off-road space. You know, there’s a lot of variables that come into play and weight is a big part of it. So, for example, and I’m going to butcher this number a little bit, but let’s just say a true electric, full electric vehicle is about 130 percent heavier.

than its internal combustion engine counterpart. So that creates a lot more wear and tear on undercar suspension, steering, all of those kind of things, and also the roadways on which they’re driving. So, you know, there’s a lot of hidden costs and hidden detractions behind the electric vehicle that I think in the emotion of

no emissions, I kind of have been glossed over and missed. You know, we’re not I’m not certainly anti electric vehicle by any means, but I think there’s a lot more options out there that are not getting the buzz just because they’re maybe not the sexy thing to talk about. But there’s a lot of possibilities in some of these other hydrogen just being one that’s on the tip of my tongue because

just actually was reading about it yesterday. But I think there’s a lot of other things that even just incredible efficiency gains in the good old internal combustion engine that we’ve seen with a lot of the turbocharging and a lot of things that have really added complexity and efficiency.

when a lot of times those two things don’t go together. But in the case of the internal combustion engine, they have been able to do some pretty cool things in that regard. So I think there’s a lot yet to be written in the powertrain space over the next decades that really do create a lot of interesting opportunities for people in our industry.

Anthony Codispoti (01:20:04.578)
Well, Eric, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Eric M Johnson (01:20:10.497)
No, I appreciate it too. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

Anthony Codispoti (01:20:14.316)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.