Building a business starts with the right people
Germal Daniel and Jazen Brown, owners of multiple Meineke locations in the Greater Atlanta area, share some of the lessons they’ve learned as business owners.
When Germal Daniel jumps on a call with the Driven Brands team on a Monday afternoon, he's in the middle of training four new managers.
This hands-on, people-centric approach would be the throughline in the conversation that followed about how he and his business partner, Jazen Brown, own six Meineke locations in the Greater Atlanta Area.
The two former engineers (Germal graduated from the University of Maryland in Environmental Engineering and with an MBA and Jazen from Howard University in Automotive Engineering) met while working for Amazon's Delivery Service Partner (DSP) program.
Germal joined the DSP program in 2019, following a career at Exelon as an Industrial Hygienist, General Electric as an Environmental Engineer, and Amazon corporate as their North America Environmental Engineer and Projects Manager. He had landed two major contracts with the DSP program and another with FedEx.
“I was spending a couple 100K a year on maintenance,” Germal notes. "Because of the expense, I was fixing the cars myself. I thought: 'Maybe I can turn this into a business.' That's how the research on Meineke started.” Getting involved in the auto industry was an ambition that came naturally to him, "I'm a car guy at heart. I build race cars, and I have one myself,” he says with a smile.
Jazen's experience in the automotive industry began as an engineer for Chrysler Corporation followed by Ford Motor Company. At Ford, Jazen started to feel a bit stagnant behind the scenes. He sought something more customer-focused and transitioned into marketing as an advertising buyer.
He eventually parted ways with Ford in favor of a position with one of his vendors, Graphic Press, the largest minority-owned commercial printer in the country at the time. "Then life started life-ing,” as he puts it. "A baby came along, and I moved to Atlanta for a career in healthcare. I thought my career was set until Amazon DPS came along.”
Jazen and Germal worked at the same Amazon DPS station and immediately hit it off. "It's rare that two people get along so well by chance. We have similar goals, and we saw a lot of success with Amazon. It gets you thinking that you can do anything,” Jazen notes.
Their connection and shared drive inspired Germal and Jazen to join forces as business owners. They started researching their options at the end of 2019. After looking at a few different brands, they landed on Meineke. The organizational structure, processes, and technology won them over, as well as the opportunity they saw in the Atlanta market.
So why not just start with one? The answer comes back to their ambition. "We thought, if we're going to do it, let's do it all out. We saw the territory and the opportunity and just went for it,” says Jazen.
As for how they attribute their success, Germal and Jazen say it starts with building synergistic teams, investing in the right people, and putting them in the right roles.
“Team building is more important than anything,” Germal begins. He shares how one of their centers stopped performing well, but they initially couldn't understand why. “When we looked into it, we realized it was because of team issues. So we examined the hiring process and started focusing more on the people. It's since become one of our top-performing centers.”
Jazen also notes that the business has adopted DISC testing to customize their training and build teams based on different communication styles and personality types.
As for their words of advice for anyone looking to venture into entrepreneurship, with Meineke or otherwise, Germal says it starts with the right attitude.
“You have to be mentally tough and crazy enough to think you can do it. You have to be your biggest cheerleader and your biggest believer.”
And if you're lucky enough to have a business partner like Jazen by your side with a mindset as driven as your own – well, even better.