Eric was a farm hand for his family, but was quickly thrust into an entrepreneurship pathway by his mentor. Along the way, Eric has not only learned how to build a business but also understood the responsibility of leading a team. Learn how Eric took a small, one-bay tire shop and grew it into a multi-million dollar, international company.
Who are you and what business did you start?
I’m Eric MacPherson, and I’m the founder and CEO of Dawson Tire and Wheel.
We started in 1998, and sell agricultural tires and wheels across North America. Our principal customers are equipment dealers who sell to farmers. These could be ag tires for combines, tractors, irrigation, or other types of tires for certain crop types or farming practices.
We’ve also ventured into the retail space and have three retail stores where the farmer is the principal customer, but we can take care of everything from suburban moms and the kid’s school cars to the combines, tractors, and trucks.
Our bread and butter is the ag industry in America.
Most recently, we made a major change to the company – we were acquired. We were purchased by another similar tire company, CFI Tire & Solutions out of Des Moines, Iowa. I’m a partner in the company, and I still manage the retail space out here in the west.
What was your background? How did you come up with the idea?
This is a bit of a longer story.
I grew up working for my Aunt and Uncle, on a farm north of Gothenburg, Nebraska. It was a typical farm – hogs, cattle, corn, and soybeans.
I got married in 1996, and I had a kid on the way. I went to talk to the farm owner, my Uncle Dale. I asked him about my future since I was just a hired hand at the time.
It was on a Saturday morning, probably March of 1998. He said, “Well look, Eric, you aren’t going to inherit anything. I have three girls, and they are going to get the farm. I need to start slowing down, so you really need to be thinking about doing something different.”
And I said to him, “Well, what do you think about a tire shop?”
There were two different tire shops in town, and one of them had recently closed down. I also had some friends in Iowa who owned a tire shop, so that’s where the idea came from.
He said, “That’s a pretty good idea, Gothenburg really needs a tire shop.”
The conversation ended there, and I went home.
Monday morning, I was back on the farm. I had gone out to do chores, and Dale didn’t show up until almost the afternoon.
He looked at me and said, “You need to go home and get cleaned up. You’ve got a meeting scheduled at 1 o’clock with the guy who owns the tire shop that recently closed down. He’d really like somebody to open that shop back up.”
So at 1 o’clock, we went to the meeting. The owner started, “I hear you are interested in running a tire shop.”
And I said, “Well, we started a conversation”, a bit hesitantly.
He explained he was really interested in someone taking over the shop and he’d be super happy to sell it to me. He said he wanted $45,000 bucks for the equipment and inventory and $30,000 for the building.
By the end of our conversation, we had an agreement, which is pretty funny to me now.
So I went home that night, and told my wife, “I think we are going to get in the tire business.” And she said, “Oh, wow, Ok.”
I called a friend with some experience that night and asked him what he thought about running a tire business.
He was hesitant, explained how much work it is, and didn’t know if we could do it in a small town – it takes a lot of people.
I said, “Well, I kinda just bought one, so I need some help.”
What were your first steps to starting the business and creating your product?
Crash Course
I needed to learn how to run a tire shop, and quickly. In April of that year, I went to a friend’s tire shop in Iowa for a week to learn how to run the tire business.
I spent a day in a passenger/light truck shop.
I spent a day on a service truck.
I spent a day in the Ag Shop, learning how to do the bigger tires.
I spent a day doing books, and learning how to do inventory. The inventory was manual at that time, sheets of paper where you wrote product in and out on.
Then, I had a little bit of accounts receivable and accounts payable – and I had no idea what those were.
Friday afternoon I drove home. I opened Dawson Tire Service on May 11th, 1998. So that’s the story.
I owe a lot to my Uncle Dale. He was the guy who just came along and, to put it nicely, gave me a swift kick in the back and said you need to get going on this.
That’s how Dawson Started.
How did you validate the market? How did you Grow?
Growing from service to products
For the first few years, I was a service Tire Shop, but in about 2002, I discovered what would become our core business.
In about 2002, I was talking to another guy in the tire business. He was explaining that he had a whole bunch of irrigation tires that he had bought on overstock.
He asked me, “Could you sell them out there?”
Being from west/central Nebraska, we should be able to sell pivot tires and wheels, right? So I got a price from him, and I put an ad in the High Plains Journal.
It was a Titan brand, galvanized irrigation tire – I don’t remember the price – it was like $395 bucks or something like that (which is crazy because they are $900 today).
So I put this ad in, and a guy from Sterling, Colorado called me. He said, “I want to come and see these tires that you are selling, do you have quite a few?”
I said sure – and I had really no idea how many we had. But you always say yes when you are trying to start a business. Lesson number one: Always say yes!
So he stopped by and he said “Well those are the same wheels that we get on our new Zimmatic Pivots – I’ll take 60.”
That really opened my eyes – I thought, “Wow, I could really grow my business in this direction.” Buy irrigation tires, advertise them in local papers and magazines, and sell them. Sure enough, that was our first foray into selling ag tires and wheels outside our local service area.
By this time we had a few service trucks and had a pretty good local business – but you are constrained by geography if you only have a local service business.
That experience started us down the road, and the business grew fast.
By 2005 we had built a new building and moved into it.
In 2007 we asked, could we do this with other Ag tires and wheels? So I called a couple of John Deere guys I knew, and they said “Oh yea, we’d love to buy duals from you, especially if you can get them at a better price.”
At that point, I hired a couple of guys to just go on the road, visit tractor implement and irrigation dealers, and start selling.
That’s really how the ag business took off – just realizing – Oh yea, maybe we can do this. And so that’s where the equipment side of the business grew.
Did you ever have any Oh Crap Moments?
What were some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned along the pathway of building? What would you tell new business builders?
Public Servant
I had an old guy tell me this, and I don’t think it’s ever changed: If you are going to get into a retail service business, you have to commit to being a servant to the public.
This means that when they need you, you respond. That seems really basic, but if I look back at anything, that’s been the difference for us.
We had a customer from another town. In his town, he has four different tire shops. But he chose to do all his business with us, even though we were an hour away. When I asked why he chose us, he said simply, “Because you call me back.”
If someone calls you, you call them back.
If they want a price, you get them a price.
We’ve done whatever was needed for our customers.
We’ve taken fuel to trucks on the interstate because that’s what they needed. Or we figured out how to put triples on a cabbage cart in Minnesota, which had never been done before, but that’s what they wanted.
You learn to say yes to the customer.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The other one is, as you grow a business – and this is a clique and people say it all the time – you need to hire people to fill your weaknesses.
You’ll understand what your strengths are as a person, you’ll learn what your weaknesses are, and you need to hire people to fill those gaps.
I see a lot of entrepreneurs who are really good at a lot of things, but they stifle their business because keep thinking they are the only ones who can do things in the business.
I mean, I loved sales, and I loved talking to customers, but I knew that I couldn’t grow the business if I stayed in sales.
My first ‘big’ hires were salespeople. I learned that couldn’t focus on selling – and this goes back to the customer servant conversation – and serve the customer well.
If you are in sales, you are in sales 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The only time you don’t answer the phone is at your own funeral. That’s the reality of serving the customer.
I couldn’t do that while I was also trying to manage inventory or cash flow, or grow the business, or get a loan for a piece of real-estate, or have to manage an HR issue that comes up – you can’t serve the customer if you’ve got a lot of other duties.
My advice is to figure out what you are good at and hire other people who do the other things.
How has the business changed your life? Both positive and negative?
Difference Maker
Let’s start with the positive parts.
I feel, that being a business owner is a moral responsibility.
You are spending more time with people than they are probably spending at home. I’ve always felt a moral responsibility that as you touch those people, you make a difference in their lives.
That’s been, I would say, the most rewarding part of this.
When people come back, even people who I hated to see leave because they went to something I couldn’t offer, they came and said it was because you pushed me, you trusted me, you gave me rope – that I can do what I’m doing today.
I’ve had people come to me and say, because of what you talk about in company meetings, or in a coaching conversation, it saved my marriage.
Or because you shared your struggle with alcohol, you helped me with my struggle with alcohol and addiction.
Those things mean more to me than any of the financial success – that you’ve actually made a positive difference in someone’s life.
As I look back, because we are a major change in the company, that’s what give me the most meaning – knowing that you made a difference in people’s lives is a huge thing.
Bad experiences
On the negative side, unfortunately, some bad experiences in business do make you more cynical and less trusting – and I wish I didn’t have to say that.
But I don’t trust people like I first trusted people. That bugs me from an internal thoughts perspective, but experience unfortunately does that.
What are some of your favorite books, classes, or resources that have helped you?
Where can we find out more about your business?
Breakdown
In this section, Humble Starts provides a summary of the main lessons from Eric’s story. Hopefully, you can apply them on your own journey towards enterprise building.
Learnings from Eric:
1. You don’t need to be an expert to start.
Eric didn’t start with a business plan or a lengthy marketing research plan, he just saw an opportunity and went for it. Even though he didn’t know much about running a business, he wasn’t passive. He found himself a crash course in the business and opened his doors.
When you are starting, a bias towards action is tremendously valuable. Just get moving.
2. Opportunity comes when you are moving.
When Eric was starting, he didn’t have the next 20 years of his business planned out. He found a unique value in the Ag Tire space that allowed him to grow into an international company – but he only found this because he got started. He was in the industry, running his local service business and he was ready for opportunities.
You don’t need to see the full picture, you need to get in the game and keep your eyes ready for an opportunity.
3. Your moral responsibility.
Eric takes very seriously his role as a Boss and owner. People spend a large portion of their lives at work, and as an enterprise owner, its your responsibility to carefor and guide that workplace environment. Take it seriously, and be intentional – it effects people. Be a boss like Eric.
