03 Sep Acquiring Minds: An Engineer’s Mini Berkshire: 2 Auto Shops in 1 Year
Today’s guest found his way to buying businesses not through a podcast or a book, but through Warren Buffett. Sujith Shankar spent 25 years as an automotive engineer — Honda, Fisker, Hyundai, Rivian — and twice watched startup equity evaporate, most painfully when Rivian’s blockbuster IPO put his paper worth at $1.5 million before the stock then crashed. That rug pull sent him deep down the value investing rabbit hole: every Berkshire shareholder letter since 1977, 200 hours of shareholder meetings. And it led him to a conclusion: rather than build a nest egg to draw down, own something that produces cash flow. So about a year ago, Sujith set out to buy a business. The first one he found on BizBuySell — a boutique auto repair shop near his home in Orange County — turned out to be the one he bought. Listen for how he financed it: no SBA loan, but a HELOC from a credit union at a rate 3.5% below what the SBA would have charged. He kept his day job at Hyundai and paid most of that HELOC off within months. Then came business number two, a body shop an hour away, bought in a 50/50 partnership with the seller. (Yes, we discuss the risks of 50/50 partnerships.) It was this second deal that finally prompted Sujith to leave his W-2 and step fully into his businesses. Sujith’s frame for all of this is explicitly Buffett: circle of competence, fat pitches, buy high-quality businesses and hold them forever. A mini Berkshire. Here is Sujith Shankar, owner of an auto repair shop and body shop in Southern California.
