No Grey Areas by Joseph N. Gagliano

Author:Joseph N. Gagliano [Gagliano, Joseph N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen:

Riding High

I got out of prison in September of 2000, tired, exhausted, and utterly beaten down. Beaten down from five years of a federal investigation, beaten down from battling a federal indictment, and beaten down from the intense media scrutiny surrounding the case. I was flat-out tired from the stress of being in prison. The only thing I wanted to do was try to relax a bit, make some changes in my life, and get a new start.

I just wanted a break.

My new-found stigma from the label of convicted felon made me feel I was constantly being judged and held to a higher standard than others. I was unsure who I was, what I was supposed to be, whom I could trust, and count on in my life. This uncertainty set me up for another round of bad choices.

I had received an unsolicited offer from a publicly traded company to purchase the Shammy Man Car Wash site I owned on the west side of Phoenix. I was into that location for about $900,000 just twenty-four months prior, and now I was being offered almost three million dollars, with a quick close.

It was too good to pass up so I took the offer and sold the site rather than continuing to build a solid, strong company on my own, one that would continue to grow into a strong metro Phoenix brand with multiple sites.

I guess other operators must have thought this was a sign that I was getting out of the car wash business, because soon after the west side site was sold, other car wash owners in town made me offers for my Scottsdale site; five offers in all came in.

I ended up selling the Scottsdale location for north of three million in March of 2001 to a great guy who owned three car wash sites in the Phoenix area. His other sites had been struggling and in the red most of the time, so his thinking was to buy my Scottsdale site in hopes of offsetting his overall losses.

After that sale, I was officially out of the car wash business. Now with the ASU criminal case behind me and money in the bank, the stresses in my life evaporated completely. I had a fresh start, and invested a chunk of my new money as a passive investor in some nightclubs in town, and a few entrepreneurial deals here and there. Life was simple.

As it turned out, “simple” is not for me.

After six months of the “simple” life, the guy I’d sold the Scottsdale car wash to called me up to tell me that sales for the site were down by over forty percent. With his other three sites already bleeding money and the Scottsdale site now down as well, he knew that something was wrong. So I worked out a deal whereby I would consult on all four sites for a thirty-day period in an attempt to figure out where the problems were and get him back on track.

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