#62 Karl Murphy, Spiffy

A Georgetown graduate who was there on an ROTC scholarship, Karly Murphy joined the Army in the 82nd Airborne, spent time in the Middle East and went through the war effort there. Coming home, Karl took a job in sales and then starting talking with a "buddy", as the story goes. They bought a car wash, started to build a chain of them. Along the way, changes in the economy and the ubiquitous presence of iPhones led them to pivot their business model and in 2014 Spiffy was born. Mobile, on demand car care and maintenance service is the business and they seem to have hit a trend. Their thesis was to go to the customer's home, take care of their car when the car was sitting. What they found out was the customer really wanted to them to serve the car when the customer was at work. When Karl and his partner coordinated the service with the building admin and the customer, it has worked out well. It also has blossomed into taking care of the customer's car when they were at the gym or the laundry. They added on oil changes to cleaning and that in turn led to fleet service in addition to individual cars. And cleaning went from individual cars to working on rental cars and decontaminating them to a sweet, clean smell for the next rental customer. Veteran Founder Podcast with your hosts Josh Carter and Carmen Nazario We record the Felony Inc Podcast inside NedSpace in the Bigfoot Podcast Studio in beautiful downtown Portland. Audio engineer, mixer and podcast editor is Allon Beausoleil Show logo was designed by Carolyn Main Website was designed by Cameron Grimes Production assistant is Chelsea Lancaster Theme music: Artist: Tipsy Track: Kadonka Album: Buzzz Courtesy of Ipecac Records 10% of gross revenue at Startup Radio Network goes to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries thru kiva.org/lender/markgrimes Listen to the Veteran Founder Podcast live on-air every Friday at 1:00pm pacific time on Startup Radio Network at startupradionetwork.com