Epic Entrepreneurs

Charging Ahead: One Man's Electric Ride to Entrepreneurship with Lee McDowell

• Bill Gilliland

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What happens when a passionate electrician and car enthusiast discovers the untapped potential of electric vehicle infrastructure? Lee McDowell's story of transformation from overworked contractor to thriving business owner offers a blueprint for entrepreneurial success in emerging markets.

Working grueling 90-hour weeks at a construction company, McDowell had little time for his young family. When personal research into EV charging for his new Tesla revealed a significant service gap, he spotted an opportunity. Starting with installations on evenings and weekends, his side hustle matched his full-time income in just four weeks. Since leaving his job in December 2021, Car Charger Specialist has grown to 11 employees with operations across Georgia and North Carolina, on track for $3 million in revenue this year.

McDowell's business journey contains powerful lessons about partnership development, equity distribution, and cash flow management. His company leverages relationships with major automotive manufacturers while avoiding over-dependence on any single lead source. His hiring philosophy—prioritizing attitude and work ethic over experience—has built a team capable of rapid growth and expansion into new markets.

Check out SilentThunderEvents.com to learn about McDowell's upcoming racing event on August 23rd.

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All the best!
Bill

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All the best!

Bill

Bill Gilliland:

Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am super pumped. Today. I've got Lee McDowell with us and, yeah, I can't wait to hear his story. It's got to be pretty cool. So, Lee, welcome to the podcast and tell us a little bit about your business and your company and yourself.

Lee McDowell:

You got it. Thanks for having me, bill. It's an honor. So I'm Lee McDowell. I'm the CEO and founder of Car Charger Specialist. We are a electrical contractor and the home base is in Georgia, in the Gainesville area, but we have recently expanded up into the North Carolina region, into the Asheville surround, charlotte, raleigh, we're kind of all up through in North Carolina and we are a contractor that exclusively focuses on electric vehicle charging station infrastructure for residential fleet and commercial applications.

Bill Gilliland:

So just to clarify what's the difference between residential and commercial fleet installations?

Lee McDowell:

So residential, like, let's say, you go buy a Tesla, right, yep. So residential, like, let's say, you go buy a Tesla, right, yep. Evs are really great when it comes to efficiency and operating costs If you have a charger installed at your house, right. So when you buy an EV, if you have the means, if you install a um what's called a level two charger at your house, then you can charge your car in just a few hours. Um, like, you just charge at night and if you can think about it, it's kind of like your iPhone or your, your smartphone. You just plug it in at night and then it works all day. Then you don't really think about it for the most part, um, and you plug it back in at night and then it works all day. Then you don't really think about it for the most part, and you plug it back in at night and it works the whole day. And that's how an electric vehicle is.

Lee McDowell:

And some days you might have super busy days right when you have to plug your phone in in the middle of the day.

Lee McDowell:

Let's say, if you're like a busy guy on the phone the whole day, a sales guy or something, sales guy or something but in that case you just stop at a level three charger which is really designed for like commercial use.

Lee McDowell:

So that's kind of that commercial application is those level three chargers are meant for when you're on the road traveling, and those charges will charge you up in about 15, 20 minutes on average. So we do both of those things. So that's the residential and commercial side. And then there's a fleet side where you might have a warehouse with 10 delivery trucks and we would go put some chargers in at your warehouse, so when all those trucks return home at night, they they charge up and we actually um, it's kind of neat we have a fleet our of our own evs, so we do our installations out of rivian service trucks. So we have an electric fleet, um, and that kind of a cuts down on operating cost and b, all of my technicians, whether they have an EV or not, they have to deal with electric vehicles every day. So that's in a nutshell what we do like big picture.

Lee McDowell:

But the residential side of things. For us is kind of it's where we make the biggest impact, because we instruct new EV owners on all the ins and outs of EV ownership and it's really fun for us because they get home with a brand new car. They are aware that the expense is upcoming of installing their charger, so it's not a surprise to them and we get in the car with them and show them how to take a road trip to Disney World if they want to. Or for, like Tesla owners, you can make your car, make fart noises you know it's kind of silly, but it's fun to get in there with them.

Bill Gilliland:

So yeah, that's pretty cool. So how did you, did you start it with that in mind? Or were you in like an, in like an electrical contracting business, and then, or how did you get? How did you make the leap? I guess?

Lee McDowell:

So I, when I was growing up, I was taught to go to college and don't be a loser like the construction guys. Like, do good in school. Yeah right, it turns out my parents were exactly right. I did not do good in school and um went to college, didn't know what I wanted to do and one summer I um came home and my uncle, cleat, had a uh. He worked for a large electrical contractor in in atlanta and he hired me for a summer job and it's supposed to be temporary.

Lee McDowell:

But I started doing some like apprentice work, just as a summer helper and I loved it. I just had never been exposed to it. So what I did is I went through the IBEW apprenticeship school and even though I was a bad college student, I was a really good electrical student. College student. I was a really good electrical student. So I decided that's what I wanted to do and I wanted to get into leadership and management and I was with this company, england Stubs, here in Atlanta. They're a large union contractor. I was with them for 13 years and when I left I was a general foreman over um multimillion dollar projects so big tenant build outs, um data centers, hospitals, stuff like that. That was our specialty and it was great. Um and I was making great money.

Lee McDowell:

But, as your listeners may know, there is a skilled labor shortage that is very serious and it's not just in the Atlanta region, it's national. It's a big issue. So what happens to us tradesmen is we end up working very long hours because the contract does not care how long you have to work, it just has a completion date. So I was working 80, 90 hour weeks often and it wasn't really a big deal until I had kids and um. At the time when I was working on those hours, I also had a sweet torch red. So it's a 2014 c7 corvette z51 beautiful, it was an awesome car. I'm a big car guy. I've had corvettes and mustangs my whole life and um, but after I had my first kid, I just didn't drive it very much anymore. It was expensive, um, especially just for a toy that sat in the garage. So I sold it and I thought I could get by with my little Corolla that I bought and I just couldn't handle it. I needed the speed.

Bill Gilliland:

I needed a four-door car.

Lee McDowell:

That was fast and it left me with a Dodge Hellcat charger. That's what I was looking at and a buddy of mine told me about the Tesla Model 3 performance and at the time I thought EVs were super lame, you know, like it was just for environmentalist type folks.

Bill Gilliland:

Right Yep.

Lee McDowell:

But I went and drove that Model 3 performance and it absolutely blew me away, like the instant torque was amazing. It was very comfortable. It would drive normal if you wanted it to, or it is zero to 60 in three seconds flat, yep, um. So I bought it and in tesla, notoriously, um, their customer service is not great. When you go, like, pick up your car, they don't explain anything to you. I didn't know anything about how to charge it or anything. So I had to do all my research and I ended up buying my level two charger. I installed it and at the time I didn't think much about it.

Lee McDowell:

But I went through about at work for about three months where I was working 90 plus hour weeks and I was gone before my kids got up each day and I was home after they were asleep, and that was, I mean, that was seven days a week for three months straight.

Lee McDowell:

And I had hair before all that started, believe it or not, and I was super stressed and I just had this daydream one day of putting those chargers in. I already had my contractor's license. I made sure to go ahead and get that in case I wanted to do something on my own, and that idea popped in my head and I told my wife about it and she basically said well, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to do something with it or not? So that was all I needed. So I formed up the LLC, I got the general liability insurance and I just started advertising on Angie's list to start, and I would go install a charger on nights and weekends and I made a deal with myself that once I was making enough money to match my take-home pay from England Stubs, that I would leave and start it full-time. And it only took four weeks.

Lee McDowell:

Wow, four weeks, yeah, yeah yeah, so yeah, that was uh. I left that company in december of 21 and I worked out of the back of my tesla, in the back of our jeep wrangler for a few months until I could buy a van and I worked out of the van by myself for a few more months and um hired my first guy and 22 in April. It was just us for about a year and after we like figured out the processes and everything, we um we really started hiring and expanding and um, now we have 11 employees. We're on track. We should do a little over $3 million in revenue this year, cleared just around $2 million last year. We're growing at a nice pace. We're expanding from the Atlanta market. We're pretty saturated in the residential piece of the Atlanta market right now. We're pretty saturated in the residential piece of the Atlanta market right now. So we're expanding into like we're working in Asheville right now and Greenville, south Carolina, is the next target for us.

Bill Gilliland:

Nice, yep, good, those are good targets. I like it. I like it.

Lee McDowell:

Yeah, man.

Bill Gilliland:

So let me ask you some business questions here. What if you had to start over from square one in business? What would you do differently?

Lee McDowell:

I wouldn't be afraid to seek investment. It's something that I was really uncomfortable with, and you kind of hear horror stories of like deals gone bad, but I didn't consider that if somebody is willing to invest in you, um, they're your partner, they don't want to see you fail, right, right, and for me I'm just we're still bootstrapped right now, but we're we're getting ready to to get some stuff kind of tightened up on our back end to seek some investment partners. I didn't realize cash flow. I didn't understand the way cash flow worked until I'd say, really this year, when it comes to like expansion and stair-stepping and things, yep, and having some capital available really removes a lot of the roadblocks that cash flow cycles put in your way.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, yeah, Okay, yeah. So there's a lot of ways to get capital, so you're considering some outside investment at this point to uh to scale.

Lee McDowell:

I actually have one other thing that I'll talk about. Um, my first, my first hire was a guy I'd worked with in the past and, uh, him taking that leap of faith to come work with me meant the world, but I, I gifted him equity. I would not do that again. It made things very complicated as far as accountability and certain things as we grew Right, so I let him go a few months back, but it was. It cost me dearly. It was very hard to do, but the cost and the stress, yeah, yeah.

Bill Gilliland:

That's a good, yeah, that's a good lesson. You're probably better off just paying them well. So, yeah, it's a good, it's a good thing. So those are good, those are good learnings. What are the? What other big learnings have you? Have you had as a, as an owner and an employer since you started the business?

Lee McDowell:

Compensation packages are everything. The way those things are structured for each tier of employee is very important. So, for example, you know, paying us as a service business, paying your employees hourly, makes accounting very easy, but it only incentivizes employees to be less efficient. Um, so that's, that's one thing, so that's, that's a big lesson. Um, I would say, um, and there's a lot of lessons learned. Uh, but just just keeping your book straight, that's super important, all the accounting. And then I wouldn't say it's a lesson learned, but it's a lesson that everybody, I think needs to hear.

Lee McDowell:

Nobody cares about you, man Like no, you're by yourself, Nobody cares.

Bill Gilliland:

No-transcript because you're right, they're too focused on themselves to care about what you're doing. You know if it can help them, great If they can't do that. So what are some common misconceptions about running a business that you've, and how do you deal with them?

Lee McDowell:

Well, when you're the founder, I think everybody kind of assumes that you're that you're getting paid the most right, it's so true, it's so true.

Bill Gilliland:

I remember my first business. Everybody thought I was rich, you know. Employees thought, well, bill's rich, he owns the business.

Lee McDowell:

I think I'm sitting in there counting the money. I am counting the money because I'm making sure we can make payroll and pay our insurance and invest in growth. But it doesn't just trickle into my pockets. My technicians, it doesn't just trickle into my pockets, right, right, like my technicians make more than me, you know, on W2. So I think that's a big thing. It wasn't hard for me. I mean, it's hard work, but if you're used to working hard, business ownership isn't impossible.

Bill Gilliland:

I like that one, I like that one, I like that one. If you're used to working hard, business ownership is just hard work. So I love it, yeah, I love it, yeah, I love it. So what do you attribute your growth to?

Lee McDowell:

Partnerships, partnerships. So for us I'll give a Tesla as a good case study we, on our residential business and our commercial, we have about 60% of our leads that come in direct through Tesla, where we're referred directly from Tesla and it's not a one-way street. We we have been very successful in getting Tesla out in front of the culture of people, and I'll explain more on that when we come talk about the race event. Yeah, but we have um, we go to tesla dealerships and educate, like on when people get their cars, we go and help instruct them on we. We cover that, fill those gaps that I discovered when I bought my tesla. We educate people on battery storage systems, on solar, on all that kind of stuff and um.

Bill Gilliland:

So, like, that partnership has been huge for us and there's a lot more like that if you're getting 60 of your leads from a partner. That's a that's a big yeah definitely diversify.

Lee McDowell:

Don't make it at 90% of your leads. That's another lesson learned. Last year, Elon fired the whole charging team off of an argument with the boss of the charging team, so instead of firing just that one person, he eliminated every contact that I had, built relationships instantly at Tesla Unbelievable. And it hurt so bad. Um, but it's because we had way too many eggs in the Tesla basket, Right, Right. So that's how I mean. Luckily we, we pulled through it, but now hey, don't do that again. Right, Right. So that's how I mean. Luckily we, we pulled through it, but now hey, don't do that again. Right, yeah.

Bill Gilliland:

There are other, there are a lot of other EVs out there. So at this point and it's just getting even more so I like it. So, um, you do have an event coming up that we want to talk about, and, since you mentioned it, let's go ahead and deal with it now. I got a couple other questions for you, but, um, yeah, tell us about, tell us about the event you got going on.

Lee McDowell:

So our event's called Silent Thunder. Um, so, to give a little background, if you couldn't tell already, I'm a huge car nut. Um, so I've I've found a trade that I'm good at and then a service that's revolving around cars, so it's business. Ownership is awesome for me because I I genuinely enjoy it and I like racing cars, I like taking cars on the racetrack and doing road racing. Um, autocross events, all that good stuff. Autocross events, all that good stuff.

Lee McDowell:

And I had an idea last year to host an event called Silent Thunder, where half of the cars on the track were electric and half were gas. I personally have both. I race my Tesla and I have a Miata race car, and then I have this kit car called a Goblin. It's the most rowdy thing you've ever seen in your life and it's gas and shoots fireballs. So I like both things and I find that in the culture people have to pick a side. Evs have become very politicized, so the EV people hang out together and the gas people hang out together, but they don't really make sense. So last year's event was really good. It was a road race, um, but it was. We were fortunate to have tesla and ribbing and bmw sponsor the event but because of the style of the race, there wasn't. It wasn't very spectator friendly, so this year we decided to move it to an oval track. You have actual stadium seating. This venue sits 7,000 people. That way, for all of our sponsors, they'll actually drive business.

Lee McDowell:

It's on August 23rd this year. We have Cadillac as our title sponsor. We have Tesla, rivian and BMW also as our second tier sponsors. We have a lot of other companies.

Lee McDowell:

In the first two hours of the event our spectators can come down and get in the best new vehicles from all these brands and ride along in their autocross course. So we have professional drivers coming to drive these sponsor-provided vehicles. And let's say, you want to ride in the new quad motor Rivian R1S. It does 0 to 60 in 2.4 seconds. It's insane. You can get in that car and experience what it feels like to do that and the handling characteristics. And then you can go get in a Cadillac CT5V Blackwing, which is a 700 horsepower twin turbo V8 Cadillac four-door and also go through the autocross course and experience that. So that's kind of the idea for the first part of the show is letting people get in these sponsored cars and actually experiencing like a high-performance driving style and it's something I don't know of any other event that lets you do that and the idea is to get people in these cars so they can make an informed purchase decision if they're in the market.

Bill Gilliland:

Sweet, so when is the event?

Lee McDowell:

August 23rd.

Bill Gilliland:

August 23rd, great and it's where.

Lee McDowell:

At Caffeine and Octane. Lanier Raceway in Brazelton Georgia. Lanier Raceway in Brazelton Georgia.

Bill Gilliland:

Lanier Raceway, Brazelton, Georgia. Okay, cool.

Lee McDowell:

It's from 12 to 9.

Bill Gilliland:

And if people want to come or get tickets or however, whatever, what's the? Is there a?

Lee McDowell:

Visit SilentThunderEventscom.

Bill Gilliland:

SilentThunderEventscom. All right, we'll put that in the show notes. Silentthundereventscom. All right, we'll put that in the show notes.

Lee McDowell:

SilentThunderEventscom. We'll have Gas vs Electric Autocross, we're going to have professional drifters there to put on a show and do ride-alongs and the main event is oval track drag racing. So that is where two cars line up side by side and hammer it and go around the circle. It's a third-mile track. It's a third mile track, so it's a pretty long oval.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah.

Lee McDowell:

You go two times around the oval as fast as they can, and the first one to go across the finish line advances.

Bill Gilliland:

Sweet yeah.

Lee McDowell:

That sounds cool. It's going to be really cool.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, it sounds cool. So all right back to back to that's awesome. I think that's a cool event that's promoting. I love that. It's letting you live in the worlds you want to hang out in electrical and cars so I love that as a thing. Which brings up the next question, which is in your previous job, it didn't sound like you had too much balance between your personal life and your business life. How are you doing that now? How are you balancing your personal life and your business life now?

Lee McDowell:

I do my best. I'm always working. Now I get up about 3.30 each day and I have a few hours to myself where I work out and nobody needs me. But right now, especially leading up to this event I mean it's Monday through Sunday we're working, but I do my best. I try to get in an hour hour or two with the kids. We do dinner together every night, all that kind of stuff. I took them to their first day of school today Sweet. But I'm definitely not spending as much time as I'd like to with the family. But that's just part of business ownership.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, well, it can be or it can. It depends on how you want to design the business. So, yeah, I mean you're working on that piece right now. There there are, there are trade-offs for sure, for sure what comes in waves. Yeah, absolutely Sure, A hundred percent. So what do you look? I mean, you've hired 11, well, you got 11 employees now.

Lee McDowell:

So what qualities do you look for in employees and how do you foster a positive work environment? So I hire, believe it or not. Um, I don't require a ton of experience. Um, particularly for our residential side. Um, I can train someone to do that job in about three months with no experience, but I can't train attitude and work ethic. So what I look for when I do my first interview how do they shake my hand? Do they look at me in the eyes? Are they smiling? Were they there on time? Right, were they? Were they there early? And I make a habit to go by their car and take a little peek inside the car.

Lee McDowell:

Peeking into somebody's car will tell you a lot about them. So those are some metrics I hire off of for new guys. Yeah, I'd say that's really the main thing. If I'm looking for experienced guys, I'm going to have more qualifying questions, things like that, but just in general that's the biggest thing, because if you don't have that good attitude, you're just not going to work out.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, hire for attitude and teach skills is a great way to go about it. So what do you wish you had known, or that somebody had told you before you went into business?

Lee McDowell:

I wish I'd done it sooner. I wish I had done it sooner. I think I I didn't have the direction, but, um, I just wish, I wish I had known that I, I could have you know sooner. Um, it's hard to say. I mean, I, that's good. You know, like, my dad owned. My dad owned businesses throughout his career and, uh, now he works for somebody and you know, I think when you grow up, you look at your parents and you think they know everything, right and like, even though he's on businesses. He gave me some good pointers to start out, but, past the initial like set up stages, you're, it's you're, you control your destiny. It's, it's all in the decisions you make. And, um, you know, I don't, I really don't know if someone had given me a mentorship prior to this, you know, I don't think we'd be where we are today. Um, I think having the agency to just do what you think is right and what you want to do is important in business ownership.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, yeah, you got to do it. You can't, you can't, you can't. Nobody can do your pushups for you. So they can give you some advice on how to do a pushup, but you know I always say you can't, I always say you can't swim. You know you got to swim your own laps.

Lee McDowell:

You always want someone to. It's the thing like still today. It's like if I encounter a problem, you go into panic oh, I need to get this person to do this thing. And like it doesn't. It oftentimes doesn't work out that way. You just got to suck it up, buttercup, figure it out. Doesn't work out that way. You just got to suck it up, buttercup, figure it out. I mean, you know. I mean, I think for entrepreneurs, that's probably par for the course Um, especially with AI. Ai is a big topic. If we have time to talk about um later on, I'd really like a chance to encourage people to use these new tools that are available right now. It's been great for us.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, so how are you using AI?

Lee McDowell:

I've used AI to completely build websites. I've used it in almost every aspect of our business, from marketing and image generation to video creation, to business plans and direction, to strategies on how to deal with tough challenges. To advise me, um, like a lawyer and an accountant, I've I've I've fired two companies that I. I have fired two companies this year that I used to pay recurring monthly fees of thousands and thousands of dollars, and I've been able to cut them loose because I can accomplish with AI and and less time than it would take me to email them about my vision and what I want.

Bill Gilliland:

Sure.

Lee McDowell:

It's.

Bill Gilliland:

It's an incredible yeah, it's a great time saver. Yeah, that's how we use it too. I use it a lot to get started on things. It's a it's a pretty interesting thing. So, um, we've got the website for the race. What's the best way for people to get a hold of you or your company if they're interested in what you have to offer?

Lee McDowell:

You can call us. Phone number is 404-520-7349,. Or you can reach out direct um 5, 2, 0, 7, 3, 4, 9. Or you can reach out direct um at installations, at car charger specialistscom. It's with the S at the end, um. Those are the best ways you can find us on um all the socials to uh YouTube, instagram, facebook, um. Just just look up car charger specialist, you'll find us there.

Bill Gilliland:

Perfect, perfect, perfect. So is there anything else you'd like to tell the world, or our, your audience?

Lee McDowell:

Yeah, it comes to AI, man, our economy is about to go through a crazy, a crazy change. Um, if, if you have a job that requires sitting in front of the computer all day, you better get with it. Um, these tools are just, they're advancing so quickly. Um, I don't know how. I'm not, I'm not really sure how we're gonna, um, as as an economy, function through this paradigm shift, but I think next year, in 2026, 27, we're going to see a ton of layoffs and we're going to have to get creative as a society on how to combat these things. So, not to be it's not a doomsday, but no, it's not.

Lee McDowell:

Start figuring out how to work with the tools and not. It's coming, whether you like it or not.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, it's just like every great technological change that we've seen. It's just happening faster in this generation than it did in the past generations, but it's happened over and over and over again. These things are not new and we'll be fine. We'll be fine. Hey look, this has been great. This has been a crazy good interview. I appreciate it. I look forward to talking more.

Lee McDowell:

Got it. Thanks, Bill.

Bill Gilliland:

Pleasure. Thank you, hey, and until next time. All the best, you got it, man.