Navy Veteran's Auto Shop
People sometimes ask me how I went from the Navy to running an auto repair shop in Colorado Springs. The honest answer is that it wasn't a straight line. Very few things worth doing are.
From the Navy to the shop floor
I served in the United States Navy, and the military taught me things that don't show up on a resume. How to solve problems under pressure. How to take care of the people around you. How to show up every single day and do the work, whether you feel like it or not. Those lessons didn't leave when I took off the uniform.
Transitioning to civilian life is disorienting in ways that are hard to explain to someone who hasn't done it. You go from a world with clear structure and a shared mission to one where you have to build all of that from scratch. I landed in Colorado Springs and eventually found my way into the auto repair industry. I opened Adam & Son Auto Repair because I wanted to build something that mattered — not just to me, but to the community around me.
More than a repair shop
From the beginning, I wanted the shop to feel different. Not just in how we fix cars, but in how we treat people. We run a four-day work week because I believe our team deserves time with their families. Burned-out technicians don't do great work, and they don't treat customers well. When people are rested and respected, everything gets better — the repairs, the conversations, the culture.
Our motto is "Just Be Kind." Three words that sound simple until you try to live them every day in a business. It means being honest when a repair isn't necessary. It means explaining things in plain language instead of hiding behind jargon. It means treating the person who drives a fifteen-year-old minivan with the same respect as the person who drives a new truck.
Where ShopGiv came from
The idea for ShopGiv was born right here in the shop. I kept watching transactions happen — oil changes, brake jobs, engine work — and thinking about what would happen if a small piece of every transaction went to something meaningful. Not a once-a-year charity event. Not a donation jar on the counter. A built-in, automatic contribution to the community, funded by everyday commerce.
That's what ShopGiv became. Every service at Adam & Son generates a donation. Customers don't pay more. The giving is baked into how we operate. It turns out that when you design a business around generosity, people want to be part of it.
The Stranded Motorist Fund
The other thing that grew out of this shop is the Stranded Motorist Fund. We kept seeing families come in who genuinely could not afford the repair that stood between them and getting to work, getting their kids to school, keeping their lives together. A broken car in Colorado Springs isn't an inconvenience — it's a crisis. Public transit doesn't cover most of the city. If your car doesn't run, your life stops.
So we started helping. Quietly at first, just covering repairs when we could. Eventually we formalized it into a real program. The Stranded Motorist Fund provides emergency vehicle repairs to families in crisis, funded by the community through ShopGiv donations. It's one of the things I'm most proud of.
Why this matters
I didn't open an auto repair shop to get rich. I opened it because I wanted to build something that reflected the values I carried out of the Navy — service, integrity, taking care of people. Adam & Son is a business, and it needs to be profitable to survive. But profit isn't the point. The point is what you do with it.
Every oil change funds a community program. Every brake job helps a neighbor. ShopGiv, Adam & Son, and the Stranded Motorist Fund are all part of AiN Collective — a platform built to turn everyday commerce into lasting community impact. That's the shop I wanted to build, and I'm grateful every day that this community showed up to build it with me.