From Garage to Global: The Journey of Amigo Mobility

Today's episode is brought to you by the Stevens Center for Family

Business, whose mission is to support the success of family businesses

through the generations with education, networking and collaboration.

The journey is tough and there are ups and downs and challenges to it,

but probably at one of our darkest times, we were pretty low on money.

The bank was pressuring us, gonna pull the loan and we thought this is it.

Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Ordinary People, extraordinary Things.

I'm your host, cliff Dubin, wa we would all agree that love is a powerful force,

so powerful that when a man saw a beloved family member losing her independence to

multiple sclerosis and it was absolutely nothing available to help her, he said

to himself, there must be a better way.

This two-time high school dropout turned HVAC business owner became an invent.

And he built into existence a way that his beloved family member could regain

her independence and her dignity.

This invention launched an entire industry giving tens of thousands,

even hundreds of thousands of people, their mobility every single day.

Please welcome to the show, the President and CEO of Amigo Mobility International,

located in Bridgeport, Michigan.

Beth Thieme.

Beth, how are you?

I'm great.

Thank you.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about where you're from and where you grew up?

Well, I was, I was born on the west side of Michigan, and then we moved to Saginaw.

I was fifth out of six children in our family, and we lived in the

Saginaw area the rest of our lives.

Where did you go to college?

So I went to Central Michigan University for my first two years.

I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but then I quickly realized that

health and science was my passion.

So I switched to nursing and then I took some more classes and eventually

enrolled in nursing school in the interim to earn some money.

I was working at Amigo and.

Soon discovered that I had a passion for business and because it was healthcare

related and that feeling of helping people, uh, touched my heart, I made

the change and stayed in business.

And we're glad that you did.

So let's talk.

So you started working for Amigo.

So then Amigo was actually a company when you joined it, and it was started by Al.

So tell us a little bit about his background.

Al Thieme was a plumbing and heating contractor, so he's a guy who did

not love school, but loved to work.

So he quit school early in the 10th grade so he could start a

career, and he became a plumber and eventually starting his own business.

He was very successful at it and loved the plumbing business.

Then his first wife was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

They had six children.

He really, she really struggled with mobility and he pushed her in a

wheelchair for the first time and, Both of them felt there must be a better way.

And he created, He promised to build something that would make her

independent, would be fun, attractive to use, and he worked nights and weekends

in his garage and created the very first three wheeled mobility vehicle.

Now, because he is got this plumbing background, HVAC background,

where did he come up with the skills to do at that time?

Primarily mechanical.

Style work in, in engineering, cuz you're really trying to build

something that doesn't even exist.

Where did those, where did those skills come into play?

You know, I think entrepreneur, that entrepreneurial mind

looks at the end result, what they're going to create and do.

And they find a way.

So he relied on engineers and friends and people in the community

to help him fine tune this vehicle.

and actually build some of the early versions of it,

He finally gets this prototype ready.

How did he go about starting to get customers?

Was it directly selling to retail?

Did he try to go out and get some, you know, commercial clients?

How did that work?

You know, it was, it was a tough journey.

It, people always, I think from a distance look and say, Wow, they made it big

Right?

It's not, it takes a lot of persistence.

He, he started by really people who had MS and were in the local

MS chapter, started to see the amigo and use, and they wanted one.

And so he would build a few more.

Really still not with the idea of creating a business, just of helping people

and, then as it grew, um, he went to medical supply dealers.

He tried selling it direct himself.

I would.

Biggest part of our success came when we made the change to having Amigo customers

or their family members sell the product.

They could speak from the heart what the product did and how it changed their

lives, and their passion could not be beat by anyone else telling the story.

And our biggest sales came from that.

We probably at one time had anywhere between two and 400

people across the country selling.

That is absolutely amazing.

And I, I have to go back and I want to touch back on this because it

was, it was something that I was really surprised to hear, but really,

Amigo started in somebody's garage.

And if you were a vendor coming to visit Amigo and you said,

Can I see your assembly plant?

We'd put on our coats, run across the four lanes of the Dixie Highway, up

the driveway into a two-car garage.

And I very proudly would open the door and say, This is our plant.

We got up to a hundred Amigos a month built in that little two car garage.

.I know.

And it was, we were so excited when we could finally build, afford to build a

building on the same side as the office.

And we didn't have to make that run across the highway,

And I bet you your vendors, when they go into the garage, they were just probably

really surprised thinking it was gonna be some kind of like, you know, GM

facility or something else like that.

But nope, here we are.

Yeah, we were, we were small.

Small but mighty back then.

Yeah.

Well, a hundred units a month.

That's impressive.

Mm-hmm.

, that's very impressive.

Out of a garage.

It is.

And it, it really speaks to the fortitude of the people who

surrounded us in the very early years.

Um, we didn't have a lot of glitz and glamour to offer and

a lot of perks and benefits.

People came to work cuz they wanted to work and they loved the mission,

I think that's absolutely so critical, especially when you're just starting

out on some kind of an adventure, is being able to communicate that vision.

Cuz a lot of people, when you share with them and they see what it is,

and you were talking before about the, you know, your customers becoming your

best sales force that is out there.

And so this really creates it like people think of, Wow, I'm

part of something special versus just I'm getting a paycheck.

Right?

Right.

People, people wanna to join forces if you have a definite mission.

And our mission is improving lives through mobility, and it's

very important to us that it, it affects the quality of what we do.

The.

Engineering of what we do in the future of what we do.

We always surround ourselves with that mission and say,

Does this fit our mission?

And does everybody understand that mission?

And it really leads to a lot of synergies and growth in the business.

I think it also applies to when you truly understand your vision or your

why of why you're doing it, this is what carries you through the lean times.

Absolutely.

We go back every once in a while and we read the, uh, testimonials

from our customers and.

Is so inspiring how we've changed so many people's lives.

You know, some of our favorite famous customers were, um, Ray

Crock, who built mcDonald's.

There you go.

Colonel Sanders, Uh, Joe Lewis, Tony Fields,, Um, Richard Pryor,

Um, and now today, Etac Pearlman.

He plays every concert around the world, sitting out in his a.

Amigo.

There's an awesome commercial right there.

It is.

He loves it.

And uh, it just seeing people become so active, independent, and really truly

living a normal life with the amigo is a huge mo motivator for all of our team.

Certainly what I like to do is I want to go back and I talk, cause I know that

we were sharing before about, you know, the company's just getting started.

It's just starting to get some traction.

You're getting some sales, you're doing a hundred units a

month, which is still impressive.

Things really start to take off, right?

You were, you're seeing your business grow like crazy.

You're able to get the building across the street.

Everything seems to be just all fine and hunky dory, but then apparently

there was some kind of a Medicaid change or medicare change that happened

that kind of threw you guys off guard.

Why don't you talk to us a little bit about that?

So our sales were growing in healthcare 50% a year.

And you feel almost at the time, maybe a little invincible . Um, and you're

focused so much on keeping up with that growth that I don't think you always

stop and look at the outside threats.

But in the eighties, uh, late eighties, um, There was a company

that came into the marketplace.

They actually visited Amigo to see if they wanted to get into the marketplace.

They were going to buy a franchise and then decided not to, and

they were named Scooter store.

And um, well they named their company after they left and started the company,

but it was called Scooter Store.

And I'm sure everybody's seen the commercials.

You can get one free, absolutely no cost to you.

And I'm.

Suggest to people that when you hear something from the government

that's free, it's never free.

There is always a cost tied to it.

But they went around in what the, They found a loophole in Medicare that said

the government will pay a hundred percent of the cost of a joystick chair, but

very little for a three wheel vehicle.

And that is, And so people would say to us, Why don't you build joysticks?

We absolutely could have.

But you don't put a person into a joystick chair until their mobility

is extremely limited because you want them to move, hold their arm, arms

up, swivel the seat movement is life.

And so we wanted to encourage that.

And even the enticement of government money would not take

us to where they wanted to be.

Uh, after many years, I'm gonna think 20 plus years, the

government did shut them down.

Oh, wow.

And we're still here.

And with that, we're gonna take a quick break to thank our sponsors.

When we return, Beth is gonna share with us how Amigo Mobility survived

those turbulent times, the creative ideas that allowed Amiga to be able to

stabilize and grow their business, and how Amigo is helping to keep obsolete

and broken motorized carts on landfills.

See you after the break.

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Welcome back to Ordinary People, extraordinary Things.

Today we are talking with Beth Thieme from Amigo Mobility International.

Now, before the break, we were talking about this really tough

period in Amigo's history, basically.

Your competitors figure out a way to sell your product, uh, for free,

uh, at the taxpayer's expense, which Uncle Sam was not happy about.

You and Al during this time were struggling to really define a

new direction for Amigo, and it was during this time that there

was an extreme emphasis on sales, like, what can we do every single

day just to sell one more amigo?

Uh, Beth, if you would, walk us through how you and your team, uh,

survived those very turbulent times.

You know, our backs are up against the wall a number of times.

It's, it's not all uphill , you know, or downhill or however

you wanna characterize it.

The journey is tough and there are ups and downs and challenges to it,

but probably at one of our darkest times, we were pretty low on money.

The bank was pressuring us, um, gonna pull the loan and we

thought we're, we could be done

This is it.

This is it.

And you know, it's a huge responsibility not only for yourselves, I mean the

personal hits hard, but when you look around at your people and they're paying

mortgages and car payments and raising families, there is a really added,

uh, burden and blessing to that where you don't wanna let the team down.

And I will say that.

I, I remember coming back from a particular tough bank meeting with

Al and just looking at him and saying, You know, we could just get

sad and drown in these feelings, but every day, let's work on sales.

Just one more amigo.

Just one more . And it kind of changes your focus to moving

forward rather than drowning in.

And one of the things that that comes to mind when you say that is, it's

also important too, to remember that you gotta keep, you gotta keep your

focus on what's truly important.

And for any business out there that's sales, you have to have

that sales pipeline coming in.

And it's really easy to.

either,

I don't wanna say complacent,

I'll say comfortable with, you know, how everything is going today and

Oh, I, you really don't need to do it cuz it's gonna take care of itself.

But I, I, I have to agree that your decision to say, You know

what, let's focus on sales.

What can we do to sell one more unit today?

Let's dig ourselves out of this.

I, I think that's just absolutely brilliant.

Thank you.

And you know, I think on, on the other side, the finance people will say

they're, they're gonna look at the cost side and let them do their thing.

But I think our role was to build sales.

And I also think too that from the employee standpoint, because employees

can feel when a company's in trouble,

So to see you putting in that extra effort to.

Move the ball forward, you know, grinding just that much harder

and we're not gonna give up.

I, I think, would also help to inspire them to sit there and say, Wow, if

they're not giving up, then neither am i,

because they've already bought into your vision.

But like we talked about before, knowing that why helps

to really carry you through.

Right.

I, I remember walking into accounting at one point and we had a young

accountant there and then we had a guy who had been with us for a few years.

The senior accountant, the young one put up his hands and

he said, We are burned Toast

He had looked at the incoming invoices that day and it

was just, we're burnt toast.

You know, he, he, he left, he, he didn't see the vision and wasn't

willing to go on the journey, which is fine, we respect that.

But the guy who stayed with us has been with us for 33 years now, and we always

talk about those tough times and, and.

Uh, shake our heads a little bit.

Smile.

There's some laughs, but there's a huge amount of gratitude for Mike that during

the darkest days and he knew what the numbers were of anybody, he knew where

we were, he stayed with us, and that, that's just something we'll never forget.

I also think too, that by going through these really tough times, has

helped you to kind of get a little bit more perspective, cuz we talk about

recessions, we talk about, you know, the pandemic shutting down the world.

And so it's almost like, you know what,

We went through this before.

We had really tough times before.

So it gives you a little bit perspective like, okay, so last time we focused on

sales, maybe we should focus more on sales this time, or something else like that.

So how is that kind of played into your visioning of the future?

Because obviously it's, it's easy to say everything's gonna

be roses, but you and I both know that you're gonna have tough times.

You're gonna have those, those struggles in there.

So how does that play into that?

Um, you know, it's coming because there is no perfect world.

And so I.

We address it earlier and we look at what do we think is coming?

How do we shore up this business by getting into different markets so you're

not solidified and 90% of your business is this market, but investing in other.

Opportunities that take you a little outta your comfort zone maybe,

but launch you into other markets.

And maybe some are a little bit more recession proof than others and, um,

but I think staying with the same old gets you into the same old problem.

Yes, yes, yes.

I, I definitely would agree with that.

Cause I could see a lot of people focusing on what's working now.

And then just thinking that's always gonna work.

Right.

And I, you know, I think the advice that we share with people is not because

we've read books or we think it's because we live through mistakes, , and

we learn the hardest way possible.

Um, and I think when you do that, you never forget that that's

true and you really, uh, work to preserve these good times.

But the lesson that we learned during that tough time was when you are

growing is when the time you need to think about reinventing yourself.

What is the next thing you can get into?

And um, so we, we've really over the years, kind of stepped back

and said, We're good at, he.

But what are we really good at?

We're good at batteries, motors, wheels, chargers, and controllers.

How can we use those components to improve lives through mobility?

So it launched us into the grocery business.

We, we dabbled in that for many years, but it really, in the early two thousands,

we made it a huge focus of our business.

And today it's the biggest part of our business.

But it also launched us into industrial, um, material handling carts, into

the aviation business, uh, into, uh, contract with a large automotive

company as a tier two supplier.

So it, it has really helped our business change and, and evolve over the years.

And plus it's opened up other revenue streams.

for your business.

So you're not just solely dependent upon selling an Amigo, you know,

you could sell different parts of it to different industries.

Correct.

And then my husband, who is a true visionary, he, um, he has genius ideas.

Every once in a while that really change.

He has hundreds of ideas, but genius ideas, crazy Sometimes it's hard

to tell the difference, right?

And I thought it was a crazy idea, but now we say it was a genius idea.

He asked the question, What happens to all the motorized carts when they're

done, when they've hit end of life?

They were being thrown into landfills.

So we decided, uh, we created a program where we bring 'em back.

We bring our own brand back.

We bring our competitors brands back.

We have recycling centers in Las Vegas and Michigan that take them apart and

they harvest the good parts because maybe.

Six months before it was gonna be thrown out, a new component was put on that.

So we harvest, test the good and sell it as re-certified parts on the

service market, and then we properly recycle the remaining plastics

and steels that are, are used.

And it's phenomenal business.

It is.

And what I'm thinking about here as you're sharing this, is, is the, the, the power

of asking the question, what if, So before you were talking about how you had, you

know, one car, but now you're thinking, well there's, you know, what if we

could branch out into these other areas, What if we could take these components?

What if we brought these carts?

At end of life.

And I think there's a lot of power in asking yourself what if.

And cuz you know, somebody will come along like you made a comment

up before your, you said, Oh, I thought he was crazy to do this.

Right?

And a lot of the times people say, Well, what if this?

And somebody will come along and say, Oh, that idea is crazy.

Oh, that idea will never work.

Well you may be right, but what if it.

What would that look like?

And now you say that, you know, it's become a big part of your business.

You're keeping all these products on landfill and everything else like that.

So I think there's a lot of power in being able to, to ask that simple question.

You know, we've gone, uh, through a program for entrepreneurs that really

has helped our business and, and our group leader has helped us identify that,

you know, we always labeled Al as an entrepreneur, but now we label him as a

visionary.

And I'm the integrator.

And when you pair visionaries with integrators, it's a pretty healthy

balance because, um, I think visionaries are like the stars up in the sky.

You hook yourself up to a star and you can.

Fly the integrators kind of

bring some,

uh,

so

they don't fly away

Okay.

All

And, and that's, that's kind of what I picture l and I

as, um, he is the idea guy.

I'm creative, but he's the, the bigger visionary.

And any business needs to either have one in their business or have an advisor

who's a visionary that they, they truly.

Because I think a lot of that would go back to like we were discussing

before, where the business was going really well for you, uh, but

then you were getting ready to hit.

You this dry patch and you guys were just gonna be really struggling after that.

So having somebody be able to come in and ask those types of questions or be

able to see the bigger vision and say, You know what, this is good for now.

Very happy with this.

So what if we could do something else, right, and start moving in maybe a

slightly different direction or open something else out so that way when

this particular avenue, it might dry up.

We never know.

So having that ability to have that vision, to be able to say that I, I

think would be important and good for any organization that's out there.

We've worked very hard the last few years to formulate our one year,

three year, and 10 year vision, and we start by saying, What does

our company look like in 10 years?

What's the revenues?

We paint this picture of what we envision and we put that up there, and then

within three years, where do we need to At that point to get to the ten year?

And then at one year, what do we need to do this year to get to the three year?

And having that, um, it's not really a formality, but it's, it's kind of a little

bit of a structure to get our thinking farther out rather than just next year.

You know, we, um, we're very entrepreneurial based company,

so we used a system called EOS, entrepreneurial operating System.

And it was developed by a guy in Michigan, Gina Wickman in the Detroit area.

And I will tell you, uh, for an entrepreneurial company, it is a very

valuable system that's really kind of helped us plot out our future.

Beth, if somebody's listening to this interview, they want to check out

what it is that, uh, you and your wonderful company are absolutely

doing, uh, whether that's online, uh, what, what would be the best

way for them to to connect with you?

our website really captures the type of work that we do

and the culture of our company.

And it's www my amigo.com.

And I also wanna mention that my husband kept daily journals from the

beginning of the business till today, and it captured all the stories and

memories that we've gone through.

He has, uh, published a book that will be coming out, uh, the end of the year.

Nice.

And

it's called, there must be a better way.

That's great.

So, uh, Beth, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us today.

I really do appreciate it.

And, uh, thank you again.

Thank you.

Appreciate being here.

And for our audience, visit .

Click on Beth's interview to get the links that she mentioned before.

You can also hear other interviews from Ordinary Michigans who are doing

some pretty extraordinary things.