Moving On Up
(Continued)

It was during this time that Weisbeck met his wife. He was still very young at the time and wasn’t taking the manager course as seriously as he should have been, still sticking to his late night and early morning norm.

“I met my wife in a bar; I dropped a beer on her foot,” he said.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The Weisbecks were married in October 1995 and now have two daughters; Samantha is 14 years old and Savanna is 7 years old.

Five days after his wedding, Weisbeck was transferred to another Jiffy Lube location in town, a shop that under Weisbeck’s guidance thrived.

	One of Weisbeck's lube shops, recently updated with Jiffy Lube's new livery.

“We took that service center from a customer count of 35 per day in November 1995 to 52 customers per day in July 1997,” he said.

That month, Weisbeck was offered the position of district manager after Orsi was promoted to regional manager, remaining Weisbeck’s boss. For three years, Weisbeck operated between seven and nine service centers in Orange Park, Middleburg and Jacksonville, Florida. He quickly learned that he could not keep managing the same way he had in the past.

“The most valuable lesson to those supervising multiple facilities is to develop one strong facility first,” he said, “which will allow you to train out of and use as an example for the way things should be. We did this in Orange Park, and we had fantastic success training most of our managers, corporate trainers and many others out of this one facility.”

In June 2000, Weisbeck was transferred to Columbia, South Carolina, and put in charge of 18 Jiffy Lube locations in the Columbia and Charleston markets.

“This opportunity demanded more delegation skills and even more time management skills,” he said. “I certainly appreciate the dedication that someone in this position must have.”

Two years later, Weisbeck was given the chance to purchase a pair of Jiffy Lubes in Florence. He was only 28 years old, and in just a few short years had gone from fledgling lube tech to the owner of multiple stores.

“It was quite a leap, being out from under the support and security of a company that had been so good to me,” he said. “I will say, to this day, the biggest challenge is being without that support system.”

One year later, he purchased a third store in Florence.

In the end, Weisbeck completed a journey few are brave enough to undertake: technician to manager to owner. It was a journey that was not always easy, but one that definitely had its rewards.

“Time will tell if there’s an opportunity for advancement,” he said. “I don’t want to give false hope to anyone. It takes working a lot of long hours and late nights. There are no free passes, but it’s all worth it in the end.”

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