Former Toyota Motor North America executive Jack Hollis comes out of a brief retirement to join Accrual Equity Partners, a private equity firm whose best-known company in the auto retail space is National Business Brokers, Irvine, CA, a leading specialist in brokering auto dealership mergers and acquisitions.
“The reason we’re here to get together now is to find growth opportunities in the future,” Hollis says in a video conference call. The partnership’s agenda includes growing National Business Brokers and potentially investing in businesses adjacent to dealerships, such as collision-repair shops.
Also participating in the call are Brady Schmidt and Jacob Tilzer, co-founders and managing partners of Accrual Equity Partners. The partnership, with offices in Scottsdale. AZ, and Los Angeles, was founded in September 2024. Hollis joins Accrual Equity Partners as a third managing partner.
Former “Factory Guy”
Hollis, 58, retired as executive vice president and chief operating officer at Toyota Motor North America, Plano, TX, this past January.
In a 33-year career with Toyota, his prior assignments included executive vice president, sales; senior vice president of automotive operations; group vice president and general manager of the Toyota Div.; and vice president of the Scion brand.
“After proudly spending three-plus decades with Toyota, I naturally wanted to be thoughtful about my next chapter,” Hollis says.
Before joining Accrual Equity Partners, Hollis says he considered opportunities in manufacturing and private and publicly owned retail automotive groups, as well as ministry, government and professional sports.
Dealer Cred
Schmidt, 55, had a long career at National Business Brokers before forming Accrual Equity Partners with Tilzer, 36, whose automotive background is largely in service and parts.
Schmidt is still the executive chairman of National Business Brokers, which does business as NBB. His late father, Kent Schmidt, founded the company in 1978. Brady Schmidt joined the company in 1991. He was president and CEO from 2004 to June 2025.
“I'm also a new-car dealer, myself,” Brady Schmidt says, adding he has stores in Hawaii and California.
Non-Discretionary Business
Tilzer says his background is “mainly in fixed ops.” Notably, in 2012, he founded Kaizen Auto Care, which grew to over 800 employees, 50 collision repair locations, ten mechanical and calibration centers and a multi-state mobile auto glass operation before he sold it in a private-equity acquisition in 2024.
He says Accrual Equity Partners is interested in “non-discretionary” or “essential” businesses – that is, with reliable demand whether the economy is up or down – ideally, in disaggregated industries that are ripe for consolidation.
“Organically, everything we do currently is in and around the automotive dealership space, serving and catering to those businesses, and we built a bunch of ancillary businesses alongside that,” Tilzer says.
