14 hours ago
133 - Building Businesses and Believing in Better Days with Cecil Bullard
133 -Building Businesses and Believing in Better Days with Cecil Bullard
June 9, 2025 - 00:40:00
Show Summary:
Recorded live at the Institute Summit 2025, explore what it truly means to stand out in today’s evolving automotive industry. Cecil Bullard covers major industry shifts, including electric and autonomous vehicles, the growing influence of private equity, and the increasing specialization of shops. Cecil also opens up about leadership, mentorship, and the personal habits that drive success, such as effective time management, the power of “mindless work,” and adapting communication styles using tools like the DISC profile. Packed with real-world advice on business planning, self-belief, and resilience, this episode is essential listening for industry professionals aiming to thrive and lead amidst ongoing change and innovation.
Host(s):
Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio
Guest(s):
Cecil Bullard, Founder of The Institute
Show Highlights:
Introduction to the Episode (00:00:00)
Getting to Know Cecil Bullard (00:01:49)
Advice and Mentorship (00:04:49)
Industry Trends and Technology (00:05:19)
Specialization and Shop Survival (00:06:42)
Time Management and Productivity (00:08:05)
Stop Stopping: Overcoming Self-Limitation (00:09:56)
Personality Types and Communication (00:11:26)
Future of ADAS, EVs, and Specialty Shops (00:16:56)
Private Equity and Industry Consolidation (00:18:25)
Shop Valuation and Selling (00:20:53)
Planning for Succession and Exit (00:28:22)
Mentorship and Coaching (00:31:07)
Lessons to Younger Self (00:33:04)
Wealth, Security, and Time (00:34:10)
Career Path and Commitment (00:37:42)
In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?
Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.
👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm6Mqmx8_uY
Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!
Links & Resources:
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Episode Transcript Disclaimer
This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
Episode Transcript:
Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network. Hey everybody. Carm Caprio, remarkable Results Radio in Amelia Island. Near Jacksonville. If you've not been here, this is a huge, huge place. I mean, the beach is right over there, but I have never seen it yet.
Carm Capriotto: When I come to these events, I work my butt off. Probably like you Cecil, right?
Carm Capriotto: Go, go, go. We're at the Institute's Summit 2025. We are the institute.com. Thank you to Cecil and Kent for having us here. The theme stand out. And it's actually been the entire, everything that's happened here, all the keynoters, all the breakout sessions, and some of the best shop owner leaders ever. I'm so impressed with 'em.
Carm Capriotto: So thank you for this award from our sponsors. Hey, take your Autocare center to the next level, the gold level with the Napa Autocare Gold Certified program. This program is for the best of the best, who can provide a consistent consumer experience and earn the trust of returning and new customers. Talk to your NAPA sales representative about how you can become a gold certified shop.
Carm Capriotto: Hey, for over 30 years, NAPA Tracks has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry. We'll prove to you that tracks is the single best shot management system in the business. Find Napa tracks on the web at N apa TRA cs.com. I am back with Cecil Bullard, the CEO of the Institute.
Carm Capriotto: I saw your speech on the first day. You knocked it out of the park as usual. But I brought Cecil in here maybe to talk a little bit about the industry, but to find out a little bit more about him. What do you do for fun? Cecil work. I knew you were gonna say that. Why did I know that?
Cecil Bullard: I like woodworking. So building furniture.
Cecil Bullard: Woods. Interesting. 'cause it's not metal and that's cool. Yeah, I love my family, so spending time with my grandkids. My dad did not build relationships with his grandchildren, and I just thought that was really important. So I try hard to do that, you know, if I do what my wife wants, it's been certain shows, so every once in a while I'm on the couch for Cool.
Cecil Bullard: For a day watching. Yeah, whatever.
Carm Capriotto: I love it. It seems like there's a decade or every decade something kind of different happens with your life. Your world. Here come the grandkids. Oh, it's a new, fun, absolute thing I wanna do. You know, last year was for me, splitting wood. Oh wow. Honest to God, we have burned more wood this year.
Carm Capriotto: Maybe we're going on our third cord. Then ever before, it's been a really cold winter. I have seven and a half acres of woods. We lost 20 ash trees because of the ash Boer. Yeah. Last year we had 10 taken down. I had the arbor take the bottom half and I took the top and I split all of it, and now I have another 10 or 15 that I have to do and I can't wait for the snow to melt in buffalo.
Cecil Bullard: So you can do that. Yes. I always love what I call mindless work. I love to mow the lawn. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because I don't have to think about what I'm doing. I can think about all kinds of other things, but, and when I'm done, I can look and go, wow, that looks really good. Yeah. I mowed the lawn
Carm Capriotto: instead of worrying about my next interview.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Or the next edit, or the next production, or the next conference. I worry about not hurting my fingers.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I think mindless work, what I would call mindless work like that is extremely valuable. Yeah. Now, I don't know if my shoulders would handle splitting wood. Mowing the lawn. Anything I like to read too, by the way, I'm just an avid reader.
Cecil Bullard: I read. Between three and four books a week. Just no kidding. Yeah. For fun. So when I can't sleep, I'm reading, if you read
Carm Capriotto: Focus Factor still Focus I,
Cecil Bullard: yeah, actually I think I'm about halfway through that one. Me, me too. I have about four books open right now. Right.
Carm Capriotto: And that's a cool way. Zig Ziglar's son, I interviewed him a bunch of years ago, he's sitting on his couch and Barry Barrett made the introduction for me.
Carm Capriotto: Mm-hmm. And he was on with us. He's got a stack of books on his couch and I asked him, and I said. Why all the books he says, to your point, he says, I read so much. I kind of lose interest. I know I want to finish. I go to another one, and then I ask this great question. I says, do you read them all to the very end?
Carm Capriotto: And he goes, hell no, Carm. He says, if I think I got out of the book what I wanted three quarters through, it's on my shelf.
Cecil Bullard: I would say I, not only do I read them all to the end, but I might read them three or four times. Over time because it's like attending a class. You know, you get a good instructor and you go in and you're like, you come out and you're just pumped up, but you can't get it all right.
Cecil Bullard: Oh no, you're right. And so sometimes you gotta read the book a second or a third time, and then the older I get it's like, oh, I know where was that. I think it's one of the things that are gonna keep me on my toes is just kinda keeping my head in it. Right. I get it. Hey, get any advice over all the years that you still follow today?
Cecil Bullard: So many wonderful people in my life. You know, so many mentors that have helped me be where I need to be. I think that the advice that's probably been most valuable, and I, I don't even know that I could tell you who finally got it through my head. It's like, I think believe in yourself and believe that the world is a good place and that whatever problems you're having, you're gonna get through that and tomorrow's gonna be a a better day.
Cecil Bullard: You watch the industry, what trends do you watch? I think we got a lot of issues right now. Obviously technology is changing the vehicles, so self-driving cars, they're gonna be here at some point and whoever owns the self-driving cars. So just had some conversations. One of the things about events like this.
Cecil Bullard: You get to talk to a lot of different people in the industry, and you have companies that are trying to buy up the Ubers and the et cetera, because like Ford would love to buy Uber, and then they get to sell Fords to all the Uber drivers. And then Ford controls where all the Ubers get fixed. And so I think right now the manufacturers, the issues with manufacturers struggling so hard in their service centers mm-hmm.
Cecil Bullard: Is driving them to think of other ways to control market. And one of the ways they're gonna try to control market is to buy market share. So, and then you have millennials and what we got c gens. They don't necessarily wanna own a car. Yep.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah,
Cecil Bullard: so I think that you're gonna see like a lease a car for, you know, a self-driving car for 400 bucks a month and it'll show up when you need it, and there's no driver and they're not gonna own the car, which means that they don't control how the car gets taken care of, who takes care of it, et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: I think there's gonna be some real challenges there for whoever may buy that and make that happen. But I think there's real opportunities, but I think that individual shops, I also see this separation of specialists. Yeah. And the mechanic. Yeah. Okay. Mechanical specialists, technology specialists, I, I mean, we still have mechanics, we still have shops.
Cecil Bullard: They're not educating, they're not training. I can get by just enough. I think we still have people that are pirating software instead of investing and training and looking at what's gonna come up in the next five or 10 years that I need to know. And I think we're gonna see a lot of shops close. You also have to think about BlackRock and the other two major private equity companies that own 87% of everything today except for automotive.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, they're coming in. Yeah. Like it or not. Yeah. And I think that. With the advent in technology with the changes, if you can't afford to pay your people well. And run a really profitable business that you're gonna get out of the business. You're gonna sell, you're gonna, you're gonna have to, there's no way.
Cecil Bullard: To your
Carm Capriotto: point, wall Street Fortune, I've seen some articles come out in the absolute observation
Cecil Bullard: Yeah.
Carm Capriotto: Of what's going on in the service side of the business. Thank you for that. Any secrets to time suck? We just seem to sometimes mindlessly not pay attention.
Cecil Bullard: It's funny 'cause Kent was just diagnosed with a DHD.
Cecil Bullard: I've had it my entire life. You have these strategies that you do. I have lists of things, and Kent has his lists and et cetera. What happens if you're not planning your time? Then all of a sudden it's the end of the day, you didn't get done what you wanted to get done. So for me, one of my secrets is I keep a pad, I write things down, I make adjustments to that.
Cecil Bullard: There are things that fall off the list. And I think when you're teaching like the high energy A D, HD or D type personality, people that we have,
Carm Capriotto: yeah.
Cecil Bullard: You know, we want to be in charge. We want to take charge. We want to do everything, but you just can't. If you put the list together and then you go through the list and you say, should I be doing this right?
Cecil Bullard: Am I the only one that can do this in my company? And if I am, then I better find somebody else or teach somebody else. Is this something I really want to do? Is this something I hate to do? Is this something I should be passing on to someone else? When you start to create that and you create a list, and then you're going through and saying, okay, I'm gonna delegate those jobs, and then I have to accept what happens.
Cecil Bullard: You know you got a manager, but you need to become a coach for the manager. You can't just let the manager run loose. I would say it's the same thing when you're bringing someone along, and I think a lot of us in our business don't even bring 'em along. It's like, I'll just go do that. It's simpler or, and then all of a sudden our days are gone.
Cecil Bullard: It's the whole week's gone and I didn't get done what I needed to get done
Carm Capriotto: this week. Be more accountable to the things that you know you want to do. I'm a list guy just like you, and sometimes they move up, they move down, they move. Sometimes I
Cecil Bullard: pull 'em
Carm Capriotto: off and sometimes I actually get a chance to check it.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. If nobody noticed that I haven't done it in like three weeks, it disappears. I guess It wasn't important. Right. Yeah. What does stop stopping mean to you? That's interesting. I think that's Marie's comment, but to me it means we hold ourselves up because we limit ourselves. Okay. And so I don't wanna limit my company.
Cecil Bullard: I don't wanna limit my people. I don't wanna limit myself. And so there are things you should stop if you're consciously determining your life and your business, making those conscious decisions, which means you have to stop in the morning every day and go, I need 15 minutes to go through my list. And that's a valid stop.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. But if you're allowing everything else to get in your way, then why are you, if, if that thing that's on your list is that important? Why are you stopping yourself? Yeah. What's holding you back? Those are the words I was just thinking of. Right. I think you really need to say, okay, why am I not doing this?
Cecil Bullard: Or what's holding me back? We as humans, we do this weird thing where. If we don't understand something or if it's really tough for us, we have, we don't have a lot of experience in it. We distract ourselves and to me stop stopping is stop distracting yourself. Mm-hmm. Right. Perfect. Yeah.
Carm Capriotto: It's the right answer.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Are you gonna get it done or not? Because if you're, ultimately, if that's not something that is of that kind of value to you, then get it off your lips. Yeah. I think it's, or give it to somebody else. I think
Carm Capriotto: it's a great two words for people to realize I'm not getting anything done. Yeah. Well, stop, stop.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah, basically stop stopping. You have a decision to make. Okay. I, I should have, oh, God should have done that last week. So stop stopping.
Cecil Bullard: And I think you have to, I don't know. You know you, your beautiful daughter works for you. Yeah. Works with you. My son works with me. Yep. And I'm the d personality. I'm the guy that's like the driver who thinks I should do it.
Cecil Bullard: I can do it faster, I can do it better, blah, blah, blah. Is Ken
Carm Capriotto: d? Is Ken d
Cecil Bullard: He says he is okay. But he's got really strong C in him. He does. Oh yeah. Yeah. So if he is a dc, which is probably his personality around me, he's more C than D around some of the rest of the staff. He's probably more D than C. Okay. So, but I'm the guy that's like, oh my God, I have to do this.
Cecil Bullard: 'cause I'm the one that's gonna do it the best I know the most. I. You can't do that. Mm-hmm. Because if you do that, they're not gonna have any opportunity. Yeah. The rest of the staff isn't gonna have opportunity. To your
Carm Capriotto: point, we're talking about the DISC profile. Yeah. Dominance, influence, interpersonal.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Interpersonal S being kind of a steady as she goes, the customer service person. And the C being conformist. Meaning the accountant style in all of us. Yeah. It's a has to go before. B controller. Yeah, exactly right. Oh, one day, lemme tell you this story about me losing my your mind on a high C. Yeah.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah. I'm an id. Okay. D and I are above the line. Yeah. And everything else is below. I won't go into that. But my point was, if we knew what our people's communication style was, our disc, we end up ultimately having the right kind of conversation with them. 'cause if you're a D, gonna talk to an I. They're probably not gonna listen unless you have their conversation with them, not yours.
Cecil Bullard: If you're a salesperson and you have a lot of experience being a salesperson, you know that you have to make adjustments for the people you're talking to. Yeah. And if you're a good manager, it's the same thing. If I'm gonna be Cecil the D and have a good conversation, especially when Kent is like in his total C roll, there's no way we're even gonna talk.
Cecil Bullard: We're just gonna get mad at each other. We're both gonna think, well, you're not listening to me. And then we end up either yelling at each other or not talking to each other for three days. Yeah. Which none of that solves the problem. Yeah. And I think there's, who's the adult in the situation? I know it is probably the wrong way to put it, but if you're the adult in the situation and you say, okay, I'm gonna get more out of this person or out of this communication if I make the adjustment to the other person's style.
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Carm Capriotto: After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at Napa Trax. That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C s.com. I've got thermal management shops, I've got EV shops. I've got. A s calibration shop. I would tell you,
Cecil Bullard: I think first of all, ADOS is gonna change with technology. It's gonna become simpler for the average shop to do the calibration.
Cecil Bullard: And so these guys that really invested a lot of money in the big facility and all that, I think that's gonna change electric vehicles. It's not the technology of the future. It's gonna be a hybrid of some sort. It might be gas electric, or it might be gas hydrogen, or mm-hmm. Diesel hydrogen or whatever.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. We're gonna have multiple options because that's really the future of it all. You know, specialty shops. I thought we would be almost all specialty shops by now. I mean, you know, 20 years ago I was like, oh, we're gonna have the BMW shops because the equipment's getting so expensive and. You gotta have specialty training for all of that.
Cecil Bullard: And we certainly, I think, have more of it now, but I don't know that the generalist is ever gonna go away because it solves a problem for a certain part of the population because, and why I
Carm Capriotto: semi agree with you. That in my house, I've got one of each. Yeah. And why do I wanna have four or three different relationships out there?
Cecil Bullard: No, and it's harder. It's like, okay, if I trust Cecil or if I trust Karm, that's where I want to go. That's where I wanna go. Right? You're my place. And so, Hey Km, I know you work on my whatever, but can you work on my whatever? The answer is, yeah, if I can make it work, if I can make it pay, then yeah, I'm gonna do it for you.
Cecil Bullard: I don't want you going anywhere else, so you can, there's a little part of me that's like, oh, he might really like them better than me.
Carm Capriotto: You mentioned Blackstone earlier. Private equity. Yeah. I mean the consul, I mean, you got your finger on the pulse of this. I know you do. Yeah. With Michael Smith joining your group Chief Strategy Officer, I think.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah, something like that. He's become a great friend of ours and we love to hear him talk. We just sit,
Cecil Bullard: we, we like him. Yeah. Yeah.
Carm Capriotto: So just sit back in the room with Michael and you know, you'll get like a million words coming at you, you know?
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Imagine it's hard for me to talk when Michael's involved it.
Cecil Bullard: Cecil Bullard. Oh, has a hard time getting in the conversation.
Carm Capriotto: Really?
Cecil Bullard: Oh yeah.
Carm Capriotto: I just spoke to him before you, I did pretty good, I think. Did you? I think I held my own. You'd be proud. You'd be proud. Yeah. I can't wait to hear it.
Cecil Bullard: I love Michael De pieces. I mean, if you get to know that guy, he is gonna heart the size of China.
Cecil Bullard: Oh my God. And he cares. And he is so freaking smart. I mean, he's wicked smart. Yeah, that's what they say, right? Yeah. Wicked. He's wicked. Wicked smart. Wicked s smart wicked
Carm Capriotto: smock.
Cecil Bullard: And, but I keep telling him. Man, you gotta slow down a little for the rest of us, you know, just for the
Carm Capriotto: rest of us. Oh my God. Just a little.
Carm Capriotto: I will feel comfortable saying that to him. Yeah. Next
Carm Capriotto: time. Just
Carm Capriotto: because I want to hear everything he has to say. Yeah. But a lot of times, like what I do for a living, it's a two-way, and it has to be right. It's gotta be a two-way, this whole Blackstone thing, consolidation, and you're close to it. There's so much talk about it.
Carm Capriotto: I mean, think out five years for me and tell me where you think it's headed
Cecil Bullard: eventually, especially with like self-driving cars, if companies like Ford end up being the provider for the self-driving cars and the whatever Uber's gonna be in the future and they steal that car
Carm Capriotto: park,
Cecil Bullard: yeah. We're gonna have a hurt.
Cecil Bullard: A little bit of a hurt. And, and by the way, if private equity wants to come into our industry, we're not gonna keep 'em out. Right. Okay. Whether we like it or not. You know, if you and I go back, say when we met eight years ago.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: How many private equity companies did you know of? I knew of zero industry. I knew of maybe two or three.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Currently I can tell you that there are probably nine or 10. In the industry right now actively pursuing, hovering, and there's five or six more coming in. Yeah, because I get stuff every day. You're Cecil Bullard, you're the institute. We want you on our board. We're a private equity company. We're gonna come in and consolidate and you know, pay you a bunch of money, blah, blah, blah.
Cecil Bullard: And so I think we're gonna see a consolidation of the industry, whether you like it or not, which there's really good news about that and bad news. So I think
Carm Capriotto: one of the words is opportunity. Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Because right now the average shop goes at about 2.8 x ebitda. So if I made a hundred thousand, I can sell for 280,000 plus assets.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. So, but my assets are only worth 20 cents on the dollar. So my old equipment. 20 cents on the dollar my car, 20 cents on the dollar, et cetera. Yeah. And my computers and other stuff here, they're not worth anything and the tools are really not worth anything. Maybe 10 cents on the dollar.
Carm Capriotto: Isn't that the toughest part for any shop owner to have to overcome?
Carm Capriotto: You know, wait a minute. Do you know how much my toolbox, I had a $200,000 toolbox? Yeah. And you want to pay me a thousand bucks for it? Yeah. And how about that? Five years ago I just bought that, uh, road force balancer.
Cecil Bullard: When I finally realized I wasn't gonna work on cars anymore at all. I gave my tools to a friend who has a shop that needed the tools, because I'd rather do that than try to sell 'em because nobody wanna pay me.
Cecil Bullard: It just me. It pissed me off. Every time I talk to somebody, they call you and they're like, oh yeah, you got this. It's a, I dunno, $500 wrench set that I might pay for Snap on. And they're like, oh, I'll give you $15 for it. And it just was like, I'd rather take 'em all and dump 'em in the ocean than do that. So I, I give my toolbox away.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I give all my tools away. I mean, I have enough now. That. Like if I need a ranch or something like that, I can, I have it.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, but I don't worry about that at this point. The best assets that any shop owner has to sell is property with a building on it if he owns it. And so 2.8, I just testified in a court case last week.
Cecil Bullard: I got another one next week about the value of shops and 2.8 is
Carm Capriotto: the multiple on top of the ebitda. Yeah, that's average at a lot of people average at the moment. A lot of people
Cecil Bullard: don't know that. Okay, but go ahead. Yeah. But with private equity coming in, the value of a. Well run shop now, by the way, the multiple can be higher.
Cecil Bullard: Let's say three years ago would've been between one and four. Okay? So the best run shop in the world where the owner's not involved and there's a manager, and the business has been growing for three years, and it's net 15% plus and no bad check marks four times ebitda. Okay? Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so, but average 2.8.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Well, now. With private equity coming in, some of the private equity companies have kinda learned their lesson. 'cause the first guys that came in, they went to buy crappy shops because they didn't have to pay for 'em. Right? So I could buy it at a one x, I could buy that shop for a hundred grand, or I can buy that shop for 200 grand and the owner will carry 150 of it and they got nothing, right?
Cecil Bullard: And then they bought a bunch of crap, and then it was crap. And now they've learned their lesson and they're coming in and they're saying. I don't want a crappy shop. I want a shop that runs well. Yeah. Yeah. And that is organized well, et cetera. And that's kind of what Michael is kind of doing in our company, is trying to get that, be the evangelist for that word out there.
Cecil Bullard: I love that word. But now you can get five x and I even know some guy's getting six X for a shop. That's well run because private equity wants the business. And if you've got a 20% net. In your shop and you've done that three years in a row when you're not the player and et cetera, and you're checking all the boxes.
Cecil Bullard: I could get a five or a six x for a single shop that maybe net 300 grand. Yeah. So now I have 1,000,005. Yeah.
Carm Capriotto: Right.
Cecil Bullard: Instead of 700,000. Right. I, I've almost doubled what I have. Yeah. But there's another part of it too. If we go and put together a bunch of those shops. Like guys that have two and three or five and seven, and we put them into a platform mm-hmm.
Cecil Bullard: That we then present. Yeah. We can get 10, 12 x. Yeah, exactly. So the opportunity is amazing right now. And I think, hang on, I gotta say it. There's a bunch of shop owners when they hear m and a or they hear private equity, they're like, well those rotten sobs, you know they are, I'm sorry. All they care about is money.
Cecil Bullard: But they're coming in our industry. They're coming in our industry hard. And you need to be running a good shop because it will give you opportunity either way. Yeah. Whether you keep it, pass it on to family or whether you decide to sell it to private equity, and I guarantee you, what's gone on in the autobody industry.
Cecil Bullard: Oh yeah. We're 12 years behind them. Mm-hmm. And private equity is much more. Aggressive right now than they've ever been in in our industry. Right. Or they ever were in autobody, and this is gonna happen relatively fast. They'll still be mom and pop, they'll still be well-run jobs, but we're gonna be dealing with private equity in something.
Cecil Bullard: And one of the things that Private Equity's doing a little different is they're not changing the name of all the shops. Now it's still John's Automotive and they're still running it under John's Automotive, but it's no longer owned by John. It's owned by, right. The private equity company, the brand was strong.
Cecil Bullard: The people were great. The owner could walk away and it'll run. Yeah, it gives us opportunities financially, if you're getting in your. You know, late fifties, sixties, and you're like, I want out. Holy smokes. What a better opportunity than being able to double the what I get out
Carm Capriotto: of the shop. Yeah. Your words are so strong.
Carm Capriotto: And one of my favorite bits of advice that I ever got in my life was the words pay attention. Yeah. And is so if an owner is not paying attention to their net operating income, I'm sorry, all of that means you've gotta do all 30 of those things way up in the umbrella. Right. If this company can run with your minimalist involvement, and it's scary to think, but some of the people that I know received and are still working and are still growing.
Carm Capriotto: In a multiple for their business. And then I was lucky enough to be with you guys in a particular meeting a few years ago and see how you can maybe even get a second payday out of this stuff.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, we got guys that are coming up to their second payday. Uh, wow. Okay.
Carm Capriotto: So what does that all that mean? Well run a great shop, hook up with Michael and figure it out.
Cecil Bullard: We have too many people in our industry and God bless 'em, who don't really understand your business is an engine. Okay.
Carm Capriotto: Mm-hmm.
Cecil Bullard: And if the engine gets air and fuel at the right amount, at the right time, under the right compression and spark at the right time, it runs like a bat outta hell. If any of those things are off,
Carm Capriotto: yeah,
Cecil Bullard: then it doesn't give you the performance that you want.
Cecil Bullard: And we need every shop owner to understand how the engine works and what, how much air and how much fuel and all of that. Because when you figure that out. Not only does it run better and it manages better, and you can take care of yourself and your family better. But you can also take care of the families and the people that work for you and create a lot more opportunity, not just for yourself,
Carm Capriotto: but for them.
Carm Capriotto: Also. Thanks for the motivation on this. We've done so many episodes. We've discussed ad nauseum on this, and I like to often bring this up because there's always a, a new opportunity, a new open mind is set that comes from some stubborn, stuck people. And a lot of new people that constantly are listening to the show.
Carm Capriotto: So where am I going one day, honey? I'm gonna sell this for a million dollars one day. And then they find out that it's not possible because they didn't run like a well-oiled engine. So
Cecil Bullard: this guy that you and I can, if I said the name, you would know exactly who it is. And currently he owns either five or six shops.
Cecil Bullard: He's been growing, but I knew him. 15 years ago when he was a tech coming into a shop that was gonna be sold. Okay? And they made a seven year deal, him and the owner and seven years go by. The owner wants to sell the shop, but what he needs is way more than the shop is worth. Okay? And they never tightened the deal down.
Cecil Bullard: They never actually wrote anything down. They never put stuff on paper. So all of a sudden this guy has put seven years into this business and now the owner is coming and saying, well, I'm not gonna sell it to you for that. I'm gonna sell it to you. It has to be this, and it's only, it has to be this because he's not okay if he doesn't get that right.
Cecil Bullard: And you know, he comes to me and he goes, what do I do? And I said, well, ah, right. First of all, neither one of 'em should have been at that point. We should have put a plan together seven years ago to make it look like and what does it need to look like so the owner can get out the way the owner needs to, and the guy can come in the way the guy comes in.
Cecil Bullard: Okay. But we ended up paying an extra a hundred grand for it. And you know, I was like, it's worth more because we know we can run it better. So give him an extra a hundred thousand dollars. It's the only way you're gonna get it. And you've already invested seven years of your life and now he has, I dunno, six shops or whatever he is doing fantastically.
Cecil Bullard: But it's that I don't want to come to the point of I gotta sell my shop. But I'm not gonna have what I need to feel comfortable in my retirement.
Carm Capriotto: Absolutely. Okay. That's
Cecil Bullard: the problem. You never want to be there. And we've also done other deals with other guys who, like, there's another guy that, if I mentioned his name, you, you know who it was.
Cecil Bullard: And their service advisor, service manager, I think they at the time had two locations. We put a plan, a seven year plan together where. Seven years from now, if you've grown the business to six locations or whatever, then you get 30% of it and you get to buy out the rest. And the owner's going, well, why would I give up 30%?
Cecil Bullard: Well, because it's not a small pie anymore, it's a much bigger pie. So your 70% is a larger pie. Right? And it worked out great. The plan was done. They've gone now, gone through that part of it. And don't let your life come to the point where you're at that point and you don't know what you're gonna do because you haven't figured it out.
Cecil Bullard: Ross Bernstein today.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Pick up the phone and call somebody. Duh. You see all these people that are stuck. I need this, I gotta have that. They don't know what they don't know, and they continue to walk down the aisle not having a clue. The p and l looks different. The assets are stronger. The business has grown, and to your point, my 70% is even worth more.
Cecil Bullard: I have a coach. I have mentors that people that both work with me and around me that I use all the time. Yeah. And I'm the guy that's
Carm Capriotto: supposed to know everything. I don't. And that's why, and that's how you know it. Yeah. Hey, if you could pick up an instant skill right now, tomorrow says, God bless me with a new skill, what would it be?
Carm Capriotto: Patience that
Cecil Bullard: came right away. Although, uh, I make a joke all the time, I have not learned patience. So if I'm at the grocery store and I'm in that line where I'm always in that line. I'm like, oh, God's trying to teach me patience and I haven't learned it. If I'm at the, I don't know if I'm checking into the hotel and it ain't going the way I want, I'm like, God's trying to teach me patience.
Cecil Bullard: I haven't learned it. And I make this joke about I need to not learn patience because if I do, then I've got everything I'm supposed to, and then God's gonna pull me from the earth. So I wanna be here while longer, so I'm not gonna learn patience yet. We all have a dark side kind of a joke. I think the slowing down a little bit.
Cecil Bullard: Trusting with management, the people around you mm-hmm. Can really change the game. I've had to do that in the institute. In order to grow the institute. I've realized that my lack of skills in certain areas will hold it back if I don't use other people and allow other people to have some freedom to do what needs to be done.
Cecil Bullard: Those early decisions, were they painful? Oh. Are you kidding me? I'm still paying for many of the early decisions. Right, okay.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: Because I made them without enough information or because I was too forceful. Or was it impulse? Whatever. Impulse. Oh, I think I'm extremely impulsive. Obviously with the D personality, you're like, oh, I don't need any information.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, I can do that. Let's go. I. I would tell you right now, if you ask Kent, you know, what's the worst thing about your dad? He's like, oh, there's a hill. Let's go take it. Doesn't look back and see how much ammo, how many people are following. Yeah. You know, what's the path? Kent wants to plan it out, so patience.
Carm Capriotto: If you could send a message to yourself, your younger you, just to say, 15 years ago, what would you say to the younger Cecil? I would say it's
Cecil Bullard: gonna be fine. Wow. Okay. Just because everything that happens, like you have this thing that happens and you're, I shattered my ankle. I spent two years in a wheelchair, seven surgeries, and during that time, it was the end of my life.
Cecil Bullard: Okay. But. Because of that, I was able to go back to college, get a couple of degrees. I now have the institute. It's gonna be fine. You know, the, if it doesn't kill you, it's gonna be fine, right? If I had calmed down sooner and been a little more patient, I think that I would live a lot longer and have a much happier existence.
Cecil Bullard: Even today. Now when something happens that's like, you know, my first reaction is like, ah, I wanna kill somebody, or you know, whatever. I'm like, okay, take a couple of deep breaths and it's not the end of the world. No. We'll make it through there. Right. You had all the money in the world gold piled in rooms at the house.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. What would you buy. I would buy security for my family children. I don't need anything else. If I, I'm not rich, but I am wealthy enough at the point that if I need something, I can go buy it. Got it. Why would I want $25 million? Well, okay, that might buy security for my family and ine, but also we're finding out that.
Cecil Bullard: You know, third generation wealth destroys people. Yeah. Frankly. Yeah. So, I don't know. I don't need a boat. I don't need a motorcycle. I don't, you know, if I need a new pair of Levi's, I'll go get a new pair of Levi's. More time. But you can't do that, right? No, no. That's the one thing, right? You can't buy. You can't buy time.
Cecil Bullard: You kind of can. If you're smart, you're putting people in place and it might cost you money. No, but you're putting people in place to do the things that you don't want to do. You're a hundred percent right. Right? Yeah. So in a way, you can maybe buy time, but it's not more time than you have on the earth anyway.
Cecil Bullard: Right. I
Carm Capriotto: have one more question. I so loved this off the charts, candid Cecil Bullard thing. Thank you for coming in here at the Institute Summit 2025. One thing that you've done, and no one knows, I always think of the bad stuff, so
Cecil Bullard: we're not gonna talk about that. Whoa. No, there. No. Oh, dude, never. Oh. You know, we all have our warts and we don't want anybody to see 'em, and that's fine.
Cecil Bullard: I'm a pretty open book. I love my family, I love the industry. I've gotten lots of calls from people that have said, Hey, Cecils, someone needs help. Or you know, and I almost hate to say this here, 'cause then all of a sudden I'm gonna get a bunch of emails, but. I'll give up an hour for anybody in this industry that wants to talk and how can I help you and what can I, what direction can I give you?
Cecil Bullard: We tried a program a couple years ago where we brought in six or eight shops. I remember that. No pay. Yeah. Yeah. Most of those shops wouldn't even make their meetings with me. Yeah. And so we killed that because. If there was no value to it, there has to be an investment in on their part.
Carm Capriotto: Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. But I routinely, if someone calls me and they're like, oh, I really need help, I'm like, okay, well if you do these couple of things, you're gonna be in good shape.
Cecil Bullard: And I don't know. I mean, what nobody knows. I'm a pretty open book. I almost played college basketball. Oh. You know, that's, that's cool. I had a. 10 inch Afro in high school? No. Oh, I had the best Afro in. Well, wait a minute. High school. Well wait a minute. That's
Carm Capriotto: the best piece of knowledge right there.
Cecil Bullard: Oh, I got a picture I gotta show you.
Carm Capriotto: Would you do that?
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. With the 10 inch Afro and I was, I only weighed like 165 pounds. I was six four.
Carm Capriotto: Six four with a 10 inch afro. Yeah. That puts you at seven. What?
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, it was, it was beautiful. It was beautiful.
Carm Capriotto: Oh my God. Cil, I must
Cecil Bullard: see that. I also had a ponytail and a mullet at different times. So yeah, I want a ponytail.
Carm Capriotto: I think a ponytail, like with the white hair and everything. Great. I've seen guys with that. Yeah. I mean, I. I don't know. My wife wants me to grow a ponytail. I don't have the patience for it, so might happen, but I, I tried a few years ago. Yeah. Is my hair continuing to grow? Cil? It didn't get long. It just kept getting more and more bushy.
Carm Capriotto: We were gonna have an afro. Yeah, I know. I was, it was getting so bushy that when I put on a hat it would all just stream out and I. But is wasn't long enough to put any kind of tail anywhere.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. I probably had about an age eight inch ponytail at the time, and I get rid of it. All right. Long time ago when the kids were small.
Carm Capriotto: Completely different view of you.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is that you probably don't know, is that I'm not supposed to be in the automotive industry. This is never where I was supposed to be. My dad didn't want me here. I didn't wanna be here. Yeah. I ended up here and there was a point in time where I decided.
Cecil Bullard: Wherever I'm gonna be, I'm gonna try to be the best I can be. And I think everybody needs to make that decision, even if you're only gonna be there for a year. 'cause you might find that it's 44 years later and you're still there. Well,
Carm Capriotto: well, it's good that you're here. You're changing a lot of people's lives.
Carm Capriotto: I've got so many friends that are part of your group and they have done incredible things with their business, and it really all flows down to some of the great people you've hired, the decisions that you've made. And, and watch the commitments. You have to advance this in. Watch for a couple announcements in the next two months.
Carm Capriotto: Ooh. Oh, can't wait. Excited Cecil Bullard. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having
Cecil Bullard: me. Thanks.
Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive aftermarket podcast. Until next time.
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