The Institute’s Leading Edge Podcast

108 - Fortune Favors The Follow Up: Strategies for Successful Confirmation With Mike Carillo & Neil Daly

108 - Fortune Favors The Follow Up: Strategies for Successful Confirmation With Mike Carillo & Neil Daly
October 9th, 2024 - 00:46:12
 
Show Summary:
Looking to boost customer retention, convert more leads, and drive sustainable growth for your business? This podcast recording, Fortune Favors the Follow-Up: Strategies for Success, is exactly what you need. Featuring top industry leaders Mike Carillo (Founder & CEO of AutoShop Follow Up), Neil Daly (Owner of Oceanside Motorsports), and Jimmy Lea (VP of Business Development for The Institute), this session is packed with valuable insights and practical strategies.
In today’s competitive landscape, the follow-up process is one of the most overlooked yet powerful tools for growing your business. This webinar dives deep into the techniques successful shop owners use to build long-lasting relationships with their customers and maximize the lifetime value of every lead. Whether you're looking to nurture your existing customer base or convert new prospects, this session provides actionable steps that you can implement right away.
What’s in it for you:
Unlock the full potential of your customer base: Learn how to effectively nurture and retain the customers you've worked hard to gain, turning one-time buyers into loyal advocates.
Build strong, lasting relationships: Discover strategies that strengthen customer relationships and foster repeat business, helping you create a loyal clientele.
Transform follow-up into a growth engine: Understand how a well-executed follow-up process can convert leads into paying customers and significantly increase their lifetime value to your business.
Real-life examples and proven techniques: Neil and Jimmy share stories of how these strategies have worked in real shops, giving you the confidence and knowledge to apply them to your own business.
If you want to elevate your approach to customer interactions, turn leads into lifelong clients, and see real results, this podcast is a must-listen. Gain the insights and tools you need to transform follow-ups into one of your most valuable business assets.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Mike Carillo, Founder & CEO of Auto Shop Follow-UP
Neil Daly, Owner of Oceanside Motorsports
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:04:03] - Mike explains how simple, consistent customer callbacks can increase retention by up to 60%.
[00:06:40] - Neil shares how follow-up efforts now generate nearly 30% of his shop's car count.
[00:10:31] - Handwritten thank-you notes to first-time customers significantly boost return visits.
[00:14:21] - Declined service follow-up is best done with postcards; phone calls work better after trust is built.
[00:17:12] - Scheduled maintenance reminders through follow-up calls help shops mimic the dentist model.
[00:20:35] - Follow-up calls can lead directly to appointment scheduling and deeper customer insights.
[00:23:25] - Tracking and reporting on follow-up results gives actionable data to improve shop operations.
[00:24:40] - Follow-up calls help identify and resolve issues before they turn into negative reviews.
[00:26:26] - Shops that care about customers should prioritize follow-up—it proves you’re invested in the relationship.
[00:39:44] - Mike recommends starting with basic weekly follow-up calls to build trust and consistency.
 
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=GEGJ-C4_LUc
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Jimmy Lea: We're going to have an awesome discussion today. I have often said there is a fortune in the followup and I am so excited for this topic that we are going to discuss today as we talk about this fortune in the followup. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'll be the host with you today. I'll be the voice for you today.
Jimmy Lea: You've got questions. Make sure you put them in the Q and a so that we can ask our esteemed panel of professionals. And first up is Mr. Mike Carrillo. Mike is from auto shop. Follow up, Mike. Thank you for joining. How are you? 
Mike Carillo: Good. Jimmy. Thanks for having me. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. 
Mike Carillo: Excited to be here. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I met Mike at the Southwest auto professional expo in Phoenix, Arizona in July.
Jimmy Lea: Like who goes to Phoenix in July? 
Mike Carillo: I assume it's a cheap time to get a conference room. I mean, I did, it was great though. We had a great show. 
Jimmy Lea: But that was like down the street for you. That really wasn't that far. Was it? 
Mike Carillo: No it's pretty easy. It was like 115 or something like that though.
Mike Carillo: So it was not it was a little aggressive. We'll put it that way. 
Jimmy Lea: It was aggressive. 
Mike Carillo: It was a great show though. 
Jimmy Lea: It was a great show. Phenomenal show. Any of you in July looking for something to do and hang out in a Phoenix, Arizona, come on down. The Southwest Auto Professionals has a phenomenal show.
Jimmy Lea: It's continuing to build and build and become bigger and they're doing a phenomenal job. Thank you for being here, Mike. Really appreciate you. And joining today as well as Mr. Neil Daley. Mr. Neil, how the heck are you brother? 
Neil Daly: Good guys. Thank you for having me. It's good to see y'all again.
Jimmy Lea: Good to see you. So the last time Neil and I were together, and this is a few years ago, because Neil's been grounded here for the last little bit. Neil was traveling North America With kids in tow homeschooling saying, Hey, you want to see Mount Rushmore? Let's go check it out. Hey, you want to see the Grand Canyon?
Jimmy Lea: Let's study it on the way to the Grand Canyon. 
Neil Daly: Yeah, that was quite the adventure, man. 
Jimmy Lea: Dude, that was awesome. How long did you do that for? 
Neil Daly: We traveled for just over a year and I worked remotely running the shop while we did that. 
Jimmy Lea: For a year. I'd love to do that. I got a glimpse of that. A glimpse of that with the Kukui van.
Jimmy Lea: I was able to travel around, visit shops all across North America. It was not a full solid year, but together one solid, if you took four years and smashed it together, I may have gotten a year out of it, dude. Congratulations, that was awesome. Yeah. 
Neil Daly: Thanks man, it was a really good time. 
Jimmy Lea: You are being very humble.
Jimmy Lea: I'll bet it was awesome. 
Neil Daly: Totally. Yeah, and just to, you know, be able to, you know, like most of my position as the GM at the time, you know, like most of that stuff could be done remotely. And this stuff that I maybe wasn't supposed to be doing was the stuff I'd Actually needed to be here for. So it was a, it was good at putting me in the position of where I really needed to be.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. I like that. I like that a lot because we're going to talk about working in the business versus working on the business. That's going to be some of our discussion here today. Some of the questions that we're going to ask and really, Mike, I want to start out with you and talk about auto shop follow up when we met in Phoenix.
Jimmy Lea: I was, this is a British term. I was gobsmacked with what you were doing. Do you understand this term? 
Mike Carillo: I do. I actually, I am familiar with the term. And I appreciate that. I think it's a compliment if I understand it correctly, at least in this context. 
Jimmy Lea: In this context, it is. Yes. Absolutely. So I'm excited because of what it is that your company does.
Jimmy Lea: So if you can give us a breakdown of what you do for shops all across North America. 
Mike Carillo: Yeah, no, excuse me for sure. So make it really simple and really quick auto shop follow up. We help shops follow up with their customers. We do personalized follow up phone calls and and do that on behalf of shops, but rather than like diving into that too much, I really like if we can today, just share some of the best practices, some of the things that we implement in our shops that I think will probably bring the most value to folks on this call that works.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. So, so this is best practices. Anybody watching this, anybody taking notes, write down all this information because what Mike's going to share with you is best practices. Best practices is stuff that you can do yourself. 
Mike Carillo: Right, but those are all things that you're a you can apply in your own shops.
Mike Carillo: And I think what's interesting is it's not things that these aren't wildly difficult things. I think that, like, a lot of things in life, the results come from discipline and consistency. Right. And that's where I think sometimes this can be a little bit of a struggle, but I'll tell you the steps are really simple.
Mike Carillo: And the results are phenomenal. So, part of the reason we got into this to begin with is, you know, We have seen shops implement phone calls and in, I'm going to say phone calls. Some people call it three day callbacks, some call it weekly callbacks, right? But essentially calling your customer after they were in the shop, following up, really just asking and engaging in conversation to find out how things went, right?
Mike Carillo: We're not asking them for a review on that call. We're not trying to get them to do another decline service. Truly just making those customer callbacks, right? That's what we're talking about with shops. We've seen shops that have implemented that and done it consistently over 12 months, have increased the retention by as much as 60 percent of retaining and keeping their customers, which is, if you know, in the scheme of the lifetime value of a customer is astronomical.
Jimmy Lea: Okay, 60 percent increase. Neil, you're shaking your head here. Have you seen that type of a retention on making the follow up call that first time customer turns into a second time customer? Have you experienced this in your shop? And maybe not to that number. You don't have to know the number, but have you seen an increase in that?
Neil Daly: Yeah. I wish I was matured enough to have the data on it. But yeah, the combination of the follow up calls and the reminder calls and what we have it for sure. Like I can attribute probably just under 30 percent of the car count that I can control to the follow up calls. So, you know, and it, that gives me that Yeah.
Neil Daly: It's stable. It's one of the keys to stabilizing car count and not just kind of hoping for people to come through. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. And Mike, we're on my computer, so I'm using my mouse. I'm coming all the way over here to this welcome call. Is this where you are in the welcome call? This is the thank you call that says, Hey, thank you for coming into the shop.
Jimmy Lea: And that's purely what we're saying is thank you. 
Mike Carillo: Yeah, and I think that sometimes this is the part that can get lost, right? And because we want kind of immediate results, especially if we're going to be having our team spend their time working on something. Right, we want to see an ROI and that makes sense.
Mike Carillo: But retention really is a long term play, although there are a lot of short term wins along the way. And I think one of really the main things to, to focus on is the idea that remembering that all of us. Like you, me included, we all do business with people that we know, like, and trust. Right. And that know, I can trust comes through relationship and proximity.
Mike Carillo: And there are an amazing amount of great tools in our industry that help you automate a lot of those relationships and automate a lot of communication to where we can now have a car dropped off. We can get a digital inspection. We can pay over the app. They can pick up after hours and we can truly never have to interact with our customer, which that's a lot of cool technology and it allows for a lot of good business.
Mike Carillo: I think where the downfall is. Is if we've built our businesses around just convenience, right. And that, that making it easy to do business we're leaving their only choice to come down to price convenience, right. And now we're coaching our customers to really be looking, deciding based on the things we don't want them to decide on.
Mike Carillo: So follow up phone calls is one of those ways you can maintain that personal relationship and that personal connection, because in our industry, everybody wants to have their person, right. That they can turn to. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah, for sure. Neil, in your shop, did you, do you have a person or did you have a person that was making all these follow up phone calls like the thank you call?
Jimmy Lea: Did you have a person doing that? 
Neil Daly: Oh man, we've always known it was something we should have been doing and I could never really implement it. I'd say we tried it here and there, but it was definitely just one of those things that we should have been doing and weren't. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I've been impressed by the shops that do make those follow up thank yous and truly, Neil, truly, it's just a thank you.
Jimmy Lea: Thank you. How's the car? How's everything? Okay. We're here for you when you need us. Wow. That's awesome. Okay, Mike, beyond that, beyond the phone call, now where are we going? What's another best practice here? 
Mike Carillo: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, your initial call is just truly a welcome call, right? You don't want it to feel like a survey.
Mike Carillo: We just saw you had your car in. We want to make sure everything's going all right. And let the customer lead that call, right? Don't try to drive them down a specific path, but let them take you where they take you because this is where you're going to find out. all kinds of good stuff about your shop that maybe you didn't know to begin with, right?
Mike Carillo: And I think that's where there's a level of intentionality that has to go into these calls that sometimes I think we're missing and it makes sense, right? And I've had a one of my favorite pastors used to always say, are you trying to make a point? Are you trying to make a difference?
Mike Carillo: Right. And I think it's really easy to check a box and make a point here and say, yes, I made my calls. But if you really want to make a difference, it's important to try to engage and actually not have the goal be, how do I get off the line with this customer as quick as possible? Right. So I think that those things are really key in the beginning.
Mike Carillo: Another another big thing that we see a ton of success in that's really simple. And again, these are simple, basic things that, you know, we've been doing for a long time. Your dad, when he owned the shop, was probably doing it for a long time too. Right. But handwritten thank you notes to your first time visitors.
Mike Carillo: Holy moly guys. The return rate on this is it is kind of ridiculous because really again what we're trying to do. And I know like at the flinch a lot of the time is, hey, do we really want to spend more money on the first time visitors maybe you're already marketing with a loss leader and they're coming in bringing a coupon.
Mike Carillo: Do we really want to spend more money. Absolutely. Yes, we do. Right. We got them in the door and we know we're not making money until that third, fourth, fifth visits. So we want to invest that time to get those people who are shopping and coming and checking you out to reactivate make sure we get that next visit.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. I like that. I find that has a lot of value and I agree with you because using a broad brush, you know, using a broad brush, what does it cost for you to get a first time customer into your shop? 
Neil Daly: Oh man, another good number, but a couple of hundred bucks, probably. 
Jimmy Lea: A hundred bucks. So let's say it's anywhere from two to three to four to 500.
Jimmy Lea: Let's settle on 200. That's a good number. Solid round number, 200 to get them in. Okay. They have come into your shop. They have purchased from you. Get them to come back a second time and if it only costs five bucks, eight bucks, ten bucks to get them in the second time, the retention is going to skyrocket because they keep coming back.
Jimmy Lea: They know you. They trust you. They love you. They love the experience they're having with you. Hopefully your shop is of that quality. Of course, anybody that we're talking to on this webinar, you're going to have a shop that's of that quality, right? Neil? 
Neil Daly: Yes. I hope so. 
Jimmy Lea: I hope so. Yeah. So do you, Neil, do you send out thank you notes?
Jimmy Lea: Handwritten thank you notes. 
Neil Daly: No, I would love to, and I probably need to implement that. We currently don't collect addresses, so it's a little bit harder than just asking them to do it. 
Jimmy Lea: What about emails? Do you send a followup emails? 
Neil Daly: Yeah, they get, no, you know what? We're texting phone call. We do the text for the review request and which works really well.
Neil Daly: And then a phone call for the the feedback, which is awesome, which is really good. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. And Mike, I see that we're going on here. You've got to client services. Are you ready to go there? Are we still talking about? Thank you. These thank you notes. That's huge. And by the way, and I'm glad you nailed on this a little bit here, Mike, when you say thank you, you say, thank you.
Mike Carillo: Yeah. No, I completely agree. And even for our shops who who use our handwritten note services, they you know, if a shop wants to put something in there, then we'll always say like, okay, but my advice, and I don't think we have any shops that do it. My advice is always just let thank you be.
Mike Carillo: Thank you. Just let that, that be that you don't have to have a reason why it's like, oh, this is really cool, but they just want me to come back. And now, and not that there isn't a place for those things that I think you touched on text messages there and email. You know, everything that we do, obviously we're really big on the human driven side, but there's so much value in that text follow up.
Mike Carillo: There's a ton of value in that in those emails and be able to communicate things. It's just about the right medium and the right place. Like Neil touched on for review generation that follow up text message is fantastic. Most of our shops run that alongside what we're doing. You don't want to hit our customers over the head with follow up but it can be really powerful.
Mike Carillo: But for actual feedback, right? Generally speaking with text messages, you can hear from everybody who loved you and everybody who hated you. And our money is in the middle there in that, that yellow neutral zone, right? That's where phone calls can really drive them into the next zone, if that makes sense there.
Jimmy Lea: Totally does. Totally does. And what's your declined service follow up? That looks like a postcard to me. Is that what that is? 
Mike Carillo: Yeah, it is. We, there are a variety of ways to do this. We, so, I always encourage shops. If you're going to start making phone calls in your shop, a lot of the time the jump to, is to jump into declined service because it feels like the low hanging fruit, right?
Mike Carillo: Hey, we know these guys need more service. Let's give them a call, invite them, try to trigger them back in. However, like one of, at least one of my philosophies, right, is When people aren't buying in your shop, it's typically one of two reasons. It's either A, they genuinely don't have the money, or B, they genuinely don't have the trust for it yet, for you yet, right, to spend that kind of money with you.
Mike Carillo: So if the case is A and they just genuinely don't have the money, right, they're going to, we've won that customer over, we have that relationship, they're going to come back in when they need that done, right? And which means makes the phone call somewhat moot. A postcard triggering that and reminding them, hey, don't forget that you need to get this done might be sufficient in that case.
Mike Carillo: Right. If they don't have the trust yet, if we're just calling and inviting him to do it, we've almost doubled down on that a little bit because now what I was saying, not only do you not really have the trust to buy initially, now we're just calling you asking you to buy again now versus taking the time to build that.
Mike Carillo: Right. And that's why I always encourage shops. If you're going to start somewhere, start with just weekly callbacks. There might be a problem at the front counter that you're not aware of. There might be issues in the shop. That are causing reasons why customers aren't buying or why they're not coming back for that decline service.
Mike Carillo: Start with the fact finding and the relationship. And a lot of times the decline service side takes care of itself. 
Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. Okay. Now what? Yeah. Like, is there a time period here? I mean, you got a first visit and a second visit. It kind of looks like you're 60 percent of the way across the board.
Mike Carillo: Yeah. And so this is an important thing, right? And I'll be honest, the intention of this graphic is to illustrate What can come from these calls and the types of calls, the types of follow up that you can do, right? And the idea isn't, Oh man, Mike, I can't make all the single one, every single one of these phone calls.
Mike Carillo: I can't do this. Yes, of course you can't have been everything at one time, but right. What can we implement? What are the pieces that we can do and be able to show you get so many things out of this. I think that shops don't realize by doing it, such as being able to collect and understand customer sentiment.
Mike Carillo: Right. And understand where your customer base is as a whole. Right. Being able to being able to schedule appointments from this. So many times it's as simple as, Hey, you guys took care of my oil change, but my wife's AC is blowing a little bit warm. Let me get you back in. Right. And it's as simple as that and being available and making a call and being consistent.
Mike Carillo: So whether you're doing lost customer calls or oil change reminders, right. There are all different tools that you can implement for me, like my two cents. The biggest bang for your buck is going to be making those weekly customer callbacks, just getting on the phone with your customers, making sure everything's okay, making sure that our perspective matches with their perspective.
Mike Carillo: Because we all look at our businesses with some rose colored glasses sometimes. And so I think it's good to get some good, honest, unbiased perspective. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. Neil, in your shop, do you have customers like me that forget about that oil service reminder on that next visit and then it's four months and then it's five months and then it's six months?
Neil Daly: Yes, but as your automotive professional, it is my responsibility to remind you of that. You know, it's not your fault. So yeah, we're trying to. Schedule all of that for you. And now auto shop follow up is making a call as the second part of that. Cause we've been great at exit scheduling for a long time and setting that appointment.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, actually like a dentist. You're doing it like a dentist, right? 
Neil Daly: Yeah, but that's just the first step of it. And now we can actually call them ahead of time. When we say we're going to without having to do anything, which is great. 
Jimmy Lea: And that's awesome. I've been in those situations. My dentist is very good about doing that.
Jimmy Lea: And they'll send a text message. Hey, you've got an appointment next week. You've got an appointment tomorrow whatever that might be. And what's interesting is. One time they sent me the reminder and I was getting on a plane and I was going to be gone for a week. So I text them back. Oh my gosh, I totally forgot.
Jimmy Lea: I'm getting on a plane. I will be back for a couple of weeks. They're like, okay, we'll get you on the hotshot list. As soon as you get back into town, let us know. And they were able to work me in within a few days. So those, that follow up is so key. I'm glad you're doing that, Neil. That's really cool.
Jimmy Lea: Do you have a lot of customers that. Appreciate the reminder because they would have forgotten or they did forget and now they have to reschedule. 
Neil Daly: Okay. So once again, I wish I had some data, but I bet you that I would get about 1%, like 1 out of 100 exit schedule cards would probably come back for that service.
Neil Daly: And now it's again, probably closer to 30%. So our success rate on getting the car back when we talked about getting it back. 
Jimmy Lea: That's solid. 
Neil Daly: There's so much more. There's so much more we can do to improve that as far as how we're exit scheduling them here. Setting the expectation and also with consistency, because now we're teaching our customers that we will follow up with them.
Neil Daly: And they'll begin to trust that and just start waiting for that call. When they call me, it's time. So I think the success rate of the exit schedules will keep going up as we keep working on it. 
Jimmy Lea: And your swag is very much appreciated to go from a 1% to a 30% e even if you're half wrong and it's only 15%.
Jimmy Lea: That is such a huge lift, Neil. And 30%, what if you're 50% off and it's actually 60% lift? I mean, that's even, that's awesome as well. So dude you're cranking it. This is awesome. 
Mike Carillo: Well, Jimmy, I would say, if you wanna hop onto the next slide, I think one of the main net like. One of the main pieces I think that shops are missing when trying to implement and do these.
Mike Carillo: Neil's like, yeah, I love this! But I think one of the, one of the main things is the kind of the so what, right? Because when we've made, had our people make calls or when we force them to, we try doing it ourselves. We just make the call, right? And we get off the phone and okay, everything's fine.
Mike Carillo: Okay, everything's fine. And it's like every call is almost dodging a bullet, hoping that nothing bad comes up, right? And then you get a, you get something that goes wrong. And now you don't want to make calls next week. But that's because we're not collecting the overall data and the information, right?
Mike Carillo: We're just trying to get off the phone and we're just trying to make that connection that we're missing a big piece. So when we're doing these calls, or whoever on your team is doing these calls, you want to have to make sure, how are we reporting the results of this? Is anything that we're doing right?
Mike Carillo: We should be able to measure and we should be able to track if we're going to have our time. Our people spend their time on it. We're going to spend our time on it. We're gonna spend our money on it. We need to make sure that we're able to track that. And so having a place where okay, are they recording?
Mike Carillo: What kind of appointments were we able to generate out of this? Right? What kind of what actions are needed, right? What other steps you take? Who's expecting a call back because they had a weird noise? Who wants to call back next week because they want an appointment scheduled, right? But having a place where You as the owner are able to go back and kind of see an overview of, Hey, here's everything that's going on.
Mike Carillo: Here's the negative things that happen. You get to actually start to see trends and what we would call actionable data, right? Things you can actually apply in your shop to improve and make things better. Right. And keep driving forward. 
Jimmy Lea: This is huge. So, help me understand this information here. What is the one, what's the three, what's, here you are making these phone calls to these people, so I'm assuming Dale, Thomas Dale and Elaine are all three different customers, clients for you. 
Mike Carillo: Yeah. So in this case, this is this is just a clip of a report from one of our current customers, just so you can get an idea of kind of how to structure.
Mike Carillo: And so we track the results of those things, right? So in this case, we scheduled an appointment she had questions about her car, curious about a loaner car in the future. And so that's just a, Hey, we had an appointment scheduled. The next section down are action needed. So these are things that are coming back to the shop saying, Hey, okay.
Mike Carillo: Thomas has a check engine light came back on and there's Mazda. You know, and we kind of go through the problem. But these are things that, okay, a service advisor needs to call back on or somebody's expecting a call back. So maybe you're taking the car care of the calls yourself. Having some sort of means of distribution, because we have to have that follow through, right?
Mike Carillo: If the customer, if we called and said, Hey, we had a question or they had a question about a noise and we don't follow up. That's not great, right? We want to make sure that we have a system of output. Okay. Make sure that these things, as we're making these calls, the needs that come through get taken care of.
Mike Carillo: And a place where you're able to review and start to see over time, like, are we improving? What are we learning? What are the issues that we have that we hear on a consistent basis? Yeah, I'm sure Neil can speak to that a little bit. He is he gets to see the reports, reporting a lot. 
Neil Daly: Yeah, dude, these are great.
Neil Daly: You know, the action needed ones are really good because we would just divide those up between the team and then someone else reaches out to them. This, one of the greatest things too, though, is it's really getting ahead of, you know, if some, if something didn't go right with somebody or if they, you know, if something else did break or whatever, or they weren't happy with the service for some reason, having you guys call versus us, they're so much, they'll communicate so much more.
Neil Daly: I'll tell you guys exactly how it is, because they didn't have to work with you in person. And it's been really good because I feel like, you know, if somebody has a bad experience, there's like four different ways that they'll handle it. There's the people that go public on the review sites. There's somebody Maybe a little more rare that they'll deal directly with you and let you know they'll have a problem.
Neil Daly: And then the two most dangerous ones, I think, are the silent ones. They won't say anything. They just won't come back. The other ones that only tell their friends. And you're allowing us to get ahead of all of those and handle a situation before it becomes something bigger and hopefully put it at rest or at least show that we care.
Neil Daly: And like, I mean, we don't get in the habit of getting bad reviews anyways, but we haven't had one since we started with you guys and we've been, I feel like we've been able to get in front of anything that, that has not gone right. Because we get it right away and then we handle it. 
Mike Carillo: I think that's one of the powerful things about making calls and having the opportunity to connect with your customer is we get there's so many things that are truly just a misunderstanding right in our industry when we deal with our customers and they just don't know better and that's okay.
Mike Carillo: But it's so many calls man that we run into and say like, they're like hey it was fine you know you guys fixed my car, but. And service is fine, but I mean, I googled the price on Amazon of the part and you guys charged me double. As like, well, well, that gives us an opportunity. Oh, well, now we get to speak to the warranty.
Mike Carillo: Right. And your technicians, we get this, we get to address that, which is an understandable concern. If you're not educated on why that would be the case. Right. But that's a customer saved. And I think that's why it's such it makes such an impact in. Retention is not just the relationships and the trust, but it's eliminating those misunderstandings and those people who did have issues and you were the person who took the time to educate them.
Mike Carillo: Those end up becoming your customers for life, right? And there's a lot of ways to have that off of the past, just making a simple follow up phone call. 
Jimmy Lea: It's true. That's true. That's solid. That's solid. I, my, I, my yeah, shops can do this. They need to do this. You're able to head off the problems.
Jimmy Lea: You know, so the only reason to not do a follow up is because you don't care. If you really legitimately don't care, then don't do this. But here's what I've seen across all of North America and Neil, you can speak to this as well. Mike, you can speak to this. In the automotive industry, there is a very big heart behind every single owner inside of every single owner that I have met at all across North America.
Jimmy Lea: They would give you the shirt off their back. To help you to make sure it's right to help make sure your car is right. The follow up is just taking that relationship so much further and so much more solidified in, in that long term relationship between you and a customer. Have you ever met a shop owner, Neil or Mike, that Legitimately didn't care.
Mike Carillo: I don't, I mean, I don't know if I can say I've never met a shop owner that I felt like didn't care, but by a lot. So maybe there's one in its entirety. 
Jimmy Lea: Maybe there's one. Neil, what about you? 
Mike Carillo: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Neil Daly: Nobody that would be here or in any form of trying to improve ourselves. You know, you'll meet those once in a while I call them like hobbyist auto shops, so it's not a professional, but no, I'm the professionals, man.
Neil Daly: Yeah. We all. We're in it, we care. 
Jimmy Lea: We do. And I'm going to give a quick story and a shout out to Jesse Matthews. He was a a mobile tech and he was booking out about this he was doing about 6, 000 a month in his mobile tech. He worked at a dealership, but kept doing his mobile tech. And then he got himself a space, brick and mortar.
Jimmy Lea: It's a single lift. Probably a two bay shop, very small, one of those, you know, 1, 200 square foot, 1, 000 square foot, small, single door, you understand where I am, right? In one month, went from 6, 000 a month to 24, 000 a month. In one month. And I am looking forward to the day, I'm counting the days, because I think there's about six months down the road that he is going to go from 24, 000 a month to 24, 000 a week.
Jimmy Lea: Because he cares. He cares. He cares about his clients. He cares about his customers. He cares about making sure that cars are running properly on the roads. And he's one that wants to better himself, better his family, better the industry, better everyone around him. Big shout out to Jesse Matthews.
Jimmy Lea: He's not even on this webinar. 
Mike Carillo: Love it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, that's cool. 
Mike Carillo: Yeah, I know. And I would say like, like to your point, but by and large, right, the vast majority of this industry are incredible human beings who want to grow their businesses. They want to do it well. They want to take care of the customer.
Mike Carillo: They're not looking to take advantage of people. The unfortunate part is we work on something that our customers don't understand and therefore we're immediately a threat, right? Because they have to take your word for it. So we're not starting out on the right foot already, right? They're having to trust you in something.
Mike Carillo: It's financial. They drive their family around in it, right? The stakes are heavy, right? And in order, I think that's where this comes into play and can be so powerful as you see those on your city Facebook page when somebody says, Hey, you know, does anybody recommend a good car shop? Those people who hop on within three seconds and there's like 15 of them, they're like my guy, that's what we want, right?
Mike Carillo: That's what we need to have. And I guarantee you that shop owner has relationships with each one of those people. It didn't happen because of an auto text message. It didn't happen because of DVI. It may be. That improves your shop operations wildly, right? Tremendously, but let's, we don't want to forget that last little piece, which is the main thing, which is everybody does business with people that they don't like and trust.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, true story. True story. So Neil of this process how involved are you on the follow up that your shop does with clients? 
Neil Daly: I mean, so it's, it takes a very little amount of time if that's kind of what you're asking. So like I get to be involved and like we see all of the results from the phone calls.
Neil Daly: And then we reach out to the ones that we need to, so like 100 percent involved there, but you're talking like five minutes a week versus whatever it would take doing it manually. So it's, yeah, it's pretty effortless to do a really good job of it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it would be and I imagine you being on the road for a year with your family and knowing that this is being taken care of that.
Jimmy Lea: You don't have to pick up the phone. You don't have to make the phone calls. You don't have to draft the letters. You don't even have to have somebody inside of your shop doing that. You can. Take that one person that used to be all about the follow up phone calls and multitask them into doing something else in the shop that makes money.
Jimmy Lea: And it allows you to be able to take a step back and say, okay, Mike, take care of my clients, take care of my customers. Let me know when there's an issue and I'll pick up the phone and we'll make sure that we take care of business. 
Neil Daly: Yeah, it is nice to have it covered. We've kind of gone to just with the size of our shop, you know, we're mostly producers now.
Neil Daly: So to ask you know, I want my service advisors focus on customers at the front door and what they're doing. I want the after sales stuff done by someone else. So that the service advisor is on to the next customer that is here. And it just keeps everybody focused on their role. 
Jimmy Lea: I love that. And what does your shop look like Neil? Your Oceanside Motorsports Oceanside, California, right? So what is the makeup? What does your shop look like these days? 
Neil Daly: Okay. So we have 12 bays. We've always had a little bit too big of a shop for what we've produced and we've been changing that rapidly.
Neil Daly: So, 12 bays with five technicians and staffed for three people in the front office. So three service advisors. And it's a good time. A couple of years ago I had some decent leadership in the shop too. That's the only reason I could leave on that trip, but I kind of failed at that part then.
Neil Daly: So I, you know, I've been back as the one person in charge, which has worked really well. For a couple of years and we've gone through some significant growth, but it is time to start taking that challenge on again next year. So that's what I mean. Like we're kind of only producers. I don't even have a we do have a bookkeeper thankfully.
Neil Daly: But that's the only non producing employee. 
Jimmy Lea: Right, right. There's no, I'm gonna use air quotes. There's no middle management. That's what I'm hearing you say. Yeah, everybody's producing, everybody's working for that paycheck every single day, every single week.
Neil Daly: Yeah, and we get it done. We've got a good group now. We've got a really good group. 
Jimmy Lea: No, that's very cool. That's very cool. And I want to point out that what we've been talking about here, these are best practices. This is not industry standard. If it was industry standard, everybody would do it. This isn't an industry standard.
Jimmy Lea: Not everybody's doing it. And because everybody's not doing it, this is some of those best practices that you can implement into your shop to make that difference. I wonder from our audience, what are you doing in your shops? What is your follow up process? What do you do to continue that relationship with the client that takes it even further?
Neil Daly: And as they're answering that. Yeah, I'll cut you off. No please. If they are. I wanted to say one of the things I was so surprised by, because even, you know, over 10 years ago, part of the best practices was to do follow up thank you calls. 
Jimmy Lea: Totally. 
Neil Daly: And even then, I thought, dude, that's old news. We text now. People aren't going to want to pick up the phone and have a conversation. I do remember when we did actually try it, people did. It was enjoyable. People did actually pick up, but it is absolutely still current. And I can't believe the success rate of people that actually answer the phone and then talk to you guys. I am absolutely wrong about that. 
Neil Daly: I was thinking about it personally too. Like I don't like, I don't want anyone to call me or do any of that. I want to text and this and that, but I've thought about it with a couple of experiences I've happened with, we've had with companies lately.
Neil Daly: If they follow it up with me. I for sure would have had a better experience because I do want to give them a little feedback or the good ones I wouldn't mind saying something about You know, so I've been thinking about it on the customer side, kind of changing my mind about that. It's absolutely a part of our world still.
Mike Carillo: Yeah, I think it's and I get right, same thing for every one of my customers, shop owner, myself, business owner. I think we are a little bit biased in that, not answering the phone, because our phones blow up all day, every day. And we don't realize that's not everybody's world, that's not every day.
Mike Carillo: And yeah, and people want to answer the phones. You'd be surprised how much people want to have a conversation and talk. During COVID, our answer rates were through the roof. Everybody wanted to have a conversation. That was a heyday for AutoShop follow up, sadly. But it was, but even still, like, people really do want to engage and have like a quick chat and and then for those folks who don't, it's okay to let them pop off the phone, right?
Mike Carillo: Everybody has that customer, too, who's like a little short and to the point. The phone call is not giving them warm fuzzies. Just say, Hey, we know we're here for you. We appreciate you. Let us know if you need anything and let them get off the phone. Right. However, that customer is best served. I think is what makes sense.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And there's a lot of good that can come from asking a client. How do you prefer to be communicated with our follow up? We'd like to follow up a day after, a week after, or something like that. And what can we do to follow up with you? Is it a text message? Is it a phone call? Is it a postcard?
Jimmy Lea: What do we need to do? So, yeah, ask those questions and that'll definitely help you. So guys, as we come in to land this plane, our podcast is a plane today, as we come in to land this plane, what's your final bits of advice? Neil, we'll start with you. Mike, we'll go to you. What advice do you have for shop owners?
Jimmy Lea: Maybe they're not doing follow up or maybe they are and they're in the middle of it and it's overwhelming. I don't know. What's your advice, Neil? 
Neil Daly: I guess, It would just be that, you know, like I hear so often where people are like, Oh, how is it there or we're slow or this is affecting my car count or this and that.
Neil Daly: And if you focus on the things you can control, like following up with your customers, exit scheduling, those other best practices there's really anytime I've ever been slow and maybe even tried to think about blaming something else I'll usually look at my calendar and if there's no exit schedules on it, like I didn't do them 30 to 90 days ago, or if I haven't been doing those follow up calls and stuff, that's why.
Neil Daly: And it's really empowering because, okay, you have something to do now that you can control. So I kind of don't take any of that BS happening anywhere else as to why we're slow if we are, and I don't know, just finally with you guys, there's a way to. Have it actually checked off as something that's done a hundred percent.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much, Neil Thank you so much for being here with us and spending your time to talk about Follow up and the fortune that can be there. I know you just swagged a lot of numbers for us, but gosh dang that It's right in the place that you want to be. So it's definitely making a difference on everything that we're doing.
Jimmy Lea: So, thank you very much. I know you got to bounce. So dude, you're awesome. Thank you, brother. Can't wait to see you again soon. 
Neil Daly: Thank you guys. It was really good to see you. 
Jimmy Lea: Really good to see you too. Mike, to you as well. What advice would you have for shop owners in their followup? What are some of those best practices that they can follow?
Mike Carillo: I mean, I would say if you're going to start anywhere start with some basic week after follow up calls. Nothing fancy. 
Jimmy Lea: A week after. So you're following a full seven days. 
Mike Carillo: Yeah. Well, I know I would say, you know, four to seven days depending on what that looks like. But I think within a week, you want it long enough to where they're able to drive their car for a minute, but not so long that they forgot about what their business was like.
Mike Carillo: Right. So I think just starting with those calls and remember, like, listen, they are a bit of a hassle. Like, I'm not gonna lie, like, they are a bit of a hassle. Most people don't really want to jump in and do them. However, there's a reason why they've been tried and true for a long time is because it works.
Mike Carillo: And it does. It does work. You will see more appointments. You'll convert more customers. You'll see more people come into your shop. And it is a small thing. I heard a great quote the other day. It said the magic you're looking for is in the work you're avoiding. And sometimes it's just a matter of diving in and like, Just go get it, work on that and spend the time.
Mike Carillo: It's well worth the investment. 
Jimmy Lea: Dude, that's solid. The magic is in the work you're avoiding. I absolutely love that. That is very cool. As we're wrapping this up and I have a question for you, maybe you don't have this answer. Is there any data? In your company, in your follow ups that you're doing for a first customer, second time customer, third time customer, fourth time customer, is there any data that says if you can get them to come back a second time, a certain percentage will come back a third time, a certain percentage will come back a fourth time?
Mike Carillo: I don't have that in front of me but that is something that we're working on and building out because I, I do a hundred percent, we need to know, right? We need to know what that looks like. 
Jimmy Lea: We need to know because I think that there is a percentage and I'm even assuming that once we can get it a fourth time visit, that's pretty much guaranteed customer for life.
Mike Carillo: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. And providing that consistent experience, right. And doing those little things that really can, it can make all the difference. I know it seems it's just so simple that it's a little too obvious, but it really does work. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it does work. And here's another shout out, another testimonial from Adam, m spec performance. Thank you, Adam. 
Mike Carillo: Yeah. Well, thank you, Jimmy. Appreciate being able to be here. And yeah, for anyone on the shameless plug portion of this, if you visit autoshopfollowup. com four slash the Institute you can learn more about our followup services and actually anyone who comes through the Institute will get a hundred free follow up phone calls if you sign up and join us.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, seriously. Thank you. That is awesome. So anybody listening to this live gets it. And anybody listening to gets it too?
Mike Carillo: Yep. Absolutely. 
Jimmy Lea: Give us that website again. 
Mike Carillo: Auto shop, followup. com forward slash 
Mike Carillo: just fill out the little form on there and we can have a little have a call and ask any questions that you have. Yeah. Happy to help. 
Jimmy Lea: Bro. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. That goes a long way. It's going to help a lot of shops. I definitely see this going a long way. So thank you very much, Mike. Absolutely. 
Mike Carillo: Thank you, sir . Appreciate you. 
Jimmy Lea: Appreciate you as well. And those of you who are here still listening, as we talk, we're talking about leadership.
Jimmy Lea: My Neil was talking about the leadership inside of his shop and the difference that leadership allowed him to have choices and to make choices and to do things. We are instituting the leadership intensive. This is with Michael Smith. He talks about human centric thinking. Why do you make the choices you do?
Jimmy Lea: Why you choose what you choose into your team? Why does your team choose to do what they do? How can we help to motivate them to make the right choices? Our next Meeting. Our next gathering on this is in Dallas, Texas in November. QR code here in the bottom corner. Go ahead and scan that QR code. That'll get you into that meeting.
Jimmy Lea: It's going to be amazing. It's in a beautiful part of Dallas, Texas in November, the 18th, 19th and 20th, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, really close to the airport. Makes it easy, convenient. You Uber over, you Uber back. You don't have to rent a car. You're in and you're ready to go. It is going to be awesome and amazing time for those of you who are looking for the leadership, whether you need the leadership yourself or your clients are needing that leadership or your team is needing clients.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, my gosh. Your team needs that leadership. Your team needs that leadership. So this is definitely something for owners and managers. And once you get those managers in, you're going to want your service advisors to come in and even your technicians to come through this leadership intensive, because it talks about the human centric learning and why we do what we do sign up.
Jimmy Lea: And we'll see you there. This is awesome. This has been an amazing discussion. Thank you so much to Mike for joining us, talking about best practices in a shop in follow up. Thank you to Neil for your insight and your wisdom and the ability you have inside of your shop to even be able to go out on a year tour of North America.
Jimmy Lea: Super awesome. I'd love for your shop to be able to do the same. If you are interested, if you like this type of training, if you like this type of information, scan the QR code in the bottom left hand corner, that QR code will link you to my team. And we would love to sit down and talk to you about your shop, what you can do in your shop to take it to that next level.
Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute. We are here for coaching and training in the automotive aftermarket for service advisors, managers, and owners, whether you are starting out as a single bay, a single lift all the way up to the garage malls. We are going to meet you where you are today and take you from that point.
Jimmy Lea: This is an awesome and elite program that you will definitely benefit from. Join us at the Institute. My name is Jimmy Lee. This is my email. This is my cell phone. Give me a call. Love to talk to you. Give me a text message. Give me an email. Let's connect. My name is Jimmy Lee. I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Jimmy Lea: Talk to you soon.
 

107 - Boost Your Auto Repair Shop’s Performance and Profits with Cecil Bullard!

107 - Boost Your Auto Repair Shop’s Performance and Profits with Cecil Bullard!
September 19th, 2024 - 01:05:33
 
Show Summary:
In this podcast hosted by The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence and AutoLeap, Cecil Bullard and Jimmy Lea dive into how auto repair shops can boost profits through better productivity, smarter diagnostics, and process improvements. Cecil breaks down the importance of viewing your shop as a machine with labor and parts as your inventory and how most shops are leaving money on the table due to poor procedures and pricing. He shares his diagnostic labor rate strategy, explains how to handle productivity blockers (or “bricks”), and offers practical ways to streamline dispatching and authorization. With real-world shop examples and industry-proven solutions, this episode is a must-listen for shop owners looking to operate at peak performance.
 
Host(s):
Nicole Penrod, AutoLeap
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Cecil Bullard, Founder & CEO, The Institute
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:04:18] - Shops should be run like machines—your "inventory" is labor hours and parts, and both need to be managed strategically for profit.
[00:06:52] - Charging variable labor rates for older or more difficult cars is essential to account for added time and complexity.
[00:10:16] - Labor is perishable—if it's not sold today, it's gone forever, making technician productivity critical.
[00:14:39] - Productivity issues often stem from poor systems; shops need to examine how cars are dispatched and how techs are kept busy.
[00:18:05] - Pre-authorizing repair limits and confirming contact methods helps reduce downtime and increase efficiency.
[00:27:35] - Diagnostic labor rates should reflect the skill, tools, and time required—Cecil outlines a tiered pricing strategy.
[00:34:11] - Diagnostic work must be priced like medical diagnosis—start with basic tests, then expand based on findings.
[00:43:24] - Productivity suffers when "bricks" exist—these can be company or employee-related and need to be removed.
[00:51:34] - Motivating a "brick technician" means removing company obstacles and helping them see a path to success.
[00:59:01] - Raising your labor rate shouldn't be feared—most customers won’t notice, and those who do likely aren't your ideal clients.
 
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=hLzmQDVBwug
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: 
Want to learn more? Click Here
Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
See The Institute's events list: Click Here
Want access to our online classes? Click Here
 
________________________________________
 
Nicole Penrod: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Super excited to announce that not only do we have Cecil here with us, but we also have Jimmy Lee. So they are going to be leading us through today's webinar. But I want to let everybody know that We are recording this, so if anything happens, you need to drop off for something, your internet fails for whatever reason, there will be a recording available.
Nicole Penrod: Also wanted to let you know that the institute will be recording, adding in a couple of things, and then sending this out to everyone. I'll let Cecil give you more details on that. So I will leave everybody with Cecil Bullard, the CEO of the Institute for Automotive Excellence and Jimmy Lee, the VP of business 
Jimmy Lea: Business development.
Nicole Penrod: There we go. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We'll take it. We'll take it. Well, thank you, Nicole. Thank you for inviting us on to talk to. The industry today, because we're going to talk about some really awesome and wonderful things and to make sure that this is as interactive as we can possibly make it. Please everybody go to the Q and a section.
Jimmy Lea: Now, do we have chat or Q and a here? Nicole. 
Nicole Penrod: Both the chat should now be active. Everybody should be able to message to everyone. 
Jimmy Lea: So if you've got a question you'd like me to ask Cecil, put it into the question. If you, if there's just a little bit of chit chat that wants to happen, put it in the chit chat.
Jimmy Lea: But I want to make sure you know how to do the question portion here, because that's where we can dig deeper in with Cecil talking about questions. So go in the window to the question bar, And type in to the Q and a where you are joining us from today and what your shop is. So go to the Q and a and drop in there.
Jimmy Lea: And I'm laughing because I'm laughing because Andrew's following me around today from Long Island, Andrew Knutson, Long Island, going from webinar to webinar, gathering as much detail and as much information and knowledge as he can possibly gather. Andrew, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate that.
Jimmy Lea: Stu's joining us from Salt Lake city, Utah. Michael joining from North gateway tire in Medina, Ohio. Nice. How's the weather in Ohio? Alyssa from top knot mobile mechanic, LLC from Florida. Nice Alyssa. That's wonderful. What part of Florida are you in? Florida is a big state. My parents just moved to Pensacola.
Jimmy Lea: We just had an employee move into Naples in Florida. So tell us where you're from in Florida there, Alyssa. Robert joining from Boca Auto Service. Robert, glad to have you with us. Is that Boca, Florida? Robert, let me know. Eric Newton from Phoenix Kurtz Auto Repair. I think that would be joining from Phoenix, and it's Kurtz Auto Repair.
Jimmy Lea: Becky, owner of Butterworth Service Center in Ingersoll, Ontario. Woo! We're international, baby. How about that? Love to have our brothers and sisters from the frozen white north. Hey, is it frozen white yet? I saw snow on the mountains. Cecil, did you see snow on the mountains up there in Ogden? 
Cecil Bullard: Not here, not yet.
Jimmy Lea: Really? Down in Utah County, they were posting pictures. Everybody's posting pictures of snow on the mountains. Might've been earlier in the week. 
Cecil Bullard: We had sleet. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yuck. All right. Nevermind. On from that. Garner from Ideal Car Care in Arizona, Noah from Nathan's Garage in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Michael says it is beautiful.
Jimmy Lea: Leland Arizona Suspension in Arizona, Alyssa Lakeland, Florida. Nice. That's beautiful territory. Robert says Boca Raton, Florida. Thank you. That's what I was thinking you were going to say. And Becky from Crazy Hot. Oh, that's Ohio. It's crazy hot in Ohio. All right. Well, very good. Now that you know how to work the Q and A, which is awesome.
Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much for doing that. We're going to jump right into having a conversation with Cecil Bullard and Cecil is going to talk to us about processes, procedures, and profits. Hey, those are three Ps. That's really good. We should, that's a good one. But it's more than that Cecil. I'm going to turn the time over to you brother and have at it.
Jimmy Lea: So as you have questions audience, Type them in the Q& A and then I'll interrupt and we can ask those questions. Don't wait to the very end. Don't wait to the very end. 
Cecil Bullard: Alright, so a funny thing happened to me on the way to the webinar. I walked in and I said, today we're not going to have a PowerPoint.
Cecil Bullard: And Nicole was like, ah, we're going to wing it. And Jimmy Lee said, no, you don't understand. We could actually record Cecil in his sleep and he would be talking about these things. We are a at the institute. We are a coaching and training company to help automotive businesses. We have programs for owners, service advisors, et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: And the reason I say that at this point is, I think some people don't understand that we actually, that's what we do. But also because it's gonna come in to play a little bit in what we're gonna talk about. There are. When we're talking about improving performance, and I think when we look at shops from my perspective, from what I do I'm on the, I'm online with someone, or I might even be in a shop, and I'm looking at bays, I'm looking at effective labor rate you have a posted rate, and you have what you call your effective labor rate, which is what do I actually charge, Per hour on average.
Cecil Bullard: I think some people believe that your effective labor rate is what are we actually bringing in per hour? And that's not, it can certainly be called that, but that's not what, when I'm talking about effective labor rate, that's not really what I'm talking about. So, you know, if my technician is productive and does you know, 1.1 hours in a one hour period, or say nine hours in an eight hour day.
Cecil Bullard: Then I'm going to bring more money in during that eight hour day. But I also have what I charge. And we have today in the industry, most of the shops that, that we would work with and I'll say most only because I cannot necessarily tell you that I've looked at every single shop we work with every day and I know exactly what they're doing.
Cecil Bullard: When I say most, I really mean all, but most of the shops that we work with have varying labor rates. I was talking to one of our clients yesterday. And they were talking about cars that are more than 20 years old coming in their shop and how difficult they are. The owner does not want to turn those cars away.
Cecil Bullard: The technicians don't necessarily want to work on those cars. And I'm kind of with the owner in that I don't want to turn them away because instead of charging, say, 140 an hour, I can charge 165, 170 because I know that this car, being older, I'm gonna have to deal with rust, other than if I'm in Florida or Palm Springs, California.
Cecil Bullard: I'm gonna have to deal with trying to chase down parts that are difficult to come by if it's even possible. We might have to chase parts in, in a junkyard for an older car. We might have to modify something else to make it work or fit where we can. So varying labor rates is one of the things that we might talk about if we're gonna talk about increasing property.
Cecil Bullard: Profits. So the basis of this is really my business is a, it's an engine. And that engine is designed to put out a certain amount of torque and horsepower for me, that means money, profit, and productivity. And there are really two ways in an automotive shop, and I guess I could have put that slide out.
Cecil Bullard: I've shown you guys this slide in a hundred webinars. One way is parts. We buy and sell parts. And we have lots of webinars out there right now talking about parts marching and parts matrices and how to price yourself and you know, how to answer questions of customers that want to bring their own parts, things like that.
Cecil Bullard: So I don't want to get into that. Today, I'm going to tell you the second way that we make our machine run properly is through productivity, having a technician come in and spend eight hours on the clock and in effect, if I'm paying a salary or an hourly, get paid a certain amount and then give me eight hours worth of billable work done.
Cecil Bullard: That I can then sell to my client. So if you thought about yourself like a store, you'd have two things on your shelf. You'd have parts. And I buy those parts from, I don't know, Napa, WorldPAC, CarQuest, wherever I buy my parts. And then I mark them up and I resell them to my customer. And then the different thing, what I paid for them.
Cecil Bullard: And what I sold them for is my profit or my profit margin, dollars and margin equals dollars equals margin. And then I also have labor on the shelf and the thing about parts is a non perishable. So parts is like having, I don't know, toilet paper on the shelf or paper plates or I don't know, plastic forks.
Cecil Bullard: If I have that on my shelf and I don't sell it today, it still is good a week from now, you know, a month from now, maybe even years from now, I can still sell that and I can make I might even make more money on it later because the price of it has gone up and the cost of it's gone up, but I paid for it five years ago when the cost was lower.
Cecil Bullard: Labor, on the other hand, is what we're going to talk about primarily today. And labor is the thing that gets me because I have labor on the shelf. If I have three technicians who are gonna work eight hours today, I have 24 hours on my shelf that I need to basically sell and then I need to make sure that work gets done.
Cecil Bullard: And I think when we look at shops and I look at shops every day yesterday, I think I had six meetings with shops that I coach with. And we're going to talk about a couple of those meetings because a couple of things that happened during those meetings is one of the reasons why shops are not financially as prosperous as they ought to be.
Cecil Bullard: And so I have this labor on my shelf and I have 24 hours. Am I finding the work on my customers cars? And am I selling the work? When we look at the machine, the automotive machine, the automotive business as a machine, and we diagnose that, we look at it and say, I've got 24 hours of labor on my shelf.
Cecil Bullard: I'm 130 an hour. And my parts to labor ratio is of what I'm selling 55 percent or let's do 50%. It should be 55 percent labor. And 45 percent parts, but let's do 50 50. So if I'm 130 an hour effectively and half of what I sell is parts and half of what I sell is labor, then I have 260 times 24, which is what I should not only sell today, but what I should finish if I don't finish the work, even if I sold it, then my guys are not productive.
Cecil Bullard: And my cost for labor it doesn't necessarily go up because I'm paying you for that eight hours, but my profit on labor goes down because I'm paying you for eight hours, but you're only giving me six to sell instead of eight and frankly, if I have three texts that are doing six hours a day, instead of eight, then I'm losing at 130 an hour, 260 times three 700, eight 780.
Cecil Bullard: Every day. And if I do that every day, then I've lost 780 times 200 and 50 days. And so whatever that, that particular number is, my, my brain isn't going to let me, it's probably somewhere around 300, 000 or something. I've lost this huge amount of labor that I didn't bill for and the parts that would have went along with it.
Cecil Bullard: So what I'm trying to do when I walk into a shop is I'm trying to say, I've got three techs at this amount, which means that we should be selling 8, 000 today. And if we sell 8, 000, then we should also be doing 8, 000. And when I'm doing my business planning. I'm so I'm having a marketing discussion yesterday with one of my clients and they have a business in around in Tennessee and we need a certain amount of dollars to make that business run and be profitable.
Cecil Bullard: And we have I think five techs in the shop right now. And I'm saying to them, not only do we know how many dollars we need in, but we also know how many hours we need to sell. And we also know how many cars that needs to be. So when we have a marketing discussion, we can talk to our marketing people about the fact that I need 12 cars a day or 15 cars a day, because I have an 800 average repair order.
Cecil Bullard: And I need to do 12, 000 worth of work. Well, that's at 800, that's 12 cars, right? Excuse me, 15. Somebody's gonna correct me. But I know, if I know what that number is that I need to produce, because I know what my hour's worth, and I know how many techs I have, then I know how many cars I need, because I also know what my average repair order is.
Cecil Bullard: So there's a real simplicity to this. When you really understand your numbers and what you should be producing in your business. And so now I'm going to, I'm going to shift and I'm going to talk about productivity because that's the thing when we're talking about performance, we're really talking about productivity.
Cecil Bullard: And performance can be service advisor performance. Certainly. I need my service advisor to sell a certain amount of whatever we offer our clients. But I also need my technicians to perform at a certain level so that I can bring in the money I need to pay the bills and have the money I want left over.
Cecil Bullard: And I'm trying to not get too deep, but get deep enough to kind of paint the whole picture here. So I'm looking at my three technicians and I'm saying I want 24 hours sold today and I'm done today. And there are easy things to fix, and there are hard things that are more difficult to fix. So if you were to look at productivity as one of your primary things that's holding the business back from running the way that it should, and making the profit that it should then you start looking at what creates productivity in a shop.
Cecil Bullard: And I'm going to talk about easy things. And I'm going to talk about harder things. So, one of the things that happens when we walk into a shop we'll look at things like how much time are you charging for what you're doing. So, I'm on a meeting this morning with a client happens to be one of the service advisors in one of the shops that we coach and consult with.
Cecil Bullard: And the service advisor is saying, well, we have this tech who's upset because he's getting all the work that doesn't pay well. So he's doing all the heart diagnostic, all the weird stuff and we, he's, part of his pay plan is a performance bonus, and he's missing his bonuses, because that work is, Giveaway work or that work is work where you cannot charge what it takes.
Cecil Bullard: And what I'm saying to him is there is no giveaway work, right? I don't have technicians work on cars that customers are not paying for. Because if I do, then my business doesn't produce what it needs to, and I'm not as profitable as I need to. So one of the things that will make you successful is basically the pen, or today we would translate that to the computer system.
Cecil Bullard: How am I estimating the job? So for instance the shop that I'm talking to has a lower labor rate on their diagnostic than their normal labor rate. And why they do that, I don't know. The reason that shops have lower labor rates on their diagnostic is because they're trying to be competitive with places that don't charge for diagnostic.
Cecil Bullard: And what I'm going to tell you is, frankly, there is nobody that doesn't charge for diagnostic. Even Pep Boys or AutoZone charges for diagnostic, okay? I get it that the customer doesn't quote unquote pay for that, I see Jimmy raising his finger, but the customer does pay for that time because that employee is charging and getting paid and the company is raising the price on their parts to pay for that time, okay?
Cecil Bullard: So I don't know, Jimmy, if you guys, if you had a question or whatever, you were raising your finger, go ahead. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, so the question falls right in line with what you're talking to hear about the diagnostic time versus the labor time. And this is a question coming from Eric. Eric, I might need a little bit more detail.
Jimmy Lea: The end part of this, I'm not 100 percent certain, so I'm going to kind of riff on this. Eric's asking, how do you handle the eight hours a day per tech when jobs cannot be sold on time because of the customer's slowdown? And I think what he's saying there is that the customer is slow to respond. How do you still handle?
Cecil Bullard: So you you know, obviously there are complications and things in your business that are more difficult for say a shop that's got three bays. than a shop that has 15 bays. So if my techs each have two bays then I if we have a slowdown, my tech has other work to do. The way that we dispatch is one of the things that will create productivity or keep us from being productive.
Cecil Bullard: If I bring the cars in kind of throughout the day, and I kind of plan like that one's going to be three hours, And then, so I'm going to bring another one in at 11, and then I'm going to bring another one in at 2 and I give, I dispatch one car to my tech, when that car, when he's stopped, or she is stopped on that vehicle, then there's nothing else for them to do.
Cecil Bullard: So, what we want to do, really, is We want to bring all the cars in kind of in the morning early and we want to dispatch multiple cars to our techs. I always want my tech to have a backup job to do if they get held up, and they can get held up for a lot of reasons. They can get held up because the service advisor is too busy to do the estimate because somebody else's estimates came in first or whatever.
Cecil Bullard: They can get held up because the service advisor is too busy because the service advisor is answering phones and doing other stuff. They can get held up because the parts aren't here or the parts they got were the wrong parts. They can get held up because it's taking too long to get the sale and the authorization because you can't get a hold of the customer.
Cecil Bullard: And so if I look at, say, that one and I carve that one out what I do. Is when I'm, when the car comes in, first of all, I'm bringing the car in as early as possible in the morning and I'm letting that customer know that I will call them at some point, like one o'clock in the afternoon. And then I'm telling the technician, I need to have that estimate on my desk at noon so that I can estimate it and call the customer by one.
Cecil Bullard: and get that thing sold. And hopefully, you know, the way that we schedule and the way that things work out that actually happens the way that I think it ought to happen. But it often does not. Another thing I do in the morning is I verify my contact method with the customer. How do you want me to get a hold of you?
Cecil Bullard: Is this a good phone number? Would you like me to text you? If I text you and I can't get a hold of you, you don't respond, would you like me to call you? If I can't get a hold of you, do you want me to move ahead up to, say, 1, 000 and get the work done? Or do you want me to stop so that you and I can talk?
Cecil Bullard: So pre authorize, pre authorizing a certain amount. Also will help me with that and help me get my technician moving at a faster pace. So there are, you know, maybe four or five things I can do to make sure that it happens as fast as possible. But if my tech does get held up, I want to have that technician have another job that they can do.
Cecil Bullard: So in my shop, we scheduled all the customers to come in before nine o'clock. 90 percent of the time that worked out fine. We had. Our 13, 14 cars come in before nine, we dispatched all the cars to our techs, and then throughout the day, we made adjustments to the dispatch based on what was selling, what wasn't selling, what was getting us held up, you know, parts, et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: And we move some things around to make the most efficient use of the machine. So, if Bob we sold 15 hours for Bob on a car and we had the parts here and we knew we could get the work done. Bob still had two other cars that he was supposed to diagnose and work on. Probably while I was estimating, Rob, Bob was working on one of those cars.
Cecil Bullard: One of those cars he hasn't touched yet. I'm actually going to pull that car from Bob, and give it to somebody else in the shop who didn't, whose work didn't sell, or who got held up. So if we are paying attention to the flow, the ebb and the flow of the business throughout the day, or somebody is doing that, Then we're going to be more efficient.
Cecil Bullard: Our people will be able to be more productive and we will get more hours done. Is it a perfect world every day? No, it can't be, but we're going to do everything possible to make it as perfect a world as we can make it. So if I identify not getting a hold of customers and getting the authorizations from them as one of my problems, then I'm also going to identify three or four solutions.
Cecil Bullard: During my weekly management meeting or when I'm sitting in my office by myself working on my business instead of in my business, and then I'm going to work with staff to implement those solutions to create better flow. better productivity, more consistency of product, more consistency of profit.
Cecil Bullard: And I hope that quote unquote answers that particular question. 
Jimmy Lea: It did. And Eric says, thank you, by the way. So that, that went right into it. What I'm hearing is that a lot of proper preparation will help in the process procedure and proficiency of the shop. There's a lot of P's there. I know The proper preparation, getting that set up right at the very beginning definitely helps the productivity of the shop and the efficiency of the technicians.
Jimmy Lea: So Eric, man, that, that was awesome. Oh, Eric says what expected productivity would you expect out of a shop because of those possibilities? 
Cecil Bullard: My shop ran at 119%. Our goal was 120. So my guys produced about 9. 5 hours a day. Over us in an eight hour day over in an eight hour day now, by the way you you have to, you, everything has to be working smoothly for you to have a hundred percent or more productivity in your shop.
Jimmy Lea: You don't step into that tomorrow. That's a lot of work. 
Cecil Bullard: Well, you're yeah, there's, it's, everything's a lot. Yeah. So I walk into a shop or let's say I get a vehicle in my bay and that vehicle is not running as well as it's supposed to run, customer complaint, whatever. I know how that vehicle should run and it's not.
Cecil Bullard: And then I'm going to go through a diagnostic process or a series of tests to determine why it's not running the way that it should. And then I'm going to put a solution in place. And that solution might be part of the solution, or it might be all of the solution on the car. Business is not different in my thought process in what I, you know, what I do is a little different, but my, I diagnose, I have an idea of how it should run, and when it's not running how it should, I go look at the things that create, say, productivity.
Cecil Bullard: So one of the things that creates productivity is this. So if I'm. Getting a car in for a diagnostic and customer calls and says, Hey, I've got to check engine light on my car's running kind of crappy. I'm not getting good gas mileage. It doesn't feel right. I estimate back in the day, we were 250 for a diagnostic on a typical car that had a check engine light or run ability problem or a noise.
Cecil Bullard: We had other diagnostics, like if we had a cooling system. problem. We had a cooling system diagnostic, which happened to be 158. We had a starting and charging system diagnostic, which happened to be the time. I think about 128. We had a brake steering suspension diagnostic, which at the time was 68. And so different diagnostics because of the time involved or the time we estimate involved have different pricing.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and we've seen shops all across the country that have that 50 percent efficiency, 75 percent efficiency, 100%. It's awesome that you were up in the 119s. That's super cool. 
Cecil Bullard: Well, efficiency and productivity, two different things. Totally. A lot of people, a lot of consultants, a lot of trainers will talk about efficiency.
Cecil Bullard: When they're really quote unquote talking about productivity, how many hours does the technician produce in a day? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I want to go into your diagnostic. So this is a question from Andrew. This is coming from our audience here. Andrew is asking I don't know if I missed it but is there a formula that I can use to determine what my diagnostic labor rate should be so that my labor margins don't fall if we are diagnostic heavy?
Cecil Bullard: There's two pieces that you need to do. One is my diagnostic should probably be an hour and a half of my time. Okay. So if I'm going to spend an hour and that's what I think the tests I'm going to initially run are going to take. And I think that, I don't know, 60 percent of the time that should get the job done.
Cecil Bullard: Then I want to charge an hour and a half of whatever my labor, my diagnostic labor rate is. And my diagnostic labor rate is a higher labor rate. Because I'm using the most expensive equipment I have the most expensive technicians I have and the most expensive training I have
Cecil Bullard: to do those diagnostic and a lot of times we have shops either not charging for diagnostic or adding it in or some of it in later or they're charging based on a regular tech when they're putting their most expensive guy on that diag And so, and then I need three different diagnostics, at least four, say check engine lights and run ability stuff, because, you know, I know nothing about the car.
Cecil Bullard: Sometimes the customer tells me they've got a Camry. And it shows up in actually a Corolla, sometimes the customer tells me they have a Toyota and it shows up and it's actually a Honda. And sometimes the customer says, you know, it's running a little bad or it's running fine, but the light's on and the car comes in and there's steam coming out of the hood and it's running terribly and we know that there are major issues with the vehicle that we have to figure out.
Cecil Bullard: So I have a multi level initial testing phase. Some people don't like the word Diag. I used it all my life. So. I'm going to say DIAG, and that is an hour and a half of my time at my highest rate because I'm using my equipment, I'm using my highest paid tech, etc. And by the way, that is a starting point.
Cecil Bullard: That's not a finishing point. If I get the car in, if it has one or two codes that have to do with the same system. If we run a couple of tests on it and we are able to determine the problem very efficiently, very quickly, then I might even charge a little less than that DIAG that I initially quoted or at least I charged that DIAG that I initially quoted.
Cecil Bullard: If the car comes in and it has 23 codes that are across five systems. Then my original assumption about the time that we would spend on the car is inaccurate. And at that point, I have to let the customer know that I need additional time and additional testing because the problem that we were, the basis we were going on to set time and pricing is is no longer valid.
Cecil Bullard: So, I go to the doctor I've got, I had my shoulder rebuilt. I have trouble with my shoulder. I go in and I go to my normal doctor and my normal doctor, you know, do this, do that. How's that feel? Blah, blah, blah. Hey, see, so I think we need to run some x rays. So I'm paying my normal doctor's rate. And then I'm going to pay for the x rays.
Cecil Bullard: Then I'm going to go back to my doctor and he's going to hold those x rays up and he's going to say, wow, this looks more complicated than we thought. I think we need to do an MRI. So, and Cecil, you've, now you're beyond my capabilities, I'm going to talk to you about your MRI, but I'm going to send you to a specialist that does shoulder reconstruction or whatever.
Cecil Bullard: So now I go for an MRI and I pay for the MRI and then I go to the new doctor who interprets the MRI and then tells me what the solution is. And the solution is to go in and rebuild my shoulder. All right. So now I go and have that done and I pay for all of that. And then I go through therapy and you know, six months into therapy I'm still in a lot of pain.
Cecil Bullard: It still doesn't work the way I want. Wakes me up in the middle of the night if I move wrong. And so now I have to go back to my shoulder guy, or I have to go to another shoulder guy, and I have to run additional tests. So I had a second MRI, and the second MRI showed problems that they thought, okay, they have to be in your neck.
Cecil Bullard: So now I'm going for an MRI on my neck, which creates or shows a couple of additional problems. One being That I have some vertebrae that are screwed up. So now I'm going to go to a neck guy and pay for that. And then it also showed some things on my thyroid that now I have to have tests to see if potentially I might have something else going on that I had no idea that might be going on.
Cecil Bullard: But, you know, and when you look at that and how they do that in medical, you know, in a huge way, how we repair automobiles and how we diagnose automobiles is very much alike and should be, except most of us in the automotive industry think, well, we charge them. You know, 120 for the original diagnostic.
Cecil Bullard: And if I can't figure it out in the original hour, I thought I would, I need to spend whatever time I can to get it figured out and it's my responsibility. And the fact is it's not my responsibility. I mean, my responsibility is to do is to know enough to be good enough. to do an honest and intelligent diagnostic on the car in a reasonable amount of time.
Cecil Bullard: But if it's got one code and one problem, that is what I'm thinking. What if it's got 15 codes and six problems? That's not my responsibility to take care of all of that because it's not my car. And I don't know, Jimmy I don't know what they're saying out there. I don't And I don't even know if I answered the first question, the way that we think about charging and the way we charge in this industry is wholly inadequate for the way today's cars are complicated, because you know the way that we're still charging is what we used to do back in the 1970s when we were working on 1960s cars and 1950s cars that had carburetors.
Cecil Bullard: And points and condensers and did not have, you know, six computers with 27 different systems on them. And so we, as an industry need to change and we're not changing fast enough and we're holding each other back because some of us are afraid to charge the customer. To fix their car, right?
Cecil Bullard: Which makes no sense in my brain. So, What was the original question? Did I get the answer or did I like go off in my ADHD mindset? 
Jimmy Lea: Well, you were definitely chasing squirrels, but I think all the squirrels were really good. Because we were talking about the diagnostic fee and how do I determine what that diagnostic fee is?
Jimmy Lea: And I think you nailed it. It's the most expensive time in the shop. It's the most expensive technician. It's the most expensive equipment. It costs you the most amount of money for the training for the technician. So it I mean, I think the question is how do I determine what I should be charging for diagnostics?
Cecil Bullard: I have, I start with three different rates. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Cecil Bullard: I have my level one diag, which is usually an hour and a half of my highest amount of time. So if I'm doing if I have a normal rate of say one 30, I might have a DIAG rate of 160 and I might have a 240 initial DIAG and the extra half that I'm putting in there is for the parts that I'm not making and the income and the profit on the parts I'm not selling.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I was going to ask about that because you're missing out on that margin of parts. Yeah. 
Cecil Bullard: I also under that circumstance want to dedicate 45 minutes of time to the actual diagnostic. Okay. And no more. Yeah. So, in my shop, we had a level one diagnostic, which at the time was 250.
Cecil Bullard: And it was one and a half times our our high rate at the time. And my tech spent 45 minutes on the car and then they filled out a form, which at the time was on paper today would be digital that said we did, we went in, we pulled these codes. We ran these tests. We know this about the car, either it's not this, it's not that, because the test proved that it wasn't that, and we've either diagnosed it, and we know this is what we need to do, or here are the additional tests I need to run, and the additional time that I'm going to spend, and by the way, time, when I talk to my tech, it's about time, when I talk to my customer, it's always about money, time is never mentioned.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I have a second level diagnostic, which is when I get in there and it's obvious that the initial one hour, one and a half times my high rate 45 minutes of time spent and 15 minutes of paperwork and discussion and research. Then when my tech goes in and pulls 15 codes from, say, four different systems.
Cecil Bullard: Then my tech, I want my tech coming to me very quickly and saying that initial guess was not right. And here's why. So now I can go back to the customer and say you know, I know we talked about 258 or whatever. And unfortunately when we got in the system and we downloaded the information we found.
Cecil Bullard: You know, 15 different codes in four different systems. And so the original time that we thought the original amount that we thought is no longer valid, we have to go here, right? And so that's a level two, which is usually for most shops, a double, whatever my level one is. So if I have a 250 level one diag, then I have a 500 level two diag.
Cecil Bullard: And that's a couple of hours. Of my time that my technician spends an hour and 45 minutes on, because don't forget about the 15 minutes of paperwork and some research that also has to be done. 
Jimmy Lea: That's right. 
Cecil Bullard: And then I have a level three diag, which in my book is usually four times my normal, because if you come to my shop and you say it's been to two shops and nobody can fix it, and I've already spent 2, 000 on it, then I don't want to start at a level one.
Cecil Bullard: I want to start here. Yeah. Because for some reason. The customer always seems to think that because they've already spent money on it, I should do stuff for free, and I'm not going to do that. 
Jimmy Lea: And that you'll find it quicker. 
Cecil Bullard: Yeah it's, and by the way, if you've already had somebody in there, or you've been in there, then you've just complicated my job, and now it's going to take more time.
Cecil Bullard: And time is money.
Jimmy Lea: figure out what they do. Yeah. Oh, it's so true. So the thank you for talking about the diags of one, two, and three. That helps a lot. I think that'll help Andrew and it'll help Eric. Robert is now asking a question. I don't know if this is specific to AutoLeap or if it's applicable to all point of sale systems.
Jimmy Lea: The question is how do I be sure that I have this set up properly in my software to charge the appropriate price for the diagnostic? 
Cecil Bullard: I think it's a combination of things. Number one most software systems today point of sale systems, shop management systems allow you to use multiple labor rates.
Cecil Bullard: So I can put in different labor rates for different, under different circumstances. They certainly allow you to do canned jobs. So I can create can jobs for a level one, level two, level three. I want can jobs for my brake steering suspension, my air conditioning diagnostic or tests my come on, see, so electrical starting charging system tests and et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: I want to create. A canned diag or a series of canned diags in my system that are charged out properly so that I can easily get those on the ticket and get the customer in and out as fast as possible because that will increase my productivity. The faster I can get the customer out of the, my face and get the car back to the shop, the sooner I can get a diag, the sooner I can get the parts coming, the faster I can get the car fixed.
Cecil Bullard: So, and you know, also now a lot of the systems and I'm not as familiar as I probably should be. So I, you know, I can't say auto leap or whoever else does exactly this, but they also should allow you to use a labor matrix on certain jobs, which a labor matrix will also help me be productive.
Cecil Bullard: And just briefly the three minute explanation. Is that when the labor time was originally figured out on a car was in a bay, it was racked the tools were laid out, the parts were laid out, and they had a technician do that job multiple times on a new car. I don't get many new cars in my shop that I'm going to put water pumps on, or radiators in, or rebuild the rear differential, or whatever, most of the cars I get, the vehicles, cars and trucks I'm going to work on, Are going to be 6, 7, 10, 12 years old and they have these gaskets and these plastic components that are worn and maybe someone else has been there and overtorque the bolts et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: And also in the beginning, they, the tech that was doing the time was start to finish replacing the water pump, not start to finish replacing the water pump and doing the test drive, rechecking the system. And filling the paperwork out. That's right. And so, I talk a lot about brown bananas. If you've seen me before talk about this subject, there are things called brown bananas.
Cecil Bullard: The way I relate it is in a grocery store, my grocery is going to buy 5, 000 bananas and but they're not going to sell 5, 000 because some of the bananas are going to go brown and customers don't like brown bananas. So the question is who pays for the brown bananas and in many shop owners and service advisors will say, well, the grocery store pays for the brown bananas.
Cecil Bullard: That's not right. The customer pays for the brown bananas and the reason they pay for the brown bananas is that the green and yellow bananas are priced higher to make up for the brown bananas. That's how a grocery store stays in business is they understand their loss rate. And they modify their pricing and raise their prices to cover their loss rate.
Cecil Bullard: So if I have brown bananas, if I have time that my tech needs to spend on paperwork, cleaning and cleaning would include taking old gaskets off, because that's not how the time was originally decided the test drive, re verifying the repair etc. That is brown bananas, and we have to raise our rate to cover those brown bananas because I still have to pay my technician.
Cecil Bullard: And so, you know, I want to cover briefly, and I know we don't have a lot of time, so unless there are exactly more questions here, Jimmy, on this, I want to talk about bricks, okay? So, as a shop owner trying to get performance, productivity, consistency, and profit out of my business, I'm going to have people come up against a brick wall.
Cecil Bullard: All right. And so, one of the bricks in the wall is something someone mentioned earlier. I can't get a hold of my customer in a timely fashion. I can't get the approval in a timely fashion. And this slows my productivity down. That is a brick. Okay. And when we think about bricks in the wall, We think about all the different things.
Cecil Bullard: So estimating and time charged initially is a brick. If I'm estimating an hour and my technician is spending three hours, that's a heck of a brick that's in a wall that I can't get through, and so I can't get the productivity that I need. Your employees are coming up against brick walls. When we think about bricks in a wall, we have to think about two different things.
Cecil Bullard: We think about company bricks. And we think about employee bricks. Okay. So a company brick is the way we dispatch. So if we are bringing in cars and I've got, I don't know everybody, all my techs have a car, but I have seven work orders, you know, sitting in the computer and seven cars sitting here that have not been dispatched.
Cecil Bullard: That is a brick that will create an initial issue, right? If I dispatch all the cars so that when my technician is held up, they can go to another car and get started working on another car while we're getting the authorization, while we're getting the approval, while we're getting the parts. That's a brick that I take out of the wall, and that's a company brick, the way we dispatch, the way we schedule, the way we price, those are all company bricks.
Cecil Bullard: So, if I'm trying to get productivity out of my technician, but I only have one DIAG, and it's A half an hour, and then my technician is spending three or four hours on a typical diag, then that's a brick that's keeping me from getting the productivity and the profit that I need. So I need to identify the company bricks, and as a company, I need to remove the bricks.
Cecil Bullard: And I also need to identify the employee bricks, and I need to, as a manager, help my employee understand what bricks they're dealing with. that are keeping me from, you know, earning them from being productive and us from earning the profits and the consistency of profit that we need. So an employee brick might be a tools problem or knowing how to use the tools issue.
Cecil Bullard: I'm talking to a guy either yesterday the day before one of our clients. They got a new alignment machine. Surprisingly enough, we got a new alignment machine. Now we're doing three times more alignments. So we had a brick that was, we have an old machine that nobody can use, or knows how to, where it's too difficult, so the employees are not recommending alignments.
Cecil Bullard: And we get a new machine. We didn't know we had the brick. We get a new machine and all of a sudden we're doing more alignments on vehicles because now the machine is fun to work with and it's easy to work with. That was a brick that we didn't know about. If I'm a good manager and frankly, a good business owner.
Cecil Bullard: I have an understanding of what the expectation of performance is, the volume, the hours, et cetera, out of my staff in my shop. And in my head I believe that a good technician that has everything they need to. And if with a shop that's pricing correctly can do 1. 2 hours for every hour that they're on staff.
Cecil Bullard: Because we're going to make sure that the customer is paying the right amount of time, is paying for the brown bananas, and we're going to hedge our bets a little. Plus, if my technician is good at what they do, you know, break flush. Most of the shops are charging between eight tenths and an hour to do a break flush.
Cecil Bullard: And certainly, A break for us today is, or some people don't like flush, so, I don't know, fluid transfer, whatever it is you want to call it. Excuse me, I got my foot stuck in the stool, and I'm cramping up, so I've got to move it. Oh so, most of the shops are charging somewhere between eight tenths and an hour for a break service a fluid service.
Cecil Bullard: Whatever you call it, and it really takes. maybe 20 or 30 minutes for a technician that knows how to do it and that has the right equipment. So if we're going to do, I don't know you know, a break flush today or two break flushes today. And my technician is going to do that. Then my technician can be very efficient on those jobs and can be very productive because, you know, in 40 minutes, maybe an hour at the most, My technician will be able to do two of those and I'm billing that out at an hour each.
Cecil Bullard: And so I've got two hours billed for an hour's worth of real work for my tech, which will help make up for some of the times where the technician has to spend a little more time on the car or the job because of other difficulties. And I need to understand my business in that kind of financial way so that I'm making sure that my jobs are priced correctly.
Cecil Bullard: Pricing is a brick time and how we price it is a brick in our wall. Whether or not we can get to the productivity on the other side of the wall is whether or not we fix our pricing. And I know that some of you out there are going to tell me, see, so you can't charge that here. You don't understand.
Cecil Bullard: I'm in Utah. I'm in, I don't know a poor part of town. I'm in whatever. I don't know, man, I just went to. Carl's Jr. for breakfast yesterday, and I got a burrito some potatoey things, and a soda and I paid I don't know, almost 13 for that, and it used to be 5 6 at the most, and that was two and a half years ago, and now it's 13, and I didn't go in and yell at the manager I didn't write a really nasty response on their, I on their website about how they're cheating me and how they're ripping me off, et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: But we have a lot of people in shops that are doing the pricing, that are figuring out pricing, that are not pricing themselves for success. And so I need to be pricing myself for success. It is probably The easiest thing that I can do to remove a brick out of the wall and create more productivity and more profit out of my business.
Cecil Bullard: And I know that somebody is going to go, there you go. There's just one of those coaches, raise your price. And that's not really what I'm saying here. I'm saying get paid fairly for what you do. No longer can we take on the responsibility of fixing someone's car and doing that work if it's not our car.
Cecil Bullard: Because the business used to run easier, simpler. The cars were easier to fix and it is more complicated today and we have to be able to get paid for that. Jimmy, do we have some other questions? I'm being told that we're coming up on the five minute mark. And I want to make sure we get questions answered.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, we are on the five minute mark. We do have one last final question. And I hear this across the entire industry. Not just in Long Island. Not just in Sacramento. Not just in Phoenix. Not just in Maine or Montauk. The question is, About the bricks. What if you've got a brick technician? How can I, as a younger manager, motivate a brick?
Cecil Bullard: Well, first of all come to a leadership intensive, which is a three day class that we put on that's about how to build amazing teams and how to I'm not gonna say motivate people, but how to understand people better. To be better in a position to help them motivate themselves. Okay. So frankly, I can't motivate anybody.
Cecil Bullard: I have to help them figure out what their motivation is. And and then, and then help them understand that they're motivating themselves, which in a way. Create the environment that they can win. So think about this. I'm a tech in your shop. I come to work every day, go online go to changing the industry podcast.
Cecil Bullard: Listen to some of that go online to Facebook and look at their Facebook and the comments. And you have, I don't know two thirds of the techs or a third of the techs in the industry who are literally dying complaining about how bad it is where they work. All right, so go to work every day and come up against a brick wall that is primarily the company brick wall, not mine.
Cecil Bullard: So, you're putting me in a position because of the way you price yourself, because of the way you estimate. Because of your fear with customers, because you don't have the money to buy the equipment I need, or send me to the training I need. You're putting that person in a position where they not only cannot win now, but they lose the hope that they'll ever be able to win.
Cecil Bullard: Right? And so, and now you say okay, Cecil, I want to motivate that guy. Well, you can't. You put things in their way. If I want to earn someone's trust, another subject. And I have to earn the trust of the people that work for me, meaning they have to believe that I'm trying to do what's best for them maybe even over what's best for me, okay?
Cecil Bullard: And the way I do that is I'm constantly trying to figure out how to help you be successful, and then I'm putting things in play that help you be successful. So if you come to work day after day and, you know, you get your coffee and you stand there for 15 minutes and you don't have a car dispatched.
Cecil Bullard: And then I'm going to get on your ass about productivity. Well, wait a minute. You're mad at me because I'm not productive, but you're not giving me the opportunity to be productive. You've got technicians that are coming in and spending 3, 4, 5 hours, 3 days on a car that you only charged an hour for. And you haven't done anything about it.
Cecil Bullard: And don't think that technicians don't know what's going on. Because they're going, holy crap, I'm, you know, and you're going to them now and saying, why aren't you productive? Well, it's the system is not set up to make me productive. And so you want to motivate me, help me win the game. Help me win in my position.
Cecil Bullard: Help me be productive. Do your pricing right. Do your products correctly. Get me the right education. Have better dispatch. Have Work on your parts and getting your parts in a more timely fashion or you know Some people are ordering parts from the weirdest of places because they're cheap Well when they come in it's not the right part or it doesn't work the first three times We put it on the car and then we're upset with our tech because we tried to save ten bucks on parts for our customer And instead, go to the best place that will get you the best part that will get you the part the fastest because that's going to put your technician in a place to be successful and you in a place to be successful.
Cecil Bullard: And by the way, the customer wants that car now, and most customers, not all, probably 85 percent of them, understand that they might have to pay for that. And so, you know, how do I motivate people? Give them opportunity, show them the opportunity, help them have hope. And then get the company bricks out at least so that, you know, if I have a brick wall in front of me and it's six feet high, it's and it goes from wall to wall, it's hard to get over that and get to the next place.
Cecil Bullard: But if I have a brick wall, it's only a foot and a half high. I can step over that pretty easy and get to the next place. So, I want my people to understand that no, my company is not perfect and there are things that aren't right, but we're constantly working on those things to help our people be successful and get what they want and what they need to feel good about themselves.
Cecil Bullard: Because that's what's going to motivate them, not me, you know, yelling at him or not me, you know, being unhappy and miserable because the shop's not profitable change. And if you don't know what to do, there's some great coaches and consultants out there. And if you don't think it's worth it, I'm going to tell you something.
Cecil Bullard: Our clients I think the net. Average net from our clients was over 19 percent last month, our clients, and you're talking about some people coming in to the program that would have very low numbers. So our typical clients been here for a while probably is more than 19 percent net profit. Our clients have higher sales, higher average repair orders.
Cecil Bullard: And I would say that's probably true of most of the coaching and consulting companies out there. There's some bums out there, just like there are in our business. You know, if you don't know how to do this, get the help you need and then listen to the person that's giving you the information because I've helped over 3, 000 shops at this point in my career.
Cecil Bullard: I think we know how to get the job done. Any other questions? 
Jimmy Lea: That's it, brother. That's it. Thank you. 
Cecil Bullard: I have to mention we have a five day service advisor intensive coming up. It's life changing for the service advisors that have been through this program. The, we dumbed the numbers down in our advertising because we didn't think people would believe that we can get that kind of results, but we can.
Cecil Bullard: It's life changing for the people that have attended it. And we have a summit coming up, which is our big thing for our clients and additional people. Three it's I think three days. It's going to be amazing. In February, we'd love to have you there. Last time we did this. Everybody was, they just thought it was the greatest thing in the world.
Jimmy Lea: It is the greatest thing in the world. It is, it really is. And Nicole, you'll be there with us, so it'll be, it will be awesome. 
Nicole Penrod: I know, I'm looking forward to it, so. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I'm gonna throw you a little softball here. One last final question coming in from Noah. When it comes to increasing your labor rate, is it best to do it all at once, or to take it increments over time?
Cecil Bullard: I'm an all at once guy, get the paint over with, tear the band aid off. I've had guys do it over six months. I don't think it matters. 
Jimmy Lea: I've been What about that guy in Utah that doubled it? 
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, well, you know, I pro I don't know if I would have doubled my labor rate at all, ever. I don't know that I ever had the guts for that.
Jimmy Lea: When he was at 45 and everybody's else is at a hundred. Okay. That's not that's not that big of a jump, but that's years ago. 
Cecil Bullard: But I think unless you've built your business on discount customers and doing cheap oil changes and you raise your labor rate, most of your customers, 99 percent are not gonna even notice.
Cecil Bullard: And I would tell you that. I've been 25 years or 24 years as a coach doing these events and teaching classes. And I started out saying, raise your labor rate, change the way you price yourself 24 years ago. And today if I'm in a class and I'm teaching and I'm talking about rates and stuff like that, I will say, hey how many of you have attended a class like this and you went home and raised your labor rate?
Cecil Bullard: And most of the class will raise their hand. And I will say how many of you. Lost a bunch of customers or more than just the two or three customers that you should have lost anyway. And then you want it to lose anyways. Yeah. And nobody will raise their hand. Customers care about do I get it? Do I feel good about being here?
Cecil Bullard: Is it convenient for me? Do I believe I can trust the people working on my car? Did my car get fixed? They care about those things five times more than they care about what the cost is. Yeah. All right. And most people don't understand what the cost should be. And most people, even if they are pricing you online or calling around, they don't know what they're pricing.
Cecil Bullard: So whatever their pricing doesn't match, and it's more about where they feel comfortable than about where's the cheapest price. And if it is about the cheapest price, probably not the person you want in your shop in your face.
Nicole Penrod: All right. 
Nicole Penrod: I know that Cecil could talk about this for another five days. So I want to thank you guys both for being here and presenting this information. And I want to thank everybody for joining us today. As a reminder, this was recorded. It'll be sent out and it'll also be available on the auto leap website.
Nicole Penrod: And then there's a couple of links in the chat. So I dropped one for just a feedback survey about our webinars, and then Stu posted the five day intensive service advisor course from the Institute, as well as more information about the summit. So, those are available, and I'll make sure that those links are included in any follow up emails.
Nicole Penrod: So with that, thank you everybody. Have a great day. 
Cecil Bullard: Thank you.
 

106 - Auto Shop Marketing in the Social Media Era

106 - Auto Shop Marketing in the Social Media Era
September 17th, 2024 - 00:56:46
 
Show Summary:
In this high-energy and insight-packed episode, Jimmy Lea and James Harris, from Steer, are joined by Chris Enright, owner of Enright Automotive and rising social media personality in the auto repair industry. Chris shares his journey from technician to shop owner, the lessons he learned along the way, and how social media has transformed his business. He dives deep into creating content that connects, the tools and platforms that have worked for him, and how he balances growing a brand online while running a busy shop and being present with his family. The conversation is a blueprint for shop owners looking to harness the power of organic content and build trust with their community.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
James Harris, Steer CRM
 
Guest(s):
Chris Enright, Owner of Enright Automotive
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:05:14] - Chris shares how frustration with the industry led him to open his own shop.
[00:06:04] - He reflects on learning the hard truth about overhead and how being a tech doesn’t prepare you to be a business owner.
[00:08:03] - Chris emphasizes how management training at Vision became the turning point for running a successful shop.
[00:11:22] - Chris credits his wife for pushing him to start creating videos, which eventually led to building a powerful social media presence.
[00:13:55] - He explains how Instagram became his strongest community and why he didn't prioritize TikTok at first.
[00:17:19] - Chris highlights the viral power of tool videos and how they fuel broader reach for other content.
[00:21:12] - Tips on hooking viewers in the first 1–2 seconds and maximizing video performance across platforms.
[00:24:22] - Chris breaks down the basic gear needed to get started: a phone, tripod, and wireless mic.
[00:34:05] - He explains his daily schedule, how the batch creates content, and balances work with family life.
[00:41:05] - Chris discusses the business impact of social media, both in revenue and building trust with customers.
 
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=npiyTrt4Xk8
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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________________________________________
 
Jimmy Lea: Awesome. Thank you so much. Glad you are being here. Oh, and we're being live streamed too, by the way, Adam, joining us from Denver, Colorado, Dwayne Duluth, Minnesota, John from, oh, Coughlin automotive in Arvada, Colorado. Oh, nice, John. Thanks for being here. Becky Witt from Lincoln, Nebraska. I think the worst roads I've ever driven on were through Nebraska.
Jimmy Lea: Becky I think you know that. Keith from Hoquiam, Washington. Keith, I hope I'm saying that right. Trish from Huntington Beach, California. How is the beach, Trish? I heard you, you really cooled off this last couple of days. That's pretty dang cool. I was down there in California at the ASCCA team weekend.
Jimmy Lea: Brandon, Roswell, Georgia. Keith Brown from Tire World. Keith is always here. He's the steady man. You and Andrew, Keith, you and Andrew. This is awesome. No, Mary Kissimmee, Florida. Nice. Nice. Thanks for joining us. Yes. Trish says it's cool, but beautiful. Of course it is. It's California. It's absolutely gorgeous.
Jimmy Lea: That's why it costs so much to live there. Keep everybody out because it costs so much to live there. Hey, I'm excited. Thank you so much for being here. This is going to be a very interesting conversation that we're going to have. As we talk about social media, spending your time on social media, where are you spending your time?
Jimmy Lea: What are you doing? My name is Jimmy Lee, I'll be the host with you today, the voice for you, so if you've got questions, we've got answers. We've got the people here that can help us to disseminate. And dissect this information and help us to understand what it is we're looking at as we look at social media as a medium of communication.
Jimmy Lea: Joining us today in our joint webinar is Mr. James Harris. Joining us from the backseat. 
James Harris: That's right. Thank you so much. Gotta stay out on the road so we can we can hit that 400 shop number again this year, Jimmy. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, I know you got to stay on the road, but thank heavens you're not driving while doing this webinar.
Jimmy Lea: That's right. Hey, not this time. We're in the backseat lounging a little bit. We're really taking it all in. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's good. That's good. I did do a webinar once at 88 miles an hour. I was not driving. I was not driving. I was the passenger. We were going across the 10 from Miss, Biloxi, Mississippi. All the way through to Florida.
Jimmy Lea: So that, that was awesome. It did do a webinar at 88 miles. And I love it. 
James Harris: No I'm I'm glad to be here. Unfortunately, I don't have a driver today, so I've got to take the backseat, but I'm going to take it and try it. So we're going to take it and run with it. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and here's James, my backseat driver.
Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much, James, for being here. 
James Harris: You got it. Appreciate it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yep. And you noticed the picture? 
James Harris: I love it. Hey, we were just having a great time in California. 
Jimmy Lea: Right? We were just there at the team weekend ASCCA. Great conference there. James was there. I was there. I thought, oh my gosh, we definitely got to get a picture of this.
Jimmy Lea: And look how long that hair is. I have got to get a haircut. Look at that. See, that's a good haircut. It's looking good. I know. Got to bust out the Flobby and see what I can do. Thank you for being here, James. We really appreciate it. We appreciate it. And congratulations on the the merger of steer and auto ops.
James Harris: Yes. A lot of great things that are going to come out of that. It's super exciting. We're really happy to have that team with us now, 100 percent working with them every day. And, you know, they're bringing great ideas. We're bringing great ideas and there's going to be a lot of things that are going to be able to come out of that.
James Harris: So we're really excited to see see what the future holds here with the steering auto ops team. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's super cool. Cause if we boiled it down to it, it's a steers, the CRM auto ops is the online appointment setting, a super powerful tool for the two of you guys to come together. Congratulations.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. And let's bring in our main guest here, Mr. Chris Enright from Enright automotive out in Ohio. Chris, how are you? 
Chris Enright: Good. How are you? 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, we're great, man. Thank you for joining us. And your shop is like 900 square feet in the back 20 acres of your property. Isn't that 
Jimmy Lea: right? 
Chris Enright: Yeah. Back two acres, but yeah, yep, absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. How do you warn clients and customers coming in? Just watch out for the tricycles and the children clear of the playground, please. 
Chris Enright: That's right. We keep our kids away from there, I guess. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that's awesome. I, you know, I do see a lot of the home at the front driveway, shop at the back. I see a lot of that in Indiana.
Jimmy Lea: I've seen a lot of that in Illinois. James, you've probably seen a lot of those as well. We've got that flagpole property at the back of the property. And that's awesome that you did that, Chris. 
Chris Enright: It's been a great journey. I constantly tell people it was a great way to start and we're ready to grow and ready to expand.
Chris Enright: So it's been exciting for sure. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And you have the quintessential story of Every technician that started in the industry and became a shop owner. Chris, what is that story? 
Chris Enright: So I started out at an independent shop, then went to a dealership, then kind of mix it around in between there, between dealerships and independents.
Chris Enright: And then got frustrated and started my own shop because I thought I could do it better for cheaper. 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. And is there any, I love that you said that. Thank you. Is there anything that you didn't know that you didn't know that now, you know, as an owner that we can share? I mean, cause there's a lot of technicians that are out there and they're disgruntled.
Jimmy Lea: They're like, man, I know I could do this better. You're only paying me 40 bucks an hour. You're paying me 50 bucks an hour, but I know you're charging 200 bucks at the door. So you're putting 150 in your pocket. What did you learn? 
Chris Enright: I learned that business has a lot of overhead. You can't do it better for cheaper.
Chris Enright: And there is a lot you don't know about owning a business. When I started out running the shop, I was a terrible business owner. As most techs turned shop owners that I meet are the same way. So the two are nothing in the same, not even close. 
Jimmy Lea: It's so true, isn't it? It's so true. There's so much. So I, as I go around the country and James, I know you see this as you go around the country as well.
James Harris: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: Super polished, wonderful technicians that can work on anything. It's like cars talk to them. They under, you understand Japanese. You work on Japanese cars. There's shops that speak German. There's shops that speak, you know where I'm going? Like the car rolls in and you say, Oh, that's what's wrong.
Jimmy Lea: Technicians, highly skilled, super talented. Service advisors at the front counter, super skilled, different skillset. Sometimes a technician can be a service advisor. Sometimes they can't. Did you find it difficult to go from being a technician to being a service advisor? 
Chris Enright: Yeah. So actually while I was at the dealership, I had a short stint where I wanted to be an advisor.
Chris Enright: So I actually worked at the dealership as an advisor for about three or four months. And I think it was two months in, I told my service manager, I want to go back. I hate this. I hated every minute of it. And so I, as soon as I could go back to being a tech, I went back to being a tech. And it's funny because now as a shop owner, I.
Jimmy Lea: You're back to 
Jimmy Lea: being a service advisor. 
Chris Enright: Back to being a service advisor and the tech. And I prefer being the service advisor most days. So I'm starting to move back, but I've also had a lot of training now too. So that has helped my service advisor side a lot of getting a lot of those training and going to training events and stuff like that has been a huge benefit.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. And those training events, what, where, what are you taking as a former technician turned service advisor, business owner? Now, what are the courses, man? What are the courses, classes that you're taking? 
Chris Enright: The very first event I made the same mistake as a lot to do and I went and took a lot of technical classes and I think I took one management class and then when I went, I actually won the scholarship to vision back in 2020.
Chris Enright: One, I think it was, yeah, 2021. And so that you have to take all management classes and that's kind of really when things kicked off. And I took several management and advisor classes while I was there. And that's kind of where things kind of took a one 80 and I started really putting it in practice.
Chris Enright: What I was learning in those management classes at the training events. So ASTA, vision, et cetera. 
Jimmy Lea: You know, there's somebody and there's probably a lot of somebodies that have that exact same story where they went to the conferences, the trade shows, the training, and they're taking all the technical classes, you know, Lucas Underwood.
Jimmy Lea: Same story. He shows up and he's meted at the door and somebody says, Hey, I see you're an owner and you're taking all the technical classes. What management classes are you gonna take? Oh, no I gotta be able to work on cars. , you need to be able to work on your business 
Chris Enright: 100%. It's it's not all about fixing cars when you start a business.
Chris Enright: I, I tell people constantly all the time online, and I spend, I would say at least. 60 percent of my time sitting right here in front of this computer, talking to clients doing paperwork, estimates, finishing up inspections, doing invoicing. You spend more time at the computer and dealing with clients than you do on the car.
Chris Enright: And so that's why it's not all about fixing cars when you want to start your own shop. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So that's why people are parking in the grass now at the property because you ran out of parking lot because you're on the phone with them. You can't, you don't have time to fix their cars. 
Chris Enright: That's right. Oh my gosh.
Jimmy Lea: And you started your shop in 2020? 
Chris Enright: February of 2020 a month before all the COVID stuff. 
Jimmy Lea: That's what I was going to say. I remember where I was. March of 2020 when the world shut down, my flight was canceled and then I had to drive home. 
Chris Enright: Yeah, it was interesting timing for sure. We were very unsure of things without a doubt.
Chris Enright: And what's even crazier, I mean, it was perfect timing for us actually, because they laid everybody off except for two tax at the dealership. So I wouldn't have been working anyways. So they only kept the two, two most senior seniority guys. So. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. And you didn't have that seniority at the dealership.
Jimmy Lea: So you'd have been out. Oh my gosh. Wow. So, so clearly you survived COVID. Clearly you survived as a business, as a company. 
Chris Enright: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: That's amazing. 
Chris Enright: Yeah, we did great. We actually doubled our revenue from year one to year three. So we did extremely well. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. That's good. That's really good to hear.
Jimmy Lea: At what point did you go from, Hey, I'm going to work on these cars. At what point did you start picking up the camera to document a lot of what you're doing? 
Chris Enright: So it actually all started with my wife actually, because I kept 
Jimmy Lea: Your wife was filming all this stuff? 
Chris Enright: In the beginning, she was filming the videos for me because I kept telling her, I'm like, I need to record these videos of like my top 10 Hondas and my worst Five Hondas.
Chris Enright: And, you know, like going through and just telling people my opinions and thoughts around Honda's because of course I specialize in Honda's and I wanted as many Honda customers as I could get in the building. And so finally one day she was like here, give me the phone. Let's record this video and get it done.
Chris Enright: And that's how it all started. We recorded it in an apartment that we were staying at because we were in between houses. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Chris Enright: That's how it all started. I started out that way doing those types of videos only on Facebook. I didn't, I wasn't doing any, hardly any Instagram or any of the other platforms.
Chris Enright: And then it was never consistent. I would do like a video here, a video there, like maybe every one a month, maybe. And then as time progressed, I was doing more consistent videos, but not really putting a ton of effort into it. And I'd always liked watching tool review videos and tool videos. And so that's when really things started kicking off.
Chris Enright: Cause I was like, you know what, if all these people are getting free tools, why can't I? And so I started doing tool review videos and got really excited about that. And so that's what got me going. And then as the pages grew, I had more technicians and shop owners asking me about the shop and my journey and how I got started.
Chris Enright: And you know, what do I recommend because I would talk about those things on my stories, but not just in my regular videos. And so that's what morphed me going into talking about the industry and talking about how I got started and what I did to fix things and what I do for marketing and CRMs and SMSs and all of those things.
Chris Enright: So it's kind of just. Worked its way naturally, which has been great. 
James Harris: Great. Chris, you tell me it started with free tools and got all the way up to where it is now, where you can really go in, dive in and talk and really benefit the whole industry. That's quite the story right there. 
Chris Enright: Yeah. It's been amazing for sure.
Jimmy Lea: I can definitely see the love hate relationship you have with all these tools and different brand suppliers. 
Chris Enright: Yes, very much so. It's mostly a love hate relationship with all of the hate on the internet. It's quite interesting. It's an interesting dynamic for sure. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah I've seen you really pump up some tools there.
Jimmy Lea: I think, and you know what I find interesting too is your customer base. It seems that you say you started on Facebook, but man, it seems like Instagram has really taken off and that's where you have the majority of your followers. 
Chris Enright: Yeah, Instagram is, has actually been the hardest to grow, but it's my strongest community by far.
Chris Enright: And I think because in the beginning, like when I really started putting time and effort into it, Instagram was the place that I spent most of my time and put all of my effort in towards. I actually started my TikTok six months after I started all my other accounts, like actually recording them. I mean doing videos, I'm sorry.
Chris Enright: And then I didn't even put any effort into TikTok until a year later when I was already doing a bunch of videos. So I just, in the beginning, I had no interest in TikTok. I was primarily focused on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, you probably don't dance very well either. 
Chris Enright: No, I definitely don't.
Jimmy Lea: Because you have to dance to be on TikTok, right? 
Chris Enright: That's what they say. That's what David Roman says, anyway. 
James Harris: I mean, that's all Jimmy's TikTok's gonna take off. Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, my tikTok's gonna be lit, because I can groove, man. 
Chris Enright: Oh, God, that's awesome. 
Jimmy Lea: That's funny. So you found, you started in Facebook you changed over to Instagram.
Jimmy Lea: Instagram is your better following. I didn't even know you had a TikTok stuff. So probably everything I'm seeing on Facebook and Instagram starts on TikTok, or are you doing different stuff for all the different platforms? 
Chris Enright: So I do different stuff for most of them get the same content, but I definitely record individual videos for each platform.
Chris Enright: So like on Tik TOK, I just recorded like an almost 10 minute video talking about gross revenue numbers and what the potential is of a one person shop owner. So that's what I like. 
Jimmy Lea: How does tik TOK have a 10 minute video? 
Chris Enright: I know. They actually have some people invited into 30 minute videos, so you can do 30 minutes if you're invited into that.
Chris Enright: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: Dude, I thought TikTok was all about the six seconds and the eight second. 
Chris Enright: They were and they, so what I tell people constantly is all of these platforms always are competing against each other and they want the users on their platform. So TikTok is trying to pull in that YouTube demographic long form.
Chris Enright: They want the long form. So they started pushing and actually, so if you rescore, if you record a full screen video, they'll actually boost it for you on purpose to give you additional views because you're using full screen. Cause they're trying to push that for people to watch. Same thing with the 10 minute videos.
Chris Enright: They're not pushing those, but they're allowing you to do longer videos. So I actually do quite a bit of longer videos on YouTube or I mean on tick talk than I do the other platforms especially when it's talking about industry stuff. For sure. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So some of the Instagrams that I've seen for you that you've done on your Facebook might have one, two teens, maybe twenties that have any interaction with it, but your Instagram following is in the thousands on the same video.
Jimmy Lea: Well, it seems to be the same video. Yeah. It's probably different. But 
Chris Enright: They're similar. They're a lot of those are the same. So if I post on Instagram, those, most of those posts automatically on Facebook, I have a set up cause they're a meta. So I have it set up like that. And yeah, Instagram does really well.
Chris Enright: And even it's funny because sometimes I'll post the same video on YouTube, and one does tremendously better on one platform than the others. And then sometimes they'll all three do really well. It really depends on the video and who's watching it how they interact how it relates to people And all of that stuff matters how long people watch the video duration is a huge part of it as well So that all matters. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and I wonder from our audience.
Jimmy Lea: Are you guys doing videos? Are you doing tik toks? Are you doing facebook? Are you doing instagrams? Are you doing some of this stuff? So i've seen royalty automotive service sherwood. 
Chris Enright: Yeah, sure. What royalty auto service? 
Jimmy Lea: Yep, dude He has blown up on TikTok. 
Chris Enright: Yeah, him and Dave's auto center.
Chris Enright: And then who is a tech working for someone else, but he's got a million followers. And he's getting ready to start his own shop again. So. Having that, because people will bring him transmissions because he's a GM transmission specialist. They will bring him transmissions from other states to have him rebuild it at this other shop.
Chris Enright: So, the power of social media is quite literally incredible. And the fact that it's free if you want it to be is even more incredible, so. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah! So you can boost it, but you probably haven't boosted it in any of your Videos you don't see the need for 
Chris Enright: I don't boost any videos The only videos I boost is if I have some sort of affiliation and i'm getting some sort of commission from it I'll boost it because I know that my return will be back on my affiliate links or whatnot So my commissions go up if I boost it, but outside of that none of my other videos get boosted and i've had You know, anywhere.
Chris Enright: I think my highest viewed videos, like 32 million. I just had one that did like 20 million, 21 million views. So, and those are tool videos. So keep that in mind. Those are different. Typically the ones where you're like talking about industry stuff, they'll do well, like I have quite a few of those that will do well and go into the 50 to 200, 000 views, but they're not gonna.
Chris Enright: Crush it like some of these other videos. So, but I constantly tell people when I talk about social media, it's good to mix it in because you want to catch those algorithm boosts in there. Because when I hit that 20 million view video, every video I posted after that absolutely dominated and they all did extremely well.
Chris Enright: So you can ride that down and try to, you know, I try anytime that happens. I'll ride that wave as long as I can and I'll post video after video, like not all in the same day, but I mean consistently making sure I have at least one to two videos a day riding that wave for sure. Okay. 
James Harris: Chris, how are you going through picking what content to put on these videos and which content's going to hit harder on which platforms or things like that?
James Harris: How are you going through that decision process of making that choice? 
Chris Enright: So I don't so now that I hired my assistant, I am actually have been sitting down and going through my analytics and analyzing like video duration what type of reach it's reaching on as far as followers versus non followers, which I'm actually finding out some really interesting information of how to reach your core followers, which has been fantastic.
Chris Enright: But honestly. I can't, I've just been doing it now. It's been two and a half years now. Like I, you never really know if a video is just going to go absolutely viral, but you do start to get a feel for like, Oh, this video is going to do well. I recorded this video and I added this audio and it just fits.
Chris Enright: But that was not like that in the beginning. I had no idea. Like I was just throwing any audio with any video and just posting them out there and just getting them out there, which in the beginning, that's what you need to do, because just like anything, just like becoming a tech, just like starting a shop, anything you learn new, it's going to be a learning curve.
Chris Enright: It's going to take time. You're not more than likely going to go viral overnight. That's pretty rare. So you have to learn it and understand it. So now when I create a video. I just, I know the algorithm better. I know the videos better. I know the audio better. So I know how to fit things. I know how to start a video because you want to grab their attention.
Chris Enright: I used to say within the first five seconds, it's within the first three seconds. Honestly, within the first, probably one or two seconds, you have to grab their attention because people are swiping so fast now. It's quite literally crazy. So 
Jimmy Lea: I tried to watch with my son. I was like, dude, you don't even see anything.
Jimmy Lea: He's like, Oh no. Like it's a half a second for him. Yeah. For me, you got a good 17 seconds, but just kidding. 
Chris Enright: It's really short attention span. So grabbing their attention in that first, you know, second or so is absolutely huge for sure. So I've been playing around with some stuff the last few months.
Chris Enright: I don't have all the information and data yet, but it's really exciting when I do, because and I'll be sharing it all as well. Just kind of showing people what I've been finding out. 
Jimmy Lea: You're going to share this with Asta? 
Chris Enright: No, I won't but I'll be sharing it on my social media platforms. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, good. So everybody tuned in. 
Chris Enright: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: That's a nice hook there. Thank you very much, Chris. We all need to watch Chris's information because he's going to post it on social media. So, oh man, I had a question I was going to ask. There is questions coming in from there from our audience that I want to make sure that we.
Jimmy Lea: Address and one of them says there'll be, Adam is saying, we're going to be talking about the product in this webinar. So I don't know exactly what Adam is going to be talking about and unless he's talking about you, Chris, because I think you're the product here Avery says that they are doing Facebook and Instagram.
Jimmy Lea: They're doing Facebook and Instagram reels. Nice. You finding those reels to those translate easily over to TikTok as well. 
Chris Enright: Yes, very much so. They, I mean, it's hit and miss. They won't always do as good on Tik TOK. Sometimes they'll do better, but I personally think if you're doing those, you might as well just cross post onto Tik TOK.
Chris Enright: Now, if you originally record on Tik TOK and you have the watermarks and then you post on YouTube or Instagram, they don't typically do very well. None of the platforms play nicely with each other, except for you. I mean, Facebook and Instagram, cause they're meta. Outside of that, you really want to try not to cross post if they have watermarks on them.
Chris Enright: So I always try to. 
Jimmy Lea: Does that, is that talking to the fact that I'm going to record it on my camera, not on my Tik Tok camera or my Facebook camera? 
Chris Enright: Correct. So if you don't. Film it within the app itself, just film it on your regular camera on your phone and then post it there. Cause like if you post natively on TikTok through the app, it's going to have that TikTok watermark on there and you don't want them.
Jimmy Lea: I've seen that. I've seen that on Facebook cause I'm generally a Facebook person and most of our clients at the Institute are. Facebook heavy, so I, we have found that our Facebook almost 5 to 1, 10 to 1, 15 to 1 to Instagram. I haven't tried anything with TikTok yet, and LinkedIn, we're starting to break into LinkedIn as well.
Jimmy Lea: We've turned that on here in the last 4 or 5 months. And I'm learning a lot of interesting things about TikTok. Andrew is waiting for me to fly out to New York before they start there. Facebook, Instagram stuff, Andrew, I'll be there. And then we'll go get us a plate of trash. Keith is wondering, now Keith's in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jimmy Lea: Keith's wondering what software, what equipment are you using for the beginner? For somebody that's just going to start, how, what are you going to suggest here, Chris? 
Chris Enright: So in the beginning, this is all you need is your phone. So this is all I use is my phone. And even to this day, two and a half years later, it's still about what I record.
Chris Enright: Probably 70 percent of my content is on my phone. If you have a newer iPhone or a newer Android phone, the cameras are quite literally incredible. If you have anything, I think it's 13 and later where it's the pro maxes. They're top notch quality, 4K, all of that. The one thing I tell people for sure to invest in is a, I have it right here, a wireless microphone.
Chris Enright: So, I have two types of wireless microphones. Either you can do DJI, which that's what this is. DJI is the brand. Or you can do Rhodes, R O D E S. So they're called Wireless Go Rhodes 2 or something like that. I don't have those here. I have someone borrowing those right now to try them out. But that's what I used when I started.
Chris Enright: So either are great quality. They're, the DJI's are a little bit more expensive, but they seem to be a little bit better quality. And then I upgraded to this. It's a DJI Pocket 3, and it has a built in gimbal on it. You can record. So if I have the screen turned this way, it's full screen. If I have it turned this way, it's vertical for short form.
Chris Enright: And that was like, I bought the creator's package. So it came with one microphone and a bunch of extra stuff. And I think that was like 629. Definitely worth buying. You know after you've started filming and if you want to buy in the beginning you can I just encourage people to really Focus on getting the content filmed and posted because so many people are critical of the videos critical of themselves critical of their voice It's natural.
Chris Enright: It's normal. You'll get over it. You get used to it what? My friend Brian Walker always says is that's what we all see and hear all the time anyway. So it's okay. It's totally fine. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. I heard these exact same thing from Darren LaCroix. He says, that's what you sound like. That's what you look like.
Jimmy Lea: Get over it. 
Chris Enright: It's so true. And it's funny because in the beginning I absolutely hated it. And now I'm so used to it. It doesn't even faze me. So I've done, I have well over, I think 2, 300 videos posted on Instagram now and thousands of videos on Tik TOK as well. You just, you get used to it. It's okay.
Chris Enright: Like people are fine with that. I promise. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So a cell phone, wireless mic, and I totally agree with you, super props for the mic because that audio comes across and it needs to be crystal clear, easy to understand, easy. Don't make, don't force me to cringe to try and understand what you're saying. Make it easy for me to understand what you're saying has to be there.
Chris Enright: Yeah, people will watch a video with bad video quality. They will not watch a video with audio quality. So you need good audio quality. The only other thing I would say is find a good tripod. I used one, I forget what they're called, but one of the bendy Tripods that you can like wrap around stuff.
Chris Enright: And I used my under hoist stand and rolled that around and just had it wrapped around. That's what I used for the first probably year. And then I finally bought an actual tripod. So that's what I tell people. You don't need anything fancy to get started. You really just need the. Dedication and consistency to actually do it.
Chris Enright: And unfortunately, most people don't do that. They won't either get started at all, or they'll post a few videos and then stop. So you've got to be consistent because if you're not consistent, you'll never see results. Now there are some things to do after you get consistent, but the consistency gets you started.
Chris Enright: Then you start making adjustments because I've seen people post consistently and their page never grows and they get a couple hundred views every single video and it never changes. Well, that's because the content is not good, but then they never change the content, but you have to start that consistency.
Chris Enright: Then take a look at your videos and be like, okay, these aren't doing very well. What do I need to do to start making some changes? Then you start making some changes from there. 
Jimmy Lea: And next thing you know, we're signed up for ballet lessons. 
Chris Enright: That's right. Just kidding. Do the dances. 
Jimmy Lea: No. Nobody has to dance.
Jimmy Lea: There's no dancing required in these videos. So Keith is right on the same line. He pops in with another question. So he's got an iPhone. He's got a wireless microphone. Now, what software are you using? He's saying, do you use iMovie? Which I think is the software that comes with the iPhone. 
Chris Enright: Editing software is what he's asking for.
Chris Enright: So how do I edit my videos? I'll be completely transparent. I don't edit very much. I always say when I talk about social media is you can edit a whole bunch if you want. Or you can hardly edit at all. It's your choice. What I don't like seeing people do is worried so much that it needs to be a perfect video.
Chris Enright: It does not be perfect, especially in the beginning. And if it's a terrible video, it's okay. Cause no one's going to see it anyways. So just get it out there. But the editing software to answer your question, I use I've used iMovie. I use light cut, which is in software that came with my DJI. So I use light cut then you can also use cap cut and they have a free version and a paid version The free version is very good.
Chris Enright: The paid version is even better and There are some other ones like if you want to get into actual like full on editing i'm not too familiar with Those softwares, like the full on. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay, yeah, we'll put a pause right there that says, Let's start, number one. Start recording the videos, and I love what you're saying here about having that video, the one take wonder.
Jimmy Lea: It's raw, it's not perfect, people are going to sneeze, they're going to burp, they're going to have a hiccup, and it's normal, it happens. It's okay. We're not Hollywood. Not all of us have the dashing good looks of James. But we can be on that video, we can record the video and there you've got that raw footage, that raw information.
Chris Enright: Exactly. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So are, do you find that you like to throw a lot of words up or do you not put words up? Is that the meme area or. What do you do there? 
Chris Enright: So the only time I throw words up for me personally, as if I'm using like a meme or a trending Oh shoot. I forget what they call them now, but basically a trending meme, essentially, and I'll throw words up with that.
Chris Enright: But outside of that, I mostly want to draw attention to the video and they're all have different styles. So if you want to do something trending, then do what you see in the trending video. So if it is like a, meme style video where it's like a green screen of a character from a movie and you see a video that somebody else did and you want to take that idea and turn it into your own and it has.
Chris Enright: Captions on the top, put the text on the screen, so make sure that it's on there and use that to grab people's attention because what that does is they see the video, then they start reading it and guess what they're doing, they're staying on your video, which is going to drive views up. So yes, absolutely.
Chris Enright: And then other times I'll use it to draw people's attention to the caption down below. to have them read. If I'm trying to get a point across, like if I'm talking about why I say maintenance matters all the time or why I talk about professionalism or whatever, and then I'll write a really long story. So those are more serious videos that I'll do, but I use the real at the top to grab their attention.
Chris Enright: And I'll say, read caption below. And so that way it draws them down. So then once again, they're reading the caption while the video is playing. And then hopefully they like it and then share their opinion on the video because then that's like the trifecta, right? They're liking commenting sharing or watching the entire video.
Chris Enright: So that's what you want. You want as much interaction as possible 
Jimmy Lea: Do you find that you have to say that a lot of times do you have to remind people to like share? Comment 
Chris Enright: I try not to because you see that in so many videos I the only time I say that is in my youtube videos and my long forms and I either say it like In the beginning or I'll say it in the middle.
Chris Enright: I don't say it multiple times throughout the video I try not to I just I want to get straight to the point I found that if you're babbling on something I had to learn early on Is if you're babbling and just talking about nothing people get really bored really fast 
Jimmy Lea: You're noise. You become noise. Yeah, I totally agree.
Jimmy Lea: How do you balance this all? How, and here's what I mean. Here you are, you start the social media to get your name out there. And you get your name out there and you become more well known and people are bringing their cars to you and now they're parking in the grass because the parking lot's full and you're busy.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, and by the way, you have a gorgeous family. How do you work the repair shop, work the editing social media, and have the T I M E to show L O V E to the family? 
Chris Enright: Great question. I will be fully transparent at 5 o'clock, I'm done with the shop. So after 5 o'clock The shop is done. I was one of those people in the beginning.
Chris Enright: Like I said, a terrible shop owner didn't know what I was doing. It wasn't charging enough working until six, seven, eight o'clock at night, working Saturdays and Sundays sometimes. So just because I thought I needed to fix more cars cause I wasn't doing things appropriately. As far as the business side of things.
Chris Enright: So once I started getting that figured out, now I'm done at five o'clock every day, I come into the shop early every morning. So I have a, one of those crazy schedules. I wake up at 4 20 in the morning. I go to the gym, I come home, do all my stuff. And then I come out to the shop at 7 00 AM. We don't open till eight.
Chris Enright: 30. My assistant comes in at eight. So I have an hour of uninterrupted time by myself. And then another half hour before clients really start interacting with us throughout the day. So that gives me time to come in, record videos schedule videos. I love scheduling videos. You can go in on the apps on a lot of them and actually schedule the videos out.
Chris Enright: So that way you're not having to babysit them and be like, okay, I want to post this video today at 11 a. m. or 7 a. m. or whatever time that you feel like you want to post it that day. I just schedule it out. And I'm like, okay, today I'm going to post these two reels at these two times it's scheduled and so on and so forth.
Chris Enright: And so that's what I'll do. I'll have a lot of setup or I'll record videos in the morning. I'm taking care of a lot of that before my doors even open in the shop. And then I do come out here on the weekends and I'll do live streams on Tik TOK. I will record a couple videos. I always try to record at least a couple videos on the weekends if I can.
Chris Enright: And spend like maybe an hour or two in the shop. If I'm doing a live stream, it's a couple hours and I'll record a couple of videos and then doing a live stream for about an hour or so. But you get better with time in the beginning your reels and videos are going to take longer If you want to trim them up if you want to add transitions, it's going to take some time But now I can record a video have it posted edited cut trimmed exactly how I want it Within five to seven minutes, that's recording the video.
Chris Enright: And now we're talking like a 15 to 30 second reel. So I can have it all done within five to seven minutes. It doesn't take me long now. So I'm not spending a ton of time posting a ton of these videos. Now, some of the longer videos, of course, those take longer. Like the 10 minute video took me 10 minutes to record because I had a lot of information I wanted to get across, but those are important to me.
Chris Enright: So I spend extra time on those. 
Jimmy Lea: Wow. James, is your mind blown like mine? I thought, what the five minutes in seven? Huh? He did away. 
James Harris: I mean, that's just what happens when you really dedicate time to a craft, right? Well, you said consistency. That's what it takes on that. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Carlos is asking that exact question.
Jimmy Lea: How much time do you dedicate to your writing, posting, editing, et cetera? 
Chris Enright: And it changes and I do tell people all the time because we're smaller and I'm still the only one wrenching it's a happy medium because if I don't have cars in the shop, then I don't have as much content If i'm slam busy, then I don't have as much time for content So there is a happy medium in there that works perfectly for me If you can put somebody dedicated over content creation, it's highly advisable.
Chris Enright: You can look at plenty of examples on these platforms, YouTube, whatever, where they have either hired somebody or they brought somebody in house that's already working there and they just put them over social media and you can see the growth instantaneously by someone actually spending the time, dedicating the time, recording the videos, posting them.
Chris Enright: Now that's not free if you hire somebody, but it's still free marketing. So anytime you can get free marketing out there, you're going to be benefiting yourself and it's going to take time. It's not going to happen overnight. I feel like all marketing takes time. But it's worth it for sure. So I would say if you can spend.
Chris Enright: And it doesn't have to be every day, but as a total for the week, an hour a day. So five hours a week, I think that's more than enough time to get plenty enough content and you can backlog it. So I have videos and content backlogged for weeks sometimes where I have enough videos on there that I can just.
Chris Enright: Post as I get them. And if I get busy in the shop and I can't record any content, I will just use those videos and drain them out until I get, you know, where it's a happy medium again, and then fill up my phone again with more videos and do it that way. It's such a great way to do it. Don't feel like.
Chris Enright: One of the biggest things you want to do when you get done with a video because you're so excited about it is post it. And you don't want to just post them all at the same time. If you post videos back to back to back, almost all of them will tank. None of them will do good. Just spread them out.
Chris Enright: Don't post more than a certain amount of times. Each platform is different and they change it constantly. So if I tell you today, here's what they want. Yeah, it'll change by tomorrow. So I'm not even gonna waste your time with that. But if posting one a day is where I would recommend, starting two to three times a week is an even, is a good starting place.
Chris Enright: As long as you're posting a minimum two to three times a week, that's gonna help at least get you started.
Jimmy Lea: Two to three times a week, once a day. Do you oh man, I have so many questions. Do you post them only when you're working in the shop or do you also post on holidays? And, oh my gosh, I don't ask three questions at the same time ever, but I'm asking you three questions because I also, in the scheduling, how far out do you have things scheduled?
James Harris: That was my question, Jimmy, right there on the spot. When you said you had a backlog of videos and you run that through, it runs out. I just am interested in how far out you can get sometimes of planning that out, especially when holidays and busy times are coming up for you. 
Chris Enright: So anytime I'm on like vacation holidays or anything, I schedule those days out and I stay off social media.
Chris Enright: So I want that time to be with my family and I will, I'll even turn off all my notifications, nothing on, I mean, most of my notifications are turned off now anyways, because I get over a hundred an hour now. 
James Harris: It must be nice to be popular, Chris . 
Chris Enright: I don't know. Someday it doesn't feel like it.
Jimmy Lea: As soon as he starts getting some dance lessons, it's going to triple. 
James Harris: It's over.
Chris Enright: Right. That's right. But I'll, I usually schedule them out and this goes up and down. So I do like right now I have nothing scheduled. So I will just post them as the days progress. And I always try to post two reels a day on Instagram and it doesn't always happen. So these are just rules of thumb. I like to try and follow.
Chris Enright: But I don't hold myself to such a high standard that if I mess up, I'm like, Oh, you know, everything's going to go down the tube. It's okay. If I took a week off, my Instagram is not going to burn and crash. People are still there. No one's going anywhere but I will have them booked out on average usually two to three days Sometimes a week, especially if i'm on vacation I will record a ton of videos while i'm on vacation and i'll have two videos post every single day while i'm gone on Vacation and I don't do anything with them I just let them do their things and I might check in Maybe once while i'm on the trip if I have some time and I have some time to myself I will but if not it is what it is.
Chris Enright: i'll get with everything when I get back 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I'm sure when you're on vacation, it's 420 a. m. and you just, bing, wake up. 
Chris Enright: That's exactly right . 
James Harris: Chris, I guess with obviously your presence has grown a lot here over the last couple of years, and I'm sure a lot of people that are thinking about doing this, one big question that pops up for them has to be, how is this going to help grow my business?
James Harris: Have you seen a huge correlation there of, As your social media presence has grown. So has you know, the presence of your shop and as well as utilizing other tools that you use, how do you tie those together? 
Chris Enright: So yes and no. And why I say that is yes, I've seen growth as a business, as a whole. But I've also done my social media quite differently than like what you see, like a realty auto service or a Dave's auto center.
Chris Enright: So on and so forth. I have done mine and turned mine into an additional business. So I actually make quite a bit of revenue for my social media, which is, you know, comes along with my business. But as my social media has grown, my business has grown too on top of that. Because I'm paying for marketing and I'm paying for, you know, things like that and doing blog posts and having my marketing company, put that on my website, all of that comes full circle.
Chris Enright: Now if you don't do what I did and turn it into an additional business, then yes, absolutely. You're going to see growth. You're going to see clients come in. You can walk, go watch these other pages and you'll see they'll do videos. This person came in from some other state because they've been watching them on TikTok and because they trust them because they're showing Their process and why they think it's important and why you shouldn't do this And why we think you should do that giving their opinions in real life scenarios Our industry as we all know it There's just an unfortunate trust factor that people have an issue with shops.
Chris Enright: So if they find someone that they're trust They trust online They're going to bring their car to you if you're semi local even if you're far like me now I have lots of clients that drive an hour to my shop. I'm in a rural area I'm in a town of 400 people. So i'm not in a huge city and People will absolutely drive to you and come to you if they trust you.
Chris Enright: I mean the proof is in like collaboration and content creators and social media influencers because people trust those people. So your shop is becoming like a content creator or a social media influencer. It's the same idea, just you're just making the content slightly different.
Chris Enright: Did you see that thought just evaporate? Oh, I got it. Who's your audience? Who are you making your videos for? Because you're a shop owner and you have clients, you have customers. I see a lot of your videos. They're tools. Which would say technicians and DIYers and that's a different market. So, who's your audience?
Chris Enright: My audience is technicians and shop owners. I mean, I don't cater to DIY. I mean, I talk all the time that I don't have any interest in helping the DIY community. I have nothing against the DIY community, but I tell people all the time. It's how I support my family and my wife and kids. So I don't want people to fix their own stuff.
Chris Enright: It's okay if they do, but I would prefer them to bring it to my shop and have me fix it because. I got to pay my bills and support my family. So I cater to shop owners and technicians and I can cater to the to the consumer as well. So now that I've hired Abby, we are starting to do more types of videos and I call them interview style videos where she'll come up and ask me a question.
Chris Enright: And then I answer those questions. So like the most recent one we did is what vehicle I think will make it to 200, 000 miles. And those types of videos are going to reach. Consumers because who all is going to comment on that video first? It's going to be anybody who hears me say their vehicle Second is anybody whose vehicles over 200 000 miles that I didn't mention in the video Or anybody who disagrees or agrees with me?
Chris Enright: So those videos get a ton of interaction and they're going to reach a different type of consumer base So i'm adding those it was always just really hard to interview myself So until I hired somebody I wasn't doing those videos, but now that she's here. We're adding as time progresses. So that is my goal is to start adding those into my normal content as well.
Chris Enright: So then I'll have the trifecta because I'll reach a huge avenue of people for sure. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And I think within that third realm of those that disagree with you is all those technicians that say, Oh yeah, but this car is going to make it in this car. And I have this car that made it and dah.
Jimmy Lea: And I saw that video that you did that Abby recorded you and you were talking about. This vehicle. Now, between this year and this year, they had a known engine problem. It was bad. So you want this year to this year? Cause those are the best years. 
Chris Enright: Correct. Yeah. And it shows your expertise in that area as well.
Chris Enright: So, and then if you look at the comments on that video. There's tons of comments in there with people with those civics talking about how, yeah, I've just hit 300, 000 miles and it's been a great vehicle. So on and so forth, that video did really well. I think last time I checked it was over 150, 000 plays.
Chris Enright: So, and for that being our first interview type video, I was ecstatic with that. So we're going to do more of those because again, that's going to reach those consumer level people because they want to know what an expert in the industry is saying about. Vehicles because they may be in the market to buy a used vehicle. 
Jimmy Lea: Yep. And here we are, we're reading the consumer reports where we, the public, I, and I include myself because we, I just went through this process myself. What vehicles do I want to go after? What vehicles do I want to avoid? I'm going after the consumer reports. I'm digging into this. And then I thought, Hey, wait a second.
Jimmy Lea: I happen to have a very large knowledge base. I can tap into called technicians across America. 
James Harris: Absolutely. 
Jimmy Lea: And so, the vehicle that we honed in on is a Toyota Venza. 
Chris Enright: Nice. They're great. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. V6. Great vehicle. Great vehicle. 230, 000 miles on it. We anticipate hitting 300. No problem. It runs like a top.
Jimmy Lea: It is so dialed in. It's such a good car. 
Chris Enright: I tell people all the time I am the perfect example of what I preach. My daily driver has 438, 000 miles on it. Our loaner vehicle has 275, 000 miles on it. And my other Ridgeline that I drive has a 281 or 282, 000 miles on it. I practice what I preached all my clients that if you maintain and keep a car it'll last you a long time.
Chris Enright: You just have to maintain it and keep it. So, 
Jimmy Lea: yes. And I maintained my Ford F 150 well over 200, 000 miles. Love it. I did have to pay for it.
Jimmy Lea: But yeah that's super cool. Very good. So there are advice to everybody. Oh, Carlos is asking. He says, I missed it. What did you say to record? What did you say? Programs to edit Chris, if you go over that again. 
Chris Enright: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So editing, you can use iMovie, CapCut, free or paid version.
Chris Enright: So CapCut, C A P C U T, LightCut, so L I G H T, cut. And actually those would probably be the top ones to use. I would say if you're on an iPhone, if you're not on iPhone, then use CapCut or LightCut. Those are both pretty good platforms. They don't have a, CapCut has more bells and whistles. And then to record, I would say an iPhone or an Android, a newer phone.
Chris Enright: So iPhones would be like. 13 or newer and I don't know androids, I'm sorry. And then if you want like an actual camera, this is absolutely what I recommend. It's the DJI pocket three. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. But no, I'm going to include here, Chris, you need to tell people that they can't buy that camera until they've been doing videos for a year.
Jimmy Lea: You do it from your cell phone because it's in your pocket. You do it from your cell phone because you've already got it. You don't need to go out and spend thousands of dollars. Yes. By the way, I just bought that one. Mine was 670. I have the exact same creator version with the extended battery and the tripod and the gimbal.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. They're fantastic. Yeah. So if you record for a year from your cell phone using the DJI or mobile, I have mobile microphones. Okay. Yeah. Pretty good. Mine were 150 bucks. Yeah. That's not bad. 
Chris Enright: No. 
Jimmy Lea: And DJI DJ, I agree that DJI is a very top quality microphone. Yes, really well, 
Chris Enright: very much so. And actually the the new DJI microphones have what's called 32 boat, 32 bit float.
Chris Enright: And so normally when you would like record a video and if there's an air hammer in the background or an impact, the audio cuts out, the new ones don't do that. Because they have the 32 bit float. So it is nice if you are worried about that or you have a ton of noise in your shop all the time, I would recommend doing that because you're gonna have a lot of audio cuts if you're close to that impacting your air hammering. So. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. Very cool. Boy, man, so much that we covered here today. It's absolutely phenomenal. I think we need to bring this plane into land here for a few minutes. Last bits of advice, Chris, and then James, we'll go to you. 
Chris Enright: Get started, stay consistent, be willing to learn and grow and look at yourself and realize that you can make improvements and adjustments in your content consistency matters, but good content is good content.
Chris Enright: So at the end of the day, that's what truly matters. 
Jimmy Lea: Love it. 
James Harris: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I think a big thing that I've taken from. Not just this particular webinar, but everything you can be involved with is just always keep your mind open and really put yourself in situations of you never know what that next big light bulb is going to be, or who's going to be in front of you.
James Harris: Someone like Chris, who has all this knowledge and all this expertise in something that maybe you're not doing to grow your shop. There's always so many tools out there and so many different ways to approach things. And I think that I've learned a lot today. You know, luckily my generation is at least within social media, but do I use it every day?
James Harris: No. So it's always great to hear, how are you using it, Chris? What's going on there and just get a lot of these questions answered that are always out there. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Yeah. I've loved it as well. I've loved it as well. One last question from John. What would be the best platform to start on B does that matter?
Chris Enright: Facebook. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, start on Facebook. 
Chris Enright: Yeah. Facebook typically is like you guys found is where most of your core target audience is going to be. Now, the best way to find out is ask your clients. Just when they come in and get, pick up their vehicle or drop off their vehicle and say, Hey, we're looking to start social media.
Chris Enright: We'd love to know what platforms you use the most. That's the best way to find out. But I have found that Facebook and Instagram are typically the two most common ones that everyone uses, but. Your demographic may be different, and they may be using TikTok, and that's what they're on. Because there is a common misconception that TikTok is a much younger demographic.
Chris Enright: And while, yes, there are a lot of younger people on TikTok, my demographic is still older than what you see, the lower age demographics. Like, I don't have 13 year olds following me. My youngest followers are around 25 years old, and then up to 35 years old. So you're still going to target a different demographic either way.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. I like that. Okay. So we're going to start on Facebook. Would you also suggest that because it is Facebook, it's meta, you just instantly share it to Instagram as well? Yeah. As well. It's free. It's easy. It's a click a box and you're good. 
Chris Enright: Very much so. Absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: With that, we're going to close this down, my friends. Thank you very much for joining us. Make sure you check out steer as a CRM because you're going to get busy doing all this social media stuff. You need to set up all that automation, James, right? I love it. You got it. You nailed it, Jimmy. Set up the automation, tie it in with your point of sale system.
Jimmy Lea: So your automatic reminders, your appointment reminders, your decline services, your happy birthdays, your thank yous, your review requests. They all go out automatically because you're out spending your time recording some social media videos to post on and, you know, get yourself some dance lessons so you can be on TikTok too.
Jimmy Lea: Chris, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, brother. This has been absolutely phenomenal. My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute. You have advisors, managers, owners that are looking for coaching and training. If you are one like Chris that started it out. In the industry, decide you were going to do it on your own.
Jimmy Lea: There's things you don't know that you don't know. We at the Institute would love to help you out. There are quite a few training instructional videos that are available. Check us out on YouTube, check us out on our website. A lot of information that can start your solid foundation. And then if you're ready to take it to the next level, we'd love to go there on that journey with you.
Jimmy Lea: Upcoming events in October, eight through 12. Five day service advisor training, super intensive in Ogden, Utah, at the headquarters of the Institute. If you have service advisors that need training, bring them our way. We would happily give them that solid foundation to build off of so that they can definitely help you as a shop to grow and be bigger and better.
Jimmy Lea: And then in February, we have the summit, Amelia Island, Florida. It's going to be amazing. Can't wait. I'll see you there. Thank you very much, guys. We'll talk to you soon.
Jimmy Lea: Stuart must still be here. 
Stuart Heywood: I'm here. 
James Harris: Stuart coming in clutch.
James Harris: All right. So that was awesome, man. That was awesome. 
Chris Enright: Thank you. I appreciate it. I had a good time. 
Jimmy Lea: Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. And good luck to you. I, the balance is where I think a lot of people are going to get hung up. They're going to want to put so much into this social media. I love that you really narrowed it down to say, Hey, no more than an hour a day.
 

105 - Progress To Inspiration with Bob Conant

105 - Progress To Inspiration with Bob Conant
September 11th, 2024 - 00:49:28
 
Show Summary:
In this podcast, Bob will shares the story behind his success, including the lessons he's learned from both his triumphs and the mistakes he’s made along the way. He'll be joined by Jimmy Lea from The Institute, offering you an exclusive chance to hear firsthand how to overcome challenges and adopt actionable strategies for your own shop.
Since 1983, Bob Kaiser's Repair has been delivering reliable and trustworthy auto repairs to Hilton, Rochester, Hamlin, and the entire Monroe area. Over the years, Bob has achieved tremendous success by increasing sales, boosting Effective Labor Rate (ELR), and significantly improving both Gross and Net Profits.
The podcast focuses on Bob's experiences as a shop owner, particularly his success stories and the mistakes he's made throughout his journey. Bob shares insights into the practical lessons he's learned, offering valuable advice to other shop owners on what worked for him and, just as importantly, what didn't.
This isn’t just advice—it’s lived experience. Learn from someone who’s been through it all and come out stronger on the other side.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Bob Conant, Owner of Bob Kaiser's Repair
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:34] - Bob shares how he got started at the shop, initially mowing lawns and eventually becoming a technician.
[00:03:00] - Transitioned into service advisor and general manager roles to avoid the physical toll of turning wrenches long-term.
[00:04:44] - Talks about years of waiting for the previous owner to let go and the challenges of delayed succession.
[00:06:00] - Joined a coaching group to grow the business, but couldn’t implement changes due to owner resistance.
[00:08:48] - Finally purchased the business in 2020/2021 after over two decades of dedication.
[00:17:26] - Credits joining a coaching group as crucial for handling the transition and business responsibilities.
[00:21:07] - Emphasizes empowering staff and setting clear goals as key to rapid growth in the first two years of ownership.
[00:26:33] - Talks about creating a fun, supportive shop culture that improves both employee and customer satisfaction.
[00:34:46] - Shares future vision of expanding to five shops in five years and eventually retiring.
[00:44:09] - Advises new shop owners to seek support, stay accountable, and not go it alone - “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
 
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=GUJJSoI_HCU
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: 
Want to learn more? Click Here
Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
See The Institute's events list: Click Here
Want access to our online classes? Click Here
________________________________________
 
Jimmy Lea: Welcome. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. This is the Institute and these are the leading edge podcasts. As we have discussions talking to you about your awesomeness, your success, your prowess in making your shop the best that you can possibly be super excited to be here today.
Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute. We are talking to you about your awesomeness, your success, your challenges, your past, your future, your present. Where are you today? As we talk about these things today, the guest is Mr. Bob Conant. Bob, glad to have you with us. We're going to talk about you. So it should be easy for us to talk about Bob.
Jimmy Lea: You can come up on camera now. Hey, how are you? 
Bob Conant: Good. 
Jimmy Lea: Good. 
Jimmy Lea: Good, good, good. How are the bills? 
Bob Conant: Those are good. 
Bob Conant: 1 and 0 
Bob Conant: undefeated. 
Jimmy Lea: They're doing great as of today. 
Bob Conant: As of today. Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: As of today. And how do you think they're going to do going into this weekend with Miami? 
Bob Conant: Tomorrow's going to be a tough game with Miami.
Bob Conant: So we'll, we'll, we'll see. I'm okay either way, but if they win, they get to talk a little more trash. So hopefully they'll win. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Yeah. It's amazing how much of a religion football can be. 
Bob Conant: It can be. 
Bob Conant: Yeah. 
Bob Conant: Yeah. We have people every, every Sunday or every game that come over and watch it with us. So it's, it's a, it's a blast.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, it sure is. Sure is. And Bob, you, you I I'd love to jump into your story to talk about who you are and about your history and about your past, where you came from very specifically with Bob's shop, Bob Kaiser's shop. You were a technician in the shop for quite a few years. 
Bob Conant: Yeah, I worked for Bob on and off for years and I came back back in 2000 as a tech and then started to do a little bit more of office work.
Bob Conant: And mainly it was because I saw how. The industry beats up a technician's body. So for me, I said, Hey, let's let's, let's learn a little bit more of the office side and maybe I can expand my career in the industry. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, let's back up a second. That's 24 years ago. You say you came back to Bob Kaiser's.
Jimmy Lea: Does that mean you worked in the 1900s at Bob's place? 
Bob Conant: I felt like, you know, so I, I worked through and through high school and I actually started off cutting his grass at his house. And then worked into cleaning up and, and I've done pretty much every position here between tow truck driver you know, cleanup kit, the whole nine.
Bob Conant: So, and then I kind of transitioned through high school work here and then left, went to a couple of shops in between coming back. And I came back for good back in right about 2000. So. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So you've been a technician for a lot of years. You come back in 2000, 24 years ago, you start getting into more of the office work.
Jimmy Lea: Is this like service advisor, general manager or service advisor solely? 
Bob Conant: No, I started off as a tech and service advisor. I did part time tech, part time service advisor. And and then eventually went to full time service advisor and probably the last 10 years was a labeled a general manager. So, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: And at what point, when you came back in 2000, and we're just going to start at that, at what point did you look at this business and say, Hey, you know what? I think I really like this and I think I want to buy this shop. 
Bob Conant: I think that's crazy talk for anybody, but I would say that it's probably 10 years into that it was he was talking about retiring and, or at least thinking about it.
Bob Conant: And so I looked at that point to say, Hey, you know what, this would be a great opportunity. You know, I was in my forties. A little bit more energy than in my fifties and said, Hey, you know, this, this would be a great opportunity. So, we started talking at that point and, you know, you kind of realized that he really wasn't ready to let go and retire.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, dang. 
Bob Conant: So, so from there, I had actually had a, a friend of mine who worked for Bob for 20 something years left and went to the dealer. I bought it back and as a, to be a partner with me, we were planning on purchasing it together. So that went great for, for years. We were all kind of pushing for the same thing.
Bob Conant: And then you kind of saw that Bob was just really not ready to let it go. So, so then it kind of started to change with my partner and then he had medical issues that he had to finally retire from the industry. Which again is why I tried to get into the office because it beats up your body. Yeah.
Bob Conant: So, so he, he left and then there was several years it was several years after that that it, the talk finally came real. But there was, it went a long ways before, you know, you kept having that, that carrot dangling in front of you and Hey, yeah, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. But for an owner, it was really hard for him to let go.
Bob Conant: I mean, this was his life. He literally lived in front of the shop. So his commute was really quick and he worked 25 hours a day, so it didn't really matter, you know, so this was his life. It wasn't just a, a business, it was his life. 
Jimmy Lea: So 
Jimmy Lea: literally he lived. Like 
Jimmy Lea: next door to the shop. 
Bob Conant: So yeah, this is actually, we're, we're actually an old bus garage that's set back off the road.
Bob Conant: So there's two houses in the front and one of the houses, he owned both of them, but the one house he lived in for 30, 33 years, somewhere around there. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Bob Conant: So, yeah, it was, it was tough for him to, to finally let go. And then, and then when he finally was ready to say, Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm really looking to retire, I wasn't in a mindset and, and to go back, we had so we had finally joined a coaching group years ago and he was, he went to a couple of meetings.
Bob Conant: And then realized it's not for him, right? He was, he was a true technician, but he was not a good people person. So he he didn't want to join the groups. He didn't want to be involved in our groups, but knew that the business needed it. So I was put in the position to represent in the groups. And we were in a group for probably about six years.
Bob Conant: And finally I was kind of like, all right, you know. Every time I go to a meeting, we'd learn a lot, come back with a whole bunch of notes and I'd come back all gung ho, ready to change stuff and get stuff on track and he wasn't willing to change it. No, we can't do this. We can't do that. Customers will never let us do this.
Bob Conant: So, there was a lot, a lot of that going on and, and, you know, we can't do that in our area. So. Finally, after coming back and getting beat up at these meetings a lot without being able to change anything, I said, you know what, if, if nothing changes by the end of the year, I'm going to leave the group because I'm not benefiting anyone there.
Bob Conant: So I, which kind of, which really did stink. I mean, I, I love. the group. I love the guys that were in there. It was a lot of fun, a lot of great information. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Bob Conant: So finally I said, all right, nope. At the end of the year I was out and, and that was it. So we went a couple of years after that. It was probably about four years after that before he really seriously started talking about selling and retiring.
Jimmy Lea: Oh 
Jimmy Lea: my gosh. 
Bob Conant: Yeah. So then after that, He was, he was finally said he was ready to sell. I said, yeah, I don't think so. So I went through a couple of years of, you know, screw you. I can't, I'm not, I'm not buying, I'm not, I'm not chasing this carrot again. So, and then finally it looked like he was really serious.
Bob Conant: So I sat down with my wife and said, all right, what should we do? So, you know, I said, I can go somewhere else. There's always McDonald's, so you can always get a job somewhere.
Jimmy Lea: Right? Taco time. McDonalds
Bob Conant: I said, all right, now, you know what? I loved what I do. I love the customer base. I love. The staff here said, all right, let's, let's bite the bullet.
Bob Conant: And, and if he's serious, let's, let's do it. So he was serious and, and everything went through and then I purchased the business and well, actually I started leasing it in May or February of 21. And then finally closed on the, on the purchase of it around August of 21. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. That's that's, I'm going to say that's fairly quick.
Bob Conant: It felt like it took forever. 
Jimmy Lea: It did take forever. But from the final, okay, February to August, that's the short time period, but it took you 21 years to get to that point. Which, here's the good news, you don't hold the record. I'm sure, I'm sure. But that's also the unfortunate news, that you don't hold the record.
Jimmy Lea: What advice would you give, because I think there's a lot of service advisors, managers that are in that same position that you were in where that carrot kept being dangled, but you just didn't. And it wasn't that you weren't willing. It's that you weren't willing at the same time. Ooh. How do you give somebody hope that it's going to happen eventually?
Bob Conant: So that's a great question. Cause you know, honestly, I looked at it as I should have just bailed out years ago and open my own shop. And, and I'm glad I didn't, but it's, you, you gotta look deep because if I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that are, that are Well, there's a lot of owners out there that are looking to say, Hey, you know what?
Bob Conant: I need to get out. Right. And the problem with it is, is nobody really puts a lot of the, the majority of people don't put things in place to make it happen. And, and for that, you string a lot of people on, like you say, for me, I would have much rather do it in my 40, you know, around 40 than 50. But.
Bob Conant: Honestly, I don't, you really have to look deep at it because again, I didn't think this was ever going to happen. And in reality, to wait that long is kind of crazy if this is what you want to do. So, yeah, I would say they would really have to reevaluate it. Cause I know, I know a handful of guys now that are in the same boat locally that are being held on that, Hey, the owner is going to sell.
Bob Conant: The owner is going to sell. The owner is going to sell. And honestly, it's, it's a lot harder for knowing now, I see it's a lot harder for owners to say, Hey, you know, if, if an owner is involved on a daily basis, it's going to be hard for them to make that decision to say, you know what, I think it's time for me to retire.
Bob Conant: Interesting. So if it is an absentee owner, it's a little bit easier. So if you were to go to these, unless there's two or three guys that are in your town, what advice are you going to give them? Cause each, each situation is unique. And I, I understand that. So this is a very broad brush. What advice would you give them?
Bob Conant: Honestly, I, I'd say don't believe the hype. I mean, you know, actions speak louder than words. So if it's not happening and that's what you want to do, then you've got to make that decision to make the move or you make the decision to hang in and, and, and wait until it does happen. If it does happen. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. If you really like that location, if you really like that customer base and you really want to stay there, then you can stay there. I, I think, and, and help me out here on this, Bob, would it, and I don't know if you did this or maybe collectively the both of you did this where you finally drew a line in the sand.
Jimmy Lea: Well, let's call it that a line in the sand and said, okay. This has to happen by the end of the year. 
Bob Conant: Yes. And, and basically it was, it was, it was both of us. I mean, for me it was okay. Is this really going to happen? And I dragged my feet on it a little bit because I was like, I don't, I don't really think he's really serious.
Bob Conant: So I had to wait. I had to see it in his eyes that he was serious. Okay. I want to go. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Bob Conant: And the funny part with that is. Even after it happened, he didn't really want to go. So, was he still coming in every day? Oh, he was, he was still, yeah, he was still coming in every day and the habit was, it's hard to break.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I mean, that was his life. You're back next door. You're, you're the backyard. You, the shop is. Part of his daily routine. 
Bob Conant: It was his life. So, so finally when he was, when he was serious I said, okay, let's move forward. And, and honestly, for me, for this business, you know, and I look at it as it was, it was a good choice for me because He built a really good business.
Bob Conant: I mean, he invested his blood, sweat and tears in it. He worked 25 hours a day, you know, eight days a week. And he had a really good reputation and he did things right. So, and I worked for a couple of shops in between. And you know, you find guys trying to cheat the system and you know, to try to get ahead or make an extra buck and, and it's not worth the, you know, Bob is, was always a very honest guy.
Bob Conant: So I, I was, had the opportunity to learn from a very honest person. a very smart technician. So for me, it was, it was a great situation for the learning aspect of, of what he put into this business and where it was when I was looking to purchase it. It was a, it was a solid company and, and not even number wise, but trust wise, loyalty wise with customers, you know, our retention rates really high.
Bob Conant: So we had a very good customer base that was, was loyal. I mean, when he first moved out here, he was in the city, moved out here in 80 and 86 for his first year, he had 75 percent of his customers that traveled 20 to 25 minutes to come out to Hilton for his repairs from Rochester. Yep. So, I mean, that's, that's type of loyalty that he built with his, his.
Bob Conant: Client. So, they, that made him survive the first year. And then from there you know, the community learned of him and it grew from there. 
Jimmy Lea: And they embraced him finally. 
Bob Conant: Finally. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, I, with the small towns, you're living in a small town. Hilton's a small town there. You got to break through that good old boy mentality and become part of the community.
Jimmy Lea: And that's sometimes very difficult in a small town. 
Bob Conant: No, it wasn't. And it built a great reputation. And, and like I said, I love the area. I love the customers. So for me, it made sense to make the jump and, and purchase the business. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's beautiful. And that's one of the things I love about the automotive industry too, is that the honesty is.
Jimmy Lea: The integrity is there and I'm using a very broad brush because yes, there are some that aren't, but for the majority, I think the industry is hardworking, super hardworking. They'll put in the time, effort and energy to get the results. And you have done that. So I'm seeing a 21 year time period. Six of those years you were in a group mastermind idea.
Jimmy Lea: Then you dropped out. Then you came back three years ago. You, you finally. Took that big plunge and bought the business. What, what did that look like? I mean, gosh dang, that had to be one of the scariest moments. 
Bob Conant: It was, and for, for many owners that are, are or were technicians it's a, it's a scary thing.
Bob Conant: And for me, you know, I was a tech service advisor and then label as a general manager. And I say that because I really didn't have, I had some of the authority, but not full of the authority. So it was, it was a scary move because I didn't know the backend, right? I knew how to run the shop, deal with the employees, handle the customers, things like that.
Bob Conant: But I didn't know all the fun that goes on on the backside between bills and taxes and all that stuff. So, yeah, it, it was, it was very scary, which is why when I purchased the business, I already knew that I was going to join back up into a group and, and to have that structure, you know, the discipline and the accountability with it, so, and the resources, I mean, you know, without, without the group and in any group, do you have a lot of, of.
Bob Conant: Board members that you're, you can bounce stuff off and you have a lot of resources to be able to, to, to. figure out problems because we all go through the same thing. The, the industry's, you know, an auto repair shop is an auto repair shop. We all have similar to the same problems. Yes. So to have that counseling, if you will you know, it, it makes a big difference, which is why I knew that I needed, I needed to join a group.
Bob Conant: For me, it was also because I really wasn't sure that I could do it. You know, it's a, it's a big, it's a big load to take on. And it's a lot of responsibilities to have employees that have families that, you know, you're responsible for now, you know, cause my job is, is to keep them with a job and, and keep them stable and, and whatnot.
Bob Conant: So yeah, it was a bit, it was a big leap. It was definitely a little scary. 
Jimmy Lea: It's a humbling experience to finally realize, Oh my gosh, now I have nine mortgages. Now I have nine families to feed and nine families to clothe and nine families or whatever that number is for you. Right. I mean, that's, that's a humbling experience.
Jimmy Lea: So what what did it look like that first year for you? And I understand it's a completely different skill set going from a technician service advisor manager. Owner owner is a different skill set. You went into that group environment from where Bob had built the business. Now you take over, you're in the group.
Jimmy Lea: What is that first year look like? 
Bob Conant: Yeah, it was it was interesting. So for me, I had, I was fortunate enough. So Bob's wife took care of the back end, the bills and whatnot. So I was fortunate enough to have her through my first year to help train me. Right. So, and, and, you know, she was stuck in her ways and she was using QuickBooks desktop.
Bob Conant: So I said, I'm going to use QuickBooks online. So. February 17th, when I started leasing the business, I changed to QuickBooks Online. So she had to learn with me to help me learn. So I, I had some guidance with that. The first year on the backend with handling the books and everything else. The, the employee portion, I mean, we have, you know, everyone has different management styles and whatnot.
Bob Conant: I like to have fun. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a sarcastic person as some of the group members that are on here watching know, 
Jimmy Lea: That's your second language. 
Bob Conant: Yes, it is. 
Jimmy Lea: And you're fluent. 
Bob Conant: But you know, I, I like to have fun and, and, and for me, it was great because my employees were, were bought in for me personally, the business, they wanted to work hard for me.
Bob Conant: They knew that. I put everything I had into purchasing the business. So I didn't have a lot of resources on the backend to where things went sideways. So I had, it was, it was awesome to see that my staff worked their butts off to make sure that we were hitting our numbers, hitting our goals. And everything staying on track the way it should.
Bob Conant: So without them, that, that first, I mean, it could, it could have been really bad. And, but no, I, I had a great staff to start with. They were all. on board with, with me taking over. So that worked out. That was, that worked out the best. 
Jimmy Lea: It could have been a mutiny and thank heavens it wasn't. So here's a comment that comes in from Craig, Craig Zale down in Texas.
Jimmy Lea: We can't do it that way here. Our clients won't let us do that. Those are probably some of those things 20 years behind. You know, it's not as progressive. So my question for you is, and this is some old school mindset. What are some of the things that you did in implementing that when you bought the business, you had the staff, you had their buy in, what are some of those things that you did?
Jimmy Lea: to really grow sales, grow profits, to grow the business that first year? 
Bob Conant: Well, the first year, really, honestly, not a lot. It was, it was, I was in, in my head, I was in survival mode, right? I was in don't fail mode. Yes. Yeah. Which is where my staff really picked up. And our sales, I think our first, I think 21, our sales were 15 percent up from the previous year.
Bob Conant: And then the second year we were up 29 percent in sales. So, and honestly, the biggest thing for that was just getting out of my way letting my staff, you know, giving them the expectations, the goals and letting them do what they're paid to do. 
Jimmy Lea: How hard is that to do that, to step back and go, okay, I need you to do that.
Jimmy Lea: It's going to take you a couple hours. I could do it in 35 minutes, but. I need you to do that. 
Bob Conant: All right, Jimmy. So you, I mean, you don't really know me, so I'm not, I'm not a micromanager. Right. So I don't like to be up people's business when they're, when they're doing it. But if you ask my wife I'm not a good teacher with that stuff.
Bob Conant: I'll just do it because it's easier. Right. So it was extremely hard. And, and I, you ask any, anyone in the group that's being told to, you just need to let go yeah, it's, it's scary. I, it's, you know, there's, I guess the good part about it is there's days now that I come in and I'm like, all right, what am I doing here?
Bob Conant: What, what, what, what do I do? Because you don't have that, that normal, I'm working on it. The hardest thing to do is to sit back and look at numbers or look at, you know, anything else and go, all right, how are we doing? How's the staff doing? So, and that was more of the second year of, of giving my staff more responsibility and kind of letting them, you know, do what they're supposed to do.
Bob Conant: And, you know, here's our goal, where we want to be, let's push it there. So I think that was really my, my biggest increase. It was definitely our biggest increase ever here in, in the 41 years we've been open. So, and yeah, it was, it was hard. It's, it's not, it's not the easiest thing. Anyone that says it's easy and I envy you because it's, it's really not.
Bob Conant: It's, it's no fun at times because you, you feel a little bit lost. You, you kind of lose your purpose, but you have to realize that your purpose. Is on a, on a more overlooking, you know, area to say, Hey, you know, I need to keep all this stable and whatnot. It's not that, Hey, I've got to write up a customer, sell this job, fix a car, anything else.
Bob Conant: So it's harder looking from, you know, 30, 000 feet up than, than it is down on ground level. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And Tommy gives you a heck yeah, he's sarcastic. And yet. He's a great shop owner and his staff respects him. 
Bob Conant: Yep. They were just here in September. So they got to tear me apart, which was which was great.
Bob Conant: And luckily there wasn't, there wasn't a lot of bleeding. So, but it's, it's, it's it's, it's good information, but yes, no, they, they met my staff and, and I've got a good staff and. And that's the reason why I'm able to sit here with you today. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. So what, what did you do in those first couple of years?
Jimmy Lea: You grew by 15%, you grew by 29%. What were some of those steps you took to improve that gross profit and that net profit? 
Bob Conant: It honestly, it's, it's, it's the group process. It was a couple of things for me, right? So it was, It was the no, I'm not going to fail. Yes, I can do this. You know, after my first year of, of being a little nervous and going, all right, really, can I, can I, you know, do this?
Bob Conant: It was like, you know what, for anyone who thinks I can't. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it. And then it was just, it was the group process. Watch your numbers. These are what we do. Give it to your employees. These are the levels we gotta hit. This is where we need to be. This is the customer service that we need to provide.
Bob Conant: You know, and, and it was just a lot of, of monitoring that and, and giving them the tools to be able to do their job. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, cause I mean, you think of the time wise, you were buying the shop in the middle of COVID. 
Bob Conant: Yeah, at the end of, end of COVID was basically, well, yeah, I mean, we were still, we were still there.
Bob Conant: So yeah, it was, it was scary. And the funny part is, is in 2020, when, when COVID came out at Mars, we had probably our best first two months and we're starting off great in, in March, then I think it shut down on like on the 17th or something like that. And we really didn't miss a beat too much through, we were fortunate that we didn't really, we were off a little bit.
Bob Conant: In 20 and yeah, so that's when I was looking to purchase. So yeah, that was even a little scary, I guess, thinking back on it now, you know, yeah, cause it was all unknown. But in reality for me, I looked at it as, well, you know what, we didn't get killed through COVID. We stayed there. And you know, we're, we were one of these businesses that, you know, was essential and, and, and so I'm like, we're not going anywhere.
Bob Conant: So I said, yeah, let's jump on the train and do it. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. So what have you done within your shop? In your culture within your people that keeps that high level customer satisfaction for your clients that keep coming back to you year after year after year. 
Bob Conant: It's pizza parties, right? That's what I see online.
Jimmy Lea: Pizza parties. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, is that all it takes? 
Bob Conant: That's all it takes. I don't see it. I think it's just me being me. I like to have fun. I want my staff to have fun. I don't want to have to go to work going, man, I got to work with Jimmy again, right? He's going to be in his mood on Monday. The Seahawks lost and you know, and so, I like, I like everyone to have a good time.
Bob Conant: So for me, it's, it's getting my staff to enjoy it. And I'll give you an example. I've got a, I've got a guy that we took from we were able to grab from another shop because his wife reached out to me. there. He was coming about work, did a good jo over 15 years, almost 16 so she reached out to me, we interviewed him, brought him here.
Bob Conant: She says, you know, he is been here oh, two and a half years, almost three years. Yeah, about two and a half years. And you know, we, we do dinners together as a staff. We go out golfing together, that kind of stuff. And she says, you know, he couldn't be happier. I mean, the, the home life has improved because his work life has improved.
Bob Conant: So, yeah, for me, for me, it's, it's. I take what we do serious, and customer service needs to be at the highest it can be, but you have to have fun, you know, and to me, that's the biggest thing for me. I appreciate my staff, they know that I care about them, you know, we've done food, I've cooked garbage plates, and you know, all kinds of burgers and breakfasts, and if you've never had a breakfast baconator, they're pretty good, so.
Jimmy Lea: No, no, no. You, you got me a garbage plate. What? 
Bob Conant: Oh, that's right. I forgot. It's more of a Rasha thing. It's a garbage plate. It's, it's either, it's either burger, cheeseburgers or, or, or hot dogs on max salad and home fries or, or max salad and beans or any kind of combination. Yeah. I forgot. It's more of a Rasha thing.
Jimmy Lea: You call that a garbage plate? 
Bob Conant: It's called a garbage plate. You, you got it. You got to Google it. Check it out. It's. It's really good. You should try one this Sunday for the game. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, yeah. Anybody that's watching this is garbage plate. Is that due to me? Does anybody else know this? And is this outside of New York?
Jimmy Lea: Is it just really, is it just a Rochester thing? 
Bob Conant: I think it actually originated in Rochester, I believe. But yes, there was a place called Nick Tahoe's that was here that really was big on garbage plates and and now everyone copies it. And I've seen people that have moved further down south and started selling garbage plates because it's yeah, you're right.
Bob Conant: I, you know, it just came up because that's. That's me. That's our life. But yeah, garbage plates are more of a Rochester, New York type thing than, than I think anywhere else. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Well, it has not made it to Long Island. Andrew pipes in. He says, Nope, it's not down here in the Island yet. Yeah, we all need to make a trip now, Andrew.
Jimmy Lea: You got to go get us a garbage plate. Craig says he's never heard of it. All he knows is dirty water, hot dogs. 
Bob Conant: We don't, we don't, we don't put her, I don't put my hot dogs in water. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, Craig, no, we got to talk buddy. That's that's not a good idea, especially if you're drinking it afterwards. Oh my gosh.
Jimmy Lea: All right. So what. I mean, Bob, I just have this imagination that everybody's loving working at your shop. They love coming into work every day. You've got technicians now that were miserable for 16 years and in the last two and a half have just really brightened up and really are enjoying coming to work with you at your shop.
Jimmy Lea: What do you think are some of those skills? Beliefs, cultures, thought process that, that are essential for a business owner today to be successful. 
Bob Conant: Yeah, that's honestly, I, you know, I joke around that if I didn't have a sense of humor, I probably hurt people. And honestly, you, I mean, you have to have a sense of humor.
Bob Conant: You have to let people grow. You have to let people make mistakes, right? I worked for, I mean, the previous owner was, he, he was very good at what he did and, You know, you needed to be you needed to be 110 percent correct, 150 percent of the time, which is humanly impossible. So you have to let people make mistakes and learn from their mistakes and, you know, not, not kill them.
Bob Conant: If they do if they're repeated mistakes, then, you know, there's time for a conversation. But for me, yeah, I think it's, if, as for an owner, I don't know, again, you have to have a sense of humor. There's a lot of stuff that would. You know that on your daily basis that would make you very angry. And, and don't get me wrong, I, I have mine almost, you know, every day too.
Bob Conant: But you have to, you have to be able to let some of it go off folders and, you know, it's kinda like when my kids played hockey. It, it's the 24 hour rule, right? So. You know, you got to give it some time. And, and I, I, I had one of those, I had a young kid that literally drove a, a full size pickup truck off the front of my drive on lift and took out my alignment machine.
Bob Conant: And I had, I had to walk away and It wasn't 24 hours. It was a couple hours before I came back and tried to find out what went on and whatnot. So yeah, you know, the downfall is I think is as owners of any business, especially automotive, there is crap that goes on every day that you have to deal with.
Bob Conant: So for me, I've always looked at it as, you know, that it's going to happen. And that's what I try to tell my advisors, right? You know, something's going to happen today. What time, you know, and I would always play a game. All right. What time is going to happen? What's going to fall apart? Wrong parts, something broke, you know, whatever it is, you know, let's, let's pick an hour and see, because the way I've always looked at it is, I mean, I can get upset at a lot of things, but in reality, you know, it's going to happen.
Bob Conant: And it's my job to be able to try to set the ship straight when things go crazy. So, it doesn't help if I lose my head. So, you know, I, I take it with a grain of salt and there's probably times I should get more upset at things, but, you know, in, in reality, it's, it's, to me, it's, it's a part of the business that we're going to have problems.
Bob Conant: And my job is just to figure them out and move past it and make sure that the customer is taken care of and whatnot. So. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I love that idea. I love that aspect of your business where, you know, something's going to go wrong. So now you're taking bets on it. And my, my money's on 2 35 PM, just so you're aware.
Jimmy Lea: All right. I love them. 235. So you, you know, it's going to happen. You know, that's going to, and when it does, Hey guys, it's, it's okay. Who was the closest? Okay. Johnny, you won today. 
Bob Conant: You know, what's going to happen. 
Jimmy Lea: It's going to happen. Perfection is not a thing. You're not going to be perfect, but we are going to build this plane as we're falling out of the sky and it's going to be getting us there.
Jimmy Lea: We're going to, we're going to make it. It's going to be okay. 
Bob Conant: No, because it stresses everybody out. You get an advisor, you know, Mrs. Jones needs her car, her car by four o'clock and you know, you're finding out at 3 30 that the pads and rotors are wrong and you're like, all right, well now you just got to panic.
Bob Conant: No, you don't have to panic. Let's just figure it out. Yeah. What's, what's, what's our options to try to make it happen if you can, if not, you know, you put her in a loaner vehicle or, you know, a lot of people, if you ask them really, when they say I need it back by four o'clock, you find out that, well, no, they really didn't.
Bob Conant: It just. That was your only time for a ride, right? So then you're like, okay, well, we'll pick them up. So yeah, it's about, it's about solving the problem, not because you tweak out on it and you're just, you're, you're amping everybody else up and, and it just makes for a bad situation, right? So, 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's beautiful, man.
Jimmy Lea: That's beautiful. Well, if there's any questions from our audience that is listening, go ahead and type them into the Q and a Bob, I I'd love to look forward down the road, three years, five years, eight years, 10 years. 15 years. What does the future look like for Bob Conant? 
Bob Conant: Yeah, well, ideally for me, I would love to say that, Hey once this shop's all up on its own and running and moving you know, my goal would be five shops in five years, retire in 10.
Bob Conant: Right. So, however that looks, that's, that's the that's a penciled in, you know, Projection. So, one step at a time, you know, I'm, I'm close with, with the one, if I can keep this one on track without, you know, having to hold hands at all, then then that would be the, that would be the next step. 
Jimmy Lea: Yes.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. When you find that you've gone from, and we talked about this for a brief moment, when you find that you've gone from being the fireman to being the head cheerleader, to being the observer from the outside, now you know that you're ready for the expansion. You're ready for the five from five. 
Bob Conant: Yeah.
Bob Conant: Yeah. And that's yeah. And that's the goal, but it's, it's, and it's, it's a, it's a, it's a long, long process. I mean, it's, I guess it doesn't have to be, but it's, it's a long, it's a long process and it's a lot of, it's a lot of, of letting go, which is, you know, is what we're told you need to let go, let staff do it and whatnot, but it is also one of the hardest things to do.
Bob Conant: So, and, and honestly, I miss it. You know, you go from working on cars was, was fun. Until it wasn't right. But in, you know, they frustrate you, but it was easy. The cars don't talk back. Right. My favorite part were customers. You get to know them, you get to talk to them. You get to help them. So that was my fun part.
Bob Conant: You know, the owner portion of it really isn't that much fun. So, I mean, it is, but yeah, it's not as fun. I, I miss, I miss doing a lot of the other stuff. 
Jimmy Lea: You miss wrenching. 
Bob Conant: I do. Well, I'm just mentioning that I miss actually dealing with the customers, shuttling customers, you know, you get to know him, you get to talk to him, you build relationships which is really all it's about.
Bob Conant: And, you know, so for me, I missed that part, but, but so the hardest part when you transition from, you know, a technician or service writer or anywhere in between. there to a owner, it comes with a whole other level of responsibilities that you really don't look at. And, or maybe you didn't know you know, what your purpose and what your job is at that.
Bob Conant: It's a lot harder at the higher level. You know, Which it should be. So there's a lot more responsibility into it than a lot of people think. It's not just, Hey, you know, I can, I can, you know, put gas in my car on the company card or whatever it is. It's, it's you know, it comes with responsibilities and, and, and, you know, it's a lot of good.
Bob Conant: I mean, actually seeing your staff grow and be able to handle situations that they wouldn't in the past. You know. That they're training, they're listening, they're, they're learning. Yeah, that's that, it's like, it's like watching your, your little kid grow up, right? It's, it's, it's, it's a little bit of an accomplishment to go, okay, hey, they did it.
Bob Conant: It's only to do something stupid and then you're like, really, didn't we just talk about this? 
Jimmy Lea: Hey, that happens to everybody. We all have dummy moments. And Tommy says thank you, by the way. Wow. Five shops in five years. He's going to hold you to that now. I know he will. He'll hold you to that commitment, which is good.
Jimmy Lea: It's as good that this. So are there shops in the crosshairs? Is there something that you are looking at that might possibly expand the kingdom? 
Bob Conant: There are. And, and, you know, I think the good and the bad part is you're seeing. I mean, I've got a lot of, I don't have a lot of shops in my area. If you really look at where we're at, it's, you know, there's, I mean, there's shops within three miles and five miles and whatnot, but there are a lot of, there are a lot of older owners probably without plans and I know one of them that's looking to, that's looking to retire and his plan was his technician and his technician said, nope, you retire, I'm out too.
Bob Conant: So, there's, there's a, there's a handful of shops in the area with, with owners that don't have. You know, a contingency plan to move forward and move out. So I think there's a lot of availability, which isn't a good and a bad thing. I mean, you're still losing a lot of, a lot of knowledge with, with you know, cause the older guys are leaving the business and what's a hurt because the younger guys don't really want to invest.
Bob Conant: In themselves as much as what we had to so you're not, you're not seeing that, you know, nowadays you have to train and learn on company time where, you know, you go back years ago and not to date myself, but you know, you would, you would do that on your own time to better yourself to learn and whatnot.
Bob Conant: So, but there are a lot of shops in here that you can see that in talking to tool guys and, and, and, you know, parts delivery guys, there's a lot of people out there that are looking to get out because it's not getting any easier. 
Bob Conant: This industry is, it's not a glamor industry, you know, you don't get a lot of pats on the back.
Bob Conant: I mean, you do, but not really. You know, if, if you, if you need a pat on the back, this is a tough industry to be in because people really don't appreciate you as much as, as. The effort that you put in. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. They, they don't understand what it takes to repair the vehicle, the computer science behind it all, the coding that's in there, the amount of diag it takes to find what's wrong.
Bob Conant: Yeah. Yeah. And to keep staff happy and motivated and give the customer service. Cause we've all been to those restaurants or convenience stores or anything else where you can tell that person really loves their job and they don't, but So that's, that's the hardest part. That's, it's to get your, get your staff to, you know, and, and the example I have is the old owner and I, and I've heard a lot of other business owners talk about it where, you know, there's something on the floor and the owner's like, Hey, I've, you know, I've walked past that for three days.
Bob Conant: Everyone else has walked past it. Nobody's picked it up. And I said, you know, have you ever asked yourself what do you have to do to make them want to pick it up? Right? Because that's the key. If you can make, because no one's going to have the same passion and drive as the owner does, but how do you make somebody buy in and want to do part of what the owner is in the owner's head of what they do?
Bob Conant: Right? So how do you make them want to do it? How do you make them want to pick that up? How do you make them want to make sure they go the extra mile for the customer? You know, those are, those are the kinds of things that I think we need to ask ourselves more because You can tell somebody 20 times to do something and every time it needs to get done you can say, Hey, Jimmy, can you go over here and take care of that for me?
Bob Conant: Right. But how do you make somebody want to go, Oh, you know what? It's Tuesday. I gotta go, I gotta go take care of that. You know? So yeah, I think that's the, that's the magic question and, and I don't have the magic answer, but I can tell you that it definitely starts with caring for your staff, treating correctly and you know, having a sense of humor, have a fun day.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Having fun. It's definitely goes a long way. And I think where you are is building that company, that culture, that process, that procedure, that mindset where they do want to pick it up. One of my favorite pictures was, is, is being able to see Walt Disney at Disneyland picking up trash in the street.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I think it was on Main Street. 
Bob Conant: It was Steve Jobs that said everyone sweeps the floor. You know, it was something like that. So, you know, in reality, I mean, for me, I'm a lead by example. I'm not going to have you do anything that I won't. You know, my wife's always like, why are you still getting to work at quarter to seven?
Bob Conant: I said, well, because that's what I like to do. And that's, you know, I like to be here early. I like to be here before everyone. And Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's, you know, cause in part that I, I, I would miss it. I mean, yes, there's, there's times I need to work from home, but otherwise, yeah, I, I like the, I like the chaos that goes along on a daily basis.
Bob Conant: So, 
Jimmy Lea: Well, so let's see, you went from the fireman to the cheerleader, the head cheerleader, and now you're the chaos coordinator. 
Bob Conant: Yeah, that's a title. I'll get a shirt made with it because it's a, yeah, honestly, it really is. It's, it's controlled chaos though, right? It's somewhat controlled. Yeah, no, it's, I think, I think if you look at my LinkedIn, I was, I probably should change it because I haven't changed it in like 10 years or more, but I think it was firefighter, babysitter policeman, referee, counselor.
Bob Conant: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's that's the fun part, but you gotta take some of it with a grain of salt. And again, you gotta laugh with it. And cause again, if you don't laugh, you'll get mad and you know, somebody might get hurt. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And that's the last thing we need to do is Be behind bars because somebody got hurt.
Jimmy Lea: So laugh with it. I love that. What last and final question we can land this plane here. What advice would you give to shop owners that are starting their shops today? You bought your shop three years ago. So this is somewhat new, but also relevant and, and, and very close and near and dear to you.
Jimmy Lea: What, what advice would you give? Guys or gals that are starting a shop today? 
Bob Conant: Jokingly. I would say don't do it, but honestly Get support join a group. Yeah, you know Because you don't know what you don't know and I tell you you can you see a lot of owners that are you know? You're only working through here.
Bob Conant: I'm only seeing this Right. So you don't know, and sometimes it's, it's, you know, misery loves company, right? So you, you, you see all the shops that go through the ups and downs and, and, you know, Hey, I'm having an employee problem. I'm having an employee problem. You know, you kind of, you kind of, okay, well, we're all dealing with the same thing.
Bob Conant: Right. So, but yeah, you don't know what you don't know. So a group to keep you accountable. To have your board of directors, to have, you know, people to lean on that honesty. And that's why I looked at it when, when I was taking over that I said, all right, well, I'm, I'm going to, I have to join a group because I know that I need that.
Bob Conant: I need the support. I need the knowledge too, because like I said, you know, initially I wasn't very confident that I had the skills to do it. And, you know, without that support and accountability. You know, I, I, I wouldn't it's so easy to get off track and go wrong directions and you still do when you're in a group, but you have more people to help bring you back in.
Bob Conant: I mean, for me, if, you know, I love the group I'm in and not just because some of them are on the call here, but, you know, it's just a great support system. And, and again, with, it makes you look at things and think of things in a different way, where if you're not doing that you don't know. And I can tell you, I met a guy, I was out, he recently, recently purchased a shop.
Bob Conant: And some of the stuff he was, we were talking about, he was doing it. I'm like, what are you crazy? I mean, you're. You know, no, I mean, so anyways, I, and I gave him a business card and said, Hey, look, if you need any help, you know, give me a call. I'm not that I know at all, but you know, I can help you, you know, with whatever I can help you with.
Bob Conant: And, and and I think that's where, you know, if you don't, if you're not in a, in a networking group locally with shops or, you know, in a larger group with the Institute or any of the other ones, you're, you're, you're missing out because again, you've got blinders on and you're only seeing what you see and what you think.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah, that's true. So there's going to be a mad rush. Everybody wants to join Bob's group. That's group number two. Let me tell you that there's a lot of groups with the Institute. So those of you who are interested that are hearing this. Yes, absolutely. You are welcome. We invite you to come and join us in the group environment.
Jimmy Lea: Bob will be there. A lot of other shop owners will be there. So if you need a healthy dose of accountability and direction, or maybe you're like a Tracy Holt that you just really need to fine tune a couple of things here and there. Tracy 7 percent net profit up to, I think he's at a 28 percent net profit now.
Jimmy Lea: That's pretty dang awesome. Yeah, pretty dang awesome. So, the groups are awesome. Thank you. Yeah, that everybody's chatting and saying how awesome the groups are. So thank you to that, Bob. With that, we're going to land this plane. Thank you. Thank you for joining me this morning. I really appreciate you being here.
Jimmy Lea: We've got coming up here in the very near future, the five day service advisor intensive. October 8th through the 12th. Everybody needs to get your service advisors out to Ogden. This is life changing training for your service advisors. So definitely be out there for that. Coming up here in February is the summit put on by the Institute with three, four days where you can work on your business and not in your business.
Jimmy Lea: We're going to provide some awesome information, some awesome inspiration to help you take those next steps in your shop and in your business. So let's see Leadership Intensive is one of the last things to talk about. Leadership Intensive is in November. Where is that in November? Is that in Ogden?
Jimmy Lea: Stewart? He's typing quickly. Dallas, Texas! Craig, we're planning on you being there. Leadership Intensive, this is talking about the human centric side of why people think the way people think. Bob, I invite you to a Leadership Intensive. Have you been to one yet? 
Bob Conant: I have not. No. 
Jimmy Lea: No. There you go. Now you can come to Texas in November and enjoy that Thanksgiving short sleeve weather.
Bob Conant: Sure. 
Bob Conant: Maybe not today. France is coming through. Don't you? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, Craig did go to the one in Denver a few months back and everyone needs to go. Craig is saying everyone needs to go. So there you go, Bob. You've got a recommendation there as well. That's right. All right. Well, thank you very much.
Jimmy Lea: Appreciate you. And to your success and your continued success, keep pushing forward and know that you're not going to fail. You guys are awesome. Thank you very much. 
Bob Conant: Thanks Jimmy. Take care guys.
 

104 - Leveraging AI & Adapting Your Marketing Strategy with Dan Vance, Founder & CEO of Shop Dog Marketing

104 - Leveraging AI & Adapting Your Marketing Strategy with Dan Vance, Founder & CEO of Shop Dog Marketing
September 4th, 2024 - 00:56:17
 
Show Summary:
In this podcast, we'll explore the transformative impact of AI on digital marketing with Dan Vance, Founder and CEO of Shop Dog Marketing. AI is here to stay and is revolutionizing how we approach everything from content creation to customer engagement. In a world where AI can act as a personal assistant—virtually an expert on any topic—how can you ensure your business stays ahead?
Dan will also discuss the latest industry trends, including navigating the ongoing changes in social media and SEO, especially with Google's recent updates downranking AI-generated content. With shifts in the automotive industry, it's crucial to stay prepared.
This is your opportunity to gain actionable insights and ensure your marketing strategy is ready to meet the challenges and opportunities.
What You’ll Learn:
Maximizing AI for Your Auto Shop: Discover how AI can revolutionize your marketing, from crafting compelling content to engaging your customers, helping your shop stay ahead in the competitive automotive industry.
Adapting to SEO and Social Media Shifts: Learn the latest strategies to keep your shop visible online, including how to respond to Google's updates and navigate potential changes in social media, such as a TikTok ban.
Strengthening Your Shop's Marketing for the Remainder of the Year: Get actionable insights to refine your marketing strategy, ensuring your shop is prepared to tackle challenges and capitalize on opportunities as the year progresses.
At The Institute, we help shop owners build thriving businesses that supports both their team and long-term goals. Regardless of where you are in your automotive journey, whether you're just starting your first shop or you're a MSO, we have something for your shop! Please reach out!
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Dan Vance, Founder and CEO of Shop Dog Marketing
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:41] - Your website should tell your shop’s full story- community involvement, partnerships, and personality.
[00:04:00] - Google is your website’s biggest visitor and evaluates your authority through content.
[00:05:41] - Understand and apply Google’s E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust.
[00:07:03] - Shop owners must stay involved to build trust and improve website engagement.
[00:10:36] - Use AI to analyze your reviews and uncover hidden emotional trends and weaknesses.
[00:13:30] - Even with a high review score, negative sentiment like “rude” can hurt your ranking.
[00:21:02] - Images are becoming increasingly important—humans process visuals faster than text.
[00:31:34] - Take intentional, high-quality photos of your actual shop to support transactional search queries.
[00:42:17] - Use AI for seasonal marketing planning by analyzing customer data and trends by zip code.
[00:48:49] - Reviews are more than stars—they’re powerful tools for social proof and keyword relevance.
 
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=E0YEpFYXDCk
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: 
Want to learn more? Click Here
Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
See The Institute's events list: Click Here
Want access to our online classes? Click Here
 
________________________________________
 
Jimmy Lea: Jimmy Lea here with the Institute. Super excited for it to see you, my friends, as we are starting another day in the life of you as a shop owner and the things that you can should and must be doing in your shop to be the best that you can possibly be. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. I'm super excited to be here with you today as we talk about leveraging artificial intelligence, or maybe it's advanced information or assisted information.
Jimmy Lea: Super excited for the conversation that we're going to have today. And if you don't recognize me on camera, then maybe you recognize the picture. My name is Jimmy Lee. Super excited to be here with you as we talk with my very good friend, Mr. Dan Vance, founder Owner CEO of shop dog marketing. Dan is here with us today.
Jimmy Lea: Dan. Good morning. How are you? 
Dan Vance: Doing great. Glad to be here. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Thank you and I'm excited for us to talk about websites, to talk about AI, to talk about marketing in the shops because there's so much that can be done. And you and I both know that a lot of shops, they have a website, but they treat it like a tick mark on a, Chart or on a list that has to be checkmarked off almost like in the old days they did with yellow pages.
Jimmy Lea: Yep. I've got a yellow page ad. I've got a yellow page ad, but the website is so much more dynamic than that. Was wondering Dan, if you could talk about the life of a website and what shop owners really should be paying attention to or looking at in their websites. 
Dan Vance: Yeah, well, I think the best place to start is just to remind you that your website is going to be the one place where people can learn more about your business than any other source.
Dan Vance: So, it's a good place for you to really build it out in a way that kind of illustrates all the aspects of your business, why it's unique, the community that you serve as partnerships that you might have, foundations that you participate in, and really just Letting people know, hey, this is this is who we are as a small business and we serve this local area on a more broader sense.
Dan Vance: Do you have a thought? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 
Jimmy Lea: I have an idea. So, those questions or comments or concerns that shop owners get on a daily basis about, you know, who are you and what are you and what do you do? What do you stand for? That is all that information that could go on this. Let's call this your employee that works on the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week, never takes a day off, never has any sick leave.
Jimmy Lea: They're constantly out there working for you. All of those things that you just talked about the charities, the community involvement that can all be put on the website. So those that are searching and wanting to discover more about you, that's a go to place for them. 
Dan Vance: Absolutely. And we have social media channels, which support that, but it's a well known fact that the website is the place that people are going to rely on as the main source, they recognize that it comes from you and whatever's there is by you.
Dan Vance: So. I think it's really kind of a missed opportunity by most auto repair shops. And I would love to see, I would love to see more shops really kind of dig into like, let's tell our story, let's be more visible about who we are, what our personalities are, what makes us laugh, those kinds of things. On a more broader spectrum, the website has a function too, to help Google understand the services that you provide in your community, and they're probably going to be your number one customer in terms of like looking at your website, reading all of the content on your website and making assessments about whether you really speak with authority related to your industry.
Dan Vance: Sometimes we miss those two top tier things. We forget about we're part of the community. We should express that. We miss the fact that Google's our number 1 reader of our website, all the content on our website. And then we also forget that our website's a transactional place. People come there to take some kind of action and while there are some that will come to your website looking for information, like, how do I how does a break system work?
Dan Vance: Most are going to come there and look for like, how can I get and get my breaks fixed? Transactional. So, your website really needs to address those transactional things and just know that people are like looking, they don't want to put a lot of time or energy into it. They're just looking for certain things like where do I schedule?
Dan Vance: How do I call? What kind of value things do you offer like a loaner vehicle or warranty or some of those things and all that should be first and foremost on your website. So then you get into design aspects really to help consumers. make transactional decisions when they do get to your website. So who we are.
Jimmy Lea: I have a question. 
Jimmy Lea: Um, and this goes, you struck on something here that it's absolutely Like struck lightning in my brain that Google is our biggest customer. That's looking at our website. And I know that Google has an acronym, the E A T that, and that everybody needs to write that down. If you're listening to this webinar, write down E A T, which stands for.
Jimmy Lea: E is expertise. 
Dan Vance: Experience. There's two E's actually. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Experience and expertise. What's the A? 
Dan Vance: Authority. 
Jimmy Lea: Authority. That you are the authority, that your shop is the place to go to, that you are the one that can solve the problems. And then T, what's the T? 
Dan Vance: Trust. 
Jimmy Lea: Trust. Does the public have trust in you? So when you look at a website, Dan of anybody out in the industry, when you look at a website, do you view it from a Google point of view or do you view it from a consumer point of view?
Jimmy Lea: Who, what, how do you analyze? A website. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. The biggest value I can add to shop owners is really to look at it through the eyes of Google. 
Jimmy Lea: Because that's 
Jimmy Lea: the biggest consumer. 
Dan Vance: Yes. Yeah. But auto shop owners, you know, they will, they'll, like you had mentioned earlier, they like check it off and they'll be like, Oh, I handed this off to my agency.
Dan Vance: Um, and then they stopped working it. And, but the ones that don't do that, the ones that are much more proactive about it. So. Adding new pictures and making sure they're telling their story. They have higher engagement rates, which is just another way to say, Google notices that people are taking interest in your website and they'll rank you higher.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Dan Vance: So, That's something that you can do that's really hard for an agency to do, but that's hard for us to do for you. But I can definitely, I have tools, like you have tools in your shop that help me understand what the words on your website say. I have tools that help me understand whether you meet that criteria, that EEAT.
Dan Vance: I have tools to help me understand whether, you know, it meets other compliance rules that Google is looking for. And we can modify and adjust it and resubmit it. and get you to rank higher. And so that's really like, because we're in this industry and we use the toolbox, like you just have to know an agency is this tool and they can do this for me better than anybody else, but it's not the only tool.
Dan Vance: Like I have to know, like I have a role in this. So I think that's a big takeaway for people. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. So as an agency can definitely set up the shop to be the EE, the expert. The go to the expertise, the experience and the authority. But when it comes to the trust, I think that's really where the shop owner has to step up and reply to all the reviews, request the reviews, get the Google reviews.
Dan Vance: That's where the gold is. They've got to help set themselves up as the trusted source. So you, as an agency help with the EA. And then the shop owner can definitely help influence the T, the trust. Yeah. 
Dan Vance: So I'll just share a quick example with you. Like you may notice that sometimes you go to a page on Google's website where it's a policy guideline or something where they're describing like how it works.
Dan Vance: And at the bottom of the article, they have a little button that says, was this helpful? 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. 
Dan Vance: And maybe you've thought about why they do that or why they don't do that. But the reality is that the algorithm or Google's search engine ability to read content on your website and make lots of decisions about what that content is.
Dan Vance: At the end of the day, like this is a roadblock for them. They don't know if it's actually helpful. So I might speak to expertise and authority and trust, but am I really helping a consumer 
Dan Vance: make 
Dan Vance: a decision that's going to benefit them? That's why I'm in business. And so that's a huge takeaway, as I said the trust factor is they're looking for trust factors.
Dan Vance: And the easiest place to find trust factors is in reviews. And we're going to talk more about AI today, but AI is a great place to. Cram your reviews in there and ask AI to help you understand them better from a search engine's perspective, because it'll tell you, this is the way the search engine sees this.
Dan Vance: They understand the emotion, the sentiment, and the attributes like great pricing, great warranty they did the break job right away, they took me right in, so those kind of things, and those are all trust. Those are trust factors and they're all kind of related to this idea of engagement. And yes, I was helpful.
Dan Vance: My website was helpful. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. 
Dan Vance: Google loves that. 
Jimmy Lea: Now, wait a second. So what I heard you just say is that I can take all of my reviews, 200, 300, 2000, 3000. I can take all my reviews, put it into a a chat GPT or an AI. And I'm going to ask what question? 
Dan Vance: Yeah. So just, I'll give you the process. This is how you do it.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Dan Vance: You can copy and paste, um, and then put it into an Excel spreadsheet and then go in there and take out your business name. And take out the client's name, the reviewer's 
Dan Vance: name. 
Dan Vance: You can easily do that. You just have to go to Rome and just remove them. It's not important to, because ChatGPT is an open source.
Dan Vance: So, and it's a learning mechanism, so it will take that. It'll give you information back, but then it kind of puts it in their bank. And they'll refer to it. So at this point, we don't know whether it's actually kind of prudent or good idea to like give them that kind of content. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So we're going to remove the personal name, personal information.
Dan Vance: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: But if it's in the review, leave it in the review. 
Dan Vance: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So now we've got.
Dan Vance: Like a service writer or something else, I would leave those. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Dan Vance: I would leave those. Okay. Because all of this is going to, you can dump this, I just dump it in a spreadsheet, like a Google Sheets or you can use Excel and then save it as a file.
Dan Vance: And then you go into ChatGPT and you open it up and you attach the file. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. I follow up. And then you're tracking everything. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. And then you say to AI and prompt engineering is a big deal. So then you give the AI an assignment. So you say something along the lines of, you are, so I'm gonna give it a, I'm gonna give it a persona.
Dan Vance: I'm gonna say to ai, you are, um, a search engine algorithm, and you are going to read these reviews and you're gonna write down the top 10 emotional comments that are made in this reviews as a bulk. And I hit enter and it'll spill out top the top 10 and I'm going to promise you that you better be holding on your hat and your seat because it's going to surprise you because what you see in your reviews and what an algorithm sees in there are not the same.
Dan Vance: So, um, you're going to see some stuff and then from there, you can just go further. Like it, the, that chat process knows in that moment that it's acting as a search engine and it's giving you feedback as a search engine. And so then you can ask it more questions like, what's the top complaint?
Dan Vance: What's the top service related to the top complaints. And I'll give you an example. Like we've tested this and one shop. Um, had good review score. I think it was 4. 7, but he had a bunch of negative reviews and we found out that 25 percent of his reviews had negative sentiment. There weren't negative reviews.
Dan Vance: There were negative sentiment. People were mad. They weren't happy with the experience there, and they were, and as we went through this and we asked questions, the most common emotional statement that was in this bulk of reviews was the word rude. Imagine that's your shop. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay, I'm imagining that's my shop now.
Jimmy Lea: Who is rude? I mean, what do I do with this information now that I know that rude is the word associated with my shop? 
Dan Vance: Yeah. So then you can go through and you can ask, you know, who's mentioned like a service writer or this or that, how did that happen? And it will dig that information out for you. It will tell you what jobs are tied to the emotional statement.
Dan Vance: And in this one that we did in particular, it was brake repair and oil service, which is kind of sad because those are your highest conversion. Those are new opportunities that ran away with a negative experience. And of course, this shop owner had no idea. Like he was as shocked as, you know, anybody would be because he's got a nice review score.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 4. 
Dan Vance: 7. But the search engine sees it completely different. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 4. 7. That's solid. That's a good score. That's right in the middle where you want to be. But if 25 percent of all your reviews has a negative sentiment. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. Good score, but a negative review and a negative, a very specific negative, like, you know, around a service or you know, interaction with people in the business.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Interesting. So again, 
Dan Vance: we talked about trust. Yes. And I think this is a good place to roll back to that and just say, trust is evaluated by Google through reviews. And so Google would look at that and just say, okay, there, we're going to bring them up for break repair because they're doing all this other stuff, right?
Dan Vance: But they're not going to be dominant because we know this shop isn't really providing the best kind of experience. And for us as a search engine to stay in business. We've got to give them the very best shop, which might be the guy down the road that has You know, two people and they're just working away and they don't really have a they have a terrible website like all this stuff That frustrates us about other people, but they've got good review sentiment.
Dan Vance: And so they get more ranking love from google 
Jimmy Lea: Fascinating. Fascinating. Um, for those of you who are listening and watching, what is your Google rate rating right now? Are you a 4. 7, 4. 8, 4. 9? Is anybody brave enough to take their reviews and put it into chat, GBT and share with us. But what I'd love for you to share is what is your ranking right now?
Jimmy Lea: Put that into the chat, into Q and a. I'd love to see where we're ranking here across the country. If you can, if you, and as we go 
Dan Vance: through this, because we're in partnership with the Institute, if the Institute wants to send us people that are interested in having us do that for them, I would run that for them.
Dan Vance: I would do that process for you. Complimentary, because I think it's important that you Start seeing the power of AI in marketing, especially because it's become more complicated in terms of ranking and competing a local business. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Jason is a 4. 6. Jason's in North Carolina. Jason, are you going to ASTA here at the end of the month?
Jimmy Lea: Because we're going to be there. Dan, are you going to ASTA? 
Dan Vance: I am, and I'm doing a class on this very thing. So come to my class. 
Jimmy Lea: Jason, you got to be there 
Dan Vance: Saturday morning. Okay, 
Jimmy Lea: cool. So 4. 6, what, where is, where does the shop want to be with their ranking? According to algorithm, not according to Jimmy Lee, not according to Dan, not according to, Hey, I have to have a 5.
Jimmy Lea: 0. What where do we want to Oh. And here's a couple more here. Janice is a 4. 6. Brian is a 4. 6. Wow. We got a lot of 4. 6s. So Dan, where. The number's good, but I think the sentiment goes a little bit further. But is there a number that shops would want to be at? 
Dan Vance: Well, I went to a conference and there was Google people there and they said.
Dan Vance: They said at the conference that the optimal review score is 4. 3. Now I would add that. I think that's not correct for auto repair. I think auto repair is 4. 7. I think that's your optimal score. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So they're saying 4. 3 because it's across all. Websites, if we look at automotive 
Dan Vance: restaurants, laundry, bookstores like everybody, but for auto repair, people are looking for something higher.
Jimmy Lea: And I think 4. 
Dan Vance: 7 is a place that's kind of a sweet spot. And especially if you have 300 reviews, you're 4. 7, that's a great place. That's very solid. 
Jimmy Lea: That's very solid. So these couple of shops, these three that have responded with their 4. 6, not bad, that's good. That's good. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: We'd love to get you up to a 4.
Jimmy Lea: 7. Now you can go to 
Dan Vance: AI and you can say, Hey, I've given you this list and help me discover some ways that I can improve my score based on the reviews that I'm currently getting. Yeah. And guess what? It will give you good feedback on how to do that and it'll even help you draft a new review request that has more key information in it.
Dan Vance: That will help you improve your score. Now we're an agency and like we could do that, but on an individual basis, that's something like if you empower yourself to really kind of manage that piece, you're going to have better results. And you're going to have a better pulse on really what customers are experiencing in your business.
Dan Vance: Yeah. So, use AI to move yourself forward so you don't have to think real hard about it. Like, it'll help you do the right thing. 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. Alan has a 4. 9723 automotive and diesel reviews on Google. That's 
Dan Vance: superior. 
Jimmy Lea: Solid. You're not telling Alan to go screw things up so he goes to a 4. 7, correct? 
Dan Vance: Correct. 
Jimmy Lea: No, I'm not saying 
Dan Vance: that at all.
Dan Vance: And I knew you weren't. Now if he had, if he was just a straight five, whether it was ten reviews or a hundred reviews or more, that's actually problematic because people don't believe that. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and here's one from Rudy and this falls right in line with what you're saying, Dan 4. 7 over 1400 reviews for Rudy.
Jimmy Lea: That's solid. 
Dan Vance: That's solid. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I would be interested, Rudy, for you to run the AI. From an algorithm point of view. 
Dan Vance: I was thinking the same thing. I was like, that's a beautiful data set, man. Think of what we could find there. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. What's the sentiment according to an, a search engine algorithm.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that's just a whole nother level Dan, that you've brought into this. Phenomenal. I love it. Okay. Keep going. Keep going. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. So we started with websites and you can see like, there's just a layer of the trust aspect. There's a whole review thing, which we talked about, but there's more.
Dan Vance: And I'm going to tell you that the more piece that we're definitely seeing is we're going to see a lot more images. In terms of search engine responses. So I do a search for something and I'm going to see more images as a response. And the reason for that is because images, we actually communicate better through images.
Dan Vance: We can see a lot more information faster. I think the number is something like We can? Are you saying we or are you saying algorithms? Human beings. So human beings can read a picture like 400, 000 times faster than text. And because we don't really like to read, like we want a little bullet points, give me the facts, got to make it short, we skim images are going to be more of an engagement.
Dan Vance: Okay. So we like images, they tell us more, there's a bigger story behind those. 
Jimmy Lea: Totally agree. 
Dan Vance: AI is another place that can really help us discover like how to leverage images on our website to express experience. Authority, like why we're authorities in respect to repairing your vehicle, your brand vehicle and trust and the image can do all of that.
Jimmy Lea: So, and I, we have to pause this image because I do have an image question because I need to circle for Jordan. Jordan has a really great question. How do I, Retrieve all of my Google reviews. Is it just simply going through and copy and paste? Or is there a button that I can tap and I get a, an Excel spreadsheet of all my reviews?
Jimmy Lea: You're nodding your head at the copy paste. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. So I have a tool, a right tool to make a big difference. So I can open a tool and it gives me all your reviews from all the sources and I just download it from there. So yeah, easy peasy. Um, why don't you just let me do that for you, or you can go into your Google business listing and just start copying and pasting.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So the simple way, the DIY do it for yourself, Jordan copy and paste it yourself, phase two. And I think as Jordan says, thank you. I think as shop owners, we know this better than anybody. The tools make all the difference. 
Dan Vance: Dan 
Jimmy Lea: has the tool. Let's talk to Dan here at the end. We're going to give out his contact information so you can reach out.
Jimmy Lea: Dan Jordan says, thank you very much. Um, all right. Too much to image questions, website. I've been shouting this from the rooftops for years and years. Shop owners. You need pictures of your shop. You need live pictures of your people. You need live pictures of your shop. Don't put up stock images of some mechanic from the Netherlands and blue coveralls.
Jimmy Lea: Great picture. Not your shop, 
Dan Vance: you know, the one, right? I know exactly what you're saying. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, as a placeholder, it's okay. And a placeholder is a week, two weeks, maybe a month, maybe two months. But if you go three or four and Google has now crawled your website multiple times, thou shalt not, don't put it out there.
Jimmy Lea: Okay, 
Dan Vance: now there is some ins and outs of that we should kind of address. So everybody is at common ground, right? So I would tell you that Google prefers stock images on the level of they know that it's licensed. And licensing with images can be problematic. So where did you get that picture? Did you have that person's permission to publicly profile them on your website?
Dan Vance: You know, those kind of things. So licensing is a factor in stock images that kind of like offset the discoloring of the fact that it's not a great representation. It's the guy in overalls, like I get that. Stock images are really well done, so they're exceptional in lighting, good color tones, the colors are rich.
Dan Vance: And so no matter what kind of device I'm using, I have a great image experience. So, there is kind of like this, um, making sure that the images that you use meets those kind of standards, right? Like I have the right kind of permission, that it is licensed, that I have a written agreement from this employee that he knows, like, this image belongs to the company and we use this on everything and so on and so forth.
Dan Vance: And that you take good pictures with good coloring, good lighting, because it makes a difference in that experience on the website. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Dan Vance: So, go ahead, I know I, I bet I can see a question. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, oh boy, can you see the question? I mean, the gears are just grinding here. Okay, so, stock images are okay. It has to be licensed.
Jimmy Lea: But it's not the best. 
Dan Vance: Correct. 
Jimmy Lea: The next level up from that is taking pictures in your shop, hire a photographer, this is what I'm hearing. Get good lighting, get good imagery, get good quality photographs at a high resolution, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to put a 4k image on your Website because that would just heal your ranking that would kill your page.
Jimmy Lea: Make it 
Dan Vance: really heavy. Yeah, 
Jimmy Lea: okay So they're gonna hire a photographer Um, and here's a little side note wedding photographers are great to hire because they can come in on a wednesday morning They don't shoot anything except for the weekends Yeah, so to have a morning gig during the week. They would love to do it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and they have all the tools They have the tools. They have the equipment and just 
Dan Vance: show up and do it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And same for videographers to videographers that are doing weddings are great for us in the automotive to hire during the week. They can come in. They've got all the equipment. They can handle it.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Talk about the images that they take, the pictures that they take or that you take. Cause you taking them on your iPhone or your Android, you've got a good high quality camera in your phone. How do I convince Google that's. My picture. I took it. I own it. 
Dan Vance: Yeah, so there's a place on the image where you can put the licensing.
Dan Vance: So you can put like this property of and, um, license and agreement in place for all aspects of the image. Okay. 
Jimmy Lea: Is that something that I do as a shop owner or I have my website people do because they're my expert? 
Dan Vance: It's not hard to do, but I would have them do it for you. It's easy for them. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Dan Vance: Easy for them.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Is there more to talk about here with taking pictures? Yeah, I think 
Dan Vance: there's probably another aspect with AI. That's where I was 
Jimmy Lea: going to go! Yeah. Okay, go. 
Dan Vance: So, um, a few years ago when Google announced that they could read images, which was a huge leap forward because 10 years ago, they couldn't read pictures.
Jimmy Lea: That's right. 
Dan Vance: Now they could read pictures and they had a tool where you could test the picture and it was amazing because it didn't matter what the picture was, but you could put it in there and then it would give you all of these spectrums. So it would tell you like, it's a male. with a beard and he's smiling.
Dan Vance: So it gave you the emotion, how they looked, sex, right? It told you all of that. If they were standing in front of a car, it would tell you the brand of the car, the brand of the tires. If there was a logo in the back, it would identify a business logo. So it picks up all of that and that's just one little picture, right?
Dan Vance: It's got all the information in there. Well, now with AI, um, you can ask yourself, like, I want a picture, just ask yourself, like, if my website on my homepage is transactional, like I want to help people make a decision quickly. 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. 
Dan Vance: What kind of image really helps people do that? And now you can take and take an image either off your phone or you can copy and paste one into AI.
Dan Vance: And you can ask AI, tell me about this picture. What are aspects about this picture? And it'll give you all of that breakdown for you. And then you can start tying it off. You can say, okay, I'm thinking about adding this to my website. My goal is to make it transactional. I want people to make quicker decisions.
Dan Vance: I want them to understand the value of a loaner vehicle. As an example, and it will help you make decisions about that. You can change the pictures till you find the right picture. And then when you put it on your website, the search engine will read that image and know exactly what it is and what its purpose is.
Dan Vance: Because you did the pre work using AI. Now this is something we couldn't do five years ago. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. Probably even two years ago, Dan, this wasn't a 
Dan Vance: thing. Because AI is not even two years old yet. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. 
Dan Vance: So, this is, we're definitely moving to a place where search engines, we're already seeing that. Now, you do a search for whatever, and you're going to see more images on that search results than we've ever seen.
Dan Vance: And this is why, is because Google understands what's in that image, and what the story is telling them. And they know. That image matches up with the query that we put in there for local service. Okay, I um We did a test yesterday. We had a shop that's got a bunch of pictures on their google business profile And then I went over to did a search in images for their zip code And none of the images in their Google business profile actually shows up in the search engine results.
Dan Vance: Why is that? Well, because then they're they're not, um, they don't speak to authority or trust or experience or relevance, right? There's no relevance there. So if I do a search for auto repair in your zip code and I look at the pictures and I don't see your pictures there, that means you don't have pictures on your website or in your Google business listing that represent a tie in to that key search.
Dan Vance: So if I want to rank higher, And I understand that Google's moving to more image related technology. That's a place where I can play around with AI and find images that work better and stick those suckers on my Google business profile and start testing it and seeing if they show up in search, and they do pretty quickly.
Jimmy Lea: But okay wait. Now, so if I'm searching for images and I grab these images, These are images that I don't own. I don't have the licensing for. No, I'm just 
Dan Vance: saying, like, for you to discover and learn, like, Okay, this is how it sees it. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So I see what Google wants to see and then I recreate that in my shop and I take that picture.
Dan Vance: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: And I put that on my Google business profile. Yes. And okay. I follow you now. I follow you now. And 
Dan Vance: I'm glad you asked me to clarify that because this is so amazing and it moves so quickly and sometimes our minds are racing to trying to like figure out like, how do I put all those pieces together?
Jimmy Lea: Yes. 
Dan Vance: And 
Jimmy Lea: so on my Google business profile, how many pictures should I have? 
Dan Vance: Well, I think the better question is like, what do I really want people to know about me and my business? That's going to help them with transactional decisions, like call me or schedule an appointment. So I'm going to have images around oil service and brake repair and engine and check engine light.
Dan Vance: I'm going to have my signage and my storefront so people know what it looks like when they drive up or when they walk into my office. Is there, I don't know if people have sitters or not, but just, I want all of that experience there. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, waiters sitting in the lobby. Okay. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and I've always said, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe we need to ask AI this question.
Jimmy Lea: I've always said, don't ever put any pictures up of your shop where the parking lot is empty because it shows you have no business. You have, you're nobody, you're not working on cars. Nobody's visiting you. So always, if you have to stage it with cars, have everybody come on a Saturday and you just park their cars there.
Jimmy Lea: But I also have seen, and I have seen this, I used to tell shops, Post up those things that are funny, unique, interesting. Well, then the shop gets flooded with all this unique, one off, crazy, Oh my gosh, I've got to do this Roadrunner repair on this car. But that's not what the, that's not the bread and butter.
Jimmy Lea: So now I'm telling shops, Okay, find out your most profitable vehicle. Yes. If it's the Ford F 150, all of your pictures need to have a Ford F 150 in the picture on your Google business profile. Yes. 
Dan Vance: And your instincts are right. And it's definitely supported by AI giving us feedback about what the search engines are really looking for.
Dan Vance: Okay. But you can also hammer out searches and see what the search engines are providing as a result that reinforces that as well. And we are, I know Jimmy and you've seen this too, like I will look at Google business profile and I'll see images where there's an engine on the floor. And I think that's the worst kind of picture to have in there.
Jimmy Lea: And me personally, I agree with you as well. I think as a technician, you would kind of geek out about that. Yes. Because you could look at it and identify and say, Oh, that's a 5. 0 V8. Yes. Coyote Ford engine right out of that F one 50. I can, I know exactly. In fact, I know what's wrong with that engine.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Yeah. Technicians do and shop owners do. They do all the time. And it blows my mind that they're able to look and say, Oh, I could tell you exactly what's wrong as a consumer, as the public. I don't want to see the guts of my car all over. Yeah. That doesn't mean 
Dan Vance: they have to take my engine out to fix it.
Dan Vance: That's a question they'll ask. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, so it doesn't breathe confidence. I want to see cars that are running well, that are in good condition and people are smiling and happy about it. Okay, I can, you can take tires off and show me things that way. I'm good with that. But man, when it looks like the guts have been spilt.
Dan Vance: Yes. And people that are having, that are in this call, maybe they're doubting whether this is true or not. Take your image. 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. 
Dan Vance: Put it into AI and prompt the AI and just say, this is an image about my business where we do auto repair. Tell me what people would see by looking at this image. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Alan, Rudy, Jordan, Brian, Janice, Emily.
Jimmy Lea: Who's brave enough? Will you take one of your pictures, post it into a chat, and see what the algorithm would return to you as an idea? Now, I have another question for you about AI and using, what about using AI images on your website? 
Dan Vance: So, Good, 
Jimmy Lea: bad, ugly, what? 
Dan Vance: I think you have to do two things. One is you have to have a, some kind of like disclose your statement that this image was produced by AI technology 
Jimmy Lea: and 
Dan Vance: on the website for the user to see that.
Dan Vance: Um, I, um, the other thing I would say is that the images that I'm producing with AI are fun and they're great for my class presentations, but I'm not sure I want to use any of those on my website or in my Google business profile. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. Yet. The dog with six toes and three elbows is kind of hilarious.
Dan Vance: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And Jason says he doesn't recommend using AI images. 
Dan Vance: I don't think it's going to be like that forever because they're getting much, much better. 
Jimmy Lea: Because that AI image is custom. It's unique. Nobody else has that image. Now, I don't know what a shop owner could show about their shop that would use AI to create that image to make it unique.
Jimmy Lea: I really don't see that being a thing. 
Dan Vance: Not right now. But because we're going to images, it's going to be a bigger piece. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 
Dan Vance: and, um, but I think in anything we have to keep in mind, at least for the moment, because as things change, then we'll probably change this to kind of adjust with that. But right now you want images that help search engine understand better why you're different and how you meet that criteria, but you also want to provide a great experience for the user who's got some kind of a transactional intent.
Dan Vance: So how do I help them make a decision quicker? Yeah. By communicating to them. Oh, they do oil. They're close by. They got great reviews. I'm calling. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Those reviews are the word of mouth marketing. That is your best whispered secret. If you've got Wasn't 
Dan Vance: helpful. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just like who, who was it said 1, 400 reviews.
Jimmy Lea: Rudy has 1, 400 reviews, 4. 7. So there's probably over a thousand people saying this is a five star shop. Dan, you should go there. 
Dan Vance: Yes. And that social proof is a big motivator in terms of how we make decisions. Yeah. Because we don't like to make decisions isolated and the social proof and psychology and all that, but.
Dan Vance: How many of you go to dinner and you always ask the waiter, like, what gets ordered the most? 
Jimmy Lea: That's the only way. I don't even read menus anymore, Dan. I don't! I don't read menus. I ask them, I say, what do you like? What's good here? 
Dan Vance: Yeah. What's your favorite? 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and I do that because I know that they know what's good.
Jimmy Lea: I know that they know what's popular. I know that they know, they're not going to steer me wrong. 
Dan Vance: And you're describing the power of what a review does. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Dan Vance: Right? That guy has no interest whether I do business there or not. He's just telling me from his perspective of this is what my experience was like.
Dan Vance: It's exactly like you're describing. Oh yeah. It's so powerful. 
Jimmy Lea: I was in a sushi restaurant and I asked the waiter, I said what's good here? I love sushi. 
Dan Vance: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: What's good? What do you like? Oh I don't like sushi. I don't like raw fish. Okay. Can you have the chef come out please? Cause I don't want to talk to you.
Jimmy Lea: And they did it and we had phenomenal dinner, phenomenal sushi. It was amazing. So, getting those recommendations goes a long way. And that's exactly what you're talking about with this EAT is making sure that you have that trust, 
Dan Vance: that 
Jimmy Lea: you are the authority, that you have the expertise. Oh, I love it.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. Okay. What else? 
Dan Vance: Well, I think another thing is like when I roll into Q3 and Q4, like we know we're pushing the end of the year. We want to make sales. We want to reach our numbers. Like, how do we keep summer momentum going? And there's always. There's always a natural incline and search for certain types of things, like in Utah winters, we're going to see more searches for tires and coolant, my heater's not working right windshield wipers, you know, just stuff along those lines.
Dan Vance: Yeah. In other places, they're still doing AC all the time. 
Jimmy Lea: St. George. We're 106. 106 
Dan Vance: degrees.
Dan Vance: That's hot. That's hot. Way hot. So I think you can say, look, this is, and you could do this with AI. You could go into AI and you could say, you're a marketer and I'm looking for some marketing ideas for Q3 and Q4 in this zip code and hit enter. Can you 
Jimmy Lea: hit a couple of zip codes at the same time, Dan?
Jimmy Lea: Totally. Okay. So if I'm in St. George, I've got 8, 9, 8, 4, 8, 0. I could hit all three of those at the same time. Okay. I 
Dan Vance: would definitely do that. And then we'll come back and it'll give you ideas like these are trends we see in Q3. And some of them you're going to be like, Oh, that's obvious. That's obvious.
Dan Vance: And then you're going to, Whoa, hit the brakes. I got something here and it's probably going to be something that other people are doing. And then you can go to the next level and you can say to AI, help me write some kind of promotional thing to put on my website that tells people we're doing this service and it'll describe to you how to do that.
Dan Vance: It'll give you all the pieces. Some of that you can do, or some of that you can be asking your agency. Are you doing this for us? That's something you're looking at, right? 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. 
Dan Vance: Yes. I 
Jimmy Lea: love that. 
Dan Vance: I can, I know as an agency, like the more I use AI, the more I'm just like, I cannot believe how powerful this thing is and the ideas that you get from it and when your mind gets growing and you're brainstorming essentially with something like this, you start thinking about things more creatively and you get other ideas.
Dan Vance: And that little edge is what you need to be competitive in Q3 and Q4. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, and we're in the middle of Q3. Yeah. Well, no, we're at the end of Q3. 
Dan Vance: No, we're just starting Q3. 
Jimmy Lea: Three, three started in July. 
Dan Vance: No, June, our first quarter is January through March. Second quarter is through July. Oh, yeah. So August, man, we're marketers.
Jimmy Lea: Welcome. Welcome to the end of Q3, Dan. Glad to have you with us. So here we are at the end of Q3. So the question is for us to ask Everybody's laughing, by the way. I don't know if you saw those. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. Emotions are coming through. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay, so here we are. Oh, this is so much fun.
Jimmy Lea: This is too much fun. Gather yourself. Okay, so here we are at the end of Q3. We should be asking questions now for Q4 for my zip codes. And that's where the marketing wants to go. Cause we got to plan ahead. If you're slow today, what you do today is not going to help you tomorrow, even this week, or you might possibly next week, but really the marketing you're doing today is going to help you next month.
Jimmy Lea: So what you're doing today is preparing yourself for Q4, which starts. October 1st. 
Dan Vance: Yes, 
Jimmy Lea: Dan. October 1st. 
Dan Vance: So I would also, and that's a heartbeat away buddy. . Oh man. I'm not gonna look at October 31st. First. First. Okay. First. Okay, so why don't I do something for Q1 along the same lines, right? So repair. Now I can take information outta my CRM and I can scrape the data out so it's clean and safe.
Dan Vance: And then I can put that into AI and I can say, what type of typical orders do I get in January through March? And you can start drafting marketing around those because you know, people are coming in for those services. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. That's phenomenal. Um, question for you, Dan, is there any difference between the free chat GPT and the paid chat GPT?
Jimmy Lea: Do you notice any differences? 
Dan Vance: Yes. Yeah. Um, 
Jimmy Lea: so do you highly recommend the paid? 
Dan Vance: Yes, I use the paid and I don't know what you get with the free, 'cause I use the paid. So when I'm describing like, yeah, I dropped this thing in there, or I do this or I do that, it's all that experience through the paid version.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. So here's the difference I've seen Dan and I, maybe I can articulate this to help you, that the free one gives you free. Basically free advice and it won't do the heavy analysis, the paid. And what's the paid? Was it like 20 bucks, 25, 25 a month. 
Dan Vance: It's 
Jimmy Lea: really not that heavy of a lift. And, but it does do some really good heavy analysis, data analysis, market research, website research, internet search.
Jimmy Lea: So when we're doing this type of stuff that we're talking about, Dan, it's, we're definitely recommending the paid chat GPT. Because it gives, You know that movie, 
Dan Vance: The, I think it's called the right stuff. It's where they go out to the moon and they're coming back and they have problems if their oxygen thing isn't working.
Dan Vance: What's that movie called? 
Jimmy Lea: Well, it's Apollo 13. 
Dan Vance: Yes. Okay, so, right in the movie where they have all the engineers that come into the room and they pour all the stuff out on the table and they say, this is everything that's in the spaceship and we need it to fit this. But here's what we have. And so then they all dig in and they start taking that and they come up with something.
Dan Vance: And that's the way AI works. 
Jimmy Lea: It's 
Dan Vance: like, this is what I need. And then you rely on the power of that machine learning to crush all of that data into some meaningful insights. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Dan Vance: And it gives you the thing that works. It'll fit. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. 
Dan Vance: 20 a month or 250 a year to me like is a pennies for the value you get out of that computing power.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. This is a great comment. This has come in from Jordan. I've trained ChatGPT to reply to Google reviews as well. It's a huge time saver. Love it. Hate it. 
Dan Vance: I love that idea. Recommendations. And kudos to you for digging in and doing some stuff with it. Yeah. Now, I will tell you that as far as we know, Google doesn't really use review responses of ranking signals, but they do look at it as a way of you engaging with your customers.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. Okay, keep going. 
Dan Vance: So, you definitely want to do it, and it's okay to use AI, you're not going to get penalized from the search engine, because it's a little touchy when I take AI generated content and I plug it into search engines. They are really touchy. That's why we have this whole eat thing is because they're very sensitive to kind of like human real communicated.
Dan Vance: Experiences that you can put out there. So I would not, um, I just would, I would just say to you like that's a really good thing to do and to continue to do that, but don't have an expectation that's going to change your ranking. 
Jimmy Lea: Correct, because there's what Google says and then there's what Google does, because they even say that the reviews don't have any, that they don't, the reviews aren't searchable, those keywords, they say that they're not, but then when I do a search for BMW expert, Google might throw up a review that says, here's somebody that had a good experience at this shop, you might want to check them out.
Dan Vance: Totally. Yeah. And they, there's no question. They look at a review from me about a shop and they'll pull information out of that. And they call those attributes or they call them sentiment, which is where we started. Yeah. And they're definitely doing that. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So the 
Dan Vance: companies, I'm sorry, there's some review companies that you can use that if I come to your website from search engine, I did a search for brake repair and I land on your homepage.
Dan Vance: It will automatically display a review about break repair, because it can identify the source of the search query. It's a real thing, and it happens. Birdseye does it. There's a couple other places. Now, our industry, our review companies that build these tools, they're This is something I'm sure they're working on behind the curtains because this is a big deal like if I'm doing a search for BMW repair, don't I want to see BMW review the first thing I see when I land on that website?
Dan Vance: Totally do. Because it's transactional, it helps me make a decision faster. 
Jimmy Lea: I love it. That's all 
Dan Vance: AI generated stuff. That's the power 
Jimmy Lea: of AI. Okay, so you have seen Geppetto, you have seen the Wizard of Oz, you know where the strings are, and you're helping us to be able to pull those strings as well. Yeah. I love that.
Dan Vance: Yeah, 
Jimmy Lea: this is taking this. I hope everybody 
Dan Vance: realizes to like, from my perspective, like I give you stuff that maybe the others don't. But I do that because I see this as a team effort. Like if you understand what I can do, you can understand better what you can do. And together we do amazing things. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, so true.
Jimmy Lea: It has 
Dan Vance: to be that way. 
Jimmy Lea: It has to be. I think I'm going to give dad credit for this one. My dad would say. I don't know what you don't, I don't know what you know, and I don't know what you know, but I know together we know more collectively than I do individually. So as a team, let's come together. Let's elevate the industry.
Jimmy Lea: And I love that you're giving this information freely to those of us who are listening. Some will do something with the information. Some won't, some will, some won't. So what? Who's next? Those that are going to do stuff with this. There is even more that Dan could help you to do with your shop and your website.
Jimmy Lea: If you were interested, and some aren't. 
Dan Vance: Well, we want to help you grow as much as anybody else does, but I want you to know, like, there's stuff that we're doing that is just really changing the whole landscape about how we have insights, how we use this data, how we understand the search engines do things differently.
Dan Vance: Um, and a lot of things have changed over time. Like, it used to be, and you would know this, Jimmy, like, you want backlinks, you want right blogs, so you get backlinks to your website. But somebody released a bunch of information from Google. And what we found out in that private data was is that Google will measure engagement.
Dan Vance: Did I come through that backlink and did I do something? Was it helpful? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Dan Vance: And I don't care if that backlink was from the New York Times. If I did not do anything, they will downgrade that backlink. In other words, they'll take the value out of it. It's not the same value. So I can have a backlink from.
Dan Vance: the Chamber of Commerce that's not as strong as the New York Times, but it creates engagement on my website and it helps me write better. 
Jimmy Lea: Better than New York Times does. 
Dan Vance: So there's stuff that we know that we didn't know before, and AI is helping us write better stuff to compete on that. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, man. I love it.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. 
Dan Vance: It's exciting. I think this is about the best time ever to be in digital marketing. The ground feels like it's finally stabilized a little bit because so long. It's just been like what the search engine knows and what the rest of us are guessing. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, 
Dan Vance: they know. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Dan Vance: But now with AI. The mystery is coming out a little bit, like where the curtains being pulled back and we're going to say like, oh, okay, we see how this works.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And be careful, Dan. Cause as soon as you think, you know, what's going on, the rules are going to change, of course, you already know that. Oh, that's awesome. So how do people get in touch with you, Dan? How can we send our shops and our shop owners and those who are interested in learning more about their websites and their local search and their.
Jimmy Lea: algorithms. How can we get people in touch with you? 
Dan Vance: Well, you definitely can reach me through the institute. They know how to reach me, but you can also reach out to me directly. My email is dan and the, and it's the advanced local. com is my preferred email still. So that's what you want to send it to.
Dan Vance: We operate in the auto industry as shopdog marketing, but my email to reach me is dan at advanced. local. com and send me an email. There's no expectations other than how can I help you? I'd love to help you. I want to be a helper in the industry. My role is to give back to the industry and let's see if we can give you a little lift.
Jimmy Lea: Come to 
Dan Vance: my classes. I'm going to be at AST and I'm doing a class on AI and I've just given you like a little glimpse of some of the amazing things we're going to talk about in there. Um, and also we're going to be at Apex in Las Vegas. So come by and see us there. Are you down by Joe's garage? Yeah.
Dan Vance: Joe's garage. Yeah. So, we'd love to meet you if we haven't already. 
Jimmy Lea: Definitely come by. We will see you at the A STA Expo. Yes. We'll see you at Apex in Las Vegas. Yes. And more Good 
Dan Vance: times 
Jimmy Lea: and more. Thank you very much. Thank you to everybody who is online, who's here with us. There's so much more we could still unpack.
Jimmy Lea: Dan, we've definitely gotta get on the books here for our next webinar. Yeah. Everyone is shouting out the thank yous and they'll see you at a STA Expo. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Emily. Jason Jordan. Thanks guys. 
Dan Vance: Thank you, 
Jimmy Lea: Dan. Thank you very much. All right. We'll see you guys. See you again soon.
Dan Vance: Bye.

103 - Succession, Success, Now What?! Featuring Tracy Holt, Owner of Performance Place in South Jordan, UT

103 - Succession, Success, Now What?! Featuring Tracy Holt, Owner of Performance Place in South Jordan, UT
August 28th, 2024 - 00:58:18
 
Show Summary:
Join us for the discussion on two key elements of a successful automotive shop: fostering a supportive, family-like work culture and preparing your business for long-term success across generations. In this webinar, you'll gain actionable tips on creating a positive work environment that keeps your team engaged, while ensuring your shop’s legacy continues for years to come.
About Performance Place: Performance Place has been a staple in South Jordan since 1974, starting as a small 3-bay shop and growing into a 14-bay, 10,000 sq. ft. facility. Now run by Kent Holt’s sons, Tracy and Byran Holt, the business continues to thrive while maintaining its strong family values.
Key Topics Covered:
1. The History of Performance Place:
The evolution of Performance Place and lessons learned along the way.
How Tracy Holt took over the shop from his father while staying true to core values.
Adapting to growth while honoring the past.
2. Creating a Family Atmosphere:
How to promote open communication and mutual respect within your team.
Building strong bonds that keep your team motivated and engaged.
Supporting ongoing learning and personal growth.
3. Building a Legacy: Lessons from Multi-Generational Shops:
Preparing the next generation for leadership roles.
High-commitment to employees leads to high retention and long-term success.
The role of continuous evolution in creating a lasting legacy.
At The Institute, we help shop owners build thriving businesses with a culture that supports both their team and long-term goals. Regardless of where you are in your automotive journey, whether you're just starting your first shop or you're a MSO, we have something for your shop! Please reach out!
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Tracy Holt, Performance Place
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:22] - Tracy shares that the shop is celebrating 50 years in business since his father opened it in 1974.
[00:02:54] - The original shop began on half an acre and expanded over time as the city grew around it.
[00:05:21] - Tracy now operates 14 bays and is planning to expand further to support more staff.
[00:07:39] - Tracy recounts growing up in the shop, working his way from sweeping floors to running the business.
[00:09:24] - The transition from father to son was slow, emotional, and full of learning opportunities.
[00:10:41] - Tracy wants to make the next succession plan easier for his son, should he choose to stay in the business.
[00:20:00] - A pivotal moment in planning came after Tracy’s son’s accident, which emphasized the need for long-term security.
[00:26:21] - Tracy joined The Institute, embraced coaching, and saw measurable improvements by implementing pricing strategies.
[00:36:22] - The shop improved from a 5–6% net profit to 21% by refining the parts matrix and labor structure.
[00:55:48] - With the business thriving, Tracy is considering a second location or major expansion for the future.
 
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.
 
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Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. It is a good day, no matter where you're joining us from. Today is a good day. We are talking today about succession plans, succession planning, the success of the plan, and then, and then what?
Jimmy Lea: So now that you've done that, what's next? What do you do? My name is Jimmy Lee. I will be your host today. You've got questions. We've got the answers. Type them into the Q and a and we'll ask Tracy. Who is our guest Tracy, your questions, Tracy joins us from a performance place in South Jordan, Utah. Tracy.
Jimmy Lea: Good to have you on this morning. Good morning. 
Tracy Holt: Good morning. It's great to be here. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And, you know, for us, it's morning, but for Andrew, it's afternoon. Andrew's joining us and, uh, it's probably already after lunch for Andrew. So good afternoon, Andrew Tracy. Uh, thanks for being here, man. I really appreciate it.
Jimmy Lea: I've seen your shop. It's amazing. It's definitely grown over the years. Um, and, and I'd love to start by going back in the way back machine to when pops started the shop when dad started the shop, but 1970 or so? 
Tracy Holt: '74. 
Jimmy Lea: '74. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. So this, this year marks 50 years in business for us. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, yes. And that's easy math for me.
Jimmy Lea: I was born in 74. So yeah, 50 years. That's a long time, dude. Okay. When, when, when dad started the shop back in the day, what was it that you guys were working on? What was pops working on? 
Tracy Holt: Well, you know, back in South Jordan, the early days in 74. I mean, there was a lot of farm equipment. Um, he had opened a small You know, it was actually a, a six bay shop to begin with, um, right on Redwood Road, the main drag through South Jordan.
Tracy Holt: Um, but he started out pretty much working on anything from cars to trucks to tractors to Whatever I think he could, uh, you know, to help get the business going. So, 
Jimmy Lea: yeah. And, and, and he built the building, right? You have, uh, like three and a half acres there or five acres or 10 acres, or I mean, you've got a lot of land.
Tracy Holt: Yeah. We've got like, uh, almost three acres now, but when he started, um, he was on a half an acre, um, the building took up most of that, um, It's funny, my, my grandma owned the land and basically helped my dad get started way back then. Um, helped her, helped him build the shop. And then through the years as pieces of property.
Tracy Holt: Around us became a, you know, available it, uh, you know, we purchased them over the years piece by piece, you know, and now we're right in downtown South Jordan, and, you know, the, everything is literally just grown up around us. I mean, when we started out, there was a little two lane road up and down in front of the shop and now it's, you know, it's a major metropolitan area now.
Jimmy Lea: Well, yeah, aren't you like a six lane road out there in front of you? 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. Yeah. We, in the beginning, we had actually parking in front of the shop between that and Redwood Road. And now they've expanded Redwood Road where it's six lanes. And I mean, our building's 10 feet off the road. It's, you know, they'd never let us do that today, but you know, we were kind of there before everything else started.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I was trying to remember, it felt like the sidewalk was right up against the building. 
Tracy Holt: It is, the sidewalk is literally three feet from the building, you know, but. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's so close. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah, you know, and people are like, how did it be so, you know, end up so close? And I said, well, the road used to be, you know, you know, 30 or 40 feet out from where it is now.
Tracy Holt: And it was just two lanes. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, so when Pops started it was all ag and uh, didn't he have like four or six bays or something like that? 
Tracy Holt: Yeah, he had the first initial part of the shop which we're still operating out of, um, six bays. Um, you know, there was enough driveway around it for circle around, not much parking at all.
Tracy Holt: You know, and I'm thankful, you know, as of today that, you know, as stuff popped up around us for sale, he was able to purchase that. You know, um, there's a lot of demand for the land where we're at. So, you know, going forward, you know, we're in a, we're in a great spot. I mean, we've got loyal customers and, you know, there's literally the, the community has grown around us.
Tracy Holt: We, we actually, in the city of South Jordan, we're one of the two oldest still operating businesses that have been going on for this long. 
Jimmy Lea: Wow. Yeah, that is, that's super cool. That's some longevity there. Pops really set up a legacy for you guys. And he also built on the building a couple of times to where now, aren't you like 14 or 20 different bays that you've got available?
Tracy Holt: Yeah, so we've got 14 workable bays right now. Um, there was an addition and an addition and then, uh, just an addition on an addition. Um, yeah, we've got 14 workable bays right now. Um, and actually, we're in, right now, in the design stages of either adding on a new waiting room and possibly, Some more workable bays out of the shop.
Tracy Holt: Um, one of our big Issues right now is our waiting room is still the same waiting room that we started back in the original shop and so now We've got to come up with a plan to get some more service advisors in there to help support More technicians because luckily we have the shop size to support more technicians, but we need to develop More workspace for the front office to support them.
Jimmy Lea: Right. For sure. For sure. And, and I want to paint a picture here for everybody that's listening and watching this. The service advisors are in a hallway. This hallway has been converted into their office, which used to be the parts. Closet, right? 
Tracy Holt: It was. Yeah, it is. As far as having a shop layout for service advisors.
Tracy Holt: Um, it's, it's not ideal, you know, but you think when he started, my dad was fixing the cars, you know, greeting the people at the front counter, you know, back then they didn't even know what a service advisor was. Um, in the beginning, I think there was one or two chairs in a little corner for somebody that was waiting and you know, now the industry's grown, you know, grown into this where you have a support staff in the front office that supports the rear and back and forth.
Tracy Holt: Yeah. And we've just had to adapt and we finally just got to the point where we've outgrown physically what we can do in the front office. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I love it. I love your shop. I love the opportunity. I love the expansion Possibilities that are there for you guys. It's super awesome. Super awesome So question for you as you're going through life, you know here here you you step in and you you start shoot, man You must have been like two year old pushing a broom.
Jimmy Lea: You must have learned to walk in the shop Like you grew up in the shop you bleed 1030 
Tracy Holt: I do. I, I literally, it's the only job I have ever had. Um, I remember being a young kid, empty in the garbage, pushing the shop, you know, pushing brooms. And, you know, all I wanted was my dad to give me the opportunity to pull a tire off or use some kind of a tool as a little kid.
Tracy Holt: You know, and I worked there all. My teenage years up through, you know, where I was a full time technician out in the shop for years and years and then obviously transitioned into the front office, you know, as, as things went on and we grew, but yeah, it's, you know, it's funny. I, we've been in business, um, 50 years and, you know, I was three years old when the shop was opened.
Tracy Holt: So I guess I've been employed more or less. I probably should just retire. You would think by now, I mean, I've put my 50 years in. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. After 50 years, you should get a gold watch or something or a plaque on the wall. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: So that progress that you've made through the shop. That's what I want to talk about here for a second, because there's a lot of shops that I go to all over here in North America where it's family.
Jimmy Lea: It's all family. And, uh, the son is out in the shop, they work up through, uh, in the shop, they, they, they've have the scars, they've done the work. Then they come up into the front office, they learn the business of it. At what point with your pops, did you take that active role that he became? semi retired.
Jimmy Lea: Can I say that? What did that look like for you and your pops? 
Tracy Holt: Well, it, it was a long time coming. I mean, and, and it was a slow transition and a lot of discussions. Um, you know, he'd been doing this full time for many years and he was getting burned out on it. 
Tracy Holt: Um, 
Tracy Holt: so I've been, Honestly, up in the office for the last 20 years.
Tracy Holt: Um, and when I say in the office, I was a number of years still fixing cars, assigning the work and kind of running everything day to day. Um, You know, obviously with dad's support and then my brother was there too. And my sister, um, but it, it was, it was an interesting process to end up where we are today, and I look at that.
Tracy Holt: You know, cause I've got kids that are in the shop. I've had all my daughters have worked for me during college. Um, my youngest son is 19. He's out a GS in the shop right now. And, you know, and if he chooses to pursue this long term, um, hopefully I can make it a little easier on him than maybe I had it in that transition going forward.
Tracy Holt: You know, I had to learn a lot and I know that my dad stuck me in places where I needed to learn. Um, but, you know, there was a lot of uncertainty, you know, of how this was all going to play out in the end, and it's taken us a long time to get us to get to this point. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, for sure. And there's a lot of Rockefeller family dynamic there where he's putting you where you need to learn.
Jimmy Lea: Like everybody in the Rockefeller starts in the mailroom and then they work their way up into the business. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: Sounds like pops did the same for you. And the beauty of what you just said that I'm hearing is you experienced it. So hopefully when you do this transition with your son or your succession plan, because you went through it, you're going to make that work better for.
Jimmy Lea: Whoever's going to take over when you're ready to transition as well. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah, I think the big thing is, is I, I just want whatever the next step is or the next generation is, you know, whether it's family or somebody else, you know, more of a clear cut plan of how. It needs to be laid out and, and, you know, and we had, dad would talk oftentimes, you know, when he was having a really bad day, he would be prepared to turn it all over to me and walk away.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: I'd be like 10 
Jimmy Lea: bucks and here's the keys. I'm done. 
Tracy Holt: Exactly. And then the next day, nothing would change, you know? And so, you know, and as. As things went on and on, I mean, the hard part for dad was that he, this is his baby, you know, this is all he's done. He's had so much, you know, blood, sweat and tears into it.
Tracy Holt: It was hard for him to realize that he didn't need to be here on a daily basis. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. You know, you've got that same dynamic that it has been all you've done. It is your baby. Yeah. I think you've got a different perspective in that it's not, it's not everything. But it's a lot. 
Tracy Holt: It is. 
Jimmy Lea: And you've got family working there now.
Jimmy Lea: I met your sister. Your sister's there working with you. How does, how do you work with your sister and not kill her? How does she work with you and not kill you? Well, How is it that you're still on this side of the bars? 
Tracy Holt: Let's put it this way. When we go on family vacations, we go our separate ways. Um, yeah, my sister, she runs all the accounting side, the bookkeeping side, the back office.
Tracy Holt: Um, she's awesome. And I mean, she can honestly step in and service, right? She can help people at the counter. She can order parts. I mean, she can literally do anything. Um, but her main focus at this point is keeping track of the numbers and making sure everything's taken care of. Um, my brother is also a service writer and he's been there a long time also.
Tracy Holt: Um, you know, and it's been. 
Jimmy Lea: Who's your brother? 
Tracy Holt: Byron. 
Jimmy Lea: Byron! Yes, yes, I met Byron. Okay. 
Tracy Holt: Yes, 
Tracy Holt: he was there. You know, and so it's, it's been a hard transition because there's times when you have to interact as family. And then there's times where you have to interact as employees and. You know, and it's really hard to separate that.
Tracy Holt: And I think that's probably, it hasn't been easy and we've had our battles, but somehow we've fought through and found some kind of a balance, whether it's a healthy balance, I don't know, but you know, we've all tried to put the best interest of the shop ahead of our own because, you know, the shop not only supports us.
Tracy Holt: You know, we've got all my employees, their families, you know, there's so much more to it that, you know, you have to put the, the, the welfare of the shop, kind of a head of, you know, personal feelings and things like that. And that is so hard to do. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, it is. It is. Uh, I, my, I tip my hat to you, brother, that that's, that's an awesome dynamic that you're able to work in that.
Jimmy Lea: Uh, I had an opportunity way back in the way back days to work with my dad in construction. And I just thought, you know what, I really need to keep this father son relationship, not the boss employee relationship. So I, uh, I chose to step away and I know it kind of broke my dad's heart that I did that.
Jimmy Lea: But I, it's, it's one of the things you have to really weigh out and the fact that you're able to do it with your daughters and with your son. Bro, congratulations. That's it. 
Tracy Holt: And I  think every personality type is going to play into that. I've got a daughter that worked for me all through college. And then she refers to it as her adult job and you know, that she got after college, you know, they work for me when they need flexible schedule and, and things like that.
Tracy Holt: And, and she, it's funny, you know, I, and she is just. My wife refers her to the female version of me. 
Tracy Holt: I mean, she's a go getter and on top of things. I mean, yeah, you know in the beginning i'm like man She could run this place easily and One day she we were talking about you know What she was going to do now that she'd graduated and leaving me and she says dad for our relationship It's best if I go work somewhere else because we're too much alike So, you know Um, yeah, and I, I'm, I'm, I've never forced my kids into the business.
Tracy Holt: They've all had an opportunity there, but at the end of the day, it's their decision to stay or go and I'm not going to hold it. You know, it doesn't matter to me. I just want them to be happy. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's super cool, man. Yeah, that is, that you have that relationship with them and yet they have that understanding, that dynamic, that's super cool.
Jimmy Lea: So that's, that's where the um, business is today, um, what about the future? Where does it, where, what, are you going to gobble up some more land? Are you going to move? I don't think you can move, dude. I don't know where you'd go. 
Tracy Holt: No, I think with our customer base, where we're at is where we need to be. Um, and, and honestly, if I was to look at starting over again, with the cost of property and where our customer base is, it would be really hard to go start somewhere else.
Tracy Holt: Um, you know, and I, I actually enjoy, you know, I've found a new joy in the business in the last few years. Um, you know, for a lot, a lot of times it was kind of a job that I was just, you know, it was paying the bills and this and that. And, and honestly, I was kind of burned out. Yeah. Um, you know, and after getting my dad to step away.
Tracy Holt: You know, here a few years ago, and 
Jimmy Lea: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. A few years ago? 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: wait, wait, wait. How many years ago? 
Tracy Holt: So, I purchased the, the bill the, the shop. I don't know what it's been. It's going on three, three or four years now. Outright from dad. 
Jimmy Lea: He really held on for a very, very long time. 
Tracy Holt: He did. Um, he, he, it was, it was hard for him to step away.
Tracy Holt: Yeah. Um, you know, but the shop was also expanding and kind of turned into this thing that he realized he couldn't control and. You know, I was doing my best to kind of control the growth and what we needed, but he still kind of had the mentality of, I don't know, he had struggled so long in the shop that, you know, when it come time to talk about expansion and spending some money on equipment and this and that, you know, he, he didn't see the longterm picture of it. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. Right. 
Tracy Holt: You know, and finally it come down to some long conversations of, you know, dad, if you were to pass away and when you're gone and you don't have this drawn out of what you want to happen to the shop, it may destroy the shop because, you know, everybody's going to have their idea of what maybe dad thought or what dad wanted, you know, but once he's gone, who's going to be there to say one thing or another.
Tracy Holt: And so I said, you know, whether you. Do what you do with it, but make it happen now, you know, don't wait till, you know, it's forced and you have no say because you're not here. 
Jimmy Lea: Right? Don't wait until it's in probate. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: And, and, and then nobody has a voice. Now the, the, the, the court is telling you what's going to happen.
Jimmy Lea: That's not cool. So yeah, kudos to you for talking to your dad like that. And that was a 
Tracy Holt: hard conversation to be like, you know, we've got to make a decision. Good or bad, you know, and, and get the ball rolling now. And, and I mean, when these talks went on, honestly, for years and years and, you know, He's obviously getting older and, you know, I hope he's around for a long time, but you know, you, you start to see, man, we, we've got to get this taken care of because I mean, not only for the livelihood of my family, my brother's family and our family, my employees, you know, I've got, um, I think you maybe met, he's my parts manager at the shop, my son Brady that had been in a severe car accident.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah, big dude, tall, long hair. 
Tracy Holt: Yes, yes. 
Jimmy Lea: He's a 
Jimmy Lea: funny kid. 
Tracy Holt: He is, 
Tracy Holt: yeah. You know, his accident was about eight years ago and that kind of spurred this whole conversation of like, you know, I've got to be able to provide an opportunity for him. He's an adult, but he's had some, has some disabilities. And I had, you know, I have this awesome opportunity that I can give him a career.
Tracy Holt: Yeah. Something to go to. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. A purpose. 
Tracy Holt: He is a purpose. Yeah. So, you know, and, and I just thought to myself, if something happens to the shop, you know, not only all my employees and my family and that. But, you know, that kind of spurred the new me on, yeah, let's make this thing as accessible as we can and the longevity.
Tracy Holt: And so I've really worked hard, you know, the last five years getting it to a point. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and wait a second. So let's back up here because I'm, I'm hearing the conversation started eight years ago. Son was in the accident five years. So was, was this conversation with pops? Is this a five year conversation that's saying, Hey dad...
Tracy Holt: it's been going on for 10 years.
Tracy Holt: I mean, a long time, but really after his accident, um, you know, he was, he was in a hospital. He was in the hospital for more or less of a year. You know, our family went through a lot after that and it kind of makes you reevaluate, you know, what maybe your long term goals are or where you need to be looking, you know, and not to say that that's the whole reason, but that was a big part of me making a change of like, okay, I've got a, I've got a, you know, I've either got to make this work.
Tracy Holt: And work, whether I'm here or not, or it needs to go away and we got to figure out something else. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Or we got to find the next thing. What's the next thing? Yeah, exactly. Oh, brother. I, uh, congratulations. And, uh, what a blessing that your, your boy Brady is still around and still with us and that you've got an opportunity for him there at the shop.
Jimmy Lea: That's, that's super cool. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. And there's, there's been a lot of great things that have come from it. You know, it's, it's one of those. Life changing events that you, you wish you never have to go through, but then there's been so much good that's come from it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I know of a few on this webinar right now that are observing that are in that same situation where POPs is still holding on to the business, but needs to make the plan.
Jimmy Lea: And put that, that next succession into play. Is there any advice that you would give somebody today that's in that situation? How do they exclamation point this conversation to say, Hey pops, we really need to make this plan. 
Tracy Holt: You know, I, it was hard because there was a lot of discussions between me and dad.
Tracy Holt: And he, there was times where he would say, well, you just. Write up whatever you think and I'll agree to it. And I, I never. proposed anything like that to him. I said, no, dad, this needs to be something that comes from you. Um, and so it, it, it seemed like that drug on forever and ever because, you know, there's obviously a lot more family involved and, you know, and I, I just, I felt for what he was trying to do, but I had to give him the space to do it, but kind of, I had to get to the point where it was like, we need to do.
Tracy Holt: We had to have a hard discussion of like, you know, it got to the point where I'm like, Hey, we're going to make this happen and we're going to do it this year. We've got to the end of the year to make this happen. And honestly, it took better part of a year with a deadline and signed the papers in January 1st, I took over the company.
Tracy Holt: You know, um, but I don't think if we would have had that deadline of like him agreeing to it and it kind of forced him to make some decisions. Um, I don't know. It's, it's a hard thing. Cause I'm every situation is going to be different. Um, you know, at this point I'd invested so much time and effort and that into the company, there was days when I just wanted to walk away and be like, this is stupid.
Tracy Holt: I can go do something else. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Tracy Holt: But you know, it's also my baby, you know, the growth we've experienced and everything I've been through the lean times and the good times and all the cycles 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, uh, to, to that point, uh, I remember when you hooked up with the Institute and the conversations that you and I had initially, you're like, Hey, look, I, I'm not looking at car count.
Jimmy Lea: I'm not looking at marketing. I've got a good car count. I've got good this and good that I really am looking to fine tune what we're doing. So when, when I, I don't remember, uh, I think it was a seven or an 8 percent net that you had operated over the last three years, but you knew that there was a little bit more, there's just something else that you wanted to do.
Jimmy Lea: And the fine tuning is what you were looking for.
Tracy Holt: You know, in, in the beginning, um, I've, I've. Over the years, we've used a couple different coaching companies. Um, they've all been good. We've got something from every one of them. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. 
Tracy Holt: Um, part of the problem was, is dad would insert me into these coaching companies, but he still had control of everything. So I'd come back and be like, hey, we should do this. Or we should do this. And he, well, you know, I don't know. I don't know. 
Jimmy Lea: Drug his feet. Drug his feet. Drug his feet. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. And, and so after, you know, the company became mine, I started to look at the financials, um, from an owner's point of view, and we had money to pay the bills every month.
Tracy Holt: You know, there was times obviously when we would stagger what bills go out to what vendors throughout the month so that it would clear the bank, but there was always cash flow coming in. And I'm like, we're working too hard. To have to operate like this, we're doing something that's not right. Um, so I did, I honestly was looking and I can't even remember how I come across the Institute, but I remember thinking, Oh, they're in Ogden, Utah.
Tracy Holt: This will be great training. It's in state, you know, versus, and so I went on and I signed up to the program where you could watch all their videos online, um, Cecil's videos on, you know, The numbers and I, I honestly think I've watched every one of them multiple times before I ever contacted the Institute about coaching.
Tracy Holt: Um, after watching the videos, I started to tweak a few things, you know, on the parts matrix and this and that. And I'm just like, man, I'm tweaking these things and my numbers are starting to move in the right direction. And I'm like, man, what if we could get to this 20 percent that they talk about? You know, and I'm looking at ourselves and figuring 20 percent and I'm like, holy crap, why can't we do that?
Tracy Holt: And so then, you know, obviously I contacted the Institute and said, you know, I need some coaching. Um, the biggest difference was when I contacted the Institute was, I think I was ready for the coaching. I'd already committed that. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to do what they tell me, whether I think it's right or wrong.
Tracy Holt: I'm going to give it six months and. If I follow what they say was what I thought in my mind, and the numbers start to grow, I'm gonna swallow what my pride is, or what I think I know, and just trust the process. So I signed up. I, I ended up with Aaron as my coach. Um, those first couple months, I think if he could reach through the computer and strangled me, he would have, um, because he would say these things and I would agree and I'd be like, Oh, I don't know.
Tracy Holt: I just don't know. And, and so it took a long. You know, when I say a long time over the first few months of tweaking this and tweaking that and kind of like getting Letting me get out of the way of the process And letting people do what i'm paying them to do. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah 
Tracy Holt: You know the numbers started to move in in the appropriate direction 
Jimmy Lea: Nice.
Tracy Holt: You know. 
Jimmy Lea: So Tracy, how long has it been? When did you sign up? 
Tracy Holt: Um, I think it was June, 
Jimmy Lea: June of last year, 
Tracy Holt: last year. 
Jimmy Lea: So just over a year. 
Tracy Holt: Yes. Just over a year. 
Jimmy Lea: And shout out to your coach Aaron for not killing you. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: And then, uh, So you were with Aaron for quite a while. Um, and then you got into the group environment.
Jimmy Lea: How long were you with Aaron in that one on one coaching environment versus going into the group environment? 
Tracy Holt: So my first group meeting was last November. Um, I got invited as a guest and we went to Denver. And so I ended up going to Denver, you know, and he'd got, we'd got to the point where he's like, I think you could really benefit from the group process.
Tracy Holt: I went to Denver and you sit for, you know, a couple days and evaluate somebody's shop and you go over each other's numbers and I'm like, Oh my gosh, these guys have got it figured out, you know, and The accountability that was being held as the group was honestly, I come back and, and my, I'm telling my sister, I'm like, oh, well, you're gonna have to do this and change this and this.
Tracy Holt: And she, she probably wanted to kill me. I think.
Jimmy Lea: Probably. 
Tracy Holt: yeah, cause I'm like, we're revamping the entire accounting procedure and going to do that this way and this way. And, and, but you know what, after. Words and we've got everything dialed into where we truly understand the numbers and what it takes to be profitable The business isn't that hard once you get it to that point there's still struggles and there's You know, things you're always working on, but, you know, in the beginning, it was like, we've got so many broken pieces in the business.
Tracy Holt: Where do you even start? I mean, so we fixed the, you know, some labor matrix, we fixed a parts matrix. We fixed, you know, and, and I would hyper focus on one aspect until I got it moving in the right direction. And then I would go over here, um, you know, and so. After entering the group process, you know, I've been to two meetings now.
Tracy Holt: Um, there, we were in New York a couple months ago 
Jimmy Lea: With Tom, you went to Tom's place. 
Tracy Holt: Tom's actually my composite. He's my partner. So he's awesome too. Yeah. 
Jimmy Lea: Your  accountability partner. 
Tracy Holt: Yep. Yeah. So you end up with a partner that you look at each other's numbers and goals that you've have written out and you kind of have a, you know, meeting a couple of times a month.
Tracy Holt: And, you know, their job is to hold you accountable and your job is to hold them accountable. 
Jimmy Lea: So, I'm going to say some words here and you can correct me. And, uh, the words are, uh, uh, Has Tom been able to hold you accountable and call you out on your crap? 
Tracy Holt: Oh, absolutely. 
Jimmy Lea: Have you been able to hold Tom accountable and call him out on his crap?
Tracy Holt: You know, Tom's been in it a little longer than I have. So I think it's been more of a one way street towards me, but I do feel like the last couple of meetings we've had where I, I could look at his business now that and say, yeah, where do we need to work on? What are you working on? Um, You know, the first couple of meetings, I'm like, man, it was like another coaching session with Aaron, but with Tom, I'd be like, how do you, how do you do this, you know, and he, and all he kept saying, he says, you know, it's funny a year ago, I was in your shoes, um, where I just felt overwhelmed on.
Tracy Holt: Everything. And he kept saying, Tom keeps saying, you will get there. You will get there. And you know what? Every meeting we have, I feel like I'm getting a little closer. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. That's awesome. So you, you, you highly recommend the group. 
Tracy Holt: Absolutely. 
Jimmy Lea: You highly recommend that accountability partner. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. I didn't know what I was getting into because when I was researching the Institute, I'm like, man, this group process sounds awesome.
Tracy Holt: But, you know, in the beginning I wasn't ready for it. Um, you know, my numbers weren't where they should have been. If I would've got thrown in there from day one, I would have fizzled out because it's too much. 
Tracy Holt: Um, Aaron, we spend a lot of times working on the business to get it to the point to where, you know, you can enter the group process and kind of, you know, everybody's on different levels and, but you're all.
Tracy Holt: You know, kind of on the same level of wanting the same success. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, uh, the irony here is, uh, cause I'm re I'm remembering the conversations you and I had, you're like, Hey man, I got this. We, I just want to tweak a couple of things. You know, I just want to get in. I want to tweak a couple of things.
Jimmy Lea: I don't need to overhaul. It's not car count. I don't need to charge shop supplies. I'm already doing that kind of stuff. And here, now you get into the group environment and it just takes off to a whole nother level. So let's talk about the whole nother level. Judging by the numbers. Um, let's talk, can we talk net profit?
Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Can you share that? Cause you were at a 7/ 8%. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. When we took over, I mean, obviously our first year of me kind of running the business, I think we were at 6%, 5 or 6%. Okay. And you know, it didn't take long to look at those numbers and be like, well, that's why, you know, there's no money in the bank.
Tracy Holt: I mean, the money that's coming in is just going out and there's. You know, and since being in the group process and, and joining with the Institute, um, I think last month I was at 21 percent net profit. So. 
Jimmy Lea: Congratulations. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. And, and there's still, there's still more to work on. I know that, but it, it, it's pretty awesome.
Tracy Holt: Um, you know, and, and the difference. From a business owner of back when dad was there of like, you know, we'll send this bill out today and this one out next week. My sister just sends them. I, it pays them. I don't, you know, it just goes there. 
Jimmy Lea: It's do pay it. It's do pay it. It just pay it now. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. I mean, right before this meeting, I was talking with, we're going to buy a new alignment machine.
Tracy Holt: And I just said, yeah, let's just get it. And I just remember the Hunter guy talking to him. He says, well, you want a leash you want to buy? And I'm like, I don't know. We'll probably just write you a check for it. And I remember after I walked away from that, I'm like, man, that feels good to say that because.
Tracy Holt: Five years ago, I would have been like, well, we need it. But how are we going to do this? How are we going to do that? 
Jimmy Lea: Yep. How are we going to finance it? 
Tracy Holt: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: We, there, there were companies I used to work with way back in the day and she called it, what does she call it? Creative financing. Where I'm going to write this check, I'm going to float it to you.
Jimmy Lea: I know it's going to take a week to get to you in the mail. So hopefully in a week I have had this client pay me and that client pay me so that I can clear that check when it goes through the bank. Creative financing. 
Tracy Holt: And, and, you know, really getting the business where it's profitable. We're charging what we need to, um, you know, I've been able to increase the salaries of my front office.
Tracy Holt: I've been able to increase the salaries of my technicians. Um, do I think as an industry where we are at, where we're need to be to pay technicians? No, I think we're behind, but I, you know, I feel like we're on the right path. You know, if we charge appropriately, do a good job for the customer, you know, everybody can benefit from that.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that, that's, that's awesome. Congratulations. I'm, I'm sure that the air breathes different, the sky is bluer, the grass is greener when, when you're not in survival mode, everything changes. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. You know, and, and you get to a point of like the money side of the business. It's something I don't even worry about anymore.
Tracy Holt: I mean, I, you always worry about it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: But, you know, when you have your sales tax come out, when your payroll comes out, it just goes out. You don't, you don't stress about did that job get done and, you know, into the bank to, it just, you know, it, we can focus on other things than just cash flow because it seemed like for years and years, that's what the focus was.
Jimmy Lea: Right. Cash flow. Right. Right. For sure. For sure. And if I remember right, you've got some advisors in the advisor program with the Institute and a manager in the manager program or? 
Tracy Holt: Just the advisors 
Tracy Holt: right now. I have. Um, one of my technicians, um, had to transition due to health reasons out of the shop.
Tracy Holt: He's worked for me for over 20 years. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. 
Tracy Holt: And basically, due to back issues, the doctor said, You need to go find something else to do. That's tough. So, we transitioned him up into the office. Service writing and I stuck him in the advisor group. Um, it's been a big learning curve for him. Um, which has been great because we've been able to work with him, transition him on how we do things, but then he also meets with his, with his coach that gives him, I think, another perspective on how the business works from, you know, that position.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. 
Tracy Holt: You know, 
Tracy Holt: and some of those things are things that we've done for so long. We automatically think that everybody should know, but it's like, yeah, you learn those over a number of years, you know, where he's starting from day one and he's doing awesome. 
Jimmy Lea: And he's got 20 years of experience as a technician, turning a wrench in the bays.
Jimmy Lea: Now skillset, which takes time. But he'll get it, he'll get it, and he'll do it really well. And, you know, Tracy, we've got a, uh, service advisor intensive coming up October 8th through the 12th. You may want to send your advisor there to that five day intensive. Because it's more than just show up, divulge information.
Jimmy Lea: We want to know what their starting point is. Then during the training, we give them tests to see how well they're learning the information. And if they pass, they get a certification at the end. And then we follow up a month after and three months after to see how much of the information is sticking and how to see what their progress is, to see where they're going in that next level of.
Jimmy Lea: retention of the information. How much did they implement? 
Tracy Holt: I think it sounds like a great program. Um, you know, like anything else I've learned through the Institute. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: You know, you can talk about things, but you put things down on paper or in our group process, process, we call it an actionizer. Which are business goals, personal goals, short term, long term.
Tracy Holt: And, you know, that's one thing that you, you know, you just don't talk about it. You know, there's always a follow up on whatever was being taught or whatever to make sure you're doing what you're doing. Um, it sucks sometimes because there's times where you just don't get it done. You know, like a kid in his homework.
Tracy Holt: It's like, well, it's due tomorrow and I haven't done anything. Um, but, you know, the accountability is what I think makes the difference all the processes work.
Jimmy Lea: Cool, cool. That that's some great feedback. I appreciate that. That's very cool. If any of you have questions comments concerns questions for tracy put them into the q and a and we'll definitely address those because um, you know, there's there's a lot of People in this industry.
Jimmy Lea: There's a lot of different dynamics Uh, and I know that there's some people right now that are in that succession plan Cycle where they need to set the date, have the hard conversations to take those next steps because, you know, pops, what is it you want? To have happen? 
Tracy Holt: you know, and I think that was a big turning point where, as I just focused on dad and I'm like, what do you want?
Tracy Holt: You know, 
Tracy Holt: I take away what you think I want, what mom wants, what everybody, you know, what do you want to see happen to your business? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: You know, um, and part of that needs to be, you know, what, where do you want, where do you see it in 20 years from now? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. I love that you have that perspective. I love that you have that relationship with your dad, that you can have those hard conversations because.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, take everything away pops. It was just the business in you. What's the next phase? What's the next step? What do you want to have happen? 
Tracy Holt: And, and that it was, it was a long time to get to that point, you know, once we got to that point and we'd set a date, I kind of knew at that Point I needed to just focus on that and not let it go.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah 
Tracy Holt: We've agreed to this Whatever the terms were we agreed that it was going to transition this year or whatever it was And kind of had to work backwards from that point and You know, the terms of our decision and, and our, you know, it changed 20 times during that. 
Jimmy Lea: Easily, right? Every conversation, it changes.
Tracy Holt: Yeah. You, you would come up with an idea. How about this? And it sounds so good. And I'd wake up at three in the morning and go. 
Jimmy Lea: That's a terrible idea. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. You know, and so you have to, you have to give it enough time to kind of digest all that, try and look at it from every point of view. And, you know, there's not a perfect scenario, but you have to pick the best one.
Jimmy Lea: Right, right. Well, we got a question coming in here from Gary. Gary's question is what. is the one thing and, and, or biggest, his word is biggest. What is the biggest thing you changed in your business to go from 5 percent to 21%? 
Tracy Holt: I think, you know, and every business is different. Um, we're blessed with, we are exceptionally busy.
Tracy Holt: So I wasn't looking for cars, um, to fix. Um, I, we're weeks out on the schedule right now. biggest, honestly, the biggest change that I implemented was fixing my parts matrix. Um, you know, and I, that took a couple months of tweaking this to that and watching the numbers and making sure they were moving in the right direction.
Tracy Holt: Um, the other thing was I implemented a labor matrix, um, where obviously, you know, your, your door rates, you know, our door rates, one 65, but the more. Hire the hours. It's going to creep the door. And that I mean, those two things were probably the biggest, the biggest changes we made that I saw the, you know, a significant jump, um, you know, people always say, well, if you're that busy, you've got to just keep raising your labor rate.
Tracy Holt: Honestly, we're at the for our area. We are. At the top of where we're at. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: Um, do I we need to raise it again? Absolutely I you know, and that's got to be a conversation you have quarterly do we need to bump up five dollars or whatever it may be Um, you know, we went a long time There was one point where we had I look back and we had changed our labor rate For a number of years and we were 125.
Tracy Holt: I jumped at $25 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow, 
Tracy Holt: I thought, and this was right after dad and I'm like, if my dad saw me do that, he would kill me. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 
Tracy Holt: You know what, I, I bumped my labor rate in one day 25 and. Never heard a word about it. Business went on and nothing changed. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and if we roll back, because I remember having conversations with my shop here in St.
Jimmy Lea: George, Utah. There were a lot of conversations about getting over 100 per hour. And I have to go back a couple of years to do this conversation. There was a mental block. There was a mental block. They just couldn't do it. I'm sure you and your pops had the same conversations. We just, you know, we just can't charge more than a hundred bucks.
Jimmy Lea: But, um, yeah, 
Tracy Holt: and now we're, we're approaching the 200 an hour rate and we're going to be above that shortly. And we need to be as an industry. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I know shops in Florida that are over 300 an hour. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. You know, and, and, and a lot of depends on where you're at and what you're... 
Jimmy Lea: it depends on your business model.
Jimmy Lea: Depends on what you're working on. Depends on what your market can sustain. 
Tracy Holt: Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: Totally agree. A hundred percent on everything. 
Tracy Holt: You know, our, our, your expenses. But you know, the great thing is like working with the Institute, all that stuff's laid out to where, you know, what my expenses are, what, you know, and you can look and be like, Oh, we're off a few percent here and there.
Tracy Holt: And you can deep dive into those and see why it's off or what you need to. 
Jimmy Lea: Chasey, that's a really good point that you're making right here. And I, I want to, uh, uh, uh, put an exclamation on this. Um, let's just use a number at one 65 for some shops that is inappropriately high as a labor rate for some shops.
Jimmy Lea: It's inappropriately low as a labor rate. Absolutely. What's your business? What's your business? And that's where I, the, the coaching and training has come in and really helped you to take it up to that next level. Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: I'm, I mean, that number of 165 or 195, whatever it is, honestly, irrelevant. As long as your percentages.
Tracy Holt: Will support it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: You know, um, if your percentages won't support it, it probably needs to go up, you know, or your expenses need to come down one or the other. But, you know, it's Cecil's talked about this and, you know, it's a financial balance in your business. 
Jimmy Lea: Totally is. Totally is. 
Tracy Holt: You know, and it's, it, it depends on honestly, and that's where you can say, you know, obviously what we pay here is going to be different than California or whatever.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, are different than Florida for sure. 
Tracy Holt: Absolutely. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. Oh yeah. It's totally different. Okay. So one last question here, um, this is coming in from Andrew and his question is, did you and your father have issues when you wanted to make changes to the business such as increasing the labor rate? 
Tracy Holt: Yes. Um, my dad for years, there's a handful of shops that, you know, you know, in your area.
Tracy Holt: And we talked about the labor rate and he said, well, I'm going to call so and so and so and so and see what they're going to charge. And I'm, and I just now looking back on it and I'm like, okay, maybe that gives you an idea of what's around you, but you have no idea what they're. Expenses are what they're, you know, so you have to look at it I mean, obviously you have to look at the market and what it'll support But you have to look at it from your business and what you need to support your business Um, you know, that was probably after my dad stepped away You know, that was probably one of the biggest things that You know, when we would have the labor rate discussion of what, you know, cause there was times where he'd say, we need to raise it.
Tracy Holt: I'd be like, Oh, I don't know. And then there's times I'm like, we need to raise it. Then, you know, and we would seem like we were never on the same page at the same time. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And, and the, the element that both of you were missing was evaluating the business as a whole to see what does the business need, not just your gut feel of, we need to raise it.
Tracy Holt: Yeah. I mean, you, you can go look at your expenses. You can look at, you know, all your costs. And you can work that number backwards and be like, okay, we're doing X amount of cars per day and, you know, so many hours and whatever you could work that back and say, well, I've obviously got to charge this number, whatever it is.
Tracy Holt: Um, 
Tracy Holt: but the problem is, is we don't look at it from that point. We just look at it as, you know, well, so and so down the street's charging this or that. You know, you've got to look at it from what, what you've got from your business and what it'll support. And and you know what and if all of a sudden it needs to be raised or maybe expenses need to be addressed or there's Things in there, you know, there's there's multiple sides to it But until you really understand the business from the number standpoint Which I kind of understood them but in the last couple years I mean, it's... 
Jimmy Lea: Now you really understand.
Tracy Holt: I 
Tracy Holt: really understand and and you know, i've made this comment You know, it's like, man, if I would have deep dove into this years ago, where would we be today? But you know what, years ago, I wasn't ready for that. 
Jimmy Lea: Right. But you are today. You took the steps. Andrew gives you a big time shout out saying it's very stressful to work with family.
Jimmy Lea: Agreed. 
Tracy Holt: And it is. I mean, I love my family to death. Like I say, we often will go on vacations our separate ways. And you know what, we're okay with that. 
Jimmy Lea: Sure, sure. You're, you're with each other all the time, all day, every day. So to go on vacation, you need a vacation from work. 
Tracy Holt: And the hard part is, is, is family knows when you get together, the discussion is work and that's been a hard transition for me and dad.
Tracy Holt: I'll call him. I call him a couple times a week. He lives down in St. George by you. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. Yeah. And he, you know, first thing is how's work going and I'll give him a little rundown, but we've had to find other things to talk about. 
Jimmy Lea: Good. 
Tracy Holt: You know, and that's been, you know, because we're 30 years, that's what.
Tracy Holt: our discussions were of. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah. 
Tracy Holt: Of the business. 
Jimmy Lea: I'm glad you're able to make that transition brother. That, that's, that's very cool. If anybody is interested, we'd love to work with you. We at the Institute and Tracy, my shout out is to you, brother. Congratulations on all that you have accomplished. with your dad, with the shop, with your siblings, with your nieces and nephews and your, your children, your, your shop is awesome.
Jimmy Lea: It's amazing. And yeah, the, the future is bright. What are you going to do next? What's the future? Where are you going to go now? 
Tracy Holt: You know, it's funny is, is like, I, after being in the group process, you know, if you had asked me. A year or two ago, do I ever think about a second location? And I said, you would have to be absolutely nuts.
Tracy Holt: And now 
Tracy Holt: that's kind of turning in the back of my head, you know, who knows what, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's a second location somewhere, you know, maybe it's a, a major expansion of what we've got, um, it's, I don't know. I, the, the, the future's bright and I look forward to whatever it is. And that's kind of my new challenge in life.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 
Tracy Holt: Yeah. What's next? 
Jimmy Lea: What's next? Well, we know that you're definitely going to be getting a new building with a new waiting room soon ish because you got to get out of that hallway. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Uh, Andrew gives you a big shout out and says, congrats on everything. Uh, he hopes to meet you at the summit in February.
Tracy Holt: I'll be there. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Very cool. Well, let's, let's get there. Let's get there together. Let's lock arms as an industry and together we can elevate all ships together. We will do this because we can Tracy, any, uh, last words of wisdom. 
Tracy Holt: You know, if, if the one thing I can say is if you're watching this and you see the struggles, um, you know, don't be afraid to ask for help.
Tracy Holt: You know, that's, you know, once you over become that. You know, things, things become easier because there is, there's a whole industry out there that wants to help, whether it's coaching other shop owners, you know, don't be afraid to ask for help. 
Jimmy Lea: Love it. Love it. Yeah. Don't be afraid. Don't, don't be too prideful or so prideful that you're not willing to ask.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Be willing to ask. Well, you're awesome, brother. Thank you so much. Thank you. Everybody that was here today. My friends, it's good to see you. Hope all is well with you and your shop. Look forward to seeing you at the next conference trade show. See you at the summit. See you at the service advisor intensive in Ogden, but whenever it is, we look forward to seeing you again soon.
Jimmy Lea: Thank you, Tracy. 
Tracy Holt: Thank you.

102 - 5 Steps to Grow Your Shop Margins and Become More Profitable

102 - 5 Steps to Grow Your Shop Margins and Become More Profitable
August 22nd, 2024 - 01:06:29
 
Show Summary:
In this podcast, Cecil Bullard, CEO of The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, dives deep into the importance of margins for auto repair shops. Margins are the key to increasing your overall net profit, but many shops struggle to achieve the profits they deserve. Cecil walks you through actionable steps to improve your shop’s labor and parts margins, helping you reach your target profitability.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding the key factors that impact your margins.
Practical techniques to maximize your labor and parts profitability.
Strategies to consistently reach and exceed your financial goals.
Host(s):
Amber Wright, AutoLeap
 
Guest(s):
Cecil Bullard, Founder & CEO, The Institute
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:03:00] - Cecil explains why having solid gross margins is critical to achieving real net profit in your shop.
[00:05:10] - The first easy win: install and follow a legitimate parts matrix to boost parts margins.
[00:08:29] - Labor rates in the automotive industry are far behind – Cecil compares them to other trades and stresses the need to raise them.
[00:10:59] - Cecil shares real-world data showing that raising your labor rate rarely results in losing customers.
[00:19:15] - Labor margin issues often stem from low productivity – Cecil breaks down how to identify and fix it.
[00:22:12] - The “brick wall” analogy helps owners pinpoint company vs. employee roadblocks to productivity.
[00:30:40] - Use a labor multiplier to account for things labor guides don’t cover, like test drives and paperwork.
[00:35:43] - Labor leakage is everywhere – from underquoted diagnostics to free inspections – and must be stopped.
[00:41:48] - Improve estimating and workflow by getting four key pieces of info from techs to speed up the process.
[00:48:07] - Cecil shows how applying all five margin strategies can add up to nearly $400K in additional profit.
 
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=ed6KkS6Rgrw&t=1s
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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________________________________________
 
Amber Wright: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It is a hot summer day here in Atlanta. And we're glad to be back with our webinar series. We did take a little time off, but we are kicking it back in full swing and we are super excited to have our very own expert Cecil Bullard with the Institute here with us today.
Amber Wright: Before we get started, as always, we're going to kick off with some housekeeping notes. We are recording this session, so if for any reason you need to drop off, you get busy, or for whatever reason your internet fails you today, please do not worry. We always send out the recording no later than Monday. Of the following week, and then we also always post the recording on our website under the resources tab on autoleap.com. So, to kick it off, I do want to also say we are on webinar, so you guys are not on video, you do not have voice. But you do have functionalities so that you are able to enter in your questions depending on how the session is going, I will leave them in for Cecil will do a few here and there during the session, but if not, we'll kind of leave the majority to the end so that we can make sure that we get through the content and you guys really get the full scope of this expert session.
Amber Wright: So today we're going to talk about the five steps to grow out. Your margin and being more profitable. Why are margins so important? Well, they basically help you become more profitable. So, again, today we have Cesar Bullard, the CEO of the Institute of Automotive Business Excellence. And Ogden, Utah.
Amber Wright: And really the things that we're going to take away from this is understanding your margins, improving your labor margins and reaching target margins. So Cecil, I'm going to pass it over to you. And once again, we really appreciate your time and being here with us today. 
Cecil Bullard: All right. Thank you. Thank you.
Cecil Bullard: Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I was going to ask ask you if you would pay attention to the questions, but you already answered that. So, we do like questions especially if they're about the material. So, don't feel free to ask. And I would see there are no dumb questions, really.
Cecil Bullard: But there probably are a couple, but most of them are not. So, you know, do your best. What you're seeing right now, there's a QR code there. There is a simplified workbook. It's really just the slide set with some notes. There is a parts margin and there are there's a calculator there that you can get ahold of if you fill that out.
Cecil Bullard: So you'll see that a couple of times throughout the thing. And then again, at the end why are margins important? Let's kind of start with that. If you're doing, I don't know, a a million dollars in business and your gross profit margin, which should be somewhere in the neighborhood of say 62% if you're loading your labor loaded labor means I'm taking into account all the cost.
Cecil Bullard: Like a few to workers comp. If you're not loading your labor, you probably want to be closer to 74 percent on your gross margin, maybe even 80 percent on your gross margin. If you are not hitting your gross margin, then It comes out of your net margin. So if I lose 10 points because I don't charge enough for my parts or I discount stuff, or my technicians are not efficient and productive, then instead of on a million dollars making a hundred thousand excuse me, instead of making 200, 000, I make a hundred thousand dollars.
Cecil Bullard: So, and there are coaching companies that will tell you it's okay. You know, not to worry too much about your margins to worry more about gross profit per hour. And there is something to that, but if you don't have margin, you don't have profit. And so I may have a decent gross profit margin per hour for a few hours because I did some jobs that are low margin, but when I add it with everything it might get me in trouble financially.
Cecil Bullard: So, what should my business earn me? I think that's, we need to kind of start begin with the end in mind Stephen Covey. I want to make about 20 percent net profit and that's not my salary. So I make money as an owner in two different ways. I make a net profit. That's about my risk and my investment and et cetera.
Cecil Bullard: And then I also make a wage based on what I do for the business. So if I'm a manager. I make a manager's wage. If I'm writing service, I make a service advisor's wage. If I'm a tech in my business, then I make a tech's wage. Excuse me. And if I'm doing all those things, then I make a higher wage because now I'm making bits and pieces from each of those areas.
Cecil Bullard: So I think we need to keep that in mind. I mean, this is my goal. This is my target. So, what's the easiest thing? The easiest thing there's two easy things. We're going to talk about them. Not going to spend a ton of time here. Because I've done so many webinars and we have so much on our YouTube channel about these first two things that I'm just going to go quickly here, install and follow a legitimate parts matrix.
Cecil Bullard: In other words, I have a methodology for charging parts and I stick to that methodology. And I know that some people are going to call me and say, I want to bring their own parts. That's a no, I don't do that. I also know that Sometimes I'm going to look at a part. I'm going to say, wow, that's really expensive.
Cecil Bullard: And the good news is it's not coming out of my pocket. So I'm not paying the bill. The customer is paying the bill. And frankly, if you're not willing to make let, allow me to make a profit, then I don't know that I want you as a customer. So you want to hold your margin on your parts and therefore you need.
Cecil Bullard: methodology. And the best methodology is to have a parts matrix. So if you're a shop doing, say, 600, 000, now you may be a shop doing a million and a half. I mean, we have some shops that do 10 million in a year or more, but let's say you're doing 600, 000 and you actually have a parts margin that isn't 58%.
Cecil Bullard: Let's say you're currently doing 38%, which is not That's fairly typical when we see a shop that really hasn't had coaching, etc. And you just raise your parts margin by 10%. So you go from 38 to 48. It's not 58, but it's still more. That gives you an additional 2, 250 in parts profit each month. You know, assuming that about 45 percent of your sales is Parts and about 55 percent is labor, which would be fairly typical.
Cecil Bullard: And that's 27, 000 a year just for being paying a little more attention to your parts holding the line a little bit, making sure that your parts margins are correct. And you know, why am I in business? Well, I'm in business cause I love helping shops and I'm in business because I love what I do and I love coaching and I love doing webinars, but you know, I'm also couldn't be in business if I didn't make a profit and couldn't take care of my family.
Cecil Bullard: So you deserve to make a fair profit, decide what that is, and then stick to your parts matrix. Here's an example of a parts matrix. And again, if you go to the QR code. You can get that parts matrix and a matrix. It's just a methodology that basically says when I get a cheap part or an inexpensive part, my cost, I might mark it up times 3.
Cecil Bullard: 8 or even four times. So I take a 2 part. I charge 8 for it. And that would give me a 75% margin on that part. And so when I'm doing 75 percent or even 80 percent on a small part. Then when I'm doing a big part, like an engine or I don't know, a control module, and I'm only getting 40 percent when that all balances out, I end up with the 55, 58 percent that is the goal and the target to get our parts margin.
Cecil Bullard: And again, if you have questions, please ask questions. If you go to our YouTube channel. I believe that's a gear for shops dot com. There's more material on that. So that's all that I'm going to say there. I wouldn't be a coach or really care about the industry if I didn't say raise your labor rate.
Cecil Bullard: Our labor rates at this point are not enough. They're not enough to pay the technicians what we need. They're not enough to buy the equipment we need and get the training we need. And frankly, this industry is way behind in labor rates. So what does a plumber charge? Well, here in Utah anyway, from about 300 an hour for a cheap plumber, all the way up to about 500 an hour for a great plumber.
Cecil Bullard: Electrician, my electrician who is a friend of mine works for about 300 an hour when they come and do work, but his company charges four or 500 an hour for the work that he does. Working for his company. HVAC, they're 300 to 500 an hour. I just had some HVAC work done on my house, and it was about 450 an hour.
Cecil Bullard: And that's by the way what they charged me. If you look at the time they spent on the job and what they charged for labor, they were probably closer to 650 an hour. In the automotive aftermarket auto leap did a survey. I think we're about a year out from that survey. And the average, I think on that survey was 128.
Cecil Bullard: There's a couple other companies that have done surveys. 128 would be kind of normal right now for the industry, but. It should be much higher. I mean, I think we, I used to talk about us needing to be two 50 an hour. And now I think we really need to be talking about three to three 50 an hour as a automotive businesses because of the complexity, the education, the equipment, and the other things that I need, and then we can't even talk about lawyers and doctors and dentists dentists make oh my gosh, I, I don't even know, but dentists are the highest paid.
Cecil Bullard: Many doctors depends on which field you have are also paid over a thousand dollars an hour. And I know they have medical insurance and all of that, but I have liability insurance. I have other things that I have to pay for. So, raise your labor rate. I've been doing this for 24, 25 years now as a coach, I've been in the industry for about 44 years, getting old.
Cecil Bullard: And if, I've told people all along to raise their labor rate and we have a lot of shops that will go home and raise their labor rate from a class or a webinar by 10 an hour. And they don't get any complaints from their customers, clients, et cetera. Or if they have anybody complain, it's really just the five worst customers that you have that you're trying to maybe not work on their car.
Cecil Bullard: Anyway, I did a calculator on the. The average labor rate from 1980, because I was, I owned a shop and was running shops in 1980. And I just raised the labor rate 3 percent a year for the cost of inflation. And that would have got us over 250 an hour as an industry, if I just raised my labor rate 3%.
Cecil Bullard: And of course you know, we're certainly our our inflation is much more than 3 percent today. I don't care what they tell us. All right. So raise your rate. What if I increase my rate by 10 an hour? If I was a shop with three techs with the average productivity that we have of 72%, that's 362.
Cecil Bullard: 9 hours a month that my technicians would do based on like a 21 day month, which most months are actually 4. 3 weeks or about 21 days. If I raise my labor rate by 10 an hour that would give me an extra 3, 629 in labor margins, labor profits which is about 43, 000, a little over 43, 000 a year.
Cecil Bullard: So, you know, I also have to tell you that I, having talked about this for, you know, 23, 24 years in the industry. I don't think I've ever had somebody go, I went home, I want to raise my labor rate by 10 bucks an hour, and my customers left me. In fact, in almost every class that I do when I'm teaching service advisors or owners and we're talking about margin, we talk about labor rate.
Cecil Bullard: I ask people, you know, have you ever attended a class? Have you ever went home and raised your labor rate? And most of the class will raise their hand and say, yes, I have. And then I asked them a second question, which is how many of your customers left you? And almost everyone in the class says none, zero, nada.
Cecil Bullard: So, you know, if you're not making the profit you need, the two easiest things, put a parts matrix in place, follow it. Don't get emotional about it. Number two, raise your labor rate. Even if you lost 20 customers because of it, the bottom 5 percent of your company that average 500 repair order show up 1.
Cecil Bullard: 2 times a year. I would still earn 31, 000 more per year in profit by raising my labor rate 10 an hour. And there's a place where your labor rate probably is too high. I don't know what that is because I've got clients right now that have effective labor rates well over 200 an hour. I have some clients that have posted rates well over 2 50 an hour and in my, all the clients that I have in the company, the Institute the ones that are doing the best, the ones that have the most consistent businesses.
Cecil Bullard: Are the ones that are the most expensive. They have the highest labor rates. They have a more consistent business. They're able to buy nice things. They're able to provide for great technicians great employees, et cetera. So raise your labor rate. If there are any questions, please feel free to ask them.
Cecil Bullard: I know that Amber is paying attention to that 
Amber Wright: I was going to say yes. I think there's a really good comment to kind of just like, discuss and. There has been some really good advice in the chat. So, aftermarket parts and accessories generally have a set advertised price that we generally have to try and stay within.
Amber Wright: Otherwise, they think we're overpriced as they have the set retail price. And so some of the suggestions is just increase your labor rate to compensate the loss of revenue on parts. 
Cecil Bullard: I would argue the point about aftermarket parts. There's a cheap place to get parts. We all know that if my client goes online and they go to Amazon or any of the rock auto online auto parts, they can probably buy them cheaper.
Cecil Bullard: Something I believe I saw a statistic that 20 percent of the parts that are online are what do they call them when they're faked. You know, they're not real. They don't, they're not coming from where you said they were coming from. So they're they're not. They're not good parts 20%.
Cecil Bullard: Number two I've been dealing with parts pricing for 43 plus years, because when I started in business and I was a young tech, young service advisor in my shops or the shops I was working for we had parts houses and my client can go into any parts house and get a price. We have dealerships and I think some people believe that the dealership price.
Cecil Bullard: Is the price. There's a manufactured list. Well, if you call three dealerships on a certain part today, call three Ford dealerships, three BMW dealerships for the same part, today you're likely to get three different prices. And by the way, if I don't earn enough profit on those parts then I still make the money I need.
Cecil Bullard: So even a dealer list for me doesn't mean a thing. And I've run shops. And had shops and been a service advisor and been an owner and a manager. And I've been pricing my parts based on a matrix, which often is more than the dealership might for, I don't know, since the mid eighties. And we have a lot of shops that earn 58 percent margin on their parts.
Cecil Bullard: And which means that they're pricing dealership parts higher than maybe the dealership would. I think you have to understand that in sales it's about creating value. I think that if I talk about going to McDonald's and getting a hamburger, that's different than going to five guys and getting a hamburger and they're different prices, and it's different than going to a really nice restaurant in town and getting a hamburger, all three different prices.
Cecil Bullard: But wait a minute, doesn't McDonald's set the price on hamburgers? They're four bucks a piece or used to be two. People go to places and do business with places more about how they feel about the place and what they believe the value is of what they get then about what the price is. And you know, as the economy tightens, yeah, we probably have more people that are paying a little more attention to prices, but.
Cecil Bullard: Do they like our service? Do they enjoy what we do? Do we give great warranties? Do we do a great job on their vehicle? Is their experience a great experience? That allows me to price myself where I need to. And when you've worked with over 3, 000 shops, and you've seen that a good 20 30 percent of those shops the top producers, Are routinely charging matrix price parts, which are more than they could buy somewhere else maybe.
Cecil Bullard: And their and their clients are fine with it. I think it, that, that argument goes out the window and yeah. Now there's an idea of I'll just charge more for labor and less for parts. Cause people are more paying more attention on parts. I'm not so sure that's true. When I teach classes. In a class of you know, 200 clients and shop owners and potential clients, non clients.
Cecil Bullard: And I ask in your neighborhood, in your area, are people more focused on parts pricing or labor pricing? It's usually almost split down the middle where 50 percent are saying, well, it's labor and 50 percent are saying, well, it's parts. And it's your mentality. I have two shops in a major city in the United States.
Cecil Bullard: They both are really good shops. They both do really well. One of them believes that you can't get more than 50 percent parts margin in their area. So they're routinely around 47, 48%. The other shop believes you can get 58 and routinely gets 57, 56, 58 percent on their parts, same neighborhood, same parts, same places.
Cecil Bullard: Why does one person get more than the other? I think it's about. Do you believe in your product? Do you believe that the value of your product? Can you build that value for your client? What's your marketing? There's so many variables. And I can tell you from having taught, I don't know, 20, 000 service advisors in the past 20 years, maybe even more than that.
Cecil Bullard: The service advisors that believe in their pricing can build value for their clients are always going to get more margin and their clients are going to buy more at a higher price. I don't know if that helps, doesn't help, but there it is. I really want to spend some time on this idea of increasing your productivity because there's really two types of margin that we have.
Cecil Bullard: We have parts margin and we have labor margin and most labor margin problems are not. Our productivity problems, not pricing problems, really. Although again, you could probably raise your rates a little and nobody's going to pay attention or really care that much. So, so I want to kind of go through several things that are productivity related or productivity issued because the more hours that my hourly or salary detect can do.
Cecil Bullard: In an eight hour day that I can sell to a customer, the higher my labor margin, the higher my profit. So, in my shop over the six and a half year period, the last shop I ran personally we had 119 percent productivity out of our techs because we did a lot of these things exceptionally well. So I'm going to talk about those.
Cecil Bullard: And again, if you have questions. Please feel free to ask them. Currently the average productivity in the United States about 72%. It's from surveys and stuff over the last, I don't know, five or six years that we have seen you know, in any given year it might be 73% or 74%, or it could even be 70%.
Cecil Bullard: That number's been very consistent for a long time. In our industry, the shops that we work with. Probably are much closer to a hundred percent. I would tell you, we're probably in the very high nineties for many of the shops that we work with, if not most of the shops that we work with or above and it's about these things.
Cecil Bullard: So if you take a three tech shop, I've got three techs, I'm 128 an hour. And I have a 45 to 55 percent partial labor ratio and you look at what they're actually doing. I should be doing 1, 369, 805 in sales, but I'm actually doing 986, 259. So there's a very big difference between what I'm actually doing and what I'm doing.
Cecil Bullard: And by the way, if I'm paying hourly or salary to my employee. When I'm doing 986, 000, I might be paying out 250, 000 to my tax. And when I'm doing a 1. 36 million, 1. 37 million, I'm still paying the same amount out to my tax. So when I'm doing more, I have a much higher labor margin. So, costing this shop.
Cecil Bullard: Because of their productivity, 383, 000 in annual sales and 76, 000 in profit. If you look at a 20%, a net profit. So what do I do to fix that? You know, we talk a lot about management. I want, I have this visual, I'm a very visual person, so. I'm looking at this particular visual, and it's a wall. So, I'm looking at a wall that's made up of bricks, and there are two types of bricks in my wall.
Cecil Bullard: So, in my business, there are walls that we come up against, and our employees come up against them. We, as a company, come up against the wall. And there are two types of bricks in this wall. One is a company brick, and the other is an employee brick. So, if we looked at bricks you know, there, here's a wall with bricks in it and as a manager or an owner, I want to get rid of the bricks because I want to get on the other side of the wall.
Cecil Bullard: And bricks for company bricks would be things like scheduling. If you're not scheduling properly, your technician shows up at eight, they don't have cars. If you're not you know, like, they get done with their car at 10, but I don't have another car scheduled till noon. Then they don't have work to do.
Cecil Bullard: That's a scheduling problem. If you're have waiters and you're pulling your tech off of a 6, 000 job. And you know, for a waiter in a way that's a scheduling problem. So you're doing a waiter oil change where you're really not making money and pulling them off of a 3, 000, 5, 000 job. And then they have to get back to that job.
Cecil Bullard: They have to get caught up. That will cause inefficiency and productivity loss tools in education. Do you have the right tools? Are they in the right place in the shop? Are the, can the techs diagnose or. Do the job in a reasonable amount of time. Again, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about book time before we're done today.
Cecil Bullard: You know, can they beat. Book time in doing a normal job, we have a lot of shops where we have texts that are probably under qualified, trying to do diagnosis on a vehicle where we've told the customer, it's going to be 150, a hundred dollars, whatever, and the tech is taking three, four, and five hours to do that diagnostic, that's a brick that's in my wall, that's keeping me from being profitable and keeping my tech from being productive.
Cecil Bullard: And that brick is it's an education brick. You know, how do they know enough? Have we taught them enough? Have they taken enough classes? Dispatch is a company brick. Are we dispatching properly? I would tell you to dispatch all the cars, get them all in the morning for the day, dispatch them all, and then manage your flow throughout the day as opposed to scheduling customers all throughout the day.
Cecil Bullard: And the reason why is when your technician has three cars, Instead of one sitting here, if they have one sitting here and it's a two hour job there's a law, can't remember the name, Tony's law or whatever it is. It's not Pareto's law. It's a different one, but it basically says that a technician will make the available amount of work fit the available amount of time and my history.
Cecil Bullard: My experience is that's true, but give a tech a two hour job and they think they don't have anything for the next three hours they'll fill in and that job will take three hours. If I give a tech you know, a six hour job with maybe five hours of time to do it, my techs would get the job done in five hours or maybe even less.
Cecil Bullard: And if the tech has one job that's a two hour job and another job that's a six hour job, they start the two hour job, they know they have the six hour job, they'll work at a different pace, they'll get the two hour job done faster because they have another job lined up that they know needs to be done and should be done today.
Cecil Bullard: Estimating, are you estimating the proper amounts of time? We'll talk about that a little more. Parts. Are we getting parts in a timely fashion? Are we getting good parts? Are we matching those parts up? Or do we wait until, you know, two days later when the car gets pulled in to check the part and see if it's the right part and then we find out it's not the right part.
Cecil Bullard: So, parts can be a brick. Culture. We have a culture of laziness. We have a culture of, well, it doesn't really matter what we get done. Or do we have a culture of, we want to produce you know, 120%, 9. 6 hours per day. What's the culture of the business. Those are company breaks. And unfortunately, when I look at poor productivity in shops, and I've been doing this for a very long time, and I've probably personally been in over 2000 reviewing their stuff, their work orders, their productivity, their processes you have a lot of employees that are underproducing because the company has not removed.
Cecil Bullard: The bricks has not solved these problems. You have employee bricks what are employee bricks organization employees, not organized. They don't keep their tools. They spend 10 minutes looking for a 10 millimeter socket because. They can't remember because they don't have a structure and organization about how they, you know, how they take care of their tools or even how they work teaching kind of a work process.
Cecil Bullard: You know, you get a car in, it's got a check engine light on, what do you do first? Right? For me, it's like research, you know, run the code but kind of do a little history on the car. Take a look at the car, research the code. What's the code about? Etcetera. Because if I do that, I spend that time there, I can be more organized in my approach.
Cecil Bullard: And if I have an organized approach, I'm probably going to be more efficient and more productive tools. Do they have the right tools themselves? Do they know how to use them? Skills? Do they have the right skills? You notice I said education in the top company brick. Are we educating our people in the bottom?
Cecil Bullard: I said skills for the employees. My employees may have lack of skills in certain areas. And it is up to me as a company to educate them. But it's also up to my employee to keep their skill sets up work ethic attitude. You know, we, I've had employees work for me that got a bad attitude, whatever was going on in their life, whatever was going on you know, in their work, they get tired of doing break jobs or whatever.
Cecil Bullard: They just had bad attitudes and the attitude affects productivity. So. If I can help the employee understand that their attitude is not in a good place and we have a good culture in our company, then I can work with them and then they'll be more productive teach them good work habits. So I have this as a manager in a business, I have this vision of this wall that has these bricks and if I am managing you and you're my employee and you're not, you know, producing what you should, you have too high of a comeback rate.
Cecil Bullard: Your attitude is poor. I'm going to look at the bricks and try to determine, you know, do you have a poor attitude because the company's holding you back? Are you not as productive as you need to be because the company is holding you back? Our processes, our systems, or. Is it something that, that you're holding yourself back?
Cecil Bullard: And I would tell you it's probably in the beginning with an employee, you've got a good employee and their productivity starts to go down, et cetera. It's probably 80 percent or 90 percent company breaks and 10 or 20 percent personal breaks. And then over time, if we don't solve the company breaks, then it's maybe 50 percent or 60 percent company breaks.
Cecil Bullard: And 40 or 50 percent employee bricks getting in the way. And what we need to be doing as management is we need to be identifying and removing those bricks. And so, if I if my job as the manager, my job is to make sure that you hit your goals and targets so the company can hit their goals and targets, then I need to be identifying the bricks, and then where I can, where it's my responsibility solving those problems.
Cecil Bullard: Where it's your responsibility, helping you understand how to solve those problems yourself, or helping you identify those problems and in a way, maybe holding you accountable or helping you accept responsibility for your own issues and problems. I think we have a real management crisis. I would also tell you, we have a customer service crisis in this industry and probably in our in the United States, Canada.
Cecil Bullard: But I would also say we have a management kind of crisis because We have a lot of people in management that aren't, they don't have good habits. They're not, you know, finding and removing the bricks on a constant basis. Again, if there's any questions, please ask them. And all right. So that was kind of, that was kind of a preemptor to the three, four, and five, number three, make sure you're using a labor multiplier.
Cecil Bullard: And that labor multiplier is appropriate. Why do we use a labor multiplier? Why am I charging if the book says it's a three hour job? Why am I charging four hours for that job? Well, the book and the labor guides really don't consider the test drive. It's not included the writeup, the paperwork, the time that the tech is now spending in creating the story and saying, this is what happened.
Cecil Bullard: Go back 25 years ago. We didn't have our techs write up what was going on with the car, why it needed what it needed. We basically had you know, in many cases, the technician walking into the service device saying this car needs breaks and here you go and away you go. Now we've got technicians in AutoLeap writing stories out and taking their time and many technicians are not.
Cecil Bullard: Great typers, some of them are not great spellers. So it takes them longer. None of that is considered in the labor guidebooks. The age and condition of the components that's not considered when they're setting labor times, they're working on brand new cars that haven't been sitting around for a long time that haven't had issues that haven't had another technician over tighten bolts or, you know, screw something up.
Cecil Bullard: They're also not considering cleanup time. And I call those. Brown bananas. And so, you know, in the grocery store interestingly enough, the margins are very low and the grocery store has a thing called the loss rate. A loss rate is things that are stolen. And things that spoil things that go bad.
Cecil Bullard: And so my grocery store is going to buy, I don't know, 10, 000 bananas this month, this week, but they're not going to sell 10, 000 bananas because some people are going to grab a banana and eat it as they walk through the grocery store and then throw the peel, you know, in with the milk. Some people are going to steal a banana, put it in their pocket and walk out of the store with it.
Cecil Bullard: And some bananas are going to go brown and go bad where nobody will buy them and end up getting thrown away. And what the grocery store does is they charge a little more for the green bananas so that they can pay for the brown bananas and the leakage the loss rate. Our loss rate, our leakage is in test drives and write ups and the age and condition of the components.
Cecil Bullard: Our Brown bananas are, you know, other texts have screwed things up and now the job is harder than it supposed to be. Ours is in the cleanup. These are our brown bananas. And frankly, customers have to pay for those brown bananas. So we use a labor multiplier or a labor matrix today. And I can also tell you that 20 years ago, we didn't today.
Cecil Bullard: We do most of the shops that we work with. And by the way, when I say most, I would say a hundred percent. But then somebody might go, well, I know Bob and he doesn't, but I'll tell you right now of the hundreds of shops that we work with every one of them unless they're just coming into our program, they don't understand it uses a labor multiplier.
Cecil Bullard: And that multiplier today in most shops is somewhere between 20 and 30%. And I do know that some of my BMW guys are using a higher multiplier because of the way that BMW does their labor guides, but. A minimum of 20 percent and probably to 30 percent on a labor multiplier. If I use a 25 percent labor multiplier and I have three techs doing, you know, 72%, 362.
Cecil Bullard: 9 hours and I multiply that by 1. 25, that's 453. 6 hours. That extra 400 that extra 90. 7 hours at 128 an hour, It's going to generate 11, 610 per month. And by the way, that is likely that's going to add to my labor margin. It will add to my productivity, depending on how I'm defining, I can define productivity by dollars or hours produced and the labor multiplier, if it's an hour and we're now we're charging 1.
Cecil Bullard: 25, if it's six hours and now we're charging, you know, whatever it is. Eight point whatever that's going to add to my profit. And so in a typical shop with three texts doing 72%, number one, you're 72 percent is going to go up. Number two giving you a better labor margin. Number two, you're going to get more money for that job and you're going to put 139, 000 into your gross profit, most of which will probably fall into your Bottom line profit.
Cecil Bullard: And again, if there are any questions, please feel free to ask next find your leakages this goes back kind of to the wall. Where is labor leaking through my shop? And I'm going to talk about a few different areas that we see that are fairly common. Every shop we have has some labor leakage, meaning we don't charge enough.
Cecil Bullard: We don't get enough. Our tech takes longer. Sometimes we don't charge at all. And so here's a few areas. Number one, In your canned jobs. A lot of times we have canned jobs that were put in six years ago, eight years ago, and even though we've raised our labor rates, we have not done any adjustment to our canned jobs.
Cecil Bullard: So, you know, an oil change that used to be 39 average is probably now 89 average because of components and costs of parts, but also because of labor increases and because, and if we have a canned job, that's a, I don't know, 39 oil change. And we've raised the rates everywhere else. Maybe it's time to raise the rate on some of our canned jobs.
Cecil Bullard: And I always tell my clients, if you don't think you can go all the way to 89 between 39 and 89, where do you think you can go? That's that's kind of a management methodology. It's a sales methodology, but it's a, okay, I can't stay at 39. I don't know that I want to go to 89. So I don't know, take it to 49, get another 10.
Cecil Bullard: That's going to increase your margin. And if you're putting that in labor, it's going to increase your productivity and your labor profits. Charging. We do this all the time. I go into shops and I sit down in their office and I read a people magazine or whatever you got, or I'm on my phone, but I'm paying attention and I'm watching and what happens is customer calls.
Cecil Bullard: And says, Hey, I've got a problem with my car. It doesn't run right. Or it's got this, or it's got that. And we go, okay, let's get it in. And that's going to be, I don't know, 140. That's my one hour diagnostic. And if you've got a good salesperson, when the customer comes in or good service advisor, when the customer comes in, they'll ask them, is there anything else that we can do while you're here?
Cecil Bullard: Is there anything else going on besides that one problem? And I'll see a customer say, yeah. You know, I've got this really bad rattle coming from the rear of the car when I go over bumps and tech service advisor, write that down and then yeah, and you know, I've got this weird electrical issue.
Cecil Bullard: My driver's door, sometimes it doesn't roll down automatically. I have to turn the car on and off or I have to jiggle the switch or bang the door, whatever it is, and they'll write that down. And now I've got a technician's got three problems to diagnose in really three different areas. But we never increased the time.
Cecil Bullard: So now I'm giving a technician instead of one potentially, you know, MIO problem and I'm giving them three different problems, but I'm only sending it out for one hour. And so I would be teaching and training the service advisors, how to sell the additional labor to the customer at the time. And in my world crazy as that might be.
Cecil Bullard: If you don't want to pay me to fix the rattle or to find out what it is, then I don't want to fix it. I don't like working for free. I've been doing this so long that, you know, I just, I see this happening and I see this labor leakage and then at the end, the shop's not making the money they need.
Cecil Bullard: So this is an area that I can go in, I can pay more attention to times. I can make sure my service advisors are you know, paying attention to times. My technicians when they had an hour long diagnostic, they had a 45 minute timer. They put on at the end of 45 minutes, they stopped whether they had finished the diagnostic or not.
Cecil Bullard: I told, I taught my techs, tell me what you've done, what tests have you run, what have you found, tell me what additional tests you think you need to run to diagnose the car and and tell me how long you think that's going to take. And then we went to the customer and talked about their car, what we've found, what we've done, the additional tests that we need.
Cecil Bullard: I go to the doctor the other day. And you know, I'm in the doctor's office. I paid my deductible. The doctor gave me a shot in my shoulder. I've got a problem in my shoulder. So, that was another 79 once I paid for what I had to pay for. And then the doctor said, you know what, Cecil? I think we might have a problem with XYZ.
Cecil Bullard: I want to do a blood panel on you because you've got this issue, blah, blah, blah. So, now I'm going. To the lab and now they're going to run blood work and I'm going to pay an additional fee for that blood work. I mean, we just, we're so used to doing it everywhere else. We need to be conscious of that here.
Cecil Bullard: Paying five tenths with no charge for an inspection. I tell my shops, get rid of your oil change, stop changing oil. Stop talking about it that way. Start talking about servicing the car instead of having a, you know, 69, 89 oil change, have 139 you know, service of the vehicle that includes the oil and filter, but also the inspection.
Cecil Bullard: So maybe I'm paying my tech five tens. And right now I'm getting nothing. I don't care if you get another two tenths out of it or another three tenths or another five tenths, get something out of it. And then when you're estimating a lot of times because of your process, the service advisor is the one doing the estimate, but the technician, the one that looked at the car.
Cecil Bullard: So broken bolts, rust cleanup, things like that are not being considered in the time. So make sure that your techs are aware of that. So that they can let your service advisors know. And if that gets you another, I don't know, a few hours. So what if I captured an hour a day per tech? And again, in that same three tech shop, that's 99, 000 a year by capturing an hour a day, because I worked in these five or six areas, five areas.
Cecil Bullard: Just even just doing a little in each area. Produce another hour per tech per day. If I'm willing to do the management and pay the time number five, look at your workflow because this is the thing that holds your techs up for being productive, probably the most and make sure that you have good scheduling, good dispatch and really great estimating process.
Cecil Bullard: You know, how easy, how quickly can I get the, that estimate done properly through and back to my tech in a lot of shops, that's taking two hours and three hours when it really should only be taking 30 or 40 minutes. And it's because in many cases, the service advisor doesn't have the information that the service advisor needs.
Cecil Bullard: So in, again, in my shop our techs gave us four pieces of information because. As a service advisor, I needed those four pieces of information in order to do an estimate, do it quickly and do it accurately. So number one, what does the car need? In other words, here's the problem. See, so, okay. Number two, why does it need that?
Cecil Bullard: Well, here's what, why it's broken and it failed the test. It's out of spec. It's you know, leaking, you know, whatever that is. And I used to tell my people. My service, my, my tax, I used to say, if you could describe it in a paragraph, describe it in a paragraph, but if you can describe it in one sentence, do that instead of a paragraph, and if you could describe it in two words, instead of a a sentence, then do it that way.
Cecil Bullard: So like in my shop, we created standards and we created kind of a shorthand so that my tech could say to me you know, this is a 0 percent on tires. And on brakes, 0 percent means it's time to replace the tires and brakes because they're worn out. You know, we had these this is a leak. Well, a leak is different than a drip.
Cecil Bullard: A drip gets on the ground. A leak is actually leaking, but getting in the belly pan and not reaching the ground. So now I can talk to the client and speak better about it. How much what does the car need? Why, how much time do you think it's going to take? Because. If you're the tech and you look at this thing and you see that somebody else has jacked it up or there's a, you know, it's really rusted or, you know, Oh my gosh, this is an intake on, or excuse me an exhaust manifold on this kind of vehicle.
Cecil Bullard: And man, I don't know how many of these I've taken off where almost every single time one of the bolts is broken. Then let us know that because as a service advisor, I don't know that. And I might just look at the book time and estimate it per the book time. When I need to be considering that there's going to be a broken bolt.
Cecil Bullard: So in your estimating process, make sure that this additional stuff is being told to you by the tech. And then last but not least, what parts do you need that will help us on the getting the parts, getting the right parts, getting the, all the parts you need as a service advisor. So my guys did all of this.
Cecil Bullard: And it only took him a few minutes, but what it did was keep me as a service advisor from walking out in the shop, grabbing that tech away from the job that he's doing, having a five minute conversation or seven or eight minute conversation about what was needed and why it was needed. And, you know, is there something else I need, what parts.
Cecil Bullard: And so it really improved the time that I was spending with the customer, you know, with the estimate. Because I wasn't walking out there to have that conversation. I rarely went out in the shop and we have some service if I say, well, I got to see it before I can sell it. I'm sorry. I personally don't agree with that.
Cecil Bullard: I've seen lots of bad breaks. I've seen lots of oil leaks. I've seen, I don't know, a million tires that were worn out. I've seen, you know, exhaust systems falling apart a thousand times. You know, I've. As a service advisor, having done it for so long, I've seen all this. I don't need to see it again.
Cecil Bullard: If I have a good trust between myself and a good communication between myself and the tech, it will. Create more efficiency, which gives the service advisor more time to spend on the estimate, which gets the estimate out faster, and it also will increase the time for the technician. So if I spend my time here, it's going to reduce time spent later by both of us and improve the workflow.
Cecil Bullard: I get the estimate out faster. The faster I get the estimate out, the more time the tech has to get it done. The more likely they're going to get it done faster, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on infinitum. So I'm going to work on my workflow. I'm going to improve my estimating process. And it seems really simple and it really is, but in many cases.
Cecil Bullard: We don't have a good estimating process and or process if you're in Canada. And it takes additional time, which is one of the things that's killing the technician's productivity and actually hampering the service advisors productivity. So what if I did that and I improve that workflow and if you had an effective labor rate here's the formula to determine what your hour's worth.
Cecil Bullard: So in a shop that has 128 effective labor rate. It's the formula to understand what your hours worth is. One plus parts over labor. If a 45 percent of what you do is parts and 55 percent is labor, then you're 128 times 1. 82, meaning that your hours were 232 and 96 cents. Every time you sell one, that's what it's worth.
Cecil Bullard: Every time a technician does one, that's what it's worth. Well, what if I improve my workflow process so that now my technician could get more work done? Because the estimates are happening quicker. There's less time spent on, you know, verbal and face to face communication et cetera. And I could put another hour and a half into my day, right?
Cecil Bullard: And so now I take an hour and a half. Now, by the way, if I've got three texts, it's a half an hour of tech. And if I got if I did that 250 days a year that's 87, 000. What if I only got half of that? You know, what if I only recovered 15 minutes a day per tech? Well, that, that would be another 43, 000 in, in my shop.
Cecil Bullard: So in order to really increase your margin, you have to become efficient and productive. And you have to be charging properly and you have to, again, in order to charge properly, you have to learn how to sell properly and build value for your clients, et cetera. Okay, well, what if we put all of it together?
Cecil Bullard: What if we just did a little of everything? And and so we're going to increase our parts margin by 10%. That's going to bring us about 27, 000. I'm going to increase my labor rate by 10 bucks an hour. That's going to bring me 43, 000. I'm going to increase my labor multiplier or use one. If I'm not, that's going to bring me 139, 000.
Cecil Bullard: I'm going to reduce my leakage one hour a day per tech. That's going to bring me 99, almost a hundred thousand dollars. And I'm going to improve my workflow. Just by adding 1. 5 hours a day, by looking at the bricks and getting rid of the bricks. That's going to give me 87, 000. So, and the total there is almost 400, 000.
Cecil Bullard: Well, what if I only got half of that? What if I could only do half of it? And what if I only got half of that to drop to my bottom line? That's a hundred thousand dollars a year. And so sometimes I look at this overwhelming, like, man, I'm working my butt off. I'm not getting the profits I want or need.
Cecil Bullard: You know, this is difficult. The other thing that happens when you clean up these processes and we start tearing the bricks down. Your employees see that their job is easier. They're more fulfilled when they're more fulfilled. They're actually more productive. You know, there are side benefits to doing these things.
Cecil Bullard: And not just the profit that you might make, but it's a happier environment. Now I have money to pay people more than I would have paid them and to motivate them to be even more productive. So anyway, that's. You know, I'm constantly working on tearing down the bricks in the wall. You have to be doing that if your shop is not at 20 percent net, you know, if your goal is a 62 percent or 64 percent gross profit.
Cecil Bullard: With a loaded labor and you're not there, then what are the bricks and how do I take them down. So, we're at, we're close to the end. We got another five, six minutes, Amber, do we have questions? 
Amber Wright: Yeah. So what is the best way to inform a customer that the job is going to take more labor than what the customer approved job for me?
Cecil Bullard: I think number one, don't create the expectation that. You know, my diag is the final thing, you know, when I had, I'm sorry, it sounds like I cut you off, Amber. I didn't mean to do that. No, you're fine. 
Amber Wright: It was just, he was giving an example, but you go. 
Cecil Bullard: Yeah when you know, I'm setting the diagnostic up as a service advisor, every, almost every customer I'm like, you know, by the way, when we get this done sometime at real close to one o'clock, are you available?
Cecil Bullard: I'm going to call you and we're going to talk about it. And if there's anything that we need to do to take care of this problem, then we're going to talk about what that cost is. You know, and I think there are jobs where you should be able to go. This is the price. So, you know, I'm doing a break job.
Cecil Bullard: Gosh, if we can't estimate a break job accurately, and I got to call the guy back and talk about extra money maybe we're just not doing as good a job as we should, but there are other jobs. Like when you get into an EVAP system, you know, I'm going to run these tests and this may not diagnose the whole thing.
Cecil Bullard: I may have to replace a component and then there might be additional efforts. Or when I get into a car, you know, customer calls me on the phone. I know nothing about the car. I've had customers call me and tell me they had a Toyota Corolla and when they came in it wasn't even a Toyota. And they don't even know what they're driving.
Cecil Bullard: And so You know, all we know is that there's a check engine light. I'm not guaranteeing in that hour that I can diagnose and tell you what's wrong with your car. I'm going to run some tests. You know, we, you know, I can tell you that probably 70 percent of the time we can figure it out in an hour. I've got great techs.
Cecil Bullard: I may have to call you to talk about additional testing. You know, if you prep your customer in the beginning, it's much easier. And I, you know, a lot of times we have owners that are nervous or scared to make those calls because they're really not salespeople. And they are so invested and they're really afraid.
Cecil Bullard: I just don't want my customers to hate me. And they're very careful about what they do. I'm sorry, I can't. Yeah. Broken bolt. Well, broken bolts, a broken bolt. You know, I didn't make the car. I didn't drive the car. I did. I didn't buy the car. I didn't get the benefit of it. Why am I paying for broken bolt?
Cecil Bullard: And by the way, if you're a tech, or you're working on cars, occasionally a bolt's gonna break. And if you're blaming the tech for that, now by the way, if I have a tech who keeps breaking bolts, maybe I better teach him how to take out a difficult bolt. But if I have a tech who doesn't normally break bolts, it's not a thing and the bolt breaks, is it our fault, or is it a condition of the vehicle?
Cecil Bullard: And if it's condition of the vehicle, is it my responsibility or is it the owner's responsibility? So I have no problem calling up and saying, you know, while we were doing this, you know, we, there's a bolt that broke coming out. This happens occasionally. I hate to be making this call, but here's what we need in order to take care of that.
Cecil Bullard: And I will tell you the clients that we've worked with that have actually gone back and been able to do that. 9 percent of their clients don't argue about it. They're just like, okay, you know, I go to the dentist. I don't think I have any cavities. When he comes in and says, I have a cavity. I'm like, okay, fix it.
Cecil Bullard: And he goes, digs in and he gets too deep and he goes, Oh, we're going to have a root canal. I don't go, well, wait a minute. It's your fault. I'm like, oh, that's horrible. I hate to pay for a root canal. Okay, you know, take care of it. I think in this industry, we just, we're just so emotionally attached and Just afraid that our customers are going to hate us because we, it wasn't exactly what we said.
Cecil Bullard: I don't know. I've been doing this a long time and I can't tell you how many times I've called customers later and said, Hey, while we were there, we found this. And here's what it's going to take for us to take care of that. And I would just do it without any emotion. I mean, yeah, I feel bad for the customer.
Cecil Bullard: But I don't feel bad for me. I didn't do anything wrong. It's their car. I don't know if that answers that or not. Amber, do you have a couple more? 
Amber Wright: No, no more questions at this time. Just some kind of comments and suggestions on how other people handle that as well, which I love that you guys are engaging in that and helping each other.
Amber Wright: If you guys want to give it another minute we can ask any questions or any last minute thoughts, Cecil, from you. 
Cecil Bullard: I would just say. You know, for management wise, you need to be looking at your business. You have goals and you need to feel like these are the targets I want to hit 20 percent net X percent gross profit.
Cecil Bullard: And I'm going to manage my business and look at that wall and tear those bricks out and get rid of those bricks constantly, because, you know, it's amazing. You can tear the whole wall down. And then, you know, two weeks later, someone's putting another brick or two on the wall. So for me it's manage it.
Cecil Bullard: Manage it. And then I'm also not, I didn't buy the car, I didn't build it, I didn't drive it, I didn't break it. It's not my responsibility. My job is to help the customer understand what they need to do that well, but not perfectly. I don't have perfect techs, I'm not a perfect person, I have never met a perfect person.
Cecil Bullard: You know, there's a few people that come fairly close they're Amber.
Amber Wright: I 
Amber Wright: hope that's me. I see what you did there. I did. Hey, I think you made my day. What are your thoughts on commission based text versus non commission? 
Cecil Bullard: I don't like flat rate. In some states, it really does violate the labor laws today.
Cecil Bullard: I think there's a real black cloud over flat rate today. And if you're paying attention to the blogs and the, you know, the online channels and all of that. There's a lot of texts that are, they've just been used and abused. The problem with flat rate is it puts almost all of the responsibility and all of the risk on the technician shoulders.
Cecil Bullard: The problem with hourly is that it puts all the risk on the business and the technicians have no, no push, no drive. And so I like to build what we call performance enhanced pay plans. I do it all the time, probably four or five a week for our clients which are a combination kind of a blend.
Cecil Bullard: Where there's a reasonable base, probably somewhere 60 to 70 percent of what I can pay for that position. And then there's a bonus structure around performance and education and things that I want from that position. And so my thoughts on, you know, commission only, you know, by the way, I was always a commission guy as a business owner.
Cecil Bullard: I'm. 100 percent of commission guy. My company doesn't make money. I don't survive. But I think today in the marketplace, it's more difficult to get texts that way, and I really think we need to rethink the way we have paid technician service advisors in the past. And really think about a new model for that.
Cecil Bullard: And my model for that is kind of a blended where the technician knows that they're going to make money. If you follow Maslow. You know, Maslow says, if you can't take care of your basic needs, then you can't think about higher function, things, God how to do this better being productive. And so I'm not a giant fan of commission only, although I will tell you, I will also have technicians and owners that will say, wait a minute, I love that because I can go out and do 80 hours and make twice the money.
Cecil Bullard: Okay, great. You should. 
Amber Wright: Love that. One last question. And of course, if you guys want to put up the screen on how people can reach out to you again, while we answer this last one Preston said, I work on classic cars and many clients have purchased their own parts before they find me. They're usually the same parts I would have bought anyway.
Amber Wright: I have taken those jobs in but increased my labor rate to accommodate the lost parts margin. I don't feel like I have the best delivery on explaining why. I'd be curious if you have input on that scenario and explaining it to the client. 
Cecil Bullard: If you reach out to me, I have a whole write up on that. That's one page for clients.
Cecil Bullard: There's three reasons not to do parts that the customer supplies. One is I don't know the provenance of the part. I don't know the quality of the part, the fit of the part. There are 20 percent crappy parts online. And then, you know, there are my, I'm an opinionated guy because I was a tech. And so there are certain places where if you got the part there, I don't feel good about putting it on your car.
Cecil Bullard: So one, one reason is that, and the provenance issue is an issue for me and my liability and my insurance. So, my insurance finds out I'm putting parts on your car that you're supplying. That creates more risk for them. They can raise my rates or cancel me. So they could literally say where that part come from.
Cecil Bullard: And I'm like, well, the customer supplied it. And then they'll say, I'm not taking care of that. And I could have a 12, 000 engine job, go bad. That now I'm responsible for because the second reason is the courts see us as the experts. So if I go to court, whether the customer supplied the part or not, the judge believes I'm the expert.
Cecil Bullard: So I should have known that part was not a good part or not a high quality part or whatever. And so I'm responsible for warranteeing that part, whether or not I made the profit on the part that I want to, or I need to. And then the third reason is. Part of the money I make in this industry and maybe, you know, 20 years from now, that won't be it.
Cecil Bullard: We won't, we'll just give parts away for free, but we'll charge five times the labor. I don't know but today a good portion, 40 percent of my profits or 45 percent of my profits come from parts. And so if I'm taking their parts in and I'm not raising the labor rate high enough, or I'm not financially in a place to even.
Cecil Bullard: Hold up the warranty. So I, you know, there's three great reasons not to do that. And I would literally tell you, show me a restaurant in town that will let you bring your own steak and that will cook it and and take any of the risk at all. Just show me one restaurant and then we'll have a different conversation about parts.
Cecil Bullard: You know, and don't tell me it's my best friend, my buddy who owns a restaurant who I help and I go in now that doesn't count. Just show me a restaurant where it's not your friend, where you could go in, you know, an Outback, a Longhorn Steakhouse, anywhere else where I could take my own steak and they're going to cook it and lower the price of the meal for me.
Cecil Bullard: Show me where that's going to happen. And then we'll have a different conversation on Don't do it. That's my answer. 
Amber Wright: Well said. That's what they said. So, appreciate it guys. We did. I put some key takeaways in the chat. There is a survey, but we will also send it out afterwards. Again, this session was recorded, so you will get access to that following.
Amber Wright: We really appreciate it, Cecil. A lot of compliments, excellent points. Thank you. So, we look forward to having you on our next webinar. 
Cecil Bullard: Can't wait. Thank you very much, Amber. 
Amber Wright: All right. Bye. 
Cecil Bullard: Bye bye.

101 - Collaboration Over Competition: Building Strong Business Partnerships with Shop Owners Tim & Johanna

101 - Collaboration Over Competition: Building Strong Business Partnerships with Shop Owners Tim & Johanna
August 21st, 2024 - 01:02:25
 
Show Summary:
An insightful podcast by Juliana Sih, founder of Crescendo, a Leadership and Life coaching company dedicated to empowering individuals to achieve happiness, financial success, and fulfilling relationships.
In this session, Juliana will guide you through the essential strategies for building and maintaining successful business partnerships as well as discovering how to resolve conflicts with ease, create a unified vision that drives success, and foster trust within your partnerships.
Juliana’s holistic approach, combined with her passion for coaching, will empower you to take actionable steps toward a more harmonious and productive business relationship.
We are excited to feature shop owners Tim Chakarian and Johanna Reichert in a live Q&A segment, where they will share their experiences of working together in the business. They’ll discuss the unique challenges and rewards of navigating a professional and personal partnership, offering practical advice on maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Key Takeaways:
Effective Conflict Resolution: Master the art of active listening to make conflict resolution straightforward and manageable.
The Importance of Goals and Vision: Learn how to ignite success by crafting clear goals, uniting your team with a shared vision, and implementing effective systems.
Building Trust: Gain strategies to build and strengthen trust within your business partnerships and with employees.
Whether you’re running a business with a spouse or managing partnerships within your company, this podcast will provide you with the tools and insights needed to foster collaboration over competition.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Juliana Sih, founder of Crescendo
Tim Chakarian and Johanna Reichert, Bimmer PhD Motorsports
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:03:30] - Juliana kicks off with an interactive exercise to uncover each participant’s mindset around leadership, success, and change.
[00:07:10] - Johanna shares how she went from delivering mail to co-owning a thriving BMW repair shop with Tim.
[00:10:53] - Tim confesses how his ego resisted training until one class added $5K to their bank and changed their mindset forever.
[00:13:27] - Johanna reflects on the challenge of finding management training early on and how it's crucial to building a strong shop culture.
[00:17:20] - The couple explains how they bring in their manager as a neutral third party to mediate disagreements and gain new perspectives.
[00:21:27] - Juliana breaks down conflict styles (fight, flight, or freeze) and explains how active listening can de-escalate high-stress situations.
[00:28:13] - Johanna discusses the emotional work behind resolving conflict by owning your part and seeking connection instead of blame.
[00:31:04] - Tim shares how vulnerability and empathy became game-changers for him as a mechanic and business owner.
[00:36:14] - The couple reveals how shared tools like the Actionizer and group coaching keep their goals aligned and growth intentional.
[00:50:20] - Juliana outlines how trust can be broken, and rebuilt, through transparency, consistency, and small, daily promises.
 
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=39WLF6tV6P4
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: 
Want to learn more? Click Here
Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here
See The Institute's events list: Click Here
Want access to our online classes? Click Here
________________________________________
 
Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, and we are here to just really make sure that we're working well with our business partners and we're not going to jail, but what does that mean? Well, that means that we really don't want to kill them. No, definitely. We don't want to kill them.
Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm here with the Institute and super excited to have with me today as our panelist, Juliana C. Juliana is a licensed. Marriage, family therapist, and she is a coach. We also have joining us Tim and Johanna from Bimmer's PhD. So, come up on camera, you guys. It's so good to see you.
Jimmy Lea: Glad that you're here with us. Cameras are working. You know, technology is great when it works. And when it doesn't, oh my goodness, does the blood pressure go up? Tim and Johanna, thank you. Good to see you. Good morning. 
Johanna Reichert: Thank you for having us. 
Tim Chakarian: Morning. 
Johanna Reichert: Nice. 
Jimmy Lea: All right. And Juliana. Hey, rock on. And this is Juliana.
Jimmy Lea: See we, she and I have done a few webinars together once upon a time when we were at. Kukui, Julianna and I was at Kukui, Julianna joined for a couple of webinars, as did Tim and Johanna. So, phenomenal. Glad to get the band back together again. And with that, I'm Julianna, you are on for screen share.
Jimmy Lea: So go ahead and if you would to introduce yourself, you're muted at the moment. 
Juliana Sih: Yes. I'm so excited to be here. I'm just going to move a slide. I'm, you know, we're talking today about collaboration over competition, building strong business partnerships. So if you're here, I just want to acknowledge you for being here for taking time out of your busy day to learn something new.
Juliana Sih: There must be some intention for you to want to be. So I just really want to acknowledge you for taking time out of your busy day to be here. So we got quite a bit going on. And I want to quickly introduce myself before we go into that. My name is Juliana. I'm a leadership coach and I'm passionate about this topic because I want to help my clients have better relationships, make more money and be happier.
Juliana Sih: And I do that through the vehicle of coaching. I've been doing this for about five years now, full time. And then I did it as a side hustle for two years before that. Before we get started, I just want to go over some quick housekeeping items. I want you to have a pen and paper available. So if you don't have a pen and paper available, take 10 seconds to go and get a pen and paper.
Juliana Sih: We're going to do a little bit of writing. We're going to do an exercise. This webinar is going to be interactive. My hope is that you get as much as you can out of it, you learn something new about yourself, and you have something strategic and tactical for you to take on today to make your relationships better.
Juliana Sih: If you can keep your video on and keep interacting in the Q and A I would love if you could avoid multitasking. I know it's so easy to be on your window, on your phone at the same time, but I really want you to get the most out of what our webinar today. So please avoid multitasking. At any point, if you have some questions, go ahead and put it into the Q and a box.
Juliana Sih: And Jimmy will kind of lead that portion to get all the questions answered. All right. So we're going to dive right into exercise. I thought initially we had checks, check Chat boxes available. Well, we don't. So I'm going to have you write down on your piece of paper. We're going to go through a quick exercise.
Juliana Sih: It's going to be a fill in the blank. And I want you to write down the first word or phrase that comes to your mind. And it's important that you're honest. And it's absolutely necessary for you to be honest so that we can go in deeper into understanding yourself. All right, ready? We're going to fill in the blank with leadership is.
Juliana Sih: Write down the first word that comes to mind. Leadership is. Success is.
Juliana Sih: Success is.
Juliana Sih: My employees are.
Juliana Sih: My employees are.
Juliana Sih: As a leader, I am.
Juliana Sih: As a leader, I am.
Juliana Sih: Last one is, my relationship to change is. My relationship to change is...
Juliana Sih: so now what I want you to do is I want you to take a quick look at your paper and I want you to underline the word that you want more of. So let's say that what you shared on your paper is leadership is fun. So I want you to underline that word because you want more of that in your life. And then I want you to circle the word that you want to do, improve on. Let's say my, my relationship to change is it's hard and you don't want it to be hard anymore. So I want you to circle that word. And the reason why I had you do this exercise is because this is our frame or context. Our mindset, the way that we view life, our truth tape is the narrative that we say talk about in our head over and over again, that becomes our truth.
Juliana Sih: And what we don't realize is that we have the power to rewrite our truth tapes. So I want you to take a look at the word that you circle, and I want you to start thinking about ways that you can. Rewrite your truth tape because after all the way that we see the world, that is under our control and we can change that narrative to be more empowering and to help us to move forward and be better people.
Juliana Sih: All right, we're going to move into, I'm going to have to go back to Jimmy now so he can. Do a little intro again.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. So excited for that size. Juliana. Thank you. And I was writing so frantically and I was thinking as you were asking the questions and trying to write it down as fast as I could. That was a good exercise. Joining us today is. Tim and Johanna, they are the owners and the operators of Bimmer's PhD.
Jimmy Lea: So you guys can come up on camera. They they have been working together for quite some time and successfully. I'm sure that there have been moments where Maybe Johanna wanted to fire Tim, and I'm sure there are moments where Tim might have wanted to fire Johanna and that's gonna happen that's gonna happen in any business relationship and even in a Personal relationship.
Johanna Reichert: I don't have control over the video. 
Jimmy Lea: You don't well, let's ask you to start the video. How about that? Perfect. Did that work? , you know, it's great. Technology works . So we got that going. So what's the history here, Tim and Johanna? How is it that you guys came together and started Bimmers PhD?
Jimmy Lea: Where what's the, a little bit of the backstory? Go for it. 
Johanna Reichert: Yeah. Well, Tim was a BMW Master Tech at the dealership. And I was a mail lady, actually. I used to deliver mail. And we got together, and within about, it was right when he was thinking about opening up his own shop, because he was kind of tired of how the dealership treated, A, employees, and B, their customers.
Johanna Reichert: And so he thought, I think I can do a better job at this, and take care of customers better than the dealership can, so. He was apparently looking for a shop when we first started dating and I told him, Hey, that's a worthy idea. Let's go ahead and do it. And so I told him, you focus on the shop. I'll focus on the house.
Johanna Reichert: And he opened up the shop all on his own. He would order parts and close the shop and go pick up parts and come back. And then he would. work on the car and then he closed the shop and go pick up the customer and bring him back and so it was all a one man show all on him and then maybe about six months after we'd gotten together we realized that I could probably work at the shop and I didn't have to work at the post office anymore so I quit my job at the post office and I started working with him in the shop kind of doing the admin and the office work and P& Ls and things along those lines.
Johanna Reichert: I mean I did backup service advising and things along those lines too but that's not My forte. So yeah, I kind of do the back end and Tim ran the shop and was service advising and we've just kind of grown it over the last 15 years. We have a staff of nine right now. So there's Tim and myself and we have a service manager and a backup service advisor.
Johanna Reichert: We have two technicians and one apprentice, two, two, two regular technicians and two apprentice technicians and one porter. 
Jimmy Lea: Wow, that's phenomenal. That's awesome. So, I need to go back here to the beginning again. Here, six months in, Tim's working, the shop, open, close, open, close. You're still dating, is this right?
Jimmy Lea: Yes. And you quit with the post office and came into the shop and you're still dating. At what point did you guys get married? And this was like, this is the real deal, boys. It took about five years. 
Tim Chakarian: From the beginning that we were going to be together, but let me add a little clarifying story.
Tim Chakarian: So we love their bike riding and spending outdoors and going camping together. So still working at the post office and every opportunity she has, she comes in visits, but. A one man show. I mean, like you ever seen the guy that's like doing the drums and the guitar and the harmonica, that was me. So, it was a breath of fresh air when she came to help me, but you know, her very first phone call, she like choked on the phone call and today she teaches how to do phone calls.
Tim Chakarian: So we, we didn't know Jack, Jimmy, we didn't know anything. So I was a, I can figure it out better mindset. from, you know, the 1800 square foot shop and the one lift that there was in the one office that there was. So, anyways, Johanna got her dirt bike riding. She bashed her knees, got some stitches, and so she got to not go to work to the post office.
Tim Chakarian: And I was like, well, why don't you come in and help me out? And that's when we quickly realized, you know, we're great partners, you know, we love each other, but we, there's a little bit of compatibility issues. She's like, you don't know what you're doing when it comes to the office work. And I was egotistical.
Tim Chakarian: Mechanic who said, I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this a long period of time and we quickly figured out if we don't get some help, we're doomed. So, we were, but at that point we're buying parts from WorldPAC. So there was a group meeting. So Johanna said, why don't we go to those, one of these trainings?
Tim Chakarian: And I said, trainings, I know everything. I don't need to go to training. I could probably be the instructor myself. Oh, we went to one of these trainings and quickly realized we don't know jack and we implemented what we thought. All right. If we try this is going to make money. And within our 1st month, we had 5, 000 extra dollars in the bank.
Tim Chakarian: So we quickly learned that. Hey, we got we got to get with somebody that knows how to do this so that we can learn this process because we need more than just to go to this training event. And that's when we started picking up coaching. And I think that's been the biggest game changer for that big gap in the story of how we started as a one man or two man, husband and wife team to hiring somebody that seeing things from a bird's eye view that said, you really should do this.
Tim Chakarian: And being able to understand how we transition our personality to I should do this, even if I don't want to. And in Juliana's words, she put coaching to me is coaching is something doing things that you need to do that you don't want to do. And I think that's the strength that we drive off each other's quickly learning to understood like we don't know this stuff.
Tim Chakarian: So we need to get somebody to train us and hold us accountable. And then from there, we've kind of progressed it to how do we hold each other accountable and not rip each other's heads off because we're not always going to agree that we don't agree. We don't always agree. 
Jimmy Lea: No. Yeah, that's right. Well, and I'll tell you what's interesting.
Jimmy Lea: And Johanna classic situation here that I've seen in the industry, when a husband and wife are working together and the wife sees that there's an opportunity for training the females. are very much. Yes, we need training. Yes, we need coaching. Yes, we need direction. Yes, we need to do this.
Jimmy Lea: And we the men, the egotistical testosterone driven men that think we know everything are the ones that are saying no. I already got this figured out. I'm so glad that you got in there into coaching and training. I'm so glad to see that Training paid off so quickly a 5, 000 bump. You were able to see that immediate which is awesome.
Johanna Reichert: I tricked him. I said, let's go travel. There's a class they can go. We can go take some training and make it fun. So we can do traveling and we can also get some training at the same time. And he's like, That sounds cool. So you got a little bit of everything in at once and that put back. Love it. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. . Johanna, a question for you in, in getting this coaching and training, I, you know, we you see, oh, how do I ask this question? In the training that you guys received it was mainly focused on the business. Right. At what point did you see a say, okay, now we need to focus on us as a partnership.
Johanna Reichert: That's actually a good question. You want to go for it. So I feel that it's, you know, you can find service advisor training, you can find. technical training for your technicians. It's actually not very easy at least, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago to find management training. You know, how do you become a manager?
Johanna Reichert: How do you work with people? How do you create a good culture in your shop? How do you create a team that loves working for you and that they're loyal to you because they love coming in to work for you? And if another shop offers them a job because they know that you train really good technicians and they want that.
Johanna Reichert: Those people aren't going to be like, oh cool, they're going to offer me more money, like they like working here because you've created a culture and an atmosphere where they get along with everybody else and they want to be there. And I was, I remember thinking like it's hard, you know, it's not easy.
Johanna Reichert: If you don't know how to manage people, how are you going to figure out how to do it? So I just remember feeling like I wish that there was more of that. And I really do feel like within the last three or four years that, that you know, there that's been more. It's come around where it's like, Hey, these people need training.
Johanna Reichert: They need to know what they're doing when it comes to working on their business and not working in their business. And that's been super helpful. And I really am appreciative that has come around. Cause it didn't exist, you know, 10, 15 years ago. I think that's something to add to. 
Tim Chakarian: No, I think that's the bottom line.
Tim Chakarian: It is, you know, getting a good coaching program was the key for us. Once, once we got in with the Institute and we realized what are those process steps that we need to change. That's when the quick results come and the slow results come when. We the owners have to fix us before we can fix the shop, right?
Tim Chakarian: And you know today I can tell you fix the owner fix the shop means so much more to me than in the very beginning It was like are you saying that I'm broken? Yeah. Yeah, I was 
Jimmy Lea: Yes, in fact, we are saying you're broken and but and that's the interesting thing is you don't know what you don't know You didn't know that you were operating broken But it's always 
Johanna Reichert: improvement.
Johanna Reichert: We probably still are. 
Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. That is a nonstop everyday battle and relationship. We choose to be together. We choose to work together. As opposed to allowing some conflict or some problem rip us apart. We choose to work together to overcome all the obstacles, no matter what those obstacles are.
Jimmy Lea: We choose to be together and that's a choice to take. So I have a question for the both of you. When there is conflict in the business, how do you resolve that conflict in the business? 
Tim Chakarian: You ever seen Homer Simpson grab Bart? No, I'm just kidding. 
Johanna Reichert: Should I 
Johanna Reichert: be strangling first? You know, we actually have a good team with our manager, too.
Johanna Reichert: One thing I noticed is when Tim and I do have you know, a difference of opinion we'll pull our manager in and say, Hey, you know, this is what's going on. This is our thought process. We'd like to get like a third opinion and kind of see. What you think. And he's actually pretty good, like, you'd think, oh, he thinks more like one person, or he thinks more like the other person.
Johanna Reichert: He's actually a pretty, pretty good melding of, he's just calm, and he kind of looks at things from different points of view, and sometimes he'll agree with what I say, and sometimes he'll agree with what Tim says. It's never like a, oh, I know if we pull Kevin in, I'm gonna get my way. You know what I mean?
Johanna Reichert: It's he always pulls a fresh perspective in because he's the one, you know, managing the shop. He's the one that's seeing what's going on and the every day to day. And we're, you know, we're in our offices trying to run it and look on the business. So he's more in it. So he offers a fresh perspective.
Johanna Reichert: So if we feel that we can't come to an agreement on something, or we just can't see eye to eye on something, it's, we always like to get a fresh perspective from somebody that we trust and who we also know, you know, has the best interests of the business at heart too. And that helps quite a lot. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, I love that.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. That's amazing. 
Tim Chakarian: And in turn, 
Tim Chakarian: what that does is it helps us see it from a different point of view, right? Because I think as what I was going to comment on, that is sometimes husband and wife are like, no, we got to do it my way. There's this like unsaid domestic battle of, I have to win the argument.
Tim Chakarian: In the very beginning, and this is the insight that I would tell you now, how did the manager come into play is the question you're going to ask in the very beginning. It was like bringing this up to our coach, right? Whether it's your business coach or your life coach. Hey, how do you help me deal with this situation?
Tim Chakarian: And they help you utilize those tools in the very beginning. Secondly, you start practicing those tools on each other, but we suck, right? So, and my apprentice technician, how many times I got to remind him, use the magnetic socket, put the extension. Why? Because if you try to put the bolt in with your finger, you're going to fail.
Tim Chakarian: I don't want them to fail just like the coach doesn't want us to fail. So we start muscle memory, those tools and the things that we had, and when it doesn't work with each other. Now that we've got, you know, that we've built ourselves a good culture in the shop where we have the respect of our manager, it's hey, can you help us resolve this?
Tim Chakarian: Or what would be your take on it? Because ultimately we're going to visionary it, right? We're going to process it, right? But who has to do it? Them. So if we have their why or how they see it, it changes our viewpoint as to, okay, well, I definitely want the success of the team. So that's not what I wanted to do.
Tim Chakarian: I thought I was going to win the argument, but for the sake of going home, happy and sleeping in my own bed with my wife. Let's go ahead and do this for the collective of the team, and now that's that little bit of maybe I'm not always right mindset that comes up, whether that's on her part, Kevin's part, it helps level the playing field so that it's win for everybody.
Tim Chakarian: And I think that's the key factor is when you get that leadership maturity, you understand I have to make this win for everybody in order for me to get what I want. And then you will get a fulfillment. It just won't be the expectation that you might've had going into it. 
Jimmy Lea: True. And I love that you have this third party.
Jimmy Lea: Kevin, that is able to come in as your manager, as a sounding board. Have you ever had a situation where Johanna, you had this idea, Tim, you had this idea and here you present them both to Kevin and Kevin's like, well, did you guys even consider this idea? 
Johanna Reichert: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah! That's the one thing I love about getting the outside perspective.
Johanna Reichert: I mean, we've worked with Giuliana before as well, and sometimes I would talk to her about, like, something that was frustrating me. And she's like, well, what about this? And I was like, huh. Like, I literally Never would have thought of that. Ever. I would have never ever thought of that in a million years. So, that's what I love about talking to people, especially people who are trained to do that kind of stuff.
Johanna Reichert: Juliana's amazing because she's a life coach. We have Jennifer Holbert who is our gear performance group facilitator. If we have, if, you know, if we go to Kevin and maybe Kevin doesn't have the answer that we need or maybe we need a little bit more insight. Jennifer's always a text away, and she's also amazing, especially when it comes to business advice and things along those lines, so we have a good network and it's, you know, always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, better at your job than you, because, you know, you're always going to be able to network with those people and learn from them and get advice from them.
Johanna Reichert: And sometimes it's literally something you're like, mind blown. I would have never thought of that. I didn't even think it was an option. And yet it's so simple. It's so simple. You just never would have thought of it. 
Jimmy Lea: It's so true. It's so true. It's great to have that coach. That can give you the guidance because that is all also with Julianna and Julianna.
Jimmy Lea: If you're here, this is where Julianna has trained and taught and researched and developed and worked with. She has these skills, these tools to help couples to help business partners to come together. And when there is conflict to work through that. 
Juliana Sih: Yes. Yes. And that's exactly what we're going to be diving into.
Juliana Sih: Some of the things that Tim already shared are going to be things that I'm going to be talking about. So I love that. But conflict is, you know, a clash of interest values or needs between individuals or groups that often result in disagreement, struggle, and tension. And people don't often know how to deal with conflict because it gets really uncomfortable.
Juliana Sih: First of all, you know, we're in a state, a heightened state of fight or flight. Literally the same parts of the brain that are activated when you're being chased by a cheetah are the same parts of the brain that are activated when you're in a conflict. So imagine being chased by a cheetah and trying to talk it through, right?
Juliana Sih: No wonder we say things we don't mean. We say sometimes our ugly self comes out. Or some of us might just freeze and not say nothing. And some of us might actually just like flee the scene, right? Like, I can't talk about this now. I got to go. So we all have a different conflict style. So it's important to identify your conflict style.
Juliana Sih: You know, are you a fight? Are you gonna die on that Hill? Are you a freeze and you just clam up and you're not even listening to the person you're in your head overthinking, or are you like the person that leaves? Figure out what your conflict style is like. I think that's really important. And I'll share a quick yeah.
Juliana Sih: And I'll share a quick story about when I was in college back in the day, I was trying to take this class that I didn't have the prereq for, right. And some of my classmates were getting exceptions and getting exceptions to get into that class. So I emailed my counselor and I was like, Hey, this seems unfair.
Juliana Sih: Why am I not getting into this class? And he sent me an explanation that I needed one or two more classes that they had taken that I didn't. And I was not happy about that. So I emailed his boss and I sent him an email, a not so nice email saying like things, why I felt like entitled to get into that class.
Juliana Sih: And I felt pretty good after I sent the send button, I felt pretty good. I was like, these are good points. He's going to let me into the class. Few days go by. I don't hear anything. Another few days go by. I don't hear anything. And that's when I realized. That's when it dawned on me that I did not handle this conflict well.
Juliana Sih: I was trying to fight and compete against that counselor versus trying to collaborate with him. And that was the day that I learned that, like, it's really important for me to take a step back, not be in my fight or flight mode, in order to resolve something peacefully and in a way that works for both of us.
Juliana Sih: I personally believe that listening is an antidote to conflict. And there's a difference between listening and active listening. Okay. Active. They're just two different things. If you're thinking about the next thing to say, that is not listening. If you are thinking about your to do list while someone else is talking, that is not listening.
Juliana Sih: Active listening is about being intentional, engaged with the other person, fully concentrating on the speaker. You're giving them their full attention. You're working to understand what the other person is saying, and you're also noticing what they're not saying. You're providing feedback, you're engaging with the conversation, you're paraphrasing and summarizing.
Juliana Sih: And you're also paying attention to their body language, eye contact, and showing attentiveness that you're paying attention. One of the fastest way to deescalate a conflict is to move into the mode of active listening and stop being in your head and be with the other person. Active listening is not looking at your phone while someone else is talking.
Juliana Sih: Some other quick effective strategies that Tim already touched on was create a win, right? When you're in a conflict, try to find a solution that is a win for both parties, because then you're not going to be competing against each other. Right. Cause if it's a win lose, someone's going to lose and they're not going to be happy about that.
Juliana Sih: So create a win. Another important thing is to like, learn to manage your emotions because after all, we cannot control other people, but we can control our emotions. So understand your conflict style and start to work to reinvent it, right? Like that true tape, rewrite that true tape agree on the action steps.
Juliana Sih: So you don't leave conflict up in the air agree on the next action steps. And I think the most underutilized thing that sometimes what Tim mentioned about the ego is we forget that we got to be willing to forgive and let go because after all, there is a way to clean up, right? Clean up on aisle seven.
Juliana Sih: We have to be able to clean up if we make a mess. And it couldn't be as simple as, I'm sorry I messed up. What I can own about how it went is this. And I know it's tough because our ego doesn't want to admit that it's wrong. But it, you know, our soul and our heart, we want to reconnect back with the person when we have conflict, we don't want to leave it up in the air, especially not if it's our business partner.
Juliana Sih: And there is almost always something that you can own. There are two sides to the story and you can take ownership for how it went. So I have a little. Practice for y'all to take on. Let's put this into action. Let's practice some active listening. Today, pick someone in your life that you want to practice active listening with.
Juliana Sih: I want you to practice focusing on them, pay attention to them. Notice what they're doing or not doing. I want you to. Be engaged with the conversation, summarize and paraphrase what they're saying. Ask clarifying questions. People say things that don't make sense. They need the other person to ask questions about it.
Juliana Sih: And then notice if they're making eye contact. Notice if they're fidgeting or notice if they feel, look really comfortable. So take on that practice for two weeks and I guarantee you it'll transform the relationships that you have in your life with that active listening skill. All right, back to you, Jimmy and Tim and Johanna.
Jimmy Lea: So, Tim and Johanna, what do you guys do for active listening? How do you resolve conflict between the two of you? What is your active listening? What does that look like for you guys? 
Johanna Reichert: I think it does, it takes a conscientious effort to stop the thoughts that are going on in your head of what am I going to say next to what he's saying right now and just really What's his point of view?
Johanna Reichert: How's he feeling? I'm a pretty empathetic person. So it's actually a little bit easier for me to just kind I always will put myself in the other person's shoes and wonder like, you know, if I was them, how would I feel? And it's usually, you know, not great. And then I don't want to make people feel that way.
Johanna Reichert: So, you know, it's a conscientious effort. You have to kind of stop yourself in your tracks of what you're used to doing. And Like Juliana said, like you just got to be an active listener. You have to, I think one of the big things really with everybody is just what are you going to say next? You know this, what he's telling me that I did this, and this, but I need to defend myself and I need to say, but this is why I did that.
Johanna Reichert: And this is why I did that. And well, you did this, but that doesn't get anybody anywhere. It just creates more conflict. And then you'll find that if you just take a step back and be like, okay, you know, if I did this. If I was him and he did this to me, whatever, if this was done to me, how would I feel?
Johanna Reichert: It's like, okay, you know, I feel pretty crappy. I wouldn't like to feel that way. So, I can see why he feels the way he feels about my actions or lack thereof. And so, it's easier to kind of take a step back, listen to it, and then, you know, once you, I've noticed a lot, it's like, Usually there's two sides to a conflict, obviously, right?
Johanna Reichert: You know, you say something, they say something. It's kind of crappy on both parts, even though one may be a little bit more copable. After you're like, oh, you know what, I didn't mean to make you feel that way, I apologize, I totally see why, what you're, where you're coming from, and I'm gonna make a conscientious effort in the future to think before I act, or think before I speak, and not repeat this action.
Johanna Reichert: And then you'll get I'm sorry too, you know, I shouldn't have said this and I agreed and everybody you feel you both feel connected and you feel the same And it's Gianna said it's a win. So you're not sitting there like it's my fault I feel like crap now because I'm the one that did everything and you were right and I was wrong Because they don't want you to feel that way either you know if you really have a good relationship and a strong relationship, they're gonna be like I love the fact that they admitted they were wrong.
Johanna Reichert: I love the fact that they, you know, said sorry to me. And you know what? I had something to do with this too. What was my part and what can I do to make it better and to also communicate with them that, hey, let's work together so that this all ends up being a win for everybody. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, being able to take a walk in somebody else's shoes for a mile or 2 or 3 to understand their point of view and their perspective goes a long way. 
Tim Chakarian: That's hard to do for a mechanic to me, because we're always trying to get to the root cause. I'm being honest with you looking at, like. You know, my growth from being the, what do you need, let me fix this right now mechanic to understanding that empathy because I don't have that empathy and that's a quality that I yearn for, but I think the part of it that took a challenge, and I would probably challenge other mechanics and leaders to start with this is start with vulnerability.
Tim Chakarian: You know, and I think changing the conversation, it's easy to say, you made me feel right one, two, but we've got three more of these bullets pointing right back at us, or as you know, I've had to change and go, okay, cool. Well, those conversations that I started with ended with more explosion. Now the conversation is okay.
Tim Chakarian: I listened. I heard what you're saying. And oftentimes, usually you miss a word or two, like right last week. I think it was even earlier this week. She said, Okay. I did that already and in my mindset, I was going to do that because I was pretty sure that she didn't do that and I heard her talking about it.
Tim Chakarian: But I missed that I already word so I found myself doing what she's doing and now we became counter counterproductive So I think the point that I want to drive home is I've had to change and being vulnerable and for leaders Oh my god, we're not vulnerable that shows you're weak and you don't know.
Tim Chakarian: Yeah, I don't know I don't have the answer and that starts with my wife that starts with my manager and it goes all the way down to my Text they come up to me in the middle of a job. I don't have the answer right now Look at work towards it together, but being vulnerable and saying, I'm not sure let's figure it out together gives the other person their ability to kind of just drop their guard and go, okay, cool, we can come back to this and it's organized and set in a time frame versus a fire putter outer, you know, a scenario where you've got something that you're handling that you're not in the correct mind frame for.
Tim Chakarian: Again, we could go down the scheduling path talking about that, but handling that at the right time and making sure that you leave the other person feeling empowered, right? I want to make sure that you feel, when you leave, you feel like I did the best I could to help you with your situation. So you're inclined to come back and ask me for help again.
Tim Chakarian: And that goes all the way down to your clients, your customers, your family members. It works all the way around. And if it wasn't for the people around us that helped you see that with patience, at least with me, I wouldn't be here today. So that's a very good point that I find myself constantly working on and failing on too, but you know, work in progress, 
Tim Chakarian: right?
Johanna Reichert: Failing forward. 
Jimmy Lea: It always is. It always is. And Tim, thank you for being vulnerable in this situation. It's not always easy, man, and I understand that, and I'm with you. I am working actively to develop more empathy, and it's something that I'm working on. Tim, it's great to hear that I'm not alone. I'm glad that you're working on it as well.
Jimmy Lea: Brother, that's awesome. Thank you. So, question for both of you then. Also, I'm going to steer a little bit different direction here. When we talk about the business goals, And your vision of where you want to go. How do you align your business goals to be in line with your vision together as partners?
Jimmy Lea: Because maybe one wants to go another way. One wants to go another way. How do you align your goals to be with your vision together? 
Tim Chakarian: Actionizer. 
Johanna Reichert: Yeah, that's, that helps. And that's the to-do list. Yeah. Right. So I feel that the training that we do it together. You know, very rarely, there was one time when our service advisor, our manager, was out on paternity leave.
Johanna Reichert: And so we didn't really have anybody who could run the shop. So one of our meetings, Tim had to go alone up to Seattle, and I stayed here to kind of help run the shop with the backup service advisor. And that was one of the only times where. He went up and got the training and I didn't and it actually felt really weird for both of us because he was pretty much ahead of the game.
Johanna Reichert: He got all the, you know, in person training and going over everything that we were doing and the things that we were working on in the group. You can definitely feel the difference when you're not together doing it, because when we're together, it's like, okay, you know, you get an assignment, look at your actionizer, what are your goals, what are the things you're working towards, how are you doing on it, and then we both sit down and look at it, and okay, you know, this is what we're working on, have we gotten some headway on this, or what steps do we need to take in order to get there Tim's a little bit more brave when it comes to things than I am, you know, he like, From like five ten years ago, he's been wanting to be a multi shop owner.
Johanna Reichert: And I'm like, oh my gosh, it's hard enough running one shop and being on top of everything with one shop. Why would I want to do it with two or three or four or five? So he kind of sometimes has to drag me with my heels on the ground up into those things. But, you know, I'll come around. But he's kind of the visionary and I'm kind of the one that sits in the back and it's like, well, you know, you gotta think about this rationally and what's going on.
Johanna Reichert: But we corroborate we do it together. So. You know, I help him to not make too rash of decisions when it's not when it's not a good time. And he helps me to kind of make rash decisions when it's the right time. So, we just work together at it. And, you know, I feel that the training and the group effort doing it all together, that really helps to keep us in line.
Johanna Reichert: And then you just have to set the time. And that's really hard. I mean, it's actually something that we find to be difficult. Because you know, you live with each other. You work with each other, you sometimes we drive with each other, sometimes we don't. 'cause you just need that 45 minutes away from each other, every, you know, every day.
Johanna Reichert: So it's like when you get home, do you wanna sit down and work on the goals of the shop? Sometimes it's like, no, I don't wanna talk about the shop. I just want to like cook dinner and or relax for a minute. And he's usually very, we gotta talk about this, we gotta talk about this. So, you know, it's kind of finding a, an even ground.
Johanna Reichert: Finding the time to do it and making sure that you stick to it. He's a little bit better and more consistent with it than I am, but he helps me out, which is once again, it's a good thing because we need, we're opposites and you need somebody to help you out where you're deficient and vice versa. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that.
Jimmy Lea: That's amazing. That's amazing. 
Tim Chakarian: I don't know how to follow up on that, man? That was all in a nutshell, but it's the groups. I think if I could add one thing. For those that don't know we're in a groups program with the institute and that means you're within 12 other 15 shop owners and we meet and we hold each other accountable and I think that's the key behind it is people look at coaching like, Oh, somebody's going to tell me what to do.
Tim Chakarian: No, I tell this other person, Hey Johanna, I need help with this and can you help me with this? Can we sit down and collaborate with it? So in that group setting, we've learned to use a page that we call the Actionizer and it has goals. For the company and then personal goals and I'll tell you my personal goals are like I had to add categories to the personal goals.
Tim Chakarian: So what that did is when I first seen that it helped get all my ADHD ideas out of my head and on paper and then now we can discuss them and say, is that our goal? Yeah. And on that goal list, this year we hit, we bought our first house. This year we hit, we bought our property of 15 years we've been renting.
Tim Chakarian: So if you put goals in front of you and you work towards that and you talk about it, whether you want to talk about it, whether you don't want to talk about it, it puts the vision in front of you. And I've learned to be more and more process driven, which helps you go, okay. How do we get to where we need to be?
Tim Chakarian: And I think working with Juliana and past before that has been the clutch. Cool. I got an explosion of emotions. I don't like, how do I change that? Well, I changed my relationship with my emotion. I don't like this anger that I feel. How do I change that relationship? I got to either take time away or go.
Tim Chakarian: These are the steps that I'm going to do like we did. And these are the things that I'm not going to do. So when I hit those, I go, damn it, that's that I didn't want to do. Let me go back to what I was doing because I wrote it down. It's real to me. And when you got an accountability partner, I wouldn't be a good partner if I just said, yeah, whatever you want to do, because that doesn't lead to the end goal of.
Tim Chakarian: Doing what's hard right doing what's hard I'm, sure joey i was gonna go back. So i'll just shut up and let her do her deal 
Juliana Sih: No, I think you're hitting the nail on the head tim I mean, it's so important to have goals and to know the direction that you're going especially in business partnerships and I think oftentimes we talk a lot about goals people talk about goals vision values, but they're actually Quite distinct, but they get all moshed up.
Juliana Sih: So a vision is the bigger picture. The thing that you're working towards, it's designed to motivate and guide over an extended period of time. And the vision is also meant to motivate your employees as well. And it could affect how you interact with your customers. Goals are a little bit smaller. They're clear.
Juliana Sih: Clearly defined in focus. There's typically a deadline or a timeframe around it for you to achieve it. And the values is the thing, the guiding principles that you make decisions with and create the goals and vision with. So I'm going to give you, I mean, Tim shared an example of the values of a goal, but I'm going to share a little personal story about when I was in my mid twenties, I started dating this hot nerdy scientist and on paper, he sounded great.
Juliana Sih: He sounded great. Except for the fact that inside, I knew that we didn't really want the same things. We didn't really talk about our goals, right? I was looking more for a monogamous relationship, long term, maybe lead to marriage. At least I wanted that possibility to be in place. And for him, I don't think he knew what he wanted.
Juliana Sih: He didn't know what he wanted. So we never talked about it also. Like sometimes we're too afraid to talk about the things that we want because they might not align with the other person, but I spent five years with this person when I probably should have broken up with them three, you know, after two years.
Juliana Sih: So although the relationship was still great, we, our visions and our values did not align. We were not on the same page about what we wanted. And that, so imagine that in a business partnership. Right. Tim wants five shops. Johanna is like, I'm good with one, but if they didn't communicate about that, then their actions would be different on a daily basis, but they do communicate about that.
Juliana Sih: So that is like the very important piece. So if you're a shop owner, make sure you have a guiding North star that everyone in the company knows, including your employees, make sure you have a target or a goal that is specific. And you want to create these for your employees as well, because that's going to help motivate them.
Juliana Sih: You know, if your employee wants. Let's say they want to manage people and they don't communicate that to you, or you don't know about that. You're never going to put them into a manager position because maybe they're so such a good tech, or let's say your employee wants a raise, but you don't ever specify what they need to do to get that raise.
Juliana Sih: So it's a co creation between the shop owner and the employees to make sure that there's a target that they're working towards that is specific. So that helps to motivate them. So every day that they come in, they're excited and doing their best job. And then you want to make sure that you communicate.
Juliana Sih: And over communicate your goals your vision and your values as well. So the values will help shape how you pursue the goals and uphold the vision. And I think in my relationship, when I didn't have the vision and the goals in place, I wasn't in integrity with my values. Also, I did things that did not withhold, like did not uphold my values.
Juliana Sih: And I tolerated things that were. That were not part of my value. And once you kind of have a vision and goal in place, then you can create some really clear communication protocols, right? Like having those standard operating procedures. It's hard to create standard operating procedures in a business. If you don't have a vision or a goal for the company.
Juliana Sih: So. And this is important when conflict arises, right? Let's say one of your employees is not doing so great, or they had to leave. What are you going to do? You have a protocol in place for that. Figure out the best way to, you need to have communication protocols, such as knowing how you're going to communicate to people.
Juliana Sih: Are you going to email, text them, have a verbal conversation. So all these things can be created when you make your goals and your vision put into place. So I'm going to turn it back to Jimmy and Johanna now for our next section. Oh, go ahead. 
Jimmy Lea: No, this is really good because I have a situation here. I'm going to throw out at Johanna and Tim.
Jimmy Lea: Fictitious. This is fake. This is not real. And, but, and it goes right in with what we're talking about. If Tim was to come home and say, Hey, Johanna, I just bought our second and third shop. Yay! Tim's all excited because it's going after his vision. And if they hadn't had conversations, Johanna's thinking, What in the gitch?
Jimmy Lea: No, right. I mean, that would be a bad situation. So totally fake. I understand Tim and Johanna, what do you do in your relationship that helps with the transparency and transparency? Did I say that right? The transparency with your relationship and to develop trust in that relationship that you're both on the same page.
Jimmy Lea: What do you do 
Jimmy Lea: Meetings? 
Tim Chakarian: Yeah, monthly meetings, but mainly the financial meeting. I think going over, you know, where understanding this money that we moved. Where did it go? Did we end up with profit? How much of it ended up for us? Did that go in the goal set that we had? 
Johanna Reichert: Doing your numbers every month.
Johanna Reichert: Well, I mean, that's step one. You need to be doing your numbers. But there's so many shop owners that don't. Which, I mean, I get it. Most people are like, Hey I'm a mechanic. I know how to work on cars. I think I can do this. And you very well could. But you also need to make sure that you stay on top of things.
Johanna Reichert: And if you're deficient in an area, That's totally fine. Find somebody who's not deficient in that area. So, find a bookkeeper, find an accountant find somebody who's able to handle that part. Because if you go month in, month out, and you literally have no idea how much money you've made, or you have no idea what your margins are.
Johanna Reichert: Yeah. I mean, most people think, Okay, I just I just had this big job. I just sold 3, 000. I have 3, 000 in my pocket. But part of that's sales tax, part of that paid for the parts, part of that paid for your technician, and then, you know, you have rent on your building, and you have electricity, and you have, and it's like, dude, but they think, well, I've got 3, 000 in my bank now, so I'm good for the next week or two you, some, so, there are so many shop owners that do that.
Johanna Reichert: And it's really scary. I can't even imagine running a business like that. It would be nerve wracking constantly. So, not only having a monthly meeting, but to have something to have a monthly meeting about. We do our P& Ls every single month. I try to have them done by the 10th, but the 15th at the latest.
Johanna Reichert: In the groups, they hold us accountable. We have to have our numbers turned in by the 20th. So that we all go over it and we're all on the same page, and if anybody needs help, they reach out to other people and they get help. So that's one thing that, that's key with that. But also, I think just, you know, you if you don't have a trusting relationship, and you know, I, you know, I don't lie to him, and he doesn't lie to me.
Johanna Reichert: You know, I'm not counting white lies. Everybody lies. But, you know what I mean when it comes to the important stuff? You know, you, if you know that the person's gonna tell you what you need to find, what you need to hear Tim's really good at that. So, I think that we have a pretty good Understanding that we don't keep things from each other.
Johanna Reichert: We're on the up and up about things when I make mistakes, I let him know I make mistakes because it's going to be easier to discuss it and be forefront about it than it is to for him to find out and go, did this happen? And it's like gulp. You know, you don't want to be in those kinds of situations.
Johanna Reichert: So I think that we're pretty good at that too. And that's a tremendous help. 
Tim Chakarian: And if you follow that thought to an end, Jimmy, you know, if I come home with three shops, At the end of the year, am I still going to have those three shops? Do I have the commitment of my team and my spouse to be able to progressively accomplish my goal?
Tim Chakarian: Or did I just fly off the handle and, you know, that's the equivalent of you can use another scenario as a Ferrari. Anybody can afford to go out and buy the Ferrari, but are you going to park it on the street in your apartment? You know, what did your mate say? Can you afford the tires and the mate?
Tim Chakarian: Can I afford to follow through on this decision that I made? And do I have the support of my mate? Because If you don't, you know, you're going to have a rudder that goes this way, but you're going to have another jet that goes this way. And then the jet never gets off the ground. You got all these people making decisions, right?
Tim Chakarian: So I think talking about it on a regular basis, having a good financial analysis of is this real, you know, like Joliana talked about the goal, setting smart goals, right? Measurable goals, realistic goals, attainable goals that we can say. a hundred percent, and that's what the actualizer does when we get to our goal.
Tim Chakarian: I put a full green, 100%. I pat myself on the back. I pat her on the back and I say, yeah, I did this. Okay, cool. What's next? And sometimes, believe it or not, it comes up month after month. We still, I still have to fix the lights. The techs are still telling me that now one more light is out, so I'm not perfect, you know, any more than she's perfect.
Tim Chakarian: But just to get lights fixed in a shop, there has to be a plan, there has to be a budget, and these are the things having these constant conversations, putting these small little Processes and steps in front of us not only helps us, but it sets a really good example for our staff because when we're not here, they go, oh, when they weren't here, this is when they were here.
Tim Chakarian: This is what they expected us to do versus oftentimes what I'm talking to other shop owners when the cats away, the mice will play and we don't want that. I want to set a good example. So my staff knows. You know, Kevin's growth spurt is, or Kevin's growth plan is to become the manager and run the shop 100 percent independent of Tim and Johanna.
Tim Chakarian: When that occurs, then, only then, can we put ourselves in a position where we're not part of the hamster wheel and we can now go open a shop 2, 3, whatever the scenario may be. But the collaboration is there and I really want to elaborate on collaboration because this hit me on a drive in one morning, I was listening to John Maxwell book and he was talking about the difference between cooperation and collaboration.
Tim Chakarian: And that you're smiling because we've had this conversation before. Cooperation is everybody does what I want, we're all happy. Collaboration is she doesn't agree with how I want it and now we have to figure out how to make this work for everybody and that is so much easier because everybody laughs when I say this, but you know, as a D mechanic personality, I'm easy to get along with as long as I get my way.
Tim Chakarian: But that doesn't work in the long run. And that's the bottom line is that may be short term, but it's not sustainable. And when you think of a business or when you buy a property, you don't do it for five years. This is a long term infinite game that you're going to plan and do something with this wealth of an empire that you built with your partner, in my case.
Tim Chakarian: And, you know, I wish that for the best. I wish that for other shop owners, it's definitely challenging working with your spouse. But I think the reward of it, like Johanna said, how are you going to find another person that's going to trust you, that you can turn the entire finances of your empire on over with and have them give you a good report.
Tim Chakarian: It's challenging, but when you do, you have this amazing relationship that you run a business, raise kids, raise a family. and still go home to watch the sunset with your mate, you know, and hopefully we'll be in business 50 years and be married 50 years and, you know, be sitting around like the old couples.
Tim Chakarian: And that has a lot to do with the people that got us here, the network, the Institute, Giuliana Jimmy, yourself, and all of the other people that we surrounded ourselves in. So it's a day to day work in progress. And like one coach told me nonstop ever growing improvement. 
Jimmy Lea: Always. And I'm looking forward to those races on the front porch in our rocking chairs.
Tim Chakarian: Amen. 
Jimmy Lea: Amen. We're going to do it. So you talk about cooperation, collaboration, and I totally agree. That's been some long conversations we've had, which is awesome. What about trust, Juliana? If we talk about trust in a relationship, is there a way to build trust? Because maybe relationships don't start with that trust level.
Jimmy Lea: It's all, do what I say, do what I say, do what I say. How can we build trust in relationships? 
Juliana Sih: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think we underestimate that the ability that we have to build trust. So trust is assured reliance on the character ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. I believe you can gift trust, right?
Juliana Sih: It's not necessarily transaction, but it's also conflict complicated. And not only is there trust with others, but there's also trust within yourself. So if. Trust can affect your confidence, your integrity, and how you show up in the world. And often time, trust is kind of complicated too because you don't necessarily know that you broke trust with someone, right?
Juliana Sih: Right? It's like death by a thousand cuts. Sometimes we just don't know. Maybe it seems minor. They got over it and they're like, oh, okay. Like, we're all good now. You know, I'll share a quick story about when I broke trust, not only with myself, but also with my coworkers. This is a little bit embarrassing, but I'm going to share it anyway.
Juliana Sih: So I went on vacation, but I didn't tell my boss. And this was pre pre coaching when I had my own business and I went on vacation without telling my boss. I was naive and I thought I could like work remote and I was going to Burning Man. It was just like a lie that I told myself that I could work at Burning Man cause it was just not going to happen.
Juliana Sih: So I lied to my boss about where I was going and I lied also to myself that I could, would be able to work. And. You know, the first few days were terrible. It was like eating me inside that I had told this lie. Eventually I was able to get out of it. And like, I had fun at the event, but you know, when I had to go into work that Monday or Tuesday, whatever it was, I had my tail between my legs and I knew that I had effed up.
Juliana Sih: And What I had to do was I had to rebuild trust. I had to a, admit to all my mistakes because that was going to help me to trust myself. But B, I had to also do a really good job at my work project managing. I was excellent with my clients. I was a transparent in my communication and I was able to rebuild that because after all, there are a ton of different ways that we can break confidential, like break trust, right?
Juliana Sih: Beach of confidentiality. Someone tells you something in secret and you go tell it to someone else. That breaks trust, or you're dishonest, or you don't follow through on something. Like you say, you're going to do something you don't follow through or you're inconsistent. But just as just as much as it's easy to break trust, it's also just as easy to build trust.
Juliana Sih: And. Building trust can look many different ways. It can be owning up to your mistakes. It can be being consistent, showing up, like saying what you say, you're going to do something and you do it. That's the way that you start to build trust again. Build a positive relationship. Maybe you actually have a conversation around how you want your relationship to look like.
Juliana Sih: Things that I know for sure build trust is transparent communication, openly share information. I love what Tim and Johanna said about they constantly communicate. They're open about it. They're honest. Don't sugarcoat. Don't sugarcoat. You're only lying to yourself or the other person. You only sugarcoat because you're trying to protect yourself.
Juliana Sih: Or the other person and neither of them that really work integrity and consistency or keep your promises. And it can be small promises, but keep your promises a to yourself, right? Because that creates confidence. If you don't keep your promises to yourself, that starts to erode you, you trusting yourself and your abilities.
Juliana Sih: The last thing is just respect and recognition and knowledge. Thank your partner, let them know they're doing a good job. And always address their concerns thoughtfully. So I have a little practice before we all take, another little practice before we all take off. Pick one person in your life that you want to build trust for.
Juliana Sih: And for the next two weeks, you're going to create small promises with them. And you're going to follow through. They could be simple like, Oh honey, I'll email that difficult client. And then go do it. Or, you know, I'll take care of this at the shop and then go do it and then practice being honest, diplomatic and tactful, especially if there's conflict and start to build that trust in two weeks.
Juliana Sih: If you just do these simple things, your transit your relationship will be transformed. And if you're looking for a little bit more transformation, I'm offering all our participants 30 minutes of a complimentary coaching session so we can dive into your partnership and to get a little bit more specific about what you're looking for.
Juliana Sih: Jimmy, I have a closing quote before we go into questions. Should I go into that? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Go into your quote, closing quote. But before you do that, you know, I do have a question for you with the QR code, if you want to bring that back up, is this just for married couples or is this also available for business partners?
Juliana Sih: Both. Both. 
Jimmy Lea: Okay. 
Juliana Sih: Or maybe even people that are thinking about getting a business partner. That's a great time to also think about getting a coach is even before you're in a business partner. What do I want in my business partner? What conditions must be met before I even say yes to this person?
Juliana Sih: What do I actually need in a business partner? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, that's extraordinary. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. Let's go into the quote. And then I do have a question for Tim and Johanna. 
Juliana Sih: All right. Great. I just have a little closing quote from Henry Ford about, you know, coming together as a beginning, keeping together as progress and working together is success.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. Yeah, let's go for the success for sure. So this question is from the audience Selena Solana says, Hey, Tim and Johanna, did you seek leadership coaching like Julianne offers or did you learn more of it along the way? 
Johanna Reichert: Yeah we definitely went looking for, like I said when I felt that there wasn't really a lot of management kind of coaching or how to be a good leader to deal with your people and kind of understand what they're going through, etc.
Johanna Reichert: We spoke to our personal business coach at the time, and he actually knew Juliana. And he said, I think I, I have somebody who might be able to help you out with that, and he introduced us to Juliana, and we actually did start working with her on that, because I, like I said, I felt like that it was a, an area that was lacking anywhere that I had looked, and so, I do feel that actually has improved more even expanding beyond Juliana it's helpful to get the life coaching that she offers and then also working with different different people.
Johanna Reichert: Groups, they have training groups. They have different things to offer now for management and how to be a good manager. 
Tim Chakarian: Yeah, and I want to elaborate on that. That's different than your business coach, right? Your business coach focuses on you, your process, your business and how to get there. We wanted to focus a little bit more first together, how do we help our relationship and understand that and in our meetings, we discovered.
Tim Chakarian: We kind of have to separate this a little bit. There's a whole different learning that I need that I got to have a little bit of time with Juliana. And I understood, to me, that came really quickly. What do I need to do? How do I do it? How to get it done? And the progress in the beginning was slow. But once I got it, it was like, okay, cool, I ran with that, right?
Tim Chakarian: And then Johanna continued to meet with Juliana a lot more on a weekly basis. And I think that really helped. The point I'm getting at is it helps you individually. This is your life coach to help you focus on things that are you and you only. And hopefully that's in the direction of your partner. And if that aligns with what's going on in your group program or your coaching program, even better, it's like socks and shoes that fit together.
Tim Chakarian: And then you got those awesome laces that just say, I'm Jimmy Lee and I love, I mean, it's just, it becomes a perfect package together. So if you're doing business, if you're not doing business coaching. Get there. If you're doing business coaching and want to try life coaching it's life changing. And I think that's why they call it life coaching.
Tim Chakarian: I've since moved on from it, but I gotta tell you, Juliana, all of the tools and the things that you've taught me, I use, if not day to day, weekly. And some of the ones I don't use often, I remind myself when I step in it to go, Damn, that was that thing I wasn't gonna work on. But, you know, work in progress, right?
Tim Chakarian: It's the whole network behind us from Juliana, from the business coaches to David Cousa to Cecil to Jennifer, everybody, even coaches that are, don't know that they had an impact on us. You know, Aaron Woods, I'm going to call you out on that one. It's the, all of the stuff that the people that you're around that helped you go, this is the little things that you should be working on constantly hearing those.
Tim Chakarian: Helps bring those to fruition. And you look back and you're like, wow, I can't believe we've accomplished so much in 15 years. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that's super cool, man. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate that Juliana you want to bring back up your qr code. I want to give you a big shout out Thank you for all of your time your effort your energy your thoughts and I tim I man I agree with you.
Jimmy Lea: Let's work on us. Let's work on our relationships. Let's work on the business Because that'll get us in the right direction down the right road and have the right vision for getting there So anybody that's watching this Scan the QR code. This will get you on to Juliana's calendar. Pick a time that's convenient for you.
Jimmy Lea: Her calendar is there available for you to have a meeting. And Juliana, thank you for offering this to everybody who's listening. That, that is so powerful. Thank you very much. 
Juliana Sih: Yes. Thank you for having me. 
Tim Chakarian: Listen, take advantage of the 30 minutes. 
Jimmy Lea: The 30 minutes will go very quickly. You'll be surprised at how quick it goes and how much you get out of it.
Jimmy Lea: And you just want more and more. So, thank you. My name is Jimmy Lee with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Thank you to Tim. Thank you, Johanna. Thank you, Juliana. You guys are awesome. We'll see you guys again soon.
 

100 - Next-Gen Success: Opportunities for Young Leaders in the Automotive Industry with Raven Harris

100 - Next-Gen Success: Opportunities for Young Leaders in the Automotive Industry with Raven Harris
August 14th, 2024 - 00:58:27
 
Show Summary:
In this webinar, Raven Harris, a successful Euro shop owner in Simi Valley, California, will share his journey and insights on how the industry is evolving and the vital role young talent plays in its future. We will explore the diverse career paths available, from technicians and managers to aspiring shop owners, and discuss the skills and mindset needed to thrive in these roles.
Key Takeaways:
Attracting & Retaining Young Talent: Understand the importance of attracting young professionals to your shop and the strategies to do so effectively.
Exploring Opportunities: Discover the diverse career paths available for young individuals in the automotive industry, making it an excellent time to enter the field.
Fulfilling Industry Demand: Gain insights on how many shops are actively seeking technicians and the potential this creates for young professionals.
Developing Inexperienced Talent: Explore strategies to attract top talent and develop young, inexperienced individuals into key employees or even future shop owners.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Raven Harris, German Auto Specialist
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:01:19] - Raven describes his Air Force experience maintaining C-17 aircraft and how it parallels his current role as a shop owner.
[00:04:52] - He shares a late-night repair story that demonstrates his problem-solving mindset under pressure.
[00:08:17] - Raven explains how he rebranded the “oil change” into an “oil service” and doubled his revenue from that service line.
[00:10:03] - He outlines his decision to pursue business acquisition over real estate and how he found his first shop.
[00:13:34] - Raven breaks down the creative financing structure he used to purchase a $1.4M shop with only $70K out-of-pocket.
[00:18:09] - Since working with a coach from The Institute, his ARO jumped from $750 to $1,250, with a goal of hitting $1,500.
[00:21:29] - Raven discusses tracking ARO, AWRO, and close ratios - and how he uses these metrics to drive performance.
[00:26:22] - He shares why European repair shops offer a high-margin opportunity and how brand perception plays into value.
[00:36:45] - Raven talks about mentorship, learning from other multi-shop owners, and using recruiters to find top-tier talent.
[00:52:10] - Despite year-one challenges, from theft to lawsuits, Raven’s resilience and belief in solving problems helped him thrive.
 
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=jSWDNzgsLwg
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Jimmy Lea: Welcome. Good afternoon, friends. Glad you are here with us as we start this webinar. I'm super excited for our guest today as we talk about that next generation that's going to take over and that next generation of success going to be streaming into our industry, the automotive aftermarket.
Jimmy Lea: Those of you who are here, we're talking about the next generation of success and the success that they are going to have in this industry, the automotive aftermarket. And I'm super excited to be the host for you today. As we talk to specifically Raven Harris is the owner of German auto specialists up in Simi Valley, California.
Jimmy Lea: He is running a phenomenal shop there doing a great job with his technicians, with his his business. And one more shout out here, Raven for Craig Zale joining from Lucas, Texas. Craig, you're awesome. I've been to Craig's shop a couple of times too which is awesome. And I've been to Jeff's shop, which was the old shop.
Jimmy Lea: Jeff's now in a new shop. So Raven, thank you for joining. Glad to have you with us as we're talking about German auto specialists. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for taking some time to talk to us today. I'm excited to talk to you because of your background.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, for sure. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. Hey, you're welcome. You're in the Air Force and you worked on the C 10. 
Raven Harris: C 17 aircraft, correct. 
Jimmy Lea: C 17 aircraft. My father was also in the Air Force, and he worked on the control panel for airplanes. I'm trying to remember which one. The big bomber airplane back in the Vietnam era.
Jimmy Lea: Huh? Maybe a little after the B 52, maybe? That sounds right. That sounds right. Yeah, I have to find out from my dad. I'll get back to you and let you know because you're on the C 17. And what is the C 17? What do you, what did you do? 
Raven Harris: It's like the workhorse cargo jet of the Air Force. So, basically they just send missions, drop packages all over the world and we maintain those.
Jimmy Lea: So this was the big mama jamba, like the size of a football airplane, football field, airplane 
Raven Harris: one smaller than the largest one we have, which is the C five. Right. So you can actually fit a C 17 inside of the C five, but the C 17, the most capable because it's just large enough that it can actually take big missions, but it's just small enough that it's still maneuverable and you can get it around and land on shorter runways.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. That's very cool. When I was in Las Vegas, I had an office very near Nellis Air Force Base. And I would tell you, I would swear to you, there was a C 17 or a big massive cargo type plane that went over the top of our office. You couldn't hear yourself think it was so Loud. 
Raven Harris: Right, right. Yeah. No, those things get crazy.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and even the stealth bomber that came over, not the stealth fighter, but the stealth bomber came over our office once. It was past us. The noise came, but phenomenal situation to have happen. Just crazy. So what did you do on the C 10s or are you a mechanic? 
Raven Harris: Yes, actually I was a mechanic in the air force, but the official title is crew chief.
Raven Harris: So basically I'm like a general doctor of the aircraft. So I'll find the problem and I'll call someone else out to fix it. So kind of similar to what I'm doing now. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. I've got a story from my grandfather. He worked in the commercial airlines. He was also a technician. 
Raven Harris: Okay. 
Jimmy Lea: Tell me a story about a situation where you got called in to fix something.
Jimmy Lea: They had spent a day or two trying to fix it. And here you jump in. With your team and have it fixed very, in a very short amount of time. You got any examples like that? 
Raven Harris: Yeah, just a few times. Usually it's going to be engine related problems. So we come across some engine problems when the first team of crew chiefs couldn't come out.
Raven Harris: Then it's in second team, just some. The team is a little bit more specialized and we work with the Jets crew to go ahead and get that knocked out and Jets crew. They're definitely specialize in just engine. So they had called over my team pretty late in the night. We were working night shift and they're probably about 12 hours into the job and they seem to be stuck on this portion of the, the aircraft where the jet the engine is supposed to have the stress reversers where the thrust reversers are going to help stop and break the engine. So basically what it does is it takes the the airflow right and pushes it out towards the back of the engine. But when you're using the thrust reversers going to take that airflow and blow it back towards the front of the plane.
Raven Harris: And that way it actually helps slow down the aircraft. And so the thrust reversers were broken and they were doing 12 hours and they were ready to go home. So we came in second shift and I got ahead, went ahead and knocked it out. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice, nice. My, my grandfather that worked in as a technician on large commercial aircrafts, always as a technician said, people want to underestimate us.
Jimmy Lea: They want to say, Oh, you work with your hands. Oh you're a wrench. Oh, you just turn wrenches. You're not very smart. Well, this is the smartest thing that I have ever heard of. They called him on Christmas day. Jim, we're having a problem. I'm named after grandpa and dad and me and then my son. Jim, we're having a problem.
Jimmy Lea: Can't get this fixed. We've been working on it for a day and a half, but we know you can get it fixed. We just can't get fuel from the tank into the engine. And he says, it's Christmas day. I'm here with my family having a great time. Thank you. I'll be there in a day or two, right? I mean, after Christmas, they said no.
Jimmy Lea: We've got people here. They're in San Francisco. They're on the, they're in the airport. They need to get home. It's their Christmas as well. He says, all right, well, I'll tell you what I, if you guarantee me. Three. Triple pay. Triple pay. Guaranteed. No matter how long it takes me to fix the job or not, I want a full guaranteed full eight hours.
Jimmy Lea: They said yes. He went in, fixed it within 30 minutes, 45 minutes. On his way out, the manager's like, no way no, I'm not going to pay you triple pay for eight hours. You were here for 30 minutes. And somebody from the C suite was coming along and said, you're going to pay him. Thank you very much, Jim. Have Merry Christmas.
Jimmy Lea: Goodbye. Go home. And the plane was able to take off. The families got home technicians. I Large respect for technicians and the ability to make things run and make things work. It's a very specialized skill set and you, thank you for your service. Thank you for what you've done for the Air Force and thank you for.
Jimmy Lea: Keeping us safe and at home. Appreciate that. 
Raven Harris: Well, it's funny. That story reminds me of this lesson. My first coach at the Institute would always tell me is like, you have to understand price versus value. Right. And you'd always give me a similar story about like, he was a lawyer. And there was a train that had I think it was like this carrying potatoes or something like that.
Raven Harris: And the train got stuck and it wasn't able to cross over some certain border. And you know, they were calling all these lawyers trying to figure out how we can get this train across this border. And they called in what was it, they called in the instructor, my lawyer or my instructor, the lawyer, and they asked him how can we get this situation resolved?
Raven Harris: And he's like, all right, well, you're going to have to pay me a certain amount. And so he charged him, like, I think three times his normal rate but he was the only one who could get it done. And so he got it done probably in like just a few hours from a couple phone calls, but he's the only one who had that ability.
Raven Harris: So. You know, there's price and then there's the value. And so the value definitely outweighed the price at that moment. 
Jimmy Lea: So, Oh, that's a beautiful situation now. And I've heard that story may have translated into your business as well. When you started with the Institute, you had an oil change and now it's an oil service.
Jimmy Lea: What can you tell me about that? Yeah. 
Raven Harris: Yeah. That's a great segue actually. So, I was looking for opportunities to be able to increase my ARO. And so, my average ticket price needed to go up. And so I figured if I'm going to raise the average, I need to raise the lowest ticket item that I have in the shop.
Raven Harris: Instead of doing an oil change, I swapped over to what we like to call an oil service where we'll do an oil change, but we've added a few bells and whistles to help the customer just get more longevity out of the old chain. So we'll go ahead and we'll add in some we added this almost like a degreaser that goes inside of the engine and we run it for 15 minutes and it pulls all the oil, all the gunk out.
Raven Harris: And then. After we flush the oil, then we put new oil in and then we run it. And then we'll usually add an additive on top of that. So, instead of just the basic oil change, now we tell them we don't do all changes, we do oil services, right? So it's a full service. You're going to get more mileage out of this oil change.
Raven Harris: And we were able to double the price from one 50 per oil change to 300.
Jimmy Lea: 300. 
Raven Harris: Yep. So that's about our lowest job you can get in the shop, 300, 350, depending on how many tons of oil. 
Jimmy Lea: Dude, congratulations. That's awesome. 
Raven Harris: I know, it's cool. 
Jimmy Lea: That is super cool. Oh, and a shout out to your coach with the Institute. Shout out to Kevin for helping us to understand the difference between value and cost.
Jimmy Lea: You're providing a tremendous amount of value. Oh, I love that. Okay. So let's go back into the beginning. You're in the air force, you get out of the air force, you're getting ready. Get into the automotive industry. What motivated you that direction to get into the automotive? Why not stay in a commercial and in a commercial flights flight mechanic?
Jimmy Lea: Sure. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, I'm not sure how well this response is gonna fit with the general mechanic, but me, I was just actually I used to buy real estate while I was in the air force and started buying rental properties. I'm doing the math and I'm like, all right, it's going to take me about 100 houses before I can get financial freedom.
Jimmy Lea: So maybe there's a better opportunity. So I started looking into business acquisition. I'm like, Hey, you know what, I could actually go out there and buy a business. Instead of start one. And so I had this kind of idea in my head and I just started studying up on the process. How can I buy a business?
Jimmy Lea: What type of companies are out there? What's a good business to buy? What are the prices? And after I started teaching myself some evaluation I just told myself, you know what, I could do it. So I moved back home to California where I'm from. I'm living in Los Angeles and I started looking just about an hour and a half radius away from where I'm at in Hollywood.
Jimmy Lea: So, spent some time, took me about, let's say two months to find the business, but it took me another six months to close on it, right. Through negotiations and things like that. But I finally came across a European auto repair shop and kind of checked all the boxes for me. And so I knew that this would be a good opportunity going forward.
Jimmy Lea: I just took a risk on myself. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. And that's awesome, man. Congratulations for doing real estate while you were still in the service. I, and I agree with you this, buy it versus build it. There's a book. Yeah. Say it again. I didn't build. Yes. I've been reading this book. This is a really good book. My brother turned me onto it.
Jimmy Lea: He's looking at buying this metal fabrication company. And so he's looking at buy it instead of. Build it from the ground up a phenomenal idea. So the get into this concept because here you are just out of the air force. You find a company, it takes you two months to find it. It takes you six months to buy it.
Jimmy Lea: What is the financial
Jimmy Lea: makeup look like for buying a business? What did that look like for you? 
Raven Harris: Well, I knew that I wanted to find a business doing between 500, 000 and a million dollars in EBITDA. And so that's just a fancy financial term for saving profit. And with that I knew that if the company was less than 500, 000 in profit, most likely I couldn't hire a good management team in place.
Raven Harris: And also I wouldn't have enough meat on the bone to just have that barrier of safety. Because in my mind, and from what I've seen, usually in business is that the larger companies are usually safer, right? It's a lot easier to go from 100, 000 to zero than it is to go from a million dollars to zero, right?
Raven Harris: You got some more space in there. So I was looking for a business that had a decade of history that had great reviews. The shop where I had it, when I found it, it was doing about 500 five star reviews. So probably the greatest reviews for any repair shop that I've seen. Ever, right. And so, you know, there was a lot of tells that told me this company was going to be profitable and that it was going to be a good opportunity.
Raven Harris: And so, the business ended up doing about 600, 000 in profit every year. And I paid a 2. 3 X multiple came out to like 1. 4 million total. Okay. Yeah. And I can get into more about like how I broke that down through some creative financing and some different structures, but it's up to you guys. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Cause here you are looking at a company at a business and it's a profitable business and clearly somebody wants to get out, somebody wants to get in and I'm glad that you were able to get in there and you know, and you understand the financial model of what you're looking at so that you're able to get into it.
Jimmy Lea: What does it take to get a loan? For 1. 4 million. 
Raven Harris: Sure. Yeah. So, I guess he's gonna take some creativity and some good credit. I'd say if you got those two things, you could probably make it happen. And so, what I did is I was able to get about a million dollars financed through the SBA. And so, the SBA said, okay, we'll give you a million dollars on this business, but the seller said, I want 1.
Raven Harris: 4. I said, okay, that still fits within my evaluation criteria because I knew that without getting too technical, basically if you pay anything over a three and a half X multiple on payment, right? And so what a multiple is you're going to multiply that EBITDA or that profit by a certain number.
Raven Harris: And so anything over three and a half, what happens is your debt to income ratio becomes too high. And so banks won't loan on those types of businesses. So I knew I needed to buy a business. And well below three, because even three was too high for my threshold. It was like you know, almost like 50, 50.
Raven Harris: Like if I make a hundred thousand, 50 goes back towards debt and 50 goes to me, you know, and I just thought that's not enough breathing room. So I needed to get it way below three. And you know, once he said 1. 4, I knew that was doable. But another thing is the business was making a lot of cash.
Raven Harris: Right. And so because it was making a lot of cash on the taxes, those taxes weren't necessarily reporting all of that cash. And so what I needed to do was I needed some one proof, right, that the cash was there. And so I kind of just did that through some investigative journalism, right, just kind of looking at how busy was the shop.
Raven Harris: What's the card count? What's the average ticket price? And I was able to work backwards from there and say, okay, so this business has definitely done this revenue and their profit margins are definitely this number. So I can say that they have me that cash, even though they didn't report it on their taxes, but the bank said, Hey, we'll only go ahead and loan you on what we can see on the taxes.
Raven Harris: And that was about a three X on 300, 000. So for the other 300, 000. There, which was basically that extra 400, 000 of that 400, 000 back to the seller. So what I told him, what we'll do is I said listen, what we can do is I can set you up with a seller note and I'll pay you that 400, 000 over the next five years.
Raven Harris: And so we broke it down to where in the first year I pay about 40 percent of the note. And then over the last four years, I pay about 15 to 20%. And so. With that, I was also able to get my down payment from the bank because they said, Hey, you need to come in at 10 percent for the SBA. Oh, but now that the seller is holding about 30 percent of the total purchase price as a note, we'll actually lower from 10 percent to five.
Raven Harris: So I was able to buy the business for about 70, 000 out of my own pocket. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I was going to say you're about 70. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's phenomenal. Congratulations. So when did this all happen? I mean, is this like. Yesterday? Is it last year? Two years ago? Three years ago? How far in are you? Sure, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: So, 
Raven Harris: I guess technically now I'm just over a year and a half. We're right at the year and a half mark. Baby! Last February I got started. So, First year was taking all my lessons, taking them to the chin, and it was a lot to learn, figuring it out. I remember I went to this what was it?
Raven Harris: I went to this event for the parts authority where they send everyone to Cancun. Right. And so it's like a networking event for all the mechanic shops. And if you sell a certain amount of parts, they'll send you. So I went over there and I'm talking to some other guys who own shops and they're telling me like, yeah, you know what?
Raven Harris: I've got like, seven shops. I'm like, how'd you do that? And they're like, Oh, you know what? I got a coach. I was like, really? I was like, wait a minute, like a light bulb moment. I was like, why am I not doing that? I should just go get information for people who already have it. Right. So 
Jimmy Lea: they've been there, they done it.
Jimmy Lea: They've got the t shirt and the scars and the hat. They can show you the direction. Carry on. Okay. Keep going. 
Raven Harris: So that was basically it. I was kind of fumbling around in the dark, figuring things out. Just staying afloat really. But once I realized I should just get coaching and just speed through the rest of the way I just kind of went online and I found you guys and, you know, I saw your podcast and you guys had great information.
Raven Harris: I had auto leap at the time. So, you know, they would always have the podcast with Cecil and then You know, I just went for it and you know, everything my coach told me, I just took action as soon as possible. So he told me something on Monday, it'd be in the shop by Tuesday. 
Jimmy Lea: Dude, dude you're a model student, bro.
Jimmy Lea: That's freaking awesome. You know, I, here I was going to pontificate on Michael Jordan and, you know, Phil Jackson and you know, every professional athlete even has a coach, right. And, but you're the ideal student. So you get with the institute, you get with Kevin's your coach. What have you seen?
Jimmy Lea: What's the results that you have seen that has happened for you and your shop? 
Raven Harris: Sure. Yeah. So, definitely there's been much more order to the process than there was before we've been able to increase our ARO from 750 per ticket to about 1250 per ticket. And some months I get closer to the 13, but the goal is to get to 15.
Raven Harris: So I'm pushing it. And what else are some of the things I think that finding a good team as well, and what that team looks like maybe made everything, you know, night and day difference. So between those few factors pretty much set up at this point. So. 
Jimmy Lea: You know, so what does your team look like right now?
Jimmy Lea: Who is on your team? What does that look like? 
Raven Harris: Yeah. So I've got one lead technician and then three mechanics and one like intern type mechanic. Right. So I'd say, 
Jimmy Lea: is it an apprentice or is it, what's an intern? 
Raven Harris: Yeah, exactly. So, just really some high schooler came by and said he wanted to learn how to do oil changes and inspections.
Raven Harris: And we said, you know, we got a job for you, you know, shut up. Yeah, so it was a good opportunity for both of us because getting those inspections knocked out allows my guys to just kind of focus on, you know, changing parts and the money making opportunities. So, you know, and that's happened a few times that like high school is coming in and out.
Raven Harris: I just wanna learn inspections and oil changes and simple stuff so they could do to their car. So it's been working out. And then I have two service advisors in the front, and then me and I have an assistant. 
Jimmy Lea: And you have an assistant, okay. Yep. So, so your understanding of your financial model.
Jimmy Lea: I, I would say that's pretty well dialed in. What advice would you give others that are looking at their finances? How can they understand it better? What advice would you give them? 
Raven Harris: Sure. Yeah. So, I guess if it comes down to auto repair shop advice or just finances. Which one would you say?
Jimmy Lea: Do the finances first and then we'll go to the other one. 
Raven Harris: Okay. I think it's definitely important to what I did is I got a fractional CFO. Right. And so instead of a bookkeeper I found a chief financial officer and he works on like a billion dollar company. And then my small one, cause he does a part time and sick retired.
Raven Harris: So he's just. Kind of doing me a favor, but you can find people like that all over. They're called fractional CFOs. So it's like having a CFO for your company, but he only works part time, but that's really all you need because auto repair shops are pretty simple. You're doing the same things every week.
Raven Harris: Not too many moving parts. And so once you get set up. Then they could kind of look over your numbers. And what I do is I meet with my CFO every Tuesday and we go through my profit and loss statement and my balance sheet, and we kind of see what's going on in the business. And because I'm able to see it every week, I'm able to keep track of what's going on.
Raven Harris: And so, that's on the kind of the financial side, but on the shop number side, I'll look at you know, the close ratio, the ARO and the AWRO. And so the reason I looked at those numbers the most is because. If I see that the AWRO, right, which is the total ticket price that we give to the customer, that tells me how well are we doing inspections.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. To find that out too. So people understand ARO and ARWO. 
Raven Harris: Yeah. So if you have the air it was an AWRO, right. 
Jimmy Lea: Actual 
Raven Harris: I'm not even sure about the full term. I just know what it means. 
Jimmy Lea: ARO 
Jimmy Lea: is your average repair order. 
Raven Harris: Yeah. The ARO is average repair order. AWRO. I'm not sure. I just know it's the total ticket price.
Jimmy Lea: Average 
Jimmy Lea: written repair order 
Raven Harris: repair order. Yeah. So the average written repair order you just get to say, what did my guys find on the inspection? Right. Yes. How much did they present to the customer? Right. And for my service advisors to sell, right. Yes. So I know that my service advisors have a 50 to 60 percent close ratio, right?
Raven Harris: So what that tells me is that with a 50 to 60 percent close, the more I can present the customer, the more money I can make, right? So I keep that AWRO high, right? I try to get my guys to go for 3, 000 worth of work because they'll close on 50%. Right. Which is 1, 500. And that would put me at the ARO, the average ticket price of 1, 500.
Raven Harris: Right. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. I love it. 
Raven Harris: So look at those numbers. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Now, also, we're talking about things that are necessary or needed on the vehicle, or it's a future item. This isn't selling work just to sell work. This isn't Painting shocks on a Ferrari. This is proper. Your shocks are seeping, weeping.
Jimmy Lea: Here's a picture DVI shows it. So there's a question coming in from Chris, his question about your intern. How do you know if the intern can spot an issue, recommend it, escalate it and move it up to the more experienced techs? How does the, your intern know the problems or issues if he's not a Trained mechanic or trained technician.
Raven Harris: Yeah. So, well, they're always going to get a lot of training before we just let them start looking at cars because that's the, my AWR was zero pretty quick if we just took whatever they found in our beginning. And so, what we'll do is we'll train them up and we use the tech metric. So we go through inspections with the.
Raven Harris: DVI digital vehicle inspection, and I've got a 60 point inspection where I can basically go step by step. They go ahead and they look over every part. And so my lead technician will show them, all right, for the brakes, this is what you're looking at. You're going to measure them with this. You're going to check the calipers.
Raven Harris: They're going to throw on look at the rotors. You're going to look for rust and all these things. So they have all this criteria for each step and they go down. At the end of the day it's really just a checklist that they can follow the checklist and follow orders. They can find problems. So, it's not necessarily that they know how to fix it or even that they know what the problem is, but they can alert us to the fact that, Hey, there's something going on here.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. Oh, I love it. I love it. And also I say that. A technician, an intern and even an apprentice knows when something is worn, torn, frayed or broken, cracked, leaping, leaking, seeping, you can see those things and they just need to understand that when you see this, document it, then the more experienced technician can look at it and say, okay, yeah, that's an issue or okay, that's an issue, but not yet, maybe next visit.
Jimmy Lea: We can take care of that, 
Raven Harris: right? So they kind of bring it to the attention of someone who is more qualified. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. All right So let's go now for the young entrepreneur looking to Buy a shop purchase a shop look at a shop. How what advice would you give them in?
Jimmy Lea: Evaluating a shop or a business? 
Raven Harris: Sure. You asked me i'm definitely going to say go euro, right? European is going to be one of the best and the reason why is there's a specific Benefit to this model, right? If you have European and that's it, the margins are higher, right? So you're going to have higher quality customer usually with more expendable funds and more willing to do higher ticket repairs on their car.
Raven Harris: Right. And so what that means is that you're not going to have to fight over, do you have the lowest oil change in the area? Right. Because they are already, what they already have the expectations set by the brand, right? So BMW, Mercedes. Porsche, Ferrari, they already, when they buy the car, they know, hey, this is not going to be an affordable, reliable vehicle to give you from A to Z.
Raven Harris: It's just going to 
Jimmy Lea: It's not a 
Jimmy Lea: grocery getter? 
Raven Harris: Right. I mean, they use it for that. Definitely hundred percent. That's what most of our customers are using it for to pick up the kids in soccer practice. But it's, you know, just the outward representation of themselves. They want to they feel as though they're more of a higher quality individual, you know, they put into their car, they care about it.
Raven Harris: They care about their appearance, how they look, things like that. And so those type of customers, they expect a higher quality service, but that also means a higher price. Yes. 
Jimmy Lea: Yes. So, so you your advice is definitely look European, but even regardless, even if it's Toyota, Lexus or it's all domestic or it's all Asian vehicles or whatever your mix is gonna be.
Jimmy Lea: Your evaluation holds true to all of it. 
Raven Harris: A hundred percent. Definitely. I mean, so usually what you'll see is that you'll see a shop that's the same doing all Japanese cars. They're going to have margins. Closer to 20 percent on the bottom line. So if it's doing a hundred thousand dollars, you'll get 20 grand at the year in your pocket.
Raven Harris: Right. And so, that, that could be definitely still a great opportunity if you buy the business large enough, right. Because you know, a smaller business it's making a hundred thousand, right. And you only get to keep 20. It's not going to be worth your time. You will got to go for something larger, but any business any auto repair shop can do those 20 percent margins.
Raven Harris: That's basically standard, especially if you get the coaching, you know. It's a numbers, right? 20 percent is basically the standard. 
Jimmy Lea: Well, and here's something interesting, Graven, as I go around the country, most shops that I go and visit okay, this isn't that broad of a brush. A lot of shops that I go to, not all of them, a lot of them are in the three to 4 percent net profit, 
Raven Harris: right?
Jimmy Lea: They're alive, they're breathing, they're one hiccup away, one problem away, one lawsuit away from closing the doors because that three and 4 percent net. That's pretty tough. 
Jimmy Lea: Those 
Jimmy Lea: shops that are in coaching that I've been to across the country. Okay. There's been one, one shop I've gone to that did not have coaching at the time, but he did come from coaching.
Jimmy Lea: He was able to implement everything and kept it going. And that's the hard thing, right? To be consistent and can keep it going. He kept it going. So most shops that are in some sort of a coaching training situation are 20 percent plus 20 percent net plus. 
Raven Harris: And I think that's why the opportunity is so big because there's so many shops out there, right?
Raven Harris: With these low margins. And so when you buy a business, you're buying it based off their numbers, right? You're not buying it based off what you can do with it. So you can look at a business and say, Alright, like today, if I wouldn't do a shop based off my time being in the company, I've learned what I should look for when I'm going to buy another shot.
Raven Harris: So I'm actually in the process of buying a second auto repair shop now, another one out in closer to the beach. And so, with that, I know that there's certain criteria that I'm going to look for that even if the business isn't profitable, I can put my management style in place. I can use my numbers.
Raven Harris: I can say I could take What my shop is doing here, and I can duplicate it, copy and paste it onto another location because I already know how the systems ran. So if it's running at three, 4 percent margins, I'll get it up to 20 percent if it's a domestic, and I'll get it up to 30 percent if it's European.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. So I've got a Question coming in from Alex. And I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this question or not the way he's asking. He says, what's the best route in a cost perspective to access information, to diagnose and repair Euro products without purchasing the excessively priced right from the OE with a subscription besides pro demand all data identifics and the advice for him.
Raven Harris: He's trying to figure out how to not use all that. Is that what I'm getting? 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, he's trying to figure out how to fix euros without getting the euro software. 
Raven Harris: Okay. Well, what I did is I just reached out to another shop owner and I told him let's split the cost of all data. So I still use it, but Oh, nice.
Raven Harris: Because he could have multiple users. So I told him, I think it's like 200 bucks. I sent him 100 bucks a month to get access to that. There's also some other, there's a website for BMWs called new TIS, N E W T I S. It's not even an American platform. I think it's like under a Russian name because BMW keeps shutting it down.
Raven Harris: But you can pay like 50 to get access to that. And it's called like newtist. ru. And you, once you get access it's got basically all the documentation and word data for BMW specific. So it's good stuff. It's got like, exact repair orders and how to remove parts and put them back together.
Raven Harris: It's got part numbers. It's got everything in there. So newtist. ru if you're a Beamer guy. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice nice. So, thanks for talking about that. And Alex has more questions. Maybe you and Alex can connect after or something like that. But back to the shop and your shop that you've got. Are you looking at expanding?
Jimmy Lea: You talked about being able to rubber stamp your 20 percent or 30 percent and take it over to other shops. Where are you at with that? 
Raven Harris: Yeah. So, basically the beginning of this year, I was still figuring out, I was like, okay, what do I want to do forward? You know, I got a management team in place. I go into my shop about once every two weeks, go say what's up to the guys, make sure everything's working order and pick up some cash.
Raven Harris: And, you know, I'm on my way. And so I'm like, you know what, I think I could probably just go ahead and do this again because it's working out for me. So, I started just basically getting back online similar to how I did for my first business. I just went to businessesforsell. com and another website called Axial and reaching out to old brokers that I had been in contact with before.
Raven Harris: And you can find them just through internet searches, you know, and so I give them a call. I tell them what I'm looking for. I'm looking for an auto repair shop in Southern California. I'm looking for it to do over 500, 000 a year in EBITDA or profit. And I wanted to have at least 10 years experience with some good reviews and I would take the rest from there.
Raven Harris: And then they'll usually send me a list of people. I'll reach out. I'll tell the the owners. Hey, I usually do purchase businesses for between two and four X multiple. And would you be interested in selling or be thought about retiring or something like that? 
Jimmy Lea: Interesting. You know, that's a great way is just even to search all the euro shops in your hour and a half radius, walk in and say, Hey, I'm looking to talk to the owner.
Raven Harris: Yeah. And if that doesn't work for you, if you want to move with some speed, you can also write a letter. To all the like five star reviewed euro shops in your area and sign them, right? So you can type out the letters, sign them, and then send them out through the mail. And you can probably send out like a couple hundred letters in a day.
Raven Harris: That'll save you some time from driving. And the close ratio on that is about a four to 5 percent callback. So if you send out 200 letters, you should get about eight calls back. 
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that, that'd be nice. That'd be nice. Yeah, there was a gentleman that I know of in, in California, San Francisco Bay Area, and he kept in touch with a lot of the shops around his area.
Jimmy Lea: Take them to lunch, take them to breakfast, play in the long play, because he wanted to buy their company, wanted to buy their business. And it got to a point where one of them was like, okay, well, that's it I'm done, you know, here's the price. And as they were negotiating the deal, The gentleman passed away, so now he's working with the wife in trying to purchase this business.
Jimmy Lea: This is what we were looking at. This is what we had agreed on. Are you still interested in selling to me? And he was able to get it for a pretty dang good price. And it was the price that the previous owner had agreed on that they came to terms and they were actually able to make a deal.
Jimmy Lea: So, yeah, I love that you're expanding the kingdom, if you will, expanding the walls, expanding your reach and your influence in the industry. That's awesome. Let's make sure that we make something really clear here that we are not propagating theft of information. We're not propagating going around any OEs.
Jimmy Lea: If you're in the Euro business, in the Euro industry, you definitely want to have that proper information, the proper tools. It takes those proper tools. So I've been to quite a few shops that every single line of vehicle has a specialty tool. And so they'll have all the Volvo tools. They'll have all the Saab tools because that's what they work on.
Raven Harris: Yeah. Yeah. That would be crazy. 
Jimmy Lea: In that Euro industry, you've got all the BMW tools, all the Mercedes tools, because they're not the same, right? They are different, right? You've got to make sure you have the right tools to diagnose the right vehicles. 
Raven Harris: Yeah, at the end of the day you're going to be using it so much.
Raven Harris: It's worth the investment. It doesn't make sense to try to get around it. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And make friends with those domestic shops down the street from you, Raven. Cause they might have a Euro card that they ought not be working on and they could bring it to you. Yeah. That's a great way of doing that as well.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Okay. So want to give a shout out to, you have a mentor in the industry. Bob. Tell me about Bob. 
Raven Harris: Yeah. So, actually I came out to to an event. What was it? The marketing event you guys threw 2023. 
Jimmy Lea: Mars, 
Jimmy Lea: the Mars conference. 
Raven Harris: So I was there and we were going over some of the social media portions and while they were doing that I was out in the lobby talking to the owner of wicked file, which is Bob, and he was telling me about his software so wicked file basically allows you to track your invoices for parts, your returns your credits.
Raven Harris: And it puts it all under one platform. So you can actually see what's going on. Okay. Did you get the credit for this part? Was this part returned? What happened when you ordered this part, but it didn't make it onto the RO. It was a part of stolen by an employee. You did it disappear. What happened?
Raven Harris: Right. And so, this kind of, you know, Handles everything from from beginning to end when it comes down to parts. And so I was just asking him a ton of questions, trying to figure it out. And as we talk more, he was just giving me more information, just generally about opening up shops and how to manage it.
Raven Harris: He's got about 10 shops himself. And so, he's the one who kind of gave me the idea to just keep going with getting more shops. Cause one of the issues that I had come across is, Hey, it's hard to find mechanics. I don't know if I want to double down on buying more shops, if I run into some issues.
Raven Harris: So, He let me know that he was doing something similar what I was doing, which is just reaching out through headhunters, and they'll go out and find them for you. You know, you have to pay a little bit of a premium to be able to hire these people to find good employees. But from what I've been able to see, it's definitely been worth it.
Raven Harris: And so I'm not really spending any money, any time to go out and do it, but I just paid him the money and they're usually bringing in really Eight players. And so of the two or three people they bought in, they've been really good in my shop. Start players immediately. So, definitely been worth it.
Raven Harris: And if they're able to do it for one shop, they can definitely do it for more. And so, you know, those few tips that Bob had given me were really helpful. And I ended up getting his number and I still talk to him to this day. And you know, we just kind of chat business and whenever I need some help on wiki file or whatever, he'll pick up and tell me what's going on.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. And I've heard some horror stories where shops have paid shipping on a part two, three, four times because they kept getting an invoice. So they just kept, they would just pay it. And here it adds up a lot and wicked file. What a phenomenal program. What a phenomenal software to help you as a shop owner, make sure that you are.
Jimmy Lea: Charging for the parts. You are getting on the invoice. You are getting on the repair order. Your technicians we trust them that they're the best, but you know, occasionally 
Jimmy Lea: parts go missing. 
Jimmy Lea: We don't want that. 
Raven Harris: Even if you're doing a great job for sure, there's no way you can catch it, like the things that we could fire catches.
Raven Harris: Are like so minuscule that you would have to be have a full time parts person. They would have to be here documents side by side every single document, the statements credits everything would have to be like you'd have to line it all up. No one's doing that I can guarantee it you know there's somebody looking over it.
Raven Harris: But no one's going to be able to catch it like Wicked Fowl can. So it's almost mandatory, I'd say at this point, especially if you're doing over a million. Less than a million you can manage to get a couple losses in parts throughout the year because things slip through the cracks. But over a million, it's definitely something you need to be looking at.
Jimmy Lea: Well, you heard it here from Raven. If you're over a million, you need Wicked Fowl. Their commission's in the mail, the check's in the mail, Raven. Hey, you know what? And I just drew a parallel between something you said earlier and something you just said now, those companies, those businesses that are at a million, there's a lot more runway or there's a lot more ladder to come down before you hit zero versus a hundred thousand to hit zero, same thing with your shops, if you have two, three, four, five, 10, 20, 30 shops, you've got a lot more.
Jimmy Lea: Available to you that you could move a technician here within, if you've got that group, if you've got a solid foundation, and if you're treating your people extremely well, they love you they recruit for you. Now your commissions to those headhunters, while it was absolutely warranted needed necessary in the beginning.
Jimmy Lea: Now your word of mouth is drawing in all those technicians, building the kingdom even further. 
Raven Harris: Came to the same conclusion. You figured it out. It's like, the bigger you go, it's almost like the safer, you know, it seems more risky, but you know, you're looking at it from the wrong perspective, you know, the larger the company, you know, if you have a small shop, right.
Raven Harris: And you are, you're a service advisor and you have two mechanics, right? One day, one of your mechanics calls out sick. 50 percent of your workload just disappeared overnight because your mechanic just called out sick, right? So you can only 50 percent capacity, right? And most likely they weren't even working at 100 percent capacity.
Raven Harris: So now you're like at 20 or 30 percent capacity, right? Because no one's 100 percent efficient all the time. Yeah. That's if you just have one shop, right? But let's say you have a large shop or you have multiple shops. You have one manager, he manages multiple shops and you can move mechanics around, like you said, and you can share information and you can maybe even share tools and parts and get things faster.
Raven Harris: Oh, I have the spare part over here. We can get it to you. Things like that. So, the business gets more efficient and more profitable the larger goes and you actually deter from risk. If you're a larger company versus a small one. 
Jimmy Lea: I love that. I love that. Let's talk about you talk about your mentor.
Jimmy Lea: You talk about your coaches. We also, you have interns, you have apprentices that have now come into your shop. Are you looking at expanding that program? Are you looking at giving back to your apprentices, expanding that program? What does that look like for you 
Raven Harris: currently? I mean, it's definitely something that I've been thinking about trying to get a full program put together, but it's so hit and miss with finding people, especially the younger guys they come in and then they, you know, they want to go back to school or they want to change careers or something like that.
Raven Harris: So, you know, we give them opportunities when they come by, but we haven't been doing the outreach for that so far. 
Jimmy Lea: Nice. You know, there are some apprentice programs that are already established. They're already. for having me. Bye. approved with the federal workforce, even the state of California, to where there are grants you can apply for 50 percent of their pay is paid by the federal workforce.
Jimmy Lea: And then you're covering the other half. There are a lot of programs out there that are already done established. So the groundwork Maybe easier for you than creating it all from scratch. 
Raven Harris: Y'all have to check that out. 
Jimmy Lea: Definitely. I know Napa has one, I know world pack has one. I know ASCCA has one. Are you familiar with ASCCA?
Raven Harris: No.
Jimmy Lea: It's the 
Jimmy Lea: association in California, specifically in California. So I need to connect you with Rocky and David. David Kousa is up in San Francisco area, Rocky is down in Santa Ana area. These guys they have a, it's a phenomenal association for California and it specifically looks after you as a shop owner.
Raven Harris: That's cool. Definitely. 
Jimmy Lea: What opportunities would you see that are available to younger generations? What opportunities are out there? 
Raven Harris: Well, when it comes to shop owning or just just in life? 
Jimmy Lea: All the above talk about life first. And then we can talk about shop owning a shop. 
Raven Harris: Yeah. So, I chose a European auto repair as my first business acquisition, but I just think the time now for buying companies the time is great.
Raven Harris: It's a perfect storm. I'd say there's a lot of baby boomers are looking to retire. And they usually have no succession plan. There's no successor to anyone to take their place once they're gone. And so there's going to be a huge wall transfer of people who either going to shut their doors because they're not going to work anymore.
Raven Harris: They don't have anyone to take over or they're going to be trying to sell. And so either way, that's an opportunity for you to get out there and take over a business that's already. Got decades of experience. It's already been making money and you can go and add some technology, add some hard work, some grit, some new energy to the business and make a good life for yourself.
Raven Harris: So the American dream is still out there if you're looking through acquisition. So I'm a big proponent of acquisition for people of all ages. But if you're young, you know, that should stop you. I was 23 when I found German, I was specialist. 
Jimmy Lea: 23. How old are you now? Raven just turned 26. Happy birthday.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. So what does the future look like for you, Raven? We're going to get back on a podcast a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. What is your future? What does that look like for you? 
Raven Harris: Sure. So, right now I'm looking for a couple more auto repair shops. Maybe within the next year I'll have two more would be the goal.
Raven Harris: Maybe two every year for the next five years. After that, I've built up a size where either I will merge with another company that has like five or maybe I will sell it to a private equity company that would basically take my five shops or 10 shops and they'll do the merging for me right with another 10 and they'll move me up where I'll take a small equity position, maybe 30%.
Raven Harris: And then the rest I'll take as cash and then they'll go and roll it up to the next group and I'll get a little cut of this slice of that one as well. That could be one opportunity, but I really do like the industry and I do like owning an auto repair shop. I think it's a great cash flowing business. So another option is I'm actually going to another event, but one of the coaches that I was working with basically told me that I can take a company public if I make a certain amount of money and he basically gave me a book on how to do it.
Raven Harris: So. If I do get to the, let's say 10 shops in the next five years, maybe I keep them all and I take the company public and it trades on the NASDAQ. And you know, I'm able to just borrow against my shares and live off that that income. 
Jimmy Lea: That'd be phenomenal. So you were gonna retire when you are 32 years old?
Raven Harris: Yeah, something like that. Between 30 and 35 . The thing is like knowing me, if I was to have some big payday at the end where I like, I exit for, you know, here some, here's something interesting that I think people would like to know, is that if you go multiple shop it's the growth of the valuation is linear or not non-linear.
Raven Harris: So what happens is. You buy a shop for, you know, let's say two X, two to three X multiple. But you combine it with five other shops, right? And now you're not trading for two to three times profit anymore. You're trading for five to six, right? And if you can get to 5 million in EBITDA per year, you can actually sell that company for eight times, right?
Raven Harris: So for 5 million a year, you can have a 40 million exit. 
Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. 
Raven Harris: Numbers just get astronomical after a while. And so if I was able to buy let's say. Five more shops. Right. And then I combined them with a friend of mine who's got three shops and we put it together. We say we're all under one automotive group, right?
Raven Harris: And now we're at 5 million a year in EBITDA. Well, then we sell it to the next guy and we have a 40 million exit. And then I would take that 40 million and go buy 20 more shops. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I love it. I love it. And you know, the Institute, when we merged with Michael Smith, Hertzberg and Smith Institute now has that program where you can take your.
Jimmy Lea: Five shops combined with another, as soon as you have 30 rooftops it's ready. It's prime. It's ready for private equity acquisition. So yeah, we Raven, when you get there, we've got some guys in the. Institute that are looking to get to that 10, looking for the PE and the buyout. We've got other guys that are looking to get to the 50 and the hundred and then take it to PE, which that's of course, then an even bigger payout, a bigger payout day.
Raven Harris: Yeah that's the big one. 50 to 100 is kind of like the 
Jimmy Lea: goal, I'd say. That's a lot of shops. That's awesome. And you can do it, dude. You absolutely can do it for sure. Okay. Talk about Brian Bates and what he did. Yeah we did have you heard about What Michael did with Brian Bates. So, Michael set up a program in the Denver area and these shop owners, they all came together and they got to a point where they had 40 or so rooftops and they were ready to go, they took it to.
Jimmy Lea: P. E. and they got a lot more than the street value. Instead of only getting three to four to five times EBITDA, they're up in the eight to nine times EBITDA. Super successful. They, these guys are continuing to grow. They continue to go. Now that happened a year ago, March. So it's very recent past.
Jimmy Lea: It's very recent history. All right. Well, one last final question here coming in from Alex. His question is about expanding his kingdom. Would you recommend going with a lease and Alex, I want to make sure I say, ask this question, right? I have a successful shop, but I want to expand the footprint.
Jimmy Lea: Would you think lease and start fresh with the same name umbrella or buy an existing to have a foundation in the area of for some expansion? What would your advice be there, Raven? 
Raven Harris: So, the question is what I buy the 
Jimmy Lea: business, change the name, keep the business name, and just continue to expand the business.
Raven Harris: Yeah, so, it really just depends you know, how well is it 
Jimmy Lea: working. 
Raven Harris: For example, my company, I just kept the name because everyone in Simi Valley knows German Auto Specialists. It's been there for a decade and it was passed down between the seller's father before him. So it's just been around for a while.
Raven Harris: People know the name. It's got great reviews. You want to, you don't want to mess with the Google analytics too much, right? So I just kept it. But I think if I was to go and acquire more, what I would probably do is I would. Change the name to gas automotive group, right? So German auto specialist is gas automotive group, right?
Raven Harris: Interesting. Play on words and I think that it still allows me to acquire other shops that may not be German, right? So that'd be one of the things if I was to go and buy a Japanese repair shop. It does make sense to call it German auto specialist, but if I call it you know, gas automotive that, that gives me a little bit more leverage to, to move things around.
Raven Harris: And so I think it really just depends on the situation, how you want to attack the strategy, how you want to acquire. But name is important. If you're just going to buy one business, it's better to probably just to keep the one that's already got the brand recognition. 
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And if they're close.
Jimmy Lea: It makes sense to switch it out. But I've also heard of shops that kept and they own three shops in town. They're all competitors. People get upset at this shop. So now they're going over here. They get upset at them. So now they're going over here. They don't understand that it's all owned by the same guy, but nevermind.
Jimmy Lea: It's all good. 
Raven Harris: Like I said, it really just depends. There's no, I mean, I've asked the same question. I was trying to figure it out. Does it make sense to have it all under one name, one brand? There's definitely a lot of benefits to it, but like, like we just discussed there's also other strategies you can use by having different names.
Raven Harris: So, 
Jimmy Lea: oh yeah. 
Raven Harris: One thing too, that I do want to mention though, I don't know if we're about to get out there is that, you know, in my first year of running the company, it definitely was a struggle. So I know at this point, it's basically just me. Telling you, you know, it's great. Everything works out. But year one, I was basically working at the shop 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and I was doing more work on the weekends.
Raven Harris: Right? So, I signed myself up for that. I knew that it was going to be tough. I knew that I'm not a mechanic by trade on BMWs, Mercedes, you know, I was working on C 17 aircraft. So, the learning curve was huge, right? I didn't know anything about ordering parts. I didn't know anything about being a service advisor, making sales, but I had the determination to learn.
Raven Harris: So, yeah. And I knew that my strong suit was the financial. So as long as I could keep my numbers in order, and I could keep track of that I can basically handle everything else. And so, that only comes through repetition and practice, and really, you know, a lot of self belief that you can get it done.
Raven Harris: But anyone can do it. You know, I didn't you know, I was in college, but I dropped out to come by a business. So it's not that you need a Ivy League degree to get it done. It's just that you need to spend the time. You know, I was listening to podcasts every day. I was you know, getting coaching and things like that.
Raven Harris: And It really wasn't until I found a good team right behind me that allowed me to really step out of the business and instead of working in the business, I'm working on the business now. And so I think that there's a few lessons that I had to learn the hard way for sure throughout year one. It's just one of those things like you're in business like you got to figure it out.
Raven Harris: You know, I've had basically everything they could have went wrong did you know they did. I had an employee who crashed my shuttle van. It got completely totaled. You know, it stepped out. I had to go to a conference and the second I landed on the plane, my employees are calling me like, Oh, we crashed the shuttle van.
Raven Harris: It's gone. So that's 20, 20, 000 out the window. They have never paid me back for it because, you know, the title was held by the bank. And then I had an employee steal from me when I bought the shop. I inherited some drama between the previous owner and his competitor across the street. They were leaving bad reviews on my site.
Raven Harris: I got sued multiple times. I've been in and out of court, let's say three or four times now. Just customers who they thought that they deserved some money or some sort of Some sort of repayment for whatever service you know, that they did, they may or may not have got for me. Haven't lost any in court, thankfully.
Raven Harris: So, you know, I've always been on the right side of you know, those, but, you know, everything that could have happened year one, I've hired an alcoholic who's driving. I had no idea that I found out he was an AA. I had to let him go on the spot. So there's something wrong that could have happened in a business.
Raven Harris: It happened to be all in on year one. So I definitely learned every lesson along the way. And I'm sure there's thousands more. But I say all that to say that every time something like that would happen where I'm like, I couldn't find employees, you know, the revenue dropped in half. I just wasn't figuring it out.
Raven Harris: I just never gave up. And I saw that there was always a way forward. It's like, Hey, you know what? Things are tough, but I know what I need to do. Right? And so what I did is I adopted a mindset that said that problems are your friend. Right? And so what happens is you see every problem as an issue, right?
Raven Harris: Like, Oh, you know what? I can't find good employees. Then you will never get it right. It's always going to be something in the way of, Hey, I just can't find good employees. I can't find anyone to help me. You know, this business model sucks. This and that. And what I ended up doing was saying, Hey, you know what, this is an opportunity if I can figure out how to find good employees.
Raven Harris: My business will beat all of the competitors. Right. So I'm like, wow, what a great opportunity for me now, because I don't see it as a problem. I see it as an opportunity. So like, what a great opportunity for me to go out there and see that you know, there's this huge issue for all shops, right? It's not just not just mine.
Raven Harris: And if I'm the one who can solve it, right, I'm the one guy in the game who actually has the keys, then that puts me ahead of everyone else in the game. And on top of that, yeah. It just makes my life a whole lot easier. And, you know, the, after that, the profits are infinite. So those are all things I had to like learn and figure out along the way.
Raven Harris: If you get a coach sooner, you might have to, you might be able to skip some of that. And if you get a good team, you know, right from the beginning, those are some of the things that you might be able to skip, but I'm glad for my lessons. I just want to throw that out there that you know, it's not that easy, but it can be done and it's definitely worth it.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, dude, that, that's an awesome way to wrap this up. I thank you for adopting the mindset of friendship. You've made friends with your problems and your opportunities. You've adopted the mantra of keep moving forward. I totally agree with that. You can keep moving forward and keep moving through it.
Jimmy Lea: You're going to get there. You're going to make it happen. So dude, you are awesome, Raven. Thank you very much. I look forward to many years of success of your success and opportunities for us to get together again and talk about the next opportunities that have become your friends. 
Raven Harris: Yeah, for sure.
Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much. With that, we're out of here. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. My good friend, Raven Harris, German Auto Specialists soon to be known as gas automotive. Thank you.
 

99 - Sharpening Your Skills and Staying Ahead of the Curve

99 - Sharpening Your Skills and Staying Ahead of the Curve
July 23rd, 2024 - 00:59:42
 
Show Summary:
In this episode, Gregg Rainville and James Harris from Steer lead a discussion with automotive industry pros and shop owners, including Jimmy Purdy and Jennifer Hulbert. They discuss how to proactively prepare for seasonal slowdowns in the auto repair industry. The conversation explores smart CRM usage, campaign timing, customer retention, and reputation-building strategies that drive long-term success. The panel emphasizes the power of data, the importance of a marketing plan, and how to turn marketing efforts into measurable results. From Google Ads to handwritten postcards, they cover it all, with humor, real-world insights, and a heavy dose of experience.
 
Host(s):
Gregg Rainville, Steer CRM
James Harris, Steer CRM
 
Guest(s):
Jennifer Hulbert, The Institute
Jimmy Purdy, Shift'n Gears Auto Repair
 
Episode Highlights:
[00:05:14] - Jimmy shares how fair season marketing didn’t deliver results and why shop owners should carefully evaluate where their target customers actually are.
[00:07:52] - Jennifer explains how analyzing seasonal trends and planning 60–90 days ahead can help avoid last-minute marketing scrambles.
[00:10:15] - Shops should have a “slow day” action plan ready to go, including quick-launch campaigns and customer communication tools.
[00:12:17] - You can’t out-market poor phone skills. Jimmy and Jennifer stress the importance of phone training for service advisors.
[00:13:11] - Trust-building through DVIs, solid repair work, and personalized follow-up is just as crucial to marketing as paid campaigns.
[00:17:25] - Referrals and reviews still work, if you actually ask. Jennifer shares simple ways to turn happy customers into promoters.
[00:21:53] - Visibility in your community is powerful; from volunteering to gym memberships, Jimmy highlights low-cost ways to grow your network.
[00:25:04] - Many shop owners market to the wrong audience. Defining your ideal customer avatar helps you stop wasting money on ineffective tactics.
[00:29:55] - Retention often outperforms acquisition, Jimmy shifts budget toward existing customers when new car counts dip post-holidays.
[00:34:36] - Use your CRM and tools like Google Analytics or The Institute's dashboard to measure campaign performance and make smarter decisions.
 
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?
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Gregg Rainville: To discuss today, sharpening your skill, your skills and staying ahead of the curve for whenever your shop might have slowdown periods throughout the year, which really could be any time of the year. A big thing, what we've done over at STEER is not only our company, but what we've tried to build a platform to really help making data driven decisions.
Gregg Rainville: So being able to look at your data back in 2023 to know what might happen in 2024 now it's just crazy that we're halfway through 2024 looking into 2025 and we should start talking about You know, when are those slow periods? We have back to school. I know after the holidays, things typically slow down for shops, but we have a great panel today to discuss this with the Institute and also Jimmy party from shifting gears.
Gregg Rainville: It'll be a great way where we can discuss you know, what's some shop owners and coaches, what they look at, some strategies you'll also have me and James Harris from STEER here also just to give some insight with some of our. What we've seen in the marketplace quick background on me.
Gregg Rainville: I've been with STEER for over 12 years now have a lot of industry experience. Fun fact, I visited over 200 shops in 2022. It looks like from looking at James's bio, he's got me beat with 400. Over the last year, and I believe James is actually on the road right now in Kansas city, visiting shops.
Gregg Rainville: I'll be out in the market next week, visiting shops for mobile one which I love doing. But personally, I love being out in the fields. I love visiting shops, love talking to shop owners. I do also like going in the STEER platform with some of my friend shop owners and building campaigns and seeing how those campaigns work for the shop doing a B testing.
Gregg Rainville: It's probably one of my most favorite part of the job is actually going into the STEER platform and seeing if I can turn around car count for some of these shops that I work with. Other fun fact about James is he's a great golfer. A lot of people tell me that they're good at golf.
Gregg Rainville: I don't believe them. I actually golf with him a couple of weeks ago at tools and he can drive the ball probably close to 300 yards consistently. So James, I'll give you, I'll give you some props there. 
James Harris: I appreciate that. Appreciate it. 
Gregg Rainville: We're lucky to have James. He's been with us for over a year now. He came from shop where so he does have shop management system experience.
Gregg Rainville: And now he has over a full year of CRM experience and he really helped us with launching the advanced auto parts relationship. And now he's working with me closely on, on mobile one, visiting some different type of shop with quick loops and stuff like that. But again, with me and James, we have a lot of experience visiting shops and really just talking to shop owners and trying to help them overcome some of their struggles.
Gregg Rainville: Next, I'll introduce the panel. We have Jennifer Hulbert here from upstate New York, right? Right, Jennifer? That's correct. Upstate New York. All right. We're covering the whole entire United States with Jimmy being in California. Jennifer has spent her whole entire career in the automotive industry.
Gregg Rainville: So she's got me and James beat there. Definitely. I love that she's into data. I think you're perfect for the panel. The fact that you like. Like looking at data and you like financials and I love that you care about your shops and seeing them succeed. I think that's something that also me and James like to see too.
Gregg Rainville: So welcome to the panel. I'm very excited to see what you have to say about KPIs and some of the things to look at for a shop when doing campaigns and stuff like that. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Thank you. I'm excited to be here and excited to, to get this information out to the public. 
Gregg Rainville: Excellent. And then we got the rockstar Jimmy Purdy.
Jimmy Purdy: I think you're the only one that says that Greg. 
Gregg Rainville: Jimmy has mastered the 3 60 Facebook live and it's going, I think it's going viral amongst other groups. Jimmy, 
Jimmy Purdy: Talk marketing, thats important, you know.
Gregg Rainville: We are, that's right. So we've got a marketing expert in the house. 10 years, 10 years, a technician led to him owning his own shop.
Gregg Rainville: So he's got a lot of experiences, I guess, on both sides of the house. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah, the atypical tech term shop owner. 
Gregg Rainville: Perfect. I met Jimmy this past winter out at the Mars conference for the institute. So it was great just actually meeting up with him, talking to him a lot about my experience and then him telling me stories about kind of his experience in the industry.
Gregg Rainville: And then we also had some fun kind of going around Ogden and meeting some local people and seeing what they do for Facebook marketing live at their bars, which was, yeah, which was pretty, pretty interesting, but we are super happy to to have this panel today and kick things off.
Gregg Rainville: All right. Excellent. So, so Jimmy, one of the things I talked to you a couple weeks ago we were talking about things slow down typically towards the end of the summer going into back to school. A lot of my shops to our shops that I see when I look at the data and STEER things slow down after the holiday season.
Gregg Rainville: I don't know if there's like a lot of spending that goes on and then, you know, Consumers typically kind of watch their wallet and sometimes car repairs right now might not be top of mind during that time. But Jimmy, you said something really interesting to me where you're talking about not only back to school, but right now is like fair season, especially where you live.
Gregg Rainville: And I know where I live in Massachusetts, there's a lot of fairs popping up. So. You were talking about doing maybe some campaigns or some marketing around fairs, but then leading into the school season can you tell us a little bit of kind of what that looks like? Some of the strategies and some of the things you're thinking about.
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah, its tough man because it's like, what are the ebbs and the flows?
Jimmy Purdy: What are the highs and the lows? What? I mean, you can put all your eggs in one basket and it works. Then you do it again and it doesn't work. And then you're trying to like find the rhythm and the seasons and I don't think auto repair is Not in california seasonal right and that's like different across the whole country too.
Jimmy Purdy: Like because you have seasonals Like, I don't even know tire, the tire thing was the thing on the east coast, right? Where you like store the tires, you do the tires, like that just blew my mind. I'm like, I'm in California. We don't have snow season. So marketing that way is like, that's, that doesn't work for me.
Jimmy Purdy: Like that wouldn't make any sense. But to your point with like the fair season, that's something that affects everyone across the country because fair season is the same time. Across the whole nation, right? Like it's always the same and the same with road construction. And we're talking about, like, everyone seems want to do road construction at the same damn time across the whole United States.
Jimmy Purdy: Like they all get together. So how do you like market towards that? And how do you anticipate that? Because if I did it today, the fair started four days ago. So if I put a campaign together right now, they're going to do anything for me. So I've got to anticipate that. And then is that even worth the time though?
Jimmy Purdy: Because then we were talking like, well, people come to the fair. Are they even interested in auto repair? And like, are those people that need the auto repair when they go to the fair? Is that your ideal client? Right. And we were talking about trying to find the avatar and like, who exactly is it that we're trying to market it towards?
Jimmy Purdy: Like, is that even something I want to spend my time and energy on? I know a few years back they have a booth at the fair and I wouldn't got a booth for the shop fair. It was like the worst decision I ever made. Like it was a waste of money. I spent all, I mean, other than I can bring a cooler into the fair and we can drink our own beer there.
Jimmy Purdy: That was pretty much the only benefit, but I only think it benefited my friends, you know, cause they're like, Oh, Jimmy's got beer at his booth. We'll go over there and hang out. Right. Like I didn't do anything for the shop. So it was like. I don't think that was the right tactic to go towards, but it's just paying attention to those outside things that are around and how can I capitalize on those situations?
Jimmy Purdy: I think it is the main takeaway, right? 
Jennifer Hulbert: I would absolutely agree with that, and having a plan is the first step. So looking at the data, you mentioned that in my introduction looking at your historical ebbs and flows and highs and lows, and then putting a plan together so you're anticipating those typical slower seasons.
Jennifer Hulbert: Back to school is a perfect example of that. That timeframe can shift across the country. I'm in upstate New York. We don't go back to school until after Labor Day. A lot of Southern states start now or in the next couple of weeks. So pre planning for that in, in months in advance. Also looking at your total marketing.
Jennifer Hulbert: So STEER focuses on. Customer retention marketing. We also are concerned about new customer attraction, but making sure that you have all of those pieces, new customer attraction, retention, and image and branding handled in your marketing plan and have an actual plan with a calendar and a budget is very important as well.
Jennifer Hulbert: Yeah. 
Gregg Rainville: How far out should you be planning? I was gonna, I was going to say, because I have some shops right now that I'm talking to that are scrambling. So they're like, my car count just died. Right? Like, like, they just told me this last week. They're like, what can we do? So I'm sending out some text blasts and I'm trying to do whatever I can to kind of get creative in the month of July to help this shop.
Gregg Rainville: But. What could they have done better kind of planning, just knowing that things slow down maybe for them in July, like, like, like, should they have planned this two months out, three months out? Is there like a magic number of when you should be planning this out or a year out if you're a real good planner?
James Harris: Yeah, that's what I was going to say, Jennifer, on top of that, like, how much of the plan would you say get into place at the beginning of whatever that cycle is? Do you go ahead and look at the whole year or kind of what are you doing there? 
Jennifer Hulbert: Yes. And no, I think more than 30 or 60 days customers aren't going to remember the pieces that you sent to them.
Jennifer Hulbert: And I'm talking about planning for mail pieces typically because the email campaigns, the text message blast can happen pretty instantaneously or within a couple of days. But if you're preparing for something in physical mail that takes months to prepare for, to make sure the print is ready for the date that you want it to go out.
Jennifer Hulbert: Slow times happen unexpectedly. I think in every single market, I am a shop owner as well. And that happens to us. So having a prebuilt like slow day action plan, what can you and your marketing and your staff do to communicate with customers within a couple of days notice? So having just some of those campaigns ready to go out, Would be my recommendation.
Jennifer Hulbert: And then communicating with your marketing team, being someone like STEER and saying, okay, you know, I can contact my rep and in a short period of time, I can have a piece go out for a specific, like an immediate. turn that maybe wasn't expected for. Jimmy, you mentioned road construction. Many people have had complications because of road construction and you can't plan for that.
Jennifer Hulbert: So if your physical road is closed in front of you, how do you communicate how to get to the shop easily and quickly? And again, that relationship with a marketing rep would be very important. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. And making sure you're paying attention to how many new clients you're getting every month versus your growing debt database.
Jimmy Purdy: And that's the one thing I'm struggling with, right? We have a huge. Problem with retention and having a CRM program put in place to constantly be in front of mine is what I struggle with because I hate sending out those text reminders. I hate when someone clicks unsubscribe right to my email that I worked so hard to get in.
Jimmy Purdy: And that's the other point. How many of these emails are you capturing when these people come in? How awkward is that conversation when someone comes to the counter and you're like, Can I get your email? They're like, actually, I don't believe in that stuff. And you're like right. And then so like the next time around, you don't want to ask for the email, but that's all the stuff that builds that client base that helps you when you're slow, you can send out that text or that email blast and be like, Hey, you know, we got some spots available this week.
Jimmy Purdy: If you're looking to get that old change we talked about last month. I mean, that's just been huge in the last year for me to start learning that and like implementing that instead of like constantly going for the new stuff. Like, well, why don't you just pay attention to what's already sitting in the, And the cash register has been huge. 
Gregg Rainville: I'm sorry. I was just going to ask about just like picking up the phone too. Like, Is that worth it to like set aside some time and go through the list and call customers 
Jimmy Purdy: if you like it? 
Gregg Rainville: Yeah. 
Jennifer Hulbert: And if you're good at it, so it, it takes a, the right person to make those calls. So they're not, they sound not scripted or they're not floundering.
Jennifer Hulbert: So yeah. 
Jimmy Purdy: And Jennifer, on that point 
Jimmy Purdy: too, like having like someone like the Institute, take your advisor through their coaching program. And like, learn how to answer the phone. Cause you can do all the marketing in the world, but if you don't have someone that knows how to answer the phone, that's like, what can I do for you?
Jimmy Purdy: Right. Instead of being like, Hey, this is Jimmy with Shifting Gears Auto Repair. How can I help you today? Right. It's like, it just changed. Like you can spend all the money in the world of marketing or retention. It's like, why isn't anybody coming back? It's like, well, cause you suck to deal with. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Well, I think that's a great point, because if the phone isn't answered correctly or the customer's not handled in the proper way, then the customer's not gonna have trust with the shop.
Jennifer Hulbert: And that's why customers stay with typical shops is because of that trust factor. So
Jimmy Purdy: They got no right to trust you. 
Jennifer Hulbert: They do.
Jimmy Purdy: Just like Walker says. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Yes. And that leads to a couple other areas. I mean, you need to do the repairs right the first time. So you need to have the technical staff behind the scenes doing the work correctly.
Jennifer Hulbert: And you need to be able to communicate what the vehicle needs like through a DVI or a vehicle health evaluation with the customer. So those are a couple other pieces that people typically don't think as marketing. But in my opinion, there are. As important as a CRM campaign and reaching out and say, Hey, remember when your vehicle was here and we provided this beautiful report, all kinds of pictures and data about your vehicle, these are the items that you didn't do, but because we developed that trust level with the customer during that DVI and sales presentation, they're more likely to come back because of that trust.
Jennifer Hulbert: And then the reminder from a STEER CRM. 
Jimmy Purdy: And that gives you a better ROI, right? You raise your ARO. That makes gives you a better return on the investment of marketing, right? So if you get them in you do the dvi and you get your pair order up And that makes it more feasible to spend more money on marketing.
Jennifer Hulbert: Absolutely. 
Jimmy Purdy: You have a low ARO, then it's like, well, I'm spending all this money on marketing and I'm not seeing any dollars in my bank account. Trust me. I know I've been there. 
Jennifer Hulbert: I remember the time that you were there. 
Jimmy Purdy: So it helps. And then you start watching the numbers and you're like, Oh, it's all starting to kind of make sense now.
Jimmy Purdy: And then Greg, we talked the, what was it about a week ago about using that money for retention. So how much does it cost you to acquire each one of those clients? Right. And what if you, instead of spending that kind of money. And if you're just going to spend a dime on acquiring new ones, why don't you just give a discount to your existing client base that's already there?
Jimmy Purdy: Because it's going to cost you money either way to get someone in the door. And I was like everybody, I was like everybody else. I didn't believe in marketing. I'm like, nah, if I just do a really good job, then everyone's going to know about it and everybody's going to come to me. I don't need a market.
Jimmy Purdy: Marketing's for the week, right? Like, I was like, I just, I'm just gonna fix the car so good that the world will spread and I'll have to worry about spending a dime in marketing. Right? Like I really believed that and it's like that's so wrong. 
Jennifer Hulbert: No, I absolutely agree with that. And many shops feel that way that they don't need to market and they don't need to get their name out.
Jennifer Hulbert: One of the areas that we haven't talked about yet is reputation. So are you asking for reviews? Are you talking to your customers about that? Are you sending a campaign and saying, hey, if we did a great job, please leave us a review? Are you responding to those reviews and monitoring them and communicating with a customer who may be not be satisfied and rectifying that situation?
Jennifer Hulbert: So I think reputation is as important as well. There's a lot of pieces that go into this. 
Gregg Rainville: Yeah, I was going to mention getting that feedback loop during those slow times might be a really important time to see how your staff might be handling the stress. I know personally for me, you know, coming from a sales background and James, you also have a sales background, you hit the end of the month.
Gregg Rainville: And it's the same thing. It's like, are you near your number? You're not at your number. Like, are you, do you smell desperate when you're actually calling the customer? You don't want your team to do that. And also that, that could trickle over into other parts of the business. But I think to your point, Jennifer, like if you're having that feedback cycle and you're monitoring that closely, and especially during a slow time, I think.
Gregg Rainville: Some things might be exposed that, you know, I didn't appreciate this about the shop or it's like when you, your standard operating procedures kind of get exposed. If there's something that happens by, and then again it's that feedback loop, but I think during these slower times, it's probably a better time to keep an eye on it 
Jimmy Purdy: Not just listen to negative 
Jimmy Purdy: stuff, but the positive stuff too, right?
Jimmy Purdy: The one missing part is the CRM is okay. Maybe you don't want to bother your clients. You don't want to hound them, whatever, but a lot of people are waiting for you to ask them. What they thought, like most people won't tell you unless you ask. But if you ask, they will tell you, right? We've had over 100 Google reviews in the last year just based on asking for a review, right?
Jimmy Purdy: Like just that simple text. Hey, let us know how we did and all of a sudden our reviews grow. And guess what that does to the Google, right? Like my whole thing is to stop paying for Google ads, right? Because it's not sustainable. You know, it's like if you're paying for Google, what's the best patient out there?
Jimmy Purdy: A sick one. Right. So if you're using Google ads and they're getting you business, they go, well, they're going to want you to keep paying for Google ads. So the more organic stuff you can get, the better off you are. Right. And one of the big things is getting reviews, but you can't get the reviews unless you ask.
Jennifer Hulbert: Correct. And the same goes for referrals. So asking a customer to refer a family or a friend can do the same thing. Because again, that existing customer already knows and trusts you and has a relationship with you. So they're going to sing your praises to another new customer that could potentially be yours.
Jimmy Purdy: Maybe not the in laws, but most families, 
Gregg Rainville: do 
Gregg Rainville: you have a process that you coach for asking for referrals? Cause I know this is like, it's almost like the, it's difficult. Sometimes when I talk to shop owners, we're like, I can't ask for emails. Kind of like what Jimmy was talking about earlier of just being like, you know, it sometimes gets awkward, but I see asking for referrals almost being sometimes awkward.
Gregg Rainville: Are there any strategies to help with obviously boosting those new customers through referrals that, that. You could give anyone who's listening today on. 
Jimmy Purdy: That's a good question. I'm listening to this one. 
Gregg Rainville: Yeah. 
Gregg Rainville: I don't know if you have it built in the CRM or if it's just asking. 
Jennifer Hulbert: I think you do both.
Jennifer Hulbert: Any in front of customer requests that you can have, I think is going to be the most impactful. So at my personal shop, we have a little card that we printed up and give to customers who we want feedback from. There are some customers that you don't necessarily want their feedback. Everyone is getting the email as a follow up CRM, but we do give a personal just little note, Hey, if we did a great job, this is how you can leave us a review, and this is where to find us on Google, the same thing for a referral program.
Jennifer Hulbert: So you need to have a process and you mentioned a standard operating procedure. before. Many of this type of items can fall into that. So are you offering an incentive for the customer to refer someone else? Are you offering a discount for the new customer to come in? Are you doing something like cookies or candy or is a thank you enough?
Jennifer Hulbert: So looking at Who you have in your database and who are your best customers. We all know who our top 10 to 12 or 10 to 20 customers are. You could ask them and do a survey. What would be a reward for you to send me a referral? Many people in my experience say just your thanks and just the fact that you do great service and are a part of the community is thanks enough.
Jennifer Hulbert: Some people say, you know, Some small type of discount. So defining what your process is and then following that process. I do think referrals are best if they're asked for in person or something, maybe like a mirror hanger. where the technicians faces. Hey, I'm proud to work on your vehicle. I would be proud to work on a friend or family members vehicle.
Jennifer Hulbert: Here is our referral program and please refer because it means a lot to me so you can really personalize it. And I think that means something to customers. But having that process is And Jimmy knows that we talk about SOPs all of the time in our group process. So I'm a proponent for having a lot of things in writing and documented, and then communicated with the staff.
Jennifer Hulbert: So they know exactly what and how to do that process. And this would fall into them. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. Cause guess what? Six months go by and you're like. Wait a second. What did I put in that lasagna? And you don't remember the recipe, right? How did I get right but on that networking side? So the other thing too for referrals is like joining a bni group or the chamber of commerce or bdg, right?
Jimmy Purdy: Maybe starting a podcast getting a radio show but it can be as simple as like just volunteering at community events Like just getting out there one day spending two hours, right? The volunteers are like they only need you for two or three hours But the amount of contacts that you make and the people you talk to and they're like, oh you want auto shop?
Jimmy Purdy: Right, like I can tell you how many people I went to a local jiu jitsu gym, and I recommend everyone at least do one year of jiu jitsu But the amount of contacts I made there right you're Hello, talking with some other person for an hour, right? You get pretty intimate with them, right? And so they just trust you right away.
Jimmy Purdy: You're like, wow, you're holding my neck and your arms and you're not going to get your beards in my mouth. Yeah. But it's like just doing that. And like, quit going to be like Jimmy Lee and quit going to super cuts. Go get a good haircut. Right. And like make connections at the barber shop, right? Like so simple things that cost you any money.
Jimmy Purdy: That just builds this network. And then these people refer you, right. And like spreads like fire. It's like the next time someone's in that barber chair, they remember you. And they're like, Hey, actually I got a guy that owns a shop. He comes in here once a week or once a month or. If you're Jimmy one, every two hours or however many times he gets his hair done.
Jimmy Purdy: But you get my point, like get out there and like be with the community. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Well, and then communicate that through social media and your marketing programs. So if you're sending out emails and you want to highlight something that you're doing in the community, so your customers know that you are involved and that you're supporting their local community as well, share that.
Jennifer Hulbert: Make that part of your marketing plan because that what we do, we, many of us hold it so tightly to our chest and not communicate it out, share your staff, share your success stories, share your wins share, you know, customers that are coming into you for the first time, getting pictures, you know, if you can get a thumbs up picture in, in front of someone's car, and then communicating that out into all of your marketing platforms. CRM, website, all your social media.
Gregg Rainville: It brings your shop to life almost, right? Like, like people think they know your staff, they know you just because yeah, a lot of people, most people spend what, two, three hours on Facebook a day, you know, and they keep scrolling through, they see your live videos. They see your pictures.
Gregg Rainville: They see your friendly faces. Like, like they, they want to go there and do business. 
Jennifer Hulbert: It makes you a person, so it makes you relatable. 
Jimmy Purdy: If you use it right, like radio has got a pretty bad rap, right? Because everyone wants to do a radio ad and then they expect this huge turnover. And it just doesn't work like that.
Jimmy Purdy: And so like me doing the radio show, I have people coming all the time. And they're like, I just feel like I know you, like I've never met you in my life. Right. Like, and it's like kind of a one sided relationship. They're like, Oh, you went here last weekend. You talked about, and that's what I do. I don't just make it all about the business.
Jimmy Purdy: I talk about what we did last week. And I talk about what we did last week and like, and just make it personal. And so they get to trust me, know me as a person. And I think that's kind of missed. And I think a lot of the big influencers, especially in the social media, that's what they do. They make it about them and not necessarily all about what they do.
Jimmy Purdy: Like educational content is great, but you're marketing to the technician. That knows how to fix his car. He's not gonna come to your shop . Right. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Yeah. Your radio show is marketing to that . 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. The radio. Yeah. I mean, it's a call in so they can call in if they've got problems with their vehicles, but I really try to make it more kind of layman's and kind of simple.
Jimmy Purdy: The podcast is really based on, you know, industry professionals and that's not really to market, you know, new clients to the shop. But I guess my point is I watch a lot of social media influencers and some of it's very. like educational technical content where I enjoy it. But I'm like, I'm probably not going to go to that shop.
Jimmy Purdy: Like that's not going to build my client list, but it feels like it's the right thing to do. Does that make sense? Like it's one of the big problems I have for a long time is creating content and marketing to other technicians and marketing to other like shop owners. Like, well, this isn't making any sense.
Jimmy Purdy: So who do I need to market to? And that was a big one that was it Jimmy Lee that had the dope marketing? It was definitely something with the Institute where I was looking through and like, Oh, I'm not marketing to the right person. 
Jimmy Purdy: I'm spending my 
Jimmy Purdy: money and I'm getting the right people in.
Jennifer Hulbert: You mentioned the avatar before. So figuring out who is your target customer? How many vehicles do they have? What's their income? What's their location away from the shop? How are you going to reach them? Where did they shop? How do they communicate? So figuring out some of that will help you target your campaigns.
Jennifer Hulbert: Do I need to email? Do I need to text? Do I need to mail and to who, what carrier routes, if you're going to be doing mail campaigns how often do they want to hear from me? And with CRM specifically, I see a lot of new shops coming in that have their reminders on and the appointment reminders, and they're asking for the reviews.
Jennifer Hulbert: And that's about it. So my first question is, okay, you have a 30 day reminder from a recommended service and then you don't communicate with them again for how long? So do you have an ongoing campaign that's targeting your whole database? And Jimmy, you mentioned this earlier that you hate to see those unsubscribes come in, if you're doing it too often, you're going to see those come in.
Jennifer Hulbert: But if you're doing it on a regular, maybe a monthly basis. That's not too close together, but you're still reaching your whole database. That's the important key is you need to stay in front of your customers 
Jimmy Purdy: and targeting the wrong clients. I mean, I just flat out say I've got the wrong clients come in and I'm just doing the wrong things, right?
Jimmy Purdy: I'm trying to get to the top pinnacle and I want to be, have this cool hip campaign, right? Like. And be able to do like a got milk campaign, right? Like, like Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, like do this really hip thing. And it's like, I'm just so far away from that. Like I need to focus on who I'm supposed to be attracting and spend, spending all this money trying to build a brand and.
Jimmy Purdy: And you know, market to the wrong people. It's just, you got to take it in steps and kind of build that base layer and get a foundation built before you can start stacking on there. And then before you know it, I feel like you can kind of narrow it down and target exactly who it is. And then you can do targeted campaigns.
Jimmy Purdy: But I think for me, I mean, that's what I did. I wanted to go straight to targeted campaigns. Like I knew who I want coming in here. It was like, I still don't know. I still haven't figured it out. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Well, and then how did the customers want to be communicated with? 
Jennifer Hulbert: So. Is it mail? Is it text? Is it email? And one of the things you mentioned earlier, Jimmy, is it's weird for you to ask for an email. That's part of our incoming script. So it's name, phone number, address, email. 
Jimmy Purdy: And birthday. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Oh, we don't do birthday, but it's just that the normal feel that we ask and customers typically don't say no. If you just ask it that way. If you ask, well, Hey, I'd kind of want your email. So will you give it to me?
Jennifer Hulbert: Then you're going to get the nose 
Jimmy Purdy: the desperation, like Greg said, you can't mark it when you're desperate. I guarantee when you're busy and then you overpriced a job because you don't want to do it. And guess what? That's what they say. Yes. Every time. And you're like, I tried to price that out. 
Jimmy Purdy: I didn't want to do it.
Jimmy Purdy: That same job comes next month when you're not busy and you go a thousand dollars less. And then it's like, it's just a crazy thing. And like you said, people can smell it. Like they should know. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Well, and we talked a little bit about ROI. 
Gregg Rainville: What I was going to ask you, Jimmy, you're on the hot seat, I guess, of like, so when do things slow down for you coming up?
Gregg Rainville: Like this next, is it happening right now or is it happening in September? In a couple of weeks, you know, the data. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah, I'll probably see a slowdown in January. It's usually December for Christmas. And I think that's just standard. That's just like after Christmas, I think every industry in the world dies except for Amazon with all their return.
Jimmy Purdy: That's typically it. Yeah. 
Gregg Rainville: Are you planning right now, kind of what you're going to do for January? No. I'm going to put you in the hot seat with your coach. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah, right. And we'll talk about this tomorrow. I don't have to do it all the time. Like, Jennifer helped me. She's like, you need to do this. Right now, I'm focused on back to school.
Jimmy Purdy: So we have back to school flyers going out. And this is the first time we've targeted. To back to school. And so we're going to see how that works. And one of the things I've read was, you know, greatest is the enemy of great, right? And so you draw a line and you want to find like the greatest thing, like, what am I going to do?
Jimmy Purdy: What's the greatest thing I can do to get people in door, right? And then you miss all these great opportunities you can, right? So instead of like, you draw this line and you're just looking for this greatest thing, that's it. That's all I'm going to do instead of like, well, that could be a good idea. That could be a good idea.
Jimmy Purdy: And Jennifer doesn't like when I do this, but I do get a lot of ideas and like, but I want to throw everything at the wall and kind of see what sticks and they're all great ideas, but they're not the greatest, right? But you'll never know unless you kind of categorize them and start stacking them kind of like poker chips, right?
Jimmy Purdy: Like you're trying to like, well, that could be work. That could work. That works. So one of the time, one of the things this year is going to be targeting the back to school and see how that works for us in our area. Just like the fair time, maybe next year we'll try targeting the fair time again and see what happens there and just see if that works.
Jimmy Purdy: So I guess to your point of the slowdown we're looking for in January I don't really have a big game plan to get that moving. I already have like the basic stuff that I'll be working on getting a lot of the retention. That's going to be huge. I think getting new clients after Christmas time is going to be impossible, or it has been.
Jimmy Purdy: Like, our new customer count for the last three years has never ever gone up after Christmas, right? But we can target and do the CRM and reach out. to the people that we already have in our database and then work that way. 
Jennifer Hulbert: One of the key things that you said was our new customer count doesn't increase.
Jennifer Hulbert: That means you're tracking it. And that's important. So if you're not tracking the new customer and returning customers or your active customer lists, then you're not going to know if you're impacting that at all. And one of my coaches that I've had said, you may not completely make a poor month or a typical slow month, the best month of the year, but you're going to impact it and increase sales because of your marketing.
Jennifer Hulbert: So even if you can move the needle a little, then that, that's what we're looking for. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. 
Jimmy Purdy: And sometimes, you know, marketing, I don't know who told me this, but your marketing budget could just be. Paying for cash flow, right? Like if you're not tracking how many return clients you're getting back in You're just paying for cash flow because the amount of money you're spending to get them in the door is just market to get new people in the door.
Jimmy Purdy: So it's like, it's just cashflow. Right. And that's great. When you're starting, like you have to do that. Like if you don't have cashflow, you don't have a business. Right. But over the years you start realizing, okay, well man, my retention rates down at like 60 percent right now, that's not good. And I'm in the process of that right now, the last two months, we've had a 10 percent drop from last year in retention.
Jimmy Purdy: Oh man, what are we going to do here? But it's not 20%, right? Like we're not, Based on new cars every month, I'm seeing the needle go the wrong way. And I'm like, okay, we got to work on retention. So what are we doing? We're doing a back to school postcard flyer for all of our existing clients. And we're going to spend all our money trying to get them back in the door instead of acquiring new.
Jimmy Purdy: Of course, you always got to get new. You always got to be constantly branding all always pushing it out there. But the focus right now is getting the clients that we already have in the debt database back in the door. 
James Harris: Yeah. And I think a big piece of that too, Jimmy is when you're looking at it, I know you said you don't want to throw stuff at the wall and see what works, right?
James Harris: But there, there can be a strategic way of doing that when you're using. Tools that allow you to track that data back and figure out what's actually working and see what dollars are bringing back with certain campaigns That's what you can reuse next year. That's what you can change next year if it didn't work I think that's a big piece to it right is making sure that when you're going into it You're really looking at analyzing what is working what's not and having a tangible way of grabbing that and seeing what I like doing 
Jimmy Purdy: Just to clarify, I do like throwing stuff at the wall.
Jimmy Purdy: So you would say, well, I know. Jennifer freaking hates it. And so does my wife. Like, stop coming up with all those ideas. I'm like, I'm telling you, one of these is going to be cold. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Well,  and when we're talking about retention rates, one of the things that we haven't talked about yet is the business model.
Jennifer Hulbert: So Jimmy, you are typically a transmission shop. where customers came to you for those large repairs and not for the maintenance services. Now you're doing tires and alignments. Now you're going to get into maintenance services. So that's part of the marketing plan as well is what is your business model and who do you need to retract attract?
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. So, Stop stepping over to the dollar to pick up a dime, right? 
Jennifer Hulbert: Correct. 
Jimmy Purdy: But I really want Euro cars. Yeah, but you're not getting any Euro cars. Yeah. So just work on the cars that are, like, coming in. And that's what the classic cars are coming. I don't have to, they just come in organically.
Jimmy Purdy: I get a lot of classic cars and as soon as that word spreads, it's like, oh man, you can work on old cars? Yeah, it's not a problem. And I don't have to spend a dollar marketing towards it. And it's like, well, you know what? That's what's working. And now I got to figure out how to on the business side of it.
Jimmy Purdy: So aside from the marketing side, I got to make that make sense to make money.  But it's like, that's just easy. I had a going through some of my keywords and watching KPIs is another important one. So if you're spending money on Google ads, you better know what's working. Right. And so going through, I saw one of my blog posts for drive train really like took off my drive train because how many times have you looked through?
Jimmy Purdy: Like, what do people search when they're looking for auto repair? Like, what are they typing? What is it? Is it auto repair? Is it auto care? Is it maintenance? Like, what is it? All of a sudden drive train took off. So I just took it and put it on one of my KPIs. And boom, now I'm number one rated if someone searched drive train and it's just like, that costs me nothing other than just watching what was working and then just copy, cut, pasting.
Jimmy Purdy: And now it's on there and I'm ranked number one for drive train. And it's like, I didn't even know people look for that. I didn't even know that was a search term. 
Gregg Rainville: What I was going to ask, what, like what tools for looking at these KPIs, the key performance indicators like what tools do you use outside of your CRM, like, like are there.
Gregg Rainville: Are there any tools that you want to share with the audience? Maybe that you're using? I don't know if you're using like Google Analytics to look at this, but like, what are the tools that are great to have to like, to know what's working, what's not working besides CRM? 
Jennifer Hulbert: So if you're an institute client we have something called the dashboard that pulls in all kinds of data from your shop marketing system or shop management system, and we get all of that information.
Jennifer Hulbert: So. Gross profits, average RO, hours per RO hours for the technicians, and then we get all the marketing. So active customers, new customers, lost customers, we get attrition rates, and that's all pulled in from the management system if you are an institute client. Without that, I think you're pulling data manually from your management system unless CRM and you can pull that in.
Jimmy Purdy: It's a secret, Greg. It's a secret. It's Google analytics. Right. 
Gregg Rainville: It's called the dashboard. 
Jennifer Hulbert: For the Institute. Yes. 
Jimmy Purdy: If you have and we utilize that all the time being a client, right. But for what I was talking about with the keywords, looking through Google analytics having a marketing company that's working for you that actually shows you that stuff and sit down for a month.
Jimmy Purdy: And if you have a question, you can email them and they send you an updated. So I have another dashboard that's just for Google Analytics alone. And it goes through and it shows me all my KPIs. And I can go through and see what's working, what's not, where I'm ranking, where I'm not ranking, where I should be putting Google ads in.
Jimmy Purdy: Right? So one of the big ones was trying to get more Asian vehicles in, right? I want to get some Toyotas and Hondas. That was one of the things I started a couple of months ago to try to get more of those vehicles in because looking, that was one of our highest AROs was Toyota pickup trucks. It's like, people like to spend money on those things, right?
Jimmy Purdy: And Jeeps, but we already had a good thing with Jeep. So, we started doing a Google Ads campaign specifically for Toyota, Honda, and Subaru. That was it. That's all I want. That's all I want to spend my Google ads on. And that's all I'm going to do. Instead of saying, well, let's do Google ads for auto repair.
Jimmy Purdy: Okay. Good luck. You know what that CPC is going to be like, that's crazy, man. You want to compete for that? Like that's got to be organic. That's fishing in a big lake. Oh man. Tiny little fish. Yeah. 
Jennifer Hulbert: That goes back to your business model. So do those type of customers, do they shop and act differently? Is that your avatar or do you need to change your avatar and then be able to communicate the way that they're going to hear you?
Jennifer Hulbert: So when we say marketing, it's this whole big ball.
Jimmy Purdy: Yup. And then knowing which ones you should be for CRM, you should be targeting back. Right? Because if you're constantly having these problems with these certain clients and maybe you find a pattern that everyone that Drives a Volvo isn't someone you like dealing with then maybe not target to Volvos anymore Maybe get your CRM program to stop reaching out to those people I mean that's just what it is Like I everyone wants to make everybody happy But that doesn't make any money and that was like one of my big struggles too is like I want I just want to make Everyone happy.
Jimmy Purdy: So everyone that came through the door was like, yep. Come on in. Come on in. I'll help everybody And then I'm like, I'm not making any freaking money. What's going on here? And once I started realizing, I peel the layers back and start actually saying, okay, Toyota trucks make money. So I'll market towards Toyota trucks.
Jimmy Purdy: Then all of a sudden it's like, it makes sense. Like, yeah, I'm spending four or 5 percent on my marketing budget, but I'm making that hand over fist on ROI. So it's like, if you did that with a Volvo, you're probably not going to do it. Right. Or if you're a domestic shop and you're working on BMWs, you're probably not making the same kind of money target to what makes sense, you know, and it's always got to change.
Jennifer Hulbert: So monitoring that and then acting on that data is important. So knowing what that data is, where to find it and communicating with your marketing team. So a lot of people think that's internal, which typically falls on the shoulders of the owner, but STEER would be. Part of my marketing team, whoever is handling my website and my Google AdWords is part of my marketing team.
Jennifer Hulbert: So communicating with that team on a regular basis of these are the goals that we have set out for the year or the month or the quarter. This is what we think will work getting the opinions of that marketing team, because. They're the experts. STEER is the expert in the CRM. Whoever's handling the Google AdWords is that expert and getting their information and then coming up with a plan to lay it out, to do the best for the shop, monitor the results, make changes and continue to work forward.
Jimmy Purdy: Or you can just do a blind ly and just tilt up the wall, I guess. I don't know. 
Gregg Rainville: No. The the other thing is I'm sure, and I'm sure the dashboard has this, but I think understanding what your customer acquisition cost is. So like, like how much it is to get that Toyota truck through the door, like, like how much are you willing to spend Jimmy to get that, that Toyota truck through the door?
Gregg Rainville: I'm going to ask that as a question, $200? 
Jimmy Purdy: Just right, right to the point. 
Gregg Rainville: Yeah. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. Put the knife to my neck. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you told me that's one of those cars that you want. You want to give me five minutes. I got to get all my stuff open here and look at it. Well, I mean, it just depends on the ARO, right?
Jimmy Purdy: So if our average repair orders is around 1500, then I just kind of averaged across the board. And if I look and see, okay, four trucks is number one and Toyota trucks is number two. Okay. Well maybe we should target more Toyota trucks. Right. And I think that, I think Jennifer, we had a conversation about that where Ford, Chevy, Dodge, people just look up auto repair.
Jimmy Purdy: They don't look up who fixes a Ford truck, who fixes a Dodge truck, who fixes a Chevy truck. Like they just say, who can fix my truck? Right. Like they don't. So, but Toyota, like I have a Toyota Tundra. Who can fix my Toyota Tundra? Who can fix my Toyota Tacoma? And so knowing a little bit of that. Yeah. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy: It's like knowing a little bit of that. I'm like, okay, maybe I should spend a little money and target that and kind of see what happens. I don't have a lot of database. database driven, you know, behind me, I just that kind of makes sense. Let's see what happens. Right. And I just kind of roll that way, but it's not completely blind anymore anyway.
Jennifer Hulbert: Well, and then having that be part of your marketing budget. So we recommend between four and 6 percent of your annual sales should be towards your marketing budget. So what portion of that is that allocated between CRM, new customer attraction, your website, your. Any of your social media campaigns or any other marketing that you might do.
Jennifer Hulbert: So deciding how to break that up and what's going to be the most impactful. And unfortunately, sometimes you need to make an educated guess and throw some of that mud as long as it's an educated guess, right? 
Jimmy Purdy: I'm a diagnostician. I take all my best educated guess every day. 
James Harris: It's like that leash has got a little bit longer for you, Jimmy.
James Harris: You got a little freedom there now.
Jimmy Purdy: What about website? Like you talked about website and how many shops out there do not have a, you guys both go to 500 shops a year, right? 200 shops. How many of them don't have a website? 
Gregg Rainville: A lot of them have some sort of website. They think it's Facebook, their Facebook's their website. 
James Harris: I was about to say define website.
Gregg Rainville: Or they just have this like Wix website. And I'm seeing a lot, especially on the QuickLube side. And they seem really like proud of their website that their brother built for them. Or, you know, and it's nice but I don't think they understand like how important it is. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Well, there's a difference between having a website and then having a search engine optimized program. And again, that is part of your marketing plan. 
James Harris: Yeah. It even goes back to the pictures you have on your website too, right? You have a bunch of fake pictures on there of a shop that is not yours. And then someone shows up to your shop and it's got dirt floors and that's not what they saw in the picture.
James Harris: It's like, wait a minute. Where am I at? Am I at the right place? That's a part of building that relationship as well and retaining that customer from trust right away. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah, good point. Because that's like, how are they going to recommend you if that's the experience they got? They're not going to want to give that experience to someone that they know or love, right?
Jimmy Purdy: Like, they don't want that either. It's like, you go to the website, it's like, yeah, that dude I saw on the website is the same dude that's actually sitting at the office. That just builds trust like right away and it's just amazing to me how many people don't have a website or don't have an email And how that's just such a fun, but then they're spending ten thousand dollars a month on a billboard or a radio ad.
Jennifer Hulbert: Yes 
Jimmy Purdy: So, what do people do when they want to look you up? Well they will just go to my shop, they will, huh? Okay. 
Jennifer Hulbert: And then not tracking the results at all. 
Gregg Rainville: Yeah. And it's wild because we now live in a time where like scheduling is becoming really popular in the automotive repair space. I'm trying to break it into quick lube a little bit.
Gregg Rainville: It's a little. difficult with like first come first serve. But if you told me like three years ago that scheduling would be like a hot software, like I'd tell you a lion just because most of the shops I talked to them that I was visiting there like this is not a hair salon. This is not the dentist.
Gregg Rainville: Like it's really hard to book appointments. Like we don't know if the car is going to be here for 20 minutes or three days. But that's been a breakthrough. But That's the way people want to do business today. Like, like I talked to a shop the other day who's using online scheduling. And I was like, what made you make the switch?
Gregg Rainville: And they told me, they were like, I had a family or I had this family of vehicles. And the son brought his car to my competitor around the corner. And I asked him, I go, what are you doing? Bringing your car there? He goes, they had an online scheduler because he made it really easy for me to do business and book an appointment.
Gregg Rainville: And like, that's the way you need to start thinking, especially during these slow times of making it easy to do business with your repair shop. So it's that switch. 
Jimmy Purdy: Jennifer, you said monitoring too, right? Like tracking it. And that was another. The whole big thing that I was losing, right? Did you spend the money on a billboard or a radio ad and how do you know it's working, right?
Jimmy Purdy: Like the online scheduler, that's pretty easy. They make the online schedule, you know, they make the point and then they show up Oh, it's working. Cool. But like tracking the other stuff that was another one that I was missing out on too and being able to have like a QR code or if you're using like a CRM program, you know, it's working right away.
Jimmy Purdy: You send out the text and you immediately get the people in Yeah, the tracking phone numbers and all that stuff that like that gets kind of missed when you do these kind of off the wall marketing column campaigns, right? Like postcards. That's a tough one. Like, unless they come in with the postcard, then you don't know.
Jimmy Purdy: But it's another part of that process when they come in. Hey, how'd you hear about it? It's like crucial. How did you hear about us? Why are you here today? I know your cards broke, but like, why are you here though? Why did you come to me? 
Jennifer Hulbert: How did you hear about us?
Jimmy Purdy: Yes. And without knowing that, like, how do you know what is working and what's not working.
Gregg Rainville: I was going to, I was going to ask you, Jennifer, just like what kind of marketing is your favorite, like being a coach that's like. The most productive, but maybe the least expensive or maybe we'll say cost effective. What is your favorite 
Jennifer Hulbert: It's CRM.
Gregg Rainville: CRM. Okay. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Because again, your customers know and trust you already.
Jennifer Hulbert: They've already been to your shop and they've seen the stellar service that you're going to or should be providing. So that trust factor is pretty much already. already a given. And then a well qualified service advisor to deliver on the promises made. That's also key. So you can get the phone to ring all day long, but if that call isn't handled correctly, then that customer is not going to come in.
Jennifer Hulbert: So I do agree with CRM that's my go to, and that's going to have the biggest return on investment in my opinion. 
Gregg Rainville: And then what's your favorite for customer acquisition that you've seen work at your shop or for some of your clients? 
Jennifer Hulbert: Google AdWords and a well designed SEO website. So yes, my, you know, my cousin could have made my website and it looks absolutely fantastic, but is it doing its job to get customers to come in the door?
Jennifer Hulbert: That's a whole other type of website. And if you're not paying attention to the CRM, your Google Analytics, meeting with whoever your website provider is, and knowing that you know, you're getting the customer to come in the door. Recently I've had my website rewritten about five or six years ago and recently we started to see our organic searches really fall off.
Jennifer Hulbert: So my whole website, all 106 pages were indexed by Google, but now all 106 pages have new content to be re indexed. So knowing that and having a web company who understands that and can make the recommendations of, hey, these are falling off because we're paying attention to the data and we need to make some changes there.
Gregg Rainville: Excellent. No, this is great. I'm going to open up the chat now. So for anyone who's online right now, I know we probably have about 10 minutes left roughly. 
Jimmy Purdy: For the three of you listening right now, it's time for your questions.
Gregg Rainville: But if anyone has questions, please post them. We're more than happy to to give you, I can give you an educated. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yes. As an answer. So don't It would be an educated guess. I'm not the master, but I think learning and then just like you said, tracking and monitoring it and just constantly making changes.
Jimmy Purdy: Like the website's tough. Like it is so tough and it's a full time job. And I think a lot of us technician turned shop owner, we try to take on as much as we can, right? Like I can fix a car, I can fix anything, right? Like I can fix a sandwich. No problem. But then you start, you know, building the website and you're like, what am I doing this for?
Jimmy Purdy: Like, how much is my time worth? Right? Like the Dan Martel was a buyback your time, like figure out where you should be spending your time. And like building websites, not that you're, that's not what you should be doing. Right. And even with the CRM, like, Oh, I can make phone calls. I can text people.
Jimmy Purdy: And Greg, you brought that up. But what if I just, I can just cold call my clients. Okay. How long are you going to spend doing that? Like when you just have a campaign, you're just sending out automated texts and emails. And then maybe you can narrow it down and we do that at the shop We notice if we're not getting some feedback, we'll have a small percentage and it was okay So you guys I want you to call these five people and I want you to call these five people and that's it like we have a very select amount of people that we Go through and make sure like this is going to be worth the time to make that call to get them back in.
Jimmy Purdy: They spent 3, 000 last year and we haven't seen them in nine months. Let's see what's going on here, right? But without knowing the numbers and seeing that and having those programs in place, man, you're just trying to find a needle in a haystack. It is so much. It's amazing. 
Jennifer Hulbert: We do have a couple of questions and one of them is, are you using AI to generate content for your website?
Jennifer Hulbert: And I am not a website design SEO expert, but I have heard from the experts that we've worked with that using AI to generate content can actually hurt your rankings with Google. So I definitely do not recommend that unless you're having an expert tell you differently. And again, I want a disclaimer here that I am not an SEO expert.
Jennifer Hulbert: But working with a company who can create authentic content for your site is going to help your rankings with Google. 
Gregg Rainville: I feel like Google might be smart enough to know if it's AI content. 
Jennifer Hulbert: They are. From my understanding, 
Gregg Rainville: On that side, I'm not an expert. I'm more on the CRM side, but I would probably think that Google would know that the content being created isn't really human content.
Jimmy Purdy: I think it's got to be like a hybrid, right? Like you got to have some human like stuff in there because there's certain words and certain, what do they call it? phonetics that AI uses to script sentences that are very easy to pick up on. Like that's not how a human being speaks. I'm sorry, but it's all right. It's all factual, but it's not how a human being speaks.
Jimmy Purdy: I use AI a lot for, you know, Facebook posts. That's a big one. I haven't heard anything bad about using Facebook posts. So just boom, generate something on social media and do three posts a day. Facebook constantly. And then we've all seen it with the, with CRM. They're starting to use it to generate reviews for Google for the CRM programs.
Jimmy Purdy: Like, so I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, I use it for emails all the time. I just make sure to read it. Like don't just post it. 
Jennifer Hulbert: So another question is there a silver bullet in marketing? My opinion is making a plan. So having a plan and following it, knowing who your target customer is, tracking the data, monitoring the data, meeting with your marketing team.
Jennifer Hulbert: Those in my opinions are silver bullets, but a specific campaign no I don't know of one that's just going to generate hundreds of customers to flock through your door. 
Jimmy Purdy: The Budweiser campaign, you know, frogs or maybe the got milk campaign. That was another good one. You know, one thing we didn't talk about was like doing like jingles.
Jimmy Purdy: And I don't know if that's going to be like the next thing for auto repair, but having some sort of audio cue. And I know there's another word for that, but you know, like everyone knows what HBO sounds like when the HBO thing comes on, the logo pops up and it's feel like the audio thing is like that really hits a lot of people and makes them remember you.
Jennifer Hulbert: Well that goes into branding. So how are you branding your business? And top of mind, 
Jimmy Purdy: I think that would probably be the closest thing to a silver bullet maybe is being, having a really solid brand. So you're always. Always thinking about you. It 
Gregg Rainville: Looks like someone's asking Jennifer to speak more a little bit about the Institute.
Gregg Rainville: So what the Institute does, I mean, obviously it sounds like you guys have this amazing dashboard, which I just learned about today. But and obviously the coaching side of things, like what else does the Institute offer, offer clients? And Jimmy, you could probably talk a little bit about it as well too.
Jennifer Hulbert: Sure. So we are an automotive shop owner advisor and management coaching group or company. So we have automotive shop owner groups similar to the 20 groups that you hear. So we're meeting in person with 15 to 20 people in a group and we're traveling around to the actual shops to do an evaluation.
Jennifer Hulbert: We have an advisor training group called the advisor program. We have a manager's program. We have an individual coaching program. And Cecil Bullard and Kent Bullard are the owners and they are a wealth of knowledge and sharing that knowledge with their staff and then communicating that out into every aspect of running an automotive repair.
Jimmy Purdy: It turns you from owning a job. To being a business owner. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Correct. 
Jimmy Purdy: Makes the difference. And I'm I've been two years now and we've taken our sales from, was it about 600,000 last year? And we're on track to break 1.2 this year. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Yep. Doubled in a year. 
Jimmy Purdy: Yeah. And not to mention the net, we actually have a net profit.
Jimmy Purdy: It's not huge, but we're working on that. But knowing that is what is important, right? Yes. Knowing what you're striving for and setting the goals and attaining the goals, and then having Jennifer hold you accountable because she will. You better do those things you said you were going to do.
Jennifer Hulbert: Absolutely. 
Gregg Rainville: There's an event coming up too. I think we can scroll it at the bottom or post it at the bottom. Yep, there we go. Look at that. 
Jennifer Hulbert: So we have the Institute Summit is going to be February 6th through the 8th, 2025. In Amelia Island, Florida. We have a great lineup of speakers coming in. We have all kinds of vendors coming in so you can learn more about the different products like STEER or a whole host of vendors coming in.
Jennifer Hulbert: This is the second one that I'll be participating in. Our first was in 2022, I believe. And it's just great to get all of these like minded people together like any industry event, the camaraderie that happens, the communication that happens, the ideas that flow. I'm just, I'm really excited to get to the Summit and it's in Florida.
Jennifer Hulbert: It is. And for me, that's important. I'm in upstate New York, so Florida, it's not going to be 30 below. 
Jimmy Purdy: It's important for everybody because we're going to Florida. We're in Miami. Greg knows. Good time, Greg. We're going to have a good time, man. 
Gregg Rainville: Ogden part two, but in Miami. Yes. Oh my God. Oh, can't wait. And then we're scrolling down below the the gearbox podcast on your favorite listening podcasts.
Gregg Rainville: Yeah. There's millions of podcasts, but you could find the gearbox podcasts, just do a simple search right on the app, 
Jimmy Purdy: lots of conversation, just like this with other shop owners across the whole nation. I go to different events. I talk to different shop owners, talk about their journey, talk about what's works for them and their shop.
Jimmy Purdy: If you're ever interested in being on it, you can find me on Facebook. I'd love to have anybody on. I like to hear the stories. There's so much we can learn from each other when we learn to collaborate. So, 
Jennifer Hulbert: Correct and I'm excited to be a part of this webinar with STEER. I think communicating this type of information out to the general public of people who just are learning how can I impact my business and what are the small tweaks that I can make.
Jennifer Hulbert: So I'm really excited to be here and happy to have been part of this team. 
Gregg Rainville: Yeah, this has been a great panel. I've learned a lot. I love, I knew Jimmy was kind of a wild child, but with, but it's good to know that Jennifer, you're there to keep them in control. But yeah, this is fantastic. With STEER.
Gregg Rainville: There are some new features coming out in the next few months. So we are doing a lot with Google. We have reserved with Google. We are doing a lot with scheduling, so doing some stuff on the customer acquisition side. I know we talk a lot about customer attention, but we are focusing a little bit more on the customer acquisition side and more to come with that.
Gregg Rainville: But again, I appreciate everyone's time and everyone joining the webinar today, I think we'll have part three in a couple of months. I'm looking forward to that with the Institute and I am looking forward to the event next year that hopefully. Me and James and we'll be attending again and find in the hotspot. Jimmy, we're going to go meet some locals and learn how to advertise our business. 
Jimmy Purdy: Social media marketing. One on one. We'll just have a class. And it's like, when's the class start at about eight 30 in the morning? No. Excellent. Cool guys. Well, thanks for having me. This has been fun.
Jennifer Hulbert: Yes.
Jimmy Purdy: I enjoy all your company. And I mean, I learned something every time I talked with. industry professionals like yourselves. So this is, this has been a great opportunity to be here. 
Jennifer Hulbert: Yes. Thank you again. It's been a lot of fun. 
James Harris: Awesome. Thanks y'all. I appreciate it.