The Institute’s Leading Edge Podcast

154 - Process, People, and Profit: Inside JB Import Auto with Ryan von Steinen

154 - Process, People, and Profit: Inside JB Import Auto with Ryan von Steinen
October 6, 2025 - 00:37:41
 
Show Summary:
What happens when a motorsport kid with a rebuilt BMW and a shattered leg trades the wrench for the front counter and still can’t shake the need for speed? Jimmy Lea sits down with Ryan von Steinen of JB Import Auto in St. Petersburg to trace a career detour that became a superpower: pairing deep technical fluency with world-class customer care. Ryan opens the hood on a shop that balances everyday Euro work with a thriving Rolls-Royce/Bentley program, powered by a clear org chart and an estimator-driven workflow. He shares how a living SOP “Bible,” weekly reviews, and photo-rich DVIs protect margins and build trust. Recruiting is a sport of its own: Trello benches, school partnerships, and “grow-your-own” apprentices. With a five-year plan to stretch a quirky legacy facility to $6.7M, Ryan argues the industry needs real certification, likely nudged by insurers, as ADAS and EV complexity spikes. He closes with blunt succession advice: don’t DIY the deal, get experts, and if it isn’t written, it didn’t happen.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Ryan von Steinen, Chief Operating Officer of JB Import Automotive Repair
 
Show Highlights:
[00:03:34] - Ryan’s love for cars and motorsport started young—autocross at 14—and he pursued high-performance training at the University of Northwestern Ohio.
[00:05:47] - A serious accident two weeks into his dealership job ended wrenching for a season and nudged him toward advising/management where his tech knowledge still shines.
[00:11:24] - After Porsche-heavy experience and a tough management stint, Ryan lands at JB Import, where he’s spent nearly 12 years, holds a small ownership stake, and is executing a five-year growth plan.
[00:13:35] - The shop’s SOP “Bible” is a living document—reviewed weekly and refined with team feedback—so processes evolve instead of collecting dust.
[00:15:23] - Clear org chart: six techs plus a coach/CEO, service manager, two advisors, and an estimator who also handles parts, inventory, and estimate building.
[00:16:41] - RO checklist discipline and an estimator bridge reduce misses between techs and advisors and keep customer communication consistent.
[00:33:03] - DVI standards: minimum photo counts (even on new cars), include positives—not just problems—and always capture four corners and the instrument cluster to prevent disputes.
[00:24:33] - Capacity and mix matter: maximizing one facility first; exotic ROs can be 3–4x Euro “daily” work, but big hurricane projects can skew monthly optics.
[00:20:52] - Recruiting is proactive: Trello follow-ups, open-door visits, and active involvement in local high schools and tech programs to “grow your own.”
[00:26:49] - Industry wish list: real certification/standards (perhaps insurer-driven) as ADAS/EV complexity rises, and solid succession planning with expert guidance and thorough documentation.
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Hello friend. My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Joining me today is my very good friend, Ryan von Stein, with JB Import Auto Outta St. Petersburg, Florida. Ryan, thank you so much for joining. How are you this morning?
Ryan von Steinen: Excellent, Jimmy. Happy to be here. So thanks for having me.
Jimmy Lea: Oh man, this is awesome. So, St. Pete is probably the one of the only places that my luggage ever got lost. Here I was flying from Vegas to St. Pete and right about mid states. It hangs a hard left. The plane does. Everybody feels it hard left. We were flying into Dallas and then from Dallas we were going into St.
Jimmy Lea: Pete with Tampa. Yeah. And, and as we're coming in towards Dallas Hard Bank left. They said, Dallas is having an ice storm. We can't land there. We're going to Denver. And I was like, oh, okay, great. We're going to Denver. Never fear your flights have already been rescheduled. When you get on the ground, it's all set.
Jimmy Lea: Everybody's good to go. Your luggage will go wherever it is your final destination is. I was like, oh, sweet. Great. So I land in town. I have 45 minutes. From land, get off the plane, not really four, five minutes. It was more like 15 minutes and I walked right onto my next plane. So I really went from gate to gate and I was right on the next plane, which was wonderful.
Jimmy Lea: So I get to Tampa, Hey, can you scan and my codes and see where my luggage is? 'cause it hasn't come out on the conveyor yet. It's not in the oversized, and I'm looking for my booth. It's not there. And she says, yeah, I figured with you. Oh, I'm so sorry that somewhere over Denver, your luggage broke hands.
Jimmy Lea: They were holding hands up to Denver, but then they weren't holding hands anymore. Half of it went to Dallas. The other half is in Chicago. I wasn't even going to Chicago, but it's in Chicago. It's like, all right. All right. So what's the plan? Well, half of it'll be here by midnight. The other half will come about, four 30 in the morning.
Jimmy Lea: I said, great. I'll come back for that one half that comes at midnight, because I need that. That's very important. It was the whole booth. Here I am at a trade show. I have to have the booth. Right. You gotta Yeah. Half show off who you are.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. I figured if you're traveling, that's it.
Jimmy Lea: Right. So I had a car, I came back, I got the booth, put it in the truck. I took it over to the, trade show, and the next morning my second package showed up in a clear plastic bag. It had gone full blown yard sale. Oh, everything was strewn out all over the place. Oh, so hilarious.
Ryan von Steinen: Dang, man. I'm sorry. Not a good Tampa reception.
Jimmy Lea: Hey. No. Tampa was phenomenal. They brought it all over there. It wasn't Tampa's fault. I got mad props for Southwest as I showed up to pick up my booth at midnight. She hands me a voucher for like $150 off your next flight. Okay. Yeah. Oh, sweet. There's loyalty for life. And I do. I fly Southwest everywhere I go, so it's a good thing.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah, I get it, man. That makes sense.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Loyalty. It goes a long way.
Ryan von Steinen: It does, man does. I'm stuck there too. So,
Jimmy Lea: hey, so Ryan, how did you get into the automotive industry? What does that look like when you started? Are you a baby sweeping the floors or you in high school? What's the catalyst here that gets you involved?
Ryan von Steinen: I liked cars from really young age, but I had, my mom's side of the family was into the Indianapolis 500, and I grew up in Michigan. And it was like a grandfather that grew up listening to it on the radio, so that was always a big event every year and somewhere around when I was maybe about eight, my dad autocross to used BMW and that really just started it where I was obsessed with motorsport, most especially, but cars and motorsports, you know?
Jimmy Lea: I love it. How old were you when you learned to drive?
Ryan von Steinen: I learned to dry when I was about 12 in the woods up on some dirt roads. Yeah. And I taught across when I was 14, so yeah,
Jimmy Lea: dude. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I was nine and we went to Canna, Utah. We drove from the house to the barn and back. If you went another halfway that was a mile and one summer we put 10,000 miles on this little 73 Toyota Corolla.
Jimmy Lea: Holy cow. Go into the barn and back, dude. I mean, holy cow. At nine years old, you thought we, we had freedom. That was freedom. Driving was freedom.
Ryan von Steinen: 10,000 miles of freedom. That's amazing.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Well, we stayed there for a month, so it, yeah, it was dawn until dusk that we were just driving that and grandma and grandpa loved it.
Jimmy Lea: It was, oh man, it was such great, it was cool. Didn't. So you started, with BMW Motocross.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. Yeah, like my dad was like lightly into autocross. We always had used BMWs. And then I went to a high school in Michigan that had a pretty great autobody program. So I did that and I had an awesome instructor and I redid a old E 21, the first three series BMW, my senior year with that program.
Ryan von Steinen: But I was more interested in mechanical work. Okay. And all those autobody schools have. You know, UTI and WTI at the time, all these training institutes that come around. So I signed up and went to the University of Northwestern Ohio. They had a degree you could get with it, so I was interested in that.
Ryan von Steinen: So I haven't applied science degree with them, in high performance automotive. 'cause they have a high performance segment there too. Which was really my interest, you know? So,
Jimmy Lea: so, so you get out of school, are you specializing in euros? Are you specializing in the BMW or what.
Ryan von Steinen: I thought I was, but no, you know, I don't think I was really that kind of person.
Ryan von Steinen: And I got a job quickly at a dealership that was a Ford Lincoln and BMW dealer, kind of an odd combo. And I wanted to be at the BMW dealer, but they hired me in the Ford. But about two weeks. And then I got in a really bad accident and I was not a technician again for over a year. Like I, I got hit in a crosswalk, so, I spent a lot of time on crutches.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. Oh, so it wasn't a, an it wasn't a thing in the shop that you got hurt. You were walking across the street and got hit?
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. Oh. So two weeks into my career out of tech school. Right. Yeah, I got hit in a crosswalk. I six plates on the left side of my head and a rod in my right leg from my knee, my ankle.
Ryan von Steinen: So I did a lot of crutches the next year and
Jimmy Lea: whoa, you know, were, you
Ryan von Steinen: did different stuff.
Jimmy Lea: Was it a year of therapy to get you back into the shop?
Ryan von Steinen: It, you know, the head was really pretty straightforward. The leg, it's things like, they told me six months in I could start walking on it and I went back a week later.
Ryan von Steinen: I'm like, something's really wrong. And what had happened is the bone had broken in like a pi seat pie piece, you know, like a piece of pizza. Yes. And the front edge healed and an x-ray is one dimensional. And it saw that, so they said he could walk on it, but it broke again. And I bent the rod I was walking on, all the weight was on this rod.
Ryan von Steinen: So they had to take that out and put a 12 millimeter rod in and yeah. So it was some stuff like that and
Jimmy Lea: Dang.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Took a while, dude. That's rough. Yeah. Alright, so, so let's get past the, yeah. Crutches. The era of the season of crutches. Yes. You're now back in the shop, you're turning a wrench again.
Jimmy Lea: Life is good. And then what, where, what's next?
Ryan von Steinen: Well, I mean, I'll continue on where I was at there. It's like I started a Napa parts job and I really wanted to move out of Michigan. Michigan in 2007 was not a great place to be with everything that was going on, in the country, but most especially that, that state.
Ryan von Steinen: And I had an uncle in Reno, Nevada, so I moved out there and I started bunching part-time. And it never, the business kind of fell apart. I never pre progressed in a full-time gig, so I got a service advising gig there. At a place that did tons of Porsche because Porsche, north America used to be in Reno before it was in Atlanta.
Ryan von Steinen: So this is a huge old Porsche town. So yeah, I got into Porsches there being a service advisor and moved into management and chased a girl to Florida. And then, ended up down here and I've been down here 13 years, so,
Jimmy Lea: well, congratulations. Yeah. And how did it work out with the girl?
Ryan von Steinen: Good. We're married.
Ryan von Steinen: We have a 7-year-old. It's great, man. You know, we grew up three miles apart, but we never knew each other until I was 26. So, she went to a different school, you know, she was just like right on that line. Went to a different school, so.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, isn't that wild? It is. That's wild. Well, congratulations.
Jimmy Lea: Good job. Congrats on winning the race, catching the girl.
Ryan von Steinen: It was fun.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Getting married, having a child, boy, or girl.
Ryan von Steinen: I have a 7-year-old boy.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, boy, congrats. That's always awesome, man. It's, does he have the same passion for cars that you did growing up? He
Ryan von Steinen: doesn't, but there's an oppositional kind of thing going on right now, you know?
Ryan von Steinen: Okay. So there's lots of things he does that are racing or mechanical, but he's like, no, I don't like race cars. You know, that's what he tells me. But
Jimmy Lea: that's fine. Yeah. That's okay. You like what you like I, I learned that with my son, baseball. Yeah. It's like watching paint dry. Unless my boy is playing with my boy.
Jimmy Lea: Sure. If my son's playing, I am in, I'm front row, I'm cheering. I am the baseball dad Outside of that man, it's tough.
Ryan von Steinen: For me that's riding rollercoasters. 'cause my son's obsessed with rollercoasters. He wants to be a rollercoaster engineer. And so I don't like riding really, but I've put up with some to Yes.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah, you do it for him and that's exactly
Jimmy Lea: why you do it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I'm good for about one rollercoaster every other hour.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah, that'd be about my rate too. It's tough. My stomach. So we're right by Bush Gardens and he's, I mean he's met like the president there and you know, he's really like, been there a lot and experienced a lot.
Ryan von Steinen: And Bush Gardens has been really. Awesome. So,
Jimmy Lea: dude, that's rad. That's so cool. Yeah. Congrats man. Alright, so now you move, you get into the advisor role. Yeah. Do you like the advisor role? Do you wish you were still wrenching? What's your take on? No,
Ryan von Steinen: I mean, I think that's kind of what I discovered after school and breaking my leg and having kind of some time is like, I really liked working on race cars, right?
Ryan von Steinen: Like, Jimmy comes into the pits, he's like, man, it's loose all the time on these corners, and I make an adjustment. You're like, oh, it drives so much better. I love that. I don't love working on your Ford Explorer and putting front shocks on it. So I had a customer service background before automotive in this indoor sports facility that I worked at.
Ryan von Steinen: And it kind of fell to me where I was like, excuse me, fell together really easily for me. 'cause I was like, all right, this is customer service. And I know the car slash mechanical technician element enough, right? So it really felt like powerful. Like, all right, I had this training to be a tech, I'm not gonna be a tech it seems like, but I can still use this.
Ryan von Steinen: And I've used it consistently for 20 years.
Jimmy Lea: Good for you. Good for you. That's cool. That's really good. That's really good. Well, congrats on being able to stay in the business, stay in the industry. So you move to Florida, you start working, as service advising for. Yeah, the
Ryan von Steinen: shop. Well, yeah, actually I saw in Reno we did a lot of Porsche engines there.
Ryan von Steinen: Worked for a very reputable builder and we had a customer in Sarasota that ran a shop. And he, I came down here and interviewed before I moved. We were friendly with each other and he gave me a job as their service manager. So I ran a shop in Sarasota for a while. That was really, I thought, gonna be like the deal.
Ryan von Steinen: It was the best group I've ever had at technicians. But, the owner. Wasn't into it, you know, maybe how we see some other people that are passionate, you know? And so it really spoiled it for three of us, and we all quit in a three month span. Oh wow. So, yeah, it was really tough. But that moved me to JB Import and that's where I've been for almost 12 years now.
Ryan von Steinen: And so I'm happy, you know, things happened for a reason, but at the time it was like, man, what a crew to separate, you know?
Jimmy Lea: Well, for sure. And did you get any of that, crews, any of that crew with you at JB?
Ryan von Steinen: No, bummer. Really like three important people from there did gather up together in Sarasota, but that's about an hour south of me and I liked this area, so I was like, I'm gonna stay up here.
Ryan von Steinen: But I'm happy that three of them, they were able to form another company. And good, I've really done well, so, yeah. Congrats. That's nice.
Jimmy Lea: So you interview with, JB Imports and this is where you've been for, did you say 12 years?
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. December would be 12 years.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, dude, congrats.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And what does that look like for you now?
Ryan von Steinen: I have a small bit of ownership here. I'm looking towards the future. Yeah. I have a, you know, a pretty aggressive growth plan for where I want to be in five years. Okay. I'd love to make it to be a multi shop owner, but I think being. Efficient with one shop is more important to me than having multiple, right?
Ryan von Steinen: Like, I wanna produce the max I can here before I look outside. So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah, you know, that's very admirable. 'cause if you, hone in the process, if you perfect that process for the single location becomes easier for you to now expand it out and do it at other locations as well.
Ryan von Steinen: Totally. And I have a procedure guide I put a lot of work into, and that's like why I keep coming back to it, to like change something, update.
Ryan von Steinen: I'm like, this is gonna, it's like the Bible, right? Like for the business. It is, we're gonna need this a bunch. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: It's a living document. It's something that you go to an update. Anytime you have a company meeting, you have a company, gathering. Everybody says, Hey, you know what? I come from this shop over here.
Jimmy Lea: And we did things like. This. Alright, well let's analyze it. Is it better than, what we currently do? Or is it maybe take a little bit longer?
Ryan von Steinen: We've totally done that. We hired a tech about 18 months ago and he had a process that he told us about from another shop about how they prepared vehicles for maintenance before they came into the shop, and we totally adopted our own version of that.
Ryan von Steinen: So yeah, it's this huge document I take a lot of pride in, but it's open to anybody to interpret and hey Jimmy, this is what I think would work better, and that's really what I want. Right. Is that kind of feedback from people.
Jimmy Lea: And how well do the technicians adopt this living document? Do they go in and make suggestions or edits to make, to improve it or do they come to you with those edits?
Ryan von Steinen: They typically come to me, so we do a weekly team meeting and we review one procedure a week, and it's, there's ones that are more repetitive than others, but, and then I do a one-on-one meeting with each person monthly. So like things will come up in there, you know, where they're like, Hey, I thought about this, right?
Ryan von Steinen: This is how we're doing X and I really think it could be better.
Jimmy Lea: Dude, I love it.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. And I'm just trying to make that culture where it's open. Right. But I want it to be open where you can come with something constructive, right. Not just this thing is crap or whatever. Yeah, some good feedback about how we can improve it.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. That's awesome. Congrats, man. So what does this shop look like today? What does JB Imports look like today? Now, bays, techs, advisors.
Ryan von Steinen: So we have six technicians and my partner Mike, is, he's CEO, but we call it coach every opportunity. And I say that 'cause we do a good amount of old Bentley and Rolls Royce work, and Mike has worked in that field since the late seventies.
Ryan von Steinen: And we have, maybe not young and age, but experience with those vintage cars. So Mike's really working with them frequently about. Those systems, on those older vehicles. So there's six techs and Mike, there are, there's a service manager, two advisors and an estimator. And the estimator handles all the parts duties too.
Ryan von Steinen: But he writes a lot of estimates for it. He's a technician. That really wanted to be an advisor. And after he was an advisor, he was like, man, it's really hard for me to deal with the people. And I was like, man, you've got all this knowledge though about how to deal with situations. So he is really great at working with the technicians.
Ryan von Steinen: Nice one-on-one. Yeah. And then building estimates and helping the advisors build estimates. So
Jimmy Lea: yeah, dude, that's awesome. Congrats. Yeah. People don't realize, they think it's all, song and games. They think it's so easy there at the front desk. Yeah, and the front desk thinks, oh, these technicians, it's so easy for them.
Jimmy Lea: But until you've walked a mile in those shoes and gone the extra mile to make it two.
Ryan von Steinen: You don't know. No. And that is really apparent with this gentleman that I'm talking about, the estimator is he thought that when he was a technician, he went up there he is like, I thought they were just always like reading online or something, and he's like, I'm busier than I ever was as a tech.
Ryan von Steinen: And we have a RO check sheet. It's a whole page of things like, did I talk to Jimmy? If you're my customer about this, did I explain our warranty? Did I do our referral program? So there's. There's a lot of little pieces there.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And that can become overwhelming for a technician who really doesn't wanna talk.
Ryan von Steinen: Right.
Jimmy Lea: To have to talk and talk to all these people that are coming in the shop. Yep. And not only are they talking to every single person, but there's this checklist, so it's repetitive. It's the exact same conversation over and over.
Jimmy Lea: The answers are different, but it's the same questions.
Ryan von Steinen: Yep. Totally.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I can see where a tech would be like, oh my gosh, stick my eyes with a fork. I don't wanna do this anymore.
Ryan von Steinen: No. Just trying to place him where he is happy. 'cause he is a important person, you know, for us. Yes.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, he is important.
Jimmy Lea: He has value and congratulations for finding a really good position for him. Yeah. One as a, an estimator. Does that also mean he receives all the parts and disseminates it?
Ryan von Steinen: Yep. So he receives parts, returns parts, does our inventory, and then we have like, labeled shelves for the technicians where we try to put, like, they got control arms that'll say the ro number, the vehicle.
Ryan von Steinen: So it's very easy for a tech. So he does almost all of that. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, dude, that's rad. Yeah. How many bays, how many, lifts?
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah, so I always get a little, let me think about this. 5, 9, 10, 14. And we have another bay we're trying to build out. We'll have two, two more. So it's a little bit of an odd setup for an auto repair shop.
Ryan von Steinen: It was built in the fifties. It was an auto body shop first. So yes, we make the best of it, but yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yes, and that reminds me of, Tracy Holt performance place in Utah. I think he's South Jordan or West Jordan. His shop. Dad. Dad, grandpa. Did grandpa do it first? It might've been grandpa and then dad took it and now he's in it.
Jimmy Lea: It took him 40 years to buy it from his dad. So if you got a succession plan that's shortened 40 years. Yeah, we want to hear about that. So here he is. And they are working on ag only They're working on tractors. Yeah. Right. For just years and years. They are now the oldest. Incorporated business in South Jordan or West Jordan.
Jimmy Lea: Geez. In the whole town. Like, there's no other businesses that have been around as long as these guys have. Wow. I think they started in 1950, or maybe it's even before that. So, yeah. Tracy grew up in the shop, Broman pushing a broom. And everything is tied. That whole family, the success of the family is tied to the success of the shop.
Jimmy Lea: And he has done a phenomenal job. He and his sister, Patricia. Yes, I think her name's Patricia, a phenomenal job. And they run the whole show and they have 16 bays and you can see how they added on. And dad had four bays at the very back, so it would've been 20, had four bays at the back with all these dead bodies of old race cars and stuff like that.
Jimmy Lea: And I was like, Tracy, you need to like get this all outta here 'cause this is production. You could do another. How much? Get amount money a month? Yeah. Maybe 120,000 a month. Just cleaning it up. This, so he is like, oh my gosh, yes. So he got a couple detainers, put 'em out. He had three and a half acres.
Jimmy Lea: He put 'em out in the yard, loaded everything in the tainer. Dad, your stuff's here. Come play with it whenever you want. Right. But it's not in the shop. Took out the rv, took out the boat, took out all these old race cars and put it all in there. Dad hadn't been there for like 15 years and when he does come down he just tinkers with a few things and he is done.
Jimmy Lea: Sure. So opening, I love hearing the success. Opening this up, they, I think they hired another two or three technicians. It's so rad. It is so cool when you see stuff like that happening, and I'm seeing it here with your shop as well. Congrats.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. And that's been a big piece is focusing on how to have a bench.
Ryan von Steinen: And that's something that, it's hard, you know what I mean? It's really taken big investment in follow up, you know? Yes. Can't, yes. If you want someone on a bench, you gotta keep in touch with them, right? Oh, absolutely. You can't just let 'em sit there for nine months.
Jimmy Lea: So, so, so what's your follow up?
Jimmy Lea: How often are you touching base with these technicians that you really want to have come work at your shop?
Ryan von Steinen: I just use Trello and I organize all the candidates in there. And you can put a one month, you know, you just put one month there and put one month out. And so then I try to follow up with people that I'm interested in and people that live locally.
Ryan von Steinen: I just invite 'em, like, anytime you're by the shop, just come in right? And like I'll even, unless I'm in this kind of deal with you or something, Jimmy, I'll give and time and say, Hey, let's talk for a few. So, yeah. And you know, another big piece that I've worked a lot on and I, I enjoy is at the schools.
Ryan von Steinen: So there's two technical schools here in our county. And volunteering there and kind of getting to the point where I've learned from some senior shop owners like of growing my own right. And that's an important piece of business to me is to like be able to have a good apprentice mentor program.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. Yeah. So you do have an apprentice program.
Ryan von Steinen: So we do have an apprentice program. I do not have an apprentice in it right now. I have a guy who just graduated from tech school, but he graduated with all ASEs, and you could maybe call him apprentice, but he is really the highest level I've ever had at that position, you know, so I would say he's a tech, you know?
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. Just, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, congrats. That's awesome. Yeah. Do you, so I, and I applaud you for being in the tech schools, the UTIs, the wts. Do you also go into the colleges, the junior colleges, the. Community colleges, high school, middle school, elementary school. You're doing stuff like that too.
Ryan von Steinen: I mean, there's a little bit, I can't say all that.
Ryan von Steinen: So the high school near me, I met a gentleman at the last board meeting at the technical school. They have 120 kids in this program three miles away. So I'm really trying to get involved there. There is another high school local that I sit on the board for, and they have a really awesome instructor, and then my kid's in elementary school, so I they do this, I can't remember what it, career day. Career day. Yeah. So I go in and talk to classes about being a technician, so, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's so cool's. Bringing that air drill.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. And just anything like, just showing the kids images and like, what is this car, is kind of their favorite thing, you know, if it's an Audi with a black grill, you can't really tell something like that.
Ryan von Steinen: They love, that stuff. So yeah, it's been really fun.
Jimmy Lea: That's super cool. And you guys are working on some pretty crazy cars there. If you got. Bentleys, rolls Royce and Lamborghini.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. I mean, most of the exotic car stuff is Rolls Royce and Bentley. I feel like there's been a dealer here, so don't quote me exactly, but the late fifties, early sixties, there's been a dealer here.
Ryan von Steinen: So there's a lot of old cars. Yeah, and a lot of new cars too. And Mike, my partners, like our specialist with Real Rolls Royce and Bentleys, let's say before 1998. And then the gentleman that runs the exotic car department is our, really our best technician too. He is our manager. But he is the most knowledgeable person I've ever met on modern Rolls-Royces.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah,
Jimmy Lea: dude, that's rad. Yeah, he's the
Ryan von Steinen: Rolls-Royce owner, club technical, manager for that division of cars. I mean, he's really an incredible individual, so
Jimmy Lea: Congrats. Yeah. That's awesome.
Ryan von Steinen: It's a cool team.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, very cool team. And congrats on having a bench, building a bench, keeping in touch with people once a month.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that's solid. That is solid. Trying man. Yeah, that's cool. So what does the future look like for Ryan? What does the future look like for JB Import?
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah, I mean, like I said, I'd really like to maximize what I can do with this facility, and it's a little bit odd layout compared to like Optimal, but I feel like it's about a four and a half, $5 million facility.
Ryan von Steinen: We're under 3 million, but you know, maybe about 2.7. We're on track for this year, so we have some growth to do, but I, you know, I have a five year plan from now for 6.7 million, and so I think at some point that'll mean another shop here, but you just kind of have to see how things go. Sure. And how much of our business is exotic versus just normal BMWs, Audis and stuff, because.
Ryan von Steinen: A RO over there is three x of what it is, you know, here on BMWs and Porsches and stuff. So it's, it where, how many you do of each matters, right? How the income,
Jimmy Lea: so you're probably, let's call it, 1200, 1500 per vehicle. And over on the exotic, the Bentley, the rent, about Range Rover. Oh, rolls Royce and Rolls Ry, thank you.
Jimmy Lea: And stuff. Yeah. You're in the 3,600 to $4,500 range or something. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's
Ryan von Steinen: four to five. It's like a pretty normal monthly one, you know, and it ebbs and flows. 'cause sometimes we have a humongous project from the. Hurricanes last fall. Oh yeah. And that'll make a month look like Incredible.
Ryan von Steinen: 'cause you have a hundred thousand dollars ticket on this huge project, but it's deceiving, you know, so.
Jimmy Lea: Right. That's the anomaly. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. And it is just awesome what people will do and pay for to maintain or save their vehicles, you know.
Ryan von Steinen: We've seen it through the hurricanes.
Ryan von Steinen: Last year was hard 'cause we totaled 25 ish cars and mean like really nice BMWs and really nice Bentley and all sorts of stuff. But if it got saltwater it was pretty much instantly totaled
Jimmy Lea: toast. It was toast. Yeah. That's tough man. It was. That's tough. Well, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you've got a plan.
Jimmy Lea: You're gonna get to 6.7 million. Yeah. Yeah, baby. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. What, so that's the future. Let's see. So if you were to change anything in the automotive industry, what would you change? I'm giving you a magic wand moment. You'll have one wish. You can't wish for more wishes. What's your wish?
Ryan von Steinen: So I always say it like this.
Ryan von Steinen: My wife is a speech and language pathologist, and one of the smartest people I know too. She means so much to me, but, I can't go open a speech and language. Practice down the street, you have to have a certification. Right? But my wife, who's never changed oil can go get a garage license and open a garage, right?
Ryan von Steinen: So for me, I think some type of CER certification would really make it better for the good people. The people that are listening to a podcast that are investing in training for themselves, it would make things better for those people. And I think this is only gonna become more evident as we get, you know, ADOS and electric cars and all this stuff.
Ryan von Steinen: Like we really need like a. Some type of certificate at a state level. I'm not really sure the con, the construction of it, but I really think that would be a good deal.
Jimmy Lea: So do you think that this, program, can we self run, self-fund this as a, as an industry or do you think there's some governmental, oversight that needs to step in and take control of it?
Ryan von Steinen: You know, I don't know. The thing that I feel like there in its opinion is it's hard to get government involved in stuff like this that might feel really small to them. So what it feels like to me is we've got ADOS and electric car and stuff. Once we get, and this is terrible to say, but enough accidents that come from poor repair, then the insurance company will say, you can only go to a shop that's X and X insured or certified or whatever.
Ryan von Steinen: It's, so I really think it's probably gonna be insurance companies that make the move, not. You know, the government. And that's just a guess, right? It's just something I hope for because I like the thing I said about my wife. I just, yeah. Want some kind of buried across that. Yeah. You are a respected individual in this field.
Ryan von Steinen: You can repair things correctly. 'Cause there's a lot of shops that are pretty, pretty rough, you know?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, for sure. And you find that almost in any industry. Yeah, maybe we need to go look at the, electricians or the plumbers. What's their journeyman? I had an uncle that was a lineman and he had to come up through the ranks, so there were years of hazing by other electricians Sure.
Jimmy Lea: For him to take his position as a lineman. But, yeah. What's their process? What's their procedure? Do they have oversight or is it all self-funded? Self maintained, self-controlled. By themselves. I don't know.
Ryan von Steinen: It's gotta be like who, who's at the top, whether it's insurance or the person of a big company.
Ryan von Steinen: 'cause my brother works in the elevator repair industry and he's in a union and they do lots of repair and building around here, but there's still non-union repair places that can go and repair it, and they do it for less money, you know? Sure. So, I don't know the solution I guess. Right? I just think about, man, this could really help.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I agree. And what is it? What's the answer? We don't know, but we know there's a problem and if we keep asking the questions, we'll come up with an answer that helps us because Yeah, you're right. I mean, we can hire an electrician off of Facebook. We can hire an electrician, from an independent guy that, used to be a lineman but now has his own company.
Jimmy Lea: We can go to the union and hire somebody. What level of skill training. Experience, what are we looking for? And,
Ryan von Steinen: we're, and we're seeing like a little bit with the Google certified, right? Like it's a process to go through that. I did it for our company. And so that's a little bit, right, like you get that badge.
Ryan von Steinen: So maybe it's someone like that's. Talking about they are more qualified for X and x repair these difficulties, this electrical diag. Maybe that's something that can come from that side too.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. Yeah. You know, Google got in trouble 'cause they had that Google certified before where it was, Hey, are you, can you fog a mirror?
Jimmy Lea: Okay, you're Google certified. Well then Google got sued too many times and now they've come back and revamped the program. So that's why it was such, so many hoops for you to jump through on that. For sure. Yeah. To what it used to be. So congrats on getting that. That's, there's a feather in your cap right there.
Ryan von Steinen: Well, and I like those little things. Right. Because I feel like it's a little advantage versus the guy down the street, so I'm gonna do everything I can like that. That helps. So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. Yep. That's awesome. Congrats for doing that. That's very cool, man. Yes. There, bits of advice or topics or subjects to discuss in our Leading Edge podcast.
Ryan von Steinen: You know, I think I, I don't know what the average listener is, right? But I think I, excuse me. I know I speak to a lot of shop owners who don't have any SOPs, you know, standard operating procedures. And when I talk to these people that are trying to start it, I'm like, just go write how to open the shop.
Ryan von Steinen: And it's gonna seem silly to you, but like walk in, go to the light switch at the back of the room, go to the compressor room. Like, just write that. And then you'll get this flow about how it's gonna happen and you'll just get better and better as you do him. And I really, you know, this is from a friend Neil at Oceanside Motor Sport.
Ryan von Steinen: Hes really, Neil's a rad
Jimmy Lea: dude, man. He's so, he's awesome. Awesome. He's
Ryan von Steinen: so awesome. And so I get a lot of good stuff from him or bouncing stuff off of him. Google Docs, you know, and just using everything in Google 'cause it makes it so simple to share with team members to edit and it rein indexes your, you know, your little glossary where you can find stuff.
Ryan von Steinen: So, yeah, make it Google Docs and just start writing procedures. 'cause it's really, it's pretty awesome when it works out for you, for an owner. And like, one that happens to me a lot is if it's not written, it's not true, right? So someone when they come up to me like, Hey, this person said this, or whatever, I'm like, okay, where did you write it down?
Ryan von Steinen: Like, ah, didn't, like, okay. Like, I'm so sorry. Like I care about your feelings. Right. But we've made this a rule for a reason, in things like this. Like every shop owner wants to get the most money he can, right? So we have a rule, like if a technician sees it, he's gotta note it, gotta have a photo, he is gotta have a note about it.
Ryan von Steinen: If an advisor gets that from a technician, they have to estimate it, right? And so love it. Doing those things, putting procedures in place and holding people accountable has really made a big difference.
Jimmy Lea: So, what point of sale system are you using? Tech metric. Tech metric. So in tech metric, are you using their DVI as well?
Jimmy Lea: When a technician is working on a car and he marks that something needs immediate attention, is it part of your policy procedure that they have to take a picture of whatever it is that they're recommending?
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. And even like sometimes you'll get the car with 8,000 miles. I'm like, you gotta put up four photos, minimum.
Ryan von Steinen: Take a photo of the tires or the engine, say how clean it is or how awesome this car is. Like, and another thing is like, don't just put all bad. Right? Yeah. You get somebody and you're writing 'em $12,000 estimates, you gotta tell 'em something good too. Right? You know, this thing looks great.
Ryan von Steinen: Or front suspension I can tell is head work, good job, whatever it may be. But include some good, oh yeah.
Jimmy Lea: No, there, there's a standard number of photos that you should have on every car, and this will help save you and save your clients and your customers. Specifically taking four corners. Yeah. You take pictures at the four corners.
Ryan von Steinen: Yep.
Jimmy Lea: It documents the condition of the vehicle, so it helps you to not pay for those dent lists. Ding removal. It had a ding when it came in. It had a ding now and it's gonna leave with a ding. There was one, that the customer was adamant that the shop had broken off the passenger mirror.
Jimmy Lea: And, they went back to the DVI and the picture showed that it was broken off. And he's like, well, you broke off before you moved it into the shop. So they went back to the video. They have video that video the whole yard. And as sure enough as he's driving in, it was broken off and, he had to apologize.
Jimmy Lea: And to his credit, he did, he talked to his wife and sure she had accidentally broken it off, backing out of the garage or something like that. So. And just not gotten around and forgotten. You know, life gets busy. Just forget to say, Hey, oh, this happened. Right? So it, it was on him and he owned it.
Jimmy Lea: So still a good client of that shop, I'm sure.
Ryan von Steinen: It's been many times that's happened, you know? Yeah. And there was a Rolls-Royce that got delivered here a couple years ago and had a cracked windshield and a Rolls-Royce windshield, big money. And the owner was all about, it wasn't cracked rent, left my house, and it was cracked when it arrived.
Ryan von Steinen: So we figured it out, but it's just because of that four corner check in. And we always do the, instrument cluster with their seatbelt on too. So
Jimmy Lea: I love the instrument cluster. I also take a picture of the Dr, the license plate.
Ryan von Steinen: Yeah. Okay.
Jimmy Lea: Because you got your tags on there. If it's expired or coming up for due, or it's due for expire soon.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It helps you in tech metric. You put in there the renewal date and now you know, hey, you gotta bring your car in. We need, we can do this. Well, Florida doesn't have state protection anymore. No. And that would be a
Ryan von Steinen: great thing. That's another thing I would love, but, yeah, but no, I get what you're saying and I like just having it to be able to tell him, Hey, Jimmy, like, you know, your tag's running out next month, right?
Ryan von Steinen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, hey, it expired last month. Oh, shoot. Thanks. You know?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I don't want you getting a ticket. No. I've been a recipient of one of those, one of those fix it tickets.
Jimmy Lea: Yep. Totally. Oh man. I just totally forgot. And you take care of it and everything's fine. Yeah. No, that's good.
Jimmy Lea: That's good. Well, conga, congratulations Ryan. Congratulations on the future. I hope it goes extremely well for you. Do you have a succession plan here with your partner? That you're gonna buy him out, or does he want to be bought out? Yeah,
Ryan von Steinen: he, he does it. But it's truthfully been hard and messy and the property and the business are two separate things, you know?
Ryan von Steinen: So, I see the light. I'm not giving up. I'm very positive about it, but it's not easy. So I think that's something maybe I could say to another shop owners too, is. A lot of shop owners are DIYers, right? They're good at fixing things, doing stuff themselves. This is not something you really should DIY you, you need some help, right?
Ryan von Steinen: So you do. That'd be my advice. And
Jimmy Lea: especially with people that have been there, done that, they've gone through the succession plans, there's 99 different ways of documenting or planning out your succession plan, whether it is the properties included or not, or leased back or, first right of refusal, whatever that situation is.
Jimmy Lea: Document, document. My $17,000 lesson that I learned that you guys have implemented is it has to be written down. Yeah. It's not written down. It didn't happen. Doesn't exist in your SOL. Yeah. Yep. Cool. Well congratulations Ryan. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time today. Thanks for Yeah, it was great talking about Talking Shop.
Ryan von Steinen: Thanks so much Jimmy. Appreciate the time.
Jimmy Lea: Alright man. Talk to you soon. Take care. Bye.

153 - Jackie Mills: Reviving a Family Legacy at Jess Lewis Transmission

153 - Jackie Mills: Reviving a Family Legacy at Jess Lewis Transmission
September 30, 2025 - 00:30:47
 
Show Summary:
Jimmy Lea talks with Jackie Mills from Jess Lewis Transmission in Fort Wayne, Indiana, about carrying forward a legacy that began in 1954. Jackie shares how her family has grown the business into a 16-bay operation with nearly 20 technicians, balancing tradition with modern innovation. She opens up about her father’s lifelong dedication, the challenges of delegation, and her mission to strengthen structure and process. From mastering CVT rebuilds to transitioning to AutoLeap for better communication and customer transparency, the shop is evolving without losing its roots. Jackie also discusses hiring challenges, industry perceptions, and how she’s preparing to take the business into its next chapter while pursuing her master’s in accounting.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Jackie Mills, owner Jess Lewis Transmission
 
Show Highlights:
[00:00:22] - Jackie shares the history of Jess Lewis Transmission, founded in 1954 with racing roots.[00:01:42] - The shop’s ownership passes through decades, now in the hands of the third family generation.[00:03:13] - Jackie works alongside her dad, focusing on building systems and delegation.[00:05:21] - A look inside the shop’s structure: 16 bays, rebuild specialists, and CVT expertise.[00:06:41] - Her husband’s role in tackling the toughest rebuilds that few shops attempt.[00:07:26] - Growing up at the shop taught Jackie the value of hard work and small business life.[00:09:28] - Corporate experience prepared her for the customer service side of the auto industry.[00:12:23] - Hiring remains the biggest challenge as the trade faces generational shifts.[00:17:46] - The switch to AutoLeap brings efficiency, transparency, and stronger customer trust.[00:20:11] - Future goals: refine processes, strengthen operations, and expand for sustainable growth.
 
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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me. This is Jimmy Lea. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Joining me today is Jackie Mills. Jackie is with the Jess Lewis transmission, a shop in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Is that correct, Jackie?
Jackie Mills: Yep. Yeah, that's correct.
Jimmy Lea: The one flight I've taken as a red eye was to Fort Wayne, Indiana. How about that for a memory of Fort Wayne?
Jackie Mills: We have a pretty good airport. It's very small, but like nice and friendly, and you always get a cookie and you get off of a flight.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's cool. Now I don't think I got myself a cookie.
Jackie Mills: Oh no.
Jimmy Lea: I attended and went immediately into a chapter meeting.
Jimmy Lea: I was so red. It was the one and only red eye have ever done. In the last 15 years, I've traveled quite a bit. I was a zombie for the next three days. I really couldn't even tell you where I went, what I did, who I saw. I was pretty much zombie. It was horrible. I don't ever recommend you do red eye flights.
Jimmy Lea: I just think that's cruel and unusual punishment.
Jackie Mills: I agree.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And here I thought, oh, I'm being so smart here. I'm gonna save the cost of a hotel room. No.
Jackie Mills: Not worth it.
Jimmy Lea: Not worth it. Not worth it at all. Not worth it at all. So Jackie, thank you for joining me today. Really appreciate it. And I'm excited to learn more about Jess Lewis transmission.
Jimmy Lea: In fact, that's where I wanna start. The question is, who is Jess Lewis? And what's the story here with your shop?
Jackie Mills: So Jess Lewis he founded the shop in 1954, so we've kind of got a longstanding history in Fort Wayne. I know you'll have to forgive me for not knowing the details of that I grew up like around cars and all of that.
Jackie Mills: I just don't know them as well as maybe I would like to someday, but. He like invented a specific type of transmission, like he was really into racing stuff. We've dug into a little bit about that and if anyone's curious, we have a little bit of background on our website. It's hard to find a lot because he did all of this stuff in the.
Jackie Mills: Like fifties, sixties, seventies, what have you. But it has been in my family since the nineties. I know that it went through a change of ownership between the eighties and nineties. So, Jess has not been involved for a little bit. We're technically the third owner. But he passed away in like the early two thousands, but I guess he was pretty big in the automotive world in our area.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Well, racing was very big in Indiana, that was that's a big pastime there in Indiana and may he rest in peace. That's phenomenal that he started the shop and got you involved or that your dad was able to buy it. So you guys are third time generation owners. Dad bought the business.
Jimmy Lea: Is dad still working in the shop?
Jackie Mills: Yes, very much so. He's still very active, very necessary. In the past several years we've been trying to get him to be a little less necessary because he's one of those traditional, like one man show does everything over, extends himself. Worked way too many hours for way too many years.
Jackie Mills: So we're working on the delegation thing and I mean, I've been here for like the past five years. So that's what we've been working on for five years and we still haven't gotten him to quite like, you know, step out of everything the way that we want to, but we're working on that.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, there's been quite a few succession plans that we have helped implement here in the last two years that I'm aware of at the institute.
Jimmy Lea: So if you'd looking for any advice or information about how to start the conversation, how to structure the conversation and how to finish the conversation. We could probably assist with a little bit of that conversation between you and pops.
Jackie Mills: Yeah, definitely.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's cool. Well, and congratulations to pops as well for having the insight and the foresight to be able to buy the shop and have it ready for you.
Jimmy Lea: So what's the succession plan? What are you looking to do with your dad?
Jackie Mills: So we don't really have like anything officially structured like nothing. Other than kind of like loose ideas, I imagine that he'll still be working for quite a while and in being involved in some capacity even after retirement.
Jackie Mills: He just likes to be busy. He's a very like, hard worker. Like that's just kind of what he does. That's how he, because I mean, he even grew the shop to be like. What it is today. And like it was a very small business with just a couple bays and now we have like 19 guys working for us. Well, 19 technicians I should say.
Jackie Mills: 'Cause we do have a Jackie
Jimmy Lea: 19 technicians. Oh my gosh. How many bays do you guys have? How many shops do you have?
Jackie Mills: So we do it a little bit differently. I think we have like 16 bays. Some of those guys are exclusively rebuild technicians, so they focus on the, like r the rebuilding of transmissions exclusively.
Jimmy Lea: RR,
Jackie Mills: yeah. So like the rest of them are your traditional like r and r automotive technicians. And then the other ones are just rebuilds. So they, like the r and r guys, take the transmissions out and put them in and do like the traditional automotive work, that type of thing. Whereas our rebuilds like actually do the rebuilding of the transmissions.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. And that is such a skill. I've St. George transmission in St. George, Utah, which is where I used to live. There they have the, he has nine master certified techs and these nine guys are the master certified that would take apart that jigsaw puzzle and put it back together. And they love it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And I love that they love it because that is not my jam.
Jackie Mills: Yeah. Yeah. And these, I'm some of them are a little newer, but we've got some really great like rebuild texts like. That's what my husband does right now. He does some of the management stuff, but he's focusing on rebuilding stuff and he works on a lot of the stuff that nobody else will touch, like cbts.
Jackie Mills: A lot of people, I don't know of many shops that will even touch the cbts, but we do a lot of those.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. There's such a pain in the butt. There's so many little teeth inside of there. I understand why nobody wants to do it, and kudos to your husband that he can do it.
Jackie Mills: Yeah. Yeah. He's only been doing it for five years and he's like worked out his own system.
Jackie Mills: He's pretty good at it.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Congrats. That's very cool.
Jackie Mills: Thank you.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, those CVTs are not to be taken lightly. That's interesting. Okay, so back to pop spot. The shop. He's working in the shop. You are working in the shop. You probably grew up at the shop.
Jimmy Lea: Sweeping floors and Exactly
Jackie Mills: that.
Jackie Mills: Yeah. I
Jimmy Lea: take out the trash.
Jackie Mills: I actually so me and my brother were homeschooled till like high school, so we actually did school at the shop for a while, like in the office. I remember growing up and doing school there 'cause my mom did office work and stuff like that. So like, I literally grew up there.
Jackie Mills: Spent a lot of time at the shop.
Jimmy Lea: Yep.
Jackie Mills: And then I started cleaning floors probably around the age of eight. Like child labor, what? I don't know. Oh
Jimmy Lea: yeah, no, you definitely were child labor. Did you run the Zamboni or was it a MPP and bucket?
Jackie Mills: It was MPP and bucket. I think eventually we got some type of machine, but I was probably too small to like physically handle that at whatever point.
Jackie Mills: So it was very mopping bucket.
Jimmy Lea: Oh that's awesome. That's hilarious. That's awesome. Very cool. I love that mopping bucket. Yeah. And that's true. That, and you then you have a greater appreciation for those Zamboni machines.
Jackie Mills: Yeah, definitely. Definitely have an appreciation for that. And the, just the work and effort that goes into cleaning it in general, like the people that take the time to clean it.
Jackie Mills: Now I have the appreciation for that.
Jimmy Lea: Bingo. Very cool. Very cool. Well, that's a great background you've got within the industry and a super solid foundation. How did you, how did you get I knew you grew up in the shop, but how did you develop this passion for, and continue to work for the shop as opposed to, oh, you know, I'm gonna go off to be a hairstylist.
Jimmy Lea: I want to go be an attorney. I want to go be a different business owner. I want to sell. Whatever. What drew you to the automotive industry?
Jackie Mills: So, I mean, I didn't spend all of my time in it. I did actually like work for the shop and like, I did like payroll and stuff like that in college. I. I have a degree in business management.
Jackie Mills: So I did that for a while. I did work like after graduating, I spent a few years doing other things because while I kind of always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to come back and like work in the family business, that type of thing, my dad felt like it was important to get experience outside of that.
Jackie Mills: I mean, I agree with him because I feel like I have a better appreciation for what it's like to work for a small business. And I worked at a couple large corporations Sweetwater in Indiana, which really great company, loved working for them. And then I worked at MedPro, which is medical malpractice insurance.
Jackie Mills: I was in underwriting, so I did. Customer service based roles in both of those things, which I also feel like has helped me a lot. Like, you know, a lot of people come to automotive repair very angry. So I feel like having the customer service background has like helped prepare me for that. But eventually.
Jackie Mills: My dad got to the point where he was like, I need someone to come help, like take stuff off my plate so if you're ready to come back, I'm ready to have you come back. And it like ended up being good timing because I was very weary of underwriting work and insurance and dealing with angry doctors.
Jackie Mills: So. I just came back to that and now we're kind of working on like building in you know, like more official structures and processes so that it's not like as much workload on one person or like tied into like all being reliant on my dad. So like we've built in management for like different sections of the shop and that type of thing, but really I just like.
Jackie Mills: I do love cars. I'm a fan of cars. I don't understand how they work so much as I just like them. But it's more of a passion for like the small business side of things. And I like working with the other small businesses that we work with and I like what I do and I have a lot of flexibility in what I do.
Jackie Mills: So.
Jimmy Lea: That's very cool. That's very cool. I'm glad you enjoy it. I'm glad you're able to work with mom and dad too. Oh, did, and speaking of, does mom work at the shop too, or no?
Jackie Mills: No she like does a little bit. She comes in and decorates, makes things nice, helps keep the office tidy like she's in and like involved, but she's no longer.
Jackie Mills: Working an official role or anything like that.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, nice. So what's one of the bigger cha biggest challenges or bigger challenges for you as HR and operations for the shop? What's one of those challenges that gets you on a daily, monthly, weekly basis?
Jackie Mills: I suppose like one of our biggest challenges has been hiring.
Jackie Mills: I think that's a industry thing in general. We have a really great team. Like we really like love all of the people that work with us, like work for us, work with us, all that. We have a really great team right now.
Jackie Mills: We also have probably the space and need for more people. It's just hard to find the right people, I guess.
Jackie Mills: I think it's an industry challenge because you have a lot of the experienced people kind of aging out of doing it. And then a lot of the people in like my generation and the newer generations just aren't willing to do this type of work. So that's the struggle, just like finding people that even want to.
Jackie Mills: Do the job. So that's probably our biggest challenge, finding people.
Jimmy Lea: It is. And what's interesting that I hear in the industry is they'll say, well, I want a 20-year-old person who has you know, 15 years of experience and I want to pay a minimum wage. Yeah. It doesn't work like that. No, it worked like that.
Jimmy Lea: No, it definitely does not. You gotta really dig in and know your business and know the numbers and what does it take to run your business. And for every single shop it's different 'cause every shop has a different number of employees. There's different expenses, there's different operating expenses, there's different overhead that it has to be taken care of and accounted for.
Jimmy Lea: So what might work at your shop as a door rate? Might be way too high at my shop. So we have to know our businesses to know at what level can we operate.
Jackie Mills: Yeah, definitely.
Jimmy Lea: That's good. How often do you analyze the business on a whole To find out the the operating net Pro gross profit, net profit.
Jimmy Lea: For the business.
Jackie Mills: It's probably more of a annual thing at this point. Like kind of work with our accountant on that. I'm actually in the process of getting my master's in accounting so that I can do a little bit more of that. I wanna do a lot of the work that he does and be able to like, understand more of that and, you know, like stay more on top of what we need to stay on top of.
Jackie Mills: We do a lot of like analyzing our expenses and like what we need to make. And I do like pricing reviews more regularly than annually.
Jimmy Lea: Agreed. But
Jackie Mills: eventually I would like to be doing that, you know, like quarterly or something like that.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's very cool. Yeah, things changed so quickly. My uncle owned.
Jimmy Lea: 129 different rental properties. And so by the 10th of the month, he wanted to know what's our gross profit, what's our net profit? So by the 10th of the month, he wanted to know last month. So let's say September was last month, by October 10th, he wanted to know all the numbers so he would know on that monthly.
Jimmy Lea: 'cause if you're looking at it annually, it's probably, there's a lot that could have been changed along the way, to your point, quarterly, yeah. Is a really good spot to be in. And then I would say even suggest that the monthly, looking at it monthly is a beautiful way of knowing, am I on top of my numbers or not?
Jimmy Lea: Have you ever been involved in any coaching or training where you've got an accountability buddy?
Jackie Mills: No, we haven't done anything like that, and it's something that we've discussed. It's we have a lot of changes and all of that on our plate. That makes it a little difficult to like, introduce anything in, because I'd really like my dad to get in on that stuff.
Jackie Mills: Sure. But we have been part of like the institute's community for a while now. Like I'm. I'm a big podcast listener, so I have listened to your podcast and I've listened to some of the other podcasts that are like, kind of in the community. Yes. So like I'm in on all of that and like love the advice and all of that I'm seeing and we're working on kind of applying that 'cause it's been like a hit the ground running thing for my dad for a while.
Jackie Mills: We're just trying to like, catch everything else up to it.
Jimmy Lea: Right. I mean, even though he's been in the business since 1990 something, it, every day things are growing so fast and moving so quickly. There's so much to learn on a daily. Yes. It's like, oh my gosh, how, when am I gonna have time to run my business?
Jackie Mills: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We and it was something that we got kind of from, like the community that you guys have built and all that. But we just recently switched our system, which was a huge undertaking, and it's so much more than you think it's gonna be especially just with the older guys that don't want the technology.
Jackie Mills: So we like moved from. I don't know if you, I don't know. I don't wanna like disparage their system. Okay. We moved from, no,
Jimmy Lea: there's no disparaging here whatsoever. You went from a platform to a different platform. Yeah. The one you were on is whatever, but the one you went to. What are you on now? What are you operating?
Jimmy Lea: We're on
Jackie Mills: auto leave now.
Jimmy Lea: Excellent.
Jackie Mills: Yeah. Yes, we love it. The
Jimmy Lea: rules. The rules of changing your point of sale system. Rule number one is don't do it.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. That being said, rule number two is when you do decide that it is, that the old system just isn't giving you everything you want. Or need or desire. Every system that you look at, does it give you everything you're wanting. And so moving to OT Leap it's a great program. They've got great customer service, great support.
Jimmy Lea: They're doing a great job for you. What do you like about the Auto Lead program?
Jackie Mills: So one of the primary things that we like is that it's an all-in-one, and that's what we were really searching for when we dec because it was a big decision. We spent a lot of time researching everything and trying to decide if that was worth it, because it is a big change to go from one thing to another thing.
Jackie Mills: But we love that it's an all in one. And then the other big thing is that it has a lot more transparency capabilities, like sending the inspections to customers. So we are looking to like level up our customer service with communication, but also like, hey, here's where we are at in the process. We do general automotive repair, but a lot of our work is focused in transmissions and like transmission rebuilding, that type of thing, which is longer than standard automotive work.
Jackie Mills: Like you have a lot more time wrapped up in transmissions, which is a huge frustration for customers because. I understand it 'cause like not everybody understands what goes into it, but we were kind of looking to try and provide a way, like you can know where you're at in the process, like we're waiting on parts or like that type of thing.
Jackie Mills: So like we love that Auto Leap gives us the capability to communicate all of that stuff without adding like copious amounts of work.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, for sure. Congrats. I That's great. I'm glad you're on Ale. It's a good program. It's got a solid foundation. They're doing some great things in the industry too.
Jimmy Lea: So that's very cool. That's very cool. So what does the future look like for your transmission shop that is transforming and now doing automotive maintenance? What does it look like for you in the future?
Jackie Mills: I think we're like focusing on trying to make what we have the best that it can be.
Jackie Mills: And we do have, like we have an extra building with some more bays in it to like hopefully do some growth in you know, other areas like maybe offer more services or just hire more techs, that type of thing. Not 100% sure what that's gonna look like yet, but like we do have like growth plans in the future, but currently we're mostly focused on.
Jackie Mills: Trying to make everything work the best that it can be for us, our techs, our customers, that type of thing. So, growth, but mostly like improving our processes and kind of catching everything up to. We're at.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. You're reminding me of a really good friend, Tracy Holt. His shop is Performance Place up here in Utah, and he came to the institute and he says, Hey, look I'm a 7% net profit.
Jimmy Lea: I'm an 8% net profit shop. I just, I can't break through I what I need, process procedures. If you're not gonna help me with that, if you're gonna tell me I need to increase my average repair order or increase my car count, then, you know, thanks. But no thanks. We can part ways and still be friends.
Jimmy Lea: I was like, oh yeah, Chay, we got you. We're gonna meet you where you are and help you to improve from there. So he had 16 bays? Yes. 16 bays and. Operating and doing very well. In fact, the family is so involved in his business that the success or failure of the family is dependent on the success or failure of the shop.
Jackie Mills: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: A lot of his, I
Jackie Mills: don't really understand that.
Jimmy Lea: A lot of his children, his nephews, nieces, his sister is his business partner, so the two of them operate the business together. And it's only recently it took like 40 years for them to buy the shop from dad. 'cause dad kept. Dragging his feet. Oh, you do what you want.
Jimmy Lea: No dad, this is your business. We respect you. We love you. This has to be your choice, your decision. So finally, after 40 years, they finally got it done. Probably the longest story that I've heard of buying a shop, but he finally got it done and the institute worked with him on process, procedures, and just this last.
Jimmy Lea: November, December, he broke 23 point something percent net profit in the November. And in December broke 24 point something percent net profit.
Jackie Mills: Wow.
Jimmy Lea: 16 base. Yeah. So what's the net result? The shop is doing extremely well. They're very happy. The air is cleaner, the sky is bluer, the grass is greener.
Jimmy Lea: Everybody's happier, and it provides different quality of life for everybody at the shop. What's the net result on car count? What's the net result? On average pair order, they all went up.
Jackie Mills: That's amazing. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: All went up because they focused on process procedure, which allowed them to be more efficient, which allowed them more capacity.
Jimmy Lea: I think that is awesome. Yeah. Let's add to it, just like you were talking about, you have the ability to expand. He had the ability to expand. I went and visited his shop. He shows me the back. A lot. So you can see this is one of the oldest businesses in his town or wherever he is west Jordan, south Jordan, one of those two.
Jimmy Lea: You can see where dad had the original business and then he added onto it, and then he added onto it, and then he added onto it. So those 14, 16 bays were in the first three editions. There's a fourth edition, and dad had all of his old dead bodies in there. Old race cars, not human bodies. Dead bodies in there and six Bay, four bays of stuff, an rv, a travel trailer, just stuff and things.
Jimmy Lea: And I was like, bro, when's the last time pops came in here and looked at his stuff? It's been a couple years. Get some sea retainers, put 'em out in the parking lot there with. Whatever he's got out there, pops, here's your stuff. It's available for you anytime you wanna come down a rifle through it.
Jimmy Lea: Come on down. We'll set up lawn chairs and have a good old time. The RV moved out, the travel trailer moved out. All the dead bodies that are in these detainers now from their racing days and all that kind of stuff. And he opened up another four bays. At the shop. So he's now a 20 bay shop on, I think he's three point something acres.
Jimmy Lea: It's got some land to it. They're so excited. They're doing so well. I'm so very proud of Tracy Holt and the family and the team there at Performance Place.
Jackie Mills: Yeah. That's amazing.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. They're doing a great job. Similar story for what you guys have, you have an ability to expand. How many bays would that add for you?
Jackie Mills: I. Not 100%, but I think they're thinking it would add like four or five more bays.
Jimmy Lea: Love it. Love it. You should do it. You should do it as quickly as you can. 'cause you've already got how many technicians? 16 technicians?
Jackie Mills: Yeah. I believe that it's 16 or 17, somewhere in there.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Yeah, I'd be expanding pretty dang fast.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. That is so awesome. So what is the one thing, if you could change something in the industry, something at your shop, what's one thing, if I gave you a magic wand and you were able to wave the wand, you can't wish for more wishes, but you could wave the wand, what would you wish for in the industry?
Jackie Mills: I think I think it would definitely be, and it, I know it's one of the things that you guys are kind of like seeking to change is the perception of the industry. And I know by far and large that there has been, like, there has been some guilt in the industry, but you do get. I'm sure you've experienced this, a lot of customers that come in already expecting the worst of you.
Jackie Mills: Whereas, you know, like stuff does happen. We do make mistakes. We always try to like own up to anything that we do or cause or whatever. But when you're always trying to look for the bad thing, you're going to see the bad thing. And you know, we're here, like we've been in business for a really long time, always trying to do the right thing.
Jackie Mills: Trying to do right by our customers, trying to do right by our employees. But you know. There is a lot of, like, we have amazing customers. We have a lot of loyal customers, but there's also some people that, you know, just always wanna find something wrong with what you're doing. And maybe it's because they have been burned by someone before, but I think that I would like to change that.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. And you'll do that with those digital vehicle inspections that you provide to your customers and clients. Show 'em. Show 'em. What's worn, torn, frayed, broken leaking, seeping. Cracked. Put arrows, pointed it out to them so they can see it. They will make better decisions when they're educated, they make better decisions.
Jimmy Lea: So that DVI gives them insight into, they're not just trying to take me for all the money I've got. These are safety issues. These are the things that you have to take care of. This is very, this is Paramountly important. And there's a next level that says we can do this while the car's in here, or we can keep watching it maybe in three months or six months.
Jimmy Lea: These are the items that you're probably gonna need to take care of next. And then these are all the other things that are good. So there's your red, yellow, green. Red, let's get it taken care of today. It's in the shop. You absolutely, this is safety issues. Yellow says future, but we can do it today if you want.
Jimmy Lea: And a lot of people say, yeah, let's get it all done today. You've got the car. I don't wanna have to come back. Let's get it all done.
Jackie Mills: Yeah, exactly. And we have noticed that we have had a lot more like customer satisfaction since we've kind of implemented like a higher level of communication and on our end, like a higher level of due diligence, like having the pictures and the notes and all of that too.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. It's so cool. I love the digital vehicle inspections. It provides so much more clarity into what you're doing and the service you're providing for those customers and clients because it's, it is not just a laundry list of this, you need to do this.
Jimmy Lea: $2,500. It's a breakdown that says you need to replace your brakes and brake pads and rotors, and here's the reasons why, and this is what yours looks like. It's metal on metal. It's bad.
Jackie Mills: Dangerous.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. It happens. It happens. Well, Jackie, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about your shop and your business.
Jimmy Lea: So excited for your future. You've got a very bright future there with Pops and with your husband, and congrats on going for your Master's in accounting. Super cool.
Jackie Mills: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate getting to talk with you.
Jimmy Lea: You're welcome. You're welcome. This has been very enlightening, and if Pops is open for the idea, we'd love to train you, your husband and your pops all together to train on the shop, on the business.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It's an opportunity for us. Let's do it. If there's not, we're all good. We'll still be friends.
Jackie Mills: Definitely. Thank you so much.
Jimmy Lea: You are welcome. You're welcome. Because we here at the Institute, we're all about building a better business. Your business, better business, better life. If your business is better, it helps your life to be better.
Jimmy Lea: You'll breathe better. Not just you, your employees, not just your employees, their families, their spouses, their significant others. It helps everybody to breathe better, and when we, as the institute or as the industry, we lock arms together, that's our third mission with the institute, is we're here to build a better industry.
Jimmy Lea: So we'd love to work with you on that to build up your business, your life, and your industry as well.
Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much, Jackie. Look forward to talking to you soon.

152 - Efficiency Over Expansion: How Matt Kranz Built His Dream Team

152 - Efficiency Over Expansion: How Matt Kranz Built His Dream Team
September 30, 2025 - 00:38:59
 
Show Summary:
From broom to Bentleys, Matt Kranz maps the climb from a cramped back-office closet to leading Long Meadow Garage, a three-bay shop attached to a gas station and c-store. He unpacks hard-won lessons from a chaotic first job, showing why turnover and shortcuts kill trust, and how a dirty white shirt at the counter builds credibility. Matt explains his pivot into European and luxury work, the tools and security credentials he chooses with purpose, and how shop-to-shop collaboration expands capability without bloating costs. He shares real KPIs, a lean team structure, and the discipline behind DVIs and the 300 percent rule. Training is a constant, with on-the-job diagnostics, lunch-and-learns, and curated content keeping techs and advisors sharp. With demand three weeks out, Matt prioritizes efficiency and quality over bay count, yet still sets a stretch target for what three bays can do. He closes with straight talk on the tech pipeline and his best advice to new owners: do not take it personally, learn, systemize, and keep leading.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Matt Kranz, COO of Longmeadow Garage
 
Show Highlights:
[00:00:21] - Matt laughs about recording from a tiny back office and traces his start in 2000 sweeping floors while his father worked the parts side of the industry.[00:02:08] - Lessons from a badly run first shop reveal what not to do, from high turnover to dishonest practices, and why every example teaches something.[00:04:07] - As a working manager, Matt helps take a location from roughly 250k to about 690k in annual revenue and learns the power of a “dirty white shirt” at the counter.[00:05:23] - Moving to a long-standing Mobil station, Matt becomes the fourth owner and leans into European and luxury work while still serving mainstream makes.[00:07:14] - He invests in tools with intent, maintains NASTF security credentials, and builds reciprocal relationships with specialty shops to fill capability gaps.[00:09:10] - Team snapshot: two techs, one inspector, one service writer, and a culture focused on customer experience, mentorship, and generational perspective.[00:11:29] - KPIs on the table: about 1.6M total revenue, roughly 300 cars a month, near 420 ARO, and state inspections at 35 dollars that add six figures in volume.[00:15:02] - Strategy over size: optimize a single shop for quality and efficiency before chasing bay count, even while eyeing a stretch goal near 3.6M from three bays.[00:23:05] - Training in action: on-the-job diagnostics, WTI lunch-and-learns, ASE replays, and curated YouTube content to keep skills sharp across the team.[00:30:46] - Every vehicle gets a DVI and the 300 percent rule keeps inspections, estimates, and presentations consistent, with QC as the next level up.
 
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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Good morning friends. So excited to be here with you today. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Joining me today is Matt Krantz from Long Meadow Garage and it is a three Bay Garage at a gas station with a C store, and with Fuel. And Matt, you own all of this, correct?
Jimmy Lea: Correct. Yep. Oh my gosh, Matt, and you're joining me from those of you. You can't see this, but you can hear this. It looks like Matt is joining me from a janitor closet converted to an office. What are we looking at here, Matt?
Matt Kranz: It is, it's just a small office in the back. Originally we did all the paperwork by hand, so there wasn't a need for much.
Matt Kranz: And we never improved it. We're working on some improvements to maybe make this office open floor into the shop, so,
Jimmy Lea: oh, that, that is awesome. I think if you put your hands out, left to right, you could probably touch both walls.
Matt Kranz: It looks that small. I think I can actually, yeah,
Jimmy Lea: it's that small and front to back is probably just about the same.
Jimmy Lea: You could probably see about the same. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well that's awesome. So, your shop, you've got the three bays, but let's I wanna go back in time to when you started in the automotive industry. What did that look like for you? And then we'll come where you are today and then we'll go to where you're going in the future.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So where did you start?
Matt Kranz: I started in about 2000 and started working at the shop, sweeping the floors down the road. My father actually owned a muffler shop back then. It was a mining gee. So it was a good beginning. And I wound up he wound up selling that and moved on and he became basically a parts rep.
Matt Kranz: So he worked for different parts companies throughout the years and, I wound up continuing to work on like weekends because I was still in high school at that point, right. I was gonna just take a year off to save some money for college or technical school, and I wound up taking that year off, making some money and never went back to school.
Matt Kranz: Taught myself, and
Jimmy Lea: here we are, school of hard knocks. So you went straight into a shop.
Matt Kranz: I went into a terrible, terribly run shop. I stuck with it, but I saw, you know, what, some of the people, the high turnover rate and the dishonesty. I got to see all that, learn from it and learn from their mistakes.
Matt Kranz: And I, I took all the experiences with, you know, basically with for gold that they. Experiences you could not get. You could only be told about,
Jimmy Lea: yes. Told about, or you have to experience it and what you experienced is that everyone is a good example. Everyone's a good,
Matt Kranz: yeah. Yeah. A good example. Do even when you're doing things wrong, you're a great example
Jimmy Lea: or a bad example of what you shouldn't do or a good example of what you shouldn't do.
Jimmy Lea: That. That is awesome that you were able to do that. How long were you at the shop then? How long were you there? Breaking knuckles, cutting your teeth.
Matt Kranz: At that shop for about six, no, seven years, I think it was seven years. And as I started, they, you know, the people who owned it, you know, with the turnover.
Matt Kranz: I think we went through 20 managers in the first two years. And I was just sweeping the floor. I was still learning how to, you know, work on things and work on 'em on the side because a lot of the stuff they did was only brake suspension. An exhaust. And that didn't excite me. I wanted to get more into engine's performance.
Matt Kranz: I did a lot with racing. So like anybody, I got myself in trouble. But, you know, it I wound up finding the right ways to do it. So today I can show the guys, you know, some of my race cars and bring 'em out and say, look, let's go to the track and we're gonna, we're gonna go to speed limit to the track.
Jimmy Lea: B limit to the track, and then on the track, now it's time to race.
Matt Kranz: Now it's time to have fun. Go break something now. Just don't hurt yourself. Yeah. But the yeah, I mean all those experiences, you know, I eventually wound up managing that, that location. So we started out, I guess the first couple years that was a 200 to $250,000 in total revenue operation.
Matt Kranz: The last year I left, which would've been oh seven, was the total, was the complete year. That year we closed out at about six 90. So big improvement, and I was the manager for the previous four years. So, I feel like I was responsible for that.
Jimmy Lea: Congratulations. Yeah, you were responsible for that.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. So how long were you at this shop then at turning a wrench and managing
Matt Kranz: About seven years total. Seven years
Jimmy Lea: total.
Matt Kranz: Oh, seven years total. And I was a working manager, so I was expected to be in the shop. You know, we'd run back and forth to the counter, talk to the customers. And I think that helped a lot.
Matt Kranz: 'cause they'd see it covered in grease and they'd be like, oh, this isn't just a salesman telling me what's wrong with my car.
Jimmy Lea: No, this is the guy working on my car, telling me what's going.
Matt Kranz: Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Psychology. I was able to, you know, pull up from that. I found the dirty white shirt sold stuff to those people better than a, you know, a clean shirt.
Matt Kranz: They were, they wanted to talk to the mechanic if you had a shirt, clean shirt.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my word. That's awesome. Congrats on that. So at what point did you look at where you were in your life and you look at these seven years and you're like, okay, no, I think I wanna start my own shop.
Matt Kranz: So actually I had the opportunity to come to this mobile gas station, which had been around since 1941.
Matt Kranz: It's on, it's, I'm the fourth generation of ownership to it. It's only two of them were within a family, and the others were, we're just partners that, that came through and worked and made it happen. I always had a, you know, app for the high-end cars for, you know, really nice stuff. And this, believe it or not, this shop is only about four miles up the road.
Matt Kranz: But what a difference in clientele and in what we work on. You know, now I've moved I've always been a master tech since I was able to get the certification and. Now I'm working on, you know, your top cars that are out there between, you know, Maseratis, you know, we get you know, Bentleys range Rovers, lots of them, BMWs, Mercedes.
Matt Kranz: And then we'll work on your Honda and Chevy too. Those are easy when you work on a lot of the European stuff. I, in this area, I can't believe how many people don't want to touch it 'cause it's like too mentally tolling. But. I've always needed that stimulation. I need it if I'm not challenged and it's easy.
Matt Kranz: It's not fun.
Jimmy Lea: Well, and you're working on the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris as well, right?
Matt Kranz: No Ferrari, occasional Lamborghini, but I have the factory sports
Jimmy Lea: luxury vehicles. Yep. Nice. And I, you know, I think that's probably a lot of the scare for a lot of people is that they are worried about trying to get all of this extra equipment, scanners, tools, everything that has to go along with working on that vehicle and they just can't do it.
Matt Kranz: It is a requirement. Yeah. I mean, there is a, any, anything that I don't have, it's 'cause I don't want it. It's I've made the decision that either it's not financially feasible or it's not a brand that I want to commit in full to.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. So are you what are the flags that you have chosen to not renew?
Matt Kranz: Mercedes Century, believe it or not I've left anything for that to be remotely programmed. And there's a route that I can still work on it and do anything that's needed. I do have a locksmith id with nastf that I can purchase all the security relevant parts. So that, I mean, that's important for anybody out there, but, there's certain things that we just haven't, we haven't wanted to get, you know, fully vested into that. But I always try to have a relationship with other shops that do so a lot of times I can help them with a, you know, a tool or a scanner procedure that they don't have. And I hope that they can help me too.
Matt Kranz: Which it works out. It's a good compli.
Jimmy Lea: And that's true. So are you locking arms with a lot of these competitors? We'll call 'em competitors in the industry, but they're really not competitors. They're your band of brothers that you get together and you help each other.
Jimmy Lea: Do you find yourself working a lot of these other shops?
Matt Kranz: Yeah the competitors I've been, you know, they're not competitors, like you said. They're really, these are people we can network with and work with because they do things that I don't and vice versa.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true.
Jimmy Lea: Oh man. It's just awesome that you can work together with these people. And so, you run the fuel, the C store and the bays. You've got three bays. How many techs do you have today working with you
Matt Kranz: today? I have two techs. The third one is my inspection guy, Nick. He's really good. But he doesn't have the full technical backing, so he needs some help with some of the technical stuff. But his primary job is inspections. He keeps himself busy over there. So, it, that, it's really a good compliment. I do also have a service writer, Marcus. He does all the, you know, ordering up parts, writing up everything.
Matt Kranz: So he,
Jimmy Lea: yeah,
Matt Kranz: it, everybody worked really well together. I have, I think, the best crew I've ever had here. And I was able to get myself out. That's awesome. The shop, that was one of my goals. So I could focus, you know, on the different things in the business, you know, making the customer's experience better and actually passing some of my knowledge down to these guys.
Matt Kranz: 'cause I, as, as young as I think I am, there's so much that I find that they've never seen. We actually just had a conversation this morning about minivans. We had to fix a door on a Toyota Sienna minivan. The cable broke and. I looked at Ben and I said, well, it's weird to have two doors on a van and Marcus is about my age and agreed.
Matt Kranz: And Ben said, I've never seen a van with one door. What are you talking about?
Jimmy Lea: Ah, that's awesome. Oh, that's hilarious. That's funny. Haven't seen a van with one door. Yeah, I grew up with the one door Dodge Caravans.
Matt Kranz: That's right. Lee Koka had those down. I mean he years, he perfected several body styles of those.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, he sure did. Oh my gosh. That's hilarious. That is hilarious. Yeah the the double doors is, in my mind it's new, but gosh, it's been around for 10, 15 years now that they've had double doors.
Jimmy Lea: I just haven't, it's not been on my radar, you know?
Matt Kranz: No it's so funny 'cause it, it came up and I was like, holy crap. Like, we're not that we're only a 10 year, 11, 12 year age difference. But what a difference generationally.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. You know, it's, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
Jimmy Lea: People are people and we all learn. So, to speak of people being people what is your, what do your numbers look like right now? Are you familiar with your kpi? Yeah, right.
Matt Kranz: I have a cheat sheet here, so I don't box them so anybody can check me. But our total revenue last year we did real well.
Matt Kranz: We did 1.6 million and that did include inspections. That's really three bays. It's more two bays. It was 1.5 and some change. Not counting the inspections. Yeah. So each of my techs billed out about 2000 hours. And my car counts about three, it's like three 90, or I'm sorry, 2 97, almost 300 per month.
Matt Kranz: And our RO is about four 20. Nice. So. So you're looking at about
Jimmy Lea: 300 cars per month? Is that what I heard? 300 cars? Yeah. 2, 9, 7. And then your average repair order's in the 4 54 24 20 range. Nice. Solid. And is that average repair orders, does that include your estate inspections?
Matt Kranz: It does not.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. What is your, what are you able to charge for your state inspections?
Matt Kranz: Those are $35. So that, that equates to, you know, usually a hundred to $120,000 a year. Yeah. In, in, in $35 inspections.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. That's a lot of vehicles. That is just horrendous. But I'm glad you're getting 35 in the state of Utah.
Jimmy Lea: They were getting 16. Oh, wow. And they went to the state and they're like, you know, we're losing our butts here on this state inspection stuff. We need 41. And the state said, oh, you want 41, do you? Okay, you can have 19. We need 41. Oh, okay. We're gonna cancel the program. There you go. Oh geez. Oh yeah. So the state of Utah, I'm scared now.
Jimmy Lea: There's cars broke down on the side of the road all the time. Because there's no state inspection. You can see 'em their ball joints give out their control arms, their sway bars. They're pigeon toes. They're you know, they're,
Matt Kranz: yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. It's so scary. It's like Florida
Matt Kranz: Connecticut's the same way.
Matt Kranz: But it helps that they have a higher per capita income, so people are more apt to spend some money, which is the game. But once again, there's no safety inspection. They only do emissions.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my God. Yeah.
Matt Kranz: Out by us. It's been 35 since 2011, and that came up from 29 and 29, I wanna say was in 97 or 98.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah,
Matt Kranz: so there really hasn't been, it, I mean, it hasn't followed inflation at all.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, no, it really doesn't. And the funny thing about the state of Utah is there is emissions test only if you're in the big cities. If you live in a town that's smaller than a certain population, you do not have to get emissions.
Matt Kranz: Oh, interesting. Didn't realize that. Yeah. So I think you're in, there's enough trees. There's enough trees to suck up the knots.
Jimmy Lea: No, that's the funny thing. It's all down in the desert. Trees don't touch knots. There are no trees. It's all cactus and lizards and tortoise and coyote. Oh, wow. But up here in northern Utah, they have these inversions where the smog gets so bad it just holds the cold air low.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. It's due to the smog. And so they really are trying to eliminate that. So anyways, so you're working in your shop. You, I mean these are some good numbers. You got rocking there. You right in line with the national averages, which is, that's awesome. That's very cool. Where, what is the future look like for you,
Matt Kranz: Matt?
Matt Kranz: I really the biggest goal, you know, every time I look to expand, maybe buy another shop, but to expand I don't think is the right answer. 'cause you know, I can give a real nice personal service, focus on everything. I have a great crew and keep my stress low and there's no turnover. If anything, I think work on efficiency and how to make these guys the best they are.
Matt Kranz: You know.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, totally. My, my
Matt Kranz: problem right now is I'm booking out three weeks and yeah, we have to apologize to customers for that, but it's not like we get, you know, 10 bays, 10 techs and then we have to apologize 'cause the car wasn't fixed right the first time and came back. Then we kill the quality and I've always been huge into the quality over quantity.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I got a buddy with a three bay shop in Denver, Colorado. Fourex. They do 3.6 million.
Matt Kranz: Nice.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good. So there's a goal for you, 3.6.
Matt Kranz: Heck yeah. It's all efficiency at that game.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And he's tucked in, he has, he owns his building. He owns a small little parking lot, and they, their efficiencies have to be super high because they cannot have vehicles parked for long amounts of time.
Jimmy Lea: So they're constantly pulling in, pulling out, pulling and pulling out vehicles. So 3.6, put that on your radar.
Matt Kranz: Yeah. Yeah. That's a big goal, but I'm down for it. Yeah. If we don't up the challenge, then there's no point in doing it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And if you're getting ready, if you're looking at this saying, okay, I either want to optimize my single location or expand the kingdom, and we can operate at a solid 80, 90, 90 5% efficiency.
Jimmy Lea: Hey man, that's solid too. Let's expand the kingdom and now you're, you have two and three and four and five, and maybe you down the road you get to 10 that have, and you can private equity and they have a legacy because in a, are you familiar with private equity in these situations that they're putting together?
Matt Kranz: Yes, ma'am.
Jimmy Lea: This legacy could live on and on. You could have. The ability to resell the business every three to five years, and you continue to be part of the operations. But at that point, when you've got 10 locations, you've got process, procedure, down, you've got a team in place, you're operating at the top of the level.
Jimmy Lea: You're sitting on a beach and drinking my ties while the shop is being run by the team. Yep. The kingdom is being run by the team, so it's a great opportunity and it's awesome to get in while you're young, to be able to have this legacy generational money now for the, for the family. And it could come from a single location optimized at a 4 million out of three bays, or it could be that you've expanded the footprint and now you're 10 locations.
Jimmy Lea: Either way, get your process procedures down, help the team get better together with you. And there you go. So I heard a quote a while ago. I wanna run this past you, Matt, and see what your thoughts are here. The quote was, just because you own a business doesn't mean you're a good leader. It's true.
Jimmy Lea: What does that say to you?
Matt Kranz: That I a hundred percent agree with that. I've seen, yeah you gotta show your guys the way, you gotta guide 'em. You can't sit on top of the trailer and let them tow you. You gotta help push the trailer with them. That's, I that it's all too common in this area.
Matt Kranz: And it, I think it just creates arrogance.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And that's,
Matt Kranz: there's no place for that.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Do you see a lot of shops in a we'll call it a Mexican standoff where they're standing toe to toe and they think each other are enemies, but really we need to be a brotherhood.
Matt Kranz: That's, honestly, that's one of the biggest things I see whenever, and I haven't done a whole lot of networking to the point that I want to.
Matt Kranz: But whenever I have an, you know, a parts guy call me and like, Hey, Matt, how do you set this up? Can you help this guy out? He is not familiar and a lot of times it's a shop that I don't wanna point down 'em, but they're, they may be in their infancy with technology. They, they've resisted for long enough and now they have to get into it.
Matt Kranz: I've actually helped set up about 10 different guys in the area with these, you know, different secure links. And I'm like, where have you guys been? Like, Subaru's got it. Mercedes has it. Chrysler has it like Volkswagen with GRP now. Either way, the point being is whenever I talk to him and they're almost like, oh, he's from Matter Garage.
Matt Kranz: I've heard of him and I'm a problem solver. Shop. So I'll get a lot of cars that went to other shops and I charge through the nose for it. But when you come in and you preface that, oh, they put all these parts in and now you're asking for this much money, I look at 'em and say, you didn't pay me any of it.
Matt Kranz: You could have paid me this the first time, and
Jimmy Lea: oh, and I would've fixed it right the first time too, by the way. You're right.
Matt Kranz: But the reality with it is when they start that standoff I kind of look at it and I'm like, why do you think we're competitors? We're not competitors at all. I'm fixing the things you can't fix and I'm not taking your simple brake jobs or your simple work, or we work together and I can, you know, I can compliment you.
Matt Kranz: So when you compress that caliper on the back of the Audi and you can't get that light to reset 'cause your guy unplugged the motor. I got your back. You know, let's work on that. Yeah. Oh, that's so good. But usually that's what I see is it's the guys resisting the change.
Jimmy Lea: Well, thank you for being the voice of change there, Matt, in your of the woods Bond.
Jimmy Lea: Bond with them lock arms together. Let's, we can do this together. There's no way you could service every vehicle that passes your shop. There's no way that the six of you could service every vehicle that passes in front of your six shop. There's no way the 10 of you could pass and service the vehicles.
Jimmy Lea: There's so much business to go around. We are. What's a friendly competition? We're frenemies, but we're not enemies. There you go. Friendly competition. We friendly competition works like a team and we build each other.
Matt Kranz: Yeah. Sometimes we got, eh, you know this guy said this much and you're said this much.
Matt Kranz: You know what? That'll keep us honest. I'm good with that.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. It is not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing.
Matt Kranz: It's a good, I keep getting that you're gonna be cheaper than the dealer and I, whoa. Well, we're probably not gonna be cheaper than the dealer. We're gonna be about the same. 'cause the parts are the parts when we get that level of part.
Matt Kranz: But ultimately, I'm way less expensive than the dealer, even though I may charge the same amount. I have a crew and people that care about the car you're working on. Whereas at the dealer, you might get that superstar, that awesome guy, the head tech, the upcoming guy that really cares about what he's doing.
Matt Kranz: But you might get a guy they had to hire 'cause they have to get warranty work out the door and you don't really want him tearing your car apart.
Jimmy Lea: No. And the only reason he got hired is 'cause he could fog a mirror. You're right. And that's scary. That's the wrong person to put on the bus.
Matt Kranz: I mean, I'm, I guess I've been very unique with some of my hiring that if we're, in the past when we were shorthanded, I was out there and I said, you know what?
Matt Kranz: I'm gonna pick up the slack. I'm gonna help you guys out. Like, this is a team. I'm part of it, and we're doing this until we find another person. And I get that at the dealer. They can't, it's nobody that can jump in and do that. But heck yeah, we're gonna be more, we hire a better quality. We work as a better quality.
Jimmy Lea: I just have had quite a few conversations here recently about training. What do you do for training, for your technicians, for your advisors? What do you do that way?
Matt Kranz: Currently there's not as much as I'd like, but I'm always grabbing things. So I actually just the other day we ran into it with a with a, a Jeep Diesel and it came up with a PO four 20, a catalyst efficiency.
Matt Kranz: And then my, one of my head techs came over and scratched his head and said, I'm not sure what to do. And I said, me either, but let's read the service manual together. And we did. And it, you know, it was Chrysler typical test A, B, and C and go through the tree. And then I, you know, I said, well, why? I wanna know why they had us go in this order.
Matt Kranz: So I, I actually looked it up and brought in a bunch of it today. So I think that on the job training, just the interest in what he was doing is really helpful and beneficial for them. And I'll grab Carlos and, Hey man, listen to this. You know, you weren't involved, but I want you to see what we went through over this.
Matt Kranz: And then also I've been actually really happy with the the lunchtime training. We've been sitting down about every two weeks. And do either the Tuesday or Thursday launch time training with WTI, which has been really cool. A SE has an awesome program. I'm, those are at night and I can't sit the guys down at the shop.
Matt Kranz: But what I've been trying to do is I'll, I found a hack that I can sign in, take the course myself, which I just like learning it anyways. And then two days later they'll send me a link so that I can replay the course. So I make sure the guys all get a copy of that. And hey, if you're sitting around, dunno what to do.
Matt Kranz: Take a look. You know, the Snap-on actually has the really good YouTube channels that update all the time. I was, I maybe you can gimme some more that are awesome. I'm always looking for 'em. You know, be it dormant or standard or some of 'em are very focused on the sales, but there's always something you can grab from 'em.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, there always is. Yeah. The more your technicians can learn to be the best technicians they can be, the better it is for the consumer, the customer, and the experience. And let's also translate that to the service advisor. I talked to some shop owners, they're like, oh no. I'm not gonna train my advisors.
Jimmy Lea: Why not? They need training. They need training on communication, on creating estimates, best practices.
Matt Kranz: I found there is a go ahead. That training is much more difficult to find. I've been very interested, actually. I was so excited and I unexplained it to all the guys, and I told 'em, I said, I really look like a jerk, but let me explain why.
Matt Kranz: And the name of the seminar was triage diagnosis. So from triage diagnosis, I took that to mean the first step when you walk in the door. How do we start the diagnosis? So we start to talk to the customer, you know, that we form a relationship, we talk to 'em and we say, Hey, you know what? So what happened when the battery light came on?
Matt Kranz: What were you doing? How fast was the car driving? You know, were you accelerating, stopping going? Did it go out thereafter? How did you get here today? And the point is through the little explanations that I asked, maybe I can deter. It's probably a bad alternator. And then our shop efficiency is so, so important.
Matt Kranz: And just that simple, you know, flow that service writers, I find that a lot of 'em miss because they're missing. I'm obviously very fluent in it, but I have an extremely technical background. These guys don't but they can do it. They just need to be shown.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Matt Kranz: Yeah,
Jimmy Lea: and sure.
Matt Kranz: I actually, I have them, you know, him and my state inspector sit on even when.
Matt Kranz: They're not gonna lose.
Jimmy Lea: No. They'll always learn something. They'll always learn something of value.
Matt Kranz: Sometimes it's as simple as the process with the case study. Like, Hey, this is the process of what they did, and guess what? They can explain that process to a customer. So that's important.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And there's a new news relative, I think they'd been around for a year and a half, maybe even two years. Today's class technical training. Have you heard about this one?
Matt Kranz: Today's class. Today's class, I haven't.
Jimmy Lea: So it's an app that the technicians log onto and it's gamification from this app.
Jimmy Lea: They have different scenarios and they've got a multiple choice, so depending on how long it takes them to answer the question and if they get the answer right or wrong. It will guide them into some training about that subject. So it's got five different questions a day and they just answer the questions.
Jimmy Lea: The beauty of this as well is the gamification. You get points for answering these questions. Okay, so who's got the most points at the shop? Who's the highest rank at the shop? But then also. You compete, shop to shop as well.
Matt Kranz: Oh, no kidding.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's super cool. I
Matt Kranz: just pulled it up. This I wrote it down so I don't forget, so I was scrambling.
Matt Kranz: Yeah. In
Jimmy Lea: class. So check them out and then for your service advisors, go onto to, we are the institute.com, but go to our YouTube channel. We have a tremendous amount of free information for service advisor training. Okay, you can dive into, and if you want to dig in deeper, man, there's some stuff that we could help out there as well.
Jimmy Lea: But that's another road down the street, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So, into where you are today, you've got the four technicians, the three bays, the two
Matt Kranz: technicians,
Jimmy Lea: one inspector, one
Matt Kranz: service writer.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I was GI. So here's my four. I thought you had the two. I got four employees. State inspection and a gs.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. So this is a service advisor? Yes. The fourth person? Yes. Yes. Okay. Nice man. They're busy too, huh? They are
Matt Kranz: busy.
Jimmy Lea: They're busy. That's good. And what point of sale system are you running?
Matt Kranz: Right now we run Shocky Pro. So Mi It's a Mitchell.
Jimmy Lea: Mitchell? Yep.
Matt Kranz: Mitchell manager se
Jimmy Lea: nice. You like it Does everything you need to.
Matt Kranz: I do. I really like it. We don't use it to its full potential. But that's kind of good because we can learn and integrate things little by little. Love it. We're small enough that we can communicate really well in the shop. So, digital vehicle inspections
Jimmy Lea: are you
Matt Kranz: doing? We do. We're using both on, we're using both on, yep.
Matt Kranz: So we, we love their inspections. I'm still torn about the text messaging. I that, but, you know, give and take. I feel it loses some of that personal touch. I don't like to solely work on the text message, so
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. No. Well, and there are some people that, that's how they prefer to communicate
Matt Kranz: is the younger kids like, don't even want a phone call.
Matt Kranz: They're like, oh, no, why are they calling me? They're already anxious enough about this car repair, and now they're getting a phone call on top of it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So there's times where I can't take phone calls. Okay with the text messages, zoom meetings and think of attorneys and doctors and government employees.
Jimmy Lea: They can't always get to the phone to answer the call, but if you text them, they can text you back. Yes. And that's a beautiful way of communicating. So it goes very quickly. But then, and that also is our ask from the shop side is, Hey customer, when I text you, it's not because I want to chitchat. There's stuff we gotta talk about.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So answer your text message, answer the phone call. If we need to have a phone call let's take it to that next level so the relationship is not lost just because of texting. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. So I love You're doing dvs every vehicle, every time.
Matt Kranz: Yes. Every vehicle gets a 27 point inspection no matter what.
Matt Kranz: Love it.
Matt Kranz: The only time there's exceptions is when somebody's out sick, it happens. And I'm like, all right we gotta squash the schedule together and get it done. And, you know, we use some discretion with that. For the most part though, everybody's still going over 'em, you know, so they're still, they're pulling in, they've got the process down at this point that they're already, you know, checking the lights on the way in the bay.
Matt Kranz: And you know, they're looking at the brakes because nobody wants to sit there and watch the oil drain. Those guys don't work here.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No. Really, truly. Yeah. I love that you're doing dvs. There's one rule that you'll wanna follow. It's called a 300% Rule. Yep. You're familiar with this one?
Matt Kranz: I am familiar with it. I have brought that paper. I don't remember who wrote it through Ratchet and Wrench, and I brought it out to all of them and read it. And that's one of the staples on the wall that it gets pulled down every so often.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. That
Matt Kranz: Moline method.
Jimmy Lea: Every vehicle, every time is inspected.
Jimmy Lea: Every recommendation is estimated, and every estimate is given to the customer, given to the client. And Cecil will take this even a little bit further to say The 500% rule includes that every vehicle gets a quality control test on a specific route. You have a specific route that you follow every single time and you explain all that to the customer and the client.
Jimmy Lea: He's got another one. I forget what his other one is, but it's he takes it up to another level.
Matt Kranz: Okay.
Jimmy Lea: So the 300% rule definitely covers it. That's the one that's popular in the industry. So let's stick with that one for right now. Matt, what's the future? I know we talk about optimizing the single location, possibly expanding.
Jimmy Lea: Where do you see the industry as a whole going in the next five to 10 years?
Matt Kranz: As a whole, it's I think it's gonna, it's gonna explode as far as the. Shops that are not hiring and doing things right, are gonna fizzle out. They're gonna be out of business. And we, I watched that since 2008.
Matt Kranz: I, I can't tell you how many shops I watched fizzle out. They're not there anymore. And I'm looking back and saying, well, look at how you ran it. Of course it's out. So I guess I was fortunate enough to be able to open my eyes to that and see it. But I think unfortunately that. Repairs are gonna become slower because I, I keep reading the statistics, I don't know if it's true.
Matt Kranz: But pretty much for every four techs that retire, there's only one coming in.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. And
Matt Kranz: we can only handle so many cars. There's more cars going on the road. So, you know, it's either gonna be a long time for repairs or people are gonna start to have that second car or that fun car, which I can see as a benefit because cars are supposed to be fun.
Matt Kranz: I keep showing my son that. And you know, there's a lot of people that and kids of the younger generation that are like, well, it's transportation. I don't care what it looks like.
Jimmy Lea: Well,
Matt Kranz: maybe lemme show you some, I guess. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Actually my, my, my brother-in-law he, I have a couple older cars and race cars and he's like, I don't understand what's so exciting about the loud pipes and the, you know, the fast, you know, bill, you can't go fast on these roads around here.
Matt Kranz: So, but you can get there fast.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You can
Matt Kranz: get to the speed fast.
Jimmy Lea: Yep. You go stop, sign a stop sign fast.
Matt Kranz: That's it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. He just doesn't
Matt Kranz: have that appreciation. But nobody's ever sat him in a car and showed him, so
Jimmy Lea: there you go. Take him to an HRA event. Yeah, so, so you could see his reaction for the funny cars.
Matt Kranz: Yeah, right. I was, well, I was just trying to get my son is 13 and we me and my wife slowly discussed him joining the junior street in the NHRA, which is it'd be kind of a cool intro for me. He loves go-karts. That might, you know, you know what my disappointment is I don't see a lot of other people up there.
Matt Kranz: Not a lot of people doing it, which tells me that. People aren't shown how fun these can, these cars can be.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Anybody listening, if ever you have an opportunity to go to NHRA, you definitely need to go. It is an experience unlike anything you'll ever experience.
Matt Kranz: So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah, listen to the announcers, 'cause they'll go through the stock cars, they'll go through the modifieds, they'll go through the this one and they'll get to the funny cars and the top fuel.
Jimmy Lea: And you can definitely see who the virgins are in the audience when they start up that engine. You have never felt that experience ever. I guarantee it. Yep. Oh that's, yeah, because I was there. I was there. I was the virgin going, holy
Matt Kranz: coach, what the heck was that? Well, that's 12,000 horsepower, right.
Matt Kranz: It's only half though. You only feel half of it. 'cause the other half's on the other side.
Jimmy Lea: Right? Oh, it's so true, dude. Oh my gosh. The family was just in shock. It was so much fun. My son was like, oh my gosh, can you feel that? Oh, and it just rattles your heart and your chest. It just feels like, oh yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Burst outside. So awesome. So awesome. So if you were to start your shop today, Matt. What advice would you give yourself today, starting your shop today?
Matt Kranz: Man,
Matt Kranz: That's a tough one. I would I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I guess the biggest thing is just to, you know what? You're gonna get frustrated. Don't take anything personally, it took me a lot of years to not take a lot of the problems with these cars personally or.
Matt Kranz: You know, somebody's frustrated 'cause the car isn't fixed and hey, you know, it's an intermittent problem or I'm not sure what's wrong with it. And I've always been anchored to the shop because of it. And it's been recent years that I said, Hey, you know, it's not a personal thing if somebody doesn't want to have their car fixed by you or says no to the work or even, you know, if you can't fix the car.
Matt Kranz: I guess some of that, taking it personally did help me be better because I would go home and I need to find out everything I can about this system, how it works, and why can't I figure out what's wrong with it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, that, that is that, Matt. That is really good advice. Don't take it personally. It's business.
Jimmy Lea: Don't take it personally. What else? It's
Matt Kranz: just a car in the end.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's a car. And what I also heard from you in our conversation is not only don't take it personally, but. Get training. Get training for your technicians. They need the training. Get training for your service advisors. They need the training.
Jimmy Lea: Get training for you as an owner. You need the training. Yep. Yeah and that's our mantra here at the Institute is we're here to help you build a better business. And the net result of building a better business is a better life. And it's not just a better life for you, it's a better life for your technicians, for your service advisors, for their spouses, for their children.
Jimmy Lea: For the entire company. It's a better life for them as well. It's a better life for your customers, your clients, your those people who trust you to take care of their vehicles. They're safer on the road. They'll be able to stop when they need to stop and go when they need to go, so you're building a better life for them.
Jimmy Lea: Build a better business, a better life, and a better industry. That's our mantra here at the Institute. We're gonna lock arms with all these shops so that we can build this industry to be the best it could possibly be.

151 - "Ask Me Anything" with Michael Smith & Lucas Underwood

151 - "Ask Me Anything" with Michael Smith & Lucas Underwood
October 1, 2025 - 00:57:35
Show Summary:
Firefighting your week away? Lucas Underwood and Michael Smith chart a clear path from operator to investor, showing shop owners how to turn daily chaos into durable, transferable value. Human capital takes center stage with culture, trust, and leadership systems that make great work repeatable and businesses sellable. They unpack exit strategy myths, the three “languages” of success (repair, leadership, finance), and why abundance beats scarcity every time. Expect practical plays for full transparency DVIs, customer stewardship, and quality control that builds loyalty instead of skepticism. The message: compete on value, not price, and future proof your wealth while your team and customers win too.
 
Host(s):
Lucas Underwood, Shop Owner of L&N Performance Auto Repair and Changing the Industry Podcast
 
Guest(s):
Michael Smith, Chief Strategy Officer at The Institute
 
Show Highlights:
[00:01:00] - Michael shares his background in consulting and why he fell in love with the automotive industry after helping shop owners improve profits and quality of life.[00:03:30] - Discussion on how many owners spend decades just getting by without building business value or retirement plans.[00:06:00] - Lucas reflects on how shop owners often fight daily fires without fixing the core issues that cause them.[00:08:20] - Michael explains why every shop owner must define their exit strategy from day one to avoid regret later.[00:11:20] - The two contrast the operator mindset versus the investor mindset and why both are necessary for long-term growth.[00:14:10] - Michael describes the three essential “languages” of success: repair, leadership, and finance—and why all can be learned.[00:20:00] - They dive into how shop culture forms naturally, why it often becomes toxic, and how leaders can “clear the water.”[00:25:00] - Lucas shares how rebuilding culture requires trust, accountability, and servant leadership focused on people first.[00:28:30] - The conversation shifts to abundance vs. scarcity thinking... and how businesses built on abundance outperform over time.[00:50:00] - Michael and Lucas break down why competing on value, not price, is the key to profitability and long-term sustainability.
 
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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Episode Transcript:
Lucas Underwood: Good afternoon everybody. My name is Lucas Underwood from l and m Performance Automotive Repair, and the Changing the Industry podcast. I'm here for another AMA webinar with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. And today I have the honor of having Mr. Michael Smith. The main leadership man at the institute joining me.
Lucas Underwood: I am so excited to have you here, Michael. I know. Michael, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself so those that don't know you, don't know who you are yet, can kind of get a feel of who you are and where you came from?
Michael Smith: Absolutely. I am 45 years in the professional space. I grew up. Up to up 31st, 35 years.
Michael Smith: We're outside of the industry that we're in now, and about 10 years ago, I came from the big consulting firms, have experience in private equity holding companies. And I came here about a decade ago to when I met a guy who had three shops and he said, Hey. Can you help me take a look at what I've got?
Michael Smith: I'm not having enough fun or making enough money to keep doing this. I gotta change something. And I dug in with him. And guys, I gotta tell you I, I fell in love with this industry. So I've been here focusing primarily on this for almost. Almost 10 years at this point. And I bring, I have never fixed a car in a shop in my life, so I don't come as an owner operator.
Michael Smith: I come from the owner investor perspective, from the outside investment perspective, the high performance business building perspective. I bring different things to the table which is fun to be here. Lucas, it's really fun to be able to share what I know with the people here. This is a hard business and a hard industry, and we got awesome people here.
Michael Smith: So it's my privilege, my friend.
Lucas Underwood: Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. And you know, a after I got to know you a little bit and got to pick your brain a little bit, I began to see that you had a different perspective on business valuations. That you had a different perspective of why we were doing this.
Lucas Underwood: And it's something we often lose in the automotive space, and I think it's very valuable for you to be here with us for that very reason. Because I go to work to fix cars. And you go to work to make sure that I make money while fixing cars and make sure that I have something to leave my children generational wealth.
Lucas Underwood: And it's bigger than just money, right? Like it, it's a sustainable business. It's something that isn't as taxing for the next generation. It's smart business. More than anything else.
Michael Smith: I'll tell you one of the first things I learned when I got here was what a challenge our industry is.
Lucas Underwood: Yeah.
Michael Smith: And it's, it can become a daily urgent to urgent issue, one after the other, and then the days fly by.
Michael Smith: And the week starts on Monday and you know, before you unlock the door, it's like, okay, here we go. And then the hell storm starts, if you will, for lots of folks. And then you crash your way through the week and Friday afternoon you're trying to get as many cars out as you can and then the doors lock and you're like,
Lucas Underwood: oh.
Michael Smith: And then, you know, maybe you have a weekend and you pick up and do it again. And I say that only from the perspective that you can do that for 30. 35, 40 years. You're exactly right. And the end, back to the value question. Doing that in such a way that you're just getting by no investment perspective, no money, set aside, profits are, when they do finally show up and they're stable, you pull it out because you're not sure if you're gonna see 'em again.
Michael Smith: And time flies by. And the sad statistic is, and I'll turn it back over to you, 75% of owners of privately owned companies, and I actually believe it's more in our industry, they, this is the quote. Profoundly regret. The way they exited because they didn't know what they were doing. And I've got stories under my belt knowing all the people we know.
Michael Smith: $120,000 for your shop, that's what you have to retire on at 65. How can you retire at sixty five, a hundred twenty five grand? You can't, you end up working somewhere else. And that literally, we've talked about this, that's why I'm here. I don't want that for as many people as we can touch and help. Right.
Michael Smith: That's literally what. Yeah,
Lucas Underwood: so absolutely a hundred percent. And you know, we I met you the first time at Leadership Intensive and some really interesting things because. I'm not gonna lie, Michael, the first interaction with you, I thought, this guy's trying to convince me to sell my shop. This is some wonky proposal, like one of those weird deals.
Lucas Underwood: Is this a Ponzi scheme? What's this guy up to? And then the second meeting that I was in that you were at, you said something that I thought was extremely profound and you said venture capital and private equity realized that nothing exists without human capital. There is no profit without human capital, and they understand the value of human capital.
Lucas Underwood: And so if you don't understand the value of human capital, why are you doing what you're doing? And I thought that for, well,
Michael Smith: Lemme add to that. Some of the finance guys get it. And what I mean by that is you can play a pure finance game irrespective of humans, and you'll do okay, but you can't optimize unless you understand that.
Michael Smith: I mean, we're as about as technical a business as you can be. But if you think about it, all the work passes through multiple hands from the first time a customer drives in until they drive home. And many humans are touching that. So we can SOP ourselves to death and we need to, from a sustainability or from a transferability to a new owner and a consistency standpoint for quality.
Michael Smith: But that's not the key to getting it done. Every time a human touches it, if they blow the systems or they screw up the relationships, then everything starts to slow down and not be as good as it could be. And so at what you and I have talked about a lot, it comes back to the human factors. Yeah.
Michael Smith: People, human capital is your greatest. Asset. And if you don't know how to manage it, that's a great place to start. 'cause fixing cars is a lot easier when you have phenomenal people who are doing it well because they care makes a big difference.
Lucas Underwood: You know, for years I've watched a lot of owners do this, and it's one of the reasons that I do what I do.
Lucas Underwood: It's the reason that we have the podcast. It's the reason that, that I'm out here at these trade shows trying to talk to people and it's, the reason I answer the Facebook messages and all that stuff is because I've recognized a pattern that I once had in my business. And I see almost every single independent shop owner doing this.
Lucas Underwood: The pan is on the hot eye, there's oil in the hot eye. It is on fire, and the shop owner takes the lid and they put it on the pan and they put the fire out. And they pull the lid back off and the fire starts back. They never empty the pan of the oil. They never turn the eye off. They just constantly fight to put that fire out, but they never build the system around it that says I'm gonna do something.
Lucas Underwood: So I get a different result. And so much of what you've taught me is very much about getting a different result, seeing things differently. And, you know, as I've kind of moved into this retirement concept, in other words, not that I'm gonna retire. But after we really had some in-depth talks, I'm sitting here saying, Hey, now wait just a minute.
Lucas Underwood: I thought my business was gonna be my retirement, but maybe I need to have some other safeguards in place. And so I start playing with the market a little bit. You know, I've got my 401k through the shop and I started looking at the numbers and I thought, now wait a minute if Wall Street values that business like that.
Lucas Underwood: And the PEG and the PE ratio and all this other stuff is over here. And I apply those metrics to my business and I say, wait a minute, everybody says, I wouldn't buy that business for that. Yep. Wait
Michael Smith: a minute now. Hang on brother. Here's the scary stat. If you ask the private equity industry, there was a little gap there.
Michael Smith: We froze. If you ask the private equity industry how, what percentage of privately owned businesses after they look at them, they'd like to buy. The number is 10 to 15%, so let that sink in, right? If there's a hundred folks listening in here, a thousand, right? 10 to 15%, somebody who's a real professional investor will come and consider paying you money for all the rest.
Michael Smith: To this because we haven't run it with an owner or with an investor value perspective. We'll have nothing to sell at the end, but assets or, and here's how our industry's gone. This is history. As we turn around and sell it to a key employee, who can I be honest, frankly, doesn't know any better, how little value they're buying for the price they pay.
Michael Smith: And that's been our industry's history and what you and I have talked about, this does not have to be, if owners understand you and I talked about this. Day one, I meet somebody, I start asking questions, what's your exit strategy? Why are you in this business? What's the legacy that you wanna leave when you're done?
Michael Smith: 'cause if they can't answer those questions, it's time to stop and think about those answers. And when you have that futuring kind of a model in your head, then you go back and say, well, what are you holding in your hand right now? And whatever the gap difference is between what you got and where you're gonna go.
Michael Smith: The job between now and then is to close it and grow it and enrich it and get it ready for that final set of transactions. And so people will say to me, Lucas, it's like, look, I'm 30. How can I have an exit strategy at 65? I can't see that far. And I say, I know. Think, pretend you can start now headed in a wise direction, and then this thing will stay alive for.
Michael Smith: 35 years, you'll change it 15 times between now and then. But don't wait until you're 64 and ask the question, what do I do now? And brother, our industry is rich with people who've been, or they're now, they're in their sixties. They're sitting on it. They haven't thought about this stuff ever.
Michael Smith: Now they're getting tired and they're like, maybe I should be retiring. And now it's not too late. To start, but it's a whole lot better. The sooner you start, the better off you can be. Over time, you can build in a direction and build something much stronger if you do that, which will get you better outcomes.
Michael Smith: Right?
Lucas Underwood: Yeah, absolutely. And you know what I'm seeing though and here's the issue is they get very nervous. They get very upset when you talk about exit strategy. I don't wanna sell my shop, I don't wanna retire. I care about my guys, I care about their best interest. Okay. That's the point.
Lucas Underwood: It's because if you care about them, you have to build an organization that can stand on its own. Yep. That if something happens to you, they're taken care of. Right. Right. And we don't like to talk about that. We don't like to talk about what could happen. And you know, I've shared this before that, that when I started the shop, oh, I'm gonna be the technician.
Lucas Underwood: I'm gonna be the guy working on the cars. 10 years in, I realized, hey, I'm not the best guy to be working on the car. You got it. I've got people that are way better than me. They're way more efficient. I need to be running the business. So I became the service advisor, so now I'm the service advisor in the shop.
Lucas Underwood: And after a while I'm like, this is great. I'm a wonderful service advisor. I make everyone happy. The only problem is I don't have any money because I gave it all away. And I'm like, okay, so maybe we need to do something different with this because this is not working. And then, okay, well I'll manage.
Lucas Underwood: Right? I'll be the manager and I'll, you know, I tell people all the time, well, how can you steer the ship from the engine room? You can't really see where you're going. So you kind of have to have like a perspective where you can see things. I'll be the manager. We put 10 bays in the shop and I'm like, holy Carol, this is a lot of work.
Lucas Underwood: Like, I'm gonna do a lot to keep up with this. I dunno that I have the capacity here. I need to hire a manager. Yeah. And so it, it's like it's a wake up call that as I've gone through this process and then the business is developed and the business has got more profitable and can do what it's supposed to do.
Lucas Underwood: Yep. That, that my role has to develop. Yes. Right. And where I was 10 years ago is not where I'm at today. And it's so important that we think about where we're going. Right. Because I, I worry that there's so many of these guys. They were just excited about having a business. They were just excited about getting the business off the ground.
Lucas Underwood: Well, I hate to tell you this, but you're planning your exit strategy from the day you start. Yes.
Michael Smith: And you know. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, you're planning your exit strategy from day one because if you think you're not doing it, you are doing it. People joke around about this, right? And it's a joke until I say this, everybody has an exit strategy.
Michael Smith: Like, well, I don't. I go, yeah, you do. If you don't declare one, your death is your exit strategy. Yeah. And then they get real serious, and I'm not being mean, it's, they think about it and they go, oh, I guess if I don't set one, I still have one. It's like, yes, you do. The day you become disabled and can't do it the day that you are so tired, you have a mental breakdown the day that you, right.
Michael Smith: I mean, there is an end to this and so the point of it is. Why wait till the end and not be building something intentionally. And you're right, you're absolutely right. It can be very difficult to do the thinking early 'cause we don't live here, we don't live in exit strategy, legacy zone most of the time.
Michael Smith: And for some folks be straight up about it. People who didn't have. A strong upbringing as a child where it was safe to dream and look forward? Yes. If you're in any kind of an environment where there was pressure on you to either perform or be quiet, not cause trouble, you know, you grow up and buy a business and you bring all of that, I'm gonna say baggage with you, but you bring the perspectives with you and you jump in as a business owner and you start as an operator.
Michael Smith: Now you're an owner operator, and your mindset is, I'm gonna operate this thing the way I always thought it should be done. And that has. Sometimes very little to do with the investor perspective. I got two business models. Lucas, you've seen them? Yeah. We teach them on the leadership intensive. One is an investor's view of a company.
Michael Smith: The other one is an operator's view of a company. They align with each other, but they are not the same model, and you can be a fantastic operator and not be building value in your company. And that's what I don't, that's what we want people to know, both, right? You and I talk a lot. Our mission is to get this word out and get it into as many people's hands as we can so they can think about it.
Michael Smith: And I'm gonna say this about being intimidated by all this, whatever. I'll say this and I'll turn it back to you. I talk about three languages, that if we're gonna do this right and succeed in this industry, we're gonna need to speak. One of them is automotive repair. And I'm gonna say probably every single person on this listening to this is.
Michael Smith: Fluent in automotive repair. Congratulations. I say this. That's the hardest language of the three. Yeah. The next language to be a top player in your market, which is what you want to be as an influencer and have the most sway, is what does it take to run a high performance championship team? Guys, that is not psychology.
Michael Smith: It's not just winning, it's how humans work. But I'll tell you, that's an. Easier language to learn than automotive repair. And the third language that you need if you're gonna play this game as an investor, is you gotta learn finance and don't run away from the speaker. When I say that, that's easier than high performance championship stuff, which is easier than fixing cars.
Michael Smith: Yeah, so think about that. Can you be trilingual and build generational wealth? That's you and I've talked about this. That's what we're trying to get the message out. Come tick the tires. Test it a little bit. See if this isn't scary 'cause it isn't. 'cause we know how to do all this stuff. Can you learn it?
Michael Smith: You absolutely can. You learn the hardest thing you have to learn already. Now, can we add to that so that we have more leverage, more opportunity, more power, more op? Yeah. Yes, you absolutely can. And that's literally what we're trying to get out, you and me, the message us, right? That's what we're all, you're exactly
Lucas Underwood: right.
Lucas Underwood: Exactly. And, you know, I'll tell a little bit of a story. I watched a situation unfold right in front of my eyes. I watched an older man with a shop and I talked to him about buying the shop. And I went and I talked to him and I said, Hey, what are you looking to get for the shop? He said, I'm looking to get 1.5 for it.
Lucas Underwood: I said, okay. So p and l. And he, he said, well, I don't really have a p and l, but I'll come up with something. We'll get something put together. And I get the p and l and on this p and l, you know, $60,000 of revenue for the last year. And he says, well, I've been shutting down. I've been, you know, just tinkering.
Lucas Underwood: And I said, okay, so let's look back a little bit. And he said, well, you know, now I took a bunch of cash payments and I did this, and I did that. I, you know, I didn't really need that much income to survive. And I said, right, but if I'm valuing your business. You want to sell it for $1.5 million. That's not how it works.
Lucas Underwood: And he said, well, Lucas, nobody ever taught me that. Right? Nobody ever showed me that. Right? Well, well here we are in an age, in a generation when every bit of information you could ever want is directly in front of you. You don't even have to pay to get much stuff, right? Most of this stuff is very easily accessible and you can start making some steps.
Lucas Underwood: The key
Michael Smith: Is you have to know what steps. Yes. And curating the vast universe of information yourself to get it down to say, okay, of all the things I could look at regarding income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statements, I need to know that stuff as an investor to understand my own business.
Michael Smith: Let me go dig in. And you get about a half through, you know, the first two pages of a, of an accounting class, and you're like, oh my God, I don't have. The brain power or the energy right now to do this. I'll do it later. And then guess what? It never gets done. Yeah. And so part of what we're doing is we cur, we're curating outta the universe of noise, the stuff that we know actually works.
Michael Smith: It's part of you and I've talked my background. I grew up in the big consulting firms. I was the. I worked with the Fortune 100, the Fortune 500. We did strategy, we did business development. We did organizational growth. We did all that stuff. I stopped doing that because I fell in love with small and mid-sized businesses, right?
Michael Smith: Us on the street working hard. The million dollar projects are very interesting, but at some point you've done them already and it's like, you know where the real action is. It's out in the real world, in communities where small businesses are operating. And I spent time in the private equity world with a holding company going all over the world, buying stuff, trying to improve stuff, learning how that works.
Michael Smith: And I bought a bunch of small businesses and sold them in different things just to get all this grounding so that now we can sit here and say, Hey, you know what? Here's my point. The models for all this stuff exist, and it's not theoretical. It's actual, it's practical. We know what a high performance culture is.
Michael Smith: You can build one proactively yourself. You just have to know what it is. We know how to help you build value in your business. You just have to know how to do it. Then you gotta go home and do it. You have to do it alone. No, there's podcasts like this, the Institute, I've got groups. We're here to help you do it along the way, but there's nothing we're talking about that is untried, unproven, unknown.
Michael Smith: The only people who don't know it are the people who need it the most. Absolutely. And that's the encouragement I have. Please don't be intimidated by this step into the middle of it and say, okay, I admit I don't know what you're doing. T show me what you're doing. Yeah. Intrigued me. Draw me into it. Show me something interesting that I think might belong.
Michael Smith: For me. Right. And then when they get into it I kid you not, they're like, this isn't as hard as I thought it would be. It's like I told you on the podcast, the hardest language is the one you already speak. It's easier exactly after as you get this thing going, and then it becomes iterative, right?
Michael Smith: Then you get momentum going. You can get better people. The better people perform better. There's more cash in the bank. Now you have more that you can invest. Don't take the money out. Invest it internally. What do you put it into? The stuff that builds high performance culture, the stuff that builds value.
Michael Smith: Now you get better people on the door, you're drawing better customers and it's like it takes on its own life. And it's a hurricane that goes from category one to two to three only. It's a happy hurricane, right? It's a money hurricane and a production and success hurricane all of a sudden, and I'll come back to what you said, 'cause I don't wanna let it go by.
Michael Smith: You wanna be the person who knows the least. About all the individual drop inside your company if you do this right? And what I mean by that is there's always a better talent in every seat working for you than you.
Lucas Underwood: Yeah. That's if you're the smartest person in the room, we got problems, baby. That's the things are not looking
Michael Smith: good.
Michael Smith: That's the thing. And your job at that point is to make sure that all those super smart, super talented, highly productive. Awesome people have what they need to work together and get this thing, keep their thing going, and they'll come up with better ideas than you can have. And you've gotta get out of the way and facilitate it and let 'em go and let 'em go.
Michael Smith: And this thing will take off. And when people do this, after they go through these processes we're talking about, and it starts to take off, they're like, Michael, I'm having the best months I've ever had from a revenue standpoint, Michael, my nets are off the chart. Michael, that toxic guy in the corner that nobody could get along with is making volunteer ideas in a meeting.
Michael Smith: What the hell is happening here? Right. And it's like. It's because it takes on, the people are wired. To be happy and to have health and to be satisfied and to work that together.
Lucas Underwood: I've asked that in my reels over and over again. Yeah. I make these videos and I post them a couple days a week. Right.
Lucas Underwood: And it's, listen, you're upset with your employees. Don't you think that they want to make you happy? Don't you think that they showed up and wanted to do a good job today? Yep. Like, and you keep saying something. You keep saying the word. Culture. Right. And I'm gonna tell you, for the longest time I thought it was just hoppy cock, right?
Lucas Underwood: Like, I just thought it was noise and I, you know, oh, that's just, that's a spin, a buzzword, whatever you wanna call it. But the reality that I've learned is. You have a culture and it can be a good one or it can be a bad one, but you have one, right? You do. It's just like, and if you're not protecting it and molding it
Michael Smith: and developing it, yep, you will have a bad one.
Michael Smith: It's just like the exit strategy question. You may not think you have one, but you have one. Yeah, the culture question's the same thing. Cul, and I'll do this real quick so people can kind of get the perspective. You start a company, pretend, right? Let's say you started from scratch. A lot of you bought a business, but start, you've got a culture fish tank full of clear water because it's what you think it should be.
Michael Smith: Then you hire your first employee. They have a whole bunch of little droppers of blue dye, right? Yep. They show up every day with their culture perspective and put a drop in your tank and a drop in your tank. Now, the second person comes, they have a red dropper, and then there's a yellow dropper and a green one.
Michael Smith: Over time. Colors mixed to brown, right? Eventually they go to black. The point of that is your culture without attending to it. Just by letting people be who they are in many times, semi or fully dysfunctional ways, and not fixing that, not bringing it back to the ideal Clearwater, you know, goal that you have.
Michael Smith: You'll end up with a messy tank. And so what you're saying, you got a tank, it just may not be a very good one. Right. Can you look through it and see the other side? Sure. Nope. Well, here's the good news, right? How do you fix brown water? You start pouring in. Fresh water and you keep pouring it in and you keep pouring it in and it dilutes and you can, pretty soon, you can't tell there was ever any color in here.
Michael Smith: And that's the process. And again, it's about like that you don't just go, Hey Lucas, are you ready? 1, 2, 3, flip. And the culture is there. It's like everything's rosy and beautiful and clear water. It takes time because you have to identify what you're building. By the way, we know what the components are.
Michael Smith: You have to figure out where you're bleeding, what color is your water, so we know what to fix first. Then you gotta put the processes in place to do it. Then you begin operating. It's a lot like social media. All you owners out there that are listening, that do social media, they're like, look, you can't do social media and get immediate impact.
Michael Smith: It's like a aircraft carrier. You shove the. The throttle forward and those big screws start, it goes slow faster. The good news is you can take your hand off the throttle and it keeps going until it brings itself down. Culture's exactly the same way. So you do the right things and it still looks like brown water and it feels harder, but all of a sudden it's like, do not give up.
Michael Smith: Do not give up, keep going. And one event at a time clears itself, one event at a time, and pretty soon everybody can see through the water and they're going, I like this. Better than it was before. It's like, keep going. Don't stop. And all of a sudden, now think now just think this, and again, I'll turn it back to you.
Michael Smith: Now you've got a clear water tank and here comes an outside person you're recruiting who comes in with a little black vial of drops, right? In recruiting process, you see that your people know what they're looking for. Now, do you hire them? And let them come in and start dropping it in your clear. No you don't.
Michael Smith: You go, okay, let me see your vial. They go, what are you talking about? Pull out your drops. And they put 'em down. Clear water. Ha. Let's talk. I've got clients brother that have multi shops, like 20 and 30 shops. Yeah. And they are main job at the CEO level. The general manager, COO level operator level is to make sure the culture.
Michael Smith: The context, purpose, and character fit is in place with new people. That's the first interview is with the CEO. If they don't pass the context and culture screens, they don't even get interviewed about whether they can fix a car or sell repairs. They don't even get talked to.
Lucas Underwood: Yeah. 'cause those are the minor things, right?
Lucas Underwood: We always look at 'em like they're the big things, but they're the minor things.
Michael Smith: That's exactly right. And it's like, are there people who can fix cars? All kinds of them. Do we want all of 'em working for us? Not if you have a clear fish tank, we don't. We want the people who understand the value of that clarity and the power in it.
Michael Smith: And when they do. Then, now here's the thing, can you bring kids up through the process from Apprentice and you know, GS and all that on? Absolutely. And what you want is to have a system so strong with the people who are leading and at the top of the game that when you bring the kids in, you interview them for the potential to bring clear water, and then you move them into a system that doesn't put up with red, green, or blue dots.
Michael Smith: You just don't put up with it. Exactly. And the point is you either purge it out or they go. And you hire somebody who brings the Clearwater potential or the drops in, and then you've got a culture that is high performance and then you win. Yeah. Brother, the key
Lucas Underwood: about the high performance culture, right?
Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Like the key behind it is something that I just experienced recently, right? Like I fell in love with this concept when we went to leadership intensive and what, you know, we've got leadership intensive coming up at my shop. Yes, we do. And what I want everybody to hear is me say.
Lucas Underwood: When I talk about leadership intensive, this isn't like Michael formed all of these concepts. I mean, this is the science of leadership and the big ones that I, that stand out to me, right? I've had these really neat experiences over the past year. Yep. And you don't really know how strong you are until you have to go through something really tough.
Lucas Underwood: Sure. And so I've been through some tough things over the past year and one of them was taking over a business that was devoid of culture. Right. It was a toxic culture. Yep. And stepping into that business, the thing that I could see the red warning sign on the wall that was flashing.
Lucas Underwood: Meltdown. Meltdown. Right. Like, what was it? Well, it was that we had told people. That we were gonna do something. And we didn't do it. And you didn't do it. Right. Right. Leadership is trust earned through repeated behavior. Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. And going on a journey. So it can't be about me.
Lucas Underwood: You know, the Tim Kite video that I love so much, he talks about big ego and strong ego, and he said, strong ego is not bad. Big ego is about you. Strong ego is about them. That's called servant leadership. That's right. We have a responsibility to our people. Right. And see the automotive space has this concept about culture.
Lucas Underwood: That it's, well, the culture is either them winning or me winning. No, absolutely not. The culture is do what's right for human beings. Yes. And when you do what's right for human beings, they'll do what's right for you. Lemme
Michael Smith: this. Exactly. No. Let me broaden this. It's an abundance versus a scarcity model, right?
Michael Smith: Yes. It's a philosophic model about what the world looks like, and the reality of it is, and I'm gonna just tell you straight up, and people can say, what the hell are they talking about? If this is, we live in an abundant universe. If you do the right thing, you can generate win wins. All the way around and make all the money you'll ever need, have all the influence you'd ever want.
Michael Smith: And in fact, the people who can take this as far as they can, you have a handful of people who play the mean game all the way to the top, and eventually they fall. If you do this right and you live in a world of abundance and you lift people up and you do the right thing by customers and you don't shortcut the corners and you don't lie to your parts companies, all the stuff that we know how to cut corners and do, by the way, our industries.
Michael Smith: Pretty known for that out there in the world. Yeah. And so it causes our customers to walk in the front door kind of like this. They're not sure on go, they can trust us. Right. The whole idea that if we live in abundance instead of scarcity, there are don't have to be losers. Everybody can win. All of a sudden you start winning more.
Michael Smith: And people come to you and the people who believe that come and they bring more with them and they give you more for free because it goes along with the joy they're having, being a, and I'm not blowing smoke at you, Lucas. The high performance companies are loyal at the employee level like you've never seen before.
Michael Smith: Team members do not, you know, they look up and they go, you know, with all the foibles around here, 'cause nothing's. Perfect. I can't imagine a place that I could go that I have the kinds of relationships, the kind of a culture, the kind of opportunity that I have here. And you know what that draws from a customer standpoint.
Michael Smith: The loyal brand ambassadors in your market that also look for that from their provider of services, who can they trust? How come they know they can trust you? 'cause you all trust each other. Yeah, because you do the right and they can see it. And they can see it. They feel it sense when they walk in the front door.
Michael Smith: There's abundance everywhere. So I'm not that. It's a huge baseline concept and a scarcity centric industry, which I hate to say it, that's what it's historically,
Lucas Underwood: right? Absolutely. You're a hundred percent right. And you know, I developed a really unique culture here in the shop. Much of it by accident.
Lucas Underwood: It was that I just. Acted as I believed. Right. And I tried to do what was right for other people. I had this really neat experience, and I know you know a little bit about this, but I had this neat experience where somebody else had come into the culture and was working in the shop and they were in kind of a leadership position.
Lucas Underwood: And the team eventually came to me and said, Hey bud, like this isn't working right. This is antithetical to who we are. Yep. And I remember a time when that wouldn't have happened. Everybody in the shop would've shifted. Right. But instead, what do we do? We take a whiteboard and we go down that whiteboard and we write down like each person's name, and we say, all right, who are three people that inspired you?
Lucas Underwood: Who are three people that drove you and that you look up to? Tell me who those three people are. Okay, now gimme three things about those people that stood out to you. And guess what we did? We compiled all the way down this list, and we came back and said, this is our culture because this is what we believe.
Lucas Underwood: These are the things that are important to us, and we're all fairly in alignment. With the things that were important to us. Yep. This is why it stands out to us. Yep. And so we came back to that, right? We came back to that sheet of paper and they came to me and they said, Hey, I know you're trying to make this work.
Lucas Underwood: Something's not working. Something just doesn't feel right. Let's sit down and talk about this. So as a team, we sat down and we said, this doesn't align here and this doesn't align here. And this doesn't mean that person's bad. Doesn't mean that's a, a unworthy human being or something like that.
Lucas Underwood: It's that the culture saw that it wasn't the fit for this shop. It wasn't the fit for this business. Yep. Now, previously that would've been on my back. I would've been sitting there going, oh man, is this what I should do? Should I do this? Should I not do this? Maybe I'm missing it, maybe I'm that. But when the team as a whole comes to you and says, Hey, this isn't working, and let me show you why.
Lucas Underwood: That is a different world right there.
Michael Smith: See, look, let's talk value for a minute and I wanna build on what you said about collaboration. I wanna pull that out of the stories that you just told are rich in collaboration, right?
Lucas Underwood: Yeah.
Michael Smith: One of the things that'll cause an owner, an investor owner, to pay the more to you for your shop then they would pay for another, is if they can find.
Michael Smith: Collaboration. The reason being, look, here's the deal, right? How many times in our industry have we said, are you working on your business or in it? Like, I mean, if I hear that one more time, I'll fall asleep, right? But the point of it is like, what does that mean? And a lot of people are like, well, I, how do, I mean, I guess I work on it 'cause I show up and work in it every day.
Michael Smith: I don't know. What are you talking about? Here's a way of looking at it. If you work. You're up to your eyeballs in operations and decision making, there's not much collaboration because you are the answer person and there's a dopamine hit that goes with that, like playing video games. It's like, Woohoo, isn't this fun?
Michael Smith: I get to be the answer person. Yeah, that's great. Except guess what? I can't sell it to anybody else. I can't have a life goes. Well, the thing is, the new owner's gotta replace you with another answer person, and that's expensive. And so the value's not there and you don't get as much for your company. So we just pause there for a second, right?
Michael Smith: How do you break that cycle? You start asking people, gee, instead of answering their question, these are simple things, right? What do you think we should do? Oh, no boss, I came to you. 'cause I don't know the answer. It's like, yeah, I know that and I have ideas, but I wanna start with, what did you do already?
Michael Smith: What are you thinking? What might be an answer? It's like, well, and then here's my point. The first time it's. Awkward as can be. Second time, they kind of know you're gonna do it third time. They're starting to think about the answers before they get there. 'cause they know, you ask them, there is no fourth time.
Michael Smith: Yeah. Because the fourth time they're like, he's gonna make me answer this anyway. Why don't I just go do it by myself? Try or ask Bob in the shade in the bay next to me what he thinks I should do. And then we, and here's the point that's working on your business, not in it. Right. You get everybody doing their jobs as well as they can.
Michael Smith: They become learning beings. They're thinking for themselves. You are not the answer person. You are not the problem solver. You, of course, you have to solve some of the bigger problems, but the reality is you're empowering your people. Again. Win-win. They become stronger professionals. Their confidence level goes up, their self-esteem goes up.
Michael Smith: Then you give them your others' esteem. The team starts to support each other. There's collaborative conversation continuously. One of the marks, there's many marks of a high performance culture. One of them is collaboration affiliation. It's the fact that people work positively and well together for their own and for others in the group success.
Michael Smith: Yeah. So think about your culture as you're listening to this. Do you have a lot of affiliation and collaboration, or not too much at this point? If the answer is, eh, some, or gee, not as much as I'd like. You can build that proactively. You can put that into place intentionally. There's things that you can do.
Michael Smith: Yeah. Right. A humanistic, encouraging culture. How much trash talk do you guys have in your shops? Right? Oh, well that's the culture of the industry. It's like, I don't want to hear that from you. Do you realize every time I sarcastically. Say something negative to you, it goes into your brain. And unless you say to yourself in that moment, I don't accept that it goes into your self-esteem tapes and gets added to the negative list.
Lucas Underwood: Oh, that's so true. That's so true. It's so fun to, and well,
Michael Smith: that's just how we are. We're sarcastic. We tease each other. It's like, you're the dumbest guy I've ever seen. Oh no, you're dumber than me. You know what? Stop that stuff because that's not encouraging. Positive top cultures are encouraging and these are the things we can learn, right?
Michael Smith: And get better at Lucas. Go ahead, brother.
Lucas Underwood: Well, you know it, it's funny because I've been sitting down with part of the team that's coming to leadership intensive at the shop and folks listen, you guys be asking questions, right? Drop some questions in here. I've got some I'm gonna answer here in a minute.
Lucas Underwood: You know, here's one of the things I'll tell you about that is I've been reading through that book. And I had an incident the other day where I was talking to somebody, I was saying something and they got really upset and they got really frustrated really quickly and I thought, okay, how about just stopping right now and seek first to understand before we go any further with this, let the situation calm down a little bit.
Lucas Underwood: Let's understand. And it connected to me a little bit because it's something that I've been through. I remember when I was little. If I grabbed a bag that was too small for the sandwich and I put the sandwich in the Ziploc bag, I'd get fussed at for putting it in the too small of a Ziploc bag.
Lucas Underwood: If I got a bigger Ziploc bag I'd get fussed at for putting it in too big of a Ziploc bag, you're wasting a bag. Right, right. Like what I was I couldn't win. And I said to him, I said, Hey, listen, I don't understand why you got so upset. They said, listen, from the time I was very little, I couldn't do anything.
Lucas Underwood: Right. Right. And I constantly, like when somebody says something, I didn't do something right. It's visceral. It comes out before I even realize I've said it. Yeah. Before I've done it. And if we do that to our children. We also do that to our team. Now I pick on my team too, but I also like, we have a very haha laughing, joking team.
Lucas Underwood: Yeah.
Michael Smith: Yeah. But let me say this too though. I know I got, it's in here because every time you say something like that, I know you, you're thinking I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I'm gonna, right. And then next Michael told probably not to
Lucas Underwood: do that.
Michael Smith: I'm gonna do it anyway. Just don't tell him.
Michael Smith: You're on the road, you're almost at the end where you won't do
Lucas Underwood: it
Michael Smith: anymore anyway.
Lucas Underwood: Right. So there you go. That's it. That's it. Well, I'm gonna jump in. I want to answer a couple questions now. These are more automotive questions, so if you want to put your opinion, your 2 cents in here, be my guess. But I'm gonna jump in and answer.
Lucas Underwood: I don't
Michael Smith: answer car repair questions, that's for darn sure. So,
Lucas Underwood: And so the first one is when doing digital vehicle evaluations, do we estimate everything that we find and in my shop, yes, we do. There's some variables to that. There are a lot of cases where shops will not do that. They may only do red, they may only do red and yellow.
Lucas Underwood: They may not do things that are coming up in the future, that kind of thing. For me personally, I do this for a very specific reason. It is a lot of workload on the shop, but my reason for doing this is liability, because if they decline that. That's one thing. If I said, Hey, you need to do this, but I never told 'em how much it was and proposed a potential solution to their problem, then it's not documented anywhere that, that I said, no, I don't wanna do that.
Lucas Underwood: I don't wanna fix that right now. So if there were to be a potential legality issue, a liability, something like a litigation because they got in an accident and their insurance, like they don't really care that you told them about it. Insurance wants to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, you gave them a potential solution.
Lucas Underwood: And you weren't responsible at that point, right? They said no. So that's the reason that I do it in my shop. Quality control process is the other question also from er auto Diesel Tire.
Michael Smith: Lucas, can I interrupt you for one second? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I wanna add a trust psychology component to what you just said before you do the next one.
Michael Smith: Of course, think about being a customer and you walk into, get some service done and they're. A person across the desk from you says, listen, you came in to do one, what we would call in a DVI red thing, and we have three more red things to show you. And what does that say to them? If they trust you, you're sort of rocking that trust and squeeze a little bit.
Michael Smith: If they don't trust you, they feel like what? They're being upsold. Yeah, so then if you do the reds and the yellows, right? It's like, well, this is stuff that we have to do later. They feel like they're being set up for the next time. When I talk at the leadership intensive about customer component near the end of the program and we talk about it, we talk about building a stewardship relationship with your customer over time, and the stewardship relationship includes the things that are going well.
Michael Smith: The things that are not going well and what do we need to do in the future to be more successful together? Right? We joke around in psychology, it's the poop sandwich. What's going well is the happy bread. There's a little poop in the middle. What's not going well? And then the happy bread on the end is what can we do in the future to make us more successful in the past?
Michael Smith: Yes. When you do all three red, yellow, green and you say to them, look, the green's the good stuff. This is, you know, cars fall apart over time. That's what a car does. You got some great stuff going here. These things we looked at, they're in good shape. That's a good feeling, right?
Lucas Underwood: Yes.
Michael Smith: Then you get into the red and the yellow stuff.
Michael Smith: It's like, here's the red, now here's what the red issues are. You've moved into the, what's the scary little bit of a, you know, uncomfortable part. In the middle of the conversation, the end of the conversation comes back to the list of the reds and yellows and the greens. And saying, look, here's what I, we recommend we do.
Michael Smith: Let's do the red stuff. Now let's keep an eye on the yellow stuff so when you come in next time. Exactly. Nothing's gonna sneak by all of us and make you unsafe or have something catastrophic happen and the green stuff, we're gonna keep watching that and it starts to turn yellow. We're gonna do our best to keep as much green as we can.
Michael Smith: That's the FU in positive conversation. So you're doing that when you present all three? Yes. With the full psychology of. Positive and positive out the ugly, costly stuff they don't wanna deal with is in the middle, but it's sandwiched relationally. And the last thing is because they've got the list of all three layers, they can see that you're being full disclosure with them.
Michael Smith: Yes. And they have more trust doing something moves from yellow to red, that you're tracking it and it finally has moved. It's not just this red surprise or the price that goes with it. That's a. Hit on their credit card. They didn't want to have based on where they're going on the weekend or some such thing.
Michael Smith: So, but I just wanted to add this psychology to it. All three of those. I love it. Very powerful system.
Lucas Underwood: I absolutely love it. And that's what I believe as a automotive service industry that we need to be doing. We need to be advocates, right? We need to be there as service to them and be an advocate.
Lucas Underwood: We, we call them service advisors. What does that mean? You're giving advice, you're advising. Right. And I think that's something that we often miss. And again, I, that's my thing with just doing reds. That's my thing with just doing what they came in for. I'm not providing them a full picture. I'm not being their advocate.
Lucas Underwood: Now if you make that about a sales process, right, that they'll pick up that you made that about a sales process. And I catch flag. People are like, oh, of course you do that for sales. No I really don't. I. I am just a little bit of a softed soft-hearted guy, and I don't like it when people fuss at me.
Lucas Underwood: So I like to be able to say, I understand you're really frustrated, but I did tell you about it right here. You know what I mean? Like, I like that. It makes me feel better. I like people to like me. I can't help myself. There's also a question about the quality control process. And in our shop, what we do is we're a little bit extensive about quality control, but we build a model.
Lucas Underwood: This designed around a very unique client experience, right? We are extreme hospitality, unrealistic, or unreasonable hospitality is what we offer in my shop. And so they get cookies when they pick up and they get, you know, the warranty card and all the information, and we pick 'em up and we deliver 'em the whole nine yards, vacuum and clean the car.
Lucas Underwood: Our quality control process is 10 miles by a quality control technician. They drive it. They go out, they check the fluids, they make sure everything looks good. They visually inspect the work the technician did, and then they take it on a 10 mile test drive. They bring it back. If the weather's nice, they wash it.
Lucas Underwood: The weather's not nice. They just go right into the bay. They vacuum. The front passenger compartment out. They put the cookies in, they wipe everything down. They recheck the wheel toque the whole nine yards. Now a smaller shop, that's gonna be very difficult because that's such a large piece of your gross revenue going to a porter that's doing that type of work.
Lucas Underwood: And so in some cases it might be that you have a technician who does some type of quality control process and it's never the same person rechecking that job, right? Somebody else needs to drive it. When we first started this process, I was quality control. So they would do the work, I would take the car and drive it.
Lucas Underwood: They hated that. They thought that was absolutely terrible. They just thought that I was a bit of a perfectionist. I don't know what to say to that. Like of course I want the cars. Perfect. Right? They were built perfect when they came out. Why can't they be, don't look at me like that Michael. Let's see here.
Lucas Underwood: I wanna answer these last little questions 'cause we're running low on time here. We keep getting calls for alignments from people that either do the work themselves or had another garage do the work, but we don't have an alignment machine. We've taken a couple and they've been a lot of work, very little money.
Lucas Underwood: We're thinking about not taking them at all. Thoughts on this or a different way to handle these situations. If you don't have an aligner and you don't have someone locally that you can sublet with that, that sets it up. I probably just would not take those jobs on. If I am not the one providing that service and all they want in alignment, I'm gonna recommend the shop down the street.
Lucas Underwood: If I'm doing work on the car, I will sublet that alignment out. I'll handle all of it in-house so I can ensure it's right. I can ensure the steering wheel straight and that we got all the bolts tightened back and that they're marked and we know that it's driving like it's supposed to. So we don't have an issue.
Lucas Underwood: I can check the alignment sheet just to make sure the numbers are actually right on it. And so that would be in-house. If it is anything else, I am absolutely sending it out. If another shop's doing the work. Probably not. I'm probably gonna say, Hey, I'm really sorry. We're just really busy right now.
Lucas Underwood: 'cause it turns into a mess. It turns into a mess every single time. Probably better off, 'cause I mean, you're not really gonna see any gross profit per hour if. From that. So it's a, it's kind of a loss leader. And then the last one, before Michael and I jump back into the conversation here how do you feel about loss leader specials, oil changes, alignments, tires?
Lucas Underwood: We can't charge enough to make good gp but we do use them to generate more sales repairs. I know that is a method that's been used for this, the industry for years and years. I don't believe in operating that way. I do run specials from time to time, but they're the same price that they would normally be in my shop.
Lucas Underwood: They're not loss leaders. And really my reasoning behind that is, is because I want to serve the client who wants to buy what I sell. And if it takes those discounts to bring them in the door, I have found, for me personally, they're not really a good fit for us, but we also curated a very unique experience for our guest, and that is just kind of part of that discovery conversation.
Lucas Underwood: Part of that barrier of entry into the shop is that we don't want the wrong people into the shop. That's not saying people who are looking for a cheap oil change or bad people or anything like that. It just doesn't fit my model. Now, I will say this says that we can't charge enough to make a good gp.
Lucas Underwood: I'm gonna tell you something, and Michael you tell me from your perspective what you think about this. I think as long as our industry is focused on competing on price alone, it's in trouble. Because I know folks that work in the corporate office at a massive national tire chain, and I know what they pay for the same tire that I buy.
Lucas Underwood: I asked them to look up a Continental the other day. The number is unbelievable. They can be making 60% if I'm selling that tire at 10%. And so if we're trying to compete on price alone, and that's what's gonna drive people into our shops. Long term, I don't believe that's sustainable because they can lower their price and still make 30% gross profit.
Lucas Underwood: I'm still over. I can't lower my price anymore. Somebody will always beat me on price. Michael, how do we handle that?
Michael Smith: No. I'll throw the, I'll add to this in, well, in business school we, in microeconomics, we studied this very question, and the question is, do you compete on value or do you compete on price?
Michael Smith: And you know when the professor stands up and says, the teacher says, what do y'all think? You know, half the classes we have to compete on price. 'cause price too high. People aren't gonna come. The professor leans forward and says, you realize only one. A company in a given market can be the winner. Yep. In the low price game.
Michael Smith: And the low price winner also has the lowest margins in town too. And everybody sits back in their chair and goes, oh yeah. The best way to do this is to have a value proposition that draws a customer that will pay more because of the value proposition and get away from competing on price. Now, if you carry that into this loss leader question, then you know, when we do the high performance.
Michael Smith: Customer stuff at the end of the leadership intensive, and we do it in our high performance group, we talk about LTV, the lifetime value of a loyal brand ambassador customer. And so what Lucas was talking about was, Hey, look, let's be differentiated in building a customer base that's. Days and grows in trust and brings us more, and we charge them the right price, but we give them the best value for that price that they can find anywhere.
Michael Smith: And guess what? Now you're not working on lost leader stuff to get new bodies walking in the door. And you know why? Because loyal brand ambassadors, that's what they do. They're your ambassador. They bring people like them who are value oriented and refer them into your shop, and you'll become less dependent on churning new clients into your system than you will holding on to the top performing clients that you have.
Michael Smith: So this question will fade over time. And the real message, I wanna join you in Lucas. Don't play the low price game. That's a losers game. Absolutely first
Lucas Underwood: game. A hundred percent. And you know, one, one of the first epiphanies I had in, in this aspect, I'll never forget it was a really eye-opening experience where a STA second year I've ever been, I encouraged a lot of people to come and I had a vehicle full of people and I said, Hey guys, tell you what, I'll buy dinner.
Lucas Underwood: So look, somebody just picked somewhere to eat. Nobody would pick. So I just turned my phone over, said restaurants and said Somebody tap the screen. They tapped the screen. Now, at the time I was old country boy, right? I'd never been anywhere. Nice. And they picked Ruth Chris. And so I roll up in this place.
Lucas Underwood: One guy's arguing about having to take his hat off. Here I am with these big greasy technicians. We're going into this super nice restaurant and we're sitting down and we're eating. And the guys waiting on our table and he said, oh, you guys are car guys. Oh, I love this and I love this. And he starts talking about Corvettes.
Lucas Underwood: And they said, how do you know, how do you know about that car? That a Z oh six, that's a really nice car and pro charged and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, oh yeah, that's mine out there in the parking lot. And the guys all turned around and looked at him and said, do what? You're a waiter.
Lucas Underwood: He said, yeah. He said, I cleared $140,000 waiting tables in this place. I said, there's enough people willing to spend that on food. That a 20% tip gave you $140,000 last year. He said, this place is packed seven days a week. He said, you make as much money as you want. If you wanna work every single night, you can work every single night.
Lucas Underwood: You make as much money as you want. And I said but like they, they'll come in here and spend this all the time. He said, yeah, we've got regulars that come in here every Friday night. He said, just because you see money as this, you know, you don't have any of it. And so you think, oh my gosh, that's really expensive.
Lucas Underwood: He said, these other people, they don't see it like that. They just look at it and say, yeah, it's a meal, it's dinner. It's not that big of a deal. And that woke me up to the fact that my perspective in a lot of ways was holding me back because I had in my head what value was. I'd never seen it through anybody else's eyes.
Michael Smith: Yep. I'm gonna throw this out there. It tied to our conversation, we talk about value propositions. You have to have a better value proposition. When I started in this industry, I was in front of 70 owners in a room and I didn't know the industry yet. And I said, okay, that, let's talk about unique. Value propositions.
Michael Smith: They said, who's got a unique one and somebody put their hand up. I have a 36,036 month warranty. Okay. I wrote it on a whiteboard. Anybody got a better one? I got a 48. Right? We went through this whole thing. How many people in the room have one of those and they put on some form of a warranty, like everybody in the room put their hand up.
Michael Smith: I took my pen and I drew a line through it. Said, what's another one? We went all the way down the list with this, right? And what I wanna say to the listeners is this, you're not losers if you play the industry traditional game. I said, it's a loser's game. It doesn't mean you're a loser, it means it's a losing game.
Michael Smith: Right? What is your unique value proposition? Amen. I don't know. And it's like I'm two miles away from the next guy and all the people in my neighborhood come to me and I have a warranty from my parts company. And you know, and it's like, okay, so if we standardize everything, we're all doing exactly the same way.
Michael Smith: Yep. So what's unique about you? And then people's faces kind of go blank, right? Right. That's a hard question. That answer. That answer is the answer that allows you to play the value proposition game instead of the. The pricing game. Right? A hundred percent. And I will throw out a couple of ideas. If you have a company that stands for something, stay with me.
Michael Smith: Guys more noble than the rest of the industry. Yes. That's unique in our industry. If you have a high performance culture where people on your teams knock themselves out to make sure your customers are thrilled when they walk out the front door in relative terms, that's a unique. Value proposition. Yes.
Michael Smith: The human stuff is unique when you dial it in and get it right, because our industry hasn't done that incredibly well on average.
Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. So if
Michael Smith: you think uniqueness in terms of my SOPs are tighter than yours, you're on pretty rocky ground at that point. What's a good enough SOP one that works, right?
Michael Smith: So is there any uniqueness in there? You see where I'm going with this, right? Stay away from pricing as a competitive edge and stop and say. Legitimate question. Yeah. What do, or what could we do better than the people that we would consider our local competitors and soak in that for a while. The initial question is, gee, I don't know.
Michael Smith: It's like, good. Then go home and think about it. Let this wake you up at two in the morning. Have a beer on a Friday night thinking about it. Get up and have coffee at five in the morning, whatever your cycle. Thinking is put that back on the table again and go, what can I do? Or what do we do? What can we become that's unique in this marketplace?
Michael Smith: And that's what you take to the market. And that reduces the pricing pressure discussion, right? It's just like now people come to you for that and that's
Lucas Underwood: when owning a business gets fun again.
Michael Smith: Yes, it does. That's when
Lucas Underwood: owning a business gets funnier. Absolutely. Right? 'cause now we have something that we can target.
Lucas Underwood: Right. Because as an owner, when we get, as an owner, when we get to a certain point, it's like, we don't have a target. We don't have a goal. We don't have a, what is it, Jordan Peterson says, human beings are focusing creatures. We don't have a focus. Right. And so that gives us the focus. We had one more question.
Lucas Underwood: I know we're out of time. Michael's gonna kill me both Michaels might kill me. How do we prepare for the future turndown that's being predicted? I'll be honest with you, I think the automotive service industry fares very well in turndowns. Like we might see. But if you really look at the numbers, right?
Lucas Underwood: Yes, credit card debt is really high and delinquencies are high and card debt delinquencies are high. But the reality is the market's actually still pretty strong there. There's some softness in a few areas, but it's unbelievably strong. And those who know the market right now are saying, holy cow, how is this possible?
Lucas Underwood: It's still going up. So I mean, it was up this morning before we got on here. So I think that there are gonna be weaknesses in the market, in areas, and I do believe that the consumer is highly pressured right now. But I think that if you focus on the fact that more consumers are going to be utilizing your services as opposed to replacing automobiles, and you're creating a very solid experience and offering them the tools and resources they need to make this work, I don't think you're gonna slow down.
Lucas Underwood: You might slow down some, but that's in marketing, right? Make sure you're working your marketing, make sure you're calling your clients and checking on them. But there again, Michael. The reality is we gotta make sure the business is profitable. Absolutely. 'cause there's gonna be rainy days no matter.
Lucas Underwood: And the goal is not to say, oh, I can't afford to slow down. The goal is to say, I've got six months of opex in an account. If it slows down, let's just hope it doesn't last more than six months.
Michael Smith: No, that's right. And let me tell you one of the things about this industry. I grew up in the big firms, right?
Michael Smith: 50 60 industry verticals I was a part of. This was the 51st or whatever. This one is known for this. It's not recession proof, which some people will say, but it is recession resistant, meaning that when things go down deep, we go down, but we don't go that deep. So what can you do to be prepared? Make sure you understand, and I'll just give you some ideas, right?
Michael Smith: Make sure that you know what your your variable expenses are. The fixed ones are fixed based on the work that's gonna go down when the work goes down. But the variable expenses, what are you spending that you could maybe bank in the short run until it pops back up again? One, two, go after your customers that you have relationships with and talk to them about stewarding the downturn, say to them.
Michael Smith: What can we do to get through this together? How can we help you? I know shops that do as well in recessions as they do in the high times because they reach out to their customers and say, let's manage the recession together. How can we keep you on the road? What do you need for us to do? And people will bring their credit cards and get work done that they were putting off because they have time to do it now.
Michael Smith: And I'm not blowing smoke at you. This is, it's an amazing conversation we have with people. Go back to the, we're helping you to get as much value out of your vehicle as we can. Let's monitor this in these value tough times and make sure we're beside you. And business can actually go up rather than go down.
Michael Smith: So it, it's an interesting industry that we have. Right? Plus, not to mention the fact that when times are tough, people buy fewer new cars and they tend to hold on to the used ones longer, which is also in our favor. Amen, sir. Our favor. So.
Lucas Underwood: Amen, sir. Well, Michael, thank you for being here. Thanks to all of our wonderful listeners and commenters for being here with us.
Lucas Underwood: They're gonna drop QR codes down at the bottom, and I would like, and I'm sure Michael would like to personally invite you guys, we're gonna hold a couple seats open to those who attend some of our digital stuff to the leadership intensive here at my shop. We're gonna do a lot of. Fun stuff. We might do axe throwing, we might do gym mining.
Lucas Underwood: We might eat ice cream, who knows? But it's gonna be a lot of fun. There is a mechanical bull. Michael's promised he's going to ride it in the cowboy mode.
Michael Smith: On slow. On slow, not cowboy mode. I'm not doing it.
Lucas Underwood: So we want invite you guys and just want to say thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being part of what the institute does and Michael Smith, thank you for being here as well, sir.
Michael Smith: It's my pleasure. My pleasure. 
Lucas Underwood: Yes sir. Be well. All. Have a good day y'all.

150 - Two Bays to Ownership: Alvin Lui’s Import Autowerks Journey

150 - Two Bays to Ownership: Alvin Lui’s Import Autowerks Journey
September 30, 2025 - 00:45:02
 
Show Summary:
Meet Alvin Lui, owner of Import Autowerks in Quincy, MA. He started in dealerships in ’99, opened a two-bay gas-station shop in ’09, scaled to a warehouse, and surprised his team with a new, owned facility two years ago. In this episode, Alvin shares how culture, training, and smart real estate moves shaped his growth, why he’s leaning into BMW/Mercedes with an eye on Tesla/EV, and the hard-won lesson to protect time with family. If you’re an independent shop owner who wants to evolve with technology, build a team that stays, and step into ownership (of your building and your life), this one’s for you.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Alvin Lui, Owner of Import Autowerks
 
Show Highlights:
[00:01:13] - Fall colors and family time set the tone as Jimmy and Alvin talk about seasons in life and business.[00:03:02] - Alvin’s origin story, from Lexus oil changes to a BMW culture that knew his name and built confidence.[00:09:39] - Startup phase at a two-bay gas station with a four-person team and 15 cars a day that forged processes.[00:12:16] - Leveling up to a 2,500 sq ft warehouse, installing lifts, welcoming a new baby, and managing a transition.[00:16:27] - Lease risk turns into ownership by purchasing a former Mercedes shop and surprising the team with a blindfold reveal.[00:19:41] - Positioning the brand on BMW and Mercedes while adding Tesla capability to serve younger EV-leaning clients.[00:22:02] - Hydrogen to hybrids, lessons from early experiments and why infrastructure and use case matter more than hype.[00:24:35] - Power plus practicality, the rise of 700 hp plug in hybrids and choosing drivetrains based on lifestyle, not trends.[00:27:34] - Move smart, not just fast, real estate timing, working on the business, and leveraging a 20 Group for playbooks.[00:30:50] - Build a life, not a prison, take at least three weeks off, invest in coaching, and protect family time because you cannot buy time back.
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Good morning, my friend. It's great to see you today or to be with you today. My name is Jimmy Lea. I'm with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. We talk about all things in the automotive aftermarket. About shops, the history where they are today, what's the future of where we're going?
Jimmy Lea: What do you see that future being so exciting. Can't wait to dig in deep with my guest today. My guest today is Alvin with Import Autoworks out of Massachusetts. Alvin, great to see you. How are you today, brother? I'm doing very well, Jimmy. Thanks for having me on this podcast. Oh, you're so welcome. And I love Massachusetts.
Jimmy Lea: I'm sure the colors are changing, the trees, the colors, the reds, the orange, the yellows. Are you seeing the same thing I'm seeing here in Utah?
Alvin Lui: Yes, we are getting the full chair. It's leave sign, change color. It is beautiful here in Massachusetts.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Do, have you gone around for any little road trips to look at the colors?
Jimmy Lea: Or is that just wallpaper for you?
Alvin Lui: No, we've been I think this weekend we're playing around with the kids to take up, take a trip, up to a little hiking path to kind of enjoy a little bit of nature, the fall nature.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Two weekends ago, we hit the peak of the fall season here in Northern Utah, and so we went up and drove the canyon.
Jimmy Lea: There were a ton of people out. Ton of people, because they broadcast it, they market it. Hey, this is the peak of the season. Come look at all the colors. So we did. We went the very next weekend, so last Saturday, they closed the freeway for the amount of traffic that was trying to go up the canyon.
Alvin Lui: Wow.
Alvin Lui: That's intense.
Jimmy Lea: That's intense. 
Alvin Lui: That's unheard of.
Jimmy Lea: It was unheard of, man. There were so many cars going up there. They closed it down. Just absolutely amazing. And these mountain roads that we're driving, I mean, they are barely a one and a half lane road and it's tight turns, tight corners. I was like, no, we're going home a different way because that was a little too tight.
Jimmy Lea: I don't wanna be there with everybody else. And it's, this Highway six is one of the most dangerous highways in the state of Utah. So yeah we try to stay off of that one. Anyways, let's get into talking about you, Alvin. Well, I'm so excited to, to talk to you and finally meet you. We've been friends on socials for a very long time.
Jimmy Lea: I see a lot of what you're posting about the Euros that come into your shop. And that's where I wanna start is where did you start? How did you get into this business?
Alvin Lui: I started the business, I started this field working for a dealership. We, I believe that goes back to about 2009, where there was about eight or nine of us working at a small old dealership building working on BMWs.
Alvin Lui: So, I got my foot landed in this business because of my father. So my father was a bartender in the, in a little town of, wakefield, Massachusetts. And what happened is he surrounded his life of a lot of car guys. I never really knew that. And usually he kind of, he would be like hanging out talking to guys that own independent shops, that own dealer shops that work in dealerships.
Alvin Lui: And one of the things how I started was you know, I just, I was young. I had. I had a passion for cars and I really liked it. I went to school for it and one of my first jobs I landed was working at a Lexus dealership, which didn't last very long. So because I kind of got bored of oil changes pretty.
Alvin Lui: So after that, the service manager brought me to BMW working for BMW. It was great. It was a really great culture. There was about eight or nine technicians back then, and what was really great about it was every day the boss would come in, he'll say hi to you, you know, it was really great.
Alvin Lui: He knew your name. Every Christmas we would get a nice package from him, you know, it was awesome. So, so that's how I got into the business. And then about. 10 to 10 to 11 years later I decided to go on my own and I decided to go on my own. And then we started off at a small gas station, two big gas station.
Alvin Lui: So that's where the name came up in, put Auto Works because I like working on the Japanese cars, but then I still kind of had more of a love with the BMWs the German car engineering. I felt that the end a really great product and
Jimmy Lea: yeah,
Alvin Lui: What really helps with, I think with the business is the service, the customer service behind it.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, it totally does.
Alvin Lui: Within, yeah within any product. Doesn't matter what it is. So, that's how I got my footwear in the business. And then after that. We moved the shop, we moved the shop two to three years later down the street. We stayed there for about, we stayed there for another, probably like another 10 years, 10, 11 years.
Alvin Lui: And then right now, two years, two years ago we had an opportunity to move one more time to invest in a property and start our own business with working on. A previous Mercedes-Benz shop, but right now we are currently working on BMWs and Mercedes.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, dude. There's so much to unpack there with what you've been through to get into the business because here you are in 2009, getting into the automotive industry.
Jimmy Lea: When the world, at that time, I don't maybe you weren't to where the world was shutting down. I was in the real estate business doing mortgages and the world had shut down. I had then opened a business doing yard care, handyman and house cleaning. And it was tough going man. Oh 9, 0 10, oh boy, it was tough.
Jimmy Lea: So you got in the industry and it's unfortunate. So that's the first thing I wanna talk about. I'm fortunate that here you are. Fresh outta school and the only thing they give you are oil changes and you've got more skills than that. So it's to the company culture that you were sequestered to.
Jimmy Lea: Oil changes only unfortunate you didn't leave them because of bad job, bad business, bad work. You love the work you left because of bad management. They weren't using you for what you could have done.
Alvin Lui: Yeah, I think culture was very culture played a very big role in where I worked at the dealership.
Alvin Lui: You know, I really missed the original culture where I originally started with back in 1999. That's when I started the car business. Oh, 99.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, 1999. 
Alvin Lui: I'm sorry. I started the business in 2009.
Alvin Lui: So that was I'm a been in the car business for about 26 years. So I went from 1999, worked at a dealership, and then I moved on my own in 2009. But one of the things that really pushed me to really start what I do was try to be, to build that culture. I think that was extremely important on. Why I wanted to do, why I wanted to do what I I am doing now and continuously 16 years later, I'm still working on it and trying to Yeah.
Alvin Lui: Perfect it. Having the right people in my team.
Jimmy Lea:  Oh, I love it. I love it. I love that you were, had a solid foundation there with the BMW. They built you up. They built you. They said hello. They built the company, they built the culture. You were more confident in your skills and your abilities to relate to others and do the work.
Jimmy Lea: So, ergo, here's your love and passion for BM BMWs.
Jimmy Lea: Yes.
Alvin Lui: Does that sound about right? And today I still love it. Yeah. I still love it. You know, still a great product. You know, one of the nice things is just to build it, is to build it with a great service. Really take care of people. That's what it's paramount. A business is about.
Jimmy Lea: It's paramount. Absolutely paramount. So when you started your own shop in oh nine and you were in the two bay at the gas station, how long were you there before you expanded or are you still in the gas station?
Alvin Lui: I'm still, I'm not in the gas station anymore. We were in the gas station for about two, I'll say no more than two years.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. Two years at the gas station. Okay. And so it, when you went into the gas station, was it just you or did you have employees with you? What did that look like for you? Yes, ma'am.
Alvin Lui: Oh yeah, I, when I started the, when I started the business I didn't go in alone. I had a family friend that went in with me.
Alvin Lui: He's no longer with us, but it was my wife. We had a technician I went to school with, and it was one, two, it was four of us. So my wife would just pick up the phone. She was like, info auto works. All she would is just take a message, say, Hey, this guy called you. Need this done. When can you get it done?
Alvin Lui: I said, sure, just bring it in. We would like load the place up with cars.
Jimmy Lea: My gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
Alvin Lui: So I'm imagining this gas
Jimmy Lea: station with like 15, 20 cars on the side. You've got two bays to get 'em all in and out of. Its a lot of pushing.
Alvin Lui: Yeah. I was young back then. I don't know how, if I were to do it again, I wouldn't know how I would do it.
Alvin Lui: I think back in the days we were. Probably cranking between two guys, maybe about 15 cars a day. Oh yeah. And it was insane. Dude. You were full flying. You were flying, dude. Oh my gosh. And yeah, it was young, full of energy. So it was it was it was a moment we always remembered. So
Jimmy Lea: yes.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. And you remember it fondly. Okay, good. Congrats. That's super awesome. And bless your wife for answering the phones for you and taking the messages. That's so cool. So two years, two and a half years, you're at the gas station. Now you move to a different location. What does that look like?
Alvin Lui: Yeah, so we had an opportunity to move over to a industrial warehouse. It was about. It was about 20, I believe it was about 2000, 2,500 square feet. And what the nice part was, it was a warehouse we could probably fit about. We were able to fit about 30 plus cars.
Jimmy Lea: Inside.
Alvin Lui: Yeah, outside.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, outside. Okay.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. Now, this industrial warehouse outside, did you have to convert the warehouse? Did you have to install lifts in the bays? Did you have to create all that?
Alvin Lui: Yes we did. We had to it was a, it was an old limo business that the guy retired and we were able to take it over and we ended up putting investing lifts in there, putting new lifts.
Alvin Lui: I think during that time, at the same time, my wife was pregnant as well, and our first son was arriving, so we were running, I was running two shops, building it. In the hospital? Yeah. With my son, my first son being born and opening up all at the same time. Oh my gosh.
Jimmy Lea: Talk about multitasking, dude. You were burning the candle from every angle.
Jimmy Lea: Oh and how's, so your son, how old is your son now? He is, I believe he's 14 years old
Alvin Lui: now. He's in high school. He just started high school this year.
Jimmy Lea: Congratulations. That's wonderful. Okay, so you're, you said you were running two shops. Did you keep the gas station and go into the warehouse at the same time?
Alvin Lui: No, we were running the gas station, so we had one technician at the gas station. Just finishing up all the cars as slowly, we started to progress into the other shop where I was at the hospital on a laptop, dispatching all the work. While the techs were fixing it, and then we just had a secretary up front just kind of closing the bills.
Jimmy Lea: Sure.
Alvin Lui: It was a big blur. Big, it was a very big blur. So, yeah, it was a very, it was a very memorable and also a very
Jimmy Lea: intense moment for me. Oh, big time. And let's talk about this limo business. Did you take over the limo business or did you shut that down?
Alvin Lui: No I the limo business was another entity.
Alvin Lui: They did, they left. They okay. We, they used to be there. Yeah. And then we just took over the, we took over the shop that they were in,
Jimmy Lea: and they didn't have any lifts or no scissor lifts or anything like that. They probably maintained their own vehicles in house. I'm guessing that's why they had a warehouse.
Jimmy Lea: Is it, is that right? Or? What were they doing?
Alvin Lui: Yeah. The limo business, all they had was flow jacks. That's how they were, that's how that guy, that poor guy used to work on his cars.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my
Alvin Lui: God. So it was all flow jacks. He had like nothing. It was that and a little craftsman compressor, so,
Jimmy Lea: oh my word.
Alvin Lui: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: So, okay. So he moves out. You move in 22,000, 2,500 square feet. How many lifts were you able to get inside of this warehouse space?
Alvin Lui: We had, we have about three lifts. We had about three lifts in there, and also like one, kind of like a standup bay, just kind of a blank bay. Yep. And then we, yeah, so we had also like a upstairs level that kind of, the warehouse had very high ceilings, so it happened, and it just had stairs that go up to like a
Jimmy Lea: mezzanine, think it was
Alvin Lui: like over three, three or 400 square feet office.
Alvin Lui: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. So, so now at this time, how many techs, how many. Service advisors who's working on the vehicles what does that makeup look like?
Alvin Lui: Back then we had, back then we had about four technicians. We had four technicians and two, two service advisors. I was part of that service advisor.
Jimmy Lea: Okay.
Alvin Lui: So, yeah. And then we had the tech for about. Most of the techs are still with us. We have, we had those techs for about at least five to six years. Nice. So most of the techs did stay with us.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. And is that where you still are today or did you move on from the warehouse?
Alvin Lui: We moved out of warehouse two years ago back in June of 2023.
Alvin Lui: The warehouse that we were work were at was up for sale and they wouldn't renew the lease. And thanks to my wife, she's probably gonna listen to this. She was on the laptop looking for real estate and then what happened is, the place we're at now, the guy that used to service Mercedes-Benz, he decide to retire.
Alvin Lui: And we approached him, sir, would you like to sell this property to us? And he said, yes. And then that's where everything just pretty much came together all at the same time. And we were able, we were very fortunate to be able to purchase this property. And one of the, and then that was two years ago, and.
Alvin Lui: We never told the employees about this. They knew that this, they knew that
Jimmy Lea: the warehouse was going away. The warehouse,
Alvin Lui: They knew the warehouse. They were trying to sell the place, but they didn't know what was going on. So, but in the background, me and my wife was searching for property, and then one day I sat down with the employees.
Alvin Lui: Hey you guys, I got something to tell you guys, right? You guys. You guys gotta be, you guys have to, I got surprised for you guys, but you guys have to meet up. So one day we took two cars and I said, but the thing is, I need to blindfold you. Yeah. All right. Because you guys can't tell anybody. So I took the whole crew, we blindfolded them and we drove across town.
Alvin Lui: 15 minutes, I think we almost got arrested. Everybody was looking. Everybody was looking at us. Everybody was looking at us because they looked like a kidnap pipe. There was two, right? Two cars, yeah, two cars back to back with adults blindfolded. Oh my gosh. Adults blindfolded.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You're looking like the mobs taking some blindfolded people out to give them some cement boots.
Alvin Lui: Yeah, it was it was all pretty. It was pretty exciting. And then and what we did, we sat them down and then we just took 'em open, had to open up, and I said, Hey guys, this is your new home. Surprise. They were shocked.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I bet they were so excited. I bet they were. So yeah,
Alvin Lui: they were, they was.
Alvin Lui: Yeah. So that's how we ended up here. The shop here right now is about close to four square feet. Not as much parking space, but it's a very, it's a very nice upscale, upscale shop. And what we do now is BMWs Mercedes. And because we're in the town of Quincy, Massachusetts now we are starting to tackle a bit of the Tesla markets Nice.
Alvin Lui: Of the future of auto automobile business because this world is turning gasoline and ev. So, and this is the future of the car business and I think it is one of the things I really like is to keep up with technology as an independent shop, to not fall behind and to always stay up to date with technology nowadays because this is where we are, especially with.
Alvin Lui: Of the younger clientele that we have. Yep. That's, I believe that's some of the direction we are moving forward with the automotive business.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So how you stay on top of that, Alvin, how do you stay on top of the new technology that's coming out, the new information? What do you do?
Alvin Lui: I, because obviously you know that we're like a PAC client.
Alvin Lui: I definitely stay on top of a lot of training. And a lot of stuff, especially being part of the institute we see the changes that go on monthly, every day. I read up a lot of I read up, I like to read up a lot of articles on how BMWs changing things. Mercedes changing things. And what's the difference between a plugin hybrid?
Alvin Lui: What's the difference between now with these newer generation cars and it's so many, there's so many alternative fields out there right now. It's, I mean, not all of 'em are here to stay, but a, I think a big majority of the key players like Toyota is gonna be staying. BMW is definitely gonna be staying.
Alvin Lui: Tesla, obviously they have their own little market share with the robo taxis. You know, it's, there's so much going on and we have, as a shop, we need to evolve into this kind of, we need to evolve into this, you know, we need to be there for our customers.
Jimmy Lea: Totally. I totally agree. I totally agree. So, with alternative fuels, where do you see things going?
Jimmy Lea: Do you see a future in hydrogen?
Alvin Lui: The hydrogen. That's a little tricky one because as long as there's the infrastructure. When I was training at BMW back in the early two thousands, they did introduce the hydrogen car. Yeah. They did talk about it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Alvin Lui: And I believe that hydrogen car traveled around the world.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, drove all the way around the world.
Alvin Lui: Yeah. It's been tested. It's been around for, I mean, hydrogen has been around for. A long time. You know, I built a hydrogen car myself too, when I was back at the dealership.
Jimmy Lea: Dude, you're such a nerd. Yeah.
Alvin Lui: That is awesome. Yeah. Such a nerd.
Alvin Lui: Yeah, but I just wasn't ever stable, so,
Jimmy Lea: but nothing like driving a little hydrogen bomb around everywhere. What are you thinking, man?
Alvin Lui: Yeah, it was a very cool experiment. It was a really cool experiment. I think I built the, I built a little Toyota that did like 50, about 50 plus miles per gallon,
Jimmy Lea: you know?
Jimmy Lea: Whoa.
Alvin Lui: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It's pretty cool. That is very cool. So you got 50 miles to the gallon on fuel or on the hydrogen, both. Right, because you need the gas to get it up to temperature, then you can turn on the hydrogen. Correct.
Jimmy Lea: Yes.
Alvin Lui: You need to, like, you need to tone down, you need to tone down the fuel trim, add the hydrogen.
Alvin Lui: It was some like crazy mess. There's a lot of trial and error with that. But yeah, I mean, if I think the future of cars, definitely there's gonna be many alternatives. Gasoline is definitely, I feel like gasoline is definitely gonna stay. Electric cars are definitely here to hang out.
Alvin Lui: It really depends on. I think it really depends on how customers drive the preference. Yes. If you're a city driver, electric cars are great.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love the Tesla for the city. I love love, love it for the city. Anything less than 200 miles. I am. I am in. I'll go. It's easy. Over 200 miles. Forget it.
Jimmy Lea: You gotta charge three, four times.
Alvin Lui: Yeah. Yeah. We have customers who say, oh, try go electric car. I was like, well, you know what? It really depends on your lifestyle. If you're a soccer mom running around with kids driving an electric car, yeah. That's not gonna happen. You know, it's, I think absolute is good for you.
Alvin Lui: We just talked about, we just talked about an hour ago with a service advisor talking about these newer cars with with electric motors. With these 700 horsepower cars out there that's coming out now, and the service lines, how'd it come out like that? And I say, well, you know what, now the Germans got it, man.
Alvin Lui: They got it. They take the VA motor, now they add the electric motor, and now you put a 75 mile range. Now you got like a 700 horsepower monster. And it's still, and you could drive it all around. So it's a little bit of gasoline, electric, you know, combined. And it's great.
Jimmy Lea: Wow. Wow. They're selling race cars out of the dealerships now with 700 horsepower.
Jimmy Lea: Holy cow.
Alvin Lui: Oh yeah. It's what people want. Everybody wants a fast car nowadays, and then they also have to be like, good on gas too.
Jimmy Lea: Dude, this is like, it's like the resurrection of the late sixties, early seventies when the muscle cars became popular. It is like a resurgence of those times.
Jimmy Lea: That's pretty cool.
Alvin Lui: Yes, it is. It's it's very interesting technology. It's definitely a lot to learn about right now, nowadays. There's so much changes. I think this is definitely the year to kind of see what's gonna happen.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Alvin Lui: The automotive market itself, I mean, it's, there's a lot of good things coming up.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, sure. Lot and
Alvin Lui: more choices of,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. Sure is that's exciting. Hey, now Alvin you've moved a few times now I'm counting that you were at the dealership Lexus and then BBMW. You were at the gas station, you were at the warehouse and you're at your current location. What advice would you give to people about making the choice to move?
Jimmy Lea: When do you say, okay, now is the time
Alvin Lui: when it's the time. It's about planning out. It's about real estate. It really, I guess it really depends where you are. I mean, it's really about, to me I feel like it's really learning about how to really work on the business, rather in the business. I'm kind of in the 50 50 stage now, but you know, you have to have, you have to have a lot of.
Alvin Lui: Like learning experience with this. You know, many shop owners are different. They, every shop owner goes through many challenges in their lives. I myself went through many challenges as well. The advice is definitely a lot of training, you know, especially joining a, my, my biggest advice is join a 2020 club.
Alvin Lui: That's why I would definitely. Say it's the best advice because there's a lot you can pick up on these things. You can, there's a lot of stuff you can learn from your peers, and you get to talk to people that owns property and say, Hey how did you know, how did you ever like get, how did you ever acquire property like that?
Alvin Lui: You know, it's insane amount of money, you know. You know, and they'll tell you their experiences. You get to learn, you know, like one of 'em, when I first joined the institute especially you know, I met some guy Jim, which I'm sure you know Jim. Oh, yeah, Jim. Oh, in New York?
Alvin Lui: Yeah. Island. So, you know, he expands the thing. He has opportunity. He had a great opportunity. Yes. He said, well, you know what, we just got a nice loan out there and I was able to acquire a property and many years after, this is how it is. So, and he owns it. Those are the one of the first members I met and really great guy and this, and also there's a lot of great shop owners out there.
Alvin Lui: So I would say one of my biggest advice is as a shop owner definitely invest and.
Jimmy Lea: Training. Yeah, you, not just technical training because that's what you're talking about, not just technical training. You need management training and communication skills and ownership skills and how to run a business, how to be a good leader.
Jimmy Lea: There's a lot of different training that can go in for what you're talking about.
Alvin Lui: Correct. There's a lot of pieces to that pie that you, you won't know until you kind of. Dive, get their feet wet, dive in there and experience.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, so true.
Alvin Lui: Just, yes. You know, just some people will say, oh yeah, it's too expensive.
Alvin Lui: It's not worth my time. But when you able to make that time, when you're able to, you know, dial in certain numbers when you're able to do certain things and you, you get to fall upon a lot of these things and. I've met many shop owners that been in the business for 20 years. It's like, Hey, I can't, I get a week's vacation.
Alvin Lui: I was like, yes, you can. You know? He's like, I'm always in the shop. I was like, no, you don't have to be in the shop. You just have to, you know, you have to just kind of step out a little bit and, you know, just try to invest in some of the training and you'll start seeing some of these advantages.
Jimmy Lea: Certainly is.
Jimmy Lea: And with the institute, what group are you with? With the institute? I am with Group six. Group six with Jennifer. Oh, nice. And big shout out to Jennifer. She does a phenomenal job in facilitating group.
Alvin Lui: Yeah, she does. She holds it accountable.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's good. Only
Alvin Lui: very accountable for a lot of things.
Jimmy Lea: So how many weeks per year do you feel like a shop owner should take a week off and go vacation and get away from the biz?
Alvin Lui: How many weeks per year? Oh, at least three weeks.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Alvin Lui: Yep. At least that's you have to, you, you built this business not to be, you built this business not to be always there.
Alvin Lui: You built this business to take care of your family.
Jimmy Lea: Exactly. You built
Alvin Lui: this business, make fine for your family.
Jimmy Lea: Yep.
Alvin Lui: Yep. So, and it's extremely. That what we are doing has a purpose.
Jimmy Lea: It does. It does that. It does.
Alvin Lui: Yes. It's the, one of the main purposes in life is to have a really great balance.
Alvin Lui: Yep. And especially also to lead, you know, I always push my, even with my employee, I push on, Hey, you guys gotta take a vacation, man. You know, car's always gonna be here, but you know, your kids are gonna grow. Don't miss opportunity.
Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yeah. Oh, I totally agree. Totally agree there. There's so much opportunity.
Jimmy Lea: There's so much that can be done. And I love your idea of three weeks a year, you, as an owner should be taking your family and go do a vacation. You started the business to work in the business. And the balance, I, I say that there's seasons because when you started Alvin, you had to go crazy fast.
Jimmy Lea: You had to really put your pedal to the metal and. Put it all out. You had to do that because that's what prepared you for where you are today. Somebody who is starting today could not step into the position you are immediately. They need time, they need training. They need time in the saddle. They need time to be able to develop their own process procedures to have a successful business.
Jimmy Lea: And so this is where you are able to give advice for those new owners to say. Definitely do this and definitely get into a group with training accountability as quickly as possible.
Alvin Lui: Yes, definitely. There's definitely no doubt about it. Even like, I think, I believe I've been with the group for about five years now, and when I first met, I remember when I first met the big man Cecil.
Alvin Lui: He is like, what was that book? I just have it on a tip of my tongue. How business run automatic, automated by themselves, you know? And I was like, yeah, I think I got this. I know what, I know everything. I know it, I know how to run it. You know, I can just like maybe read books. Maybe I can just like watch videos on how to do it.
Alvin Lui: But no, I didn't have it. I definitely didn't have it. As I, as time grew by and as I, you know, just like every business owner, you know, run into roadblocks. You know, like these groups, they help you out. Say, Hey, this is what happens when this happens. You know, what should I do? You know how to prevent certain things from happening so you don't kill yourself in a business.
Alvin Lui: And I've seen many small shops they just they just run themselves to death. And I don't wanna do that. That's not the purpose. That's.
Jimmy Lea: Nice.
Alvin Lui: You know, we're, yeah, we're in 2025 now. You know, we have all the tools, we have all the training, we have the, you know, we have Zoom calls with you.
Alvin Lui: You know, we can just connect across the world. We can, you know, there's so many million things.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Million
Alvin Lui: things that can, and just, you know, push us light speed ahead of everybody. I love it. You know, we have to take advantage of it.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. Oh, I totally agree. And you know, I feel like we learned more from our failures than we learned from our successes.
Jimmy Lea: Have you had any sort of a failure that turned into a very strong learning point for you?
Alvin Lui: Have I had any failures that I learned from us? Yeah. Try not to work so much. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You know, just, you know, just one of the things is
Alvin Lui: As I grew up, you know, my father was always working. I never got to see my father much. I mean, I'm pretty sure it was very normal during those days. And, you know, all he did was, you know, just work and provide, you know, but that, that, that failure led to, you know, my father getting, you know, my father had Parkinson's because of that, because he just kept working.
Alvin Lui: All he cared about it was just providing for the family. So that is something I learned. That is something I learned from, you know, my father left, you know, he is about 66 when he passed away. That was a big change in my life. Those are one of my biggest things I saw that I did not want to repeat.
Alvin Lui: So that's why I constantly do, try to continue to do what I do. Constantly try to improve on what we try to do here. Yeah. Not only myself, I also try to teach, try to pass this on to make sure my staff does the same. They see the positive side of this.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. That's beautiful. It sounds to me like you, you learned how to spell the word love.
Jimmy Lea: LOVE. You spell it? TIME. And if you could give anything you would have, give anything to have a few more minutes with dad. You would love to have that time with dad. And Dad taught you some very valuable lessons. One is hard work, provide for the family, but also dad, let's balance this with time.
Jimmy Lea: We want you, we need you, we need some time together.
Alvin Lui: That's right. You can't buy time. So that's one of the, one of the things my wife always reminds me, Hey, you know, it's time to go home, you know, we'll fix it. Figure it out tomorrow. Guess what? We can't buy time. So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. I
Alvin Lui: didn't
Jimmy Lea: come home because it'll still be here tomorrow.
Jimmy Lea: We still can attack this tomorrow, but right now it's time to go home.
Alvin Lui: Correct. So, so in the business, we just have to work smarter. You know, we have all the technology now to work on these cars, you know, and you know, we just, we still continue to do what we do. Good job. Provide for our customers, provide for our employees, provide for our family.
Alvin Lui: You know, that's what it's all about.
Jimmy Lea: So true. Thanks for sharing with me about your dad by pops. Yeah, that's cool. I appreciate that. Yeah. My, my dad taught us how to work hard as well. There was a summer that I shoveled two and a half tons of asphalt in about two and a half days.
Jimmy Lea: Teaches you hard work. This is an industry that's really hard work. Yeah. Yeah. That was really hard work. We were resurfacing an entire gas station, a circle K, putting down the asphalt for the, over the tanks. My dad was a general contractor specializing in fuel systems, so he would build almost all the gas stations in Las Vegas.
Jimmy Lea: My dad probably built
Alvin Lui: Oh, wow.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 28 years. He was in that business and we as kids, we grew up in it. That was. Well, we did. Yeah. We learned the value of hard labor and which is one of the reasons I love this automotive industry so much, is because this is an industry that knows how to work hard.
Jimmy Lea: They know how
Alvin Lui: yes we do.
Jimmy Lea: They know how to put down the head, put down your head and go to work. You got stuff that needs to be done. We gotta do it. This is what needs to be done. Let's go. I have yet to see anybody in this automotive industry ever throw up their hands and say, Nope, it's just too hard. I can't do it.
Jimmy Lea: Yes you can, especially Alvin with what you're talking about, getting into a 20 group, getting into a group of like-minded shop owners where we can share ideas and come up with the best result because we as shop owners, when we work together. We get the best results. You may have a mountain, you're facing a mountainous problem, a huge problem.
Jimmy Lea: You bring it to the group and the group says, oh, Alvin, dude we solved that last month. Here's the solution. Here's what my shop did. Here's what my shop did. Here's what my shop did. Now you've got three different solutions to this mountainous problem that you think you have. And very quickly that mountain becomes a mole hill and you step right over it and you just keep on trucking.
Alvin Lui: Yes, that, that's definitely spot on, Jeremy. You know, I think like a lot of shop owners do run this and stuff like this and it's all about learning. It's about taking time to learn about it. I mean, even with cars, you know, we run definitely the car business is it's extremely difficult. It is very high technology, but difficult and it's constantly changing.
Alvin Lui: It's only changing and it's only difficult is because you don't understand it.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Alvin Lui: Just like aliens. I just, that's what I tell people. It's just like aliens, you don't understand it. You're not gonna, you're not, you'll never will. You have to learn about it. This is how at least eng the engineers with all these European cars.
Alvin Lui: They say, Hey, this is how we built it. This is why we built it. And that's it. And once you take the time to learn it, like anything in life or. It processes, it's, it becomes easier and that mountain, you know, becomes a little small mojo. You just walk right over it.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it, man.
Jimmy Lea: Alright, I have a question for you. Final question. I, if you were to start your business today and you were your 21-year-old self again, and you were starting your business today, what advice would you give yourself today in starting your business?
Alvin Lui: Oh, I, a lot of advice. I'll be smacking myself many times on this one.
Jimmy Lea: Don't do this then don't do this, then don't do this and don't do that. I know you won't, but no, that's not what you want do. Okay?
Alvin Lui: One of advice is learn to make time. Definitely learn to make time. Make that time. I put it into high priority and coaching, coaching classes.
Alvin Lui: Definitely learn from the experts and become an expert yourself because you know that's one of the definite advice I would give myself, you know. We time goes by just really fast for everybody.
Jimmy Lea: It
Alvin Lui: does. And just like myself, I've been in this business for about 16 years and I've seen I've seen many outside struggles.
Alvin Lui: I have my struggles myself. Definitely biggest thing is I would say education. Doesn't matter what it is, education. I've always loved it. I'm very I really like the education with the cars. I love the technology. I would, if I was going back again first thing I would do, I would probably start the business classes.
Alvin Lui: That's why I would definitely start,
Jimmy Lea: you start the what? The business classes?
Alvin Lui:  Like the bus, like business classes, like coaching classes. I think that's the first thing. I would start first because I wouldn't make. So many of those common shop owner mistakes. That's what the first thing, that's the thing I would not do.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, Alan, that's beautiful, man. Yeah. 'cause there are easy mistakes that we're making all the time and there's other shop owners that have been there, done that they can help guide you through it. So get a coach. Get on the right path. That's right. Oh, that's beautiful. Alvin, appreciate you, brother.
Jimmy Lea: Appreciate your experience, your knowledge, your the path that you have traveled, the knowledge you have gained, the time that you make as a priority now for your family, for now and forever in the future. That's one thing I try to do as well, is anytime a kid's got a game, a concert a proposal, a presentation at school, talent show, whatever it might be, you be there, be present.
Alvin Lui: That's right. And it's really important because, you know, that's where all the memories are. Yeah. And by you can't memory. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Alvin, thank you so much brother. Appreciate you joining me today on the Leading Edge podcast. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute, and if you've got a few more minutes, head on over to we are the institute.com.
Jimmy Lea: We'd love to work with you. We'd love to lock arms with you to make sure that you don't get left behind. So if you're like Alvin and you are looking for that season and you're looking for that time to be able to spend with your family, come work with the institute, we're gonna help you build a better life, a better business, and a better industry.
Jimmy Lea: 'cause together we can do this. Thank you, Alvin. Appreciate you brother. Thank you very much. Shimmy. Thanks for.
 

149 - Designing a Self-Managing Shop and a Life You Actually Want, with Tracy Cotton

149 - Designing a Self-Managing Shop and a Life You Actually Want, with Tracy Cotton
September 18, 2025 - 00:43:56
 
Show Summary:
This episode features Tracy Cotton of Santa Cruz to talk mountain biking, mentorship, and building a self-managing Japanese-specialty shop. Tracy shares how a bankrupt dealership-adjacent shop turned into his business overnight, why he narrowed to core Asian makes, and how interviewing classic Toyota owners protects culture and margins. He digs into team structure, bonuses, and the autonomy that lets him step away for days without a call. The two unpack coaching that “hurts your feelings but tells the truth,” the BAR surprise visit his team handled flawlessly, and Tracy’s next chapter: rekindling passion, potentially selling to his leadership duo, and maybe coaching. They close with a big wish for the industry: unite independents under one strong voice and defend the right to repair.
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Tracy Cotten, Owner of Mick's Automotive 
 
Show Highlights:
[00:02:10] - Toyota T-TEN grad to shop owner after a sudden bankruptcy, buying the business for about $23K nearly three decades ago.[00:08:39] - From “we worked on everything” to a focused Asian lineup, and why Kia and Hyundai no longer fit his model.[00:11:22] - The interview policy for classic Toyotas, with a paid maintenance inspection required to ensure commitment and protect culture.[00:13:15] - Saying no to “PSS” cars keeps morale high, procedures consistent, and the brand promise intact.[00:14:24] - Six lifts in roughly 3,900 sq ft, landlocked in Santa Cruz, and zero interest in a second location by design.[00:20:45] - Delegation rhythm that grows a 21-year-old from apprentice to full tech while the foreman orchestrates workload.[00:21:35] - BAR shows up while Tracy is away, the team handles everything, corrects the ask, and documents the win.[00:28:50] - Team bonuses versus individual drive, attempts to nudge a steady 30–35 hour tech higher, and the tradeoffs of roster changes.[00:37:15] - A wish for one unified voice for independents, better technician economics, and a strong right to repair.
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Hey friends, good to see you. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Super excited to have you here with us today, and my guest today is Tracy Cotton. Tracy, how the heck are you, brother?
Tracy Cotton: Doing awesome. Doing awesome. Another beautiful day here in Paradise.
Jimmy Lea: It is. It is a great day, isn't it? Now you, we were just talking. You love mountain biking. I am a road biker, so I have my Marin. That I go for long rides on the bike. Me and Dave Cusa hook up every once in a while, go riding you and tsu. Did you guys go mountain biking here for a minute?
Tracy Cotton: Yeah, so he came up for the A SCC meetings.
We rode around here in Santa Cruz and then took off to Truckee and after the meetings, Truckee and Mammoth and went mountain biking and yeah, it was all good. All good time to get some sweat out. Pound the pedals so I don't pound other things, you know? Yeah. It was all good.
Jimmy Lea: Well, good. And how was the meetings?
How was the association?
Tracy Cotton: Good. I've got friends that have been trying to get me into it. I've kind of gotten out of going to training, meetings, groups and everything. Last two years. 'cause I've been in 'em since day one. Day one. And I just needed to step back and, you know, with my own thoughts.
They was good. It's good. It's, I'm thinking of joining it, you know, California needs more support, you know, so highly likely. I will.
Jimmy Lea: Well that's wonderful. You know, and it's great that you've been such an avid. Advocate for the industry and the association for so many years. I know it's not just been a few, it's been a lot.
And it's okay to take a minute to take a knee and say, Hey man, I gotta catch my breath. I need to take a break. Yeah. And do that. And as you come back in, realize where are those boundaries? When is it become too much? When, and you know, these things. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Well, Tracy, how did you get started, speaking of being in the A-S-C-C-A for so long, but in the automotive industry?
How did you get started in the automotive industry?
Tracy Cotton: Well I actually went to school to become a mechanical, what I call technician, which is, goes out in the field and builds what the engineers build, has engineering, you know, got engaged, dropped outta school because that didn't work. That fell through.
And had to get going something. And I'd been, I've never had a job out of the automotive field, gas stations, tire shops. I was a wholesaler to Napa for a while and said, Hey, I gotta do something with my life. And went to school. I actually got a grant or by the Toyota was one of the first Toyota T 10 graduates, way back when, you know.
Took off running with that. Moved to Santa Cruz and after the dealers, one of the guys that I bought my shop from was working at the dealer 'cause he did what a lot of people did was jump in headfirst into a shop, not knowing what to do and, yep. I he was a parts soul set. He was the parts manager, so he was going around to the dealers to help them.
Found me, stole me from the dealer. And then a year, just over a year later, he declared bankruptcy. Yeah. So terrible. Yeah, I was taken off on vacation. He called me two days later 'cause I was, it, I was managing, working on it and every, not, I wouldn't call managing it. I was running the day to day things and he's like, no, we're shutting it out.
I'm like, what? He's like, no, we're shutting it down now. Not while you're gone on vacation. So. Three days later I didn't go on vacation and me and my girlfriend stayed and three or four days later I basically bought the shop from the wholesale. This is, you know, and, you know, took off on vacation anyways 'cause I figured I wouldn't have time.
And, a week later I was running a shop, so, yeah. Oh, so you bought the shop you were working in? Yeah, well he declared bankruptcy and yeah, so we bought, you know, wrote everything out, wrote him a check. For the, what the, to satisfy the bankruptcy courts. And then wrote his mom a check for the business, so the bankruptcy court wouldn't take it.
And basically I got a established business for 2220 $3,000. But now, this was 28 years ago.
Jimmy Lea: Well, so translated maybe today it's $300,000, but still it's one heck of a deal.
Tracy Cotton: For the people that are looking to run a second or third shop to get an established shop, then yeah, this was, he established, you know, I knew the numbers.
Called my dad up and said, Hey dad, I'm, I've got this opportunity. I just bought a house. I go, I don't need the money, I just need the confidence. If I do need the money, I can come to you to borrow money. You know? And he said, yes. He goes, well, you gotta gimme. Gimme some type of outline. I, you know, back then put it on Word, sent it to him.
He is like, okay, take off. You know, and I took off running, you know, so, and then I started with. Business mentors from day one.
Jimmy Lea: Who were your mentors who helped you?
Tracy Cotton: Well, at first some guy that I fired because he just didn't understand things. And a guy named Mike Sers, which I believe passed away.
Yeah, he was in and stuff. And then I joined the World PAC groups. Right. Yeah. One meeting before Cecil took over. Oh. And I'd actually gone to a meeting with Cecil, one of the classes early on. And, you know, he was, you know, and then actually I think Cecil took over on the first class that's been 15 ish years ago.
So, yeah. And joined the world Pac business groups when it was way back way, way back when, you know. Yeah. And yeah. Took off running.
Jimmy Lea: So what did you think of Cecil's? Classes in the the World Pack group, the smart groups. I've heard mixed reviews, so I just wanna preempt that. You can say whatever you want.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. It got me where I am now, you know? Yeah. Congrats. I mean, Cecil's and no holds bar puts it out how it plainly, whether you like it or not. Yeah. But if I'm running a business and I need, and there's something going wrong and I'm not seeing it, I need to know that. So I don't know. I don't want to say I don't care how it's put, but I want it put, I don't want somebody holding back or anything because that's not what a coach is for, you know?
Yeah. So, yeah. He hurt my feelings multiple times, but you know,
Jimmy Lea: but you're stronger for it, right? Yeah. Is what I'm hearing.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. You know, at that stage, if you're running a business and you can't get your feelings hurt, then you Yeah. And it wasn't, it's not that. And it's, other coaches have done it too.
It's not, he didn't go out to hurt my feelings. Yeah. He put it plainly and my feelings were hurt because it was the truth, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, it wouldn't be, you know, like I said, if it wasn't for Cecil, and I don't wanna brag on him because I know this is, you know, through the institute. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be where I am now.
You know? My business wouldn't be where it is now. Now I had to listen to him and I had to do the work. Yes. But he gave me, made it easier, you know? Nice. To give me the information, you know, so, yeah,
Jimmy Lea: dude, that's extraordinary. And when you're just starting out, you don't know what you don't know.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Right. You know what you know. You know, there's things you don't know, and then there's things you don't know that you don't know. Yeah. And it's where a good coach is gonna be able to come in and help you navigate all that red tape.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. And get you to do the pri, the priorities, you know? Yeah. Not just get the low hanging fruit, but some of the harder fruit, you know?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. That's so good, dude. Oh man. I'm excited that you were able to work with Cecil and get things started. Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. And so when you started, what was the footprint of the shop? What did it look like?
Tracy Cotton: Well, it was, the guy was a do it all because he didn't know he came, the guy, the, he was the parts, whole parts and service wholesaler, a Toyota dealer.
And he did it all. I came in, he pulled me. I knew Toyotas, I was a Toyota Master Tech. I never. I'd worked at the gas stations and stuff like that, but I'd always just, I was a lube tech type thing. Yeah. If you wanna call it back then. Yeah. And so I worked on most everything, but as I got busier, I just made it Japanese and I just started cutting cars off, you know?
I worked on, you know, the Europeans here and there 'cause I could get it done when I wasn't so busy. Dropped them for just doing more Japanese, got my marketing going. I worked on American cars and then when I got busy enough I dropped them and then got busy enough. I dropped Mitsubishi, got busy enough, dropped a Suzu, you know, and you know, so now we just work on the main Asian cars.
And Kias. And Hyundais, and I think we're busy enough now that I'm probably gonna drop Kias and Hyundais. Just 'cause those customers, they're unique. When they have a unique problem they suck a lot of time and those customers don't want to pay. To get it repaired so we're, you know,
Jimmy Lea: properly, they don't want to pay to get it prepared, repaired properly.
Yeah. There you go. Looking there it's a totally different mindset. I totally agree with you. Yeah. My wife has a Lexus. What does it need? Okay, good. Let's get it done. Yeah. It, this vehicle is darn near in pristine condition. Yep. And it's about three years old and it's almost got 75,000 miles on it, so.
We drive it a lot, we take care of it a lot and it's in really good condition. So it's a different mindset. I totally agree with you in dropping Kia and Hyundai. Hyundai, yeah. It's different client, different mindset, different customer. Yeah. So you work on mostly Toyota, Honda.
Tracy Cotton: Lexus, Subaru, Nissan, Infiniti, you know, Nissan in, yeah, no.
And then we're really 2005 and newer. And then you know, their Toyotas and Hondas will do 2000 and newer, and then anything older than that they have to, if it's a Toyota truck, you know, Tacoma Land Cruiser, we actually have the customer come in. And either me or my manager interview 'em before we'll work on it.
So we make a date. What? Yeah, we make an appointment. They come in, they know they're gonna be interviewed. And we interview them to make sure, well, the Tacomas and Forerunners and Old Land Cruisers, we wanna make sure that they're gonna invest it in the car. And if they're not worthy vest to come down to an interview, then you know, then you're not, we.
Yep, you're right. Get it outta here onto the next. And then we explained to 'em very nicely, we're gonna be expensive. But you know, we're gonna get it done right? We're gonna get your car inspected, you know, we're gonna get it done. You know, if it's diagnosis, they're gonna pay for a maintenance inspection upfront.
Yes. Yet we're not doing anything without doing a maintenance inspection. We're not gonna give 'em the free courtesy inspection and then whatever else they want. And doing it that way on these classic Japanese cars that we still work on, the tacos, the pickups, you know, you know, we get some very good customers out of it, you know, you know, and then, you know, take it from there.
They
Jimmy Lea: appreciate are you saying that they appreciate the interview?
Tracy Cotton: Most of them that wanna invest in the car, yes. But the customer that we don't want doesn't, and so, you know, two thirds of the people come down, make an appointment. Yeah. You know, the others don't appreciate it or whatever, and go somewhere else.
And that's fine. And that's
Jimmy Lea: okay, sister, brother. That's fine.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You've probably got your favorite Toyota shop that you wanna refer 'em to and you just send 'em on down the road?
Tracy Cotton: No, I send 'em down the road. The guy, the other Toyota guy in town I like. Oh okay. Yeah. And then my technicians appreciate it too.
'cause we're not being bringing PSS in. I mean, they still get by, but you know, it's not eaten every, my service writer, my service manager. Yeah. Don't get all upset because we're bringing these cars in that everybody's wasting their time energy on. Yeah. And not getting payback on, you know? Yeah. And it's not that.
It's the bonuses. They all get bonused on it. They want to help the customer, but when a customer comes in and they don't want our style, help you do that too much. And then the, it's harder to keep your people following. The procedures and the more following the company culture. You bring in a bunch of PSS in and your company cultures.
We do the best. We stand behind the best, we are the best, you know, type thing. And you're bringing all these PSS in and you're not doing anything to 'em. What do you think your people are gonna do? They're gonna believe in that company culture.
Jimmy Lea: Not anymore. No. Goodness sakes. No, you're hitting it right on the head.
Yeah.
Tracy Cotton: So.
Jimmy Lea: So with with your shop, have you grown? Did you move? Are you in the same location?
Tracy Cotton: I've been going to the same location for 29 and a half years. So, I worked for the guy for a year and a half before, it's 28 years. No, my building, the owner who passed away a couple years ago, him and his wife that went to this.
Son and daughter. I'm good friends with the son. He's a couple years older than me. Then it's gonna go to the grandkids, the wishes. There was no hopes of me buying that property. Okay. Santa Cruz in California, it's hard. Santa Cruz would be one of the hardest places to put automotive. I've had chances of buying properties three to five years to get it re permitted if it will get re permitted for automotive.
So I put my investments other places. Good for you.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Yeah. If you can't buy your property, there's other things you can invest in. And the business, you can just run the business. Run the business. That's a beautiful thing. Well, congratulations. Have you expanded the business at all?
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. 'cause when we moved in there, there was three lifts, 4,000 square foot. It was me, then it became me and. The guy that was working for the shop before it went, he, it changed over and then he left. And my shop foreman, who I've known for since the sixth grade has been with me, I've now gotta start looking and figuring out a 25th year.
Winning or not anniversary. He's been with me for 25 years. We've known each other for since the sixth grade. So that slowly, yeah. Yeah. I know. Can't get rid of them if I wanted to and I don't want to. So, and then slowly got another tech, put another lift in, you know, worked it that way. You know, I was doing everything about.
12 years ago a little longer than that, I hired somebody just to answer the phones. And then my manager, it's going on 15 years blue hired him to do those things and now he manages the shop and we've got now three techs, a shop porter service writer, bloom the service manager, and he writes about a third of the, a third a little bit, maybe about a third of the service. 'cause my service writer is, he's slow, but he's awesome. So he can't quite get it all done, but he does everything that Blue can still manage the shop, you know, and, I go in and kind of do what I want. If there's a classic car that comes in, I'll still work on it that I like.
There's some old Toyotas, believe it or not, there's some tricks to 'em that I still know. And then if we get way busy, I mean, you know, I, they've sold too much and we don't wanna reschedule people, then I'll get out there and. Get things caught up and work here or there to get things caught up when we just get so backlogged, you know?
You know, so, right. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Well, so how many lifts do you have now?
Tracy Cotton: You start
Jimmy Lea: six. Six, we
Tracy Cotton: got six and a 3,900 square foot shop. One of 'em a scissor lift, but it's one of those full height scissor lifts. They've been out for a while. It's awesome. But yeah, it's a unique situation. When my parking and everything, when you pull into all the way to the back of the shop, you gotta back the car.
There's one way to get in all six lifts. You gotta pull back all the way out past all the parking and then out, you know, and it is what it is, you know? So it works. I've looked at moving other places, but, your landlocked.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You, I mean for you to move would be buying a second location or something like that, because the properties are grandfathered and if you don't get a grandfathered station,
Tracy Cotton: yeah,
Jimmy Lea: you're not gonna get it.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. And for me, a second, shop's never. It hasn't been on the field for a long time. It's not what I want to do.
Jimmy Lea: No attraction
Tracy Cotton: for you?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Tracy Cotton: No. Nope. Everybody's, Hey Tracy, you should do it. Should do it. Nah, I've got some buddies that done it. It's just not what I want to do. Okay? 80% of the time I enjoy what I do.
And then the other times I gotta, right now I'm having to learn to find that passion again. And I'm working on it, you know, 28 years I'm working on it, you know, it's, you got, I'm having to, you know, go out there and figure it out, you know.
Jimmy Lea: Well, good for you. Yeah. That's good. So, what is a problem?
Well, let's see, let's go back into leadership. Talk about leadership and management. You've been running the shop for 28 years. You've got some great teams in place. What type of mentoring, coaching, training did you provide for your shop foreman? Service manager. What did you do for them?
Tracy Cotton: The shop foreman, not much.
He could use some more training, but I've never just seen. Any training for shop foreman out there. He gets his technical training and he's pretty good at delegating work. 'cause we hand out the schedule the day before he gets it, you know, the schedule three quarters of the way through the afternoon and he goes and sees what works left over what needs to do.
We've got an awesome, I've got the unicorn. 21-year-old. Tech. He's not an apprentice anymore. He was an apprentice when he got with us about a year and a half ago, but I'd call him a full tech now. You know, he gives him that work and stuff like that, you know, okay, hey, here's the diagnosis, and he, then he lets me know if there's a diagnosis and he's too busy to help guide him along.
Wow. And then I'll go out there and, you know, so that's what he does. Blue is been to multiple seminars, classes. He did the through the institute. He was in the manager's course or whatever it was called. I forget the term, what it was called.
Jimmy Lea: Is it the MPG? The manager Performance group.
Yeah. There you
Tracy Cotton: go. There you go. He was in that for a while. And then we had some things around the, for him personally that we pulled out and stuff. Yeah. So, and then with the crew we've got now it's, I mean, my other tech's been with me close to 10 years. You know, it's the shop pretty much self-manages itself.
As we were talking before this, I was gone for a week. I just got back. Today was my first day since last Wednesday, and I left at about noon. I did not hear from my shop at all. At all. All that's so awesome, dude. That is so awesome. And then I forgot my dog that goes to work with me. My wife works Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we can't leave her at home.
She's an elderly dog. I forgot to ask him day, can you bring her home? She dropped the they, she dropped the dog off and you know. I forgot to tell him, Hey, bring her home. He brought her home and let her in the house for me and, you know, and so, you know, when my wife got home and stuff, so yeah if you get it done right, 90, 95% of the time when I leave, it doesn't ha I don't hear from 'em.
And we had a the Bureau of Automotive Repair stopped by, so bar stopped by, which. If you're not a California it's a Nazi organization. It is and stopped by un unannounced about a customer that left us raving lunatic. Thank God his review was just raving. He accused us of not putting shocks in his car five years ago.
Because he went to, oh gosh, he and he left three and a half years ago, which was great. So he reported us to bar, the non-regular bar agent came in and said, okay, you gotta provide all this paperwork. Within three days. I was on vacation. My manager's like, Hey, I can get it, but hey, my owner's on vacation.
Can we wait? The guy's like, no. I gotta see whatever you got. And this guy was three. Three years ago, well, to come find out, BARR does can't ask for anything over than three years ago. So Blue took care of it all. Didn't call me, took care of it, got it all taken, done, made notes and everything.
He is like, I didn't know where you want to keep these notes. I've got all the hand notes here and everything like that. I'm like, great. I'll put 'em in a file. Didn't even hear from him. He took care of it. Got it done. Made the bar agent realize that he was wrong. Because they're asking for paperwork from five years ago and you know, so you get it done right.
And yeah, I, like I said, I rarely hear from them. And if it's, if it is, it's some specialty thing that we do and it, you know, it's a specialty job we sell once or twice a year that I do. Right then no reason to teach anybody else, you know, Hey, how do you bid this one, you know, some ancient, you know, job that you know, or whatnot, you know?
So,
Jimmy Lea: oh yeah, like the 1973 Toyota Corolla that I learned to drive on back at Grand Farm.
Tracy Cotton: Yep.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah that's the car that comes to you because nobody else is gonna touch that baby.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah, and that's actually what happened last time when we went Hawaii. He comes up, Hey, we got this, you know, it was a 78 Corolla, and he's like, Hey, what do we do with this?
I'm like, who is it? He is like, I think it's a good guy and everything like that. I'm like, bring it in, you know? The guy, you know it. Yeah, we brought in, did some service work to it. Just the valve covered, gasket, figured everything out. Guy took it away, ordered all the parts and brought it back and you know, you know, so Good guy, you know.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Probably still a good customer today too. That's super cool man. Yep. That's super cool. Well, good. Well, and if every shop was as easy to run as yours is, adding a second, third, fourth, and fifth would not be an issue. But it's that 20% that says, oh my gosh.
Tracy Cotton: Yep. Yeah, and it's not easy. It's been designed, it took years to get it this way, you know, took years to get it this way, you know?
And
Jimmy Lea: Tracy, you hit a key point right there. You designed it that way. Yeah. You designed it, you had a plan, you executed it, you taught the plan, you lived the plan, you breathed the plan, you have everybody bought in on the plan, what's their input for the plan?
Tracy Cotton: Yep.
Jimmy Lea: Designed
Tracy Cotton: it. Yep. And with my, every, some of the owners might be will going, Hey, I wanna pull back.
And I went to my manager, shop foreman and said, Hey. I'm not gonna be, I'm only gonna spend half days here now. And you know, they're both like, good, you deserve it. If I didn't get any feedback, like, deserve it, go. You know, my, my shop foreman's, aav, and mountain biker. I'm like, I want to go ride my bike more.
So when I leave and tell him I, Hey, do you have a good ride? You know, he's not jealous. He's like, did you have a good ride? You know? So if you design it right then, you know it works. You know, it's the more, the guilt on my part than them wanting me there.
Jimmy Lea: And I've heard this before, I don't know if it's true for your business, your shop with your guys.
I hear a lot of shops where they say to the owner, Hey, we love you. Thanks for we got it set up. You. This is a great program. We make more money when you're not here. So if you could just. Go. That'd be great.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. To me if we're busy, yes. Sometimes we don't. Yeah, we do make a little bit more when I'm there because if there's a fire to put out blue can do it.
But yeah, if I do it, then Blue doesn't and he can concentrate on the other things. You know? Or if there's a problem, child car that's eaten, I might take, I'll take it away just so we can be efficient.
Jimmy Lea: I love it.
Tracy Cotton: And then I take it over and get over and make sure, and then that way they're, we're not having a car.
Eat us out a house, a home that you need to do to keep your reputation alive and stuff like that, you know? So, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: So I, it just sounds like you have such a good and just such an extraordinary team there with Blue and the advisors and everybody. Yep. Is there any bottlenecks that you're seeing today that if you don't address six months down the road, it becomes a mountain instead of a mole hill?
Tracy Cotton: Get getting my, I've got one tech that is excellent, but he's only. A 30 to 35 hour a week person. He is, been with me 12 years. He does excellent work. He gets it done. It's just we're able to put more work out. But at this stage, everybody's comfortable. It's working good. Yeah. To go find somebody else that is gonna be better than him is.
What? I'm too scared to go look for 'em. 'cause to find somebody, I would have to get rid of them and try to get 'em in a year or two. I'm very comfortable. My manager and foreman who get an overall bonus, they don't just get bonuses off their work, you know, they get bonuses off the shop. I'm like, Hey, this is affecting your pay.
What do you want to do? They're like, well, he works. What's the likelihood of us getting somebody without scaring him away? Because it's, Santa Cruz is a small community. Yeah. You know, so we're living with it, you know? Yeah. But everybody's making the money that they wanna make. Would they like more?
Yes, but they're very comfortable.
Jimmy Lea: Well, and the way to, yeah. You want to earn more and I totally get it. You put in overtime, you put in weekends, and that, that gets you more pay. But also to your point, if you've got a tech that's turning 30 to 35 hours, are you gonna live with it or is there a way to incentivize additional pay for this technician so that it does he does turn in 35, 38, 40, 42 hours per week on a weekly basis.
Tracy Cotton: Tried that, tried it all. I've tried the monetary, the time off. You know, hey, I'll get, you know, what do you like to do? He really only likes playing video games and you know, so, okay, I can get you I can get the brand new Xbox or PlayStation, whatever, you know, or get 'em the brand new hot computer where they've got the computer games and stuff like that.
That's one and done. You know, he is got it all. He is got his little setup and stuff and he's actually said, I don't know, you know, I've tried the bonuses. 'cause he's got a bonus system that once he hits 35 it goes, and if he hits 40, then he, it goes up a even higher, you know, so he can make an extra couple hundred a week, you know, that.
And then it would get the monthly bonus even higher. Yeah. You know, 'cause I do give everybody my, as I said before, my, everybody gets a team bonus and there's a team monthly bonus. My manager and shop foreman just get much higher team bonuses, you know? So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. I wonder, oh man. You know, I mean, this falls right in line with Cecil's teaching.
He talks about performance based pay. Where a percentage of your pay is livable.
Tracy Cotton: Yep.
Jimmy Lea: You're not ordering off the $39 steaks, you're ordering the $8 hamburger, but it is livable. And then the bonus is that additional, what is that additional that gets. And it could be that because of the team bonus, he's just comfortable being comfortable.
Tracy Cotton: Well, yeah. The team bonus is if he would get it. It's, yeah. I get that. He's just, yeah I've had some people tell me if you take the team bonus away and stuff like that, but if he's the only one that doesn't get a team bonus, then it's not team. Yeah. I mean, even my shop Porter gets a team bonus, but he only gets a weekly team bonus.
Because my shop porter helps, you know, you know, bleed the brakes. He'll get in there, bleed, flushing power string, which we still do on the Asian cars or run the car in there. He's the one doing that. Or if we need a long mileage confirmation to get the monitors to run because the car won't run right.
Or we just need to, if it's a hiccup car that only hiccups once a blue moon, my, the guys will put the scanner on record. He takes off and he knows how to hit the re where the button where I'll highlight when the, if, when the problem happens, I forget Whatever button it is, you know. Oh, sure, sure.
It'll put explanation. Yeah. And he'll, he knows how to do that and stuff, so, yeah. He he gets even a weekly team bonus.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, dude, that's awesome. A team is made up of individuals and it's their individual input that helps make that bonus be what it needs to be. Yep. So, man, congrats man.
That's awesome. So what does the future look like for you, Tracy? What's the three year plan? Five year plan? 10 year plan? What does that look like for you, brother?
Tracy Cotton: Well, that's what I'm f figuring out. Like I said, I was, the last year I've been going, oh, I love it. I hate it. I love it.
I hate it. My wife's like, you need to figure this out. Right. Because you've you're affecting the household and stuff like that, you know? And so I am working on getting the passion back, working on getting, finding other things to do because I, I'm not needed at the shop and I don't want to be needed at the shop, so I'm having to find things to keep me entertained.
I now, I'm a Rotarian. I've, I donate a lot of time to rotary yes to those things, but that's only so much time. So, I'm putting now a structured. Program in for myself that, you know, I'm giving myself a schedule, do this during these times and stuff like that, which I've heard before. I've never done that, and that's helping, you know.
So the next year get my passion back for the business to where itself, it self manages itself, which it does. But I let self manage itself, you know? Three years probably offer the shop to my shop foreman and manager to buy. And if they don't go from there five years, probably be retired from the industry.
Maybe I've actually thought of coaching. You know, yeah, I've thought about coaching, but I talked to the wife about that she doesn't like, she likes the traveling when the family takes off, but she doesn't like it when I'm gone a lot and I'm gone a lot mountain biking. So she, she's told me that, we've talked about this before, she's like, you'd have to give up one versus the other.
You can't be gone three weekends outta the month or whatever because, you know, so. 10 years traveling more, you know, you know, doing, and everybody says traveling for me. It's not just traveling overseas. That's once a year or so. We already do that here in the United States. More mountain biking you know, paddle boarding more I paddleboard.
Not a lot, but I am getting back into the paddle boarding. And stuff, you know, so, just traveling more, seeing, I just came up if you're not from California, you might not know the 3 95 I hadn't been up at in 10 years. I forgot how gorgeous it was. Went over the Sonora Pass, you know, in or into Yosemite, you know, and stuff.
So those type of things, getting out and traveling more and, you know, yeah. Employing the fruits.
Jimmy Lea: I was just in Yosemite in March. Yeah, Yosemite in the Redwood Forest. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's just gorgeous there and yeah, you need to go and you need to ride it. Yeah. And if you get a chance, get up into into Whistler.
Take your mountain bikes up in the summer.
Tracy Cotton: I've done that. I've ta spent some weeks up there about 10, 12 year, well, about 10, 12 years ago. A couple times. Nice. I got a buddy that was Canadian that got booted outta the country. He was on a certain no, it was stupid. He was on a visa, didn't allow him to get engaged and he told them he just got engaged, so they kicked him out, which was awesome.
Oh my God. I went visit him. It took about a year and a half to get back in. And so I went and visited. We went and moved to Whistler. You know, so, oh, there you go. Yeah, but it's the traveling, just through the US United States, you know? We've got a gorgeous country here,
Jimmy Lea: And there's a lot of it, there's a lot to see.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: So, yeah, I agree with you. You don't need to travel internationally. There's so much to be seen just inside of these United States. Yeah. Yep. There's plenty of places for you to go to and things to see and stuff to do. Yeah I totally agree with you, bro. Yeah. That's awesome. So, if you had a magic wand and you could fix something in the industry, what would you wave that magic wand and fix automatically?
Tracy Cotton: Well, for the independents an organization that unites us all because, I love our industry. Rotary, we, the kids talk where they want to get in the trades. I hand them my cards and stuff like that, and I tell 'em I love my industry and everything like that, but you're gonna make more money as a contractor a craftsman, an electrician, or a plumber than you are as.
A technician when a plumber makes more money than a technic an auto technician, master plumber than a master technician. We've got something wrong. Now totally agree. Don't take, I don't wanna take anything away from a plumber. 'cause what they do is it's essential. Yeah. And I don't want to crawl underneath the house and do that.
I don't do it anymore. I'll pay them happily to do that work. But plumbing hasn't changed much. Cars are, you know, you're putting people's lives in their hands and stuff like that, and yet we don't have. An organization that unites us all. A-S-C-C-A, I'm gonna join it because it is floundering a little bit.
It needs more people, but we need that across the United States. We need to teach our shops how to be run better. You know, get rid of the, giving it away for free. I'm sorry. That's one thing that's kills us, you know? Oh, yeah. And
Jimmy Lea: you can't stay in business doing things for free.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah, and even the free tire rotations, the tire shops that give the free tire rotations, I think that's one of the worst things out there.
'cause you know this kid that might be working the tire shop liking it, but because they're given the free tire rotations way, he's getting paid the barest minimum out there. And he can go work at any other trade and make, probably double to begin with. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: The amount of tools he has to buy is a quarter of what we buy in the automotive.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. You know, so, something, we need something because with the how the cars are coming around and the government keeps threatening and the major organizations, you know, we've been lucky that we have not been. What I call it written out or logged out of working on the cars, you know? Yeah. We've been very lucky on that, I think.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, and I hope, knock on wood, we never do if it went to that monopoly where the dealership was the only one allowed to work on the cars, we'd be, everybody would be in a world of hurt, I think. Yes.
Tracy Cotton: And it's not that far down the road that we're gonna have drive, driving, flying cars. So if we wanna work on those cars, eh, 10 years, 15 years, they're gonna be out there.
They're out there already. Yeah. But they're very limited. And of the super rich, there's only one or two, they're only a couple companies I know, but 10 years down the road, if this matter technology hits that they say, or probably will in the next five years or so. Are we gonna be able to work on those cars?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's the question. Yeah. Are we gonna have the training to be able to work on those cars? And is it, are people gonna take the training?
Tracy Cotton: Yeah, the training, I get that is, it's more are they gonna allow us, we need the training. Of course, that training I think will come out. It'll be slow.
It's will they allow us to work on those cars?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, not only Tesla. Have you seen BYD.
No. I build your dream. It's a company out of China. Yeah. He started making batteries and then bought a car manufacturer and brought the two together. Okay.
Tracy Cotton: Oh yeah, I've heard of those. Yeah, I've heard of those.
BYD Yeah. It's funny. I don't, I've, Tesla's are huge in my town. We don't work on 'em. Well, I'd have to get rid of a profitable car line to bring those in.
Jimmy Lea: No, you're good. You're good. It's not your customer, it's not your client. So you focus where you are. Yeah. And the thing about A BYD right now, you can't get 'em, you can't buy 'em in the United States, so nobody's gonna be working on that yet.
Yeah. But BYD outsold two to one Tesla just by selling in China, they sold out two to over Tesla worldwide.
Tracy Cotton: Yep.
Jimmy Lea: So anyways, yeah, there's a lot of technology coming our way. It's super exciting. It's super fun. Are we gonna be a part of it or are we gonna be left behind it? The only way to be a part of it and continue into the future is to get involved, just like you said, just like you're a part of Rotary providing service.
We're part of the association because we wanna make sure we continue in this business that we love. Yeah. It's taken care of us. Yeah. Really, truly. Wow, brother. It's good to spend some time with you. I've got some really good ideas for you, especially when it comes to coaching.
Tracy Cotton: Well, good. Thank you. Thank you.
Jimmy Lea: We should definitely talk brother. Yeah, we should definitely talk.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah, well, like I said, I've been talking to the wife about it. I gotta get her on board, you know, as they say. Happy wife, happy life, you know. So, true. And I'm blessed. I'm the in relationships. There's the lucky one and the one that is unlucky, if you want to put it, I, no offenses or buts.
I'm the lucky one I anybody knows, goes. Yep. You're lucky. You know? So,
Jimmy Lea: so the, so if I understand you right, you're saying you're the lucky one and she tolerates you.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. There you go.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, no, see, and that right there, that's just true love. Yeah. That's just true love.
That's all there is.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Brother Tracy, I, bro I agree with you. I think as an industry, we need to come together as one, not have all these fractions of all these different associations.
Tracy Cotton: Yep.
Jimmy Lea: We need to be one big solid family. There's 250,000 independent shops in North America, 250,000. We should be a voice of one, and that would be super powerful.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.
Jimmy Lea: All right, man. Well, we'll get there. We'll get there together. We're gonna lock arms, make sure we get there together. Yeah.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah. Yep.
Jimmy Lea: All right, Tracy. Well, thank you, brother. Appreciate it.
Tracy Cotton: Yeah, thank you very much. This was great. You're welcome. Thank you. You have a great day.
 

148 - Succession, Stewardship & The Real Numbers Behind a Winning Shop with Greg Buckley

148 - Succession, Stewardship & The Real Numbers Behind a Winning Shop with Greg Buckley
September 18, 2025 - 00:47:43
 
Show Summary:
Jimmy Lea chats with industry veteran Greg Buckley to pull lessons from decades of shop ownership. Greg shares the Wilmington shop’s history with a shiplap ceiling, a former diner footprint, and a community effort restoring nearby family graves. He traces the business back to 1966 and his father’s fearless promotion and racing roots, then explains how he took the reins. A central theme is succession planning with a five year runway, clear roles, and keeping property as a retirement asset. Greg warns buyers to fix their own shops first and to do deep diligence on targets. He shifts the focus from vanity revenue to net profit and cash, and urges coaching, masterminds, and continuous education. The conversation explores bridging the labor owner divide with transparency and respect, plus raising professionalism through higher standards and possibly licensing.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Greg Buckley, President of Buckley’s Auto Care
 
Show Highlights:
[00:00:00] - Jimmy and Greg open with stories about the past and future, then spotlight the only shop bay Greg knows with a shiplap wood ceiling and why you preserve unique character, not paint over it.
[00:01:30] - The Wilmington shop backstory includes the first California Ranch style Shell station in Delaware, a former hamburger stand footprint, and a community project to honor a neighboring family cemetery.
[00:04:51] - Heritage matters. Greg reflects on Native American roots while Jimmy shares a Cherokee family story, showing how lineage shapes values and leadership.
[00:09:06] - Origin story. Greg’s dad starts in 1966, blends Firestone experience with fearless local marketing and drag racing credibility to build a neighborhood institution.
[00:13:26] - Succession in practice. Retain property as a retirement asset, define roles for the next generation, and commit to a five year transition plan.
[00:18:41] - Before buying another shop, fix your own operation and perform deep due diligence to avoid sellers with poor records, erased tickets, and no reinvestment.
[00:24:55] - Expect chaos when launching additional locations. Stabilize with process people and written playbooks.
[00:29:23] - Get a coach and accountability. Revenue is vanity, net profit and cash in the bank are sanity.
[00:33:19] - Bridge the employee owner perception gap on pricing and margins by educating teams on the true cost of running a healthy shop.
[00:37:57] - Masterminds turn mountains into molehills. Elevate professionalism with ongoing education and stronger standards, potentially licensing.
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Jimmy Lee with the Institute, and this is the Leading Edge podcast coming to you live. Via recording. Greg Buckley and I are sitting here. Just gonna have a good old chat and talk about the good old days and the days that are ahead. This is gonna be an awesome conversation and Greg, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jimmy Lea: How are you?
Greg Buckley: My pleasure, man. Jimmy, when you, when I got the phone call and the invite, I said, I gotta hop on with my good friend Jimmy, you know, and you know, let's chit chat like you just said. You and I, we could talk for days, weeks, months.
Jimmy Lea: Right. And never repeat the same story
Greg Buckley: and never repeat.
Greg Buckley: Right. So we, you know, to, to our audience, we are going to be disciplined this time and hopefully get in, get out, say what we need to say. And all within what, Jimmy? 30 minutes. Oh yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Good. Good luck with that. So, I was blessed to be able to travel all across North America and visit shops in their shops.
Jimmy Lea: I was able to see what makes shops unique. Amazing, and to date, as far as I know, you are the only shop with a. Shiplap wood ceiling in the shop in the bay. Yeah.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. Yes. Isn't it crazy? Every time I wanna redo the, think about redoing the bay and we actually did it, but we kept the ceiling. We weren't really we weren't gonna get rid of it, you know?
Jimmy Lea: No. And you can't paint it. You can't paint. ITT can't. It's so beautiful. You can't cover it. You've gotta beautify it, magnify it, and it's an absolutely gorgeous location. You've done so much in that Wilmington. That's the Wilmington location, right? That's the
Greg Buckley: Wilmington location. Yeah. And the dumpy old equipment barn, but it's, but it serves a purpose.
Greg Buckley: So, but the the Wilmington location a little history on that ceiling was in that location. That was the first Shell Oil company gas station service station in the California Ranch model. So, you know, you have the sling it roof. And you had the wood the two bay and it was, that was the model back then.
Greg Buckley: And that was the first one in the state of Delaware when shell came in. And it lasted for approximately maybe 18 to 24 months, was not a longstanding unit. Traffic was, yeah. Someone did. I don't think someone did. This wasn't right. Work. No. And before that behind the building and the three bays you see exposed, facing the highway behind that Yes.
Greg Buckley: Was an original hamburger stand called Greenhill green Hill Hamburger. I think it was Greenhill Diner or something like that. Okay, anyway. Okay. And when we moved in, sure enough, we saw the footprint of the old hamburger stand, you know, the whole hamburger drive-in which was unique. So there was a lot of history to that location, you know, and then down here.
Greg Buckley: The history of our location here. The families are all Native American, the Harmon, lingos, Norwoods, and the streets great family. They're interconnected through marriages and relationships, and in fact, they're one of the family graveyards is right next to the shop, so, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Buckley: So we have spirits in and out, you know, spirits in the bottle and spirits. That's amazing. Yeah. And you know, we actually had a, when we first moved in. Down here in Millsboro we had a little get together, the community we came to. I got the community together to actually rehabilitate the overgrown plots.
Greg Buckley: We learned the history of everybody and we we dressed up the the markers, the gravestones and all of that. It was really exceptional. We got some print got, I mean, it wasn't there to do, you know, promotional, but it came in and the community came together around it. And so now we have taken it on to where we maintained it to the best we can.
Greg Buckley: I mean, it's really a bugger, but there's I think there's nine or 11 family members. From the 18 hundreds through the early 19 hundreds that are resting there. And yeah it's really cool. It's just unique situations that you know, you find out about, and again, the families are amazing.
Greg Buckley: I mean, they're, yeah. You know, so we're fortunate and just little quirky stuff you find out about everything, so,
Jimmy Lea: well, that's a unique stewardship that you have elevated. Greg, thank you. Yeah,
Greg Buckley: you welcome that.
Jimmy Lea: That is sacred ground. That is family that is resting and
Greg Buckley: yeah,
Jimmy Lea: It allows you to educate the community as well as.
Jimmy Lea: Give honor to those that are there.
Greg Buckley: That is super cool. Well, yeah, it's pretty cool. Thank you. And we appreciate it. That was really the true mission. I, my, my mom was Native American and you know, she had some bloodlines. I can't, I don't think she was a hundred percent. I don't think that at all.
Greg Buckley: But my grandfather, I. Her father was. And there's just something there with, you know, the heritage part of it. And plus, like you said, honoring the family that's there and it's, it is special. You know, and believe it or not, you know, when I pull into the lottery, I walk over, I'll say, Hey guys, how you.
Greg Buckley: You know, you know, I wanna keep on the good side, you know? Yes. Oh
Jimmy Lea: yeah. Absolutely. So, so what line of Native American history is in your oh
Greg Buckley: gosh Nana coat. No my, my mom was Blackfoot that an offshoot that came out of nbr. The Blackfoot was pretty much central, you know, mid America and Nebraska and that area.
Greg Buckley: They had one offshoot that went eastbound and was in the Virginia area, and they were below the Nanako. The Nanako here in Sussex and Del Marva, the area here. We're the dominant tribe that really raised the agricultural level in our state and our area to where, you know, back in, well it still is. It's a lot of farmland and they, in fact, the development that is right behind the shop here in Millsboro.
Greg Buckley: It was a farm owned by nor Mr. Norwood who built this shop here as an equipment barn, and he built homes along Harmon's Hill. There are some Harmons that live on the, on this road as well. And so it's a, you know, it's really funny, Jimmy. I mean, the street, the state identification number of this street is 3 0 2, our area code.
Greg Buckley: And so yeah, it's, you might want, it's some crazy stuff that comes. You find out about Right. And then you start putting all these little connections together and you go, wow, man, how did I land in the middle of this soup? You know? And here I am. And you know, I do believe that it is a special location and you know, we're just playing it like, like we should, nice and easy, that kind of thing, so.
Greg Buckley: Oh, that's
Jimmy Lea: beautiful. My, my great grandmother was a Cherokee princess, and she Oh, yeah. Great. Two greats.
Jimmy Lea: Dad met her. Her name is Alpha Nations.
Greg Buckley: Oh wow. Wow. Really nickname, huh? How about that?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And she married a mountain man. And they were married for a short amount of time.
Jimmy Lea: Not a great amount of time. But because of her beliefs in the afterlife, she spoke of John as if though he was still alive, like he was just gone to the store for milk. I'll be back anytime I, and she would look forward. I'm looking forward to the eternities I'm gonna be able to spend with John and it's just a beautiful story.
Jimmy Lea: And my dad told me about that and I was just,
Greg Buckley: isn't that amazing?
Jimmy Lea: Oh it's fascinating and
Greg Buckley: I love it. It never leaves you, that story's like it never leaves you it actually, I, I think it becomes part of your makeup. You understand a little bit of where you originate it from and it's a tangible thing.
Greg Buckley: It's not something that somebody say, okay, well, I guess. They're from there. No. You have actual proof of their heritage, their lineage, and it, you start to say, well, okay, well there is something special.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. It's cool.
Greg Buckley: Very
Jimmy Lea: cool. We'll have to exchange Native American stories sometime. I guess, yeah.
Greg Buckley: I'm, I, you know, I don't know how much I got from my mom. My, my grandparents they did originate from out of Virginia. My grandmother has a, on my mom's side, has a whole history of. Her side being involved with you know, colonial Virginia. Oh, so there's stories that, yeah, there's stories that I, my sister is now the keeper of the secrets, I guess, or the stories, and she's still finding things out and unfortunately.
Greg Buckley: Over the last, you know, few years or even decades, a lot of the family members from that era have passed on, you know, and We got what we got, you know, and now we're, you know, making our own. So, you know, it's interesting.
Jimmy Lea: Document it as much as you possibly can. Oh God, yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so good.
Jimmy Lea: Well, speaking of stories and documenting history and you're taking over for pops.
Jimmy Lea: And what's the story there? How did you guys, how did he get started in the business?
Greg Buckley: Well, he started in 66. He's got a really unique story young man 20. Yeah, 26 years old. He was working for his sister's husband at the time, Toni's, they owned a oh, a hardware store, very large hardware store.
Greg Buckley: It would be, you know. More than a general store back in the early sixties. Yeah. And you know, he worked with he sold tires, farm tires, whatever. So Firestone was where he got his, you know, I guess training or whatever. And of course he was street racer. He is a. Really good looking guy. You know what, he had all that going on.
Greg Buckley: It was a typical, like fifties type thing you'd think of, right?
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Oh
Greg Buckley: yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Greg Buckley: So, you know, his dream was to have a location or find something to do automotive wise. And what happened was he started at the hardware store. Selling tires. He got picked up by Firestone corporate offered him a job, and he went onto the wholesale market up in Pennsylvania, Delco Chester County, those areas.
Greg Buckley: So for five years first five years of my life, it was really spent in Pennsylvania and tramps in around, you know, that area as he was building his network of you know, shops to sell tires to, you know, wholesale. Then one day Atlantic Ridgefield. The Arco of today Atlantic Richfield knocked and said, Hey, we have a location opening up literally right down from his boyhood home.
Greg Buckley: Oh my word. Yeah. Three, three blocks down. And so naturally he said, that's mine. I gotta have it. So that's where it started. It was 1966 as a two bay. And then he grew it and had fun and did everything you're supposed to do. Loved to entertain, loved to. Promote if I learned anything about promoting and marketing, it was all from him.
Greg Buckley: 'cause he had no fear. He literally had no fear of being foolish. He had no fear of being a fool or looked at as such. Costumes were generally. Except it all over the place. I mean, so he built his business as a community with that. Plus, you know, he was a drag racer, very successful drag racer. We had a couple of what we were all Fords, so we had some modified versions of, you know, certain v Well, they were, we had a fairlane.
Greg Buckley: Two fair Lanes, a wagon a two door all Mustangs. And we went as far as we could. He won a championship and stock racing, so he had all that going on, and plus, with his charm and looks and everything, you know, look I know he's my dad, but the dude was a package, you know, I mean, he had everything.
Greg Buckley: He was high spirited, loved what he did. And so he had built a successful business in his own neighborhood, and that was something that was kind of rare. So, in 95 as he was aging and we were coming up, you know, we said that it might be time, you know, things are changing and, you know, we went from full service to self-serve, which really decimated our whole.
Greg Buckley: I think the whole service industry really when we went to self-service, 'cause it just took away the personal touch. And so we had reiterations of different models that we had to use to get by on the volume. And of course you're always in a cutthroat situation with the wholesale, the fuel. The oil companies and or the wholesalers.
Greg Buckley: So, over the period it got a little tiring. 95 we purchased dad out, you know, and said, Hey, we're gonna take over the shop, the business, and so forth. And he said, okay, great. He, 40 years is what his mark was. We hung in there for a little bit more. And that was at that location. And then we migrated up to where we are today in Wilmington.
Greg Buckley: With the five basics, pay shop, you know, property and all that stuff. So. That's how Dad started. That's how we took over and, you know, one generation to the next. And that's where we're at now. We're onto the third. And, you know, I'm in a secession type planning mode, I guess, you know, with Scott and Steve taking over, they're doing a hell of a job with, you know, with the operations.
Greg Buckley: And I'm really proud of 'em. I can't say enough about how they've grown as men and they've grown as a team and a partnership, which is really critical. And one of the things that, I think there's a lesson here for the audience. Is that when you're trying to, and this isn't a fam, I have to be very accurate here, very specific, that this is all involves family business, you know, for those of you that don't have a family member that you're giving it to or selling it to whatever, what I did was I had to make sure that those family members were credible enough that they could work together well enough.
Greg Buckley: They understood their roles. And that way I was pretty much secured in what my retirement slash future would be as I exit out. And I, you know, I don't have 10 million in the bank, you know, so I have to still look at my assets and say I gotta protect them. So you have to protect them with a good partnership that's going to continue that.
Greg Buckley: And plus you're building for their future as well. So that's what we've done. That's where we're at. And it's been. It's been difficult, right? 'cause you're d Well,
Jimmy Lea: it's, yeah, it's not easy.
Greg Buckley: It's not easy. 'cause you've got not only two personalities, but your personality gets in there too. So Yeah.
Greg Buckley: You got three, you know, and all the inbetweens yeah. That's, we're right now. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. So are you you sold them the business, does that mean you also sold them the property or do you retain that as part of your assets?
Greg Buckley: I'm retaining, that's part of my assets. Yeah. They'll, when I'm ready to go to Ville, you know, the attorneys will work all that out.
Greg Buckley: But no that's what my retirement's gonna be based on, you know, amongst other things. But it's the business that they should have. They've, they're earning it. Let's put that way. And we haven't gotten to the point of a sale number or anything of that nature. 'cause we're still, we've got five years.
Greg Buckley: To really put something together here. We're just, now, we've just come to the agreement of going, okay, well what's Greg going to do? And we got together and said, this is what Greg's going to do. I don't know how I'm going to get there yet, but we will all decide and make fair for everybody. So that's what I mean.
Greg Buckley: It's almost, it's not quite step one, but we're nowhere near finished, so, you know. Yeah you're,
Jimmy Lea: well, I'll say you're not at kung fu level zero. I know we're definitely at step one, which is recognizing and saying, okay guys, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna come up with a plan that says, in the next five years I'm out and you're in.
Greg Buckley: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Because what happens, Greg? And we've seen it.
Jimmy Lea: So many times it comes to a point where somebody says, okay, that's it. I'm gonna sell today.
Greg Buckley: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Okay, well go back three to five years and start the process because you can't sell today. Okay. You could, but you're gonna get pennies on the dollar instead of absolutely getting what it's worth.
Greg Buckley: Yeah, without a doubt. And nobody wants that. I mean, you why? Do that. If you're going to lose the value of your assets that you've worked hard for, you know, oh yeah. Bring somebody in that can help raise the value of the business. You know, confi configure it any way you want, you know, whereas fairness, because they're building value and you know, you, you got all that to go through.
Greg Buckley: But you have to have somebody who's gonna be dedicated and that takes time. I mean, you can, I. I really feel for, you know, shops that don't have, that they're not thinking of their exit. Yeah. Because at the ages that we're all getting, and at one point I don't shop owners need to realize that they're never, they're not 25 forever.
Greg Buckley: No, you know, you get to the 65 and maybe earlier, whatever, you know, you start to get that knock on your back of your head going, Hey, wait a minute. You know, I, I don't think I got too many years. I'm getting tired. I, you know, I'm attracted to other things in life. I want to do things differently.
Greg Buckley: Well, what do I do? Yeah. And so you need to be prepared for that any way you can, and that's where. You know, you should always think of your exit. Always. Yeah. And how you're gonna do it. So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. No, that's so true. That's so true. You gotta think of your exit and you gotta think of it now.
Greg Buckley: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Well, what's
Greg Buckley: the first thing they tell you when you open a business?
Greg Buckley: Learn to learn your, learn how to get out of it. Learn how not to work in it, right?
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. You know, and Greg, there's people that come to us all the time that are saying, Hey, I we're, I want to evaluate this business. I wanna see if this is a business I wanna buy. Right? And we'll say, okay, and we'll look at it and we'll evaluate it.
Jimmy Lea: And it's like, you know, yeah, this is probably a good deal to buy, however, pause. Let's look at your own. Dumpster fire that you're operating. By the way, you are not ready. You are not ready to invest in another property. You need to take care of your home before you go looking at anybody else.
Greg Buckley: Yep. Yeah, you're not
Jimmy Lea: ready. You can't be operating at a two 3% net profit. You've gotta be in that 20% net profit. Yeah. You're gonna pay more in taxes. That's all right. Right. You're earning more so you can pay more. Correct. And that's okay. Correct. You've gotta be in a position that investors want to look at you.
Greg Buckley: Right. You can't. Well, I, you can't, you a good example is what I experienced here in Millsboro. All right. And actually, if I think about it was in Wilmington as well, you know, Wilmington. We had to move because of the contractual agreements with the whole deal the fuel distributor, right?
Greg Buckley: It wasn't the old company we're doing, so we had to move. The rent was coming way over top. We weren't meeting numbers. We could, we just could not survive on a three bay with the amount of expenses that small little footprint was costing us. So. You know, we said, okay, great, we're moving. And we came upon, you know, my attorney goes right to anybody that you know that has service bays that are ready to roll.
Greg Buckley: You can put a lift in and walk in. Well, we found our current location in Wilmington, there in Newport. And the gentleman had a tenant who was stiffing him for the past nine, 10 months. He got to the point, yeah, he got to the point and he said, okay. You're out, Greg, go, here's the key. Open up and you can have everything that's in the, in there right now, meaning that we had five lifts ready to go.
Greg Buckley: That he goes, they're yours. You can have 'em. Part of the building benches. I brought in wifi and the key to the door and we started doing business right away. This was after the weird thing was, is that when I purchased dad, when we purchased dad, we had a lease extension. We signed the oil company or wholesale distributor.
Greg Buckley: Thought we signed a new lease. Well, the extension ran out one year earlier, so I'll never forget this. We're in the, we're trying to figure out how we can exit this agreement gracefully and inexpensively. No rent through, no nothing. So we're going through our files and our records and we find the agreement that we signed with them and it's, and it expired.
Greg Buckley: And so I said, oh my God. I went and I showed it to the sales person. I go, look man, we're free and clear. You know, nothing. Right? So we scattered, we just got up the street and they were left with an empty building 'cause they didn't have anybody coming in and Wow. Yeah. And we walked into Wilmington. With a laptop.
Greg Buckley: Literally with this lap. Well, a laptop. Yeah. And started doing business in Millsboro. And I think I've shared this story maybe a few times here, but I repeat it 'cause it's, there's a lot of lessons here for, you know, if you think you're gonna operate your business without structure, alright. And rely and have fun with all the cash that you bring in.
Greg Buckley: That's exactly what this owner did prior, and I literally had worked for him before I made the agreement to make a deal on this place. I worked for him for a week as a sales, as a service counter, you know, an advisor. I wanted to see what the activity was beyond the the regular due diligence I had to do, whether the property was good, this and that, and neighborhood, all that.
Greg Buckley: I said, okay, my final thing is I'm looking down and work for you. So I did, and the practices that he had, him and his son were absolutely atrocious. I said, man, this is like 1960 tasa. I mean, receipts torn up, right? Oh no. Oh no. Yeah. Parts bought with personal checks.
Jimmy Lea: Oh
Greg Buckley: gosh. And he had shop he had a snap on shop key for his SMS.
Greg Buckley: And so when a client would come in. There was only one receipt, and when they left, that receipt got erased and a new person took that receipt over. Oh no.
Jimmy Lea: Oh
Greg Buckley: no. So there was, I don't even know if there was called that curbside warranty, but he had nothing and he, there was no reinvestment into the building, into the equipment.
Greg Buckley: So basically I brought, you know, a liquidation type situation where I had to convince, I did convince him that you're gonna work on my terms. Not nobody else's. 'cause I said, buddy, I said, you know, there's not a bank in the world that's gonna take this and you know there's no sugar daddy that's gonna overpay.
Greg Buckley: I said, this is what's gonna happen. You know, so we got the deal done. But he was on Bendit knee. He had no leverage to secure his hard work. Over the last, you know, five or six years plus the value of the property. And I kind of really I said, man, that's a shame. 'cause you know, he's worked hard. He's 66, he's an old tech, he's was really good.
Greg Buckley: And you know, he thought that, you know, money was too easy and he would always say, oh, it's like taking candy from a baby down here. And well, you know, it's, it was ignorance. So that's what you gotta, I mean, yeah, it's a harder road to do it the right way. In the long run, you have to have your assets in place and have your profits and structure ready for the, you know, for the, for your future as an owner.
Greg Buckley: You know, and I'm not perfect. I will die every day. I, you know, I'll screw up somewhere, you know, and you know, even with two shops and all the decades I got into business, I still screw up, you know, or I'm not accurate or I'm not the best I can be. And it's always a work in progress and for me.
Greg Buckley: You know, being MSO now I'm three years into it. There's still stuff every day that I have to change. You know, we can segue into processes because I really am not the process guy. Thank goodness for my son. He is, and he can write processes and he can write a Bible for you in, in, in a day. Oh, wow.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. And my son-in-law will execute those processes. So that's where I knew okay. These guys got it. So cool.
Jimmy Lea: Cool. So what if somebody came to you for advice or you're giving yourself advice to start a shop today, what advice would you give yourself?
Greg Buckley: I would say that definitely get involved with some coaching.
Greg Buckley: Talk to colleagues that, you know, you may have the opportunity to know if you're coming in fresh from a non-automotive. Field or you know, expertise, then, you know, you definitely have to get to know some people and understand and learn. Definitely be as cap as well capitalized as you can be.
Greg Buckley: Stay disciplined, you know, I'm trying to think of all the things that I didn't do and now that I know I should have, you know, so, and really just gosh. I mean, it's such a hard question 'cause I'm thinking, well, what is it that is the first thing that you should do? Well definitely be capitalized to the point where you can survive.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. Know what you need to do to take your first check home. I mean, you gotta pay yourself. And it's gonna be tough. I mean, if you're starting with scratch, it's definitely a tougher road. I don't know. I, it's, that's hard for me to answer. With one, you know, with one line because there's so much involves with, you know, knowing your area, knowing the client base.
Greg Buckley: That's one thing where I would I think that's a practice that I would share. Wherever I'm at, whatever, wherever I have gone into, I have done a lot of homework on the area. I've done a lot of work on the who's who, and I'm not afraid to say that I'd go down to the granular levels of knowing who the VIP area of the areas are.
Greg Buckley: Who are the players what's the community like? I, who's the politicians, get the lay of the land, you know, and make sure that I don't cross too many people or anybody actually. And I did that. Down here for sure. 'cause I'm 85 miles from my home. And even though I've been here for fun at the beaches and I've known the area and all that, I haven't known who in the area.
Greg Buckley: And so, you know, I think it's good that no matter where you're at, you know, the community, if you're stretching out beyond your home base. If you're, if like I did 85 miles away, I have to learn who the people are. I gotta learn where, who's what, how to parts to network, the distribution, all of that.
Greg Buckley: And that's really important. So I dunno, that's one thing I did.
Jimmy Lea: No, I like that. And 85 miles isn't that far, but it's 85 miles. It's that far. Oh,
Greg Buckley: sure.
Jimmy Lea: It's far. You can't just pop over for lunch. You gotta plan way ahead.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. Yeah, you do. And that's the thing that we did do, I mean, we planned as well as we could with deliveries.
Greg Buckley: And we would take we would meet in. Halfway to get parts. If we needed something from Wilmington, we couldn't get equipment, we would share equipment until we built the budgets up and where we were buying our own. And you know, so yeah, there logistically it was a nightmare for year one, you know, until we got our act together a little bit and things calmed down.
Greg Buckley: And that's, I guess that's a big, that's another thing to expect chaos. Expect chaos. Don't be naive to think that everything's gonna be rosy and you're gonna make a lot of money starting off. I mean, if you're fortunate and you have, you know, wheels underneath you, or maybe it's your third, fourth, fifth location, okay.
Greg Buckley: That, that doesn't count. If you're fresh coming from a toolbox to a cash register, you know, and working the room, it's a whole different story. So, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: It's so true. It's so true. It is. It's amazing what can be done, and I think you hit the nail on the head too, is to get a coach, get somebody who can
Greg Buckley: Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Hold you accountable. Because a lot of times we think we can do it. We think, oh I'll do this, so I'll make sure I get this done. And then you give yourself leading and see, and you give yourself too much rope and then you end up behind the eight ball trying to get stuff done. And you can't do that.
Jimmy Lea: You get a coach, get somebody who's gonna hold you accountable. And gonna work with you.
Greg Buckley: Right. Very important. And it's also important that you know, the coach is there to actually monitor and watch where your numbers are going to be and help you understand the intricacies of how those numbers work and what it means when they don't, you know?
Greg Buckley: Yeah. I mean, I myself always thought that my top line revenue number was. Glorious. You know, it was like, oh my God did this. I'm so proud of myself. What was all vanity? And it took me a while to understand that's BS because it's not that top line number, that's the most important one. It's your bottom line.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. The net profit. What you take home, what I take home. There you go. What's in the bank? So we, you know, yeah. And so, you know, I clearly remember I have two very good friends and colleagues here in Wilmington that really schooled me early. And I can never forget this, is that, we're at a seminar with Mitch Schneider when he was touring.
Greg Buckley: Okay. And Mitch was there talking about numbers and modern shop. You know, he set the precedent on what it's like to be a modern shop. So everybody was fi he was, you know, he was it, right? Yeah. Yeah. And you know. My two buddies are, they're talking and doing, and they're very they're very smart.
Greg Buckley: Very smart. I mean, I, they have taught me a lot, you know, and, you know, they're yapping and all this. And I said, well, I'm doing this much money. I'm, and I'm peacocking. My chest is out to here. And they go, just take home. Well, well, you know, I don't think I got anything right now. You know, take home once, you know, yeah.
Greg Buckley: I'm eating peanut butter and jelly. When I was like, okay, you ain't there yet, pal. Yep. How effective knowing your numbers will be. And I still took a while to fully understand and still today, you know, I, again jumping into any small business, excuse me you have to respect your numbers and you really have to understand.
Greg Buckley: How they flow, what their meanings are, why they are what they are, and you can't be afraid to set your mark correctly, you know? Yeah. That I really think that's something that needs to be taught to everybody in the organization. Everybody. Yeah. Yeah. And it has to be respect for that. You know, if we get into tech versus owner, which is the flavor of the year right now, online and social and all of our channels.
Greg Buckley: There will never be a equal level between an employee and an owner. I like, I hate to say that, but there's not, and there's no, you're not gonna get what the owner needs. You know, it's labor versus ownership and if the labor wants to become an owner, jump in man, and nobody's stopping you, but you know, there, just making sure that
Jimmy Lea: you're prepared.
Jimmy Lea: True be because every technician out there thinks, oh my gosh, the door rate's 150 bucks an hour or 200 bucks an hour, and you're paying me 30 bucks an hour or 40 or 50. Right. Whatever the number is. Right. You're thinking the owner is keeping the difference between my hourly and the door rate.
Greg Buckley: Sure. Yeah.
Greg Buckley: They're
Jimmy Lea: not even close. No.
Greg Buckley: No. And the other, the biggest thing is our counter. Folks I've had, yeah. Had people employed with me that will say, well, why are you, why are your prices higher than the dealer? Why are your parts Mark markup higher than the dealer for cost? I'm saying, you know, I said in myself I wish we had this conversation and I was aware of this with your problem prior for me bringing you on, or what kinda education do you need to understand that this isn't how it works?
Greg Buckley: You know, I'm not gonna take the MSRP and say, okay, here you go, you know, great. It doesn't work that way. So our, this is what it costs for me to run my business. Yeah. This is what costs to have. You have a. Pretty comfortable position, you know what I mean? So if you don't want that, you can let me know. I mean, we can, I can put you in a McDonald's uniform and you can go shuffle burgers.
Greg Buckley: You, you know, whatever you want. So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. So I think that there really does I, you know, and all of what I see online right now. There, there is this perception that owners are evil and owners don't care and all that. And I don't see that to be true in 90% of the cases or the people I know.
Greg Buckley: You know? Yeah. And I can leave it at that, but you know, that's.
Jimmy Lea: No, it is, it's true. And what we would say to them is, go get an education.
Jimmy Lea: The Chamber of Commerce has free classes. Your community college has free classes. The business administration has free classes to help you understand what it takes to be a business owner.
Jimmy Lea: Once you've taken those classes and now you're going to asta or you're going to sema or you're going to vision and you're taking additional. Owner classes, not the technical classes. This is owner, the, it's a different skill set. It's a different muscle. You've never exercised a business owner muscle before, so you need to get into the reps.
Greg Buckley: Exactly. So as a
Jimmy Lea: technician, you ha you are highly skilled, super highly skilled in repairing vehicles. You are a novice when it comes to running a business.
Greg Buckley: Absolutely. Yeah. So educate
Jimmy Lea: yourself. Well, you know,
Greg Buckley: one of the, one of the things and you know, I say coaching, right? Yeah. Yeah. You can do it when you can afford it, when you think you have time for it.
Greg Buckley: But you bring up a very good point. I really invested my time into programs that did not cost me anything but my time. Yeah. And that's expensive enough. But, you know, I had the SPA, right? Then you have score. Which is all retired executives that are volunteering their time to help you. Public library, all the books and resources there.
Greg Buckley: Goldman Sachs, 10,000 entrepreneurs get together and you're in classes for nine weeks and you really do drill down and it gives you these. Jump off points in a sense, but you do learn like spreadsheets and you learn numbers, and you have people assisting you that it's only costing your time. So if you're working till five o'clock and they say, well, can you meet at six?
Greg Buckley: You should meet at six o'clock. And it's a valuable situation. Or if you have to go at nine o'clock in the morning to meet them, these people are volunteering their time. That's a, it's a great. Initial point for everybody to really understand because those resources are there. Yeah. And we pay for them in our taxes and everything like that.
Greg Buckley: So take advantage of them. They're very important. And they're all over. Everyone has them. And so, you know, get the basics down and then you can move into like the institute or all a, anyone where else you would feel comfortable with.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Find out. And there's so much information you bring up a good point, Greg, find there is.
Jimmy Lea: Hundreds and thousands of hours of videos on YouTube. Millions, trillions of hours. You've gotta be very selective on what you want to consume and what you want to bring into your life. So find a coaching and training company and go find their YouTube channel and then consume everything in there.
Jimmy Lea: Everything
Greg Buckley: that's there. Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Everything. Implement what they are telling you to do in those videos. Implement it in your shop. See the business, see the difference, see what's happening, and you'll see the needle move. And when it does now maybe you're ready for that next level. That next step.
Jimmy Lea: And it's the face-to-face, one-on-one coaching your business will hockey stick. And if it doesn't hockey stick, meaning your profits don't go from here to hockey stick, it goes way high. You might not be with the right coaching company.
Greg Buckley: Right.
Jimmy Lea: It always does. The natural progression for those that come in with our program as a one-on-one is the natural progression is to go into the group environment, the Mastermind.
Jimmy Lea: This is where you're meeting with other shop owners that are in the very similar, same trenches that you are here. You come to the group and you're like, oh my gosh, world's coming to an end. This mountain can't climb this mountain. And the group goes, Greg, that was Tuesday. Here's the solution.
Jimmy Lea: Come on, let's go. That's right. And they've been there. They've done that.
Greg Buckley: Very good point, right? It is. Take a break, let it go, give it some time. Let it like, not fester, but let it calm down and you always come back with the right solution
Jimmy Lea: And here is the solution. Greg, here's the solution.
Jimmy Lea: Here's what we've done. This is what I did in my shop. Here's what Joe did in his shop. Here's what Steve did in his shop. We faced the exact same situation or a very similar situation, and here's three different solutions of what we did. You got this and then that mountain becomes a mole hill.
Greg Buckley: Yeah, it does.
Greg Buckley: It really does. It's easy to
Jimmy Lea: get over it
Greg Buckley: and it's, but you know, it is hard to, to when you're in the middle of it, the, it's very difficult to see outside of it, you know, and you say to yourself, oh my God, you know, I'm trapped. I can't do this. I, you know, maybe I can't make payroll this week. Okay, well, you will, some, something will come up.
Greg Buckley: You'll do it, you know, it'll be fine. And the best thing is just. Calm down, take a break, you know, and you'll get through it. So yeah. So true. A lot of good stuff.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Greg Buckley: So true. Greg,
Jimmy Lea: thank you so
Greg Buckley: much,
Jimmy Lea: man. Sure. If you had a magic wand and you could change anything in this gorgeous, beautiful industry that we have, what would you be?
Jimmy Lea: Change in the industry.
Greg Buckley: I think we touched on it with the labor versus owner. I wish that we would grow into a little bit more mature level of thought and respect for each side, you know? Yeah. You know, we said the labor needs to understand what an owner goes through, but the owner does need to understand.
Greg Buckley: Where their labor is or how to take care of and communicate. And they really appreciate where the labor and their employees and team members are. There is I've shared a few times, there's a great book by by a rabbi, and it's not religious in any way, but it shows, it talks about the respect, the level of respect that if you are a technician.
Greg Buckley: You're a technician. That's where you're at. That was your choice. You wish to remain a technician. That's your choice, okay? That for you are working for somebody, and that's your choice. You make the choice. You respect the person who is trying to make sure that you do have that. Level of income that you wish.
Greg Buckley: It's a partnership. The owner needs to respect that end of it as well. From the side of well, I need to be, I need to be careful of what that person is. I'm an owner. Yes, it's my risk, it's my money, it's everything. At the same time, what's my responsibility to that person? I wanna make sure that they are healthy.
Greg Buckley: I wanna make sure that they are successful. I wanna make sure that they grow so. I hope that there is, that there becomes this understanding that one side or the other is never going to get what they get. It's never gonna be a hundred percent. There's always gonna be this working the yin and yang.
Greg Buckley: You know, you, some things are gonna work and some things aren't, you know? And that has to be understood. I think if we get to that point. We will have less animosity from both, you know, you know, and it starts with language, it starts with communications, it starts with respect. And if we get to that point, I think that we'll have a much better industry.
Greg Buckley: One that's accepting of you know, bringing people in and being proud to bring people in. I, that's another thing that kind of like, it irritates me. I'm sure it irritates a lot of other people, but you have. Certain folks that are saying, well, I would never get back into this. I'm telling my young kids never do this and all that, and yet I have, yeah.
Greg Buckley: I'm going like, man, you really would eat your young, wouldn't you? You know, I said, I have two young men right now with me here in Millsboro that are amazing. One young man, he's, he just turned 17. He is top five in his school, number one in his automotive class. This kid is ready to go. I mean, he is a superstar waiting.
Greg Buckley: The other young man, Zach, he came to us because he was doing signs and he was doing graphic designs and he said, I want something more challenging. And he had a knack for putting things together and he said, can I come in as a, we'll change in turn, whatever. Sure. Okay, minute. Well, he is firing on more than all cylinders, so we have the potential to bring quality individuals in.
Greg Buckley: What we have to do, and I think the independents are much better with this, of course, you know, is we're not gonna throw them to the pits. We're going to train them, we're gonna give them the education that they need, and we're not just gonna, you know, make 'em work, you know, flat rate and all that other stuff.
Greg Buckley: You know, so we have these opportunities in front of us. We need to really, seriously consider. Licensing. I'm an advocate for putting us under a license. I think that it puts a a good level for us as a profession. You know, we're the only, I believe we are, the only trade is not licensed and not being licensed restricts us from certain opportunities that we get to work with.
Greg Buckley: Others, you know, like, you know, I remember I could not bid on, I could not bid with the rate that I needed because I wasn't a licensed trade. This was with the state. I, this was years back going after some state contracts. Right. That looked good. I, okay. Okay. We can try. Well, I couldn't bid because I wasn't licensed.
Greg Buckley: Yet the electrician could, the HVAC people could you know, all of that. And so, you know, when you think about it I think that we are going to be destined to be licensed in some degree. And I think it'll be good. So, you know, I think respect, and I think that we can, we, at some point we're gonna need to challenge ourselves on how professional we wanna be.
Greg Buckley: You know, and where that leads us. I don't think we can, I don't know of anybody that, well, let's put it this way. You, if you own an ev, would you take it to the person down the street with broken glass doors and all that, and a shabby looking place? You would say no, you know, and. Where would you go?
Greg Buckley: You'd have to go to someone who understands all that. Well, that's gonna take someone with credibility. Does the license give us the extra credibility that we need? Yeah. So anyway, that's my thoughts for today.
Jimmy Lea: Well, that's a beautiful magic wand moment there, Greg Buckley. I love it. I love it. And it sounds like there's a lot of.
Jimmy Lea: Coaching and training that happens inside of that as well, for us to take it to that next level.
Greg Buckley: Yeah. There is all the way around. I mean, from, you know, technical training to shop ownership training, all of that stuff, it's very important, you know, and then very important. Yeah. Making and the biggest thing is be willing to constantly educate yourself.
Greg Buckley: Do not be a hermit. Do not be those, you know, an ostrich with your head in the sand. You have to continue. Continuous education is just you know, something that you have to do. And like for most of us today I think we have expanded horizons, whether due to, you know, our ability to continue to work.
Greg Buckley: You know, I might be 65, but I don't think I'm ready to really just drop out altogether. So,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. Yeah. You're still gonna be a contributing member of society. You're not gonna retire.
Greg Buckley: No, I, well,
Greg Buckley: I can't because I, my wife won't let me. She, that's why we just bought the house down here. So I have my little getaway and she can stay in Wilmington, and I'm here in Millsboro.
Greg Buckley: Oh, brother. Yeah. Patty always says, well. W when are you going to Millsboro? You know, and we joke about it. S dare. She's here with me this week, but, you know.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome.
Greg Buckley: That's funny. Well go. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, you're wrap it up.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We're gonna wrap things up. Thank you so much, Greg. You're You are awesome.
Jimmy Lea: I appreciate your wisdom, your insight, your influence. It goes so deep in this automotive industry and you are one of the sage members of your community. Thank you so much. I just wanna help.
Greg Buckley: Thank you, Jimmy, and I appreciate you and the institute allowing me to come on and you know, blab away for a little bit.
Greg Buckley: I I love what I do. I've always enjoyed this industry. I really do respect it, everybody. I've said this before, we wear our heart on our sleeves. We expose it sometimes too much, but it's who we are and we've always been that way. I've been proud to be part of it. I still look for ways to help you know, and do what I need to do, and so I appreciate the words I do.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. My good friend Greg Buckley of Buckley's Automotive. Thank you Greg. Appreciate it. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast.
 

147 - Ballet Shoes to Bay Floors: How Julia Reynolds Streamlined a Small Shop for Big Results

147 - Ballet Shoes to Bay Floors: How Julia Reynolds Streamlined a Small Shop for Big Results
September 16, 2025 - 00:33:39
 
Show Summary:
What happens when a former professional ballerina trades the stage for a service bay? Julia Reynolds, General Manager at RDS Automotive Service (GA), shares how she rose from apprentice to operations lead—building a transparent, commission-free culture and turning processes into profit. In this episode, Julia breaks down the exact systems her 5-person team uses to communicate faster, sell smarter, and deliver dealer-level trust with indie-shop heart. If you’re wrestling with volume, deferred work follow-ups, parts sourcing chaos, or going paperless, you’ll steal playbook-ready ideas you can implement this week.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Julia Reynolds, General Manager of RDS Automotive Service
 
Show Highlights:
[00:00:34] - From ballet to bays: Julia pivots careers after an ankle injury, earns ASEs, starts at Ford in 2020, and joins RDS in August 2021.
[00:03:16] - Ground-up growth: She begins as an apprentice, sweeps floors, learns under master tech Paul O’Brien, then shifts to the front after a wrist injury.
[00:05:10] - Small shop, tight crew: A five-person, commission-free team feels like family and collaboration beats push-pull leadership.
[00:06:17] - INTJ ops brain: Templates, spreadsheets, and standardized parts lists make complex jobs faster and cleaner.
[00:08:59] - DVI is the crown jewel: AutoServe1 + Protractor + AutoOps boost transparency with photos/video/audio and easy online booking.
[00:11:30] - Paperless vision: Tablets in-bay and one-platform communication would cut walk-time and raise tech efficiency.
[00:15:33] - Parts in one pane: Consolidating with tools like Nexpart/PartsTech would simplify VIN-driven estimates and ordering.
[00:17:06] - Volume bottleneck: Local zoning and neighborhood shifts reduce car count, so marketing and deferred-work follow-up are mission-critical.
[00:23:04] - New audience, new work: Target late-20s/early-30s enthusiasts who want upgrades (not just maintenance) to grow revenue.
[00:26:50] - Leveling up: Prioritize electrical diagnostics training, dealer-level programming, and evaluating all-in-one shop software on the Windows 11 refresh.
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight, depending on when and where you're joining us from. My name is Jimmy Lea. I am with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Joining me today is Julia Reynolds. She is the general manager for RDS Automotive out of Georgia. So excited to have you here with me, Julia, how the heck are you?
Julia Reynolds: I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Jimmy Lea: Well, good. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to jump right into this and ask you about your journey into the automotive aftermarket. What did that look like for you?
Julia Reynolds: So it's, it almost sounds like a lie when I say it out loud, I promise you a hand on a Bible.
Julia Reynolds: It is real. I was a professional ballet dancer. I ended up breaking an ankle and retiring at about 2021. I taught for a bit after that. I. Essentially, I had a couple of jobs here and there. I worked with Shutterfly for a bit. Worked with Lifetouch, had a, you know, great group of people there.
Julia Reynolds: Very supportive still of my career change today. When I was deciding kind of what I wanted to do next with my life, I remembered growing up in. Essentially we had a service station that had a equipment shop underneath, and my happiest memories growing up were being in the shop with my grandfather and my uncles and my dad and my brother, you know, whether I was watching them or because I had little hands, you know, reach in here and twist that because, you know, I'm a girl.
Julia Reynolds: Our hands fit in places that a lot of burly guys hands don't. Oh, that's so
Jimmy Lea: true.
Julia Reynolds: And it just, when I thought back on all those memories, I was like, I. It doesn't feel like work. And I had also restored vintage, like I had a Nissan Dotson two 80 or not a two 80. My brother had a two 80, I had a 300.
Julia Reynolds: And then my brother also has a fair lady as well. So we kind of grew up in the restoration game with that just for fun, you know, kind of a bonding project with our dad. And yeah, I took the leap went and got my a SC certifications. I started out at Ford. Went through all of the Ford School Ford training back in 2020, and then I started here at RDS in August of 21.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. So you just ashad yourself sha Oh, I'm saying the wrong word.
Julia Reynolds: No, you got it. It's Shae
Jimmy Lea: Ade. You're away from ballerina into, the front desk. Oh, congratulations. A professional ballet. Thank you. I was not a professional ballroom dancer, but I was a ballroom dancer through high school and college.
Julia Reynolds: That's awesome. That's how I met my husband.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, really? Ballroom
Julia Reynolds: dancer? Yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my word. Congratulations.
Julia Reynolds: Specifically like West Coast. West coast swing and blues dancing.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love West Coast. West Coast. It's so much fun. Yep. Yep. So much fun. All right, so, back to your you went from ballerina into the automotive into Ford, ended up at RDS, right?
Jimmy Lea: It sounds like outta school, you went right into RDS, is that correct?
Julia Reynolds: Correct. Correct.
Jimmy Lea: Okay.
Jimmy Lea: Did you go straight into management with RDS or did you start on the front counter? What, how did that work out?
Julia Reynolds: I started as an apprentice. I mean, I started from the bottom and worked my way up. When I came to RDS, like I said, I was fresh out of Ford School.
Julia Reynolds: And I just said if you take a chance on me, I promise I'll work as hard as I need to prove myself. I know I'm a girl in this industry and it is not normal for a. You know, 27-year-old female to walk into a shop looking for a job. So, you know, I paid my dues, I swept the floors, I put the tools away.
Julia Reynolds: I got to apprentice under our master technician, Paul O'Brien. He is incredible. One of, in my opinion, one of the best Toyota mechanics in the city of Atlanta. So I got to spend two years with. And then after that I ended up having an injury with my wrist. I tore the cartilage here, so I was in a cast and it's kind of hard to work on cars in a cast.
Julia Reynolds: So that's when I started learning more about how the front runs and how we, you know, do bookkeeping and all that good stuff. So my boss kind of. He and I swapped. So he took my position on the floor as soon as my apprenticeship was over, and then I kind of started learning the backend until my brother came on board with us from Subaru, and now he's our service manager.
Julia Reynolds: So he handles all of the customer facing interactions and then I handle all the backend.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, interesting. So he went from teching with Subaru to service advising here with RDS.
Julia Reynolds: Correct.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my goodness. And so you're running everything behind the scenes and he's running everything front of counter.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. That's phenomenal. So what's one of the things that you love the most about leading this team you've got at RDS?
Julia Reynolds: With RDS? I know it's kind of a taboo thing to say that work feels like a family, but as a very small shop. Yeah. We do feel like a family. I mean, there's only five of us, the owner, his wife, my brother, me and our master tech.
Julia Reynolds: That's it. So, you know, it's a very small operation and I love that we all can come together, we can troubleshoot and problem solve and feed off one another. And when it comes to leading it, it doesn't even really. Feel like I'm having to push or pull or, you know, make things happen. It's really a collaborative effort and I'm so thankful to work with such an amazing team.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that, that is so cool. And it's cool that you've got a small team. So it's, I'm not gonna say it's easier because it's also difficult. It has its own challenges. Yes, working with the technicians and the service advisors. So how, what would you describe as your management style in communicating between your technicians and your brother as the advisor?
Jimmy Lea: How do you work that?
Julia Reynolds: So. Personality wise, I'm a an INTJ, so I'm very logic oriented. I like to problem solve and you know, streamline processes and things like that. So I try to take as much of my experience as a tech because I do still work on the floor and say, okay, if we are doing this job, why don't we come together?
Julia Reynolds: We're gonna make a couple of spreadsheets. So if we're gonna sell a. A timing change up, we're gonna make a sheet. So we kind of have a template. We know we need X, Y, Z for parts and things like that. And I think having that, like I said, collaborative effort has really helped a lot in that regard.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that.
Jimmy Lea: I love that. I love that, that you have analyzed your personality as well, so that you know and understand your your Yeah, you gotta perfect mind. Have you also done the personality test for everybody else in the shop as well?
Julia Reynolds: I have. I have. My brother is also an INTJ and I believe that Paul is an Ian tj.
Julia Reynolds: So we're very similar and it kind of gives that good Yan Yin and yang kind of. Feeling.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. That's great. That's great that you've gone delved into that realm of understanding personalities because it's, it helps in the communication. It helps in Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Julia Reynolds: And knowing where your strong suits are and where your weaknesses are for your management style does make a huge difference in how successful you and your team can be.
Jimmy Lea: Oh totally agree. So where do you feel most confident as a leader of RDS?
Julia Reynolds: Can you elaborate just a little bit?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So as a manager, you've, you're a general manager. Where are you the most confident in a position of leadership?
Julia Reynolds: I would say I'm the most confident when it comes to operations.
Julia Reynolds: That, so when I worked with Life Touch and Shutterfly, I was in operations, you know, a lead team lead, that kind of thing. So I got very used to, you know, here is. What we have to do day to day, here are all the steps we need to take to make x, y, z happen. So I would say when it comes to things like streamlining our parts houses, you know, we're gonna use these three systems, you know, choosing our shop management softwares adding things like Ds to our routines.
Julia Reynolds: I think that's kind of my strong suit of vetting programs like that and implementing as much as I can with the most cost, effectiveness and highest. ROI. To get customers involved. We've started using a full like photo, video, audio DVI system, and that has, it's been incredible. The customer feedback has been awesome.
Julia Reynolds: It really brings up that transparency. Especially because we're a commission free shop. We are not like most, so we are not flat rate.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. Wow. Okay. So everybody's So it's a high trust
Julia Reynolds: environment. High trust environment.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. I love it. And what DVI program are you doing?
Julia Reynolds: So we use autos Serve one and we're paired with protractor right now.
Julia Reynolds: We may be changing protractor with via Windows 11 rollout and kind of see what we're doing from there. Sure. And then we use Auto Ops for all our scheduling.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Very cool. Yeah. Phenomenal. All phenomenal programs. They're very strong in the industry. That's very cool. Yeah. On the flip side of this where you're strong in the operations side, where do you feel that there are areas that you're still developing as a leader or as a manager?
Julia Reynolds: I think for me personally, as a manager, this has been a different, kind of a different ball game just due to the industry itself. Being a young female, working with a bunch of males that are far older and more experienced than I am, I think I struggle with my confidence in saying, Hey, this is what I think we need to do, or how we need to do it, because, I mean, they've got 40 years of experience on me, and of course I want their input, but it is tough to kind of get out of my own head and say, this is your position and you're allowed to say what you think.
Julia Reynolds: So I would say just confidence in that side is probably one of the things I struggle with the most.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, hey sister, we all do. We all do. You gotta be comfortable in your own skin and standing up for yourself and your thoughts. 'cause you've got great experience, they've got great experience, you've got great experience as well.
Jimmy Lea: Let's bring them together and have the best of both worlds.
Julia Reynolds: Absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: I love that. If you could change one thing about, oh thing I hate thing, if you could change one aspect about your team's efficiency or communication, what would it be?
Julia Reynolds: If it were up to me, I would love it if we could go paperless.
Jimmy Lea: Yes,
Julia Reynolds: I would love if we could go paperless.
Jimmy Lea: Would you have technicians on their phone, technicians on a tablet, or technicians on a computer?
Julia Reynolds: So as of right now, we use tablets just for the DVI system so that we can get the, you know, pictures, video, audio.
Julia Reynolds: But there is a way, I think if we were to change shop management software, where we could use everything through one platform on the tablet. I think that would increase, not necessarily just sales, but just efficiency of communication. You know, every time you take 30 seconds to walk across the shop to talk to your service advisor, you do that 14 times a day.
Julia Reynolds: That adds up really quickly when your, you know, tech costs per minute is a dollar 65. Oh yeah. So, you know, once you do the math on how. How much it actually takes to keep the lights on and keep your text paid. That effectiveness, the less you move, the better you are. So if we could go paperless and work off tablets in our bays and have that direct line like, Hey, this estimate is ready, or This inspection is done, this inspection was sent, we got approval on this, parts are ordered.
Julia Reynolds: You know, if we could get that, you know, wham, bam, that would be really, I think, my goal. But that's where I want us to get to.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, you, and you're exactly right. When you focus on the operations, the process procedures, like you're talking about, you said it doesn't necessarily increase sales. But it does.
Jimmy Lea: It is exactly tied in together. The more efficient you are, the more you have that process procedure down, the more business you can bring in. Therefore the sales go up. I mean,
Julia Reynolds: absolutely. And it gives the service advisor more time to prepare that estimate to go over it and, you know. Have more time to explain to the customer.
Julia Reynolds: We try, like I said, to be very transparent and if they wanna know how a system works, we'll tell them. If they don't care, that's totally fine. We're not gonna give you information you don't want. But if we did have, you know, a bit more efficiency in that department, I think we could have more time to say, okay, so here's how a water pump actually works.
Julia Reynolds: And explain that cooling system to them. 'cause people in my generation, you know, between like 25 to 38 or so. Some of us grew up with fix it dads and some didn't. So as much as we can inform them, I want that to be a part of the process and that trust building with our clientele.
Jimmy Lea: It's so true. It's so true.
Jimmy Lea: And you've got that operations mind. My wife has that operations mind as well and here she was with the company. They were 48 weeks behind in processing claims. Goodness. It is. Yes, my goodness is correct. It was really far behind. She dug in and within a very short amount of time.
Jimmy Lea: I don't know exactly what the amount of time is, but it's short, like. A few months, let's call it three months. She had it completely turned around where they were processing claims within 31 days, 32 days.
Julia Reynolds: That's incredible.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. They went from being a $30 million a year company to a 40 or $50 million a year company in, in, in a flash.
Jimmy Lea: And was it because the sales guys were selling more? Well, kind of, but it was because they were able to process it better, quicker, faster, easier. They had more ability to take throughput. Exactly. To your point. So let's dive into some of this operational systems, process, procedures. Yeah. What do you think that you have implemented into your shop that is running really well as far as process, procedure or operation?
Julia Reynolds: I think the addition of. Well first the addition of auto serve one number one, that DVI system, not only does it cloud save all of the information from each inspection, the customer gets an email and texts that they get to keep forever. And then if they ever do need a copy of it, we have a backup.
Julia Reynolds: And then also including auto ops with that. So both of those integrate with protractor. All the data carries over. But now you can book from our Google business page. You don't have to worry about calling us. You can just tap a button, pick your time slot. You want breaks, you wanna describe something, you know, you just check off a few boxes and you're good to go.
Julia Reynolds: I love it. Good. I would say the next thing that I wanna implement would be, I'm considering next part if we are to change shop management software so that we're not clicking through individual browser tabs to order parts, because copying and pasting that vin into four different parts houses.
Julia Reynolds: You know, that takes time. And when you're building a big estimate and one part sauce has part of it, and one part sauce has, you know, three pieces of it, it gets very tedious. And then you end up like my desk with paper. Paper. But you're gonna miss on
Jimmy Lea: paper. Yeah. You're gonna miss something. So using a program like,
Julia Reynolds: yeah, using a program like next part, you've got one window and it says, okay, out of the 25 parts houses you've selected in your area, it's available here, and here.
Julia Reynolds: And then you can build your estimate directly from all of those and order it in one invoice, which that's our next goal.
Jimmy Lea: Beautiful. I'm not familiar with next part, but I am familiar with Parts Tech.
Julia Reynolds: Very similar.
Jimmy Lea: It sounds very similar. Very
Julia Reynolds: similar,
Jimmy Lea: yeah. Very cool. So, I love that, that you've implemented a DVI and that's your, one of your crown jewels.
Jimmy Lea: I, I, that's my baby. Yeah. Right. Oh, because a customer can see it worn, torn fray, broken leaking, seeping. Yeah. You can see that. Especially when you circle it, you put air clip, customers can see that. So, and
Julia Reynolds: we get that red, yellow, green, just like a dealer.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Oh, well, red, yellow, green is inherent.
Jimmy Lea: We all understand green means go. We're good. Yellow means, hey, caution. You gotta be aware. And red says safety. You've got to fix it now. So where do you see are some of the bottlenecks in the current workflow or communication or customer service? What are some of those bottlenecks that you've identified?
Julia Reynolds: Our biggest bottleneck right now has been volume in our area. There's a lot of different like zoning issues and stuff happening around us and it's taken things like, you know, they've torn down apartment complexes that were right next to us, that were a ton of our customers. There's several neighborhoods around us that, you know, people are either aging out and not driving anymore 'cause they've retired.
Julia Reynolds: And we also live in Atlanta, so if your commute's only four miles. We're lucky to see you twice a year. Yeah. So I think our biggest bottleneck right now is marketing just within our own, you know, marketing to our own clients. They're fantastic. We have an amazing, you know, book of business. Our customers are fantastic people.
Julia Reynolds: But it's getting new volume in getting that name out. And, you know, aside from just word of mouth.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Well, and it's interesting you mentioned marketing. We just completed a marketing intensive, a marketing workshop at the institute.
Julia Reynolds: Oh,
Jimmy Lea: we brought together, yeah. It was a small, intimate group.
Jimmy Lea: There was about 50 of us vendors and participants, and we had, it was a two and a half day speeches talking about marketing, what you can do, what you can implement. Then it was hands-on, planning out the marketing calendar. Yeah, it was really good. So next year when we do it, that's
Julia Reynolds: fantastic.
Jimmy Lea: You make sure you sign up for it.
Jimmy Lea: I'll be
Julia Reynolds: there. Yeah, that sounds great.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That would help you. So when they demoed the apartment complex, what did they put up in place?
Julia Reynolds: So it started to be a housing development, and then I believe it either bought or went bankrupt. I'm not quite sure. It changed hands. And it sat for a little over a year before someone picked it up.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my. Okay. So
Julia Reynolds: there, and like I said, all of the zoning changes like where we are, you can't open a new auto shop.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You're
Julia Reynolds: if you're not, yeah. If you're not existing, no new ones can pop up anywhere inside, you know, our particular overlay district. Yeah. Like I said, it's just been kind of tough because businesses have been moving around.
Julia Reynolds: You know, some of the clients like fleet truck contracts and stuff that we had, they're no longer here. They've moved to somewhere else. Just because they needed someone that had more bays and at this point, if we were to move, we would have to move outside of the city. We can't just move to another building easily.
Julia Reynolds: So that's been kind of a struggle, just like I said, for getting volume in.
Jimmy Lea: That's tough. That's tough. The good news is you're grandfathered and you're staying there. Yes. You're gonna be there. Absolutely. If you stand, if you need to grow just at another location, don't be yes.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah,
Julia Reynolds: absolutely. And we have, we just celebrated our 25th almond, well, we'll be 26 next year anniversary. We've been open since 1999. Same owner. And we have been in this building since 2003, I believe.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Congratulations. That's very cool. Thanks. And does the owner own the building or are you guys leasing the building or do you know what That's
Julia Reynolds: We've leased this one.
Julia Reynolds: We at first only leased the front half, and now we have one, two, well, we have four lifts and then we have two flat bases.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Okay. And for the amount of technicians you've got, that's perfect. That's perfect. The
Julia Reynolds: three
Jimmy Lea: on the floor. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So are there any reoccurring issues that it's eating up your time right now that shouldn't
Julia Reynolds: That's a good question. I would say. The things that take up my time the most that we haven't quite nailed down a procedure on is following up with deferred work. We do have some automated things that go out through Carfax and stuff like that, but getting that report pulled, finding that time in the week, especially with myself working on the floor still and making sure those calls go out every Friday, that is definitely something that it gets done, but it's kind of stressful.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's kind of stressful. Look into ops. I think they have some great programs in there for the decline services that you can set up an automatic three month, six month, nine month reminder.
Julia Reynolds: Oh, I only, right now, I have it set up to remind them if they go to schedule, but I haven't looked at sending additional Sue there.
Julia Reynolds: Thank you for that.
Jimmy Lea: You're welcome.
Julia Reynolds: I appreciate that.
Jimmy Lea: So if if some of these small problems were left unaddressed, what would. Be the big headache that you could see six months from now.
Julia Reynolds: I think the big headache if we weren't to address issues like this, again, it would go back to volume. I think we would see a bottleneck in people coming in, especially new clients.
Julia Reynolds: Like I said, we have a fantastic clientele. Our word of mouth like referrals are through the roof. I mean, we probably get, I would say, two to three a week from somebody saying, Hey go to RDS, check 'em out. But you know, when we see on that intake form, you know, Google next door, Yelp, or whatever it is, we don't see that quite as often.
Julia Reynolds: So I think if we were to leave. Things like following up on deferred work and you know, the marketing side of things unaddressed for a while. I think we would definitely see A decline in profit.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We gotta get that deferred work dialed in pretty quick.
Julia Reynolds: Absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: And I think with a phone call, you got it.
Jimmy Lea: You got it taken care of. So what's the vision for RDS automotive services over the next year? What's the focus?
Julia Reynolds: The focus over the next year is to, like I said, because of a lot of our customers have retired and aged out. We're trying to get car enthusiasts in. We want the, you know, those caffeine and octane guys who, you know, they want the killer be oil pan on their Subaru.
Julia Reynolds: Not 'cause they need it, but because they want it. You know, trying to get that group involved with us, because right now our goal is to take your daily driver and make it the same way as it was the day you bought it. But living in a city like Atlanta where people have super short commutes, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room there for us to grow.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Julia Reynolds: So getting that next generation in, you know. The late twenties, early thirties. And then, you know, the teens, like the customers that have retired, we want their nieces and nephews and grandkids. We want them coming in.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You want those video gamers that are willing to buy new skins for their video.
Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. And here they're driving a Subaru, you just want them to upgrade those bar parts, bits. Yeah. Yeah. They've got the money, put the
Julia Reynolds: fancy stuff on.
Jimmy Lea: Let's do it.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. So if you had. Let's see. If you had a trusted partner to help you remove one challenge from your plate, what would that challenge be?
Jimmy Lea: And who would it be that would help to remove it?
Julia Reynolds: If I could magically have someone who just answered the phone and did our inventory? I think that would be, if we had an actual CSR, I think that would be very helpful.
Jimmy Lea: Interesting. Interesting. You say that there's some AI phone systems right now that are very interesting.
Julia Reynolds: Okay.
Jimmy Lea: There's a company called Voice Controller talk to William Fairbank. Inbound communication. I talked to David Boyd. Yeah. I've got a couple of other people that you, I can turn you on to. And what's interesting about these AI systems is that they'll answer the phone, they'll even schedule the appointment, and if it becomes too complex of a conversation, they'll say, Hey, you know what?
Jimmy Lea: Hold on a second. Do you want me to connect you with Julia? Oh, okay. Let me see if she's available. Oh, you know what? She's, maybe you're not available. She's not available right now. Do you wanna leave a message and I'll make sure she calls you back here in the next hour or two, or Definitely today, by the end of the day.
Julia Reynolds: Right.
Jimmy Lea: So it, it's quite interesting what they can do with these AI systems.
Julia Reynolds: Huh? I'll look into that.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, definitely
Julia Reynolds: look into that.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. A lot of fun. We did
Julia Reynolds: receive, we had a virtual receptionist for a bit to, you know, like a phone tree. We had some mixed reviews on that.
Jimmy Lea: Yes. Some of our
Julia Reynolds: customers loved it.
Julia Reynolds: Some did not.
Jimmy Lea: Well, and what's interesting, I call a lot of shops and it'll say, press one to speak to a human. And what they're doing is cutting out all those robo calls.
Julia Reynolds: I was just gonna say that's a big problem that we have is just, you know, you pick it up and it's either just a click or there's no one there, or it's a bot automated call.
Julia Reynolds: You know, when you have that option to press one, AIS can't do that.
Jimmy Lea: Correct. Correct. All right. So last question for you here as we land this plane is there any more training or systems or coaching that's around you or around your team that you would like to implement over the next year?
Julia Reynolds: I definitely want us to continue.
Julia Reynolds: At least for the technicians, including myself on the floor, you know, always trying to continue our education. When it comes to electrical diagnostics, cars are becoming more and more like iPads on wheels every day. So we wanna make sure we know how to use those breakout boxes. We know how to troubleshoot all those teeny tiny electrical problems.
Julia Reynolds: You know, getting RDS to the point where we could reflash head units and, you know, do that dealer level software programming, I think would be super vital. I'm trying to think if there's anything else when it comes to like growing the team or implementation. I think it will be interesting to see what happens with our shop management software once Windows 11 comes out.
Julia Reynolds: Because we will need to be getting new computers, new equipment, you know, all that good stuff. So I think. Once we consolidate, not only will it help us financially, but I think it'll make a lot of things more streamlined if we can find a shop management software that, you know, you can use something like next part, or, I, I'm so sorry, I forgot the name of the one that you mentioned.
Jimmy Lea: Parts tech.
Julia Reynolds: Parts tech. You know, that has that all in the same window so that you're not going from one screen to one screen to look at parts and write an estimate. Just put it all in at once. All goes and gets ordered on the same ro Yeah. You know, and there's a few out there that even include the credit processing, which would be great.
Julia Reynolds: Right now we use a third party for credit processing, for financing, you know, all of that. So using a shop management software that is an all-in-one would help us, like I said, both financially and I think just as a team and communication, working with the customers and ease of use for everyone.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Are you using 360 payments?
Julia Reynolds: We are not, we're actually using Flex Buy at the moment.
Jimmy Lea: Okay. I don't know Flex Buy, but I know that 360 payments is part of the family of Protractor Auto Server. It is on shop wear. You know, they work so they've got a really good seamless program and they've also got a program right now where your clients could finance through them.
Jimmy Lea: Okay, so a credit card. You don't have to use the credit card. They get approved for finance.
Julia Reynolds: Right.
Jimmy Lea: So yeah, check out. That is definitely something look
Julia Reynolds: into,
Jimmy Lea: yeah.
Julia Reynolds: Yeah. Flex by, they're, we don't. Really push it too hard because they're, they do have very high interest rates if you miss that six month window.
Julia Reynolds: You know, and I never want my customers to have to alter their gr grocery budget to fix their car or, you know, pay off a loan, that kind of thing. So we try to be very careful with who we present that to.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Well, and that's also the beauty of it is here's a huge bill, $5,000. I don't have $5,000 today.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, but you know what? You can finance it and pay a thousand bucks a month over the next five months. And it's same as cash.
Julia Reynolds: Exactly.
Jimmy Lea: Bingo. All right. I'm sold. Or maybe it's eight 50 a month. I don't know the path on that, but, right. Yeah, man that it's beau it's a beautiful option for those that can implement it.
Jimmy Lea: And it keeps them safe on the road.
Julia Reynolds: For sure. And that's, I mean, we always go by the, would I put my spouse or my parent in this vehicle? And that's our gold standard. You know, would I put my husband in it? Would I put my mom or my dad in it? And if the answer is no, then we gotta address these problems and get 'em fixed so that you, the precious car goes, stays safe on the road.
Jimmy Lea: Totally agree. Totally agree. All right, Julia, last and final question.
Jimmy Lea: What is your future? What are you going to do in this industry?
Julia Reynolds: I would love to have my own shop at some point. I think on my cover letter when I applied here, it said I either wanted to be a crew chief or chief mechanic for a Formula One team or own my own shop.
Julia Reynolds: Awesome. If I could get into, that's awesome. If anybody knows how to get in touch with Max for staff and let me know I'd love to work for him. Oh yeah. Actually I like Liz Hamilton a little more, but no, I think I would love to own my own shop. I just it, it's a very comfortable environment and feeling, and this is the first job I've ever had where it just feels like home.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, I think you've got a bright future in the industry. I think you've going in the right direction, and there is a unique opportunity right now that if you keep your eyes open, just keep looking out there, you're gonna find it. You are gonna find that opportunity to. Yeah, there's a lot of old 72-year-old, 80-year-old dudes out there that are like, I'm ready, I'm done.
Jimmy Lea: Here's keys. Have fun.
Julia Reynolds: Do the thing.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. And you grab a hold of that. You implement everything. New technology, you triple that business overnight. It seems like overnight. It's probably in the first year. Right. You just take it to next levels. It's never even been before.
Julia Reynolds: yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Keep your eyes open, Julia, and I'm fairly certain that you and your brother will be able to find something that's just awesome and amazing.
Julia Reynolds: I appreciate that. Thank you.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, thank you Julia. I appreciate your time today and course look forward to talking to you.
Julia Reynolds: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Jimmy Lea: Are you going to ASTA in, in Raleigh, North Carolina next week?
Julia Reynolds: No.
Jimmy Lea: 25th through the 28th, there's a trade show conference, tech training service advisor training, management training, marketing training, owner training.
Jimmy Lea: It's in Raleigh a STA Expo. Look it up.
Julia Reynolds: Yeah, absolutely. I think I can make that happen.
Jimmy Lea: That would be awesome. It's really good. You get in there, get into classes.
Julia Reynolds: Yeah. Are y'all, I'm assuming the institute will be there.
Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Yeah. We'll be there,
Julia Reynolds: absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: I'll be flying in on Wednesday and then out on Sunday.
Jimmy Lea: And we've got classes that we're teaching every day about service advisor training, communication, overcoming objections, selling. Without conflict, how to overcome conflict, how to communicate front to back. I love that training, marketing, training what's next? Training. Talking about the private equity that's coming in, buying up all these little shops to amalgamate and then they sell it to, right?
Jimmy Lea: All the PE. This is an opportunity that you have as well. So there's a lot of stuff happening in this industry over the next five years. We got this unique window. That's gonna happen here for us. Yeah. I'm super excited. I'd love to see you in Raleigh.
Julia Reynolds: No, that'd be great. That'd be awesome.
Jimmy Lea: All right, Julia, thank you very much.

146 - Building a Stress-Free Culture with Loren Winfrey

146 - Building a Stress-Free Culture with Loren Winfrey
September 11, 2025 - 00:38:58
 
Show Summary:
Jimmy Lea sat down with Loren Winfrey (Stress Free Auto Care) to unpack how he scales two San Francisco shops—inside a 23-store network—without losing the customer-first soul of the business. Loren detailed how empowering teams to “work you out of a job” creates consistency across locations, why radical transparency (DVIs, live tech feeds, clear follow-ups) builds trust and approvals, and how smart incentives keep advisors and techs thriving—even when car count wobbles and budgets tighten. From solving urban parking puzzles to living by a data dashboard, this conversation highlighted culture, process, and profitability in real life.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Loren Winfrey, General Manager/Trainer of Stress-Free Auto Repair
 
Show Highlights:
[00:01:11] - Loren frames leadership as “training the bench,” empowering advisors and techs so the shop isn’t dependent on a single decision-maker.
[00:02:38] - He manages two high-density SF shops a mile apart, each moving 12–15 cars daily with AGMs and advisors per location to cover five techs apiece.
[00:04:37] - With no parking at the Geary site, a porter rotates cars through smart meters on timed alerts—and earns a monthly bonus for a ticket-free record.
[00:08:47] - ARO is softening (~$1,000 → ~$800) as customers prioritize safety-critical work; Loren layers sales by red/yellow/green and explores in-house financing paths.
[00:11:29] - As a “fully deployable” operator, Loren travels to other markets (e.g., Texas) to realign processes and culture across the 23-store network.
[00:12:27] - Radical transparency: live technician video feeds and DVIs shift the conversation from “trust me” to “see for yourself,” boosting approvals.
[00:14:43] - Once skeptical of DVIs, Loren now calls AutoFlow indispensable—photos, video, and clear write-ups eliminate confusion and drive decisive yeses.
[00:19:16] - Pay what people are worth: strong base + utilization/GP bonuses keep techs and advisors engaged, consistent, and customer-focused.
[00:23:35] - Hiring is the constraint; he sets clear standards, mentors C-techs under stronger Bs, and advocates rebuilding the trades pipeline.
[00:29:22] - A custom dashboard (utilization, GP, spend) guides daily action and human check-ins—numbers tell the story, but leadership asks “Are you okay?”
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from. It is a great day outside. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Thank you for joining us today. My guest today is Lauren Winfrey. He is the general manager of two.
Jimmy Lea: Stress-free auto care shops in the San Francisco area. He is part of a 23 store network and does get transferred all over the country to help coach and train advisors and technicians all over to be the best that they can possibly be. And Lauren, one of the things that I learned very early in my career, had a great manager.
Jimmy Lea: Her name was Michelle, and she said, it is my job to work myself. Out of a job, my processes and procedures should be in place so that I as a manager, don't have anything to do. Bingo. Yes. So you understand it. Yeah. She has people in place, process, procedures, so that the business is not dependent on her to make decisions.
Jimmy Lea: She has empowered the team. To make the decisions.
Loren Winfrey: Yes. And I think it's I think it's one of the, a lot of us in this industry, you know, we are control freaks. You know, we feel like that we, in order for the ship to be steered in the right direction, we always gotta be, have our hand on the rudder, you know?
Loren Winfrey: And so. Relinquishing control and trusting in our employees that we have, and for me anyways is one of the hardest things that I had to develop in my career, you know, is putting my trust in another individual that, you know, I, they can make the shop as successful as I can. You know, make their job successful, you know, and so that, you know, I had a really good mentor growing up and in this business, you know, and he said exactly what Michelle told you.
Loren Winfrey: You know, our job is to train the bench and work yourself out of a job so you can move on to better things or bigger things or whatever,
Jimmy Lea: you know? Oh my gosh, Lauren, that, that's freaking awesome. Four advisors kind of blows me out of the out. That just blows my mind. What is the makeup of your shop with four advisors?
Loren Winfrey: Well, I have two shops. As you know. San Francisco's a really has a really dense population, you know, and oh yeah. The culture here is that if you want anything done, you go to your neighborhood and you get it done. So there's little districts in San Francisco, upper Richmond, Noah. The hay, you know, wherever.
Loren Winfrey: And so in those little regions is, you know, a really dense population of people. And so I have one shop on McAllister Street, and then I have one shop over on Geary, which is two different districts. You know, and thir San Francisco is only 13 square miles big, you know? And so I'm a mile and a half away from each shop.
Loren Winfrey: It takes me five minutes to drive over there. And but the amount of overlapping customers is very minimal, you know, and so they're doing, you know. 12 to 15 cars over at one shop and then 12 to 15 cars, you know, at the shop where I have my office at. And and I have one assistant general manager at each location, and then one service advisor at each location.
Loren Winfrey: And then I manage both locations, staffing, you know, all the fun stuff.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. And how many technicians are each of these service advisors booking business for five each shot. Five techs stuff. Yeah. Oh, that's solid, man. That's a lot of kittens to herd. And these five techs, how many bays, how many lifts are you functioning at each of the shops?
Jimmy Lea: We have six
Loren Winfrey: bays at one location and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 bays at the other location and two flat bays. And then McAllister has four flat base and six lifts. So we can have the capacity here for San Francisco yeah. Is 25 cars I can have on site at one time.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, and that's huge for San Francisco.
Jimmy Lea: You guys really don't have much for parking your properties at a premium.
Loren Winfrey: Yeah, absolutely. And the rent screens it, you know, believe me. Oh
Jimmy Lea: yeah. For you to close up at night. Not only are you bringing the cars in, you put 'em up on the lift and pull another one under it.
Loren Winfrey: Yeah. Yeah. Well at, yeah, at the Geary location.
Loren Winfrey: Yes. And Geary's. So we don't have any parking at all. There's no parking. In fact, Gary, I have a porter that his job is to get cars for the technicians, go around to the parking meters. Pay the parking meter fees with this, you know, a little company credit card that has a couple hundred bucks on it. And oh my
Jimmy Lea: gosh.
Loren Winfrey: And then I reward him for no tickets. I give him a $500 bonus every month if he gets no tickets for us. You know, and definitely an exercise and strategy, you know, at both locations, you know. Oh, no
Jimmy Lea: doubt. So like what, like every two hours? Is this boy running around with the credit card, paying the meters?
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Loren Winfrey: Well, so in San Francisco they have smart meters, so they're all connected to to satellites. And so we go onto a website, it's S-M-M-T-A website and he has all the meter numbers written down on a piece of paper. And so he goes, he has them on the timer, on a clock. And you know, he is like, okay, meter 1, 2, 3, 6, 3, 4 time to put another quarter in it, you know, or this is two hour parking, you know, it has a little alarm on his phone.
Loren Winfrey: Alarm goes off, he goes, grabs that car from the two hour parking and then goes and looks for a parking place around the corner that, you know, isn't metered parking or or two hour parking. So it's. It's fun. Wow.
Jimmy Lea: It's
Loren Winfrey: fun. Yeah,
Jimmy Lea: bro, that's a constant dance that, that boy's performing for on a daily basis, going from paid meter to non metered to holy cow.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Now I understand The $500 bonus that's quite the dance that boy's performing. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So what are your challenges that you face? You managing two shops, you've got two unique cultures, makeup. Technicians, you got five at each service, advisors at each, there's different challenges.
Jimmy Lea: What is the challenging thing for you right now these days?
Loren Winfrey: You know, I. Car counts up and down. You know, we have a pretty, you know, this company's I came from a company that I worked at for a long time that sold to a big corporation, you know, and so, the CEO of this company had recruited me, you know, when they were opening up the San Francisco shop and, you know, I had been with the old man over at the.
Loren Winfrey: At the other shop for so long that I wasn't going anywhere. He had, he was like family to me, you know? And when we got bought out, the culture really shifted into a set of principles and values of a company that didn't align with what I felt that customers deserved in this business.
Loren Winfrey: Transparency, quality reliability you know. Just a, an overall experience that isn't like, your name is John. You are $20 to me. You know, it was your name is John. You have a few kids. You know, we wanna service your car, your wife's car, your kid's car, and we wanna build a foundation of trust so we can generationally work on your vehicles.
Loren Winfrey: That was the company that was there before, and that I was taught in. And so I came over here, you know, and I tell the big boss like, look, I wish I would've came over here sooner, you know? Oh yeah. But you know, my loyalty lied and you know, that's how I am. I've only had three jobs in 30 years. You know, and I just, I get somewhere, I like someplace and you know, but this place is challenging.
Loren Winfrey: So we have a really good marketing team. The dollar spend, you know, on customers is, you know, getting new customer acquisitions is really good. Car counts just up and down a little bit. We keep a pretty good a RO. It's slacking a little bit right now, but I mean, both, you know, this shop at McAllister, we average about eight 50 a RO.
Loren Winfrey: The gear locations of about a thousand dollars a RO over 220 cars. And it's down this month, probably two right around 800. So a r o's slipping a little bit and. I think the challenges that we're having is I think a lot of customers are maxed out on their credit or whatever, you know, and so we used to be able to present, you know, Hey Bob, this is the job we wanna sell you.
Loren Winfrey: This is the maintenance items, these are the, you know, do the whole stoplight method with 'em. This is the red stuff, the yellow stuff, and the green stuff. And, you know, they would say, do it all. Now we're having to kind of backpedal into the. Second, third layer of repairs, you know, when we're presenting our sales strategy to the customer, you know, and they're not doing the 3000 or the 2000, they're like, let's do, you know, the safety stuff only, you know?
Loren Winfrey: And so, gladly we'll take care of anything the customer needs, you know, and with, you know, the backing of our company, we're in TechNet, so, you know, we have their nationwide warranty behind us and you know, through worldpac and you know, it, it's that's pretty much the challenges is just car count kind of being a little unsteady and people not, they don't have so much to spend on fixing their cars anymore,
Jimmy Lea: So I just heard of a new program, I don't know if you're aware of this, with 360 payments.
Jimmy Lea: That allows a client, a customer, to be approved for all of the services that they need to have done. Similar to a credit card. Yeah. This is in store credit just for you? Yeah. We use 360. You use 360? Yeah. I'll have, yeah, check out the I forget what they call it. Client financing option. Yeah. And tell 'em I told you to give 'em a call.
Jimmy Lea: 'cause they're good people over there at 360 payments. So
Loren Winfrey: yeah, we love them. They're our we got 23 stores and they're our guys for all 23 of our stores.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. So you're part of 23 stores now?
Loren Winfrey: I'm in charge of the San Francisco area. You know, I'm kind of like a, I don't know what you like a general hitman.
Loren Winfrey: So if they need me at another location to go. Help or fill in or you know, any of that type of stuff, you know, I'm there and I always talk. Yeah. Look, I'm fully deployable wherever you want me to go. You know, I'm here, you know, the company's going on five years old. We're trying to grow anything that I can bring to help that growth.
Loren Winfrey: You, I'm there. I want to build with the company and and I want to grow with the company. They're sending me to Texas next week. We have some shops in Texas. So I'm gonna go out to Texas next week and help with one of the shops out there with with one of the regional managers and see if we can't bring some light and some processes back into play that you know, make our company successful.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. So what what I'm hearing is you went from, large conglomerate corporate environment and came back to a small repair shop, which has 23 locations, and you're working really hard to preserve that customer-centric culture. Yes. Across the board, you those process procedures and everybody needs to know that this is Mary and John and they have two kids and they have, this is their dog.
Jimmy Lea: They're not just 20 bucks.
Loren Winfrey: Yes, absolutely. You know, and our company culture here is, you know, the principles in our company represent all of that stuff. You know, do the right thing, you know, speak the truth, demand excellence you know, all the things that we were taught growing up in this industry, you know, that makes the customers trust you.
Loren Winfrey: You know, and we have a lot of. Proprietary software that we've developed. You know, we use a lot of software from, you know, the companies around Auto Techs, me at TME, protractor, all that stuff we use, you know, and we have a lot of revolutionary stuff that we're doing for our business. So we have we have live feeds that we send the customer a text message.
Loren Winfrey: Hey, Bob the technician's working on your call right now if you'd like to click the live feed and watch the technician work on your vehicle. You know, so transparency is one of the biggest things, you know, and I try to explain to the new customers that look. You know, gone are the days of, you know, Joe in the back saying, Hey Lauren this customer has this, and this.
Loren Winfrey: Wrong on a piece of paper, you know? And I say, Hey John you know this, and this is wrong, and if you want us to fix it, I can gladly do it for you and it's gonna cost you 1500 bucks. Now we, with all the advancements in technology, you know, and all these guys have iPads and we do the digital video inspections and all this stuff, we're able to be.
Loren Winfrey: Transparent more than any time in this industry, you know? And
Jimmy Lea: What program are you on? What shop management system are you using and what DVI are you using? We have
Loren Winfrey: we have protractor for our shop management software which is, you know, and they have Epicor, they're at the root of all estimating, right.
Loren Winfrey: Pretty much have horizon everything. But we use auto text me at ME, our, which is our DVI software.
Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Yep. Auto Text me. They're now called Auto Flow. Auto
Loren Winfrey: Flow, yeah.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill. Super good dude. Yeah.
Loren Winfrey: You're thinking back when you signed up. Yeah. Yeah, I remember. So back in my old shop.
Loren Winfrey: Yeah, over on the other side of San Francisco when auto Flow was CR first creating their platform. They, yeah, they brought me a, they brought me an iPad. And they say, try it out. Right? And so this was, I don't know, 2017 or something, or 18, I was
Jimmy Lea: gonna say 5, 6, 7 years ago. Yep. Sounds alright. I was
Loren Winfrey: like, and so the owner's like, well, what do you think?
Loren Winfrey: And I go, my guys can do a, my guys can do a multi-point with a pen faster than this thing. Let's not do it because I thought, you know, the time. But you know, thinking back, you know, of course hindsight's 2020, you know, always, you know, instead of me embracing change in technology, I kind of, you know, shied away from it, you know, and that was a.
Loren Winfrey: Hard lesson learned, you know, about having a closed line to something that could revolutionize, you know, the game, you know, and so, learning lesson, you know, that I learned, you know, the hard way. And now here I could not live without ATM E. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, you know, and I think that showing the customer, you know, back in the day I would.
Loren Winfrey: I would take a bunch of pictures with my cell phone and say, Hey, Joe, I'm gonna text you some pictures, man. I wanna show you this stuff on your car. It's really dangerous, you know? And I would text 'em from my cell phone, you know, and they, wow, how much is that to fix? You know? And I would tell 'em, they like, go ahead and do it.
Loren Winfrey: And so now I'm doing on my phone and the amount of sales that I get from presenting a DVI to a customer followed up with a text message. You know, and, you know, asking them, Hey, is there anything that you don't understand that I could help you understand to get through this? Yeah. The amount of times that say, they say, how much is it to fix it?
Loren Winfrey: And I tell 'em a price and they don't blink and say, do it. Because of the transparency with the systems that are in place. It's just crazy that, you know, I slap myself every day now that I could have brought this back a long time ago, you know? But it is what it is, you know, and I embrace it now.
Jimmy Lea: Well, good. I'm glad you're embracing it. It is a world of difference. 100%. I'm so glad that you've embraced it because it, it is probably one of the technologies that has the biggest tick in the needle. Yeah. It's the DVI and the beauty of this too, regardless of the DVI program, you're on. We love auto flow.
Jimmy Lea: We, we love all the Ds. This also helps you to not have your cell phone number out with the public. Exactly. And they're gonna call you at midnight, two o'clock, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning. Hey, my car won't start. Are you safe? Do you need a tow truck?
Loren Winfrey: Yes, exactly. Yeah. You know, and it's.
Loren Winfrey: The new shop is two miles from the old, from my old shop where I was at for many years, and so most those customers that have been coming to me for a long time. You know, the first six months I was here, they were texting me, you know, like they get like having my phone number at six 30 at night.
Loren Winfrey: Hey Lauren you know, I got this going on my breaks. And I'm like, yo, hey Joe. Well, I'm not with todo anymore. In my old company, I, you know, I'm with stress free now. I would love to service your vehicle if you feel comfortable following over to the new shop. And so, like, I don't know, 90% of my VIP customers, my key tossers, you know?
Loren Winfrey: Yeah. They, me over at my new shop, you know, and it's crazy because most of my folks, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of my technicians have been with me. For seven plus years and oh, that's rad. That's so cool. Followed me over here. One of my assistant general managers followed me over here. Another one of my advisors followed me over here.
Loren Winfrey: They turned down manager positions to come be a service advisor over here, you know, and the biggest thing is that, you know. This company pays people what they're worth. You know, gone on the days of trying to nickel and dime someone in the door, especially for me. Yeah. I'm not gonna nickel and dime someone in the door that, you know, is worth a significant amount of customer base and customer service and giving the customer everything that they need to trust us and bring their car back.
Loren Winfrey: You know, I'm not gonna nickel and dime those guys. I'm gonna pay 'em with their worth. Same with the technicians. I'm gonna pay 'em with their worth. I'm giving 'em, give 'em a great bonus structure, you know, so when they, when their utilization is really high, they get rewarded for doing a hard job, you know, for busting their butt, you know, they're gonna get, yeah, they're gonna see dollars because we don't do this.
Loren Winfrey: You know, we all love it, but we don't do this ultimately at the end of the day because we wanna pat on the back, you know, we want something in our pocket, you know, and so. The technicians get paid at this company when they do a really good job and they bust their butt for us. And, you know, and they strive to get cars out the door and, you know, they're doing 30, 40, 50 hours of labor in their 40 hour time, you know, they get rewarded, you know, and the same with my advisors.
Loren Winfrey: I put 'em on a really good bonus structure, you know, that they're on salary, high salary, you know, plus I give 'em 5% of the gross profit on everything they sell. You know, so, you know, the advisors that would get paid $25 an hour over here at this job making 60 KA year, they're making over a hundred K over here.
Loren Winfrey: And, you know, and that translates to them being happy at their job and them giving the customer they're happy to be here. So they're giving the customers the best experience they want, they're making sure that they follow through with all their tasks. They're from start to finish on a repair. They're taking care of that customer, you know, and that's all I, that's all I can ask.
Loren Winfrey: You know? Yeah. Is that you bring a customer in, you take care of 'em, start to finish down. Does that go perfect every single time? No, it does not. You know, are there people that don't understand, you know, that one plus one equals two on auto repair? No. They think it equals five. And, you know, we gotta do our best to explain it and, you know, and we can't make everybody happy.
Loren Winfrey: And I just try to coach them into, look, you can't make everybody happy and don't try to, just try to be the best you can be every single day, you know? And so, no, I love it. Man, it's it's a good gig, man. This company's really great. I don't see myself you know, I'm gonna retire from here. They have they have a remote service advisor team that we have.
Loren Winfrey: And so, you know, when I'm 70 sitting on the beach, you know, I'm gonna go work four or five hours a day just to keep from being bored, you know, and be a supervisor, you know, and hang out with the wife on the beach, you know. And, I love it. I love it. You know, this is, most of us in this industry we are a people person, you know, we love interacting with people.
Loren Winfrey: We love building relationships and conversating, you know, and learning about people and and you know, and so this is the one of the industries that we get be service and we also get to meet people and relationships. And it is great. You know, I get happy. I get to have a new experience or a new person I get to experience every day.
Loren Winfrey: You know, I get to make someone's day go from really crappy to, you know, really good, you know? And those are my favorite Yelp reviews. Lauren was able to get in and do this. Prepare for me. We're on a trip from out of town, you know, I brought the car in at nine o'clock. I had it out by 11 o'clock and we were able to carry on with our family vacation, or my daughter was in town and I was able to take her to her graduation, you know, and those are the most rewarding things for me, you know, and it's just it's a great industry to be with Matt.
Jimmy Lea: Well, and Lauren, that goes right to the name of your company, Stress-Free Auto Care. Stress-free. You have absolutely maintained that, that company culture, that mantra, that vision mission, that is deep within not only you, but your entire company to you, to your leadership, to your culture that you have created.
Jimmy Lea: You are recruiting. You are obtaining people coming to your culture and not going to a different job, even though they may have a higher position. So what. What is one of the challenges that you face as a leader in developing this culture in, in helping others to see it? Because not everybody is born with the same mindset that you've got.
Jimmy Lea: How do you implement that or what are the challenges you face in implementing that?
Loren Winfrey: I think that, some people fit in with the culture we have and the ones that don't, they weed themselves out, you know? I just try to offer an opportunity, you know, and I'm very upfront when a technician wants to come work for me, this is what I expect of you.
Loren Winfrey: This is what the company expects of you, and we're gonna hold you to that standard. You know, I'm not. I'm really not here to be your friend. I'm here to be your boss and your mentor, and to help guide you to be the best technician you can be. Any type of learning or tools that you need or things to make your job easier and be more productive, let me know and I'll make sure that you get those things.
Loren Winfrey: You know, we'll pay for all these guys. A, we pay for all their a SC certifications. You know, right now I think the biggest thing is finding finding technicians. That aren't working someplace else and bringing them over here. There's not a lot of new technicians out there that wanna come into our field anymore.
Loren Winfrey: You know, and so I have a couple of CT techs, you know, and. I really want the CT techs. I have one of my B upper BT techs kind of mentor them, you know, and when we're a little slower on the day, I give them challenging jobs, you know, so, to help them learn. So I just really think the influx of people in our industry is one of the biggest challenges we have.
Loren Winfrey: Like some stores you know, we have an ad posted for an A Tech or a B Tech or a ctec, and it takes us a month to fill it, you know? So, you know, I, I remember back in, you know. 2000 and at 10, 11, 12, you put an ad, you got 15 applicants coming in the door, you know, Hey, I'm here. What's up? You know, all competing for the job.
Loren Winfrey: You know? Now when you put an ad up wanting quality people, they either come from the wrong type of environment that we want, you know, or they don't have the qualifications minimally that we need, that we expect when someone starts or they're just not a really good fit, you know? Yeah. You know, it's just manpower's tough right now, you know?
Loren Winfrey: So, I'm all for the automotive repair colleges and getting people brought back into the industry, you know, it's like, back when we were in high school, you know, we were told go to college, get a degree you know, you'll make all this money. And we didn't get told that, you know, the electricians and the auto repair technicians and the plumbers, you know, those are the guys that are staying in work throughout the recessions.
Loren Winfrey: You know, the guys that are that have degrees in, you know, computer science are getting laid off, you know, so I hope that you know, I watch Ro you know, and he's talking about the, you know, the people in the trades are the next set of, you know, and you know, I, my, my youngest son is, you know, he's like, you know, dad, I'm either gonna go work for the elevators union or.
Loren Winfrey: I'm gonna go to automotive repair school and come work for one of your shops. And I said, look, whatever you want to do. But, you know, he's like, well, you're not gonna get mad if I don't go to college. And I'm like, no, you don't have to go to college to make a successful life. You know, you, you could, the elevators union, you know, they top out at 70 bucks an hour.
Loren Winfrey: Master technicians top out, you know, $150,000 a year. You know, electricians, you know, they're making two, $250,000 a year, you know, and you get to be on the sunshine and be in the open air and, you know, you choose the path that suits you the best. You know, so if you know, if my kids or my God kids, if they want to get into this.
Loren Winfrey: You know, business then I'm all for I'll back on the 100%. They can't work directly for me. You know, 'cause that would be you know, weird. I would like my son, I would treat him like my son instead of treating like my technician, you know? So, but I could get 'em in the door someplace, or my God kids, I could get 'em in someplace, you know?
Loren Winfrey: And help me develop their career.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, Lauren, I love that because I think you're exactly right. You kids come into the industry. Absolutely. We'd love for you to come in here. I get you a job somewhere else. 'cause I want you to always be my kid, not my employee. Yes. It's hard. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Jimmy Lea: It is hard. It is hard. Well, Lauren, if you were to have a magic wand, if you could wave a wand, what would you change in the automotive aftermarket?
Loren Winfrey: I would say that I would have the availability of parts in 10 minutes for any car.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. It would definitely take a magic wand for that one, but yeah, for sure.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. If we could do that, that, that would be so rad. Hey with your leadership, with your territory that you're managing the general manager, you're over a lot of different stores, how important are the numbers to you?
Loren Winfrey: I mean, numbers are important. It's what pays my paycheck, you know?
Loren Winfrey: We're blessed that our CEO is a rocket science rocket scientist, you know, and we have our own, he's created this phenomenal admin panel. And so like
Jimmy Lea: a dashboard? Yeah, it
Loren Winfrey: tracks everything. Spending utilization, gross profit tracks everything, and so I can focus on those numbers. With a click of the mouse, you know, every single day.
Loren Winfrey: And I live in the numbers, you know, and the numbers tell me everything. You know, the numbers always tell the story of the health of the shop, what's going on. If a guy's utilization is falling, what's going on with Joe over here? Is he going through some family problems? You know? So the story of the health of the shop lives in the numbers, and we have to live and die by those numbers.
Loren Winfrey: So. The numbers are very important because they not only tell a story of, you know, how much you know, Tim over here selling, you know, but it tells us a story of the economy, how customers are responding to you know, presentations, you know how a technician is doing, you know, and like I said, you know, if we have a really good technician, his numbers continuously are falling, then we know that we need to go have a talk with this technician.
Loren Winfrey: You know, not as like. Hey, you jerk. You know, you're not making me any money, but, you know, hey, are you okay? Is there anything going on in your life? Do you need my help with anything? Do you need some time off? Do you know, do you need a couple of vacation days? You have some family stuff that you need to work through.
Loren Winfrey: Ma'am, is there anything I can do to help you with your personal life, you know. Just because, you know, we're human beings and it, you know, and if there's anything I can do for one of my employees, you know, because they're having personal problems I will gladly do it. Give 'em the shirt off my face.
Loren Winfrey: Yeah. You know, because we're all in this to win, or we're gonna lose together or win together, you know, and you know, I would rather win together.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, amen. That's so true, man. I want us all to win together. And that's the plan is that we all lock arms. It's a crazy storm we're in. Not all ships are created equal.
Jimmy Lea: But if we lock arms together, we're gonna survive this storm. Yeah. We'll be together for the long haul, so
Loren Winfrey: Absolutely true.
Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. I'm glad to hear that you're listening to Mike Rowe and the Sweat Pledge. Make sure everybody signs one of those sweat pledges.
Loren Winfrey: Man, I listen to old Cecil too, you know?
Loren Winfrey: I listen to
Jimmy Lea: Yeah.
Loren Winfrey: There too. Yeah. You know, I, it's, every once in a while I, you know, I see something and I wanna share, you know, I'll share this video with HR is trying to develop, you know, training or like thing, watch this video about auto, they don't know, you know, their hr, they don't know, you know, their job is to, you know, to make sure the company's healthy, you know, and compliant with all of those things that the state requires of us, you know, watch this video about our industry.
Loren Winfrey: Just so you kind of understand where we're coming from, you know? Oh, thank you. That was so helpful. I appreciate it. You know, I'll watch that. You know, so, and not only that, but you know, I watched you guys and a lot of the stuff, you know, it just helps reiterate some of the things that I was taught that I might've forgotten, you know?
Loren Winfrey: Yeah. It's we, you know, if you're, if we're not open and learning, then we miss things, you know, and sometimes we forget important things that we need to, like, reiterate to ourselves, you know, like, oh, this procedure is important because, you know, it helps this, or it helps that, you know, and we forget.
Loren Winfrey: You know, everybody's, I'm egotistical and sometimes I think, you know, I'm a god of auto repair management. You know, I don't need any help. And then, you know, something happens and I get slapped back into humility, you know, and I gotta watch a couple of videos and I gotta rethink my strategy on some stuff, you know?
Loren Winfrey: But, you know, we gotta remain humble and teachable. Man. I think is the biggest thing.
Jimmy Lea: Love it. Love it brother. That's awesome, man. Thank you. Thank you for your time, Lauren. I really appreciate it.
Loren Winfrey: Thanks, Jimmy.
Jimmy Lea: Thanks for taking the time. My name is Jimmy Lee. This is the Leading Edge podcast, and we are the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence.
Jimmy Lea: All right, cool. We're out. Thanks, brother. That was fun. Dude, that was awesome. Hey and listen man if ever you're looking for a sounding board or backboard, if you're looking for a coaching company that's gonna help you or a group, a mastermind group. Yeah, dude, I got some managers that are managing the 20 threes, the 30 sixes locations.
Jimmy Lea: We're looking at starting a second mastermind group just for managers. I've got. One right now, and it's too big. So we're starting a second one. Yeah. Gonna make this more involved with those guys like you that are managing many locations. That way you can bring a problem and say, Hey man, I'm really struggling with this.
Jimmy Lea: Well, this guy over here's gonna say, dude, here's your solution. We solved that last Tuesday. Yeah, there you go. For sure, man. So if you're looking for anything that can help man, I, I'd love to throw you. Into the mix, if you will.
Loren Winfrey: For sure. For sure. Man I know that a long time ago. I think you probably guys got some of those a TI guys come work for you now, right?
Jimmy Lea: No, I don't have any a TI guys with me yet. Yeah. Let me think now. Cecil used to be at a TI, so there's one. Let's see I got Parker and Chad, and they're not a TI I've got Aaron. Aaron's not. And Jennifer's not Michael's. Not Michael's, not Mark's, not Ryan. Ryan. Ryan's not Aldo. Aldo's not. No I don't think I have a lot of a TI that are with me.
Loren Winfrey: Okay. I, yeah, I just, I mean that was like,
Jimmy Lea: is that where you guys are doing your training right now?
Loren Winfrey: No. That's where I got my training back. You know, I had my mentor, Vince, right, the old Italian guy, and he, you know, he was really Italian, like Christmas time. He would. Hey, Lauren, come here. I wanna talk to you.
Loren Winfrey: And he would like slit me an envelope of cash, you know, and like, for Christmas bonus, you know, here you go. Thank you so much. You know, and he would talk quiet. Oh my God. It was, he was the godfather. I mean, he was a great, if I can be, if I can be half the human being that guy was in this business, then, you know, I'm doing great things.
Loren Winfrey: You know, the guy was, you know, he, but he's, that's a
Jimmy Lea: riot.
Loren Winfrey: Yeah. And so I went to, like, back when the, you know, the world. The world collapsed back in, you know, the housing crisis, right? Yeah. And I had been working in technology. I had a installation company for low voltage, and I had 700 employees.
Loren Winfrey: You know, I was all over, I was working for Comcast, time Warner, brighthouse Networks, you know, California, Texas, all over the place, you know, and the. The bottom fell out. And so, yeah I went to this guy, you know, and like, I've always worked on cars, you know, as a, you know, just as a hobby, you know, and I always did my buddy's breaks and all this, you know, I was, that I always, the, I was that neighbor, you know?
Loren Winfrey: Yeah. This guy gave me a shot, you know, nobody hired me for 14 bucks an hour back in 2010, right? So it was 14 bucks an hour after I just got done making 150,000. But I couldn't really get any jobs, right? There was nothing out there. And so I needed some money. And so this guy though, the Italian guy, gave me a job and I started doing tires and oil changes and brake and service and all that stuff.
Loren Winfrey: And then I got hurt and he's like, oh, I think you'd be good on the counter. And he put me on the counter. And I outsold his lead service advisor by 35% my first month on the counter. And he's like, well, what do
Jimmy Lea: you mean, dude? You killed it. You killed it.
Loren Winfrey: I crushed everybody. And like, pretty soon I was like the number one salesman in the whole company and it was nuts.
Loren Winfrey: And then like. So I was a service advisor for this guy for a long time, you know, for three years. And then he is like, you're gonna go up to this store I have, and you're gonna be the right hand man of Craig up there. You've got the sales side down. Craig is the business guy of this company. He's gonna teach you the business side, you know, but.
Loren Winfrey: Then I was a service manager and then he said, look, this is what I want to do. I'm gonna send you to a TI I'm gonna pay for all the classes for you. And so he invested in me, like he sent me to Wow, the shop manager class. Then he sent me to the shop owner class. And so the dude invested thousands of dollars into me out of his, you know, the company bucket and nobody else.
Loren Winfrey: You know, and so a lot of stuff is in line with, you know, you guys, a TI, you know, and the core set of procedures is the same, right? And so I was able to take the core set of procedures, you know? That you need to concentrate on and implement it to all my service advisors, you know, and it, my shops have always been really done really well.
Loren Winfrey: You know, so I just I really appreciate what you guys do and helping people understand, you know, the reasoning behind, you know, why we do what we do, you know? And it's not just about, it's not just about how,
Jimmy Lea: it's not just, it's not just about the 20 bucks. No. Just like you were saying, it is not about the 20 bucks, it's about the client.
Jimmy Lea: It's about the person, yeah. That you're talking to.
Loren Winfrey: Yeah, man.
 

145 - The Power of Mentorship, DVIs & Accountability with Brandon Hack

145 - The Power of Mentorship, DVIs & Accountability with Brandon Hack
September 11, 2025 - 00:25:29
 
Show Summary:
Brandon Hack of Lake Sumter Auto Repair joins Jimmy Lea to share how mentorship, accountability, and strong processes fueled explosive growth in his shop. What started with pumping gas at his dad’s two-bay Texaco eventually led Brandon through sales, a Snap-on franchise, and into managing a thriving repair operation that has tripled its performance. He credits coaching from The Institute, Bobby Lambert’s mentorship, and holding the team to higher standards for the success. Brandon and Jimmy dive into 300% DVI best practices, educating non–car customers, and the difference between selling vehicle wants versus vehicle needs. They also cover the critical role of tracking gross profit per hour, building processes that make customer care easy, and the power of peer groups to accelerate solutions and growth.
 
Host(s):
Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development
 
Guest(s):
Brandon Hack, Manger of Lake Sumter Auto Repair
 
Show Highlights:
[00:00:49] - Brandon’s origin story: growing up pumping gas at a two-bay Texaco and eventually finding his way back to the industry through sales and a Snap-on franchise.
[00:01:57] - Mentorship matters: how owner Bobby Lambert and full enrollment in The Institute created a “no option to fail” culture that helped triple shop performance.
[00:05:38] - Raising the bar on ROs: after early mistakes, Brandon sets a new internal standard—clearer work orders, continuous iteration, and aiming for company-best paperwork.
[00:06:21] - Customer experience first: treat every visit like the highlight of the customer’s day to overcome the “grudge purchase” reality of auto repair.
[00:08:04] - Lean team, big output: one service advisor and two techs running five lifts, while the sister shop operates a multi-bay “mecca” with transmission expertise.
[00:14:45] - Tools + talent sell the job: invest in proper diagnostic equipment and skilled techs so transparent test results do the convincing.
[00:16:09] - 300% DVI in action: inspect 100% of vehicles, estimate 100% of findings, and present 100%—with photos required for every recommendation.
[00:17:16] - Make DVIs idiot-proof: circle the exact part, color-code issues, and sanity-check clarity by sending inspections to a non-car person (e.g., your spouse).
[00:20:18] - Don’t go it alone: join 20-groups/masterminds and coaching to gain accountability, faster solutions, and peer-reviewed financials.
[00:23:46] - Live by the numbers: track GP and dollars-per-hour on every invoice so month-end is a confirmation, not a surprise; then drive net profit with cost control.
 
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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Episode Transcript DisclaimerThis transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.
 
Episode Transcript:
Jimmy Lea: Hey, Jimmy Lea here with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. You are listening to the Leading Edge podcast, and joining me today is Brandon Hack of Lake Sumter Auto Repair out of Fruitland Park, Florida. Brandon, thank you so much for being here, brother. How you doing? I'm doing great, man.
Jimmy Lea: It's my pleasure. I'm glad. Well, I'm glad you're here 'cause we're gonna talk about automotive repair, automotive shops and get into the nitty gritty of the challenges of a modern shop today. Before we get into the nitty gritty, Brandon, I'd love to find out a little bit more about you and about your shop and how you got into the automotive industry.
Jimmy Lea: What bet did you lose, or what passion did you have that you want went after the automotive repair full bore.
Brandon Hack: It kind of fell into my lap. I grew up in a shop that my dad owned. Started off in a small two bay TCO gas station, full service. So at 4, 5, 6 years old, I was actually pumping gas and doing what, you know, 40, 50-year-old people know nothing about it anymore because it's been gone for so long.
Brandon Hack: So that's how I grew up in it. From there, I. Thought I'd stay in it forever. My dad sold the shop, went and managed the shop for another gentleman. I worked there as well, and then he got all the way out of it and went into doing other stuff. I got into sales and just sold tow trucks, and then I got into a snap-on tool franchise, so I had a snap-on tool franchise that opened the doors that I had.
Brandon Hack: In this area with meeting a lot of fine folks, which got me involved with Bobby Lambert, who is the actual owner of Lake Sumter Transmission and Lake Sumter Auto Repair. He and I became decent friends. He has absolutely been the most incredible business mentor. It shouldn't have happened, and it did.
Brandon Hack: And he is, he's just blessed me. Number one not to pump anybody, but because the guy understands the value of the institute. Everybody is enrolled into it. Everybody has the coaching, everybody has everything that the institute offers, and that's what puts us into. Where we can't fail, there's no option to fail because we are surrounded by good owners, great employees, and then the institute to have the coaching and everything that just, here we are.
Brandon Hack: And it's been an absolute, I can't call it a rollercoaster 'cause it has just been an absolute, we sat on a bomb. We opened this place up and it just exploded. And here we are doing, oh man, triple what the shop was.
Jimmy Lea: Oh I wanna get into all that, but I gotta push the pause button first before we go down there.
Jimmy Lea: You talk about you being at a Two Bay Texaco. My uncle owned a couple of Chevrons with the two Bay. One was up in Mount Carmel Junction up in Utah, and then he bought two more down in Vegas, had the Chevrons with the two, two little bays, and he would. I mean, he would sell batteries and wiper blades. He's like, which absolutely hi.
Jimmy Lea: His favorite question was, which tire gets the nail? The most nails in it. 'cause he had the tow trucks and he would tow the cars in off the interstate or whatever. And which tire gets the most. So I asked you, Brandon, which tire gets the most nails? It seemed like to us it was always left rear.
Jimmy Lea: Left rear. Yeah. His was right rear. Right rear passenger, rear because it was always over on that side and it would kick up and his advice was never drive on the shoulder unless you absolutely have to 'cause you're gonna get a nail. I was like, that was great advice. I appreciate that uncle. He also is the guy that taught us as kids as his nephews.
Jimmy Lea: I mean, you wanna talk about child labor? Oh, absolutely. I'm sure you were there too, right? Here we are. He, and he's like, I'm gonna hire you to clean the restrooms, but first I'm gonna show you exactly how I want it done. So when you come to do it, you know you can do it. Do we go in this bathroom? It was the nastiest bathroom.
Jimmy Lea: Nasty. Oh, it was disgusting. He showed us how to clean it and he showed us how to clean it. Right. He showed us once. Absolutely. And then it was on us. And Brandon, I'm guessing you had the same training.
Brandon Hack: I, I did. I really did. I, my, my dad was, my dad is the whole that's why we're here.
Jimmy Lea: Oh man.
Jimmy Lea: That's so cool. That's so cool. Congratulations. That's wonderful. So talk to me about you getting with Bobby and you start the shop. I love a success story that says, man, we tripled this business. If you got a timeline from going from zero to hero it wasn't zero, and I apologize for that.
Jimmy Lea: It was not zero, but you took it from what it was and tripled it. What does that look like for you, Brandon, as the manager?
Brandon Hack: It definitely, there's definitely a lot that comes with it as far as like, it's not me. It is the team and it is absolutely the team that we have. It all started from there because we, I thought I knew exactly how this works. I thought I knew everything. I thought it was easy and it is not easy. Um, I came in here and we had our manager at the other shop.
Brandon Hack: He was right away, let me go a month and make some mistakes, and came down instantly and started pointing those mistakes out. It was instant when that happened that I decided no more my write-ups, our work orders our ros, everything. We will have the top ones in our company. They will come from this shop, not from the established shop.
Brandon Hack: So we've definitely helped set the bar higher and I, I don't, we haven't hit the top of the bar here. I know that we still, we work every day on making a better ro, but just the numbers are the numbers. I just come in and I do. You treat that customer the way they need to be treated. My thing always is the highlight of the customer's day.
Brandon Hack: That's, they don't like to come to the repair shop. We make it as enjoyable as possible. So having everybody and hearing success stories and having training in the guidance from the other shop with the no-nos. 'cause they've been in business 45 years, they've seen a lot. So they recognized some of the things that were happening here, which is the way the shop used to be ran.
Brandon Hack: We nip that quick and that's what got us here.
Jimmy Lea: Wow. That's awesome. You know, I love that success story. I love that you are treating the customers the way you wanna be treated with respect, with love. I love that because you are right. We are a grudge purchase. Nobody wants to go and pour 2, 3, 4, 5, $6,000 into their car.
Jimmy Lea: I mean. I'd rather put that money somewhere else, take a vacation, do something else, have an experience. But I do know that my car, my vehicle is my second biggest purchase, aside from my house. I've gotta take care of it. So the education is so important. It's so key that you've got mentors that are teaching you and training you and helping you come along.
Jimmy Lea: I love that you set your own standard to say, okay. Is where they want us to be. But we're gonna set our own standard and we're gonna process procedure, we're gonna write everything down so that the highest ros, the highest average repair order, the highest success rate, the highest satisfaction rate from clients and customers, that's gonna come from us.
Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Yeah. So, how many service advisors do you have, Brendan and thank you that they're all involved with the institute. Where are you at? So, right now
Brandon Hack: with this shop, it's me. It's me and me. Only just you? Yep. Yep. Our other shop, there's four service advisors at that shop, but the new location, it's just me and two techs.
Jimmy Lea: You and two techs. And,
Brandon Hack: and
Jimmy Lea: how many bays do you have with these two techs? We have four inside, one outside. You know, that's a beauty of being there in Florida. You can actually have an outside lift. Absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: Four, lift one outside. Well, congrats. And what does the other shop look like?
Brandon Hack: The other shop is a I call it the Mecca. It is it is a little tight at the top. There are six bays in the top of that, and there's usually three techs that are in that. And then down the hill we have four bays down there.
Brandon Hack: And then they also have another area for a little bit lengthy repairs that they can take over there as well as a, another large two bay shop that is for nothing but classic cars.
Jimmy Lea: Oh my word. That's like the garage
Brandon Hack: Mahal. Yes. Yep. It's the mecca.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it is the mecca. Everybody wants to go. That, that's ginormous.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, man. So congratulations to you guys. So it sounds like they're doing some restoration. They're doing some auto work. The auto body work, they got the classics.
Brandon Hack: Well, that one there is just it started as a transmission shop. Oh. So it's like Sumter transmissions. And auto repair. So that's where they'll get the classics in for the transmissions or oil leaks.
Brandon Hack: I mean, there really isn't nothing that they can't do down there. Definitely. No, none of the body shop stuff it's all general repair. And a big part of that shop is the transmissions.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. My I have a shop in St. George, Utah that I go to Ryan Snow with St. George Transmission.
Jimmy Lea: Transmission and auto repair. And so he's got nine master certified techs in his transmission shop. And the work just slowed down so much. He's like, all right we gotta diversify. So they bought the building next door, which was where they started. They still owned it, but the tile company that was there was like, all right, we're out.
Jimmy Lea: Sweet. We'll take it back. They're doing St. George Auto repair. Out of this one next door and he's got five, six lifts inside of it. And man, they're just taking off. So, when it comes to transmission repair, I know you've gotta be some super, super good jigsaw puzzle assembler or. Absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And he's got nine of 'em that are master certified. Just amazing people. Well, that's cool. So what's, well for you, Brandon, um, what did you come from that you came to something or auto repair?
Brandon Hack: The Snap-on Tool franchise is what got me where I met Bobby, and he and I, it took a long time. I was so intimidated by him.
Brandon Hack: Took a long time for us to actually open up and he bought the business in the middle of me having that franchise. So he's owned it for eight or nine years now. And then once he bought it, then he and I started dealing more together. Just kept getting closer and then we started doing outside stuff. We would, we'd go to concerts.
Brandon Hack: We, we did trips, we did stuff together and got close. Nice. And I never went to him. When I was leaving that to do something else, I took another position in an off-road shop. To sell mainly to get the dealerships and get new truck builds and do that kind of stuff. I wanted to get back out. I didn't wanna be, I don't wanna be attached to a shop.
Brandon Hack: I wanted to be out on the road and doing some sales and oh, I love it. It just wasn't going where I wanted it to go. I got everything I wanted. I became the manager there and I wasn't looking for that, but we just had some things that had to get fixed, so it tied me to that shop to fix these. I couldn't go out and sell the product because it wasn't worth selling.
Brandon Hack: So I stayed there and I helped fix that and then, and we made a big turnaround and got it going and then Bobby and I just started talking one day and he mentioned to me this shop selling. And, um, I told him I wasn't interested. I didn't wanna really be in the shop and kept going. And then we started having a couple issues.
Brandon Hack: Bobby turned, had a birthday, I took him to lunch. And we just started talking about it again. And then he text me later that week, call me, and I called him and I just kind of was like, what do you, what should I do? And he said, you need to go ahead and get out of there. Come over here and we'll print some money.
Brandon Hack: I said, all right, I'll do it.
Jimmy Lea: No, man. That's so cool. So what challenges do you have from going from off-road into auto repair? Is it very close cousins or is it totally different?
Brandon Hack: It is very different. I think the biggest thing that we deal with is your profit margins. Yeah. We just don't have the profit on accessories like we can build to, to operate a repair shop properly and stay in business.
Brandon Hack: Yeah. Um, I think the biggest difference is the customers that came into the accessory shop already knew what the price of something was. 'cause they online shopped it then came to you. Whereas here, they may have an idea of how much that radiator to, to replace is when they come in there, but they're not shopping and getting exact, so it's, it just seems a little bit easier putting a total package together here and presenting that to a customer of what that vehicle needs versus selling vehicle wants.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah, that's true. People walk in and want tinted window. They already know, Hey, it's gonna be five, 600 bucks tinted window walk in for a starter. It could be anywhere from 500 to 2,500. Do I have to pull the full front off the car? Absolutely. Or can we get to it? And it's not that bad.
Jimmy Lea: It seems that most of my cars have some sort of a panel covering the water pump, and it's tied to some sort of a timing belt with the water pump. It usually ends up being $2,000 anyways. Absolutely. As you can tell I've paid for a couple of those. Yep. Oh, man. Oh, that's good. And so with your, because I agree.
Jimmy Lea: I think we're a grudge purchase. People just don't want come do this and it's good that you make it a easy for them. What is some of the technology that you've introduced into your shop that helps make it easy for customers to buy?
Brandon Hack: I would say the biggest as far as technology is, number one, having the proper equipment to diagnose properly.
Brandon Hack: Um, that's where I struggled in the beginning with not selling the diagnostics. So having a qualified tech that knows how to use it and knows where to go and what to test and use the tools that are presented. When we present that information, that's what sells it. I don't have to sell anything. We've give them, my guys here, have the tools to do that job, to do the diagnostic to run all the tests, evaluate everything.
Brandon Hack: Then we present that to the customer and there really isn't much to talk about. They have everything in front of 'em then.
Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And, well, how much what? What kind of cars is it that you're working on? Are you all makes all models or do you focus all
Brandon Hack: makes, all models. We don't shy away from the Euros.
Brandon Hack: There's just some of the stuff on the Euros that is just I'll do you a favor. I'm doing you a disservice by keeping it here. You need to go to this shop.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. It's good to have friends in the business that you can say, all right, take your euros over here. Take your problem child over there.
Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. This is our bread and butter. And that's also a lot of equipment that you have to buy. A lot of training you have to supply to your technicians that they can be on the top of their game. What about a digital vehicle inspection for the customer? Do you do a lot of DVI.
Brandon Hack: Hundred percent.
Brandon Hack: We, we follow that 300% rule. So every vehicle that comes in here, 100% of them are going to get a complete DBI and 100% of all that work will be estimated and a hundred percent is presented to the customer.
Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it with your I technicians in their recommendations if they make a recommendation, is it a requirement that they have to take a picture?
Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Absolutely. It helps, right? It helps sell it every time. Yep. Yep. Customers know, they know. They know what's broken. They can see it. Yep. That's clearly broken. Correct. Sometimes you have to point an arrow at it to say, this is what the ball joint is. This right here? Yep. Because they don't know this is a control arm.
Jimmy Lea: This is your sway arm.
Brandon Hack: Yeah. And that's one thing that we have a younger gentleman that workforce, so the technology is there with him because he is younger, so he understands that. And when you use the dbis that we use through, we use tech metric here, but when we use that.
Brandon Hack: He pays attention to every single one of those with the right color, yellow, if it's something that we need to monitor, if it needs to be repaired, it is in red, it is circled so that we don't just send the customer a picture and there's an axle and a ball joint and a tie rod in the picture. The customers don't know.
Brandon Hack: So he, they don't know. He will circle that. And now we have integrated that into the other tech that's here, because right away when I noticed them, I went to the other tech like, look how nice this is. And then what I did with that also was I told my techs to send an inspection to their wife, and then I want them to go there and have their wife tell them what they're looking at.
Brandon Hack: And that's when it hit home to them because they said. My, my wife was looking at it and she didn't know which one was a CV joint, which one was the ball joint? Which one? You know, she had no idea. I said, well, if you put a circle around it and a hazard, you know, a yellow, red kneading? Is that not better?
Brandon Hack: And it just took off. Everybody at the other shop started doing the same exact thing two weeks later,
Jimmy Lea: bro, that's freaking awesome. Brilliant. I love your idea there. Send it to the girlfriend, send it to your wife, send it to your. Whom? Whomever. Yeah. Can they look at it, see it and understand it? If not, then let's take that feedback.
Jimmy Lea: 'cause that's great feedback. It's not critical, it's not criticism, it's feedback that says we can do this better. Correct. Correct. Congratulations, man.
Brandon Hack: Not everybody that comes is a car guy and every, everybody to shop. I think they all know that. So you need to send that and do something like that to a non-car person so that you can see the reaction.
Brandon Hack: And that just makes it to where you can now do your inspections or even the delivery of what you're talking about. You're not, we don't all deal with car people.
Jimmy Lea: It's true and it's true. And not everybody's a car person. Not everybody's been under a car or seen a car on a lift. They've never been under their vehicle.
Jimmy Lea: So to show them pictures for me, I love it. I, it's fascinating. I love looking under the cars and seeing what's there. It's dirty, it's greasy, it's grimy. It's okay. That's, I don't, that's fine. Yep. Teach me. Teach me, educate me, help me understand what it is that's going on under here. Absolutely. Brandon, I'm definitely gonna give you props and credit.
Jimmy Lea: I'm gonna tell a lot of people that they need to send their DVI to their significant other. It works. Send it to your mother. Does she know what you're sending? No. She doesn't know. Absolutely not. Unless she's a car person. Right? Yep. Which it could be. You never know. Absolutely. So if you had an opportunity to go back in time and help your younger self, what advice would you give yourself today?
Jimmy Lea: If you were starting a shop today or managing a shop today, what advice would you give yourself?
Brandon Hack: I think one of the biggest things that has hit me is Bobby is involved with 20 groups as well as the institute. And I honestly I talked to a guy down the street that has a shop about this all the time, and they're totally opposed.
Brandon Hack: Nope nope. We know what we're doing. We don't need, and I honestly feel. That stuff right there is what gets you to the next level. Because you have so many other people that are involved in everything. They're able to look at every invoice. They're able to look at your monthlies. They look at every single thing you do, and you've got 19 people in this group holding you accountable.
Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. And our, at the institute, that's our GPG, which is our gear performance groups, they're our masterminds. Currently we have five. We're looking to expand to six here pretty dang soon. So that's coming up next. And you're right. What might be a mountain to you and I, Brandon, inside of this 20 group, there's somebody that has already had to deal with that mountain.
Jimmy Lea: They hand you the solution and say, Hey look, that was just Tuesday. It's not a big deal. Here you go. Here's what you do. Fixed done onto the next. We got bigger dragons to slay than this little mole hill that you think is a mountain. Absolutely. And that 20 group. Oh my gosh. What power? What power that is.
Jimmy Lea: So Brandon which program are you in with the institute right now?
Brandon Hack: Right now, just coaching right now. Right now. That's all I have right now. I meet with Ryan every two weeks and I just do service advisor coaching.
Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. So you're with Ryan Daily? Yes. Any shout outs for Ryan? I'll be with him this weekend.
Brandon Hack: There's no way that you could hand pick a better coach than Ryan. I mean, I've heard a couple stories from other guys. I know seven to nine people that are with coaching and they had to go through a couple. Um, they're all happy with where they are right now. And it's not that any of them are a bad coach.
Brandon Hack: It is that fit. It is those personalities that absolutely will take you to another level. Ryan was that guy for me.
Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Yeah. With his, so he's, have you talked to Ryan Mush? You know about his background? I mean, he's told me military Marines we bonded up my daughter, she's a Marine, she's over in Hawaii right now.
Jimmy Lea: He also has a dealership, service advisor, service manager, dealership background. And so his discipline and his ability to focus on the customer, the client, the experience, it is next level. And I agree with you. I think Ryan is a phenomenal coach. He does an amazing job. Just super proud for Ryan and what he's been able to do in such a short amount of time too.
Jimmy Lea: He's really taken it up another level, so that's awesome. Well, good. Well, thank you very much, Brandon. I appreciate it. I appreciate you, um, and your experience. I appreciate your knowledge. Anything you'd like to share with our listening public about Sumner Auto Repair Management advisors? Net profit, efficiencies, process, procedures, anything you wanna share?
Brandon Hack: I the biggest thing that I can share that has made a difference with us is paying attention to the gp, paying attention to what that shop is bringing in per hour. If you don't look at that, all you're doing is looking at a number at the end of the month and you don't know what.
Brandon Hack: You don't know exactly where you are when you build every invoice properly, that is when you know, you don't have to worry about where am I gonna be at the end of the month? You know where you're gonna be at the end of the month, the end of the quarter, however you wanna look at it. Quarters work great for us.
Brandon Hack: Um, we're new, so we are still monthly right now, but quarters is what I'm really hoping to transition into so I don't put the stress of the month. Just it the tools are in place for you. Use them. Pay attention when you are bu building these invoices. Make sure the numbers are right. Don't be in the shop that we came from, that went out of business and the only reason they went out of business is the numbers weren't and nobody cared about the numbers.
Brandon Hack: We care.
Jimmy Lea: And there you go. So you gotta care about the numbers and not only the gp gross profit. Let's also, once we get that in line, dialed in, now let's look at the net profit. What are we keeping? What? Let's control some costs, bring some costs down. We can control some costs, and what are we keeping at the end of the day?
Jimmy Lea: How much money is in the bank? That's very important as well.
Brandon Hack: Absolutely.
Jimmy Lea: Brandon, you are awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate your work in the industry, building a better business, a better life, and a better industry. That's what we're all about here at the Institute, and we're glad to lock arms with you and have you part of our journey.
Brandon Hack: Very cool. Thank you Jimmy. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you Brandon. You man, talk you soon.