Recorded at the Institute Summit 2025, Tracy Holt and Patrece Holt Vance, a brother-sister duo from a family owned shop, share how their business transitioned into a new era of strategic growth and profitability under their leadership. They credit much of their progress to the accountability and peer support they found through the Institute’s Peer Groups. Tracy and Patrice also open up about the critical role of workplace culture and employee well-being in their success, and Tracy reflects on how a personal tragedy reshaped his "why" and fuels his drive today.

Host(s):

Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio

Guest(s):

Tracy Holt and Patrece Holt Vance, Performance Place, South Jordan, UT

Show Highlights:

Introduction (00:00:00)

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network. Hey everyone. Carm Capto. Remarkable Results Radio. Good to have you here. Look at my guest panel. Okay. Maybe it's redundant, but you all know. I'm at Amelia Island at the Institute's Summit 2025, where the theme is stand out. We are the institute.com. Thank you so much to Kent and Cecil Bullard and the entire team from the Institute.

Carm Capriotto: We've had a blast here learning a lot, meeting a lot of our great friends, meeting new friends, and creating content that I know you're gonna continue to appreciate a lot of great stuff coming out of this. Thank you so much to our sponsors. Hey, take your Autocare center to the next level, the gold level with the Napa Autocare Gold certified program.

Carm Capriotto: This program is for the best of the best who can provide a consistent consumer experience and earn the trust of returning and new customers. Talk to your NAPA sales representative about how you can become a gold certified shop. For over 30 years, Napa Trax has made Selecting the right shop management system easy.

Carm Capriotto: By offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry, we'll prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business. Find Napa Trax on the web at N APA tacs dot. Hey, I am with two great people that I met in Buffalo, New York. I don't know, maybe it was about maybe seven, eight months ago, right?

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, yeah. Tracy Holt from Performance Place in South Jordan, Utah, and Tracy's with his sister, Patrice Vance in the operational side of the business. All the book. You work the counter? 

Patrece Holt Vance: I do, yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Whoa, cool. It all. All right. Lemme sell me a diagnostics. No, I'm kidding. 

Patrece Holt Vance: I'll check your car in and make sure you feel comfortable leaving it with us, so yeah.

Carm Capriotto: Okay. I am fine. A family business since 1974. I met you guys at a group meeting in Buffalo. Yeah. When you did a peer review of my friend Tom Cino. Remember that? 

Tracy Holt: Yeah. Yeah. Tom is just a great guy, good friend of ours. Good. He's actually a my partner in the group process right now. 

Carm Capriotto: You mean composite partner?

Carm Capriotto: Yep. Yeah. Yes, Tom. Whoa, how cool is that? Uh, 'cause I have the word here. I wanted to talk to you and ask you about composite partners. 

Tracy Holt: Yeah. Tom's been our partner for the last year and we've grown so much in learning from him. And hopefully he's learned something from us too 

Carm Capriotto: along. Trust me, Tom is a sponge.

Carm Capriotto: He's a great friend. My wife's name is Anne, his wife's name is Anne. We spent some time over the holiday together. And I'm just so happy to hear that. What's composite partnering like? 

Tracy Holt: You know, when you get in, uh, a 20 group from the institute, your coach that you have, but then once you get in there, they assign you a partner that helps hold you accountable for your numbers.

Tracy Holt: And then it's also nice to have somebody else that literally at a text, an email, a phone call away saying, Hey, we've got some issues here. What do you think? It's like getting another coach. 

Carm Capriotto: Is what it does. You said the word account and the word accountability has been talked about a lot here in any of the keynote speakers that we've had.

Carm Capriotto: Do you find accountability one of the hardest things to do? 

Tracy Holt: I do. I mean, I think the accountability is really hard to do, but like. In the instance of it's, but you need it. You do. And it's hard to be accountable if you don't know what you're measuring and being accountable for. Right. And if you don't share those goals or benchmarks with somebody else to help hold you accountable, you know, in your mind they're just thoughts and hopes and dreams.

Carm Capriotto: So would you say to Tom, I know what your, I know what your goals are for this year. I know you're looking for another whole point of margin. We're getting together. We're looking at each other's numbers. We're seeing what's going on with your business. And oh, by the way, Tom, you have not reached that goal.

Carm Capriotto: I'm holding you accountable. I'd like to know, is that how it works? That's exactly 

Tracy Holt: how it works. 

Carm Capriotto: Yep. 

Tracy Holt: Yeah. And then usually he can say, this is my struggles and maybe we have some insights and we come up with a game plan and you know, set some new benchmarks and goals and move forward with it. 

Carm Capriotto: Shop owners say, I can't do that.

Carm Capriotto: I can't be that vulnerable. I can't expose my weaknesses. But you guys overcame that. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah, it was really scary at first, like the composite and showing numbers and making sure things were right. Tom was pretty much like Tracy said, our coach during the beginning of it. You know, coming in new and not really knowing what we're doing and making corrections all the time on what our data was.

Patrece Holt Vance: But before we didn't know what any of those numbers were and why we needed to hit these certain goals. And that's what the institute has done for us. Is, okay, well I need to hit this margin, but why? And what does that play a part in? And why are these other margins this? So it's more of just like saying, Hey, you need to hit a number.

Patrece Holt Vance: It's, this is the reason why behind it. Tom's really good about, you know, we're having struggles. He is, it's just more of like a friendship where. Yeah, guess what? We're all not gonna have great months in business, but I have a buddy that's gonna help me through it and instead of just like losing hope, it's like, Hey, bad month.

Patrece Holt Vance: Let's move on. Let's figure out what we can do the next time. 

Carm Capriotto: I say the word struggle a lot on my podcast, and here you are very successful, long-term family business, and you mention the word struggle and Tom mentions the word struggle and you're all doing so well. And when you get that up on the table, life changes.

Carm Capriotto: It does 

Tracy Holt: be, we were sitting at dinner last night with Tom and some other friends, and it's just interesting to hear other shop's, struggles of, my service advisor did this, a technician did this, you know, whatever you want to call it. And it just all of a sudden in your mind, you're like, oh, you know what?

Tracy Holt: His business may be at a different dollar level than mine. But the struggles are the same from one to another personnel issues, you know, whatever it is. We find out that our struggles are the same struggles that everybody's having. 

Carm Capriotto: We've got some great speakers here, loved them so far, there's still one coming up.

Patrece Holt Vance: Mm-hmm. 

Carm Capriotto: Did you like Dan Clark? Oh, 

Tracy Holt: I'd love 

Carm Capriotto: Dan Clark. 

Patrece Holt Vance: That's amazing. 

Tracy Holt: He is amazing. And it's funny, I had not really. Heard of Dan until, you know, I was looking at the summit. Same here. So on the plane ride out, I'm downloading books and I downloaded his book and listened to it halfway out here on the plane and I got a chance to talk and with him a little bit and I'm like, you're absolutely amazing.

Tracy Holt: And 

Carm Capriotto: I interviewed him. Yeah, he was here. He was sitting where you were or you are? Yeah. Hot seat right now. Yeah, in the hot seat. He was fabulous. So. There's a lot of people that I've interviewed while I've been here in Orlando talking about Dan Clark. So if we've not motivated you, my listener, to search for that episode on Dan Clark, please do it.

Carm Capriotto: My big takeaway was, your why is stronger than your why not? That hit 

Tracy Holt: you hard, didn't it? It did. When he was talking about that in this business, as you become coachable and whatever. Aaron Woods, my coach, our first meeting, the first questions out of his mouth to me was, why are you doing this? There was a long pause and you have these, and I gave him some.

Tracy Holt: Answer and it didn't really mean anything. 

Carm Capriotto: He wasn't happy with it. 

Tracy Holt: No, he didn't let me off. He goes, goes, no, you gotta think about why you do this. Mm-hmm. What's gonna cause you to make these changes, you know, after some soul searching. And it's funny, I found that everybody's why for me, changes over time.

Tracy Holt: Why you do something today, may not be why you do it tomorrow. But then when Dan talked about. You know, it's one thing to find your why and why you do something, but what initiates the action is when, when the why becomes stronger than the why not. It initiates the action 

Carm Capriotto: because we think so much Patric, I'm sure this has happened to you.

Carm Capriotto: Why should I do this? Why shouldn't I do it? 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. Well, self doubt's huge on that, right? Yeah. It's easier to doubt yourself than to trust yourself just to go do the things that. In any business that you're capable of, right? It's the risk that we're going to take to become these successful people. So self-doubt is a little bit, you know, that's the why not as well.

Patrece Holt Vance: So if we can come become over that, it's kind of the same concept. 

Carm Capriotto: Family businesses, trust me, tons of my listeners are family businesses. From dad to kids to kids, wondering if their kids are coming in. You know, the multi-generational things. How does the dynamic of your family work? And is dad still working in the business?

Carm Capriotto: Let's talk about that. 

Tracy Holt: No, dad, since about COVID time, he's been retired for years, but he just showed up every day at the shop. Mm-hmm. And then since COVID kind of triggered him and forced him to say, stay away, because he was having a few health issues and we said, dad, you gotta stay away. There's just, you know, we don't know what's going on in the world.

Tracy Holt: With what you're dealing with, let's just stay away. So they have a house in Southern Utah and he spent some time down there and I think it opened his eyes saying, yeah, I can be away from the shop and you know what, we're gonna turn the lights on every day and still go to work. You know? And that I think started the process of him stepping away full time and turning it over to us and saying, you know, you guys have got this.

Tracy Holt: These are all your decisions. I'm going to step away a hundred percent. Does 

Carm Capriotto: he consult with you? Do you consult with him? How's 

Tracy Holt: that work? I still talk to him every other day and you know, in the beginning I had a lot of questions. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? The good thing is now it's kind of turned back into a father and son thing to where we, he asked me about the business, but now we just talk about other stuff.

Tracy Holt: So he 

Carm Capriotto: must be so proud of you guys. 

Tracy Holt: Yeah. Which has been hard. He's been a business partner. I mean, this is the only job I've ever had. You know, in a family business, as everybody knows, 90% of your conversations evolve around what's going on with the business. 

Carm Capriotto: Really? You mean even at Thanksgiving? Oh, yeah.

Carm Capriotto: Huh? Yeah. Yes. Oh, my Thanksgiving. Yeah. I grew up in a family business. I know. Yeah. 

Patrece Holt Vance: That's the only holiday we spend together is Thanksgiving because we're with each other. Every day for five days a week. But yeah, we enjoy each other regardless, 

Carm Capriotto: but, so no rules at the, is there rules at the Thanksgiving dinner table that's gonna talk 

Tracy Holt: work?

Tracy Holt: It's funny, as dad stepped away, it's been easier and easier to separate that because dad was always the one that was instigating. Well, what about this? What about that at the shop? But how about you guys? We're learning to find some balance, I think. You know, I think I've been able to find a little more balance between work is work and I, it's always on my mind, but there's times when you've just gotta shut it off and put that behind you.

Carm Capriotto: It's almost like maybe an emotional sense of relief. Tracy, do I talk? Yes. Oh, she didn't even hear my question. I guess for me it's all about work because that's what it was when I grew up. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah, that's what 

Carm Capriotto: I, okay. Alright. Let's talk about your business. Was there ever a major pivot that you look back on and say, glad we did that.

Tracy Holt: That's one of the things I brought up in the conference and it got me thinking about that, you know, everybody in their life has these pivoting points that move you down a different path. Sorry, I'm gonna probably get emotional there. It's all right, man. You know, for me it was about eight years ago, my son was in a horrific car, a car accident, basically.

Tracy Holt: He was a college football player. And had just started playing football. You know, you have your kids that have these dreams and aspirations, and that was number one of his, since he was eight years old, dad, I'm gonna play college football. I'm like, okay. He gets to play one semester, basically of football and was in a horrific accident.

Tracy Holt: Basically, he was ejected from his car at about 70 miles an hour going down the freeway in an accident. Long story short, he was in a coma for three months, broken neck, broken back. Traumatic brain injury that we were told. You know, he is got a 10% chance to make it through the weekend. If he makes it through the weekend, he's going to be a vegetable.

Tracy Holt: Fast forward a year, he's in the hospital, outta the hospital. They send him home with us and he was home. He had to learn how to walk, talk, everything of that. But he's home. And now I've got a 21-year-old son that's sitting at home. You know, kind of in self-doubt and pity, trying to figure out what do I do with my life?

Tracy Holt: I said, get up. You're coming to work with me. So I drug him to work, made him come to the office and he started progress and get better and better. But over time, all of a sudden I just realized it's like, regardless, this business, I need to make it profitable and sustainable to where, for him, I've always got a place for him to work.

Tracy Holt: You know, that was kind of my why in the beginning, which sprung me in. It became stronger than my why not? I need to make this work for him. Since then, my why has changed dramatically. It's still there for him. He still works for me. But you know, that was the initial pivot point in my life where it's like, we need some coaching, we need some help.

Tracy Holt: We need to make this successful. So no matter what happens to me, you know, this will be here for him. That was the one point that I can look in my life where my life changed because of that. You gave him purpose. I did. I was talking to Dan about this yesterday and kind of sharing a little bit with him about his accident and what happened, and I said, it's one of those points in your life that absolutely, I wish this would've never happened to him, but as a family, it's been a great blessing 'cause we've learned so much about each other, about overcoming adversity.

Tracy Holt: Building a strong team at work, and there's so many life lessons that we've learned because of that. 

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Carm Capriotto: After all, it's your shop. So it's your choice. Visit us on the web at Napa Tracks. That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C s.com. So Patrice on the counter, I got this quote from 2022 CNBC, said 56% of Americans don't have $1,000 in savings. Think about that when you're talking to clients. Would that change how you look at financing for them and how they come in?

Carm Capriotto: Last place they want to be is an automotive repair. Yeah. Shop. Unless it's routine maintenance. Right. And they're coming in for the right reasons. I thought about that and I thought about all the great financing plans that exist in our industry. Do you use them? 

Patrece Holt Vance: We don't. We've tried some in the past. They haven't been the greatest for us, haven't been.

Patrece Holt Vance: The people who need those that have applied don't seem to get accepted. Uhhuh. That's a huge roadblock for them. We haven't pursued anything recently, but I know there are options out there. Fortunately we're, our business is a pretty successful area of Salt Lake, so we don't see that very often. I'm not saying that it's not there, but we don't come across that very often in in our business.

Carm Capriotto: Okay. Do you use a CRM? 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yes. 

Carm Capriotto: How's it working for you? Is it bringing in a new business? 

Patrece Holt Vance: Well with us, it's hard because we are such an established company, been there for 51 years. Our business is repeat customers, generations after generations. We know grandparents, parents, their kids, so for us, marketing and all of that hasn't really been a necessity until we've decided to grow.

Patrece Holt Vance: So we always ask ourselves like, why are you guys so successful? Why are you guys so busy? I don't, we don't know. We were just so fortunate. I think our dad. Growing up being that guy who was, he just took care of people back then. 

Carm Capriotto: It doesn't mean that the customers trust you. Love you. You do great work.

Carm Capriotto: There's hardly any comebacks. The five star reviews I was on your website. It's unbelievable. Wow. All the reviews you got. Yeah, I was looking for a bad one. I couldn't find them. 

Patrece Holt Vance: There's trouble in there, but 

Carm Capriotto: I'm sure there. Trust me, there have to be because we're human. Yeah. 14 bay, 10,000 square feet. How many people do you have working for you?

Patrece Holt Vance: We have 15 people. 

Carm Capriotto: Wow. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: And here it is, this great business and it hit you guys over the head. I gotta get some direction. I don't know what, I don't know. 

Tracy Holt: Yeah. Well, and, and it stemmed from, you know, when we took over all the day-to-day operations. We were successful. We paid our bills every month. And you know, as I started to do a deep dive into the numbers, I'm like, we are working way too hard for what we have left over.

Tracy Holt: We're doing something wrong. We're doing enough right to survive, but we're not doing enough right to be profitable. So that's really the last, I don't know, few years has been our focus of profitability, making sure we're giving. The customer, the best experience they could have, doing what's right for the customer and putting the customer first, and then pricing ourselves accordingly.

Tracy Holt: And everything's kind of started to fall into place to where now I start to look at expansion. We're expanding the back of the shopper, adding five new bays that should be up and running any day now, which will allow us to expand more technicians, more, you know, better, more opportunity. But you had asked me that a couple years ago.

Tracy Holt: I'm like, I don't want any more bays. I can't handle the workflow we got now, the personnel we got. Now 

Carm Capriotto: you just hit on something that I really wanna talk about your intuition. Every once in a while it is there and you tamp it down and then it comes back up and it gets up a little higher in your head and you tamp it down.

Carm Capriotto: And is that not only what you've learned on how to make more money, how to hire great people. How to take care of your clients, but now all of a sudden I want to grow. 

Tracy Holt: Yeah. I mean you look at, with our staff we've got now and finally getting it to the point where I, you know, they call it the well-oiled machine that everything is doing.

Tracy Holt: Their part never is, but go ahead. Yeah. In your mind, you think that's what're striving for? There's always something broken that needs address addressing, but I think we're finally getting enough stuff right, that we can grow at a pace and sustain it and not hurt us and only make us better. 

Carm Capriotto: After 51 years to a point, you have a foundation that's not just a six inch slab.

Carm Capriotto: You guys gotta have like a four foot foundation and there's probably not a lot you could experiment and do that you can't recover from 

Tracy Holt: No. Yeah, and we're trying new things, but we now step back and say, okay, is this gonna give value to our customers? Is this gonna give value to the company? Is it going to have value to our employees?

Tracy Holt: I always say that everybody needs to win the customer. My employees and the shop as a whole needs to win, you know? And if I can check those boxes off, we'll pursue it. 

Carm Capriotto: Do you guys have a great cost management hack? You can give our listener. Boy, 

Tracy Holt: you know it's funny, we had no cost management hack at all until getting on with the institute and then starting to see your numbers broke down to what everything, every little aspect of your business costs.

Tracy Holt: We realized that after that we were high in some things and really low in other things. Marketing were really low. Because we've never had to market. So you don't really have a big budget for marketing? No, but we're making a shift in that now because we can see with the growth potential. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. The New Bays may account for you to have to reach out.

Tracy Holt: Yeah. Okay. So we're actually just signed up with Sharp Shop Marketing Pros and look forward to a. A relationship with them, Kim and Brian Walker. Yeah. They 

Carm Capriotto: have a show on our network. They're good. Great people love them. 

Tracy Holt: Yeah, so we're excited about that. They're gonna build this new website and it's, I was talking to him yesterday about.

Tracy Holt: I've got enough car count right now to expand, but I'm need to mark it up for down the road. 

Carm Capriotto: That's a very interesting, but not a great cost hack. Yeah, I mean, like I looked at uniforms, I looked at subscriptions. If you've done anything like that, 

Tracy Holt: we're always looking for if certain things are high in the business, what, you know, other options, but.

Tracy Holt: Our expenses have always been kind of in check. Just kind of the way dad taught us. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Oh, family businesses are so like that. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Whatcha you spending that money on? What's that? Who bought that to sound familiar? Oh yeah. Constantly. 

Tracy Holt: That was dad's. You know, we were instilled in that of like, watch what you spend was your, what you spend was your 

Carm Capriotto: mom in the business?

Patrece Holt Vance: She did all the books right now. And so, 

Carm Capriotto: oh my God, she probably stood there at attention with her rifle. A 

Patrece Holt Vance: hundred percent. She did. 

Carm Capriotto: And that was my grandma by the way. And then it's 

Patrece Holt Vance: the same thing. I do that to Tracy. So I've taken my mom's space and I'm ha sitting there with the rifle on the expenses. 

Carm Capriotto: So there we go.

Carm Capriotto: Girl. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. Wow. So you gotta go through your sister to spend money. Yeah. Yeah. 

Tracy Holt: And I don't know who's scarier, my mom or my sister. So. 

Carm Capriotto: Well, you're filling the good shoes, aren't 

Patrece Holt Vance: you? I know. Like I got good ones to fill, so, 

Carm Capriotto: oh my God. All right. Are you guys afraid of anything? I 

Tracy Holt: think everybody's afraid of something.

Tracy Holt: In the back of your mind. You're always afraid of failure, whatever that means, but you know, we just can't dwell on that. Once you become profitable in this business, it seems like your mind shift always progresses into the future and growth. When you're surviving, all you're thinking about, man, I hope this doesn't blow up on me, because we could.

Tracy Holt: It all could fall apart. 

Carm Capriotto: You guys talked about struggle, you also talked about surviving, and those are two s words that really go together and I think there's a big takeaway here. All the top shops that listen to this show, they get you guys, but the struggle ones, ones that need to get climb up above, if you will, that hole that they're digging.

Carm Capriotto: Okay, you said something so powerful, I wanna talk about it. Once you start making money, you're really, I gotta make more. I gotta learn how to make it. I gotta be smarter at this because look at what the profits can do for a company. The talent you can hire, the what you can pay, the benefits you can provide, the equipment you can buy.

Carm Capriotto: And that I think is so big and it's so powerful when you start making money, life changes. It does. 

Tracy Holt: I look at the way that the businesses ran and I dad did everything. He could at the best of his ability to make it survive. And he did. But you know, I was saying we're doing some expansion in the back, new lifts, new heating lights, and I mean making basically another extension to the shop.

Tracy Holt: And the difference from today after, you know, being profitable versus five years ago, if we would've tried to do this, it would've been just do the bare minimum to get by. When we started this, it was kind of planned, but not really. But we've spent a lot of money in the last few months. But the difference is we've had the money to spend on the expansion and in the back of my mind I think about, you know what, I'm doing this for this goal.

Tracy Holt: That's in the end. And yes, it kind of sucks a little bit now because of the cost, but I haven't lost sight of the vision down the road of we're gonna double. 

Carm Capriotto: You would've never done this if there wasn't the ROI? No. You would've never done it? No. Is it almost done? Just 

Tracy Holt: yes. Wow. It actually got some pictures.

Tracy Holt: We've got a couple cars in there torn apart this week, so I'm excited to get back and obviously staff up for it and move forward. 

Carm Capriotto: Patrice, have you ever fired a customer? 

Patrece Holt Vance: No, I don't think so. Okay. I think I just deal with everybody and 

Carm Capriotto: Okay. 

Patrece Holt Vance: You know, everybody has a story. Everybody has, their things are going through and maybe something's happening in their life and their car breaks down and it's the worst thing and they can ever do.

Patrece Holt Vance: But, or any, the worst thing that could ever happen to them at that moment. But if you can make that experience a good experience for them, it can act, it will seem to help their whole situation. Our customers, like I said before, like we're super fortunate. We have a great clientele, we have a great area we live in.

Patrece Holt Vance: Families and families come in. There's a one lady that comes in, she's very strong personality. She walks in one day and is like. I have to quit telling people about you. And I'm like, why would you do that? She's like, because I can't get in anymore. Now all my friends are coming. I gotta, and I, and she has, all right, 

Carm Capriotto: we need four new bays.

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. For her, she has the biggest personality and she does podcasting and has a very big voice in the community. You know, she's this in our waiting room and she's everyone's best friend the whole time. So, you know, the word of mouth is what's so great for us with our clients because they're telling their friends about us.

Patrece Holt Vance: The whole thing about firing. Customers. We don't really do that. You 

Carm Capriotto: said something very interesting there. This, everybody has a story, and I would love to dig into that in a minute, but you just hit something. There's millions of podcasts out there and there are so many locals. Everybody wants to be a podcaster, number one.

Carm Capriotto: Number two is I love bourbon, so I'm gonna go hook up with a bar and I'm gonna go there on a Friday night and I'm gonna do a podcast and we're gonna drink bourbon, or it's flowers or it's community. If you think about the marketing side of that, get to. Befriend every podcaster in your town in South Jordan.

Carm Capriotto: Make sure they're clients and you, maybe you'll never have to market again. There you go. We may have to keep expanding. So, oh shit. What a bay. Oh, I would never want that to happen. Are you kidding me? Four more bays after these four. 

Tracy Holt: Well, it's funny at times her husband does commercial real estate, and so whenever there's a shop for sale or something that pops up in our area, ooh, I get the email and I turn to her and she's like, no, 

Carm Capriotto: delete.

Tracy Holt: Let's get ours fixed first. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Well, that's interesting that you say that. Get it fixed. It's never going to be fixed. No, and we've realized that. So how many more shops could you have had if Tracy said yes to every one of your husband's things? 

Patrece Holt Vance: I mean, he's sitting like 10 of us in front of us, so there's, who knows?

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. 

Tracy Holt: Well I shouldn't say fixed. Let's get this one duplicatable. 

Carm Capriotto: Oh. I'm sorry. That's pretty damn powerful because you're right, because you know enough about being able to go into another place and you struggle with number two and if you don't have the processes and the systems in play mm-hmm. And you think of even wanting to go into three and I'm all the multis shop operators out there know it and they've come on my show and said confession.

Carm Capriotto: You know about, uh, oh my God, we finally figured it out after store three and a half. Yeah. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: And that's because they did it on their own. They did it with no guidance and they weren't even prepared to do two, but they did it because Camp pass up this opportunity. It just came to me. I had to say yes, the numbers were right and they thought that they could just.

Carm Capriotto: Flip a switch. No. And it just doesn't do that. 

Tracy Holt: No. And we've gotta protect our business and our brand and we will never do anything. If that time comes and it's time to do something like that, we'll pursue it. But you know, right now is, let's make the best of what we've got. 

Carm Capriotto: I have one question for each of you.

Carm Capriotto: A big takeaway from this conference so far that you're gonna go back and do something with? 

Patrece Holt Vance: I think culture's huge. We've always had a positive culture at our shop. We've had a couple. People here and there that can bring the shop down. But if we really focus on the culture ourselves, which start, or it actually starts with us, how do we come to work in the morning?

Patrece Holt Vance: How do we present ourselves to other people? That's just gonna be contagious to our guys. If I walk in the shop all mad and grumpy, and now that it's a Monday, that just sets the tone for them. So I think even just holding ourselves accountable, right? We use that word a lot this weekend too. We need to be accountable for us to start or to, it's contagious.

Patrece Holt Vance: If you have a great attitude, if you, even if you're didn't, I mean just walk into the work and just have a great attitude about things, everybody else will. You have that one guy in the corner that you're just like, oh my gosh, what's wrong with him? Right. Just lift him up. So I think culture is a lot too, about just the way that we hold ourselves.

Patrece Holt Vance: In the management part of the system, 

Carm Capriotto: my friend Shari Pheasant described culture to me this way. She says, Carmen the weather. I took that from her and it just really hit me hard. And then on podcasts, I would say, so is there a Thunder Cloud in Bay three? Yeah. Think about that. Yeah. Now, it may not be a perpetual Thunder cloud, but it could be just for today, something may have happened to that individual and it's maybe bringing down the rest.

Carm Capriotto: And you know, but I guess the goal would be sunshine every day. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. But just knowing that your team members, that they know that we have their back, that we're there to support them. We all have families, we all have other things outside of that shop. So just really understanding them as, you're not just my employee, you're a person and I do care about you.

Patrece Holt Vance: I care about your wellbeing and I care about your family. We come from the family background of the business. We have a family culture in our shop. Like our one technician, Cody, we always joke that he's my little brother. I wish I had, I would take all three of my brothers and take him instead. Our mom says that too.

Patrece Holt Vance: So just the family dynamic that we have inside our shop with our employees, it's just a natural thing for us. 'cause we, that's how we grew. 

Carm Capriotto: You know the word I just thought about, Patrice's fit. He fits, 

Patrece Holt Vance: he does. 

Carm Capriotto: He fits in the organization. He fits in the family. He fits, he knows what we do and how we do it.

Carm Capriotto: And what I took from Dr. Jesse Krieger yesterday was this whole storytelling thing. And I talked to Parker yesterday. Parker starts every meeting twice a day with his service advisors and say, tell me a story. 

Patrece Holt Vance: I like that. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, that's really good. Isn't cool. 

Tracy Holt: Big takeaway for you overall. It's kind of a general term, but we can do better.

Tracy Holt: That's kind of in the, been in the back of my mind from all the speakers and what we can learn. We can have a better culture at the shop. We can do better inspections for our customers. We can have better customer service. We can have a, you know, a better customer experience, we can be better at being involved in the community.

Tracy Holt: There's certain aspects that I think at sometimes you think, well, I do enough community support. I feel like I do enough. But you know what? We can all do better. And I think is that we force ourselves to do more. It's gonna force growth is what it'll do. 

Carm Capriotto: Wow. I so wish you guys all the luck in the world and you know, the big thing about.

Carm Capriotto: Conferences, and I think we spoke about it while we're here recording. I used to go to conferences. I still do, but when I owned the business, I'd come back. They'd never car, don't go to a conference. 

Patrece Holt Vance: Yeah. Yep. 

Carm Capriotto: You know the drill, right? Yep, yep. Oh my God. He is gonna come back and we're gonna have to change.

Carm Capriotto: He's gonna upload my new stuff. And I realized that it was, again, I had to learn, I had to grow up, I had to become a better leader. And it was just wow. Gangbusters, right? Zero to 60 in, you know, 1.9 seconds. After a while, Hey, I learned this and I saw this, read this. What do you think of this? And slowly get some buy-in.

Carm Capriotto: And if it's going to work for the company, you can't push. It's gotta be pulled into. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Great advice. Wow, this was fun. Thank you for sharing this great episode. Very emotional. Thank you for sharing all that. Tracy, hold to Patrice Vance's, brother, sister at Performance Place in South Jordan, Utah.

Carm Capriotto: Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you, karma. I've, I've enjoyed your podcast. Thank you so much.

Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive until time.