September 10th, 2025 - 00:53:42

Show Summary:

Jimmy Lea leads a conversation on shop profitability and technology with Monique Mondragon-Tafoya from Shop-Ware and Brandon Ballou, service advisor at Trustworthy Auto. They unpack how a modern shop management system, a well-tuned CRM, and tools like Detect Auto streamline estimating, protect margins, and elevate customer trust. Brandon details workflow habits, from DVIs to clear prioritization, that keep the team productive while guiding customers through staged approvals. Monique shares Shop-Were releases like integrated consumer financing, online scheduling, and an in-app CRM that reduce friction and surface KPIs. The group emphasizes using photos/video in DVIs and measuring technician productivity vs. efficiency to find bottlenecks. They also discuss hiring timing, deposit policies for large jobs, and keeping advisors focused on conversations, not data chasing. The session ends with “magic wand” wishes: more grace across the industry and a win-win mindset for shops, employees, and customers.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Brandon Ballou, Service Manager for Trustworthy Auto

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya, Shop-Ware

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:52] - Technology theme set: using tools to raise effective labor rate, proficiency, and customer experience.

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Hello my friends. It's good to see you. It's good to be part of our conversation today as we are going to have a great conversation talking about profit in your shop and technology in your shop. Oh my gosh, this is gonna be so much fun. We are here to help you where you are at. Where are you at? I, we just finished a fabulous marketing for the Automotive Repair Shops conference.

Jimmy Lea: No, it wasn't a conference. It was an intensive. It was a workshop. It was awesome. It was a workshop where those that were there had notebooks, 111 pages of notes, note taking homework assignments. It was so cool. It was so cool. And what's great with what we're doing with the institute, building better business, building better lives, building better industry.

Jimmy Lea: Is that we do we lock arms with you. We're gonna meet you where you are and go together as we go together to further your shop, your business from those that are looking and evaluating shops to buy. They don't even own a shop yet. Jonathan, I'm talking about you. They don't own a shop yet, but they're going to, and because they're going to, why not have a coach in your corner to help you navigate all of the red tape?

Jimmy Lea: Oh man, it's so fabulous. All the way up to shop, multi shop operators. You have 10 locations, 18 locations, 36 locations. We here at the institute are here to lock arms with you and make sure that your shop experience is the best that it can possibly be. For our webinar today, for our discussion today, we are talking about technology that has helped to improve your shop, your business, your effective labor rate, your proficiencies, and co-sponsoring this with us is shop wear.

Jimmy Lea: Monique is gonna join us from shop wear. Thank you, Monique. I'm so excited to have you with us. I see you blurred background. It looks like you are being a road warrior today.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yes, I'll be a ro, a road Warrior for several months, but it'll gonna be okay. So please don't mind the hotel background, but I am very excited to be here.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So thank you for having me and I'm looking forward to talking with y'all.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Monique has been with shop wear for quite a while and just excited with what is happening there. The conferences the surveys, the listening to the shops and the shops Love shop wear. The shops that are on shop wear.

Jimmy Lea: Love shop wear. So thank you for all you're doing in this industry. Yes, sir.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Thank you.

Jimmy Lea: Joining from a shop point of view, we have Brandon. He is our MMA fighter. He is our local jujitsu black belt. No you do not want to mess with this guy. Brandon, how are you brother? I'm doing great. How are you, Jimmy?

Jimmy Lea: I'm good. I'm good. I'm real good. Excited that you're here so we can talk about. Technology and the shop and the business. How is the shop by the way?

Brandon Ballou: Shop's been doing great. We had a record month in July. August was pretty good. And then, you know, hoping to just keep the ball rolling.

Jimmy Lea: There you go.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Keep the ball rolling for sure. So, back up. By the way, how's Pops?

Brandon Ballou: Oh he's great. Yeah. Is he in the shop every day still? He just, 'cause he wants to be there,

Brandon Ballou: Loves being there. Loves being part of the team, helping with the problem cars. Oh, I love it.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, so he's wrenching right.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah, when he wants to.

Brandon Ballou: And then, you know, he only touches if we have, you know, the BMW with the intermittent check engine light that only comes on Tuesday. He calls dibs and that's the one he works on. 'cause he loves figuring out the crazy hard problems.

Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. That's so cool. I saw one yesterday on TikTok that if you pull up the parking break, if you open the ashtray, if you open the cup holder and then open the.

Jimmy Lea: Glove box it actuated the steering wheel, spin mode, and it would just spin and spin and spin.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: What are you watching?

Jimmy Lea: I'm watching TikTok about customer states that if you put on the parking brake, open the ashtray, open the cup, and open the jockey box, the steering wheel will start to thin.

Jimmy Lea: And sure enough, it did, I mean. It's amazing. It's amazing what happens when customers come in and when a service advisor is in there and writing down what a customer says. It blows the minds of technicians because of their descriptions, which are hilarious, but it goes into what they're doing. So, Brandon I wanna dig in deep here.

Jimmy Lea: I want to go in on your shop, but first, give us a layout so everybody understands what your shop looks like. How can I relate to that? If I'm a single guy, I've got two techs, or I've got 10 bays, or I've got 10 shops what's your makeup so that as we have our conversation, people can relate.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah, absolutely. So we're a six bay one and a half advisors. 'cause I'm still kind of advising but not as much with three techs looking to hopefully grow to four and then two full-time advisors before the end of the year. Okay.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. And about what kind of a car count are you usually looking at?

Jimmy Lea: On a daily or a weekly or a monthly basis? What do you usually see

Brandon Ballou: monthly? We do about 120 cars with a 20 car variance either direction, depending on the month.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. And are you focused mostly on the euros, on the general repair? All makes, all models. Asians. What are you looking at?

Brandon Ballou: General repair is the worst way to describe our shop. 'cause that's not, we do fix everything, but when I say we fix everything. I have a video in my phone from earlier this week where we have, you know, a Porsche nine 11 turbo next to a brand new F two 50, next to a 2008 Ford Focus next to another Porsche nine 11, next to a Maserati, next to a 2002 Ford F two 50.

Brandon Ballou: Next to, so we work on everything pretty much newer than 2000, but that day we even had a 91 Toyota MR two in the shop for an engine. So we work on everything, you know, we have the tooling, we have the equipment, we do the training. So if it's we love to work on all of it.

Jimmy Lea: Wow. It sounds like you've got from the whole mix and the whole marriage of everything Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: All makes, all models.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Sounds like he just doesn't like to turn away money. I like that.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah. The only stuff we turn away is when stuff gets older than 2000. Unless it's a specific vehicle or customer that we know, you know, cares about fixing it like that. MR two is one we knew that customer or good customer and you know, it was a good ticket.

Brandon Ballou: Easy to find parts, but some of the oldest stuff we steer away from just 'cause we don't have the parking for a car to sit there for a couple weeks while we wait for parts.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And with those bigger tickets, are you focusing on, on, on clients, on customers and saying, all right, this is gonna be a $30,000 repair.

Jimmy Lea: I'm gonna need 15 K to get things started.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah. So not too much of our stuff gets up into that range. We have 'em, but those are the outliers. Our aros right around $1,100 right now. We wanna be the auto repair shop for the whole family. Everything from the kids' high school car to the mom's minivan to dad's truck, and his, you know, sports car that's in the garage.

Brandon Ballou: We want to be able to just take care of everybody.

Jimmy Lea: Well, and I'm thinking of that MR two with an engine. I'm like yeah. What's that invoice gonna be? I was just shy of 12,000. Oh, so what was it, 12? Are you collecting 50% up front or 30%, or

Brandon Ballou: what do you usually do? So we collect a 50% down payment on anything over 3000.

Brandon Ballou: Just so you know, the shop doesn't have to absorb the cost of everything until the job's done.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that, that helps tremendously. Being able to have that funds in-house, you can take care of business. Okay. So six bays currently three techs. You want four currently, one and a half service advisors. You want two.

Jimmy Lea: By the end of the year you'll have this in place and then you can focus on the business and dad can tinker with those cars that. Have spinning wheels. Yeah.

Brandon Ballou: That's the plan. You know, for the longest time it was, you know, I watched my dad, you know, work crazy hours seven days a week and I was like, I'm just gonna push and grow the business to the point to where, you know, he can hang out on a beach somewhere all week and not have to work.

Brandon Ballou: And then we got to the point where we can almost do that and he's still there every day. And it took me a little bit to realize he does not want to sit on a beach or anything. He wants to figure out the problem cars. And that's exactly what. He loves to do. So

Jimmy Lea: that's his hobby, that's his joy, that's his enjoyment.

Jimmy Lea: He enjoys working on the car, so he's not losing out when it comes to, that's it, that's his downtime is working on cars.

Brandon Ballou: It's just my job to make sure it goes from him having to do it to him wanting to do it. There you go. There you go. It's great to have that up.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: I have a question for you, Brandon.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yes. So I'm very curious to know, you said you're basically an advisor. Halftime, right? Yep. Part-time. Are you, does that mean you're now doing the owner job full-time, but outside of hours, so that way you can advise during the day or how does that split work?

Brandon Ballou: Yeah, it's a lot. So all the owner duties I do after hours, like I, I'll get up and usually do like the payroll and anything like that before work starts or anything.

Brandon Ballou: Online be up 5 36 starting to do that. And then I do all the advisor stuff during the day and when I have the downtime, 'cause I'm only a third or half advisor, I'm the advisor we hired. He's a rockstar. But so the little bit of advising I do that and then I have almost like the service manager position, making sure, you know, productivity's there, margins are held everything throughout the day.

Brandon Ballou: And then I go back to, you know, just tackling everything else owner's wise as far as like filling out composite and p and l, like checking the p and l and. I do that after, so hopefully we can get another advisor in and then I don't have to do the day-to-day stuff.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So you could work less hours. Yeah. I'm curious to know

Brandon Ballou: Yep.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: In the comments from everyone how many of you are working over, out eight hours a day to maybe split yourself and be two different roles? Go ahead, Jimmy.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I am.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Oh, you are? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: But for our audience who's working over eight hours I'll bet every single person out there put it. How many hours per day are you working?

Jimmy Lea: Put it in the comments

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: that, that's a better question. Yes. I would love to know how many hours per

Brandon Ballou: day are you working? And it's not even that I really wanna work less than, you know, I wanna work less. It's, I could take, you know, the time that I'm advising and put it towards other things in the business to, you know, make it grow faster.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah. If you're working less than eight hours a day, what are you doing all day? Yeah. Yeah.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: I had a part-time job once. That's what everybody's thinking about. The eight hour day.

Jimmy Lea: The eight hour day. Yeah. No, well shop owners for sure. Tracy says four. Lance says yes. He's working more than eight. James is five.

Jimmy Lea: Daniel 11, Lance 10 to 12, six days a week, sometimes maybe seven for Lance. Oh my gosh, dude. Steven is nine hours plus a tech called in six. So he is literally working on cars while listening to this. Steven, thank you for listening. We appreciate that. Jonathan, what's stopping you from adding an advisor now, Brandon?

Jimmy Lea: I think Brandon's just gotta find the right person. Brandon, what's stopping you?

Brandon Ballou: Both. We're super picky on who we hire, but also we're in like that busy time of year, so the shop's killing it. It could definitely get an advisor. Now I just want to settle through, you know, the September months where typically we see that little bit of slowdown and make sure that drops not as substantial to where we can't have that second advisor.

Brandon Ballou: 'cause last thing I'd want to do is get a rockstar, put 'em in place and then, you know, I'm struggling to try and amp up the marketing to keep up with the added payroll.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Well, and Cody Morlock working eight hours-ish, making big moves right now, but they're also a 10 fours, sorry, four tens.

Jimmy Lea: They're working four tens. So yeah. No, Cody, that totally makes sense. And just so you guys know, Cody and his wife Tasha are gonna have a baby boy any minute. Congrats. Literally, quite literally, we were at the Mars conference or the Mars Intensive over the weekend where anytime the dude would stand up to walk away from the camera, I was like, oh, we're baby watch.

Jimmy Lea: So congratulations to you, Cody. And he already sent a message to us this morning that the baby's not here yet, but there are still no baby. But thing is stuck. Oh gosh. Go for another horse ride. I put her on horseback. He had her on horseback going around the property. Still no baby stubborn.

Jimmy Lea: This is a stubborn one. You have three girls and three boys after this, so congratulations, Cody. Brandon, thanks for giving us the background of your shop and where you are and where you want to go as well. Let's talk about technology that you have seen implemented into your shop. What do you, what have you seen from.

Jimmy Lea: A technology viewpoint that has made some difference. And then let's go into the technology that has really moved the needle for you. So what's some of those that have made a difference and then the bigger.

Brandon Ballou: The biggest thing, and I'm not saying it 'cause we're on their show, is just shop wear overall as a management system.

Brandon Ballou: It's just the ease of workflow. Yeah. The, just the ease of workflow. How fast things can transition through the shop, how easy the communication and everything is. Being able to just track and hold margins and see where you're losing productivity or efficiency based on how the track, the tech is punching on and off.

Brandon Ballou: Job. So that's probably the biggest help in our shop. Other things we use having a solid CRM, our CRM really dialed in to keep our customers coming back and, you know, keep grabbing the work that customers are, you know, declining that initial visit to make sure they're coming back and still getting it done.

Brandon Ballou: Another thing is we have a, we work with detect ai. There are new AI that comes out that pairs seamlessly with shop wear. And it will, what it is so you can put your maintenance standards in it, and then it'll also go off the manufacturer's maintenance standards, and then it'll check Carfax to see if it's ever been done, and then if it has no history of it with you, no history of it with Carfax, it'll mark it yellow if it has history of it being done, but it's due to be done, again, it marks it red, and then it just saves the advisors, I would guess probably four to five minutes per estimate to seeing what's needed, far as maintenance to write up and.

Brandon Ballou: Let the customer know what's needed. So that's been huge. That's new. We've only been with them for maybe a month.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. And have you seen car owners that, that are viewing this information from Detect Auto and they're like, oh my gosh, yes. No, we definitely need to do all this stuff.

Jimmy Lea: Have you seen the average repairers going above that 1100?

Brandon Ballou: So our aros stuck about the same, but we were always presenting it. What it is just freeing up more time for the advisor. Like I was doing probably 50% of the advising before, and then detect AI was able to free up the time for the other advisor.

Brandon Ballou: So now they get to do the majority of it. And you know, one advisor with three techs is okay, and then one, two with, I'd want to add a Fourth Tech before I add the second advisor to go back to. You know, part of the reason Jonathan asked why I don't just do it now.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, no.

Brandon Ballou: Get in the right direction.

Jimmy Lea: So before you as an advisor, you were going in and doing all the digging to find the information from what manufacturer said, what this done recommended in the past declined and what the card needs today.

Jimmy Lea: You were doing that process. So now detect ai, click of a button. Boom. Yep. Saved you just 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, who knows? Per car, per estimate.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah. That's

Jimmy Lea: pretty

Brandon Ballou: cool. And it adds up, you know, if you're writing, you know, six, seven estimates a day or whatever, you know, going back and forth or customer calls with another concern or it's, it adds up.

Jimmy Lea: For sure.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So, so just to clarify you were writing. Several services on a repair order before. And now, because you can see the information with the tech auto, instead of writing six services or six estimates, maybe you're only writing four. Is that correct?

Brandon Ballou: Nope. We're still writing all the same estimates.

Brandon Ballou: It just, it saves us the time from having to go look for what's due, you know, before

Jimmy Lea: information.

Brandon Ballou: Shop, wear history, see what we've done, check Carfax, see what's due, see what's been done. Call the customer just in case. And we still do that because it can't pull stuff that hasn't been reported, but now it's just, it pulls up a PDF with everything.

Brandon Ballou: Copy paste it. We put it in our DVI and then well, we can just add all the can jobs right from there.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Thank you for that clarity.

Jimmy Lea: Oh that's good. That, that, that's really good. Okay. So these are the things that are. Freeing up time, freeing up on the daily. What else? What else besides the CRM detect auto shop wear.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. Shop wear. I have a question for you, Monique and Brendan. Hold. Yes sir. When you are signing up clients to shop wear, what do you know? Is there a percentage of them that are coming from handwritten to. Technology.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah. I mean, it's very rare that you move someone over from handwriting anymore.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: And if they are handwriting, that's probably where they're gonna stay until they move the shop over to a new owner. Right. So most people are coming from something, some other shop management system, and I would say that's probably 95% of the people we move over are coming from a shop management system.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna throw it out there that if you are still handwriting your estimates, your invoices, your work orders, there's no shame and check out shop wear because it's gonna help you out tremendously to improve the efficiencies of you as a shop, of you, as a shop owner, an advisor to not have to write.

Jimmy Lea: And I've seen some shops, Monique, this will blow your mind. They're doing 2 million, 3 million, 4 million out of a single shop. Yeah, and the service advisors are handwriting all of those tickets.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah, I would say the majority of what we see when it's someone who hasn't moved to like a newer shop management system, it's usually they're on QuickBooks, so they're writing and invoices, they're keeping the history, but it's all in a non automotive tool, which.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Is great. It's helpful because you're gonna use QuickBooks to pay your bills and do all the things anyway. However, it doesn't give you the additional functionality like hooking up to your parts vendors or looking at automotive specific reporting or KPIs. There's a ton of items that you can then check off once you move to an automotive specific software.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So. You know, that's something that folks will wanna consider if they're not on an automotive specific software. For sure.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. And Jonathan's got a question, or John has a question for you. Monique question in general, is Ware making it so technicians are on a tablet or something like that, getting all their information?

Jimmy Lea: Or will you flag sheets and information? And technicians are still providing it separately?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah, so this is a great question. All shops do things a bit different. So some like to print the piece of paper still, and some folks like to get their technicians on something mobile, like a tablet, so they can go through and do checkoff right from the tablet.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: However, we do both so we can accommodate both the. Where you gain and where you benefit is when you actually get them on the tablet because you can't track. Anything that happens on a piece of paper. Meanwhile, when they're on the tablet, we can track everything, how long it takes them to do things when they're marking it complete.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: They can take pictures, videos, all of the different items that you can't do with that piece of paper. So it is beneficial to get them on a tablet or a phone anything mobile. But yes, we can, and we can do all of the reporting on the backside of that.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. John. I hope that helps you.

Jimmy Lea: Brandon, what do you guys do in your shop with your technicians? What do you have them on? So, we

Brandon Ballou: supply tablets. They're in the corner of the shop collecting a bowl, load of dust. 'cause all the technicians would rather just use their own cell phone. We have something we supply, but it's small fits in their pocket, does their job, and they'd much rather just carry that around.

Brandon Ballou: And then they have a Chromebook at their toolbox to, you know, follow the work order and write their stories and stuff. But yeah, for the DVI, they use their own cell phones.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, nice. Very nice. Yeah. Quick, simple, easy. It's got a flashlight. It's got a camera. Yeah I get it. I get it.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: And it reaches in.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: The hard to reach spots better than a tablet would because a tablet's bigger. The cell phone camera's be better, so there's a million reasons why they'd wanna use their cell phone.

Brandon Ballou: And I will say as like personal preference for the tech app and everything with shop, where using a cell phone is easier.

Brandon Ballou: The tech app was more designed to be used on a phone. It's designed to be able to use one hand versus if you have a tablet, I don't know anyone who's thumb is this long to be able to reach side to side of the screen on a tablet. But on the phone you could do a whole DVI with one hand with the way the tech app's designed.

Jimmy Lea: Oh wow. Monique, there's some good feedback. How about that?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah, we we took a lot of time designing it, pushing it out, listening to feedback after and making changes to, to make it better and improve it. So,

Jimmy Lea: absolutely. Thank

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: you, Brandon.

Jimmy Lea: Well, speaking of DVI is one of my favorites, but let's talk about technology, Brandon, as you continue to introduce technology into your shop, what are some of those technologies that you look at and can say Every shop.

Jimmy Lea: Must have this technology,

Brandon Ballou: A digital inspection. That should be the standard now. I mean, it works great for, you know, all of us shops that are doing and other shops aren't. But it shouldn't be something a elite level shop is doing. It should be the standard builds trust. It shows the customer exactly what's wrong.

Brandon Ballou: I think it should be the new industry norm, you know? Most places, if you go and have any sort of testing done, you go to the doctor or anything, they're gonna give you a paper or something with the results, or you know, you go get an x-ray they show you the x-ray. They don't just tell you your leg ISS broken.

Brandon Ballou: It's the same thing with us. Let's show the customer what's wrong with the car. Let's inform them so they understand how the car works and why everything's needed instead of just, you know, the old way you come in. Just tell people what's wrong and how much, like help build the value of the DBI.

Jimmy Lea: I agree.

Jimmy Lea: The DVI is so important. It, it can show a client, a customer. It helps to educate the customer when they're educated. They make much better decisions. They can see what's worn, torn freight or broken. Especially when you circle it or put arrows at it. 'cause if you're saying, Hey, look at this ball joint, they have no clue what a ball joint is.

Jimmy Lea: You circle it, put an arrow at it. See that broken.

Brandon Ballou: Oh, okay. And I know most shops are doing it now, but if you're not, yeah. You gotta get on board or you might get left behind it. It was a game changer. We knew our first week we had a, she was a little sweet, old lady, came in for first time, you know, week of us using a DVI and we did our health report and she didn't have a smart smartphone or anything and so we sent it to her.

Brandon Ballou: She couldn't see it and she needed tires. Told us she needed tires and started flipping out on me. I don't need tires. I just got a state inspection last week. Like the cords were sticking out of the inside of the tires, but the alignment was off. So the outside of the tire looked fine. Her daughter's a customer at the shop.

Brandon Ballou: So I said, can I text this report to your daughter so she can see what we're talking about? 'cause I promise you need times. And then she called back. So apologetically like, I am so sorry. How did I get a state inspection? How could someone let this happen? And it just, it builds value.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Those pictures.

Jimmy Lea: It sells it every time. The video sells it every time. Anytime a technician has a marking at red that it needs attention, include a picture. It's sold. Every time.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yes. I look at this from a different perspective because I don't actually work in a shop. I've never worked in a shop. I've worked with shops for a lot of years, but I don't work in a shop.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So I am the car owner who takes my vehicle to a shop. And I agree with you, Brandon, that an inspection should absolutely be done on every vehicle because it is you are. Car doctors, and to your point, when you go to the doctor, you know, they give you all of the information. And so I think the inspection in my perspective.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Is more of a list for the technician, which is great because you need to train them in what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. But what is very important for me is exactly what you both pointed out, which is the detail that makes me an informed buyer. So if I were the old lady as well and I on the outside, it looks great and I'm.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: You know, obviously not trained to look on the inside of the tire. Then yes, those pictures, the information helps me to make me feel confident that you, Brandon, or your shop or whomever I'm taking my vehicle to is not taking advantage of me. And that's really what we all ultimately wanna know is that someone's not taking advantage of us.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So if you can. Show the information that helps me to build the trust, but also understand that you are looking out for my best interest. Then I may not need those pictures later on, or I may be able to approve without. You know, a reaction that would be unfavorable for everyone involved in the situation.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So I think that it's just really about showing the information that helps me to understand, yes, I do need that. Right? I do need that, that he's suggesting. And so I should click the approve button and I should say yes.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Brandon, think about your DVI history, your DVI experience that you've got hundreds and hundreds and thousands of digital vehicle inspections that your shop has done.

Jimmy Lea: What is one that you would say this is. A story of victory for the DVI. This is a victory for taking pictures and showing a customer exactly what needs to be done, similar to the state inspection where the tires are bald. That's unfortunate, but it does happen. Educated customers make better decisions.

Jimmy Lea: You have any stories of A DVI that went extremely well?

Brandon Ballou: Ooh. I mean, I got a bunch of 'em, but the my, one of my favorite ones is it helps, you know, we've always followed the 300% rule. Every car comes in the shop, you know, hey, it gets a hundred percent inspected. Everything gets estimated and everything gets presented to the customer well, when it's a first time customer, especially coming to our shop, usually that first visit, there's a lot of estimates 'cause a lot of shops by us aren't fully maintaining and repairing cars to the standard that we do.

Brandon Ballou: And so the car would come in and then we'd have this laundry list of stuff that needs to be done or needs to be done soon. And then it'd be a fight to try and build trust with that customer. And so we had one come in and you know, they've been going down the street forever and all they do is change oil and had their oil changed every six months.

Brandon Ballou: And then they come in and they have this huge couple thousand dollars estimate that without. The health report to show the pictures and stuff no matter how much I would've tried to build a relationship with that customer, they had 10 years of relationship with this other shop, and I'm the new guy that they decided to come to.

Brandon Ballou: They've been going to him forever and never got an estimate over $500. And now they come to me and they have something for a couple thousand. Without the pictures and everything noted and proof of what's actually wrong I don't think I could have converted them to stay a customer of ours.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true dude.

Jimmy Lea: It's so true. I was with, I was I was on a phone call with a shop and we were talking about their digital vehicle inspections and we were just doing a little audit and one came through and the technician had recommended that they need to replace their battery. Cranking amps were supposed to be in the six sixties and it was coming up with cold cranking amps in the very low three hundreds.

Jimmy Lea: It still worked. But we were headed into winter and I said to the the owner, I said, you know, if you can get the technician to take a picture of that battery test, you know, you get the receipt on it. Take a picture of that battery test results, send it to the customer, that'll be sold. Oh, by the way, back up, they had already sent it to the customer and the customer declined it.

Jimmy Lea: They declined the battery. I said, take a picture of the receipt. Send it to the customer and tell them that they are not the one that wants to be that F first cold snap that comes through. That battery's going to not crank, it's gonna be dead. They sold the battery. It was like a hundred twenty five, a hundred thirty $5 because the pitchers tell pitchers sell.

Jimmy Lea: In those situations

Brandon Ballou: and it just, it helps, you know, bridge that gap. Unfortunately, our industry has, you know, a bad stigma to it, you know, all the crooked mechanic tries to rob everybody that comes in, which just isn't true. I believe less than 10% of our industries actually, you know, crooked or trying to take advantage of people, probably even less than that.

Brandon Ballou: And then, you know. The top 20% that are actually doing things right? It's the people in the middle, they're doing things right. They just don't have the tools or the training to be able to explain things to people properly. So someone comes in, they look at the car and go, yeah, it's 3000 needs, $3,000 worth of work without any explanation.

Brandon Ballou: And then everybody assumes they're trying to get taken advantage of. 'cause you have people that only know how to speak the language of car and they don't know how to talk to people. And so the health report helps bridge that gap.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, and I love that you call it a health report too. That's very cool.

Jimmy Lea: Monique,

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: I'm curious to know, Brandon, are you sharing this off and calling customers to explain as well? Or are you just building the stories, building the value and sharing it off for them to review on their own?

Brandon Ballou: Yeah, for our model, we send them the health report. We don't have, give them the option to approve or decline with the way we work.

Brandon Ballou: Because even though, you know, if I was a doctor and I just sent you test results and pictures, hey, I still don't think you have enough knowledge to decide what needs to be done on your card. No matter if I highlight it red or green or yellow, or put timestamps. So I send you everything so you can review it and kind of have an understand what you're looking at.

Brandon Ballou: Then you really need to get on the phone with someone who understands what's going on with the car, understands what you know your personal priorities are, and can help you make a game plan with what's gonna work best for you and your vehicle. And so that, that's the way we work it. We send it to 'em, we give 'em like 10, 15 minutes.

Brandon Ballou: Once it's open to review everything. We send them a text soon as they get the, as soon as we get the notification that they opened it, just saying, Hey, seen you open this. We'll give you 10, 15 minutes to review it and then I'll call you and we'll go over anything with any questions. And then we go over everything.

Brandon Ballou: And especially because people are so, you know, dollars focused, they don't understand what's wrong with the car. They understand how much they're gonna have to take out of their bank account. So for us at least, and I know there's other shops that send it with the price and they might work for their model, but for us, I, if I send you an estimate for $4,000, the pain of how much, the $4,000 is gonna hurt you way more than what you don't understand or really know what's wrong.

Brandon Ballou: And so that's why we ex like to explain everything before we talk about, you know, just letting the customer approve.

Jimmy Lea: Well, and to your point, Brandon if you send me an invoice and it says $4,000, with that conversation, now we can decide you know what I don't have $4,000 today, but what do I need to do today?

Jimmy Lea: What can I do next month? What can I do the month after? Are there things that we can progressively fix on the car that still keeps us safe on the road? And allows us to to restore the vehicle back to its operating.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah, absolutely. And the reason we change, and we used to use it this way 'cause it was so easy and save the advisor time, but you know, there's the reason the advisor has a job and has the value up front.

Brandon Ballou: I'd have people to where I send 'em an estimate of 10 things, ball joints, brakes and tires, but the radio doesn't work. Everything else would be declined. But fixing the radio's approved, then it's like, okay, well we need to have a conversation so they understand like, you know, hey, the car. Needs the safety stuff more than it needs the radio to work.

Brandon Ballou: And the one they explain that it's, they understand

Jimmy Lea: You're reminding me of this problems how long you heard that. Well, since I rolled down the windows, since I turned off the radio, since I blew the speakers on my radio they don't hear these problems because the radio is playing so loud.

Jimmy Lea: So of course if I fix the radio fixes everything else, then I won't hear it anymore.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Alright, so two, two the shop efficiencies proficient more effective. Your DVI is part of that. Brandon, what, how do you use your shop management system to be more efficient with the clients with estimates, with work orders, invoices what do you do?

Brandon Ballou: So the way shop work can track productivity and efficiency is created, it gives you all the KPIs and everything you need. Just like you know, the customer can't really make a decision without, you know, a health report to help paint a picture and everything. Everything you can track in shop wear helps paint a picture for you as the owner to see how your business is performing.

Brandon Ballou: Like the technicians punch on each job for how long they're working, and then when they're punched in for the clock, if they're not punched on a job. It'll reflect their productivity percentage and then their efficiency percentage. And then overall shop work calls it your utilization, but your proficiency for how much your technician's producing in hours compared to how much they're in the shop.

Brandon Ballou: And you can see, you know, efficiency. You can see, okay, this tech's getting, you know, hour jobs done in a half hour or four hour jobs done in two hours. So he is super efficient, 200%, but he is only getting four hours done in a day. So he is not very productive. He's only 50% productive. Where's the issue? Is it management?

Brandon Ballou: Is it workflow? Is it the techs? You know, just not grabbing new work. So it helps you identify where the issues are in your shop.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. And do you, when you get this kind of information that he's 200% effective but only producing four hours a day, do you now know I've gotta throw more cars at him.

Jimmy Lea: I've gotta give him more work to do. Yeah,

Brandon Ballou: well that's the hard part. You gotta see, okay, is it that the technician doesn't have enough work? Is it that he's punching on accurately? And you know, he's really not 200% efficient and he is just clicking it when he is done. So that's where you gotta, you know, do the deep dive and make sure everything's being tracked properly.

Brandon Ballou: But it could be, yeah, he might not be getting enough cars. It might be that, you know, he's stuck around waiting for parts and stuff, so he's constantly punching off, just waiting. There's a parking lot full of cars, but he's stuck waiting or constantly pushing a car in and pulling another car out and there's no structured workflow.

Brandon Ballou: So that was something I know Daniel's watching Daniel. I reached out to him with some workflow and productivity issues a while ago, and he was a huge help with his process, so Nice. Great at tracking it. Yeah. So

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Where do you go first? Do you go to your service advisors to start posing questions about the workflow and how things are being done?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Or do you go to your marketing company and start to look at, obviously, what's being brought in and if they have enough work?

Brandon Ballou: For, I look right at the calendar, first off, to make sure there's the right amount of cars scheduled today. Advisors, if you run in a trend where you're only 75% proficient advisors are typically gonna only start to schedule enough work to keep your technicians at 75% proficient.

Brandon Ballou: 'cause they don't wanna break a promise to a customer. My technicians can only produce, you know, six hours a day. I'm not gonna schedule more than that. Well then you'll never. Get better than that if that's all you're scheduling. Yeah. And so that's where making sure your advisors are scheduling what your technicians are capable of, not if they're having a rough day or week, like you need to make sure they're holding the shop to its standard.

Brandon Ballou: And then management needs to hold the technicians to the standard of what they're capable of. Oh, great. So

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: if the calendar lines up, then you go marketing.

Brandon Ballou: Yep. So if the calendar does line up and there's cars there, then I know the marketing's work. 'cause the, you know, the cars are there and they're scheduled.

Brandon Ballou: So then I'm go down and I dive into the workflow issue. Okay, where's the problem in workflow? The cars are here, they're just not getting done every day, is it? The technicians are standing around? Is it, we're not. Doing things in a structured manner to get, you know, the most work done in a day. Is it that the advisors aren't pre-ordering parts and the technicians are, you know, stuck waiting for parts?

Brandon Ballou: And that's where you find the specific issues that are causing it. And I wish it was super easy, but it's never usually just one problem. It's a mix of everything I just said.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Well, what if a technician forgets to clock off of a job? Can you go in the backside? Can you go in and adjust it?

Brandon Ballou: So they'll, if they forget to, you can't go in the backside and adjust it.

Brandon Ballou: They can't just exit an RO without completing the job. So it'll always say complete. And then I know about where my technicians run. So if I see one day or one week where you know their efficiencies 260%, then I know, you know, he messed something up. And then I go talk to 'em and say, how long do you think you were on this?

Brandon Ballou: Just so we can try and keep things accurate. Nice. Because you can't manage what you don't measure. So I try and track as much as possible in the shop so I can see what we do good, what we do bad, what we can improve on. Do

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: you ever get pushback from master Techs or any of your techs wanting to clock in and out of services?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: I hear from a lot of people that they don't. Require every one of their technicians to clock into services. And I agree with you, Brandon. I think it's a data point that you can bring so many things back to. And so when I hear people aren't making their text clock in, even if they're not the bonus structure or anything's tied to it, I don't think that matters.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: I think just the data point itself is very valuable. So do you ever get any pushback and how did you get everyone to kind of. You know, buy into clocking in and out

Brandon Ballou: by, and the way I got in, not that we got pushback, but it was more just laziness. Technicians just, oh, I forgot. Oh, I forgot. But they really understood the value when it came down to, I don't know where.

Brandon Ballou: Our production issues are 'cause we're not tracking. If you can punch on consistently, I'll know exactly what our problem is. If it's not like you need training or tooling, or we don't have the equipment and it's taking you too long to get the car fixed, or if it's a production issue, cars are, you know.

Brandon Ballou: That we don't have parts ordered and stuff like that. So seeing that difference between, you know, your productivity and your efficiency is where you help identify the problem. You don't need to, but if you don't, then you just see, you know, the overall proficiency. You say, okay, the tech was here for 40 hours this week and he only produced 20.

Brandon Ballou: It, was it 'cause it took 'em 40 hours to produce those 20 hours? Or was he standing around for 20 hours? That's where those metrics come in really handy.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So it sounds like just communication, you just communicated the end goal and what you're wanting to do with the information, which didn't negatively affect them in any way.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So they're like, great, yes, I'll clock in. Absolutely.

Brandon Ballou: And they completely understood When it's, we have a problem, I can't identify what it is, and if I can identify and fix that problem, you're gonna make more money. The shop's gonna run better. And once everyone understood that, everyone got on board and was like, oh wait, if we fix this, we can make more.

Brandon Ballou: Then you know that now they're invested instead of just going do this because I told you to that they'll never see the value.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: And do you ever tie it back like, Hey guys, great. All of you clocked in a hundred percent of the time this week, and as a result we did 5% more because I found X issue. Or do you not really.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: You just communicated initially.

Brandon Ballou: Nope. I always, I love giving out high fives and letting the team know we're doing a good job. So I, I have no problem telling 'em, you know, when we mess something up. So I gotta make sure I do a good job and I give 'em high fives when we do stuff. That's good. And then fortunately, been giving out a lot more high fives than saying, Hey, we missed this or missed that.

Brandon Ballou: And I think it's because of stuff like that.

Jimmy Lea: That's solid. That's solid. Brandon, congratulations, man. That's very cool. And if you guys, if those who are listening, if you have some questions, go ahead and type them into the comments button, the comment field so we can ask, answer your questions.

Jimmy Lea: Monique I'm circling around here for you and a question about, I heard that shop has some new technology that it's releasing. Now that it's available, is it available now or is this to be determined soon?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah, so we just released financing, consumer financing with 360 payments. So if you're a customer or not a customer, but wanna find out more, it is brand new.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Hot off the press is, we beta tested it for a while. Were you, have you signed up Brenda for consumer financing? Are you a 360 customer?

Brandon Ballou: Yes, we're a 360 customer. I have the email. I've just been running around, so I haven't filled it out yet.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, it's great because a lot of the initial feedback that we've heard really kind of actually doesn't talk about the things and highlight the things that I thought initially it would, which is the kicking up the a RO number.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: It's more about not having to have the awkward conversation when you share off that repair order. So it's not as awkward for the shop 'cause they've had it a few times, but it's more awkward for the person to. That does not have the funds to pay for their repair order. So instead of having to go up to the service advisor and have that awkward conversation, they've been just getting a lot more people who initially you know, click on the financing option without anybody having to bring it up, which I didn't even think about.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: And that's great. So obviously you're gonna kick up the AR a RO, but then you really make it a lot. More convenient for the customer, the car owner to, to confidently click on the financing option and be able to choose who they wanna get financed through. So I love that. But yes, it's available. There is information that if anyone needs it, you can put your information in the chat here and I will happily reach out.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: But that is very exciting for us. Awesome.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, that's very cool. Yes. That's very cool. John is asking a question when you're using the digital inspections, are you estimating every single item on there, Brandon? Are you making a priority list or something that a customer knows? What is most important that then something else to do?

Jimmy Lea: Just seems like someone taking care of massive oil leak is going to be most important rather than the shocks. If someone's needing to get the most they can on a budget, but there's no way of showing that. It's won't seem as important, and I think a part of that comes with the conversation you have, Brandon.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah, so the following, the 300% rule is something that should go a hundred percent across the industry, and that's, you know, everything on that health report needs to be inspected, a picture taken, annotated. 'cause a customer shouldn't be making a decision on their car without knowing everything. Going on with it.

Brandon Ballou: So everything needs to be inspected, everything needs to be estimated, and everything needs to be presented to the customer so they know exactly how many dollars they need to fix everything on their car, whether it's due today or due a year from now. We even write up stuff that's perfectly fine, but it's coming.

Brandon Ballou: Breaks that are at four millimeters they're gonna need to be done, you know, in the next six months we're gonna write that estimate so the customer knows what they might have to spend coming up in the future, and then they're prepared. As far as priority, yes. Anything you take, you can annotate with a picture, whether it's red for urgent yellow, you can put off green for, you know, it's okay right now, but you'll need at some point, and it just, it helps build that with the customer. Now, every shop's different. The way I use the colors it's red is it's just, it's, it needs replacement today. It's not doing what it's supposed to. The component isn't functioning as designed. Now, whether that's a minor oil leak or a ball joint, that's gonna fall out, they're both red.

Brandon Ballou: Yellow is something that's currently performing its job, but it's near the end of its useful life. You know, breaks that are at four millimeters and then things that are green are good. Now, then you can take those estimates in the health report and put 'em in an order of priority. So even though you know, the ball joint that's fallen out is way more urgent than the minor oil leak, and they're both red, you can put that at the top and that's the first thing they go through.

Brandon Ballou: And then the priority is top to bottom. That's how we do it. I know that's how a lot of shops you shop for. I believe that's how it was designed to be used, but you can customize it to whatever fits your shop.

Brandon Ballou: Yeah.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: There are a lot going, sorry. Sorry about that Jimmy. Go ahead.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I like prioritizing it so that the customers know this is, you have to do this today, this you can do tomorrow or next month.

Jimmy Lea: And this is definitely sometime in the very near future.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah, I was just gonna say, a lot of people in who use shop wear. Use it a little bit differently. So as Brandon mentioned, there's a way that was designed, but someone had asked about the different ways to separate or categorize. I have a shop that uses it to break down.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Maintenance items versus, you know, cosmetic versus repair, et cetera. So there's a lot of different ways to do things, but the way it was designed gives obviously the best result on then being able to track all of the different metrics that not only Brandon talked about, but there are some really.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Interesting data points that we can track because we do things a certain way, like duration of service, so how long it takes you to get cycle vehicles through your shop as a whole. So some of this information comes from then using it the way it was designed, as Brenda mentioned earlier. So I hope that answered your question.

Jimmy Lea: It, it did. It does. And a couple of features you've got coming out here right now, Monique, is online scheduling. That's correct. And CRM with shop where?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: That's correct. So we pushed out online scheduling first we have a bunch of shops using it already. Great feedback. And we recently pushed out our own internal CRM.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So obviously as Brandon mentioned earlier, we have great partners who you can link up to and integrate with. But we also internally have a CRM that we've been working on and recently released.

Jimmy Lea: Beautiful. Beautiful. Love that. Congratulations. That's awesome. Technology keeps moving forward. Keeps moving forward.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: Yeah. I mean, you gotta innovate. You gotta provide more than what we provided in the past. Just like the shops here, you're providing more to your customers as well, and so we're trying to just do the same. I

Jimmy Lea: love it. I love it. So, Monique, you have a magic wand. What's one thing you want to change in the industry?

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: I would love to see more grace from one another. I feel like. A lot of times if shops don't do things the way that other shops do it, a lot of you put each other down because you're not doing it the way that everyone else is doing it. I think we can all just learn from each other, but you can still do things uniquely because we're all very unique and still arrive at the end point.

Monique Mondragon-Tafoya: So that I would love to see a lot more. That would be my magic wand item.

Jimmy Lea: Grace. I love that. That's very cool. Very cool. Pass the baton over to Brandon. Brandon, you've got the magic wand. What is one thing that you would like to change in the industry?

Brandon Ballou: Change, like any advisor, tech, pretty much everyone in the industry that's customer facing, or even technicians too, I guess, to having like an everybody needs to win type mentality when estimating the car, riding it up, you know, whatever it is.

Brandon Ballou: 'cause too many people focus, oh, that's too expensive. And then they cut the price and then it hurts their pay or the owner or you know, the technicians trying to get stuff out. Crank out works and just so they can get it done and maybe spare quality in some instances versus there's a sweet spot that we can, you know, if everybody operated at, you know, the shop can be profitable, the employees can be taken care of, and the customer can still get a good product.

Brandon Ballou: And I think thinking about trying to appease everyone involved when you're writing estimates, making management decisions or anything, I think that'd be a huge step in the right direction. Just getting everybody thinking, how can I make everyone succeeded?

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Thinking more of the conceptual, the team.

Jimmy Lea: How can we work as a team to make a team win?

Brandon Ballou: Yeah. 'cause there's so many people, especially in our industry that are either, you know, it's a race to the bottom to see who can, you know, do the job the cheapest and it's, you know, killing their employees 'cause they're underpaid or killing the level of service to the customer and they're leaving and having to come back or having another issues or just, if you can find that happy medium, whatever it is for your shop.

Brandon Ballou: To where your customers are happy, your employees are happy, and then you have a reason to be in business and you're not a, you know, the business doesn't own you, then yeah I think we'd see a huge turn in our industry.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I agree. I agree. I love that. That would be phenomenal, Brandon. I hope that the industry can do that and embrace it.

Jimmy Lea: And to you. Thank you very much for joining me for this conversation today. Thank you, Brandon. And to you. Monique, thank you for joining for this conversation. You guys are, thank you for having me. You guys are awesome. And to everybody still with us, right after we're done here, pull out your smartphones.

Jimmy Lea: There is going to be a QR code. If you're looking for a review of your business, where are you at? Where do you stand? How can you improve? Scan this QR code. Set up a time with one of my team members that we can sit down and look at your shop, look at your business, give you a piece of advice or two, not giving you the full pie because.

Jimmy Lea: That's why we have our coaches and our coaches definitely step in to help you as a shop owner or as an advisor to have the best experience with your clients and customers. You're gonna work on a lot of things from production, productivity, efficiency, in implementing technology, going from implementing the 300% rule, making sure everything is, has a digital inspection.

Jimmy Lea: There's so much that can be done. But get ready with your smartphone. Scan this QR code, meet up with one of my team members so we can talk about your shop and your business. Take it to the next level. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. We're here to provide a better business, a better life.

Jimmy Lea: And a better industry. That's what we're working for. Look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you.