Miami-based JSB Autoworks’ Chris Prieto shares how a family shop evolved from basic maintenance into a three-division operation handling European/exotics, collision, and full restorations. Starting at age 12 stripping auction cars, Chris grew into leadership, discovering his passion for people, process, and the administrative side. He helped scale a prior “hole in the wall” shop from 1 bay to 8, then returned to modernize JSB with structure, tech, and DVIs. A forced relocation shrank their footprint but improved efficiency and clarity. Today he manages ~10 floor employees across 10 lifts, emphasizing attitude-first hiring, productivity tracking, and clear communication. He credits Shop-Ware and rigorous documentation for transparency and trust. Chris’s “magic wand” wish: more passionate technicians who diagnose root causes, preserving the dying art of true mechanical understanding, especially on classics.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Chris Prieto, Shop Manager of JSB Autoworks

Show Highlights:

[00:00:58] - Family roots: a Ferrari racing/restoration past and a pivot from service-only to high-line European, collision, and full restorations.

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Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight. Welcome to the Leading Edge podcast. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Joining me today is Chris Pedo from JSB Autoworks out of Miami, Florida. Chris, how the heck are you, brother?

Chris Prieto: I'm doing fantastic. I'm doing fantastic as always.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, always. I love to hear that brother. That's awesome. Hey Miami is getting a little bit of rain right now. Hey.

Chris Prieto: Yes, sir. We're getting we got a little storm over us right now. It's been raining the last couple days, but it's been good. It's a normal here. It'll be nice and bright, sunny in the morning, and then a full blown hurricane in the afternoon.

Chris Prieto: It just, it's just like that here.

Jimmy Lea: Right. Florida. Don't, you don't like the weather. Wait five minutes. We'll give you something new.

Chris Prieto: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, definitely don't get tired of it, that's for sure. That's for sure.

Jimmy Lea: Well, that's awesome. Well, Chris, gimme a little background of you and JSB and, you know, how did you get into the industry?

Chris Prieto: So, JSB Autoworks is a family owned business that's owned by my father and my mother. Okay. They started back, my father goes way back, you know, into the sixties and the seventies. He used to work for Ferrari Racing team restoring vintage Ferrari back in the day. My mother was in dentistry, complete different industry but they, you know, crossed paths and, you know, my dad was so passionate about cars.

Chris Prieto: He used to have a dealership as well and used to buy and sell cars. And then the crash of oh four happened, and, you know, things got turned upside down, so he had to kind of. Figure out what he wanted to do next. And you know, when my mom and him got together, they got into the service side. So they started with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and as they grew, you know, the demand grew for other things.

Chris Prieto: They got into. From where they started was just service, you know, regular, just maintenance, you know, air filters, brakes, tires, you know, just regular light stuff. Now we have scaled so far that we not only specialize in Mercedes-Benz, BMW, we also specialize in Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche, McLaren, Lamborghini, Ferrari.

Chris Prieto: And you know, we do all regular service repair, maintenance. Full transmission jobs, engine rebuilds in that department. And the reason I say that department is because we do that, we also have our collision side, that we do collision work for regular, everyday like insurances for customers that just have, you know, minor fender benders all the way to having to pull a complete car.

Chris Prieto: And then we have that department and then we have our restoration department. So we do restore cars here. We do full-blown restorations. Custom rest ides. You know, anything vintage pretty much. So we do, we have a lot of different aspects of our business. Right now. I started when I was 12 years old.

Chris Prieto: Right. I remember. Yeah. I remember my dad used to buy a lot of cars from the auction. A lot of Mercedes that were crashed for parts 'cause they were hard to come by at that time. So I remember at 12 years old, for one of my birthdays, he bought me a toolbox, like a 112 piece set or whatever. Yes.

Chris Prieto: And on the weekends all I did was take apart all these cars from the auction and I just started taking apart cars and taking apart cars, and that's how I got into it. I was always, at a young age, I was very. I had an engineer's mind. Like, I didn't like the fact of what was working. I liked how it worked.

Chris Prieto: I wanted to know how it worked. I remember when I got toys and to this day, my brother would even tell me, I would get all these toys for Christmas, and I would use 'em once, and then I would take 'em all apart, you know, because I didn't love figuring out how things worked. And as you know, time got on. I love cars and I got into cars.

Chris Prieto: You know, went to school for it. I'm a C certified. You know, I have all the certificates that you can pretty much think of. And now I manage the place. My parents are semi-retired, so they're doing their own thing. And I basically run the shop with the rest of my family that's with us now.

Jimmy Lea: Dude.

Jimmy Lea: It was totally in your blood. Yeah. Your, you have taken apart your toys as a little kid, and then at 12 years old it pops and saying, Hey, you know, just take all these parts out. So did you just have a, like a bin of starters? A bin of alternators?

Chris Prieto: Everything. I mean, I had starters, steering wheel control modules, dashes I mean I took out whole electrical wire harnesses from cars 'cause they would keep all the connectors and stuff like that.

Chris Prieto: Sure. Just in case they burn up or something. So I was, I mean, gutting cars completely, like, completely gutting them.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. How quickly could you disassemble a car and have it in the bins? It,

Chris Prieto: it, it depends on the car nowadays, you know, 'cause every car is different. Some cars have more electronics than others, so it varies.

Chris Prieto: You know, if you give me a Mercedes, an old four Mercedes, that, that's what I was working on back in the day. Yeah. I'm pretty sure I have it all taken apart in pretty much a day.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh, that's so fast.

Chris Prieto: That's amazing.

Jimmy Lea: That is so cool. I put

Chris Prieto: it back together. That's a different, that's a different story, but taking it all apart.

Chris Prieto: I mean, you know, the interior of a car completely now taking out engine transmission, all this other stuff. I mean, yeah, you're gonna add a couple more days, but I mean if, as far as just gutting everything outta there. Yeah. I could take a data to gut everything outta there.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's, that is very cool.

Jimmy Lea: That is very cool. And so. You, I mean, you started at 12. You weren't pushing a broom, you were wrenching on these cars, pulling them apart, putting 'em back together. Pops was doing. So you've got the maintenance side, the service side, but you've also got autobody and a rest rod, are you doing import restaurant or is this Yeah.

Chris Prieto: All. So right now we do a little bit of everything from domestic vehicles to English cars. A couple cars that I could just name off the top of my head. We have a 19 98 Diablo vt that's a full restoration all the way up to like a 1972 Jaguar e type a series three. That's a full restoration as well.

Chris Prieto: 1988 C four Corvette as a full resto mod. 'cause it's not just a restoration. We restored it completely, but that car has. 20 15 0 1 engine that has, that's supercharged from factory swapped in there with a TR 60 60 transmission. So it's all manual swapped. So we do things from one extreme to another, you know, so, oh my gosh.

Jimmy Lea: So on, on this Corvette, are you having to put in a new engine or you gonna keep the,

Chris Prieto: no. So yeah, so the original engine's already gone, so it's out of it. It has, like I said, a 2015 Z oh one Camaro engine in it already with a TR 60 60 that we built. So the engine is gonna produce about a thousand horsepower to the wheels after we're all set and done.

Chris Prieto: So. But yeah that's the kind of extreme stuff that we do. We kind of bounce all over the place.

Jimmy Lea: Oh man, you are so dangerous. That's awesome. I absolutely love it. Chris, this is phenomenal. So you're in. You're taking over from mom and pops. At what point did you step in as manager, step away from wrenching, step in as manager and then mom and dad took a side seat?

Jimmy Lea: Oh, there's a whole conversation about mom and dentistry as well, but tell me about you stepping. So,

Chris Prieto: yeah, so me, I kind of went through a couple different phases, right? So after I graduated high school, I went to go to school for Autotech to become an auto technician. Which I went through school there.

Chris Prieto: I quickly realized in the industry as I was going through school that it, I love to work on cars. I love to wrench on cars, but it wasn't necessarily my passion in the industry, right? So while I was going to school, I had the opportunity to work at at a dealership. Mercedes-Benz of North Orlando is where I used to work.

Chris Prieto: And there I worked in more the administration side of it. I was, I started out as a BDC agent. So I had a lot of experience though with Mercedes 'cause of, you know, working with my father and stuff like that. So it kind of helped me. It was to my advantage 'cause I knew a lot of the information.

Chris Prieto: So there I was able to get very close with the service manager there. And I was able to see the service side, the administration side, and that's the side that I really fell in love with. I fell in love with talking to people. I'm a very social person. I love talking to people. I love talking to people about cars, what we can do, you know, so that part stuck out more to me than anything.

Chris Prieto: I still love wrenching on cars. I still rent on cars to this day, but that's not really what kind of fills my cup at the end of the day. And so from there I got that experience. I continued with school, I finished school and everything. Got everything done. And then when I came back, I didn't immediately come back to work with my parents because I wanted to come and get some type of outside experience.

Chris Prieto: You know, I wanted to work somewhere else, just get a feel for, you know, the independent side somewhere else. So I started with a num, another company, local to us. And I remember we started, and it was a hole in the wall, you know, it was very small. And he's been, he was been around probably about five or six years.

Chris Prieto: So from there, once I started, I was very young. I was hungry, you know, I really wanted to like grow and just learn as much as I can. You know, just try to be successful in anything that I did. Yeah, so the shop went from a one bay three lift shop and within the year I helped him and I pushed him to get a bigger shop and he moved from there to a eight bay eight lift shop with a rack the alignment rack and everything.

Chris Prieto: And you know, we pretty much almost doubled in revenue right away, you know, so, and then, so we went from a hole in the wall to this full production shop. And that was really mostly domestic cars and nothing European, just, you know, Honda, you know, domestic and Japanese cars, pretty much just the normal Toyotas, Hondas, you know, things like that.

Chris Prieto: Yeah. Nothing exotic or anything like that. So, and then, so I took that experience. I worked with him for several years and he was also kind of a mentor to me because he was also young and, you know, he had been going through the process of growing his business, you know, from scratch, which is, you know, great.

Chris Prieto: And so he passed on a lot of information and, you know, we really learned a lot, I think, from each other. And, you know, I was helping him able to help him grow. It got to a point where, you know, we just parted ways 'cause I wanted to do something else. I wanted to, you know, move on with my career and I feel like he was at a good point.

Chris Prieto: So we just, you know, we just parted ways. But it definitely helped me a lot.

Jimmy Lea: Oh man, I got questions for you too. 'cause running a business of one bay with three lifts is completely different to running eight bays. Eight lifts.

Chris Prieto: Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Give it, give me the makeup and the background here and then I want to dive into some questions.

Jimmy Lea: When you had one Bay three lift, how many technicians when you had eight bay, eight lifts, how many technicians?

Chris Prieto: So when we, when he was at one bay, you know, one bay shop, we had two, I would say B level techs and one kind of like lube tech. Okay. Okay. That's and it was funny when we decided to move, at that point, when I first started with them, we had two techs in the loop tech.

Chris Prieto: When we moved, we ended up losing almost both techs and then we only had the Lu Tech. So when we moved, when we were transitioning, we had no techs, you know, shut up. It was basically me and him, and then the Lu Tech. Okay. Why'd they leave? So the technician that was still there, he was a very good technician.

Chris Prieto: Very good. However, yes. Yeah. But however, he didn't like the. How can I say the different types of cars? He was more dealer oriented. He liked having the same cars all the time because at a dealer, you know, if you work for Toyota, that's all you're gonna see is Toyotas. Yeah. And so when you work at an independent shop, especially if it's just domestic Japanese, you're gonna work on everything.

Jimmy Lea: All makes all

Chris Prieto: models. Guess what? Yeah, exactly. And he didn't like that. He liked to stay. What? What he knows, which is understandable. So he decided at that point, he thought it was the, you know, the smartest thing for him. He's like, let me get outta here before things go crazy, you know? And he just, he worked at a dealership, you know, and he started working at a dealership and he's probably there to this day.

Jimmy Lea: I was gonna ask if he came back to you. Okay. What about the other guy?

Chris Prieto: So the Loop Tech stayed with us for a while. You know, that was it. But at that time we were transitioning through technicians, you know, we had to, you know, gain one, lost one, gain one, lost one. During that time, even at the single bay, you know.

Chris Prieto: And then once we got to where we moved, we were able to kind of stabilize and we were able to hire. At one point we had, I think three techs. And one Loop Tech at the eight Bay shop as well. With eight

Jimmy Lea: Bays, you only had three tech. Yeah. And that's the most you had

Chris Prieto: was three at that time? I'm sure now, maybe he has more, but I think because of flow, I don't think that realistically we didn't need that much more.

Chris Prieto: I mean, we were pretty busy as it was, and. You know, obviously you can't control what kind of jobs that you get, but you know, some jobs you had, you know, head gaskets to do. Other times you had evaporators that you had to do. Those are longer jobs, but then you had the quick oil changes, tires, brakes, things like that.

Chris Prieto: So, you know, mostly we just had to manage the flow to make it work.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So what challenges did you face? 'cause you're the service advisor up front going from one bay, three techs to eight bays. Eight techs or eight lifts.

Chris Prieto: Yeah, it was, I think the hardest part was just trying to keep the flow and the momentum always going.

Chris Prieto: So a service advisor, my job is to, you know, produce work, sell work, you know, and so my job was just to try to keep the base as full as possible. Yeah. You know, I'd rather have a bay that's full than bays that are empty. So totally agree. My whole thing was is now that we're transitioning into this big shop, how are we gonna keep this shop busy all the time?

Chris Prieto: How are we gonna keep all these things occupied? So I think that was the biggest challenge.

Jimmy Lea: So how long did you stay there with with this gentleman all makes all models before you transitioned over to working with Mom and Pop?

Chris Prieto: So I think I worked with him probably for, I think two years or two and a half years, give or take.

Chris Prieto: I think it was right after it was right after COVID hit. Once COVID hit I was with him for probably like another six months after COVID, and then once everything got, you know, everything went crazy after COVID hit. But you know, once everything kind of normalized and everybody kind of got into a routine, and then that's when we kind of parted ways, which is probably about like six, seven months after or something like that.

Jimmy Lea: All right, so Chris, what you need to understand is that Florida mellowed out very quickly. Six months, the rest of the world was still freaking out. Yeah. And they would not leave their houses. They would not, I mean there was a lot of curbside it for a lot of people. This was like not, so just two weeks and two months.

Jimmy Lea: This was two years that they were down. So. Alright. So six months. That's solid. I got you. You move in with mom and pop. So, when you start with mom and dad, this is probably late 2020, correct? And you're still with mom and Pop, you're still Yes. Right? Yes. How long did mom and dad stick around before they're like, oh, Chris, you totally got this.

Chris Prieto: I think that after the second or third year is when they kind of started. Coming back and just saying, all right he's got it. You know, because it, it was a, it was, they were still going through with COVID and stuff like that, so it was a kind of a weird time. They were, it was a huge shop. I mean, I jumped from one big shop to another big shop.

Chris Prieto: Yeah. So how

Jimmy Lea: big is the shop with mom and dad? What does JJSB look like today?

Chris Prieto: Well, JSB today is a little bit smaller 'cause in the last year we did have to move. So we were at our old location for about 10 years. We had to move from that location just 'cause the seller or the property owner had to sell.

Chris Prieto: And then somebody from New York came and offered maybe like, I think it was like $2 million over what the value was of the building. The building needed to work and everything else. So we were like, Hey, let's, we're not even gonna even compete with that. That was another thing in Florida, there was a lot of people from New York, California that had a bunch of money.

Chris Prieto: They came and just started buying a bunch of real estate. So that kind of threw us for a loop. So we had to, we were at a 22,000 square foot facility before, right now? Yeah. Right now we're probably about, I would say about 8,000, 9,000 square feet. Okay. Which is smaller. But it was actually good for us because my parents had a lot of stuff that they accumulated over the years.

Chris Prieto: So it was the urge. Yeah. So we made a, we made good from a bad situation. The move helped us. It helped me because I was able to restructure the company through the process of the move. Love it to try to get us more efficiency. Not have so much baggage coming with us, you know, and try to just, you know, focus on the things that are gonna really help us grow.

Chris Prieto: I love that. So with that, now we're actually pretty comfortable where we're at. We don't have so many things just hanging around, collecting dust, you know? And it's a lot more productive. It's a lot more productivity now.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So how many lifts are bays and lifts are you at now? Are you like So

Chris Prieto: yeah, so we have a pretty big warehouse.

Chris Prieto: It only has one entrance. So we only have one bay, but we have about 10 lifts inside of there. Oh wow. 10 lifts and lifts

Jimmy Lea: inside of 8,000 square feet. That's pretty tight. Yes.

Chris Prieto: It's actually pretty spacious. We still have plenty of plenty of space to go. It okay. A lot for us. And we make it work.

Chris Prieto: I mean, it's small for us because we're actually we're continuing to grow our company, so eventually we're gonna have to, you know, get something else. But this was kind of more for us to, you know, move, get somewhere, stabilize. Yeah. And then figure out where our forever home essentially is gonna be.

Chris Prieto: So. Okay, so

Jimmy Lea: you, you have 10 bay 10 lifts inside of the shop now. 10 lifts. How many technicians, how many service advisors, what's that makeup.

Chris Prieto: So I'm the, I would say I have, I'm the main service advisor. I'm the service manager and service advisor. So I deal with all the customers that come through here, whether it's restorations, whether it's just regular routine maintenance and collision as well.

Chris Prieto: I just have, you know, other employees that deal with the collision side and that help, you know, with, you know, like the day-to-day stuff when it comes to the service. As far as technician is concerned, I have 1, 2, 3, 4. Five, six technicians working for me right now in the mechanical side, I have three technicians working on the collision side, and then I have one just like lube tech, kind of, you know, shop helper, you know, so about 10 employees on the floor at once.

Jimmy Lea: That's true. That's true. All right, so, so you have six techs. Three techs on the collision side. So the, does the collision site also operate inside of these 10 bays, these 10 lifts, or are they section

Chris Prieto: Oh, sectional. Yeah. It's kind of sectioned off from the rest of the building. So they have their own space.

Jimmy Lea: Nice nice. Alright. And for you as a owner as the service manager and the service advisor, main service advisor, what challenges does that give you on the day-to-day working with all these people?

Chris Prieto: I wouldn't say necessarily it's the people. I mean it's, it definitely the people is the most important thing, right?

Chris Prieto: Yes. Not even just about what, you know, it's your attitude more than anything. When I hire people, I just actually hired in this last two weeks, another two people. I tell people it's not about what, you know, it's the attitude. 'cause just like, for example, we were talking about the gentleman that didn't wanna work with us at our other shop because it wasn't his day to day.

Chris Prieto: We do things here that people have probably never seen or have laid their eyes on, you know? And so it, and you know, some of my guys, they might, may be scared of they'll be scared of some of these cars that we're doing. Yeah. And it's like, it's, my father always told me, if a man built it, a man can fix it.

Chris Prieto: Right? But you gotta do your homework, you gotta learn, you know, in this industry, especially ours, if you think that you know it all, you failed. Oh yeah. 'cause there's something new to learn every day. You know? I think I, I'm a testament to that, you know, I'm very young. I'm 27 years old, okay. And I've been doing this since I was young.

Chris Prieto: And I know I've learned a lot 'cause I've been exposed to so many things. But even to this day, I could tell you that there's cars that come through here that I'm like, all right, I'm gonna have to go home and do some homework. And that's the funnest part, is seeing the history behind the cars. Some of these cars, I'll never see 'em again.

Chris Prieto: I'll have the privilege of touching them, restoring them, putting my hands on 'em, you know, and that could be the only car that I've ever, that I can ever see of that particular model ever again. You know, so we've seen all kinds of different cars here. So it's really, it's really just an attitude thing more than anything.

Chris Prieto: It's controlling people's attitudes. Yeah. You know, but other than that, I mean, managing so many people, obviously it has its ups and downs, you know, everybody has their days, you know, so you kind of have to be a people person, you know? Just come in with an open mentality, you know, which I try to do. I try to be very positive, even through the bad stuff, you know?

Chris Prieto: 'cause. At the end of the day, negative really doesn't make you feel any better. So why be negative, you know?

Jimmy Lea: Oh I agree. I agree. So what's one thing you wished all shop owners would know, and maybe now, Chris, you can answer this a few different ways. Do you want to view it from a viewpoint of a shop owner, a service manager, a service advisor, a technician?

Jimmy Lea: What's something that in each of these different areas, what's something that they all need to know?

Chris Prieto: I think that one of the things that I learned not only in this business but in the business that I was participating in prior was that you really have to be very structured. Like structure within the business, how it operates, the in and outs.

Chris Prieto: I think that is the absolute most important thing when managing a business. Because if you don't have structure especially in this industry, things can fall through the cracks very quickly, you know? And I think that's the most important. I mean, you know, we talk about being profitable in these, in this industry, in this business.

Chris Prieto: And I deal with cars restorations that have. Thousands of parts, you know? And at the end, if I don't keep track of every single part that we buy, everything that slips through the crack is money out the door. You know? So there has to be proper systems in place, proper structure in place to make sure that, you know, you're taking care of the bottom line at the end of your day.

Chris Prieto: You know, regardless of anything. We do this 'cause we love it, it's our passion, you know, but we got families that we have to feed. You know, we have people that rely on us to produce and to make the money that we need to make to continue to operate. And, you know, working and seeing how other businesses have worked over the years that I was able to just, you know, kind of go through.

Chris Prieto: Some people, especially in the automotive industry, they, they might lack a lot of structure. A lot of people maybe are old school still writing things down, you know, doing paper invoices, you know, and a lot of that stuff is it's easy for things to fall through the crack and miss certain things, you know?

Chris Prieto: Yeah. And we're very, like, the technology is like. Like our number one thing, like we try to be, we try to move with technology because now before you know. You would do just, you know, inspections on target and you just tell people, Hey look, you got this problem, you know, and it's just word of mouth.

Chris Prieto: And you really have to trust the person to know, to be like, Hey, okay, what you're telling me is true and I believe you, so I'm gonna do the work with you. Now we do digital inspections, so we take pictures of everything, you know, so that way it's more transparency for the customers so they feel more comfortable.

Chris Prieto: It's just not a matter of me saying, Hey, you need to spend $5,000 on your car 'cause you got all this stuff going on. No, look, here's. Pictures of this is why this is urgent, this is why this is urgent. You know, and people like that. People like transparency, people like honesty, trust. I mean, that's the number one thing in our industry right now, you know?

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it so is Chris. You talk about a client seeing something that's worn, torn freight or bo broken. They can see that. They can see it's broken. They can see it's leaking. They become much more educated with that. And I love that you mentioned technology. What and dvs or shop management system or what's a technology that you think every shop needs to implement in their process, procedure in their shop?

Chris Prieto: I think any shop that implements DVS is gonna be automatically, is gonna change the way that they do business. Not only is gonna give them more approval rating, you know, because their customers are gonna be more inclined to spend the money with them. But it's just, again, it gives you what people look for is trust.

Chris Prieto: I mean, when they look at any mechanic shop, the number one thing that people look for is trust. And so there's only so many things that we can do to gain people's trust. Right. The number one thing people are gonna go when they look up a building or a business is like Google. Hey, look, let me check out their reviews.

Chris Prieto: Let me see what other people are talking about. And then when you go in person, if you know everything, checks out your first impression means everything you know. And if the hardest part is getting the person through the door, that is the absolute hardest part. Yeah. Once they're here, if you have everything properly structured and you have a good system in place, then the work that you do should speak for itself.

Chris Prieto: You know, but that definitely, I think that's something that a lot of shops are still doing. They're probably still all manual. They're still probably all writing things down. You know, and that there's just things that fall through the crack. You know, not everyone, everything. It's so true, Chris.

Chris Prieto: It's so true. What are you using for your DVI. So we have a system called Shop Wear. So shop ware it's our management system for all of the cars that are at the shop. And in that system, our technicians can go make notes post pictures of parts as they get 'em. That's another thing that we do. Customers like to see all the new parts.

Chris Prieto: So we take pictures of all the new parts, side by side to the old parts. On these restoration jobs that we do, we take pictures throughout all the process of the car, you know, so that way the customer kind of has a track of everything that was done and he can show it the day. If he maybe wants to sell the car, Hey look, this is it.

Chris Prieto: Throughout its whole process. So we document everything from beginning to end, especially like on a bigger project, if it's something smaller, like lighter maintenance, you know, still water pumps and stuff like that. We still take pictures of everything that we can 'cause we wanna be as parent as possible with people.

Jimmy Lea: A hundred percent. And Chris, to your point, if ever a technician makes a recommendation, it marks it red. No matter what it is, if they include a picture, it's sold. It's sold every time it is sold. Oh, okay. So to shop wear, can you tell that it was developed by somebody who owned a shop?

Chris Prieto: Well, when we first started with them, it was very basic.

Chris Prieto: Yeah. The was very basic. It was very new. The good thing about shop wear is that they listen to their consumers. Yeah. So if you have a recommendation, Hey look, we can do, we can be a little bit more efficient if we do this, and this. And you can submit a ticket and you can go back and forth with your rep and they'll actually make changes.

Chris Prieto: Based off of the things that you're telling them, which is great because they value your feedback. It's not like, Hey, a system that's gonna stay the same forever and you just gotta work with what it has. No, if you wanna feature added specifically, you could tell 'em, Hey, look, can, is there a possibility that we can add this?

Chris Prieto: And they'll listen. If they have enough people that commented about it, they'll implement it and they're constantly updating their site, you know? Yep. And the good thing is that a good and bad thing? Some people think it's a bad thing, but I think it's a good thing is that it's also web-based. So yeah, I can be at home on vacation and I can still check up on the shop, see what's going on, see what they're doing.

Chris Prieto: It tracks technician productivity so that my technicians clock in and out of their jobs as they're doing them so I can track productivity, make sure everybody's doing everything correctly. So that's also a perk, is that I can also just make changes anywhere I want. I don't have to be at the shop.

Chris Prieto: Which most of the time I'm not. I mean, I'm at the shop all the time during the day, but I'm constantly in and out dealing with customers. A lot of my work comes when I get home, you know, when I'm relaxing, I go in, I order parts, I get everything going for the next day. Try to be as proactive as possible, you know?

Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. So, I, and I love that you're on shop wear. It is a phenomenal tool. They're one of our certified partners, vendor partners with the institute. They're phenomenal. They've been around a long time. We love working with Monique and the whole shop wear team. They're really good team.

Jimmy Lea: So now that you've got six technicians how many service advisors do you have?

Chris Prieto: So it's just, right now really, I'm the only service advisor that's here. So I'm the one that deals with.

Jimmy Lea: So you're running all the work for all six dudes. Yep. Shoot, man, that's a lot. That's wild. So what are the challenges that you see on the day-to-day running six techs that you can help somebody else maybe navigate that, that challenge?

Jimmy Lea: They think it's a mountain, but it's a mole hill because you already solved it.

Chris Prieto: I think that for one, you have to be very, mentally capable of handling multiple different attitudes, personalities. I think it starts really with the person themselves, you know? Yeah. A lot of people can be very emotional and be reactive when things happen because I can say sometimes here things are stressful.

Chris Prieto: We got timeline deadlines to finish things we want cars to get done, we need to make our numbers so things can get heated. You know, so you just need to have someone that's. A clear mind that like we say here, somebody that's Switzerland, that really is just here to listen, not to react, just to listen and try to figure out solutions, you know?

Chris Prieto: And that's my thing. I don't, I'm not here to create problems. I'm here to create solutions, you know, so you come to me with a problem, I will come to you and figure out a solution. And I think that just a lot of people think, oh, six technicians, it can be overwhelming. It's not that overwhelming as long as you manage and structure yourself properly, you know, like I said, since with shop wear, I have everything on my board, so I know the things that have to come in and out in the day to day, and I know what needs to get done, what's more priority, what's not.

Chris Prieto: So I know how I can move around my technicians to keep them producing hours for their paycheck at the end of the week to make sure that they're productive, they're not standing around, and that's gonna help me at the end of the day as well with my numbers and making sure things get going. But I think definitely it's not so much the technician side.

Chris Prieto: I think personally, the service advisor themselves, it's not just about how you can sell work. It's about. How you can truly manage other people. That's, and that's a very hard part. Selling work for me, I think is the easy part. It's very easy to, once you get a hang of it, you just really be, need to be a people's person, you know?

Chris Prieto: Yeah. But definitely handling people is a lot harder than I think selling. There's a big difference's, a big difference. But yeah, I think that if I could say anything to help somebody in this situation, I just would say just be very patient. Be very wise. Don't be reactive. Just listen. And you're again, just trying to come up with solutions.

Chris Prieto: You're not trying to make another problem that doesn't exist. You're trying to create a solution for whatever's in front of you. I think that's the best advice.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, I love that. And Chris, this goes directly to your philosophy in hiring people, is you're hiring for the attitude. So this attitude, it plays right out into what your approach is because it's your attitude.

Jimmy Lea: You, you bring a certain skillset, but you also have to have the right attitude. And you're. You're approaching this with all the right attitude in my humble opinion. You've got the technology, you've got the work ethic. Have you ever sat down with mom and talked, had a talk about the automotive and dental industry and how similar they are.

Chris Prieto: It's funny because my wife is actually in the dental field as well, so she manages different practices and she deals with, you know, doctors and all that stuff all the time. And it's funny she has similar issues just managing people, making sure people do their job correctly, that doing it passionately.

Chris Prieto: And you know, obviously it's different as far as like the type of work that we're doing, but at the end of the day, you know, we're all, we're just. At the end of the day, it's all just producing services for people. We're doing services, you know, so, our part is the customer service side. You know, how are we gonna have customer retention?

Chris Prieto: How are we gonna make sure that everybody has a great experience, how we, you know, those things. But the service part of it, actually doing the service. I mean, that's up to the doctor and our technicians. We just gotta make sure that the quality is good. So again, very similar very similar as far as what we need to do.

Chris Prieto: We still deal with the same kind of people, you know, customers, you can have good customers, you can have bad ones. 'cause they all, they're some good, some bad, some that you love to death and some that are like, Hey man, that one was a, that was a ride. You know? So, but it's like that anywhere that you go, I think, you know, any industry.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true, man. We are in the people business. We just happen to work on cars. Your wife is in the dental business. They just happen to work on teeth or people business, right? I mean they're in the people business. They just work on teeth. We're in the people business. We work on cars.

Jimmy Lea: There's others that are in the people business. They work on air conditioners. They're in the people business. They build houses.

Jimmy Lea: You gotta connect with people and the more you connect with people, the better that situation's gonna be. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Oh, Chris, I love it. I love it, brother.

Jimmy Lea: Alright, last and final question. This is the unicorn question. You've got a magic wand. Chris. What if you were able to wave this wand and change anything in the industry? What would you change in the industry?

Chris Prieto: I think that I. I think I would want people, or at least technicians to. Really enjoy what they do and have a better understanding of why they do it.

Chris Prieto: Right. So, and the reason why I say that is, is because, you know, a lot of people just come to, you know, go to school and they get certified and they just go to change parts out at a dealer or whatever the case may be. I was never like that. I was always like, if something broke, why did it break? You know, what's the end all be all?

Chris Prieto: What's the cause of all this? Because anybody can go and change a part. Anybody can sit there and change a filter, you know, change an engine. But I'm the type of person that I would want to know what caused it to, why. Why did that happen? And knowing those things, it's more information, more knowledge for you.

Chris Prieto: And a lot of the things that I see with a lot of technicians, they're just kind of parts changers. They don't have the passion, the want to know really how these things work. You know, like they'll change the transmission. They can be the fastest one, but you ask them to take it apart, they'll say no.

Chris Prieto: I'm not gonna do it. And I think honestly, that's like the fun part for me. Like being able to take apart a transmission and take it all apart to the last final bolt and be able to put it back together. I think that is like far superior than to anybody that can just switch something out. You know?

Chris Prieto: I feel like that's something that we lack a lot in this industry, you know? Especially me that I work on a lot of old cars. I have so many people that are like, no, I don't wanna touch it. I'm not used to it. I don't care for it. I don't know how to work on it. I don't deal with it. And it's like, well, realistically I, I.

Chris Prieto: I can't really support that. I love this stuff. And so either you can learn about it or you could, you know, find somewhere else that's gonna deal with that, you know? But I need somebody that's, that wants to know why certain things are the way they are, why certain things are not working, what's the cause, how are we gonna fix it?

Chris Prieto: Because there's a lot of things now on these older cars that they don't even exist anymore. We've had to fabricate parts, we've had to source 'em through Europe and all kinds of stuff, and. You would never know. I've had technicians says, Hey, I need this part. And I take it apart and it's like, okay, it's like one little brass pin that might be broken and it's causing the whole thing to go bad.

Chris Prieto: It's like, okay, and you can make one of those little brass pins that's $5 and that's it. Look you fix the part all together. We don't have any of that anymore. We have parts changers. That's it. You know, we just have people that are not really looking into why or how these things work. They just wanna change parts and get outta here.

Chris Prieto: So. Yeah, I just think that we need, have really passionate technicians and that's really where, what's the industry has kind of gone down is just so we don't have really, we have a technician shortage. We don't have many people that wanna be technicians anymore, so. It's hard to come by, but that's the only thing I wish that if I can wave a magic wand, I would want more technicians.

Chris Prieto: I think that's something that a lot of automotive companies are dealing with now is finding good, reputable, talented, young blooded like, you know, mechanics. I think that's where we lack, you know, in our industry right now. You know? That's what

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true. So your magic wand would be all about.

Jimmy Lea: Helping people to understand why and doing their homework and having them dig in deeper, just like you did in your career. Dig in deeper and find out why. Find out what it is. Yeah.

Chris Prieto: Yeah, I would say so. You

Jimmy Lea: know,

Chris Prieto: it's hard. It, I get it. Some people don't really have the interest for it, but when you do some of the stuff that we do here, I mean, there's not, the information is not gonna be out there for very long.

Chris Prieto: Time keeps coming. The people that used to work on those stuff are no longer here, and that information goes down with them. So it's a it's hard. So we need people that are really gonna wanna learn about this old school stuff. You know, it's a dying, it's a dying art at the end of the day, you know? So that's what I would change.

Chris Prieto: I would try to find some people that are really hungry to learn about the old school, and not only just learn about the old school, but really learn. How things are, you know, work, really have an engineer's mind. Not just say, Hey, I just want to come in and just change parts all day. I don't know, you know, I think that just defeats the purpose of being a technician, you know?

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

Chris Prieto: That's what I would change.

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Chris, thank you so much. I appreciate you being here with me and having a great conversation talking about this industry that we love.

Chris Prieto: Yes, sir. Anytime.

Jimmy Lea: Brother, thank you very much and for everybody listening, thank you. Glad you were able to join us.

Jimmy Lea: We will talk to you again soon. Thank you. Take care.