From broom to Bentleys, Matt Kranz maps the climb from a cramped back-office closet to leading Long Meadow Garage, a three-bay shop attached to a gas station and c-store. He unpacks hard-won lessons from a chaotic first job, showing why turnover and shortcuts kill trust, and how a dirty white shirt at the counter builds credibility. Matt explains his pivot into European and luxury work, the tools and security credentials he chooses with purpose, and how shop-to-shop collaboration expands capability without bloating costs. He shares real KPIs, a lean team structure, and the discipline behind DVIs and the 300 percent rule. Training is a constant, with on-the-job diagnostics, lunch-and-learns, and curated content keeping techs and advisors sharp. With demand three weeks out, Matt prioritizes efficiency and quality over bay count, yet still sets a stretch target for what three bays can do. He closes with straight talk on the tech pipeline and his best advice to new owners: do not take it personally, learn, systemize, and keep leading.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Matt Kranz, COO of Longmeadow Garage

Show Highlights:

[00:00:21] - Matt laughs about recording from a tiny back office and traces his start in 2000 sweeping floors while his father worked the parts side of the industry.

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Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning friends. So excited to be here with you today. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Joining me today is Matt Krantz from Long Meadow Garage and it is a three Bay Garage at a gas station with a C store, and with Fuel. And Matt, you own all of this, correct?

Jimmy Lea: Correct. Yep. Oh my gosh, Matt, and you're joining me from those of you. You can't see this, but you can hear this. It looks like Matt is joining me from a janitor closet converted to an office. What are we looking at here, Matt?

Matt Kranz: It is, it's just a small office in the back. Originally we did all the paperwork by hand, so there wasn't a need for much.

Matt Kranz: And we never improved it. We're working on some improvements to maybe make this office open floor into the shop, so,

Jimmy Lea: oh, that, that is awesome. I think if you put your hands out, left to right, you could probably touch both walls.

Matt Kranz: It looks that small. I think I can actually, yeah,

Jimmy Lea: it's that small and front to back is probably just about the same.

Jimmy Lea: You could probably see about the same. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well that's awesome. So, your shop, you've got the three bays, but let's I wanna go back in time to when you started in the automotive industry. What did that look like for you? And then we'll come where you are today and then we'll go to where you're going in the future.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So where did you start?

Matt Kranz: I started in about 2000 and started working at the shop, sweeping the floors down the road. My father actually owned a muffler shop back then. It was a mining gee. So it was a good beginning. And I wound up he wound up selling that and moved on and he became basically a parts rep.

Matt Kranz: So he worked for different parts companies throughout the years and, I wound up continuing to work on like weekends because I was still in high school at that point, right. I was gonna just take a year off to save some money for college or technical school, and I wound up taking that year off, making some money and never went back to school.

Matt Kranz: Taught myself, and

Jimmy Lea: here we are, school of hard knocks. So you went straight into a shop.

Matt Kranz: I went into a terrible, terribly run shop. I stuck with it, but I saw, you know, what, some of the people, the high turnover rate and the dishonesty. I got to see all that, learn from it and learn from their mistakes.

Matt Kranz: And I, I took all the experiences with, you know, basically with for gold that they. Experiences you could not get. You could only be told about,

Jimmy Lea: yes. Told about, or you have to experience it and what you experienced is that everyone is a good example. Everyone's a good,

Matt Kranz: yeah. Yeah. A good example. Do even when you're doing things wrong, you're a great example

Jimmy Lea: or a bad example of what you shouldn't do or a good example of what you shouldn't do.

Jimmy Lea: That. That is awesome that you were able to do that. How long were you at the shop then? How long were you there? Breaking knuckles, cutting your teeth.

Matt Kranz: At that shop for about six, no, seven years, I think it was seven years. And as I started, they, you know, the people who owned it, you know, with the turnover.

Matt Kranz: I think we went through 20 managers in the first two years. And I was just sweeping the floor. I was still learning how to, you know, work on things and work on 'em on the side because a lot of the stuff they did was only brake suspension. An exhaust. And that didn't excite me. I wanted to get more into engine's performance.

Matt Kranz: I did a lot with racing. So like anybody, I got myself in trouble. But, you know, it I wound up finding the right ways to do it. So today I can show the guys, you know, some of my race cars and bring 'em out and say, look, let's go to the track and we're gonna, we're gonna go to speed limit to the track.

Jimmy Lea: B limit to the track, and then on the track, now it's time to race.

Matt Kranz: Now it's time to have fun. Go break something now. Just don't hurt yourself. Yeah. But the yeah, I mean all those experiences, you know, I eventually wound up managing that, that location. So we started out, I guess the first couple years that was a 200 to $250,000 in total revenue operation.

Matt Kranz: The last year I left, which would've been oh seven, was the total, was the complete year. That year we closed out at about six 90. So big improvement, and I was the manager for the previous four years. So, I feel like I was responsible for that.

Jimmy Lea: Congratulations. Yeah, you were responsible for that.

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. So how long were you at this shop then at turning a wrench and managing

Matt Kranz: About seven years total. Seven years

Jimmy Lea: total.

Matt Kranz: Oh, seven years total. And I was a working manager, so I was expected to be in the shop. You know, we'd run back and forth to the counter, talk to the customers. And I think that helped a lot.

Matt Kranz: 'cause they'd see it covered in grease and they'd be like, oh, this isn't just a salesman telling me what's wrong with my car.

Jimmy Lea: No, this is the guy working on my car, telling me what's going.

Matt Kranz: Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Psychology. I was able to, you know, pull up from that. I found the dirty white shirt sold stuff to those people better than a, you know, a clean shirt.

Matt Kranz: They were, they wanted to talk to the mechanic if you had a shirt, clean shirt.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my word. That's awesome. Congrats on that. So at what point did you look at where you were in your life and you look at these seven years and you're like, okay, no, I think I wanna start my own shop.

Matt Kranz: So actually I had the opportunity to come to this mobile gas station, which had been around since 1941.

Matt Kranz: It's on, it's, I'm the fourth generation of ownership to it. It's only two of them were within a family, and the others were, we're just partners that, that came through and worked and made it happen. I always had a, you know, app for the high-end cars for, you know, really nice stuff. And this, believe it or not, this shop is only about four miles up the road.

Matt Kranz: But what a difference in clientele and in what we work on. You know, now I've moved I've always been a master tech since I was able to get the certification and. Now I'm working on, you know, your top cars that are out there between, you know, Maseratis, you know, we get you know, Bentleys range Rovers, lots of them, BMWs, Mercedes.

Matt Kranz: And then we'll work on your Honda and Chevy too. Those are easy when you work on a lot of the European stuff. I, in this area, I can't believe how many people don't want to touch it 'cause it's like too mentally tolling. But. I've always needed that stimulation. I need it if I'm not challenged and it's easy.

Matt Kranz: It's not fun.

Jimmy Lea: Well, and you're working on the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris as well, right?

Matt Kranz: No Ferrari, occasional Lamborghini, but I have the factory sports

Jimmy Lea: luxury vehicles. Yep. Nice. And I, you know, I think that's probably a lot of the scare for a lot of people is that they are worried about trying to get all of this extra equipment, scanners, tools, everything that has to go along with working on that vehicle and they just can't do it.

Matt Kranz: It is a requirement. Yeah. I mean, there is a, any, anything that I don't have, it's 'cause I don't want it. It's I've made the decision that either it's not financially feasible or it's not a brand that I want to commit in full to.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. So are you what are the flags that you have chosen to not renew?

Matt Kranz: Mercedes Century, believe it or not I've left anything for that to be remotely programmed. And there's a route that I can still work on it and do anything that's needed. I do have a locksmith id with nastf that I can purchase all the security relevant parts. So that, I mean, that's important for anybody out there, but, there's certain things that we just haven't, we haven't wanted to get, you know, fully vested into that. But I always try to have a relationship with other shops that do so a lot of times I can help them with a, you know, a tool or a scanner procedure that they don't have. And I hope that they can help me too.

Matt Kranz: Which it works out. It's a good compli.

Jimmy Lea: And that's true. So are you locking arms with a lot of these competitors? We'll call 'em competitors in the industry, but they're really not competitors. They're your band of brothers that you get together and you help each other.

Jimmy Lea: Do you find yourself working a lot of these other shops?

Matt Kranz: Yeah the competitors I've been, you know, they're not competitors, like you said. They're really, these are people we can network with and work with because they do things that I don't and vice versa.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true.

Jimmy Lea: Oh man. It's just awesome that you can work together with these people. And so, you run the fuel, the C store and the bays. You've got three bays. How many techs do you have today working with you

Matt Kranz: today? I have two techs. The third one is my inspection guy, Nick. He's really good. But he doesn't have the full technical backing, so he needs some help with some of the technical stuff. But his primary job is inspections. He keeps himself busy over there. So, it, that, it's really a good compliment. I do also have a service writer, Marcus. He does all the, you know, ordering up parts, writing up everything.

Matt Kranz: So he,

Jimmy Lea: yeah,

Matt Kranz: it, everybody worked really well together. I have, I think, the best crew I've ever had here. And I was able to get myself out. That's awesome. The shop, that was one of my goals. So I could focus, you know, on the different things in the business, you know, making the customer's experience better and actually passing some of my knowledge down to these guys.

Matt Kranz: 'cause I, as, as young as I think I am, there's so much that I find that they've never seen. We actually just had a conversation this morning about minivans. We had to fix a door on a Toyota Sienna minivan. The cable broke and. I looked at Ben and I said, well, it's weird to have two doors on a van and Marcus is about my age and agreed.

Matt Kranz: And Ben said, I've never seen a van with one door. What are you talking about?

Jimmy Lea: Ah, that's awesome. Oh, that's hilarious. That's funny. Haven't seen a van with one door. Yeah, I grew up with the one door Dodge Caravans.

Matt Kranz: That's right. Lee Koka had those down. I mean he years, he perfected several body styles of those.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, he sure did. Oh my gosh. That's hilarious. That is hilarious. Yeah the the double doors is, in my mind it's new, but gosh, it's been around for 10, 15 years now that they've had double doors.

Jimmy Lea: I just haven't, it's not been on my radar, you know?

Matt Kranz: No it's so funny 'cause it, it came up and I was like, holy crap. Like, we're not that we're only a 10 year, 11, 12 year age difference. But what a difference generationally.

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. You know, it's, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Jimmy Lea: People are people and we all learn. So, to speak of people being people what is your, what do your numbers look like right now? Are you familiar with your kpi? Yeah, right.

Matt Kranz: I have a cheat sheet here, so I don't box them so anybody can check me. But our total revenue last year we did real well.

Matt Kranz: We did 1.6 million and that did include inspections. That's really three bays. It's more two bays. It was 1.5 and some change. Not counting the inspections. Yeah. So each of my techs billed out about 2000 hours. And my car counts about three, it's like three 90, or I'm sorry, 2 97, almost 300 per month.

Matt Kranz: And our RO is about four 20. Nice. So. So you're looking at about

Jimmy Lea: 300 cars per month? Is that what I heard? 300 cars? Yeah. 2, 9, 7. And then your average repair order's in the 4 54 24 20 range. Nice. Solid. And is that average repair orders, does that include your estate inspections?

Matt Kranz: It does not.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. What is your, what are you able to charge for your state inspections?

Matt Kranz: Those are $35. So that, that equates to, you know, usually a hundred to $120,000 a year. Yeah. In, in, in $35 inspections.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. That's a lot of vehicles. That is just horrendous. But I'm glad you're getting 35 in the state of Utah.

Jimmy Lea: They were getting 16. Oh, wow. And they went to the state and they're like, you know, we're losing our butts here on this state inspection stuff. We need 41. And the state said, oh, you want 41, do you? Okay, you can have 19. We need 41. Oh, okay. We're gonna cancel the program. There you go. Oh geez. Oh yeah. So the state of Utah, I'm scared now.

Jimmy Lea: There's cars broke down on the side of the road all the time. Because there's no state inspection. You can see 'em their ball joints give out their control arms, their sway bars. They're pigeon toes. They're you know, they're,

Matt Kranz: yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. It's so scary. It's like Florida

Matt Kranz: Connecticut's the same way.

Matt Kranz: But it helps that they have a higher per capita income, so people are more apt to spend some money, which is the game. But once again, there's no safety inspection. They only do emissions.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my God. Yeah.

Matt Kranz: Out by us. It's been 35 since 2011, and that came up from 29 and 29, I wanna say was in 97 or 98.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah,

Matt Kranz: so there really hasn't been, it, I mean, it hasn't followed inflation at all.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, no, it really doesn't. And the funny thing about the state of Utah is there is emissions test only if you're in the big cities. If you live in a town that's smaller than a certain population, you do not have to get emissions.

Matt Kranz: Oh, interesting. Didn't realize that. Yeah. So I think you're in, there's enough trees. There's enough trees to suck up the knots.

Jimmy Lea: No, that's the funny thing. It's all down in the desert. Trees don't touch knots. There are no trees. It's all cactus and lizards and tortoise and coyote. Oh, wow. But up here in northern Utah, they have these inversions where the smog gets so bad it just holds the cold air low.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. It's due to the smog. And so they really are trying to eliminate that. So anyways, so you're working in your shop. You, I mean these are some good numbers. You got rocking there. You right in line with the national averages, which is, that's awesome. That's very cool. Where, what is the future look like for you,

Matt Kranz: Matt?

Matt Kranz: I really the biggest goal, you know, every time I look to expand, maybe buy another shop, but to expand I don't think is the right answer. 'cause you know, I can give a real nice personal service, focus on everything. I have a great crew and keep my stress low and there's no turnover. If anything, I think work on efficiency and how to make these guys the best they are.

Matt Kranz: You know.

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, totally. My, my

Matt Kranz: problem right now is I'm booking out three weeks and yeah, we have to apologize to customers for that, but it's not like we get, you know, 10 bays, 10 techs and then we have to apologize 'cause the car wasn't fixed right the first time and came back. Then we kill the quality and I've always been huge into the quality over quantity.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I got a buddy with a three bay shop in Denver, Colorado. Fourex. They do 3.6 million.

Matt Kranz: Nice.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good. So there's a goal for you, 3.6.

Matt Kranz: Heck yeah. It's all efficiency at that game.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And he's tucked in, he has, he owns his building. He owns a small little parking lot, and they, their efficiencies have to be super high because they cannot have vehicles parked for long amounts of time.

Jimmy Lea: So they're constantly pulling in, pulling out, pulling and pulling out vehicles. So 3.6, put that on your radar.

Matt Kranz: Yeah. Yeah. That's a big goal, but I'm down for it. Yeah. If we don't up the challenge, then there's no point in doing it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And if you're getting ready, if you're looking at this saying, okay, I either want to optimize my single location or expand the kingdom, and we can operate at a solid 80, 90, 90 5% efficiency.

Jimmy Lea: Hey man, that's solid too. Let's expand the kingdom and now you're, you have two and three and four and five, and maybe you down the road you get to 10 that have, and you can private equity and they have a legacy because in a, are you familiar with private equity in these situations that they're putting together?

Matt Kranz: Yes, ma'am.

Jimmy Lea: This legacy could live on and on. You could have. The ability to resell the business every three to five years, and you continue to be part of the operations. But at that point, when you've got 10 locations, you've got process, procedure, down, you've got a team in place, you're operating at the top of the level.

Jimmy Lea: You're sitting on a beach and drinking my ties while the shop is being run by the team. Yep. The kingdom is being run by the team, so it's a great opportunity and it's awesome to get in while you're young, to be able to have this legacy generational money now for the, for the family. And it could come from a single location optimized at a 4 million out of three bays, or it could be that you've expanded the footprint and now you're 10 locations.

Jimmy Lea: Either way, get your process procedures down, help the team get better together with you. And there you go. So I heard a quote a while ago. I wanna run this past you, Matt, and see what your thoughts are here. The quote was, just because you own a business doesn't mean you're a good leader. It's true.

Jimmy Lea: What does that say to you?

Matt Kranz: That I a hundred percent agree with that. I've seen, yeah you gotta show your guys the way, you gotta guide 'em. You can't sit on top of the trailer and let them tow you. You gotta help push the trailer with them. That's, I that it's all too common in this area.

Matt Kranz: And it, I think it just creates arrogance.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And that's,

Matt Kranz: there's no place for that.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Do you see a lot of shops in a we'll call it a Mexican standoff where they're standing toe to toe and they think each other are enemies, but really we need to be a brotherhood.

Matt Kranz: That's, honestly, that's one of the biggest things I see whenever, and I haven't done a whole lot of networking to the point that I want to.

Matt Kranz: But whenever I have an, you know, a parts guy call me and like, Hey, Matt, how do you set this up? Can you help this guy out? He is not familiar and a lot of times it's a shop that I don't wanna point down 'em, but they're, they may be in their infancy with technology. They, they've resisted for long enough and now they have to get into it.

Matt Kranz: I've actually helped set up about 10 different guys in the area with these, you know, different secure links. And I'm like, where have you guys been? Like, Subaru's got it. Mercedes has it. Chrysler has it like Volkswagen with GRP now. Either way, the point being is whenever I talk to him and they're almost like, oh, he's from Matter Garage.

Matt Kranz: I've heard of him and I'm a problem solver. Shop. So I'll get a lot of cars that went to other shops and I charge through the nose for it. But when you come in and you preface that, oh, they put all these parts in and now you're asking for this much money, I look at 'em and say, you didn't pay me any of it.

Matt Kranz: You could have paid me this the first time, and

Jimmy Lea: oh, and I would've fixed it right the first time too, by the way. You're right.

Matt Kranz: But the reality with it is when they start that standoff I kind of look at it and I'm like, why do you think we're competitors? We're not competitors at all. I'm fixing the things you can't fix and I'm not taking your simple brake jobs or your simple work, or we work together and I can, you know, I can compliment you.

Matt Kranz: So when you compress that caliper on the back of the Audi and you can't get that light to reset 'cause your guy unplugged the motor. I got your back. You know, let's work on that. Yeah. Oh, that's so good. But usually that's what I see is it's the guys resisting the change.

Jimmy Lea: Well, thank you for being the voice of change there, Matt, in your of the woods Bond.

Jimmy Lea: Bond with them lock arms together. Let's, we can do this together. There's no way you could service every vehicle that passes your shop. There's no way that the six of you could service every vehicle that passes in front of your six shop. There's no way the 10 of you could pass and service the vehicles.

Jimmy Lea: There's so much business to go around. We are. What's a friendly competition? We're frenemies, but we're not enemies. There you go. Friendly competition. We friendly competition works like a team and we build each other.

Matt Kranz: Yeah. Sometimes we got, eh, you know this guy said this much and you're said this much.

Matt Kranz: You know what? That'll keep us honest. I'm good with that.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. It is not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing.

Matt Kranz: It's a good, I keep getting that you're gonna be cheaper than the dealer and I, whoa. Well, we're probably not gonna be cheaper than the dealer. We're gonna be about the same. 'cause the parts are the parts when we get that level of part.

Matt Kranz: But ultimately, I'm way less expensive than the dealer, even though I may charge the same amount. I have a crew and people that care about the car you're working on. Whereas at the dealer, you might get that superstar, that awesome guy, the head tech, the upcoming guy that really cares about what he's doing.

Matt Kranz: But you might get a guy they had to hire 'cause they have to get warranty work out the door and you don't really want him tearing your car apart.

Jimmy Lea: No. And the only reason he got hired is 'cause he could fog a mirror. You're right. And that's scary. That's the wrong person to put on the bus.

Matt Kranz: I mean, I'm, I guess I've been very unique with some of my hiring that if we're, in the past when we were shorthanded, I was out there and I said, you know what?

Matt Kranz: I'm gonna pick up the slack. I'm gonna help you guys out. Like, this is a team. I'm part of it, and we're doing this until we find another person. And I get that at the dealer. They can't, it's nobody that can jump in and do that. But heck yeah, we're gonna be more, we hire a better quality. We work as a better quality.

Jimmy Lea: I just have had quite a few conversations here recently about training. What do you do for training, for your technicians, for your advisors? What do you do that way?

Matt Kranz: Currently there's not as much as I'd like, but I'm always grabbing things. So I actually just the other day we ran into it with a with a, a Jeep Diesel and it came up with a PO four 20, a catalyst efficiency.

Matt Kranz: And then my, one of my head techs came over and scratched his head and said, I'm not sure what to do. And I said, me either, but let's read the service manual together. And we did. And it, you know, it was Chrysler typical test A, B, and C and go through the tree. And then I, you know, I said, well, why? I wanna know why they had us go in this order.

Matt Kranz: So I, I actually looked it up and brought in a bunch of it today. So I think that on the job training, just the interest in what he was doing is really helpful and beneficial for them. And I'll grab Carlos and, Hey man, listen to this. You know, you weren't involved, but I want you to see what we went through over this.

Matt Kranz: And then also I've been actually really happy with the the lunchtime training. We've been sitting down about every two weeks. And do either the Tuesday or Thursday launch time training with WTI, which has been really cool. A SE has an awesome program. I'm, those are at night and I can't sit the guys down at the shop.

Matt Kranz: But what I've been trying to do is I'll, I found a hack that I can sign in, take the course myself, which I just like learning it anyways. And then two days later they'll send me a link so that I can replay the course. So I make sure the guys all get a copy of that. And hey, if you're sitting around, dunno what to do.

Matt Kranz: Take a look. You know, the Snap-on actually has the really good YouTube channels that update all the time. I was, I maybe you can gimme some more that are awesome. I'm always looking for 'em. You know, be it dormant or standard or some of 'em are very focused on the sales, but there's always something you can grab from 'em.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, there always is. Yeah. The more your technicians can learn to be the best technicians they can be, the better it is for the consumer, the customer, and the experience. And let's also translate that to the service advisor. I talked to some shop owners, they're like, oh no. I'm not gonna train my advisors.

Jimmy Lea: Why not? They need training. They need training on communication, on creating estimates, best practices.

Matt Kranz: I found there is a go ahead. That training is much more difficult to find. I've been very interested, actually. I was so excited and I unexplained it to all the guys, and I told 'em, I said, I really look like a jerk, but let me explain why.

Matt Kranz: And the name of the seminar was triage diagnosis. So from triage diagnosis, I took that to mean the first step when you walk in the door. How do we start the diagnosis? So we start to talk to the customer, you know, that we form a relationship, we talk to 'em and we say, Hey, you know what? So what happened when the battery light came on?

Matt Kranz: What were you doing? How fast was the car driving? You know, were you accelerating, stopping going? Did it go out thereafter? How did you get here today? And the point is through the little explanations that I asked, maybe I can deter. It's probably a bad alternator. And then our shop efficiency is so, so important.

Matt Kranz: And just that simple, you know, flow that service writers, I find that a lot of 'em miss because they're missing. I'm obviously very fluent in it, but I have an extremely technical background. These guys don't but they can do it. They just need to be shown.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah.

Matt Kranz: Yeah,

Jimmy Lea: and sure.

Matt Kranz: I actually, I have them, you know, him and my state inspector sit on even when.

Matt Kranz: They're not gonna lose.

Jimmy Lea: No. They'll always learn something. They'll always learn something of value.

Matt Kranz: Sometimes it's as simple as the process with the case study. Like, Hey, this is the process of what they did, and guess what? They can explain that process to a customer. So that's important.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And there's a new news relative, I think they'd been around for a year and a half, maybe even two years. Today's class technical training. Have you heard about this one?

Matt Kranz: Today's class. Today's class, I haven't.

Jimmy Lea: So it's an app that the technicians log onto and it's gamification from this app.

Jimmy Lea: They have different scenarios and they've got a multiple choice, so depending on how long it takes them to answer the question and if they get the answer right or wrong. It will guide them into some training about that subject. So it's got five different questions a day and they just answer the questions.

Jimmy Lea: The beauty of this as well is the gamification. You get points for answering these questions. Okay, so who's got the most points at the shop? Who's the highest rank at the shop? But then also. You compete, shop to shop as well.

Matt Kranz: Oh, no kidding.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's super cool. I

Matt Kranz: just pulled it up. This I wrote it down so I don't forget, so I was scrambling.

Matt Kranz: Yeah. In

Jimmy Lea: class. So check them out and then for your service advisors, go onto to, we are the institute.com, but go to our YouTube channel. We have a tremendous amount of free information for service advisor training. Okay, you can dive into, and if you want to dig in deeper, man, there's some stuff that we could help out there as well.

Jimmy Lea: But that's another road down the street, and we'll talk about that in a minute. So, into where you are today, you've got the four technicians, the three bays, the two

Matt Kranz: technicians,

Jimmy Lea: one inspector, one

Matt Kranz: service writer.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I was GI. So here's my four. I thought you had the two. I got four employees. State inspection and a gs.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So this is a service advisor? Yes. The fourth person? Yes. Yes. Okay. Nice man. They're busy too, huh? They are

Matt Kranz: busy.

Jimmy Lea: They're busy. That's good. And what point of sale system are you running?

Matt Kranz: Right now we run Shocky Pro. So Mi It's a Mitchell.

Jimmy Lea: Mitchell? Yep.

Matt Kranz: Mitchell manager se

Jimmy Lea: nice. You like it Does everything you need to.

Matt Kranz: I do. I really like it. We don't use it to its full potential. But that's kind of good because we can learn and integrate things little by little. Love it. We're small enough that we can communicate really well in the shop. So, digital vehicle inspections

Jimmy Lea: are you

Matt Kranz: doing? We do. We're using both on, we're using both on, yep.

Matt Kranz: So we, we love their inspections. I'm still torn about the text messaging. I that, but, you know, give and take. I feel it loses some of that personal touch. I don't like to solely work on the text message, so

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. No. Well, and there are some people that, that's how they prefer to communicate

Matt Kranz: is the younger kids like, don't even want a phone call.

Matt Kranz: They're like, oh, no, why are they calling me? They're already anxious enough about this car repair, and now they're getting a phone call on top of it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So there's times where I can't take phone calls. Okay with the text messages, zoom meetings and think of attorneys and doctors and government employees.

Jimmy Lea: They can't always get to the phone to answer the call, but if you text them, they can text you back. Yes. And that's a beautiful way of communicating. So it goes very quickly. But then, and that also is our ask from the shop side is, Hey customer, when I text you, it's not because I want to chitchat. There's stuff we gotta talk about.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So answer your text message, answer the phone call. If we need to have a phone call let's take it to that next level so the relationship is not lost just because of texting. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. So I love You're doing dvs every vehicle, every time.

Matt Kranz: Yes. Every vehicle gets a 27 point inspection no matter what.

Matt Kranz: Love it.

Matt Kranz: The only time there's exceptions is when somebody's out sick, it happens. And I'm like, all right we gotta squash the schedule together and get it done. And, you know, we use some discretion with that. For the most part though, everybody's still going over 'em, you know, so they're still, they're pulling in, they've got the process down at this point that they're already, you know, checking the lights on the way in the bay.

Matt Kranz: And you know, they're looking at the brakes because nobody wants to sit there and watch the oil drain. Those guys don't work here.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No. Really, truly. Yeah. I love that you're doing dvs. There's one rule that you'll wanna follow. It's called a 300% Rule. Yep. You're familiar with this one?

Matt Kranz: I am familiar with it. I have brought that paper. I don't remember who wrote it through Ratchet and Wrench, and I brought it out to all of them and read it. And that's one of the staples on the wall that it gets pulled down every so often.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. That

Matt Kranz: Moline method.

Jimmy Lea: Every vehicle, every time is inspected.

Jimmy Lea: Every recommendation is estimated, and every estimate is given to the customer, given to the client. And Cecil will take this even a little bit further to say The 500% rule includes that every vehicle gets a quality control test on a specific route. You have a specific route that you follow every single time and you explain all that to the customer and the client.

Jimmy Lea: He's got another one. I forget what his other one is, but it's he takes it up to another level.

Matt Kranz: Okay.

Jimmy Lea: So the 300% rule definitely covers it. That's the one that's popular in the industry. So let's stick with that one for right now. Matt, what's the future? I know we talk about optimizing the single location, possibly expanding.

Jimmy Lea: Where do you see the industry as a whole going in the next five to 10 years?

Matt Kranz: As a whole, it's I think it's gonna, it's gonna explode as far as the. Shops that are not hiring and doing things right, are gonna fizzle out. They're gonna be out of business. And we, I watched that since 2008.

Matt Kranz: I, I can't tell you how many shops I watched fizzle out. They're not there anymore. And I'm looking back and saying, well, look at how you ran it. Of course it's out. So I guess I was fortunate enough to be able to open my eyes to that and see it. But I think unfortunately that. Repairs are gonna become slower because I, I keep reading the statistics, I don't know if it's true.

Matt Kranz: But pretty much for every four techs that retire, there's only one coming in.

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. And

Matt Kranz: we can only handle so many cars. There's more cars going on the road. So, you know, it's either gonna be a long time for repairs or people are gonna start to have that second car or that fun car, which I can see as a benefit because cars are supposed to be fun.

Matt Kranz: I keep showing my son that. And you know, there's a lot of people that and kids of the younger generation that are like, well, it's transportation. I don't care what it looks like.

Jimmy Lea: Well,

Matt Kranz: maybe lemme show you some, I guess. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Actually my, my, my brother-in-law he, I have a couple older cars and race cars and he's like, I don't understand what's so exciting about the loud pipes and the, you know, the fast, you know, bill, you can't go fast on these roads around here.

Matt Kranz: So, but you can get there fast.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. You can

Matt Kranz: get to the speed fast.

Jimmy Lea: Yep. You go stop, sign a stop sign fast.

Matt Kranz: That's it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. He just doesn't

Matt Kranz: have that appreciation. But nobody's ever sat him in a car and showed him, so

Jimmy Lea: there you go. Take him to an HRA event. Yeah, so, so you could see his reaction for the funny cars.

Matt Kranz: Yeah, right. I was, well, I was just trying to get my son is 13 and we me and my wife slowly discussed him joining the junior street in the NHRA, which is it'd be kind of a cool intro for me. He loves go-karts. That might, you know, you know what my disappointment is I don't see a lot of other people up there.

Matt Kranz: Not a lot of people doing it, which tells me that. People aren't shown how fun these can, these cars can be.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Anybody listening, if ever you have an opportunity to go to NHRA, you definitely need to go. It is an experience unlike anything you'll ever experience.

Matt Kranz: So,

Jimmy Lea: yeah, listen to the announcers, 'cause they'll go through the stock cars, they'll go through the modifieds, they'll go through the this one and they'll get to the funny cars and the top fuel.

Jimmy Lea: And you can definitely see who the virgins are in the audience when they start up that engine. You have never felt that experience ever. I guarantee it. Yep. Oh that's, yeah, because I was there. I was there. I was the virgin going, holy

Matt Kranz: coach, what the heck was that? Well, that's 12,000 horsepower, right.

Matt Kranz: It's only half though. You only feel half of it. 'cause the other half's on the other side.

Jimmy Lea: Right? Oh, it's so true, dude. Oh my gosh. The family was just in shock. It was so much fun. My son was like, oh my gosh, can you feel that? Oh, and it just rattles your heart and your chest. It just feels like, oh yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Burst outside. So awesome. So awesome. So if you were to start your shop today, Matt. What advice would you give yourself today, starting your shop today?

Matt Kranz: Man,

Matt Kranz: That's a tough one. I would I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I guess the biggest thing is just to, you know what? You're gonna get frustrated. Don't take anything personally, it took me a lot of years to not take a lot of the problems with these cars personally or.

Matt Kranz: You know, somebody's frustrated 'cause the car isn't fixed and hey, you know, it's an intermittent problem or I'm not sure what's wrong with it. And I've always been anchored to the shop because of it. And it's been recent years that I said, Hey, you know, it's not a personal thing if somebody doesn't want to have their car fixed by you or says no to the work or even, you know, if you can't fix the car.

Matt Kranz: I guess some of that, taking it personally did help me be better because I would go home and I need to find out everything I can about this system, how it works, and why can't I figure out what's wrong with it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, that, that is that, Matt. That is really good advice. Don't take it personally. It's business.

Jimmy Lea: Don't take it personally. What else? It's

Matt Kranz: just a car in the end.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's a car. And what I also heard from you in our conversation is not only don't take it personally, but. Get training. Get training for your technicians. They need the training. Get training for your service advisors. They need the training.

Jimmy Lea: Get training for you as an owner. You need the training. Yep. Yeah and that's our mantra here at the Institute is we're here to help you build a better business. And the net result of building a better business is a better life. And it's not just a better life for you, it's a better life for your technicians, for your service advisors, for their spouses, for their children.

Jimmy Lea: For the entire company. It's a better life for them as well. It's a better life for your customers, your clients, your those people who trust you to take care of their vehicles. They're safer on the road. They'll be able to stop when they need to stop and go when they need to go, so you're building a better life for them.

Jimmy Lea: Build a better business, a better life, and a better industry. That's our mantra here at the Institute. We're gonna lock arms with all these shops so that we can build this industry to be the best it could possibly be.