Show Summary:

A rapid-fire AMA with Lucas Underwood and Cecil Bullard cuts straight into the hard stuff shop owners wrestle with daily. They break down how to hire and develop entry-level techs without burning them out, why hourly plus incentive beats flat rate for apprentices, and what a real two-year mentorship pathway looks like. From there, the conversation shifts to car count and marketing, with Cecil pushing owners to stop doing everything themselves and instead build professional, measurable marketing systems.

They also get practical about documenting warranty work so the real cost is visible, and why you can’t manage anything you can’t see. The back half drills into pricing, estimates, labor-rate layering, and the danger of trying to compete with consolidators on cheapness. The close highlights Cecil’s “Preferred Customer Program,” a simple loyalty and scheduling system that stabilizes car count and boosts ARO, plus a reminder that fixing the car is only baseline, customer experience and profitability are what keep a shop alive.

Host(s):

Lucas Underwood, Shop Owner of L&N Performance Auto Repair and Changing the Industry Podcast

Guest(s):

Cecil Bullard, Founder of The Institute

Show Highlights:

[00:00:36] – Lucas and Cecil begin by addressing how to hire and structure pay for an entry level technician, emphasizing the need for a real mentorship plan.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jG1rHqQjhww

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Episode Transcript:

Lucas Underwood: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this AMA from the Institute. My name's Lucas Underwood with the Changing The Industry Podcast, and I am joined today by the one, the only Mr. Cecil Bullard himself. Cecil buddy, how are you?

Cecil Bullard: Hey. Hey, brother. I'm great. I'm ready. Let's knock him outta the park.

Lucas Underwood: Let's get right into it.

Lucas Underwood: We've already got a pile of questions and so I want to jump right in. Let's make sure we get all these questions answered 'cause we've got so many people asking questions right now. And so we're gonna drop these in. And the very first one is Greetings from Wisconsin. We're a small three base shop with two full-time techs that are higher level guys.

Lucas Underwood: We're looking to hire an entry-level person to do basic services and hopefully grow from there. I was looking for someone with a little, no experience, but a good attitude. What advice would you give us when it comes to pay structure, expectations, and anything else you can think of now? Cecil, there is a response down below that, and it's kind of all in one, and I think we need to talk about this as well.

Lucas Underwood: And they said that we found that hourly pay with incentivized hours on production seems to be a great carrot for the entry level tech. They mentioned that I look to get an atec, but fill our industry is in a time that we have to develop, so we have to get a bench. And so I wanna start a little bit by clarifying that because I think it's an important point.

Lucas Underwood: I have been saying, I think for your first technician as a small shop, you should really be looking at hiring the best technician that you can find. And here's why I feel that way, because I tried to do it the other way and what I did is I feel like I did a disservice to our industry. Now that's me. I'm not saying that Chad would do that.

Lucas Underwood: I'm not saying that Ed would do that. I'm saying at that point in time. As a business owner, I didn't really have all of my ducks in a row. I didn't really have it together, and I wasn't able to train somebody to do that. And it takes time and it takes energy, and it takes a plan and a program to train them and bring them up.

Lucas Underwood: My fear when I say that is that we see so many shop owners that bring a young technician into the bay, they throw 'em in there and say, go do the thing. And then what do we have? We have a disgruntled technician in three, four years because they've not developed, they've not progressed, they've not grown like they thought they should.

Lucas Underwood: But I will say I've had a lot of really great entry level technicians who have gone on to be great technicians, and we're really invested, really driven to make this happen. So I think the key is the right person. Cecil, what's your take on it?

Cecil Bullard: I would tell you number one it, it is different at the different part parts of your business.

Cecil Bullard: If I'm by myself and now I'm gonna hire somebody. I think you're probably better off hiring an AEC at that point in time if you can find them and afford them and all those kind of things. If you're gonna hire a, an apprentice technician or a trainee type technician, you need to have what I would call a mentorship program that probably lasts somewhere around two years where they think about having a list of tools that they need to master, a list of jobs that they need to be able to do a list of equipment that they need to know how to operate which might include your point of sale and their part of the writeup and the coolant flush machine and how to flush brakes out and how to do a brake job.

Cecil Bullard: And, you know, just basic stuff. And if you have a and someone needs to be responsible for not just meeting with them to teach them kind of how to do this and to answer their questions, but also to keep them moving. Down the pathway. And that is also a management step. So you can have, you know, I can hand a young tech to my grumpiest, 62-year-old tech who's a master tech, but doesn't have the patience or the temperament to really train somebody.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And go, okay, you teach him. And then all of a sudden, you know, three months later that kid's quitting or we're firing him because he screwed too many things up because he really wasn't being mentored. In our mentorship programs, we recommend that you have weekly meetings with the mentor and the mentee and management and asking questions like, what did you learn this week?

Cecil Bullard: Do you feel like you're being held back? Are there jobs that you feel that you need to be taught? You know, and trying to keep a pathway ahead of them so that they know I checked this box off this week, I checked that box off this week. Yep. That helps us understand that, that hey, they now. We've taught 'em how to do certain jobs.

Cecil Bullard: In my shops, if you came into my shop and you were a master technician, you still had a min and you still had a sign off sheet.

Lucas Underwood: Yes, absolutely.

Cecil Bullard: That was, you know, where's the bathroom and how do you clock in and out and, you know, how do you rack a vehicle? I mean, every year we lose two or three guys because a vehicle doesn't get racked correctly and somebody gets killed and Exactly.

Lucas Underwood: And when to say something. Right. If the lift's not safe, if something's going on in the shop, if, like, when do you say something and blood. Or blood or fire, right?

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. If it isn't blood or fire, then I don't I probably shouldn't say anything. I should use a more formalized hey, we're gonna meet once a week, discuss where you're at et cetera.

Cecil Bullard: But if there is the potential for blood or fire then we should be saying something right now.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, so absolutely and you know, Dutch has always been a really close friend of mine and yours as well. And Dutch was in the airline industry. He was a captain in some real big airplanes.

Lucas Underwood: And one of the things Dutch said was, is you always had to keep a line of communication open between you and your right seat. They always had to feel comfortable coming to you and saying there's a problem, because they needed to be able to correct you in case you didn't see something that they saw.

Lucas Underwood: And that's something that I think that we have to watch, especially if we're putting an older mentor with someone. There has to be some checks and balances in place because we have to make sure they feel confident if that mentor is doing something and they shouldn't be. They need to be able to communicate that.

Lucas Underwood: And I hear from a lot of guys that are young and they're put in and they say, I don't know if I'm making progress or not. I'm not, they're not told if I'm doing a good job or not.

Cecil Bullard: You know, but that's also like having the feedback loop that is saying, you know, you checked that off. Wow, great. Now you know how to do this job.

Cecil Bullard: Now we're gonna work on this job, or Yeah. Hey, you, I, I know today was a tough day, or I know this week was a tough week for you. Right. But you know, next week's gonna be a great week 'cause you're gonna learn this, and this.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: A hundred percent. The other thing you were talking about I have to make sure that whatever they're feeling, and it doesn't matter if it's my ATech or my apprentice tech.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I need them to, I need to pay attention to what they're feeling, whether or not I believe it to be real. Right. Yeah. Because those are the people that are gonna do the work. They're gonna do the work. Right. That are gonna be productive. Hopefully that we'll put money in the bank and make the company run.

Cecil Bullard: And so, you know, sometimes you get employees that are having a conversation and they're talking about stuff and you're just like, oh man, that's, there's no way that, you know, we're not as a company, we're not that or whatever. But if that's what they're feeling and that's what they're talking about, we have to be able to address those things and clear the water.

Cecil Bullard: Right? Absolutely. And we can't do that a hundred percent. You know? So the other thing would be, you know, having routine communication weekly meetings with your shop. Yes, a hundred percent. Where that keeps owners from piping off on dumb stuff every day. You know, hey, take that to the weekly meeting. You know, if we're not keeping the shop as clean as you'd like, take that to the weekly meeting.

Cecil Bullard: We'll discuss it then Don't come in and yell at people and ruin their day for them when they're trying to get work out. And the other thing is I, as an employee, I need a place where I think I can take something that concerns. Yeah, and I believe I'll be heard, right? Yep. And heard doesn't necessarily mean I agree.

Lucas Underwood: It just means that I've heard you and listen, here's the thing about this is a lot of folks say, oh, I could mentor someone. I'm gonna tell you, as an owner who's had multiple apprentices and I've not done many of them the justice that I should have. Yeah. But as an owner who's done that, I'm gonna tell you that to mentor them is a lot of work.

Lucas Underwood: Right. And if you don't have the bandwidth for that, this is, you're talking about some serious work and some serious management here. Now, ed is a fantastic friend of mine. I really look up to this guy. I mean, he's next level. And so he talks about the pay aspect because that was really the root of the question.

Lucas Underwood: And he says, Hey, I believe that a good hourly pay with some incentive. And I do believe that we need to be making sure these guys are paid hourly as they come in. I've seen a lot of shops putting these apprentices on flat rate, and it's like, what are you doing? Are you serious right now?

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. You can't, it's unbelievable.

Cecil Bullard: You're setting 'em up for failure. I mean, exactly. And I don't. For the last say, 10 years, I haven't written any flat rate pay systems. Yeah. Everything is, you know, 60% of your pay should come from showing up. Yeah. In a base, people need to know they've got food and shelter and Yeah. Warmth and all of that.

Cecil Bullard: And then 40% is for doing what I want you to do. And in the case of an apprentice person, it would be learning the new thing, you know, making a mistake so that you learn the new thing correctly. Right? Yep. Et cetera. And we can't, that's another thing we cannot, at $125 an hour. Afford to pay these young people to make mistakes in our business.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And afford to have our best technicians take time to help train them and give them the skills transfer the skill sets that our best technicians have. Yeah. We can't do that. At a hundred. I think the last survey was $128 an hour is the average in the industry. Yeah. We need to be much higher because we can't, I can't bring a guy in at $22 an hour and expect him to feel comfortable.

Cecil Bullard: Exactly. Or her to feel comfortable and not do anything but live in mom's basement. Right? Yeah, a hundred percent.

Lucas Underwood: And that's kind of what you're expecting when you do that, right? You may not say it, but that's what your, that's your end result. Let's move on to the next question here. Cliff K says, I'd like to find a way to get more cars and more folks in.

Lucas Underwood: They really want to expand. They wanna bring in this third technician. I'm gonna tell you from my experiences, I grew fairly slowly for a number of years, and I kept hitting this plateau and I never could figure out what it was. A lot of my plateau was I was afraid to bring in that third person, right?

Lucas Underwood: Because I was running two for the longest time and I kept saying, I don't quite have enough work to get them to 40 hours a week. And I've realized that until I have them there and they can actually do something, I wasn't even scheduling. The potential for that work. And so I never could get it there until I just said, Hey, I'm gonna bite the bullet and I'm gonna go for it.

Lucas Underwood: So I think that part of that is, is we have to kind of bite the bullet. Now, I'm not saying if your guys are turning six hours a piece right now, that's not time to bring somebody else in, maximize what you have right now. Well,

Cecil Bullard: But it could be because Yeah, my people might be turning six hours a week because my shop processes are screwed up.

Cecil Bullard: It's not, I mean, I might be booked out three weeks and I still have guys doing five, six hours a day. Yeah. 'cause we can't get our dispatch. Right. And we're not getting our parts here on time, and we're not getting enough time for the jobs that we're doing. Exactly. Yes, they have to do a bunch of other crap because our shop isn't set up correctly.

Cecil Bullard: Right. Yeah. Yesterday I was having a conversation with somebody and it's a brand new person, or it was a person looking at us and you know, I was saying, you know, you, you have really bad productivity and, he goes, well, yeah, but it's not the tax fault. I said, yeah, no, most of the time it's not the tax fault.

Cecil Bullard: Right. They're the one doing that, not saying they call

Speaker 4: for

Cecil Bullard: it. Yeah. I'm saying if we could improve our productivity, then our labor margins go up our overall gross profit margins goes up and our profits in the shop go up.

Lucas Underwood: Yes.

Cecil Bullard: And then I can pay people more money. So Yeah. I I think pay-wise yeah.

Cecil Bullard: And we're talking about marketing, remember brain surgery like nine months ago. That's it. That's it.

Lucas Underwood: Cecil's often in Wonderland over here. So there are keeping, there are,

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Well, A DHD too, so. Wow. That's it. Marketing you know, I'm not a big fan of direct mail. I don't, I think the ROI is not.

Cecil Bullard: Real great. I think that a lot of that is discounting, and I'm not a discount fan.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: I need to have a good website that's done by somebody that understands Google and what Google wants. And now AI and what a OI wants, I need to have seo, OSEM, I need to have social media you know, there are I should be booking the customer's next appointment.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I should have a referral program. I should be working in the local community. I should be involved with the local chamber of commerce, the rotary, the local BNI groups. I should be a leader in some of those things. I think that the successful businesses have successful and marketing plans.

Cecil Bullard: And then the other thing I need to understand about marketing, not everything I'm gonna do is gonna work. Yes. And that's it's just part of the game.

Lucas Underwood: You know what, there's a lot of people listening, and I know because I too am a shop owner and they're saying, but Cecil. Where am I gonna get the time to do all this?

Lucas Underwood: And let me tell you something.

Cecil Bullard: Well, they can't they shouldn't. Okay. Exactly. Exactly. You're not qualified.

Lucas Underwood: Alright. A hundred percent. And even beyond qualified, right? Yeah. It's like, where is your value? Because my value, right? Like, you know this, if I'm the one running the shop, we can easily bang out $200,000 or more every single month with four technicians because I just know how it flows.

Lucas Underwood: And what does that mean? That means that's where my value's at in this business. That's where I need to focus my energy. I need to be paying someone who is that efficient, that productive, and that much of a master at doing the marketing for me, because it's a waste of money, it's a waste of energy for me to be doing it myself.

Lucas Underwood: That's ridiculous. We and I have to learn a new skill. There's no reason to learn that new skill. Find somebody who knows what they're doing.

Cecil Bullard: We're we are, do it yourselfers. I mean, you know, if I've got plumbing at the house or electric at the house or drywall or whatever, I'm like, oh, I can do that, but is that my best?

Cecil Bullard: Is that my best spent time? And I don't know how many people we, you know, when we get a new client, we bring 'em in and one of the first things we do is I dig up their website and I take a look and you're just like. I don't know who's doing it. Well, it's my cousin, you know? Yeah. They do it for free, man.

Cecil Bullard: Exactly. And you get what you pay for. Right. Exactly.

Lucas Underwood: And I, I don't know if you know this, and I know we gotta jumped to the next question. I'm gonna tell you this little story real quick. You know, I took over the family business, it was not intentional. It's not something I wanted to do. I'm figuring it out, right?

Lucas Underwood: Like day by day. It's not in automotive. For those of you wondering, this is completely different business, completely different world. And they had been doing all the marketing in-house and we went out and I talked to Kim and Brian Walker. I said, guys, I need help. I need you to gimme some type of recommendation of somebody who can handle this.

Lucas Underwood: And we hired a marketing company that's what they do. They specialize in this business. And do you know that we can't figure out how to schedule our people anymore because it's busy in times when it's never been busy before. And so we can't figure out how to like, make this work because we found people who were efficient and doing a good job.

Lucas Underwood: Well, if I'm gonna,

Cecil Bullard: I'm gonna, which spent a quarter

Lucas Underwood: of what we normally spend.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. You know, I it will cut my expense. Really? Yep. And it will actually get me measurable results that I can manage. And yes. And so, yeah, I mean, God bless you. Try not to do it yourself. Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Cecil Bullard: And the basis today, I mean, there's two things. There's the guy that's got a problem today. Mm-hmm. They're going either to AI or they're going to Google and asking Who can fix my Audi, blah, blah, blah. And then I also need the oh, come on. Brain damage vein brandage branding. The branding that when they need, you know, two weeks from now, three weeks from now, when Lucas has a problem, Lucas says, yeah, oh, I remember that shop.

Cecil Bullard: I've seen their name. Right. So when they do go looking, I'm familiar to them. Yeah. Different parts of

Lucas Underwood: my marketing. Amen. Amen. So Lance asked a really great question here. This is something I do that's a little unique compared to what I think you do. I was taught this from my original coach, and he says, how do I properly document my warranty stuff in my SMS?

Lucas Underwood: So, I want to know what my true cost of this is. Cecil. I'm gonna tell you what we do here in the shop is we make it like any other ticket. If it's warranty, we document the testing. We document exactly how we got to that. We go through the conclusions. It's got the five Cs on it. All of the testing data is attached.

Lucas Underwood: We bill it out like a normal job, and the way that we, instead of going in and discounting it, the way that I track it is I use a payment method and that payment method is then leaked to an expense account in QuickBooks. Now I have one for each technician. I have one for each service advisor. I have one for the manager, I have one for myself.

Lucas Underwood: I have one for each part vendor. I have all of those things placed in there. I have policy work and advertising. And you know, like policy work for me is, you know, we didn't really cause that, but I understand your situation. Let me help friends and family, same thing. Now I can track that by the percentages of income,

Cecil Bullard: my own vehicles, my own fleet.

Cecil Bullard: Yes. Absolutely. And I think we had nine marketing codes in our Yeah. In our shop. And we used those codes to track it back to an account. That, I mean, money never changed hands, but it looked like money changed hands. Yeah. And, yeah. And then the other thing is you wanna have a warranty sheet that gets filled out on every car.

Cecil Bullard: Yes. Who's the tech? What was the original repair wire? What went wrong? You know, where's the fault? I'm not trying to find fault so I can blame somebody or beat somebody up. But if I have the same tech making the same mistakes over and over, yes. And I can't pin that down, then we keep making the same mistakes.

Cecil Bullard: If.

Lucas Underwood: If it's

Cecil Bullard: a parts failure, because I'm buying parts from this company and it's a, you know, I have to be able to see that, and I have a grade form that is always filled out whenever there's a warranty and then management signs off on we've decided to give this customer, you know, a thousand dollars worth of whatever, because it really wasn't our fault, but okay, great.

Cecil Bullard: Then we put it in the right code and

Lucas Underwood: we

Cecil Bullard: track

Lucas Underwood: it. We might try and set that up so folks can get that form. I'm gonna tell you something about that beyond just this, with that form, right? Yeah. Beyond just internal needs. Something that I've learned and you know, Wayne Marshall and I had a great conversation at Apex.

Lucas Underwood: We were talking about all this stuff going on with the family business, right?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Lucas Underwood: And he said, Lucas, he said, what you will learn after running businesses, the sizes of businesses that I've ran, is everything has to be documented. Yeah. 'cause it's all it can't come back to he said, she said, or this person did this, or this person did that.

Lucas Underwood: You need to document every single thing that you can. He said, I don't care if you send a text message. I don't care if you put it on paper. I don't care how you do it. You need a record of everything you can possibly document. And there's also,

Cecil Bullard: go ahead. There's also, you can't manage it if you can't see it.

Cecil Bullard: Yes. If there's no visibility into it. Yeah. And it doesn't mean like I had my super tech. Mm-hmm. No mistake that he made was ever his mistake.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: It was always a parts failure. Someone else's fault. Exactly. And so when he had to redo that job or someone else had to redo that job, you know, it wasn't my fault.

Cecil Bullard: Parts failure. Yeah. I knew it was his fault. As the manager, somebody has to say, no, it was your fault. Yeah. Okay. That's a hundred percent right. A hundred percent. And if you're just passing it through, 'cause you're, let me just put the parts cost in. Wait, no, I don't really have cost 'cause that's a warranty part.

Cecil Bullard: So I don't have that let me just put the tech cost in except my tech cost in my point of sale, shop wear, whatever it's not correct 'cause I haven't really calculated it Right. Et cetera. And so that's all it really costs me. No. Cost You double. Right? Yeah. Because that same tech that's doing that warranty.

Cecil Bullard: He's not out producing, you know, $280 worth of parts and labor per hour because he's spending three hours doing that warranty. Yep. And so I like having the whole amount, having the account set aside with the right code that you can pull it out even though I'm not transferring money, it just looks that way.

Cecil Bullard: And I can say, okay, we had a 5% warranty this month, and that's too high. It doesn't meet our standard

Lucas Underwood: Exactly. A hundred percent onto the next one. And I need to answer this won't take just a second. Same fellow Lance asked this question, said, Hey, I just hired a coach. What's your advice for meeting with my new coach?

Lucas Underwood: Very first thing, and I'm gonna tell you from the shop owner perspective. Be honest, be vulnerable. Put the things that really hurt out there and say 'em. Don't hide behind that ego. Don't hide behind that pride. Say what you're up against. Because if you don't say, if you don't get it out there, it doesn't get fixed.

Lucas Underwood: You need to be honest. You need to be open, you need to be direct, and you need to understand that they have to push back on you. Right? I'll never forget my first business coach, right? One of the things that he kept saying was, is What's your vision? And he would say, no, that's not it. And I'm saying, dude, I'm telling you.

Lucas Underwood: You asked me what I want, where I wanna go. He's like, but that's not good enough. Yeah. And I got mad. Yeah. I won't lie. I got mad and he said, listen to me, you are looking, a year from now, you're looking, six months from now, you're looking, two years from now, you have a 20, 30, 40 year life in front of you in this industry.

Lucas Underwood: What does it look like in 40 years? And so you gotta push back some.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And plus the, from the coaching side you know, having done this a lot I want data that's I can understand. Yeah. So, and reports from your point of sale may or may not give me that data. Certainly a decent profit and loss statement if you have it.

Cecil Bullard: If not, we're gonna have to develop one. You know, you if I can't see what's going on, I can't help you. And if you're not open because you're ashamed or you're afraid or whatever then I'm not gonna be able to help you. 'cause I can't get the data to make good decisions. Good choices. Yeah. Had a meeting with a new client.

Cecil Bullard: We're just, they just put in tech metric. They don't have a decent p and l. The reports from the old system are inaccurate. And he's like, well, what are the five things I should do right now? Well, you know, at this point I can't really give you great advice because I haven't got enough data. And so we have to fill that out.

Cecil Bullard: And then it if you're a decent, if you're a good coach, you're probably saying, what are your goals? What is your future? You know, what's the vision? Because things should be built around that. And I think you also have to have a bit of a relationship where you can say to, you have to respect whoever's gonna coach you.

Cecil Bullard: Yes. And if you, because if you can't, then you can't take the feedback that you need to have. Yeah. And you need to make actionable. And some, you know, I always tell people, you're never gonna agree with me a hundred percent don't care who I coach. But you know, if you listen 85% of the time, we're gonna do really well.

Cecil Bullard: Right. That's

Lucas Underwood: exactly right. And a coach has got to somewhat be a bit of a therapist, a bit of a counselor. We're big tough men. We've never talked about these things. We've never talked about our fears. We've never put 'em on the table. You know, ed Caswell, who's in here is somebody who does this phenomenally because he encourages the people in his life, Hey, let's talk about the hard things.

Lucas Underwood: Let's stop trying to cover this up. Let's stop letting ego get in the way. Let's push forward let's drive. Let's make this better, because if you don't talk about it, and if you don't get it out there and deal with it, it never gets better. I had So shop owners will hold that inside and hurt over it, and they don't need to.

Cecil Bullard: I had a meeting today with a, with one of my clients and I told him, I said your biggest challenge is that you don't have the skillset yet to be a good manager. Yeah. And you have, you need that skillset if you're gonna have multiple shops and Sure. And you could tell he was oh. But then he was like, okay, Cecil, next meeting, can we talk about what that skillset is and what I need to learn?

Lucas Underwood: Absolutely.

Cecil Bullard: You know, that's hundred why I brought it

Lucas Underwood: up, right? Yeah, exactly. And it's not to hurt you, right? No. It's not to cause harm. It's not to make you feel bad about yourself. It's if you can't see that, if there's that blind spot and we can't see where we're weak, right. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in trouble.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Right. Because you won't ever see that blind spot. And those blind spots are what gives you your massive growth. That's where the development and the movement comes from. The next question. How should we pay a gs? There's a lot of questions in this one, so we're gonna start with how do we pay a gs

Cecil Bullard: I hate gss.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. And not everybody has to start somewhere, but mm-hmm. We hire this guy that's gonna change oil and do our inspections. Who's the worst qualified person to do an inspection on a, you know, 2019 Toyota Tacoma, right? Mm-hmm. The GS tech. There are things that are unique to that vehicle that someone that's trained is gonna see that a GS is never gonna see.

Cecil Bullard: And

Lucas Underwood: Exactly.

Cecil Bullard: I think I owe it to my. Customer, my client, to give them the best inspection, the best information. And but how do I pay a gs? I think you look at what's, you have to understand your business again financially. So, you know, I'm a post-it. I'm $140 an hour, but effectively I'm 125.

Cecil Bullard: Okay? Yeah. Yeah. So, based on my effective, I can pay up to 40%, about 36% loaded of my effective rate. So if I'm 1 25 as an effective rate, that really says that in my shop, I can probably pay. I don't know, $50 an hour, 48, something like that. And then I have to assume the load. So back that down. Now I'm at 32.

Cecil Bullard: Yep. And a GS is gonna get paid enough to be able to afford an apartment gas for their car. You know, maybe beans and rice have the refrigerator full enough that they feel comfortable. But they're also not gonna get paid the maximum that I could pay at say, 38 bucks an hour. Yeah. So, but this whole idea of paying somebody 18 or 20 bucks an hour to start and come to work for me the McDonald's down the street here in Utah is I think starting people out at 24 bucks an hour.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And what skillset do I need there? Right.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, absolutely.

Cecil Bullard: We're asking these young people to come in and basically work for nothing, and we're saying, well, yeah, and they're also not productive. You have to understand that you have to plan your business so that you have the funds to pay this unproductive GS guy for some period of time.

Cecil Bullard: I would also say that along with the pay part, the bonus part is I expect four hours a day of productive work, or five hours a day of productive work out of you. And if you do that, then there's additional pay that comes to you if you get new training, if you go out and yeah, take classes. If you buy new tools or, you know, learn new skill sets on the tools and the equipment the mentorship program that we have, I have a way to level you up.

Cecil Bullard: And yeah, a lot of my bonus structures around productivity, but there's a reasonable base pay for that person.

Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. And you know, one of our requirements here is like we have today's class. We just implemented that and it's always been scanner danner, like, you have to go through the scanner, Danner, we'll buy you the book, whatever you need, but you have to go through that because I don't want you to stall here.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. That's one of the biggest complaints I get from young people is they get stalled out in the lube Bay. They get stalled out in the tire bay. Now, for me, what I found like a huge eye-opening thing, I had not been around other shops and I had always just done things the way I did things. So for my GS guys, what I was doing is I was just cutting the hours way down.

Lucas Underwood: I was paying them hourly, I was cutting the hours way down, so I was matching everybody else's prices. And so now I've added those multiple labor rates so I can adjust. And I know that person that's in that position and you know, one thing that I heard somebody say the other day is they said, you have to remember that your, a tech may not be as profitable and your GS tech may not be as profitable.

Lucas Underwood: They're feeding the middle. And, you know, you talk about the estimating, like, do you know, I disagree a million percent. I'm, well, I'm just saying like, I am with you. I know why you disagree, and I think that the atac we should charge should be the most profitable

Cecil Bullard: because you're charging more money for that person because they have absolutely have a much higher skill set.

Cecil Bullard: We're not, are we right? No. We, the average shop is absolutely not. Are we doing? It's why, that's why today the smart shops and, oh, Cecil just said only smart guys do this. So he's telling me I'm dumb. I'm really not. But the leading edge guys, the guys that are on the front of. Change in and everything.

Cecil Bullard: They have probably four or five different labor rates. Yeah. They have different labor rates for older cars. Higher, yes. They have different labor rates for diag much higher. They have different labor rates for European cars than they have for Kias and Hyundais and Toyotas and Yeah. You know, and they have different labor rates for different jobs that take different skill sets.

Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. This guy's, next question, I think this is a good one is there a time when we should charge, and Michael got ahead of me, he's going back and fixing it. Is there a time that we should charge for estimates? Now let me, I think this is important for us to talk about because for your car to make it into my shop, I'm typically going to be charging for a service no matter what.

Lucas Underwood: Okay. Mm-hmm. And so I'm making that estimate because I've already got your car in the shop and I'm doing work. I've oil service, testing, tire jobs, something. And now when I'm doing my 300% rule, I'm going over everything. I'm making estimates for what the car needs not to sell you something to inform you and keep you advised.

Lucas Underwood: Because I'm your advocate, that's my hoping that you'll buy

Cecil Bullard: the right stuff.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, exactly. Because I'm supposed to be advising you and telling you what's gonna make this car safe and reliable for you and your family. That's my job. I'm not gonna make an estimate. I'm sorry, Cecil. If you disagree, I'm gonna tell you're wrong.

Lucas Underwood: I'm not gonna make an estimate over the phone when they call me and say, Hey, I need an alternator.

Cecil Bullard: No, we don't, not, we don't price on the phone. Okay. Yeah. The only things I can price on the phone are you know, for that particular diagnostic, this is what our base starting is this is where we start, right?

Cecil Bullard: And if I do have someone saying you know, I, I need a cooling flush and a break flush, or whatever, my question then is who told you? Yeah. Where's the car? Help me understand why do you think you need that? Right? Yeah. And frankly, I still need to inspect the car. Yeah. Because, and you see it on your, your site. I mean, every Facebook, every other day somebody is going you know, this customer said they needed X, Y, Z and they came in and I did X, Y, Z and they're dad didn't fix their problem and now they're mad at me, but I did what they wanted. Right. No. You're the professional. Imagine going to the doctor and saying, Hey, I need you to take my appendix out 'cause I have a pain in my right.

Cecil Bullard: Oh, Bob over

Lucas Underwood: here said, and

Cecil Bullard: yeah. And my cousin said, it's my appendix. And you're never gonna do that. So.

Speaker 4: Sure.

Cecil Bullard: And then back to the question, if you're doing a $69 oil change, 'cause you're trying to be competitive with oil changers or whoever down the street, and then how are you gonna afford the time for your service advisor to write that up properly in your tech, to write it up properly and your tech to do a good.

Cecil Bullard: Digital vehicle inspection. Yeah. We can we gotta stop thinking in terms of how cheap can I make it.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. And we

Cecil Bullard: gotta stop talking about, we gotta start talking about, in order for me to do a good inspection and do a good, you know, 15 years ago I was running a shop. Our cheapest service was $165.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: And my customers came in every day and paid that. And that included the time that it took to do a good inspection. That included the time that it took to create a good estimate. And then the other part of that would be, okay, I, but cis, I still want to do a $69 oil change because I think I have to be competitive.

Cecil Bullard: All right, great. Then raise your labor rate somewhere else so that you can pay for the time to do the inspections and pay for the time to do the estimates. Exactly. And exactly. If you're not estimate, you cannot sell. What you do

Lucas Underwood: not

Cecil Bullard: estimate.

Lucas Underwood: You're exactly right. And you know, I have been saying this ever since Michael Smith said it to me a while back.

Lucas Underwood: I tell everybody this little story that he tells and it's something that we have to think about as an industry because we are in the middle of a consolidation swing, right? It's happening all around us. It just happened to body shops. It's gonna happen to mechanical, there's no way around it. And these guys are trying to compete.

Lucas Underwood: With the consolidators and they may not even realize it. And what they're doing is they're getting out here and they're saying, Hey, that guy's doing oil change for this. That guy's doing tires for this. Michael talks about the fact that when he was in mergers and acquisitions with a very large company, they bought a bunch of funeral homes.

Lucas Underwood: And he said that the other little mom and pop funeral homes were actually coming to him saying, why can't I compete with these guys? And Michael said, 'cause I'm buying container loads of caskets. Caskets. Yeah. If I can buy 'em for a hundred dollars, you can buy 'em for 2000. Yeah. You won't compete with me when you lower your price, I'll just lower my price.

Lucas Underwood: You'll be at zero margin. I'll still be at 70% margin because you

Cecil Bullard: can't compete with me. And by the way, that customer that's gonna go to that chain store, to that dealership isn't probably not my customer. They're not looking for the same thing, you know, the unreasonable hospitality book.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: We have to become.

Cecil Bullard: Better at unreasonable hospitality than anybody else in our industry. That's the thing that's gonna allow us to be profitable. That's the thing that's gonna allow us to survive. Those, that customer's not coming to you because you're the cheapest guy on the block. And if they are right, you built the wrong business that you cannot survive because you cannot compete with Walmart or Costco or whoever.

Cecil Bullard: Right? Yeah. So, I wish we would quit the rush to the cheapest price in the bottom of the drain.

Lucas Underwood: I think we have made a little bit of a problem for our industry. Okay. I was in, so I was in Florida. Universal Studios stopped by there, went to some other places, was at a show called ia, and it's for the amusement industry, family entertainment centers, things like that.

Lucas Underwood: That's the space the family business is in. And I watched the people in this show go to vendors and make million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million deals all day long. One right after another. Didn't even shake about it. Right. Just like, here's the money, do it. Right. They didn't negotiate. They didn't argue.

Lucas Underwood: Lots of money changed hands. And I'm, I was thinking about that. And then later in the day, we went to a universal theme park, four people in front of us went through, it was $5,200 that they invested to go to Universal for the two days they were gonna be there. 50, $200.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Lucas Underwood: Right. We're afraid.

Lucas Underwood: To give a client an estimate for an oil change, yet they're over here spending $5,200 later in the week on Thursday. This organization's highly involved in Universal Studios and so we go over to Universal after they close their new theme park. And I was talking to a lady that worked for Universal.

Lucas Underwood: She said, we have 33,000 employees in Orlando. We have over 3000 managers. Yeah. We have a payroll budget that would make you sick to your stomach. We work 10,000 people a day. Yeah. 10,000 people a day. And you're telling me that they won't pay to have their car properly repaired? No. It's because of the image we've created.

Lucas Underwood: It's the situation we've made and we keep backing ourselves into this corner. It's time for us to rise up and charge what we need to charge and be the professionals we need to be. We need to stop worrying about what Bob down the street's doing. We have to do what we have to do to make sure our businesses are profitable.

Lucas Underwood: Let

Cecil Bullard: Bob, we're

Lucas Underwood: on the curve.

Cecil Bullard: Let Bob bankrupt his business. Let Bob hire somebody at 15 bucks an hour and lose him. I can't do that. I want run my business as a financial model and make sure that I'm profitable in all areas of my business. Yeah, and absolutely there are gonna be some people that are gonna say, I don't want to go there and that's fine.

Cecil Bullard: The one more just comment maybe before we go on to the next thing, we've, I've worked with three to 4,000 clients individually over my career, and we currently work with several hundred clients at the institute.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: And the top. 15%, the guys that make the most money, the guys that have the most consistent businesses, the guys that don't worry about the fact that Thanksgiving is coming.

Cecil Bullard: The guys that have, you know, 500,000 sitting in the bank as a you know, here's my spare money in case we have a bad week or whatever.

Speaker 4: Yeah,

Cecil Bullard: those guys have things in common, and one of them is they're not the cheapest guy. They're always the most expensive guy in the neighborhood, and they're constantly helping their customers understand why that's of value.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. So why should you come here and spend more money with me than you go somewhere else? And I think we know this all the time. We buy shit online. Oh. We buy stuff online and it comes not your censorship. You can say whatever you want. Yeah. It comes and to our homes or our businesses.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And we go, well, that was wasted money. That's a piece of crap. And, but it was cheap.

Lucas Underwood: Right. I've had so many conversations with shop owners over the years, and I'll say, let me ask you a question. So what, okay. Last time, let's say you replaced a TV in your house, Uhhuh. When was that? Oh, I bought one last year.

Lucas Underwood: Okay. Tell me something. Did you go and buy the 13 inch black and white television, this thing that you could find,

Cecil Bullard: right? That they sell for $23 and 99 cents? Or did you buy the. $1,400. Right. I wanted a

Lucas Underwood: nice TV

Cecil Bullard: ole or whatever it is.

Lucas Underwood: Right, right. Yeah. No, I wanted a nice tv. Okay, so that means you are telling me that you're so worried about raising your prices because of consumer perception but you could buy the cheapest TV if consumer perception was all that.

Lucas Underwood: It was, wouldn't everybody buy the cheapest thing? It's not just money that motivates us to buy. Right. And I think that's something that's lost. And so many of us we're technicians and you know this as well as I do, there's a lot of technicians selling out of their wallets as shop owners today.

Lucas Underwood: And it, it just, they don't have the perspective they need. They just don't have it different.

Cecil Bullard: There's a, when you go from being a tech, there's a skillset that you have when you become a manager or service advisor. Different skillset. Yeah. When you become an owner, different skillset. And if you don't learn to think in a different way to have the different skillset, what that is, then you're never gonna achieve what you can achieve.

Cecil Bullard: Yep.

Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. Okay, next question. Can you guys please explain the preferred customer program a little more in detail now? This was you talking about it, so I'll kind of let you Yeah. I think the last time, take that and roll with it. Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: I looked at, I wanted people to book their next appointment. And in order to get that done, I felt like I needed to give them some something.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. So, you could come to my shop and get a loaner car no matter who you were. Yeah. We had loaner cars for everybody because we knew that if I gave you a car, you were gonna spend five times more than somebody that was gonna wait for their car. Right. So let's give you a car. You go away that solves your transportation problem.

Cecil Bullard: It's that hospitality thing that unreasonable hospitality. Yeah. We also watched every car that came in. We ran surveys. The surveys said, customers most important thing is having a clean car. And the second most important thing is having a loaner car that they don't have to worry about transportation.

Cecil Bullard: So when I did the loaner cars, when I did the car washes, I raised my liberate by four bucks an hour because my cost was gonna be two bucks an hour to do that. Yeah. Anticipated. Now that said. I'm already giving loaner cars and car washes to everybody, but I created a card that said you're a preferred customer.

Cecil Bullard: And on that card, there were two loaner cars valued at $65 a day. Yeah. There were two car washes valued at $40 or 42 or whatever. Right. There were, there was a windshield treatment, which if we had done it for you separately, like an Aqua Pelle or a high-end Rain X we would've probably charged you 90 bucks.

Cecil Bullard: And so we valued it at 90, but we gave it to our customer for being a preferred customer. We also discounted some of our services by a little bit. Okay. 'cause we also knew that if you're a preferred customer, once we did the service and we presented the work to you, you bought twice as much as a non-preferred customer.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Okay. And so I created a card that, and everybody that came in, I said, my service advisors or me said, would you like to be a preferred customer? And they were like, what does that mean for me? Well, we have a card here. It's got these items on it. It's worth about $450, and you get one of these every year, has a preferred customer.

Cecil Bullard: But we ask something from you. What we ask is that you make and keep your next appointment. Now we have six months service schedules, so will we be booking a service for you in six months? Okay. And if you can't make it, we have a communication communications system that three weeks before we're gonna send you a message and three days before we're gonna give you a call.

Cecil Bullard: And if you can't make it, all we ask is that you go, let's get it rescheduled. I'm not ready, or I can't make it. Okay. Right. Just like the dentist and For sure. And after doing that for the first year I think we were booking nine, 10 appointments a day out of 13 cars. Okay. Right. And we had a, I don't know, it was 69% or 72% show up rate.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. And I didn't think that was high enough. So I started closing the window a little people that wouldn't make their appointment, people that fought me I didn't make them preferred customers. Yeah. And so now we're booking six cars a day out of the 13. Yeah. But we had a 92% show up rate. Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: And if you looked at a month, we actually had a, like a 97% show up rate within a month of the appointment. 'cause that was what we did. Right? And it's just a card and it's a script that you would teach your service advisors to say, would you like to be a preferred customer? And here's what we do for you and here's what we want ask for from you.

Cecil Bullard: Now, by the way, because we were already doing loaner cars and we were already doing car washes, my cost for that preferred customer card was, I don't think it cost me $35 for the year. Yeah, for sure. To offer that. And these people spent twice as much and they didn't argue and they weren't hard to convince to do the work they needed.

Cecil Bullard: And by having six appointments a day, all of a sudden my car count leveled out.

Lucas Underwood: That's what I was getting ready to say ups and downs is I'm over here thinking, you know, here we are, we're coming out of Thanksgiving, we're going into Christmas. We know this time of year is very up and down, and I'm thinking like, what would six months ago have been, right?

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. I'm thinking in the rush of my season, busy. And so now I'm, you know, back to the same thing where we're talking about the amusement side of things, right? I was in this meeting and this training and they had these research and analyst and they were talking about these huge parks and they've got it all heat mapped out and they're like, here's where we're busy, here's where we're slow.

Lucas Underwood: We're gonna move volume from here to here with this strategy. Hang on a minute. Now this is, we're gonna put

Cecil Bullard: The water

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: The $18 waters and the $12 ice cream over here. So people have to go over there. Exactly. And then they're gonna be where we

Lucas Underwood: want 'em to be. And we gotta think about that.

Lucas Underwood: So like in their scheduling, right? They change prices and they adjust things and they move things around based on that. And I was thinking, gosh, our industry is lacking when it comes to this thought process. Thinking ahead and planning. We've not developed and grown. Cecil, why is that? Why when you look at this industry we're what, how many points behind inflation since 1980?

Cecil Bullard: Oh my God. The average shop right now should be probably 264. $265. Yeah. If we raised 3% a year since 1980. Yeah. The average shop right now, I think, like I said, the last survey was like 1 28 or something. I do have shops. I a new client the other day I'm talking to, and he's like, I said, well, so what's your labor rate?

Cecil Bullard: He says, oh, we're 365 an hour. I was like, oh my gosh. Oh, right. You know, and of course they're in a, they're in a a very wealthy part of town working on high-end cars and Yeah, that makes sense. But they're not afraid to be what they need to be. I mean, why do we not because we make excuses.

Cecil Bullard: Mm-hmm. And we accept the excuses.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Okay.

Cecil Bullard: I'm not, I mean. What can I control, right? What can I control? Can I put a preferred customer program? Can I create a card? Can I punch it out when the customer comes? If the customer forgets their card, do I really care if I need to punch that out or not?

Cecil Bullard: Because you know what, if they came back a third time and I needed to give 'em a loaner car, I'd still give 'em a loaner car. I wouldn't say, well, you're outta loaner cars, right? Yeah, because so we are so busy trying to get the next car out. I talk about the assembly line, you know, I went to Nema Uhmi, which was Toyota's plant in San Jose, California.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, they're not there anymore, but they were the best and most successful manufacturer in the world, right? And not by like 3%, by like 28%. They put out 28% more cars with 28% less flaws outta that plant than anybody else. I went on the tour and I said at the end of the tour, I said, okay, I heard all the crap.

Cecil Bullard: What's the secret? They said, there's two things we do. Number one, when there's a problem on the line, we stop the line. Yeah. The whole line. Not just a

Lucas Underwood: piece of it, all of it. We don't

Cecil Bullard: go, okay, we'll deal with that a six months from now, we fix it. And number two, when the line is stopped, everybody's responsible for fixing it.

Cecil Bullard: So think about in terms of your shop. So I have a business and I'm not making the profits that I need to, right. But I've gotta work, instead of looking at my pricing and looking at how I dispatch and how I do, I have a preferred customer program. What's my marketing look like? I've gotta fix that car because it's got a problem and it's kicking my ass or my people's ass.

Cecil Bullard: And so I'm gonna dig into that. I'm not stopping the line. Exactly. I'm not solving the problem. Right. You know why that is. Right? Do you know why that is? Sure. You know why? Because I know why that is. Joy out of fixing the car and being the guy that can fix the car. Not the joy out of exactly.

Cecil Bullard: Fixing a lot of cars. It's because we know happy and making money. Right. We don't

Lucas Underwood: know how to do the other thing. We know how to fix the car. Well,

Cecil Bullard: then you go, okay, so that's the variable.

Lucas Underwood: I know the monster in the closet that I know. I know how to deal with that.

Cecil Bullard: So why do I need a coach? Right? I mean, I, yeah.

Cecil Bullard: I have mentors. You know, you talked about Wayne and you talked about Michael and people that work in the company and outside of the company. I'm always trying to find like, oh man, that person does that really well. Yeah. I need to learn how to do that really well. Do I have to pay them? Will they do it for free?

Cecil Bullard: Will they become a mentor of mine? Will they get in my circle? How do I get 'em in my circle? Right? Yeah. I wanna surround myself with. With everybody that has all the skill sets that I don't have, so that when I need that skill set, I can go can they teach me that? Or do I hire them to do, you know, we talked about marketing, you know, hire marketing companies.

Cecil Bullard: Stop trying to do your own marketing. You're not qualified. It's too complex, right? Oh, I'm gonna do my own brain surgery, right? Oh, yeah. Because it's cheaper. I offered Cecil, I would've to a fortune. No, I got a pair. Needle knife. Thank you. Yeah. And a and a hot iron. We would've, that's it. We would've got up there and did that, burned that right out.

Lucas Underwood: It may not have been nearly as like aesthetically pleasing was done, but I promise I've gotten it outta there,

Cecil Bullard: scar, et cetera. But you know, it's kind of this mentality of, and I don't know if it's. You know, the guys with a DHD, we have a high level of A DHD in our industry, the guys that are dyslexic, we have a high level of dyslexia in our industry.

Cecil Bullard: I don't know if we were kind of pushed into that, into automotive and fixing cars, I think all of us have certain talents that when we do certain things, it just brings us joy. Right? Yeah. I mean, you get a car that doesn't run, comes in on a tow truck, and you know, you spend a couple hours on it and then you're driving it down the street and it's, you know, you're driving it like a striped ass tape, right?

Cecil Bullard: And it's running like that, and there's you're smiling from ear to ear and you're endorphins are going, your adrenaline's up and you're just excited. And then you come in and you go. I have to try to figure out how to get my customers to book appointments. You know, that's not fun. That's not, you know, but if you plan, it's not

Lucas Underwood: like I feel like I can do anything about it.

Lucas Underwood: I feel helpless. I feel powerless.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Right. But if you know what to do and you actually do it, and you create a team of people that will get behind you to help you do those things, right? Yeah. And that's the whole company. And here's the thing.

Lucas Underwood: It becomes fun. It does. It does. And here's the thing is that I think there's a lot of fear involved.

Lucas Underwood: I think we make a lot of decisions based on fear in this industry. And we love our shops. They're our babies. We've poured our heart and soul into them, and we feel like anything we do could disrupt or damage our shops. And so it's very hard to make those decisions. It's very hard to make that push and jumping out on that limb to make a big move like that fills and, you know, I,

Cecil Bullard: so have you basically said, this is what I really want.

Cecil Bullard: This is my vision. Yeah. These are the results that I need in order. To be ultimately successful to get what I need out of this business, both financially, emotionally, et cetera.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: And many guys have never thought past the next job, the next bill.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah,

Lucas Underwood: absolutely. And they push themselves into a spot.

Lucas Underwood: And I keep seeing this happen. They push themselves into a spot where they're convinced they're either going to be miserable for the rest of their lives, or all of a sudden they're the one who does the flip. And they're like, I don't care about the client, I don't care about the car, I don't care about anything.

Lucas Underwood: And I think that's something important we need to bring up because a lot of people think that fixing the car is like some great magical thing for our consumer. That's the base level of proficiency for an auto repair shop. That's the expectation. Yeah. Yeah. You have to go, well,

Cecil Bullard: you have to go well beyond fixing the car.

Cecil Bullard: And by the way, fixing the car. I know a lot of shops that fix a lot of cars and go broke. Absolutely. Where everybody's unhappy, miserable, they can't afford the tools they need, they can't even fix the roof that's leaking water every time it rains. Yep. Because they're afraid to raise their labor rate by 10 bucks an hour.

Cecil Bullard: I argue with or to hold up parts margin, you know, properly or whatever.

Lucas Underwood: I argue with Brian Pollock multiple times a week about this, and this is a very upsetting topic for some folks. But here's the deal. I talked to Brian and we're talking about the fact that I'm over here with a 4.9 star on Google and I can look at my negatives and I'm like, yeah, I earned that.

Lucas Underwood: Yep. And I look over across the street and there's somebody with 3.3 stars. They are known to not fix the car and the parking lot's packed full. And they did tons and tons of revenue, but I, it couldn't just be fixing the car.

Cecil Bullard: So I, there's a guy, I could mention his name. You and I both know him real well.

Cecil Bullard: He is one of our clients. Been a client for a long time. Yeah. He's got multiple shops. When we started they were doing 2.1 million

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: And losing money Yep. In their business. Yep. You know, and I think the first year we did like 2.4 and we made four or $500,000.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: Because we restructured and we did, you know, the important, the things that are important, right?

Cecil Bullard: The, I've gotta price myself correctly. I have to make sure that I have systems and process that create productive people. Wait minute, you didn't do it by

Lucas Underwood: fixing all the cars?

Cecil Bullard: No. Fixing cars is again, like, I'm gonna go to the grocery store, I'm gonna buy groceries. Right. And I expect when I open that bread up it's.

Cecil Bullard: It's bread and that I can make a sandwich with it. Right. That's exactly. And so you, you don't win anything by giving me bread. Yeah. You win stuff by having a clean store where I can find what I need and I have some choices to make, and maybe I could buy that high end bread that's twice as expensive, but I kind of like that one.

Cecil Bullard: Right. And you could do the same thing when you talk about the industry that your family's in, right?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: It's not, it's the experience that the customer walks away from thinking how they so close out. Not for this, but I'm gonna close you out. Mm-hmm. I have a script. You know, Hey Lucas.

Cecil Bullard: I've taken your money. I'm not gonna say this, but I already, I got your keys in hand. I got your keys in my hand. And I'm gonna say, Hey, Lucas, you know, before you leave, I need a promise from you. Will you promised me something? And you're gonna say, ah, had to pay on the Cecil, or, sure. Whatever. And I'm gonna say, well, it's two things, right?

Cecil Bullard: Number one, if we did a great job three days from now, someone's gonna call you and say, did we do a great job, basically? And if we did, do you mind recommending us to family and friends? Right? And you're gonna say, what? Yes. You know, you're gonna say yes. And then I'm gonna say this, Lucas, here's where the promise comes in.

Cecil Bullard: It's the most important thing. If you can't say yes, would you call me personal? My name is on these two business cards, my personal phone number. And tell me why you can't say yes. So I can fix that so that we can take care of our clients and make you happy. Right? A hundred. And now you're walking away from my shop.

Cecil Bullard: Having had an experience with someone who cares about whether or not you're happy instead of Well, I fixed your car, right? Yep, a hundred percent. And

Lucas Underwood: I've got a reel that, that upset a lot of people and it's a reel of Dutch. And he was talking about the fact that the new generation, and I don't necessarily think this is a generational thing, but Dutch, we gotta be careful

Cecil Bullard: about generalities and course generation stuff.

Cecil Bullard: But yeah, of course. But

Lucas Underwood: he, that, that's kind of where he was taking it. And he said, I don't care if it's blowing a hundred miles an hour in the wind and it's snowing and you can't see the runway, and all of the things that could go wrong have gone wrong. You don't get a pat on the back by the chief pilot for landing the plane because that was your damn job.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah,

Lucas Underwood: you have to do that. Your job was to land the plane. There was no exception. That was the job. And see, we miss that in automotive. We think that everything's about fixing the car. We become hyper-focused on the car itself. And the car is the least important part of this equation, in my opinion. Is it important to fix it, right?

Lucas Underwood: Yes. I would tell.

Cecil Bullard: I would tell you the most important thing is customer experience. Yes, absolutely. And customer experience starts with your marketing. Yeah. And what they can see. How do you answer the phone? I have. Yeah, I have. I have listened to 10,000 phone calls. Yeah. If I've listened to one, and that's not an exaggeration, and I can name on.

Cecil Bullard: Two hands and one foot. How many people answered the phone correctly or well, right. Yeah. And that's the customer, that's the start of the customer experience. Are you educating that customer about why you do what you do and how that's beneficial to them throughout the whole experience? Are you in the experience with another experience?

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. So that they walk away with the right stuff in their head. Have you stopped the assembly line?

Lucas Underwood: To

Cecil Bullard: figure out what's wrong and a hundred percent put those things in place so that you can give them a great, and by the way, the second most important thing is making sure that you're profitable so that you can deliver those experiences.

Cecil Bullard: Amen. Right.

Lucas Underwood: Amen. So you can stand behind it so you can take care of your people. Yeah. So you do the things that have to be done. Cecil, I know we gotta wrap up here and so I'm just gonna jump in and tell Jacob's a good friend of mine. He asked a question, I'm gonna save this question. Okay.

Lucas Underwood: We're gonna answer it next time. I may even respond to him personally and answer. His parents are actually in my neighborhood right now, so they're welcome to stop. Oh, cool. Say hello. Come on in. So, I just wanted to say to Jacob, Hey buddy, I'm sorry we didn't get to your question. I promise that we will answer it next time and I will make sure Cecil gets a copy of it so he can reach out to you and give you his answer as well.

Lucas Underwood: But we will get it answered next time. Cecil. In closing. We have one minute left. And I've never heard you say anything in one minute. Is there anything you want the people to know? Don't

Cecil Bullard: misquote me online.

Lucas Underwood: Listen, I wanna say I could be wrong. I believe that was Chris Inright. And Chris is one of the sweetest, most humble and awesome human beings you'll ever meet. And I believe that Chris I believe that Chris may have taken something in the wrong light. I could be completely wrong. It may not have

Cecil Bullard: The quote was, Cecil said that all guys working outta their house are bums and you know, whatever.

Lucas Underwood: Oh yeah, that's definitely Chris. That's why got his feelings hurt. That's who he is.

Cecil Bullard: That's not, that is not what I've said. I was cleaning out a storage unit this weekend, and there's a guy working out of a storage unit on someone's car. Right, right. Now that guy is not helping the industry at all.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. But I know a lot of my clients, I know a lot of people that started in their house and then they moved to a shop and then they move to coaching and now they have five shops or whatever. There's always a starting point and there's always bad people. A hundred percent in, in, no matter what it is.

Cecil Bullard: Dentist, doctors mechanics, whatever you wanna call. Please don't

Lucas Underwood: go to a dentist or a doctor that's working out of their home, though, I'll say that might be a bad

Cecil Bullard: idea. Probably not that smart. Although it might save you some money. Right? That's it. You know, and I love the fact that we have a lot of questions.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And we have a lot of people coming online and I'm. I'm glad that we get to make a difference here. Yeah. So, I look forward to the next one, brother.

Lucas Underwood: Amen. Me too. And look I'll say this I admire someone like a Chris Enright, and I'll tell you why. It's because Chris Enright Hass been listening to people like you, people like all these other coaches in the industry.

Cecil Bullard: I like to get quoted, so

Lucas Underwood: I'm happy about that. Here's the thing is this man's been watching and he's been building the base of the business. Mm-hmm. And I wish that I had the patience and diligence that he did, because what he did is he started with the foundation and said, I'm gonna build the foundation.

Lucas Underwood: Right. I'm gonna build a good foundation under this to do that. I need to do this at my home. I'm gonna start small, and when the opportunity presents itself, I will expand. But here's the foundation of how I'm gonna do this, and here's how I'm gonna be profitable and here's my plan. So he started very early saying, Hey, this may not be an ideal situation, but I'm gonna get profitable.

Lucas Underwood: I'm gonna maximize what I have now. So now I can go buy something and I'm in a smart place. I can afford it and I can make this work. But the other thing is more people would slow down and pay attention to that. Yeah.

Cecil Bullard: He charged enough to be profitable to have the money. To do the next level or the next five levels.

Cecil Bullard: So amen.

Lucas Underwood: Cecil, thank you for being here. Thank you, all of you for all the great questions. We look forward to it. Hopefully see you all again really soon. Next time we've got another one of these coming up and make sure you're emailing in some questions. We might do some more of the ones like we've done on changing the industry where we actually get a PowerPoint up and we answer some big questions and talk through some more delicate subjects.

Lucas Underwood: So make sure you email your questions in.

Cecil Bullard: Thank you guys. Thank you.