179 -Ask Me Anything: The State of the Industry and Private Equity’s Impact - Featuring Cecil Bullard & Michael Smith
December 10, 2025 - 00:57:47
Private equity and family offices are accelerating consolidation in automotive repair, and Cecil Bullard and Michael Smith explain what that means for shop owners. They break down valuation multiples by shop size, profit, and owner dependence, and why true scale commands higher returns. The conversation also covers shared corporate offices, cooperative style partnerships, and how structure and SOPs can reduce risk while improving consistency. They stress that pricing, labor rates, and leadership development are key to attracting talent and building an investable business. Operators who build teams and value propositions will thrive, while price focused shops will struggle or disappear in 2026.
Cecil Bullard, Founder of The Institute
Michael Smith, Chief Strategy Officer
[00:01:10] – Cecil opens the discussion on industry consolidation and growing interest from private equity and family offices.
[00:07:45] – Michael explains how shop size, owner involvement, and profit margins impact valuation multiples.
[00:15:30] – The realities of small-shop valuations and why tools and equipment add little resale value.
[00:23:40] – What it truly takes to reach higher multiples through scale, systems, and leadership teams.
[00:32:20] – Why private equity is struggling to find enough well-run, scalable automotive businesses.
[00:41:10] – The benefits and risks of shared corporate offices and co-op style shop groups.
[00:52:00] – A candid discussion on labor rates, pricing fear, and the industry’s undervaluation of its work.
[01:06:30] – Succession planning realities when selling to family members or key employees.
[01:20:15] – Looking ahead to 2026: why opportunity favors shops that build value, not just fix cars.
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Share your story with us at [email protected], and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.
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Episode Transcript Disclaimer
This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at [email protected]. Cecil Bullard: Good morning in some parts of the country, I think. Um, my name is Cecil Bullard. I am the founder of the Institute, uh, and I have with me today, uh, Michael Smith, who is our chief strategist. And, uh, I would also say, um, presenter, extraordinaire. Um, Michael, welcome. Thank you, sir. Uh, this is an ask me anything.
Cecil Bullard: So if you are online with us and you want to ask questions, please uh, um, put 'em in the comments and we will, uh, bring them in and do our best to get, uh, the answers. Um, today, I think, uh, I'd like to start us out. However, uh, kind of talking about this, um, this idea of the, the. Venture capitalists coming in and kind of taking over, uh, the industry.
Cecil Bullard: Consolidation is, is what we, we have, um, you know, Michael, I think you and I have known each other now about three years, three and a half years, and I think you're coming up on two years with the institute.
Cecil Bullard: already. Can you believe it?
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Oh, time flies when you're having fun, right?
Cecil Bullard: When you're having fun when you get younger every day. Um. Let's, let's go back to maybe two years ago and, and compare, uh, you know, venture capital is definitely coming in to the, to the industry. Uh, I probably have, uh, five or six, um, inquiries from mainly at this point, uh, what they call, what they call 'em, a family practice.
Cecil Bullard: Mm-hmm. Family, uh, family office, uh, four, uh. Potential purchase of the institute because they want to be in the vertical. Um, and they often talk about the vertical. Um, and then I also get, I don't know, probably somewhere between eight and 12, uh uh. Things from venture capital, uh, venture capital companies that are inquiries.
Cecil Bullard: In fact, I think I have a conversation tomorrow with one of them. Uh, you know, hey, we're in Canada and we're trying to consolidate up here in Canada, and uh, you know, we've kind of looked you up and we think you know a lot of stuff, so we'd like to talk to you. Um, often that leads to a, um. A quote unquote job opportunity on either on the board or as some kind of a, um, uh.
Cecil Bullard: Consultant to them, uh, you know, for the marketplace. So go back two years ago and, and, uh, think about, you know, where the industry, we thought the industry was going, where the industry is going, and then now look at it today. And, and tell me your thoughts on
Cecil Bullard: You know, on, on that.
Michael Smith: Yeah. It's very interesting and in fact, if you'll indulge me, I wanna back up about a decade just for the start if we can, and go back to the very first private equity guys that showed up, um, at the table.
Michael Smith: And they were, they had a vision. Knowing in this industry, we were headed in the direction of what 50, 60 other industry verticals have gone down. The first one's on the ground, maybe the one we all know best, is Sun Automotive out of Phoenix. Put a stake in the ground, decade ish ago, something in that neighborhood.
Cecil Bullard: 10, 12 years. Yeah.
Michael Smith: Yeah, something like that. And they bought a, you know, reasonably smallish local shop that was underway and had some local presence and, and started, and the idea was to add to, to, those are, those are called the, uh, the, the baseline or the, uh, the, the platform companies that you start with.
Michael Smith: And then they make investments from there. And the idea is to just add scale. Scale, uh, takes your multiple up on an exponential basis when you go to sell the business. So there's a game afoot where the mom and pops and I hesitate to call us that 'cause I don't want to offend anybody with that. But from an investment perspective, we are a mom and pop industry, meaning we're mostly small, mostly privately held, mostly owner operated.
Michael Smith: And then the idea is to come sweeping in, buy up some kind of a regional. Starting presence of five to 10 to 15 shops and then sell it to a bigger fish who then rolls up four or five of those and goes on. So that started decade ish ago with Sun. We knew it was coming. It's not a big surprise. Part of the reason I'm in this industry at this point was a decade ago, I got introduced to a three shop company that wanted to do something different.
Michael Smith: And so I kind of watched it coming. And so what happened was there was this great expectation that our industry was gonna roll up quickly. And it hasn't gone as quickly as we thought. And Cecil, now I'm gonna kind of jump into the next five to two years to kind of where we are today. Yeah, brother, go ahead.
Cecil Bullard: before you, before you go there, I want to clarify a couple of things. Okay? Sure. So you talked about the multiple. And so if I have one shop. Uh, net, uh, 10 or 12%. Um, and I am involved in the business day to day, uh, and, uh, business isn't really growing much, et cetera. Mm-hmm. Uh, what's my multiple? Okay.
Cecil Bullard: And I know that I know that answer, but. You know? Yeah.
Michael Smith: Yeah. It depends on where your shop is. First of all. If you're in a geographic region where there's immediate distance, uh, geographic growth available for expansion is different than if you're rural. But let's just say you're in sort of the middle of all that.
Michael Smith: Um, you would get, maybe if it's, you know, I'm gonna say this, and this is part of what's surprised private equity in any industry vertical, you would imagine that may be the middle of the bell curve. Would be a seven to 8% profit margin. Maybe this 80th percentile would be a 12 to 15% profit margin in the top shops or top companies in that industry.
Michael Smith: Depending on the industry, if you're in the retail, groceries, margins aren't that high, but an industry like ours, in the trades that are profitable, you could expect a 25, 30% profit margin, top 10%. Ours is a harder business than that. So I'm, I'm, I'm gonna get to the answer to your question, the middle of the bell curve.
Michael Smith: So when I, I guess what I'm saying is when you're saying a 10 to 12% profit margin, you're not talking about a 50th percent company? No, that's on the, that's on the higher end. It's on the way higher end of our bell curve. And so when, my, my point is when they look in, the average shop will get a two and a half to two and three quarter ebitda.
Michael Smith: Or, um, let's, let's use net and EBITDA interchangeably. They are different numbers. EBITDA is a financial net number, which is more pure, if you will, but we use net. So let's talk nets, right? The average company at the top of our bell curve, halfway through the 235,000 companies, is a two to 3% profit margin.
Michael Smith: It's got two to three employees, and the owner doesn't take home a paycheck every day. So when we're talking about.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah, so I'm making, I'm making, you know, net 40, net 50, maybe net 60,000. I've got a 60, 80,000 paycheck with the truck and insurance and gas and whatever else I, I managed to bill for from myself.
Cecil Bullard: Um, you know, and, uh, and I'm gonna get a two, two and a half x maybe.
Michael Smith: You're gonna get, you get a two and a half X. And, and if you, and here's, here's what's gonna hold you back. Here's what's gonna be in your favor, that your nets are higher than normal. Here's what's not gonna hold you in favor, is the fact that you're still deep up to your neck in the business.
Michael Smith: And we have
Cecil Bullard: talked, yeah. Yep. And so I don't, I, I don't want to dig way, way deep here. I just want to kinda set the, set the stage. All right. So, so I've got a business that's doing let's say 650,000, two techs. By the way, that should be a million dollar, million, two business, two techs. But, but I know shops and I know that many shops are stuck in the 6 57 range with two techs in their shop.
Cecil Bullard: And, uh, my net is, uh. You know, three, four, 5%. I'm, I'm, I'm going to be lucky at that point to get a two and a half X, so you'll be lucky
Michael Smith: to get two and a half. Yes, sir.
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. So I have this shop that, and then I think that my parts and my, and my, my tools, these, these tools that I've spent so much money on over my lifetime, et cetera, I, I'm thinking, well, geez, I've got two, $300,000 worth of tools at least, and right on.
Cecil Bullard: Accept, accept they're worth. 10 cents on the dollar in a, in a buy. Right? That's not where I get my, my value. All right? So that's, that's a And by the way, that's what we would call a small business, right? Yeah. Um, the mom and pop, right? Yep. And then, and then we move up to, let's, let's say that, uh, let, I'm doing 1,000,005, all right?
Cecil Bullard: And I'm net 10%, plus I, I get a salary out of the business and I'm kind of not. Um. That involved. I mean, I'm not like writing service every single day. I'm still helping the master tech when he can't figure something out. I'm still writing some of the tickets. I'm still involved with the, maybe we're, we're homegrown our financials, uh, you know, et cetera, and so now I'm gonna sell that business.
Cecil Bullard: Right? Yep. I'm still probably at the most of three x,
Michael Smith: three to three and a quarter. Here's the extra quarter. If you really aren't in the business and you really are working on it, meaning you can disappear for a week and nothing really substantially changes, if you have growth from revenue and profit on top of the three, you might get to a three and a quarter.
Michael Smith: They, you know, growth is a good thing in the investment business. You wanna buy a growing business, not a shrinking one. Quality of leadership, stability of team. If you have high turnover, if you have toxic people in leadership, if you've got a problem that an investor's gonna buy, you know, they may walk in and say, tell you what look like, love the numbers.
Michael Smith: I'll give you three and a quarter for the business contingent upon the due diligence study. And that's, it's a lot like,
Cecil Bullard: and when you're saying three and a quarter, we're not talking about three, $3,250,000. We're talking about 3.5 x of my net or EBITDA your net. Right. Right. Yeah. So, so now let one more step, we're gonna have a question here in a minute, but I love it.
Cecil Bullard: I, I just kind of wanna follow this for a second. Mm-hmm. Now, um, I've got a business doing say, 4 million. And we're net 20, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, I'm netting 20, I'm netting a million dollars or 800,000 out of this business. Uh, I'm not working in the business at all. Mm-hmm. Really? Uh, I'm managing my managers right.
Cecil Bullard: And, uh, and that's a, we're gonna call that one shop. It could be two two $2 million shops, but we'll call it one. And now I'm gonna sell that. Uh, uh, in the marketplace. What, what is the, you know, what's the X? We're we talking maybe four X?
Michael Smith: Maybe four. I'd say it'd be a real stretch to get to four, and again, this feels like real scale from our single shop perspective that we tend to run.
Michael Smith: Historically at the finance investment level, you're still very, very, very small. And those numbers are a lot better than what, see, so what we started with, they're a lot better, but they're not gonna scale you to higher multiples yet. So maybe three and a half, maybe three and three quarters. If you can demonstrate stability over time in these things.
Michael Smith: Getting the fours, I mean, maybe, maybe, right? If, if I
Cecil Bullard: wait for the, if everything's perfect to put the right plan together. If, if, if I wait long enough, et cetera, I may not have the, the runway to, to wait. Um, but absolutely that's still, by the way, that's still small business. It's still very small business period, right?
Cecil Bullard: Mm-hmm. So now, now, now I've got four locations and each location is doing say, $2 million. I'm doing eight, maybe 10 million. I'm still net 20. 22, 24. I'm not involved in that business. On a day-to-day basis. I have an area manager. I have managers in the stores, et cetera, et cetera, four. Four and a half x, five x that,
Michael Smith: no, I'd say four, four and a half would be the range you're looking at.
Michael Smith: And it feels like we're growing a lot and crawling slowly, and that is absolutely true.
Cecil Bullard: So one of the things, one of the things that I've, I've recognized is, is. We that I, I know some deals that have been done where there were 10 x, 12 x, uh, and some other opportunities in that, in the, in those deals, and I know you were involved in, in one of those.
Cecil Bullard: We're not gonna, like, we won't mention names and all of that stuff, but, but I don't see as many of those happening. As I thought I would see happening at this point in time,
Michael Smith: I think the private equity guys are not seeing, they are, uh, Cecil, there is a trillion and almost a half dollars of, of what they call a dry powder out there, a trillion and a half dollars in investors hands.
Michael Smith: And these are big investors all the way down to small that can't find projects. So, so let me just say, to start my comment, they're dying for us to have projects, but here's where we don't have them. We don't have scaled 10 plus location type companies, 20 locations, 40 locations, 60 locations that they can sink their teeth into and get into with a 10 to 12 to 13, maybe even a 15 times ebitda because we haven't built that kind of scale yet.
Michael Smith: And so the challenge, yeah, brother, go ahead. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cecil Bullard: So one of the things that you did in, in what you did was you brought five smaller players together and created a 40 location ish, right. Right offering, which moved the X up considerably.
Michael Smith: Yeah. They immediately gained scale from each other by coming together into a group.
Michael Smith: Now, there's a downside to that too, is that the PE guys, the private equity investors are buying five different transactions in its. Single transaction, if that makes sense. So the complication of implementation is multiplied by five within a single project so that the multiples aren't as high as if you had a single company that brought 40, 50 locations to the table.
Michael Smith: Right. And so there's pros and cons to all of this. Yes, sir.
Cecil Bullard: And so what I, what I really kind of want to talk about here, and I, I still don't see the question. Maybe it's 'cause my glasses aren't, are, aren't good enough. But, but, um. If I'm a small business and I'm doing not a great job, um, I might be worth two x.
Cecil Bullard: Okay? 2.2, 2.4, right? If I'm a medium sized automotive shop, uh, million five, 2 million, uh, I might be worth three and a half x. Uh, if I'm a, uh, multi-location doing 10 million, I might be worth. Four and a half X and uh, I'd have to be a 40 to 50 or a combination where I brought in 40 or 50 shops with the right revenue in order to get an eight x, a 10 x and maybe even a 12 x.
Cecil Bullard: Okay? Yep. And so what I have not seen is these companies that, that are out there buying shops, like talk about Sun. They went crazy twice. Alright? They dumped a bunch of money. Uh, and then a few years later, they dumped a bunch more money into the Phoenix area. Bought up a few hundred shops in that area, and now they seem to be, uh.
Cecil Bullard: Not stalled, but certainly their growth is not, I think what they thought their growth was gonna be. Right. And there are fewer and fewer shops for them to buy. So I'm looking, uh, yesterday I got an an ad for a a four bay shop. I happen to know where it is. I happen to know who used to own it. But that shop is for sale for nickels.
Cecil Bullard: I mean, nickels, I could go buy it tomorrow. And that's, that, that's 'cause I got a couple of nickels and that's it. You know, if it was dimes, I'd be in trouble. Um, but nobody's buying it. Okay. Because it doesn't have any real value because it doesn't have the organization, the structure, the systems, the process, the, the, the clients.
Cecil Bullard: Right. And what I'm think, I'm, what I'm, what I'm thinking is happening in our industry is a separation of these are the good shops. These are the shops that are not so good. And even in that, I think the smart investor, uh, whether it's private equity or family office or whatever, they're not buying the not so good shops.
Cecil Bullard: No. Because they don't see a path through those shops to where they need, where they want to go.
Michael Smith: They're not buying. They're, yeah. Let me, and let me just build on something where we're talking about here. Suns, every private equity project would like to start with what? With this platform company in a geographic region.
Michael Smith: So region, right? So you'd like to have, yeah, so, so Phoenix, uh, Atlanta, whatever, 10, 20, 30 shops in a big city, and you buy that thing right up front and now you have a presence in the city so that you pay a big price for the owner, founder. Operators tend not to go away in those, they become partners in the private equity project at that point.
Michael Smith: They become
Cecil Bullard: private equity investors in their own lives.
Michael Smith: They do in their own companies, and they don't go away because here's the theory, that 30 shop system becomes the system that you then buy 10 shop systems until the market's empty. Then you buy five shop systems till the market's empty. Then you buy two shop systems and each of those, Cecil, back to our point, are getting less sophisticated, more work and implementation, A lot more upgrade needed to become.
Michael Smith: To the level of the private equity project. And so the scale, the value of those companies, your regional investment there is going down over time as you add scale and you're dumping that work and, and it's not a bad, in a bad way, it's an intentional way on the shoulders of the platform, people who are on the ground there.
Michael Smith: And so they may keep all the separate brands for a while of all the acquisitions, but over time the original brand on the ground will be rebranded there in the region or the private equity. Overall brand will be rebranded across the board. That's what's, those are the iterations that Sun went through.
Michael Smith: They would buy a 2030 shop system if they could find it in a region, and then they end up at some point buying onesies and twosies that aren't at the same level of their investments. But that's all that's left in a market. That's Yeah, that's the natural close. That's the
Cecil Bullard: drags, right? The
Michael Smith: drags are there.
Michael Smith: Well, yeah, and we don't even wanna call 'em that because it's just, it's just. Yeah. No, no, I'm with you and I'm, I'm not being critical of the word. It's a, there are, there are great shops that are, single shops that are run on a one-off basis, that are running consistent growth over time. Have a very strong team.
Michael Smith: The owner is sitting and maintaining a, a good leadership team that runs it for them. But,
Cecil Bullard: but you're still not gonna get a eight x outta that you, no, you're not. And those
Michael Smith: are few and far between. Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: Right. Yeah. Right.
Michael Smith: So no matter where you're. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cecil Bullard: I, I, I got this weird, like, uh, there's a, there's a trillion and a half dollars worth of powder in the gun, you know, and, and there's all these shops that are closing and or disappearing or being sold for the, for the littlest of money to the service advisor or the ex-partner or whatever.
Cecil Bullard: And, and I thought. I thought, you know, two years ago I thought, oh my gosh, uh, private equity's gonna come in and just suck those up, right? Um, uh, so, uh, gimme the incoming question. Uh, uh. What are your thoughts on sharing a corporate office with other like-minded shop owners? That, by the way, that's from isa, uh, Tola.
Cecil Bullard: I hope I got that right, uh, from pronunciation. And that is like the perfect, uh, the perfect question because that's what we have, uh, are working on, and that's what you've already accomplished. So I'll let you, I'll let. Answer that better than I. Yeah, that's,
Michael Smith: that's a great question and let me, let me run with it.
Michael Smith: The idea here is that if, if you have a, like as I mentioned before, if you have a single organization with a leadership team that's been in place long enough to prove that it's a real leadership team, which has then comes with it, a centralized corporate office, you have the best chance of getting the best multiple in the market that you're in.
Michael Smith: A step along the way, ISA or, or Issa, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, is what you're talking about. If you had other shops and you started to build a sort of a co-op of some of the things that you could share together, you're on track to potentially having. Uh, if you will, a co-op of shops that could go to market together.
Michael Smith: The co-op of shops is what we took to market with the project that I did. The best Deal those guys could have made, and we talked about it, was to have them become a single company with a single leadership group and a single set of, you know, down to the grinding level of SOPs, right? Doing it all the same way with single systems and all.
Michael Smith: That. Here's the risk you take though, and, and this is what we're here for, right? To look at the pros and the cons of this. The pros are you do that, you get your best outcome. The cons are what if by the time you're done building a couple things, bad can happen, right? Some of the partners that get into this don't do their.
Michael Smith: Their piece. Anybody in school remember doing team projects? Yeah. And some of the people didn't do any work at all and some people did a whole, all the rest of the work to get the grade. This is what you run up against, right? So here's the risk is that you put all that cost into building a single entity, then it doesn't function because you don't have control anymore.
Michael Smith: Huge issue in our is in businesses, you are the owner operator, you make all the decisions. And one of my first conversations with folks doing all this rollup stuff is you realize that when you make this transaction, you ain't the boss anymore. And they're like, what? And it's like, no, you don't have 51% of your company anymore.
Michael Smith: Now you have a committee. Now you have a board. Now you may have a controlling group that isn't you. Who's gonna tell you ultimately what you're gonna do, whether you like it or not. If push comes to shove and people are like, well, wait, I'm, I can't work for anybody else. I'm the master of my destiny. The reason I have this shop is 'cause I don't want to be a, you know, an employee.
Michael Smith: It's like, well, that's. Big mindset to get your head around. So back to the question, shared services are fantastic and shared services are a good first step toward kicking the tires on your, on your potential future business partners. Another thing to do is to have a peer group locally of your potential business partners, where you guys spend time building relationships with each other.
Michael Smith: Have it be a local peer group of very select people where you guys help each other improve each other's businesses. The background gain in that is that you're standardizing the way you do things by best practice over time. That gets you closer to being able to roll it up into a, into a roll up local, uh, single operation that you could sell to.
Michael Smith: Private equity for the multiple right scale gets you higher multiples in private equity. I also
Cecil Bullard: think, I also think you're driving. Um, performance. Um, because when you're comparing yourself against, you know, other like shops and you're saying, uh, you know, well, wait a minute. You raised your labor rate $25 an hour.
Cecil Bullard: I can raise my labor rate, and by the way, I'm gonna go 30 because I'm gonna be higher than you, blah, blah, blah. We see this happen like, uh, where there's a kind of a competitive nature to the group, uh, and a competitive nature, which, which does at least subtly have a tendency to drive result, right? Yep. Uh, other, other than I'm kind of in this world by myself.
Cecil Bullard: Um, and I, I've got my own blinders on because I don't know what I don't know.
Michael Smith: Now there's a danger. I wanna speak to a danger zone right here, which is the danger of having price and, uh, market conversations with, uh, companies that could be considered fixing. If you're not careful, and this is not dodging the rules, it's being aware of them, right?
Michael Smith: If you're in a pure group scattered across the country and you're comparing labor rates, it's a lot safer. Within an industry then if you have a concentration of people in the same town having the same conversation, you, I'm not saying you're, you're playing any games here with the law. I'm saying we don't.
Michael Smith: Right. We need to be aware
Cecil Bullard: of So you as, as a consultant. Okay. I, I have labor rate has been one of my big, um, things because, you know, um, uh, I took labor aid from 1980. Uh, where I was in Palm Springs, California, and I multiplied that times 3%, uh, every year until, I don't know, this year. And, um, the labor rate I would have today is about, it's real close to two 70.
Cecil Bullard: It's like 2 68 in change an hour. Mm-hmm. And yet the industry average, I think the last survey that was done was 1 28. Right. Right. So we're. At least probably 30, 35, maybe even 50% below where we really ought to be as an industry. And it's almost like we're afraid to have a labor rate conversation because we're afraid that somebody's listening and they're gonna say, you know, I'm, I raise my labor rate.
Cecil Bullard: You should probably raise yours, the, the whole industry. Can't, we can't build, we can't bring good techs in. We can't afford to pay them the, what they need to be paid. I'm getting these things from shops and he's, Hey, do you, what do you think? I'm gonna hire A-A-A-A-C Tech. I'm gonna pay that guy $22 an hour.
Cecil Bullard: My range is between 22 and 24. Well, well wait a minute. McDonald's is paying 27. Yep. So, so how am I gonna get a tech, you know, other than somebody that's either not very bright mm-hmm. Or somebody that just loves cars. Right. And, and they want to do it no matter what it takes. How are we gonna fill the gap if we can't pay a living wage to the people coming into our industry?
Cecil Bullard: Right. And we can't pay a living wage 'cause we don't charge enough to pay a living wage. Well, the guy down the street, you know, he's, he's only at a hundred bucks an hour and we got, uh, I, I was, um, I have a couple of storage units move the house. We put some stuff in storage and I'm moving outta one of the storage units this weekend.
Cecil Bullard: And, you know, I'm there most of the day. Saturday, on and off, like four or five times we made trips close the storage unit out. There's a guy. Working out of a storage unit, two units down, and he works on three cars that day. He's doing automotive service and repair out of a storage unit. Right. Mm-hmm. And I know that has not, there's Cecil's A DHD kicking in right here I am.
Cecil Bullard: Woo. Way. We're here. But, but I don't care, um, what your labor rate is. I just know that your labor rates that, that our labor rates have to go up in this industry. Or we are gonna have a lot of shops that are just gonna be gone.
Michael Smith: Well, and let me, let me lean into the backside of what you're saying too. I'm gonna take it to a strategic level.
Michael Smith: I believe I'm, I've been in this industry a decade at this point, after 35 years before that. You can't be that old. You can't be that old. I know. I'm actually older than you are. I don't tell anybody. Right. So, no, but I, but, but here's my point. We, um, I think we have a, a, a self-image issue in our industry.
Michael Smith: And I'm gonna say it straight up to everybody listening here. I, I wish you knew how much I think of you having grown up in 50 other industry verticals in the big consulting firms. When I work with my clients, the single shop folks, the triple shop folks in this industry, I tell y'all all the time, you guys are some of the best business people I've ever met in my life.
Michael Smith: And, and I get these looks across the table like, you're, you're joshing me, right? This is a joke. Is this a dad joke? That there's a punchline coming? It's like, no. This is a fact. The, the business we all run here is one of the most complicated businesses in the world that I've had my fingers on. Again, 50 60 industry verticals consideration.
Michael Smith: And I'm gonna tell you that when this, this, when you do this business, well you, I, I tell people all the time, you give me 10 top shop owners, I'll put 'em up against a sweet C-suite in any Fortune 100 company on a, on a competition basis, and we're gonna win. And you guys look back at me like I'm from another planet.
Michael Smith: I am telling you the truth. And I say that from the standpoint when we look at the marketplace and downgrade our thinking that, well, they couldn't possibly pay that much in the market. I'm, I'm telling you straight up, if your value proposition not competing on price. We had a microeconomic conversation.
Michael Smith: I would tell you every time, do not compete locally in your market on the basis of low price. Don't do it. There's only one winner in that game. It's the cheapest price and everybody playing that game's on your way out of the industry. What I will say is develop your value proposition so that you understand that what your customers get from you and the utility that you bring back to their life and turning their.
Michael Smith: Including their ROI on the repairs that you do, the return on investment, that you have a story to tell. And when you believe in your story, and Cecil, I'm backing you up now with labor rates, you're gonna realize we're not charging enough for the value that we bring back to the economy guys. Do you realize it?
Michael Smith: Without us, the economy ain't gonna function. We are the transportation baseline that keeps people going to work. It keeps kids going to soccer games. It keeps professionals in their trucks going to service other companies, et cetera. Without us, this economy grinds to a halt. Why do you think in COVID We were, we were called, you know, we were part of those, uh, essential, the exception.
Michael Smith: Yeah. We were essential companies that were allowed to keep functioning because. We're critical. So we gotta remember that, that we hold that, that, that status and, and place in our economies. And I want all of us to think more highly of ourselves. I'm just telling you, I meet owners day after day over and over who really question their skill and question kind of what they're worth in the market.
Michael Smith: And I'm saying, guys, we need a brand new way of thinking about this. And I, and I wanna encourage you here, if you can hear me, please hear me clearly, you're, you're as good as people get in the business world, I'm telling you right now. Now.
Cecil Bullard: So I have been coaching in this, in, I've been in the industry my entire adult life, right?
Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Actually, you could say I've been in the industry my entire life, but, you know, actively, uh, doing some job within this industry my entire adult life. And I've been in coaching for coming up on 25 years. Okay. And, and, um, my experience, my, my depth of knowledge, um, the guys that we have that are building value.
Cecil Bullard: Talking about value creating, value proposition, um, are able to charge more in their businesses. Mm-hmm. They're, they're attracting a better client. Um, so you know, there's that, uh, when you're talking to shop owners, there's, they're like, yeah, uh, I'd really like to work on Porsches. And you're like, oh, that's wonderful.
Cecil Bullard: If it's the first or second owner, when you get to the third owner or the fourth owner, you have somebody that bought a Porsche that can't afford to necessarily fix it. Those are not the best customers, right? No. And so the guys that are, are building this, this great value proposition and able to, to. You know, help their customers understand that value proposition are the ones that are most, uh, successful, most long-term successful.
Cecil Bullard: And they're the ones that are probably gonna walk away. With a five x, a six x, or maybe even a 10 x if they are putting themselves together with, you know, enough shops or enough shop owners to, to make it worth the, the while of the venture capital company, if that's who they're gonna sell to. Yeah. New,
Michael Smith: new question, incoming Cecil, let me have this one.
Cecil Bullard: Bring her in. Bring her in.
Michael Smith: It's, um, one of the, one of the things that, um, I, I have a group that I help understand what it takes to reinvest in your company like an investor. And what it means is instead of thinking like an owner operator, we think like an investor and think, how do we build value in our company that will be recognized by the marketplace?
Michael Smith: Marketplace? We're talking right now on the short list of many, many things that we consider and develop over time are two critical things, right? One of them is. Are you working in the business or are you working on the business? And if you are in the business, you're reducing the value of what you have because the minute you sell it, they have to replace you and your profit margins that you demonstrate.
Michael Smith: But trying to build your value around aren't gonna hold up in their hands 'cause they have to replace you. The second thing is, how do you do that? You have to have a leadership team and a team under them. That is rockstar enough to do this the way you would do it without you having to be there. And so you have to invest in your people.
Michael Smith: You gotta get toxicity outta your company. You have to have a strong team. And when you have that, then it leans into a third category, which is you can draw the loyal brand, ambassador customers, the best customers out of the market and into your hands that you can then sell that with your company too.
Michael Smith: The next owner, right? The next investor. It's investment perspective. Those three things are not typical in our industry. We are so technician centric. We're running a company like a machine. We get the cars in the front desk, we get 'em out the end of the day. We've done our job for the day. That is not building an investment grade company that is building an operating company that has fixing cars.
Michael Smith: Fixing cars. Can you believe it? Fixing, fixing cars
Cecil Bullard: is not what this is about. It's not what we do. I mean, ultimately cars have to be fixed. They do. But that is not what this is really all about. Right? Not if you want. To have, um, an easier life. Not if you want to, uh, make more money, if not, if you wanna support the people that are in your company.
Cecil Bullard: And I think it's almost always about building a team. Michael, uh, aorn, please give us the next question. Um, Blake, I know Blake, have you seen situations where an owner Yeah. Not involved in the day-to-day ops sells to his general manager or management team. Yeah. Lots of times. Um, but here's, here's what I see.
Cecil Bullard: Um, mostly I see it's not done well, it's not planned well, and it's kind of more of a last minute thing than a, you know, a five-year plan to make the best out of this because, um. Uh, too many owners are, are taking, you know, 10% down, or not all, not anything down because the, the service advisor, manager, whatever, has not built the money to come in and buy it, and then they're, um, they're taking payments on a business that actually wasn't really set up well.
Cecil Bullard: To run and be successful in the long run anyway. And, and so yes, I, I've been involved with several of those, um, one in one in Denver where, um, you know, we built a plan, I think at the time we had four shops and, uh, we built a plan with the general manager that if we got to seven shops, that he would actually own a certain percentage so that he could go to the bank, get the money to buy, you know, the, the principal out.
Cecil Bullard: And it went fantastically well. But it was a seven year. Plan. It wasn't a, oh, it's time for me to get out. I'm old, I'm tired, and now I'm gonna sell the, sell my business. And I'm looking around and who can I sell it to? Well, I've got a GM or a management team. Uh, and so that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah. Blake, I don't know Blake, I'm gonna,
Michael Smith: no, I'm gonna join Cecil on this and say that your question is based on what I, my experience here in the decade have been hanging around.
Michael Smith: That's the way it's usually done, is that an owner will sell to what we call a key employee, general manager management team. If it's an MBO management buyout kind of a thing. That's the way it's mostly been done historically. The thing is, the gap I think that I see looking back, that I even see today is this idea of succession planning ahead of time and what Cecil was leaning into.
Michael Smith: And, and I'll, and I'll put it this way, like there's a, you know, the world that we exist in today ain't as cheap as it used to be, so let's be real. Right. What it takes to buy a business today and get an SBA loan and to be able to prove that you're gonna be able to pay this thing off. It's nice to sell to a key employee, but do you want to own or finance this over time?
Michael Smith: So let me, let me unpack this for a minute for us, okay? If you're gonna sell this over time to a key employee, don't you wanna make sure that they're as competent as pro possible to take it from you do at least as well as you did, if not better, in their hands, so that you assure that what you want out of the companies.
Michael Smith: Actually gonna come to you. I can't imagine anything worse than you thinking. You're retired three years from now. Your key employee is overwhelmed and tanks the business, and now you get your business back. Because they didn't pay you for it, right? You get it back. It's broken and out of retirement. Now you have to come back and rebuild it before you can sell it to the next person.
Michael Smith: Let me add to that one more consideration. The world that we live in is getting more complex overnight because of the stuff we started talking about today. The consolidators are here when they build scale around you in your town, and you're the one shop left that only is a single shop. They're buying their parts cheaper than you are.
Michael Smith: They're buying their oil cheaper than you are. They're recruiting cheaper than you are. They're marketing cheaper than you are. So you can say, look, I'm an old guy, old gal. I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm gonna sell it to my key employee. Traditional flow, get out of the way. I'll take 10% down. If they can afford it, I'll pay.
Michael Smith: Let them pay it out over a decade or two. You know what? Their life in the next 10 years is the one you're avoiding. They're not gonna get away from this stuff. We're at the edge of everything changing, and it's happening, starting to happen in a deeper sense. Now, if they inherit that from you without the skills to succeed in it, and you've owner financed it, there are lot more people gonna be getting broken companies back in the future than there were historically.
Michael Smith: Not scaring anybody, just saying, guys, this ain't the same world. The next 20 years is not gonna look anything like the last 20. In terms of what, what the dynamics are. So these are just all things to keep in mind as we're thinking about this.
Cecil Bullard: I think it's, I think it's pretty, to me it's, it's exceptionally interesting.
Cecil Bullard: Um, I, I, I, because you know, venture capital's not going away. The, the family office not going away. They want a piece of this buy and, and, and they're already. Three or four pretty healthy ones in the industry, uh, active. Some of them have hundreds and hundreds of shops at this point in time, and they wanna increase that and, you know, get their multiples and, and all of that.
Cecil Bullard: And so that, that's not gonna go away. And I'm not saying that it's not necessarily a good idea to sell to an employee. Or even a family member. But holy smokes, if they're not trained up, I mean, it's bad enough. I had somebody ask me the other day, I said, Cecil, if there's only one thing that you could train, uh, in the automotive industry, they couldn't do anything else.
Cecil Bullard: Just one thing. What would you do? And I said, I train 'em on their financials, their numbers, right? Um, just what should the shop make? What, what's, what's my gross profit? How should I pay my, you know, technicians, uh, et cetera, et cetera. Um, because. You can't make money, uh, or, uh, you, you can survive. And there's a lot of shops surviving, but there's also a lot of shops failing.
Cecil Bullard: And there are some shops that are soaring like Eagles and, and frankly, those are the shops that have really got their, they built their team, they have their systems in process. They understand what they have to do as far as, I have to charge this so that I can pay that so that I can cover this. And I think that the.
Cecil Bullard: I think the world is changing even more dramatically here, and I think faster. I'm reading a book, um, unreasonable Hospitality. Uh, I think every business owner, I don't care what industry you're in, ought to read that book because I think that sets us apart from everyone else in the, in the thing and where we were having an argument yesterday.
Cecil Bullard: Um. Amongst several of us. You were, um, kind of online, but I think you didn't get involved in much of that, but too bad. I like, are we, are we talking about, you know, price, uh, as one of the factors of, uh, I'm picking the shop. You know, based on price, are we talking about that value proposition, that hospitality, the way I feel, uh, when I'm involved with that particular business or shop?
Cecil Bullard: That's the thing that keeps people coming back to your business over and over consistently. Man, if we don't figure this out as an industry, I would say I think we're gonna lose 30 to 40% of the shops. Mm-hmm. In this industry in the next 10 years. I don't know, man. If somebody wants to bet me money, I prob, I would.
Cecil Bullard: I seriously consider putting money on that. Mm-hmm. From everything I've seen. All right. Next question, Michael.
Michael Smith: Yeah. Real quick, let me add a stat to this and keep the question up and let me add a stat to this if you guys can stay at tune. Just one second. Let's talk about our cousins in the collision business, right?
Michael Smith: 30 to 40% estimate of market share is in the hands of five giant companies in collision. 70% estimated net profit in the industry is in the hands of five companies. Imagine that the margin that they've taken from the small players, like we're talking about here in our industry, is in their hands. Now you're up against them.
Michael Smith: In terms of your ability to compete. So just this is real time. This is not the furniture business. This is car related. Right. This is the collision cousin that we have, and that's where they stand as an industry. So we ain't avoiding this. We're going there whether we like it or not. Just to finish, to, to put a bullet behind your point.
Michael Smith: Right. So,
Cecil Bullard: okay. Okay. So, so we got, we, this is not necessarily different if you ask me, but, uh, Corey Knight. Hey Corey. How you doing? Yep. Um, uh, once you combine with a central corporate. Office, I think that's supposed to be corporate. Um, are you then opening up to a liability for, for some other shop's malpractice.
Cecil Bullard: First of all, holy crap, we don't understand in this industry what our liability is. I don't know. I mean, of all the shop owners I know, and I know thousands and thousands of shop owners, right? I could name on two hands. The number of shop owners that understand their liability, the liability that we have is unbelievable.
Cecil Bullard: If you ask me, I don't know, frankly, and maybe Michael, you can help me out here. Um, I don't know that okay. Having a central corporate office changes anything or creates any additional liability. Uh, than what I, I might have and if I'm having cars come from other shops that are not done correctly, uh, or, or were not fixed right, or weren't diagnosed properly or whatever, I think if I document well where, where we started and where we're going, that I think my liability gets less and less and less.
Cecil Bullard: Right. And I don't know, Michael, what, what would you say about having a corporate office and creating liability? This is fantastic. This
Michael Smith: is a fantastic question and I'll, I'll say this about liability. Um, investors will look at risk management and this is the, that risk management simply in their terms, means managing.
Michael Smith: Future liabilities, right? The risk that's inherent in our businesses. We can be smart and manage the risk ourselves as much as we can. In other words, you control your quality inside your own company. If you put a corporate office down who provides services to you in the background, you can be insulated in your company by buying services on contract from a central corporate office that you build as a separate company under a, you know, it's different from you.
Michael Smith: Right. So Bob, who's your peer in buying services from the corporate service company does something stupid that doesn't roll through the service company to you, that's still gonna be Bob's problem. And it may be the service company's problem because they help them make a mistake, but that shouldn't necessarily roll over to you.
Michael Smith: A lot of this comes down to the legal structure that you build this under and who are your partners? And I'm gonna take it back just to the quality program. The reason. That things like SOPs exist in corporate groups is to standardize process so that you can avoid making dumb mistakes on an individual location basis and standardize.
Michael Smith: You know, I, I'll, I'll say this, right? When Mercedes makes a car, they drive it to the end of the, of the production line, and then they test it. And if something's broken on the car, that doesn't work right in, in the factory, they fix it and then they send it to the market. Toyota does the same thing, but when they find something that doesn't work right, they fix it and send it to the market, but they also go back down the production line, figure out where it got broken in the first place, fix how it got broken on the production line so it never gets broken again.
Michael Smith: Those are two different mentalities about how you run a quality program.
Cecil Bullard: Cecil, one of the, oh man. I, I just, we, we as an industry. Um, we as an industry don't ever fix the problem that created the problem. We don't have time. We're too busy trying to fix the car and get the car out to solve the, the, the problem.
Cecil Bullard: So to me, um, you know, that's, that's huge. And, and corporate structure is really, really important when you get past. Um. I think from the beginning you certainly don't wanna, don't wanna be a sole proprietor. Yep. And you don't want to have your property in the same business as you have your shop. And you know, you wanna probably have a corporate, uh, office that, that has a separate corporation 'cause you're creating layers of um, uh.
Cecil Bullard: You're not invincible, but it, every time there's a layer, it's more difficult for someone to come after you, uh, the, the CEO of the company, the board, you know, the, the, the shareholder, et cetera. And so I think structure matters a, a ton in, in fact, we've just spent, I don't know, six months and a lot of money with lawyers, uh, creating new structures so that we can kind of get to the next level with the institute.
Cecil Bullard: And, uh, I, I've, I have found it. Fascinating, um, uh, you know, the nuances and the tax advantages and, and all the other stuff that, that go along with that. I think it's pretty, it's, it's exciting to me. All right. Um, LA last question, I guess we must be getting towards the end. I'd like to wrap it up a little too.
Cecil Bullard: So, uh, Carrie, uh, Rivas, Carrie, um, uh, we hope to sell our shop to one of our three children who currently works in the business. If selling to him today, how would you determine the value of the business not including the building? Would that be three times net? Uh, no. Um, it, it, it wouldn't necessarily be, it's a wonderful question.
Cecil Bullard: Um, first of all, I wouldn't sell to him today unless I had had a plan. Three to five years ago that explained how that all works. Right. And so, um, here, here at the institute, uh, Kent, my son, who is a viable and, and valuable part of the company, uh, uh, we started planning, I don't know, we're probably four years into this maybe.
Cecil Bullard: Five and he now has some interest in the company. Uh, I think it'll be 20% at the end of this year. 'cause we're gonna hit our, uh, you know, one of those milestones that we put in play. Um, and so essentially we have set him up to be able to buy the business no matter what the X is. Right. And, and obviously in what we do, the X's are different than say an automotive shop.
Cecil Bullard: Um, and so there, there are so many factors that would say three x or four x or five x, uh, or, or one X, uh, uh, and those are the things that are gonna really play, I think, to the sale of the shop. And you might say to yourself, well, you know, this is my, this is my kid. I'm gonna give him or her, um, a discount.
Cecil Bullard: Fine. Great. Uh, but man, you, you, um. There's so much kind of involved with this. They work in the business. What do they do? Do they understand the business? Um, you know that coaching and training thing too, if you want them to be successful. Uh, stuff we talked about, uh, today, that, that idea of, um. Um, creating a team, uh, having the systems and processes, you know, moving your business forward.
Cecil Bullard: So your net is not 3%, your net is 12, uh, 15, 18, 22. Um, all of those things, uh, play in the, the real value of your shop, and I believe also whether or not it's going to be successful term, whether you're there or your son or your daughter's there. Or one of your top people's there, or you end up selling it to, you know, um, you know, Billy Bob consult, uh, uh, uh, management, uh, uh, whatever company.
Cecil Bullard: Um, can I,
Michael Smith: so I wanna add to this too.
Cecil Bullard: When you get done, I wanna add to this. I know where No, I'll be done. You, yeah. You add,
Michael Smith: yeah. Now let me, let me just say, this is a conversation I have a lot with owners beginning the conversation of, so, you know, how are we gonna get out of this in the optimized way? And regardless of who you sell it to, it's similar questions.
Michael Smith: You assuming you can sell your business for a profit. Capital gains profit in your life, how do you account? How do you set that up so that you pay the right amount of taxes, but that you minimize your tax liability? How do you set it up in a family situation, particularly with three kids like you mentioned, and it's a great question.
Michael Smith: What about the other two kids? Do they get a stake in the business, don't they? What's the stake? How do you transfer it? What's the tax implication to them versus you? One of the conversations I always have is start at the end, like, how much time do you have and how much do you need out of the business to retire?
Michael Smith: Parents. Then what are you selling to the kids in terms of the business and who's gonna take what stake and what, what's their outcome? I'll say this about trust as an example. Trusts are a great tool to use. You may or may not have one questioner, but for all of you out there, trusts aren't considered valid by the US government until they're over 12 months old.
Michael Smith: So you can't set up a trust and three months later sell your company to somebody and have it be covered and handled under the trust. It's so you've got some long-term planning to do is my point. So this, and we do this helping people with these kinds of conversations all the time. Don't do it by random, don't do it by chance, if you will.
Michael Smith: Put it, put some strategy thinking into it and have, again, Cecil mentioned it, have your kids be ready to take the business from you. One in terms of passion, but two, in terms of competency. Emotional setup, right? Maturity. Make sure that you hand it to 'em so they can succeed so that you're not handing them a problem.
Michael Smith: And again, th this is different for every company, but all, all I'm saying is I, some of us get tired, we get to the end of the road. I just wanna be out of this. I wanna sell it to family and be done with it. Please, please don't do it. Uh, uh, without really digging into some of the, the side details, it could be very impactful.
Michael Smith: What on anybody involved? Brother? Go ahead. Yeah.
Cecil Bullard: What you don't know can cost you and your kids. Millions, tens of thousands, hundreds, even millions of dollars.
Cecil Bullard: I need to make a, a, a a short comment here. We had a client that, um, uh, uh, owns two shops at the time and, uh, three kids who didn't want anything to do with the business.
Cecil Bullard: Okay. Watch dad work his butt off for years and for whatever reason, you know, either dad didn't manage him well or, or dad wasn't nice at work or, or you know, they thought dad worked too hard, whatever it was, they won't have anything to do with the business. We brought them to a leadership intensive.
Cecil Bullard: These kids are on fire. They want nothing more than to take this business over and grow this business because they've seen what the opportunity is and how to do it. And we've also worked with dad and mom on how do we help the kids do this and how do we need to deal with it? I'm not. Always the nicest guy to my kids.
Cecil Bullard: Um, they're the ones that I can be the hardest on and I'm probably gonna be the hardest on. And, you know, sometimes I need somebody to say, Hey Cecil, um, you know, maybe if you approached it this way and did it this way, it would be much better for your relationship with your kids and you'd come out much in a much better way.
Cecil Bullard: And I just think that's extremely value. I wanna spend just five minutes here. I know we're getting to the end. 2026. Uh, Michael, what, what do you think for shops? What do you think it looks like?
Michael Smith: Uh, 2026 for shops. You know, we have, we have, uh, geopolitical instability that we're settling through on the planet at this point.
Michael Smith: I'm not being political, I'm just saying in the bigger macro, it is what it is. It is what it is, and there are some people who are sort of holding back a little bit, making big, long-term decisions, waiting to see what the long-term looks like. And so let's just put that on the table. Number one. Number two.
Michael Smith: Um, economically we're stable at this point. Stock market's doing great. Investment funds are backed up and ready to invest. You know, I asked the private equity firms, how do you guys plan forward into uncertainty? And they said, well, it's not as complicated as you think. We don't do a bunch of modeling. We decide, we look back and we say, over the last hundred years, what are the trends that have been successful so far?
Michael Smith: And we're gonna tend to stay with them and some until something catastrophic or radical happens, and we have to change that strategy. So all the little side questions of, well, what if this happens? And what if that happens at the investment level? They're like, we're gonna assume it's largely gonna be the same and we're gonna go ahead and keep investing up to our eyeballs.
Michael Smith: For a hundred years, it's worked with all the world wars and all the changes that model works all the way through, right? So from that perspective, what does 26 look like? Money's waiting to be invested. We're aging out as the boomers. The boomers are at least two thirds of the owners in our industries, if not more.
Michael Smith: Many of the kids aren't fully prepared for succession yet. Your key leaders aren't as ready as succession ready as you might hope that they would be. So if you're getting out. Make sure you know the pathway out. There are private equity opportunities to sell into investment systems, to have a little more as an owner in your pocket when you're done, how do you handle the shop and the real estate in your two different hands?
Michael Smith: There are strategies for this. So Cecil 2026 is, you know, big, hairy, audacious goals. Think bigger than we tend to think. Get your teams and leaders ready to go big with you and look forward and, and, and plan for the options. Plan for the opportunities, and be more creative than we've been historically about what you could pull off.
Michael Smith: And I'm gonna say to you, there are support structures, and I'll brag on ours. We're doing stuff that I don't know anybody else that we compete with is doing, but we've been there, done that, and it's. Sales pitch. I'm just telling you, we can help you do stuff that isn't typical in this industry that can take you to different places.
Michael Smith: 'cause we know that's where the industry's going. And so what's 26? I'd kick some tires. I'd lift up rocks and look under 'em that I hadn't looked before. And if you're tired. Keep doing it and don't stop yet. Lift up those rocks and see what's under there and, and I'll finish with the kid story, right? We've got multiple clients where the kids, where, as Cecil said, leaning out the front door and all of a sudden they come and they learn this and they're all back in the front.
Michael Smith: They're not even leaning in, they're in and they're like, I'm gonna build a generational wealth business with my family that has a significant community. Employee customer impact. And we are gonna play this rollup game that's coming because it's number one much more interesting than fixing cars for us.
Michael Smith: The kids. The kids, right? And number two, that's where the industry's going anyway. So why shouldn't we as insiders with advantage be in that instead of seeding that opportunity to somebody else? And so I say that to all of us guys. It's a new world that's here. Whether we like it or not, it's here. So explore the options and see what.
Michael Smith: They look like for you. And then make an advised decision. Make a wise decision about where you want to go from 26 and beyond. Don't just be tired and walk out the front door and please don't ignore this stuff because you, what you don't know may end up costing you. I mean, more than an arm and a leg. You have no idea.
Michael Smith: What's on the table and
Cecil Bullard: I see 2026 as a, as a huge opportunity for those people that are thinking differently, that are learning things they don't know that are building great teams and creating value proposition and a business that. Uh, revolves around those things. And then I see 2026 is very difficult for those people that are, you know, driving price and, and driving their business based on price and fixing cars.
Cecil Bullard: Okay? Mm-hmm. As the, as the primary. I, I just gotta fix this car so I can get the money in the door, and, and I really still will say. That we're gonna lose a ton of shops. We've seen it this year. We've seen quite a few shops disappear. We're gonna see more and more disappear. They're just gonna close their doors because they didn't build value.
Cecil Bullard: They didn't get the, you know, create what they needed to do when they had the time, the energy and the life force in them to do it. So, alright, uh, we want to thank you for joining us. If you didn't get your question answered, you want to ask another question or whatever, please hit up info at we are the institute.com.
Cecil Bullard: There will also be a QR code as soon as they take, uh, our mugs off the screen. Uh, and, uh, if you'd like a, uh, uh, no. Risk, uh, business evaluation, no cost. Uh, we'd be more than happy to spend some time with you and, and answer your questions and, and go over those things. And so that QR code is gonna pop up here in just a second.
Cecil Bullard: Thank you. Uh, Michael Smith, one of my favorite people in the world. Uh, thank the rest of you for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing you again in a few weeks when we kind of do this thing one more time.
Michael Smith: Thanks everybody. Good to see you.
