Show Summary:

In this AMA-style episode where Lucas Underwood and Cecil Bullard dive deep into leadership, shop management, and real-world challenges auto repair shop owners face. Cecil shares his personal journey from resenting his father’s shop to running multiple successful businesses and eventually founding The Institute. The duo tackles essential questions on hiring, pay plans, morale during slow periods, extended warranties, and pricing strategies. They emphasize how attitude and simple systems can drastically improve outcomes. The episode wraps up with marketing insights and the critical mindset shifts needed to sustain long-term success in the automotive industry.

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:

[00:01:34] - Cecil’s entry into the industry after a career-ending injury

[00:03:52] - Transition from shop ownership to coaching

[00:07:57] - First lever to pull during slow months: morale

[00:13:03] - Structuring hybrid pay plans for technicians

[00:19:11] - Gross profit per hour vs. overall gross profit

[00:28:22] - Handling extended warranty work in your shop

[00:34:00] - Marketing for performance vs. general repair

[00:41:56] - Dealing with toxic employees and bad hires

[00:44:30] - Buying new equipment vs. increasing car count

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oobZrL7qMc8

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Episode Transcript:

Lucas Underwood: Welcome everybody. I'm here with Cecil Bullard. My name's Lucas Underwood. We're here for an AMA Cecil. How you doing, buddy? 

Cecil Bullard: I'm great, brother. I'm always great. 

Lucas Underwood: Yes sir. Yes sir. So, uh, we've, uh, we've been through a lot together. You're my current business coach and we've had a lot of really cool stuff happening and, and we've been through some struggles.

Lucas Underwood: We've been through some wins and been through some losses and I'm, I'm honored to have you on my team and working through this with me. And the folks from the management group and, and helping us work with our managers here in the shop. And so, um, excited to be here for the a MA today and, uh, excited to see what all it is that we're gonna talk about and, and the questions we're gonna have here.

Lucas Underwood: Csil. I'm gonna kick it off kind of with you and, and let's talk a little bit about you. I know there's a lot of folks in the room who know who you are, but would you care to share with the ones who don't know who you are? A little bit about your history and, and where the institute came from? 

Cecil Bullard: Dad had a shop, uh, grew up in, uh, didn't have a lot to do with it because dad was, you know, he was overprotective.

Cecil Bullard: So it wasn't fun for me to be there. Uh, we didn't make a lot of money. Uh, dad was always at work. Uh, I resented the shop as a, as a youth, uh, because it stole my father away from me. Um, and. When I turned 19, I was at college playing basketball. That's what I wanted to do, and, uh, shattered an ankle and, uh, uh, in a basketball game about three weeks before the season started.

Cecil Bullard: That kind of ended my basketball career. Uh, I only went to college to chase girls and play basketball, so since I couldn't. Play basketball and I wasn't very good at chasing girls anymore 'cause I didn't have, you know, two legs under me. Um, uh, I went to my dad and said, I, I'd like to come to work for you.

Cecil Bullard: And became a tech and then a service advisor. I. Uh, a few years in and then a few years after that I was the manager of the shop. 'cause I can't leave things alone. Right. You know, it's kind of that thing about me. And, and, uh, then I owned three shops. Uh, I left Utah about 28, 29 years ago. Came up to u uh, excuse me, left California, came up to Utah and, uh, ran some other people's shops, did some other things.

Cecil Bullard: And, um. Kind of, uh, ran a very successful shop in Northern California. Got recognized for that, uh, joined the SCCA there, and, uh, decided that I would be best. Um, my best use would be to be a coach for other people. Uh, we did 2.6 million with fourex and two service advisors, parts guy. Uh, that was 120%, uh, at the time with an 800 and whatever it was, average 8 62, I think was the average repair order.

Cecil Bullard: And, um, at the time our labor rate was $158 an hour. You're talking 2010. And, um, everyone else was under a hundred. And so we had a very successful, very consistent, very productive shop, very happy clients, obviously very profitable, and that's kind of what led me into coaching. Uh, I work for another, another company, and since I am a technician, I, you know, said, wow, they're making all this money and I could do it better.

Cecil Bullard: I'll just start my own. You too. You too. I'll make all the money and I'll, I'll, I'll, and then I can take Wednesdays off and, you know, all that. And, uh, the good news is lately I've been taking, uh, you know, uh, Fridays off and, and, uh, you know, only 25 years after starting a coaching company. Uh, right. So that's my background.

Cecil Bullard: And I think I have a real passion for. Because of my experience with my father, uh, who you know about passed away about 12 years ago, and on his deathbed, um, had been, think he'd been thinking a lot about his life and talking about how he missed out on his family's stuff. Uh, correct. Yeah. And I didn't want, my main drive is I, I don't want any other kids losing their fathers to their business.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And so if I can teach someone to run a good business, make good money, that they can have an outside life besides the business, that's kind of my main drive. And, uh, 

Lucas Underwood: absolutely. And, and you know, for, for our listeners, if at any point you have a question, drop over into the comments and ask the question, um, we're, we're here to answer any questions you may have, but since you, you bring up a really good point is, is that fixing the business.

Lucas Underwood: Is a core component of being the good Father is a core component of being the good husband, is being part of your family, being present. You've heard a lot of my reels recently talking about this because I, I kinda lost sight of that. The business became who I was and, and you know, it's easy. It is, it is.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. It's so easy to lose sight of that and, and kind of get ourselves off into a corner somewhere and we think we're alone. And you know, one of the things I've watched with you is I've watched you work with a lot of clients over the past couple of years, and I watch you walk into their businesses or look at their financials and you say, oh, this is wrong and this is wrong, and this is wrong.

Lucas Underwood: It's simple. Just change this and change this and change this. But it's not that simple, right? It takes, well, it is encouragement. 

Cecil Bullard: It is, it's, that's the, that's the problem. You guys overcomplicate the shit out of it. Yeah, it's, it's not, it's very simple. In most cases, it just doesn't feel that way because you don't, you either don't know what you don't know or you don't have the experience.

Cecil Bullard: To feel good about that. So if you look at, at young children, you know, yeah. 12, 13 years old, they got their first boyfriend, their first girlfriend, and all of a sudden they broke up and their life is over. Yeah. I mean, for them it is completely and absolutely devastating. And then a guy like me, I'm like.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, your heart got broke. Okay. Big deal. You know that's gonna happen a lot of times before you find the right person because you have the experience and the knowledge, um, from that experience to make different decisions or to lead in a different way. Yeah, right. And so absolutely for me, I look at running a shop.

Cecil Bullard: I was having a conversation with someone, I can't even tell you who it was, but they had done something amazing. I, I can't remember what it was, uh, it's just a, a week ago. But I was, I was thinking, you know, it's, it's like a technician. They drive their car and they, and they work on people's cars and they don't realize how talented.

Cecil Bullard: They really are. Yeah. Right. To them. Absolutely. The curse of knowledge. Yeah. To them it's easy, right? Oh yeah. I pulled the engine apart and uh, you know, I replaced the pistons and you know, did blah, blah, blah. And I, you know, uh, today, if I was to pull like a timing chain off of a modern car today, I'd be like, huh.

Cecil Bullard: Right. You know, what do I do? Um, and I used to be able to do that in my sleep, right? Yeah. But it's that, it's that. It is easy. Most of what we're gonna ask you to do is easy. The only reason it's hard is because you don't have the knowledge of the experience. Right? Absolutely. And, and so when I tell you to terminate somebody and go, Hey, here's why you need to do this.

Cecil Bullard: Why, why do you 

Lucas Underwood: gotta throw me under the bus like that? Come on now. 

Cecil Bullard: Right? You know, and, and then four months later you're like, oh. I'm sitting here ling, you know that Right? Well that's kind of the point. They, they, that's what they're looking for here, so we gotta give 'em some of that. Right. That's, that's 

Lucas Underwood: good.

Lucas Underwood: So we have our first question. When the shop is having a slow month, what's the first lever you pull? Marketing operations or morale? 

Cecil Bullard: Uh, morale. Um, yours first. Yeah, I guarantee you the, the, the attitude of, oh, it's gonna be another crappy day. I have a client right now, uh, I talk to my clients, uh, about every two weeks.

Cecil Bullard: You know, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, depends and, uh. So, you know, how, how you doing? Uh, same shit, same day, right? You know, and you're like, dude, you have to change your attitude, right? Because your attitude affects everyone in your business. And absolutely. The other part about, think about this.

Cecil Bullard: So Lucas, how long you been in business? Uh, 17 years. Almost 18 now. Okay. 17 years. And you're still there? Yep. Absolutely. And how many crappy, crappy days have you had? 

Lucas Underwood: Right, A ton. There's been a couple that I thought it was over, right? I knew it was over a couple times. At least I wished it was. 

Cecil Bullard: So, attitude is in a way, is first because if you can't get your own attitude straight.

Cecil Bullard: Then nobody around you is gonna have their attitude straight. And so your marketing then is gonna like phone rings and instead of, Hey, good morning, thank you for calling Larry's Autoworks. This is Cecil, how can I help you today? It's like, yeah, what do you want? Right? Yeah. And, and it, I mean, you could even go, good morning.

Cecil Bullard: Thank you for calling Larry's Autoworks Cecil, you know, uh, but it's not the same. Right? Yeah. So, so it's a, uh, cascading effect. Attitude is first right now. And, and obviously I think second would be to address, um, if, if all of a sudden I don't have cars, is it I don't have phone calls and I'm not converting phone calls or I don't have cars.

Cecil Bullard: Okay, yes. Which is it? And then yeah, being different, I always say. You know, 'cause it's funny you've heard me say I don't know a thousand times 'cause you've been in a lot of classes and you know, I've had a lot of one-on-ones. Raise your labor rate. Raise your labor rate. So you do that. A shop owner raises labor rate 10 bucks an hour and you know, all of a sudden he has a bad week.

Cecil Bullard: It's because of the labor rate. Oh my God. See, so we raised the labor rate and it's, oh, my business went to crap and look what it did. And oh my God. And the fact is, no, it was gonna be a crappy week. Anyway, we've, we've been through them. If you're in this business, you're going to have no matter what you do.

Cecil Bullard: Now, there are a lot of things you can do to create consistency in your business, but if you're, if you're not consistent, if you're slowed down, if I have a slow period, it's, it's really nice to go. Well, school's starting, so that's my excuse. But you, you know what? School starts in August every year. Yep. So if you're smart and you're, aren't 

Lucas Underwood: we preparing for it?

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, 

Cecil Bullard: yeah. In June, why are we not talking about what kind of thing we're gonna do? What what community event. I've got a couple of shops that are doing backpack programs for the schools, providing backpacks for kids with, with, you know, paper and pens. Crayons and, you know, whatever, um, for, for the schools and that's going to drive more car count.

Cecil Bullard: And hopefully keep your 

Lucas Underwood: attitude up 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. In that 

Lucas Underwood: one slow time. You know, the two things that I see is, is I talk about a guy named Tim Kit all the time. He was a big leadership guy, um, and worked with a number of universities, and one of the things he said is, if it's not happening in you, if you don't believe it in here.

Lucas Underwood: It's not gonna happen through you. Your people will not, uh, rise to the level that you envision if it's not happening in you because they see it. Yeah. And the second thing is, is, you know, when we talk about that marketing aspect, when we talk about bringing people into the shop, it doesn't work immediately.

Lucas Underwood: And so we panic and then we start making adjustments. We start making changes. We break it, right? Like that's not time to be making, you know, those adjustments sometimes you're 

Cecil Bullard: making, sometimes because you are doing it at out of fear. Yep. You're doing the wrong thing. You can't see the force for the trees.

Cecil Bullard: There's some really great research on, uh, decision making when you are wealthy and when you're broke. Yep. And all the research points out that when you're broke. The decisions are very poor decisions. 

Lucas Underwood: You know, I've noticed this and, and you and I have talked about this. We were sitting around having dinner a couple weeks ago and we talked about, um, one of the things that I continue to see in shop owners, and it's like there is a pan full of hot oil on a hot eye and it catches on fire and the shop owner, they go over and they put the cover on the pan and they get the fire to go out, and then they pull the cover off and it starts back and they say, oh my God, what am I gonna do?

Lucas Underwood: I just have to keep putting this fire out. But they never changed the root of which calls are, take the oil off the pan 

Cecil Bullard: or turn the heat down. 

Lucas Underwood: Right. You know? Exactly. They just keep doing the same thing over and over. Yeah. So, uh, we've got another really good question. Um, and it was asking about setting up pay plans for technicians, and I know we gotta kind of keep that short because we wanna be able to, to answer as many questions as we can.

Lucas Underwood: I've been talking a lot about hybrid pay plans in my shop and why I believe that's better. And uh, it says what's the best way to structure a hybrid? Incentive slash pay plan for technicians say hourly plus bonus. What do you think the best way is? 

Cecil Bullard: So I just spent almost two hours doing pay plans for shop, um, theory quickly.

Cecil Bullard: Uh, I need 60% of my pay to be based on showing up, and I need 40% to be based on specific things that I need to accomplish in my position. So if I think about a tech, what do I want from a tech? I want productivity. Uh, most of the shops don't have the productivity they need. It's costing 'em tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Cecil Bullard: And, uh, it's, it's, it's detrimental to your profitability. Uh, I need quality of work, so I need educated people that are, uh, able to think, uh, uh, moving forward, et cetera. And, uh, I want. Quality of work, which means I'm also gonna track comebacks and there'll be some kind of a comeback bonus in the bonus structure.

Cecil Bullard: Bonuses have to be enough to change behavior. You can't give me a dollar an hour and think you're gonna change my behavior. Yeah. So our pay plans, we might start a guy at 28, 30, 32 and give him a 16 to $20 bonus level based on what he does or, or not, and how he produces or she. In that position. Okay. And, and so bonuses have to be enough to motivate behavior and change behavior.

Cecil Bullard: Um, you can never reward someone or punish someone for something they have no control over. Exactly. So for instance, I don't pay text for sales. It's not their job. And I don't pay service advisors for, you know, basic, um, I give them small bonuses for productivity. Because they manage that, but I don't give them huge bonuses for productivity.

Cecil Bullard: 'cause that's not their job. Yeah. Their job make not in their direct control, have what they need to be successful. Right. Yeah. And, and so there are these kind of rules that you base and then you want to have a performance, we call 'em performance enhanced. It's swallows a little better. Uh, and it's so funny because I was just going through one of those plans and we have a, uh, a tech and we're, the other thing is you need to understand financially that.

Cecil Bullard: I wanna pay my tax somewhere around 40% of my labor rate effective with load. So, mm-hmm. Um, if I do that and I have a low production guy that's doing 30 hours and I build this pay plan, then my margins are gonna suck because they're not producing. If I build in a performance enhanced pay plan, so now I'm paying this guy $30 an hour, whether he produces or not, if I give him 30 plus another 15 for producing and and doing what I need, this guy's gonna make 20, 30, 40% more.

Cecil Bullard: But he's also gonna do, you know, 40% more work, which is gonna change my margins and move my margins up, and I'm gonna make more money. And I'm showing this pay plan to this owner and he's like, oh my God, this is genius. No, it's pretty simple. Really. It just follows about seven basic rules and you build, uh, per that way as the business succeeds, I can pay people more money.

Cecil Bullard: Exactly. And they should make more money if they do what I need them to do. 

Lucas Underwood: And, and I think one of the keys that I see often is we, we put too much energy into the pay plan and we make it so complex nobody can understand it. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. They have to be able to, another rule, they have to be able to be simp, keep it simple.

Cecil Bullard: Right? Absolutely. And absolutely. And you have to have a way to measure a, that you both believe is accurate. And you know, I've been in shops where the owner has this convoluted pay plan and the nobody knows what they're getting paid until their check shows up. Which creates, um, anxiety and that anxiety, whether you like it or not, that that's that whole thing.

Cecil Bullard: When you said, Hey, I'm having a, a weak week or a week month or something, you know, it's not that great. What do I work on first? Attitude marketing. You know what? Holy crap attitude, because that attitude comes through. So if you have people that are. That are nervous about their pay 'cause they don't understand kind of how they're gonna get paid or how they're being paid.

Cecil Bullard: Right. They will never give you the kind of productivity that you want because their mind, you know, go to Maslow. If I'm thinking like, how am I gonna feed the family tonight? I can't be thinking about how do I do this timing belt faster. Right. Exactly. Or better. Or how do I do it right or Yeah, yeah. Right.

Cecil Bullard: Absolutely. I'm just, oh my God, I gotta finish this thing, get it out. 'cause I need that money 'cause I'm gonna, you make bad decisions. 

Lucas Underwood: And, and the core of that is take care of your people. Right? Like take care of your people. 

Cecil Bullard: Well, I think, yeah, the, the whole like our, our better business, better life, better industry, better business, the better you run your business than the better life.

Cecil Bullard: Not just you, the owner, but your people have and their families. 'cause I'm responsible. I mean, we, I, I think we have 27 or 28 people that work for the institute now. They all have families. I'm not responsible for just Cecil, and I'm certainly not responsible for me and my four kids and my wife. I'm responsible for 28 people and their families.

Cecil Bullard: Absolutely. You're exactly right. And so the better my business runs and, and it, it is simple. If I understand margins, if I understand finance, uh, for the company and. The better it runs and the better I can take care of my people, the better lives they're gonna have and the more opportunity their families are gonna have.

Lucas Underwood: You're exactly right, Cecil and I, it's something that I have seen so much of. Um, I, I do see a question in here, and I, I wanna cover this. We've not popped it up on the screen, but it's asking, what's the best metric to follow when you're pricing yourself to the customer, overall, GP or GP Per hour Now I was always taught overall GP and, and like, I, I see both things, but now Cecil, um, as I've worked more and more with you and, and I truly understand my business' financials.

Lucas Underwood: Mm-hmm. I've started paying more attention to what is my true cost per hour to operate my business. And then I start breaking that down. And, and GP per hour is pretty beneficial in that sense, don't you think? 

Cecil Bullard: I, I've always been a gross profit period guy and never really looked at gross profit per hour until the last four or five years.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. Uh, and I wasn't taught by a gross profit per hour guy. And what I do understand, and I've done the math multiple times, so there was a competing coaching company. They put an article out in Ratchet Ranch and it was like, oh, it's all about gross profit per hour, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, you don't get it.

Cecil Bullard: And by the way, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Both is is really good. And we're kind of a one or the other, I don't know, industry, uh, well. Tastes great. Less filling, tastes great, less filling, let's fight about it. No, it tastes great and it's less filling. Great. That's wonderful. Um, so the, the, the fact is you can do jobs that have better gross profit per hour.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. But they also probably have higher liability. Okay. So you gotta think about liability as a, as a part of that cost. The other thing is if you don't have gross margin, then you don't have gross profit per hour. So when I'm looking at, um, stuff, people say, what's one of your really K high KPIs? I'm looking at average repair order.

Cecil Bullard: Why do I look at average repair order? Well, if I have a high average repair order, that means that probably I'm bringing the right customers in. So it answers a marketing question. Uh, it means that probably I'm doing enough new clients to find work that because my old clients, we've already taken care of a lot of their work and there's not as much to do.

Cecil Bullard: So it answers a second marketing question. Um, one of the most important things I have in my shop around productivity is how are my inspections going? How, what are we finding and what are we selling? So if I have a higher average repair order, it means that I'm finding work and that I'm also selling work.

Cecil Bullard: So it answers, you know, three more questions that are very important questions. So if I look at my average repair order and I say, well, today I've got a $950 average repair order, I'm running a general repair shop. I go, wow, I've got great customers. My marketing seems to be working. I'm bringing the right clients in.

Cecil Bullard: Um. We must be inspecting cars pretty well, and we're building relationships with our clients because they're buying product from us. Okay? Right. And so, and then if I look and I say, well, my average repair is four 20. Ah, ah, now I have to bring in twice the cars at four 20 as I do at. And well, even more than twice than, than I do at nine 50.

Cecil Bullard: And it also means who am I bringing in? Are they buying? What percentage are they buying? All of a sudden those other five questions start coming up and I gotta go look and see how's my marketing working? What type of a customer's coming in? Am I bringing enough new people in? So there are numbers that you can use that are like, I don't know, they're the, the smoke before the fire.

Cecil Bullard: Right, right. Absolutely. And then there's the fire, like, holy smokes, if I don't have a good average repair order, I better understand why, and I better be able to go backwards to that step and fix that step so that my average repair order comes up. Otherwise, I won't have productivity. I won't have gross profit per hour because we're only doing half the work we should be doing.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, absolutely. And then I won't have profit at the end of the day. 

Lucas Underwood: I take it back to what we talked about a little bit ago is watching you analyze these shops, right? Yeah. 'cause we've been doing these really cool videos behind the scenes where we're talking about, Hey, uh, Cecil, this question came in, answer this question, right?

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. And so as we've been doing that, I watch you analyze the numbers from the shops and there's not one number that gives you the answer. Now, for me personally, now, when we're talking about GP per hour. I'll tell you where GP per hour comes in for me personally, is if I know what it costs to operate my shop and I know how much profit I want, I know that if I look at that ticket and it's below that number, then I'm not making money.

Lucas Underwood: Right? Yeah. And so for me it's, it's a go no go type of scenario. I have to be over this. But it's not the one metric that you can use to, to manage the shop. You have to use all of your metrics. 

Cecil Bullard: Let's say that I have a really good marketing process and I'm bringing in top level customers. Yeah. Okay. People that want their car taken care of.

Cecil Bullard: Right. All. And I have a good, uh, inspection process and I have a good estimating process. In other words, I have a parts matrix that my people follow 99% of the time. Right. And uh, I have a labor matrix that my people follow 99% of the time, et cetera. And so now I'm looking at that and do I really need to check margin once a day or once a week?

Cecil Bullard: No, because margins built in. Now at the end of the month, if I look at things and I go, Hey, I was supposed to have a 58% parts margin, but I only had a 52. Where did, where did my process break down? Right? Right. And so what I'm saying is, if your processes are good and you have, uh, good management and people are following those processes, then you're gonna have your margin, you're gonna have your profit, right?

Cecil Bullard: Yep. And, and you gotta understand the whole thing. So I'm talking to a guy yesterday on the phone, and we've got four technicians and they're doing 1.2 million, and their labor rate's $150 an hour. Yeah, well you're, you start doing the calculations and they're running at about 60% productivity, which is killing them.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And the guy's talking about hiring a Fifth Tech so they can get the workout. 

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, 

Cecil Bullard: exactly. That's not your problem, right? Yeah. It's your processes and the fact that your people are not productive. If you don't solve that, you won't be profitable. So. 

Lucas Underwood: I heard a great, I, I gotta, I gotta say this because it's just the perfect time to say it.

Lucas Underwood: I heard, I heard somebody talking the other day and he was talking about corporate entities and he said, did you know that the majority of these giant corporate entities, the first thing that they do, doesn't necessarily mean they come in and raise the prices? They look for efficiency first, right? Yeah.

Lucas Underwood: And, and see we don't do that. And, and if you knew the number of shops that I talked to and they say, I am booked out for six weeks, and then you look at their financials and they didn't make any money, right? Right. There, there was no money there. And it's like, well, you, you're booked out for six weeks 'cause you're not moving any work.

Lucas Underwood: Right. Like the numbers going align with what you're saying. 

Cecil Bullard: But we've had this mentality in the industry that Clark County equals profit. That's, yeah. Activity crap equals profit and it's not true. Yeah, no, you could, I mean, if you look at the industry stats and I, I, I don't know what the recent, the most recent one is, but the average shop, I don't know, last year or year before, 4.2% net.

Cecil Bullard: All right. So that's crazy. And the average chop was somewhere around 800,000. So this guy's making, he's making a salary, right? Yeah. Uh, so he's got a job and he is getting paid. Right. Yeah. And his company provides him a truck and gas and a few toys, and every once in a while he can reach in and grab a hundred dollars if he wants to take his wife out to dinner or whatever.

Cecil Bullard: Right? Yeah. But profit wise for the company, they're not making what they should be making even close. Yeah. And, and so 32,000 on 800,000 in sales is what the average shop is making. Now my shops are making 20 to 25% net. 

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, 

Cecil Bullard: so I do 800,000 and I'm taking, you know, 200,000 home. Uh, plus a salary and now that's worth doing, right?

Cecil Bullard: That's worth spending some of your life at. 

Lucas Underwood: Just today, my buddy John called me and he said, I need to talk to you. And I said, what John? He said, um, I got this job in the shop. He's a new shop owner and he's a single man operation. And he said, I know you've been fussing at me at these margins. And he said, I just want you to know.

Lucas Underwood: He said, I've got this alternator that 30% gross profit. And he said, it's got me real nervous. He said, I'm thinking about knocking it down. And I said, I tell you what I said, leave it at 30% because that's where the margin should have been for the price. All it was OE that he was dead on the money. Yeah. I said, tell you what, let's do this.

Lucas Underwood: I said, instead of giving him a discount, I said, take a hundred dollars bill outta your wallet. Give it to the man and say, Hey, this is for being a great client. He said, I ain't got a hundred dollars in my wallet. I said, okay, well go get a hundred dollars. He said, Luke, there's 

Cecil Bullard: on paper, because you'll never have a hundred dollars.

Cecil Bullard: Right? Already gave it away. 

Lucas Underwood: Um, next question here. Uh, it says, Hey guys, I love your stuff. It's helped me be a much better manager for my company. Can I ask how do we keep our parts margin with an extended warranty company? Or do we just not do that work? Okay. I'm sorry, Cecil. I gotta hijack here. I just don't work for extended warranty companies.

Lucas Underwood: I just don't like 'em. They take up a ton of time. They take up a ton of energy. I just say, I'm sorry, I, I've got plenty of other work. 

Cecil Bullard: What do you think I have? I have. I think I give the client a choice. And the choice is this. Okay, your extended warranty company is not gonna pay what we're gonna charge.

Cecil Bullard: Okay? Yeah, because they're trying to save every nickel they can. That's their job. They're not trying to do a great job on your car, give you a good warranty, a good quality component. They want it cheap because they wanna save money. So here's the option. The option is a. We don't do the job, you take it somewhere that will put a inferior part or accept whatever the warranty company gives them.

Cecil Bullard: Or option B is, the extended warranty is going to give you X towards your job, but you have a copay, you're gonna have a copay, and the option B is that you pay us, you know what's fair. So we can give you a great job and a, and a great part and stand behind it. I think you're, and most of my clients under that circumstance.

Cecil Bullard: Chose option B. Yep. Uh, to have us do the job. 

Lucas Underwood: Same here, and, and here was my thing with them, the real reason I quit using extended warranty companies is the time component. Yeah. 'cause we, we have so many cars and you're talking about an hour to two hours of, of time spent in there. So I 

Cecil Bullard: have a, I have a, I have a varying labor rate, so it's against the law technically for me to say I have a warranty rate that's a warranty rate and it's much higher.

Cecil Bullard: It's $50 an hour higher than any of my other rates. Right. That's against the law. I'm not supposed to do that. Okay. But I do have varying labor rates in my shop. So when I'm doing, I don't know, oil changes or cooling flushes, maybe I'm charging $120 an hour. When I'm doing heavy duty diagnostics, I might be charging $240 an hour.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. Correct. And, and all in between. Yeah. And that's how shops, that's, that's where we're moving if we're not all there yet. Yes, absolutely. And so now I tell my, my warranty company that here's the rate. So you are at my, my $240 an hour rate and I make up that time by having that rate that they are a part of that includes those types of jobs where there's a lot of research, a lot of time on the phones.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Uh, you know, a lot of trying to find the parts. And so, and I can completely, that's how I do it. 

Lucas Underwood: I completely agree. Very similar way to how I do things as well. And, and look, I think one of the issues, we talk about the pan full of oil on the eye. One of the things that I keep seeing happen is we do this over and over again.

Lucas Underwood: We, we get into these situations and we say, okay, well I'll cut the quality of my product. Well, I'll cut my price. I'll do all these things to make sure I get the job and to make the client happy and to do all this. But the problem is, is you just poured oil. Into the pan and put it on the fire. If you change your process, you break your process when you change it mid job.

Lucas Underwood: And so if you change it and you're doing these things that are different, you're still responsible for the quality of the repair. Just because the warranty company says, I don't wanna pay, that doesn't mean they're not coming back to you if something goes wrong. So, so keep that in mind. 

Cecil Bullard: We have a, we have a group here right now, and I went to dinner with a bunch of the guys, and one of the guys was sitting next to me who has a shop in North Carolina.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. And they do safety inspections in North Carolina at $13 and change. Yep. 13 Dictated by the state. Yep. Right. And that safety inspection to do it properly 20, 25 minutes. 

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: And they're gonna, I'm gonna get paid 13 something and I have to pay the state for the sticker and. If I do something wrong and the state catches me, it's a $10,000 fine.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Starts at 

Lucas Underwood: $10,000. 

Cecil Bullard: Okay, so, so my answer to that is North Carolina. Go screw yourself. I'm not doing safeties, and nobody else in the state should be doing safeties. And if every shop in the state said, we're not doing safeties at 13.95 because we can't make any money, in fact, I'm taking 25, 30, $40 outta my pocket and accepting all this liability.

Cecil Bullard: What if the state of North Carolina couldn't get a safety done because the industry said no. Exactly right. Exactly. And and the only guys that would do safeties are the guys that are working outta their houses that have no credibility whatsoever. Yep. If we did the same with warranty companies, I'm sorry, then the state would have to change the situation.

Cecil Bullard: Yep. All right. And, and so I'm, I'm Foreign association that has 40 to 80,000 members. 'cause there's 240,000 of us in this industry that starts to say, stop pushing us around. Mr. Government or Mr. State or whatever, because it ain't worth it. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. And then you're, I, I, I, I, there was a. A technician there also and he was like, yeah, it's $10,000.

Cecil Bullard: I said, how many $13 inspections you have to do to make up for one $10,000 fine. Right. Yeah, 

Lucas Underwood: absolutely. 

Cecil Bullard: You, you can't win. It's a no win situation. Exactly. You know what I like with no win situations. It's real. My choice is real simple. I don't play. 

Lucas Underwood: Exactly. And, and listen, you've said that a lot. I I've been talking about that a lot.

Lucas Underwood: At Cecil's Rules, everybody has to win, right? And if everybody can't win, we're not playing the game. Right. Uh, we'll go 

Cecil Bullard: play another 

Lucas Underwood: game. I'll get the oil off the fire and turn fire up. And now they popped up a question. I wanna go back to the other one that was asked, because I think that was a really important question.

Lucas Underwood: If we can find that other question, we'll get this one too. But it's, and, and I, I so connect with this since we just launched my shop and we're pushing hard socials, opening specials, replying in groups, going to events, even hosting our own, we offer everything from basic repair to full custom builds, but we're still low on cars.

Lucas Underwood: Some people assume we only do performance work. How can I better position the shop to bring both general repair and performance customers and just overall cars in general. Now market, market, 

Cecil Bullard: two different shops. Market differently. 

Lucas Underwood: I, I'm not gonna disagree, but I I, we've done a lot of videos talking about performance work.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And, and by the way, that's a different business than it's general repair. It absolutely, it's completely different business 

Lucas Underwood: and it can be a profitable business, but you need to understand it is a different business and it needs to be ran differently. And it is in a lot of ways, a labor of love. As opposed to auto repair.

Lucas Underwood: I, I was in No, it's not. 

Cecil Bullard: No it's not. No it's not. No it's not. Well it 

Lucas Underwood: was when they went into it, it 

Cecil Bullard: has to be about money. Baby changed. So otherwise that fire's going on that pot and I kept to keep putting the lid on it. So you're 

Lucas Underwood: exactly right. So that's where I started. And, and, and it was really that. A lot of those consumers knew what they wanted and they'd already looked up the prices and it was very difficult for me to, to be profitable doing that kind of work.

Lucas Underwood: I will tell you that the name of the shop really does matter to the people that will come into the shop and, and when you're first starting out, sometimes it takes time because you have to gain that reputation. You have to get the Google reviews, you have to get the Yelp. Reviews. You have to start getting your name out.

Lucas Underwood: And I really think that building relationship is the number one way to do that. Cecil, what do you say to 'em? 

Cecil Bullard: I was running, uh, I, I got hired to run two shops in Rancher, Bernardo, California. Okay. Uh, side by side. Uh, they shared eight bays in the middle. Uh, excuse me. They shared an office in the middle.

Cecil Bullard: There were four bays on each side. And, uh, it was being advertised as rancher, Bernardo, German, and Japanese auto care. And there was one door into the office and, uh, they were struggling for car count, struggling for a lot of things. So what did we do? We broke them apart. We put another two doors into the same office.

Cecil Bullard: So we advertised Rancho Bernardo, Japanese, and we advertised Rancho Bernardo German, and we went up, I don't know, I think initially 97 or 98%, and we got rid of one door to come in. Okay. Got it. And, and so the cool thing about the internet is that I only see kind of what you want me to see or what you allow me to see, so I can run, say, Cecil's, you know, high performance rebuilds or you know, uh, restorations shop.

Cecil Bullard: I can also run Cecil's, um, uh, maintenance and, and whatever shop and be seen as two different businesses because I'm really running two different businesses. And I would also tell you, you know, um. The marketing that I would do for high performance and the marketing I would do for general service and repair is two different types of marketing.

Cecil Bullard: Absolutely. All right. And, and so separate the, the marketing, separate the businesses out in the way that you charge. I mean, holy smokes, if I charge in a restoration shop, like I charge in a service shop, I'll go broke. 

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, 

Cecil Bullard: absolutely. It, it, it doesn't work. In fact, I was having a conversation with one of my clients with Restoration Shop and we're about 10% low on productivity.

Cecil Bullard: We're at about 92%. We really want to be over a hundred percent. Okay. And we're building time and materials. A lot of the work is time and materials, and I'm like. We're 10% short. Here's what I want you to do. I want a 20%. Once the time and materials are done, I want a 21 per, I want a 20% charge on top of that time and materials so that the company makes the profit the company needs to make.

Cecil Bullard: So now that job, instead of being a $4,000 job, is now uh, $4,400. But so what The customer that's, that's doing restoration. Is is is not nickel and dimming you unless you're allowing them to nickel and dime you because they don't have that many options to do the work that you need done. Yeah, for sure.

Lucas Underwood: You're exactly right. Right. Now the next question, I feel like I'm being trolled here. Okay. This person says we've all made bad hires. What's your personal, I knew it was a mistake moment. I can't share mine. Okay. And how long did you take that? At this point, I'll give you one. 

Cecil Bullard: I'll give you one. I had an employee for seven years that from the start was not able to do their job and we kept changing the job, hoping we'd find a place 'cause it's just a nice person.

Lucas Underwood: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: And we finally turned after seven years of, you know, 70, 80,000 a year. Think about that. Half a million dollars. Yeah. We finally terminated that person. Got a company to come in, uh, as a, um, you know, um, we hired a company to come in and do that job. Yeah. Cost us 30% of what we were paying the other guy and we're getting results, 

Lucas Underwood: you know, look, I'll tell you my first one, um, I, this one I can share.

Lucas Underwood: Um, long story short, this guy comes to work for me. And I just knew he was gonna be the solution, right? And this was before I had ever hired the first business coach. And I knew that this was gonna solve all my business' problems, getting a good technician in there, be able to do this. And I had listened to what he said.

Lucas Underwood: And, and you know, I don't know if you know this, but not everybody tells the truth. When they're applying for a job or when they're interview, oh, come on. I'm just telling you. Like, they tell you you 

Cecil Bullard: their truth. 

Lucas Underwood: Exactly what they believe. Yeah. And, uh, so let's see, within the first week, this guy, the client's pulling in the parking lot, right?

Lucas Underwood: And, and it, they own a durmax. Chevrolet, 2,500, they passed their truck, and as, as the client's pulling in, he's doing a burnout, going past them, going the other direction. And I knew right then, like, this is not gonna work. I didn't fire him until he changed his ringtone. And this was six months later because the dude was so, I mean, he was abrasive and he was rough.

Lucas Underwood: I thought he was just gonna try and shoot me up if I, if I. Tried to fire him, right? Yeah. Just unbelievable human being. But I finally fired him when he changed the ringtone to, here comes the asshole for me. And so I said, you know, here we go. This is it. We'll just go ahead and call it over. And you know, he was so upset that I fired him.

Lucas Underwood: He could not understand why I let him go. I mean, after all, we were such good friends and it's just unbelievable. I would terminate him. 

Cecil Bullard: I think. Uh, we've all made mistakes. We, we, mm-hmm. The guys I know in this industry, 95% of them are just the salt of the earth and just the greatest people. Yeah. Um, there's a few I don't like imagine that.

Cecil Bullard: Um, but mostly I like 'em and I think they're great. And we think, man, this guy is such a nice guy, or this guy's so good at this, I, I can change 'em. I can fix him. You know? Yeah. And eventually what it comes down to is. They're not fixable. Right? Yeah. And, and so hopefully. Hopefully you change your interview process.

Cecil Bullard: So you, you know, you ask the question, Hey, how many assholes have you worked with? Oh my God, let me tell you about all the assholes I worked with. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't wanna be the next one in the line. 

Lucas Underwood: The, the key is this is if they are toxic. In other words, if it, you know, you know this. There's a difference 

Cecil Bullard: between I'm not quite doing what I need to or whatever.

Cecil Bullard: And being toxic and poisonous. Yeah, 

Lucas Underwood: exactly. They don't align with the culture of the business. Yeah. And, and at the end of the day, listen, I, I, I'm gonna come back to Tim Kit, he always said, you promote what you permit and if this person isn't in alignment with who you are, is in alignment with what you do and you allow them to stay.

Lucas Underwood: It breeds toxicity. They're not happy, and all they see is that you are the problem. The shop is the problem, the business is the problem. 

Cecil Bullard: Think about your life experience and think about all the people that you've known or worked for who told a great story. Yeah, but never did a great job. Okay. Yeah, exactly.

Cecil Bullard: And all it does is create frustration and at some point you're just like, oh my God, stop talking because everything that comes outta your mouth is crap. Yeah. And, and so what I would tell, like the, the key to management, um, is do what you say and say what you do. Amen. And in, in fact, say less and do more.

Cecil Bullard: Exactly. Right. And, and, uh. 

Lucas Underwood: Yeah, that's, and, and, and here's the thing. True leadership is trust earned by repeated behaviors, right? Let's be real about that. One of the problems that I see is a lot of times, and, and I did not recognize this about myself, but for a while I was the toxic one, right? And I was the owner of the business and I was the problem.

Lucas Underwood: And until we recognize that 

Cecil Bullard: attitude, attitude, first brother, attitude first, I have to be. Like I, I tell this story in classes. It's if the IRS was gonna come lock my doors, do you know when my employees would know as the locks were being put on the doors? Other than that, everything's great. Everything's fantastic, and we're gonna do fantastic.

Cecil Bullard: Yep. You can't have people thinking, I need people thinking we're gonna succeed. We're gonna win this game. Yeah. Right. And if you think that way, y your odds of winning dramatically increase. And if you're toxic, your odds of poisoning everyone around you dramatically increase. Right. 

Lucas Underwood: And, and unfortunately, the people you're gonna poison first are the people you love the 

Cecil Bullard: most, 

Lucas Underwood: right?

Cecil Bullard: Well, the best, the, I have chased away some really, really great people. Mm-hmm. Because I was toxic. And it's a shame when you finally realize, oh my God, I'm, I've got to fire this guy who's a great tech, but now is just the most ornery, miserable SOB. And I'm the fault I let it happen. I allowed it to happen.

Cecil Bullard: I didn't manage this sooner, blah, blah, blah. Oh my God, it's my fault. Fire him anyway. You can't have toxicity around you. 

Lucas Underwood: Amen. I'm a small, new mobile business breaking even and want to know the next step. Do I buy new equipment and offer more services to existing clients or market to new clients? 

Cecil Bullard: So breaking even's a problem for me because breaking even is losing money.

Cecil Bullard: There's no breaking even. Alright, and so. I'm not gonna buy new equipment right now unless I can verify or justify that equipment to create a certain amount of money that would then put 20% net in my pocket. So for instance, Hey Cecil, uh, I wanna buy an alignment rack for my shop. And you look and they're doing.

Cecil Bullard: They, they got a hundred cars a month and they're doing three alignments and they're subbing them out. Right. And now they're gonna do alignments and they buy this alignment rack. 'cause if we do five or six or seven a week, we're gonna make money. The problem is they never do five or six or seven a week because they don't change their process of finding and selling alignments.

Cecil Bullard: Right. Yeah. Now you're into a piece of equipment, $80,000. Yeah. And you have a, I don't know, $2,500 a month, uh, lease payment or $3,000 a month. How many alignments do you have to do for sure to make that profitable for yourself and at what price? 

Lucas Underwood: You, you're so right, Cecil. And, and here's the thing, as I've seen so many guys do this.

Lucas Underwood: I'm guilty of doing it. I've seen a lot of others do this and, and it kind of comes back to some of this diagnostic slash testing training that we're, we're really pushing in the industry because we keep saying, Hey, we need to learn all this new testing. We need this new, great equipment. And I'm not disagreeing with that.

Lucas Underwood: I think we do, but if we're not charging for that, if we're not making money doing it, the real money's made in brake jobs. The real money's made in light services. It's not made in the big jobs. It's not made in the complex testing. It, it and it. Well, it can be. 

Cecil Bullard: It can be. It should be. That's, it should be, that's another, that's another podcast.

Cecil Bullard: It is. Which is, or another webinar, which, which basically is when you are doing whatever you're doing, how do you make that profitable? Exactly. A hundred percent. And that's why you have varying labor rates. And that's why when you're doing diag. If your labor rate is twice as much as your other labor rate, but, but you sure 

Lucas Underwood: don't go out and buy a $10,000 piece of equipment and not charge for it, right?

Lucas Underwood: Like, doesn't work well, no. 

Cecil Bullard: No, no. No, no, no. If you're in the automotive industry in the past, we certainly have gone out and bought lots of 10 and 25,000. I mean, I had one of the first $25,000 scopes that Sun made way back in the day, and we put that thing in the corner. I You just dated yourself, 

Lucas Underwood: brother.

Lucas Underwood: I mean, 

Cecil Bullard: yeah, brother. I know I did sh. You mean the white hair and the, and the white be enough? I mean, didn't date me right? 

Lucas Underwood: That was what, like 1932, something like that. 

Cecil Bullard: Oh, shut up. When I see you buddy. Going down, uh, 1980 something. Uh, I think first scope I bought 25 grand. Now we didn't answer the question.

Cecil Bullard: So right. First, let's make sure that what car count do I need? Yeah. And how many more do I need and or. Will the customers that I have pay a little bit more so that I have the profit that I need to buy that equipment or the profit that I need to market to gain better customers or more customers, right?

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And so I, I don't want the person that comes here and asked the question, so, man, they went on a tangent. They don't really answer my question. I, I don't have enough information right here to tell you which one. I would tell you probably both. If I can justify the piece of equipment to create a, I've got a guy right now that they don't work on Audi, but they do a lot of BM, bmw, Mercedes work and they want to increase their business.

Cecil Bullard: Well, you might want to think about bringing an Audi tech in and and marketing to Audi because it might increase your business by 25 or 30%. Yep. And. Also marketing vehicle specific. So the way that marketing is changing, it's now about sentiment, and I don't know what the percentage is, but a high percentage of searches probably somewhere around 30 to 40% are now being done through uh, ai.

Cecil Bullard: And AI doesn't look at your business like Google looked at your business. Yeah, for sure. AI is, is looking at the sentiment of what your question is and trying to find the right answers. Yeah. And, and so now if I'm gonna market, I wanna market. Sentiment. We had a whole big meeting the other day here and we're talking about one of our people here who is uh uh, Ms.

Cecil Bullard: Michael Smith, who's the expert on m and a. And I'm like, we have not done a good enough job. 'cause there's people coming into our industry saying, well, I'm an expert on leadership. No education, no. No real experience, but they have a podcast. And now the expert on leadership. I'm trying to cut anybody down.

Cecil Bullard: That's not what I'm doing. Okay. But I have a guy that's got 40 plus years, uh, in m and a, creating m and a. Our company has not done a good enough job. Um, uh, marketing that person and their skillset. And, and, and then we started talking about AI because we did an AI search. Like, if I wanna sell my business, uh, who could, my automotive business, who can help me?

Cecil Bullard: And the first guy that popped up on AI was Michael Smith, and the second guy that popped up was Cecil Bullard. All right. And, and that's cool, but I wanna own. All of those questions on that AI's gonna get asked, and so we've made some shifts in our marketing because of the shifts that are happening in.

Lucas Underwood: Marketing. Well, you know, and, and we started hearing about some of this a few years back. We, we were at the Mars conference a few years back. Yeah. And that's where we started hearing about some of this way before it even got here. Um, and so I, I think that if you've not been to some type of marketing training now, look, I'm a car guy.

Lucas Underwood: I'm not gonna lie to you. I get bored with the marketing thing. It's just not what I enjoy. But when you go to a class like Mars, you know the, the conference Mars that the institute does, and you actually sit through some of that marketing training, holy cow, it is next level you, you begin to understand it in a different way.

Lucas Underwood: It's not the marketing that you thought it was. You know, we used to go knock on doors and go talk to people and carry the cards around. And I'm not saying that doesn't work. I'm just saying that the environment we're in is changing so fast. You need a hyper boost, if you will. You need a crash course really quickly to understand how to market your business.

Lucas Underwood: So I think Mars is a great option for somebody like this who's just starting out so they, they don't have to fake it till they make it in the marketing department. 

Cecil Bullard: You can game the system. Um, and there will be people that game the system, period. And we gamed Google Ads, frankly, and we gained ad words and we gamed a lot of things because we were looking ahead and we knew, or we suspected that, that it was moving in that direction.

Cecil Bullard: I, let me ask you a question, Lucas. You've known me and you've known the institute for a while. Yeah. A long time. When have we ever done anything? Only at the normal level. Never, never, never. And so this is not what people are thinking. It's not sit down and have a bunch of marketing companies try to sell me their marketing.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, this is, here's the future. Here's what we believe it looks like. And by the way, we've been pretty good at this for a long time, and here's how you can take advantage of that. And here's what you can do. Go home with, that's gonna help you to bring more quality people in your business more consistently.

Cecil Bullard: For sure. Now when's 

Lucas Underwood: it, when is the event 

Cecil Bullard: that, 

Lucas Underwood: is it coming up? I wanna say the September. We've got a producer, they're gonna put it at the bottom of the screen over here, right? Fifth or put up? Yeah. September 4th through sixth. There you go. There 

Cecil Bullard: you go. That's awesome. And, and there's still some seats.

Cecil Bullard: We'd love to, you know, fill it because we have the, and the other thing is, I know, I don't know, probably 95% of the marketing companies out there, and I know their strengths and weaknesses, and I try to attract the top 5%. And the top 5% are gonna be at the conference. Yep. We're not inviting everybody. That's not.

Cecil Bullard: It's not come and have us, oh, sell me your program. It's come and help me understand how, what I need to do to be successful in the future. Absolutely. And then if you, if you see somebody there that you like and you say, oh wow, they really knew what they were talking about. I'd like to do business with them.

Cecil Bullard: That's fantastic. But we don't do things at the institute. We, we do them differently than most other companies. Yeah. 

Lucas Underwood: Okay. Well, I know we're running out of time. Cecil, you got anything you wanna add? Anything you drop in at the end here? Anything you wanna share? 

Cecil Bullard: Well, we're gonna, we're gonna do this on a routine basis and we want to answer questions and be specific to those questions for sure.

Cecil Bullard: So if we didn't get to your question, you can, uh, uh, email that question in. Um, uh, um. You can hit Cecil at we are the institute.com. You can send 'em to me. Uh, we will put them on the list and we'll make sure that. When we have our next one, we get to your questions as quickly as we can and get the best answers that we can to your questions.

Cecil Bullard: Absolutely. 

Lucas Underwood: And, and we're gonna, you know, in some of these videos, if they, if they require a more detailed explanation, we're gonna sit down with Cecil and we're gonna make detailed explanations for some of these questions. And so those will be on the Changing The Industry podcast. You'll be able to see those.

Lucas Underwood: It's where we really dig in and begin to debrief and back away and get the, the, the core of the onion peeled back to where we can see exactly what's happening, understand the business, and, and may even look at some numbers and share some shop numbers and some stuff like that. So it should 

Cecil Bullard: never know.

Lucas Underwood: Baby. 

Cecil Bullard: That's 

Lucas Underwood: it. That's it. We're not sharing my numbers. Okay. We're not doing that, Cecil. Ah, we're not doing that. I can't do it. I'll, I'll try not, I'll try to hold back. That's it. You do pretty wells. Absolutely. Good. Well guys, thank you all so much for being here. I see a lot of names that I know and appreciate very much that you guys came and hung out with us and so I'm so excited to see all of you next time.

Lucas Underwood: Again, we're gonna be doing this more often, um, and it is a lot of fun for both of us. So thank you both so much. Uh, thank all of you so much, and uh, Cecil. Thank you for being here, man. Thank you for taking time outta your day. I know you're a busy dude, so it's phenomenal. No 

Cecil Bullard: worries. This is what I love to do the most to help job owners, so 

Lucas Underwood: Yes, sir.

Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. 

Lucas Underwood: Well, thank.

Show Summary:

Recorded at the Institute Summit 2025, this episode features brothers Jason and Patrick Brennan in a powerful conversation on leadership, innovation, and growth in the automotive industry. Jason emphasizes redefining training through real-world rehearsal practice for service advisors and technicians, and using “education” language to promote a culture of ongoing development. Patrick brings his marketing expertise to the table, stressing the importance of reputation management and direct response strategies for businesses. Together, they explore how strong leadership, peer networking, and a healthy company culture attract talent and fuel long-term success.

Host(s):

Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio

Guest(s):

Patrick and Jason Brennan, Fine Tune Auto Service

Show Highlights:

Introduction (00:00:00)

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Episode Transcript:

Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network. Hey everybody, it's Carm Caprio Remarkable Results Radio. It's another Town Hall Academy. We are at the Institute Summit in Amelia Island, Florida. Okay, so I left Buffalo with four feet of snow and I came down here and of course it snowed last night. No it didn't.

Carm Capriotto: I'm only kidding what beautiful weather going on here. And we're so happy to be here at the Institute Summit. We're here February 6th through ninth recording this, so whenever you hear it, you'll know that it was a while back. Lots of stuff going on here. The theme is being stand out. And a lot of innovation being discussed, so we're really happy to be here.

Carm Capriotto: But before we get going, couple of great words from our sponsors. Hey, take your Autocare center to the next level, the gold level with the Napa Autocare Gold certified program. This program is for the best of the best who can provide a consistent consumer experience and earn the trust of returning and new customers.

Carm Capriotto: Talk to your NAPA sales representative about how you can become a gold certified shop. Hey, let's face it. Your shop management system is the most critical tool in your shop, and Napa Tracks will move your shop into the SMS Fastlane with onsite training, six days a week. Support and local representation.

Carm Capriotto: Find NAPA tracks on the web at N-A-R-A-C s.com. I have a great team here today. I got Jason Brennan from Fine Tune Auto. Hi Jason. How you doing? I am great sir. How's business?

Jason Brennan: Going well, thank you. 

Carm Capriotto: And you're here to what? Uh, hang out, learn, talk to your peers.

Jason Brennan: All the above. 

Carm Capriotto: Are you in a special group? 

Jason Brennan: I'm in the institute.

Jason Brennan: G. P. G Group. Three. 

Carm Capriotto: Cool. Group three. Best one. And that's the thing I love about the institute's groups. There's a little bit of a rivalry there, isn't there? You know Your brother's here with you? Patrick Brennan. Hi Patrick. How you doing? Good. You are not in the business, are you? I'm not. And we convinced him to come on because I think he may have some very interesting things to say.

Carm Capriotto: I think he will. 'cause I know he helps you a lot in the business. One of the things that I found fascinating about you guys, or especially the story you told me about the family plumbing business. So you were a family plumbing business, and what I wanna know is how did it become automotive? 

Jason Brennan: That's a good question.

Jason Brennan: I don't know if it was just that I, you know, I did so much plumbing growing up. I was already tired of it by the time I started my career or what it was. I don't know. But automotive, I, you know, that's a good question. We've talked before I started out. Working on lawnmowers and yeah, whatever. I was always just taking things apart and that kind of just naturally progressed into working on cars.

Jason Brennan: I was a technician, so got into the automotive business, but I don't think I would've had the fortitude or the courage to do it if I hadn't grown up. You know? It certainly had helped to grow up in a household. Where, you know, family, business and a, a service business was the environment that I grew up around and in 

Carm Capriotto: to me today.

Carm Capriotto: I mean, there's a lot of discussion out there about excellent customer service. If you forget about the customer, you must well forget about your business. 

Jason Brennan: Absolutely. 

Carm Capriotto: I don't know if we're getting enough customer service training, and I don't mean. Here's how you do it, but the service advisors at our counter today, I think it's the most considered educational series that I have seen anywhere.

Carm Capriotto: Every coaching company is including the institute. They've got a great focus on that front counter and that customer experience. 

Jason Brennan: I agree. They need to, they're service professionals. This isn't a job. And probably never should have been a job where, well, since I know how to fix cars, I'll just go up and you know, maybe I'll write service and I'll advise customers.

Jason Brennan: Can you explain to them the workings, the details of how the car works, why you should or shouldn't do the repair? Maybe. But it is a separate profession. You have to understand as a service advisor, those people have to understand sales. They have to understand customer service and they have to understand enough about the product that they're selling or recommending, and they have to understand all those things.

Jason Brennan: And then if they're gonna be a store manager, they need to understand business too. So it's a lot of stuff. 

Carm Capriotto: I'm curious, Jason, do they need to know more about themselves also? Because if you don't understand who you are and how you communicate, I think it's awfully tough to have a, I mean, well, it's my way or the highway kind of thing.

Carm Capriotto: There's gotta be flexibility built into building relationships. 

Jason Brennan: I would say yes they do, because you know, a lot of people just have a naturally good communication style and ability. But let's face it, some of us don't. And so my natural style might not be the right style. To be communicating to a customer with how'd you survive all these years?

Jason Brennan: So I know it's, I don't know, 

Carm Capriotto: it just happened. They loved you for some reason and they kept coming back. 

Jason Brennan: No, I actually, I did, I took service advisor training when I wrote service, of course. And that helped. So that's great. By the way, I needed it. It is great. And if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't be here. 

Carm Capriotto: You know, for you to, to realize this is a weakness, I may have to do something to fix that, or can I get better?

Carm Capriotto: And I'm on this soapbox of late, you know, this whole language shift thing that's going on in my world that I'm doing keynotes on. One of the most important things is the word removing the word training Jason, and making it the word education. Hmm. Because we train dogs, but we educate people and we go to places to learn.

Carm Capriotto: And there's an educator in, in the room. What are your thoughts on that? 

Jason Brennan: I think that's right. Never thought of it that way, but that's true. 

Carm Capriotto: So if you sit down with your people, you've got this continuing education program for them, I'm gonna send you off on a great training program so when you come back, you'll be able to fetch the ball really well.

Carm Capriotto: I'm really being facetious and I'm really kind of kidding here. Right. But it just hit me so hard. As you know, the Super Bowl is being played in a couple of days from recording this. And I think about athletes, you know, going to training, doing training. And why are we calling what we're doing training.

Carm Capriotto: It's one of those lazy words that has crept into our industry, and I think in order to lift even telling our customers, listen, our guys have gone through a continuous education program. In fact, they get 40 to 50 hours a year. I think it's important for the client. To know what we invest. Well, why do you charge so much?

Carm Capriotto: We don't need to give them the litany of it, but I don't know if you know, but we send all our people to, you know, we're, we're constantly educating them about what, do you have any idea what that computer is on four wheels and. How it works. That's why you're here. Mm-hmm. All that stuff. And I think it could be incorporated into marketing.

Carm Capriotto: And Patrick, I know that's what you're helping your brother do. Talk to me about that. 

Patrick Brennan: Yeah. Well, I have a background in home services and I kind of grew up in the home service business. Wait a minute, does this anything to 

Carm Capriotto: do 

Patrick Brennan: with plumbing? Yes. Air conditioning and plumbing. Okay. That's kind of my background.

Patrick Brennan: But in my career there, I, uh, helped form our marketing budgets across a big business. So. I learned a lot there and that's kind of, Jay bounces ideas off of me and I bounce ideas off of him and, but I like what you said about training and education. To me, training sounds. Like it's not permanent, and education to me is an ongoing, continuous thing.

Carm Capriotto: I love that. 

Patrick Brennan: I don't know. That's what I think about when I think of those two words. Well, 

Carm Capriotto: thank you for helping with that because the more I talk to people, we've been gone for almost 10 days on a road trip. In talking to so many people and I, I've occasionally been known to come here. I have an idea, I wanna run by you, but thank you for that.

Carm Capriotto: Some things that you're helping Jason with, you know, you say he to his ideas back and forth. What's a recent one that you were able to. Use of your brothers an idea. 

Jason Brennan: The most recent thing we've been working on is reputation management. Ooh. So, I mean, we've been talking about it for years, but Patrick actually already had a software platform.

Jason Brennan: He does all kinds of stuff. We don't have time to even talk about all the stuff that he's involved in. But one of the things is that he is doing reputation management for me. And built a software and him and I worked together on a word tracks or a script, whatever you wanna call it, things to say to customers that let them know we would appreciate them giving us a review.

Jason Brennan: Whatever it is, just be honest, give us a review. And the software sends them a reminder and then they give us reviews. We're able to get more reviews, and that's, you know, part of our reputation. 

Carm Capriotto: I think this is huge. Yeah. A reputation management piece of software and using the words, is it written word, typed words, electronic words, or is it the words that we are helping our service advisors say?

Patrick Brennan: I can speak to that a little bit. It's mainly like the surface advisors, the people who interact with the customers. They know our system is gonna send out a request for feedback to customers and to every customer. Now that they know that that's gonna happen, they kind of prime the customers before they know they're gonna get a request for the feedback on the service.

Carm Capriotto: Do you educate them on that? I mean, how you coach them, you rehearse that 

Jason Brennan: you actually Yes, and that it, rehearse is a good word. I think of rehearsal as a format. I think of that as training, so I would think. Education is, okay, I'm gonna go learn about a topic. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna understand it now and I know the theory.

Jason Brennan: And then training is repeating that, you know, repeating those words you wanna memorize or that process that you wanna follow or whatever it is. That's, so we do training. Our service staff do training every morning from seven 30 to 7 45. So if you had that up, that's a lot of hours a year. And they do training with each other.

Jason Brennan: And then on Fridays. We'll do a Google meet. I'm usually there and all of them. So there's currently six counter people and myself, and then we'll take turns hosting that meeting. So whatever we've been training on, just like a sports team that re runs, plays over over. That's how you get good at it. Yeah.

Jason Brennan: So we're getting good at it, we're practicing it, and so it becomes second nature and we could just do it on the spot and we could focus on the customer. Not having to think about what process am I supposed to do right now? What am I supposed to say? Oh yeah, it was that. And then, you know, because when you get busy, you know, sometimes it's like juggling chainsaws.

Jason Brennan: I stole that phrase from one of my store manager managers. I thought it was funny, but it's kind of true. So those things need to be second nature. 

Carm Capriotto: I fallen in love with what you just said. First of all, thanks Carm education is the right thing to do, but when we have to make sure we solidify. The process, the system, the greetings, the everything in the business.

Carm Capriotto: We're gonna go train. I love it. Seven 30 to 7 45. We train on service advising. Give me an idea of what they cover, what they do. 

Jason Brennan: It could be anything that we need to be good at, that we do a lot. So it could be. Listening. One example would be listening to plane, back phone calls. How did we handle this phone call?

Jason Brennan: Let's listen to it. Let's talk about it. 

Carm Capriotto: Is it public? Everyone gets a chance to listen to each other's calls. 

Jason Brennan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, in each store it'll be, you know, the two counter people, they'll listen to each other's calls together. Okay. And then critique it. You know, the once a week meeting that we're doing, it'll be.

Jason Brennan: One shop's turn to host and they'll play a call over the meeting and then everybody gets to critique it. So it could be phone calls, it could be, let's talk about this process for reviews. You know, this reputation management. How are we doing it? Let's talk about our inspection process. How do we do that?

Jason Brennan: What kind of challenges did we have last week? What good things did we have last week? KPIs, you know, 

Carm Capriotto: I'm fascinated by your ROI and chime in anytime, Patrick. You're doing all of this, you're listening to each other's calls, you are motivating someone to maybe possibly get better. I could have done that.

Carm Capriotto: Have you seen a direct reflection in your sales growth because of this? 

Jason Brennan: Absolutely. Yeah. We've added a third store in the last year, so it's hard to say, you know what the true growth would've been if we had three established stores. What I have for sure, what I can say I have noticed is I've noticed improvements.

Jason Brennan: Improvements where you mentioned the people's natural speaking style or something. I've noticed improvements in the way that we communicate with customers because I can listen to calls and I can be there in the shops and observe what's going on. And noticed an I improving in people's 

Carm Capriotto: confidence. 

Jason Brennan: Yeah.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. Confidence and willingness to learn. At first, it's a little awkward. Jason comes in and goes, Hey, guess what? We're gonna play these calls that you screwed up on. So try to find your worst ones and then put 'em. That's what I want you to do. Find your worst ones. 'cause it's great to congratulate each other for the good ones, but we want to solve problems for you and figure out where we can improve.

Jason Brennan: We're always trying to be the best, so do that. There were a bunch of good calls on those Zoom meet or those Google meets, but, and one guy who I'm thinking of who has had, I think, the biggest improvement from where he started. Played some pretty bad calls and then he said, you know, I know I screwed these up.

Jason Brennan: That's what we're supposed to do here, is to get better. We're supposed to be vulnerable and figure out, say, Hey, this is one I'm having a struggle with. So I've seen huge improvements by doing that. 

Carm Capriotto: Is your software, does any AI on your. Calls 

Jason Brennan: We do. I haven't tried it yet. I have inbounds. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, I've seen the dashboard for inbound.

Carm Capriotto: Mm-hmm. And David Boyd's a great guy and he is, he's a sponsor on our network. When I saw the percentage of talking about tires, hey, you guys are talking about tires. We never sell tires. It's amazing how that can happen. The thing that I love about our discussion. Is that every morning we're working with the team for personal improvement.

Jason Brennan: Exactly. That kind of ties in. What I really liked about this summit so far was Dan's comment about teams and, 'cause we're working on with our managers, especially, we're starting with managers and we're gonna, you know, roll it out to everybody. We're working on figuring out what it takes to put together a good team and have a cohesive team, and something Dan said.

Jason Brennan: Yesterday was that it's individuals on the team are what's gonna ultimately make the difference between success and failure. People make the team succeed, the team's, the team, and everybody fails or succeeds together, but it's individuals who make that happen. So we do need to work on individual personal improvement to make the team what it needs to be.

Carm Capriotto: It's amazing. When you think about teams, and I love your analogy about each individual is an individual. You're getting ready to do a timing job and you know that the tools you need to lay out, they all do a different thing. They all have their, their strength in the job. And when we put teams together, sometimes there's a broken tool.

Jason Brennan: Yeah, there could be. And you know, if I was on a team, I am on a team, I'm kinda like the coach of three teams, sort of, if you will, with the three separate shops to count out and then, or maybe the owner and the managers or the coaches. I don't know what the real deal is with that, but if there's somebody that's either not the right fit for the team or not performing, I know I wouldn't wanna be that person, 

Carm Capriotto: but that's you.

Carm Capriotto: That's you, Jason. There are some people that are just willing to just go down the highway, get on the bus and go for the ride. 

Patrick Brennan: I think his process, uh, every morning training and rehearsing is really valuable because you cannot quickly identify individuals who are just not gonna cut it on your team. If you're doing this very regularly and hopefully you're doing everything you can, that's what that provides as well too.

Patrick Brennan: And the education to me is more the why. You know, you understand the fundamental, the training, like Jason said, is like the rehearsing and just. Building the confidence 

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Carm Capriotto: It is such a strong thing. I gotta do more on this. The training is really rehearsing. Let's get the word training away. Let's talk about education. Again, if a technology specialist in the bays goes to a scope and he comes back and he doesn't use what he learned, and so maybe we then say, go and train on what you learned or start rehearsing what your latest educational class was, 

Jason Brennan: right.

Jason Brennan: Go rehearse it. It's a good example with technicians. I think they tend to naturally know that they need to do that. When I was a tech, I remember going to a John Thornton misfire class. This is probably like in the, in the early two thousands, 90% of it was over my head and I was thinking I had just opened my shop and I came from several different places, but I never really got into diagnostics that heavily.

Jason Brennan: And then I learned all these new things that I didn't know, found out about these things I didn't know. Took a bunch of notes and I thought, man, am I ever gonna be able to do this? I don't know. There's nobody else that works here. It's just me. How am I gonna learn this? And when I put it into practice was really when I learned it.

Jason Brennan: It might have taken me longer, I might not have have been able to charge people for all the time I spent on it. But that was the cost of training to me, is the extra time I had to stay after work and learn or whatever I had to do. And we have technicians that do the same thing. The ones who are really committed to learning higher level technology, diagnosis, and you know, programming or whatever it is they're doing.

Jason Brennan: Even mechanical stuff. They'll often, I'll find out that they got together with some other techs, you know, other techs in the industry on a Saturday and took a bunch of waveforms or something and put 'em, then shared 'em all and came back to their shops with a mental tool set and some, you know, computer tools.

Jason Brennan: To be able to do their job effectively and efficiently. They devoted to the training that allowed them to show up to work with a valuable skillset that they can exchange for a really good paycheck and doing a good work. 

Carm Capriotto: That's a great story. That's pure geek. 

Jason Brennan: Oh, 

Carm Capriotto: sure. Yeah. When these guys get together, I love that.

Carm Capriotto: Wow. You talk about John Thornton, one of our best industry trainers to come back from one of his classes and be so humble. It's the old story. I don't know what I don't know. Right. Yeah. I just don't know. Yeah. 

Patrick Brennan: A lot of times that's what training and education is, is figuring out how little you know. I know.

Carm Capriotto: And then take that. And say, I gotta do more, or I gotta dig in or I've gotta find another class. 'cause a lot of times you go to the same class, different trainer, or even the same trainer a year ago, and you test, let me see, hmm. One to 10. I actually knew 4% or 40% of what I didn't the last time. And I still have more to go.

Carm Capriotto: And I think you take the education you get, you go back, you use it, you rehearse with it, you put it to real good usage. And I've always said that when you go to a seminar, I've said this for years and I've known it myself, when you go and learn something. If you can come back and bring that to your people and you teach, even if you go to one of your people, you sent them to vision to do a couple of technology classes and they came back, then let them teach for one hour what they learned, the teaching experience solidifies a lot of what they learned because they were, were able to respeak it.

Patrick Brennan: Absolutely. 

Jason Brennan: I agree. I think that's one of the best ways to master. A topic or a skill is, you know, whatever a profession is to teach it. You'll get asked questions that you never thought of making things you never thought of before, right? Then you have to figure it out, so you're really learning as you're teaching.

Carm Capriotto: What makes you really successful? 

Jason Brennan: I don't know. When I get there, I'll let you know what it was. Pick 

Carm Capriotto: one. 

Jason Brennan: I no. That success. Pick one of the greatest 

Carm Capriotto: traits that you have that you say, I just can't believe this is working so well for me. 

Jason Brennan: What makes us successful as a company and gives me person the most amount of personal satisfaction has changed over the years.

Jason Brennan: It used to be a hard diagnostic challenge or something on a car. Now, I think what makes us successful is the effort that the people who work for us put in toward fulfilling our mission. When someone, you know in what gives me, you know, satisfaction about what I do now, making a good profit is always important so we can have the right resources to continue doing what we're doing and everybody else does too.

Jason Brennan: And, but seeing people succeed and make improvements and achieve the highest level that they can in their career, achieving their goals, being a part of that is what? Makes me feel like I'm being successful. 

Carm Capriotto: 10 years ago, you would've never felt that thought that 

Jason Brennan: I don't think I would've 

Carm Capriotto: because you never got out of the bays.

Carm Capriotto: Right. 

Patrick Brennan: I'll tell you what I think, one thing I think made Jay so successful is perseverance. If I had to say one thing, I mean, yeah, there were probably a a hundred times I'm on the phone with him and he's like, what the hell do I do? I, and if you don't mind me telling this story, one time he called me and he's like, I had to sell my snowmobiles.

Patrick Brennan: I had to sell something, this and that to make payroll this year. And he's like, I got. Some cash in the drawer at home and that's all I got left and he's like, I'm this close to going out of business, but he's far from that now, and because he stuck with it, I think that's what's made him successful. 

Jason Brennan: I love that story.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. I've been there, you know, a couple of times. So that was actually around the time that I joined the, what was RLO training's, bottom Line Impact Groups. Sure. Now the institute, so, um, 

Carm Capriotto: BLIG. Mm-hmm. That was a great group. Yeah. Did you come over to the institute after Cecil bought the RLO? 

Jason Brennan: Yeah, they kept all the groups intact.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. So they're really still the same. Some of the same core people are still with those groups. Yeah. So the group three is still the same, some of the same people. Yeah. Some new guys. Some new people. So 

Carm Capriotto: I heard you just had a peer review. GPG. 

Jason Brennan: We hosted a meeting. Yeah. Okay. We hosted a group meeting. You hosted a group meeting.

Jason Brennan: Right. So our group meetings, most of 'em are hosted at a shop or by a shop. So 

Carm Capriotto: you hosted? 

Jason Brennan: We hosted, but they didn't review your place did. Oh, they did? Yeah. Ah, that's what, I guess what I'm need it is a peer review. Okay. I just didn't think of it that. How'd it go? It went pretty well. Did you work 

Carm Capriotto: hard in prep for it or they just said, come on in, I'm perfect.

Jason Brennan: No, we did a lot of upfront, you know, the low hanging fruit, you know, I've been in the group long enough that I know to have like fire extinguisher signs and don't have the first aid kit in the bathroom and to make sure you have coat hooks and those kind of things, you know, just don't I. 'cause I didn't want, yeah, 

Patrick Brennan: pro tips.

Jason Brennan: Pro tips. I didn't want it to be a waste of people's time and just go there and find all this stuff that I already know I should have had done. So tried to, and that's how I'm gonna get the most value out of it, is to have them find, I wanted them to dig deep and find problems. Find room for improvement.

Jason Brennan: Problems are opportunities. Yeah. So, and they did so working. So you took care 

Carm Capriotto: of the fluff that you didn't want them to find the easy Yeah, the, I walked by it every day. I'm not sure why for the last four years, but I've never fixed that. Right now I've done it. 'cause I don't want them to pick on me. Go deep.

Jason Brennan: Right. That was our approach and we did, the manager was involved in that meeting and they came to the shop. Other business owners, 

Carm Capriotto: I've watched it happen. I've actually watched a GPG group do a peer review on a shop. And it was exciting to be there. I thought there was a lot of fun going on. They found a lot of stuff, but the owner had a chance to say confession to himself for almost six months before and clean and paint the ceiling and get new lights and all this stuff.

Carm Capriotto: And he says, I always wanted to do this. There's nothing like the people that you work closely with and that's why I'm such a believer in networking groups or peer groups like they have here at the institute. To rock your socks, to make some profound changes to let your conscious boil up and say, yeah, coulda, woulda, shoulda, gotta right.

Patrick Brennan: So it is kinda like when you're, you know, you're having guests over the house, you don't clean the house so well until the guests come over and it's similar. It's like your business, you know, you're gonna prepare for that. So I do see a lot of value in that deep cleaning. Exactly. 

Jason Brennan: Yeah. And they did a good job with that, you know, with all that stuff.

Jason Brennan: So I was proud of them. Yeah. I like the peer group process because it's more of a peer group, it's less of somebody standing there telling you things. We'll get information from the Institute, but I think we get just as much information from each other than we do from Aaron Woods, and he's a great facilitator.

Jason Brennan: And I've looked into, over the years, I've looked into probably all the different coaching or consulting groups that there are. This one was the most customizable meaning. It was up to me. I'd be held accountable by my peers for the results that I say that I want to get. Of course, they're gonna help me to figure out what that should look like, but if I say, well, I'm targeting a 20% net profit and these other KPIs, and also I want good employee retention, of course, and this many customers, this many cars per month, et cetera, it's me making those commitments.

Jason Brennan: To my peers and to the facilitator and how I do it. It's just up to me. Nobody's gonna tell me, well, you have to do this process this way. That might not work for me. I probably shouldn't deviate from it if I don't know anything else to do. But I wanted the flexibility to be able to customize my auto repair business to serve the customers the best possible way that it can.

Jason Brennan: You know, and we're not robots. I don't treat my employees like robots. We do have certain things we have to do. And I have certain things I always have to do, but other than that, it's, you know, us as people figuring out, using our brains and being smart about things and figuring out how we want to do it.

Jason Brennan: And that's what I think you need to have that in order for a business to be truly unique in the marketplace and have competitive advantages. 'cause there has to be innovation. If you just follow a rigorous set process all the time and it has to be that way and everybody's doing it that way, then we're just.

Jason Brennan: Too similar to, I think like a box store model or something, rather than When 

Carm Capriotto: you say innovation, Jason, do you mean innovation in leadership? Innovation in being able to retain and hire innovation in policies, or you're talking about innovation in the shop with technology? 

Jason Brennan: I would say all of it. Yeah. You know, just anything.

Jason Brennan: But when people are allowed to think for themselves, they might have a set of rules to follow, but when you hire smart people and they're allowed to think for themselves. And the leadership listens to those people, big improvements can happen. 

Carm Capriotto: How do you hire smart people? Help me. 

Jason Brennan: That's a good question.

Jason Brennan: First of all, I think you have to have a business that attracts those kind of people. The smart people are looking to work for good businesses because they're smart enough to figure out this place seems like they provide a good product to customers. And I'm smart enough to figure out that that's what businesses do mainly.

Jason Brennan: And they're probably also gonna be able to provide a good workplace for me. And have the revenue stream to pay me well for my knowledge. So I'm gonna work there. So I think, and, and the culture's good. It seems like when I walk in there, or I drove, I, I've had technicians tell me, they drove by my shop and looked at our guru reviews and all that stuff to see and they went in, or you know, kinda walked around just to see if everybody was smiling and telling jokes or if it was completely silent.

Jason Brennan: And all they heard was tools. That was part of their decision making process on where to work. 

Carm Capriotto: Well, and it goes back to this whole reputation management thing, Patrick. I think not only is the reputation management important to the client. It really has so much to do with being able to attract great people.

Patrick Brennan: It's a recruiting tool. Absolutely. You know, you're, everybody knows intuitively your reputation matters, right? You are your reputation. You wanna be proud of that at the end of the day, like, you know, it's a public thing when it's reputation management. So yeah, definitely recruiting tool. 

Carm Capriotto: Home services, that's what you do.

Carm Capriotto: What is it exactly? 

Patrick Brennan: Well, I came up in that industry. I'm not in the industry anymore. I focus on helping local service companies with marketing, but I kind of grew up in the air conditioning and plumbing. Industry and I had a lot of experience with the marketing and the operations side of the business.

Carm Capriotto: What kind of marketing do shops have to do? All of it. I, I knew the answer to that. It 

Patrick Brennan: needs, yeah, you need a well-rounded approach. 

Carm Capriotto: So what you talking about internet, you're talking about social media, we're talking about video. Help me. 

Patrick Brennan: Well, as much as you can afford to do, but my advice is to usually small businesses is start with reputation management.

Patrick Brennan: That should be your baseline. If you're gonna spend $1 on marketing. Spend it on reputation and you're talking 

Carm Capriotto: about getting reviews. 

Patrick Brennan: Getting reviews, okay. Improve your public review profile. After that, I recommend direct response marketing, whatever's the highest ROI for you. I wouldn't focus on social media or branding until you have a big budget.

Carm Capriotto: Really? What are you expecting? Somebody that has a big budget would spend on social media. 

Patrick Brennan: That's a good question for automotive shops, a three store chain 

Carm Capriotto: like Jason. Well, 

Jason Brennan: that's, that's a good question. Yeah. We're not doing a very good job with our social media, 

Carm Capriotto: but if you're growing, do you need it? 

Jason Brennan: I think it can be done if the owner or someone, a spouse or somebody in the company.

Jason Brennan: Wants to run it themselves, they can be pretty effective without any cost. 

Jason Brennan: Mm-hmm. 

Jason Brennan: One of our shops, the manager's spouse is doing it for us just 'cause she likes to do it and he said, Hey, can I have Jen do our Facebook page? She's really good at that. I said, sure. We're not doing much with it anyway. Go have at it.

Jason Brennan: Just put good stuff on there and. It's gotten a lot of followers. I don't know how to track it with a, a metric kind of A-A-K-P-I and numbers kind of guy, so I don't know how to track it. So if I was paying somebody to do it, I wouldn't know, you know, what I was looking for anyway. Not my strong point. I don't know what I should, you know, if I was gonna hire a company to do it and I don't want it to be cookie cutter, 'cause I've tried to do that before where it's just all the same standard stuff on there all the time.

Jason Brennan: Right. That I don't think people are really interested in. 

Carm Capriotto: Hire. Just hire Patrick. 

Patrick Brennan: No, actually I will actually say the best social media that I've seen is the most genuine. Yeah. And that comes from within the company because no company you hire can have the same voice or promote your business like you do.

Patrick Brennan: And I think what he's doing is great. The best social media is like posting pictures of the team. 

Carm Capriotto: Organic. 

Patrick Brennan: Yeah, organic. That's a good way to put it. You know, somebody's birthday, it's so and so's birthday today or so and so volunteers at this church over here and they did this event. That's a community building and actually it's also a recruiting tool.

Patrick Brennan: You know, your social media outlets are recruiting tools, and I think that's the best way to do social media. As a smaller, medium sized business, 

Carm Capriotto: we can go a million different places. Are you happy with what you're getting outta life right now, Jason? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There were times you were worried, obviously we've heard the story.

Jason Brennan: Yeah, there were times I was worried. There were times I was working way too many hours. 80 a hundred hour weeks were normal for years. 

Carm Capriotto: Call that being stuck in a hobby. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna say that you were in total struggle mode. Oh yeah. I'm such a big fan of coaches and networking groups because I really do think if you fix your attitude that I need help, I'm not Mr.

Carm Capriotto: Know-it-all that, oh, I wanted to prove to the world that I can do it. But you don't really notice that you're not. Yeah, you are, but you don't wanna admit it. A lot of people, you know, their egos are get in the way. Take us to the day that you said, listen, I gotta turn my life around. Right. And my business, 

Jason Brennan: there's kind of two different times for two different types of turning it around.

Jason Brennan: The financial, I knew I couldn't operate at a loss or a break even, or whatever wasn't gonna work. I wasn't gonna be allowed to continue operating if I didn't make a profit. 

Carm Capriotto: You were done. So 

Jason Brennan: yeah, I was almost done a couple times and just, I just somehow, by the grace of God or or willpower and whatever, all those things, and talking to people.

Jason Brennan: Talking it through with, you know, that's one of the things I do with my brother Pat, is just talk with him. The whole sounding board thing. He's just a smart guy. So yeah. Anyway, talk about that. Talk with a bunch of smart people. Get their ideas, but hey, how do you think I can get out of this? I started that with RLO.

Jason Brennan: Yeah. Which is now the institute in 2011. In 2011, and John Effler was working there was the facilitator, 

Carm Capriotto: great group, great facilitator. And did you come out of those first couple of meetings saying, whoa, this is gonna be good, or, I have a lot of work to do? 

Jason Brennan: Both. I came out relieved because I thought, okay, I think I found some of the answers.

Jason Brennan: I was looking for some of the solutions. To my problems. I know what I need to do now what? That's what I needed. I just needed to know. Jason, 

Carm Capriotto: what did it take for you to do the work this, you know, what kind of flu did you have to do in your world? 

Jason Brennan: I had to slowly start working on the business and not so much on cars, so I was still working in the business, but on different things.

Jason Brennan: I needed to increase my car count. At the time it was really low. I wasn't in a that shop. Still there doing very well now. In Lansing, but we didn't have enough cars to work on. It wasn't 'cause we weren't doing good work. We were do fixing cars right all the time with a great warranty to not enough vehicles to work on.

Jason Brennan: Part of that had to do with not answering the phone correctly. You know, incorrect verbiage, not conveying the value that we provide to customers was part of the problem. And also part of it was marketing. And we weren't doing enough to attract new customers. We weren't doing any customer retention. I didn't even know what our customer retention numbers were or very many numbers.

Jason Brennan: I knew how to read a p and l, but I didn't know about all the automotive specific KPIs that I should look at and where I, what a good benchmark would be for those. 

Carm Capriotto: What's next on your list of improving your skillset? 

Jason Brennan: Well, I'll tell you, you know what I'm working on right now? My skillset right now that I want to improve is teaching leadership, you know, becoming a better leader and also how to teach other people how to lead would be an ultimate goal I'd like to achieve in that area.

Carm Capriotto: That's great because you've got a growing business 

Jason Brennan: and I can't be at all the shops all the time. I can be in them. When I need to be or when I'm able to be. But somebody's gotta steer the ship, you know? And, 

Carm Capriotto: but you don't want many Jasons, you want individuals, right. Leader, individual leaders 

Jason Brennan: that Right.

Jason Brennan: Who believe in our core values and Right. Can carry out the mission and the culture of the people Do that. Taking care of our customers and the employees who they oversee. 

Carm Capriotto: I love this. I think we covered a lot of great territory here. Good to have you on again. And Patrick, for you to just come in like that.

Carm Capriotto: I mean, you brought him to the Institute's conference here just because you wanted him to. Hear all this. 

Jason Brennan: I'm hoping he is having a good time and learning some things. I 

Carm Capriotto: bet you will and can from 

Patrick Brennan: it. I learned something. These types of things I love because I take a little bit of something from every one of 'em.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Think about all the marketing companies that are here that you can just go up and, 

Patrick Brennan: yeah. Or just guys like Jay or you. I could talk to you guys and learn something, you know. 

Carm Capriotto: Well, 

Patrick Brennan: it's all gonna benefit all 

Carm Capriotto: of us. Yeah. Itself. Nothing like having family here to Yeah, it was, it was to run stuff by, 

Patrick Brennan: yeah, it was kind of random.

Patrick Brennan: He just said, Hey, you wanna go to this thing with me? And I'm like, okay. 

Jason Brennan: I guess. Sure. Well, I kind of told him he was going. Yeah. And then I, well, I asked him, and then after he said, yeah, I said, well, I already told him you're going. So 

Carm Capriotto: they called that voluntold, right? Yes. I love it. Oh, this is great. Jason Brennan, fine Tune Auto and his brother Patrick.

Carm Capriotto: This is a blast. Thanks for your wisdom and your insights. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank 

Jason Brennan: you. Appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. 

Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive aftermarket podcast. Until next time.

Show Summary:

Recorded live at the Institute Summit 2025, explore what it truly means to stand out in today’s evolving automotive industry. Cecil Bullard covers major industry shifts, including electric and autonomous vehicles, the growing influence of private equity, and the increasing specialization of shops. Cecil also opens up about leadership, mentorship, and the personal habits that drive success, such as effective time management, the power of “mindless work,” and adapting communication styles using tools like the DISC profile. Packed with real-world advice on business planning, self-belief, and resilience, this episode is essential listening for industry professionals aiming to thrive and lead amidst ongoing change and innovation.

Host(s):

Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio

Guest(s):

Cecil Bullard, Founder of The Institute

Show Highlights:

Introduction to the Episode (00:00:00)

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm6Mqmx8_uY

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

Links & Resources: 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network. Hey everybody. Carm Caprio, remarkable Results Radio in Amelia Island. Near Jacksonville. If you've not been here, this is a huge, huge place. I mean, the beach is right over there, but I have never seen it yet. 

Carm Capriotto: When I come to these events, I work my butt off. Probably like you Cecil, right?

Carm Capriotto: Go, go, go. We're at the Institute's Summit 2025. We are the institute.com. Thank you to Cecil and Kent for having us here. The theme stand out. And it's actually been the entire, everything that's happened here, all the keynoters, all the breakout sessions, and some of the best shop owner leaders ever. I'm so impressed with 'em.

Carm Capriotto: So thank you for this award from our sponsors. Hey, take your Autocare center to the next level, the gold level with the Napa Autocare Gold Certified program. This program is for the best of the best, who can provide a consistent consumer experience and earn the trust of returning and new customers. Talk to your NAPA sales representative about how you can become a gold certified shop.

Carm Capriotto: Hey, for over 30 years, NAPA Tracks has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry. We'll prove to you that tracks is the single best shot management system in the business. Find Napa tracks on the web at N apa TRA cs.com. I am back with Cecil Bullard, the CEO of the Institute.

Carm Capriotto: I saw your speech on the first day. You knocked it out of the park as usual. But I brought Cecil in here maybe to talk a little bit about the industry, but to find out a little bit more about him. What do you do for fun? Cecil work. I knew you were gonna say that. Why did I know that? 

Cecil Bullard: I like woodworking. So building furniture.

Cecil Bullard: Woods. Interesting. 'cause it's not metal and that's cool. Yeah, I love my family, so spending time with my grandkids. My dad did not build relationships with his grandchildren, and I just thought that was really important. So I try hard to do that, you know, if I do what my wife wants, it's been certain shows, so every once in a while I'm on the couch for Cool.

Cecil Bullard: For a day watching. Yeah, whatever.

Carm Capriotto: I love it. It seems like there's a decade or every decade something kind of different happens with your life. Your world. Here come the grandkids. Oh, it's a new, fun, absolute thing I wanna do. You know, last year was for me, splitting wood. Oh wow. Honest to God, we have burned more wood this year.

Carm Capriotto: Maybe we're going on our third cord. Then ever before, it's been a really cold winter. I have seven and a half acres of woods. We lost 20 ash trees because of the ash Boer. Yeah. Last year we had 10 taken down. I had the arbor take the bottom half and I took the top and I split all of it, and now I have another 10 or 15 that I have to do and I can't wait for the snow to melt in buffalo.

Cecil Bullard: So you can do that. Yes. I always love what I call mindless work. I love to mow the lawn. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because I don't have to think about what I'm doing. I can think about all kinds of other things, but, and when I'm done, I can look and go, wow, that looks really good. Yeah. I mowed the lawn 

Carm Capriotto: instead of worrying about my next interview.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Or the next edit, or the next production, or the next conference. I worry about not hurting my fingers. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I think mindless work, what I would call mindless work like that is extremely valuable. Yeah. Now, I don't know if my shoulders would handle splitting wood. Mowing the lawn. Anything I like to read too, by the way, I'm just an avid reader.

Cecil Bullard: I read. Between three and four books a week. Just no kidding. Yeah. For fun. So when I can't sleep, I'm reading, if you read 

Carm Capriotto: Focus Factor still Focus I, 

Cecil Bullard: yeah, actually I think I'm about halfway through that one. Me, me too. I have about four books open right now. Right. 

Carm Capriotto: And that's a cool way. Zig Ziglar's son, I interviewed him a bunch of years ago, he's sitting on his couch and Barry Barrett made the introduction for me.

Carm Capriotto: Mm-hmm. And he was on with us. He's got a stack of books on his couch and I asked him, and I said. Why all the books he says, to your point, he says, I read so much. I kind of lose interest. I know I want to finish. I go to another one, and then I ask this great question. I says, do you read them all to the very end?

Carm Capriotto: And he goes, hell no, Carm. He says, if I think I got out of the book what I wanted three quarters through, it's on my shelf. 

Cecil Bullard: I would say I, not only do I read them all to the end, but I might read them three or four times. Over time because it's like attending a class. You know, you get a good instructor and you go in and you're like, you come out and you're just pumped up, but you can't get it all right.

Cecil Bullard: Oh no, you're right. And so sometimes you gotta read the book a second or a third time, and then the older I get it's like, oh, I know where was that. I think it's one of the things that are gonna keep me on my toes is just kinda keeping my head in it. Right. I get it. Hey, get any advice over all the years that you still follow today?

Cecil Bullard: So many wonderful people in my life. You know, so many mentors that have helped me be where I need to be. I think that the advice that's probably been most valuable, and I, I don't even know that I could tell you who finally got it through my head. It's like, I think believe in yourself and believe that the world is a good place and that whatever problems you're having, you're gonna get through that and tomorrow's gonna be a a better day.

Cecil Bullard: You watch the industry, what trends do you watch? I think we got a lot of issues right now. Obviously technology is changing the vehicles, so self-driving cars, they're gonna be here at some point and whoever owns the self-driving cars. So just had some conversations. One of the things about events like this.

Cecil Bullard: You get to talk to a lot of different people in the industry, and you have companies that are trying to buy up the Ubers and the et cetera, because like Ford would love to buy Uber, and then they get to sell Fords to all the Uber drivers. And then Ford controls where all the Ubers get fixed. And so I think right now the manufacturers, the issues with manufacturers struggling so hard in their service centers mm-hmm.

Cecil Bullard: Is driving them to think of other ways to control market. And one of the ways they're gonna try to control market is to buy market share. So, and then you have millennials and what we got c gens. They don't necessarily wanna own a car. Yep. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, 

Cecil Bullard: so I think that you're gonna see like a lease a car for, you know, a self-driving car for 400 bucks a month and it'll show up when you need it, and there's no driver and they're not gonna own the car, which means that they don't control how the car gets taken care of, who takes care of it, et cetera.

Cecil Bullard: I think there's gonna be some real challenges there for whoever may buy that and make that happen. But I think there's real opportunities, but I think that individual shops, I also see this separation of specialists. Yeah. And the mechanic. Yeah. Okay. Mechanical specialists, technology specialists, I, I mean, we still have mechanics, we still have shops.

Cecil Bullard: They're not educating, they're not training. I can get by just enough. I think we still have people that are pirating software instead of investing and training and looking at what's gonna come up in the next five or 10 years that I need to know. And I think we're gonna see a lot of shops close. You also have to think about BlackRock and the other two major private equity companies that own 87% of everything today except for automotive.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, they're coming in. Yeah. Like it or not. Yeah. And I think that. With the advent in technology with the changes, if you can't afford to pay your people well. And run a really profitable business that you're gonna get out of the business. You're gonna sell, you're gonna, you're gonna have to, there's no way.

Cecil Bullard: To your 

Carm Capriotto: point, wall Street Fortune, I've seen some articles come out in the absolute observation 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Of what's going on in the service side of the business. Thank you for that. Any secrets to time suck? We just seem to sometimes mindlessly not pay attention. 

Cecil Bullard: It's funny 'cause Kent was just diagnosed with a DHD.

Cecil Bullard: I've had it my entire life. You have these strategies that you do. I have lists of things, and Kent has his lists and et cetera. What happens if you're not planning your time? Then all of a sudden it's the end of the day, you didn't get done what you wanted to get done. So for me, one of my secrets is I keep a pad, I write things down, I make adjustments to that.

Cecil Bullard: There are things that fall off the list. And I think when you're teaching like the high energy A D, HD or D type personality, people that we have, 

Carm Capriotto: yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: You know, we want to be in charge. We want to take charge. We want to do everything, but you just can't. If you put the list together and then you go through the list and you say, should I be doing this right?

Cecil Bullard: Am I the only one that can do this in my company? And if I am, then I better find somebody else or teach somebody else. Is this something I really want to do? Is this something I hate to do? Is this something I should be passing on to someone else? When you start to create that and you create a list, and then you're going through and saying, okay, I'm gonna delegate those jobs, and then I have to accept what happens.

Cecil Bullard: You know you got a manager, but you need to become a coach for the manager. You can't just let the manager run loose. I would say it's the same thing when you're bringing someone along, and I think a lot of us in our business don't even bring 'em along. It's like, I'll just go do that. It's simpler or, and then all of a sudden our days are gone.

Cecil Bullard: It's the whole week's gone and I didn't get done what I needed to get done 

Carm Capriotto: this week. Be more accountable to the things that you know you want to do. I'm a list guy just like you, and sometimes they move up, they move down, they move. Sometimes I 

Cecil Bullard: pull 'em 

Carm Capriotto: off and sometimes I actually get a chance to check it.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. If nobody noticed that I haven't done it in like three weeks, it disappears. I guess It wasn't important. Right. Yeah. What does stop stopping mean to you? That's interesting. I think that's Marie's comment, but to me it means we hold ourselves up because we limit ourselves. Okay. And so I don't wanna limit my company.

Cecil Bullard: I don't wanna limit my people. I don't wanna limit myself. And so there are things you should stop if you're consciously determining your life and your business, making those conscious decisions, which means you have to stop in the morning every day and go, I need 15 minutes to go through my list. And that's a valid stop.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. But if you're allowing everything else to get in your way, then why are you, if, if that thing that's on your list is that important? Why are you stopping yourself? Yeah. What's holding you back? Those are the words I was just thinking of. Right. I think you really need to say, okay, why am I not doing this?

Cecil Bullard: Or what's holding me back? We as humans, we do this weird thing where. If we don't understand something or if it's really tough for us, we have, we don't have a lot of experience in it. We distract ourselves and to me stop stopping is stop distracting yourself. Mm-hmm. Right. Perfect. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: It's the right answer.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Are you gonna get it done or not? Because if you're, ultimately, if that's not something that is of that kind of value to you, then get it off your lips. Yeah. I think it's, or give it to somebody else. I think 

Carm Capriotto: it's a great two words for people to realize I'm not getting anything done. Yeah. Well, stop, stop.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, basically stop stopping. You have a decision to make. Okay. I, I should have, oh, God should have done that last week. So stop stopping. 

Cecil Bullard: And I think you have to, I don't know. You know you, your beautiful daughter works for you. Yeah. Works with you. My son works with me. Yep. And I'm the d personality. I'm the guy that's like the driver who thinks I should do it.

Cecil Bullard: I can do it faster, I can do it better, blah, blah, blah. Is Ken 

Carm Capriotto: d? Is Ken d 

Cecil Bullard: He says he is okay. But he's got really strong C in him. He does. Oh yeah. Yeah. So if he is a dc, which is probably his personality around me, he's more C than D around some of the rest of the staff. He's probably more D than C. Okay. So, but I'm the guy that's like, oh my God, I have to do this.

Cecil Bullard: 'cause I'm the one that's gonna do it the best I know the most. I. You can't do that. Mm-hmm. Because if you do that, they're not gonna have any opportunity. Yeah. The rest of the staff isn't gonna have opportunity. To your 

Carm Capriotto: point, we're talking about the DISC profile. Yeah. Dominance, influence, interpersonal.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Interpersonal S being kind of a steady as she goes, the customer service person. And the C being conformist. Meaning the accountant style in all of us. Yeah. It's a has to go before. B controller. Yeah, exactly right. Oh, one day, lemme tell you this story about me losing my your mind on a high C. Yeah.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. I'm an id. Okay. D and I are above the line. Yeah. And everything else is below. I won't go into that. But my point was, if we knew what our people's communication style was, our disc, we end up ultimately having the right kind of conversation with them. 'cause if you're a D, gonna talk to an I. They're probably not gonna listen unless you have their conversation with them, not yours.

Cecil Bullard: If you're a salesperson and you have a lot of experience being a salesperson, you know that you have to make adjustments for the people you're talking to. Yeah. And if you're a good manager, it's the same thing. If I'm gonna be Cecil the D and have a good conversation, especially when Kent is like in his total C roll, there's no way we're even gonna talk.

Cecil Bullard: We're just gonna get mad at each other. We're both gonna think, well, you're not listening to me. And then we end up either yelling at each other or not talking to each other for three days. Yeah. Which none of that solves the problem. Yeah. And I think there's, who's the adult in the situation? I know it is probably the wrong way to put it, but if you're the adult in the situation and you say, okay, I'm gonna get more out of this person or out of this communication if I make the adjustment to the other person's style.

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Carm Capriotto: After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at Napa Trax. That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C s.com. I've got thermal management shops, I've got EV shops. I've got. A s calibration shop. I would tell you, 

Cecil Bullard: I think first of all, ADOS is gonna change with technology. It's gonna become simpler for the average shop to do the calibration.

Cecil Bullard: And so these guys that really invested a lot of money in the big facility and all that, I think that's gonna change electric vehicles. It's not the technology of the future. It's gonna be a hybrid of some sort. It might be gas electric, or it might be gas hydrogen, or mm-hmm. Diesel hydrogen or whatever.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. We're gonna have multiple options because that's really the future of it all. You know, specialty shops. I thought we would be almost all specialty shops by now. I mean, you know, 20 years ago I was like, oh, we're gonna have the BMW shops because the equipment's getting so expensive and. You gotta have specialty training for all of that.

Cecil Bullard: And we certainly, I think, have more of it now, but I don't know that the generalist is ever gonna go away because it solves a problem for a certain part of the population because, and why I 

Carm Capriotto: semi agree with you. That in my house, I've got one of each. Yeah. And why do I wanna have four or three different relationships out there?

Cecil Bullard: No, and it's harder. It's like, okay, if I trust Cecil or if I trust Karm, that's where I want to go. That's where I wanna go. Right? You're my place. And so, Hey Km, I know you work on my whatever, but can you work on my whatever? The answer is, yeah, if I can make it work, if I can make it pay, then yeah, I'm gonna do it for you.

Cecil Bullard: I don't want you going anywhere else, so you can, there's a little part of me that's like, oh, he might really like them better than me. 

Carm Capriotto: You mentioned Blackstone earlier. Private equity. Yeah. I mean the consul, I mean, you got your finger on the pulse of this. I know you do. Yeah. With Michael Smith joining your group Chief Strategy Officer, I think.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, something like that. He's become a great friend of ours and we love to hear him talk. We just sit, 

Cecil Bullard: we, we like him. Yeah. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: So just sit back in the room with Michael and you know, you'll get like a million words coming at you, you know? 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Imagine it's hard for me to talk when Michael's involved it.

Cecil Bullard: Cecil Bullard. Oh, has a hard time getting in the conversation. 

Carm Capriotto: Really? 

Cecil Bullard: Oh yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: I just spoke to him before you, I did pretty good, I think. Did you? I think I held my own. You'd be proud. You'd be proud. Yeah. I can't wait to hear it. 

Cecil Bullard: I love Michael De pieces. I mean, if you get to know that guy, he is gonna heart the size of China.

Cecil Bullard: Oh my God. And he cares. And he is so freaking smart. I mean, he's wicked smart. Yeah, that's what they say, right? Yeah. Wicked. He's wicked. Wicked smart. Wicked s smart wicked 

Carm Capriotto: smock. 

Cecil Bullard: And, but I keep telling him. Man, you gotta slow down a little for the rest of us, you know, just for the 

Carm Capriotto: rest of us. Oh my God. Just a little.

Carm Capriotto: I will feel comfortable saying that to him. Yeah. Next 

Carm Capriotto: time. Just 

Carm Capriotto: because I want to hear everything he has to say. Yeah. But a lot of times, like what I do for a living, it's a two-way, and it has to be right. It's gotta be a two-way, this whole Blackstone thing, consolidation, and you're close to it. There's so much talk about it.

Carm Capriotto: I mean, think out five years for me and tell me where you think it's headed 

Cecil Bullard: eventually, especially with like self-driving cars, if companies like Ford end up being the provider for the self-driving cars and the whatever Uber's gonna be in the future and they steal that car 

Carm Capriotto: park, 

Cecil Bullard: yeah. We're gonna have a hurt.

Cecil Bullard: A little bit of a hurt. And, and by the way, if private equity wants to come into our industry, we're not gonna keep 'em out. Right. Okay. Whether we like it or not. You know, if you and I go back, say when we met eight years ago. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: How many private equity companies did you know of? I knew of zero industry. I knew of maybe two or three.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Currently I can tell you that there are probably nine or 10. In the industry right now actively pursuing, hovering, and there's five or six more coming in. Yeah, because I get stuff every day. You're Cecil Bullard, you're the institute. We want you on our board. We're a private equity company. We're gonna come in and consolidate and you know, pay you a bunch of money, blah, blah, blah.

Cecil Bullard: And so I think we're gonna see a consolidation of the industry, whether you like it or not, which there's really good news about that and bad news. So I think 

Carm Capriotto: one of the words is opportunity. Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Because right now the average shop goes at about 2.8 x ebitda. So if I made a hundred thousand, I can sell for 280,000 plus assets.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. So, but my assets are only worth 20 cents on the dollar. So my old equipment. 20 cents on the dollar my car, 20 cents on the dollar, et cetera. Yeah. And my computers and other stuff here, they're not worth anything and the tools are really not worth anything. Maybe 10 cents on the dollar. 

Carm Capriotto: Isn't that the toughest part for any shop owner to have to overcome?

Carm Capriotto: You know, wait a minute. Do you know how much my toolbox, I had a $200,000 toolbox? Yeah. And you want to pay me a thousand bucks for it? Yeah. And how about that? Five years ago I just bought that, uh, road force balancer. 

Cecil Bullard: When I finally realized I wasn't gonna work on cars anymore at all. I gave my tools to a friend who has a shop that needed the tools, because I'd rather do that than try to sell 'em because nobody wanna pay me.

Cecil Bullard: It just me. It pissed me off. Every time I talk to somebody, they call you and they're like, oh yeah, you got this. It's a, I dunno, $500 wrench set that I might pay for Snap on. And they're like, oh, I'll give you $15 for it. And it just was like, I'd rather take 'em all and dump 'em in the ocean than do that. So I, I give my toolbox away.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I give all my tools away. I mean, I have enough now. That. Like if I need a ranch or something like that, I can, I have it. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, but I don't worry about that at this point. The best assets that any shop owner has to sell is property with a building on it if he owns it. And so 2.8, I just testified in a court case last week.

Cecil Bullard: I got another one next week about the value of shops and 2.8 is 

Carm Capriotto: the multiple on top of the ebitda. Yeah, that's average at a lot of people average at the moment. A lot of people 

Cecil Bullard: don't know that. Okay, but go ahead. Yeah. But with private equity coming in, the value of a. Well run shop now, by the way, the multiple can be higher.

Cecil Bullard: Let's say three years ago would've been between one and four. Okay? So the best run shop in the world where the owner's not involved and there's a manager, and the business has been growing for three years, and it's net 15% plus and no bad check marks four times ebitda. Okay? Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so, but average 2.8.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Well, now. With private equity coming in, some of the private equity companies have kinda learned their lesson. 'cause the first guys that came in, they went to buy crappy shops because they didn't have to pay for 'em. Right? So I could buy it at a one x, I could buy that shop for a hundred grand, or I can buy that shop for 200 grand and the owner will carry 150 of it and they got nothing, right?

Cecil Bullard: And then they bought a bunch of crap, and then it was crap. And now they've learned their lesson and they're coming in and they're saying. I don't want a crappy shop. I want a shop that runs well. Yeah. Yeah. And that is organized well, et cetera. And that's kind of what Michael is kind of doing in our company, is trying to get that, be the evangelist for that word out there.

Cecil Bullard: I love that word. But now you can get five x and I even know some guy's getting six X for a shop. That's well run because private equity wants the business. And if you've got a 20% net. In your shop and you've done that three years in a row when you're not the player and et cetera, and you're checking all the boxes.

Cecil Bullard: I could get a five or a six x for a single shop that maybe net 300 grand. Yeah. So now I have 1,000,005. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Right. 

Cecil Bullard: Instead of 700,000. Right. I, I've almost doubled what I have. Yeah. But there's another part of it too. If we go and put together a bunch of those shops. Like guys that have two and three or five and seven, and we put them into a platform mm-hmm.

Cecil Bullard: That we then present. Yeah. We can get 10, 12 x. Yeah, exactly. So the opportunity is amazing right now. And I think, hang on, I gotta say it. There's a bunch of shop owners when they hear m and a or they hear private equity, they're like, well those rotten sobs, you know they are, I'm sorry. All they care about is money.

Cecil Bullard: But they're coming in our industry. They're coming in our industry hard. And you need to be running a good shop because it will give you opportunity either way. Yeah. Whether you keep it, pass it on to family or whether you decide to sell it to private equity, and I guarantee you, what's gone on in the autobody industry.

Cecil Bullard: Oh yeah. We're 12 years behind them. Mm-hmm. And private equity is much more. Aggressive right now than they've ever been in in our industry. Right. Or they ever were in autobody, and this is gonna happen relatively fast. They'll still be mom and pop, they'll still be well-run jobs, but we're gonna be dealing with private equity in something.

Cecil Bullard: And one of the things that Private Equity's doing a little different is they're not changing the name of all the shops. Now it's still John's Automotive and they're still running it under John's Automotive, but it's no longer owned by John. It's owned by, right. The private equity company, the brand was strong.

Cecil Bullard: The people were great. The owner could walk away and it'll run. Yeah, it gives us opportunities financially, if you're getting in your. You know, late fifties, sixties, and you're like, I want out. Holy smokes. What a better opportunity than being able to double the what I get out 

Carm Capriotto: of the shop. Yeah. Your words are so strong.

Carm Capriotto: And one of my favorite bits of advice that I ever got in my life was the words pay attention. Yeah. And is so if an owner is not paying attention to their net operating income, I'm sorry, all of that means you've gotta do all 30 of those things way up in the umbrella. Right. If this company can run with your minimalist involvement, and it's scary to think, but some of the people that I know received and are still working and are still growing.

Carm Capriotto: In a multiple for their business. And then I was lucky enough to be with you guys in a particular meeting a few years ago and see how you can maybe even get a second payday out of this stuff. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, we got guys that are coming up to their second payday. Uh, wow. Okay. 

Carm Capriotto: So what does that all that mean? Well run a great shop, hook up with Michael and figure it out.

Cecil Bullard: We have too many people in our industry and God bless 'em, who don't really understand your business is an engine. Okay. 

Carm Capriotto: Mm-hmm. 

Cecil Bullard: And if the engine gets air and fuel at the right amount, at the right time, under the right compression and spark at the right time, it runs like a bat outta hell. If any of those things are off, 

Carm Capriotto: yeah, 

Cecil Bullard: then it doesn't give you the performance that you want.

Cecil Bullard: And we need every shop owner to understand how the engine works and what, how much air and how much fuel and all of that. Because when you figure that out. Not only does it run better and it manages better, and you can take care of yourself and your family better. But you can also take care of the families and the people that work for you and create a lot more opportunity, not just for yourself, 

Carm Capriotto: but for them.

Carm Capriotto: Also. Thanks for the motivation on this. We've done so many episodes. We've discussed ad nauseum on this, and I like to often bring this up because there's always a, a new opportunity, a new open mind is set that comes from some stubborn, stuck people. And a lot of new people that constantly are listening to the show.

Carm Capriotto: So where am I going one day, honey? I'm gonna sell this for a million dollars one day. And then they find out that it's not possible because they didn't run like a well-oiled engine. So 

Cecil Bullard: this guy that you and I can, if I said the name, you would know exactly who it is. And currently he owns either five or six shops.

Cecil Bullard: He's been growing, but I knew him. 15 years ago when he was a tech coming into a shop that was gonna be sold. Okay? And they made a seven year deal, him and the owner and seven years go by. The owner wants to sell the shop, but what he needs is way more than the shop is worth. Okay? And they never tightened the deal down.

Cecil Bullard: They never actually wrote anything down. They never put stuff on paper. So all of a sudden this guy has put seven years into this business and now the owner is coming and saying, well, I'm not gonna sell it to you for that. I'm gonna sell it to you. It has to be this, and it's only, it has to be this because he's not okay if he doesn't get that right.

Cecil Bullard: And you know, he comes to me and he goes, what do I do? And I said, well, ah, right. First of all, neither one of 'em should have been at that point. We should have put a plan together seven years ago to make it look like and what does it need to look like so the owner can get out the way the owner needs to, and the guy can come in the way the guy comes in.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. But we ended up paying an extra a hundred grand for it. And you know, I was like, it's worth more because we know we can run it better. So give him an extra a hundred thousand dollars. It's the only way you're gonna get it. And you've already invested seven years of your life and now he has, I dunno, six shops or whatever he is doing fantastically.

Cecil Bullard: But it's that I don't want to come to the point of I gotta sell my shop. But I'm not gonna have what I need to feel comfortable in my retirement. 

Carm Capriotto: Absolutely. Okay. That's 

Cecil Bullard: the problem. You never want to be there. And we've also done other deals with other guys who, like, there's another guy that, if I mentioned his name, you, you know who it was.

Cecil Bullard: And their service advisor, service manager, I think they at the time had two locations. We put a plan, a seven year plan together where. Seven years from now, if you've grown the business to six locations or whatever, then you get 30% of it and you get to buy out the rest. And the owner's going, well, why would I give up 30%?

Cecil Bullard: Well, because it's not a small pie anymore, it's a much bigger pie. So your 70% is a larger pie. Right? And it worked out great. The plan was done. They've gone now, gone through that part of it. And don't let your life come to the point where you're at that point and you don't know what you're gonna do because you haven't figured it out.

Cecil Bullard: Ross Bernstein today. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. Pick up the phone and call somebody. Duh. You see all these people that are stuck. I need this, I gotta have that. They don't know what they don't know, and they continue to walk down the aisle not having a clue. The p and l looks different. The assets are stronger. The business has grown, and to your point, my 70% is even worth more.

Cecil Bullard: I have a coach. I have mentors that people that both work with me and around me that I use all the time. Yeah. And I'm the guy that's 

Carm Capriotto: supposed to know everything. I don't. And that's why, and that's how you know it. Yeah. Hey, if you could pick up an instant skill right now, tomorrow says, God bless me with a new skill, what would it be?

Carm Capriotto: Patience that 

Cecil Bullard: came right away. Although, uh, I make a joke all the time, I have not learned patience. So if I'm at the grocery store and I'm in that line where I'm always in that line. I'm like, oh, God's trying to teach me patience and I haven't learned it. If I'm at the, I don't know if I'm checking into the hotel and it ain't going the way I want, I'm like, God's trying to teach me patience.

Cecil Bullard: I haven't learned it. And I make this joke about I need to not learn patience because if I do, then I've got everything I'm supposed to, and then God's gonna pull me from the earth. So I wanna be here while longer, so I'm not gonna learn patience yet. We all have a dark side kind of a joke. I think the slowing down a little bit.

Cecil Bullard: Trusting with management, the people around you mm-hmm. Can really change the game. I've had to do that in the institute. In order to grow the institute. I've realized that my lack of skills in certain areas will hold it back if I don't use other people and allow other people to have some freedom to do what needs to be done.

Cecil Bullard: Those early decisions, were they painful? Oh. Are you kidding me? I'm still paying for many of the early decisions. Right, okay. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: Because I made them without enough information or because I was too forceful. Or was it impulse? Whatever. Impulse. Oh, I think I'm extremely impulsive. Obviously with the D personality, you're like, oh, I don't need any information.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, I can do that. Let's go. I. I would tell you right now, if you ask Kent, you know, what's the worst thing about your dad? He's like, oh, there's a hill. Let's go take it. Doesn't look back and see how much ammo, how many people are following. Yeah. You know, what's the path? Kent wants to plan it out, so patience.

Carm Capriotto: If you could send a message to yourself, your younger you, just to say, 15 years ago, what would you say to the younger Cecil? I would say it's 

Cecil Bullard: gonna be fine. Wow. Okay. Just because everything that happens, like you have this thing that happens and you're, I shattered my ankle. I spent two years in a wheelchair, seven surgeries, and during that time, it was the end of my life.

Cecil Bullard: Okay. But. Because of that, I was able to go back to college, get a couple of degrees. I now have the institute. It's gonna be fine. You know, the, if it doesn't kill you, it's gonna be fine, right? If I had calmed down sooner and been a little more patient, I think that I would live a lot longer and have a much happier existence.

Cecil Bullard: Even today. Now when something happens that's like, you know, my first reaction is like, ah, I wanna kill somebody, or you know, whatever. I'm like, okay, take a couple of deep breaths and it's not the end of the world. No. We'll make it through there. Right. You had all the money in the world gold piled in rooms at the house.

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. What would you buy. I would buy security for my family children. I don't need anything else. If I, I'm not rich, but I am wealthy enough at the point that if I need something, I can go buy it. Got it. Why would I want $25 million? Well, okay, that might buy security for my family and ine, but also we're finding out that.

Cecil Bullard: You know, third generation wealth destroys people. Yeah. Frankly. Yeah. So, I don't know. I don't need a boat. I don't need a motorcycle. I don't, you know, if I need a new pair of Levi's, I'll go get a new pair of Levi's. More time. But you can't do that, right? No, no. That's the one thing, right? You can't buy. You can't buy time.

Cecil Bullard: You kind of can. If you're smart, you're putting people in place and it might cost you money. No, but you're putting people in place to do the things that you don't want to do. You're a hundred percent right. Right? Yeah. So in a way, you can maybe buy time, but it's not more time than you have on the earth anyway.

Cecil Bullard: Right. I 

Carm Capriotto: have one more question. I so loved this off the charts, candid Cecil Bullard thing. Thank you for coming in here at the Institute Summit 2025. One thing that you've done, and no one knows, I always think of the bad stuff, so 

Cecil Bullard: we're not gonna talk about that. Whoa. No, there. No. Oh, dude, never. Oh. You know, we all have our warts and we don't want anybody to see 'em, and that's fine.

Cecil Bullard: I'm a pretty open book. I love my family, I love the industry. I've gotten lots of calls from people that have said, Hey, Cecils, someone needs help. Or you know, and I almost hate to say this here, 'cause then all of a sudden I'm gonna get a bunch of emails, but. I'll give up an hour for anybody in this industry that wants to talk and how can I help you and what can I, what direction can I give you?

Cecil Bullard: We tried a program a couple years ago where we brought in six or eight shops. I remember that. No pay. Yeah. Yeah. Most of those shops wouldn't even make their meetings with me. Yeah. And so we killed that because. If there was no value to it, there has to be an investment in on their part. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. But I routinely, if someone calls me and they're like, oh, I really need help, I'm like, okay, well if you do these couple of things, you're gonna be in good shape.

Cecil Bullard: And I don't know. I mean, what nobody knows. I'm a pretty open book. I almost played college basketball. Oh. You know, that's, that's cool. I had a. 10 inch Afro in high school? No. Oh, I had the best Afro in. Well, wait a minute. High school. Well wait a minute. That's 

Carm Capriotto: the best piece of knowledge right there. 

Cecil Bullard: Oh, I got a picture I gotta show you.

Carm Capriotto: Would you do that? 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. With the 10 inch Afro and I was, I only weighed like 165 pounds. I was six four. 

Carm Capriotto: Six four with a 10 inch afro. Yeah. That puts you at seven. What? 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah, it was, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. 

Carm Capriotto: Oh my God. Cil, I must 

Cecil Bullard: see that. I also had a ponytail and a mullet at different times. So yeah, I want a ponytail.

Carm Capriotto: I think a ponytail, like with the white hair and everything. Great. I've seen guys with that. Yeah. I mean, I. I don't know. My wife wants me to grow a ponytail. I don't have the patience for it, so might happen, but I, I tried a few years ago. Yeah. Is my hair continuing to grow? Cil? It didn't get long. It just kept getting more and more bushy.

Carm Capriotto: We were gonna have an afro. Yeah, I know. I was, it was getting so bushy that when I put on a hat it would all just stream out and I. But is wasn't long enough to put any kind of tail anywhere. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. I probably had about an age eight inch ponytail at the time, and I get rid of it. All right. Long time ago when the kids were small.

Carm Capriotto: Completely different view of you. 

Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is that you probably don't know, is that I'm not supposed to be in the automotive industry. This is never where I was supposed to be. My dad didn't want me here. I didn't wanna be here. Yeah. I ended up here and there was a point in time where I decided.

Cecil Bullard: Wherever I'm gonna be, I'm gonna try to be the best I can be. And I think everybody needs to make that decision, even if you're only gonna be there for a year. 'cause you might find that it's 44 years later and you're still there. Well, 

Carm Capriotto: well, it's good that you're here. You're changing a lot of people's lives.

Carm Capriotto: I've got so many friends that are part of your group and they have done incredible things with their business, and it really all flows down to some of the great people you've hired, the decisions that you've made. And, and watch the commitments. You have to advance this in. Watch for a couple announcements in the next two months.

Carm Capriotto: Ooh. Oh, can't wait. Excited Cecil Bullard. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having 

Cecil Bullard: me. Thanks. 

Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive aftermarket podcast. Until next time.

Show Summary:

Recorded live at the Institute Summit, this insightful conversation explores how business leaders can apply sports principles—like team chemistry, leadership, and preparation—to enhance performance. Keynote speaker Ross Bernstein underscores the impact of storytelling as a powerful communication and trust building tool, sharing lessons from icons like Scotty Bowman and Jay Leno. The discussion reinforces the importance of having a solid business playbook grounded in strategy, data, and accountability, while also addressing the need to adapt to change, foster a culture of loyalty, leverage technology for growth, and prioritize meaningful personal connections and networking.

Host(s):

Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio

Guest(s):

Ross Bernstein, Speaker and Author

Show Highlights:

Introduction to the Episode (00:00:00)

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6bQaQ109Vw

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network. Hey everybody. Carm Capto. Remarkable Results Radio, again, back here in Amelia Island in Florida with the Institute 2025 Summit. Theme is standout. My next guest is absolutely outstanding. We are the institute.com. Thanks to Cecil and Kent for having us out here. I've learned a lot, met a lot of nice, neat new friends, and thank you so much to our sponsors.

Carm Capriotto: More than 16% of light duty vehicles on the road are EV and hybrid. Is your shop ready to safely and properly service them? Get your shop trained and equipped to service hybrid and EV vehicles with NAPA Auto Techs. Innovative. Ev Ready, level one high voltage awareness and maintenance training. Hey, for over 30 years, Napa Trax has made selecting the right shop management system easy.

Carm Capriotto: By offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry, we'll prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business. Find Napa tracks on the web at N apa A-T-R-A-C s.com. Hey, welcome back. Let me tell you about my next guest. In fact, there's so much to talk about that I have to actually read it from his mini bio here.

Carm Capriotto: The best selling author of nearly 50 sports books. Damn, I've always wanted to write just one. He's a peak performance business speaker and proud member of the Speakers Hall of Fame, which is no easy task, and you proved that to us this morning. His keynoted conferences all over seven continents, been featured on CNN, CBS mornings, MSNBC, SPN, and Fox News, as well as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA today.

Carm Capriotto: His mission for us today in the conference, as we heard his keynote, is to get us all thinking differently about how we can raise our game to the next level. Sports was, man, everything you talked about with sports, you opened up with Tom Brady, and so since I'm from Buffalo. I wasn't comfortable with that.

Ross Bernstein: I'm from Minnesota. I wasn't comfortable with that. 

Carm Capriotto: I just thought, here I am figuring out how the damn man beat us forever. Right. I know we may have been one in 10 years, I just don't quite remember that. But Ross Bernstein, you just, you nailed it. You were telling stories up there and you covered 16 different, if you will, strategies or concepts for us.

Carm Capriotto: And I wanna talk about a few of them. But the theme that we've been hearing from all of our speakers, and as I was spending time at the lunches and at the breakfasts, this whole storytelling thing is big. I mean, that's what you did. You got up on stage and all you did and all 16 key strategies was tell us a story.

Carm Capriotto: Mm-hmm. And the audience was glued. Why storytelling so 

Ross Bernstein: important. Well, thank you, Carm. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. Storytelling is just the best way to communicate, right? We've been doing it forever. When a great storyteller tells a story and they talk about their family, you think about your family.

Ross Bernstein: When they talk about their job, you think about your job. We learned that from Walt Disney, right? Books, movies, and our brains are wired for storytelling. So I think it's a muscle. You can get better at it. You can work at it. Yeah. I remember one time I was speaking at a conference with Jay Leno. And I was visiting with him in the green room and I was, you know, in awe, this celebrity.

Ross Bernstein: But of course he was the nicest guy in the world, just as you'd imagine. Asked me all about me. And I was fascinated to learn, and this is back in the nineties before cell phones and social media and video that every Saturday night when he was at the peak of the Tonight Show, when he was making a guy, probably made a hundred million dollars that he would every Saturday night at midnight, he would do like an a standup improv set at the Hermosa Beach Comedy Magic Club for the drunks.

Ross Bernstein: And it, you know, before anyone could record it, but he would basically practice his story. Yeah. He was honing hon it and, and he said, you know, if I could tighten up a story by. Two or three words just do people laugh differently. And I thought, I was amazed that here's a guy who's had such success yet, was so particular and wanted to practice and make it right.

Ross Bernstein: And that really stuck with me about that. That's what makes the great ones great, is that even those little things, they can just, they can work on him. 

Carm Capriotto: Jay Leno was a real guy, man. I mean, he was the real deal. I loved Jay Lenon. I continued to like him today. Of course. I'm old enough to remember Johnny Carson.

Carm Capriotto: Me too. And those were big shoes to fill, weren't they? In this industry, we're small business people and we're trying to teach them through coaching and what I do on the podcast and the networking groups that exist, how to become a more sophisticated business person. And everything you talked about today helped us become more sophisticated.

Carm Capriotto: One of them was team chemistry. I think we struggled with that a lot since most of our CEOs are business owners today. Never went to a leadership class. They came up from the wrench world into being a CEO chemistry. Let me see. I remember going to a class in school and we had something foaming on the counter.

Carm Capriotto: That's not it today, 

Ross Bernstein: chemistry is the biggest thing in sports and that they're aware of and they work on it constantly, and we don't think about it in business. Teams start out the season and they go to training camp in a small town, middle of nowhere, no spouses, no kids. 'cause they need to figure out chemistry, who gets along, 

Carm Capriotto: who they 

Ross Bernstein: are.

Ross Bernstein: Yeah. Do these guys get along? Do they not get along? Who are the team cancers? Who are the bad apples? I did a book called Raising Stanley, right? I interviewed hundreds of professional hockey players who'd hoisted the Stanley Cup, and I wanted to know why. Looking for the trends and the patterns and the commonalities, and I got to know Scotty Bowman, who wrote the foreword for the book, and it was fascinating getting to know this guy.

Ross Bernstein: He's the winningest coach in the history of the National Hockey League. He's got 14 Stanley Cup rings. He even named his freaking kid Stanley, which is pretty cool. Now, Stanley's won three Stanley Cups, so this kid was destined for greatness. But I remember Scotty talking about the importance of chemistry and about not having the best players but the right players.

Ross Bernstein: And when he was at the Detroit Red Wings, it was a masterclass. He was able to put the right people together. And by the way, the 14 cups wasn't a dynasty team, like the Yankees. It was, he had a repeatable process. He was able to recreate in St. Louis and Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Montreal, Detroit, and he would put the right people together.

Ross Bernstein: So in Detroit, he had one line of all Russians. There was actually a movie about 'em called the Russian five. And it's interesting 'cause three of them were there originally and they were really good. They scored a ton of goals. But they were wild. They drank a lot of vodka and it, so he literally, he knew that the only way to get the right chemistry was to get two older veterans that these kids looked up to that would listen to him.

Ross Bernstein: So he literally went to Moscow and like with brown paper, sacks of cash allegedly, and car keys to his fancy car, convinced him to defect to come to America, play hockey, get 'em an apartment. No. And once those old guys got there, these kids shaped up. It was an incredible line. And then they had another line of all Swedes and see, Scotty understood that when you put friends together, high school teammates, college teammates, they had fun, they'd fight for each other, they'd enjoy assists more than goals 'cause that guy's buying beer.

Ross Bernstein: So he was able to do more with less. He didn't have the best players, he had the right players in the right chemistry. And it's cliche, the long to hire, quick to fire, but it's so true. If there's a team can't surf. If there's a bad apple or someone's not, maybe not necessarily performing, but if they're bad for team chemistry, they gotta go.

Ross Bernstein: And that's why I talk about a lot of guys who are like clubhouse guys. The veterans. Yeah. They're the ones that keep the peace. They're the ones that let the managers know, Hey, these guys don't get along. There's, there's gonna be conflict. You gotta trade one of 'em. You gotta do something. If the chemistry is off, the team will never win and you can win in sports.

Ross Bernstein: You don't have to have the best players if as long as you get the right chemistry and players love each other. Whenever teams win Super Bowl, you watch this whenever this after the Super Bowl, when they interview people, they're gonna say, we were like family. Yeah, we all got along right? We wanna want to go out to dinner together.

Ross Bernstein: And teams that lose is drama, conflict, egos. So it's a fascinating thing. 

Carm Capriotto: How do we build chemistry? Obviously we need to be creative like Scotty was and think, if you will, outside of the box. And we have to bring our intuition to the world we live in. We have to observe, we have to listen. We have to see if we've got high fives going on, if we have people supporting each other inside of our service.

Carm Capriotto: You can 

Ross Bernstein: also, you can also incentivize your people to bring in their friends. I have companies that will do that, right? Yeah. They'll, they'll give you a signing bonus. So you bring in a friend. It's hard enough to get kids into the trades these days, right? 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Ross Bernstein: Oh yeah. I worked for a cool company one time.

Ross Bernstein: I speak at about 130 conferences per year, and they're all different industries. I do a lot of work in the automotive space, a lot of different touch points, but I do every industry and I had a, a gig one time at this Precision manufacturing conference and before I came in I was doing some homework and I went and met with this company and they make these little like springs and stamps, like little tiny, but they have to be within like a millionth of a micron of an inch or they.

Ross Bernstein: Because they go into like airplane doors and cell phones. Mm-hmm. They gotta be perfect. And if there's any problem that, you know, lawsuits, it takes a year to apprentice on this machine just to make these tiny parts. And it's monotonous and boring. It's not sexy. And this company was gonna die because they had all these old people that were aging out, that were all retiring and they, they had no pipeline of young talent.

Ross Bernstein: So they had to take some drastic measures. So they went out and they acquired this local community college, which had been disrupted by online university. So they had closed, and they were part of this other college, but there was an empty building. So they bought it and they invested. They put some of those machines in there and they kind of cleaned them up.

Ross Bernstein: They didn't look good, but then they added in some video games, a bar, a little kitchen. And then they got very strategic about recruiting, who they thought would, might be good at operating these machines. So they went for kids who were wanting to get into the trades, farm kids, motorheads, military kids, whoever they thought, and they'd bring 'em in.

Ross Bernstein: And then they brought back some of their older retirees and they trained them. And it was this really fun environment. They had music playing. It was very different than the traditional setting. And a couple things happened. Number one, the kids had fun, and as soon as they liked it, they said, Hey, we'll pay off your student loan at this trade school for what we've created just for this machines, and we'll incentivize you if you bring in some of your buddies.

Ross Bernstein: So they did, and it created this pipeline. So three things happened. Number one, they had a whole pipeline of new talent of kids who wanted to be there. Number two, they created a new culture. The chemistry, the culture changed and the old people wanted to come back to work. They said, Hey, now it's fun. You got this new energy.

Ross Bernstein: There's music. It's like people are going on after work and people like each other. And it wasn't just a job, it was more of a career and it was fun. And number three, the college that they'd partnered with. Had a hundred percent job placement. So it was a win-win win. And that college was promoting them and encouraging.

Ross Bernstein: And that's the thing, like you've gotta be able to find talent these days and acquire, there's two ways to get talent. You draft it, you know, like in sports, you develop it or you acquire it, which is making a trade. And you gotta buy someone. If you need a new CFO or shop manager, it's gonna cost you a lot.

Ross Bernstein: So. But then there's this gray area of finding those sort of emerging leaders, those diamonds in the rough, where you recruit kids who you think would come in and you make it fun. So I'm always fascinated. I don't tell people how to do it. I'm not the hero of my story. I just share other stories of how people say, here's 

Carm Capriotto: maybe this would work for you.

Carm Capriotto: You're challenging, or think, I love what you just said. And I wrote down the words Work, family. And then I wrote down, reinvent the family. It doesn't mean that we can't have the most spotless employee kitchen, a clean refrigerator where all the food's been there for over a week or two. I mean, just as good of a coffee selection as we have for our customers out front.

Carm Capriotto: And that's kind of been a discussion trend lately, is to work on the inside as much as we work on the outside. Since this whole thing was sports themed and I kind of, I've always compared what we do to the medical field to a certain degree because of the knowledge that people have to have and the specialties they have to have, which is really kind of slamming us as an industry.

Carm Capriotto: But there were so many sports analogies and when I heard you talk about playbook, you know it's on the Apple iPad and they've got a playbook. I started to think about the playbook for our people is the career path we outline for them. And the tools that we provide them and the, if you will, the functionality of solving problems for our people.

Carm Capriotto: Talk to me about the power of the playbook in sports. 

Ross Bernstein: Yeah, it's interesting. In that module I was talking about Tom Brady and all the specialized coaching that he would receive and spent extra money for. You know, now they're using, kids are using data, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence algorithms, and they measure everything.

Ross Bernstein: There's a saying in sport, the film don't lie, so they record everything and, and there's no arguing that way because a coach walks out in the huddle and says, they don't ask what happened. I don't want your interpretation of what you think happened. They just show the video. Because the film don't lie. So they record everything and then they discuss it and then they hold them accountable.

Ross Bernstein: And it's pretty fascinating. But each player has a custom playbook. So they, they load it up with data and film, and if they're recovering from a knee injury, they wanna know certain KPIs and metrics. How's it feeling? How many miles did you run today? How about yesterday, last week, last month, last year?

Ross Bernstein: What's your core body temperature? What's your blood pressure? I mean, what are you measuring? You can't get better if you don't measure it. So they measure everything and they wanna know is it a positive or negative measurement? Like, is it good, bad, they don't wanna get better in a big way. They wanna get better in a little way every day.

Ross Bernstein: They wanna get a little bit better and they know there's gonna be setbacks, injuries, there's gonna be confidence issues. So they want to get better and they wanna help build their confidence and get better. So video and data is the sort of the key to that. But then having, instead of just a playbook that is, you know, tired and old and outdated, the second it comes out, they have a, an iPad that they can upload with new information of things you wanna watch.

Ross Bernstein: Then they can hold 'em accountable. Did you watch these videos? It'll tell 'em, did you watch it? Yes. How many times did you watch it in slow motion? Did you, what did you look for? What did you learn? And then they practice over and over and they hold 'em accountable. And if you don't practice and do these things, you're on the bench or you're working our trades you or cut you.

Ross Bernstein: So we don't do that in business. We don't practice making phone calls. We don't teach our young people how to work with the customer. We just say, Nope, I fixed it. Right. Well, you gotta train them. It's like storytelling. You gotta, you gotta practice. Like sometimes my daughter, who's a wonderful storyteller, will tell this long.

Ross Bernstein: I'm like, honey, land the plane. Get to the point like, like make it like if it's funny, like get to it. Right. I love that. Yeah. So I mean, there's no one right way to do it and that's kinda what I do. I celebrate lots of different ways and I just do it to the lens of sports. It's kind of been my passion, but it applies to business, applies to life and you know, the people in your industry do an amazing.

Ross Bernstein: Service, they help to create the American dream. They help to make sure that our vehicles run well and that we're safe and that we can get to where we need to go to run our country. Yeah. And run businesses. And what they do is profound. And you know, I love setting the top producers. Like what makes the great ones great and why?

Ross Bernstein: Right. Like Tom Brady, like love 'em or hate him. I mean, the guys, the winningest. Ever. Mm-hmm. And it's not just getting to the top, it's staying at the top. It's that dynasty mentality. How do you continually deliver extraordinary customer experience? How do you continually hire and recruit and train young Gen Z talent that wants to work with you and stay with you?

Ross Bernstein: How do you continually come up with new, innovative ways to solve problems? This is what great companies do. Yeah. Last week I worked for Kraft Heinz for huge sales group of people that sell ketchup and condiments and Philadelphia cheese. And I'm like thinking like, man, what? You know, these, these guys sell ketchup packets?

Ross Bernstein: But no, they, they make the fun. Right. Like french fries aren't fun without Heinz ketchup. Bingo. And, and I'm like, it was just awesome. And they have so much fun and some they sell to mom and pop stores where they just got the old bottles of ketchup. And they even changed that. 'cause remember in the old days they would have a bottle of ketchup that was like a quarter empty and it was all kind of slimy in there.

Ross Bernstein: And you're like, Ugh, I don't want that. So they created these plastic bottles that are the identical color red. I dunno if you've seen like a Heinz bottle. It's, it won all these awards for packaging. It was really remarkable. And they can't fill 'em up. They make it so the cap, if you take the cap off, it breaks it, can't use it.

Ross Bernstein: It's one use, but it always looks full and it has a flip top. Yeah, it does. But you can't refill it. Okay. Like once you unscrew it, it's toast. It's, 

Carm Capriotto: yeah. 

Ross Bernstein: But you know, some sell packets, some sell those flip tops and they put 'em on the tables, you know, and they got those little baskets in the table. Some sell industrial, like the McDonald's where they buy 'em, where you pump it out at a pumping station.

Ross Bernstein: That's the thing I learn every day about new products, new companies, new, you know, and I'm so, for one day I'm an expert in ketchup. Right. So it's fascinating. 

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Carm Capriotto: Napa Trax is always customized and tailored for you, whether you are a one man shop or a large multi-pay or multi-location company. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at Napa Tracks. That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C s.com. Ross, I'm an expert in ketchup. Can I tell my story? 

Ross Bernstein: Calm the condiment king.

Ross Bernstein: I love it. Can I tell you my story? Let's hear. Let's I 

Carm Capriotto: come back from Apex, get off the plane, meet Anne. We go out with our friends. 'cause every Friday night we go out with friends. We're sitting, there's like eight of us at a table. And the food comes out and there were french fries on my plate, so I right in front of me, I reach for the ketchup bottle.

Carm Capriotto: It's one of those exact bottles you just described and I brought it near me and I flipped the top. It exploded. Oh no. It was, I'm wearing a white shirt, sport coat, the whole, it's all over me. Oh no. It's all over. My friend to the left, it's over, my friend to the right. And we're all scurrying for more napkins.

Carm Capriotto: Water spray bottle, the whole thing. I am glass. Catch it exploded. And what I want to know, and I've never really found out, maybe you can tell me. What happens? I mean, did it ferment? Why was that thing man explosive. I better call craft. 

Ross Bernstein: Maybe it was hunts. Maybe it wasn't their bottle. Let's say it was a competitor.

Carm Capriotto: Right? No, and I don't mean to bring up a brand. I just mean to bring up, yeah. What happens to ketchup bottles that explode? 

Ross Bernstein: I have no idea. We've all been there. Right? 

Carm Capriotto: I thank you. I've never told that story in my podcast. I think this is the first time. Okay. Thank you. You'll land the ketchup story for me.

Carm Capriotto: You mentioned the word practice just a few minutes ago, and in our industry, this continuing education that we have to be involved with CEO leadership training, service advisor training, and all the technology that goes on in the bays, we go out and educate. But if we don't come back and practice what we learned, we lose it.

Ross Bernstein: Yeah. And you know, this business, it's such a mom and pop business at its core. Like everyone who gets in. 

Carm Capriotto: Maybe they start as a mom and pop, but today we're much more sophisticated. Yeah, but they 

Ross Bernstein: know the business, right? It's not like you just bought it and you're hiring people to run. And people in this business are passionate about the business.

Ross Bernstein: Anyone our age certainly knows how to change a tire, change oil, work on the carburetor. Like those are, there's no such thing. Morning, no such thing. But the old Gs, they all, I get it. Know that stuff. I know what you. And it's a different world, so, but I think that's what's cool about this industry though, is that people are passionate about it.

Ross Bernstein: It's like I do a lot of work in the hospitality industry. I work at some of the biggest hotel and restaurant brands, and anytime you interview a restaurant manager who's been around for a little while, they all started out as a barback, a waiter, a waitress, a dishwasher, and they worked their way up.

Ross Bernstein: Assistant manager, swing manager, by the time they get to a manager or a franchisee. They know every touchpoint of the business. And that's the thing that's cool about your industry is that people know, like the CEOs, these companies, the owners, the shop owners, they know Yeah, they, they've been there.

Ross Bernstein: They've been in those bays. Right. Yeah. That's a really cool, unique differentiating factor about this industry is that you have that connection. I work in a lot of industries where people have no idea what goes on. In those other areas. Right? And that, I think that's unique. But how do you, but I think that also creates problems that you sort of take things for granted.

Ross Bernstein: You go, well, we've always done things that way, or, well, I know what's going on 'cause I've been there, done that. But the reality is that young people today and those kids that are in those bays, they think different. They have mental health issues, they care about different things and about work and culture and life after work.

Ross Bernstein: And so now you can't just be a boss, you've gotta be a psychologist, a mom, a dad. A shoulder to cry on. Yeah, you've gotta, kids wanna be promoted, you gotta give micro promotions, you've gotta. You gotta help 'em succeed or they're not gonna stick around. And if you wanna create loyalty, like I, I told a story today I've worked in, I worked for some, some restaurants that have 150 to 200% turnover every year.

Ross Bernstein: I mean, as bad as your listeners think they have it, imagine that that takes into account you might have a typical fast food QSR restaurant. 20 employees, five are lifers. Five have been there 10, 5, 10, 20 years. That's a lifetime in fast food, right? Some, but then you take the other end of the spectrum.

Ross Bernstein: They've been there five minutes or they said, you know what? On the way over the interview, the other guys, Arby's offered me a nickel, an hour more. So I'm gonna go there. So you're constantly, someone shows up day one, you train 'em, they quit. So they quit. That means you're coming in on Sunday, right? Yeah. So to create loyalty, to create that culture, that environment is such a key factor, and that's where being a great leader, being a good storyteller, listening, those are all those, that's the secret sauce.

Carm Capriotto: You said something I think almost near the end of your speech today about. A day, a week and a year. And I think you said, you know how quickly a day and a week goes by? No. You know, here. Oh, a day and a I'll 

Ross Bernstein: give you, it's, it's an old, it's an old proverb. It's not for me, but it's no days and weeks and months.

Ross Bernstein: Drag on. Right. But years fly by. Yeah. And that's, if you've got kids, then you, that connects with you. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, I know. Exactly. And so I wanna jump into the word focus right now because. Sometimes we just don't give our all to understanding what we want to do. I know you talk about goals and purpose and why it's been big at this conference.

Carm Capriotto: It's big, I think for all of us in life to do this. But focus, I think, is something that's pulling us away from really accomplishing our goals and our wives. How do we get some of the distractions away from us, Ross? How 

Ross Bernstein: it's a different world, social media, cell phones, I mean, they're, they're just a part of that world now.

Ross Bernstein: So you're gonna have, we've learned to live with, whenever I, I had a two hour speech today with a room full of people that were tired, hung over many of them, and basically. I look at them, they look at me and a lot of times I, I'll see someone basically with their phone and like this, and they go and they're looking at me like, okay, monkey boy dance, because if you suck, if I'm not interested, I'll be here for the next two hours.

Ross Bernstein: I don't need you. I need to be better than Instagram and Facebook. Whoa. If I can capture the audience, and that was, that's a superpower. That's a weird one. 'cause I don't take a breath for two hours and I'm up there. It's a pretty weird thing. But I'll tell you what, as I looked around the audience today, several hundred people, there were a couple people that were sound asleep.

Ross Bernstein: I'll tell you what, I think that's awesome because that's their time. My gift to them is time, and you never know what someone's going through in their life. I had a guy one time that was sleeping during my program and I didn't, afterwards, she came up to talk to me. He said, I want you to know I lost my mom this morning and I just wanted to listen, and then I wanted to zone out.

Ross Bernstein: I just didn't wanna be at her. Hey, I was really tired because my wife has cancer. And I'm like, man, I, you don't know what people are going through. 

Carm Capriotto: Everyone has a story. 

Ross Bernstein: Everyone has a story. And if I could give them the gift of just giving them a little time to catch up and get recharged, I mean, that's the thing at this conference, we're not on Zoom.

Ross Bernstein: We're not just like zooming in to be 'cause we had to or 'cause it's like they chose to invest to come here. They're not working in the business, they're working on the business and they're present and they're here. And they can take a part of whatever they're not required to be here. The boss is gonna fire them if they don't come to the keynote session.

Ross Bernstein: But they wanted to be there. And my job is to entertain and educate them and inspire them, and hopefully challenge 'em to think differently. But you never know what someone's going through. So I think. You need to be better than Facebook and Instagram. That's just the bottom line. And you need to be more interesting and you need to have a fun work culture, and you need to be able to have a let 'em, let their hair down, take 'em out, go out, make it fun for them, gamify it, make everything a game, right?

Ross Bernstein: That's what great sales organizations do is they gamify everything. So they say, Hey. If you do this, you do this, you win this and, and people wanna win. They wanna win whatever it is. So if you're not gamifying and making it fun, they can incentivize them. They're not gonna stick around. 

Carm Capriotto: Is it a generational thing for gamifying?

Carm Capriotto: A 

Ross Bernstein: hundred percent, yeah. Is it? But you see, like, let's tell you what, I'm on flights every day. Lots of old dudes and gals gaming on their phones. They're playing video games, everything. That little rush of dopamine, right? Whatever it is. But I see people gambling, sports gambling, they're playing roulette 21.

Ross Bernstein: People just, they wanna be entertained. It's a different way we entertain ourselves. Do we talk to each other anymore? Well, that's what these conferences are for, right? I mean, that's what's so good about a con. And that's, you know, during COVID, I lost my humanity, right? Like March 21st, 2020, I was. My first client canceled and then every client canceled, and I didn't know if I'd ever work again.

Ross Bernstein: And we started being on Zoom, and first people were like, oh, this is great. I'll never have to go to work again. And then six months in we're like, zoom sucks. Like I wanna be with people. Yeah. And I remember being that first conference where we were together and we were social distancing. We had masks on, we had wristbands.

Ross Bernstein: Remember, red means don't come near me. Yellow means I'm okay, blue, you can hug me. Do I remember? And these new rules and the P, PP and all these things. I remember that's when it made me think like, that's what's so cool about this. When you come to a conference, it's not about the conference, it's about having a steak and a beer and a glass of wine and shaking hands and making new friends and connecting on LinkedIn and Hey man, I can't wait to see you next year.

Ross Bernstein: And hey, we should. Do a mastermind. We should talk like we should go offline and we could share leads and, Hey, I got a guy, he's got a special vehicle. Maybe you'd be great for this. Or Can I borrow one of your pieces of equipment or whatever. Like that's what this is about. Yeah. It's collaboration. It's coming together.

Ross Bernstein: Right. You can't do that on Zoom. 

Carm Capriotto: Completely agree. I think you summed up what's important in today's world that we're not gonna learn this sitting on our ass. We're not gonna learn this scrolling mindlessly on our phones. We're not gonna learn anything about being better, getting out of our struggle. And I'm sorry to my listener because you hear me talk about struggle a lot today.

Carm Capriotto: We talked a little bit with some of our, our interviews here. The survivorship is the connection that I've made actually in the last interview that I did. If you're struggling and you don't care to survive, then continue to struggle. I have nothing more to do, say, or help you with, but if you do wanna survive.

Carm Capriotto: What we do on our podcast has a lot of the answers and or coming to events like this here at the summit at 2025 from the Institute. So thank you for bringing that up and forcing that into my listener's mind. You talked about being humble and I think for the most part, many in our industry are. Because we got what we got, not by being, I think, boisterous and big and loud.

Carm Capriotto: We just came back because we took care of people. They came in 'cause they loved us. But now I've gotta run a sustainable, profitable business. And I think to a point, we can be humble, but I think we also have to embrace that we've gotta make really tough decisions. If I'm a super humble person, can I really empower my people?

Ross Bernstein: A hundred percent. You know, I just met Cecil who started this whole thing and yeah. You're not gonna meet a more humble dude than Cecil. I know mean he's just salt of the earth as it gets. Right. And that's the thing, I sort of celebrate athletes who just, they've act like they've been there before. Right.

Ross Bernstein: They don't spike the ball, they don't dance, they don't track. Yeah. You told 

Carm Capriotto: the Walter Payton story. Yeah. And that's where this whole humble thing came from. Yeah. And 

Ross Bernstein: you know, and we like doing business of people like that. I mean, look, there's other people, I mean it, look, we're in an era of Trumpism where that's the anti humble, right?

Ross Bernstein: I mean, and you look at Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali wasn't humble. He was one of the most cocky athletes. He had swagger, you know, chutzpah, charisma. Call it what you want, but tell you what, there's lots of different ways to do business. And Ali used to say he'd won half his matches well before he ever stepped into the ring.

Ross Bernstein: When you're that confident, and you know what, if I'm going up against some guy for a piece of big piece of corporate business, and now the way to be humble is you people just know like, man, those guys, they have the best service. They got the best waiting room. They take care of you. They just shower you with they.

Ross Bernstein: Take little videos and call you and they don't nickel and dime you and they're not gonna try and, you know, screw your insurance company for extra money or whatever. They just, they're gonna take care of you. And like, that's the new cocky, right? That's the new way of being, like, you just kill 'em with kindness and service.

Ross Bernstein: And that's the new thing. Now, 

Carm Capriotto: I've talked to the industry about hiring A CXO for their small business, and they look at me like I'm really strange. The client experience officer. Our businesses are too small to even think of doing it, but the answer is we all have to be. Mm-hmm. The CXO, 

Ross Bernstein: well, I think you can do it now with social, so cool.

Ross Bernstein: So I talk a lot about philanthropy. I've got a charitable foundation and I'm involved a lot of charities. One of my favorite companies is a company called Starkey. They're a $6 billion medical device company. They make hearing aids, but they're not really known for their hearing aids. They're known for their philanthropy.

Ross Bernstein: Their founders, bill and Tani Austin, their passion is to watch little kids hear for the first time. Mm-hmm. So they have these mission trips and they get rock stars, politicians, professional athletes, they go to Haiti, Ghana, Liberia. They fit and they give kids hearing aids. But the secret of their success is they hire a bunch of young people like your amazing daughter, who understand technology and social, and they get little video snippets and they put 'em to great music.

Ross Bernstein: And they put 'em on TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram and YouTube and they go viral and it's these little kids hearing it and they go viral. And then every year they've got a gala. We get to go. It's, they raise at least $10 million every year. It's a Hollywood A-list event. They fly in 'cause they just love this company.

Ross Bernstein: I could just speak at their expo every other year. I'm a mini keynote and between President Bush and President Clinton Got it. Talk about bipartisanship. Okay. But this company in a. Completely commoditized industry of hearing aids has completely differentiated themselves and quite frankly, kicked butt to their philanthropy.

Ross Bernstein: They're not the low cost leader. They're not the Walmart of hearing aids. In fact, they're the opposite. They're the most expensive. But people choose to do business with them because they give and they serve the communities that serve them, and they do it. Through their social doesn't cost a lot to create great video content.

Ross Bernstein: That's storytelling done in little snippets. 30 seconds, 60 seconds, right? I mean so many of these of your listeners are, you know, they're just beating the dead horse with Facebook, you know, whatever. But you gotta think differently. And if you a CX perfect, that's a person that's gonna think differently about how they're gonna create different experiences, getting video testimonials of those great stories.

Ross Bernstein: How do you coach a young person to say, Hey, can I get a video testimonial? Would you tell the story? Because if the customer tell, like I work for a very similar group like this in the HVAC space, these are coaches like the institute where they tell coach mom and pop owners, plumbers, all these different things.

Ross Bernstein: And they do very similar thing 'cause it's a very similar industry. It was like your listeners, I told them about a story about video testimonials 'cause I have 150 on my website that people watch. That's what gets me booked for speaking. 'cause I'm in a very commoditized business of selling speeches. Yeah.

Ross Bernstein: So, 'cause they get proof from other CEOs, VPs of sales going on and on about how, how great my program was and how much they love my program. Love Ross. It's not me bragging about me, it's my best customers. Yeah. Yeah. So I coached this guy and how he could coach his people. So sure enough, Minnesota's story here.

Ross Bernstein: A guy, mom and pop guy, some big wig has a party going on at New Year's Eve at his house. The heat goes out New Year's Eve at like, you know, 11 o'clock at night. Who are you gonna call? He starts calling. No one's answering. Finally gets a guy after hours, 24 hours. Calls me, says I'll be right over midnight.

Ross Bernstein: Shows up, fix it. You don't have a good heater, Minnesota Midnight, you're gonna die. This guy was so happy that this guy came over and the guy said, Hey, can I ask you for a little video testimony? He remember? 'cause the guy gamified it. So if you bring the video, I'm gonna paid Friday off. Right? We're gonna get, we're gonna reward you gamify.

Ross Bernstein: So this CEO says, I'm switching all my business. I own all these companies. We're switching all our business to, you know, Bob's appliances, whatever it was. 'cause these guys were incredible. They came over. No one else took my call. These guys, he came over, he saved the day. He was so nice. Didn't nickel and dime me work and.

Ross Bernstein: It went viral. They got so much business from this guy telling this Bec, but it's because he asked for that and he didn't want it. Go back to your office. Record it just in the moment with the iPhone. Authentic, bad audio. That's much, much better. More real. And that's the kind of stuff people need, and that's what the CXO does.

Ross Bernstein: You get a kid who understands technology and how do you capture the hearts and minds of the customers? 'cause people have choices, they wanna work with them. And then the C XO is gonna tell people like, Hey, maybe you shouldn't be commenting on Trump and Elon or Hillary and Kamala or abortion or gun laws because maybe half your customers disagree with you.

Ross Bernstein: So don't do that. 

Carm Capriotto: Warning. That was one of the best pieces of advice we've had in a long time. Be careful. 

Ross Bernstein: Yeah. And just don't do it. Right. Half my, I'm Switzerland, half my clients watch Fox News. The other half. Watch M-S-N-B-C. Yeah. It would not be prudent or smart for me to comment on anything political in my life, so I don't 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, that's smart.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. I'm neutral too when it comes to all the great people in our industry. I'm moved by, first of all, your great speech, but in a very short time together, and I wanna leave. Ross with your piece on, be willing to change and we all can change and improve. But when you said lean in, that really grabbed me because I think we talk about stuff, we write things down.

Carm Capriotto: We have our purpose, we have our why, we have our goals. We, we never, if you will, I call it being bold, italic. Leaning into a decision or into a goal and saying, I am going to do it and I am gonna get it done. Talk to us about leaning in 

Ross Bernstein: it's inevitable. Change is here. I gave some examples in my world of certainly when COVID hit going virtual, a lot of my colleagues, competitors went broke.

Ross Bernstein: I have one of my best years ever, I. I was doing four gigs a day, right? I would, companies didn't have a budget. I said, no worries, twofer, bogo, I'll do this one for free. Bring me back next year, full fee, and I'll be in person. And 

Carm Capriotto: this is all online, right? 

Ross Bernstein: It was all online. But I came outta the pandemic as the busiest speaker on the planet because I didn't let those relationships die.

Ross Bernstein: I took care of 'em when they needed me, just like I learned from my grandpa in the furniture stores. Take care of people when they need you the most. Don't charge 'em. Help 'em. And they'll remember you. And I came out smoking and a lot of people never got their traction back. It's a momentum business. You get it, you keep it, but you gotta change, right?

Ross Bernstein: I mean, I wrote 50 books. Guess what? Bookstores are dying, right? Bookstores are gone. And now we've got eBooks and Kindles and nooks and audibles. And so content's changing. So you gotta change, you gotta adapt, you gotta do different things. I've had books are what I call currency. I just, I give 'em away.

Ross Bernstein: They're what I call that first warm puppy wet kiss. If a new client wants to hire me, I don't send them a brochure. I send 'em a bunch of my sports books for their bathroom library in it. Starts that conversation off in a really different perspective. 

Carm Capriotto: Cool. You just hit on something and I, I wanted this to be the last piece, but I can't let it be it.

Carm Capriotto: Okay. Because you talk about pick up the phone and call somebody. It resonated with me. You also said, what would Grandpa Joe do? Mm-hmm. Right? So you're thinking back to some legacy moments, the things that you've learned in your life, and we all have them, but we also have challenges of today that we're not quite sure what Grandpa Joe would do, and even if Grandpa Joe could even understand the situation that I'm in.

Carm Capriotto: So you pick up the phone and you learn to network. I think it's missing. We do have friends. Maybe not to the widest degree that we need to have in our industry as far as an influential network, 

Ross Bernstein: but 

Carm Capriotto: boy, we need to pick up the phone. Yeah, 

Ross Bernstein: I'm old school that way and I still call people. I check in, enjoy it.

Ross Bernstein: You know, I'd rather call someone when I'm up for a run or a walk than being a mastermind where I get pay to talk to them. I would rather just, Hey man, how you doing? How's your family? What's going on? Like, catch me up. Anything new and exciting, and I just check in on people. I remember when my dad took over the furniture stores in Southern Minnesota and he brought, he got a, he bought a computer and that was a big deal.

Ross Bernstein: 'cause we had file cabinets of all of our customers. And look, they would come in and pay it. They run a layaway, right? We would, they'd make payments like every Monday or whatever. First of the month, people would walk into the store and they would sit down, they'd have a cup of coffee and they would make a payment that was credit and those, right?

Ross Bernstein: Yeah. And my grandpa would always under promise and over delivery. He would. Make sure they left with a donut, or maybe we'd always get free carpet samples, those little squares, and that would always be like a new rug for the garage. Right? So people would always say, can I have a carpet? Of course you can.

Ross Bernstein: Right? They'd always leave with something. Right? And when we got the computer, this grandpa's like, well, they're not gonna come in anymore. Then what? It's scary, but every industry from the horse and buggy guys to, to now we've got hyperloops and autonomous vehicles and mass transit and trains and Uber. I mean, are people even gonna have cars in the next 10, 20 years?

Ross Bernstein: I don't know. But it's all about leaning in and saying, Hey man, let's just enjoy this ride and look, if you want out, get out. There's private equity. Let the young guys take in. Right? I mean, just like in Shawshank, get busy living. Or get busy dying, like enjoy this. Take care of people, have fun or find something else to do.

Ross Bernstein: It's okay. That's what this conference is about, man. Figure out that next step. If you're not passionate about it, pass the reins. It's okay. 

Carm Capriotto: That list that you read off of like 150 different things, did you write that last night or is that just kind of a standard piece? 

Ross Bernstein: I have no comment. 

Carm Capriotto: I customize it for every group.

Carm Capriotto: I bet you do. Yeah. Because we heard, of course, so much that it had relevancy to us. My client yesterday 

Ross Bernstein: was Ameriprise Financial Services. So they have very different problems than you have. Right, right. In this world. So every client has different challenges. 

Carm Capriotto: Oh my God. It was We're sitting there and he's going and going and going.

Carm Capriotto: Then he flips this little piece of paper over and he does another 50 or 60 over, and everyone resonated with me. 

Ross Bernstein: Yeah. But then, but the moral of that story was. What are the things you can control? Yeah. So many things you can't. Right, exactly. The economy and politics. Then it just comes back to like picking up the phone and just being nice and taking care of your mental health, your physical health.

Ross Bernstein: I mean, it's not rocket science. Business has always been business forever. People choose to do business with people who they like, who they trust. Who get it right and that at the end of the day, that's what it's about. People can get their car fixed anywhere. Why would they choose to get their car fixed or repaired with you?

Ross Bernstein: That's the secret, and that's what you do. You educate your listeners. You're a proponent of cheerleader for the industry. You're helping them solve problems, creating new ideas, ways to think and. So I just feel really lucky I got to spend a day and be an expert in this world. But I love meeting guys like you and your daughter and 

Carm Capriotto: yeah, thanks.

Carm Capriotto: You're all about helping. Thanks for hanging out with us. This is great. Ross Bernstein and author, former mascot. It's true. Oh my God. Former rodent Golden Gopher. Former former Godin rodent mascot. And you've gotta hear that story someday. You have a book about it. Am I right? 

Ross Bernstein: Well, it's not about me. It's more about the history of my books aren't about, I'm, like I say, I'm not the hero of my story.

Ross Bernstein: I talk about other people. That's a history of Gopher Hockey at the University of Minnesota, as told to a large smelly fury rodent. Thanks for being here, Nick. Great. Great to meet you. Thank you, Carl. 

Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive aftermarket podcast. Until next time.

Show Summary:

Recorded at the Institute Summit, Mike Simard dives into the challenges of recruiting and developing talent, especially in a unique setting like Alaska. He shares his innovative strategy of acquiring lube centers as entry points for new team members and highlights the critical role of strong company culture and leadership. Mike also emphasizes the importance of building the right team, balancing the visionary and integrator roles, and the need to continuously adapt in the ever-evolving automotive industry.

Host(s):

Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio

Guest(s):

Mike Simard, owner of Simard Automotive

Show Highlights:

Mike Simard's Background (00:00:00)

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZHa2uib2k

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network everybody. Carm Capriotto Remarkable Results Radio in Amelia Island. We're here at the Institute Summit. We are the institute.com. Thank you so much to Kent and Cecil and the entire team from the institute to be here just a few hours ago. Michael, were you in the room when I gave my little speech?

Mike Simard: I was not. 

Carm Capriotto: You weren't? I was not. Okay. Well, they'll do it right now for you.

Mike Simard: Let's hear it. 

Carm Capriotto: No. It's a little longer than this podcast will warrant. Yeah, and it was great doing that and a lot of great friends, top tier shop owners that are here, and glad you're here with me. So we appreciate everything from the institute and how they're growing and how they have these incredible groups.

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Carm Capriotto: With me is Mike Simard. You were on a couple of years ago at the same event. That's right. Wow. Two, three. 

Mike Simard: That you even pronounced my name right? Still. So, 

Carm Capriotto: all right, throw the dollar over. I've been practicing it seven locations, but there's a couple of really unique things about Michael that you all need to know while you're driving down the highway on your treadmill.

Carm Capriotto: Listening to this, because you're here to listen, to learn. Just one thing from Michael Smart. It's got seven locations, but they're in Fairbanks, Alaska, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. And Anchorage. Now you see I got an incredible update. Last time I knew you, you 

Mike Simard: had four I. So I met you in Florida and at that time I had four locations, comprehensive models in Fairbanks, and then we a few months later had bought three lu and tire stores and a tire warehouse and two are in Anchorage.

Mike Simard: So we're now in the Anchorage market as 

Carm Capriotto: well is the tire warehouses just like they do in Canada where they store the tires for people or you distributor of tires too 

Mike Simard: distributor. So, ah, we have more buying power through this point S group that we join a tire buying group co-op, and we need to house the tires.

Mike Simard: Got it. 

Carm Capriotto: So. Amazing. Where the hell do you find the energy to do this? 

Mike Simard: Well, my wife says if I wasn't doing something, I'd break things just to. Just to stay going, so I like to 

Carm Capriotto: You're the Energizer bunny. 

Mike Simard: Yeah. I like to solve problems. I like to do different things. Oh God. I like to. Oh, I so love that. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah.

Mike Simard: You know, I sleep good at night most of the time. Do you invent problems so you can fix 'em? That's what I said. Yeah. She said if you didn't go find something broken to fix I know. Or build something new. I'm so much like that. Yeah. I really, 

Carm Capriotto: does it still continue to work? Okay. Which 

Mike Simard: parts 

Carm Capriotto: I know Think about it and 

Mike Simard: can it do it better?

Mike Simard: You know? Can we get a better mousetrap? Teresa says, dad, it's fine. 

Carm Capriotto: Well, yeah, it's fine, dad, because I've always been this perpetual upgrader, you know, 2.0, 2.1 2 3, 3 0.0. I've always been, you never stay stagnant, right? 

Mike Simard: Well, our purpose, our vision is always try to elevate others the highest potential, so you better live that yourself.

Carm Capriotto: Michael, it seems crazy for you to go and buy some lube centers 

Mike Simard: and did you have a purpose to do that was the deal, right? The biggest thing, you know, I discovered a lot of new things, so I love learning and it's a new challenge and one of the things we need to do is continue to find great talent and grow our own by buying.

Mike Simard: I always had this vision many years ago, didn't quite understand what it meant, but the vision was like over on that side of town we'd have this teaching training shop. A place that maybe we can find talent, find people that want to come into this industry and train them up. People need to come in for a convenience oil change.

Mike Simard: They need to get some basic services and then get on their way. It's a wonderful place to teach people a better industry and kinda get them started, you know, and make sure they have their basic hygiene, make sure they really want to go down that road, and when we find out that they're a value fit, that there's somebody that wants to learn.

Mike Simard: That somebody we can maybe take all the way into our four year apprenticeship program. And so I had that vision and that just happens to be that one of the stores I bought in Fairbanks was in that same side of town and never thought that'd be the place, this one particular location. 'cause I was like, that's something I can't do.

Mike Simard: I. Had a limiting mindset there for a while. Yeah, sure. And then all of a sudden we did it and then we grew in the Anchorage market. 'cause they're really thirsty for, we believe what we have. And now we actually have promoted, hopefully next month will be the third apprentice. Out of that same location I.

Carm Capriotto: Apprentice out there into, 

Mike Simard: so that's into our general service shops. Into your, okay. And then we can grow them to a level master tech. 

Carm Capriotto: I just logistically need to understand how far away is Fairbanks and Anchorage? 

Mike Simard: Six hours unless, 

Carm Capriotto: oh, okay. You're going faster. So this isn't someone that you train 'em in Anchorage and move 'em into Fairbanks 

Mike Simard: for the Fairbanks market.

Mike Simard: But we actually just last October started our first ever 

Carm Capriotto: Anchorage Apprentice two, so I think we've got seven or eight now. Okay. Alright. It's such a great idea. That an independent successful goes into a specialty shop for entry level maintenance. And looks at that as a team building operation. 

Mike Simard: Yeah, that was the first vision actually.

Mike Simard: It wasn't like, I'm gonna go make a bunch of money or just get more car count. I was like, I wonder if we can find people and attract them and teach them who we are and maybe we can, you know, are you gonna show up in time? Are you gonna comb your hair? Are you gonna wear a uniform? Do you get along as a team?

Mike Simard: Can we teach you some life skills, some basic goal setting. Quality control. Do you care? Do you have customer service so you can actually, the lube model's kind of interesting 'cause a lot of people will change the oil and interface with the customer at the same time. So you actually can get advisors out of this.

Mike Simard: Technicians. And also when I went into that side of the industry, I didn't realize, you know, being part of the institute and ROO and the legacy evolution of this wonderful thing that they're doing here at the summit. I didn't realize how much they need there too. And we can share and learn from both sides of that industry.

Mike Simard: The tire and lube business and the comprehensive model. It's very interesting how they can share and grow together. 

Carm Capriotto: Why don't I hear a lot about that here in the States, and it's going through my mind. Well, they don't want to compete with Jiffy. You must have Jiffy Lubes up there. I 

Mike Simard: think we have two other quick lubes in Fairbanks.

Carm Capriotto: Okay. 

Mike Simard: Wow. It's then us. Okay. And then you have the dealership Fast lubes, of course. 

Carm Capriotto: Okay. So when I think of what you did as a proving ground, if you will, for talent. To feed growth of your other comprehensive stores as I think you called them. Why wouldn't we be thinking of doing that here? 'cause I don't know a lot of independent professional shops that own quick lubes.

Carm Capriotto: I think they have quick lube bays. I get that. I know a bunch of people that have quick lube bays. It's probably an incubation for talent, but it's a brilliant move. 

Mike Simard: Well, I guess I didn't really think of it until you asked me about it. The dealership does it for obvious reasons. They service the same brand.

Mike Simard: Yeah. I have a couple of friends that have done it. I find there's a few of us out there doing it. I can tell you one thing. We also have a couple of gas stations. Now, the reason why we bought them is because they were great quality shops already in excellent locations, and Fairbanks just doesn't have a lot of opportunity to buy shops.

Mike Simard: So I can tell you one thing though, if you can do one thing really well and get really good at it and don't do 27 things and try to do them all really well. Doing one thing really well is easier. And when you say that, you mean 

Carm Capriotto: oil changes 

Mike Simard: Really well. So if you just, if you do tires or you just do lube or you do comprehensive, but we do that and we'd sell gas, and then we have a tire distribution system.

Mike Simard: So I. The complexity of it is challenging, and so maybe that's one reason why not everybody's doing that. 

Carm Capriotto: Okay, got it. The lube centers, are they finding work for your comprehensive, your four other stores? Yes. That's the other benefit. 

Mike Simard: So they, we have a little internal referral system. Okay. We also at this time have branded them differently, so if you go to our website, you won't see that tire and lube model on there.

Mike Simard: Okay. Yeah. Because customers are expecting different things. You, in a convenience store, you expect one thing, you go into a big grocery store, you expect another thing. And so we wanted to be able to still provide to our small communities the opportunity to get the kind of service that they associate with that type of store or that brand.

Carm Capriotto: This is fascinating. I'm with Mike Sard from Fairbanks, Alaska from Sard Automotive, four stores, actually seven locations all together, a couple of quick loses and a tire distribution place. Is this the only place that you're recruiting? No. And so that's the big thing. I mean, you know, listen to my listener, you know, Carm, I'm interested in everything in the industry and including this man from Alaska.

Carm Capriotto: I've always wanted to do a story on mushing. Your mush dogs. 

Mike Simard: Oh, you're gonna come up sometime, right? And see us? Yeah. Yeah, we 

Carm Capriotto: are. Yeah. Yeah. How many hours is that? I mean, from Florida here, 

Mike Simard: driving or flying? You know, it's only like 13, 15 hours. So it's 

Carm Capriotto: only 13 or 15 hours to fly. That's right. Like to Florida.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah, but from Buffalo, maybe what? 10? Add 

Mike Simard: two, three more hours. Go to Boston and then go, 

Carm Capriotto: oh, I live near 

Mike Simard: Toronto. Jets are fast. Okay. You can make it. No excuse. You wanna go Tracy? Next summer. Tracy wants to go take you fishing. Oh, maybe you can bring Michael Smith or somebody. There's, oh my God, 

Carm Capriotto: what I'm telling you, I would, I 

Mike Simard: can buy fuel.

Carm Capriotto: We'll have 'em buy fuel. It would be a blast to hang out with a whole group of, if you ever get a group of institute people that want to just come up for the Alaskan trip of a lifetime, I'm in. 

Mike Simard: Oh, we had Bates and Waffler, and you did Casey last year. We do that. They know how it works. You buy fuel for my, and maybe a bottle of Kraken and then I take a minute when they want to go, oh my God.

Mike Simard: We could do a podcast out to see. Would you like that on Starlink, huh? Yes sir. Okay, done. You continue 

Carm Capriotto: to stretch this balloon here. Maybe you help me 

Mike Simard: recruit. That's not a conflict of interest. We'll, even, well, 

Carm Capriotto: let's talk. I'll buy the fuel. Alright, so let's talk about that, which is where I was going like, Hey, let's go.

Carm Capriotto: Was kind of going down that rabbit hole of. Anybody from the us you see your ads and say, I think I want to go up there where it's cold and there's no sun. Or where there's a need and I can fill it. How do you wanna look? I love that. How do you wanna look at that? I love that. You know? Oh, that's perfect.

Carm Capriotto: That's the exact answer. I see what happens with the sun on my head. Yeah. Too much. Yep. It's making it hardened a little bit from the north. Yeah. 

Mike Simard: I had to buy sunscreen. 

Carm Capriotto: Day one man from the North country, was it the Game of Thrones? Anyway, but I digress. Recruiting, I mean, is it all Alaskan talent you're finding?

Mike Simard: So we continue to evolve in recruiting. I sat down the other day and wrote a well over a couple weeks, a 200 page playbook on recruiting. Just try to dump everything out on my knowledge and Oh wow. This Playbook builder called The Way Book when our coach said many years ago, you gotta recruit. It's coming.

Mike Simard: He was right. And especially in Alaska it became more noticeable. A very small place to, to pull from. And uh, especially since COVID, you know, I think the attrition, people moving around more and more everywhere. And so we recruit, had some really good talent from Florida. It's really weird, Texas. I can't seem to get anybody outta the northwest.

Mike Simard: You think that'd be natural? It's like one plane ride. Just go over the border. But we recruit all over. So we're hoping though, in the next couple years. With, shoot, I think we're close. Like I said, between six and eight apprentices now. That next couple years, they're gonna start getting their master program in a little more time in saddle.

Mike Simard: And so maybe we have a little less room for the people down here now. We'll keep growing shops that'll, if it's right to do so and so we'll continue to, to 

Carm Capriotto: my listener. Don't be pissed that I'm trying to talk to Mike to recruit great talent to go up to Alaska. But my curiosity of where you find great people, then you say, yeah, people, they want a life change.

Carm Capriotto: If the whole family comes up, do you getting single people going up? 

Mike Simard: Yeah. And of course we wouldn't recruit from our friends, so we're not gonna do that here. Sure. We all have a hard time. So we'd be happy to share. That's smart. We do share with our friends. That's smart. Yeah. Like this is how we find technicians and so I wanna help the industry, so I'm not gonna try to pull people other shops, but obviously we don't wanna hold people back.

Mike Simard: So actually I prefer a support system, but we're not gonna discriminate against anybody. So I. We go through a very long process. I can give you the overview if you want. Sure. We've done some stuff on social. I've been in Texas before meetings with like, Hey, that guy in Alaska, and usually I'm out at sea saying, come join us for Alaska, so I gotta sell it a little bit.

Mike Simard: Yeah, I get it. Yeah. And so we have multiple parts of the leadership team, of our leaders, and we all recruit. We talk to them and we kind of reconvene and say, how's this working? What do you think about this position? We really talk about the trial. We do a job trial. If they pass all the interviews, they come up for two weeks.

Mike Simard: We pay them, they work with us. Every shop is a loaner toolbox and they work under the lead tech. And then we have a conversation. We take 'em out to dinner, how's it going? And then we give 'em a pretty substantial relocation package if we make that full-time job offer. And we'll move a whole family up. 

Carm Capriotto: Are you a Napa Autocare Center who is ready to take your shop to the next level?

Carm Capriotto: Then the Premier Tier Napa Autocare Gold certified program is exactly what you need. Gold certified Autocare Centers provide customers with a consistent experience no matter where they are in the US Now, this means. They're more likely to return and support your shop or find your gold certified auto care center while on the road.

Carm Capriotto: Gold certified members can maximize technology, increase their local marketing opportunities, and have a fully trained team that keeps up with the latest trends. Simply put the gold certified NAPA Auto Care program powered by your local brand will set you apart. A true partnership is a two-way street.

Carm Capriotto: Shops must meet specific criteria to be eligible for the many benefits of gold. Now, Napa Autocare rewards its most committed partners, their gold certified members with free premium shop referrals on the NAPA online locator, annual marketing dollars and enhanced warranty training opportunities, program rebates, and so much more.

Carm Capriotto: Are you ready to get started? Contact your local NAPA sales representative to discuss your eligibility and apply today more than 16% of light duty vehicles on the road are EV and hybrid. Is your shop ready to safely and properly service them? Get your shop trained and equipped to service hybrid and EV vehicles with NAPA Auto Tech's innovative EV Ready, level one, high voltage awareness and maintenance training.

Carm Capriotto: Hey, take your Autocare center to the next level, the gold level with the Napa Autocare Gold Certified Program. This program is for the best of the best who can provide a consistent consumer experience and earn the trust of returning and new customers. Talk to your NAPA sales representative about how you can become a gold certified shop.

Carm Capriotto: Let's face it, your shop management system is the single most important tool in your shop. Period. Napa Tracks was built from the ground up to make your business more profitable and efficient, we provide an extensive set of tools to increase and track profitability in real time. Napa Trax offers the industry's best post-sale support hands down.

Carm Capriotto: And we train your people on site. Yep, on site. And we offer remote refresher training 10 times a week, and customer support is open. Six days a week, give us a call. Visit the website or join our Facebook community today to learn more. We'll prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business.

Carm Capriotto: Napa Trax is always customized and tailored for you, whether you are a one man shop or a large multi-pay or multi-location company. After all, it's your shop. So it's your choice. Visit us on the web at NAPA Tracks. That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C s.com. Hey, did you [email protected] you can find an SOPA checklist forms along with policies and procedures that can help you move your business ahead.

Carm Capriotto: Well, sometimes you just need a little motivation to write a policy. If only you had something to review and then make your own. You can save so much valuable time when you can grab a document from our library, make a few adjustments for your shop, and move to your next task. There are more than 350 searchable documents with new documents arriving [email protected].

Carm Capriotto: If there's a job fit, you're gonna do what's right. That's right for them. That's right. 

Mike Simard: And then we'll house 'em for the first 90 days as well. Yeah, on top of that. And so usually it's enough to get started. That's an 

Carm Capriotto: expensive, 

Mike Simard: it's very expensive. Whoa. I just actually calculated it three days ago. I 

Carm Capriotto: don't know if you want me to tell you what it costs, but Yeah.

Carm Capriotto: I'm so curious. I'm sure my audience is, I mean, 

Mike Simard: It might scare people. It shouldn't be super 

Carm Capriotto: secret, but it's a reality of life. What it takes to, for you to recruit into Alaska can, I guess. Yeah. 20 grand 

Mike Simard: total cost more. 

Carm Capriotto: Wow. Yeah. Can I jump up another 10? 

Mike Simard: If you don't count the money you lost because maybe someone left.

Carm Capriotto: Okay. Yeah. 

Mike Simard: I think it was in the 30 something thousand. Now this is providing them 10,000 plus and then you're providing for the salary when they come up. Yeah. And then your time. It depends, however you wanna break it out. And if you indeed spend and sponsor, there's other ways to do it. That's the current mode.

Mike Simard: And I remember when I had a single one or two stores thinking that a recruitment fee or whatever, it's like, how am I gonna run my store? How am I gonna make payroll? How am I gonna serve customers? How am I gonna fix cars and recruit? That's what we had to do. Right? People don't understand what that takes.

Mike Simard: And it's harder now, 

Carm Capriotto: but you figured it out through. The right profit, the right gross margins, the right sales structure, the right everything. I mean, people can't be listening to this podcast and saying, I don't know how he does it, but you do. And you do it because you have great disciplines, good structures, I'm sure.

Carm Capriotto: Great programs and policies and people and culture. That's right. And all of that allows you to spend that kind of money. Now are you recruiting one or two a year? One every couple of years. Like that 

Mike Simard: depends how much you grow and it depends how well you take care of the people you had. Right? And it depends on how sticky you can make your company.

Mike Simard: So the idea is that people matter. And I think it really comes down to the continual evolution of our understanding. Our ability to find people that, that believe in our values and believe in our purpose. And then of course, Alaska is very unique. So the thing I can tell people, my recommendation to people is like, every place you are okay, has a unique thing about it.

Mike Simard: Now, I wouldn't wanna live in Arizona anytime soon because I was talking to Arizona and friends. I'm like, every day you get up, it's the same except that three days of rain. So for me, I like change. Okay. And so, but that's very appealing to somebody that maybe is sick of the cold or sick of the rain. No, I got it.

Mike Simard: So the grass looks greener on every side of the fence. So find your, you know, unique selling point for your Yeah. Company. But what about your community? And you will find people that want to come to you. And so you have to start that relationship. Obviously you have to start that connection. And then make sure it's a fit, and then you will make mistakes just like any technician minded person like myself.

Mike Simard: And just keep learning, 

Carm Capriotto: keep growing. Mike, what happens if you get hit by a bus tomorrow? People gonna handle it. 

Mike Simard: Well, 

Carm Capriotto: my attorney 

Mike Simard: told me to raise my life insurance, so Okay. That I did that part. Well, good. That's get your will, get your affairs 

Carm Capriotto: in order, get all that in order. But you're gone for a couple of weeks.

Carm Capriotto: You got a great team that's just charging ahead. I mean, the culture, the kind of people tell us you don't have to leave for two weeks. You could leave for, you know, work. Three days at the shop and two at home. As long as you have the right team, and obviously you've had to build that. Yeah. 

Mike Simard: And still learning, still growing.

Mike Simard: You know, I think obviously you can't start that way if you're running a single store. You've gotta pour in your people. I think it was just like, Dan, just like a lot of people talked about at this summit here, is find somebody that you can pour into, find somebody that wants it, find somebody that wants to learn.

Carm Capriotto: I love the word pour into, but they have to have the capacity to drink that Kool-Aid, don't they? Yeah. Yeah, they do. And sometimes you believe in the person, but they don't get what you're trying to do. 

Mike Simard: I'm an activator, right? Yes. So, and I have Woo, and then all those things. So that I'm really good at getting people started.

Mike Simard: And one person said for me from one of my strengths is I've gotten older, getting older, approaching 50. You start, hopefully wisdom comes in with less hair and more gray isn't, wait a minute. That's the idea. I think wisdom, I'm still acquiring it. I'm asking for it and I seem to get a lot of lessons to teach me it, but yeah.

Mike Simard: So you get kicked in the ass and instead of failing backwards, you fail forward. Yeah, exactly. So really trying to learn how to 

Carm Capriotto: do that better. So how do you guys survive the rollercoaster of business and weather and stuff like that? 

Mike Simard: So again, the institute's done a good job. I'm not here to sell the institute.

Mike Simard: Right. But I have some really good coaches that help us plan, forecast. Yeah. You gotta scroll away. What's that? Yeah. Because you're the leader, like you're helping feed all these mouths, all these people relying on you. The weight of leadership. So weight of responsibility. So like right now, first quarter's kind of slow.

Mike Simard: So you have to be ready to weather that storm. 

Carm Capriotto: Do you stop marketing? Do you keep marketing? You know, there's, people are saying, well, I'm really busy. I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull my marketing back, and then all of a sudden they're only four days out instead of eight days out, and then they want to turn it on.

Carm Capriotto: I. But it's tough to turn it on and have an instant result. 

Mike Simard: Right. And when the market and the customer, the demand's not there, or it's around the holidays, they don't always have the money. It's kinda like recruiting. Do you recruit when that person leaves or do you do it before? Yeah, so we really learn that stuff now.

Mike Simard: You can listen to the coaches, you should really listen to coaches, but a lot of us are stubborn. A lot of us are a personalities and like, oh, I'm gonna figure it out myself. Right. Well then you get burned and you get hurt and you can choose to either cry or fail forward, like you said. We 

Carm Capriotto: could do hours on.

Carm Capriotto: I didn't listen to my coach and here's what happened. Yeah. And now I regret. I 

Mike Simard: was right like two times though. I'll just say, 

Carm Capriotto: okay, 

Mike Simard: that's okay. Out of 20 years, two out 20 years, I remember 

Carm Capriotto: two out of how many 

Mike Simard: things they told you. Hundreds, right? Yeah. And with my wife, I think I was right. Less times. I'm just saying that was married for longer.

Mike Simard: But my wife's always right. That's why I'm happily married one time, but 

Carm Capriotto: that's it. She'll listen to this and so you're, hi, nice to meet you. Yep. Long distance. Sorry hun, please don't think terrible of me. No. Type A. What did you call yourself a few minutes ago? Oh, an 

Mike Simard: activator. An 

Carm Capriotto: activator. What kind of skills do you delegate?

Carm Capriotto: 'cause you just don't like to do 'em? 

Mike Simard: Well, it's funny. That's where I was thinking about the wisdom part. Like we didn't stage this at all. I've learned some of us have read the book E Os or Traction. Oh yeah, 

Carm Capriotto: sure. Are you doing that? 

Mike Simard: I. Yeah, we're actually going through the scaling up process, which, okay.

Mike Simard: Which I found out is where, and you're the visionary. You're the visionary. I'm the visionary all the way. I read a book like Rocket of Fuel and I'm like, yeah, so it's okay to be me. Like this is like, I know everything about me. It's okay. I know. So what I have now up there is somebody that compliments me really well.

Mike Simard: She's been with me 12, 13 years and she like, I'm a high di. And I know I'm using a lot of the profiling things and stuff, so I'm just a driven Sure. Like a driven coach. Like I wanna win but I wanna win together. And she's a very high sc so it's a very complimentary so, and if she hears me say this, she'll be a little concerned 'cause she don't like when I say the word friction or a little bit conflict.

Mike Simard: So there's some of that sometimes. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. But an SC should be a great integrator. Exactly. Does she want to be an integrator? 

Mike Simard: Yeah. Okay. So you're finding a right role for her? Yeah, and very complimentary. I'll cast the vision, but she's more wired for lingering behind and supporting. Okay. And making sure they're getting all the details.

Mike Simard: Yeah, they need to. So it's like a perfect thing. I don't like great details. I don't like to slow down. And S As and C's. I love the details and really wanna make sure it's, are you high D or high A? High D I'm like 99, 98. 

Carm Capriotto: Okay. 

Mike Simard: Alright. Depends if you depends. 

Carm Capriotto: We're partying, 

Mike Simard: we're gonna have fun or we're gonna fight.

Mike Simard: So whichever one. 

Carm Capriotto: Wow. Not 

Mike Simard: fight, but 

Carm Capriotto: you're an all. We'll fight for my team, like a good coach. You're an all in di or DI. Yeah. Wow. It's fun. I have to tell you, and I know a lot about disc. I went through all kinds of training, got a textbook on it. I've got a great, oh, by the way, go to my website.

Carm Capriotto: Remarkable results is slash downloads are on my downloads page. On the website, there's this great chart on disc for your salespeople to see. I think it's so cool to see a high D that has high I high. I could get along with that person. You and I could be friends for a long time. But for me, a high I to work for only a D, that's a tough thing.

Carm Capriotto: Unless the D is willing to listen to my crazy visionary off the wall. Hey, it's, you know, this is good stuff. It's gonna be fun. I had a boss like that. But ultimately, I believe we ended up becoming really close and good friends at the run of my career. I almost believe I really do that. I changed him a little bit from being such a, just a driver.

Carm Capriotto: Tough D. A tough D, and I got some of his D. When you had to go out and do stuff, you had to make things happen and you want to go out as a high I, Hey, come on everybody. We're gonna do this thing. They say, okay, we're gonna have another fun day of really new important policies with km. And you know, I needed my lu razzi in the room, my high D, to say, alright, here's what we're gonna do right now.

Carm Capriotto: So, and I find that fascinating in building and growing culture in the business. Is it all you or is you bring the team together? Do they know? We do what we love to do. This is the kind of company we have. We take care of people, we take care of you, we take care of the clients. How have you built this great culture?

Carm Capriotto: We're still 

Mike Simard: working on 

Carm Capriotto: it. Okay. We're not, that's a great answer. Not answer, by the way. Honestly, we're not. I love that 

Mike Simard: and I am, you know what? Our values is excellence, so I always want to keep growing. I'm very mindful of that, trying to stay humble. I think the biggest thing that I'm continuing to get, hopefully, some more wisdom on is really in the leadership team, really looking for people that we can compliment each other and also making sure we have the skills to not like get stuck in a certain place like we did the Working Genius the other day.

Mike Simard: Won't go too deep into that. I'm still learning about it, but I really resonated with, I could clearly see what I love to do and what I don't love to do. And then, but then I looked at back at DISC or some of those people on my team. I was like, but you do. And so what I realized, the more I stay in that visionary space, casting the Y, I just, I probably put eight hours in that beach, or I wore a trench.

Mike Simard: And a lot of like earbuds in vacuum, just talking to my people. Yeah. Yeah. And literally, I swear we talked about why, and Dan Clark talked about why. Yeah. And the why. It's like, I know, how do I get through? Like they didn't see that coming and I've been talking about it for a couple months. It's like, how do I get through and talking to my wife or talking to.

Mike Simard: Chief of staff and it's like, how do I get through and help from a perspective of Michael Smith and I talk all the time, and I think I wore him out on the beach too for two different walks, but really coming down to if you can get someone else to see the vision and see the why. Okay. And now that's where I need to live.

Mike Simard: Now I also know how to do the how. So, but what's dangerous for me, I'm finding as I'm getting older, is that if I stand how too long in those details, that's probably not the best space for me at the size of this company right now. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: When I was listening to Dan Clark and I didn't hear his entire presentation today.

Carm Capriotto: He did say it's the why, not the what. And I wrote that down and I was impacted by it because when you talk to people about their why, it's tough for a lot of people. It's tough to know and to figure out. Appreciate, understand their why, but by saying it's not your what, that person maybe can back into the why.

Carm Capriotto: He, it's not what you do, it's why you do it. And I thought that could be a game changer for somebody struggling with their why. Yeah. Now I get the whole how thing. I really understand the how thing, how you know, it's like who not how. Right. Another great book that really helps you understand it's Dan Sullivan.

Carm Capriotto: Dan Sullivan. Yeah. It's, when I hired Tracy was Barry Barrett, who sent me the book and I was telling him about me and Tracy talking and he sent me the book. I realized that she was my how 

Mike Simard: she's a who that can figure out the how that, yeah, exactly. You focus on what you need. Exactly 

Carm Capriotto: right. It's amazing.

Carm Capriotto: We're a tiny little company, but in your company I can see the value that it brings. 

Mike Simard: Wow. Yeah. Actually, just funny, I picked up another book called Who. By Jeff Smart. Okay. Top grading. I think his father wrote the book all about top grading and interviewing and having a players and his book's called Who?

Mike Simard: And it's like, oh my gosh. It's like Dan Sullivan and him had a conversation. Yeah. And he does it a different way. It's a little bit different take on it, but I think that's the whole wisdom part. I was saying that I'm hoping and praying I get smarter as I go and stop beating my head against the wall at times.

Mike Simard: And if you can find those that are really good at something, 'cause you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room, like get over that thing. Right. Find someone that's just loves doing that one thing. And there's things I just don't like to do and I love leading teams, but there's certain parts of that I do really well and there's certain parts I can do and I need to do.

Mike Simard: And when you're a single store owner, have a couple stores, guess what, like which hat you're wearing today? It's tough. It's tough. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Hope to get smart. You just said that about a minute ago. I hope to get smart. You will. Because you hope. Because you know that's something you have to do for so many that just don't want to get ahead, that are languishing and struggling and really hurt our industry.

Carm Capriotto: They don't want to get smart 'cause they're afraid what it looks like. Yeah. I've been there. 

Mike Simard: That guy's still in there. He still talks to me. 

Carm Capriotto: And what do you do? Do you just grab him by the throat and throw 'em in the corner? Well, 

Mike Simard: I tell you, sometimes I lose the battles, but gonna win the war. 

Carm Capriotto: Oh. Is he screaming at you or just whispering in your ear?

Carm Capriotto: Oh, you'd name it. They'll try every little thing. And I 

Mike Simard: don't wanna go too far into that. The devil in one shoulder, angel in the other. But you know, as Michael talked about, and Dan talked about it, you know, we have a soul, we have a spirit, we have our body, we have things, forces, environments around us. We have people that talk to us in the past that are still talking to us that weren't very nice and things.

Mike Simard: And so what you said was very important. I think you have to first believe. I mean really we're such amazing humans, right? You have to first believe you can. I love what Dan said. Dan said today. What he say? Something about when your wise bigger than your why not? Yeah. That's what I took 

Carm Capriotto: away. When your wise bigger than your why not?

Carm Capriotto: And that to me, I was like, helps you understand your why. Mike, thank you so much for the, I enjoy this to a degree that I believe there's a lot of people out there. We always try to break these barriers that, you know, I just believe people have in general, but there's barriers in our industry of people wanting to jump and get ahead.

Carm Capriotto: I, it was a great episode to hear what you're doing and how you're doing it, so I appreciate you being here. Mike Smart's automotive Fairbanks. Anchorage, Alaska, seven locations. God bless you, man. Yes, thank you so much. 

Mike Simard: Yeah, thanks Carmen. 

Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive aftermarket podcast.

Carm Capriotto: Until next time.

Show Summary:

What if your shop’s uniform was more than just workwear? In this episode, Jimmy Lea is joined by Leah Grubb, founder of Green Bolt Printing, to discuss how automotive shops can turn everyday apparel into a strategic tool for branding, leadership, and culture. Leah shares the origin of her company, born from firsthand experience in multi-shop growth, and explains how the right look can foster pride, unity, and even performance. From choosing the right fabric to using color with purpose, this conversation unpacks the overlooked power of uniforms...and how to get them right.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Leah Grubb, Founder & CEO of Green Bolt Printing

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:23] - Apparel is often the first impression before a customer ever visits your website or talks to staff.

[00:02:35] - Leah shares her journey from rapid shop expansion to founding Green Bolt Printing out of operational necessity.

[00:04:47] - Reframing uniforms as a shop's “constant visual identity” enhances culture, pride, and morale.

[00:08:16] - Rebranding with color and design transformed the team’s enthusiasm, professionalism, and sense of identity.

[00:10:15] - Differentiating technician uniforms still matters, even if they aren’t customer-facing.

[00:14:24] - Biggest mistake shops make: not involving their team in apparel choices.

[00:19:10] - Fit, function, and thoughtful design choices affect confidence and job satisfaction.

[00:24:04] - Unified looks can range from strict uniforms to flexible, branded individuality, find your shop’s identity.

[00:37:10] - Merch stores only work for retail-forward brands or customer loyalty rewards, not just selling uniforms.

[00:49:43] - Use color intentionally: blacks evoke sleek professionalism, while red, blue, or green can cue emotion and expertise.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16XGiHzhxKY

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

Links & Resources: 

________________________________________

Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. It is a beautiful day outside. The power is out in Las Vegas, and that's okay. We're okay with that. We have such exciting conversations to happen today. I'm so excited to have you here with me, my friends, as we have this conversation to talk about something that affects every customer interaction.

Jimmy Lea: Today we are gonna talk about this and before any word is spoken. There's something that happens, and our discussion today is with the founder of Green Bolt Printing. She helps automotive shops all over the country turn their gear into a leadership tool, from bold branding to team building through apparel.

Jimmy Lea: She understands how a look can drive culture, confidence, and performance. She's just not about putting logos on shirts. It's about uniting teams through identity. Give a big round of applause as we help to welcome the incredible Leah Grub. Leah, I'm so excited that you are here with us today to talk about your business and what it is you do to affect the shop's company culture and everything that goes with it.

Leah Grubb: Me too. Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking really forward to today. 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. This is gonna be a great conversation that we're gonna have to talk. I know you've got a lot put together with a PowerPoint and a presentation. So with that I'm gonna turn it to you as questions come up, just be understanding that we're gonna interrupt and ask some questions.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Because marketing is so much fun. This interaction happens before a website. I mean, it's not a website. This is our apparel, this is what we're doing that we wear. Has a uniform to be part of the team. Every team has a uniform and we're now part of it. So Leah, we turn it to you. 

Leah Grubb: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jimmy.

Leah Grubb: Hello. Hello everyone, and thank you again for joining me on this Wednesday afternoon and on a holiday week, nonetheless. I wanna start kind of with the concept and how we frame things before we dive in here, right? Because up until today, what you were to work right, is just kind of that what you wear to work.

Leah Grubb: So instead, I'm want to talk about how it can be so much more than just a uniform and instead your shop's visual identity. And I'm gonna be using that word. A lot, and I'm a bit of a fast talker too here. So, because these t-shirts and polos are something that you wear to work every single day, they can be the very vehicle that creates a feel good, ready to perform environment that achieves excellence.

Leah Grubb: But before we dive in, I do want to tell a little bit of my story here. Because right before I founded Greenbelt, I was working as a marketing director for two local automotive shops. One of them was C and J Automotive. And there I am, right there on the end. And at the time we had two shops. One was our HQ that was founded in 1988 and the other one was a second shop.

Leah Grubb: About 20 minutes down the road that was established. Very recently, I guess 2015, so 10 years ago, comparatively to 1988. Then within about a span of a year and a half, we expanded to not just the third location, not just the fourth location, but five locations in, yeah, about a year and a half in total.

Leah Grubb: Within the next closest one being 40 minutes from our hq, one being in a completely different state. New Jersey. Now you could say that we were learning how to build a rocket ship on the way up, or a parachute on the way down, depending on your outlook for that day, because if that wasn't enough, we decided to rebrand and revamp all of these locations.

Leah Grubb: And this was all at the time of. That post COVID supply chain issue, remember this the toilet paper shortages of that time. So it was a bit of a headache to say the least. And doing it at this scale and in this timeframe exposed a lot of flaws in the screen printing and embroidery industry that I thought could be approved upon.

Leah Grubb: So much so that when my employers decided that, that we decided that we could do something better with this. So Jack, who is right there in the center, and then my other employer at the time who owned a collision shop bootstrapped the idea and Greenbelt was born. And I'm saying all of this because I'm sharing a few other stories from my time in this career because Greenbelt truly was born out of necessity and not just general necessity.

Leah Grubb: Right. Actual specific necessities from growing auto repair shops, and that started with the rebranding process. We had to dive deeper into our brand and our visual identity. And where is that? Not if the most prevalent than in the clothing that we're wearing every single day. You don't need to go through a rebrand of your apparel to do all this.

Leah Grubb: Actually, the main thing I want you to do is to reframe your idea of what uniforms are as you know them, right? Uniforms are for identification, for functionality. They help people identify who works where, like going up to someone in a red shirt at Target and hoping they work there. 'cause a lot of people are wearing red t-shirts.

Leah Grubb: So, or functionally they're just more durable for the wear and tear of the day or the task at hand, or protective, like high visibility gear. But what if we took that one step further and recognized uniforms for their higher purpose that they can serve as a consistent or constant visual identity? And that's gonna be our tongue twister of the day because.

Leah Grubb: If you move past uniforms, just being used for purely identification purposes or purely functional needs, a uniform can reinforce a shared identity, build a sense of pride, boost morale, and set expectations, ideally positive ones, both internally and externally with your customers. Because the reality is uniforms are one of the most visible, consistent expressions of your brand and your culture.

Leah Grubb: Your team wears them every day. Your customers see them first. I. That's powerful. So when you start thinking of uniforms as a constant visual identity and not just the thing you're wearing to work every single day, you unlock their real value as a tool to shape how people feel about your shop and how they feel inside it.

Leah Grubb: So another story time again, right? With c and j, this new concept, this new way of thinking came into play during that rebrand because we especially had to think about where this brand was going to be seen. Would it look good on a mailer, on social media, on a street sign, and of course on people and on our.

Leah Grubb: Buildings. So the current logo already had to go through some refinement to look good for social media, right? There's our social media profile photo, and then it had to go through more refinement to be cost effective, and in some cases even possible, as in just actually able to be embroidered and put on physical products.

Leah Grubb: So then it became this, and then if you look at these suites of logos, it's. A classic auto repair shop logo. You have the wings. And some might say it's dated, especially if we use the full logo and some may say it's cluttered with those cars or things like that, but it's simple, clean to the point.

Leah Grubb: We were a local family owned, rooted in history or vintage depending on when you were born for 1988 at Auto Repair Shop with a friendly and personal service that we wanted to be known for, that our customers knew us for, but we wanted anyone for their first impression to also know us for whether we were there to talk with them about our history or not.

Leah Grubb: And thus our new brand suite was developed and our identity was finally realized, not just in the logo, but in now some red and blue colors that fed into this new visual identity that created a sense of pride within our team. And everyone could agree this was our shop and this is our look so much more so than the black and white chrome or and what it was beforehand.

Leah Grubb: And just look at the, okay. I have a 

Jimmy Lea: question. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: That is a significant rebrand to go from the black and white to adding color to being the red and blue. What did that do to the team? The performance, the culture, the feel of the shop? What happened internally when you did this? 

Leah Grubb: Yes. So when we first revealed this new logo, I mean, the reactions were just like that sick.

Leah Grubb: Like it's a logo you could put on a crew neck or a t-shirt, and it looks like maybe a vintage, I don't know, like alcohol brand or some of something else that you would've dug up out of your dad's old box of stuff in the attic. And now it's like worth. A lot more money. Right. There was so much more character to it where people now are just like, no, put it on a t-shirt for today.

Leah Grubb: It's become a brand more so that not just only for the uniform and what they wear to work every day, but they're getting casual t-shirts and casual hoodies that they wanna wear out and about because it just looks cool. It looks vintage. It's a, it's. Providing them a certain identity out and about even that's related to their work.

Leah Grubb: So it's advertising on our end, but it's also just something they feel good about wearing. There's pride in what they're wearing now. It's more fun. You know, we were a really fun shop. 

Jimmy Lea: It changes how they show up. It changes how the, their mindset is, it changes how they show up for work every day.

Jimmy Lea: You know, even to the technicians. So technicians in the back of the shop, they're not necessarily always seen. Usually it's the front counter, the front desk. Where you've got the polos and whatnot. Yeah. But then you've got t-shirts. 

Leah Grubb: Look at that kind of comparison in our teen photo from before with the old brand.

Leah Grubb: And we're all black and white and it's just a kind of typical thing to now how we put this brand together, red and blue, and we actually strip it away from the off from white to like an off white. So again, vintagey, with time beginning that timelessness and, you know, nodding back to our founding in 1988 and now we're wearing all colors, we're wearing dark navy, we're wearing gray, we're wearing some reds, and we can still and have fun with it.

Leah Grubb: Right. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So John's got a question and I want to ask his question then I've got another question behind his. How important do you think it is that technicians who are not customer facing to have their uniforms as well, are you thinking logos matching or full uniforms? 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. So if they're not fully customer facing we can do less branding on it per se.

Leah Grubb: Right. So you, for someone customer facing, you might wanna have on the polo a left chest or even something on the back too for when they're turning around. Yeah. But if they're always in the back and they're not really engaging with customers, you could maybe just do one placement on the t-shirt one to still functionally.

Leah Grubb: Identify that this person works here, that this person working on your cars and someone random off the street, they work here. So you still want that identification aspect. 'cause that's gonna build accountability and just build some communication between the customer and the technician that you don't have to say like, oh, don't worry about that guy over there.

Leah Grubb: He does work here. We swear. But you can kind of pull it back and we get some cost effective options there. But you also have to again, consider what if that those one-off times when the customer does like, want to talk to the technician too, right. That they're still looking like you want them to represent the shop and how you want that to look, but doesn't have to be.

Leah Grubb: Full out matching with the service advisors and service managers in that way. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. So, and back to your picture with the rebranding, you went from all black to a rainbow of colors. 

Jimmy Lea: What was the mindset or what's the algorithm? What's the idea of. Who gets to wear black? Who gets to wear gray?

Jimmy Lea: Who gets to wear blue? Who gets to wear the off white? What? What's the mindset there for the shop? 

Leah Grubb: Yeah, so for that mindset, we went with that functionality too. So we're still blending in the same pre ideas of a uniform with functionality and identification, but now we're just adding more identity and more values and more emotion into it.

Leah Grubb: So the technicians still are primarily wearing black. Because it's a dirty job, right? Like we're not having them going back in those light gray polos. We'd probably never see them looking like that color ever again. So pure utility, the technicians are all in black. But then we also have a line of a lot of casual t-shirts that they can wear out and about and are like, not allowed in the shop because they're nice, like ivory colored and things like that.

Leah Grubb: Whereas the service in the front, you know, it's a little bit of a less dirty job. Maybe you're in the back just every now and then, but they're not. It every single day. So they're able to wear those light gray polos, those red polos, the navy polos and things like that. 

Jimmy Lea: Cool, cool, cool. I love that. I love that.

Jimmy Lea: I, there was a shop I went into Eric, Eric has a screaming mullet from straight outta the seventies and eighties and in his shop, his technicians had the black uniforms, but their accent color specified. Master tech Shop foreman, nice. BT Tech, Ctech, general service. So you could look out into a big shop very quickly and easily to identify.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yellow, that's the shop foreman, so he's over there. Red is the Atex and you could see where they are. And blue, and then green and gray. It was really cool how the shop used the uniform for identification, which also became a promotional. Yeah. Product as a technician studied, trained, passed, test, and advanced themselves.

Jimmy Lea: They could get a new uniform. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah, exactly. There's that certain pride that people can have in the shirt that they're wearing every day, and that's what we can imbue when we rethink right. Uniforms from, I gotta put this on every single day just to go to work and to write that constant visual identity.

Leah Grubb: I 

Leah Grubb: love that. 

Leah Grubb: And that's the one thing that we really had to do with that rebrand is like, okay, it's not just what we're wearing to work, like what value can we put into it that we can go and say, this isn't just a T-shirt, this isn't just your polo. When we're all wearing these together, you know, we're not just this group of individuals, this person off the street, we pulled in to do your oil change.

Leah Grubb: We're one team representing one mission and we look like a team and we act like a team and we can win like a team. So it's a team building, morale building thing when we're looking at each other and like, we're all in this together, you and that Polo and me and that t-shirt. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it.

Jimmy Lea: I love it. Okay, so you've been in this game for a minute. What's one of the biggest mistakes you see shops make when they're choosing gear for their teams, 

Leah Grubb: not involving their team members in the decision? As a manager or an owner. And yes, maybe you were working in a shop and you've moved into management and ownership and you like a certain T-shirt, so you get everyone that T-shirt, but t-shirts, hats, hoodies are the most personal thing I think we can choose, especially if you're gonna have them wearing it every single day.

Leah Grubb: So if you pick something even as simple as like you love a hundred percent cotton. And how it feels. And then you have someone who comes in and you know, specifically I'm thinking of this shop in Florida. It's hot. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. 

Leah Grubb: And they need something that really wicks the moisture away. But cotton, while it does that, I.

Leah Grubb: Then you're just kind of sitting in your sweat all day. Oh yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: you gotta peel that shirt off. 

Leah Grubb: You gotta peel that off. So when you're, you know, maybe in the comfy, cozy office for a little bit, it's fine. But when you talk with the technicians and they're just literally drenched in that shirt and they're not comfortable working and that's one of the main, they're just thinking that in the back of their head, the entire time they're doing a repair or whatever they're working on, or dealing, interacting with their team members, it just is kind of that little.

Leah Grubb: Rock in the shoe that is gonna start eating away at something. So involving your team members in how and what you're choosing, whether that is a cotton T-shirt or is it a blend T-shirt or is it a fully polyester t-shirt, which is great for really sunny locations. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Very cool. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Very cool.

Jimmy Lea: So, what about, are you gonna talk about colors? Yeah. Maybe I'll hold my color question. Okay. 

Leah Grubb: I'm getting, so how can we Right. Create kind of this identity Yeah. And create that environment. And one of the main key considerations that managers can consider is of course function. And we talked about this right?

Leah Grubb: The uniform should support the work. You're not gonna get a technician in a white T-shirt unless you want to give him a white t-shirt every single day. That's up to you. But it needs to hold up to the grease and the wear. It needs to be comfortable in the heat, especially if you don't have AC in your shop.

Leah Grubb: And it can offer utility with as something as simple as pockets, which that was a whole heated thing with another shop on whether or not to have pockets on their shirt. And, you know, everyone had a say in that. The next thing, of course, would be fit. How well it fits is one thing. The size is one thing because that poor fit, right?

Leah Grubb: Whether it's super sweaty and it doesn't function for them or it's just too big or too and baggy. Core fit can make someone feel uncomfortable and overlooked as well within your culture. And I don't think anyone wants to develop a culture where you're just like, ah, here's that for you. And I don't really care about your thoughts or considerations or how you feel in it.

Leah Grubb: When a uniform fits well, it can make people focus better and feel more confident. So example, like what happens when you hire someone who's seven XL tall. True story. Someone hired a seven XLT technician. Or more likely what happens with a lot of shop owners is you hire your first woman service advisor or woman technician, right?

Leah Grubb: Yeah. And what are you going to do? Go back to your office, see rummage through your bag of all the old uniforms you bought from all the previous orders and he got something close. But don't, you know, tell the seven x Excel tall guy like, you know, maybe don't. Bend over too much or reach up too high.

Leah Grubb: 'cause now your shirt's just gonna ride up. Or the woman, you know, just appears a mend. It doesn't 

Jimmy Lea: fit right, 

Leah Grubb: it doesn't fit right, and it just eats away at your self-consciousness. Like if you've ever put on a great jacket or your best fitting shirt and to go to your job interview or whatever it is, it makes you feel so much better and it provides that confidence.

Leah Grubb: And with that confidence, you can then go, in turn, give a better experience to your customers and give, provide better service. So. A lot of times our shop owners come to us to outfit these new, as in unique new hires because they don't have this uniform on the back stock in the back office somewhere.

Leah Grubb: And plus, they wanna be able to get some new and unique styles just for them. Whether it is big and tall or whether it is women's styles or you know, whether they're family, their team members are having new family members, then we can do little baby onesies for 'em. It's super cute, so. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's rad. It is 

Leah Grubb: always there.

Leah Grubb: The last thing to consider is design, and we're gonna dig really deep into design today, but the main takeaway here on is just to be thoughtful about it, right? It's not just how your uniform and how your apparel looks, it's what it says, right? Your design can reflect your shop's values and culture, whether it's.

Leah Grubb: A rugged, you know, blue collar shop or a brother's precise and clean and family oriented. The right uniform isn't about just something your team wears. It's what they represent. And that's what that new concept of a visual identity that's what I want you to keep in your back pocket kind of throughout.

Leah Grubb: Because I will still be using the term uniform moving forward because constant visual identity is a tongue twister. I think I have maybe maximum of 10 tries saying before it starts getting really muddled here. But bottom line, right? Your uniform is your constant visual identity. It's your daily opportunity to show your team who they are and to show your customers who you are.

Leah Grubb: And you get this right, it becomes a quiet but really powerful way to reinforce pride in your brand and in what you do. Unity within your team and boost performance within the team and therefore boosts customer satisfaction. So these three things are main things for Manu managers to consider.

Leah Grubb: But don't make any decisions, right? Like what we talked about before, involving your team. There's plenty of research on how you involving your team is that employee involvement and uniform decisions makes a huge difference when you involve them, even if it's just getting feedback on letting them vote between a few options.

Leah Grubb: It gives them a sense of ownership. It shows them that you value their comfort, their perspective, and how they represent the shop. That has ripple effects too, because people who feel heard are more likely to take pride in what they wear. They wear it consistently. They show up more confidently. And one of the studies I've looked into has even shown that uniform satisfaction, which is influenced by how much involvement they have in picking their uniform, is directly related to job satisfaction.

Leah Grubb: And that's a powerful connection right there. But on the flip side, if someone has no say in the uniform, they can start to feel like what they're wearing is a symbol of hierarchy, of disconnect. Something that's done to them instead of for them. So even if you're not redesigning from scratch, which most of you will not be small moments of input.

Leah Grubb: So surveys, wear tests. Quick feedback can go a long way in helping your team feel included, respected, and more connected to your shop's identity, which I think is something all shop owners kind of want, because at the end of the day, there's only one shop owner, right? Or whatever team of shop owners you have.

Leah Grubb: But how can you get that buy-in from everyone that you bring in here, other than just, you know. Paying them for the job well done. Right. And so one of the things we did at c and j during that rebrand was to have a team discussion and to actually use a questionnaire to get involvement in a formal way because.

Leah Grubb: People were we use the team meetings. We have a team meeting every Wednesday during lunch 'cause they already eat lunch together anyway, so now we just all join in there and kind of take over that lunch so we could talk. We talked about these things, but then we also followed up with a questionnaire, and this is a lot of questions in one slide, but all of these questions we followed up with now and people ranked them on a one to five scale.

Leah Grubb: So it was a pretty quick one to five kind of run through thing. This way, you know, we could accommodate some of our team members who weren't as opinionated in a team setting. They, we know they were just better over in communication or when we could talk to them alone on the side instead of in the group as a team.

Leah Grubb: And that's fine. And this questionnaire also had that open-ended box for them to put an input there. The key thing with this in doing this discussion and doing this questionnaire was that the next team meeting, we followed up again with the same discussion of what we talked about, what like us as management heard from the team, and then also a little bit of the results from the questionnaire because we wanted, again, the team to feel like, Hey, we heard you the first time we've reviewed what you did and the input that you just.

Leah Grubb: Given to the company. And then here's like what our next steps are. Here's what we're kind of gonna do now for the uniforms and things like that, because we heard you like, it's not just they shout it out into the ether and then where's the follow up, where's the follow through on that? And we wanted to, you know, clearly connect those dots from this conversation, this questionnaire, this result for you from you.

Leah Grubb: So, 

Jimmy Lea: wow. That's powerful. 

Leah Grubb: Yep. And then, so with that feedback in mind there's a lot of key and key fundamental conver considerations. Now we can get, talk about the fun part, sorry. And how we can actually build this identity, this brand, this. Uniform. And I do wanna shout out one of the quick studies I actually went through for this webinar and when we were building this uniform back in my c and j days be if anyone else wants to read through it, it really it's mainly about the hospitality industry and how the effective employee uniforms.

Leah Grubb: Affect employee satisfaction for hotels and restaurants. But if you do think about it a lot, auto repair shops are very much like in the hospitality business because every other auto repair shop could do an oil change. How well they do it, you know, is all up for debate, but it's, at the end of the day, it's that customer experience, the customer satisfaction, how they feel going into your shop and how they feel leaving it.

Leah Grubb: That is the differentiator between you and that shop down the road. So especially, you know, first impressions, setting the tone when they walk into that shop. When you think about when you walk into this fabulous hotel lobby versus. A Motel six lobby or something like that, or, and especially the team culture and the, and equaling the customer experience and that specifically your team culture has a huge impact on that customer experience and uniforms can really play into that and thus affect the satisfaction of your customers.

Leah Grubb: And some of the key recommendations from this were about designing the unified look using color intentionally. Offering Gears awards and involving your team, which we already discussed. So we're gonna talk mainly about one, two, and three on designing a unified look. So the first thing with designing that we kind of define what is the uniform, right?

Leah Grubb: Like what is it? Is it the same shirt we're wearing every single day or just what we wear to work? And there's a lot of variable ideas we have around that. So on one end, right, you have uniformed, it is the same shirt every single day. Same color too. Everyone's wearing the same color, everyone's wearing the same shirt.

Leah Grubb: It's consistent. It's highly consistent in the middle ground, which is where I think most of our shops are at, and where most shops do sit is unified, but with a bit of controlled variety, right? We all wear polos, but we have a choice between red, blue, and gray. So we have a few color options there. On the other end is what I like to call branded individuality.

Leah Grubb: So you can have a lot of product options. Maybe it's a polo or a button up, and a lot more different colors, maybe up to like five or six different colors in all of those that follow your brand palette. But there's a lot of variability there. And each one has its pros and cons. You can kind of see on one end you decrease in consistency from being highly uniformed to having more individual expression.

Leah Grubb: But with increased individual expression, oops, my keys were there. You can increase team pride and personal comfort because you have now more input that the team member can put into what they're wearing every single day, increasing your personal comfort and therefore increasing their pride. And like, I chose this.

Leah Grubb: Sure. It's a very narrow down selection of what they could choose from, but it wasn't, you're wearing this every single day, this color. That's what it is. It's, I have a choice. There's I really like this color and I look great in this color, and they can feel good about that. So let's look at some visual examples, right?

Leah Grubb: So Rehouse does a uniformed, high consistency look right? It's the same shirt, same color, every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And for. Those of you who follow Jamie's garage on YouTube, this is one of his three shops. Everyone wears Polos and the only choice they get is between pocket or no pocket.

Leah Grubb: And then when Jamie hires someone new, he can simply go to a store, purchase however many polos he needs, but in the case of a new hire, if they need just six, we made it super easy. So even the new hire or the manager can go in and do it without having to remember how much they need with these new hire bundles here.

Leah Grubb: So. But they are even across his brand. So his three shops are Rent House Elite, Motorworks, and Elite Auto and Tire. Three different logos, but all of them all wear all black. All polos, even the technicians, which I found very unique. And then the middle ground, I think where most people are at is something like what we do at c and j where everyone wears polos.

Leah Grubb: I'm specifically talking a lot about service because they are the more customer facing team members, and they're the ones that this impact of the feeling of the uniforms are gonna have the most impact on with the customers. So with c and j. They could pick between three colors, again, the gray Navy or red.

Leah Grubb: And specifically for them we do bundles of six because you never know when someone's doing laundry. You might need to run over into Monday with that fixed polo or something happens and you really need an extra polo during that midweek. And then I wouldn't recommend, usually with this middle ground more than five colors is, it's just a lot to pick from.

Leah Grubb: Three is a three's a pretty good safe number there. So. With c and j, we moved away from that black, right, and we moved on to just navy gray and red. And we'll talk about why, because of the feelings those colors evoke later. But for ordering, right, again, the shop manager could go into the store and of course buy two of each color.

Leah Grubb: But I. That's also dependent on the shop manager knowing what is exactly going into every new hire bundle when they hire someone new. And it's too many clicking, too many clicks for my liking. So we again, made that bundle and oh, look, they also need quarter zips as well. So we include those with all of our new services as well.

Leah Grubb: For that outerwear layering, especially since we're located outside of Philadelphia, weather is, I mean, it felt like winter two weeks ago and now it's like. The heat of summer here, so we can never guess that. And then on the final end of that spectrum is branded individuality. Flexible consistency where there's a lot of product options and a lot of colors to choose from within that colors within that brand color palette.

Leah Grubb: So Brown's Automotive is a four shop, MSO based out in New Mexico. And their main rule is that anyone in the front had to wear something with a collar shirt. That was their only and main rule. They didn't really care what color or what style it was. So there's both button up. And polos and what color it was up to their personal preference.

Leah Grubb: A person could buy the all light gray or all dark gray or you know, that lime green or that teal blue, but two colors were reserved just for management. So there's that differentiation again. So only black and only white was allowed to be worn by management, or specifically the owners in that case. Were able to wear that color so when they go into a shop, anyone, which is odd if they've never met them, but it's very easily identifiable to find them there.

Leah Grubb: Some additional considerations, right? You kind of see either shop leans towards button-ups or polos. And that's again, mainly a preference on what you want your identity to look like, because button-ups could tend to give off a more formal, traditional, precise. Five. You know, we take our work seriously.

Leah Grubb: We've been doing this for a while and it could be a great fit for any shop that wants to project that experience the technical skill or even a higher end service. You know, it's just a little more formal feeling. On the other hand, polos are, offer a more casual, modern, approachable look. They could say that we're friendly, easy to talk to.

Leah Grubb: We're here to help approachable feel. And it's great for shops that wanna focus on, you know, customer connection, quick service, community feel, things like that. And neither again is better or worse. It's about what fits your shop's identity. Are you gonna go for buttoned up and detail driven or more laid back and people first.

Leah Grubb: And again, none of those descriptors either are mutually exclusive. You could. Be people first in a button of, right. So, also don't forget to take into consideration some regional differences and preferences. I'm from outside of Philadelphia. Generally the Northeast is considered pretty preppy, especially the more north and the more east you go.

Leah Grubb: So polos could be considered more casual and modern depending on where you are. In a more laid back area. Like, in my head, I think California is pretty laid back or Hawaii even, right? Polos could be viewed as formal and you should be wearing more just like a t-shirt, and that's, that could be professional enough.

Leah Grubb: So, always take those into consideration. The key, again, is to be intentional. Don't just pick what's the cheapest or what you've always done. Choose a style that tells the right story to your team and to your customers. Every time they walk into that door. You also have branded versus unbranded attire.

Leah Grubb: And I'm not talking about just like the items you put your brand on, like versus not put your brand on like pants, which you may think could be undecorated or should never be decorated. But we actually do have a handful of clients that put their logo onto their shop pants, like specifically their technician's shop pants on the upper thigh and on the back pocket.

Leah Grubb: Which is just a fun little thought of adding a, another touch of branding and another touch point there. But what I more so mean by branded versus unbranded attire is using stuff like Nike or Carhartt or even the North Face because branded apparel can carry a different weight. It can feel more premium, especially depending on the brand you're picking.

Leah Grubb: And it can tell both your team and your customers, you know, we've put some thought. And some additional money into this. Into what? Into what we're wearing every single day. And especially for employees, it can boost confidence even further, right? When wearing something from a trusted retail brand like Carhartt they can make the fee, it can make the uniform feel less like a requirement and more like a benefit or like a perk of working at your shop versus whatever other basic t-shirt there that's out there.

Leah Grubb: And then for customers too, it sends a similar message about quality and standards because you're almost. Co-branding your shop with how they've come to know and perceive Under Armour and Nike as a trusted retail brand as well. Another shop we work with they're called Bimmer Rescue. They're located in Richmond and Virginia.

Leah Grubb: They're actually, it's like a three shop location. But the other ones are called something different, auto rescue. Bimmer Rescue specifically noticed that they had high-end high spending customers coming in and they always had their golf clubs in their cars. So they started co-branding their Bimmer rescue logo with Travis Matthew, golf logos to kind of elevate that experience and their customer's perceptions of them when they walk into that shop.

Leah Grubb: John said that he missed the first half hour, and that will this be sent out in a recording? And I do believe it will be sent out in a recording as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think 

Jimmy Lea: I'm wrong. No, you're totally right. Yeah. It is recorded and we'll be sending out a copy of it, but I have a question for you.

Jimmy Lea: You talk about branded logo to apparel like Nike or Under Armour, or Ping or whatever name, name your brand, a adida. What about shops that are on a budget? Where do they start? 

Jimmy Lea: Where do they start when it comes to branded gear? Because for many shops, this is a big expense for 'em, or it is an expense for 'em and they want to spend their money wisely.

Jimmy Lea: Versus there, there are some shops that kind of go hog wild, which I think is cool but what about those that are on a budget? Where should they start? 

Leah Grubb: So my personal, maybe controversial opinion is I think Nike is very overrated and very overpriced. And I say that cautiously 'cause I do know that there's some shops in the institute that use Nike Polos.

Leah Grubb: But I, you know, and for consistency, yes, they continue to use them. But if you're looking at getting something branded to start. I say we use Adidas at c and j because it is one great quality. And two, it's still a well-known brand that everyone can just look and see and immediately recognize that and then they see c and j, right?

Leah Grubb: But it's at the, a much better price point. Under Armor, I think is coming down price point, but it's not. Quite there yet as comparative to Adidas and Nike, I just kind of think it is overpriced for what you're getting. So Adidas, I would say is a really great entry point. There are also a lot of other brands like OGO, which is a little bit more of a golf brand, but I think they're trying to do some other industries now.

Leah Grubb: And a few other and really any other brand too. There's a lot out there. There's on kind of the more. Traditional wear. You have Eddie Bauer for outerwear as well versus the North Face. Right? Right. The north face is gonna be expensive, and I'll be real about that. It's not cheap.

Leah Grubb: But Eddie Bauer offers similar performance and functionality, which we're always looking for, but still offers that at little additional branding that you can put your logo next to. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Alright. And John's just asked the question, this is one that I've thought of quite a bit with different shops and what they're doing.

Jimmy Lea: John's question here is do you feel like having merchandise store available for customers to buy branded logo stuff is a good idea? Spreading the logo and letting people see it more than just on your staff? Is that a good idea for smaller, mid grade shops or is that a bad idea? What's your thoughts there, Leah?

Leah Grubb: So, I. We have one shop that has a store that sells to their customers. 

Jimmy Lea: Right? 

Leah Grubb: But the only way, or the only reason it works is because the merch they're selling specifically in that store isn't their uniform stuff. It's graphic t-shirts that are just. Tiny, slightly branded with Eurotech, right? It's by, it's about the design.

Leah Grubb: It's this really cool car design that looks like it was hand illustrated, really like, like a lot of lines and stuff like that. So it's a cool design. By Auto Tech or Euro Tech. Right. I think as shop owners we can, you know, our brand is our life, our shop is our life, our brand is our life. It's cool.

Leah Grubb: And we're surrounded by a lot of people who are supporting what we do. Right. You're with the institute and your members there with friends and family like. Our work is our life. But when you try and go and then have a customer who's also spending however much money on repair, go and also buy merch it's not always gonna work out.

Leah Grubb: So when opening, if you wanna open a merch store, right, you have to come at it from either two different directions. One, you want to make money from it. That's when you would go the route of creating some really cool designs and actually building a retail brand, which if you wanna, you know, go that route and essentially start another company that's your prerogative, or it's for customer gifting and brand exposure and rewarding customer loyalty because you're gonna get so much more value of giving a really loyal customer a t-shirt for free than having them buy it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. You've just spent $2,500 at the shop. Go ahead and pick something off the middle shelf. Yeah. What, how much do I have to spend to get off the top shelf? Well, that's $10,000. Yeah. You're getting there. You're getting close. But this trip middle shelf. 

Leah Grubb: Yep. So we've had a few shops who still explore it and we open a shop for them.

Leah Grubb: It's very easy and we do that. But 

Leah Grubb: yeah. 

Leah Grubb: There's no traction. I mean, we have the numbers on our end. There's no traction there. Unless you go the route of. We are retail forward specific, or we are here just to the shop owner would actually just go on order a t-shirt on their customer's behalf and have it shipped to their house because, you know, you never know what size the t the customer's gonna be.

Leah Grubb: So they use that store to get that item shipped out specifically to them. Nice. 

Jimmy Lea: So, John's asking here are there different places that offer discounted pricing for businesses, for those polos, et cetera? And I think this plays right into you, Leah and your company. Yeah. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. So that was, that's what we would do.

Leah Grubb: Because the only way you're gonna get a quote, like discounted price on that is to get it at wholesale which you don't have the license for, which, but we do. So Right. You would work through US or again, like, any custom apparel. Does manufacturer would be able to access those wholesale prices, put your logo on it, and then we specifically put all that stuff into an online store for you so you can order one at a time or six at a time, or however many you need at a time, whether it's for you, a new hire, or a really loyal customer that just spend thousands of dollars at your shop and that they'll wear with pride out and about them.

Leah Grubb: So. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. So that's pretty dang cool that you work with these shops and you can order in lower quantities. 

Jimmy Lea: Your equipment has the ability to do the lower quantities, which I think is tremendous. 

Jimmy Lea: Especially for that tech that shows up who's a seven XL t 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why we started Greenbelt as.

Leah Grubb: It was because we were trying to, right, we're opening essentially three shops at a time, which was crazy, to begin with. But you know that you could think, oh, we're gonna bring in all these new people. We're rebranding. We're gonna be outfitting all these people at once. We do a big bulk order. But then a week goes by and someone doesn't wanna move along with a transition and they quit.

Leah Grubb: So now we gotta hire and then we realize like, hey, we actually probably need to hire another person. So, the bulk orders only go so far and we still actually have my other business partner, the one that on the collision shop. Had the same thinking. We were hiring a bunch of people, let's just get a big bulk order in and buy a bunch of these exercises.

Leah Grubb: And we bought like two XL up to four, five xl. 'cause we were hiring some big guys. And I. It's still an inventory. And that was when I was working for them five years ago. Oh my God. And it was still going through that. And anytime we hire them, because after that, of course, all we hired were small and medium high school guys to come in and we had nothing that fit them.

Leah Grubb: So we were really frustrated with one, having to wait almost six months because of the COVID supply chain issues to get what we needed. And even now the turnaround times for some screen printing shops are still a month. Wow. Because they're that busy, especially for the low quantity orders they don't prioritize them in screen printing shops.

Leah Grubb: There's, we're seeing on my end, we're seeing a split in our industry of shops like mine with the online stores that specialize in minimum or no minimum quantity things. Really specializing in that and then screen printing's moving farther and farther away to like, unless you need 200 shirts, don't talk to me, kind of thing.

Leah Grubb: And 

Jimmy Lea: yeah. 

Leah Grubb: That's how they're feeling. Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and so back in college, I, I did have a custom apparel company and I sold t-shirts to the college and the football team and other organizations. And the greater the quantity, the bigger the discount that it would be Yeah. For the end user. And it just makes sense.

Jimmy Lea: It's beautiful that you are able to offer such a great price at a low quantity for these shops, especially the shops that are bringing in a seven XLT. 

Jimmy Lea: Which is just amazing. Yeah. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. When I got that call I was like, oh I know. Six xl 

Jimmy Lea: Yes. Seven. Yes. So, I have a question for you. And oh, it kind of goes into John's question here as well.

Jimmy Lea: Do you have a setup fee for the logos or is it basically you get the logo and there's no cost for the items that we pull to the shop you guys set up In the past, I've done that type of stuff, purchasing the shirts, hats, et, and then have them embroidered after the fact. So my question for you is how much into John's question.

Jimmy Lea: My question for you is, how much advice or guidance or consulting do you do for a shop? To say, Hey, your logo really is not embroidery friendly. Or it's not print friendly. Do you re help them rebrand or do you help them modify their current logo so that it looks better? Or do they need to come with to you?

Jimmy Lea: With

Leah Grubb: print ready? Print ready? Probably here. A lot of other shops say like, we need print ready artwork. What does that mean? I'm not a printer. Right. And so because of that I've learned all of that. 'cause I had, I have plenty of time on my hands to try and outfit all these new employees. Yeah. But you as an auto shop owner, unless you've like John, you said that you are ordering a lot of these, so you've probably seen it a bit before, but you're brand new to it.

Leah Grubb: What was that mean? So, I like to say like, we're pretty much full service in that, you know, if you come to me and the logo is. The logo that you have, but for embroidery, right? Maybe it's a very I, we call it dense in the industry, but it has a lot of elements to it, right? It has your name, maybe a picture, maybe something else on it.

Leah Grubb: And altogether that may create a lot of extra stitches, and that's a lot of extra costs. And even though we can do one pole at a time, we still price based off of that. And so we can come we get that and we actually automatically just kind of come back. It's like, Hey, we can do this. It would cost this much though.

Leah Grubb: Or here's like three options of how we could par like par down your logo. So the integrity is still there. It still gets across like this is you and this is your logo, but these items, we can remove them and it saves you a lot of money for that. Yeah. So for embroidery, same thing for printing too. On the design.

Leah Grubb: On the placement, we can, if you just say like, here's my logo, I wanna put it on shirts and I wanna put it on hoodies. And whatever it is, we can take that and run with it because you have plenty of other things on your plate to deal with. And that's the kind of experience I grew, not grew up with what I learned through my career at c and j because Jack would just come in, you know, an awful whirlwind and be like, we need new t-shirts and we need softer ones.

Leah Grubb: And I'm like, that's all I need. And now we're just gonna go and create some designs. And that's what we do for a lot of our clients because again, you have your logo. How is it best gonna look on what color T-shirts, what color, hoodies, polos, or whatever it is. Yeah, that's our, you know, area of expertise.

Leah Grubb: So you can we can do all that for you. And to specifically ask answer John's question on the setup fees for the logo. We don't do setup fees, we don't do hoop fees. We don't do. Any fees. Shipping is included on every single order too, so that's not a surprise thing. Oh, wow. My favorite tagline right now that we're using is, you know, what you see is what you pay.

Leah Grubb: The price you see of that item in your store, you know, 24 99 polo or whatever it is the price you're paying aside from tax. But right now there really is no tax 'cause we're based in PA and we don't have clothing tax. So, that's really tax only gets applied on like drinkware, I think right now.

Leah Grubb: So get it while we're, while we still don't qualify to pay sales tax. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah. But, 

Jimmy Lea: and Leah you also supply more than just hats, hoodies, beanies, t-shirts, polos button downs. You have a full line of. Products that you can offer to shops as well. So if they're doing a car show or they're gonna participate in the county fair, you could do backdrops and.

Jimmy Lea: 10 Taylor Pops and popups. 

Leah Grubb: Yep. We just did a whole outfit for another community event. 'cause summer and fall is a time for community events for a whole new 10 by 10 popup, whole new tablecloth and then a bunch of rubber duckies for the kids. So the rubber duckies are for the Jeep owners and for the kids.

Leah Grubb: That's awesome. So between that and then all the office supplies, they just bring with them as well, all their extra pens and their sticky notepads. And then we also do a lot of. Maybe advertising supplements. So if that's like a poker chip voucher business card or like mints for a giveaway and even wall decals for just kinda freshening up your lobby area.

Leah Grubb: So pretty much anything you wanna put your brand on. The only way we can kind of describe it, there's a lot of items out there. 

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. That is so cool. You know, and if anybody else has questions, comments, concerns, just bursting at the forefront of your mind Leah, how do they get in touch with you?

Jimmy Lea: How can they get in touch with Green Bolt printing? I. 

Leah Grubb: Yeah you can go to green ball printing.com and type in that contact form. It'll reach me and Allie, but mostly I see everything going through it. You're gonna talk to me, but also my email's just [email protected] and you can reach me there as well.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. Yeah I, this is absolutely fascinating. The abilities that your business has of these low quantities and the pricing is still such a good price for shops and shop owners. That's just amazing. I love this, that we can do this with you. So Leah, this is phenomenal. 

Leah Grubb: Thank you. 

Jimmy Lea: Other ideas, thoughts, magic wand moments.

Leah Grubb: I would say a little bit, if we wanna talk a little bit about color. Yes, let's talk color. There's a lot of shops and sometimes you guys come to me with your logos and it's just like, put this on a black T-shirt. And I'm like, okay. Which we'll do that. But I think there's a lot of opportunity you can have with.

Leah Grubb: Adding color, even if you just have a black and white logo, right? You can start putting in navy blue or royal blue polos or things like that and evoke a certain emotion with it, which I think you kind of all saw with c and j changing from just an all black outfit to a colorful one or on. Flip side, right?

Leah Grubb: Maybe there's too much color and you wanna reduce down to all black. 'cause you see with like Rent House and Elite, it's very sleek, it's very modern. If you take a look at any of their social media, they do a great job at social media. They do make a lot of content, which I expect Jamie's a YouTuber with 800,000 whatever subscribers or something.

Leah Grubb: So they better be good at some content there. But they, everything they do looks very sleek, very performance driven, very modern and professional There. And so again, it depends on the identity that you wanna bring forward, but if you can throw in maybe some blue, which is a very trustworthy, very go-to color.

Leah Grubb: Everyone loves blue. How can you hate blue? I love blue. That's my favorite color. If you maybe specialize in EVs or you wanna distinguish yourself in the market as an EV specialist and get all those Teslas, and the Ians and the Lucid are in the pole stars, which is my car. Maybe throwing some green in there and start kind of marketing EV specialists.

Leah Grubb: Maybe throw on specifically for your technician, a little EV specialist badge if they go through a certain training like that. Right. Red, yellow and orange. Yellow and orange are definitely, you know, not as popular. Colors red. I see a lot though in the automotive industry 'cause it's, there's. It's just energy and passion and then it's urgency and performance, but it can be overpowering, right?

Leah Grubb: So like if you were to look at these two sets of people when you walk into an auto shop, right? How do you feel comparatively one to the other? And even if you can't place it in like words you get a different feeling with each person. So a lot of times, right, if there's red in a logo and they wanna also put on red poles like this, we can put both of these into your shop and you can kind of see how your logo on this red polo versus something that just has a little bit of red could feel.

Leah Grubb: Same thing with like outerwear. Or something with yellow and gold. There's a lot of options to do accents of colors versus full out, because sometimes that red polo can be a little in your face and that might not be the vibe that you want a customer to feel. So you can have something from all the way up to, oh, there's red and black to, I don't know if you can even tell on the screen the one on the very end for the piping.

Leah Grubb: It's. It's barely there, but it's there and it's just that little bit of accent that provides that feeling again, that the red can provide. So I love playing around with color especially. You can do something like this if you are an all black T-shirt or an all black polo brand right now. Add in these little, just like flex of not just color, but like feeling and a vibe and an intensity there.

Leah Grubb: So. 

Jimmy Lea: I like it. I like it. That is a very cool and to have those different options for the accent colors, that could also be a promotional product that as you progress, you get more color. Or something like that. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Well, Leah, thank you very much for the information, the marketing, the colors, the mindset, the culture, the look, the feel, the uniform, the visual.

Jimmy Lea: Reminder that we all have, that we are part of a team that is super awesome. If you were to have a magic wand and you could change anything about this industry, what's one item that you would change in the automotive aftermarket? 

Leah Grubb: I would say having more fun with your brand. I really do think that there's a lot of potential that.

Leah Grubb: It's out there and a, aside from just putting your logo on a shirt, putting it on the back and calling it a day. Right? Yeah. And that, I guess not just in the color, it's in the items that you could be giving out for promotional products, you know? Yeah. We know about the lip balms and we know about the pens and you know, a t-shirt, and those are all safe staples and they're popular for a reason because people use them.

Leah Grubb: But there's a lot of other fun stuff that is really valuable, like. Pizza cutters that people aren't doing because it's not air freshener not gonna go in the car, but now it's in the drawer and every time they make a frozen pizza at home, they're using it. So there's a lot of other fun things that like you don't automatically associate with cars in the automotive industry, but you brand can go on them and I think can become like a keepsake over time.

Leah Grubb: I still have a pizza cutter that my mom got as like a freebie. Like what? Like before I was born and I'm still, I'm using it because it's the best pizza cutter I have. So there, there's so much more that we could be doing than just pens, chapstick shirts. Oh, 

Jimmy Lea: I love it. 

Leah Grubb: So I think we could all have a lot more fun with our brand and still keep brand integrity and still keep that.

Leah Grubb: Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. Elena says she doesn't even have a pizza cutter, but anybody who does it for their next automotive repair shop. We need to send one to Elena. 

Leah Grubb: Absolutely. I'll put you on the list just a little, take a little one off the cart. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. So cool. Leah, thank you so much for joining us today and talking about uniforms.

Jimmy Lea: You know, our military has uniforms, professional sports teams have uniforms, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, we all have uniforms. And as an automotive repair shop, we're family. We're a team. We work together, and because of that, we. Are able to help our team to be better and we can provide leadership and guidance.

Jimmy Lea: So super awesome for that. Yes. Thank you for throwing this up here. Sign up for an appointment with Leah. Go ahead and scan those QR codes and get on her calendar so you can. Help your shop. 

Leah Grubb: Yes. And I'm happy to discuss any questions or any ideas you have about even where you wanna take your uniform, your constant visual identity.

Leah Grubb: As you can see, I could probably talk about this for another half hour maybe, or something like that. So if you wanna sign up for some time there, my calendar's right there. Or you can go straight to that contact form on the left and get a store done. Again, no setup fee. We were. Kind of consider us just like your own apparel director on your team and we work with you like that, so.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. And I love that you've put together the bundles already so that anybody hiring on, okay. You're extra large. Click. All right. Your six search will be here. What's a usual turnaround for you, Leah? 

Leah Grubb: Our standard production time is. About five days. And then depending on where you're in the country, that's another one to five days on shipping.

Leah Grubb: So if you're in the northeast or pretty much actually anywhere on the east coast, you could get your stuff in about seven business days. Oh, that's awesome. West Coast. Sorry, you need probably an extra three days on that, but all told a week and a half, week or two weeks to get all of your stuff. Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Love it.

Jimmy Lea: Love it. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining. Thank you. Thank you for joining and talking about uniforms and leadership and unity and branding and value. 

Leah Grubb: Yes, absolutely. My favorite topics. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Thank you very much. Hey, you know that this is my name is Jimmy Lea. I'm with the Institute.

Jimmy Lea: This is some valuable information. If you find this valuable and you want to talk more about other aspects of your business. Whether it's your advisors, your managers, or you as a shop owner, you've got questions about your profit and loss, your income statements, or maybe you don't even have a profit and loss, maybe you don't even have a an accurate income statement.

Jimmy Lea: Following my comments for 30 seconds, you want to pull out your smartphone and scan this QR code. You can meet with one of our business specialists to talk to you about your shop, your business. What can we do to work together to help you elevate your business? We at the Institute are all about better business, better life, better industry.

Jimmy Lea: The more we can help you to improve your business, the better your life is gonna be, as well as the lives of your staff, your family, your employees, your technicians, and their families as well. And in the end, the net result is that we are able to, as an industry, elevate and become a better industry. My name is Jimmy Lea.

Jimmy Lea: I'm with the Institute. Look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks.

Show Summary:

In this episode, Jimmy Lea hosts a dynamic conversation with John Phelps from Tekmetric, shop owner and Institute coach Jennifer Hulbert, and Tonnika Haynes of Brown’s Automotive. They dive into the realities of switching point-of-sale systems, discussing both the challenges and the rewards. John shares how Tekmetric has evolved, focusing on cloud-based innovation and powerful reporting tools that help shops improve performance. Jennifer and Tonnika provide real-world insights into how Tekmetric impacted KPIs like effective labor rate and average repair order. The conversation highlights the importance of accountability, data transparency, and choosing the right tools and partnerships to help shops grow and succeed.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

John Phelps, Director of Channel Partnerships, Tekmetric

Jennifer Hulbert, Owner of Service Plus Auto and Head Coach at The Institute

Tonnika Haynes, Owner of Browns Automotive

Episode Highlights:

[00:02:21] Tekmetric celebrates surpassing 10,000 shops using the platform, marking a major growth milestone.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZq3oadWJ-o

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

Links & Resources: 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. My name is Jimmy Lea. I'm with the Institute. We are going to have a really great conversation coming up here in just a few moments. This is to be an interactive conversation. You've got questions, we've got answers.

Jimmy Lea: You've got questions about different point of sale systems, you've got questions about Tekmetric. We've got the extroverts that are gonna be here with us. So not to give everything away, but we do have Tekmetric in the house today, which is gonna be an awesome conversation. Thank you to everybody who's here.

Jimmy Lea: We have a phenomenal panel that's gonna join us here today, starting with. John Phelps from Tekmetric. John is joining us as the voice of Tekmetric today. John, how are you sir? 

John Phelps: I'm doing very well, Jimmy. Thank you for having us. 

Jimmy Lea: This is gonna be awesome. And just so you all know, I did try to canonize John the other day.

Jimmy Lea: I called him John Paul. 

John Phelps: Yeah. I felt like, I was a pope candidate at the moment, but no, 

Jimmy Lea: you were, 

John Phelps: you're 

Jimmy Lea: in the running. There we go. You just didn't know it. 

John Phelps: No, I was a little late to that one, apparently. Yeah. That he was already he was already selected. Even though he is from the us No I did not make that cut.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. Well, glad to have you here with us, John. Thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate Tekmetric that, and the strides that you are taking as a software of value in the industry. Really making it great for our shops to understand where they are, what they're doing, process, procedures, profit effective labor rates.

Jimmy Lea: Effectivity is super awesome. 

John Phelps: Absolutely no, it's it's really been awesome to see, you know, we've got clients like like we have here today, and I know you said you don't wanna give everything away, so we'll wait to bring them in here in a little bit. But just to be able to see the strides in the growth within Tekmetric, but also within our clients, within our shops over the last few years.

John Phelps: I personally have been with Tekmetric a little over four years now, and in that timeframe it's been very cool to see number one. We've more than, let me see here, quintupled. Almost sex coupled in terms of shop count you know, sub 2000 at the time. And now as we, you know, announced a few months ago, cracking over the 10,000 shop mark across the country and growing bigger and bigger every single month.

John Phelps: Luckily for us, and even more so, and I know we'll get into this a little bit later, but. The strides that those shops have seen since switching. And by no means will we ever take the credit for a shop doing very positive things with their own business, but we're just happy to be a part of that ride.

John Phelps: One of the things I will say, I. Is, you know, the national average based on the most recent metrics that we've seen in terms of a RO which you mentioned, right? The average repair order that parts in labor sales per ticket is between four and four 50. We've heard reports as high as four 80. Whereas Tekmetric customers across our entire user base has cracked over $600 per car that comes across their shop.

John Phelps: So 27% higher than the national average. And I know we've we've got a. Can say a little bit more than that in terms of their growth that they've seen in the last few years. And I'll let them do the description on there, but very happy to be here and and be a part of this. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, thank you John.

Jimmy Lea: Welcome, man. This is awesome. And joining us, Jennifer Holbert. Jennifer is a facilitator coach with the institute. She is a Tekmetric user as well, and she made the leap to go from one point of sale system to another. And Jennifer, we know the rules. We know the rules of jumping and what are those rules?

Jennifer Hulbert: Hello, Jimmy. Thank you for the introduction. So as a facilitator my first rule of changing management systems is don't because it is a very large deal and can be disruptive to your whole shop. I. Went against that rule and made the switch from a different management system to Tekmetric about seven years ago and have seen nothing but an upside from that switch since then.

Jennifer Hulbert: We'll get into some of the reasons why in a little bit later. Yeah. In the podcast. But this has been a very positive move for me as it has been for many of my coaching clients and group members. 

Jimmy Lea: I think the top rule three rules of change your point of sale systems is don't do it.

Jimmy Lea: Don't do it. Don't do it. And then 0.4 says, to your point, make sure when you do it, it does fulfill everything that you're looking for. 

Jennifer Hulbert: Yes. Thoroughly research it. 

Jimmy Lea: Thoroughly research. I'm glad you research it. And you, your client number? 2000 something? Something. 

Jennifer Hulbert: 24 88. 

Jimmy Lea: 24 88. Wow. Wow. Welcome. Glad to have you here with us, Jennifer.

Jimmy Lea: This is awesome. Thank you. And by the way, just so everybody understands, not only is she a coach and facilitator with the institute, she owns a shop. You own a shop and run a shop in nor New York, 

Jennifer Hulbert: Northern New York, yep. Service plus automotive in calcium, New York. Nice. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Awesome. Joining us as well is Tanika Hayes.

Jimmy Lea: She's with Browns Automotive. She is phenomenal. Tanika, we are so excited to have you here with us. How are you? 

Tonnika Haynes: I'm great. I'm excited to be here. 

Jimmy Lea: You're, it's exciting and you sound like you're in a cathedral of sorts. 

Tonnika Haynes: I'm sorry, is my mic acting up again? 

Jimmy Lea: No, it's all good. It's all good. It just it's awesome.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you for joining us. We are all in different locations than we normally are Today. I'm in Manta, Utah on the road, helping to take care of family 'cause that's what we do. We help take care of family. And Tanika, I'm glad you're here so we can have this great conversation talking about your journey and what that looks like and Jennifer, your journey and what that looks like.

Jimmy Lea: And to kick it all off, we're gonna give my John a few minutes to talk about Tekmetric. And so any of you who are tuning in, this is the. 32nd commercial, which is a little bit longer than 30 seconds. We're gonna give John some time here to tell us a little bit about Tekmetric and what's happening, what's going on, what the future looks like as well.

John Phelps: Let me actually do this. I'm gonna go off script. Tanika, if I could ask you a question. Yeah. When you were looking to switch Now you joined us in July of 2020, so happy five year anniversary to that. Up here in a few, but when you were looking to make a switch as they've highlighted, it's a pretty big commitment, what were the utmost important things you needed to have in a resource, a software solution in order to consider making a change?

Tonnika Haynes: For me, it was the fact that I could work off site because at the time I had young kids just being able to. Use my phone, use my laptop, wherever I might be. I was able to connect with the shop. That was very important. That was most important to me. 

John Phelps: Perfect. Now, and that's what I wanted. I wanted a live 32nd commercial because I wanted it to be very customizable to her situation, but also it's what we hear.

John Phelps: Across all of our user base, right? One of the biggest things that we highlight at Tekmetric is being cloud-based. Cloud-based means we operate in a web browser and it's as mobile as it possibly can be. Laptop, tablet, cell phone, desktop from anti, from East Texas to upstate New York, wherever you are.

John Phelps: You absolutely have that flexibility and it's always been that way. Now that being said, having that one feature, being cloud-based isn't enough. Right. To Jimmy's point, we've got to continually innovate, and I mentioned, I've been with Tekmetric a little over four years now, and in that time, on average, we've released more than three new features or solutions, as we like to call it, every single month.

John Phelps: Right, that is a hundred. It's a couple hundred different solutions that we've been able to release over the last four years. And I say solutions because it's nice to have a nice, shiny, new object, but if it doesn't bring you value, if it doesn't allow that extra checkbox to be completed, something that you didn't have before, something brand new or a new way to look at it, well then it doesn't do any good.

John Phelps: That's just a shiny object that really nobody's gonna act upon. And so over the last few years, we've released things like our. Our MO, our multi shop owner functionality, right? Our payments platform that has buy now, pay later, actually multiple financing options within that. We acquired a company, right?

John Phelps: We acquired a CRM called Shop Genie. And we're building within a Tekmetric marketing platform inherent into the system. All along the way, we'll sprinkle in some smart jobs to where you can build entire estimates in just a couple of clicks. Instead of having to source every part, every labor line multiple times, go ahead and do a one click feature right there and.

John Phelps: Few smaller things like template text messages. Of course we've got the two way texting, the digital vehicle inspection. Tamika, we spoke the other day talking about moto visuals and having vi videos be able to add it automatically to that digital vehicle inspection, that DVI and the value that brings to you.

John Phelps: Sure. But really your customers and that way that it sets us apart, sets you apart as a shop of anywhere else that they could go. And so, by no means are we satiated with where we are. We absolutely wanna grow as a product. We want to grow our user base. And being a part of things like this allow us to be able to get in front of more people, speak more specifically about the functionality of the software that is important to our shop owners, and the value that each individual solution brings you.

John Phelps: And hopefully hearing more about that throughout the conversation today. Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. I love where Temp Metric has come from and where it's going. And you mentioned Smart Jobs. Would the industry call that a can job Or what is a smart job? What's that definition?

John Phelps: It's a, that's a great question. So we do have CAN jobs which is a portion that we've had in the system for a number of years. However, smart Jobs, it sounds like it's ai, it's not, it's actually built from the bottom up inside of the system. And so. Interestingly enough, you can have a smart can job.

John Phelps: So for instance, if you've got an oil change, right? Jimmy, do you know how many quarts of oil and what type of filter your vehicle takes? If you do, it's gonna be different than mine. Very likely different than Jennifer's and so on and so forth. And so instead of having four different oil change can jobs for our four vehicles here, you can have one Smart Can job it is gonna decode the vin.

John Phelps: It's gonna know the type of oil, the quantity of oil, and the OE part. Number of that filter, which is gonna be then cross-referenced with your inventory or your preferred part suppliers. And within a couple of clicks, it's gonna know that it's 4.8 quarts of zero 20, or 8.3 quarts of five 30. All within the same smart job right there on your estimate, and it's not just the oil changes.

John Phelps: Sure, we've got the oil changes, the air filters, the brakes, but what about spark plugs? Four cylinders, six cylinders, eight cylinders? Where do you buy your split? Your plugs? Does it automatically pull from the labor guide or your own dedicated labor? Time? Answer is both. Whichever you prefer automatically applies.

John Phelps: Your parts markup, your matrix that you prefer, and within a couple of clicks without having to dig through. Is it 4, 6, 8, 10? You've built that estimate, that job with a couple of clicks, so saves a lot of time. We plan to expand upon that to have a couple of hundred, but that is the early onslaught of these smart jobs inside of Tekmetric.

Jimmy Lea: So I have a question. Did he freeze on you guys? Just on me. Is he's frozen. No, 

John Phelps: no. I can hear you Jimmy. I can hear you. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, okay, good. Yeah. Hey, so, with these smart jobs, I, oil changes. Okay. I totally get it. What about timing belts or water pumps? Same idea. Absolutely. Looks up the vin looks up, the part, looks up, poses, brackets, belts, everything that's needed for that 

John Phelps: job, correct?

John Phelps: Correct. Now, again, being that it is a build proprietary solution inside. We've gotta, we've gotta build certain things out. So is it a water pump or does it come with the supplemental labor that goes along with that? Okay. I've gotta, it's a water pump, but I've gotta pull the pulley. I'm gonna go ahead and replace the belts as well.

John Phelps: There's different ways and obviously different vehicles call for different repair. Within that then do you fully. Service the coolant or do you just replace what's drained out? So certain things like that are continuing to be built out, but absolutely it is going to be the same concept. One water pump smart job regardless of vehicle, one water pump or one timing belt, smart job or chain, I guess, regardless of vehicle.

John Phelps: Absolutely. That is going to be the concept with it. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, wow. Jennifer and Tanika what's your experience here with.

Tonnika Haynes: I am back and Can you hear me now? I feel like I froze a lot. Yeah. Okay. So I love the smart jobs. I'm getting used to it. We were definitely in for the can jobs. That was fun. We go ahead and build it and make your notes in there. Everything was great. The smart jobs, when it starts popping up and it's doing the work for you.

Tonnika Haynes: It's amazing. So I have to remember that I don't wanna say this aloud, but I'm gonna say it. I'm not fond of technology. I don't want a new phone when a new phone comes out. So I'm pretty sure a lot of people like that, the same boat as me. But once you get into it and you learn it, you're just like okay.

Tonnika Haynes: This is it. This is what's up. And so it's like adding, maybe not a whole nother employee, but it's like adding an assistant that can do some of that work for you. 

Jimmy Lea: Hello. Yeah. Well, speaking of technology, here we are updating mom and dad's phone. They're 19 updates.

Jimmy Lea: That's painful. Jennifer. Smart, smart jobs. 

Jennifer Hulbert: I for me, I haven't, I. Use them myself, because I'm not in a day-to-day position at the shop, but I know my two service advisors absolutely love them because just like Tanika said, it saves them a significant amount of time. So knowing that we have this technology, we can utilize this technology, it's gonna make our jobs easier.

Jennifer Hulbert: Is one of the reasons that I continue to be a Tekmetric subscriber. 

John Phelps: I want to add to it though, because you know, myself, my, my background is automotive, but I didn't come from a technician role, right? I didn't come from turning riches and having that inherent knowledge. And so to me, when I first saw the Smart job functionality, it was one of those that two things stood out.

John Phelps: One is. A steeper learning curve, right? Getting somebody up to speed so they don't have to guess, what do I do with this? What do I do with that? What do I need to add into this job? And the second and kind of supplementary thing to that is consistency. Yeah. We've all seen it to where one advisor quotes something separately than the other advisor because, well, their experience says this, and then they say, well, that's, that doesn't seem quite right.

John Phelps: So they pad something here or they adjust something there. But if you've got 2, 3, 4, 5 separate advisors. That same smart job is applicable across the board, and that consistency is there. So you don't have to worry about, well, did he quote it and she quote it the same way this time versus last time. So the learning, the training piece of it, but as well as the consistency piece of it.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. I love that. I love that consistency. Now you're able to bring in an advisor that doesn't have an automotive background, and the consistency is across all of them. So when an advisor's going to recommend an alternator. Does that include the alternator, the belts, and the bracket? Or is it just the alternator?

Jimmy Lea: Well, it needs to be everything that's involved. Love this. I mean that, that's just amazing. Alright, back on to, I mean, we could go down this, I'm, I could go down this rabbit hole with smart jobs, tell the cows come home, but. I wanna ask you, Jennifer, you were talking about your smart jobs, you know, your advisors using them.

Jimmy Lea: When you, when Tanika came on with coaching and training with the institute, what were some of those first things that you looked at with her and her business? 

Jennifer Hulbert: Typically, the first thing that I go to before we get solid financials is just the KPIs within the system. So with Tekmetric, that would be the end of day report and we can see her sales volume.

Jennifer Hulbert: We can see the gross profit in parts and labor. I. Sublet tires individually, we can see the collection of environmental fees. So if there was anything on the lower end of our benchmarks, that's what I would look at to, to improve first and to make any adjustments into a parts matrix or collecting labor.

Jennifer Hulbert: Tanika had a lot of those items pretty dialed in. Again, she utilized Tekmetrics ability to dive into those reporting to find some of those areas before we started to work together. But I believe, Tanika, correct me if I'm wrong, we looked at the parts matrix and made some decent adjustments to that.

Jennifer Hulbert: And I think effective labor rate too were some of the two that we looked at first. But she was well versed on the software and also had the familiarity to look into the reporting and a general understanding of her key KPIs, and they were in a good range to start off with 

Jimmy Lea: T Tanika.

Jimmy Lea: What were some of those first challenges or process procedures that you looked at with a coach that you were like, okay. I know I'm here, but I know I wanna be here. What do I need to do to get there? What were some of those things that you first looked at when you were with Jennifer? She talked about the KPIs.

Jimmy Lea: What else did you look at? 

Tonnika Haynes: I was really concerned with my effective labor rate and how to increase that and get that closer to my do. And with the help of Jennifer and being able to go into Tekmetric and just make adjustments with the click of Mouse and just watch that effective labor rate and the door rate just start to closer together, that was also, and again, like she said.

Tonnika Haynes: I'm not coachable, but when Jennifer said, Hey, go in here she's laughing 'cause she's, I'm not coachable. I am she said, go in here and let's change the parts matrix. Let's add this and let's do this and let's try this. And I drank the Kool-Aid and I did it. And I'm just slowly watching those KPIs just get to industry standards or even my standards, you know.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. And how close are you now with your effective labor rate and door rate? Are you exceeding the door rate? Are we there yet? 

Tonnika Haynes: Not yet. We're not there yet. We'll be talking about that on our next meeting, but it is a lot closer than what it was before. A whole lot closer. So, you know, just a tweak here, changing in policy there.

Tonnika Haynes: We're gonna get there for sure. 

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. And did it, Tanika, had you never come on with coaching and training with, is this an area that you would've found, discovered, implemented on your own? Or did you need some accountability to make it happen? 

Tonnika Haynes: Oh, Jimmy, I need accountability to make it happen because I was one of those shop owners that, I'm still one of those shop owners that look at, I look at a checkbook, so there's money in the checkbook.

Tonnika Haynes: There's money in a bank account, I can go buy things, so I'm fine. Right? No, Jennifer's not going for that. I mean, she's not, I'm getting better. Can I get it? Am I, look, she said I'm getting better. I'm getting better at really understanding, not being afraid of those numbers. If I don't understand it, I'll get frustrated.

Tonnika Haynes: Just like I don't want new technology, anything new. But learning each and every thing that she's teaching me and when she's learn, teaching me how to. Get that to a better place, let's decrease that. We need to look at this. What does this mean? I'm getting to the point that I can answer most of the questions.

Tonnika Haynes: So nice. The Tekmetric reports, they make a huge difference in being able to see what's really happening in the shop and not waiting for that credit card batch to hit the bank account and say, oh, I won. I know exactly how much I'm winning by percentages. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's good. Jennifer, a question for you.

Jimmy Lea: How do you what's the method, what's the strategy? How do you take someone like Tanika, and I'm not gonna say survive because I think Tanika was doing well. How do you change that mindset to go from a survival or a coasting mode to a thriving mode where she is implementing and she is holding accountability and she is.

Jimmy Lea: How did you do that? How do you. Guide someone down that path. 

Jennifer Hulbert: Well, you first start looking at the reporting. So again, that was one of the reasons I changed to Tekmetric was the high level of reporting and the ability to dig down deep to find the areas of improvement that we need. So if we're talking about parts gross profit, then we're gonna look at the Matrix and then we're gonna look at.

Jennifer Hulbert: Where do the majority of the cost of those parts fall within the matrix? Are we making the right adjustments to the matrix to really impact the total parts gross profit? So again I'll say this a million times. One of the reasons I love Tekmetric is you can dive deep into pretty much any area that you need to.

Jennifer Hulbert: Just before this webinar I was on with another GPG member and we were looking at possibilities and ways to increase the average repair order. So we started looking at the vehicle inspections. Are the technicians identifying enough work to be able to be estimated? To present to the customer. And that inTekmetric is called average written repair order.

Jennifer Hulbert: So that's a KPI in a report that we can look at to say, Hey, you know, if I'm in the thousand dollars range, I'm typically gonna have a lower average repair order, where if I am consistently estimating 2000 or 2,500, which is. What we recommend, I'm gonna be able to get to that eight, $900,000 average repair order if we have an effective service advisor.

Jennifer Hulbert: So depending upon which KPI is we're trying to improve. Tekmetric has an ability to look at a report and say, okay, these are the areas that we're identifying. Now we know. Do we go to the technician for a change in the DVI process? Do we go to the service advisor for an upgrade or an a higher sales training ability?

Jennifer Hulbert: Do we look at a change in a matrix? Do we need to increase our labor rate or our labor matrix? So it's a little bit of a loaded question, Jimmy, as to where we look first, but it depends on what area that we're focusing on. And again, Tekmetric makes it easy because we typically have a report that we can dive deep into.

John Phelps: Well, for sure. Can I add to that real quick? Only because, you know, I do say this a lot, but you just verbalized it and kind of put it to life in that there's a few different reports that Tekmetric provides you that allow you to go from a 30,000 foot view to a three foot view very quickly.

John Phelps: Right. How we do and how'd this ro get to this point? Yes. And whether that be the A WRO, what advisor, what technician what matrix didn't get applied. Oh, we had a discount, we had a coupon, we had a one-off. And it allows you to find those, but it does allow you to see how are we doing? What happened here?

John Phelps: I. Within just a couple of clicks on various reports. 

Jennifer Hulbert: Absolutely. And that's what I did just before this webinar was to go in and look at individual service advisor and we found that it was one service advisor that we need to focus with and one technician, and they had worked together quite a bit the month before, so that, that had the effect or the negative effect in this case on.

Jennifer Hulbert: The average repair order. So, yeah, being able to dive deep and to see okay, what's the overall KPI for a timeframe, and then dig down into each individual repair order is very simple. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. Ika, I've got a question for you, but I'm gonna ask John first. John. What do you hear from shop owners that are coming over and adopting Tekmetric?

Jimmy Lea: What's one of their, what's their reasons for coming over? Why do they choose Tekmetric? 

John Phelps: I. You know, there we're gonna hear any number of reasons, dozens and dozens of reasons. However, we have actually boiled down to really one of four things, right? Simplicity or ease of use, right? How easy is it to actually operate the system?

John Phelps: We've already mentioned change is hard. We wanna minimize that difficulty to a matter of a couple of days, if that, not a couple of weeks or a couple of months. So simplicity or ease of use is a key portion. A second is consolidation. How many systems can Tekmetric replace? Right? If you've got a system for texting, a system for digital vehicle inspections, you have a separate payment processor, you even have a separate marketing piece and the list goes on.

John Phelps: Tekmetric has all that built in, and it's all right there. Now we have the integrations with a lot of other companies, but we also have that product built right in. So consolidation is another one. The other two are performance and depend dependability. Performance is, does it work how it's supposed to, meaning does it work like it's supposed to run in an auto shop?

John Phelps: And yes, I have had that said to me many times. It actually looks like it's supposed to run in a repair shop. Well. That's how it was designed. That was the whole intent. It wasn't a a restaurant software that we thought would work in auto shops. No, it was built for auto shops. And then dependability does it work when it's supposed to?

John Phelps: With over a 99.9% uptime, even in the cloud, you've got very minimal, if any, downtime in the actual software because if something happens, it's usually fixed very quickly. So, regardless of everything that the shop owners say. Simplicity, consolidation, performance, and dependability are the four things that those all kind of bundle up into in terms of the reasons that they switch.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And Tanika then, now the question comes to you, you were on a different point of sale system before you decided to switch over to Tekmetric. What was that deciding factor for you?

Tonnika Haynes: For me, it was exactly what he said. I needed something that was more dependable. So I needed something that could give me reporting, even though I didn't even know how much reporting I actually needed at the time. I needed something that was easy for my customers as well. Everything is under the umbrella with Tekmetric, the text to pay the dvi, all of that information because I'm in a college town, so there's a lot of students, and so when the parents are a couple cities or a couple states away, I need to be able to communicate effectively with them.

Tonnika Haynes: So the DVI, giving them full picture of what's going on with the vehicle, in case they're too busy, I can send it to their email, I can send it to a text. They don't have to, we don't have to play phone tag. So that, that made the biggest difference for me being able to effectively communicate with all of my customers.

Tonnika Haynes: That was a bi big sales. Sales point for me and like he was saying, what I had before I believe was designed for a dental office and so it really didn't fit automotive as well as it should have, but these guys have built it from the ground up and everything that works seamlessly. I love it.

Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. I'm glad it's working. I'm glad it's working extremely well for you too. Jennifer, you have the rules that thou shalt not change nine point of sale system. What was that deciding factor? What's the tipping point for you with the rule that says, thou shalt not. 

Jennifer Hulbert: For me, it was, we had three different systems.

Jennifer Hulbert: We had a DVI system, we had a time clock. We, well, four, we had a text platform and then we had the management system and there were constant communications between the four systems and the level of reporting. So. As my group members know, I'm a very detailed numbers person, so being able to dive deep into identifying an area of improvement is important to me.

Jennifer Hulbert: And my old management system didn't allow that to happen as easy as Tekmetric did. So just having all of the communication systems working together was the key factor in the reporting. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And does that help you with your coaching and training with shop owners? Having a point of sale system that has good reporting, good data, good information, 

Jennifer Hulbert: it's imperative.

Jennifer Hulbert: I can't detect what I can't see and I can't coach it for an improvement of what I can identify. So having detailed reporting is. Imperative from a coach and a facilitator standpoint? Absolutely. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh man. Yeah, it sure is. Sure is. Makes all the difference. Tanika, were you at all afraid or fear fearful of switching from one point of sale system to another?

Tonnika Haynes: I can't say that I was afraid. I was ready. I'm shop number 9 67. I was ready to get on board for something new. And it worked seamlessly for me. Onboarding was easy. Actually. It's probably a lot easier than I can remember. I remember it was just easy overnight. We had everything uploaded. The learning curve kept with anything new.

Tonnika Haynes: You're gonna have a learning curve. But I remember just thinking like, wow, where has this been all my life? You know? So for me it was easy. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Props to you, John. Props to you and your team. That's pretty cool. To have an easy transition, an easy thing like that, that's pretty dang cool to make it easy for everybody to come over.

John Phelps: Yeah. I mention a lot when I'm doing any kind of presentation, right. Day one is tough. It's 'cause it's just something different. If, I mean, quite frankly, we are going through a transition in our own CRM and what we use to record to, to take record of our customers and prospects and so on. We're absolutely in that transition as a company right now.

John Phelps: So by all means I've done it before on the automotive side, but we're doing it here at Tekmetric as well. And what I always say is, yeah, day one's tough. Day one's a little less tough, right? Get gets a little bit better, but by day five, you're able to show the person next to you. Look at this feature I found.

John Phelps: Look at how. I do this, look at what we're able to do with this now. And I've said that in rooms, and by all means I wanna make sure there's corroboration. And people in the room say, yeah, absolutely. It was that way. You're gonna find nuggets along the way. You're gonna find things that maybe were you glossed over or didn't you know, didn't absorb quite frankly that, that first try.

John Phelps: But along the way, especially as we update, there's those new things that you find and wow, okay, that's a simpler click. I can open that in a new tab. I don't have to jump out of this. And it just. Becomes a little bit more seamless day after day. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that, that is so cool. And Tim's piping in here talking about how techs love using their cell phones with the app rather than using a tablet or a computer.

John Phelps: I. Yeah, it's, it is one of those things that, you know, we always, early on, especially touted, Hey look, you can use this on a tablet. No, you don't have to buy the thousand, $1,500 ones. You can buy the $200 ones. And you know, I have the ability and the privilege of visiting a lot of shops with my role.

John Phelps: And you see tablets kind of sitting on a charging cord on a toolbox. And technicians specifically like the mobile use of the phone, it's their phone. They're used to the screen, they know where the buttons are, and they can take the picture and they can put it in their pocket. And then they can move to the next one.

John Phelps: They can take the picture, they can put it in their other pocket, and they can use voice to text and type if they would need to, whatever the case is. And knowing that, that's why we developed the app. The app started off, it was released last fall but it started off specifically for digital vehicle inspections.

John Phelps: It was technician focused to ensure that they had an optimized, app ability to use that on their phone because it could have gotten a little clunky. Right. And I'm on my phone. I like it better than the tablet, but it jumps over here and it's not optimized specifically for that because I'm just logging into the website.

John Phelps: On my phone. Phone as opposed to an app. So releasing that and now coming up with new iterations, VIN scanning, license plate scanning, being able to add prefixed shapes and colors and text boxes to the pictures. I think we're on version 1.9 or something like that now with the app itself. So it is continuing to evolve.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. That's awesome. Tanika, Jennifer Tanika first, was there anybody resistant to this change?

Tonnika Haynes: I'd say, yeah, I've had, you know, tech that's been with me for a few years and he's just not sold on the DBI, but I think since it's on the phone, so we have the app that was dedicated just for the text, that's so much easier than the big clunky tablet now. And so he's buying it. He's buying in. I can see the dbis getting better, more pictures on each DVI, that 300% to that 300% rule is ruling.

Tonnika Haynes: So, 

Jimmy Lea: yeah, 

Tonnika Haynes: for sure. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Jennifer, any any holdouts, any resistance at your shop? 

Jennifer Hulbert: I was the biggest holdout, 'cause I had used my previous management system for 20 years and the change was very difficult for me, for my technicians. We didn't have the app at that point, but they moved pretty seamlessly.

Jennifer Hulbert: And my second advisor at the time was a little more up on technology than I was, so I fall into to Tanika's shoes a little bit there. And he picked up on the software. Much more quickly than I did. 'cause it was a different process for me. We didn't start in the same screen with my old system, so it was like a thought process change that I had to get myself over.

Jennifer Hulbert: But the technicians they worked pretty well. 'cause we were, well, I don't wanna say this. We went from paper to digital and then to metric pretty quickly. So they enjoyed the ease of the DVI because that is an area that we were very focused on at that time. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. DVI is a drum that I'm very familiar with and I absolutely pounded that drum for four or five, six years in the industry.

Jimmy Lea: Tanika to the DVI and educating the customer. What do you find it works best in educating that customer? 

Tonnika Haynes: The DVI along with motor visuals, that is a game changer. Like for example, we all speak different languages. I can try to explain to the customer a certain way and try to make it apply to everyday life or try to find something that it I can compare it to.

Tonnika Haynes: So you can do that. You've got the DVI with the images of their car, and if they still don't understand it, it's connected to motor visuals. So you gotta win, and win. So the and then the reporting, and I'm so happy for Jennifer for point this, there's so many reports on here, but the reporting on which check is doing the dbis, how many photos, how many videos per DBI is he doing?

Tonnika Haynes: And the more photos and the more image the more videos, the easier it is to sell that. Job to the customer. So the DBI reporting is winning. The dbis themselves are winning. The integration with more visual is all a win. And again, like I said, I have a lot of customers who have students. I mean, their students and their parents need to make these decisions.

Tonnika Haynes: Not only that, as we are close to UNC and SUNC hospital, major hospital, so we have the physician and hospital staff, we've got nurses, we have a lot of people that are just busy in their everyday life. And so maybe I, they don't get to talk to me about. The findings on their vehicle. But the DVI helps communicate everything that we found and if they don't understand or they need to dive deeper into it, they get a break.

Tonnika Haynes: They to pick up the phone and give us a call. Hey, I've looked at the pictures. Oh my goodness. Is that my car? Yes, it's my car. Did you follow the link to the video? Yes. That is pretty cool. Thank you. What should we do? And then we can go ahead with our sales process from there on out. So the DBI, again, like another employee?

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And the answer is fix it. Fix it. Keep me safe on the road. Whatever it takes, keep me safe. Yeah, educated customers are the best. They make the best decisions, especially when you're having to send it to mom and dad. They might be in New York or Maine or Florida, and there you are in North Carolina helps them make those decisions as well.

Jennifer Hulbert: Well, the DVI does that, but it also creates that trust and transparency. So there is no question on what needs or the reason it needs to be repaired. And that, I mean, that's what we teach in the group process of the number one reason to do I. DVI is to create that level of trust with your customer and to build that relationship that what you're saying is absolutely what the vehicle needs.

Jennifer Hulbert: And we can prove it with a picture and a video of your vehicle, not just something that's prefabbed and out there of, you know, this is what a, a clunky ball joint looks like. No, this is your vehicle and I can move your tire because it's, you know, you actually have it at that loose. So it's that level of trust and transparency that, that I push the DVI for.

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, it is. And that transparency is paramount. Tanika, what is the 300% rule? You mentioned that a couple of times now. 

Tonnika Haynes: You know, I think that's one of the hardest rules for shop owners that are, have been in the industry for a long time to apply is you write up a hundred percent everything that you look over a hundred percent of the car present.

Tonnika Haynes: A hundred percent estimate, a hundred percent. And it is hard to do because you feel like you might be pencil whipping, but you're not. You're giving them a full picture of what's going on with their vehicle and that's very important. Not to get off subject, but I had my vehicle at the dealership when I was on vacation for something and they did not follow the 300% rule.

Tonnika Haynes: They did the DVI, they showed me the problem, they showed me the video, did not present me with an estimate for that, did not do anything other than show me the picture. Personally for me, I would've gotten it done while I was there, while I was on vacation. 'cause that's not a job I wanted to do in my own shop.

Tonnika Haynes: It'll never get done, you know, call the daughter never has shoes. So the 300% rule is effective. And I said it is difficult to buy into, is difficult for tech to buy into, especially if you haven't been doing it the whole time. But once you do it, the average repair order automatically goes up. That means you have less cards that you have to bring in to hit the KPIs.

Tonnika Haynes: You can explain to the technicians, Hey, if you go through this car thoroughly, and if I do my job, then that means you have less cards to get on the lift every day. So instead of working on 10 cards to make your goal, you can work on four, you can work on five. And so I think everybody just needs to get on board, study it, understand it, and do it right, and it'll work out for you in the long run.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, so true. 

Jennifer Hulbert: You're also ma helping the customer make an educated decision on what investment to make in their vehicle. So if you're only giving them the bare minimum and say that the estimate is $800, but they really need. $8,000 worth of work, is it, should they put the $800 into that vehicle or would they make a different decision?

Jennifer Hulbert: Or is this something that they want to last? So, you know, they are gonna make that investment so they have that long-term vehicle and they don't need to purchase something else. 

Jimmy Lea: I, I love that 300% rule where everything gets, you take a picture of every recommendation, you estimate everything, and you present everything to the client, the customer.

Jimmy Lea: That customer's gonna make a much better decision about their vehicle and being safe on the road. Or, Jennifer, to your point, am I gonna put. $20,000 into a car that's worth 1200? Well, it depends. Is it sentimental? Yes. I'm gonna put 20,000 into it. Is it not applicable? Yeah. Okay. We just paperweight that sucker and let's go get a new vehicle.

Jimmy Lea: John, I have a question for you about the 300% rule in Tekmetric. What reporting do you have in Tekmetric that helps us to know if a technician and a service advisor working together is presenting everything to the customer? 

John Phelps: A few of them actually. So one, one of the things they were talking about earlier and being able to dive in I didn't mention this, but it's coming to now, is the real time reporting.

John Phelps: Being able to see what's happened before it actually closes. So if a correction needs to be made. You don't have to wait for the fire to burn down the house. You can put the fire out before it gets started, and so there's the realtime service writer report. Then the realtime technician report, and it allows you to kind of see things as they're happening, as they're being estimated.

John Phelps: Now, we've talked a lot about the digital vehicle inspection that DVI and to go back on why people say, yes, I gave you the four main things of what it rolls up into, but the most common feature mentioned. Is the DVI, is that D vehicle digital vehicle inspection. And within the inspection report, which falls under the employee reports, it allows you to see and Tanika already kind of mentioned this, I believe, was that, well, how many vehicles do we have?

John Phelps: How many of those actually have a DVI on them? How many of those are completed? How many of those were sent? How many of those were viewed by your customers? And then you can see the breakdown of how many pictures. How many average findings per tech, per advisor, per inspection. If you have multiple in there, you can see which ones are most effective, most impactful, and it really allows you, like I said, to kind of drill down and see, okay this DVI is my default one, of course is gonna be the most common.

John Phelps: However, we're supposed to do some extra checks on any car over 150. We're not seeing that being by this advisor, but it this. 12 pictures and their a RO is through the roof compared to this technician's adding six. And it's really kinda the four corners in the driver door open. It's the default pictures that we have.

John Phelps: Right? And so those, that inspection report is one of those that really allows you to inspect what you expect. Just so happens to be called the inspection report you know, setting those goals. A lot of times we have the outcome based goals. I want to be here, but really it's the performance side that allows us to achieve those goals.

John Phelps: And these are the reports that allow you to see the performance as opposed to just, well, let's just see what the outcome is at the end of the month. I wanna see what the performance is as we go. So can I can make. End game adjustments, whether that be in the RO throughout the day, throughout the week, or the month.

John Phelps: It allows you to make those adjustments and really start to improve that before it is too late. 

Jimmy Lea: John, I'm gonna put you on the spot here a little bit with pictures and DVI do. You, are there natural breaks that you see in patterns that says hey, if a technician takes 12 pictures, his average repair order probably is in this range.

Jimmy Lea: If he takes 20 or 40 or 60. Do you see a, an absolute correlation between the number of pictures in the average repair order? 

John Phelps: Absolutely. More than eight is, is that number now, within that inspection report it breaks it down by those picture ranges and I wanna say it says zero to six, six to 12, 12 to 15 or 18 or something like that.

John Phelps: And it gives you that bar graph. An a RO bar or line graph I should say, of, well, here's my a RO. And then when I get up to the eight, to 12 to 15 pictures, and then when I get down to when I get 20, 20, all means different shops have different processes. Talk to shops that say, I require 30 pictures. Now, when you aggregate the data, you're gonna see those peaks a little bit earlier and it really is that greater than eight.

John Phelps: In fact, we did a study, and it was a few years ago now, but what we found was when there's at least eight pictures, eight pictures or more, and it is sent to the customer at least 50% of the time, right? Take all the pictures you want. If you don't send it, they never see it. Yeah, if you send everything but take zero pictures, you're not doing yourself any good.

John Phelps: So if it has at least eight pictures and sent to the customers at least 50% of the time, shops that did versus shops that didn't saw $106 higher ticket, a RO was $106 higher for those that met that criteria versus those that didn't. So that sweet spot that we see is, let's just say six to 15. In that peak, in that a RO for the number of attachments.

John Phelps: And it is, it does say attachments because you can add videos, you can add PDFs as well. But pictures is the most common and it is that nice mid range of, call it six to 15. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. When I was pounding on this DVI drum standard pictures to take on every single vehicle, whether it's the four corners, the engine, the door.

Jimmy Lea: The license plate. You've got some standard pictures that you want to take, and anytime a technician makes a recommendation, take a picture. Take a picture. Take a picture. It will sell it Every single time. There was a shop I was talking to and we were doing a little bit of a DVI audit and here and a DVI came in from the tech and we're looking through there and I says, Hey, look right there.

Jimmy Lea: He's the technician's recommending a battery that a battery needs to be replaced. That it of 660 cold cranking amp, it was at 300. And the tech didn't take a picture. And I says, Hey, tell the tech to take. And this had already gone to the client, the customer. The customer declined the battery because what do we know about cold cranking amp?

Jimmy Lea: It's middle of the summer. I don't need cold cranking amp. It's not cold. Take a picture to show the customer. And they took a picture of the little report that comes out of the battery tester. Sent it to the customer, and the customer says, oh, yes, absolutely no. Now I understand I am borderline gonna be stuck on the, in the parking lot somewhere, not able to start my car because it's not gonna start.

John Phelps: What I've always found is people's biggest objections, right? The most common objections we hear really boil down to one of two things, time or money. But when you take that money piece and you dig into it a little bit more, it's not necessarily the cost, it's the value or the lack thereof. And if a customer doesn't see that value, and that's brought to them by information and benefits, right?

John Phelps: I need to have the information so that I can see the benefit. And if that's the case, the value outweighs the cost. Therefore, money is an objection should really be about, they just simply don't have it, versus they don't see the value in it. If it were to boil down to that, and that's what this allows.

John Phelps: We've talked about the education and the transparency. It's providing that information. They don't need to know how to replace it themselves. They don't need to know how the inner workings of the alternator actually work, but to know what it does and the importance of it to the running of a vehicle.

John Phelps: That alone allows them the educational piece, that information to see the benefits and allows them to say yes to the repair. Nice. And 

Jennifer Hulbert: sometimes seeing those benefits is not even connecting with the customer. It's all digital, which to, to me, in, in my generation I love that personal connection, so I want to have that call and that explanation, but I.

Jennifer Hulbert: The newer generation sometimes don't like that. So if they can see the reason why on the DVI and then receive the estimate digitally, then they can make a decision and have very little interaction with the shop. So we have that ability to do both. 

John Phelps: I had a shop owner tell me that they did 83% of their business, their dollars.

John Phelps: Touchless. Wow. Text message. That was it. Now we're not gonna say we're gonna eliminate the phone calls, but it may help to increase that efficiency if you can text back and forth to set up the phone call as opposed to the four time phone tag back and forth throughout the day. And then it's too late in the day to order parts, can't get the card done.

John Phelps: All that possibly could have been done via text. So hopefully we can increase that efficiency with the phone calls. And in some cases, with some customers, you can actually eliminate it because. It can be as touchless as you want it to be. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true. I mean, Tanika was talking about the university parents that are around the hospital.

Jimmy Lea: There's so many professionals where they can't check their phone, they can't take a phone call, but they can check for a text message and from that text message, respond, yes, fix everything, do it all, whatever that case may be. That texting, I didn't know as high as 83% That is. That's really high. I think 

John Phelps: That, that was the highest side scene.

John Phelps: I will say that. But even now and you know, we've got, obviously you can text the inspection with the pictures and videos. You can text the. Then you can, number one, you can capture a digital signature. And number two, if you do have our payment processor and our buy now pay later, they can actually apply for a buy now pay later on the estimate itself.

John Phelps: So granted, you've gotta set the expectation with your customers. I will be texting this to you because you can send 'em text all day if they don't know who it's coming from or what it's about. Those can go unread. Otherwise, if you're setting that expectation and letting them know is if this is the preferred way, we could do everything via text.

John Phelps: They can send you pictures, you can reciprocate, they can approve, sign their name, even apply for financing options all while they're sitting in a meeting. Hopefully still paying attention to the meeting though. 

Jimmy Lea: So true. Hey, congratulations, Tim. Tim went up $300. $1,700 average repair order. That's pretty dang good.

Jimmy Lea: Gotta love that. It's, it is awesome to be able to witness that, John as you're standing on the bench or on the sidelines watching the game happen in front of you, you get a see and witness all this shop greatness. 

John Phelps: The success stories are awesome. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh they cer they absolutely are.

Jimmy Lea: Tanika has a theme that she likes to run in her shop, which is do it right. So, John, I wanna hear from you what does do it right mean to you? Because we're gonna land this plane here, John, and then Jennifer Ika will let you close it out. But with the institute, we are here to help you as a shop. As a shop owner.

Jimmy Lea: You're a part of our industry. We are part of your industry. We wanna lock arms with you and help you meet you where you are, so we can help you to progress, to grow, to get better. Let's lock arms. This is a crazy storm we're in. No two ships are the same, but if we lock arms together, we will not leave anybody behind.

Jimmy Lea: We will all make it together. At the institute, we have coaching and training for advisors, managers, shop owners. We have group environments that helps you to see other peers. What might be a mountain to you is really a mole hill. In that group environment, we can help you to discover ways around that mole hill very quickly, which might be a mountain to you, but to others, they already did that on Tuesday.

Jimmy Lea: So we can get together and take care of that business, John, to you do it right. 

John Phelps: Remembering who you're doing it for. You know, at Tekmetric we do have the automotive background. I saw somebody in the chat post about Sunil story and kind of how it got started. I mentioned my background is entirely automotive.

John Phelps: For the last two decades, I've done nothing but be in the automotive industry. That being said, I don't have all the good ideas. We see it all the time with shop owners or even just those that work in the shop, they've worked at other places. They come in with their own ideas and those processes tend to change a little bit over time for the better of that individual and maybe for the better of the shop, but not necessarily for the betterment of their end user, their customer.

John Phelps: And if we as Tekmetric and our shops can continue to keep. Who it's for in mind for us, it's for the shop owner, but we also have to think through that and for your customers as well, because if we do only things for you, it may lose contact with your customer. So doing it right to me is gonna mean keeping in mind who you're actually doing it for.

John Phelps: Keeping that message the same in driving to improve that. We've said it in early on and continue to say it. Sunil started out with Tekmetric with a vision to introduce a technology shift in the automotive industry, right? We've got the cars that are half computer, we've got consumers that can do everything on their phone, and a lot of times in the industry we're still trying to get to 1999.

John Phelps: Y 2K is upcoming in some of our minds. So we've got to think in advancement of all that and get ahead of that curve with in mind who we're doing it for so that we continue to strive in the right direction. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's paramount that you partner with the right people so that even though you may be technology adverse, you partner with the right people that help you get there in the right direction.

Jimmy Lea: Jennifer, what does it mean to you here? Do it right. 

Jennifer Hulbert: Well, the core values of the institute is to build a better business, helps build a better life, and build a better industry. So. As a group facilitator, that is my number one goal is to help make our shop owners businesses better, which in turn makes their individual lives better, which in turn enhances the industry.

Jennifer Hulbert: So software programs and management systems like Tekmetric make that. Simpler to do because we are able to identify areas that need improvement and to help our clients and our group members to take that next level and that next step. So, doing it right is just utilizing all the information that we have and then.

Jennifer Hulbert: Encouraging and sometimes pushing right Tanika members to make those improvements, to see that there are better profitability angles to go and work towards. And just do it with a lot of fun. So Jimmy, you mentioned locking arms and supporting each other. And that's exactly what our group process and our coaching does for our individual clients.

Jimmy Lea: Beautiful. Yeah I agree. Locking arms is the best way for us to do that, and we'll do it together. Tanika, this is your mantra. This is your motto. Do it right. You have said it to me quite a few times in the past. Past webinars. Past conferences and trade shows. What does that mean to you? To do it right in your shop?

Jimmy Lea: Hold on, sister. You're muted.

Tonnika Haynes: Am I here? 

Jimmy Lea: Yep. 

Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. So I was saying for me, second generation shop owner one of the things everybody knows that's important to me is make my father happy. So I want to continue to do things right so our name lives on in a positive way, and I also have to get it re ready for the next generation. My kids, not only is it about my family, it's about my community.

Tonnika Haynes: We're responsible for. For fixing and keeping our customers safe on the road. And these are the same people that I have to drive beside every day. I have to see them in the grocery store. I'm responsible for keeping them and their families safe. I have to do it right. I will see them in the grocery store, I'll see them at church.

Tonnika Haynes: So, my, my father's name is on that building. So doing it right is the only way that it can be done. There's no second guessing it. And so with the help of the institute and Tekmetric I feel like I'm getting. Writer and writer every time. You know? So the more that I learn and the more that I'm coach with the institute and everybody, Cecil, you, Jimmy.

Tonnika Haynes: I'm just thinking I can't, can I get any more writer? 

Jimmy Lea: And then we discover. We discover new levels of writer, 

Tonnika Haynes: new levels of rightness is happening here. It's righteous. How about that one? 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love that we're getting there and you know, if you're seeing this information, you find value in what you're seeing.

Jimmy Lea: We are the institute. We are here to meet you where you are, to help you grow. If you wanna work with a coach like Jennifer, that's gonna hold you accountable and show you what the possibilities are of that writer, of that better way of operating, a better way of doing things, we Woo. Did you see that? I kicked my camera?

Jimmy Lea: We would love to partner with you on this so that we become that value Partner with you. Let's lock arms. Let's lock arms together. We analyze different. Softwares, different programs in the industry to bring to you the what we feel is a best of industry program and Tekmetric is one of the best that we have in the industry.

Jimmy Lea: They're doing a phenomenal job to that. We applaud you, John. We applaud your team. We applaud Check Tekmetric and where you're going. We appreciate that, the reporting that's available. It definitely helps our coaches. It helps our shop owners to be the best that they can possibly be. 

John Phelps: Well, I'll take none of the credit, but I will absolutely accept it on our behalf.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And send the message, make sure everybody knows how much we appreciate what you're doing and the difference that they are making as an industry for our industry. Absolutely. That's awesome. With that, thank you very much for joining us today, Tanika. Thank you for joining, Jennifer. Thank you, John.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. And with that, we are gonna call this a very good day. Thank you. And we'll see you again soon.

Show Summary:

Parker Branch of Branch Automotive joins the conversation to discuss shop culture, leadership, storytelling, and business growth in the diesel specialty repair industry. Learn about the importance of employee buy-in, boosting productivity, and ways to build customer trust through thoughtful use of technology. Parker shares his journey from technician to business coach, offering personal experiences and proven strategies for success.

Host(s):

Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio

Guest(s):

Parker Branch of Branch Automotive

Show Highlights:

Introduction to the Summit (00:00:00)

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/KfU09DMYEg4

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Links & Resources: 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Carm Capriotto: This is the Aftermarket Radio Network. Hey everybody. Carm Capto. Remarkable Results Radio. We're in Amelia Island, Florida near Jacksonville. What a beautiful resort. We're here at the Institute's Summit. wearetheinstitute.com. I can't even quite come up with the word 'cause. I've had a chance to listen to many of the keynote speakers and be involved with tons of friends, meeting a lot of new people.

Carm Capriotto: This is what I do for a living and, and it's just great to be here and, and hanging around. So thank you so much for the institute, for having us here. Hopefully all the great content that we're gonna send out are gonna change people's lives. I wanna thank so much the great sponsors that we have on the show.

Carm Capriotto: Hey car here, and I hope to see you at the 22nd annual TST Big Event Saturday, March 29th, 2025. This very comprehensive one day seminar will feature trainers Bill Weaver from NAPA Auto Tech training, Josh Weaver from Dormant training, and Eric Ziegler from WTI. This all day event will be at the Westchester Marriott in Ton New York.

Carm Capriotto: Sign [email protected]. I'll be there and I'm going to present the keynote, the Rise of the Mechanical and Technology Specialist. Great education. Breakfast and lunch and a ton of learning. TST seminars.org. Saturday, March 29th, 2025. NAPA is focused on the now a national ownership workshop for our valued Autocare members centered around business building training from industry leaders.

Carm Capriotto: This is a can't miss event as we celebrate the past 100 years while looking ahead to the next 100. For over 30 years, Napa Trax has made Selecting the right shop management system easy. By offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry, we'll prove to you that Trax is the single best shop management system in the business.

Carm Capriotto: Find Napa Trax on the [email protected]. Also thanks to aftermarket management network.com for information that can help you move your business ahead. And for the free and informative labor rate tracker.com. I'm here now with Parker Branch. Hi Parker. Hello Carm. Glad to be here. So here's the story. We just came out of a keynote speech from Dr.

Carm Capriotto: Jessica Kriegel and we were both extremely motivated by her story. On changing culture and building culture and creating culture. Can you go back to the shop and take all this stuff with you, Parker? 

Parker Branch: I can't wait to try some great ideas on, you know, culture's very important to us at our shop and as it is to so many people, but sometimes knowing how we can have a positive impact on that, you know, how to get the message to the people, how to set the expectation and.

Parker Branch: What great ideas she brought. It was kind of a blueprint, wasn't it? It was really good. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Here's these three things you have to do to make it work. Now. It's a heavy lift. 

Parker Branch: Seemingly simple when she delivered it. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Parker Branch: But gonna be some strategy and some help. Oh, boss is coming back from another convention.

Parker Branch: Oh boy. What is it gonna be this time? 

Carm Capriotto: You know what? I never have a chance to thank Tracy. For all that she does. I mean, every time I open my mic, I, I need to say thank you to Tracy for all the things. Let me see getting you here a little later. 'cause we, we wanted to stay and listen to Dr. Kriegel, all the MIC adjustments and all the great production.

Carm Capriotto: And Tracy, thank you. Thank you. I've told this to Tracy how many times, and I've said it on the phone. When I own my business, I come back from the conference. Even when I worked in corporate America, they said carve away to a leadership school or something and we're gonna have to change. What I did wrong, Parker, is I came back and I said, this is what we're gonna do.

Carm Capriotto: Mm. I made this huge mistake, but I was young and maybe dumb and I was trying my ass off, but I didn't really have any of the magic. But I think back then, leadership books were just starting to be written in the nineties, right? I forgot to sell. I was out telling and I wasn't selling and I wasn't engaging, you know, by sitting down with some of my leadership group and say, listen, I gotta tell you guys, I just came back.

Carm Capriotto: Lemme tell you. I learned the storytelling. Yeah, exactly. And when you teach, you learn and they need to give you feedback. Actually, what you're doing is you're selling for, you know, buy-in and engagement, and I'm sure that's exactly what you'll do when you get back. 

Parker Branch: Absolutely. Those thoughts were going through my mind as I was listening to Dr.

Parker Branch: Kriegel about. The storytelling and we're all real good at going back and telling the story. I'm gonna figure out some resources to try to get some more buy-in to show them to align their beliefs with what we've learned and take it back. You know, Hey crew, this is what I learned and we're gonna do this.

Parker Branch: No, I'm gonna take it back. Exactly. Listen to what I. Saw and witnessed and learned and what do you guys think of this, by the way? Who's Parker Branch? 

Carm Capriotto: Just that right. Never even introduced the, here it is. We jumped right into this branch. Automotive Littleton, Colorado. A diesel shop. 

Parker Branch: Yes sir. 15 years in business in Highlands Ranch.

Parker Branch: Uh, was a GM dealership technician for many, many years. Before that and also a one-on-one coach for the institute in my spare time. Are you on fire, your business on fire? It's going well. We've had a lot of growth. We acquired some additional space for our one location last year and that led to 27% growth last year was great.

Carm Capriotto: Are you empowering your people so that you can go out and be a coach and be here? 

Parker Branch: I'm really trying to. 

Carm Capriotto: But it's working. Obviously, Parker, you probably should pat yourself somewhere on the back and say, Hey. I'm learning so much and you know, part of this whole culture thing that we learned this morning is are they gonna do the things sure.

Carm Capriotto: That really matter to the business when you know, obviously they're gonna watch what you're doing and mimic you, but they understand the plan, they believe in the plan, so you don't have to micromanage people if the culture's right to do what needs to be done 

Parker Branch: to serve. Yeah. And I believe that we have created some of that culture.

Parker Branch: I feel good about it. And if I was gonna reach over somewhere to make a pat on the back, it would be my manager Daniel. High fives, Daniel. Yep. He is learned a lot by, you know, immersion, being with me day to day for years and years, and then just giving him, you know, free reign. We talk about everything. We have weekly meetings together and then he goes and does his thing.

Parker Branch: So. Cool. Hey, are you doing more than your competition as far 

Carm Capriotto: as anything? I hope so. Okay. I mean, did you ever really study that and say, you know what, we've gotta do this bigger, better. We 

Parker Branch: try hard to embrace the difficult repairs and then the diesel business. You know, lately emissions systems are very complex and can be very difficult to repair.

Parker Branch: We've embraced them and we do see even our competition in the Denver market will sometimes send us those vehicles that they don't want to or are not able to take care of. Alright, so you're doing the 

Carm Capriotto: hard work? I hope so. Okay. Just because, uh, Parker has a diesel shop doesn't mean that if you work on ice engines, you shouldn't listen to this because of course we're a business leadership podcast advancing the industry.

Carm Capriotto: And if you can pick, listen to learn just one thing. It was Jimmy who said it the other day. You know that one thing from Carm, you gotta take one thing away. And that was the key for me, that if you're listening to this, there's insights, there's great ideas that you're getting your mind is, you know, sometimes people listen to my podcast.

Carm Capriotto: And they don't even hear the words for the last minute because they're out daydreaming on thi Oh my God, that's a great idea, and how can I implement it? I'm there. I'm 

Parker Branch: there with you. I've listened to you and I, you give me a nugget or a a point is taken from one of your guests or, and the next thing you know, I'm often thought, how can I take action on Exactly right.

Parker Branch: Well, wow, I love that. What am I gonna do with it? How can I share it with my team? Gems? Yes. Nuggets. We call 'em 

Carm Capriotto: nuggets. Any regrets for something that you just didn't do that you'd love to go back and 

Parker Branch: redo? I don't know if it's a regret, but I am happy to have learned maybe in the last year or two.

Parker Branch: Something that our last speaker even shared is when something's not going the way I want it to or in the direction I would like it to. How am I responsible for that? Like, I try to take a lot more accountability. I've shared that with Daniel. We now, when we have a, you know, a challenge, we look at ourselves first.

Parker Branch: Have I empowered my people? Have I educated them? Have I set an expectation so that they understand how to get there? 

Carm Capriotto: So before you get in front of your people to discuss anything, you're really self-assessing yourself. Yes, 

Parker Branch: sir. 

Carm Capriotto: Before you get in front of your people, are you reassessing yourself? I mean, I said that twice because.

Carm Capriotto: That's so important to get up there and ask your people to do this when you don't demonstrate the same 

Parker Branch: a hundred percent. And we have to figure out what responsibility we have, what's coming from us. You know, in any relationship the people that we're speaking with are trying to inspire. They can read what's going on with us and our emotions.

Parker Branch: So we have to take accountability ourselves and be willing to try to improve. Vulnerability share with 'em, Hey, you know, I realized Carm, that I may not have given you the tools or empowerment to achieve this, and I'm sorry for that and let's get better together. 

Carm Capriotto: You know? I know Parker, the last time you actually were on August of maybe a year ago or, uh, 

Parker Branch: yeah, sometime this last year.

Parker Branch: Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: And we had such a great. Interview. I went back and I looked at the talking points from that huddles service advisor, I think reviews, or at least a couple of times a day, we interview a couple times a day. Yeah. Make 

Parker Branch: sure 

Carm Capriotto: we're holding 

Parker Branch: each other accountable. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Are, are we on track? What's going on with the clients?

Carm Capriotto: What do you hear? What do you know? That storytelling piece. We think about the huddle, Hey, something cool that happened in the last week or yesterday to you, and you have people tell stories and if it aligns with the culture. You got 

Parker Branch: a home run. Oh, and I have to tell you, when Daniel, my manager approaches, uh, service advisors, he does like an 11:00 AM visit.

Parker Branch: And then again in the afternoons around three, not micromanaging, just, Hey, let's, what I wanted to say is, let's get on record, right? He says, tell me a story. No kidding. He's doing that. His line, that is what he says. Tell me a story. And I just, I eat it up. And then we're sitting in there and she's talking about storytelling and.

Parker Branch: You know, we lead a lot of our meetings by storytelling to then try to, you know, get where we're trying to get. 

Carm Capriotto: One of the things I remember is how Lean is important to you. Does lean continue to be a high strategy for you? I mean, we have to be aware of it so that we're sustainable. Lean is really for everyone out there who doesn't know, it's just, it's that six Sigma thing where you're just trying to do everything with the as least amount of steps.

Carm Capriotto: The greatest story about Lean that I ever heard was my friend Jim f Fleshman. He's an observer. He walks around his shop, he does all kinds of things, puts timers on every lift and all that stuff. And he said to me, car, he says, I'm watching our guys go walk to the other end of the shop to get a battery charger.

Carm Capriotto: So I bought two more and I put a charger in every bay. 

Parker Branch: Nice. 

Carm Capriotto: Think about, yeah, the steps saved, but then while it's there and it's in your environment, you know what that's used for and why. That's a good example of how you can stay lean. Yeah. Isn't it 

Parker Branch: Absolutely. Your client, they're spending a big a RO with you typically.

Parker Branch: Absolutely. Yeah. We are a light duty diesel pickup truck specialist, so any domestic diesels. So a lot of us know those repairs do tend to be more expensive, so it does drive a larger average repair order. What's the group doing to build trust with them? Internally? From my team? 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Parker Branch: Digital vehicle inspections.

Parker Branch: Making sure that, you know, one of the conversations we just had, Daniel and I, since we've been here, 'cause you know it's nice to get away and think and reflect. There was some discussion about canned findings and canned responses or recommendations. With the DVI process so much focus is on streamlining and making it quicker and for the technicians.

Parker Branch: And we reflected a little bit this week and thought, you know, we might actually go back and talk to the team some of what we just learned now, you know, trying to inspire some culture change with respect to the dvs and we might put more detail that's specific to each vehicle. Ask the guys to use their speech to text and tell the story.

Parker Branch: A little better than, you know, just as a blank example, you know, we have a line for windshield and there's a canned, you know, finding windshield's cracked, suggest replacement of windshield. Well, the customer didn't need to hear that. That has no value to them, you know, telling the story like they know it's cracked.

Parker Branch: They know the thing to do is put a new one in. So maybe. You know, that could be a tough example for getting more into it, but if we're talking about brakes or some check engine light issue, that created a problem getting into some of the detail, telling a story to help the average customer who doesn't know about this engine and what an EGR valve is, or, you know, whatever it is.

Parker Branch: Give them some explanation of what it is. Sure, yeah. How it works. Why does this matter and why we suggest to take what repair method. So yeah, we're gonna have to work a little bit more, but the value that we create by doing that, it will be so much better. And then the customer has trust, transparency.

Carm Capriotto: It's a great point. There's a lot of shops that are taking the technician or specialists. Paragraph, throwing it into AI and it's coming back and they say, wow, that's, it's the same stuff, but it's just a little nicer, a little friendlier, and they're putting it 

Parker Branch: back into the DVI. Sure. And I think you need to watch that too, because I've seen some of my guys use the AI to tune up their stories.

Parker Branch: A little bit of what came out was, you know, yeah. I drove the vehicle into the stall and picked it up and Oh, okay. Terrified what the customer said, so it was like, well, yeah, it's almost too robotic. Correct. 

Carm Capriotto: I just read something, Tracy Parker, that there's this movement out there that says that they want to make the AI voices that come back to you, that people can read it back to You sound like computers.

Carm Capriotto: Only because it is almost too real and you'll never know. Sometimes you can see a fake AI picture so that you could differentiate if this was AI generated or not. Yeah, I mean, even if you had to put the word, I find this AI thing off the charts, by the way. Yeah, I think it's changing every day. First of all, I think there's room in usage for it in our industry.

Carm Capriotto: But to rely on it, to your point, if it comes back and sounds too gr grammar. Schoolish. Or robotic. Or robotic, yeah. I mean, we've done episodes on this and I want to continue to stay very close to this AI thing. So if you're listening and you've got an opinion or some kind of great experience using ai, please karma at remarkable results.

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Carm Capriotto: You're out doing a a one-on-one coach, correct? Yeah. I have eight clients right now. Eight clients, fabulous. Biggest struggle that's going on right now that you're hearing about? 

Parker Branch: Obviously the same thing we all know is attracting and retaining help. Those 

Carm Capriotto: are the two biggest things today. Biggest Absolutely.

Carm Capriotto: Is retention and recruitment. Of both of those, what's the biggest, what would 

Parker Branch: be just above the line? Retention? No, I think trying to acquire the talent is okay. Is probably the most difficult. 

Carm Capriotto: So you, but you need to acquire is you're acquiring for growth or are you acquiring because you lost somebody? 

Parker Branch: I see some of both.

Parker Branch: So, and some of the clients that I'm working with are typically clients that are, I. Have been in business maybe only a year or two, and they're starting to recognize their weaknesses. A lot of them might have come and listened to your podcast and they got the idea, I need some help and come to some coaching company in, in this case, the institute with me.

Parker Branch: And so they're trying to figure out how to grow, how to become more profitable, you know, and it might be them and one person. So. It's more of a growth in that situation. But then, you know, on the flip side of the coin, I'm still operating branch automotive and same thing, we've had some growth, but we've also had some talent leave, and it becomes top of mind, like, how can I make sure that I'm doing a good job of creating a culture that these people want to stay with us?

Parker Branch: Got it. Yeah. As well as how am I gonna grow? Why are they leaving? I've had one person leave, knock on wood. Well, I hope it stays that way. Technician that was with me for nine years and he just decided I'm a little bit tired of the ups and downs. His particular situation, he was offered a job by the electric company and he had, you know, grand ideas of how he would sit around drinking coffee and telling stories and still getting paid.

Parker Branch: And I've talked to him a little bit since, and there's definitely been a little bit of. Whoops. Yeah. Not sure. Oh, whoops. Moment. Yeah. He was a great employee. Really, uh, loved the guy and he knows the door's still open, so if he changed his mind, you know, we've even reached back out to him. But the grass isn't always greener.

Carm Capriotto: In your last 15 years, did you ever let someone go that was 

Parker Branch: really toxic? Absolutely. Tell us about. Not a lot, but there've been a couple. I definitely had a service advisor a few years ago. It was my strongest advisor. We were in a good place, sales wise and so forth. He was wonderful with customers, really good.

Parker Branch: He had a following, but internal to the company. He was extremely abrasive and made people feel uncomfortable, even myself sometimes, and eventually it just became so much of an issue. That feeling, I think Dr. Kriegel talked about that if you have that little thought in the back of the mind or uncomfortable, you know, thing going on in your mind about a situation or a person, you need to address it.

Parker Branch: And we actually had one technician that was thinking of leaving as a result of how abrasive that behavior was. And when I did let that individual go, overall it was awesome. The whole place went up. It was so much better. Yeah, people were happier. More people that I didn't realize he was rubbing wrong seemed to me.

Carm Capriotto: Parker. Parker, what does it take to listen to your intuition to observe? 

Parker Branch: No, I gotta do something. Yeah. What does it take? I mean, I have a little bit of intuition now, situations that, you know, this week was a good reminder. Hey, you need to go home and address this, all the, all the 

Carm Capriotto: right reasons to go to a conference 

Parker Branch: and be, be involved in networking.

Parker Branch: Well, how many, I mean, probably most all of us people listening us here in the room today, we'll have those intuitions at time and it may not be convenient to listen to them or take action. But then when we do, we generally, in my experience, almost always, thank God I finally listened and took action on that.

Parker Branch: We're in a better place now. 

Carm Capriotto: Thank you for saying confession. Are you overwhelmed? We're only in, I dunno if you've been here for three or two or we have one more day to go. I. And there's so much incoming. We're taking a lot of notes. We're hearing a lot of people, you can't do everything. But the story is, is if you don't do something with what you came back with within at least 30 days and hold your own personal self accountable, I.

Carm Capriotto: You just wasted your time and money. 

Parker Branch: Absolutely. And it was discussed in the last get together that you need to take action within three days. Oh, that's right. It was three days. Yeah. Yeah. 

Carm Capriotto: Get off your, yeah. Oh right. I'm gonna go back sleep for a day. Yeah. And then I only have two 

Parker Branch: left. Yeah, exactly. And uh, so the notebook needs to be opened up Monday at back at the shop.

Parker Branch: Wow. And I'm gonna go through there and pick. You know, one or two things to start with. They're going onto my to-do list and I want to take action. Cool. 

Carm Capriotto: What are you gonna go back and do? First? 

Parker Branch: Have a meeting with Daniel and we're gonna plan how we can take some of what we just learned in this last session with Dr.

Parker Branch: Kriegel about the culture and presenting it to our people differently. We're aware of it in the past. We've tried, we've done storytelling and so forth, but I think there's some more questions that she taught us to ask. Our people engaged. 

Carm Capriotto: It was a very easy and simple three step process to make culture work.

Carm Capriotto: To her point in the beginning, and I love to talk about culture, it's, you know what I mean? It's one of those uncomfortable, it's uncomfortable, it's soft, it's emotional. Did I say Moshi? And people, uh, I don't need culture a lot. We are the culture. We're badass. 

Parker Branch: No. It's not, that's not who the people that are coming into the industry, they are not that person.

Parker Branch: It's 

Carm Capriotto: like, so you like working there? Oh yeah. It's a great place. We're all happy. You know, Fridays they do lunch. Yeah. But you still never get accomplished in the business, even though people love lunch on Fridays. Yeah. It doesn't mean that you're hitting your results. Sure. So anyway, I know I'm only gonna get 20 minutes with Dr.

Carm Capriotto: Kriegel when she comes in and we do this episode. Please listen to it. 'cause I'm going to. Zero in on one particular section that she talked about and hopefully she's willing to go there with us and just give us 20 minutes on this and we'll find out In her episode we'll talk about how you can get in touch and see her stuff.

Carm Capriotto: Can't wait to hear that. Yeah, and Dan Clark was here and I interviewed Dan Clark and I'm gonna go home and listen to that before when it releases it. It may not release you like right away. It could come out in three weeks or so, but. 

Parker Branch: What a humble and amazing guy. My wife is here, Celeste. She went up and spoke to him after.

Parker Branch: Yeah. And he welcomed her to ask some questions about her challenges with her salon and so forth and dealing with people. And it was, he was like, absolutely, let's talk about this. Call me, let's get on the phone. Let's trade emails. What a neat 

Carm Capriotto: guy he was so open, Tracy and I. At the end of the episode, I'll give everyone a hint as to what happened.

Carm Capriotto: He asked us, where are you from? And we said, Buffalo. And he says, go Bills, right? Yes. And he starts telling us how often he spoke to the Bills group, and he's going down the list of all of our Hall of Famers that he's 

met 

Parker Branch: and known. But we gotta let the public know that Parker Branch grew up just outside of Buffalo, New York as well.

Parker Branch: So go Bills. And I grew up in the days of, you know, Marv Levy. 

Carm Capriotto: Oh my God, yes. Kim Kelly and the old, old crew. Yeah. So we've been out for a long trip. This is the longest conference trip. Tracy and I have been away from the office and or home. Right. And wherever we go. By the way, didn't he win last night?

Parker Branch: Yeah, 

Carm Capriotto: Josh Allen. Yeah, Josh Allen. I watched, 

Parker Branch: I caught just a glimpse of that and I was really 

Carm Capriotto: excited. I wished I would've seen it, but I did see it on, uh, I dunno if it was a newsreel this morning or whatever. Yeah, I think that's what I just popped in. 

Parker Branch: Last night. So Dan Clark's a Bills fan. 

Carm Capriotto: Bill's Dan Clark's a Bills fan.

Carm Capriotto: He goes, anytime you wanna do another episode, just let us know. That was our coin, that was our little chip to get in. There's a little payoff for us, uh, being Buffalo Bills fans, and that's what it's been since we've left. I don't mean to degrade from our great discussion, but it's always fun to, you know, obviously listen.

Carm Capriotto: To all my friends, my dear friends in Kansas City, and how many times you've had to send chicken wings over to Sherry Ham a lot. We spent a ton of money on buffalo wings. I think I've told this story before, but we never communicated with Sherry and her great team from Auca. Vision on the game that the bills won.

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Parker Branch: You know this early in the season. Oh yeah. This season. Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you what, when we go to Vision, 'cause we'll be there half of our crew with you. Cool. We're gonna talk to her about that. 

Carm Capriotto: Okay? Okay. Yeah, let's do that. So all of a sudden, the next day, Tracy gets an email from Sherry and says the barbecue is coming.

Carm Capriotto: Oh. Yeah, Jack stacks and we Did you get to pay off? Oh yeah, we did. Yeah. Nice. And then on the wing part, listen, we send wings from a great restaurant in town that does ship out and they're frozen and they have to either thaw 'em and bake 'em or do whatever they have to do. But, uh, I don't know. I think we're going on our fifth batch now or something like that.

Carm Capriotto: I, I don't, this is gonna have to stop, huh? Yeah, I mean, to the point is, is, you know, I think it's five to one right now over the Super Bowls, whatever. Next year. Next year is our year. Next year, right? Yeah. And how about that rumor about the color of the Super Bowl logo? Uh, not aware of it yet. Oh, look at the colors of the Super Bowl.

Carm Capriotto: Is it 59? Yeah. Super Bowl 59. Look at the colors. I'll check it out. They're the chief's colors. 

Parker Branch: Oh. And, uh, what colors are the officials wearing? 

Carm Capriotto: I don't know. Oh my God, we digress. Big time now. Let's not have that discussion. Yep. Let's talk about back to the industry. Let's get into coaching. 

Parker Branch: Is productivity a big issue with your clients?

Parker Branch: With all of us, absolutely. And I think some of the level of, you know, technology and difficulty, I. Can create some issues in that, you know, trying to have them, you know, managing their time, getting through these issues and stuff. So we all have to look at it, measure it. Obviously labor inventory is what we have to sell on time, and we wanna make sure that the guys are proficient, we're efficient.

Parker Branch: So what are you doing about it? What are the great ideas that people are sharing about improved productivity? So we're having quarterly performance evaluations. So each quarter we get away from the shop, Daniel and I, and sometimes even our lead technician who's part of our management team. And we'll go sit down with each employee and it's uh, Hey, Karm, how are things going?

Parker Branch: Like, how is your experience? You know, what's getting in your way? Is there things that I could do to make it better? We're there to talk and listen and learn. And try to help empower them. Figure out what their challenges are. I so it's a 

Carm Capriotto: discovery moment. It's a, and it's 

Parker Branch: a 

Carm Capriotto: discussion. It's a discussion and discovery and every once in a while guarantee you a nugget's gonna come up.

Parker Branch: We learn more by listening to them, giving them a chance to talk. We like to get away from the shop, away from the rest of the people so they feel comfortable. We start having lunch, you know, there's an olive garden down the street and when I walk in there, they're like, oh, hi Mr. Branch. The usual. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah.

Carm Capriotto: Would you like those unlimited breadsticks in that big salad bowl? 

Parker Branch: Yeah. So I abstain from the bread, but, oh, smart man. I wish I could, but it's just great to, I have to, we get 'em, you know, comfortable and it's not, you know, manipulative. It's like, let's just sit down and get comfortable and chat for a few minutes and then start talking about how's things going for you.

Parker Branch: And like you said, the nuggets come. We get ideas on how we can improve their experience. You know, what's getting in your way? And it's kinda like that last seminar we just listened to. There's, uh, one train of thought where you get in there and work hard and force this to happen and we're gonna make this thing change versus, Hey, let's talk about this and see how I can help you and you know, what do you actually believe?

Parker Branch: What's important to you that could help you do your job or feel good about your job? 

Carm Capriotto: What's the opposite of making change? Is it like morphing change? Is it, is empowering change inspiring, maybe inspiring like that? 

Parker Branch: Yeah. I mean, our coaches talked a bit in the last round of gear performance group meetings that, you know, you can't pull motivation out of someone.

Parker Branch: You know, the motivation comes from within. You can inspire those people, but you can't force anything to happen. It goes back to 

Carm Capriotto: culture. 

Parker Branch: Yeah, 

Carm Capriotto: it really does. And everybody focused on the results and how are we gonna get there? What we believe is going to make a difference for us and the client, and. One of the things that just can't stop making sure is number one in everyone's mind is the people in the company.

Carm Capriotto: Number one, the people, number two, the client. 

Parker Branch: Yeah. And one of the things that you just said kind of struck a nerve for me. Focus on the results. Yeah. We as shop owners and people in the industry, we go through seasons. Of our business seasons. Of the industry. Mm-hmm. So we're at different places. We're trying to figure it out now.

Parker Branch: I think I have it figured out now I need to grow, you know, what am I gonna do next? This is huge, what you just said, 

Carm Capriotto: the seasons of my business. There aren't just 

Parker Branch: four. There could be ongoing 50. You know, one of a saying that I picked somebody, it's a biblical thing, but somebody said to me with respect to what we're doing and how things are going in the shop, whether it's good, bad, whatever, this two shall change, this two shall change.

Parker Branch: Yeah. So if you're on top of the wave, eventually you're gonna be off the wave. Yeah. I love. 

Carm Capriotto: If you're listening to this and car's gonna talk a little bit about seasons of your business and that really is describing don't get stuck. I'd love to get stuck in summer in Buffalo. I'd love even fall stay. But now we get the snow and it's an eventual thing that happens.

Carm Capriotto: And in your business, no matter how successful or even marginally unsuccessful or successful you are, you need to create. Through your vision, through the where you want to get and how you want to get there, your seasonality of growth. And that means almost fall, gets winter, but the snow comes a little bit at a time and then it gets worse and it gets colder, and then spring shows up, boom.

Carm Capriotto: It's not immediate and it's an evolution of seasonal changes. So if you want to take your business. Want to go back and start working on processes. 

Parker Branch: Sure, 

Carm Capriotto: it's not gonna happen tomorrow, but take that seasonality approach where we're gonna get it, figure it out, implement it, watch it, grow another season of maybe better culture move maybe.

Carm Capriotto: We're gonna review our technology and all the equipment that we have, and we're gonna look at all the educational systems we bring into our people. And I guess if you think about all those things you have to work on and you think about this ongoing roller smoothing that out. Yeah. So this rollercoaster of seasonality Sure.

Carm Capriotto: Of the leader 

Parker Branch: of the business moving his business forward. Right. Not such a abrupt changes. I think by doing a lot of the right things, we can create some momentum. Yeah. That will smooth some of those seasonalities or seasonal changes so they're not so abrupt. I was just gonna say the word abrupt. I was just 

Carm Capriotto: thinking of that.

Carm Capriotto: And I think that's what. Hold some people back, Parker. Exactly. If we're reacting to things rather than I can't do this. Yeah, it, it would shake my company up. No, it should be slow and eventual. Hundred percent or methodically, eventual, but you can't get there by dreaming it and wishing it and speaking it.

Carm Capriotto: It literally has to be, this is what we're gonna do and why we're gonna do it when we're gonna do it. 

Parker Branch: And your team picks up on that. So if you're reacting and you know, letting it. Swing your behavior and mood. Yeah. Abruptly. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Parker Branch: You know, by 

Carm Capriotto: April team, this is what we're doing. I 

Parker Branch: love it. 

Carm Capriotto: Yeah. 

Parker Branch: And then this is what we can expect based on what we've seen in the past.

Parker Branch: And you know, if we're in a lull, we know that we can expect this. We're gonna, you know, carry our momentum right through there and we'll be right back up on top of the wave 

Carm Capriotto: again. All right. Parker Branch, a branch. Automotive Littleton, Colorado. Give me. A great reason why you're so damn successful.

Parker Branch: Commitment. I love being there every day and I love fixing trucks and making people happy, 

Carm Capriotto: man. That's it. Great summary. Thanks for being here, man. Thanks 

Parker Branch: so much, Karm, and thank you Tracy. 

Carm Capriotto: Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the Premier Automotive aftermarket podcast. Until next time.

Show Summary:

In this insightful episode, Jimmy Lea of The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence is joined by Brian Burris of Promotive and Mike Grosse of Glen’s Auto to tackle one of the biggest challenges in the automotive aftermarket: hiring and retaining top technician talent. Mike shares his journey from shop helper to shop owner and the influence of mentorship and industry support. Brian walks through the detailed processes Promotive uses to match technicians with shop culture. Together, they explore strategies like working interviews, career path planning, and internal training to build sustainable, high-performing teams. Their conversation offers actionable advice for shop owners seeking to grow without compromising culture or quality.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Brian Burris, Account Manager of Promotive 

Episode Highlights:

[00:04:53] Mike Grosse shares how he accidentally stayed in the automotive industry after taking a part-time job post-high school.

[00:07:35] Encouraged by a mentor, Mike climbed from sweeping floors to owning Glen’s Auto.

[00:13:02] Mike explains how his late mentor supported changes like marketing and tech upgrades despite an old-school mindset.

[00:16:04] Brian Burris explains how Promotive tailors recruiting by deeply understanding a shop’s culture through intake calls.

[00:17:59] Common red flags in candidates include mismatched experience and badmouthing previous employers.

[00:21:20] Mike emphasizes patience in hiring and the importance of job-specific and personal questions to uncover true fit.

[00:24:09] Brian stresses the value of speed in hiring and keeping communication open to maintain a talent bench.

[00:34:00] Working interviews and technician walkthroughs are powerful tools to assess cultural and technical compatibility.

[00:47:12] Building career paths and training plans help retain and grow technicians into long-term contributors.

[00:54:22] Mike and Brian share what they'd change in the industry: more young people entering the trade and reviving technician passion.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAj_C4fGSBA

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

Links & Resources: 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight depending on where and when you are joining us today. It is a beautiful day outside. I'm so excited to be here with you, my friend. So thank you to everybody who's here and joining. Whether you are watching it live or watching the recording, we so appreciate you as we lock arms together to make sure that we are building a better business with each other, resulting in a better life and a better industry.

Jimmy Lea: That is the mantra here for the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence is to build a better business for you as a shop owner, a better business for you as a service advisor, a better business for you as part of the industry. And by building a better business, it results in a better life for you as a shop owner, a better life for your advisors, your managers, your parts people, your tech.

Jimmy Lea: Nations, it's a better life for them and their families and their spouses and their extended family. It results. It's a really big ripple effect that happens. And the net result of all of this is that we work together to build a better industry. So I'm very excited to be here with you today.

Jimmy Lea: My guest today as we get here together. Joining us first is Mr. Brian Burris. Brian joins us from Promotive. Brian, good to have you with me, brother. Good morning. How's Atlanta, Georgia? 

Brian Burris: It is beautiful as always, sir. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, speaking of 85 in Alaska, what is your temperature in Atlanta today? 83 in Bert. 83 in humid.

Jimmy Lea: What's your humidity factor? 

Brian Burris: Oh, it's 83 probably. We've had a lot of rain recently, so. Oh, 

Jimmy Lea: a lot of rain. Yeah. Nice. Well, and you're recently returning to Atlanta. Congratulations. 

Brian Burris: Thank you. 

Jimmy Lea: Always good to move back home, isn't it? 

Brian Burris: Yes, sir. Yeah, absolutely. 

Jimmy Lea: How long have you been with Promotive now, Brian?

Brian Burris: Just over a year actually. End of May was a year with them, so. 

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. And you got your promotional t-shirt I see. 

Brian Burris: Yes. We get that after you have to 

Jimmy Lea: be there for a year and then you get your t-shirt, right? Correct.

Jimmy Lea: With the institute you have to close 10 deals before you get a backpack, so Oh, there you go. Now you know.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. Welcome, Brian. Glad to have you here with us. I'm so excited to talk about what you're doing in the industry to help. Shop owners because there is a huge shortage in the industry. So those that are here currently are the ones that we want to elevate and bring them to the top. And speaking of phenomenal shops, phenomenal shop owners.

Jimmy Lea: Our guest today is Brian Gross and he is with Glen's Auto down in California. Mike, welcome. Good to have you here with us brother. 

Mike Grosse: Good morning, Jimmy. Good morning. 

Jimmy Lea: Brian. Mike. And you sound so good, Mike. I'm loving this microphone you got, I'm gonna thank you for all of that.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, dude, this is awesome. How's the shop there, Glen's Auto? 

Mike Grosse: It's, you know, we're pressing forward. It's been a little quiet as of late, but guys have work to do, so that's good. 

Jimmy Lea: That's good. That's good. And what's the makeup of your shop, Mike? What does that look like? 

Mike Grosse: It's a pretty small shop, little four bay shop.

Mike Grosse: Got one advisor, two techs, and and I'm kind of the floater, you know, I just wander around wherever I'm needed and that's really about it. Yep. 

Jimmy Lea: Yep. It's that all the hats that you get to wear. Good manner. Rural shop, four, four bays, two techs, one service advisor. Are you looking at expanding?

Jimmy Lea: Are you wanting three techs or four techs? What are you looking at? 

Mike Grosse: You know, I think if I could ever have any more help down here might be some support for my advisor and possibly somebody to help support the technicians. But as far as growing the shop, I'm quite comfortable with where it's at.

Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. Two techs, each tech has two bays. That's a beautiful thing. So as you're waiting for parts on one, you can be working on another. You don't have to push in, pull out. There's a lot of shops where it's one for one. Oh, yeah. Makes it challenging. Makes it very challenging. Sure does. Hey, Mike I wanna go back a little bit in history to talk about your experience in the automotive aftermarket.

Jimmy Lea: How did you get started? What did that look like when you entered into the industry? 

Mike Grosse: I actually kind of got here on ac I stayed here on accident, I guess. This was, you know, coming to work here was just you know, I'd just gotten outta high school and was looking for some part-time work while I was going to college and I never left.

Mike Grosse: It just turned into a full-time job and you know, I. Never had much formal education. I had a great mentor who was a phenomenal technician and he just kind of took me under his wing and showed me the way. 

Jimmy Lea: So, wow. Mike, that's a similar entry point as to what I experienced. You got a job as you were there and attending college and you just stuck.

Mike Grosse: Yep. 

Jimmy Lea: I say that I entered the industry 'cause I lost a bet. I.

Mike Grosse: But did you really lose? 

Jimmy Lea: No. Well, I lost the bet, but I gained a beautiful industry that is phenomenal. There's so much love in the automotive aftermarket. There's so much integrity and so much charity. That's here in this industry and care and focus on people that Yes. In the end I'm a winner.

Jimmy Lea: Correct. And I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you very much for that perspective, Mike. So you started as were, did you start as a technician in the shop or did you start at the front counter? What did that look like? No 

Mike Grosse: I had no idea what I was doing. I slung tires around at a Firestone for a few years, and I thought I was the fastest tire changer in the west.

Mike Grosse: But 

Jimmy Lea: you probably were, came, 

Mike Grosse: I came over here just as a shop helper. I mean, I did everything from sweeping floors to changing oil to. Cleaning the stock room out picking up parts, dropping off customers. I just, I did whatever I was told. So, yeah. And then ended up just working more in the shop.

Mike Grosse: There was actually quite a few employees here when I first came to work here, and, the culture was pretty good and I, you know, I got a lot of guidance from all the technicians that were in here. There was every, everybody was really helpful in guiding me along and educating me and showing me the ropes.

Jimmy Lea: So, oh, that, that's awesome. So you advanced from being the gopher. Go for this. Go for that. Go for this. Go get this. Go get that. Sweep this, sweep that, clean this, clean that inventory. This inventory that you went from being the goer to the shop owner. I. 

Mike Grosse: Yeah. Yep. Lot of pressure applied to me from the previous owner.

Mike Grosse: You know, not pressure I shouldn't say it that way. A lot of encouragement you know, to go out and get those ASEs classes after work at night, getting involved with those, getting my smog license and. You know, at that point, you know, I was being taught how to troubleshoot vehicles, diagnose.

Mike Grosse: And then that led into working at the front counter learning how to write service and just figuring out how to put it all together. And the opportunity presented itself for me to buy into the place. And never really thought I was gonna be a auto repair shop owner, but I think I was more afraid of leaving here to go work for somebody else.

Mike Grosse: And so I took the plunge and here I am. You know, it's been a, been kind of a wild ride, seeing a lot of ups and downs and probably the first 10, 15 years more downs than ups, but, you know, with the help of a lot of people in this industry we've managed to turn things around. 

Jimmy Lea: So it's a good place to be.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it sure is. And you know what I hear right there, Mike, and this is a joke I. For your job security, you just went ahead and bought the shop? Yeah, pretty much.

Jimmy Lea: I don't know if I can do anything else, so I'm just gonna buy the shop and yeah, that, that's job security right there now but did, how quickly did you discover that the skillset you have inside the bays, the skillset you have behind the front desk, behind the counter is a different skillset to.

Jimmy Lea: Shop ownership, business ownership.

Mike Grosse: I have a lot of these and I just, yeah, a lot of hats. 

Jimmy Lea: You wear a lot of 

Mike Grosse: hats and anybody out there that owns a shop knows that oh yeah. And you know, you have to be able to juggle it all around. And it's, it comes with its set of challenges. That's for sure. 

Jimmy Lea: How long did you trudge this on your own? And who was there to help you along the way when you first started out as the owner? Was the previous owner there with you, block, step, side by side, or was it good luck? Here's the deep end. 

Mike Grosse: No, as a matter of fact the the unwritten contract that we had was that basically I would show up for work one day and I'd get a new hat that said Boss and and Bill, who was the previous owner he became my advisor, my bookkeeper I mean, he was everything.

Mike Grosse: He stayed here to make sure that I didn't fail. And he was kind of old school. It was it became challenging because his way of thinking again, was kind of old school. You know, everything was word of mouth. He didn't, although he was real techie he didn't understand the value of.

Mike Grosse: Having a website and you know, all the things that come along with that marketing. And and I think that's where I started running into my struggles because I didn't know how to fix my broken business. But he was very helpful in making sure all the bills were paid on time and that. He'd kick me in the fanny if there wasn't enough money in the account and he'd tell me to just work harder.

Mike Grosse: Yeah. So, and that was that lasted for a long time. He he left us about three years ago and I didn't retire him until about three months before he passed. I almost refused to do it. He was just such a huge part of this operation and miss him a lot. So, 

Jimmy Lea: oh yeah, for sure. And it's awesome that you get to continue the legacy and continue the journey, the story the company, the culture.

Jimmy Lea: You get to continue that legacy that was established once upon a time and now you are the torch bearer. Yep. And enjoying it. Well, good for you. Oh, that's awesome. So as you step in and you took over I could see that there's probably, a lot of opportunities. Wrong word occurrences, where you probably locked horns with Bill from old school.

Jimmy Lea: This is what works. This is what I've done for 35, 45, 50 years to where you're wanting to introduce technology, software, modern marketing. 

Mike Grosse: He wasn't, you know, he wasn't really, he wasn't really opposed to the changes when they started coming. He really embraced them. The thing with him is he just didn't know how to guide me into doing that.

Mike Grosse: You know, it was through our local auto association and other shop owners. They were the ones that actually took me under their wing and. Led me down a different path, but as I started bringing this information back to the shop bill was quite helpful in getting it implemented and in place.

Mike Grosse: And I, I didn't get, I didn't get any pushback from him there whatsoever. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So the auto association that you were involved in was the A-S-C-C-A? 

Mike Grosse: That's correct. 

Jimmy Lea: Were you working with like John and Rocky, or who was it that 

Mike Grosse: Rocky was in our chapter when I joined TSU. Tida Love tsu.

Mike Grosse: He was love Rocky. He was probably the biggest cheerleader. If anybody knows tsu he's a cheerleader and he's a champ. He really yeah, he was my big, he was the big pusher for me. And I, you know, I'm very thankful for him, for everything that he's ever done for me. So, yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: he's expanded his kingdom here recently.

Jimmy Lea: I think he has a second shop now. 

Mike Grosse: Yeah, he does. He does. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Mike Grosse: Running two shops now. I you know, again, my hat's off to him. I, it's being an MSO is not for everyone. So. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and that I was gonna ask you that, Mike, are you looking at. Expanding your kingdom, are you wanting to add to the footprint or do you think you're comfortable where you are at the moment?

Mike Grosse: I think I'm pretty comfortable. You know, I don't wanna say I've ever considered it. It certainly has crossed my mind a time or two. But, you know, I don't know, I don't know what the future holds. You know, I'm getting old. And I, you know, I just don't know if that would be a good move, Brian.

Mike Grosse: What does that 

Jimmy Lea: make us? If he thinks he's old? 

Mike Grosse: Oh, yeah. I'm just not sure if I'm, you know, prepared for that. So, but you know, he can only, each individual can only handle so much and I'm not sure if another shop is in my wheelhouse, but, 

Jimmy Lea: yeah. Well, and if it does come to that and you do look at expanding the kingdom.

Jimmy Lea: And adding additional shops to what you're doing. Gosh, man, reach out. We'd love to help you out with what that looks like and how you can build onto what you've already developed and built. 

Mike Grosse: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: And that goes right into what we're talking about today is if you were to lose one of the two technicians you have, yeah, you could step in for a minute, but you've gotta replace that person fairly quickly.

Jimmy Lea: If you are adding to the kingdom, and now you've got a second location, a third location, a fourth location, you've gotta have somebody like a Brian Burris, a promotive on your side to help you find the right people that are qualified. So that you can now go in and interview them. And so Brian, my question for you from a a recruiter's point of view, how do you define a company's culture clear enough to be able to hire for that?

Jimmy Lea: Do you know Mike's shop so well that you're able to hire for or qualify or interview candidates to match his culture? Or how do you do that? What's your process, Brian? 

Brian Burris: So initially when, whenever someone signs up with a promotive we will set up an intake call. So that intake call, I had one yesterday.

Brian Burris: It was two hours long. Just learning the the shop's culture and what they were looking for in a technician. Building that relationship with the shop owner and myself and the other account managers we get a good idea of what they're looking for. What the culture of the shop is, and we try to plug and play that.

Brian Burris: We'll go through hundreds of candidates before we send somebody that we think is a good fit. If we send somebody that you know isn't a good fit, Mike would come back to me and say, Hey, here's some red flags from me and let's pivot moving forward. And the recruiting team will also do the same. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, that's interesting.

Jimmy Lea: Brian, from a a red flag point of view, what are some of the common red flags that you see from other shops? Or maybe it's something that you've seen even from Glen's Automotive. What are some of those non-negotiables that you see with a lot of shops? 

Brian Burris: One thing is, it's a common occurrence is when we have a candidate we're screening them.

Brian Burris: We're asking about their experience as well. And when they go into a shop, their experience doesn't match their resume. That happens all the time. And then we also see the candidates. Unfortunately speaking bad about the previous employer, that's a red flag usually from any shop out there. When you go into an interview, you're not, you don't wanna be the one sitting there talking bad about your previous employer, your current employer.

Brian Burris: What if that technician leaves you? What are they gonna say about the job? 

Jimmy Lea: That's the story that I'm hearing is I don't want to be the next bad story that you're telling to your next employer. Correct. So there's a red flag that says Yeah. No. Next. Yeah. So do you hear that in the prequalification interviews that eliminates them?

Jimmy Lea: Or is it on to mike to listen for those indicators? 

Brian Burris: So we do ask a ton of questions when we're pre-screening or vetting a candidate for a shop. The recruiters will actually, we have a section for internal use only. They'll put red flags in of stuff that you know, we necessarily wouldn't send to a shop.

Brian Burris: But again, the recruiters vetting that person. I know Mike, I know what he is looking for. And those red flags I won't send to Canada. I'm not gonna waste Mike's time. Setting up an interview if there are things that Mike and I have discussed that you know, he doesn't want, that's where the buck stops with me.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, and Mike, to your shop and to your experience, I want to talk about a success and then talk about a failure. Maybe we talk about a failure first. Have you ever hired somebody into your shop that disrupted your culture, and what did you learn from that? 

Mike Grosse: I haven't had anybody in here that had, I mean, that was just completely the opposite of what our culture is.

Mike Grosse: Most of the issues that I've had with people that I've hired is just their inability. You know, there, there's, I have different personality types that work for me now. Everybody seems to get along pretty good with one another. Every once in a while, you know, I have to intervene. You know, maybe we forget about our lines of communication around here, but having just a really rotten banana in my basket is not something that I've had to deal with yet.

Jimmy Lea: That's lucky, Mike. That's really good. 

Mike Grosse: Yeah I've heard horror stories, so, oh, 

Jimmy Lea: I yeah. You gotta what's the saying you gotta be slow to hire and quick to fire. Oh, yeah. I think that's what I've heard. Gary V say that quite a bit. The question. Whoops. Question for you, Mike. And then Brian, same question for you.

Jimmy Lea: And this is a comment that's coming in from Sherman. What are the top three hiring tips that you've got that you can share here? Mike, what are your top three hiring tips? And then Brian will ask you the same question. 

Mike Grosse: I think the first thing for me is patience. Don't. Don't fall in love with somebody on the first interview.

Mike Grosse: Take it slow, but not too slow for sight's, 

Jimmy Lea: not a thing. 

Mike Grosse: Yeah. You know, take it a little slow, not too slow because you know, you might not be the only person interviewing that candidate. The other thing that I would have to say is think about the position you're hiring for. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Mike Grosse: And compile.

Mike Grosse: A really good list of questions job related questions and also you know, personal questions. Get to know the person a little bit on a personal level. If they're a chatterbox like me, you'll get them to almost forget that they're in an interview and then just start talking openly and candidly.

Mike Grosse: And you can oftentimes. Really see somebody's true colors when you can get 'em to just open up and start chatting. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. I love that. Yeah. The more you can get that candidate to be the one talking, the better off. You're gonna have a field if it's working or not. Brian, same question to you.

Jimmy Lea: What are your top three hiring tips for 

Brian Burris: going back to what Mike said there. They're not just meeting with you. You know, that's one of the questions that we asked during our prescreen of vetting is, how many other applications do you have? Do you have any offers on the table? Any of that. So circling back to that, it's speed to lead.

Brian Burris: We, that's the saying we use almost every day. We've gotta be fast on these candidates. If they're good, we need to get 'em in front of the shop owners as quick as possible that we're working with. Because there's other dealerships you may not be. Offering the most you know, hourly or flat rate, whatever it may be.

Brian Burris: But if the FR culture fit is good, they're gonna pick you. So sell your shop on that. So speed of lead the questions that we use can be edited per se. We ask tons of questions, like, if I send somebody over from Mike, we're ask him, you know, how much do you have in tools? Ask those tough questions upfront.

Brian Burris: Ask, what do you think your level is of diagnostic being electrical drivability on a scale of one to 10? That's one of the questions that we ask as well. So we try to get as much information as we can upfront before we sit 'em to the tech, to the shop. Secondly, I would say, you know, keep the communication open.

Brian Burris: Even if you're not, it doesn't work out. Right. They take another job over you. We see it day in and day out where a technician won't accept your offer, but they accept somebody else's. And they always thought that grass was greener on the other side. Turns out it wasn't. So we see that a lot as well. So again, keeping communication open with that candidate is key.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and I'd like to call that building a bench. Absolutely. So as a as the coach. You've gotta build a bench of technicians that you're engaging with and you just keep in touch. Once a month you reach out and say, Hey, how's it going? How's the shop? Oh man, I'm so glad you're having success over there.

Jimmy Lea: It sounds like you're doing really well. Oh my gosh, whatever. But eventually there might be an opportunity that comes back around. And Mike, you may lose one of your technicians at the shop. Maybe he has to move back home to Wisconsin, take care of mom and dad, or whatever the case is. If you've got a bench of people that you can pluck from, makes that interview process much shorter.

Jimmy Lea: I. Correct, correct. Yeah. 

Mike Grosse: And I do keep a, I do keep a file. I try to keep good, clear notes and right on the top of the page, you know, I, you know, you might put on there something you know, might wanna follow up with this guy you know, in the future. Yeah, I've got one guy in particular that I really liked.

Mike Grosse: And although we couldn't come to terms I text him once every couple of months just to see how he's doing, and he's chatty he'll get back with me and you know, would he ever be the right fit for my shop? I don't know. But there was something that we liked about one another. And you know, again you never know what life brings you.

Mike Grosse: So, and like you said, you could have a technician that just might wake up having a bad day one day and decide that it's time to move on, so, oh, yeah. Yeah. It's nice to keep that, you know, keep all those candidates in a warm pool. 

Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. And Tim, Ian's probably got one of the best stories that I heard recently about a technician wanting to come back to the shop.

Jimmy Lea: He expanded the shop just to bring this guy back in. Oh my gosh. What a beautiful experience. And this technician that is returning to the shop is now taking on an apprentice and teaching the industry as well. Yeah, phenomenal. I love it. I love it. Okay. Question has come in here, and this is a question for both of you.

Jimmy Lea: Coming from Angel, what kind of questions would you recommend for a non technician? Somebody like me, I'm not technically skilled. Somebody like you Mike, you know, technical questions, you know the technical things to ask and Brian, maybe you do as well, but for me, I'm not a technician. I'm not master certified.

Jimmy Lea: What kind of questions can someone who's non-technical ask a technician candidate? 

Mike Grosse: Ah, let's see. Well, if I, maybe I'm gonna read into this a little too much, but if if Angel happens to be a shop owner that has no technical background I would probably confide with whoever your lead tech is at that time, who does have the experience, let them compile a list of those questions.

Mike Grosse: And again, it kind of depends on what skillset you're hiring for. I mean, if you're looking for a rockstar bumper to bumper guy, if you already have one of those guys, have them put the questions together. If you don't network you know, most of us know other shop owners who are, you know, some of us doing better than others reach out.

Mike Grosse: That would be my recommendation. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah. Yeah. And Angel, where are you from? I'm Go, oh, chapel Hill, North Carolina. So, angel, make sure that you are part of the association there. Asta. Asta is a phenomenal association. They have a very strong membership. And if technical is not your background.

Jimmy Lea: They will definitely help you and Mike to your point if you've got a master tech creating your questions, also make sure he gives you some appropriate answers that are good answers, that this is what we're looking for. For sure. This is good. This is mediocre, and this is somebody who just doesn't have a clue what you just asked.

Mike Grosse: Yeah. Yep. 

Jimmy Lea: Brian, what about you? What would you say is advice for the non-technical to ask a technical person? 

Brian Burris: You know, going back to what Mike said getting another team member or, you know, a peer involved with those questions, we do provide a lot of questions for you. I get it quite a bit.

Brian Burris: I actually had a shop yesterday ask me, he is like, Hey what can I not ask? I was like, oh, there, there's a whole list of stuff. He is like, what about politics? What about. I'm like, stay away. Don't do that. Yeah, you can't go there. No, he was just joking with me. But we can also help you with that. I do ask, get that question from shop owners quite a bit of, you know, what are your thoughts on this guy?

Brian Burris: Or, you know, what are some questions I could ask? And I've actually typed up an interview just bullet points for a shop owner for him to go over with a service advisor or a technician. I've been both. So, granted it's been many years, but I still turn a wrench in the garage with my house. But and I'll even call a shop too.

Brian Burris: Hey I'll call Mike and be like, Hey, what would you ask this guy? Or Can you help this other shop owner out as well? 

Jimmy Lea: And Angel's gone a little bit deeper into this, so this is even getting even better. This is a prescreening of a technician. They've got 13 different stores, 13 different shops. So what are some good question?

Jimmy Lea: Culture questions, team questions for someone to ask to find out which culture of all these different stores is the appropriate to go into. So 

Mike Grosse: trying to place him in the correct store. 

Jimmy Lea: Him or her. 

Mike Grosse: Him or her. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. There's, I know the Institute has some information on what am I thinking about assessing people's personality types, the DISC personality test, the disc personality test.

Mike Grosse: That might be a good place to start giving them that test. And also, and again, it's not something that we've done here, but I know a lot of shop owners do it. Doing that within your current staff and getting to better understand their personality types and then give that same test to incoming candidates that could help right there.

Mike Grosse: Trying just by doing that, figuring out which store would be a good fit for these incoming candidates. 

Jimmy Lea: Brian, what about you? 

Brian Burris: You know, that's a great tool. I have quite a few shops out there that we work with that use the disc. And we'll have the candidate complete that prior to them, you know, being sent over to the owner.

Brian Burris: We do ask some questions, you know, what are you looking for in, in a new shop? You know, it's stability, work-life balance, culture. You know, some of the guys they work with are toxic and management won't do anything about it, so they're gonna move on, unfortunately. Yeah. So those are some questions I would ask as well to make sure that you match up.

Brian Burris: 13 stores is a lot, so. 

Jimmy Lea: Which is also really good. You've got a lot of opportunity of retaining that talent because you've got different options for him or her to go to. As an option though. Well, if it doesn't work out at this shop, I've got 12 others and I've got three that I think you would be a very good fit for.

Jimmy Lea: So let's talk about what this looks like. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's good. That's good. So Andrew types in with a really interesting question as well when it comes to interviewing technical technicians. Have you ever had a what does he say? A senior tech sit in on technical questions in the interview?

Jimmy Lea: Mike, have you ever done that? 

Mike Grosse: Yeah, I did that one time about a year and a half ago. I did have my lead tech really I. Conduct the majority of the interview. And we ended, we did end up hiring the guy. But I don't think I asked enough of the cultural questions. He was kind of a, you know, just in it for himself.

Mike Grosse: But 

Jimmy Lea: oh geez, 

Mike Grosse: You know, but having my lead tech. Interview him from a technical standpoint. The guy was, he was savvy. He knew what he was doing. So, 

Jimmy Lea: so you were looking for an a tech and you had an a tech interview to make sure that you were pulling in the right person. 

Mike Grosse: Correct. 

Jimmy Lea: There you go, Andrew.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah I think that's phenomenal. Brian, 

Brian Burris: real quick, so I wanted to mention something that I've seen a lot more lately is I. Working interviews where they come in for, you know, four hours or whatnot, but you get 'em in there with the team that they're gonna be working with every day. Get feedback from your current team so you're not throwing that toxic person in there and potentially losing your other, you know, great techs who's been with you forever.

Brian Burris: One shop that I worked with in Oregon will actually the shop in a row do their first initial interview, and then they'll just throw 'em out in the shop. Just do walkthrough, put 'em up with your senior tech or, you know, the. The head guy in the shop or gal and get the feedback from them, see if he's gonna work, ask those technical questions.

Brian Burris: You know, your tech can, you're not in a office bubble of the interview, right? The pressure of the owner staring at you. They're gonna open up a lot more with that fellow technician or fellow service advisor about their personality and if they're gonna fit or not. So working interviews is great. And just do you wanna a walkthrough with the shop?

Brian Burris: You know, you'll learn a lot about that candidate. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, and so you two, two different ideas here. Brian, one is a walkthrough of the shop, but what about also a working interview? Technician comes in and works for the day to see how he j he or she jives with the whole team. Do you do that?

Jimmy Lea: Is that Yes. Appropriate? 

Brian Burris: Absolutely. It happens. And do you pay for 

Jimmy Lea: that day of work? 

Brian Burris: So the, typically the shop owner will pay. Cash, right? So they're taking their time off. They're using PTO or whatever. Sure there is a form of payment. Sure. You know what I mean? To pay them for that time. Again, working side by side with the guys you're, or gals you're gonna be out with in the shop every day is good.

Brian Burris: And then get that feedback. So it happens quite a bit. 

Jimmy Lea: I like that. I like that. What do you think, Mike? Working interview? 

Mike Grosse: I think it's a good idea. But you know, again, sometimes you're. In most cases, we're dealing with people that are currently employed and, you know, depending on how their work schedule is.

Mike Grosse: I, I mean, I've interviewed people that, you know, may have one day off during the week and then they work on a Saturday. We're a Monday through Friday shop, so we're not open on the weekend. So if I had a guy that had a Wednesday or a Thursday offer, whichever day guy or gal I could bring them in and do a working interview.

Mike Grosse: I. But at this point, I did have one entry level guy come in a couple of years ago on a day off, and he came in and worked for us. But yeah I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea if it works out for the candidate. If it works, yeah. With their schedule. So I'm a pretty compassionate person.

Mike Grosse: I, you know, I hate the thought of having somebody quit their job and come to work for me, and then after eight hours, I. You just cut the Yeah, cut the cord. So, 

Jimmy Lea: I've heard all those horror stories, Mike. I've heard technicians that failed to even show up for the first day of work. I've heard of technicians that show up for the first day of work, go to lunch and never come back.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I've heard of those stories. So yeah, it would be very powerful from a stability point of view, from a tech point of view to make sure that they're a good fit and a working interview, whatever compensation it is that you work out with that technician for the working interview, I think it is well worth it.

Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Yeah. Brian, question for you. Now, this comes from Kevin. Kevin's asking, are there personal questions that you are not legally allowed to ask? And I think that there's probably a plethora of, I. Questions, thou shalt not ask. This is 

Brian Burris: correct. Yeah. So there's a list of questions that our recruiters stick with.

Brian Burris: Angel put a link in there. Thank you for that. EEOC is definitely, you know, your hrs best friend gender, race, religion, you know, all the top ones. Politics. Politics, yeah. Stuff to stay away from. 

Jimmy Lea: What about drugs? Drug use, personal recreational time. 

Brian Burris: So we do ask that as well. 'cause you know, obviously it's getting more and more free out there of each by state.

Brian Burris: We do ask, you know, are you able to pass a background check or are you able to pass a D drug screen? Do you have a clean driver's license? They're very forthcoming sometimes on what we hear from the candidates of their background or, Hey, I don't do it at work, but I do it at night. So that's stuff that we would provide.

Brian Burris: All you can ask is just would you be willing to take it? Are there any concerns if you were to take a background check or a pre-employment drug screen? Nice. Nice. That's how you word it? Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: it's proper wording. Can you ask about children and spouses or girlfriends or divorced or family questions in general?

Brian Burris: I would do not ask about that. That's some things that we do not ask on our end. If they're forthcoming with it, you can pick it up, you know, Hey, I've got a family and daycare and all that, but you cannot outright Aztec.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. Any other questions, comments, concerns? Go ahead and type them in the chat. This has been very interactive. This is quite the conversation that we've had here on a two-way conversation. This is good. It's really good. What other items, Mike, would you suggest that as an industry we need to pay attention to?

Mike Grosse: Oh, to pay attention to. That's a good question. You're really gonna scramble my noodle to try to think of an answer for that. 

Jimmy Lea: Well, maybe we can go to Brian first and you can noodle on that. Thanks, Mike. Thanks Jimmy. Uhhuh 

Brian Burris: light's on you. I would say the culture, you know, when I started in a shop.

Brian Burris: 20 plus years ago. And a lot's changed, let's put it that way. Evolving with the times these technicians that are still in the industry are getting older, right? We've got the young bucks coming up, they ranks and they're not the same mindset. The mindset as the technician that was there 40 years, that's 70 years old now and.

Brian Burris: You know, got arthritis in his hands and back and knees. You've gotta change with the times. Unfortunately. I know some of us like to get stuck in our ways and it's hard, but to keep this industry thriving with the younger generation, we need to make sure we, you know, not coddle, but I don't know how you wanna present that, but, we've gotta change, so 

Jimmy Lea: we have to be sensitive to it. Correct? Yeah. 

Brian Burris: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Mike, specific areas you think we, we need to focus on as an industry?

Mike Grosse: I think we need to focus on.

Mike Grosse: Training internally. You know, I at least where I'm at cost of living is terribly expensive where we are. And you know, it was the same scenario for me when I became a full-time technician. There just didn't seem to be time in, in the day or evening to. Go to school. So, you know, there's a lot of guys that are growing their own and and that's a better fit for some shops than others.

Mike Grosse: It's a little tough for me because we're such a small little family here. You know, maybe some shops that have four and five technicians they might be better suited for a mentor type program, but. You really got during the interview process. That's one of the questions that we discuss is ongoing training and making sure that these guys are willing to sit down with a, and do a lunch and learn, or, you know, maybe go spend two or three days at STX.

Mike Grosse: They've gotta be willing to continue their education. These vehicles are so advanced now. I mean, you've gotta be, you know, everybody talks about the unicorn. Everybody wants a unicorn. If you're not a unicorn, you're gonna really struggle trying to learn how to do this job on the fly. So, yeah.

Mike Grosse: Training 

Jimmy Lea: is key. Yeah. So, to that, to training. Mike, how much emphasis do you give and this is a comment by Keith, how much emphasis do you ha give for certifications? 

Mike Grosse: You know, we've, we structure our pay scale a little bit differently depending on the technician. I mean, I've had technicians that you know, when we have a production based pay plan for a technician that they'll, they can earn extra dollars per build hour.

Mike Grosse: When they're maintaining a certain amount of ASEs. So, and also for training, you know, I had one technician that was working for me that you know, he'd get an extra dollar an hour for every hour. He produced by doing eight hours of training. And he had no problem with that. So, yeah.

Jimmy Lea: It's important that personal training, you know, Cecil talks about often he, when he was managing Larry's shop up in California, Northern yeah. Northern California. There was technicians that they would get a bonus. If they participated every quarter, I think it was every quarter they had to do eight hours worth of training.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And this one technician, this one quarter didn't do his training. So Cecil went to the guy and said, Hey man, thanks so much for this bonus. You're giving me I'm able to keep an additional two or $3,000 this next quarter because you didn't do your training this last quarter. And the training was a very broad open.

Jimmy Lea: Online training, in-person training, reading books, personal progress. There's, there was a lot of training that you could do that you get to choose from, and this technician missed out on that, and so he missed out on his bonuses for the next quarter, so, 

Mike Grosse: sure. Yeah. I keep a I, each one of my technicians has a folder that their timecard goes in.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Mike Grosse: And so they see it every week. And we keep a training log in there. I, you know, I print up a training log, I staple it to the inside of their folder, and it's kind of an honor system thing. You know, again, we're a small little family here. I, and I'm on the premises all the time. So if I see, you know, I come up in the break room and a guy's sitting there doing a world pack lunch and learn, I see it.

Mike Grosse: And, you know, sometimes, a lot of times they'll come to me and, you know, Hey, I sat in on this lunch and learn and, you know, I learned this and I learned that and, or, you know, maybe I, you know, I, somebody showed a different way of something and yeah. So they'll usually be the ones that open up. So you pretty much know that they took the class, you know, they just weren't sitting there on the couch with their sunglasses on pretending like they were watching it and sleeping.

Jimmy Lea: Right. So, 

Mike Grosse: And when they know there's money hanging on the end of that. They'll usually do it. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, for sure. I love what Misty has put in here as her suggestion for a question. And I'm gonna couple that what a good question is where do you see yourself in five years?

Jimmy Lea: And I love that question. I, Misty, thank you very much. That's a great question. I wanna couple that with Kevin's comment earlier about building a career path. If you've got a very well-defined path that says, when you come on with us as a technician, this is the coaching, the training that, that we're going to provide.

Jimmy Lea: In house. This is the trade shows we're going to attend. And if you perform at such a level, you get to go to these trade shows and attend to these trainings. The face-to-face, the hands-on training. So when you are able to build out that timeline. Of what it looks like for these technicians.

Jimmy Lea: I'm gonna invest in you and in fact, I'm gonna invest in you so much that your efficiency and productivity will increase, that you are gonna get a raise because you are a better technician. You build that path and that timeline of what it looks like. 'cause it could be to Misty's point in five years, Mike Gross wants to own the shop.

Jimmy Lea: Phenomenal. Mike, you know what? You and I are gonna work together. There's a lot of free classes we can take at the community college that talks about business ownership. You and I will go take these classes together. There's instructions you can get from worldpac Lunch and Learns. There's instructions you can get from the institute, the gear course library.

Jimmy Lea: Go in there and watch everything to learn about. Productivity, profitability, efficiency, tech efficiency, learn those skills. You need to know as a business owner that you probably don't know as a technician yet. Yeah. Are you building your competition? Potentially, but what a great friend to have in the business that has done this training, and what if in the process of learning about business ownership, they get to a point where they say, Hey, you know what, Mike?

Jimmy Lea: I don't think I wanna own a business anymore. I just wanna be the best dang technician you have ever had at this shop. And I'm digging in, I'm staying here. This is my life. This is my future. This is what I'm gonna do. You got me. I'm a lifer. Yeah. 

Mike Grosse: Well, you know, again, in the interview process too, you know, asking that question, where do you see yourself in five years from now?

Mike Grosse: I mean, I've had guys tell me that, you know, I, you know, this is, you know, I. Eat, sleep and drink fixing cars all day long. And I don't wanna do anything different than what I'm doing now. I've had people say they wanna become educators. I would love to, you know, get into a high school and teach auto shop.

Mike Grosse: And I think that's fantastic, but what does that look like for me? You know, you want to come here, you wanna build up some knowledge for five years, I'm gonna invest all this time and money into you, and then you're gonna boogie. You know, that's definitely something to consider. You know, I've hired, I've had, I've hired older gentlemen, I've interviewed older gentlemen.

Mike Grosse: You know how, you know, how much time am I gonna get out of you? When are you gonna retire? You know, how's that back feeling? There's those definitely good questions to ask. Where do you see yourself in five years? One question that I ask, I, you know, I have nobody to pass this business down to, just like the previous owner.

Mike Grosse: I asked that question, do you ever consider owning your own shop one day? And, you know, some say yes, some say no. But again, like myself, I really wasn't sure what I was getting myself into when I. When I bought it. 

Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Well, job security for one. 

Mike Grosse: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: But yeah, no that's really good.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I was gonna go down another path I totally forgot. Oh. Training. You'll never fail By training. You'll never fail. And we've heard it time and time again. I'll just reiterate it for everyone. What if I train 'em and they leave? To your point, Mike, what if I train you for the next five years and then you decide to go off into the higher education or a high school education to teach shop?

Jimmy Lea: What if I te train you and then you leave? 

Mike Grosse: You know what I think it's a risk that we all take. Yeah, but you never know. You know, maybe that guy that you trained and he leaves and goes and becomes an educator you know, maybe he starts sending you. Yes. Some of his students, 

Jimmy Lea: yes, he sends you his A plus students and now you have the best pick of the litter for that.

Jimmy Lea: But then also on the other side of this, what if you train them and they leave? What's the opposite of that? What if you don't train them and they stay? 

Mike Grosse: If you don't train them and they stay and.

Mike Grosse: You know, they just, they get comfortable, they get complacent. Yeah. And, you know, maybe they end up being removed from the company. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We want them to progress. We want them to learn. We want them to grow. And as a, an industry, we want to be more professional. We want to have a career path for our people, for our staff.

Jimmy Lea: What's their goals? What do they want to do? Oh, I just want to turn a wrench for the next 20 years. Great. You have got a home here. As long as we stay productive. You've got a home here. 

Mike Grosse: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It goes a long way. It goes a long way. Well, thank you to everybody that has contributed both online and thank you, Mike, to you and your experience with Glen's Auto, your job security there with yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Glen Brian Promotive. Thank you very much for promotive. You guys are a valuable partner with the institute. Thank you for all you're doing in the industry. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you guys. Thanks Mike. You're welcome. Now one last final question. We'll call this the bonus question for each of you. We'll do it one at a time.

Jimmy Lea: Brian, I'll start with you. If you had a magic wand, what would you change in the automotive aftermarket? And Mike, this is giving you time to think. 

Brian Burris: Ah, thanks Jimmy.

Jimmy Lea: Magic wand, what would you change? 

Brian Burris: I would say keeping. A lot of these kids that we see these days, even my kids they don't want anything to do with turning a wrench. I had a magic wand getting more, getting the younger generation more involved with automotive. There's a lot to learn. There's, it's fun sometimes.

Brian Burris: But magic wand, getting a pipeline of. Younger kids into automotive. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Stardom younger. I love it. I love it. Mike, to you, you have a magic wand. What is the, what's one of the things you would want to change in the industry? 

Mike Grosse: I would wanna change the mindset of the young technician. Everybody.

Mike Grosse: Everybody today seems so focused on the dollars that.

Mike Grosse: It's almost like the, you know, like the passion that older technicians have for this industry. They wanted to just come and fix cars and they got paid for it. Now these kids coming in, you know, I don't know where, I don't know if mommy and daddy teach 'em this, or they're college instructor teaches them this, but they seem to want to come in here with virtually.

Mike Grosse: No knowledge or no hands-on experience and wanna make money, the kind of money that it took me 20 years to get to. And they need to fall in love with their career and be good at it and the money will follow. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, I love that. It's almost in the realm of teach them how to work hard and the money will follow.

Jimmy Lea: Find a passion for what you're doing. And the money will follow 

Mike Grosse: work. Smart. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh yes. Amen to that. That's awesome. Well, thank you very much gentlemen. Thank you to the our friends who are joining us online. We are so happy that we are able to be here and be together for this great conversation. As you hear this information, as you gain this knowledge there's a QR code that's gonna show for about 30 seconds.

Jimmy Lea: Once we're done, pull out your smartphone, get ready to scan this QR code. If you find this information valuable and you would like to learn more about this industry, more about yourself more, learn more about your shop. This is an industry that will definitely chew you up and spit you out if you don't treat it with the right respect.

Jimmy Lea: Hire a coach, hire somebody to be in your corner and help you navigate this sea that's ahead of us. It's a crazy storm. We're all in. As we lock arms together, we can survive this storm together. Nobody's in the same ship. All of our ships are different. Let's lock arms and together we'll make it with that.

Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. I'll see you again soon. Thank you.

Show Summary:

This podcast webinar was hosted by Jimmy Lea of The Institute at the Tools Conference in Pennsylvania, the spotlight is on the evolution of customer loyalty programs in the auto repair industry. The conversation features Jeff Rudnick of Pit Crew Loyalty, alongside shop owners Joe Sturza from Auto Doctor in Michigan and Mike Simard from Alaska. They discuss the shift from traditional, manually-managed rewards to an automated, flexible loyalty platform that drives customer retention, community involvement, and business growth. Real-world examples illustrate how Pit Crew's customizable and scalable platform helps shop owners streamline customer engagement, promote referrals, support local charities, and create long-lasting connections. The episode concludes with data-backed insights and heartfelt reflections on giving back to the community.

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

Guest(s):

Jeff Rudnick, Pit Crew Loyalty

Mike Simard, Simard Automotive

Joe Sturza, Auto DR Xpert

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:38] Pit Crew Marketing rebrands to Pit Crew Loyalty, emphasizing a shift from rewards to full loyalty and engagement.

[00:04:49] Mike shares a failed attempt at a self-managed membership program due to administrative burden and lack of automation.

[00:09:09] Joe describes the challenges of old-school punch cards and manual gift card referral tracking, highlighting the need for automation.

[00:12:27] Jeff explains how the Pit Crew platform automates and gamifies customer referrals, allowing real-time tracking and incentives.

[00:14:40] Mike outlines how automated rewards are crucial for high-volume quick lube shops to avoid manual errors and maintain engagement.

[00:19:00] Joe showcases the power of “cross pollinators,” where local businesses collaborate through the dashboard to offer exclusive customer deals.

[00:26:09] Jeff highlights how the platform transforms the shop into a community hub—similar to the old-school barbershop—with tools for charities, referrals, and events.

[00:29:04] Mike shares how supporting a soup kitchen through storytelling and loyalty point donations resulted in community buzz and positive business impact.

[00:34:34] Data shows that customers who donate loyalty points or refer friends spend up to 35% more and return more frequently.

[00:45:53] Joe praises the customization and partnership approach of the Pit Crew team, which tailored the system to fit Auto Doctor’s community-driven mission.

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4c4Ewbo2DM

Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!

Links & Resources: 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: And good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on where you are. And when you are. It's a morning or afternoon. And today I am presenting from the afternoon. Usually it's 11:00 AM Mountain. I am in Eastern. I'm at the Tools Conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, here with the MWACA Association. And we are, we've got a trade show going.

Jimmy Lea: It is phenomenal. I'm so excited for this third in the series this week of webinars that we're doing. As we lock arms together to really help this industry grow and to help it become awesome and amazing and become better 'cause it's a crazy storm. We're all in. And if we lock arms and we do this together, we will be able to weather this storm together because it is all about a better business, better life, better industry.

Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I am with the Institute and that is our mantra. Better business, better life, better industry. Our guest today, we have joining today right here beside me, Mr. Jeff Rudnick. Hello everybody. As we're here at the Tools Conference, we can put Jeff's camera up. Jeff is with Pit Crew Loyalty.

Jimmy Lea: Hey, look at the difference in our cameras. You're sitting right next to me. Yeah, I know. Totally different. Oh, that's funny. We're a couple inches apart, right? I. That's too funny. That's too funny. All right. Jeff is with pit crew loyalty. And the tremor you felt in the force is the fact that pit crew marketing has become pit crew loyalty.

Jimmy Lea: The re rapid the rewards program is now a loyalty program. This is not a rewards program. You felt that you're gonna hear about it here. Thank you for doing this, Jeff. Oh, thanks. This is gonna be awesome. I'm excited. Joining as well is Joe from auto Doctor. And Joe. Joe. 

Joe Sturza: Joe, thank you for being here, brother.

Joe Sturza: How are you? Hey, appreciate it, Jimmy. I've been trying to get on your podcast for years, man. Well, I'm glad we finally hooked this up together, brother. Where's home for you, Joe? We are in Michigan, north of Detroit, 

Jimmy Lea: north of, well, okay. I was in Michigan, north of Detroit. I understand the, I know where, how far north of Detroit are you?

Jimmy Lea: About a half hour north. Okay, so I took the Kakuy van once upon a time, and I dropped this. Yes. 

Joe Sturza: But you weren't here. I missed you. 

Jimmy Lea: All right, Joe. All right, Joe, I got you, brother. Thank you. Thanks for watching the van too. I really appreciate that. In fact, long story short, I couldn't get an Uber out of your shop and I had to finally call Lyft.

Jimmy Lea: To get a ride down to Detroit so I could catch my flight the next morning. That was a funny story. No, Uber's up in your area. It's all 

Joe Sturza: Lyft. No. Yeah. There's nothing out this way. 

Jimmy Lea: We're in a rural area. Oh. Oh, it was, I felt like I was on the edge of existence. 

Joe Sturza: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: That's us.

Jimmy Lea: That was you. That was the shop joining us as well. From the other side of the continent, from Alaska, Mr. Mike Simard, Mike, how are you brother? 

Mike Simard: Good morning. I'm wonderful. Thank you. 

Jimmy Lea: It is Good morning for you. It's like 9:00 AM 

Mike Simard: It's 9:10 AM It's still early here. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Did you make the drive to Anchorage or are you still in Fairbanks today?

Mike Simard: Still in Fairbanks today. Beautiful sunshine in Fairbanks where my home is 

Jimmy Lea: so. It's gorgeous. That's awesome. So as soon as we're done here, are you headed to Anchorage or, yep. Actually driving 

Mike Simard: to Anchorage. You see my other stores down there, here and as soon as we're done here. So it's 

Jimmy Lea: gonna 

Mike Simard: be a good 

Jimmy Lea: day today.

Jimmy Lea: Nice drive. Very cool. Very cool. Well, we've got a great conversation. I look forward to what we're talking about because we're talking about a revolution of the rewards program and I say revolution, Jeff, that's my word. I don't know what word you use. 

Jeff Rudnick: Well, I don't think it's a revolution.

Jeff Rudnick: I think in this industry maybe it's a disruption. You 

Jimmy Lea: are disrupting the re the loyalty program. 

Jeff Rudnick: Loyalty rewards has been slow and coming to the automotive industry and I think for a lot of reasons that we'll go into technology integrations with shop management systems retail sophistication.

Jeff Rudnick: Recognition by auto shops that they're in the entertainment business finally. And they're in the customer service business. Yeah, the hospitality business. Yeah. And so sometimes things come a little late to the industry, but it has been growing really quickly in the last two years. 

Jimmy Lea: So before we launch into the greatness of what Jeff has created I'd love to get from you, Mike, and then from you, Joe.

Jimmy Lea: What's something that you've done in the past that did not work, that you thought, oh my gosh, this is gonna be great. This is gonna be awesome. Oh, this is, we're gonna have to buy heavy duty hinges. The doors are gonna blow off the hinges. What? What kind of a reward program Mike have you implemented in the past and it just fell flat?

Mike Simard: Well, I would say I've tried a lot of things that didn't work and that's usually how you get better. Right. And specific specifically towards customer retention and how to give them maximum value. One of the things we tried to do in the past was create like a budget program. So in the north you need to keep your heating oil tank full multiple times a year.

Mike Simard: And for example, you know, you would get an autofill and you have a smoothed out payment for 12 months. But we tried to institute, like our own program and manage it ourselves. 

Jimmy Lea: Like an automotive, a an automotive warranty or a, a self-care program, a membership, 

Mike Simard: like a self-care membership base. Pay $300 a month and that way you like a budget program.

Mike Simard: But here's the thing. The idea was to get them to want to come back. And because they have a credit with you and they feel like you give them value and the program gives them value, so there's no surprises. Well, it was way too much to manage the admin part. And so, you know, and we found someone like Jeff, for example, that can help you not in the same context, but in the context of bringing maximum value to customers and something that's already built and can do all the admin work for you behind the scenes is.

Mike Simard: It's huge. So that's one program that never worked. 

Jeff Rudnick: You know what? And then until I met 

Mike Simard: Jeff 

Jeff Rudnick: early on when I first met you, 'cause it was probably 15 years ago or so, and we started going down the path of doing the rewards program and it got very, you had a bunch of ideas. There were a lot of things technologically that we weren't doing yet.

Jeff Rudnick: And we kind of went our separate ways for a few years. I think that's when you implemented an in-house kind of a membership program. 

Mike Simard: Yeah. We also, we did a manual system and there was a lot of benefit to that, a lot of learning. I. And so that system was good, but again, a lot of manual having to send things out manually.

Mike Simard: And what would happen in the busy life of an automotive repair shop, the advisors would forget to send out a thank you or an email or a reward. And so the nice thing that I like about systems like a pit crew is that, it's mostly all automated, so, the streamlined efficiency of the process is extremely important.

Mike Simard: I think when you're looking for a loyalty program. One of the 

Jeff Rudnick: things we learned so early, every shop owner, I used to say, you're like snowflakes, but then that became a bad thing to say, right? And but they're all different. You all have, you're all unique ideas, all your unique, so the software has to be infinitely flexible.

Jeff Rudnick: It just has to, you have to be able to try things, do different things. We can measure and we know, I think like any other solutions provider, when you do it for a long time, yeah. And this is probably wrong, you start to think you know exactly what to do, 

Jimmy Lea: right. 

Jeff Rudnick: And you just get this tunnel vision. Do it like this, do it like that.

Jeff Rudnick: Oh 

Jimmy Lea: yeah. That's a developer's nightmare. I mean, that's the developer mentality is you think, you know, best 

Jeff Rudnick: you do. I mean, you do it for a long time. You get ate, you can't help it. You know, and you say, but you get new ideas all the time. So that's. Probably one of the best innovations that in thinking as well Yeah.

Jeff Rudnick: For us is that we make sure it's infinitely flexible so that it can be tailored to Yeah. Individual. Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: for sure. Now, and Mike, one of these days we have to talk about your membership program. I try to suggest that to my shop in St. George, and probably for the same reasons that you stopped doing it.

Jimmy Lea: They never started doing it, but man I thought for sure, this has got to be a banging. 

Jeff Rudnick: We actually support that now. No, we do. I mean, that's okay. 

Jimmy Lea: We'll have to talk about that in a minute then. Yeah, 

Jeff Rudnick: exactly. 

Jimmy Lea: Let's get to Joe. Joe, what's a, an implementation that you made that did not, 

Joe Sturza: I mean two parts.

Joe Sturza: One we did the old fashioned business card. Punch card. Punch card for oil changes. Five oils. 10 oil changes. What, how many was it? It was five. Five, buy, five get one free. And you know, that's when you know, you forget to put on the card and the printing of like, am oil doesn't count. And you now you're eating $150 oil change and, you know, so yeah that it became a little hectic.

Joe Sturza: And then, you know, referrals. We would send out thank you cards every week along with a gift card for the local coffee shop. Which was nice 'cause it supported local, but it was, again, like Mike was saying, administratively burdensome in the sense that we had to keep track of all that. Where now we are part of a team that things can be done behind closed doors and help us focus on what we're supposed to be doing here at the shop.

Jimmy Lea: Interesting now and when you're talking about gift cards for the coffee shop, was it just a good old here's five bucks of the coffee shop, 

Joe Sturza: or was it 

Joe Sturza: Yeah it was just, yeah, just a little token. 

Jimmy Lea: Thank you. So you had to buy it ahead of time. Yep. Yep. So there wasn't a redemption point of view where like you could hand out a hundred cards and maybe only 35 get redeemed.

Joe Sturza: No, it, it was if for instance, Jeff came into my shop and he said, Hey, Jimmy Lee referred me to you. I would send Jimmy Lee a thank you card with a coffee card to say, Hey, thanks for sending Jeff our way. We really appreciate the recommendation. 

Jimmy Lea: Love it. Love it. I, you know, I have a really good friend in his shop is in California.

Jimmy Lea: He gives a $50 gift card to his shop. This is a $50 gift card only redeemable here. No cash value. You have to redeem it at my shop. As a referral. As a re Yeah. Not only a referral, but even a Thank you. Yeah. So you could use it on an oil service. On a I Maybe he specified no batteries and no tires.

Jimmy Lea: I, I don't know, maybe it was just 50 bucks. You could use it however you wanted. They've found that to be very successful because not only would he hand one to the client, he would hand 'em additional two. Say, give these to your best friends, because if you like that client right, chances are you're gonna like their friends too.

Jimmy Lea: No, chances are their friends are very similar to them 

Joe Sturza: as well. Yeah. Word of mouth you know, out here is huge for us. 

Jimmy Lea: Word, mouth. That's the, 

Joe Sturza: the best type of advertising. And now that we're I call it part of the pit crew team, the ability for a customer, a client, a family member, to get into their dashboard and send referrals out on their own.

Joe Sturza: They get a $25 gift card if they use it. The person referring it to $25 gift card. It's all part of that system that Mike was talking about that's automated. And the customers absolutely love that. That, oh, you're gonna send a gift card to someone on my behalf? Absolutely. And if they use it, I'm gonna give you that same amount.

Joe Sturza: They 

Jeff Rudnick: can actually see who came in. The consumer themselves can see in their dashboard, here's everyone you sent it to and here's who came in. And you can reshare and you can gamify it. So you can say, oh, I like it this month. You've earned the right to give out three referrals or, Hey, it's Christmas. Why don't you use these as a stocking stuffer?

Jimmy Lea: Ooh, there you go. 

Jeff Rudnick: And it can go out that way. 

Jimmy Lea: Love it. I mean, that's a perfect segue, Joe, into what are you doing now? What? What is working? So let's break down this full loyalty program. Mike, what are you implementing in your shops? 'cause you've got quick lubes as well as general repair. Are you using the pit crew loyalty for all of your programs?

Mike Simard: Not yet. I think Jeff and I have a future to do on integrating a lube shop. So the lube shops are going to be a much higher pace, higher volume. Yes. The good part about it is then, is that 

Jimmy Lea: more of like the coffee shop idea, where it is that buy 10 get one free. Do you think or no?

Mike Simard: Well, I do think that those types of customers are gonna definitely be looking for value. All of our customers are looking for value. But the retention model or the concept, I think would work excellently. Now, I don't know how many lube style lube and tire shops Jeff has specifically the technologies there.

Mike Simard: I think there might be, I think with traction there might be a little bit of backend code to write. I'm not sure, but I know they have the abilities to do that. And I'm actually kind of excited because to go back to the old system of the referral cards, the manual stuff, it's gonna be worse. It's gonna be worse than 10 cars a day at a high average row 30, you know, we're 90 to a hundred cars a day in three stores.

Mike Simard: Like, there is no time to be writing handwriting, thank yous. So it has to be a quality program so that way your people can focus on people, focus on communicating value and expectations and serving their needs. And let the system in the background give them added value reminders about the rewards.

Mike Simard: And so when they come back, they're like, you know, why wouldn't I go there again? 'cause they have credit. Like, yeah it's, I get a free oil change like. I think it's gonna be super powerful and I think Jeff just needs to, after we complete this last awesomeness of customer loyalty and communic community things that we're finishing up, I think we should just push and get those loop shops signed up here in the next couple months.

Jeff Rudnick: The most important 

Mike Simard: thing here that, 

Jeff Rudnick: that everyone should understand about loyalty. You wanna throw a party for every customer that comes through the door. Yeah. There the data is so crystal clear. You get the second visit. I have this data on every one of our clients. If you get that second visit, your, the likelihood of a third visit is this, for that shop.

Jeff Rudnick: You get the third visit, the fourth, fifth, and sixth come. So it's about throwing that party with that first time customer and having a suite of benefits for them. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: And that suite of then where we come in, 'cause everyone can do this. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: Anybody can run a loyalty program with a suite of benefits on their own.

Jeff Rudnick: Will you remember to tell them, like, this is where technology comes in. This is where you make that decision. Do you need a technology partner or you don't, here's the suite of benefits. Are they automated? Can you scream it at them so they know it? Is it texted to them, emailed to them? Do they have a login to see it?

Jeff Rudnick: And then will it continually keep that relationship? But coming up with the benefits is not hard. Yeah. Any shop in the world can sit down. With their friends or their consulting company and say, let's list 10 unique selling thing points that we want for our shop. Let's list four benefits. But like what Mike was, what Mike learned was how do we actually manage this?

Jeff Rudnick: I love it through multiple advisors coming on board and it becomes very difficult. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Joe, what do you view implemented for your program in your shop with the pit, Lou pit? I mean, at this point, what haven't we 

Joe Sturza: implemented? You got the full Monty, huh? Yeah. You know, my, my background Jimmy, is I came from a business management, marketing sector.

Joe Sturza: Retired very young. I got an early retirement. My wife didn't want me home anymore, so she's like, go find a job. And so a mutual friend of ours knew the owner here at Auto Doctor and says, you know, he's looking for someone just to answer phones, Joe. I'm like, easy enough. Well, it's now turned into the general manager, but role, right.

Joe Sturza: So, you know, we've created this huge role and you know, he's the visionary. I'm the implementer. He says, Joe, I wanna do this. Let's get this on board. And one of the things was definitely a loyalty program. I happen to see Jeff in a webcast webinar and I'm like, we've gotta get in touch with Jeff because I think this is what we've been looking for all along and everything is automated and tracked for us.

Joe Sturza: So, not only do we have the free oil changes, but we actually have the ability through pit crew. To put. Charities on our dashboards. So, so what we did, and it was the first one we ran and we've only been active with pit crew since January. The first one we did is we have a veteran's home.

Joe Sturza: Here in our area, and we ran a monthly collection of tangible goods, but we also invited our customers through pit crew, through text message and email to donate their loyalty dollars to the cause. We raised a thousand dollars, and now mind you. We hadn't been active that long, so people didn't have a lot of dollars raised in their accounts yet.

Joe Sturza: Right? So to reach that was huge for us. And we're like, wow, this is fantastic. So now we have a second one up there that we're promoting now. So that has been huge. The other thing that has been like I think Jeff was even surprised at how well it was received in our community is the cross pollinator.

Joe Sturza: Ooh, yes. So we have to buy local. Yeah. So we're very big into our chamber of commerce. We're very big about supporting our community. 'cause this actually behind me is maybe half of our brand new shop that we built. And we know we could not have done this. Without the support of our community.

Joe Sturza: So we make sure we're giving back, we're supporting local by local. That is huge for us. So the cross pollinator gave us a unique opportunity to reach out to some people that we've worked with in the past or not and say, Hey, no cost to you. We'd like to give you the opportunity to basically. Showcase your product on our dashboard and offer our customers some type of a discount.

Joe Sturza: Love it. No cost. And they're like, no cost. There's nothing in it. I'm like, no. It's simply just being business partners together. Let's refer each other. Yeah. Right. So as of right now, I've got six cross pollinators live on my system, and the one that expired, which I think they're gonna renew was a local Mediterranean restaurant.

Joe Sturza: They started knowing our customers so well. They weren't even asking for the downloaded coupon on their phone because they knew, oh, auto doctor, customer, I already know. Yeah. You get 10% off. Wow. So, so the cross pollinators have been absolutely fantastic. And now some of the businesses are reciprocating, like down the street from us.

Joe Sturza: If you're familiar with pickleball. Yes. We just had a 24 7 pickleball establishment open up. They're cross pollinating with us. They asked if we could send them a a p and g advertisement that they could run on the screens in their facility to promote our business. Dude that's so rad. So it's like, wow this is working even better than I dreamed it would work with the businesses.

Joe Sturza: I love it. So what would and the customers absolutely. Blown away when they come in. We actually had a flyer printed that explains our loyalty program to them, how to get to their dashboard. Everything you can do with it. They're like, you're giving this to me? Like, yeah, absolutely. They're like, this is so cool.

Joe Sturza: No one else does this around here. And it's like, you know what? That's what sets us apart. That's why we wanna add value to your visit to us. TH and this loyalty program is part of that value of being an auto doctor customer. This is everything you're gonna get, and we're gonna get other people on board with this program too.

Jimmy Lea: That

Jeff Rudnick: Do you want me to, why don't I just, Joe, that was awesome, man. You know, so we've been around a long time and we've had a lot of ideas, this cross pollinator idea. It was literally the idea was a bee flying around Love it. Just pollinating local businesses. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: And like why shouldn't the goal be to spend as little as possible on marketing?

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: And get the biggest possible result. Local businesses all have the same challenges. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: And we like to say we support each other, so why wouldn't we just do this? So we built it into our program that you can easily showcase a local business and have. The consumer from the portal download the offer right to their phone.

Jeff Rudnick: I love it. Show it, track it, manage it, love it. And now these other LO local businesses are also putting in the rewards program. I love it as well. So now it's interesting with new customers. So Joe has been around since January and I like to say like. My customers that have been around a long time, there's some scar tissue.

Jeff Rudnick: Right. You know, because they've been through the 

Jimmy Lea: trenches. 

Jeff Rudnick: Yeah. Like Mike can tell you, he's believed in us since the beginning, but like, Hey, you're not quite there yet. Or That's not quite finished and let's keep 

Jimmy Lea: working on it. Keep tweaking it. So you get all these new 

Jeff Rudnick: customers and they're like, wow, what the old customers are going, why aren't I doing that?

Jeff Rudnick: I'm like, well, 'cause we weren't good enough quite at that point. Right. You know? Yeah. So you gotta play a little bit of catch. But this cross pollinator thing, you gotta remember. People remember what they feel. Yeah. And so the consumer, at any retail retailer in general, they remember the experience, what they feel, how you made them feel about their community or about themselves.

Jeff Rudnick: And when they do a donation, they're not just donating, 

Jimmy Lea: right? 

Jeff Rudnick: They're clicking that button to donate their rewards. They're an instant teammate of yours. To 

Jimmy Lea: doing good. And to promoting your company too, and your, yeah. And promoting the emotion, the feeling, the, 

Jeff Rudnick: the, you're on a team to help the community be a better place to live, work be.

Jeff Rudnick: And the same thing goes with the cross pollinators. People feel it. Yeah. They might not be able to put it into words, but it's more than a 10% discount at the kebab place. It's small businesses, you know, we all go home at night with the same challenges. Yeah. Sometimes business is awesome. Sometimes you're crying at dinner.

Jeff Rudnick: It's just the truth. Small business isn't easy, and when you feel that you have a team, life is better. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true. Absolutely. Totally agree. And I wonder if there's a way for us to analyze this, Mike, Joe. Jeff here. Is there a way that we can analyze it so that instead of. Offering a discount.

Jimmy Lea: What if we offered a value add? So when you partner with these local businesses, instead of saying, Hey, give a discount to my customers, we say, Hey, I want you to charge your premium amount. I want you to charge yeah, 10% more, but I also want you to give my client something more. What is it that we can do?

Jimmy Lea: And some 

Joe Sturza: of 'em 

Jimmy Lea: do that and some of 'em do that. 

Joe Sturza: Yeah. I actually have one that's doing that right now at Jim. If you sign up, you get three free sessions with a personal trainer. So we actually have that value added into that, 

Jimmy Lea: and the beauty of it, of that, I love what they're doing. The beauty of that is with those three free training sessions, hopefully the trainer demonstrates the value of continuing to work with them.

Jimmy Lea: Now they add that to their program. I love that. I think that's phenomenal. 

Jeff Rudnick: And these local businesses now, everything the word of the day it seems is frictionless. You need to make everything easy. Like if Joe had to sit there and get on the, like Joe's done an amazing job getting on the phone with everyone.

Jeff Rudnick: Yeah. Like Mike did, it has done a great job with some of his charities. But in order for this to work for. A lot of small businesses, it has to be super easy. Yeah. So we've made it so that the businesses can now log in to their own account at the shop. The goal is to have the shop be the hub of the community.

Jeff Rudnick: Yeah. So it's charity, cross pollinators, and community events. Yep. So it's a calendar. It's, 

Jimmy Lea: you're the source of truth. 

Jeff Rudnick: Right. And it's like the barbershop of old, right. Yeah. That's kind of where the idea is from. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. But 

Jeff Rudnick: it has to be easy. 

Jimmy Lea: It does, it has to be easy. Mike, question for you.

Jimmy Lea: When it comes to the charities, which of your charities have you found to be the most successful, the most attractive, the most attention grabbing? 

Mike Simard: Well, I think there's a little bit of a explanation of the why about this and a discovery process. I. I've realized over the years, and we've done a few different things and we went deeper in this concept.

Mike Simard: So for example, in oh seven we sponsored a local dog musher. And I discovered that when you have somebody else tell their story and then you can combine it with yours you know, overcoming adversity and doing hard stuff, like running a thousand miles on a dog sled with 16 of your best friends at 45 below and winning the race four years in a row that's a heck of a story.

Mike Simard: And you don't just, you don't just get on a dog sled and. You're Michael Jordan on a dog sled, right? There's 20, 30,000 hours plus. So that was a discovery about local community and it was a bit of a service thing. But then I went deeper. I was like, okay, people actually like that. They were telling me that I was on TV years later when I wasn't even on TV anymore with this guy.

Mike Simard: So that was like, oh, I discovered storytelling. A long time ago. And then Jeff encouraged us to, to couple our charity program with pit crew. And what I discovered there is a deeper level. So, and it's, look it when you can like, try to give back to the community and not necessarily expect anything back, like that's the ultimate form of giving, I think.

Mike Simard: Now obviously there is a business and the more that we make, the more the bigger checks we can write. Yeah. So there's a way to, to do charity, and that's what, you know, I think the institute coaches taught me a long time ago, like, make good money and write big charity checks. Be careful not writing, you know, big discounts on the counter or else you can, you, you can go bankrupt and you have nothing to give.

Mike Simard: So the more you can do in an ethical way be successful for your people, you can elevate them in your community. So what we learned was Stone Soup Kitchen. Was where the need is at. I mean, these are literally people that have no food. It's cold up here. It's a challenge anywhere when you're homeless.

Mike Simard: And so we just simply did a big drive with Stone Soup Kitchen. So learning about storytelling we went on TV and told us their story. Not our story combined with a local celebrity, but their story only, I'm here to just sponsor your story, so we just took us out of it. Really, that's what it was about.

Mike Simard: We just took us out of it and said, we're just here to let you know that there's a little place here that Sues serves breakfast and soup for people that don't have a jacket, don't have a place to go, and they really need your help. And they spoke about it. We did bring in another local celebrity who this year won the Iditarod.

Mike Simard: So like we're repeating history. And we did this before he won the Dita Rodd. All that does is bring credibility to what the call to action. So when we pair up credibility through a local celebrity, we learned by accident again, by just trying to go outside ourself and do something for the community. We raised $4,500 to do this little place, which to them is like humongous.

Mike Simard: Oh yeah. And and then all of a sudden people just, they said a couple months later said. We've never had anything like this. People are just coming by. They didn't know we were here dropping off food, clothes, money, just because you said, told your story and we're the pit crew comes in. The technology part is we also made phone calls and we asked people to donate and that's where that $4,500 went.

Mike Simard: So instead of giving a discount, they have a feel good and they felt good about it. They obviously feel good about the brand. We wrote a nice check, so we felt good. And more importantly, we fed the homeless. We helped feed the homeless and we brought the community along with it. We're about to do another big one with that Iditarod champion for another soup kitchen.

Mike Simard: Same thing. And we just learned so much about storytelling, how to serve your community, think outside your own self and your own needs. And, you know, at the end of the day, one of our sayings is, if you do the right thing, then money should come. So do the right thing. Don't worry about, you know, gotta stay in business, but don't worry about what you're gonna get back.

Mike Simard: And I think it will always come back to you. Oh, it's so true. 

Jeff Rudnick: And where the magic again comes in. This is a really subtle shift. 'cause a lot of shop owners and rightfully so, they don't wanna promote the, these good things they're doing. They're doing it 'cause they want to and it feels good. Yeah.

Jeff Rudnick: But they're not looking to grow business necessarily in that manner. Here's what you're missing is people are hungry for connection. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: And when you put the plaque about the baseball team up in your lobby, that's nice. You've made a donation and you know, you share those things. It might make it in the local paper, but when you reach out and say, we think this is important at ARD or at auto Doctor, if you think it's important too, click here and you can donate a portion of your rewards.

Jeff Rudnick: I always call it the God particle. That's the magic happens right there. 

Jimmy Lea: Poof. 

Jeff Rudnick: Two people doing something good together and 

Jimmy Lea: it 

Jeff Rudnick: changes the 

Jimmy Lea: world. Oh, it does. Oh totally. It does. Yeah. And I love that, that you can do that. So the example that, that caught me when you shared this with me, Jeff, was you talked about donating to the VA hospital.

Jimmy Lea: And so all these people are donating to donating, and then when you get up to that a thousand dollars point. You tell all these people, Hey, next Wednesday at one o'clock we're all gonna get together and hand 'em a big giant check. You are part of this. We'd love to see you there.

Jimmy Lea: Wednesday at two o'clock 

Jeff Rudnick: and here comes the marketing, the conundrum with marketing in general. 'cause this is just about doing good. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: But for every idea there's like a list. A thousand oh items long of what you can do. So you can extend it as far as you want. 

Jimmy Lea: Sure. 

Jeff Rudnick: And when for reach. If you post online about what you're doing, these local charities will also share what you're doing.

Jimmy Lea: A hundred percent. 

Jeff Rudnick: We had one shop in Minnesota had 55,000 views on their Facebook page. From one fundraiser, what? 55,000. That's a lot. That's a lot. People care about this. It's tough. As an automotive repair facility to come up with things to talk about. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: But when you talk about goodness and kindness and the benefits of your loyalty reward program or anything else that's more personal.

Jeff Rudnick: People actually care about it. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Well, and this is a beautiful thing to contact all the media in the area and say, Hey, look, next Wednesday, two o'clock, we're handing over a big check and there's gonna be 20, 30, 40, 50, a hundred people there because they have all donated. Through our automotive repair shop and we're gonna hand a check over.

Jimmy Lea: Correct. You are welcome to be there. And that's all you have to put out there. Right? They're looking for feel good stories, so put it out there and they'll be the ones to tout how great you guys are and Oh, that's wonderful. So, and I love the loyalty, I love this idea. I wanna ask Mike and Joe and then Jeff, if you can support this as well.

Jimmy Lea: What have you seen? Loyalty wise, you know, the average nationwide is 1.2 visits per year. Maybe it's 1.3. Do you know what your visits has? Has it increased? Have you retained more, retained higher? Those that are participating in the community, do they spend more, those that are participating in charities, do they spend more.

Jimmy Lea: So start first with the idea are you retaining your clients or is there a loyalty that's happening by implementing a program like this? 

Jeff Rudnick: Do you mind if I jump in just real quick? 

Jimmy Lea: Hey, 

Jeff Rudnick: hit it. Mainly because we haven't had great access to numbers until this year. We spent the last six months, like three data scientists looking at every touchpoint and how people behave differently.

Jeff Rudnick: So, yeah, we have Joe's a little bit new on the program to have, you know, a bunch of numbers on it. Right. But we know with Mike, people that donated to the Stone Soup Kitchen, yeah. Spent 24% more the next year than his customers that didn't, and those other customers still came back. I know Mike's average repair order, so that's pretty good.

Jeff Rudnick: And. Number of everything goes up and I'd have to read from the actual data, okay. But the number of visits is off the chart. When you have a really good loyalty rewards program, and for any retailer listening, a loyalty rewards program is not just dollars. It can't be in the automotive industry.

Jeff Rudnick: I'm just telling you, we've done it for so long. Consumers don't come in enough. You're not Starbucks. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, they. 

Jeff Rudnick: They are not there frequently enough where they're excited to earn their free cup of coffee and Right. You know, so it's about the other things and it's the other benefits of the program, which I don't wanna be too much of a salesman, but there is a list of benefits that we've created that's ever expanding along with our partnership with local businesses and national businesses that are now supporting our program.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Mike, what are you seeing from your point of view as a shop owner? 

Mike Simard: For retention rates. Again one of the things that's important is our one and done. So when you do a marketing campaign, you get, you know, you get one person in. You know, I think the maybe about 50% return rate, it's a pretty good rate.

Mike Simard: We've increased that return rate probably about 30%. So, I don't know the exact numbers, but I know we've seen a rise in people coming back. So that's super important for us. You know the benefits of the reward dollars that you earn for every dollar you spend, you earn money. The referral program, as you described recently earlier, free oil changes.

Mike Simard: The roadside assistance program is very big, especially up here. We've actually increased that towing to 150 because I. Yeah, tos expensive. And you know, the local ch local charity donation with those reward points is another feel good awesomeness because it's like I can come in for a discount or I can also give it away.

Mike Simard: And that provides that, that awesomeness there. So the customer account portal is really a huge benefit that we've also seen where they can go in and see what's going on with their account at a deeper level and give to charities and do the cross pollination and get those rewards from other.

Mike Simard: Other businesses. So we just know that the more we do this, you know, the biggest thing is making sure that you have a proper, consistent approach to educating your customer. Oh yeah. And how you bring that into, obviously we're fixing their car, we're servicing their vehicle. So how do you bring the right amount of information to the person and communicate?

Mike Simard: It's not just a script, right? It's a conversation. And so how you can bring that to them in a way that they can understand the value. And I think that's the key to any program out there. And so it's been huge for us to see repeat customers across the little town of Fairbanks. Oh, that's beautiful.

Mike Simard: So Mike's one and done 

Jeff Rudnick: rate 30%. And Mike, that's huge. That's awesome. And everyone's across basically you're if you were to build something like this yourself and just give out. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: Just if, honestly, any shop owner listening, if you literally just didn't let a customer leave your store without telling them the awesome things you have, most shops don't even tell the customers about their warranty or you know, they have roadside through maybe the tires that they purchased or any of the other things you might get from a TechNet or from a napa or whoever.

Jeff Rudnick: You would get a decrease in one and dones wouldn't be probably quite as big. But just remember if there's one tip you can take away from today, make sure you tell your customers about the cool things you already have for them. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, that's super cool. Yeah. Joe, what about you as well? Are you seeing a increase?

Jimmy Lea: I mean, you've only been on it for a few months, but 

Joe Sturza: I mean, we I think when we came on board with Jeff we kind of said let's do a, a. Follow up in six months. 

Jimmy Lea: Six months, yeah. And just, 

Joe Sturza: just to kind of give a good window of is this gonna work or not? What'd you say, Jeff? You held my feet to the fire.

Joe Sturza: But you know, you know what I mean? It was almost an instant result and reaction from people. I think. And I don't wanna speak for you, Jeff, but I think Jeff was pleasantly surprised with. How quickly we were getting the response. We were really happy with the outcome because I'm one with a marketing background, you know, with your former place of employment, Jeff or Jimmy kakuy.

Joe Sturza: When I started here, we had Kakuy, but it wasn't being used to its fullest. So I was a kid in a candy shop. Right. You know, I sat down with my rep week or monthly and just dove in there. I'm like, man, if you're gonna pay for this program, use the tools and I. The follow-up portal in that program was like, fantastic.

Joe Sturza: So when I saw Jeff and we went through the program and I saw everything that we could do with it, I'm like, we're doing everything. We're not just launching a little bit. We're doing everything. And I think I caught Jeff off guard. I think I caught Jeff off guard when I said, I want everything. Now.

Joe Sturza: Yeah. I'm not gonna launch just an oil change program. I want it all. Yeah. And I, I think that explains on who we are as a business and how important it is for us to give back to the community, give that value to the customer. And since, I mean, we've only been in this facility, we haven't even been in this facility a year and this brand new facility.

Joe Sturza: And I really a hundred percent believe that pit crew loyalty has been a huge part in. Keeping our customers, retaining them, getting more customers to us, and getting those other businesses to come to us as well, to promote their business and to promote us too. Because when we put our name.

Joe Sturza: On the kebab house down the street, or what have you. That says a lot because we have a really high Google rating and for us to put our stamp of approval on another business in that dashboard says, we endorse this business, we support this business. And them flipping it back to us says the same exact thing.

Jimmy Lea: Love it. So, 

Joe Sturza: you know, customers absolutely love that. I had a real quick, I had a guy come in, I didn't know where he worked. Brand new customer. He had a logo on his shirt. I'm like, you work for that company? And he goes, yeah, I'm the director of operations. It's one of the larger movie theater chains in the state of Michigan.

Joe Sturza: Huh. And I started explaining the, a loyalty program, the cross pollinator to him. And he goes, I said, are you interested? And he goes, absolutely. Email me what you want from us. So then I explained one of my charities, which is called Neighbors Helping Neighbors. And we actually work with our vendors, our part vendors and the business community to fix people's cars for them that cannot afford to do it, but they need their car to get to work.

Joe Sturza: To put food on the table. Yeah. So people can go on our website, they can nominate someone in need, and we have a process that we go through that and then we work with our part vendors and businesses. I'm like, Hey, I know this movie company gives back to our state. I. Tenfold. They are huge in charity. I'm like, interested in this too.

Joe Sturza: Absolutely, Joe. He goes, gimme all the information. So Pit Crew is allowing us to do that networking and build all of those relationships to let the community know, you know, it's not. I mean, yes, ultimately, like Mike said, we're here to make money, but it's also about helping the community that helped build us and giving back and do we want the kudos and props?

Joe Sturza: Absolutely not. We just want to be here to do our job. We want to treat others the way they wanna be treated and show them. And this tool would, I mean, not to keep pumping you up, Jeff, but I'm gonna, but when I saw this. Tool. I'm like, holy cow. This is everything we wanted in one platform, in one dashboard for us.

Joe Sturza: And we can do it all. And it monitors everything and we can track everything. And holy cow, this. This was like great. It's like we did not have to reinvent the wheel or administer it. We got this program right here that does it for us. Well, obviously I appreciate you saying all that. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. But I want checks in the mail, Joe.

Joe Sturza: Yeah, I was gonna say, this is not a paid compensation endorsement. 

Jimmy Lea: No, it's not. And thank you for. Saying that, Joe, thank 

Jeff Rudnick: you. I don't know if people realize how hard every vendor works to really make something that you guys are gonna use and that's gonna work and, you know, there's blood, sweat, and tears that goes into it.

Jeff Rudnick: For us, one of the most important things, and I don't, I still haven't been able to get the word out about this, our job has to be about making marketing fun and easier to do. Yeah. And this is why Fortune 500, 100, all the big retailers have loyalty programs. It is an incredibly efficient. Way to communicate and execute your various programs that you wanna run.

Jeff Rudnick: And it's comprehensible to the consumer Yeah. The community. And it's actionable. So it becomes a playground for you. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. Yeah. 

Jeff Rudnick: And that's what a good loyalty reward program should be. And it, that's what we've been striving to, to build and hopefully we're getting there. 

Joe Sturza: Oh, I love that.

Joe Sturza: And Jimmy, you know, what's nice about pit crew is, you know, initially we had a few hiccups on implementation. We're perfect. Whatcha talking about Jeff? Jeff got his whole team on a teams meeting with me and let me share my vision guys. This is what I see this program to be. And you know what? They designed it for me.

Joe Sturza: They're like, okay, this is what Joe sees for his community. And they the team got to work. It took a little longer to implement than what we initially thought. But you know what? I wanted to implement something that was as close to perfection as possible, and that's what we got. That's, and the team worked with us.

Joe Sturza: We were in constant communication, but by Jeff getting that team on a teams meeting with us showed me that, you know what? I'm not gonna give you this cookie cutter design thing. I'm gonna make this. For you and for your community, and then you run with it. And that's the key thing is you running with it, Jimmy.

Joe Sturza: Because if you just subscribe to this product and let it do its thing, yeah, it'll work. But if you're not involved and getting those cross pollinators and checking things and all that, it's not gonna perform a hundred percent for you. Mike's nodding. You agree with that? 

Jimmy Lea: Oh yeah, for sure. 

Jeff Rudnick: Yeah. I mean we're automating the living daylights out of things so that like businesses can sign up on their own, consumers can check things on their own, the marketing calendar, but there still has to be some will.

Jeff Rudnick: Yeah. And no marketing company can send things out without approval. Right, right. So you, there has to be some involvement. And what Joe did, you know, this is where I'm always so grateful when I. I remember when this happened. I'll tell it real quick. I know we gotta go, because Joe was upset. There was a moment where he was upset with what was going on, and my team who had been working so hard was upset that he was upset.

Jeff Rudnick: And I'm like, guys, we're all gonna do this meeting. Here's why. This is that opportunity for someone who's, he's willing to do everything that we've ever wanted, every idea that we have, and he's gonna implement it all. Why not just let him teach us what we're screwing up at? Yeah. And he did. And so we're better at what we do.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Thanks Joe for getting 'em out of their developer cave. 

Joe Sturza: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Putting 'em into the sunlight. 

Joe Sturza: I I think the, there are companies out there that won't listen to you and won't take your feedback. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Jeff. 

Joe Sturza: Jeff is an example of a company that will listen to you, take your feedback. Implement it and give you the product that is going to help you be successful.

Joe Sturza: 'cause that's the key. This product is gonna help me be successful and help grow in my community. And Jeff and his team really listen to us and we have developed a program and in fact we're meeting next week to actually look into going to the next step already with what we have. We're ready to move forward with even another step of this program because it has been that successful.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Hey, Mike and Joe, I want you to gimme a thumbs up or a thumbs down. I'm gonna ask Jeff some rapid fire questions and yes, you agree or no? No, don't agree, uhoh. All right, so Jeff those shops that are participating in a loyalty program. What's the percentage of increase that they see for customers that are participating versus customers that are not participating?

Jeff Rudnick: Customers? Revenue spent. Revenue percentage increase. We can back this up in court. You're gonna see a 30% increase from customers that you do a redemption with. They come in that first. They come in the second visit. Yeah, you do a redemption. Now they're in. Now they're in. And you're gonna see, but 

Jimmy Lea: thumbs up, thumbs down.

Jimmy Lea: What do you think Mike? Your thumb 

Mike Simard: is hit. Yes. It won't. It won't. Oh, there we go. There's thumb. It's like it's in the virtual world. It's in the virtual, 

Jimmy Lea: yeah. Oh, alright. So, so two, two more questions. Or maybe it's three. So that's those that are participating in the rewards program. What about clients that are using the community and the redemption part of it with the coffee shop, the movie theater?

Jimmy Lea: The restaurant. How much are those 

Jeff Rudnick: customers spending? That's the newest part of our program. Okay, so we don't know that number yet. Don't know that number yet, but I do know from anecdotally we have the numbers of what, the number of people downloading the offers. Oh, there you go.

Jeff Rudnick: Right. So at Joe's location. Yeah. You're roughly, I think last time I, because I wasn't prepared for this. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. No, you're good. We had 

Jeff Rudnick: somewhere around a hundred customers that have downloaded the deals. He got a call from the kebab place that said, wow, that's working 

Jimmy Lea: good. 

Jeff Rudnick: But from a charity standpoint, I think I already shared 

Jimmy Lea: it.

Jimmy Lea: Yes. That's the, and that's the third question. Those that participate in those of us that are clients participating with the shops that are redeeming our points to donate to the VA hospital, the A-S-P-C-A or the animal shelter, or the battered. Women and children shelter, what? Those of us that are participating in that charity and gaining recognition for it, what's the, what are you seeing from a shop point of view?

Jimmy Lea: Across 

Jeff Rudnick: all of our clients, it's 24% increased spend by a consumer that does a 

Jimmy Lea: donation. Thumbs up, thumbs down, Mike, 

Jeff Rudnick: but we have more numbers. Well, okay. If the customer does a referral, if they send a referral to a friend. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. 

Jeff Rudnick: Just the act of send, just the act of sending it. That customer spends 35% more than the, than.

Jimmy Lea: So if I'm referring Mike, I'm spending 35% more because, 

Jeff Rudnick: and you know what? I never realize, it's not just that they're spending more money, they're bringing in their, a lot of times it's if the wife or the husband, they go to a different shop 'cause it's closer to work. 

Jimmy Lea: Sure. 

Jeff Rudnick: When they see the benefits, they say like, you know what, we're getting all this.

Jeff Rudnick: Let's just all go here comes there. So in the referral program, I'll tell you it's the hardest piece. You have to work that a little bit. Yeah. If you want the best benefit as a shop owner, you really should have the pre-printed card as well. Yep. And pass that out. Yep. Yep. We all want set it and forget it.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. But it's not a thing. 

Jeff Rudnick: It's not all. There's no 

Jimmy Lea: silver bullet. 

Jeff Rudnick: No. 

Jimmy Lea: You gotta work it. All right, last final questions. We've got coming in from those that are listening to us, so I don't want to ignore these. I acknowledge them. Thank you very much, John, for your question. With larger accounts, are you guys giving the loyalty rewards to those accounts that are fleets?

Jimmy Lea: Does you mean? Okay. I thought he meant fleets, multiple vehicles. Yeah. And Jeff Jeff says that, or no, Jeff. No, Joe. Joe says that you're not giving it to Yeah, no, 

Joe Sturza: no. We do not do it for the fleet customers, right? Yeah. 'cause we have special pricing for them already. So we don't give it to them.

Joe Sturza: It is for the residential customer. Got it. This 

Jeff Rudnick: gets back to that previous snowflake comment that I made earlier. Everybody's unique. Everyone's unique. So in the automations tab, by the way, everything that we're, we, we know this. I learned if I make the advisors do all of this, it'll never get done. So in the automations tab for any of the different shop management systems, you can choose to auto-enroll fleets or not.

Jeff Rudnick: Or you can manually enroll fleets on your own. But most people that do fleets have a fleet program. But they can leverage this 'cause just, this is a really good sales tip. You wanna go in and impress a fleet on a sales call. You show them your benefits package, including that you will give one per, all you have to do is go to their website, they give away money to charities too.

Jeff Rudnick: Say you come in, you're gonna get 2% back on your rewards card and we're gonna give. Half a percent to charity. Yeah. This charity in your name. Yeah. And this tracks all that. And there's a whole bunch of other things that we do for fleets. Love it. Love it. 

Jimmy Lea: Most people 

Jeff Rudnick: don't give rewards to fleets though.

Jeff Rudnick: 'cause they're already doing 10% off, 

Jimmy Lea: typically. Yeah. Well, and I think if I was doing fleets, I'd charge 'em 10% more. 

Jeff Rudnick: You always say that. 

Jimmy Lea: I know. Well, they want it done so fast. Right. 

Joe Sturza: Exactly. There's a premium for getting it out the door today. 

Jimmy Lea: Yep. 

Joe Sturza: And if you don't have 

Mike Simard: a fleet program, just walk in with this program.

Mike Simard: And I would say either or is good if you have a different program, but if you don't have a program, just make this your fleet program. And that really works well as, as well. People will appreciate that we have a little fleet. Thank you. We have a little 

Jeff Rudnick: fleet packet that, that people use. It's a letter, you know, and a that tells the benefits of the program.

Jeff Rudnick: And a lot of the fleets use it as a giveaway to their, so you say, here's our fleet program and here's. A bunch of gift cards for your employees. Oh, employee benefit program. Now the employees come in, they get enrolled into the plan as well. Love it. 

Joe Sturza: And, you know, pit crew adapted one of our segments for our, one of our business partners.

Joe Sturza: We do trade into towing company. They tow for us. Don't charge us, but. We do stuff for them. So now that's managed through the pit crew system that we can go in there and we can add value in there and subtract value when we know, so we're not doing it on paper and pencil. It's all managed through that system.

Joe Sturza: So they really tailored that to what my needs were for that system. That's perfect. Yeah, 

Jimmy Lea: that's perfect. All right, let's wrap this up with a magic wand question. In a sentence or two. Joe, then Mike. Then Jeff, what would you magically change? What's your magic wand question? Solution. Something that you would want to change if you had a magic wand in the automotive aftermarket Joe 

Joe Sturza: customers with patience.

Jimmy Lea: Ooh, that's a good one. That's a good one, Mike. 

Mike Simard: Training important things in like this on how to communicate and connect with customers and express value over the transactional price. And if we could do that consistently, immediately, and do it better than anybody else, which I think we do have a pretty high bar, there's still more room to grow.

Mike Simard: That's the magic wand for me. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. That's beautiful. Mike. Thank you. Training. Yeah. Training. Jeff, what you got, brother? Magic wand. 

Jeff Rudnick: I wish that we could magically make customers understand that they're better off spending the right amount of money on their vehicle, maintaining it than cons, than fixing it.

Jeff Rudnick: That it would cost them less money and that they would just know that. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Hundred percent. 

Jeff Rudnick: Yeah. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And that, you know, if we do the proper training, as Mike is saying, and we train and educate our clients, our customers, with an educated customer. Buys more. They make better decisions. They stay safer on the roads.

Jimmy Lea: They protect my family. They protect their family and Jeff's family, and Mike's family and Joe's family. And we're all safer on the road because we're educating our customers better so they can make better decisions. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Mike. Thank you Joe. Appreciate you guys being here.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you all very much. Yeah. And those of you in our audience that are here, you're listening to some awesome and great information as we talk about the industry elevating the industry. This is the institute. We bring together the best of the best to help the industry become better. We're here to help you build a better business, have a better life.

Jimmy Lea: Which in fact helps the institute to build a better industry. If you find this information valuable and like to have a discussion in the next 30 seconds, there's gonna be a QR code up on the screen. Pull out your smartphone, scan this QR code, and let's get together. Let's talk about your business, your goals, your numbers, so we can take that to the next level.

Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute. Thank you very much. We'll see you again soon.