Bonus Episode - Vehlo CEO Reveals What's Actually Changing the Automotive Industry in 2026
Now playing — Changing the Industry Podcast
About this episode
Don't get to the end of this year wishing you had taken action to change your business and your life.Click here to schedule a free…
Key takeaways
- —Effective communication is crucial for building a strong company culture.
- —A winning mindset can be cultivated through collaboration and celebrating successes.
- —Feedback, both positive and negative, is essential for employee growth and satisfaction.
- —Creating a unique customer experience is vital for shop success and differentiation.
- —Investing in innovation and adapting to industry changes is necessary for long-term success.
Frequently asked
- How can I improve my shop's culture?
- Improving shop culture starts with clear communication about what winning looks like and fostering collaboration among team members.
- What role does feedback play in employee performance?
- Feedback is crucial as it helps employees understand their contributions and areas for improvement, ultimately leading to a more engaged workforce.
- Why is customer experience important in the automotive industry?
- A positive customer experience can set your shop apart from competitors, leading to customer loyalty and increased referrals.
▸Full transcript
Hey folks, David here, and I'd like to thank you for joining us for the Changing the Industry podcast. Lucas and I started this podcast with the goal of capturing the frank and open conversations you typically have at industry events. Those conversations cover the challenges we face in our business and lives, as well as difficult repairs, new products and services, and everything in between.
We hoped that these recordings would spur our listeners to enact the change they'd like to see in their own lives and businesses. That's also why we've partnered with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. My first management class was with Cecil Bullard, and his genuine passion for helping others in an honest and ethical manner permeates his entire organization. And if you need some of the Institute's help, they have a special offer for our listeners.
Click the link in the show notes and get signed up for a free business analysis. They'll go over your current situation and give you advice on your next steps. And they have everything from free resources and online classes to peer groups, one-on-one coaching, and specific help for MSOs. So don't miss out on this great offer. Click the link in the show notes.
And now on to the podcast. Get that thing out of the way. Oh, is it in the way? Okay, here, let me fix that for you. Oh my God, these chairs are so tall. So what's happening now? I know I was coming over to meet and say hello and now we're— I told you. We got cameras. That's it, we got cameras. I told you, this is how they work.
This is just how it works, right? No good. So, uh, hey, I've been following you on LinkedIn and you seem like a really legit human being. You seem like you're like super genuine, and in your space and in your role, that's really rare today. Tell me a little bit about yourself. All right, man, you better introduce yourself. Yeah, where do I start with that?
How much time do we have? Yeah, uh, so my name is Josh Weiss, CEO of Velo. Where am I looking, by the way? Yeah, you can look anywhere you want. All right, you're on camera no matter which way. All right, so, uh, yeah, live in Tampa, Florida area, uh, grew playing sports, so believe in the team aspect of winning, love winning. So there's a lot of theme of competitiveness and team winning.
And, uh, I do believe that humility is a really good quality and servant leadership is the best way to go. So I try to— we have 700 people at Velo that I think are amazingly talented, so my job is to kind of unleash their capability, let, let that exponential impact of 700 people drive things and have impact. And so my role is more to serve the team and help them do what they do best.
I, I, if you had been on this show a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have believed you, okay? But we went to your customer experience event, okay? And that culture which is exhibited there is like nothing I've ever seen before, right? I made a post about it because I was like, and you can ask David, I came back and I was like, They're like, this doesn't make sense.
How is this even possible? How can this work? Because all of these corporations that we've talked to, all of these people, they say, I believe in team and I believe in giving them the autonomy to do what they want to do, but it doesn't really work that way. And you talk to the team and there is no culture. There's no such thing as culture in that environment.
But you go to your event and know like they are bought into this. They believe in this. I know Mo really well. She believes in what you're doing. Yeah. How did— because like I didn't— I was to the point in my life where I didn't think it was possible to take a team that size and do that. Yeah. How did you do it?
It's a lot of communication around, hey, this is what winning looks like. This is how we need to help each other. We have fun with it. So we talk about hashtag winning. We talk about silos aren't cool. So collaborate, reach across the aisle. We celebrate those things. So we make it a point when we see it, we're like, let's talk about it and brag about it and high-five about it.
We have a saying of high performance, low ego. So we want to be high performance. We want to win, but leave your egos at the door. Like, that's just not how we operate. And it takes everyone buying into that. But, you know, a lot of my job is let me keep helping define what winning looks like. And if you have A players on your team, they're going to lean into that.
Winning begets winning. I grew up in a strong sports culture where we kept winning because the previous teams won before us. And so those that aren't A players kind of self-select out and realize they're not a part of that culture. And it becomes almost like this self-operating machine where, again, those people will leave on their own and the good people will stay and lean in more.
And I think that's Everyone's doing their part to make sure that happens, and then it becomes a real thing. So like the flywheel example in Good to Great, right? Every day, just being persistent on pushing that flywheel in the right way. And culture is really the key. And people talk about culture in a, I think, a too broad a sense without any real meaning behind it.
But I define culture as how your team feels on Sunday night. Amen. About Monday. That's awesome. We have a lot of great team members that love the industry, that love serving customers and partners well, and I think that's just feeding on itself. Well, you know, uh, there was a video I watched— David hates it when I talk about it because I talk about it all the time— but one of the things he says in that video, um, it was by a man named Tim Kite.
He was big into the sports world, right? He developed Ohio State's football culture, right? And it's a really cool video. I'll send it to you at some point. But he talks about the fact that getting it off of the wall because like culture and core beliefs as we know it today is very much poster values, not like core values. And the challenge was getting it off the wall into the hearts of the people.
Well, like you can see that in Mo, you can see that in the people that work with the organization. How did you get it into their hearts? Because like it's one thing to talk, it's another thing to do it. I'm going to actually jump in for that. So what he's leaving out is the communication at Velo is beyond what I've seen before.
So not only are we communicating to our bosses, but then they're funneling it up to him, and then he's communicating back down to us. So every Friday, he actually records and posts a video about highlights of what's happening, both good, bad, and different. But that's important for you to feel like you're valued and you belong at a company, and you're not just hearing it from your direct boss, but you often will hear your good work funneled down from the different levels.
And so you know internally that if you do a bad job, they're hearing about it. So you would prefer them to hear that you're doing a great job. So that way, as he mentioned, I serve the folks at the company and he in turn serves the folks at the company. So everyone's kind of serving one another versus trying to compete. Right? Yes, we're winning at the end of the day, but we're winning together.
And that's what's important. That, that's really powerful because Justin Allen, he was over here speaking at the ADOS booth a minute ago. Justin is a really close friend of mine, and some of the things he's talked about to me was that the most important thing for him was feedback. Right? And he was really struggling with feedback for a while because he didn't feel like he— it wasn't that he was getting bad feedback or good feedback.
He was getting no feedback. And he couldn't find himself. He felt like he was kind of lost. And all it took was a change in position to where somebody else was giving him that feedback. And he said, all of a sudden, I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I feel like I'm going somewhere. So without that feedback, man, you can, you can end up lost so quickly.
And it doesn't always have to be you're, you're doing the best. It's just the feedback, whether good or bad, you need to know What am I doing? How do you feel about the work that I'm putting in? And you hear it from all different angles within the company, not just your direct boss. Well, and I offered ride-alongs. I call them ride-alongs. I'm like, hey, if anyone wants, reach out to me.
I just want to see what you do every day. I want to see how you're either building our products or engaging with our customers or the tickets you're answering. I go, just walk me through what your normal day is. But then that and other meetings, I generally ask at the end, like, well, okay, well, how can I help? Yeah. And you get so much out of that answer.
It's a lot of like, hey, if we actually just did this, I think we can have more impact, or I think we can serve the customer better with this feature. And so just asking, how can I help? Super open-ended, sit back and just listen. Listen. I've gotten so many nuggets out of that. And to give credit where credit's due, Velo's always been a good culture before I got there.
Of course, my, my job and my hope is We only make it better day by day. But we have these things called success factors and we celebrate those in town halls. Like, so when someone's entrepreneurial, that's one of our success factors. Or acquisitive, where we're trying to make sure we've done some acquisitions and we want everyone to feel welcome. We want our products to be obviously integrated better.
We want a better together story when we do those and everyone plays a part in that. So just celebrating those things a lot. Overcommunicating is a big part of it and You know, I don't think you never do enough of that. Well, so that was one of the things that I noticed when Shopware got bought by Velo, right? Like there was that communication and in some ways it was communication that was not there before, right?
Like in some areas, yes. In some areas, no. Yep, that's right. Like it felt like Shopware finally had the potential. I'm not saying it didn't have potential before, but it had momentum, right? Yeah. If anything, more support, right? More support than before. Absolutely. It made a difference in the company. So like, I've got to ask, you know, we've interviewed a lot of CEOs and you're the least uptight of any of them and you're the most real life of any of them.
Good. How are you so chill, right? Like, because there's so many folks in your position, ton of pressure, ton of stress. What led you to Velo, how did you get there? Tell me a little bit about your story. Oh man, that is a very loaded question. I'll do my best to give you a brief answer. So I've always had, I think, very good fortune working with great people.
I worked, the people behind Velo today, I worked with before at a different software company, had a lot of fun, had a lot of respect for them. I was the CEO of a previous company before this in a good spot. They reached out and told me about Velo, and I actually told them no at first. I was like, I'm not looking, I'm in a good spot.
Yeah, appreciate you guys, respect you all, but I think I'm in a good spot, so thanks but no thanks. I appreciate the consideration. They said, no, really, we have a great thing going here, just please fly up and spend a day with us. And out of respect for them, I was like, okay, we'll do. And, um, they started telling me about the company.
They weren't overselling it. I got to ask all the questions that I, I was curious about— culture and how how decisions are made, how we basically work together. And everything sounded great. And they made me a fair offer where I was like, you know what? I talked with my wife. A big part of that answer, frankly, is, you know, my personal faith where I don't worry about those things.
We pray and talk about those things as a family and felt like it was a great opportunity and a blessing. So, It all worked out. And what I tell people now is I've been there now a year and a half. Everything from the people, the culture, the support, it's actually all been better than I thought. Kind of to your comment where you've never seen anything like it.
My goal is to just help multiply the good things that we're already doing and make sure we're not doing any of the silly things that aren't helping the business, helping the customer. And man, it's just worked out so well. I couldn't be happier. You know, like I said, we're 700 VEEPs now. We call them VEEPs at Velo Deep. And I think everyone's having a lot of fun.
We like leading a market. We feel like we're a strong market leader. And that comes with a lot of responsibility to keep doing good work. And I like that thing. So if you think of StrengthsFinders that people have, one of mine is significance. I like being a part of big things and big change. And winning and being competitive is actually my number one strength.
So I couldn't be happier here. I get to hang out with people like Mo and team and go to events like this. So great company, great culture, having a lot of fun and trying to lead the market really along the way. What do you see as challenges in front of us, right? The industry as a whole, right? The automotive industry has some challenges coming.
What do you see as the big challenges that we need to be watching for down the road? I mean, I think it's just constant innovation, right? The speed of change is never probably gonna be slower than it is today, which means it's only gonna accelerate day by day. Being in front of that to make sure you all win, right? I mean, our job, we're successful when our shop owners are winning and we're removing headaches, we're creating efficiencies, we're helping them be more profitable and be more successful.
And that's obviously a big responsibility. So however we can continue to innovate, That requires a lot of investment. You got to pick the right strategies with all those investments. So we get a lot of input from our customers, from our team to do that well. But the speed of change as you think of AI and how that's going to obviously come into play.
And again, ultimately we have to make your business more profitable, make your life easier, remove headache. And the more we can do that, I think the more successful we'll be. But it It's a daily, if not hourly focus, frankly, because the speed of change is so frequent. It is. It is accelerating at a rate that we've never seen before. And it's only going to get crazier.
And, you know, I can't— I want to say maybe it was Mary Barra who said that we've seen in the past 10 years more innovation in the automobile than we had seen the 100 years before. In the next year, we'll see more than we've seen in the last 10. Yeah, right. In one year. And so we're seeing this development at such a rate, it's almost impossible to keep up with.
And that's one of the things that we see with some of these shops is that a lot of them are kind of lagging behind and they're not staying up. So it's important to have partners like Shopware, right? Because if we have that partner that's doing it for us and creating this awesome experience for our client, like that's what it's all about. And so it's not we have to reimagine the customer service experience, right?
I've told her over and over again, her and Carolyn are the reason that I stayed with Shopware when I did. Yeah, but they sat me down and said, hey, listen, you're trying to run this SMS. In your shop like you ran your shop. You have to change this, you have to shift this, you have to run it like it's designed to run.
And so they showed me, and Mo set me down multiple times and said, no, no, no, you're not doing this the easiest way, do this. Yeah. And so Shopware became a partner for our business that made our business what it is today. And it really kind of refined what we believed in when it came to serving the client because it created our customer experience.
And that was at the point that I realized my software stack can be my customer experience, right? And that's something I think so many people miss and they're like, I'm going to go get this software, I'm going to go get this software, I'm going to go get this software. You bring up a good point. So yes, you're giving a great customer experience, but to be fair, they all look like they're the same on the outside.
But Shopware uniquely designed it the way that we present to your customer to be a unique experience. So they may look the same, which is why people are choosing this or that. But they're not, they're not the same. For sure. I've got competitors in my market that use other products and my customers have been to multiple different shops and they're like, this is the most intuitive process that I've ever experienced.
And so I think that it's very important you build partnerships with your software companies and you know what you're working with and then you have to use it the way it was designed to be used. Or you'd miss out on that customer experience, right? For sure. For sure. And like, I don't know if you know this, but like, she is Shopware. I agree.
Doesn't surprise me to hear that. She's the one who makes it happen. I'm just telling you. So I'm literally not— I pay him. I know. She's one of the rare people that I know where every single person who knows her and interacts with her brags about her, loves her, speaks so highly about her. So yeah, I get it. Makes sense. Absolutely. You do a really good job though.
I mean, like, the amount of support that we've gotten from her over the years is the reason that— I mean, how many episodes have we said that they better never let go of Mo because we're out of here? Let me tell you though, you've not heard this story, but one time I— and he tells it all the time, so I'm going to— I went to his shop, I drove by his shop, stopped at his shop to go deliver him goodies, and he did not show up on purpose because he didn't want to hang out.
He, he totally avoided me. I'm like, hey, I'm here at your shop, man. Yeah, rude, huh? Right? But we're still friends. I don't hold it against him. You probably should. He avoids me. And the only reason I'm telling you now is because how many times have you told about this story on the podcast? Probably like 22. At least. Oh, I don't know, every other episode.
We're what, 250 episodes at this point? Do you remember the time I avoided her when she came to the show? I don't want to admit to avoiding people. I just, I was busy. You're lost, man. You're lost. It's okay. She left the shirt behind. He's still got it. I know my wife wears it. Yeah? Yeah. And it would— well, I don't know, you're pretty muscular now, but you lost a bunch of weight.
Your complaint before was you were not gonna fit in it. We should create a wall sometime of you with all your just selfies and your smiles. I mean, we would have a whole wall of just Mo selfies. We absolutely would like Photoshop. One of the girls at the work said, do you— do your cheeks ever hurt from smiling that much? I'm all I mean, it takes more to frown than it does to smile, right?
Well, so like, let's see, we met for the first time at ASTE. That was when I was first starting working on like improving my business. I didn't know anything about business and I didn't go with Shopware for what, another year? Probably. I think you finally signed with us at VISION. Yeah, I think it was like a whole year after. And so like my story was I went to my wife.
I'd had a particularly hard day and I went to my wife and I said, I'm done. I'm out. She's like, what are you talking about? I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. Like I could go get a job working for somebody and I could earn this much money working for somebody else. I'm doing $14,000 a month. This does not work. Yeah.
And I'm done. She said, well, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to go train to be the best technician I can be. And so I said, okay, well, this came in the mail today and she handed me an ASTE postcard. And so I signed up and I went and I thought I was super cool because like I walked through the door and the executive director said hello and he's like, you're Lucas Underwood.
And I'm like, oh yeah, I didn't have my uniform on or anything. Turns out there are only 16 people at the event, right? He knew the other 15. So you're the one he didn't know. Right? Yeah. And so we go in and he said, hey, would you humor me? I see that, you know, you're a shop owner. Why are you not going to shop owner classes?
And I said, I'm done with this. I'm out. Checking out and he said, will you humor me and go to some technical or some management classes? And I said, yeah, sure. So I went to some management classes and said, oh crap, I don't know how to run a business, right? Like I know how to do what the business does, but I don't know how to run the business.
And that's where I met Mo. And so I left there and I joined this group called ASOG on Facebook. I asked questions, I got torched. This dude messages me, the least friendly person I know. Sorry. I'm just being truthful. I'm seeing a theme here. Yeah, I mean, it must have worked out because look. Messages me like, hey, don't listen to those guys.
I'll help you the best I can. So he started giving me advice and the business started getting better. And then I reached out to Mo again. I'm like, hey, this All Data Managed thing's not working out. They lost our whole data file multiple times in online. And so like we lost all of our customer data many times. It was like, man, this is really frustrating.
And so that's when we switched to Shopware. In that same, the very first training, Malan Newton, who's not with us anymore, God rest his soul, we had, I had gone into one of his trainings and he was talking about this Disney experience he had and he was talking about customer service and he said, customer service, we somehow in automotive get in our head, customer service is about how we feel about the guest, not how the guest feels about us.
And so it was that that triggered me to start looking at Shopware. Saying, I want to create a different experience. This is not about a shop management software for me. This is about creating an experience, right? And so then David says to me, he said, I'm looking at all these different softwares. And he said, look, I'm going to tell you one thing that I've learned from being in management in the parts stores for years is always go to the thing that you could train your people on the easiest.
And he said, there is no easier software to train than Shopware on the planet. Right here it is. This is it. And so I called Mo and I was like, hey, I'm thinking about this. And she said, we're going to put you in the sandbox. And so like little step by step, now here we are. So it's been like a wild ride.
Yeah. How long ago was that? Gosh, 2016? No, it was like '18. Was it? Yeah, it was 2018. That's when I joined, 2018. Yeah. And so that, that like, that was the, course-changing in my business. And, and, you know, since then I've done a lot of research in like unreasonable hospitality. And I say, okay, how can I take the product that we have, be it Shopware, whatever we use, and create unreasonable hospitality with that?
And that's our focus. You ever heard the name Horst Schulze? Oh yes, I love Horst Schulze. Absolutely. So I'll have to find a talk that I think is one of the best I've ever heard, and I'll see if I can find and send it to It's so neat. Chatoola Resorts right down the road from my shop, one of his protégés is now managing that hotel.
And so that man, like, ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen, right? And it was a whole different concept. And I think that's something that we're lacking in the automotive space. It's so funny because we were just sitting at lunch talking about this. The last two interviews that we did We had the first person said, "Hey, I believe happiness is fleeting and I'm not sure that it exists in this world."
Right? And then the second one comes in and says, "I find happiness in properly repairing automobiles and knowing that my guest appreciates that." Right? We don't see them as guests in automotive. We see them as a car. We see them as this thing we have to accomplish, this thing we have to do. But we should be treating them as guests. And I think we're missing that.
Aloha, Laura Schultz. Servant leadership. Yeah, you're serving that customer. Yeah, that's the life-changing stuff right there. When you get to the point that you're doing that and then they serve the guest because that's what they do. Yeah. And obviously I get less opportunities to do that, so I get to serve them as best I can. I know it cascades all the way out to the customer and business isn't a zero-sum game, right?
A lot of people think someone wins, so someone loses. I think we can find the win-win-win. So, love it. Yeah. Well, you know, that's what Cecil from the Institute says, is everybody has to win. That's the one rule is like everybody has to win. So anything you want to tell our guests or any Shopware users? Well, one, can't say thank you enough for using the product.
We welcome all the feedback to make it better. We always want to make it better. You know, the idea is just getting better every single day. I was a finance major, so the compound effect of us getting better every single day is going to make sure we have the best product. One of the best ways to do that is to hear the feedback and have conversations with folks like you to make sure we do.
And, you know, at the end of the day, we all win. So our goal is to, to be the best software provider for shops in the country. And no easy task. And excited to make progress every day and hear the feedback. But we got great people along the way. And yeah, just, I mean, can't say thank you enough. I really think gratitude's important.
But at the same time, we got a big responsibility to keep building the best product. Sir, well, I think you're doing a really good job right now. And thank you so much for being here. Yeah, thank you. Yes, sir. Appreciate it. Of course. Thank you for listening to the Changing the Industry podcast. If you enjoy the show, do us a favor and leave us a review on your favorite podcast player.
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Don't get to the end of this year wishing you had taken action to change your business and your life.Click here to schedule a free discovery call for your business: https://geni.us/IFORABEDon't miss an upcoming event with The Institute: https://geni.us/InstituteEvents2026Shop-Ware gives you the tools to provide your shop with everything needed to become optimally profitable.Click here to schedule a free demo: https://info.shop-ware.com/profitabilityTransform your shop's marketing with the best in the automotive industry, Shop Marketing Pros!Get a free audit of your shop's current marketing by clicking here: https://geni.us/ShopMarketingProsShop owners, are you ready to simplify your business operations? Meet 360 Payments, your one-stop solution for effortless payment processing.Imagine this—no more juggling receipts, staplers, or endless paperwork. With 360 Payments, you get everything integrated into a single, sleek digital platform.Simplify payments. Streamline operations. Check out 360payments.com today!In this episode, Lucas and David sit down with Joe Ocello and Tom Elder from AASP New Jersey to discuss the state of the mechanical and collision repair industries. Tom shares his perspective on the growing need for specialized education and proper documentation as vehicles become more technologically advanced. Joe emphasizes the importance of ongoing technical training and communication to keep independent shops competitive and safe.00:00 Teaching and building a skilled team08:22 Ignoring safety instructions14:35 Discussing mechanical challenges19:55 Dealership service concerns26:33 Replacing a deformed metal line28:52 Carrying on the industry's legacy34:24 Importance of business education42:42 Dealing with repair mishaps46:03 Discussing lawsuit strategy and repairs49:57 Used car ADAS diagnostic work58:46 Maryland ADAS certification debate01:00:51 Discussing automotive repair regulations01:08:25 Engaging shops beyond North Carolina01:10:31 Staying focused on future goals
Episode 289 - Rich Fasulo aka Check Engine Chuck Talks Shop Failure to Mobile & Social Media Success
Don't get to the end of this year wishing you had taken action to change your business and your life.Click here to schedule a free discovery call for your business: https://geni.us/IFORABEDon't miss an upcoming event with The Institute: https://geni.us/InstituteEvents2026Shop-Ware gives you the tools to provide your shop with everything needed to become optimally profitable.Click here to schedule a free demo: https://info.shop-ware.com/profitabilityTransform your shop's marketing with the best in the automotive industry, Shop Marketing Pros!Get a free audit of your shop's current marketing by clicking here: https://geni.us/ShopMarketingProsShop owners, are you ready to simplify your business operations? Meet 360 Payments, your one-stop solution for effortless payment processing.Imagine this—no more juggling receipts, staplers, or endless paperwork. With 360 Payments, you get everything integrated into a single, sleek digital platform.Simplify payments. Streamline operations. Check out 360payments.com today!In this episode, the conversation focused on Rich Fasulo's career journey, also known as Check Engine Chuck, as he shared his path from mobile diagnostics to shop ownership and back. One concept discussed was the importance of charging appropriately for diagnostic and repair work, with a strong emphasis on valuing your time and not giving away discounts out of pocket. A key theme that emerged was the struggle to balance caring for customers with running a profitable, sustainable business—highlighting how industry integrity depends on both technical skill and smart business decisions.00:00 Choosing between shop and mobile business06:56 Failing van inspection in New York08:19 Fixing my car with a friend11:42 Fixing a wheel balance issue14:25 Learning from Scannerdanner videos19:54 Writing detailed explanations for claims23:37 Ensuring quality and reputation25:38 Frustration with lack of effort27:23 Frustration with tech industry's focus30:26 Reflecting on past business failures35:51 Explaining billing to customers38:59 Realizing a Habitual Pattern42:03 Learning from industry peers44:34 Sharing videos for personal reasons48:38 Diagnosing and strategizing module repairs51:47 Troubleshooting a no-crank issue53:37 Bringing in more mechanical vendors
Related across the catalog
218 - What Your Opt-Outs Reveal: Your CRM Isn't Broken. It's Being Misused
218 - What Your Opt-Outs Reveal: Your CRM Isn't Broken. It's Being Misused September 9th, 2026 - 00:55:22 Show Summary: Most CRM systems are capable of producing results but the way shops use them can weaken customer relationships. Mass messages often focus on filling bays instead of delivering value customers actually want. Strong retention starts by understanding communication preferences and earning permission before sending messages. Shops can build stronger relationships by creating meaningful reasons for customers to stay connected. Automation can support that process but it should never replace genuine human communication. Returning customers should become a primary measure of success because lifetime value matters far more than a single repair order. A retention focused culture can create steadier car count and stronger long term growth. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): Craig O'Neill, VP of Training Autoflow Show Highlights: [00:02:45] – CRM systems work but shops often misuse their capabilities. [00:06:32] – Mass text blasts can create opt outs instead of appointments. [00:12:10] – Effective communication must focus on what matters to customers. [00:18:18] – Customer retention should create meaningful relationships built on trust. [00:21:08] – Customers should understand why your messages provide real value. [00:27:36] – Promotional mass texts require proper permission before being sent. [00:33:28] – Retention should become a goal across the entire organization. [00:35:02] – Returning customers can reveal more than traditional sales metrics. [00:41:12] – Give customers a compelling reason to return after every visit. [00:45:35] – Safe reliable vehicles provide a powerful purpose for follow up. In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry? Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode. 👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/10RC8L1nKhM 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: Want to learn more? Click Here Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here See The Institute's events list: Click Here Want access to our online classes? Click Here ________________________________________ Episode Transcript Disclaimer This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com. Episode Transcript: Jimmy Lea: Hello, welcome. Glad to be with you today. It is Wednesday, so excited for Webinar Wednesday. Coming to you live from the road. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, here at Brian Slater's shop in Eugene, Oregon. This is the North Eugene Auto Repair in in Eugene, and so coming to you from the road. Thank you, Brian. Jimmy Lea: Appreciate you letting me use your office today as we're out and about visiting shops. It's just an awesome, gorgeous weather here in northern U- northern... no. I was gonna say northern Utah. I'm not in northern Utah. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, and this is not northern Utah, but it is gorgeous weather. Jimmy Lea: So if you don't have gorgeous weather where you are, you wish you were here. We're gonna have a great conversation today. Those of you who have comments, questions, comments, put them into the chat section. That chat section comments allows us to have this conversation back and forth. I will be the voice for You've got questions, comments, concerns for our guest, want to make sure that those are voiced for you, put them in the comments section. Jimmy Lea: My guest with us today is ever-present, ever-linguist, Mr. Craig O'Neill of AutoFlow. Craig, how the heck are you, brother? Craig O'Neill: I'm really good, Jimmy. Really good. I was actually thinking northern Utah, as you mentioned Utah, even though it was Oregon. Both places are beautiful. I can't blame you for the distinction issue there. Craig O'Neill: That was- that's all right. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. No it is absolutely gorgeous up here. Now, I will tell you that there is a large lack of mountains in Eugene, Oregon- ... Jimmy Lea: That northern Utah does have, is bounteous mountains. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah. I can't wait. Ogden, a couple, next month. Next month now is October. Jimmy Lea: Yes. October for the Mars Conference. Craig O'Neill: Yep. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Yes. Speaking of Mars Conferences we're gonna put up a QR code for the Mars Conference. If you scan this QR code, it will get you right onto our registration page, and those sticking around to the very end, there is this very special, very unique offer for anybody who wants to attend the Mars Conference. Jimmy Lea: So stick around, scan the QR code. Save that in your smartphones. We are gonna have a great conversation about marketing. Craig is one of our presenters at the Mars Conference, and super excited for Craig to be here. Craig and I have known each other for a couple of years now, and worked together at a couple of companies, and- Jimmy Lea: glad that we are able to still be friends here in this wonderful industry that we call home. Craig, what are we talking about today? Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, this is the, one of my favorite topics to go into. We're talking about CRM systems, of course. Now I have some opinions about CRM systems. Both of us come from a background that deals in these systems. Craig O'Neill: You have opinions as well, and you have some observations, and my observation is simply this: the systems themselves are capable of some pretty cool things- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... Craig O'Neill: but we aren't using them very well. The it's not broken, they're being misused, is the title of our conversation today. Your CRM isn't broken, it's being misused. Craig O'Neill: And I don't like to walk into a conversation with "Oh, you're doing something wrong", or on the opposite side of it, I don't like to walk into a conversation as you guys are doing it right. You're just fine, but other people are doing it..." Like I, I've used stuff wrong. I've made mistakes in how I leverage the different systems and tools that are available, and I just believe, and I hope you just go along with us today, there might be a better way than our way that we're approaching it now. Craig O'Neill: Be open to that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Be open to it, because what they're, what you as a shop may be doing today is working. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. It's not even a debate. It is getting results of a certain level and type that are appearing to be adequate. Jimmy Lea: Adequate for today. And hopefully with this conversation that you and I are gonna have as we talk about the customer relationship management software Hopefully there's something we can expose shops to that might say, "Hey, maybe there is a different way of doing this." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: So what are these ways? What are the five mistakes that shops make the most, or not the mistakes. What, how can we help these shops improve? Sure. I would call Craig O'Neill: them hurdles that we have to get over, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. This one it's an opportunity for us to make it better. It's an opportunity to make it better. Jimmy Lea: This is what it is. It's not a mistake. You're not doing it wrong. Consider this. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. We're gonna talk about a lot of things on this, and I think before we even get into those hurdles, let's talk about the nature of communication today. Yeah. People's attention span today, because I think that there's a couple of different things that we need to understand. Craig O'Neill: And first off, let's talk about why we even wanna leverage a CRM system. And for many shops, you might have a sustainable s- sort of automatic practice here, but when you're a busy shop, you feel very successful, and then all of a sudden things are not as busy as they are. This happens to all of us. All the time. Craig O'Neill: We've ... shop, Jimmy, our transmission shop, family business that I came up, down into grew up in, and like we never had a slow spell. The shops around us always had those little slow spells, and we're like, "Yeah, we don't." And that was a good feeling until it happened to us, too. So we're all vulnerable to it, and the knee-jerk reaction that I see is this. Craig O'Neill: People as eventually hit that slow spell. They check, see if other people are experiencing it, too. We comfort ourselves with the fact that others are doing it, defining it as a, a market-wide symptom of broader events that we have no control over. And so then we can just comfort ourselves with another idea. Craig O'Neill: It's like, "Ah, it'll come back around." And I heard this over, and over again from my family who is owner of the business, my, my dad and my grandpa, because that has been the experience. It always comes back around. Why would we ever be okay with the fact that a slow spell also technically always comes back around? Craig O'Neill: And if our knee-jerk reaction to those moments is then to go into a, a degree of marketing or a degree of follow-up or a mass blast text strategy, like I see a lot of people fall into is like, "Huh, the work needs to be drummed up. We'll turn to our CRM system. We'll construct the perfect message and send it out, and then people will make appointments and fill our bays." Craig O'Neill: Sound familiar? Jimmy Lea: Oh, it does. It does. And if we know those, those times are gonna come back around because it's cyclical, what are we doing? We... It- Yeah ... is preventable. What are we doing that we can prevent this from happening and being that cyclical item? Because- Craig O'Neill: This is, this goes straight into it, because what I see people doing with the knee-jerk response is they're actually crippling their ability to handle the cycles of this. Craig O'Neill: When you do a knee-jerk text blast response, what's the number one reaction that you get to it every single time? Opt-outs. They are the most common reaction to this, and that's what I... If you go on the socials and you look on comment threads of shop owners experiencing a slow spell, they're asking each other "What's the perfect message that you can type out that gets fewer opt-outs and more appointments?" Craig O'Neill: There isn't one. There is no perfect message that gets X number of people. The ratio will never be the same in two demographics with unique people being the customers or clients in every one of the unique repair facilities that we have. There is no perfect message. Jimmy Lea: No. They're not. They're looking for that silver bullet, Craig. Craig O'Neill: Yes. It's silver bullet is the right term for this, and I discussed this on my podcast in an early episode of the podcast Speak Up: Effective Communication on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. It was episode 14. I said, "What your opt-outs are really telling you," and I think that what they are telling us is something we need to listen to. Craig O'Neill: So now on that, let's move into the attention span of the people in the world today versus the past. And Jimmy, I love to read. I love deep thoughts, and we're gonna get philosophical for a second. I know you don't mind. Love it. We love this. Yeah. Let's Jimmy Lea: go. Craig O'Neill: Signature classic, C.S. Lewis. One of my favorites, Screwtape Letters. Craig O'Neill: In the early chapters in that book it's describing... I won't go into the details of Screwtape Letters, but the way that you distract someone if you're trying to distract them from serious thoughts in C.S. Lewis' time period was, and I'll quote here from the book that- Got the guy to think he was hungry, and then I showed him a newsboy shouting, "The midday paper," and the number 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps, I had him into an unalterable conviction that whatever odd ideas might come into the man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of real life, which he meant by the bus and the newsboy, was enough to show him that all that sort of thing just couldn't be true. Craig O'Neill: He knew he had a narrow escape, and then years later was fond of talking about it. I w- I'll skip ahead. But thanks to the process which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. So this is hard to digest 'cause it's C.S. Craig O'Neill: Lewis. You... It's like a tough piece of wonderful, awesome, the best flavor steak in the world that you gotta chew on a whole lot of times before you can actually get to digesting it. But the point is, C.S. Lewis's era, the distraction was you wanted to get them into this stream of events and that's your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Craig O'Neill: Teach it to call it real life, and don't let him ask what it means by real. And that stream is exactly what people are having today. This is a word used by C.S. Lewis before streaming like we are on a webinar, streaming across the web even existed. What distracted a man? Just being on the street with a bus and a newsboy shouting. Craig O'Neill: That's yesterday. That's 1940s United Kingdom, actually, in C.S. Lewis' time. Let's fast-forward Johann Hari's book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, absolutely nails the same point in the modern age and puts a name to it with this term called the f- this frenetic digital interruption, and he says, "Is pulling our attention away from our thoughts and suppressing your default mode network," cool term. Craig O'Neill: I think we're almost in this constant stimulus-driven, stimulus-bound environment, moving from one distraction to the next, and if you don't remove yourself from that, it will suppress whatever train of thought you had, right? And I think that frenetic digital distraction really i- it's just, we have to acknowledge this is the reality we're in today, and there's people that are struggling with notifications and attention, and bombarded with media messages. Craig O'Neill: Every news article you read has the pop-up ads. Are we in that same zone like C.S. Lewis, where a newsboy and the sign on a bus is the only thing that could distract our attention? No. We are under a constant 24/7 assault for our attention span today. That's where we're communicating from, and when your shop gets a little slow and you decide you're gonna have a knee-jerk reaction to the slowness, and you expect a message to land that leads to action with a population that's drowning in this reality, would it be any surprise that it only sees marginal results? Jimmy Lea: Is there any irony that it is called streaming? Is there any irony that it's called a reel? No. Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, it's like the oldest problems are always resurfaced again in our lifetimes today- Yep ... with different technology. Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's totally different. And now it's 17-second blurbs about it's a seven-second commercial, it's a 17-second commercial. Jimmy Lea: We're being bombarded with this instant stimuli to totally distract us from what is actually real- Yes ... and consequential, and you're being bombarded by things that are momentary blurbs of Jimmy Lea: Endorphins Craig O'Neill: Yeah. It, and it just- It's a Jimmy Lea: temporary- Craig O'Neill: You're competing with that- Yeah ... tendency too, to escape with these things. You're spot on. This, this topic is why I lead into these five barriers to that are causing us, like the things that we're misusing in our CRMs, right? Yeah. I consider them barriers or hurdles because we can get over them. Craig O'Neill: Yeah ... and we can decide to lever it right. And number one and we have a slide for this, so I put it up there. I know some people like to read and some people can listen. I wanted to put this quote on there because... And I'm gonna, fatal sin of speakers, I'm gonna read the quote. I know it's on the slide, but I know some of you can't see it, and I know some of you are only listening. Craig O'Neill: Yes. I can't read it. Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry. It's too small. Too small? Oh, that's okay. That's why I'm here. Yeah. So- You can Jimmy Lea: read all of them. Read all of Craig O'Neill: them ... it's a big meaty slide. Problem number one though is we're not communicating to people on what matters to them. That's the problem. And to reference this point the, a great read, and please write this down, pick up this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. Craig O'Neill: Amen. If you're interested in this topic at all, read that book. It's from the Dale Carnegie and Associates. So updated for the digital age. There's so many profoundly good things in this, and this is a quote I pulled straight from the book, and I wanna make sure it gets its proper reference there. Craig O'Neill: But it says, "When it comes to mattering to others, you must discuss what matters to them. Assume all else will fall on deaf, or in this case, dull ears. This is an interesting principle to consider given the spirit in which the vast majority of people are communicating today. Most messages are primarily meant to educate others about our lives, our products, to reveal compelling portions of ourselves we think others would be attracted to. Craig O'Neill: While this appears to be an assertive strategy, it is actually a passive strategy in that it requires others to connect with us." "The trouble is that's marketing monologue, not relational dialogue. It's assumption, not assimilation. When assumption guides our efforts to befriend or influence others, the results end up on the wrong side of memorable." Craig O'Neill: Okay. End quote. That is that's another, like I'm giving you solid food to digest today. That's, that's- ... we don't have time to go this layer of depth in our presentation at Mars, so that's why I'm really happy to have this conversation today. It's a primer. If you walk in primed with some of these thoughts, you're gonna be able to get a lot more out of it. Craig O'Neill: But here's where I go with this. We are communicating from a position of our interests most of the time in the auto repair shop. When it slows down, we're interested in filling our bay. If we were really interested in having those customers come in, we would have done the harder work of relating and documenting and managing the data, all sorts of things differently to have a sustained conversation that they understood the value in, because we understand what's important to them. Craig O'Neill: And that's a whole different thing, and that's gonna come up again as we move into these, these other hurdles. But I think that's the thing, first and foremost, remember what messages right now are you pushing out there that are not memorable? I didn't give this in the slide, but I have an example recently, Jimmy very recently. Craig O'Neill: I turned 43 earlier in August, and I'm not on social media these days. The one thing that was fun is getting all those birthday harvests. You know how you get all the happy birthday thing. It's actually a lot of work. Yeah. Then you gotta go like everything and all that stuff too. But don't worry, I don't miss that entirely because I have been a patron in local businesses that have CRM systems in my neighborhood chiefly my Subaru dealership where we have a, a vehicle leased presently. Craig O'Neill: And I got three happy birthday emails from three separate people in that organization. Two of them were identical emails automatically constructed, and there was a neat little quote in the bottom of one of those emails. It actually said, "This email is automatically generated, and we do not monitor replies to it." Jimmy Lea: Oh my God. That's- Craig O'Neill: But it was a beautiful picture of balloons with the branding of that dealership on it. Oh, it was touching. It was such a great birthday blessing to receive that on Sunday afternoon. Jimmy Lea: Had it been from an actual person and not an automated system would've made it even better, but... Craig O'Neill: Sure. But does the birthday greeting from a business actually land on the memorable side of communication, or is it a cheap and simple automated gimmick to feign that you care with a direct interest that is more for the business's benefit rather than it is for my birthday, right? Craig O'Neill: Congratulations, you captured my birth date in a data field in a system that is automated to generate a joy, because I don't unsubscribe because I love these examples. It really was a gift for me that I get to use and communicate from. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And that's good. That's good. Craig O'Neill: But no, this is a common thing, and we've we've seen this strategy. Craig O'Neill: You and I have been in the CRM space for a while, and you've seen that given as a best practice. We wanna capture the, birth date and month, not the year. Birth date and month. And then you can have these sort of birthday messages go out. All right, maybe you have that strategy applied in your shop. Craig O'Neill: Is that a wrongness? No. Maybe some people really appreciate it. I think a lot of people don't give it a second thought, and that's the majority. Jimmy Lea: They probably don't, but they also aren't sending it from an email that is not being monitored and not gonna reply. Craig O'Neill: Let's hope not. Yeah. ' Jimmy Lea: Cause if Jimmy's Super Shop were to send you a happy birthday message, it would purely be a happy birthday message. Jimmy Lea: There's no other ulterior motives whatsoever. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Jimmy- And you would reply and say, "Oh, thank you so much, Jimmy's Super Shop." We would reply again to say Craig O'Neill: I would hope so. Yeah. Now, my experience in birthdays are one thing, but all sorts of messages. I know when CRM automation occurs, and I'll touch on this at Mars a little bit further the team is not engaged in that part of the process, and it's difficult for them to engage in the inbound Present Jimmy Lea: conversation. Jimmy Lea: Yeah Craig O'Neill: Yep. There's a, a loss of continuity there. So I do feel a lot of times there's automated things going out from a shop, but there is actually no behavior that is being encouraged or directed or accountable any accountability layer for the team to be a participant in that. So it does play in that. Craig O'Neill: But this goes to number two which I think is at the root of the whole problem, and this is, again, another quote from the Dale Carnegie and Associates. First off, problem number two we're not cultivating a community, and this, this principle comes for me from my study in this book. And as I was reading that book, assessing how shops are leveraging CRMs, this stuck out. Craig O'Neill: And it says, and I quote, "Often forgotten is the long-term plan. Businesses call it a customer retention strategy, but it is best thought of as a lively, meaningful dialogue among a community of friends. If the foundation of all long-term success is the establishment of trust-based relationships, then the goal of all interactions should be to convey value as soon and as often as possible." Jimmy Lea: Not just birthdays. Craig O'Neill: Not just birthdays as a data field. What's meaningful for a client in a repair shop? What's meaningful to them in a repair shop? What is the purpose in our community, and how are you articulating the value of staying in touch so we can continue to express what this purpose is and how it benefits you? Craig O'Neill: And by the way, Mr. Client, it's very important, save this number in your phone so that you recognize that we're a contact 'cause you can reach out to us here, and we're gonna be here if you have any questions. And that's starting to get to the sense of community here. And Jimmy, this is getting more important. Craig O'Neill: In today's world, here's a tip for y'all right now. I want you to open up your phone, go to your text message app, look at the spam folder How many messages do you have in the spam folder of your messages app, whether you're using Android or Apple, does not matter. Automatically, messages are going straight to those folders with default settings from the phone's operating system and device. Craig O'Neill: There's a bunch in there, and a lot of it probably is spam, correct, Jimmy? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I'm pretty sure all of it's spam. Craig O'Neill: A lot of times it's very accurate in mine. I- I've only on occasion seen one or two messages in there. Here's how your shop is gonna land in the spam folder. If the client never accepts you as a contact and never engages in the dialogue with you in text. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: And so the manifestation of this, and I've started to see more of this recently, very recently, just this summer people sending a DVI link to their client, for example, but the client claims they never got it. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: But they do receive- Because it went to spam ... messages without the link went to the spam folder because sometimes those links are just being interpreted when it's not saved as a contact. Craig O'Neill: The solution is to get it saved as a contact. Interesting little issue, but that takes a little effort, doesn't it, to keep your client- Yeah ... to add you as a contact. There's some cool tools to do that, simple QR code scans, and lots of things we can do at the counter to help people through this problem. Craig O'Neill: But we need our advisors to express the importance of the communication and why they should want it before they'll ever accept it as a contact. Jimmy Lea: That's right. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So interesting, right? So I think that cultivation of a community, that's the easy entry point. Help them understand the value of the communication that's coming and why we're going to be reaching you and make sure they actually do want it. Craig O'Neill: And that leads perfectly into hurdle number three. Hurdle number three is we are not gaining an opt-in for the purpose we seek. And Jimmy, you know this is true across the board generally for opt-ins and shop capturing, and we're gonna talk just a minute about this here as well. We'll do this after the next point. Craig O'Neill: The next point is a strong one on this. But you want the customer to want the message from you. Yeah. Does that happen automatically that they understand what you're going to be sending them and why you're going to be sending it? Jimmy Lea: Not unless you explain it. Craig O'Neill: Not unless you explain it. What's the value in it for them? Craig O'Neill: Why is there a benefit for them to be on a list in your shop for a certain type of message? I used an example earlier about text blast when it gets slow. And the mistake I see the most, Jimmy, is that shops literally have their all or repeat customer list, and they just hit this whole list with this message like, "Hey, we're slow. Craig O'Neill: Come in." Yeah. What if... just go with me here. Love it. What if you created a list that people could sign up and subscribe to in your shop? It's like, "Hey, if you wanna join our slow day list, there's a couple advantages of this. If you wanna just you have a few lingering maintenance items type of a thing, and we have openings we have a... Craig O'Neill: Maybe there's a promotion rate, or maybe it's just literally we can get you in and out because we know time is important, and we're not a discount culture anymore here, right? So maybe we express the speed of service. We know it's inconvenient to have the car down when it's quiet like this. We'll have loaners or rides available. Craig O'Neill: Whatever. There's benefits for you signing up on this list, so you can gain access to this thing that we're gonna do to make it better for you. Would you like to be on that list? We maybe send one or two of these out-" a quarter and perfect, right? And they sign up for that, so now you've got a warm lead list of people who are ready to fill your bays when they need filling. Craig O'Neill: How hard would it be to create that? Jimmy Lea: Oh, not very hard, and I wanna rename it already. I wanna call it the VIP available spots list. Perfect. Craig O'Neill: Yes. Yes. All sorts of things that you could do. Yeah, you could call it your membership list. Whatever. You go crazy. Have fun with it. Communicate the value of it. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And you have some- My wife does this at art shows. She sells her art in these art shows, and she's found that even just the placement of the sign-up form matters. Like, when it's front and center, people who are waiting in line for the checkout now are able to sign into that book while they're waiting for their turn to check out with the art, and she gets way more signups for her email list. Craig O'Neill: Love it. It's perfect. Yeah, and similar practices are totally possible still today, but what do shops do? We automatically assume everyone wants to get any type of message we wanna have for any purpose, and we never clarify or distinguish any special type of thing, and thus they never get the opt-in. Craig O'Neill: And thus, what are your opt-outs telling you? Man, that's their first chance to talk to you about their preference for the type of communication you send. And you know what happens in an opt-out, Jimmy. You know as well as I do. That number's blacklisted at the carrier level. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: That's hard to undo. Now you gotta communicate to them about the value of reengaging in that by texting the word start to this number, and that's a harder thing for a busy service advisor or customer service rep to be able to engage in. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: We've gotta communicate with them on the level they want in the form that they want. And sometimes those opt-outs are them saying, "Look, I just don't want to communicate in this method." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: But what do they prefer? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Might Craig O'Neill: be. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: What's the conversation? Where have you built the relationship to continue that conversation on their preferred platform? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Look, I cooked my cellphone a long time ago doing demos of AutoFlow at, with multiple instances. Now I get texts that I forget to clear out of their thing all the time. That texting's not the best way to get me during the day. I am, however, in my inbox. And I promise you, you have clients that's the same thing for them too. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Or they don't even want... Now, go with me here. What if we had a list of people who prefer a phone call follow-up, Jimmy? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. And there are. Craig O'Neill: Yes. Jimmy Lea: There's people that's what they would prefer. Craig O'Neill: Yes. 100% yes. And if you don't get the buy-in from that group, and you think everyone wants a phone call follow-up we already do this- You're wrong Craig O'Neill: at Chris' shop, Jimmy. Yeah. You wanna know in about 90 to 120 follow-up calls that we do in a week there we have a gal doing this for us, for Golden Rule Auto Care. Yeah. We get about 10 to 15% of those calls that go out end up with good connections. Like a good conversation. Jimmy Lea: Oh, they actually answer the phone and have a Craig O'Neill: conversation. Craig O'Neill: Actually answer the phone and have a conversation. Only 10 to 15% 10 to 15. Around 120 calls. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I, Craig O'Neill: I- Not a huge number. Jimmy Lea: No, it's not. Because people are busy, and they don't wanna be interrupted. And those that want the conversations, they're the ones that answer the phone. And the other 80, 85%, 90% prefer a text message or an email or a Facebook message or purely nothing at all. Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much. Goodbye. Craig O'Neill: Let me ask you this, Jimmy. You got it, man. And when you get a phone call today from a number that's not a contact in your phone- ... do you answer it? Jimmy Lea: Voicemail. No. I- Craig O'Neill: Or screening? Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: I found the you push the two buttons on both sides, boop, right into voicemail. Done. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. I, I have, one of the call screener things on mine now. If it's not a contact, it hits that pretty much automatically. I don't answer my phone. I don't answer my phone. I then check to see the missed call, and if it is something important, I'll call it back. That's the world we're entering, and it's the same principle that we just discussed with that text message that i- if they darn a contact, same is true for the phone number that you're dialing from. Craig O'Neill: If that hasn't yet been saved as a contact, look, guys, your call isn't gonna be trusted yet. Area codes that are mine are the least trusted. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yes. But that's the world now, and we have to be able to recognize that and combat that. Yeah ... but that involves becoming that contact, agreeing to that type of conversation, and maybe making a note somewhere in your management or CRM system about those preferred lev- levels of contact. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So- that's the hard work here, and I understand why shops that are low staff or only have one service advisor to five technicians, and he's also the CSR, and he handles payroll because he's also the owner, and yeah, it gets really tough really fast. And you have opportunity there when you're overwhelmed to hire someone else who can do these things, that's gonna add value to your business. Craig O'Neill: They'll be able to help cultivate these lists, which ke- it's more retention, guarantees you have the income and the cashflow to be able to support their livelihood, and everything gets better. But the starting point's really tough. Problem Jimmy Lea: Number four Craig O'Neill: Let's go. All right, this one's key. Mass blasts- Oh Craig O'Neill: without express written permission are against the law. True. And this is- True ... the really bonkers part of this is shops are loosely aware of this and yet they do it anyway. I forget what the fine is right now, and I'm not a lawyer. I'm not giving legal advice. Just disclaimer on that if you can put it in bold. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, no. But I think it's a $1,500 fine per offense, and if somebody knows that they did not expressly give you permission to text them very specifically- Jimmy Lea: Yep ... Craig O'Neill: text is what we're talking about here. Yep ... that's something they could sue you for and win every time. Notice a lot of the largest organizations out there with multiple locations do not engage in this method of follow-up Jimmy Lea: Because- They Craig O'Neill: know the targets Jimmy Lea: they've lost multiple court cases. Jiffy Lube is one that comes to mind. You can Google it. Court cases where Jiffy Lube had to pay out multimillion dollars because of their mass texting clients. A- and- and what's makes it worse is that they were mass texting clients who had opted out. Craig O'Neill: Oh. Oh, no. Craig O'Neill: So they had a blacklist failure- Yeah ... which is even another thing. So yeah, this is where, okay, you videcoders out there, I know you're out there, and I know you're even playing with APIs from groups like Twilio. And you might think "Cool, we can do texting real easy." Guess what? Start managing your blacklist because Twilio sometimes doesn't do it properly for you. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And the carrier sometimes doesn't do it properly, and it is still you on the hook every time. And if you're giving your software platform to other people to use, your platform, unless it has clear terms and conditions, could also fall under some scrutiny. Oh, boy. It gets sticky. Investigate that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It does. It really is. So there's a difference between mass sending a marketing message versus pinpointing and being very specific. Craig O'Neill: Oh, I'm glad you bring this up, Jimmy. Yeah we have a slide on this. So CRM permissions are not actually the same across the board in multiple channels. So the- you probably use terms like transactional versus promotional, Jimmy, I'm sure. Craig O'Neill: But industry terms do vary from- from some- And our industry itself is not usually good at taking universal language- ... Craig O'Neill: And carrying it forward. But these three categories of- of text messages, I put this out. This is I don't have the source on here, but I pulled this source from online. Craig O'Neill: Conversational, informational, promotional. I wanna draw your attention to that blue arrow on the screen. It's kind of a bluish-green arrow, Jimmy. It's on that- Yep ... one, two, three, third row down, where it's talking about how that- that message is constructed. Messages promoting a brand, a product, or a service Or anything that prompts a consumer to buy something, go somewhere, or otherwise take an action. Craig O'Neill: That, if it's in that category, requires express written consent to be legal. Express written consent. Consumers may sign a form, check a box online, or otherwise provide consent to receive promotional text message in some fashion. That express written consent is the highest form of consent, and I haven't met an organization that's tracking it yet. Jimmy Lea: And through the TCPA- Yeah ... which is the act that governs over texting and how you can communicate, it used to be that you had to have a wet signature for that promotional message to go out, and you had to retain it for seven years even after you stopped your business. You still had to have it on file. Jimmy Lea: It's now changed. You can track it digitally. Yes. But you have to be able to provide the source, the date, the time, where it consent was given- Craig O'Neill: Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: for you to send promotional messages. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: conversational, reminders, informational. Now and it's interesting you've got informational broke out here that you do need consent Craig O'Neill: Express consent, which is different than express written consent, and this was interesting to me when I started studying this too, and these things are pretty stable. Craig O'Neill: I don't see this element changing a lot. Yeah. But permission can happen over text on that, or on a form or a website, or verbally, and that's an interesting one. And that's just a message that contains information, just information. It's a status update, it's an appointment confirmation or a reminder. Craig O'Neill: Those types of things are information text, and that's handled- Yeah ... very differently than a promotional marketing text that's asking them to take an action. It tips towards promotional anytime you're asking them to click a link to schedule an appointment, for example, on your slow day blast type of scenario. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. That is a promotional text purely. Even if it's a deferred service reminder. Think about those deferred service drips that people have active in just about every CRM system in the world. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: That is asking the consumer to take an action, and this is exactly the type of thing I will be combating in, in, in our session at Mars 'cause we have a better way forward. Craig O'Neill: We can start talking a little bit about that here too. But those deferred work little drips are... Like, it's a strange thing to do. It's the thing your customer said no to during your visit that we're now assuming they want to receive an, a reminder about without any knowledge that this is coming, and certainly no express written consent. Craig O'Neill: And all of the burden is fully on them to take the action to make something happen about that still deferred work. Yeah. We aren't doing anything. We, in fact, automated the whole thing. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So what's- Craig O'Neill: It's a passive reminder, as we discussed earlier, right? Jimmy Lea: What's the better way? Are we gonna discuss that here, or are you waiting for Mars? Craig O'Neill: Oh, we can ta- we can talk on it here. So our better way is, it depends on our sense of purpose here, but I think let's go to barrier number five before we talk about that better way, 'cause I think this plays into the whole topic that we're discussing. And this is really the largest barrier, and it is the, the one that I think needs to be overcome before you fix any of the other ones. Craig O'Neill: We don't have our whole organization truly oriented towards retention as a goal What are we oriented towards then? Is the question I like to ask. And if you really stop and you really think about what your organization is structured to achieve, what is it? And it might be what you consider your most important metric might give you a clue. Craig O'Neill: I think it's an interesting question to ask, Jimmy. I do this a lot in different courses. I ask what's the most important metric for a service advisor or for a technician or for this or that?" I like to ask specifically for our front counter staff, whether it be a CSR, a reservationist, a service advisor, whoever we have working our front counter. Craig O'Neill: What is their most important metric? And you get all kinds of answers. You've probably heard every one of them, Jimmy. Closing rate. Those service advisors are like, "I sell 98.92% of all work I ever write up." Terrible stat, by the way, 'cause that's the work you write up. You can artificially inflate your closing rate on sales by writing up what you know will sell. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. But I th- I'm gonna give you my answer. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Craig O'Neill: Your ratio of returning customers Jimmy Lea: Agreed Craig O'Neill: It's your most important statistic Jimmy Lea: If they're not coming back, you're doing something wrong Craig O'Neill: Correct. Yeah, I don't care what your ARO is really. It's an interesting stat to know. You'll establish baselines for all sorts of KPIs. Craig O'Neill: They tell you useful information. But is our goal to sell all of the stuff we find on every visit? And is our team like, "Is that's what's gonna impress the boss? That's what's gonna make him very happy"? Jimmy Lea: No, returning customers. Totally agree. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, because what's the value of one good visit, right? Yeah. Craig O'Neill: What's the value of one visit versus the lifetime value of a client? Jimmy Lea: Yes. The lifetime value has so much more weight to it. Neck and neck. Tens of thousands of dollars versus- Craig O'Neill: Hundreds. Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: hundreds that, for that one visit. Craig O'Neill: Some, yeah. Yeah. And o- I had family accounts, family accounts- Yeah ... literally in the hundreds of thousands with, For Jimmy Lea: the lifetime value? Craig O'Neill: Lifetime value of that particular individual. He had a lot of vehicles in the family. Jimmy Lea: And, What's the family fleet? Craig O'Neill: It's the family fleet ... it's a family fleet. It's Jimmy Lea: a Craig O'Neill: fleet Jimmy Lea: account. Craig O'Neill: Yep. Yep, but even when the kids grew up, they were still coming in as well, too, and that, the lifetime value of the relationships that turn into more things, like, man, if that's true, though, and we do this. Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, we pay lip service to this all the time in our industry. It's a relationship-based business. It is. And then we go and we emphasize we gotta sell this much, and this is our target for sales, and all this other thing, and it's and how much time really are we putting our human attention on our team's human attention in this frenetic age on retention strategy? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. How involved are they in your team right now towards the goal of getting people back in the door from the beginning of that visit to the end of that visit, and what happens in between, the humans involved? And Jimmy, you've been in this industry. It... Most shops, I hear they say, "Hey, my guys aren't gonna use this. Craig O'Neill: I just need this to be automated." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We'll try and make it sound as personal as possible in that automation, but Craig O'Neill: Yeah, we use those cool little variables. Your service advisor gets filled in with the service advisor's name, all the automated message, and automation has merit. It does. We create, through automation, consistent repeatability of things that we want to have occur That's good, right? Craig O'Neill: It is. Jimmy Lea: Make it personable, and make sure you're responding. Craig O'Neill: And make sure you had a hand in that, and make sure you are responding. Correct. The service advisors know these are going out, they know when it's going out, and they're maybe involved in scanning to see who replied and who didn't, or maybe that's somebody's job in the shop. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And we'll talk about this at Mars a little further. I believe it is somebody's job in the shop. We call... I call it the reservationist. A lot of people have a CSR. Yes ... it's a fun topic because... And it goes deep, and we have podcasts on that too. But dude, it's an orientation thing. It's if it's important to you, you're gonna do something about it. Craig O'Neill: If it's not important to you, you won't do anything about it, and that's the measure that, yeah, like, all right. So I just kinda threw a C.S. Lewis mindset at you. There's like this is one of the things I love about reading some of these, these thinkers, right? It's and of course, he's Christian apologetics and that sort of thing, but he said... Craig O'Neill: i'm breaking it down to just a simple point, like something is important or it's not important at all. Craig O'Neill: That middle ground in this topic, I think this is true, that middle ground's not given to us, which forces us to either have to decide, "Eh, it's really not important and we can continue as we are because we're okay with the results," or, "No, this is a really important topic. Craig O'Neill: Our strategy for getting clients into the shop is of actually critical importance to the ultimate success of our business, and is the most important thing that we should be focusing on to guarantee our success. So we're gonna really put in all of our effort towards this goal instead of just reacting to the chaos, reacting to the things that made it in today." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: Wow. What would happen to your business with that focus? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Man. We wanna exponentially increase it. We wanna rocket fuel this. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: And I wonder what the statistics are. There, there was a, a, a read a while ago that talked about restaurant industry was tracking this. How can they get a client to come back for the second dining experience- Yeah Jimmy Lea: and the third dining experience, and the fourth dining experience? And once they get 'em in for that fourth dining experience, they've got a client for life. Craig O'Neill: True. Yeah. I actually just had a interesting restaurant follow-up. I'm on the email list for one of the sushi joints here in Grand Rapids. I love sushi. Craig O'Neill: Love this place. We go Maru Sushi on Cherry Street. Fantastic. Next time you're in Grand Rapids, wonderful. Love going there with my wife. It's our go-to spot. We had a couple months of a dry spell there where we didn't make it in, and we were busy with art shows and all sorts of stuff. Sure. And I got an email that must have been triggered. Craig O'Neill: It's like their little lost customer reminder. It's like- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... " Craig O'Neill: It's been a while. Here's a free app- appetizer" Okay ... for next, on, on your next visit." It was an interesting follow-up. I thought it was really good. Oh yeah, it has been a while. Man, I want sushi right now, is what I experienced with that. Craig O'Neill: And then, and there's a benefit for me right there in it, and I already wanna go there anyways. It's just been a while. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: It's a great way of getting you back in. I, there, there was the example That the manager would go around and say, "Oh, is this your first time?" They had different colored napkins, so he knew- The servers ask us, they're the new ones that don't recognize us. Jimmy Lea: They ask, "Have you guys been in before?" It's like, "Oh, yeah." Yeah. All right. "You can hold on to the menu. N- unless you need it to show us that you haven't taken the order yet," right? Yeah. Yeah. The the managers are going around and they're giving away, "Hey, on your second visit, make sure you try the cheesecake, and here's a coupon for a free cheesecake." Jimmy Lea: You get me back for a $100 meal for a free cheesecake, is it worth it? Craig O'Neill: Totally. Jimmy Lea: What's that cheesecake cost you? Craig O'Neill: Cheapest marketing. All right. So look- Cheesecake more cost ... how much Jimmy Lea: money Craig O'Neill: do you spend on other marketing efforts for what kind of results? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And we've got to do the optimizing everywhere. Jimmy Lea: We've got to optimize ourself in all the locations. There's, which is true. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: But also how effective, and it's extremely, ex- extremely effective when they're there at your shop enjoying the experience, you give them a reason to come back. Craig O'Neill: Yes. And I like what you said there, Jimmy, and I think that's worth drawing some out a little further. Craig O'Neill: What you described is what I we have an improv club in our Toastmasters club, so the we play a lot of improv games, and we've been taught the yes and- Yes and ... approach. Yes and. Yes and. It is, it's, so it's a rule in improv where one of the people in your troupe are make something, that's truth now. Craig O'Neill: You react with that. It's not, you can't go combat this thing. It's not this or this. It's these things now have to be recognized as, as connected. The reality of Jimmy Lea: what you create. Combining forces for something good. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So you said- Using that idea ... all networks, all channels, and this is exactly it. Craig O'Neill: This conversation that we're having doesn't say "Oh, yeah, we just master this and we won't need to spend as much money in this other area." That's not necessarily the case. Now, although maybe you have have some restructuring of that, it's you do refine your strategy on how your team is engaging retention, and you continue your outreach efforts, and maybe restructure how your phone call skills and other things go into all the m- effort you did take towards generating leads actually gets converted into real clients that come back again. Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. W- I was talking to a shop the other day, "My marketing's not working. My marketing's not working. I need to redo all my marketing." Got digging into his phone call log, discovered 43% of phone calls were- Ooh ... not being answered. No. 43%. Craig O'Neill: This is the world th- that AI assistants are entering. Craig O'Neill: And Jimmy- Yes ... this is this is the deepest, saddest thing in the world for me. AI assistants are one, a thing that is i- in demand and two, that it's sometimes better than the Jimmy Lea: people. If you're not able to answer the phone, you need to figure out either you need a human that's there answering the phone, or you implement this AI answering system- Oh, man Jimmy Lea: that's tied to your point of sale that sees your schedule, that can schedule- Better Craig O'Neill: at containing the context and keeping the notes and everything else ... four different... Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, I know. Jimmy Lea: And it's true. If- I do not support the idea that the AI answering your system is going to replace your advisor. Jimmy Lea: Absolutely not. Yeah. Craig O'Neill: No. Jimmy Lea: You do need to answer the phone as quickly as you humanly possibly can, but if you're not able to, that's where you've got this backup that can take care of business. And it's an interesting thing. Craig O'Neill: And this backup Jimmy Lea: is just that. Yeah. It needs to be backup, not plan A. Craig O'Neill: Oh, not plan A. Craig O'Neill: And in fact, you need to be aware And we were having this conversation in our team, too 'cause our sales guys, when they're calling shops, they're hitting AI- Jimmy Lea: Yes ... Craig O'Neill: systems far more frequently than they ever used to, and it's interesting to see that volume go. But simultaneously, we understand, like, how do you feel personally when you call a business and the first thing you get is an AI? Craig O'Neill: Are you happy or a little sad about that? And in an election year right now, it has turned divisive. And we did tailor- trace this back to this really started about two weeks ago. Even in demos where we're talking about AI features- ... the data center issue is coming up. And, like, all these things are, like, top of mind, front and center. Craig O'Neill: "Oh, I can't believe you guys are engaging with AI stuff in this world right now." And it's oh, wow, hot button issue. You have an AI assistant, you probably are gonna have a 50/50 split. I'm y- I'm talking 50/50. Some people will love it and think it's fine or just tolerate it. The other 50% are going to hate it, hate you, and may never call you again. Craig O'Neill: And congratulations, now we're in 2026. Yep. Jimmy Lea: And I, I think the 50/50 might be a little, Craig O'Neill: I'm just thinking about how the elections play out- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... for two different parties. I propose there's probably a 30%, maybe a 33% that loves it, 33%- Fair ... that hates it, and 33% that's in that middle that says, "Ah." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: I Craig O'Neill: would love to see a strong third party too, Jimmy, but that's neither here nor there. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So look at this though. We talked orientation. We don't have a whole organization structured towards retention. Now I had a great coach. Bob Greenwood was my coach. He passed away 2021. And I talk about this frequently. I echo what he taught me a long time ago, and he described our professional responsibility. Craig O'Neill: He asked the question, "What's our job? What's our job? What is your job?" I remember being the technician in the room that raised my hand, and I told him what he was expecting someone in the room to raise their hand and say. Jimmy Lea: Fix cars. " Craig O'Neill: I fix cars." Yep. He pounced. He was ready. This is what he did. I've seen him do it multiple conversations after that. Craig O'Neill: He said, "No. Your job, your professional responsibility, is to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient. That's the job. And that, Mr. Client, is why we do a multi-point inspection on every vehicle that we do, and we will send this digitally to you, and we won't let you down." And there's lots more that goes into that, but there's a whole underlaying sense of purpose about the service that we provided. Craig O'Neill: And if that is our job, to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient, we owe it to our customers to be participants in that- Yeah ... as a member of the community of which they are also driving in. It has direct benefits to us and the other people we love on the streets. But that's an orientation, right? Craig O'Neill: And if that is what you believe about your purpose in this industry- Amen ... yeah, we're gonna start following up with the strong ability to communicate that sense of purpose, and people will hear the conviction in there and that commitment that you made to not letting them down. And that is not going to be heard in your competitors. Craig O'Neill: If you master this, and you don't, you will stand out, I promise you. Jimmy Lea: It's true. It's true. Yeah. Craig, this is a, a phenomenal conversation that we're having, talking about all things marketing, customers, customer relationships. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Managing those relationships, communicating in their preferred method, form, and fashion. Jimmy Lea: This is gonna continue in our Mars Conference. I can't wait. Let's throw up that QR code again. If you are able to attend, and you are listening to this, today is... What day is today? Craig O'Neill: Today is the 9th. Jimmy Lea: September 9th It's called Wednesday. September 9th, intensive giveaway winners. Oh, don't forget the giveaway winners here, Craig. Jimmy Lea: We've- Oh ... le- but- Great Do you wanna announce the winners first, or do you wanna announce the the special giveaway for everybody listening? Craig O'Neill: Let's do the winners first, Jimmy. I'm excited. So we had a drawing as we had two tickets to give away to Mars, and we have two winners, and we'll be sending emails to these winners as well. Craig O'Neill: Winner number one, Preston Callahan. Winner number two, Jordan Jawarenko. And we will get those emails out to you and hope to see you in Utah. And yeah bring your hiking shoes if you wanna go up in the hills with me. I definitely encourage getting up in the hills. So- Jimmy Lea: Are you gonna be rucking? Craig O'Neill: Oh, see, when I'm in the hills I don't just bring useless weight, I bring actual hiking gear, so I just call it hiking when I'm actually in a mountain. Jimmy Lea: When you're in Utah, you go hiking. Yeah. Everywhere else it's Craig O'Neill: rucking. Yeah. Rucking is what I would call urban hiking. Jimmy Lea: It's for you flatlanders. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yeah. So no, I will definitely be ha- I have a pack, I have I put water in there for weight and snacks that I can eat, and the, the idea is you get it lighter as you go with that sort of stuff, but- Oh ... it's absolutely beautiful. So these- Yeah ... are the winners from the Autoflow drawing that we'd had. Craig O'Neill: Those of you who did not win on that drawing, we'll still email you and hope to see you in Utah. Take advantage of this promotion. I think it's gonna be a great conversation. I've done this intensive multiple times. Jimmy, I gotta give you guys some props on this because this is my favorite format literally in all events that I go to. Craig O'Neill: You're in one room together at your headquarters in Ogden, Utah- Yeah ... which is a cool town. Everyone hears the same presenter. We get everyone here asking those same questions, and then- Yep ... the next presenter's gonna be up, and then we do that. We have great food in between, and then there's breakout sessions afterward where we get to go and break out into groups and discuss everything that's done. Craig O'Neill: No one's missing any of the context from any of the presentations. It's not like you're in one session and then another session is going on and "Man, that would've been a cool talk too, but this is really good." You don't have any fear of missing out on anything that's happening. Everybody's a participant the whole way. Craig O'Neill: It's awesome. Jimmy Lea: Oh, and I love the, the vendors are included. Everyone is in the same- Yeah ... room, and we're having these conversations together. It's not just shop owner to shop owner point of view. We get everybody's point of view in on these conversations- Yeah ... which is super awesome. All right. So if you scan this QR code, grab out your smartphone, scan this QR code, this is a coupon. Jimmy Lea: It is on- coupon, oh, I hate calling it that. Yeah. This is a special member VIP. Because you are watching this webinar, this is a cu- the, this code is good until 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, Pacific Daylight Time The code is, and I have to switch over to my other computer, the code is Mars300. This is $300 off of the general admission pricing. Jimmy Lea: So you and a- anybody of the public that is out there, you will get the webinar, the the whole entire intensive, Mars Intensive at the institute member pricing. So use the code Mars, M-A-R-S 300, and that is good until, for in the next, what? 12 hours? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Where are we? 10, 12- And after Jimmy Lea: you fill that out- Oh, 13 hours. Jimmy Lea: You got 13 hours. Ready, set, go. Go ahead ... after Craig O'Neill: you fill that out, email us and I will tell you my favorite two sushi joints in Ogden, Utah, and maybe we can even grab a bite there. Jimmy Lea: Ooh, that's great. And you know what? We do have a couple of more tickets available. There's not a lot, but there are a few more tickets available for that exclusive dinner with Cecil Bullard. Craig O'Neill: Nice. Jimmy Lea: We're gonna have some great conversations. Those that are speakers are invited to be able to be part of this conversation and it's an exclusive dinner with Cecil, so you're gonna have some really good, intense, great conversations with the speakers of the event, with Cecil being there. These are gonna be some really good focused conversations. Jimmy Lea: Those Craig O'Neill: are my favorite moments, Jimmy. Yeah, the event is one thing, but the conversations that happen throughout and at dinners these... If you're not frequently going to industry events like this is... You owe it to yourself to do this. The ideas that you get to go back with are phenomenal, and the connections that you make and the sense of community that you feel that, that's permanent Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Craig. Oh, yeah. Congratulations to Preston. Congratulations to Jordan. Look forward to seeing you in Ogden, Utah, October 26th, 27th and 28th, right before SEMA Apex. And for those who are the adventurous types rent a car. Let's go drive down through Zion and Bryce Canyon and- Yes Jimmy Lea: I'm sure Craig Craig O'Neill: and- Zion. If you haven't been to Zion National Park, what is that place? It is beautiful. It is. Southern Utah, phenomenal, dude. I could go... We have another hour here, so we can just talk about Southern Utah. Man, dude- ... you guys have got the pocket of beauty in this world. It is phenomenal. Craig O'Neill: Like- Jimmy Lea: It's gorgeous. Yeah. It is gorgeous. Craig O'Neill: Absolutely. You will... And Salt Lake City's no joke either. You fly in there, you're gonna think, "This is amazing," and it is. And then you go to Southern Utah and you think "What is... It gets better?" Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Glad you had a great experience with your family down there in Southern Utah. Craig O'Neill: Dude, my wife and I are flying out a little early. We're staying through the weekend before the Mars Intensive we're gonna be hiking some hills then too. It's hard to get the bigger hikes in between the event stuff. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Craig O'Neill: It gets dark- Yes, it is ... it gets hard on the mountain. Jimmy Lea: It does. It does. Jimmy Lea: Even with that, it's not quite enough. I got you. With that, thank you, Craig. I appreciate you being here, brother. Oh, thanks. Thank you so much. Look forward to Mars- Can't wait ... the Mars Intensive. Let's continue this conversation. Let's get in deeper with these conversations and have a great time. I will see you there. Jimmy Lea: Thank you, everybody. See Craig O'Neill: you soon.
Autoshop Ministries Episode 9- Ask With Vision: What Do You Really Want from God?
Joe Adams and Pastor Devonte Tidwell unpack the story from Mark 10 to show why being specific about what you ask for matters in prayer, leadership, and business. They contrast clear, faith-filled requests with vague desires and explain how vision shapes outcomes. The episode offers practical takeaways: sharpen your language, examine motives behind requests, trust God’s timing, and seek the deeper need (sight) rather than temporary status (a seat).
Shop Owners: Maybe YOU'RE the Problem | Tristin Sweeney - 38
Rick White was my VERY FIRST business coach, and trust me when I say he helped me get my shop-owner life together! 😂 Now I’m proud to have 180Biz presenting Downshift, so head to 180Biz.com and book your FREE strategy session with Rick because, honey, you don’t know what you don’t know!Y’all, if you missed the first Tektonic, you missed a GOOD one, but you've got another chance! 😂 Tekmetric is going even BIGGER in Houston, Texas, April 1–3, 2027, so head to Tekmetric.com/Tektonic and get registered because you're NOT missing out twice!Consistency is key - heard that! But, consistency is HARD. That's why I gave up on trying and let the experts handle it. Detect Auto. Let them clean up your estimating process and raise your ARO - like they did for me! CLICK HERE TO BOOK A DEMOAt 29 years old, Tristin Sweeney is running an auto repair shop, building automotive technology, and questioning some of the industry's favorite excuses. In this episode, Tonnika Haynes talks with Tristin about his unconventional path from the startup world into automotive, acquiring Honest Automotive, building Shift, and why owning a shop became the ultimate testing ground for solving real industry problems. But things get spicy when they tackle the supposed technician shortage, outdated hiring practices, shop owners blaming younger generations, and why good employees may be leaving shops that refuse to change. They also dig into AI, technician training, communication, leadership, burnout, and why new technology should solve problems instead of creating more work. If you're a shop owner who keeps saying, “Nobody wants to work anymore,” this conversation might make you look in the mirror.Timestamps:00:00 Why automotive has become unattractive to work in00:23 Downshift intro00:42 Meet Tristin Sweeney: 29, busy, and obsessed with automotive01:23 Audi, Volkswagens, and where the car obsession started03:15 Can you be a great service advisor without knowing cars?04:40 There are more automotive careers than turning wrenches06:26 From tech startups to the automotive industry07:17 Getting laid off, joining ShopGenie, and finding his industry09:17 Running TWO automotive businesses at 2910:11 How Tristin bought Honest Automotive after finding it on Facebook14:01 Has shop ownership given him gray hair yet?14:32 Building a shop around passion and customer experience16:21 Honest Automotive is also Tristin’s “laboratory”16:48 How Shift Automotive was born18:19 Building software from the problems that drive shop owners crazy19:10 Technology problem or people problem?20:17 How does someone working 60–70 hours a week avoid burnout?22:55 Success isn’t worth burning yourself out by 3023:19 Tonnika gets VERY personal about Tristin having kids 😂25:32 Why Tristin is committed to automotive for the long haul28:53 Shift grows to more than 150 shops30:02 Why simply SHOWING UP can change your career31:21 The “Gen Z stare” and learning how to communicate33:34 Get in rooms where you’re uncomfortable37:04 What will automotive look like 10 years from now?41:11 Shop owners who ignore AI WILL get left behind42:43 How should shops prepare technicians for new technology?43:27 Does every tech need to understand the newest cars right now?45:48 Why the next generation matters more than ever47:58 What does a technician actually need to “look like”?48:48 Is the technician shortage actually a hiring problem?49:48 How many great technicians are shops overlooking?50:48 “I hire people. I don’t hire jobs.”52:00 Why automotive can be an unattractive place to work54:18 Great shops generally aren’t struggling to find applicants54:51 The talent is out there—and some of them want to leave their current shop55:55 If recruiters can steal your technicians, that’s a YOU problem56:04 Most shop problems start with the owner57:30 Accepting criticism from your employees—even your own son58:03 Old-school leadership vs. the way Tonnika leads today59:33 The macaroni-and-cheese recipe for evolving a family business1:01:47 Is treating every employee differently “coddling”?1:03:50 Why one universal pay plan doesn’t work for everyone1:04:39 Flexible schedules, flat rate, salary, and what actually motivates people1:07:08 Shop owners who refuse to compromise may lose great technicians1:07:56 Bad bosses create the next generation of bad bosses1:08:21 Why leadership and communication have to be learned1:13:00 Stop micromanaging every detail of your shop1:14:22 “Granddad did it that way” isn’t a good enough reason anymore1:15:28 The Carfax data debate gets spicy 😂1:16:24 What Carfax actually gets from your shop1:17:47 Tonnika’s grandfather discovers OnStar and thinks “they’re coming for him”1:19:03 Technology fear usually comes from misunderstanding1:19:45 Tristin’s legacy: Leave automotive better than he found it1:20:00 Where to find Honest Automotive and Shift Automotive1:21:22 Closing, AI hot takes, and what’s next
Why Young Technicians Keep Failing | Riley Spence - Ep 36
Rick White was my VERY FIRST business coach, and trust me when I say he helped me get my shop-owner life together! 😂 Now I’m proud to have 180Biz presenting Downshift, so head to 180Biz.com and book your FREE strategy session with Rick because, honey, you don’t know what you don’t know!Y’all, if you missed the first Tektonic, you missed a GOOD one, but you've got another chance! 😂 Tekmetric is going even BIGGER in Houston, Texas, April 1–3, 2027, so head to Tekmetric.com/Tektonic and get registered because you're NOT missing out twice!Anybody can run a shop. Building one that lasts? That's a whole different story. If you're ready to build smarter systems and a better experience for your team and customers, check out Tekmetric HERE00:00 Meet Riley Spence and the dangers of reading internet comments03:12 Starting in the automotive industry at 14 years old04:54 Learning from mistakes, trouble, and a different career path06:06 Moving from turning wrenches into service and parts management07:36 Being promoted without training, procedures, or support08:21 Are service advisors really doing the easier job?09:52 How technician roles differ between dealerships, independents, and fleets12:31 Front and back must work together—not against each other14:35 Ego, arguments, and the shop cultures nobody wants17:23 Why Riley loves his current shop and the people around him18:34 Not every mentor is right for every apprentice19:02 Riley admits how ego hurt him as a young technician20:11 What Tonnika tells young employees who ask for help but won’t listen22:20 Making mistakes, slowing down, and learning without giving up24:20 What happens when a technician oversells their abilities25:51 Tonnika’s “green banana” scale for inexperienced technicians26:54 Do experienced technicians actually want to teach the next generation?28:30 The most important lesson for apprentices: shut up and listen30:00 Could an experienced technician learn from a 20-year-old apprentice?33:00 How younger employees can make an entire shop better35:18 Accountability, respect, and preparing young people for the workforce37:42 Mental health is real—but it cannot erase accountability41:04 Work-life balance and creating a safe place for technicians to talk44:10 Riley shares a costly mistake involving a car with no brake pedal47:52 The high-school dropout who became a talented technician50:35 Finding potential in unexpected employees51:24 How shops can make automotive careers more attractive53:01 Tool allowances and helping young technicians build a toolbox54:45 Why shops need to invest in training55:20 Technicians don’t have to wait for their employer to educate them58:40 Don’t let a bad shop stop your career growth01:03:00 Why support at home matters in a demanding automotive career01:05:11 Parenting your own children is not “babysitting”01:07:33 From “Brown’s daughter” to “Tonnika’s dad”01:08:09 Making a difference in employees’ lives01:10:36 What legacy really means inside and outside the shop01:12:52 Why shop owners need honest feedback from their employees01:21:11 Jordan’s roadside repair and a helpful stranger01:22:11 Banana pudding, Southern culture, and automotive friendships01:23:47 The automotive leaders Riley admires01:26:32 Why conversations and community are changing the industry01:27:00 Why Tonnika finally started a podcast01:27:29 Showing young people that automotive can be a great career01:29:24 Riley’s responsibility to the next generation01:29:42 Dirty hands, clean money