Ep 113 - Saurav Kumar & Kamran Rahman | Why Generic Social Media Is Killing Your Shop

0:00There's a lot of shops that'll post generic media because they've hired a professional company and it's in years past, AI images, $49.99 oil change or a happy holiday. Don't shit on my cheap oil change. I love me a cheap oil change. And they, and they think, you know, oh, we talked to many shops. Oh, I'm already, I'm already doing social media. I'm already got to do marketing.

0:21And I go look and I'm like, holy shit, really? Like this, this is posted at 100 other shops. The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we or our guests may say do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along.

0:49So without further ado, here's your host. Mike Allen with Confessions of a Shop Owner presented by TechMetric. Simply the best software ever made. Let's be honest, in this business everything needs your attention all at once. A customer's waiting on an update, a vehicle's ready for pickup, there's a payment question at the counter, the phone's ringing, another estimate needs approval. Everybody needs something and it all seems to hit at the same time.

1:14That's why having everything in one place matters. TechMetric brings your shop management, your payment processing, and your marketing all together in one platform So you're not bouncing back and forth between systems and losing time chasing updates. It keeps your team aligned and gives your customers a better experience from drop-off to checkout. Learn more at techmetric.com, tap the link in the show notes, or scan the QR code below.

1:36ASTA Expo 2026 coming at you September 24th, 25th, and 26th, just around the corner. If you've been hiding under a rock and you don't know what that is, it is only the very best. Networking, training, and trade show event in the country, or at least east of the Mississippi. So I believe that you need to be there. It's bigger every year. It's better every year.

2:00And to top it all off, Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosting the hospitality suite for the 2nd consecutive year. If you hadn't heard, it was the best freaking hospitality suite in the history of the automotive industry, hands down, no doubt. And if you also haven't heard, we are giving tickets away to the expo this year. The podcast is, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors.

2:21Astausa.org to learn more and to buy tickets. Be there or be square, dog. So I mean, was it the worst day of recording that you guys have ever had? It was pretty close to it. Who was worse? No, just breaking your buckley was worse. Greg Buckley. Jeff Buckley. You haven't worked with Jeff yet. I was like, who? Greg's gonna kill you. I know Jeff Buckley is in Texas.

2:53He's a shop owner in Texas. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, we don't know. He could be the worst, possibly. Well, I mean, you got to go record with him and find out. So, um, I had a lot of fun today. So, um, I feel like I probably did you guys a disservice because I didn't call you and be like, hey, what should I do to prep the environment?

3:16I was intentional with the team. I didn't tell them because I didn't want them like getting their hair cut and trying to be all like nervous about it, right? Maybe that was a good thing, maybe it was a mistake, but we didn't clean up the shop at all. There was no like trying to put lipstick on that pig. It was just, well, let me show you what it's really like, for better or for worse.

3:35So hopefully it wasn't the worst place you've ever been, and you just lied to me and told me it wasn't the worst day of recording you've ever had, so that's good. But I'm interested to see what comes of it. I'm excited to see the finished product afterwards. This is your first time out, and so when you're working with clients at the higher level, one of your higher packages, how frequently do you need to visit to get new content?

4:02You know, it really does depend how much media we capture on our first on-site, right? Like In our first session here today, we did close to, I think, 12 videos that we captured alongside with probably 12+ picture carousels. And so that's enough media to cover 3 strong months. And then we still have tomorrow left where we're gonna hit the floor running and capture more.

4:31We're always about quality over quantity. Okay, right, uh, as we get used to the shop a bit more, it just speeds up. How do you feel about, uh, marrying the content that you guys create and produce and, and release at your cadence? If I wanted to be creating like some goofy silly videos in the shop and also releasing them, does that work counter to what you're trying to do, or can it work together?

4:59You know, as of right now, we haven't had any clients do that, right? Um, what we do is an all-inclusive, you know, service that we provide to all of our clients, and so it's pretty much hands-off for them. So keep my sticky fucking fingers off of my social media, just let you manage it? You know, you're more than welcome to step into it.

5:16What we'll say is, uh, send over the piece to us so we can take a look at it and maybe put some magic behind it a little bit. Okay, okay. Uh, we don't wanna— we wanna keep the image, the quality, and the execution proper, but we're, we're open to you goofing around with the team on there. Well, I can guarantee you that the quality will not be what you guys brought, because seeing the professionalism that y'all came in with and the equipment that you came in with, this is not hobby-level shit.

5:42This is real deal, uh, and it's to be expected, you know. That's, that's what you do. So that's right. I was super impressed. Uh, you know, we'll step back a little bit. Uh, We first met at Elite's Ignite event. Yeah. And I didn't know you from anybody, and I was like, who the hell is this dude who's— he's dropping all the industry buzzwords, uh, and I've never met him before.

6:09I don't— what is this? I don't even know what his business does. Like, we integrate and funnel. And I was like, I don't know what the fuck you just said, bro. And I was like, where's your name badge? And I thought you were just some dude who had come into the event who wasn't registered, who was trying to drum up business without like being a registered vendor at the event.

6:27And if you know me, you know that I love Elite and everybody there. And I was like, no, no, no, we're gonna go up front right now. I thought I was like being the hall monitor police on your ass or something. Yeah, it turns out that you actually were legit. You just hadn't got your badge yet. I was like, let me, let me bring in Hannah into this.

6:42Hannah, could you, could you talk with this guy that I have no clue who he is? Let him know that we belong here as well. And then you knew right away. Yeah. I tend to forget my badge anytime I go to any events. And ID. And ID as well. Like, I don't have my ID on me right now. It's at the hotel.

7:03I find that traveling around the country without ID is problematic. It definitely can be. I'll keep my passport close to me when I go to the airport. Outside of that, I've just been living freely, you know, having my ID on my phone. If someone wants to look me up, you know, um, I mean, we'll definitely go to stores that require an ID and he'll be like, go get this and this and this from the store and go by yourself because I didn't bring my ID.

7:31Yeah, and that happens like 9 out of 10 times. It happens very frequently. I just hate carrying things on me. The only 2 things I'll ever carry is my phone and, and maybe my car key. Maybe. I guess you got Apple Pay or whatever your device is, uh, So you can pay. And I tell him, I'm like, dude, you always have to carry, uh, your wallet with your ID and like some form of payment.

7:56And he was like, dude, you know what, I think it's just because you're old that you're saying that. Yeah, I stopped carrying my wallet a long time ago. And I was like, oh well, that's valid feedback, maybe that's true. I mean, I used to carry like the big fat-ass trifold. I think I'm trying to dumb it down a little bit. But that still is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes to have that.

8:17But I feel like you need like ID, insurance card. Like I've got, I've got a company credit card from each of the companies, one for the podcast. I don't know, man. I could put all that shit on my phone though, is what you're saying, if I just wasn't from the 1970s. You could try it. Yeah, I think it'll work well. Yeah, I was gonna say, going back to Elite, so after— so there's— you met— you know Josh Hammerling?

8:49Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like we had been just kind of following what he's working on on Facebook, of course. I think we actually had dinner the night that I met you. Yeah. Because he was from— he lived in Phoenix, right? Yeah. So yeah. That's right. And so when we were coming into Elite beforehand, we're like, Hey, let's meet in person. Just come in at the tail of Elite Ignite.

9:10Yeah, we briefly met him. And then, um, when we got back to Seattle, Josh was like, yeah, I was, uh, talking to Mike Allen. And I'm like, which guy is that? Because there's like a Mike Allen and a Matt Allen. Yeah, right. There's a lot of us running around. Yeah. And so Josh is like, yeah, he's a— uh, Mike was, uh, mentioning something about you guys and he has no idea what you guys I'm like, good feedback.

9:35I tried to understand. I failed to understand. I'm not sure if that was your messaging or my comprehending. I may have overcomplicated it initially, right? This is just, I think Ignite was just a few weeks, maybe a month or so after we had visited San Francisco, right? You had all the buzzwords. I had all the technology buzzwords in my head and those people talk different, right?

10:02Silicon Valley folks, they understand things in different lingo. And so I think I was just stuck in my way there. And then after our meeting, after we met that day, I was like, you know what, I gotta take it back a bit and keep it very, very simple. So my dad used to, he loves to tell a story about he met with a rep from some company, I don't know what the company was, and it was a similar situation to that first interaction we had.

10:30But my dad has a way with words that I've never been gifted with, and he said, sir, do you see how fast I'm talking? That's how fast I'm listening. City boy, slow down. But no, it was— I'm glad that, that you guys were pleasantly persistent and bulldozed your way through me putting up that initial barrier that I totally did. That's right. It's all about leaving impressions, you know, positive ones or whatever that experience was.

11:03Positive ones, or it was memorable if nothing, right? That's right, exactly. And you know, God willingly, we keep— we're gonna keep trudging forward, right? And, uh, one way or another, here we are, you know, sitting down doing a podcast. There's always a— there's always a greater plan when people meet, you know. What do you think of the Confessions of a Shop Owner Lounge and Studios?

11:23Uh, this is the best non-work-related thing we've ever seen in any shop ever. We actually— hope you don't mind— took some pictures and sent, uh, sent it to one of the shops we work with because she's really into this stuff. And it's like, this is exceptional. This is— if a shop was in Silicon Valley, like, this is what it's supposed to look like.

11:46Well, you know, I— so it's For those of you who don't know, we're at my downtown store and there's a second floor here that is a loft over the shop space, and it's really hard to make it productive square footage. And I mean, you can do tire storage, but there are 3 distribution centers within 5 miles of here. Um, I mean, it used to be a machine shop up here that used to, to build, uh, Karmann Ghia and VW motors, right?

12:15And so it's a heavily reinforced concrete floor. There's a crane behind the curtain that you can lift blocks up and stuff. But, you know, I don't do that shit. And so ultimately it was just becoming a place that was accumulating my extra crap. It was like storage. I don't need that because then I'm just gonna accumulate more crap that I'll have to throw away one day, right?

12:38So when we hosted the When Confessions hosted the hospitality suite at ASTA Expo last year, I was like, you know what, I'm not just going to use hotel furniture and make it a boring room that has, you know, bottles of water and beer. We turned it into a, like, a party lounge, and this is all the stuff that was in the party lounge.

12:58And so now it's the Confessions of a Shop Owner studio and lounge presented by Techmetric. One of the first things I noticed was that, uh, I don't know, king's chair. Yeah, the throne. The throne. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, so that's the chair in the COVID for the podcast. That's the throne from the logo. Yeah. I had always assumed that was just a picture you took at like a liquor store, like at the Crown Royal section.

13:23He must have just sat there and he's like, take it here. Every man needs his own throne, right? No, so funny story about the actual picture from the logo, uh, I was in Uvalde, Texas for a Continental Tires ride and drive event where they take you out to their proving grounds and let you take different cars out on the track with different tires and that kind of stuff.

13:45And there was a rooftop bar across the street from the hotel we were in, and it had a throne. And a couple of guys got there early, and I was like, hey, it was just that. It was like sunglasses, you know, flip-flops, and a glass of whiskey. Take my picture. You know, I'm gonna slay king. And it turned into that. But what we didn't realize is it was the drag bar in Uvalde.

14:07So when we got back from our day at the track and went back up there, there was a party going on, man. And it was one, the best music in town for sure. And 2, the most entertaining in town for sure. Drag bars might not be your scene, but man, was it funny. It was a good time. Those dudes know how to party.

14:27So, oh, so there's like a bar with drag queens in it? Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In Texas? Yeah, in small town Uvalde, Texas. But, uh, what are you gonna do? Just roll with the flow, have a good time. Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought this chair was a bit smaller than, than the one in your picture. Well, the one in the picture is gold, right?

14:45Right. So that's, uh, not quite as gilded, but, uh, the, the one— the, the photo gold ones One day maybe, you know, but you got to move up to that. You can't— you know, I'm starting off with just oak. You know, you can dip this in gold, man. I'm sure there's a service out there to do that. You know what drives me crazy is scrolling my social feed, and obviously I follow a ton of shops like a lot of you do, and you see the exact same image, generic photo, generic holiday post or whatever it might be across 40 or 50 shops around the country because none of them have unique to their business material.

15:22That's not building a brand. Nobody's ever won a customer with a generic Labor Day social media post, right? Look, I've personally been watching 47 and what they've been doing for Greg Buckley at Buckley's Auto Care in Delaware, and I'm super impressed. That's exactly why I've made the choice to sign up with them myself in my business, because I want to dominate the community here in Raleigh, just like the other clients of theirs are doing, like Greg is doing in Delaware.

15:46If you want your shop to stand out, go to 47consultants.com/confessions. It's 47consultants.com/confessions. Tell them Big Daddy Mike sent you. And sorry guys, they're not going to do any free diag for you. Okay, so guys, today I'm actually here recording and I've got part of Team Detect Auto off camera and we were just laughing about some of the tool names that they have.

16:10But one of the ones I want to talk to you about today, they call it the Inspection Finding Writer, which is a terrible name, bro, do better. But it is an awesome tool to go along with that. You know, when I was trying to find a way to describe it, if you If you've ever used Grammarly as an add-on onto your web browser, it's like Grammarly but for tech speak.

16:29It's gonna take the findings that have been written up by your techs and by your team on the repair order, and it's going to shift that into more easily understood language. It's gonna clean up the grammar, it's gonna clean up the spelling. But the other thing that's super cool about it is it's also got the ability to analyze images that are added to the repair order.

16:48If I check a red item on my DVI for fluid leaks and take a picture of an oil pan that's obviously leaking, It's going to identify that that's an oil pan that's leaking and it's going to give that language into the repair order for you. So that's yet again going to save you time typing and writing it out. Now you can also add a little bit more context, add some simple, very short context, and it will expand upon that for effect.

17:10It's just another great tool that the team at Detect Auto are putting out there to help streamline your business, make things run more smoothly. Now they just need to work on naming their tools. If you want to find out more, check out the link to Detect Auto in our show notes. Ladder. You just got to ladder up over time. Just got to move up my throne game each year.

17:33So, so now that we're like 20 minutes into this, let's do my standard thing. We're 20 minutes in. I'm going to say, who the hell are we actually talking to? Why don't you guys introduce yourself real quick and your company? Sure thing. My name is Sarav and I'm the co-founder here at 47. 47 Consulting, also known as 47, also known as 47C.

17:51And, uh, my name is Cam, the other co-founder, 47. And we always have this debate in this conversation: is it 47? Is it 47C? Is it 47 Consulting? And, uh, I think that we just need like a lookup table. It just tells you that all of these equate to 47. But yeah, that's— in my mind, you're 47C. I don't know why, that's just how it settled in my mind.

18:14That's probably from the Facebook branding that has been pushing out. Yeah, we're trying out different various ones, see which one's more sticky. Yeah, well, people remember. So why 47? Uh, 47 is actually the latitude of, uh, the Pacific Northwest, Washington State specifically. All right, yeah, that's home then. That's home for us. That's the idea. And, um, Washington State is our home base.

18:40We've got a really supportive community of shop owners there, and they're really trying to do things to a certain degree for like the ACA and whatnot. And so as we're like traveling around the country, just seeing the rest of the shop world, we're seeing everything that's possible. What, what, what can different communities of shops do when they come together? Or how do shops work in a specific community?

19:06Like, what's it like in the shop? And, um, the one conclusion that we drew— and this is kind of like, uh, this is one of those petty goals that you have, but it's like, uh, it's not really the business goal— but one of the things we're like, man, people in Texas are doing really cool things, people in the Southeast are really doing cool things, and why the F isn't Washington State on the map for automotive?

19:29And so got 47, and one of our side quests is to make Washington— put it on the map for automotive. Northwest ACA had a really good thing going for a long time, I thought. I thought they were very well thought of. I mean, I've, I've been to a couple shops in the Tacoma area, uh, from my 20 group with Elite. Okay. But, uh, that's about the extent of my— I think you were in the group with Pete Bristow, I think.

19:55No, name didn't ring a bell. Pete Bristow's Bristow's Exclusive Auto Repair in Tacoma. So they've got a few. So Elite is much more heavily, uh, centered on the West Coast, so they've got a lot of California and Pacific Northwest, right? And then into the Rockies, uh, and there aren't as many East Coast shops. I don't know why Dad got linked up with them way back, way back when, but he did, and I've You know, I'm too lazy to, uh, to do anything other than stick with what I know and love, and that's what I know and love, so that's what I've been with the whole time.

20:30I would say the, the Nawaka has a good thing going for it, but I think it can always be elevated. If one of your petty goals is to elevate the industry in your area, that's not very petty because I have some pretty petty goals. What are those like? I'm not sure that I should share the petty goals, but I mean I'm a pretty petty bro, so if your petty is let me help our industry in my entire region, it's pretty strong, dog.

20:57Well, I mean, it's happening. So why automotive, Cam? Well, good question. TL;DR, the short answer is the people are great and the culture in the industry is— it's, to us, it's pretty great. Now You ask different people, they might feel a certain way about it, but we came from completely different backgrounds. We weren't in automotive. We weren't even remotely in the field that we're in now in terms of what we do.

21:28So we'd been exposed there, and then before niching down into automotive, we had experimented with 12 or 13 different verticals, including like really large like market cap regional companies. The 2 things that stood out to us is people in automotive, to us once again, are normal, down-to-earth people. 2, generally speaking, they know how to run a business, run the numbers, manage the numbers.

21:57They have metrics. They really track like every bean, really, in a lot of cases. And that was a level of sophistication that we found were lacking in other parts of whatever, the working world. And so it was a lot easier to one, connect with people in the shop, two, like talk business with them 'cause like they understand it and they understand numbers and that was just a good fit.

22:26I think that's interesting. I think that tells me the caliber of shops that you're getting in front of. Because I would argue that one of the reasons that so much private money is coming into the industry is because on average we're really bad at business and knowing the numbers. And so big money comes in and they know that— they think that they can come in and turn a quick improvement and a quick profit.

22:56And in some ways they can. In other ways they screw things up pretty bad, right? But for you to say that, that tells me that you're in the right rooms, in front of the right shop owners, and, and the, the guys and gals that are out there trying to learn how to run a business and take care of their people and take care of their community and still be profitable.

23:18So yeah, that speaks well. You know, we, we tend to work with the, with the best of the best shops. We call them the gems of the industry already. It's something that, you know, we're personally just attracted to, uh, and so we've seen these individuals execute at a very optimum level, um, and that's all we're personally aware of, of what's out there in the industry, right?

23:40And you got big money coming in, uh, because yeah, it's, it's something that they haven't tapped into themselves, right? They're looking at money being earned, all these optimizations like they can do and come in for a quick win, um, and for a large exit in the future for themselves as well. Yeah, and like, this is coming from a perspective of somebody that's never worked at a PE firm or anything like that, but the thing about automotive that makes it pretty compelling, at least from our perspective, is you're— it's not a subscription business But it sure as hell is a recurring business.

24:20And so you can only, you know, skin a cat in so many ways, and you can only fix a car in so many ways. So it's kind of a— it's somewhat at a high level a repeatable thing, maybe not in the minutia of the variation of a car and the variation of its problem. But if you can kind of establish like a, a good EBITDA, as they call it, which I forget what that even stands for, but it's, it's the, it's the qualifier for figuring out how many multiple am I gonna buy this for?

24:45You're gonna have a good exit. And then private equity firms see, oh, this is undervalued and we can pump it up. But I'm not saying this about everybody with a suit. As someone that has worked with a lot of people with suits, most of those people can't find their way out of a cardboard box. So when they come in and they don't do a good job and they go bankrupt or They call it the soul of the business.

25:12Yeah, it's because you don't know how to actually run a business. Things look— things in a spreadsheet look a certain way, and the most you're doing is you're just updating the spreadsheet on a recurring basis to see if things are working. You're not out in the shop to see what, what's actually working, what's not working. You're not inspecting things. And so it's undervalued, it's attractive to private equity, but because it's undervalued, it's also a great opportunity for any shop to really mature their business sophistication or their fiscal literacy or their software literacy.

25:45They're all capable of doing that. If you can fix a car, you can learn anything pretty much. Well, and to your point of that, it's the gems, right? As you said, any small business owner that is looking to invest a not insignificant amount in their online presence and their image and their branding through video content, they're already, I would say, in the top 2 or 3%.

26:13So if they've already got enough revenue and enough profit to be able to justify spending to build their footprint and their image in that way. So to that end, explain specifically if could what it is that 47C does, because I'll butcher it if I try to do it. Yeah, you know, at a high level, we help auto repair shops build an emotional connection with their local community before that community ever has an issue with their vehicle, right?

26:47A large portion of shops, the way they get their business, uh, outside of, you know, recurring customers that you've built relationships with is people having an immediate need, going through Google and searching a mechanic near me or brake job near me, and they're just trying to find the first shop, right? And these shops are competing with Google Ads and LSAs for that space on there, right?

27:14That one person might come one time and never come again. With the way that we do media, we're building a belonging, an emotional connection where somebody says and feels, I actually feel a part of the story there. I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of the Miata Gang. I want to be a part of a shop that's open space for women.

27:39And so with the work that we do, we just tell the story of the shop, of the employees, put them in the best limelight possible. And we're not here to change anything. And you texted us earlier, You're like, boys, um, you know, do I need to do anything? We're like, no, there's no prep work. If the floors are dirty, that's absolutely okay.

27:58If someone— it's not okay if the floor is dirty, but sometimes the floor is dirty. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if someone doesn't want to be on camera, don't worry, allow us to, to work with them and, and get it out of them. Yeah, right. And so now, without all that bluff there, pretty much We are a team that comes on site with our cameras and our gear.

28:17We'll put the team on camera, employees, yourself, et cetera. And we distribute all of that media across various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, TikTok. And then we run very specific targeted ad campaigns, hyper-targeting your local demographic interest. And we make sure that those people know that your shop exists. And there's some other things that happen afterwards where we actually are building human relationships with the shop and the consumer by implementing a real-life person that actually has conversations with those people as well.

29:04So you're sliding into their DMs. DMs and, uh, you know, offering to hook them up with some hot, hot car service. That's right, building a relationship. But one of the points that, uh, Sarav mentioned was, uh, belonging, and that's kind of like what you achieve with a brand. So take a shop owner, maybe they have been in one coaching organization, maybe they have been in 2 coaching organizations over a period of time.

29:33And sometimes when they make the change, there's usually something about an individual coach, a specific relationship, or how they feel like they connect with the organization that keeps them there. Like, do you really need to be in a coaching organization for 10, 20, 30 years? I mean, if you figured it all out, I don't know, do you need to be? But some people do it anyways.

29:54And our hypothesis with that is, people enjoy just being a part of something. I think there's a reason people call things tribes or 20 groups. It's a group and you're a part of it. And so if that exists for a shop owner, who by the way is the hardest person to try and sell on anything, why would that not work on your neighbor?

30:17They're gonna spend the money on fixing their car eventually and they're gonna have to pick somebody. It's not— it's like kind of like going to the doctor in an emergency. Like, you're going to the ER, you're not going to figure out, am I going to go to that one, that one, that one? You're going to the first one that comes to mind.

30:31And so that's kind of where the shop wins, is you create an identity that other people can identify with. Well, after spending a day creating some of that content with you guys and seeing kind of— I feel like I can see what you're producing in my mind's eye. We're doing multiple cuts that I know are going to be edited together for effect, and some of them are rapport-building, informational, telling the story, and some of them are fun, silly.

31:02And I like silly, right? And but they're— it can't all be silly. That's right. There has to be, there has to be some content that's a little richer and a little thicker, and there has to be some call to action, I believe, as well. And so I have discounted social media brand building for a long time for the business, obviously, for the auto repair business, and have finally been brought around to it's time to embrace that as the next level in my marketing growth strategy.

31:41So great service advisors are not born, they are trained, coached, and developed. That's why Elite Worldwide created the Master Service Advisor Program, an intensive 3-day training happening September 10th through 12th in Dallas, Texas. This class is built for service advisors who want to elevate every part of their performance, from customer communication and relationship building to presenting recommendations with confidence and increasing overall sales right away.

32:08You'll learn proven strategies used by top-performing advisors across the industry while gaining practical tools you can immediately apply in your shop. Whether you're looking to improve your confidence, increase your effectiveness at the counter, or become a stronger leader for your team, this program delivers the training and support to help you succeed. Join us in Dallas this September to take the next step towards becoming a world-class service advisor.

32:32Hey guys, Carrie Lynn with Turnkey Marketing. If you are looking to increase cars and you're looking for the right demographic to go after, you want to get the right people who need auto repair right now, then give us a call. We have a service called Direct Track, and it utilizes AI to find people in your area who are the great demographic that you want to go after, have raised their hand and opted in saying, I need auto repair help right now.

32:57We send them an email. As soon as they open the email, we then get their physical address, follow it up with commercial ads on all their streaming services like Hulu and YouTube and ESPN, Fox News, all those different things. And then we also get their physical address and we start sending banner ads and display ads to every single device in that house.

33:18It has been incredibly effective. It has made shops seem like they're everywhere to those people who need repairs right then. And I mean, I'm telling you guys, the return on investment has been huge. So if you want to increase car count, you want to get great people in the door, give us a call or reach out to us and ask us about DirectTrack Marketing.

33:40Um, I will tell you that Greg Buckley at Buckley's Auto Care in Wilmington has been a friend for several years. My wife's father actually lives up right by him, and I think is a customer of his actually. And so I knew that you guys were having conversations with him, and then I saw that you guys were up there working with him, and y'all were trying to, you know, be pleasantly persistent, just a little drip, drip, drip here trying to, trying to get me to open up a little bit.

34:11And I called Greg and he was like, these guys seem like they're the real deal, man. I really— they— the guys just open up to them and really enjoy talking to them and the content they're making. I really like it. And I was like, okay, well, let me know how it goes. And then 30 days later it was like, I really think this is good.

34:26You really need to look into this, Mike. And then 30 days later it was like, my follower count's up. My phone volume's up, people are coming in saying that they saw us online, and it's like, it's working, it's driving cars, Mike, you should call. I was like, okay, now I'll call him. Yeah, uh, well, did you want to say something first? No, no, go ahead.

34:44Uh, I was just gonna say, uh, my point of view is that right now the, the shops that are doing it are kind of early adopters because, uh, technically this whole whole thing about short form becoming a thing really got popularized during the pandemic. And what happened was TikTok, which a lot of people are on that, like technicians, whatnot, that kind of spun things up.

35:09And then of course Mark Zuckerberg is like, China's doing something really interesting, let's just copy them and create these things called Reels. And then everybody else that's smaller just kind of followed suit. Yeah. And so that really started to take off as a technology, like 2020, 2021. That's only 5 years ago. And then from about '21, '22, '23, during that period, they've slowly started adding things that make it easier to monetize.

35:35Monetize meaning getting in front of people that are relevant to you or whatever you offer, and then actually having a tangible result in the shop or in whatever you offer. And so really like 2023, 2024, 24, a lot of that, those features and functionalities became more prevalent. So it might seem like some people might think I'm behind the curve, but really technically you're kind of an early adopter at this, at this stage of things.

36:01Well, I've always been scared of being a super early adopter. Um, my dad was full of sayings. One of the sayings was being a pioneer is really exciting. You're breaking new ground, right? But don't forget that pioneers are also the ones that ended up face down in the prairie with a back full of arrows. Yeah, so I don't want to be the first.

36:22I'm okay with being like third or fourth. Yeah, so, you know, this is not, uh, this is not a race at the track. This is, uh, let somebody else make some of the mistakes and then I'm gonna get in, uh, early on. Yeah, so I let Greg be the pioneer and he didn't get any arrows in his back. He didn't scalp. So here I am.

36:41Yeah, it's like Christopher Columbus came here. They're like, he ended up somewhere. We don't know if it's the mainland, but that's generally the right direction. Let's send more people there because those first guys made it back. That's right, man. But so I have, I have a really important question, and this is something that— Braxton, this question is for you. Um, since you guys are, are experts in the field.

37:08Landscape is shit and you should do everything in portrait mode, right? What? You're talking about the orientation? Video orientation. Oh yeah, there's reasoning behind each one, right? What's so funny behind that? I mean, some traditional pure-play videographers, they will die on the freaking cross about doing everything horizontal. Oh yeah, we're not— The problem with that is when you obsess over that kind of detail, well, that's great because now you're being an artist, but when you need to deliver business outcomes, you do things that do that.

37:50We're not traditional marketing folks, right? We come in with our own dialect and then we're very prone to assimilating with whatever is— wherever the tides are pushing, right? We're not going to fight them. And if vertical reels do much better for penetration, for visibility, then we're going to go that way. But now there's a storytelling aspect of it as well, right? Like there's some video topics that we'll cover that'll be in the horizontal format, right?

38:21It allows for a lot more storytelling, a lot more A lot more room on screen to manage and add more oomph to things, right? Like when we did a video with you earlier today, the highlight video, it was horizontal because it's able to tell a better story, right? It's gonna live online for a period of time. You want it to be done really well, right?

38:45Those are the type of media assets that can be used on like your website. Right? And they can— and people will go there and watch them and enjoy them. These short format reels, they're, they're put up for today. You build equity, but what's next is what's more important than what was in the past. So the root of that question, like much of my content, was very childish in that Braxton asked us to do some videos for an SDA expo that just comes up next month, just some quick promotional clips.

39:19And I sent them to him in portrait mode, and in our group chat of all the different podcasters in the space, because most of us are in one group chat together, right, he was yelling at us to do landscape instead of portrait mode. And then all of us started sending in only portrait mode or really obnoxious shit in landscape mode. So I laid on my side in my office and took it in portrait mode so that I was sideways and you had to turn it up.

39:49So that was orientation within an orientation. Yeah, yeah. So that was just me being a child because that's what I do. I apologize. But that was actually a legit answer, so thank you for taking me seriously. No one takes me seriously. No, that's a good question because, um, there are analogs for that in automotive. Do I charge for diag or do I not charge diag?

40:09And then it just kind of depends which church do you go to. Yeah, yeah, horizontal or vertical. Yeah, it's totally true. So, um, a lot of my, uh, haters online for the whole free diag thing are going to be hugely entertained to learn that at one of my 3 shops I'm charging for diag now. Uh, part of my whole— the whole thing behind free diag is why do you free diag?

40:33Well, it's to overcome the objections and the barriers between you and a first-time customer that doesn't yet have a relationship with you. They don't know I can trust you yet, and it drives car count. But if your business is running at redline and you've got all the cars you can manage, why would you give anything away? You don't need more cars because you can't help those people.

40:57And so one of the shops is running at redline right now. Now, and we got all the cars we can handle, uh, and so we're charging for diag. And if something changes and, uh, you know, we're no longer, you know, run— running at max capacity, then, then we'll go back. But, you know, consumers are used to dynamic pricing and airline tickets and concert tickets and Uber, uh, anything else.

41:24If the demand is high, it's going to cost more. If demand is low, you're going to get a deal, right? So, uh, that's kind of the direction that we're going on that front. Uh, it'll be interesting to see the results that are there, but I'm sure Braxton will cut some clip where it just says that I admitted I was wrong and that we have to charge for diag now because I'm an idiot, and it'll get lots of rage bait engagement.

41:47What are you gonna do? Uh, so it's funny, we're talking about dynamic pricing. So when we were driving here Somehow ice cream trucks came up. And what story was this? So yeah, there's a— I won't give the story away, but it was a lesson about dynamic pricing at a very young age. Maybe you could share. Yeah, so I've, um, I've been hustling since I was a young kid.

42:15I remember when I was in elementary school, I would go and sell ice with my mom. And I, you know, initially there was those magnets and we had sticker pricing on every single ice cream, right? At one point, I kind of had an epiphany that, hey, some people are willing to pay more. You go into the rich kid neighborhood, charge them a dollar more, you know.

42:40So I took off all the pricing. And then whenever we'd go into each individual neighborhood or meet a certain type of person, I would just jack up the pricing. And Mom told me I can, I can one, have a hot bag of Cheetos when I, when I go with her, and she'll buy me any drink. And then also I get to keep all the coins.

42:59And so here I was charging, you know, $1.25, $1.50, $1.75, so I could pocket, pocket that extra. So I was living off a commission, having a good time with that. I, I knew my, I knew my clientele. I was like, this person's gonna be fine with this. There's a crying baby, $2 extra. Sorry, not taking dollars, only change right now. Hey man, it's a free market economy, right?

43:25That's right. If they were willing to pay that price, then that means that was what it was worth to them. So that is a big problem in our trade. I find from— first, you should never as a, as a, as a podcaster, or, uh, I don't think it's healthy to spend time in the comment sections, uh, online, right? Um, you know, Pollack, one of his favorite things is, um, you know, by definition, half of the population is of below, below average intelligence, and that half of the population is overwhelmingly represented in comment sections, right?

44:03Oh yeah. But so in the automotive space comment sections, it's always, we're underpaid, we're undervalued, pay us what we're worth. That's one. I'm not gonna go to training unless my boss is doing it, is paying for it. But if your boss is not paying for it, you're never gonna learn more in order to be able to earn more, right? And then it's, I went out and opened a shop so that I could help out folks because the boss was ripping them off.

44:39Right? So you want to make $150,000 a year for average level technical acumen. You don't want to invest in your own betterment. And you think that the labor rate should be $75 an hour. If you want an owner who can pay to send you to ASTA Expo or to Vision or to STX or whatever it might be and can pay you $150,000 for middle-of-the-road, you know, skill level and can give you health insurance and paid time off and paid all those benefits, that's why the labor rate needs to be $225 an hour or $250, whatever that number is.

45:21Right? So, I don't know, it's hard to get on a soapbox, but I spent some time in the comments as a mistake last night, and you should never do that. And every now and then I fall off the wagon and I get into the comments section. I'm like, these guys are fucking stupid. Or maybe they don't recognize their own hypocrisy. I don't think— you know, well, each one of those complaints or whatever you want to call it represents a different kind of person or maybe the same person under different circumstances.

45:55The one about the labor rate, they don't know what goes into a business. And I'm not just talking about what goes into running a business. I'm also talking about what was required to get there. And so the one comment about we're underpaid and being a middle-of-the-road any profession and making what is well above the median salary in the United States, there's really— there's no shortcuts.

46:24So some people might say, oh, this, this business owner is really successful. Well, were you there the first 10, 15, 20 years when they weren't at that point? That's the tip of the iceberg. Or you might think, oh, doctors make a lot of money. Or dentists make a lot of money. Well, did you do the 12 years of schooling after your first 12 years of schooling, then work 80 to 100 hours doing residency and rotations and having to do like these insane clinicals?

46:50Like, you get to pick on what timeline you want to compress the difficulty level. You can choose to do it over your whole life and never really get anywhere, or you can choose to condense it. And sometimes that means investing in your own training, investing in your own learning, and and showing the result. But not everybody understands that. Well, and, you know, not everybody needs to own a business, right?

47:12Like, my, my wife has zero desire to own a business, or she has said that historically. Yeah, conversation this week's been oddly different. But, um, so I don't know, it's just, it's just the entrepreneurial spirit, the desire to go out and forge that path on your own is not in everybody, and it is exciting and terrifying and wonderful and horrible, and you don't get to sleep.

47:42You know, it's a roller coaster. How has that been for you guys? You know, um, for us, one thing that we did when we kicked off 47 was that work-life balance has to be utmost at a high priority for us. We, we, we want to enjoy what we do on a daily basis, and we do enjoy what we do on a daily basis because we have a segregation between work life and home life and anything else that pertains to that.

48:16Um, you know, one of my strong contributors to that side was my wife, right? She's like, honey, I'm home. You should be spending time with me and the family. Work is always going to be there, right? Um, and initially it was, you know, I was like, hey, I got to put in these hours and whatnot. But then you notice all these hours that you're missing with building a relationship with your wife or your kids or your family and whatnot.

48:41And that watching other people go through the cycles of it, it's kind of terrifying. Right? And so sometimes Cam's online after 5 and I'll message him like, Cam, get the fuck off, bro. We're not supposed to be working right now. Oh, I'm gonna do this one more thing. You know that he logs on to shenanigans calls. Oh yeah, happen at night. He'll be on like from 9 to 11 or 9 to midnight.

49:05Oh yeah, watching us get steadily more shit-faced while he's walking on his treadmill being healthy. That's right, that's right. This guy, we We walk into the hotel and he's like, dude, did you know they had ice cream? I was like, what, they had ice cream? And then I'm like, look, looking through it, I'm like, which one are you gonna get? He's like, oh, I'm not gonna get that.

49:24He's like, he's like, I'm not just gonna be a bad influence. He's like, now that I think about it, I shouldn't have brought it up to you. I was like, yeah, come on, man, what the hell? Well, speaking of bad influences, I was like, we're having nice cold bottles of water because it's a little bit warm in here. It's a shop environment, it was probably high 70s in in here.

49:40Um, and, uh, I was this close to bringing out the whiskey and seeing if you guys wanted a whiskey or not. But I— one, I don't know if y'all are drinkers, uh, or not. And 2, you struck me as very professional, like maybe when you're working you wouldn't want to imbibe. And so I'm just gonna lay it out here now: while we're working, no booze, no cocaine.

50:01Okay. And what happens after the cameras are off, I mean, zero judgment zone. Hey, nobody's gonna know. Exactly, yeah. We do not do cocaine on Confessions of a Shop Owner. We absolutely do booze. The, uh, yeah, the professionalism part. Oh, that's another thing why we like automotive, because for the most part we can be our own variation of professional. Which might not be other people's variation.

50:34You don't have to be a stick in the mud, man. Yeah, you can make money and run a good business and take care of your people and take care of your community and still have fun. 100%. So now the, the, the thing about the roller coaster thing, I would say early on, early on when you do anything, it's going to be a roller coaster.

50:51And it's kind of like if, if you're, if, if you're going into entrepreneurship I mean, I'm sorry to say, that's just a part of the process. Like, there's no avoiding that. And actually, I don't know if there's ever, ever a true way to get away from that. It's just over time, the, the, the, the highs are a little bit more decelerated. It's not like a, it's not like a parabolic, you know, 10x type of rise.

51:18It just, it just kind of hap— it kind of happens at a slower pace. And so I would I would say, you know, early days, definitely a roller coaster. The period, you know, now it's definitely like less volatile, and we don't know what the future may hold because that's just the nature of entrepreneurship. You don't know what the future holds. You can project all you want, but you really don't know.

51:42How many clients can you guys serve at your current level if they all wanted to sign on at the high level? You know, I don't We don't have a static number in mind. What— but what we do do is we only add 1 to 2 clients each month, and that's the cap. And they get scheduled out, uh, you know, X weeks, X months out, so that way we go on site, we can execute.

52:08Um, Cam and I do the fulfillment. We have a whole team behind us in the back, systems created and everything, to, to execute on it, we want to, we want to ourselves be invested deeply into it, right? Uh, leave a, leave an imprint, a strong impression on folks. We're not, we're not personally, you know, we're not— obviously we're a for-profitable business, right?

52:31For-profit business. But we're not in it for the money. We're here to actually have an impact. And it's, it's less about making the owner more money, and it's, it's more so about the community's benefit from what we do. They get to be exposed to a shop that actually cares about them and is actually going to do them justice, because everybody and their mother drives a vehicle.

53:01And sometimes it's, it's those car keys are, are to drop off their kids, sometimes it's to pick up family member from the hospital or is to go to work. The real winners for us are our clients' customers. That's where the real money is made. And we've— it's just left such a big imprint on, on the community. And, um, like, we have a shop, Easy Street Auto Repair.

53:27We started working with them 3 years ago. That was the first shop that we worked with, with Amanda. And people are so thankful that they found this shop and how welcoming it is and how other shops are just out to get them. And we have the pleasure of, of one, decommoditizing the industry itself. It's— no, it's not just another gas station that you can go to any one of them.

53:57And then 2, it's being able to actually build lasting relationships, that these people on the other end are professionals at what they do and they're here to take care of my vehicle. Obviously they charge a price for what they do. You know, the one cool thing on, on our side is that we see is people are less likely to, to be window shopping and they're ready to spend the dollar because they trust, they trust what you said on camera and they're ready to, to be a part of it.

54:23Well, and if they the content is not stale and generic content, it makes a huge difference, right? And so I think that's a huge part of the value that you guys are bringing because it is actual people that you will— if you go into that business, you will meet those people and get to talk to them and laugh together about the silly video, or, you know, already have that sense of connection because, oh, I didn't know that he was from you know, that part of the country.

54:51I'm from that part of the country, you know, or whatever it might be. And creating, like you said earlier, genuine connection. I never put stock in that when I heard it in years past, and the podcast has taught me otherwise because I'll meet people at events and we've got a whole series of inside jokes and stories already because they've listened to the show and engaged with us online or in the content, and we've had back and forth, you know, over Messenger or whatever it might have been.

55:26Or even they've never even reached out to me, but they come in and they know me and they ask about the shop and they ask about, you know, this service advisor or that technician or this customer because they've engaged with it and they feel like they know me and they have a relationship with me already. That's right. And it's crazy how powerful that is.

55:45Yeah, and I just wanted to add to that. If you mentioned that one point that it's not really about money, so really, how do you make an imprint on whatever communities? Or for Car Fix, it's gonna be like this immediate community, but for our community, our community is shops, it's not a city. And so essentially, you gotta figure out, What are the actual pains for your community?

56:12And it's gonna be different for you than it is for us, but the 3 pains that we see are kind of, there's a division amongst shop owners and any way you splice it, there's a division. Super fractured. Super fractured, like, F you, I'm with this group and they're right and you're stupid for being in that group. Things like that. There's also a devaluation of like internally, it's like endemic.

56:40So, you know, we complain about, you know, customers have a hard time paying the money, but at the same time we have a hard time paying ourselves, we have a hard time paying each other, we have a hard time making sure we're charging enough. There's a general devaluation. And then 3, there's just a general underappreciation for what the skill trade is, what it does, the intelligence that is required to do that.

57:04And so our angle is we don't talk about marketing. Shop owners couldn't give a fuck about marketing, okay? And so, and we don't intend to offend anybody, but like, if you're a marketing company, what makes you think that talking about a very specific marketing thing is going to even be interesting to shop owners? Those are not like Those are not the breaking neck pains for them, okay?

57:28For the most part, it's not. It'd be like if you're a shop, as a driver, I don't care about how you pull this transmission together and what it does in the car. It doesn't fucking matter. Make it work. Yeah, just make it work. And so figuring out what matters to your community, and from our perspective, those are the big pain points for shops.

57:47And so anything that can help remediate those, like, and not this This is not a one-to-one thing with a shop, it's like at an industry level. Anything we can do to remediate that, like we want our fingerprints on that because then that's what we're known for. And for a shop, we have our 3 pillars, you know, fun, personal, professional, and those kind of remediate certain types of problems that customers have when they think of a shop.

58:09And so it's a long way of saying it's not about the money. This is kind of— we're taking what we teach you guys and doing it for ourselves, just in a different context. And when you do that, it's about having an impact, and people remember that. People like Greg Buckley didn't come through because we called him. He came through because he saw like our video of one of us just yapping at a camera, and he was like, this is interesting.

58:34And then he made a video about the video, and we were like, wow, Greg, never met you, but thanks for making that video. And then next thing you know, we were in Wilmington. So that's kind of the the game is an impact game. Well, and, you know, to your point, um, I enjoy a conversation about marketing. I don't enjoy the execution of marketing, which is why I have a company like Turnkey to handle that for me, right?

59:00Which is why I hire a company like you guys to come in and help me create it, because I'm not going to have the creative juices to think up or the skill set to produce, uh, or the equipment to capture it in a way that is, is visually appealing in that capacity, right? So we don't want customers— we don't want DIY customers for the most part because they fuck stuff up or they half-ass it or they get the wrong part or they get cheap parts or whatever it might be.

59:32We want them to hire a knowledgeable and skilled professional to do it right the first time. Yeah, right. And so if you are serious about wanting to do video content and grow your footprint and your connection with your community, hire a professional to do it right the first time. If you are serious about growing your business through managed kind of marketing across all channels, hire a marketing management firm to manage it for you.

1:00:03I use Turnkey. I use 47C, right? If you're serious about taking your software to the next level, right? I mean, this is not just a go-through-Mike-sponsors bit, but focus on what you're really good at and hire out the other shit. That's right. To people that are really good at it, and, and just focus on what you're excellent at. And if you're not good at any of it, maybe you're not maybe you're not in the right gig, or just hire a bunch of people.

1:00:31And to add to that point, things shouldn't just be a checkbox, right? Um, you, you like, you sh— you sh— you shouldn't— well, there's a lot of shops that'll post generic media because they've hired a professional company and it's in years past. AI images, $49.99 oil change, or a happy holiday. Don't shit on my cheap oil change. I love me a cheap oil change.

1:00:57And they, and they think, you know, oh, we, we talked to many shops. Oh, I'm already, I'm already doing social media. I'm already got do— doing marketing. And I go look and I'm like, holy shit, really? Like, this, this is posted at 100 other shops. You know, it's— you have to, you have to know how to vet out your professional, uh, partners as well, right?

1:01:17Um, Because one thing that really grinds my gears on the side of marketing is when people are, one, creating generic media, right, using AI. But then the, the, the one that Cam and I always laugh about is like these, these like skit-based shit that they do that's just like a TikTok dance. And like, like, like in a video, a horse will kick a person, and then in the second scene, like a technician will get kicked into a bunch of chairs, and that's all the media it is.

1:01:47They make themselves look like clowns, right? And I'm like, yeah, you're getting views, you're getting even followers, but have you, have you seen where those views are coming from? Who are these followers? Are these people even localized? Yeah, there are other technicians from around the country, or there are other shop owners. Yeah, I get that. We're, we're— what we do is we're hyper-personalized for the shop and localized.

1:02:11We're not here to get— we're not here to get viral. That is not the point. If we go viral, I need to turn that shit off because my— the sales executive that I'm gonna plug into the account, I'm gonna be paying for them to be talking to all these people that are nowhere along the, like, the line of potential clients at all.

1:02:35And then now I'm feeding the algorithm that, hey, I want more of these people. That's— nope, that's incorrect. You said the first video that we had go viral— and we'll wrap it up after this because I want to be respectful of y'all's time, and also we're going to the pit for barbecue after this, we have reservations— the first video that we had go viral for Confessions was this really heartwarming, sad story from Darren Barney at Elite about when his father passed away and how he almost missed it because he was working late at the shop and refused to go to the hospital because he thought that he had more time.

1:03:13Oh, and like million-plus views, right? And share, share, share, share, share. But it was being shared by 60-year-old women around the country because it was plugging the right heartstrings, right? And it was, it was a moving story, but it was not shop owners, it was not technicians, it was not, uh, you know, service advisors, it was not vendors in our industry. It was grandmas, you know?

1:03:45And, uh, then they get fed in the next week a video of me talking about splitting my pants open and my hanging out because I was commando, right? And so we got this spike of follows and poof, dropped off because it wasn't the right people, right? So getting the message in front of the right people is more important than getting 100,000 views.

1:04:10Yeah, it's like— because the algorithm will, if it starts to pick momentum up, it feeds it to more people that look like the ones who interacted. That's it. If they're the wrong ones, then and you're gonna— it's gonna skew your entire— it's diluting the whole thing. It's gonna make your job of doing business on that a lot harder because now you just have trash data in your system.

1:04:30So the thing that I learned from this is that, um, like true heartfelt heartwarming, this changed my life and how I look at things, is not what I need in confessions. I need more of my balls out to appeal to shop owners. Around the country. So maybe we'll end it with this. There's 3 of us at the table, and there's probably more than one of us that's commando right now.

1:04:59Ah, shit just got awkward. Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out— the good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, Learn a little bit and maybe have another drink.

1:05:19You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover, or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email mike@confessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number is 704-CONFESS. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership.

1:05:42I'll see you on the next episode. If you're still thinking about the shop at 10 PM, you're not alone. You're replaying the day, wondering what got missed, what still needs follow-up, how the numbers look, and whether anything is waiting for you first thing tomorrow morning. That part of being a shop owner gets old really quick. Techmetric is built to take some of that off your plate.

1:06:13It brings you shop management, payments, and marketing together in one place, so you're not piecing things together at the end of the day trying to figure out where everything stands. Your team has what they need to keep things moving, your customer communication doesn't stall out, and you have a clearer picture of how your shop is actually performing. See how it works at techmetric.com.

1:06:33That's T-E-K-M-E-T-R-I-C dot com. Or tap the link in the show notes.