Ep 88 - Ashley Butler & Rochelle Gotsdiner | Scale Your Repair Shop by Doing This

0:00You need to charge more. You need to hire more technicians. You need to add more lifts. You need to something. Say yes more. So many people find a way to say no. Oh, it drives me crazy. Oh yeah, yeah. Your brakes are grinding. Yeah, I can help you with that. We got a lot going on right now, but if you drop it off with me tomorrow, I can look at it.

0:19No, no, no. Right now. It's not that hard to look at it. Lock the car. In an ideal world, you get the car there now. You show the customer, they say yes, you get them home, right? Then you buy time on the back end. 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.

0:47There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shop Owner, presented by TechMetric. Simply the best software ever made. I'm a fangirl right now. I am a Confessions of a Shop Owner on the way to work, running errands.

1:16Yeah. And then I text my dad and I'm like, "I'm in love." See, this is a good practice run. Yeah. But since your show aired, yeah. I send it in the morning to the group chat with my dad and my brother when I listen to episodes. Yeah. Nice. I'm so sorry if that's what you consider to be good content. No, it's great.

1:38It's relatable, but you get knowledge out of it. So see, so I messaged him and I said, hey, I'll be there, let's record. And then that's how we all got it. Nice. See, you open the doors. So the answer is no if you don't ask. Close mouths never get fed. Yeah, exactly. There you go. So I was looking at, uh, with Tanika, there are recording schedules for this.

2:03And one, I love Tanika, we're good friends. And she's— I'm the immediate past president of the Automotive Service and Tire Alliance, and she's the current vice president. And then Mimi Dowd is the current president. So two really powerful, dynamic women in the industry that are taking over that trade association and pulling it out of the ditch that I ran it into, right?

2:24And now I got you two guys here who are operating incredible businesses yourself. And tomorrow I'm talking with— I'm just going to pull it up. I don't want to get it wrong. Oh my God, I got old man eyes now, so I have to zoom in on everything. Don't get old. It's a trap. Better than the alternative. Yeah, that's fair enough. Jesse Jackson from Mango Automotive.

2:50Okay. So I guess they've gone from 1 to 8 stores in like 3 years and she's got 7 kids. Oh my, 7 children and 8 stores. That's what I mean. Yeah. So she's got 15 kids. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And not even including the employees. At a minimum. At a minimum. I do reference the shops to babysitting sometimes. All the time. So there's just so many widely variable personalities that you have to deal with, right?

3:17Yeah. I think so. I've been trying to read up on you guys a little bit. I very rarely do any show prep, but usually I know folks a little bit, right? Um, and so I kind of feel a connection with you, uh, just because we're both dad's kid. You were in the shop, and I've got 3 stores, but I think my 3 stores together are probably roughly the size of your store.

3:38Y'all got a big shop. You, like, I aspire to be like you, actually. Like, you are a baller. So, um, I want to just take a quick minute and just Can I— you know what, I got to back up. I always do this. I always just start talking and we never do introductions. So Ashley, introduce yourself. My name is Ashley Butler, Tampa native.

3:59I am in love with the automotive space. It has provided me so many opportunities in my lifetime to open up doors for others. And I'm just— I'm excited to be here and share my experience and Hope that it can be of value to other people. Awesome. Awesome. And you're all, you're all over Florida though, right? West Central Florida. Okay. How many stores you up to now?

4:2314 locations in 5 counties. Okay. So I can get to them all within an hour and 40 minutes. Like if I leave my house, I can go to the furthest one and then drop back and, you know, I can pretty much do them in one day. I don't try to though. How often do you touch each store? Every quarter. Okay. Is your day-to-day work life at a corporate office?

4:43Do you work from home or do you work in the stores every day? Usually I work from my residential office Mondays, Wednesdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, shop visits, Fridays, usually like board meetings. I know one Thursday morning out of every month I have the chamber board meeting, but most of my other board meetings are on Fridays. I usually leave Fridays open for community networking, being where I need to be, being in spaces, or show up at a shop and hang out with the team.

5:13Yeah. Surprise visits. Yeah. Yeah. AJ says you got to pull up. AJ says, hey, you got to pull up. All right. We're going to come back to all of your other community involvement because I was reading your bio on the website. You got two different bios on the website. Really? One for the store owner and then one for the franchisee. For the big boss.

5:32And I want to come back to talk about all the other stuff that you do. And I want to figure out where you get your energy from, because I need some of that. Uh, but before we do that, Rochelle, introduce yourself. Rochelle Gottsteiner with North Rich Automotive in Richardson, Texas, so right outside Dallas. Family-owned and operated. I've been working alongside my father for 8 and a half years now.

5:54He started the business 30 years ago, um, was blessed enough to be able to convince my older brother to join us for the past year and a half, and Numbers are high, goals are higher. I love this industry now. I was not supposed to be here. So here's the thing. Outdated SMS just— they don't just slow you down, they cost you money.

6:16And I learned it the hard way. Before Techmetric, I was wasting time on inefficient processes, manual updates, back and forth calls with customers. Now I handle everything in one place. DVI, customer communications, payments, real-time reporting. It's all in one page. Since making the switch, my average repair order has jumped from $293 to $916, and it's not just me. TechMetric powers almost 10,000 shops nationwide.

6:42By the time you're hearing this, it probably will be 10,000 shops, helping them grow and operate smarter. If you're tired of losing time and money to outdated systems, tap the link in the show notes and see what TechMetric can do for you. Hey guys, Kari Lynn with Turnkey Marketing. If you are looking to increase cars and you're looking for the right demographic to go after, you wanna get the right people who need auto repair right now, then give us a call.

7:06We 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. We 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.

7:33And then we also get their physical address and we start sending banner ads and display ads to every single device in that house. It 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.

8:02I have a science degree. I was enjoying medical sales and something shifted. Someone that worked for my family for 21 years and decided to take a leap of faith and become a shop owner at 25 and still here. Can't get out of it. You're stuck now. I'm very much stuck. It's like the mafia. Yeah. You try to get out and it pulls you back in.

8:23So what's it like bringing— like you've established yourself in the business, you're an important part of the business, and then your brother comes in. 18 months ago. What's that dynamic like? It was also a change, but him and I are very much yin yang. He's an accounting IT guru and he knows numbers like the back of his hand. People and, you know, connections like the networking is not as much of interest to him.

8:50So we balance each other out well. He helped me when I first stepped in. So 8 years ago, he was just remote and his company at the time let him work once a week with us. But we were picking up a failing business. And when you're a numbers guy and the numbers aren't growing after a year and you have families to feed, you know, he decided to step out, um, but brought him back in.

9:14And all in all, it's, you know, truly the three of us— my father, myself, and him— that's the reason we're able to excel past the goals last year. But it's awesome. We're still working through it. So how long until you guys grow the business to the point that your dad's allowed to retire to the islands? And, uh, he can retire whenever he He does not want to.

9:37No, he has a lot of value and knowledge, but the goal is to be able to let him travel more, enjoy, relax. We still want him to work his brain. So we don't talk succession planning in our family yet. Well, you don't have to talk it, but you got to plan it, right? Because you never know. We're not guaranteed tomorrow, right? So that's something that has been pushed to the forefront of my mind of late because I've I've heard tons of people, all my business coach, everybody, you have to have a— I think the book that I have in my desk that I haven't finished filling out, it says, oh shit, I'm dead.

10:12Now what? And it's a book for my family and my business. What are all— where are all the keys? Where are all the codes? You know, what are all the account numbers? You know, what's the succession plan? How do we keep payroll going? That type of thing. And as a small business, I feel like actually you probably have a lot of that is running on autopilot to a degree just because of the structure you have to have to grow the business to that scale, right?

10:34Well, we're fortunate because we have, uh, 8 franchisees. Okay. And so they take care of the day-to-day, their own payrolls. And so that doesn't land on us. But we do have 5 payrolls. We have the corporate office and then the 4 operational outlets. Um, pretty much, yeah, office manager, um, and the support team can guide most of the data entry. I am still like the final say yes, green checkmark in Slack.

11:01They usually post up like a payroll preview and— Pause real quick. Yeah, guys, you hear that? She said green checkmark in Slack. We use Slack in the company. We had a team meeting Tuesday night and I was like, hey guys, let's talk about Slack etiquette and how we're going to acknowledge that something's done. The green checkmark or the thumbs up emoji are the acceptable thing.

11:19Okay, so for Teams too. Yeah, thumbs up. Thumbs up is I acknowledge it. I see it, and green checkmark is it's completed. So that's our etiquette. Like a thumbs up says I got it, it's on my radar, I set some type of reminder. Green checkmark, it's done, cash it in. All right. I asked Rochelle about the dynamics of working with your brother.

11:42Tell me about the dynamics of working with your wife. What's that like? It's pretty easy, you know? Really? Oh yeah. I could never work with my wife. We kill each other. We would kill each other. No, I actually. It works pretty good. We are both zodiac sign Taurus. And so we kind of live in our own circle. We divided the roles and responsibilities, similar like you and your brother.

12:04I'm a front of the house leadership. I deal with finance, real estate, legal stuff. And she's intra— you know, marketing, HR, back of the house, making sure we always have lots of interviews on the docket. And then our team in operations, we process the interviews. And so we've split everything up. But yeah, we, we work from home. She loves that, you know, she used to be a nurse.

12:32And so having to get up and drive somewhere and then care for people and then try to care for yourself, you know, we have a 23-year-old son that grew up with us, you know, going through this process. And, you know, that can put a strain if there aren't boundaries. And so we make sure that we have a— we call it wind down.

12:52We're at the end of the day where we kind of take off the shop and we put on us. And sometimes wind down kind of can blend too far into the evening. And then one of us has to say, okay, it's us. And like, all right, leave the shop at the shop. And so it's those understandings, right, and having those distinctions set.

13:14That way you don't give up everything to the business. But when you're growing a business and turning around shops, there's a point in time where it's like 24/7 that you need to be on about the business so that you can right the ship. And then you can go back and, you know, before we bought the franchise, we worked 10 hours apiece between networking, BNI, Maybe overseeing payroll.

13:38We didn't work for about a decade before we bought the franchise. We were absentee with our one store and it was perfect. And now we're back in the thralls of it. And so it's on and popping right now. So what does 2026 look like for Ice Cold Air? And what does 2030 look like for Ice Cold Air? 2026 is really cool. We have our training center that Adrian has wanted for, I would say, good part of the decade.

14:04So we have a training center in Pinellas Park, which happened by grace and also by fire. One of the franchisees just was too much pressure for him and he just walked away like Christmas Eve 2025. He said, I can't handle it. Just locked the door and walked out? He didn't even, he just was like, I just rolled up to give out gifts for everybody.

14:27What? And he was, yeah, exactly. He was like, I can't do it anymore. And I was like, well, what's going on? I was like, all right, let's work on a plan for you. He's like, no, I'm out. No, I can't. And I was like, oh, what do you mean? I never, I'm not a quitter. So I didn't understand how someone could just do that.

14:44And he was like, yeah, I got a job at Toyota. And I was like, whoa. Whoa. Oh, okay. Got it. Oh, got it. So, you know, you got to get legal involved. You do all this kind of stuff and let them work that part out. But it was like, you know what? This is the biggest shop in the company, like footprint-wise. It's near the P-TECH, it's near St.

15:03Pete College, it's— it's— and I was like, all right, big fella, I see what you're doing here. And so I said this all weekend, you have some serious angels looking out for you, right? My gosh, this girl, she's a lucky charm. I, I tell people that. I tell people, I believe it. I tell people, can you come hang out at my shop for a couple of weeks?

15:20Yeah, yeah. Now when everybody break out doing cha-cha-sla, you know, because we have It's fun. You know, when I'm in the shop, the music's going and I keep the vibe right so that we can get the work out. But everybody knows what we got to do. But anyhow, back to the fire turning into the grace, we now have this training center. So for 2026 and 2027, what I want to do is become a place where you bring me a novice and I turn them into a flat rate tech, and then I'll fill up all my shops.

15:50And then like people can come and headhunt techs from me, you know? And so I'll train them. They know how to do DVIs and I have their metrics. Like this person can do DVIs in this front, they strong on this, they're strong on this. What shop is looking for it? And I was posted in the job board and let everybody say, "Oh yeah, I want that guy."

16:07And I say, "Listen, this is how much I got invested." You know? Pay up. I mean, give me a little something. Yeah. You know, I'm not trying to exploit, but you know, I put a lot into this person. And so, you know, help me reinvest that into the next group of people. And with partnerships like NAPA Autocare, They are coming through with toolboxes for us.

16:27They're doing a training tomorrow at our shop for ADAS training. So we're going to have ADAS systems in every county so that we can have the brightest technicians coming out of our shops and bringing full value. Education is big, important to me. Yeah, if you know me, you know that that's top, top importance to me. So you're big time involved with USF still as an alum, right?

16:48Yes, yes, yes. I am the— just coming off from chairing the Green and Gold Gala. At the Motor Enclave. That was cool. It's my second year throwing that big party. It's our biggest fundraiser and we've made money higher year over year. And I'm on the Foundation Board, which is bringing light and awareness to everything that's happening at the university. We're doing great.

17:10We just became AAU and I'm just proud to be a Bull. Go Bulls! We're doing a great job. Awesome. That's great. So, Rochelle, same question for you. What's '26 look like? What's 2030 look like? I don't know about 2030, but, you know, this year, next year, hopefully increasing sales 2+ million more than what we did. So, right, would love to do over 4 million for sure, and really implementing a lot of our processes and procedures.

17:39So I have been spending time kind of hiding away from the fires, letting the team figure it out so I could write stuff down and not You know, very much involved, still running it from the middle, but allowing our team members to take ownership and responsibility. I would love, you know, eventually we want to expand, hopefully, God willing, anything that comes around us and it's the right purchase, we will.

18:04We are very blessed, no parking spots, a good problem to have, but finding a way to improve our flow and continue to servicing more customers. And also we do have plans to remodel a bit. Our building is great. We've slowly, like I joke, I've been giving it a facelift over time, but it was built by my dad from the ground up by, you know, everything that my parents could afford back in 2000.

18:34So we are maxed out on space, period. We'd like to maybe remodel, blow out a few walls, maybe build up like We need to get an office space. Elite clients don't just learn more, they do more. We help shop owners build stronger teams, improve profitability, and create systems that don't fall apart when you step away. The goal isn't just growth. The goal is sustainable success and a life you actually enjoy living.

19:02Elite Worldwide. Okay, here's the deal. Uh, at VISION, I recorded an episode with Keith Perkins and Seth Thorson, and I figured that we were going to talk about NASDEF stuff the whole time, but we ended up talking about AI the whole time. And they had just taught a class on building your own AI agents within your business, and it was an incredible conversation.

19:25And then after we recorded that, I went out into the show floor at VISION, and I talked to a ton of people who had been in the class, and they were talking about how 3 hours in that class had changed their entire perspective on AI, and they were building their own tools in just 3 hours of training. You know, it blew my mind.

19:41I've got to have that in my business. And so here's the deal. On Saturday, June 13th, I'm flying Seth to Raleigh, North Carolina, and we are going to have a full day— not 3 hours, but a full day class, breakfast, lunch, and dinner included. If you want to come down the night before on Friday the 12th, we're going to do Friday night shenanigans at my business at the, the Car Fix Bar and Lounge.

20:01It's going to be a great time. I think it's going to change the nature of how we do business. This class is for owners and GMs only. There are limited seats available for this class because it's very hands-on. You're going to need your laptop. You're going to need an active subscription to the AI of your choice. I recommend ChatGPT and Claude AI.

20:18Early sign-up discount, it's $8.99. If you sign up after May 17th, it's $12.99. Tap the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on your screen to learn more. It's going to be awesome. Maybe not corporate, right? Because it's just us, but having a place where we can review all this data. Wait, wait, wait. You're not allowed to have an office.

20:38I know. You're a Todd Hayes acolyte. But you got your office is Bay 1. Yeah, but have you seen what Todd Hayes has upstairs over there? Yeah, it's, it's a nice projector. You can easy review. But yeah, my, my feet have been in the Rack Attack, and that's true. Soon as I did that, you start to see it, right? I have a— I'm— when you own a business, there's no off and on.

21:03If you have to review something, you get it done. So whether you have your residential office or just your office. We're in a day where you have to get it done. And I can work from home, I can work from here, right? So just truly about cleaning up, making more. We don't have room for our customers in our waiting room. Again, it's a blessing, right?

21:25We get them home, but some of our customers like to sit. So I'm constant. I'm a really good mover, right? And builder of furniture. And my dad makes fun of me all the time, right? I asked them like, are you feeling tired? We got to move this shelf over here and put this cabinet here. And before you know it, I have a pillow on a cabinet that's now a bench for a customer to sit at.

21:48Why not? Yeah. So just staying involved and growing. So what, you know, having not having enough space in the lobby for your customers, right? Tells me that you have a lot of customers that wait for service, right? Not even a lot that wait for service, but we have 4 chairs. Okay, it's very small. And literally a bench, like I have a bench outside, I have a picnic table, but we have 4 chairs in our waiting room.

22:15How big is the shop? It's a big shop though, right? Right, so we have about 4,000 square feet in our front building and a little over 2 in our back. But again, maximize on space every every ounce of it. So he built it to have 10 lifts in our building, right? So we have that. It over time, it's, it's crazy how even changing from a bulky computer to giving a technician a laptop workstation can save, right?

22:46So just being innovative of that. Well, one of the things that, you know, the different speakers this morning were talking about was speed. I think it was Rosenberger. Was talking about speed, speed, speed, right? And not just Rosenberger. Did the general also— was he also talking about speed? Yeah, you got to make choices and move. I mean, we're in a society where people decide what they want finally, and then they want it 5 minutes ago.

23:13Yep. And so there's a lot of friction involved in a customer calling a shop and you saying, well, I can get you in in 2 weeks. Never. Yeah. But look, that's— don't give me a heart attack. Right. I get that. Yeah. That's the point of pride with shops all over the country. Like, oh, I'm booked out 3 weeks. Oh, well then you're fucking up something bad, right?

23:36Bad idea. I mean, you need to, you need to charge more. You need to hire more technicians. You need to add more lifts. You need to something. Say yes more. Say yes. So many people find a way to say no.. And, oh, it drives me crazy. Oh yeah, yeah. Your brakes are grinding. Yeah, I can help you with that. We got a lot going on right now, but if you drop it off with me tomorrow, I can look at it.

24:01No, no, no. Right now. It's not that hard to look at it. Lock the car in. In an ideal world, you get the car there now, you get the car, you show the customer, they say yes, you get them home, right? Then you buy time on the back end. But you're right. People want it yesterday. And their brakes didn't just start grinding on the way to work that morning.

24:20The brake pad, ding, near falls off when you pull it into the left, right? It's a safety concern. And the more that you tell people like, this is urgent, you cannot continue to drive this, or your technicians start to understand like, I don't have to worry about taking my time on this work because we have a full buffet of work for our technicians, right?

24:41Who needs What's the next, the next car coming in? They just keep knocking it out. That's right. It's how much can we do? Have you had any pushback implementing the Hayes concept from your technicians not wanting to give up DVIs? Not necessarily not wanting to give up DVIs, but so we've gone to train with Todd Hayes, I think 3 times now. And the first time in 2024, my dad and I went, it was just the 2 of us.

25:09We came back and my hair was on fire and you were either getting on this bus with me or you were getting out, right? So I had, we also didn't have 20 extra hands just to say, you're going to start helping me inspect this vehicle. So we shifted around and we continued to shift and we still do even almost 2 years later.

25:33We didn't get pushback on the technicians not wanting to do the DVI because again, technicians, maybe there's a dime a dozen that really like to take the photos and detail it. They probably shouldn't be your A tech. They should probably— They're the ones who figured out that's how they write their own check is finding all the work, right? But if they believe that your Reca-Tech team is going to find the work accurately and quickly, then they get on board.

25:59It's when they miss something or misrepresent something. Okay. We all have situations right now. I'm confessing my own shortcoming because I got hot and heavy on Todd's concept and tried and failed to implement it in some ways and succeeded in other ways. But ultimately what I've got is, you know, in my big shop, I've got some advisors who are really good at selling and some advisors who are really good at checking down a car and finding that, documentation and doing all that part.

26:29What ended up happening, rather than it being a rotation of advisors, the selling advisors live up front and the rack attack advisor lives in the back. And then I got a couple of GSs that are his hands and feet, right? And what I see when I go down to Woodlands is it's all advisors and maybe one GS or maybe one tech comes over to look at something.

26:48Um, man, I can't, I can't fathom having, you know, they effectively have 15 advisors over there. That's cray cray. They have a— you're like, what the hell are you talking about? But you're right, you know, their advisors are on their feet, and we just brought on our third advisor the past month and a half or two. So I'm finally able to have 3 advisors, and again, max capacity on space.

27:16So one of my advisors that has been with us for the longest his desk now is that rack computer. And I was hoping that I would be able to have all 3 advisors rotate through the rack and get in the flow of it. And we're seeing that's just not possible. So one thing I stop and look at at Adams is that they still have one man running that rack computer.

27:39The other advisors do come in to help and talk with them, but there's someone that's monitoring workflow, right? That's understanding dispatch. That's still guiding them, the new advisor, or, you know, the advisor that checked in the customer is coming, bringing that information. And we just don't have enough staff to where I could have an extra hand up front. Let's say a receptionist, not, not a receptionist, but I can't physically put a fourth person up front because of our flow.

28:12So as bad as I want that advisor that's selling the work to be involved in the car full time, He's got 3 other people waiting at his desk and 2 phone calls. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So you just have to— you keep working it. Well, let's, I want to shift gears a little bit because as much as I know that, that Todd and Glenn and those guys would love it to be the Todd Hayes Power Hour, we're going to— we're going to— I want to talk about the hot topic of the year, and that's how are we going to integrate this technological revolution that we're living through right now of AI into our business, because

28:47I think what's going to happen is the early adopters— my dad used to have a saying, being a pioneer is really exciting. Pioneers are also the ones that ended up face down in the prairie with a bunch of arrows in their back also. So there's some risk to that, um, but being an early adopter means you get the— it's a higher risk but higher reward.

29:06Yeah, and you definitely don't want to be a late adopter, so The early adopters, their business is going to evolve so much in the next 12 months that it's not going to be recognizable. I mean, I don't, I don't have the creativity to, to think about what it's going to look like, but the job of an advisor, the way they execute on their job, how many cars they can handle in a day effectively, how many phone calls the store can manage in a day, all of that is going to change dramatically in the next 12 months.

29:40Diagnostic workflows, information access, finding information efficiently for the technicians, having information in their lap immediately rather than have to go log into the different OEMs or the different, you know, service information modules or whatever it might be. You know, how we manage our marketing. Marketing is going to be revolutionized by AI., you know, call agents that can handle 80% of your inbound calls to a high level of customer satisfaction.

30:09You know, that's a choke point in my business right now is last week we had 280 inbound phone calls and I got 2 advisors on the counter and they just couldn't manage it. It was just— so we're talking about how can we shorten the length of the phone call so that you can manage more of those and miss fewer of them. But ultimately, I just need to add another advisor, right?

30:26I don't know what the number is that you can handle, but 100 calls a week. Plus the ROs, plus talking to the techs, plus the Slack messages with the green checkmarks and making sure you got all everything operating in the back correctly. I mean, there's just so much our advisors are doing. I don't track inbound phone calls as many as I should.

30:46So that's a good metric. I think it's interesting. I get sucked into data and I have paralysis with data too much. But how many inbound phone calls does it take to equal one car? Uh, and I think that's an interesting number and trying to compress that number as much as possible means that your guys are being effective and not missing calls. And also the way to reduce the number of inbound phone calls is to communicate with your customers in a timely fashion so that they're not calling for an update.

31:14Yeah. Say it louder. I just had that training and it's the number one no-no. If customer has to call you about What is going on with their vehicle? You didn't set the stage correctly at the drop-off. You didn't set the stage correctly with your team to where everybody knows what has to happen during every phase of that ticket running through the shop.

31:41And so, you know, very clear, Mrs. Jones, thank you for bringing it in. We're going to take care of X, Y, and Z. Is there anything else? Got it. We're going to get the inspection done. I should have a phone call and an estimate to you by XYZ time, 10:30, 11:30. From the time you give me the approval, review everything, then usually we get all cars back same day.

32:05So usually if you get me it in by 9, I can have your car back out by 5, just like the dry cleaners. They usually laugh. And you say, and if there's any issues like with parts or anything, we're going to talk to you by 2 so that you can rearrange your afternoon so you can pick up Sammy, Joe, get to practice, get to the recital.

32:22Consider that time is the most valuable resource we all have. And when you respect customers' time, they will choose you over anybody else that has the lowest price. They will put themselves significantly out of place to continue coming to you. They love your system. Yeah. Customers buy systems. So what we talked about at our last team meeting, once a month we have an evening team meeting for all the stores to come together and we eat, drink, and be merry, that kind of thing.

32:52Um, and it was 10 and 2, you know, 10 and 2. That's where you hold the steering wheel. I guess maybe not anymore. I don't think they teach that anymore. I think it's 9 and 3 now because the airbag, whatever. Um, that's when we need to be talking to our customers, 10 and 2. Because you know what happens when you're really busy and systems and processes start falling apart is at 3 o'clock, all the lines light up because Miss Jones and Mr.

33:14Smith Mr. Jacobs, they all call wanting to know what's up with their car because they want it back by 5:00 and they're trying to figure out, hey, it's about time to go get Timmy from school and I got to practice and I got to go to the grocery store and then we got to go to church. The phone starts ringing at 3:00 when you drop the ball.

33:29Yep. What I love to hear is the bays are full and the phone's not ringing at 3:15. That's right. That feels, that feels pretty good. Knows we're doing all right. Manageable. I imagine that I would love to hear that. I haven't heard it yet. It's coming. 2026 is coming for you. We just had the same conversation. With our team as well. It's, we do the 10 and 2 and I send them the message, 10 and 2, I need your updates, I need your updates.

33:53And I don't get all my updates that I'm looking for, but you just pick up that one phone call from that customer that says, I haven't heard from this person in a day. Oh, team meeting right away. We're making sure this doesn't happen anymore, right? So here's the thing, outdated SMS just They don't just slow you down, they cost you money. And I learned it the hard way.

34:18Before TechMetric, I was wasting time on inefficient processes, manual updates, back and forth calls with customers. Now I handle everything in one place. DVI, customer communications, payments, real-time reporting. It's all in one page. Since making the switch, my average repair order has jumped from $293 to $916. And it's not just me. TechMetric powers almost 10,000 shops nationwide. By the time you're hearing this, it probably will be 10,000 shops.

34:45Helping them grow and operate smarter. If you're tired of losing time and money to outdated systems, tap the link in the show notes and see what Techmetric can do for you. Because we've set clear expectations of what we expect as owners. I trust you to do it because you are a knowledgeable employee. You've acknowledged you will do it. And now Mrs. Jones called me to tell me you didn't do it.

35:11So where are we falling, right? And that's where I kind of kept letting them know, I don't care just about the cars you're working on today. You need to let the customer know whose parts we're still waiting on for 3 days. Hey, we're still here. We know you're still here. Your car is still here, right? It's clear communication. I agree. Then you don't have to have your phones blowing up at 3.

35:36Well, in the WordTrack we practiced, uh, this week was, you know, hey, Miss Jones, this is Mike down at Car Fix. I just wanted to touch base. I didn't want you to think I'd forgot about you. I haven't. We're still on track. Everything's going as good. I just didn't— I don't have an update yet. And I was thinking about you. And I want you to know that as soon as I know more, you'll know.

35:53The no update is an update. Yeah, absolutely. It is an update. Yeah. At least you know that I'm considering you. When you were saying one of our core values is our word is our bond, something my mom taught me when I was a little girl. Your word is your bond. And so if you can trust my word, even if you don't like what I have to say, I kept my word.

36:13And that is what builds relationships that are timeless. You can't break them because they're built with integrity. Relationships are everything, and taking care of people is a core, core, core incentive. In order for the people to trust you with— you got to understand that most people in the United States don't own their own home. They're renters. Their car is their biggest financial investment.

36:36Biggest financial investment. So they left it with you. And they have things to do in their lives. And so our teams, like, that's one of the biggest things that I try to get into their head. And when I teach these core values is that we're— people are trusting us. And we can't play with trust. You have to treat trust with delicate kid gloves.

36:55And you have to honor it. And when someone gives it to you, you have to treat it like a Fabergé egg. That's your BNI training coming through right there. That's it. People do business with people they know, like, and trust. Yeah. I learned that before BNI, but absolutely. I did BNI for 13 years. I think, I don't know when I learned no like and trust, at some point early in the game.

37:16But it's true. It's true. And it takes one person to be upset to tell 5 people. That's it. Yeah, for sure. And then you're losing 20 cars because they don't just bring one car to you. Hopefully they bring the whole family. That's right. So there's a lot of risk in that. And When you work your whole life for reputation, no, and then one service advisor that just is there for the check tries to ruin that for you, you promote them to customer status immediately.

37:45You have to release them to the industry to seek further opportunities. Release them to the industry to seek further opportunities. You'll be successful somewhere else. You will be successful somewhere else. You know what, here's the real deal though. Cody said that. If we've got incredible processes and procedures because I think— I don't remember who I should say it, but, uh, our competitor— it was you— our competitors do a great job of making us look good.

38:08Other shops make it so easy for us to look good. Yeah, you said that when you're on stage. So I've had multiple guys that it didn't work out for whatever reason in my business, but we parted ways amicably, right? We understood, and they are monsters where they are now. Sure. And some of that is, I like to think, because of what they learned Well, and so it was probably because they went somewhere that had a far better leader than they had when they were at Carfix, because I'm a bit of a train wreck.

38:33But it is what it is, right? I do want to go back. I want to touch on AI again because I'm— I love shiny object syndrome. I love you guys. You guys have plans on how you're going to start to integrate and utilize this new technology in your businesses? What I'm using right now are the Google products, Notebook LM. For training modules, converted our entire franchise module into Google Classrooms, used NotebookLM to create the quizzes, to create the podcast so that a new hire can listen to it, or a new franchisee can listen to the section on branding on their way into work.

39:09And it's not just my voice droning on and on, because then I'll start sounding like the teacher on Charlie Brown, right? Nobody wants to hear the same voice all the time. And so NotebookLM has been a big part of our training to get different modalities that will articulate for the people who like to visually see. We got the infographics for the people who are audible learners, for the people who have to have videos like myself.

39:34I'm a YouTube fanatic. And so that's one of the ways that we're using it. A lot of the things that we're building are all around training because we think that's our secret sauce. Is that we're just going to be the best at training people and then we won't have a people problem. And without a people problem, you can dominate. That's awesome. So that's the way I'm using it right now.

39:56I have not set up a Claude bot, an AB bot, but I think I will. I think I have a little bit of trust issues and I do like independent thought. And so I think getting good output because I think through a lot of the things before I put it into Perplexity or before I put it into Gemini and it's bringing back a new rendition or a point of view that is similar to my train of thought and not an outside influence.

40:28And one of my favorite things that happens is when I tell Perplexity, hey, this is what I articulate, and I copy and paste what I type, and it goes, yeah, you— yeah, you're good. Like, what else do you want us to do? And they're like, all right. And then you read it back and like, are they changed 2 words. And so it's, all right, I'm training my AI to understand my voice, my tone, my business.

40:50Took me a while to trust it, but Adrienne, she gave me Lexi. That's what I nicknamed Perplexity. I was like, I got my assistant Lexi. And so she helped me, she helped me free up that fear and also keep control. Is Adrienne looking at any AI tools for HR management? Yeah, I'd have to— she'd have to be here to give you the exact tools.

41:12But as I'm watching our process, get better. And some of the tools that we're getting through our payroll processor, ADP, that come with our packaging, I'm watching things become easier. They're not like they were 20 years ago when we got started. And, and so I'm grateful for AI. And I understand that people are fearful. But I think you have to lean in, and you have to get what you need out of it so that you can have more energy to spend on things that, that bring different art Return.

41:43So I had an episode that I think was released a week or two ago, but it was with Seth Thorson of German Car Support, and he's got 5 Euro and, uh, exotic shops in the Minneapolis area also. Um, but he— dude's freaky smart, right? But he taught a class at Vision about building your own AI agents to do things within your business— HR, bookkeeping, call agents, sales training, and he's been a big proponent of Trainual for years.

42:13And I think he's moving away to, to build his own, you know, tools in that capacity. But I hated that I missed his class because I was recording a podcast and then everybody came out talking about what an incredible class it was. But one of my friends, Anis Lavi, in Canada, he was in the class and he came out and said, man, I bought a subscription to GTP Pro, which is the $20 a month subscription at the beginning of class.

42:39And yeah, I have my laptop and by the end of this 3-hour class I had an app overlaying Chrome on TechMetric and I said, build an oil change. And it looked up the right oil. It found what he had in inventory. It built the whole thing. It sent the approval link. The whole deal. Game on. And he said, 3 hours and I don't know computers.

43:03I was like, holy cow, imagine. And so that was Seth and Keith's point in that episode was amateurs can do this in a few hours if you become a student of these tools and really grind on it. There's incredible— like, your imagination is the limiting factor on what you can get it to do for you and how you can streamline your business and become more efficient.

43:27And what have we been talking about all day? Speed. Money loves speed. Money loves speed. And so all of this is going to make your business run more efficiently. Your people will be able to, to do more with the time that they have. You can eliminate the time suck things. And so I actually— what date is it? I'm paying to fly Seth down to Raleigh to teach that whole class again.

43:52Uh, it is going to be June— Saturday, June 13th. I don't have any details yet, but if you're a listener and you want to come hang out at my shop, we're going to do, um, Friday Night Shenanigans live from my downtown store. My— the second floor of my downtown store is a big lounge with video games and poker table and everything else because I'm a child.

44:15But, uh, yeah, I want to chip in on this. All right, well, we Well, so I got a couple of— I love poker. I'm also very bad at poker. And so I have a every now and then poker game that's just for shop owners from the Triangle area of North Carolina. We all come together, some, a couple of vendors too, but they get great pleasure from seeing that I'm hosting an event and I'm buying the beer and the pizza and I'm getting my ass kicked at the same time.

44:43So, but it makes for a fun, a fun evening. You're doing good for our community. I tell you what. It's funny you bring up that episode. Cause that's what I was gonna say. I listened to it by myself and then I listened to it with my dad on the way up here and it changed my idea of how I could implement AI in our business.

45:02So I've been big on being able to write social or, you know, decide how to maybe review maintenance records for customers and what are we not selling or taking a technician's verbiage and write, rewriting it. I've been using AI, just ChatGPT. But now with my brother, who is the IT, the tech nerdy side of things, he's been loving his Claude. I joke he's Clauding.

45:28You know, he's hanging out with his friend Claude, his girl, whatever you want to call it. But Claudia. Claudia. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I said to him after your episode, I said, hey, can you please listen to this? Because this put my brain down a rabbit hole that I wasn't even thinking about. It's not just build the oil change, it's making sure you've sold the entire oil pan if needed, right?

45:53Or including the gasket so that your technician isn't about to start and your advisor forgot a part, right? Or reviewing and research and can it help my technicians on the diag side? And I loved how he said and reference a credible source. So you make sure that whatever information they're providing them, is helpful. I think in our world in general, you're not using AI.

46:16It's just like, uh, the keynote speaker had where it was like all the gray dots and one red at the very bottom. Maybe like the last 5 rows were people that spend $20 a month to use it. People are using it. You— if you use ChatGPT, you can tell a ChatGPT response in something. I even use it for hiring, like Indeed messaging.

46:37Help me draft this. It's not fun when you see the resumes that are very clearly written by ChatGPT. Yeah. And sometimes they didn't even copy and cut out the part. They just copied and pasted the whole response when it says, here's a good response for this question. Oh my. Yeah, exactly. And I don't see resumes, but that would just make me laugh so, so hard.

46:54Yeah. So there's just so much that you could do. But that episode that you guys had really made me go back and I said to him, I'm like, please take a look. Because there's so much more that we could be doing we haven't even looked at yet. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's only— it's only up from here. I think it's going to— I mean, the business is challenging, but there's a reason private equity is dumping money into our industry as quick as they can.

47:27It's because there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. Because as an industry we haven't been good at business. And so they know that they can come in and they can put systems and processes in place and be far more profitable than what we do. That being said, they also tend to come in and buy, and then the quality of that individual store or that small group of stores goes downhill and comes back towards the mean.

47:54But for small independents, I think we shouldn't be threatened by that. We should be looking at it as that's an opportunity. They've got good techs over there that are going to be unhappy. I love it. That's what I have found out. Yeah. I'm glad when I see one of those big boxes because I know everybody's going to say they got so many applications.

48:11And that's when I start saying, not that I like to curve around the process, but I start saying, if you get any A's, I'll meet them for coffee. And I just meet them at my favorite little place and we have café con leche. And I talk to— I just, I'm like, grab them before the other people do. But I love when they run them off with their big box mindsets because most people want to be treated like a human.

48:34Like Bobby said today, and big boxes, sometimes they're running numbers, but they're forgetting that the people are the people who make the numbers possible. And so, yeah, bring it on. Speed luck. Money loves speed. Money loves money. Money loves speed. So I'm actually sitting at 3:30 on a panel about hiring and recruiting and that kind of thing. And ultimately, if I get a resume, if somebody is at that point in their current job where it's like, you know what, fuck it, I'm applying somewhere else, they're— people are scared of change.

49:13So right now they're passionate. Tomorrow they might change their mind, right? So like the next time they have a meal, I want it to be with me. They send me a message at 10 AM. Hey man, what are you doing for lunch? That's it. That's me. What are you doing for dinner? Let's get coffee. I'm jumping in front of the process. I don't have time to wait for you guys to do that.

49:32You can check if you have a valid driver's license after I have coffee. Yeah. You know, you can check that after because right now he's upset and I need to find out at the root of it what's really going on. If it's the right resume. Right. If it's the right resume. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, what's going on? And for us, we're favored because our, our CAMs and our regional directors for our parts places, they know we're a great place to work.

49:55And so we'll get a text. Yeah. Hey, A.B., right? This guy's about to make a jump. Can you meet him? I'm like, tool guy. Damn right I can. You know, you know where to send him. Send him, let's go get some coffee. And, you know, I just picked one up on Saturday. He's already in a store right now. You know, I picked one up on Saturday.

50:12And jump right on it. And I knew he was the right person because I needed to get some refrigerant picked up from South Florida. And on Sunday, him and his wife jumped in their truck and they drove to South Florida and picked up 30 cans of 1234YF for me from one of my vendors. Sold. Well, that was it. Like, the interview was great.

50:30The second part of the interview, we went to shop visits, and I was like, boom. And so they know— can I trust you with $15,000? Can I trust you with— can I trust you? But she already had his toolbox, so No, no, I didn't. He came through a reputable source. And I figured if you came through Imer, then, then you must be that guy because Imer is not going to give anybody my cell phone number.

50:50Well, you know, most techs that are qualified, they're working somewhere. Their resume is not even out there. Nope. So you got to catch it before. The best time to buy a piece of real estate is before it goes on the market. That's how I got all my best deals. I bought a house in my neighborhood from walking my dog and the guy was complaining that his landlord was about to put him out.

51:09And I was like, what's going on, man? Tell me, tell me. And before you know it, like the next week I closed on a cash deal, bought the house, but just from walking the dog. So you got to be outside of your office to make these deals and you really got to be asking questions and listening and you got to be ready to pounce when the opportunity shows up.

51:26So for those listeners that are looking to grow additional stores and are not, looking to do it through equity money, or maybe they're looking for a deal, right? I'm, I'm cheap. I'm looking for a deal when I'm looking for another store. Um, I would encourage you to find your trade association in your market and get heavily involved. It's networking amongst peers. Um, but here's the deal.

51:49Word gets out that you're looking to grow, and then before they go sign with a business broker, before they go talk to Main Street or Sun, they call you. Right? Uh, and there are great deals to be had in that capacity because once Sun or Main Street or somebody else gets a hold of them, it's over. Because they're paying— they're paying multiples so much higher than, than what— yeah, they're paying, yeah, way past 3.5 EBITDA for owner-operator.

52:15And so those are the best names though to use when searching for resumes is by previous company. Yeah, then you can find them all. So you take like Sun You search resumes for people that work there, then you start talking to them. Okay. See? So find out who your competitor— not your competitors, but who are these big guys? Because you can work there, but your resume is still online.

52:37Yeah. Which means you're interested. You've been giving me game all week. No, I— do you want to send me your training manual? I'll trade you. We can trade something. All right, we've got a few more minutes. Give me your best guerrilla recruiting technique. Oh, umbrella recruiting. You need a GS, you go to Harbor Freight at 6 PM on a Saturday. They're, they're in uniform.

52:59Just hand out cards. What time? 6 PM on Saturday. They just got off work because they're gonna go do side work. Yeah, they're, they're looking, looking at tools. Uh, they're in the tool bit, the tool aisle in Harbor Freight at 6 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. They're in uniform, their name's right there. Or the gas station by the dealership. That you have, right?

53:17We have one. Technicians, it's the bar on dealership row, like the, the whatever sports bar that's between all the dealerships. Lunchtime, then you're finding dudes who are drinking at lunch. Maybe not, but after work, there's always a bunch of techs there. I have a good one. Find a GS, start interviewing him, and ask him who the best master technician is or who he learned everything from.

53:42Who have you learned the most from? Rah. I heard that one. So were you actually doing the work or was someone guiding you? Oh, yeah. You know, this guy Pete, he's smart. Great. Thanks for your time. What would Pete say about you if I talked to Pete? Let me get Pete's number so I can ask him about you. I heard about this one.

54:04Yeah, I got to continue to be in rooms like this because you guys are really gully. I love it. And then on the back of my resume notes, I've got I got 6 different names and my dad's like, what is this? And I'm like, this is this person, this is this person. Yeah, and it's perfect. No, look, I'm so detached from that portion.

54:21I haven't done— Adrienne came in in '13 and she took over all the people processes. And so I've been away from it unless I have a shop in trouble. And then I start hounding in the HR Tools channel in Slack, got anything? And then my GM's in there, me and the GM are like tag teaming, give us anybody, we're ready to talk, we're ready to talk.

54:39And so I like these little black belt moves you guys are teaching. These are black belt level. I'm just trying to get something worth saying when I'm on stage in a little while. I'm going to steal y'all's thunder and take credit for it. No, take it. Take it. We're in your space. We're all R&D. We're all ripping off and duplicating many, many people that have said these things before us.

55:00Yeah. This is all easier said than done, right? Perfect policies, procedures that everyone follows. Every customer is happy. Every employee shows up. No one makes mistakes. Especially— this is so easy. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. That guy said it perfectly on the channel. There's things that you cannot differentiate. And then there's this window right here where I'm like, you can slam in between these walls as much as you want, but on this topic, you stay here, right?

55:23But these topics, run up against both of these walls and let's see what comes out. So thank y'all. This has been a great chat. Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you. Appreciate having you guys. Cool. Thank you, Mike. We appreciate your podcast. 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.

55:43I'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? You 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.

56:00The number is 704-CONFESS. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, or follow. Join us crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode. All right guys, AI class. Learn how to use AI so that you can make it your bitch and you don't become its bitch. Saturday, June 13th, Seth Thorson's teaching a full-day class in Raleigh, North Carolina.

57:00Tap the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on your screen to learn more. It's going to be awesome.