Screw the Customer - Happy Workers Are More Important | Becky Witt - Episode 6

0:00Everybody knows the customer is always right. Right? To quote my hero and role model, General Bull Wright, off of the old Laugh-In thing, I'mma have a little dash, poppycock, and bull feathers. Malarkey. You will never have a happy customer until you first have happy workers. Everything in your business needs to be designed around keeping your staff happy. Screw the customer. Welcome to Downshift with my sis, Taneka Haynes.

0:33We all know as shop owners, sometimes you got to slow down in order to speed up. And that's what this podcast is all about. It's time to downshift. Good morning. With the Twinkies. That's so funny. Good morning. Oh my gosh, look at you. Cause why not? Oh my gosh. That's so funny. That is so funny because I am, I am just setting up my Valentine's Facebook post.

1:11Uh-oh. I don't know if you can see this. Uh-huh. Yeah. Oh, so Twinkies. Oh yeah, that's for my car. It's being served. I love my car. That's it. It's all, it's all blurry, but, but the wine is a special wine. It— you're not supposed to laugh at your own jokes. Yeah, well, too bad. I can't see. What does it say? Transmission red.

1:45That's hilarious. It's, it's from one of the automotive video conferences. What is that? Jerry Lowers. I love it. Is Paul's wife. They own AVI and she was a winemaker. And so she made a special, special wine for the '04 conference. Oh, that's cool. So here we are. Here we are. I'm excited about this one. I remember you, my first time meeting you.

2:13I have been in love with Ms. Becky Witt, Aunt Becky, since then. Was that when you were sitting with with a little thing on your leg? Or was it— when was it? Was it in Raleigh? It was in Raleigh, but I don't think I had the cast. I think the first time I was in the back and just kind of hiding and just sitting there like, yeah, I'm not crazy.

2:35She's right. Yes, yes, yes. Somebody that gets it. And then I think the next time I had the cast on my leg because I had to cast them on last year, year before last. It's been so many years. You're just an absolute spark plug. I just love you. You're just everything about what's right about people that should be in this business. Oh my goodness, sometimes I misfire, but I'll take spark plug.

2:57We all misfire once in a while. Once in a while. Ash, do you misfire? Every day. Every day. Misfire cylinder number 4. I foul, I misfire. So, Becky, so just in case We've got a person that's been living under a stone. Tell the world who you are. You have to introduce yourself. Talking to me? Yeah, you have to introduce yourself to people that don't know who you are.

3:30Whatever. Idiot doesn't know who you are. Excuse me. My name is Becky Witt. I am a repair shop owner now. I am a career automotive person. From, from, from the time I knew what a car was. When I was a kid, we didn't have air conditioning, and so everybody sat on the front porch. And at about 3 or 4 years old, I could name every kind of car that went by.

3:53And I've just always been about cars. And so I rode a bicycle and I carried tools in my pocket so I could work on my bike. And the day I turned 16, I walked to the nearest gas station, which was about 3, 4 blocks away, and I got a job. I was a technical installation engineer for Texaco Petroleum Products. I pumped gas.

4:18This— this— this was before self-service gas. I'm— see, I'm so old that my Social Security number is 2. I hope this doesn't get— I hope you bleep that out so it doesn't get broadcast. Thank you. So I, I ended up in my family. We were all required to get a 4-year college degree. Dad said, I don't care what else you do, but you're getting a degree.

4:47He only had an 8th grade education and he said, I'm sending you all to college. So I went to college. I got a degree in business. I majored, I majored in business with a minor in psychology and political science. Wow. Okay. And I worked for a few years doing jobs that you would do if you had that degree. But, you know, every time I went into a car repair shop, I loved the smell, the smell of the solvent and the rubber and all the stuff, the sweat.

5:22I love that. That was my home. And I thought my dad was going to freak. When I quit my job and I got a set of tools and I went to work as a mechanic in a gas station. So I spent 3 or 4 years as a real mechanic. Then, then I, I had a falling out with the management like most technicians do, because I don't feel like I was being managed fair.

5:50And I, I said, I wonder, I wonder where I could go. And I thought, okay, What I'm going to do, I'm going to go through the Yellow Pages because that's how we made phone calls back then. I'm going to go through the Yellow Pages and I'll look for all the repair shops and I'm going to try to find the one that had the best customer treatment because I figured if they're treating their customers well, they're going to treat their people well.

6:16So I went to work for the Oldsmobile dealer. They had an Olds and a Honda place, and I really wanted to work on Oldsmobile. Honda was brand new. This was in the early '70s. They'd just come out. And they only had an opening at the Oldsmobile place. No, I know what, no, I took a place at the Honda place. I wanted to go Olds, but they said, "No, you gotta be Honda."

6:38So I went to work at Honda and it was dull, it was boring. The cars didn't break hardly. When they did, when they did, it was a water pump and you could hear it from 2 blocks away. The water pump was noisy. And I was a service writer. I wanted to be a mechanic, but they didn't have any openings, so they made me a service writer.

6:56And, and I, I worked my way up from being a service writer to being an assistant service manager to being the service manager to being the service and parts manager. I left there, I went to work at another place. I, I've worked for, I think, 4 different dealerships, and I've been, uh, a service and parts director. I've been to all the Honda management schools, both service and parts.

7:24Honda was so impressed with my participation that they asked me to appear in a training video on shop marketing. Wow. And I was in a, I was in a training video for that. I got very good relationship and they asked me to be in a training video for parts. So I've appeared in two Honda training videos. I've won Honda's most prestigious awards for service management and again for parts management three times.

7:50I've won the top awards for top, top 10, top 10 in the nation out of 1,000 dealers, not 10%, top 10. Wow. All right. So I'm working for a dealer that I'm just not getting along. And I don't play well in corporations and I don't like how techs get treated. I don't like how the customers get treated. And I got fired. I got fired and I come back home and I said, "Do you know anything about Nebraska football?"

8:26No. We sell out every home game, every home game since Kennedy was president, since 1962, I think, like 300, 400 consecutive, consecutive without missing a single one. And I've got season tickets. And I said, "You know, I can't leave town." I gotta stay here. I got season football tickets. Lincoln is my home. I rented a one-bay stall in a storage building, and that's where I started my company.

9:01Wow. And it was on a dead-end dirt road. I, I— the key to my success was low overhead. My overhead at the time was $22 a day. I said the phone only has to ring once. Wow. What's up? What year? When did you start? Yeah, so from there I outgrew that in 6 months. I moved to a 3-bay, outgrew that in 6 months.

9:23I moved to a 5-bay, outgrew that in a year and a half. And then I'm in my current 10-bay shop right now, which is too big, but what the hell, I got a lease, so I'm stuck. When I talk about this industry, I want everybody to know whatever job you've done, I've done it. Don't tell me that I can't do something. You know, the one thing, Tanika, you'll understand this.

9:47I'll try. People who say it can't be done are particularly irritating to those of us who are doing it. The word impossible is my biggest pet peeve. Like my grandmother used to say, can't was a four-letter word. Yeah. And she was— well, look, whether you say you can or whether you say you can't, You're right. I don't think people understand what that really means.

10:14I know. Yeah. And they know, but they don't know what it means. The thing that was going through my head this morning is you don't know what you don't know. Mm-hmm. Each of us sees the industry through our own lens, right? If we, if we've been a tech for one place, then we think that's how the whole world revolves. Yeah. One of the first things that I learned very early on is the difference in clientele at the Honda shop.

10:44Well, I got transferred to the Oldsmobile shop. Yeah, I was so excited because it was such a challenge— ah! You can't laugh at your own jokes. Can't help it. It's when Oldsmobile came out with a diesel. So I got it. So now I'm writing service on the service drive for people that have diesels that won't run 150 miles without blowing up or something.

11:16So good job, Security. So I learned about the difference in clientele. And what I found was that the average Oldsmobile owner was old and cranky. They'd come in, slam the door, and demand to know, where's my ride to work? And at this time, the average Honda owner would pull in, pedal, pull out their 10-speed out of the back and pedal off to work.

11:39And you didn't dare ask the Oldsmobile owner that was in for their first oil change, is there anything else? Because this huge list would come out. And at the Honda shop, their first oil change, is there anything else? Nope, we're good. And you don't even want to start me talking about Volkswagen owners. Not going there. No, we don't have enough time to go there.

12:04No, no, we don't. So is that why you decided— yeah, a couple. I mean, we've got 24 hours. Is that why you chose to be a Honda specialist, or are you just— exactly, that is exactly it. When I started out in— at, at the gas station We were in it. We were in a nice neighborhood. People had money and we worked on everything.

12:27I even worked on a Rolls-Royce. Not kidding. Jaguars, Fiats, whatever you got. Yeah, we can do it. And that's where I first learned that people that don't like their cars, their car doesn't like them. Swear to God, you'll back me up on this because you— there's some people, they got the car from hell. And that car is like saying, oh yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet.

12:50Yeah, you just wait. Just wait. Yeah, you just wait. This is why you never want to work on a car for the fourth owner of a BMW. Not even a second. Yeah, well, okay, thanks. No. So, so you decided— how far into, into your shop ownership did you decide to go only Honda? Did you just start that way? Because you say you've worked on everything, but when did you decide I'm not dealing with these other jokers anymore.

13:20Well, when I got to the dealership and I saw the difference between Oldsmobile and Honda, and I realized you can fix a Honda, you can't fix an Oldsmobile diesel. And I watched Oldsmobile take themselves right down the tube when they're believing their own balderdash. I watched the PCD get overactive. That's the product cheapening department. Product cheapening department. Yeah, the product cheapening department.

13:55PCD. It's good. They just kept making stuff crummier and crummier. Yeah, but you're making all the money writing it up and selling it and selling it, right? Well, See, they just, they believed their own balderdash. They kept saying, you know, this is, this is what I found out about the Germans, is, is the Germans will never correct a fault because to do that would be to admit they made a fault.

14:26Well, they can't do that. Their standard answer when you point out an engineering flaw is, this is the finest German engineering. Okay, thank you. And nothing is more irritating than to have somebody tell you everything's fine when you can plainly see it isn't. That's true. So after, after my tour of duty with Honda owners, Acura owners, I, I, I was— I, I got hired to be the service manager, an Acura dealer, and I thought Oh man, this is going to be murder because the owners of the Hondas, some of them were just terrible to deal with, some of them.

15:08And, and, you know, the guy buys an Accord and it's supposed to be the perfect car and he keeps pointing out all these little flaws that you can't fix. And I'm thinking, oh boy, the Acura dealers, they're going to be terrible. Well, the Acura owners were fabulous. What I found was the average Acura owner had a nice life. They had a nice house.

15:28They had a nice career. Life was good. The car was just part of— that was just something. It was not your identity. It was just a nice possession. Yeah, that they have and they loved it. Yeah. Okay. And, and I also, at the same time, I was the service manager at an Acura dealer. He also owned a Honda dealership, which was— this was in Omaha, and the Honda dealership was across the river in Council Bluffs.

16:00So the demographics for the Omaha was well-to-do, and across the river was the lunch bucket people, and they were a whole different group. But you can handle all of them. You don't want an easy customer, do you? Well, what I have learned, I have not in addition to my my payroll experience. I've been, I've been a paid consultant to several other dealers, one in, one in, in Minnesota, one in, in Arkansas.

16:36And I got experience in, in, in Salt Lake. Every place is different. So you go to Salt Lake. I took the job as a service manager there. I was— it was a career. No, it was a charter Honda dealer. He was, he was, he like, he started with Honda and, and he grew it into a big place. It was like, uh, 50 mechanics, big, big place.

17:03And, and he said, we just, we're just not making people happy. He said, we've even put out coffee and donuts in the service drive and it's not affecting our customer satisfaction. I said, your customers don't want donuts, they want their car fixed. They want the car fixed right. Right. So I came in and within 3 months I had increased customer service pay by 30%.

17:31Wow. Yeah, I was on fire. I didn't get along with them. I quit. So you— I don't get mad, I just quit. I quit. I quit. I quit. Yeah. So you've learned a whole lot through trial and error. I mean, you just go in there, figure out some stuff, and then you quit. Go in, figure it out, and quit. And then you opened your own shop and you had all the answers to all the questions, right?

17:56I didn't have a clue. So, I mean, so you, you were— I mean, seriously, you think that's a good point? Because you got to think about technicians, because you're a service advisor, technicians that are at a shop and they hate the way management is doing everything. Everything is stupid. The front office is stupid. The whole world is stupid. And they know everything and they open the shop and then they get the aha moment of, oh crap, I don't know.

18:26Yeah, it's a, it's a completely different job. Yes, I, I am fortunate. I have a dream technician. He is a true unicorn. He can fix— How many frogs did you have before you had your unicorn? A lot. Lots of frogs? A lot. Are you a quick to fire person or do you try to work with them? Well, yeah. Both? I fired some, some quit.

18:52I've been through a lot of people. A lot of people. And I was not an easy person to work for for a lot of years. And I made a lot of people's lives hell. And to any of those people that are watching today, I'm sorry for what I did to you. And I accept that that I was, I was hard at times.

19:11Yeah. So this unicorn you talk about, is this the same unicorn you're talking about like all the time? How long has this guy been with you? This is the guy. Yeah. How long has he been with you? 3 years. 3 years. So you work 2 days a week. You got one day a week. Well, 2 and a half. We work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

19:30We open at 6:30 in the morning till 5:00 Monday and Tuesday. Wednesdays, we knock off at noon. And 10 Bayshop. And you don't want more, more, more, more, more to reach all your KPIs and make all the money? You know, everybody, this is an important thing. This is critically important. I cannot emphasize this enough. There's a lot more to life than money.

20:00Mm-hmm. Each of us has to decide What, what is it that we want? What is it that we— what really drives us psychologically? They say that it's money or it's recognition or it's security. So a secure person will stay at a job that sucks just because they know payday's Friday and they're going to get a check and it's going to clear the bank.

20:30It may not be very much. It may suck. Working conditions may be terrible, but it's a job. That's security. You got money. Those people may work well, very well on flat rate because they can control their own destiny. They get to say how much do they make. Recognition is the third motivation, and that is they want to win awards. They want to stand up and and be the one that gets the trophy, and it ain't a participation trophy.

20:59They want to be the one that gets recognized for whatever it is. They really— they have the money, that's okay, but you know, I'd rather get the recognition. So those are 3 different motivations for workers. So in the case of my unicorn, he just has a tremendous amount of pride in his work. He is all about perfection. He has been the top producer every place he's been.

21:26His favorite part in a dealership was the used car mechanic because he could come in. He hates people, by the way. He hates people. Don't say that. He did. Now he really, he really hates people. When I, when I checked his references and I called his previous employers, they said he hates people. He doesn't, he doesn't bond with the others. You know, when we have like a pizza party party.

21:53He doesn't care. And he won't— and he won't run cars in and out in the morning or the afternoon. He won't sweep his floor. He won't take out his trash. I said, does he fix cars? Oh yes, he fixed cars. You know, his work quality— oh, his work quality, you can't find any better. So as the— as the used car mechanic at a dealership, he could come in at like 3 in the morning.

22:18There's nobody around. Knock everything out. And he told me stories of like 11, 12 o'clock going to his service manager. I'm going home. What do you mean you're going home? It's only noon. So I've done all my work and he punches it up and he goes, holy, 22 hours you turned today? Yeah, that's why I'm going home. I'm out of work. Can you imagine how many shop owners would have someone like that?

22:45And if they came and they turned 22 hours for that day and they wanted to go home at 2 o'clock, that that shop owner would have a shit fit? Well, that's a great question and that's a great issue. And I address this in my Becky Wit Shop Management where it's my way or the highway. You know, it's more important to control people than it is to reap the rewards and use them like the fine tool that they are.

23:10Yeah, because I think that's ego with the shop owner. You're going to just— you need to stay on the clock. We're open. We're open at 6. I can get more out of you. I can get more out of it. It's my way or the highway. Yeah, it's my way. And by golly, if you can't do it, we'll get somebody in here who can.

23:31Well, I know. Why do you think I quit all my jobs? I can't imagine you as an employee. That would be funny. Can't imagine how many W-2s you got on the January at the end of the week because you had quit so many jobs. So, like, the whole technician thing, it's an ego thing, but, well, I'm not going to say ego. It's like a leadership thing.

23:55It's a leadership problem. I think, you know, we try to get the technicians, we treat them all like the same sheep, and they're supposed to all have the same personality and do the same thing. But if you have a unicorn, and this dude can knock out 22 hours before 2 o'clock, and he gets it done, he gets it done right, and he's like, boss, I'm ready to go home, and I'm like, okay, you want me to drive you?

24:13Yeah, right. Yeah, right. You want me to put— I'll put you on my back and take you home, brother. But I can't imagine how many opportunities I lost because, um, shop owners just cannot bend and understand and learn that technician and learn how to lead that specific person. They want to lead the whole shop the same instead of seeing who that person is, what they need, and how I can get the best production out of them.

24:37Like you said, Becky, it's either my way or the highway. And that is— that's not going to work. You're exactly right. I think the biggest problem with our industry is the people who own shops think that because they can fix cars, they're going to be a great shop owner. And I think that we have too many shop owners who were mechanics who just— not only do they not understand business, They don't understand psychology.

25:09Yes, thank you. But that's like, that stuff hurts your feelings when you have to look at yourself and figure out who you are. Because if you don't know who you are, you can't lead. And I'm learning this. I'm still a student of all of this. If any, I'll go to anybody class. I need to know what's up and what I do not know.

25:25Like you say, you don't know what you don't know. But when the ego gets in the way, you're affecting your paycheck at the end of the day. I think if people would just get out of their own way a lot of times and listen to different ideas and actually learn and open themselves up to learning and learning more about themselves. And just assume— I tried to assume for the last couple years that I'm the problem, I'm the drama, I'm the problem, I gotta fix me.

25:48So then once I get right, then I can trickle down to my team and I can help them do their job right instead of me micromanaging. I'm the boss, this is my damn shop, we're going to do it my way. I mean, didn't they done that? Still do it some days. Do that again. Well, now, okay, now we're down to it hurts to change.

26:12It does hurt to change. It hurts to change. It hurts terribly. So, when you're confronted with a new idea, what's the first thing you do? You push back. Oh no, we don't like that. That's stupid. Well, this is the reason that you are such an amazing pinnacle of success. Yeah, don't look at that. No, I am a work in progress. I am trying, trying, trying.

26:40We're all a work in progress. There's some that just haven't started on it yet. So if you want to get what you want, you have to help other people get what they want. Until you do that, you're not going to get what you want, right? All right, so you— okay, now I'm going to talk about management by the minute. Let's do it.

27:14One thing that you do not do with a flat rate technician is hold them up. You don't hold up the authorization. You don't hold up them getting to work. You don't interrupt them. You don't go back and talk to them. You ask me, Tanika, why don't you have a cast of thousands? I did. I had 5 mechanics. I had 2 service writers.

27:45I had a parts person, and I had a person to a shop steward to keep the place clean and give people rides to work. We opened at 7:00. First customers came in at 7:30. The mechanics all stood around and smoked cigarettes because that's what you did back then and talked for 30 minutes. I'm counting this up and I'm going, you know, We need to get people here at 7.

28:18These people need something to do. And the service writers, they looked at me like I've got two heads. You know, they're thinking, why don't we just wait to open until 7:30? And I counted it all up about how much our sales were per hour. I said, you know, you know what? I said, we're losing $47,000 a year in sales because we don't have any work at 7 o'clock until 7:30.

28:49Oh wow. Yeah, I said imagine, imagine if I came to you and I said, hey, I got a job for you. What do you gotta have to do? Uh, well, it pays $47,000 a year. All you have to do is sit in your chair and take appointments and, and fill up the schedule from 7 to 7:30, and once you've done that each day, you can go home.

29:08And and I'll pay you $47,000 a year and maybe you work an hour or two. What do you think? Oh, sold! Absolutely. Yeah, we'd have some takers on that. And, and, you know, I— it was just so much damn trouble to manage all those people. I'm just not— I'm not cut out to do that. Yeah, it is a lot managing. It's a lot and it requires a lot of money.

29:34But those little things like you just said with the, that, that 30 minutes each day, it costs so much money. I don't think people miss that. And with my service advisors, I'll look at them and say, okay, it's 7-Eleven, they're still standing there. What do we got? What do we got? Encourage those customers to drop off overnight. They can drop off overnight.

29:53Let's get them to wrenching because technicians, they, they're ready to wrench, they're ready to work. Yes, they're sitting around. I mean, if you gave them something, let's go, let's go ahead and get it done and get this day over with so they'll go by faster. Nobody wants us They don't want to stand around. And then the whole thing, I think it was you with having the parts ready the day before.

30:11We have everything down to the oil filters ready and labeled for each job. It's— way to go! Yeah, I've been listening. You're paying attention, aren't you? I've been paying attention. That's why I'm so excited to talk to you, because I think people— some people just think they don't need coaching. It's not that you need coaching, that you don't know what you are doing.

30:29We're not saying that. We're saying there could be a better way for you to do that that could save you time and money. Now, if someone came in there and you threw a Twinkie at them and you gave them a donut and they did not like that donut, you know what? You don't have to eat it. Spit the donut out, but don't not taste the donut.

30:47Taste the donut. Um, I'm like, serious, people are so stuck in their own ways that they're so blind to all the opportunities that it stand in front of them. I think like people that are with the same coaching company for like years and years at the time, like you haven't had any other experience with any other coaching company or any other training to look at things from a different perspective?

31:14No, I've been with them for 30 years. Oh, okay then, because even if I'm with a training company, I'm still gonna say, oh, there's a Becky Whit class, sign me up. What is she doing? What does she have? Okay, I like that. I like— oh, I don't like that. Oh, I like that. I can do that. You go in the shop, you implement it.

31:31If it works, if it doesn't, try it again. If it works, if it doesn't, then don't try it again. But at least try. At least open your mind up to change and coaching, and not just at work, just in life, period. Like, Becky, do you have any idea how much impact that you've had on the industry, like with other shop owners. When they're in your class, everybody just lights up, and we don't know if we should be laughing or crying half the time.

32:01But that's true. It is, it is like the best atmosphere for learning, and it's so matter of fact. And the stories from— I don't know, how do you come up with those stories? What? You mean the Frankie and Louie? Oh, like the donut stories. And when we're— I was like, listen, here's another story. Like, can't nobody take you seriously, woman, with you in these stories.

32:30But that's the thing, if you can break it down to them with all the— without all the big words, all of the, all the statistics, all of the big numbers, and just keep it simple So they can eat one donut at a time and not end up with diabetes. It's very true. It works. The stories help you remember, right? That's what the stories are all about.

32:55Who can ever forget about Everett Sinchu? Ever since you— now what I have found interesting is every single trainer has used some of my material. Well, that's, that's, that's, I got copyrights on it. Yeah, yeah, this, this, this gross profit per hour. I wrote a class in 2000. I was a featured presenter at Vision. It was all about gross profit per hour.

33:26Nobody had heard about that. You're a pioneer. Yeah, yeah, I'm a highly trained unpaid Pioneer. But why is that? Because you do not ask for a lot with ASTA, with Fueling Connections that we have coming up. You're not a trainer that comes in and says, I need $10,000 in a, uh, 5-star hotel and Dasani water. Well, Dasani sucks. Or what, a seltzer water, room temperature.

33:58You're not that person. Why do you not ask to get paid for your knowledge? You ask a great question. I've never wanted to be a coach. I wouldn't know how to be a coach. I say the same thing. I, I, I, I— all I ask is pay my expenses. Every other, every other coaching company has an agenda. They want to send trainers to these events so they can sign people up and people all need to be signed up.

34:36I mean, I'm not, I'm not putting them down for doing that. They need to get paid for what they do. This is their marketing. So early on, I just opened up and what I wanted to know are what are my financial guidelines? What should my— how do I set my pricing? You know, this, that, and the other. And this is way back when they had Management Success.

35:02Mike Lee was the guy who started Management Success, and he, he was constantly sending out advertisements, and he was putting on a class in Kansas City, which is 180 miles away, and it was $180, and I signed up for it, and it was a 2-day class, and I'm a college girl. I'm a professional student. When I go someplace, I take notes. So I sit through the first morning from 8 till noon.

35:38And all I heard from Mike Lee is we need management training. Boy, do we need management training. And I'm just smoldering now by noon. And I finally grabbed one of the assistants at lunch and I said, I paid $180. I drove 180 miles. I don't know. I don't need somebody to tell me I need management training. I'm here to get some. Can I please get some?

36:03Here's what I want. For the love of God. So I went home. I think it was R.L. O'Connor had, or it was Horizon Training Group that did a similar thing. So they had a 3-hour class. I went to that. I filled up 2 pages of notes, single-spaced. I was on fire with all the cool ideas I had. And they had a program where it was, it was 4 days of training about a month apart.

36:32So it was, it was, it was a day of training and then, then you wait a month and implement that and then another day of training. So I've had some, some formal training from, from the industry. That pretty much was it. And when it came to the one on technician time management, This is, this is what really fired me up. I closed the shop and I took the whole staff.

36:57And the guy said, I've never seen anybody do this before where you close the business. This was during— this is a workday. Close the business and brought everybody. I'd never seen anybody do that. Well, when we came back, we're all fired up. And I mean, it just changed everything. And that, that right there enabled me to realize that the best-run shop is when the technicians understand what management's trying to do.

37:24Yeah. And that's scary for shop owners. You all see the same movie. You all get the same notes. Now everybody understands here's where we're going. Without a clear definition of our goals. Yeah. You don't know. That's scary though. It's scary coming from a shop owner. Um, you know, you got to share your numbers with your staff. You need to do this, you need to do that.

37:47You're thinking you don't want them to think that, okay, so you made a million dollars in sales, that means the boss lady took home a million dollars. No, I, I didn't. That's not how the world works. Um, like, some technicians don't even understand their paycheck, right? Like, how taxes work. Like, okay, yes, you made $1,000, you went home with $800. It's probably worse than that.

38:10Um, so what'd you do with my $200? I didn't do anything with it. I gave it to the government and they asked me to give some more to the government. So your paycheck wasn't $1,000 that I paid you. It was like $1,200. They don't understand that. So I think if technicians understood the cost of doing business and that, that would be an easier conversation when it came to getting paid.

38:31That's a great, that's a great one. I remember, I remember way back. We were offered bonuses for whatever, and this one mechanic said, I don't want a bonus because I get a bonus, they'll take more taxes out. I said, no, they can't. There's no such thing as 120% tax bracket, right? You know, yeah, they're going to take out more taxes, but you're going to get more money.

38:52But they're still going to take more. They're going to take more out of my check. Oh, for the love of God. Okay. What you just said to me was important though, too, like Being transparent with the numbers helps for other reasons too, like technicians. All right. I'm having trouble hearing you. Can you get closer to your mic? There you go. Yes. Is that better?

39:11That's much better. Technicians that want to become shop owners but have no idea the costs involved to run a business. Like, I feel like you're doing them a service by being transparent, even though it's uncomfortable, but like understanding just simply payroll tax. Like payroll tax in itself is a whole thing. Workman's comp insurance, insurance for this, insurance for that. Uncle Sam and every insurance company wants anywhere they can take money from your business.

39:41And I think that that's something that's overlooked by a lot of employees. It's something I've always been curious about when I was an employee. So luckily I knew going into it how expensive owning a business was, but I think a lot of people don't. And so they go, I'm gonna go open a shop. I'm going to go be my own boss. I'm going to go do this and do it my way.

40:00And then they realize how hard it is to take money home for yourself. Yeah, they don't know how to pay themselves first anyway because they don't have the cash flow. They haven't set up their labor rate correctly because they're looking at the labor rate basis. I'm going to be the cheapest guy. I'm going to be cheaper than my boss. Right, right. Okay, my neighbor's $150.

40:19Yeah, my neighbor's $150. I'm going to do $120 and I'm not going to mark my parts up and I'm not going to do that and I'm going to save the whole community. And in the meantime, they're at home broke, and their wives are like, what the heck did you do all day? Because we have no money to buy the bacon and fry it up in the pan.

40:33They cannot buy the bacon, fry it up in the pan, because they are not properly charging. So like, that's why I think some of the common sense stuff that you say, Becky, just hits home. And I think that's what makes you such a great teacher, coach, whether you want to be that or not, um, is because you don't make things overcomplicated. You just make it very simple.

40:55The whole KISS method, and I love it. But when you're teaching, or even on your social media page, what is one thing that you think that service advisors or owners resist? Things that you say, try this, and they're like, oh, that'll never work, that'll never work. And then they come back and like, okay, you were right. Like, is there one thing that you're just like, do it because this is the way it should be done, or you should try it, and they're like, oh heck no, that's just ridiculous?

41:23I think probably the biggest hurdle is asking people for money. When, when we, when we fix our own car, we can buy a water pump for $100. So we're thinking, okay, somebody's got a broken water pump, it's going to be, it's going to be $100. No, it's going to be $800. Well, I can't do that. The biggest obstacle is our own false belief that I can't charge whatever it is.

41:53I can't charge that. And I remember starting out and I, you know, competing shop, he put in a battery and I mean, he charged like twice what I charged to put in a battery. I'm going, how can you survive? Well, he survived very nicely. Thank you. Very, very nicely. Well, we, we, we get We get too wound up, and as a matter of fact, that's— that is this week's donut.

42:22Okay, is going to be the 3 types of people that come to our door. We have clients, we have customers, and we have people with broken cars. The clients trust you, they love you, They've been coming to you for 27 years. And if you tell them a water pump's $800, they ask you, will it be done today? The customer— now, the client, they'll just— they'll do whatever.

42:56Their— their client means you have a special relationship with that person. A customer is someone who comes in, they understand it costs money. They may shop around, they may not buy everything from you, but they don't drive you up the wall. The person with the broken car is the one that's going to ask you to discount the work heavily, stay late till 11 o'clock to get the job done because they need it, and then give you a 1-star review because you were late.

43:30She broke it down for you people. Yeah. So Well, last week's donut was about diagnostics, selling diagnostics, and several people said, well, I suggested charging double, charge an hour and give it a report in half an hour. So we're supposed to find everything in half an hour? No. Nope. You're going to adjust that. But one guy actually said, no, you just leave your best guy on it all day if that's what it takes.

44:07But when you get it fixed, you got a happy customer. Yeah. And your kids are hungry because you can't afford school lunches. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Well, oh, but he's on salary. Well, what difference does that make? You still have to pay him. But people are trying to save the world and then they're hurting themselves because that is ridiculous. I know this is— I've been guilty of that, and that's why coaching is important.

44:31I've been guilty of pricing out of my own pocket. Oh well, they know that they can go buy that part at AutoZone for $100. How can I charge this? Well, the way I can charge this, because I had to buy the part, I have to warranty the part, I have the building, I have the technician, I have the lift, I have the tools, I have the knowledge, I have the database.

44:48Because I can also go and get, uh, 3 pieces of chicken and fry it and make some mashed potatoes and a biscuit for less than $10. But you know what? I don't feel like it, so I have to pay for it. So it's the same thing, like we, we discount ourselves just out of emotions. And because a lot of customers don't even go in there with that mindset, we just say it.

45:11You just say, well, you know, they don't even ask for a discount. We're discounting before we even open our mouths. But I had to learn that. I had to learn I mean, in the last 2 years, I fixed my parts matrix, I fixed my labor matrix, I did all of that. My coach that I have right now, she's like, you need to fix this parts matrix.

45:28I was like, there's no way people pay for that. And I said, you know what, get out of your own way, Miss Haynes. Okay. And then I did it, and I drank the Kool-Aid, and the Kool-Aid was good. And I got rid of a lot of— what do you call it— broken car people. What's the last category? Yeah, people with a broken car.

45:46The people with a broken car. The people with the broken car that someone, um, was just on the pod and they were saying, okay, you do the oil change, you do the DBI, you give them a list of things that needs to be done, and then the next time you see the car, all the stuff is done. Exactly. And they're back for another cheap coupon oil change.

46:03And then you're like, oh, do— would you like to do any of those previous recommendations? Oh, I got it done somewhere else, they were cheaper. Well, I'll tell you what, you take your little happy tail back to the place that you got it done. Why are you here? Why are you here? Because you allow them to be there and use it, use you, in my opinion.

46:19Yeah. Well, okay. So this is great. So how do you tell these people? Do you just stand there and say, "No, I'm not going to work on your car anymore"? That's a very difficult thing to say. Well, not for me, but we need to tell other people. Well, not for you. Yeah, well, because I will tell people when they want to just— state inspection in North Carolina is $13.60 in my county.

46:41That's it. When people want to come for an inspection only or oil change only, I'll say, you know what, you know, I think it might be best if we don't have this relationship anymore because we have made recommendations and you tend to go somewhere else for all of your other work. And it's not fair to my technicians because it's like you going in a restaurant and ordering just a cup of water and taking a table for an hour.

47:01And so it's not fair. And then some people say, you know, eyebrow raised, like, oh, I never thought about it like that. Well, I'll go to the dealer for everything else. Well, then you probably should go there for your inspection. It's a long drive. But you're so convenient. I know I'm convenient. We have a nice office, we do a great job, but you don't trust me with anything else.

47:19So that is not fair to me or my technicians or my service advisors for us to spend our time and energy for a job that nets negative $8. This is exactly why I don't do free DVIs. There was a time when I, I You know how big of an impact I've had on this industry? I'm going to— I do. Do you know how big of an impact you've had on this industry?

47:43I changed the dealership model to Fast Lube. Back in 1988, I became the service manager at a Honda dealership, and the dealer principal had hired, had hired a consulting company to come in and said, how can we increase our revenue? And they said, you can't, you got the market saturated. Well, I evaluated this whole thing and we got— we had 10 techs and, and I said, you know, there's always somebody that's going to be between jobs.

48:18So how about if from, say, I don't know, 8 to 11 in the morning and 1 to 3 in the afternoon, we do no appointment needed. We'll do an oil change while you wait. We increased customer pay labor sales by 30%, 20% first year when they said we couldn't do it all. Well, I was just— I was even back then measuring minutes.

48:43So I'm looking at— I got somebody between jobs. What the hell? Let's run it in, do an oil change. So the pay for the technicians was whatever you find that needs doing, you get that work when it comes back. Okay, fine. So pretty soon I had mechanics coming to me and saying, I'm not getting my fair share of oil changes. Yeah. Wow.

49:10We're just going crazy. And, and, and Pennzoil and Honda both are flying me all over the country to talk to service and parts managers clubs on the benefits of doing oil changes while you wait. Nobody done that before. This is when Jeff got started. Huh? Do you do waiters now? No. Full circle. I have completely come full circle. What COVID taught me— see, I was— I used to do— I was doing wait oil changes up till COVID.

49:42As a matter of fact, I have the unquestioned nicest customer lounge. It is 12 feet by 24 feet. It is separate from the office. You sit in there and you don't hear anything. I think having customers wait while you've got service writers on the phone or talking to customers is a bad thing to do. Oh my God, they want— how does the coffee machine work?

50:11How long is it going to be? Then they want to talk. Well, it's awkward too when you're talking to somebody else about like, yeah, the step car. And I got this little waiter girl who was like, are they gonna come do that to me too? Yeah, we have, we do 2 waiters still in the morning. We got from 7 to 9, 2 waiters.

50:31That's it. All right. So what I found was the people that waited never bought anything extra because they wanted to get going. And I also found that I had a whole legion of people that never bought anything. I finally said, okay, okay, here's what we're gonna do. I had taken a long time. I think it took me 6 years to transition my whole fleet from regular mineral oil motor oil to Mobil 1 Extended Performance.

50:56Wow. And I said, it'll go 8,000 miles in Lincoln, Nebraska without any problem. I said, gee, 8,000 miles, what else needs to be done at 8,000 miles? Well, that's when the tires need to be rotated. The brakes need to be inspected. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to do it. What I'm going to do now is an annual maintenance.

51:19It's important that you have names for things that ring so that they pick up on it. It's an annual maintenance. You come in once a year or 8,000 miles, and we'll start off with a road test your car to see, does it leak? Does it squeak? Does it pull to one side? Does it do anything it shouldn't? Then we're gonna bring it in and check under the hood, put it in the air, lift it up.

51:45We're gonna check all the lights, check under the hood, lift it up in the air, check the steering, the suspension, pull all the wheels, inspect all 8 brake pads, which nobody ever does, rotate the tires, computer balance the tires to go to the front, put on a special oil filter designed for extended service, put in our fabulous oil, and when we're done, we're gonna do a second road test to make sure that everything's okay.

52:07All this is only $450 or about $35, $40 a month. You can't buy a bus pass for that. What do you think? Is that the level of care that you're looking for? Well, that's just crazy. All I need is an oil change because I don't drive that much. I know. So I'm sure that there's a lot of places in town that do oil changes.

52:28I'm just not one of them. Well, you don't want my business. Well, you are not— you're not selling— you're not buying what I'm selling. There's no harm in that. You know, you don't buy tomatoes at the meat market. So we have, we have an issue here where this is what I'm selling. You can buy what you want. And I had one guy, I perceived that he was a really good customer.

52:54When I first did this change, it was instant. It's here from now on. And the guy said, so So this is it, huh? I said, I never said this is it. You're the one that said this is it. I'm just telling you, here's what I'm selling. You decide what you want to buy. I looked up his history. In 5 years, he'd never even bought an engine air filter.

53:16Yikes. What happened was I, I was losing money on every oil change that they didn't buy anything else. Because you got to be competitive. And I had to hire, just to be sure that I lost my behind, I had to hire an extra service writer to write these up and hire an entry-level technician to do them. Because even on a wait basis, people aren't right there.

53:44You've got gaps, you've got unsold time. You can't do this. If I tell you come in at 8, well, maybe you're at 8:15, that's close enough. So, so now you've got to be careful how you space these out. And it was just a horrendous loss of money. I lost 30% of my clientele. Wow. And my average repair order doubled. That's what I was waiting for.

54:13Believe it. My sales went up. Yep. My gross profit went up. And I was able to get rid of 2 people. And then I'm looking at this and I'm going, wow, okay. It cost me $50,000. This is old numbers. It probably cost me $60,000 a year to give rides. My shop is not in a neighborhood area. You gotta— it's a cheap location.

54:41It takes a compass, a map, and a Sherpa guide to find me. It's a destination. It is, it is. It's a destination. And I said, you know, for $60,000, I wonder how many loaner cars I could get. So I currently have a fleet of 8 loaner cars. We do about 6 jobs a day. Average is 2.5 hours. So, so we're putting out about 15, 18 hours a day.

55:09And, and we just give you a loaner car. It's all figured into the cost of doing business. Is there an extra fee for that? No. So it's free. I said, no, nothing's free. But, you know, there's no extra charge for it. And, and they're all old cars. They're all over 20 years old. They all have like 200,000 miles on them. They're all former client cars and they look like nobody's ever sat in them.

55:35They don't leak, squeak, rattle, or creak, and they drive great. They even have brand new tires on them. I mean, testimony of maintenance. That's exactly what it is. I have older loaner cars too, and they're like, oh, that little thing can go. Mine are Camrys. Yes. And I was like, yes, a 2002-2004 Camry. And they're like, oh, it's really nice. I was like, yeah, okay, they'll take care of you.

55:58Yeah, yeah. So do your maintenance. Do your maintenance. I've had more than one person tell me, said, you know, I wasn't sure if I should invest the money in my old car, but after driving yours, it's cheaper to keep her. I see it can last. So there's people, hopefully there are people out there watching this, because who knows if they're going to watch my podcast.

56:22I heard that they're going to watch it. Do you think they're going to watch it, Ms. Becky? Aunt Becky? They're gonna watch you for sure. They're gonna watch you for sure. So that's no doubt. So they're going to be watching this. So I can only hope. Your aunt Becky is my great aunt. Yes, that's how it works. Okay, so you've got— yeah, you've got great aunt Becky.

56:41She's my auntie. Um, I love it. For the people sitting in the back, sitting in the audience, sitting on the YouTubes and the FaceSpace, what is the one thing if a new shop owner is listening right now They're listening to your voice. You've got all of their attention. What is the one thing that they should stop or start doing immediately to make a difference in their shop?

57:05Like, I love this question and I've got the perfect answer. Let's do it. I'm ready. All right. Everybody knows the customer is always right. Right? Boom! To quote my hero, and role model General Bull Wright off of the old laugh-in thing. I'mma have a polterdash, poppycock, and bull feathers. Malarkey. You will never have a happy customer until you first have happy workers.

57:40Everything in your business needs to be designed around keeping your staff happy. Screw the customer. I don't do anything while you wait. I don't care if you have a light bulb out. I'm not going to disrupt my mechanics by having them be interrupted on a job, walk away so they can put a bulb in for you. And I'm not going to be open 7 days a week, and I'm not going to do free inspections.

58:08You want your car inspected, you'll pay me to do it. That's what an annual maintenance does. I'm not going to take pictures. That takes too much time. You just come in because I'll fix your car right, and you're going to trust me to do that. I don't need to show you a picture of some mangled piece of rust that even I couldn't tell what it is.

58:31It's a thermostock. It's our most profitable item. The left one. The left. The left one has leaked. So bad, we gotta change both sides. Oh Lord. That sounds so sad. What is the sound? A thermal throttle. Thermal throttle. Thermal throttle. Thermal throttle. Yes. The sad part is that is what a customer hears. Yeah. So, you know, people say, I need my car by 2.

59:02I used to ask people, when do you want your car done? And they'd tell me, and that became, that became Hurry up. And you tell your mechanic, hey, hurry up, this goes at 2, she's waiting. Like, you can't— nobody can work like this, right? When my customer says I need my car by 2, you know, you know what I tell them? Well, I hope you get it.

59:24Here's the keys to a loaner car. Here's the keys. I really do say that. Here's the keys to a loaner car. Well, when's it going to be done? I said when it's finished. Well, what, you can't tell me? I said, how am I supposed to know? I take in what I think I can do in a day, but I don't know what I'm going to find.

59:45I don't know who's going to say yes, and I have no idea where the parts are coming from. So don't start me to lie because it ain't what I do. It gets done when the guy doing the job is satisfied it's as right as it can possibly get. So here's a loaner car. It is yours to use for whatever you need. I had, I had one guy, we had a real problem.

1:00:05It was a fairly late model Honda. With fuel injectors, and, and they're, they're buried inside the engine. You can't just change one, you got to take the engine all apart. And, and we had his car like 2 weeks. He drove my car to western Nebraska. He drove all through the sand hills, all over the place. But that's the deal. So my, my advice— you want my advice for the, the best thing for any new business is Do your management to make your technicians and your staff happy.

1:00:38Everything needs to be about making them happy. Now, you're going to have some people that aren't grateful and they're going to take advantage of you and they need to find someplace else to be happy because it ain't going to be here. But once you got, like, my unicorn, oh, he's a happy dude. He'd been with me about about a year. And I said, so what's the chance you're going to be here in another year?

1:01:03He said, I'm dying here, man, this is it. And when, when, when you're— when your mechanics start bringing their own stuff in and bolting it to the floor, you know that you've arrived. That's cool. And this guy, yeah, this guy that's antisocial, he's the most social guy you'd ever want to meet. His favorite thing is to come in the office, pull up the chair that people are sitting on, put one foot up there and talk to us.

1:01:31And, and, uh, our favorite word is dumbass. Whenever somebody makes a mistake, it's always dumbass. Becky, this has been like the most fun I've had recording. My face hurts. It's too early in the morning smiling this much. Such a Valentine's Day gift. I'm so happy to have you, and I'm so happy to have met you and just being allowed to be in the same space.

1:01:58Like, your humor with just giving a lesson makes it so much easier to swallow. And I really hope people just listen and hold on to all the things that you have to say. And like I said, just try it. And if it doesn't work for you, spit the damn donut out. But not trying something just because you're afraid, you just don't know what the other, the other half of it, the other side of it's going to look like, is no excuse not to even try.

1:02:20So how do people— you got to tell the people where to find you if they want more donuts. Like, it's all right. Thank you very much. It's a Facebook page, Becky Witt Shop Management. Becky Witt Shop Management. Just all you got to remember is Becky Witt. And where are you teaching in the next couple months? I don't know when this will be out.

1:02:40I know you'll be in North Carolina in April. Yes. Are you doing vision? Uh-oh, maybe. No, I, uh, I don't do vision anymore. Okay. I actually, I don't do any live training. You want to know how special you are, Tanika? You've got me to North Carolina. I have no other obligations. Um, and, and actually I'm taking my own advice right now because you can get trainers for free.

1:03:25I'm just not one of them. Nobody wanted to pay me good money. I mean real good money. My— the value of the time in my repair shop is $8 a minute right now. Wow. And, and I, for 20 years, for 20 years, I was a pioneer for training. I have taught at every venue there is, coast to coast, north to south, Minnesota to Texas, Rhode Island to Los Angeles, and points in between.

1:04:00And I, when it all came down, I didn't, I didn't make minimum wage. For all the time it took me. My class on advanced pricing strategy was based on a university-level textbook on cost accounting, 400 pages. I read the whole book. I took the principles in that book and I applied them to owning— to running an automobile repair shop. This is where I came up with the concept of eliminating Steps that cause— cost money, that add cost but not value.

1:04:38Steps that add cost but not value. And I spent 140 hours to write that class. Do you know how much I've made off of that 140 hours? I'm scared. Not a lot. Not much. No. So I've decided Okay, um, I'm just not gonna go anymore. And I used to, for my material, I, I wrote out everything. My, my class on, on being a service advisor is 50 pages.

1:05:1150 pages I wrote. I typed that all out. And the next year, oh, what are you going to teach this year? I'd write another 30 pages for that one. And, and putting, putting together all the, the PowerPoints and doing all of that, it just wasn't fun. Tanika, I have to tell you what I'm doing now for North Carolina. I pitched a number that will pay all of my expenses to come out.

1:05:44None to teach, but will pay my expenses to come out. I'm a biker now. You want to know what I do? I work 3 days a week. It gives me 4 days off. You know what I do? I ride a motorcycle and cook. Becky Ecke. Yeah, I ride a motorcycle. I am— I have been described as my girlfriends in the biker— my girl biker gang— as a pad scraping, ride it like you mean it woman.

1:06:11I have ridden— I'm a Harley Road Captain. I teach people how to ride safely. I have ridden 180,000 miles. On a motorcycle, I have ridden through 49 states. Alaska is the last one, and I probably won't be doing that. I've got a Honda Goldwing. It's like brand new. It's a 7-speed automatic transmission. It has all the features a car does— stability assist, anti-lock brakes, hill stop, hill stop assist— and it's a 6-cylinder.

1:06:47It's even got reverse. You're living your best life. Thank you, and you're helping me do it. Oh, so on the way out, I'm gonna ride 400 miles to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and I'm gonna ride a road called the, the Pig Trail. Then I'm gonna ride down to, um, um, a town in Louisiana. From there I'm going to go to, um, a port along the Gulf Coast, then over to Jacksonville, Florida, then up to Charlotte, and then over to your location for your class.

1:07:31Where are you going, Jacksonville? What's that? Where are you going to go in Jacksonville? Jordan's moving to Jacksonville next weekend. Uh, there is, there is a lovely, uh, Marriott right on the coast of Jacksonville. It's right next to one of my favorite seafood restaurants. I bet I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's right on the coast, just right off of where the interstate is there.

1:07:58So I've mapped it out. It's 3,200 miles round trip. I love it. I love it. This has been great. So make sure we find Becky on Facebook, get all your donuts there. You are such an inspiration. I am just— I'm telling you, I'm so tickled right now. I'm gonna eat a Twinkie. You're a big inspiration for me. Oh, I'm honored that you got me here.

1:08:31And I'm very, very pleased with what you've done. To help get me out to North Carolina. And I got to tell you, you know, people in my class are having fun. I'm having more fun than anybody. We can tell. And that's the best part. It's the best part. It's so engaging. It's so real. It's so common sense. Keep it simple. Everybody's engaged.

1:08:55Nobody ever has their head down. No one leaves the class, you know, the first 2 hours or whatever. You're in the class and then it's 20 people in the class and then the next one in your class, it might be 40 to start. And at the end of the day, there's 60 sitting in there on the floor. Yes, you're right. Ready to engage.

1:09:10So I'm so excited. I'm so excited for Feeling Connections and getting to see you after your big road trip and all of that good stuff. So we'll get together. I'm so excited too. Every time I've gotten to meet you, I've been working a trade, the trade show, right on the floor. So I've never been able to sit in one of your classes.

1:09:28This is the first year I'm not doing a booth. So I'll actually get to sit in. I'm excited. You— it's the best. It's the best. Downshift with Tanika is where we slow down long enough to have real conversations, hosted by myself, second generation shop owner Tanika Haynes. This goes beyond your car count, your KPIs. We want to talk about leadership, legacy, mindset, and the messy beautiful journey of building something that lasts.

1:09:58You will hear stories from shop owners, technicians, and other industry leaders who are figuring it all out by themselves in real time. This is a space for growth, tough love, laughter, and leveling up.