Build Customer Loyalty: Branding, Event Planning, and Community [RR 1088]

0:00This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Hi, everybody. Carm Capriato, Remarkable Results Radio. Good to see you and have you hanging out. Don't forget, our YouTube channel is out there. We sure would love to have you subscribe and hang with us. If you don't want to listen to the audio, you can always watch us on video, and you can actually see the video on our own podcast listening app, the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

0:29.com/app. Please get that app. It's the ultimate playlist. And listen, we've got a great episode on event planning and branding with one of, uh, our industry's, uh, actually smartest person when it comes to doing all this stuff, Lola Schmidt. She's here, and we'll have Lola up here in a second after we thank our partners. Hey, you know, the technician shortage is real, but NAPA Autocare has a solution at no cost to members.

0:58The NAPA Autocare Apprentice Program builds tomorrow's technicians through a 2-year, 9-stage curriculum. Learn more at member.napaautocare.com or talk to your NAPA representative today. Hey, for over 30 years, NAPA TRAX has made selecting the right shop management system easy by offering the best, most comprehensive SMS in the industry. We'll prove to you that TRAX is the single best shop management system in the business.

1:24Find Napa Tracks on the web at napatracks.com. Hello, Lola, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm super duper. Event planning and branding. I have to tell you, I'm not sure in our industry that we're doing enough events. I know some great companies that are, and I actually go, I'm with a group and I raise your hand if you've done any events this year, be it community, you've gone, places, you've done things, you've brought a booth.

1:58There's not a lot of that going on. And in my mind, don't ask me why I think it's so important, more than you can possibly imagine, not only being involved in community but getting yourself up and out there telling the stories. That's it, telling the stories. Talk to us, man. Motivate us as to why we got to do this. I would agree that there is not enough going on.

2:23Now, I feel like there's probably numerous amounts of reasons why shop owners and staff aren't doing this, but if you want to be involved in your community, or if you feel like you don't have enough footsteps in your door, getting involved in your community is such a good way to do this. You do need to do it authentically, not just begrudgingly. So find what your passions are inside of the business and what the, you know, things are that you guys care about as a team.

2:52And start joining those. Like, in our shop, we knew that educating the youth was a huge focus for us. So anytime there is a STEM situation that we can get involved in, or a career day that we can get involved in, or anything mechanical or technical going on in town that we can get involved in, we interject, whether that's donation, sponsorship, but physically showing up, like you said, getting the booth, getting the table, Being there to talk to the people.

3:22You are your best asset. So, you know, telling the stories, why should they come to you? What can you offer them? Getting their children excited about things for the future. So that's really how we kind of pick and choose what we're going to be involved in. We're involved in a lot now. We're very embedded in our town, but even if you don't want to go out and you don't want to go and like rent the booth, maybe you're more shy about that kind of stuff, bring them into your shop.

3:52You can bring people in, host some classes, host an event, host an after-hours for your chamber. There's all kinds of really cool things that you can do to get bodies in your shop, to see your shop and show off your shop that doesn't have to do with them bringing a car in. And for us, those little moments that only take a couple hours and very little money are such big wins.

4:20People need to know who you are. And sometimes social media, like, it connects us like a little bit, right? Like we all feel like we know each other, but you don't really know. You're a 3-second scroll. Yeah, you are. So getting them in your bays and shops and to touch and play things is so welcoming and interesting. We have a very interesting industry.

4:43People don't even realize how interesting. But my shop's cool, man. If you go into it, it's clean, it's bright, it's open, it's accessible. We want you to ask questions, we want you to see things, and that's what we try to do. And you can show off your ADAS equipment. We could. I'll have to roll it out of the corner. That was an inside joke, everyone.

5:04But what I'm hearing you saying is showcase you. Yeah, I have a poster on my website on my downloads page, and I really want people to download it and print it in color and put it up on their counters. And it says that we are a high-tech industry, that we're looking for young people to join it. And I want that poster to be out there to incite discussion.

5:26And who says you can't showcase your shop by saying to your chamber, to your BNI group, to your local community— I don't care, even if it's the Girl Scout troop or the soccer mom that you go to says, we're having a high-tech showcase and it's all about your vehicle. And they may just go on and say, yeah, I know this thing is pretty fancy and I got all these screens and all this stuff, but we're gonna take a deeper dive for you so you can appreciate what's going on.

5:55How many times people, what's underneath that laptop? Well, you'll never find out. Whoa, we can talk to you about your vehicle. What a great idea. And people like to talk about their stuff. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I'm proud of my beautiful new BMW here, but it makes noises when I go left. Listen, I've had my car for 5 years now and it's old.

6:18We got it used and Eric showed me something on it the other day that I literally had no idea that I did. And I was like, well, that's awesome. I was like, thanks for showing me. But yeah. Oh my God, showcase you find out something about your vehicle that you did not know. That's the title of this thing. Find out something about your high-tech vehicle that you did not know.

6:40And what do you get? 20, 25 people to come in. The beauty of that is if it's word of mouth or, you know, it's the second generation, that's what a blast that could be. And how much prep do you have to do? Clean the place. Yeah, maybe get some snacks. I don't know, maybe you get some snacks, maybe you have a little mini presentation, or maybe you take an old part.

7:04We have seen people do this and start small, and 5 or 6 years later they've got one hell of a gorgeous event going on because they continue to improve it. In 2018, we did our very first community class, and we only had 2 employees at the time, right? So we were a little baby shop still. We were in our old shop, which was way small and kind of grimy.

7:29We did a little class called Smoke Signals for new drivers. Like if they're— whatever you smell or see, like this is if you should pull over, if you should call mom and dad, if you should call the tow truck. And that class, I think we had 12 kids in it and their parents stayed. And so that was our first entry into like tiptoeing into classes.

7:47And now we, in like 2 weeks, are going to be giving 30 girls their car care badge for Girl Scouts. And our Tiny Tech event, we had 300 kids come through our shop in a 2-hour or a 3-hour increment every fall. There's so much power in growing this community involvement if you just put a little effort in. What is it like reaching out to other small business owners in your town?

8:15Do you involve them at all in what you do? Do they know who you are? How do you involve them? Okay, so I'm really loud and involved in town. Everyone knows me. Um, during COVID I was like so pent up with like everybody saying, "You have to be home, you have to be home," and I just didn't want to be home. And we had all of The majority of small businesses in my town are owned by women.

8:42So I knew this right off the bat. So I just like got in all their DMs and I was like, we're going to low-key meet for like marketing meetings and like business meetings. Can you meet us here? And we have this like secret location. We all met at like every 2 weeks, all through COVID. And that's how we kept our businesses alive.

8:59And that we knew right then we had to pair with each other to stay alive. Like we weren't going to get around this like individually as businesses. It had to be. My business is going to serve coffee at your business. Can your business send people over here? Can you put our candles in your shop? Like, we had to support each other. So I have a community that will rally very nicely around us if we just ask, but we also give back.

9:28We answer the call when they need us to. You know, I sit on the Chamber of Commerce board for 3 years. Eric sits on it now. We're very heavily involved in our community, so it's very easy to do business to business, but we had to cultivate those relationships just like every other relationship, right? Mine just happened to kind of like happen during COVID Talk to me about fundraising.

9:50Some people think it's a, they, oh God, here's somebody else. They want me to put up a sign in the, in the backfield of, of the baseball diamond. Is all of this worth it? I mean, let's go back to maybe part of that fundraising thing is about brand building and getting your name out, your logo out? I think it does depend on where you want to play and how you want your business to be presented.

10:13When we moved into our bigger shop, we were looking for many more footsteps in a different place. So we did put our name in areas that like we normally wouldn't, like I normally wouldn't spend $4,000 to put my name on your wall at the gym, but there was like some schools that we really wanted the attention of. So that's what we did.

10:33I never have found that has been our best bang for our buck as far as attention and actually getting footsteps to come back. It looks good. It feels good. Sometimes I think you have to do that in business. There's a PR game to play as well, right? So— Branding. You're passionate about that, and I've heard you get up and speak about finding your difference.

11:01Talk to us about that. You have to have something different in your shop to be interesting. Car care is not interesting. Auto shops aren't interesting. Nobody gets up in the morning and is like, "I can't wait to go to Schmidt Auto Care today. I'm so excited about that." You know, like they know that they're probably gonna have to pay us some money.

11:17They don't wanna come out of pocket on, and as nice as we are and as nice as our facility is, it's not fun. Also, if you're anything like me, and I imagine most shops are, they kind of stuff you in an area where there's other auto shops around you. So, you know, rarely is an auto shop sitting by itself. So what makes people drive past those shops to come to you?

11:39I'm the farthest one away. They've done shoved me all the way in the back end of town. So you gotta drive past like 9 shops to get to me. You have to showcase what makes you different, why people should spend money with you, why they should listen to you at all. Dig deep into what those differences are, because you are doing more than just fixing a car?

12:01Are you providing some form of care that's interesting? We do curbside service, and that's a huge difference maker for us. We have an app. That's a huge difference maker. We're the 4-day work week. We stay open later than other shops. We have quite a few differences. I have all of the top technology in town. Your car's coming to me whether you want to or not for some things.

12:23Do you promote that? I mean, you're talking to me about your differentiators. I just love that word. How do you get that out, Lola? Oh yeah. All of those things are different stories we tell. See, that's the key. I gotta stop you right there. And I'm so glad you said stories because that's how you get that out. If it's not in social media, it could be through an interview for a small town paper.

12:49Who knows if it's on the radio, but just telling your story amongst your peers in the business community, and then getting up that these young people that come in to your place and all of a sudden you're starting to tell a story about your differentiation. You may not know it, but I've got every tool over here that can do every Japanese car and fix every computer, blah, blah, blah.

13:11No matter how someone repeats it, no, they can't repeat it identical, but they're gonna say, wow, Schmitz does everything Japanese. You gotta go there. Yeah, I mean, and we try to keep it easy. So, we are blessed. We have a bigger shop. We've been able to tool up a lot of really great equipment. I don't have to outsource anything. That is also a difference maker because there are some shops locally, they don't have alignment racks or they don't have tire balancers and stuff like that, you know?

13:38So, you have to send your shop from— or car from shop to shop. We have it all in-house and you do need to tell that story. We tell it in a variety of different ways, whether it's that we're doing it on a podcast or we're doing it on just a quick video. Or maybe we're doing a cute TikTok, or maybe we're having a long-term campaign.

13:57This year, the entire area of the world is going to hear about alignments from us because I have a new alignment rack to pay for. So the story is all about alignments, why you need them, how to do them, when to do them, the cars that we're going to be doing them. We're going to have unboxing videos. Like, it is planned. There is campaigns planned.

14:16And it can't be fly by the seat of your pants. This is planning. Branding is planning. Hey, you know, it's no secret the automotive industry is facing a technician shortage, but NAPA Autocare has stepped up with a powerful solution: the NAPA Autocare Apprentice Program. And the best part? It's completely free for members. This program was pioneered by shop owners Pete McNeil and Master Technician Jake Sorenson at McNeil's Autocare in Sandy, Utah.

14:43They recognized that waiting for skilled technicians to appear wasn't an option. So they built a program to grow their own. By recruiting motivated individuals with the right passion and attitude and providing them with structured training, they proved that apprentices could become the next generation of skilled certified technicians. The program features a comprehensive 9-stage curriculum with in-depth classroom videos, instructor-led NAPA Auto Tech classes, web-based courses, and hands-on training with a mentor.

15:13Apprentices move at their own pace, typically completing the program within 2 years. Graduates earn 4 ASE certifications: the G1, A4, A5, and Air Conditioning, and are officially registered with the Department of Labor as journeyworkers automotive technicians. And here's the business benefit: as apprentices gain skills, they generate billable hours, often boosting shop profits as early as Stage 5. Plus, NAPA now offers a new apprentice toolkit developed with Carlyle Tools at an exclusive price, helping break down one of the biggest barriers for new technicians: the cost of tools.

15:52Together, NAPA Autocare and your shop can tackle the technician shortage head on. Start now, grow your own talent, and build your bench for the future. Visit member.napaautocare.com or contact your NAPA representative today and get started with your apprentice program. Let's face it, your shop management system is the single most important tool in your shop, period. NapaTrax was built from the ground up to make your business more profitable and efficient.

16:21We provide an extensive set of tools to increase and track profitability in real time. NapaTrax offers the industry's best post-sale support, hands down, and we train your people on-site Yep, on-site, and we offer remote refresher training 10 times a week, and customer support is open 6 days a week. Give us a call, visit the website, or join our Facebook community today to learn more.

16:45We'll prove to you that TRAX is the single best shop management system in the business. NAPA TRAX is always customized and tailored for you, whether you're a one-man shop or a large multi-bay or multi-location company. After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice. Visit us on the web at napatracs— that's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C-S—.com. If you're finding it difficult to find your own differentiation, then pull the team together and say, what do we do that no one else does?

17:21Without saying the word we're different, what do we do that no one else does?, and you may just discover things you never knew about how your people feel about your business. It's true. Or just what they like to do. Like, we ask them every year, you know, like, what do you think we do well? That's one of the closing things at the end of our year meeting that we talk about.

17:42I've never had a technician before speak up and be like, my welding skills are underused. We can tell people how I weld. This can be a thing that can be beneficial. Well, I didn't realize that he could even weld. So, you know, now we're able to lean into like a different sector of work in a different way and tell a different story because we asked our people, we involve them in the— what they wanted to be, how the brand should look and what it should feel like.

18:09And they can, they can tell you things that you don't think about. I didn't think about that. You gotta be a positive public partner, but you also have to be sure logo's nice. The images that you're putting out are nice and clean.— and not thought as a secondary thing. Ah, yeah, okay, it's a little blurry, but post it. No, no, no. It's your image.

18:32If you're posting messy images, your clients are probably gonna think you're gonna do messy car care, messy service. Also, some of us have nice cars and we don't want our car in your messy shop with messy pictures. The whole entire image matters from front to back. It's a 360 approach, right? Like, What you say, how you look, how you present it from the time they walk in the door.

18:59People know if they're gonna spend money with you very quickly, and it doesn't have anything to do on what you say. You ever stop and ask your clients, why do you come here? All the time. Okay, perfect. And so that helps gain you confidence in the direction that you want to continue to build your brand because people are out there talking about this stuff.

19:20What are some other great reasons they come there? So it's going to depend on who you talk to. If you're talking to a woman, they're going to tell you that they like that there are women in the shop at all times. They are going to tell you that the curbside service is very valuable to them. They're going to tell you that they appreciate the fact that my guys pick up their bags and carry them to their cars when their hands are full of children.

19:45So they're going to tell you that. But my men who come in, they're all very happy with the fact that they will always say it's honest and direct. There's not a lot of— there's no like games being played. If your car sucks, it sucks. Jake's gonna tell you it sucks. He's gonna do it in the best way he can and just lay it out.

20:05But there's no pressure. If you don't want to fix your car, then don't fix your car. But don't be mad if it falls apart further at us. So We just try to do what's right by people, and it's authentic, and you can feel that. That's what they're looking for. But we just had a journalist in our shop the other day who's writing an article on us, and my customer was at the front desk, and he asked my customer, he said, you know, like, why did you come here, and how far did you come?

20:30And that person had drove an hour to come to our shop. They passed a lot of shops to come to me. And he was like, they don't waste my time. And that was his answer. That's pretty powerful. And I thought that was great because there was no answer I could give a journalist that was going to be better than my own customer who drove an hour and then still thought we didn't waste their time after being there and like driving the hour.

20:55What's the trend on making sure— and I'm going to say this gently and nice— that we have women on our counters? Okay, not that our guys, that, that our legacy people aren't doing their job, and they've got the feel, they've got the knowledge of the self-awareness to make this thing work. But I'm hearing more and more that women are joining our ranks, and the training for service advisors, or client advocates that I like to call them, are really kicking it up a notch.

21:24Maybe we're a safer space. I don't know. I hate to say that. More relatable. The majority of the people that come through my shop are women. I feel like they want to relate to a woman. Or at least feel like a girl's around. Like, our shop smells good, you know, like Savannah's around coming and seeing if you want some coffee or if you need a snack or whatever it might be.

21:48And she's the one that's going to drive you around, like, if you have to go back home. So it's a nice connection piece, I think, um, and it's just a little comfort. I don't know, I think it feels comfortable. Is Savannah your CSR? Yeah, she's my in-house content creator slash marketing girl. Cool. Okay. All right. She's not the first one they greet.

22:06No, at the front desk, you would meet Jake and Rick. They sat at the front desk. That's my two front of the house, but they're both like extremely personable and you're, they're going to greet you with a big smile. But when it comes to anything guest relations, like if a guest has to move around or be hosted in any way, Savannah steps in and she takes ultimate care of, excellent care of our people.

22:29You do any kind of handouts? What do you do to the client when they get back into their vehicle? Any waters, anything like that? Every month we have a car care gift and that rotates. And we've done that for years and years and years. At this point, I have a storage unit because of them. It is a whole beast on its own.

22:47And Savannah manages that whole thing. Like it's literally, it's like a job in itself now. So we have something that rotates every single month and We have little gifts that go in car seats for little kids. Got coloring books at the front of the house in case kids are there a long time. We got balloons to blow up, Hot Wheels cars. I don't know, at this point, if you name it, we've got it there, I think, at this, at this point.

23:14Yeah, we've done shows on that, uh, little stuffed animal in the back car seat. It was Matt Lockowitz who brought that to me back in the day and We were on the Karm Cruise with him and he actually started a company to make these. Oh, I wanted to get with his company then. Yeah, you should get with Matt and he's a great guy.

23:35Multi-shop owner out in Minnesota, 10 operation. He's got a lot going on. He's a very impressive young man who's got a great business. But yeah, he started the— every year there's a new stuffed bear. Oh, why would Ray Weather get my bear from him? Yeah, Matt, the cool thing about developing this over all these years is people come in and says, what's the bear like this year?

23:56So they anticipate coming in and wanting to get the latest, or if you will, you, you have a monthly thing, but his bear changes on a yearly basis. Well, people start to know, cuz there's some things that we do, like the Valentine's cookie. We have this branded cookie sent in and it's so, so good. I swear people will like wait till February to get their car done.

24:17And like not do it in January if they need to do it just so they get the cookie. Same thing for the candle in November. Everybody will wait to get the candle. It's interesting sometimes. Well, I love this whole thing about event planning, branding ideas, and all, of course, the things that you provide for your clients that probably they've come to expect them, I guess.

24:42That's my point. They have their little spoils. Yeah. But when you get a brand new client and they say, this is for me. I mean, you talk about a, yeah, here's my card, swipe it for that $1,800, but ooh, I have a cookie. Well, my new guest gets a gift. So I have this like new car care gift. So if you've never come to us before, you get something special and Savannah leaves it in the box.

25:08So you get like a whole unboxing moment. Alright, I love it. Okay, so it comes like this and she puts it all together for you. And this one doesn't have the batteries in it. She literally opens every one of these and puts the batteries in. Yeah. So it's done. She does it for the client. So you can't walk out with it. You have to unbox it in front of me.

25:28Yeah. So like, and then you open it up and it's like a light that they can travel with. We live in an area where you can do a lot of camping or it like blinks and stuff for safety. So if they're on the side of the road, has our name on it, our QR code's on there to scan. And then inside of the box, she also has like our magnet, our Google review card.

25:48And then the only people that really get the $50 off labor for next time is the new customer. That's our new care, our new customer gift that we give this year. My God, that has got to be so expensive. What does that thing— I don't want to know. The point of it is is you're doing it, you have a great and successful business.

26:07You found that it builds relationships, that it brings repeat business. Because again, I don't know what you're spending on marketing to make the phone ring and keep dialed in, but what you're doing after that, that spend is you're attempting to connect and hook, grapple, if you will, that client in with these surprises and these, these, and to me, I guess you could spend a little less over here and a little over here, and you could kind of blend what you're spending on marketing.

26:37I would call what you just showed us is a marketing spend, right? Oh yeah. We have a whole line item in our marketing calendar called guest gifts. You know, we buy so many things off-season because at this point we know it's, it's a machine. Like I said, right? Like we use a lot of the same vendors. I know when those vendors are having sales at this point, we buy in bulk.

26:57So I buy a lot of things off-season. November, December is a good time for us to buy. February is a good time usually for us to buy. So we just started packing it up and bringing it in. That's why I have a storage unit now. All right. Well, this was enlightening. And the more we hear about— and it's not self-promotion, it's really not.

27:17It's— I always like to call it brand building. It's connective, not pieces you're going to throw away. I think so many people will just put their name on anything. You know, like an ink pen's cool, but how many times do you lose your ink pen? You know, like, are you gonna lose this light? No. But you know how many people have already come to us to say, that's what my kid uses to walk to the end of the driveway with to get their mail.

27:41That's what my kid has got in their car and feel better at night when they have to like look under their car or something. Like, these are like moments that spark conversation. I just had this crazy thought, Lola. Here's my crazy thought. Anybody seen the Schmidt lantern? Right? The kid needs to walk to the driveways. Don't forget the Schmidt lantern. Where's the Schmidt lantern?

28:07Oh my God. It's perfect. It's a perpetual brand builder. You've seen the Schmidt bear. You've seen the Schmidt there. Oh my God. I never really thought that through that item that you, Did you have the Schmidt cookie for Valentine's Day? Did you go to Schmidt's and get the cookie, or did you have the Schmidt cookie? Wow. Little things, you know, they're gonna get flower packets for, you know, Earth Day in April, this little car seed packet.

28:34And so like all summer long when they're looking at their wildflowers, it'll be us. Those are the Schmidt flowers. I love it. It was enjoying. I took away as much as you gave. So thank you so much. This is way too much fun. Lola Schmidt at Schmidt's Auto Care in Springboro, Ohio, along with her husband Eric. How many years you guys been there?

28:57This is year 16. Good for you. The next time you see Lola going out and speaking at a conference or reading one of her great articles that she writes for our industry, you'll have a little more greater appreciation as to where Lola is coming from on all these great, great ideas. And also go to my website, type in Schmidt, listen to a couple of the previous episodes we've done with Lola.

29:19So thank you so, so much. Appreciate this discussion on branding. Thank you. Bye, Lola. Thanks. Thanks for being on board to listen and learn from the premier automotive repair business podcast, Remarkable Results Radio. Get your episodic education on the ARPN listing app at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com. Also enjoy the podcast on our Carm Capriato YouTube channel. Karm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry.

29:46Until next time!