Selling to the Curb: How AI Turned More Calls into Customers [RR 1099]
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About this episode
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA Auto Care and NAPA TRACS Watch Full Video Episode What does it take to build one of the fastest-growing auto…
Key takeaways
- —Effective leadership and a strong team are crucial for business growth.
- —Measuring key performance indicators is essential for improving shop operations.
- —AI can enhance customer service by analyzing call data and improving conversion rates.
- —Creating a positive shop culture can attract and retain talented employees.
- —Understanding market trends and preparing for retirement can significantly impact a shop owner's exit strategy.
Frequently asked
- What is the importance of measuring shop performance?
- Measuring shop performance helps identify areas for improvement and ensures that non-negotiables are being met, ultimately leading to increased profitability.
- How can AI be utilized in an automotive shop?
- AI can analyze call data to improve conversion rates and provide insights into customer interactions, helping shop owners make informed decisions.
- What strategies can shop owners use to prepare for retirement?
- Shop owners should focus on increasing profitability and understanding market trends to maximize their business's value when considering an exit strategy.
▸Full transcript
This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, depending on when you're listening. To all my peeps out there, thank you so much for being here. It's Carm Capriato, Remarkable Results Radio. I've got Jesse Jackson with us, founder and CEO of Mango Automotive, and she is going to talk about some really cool things here today. We appreciate you being here, and don't forget Just in case, you know, Spotify is getting a little too complicated, and/or if Apple is, we've got this fabulous app out there.
I'd love you to get it. arpn.app, the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. A lot of things for your smartphone, of course. The ultimate professional automotive content playlist. And you see your recently played, share, all kinds of things. Make up your own playlists with our app. You'll Have a blast. Hey, we always, and for a long time, have so appreciated all the great sponsors such as NAPA Autocare and NAPA Trax.
Hey, stay ahead of the curve with NAPA Autocare's newest auto tech initiatives: Fast Track Assessments, Accelerator Immersive Training, and Tech Assist Smart Support. The future of technician training is here. Connect with your local NAPA representative for more information. Hey, let's face it, your shop management system is the most critical tool in your shop, and Napatrax will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with on-site training, 6 days a week support, and local representation.
Find Napatrax on the web at napatrax.com. Okay, I'd like to introduce you to Jesse Jackson, CEO of Mango Automotive. Hello, Jesse. What's up, Carm? Oh man, I have to tell you, I have this big question. Okay. So you get an idea. 8 locations, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. Stop me if I'm wrong. And you were founded in 2021. December 26th, 2021. Oh, is that right?
Okay. Barely in 2021. Did you acquire locations when you first started or did you start from one? We did. Well, we started from one, we started from zero, and we acquired all 8 in separate transactions in 5 years. Yep. 4 and a half. So question, I can only imagine that the team you have is smart, powerful, resilient. Could you have done this without, you know, just an incredible group behind you?
Oh my gosh, definitely not. I have my business partner Brian who joined Mango when we were nothing, when we had zero shops. So I'm, Forever thankful to him. And I couldn't have done this without him. As far as the corporate team, Brian and I were chief marketing officer, human resources, accounts payable, all the things until we hit 5 shops. At which point we, I think we had around 60 employees.
We collapsed and we hired finance and human resources. And our district manager who, yes, are all better at their jobs than we were at doing them. Keyword Jesse just said was the word collapse. I just totally love that word. We talk about all the issues that happen to us as CEOs and owners of businesses, but I haven't heard the word collapse in a long time.
And that was one of those reality moments that just hit you upside the head. Yeah, we just did all the things until we literally could not do them just before we opened our 5th location. My business partner told me he was spending more than half of his hours every week on recruiting alone. I said, Brian, we should really hire that out. And he said, no, no, no, we can't afford it.
And I still interviewed some people, chose someone, and then I will always remember we were in the back shop of our 5th location. It was the day we were opening it. And I looked at his face. And I knew he was totally and completely overwhelmed. I said, Brian, let's hire that HR person. He said, okay, let's do it. Based on 60 people your size, 8 shops, it's not difficult to do an ROI spreadsheet and say, if I could get Brian back 4 hours working for, you know, you know, not in the business, but on the business, those are no-brainer decisions.
And you, I'm sure you made the right one. Yeah. Good for you. I see something, the Auto Repair Queen. Hmm. How did you get that moniker? Interesting. I spent about 4 of the last 4 and a half years that I've owned Mango coaching in the acquisition space. So, this was more broadly like, how do you acquire? How do you acquire with $0 out of your own pocket?
And it was in that space where I was exclusively doing automotive repair that they started calling me the Automotive Repair Queen. Got it. Your background, what was it? I was in software. Well, first I was an environmental engineer, then I was in software in the product space for many years. I happened into an automotive software, and because I was chief product officer, that's when I began to understand the landscape of automotive repair.
So then when we sold to private equity, I saw a huge opportunity in the brick-and-mortar space. There still is opportunity with exchange of wealth in that, in this space with so many retiring owners that I moved into brick-and-mortar space and, you know, put a hold on my software career. The numbers are out there, 20,000, 30,000, if you will, silver tsunamis that would love to get out of the industry, sell, succeed.
We're doing shows on how to value your business, how to work toward valuing your business. How to find internal candidate. We, we've done a ton of shows over the years on that. As a company that has grown to 8 locations in, as you said, 4 and a half, 5-ish years, there's so much opportunity out there for you. And to be a multi-stater like you are.
And this is what I want other shop owners to think of. Like, there, by my count, there's 35,000 shop owners that are going to retire in the next 3 to 5 years. I cannot acquire 35,000 shops, and I don't wanna see these owners close their doors. So that means the rest of us shop owners who are still in growth phase need to, you know, have the opportunity to serve the generation that came before us by, you know, picking up those shops and continuing their legacy rather than letting them close.
Let's move into a couple of topics that you and I would like to talk about. Leadership and personal growth is one of 'em, and I don't think you can do what you've done by not becoming a student of it and being a great leader for your team if, so they can aspire to the great culture. 'Cause there's a lot of toxic shop cultures out there.
You probably see them when you look at, at places to buy. Yeah, that's for sure. We started our culture just around a couple of ideals. My business partner said, we never yell, we bonus well, and we try to have fun. And, you know, those 3 very basic Shop tenants got us pretty far in hiring. Never yell, but bonus well. And have fun.
And have fun. If you were sitting to recruit a specialist or technician right in front of you and you said, hey, this is what we do, that was probably something, oh, I've never heard that before. Yeah. There's a lot of screaming in our culture, that's for sure. Never yell. I love it. So emotional intelligence, coaching versus managing, burnout prevention, and all those things that have to do with watching your people, watching yourselves, and being able to grow a great company with your eye on the target of profitability, number one.
What can you tell our listener about your role to make sure your managers, your district people, because there's a lot of people that are growing in multi-shop operations. And they say, oh, I did the first one, maybe I'm 10 years out now, I can do the second one real easy. And people get hit upside the head because they don't have some of this core stuff down.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of what we've done that has really been like putting the wheels on while we're driving down the road, to use an automotive term. But sort of, you know, when we had one shop, I remember talking with Brian, who— he's really— he was our original district manager. He's in charge of making, you know, the shops run inside the shop.
Like, Brian, we need SOPs because we're going to grow big. And he was like, I don't think we really need SOPs. Like, I'm covering our advisors' lunches. You could still be in the shops. But then we reached this period where Brian, he couldn't even feasibly be in 3 shops. Cause you know how shop time is like, you show up at a shop, you just get sucked in.
Like you're there for many hours. So, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we built as we grew, but one thing that we're acutely aware of right now is in a very standard moniker, what gets measured gets managed. And so we'll train our front of the house team, for example, on selling to the curb. And then you can do test calls and you're shocked when they don't make an appointment or sell to the curb.
Right. And so I have a bunch of kids and I just remember like, you know, my child needs to be taught the same thing over and over again. And We need to just, we're all human. We forget things. We go back to our habits. So we don't yell once we teach something, right. We're open to teaching it again and again, but we were realizing is it's hard to see if our advisors are selling to the curb without listening to every single call.
But now in the day and age of AI, we just built a dashboard where we send all of our calls through AI. We say, was that call convertible? Could we have gotten them to come in and did we get them to come in? And if we didn't, we put it on a checklist that they can look at and, you know, call them back and check them off so we can increase our conversion rate.
Because as the owner, we know that every call that's coming into the shop is costing us a lot of money, but maybe our manager or advisor was busy or doing something different and, you know, didn't give that call the attention they need. So now we can look at those numbers actually happening. I'm impressed with sell to the curb. Does that mean the conversion of the call?
Is that what you're saying? You want that? Vehicle to come up and over your curb and into the building. Is that what you mean? Yeah, exactly. I think sell to the curb is this idea of setting an appointment and getting the customer in once they make the phone call. I love that. I wanna stop you there for a minute and I wanna share that with our listeners.
Sell to the curb. So many times you need— if, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Some kind of clever statement that helps people say, sold to the curb. It's instead of sitting down when someone says, let's talk about what just happened, blah, blah, blah. Sell to the curb describes, you know, 4 or 5 paragraphs of how things need to be done.
And I love that when there's an issue, as you well will go through your AI and see that we didn't convert this, let's sit down and talk about selling to the curb. They know exactly where you're going with that. And it's part of the, in fact, it should almost be a little sticker on the phone. Right in front of the phone. Smile, sell to the curb.
Right. Smile and sell to the curb. I love that. And so as we're doing this analysis, because now we have the tools to see it, we see this pattern emerging. Who is the hardest to sell to the curb? And that's price shoppers. And I think there's an old, you know, thought process in our business that if they're asking about price, that's bottom of the barrel.
We don't want them to come in anyway. But we found that that's not the case. People are price conscious, or they want to have a general idea of how much they're going to spend before they come in. So, you know, in automotive repair, it's been taught to us and passed down, you know, between shops and coaching programs, don't give a price over the phone.
You can't accurately quote, tell them you need to see it, have them come in. But as we saw that dramatically decreasing our call conversion, we built a tool where our advisors can quickly punch in what the job is and we can produce a price range. So now we can tell our customers, this is the price range we expect it to come back in and get more customers to the curb, even those that, you know, are seen as price shoppers and we might have previously lost.
So are you quoting a low and a high number to that client? Yes. Yeah, we quote a range. It's pretty wide, right? Because we don't have all the details. The more details we can give our AI, the closer to the price range. We can get them, but it might be, you know, that brake job is going to cost between $600 and $900.
It's a pretty wide price range, but we found that to be a useful tool. And you're converting to the curb because of you doing that, right? It's increasing our conversion rates. Brian was saying we need— who was saying we need SOPs? Was it you or Brian? It was me in the very beginning with Brian. Now he sees the picture very clearly because Brian cannot be in 8 shops.
Every day to have those SOP or to make the SOPs happen, right? I call them protocols. Interestingly enough, I fell into that word, oh, a couple of months ago when I realized it may describe how government works, but really not. It's the protocols of the business. And then underneath all those protocols would be counter, would be sell to the curb, would be all of those policies or procedures that would be under.
And so, When you say, hey, we're slipping on our protocols. And I think SOP, standard operating procedures, get it, critical, important. But I love to lift all of those little different policies and procedures up into a singular overarching umbrella called protocols. Yeah, same thing. We really talk about them when we talk to our teams, like I'm calling them SOPs, but we talk about the non-negotiables.
So we have the 6 non-negotiables in the back of the shop, in the front of the house. But what I found is if you can't measure those non-negotiables, if you're teaching sell to the curb and you don't measure how many calls they're selling to the curb, that you might as well not have that non-negotiable because it's gonna fall by the wayside. So you have to find a way to measure every single non-negotiable or protocol as you're calling it.
You're absolutely right. And I think one of the things that we're missing in a lot of the mid-range shops that are really striving to be in the top shop categories are not measuring enough. Number one, they probably just, number one, don't know how. Number two, don't know what the formulas are because they don't have a coach. And they find it impossible because of the workload that they put under themselves to even find the time to do this.
And this is where you go from working on your business instead of working in it. You had a coach, Brian had a coach, you're coaching. Explain to me where all this great knowledge this detailed knowledge came from for you guys, Jessie? Yeah, I think, you know, Brian comes from automotive repair. He's essentially been in the business his entire life. So, he is, I didn't know how badly I needed Brian.
We sort of, I called him to acquire his existing shop and we ended up partnering together, but he has all of the deep knowledge. And then along the way, we've done different coaching programs. So, we pick up what we can of value. You know, every coaching program has their sort of their way to think about it and you, cherry-pick what's valuable to you to build your own system, right?
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Visit us on the web at napatraxx.com. That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-X-X dot com. Well, thank you for your insight on leadership and all these great things that are so critical. You mentioned the word AI just a little bit ago. And you said, well, we'll throw some of these calls through AI and it'll come back and tell us some stuff. As the leader of the business, you and Brian said to the team, listen, AI's here to stay.
We're gonna learn how to use it. We're gonna be its boss and it's gonna tell us stuff and it's gonna help us. Is that your framework? So a little bit, yes. And a little bit deeper than that. And just because I have a software background, I have built tools, specific tools for our team to use. So instead of saying, you know, throw this question into AI and get a pricing result, I've built a specific tool that they, that lives on top of our dashboard that helps them learn to both sell a job and it allows them to price a general job and get a price range, right?
I have built a dashboard that runs every single call through AI, analyzes it, and auto-creates this to-do list of calls that we think that they can rescue. In that dashboard, we also measure whether they're making a future appointment for the customer, right? When they check out, we want them to make their next appointment in 4 to 6 months. So is that actually happening?
How much money are we losing in comebacks? All of this stuff, I have used AI to build a dashboard to measure these metrics, which directly correlate to our non-negotiables. So that we can, as an entire organization, keep track of what's important to us and easily dig down into the cause when we have a drop in revenue or a drop in GP dollars.
Excellent. You mentioned make an appointment. You just hit an incredible ding in my brain on how similar the dental business is when you're getting, you know, just routine maintenance, right? Routine maintenance. Yeah. I just had routine maintenance done a couple of days ago and son of a gun, I couldn't leave the chair unless I had an appointment for 6 months, right? Couldn't left.
I mean, yes, I could have left, but it's just how they do it. Based on your mileage, let's have you back in April. We'll set a date and if it doesn't work for you, we'll, we'll just move it around. And then she says, I see this one filling that you have and I think it needs to be replaced. And blah, blah, blah.
She goes, can I go in and take a picture of it? And I said, sure, go ahead. So she wanted to kind of capture that. And while I'm sitting in there, I said, oh my God, they just did a DVI on my mouth. And when the dentist comes in to do the review, I stopped and I says, like, I gotta share this idea with you.
You just did a digital tooth inspection, a mouth inspection, and I'm going crazy. Trying to draw the parallel in automotive. And I said, now, if I don't set the appointment as I'm leaving to get this thing done, are you going to text that photo of my tooth to me in 3 or 4 months? And he goes, no. And I said, your software should.
And he goes, that's a great idea. So, so think about the client work that you have And the photos that you've been taking and how that can help support that. And so I had to bring this whole automotive thing to the dentist's chair a couple days ago. It's perfect. I mean, I think those are great stories for us to tell to our people and even to, you know, people that buy from us.
You know, dentist takes a look, does the x-rays, and we're doing DVIs. We got all this great photos for you and we got to get this work done. Well, for our entire existence, our rebook rates, so making a future appointment for a customer, were under 12% every week at every single shop. Now that we're measuring it in the dashboard, we're seeing rebook rates between 50% and 90%.
So what a difference to not have to go out and find every single customer all over again, but to have them already have an appointment on the calendar. There's your proof. If you don't measure it, you can't get things done. You have to measure it. Wow. What are you doing to train your counter people at front, your client advocates? Are you sending 'em to school?
Are you doing videos? Do you have coaches for that? What's your focus on making them the best? Never-ending training. So we have a program that we send them through. It's sort of a 12-week program and they complete that program online. We do weekly service advisor training, so a different topic each week. Our whole team gets on Zoom, we train them on that topic, well, a different topic each week ad infinitum, right?
Back and repeat, cover the same topics all over again. And we have an AI tool where if they open a ticket in our shop management system, we, for that specific ticket, tell them how they should present it. So the most critical items first, the items that that should be done, but don't need to be done right now, this exact moment, and things they can put off that, that essentially sells that entire ticket.
So, they're not reading from this mostly, but they are reading through it to get a refresh. Even our more seasoned managers are like, oh, sometimes I just need to reset my brain, right? We all forget, no matter how experienced we are, they reset their brain with that, that AI script essentially written for that specific customer and that specific ticket, and then they sell.
Jesse, we have an AI tool that helps them. Is this the one you designed or is it something else you're using? Yeah. Yeah. That one's called Guava. I think it's at getguava.ai. That one is actually, it's coupled with the pricing tool and it's available. Okay. Yeah. It's getguava.ai. I haven't even put the pricing tool on the website, but it's bundled in there.
And, but that's your tool. That's my tool. Yeah. Cool. All right. Whoa. So with your software background, you're writing tools, you have tools, you appreciate where AI is coming from. And I guess your message to the industry is get on board. Yeah. And I think, you know, not everyone is gonna be creating their own tools, but look at what's out there and you gotta find a way to measure anything.
So if you don't want to use AI to measure Okay. The first thing I did before I created a tool was I went to my call dashboard where, oh, most people have this that are using VoIP, where it's transcripts of every call. I just copy pasted those into, well, AI tool of choice, right? ChatGPT, Claude, and then asked it questions like, why are we losing calls?
Which calls do you think were redeemable? Who should we call back? That, as opposed to listening to calls for 10 hours in a day. It can be done in almost an instant. So you don't have to build a tool that does it automatically, but think to yourself, if I have a non-negotiable, if I have an SOP, I have to measure it. So how am I going to measure it?
And you as an owner can spend now 30 minutes by throwing something into AI and asking questions to get that measurement out, especially if you just have one shop, right? How quick is that? But look for existing tools. Those are nice. But, you know, ChatGPT is either free or you can pay, you know, a small fee a month. Same with Claude. And you can get these same answers in a, quote, now new manual AI way that is still infinitely faster than we were doing it before.
So I would say look at your non-negotiables in this way of how do I measure that and find a way to measure it even if it's, you know, manual-ish for now. Otherwise, don't bother having that non-negotiable. To your point, in AI, if you don't have Jesse's capabilities and powers and, and that background, the thing that I continue to learn about AI, we've done a recent episode with Chris Cloutier on it.
He asked me to read a book, The AI-Driven Leader, and we really changed my thinking that AI is not necessarily a tool, but it's a partner. But you have to say, Hey partner, here's how we're doing things. You have to be in control and in charge of what you ask, why you ask. I mean, you could even tell it, never say this to me, never suggest that.
And it'll learn that and it'll start getting in alignment with you and what your needs are. I'll give you 2 little AI tips that I love, Carm, that make that— before I build a tool, made things really easier, much easier and quicker. One is you can establish a protocol in AI. And you can say, this is called protocol assess the call. And every time I say use protocol assess the call, I want you to look at all the call transcripts that I put in.
I want you to output which call transcripts need to be called back because we could have rescued them and we didn't, which advisors have a higher conversion rate, what is the conversion rate for each advisor, et cetera, et cetera. So then you only give it that prompt once. Next time, all you do is copy paste the transcripts and you say, do the call protocol, right?
And it'll remember that and do it all over again. So it saves you a lot of steps when you start creating protocols. Scary good. The other tip is minor because I heard you say you can tell AI not to do things. AI is not that great at not doing things actually. Like I found when I'm like, never do this and I sort of put it in my settings.
That it'll still do that. But what it's better at is replacing things. So what makes me crazy is that em dash was one— the first thing I tried to train out. And when I said, never use the em dash, it kept using it. And I would say, I told you not to use the em dash. And it would say, oh, sorry, I forgot.
But then I said, instead of using the em dash, create a full sentence, put a period and start a new sentence. And then it'd be was able to do that. So it's better to say not this, but that, than just say not this. 'Cause it's that old experiment of don't think of a purple elephant. But if I tell you, don't think of a purple elephant, but think of a, you know, pink turtle instead, like maybe you can make that swap.
I'm having a blast with you here. This is cool. I taught it to do no em dashes without any other explanation and it did it. So maybe I caught it in a good mood. Your AI must be more compliant than mine is. Oh my God. All right. You just highlighted on consolidation and, and the opportunities that exist in private equity and exit planning.
Any advice to— you're gonna be out looking for shops and there's gonna be shops looking to sell, but there's also gonna be people out there looking to buy. We have such interesting stuff merging together. Any great advice for our industry? There's a couple of things that we're doing, and this is mostly, you know, for the shop owner who's looking to retire, but I'm trying to think of what direction to go at this.
I think that it sounds like you've had a lot of full conversations around if you're looking to sell. So we won't, you know, hit that, but I will talk a little bit to you about multiple arbitrage because I think everyone in our industry should understand multiple arbitrage. So What is private equity doing? They're purchasing you for a 3x multiple. Maybe if you have $500,000 in profit, maybe that's going to go up.
That will go up a little bit depending on what your profit is, but what's their endgame? We saw someone just recently sell for a 16x. And why did they get a 16x multiple? Because they had $20 million in EBITDA. And you might be thinking, but I don't have $20 million in profit. So what private equity is getting, they're getting the spread on what they're buying for, which is a 3 to 5x multiple and a 16x.
So they're getting more than a 10 multiple on what you've built by doing nothing but putting a bunch of shops together that have EBITDA. I'm absorbing this and I'm making it part of my head is going up and down for yes, yes, yes. I'm with you. That's multiple arbitrage. And the reason why I'm so passionate about this, because a lot of times you have We talk to owners all the time that have built their business for 30 years, cannot retire on a 3x multiple.
And that's what the market is. You know why they can't retire on a 3x multiple? Because they don't have any profit. They have never designed their business to make money. And then they're gonna say to the, uh, private equity, listen, I, I got the boat at the lake and all my grandkids' cell phones and stuff like that. And they're looking for add-backs and they're tiny, they're small.
Make money, find a 20% net operating income so that you can get a 5x on it. I mean, even if you have a 20% net operating income on a shop that's doing, you know, $2 or $3 million, you're not gonna get a 5x. You're gonna get a 3x, a 3.5 maybe. Some of our listeners just say, Carm, you already lost me on this 3x, this 5x thing.
It's the multiple. Well, what's a multiple, Carm? If you have your net operating income, the adjusted bottom and private equity comes in to your point, say you made half a million dollars consistently over the last 3 or 4 years as they look back and they say, okay, well then we'll give you 3 times that or a million and a half. And you've been, that is what the multiple is about and that's what the X means.
So go ahead, keep going. But then when, you know, lower market private equity resells your same shop, Then they're gonna get like 15 times your $500K. So that means they're getting $7.5 million and they only paid you $1.5 million. So they're getting $6 extra million just for buying you and bundling you with other shops. Jesse, what if they came to me and I said, listen, you don't have anybody running this region.
I'll sell you my 5 stores. I'd like to stay on and I'll take 49% of the offer. So I can get a second paycheck. What do you think of that? Yeah, there's a lot of that second bite of the apple happening. And so long as you believe in what the company's doing and they have majority, you can often get that. But we are putting together another way, which is the co-op, as we call it, which is where we're putting together our own $20 million in EBITDA and We will sell, of course, you know, to larger private equity for a higher multiple and shop owners get a chance to sell their shop for about 3 times
what it's currently valued at. So instead of getting a 3 times that $500K, they could get more like a 9 times that $500K and get $4.5 million because they earned it. And, you know, private equity was sort of the first one to start bundling shops, but We believe that we should do it and reward shop owners who have been building something for the last 30 years.
When you say co-op, are you talking about getting groups together or individual? Exactly. Yes. A group of about 40 shop owners with $500K-ish in EBITDA about each, where we amass that same $20 million. Interesting. So many things are going on in our industry and, and this co-op idea. This is the first time I've heard it. Maybe it's the second time I've heard it.
It's brilliant. I love it. And you're probably gonna lead this, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think people have said to me like, oh, you're gonna sell to private equity anyway. We have to stop the consolidation. I would say we're not gonna stop the consolidation. We watched it happen in paint and body, which is now largely consolidated. It hasn't happened in automotive repair, but it is happening.
So you can fight it. You can be that standout house with the freeway and the mall built around it. Or, you know, you can make use of the trend that you already see happening and make that work for you and your family. So I'm not telling anyone what to do with their business or, you know, how to do it, but we're just creating another option for those people who want to exit, but, you know, doing it at a 3 times their profit doesn't make sense for them.
This was so interesting and great. I love what you just said. I think it's a perfect ending to this episode. And I don't know, we, we covered a lot of ground. And thank you, Jesse Jackson, CEO, Mango Automotive. Uh, noticed the mangoes on the back wall. And since I don't know a lot about mangoes, what's all the words below that? What's the plaques below those?
Oh yeah, that's just one for each shop. It's a mango and it's a night— an orange 1970 Camaro, which you can barely see, and then one for each shop. So I gotta fill that gap and then get another shelf. An orange 1970 Camaro. I see. My first car ever was a 1972 Camaro. Oh yeah, that's what my mom drove when I was a kid.
It was a Rally Sport split bumper. And if I was smart enough to keep it, it'd be worth a ton of money right now. Oh God. Shucks. I know. Shuckaroos. Hey, it's been great to have you on the show, Jesse. Thank you so much. Thank you, Carm. Nice chatting with you. Same here. 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. Carm is all for advancing the professional automotive service industry. Until next time.
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215 - Ask Me Anything: Car Count vs. Profit - Why More Cars Doesn't Always Mean More Profit
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[00:18:00] – Every shop must find the workload that supports its model. [00:20:00] – Clean financial data helps owners make sound business decisions. [00:22:00] – Fix weak margins before spending money to attract more clients. [00:28:00] – A thoughtful response can protect workflow without rejecting the customer. [00:42:00] – Adding technicians without strong processes can create greater chaos. [00:49:00] – Clear goals and accountability help employees understand how to succeed. In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry? Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode. 👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/7M70n_DfTDg Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this! Links & Resources: Want to learn more? Click Here Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here See The Institute's events list: Click Here Want access to our online classes? Click Here ________________________________________ Episode Transcript Disclaimer This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com. Episode Transcript: Ask Me Anything Car Count vs. Profit - Why More Cars Doesn't Always Mean More Profit Lucas Underwood: What is up, everybody? Hey, y'all. It's Lucas Underwood from the Changing the Industry podcast and L&M Performance here in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. I am joined today by the one, the only, Mr. Cecil Bullard. We're gonna be talking about car count versus profit. Cecil, how are you today, buddy? Cecil Bullard: I'm doing fantastic as usual, Lucas. Lucas Underwood: Very good. Very good. So Cecil, one of the, one of the things I'll never forget, I taught a class at a industry event one time, and I had been in another class where the person was talking about do whatever it takes to get them in the door, and they'd been in a shop, and they were in their own shop, and the, the advisor had turned down a car at 4:00 in the afternoon that came in for a coupon oil change and wanted to wait. And so she chased the person back out into the parking lot and said, "No, no, no, no, no, we'll get you in. We'll make it work. I'm gonna pull a technician off something else. I'm gonna put them on this," and fired an advisor over it. And I've, I'd been in that class, and I'm talking about that in this training, and that person was sitting in the back of the class and I didn't see Cecil Bullard: him. Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And, and the thing that I said about it was this, is I said, "Listen, one of the most impactful things that I've ever experienced was being on the other side of an experience like that as an advisor, as a technician, what it feels like to feel that kind of pressure and why we shouldn't do that to our people And so I know there's been a massive movement, movement in the industry that's pushing people to say yes to every car that comes in the door. Doesn't matter what it is, just more cars, more cars, more cars, more cars. And I have had a very, very different experience than that. I am someone who has experienced a higher ARO with less stress and less pressure on our people, a better experience for the client, and I have found that that works best for me. And I'm not saying it works best for every organization, but I wanted to dig in with you and talk a little bit about this. Are you a say yes to every car man, or are you a balanced car count and balanced ARO man? Help me understand. Cecil Bullard: I think there's a, I think there's both, frankly. Um- Okay ... it, it has to make common sense, and I think you're really talking about two different things. So first of all- Yeah ... you know, before you fire someone for not doing what you want, does the person really understand what you want, right? Yeah. I mean, is that, is that well defined? Did the guy know that no matter what, I have to bring that car in? Uh, you know, so at 4:00, your service advisor made a decision. He'd made promises to other customers that they would have their cars. Yeah. And instead, now you're jumping in the middle of that and you're saying, "Well, I'm gonna fire this guy because he turned down a, a discount oil change or whatever." Yeah. Maybe a dis- and it- maybe a dis- you know, the guys, the discount oil change guys would say, "Well, yeah, but we do discount oil changes 'cause it leads to other sales." Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: But so that's one thing, you know? I- I- is the person who works at your counter... Um, I, I was in, uh, North Carolina. You saw me last week. I was on the road- Yeah ... for four da- after one of my meetings, and this happens a lot, one of the kids came up, young guy, uh, looked like he was about 14, but he was probably in his 20s, and he's like, "I'm a third generation. My dad runs the shop, but, but you know, my dad, he's getting in the middle of everything. It's really hard." And, and, uh, I, I always say you work for someone, they write you a check- You have to make a decision about what you're willing to put up with or not put up with, right? For sure. As an, as an employee, right? Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: And so when you decide that I, I wanna work here and I wanna take the check, i- in a way you also decide I'm gonna follow the rules of the company, whatever those are. Yeah. Whether Cecil agrees with them or Lucas agrees with them or, or whatever. None of that really matters. What matters is that the person that's writing you a check is, is basically saying, "This is how I wanna do it," right? Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: And, you know, behind the scenes, we can have all the arguments we want. We can sit down and go, "I don't think that's correct." Um, a- a- but until the owner changes their mind about how we do this, then you gotta do- That's how business Lucas Underwood: runs ... Cecil Bullard: you gotta do how, what the owner wants. And so if that employee got terminated legitimately because- Yeah he knew better, then I'm, I'm fine with that. I, I, I think we have a craziness in our industry. I think we've all lost our minds because You know, you, you look at car count, car count. I mean, that's everybody's... That's like the mantra, right? More cars, more cars. I'll make money if I have more cars. Yeah. Well, that's, that's not necessarily true. It's never been true, frankly. Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: Right. You know, we have these shops. I mean, I can't tell you how many times, you know, having done seminars in the industry for well over 20 years and, and, and worked with automotive- thousands of automotive shops, we have these shops that come in, they're doing $2 million a year worth of business and losing money. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and so... And we also have shops, frankly, that are doing, you know, uh, 700,000 and losing money, and, and I'm pretty sure there's shops out there doing 10 million and losing money. Yeah. Uh, there's a balance and there's a way to run your business that is successful, right? Yep. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. 100%. So- And, and look, h- I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a play directly from the Cecil Bullard playbook, okay? Hey- I'm gonna pull the play straight out of the playbook because you said something that I think we need to address right here and right now, okay? We Cecil Bullard: lost our minds in our industry? Lucas Underwood: Well, I mean, you would've had to have had one to have lost it, okay? You have to have something to lose it. So, I, the industry in that sense, we're in trouble. But, you know, th- this brings up something that's completely off-topic and, and I'm just gonna ask you what you think about it. There's all these technicians who are really upset right now, right? They're, they're very disgruntled, and it's primarily in the dealership space, right? You know I make these videos and they come out- Yeah every single Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. And these videos come out, and all these dealership guys get so upset and so mad because they think that I'm talking about the dealership space. And I keep saying to them, like, you set the terms for what you're willing to accept in that, that job, in that role as an employee, and if you don't like the job, for God's sakes, leave. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, there's- And if Lucas Underwood: everybody leaves- Cecil Bullard: There's so many... There, I mean, you know, I, I think if you got a thousand shop owners in a room and you said, "How many of you need a good technician in your shop?" You know, 999 hands would go up, right? Yeah. Um, the, the... And, and yet we have these techs that are so miserable in their lives, in their sh- in the shop that they're at, and the, bec- the owner doesn't pay me, doesn't appreciate me, doesn't whatever, or she doesn't- Yeah or whatever. Okay, Lucas Underwood: cool. Why Cecil Bullard: are you there? Go somewhere else. Right. I mean, holy, holy crap. Um, yeah. I'm with you, man. I mean- I am like, uh... And I was t- I talk about the level of incompetence you're willing to accept. I, I do that- Yeah ... with owners because, you know, nobody's gonna be Cecil, right? Yeah. And by the way, in Cecil's head, in my brain, I think I do it right all the time. Right. Yeah. I mean, there's a piece of me that knows that's not true, right? But we're all a little- Sure ... insane in some ways, and we think that, you know, we, we know how to do things, and we think that our way is the right way. And, and, but as an owner, I'm gonna work twice as hard as pretty much anybody else, you know? Yeah. If it... I, I was talking to one of our, um, our marketing people. I, I used to print our workbooks, and I used to write our workbooks, and I used to edit our workbooks. Yeah. And, excuse me. I don't, I don't do that now, but I was, I was talking to her and I said, "You know, I used to be here at 2:00 in the morning-" Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: printing workbooks because I had a class the next day that I needed the workbooks for- Uh ... and putting them together. 100%. And now I'm really glad I don't have to do that. Lucas Underwood: But- We, you know, we got a, we got a review the other day b- at the family business, and it said, "The owner was in there serving food." And I wanted to reply and say, "Yeah, because, like, I gotta do whatever I gotta do." 'Cause Cecil Bullard: everybody quit, and, and I'm in trouble, and I c- I'm the only one. Otherwise, I wouldn't be there. Lucas Underwood: Right. I've gotta do what I gotta do, right? Yeah. Like, this is how we're gonna survive. And, and I, uh... What is it that old Dutch always says? Like, "I'm paying for the blessings of tomorrow with the sacrifices of today." Of today. Whatever it takes. But Cecil Bullard: we a- you know, a- and so you, you create the level of incompetence. And I would say from an owner's point or a manager's point, you say, "Okay, in that position, I'm willing to accept 3% warranty," right? Yeah. So I've got a tech, I'm willing to accept 35 hours a week as a, okay, that's, like, you, you, you hit 35, you're, you're still in my good graces. You- Lucas Underwood: Right ... Cecil Bullard: you only have 3% warranty, you're still in my good graces. But, but also employees have to do the same thing. I mean, you have to decide, what am I willing to put up with? Am I willing to put up with- Yeah ... crappy pay? Well, if you do, and you take the check, and you keep taking the check- Lucas Underwood: Ain't Cecil Bullard: nothing gonna change then shut up. Right? Right. I mean, stop bitching about it. And we're, we're a, an interesting industry. Like you said, maybe we never had a mind, but- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you know, we, we, we constantly eat our tails, you know? Yeah. We constantly bitch and bitch and bitch, and, and we don't W- I don't even think we fully understand. So, you know, I'm pretty sure if, um, if, uh, uh, Aaron Stokes was still alive and, and we had Aaron on this, Aaron would be saying, "Yeah, you say yes, and you say yes because of this, this, and this," right? Yeah. Because that was w- that's one of their philosophies, was that yes philosophy. And on the same time, I would be saying Yeah, but sometimes you gotta say no. Yeah. Because you've already made promises to other customers because you're pulling a guy off of a $5,000 job that he could finish up- Lucas Underwood: For a $29 Cecil Bullard: oil change ... and you're gonna have him do a, an oil change where you're gonna lose $35. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And then he's gotta come back to the $5,000 job, and he's gotta get his head back in the game. So now you've increased the odds of, of mistakes happening, comebacks, et cetera. And so I think there's a point where you say to the customer, "Look, you know, we, we would love to do that oil change for you, absolutely. Only I can't do it tonight, right now, because my techs are all tied up on other jobs, and we've made promises to customers." Absolutely. "And I'm pretty sure if you were one of those customers who I made a promise to, you would not want me pulling the tech off of your car to do someone else's- To, to do that ... service or whatever it is, right?" I, I think- And it's not even about a $29 oil change. If it was a $300 oil change, I still wouldn't pull my guy off of a $5,000 job- Yeah at 4:00 to do that oil change. Lucas Underwood: I, I think it's easy, right? Like, so, so my vision of leadership is, is my job is to create a awesome environment for my internal customers, my employees. Right. And, and currently I'm not in the shop that much, so it is my managers' job to create an amazing experience for them, and then they in turn create an amazing experience. The desired outcome is a safely and properly repaired automobile for our consumer that is safe and reliable for them and their families. Or that, that's what we're trying to accomplish, and we have the guardrails which say, "Here is the, the metrics of profitability that we expect, and so you guys stay within these guardrails. Here's where you're going. This is the roadmap. This is what we want." You saw the roadmap. Well- I've, I've got it on the whiteboard, right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And so- And you're also not, you're not setting yourself up for success here, right? I'm, I'm bringing a, a $29 oil change. So I'm working with, uh, big old tire guys, uh, not, not the big company, but a guy who owns three locations. Yeah. And we're doing free tire rotations and free brake inspections. Yeah. We're doing hundreds of them. You know what we're selling? Probably Lucas Underwood: nothing. Nothing, Cecil Bullard: right? Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: Because we're so busy doing the tire rotations and brake inspections, we forget to look at the car. We don't have time to get to the Lucas Underwood: actual work Cecil Bullard: that they could approve. We, we forget to estimate the work and, and we don't have time to have a conversation with the customer. Yeah. And so I'm, I'm literally going... I said, "Why, why do you guys do free brake, uh, you know, inspections, free tire rotations?" Yeah. He said, "So we can look at the car." Well, you forgot that- Does it matter if you're not getting the end of it? somewhere along the... Yeah. So now I'm gonna bring this, this oil change in, and we'll get to that question in just a second, but I, I just have to make the point. I'm gonna bring this guy in at 4:00. It's a waiter, you know? Yeah. Uh, we're gonna service the car, and if I have a good technician do a good inspection, we're 35, 45, 50 minutes in. So now we're pushing 5:00 Then we will find stuff on this car that needs to be talked about. Customer may not buy it, but it needs to be talked about. The whole reason I'm doing the cheap oil change is to get the guy in so I can look at the car and try to sell him the things that he really needs, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Except now it's close to 5:00. Is that customer gonna sit for another 15, 20 minutes while- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: my service advisor estimates the work, and then is he gonna sit for another 15 or 20 minutes with my service advisor after that to discuss what he needs- In- ... so that he can make a good decision? Lucas Underwood: In this instance, the, the, their theory was is like just, just find one thing wrong with the car that will make them leave it, and then do an inspection and provide the inspection later. I didn't feel like that was very kosher. Cecil Bullard: It's not my, it's not the way that I would- Lucas Underwood: No, I didn't feel like Cecil Bullard: it ... I would approach it. And it's certainly, it's certainly not the way that I would teach. I don't wanna have three phone calls with you, right? Yeah. Or three meetings. I don't wanna find one thing and say, "Oh my God, your, y- you know, your oil leak is coming out of the, the whatever timing cover so badly, we've gotta do your timing cover, and it's gonna cost X, Y, Z." And you go, "Okay, you know, I've seen the leaks. Do it." Yeah. And then you leave And then I go, "Oh, and now we've had time to check the car over, so here's another $5,000 worth of crap." Right. I don't wanna have that. I wanna have one conversation. I don't wanna have three or two, right? Right. I may have two because when we get in the middle of stuff, uh- Yeah we may find something- My vein's gonna have to- ... that are related that, that we can't see at that point in time with a basic inspection. But I certainly don't wanna have three conversations. And- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: and I think you're, um... Everything is i- with a client is about how does that client feel about us, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And that experience with us. And, and so by telling him yes, I made him feel good, okay? So yeah. Tell him, any, anytime you tell someone, "No, I, I really can't do that," if that's all you say, you're in trouble, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Or no. Uh, nobody wants to hear no, right? Yeah. "Oh, my gosh, I would love to do that for you right now, but unfortunately there's just not enough time, and if we did it right now, we wouldn't do you a justice. We wouldn't be able to-" Yeah "... inspect the car. We wouldn't be able to tell you about what's going on with the car. You would not have the information you need to make intelligent decisions, and my whole job is making sure that you have the information you need to make the right decisions about Lucas Underwood: your car." Is advising you, being your advocate. Cecil Bullard: That, that's what I do, right? Yeah. And so this, this yes mentality and this car count thing of just driving as many cars through. We... I watch... I'm a numbers guy. You, y- everyone in the industry kinda knows, you know? Cecil understands the numbers or thinks he does. And- Yeah and I watch shops drive car count, and as they drive car count, I watch sales go down. I watch- Yep ... average repair- Yes ... orders go down. I watch mistakes go up. Employee satisfaction Lucas Underwood: go down. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. The whole nine yards. Employees are, are running around- Yep ... like chickens with their head cut off. Yep. There's a lot more inefficiencies that, that happen in the business. Yeah. And so if you, if you run a shop and you really pay attention, you'll learn where your sweet spots are, right? Yeah. Where does the shop make m- the most money? Where does the shop create the most happy clients? Where does the shop create the best average repair order? You know? Yeah. Those things that matter to me. And then where does the shop create the most profit? Because y- I, I have to, I have to be profitable here i, in the short term, and frankly, in the long term. Yeah. Otherwise, I, I have to go work f- For somebody else, and I'm not employable Lucas Underwood: Right. I, I'm the same way, and I, I think it's important, right? O- one of the things that I'm bad for doing is painting with a broad brush. Yeah. If you own, own a tire store, right? And, and you can turn hundreds of tires a day, that, that's a different model than what we're discussing. We're not talking about a high volume just tire store or something like that. That's a very different model. But even then, these same practices work in that tire store the same way they work in, in a mechanical shop. Cecil Bullard: And- Most of, most of the tire guys that I know are- Mm-hmm ... probably doing 50% tires, 50% um- Mechanical ... at least. Yeah. I mean, I know there's some that are 70% tires, 30% service, but I don't know of- Yeah ... any tires, uh, other than maybe discount tires, that are only doing tires. Just tires. Yeah And not getting into any of the service at all. Um- Lucas Underwood: Well, you know, I, I thought, I was, I've talked with Mark Ponz a lot. Brilliant, brilliant businessman, right? And, and one of the things that I always learned from Mark was, was, "Hey, watch the way we do tire business," and then we kinda shift gears in the mechanical business. You have to. It runs a little bit differently, right? Cecil Bullard: It's a different business, right. Lucas Underwood: And so you've got your tire team that's out here just nailing the tires out, and that's what they do every single day. And, and I've, I've, because of ASEA, I've had some amazing opportunities to work with some of the best tire men in the entire country. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And, and I always, I was the guy saying like, "You can't make it with tires." How do you make it? And then I meet Mark Ponz and I'm like, "Whoof. He did more than make it with tires." Cecil Bullard: Holy smokes, you can make a lot of money with tires. Yes. But- Lucas Underwood: Yes ... Cecil Bullard: it's a different margin, it's a different business. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. And it, it's ran differently. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And so, you know, I found my sweet spot to be three cars a day per tech, somewhere between $900 and $1,100 on my ARO. That, that's my sweet spot. That's where we run. That's where things work. We get too much higher than that, we start getting into very complex jobs. And, and listen, I talk to a lot of shop owners, "I got a $3,000 ARO. That's too high." And they're like, "What are you talking about that's too high?" Well, Cecil Bullard: if, if you're a diesel shop, it's not. For sure. If you're a European shop, you're pushing the edge. But- For Lucas Underwood: sure ... Cecil Bullard: but if you're a general repair shop, it's, it's too high, right? Lucas Underwood: Exactly. It means you're Cecil Bullard: doing engines and transmissions all day. It also means you're doing a lot of heavy duty work. Engine repair. And if you're doing a lot of heavy duty work, the margins and the matrixes that- You currently would have in place normally that would be taught to you will never work for your business- Yeah to make the profit you need. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Right. You're 100% right. You're 100% right. And, and I think that's why, you know, it's like when I talk to folks about coaching with the Institute, I'm always saying, "Listen, there is no cookie cutter model that fits every shop." Like, this is a- I think there, Cecil Bullard: I think there is, frankly. I mean, if you say, "I'm a tire store," there's a model that works best. Yeah. If you say, "I'm a- I don't Lucas Underwood: disagree ... Cecil Bullard: I'm a discount store-" I don't disagree with that ... there's, there's a model that works best. Yeah. But, you know, I was... A- and again, I, I have never run a discount store, so I've never done- Yeah ... a cheap oil change or anything cheap. Or frankly- Right ... I'm, I never, when I was running shops, I never was a discounter. So- Yeah ... I don't understand that model. And I know some guys, however, that run really discount. Yeah. I've known some guys in my life. And, and their model works for them, only their techs are usually, uh, pretty transient because- Yeah they're just- Discount model, that's it ... they're not paying them enough, and they're running too many cars through, and that's, their service advisors can be somewhat transient in that business, and their customers can be somewhat transient in that business. Yeah. So the other part of that is if I'm running a discount model, I have to keep really hounding- Yeah marketing. Tha- those are the guys that are also saying you need to send out 10,000 to 40,000 mailers every month so you can bring- Yeah ... these oil changes in, so you can do enough business to- Here- ... you know, to be profitable. Lucas Underwood: Here, here's my thing, though, okay? When, when we look at the numbers, right? When we look at the financials, because I talk to Eric Jordan all the time at Geisen. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, yeah. Lucas Underwood: And I'm like, "Dude, I... You know where I was at, I didn't have clean numbers." I, I ran through a, a spell where we didn't have good bookkeeping and, and our numbers were a mess. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And it's impossible to run a business without good clean numbers, right? And so what I'm saying, though, Cecil, is that without good clean numbers, without good clean data, there is no model that's gonna work. And I think that when they have good numbers, that GP number that you have to hit every single month to pay the bill- Cecil Bullard: Yeah ... Lucas Underwood: what, what the shop down the street's charging- They don't, they don't- ... is irrelevant to you. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. They also- Lucas Underwood: What you have to make is what you have to make. Cecil Bullard: If you don't have clean numbers, you make mistakes. Yeah. And you make bad decisions. So, you know, imagine- I've made bad Lucas Underwood: decisions with clean numbers, Cecil. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Right, yeah. But, but, you know, imagine that we brought a new car in or a, you know- Yeah ... a four-year-old whatever, and we didn't have a scanner, and we couldn't get the data- Yeah ... out of the car, and so now what are we doing? Now, now it's the, you know, well, I, I, based on my experience, I think, or- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you know, my tech is saying, "Let's- Yeah ... place re- let's rep- replace these six parts. Maybe that's gonna solve the problem." Yeah. I, I don't wanna be that company. I wanna be the company that says, "I know exactly what's going on with your, with your business, and- Yeah these are the three or the five things that we can do that will really improve your business and- Yeah ... put more money in your bottom line, create more happy, happier employees, happier- uh, clients, et cetera. For sure. Um, we do have a question. Let's- Yeah. Kyle ... let's get to the question. 2020, Kyle. I know that this is supposed to be ask me questions, so, and I've al- I have kinda read the question, but I'll let you read it. I read it myself, so. Yeah. " Lucas Underwood: I'm a mobile programming and testing company netting 8% currently." Now, Kyle is a, a fairly new company, very proud of him, doing awesome things. "My GP's 55% per RO, but my car count is only about 10 per week, so two a day. Should my next step be more investment into marketing or jump into coaching to maximize what I currently have?" Cecil, what do you think? Cecil Bullard: Well, I would, I, I, I would lean on the coaching side, and here's why. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Y- Cecil Bullard: you're supposed to be making net 20, and your gross profit is off by, uh, what is that? 12, 14 points. Yeah. I mean, I need 62 to 64% GP. Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: And I need to know where that's missing. For sure. And what I have to do to get that. So you can bring more cars in at this point, and you'll st- and, and if you maintain a, a net eight, you're just gonna... If you wanna make tw- you know, the 200 K you told- A higher Lucas Underwood: net eight. Cecil Bullard: I wanna make, I don't know, I wanna make $200,000. At 8%, $200,000 is an awful lot of cars to work on, an awful, awful lot of places to make mistakes, and a lo- awful lot of liability. Yeah. At 20%, you know, $200,000 is a lot less cars, it's a lot less liability, and a lot less places to make mistakes. I- So for me, I, I'm, I might do both. It, it would depend on, you know... I mean, 8%, if you're doing, you know, 10,000 a month, okay, I'm making 8%, that's, in my opinion, that ain't enough to survive. You know, if you're doing 100,000, you might do both. You might, you know, get coaching, improve your margins, figure out where your business is going wrong, and then while you're doing that, you might improve car count and put a few more, you know, butts in seats so that I can make 20% on more people instead of 8%. Lucas Underwood: So here, here's my perspective, okay? So, so thing number one for me here Is that you're exactly right, and my reasoning's a little bit different. I would want to fix my net and I would want to fix my gross profit- Gross Cecil Bullard: profit ... Lucas Underwood: first before I started stacking more clients in the door, because now I'm gonna have more attrition because I'm changing my model midstream as opposed to narrowing down and polishing my model right now and getting my model right before I start presenting it to more people, right? Well, then- So, so I can set the expectation early. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And if you, if you do that, you'll have happier clients that will continue- Yeah ... to use you and come back. And- Lucas Underwood: I Cecil Bullard: agree ... this is a mo- mobile programming guy, so his client is probably not, uh, like the end user. This m- he may be working with more shops. I mean, there's- Yep definitely more information I'd need in order to- For sure ... evaluate him. And, and he is- These are the five Lucas Underwood: things ... he's working with a lot of shops. Right. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And, Lucas Underwood: and I think he's doing some mobile diag too. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: But so here- But you're- ... here's the next question to that though, right? Okay. Because I think there's a lot of mobile diag guys out there, there's a lot of mobile techs out there, and, and that does lead us to that next question is, hey- Like I, I'm not... If I do a DVI, how am I gonna upsell something? Because I'm really just coming out to do the diag and program the vehicle. Cecil Bullard: Well, in, if I'm working with other shops, I'm not doing a DVI. We're, we, we are just there to fill a, a place. That's why- Yeah ... I never liked, like, uh, being the alignment guy for the 10 shops around me. Um- Yeah ... because when the car comes in, I see things that- Lucas Underwood: Wasted Cecil Bullard: opportunities ... that the customer should be talking. We, w- we need, I, I feel like- Yeah ... oh, my God, why aren't they telling the customer that, you know, your upper control arm bushings are falling out of the car, and- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you c- I can't even align it, right? It, I, uh, uh, but it, I have different roles in, in different places. And, and if I am coming out to do programming and I'm the, I'm at the end user, the, you know, the client who owns the car, and I do a DVI, I might have an opportunity to sell additional stuff. But do I have the tools with me? You know, do I have the parts there? You know, do I have the equipment? Can I do it wherever I'm at, or do I have a place where I can take it and do it? I mean, there's a lot of additional questions and information, you know, depending on the model that you wanna build, right? I- And- Lucas Underwood: Yeah. I- ... Cecil Bullard: I don't think you should run three different models. I think you need to find the model that's gonna work the best for you, and that's the model that you wanna run, and you wanna run it as, a- as, as well as it can be run. Right? Lucas Underwood: I, I don't know anything about the mobile business, and I'm not gonna pretend to. But I, I think if it were me, right, what I would be doing is I'd be working with professional shops, and I'd say, "Hey, what I'll do, you guys get the cars you need programmed lined up. You get everything you need. In other words, do you have multiple cars that are gonna need programming? Do you have things? Try and get those all scheduled on a day for me. I'll come out, and I'll get the repairs made if you need me to do repairs. Whatever. I'll get diags done. But get me a day's worth of work," right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I can't be moving around. I'm losing- Exactly ... my time, and time has to be billable no matter what. So either I gotta- Exactly ... charge... If, if I'm, if I'm working with five shops in a day- And I'm traveling around I have to shop Lucas Underwood: to shop, I spend as much Cecil Bullard: time and gas money Lucas Underwood: moving Cecil Bullard: Am I charging enough? Yeah, do, am I charging enough to cover the vehicle, the, the expenses- Yeah ... the, the gas, the rent, the, uh, excuse me, the utilities, the payment, whatever, uh- Yeah you know, or... Utilities, holy smokes. You know, I bet I'm, I'm thinking one thing, and it c- what comes out of my mouth is something else sometimes. Um- Lucas Underwood: We're used to it, Stace, so it's fine. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, it's all right. Guy's losing his mind. Um- You Lucas Underwood: never had one ... Cecil Bullard: and never had one in the first place. Um, but am I charging enough? And- Yeah ... and by the way, if I'm going to one shop and I'm gonna be there all day, that cost, uh, can be less for that shop than if I'm going to five shops. If I'm going to five shops- Yeah ... I have to cover all the traveling time and all the expenses that go with it. I've gotta charge more, otherwise I only make 8% or I only make 3% or whatever. I don't make my 20%, and I need my 20%. Lucas Underwood: I, I, I think, you know, to summarize basically where we've gone with this is, is like, the, the base numbers, the 55 and the 8%, are not fixed by increasing car count. Mm-hmm. So we fix those numbers first. Cecil Bullard: Yep. Lucas Underwood: And then, like, we, we get some of that dialed in, and we get the model dialed in, we get the efficiency dialed in, and then we work on marketing to bring more in if we need it at that point. But that's, I, I, that's how I would take it. Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So imagine you were, say, building houses, and you weren't charging enough, plus you maybe weren't building the house in a correct manner. All right? Yeah. So, and I, I build more houses, I create more liability- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: that la- later I may have to go back and fix, repair, whatever. Um, I think you always wanna fix the model first. And, and there- Sure ... is a point, you know, hey, I'm a guy. I, I wanna start a business. I don't know what I don't know. Uh, I'm gonna get in there, and I'm gonna work my butt off and, and all of that, but there's a point in that where you have to say to yourself, "I want this to run well- Yeah and I want this, you know, I want... And so I need to know what it really takes to run it well, because I don't wanna work, you know, 12 hours a day, uh, in order to make the money I need to take care of my family or to- Yeah ... you know, take..." So yeah, I, I mean- A- and that, back to the... Okay, so I hope we answered that well enough, Kyle- Yeah, I think so and thank you so much. Thank you so much for that, that question. Um, and, uh, you know, back to this yes mentality, I told you I'm, I'm of both worlds, so I don't wanna tell a customer no, no matter what. Yeah. I, I really don't. But sometimes I have to say, "Yes, but..." Right? Lucas Underwood: Right. " Cecil Bullard: Yeah, we'd absolutely love to take care of that for you. However," right, "this is the situation." Uh, I always try to, um, to create some, uh, empathy, uh- Yeah ... around what's, what's going on in my world. Yeah. And, and by the way, if I get a guy that comes in who's really pissed off because at 4:00 I can't stop everything and change his oil- This is Lucas Underwood: somebody I want in my shop. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, and is that the guy I wanna work with? Yeah. And the answer is no. N- for me, the answer is- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: uh, uh, unequivocally no. Lucas Underwood: So, so many of these shop owners, okay, and, and I'm gonna be really blunt here, and I'm not talking about the Institute. You blunt? Wait a minute. Yeah, I know, right? I'm not talking about the Institute when I say what I'm gonna say, okay? Cecil Bullard: Okay. Lucas Underwood: But so many of these shop owners, they go to a class somewhere, and somebody gives them these ideas of what to do. Now, listen, I, I've been this guy. I've been disconnected from the front counter. I've been disconnected from the base, and I go to a class, and this person recommends... And, and I'm gonna tell you, why do you think coaches have got such a bad name? There's, there is a coach that, that if you go on TikTok and search his name, it's technicians cussing him. Like, every TikTok video is people just cussing this guy out, right? And it, it's, it's that they have become so disconnected from what it's like to do the job. Now listen- I think what happens is, is that owner has been struggling for a long time. I've told you about this in my personal life before, that I spent so many years fighting and just climbing and trying to get things right and dealing with the stress and the upset client and all the things, that the minute somebody was willing to walk in that front door and take that pressure off of me, I'm like, "Here you go. It's yours. Take it. Do whatever you want with it. I don't care." Right? Cecil Bullard: Like- Well, would you... I mean, if you're gonna listen to someone- Yeah ... give you advice, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Um, uh, you know, uh, am I going to do some research on that person or that company- Lucas Underwood: Absolutely ... Cecil Bullard: and, and find out- Lucas Underwood: Absolutely ... Cecil Bullard: you know, you know, what their clients are, are saying and, and, you know, where did that person get his education? You know- For sure ... what, what's the, where's the- Lucas Underwood: What's Cecil Bullard: their experience? Uh, as they said in What Are the Bona Fides, right? You know- Yeah ... um, uh, in, in whatever movie- Right ... I can't remember the title to, but, um, i- or are, are you just, uh... At one of our events, and again, I'm gonna be brutal but not name their name. Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: You know, last year, um, chose speakers based on the title of their thing. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and they got a- Never Lucas Underwood: actually inspected the class or anything. Cecil Bullard: They got a lot of complaints. Uh, uh- Yeah ... and I heard a lot of feedback from people saying, "Wow, I, you know, in 20 minutes I walked out of that class." Yeah. And, and so do you wanna ha- I, I'm not saying we don't wanna have new people in the industry, 'cause we do. We wanna bring new people in, but do you wanna have people that, that have no bona fides, no, no qualifications? Just, they're just basically- Well- The, the thing I hate about the internet is they're able to say, "I'm the expert on this," and all of a sudden- Exactly everybody believes they're the expert on this- 100%. Lucas Underwood: 100% ... Cecil Bullard: even though they don't have the experience. They don't- Well- ... have the, the basic knowledge to really- E- ... be the expert. Lucas Underwood: Here's my beef though, right, is like they, they can come in and say whatever they want and, and it's, it's like a lot of what's being taught in the industry right now has consequences that, that we're not paying for yet. And I believe there were a lot of things taught over the past however many years that we're paying for the consequences right now, right? Like, there's a lot of things that we're paying for that were done years ago, and this is just how the industry works, and now we're paying the price for it. We don't have any techs, and all of these problems and all this stuff's coming up, right? And so when I... I guess what I was saying about, like, they're teaching these things, but they've never been on that side of the counter. And so it's like the shop owner comes back and says, "Hey guys, we're gonna start doing this." Well, let me ask you, Mr. Shop Owner, how many years has it been since you've sat on that front counter? How many years has it been since you were the one getting the butt chewing because you did something that was shady or was... Right? Like, have you disconnected yourself from the, the experience? Have you disconnected yourself from the consumer, the advisor, the technician? So I'm gonna- Because many of the guys we teach- Cecil Bullard: Yeah Lucas Underwood: were technicians, they were advisors. And- Cecil Bullard: Yeah, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick you in the teeth here. Lucas Underwood: Okay. I like it. Do it. Cecil Bullard: Just because you sat on the front c- on the front counter- Lucas Underwood: Mm-hmm ... Cecil Bullard: doesn't mean that you learned anything. Lucas Underwood: Of course. Cecil Bullard: So, so I think, um, like having a technician who becomes a service advisor, I would rather have a service advisor who was never a technician. Yeah, I- And I know a lot of shop owners are gonna go, "Man, you're crazy, Cecil." But there's bad habits that you learn as a tech- Yes, absolutely ... that are great habits when you're a tech, but when you're a salesperson, service advisor- They're terrible ... they're not good habits, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and so that's one thing. One thing is, okay, so you did it for 20 years. So what, right? And, and I know, you know, that's some of my bona fides. I used... You know, I- Yeah ... I did this. This is... I've, I've, I've run business, been successful, et cetera. I, I believe I've learned a lot of things that, that maybe many shop owners don't really know and understand. Here's, here's the other part of this. There are things that need to be taught to a tech that a service advisor should not be taught. Yeah. There are things that a service advisor needs to know that a tech shouldn't know, and, and there are things that a manager needs to know that are different than a service advisor, and there are things that an owner needs to know that are a, a lot different, and not all of those will, you will learn by being on the counter or by running the business, right? For Lucas Underwood: sure. Cecil Bullard: And, and listen- We... I've got guys that has, have been doing this for 30 years. I see them all the time. They come up and they're like, "Yes, I've been, I've had a shop for 30 years" and, and their business is worth $150,000 all in. And they, and they have no money. Right? A- and but they've been working at this for 30 years. Lucas Underwood: We've always done it this way. Yeah. But, but here's my point, though, is, is where I'm going with this is a little bit different. Where I'm going with this is it's been so long since you've sat on that front counter, and your policies and procedures are causing problems for the front counter that you don't even see. Cecil Bullard: I, I cannot use my policies and procedures when I was running a shop 15 years ago for a shop today. Yeah. Exactly. Lucas Underwood: Um- Cecil Bullard: Exactly ... and, and we don't teach that, you know? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: It might be a good place for you to start, because you can see what a policy and procedure should, should look like. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: But to take my policy, even my sche- the way I scheduled- Lucas Underwood: Yeah, Cecil Bullard: completely different um, uh, today, I think it's a bit different, right? I, i- it has to be modified. But- And that, another thing you want your coach to be is somewhat flexible on certain things, because- Yeah ... if they're not, they're gonna teach you what they learned 25 years ago, right? And- Well, Lucas Underwood: I, I mean, I guess my point in that, though, is let, let's, let's go back to the example given, okay? Of, hey, we're gonna have this situation where we bring this car in, and they've got a coupon, so we just wanna get the car in to convert it into a car that we can turn into a higher ARO, right? Now, I've got an advisor who's at the end of the day. Yeah. They're trying to make all of their telephone calls, they're trying to update all of their clients, they're trying to get everything cleaned up. Cecil Bullard: Once finished the 15 tickets that are going on- Exactly ... they get the money in the bank, et cetera. Lucas Underwood: Trying to make sure- Right ... the shop looks good, trying to get everybody wound down. They're, they're in the end of the day. They're phasing it out. They're getting ready to bookend the day. Plan tomorrow, right? Cecil Bullard: Right. Lucas Underwood: And now I've got a technician who's in the middle of a job, he's got an hour left, and I'm going back and I'm saying, "Hey, I need you to stop what you're doing. I need you to inspect this car. I need you to do an oil change right now. I need you to pull this thing in right now." And plus you're asking the advisor to go to that client, write an estimate for something simple, something that needs to be dealt with right now. It's a big deal to get the car to stay, and now I'm arranging a ride for this person, right? So the- Now you wanna talk about disgruntled, think about how that disrupts every single person in the shop's day. I've disrupted a porter, I've disrupted an advisor, I've disrupted a client, I've disrupted a technician. Cecil Bullard: I've disrupted my profits. Yes. I've disrupted my, my workflow. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. Cecil Bullard: You know, one of the biggest, one of the biggest expenses in the automotive industry, the biggest cost and, and where we're losing the most money is that we do not have good workflow. Yeah. So the productivity issue, and we have a... Because of that we have a lot of techs complaining 'cause they can't get paid. If they're on flat rate and we don't have productivity, and it is the fault of the business because of our flow, um, then they got a, they got a legitimate complaint, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and what we're doing, I have a class called Stack the Deck, and what we're doing is stacking the deck against us. Yeah. We're not stacking it in our favor, Lucas Underwood: right? Right. Cecil Bullard: And so we're doing... By, by bringing that car in at the, at the last minute, we're doing everyone a disservice. Everybody. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: The, the client, the car, the service advisor, the tech that's gonna have to be pulled off, and, and we're creating kind of hatt- havoc and, and bad attitudes. Lucas Underwood: Chaos. Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and if we create, you know, bad attitude and havoc in our, and chaos in our business, then what are our results gonna be? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Okay? Exactly. And you can beat guys only so long. You know, you, you can- Yeah ... be a forceful manager and, and use the whip or the, you know, the, the prod or whatever only so long when guys say, "Uh, no more of this." It is not a long-term strategy for running a good business that's gonna last long-term and be profitable long-term. It's just not a good strategy. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Yeah. I think you're exactly right, and, and I think that that's where it comes back to me that, that if I build a workflow That is prioritizing profit over the car count, right? Because I, I don't believe in the, the high car count numbers. I- now let me tell you something. I, I had an epiphany a few years back because I was in three bays. You've seen the shop. Cecil Bullard: Mm-hmm. Lucas Underwood: I was in three bays, and it didn't take a lot- With Cecil Bullard: no ceiling. I mean, nine feet- Yeah ... or eight and a half feet or whatever. Yep. Yeah. Lucas Underwood: It didn't take that much to fill that shop, and it didn't take that much to pay that shop's bills. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And then you've seen the new shop, and I, I, I'm, I don't even have to tell you, it takes a lot to pay its bills, right? Cecil Bullard: Yes, sir. Lucas Underwood: And so I have a whole new appreciation for people who try and drive car count. Like I get it. I get it. Cecil Bullard: I had a... In the, in the class, I had a, a guy come up and he's like, "Hey, I'm just, I'm just me, and, uh, what should I do now?" And I'm like, "Well, first of all, I, I don't know enough information." Yeah. "But second of all, when it's just you in one bay, you're gonna have the least expense, but you're gonna make the most money." It's gonna be hard because, you know, you gotta be the service advisor. You gotta, you know, when you've gotta answer the phone- Yeah ... you have Lucas Underwood: to stop what you're doing- Maybe you can stack Cecil Bullard: that bank account full like that ... blah, blah, blah. But you, you can. Yeah. I also have to... Kent made a comment that, um, it requires you to hold the stick. Somebody has to hold the stick. Yeah. And my answer is, "It doesn't require me to hold the stick. It requires the stick to be held- Yeah ... and held by somebody that, that knows what, what they're holding and knows what they need to do, right?" Yeah. Flying a plane, I don't wanna put my, you know, uh, 13-year-old grandson flying a plane. He's no experience. I put the stick in his hand, we're probably in trouble. You know, I want, I want a pilot, I want Dutch at the- Lucas Underwood: Exactly ... Cecil Bullard: you know, behind the wheel, right? Lucas Underwood: Well, you know, it's funny you say that because I was getting ready to bring him up. I, I was talking to him years ago. I was really frustrated about the way the shop was going, and he said, "Son, let me tell you something" He said, "When I worked for the airline," he said, "it does not matter who flies that plane or who does what on that plane." He said, "Because I was the left seat captain, that was my job." He said, "I could let anybody I wanted fly the plane. For God's sakes, I could let a passenger fly it." Cecil Bullard: Yeah, but he- "But I Lucas Underwood: could give them- Cecil Bullard: But he's responsible ultimately for what happens on that plane ... Lucas Underwood: I could give them all the authority in the world- Yeah to fly the plane, but ultimately it was still my responsibility." Good luck. And I said, "What does that have to do with me?" He said, "You're letting a bunch of bimbos fly your plane." Yeah. Cecil Bullard: People who don't know. Lucas Underwood: Like- Cecil Bullard: That's like, that's like- You know? It's like- ... going to coaching and, and going to classes- Yeah with people who, who have a nice internet presence who don't really have the, the experience or the knowledge to really help you out. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, 100%. Cecil Bullard: You know? And, and, and- I, I see these, some of these new coaches come on and they say things and I'm like, "Well, that sounds really pretty, but-" Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you know, it i- i- it's not meaningful or impactful. It just sounds pretty. Lucas Underwood: Right. Okay, we've got a question here. Um, Steve from Wasp Automotive: "My question is how do you decide when adding capacity, another tech, actually helps profit versus creating more chaos?" Been there, done that. It's all in the numbers. It's all in your financials. Ha- I, what do you say, Cecil? What Cecil Bullard: do you- I think, um, I think you look at your business and you say to yourself, uh, you know, like, "I've got three techs. I have one service advisor. I'm probably... My flow is now starting to get affected because one service advisor, three techs." Lucas Underwood: That's Cecil Bullard: for sure. Uh, and 11, 12 cars a day, maybe 15 if you're running a lower ARO model, and that service advisor can't talk to all those people, answer all those phones, deal with everything that's happening and make that happen. So you say to yourself- Yeah ... "Okay, um, I'm gonna add a fourth, uh, uh, tech," before you really have your service advisor stuff really set up. So, you know, I'm, if I'm adding a fourth tech, I'm, I'm certainly probably at that point adding a second service advisor. And if you're, if you're willing, if you have your systems and processes down and your shop is efficient, the, if you have a, a decent ARO, if you, if you know your inspection process and your sales process is good, then let's add a tech. But if you're, if you're adding a tech because you feel like we're, we're stacked too deep and I can't get the work out, then y- y- Yeah ... it's not the tech you need, it's the process you need. Lucas Underwood: So- Right? ... w- what I do in my shop, okay, let me give you a rundown of how I do my daily planning, my weekly planning. Yeah. Is I'm monitoring how much work we have in the shop at any given time. So I know how many hours and I know how many dollars I have in the shop, and I'm saying, "Okay, I know what my typical sales per build hour are, and does that line up with the financial model we've put in place for the shop?" And so if I'm consistently at that number, I can take my hours and I can say, my technicians should be able to turn eight hours a day. There's gonna be days they're a little bit less, there's gonna be days they're a little bit more, but if I have X number of hours and it gives me a runway, because I view this like my runway, right? Like, how far can I go? And I run this shop somewhere between five and seven days out, is, is typically where it falls, right? Yeah. I wanna have between new appointments coming in, right, because I know my average hours per repair order, new appointments coming in versus the work that I have here right now. How much work would that give me, right? And a lot of guys come back and say, "How could you judge what a new appointment's gonna be?" Because it's my average hours per repair order. That's what we always run. It doesn't go up and down hours. It goes up and down five, 10, 15 minutes. It goes up, down .1, .2. It's not a huge swing. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And so now I'm looking at the shop and I'm saying, "Okay- If that is the case and I have this much work and I'm billing this much, is the work getting done? No, it's not. Okay, well now I have an efficiency problem in the shop. Cecil Bullard: Maybe. Maybe- Okay, the work... Go ahead. Maybe it's an efficiency problem in the shop. Maybe it's a, I have too many clients and I need another tech, right? So- Lucas Underwood: Well, I guess, I guess what I'm saying though is if, if I'm in that situation, right? So if I've got that number and my number is, is each tech should be able to do eight hours a day, and I am not moving that number through the shop, and I go and I look and I find out, hey, I got four hours per day per tech, that's an efficiency problem. And by the way, that's a- Adding another tech Cecil Bullard: will not fix that problem don't hire another tech. Yeah, because now you're gonna have- Unless you- Now you're gonna have five guys doing three hours- Doing four hours a day ... or whatever. So yeah. And, and all the marketing, all the money you've spent on that and everything else- Yep ... is just gonna go by the Lucas Underwood: wayside. 100%. So- But I'm gonna maximize what I have, I guess is my point. I'm, I'm, I, it, it's ran by the numbers. There's a formula. I Cecil Bullard: think, I think if you're smart, you're always maximizing what you have. And so- Yeah ... um, you know, you're, the question that I ask every day is, is why not, right? W- why- Yeah ... aren't we? Why, why, why isn't the institute growing faster? Why are we not, uh, signing up more people? Why are we, you know, whatever, whatever it is. Because the answer to that question is the answer I need to, in order to really move my head- Yeah ... right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Sure. And, and so if you're, if you're saying, you know, I've got, um, six hours of productivity out of my s- out of my techs- And now I'm gonna hire another tech because I have too many cars. Well, m- maybe your price isn't high enough to, you know- Yeah ... maybe your price needs to be a little higher. Uh, so th- that's a way that you might manage car count. So we're booked three weeks out. Well, booked three weeks out is, is not okay, and what, what often happens is I, I have customers come in today, and they were scheduled for whatever, and then we found $4,000 worth of stuff they need, and they wanna buy it- Get bumped I said, "I can't, I can't do it today." Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So they get bumped a week and a half out, two weeks out. And then the other problem is if I'm, if I'm scheduling that way, and, and I have new people that are, that I'm... They don't know who I am. Yeah. So they're calling for a first time. I need to get those people in either today or tomorrow. Yeah. I cannot- If you wanna retain that ... schedule those people. Yeah. Otherwise, that money I spent is wasted money. Yeah. And, and so, you know, there, again, there's these balancing and tipping points in your business that if you really understand the business and you're watching the numbers as, as Ken says, you know, if you know where you're going and you're, you know, you got s- your hand on the stick, and you got the data that you need- Yeah then all of a sudden, I'm making better decisions, and so I know what to do when I need to do it. And then- For sure. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely ... I Cecil Bullard: think, I think everybody should have mentors or coaches. Uh, y- you know, mentors, uh, uh, many of... Some of those are paid because you, that's what you hired them for. Yeah. And they might be your coach, and some of those are not. I mean, you know, I'll, I'll call you occasionally for something and say, "Hey, Lucas, what do you think about this?" Because- For sure ... frankly, I look at you in s- some areas as that guy where I can call you and get some good information. Right. Um, and, a- a- I just think we have so many people in our industry that they just don't know enough about the business and how- Yeah the business runs to make the best decisions, and so they keep running into the wall. Lucas Underwood: They were really good at fixing cars, and they were really good at maybe selling service. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: But they weren't good at running the business that fixes cars and sells service. Cecil Bullard: Well, Lucas Underwood: how many- There's a d- there's a difference. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And then, you know, how, how about how do I manage these people? I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "Well, my guys won't do good inspections," or, "They won't take-" "... 20 pictures of the car," or whatever. Ah. And, and, and I'm, I'm like, part of me is, is flabbergasted, right? Yeah. Part of me is like, how, how do you have people that won't do what you need them to do, and you keep writing them a check every, every week- Yeah right, or every two weeks? And, and then part of me is, is angry, like- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: are you, are you really that dumb that you, you can't figure this out, and, and manage people, and make sure that you're getting, you know, what you need out of your staff? And, and so I, the... I'm always two people in my head, you know? I'm just always. But they keep doing the same thing over and over. Yeah. And they keep thinking they're gonna get different results. Lucas Underwood: You know- Cecil Bullard: It's insanity ... Lucas Underwood: here, here's what stands out to me, because you know I've been working at the other end dealing with- Mm-hmm ... with much younger employees, right? Cecil Bullard: Yep. Lucas Underwood: And I had one a while back come up to me and said, "I really appreciate you holding me accountable." And I said, "What are you talking about?" And they said, "Nobody has ever said to me, 'Why didn't you accomplish this thing?'" And they just acted like I was gonna be upset or was gonna be mad if somebody came and said, "What about?" And they said, "The problem was is I never knew if I was winning or losing. And so I need somebody to tell me I'm doing good or I'm not doing good- Yeah so I understand where I need to go, but that's not happening anywhere else I've been." And see- Cecil Bullard: Well, it doesn't... In most places it does not happen, my friend. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And so- Lucas Underwood: Exactly ... Cecil Bullard: you know, we, we don't have goals. I'll, I'll go into a shop and say, "Well, what are your goals for your techs? How do they win," right? "Well, uh, they do a lot of work and they don't have any comebacks." Well, first of all, not having any comebacks is ridiculous because you can't work on cars without having a comeback. Lucas Underwood: You figure that Cecil Bullard: one out, buddy. Second of all, what's a lot? What's a lot of work, right? I mean- Yeah ... a lot of work is, is 10 hours a day. I mean- Yeah ... uh, people need... If you hold people accountable, if they understand, if you're fair, meaning- Yeah ... they know what their target is, they know what they have to do, and then you hold them accountable, they're very happy. They're happier than they can ever be. Yeah. It's the people that don't have any direction, that don't know if they're winning, you know, every two years, every three years they move to another shop hoping that they can find that thing that they don't have, and the thing that they don't have is goals, targets, accountability, and winning. I mean, those are the things you absolutely have to have to be a happy human being, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: If not, it wears at you and it wears at you until what you do is you go online and you just bitch, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and so we got a lot of online complaining going on. Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: Um- Lucas Underwood: The, the quickest way to a depressing life is unmet expectations. Yeah. And the only human being capable of setting your expectations is you. Is Cecil Bullard: that right? Well, and that's the other thing I think we all... You know, I, I always say, um, managers need to manage, meaning- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you know, you... When I was a tech, I kept track of every hour I billed, okay? Now, the reason I was keeping track of every hour I billed was not because I d- I thought my company was gonna not pay me for it. The reason I kept track of every hour was because every day was a competition against yesterday. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So if I did seven hours yesterday, today I wanna do eight. And, you know, I, I, I'm competing against myself. In, in a way, part of my life has been managing myself because if somebody else- Yeah ... doesn't create the expectations for me, I create the expectations. Lucas Underwood: Amen. Cecil Bullard: Because I need the- The dopamine or whatever that comes from being successful. Lucas Underwood: Amen, Cecil Bullard: buddy. Uh, if not, at the end of the day, you watch me. I'm sitting watching TV doing this because- That's it ... I wasn't successful today, right? I di- I didn't- Yeah ... make anything happen. Lucas Underwood: Kent says, "Complaining can make the problem feel bigger it is to the point it feels insurmountable." Um, I- Cecil Bullard: Yeah, it happens all, all, all the time in this, in this industry ... Lucas Underwood: somebody told me one time that human beings can be in love with their problems. They can make their problems their identity, and so I think that Cecil Bullard: that's- Well, think, think about this. As a technician, I'm a problem solver. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? And problems are brought to me all day long, but all of a sudden- Yeah I become a salesperson or I become a manager, sol- creating problems so that I have problems to solve, right? Lucas Underwood: Amen. Cecil Bullard: And, you know, don't get me wrong, you'll... A- as a salesperson you'll have plenty of problems to solve. As a manager you'll have ple- plenty of problems to solve, but we have a lot of people in, in the industry that are creating their own nightmares- Lucas Underwood: Yes Cecil Bullard: and then they're living in them, and then they're complaining about them. Yeah. And, and, and my mind is like, "Okay, fix it." Lucas Underwood: Right? Exactly. Exactly. Cecil Bullard: It might not be easy. It might not be quick, but fix it. Stop doing what you're doing today. Start learning how to do something just a little bit different and, and because you keep going the same way, you keep getting the same thing. Lucas Underwood: That's exactly right. If you continue to do the same thing and expect different results, that is the definition- Is Cecil Bullard: insanity ... of Lucas Underwood: insanity. Cecil Bullard: Yes, sir. Lucas Underwood: Cecil, thank you for being here today. Cecil Bullard: Yes, sir. Well, thank you. I love these things. And- Yes, sir ... uh, thank you for those of you that participated and, uh, and asked questions, and we'll be back again soon I'm sure. Lucas Underwood: That's it. Well, I guess another month and we'll be back Cecil Bullard: here. Another month, and we'll make your head Lucas Underwood: hurt one more time. Another AMA. Yeah. Waiting to hear y'all's questions. Cecil, see you next time, buddy. Cecil Bullard: Love you, brother. Lucas Underwood: Love you, brother.