I Netted $100K In A Month AFTER I Got Stolen From | EP1 | Shop Fix Academy Podcast

0:00My shop was burning. I didn't care. Let it burn. Like, he couldn't have thought of a better way to steal from me. I lost every single person that was in that meeting room the day I fired my manager. The call though, he was like, dude, you need to shut down your other store. On the first call. On the first coaching call you had.

0:14Just went back and I did it, dude. I was like a madman. I was locked in. Then July of 2025, for the first time I netted over $100,000. Dinamo. That was your main, your first shop at that one? Yeah, that's the main shop. Didn't you find something in your closet? Welcome everybody to the Shop ShopFix Academy podcast. My name is The Berg, and joining me is my co-host Guy Roberts.

0:39The guy, the guy, that guy, that guy. That's right, all the guys, all the guys. Absolutely. And on our very first episode, I cannot think of a better person to join us than Jay Ha from North Carolina. Jay, how you doing? Good, good. I'm good. I'm happy to be here. Awesome, awesome. And as with all of our coaches in ShopFix, They originally were a client.

1:02Yeah. And you were a client. When did you join ShopFix? Way back in 2017. I think it was October. Yeah. 2017. 2017. It's been a minute. Crazy. Crazy, man. We had less than a handful of people too. Yeah, I think I had hair. You might have had hair. I had some. Yes, absolutely. And so you joined in 2017 and you've got a crazy story, but I would love to hear from you kind of that journey, that story, but then also like Like everybody asks the question, like, what is coaching?

1:34When I joined in 2017, I was broke. I didn't know what I was doing. I remember standing in line at McDonald's one morning. I had 3 shops and I was like, dude, I need to open up one more shop to net $4,000. That I literally remember thinking that because I thought it was only possible to net $1,000 per store. I didn't know anything back then.

1:53And so that's how my journey started. And man, like my first call with Aaron Stokes, I think it was November and like it was a 3-hour long coaching call. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said the numbers 400, 800, and 50. And back then it was like $400 ARO, $800 tech quote, and 50% close ratio. That's the only thing I remember.

2:13All I knew was like I had to pee really, really bad. And like an hour and a half into the call, like, you know, I ended up using the bathroom and Aaron said he didn't know I was using the bathroom, which is great. During this call? Yeah, it's good. You're using it during the call. I was at Barnes Noble. There was echo suddenly.

2:29Yeah, man. So at the end of the call though, he was like, dude, you need to shut down your other store. And I did on the first call. On the first call. On the first coaching call you had. And I, I just went back and I did it. And man, that's the type of authority that Aaron had over me. And wow. And still does to this day, you know.

2:46And he left all these recordings with us. I listened to it and yeah, man, I think it's so fitting. So back in January, December, January, we were talking about the rebrand of the podcast because 90% of our audience, and 90% of everybody we had on here was ShopFix, a coach, or, or somebody related to ShopFix. And so when we sat down and, and we kind of strategized all this out, like, we locked all this in by the end of January, this new podcast that is ShopFix Academy Podcast.

3:15And I think it's so fitting that you were the last Success Leaves Clues podcast, and now you're the first ShopFix Academy podcast guest speaker. So yeah, thanks so much. It's just, you know, God's, God's, um, kind of story is just woven all throughout all this, and it's just really cool to see that kind of reflected through. And, um, yeah, thanks so much for being here, and your story is absolutely amazing.

3:43So I signed up in April at 18 as a client. Yep. I didn't get my one-on-one coaching call with Aaron And it wasn't even a one-on-one. There was 3 other people on the call with me. Yuri somebody and somebody else. But the other person flaked out last minute or something. So it was the 2 of us. It was a 2-hour call. He needed time.

4:05We were getting more people and he was like, guys, doing one at a time is not working. What if we did multiples? Brilliant. Let's do that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you were on those. I waited 2 months for my call. Oh wow. All I had was videos. I mean, that's crazy though. Like, if you think about it now, because we've all been coaches now, sure, then, you know, I have 50 clients and it's a lot, right?

4:28Yeah. And just, he had over 100. Yeah, right. Yes. Yeah, I think I was number 121, 125, something. I don't know. Yeah, lost count a long time ago. But that is crazy. Like, he, he was handling all the coaching all the way up to that point before he handed it off to Guy. So Fun fact, Guy was my first coach. I was.

4:49I gave you the name Berg. You did. That's awesome. And here's why. So Rosenberger, I kept calling you Rosenberg and I forgot the last ger all the time. And we were actually, we were in Denton, Texas. I was visiting your shop. Yes. And I called you Rosenberg. And you're like, during spring break week. It was. And you said, do you remember spring break week?

5:08I don't. I just remember being there. I remember. Do you remember running out of clipboards? At your shop. Yes, yes, we were like unwrapping new clipboards. There's so many cars. Sorry, that's right. No, but, but at that point I said, hey, can I just call you Berg? And then I think TJ put the in front of it to make it official. The Berg.

5:26Yes, which is, which is good. Yeah, I like that. It's stuck ever since. Ever since, man. So people call me Michael and I, I, I respond faster now to Berg than I do Michael. That's right. And don't call him Mike, he gets— please don't— very upset. No Mike. Very upset. Yeah. So you literally, your first coaching call, he said shut down the store.

5:45Like, and you went like, how long before you shut down a store? Like, I did it that day. No way. I went back. Yeah. It was the afternoon. What'd you tell all your people? Well, it was easy because there's only 2 people working that were right there. And you needed 2 people out of one of the other stores. We just consolidated. Perfect.

6:00So I call it consolidation, you know, like my ego aside. If we consolidate the stores, it doesn't sound as bad. Sure. So. Was your shop the one that was in that strip? Mm-hmm. Yeah. There was like 2 or 3 other shops in that strip. Yeah. Still is. I remember visiting you at that shop. That's crazy. That was your main, your first shop at that one?

6:21Yeah, that's the main shop. Yeah, we're still there. We found, didn't we find something in your closet? Did we? Aaron and I went in there. We were looking in the closet. Something in the closet. It was a mess. I remember it was a mess in there. Oh, it was bad. And you had a young guy on the front counter who was just kind of making it happen.

6:35And I think Aaron started going through a storage closet. Do you remember this? Started going through a storage closet. What the fuck? I can't remember. It was a half empty bottle of whiskey. Oh, bro. Do you remember that? Or Crown Royal or something? I don't know. You're like, I don't know. I don't remember that, but it's not— You don't? It's not a— No, I believe it 100%.

6:52Oh yeah, totally. In fact, I remember Aaron was a guy I looked up to, right? He was the role model. I believe that success can be duplicated and you just got to pick somebody that you want to be like, right? And I picked Aaron Stove. I copied everything he did. He was my role model. And after after touring the whole place, after talking to my advisor, he go— he comes up to me, looks me in the eye, and he goes, man, even if I was here for only 6 months, I wouldn't run my shop this way.

7:16And that was like a freaking stab to the heart. But man, the thing about Aaron is he didn't sugarcoat. Like, he would tell you what you needed to hear, not what you wanted to hear. Yeah. And if I think back, okay, so Aaron Stokes is running a business, it's a coaching company. How many coaches out there that owns a company can look a client in the eye and say that kind of truth, knowing that that client looked up to you.

7:39I mean, can you imagine? But by him doing that, I actually made the changes. And 5 years later, I would move into the suite next door. And man, I wanted to make Aaron proud. So I fixed up a brand new epoxy floor, all new lifts, everything. Like, I went to Target and went to the Joanna Gaines section. I literally bought everything on that display and put in my waiting room.

8:02That's awesome. And so it gave me that kind of drive. But the funny thing is he actually came by like, what, 8 years later? A few months ago. It was back in October. October. And he toured the whole place and I let myself go at that time, right? It's been a while. So it's like, it's kind of run down now. You're like, I swear I had it all done.

8:24You just waited way too long before you came back. He comes up to me and he goes, man, it's very apparent that you don't bonus your people off of cleanliness. I'm like, oh man, round 2, stabbed in the heart. Oh wow. But because he came by and told me the truth again, dude, I renovated the whole place. Dude, it looks amazing. I saw those pictures you posted, your war room.

8:44Yeah. And the new layout, is it flowing a lot better? Oh dude, like, like if you're a shop owner listening to this, you need to have what's called a war room. Like there's 3 things that shop owners need to focus on on a daily basis. That's hiring, marketing, and implementing systems. And the system part is what we call having a board. And your shop just needs to flow because if you don't have one system in your shop, you have however many people running around, that's how many systems you have.

9:08And so a lot of times we teach what's called the board system and owners like, they can't implement it or they'll fail to implement it. And when that happens, there's one thing that is hard to see as a coach because we're not in the shop, and that's having a war room, a central location where everybody gathers together. It's like a mission control hub.

9:26Absolutely. And, and man, we— it just flows so much better now. Awesome. Dude, good job. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. And dude, I'm so excited about the Tribe Tours coming up. So at ShopFit Academy, we'll meet here once a quarter in Nashville, Tennessee, which is so awesome because you get to meet with other people that are like-minded. But man, we haven't been going to each other's stores, but now we implemented this actual thing and we're gonna go see Berg's store.

9:53I've seen it before, and you do like 1,000 cars a month and flows like butter. And yeah, you've been there. Oh yeah. And he didn't have his crap together either. Oh no, I did not. I did not. Yeah. And you're going to go there and find stuff in my own store. Just, you know, just write me a list. Write me a list.

10:11But that's how we get better. That's the community part. That's the community is the iron sharpens iron. And that's what I love about ShopFix. That's what I love about the people. And we're just— you have to be humble enough to be able to accept that advice. And not take it personal. And, and there's a lot of people in the automotive industry where our egos get in the way, mine included.

10:33Like, I used to have a huge ego, and the second you put that aside, you listen to wisdom, yep, and you humble yourself before, you know, before Aaron or for your coach, magic starts happening. Does your Aaron have those moments too? I know, 100% in our own shops. We didn't always have our crap together. Yeah. And there was moments when we were running— my brother and I, we were running his shops, and, and there was— he gave the space for the managers to run the, run the business.

11:02Sure. And trust them. And there's moments where we had to come in and we'd hear from the man too, you know. Yeah. Uh, hey, you remember we talked to doing this? We're not doing this. This is why. And you just had to humble yourself and— yeah, get it done. That's the hardest thing. And you mentioned ego, and I think there's a lot fragile ego out there.

11:21And if you think about the auto repair industry, we are all blue-collar workers, uneducated, uh, broke, broken home. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I grew up in a rough family environment. And thank God my dad was a Christian, but if he wasn't, I mean, I still got abused, but I can't imagine what would happen if he wasn't a Christian.

11:40Um, but I, I— everyone I talked to, a lot of the clients I have came from broken homes, broken marriages, you know, grew up broke. Like, nobody well off, you know, it's very rare if you were well off you ended up in this industry. I don't know what it is. And Aaron Stokes too, I mean, he's like the wealthiest guy I know, and, you know, he— 8th grade education.

11:59Yeah, multi, multi, multi-millionaire. Yeah. And so I look at that and like, man, are you able to humble yourself, or do you shut down as someone— like, as soon as your ego is attacked? And what I loved about what you spoke on this morning is not the revenue that you do. Like, the shop owners listening, I mean, you could be doing a lot of revenue Sure, I know shop owners that do a lot of revenue, but they are freaking broke.

12:21And not only broke, but their family life is suffering. Like, their marriages are falling apart. Yeah. And so, man, you hit on cash flow. You're speaking my language. All I care about, man, cash flow. Cash is king. So, but speaking of cash flow, like, you do the hard things and you do the hard conversations and you put in the systems and, and you build a war room and you go and you, like, you probably busted your butt for a week and got that thing going and, you know, probably 80 hours of work that week.

12:48But you do all those things to build the life that you love. Build a life that you love. Talk to us about the life that you built with your wife and your kids and like what it— because of all those hard things and because you put aside the ego and you put those systems in, talk about the life that you built because it inspires me.

13:09Aaron had a lot of these phrases, right? Yeah. But one of the phrases was The perfect life is built and success is built one decision at a time. Amen. And that made me think when I first heard that, I was like, well, okay, if Aaron was to buy my business and let's say it was back in 2018, 2019 when I was broke and when I wasn't cash flowing, if he bought my business, would he cash flow next month?

13:34Absolutely he would. And is it going to cash flow because Aaron's on the front counter? Is Aaron going to be diagnosing cars or working on cars? No. Is he even going to put 40 hours of work into my shop? Probably not. It's literally the decisions he would make that would make all the difference in my business. And that's exactly how I turned my business around.

13:52It wasn't me being on the front counter. It wasn't me working on cars. In fact, that kept me stuck is when I was working in my business. It's literally decisions change everything. It's as simple as that. It's a decision to put my people on flat rate, decision to put people on commission, decision to let all the low performers go, decision to You know, put marketing into place.

14:13It's all these decisions, but that's where people get stuck. Yes. It's not even the hard work. It's not about hard work. It's about the hard decisions. Or, or, or getting stuck in the perfect decision. Yeah. That they, oh, it has to be perfect. Oh, let me think about this. Well, that could be wrong and that could be wrong. I don't wanna do that cuz of this.

14:30I don't wanna do, no, just make a decision. Yeah. Make a decision. Have you made wrong decisions? Absolutely. In those 8 years? Absolutely. You just pivot. Yeah, pivot. Yeah. Talk about your, uh, so your employees. So how much turnover did you have as a result of some of these decisions? Oh, right now I have nobody that started with me in the, you know, in the beginning.

14:51And in fact, people are so afraid to make changes and these decisions, and the biggest fear I get is what if they quit? And my rebuttal is they probably will. What if they stay? Yeah, what if they stay? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a lot of shop owners, they struggle with that the most. And working with, uh, the training that we do with Sales Fix and Tech Fix with employees, when I talk to shop owners, there a lot of their fears are, um, if I hold these people accountable, they're going to leave.

15:24When you were making those decisions, um, talk about, was that a fear for you? Like, what if I lose these people? Oh dude, like, it's fairly recently. Last year was a rebuilding year for me because July of 2024, I caught my manager stealing from me. He wrote a check to his wife's quote unquote cleaning company where I was the only client. What?

15:44So I was doing this. And so like that, earlier that day he had written a check and then that later that day he had written another check for 3x sum of what we usually pay. And on the memo it said customer refund. I don't know why. I didn't know if that disappointed me or the fact that he tried to get away with it was something so stupid.

16:02Like, I was like, man, that was a manager. Like, he couldn't have thought of a better way to steal from me. Correct. I thought, or maybe even with that much effort, actually doing a good job as a manager. But the crazy thing is, like, I made a decision right then and there to let him go. And it was the easiest decision I've ever had to make because of what Aaron preached.

16:18I mean, it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Don't get me wrong, but the decision was easy. Sure. And I was out of my shop for like 2 years. I had complete freedom at that point. My GM did all the hiring. Everyone loved my GM because he would buy lunch and, you know, I would give him a card, but he would buy all the lunch.

16:34And that was by design. And so in the preceding 4 months, and this is while I was a coach, like, I lost every single person that was in that meeting room the day I fired my manager. I think, no, I still have like maybe 2 employees from that era. But yeah, I would lose all my techs, you know, lose all my advisors.

16:53And you would think that my family life suffered. I was in my shop. I was only in my shop for half a day. I still had 500 to 600 cars coming in a month and I was down to one advisor. And you would think I would step in doing the advisor role. Nope. Because I knew that if I started doing the advisor role, I would be stuck there for years.

17:11Yeah, but I didn't care. Like, my, my shop was burning. I didn't care. Let it burn. I'm going to just focus on hiring, dude. I was like a madman. I was locked in. I was high. As soon as I lost a technician, I would get one. Lose one, get one. Lose one, get one. And so yeah, that was July of 2024. And then July of 2025, for the first time, I netted over $100,000 in a month.

17:33Yeah. Good job. And like, I remember like out of one store, out of one store, one store in competition. It's in a strip mall with 5 other stores, 3, 4 other stores. We put one out of business, so one is sitting empty. So yeah. I love your heart, and you're an awesome coach. You're an amazing coach. So many people look up to you.

17:55Coaching is, is more of a, you know, ministry, if you will, or volunteer position than it is anything else. Because here you're netting $100K a month on a store, right? So you don't need to coach. You don't need to go help the other industry. What, what is your greatest joy? What is— what do you take greatest satisfaction in, in coaching? We all need that significance in our lives.

18:17And you say, I don't need coaching, but I need it more than what people think because I need that significance. Because when you have the money, when you have the time, you really want to make impact. But not only that, what Aaron said is like, never trust a leader without a limp. Yeah. And man, like when I see all the coaches in ShopFix, we all have a limp.

18:35Like some of us more than most. Yes. But we're all sometimes crawling around, right? Yeah. And like we know that pain. Like, we know what it felt like to be broke. We knew what it felt like when we were about to lose our family. Like, I lost like the first 3, 4 years with my kids because I was working in my shop.

18:53I was drowning in debt, you know. I, I would probably be divorced right now. And so I got this limp, and then I see all these shop owners out there in the same exact position. Sure. And you know what the crazy thing is? I have this 20,000-foot view and I'm like, dude, you just got to do this, this, this, and this. And if you do these things, then your life will look like this.

19:14And it's so hard to ignore knowing that and seeing that and being in that position. I can't ignore it any longer. And that's why I'm on Facebook all the time, like just trying to get people to join ShopFix. I don't get paid extra to, you know, make people join. Like I had no, like, monetary gain from it. I literally want to see people's lives changed.

19:31And that's, that's it. And that's ShopFix. That is. That was what Aaron did. Yeah, the same exact view. Yeah, of— he saw shop owners in the same way that you're saying, and he just had this heart to help them. Yeah, I think it makes the best coaches are the people actually— their heart is like in it, you know. They, they feel like, you know, it's my responsibility.

19:56There's somebody drowning. Yes, my responsibility. Throw them a life preserver and let them know that there's hope, right? Literally owners helping owners. Yeah, so powerful, so powerful. Jay, thanks so much for being on the first podcast with us for ShopFix Academy Podcast. Um, guy, you're funny. Bird, you're smart. He's the smart one. I'm the looks. I You can't sit— here's the deal.

20:28He taught me more in that first year. He was my coach. We went back and forth and I challenged you a little bit and you challenged me right back. But man, if you hadn't been there that first year, like I would have been out of business. And glad you're here. Yeah, I wouldn't be sitting here. So I mean, if Berg didn't push himself into our organization and start working for free.

20:53Yeah. Gosh, I don't know if I'd still be here. Honestly, it's a pleasure. To work with you and Jay and, and all our other coaches. They're just— everyone who's here for the right reasons, they're here because they want to be here. It just makes this a joy. Such a great work, such a great community. Absolutely. Hey guys, everything that Jay has been talking about, like, all of us have the same heart and the same vision, and ShopFix is, is catching on.

21:19Like, it is gaining momentum right now. There is fire in people's bellies. There is momentum. There's lives being changed every day, faster than I've ever seen it before. I mean, people are just— they are hungry. It's, it's like, um, somebody told me once, it's like ShopFix is like that water, that fresh oasis in the middle of a desert. And people are attracted to that and are attracted to that water.

21:46And we're going places, guys. Yeah, ShopFix is going places. We, within a few years, we will have $10 billion of industry revenue that we will be coaching. Yeah. And that's powerful. That is so powerful. But we're already coaching over $2 billion in revenue. But I think we're going to get to $10 billion super fast. And we're just going to keep accelerating. We'll have over 3,000 people in our, in our pro program alone.

22:18Plus our Light program. Yep. Have thousands. How many coaches will we have with that? We'll have over 200 world-class coaches. And, and that's the beautiful part, is like guys like Jay, like Berg coaching. I mean, these shop owners who are coaching other shop owners, the amount of information that's coming out. And Aaron is the first ones to say that, you know, uh, there's all kinds of ideas coming out of, of this organic thing that's happening, and there's so much information coming out.

22:47When you come to an event, it's a— it's like drinking from a fire hose, right? Yeah. And, uh, the beauty part of it is you're not going to get all the water that's coming at you, but you get what you need. Absolutely. You know, and that's why you keep coming back, coming back to these events and, and getting what you need to take that one thing back, that one nugget that Aaron would always talk about.

23:06Take that one nugget back and take another step. Make one decision You know, Jay is talking about making— I made this decision, then I made this decision, and I made this decision, and boop, boop, boop, boop, all these things happen. And the confidence to make those decisions. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we are a community of shock owners. Yeah. And we are here— fix the owner, fix the shock.

23:28You save the hero to save the world. For sure. And we are going to build up superheroes all over this world. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because our world needs to change. Yep, it does. Appreciate you, Jay. Appreciate you guys. Thanks, man. Thank you. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.