195 - Ask Me Anything: The Questions Every Auto Repair Shop Owner Should Be Asking
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195 - The Questions Every Auto Repair Shop Owner Should Be Asking March 13, 2026 - 00:53:14 Show Summary: Entrepreneurial drive can turn destructive when…
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Content Starts Inside Your Shop: What's Worth Sharing?
224 - Content Starts Inside Your Shop: What's Worth Sharing? October 20th, 2026 - 00:58:03 Show Summary: Great marketing starts with the everyday moments happening inside your auto repair shop. Melissa “Birdie” Patterson shares how authentic photos and videos can build customer trust and strengthen your shop's reputation. Discover how customer interactions and technician accomplishments can become engaging social media content. Learn how to involve your entire team in capturing meaningful stories that attract customers and showcase what makes your business unique. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): Melissa Patterson, Automotive Trainer & Shop Growth Strategist Show Highlights: [00:04:00] – Discover why effective marketing starts inside your own shop. [00:09:40] – Everyday repairs and customer interactions create valuable marketing opportunities. [00:12:30] – Turn digital vehicle inspections into months of social media content. [00:14:30] – Learn why videos create stronger engagement than photos alone. [00:18:45] – Focus your marketing on your most profitable automotive services. [00:22:00] – Authentic team photos help customers feel comfortable before visiting. [00:28:00] – Community involvement builds recognition and strengthens local customer relationships. [00:33:00] – Customer experiences and team accomplishments create compelling marketing stories. [00:42:30] – Adding context transforms ordinary shop photos into meaningful content. [00:49:00] – Empower your entire team to capture stories worth sharing. 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/CpK22rm1TQc 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: Jimmy Lea: Hello, friends. Good to be here with you. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from today. No matter where you're joining us from today, my name is Jimmie Lee, and I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Here with the Leading Edge podcast, as we're going to discuss some of those things that help you as a shop owner to make your business bigger and better and more awesome. Jimmy Lea: We're gonna lock arms together, and in this presentation, we're gonna talk about things that are gonna help you as a shop owner. It may be things that you need to hire out, it may be things that you can do yourself. Either way, it's really important that we pay attention to where our clients are, where our customers are. Jimmy Lea: So be part of that. If you're joining us live, we are live streaming on StreamYard, as well as Facebook and YouTube. Thank you for being here with us today, and my guest today is Bertie. Melissa Bertie Patterson. Peterson or Patterson? Melissa Patterson: It's Patterson. Jimmy Lea: Bertie Patterson. She is flying high. She's getting her pilot's license. Jimmy Lea: Congratulations on that. How's that going? Melissa Patterson: Oh, it's coming along, slow but surely, step by step. Next month I'm working on it real hard. Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Congratulations. How many hours have you clocked so far? Melissa Patterson: I currently have 17 hours, and hopefully I'll be in my mid-20s to 30s, and I'm starting ground school in October. Jimmy Lea: Ni- we in, are in October. Melissa Patterson: Oh, November. Jimmy Lea: So that'll probably be after Apex SEMA. Are you headed out for Apex SEMA in Las Vegas? Melissa Patterson: I totally missed that with my calendar. I don't get to attend this year. But I'm gonna spend a lot of quality time with my family, and I need to do that, so- There you go Melissa Patterson: that's my priority in November. Jimmy Lea: There you go. That's important. That's important. Melissa Patterson: FOMO. Jimmy Lea: Yep, yep. We will... You will be experiencing high levels of AKIMO. Forget about the FOMO. This is AKIMO. AKIMO is actually knowing you are missing out. Melissa Patterson: Ah, I like that. Yes, this is an intentional choice. Jimmy Lea: Yes. And- and good for you. Jimmy Lea: That's awesome. Congratulations. Spend time with the family. Be there with them. Have a really good time, because that's absolutely important. And to our presentation today, to our information today, as we lock arms as shop owners in this industry that we love, the automotive aftermarket, social media is where your clients are spending a tremendous amount of their time. Jimmy Lea: If you've ever wondered, check out your children, check out your spouse, check out your neighbors, your friends, and ask them to pull up in their cellphone and show how much time they spend screen time on their cellphone. Many times it's six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 hours screen time on their smartphones. Jimmy Lea: So where are they spending that time? Chances are it has to do with social media. And Birdie, that's why you're here, sister. Thank you very much. I'm excited for this information. And for our audience, Melissa is going to share a lot of information, so if you've got questions, type them into the questions box. Jimmy Lea: I'll be the voice for you. I'll ask those questions as, as we're going through. So if you have a question, let's ask it immediately. Don't wait till the very end- ... 'cause you'll forget. Ask it as it's happening, and I'll be the voice for you so we can ask these questions of Birdie. So with that, Birdie, let's go to your presentation, and let's hear this information you've got to share with us in anticipation of the Mars X- m- the Mars intensive that we're doing at, in Ogden. Melissa Patterson: I'm very excited about upcoming Mars class, and so I created a spinoff presentation about content that starts inside your shop. So yes, I'm Melissa. Most people call me Birdie, and of course there's a story behind that. But let's just go with that I've had this nickname since the day that I was born. I have spent the last 30 years inside the automotive industry working alongside shop owners, and I specialize in organic marketing. Melissa Patterson: I help shops get found, build trust, and become the shop that customers choose and recommend without relying heavily on Paid advertising. There's a time and a place for it, and I think it's important to use it, but I really do believe that this organic marketing and showing who you are as a shop matters. Melissa Patterson: So one of the things that I learned over the years is that marketing never s- stands alone. Everything inside your shop is connected. It's interactive. And the experience that your customers have, the way that your team is working together, the systems that are supporting your business, and really that's the culture that you're creating. Melissa Patterson: Ultimately, it's the kind of shop you're building for the future, which is a big part of my goal of growing shops. I want independent shop owners to have these practical resources. You don't have to feel like you have to figure it out alone. You have this huge supportive team, the Institute, thank you. We're all here for you. Melissa Patterson: So that is really the lens that I'm bringing into every class that I teach. It's practical, real world, and built for what is happening inside your busy shop. Which brings us to this class, because when we're talking about marketing, one of the very first places that I think we need to look is not somewhere outside of the shop, it is right here inside your base, at the front counter, at the conversations, these interesting repairs, the people, the team, and those are completely ordinary moments to you that are happening every single day. Melissa Patterson: So that's where I wanna start because the content does, it starts inside your shop Hey, Jimmy, before we get into it, w- I'd like to know who's with us. Jimmy Lea: I can tell you from the quick comments that are coming through, John Firm, Buckin Buckaroo Bob out of Fort Worth, Texas. He is here with us. Owner, Melissa Patterson: right? Jimmy Lea: Yep. Melissa Patterson: Shop owner. Jimmy Lea: Great. He is a shop owner. He does a lot of fleet business. Now, he does have a question, so we'll come to his question here in a second. We also have... Yeah, you can't put that up yet. Yeah. We also have AutoFlow. AutoFlow is here with us, and that is Craig O'Neill- Yay, Craig ... with AutoFlow joining us from from back east. Jimmy Lea: I- Wonderful ... believe Craig is in Michigan, if I'm- Yeah ... remembering Melissa Patterson: oh, Tanika. Hey, Jimmy Lea: girl. Tanika is here. Hey. Hey, girl. Auntie Tanika is in the house. Thank you for joining us, Tanika, and as we support Birdie here in, in this presentation, talking about social media, and the new queen for social media is definitely Tanika, talking about her 3:00 AM how do I turn my brain off at 3:00 AM post. Jimmy Lea: Did you see that this morning? I'm Melissa Patterson: so stinking proud of you, Tanika. Jimmy Lea: Oh, that was awesome. So g- let's go to Bu- Buckin Buckaroo's question. As a fleet mostly fleet shop, do you have any programs to help a shop be seen more by fleet owners and fleet managers? Melissa Patterson: Oh, that's a great question. Business to business. Melissa Patterson: This is... For me, a lot of that has to do with those personal connections, and bringing donuts, and having those in-person conversations. I love the organic marketing and guerrilla marketing. That's where I would go, absolutely. So staying connected with your local chamber, and out meeting people, truly. Melissa Patterson: It's all about that person-to-person contact. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. There, there was once upon a time I was in sales, in packaging sales, and I would take pastries and donuts and pretzels and donut holes and all sorts of things, and I would put a message on the inside of the box so that as they opened for their special treat, there was a message or a note from me, so everybody there in the office knew that Jimmy Lea was calling on 'em. Melissa Patterson: That's clever. That is guerrilla marketing. That is the organic... and LinkedIn is really important, I think, for business to business. That's quite a bit different than B2C. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: Absolutely. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, for sure Melissa Patterson: So just staying out there Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We've gotta stay in front of our customers, stay in front of our clients. Jimmy Lea: And if there's a program out there that works m- with fleets and works very well with fleets, then we definitely wanna get that over to Buck and Buckaroo Bob. I know that NAPA and the NAPA Auto Care program has a fleet service program I'll bet John is already on that program- ... Jimmy Lea: That does find all of the fleets in his area. Jimmy Lea: And if we were to talk to John S- Sitzer, I know he creates his AI, his Claude every night it goes out and finds those businesses in his area, landscaping, HVAC, plumbers, electricians. He goes out to find those different businesses in his area to create a list for him. Oh. So that's another way that he's finding those people. Jimmy Lea: But yeah. Correct. And being here on social media It's where we get a lot of attention. Melissa Patterson: Absolutely, we do. Yep. You nailed it. I'd like to just talk more about content and where you find it, and it's not creating this list of 50 things to post. ChatGPT is great for that, and yes, a marketing calendar is fantastic too, but I'm not suggesting that you become a full-time content creator. Melissa Patterson: I want us to take a look at what's already happening inside your shop every day, and that is customer conversations, the repairs that are happening inside the shop, the wins that are small and sometimes big that no one outside your building ever hears about. And then of course, those weird, funny, completely ordinary moments that you probably are walking right past, but we wanna know. Melissa Patterson: We wanna see those things. So my goal is, by the end of this class, is that you would look around your shop and catch yourself thinking, "Wait, that's content?" Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh it's the moot. It's the mundane. It's mundane to us, but to everybody else it's something new. It's something they've never seen before. Jimmy Lea: Even showing the bottom of a car, the underside of a vehicle there's value in that. People don't get to see the underneath their cars. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: They never get to see that, so if you're able to show that as the mundane, but for the rest of us, oh my gosh, I've never seen my car, the underside of my car. Jimmy Lea: Wait a second. Why is it so wet? That's the oil seal. That's the gasket that's now leaking everywhere. Jimmy Lea: That's oil. That's not water. It's oil all underneath your car. So i- it's such an eye-opening experience and that moot and the mundane for us is inquiry for everybody else. Jimmy Lea: They've never seen it before. Melissa Patterson: Big Jimmy Lea: time. So yeah, post it up. Yeah. If you only post the- Melissa Patterson: Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: unusual, the odd, you're gonna attract that unusual and odd to your shop. So if you are a shop that does wanna work on the- classics, then post up the classics. If you're a shop that doesn't wanna work in, on anything older than 2010 or 2005 or 20- 2000, don't post old vehicles on your socials because you will be put in that algorithm, and now you're showing up for everybody, and they're odd vehicles. Melissa Patterson: You nailed it. You nailed that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: Thank you. Yeah. And I hear this all the time from shops. If you've ever said it, you're for sure not alone, right? I don't know what to post. Jimmy Lea: Oh, all the time. What do I post? I've heard it yeah. I don't know what to post. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. And you sit down to do it, you open Facebook, you get that blank little column there, and the cursor's blinking, and all of a sudden you're drawing a blank. Melissa Patterson: You can't think- Yeah ... one interesting thing that happened in your shop. Does that ever happen to you? How often do you get stuck trying to figure out what to post? Jimmy Lea: I love working with shops and I hear this question all the time. What do I post? Where should I go? Where do I find information or content? Jimmy Lea: And I think Craig O'Neill will love this comment- ... talking about going to your DVI. Go to your DVI. What is a post that you can make about a front left tire? What's a post you can make about a front right tire? Melissa Patterson: There's Jimmy Lea: a- What's a post you can make about headlights, and a horn, and shocks, and struts, and a timing belt? Melissa Patterson: And Jimmy, we wa- don't wanna forget, people wanna see your face. So you gotta get- Yes ... you in there. Gotta get somebody in there. Jimmy Lea: You've gotta have people in there, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Relationships. We're all about the relationships, so the more we have people in the post, the better it's gonna be. Melissa Patterson: That's Jimmy Lea: right. Jimmy Lea: For sure. Melissa Patterson: Big time. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: So go to your DVI, start at the top, work your way down. If you've got a 75-point inspection sheet, there's 75 days. Sh- that's a few months. That's what? Three months? Three and a half months of content. Oh, my DVI is only 35. All right that's a month and a half worth of content. Melissa Patterson: It's a whole lot of content, that's right. And some days it feels obvious, but other days, people are, we're just drawing blanks. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. No, i- it's right. Shoot, I think about my, my sister and in-laws and people that really don't understand cars. They know I put gas in the gas tank. Jimmy Lea: I turn the key, the engine runs, and I push down the gas pedal, and I can drive. They really don't understand more of the vehicle than that. It just works or it doesn't, and they have no, no idea how the rest of it works. Melissa Patterson: And then a lot of shop owners are thinking, "Oh, I have to come up with something clever," right? Melissa Patterson: Oh, let's do the holiday of the day or create some graphic. And if you're sitting there trying to invent content- Melissa Patterson: Really, ultimately- Just take- ... you have an entire shop happening just right around you. Jimmy Lea: Exactly. Just go out there and take a picture. Now here's a, here's an interesting question from Tanika with Brown's Automotive. She's also a podcaster with Downshift with Tanika. Her question is what's more valuable, pictures or video? Melissa Patterson: Boy, they are both valuable, but the videos, I think they're even better. If you can convince someone, Tanika, you're an incredible poster child for this, getting in front of the video, making that happen. Many shops, shop owners, they're possibly too busy to work to work on video content But really, that's where it's at. Melissa Patterson: Ultimately, I think video is for sure better, but photo content is incredible because you can use it even in the holiday posts, even if you're s- supporting something in the community. There's a lot of value in these still shots for your staple marketing. But boy, for interest, video all day long. Jimmy Lea: Yep. And I love that you have a shop dog in these photographs. Jimmy Lea: The shop dog gets so much attention. Dogs get a ton of attention. P- post pictures of your people, absolutely, and that shop dog gets a lot of attention. And what's funny in the marketing world that the dogs get more attention than the cats. It's just the way it is. Melissa Patterson: It is the way it is. This is one of the things that I'd like to talk about is content is already happening in your shop, and it's not these exciting days. Melissa Patterson: We'll take a picture of that day that the Lamborghini came into our parking lot and think that's content. But Jimmy, you called that earlier. If you don't wanna get these exotics or these classic cars, don't post about them. Post about something simple that happened yesterday, things that are happening every day. Melissa Patterson: Customers, they ask a good question, or a technician found something unexpected. People are solving your prob- these problems with their car, or maybe a service advisor simply just explained something very well. Or an, a mentor. Do you have a mentor in your shop that's helping out an apprentice or maybe it's you? Melissa Patterson: These are valuable content moments. Your team can be laughing about something ridiculous, getting photos of this, or maybe there was a win that no one will ever know happened. All of this is content. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Melissa Patterson: We just might not be naming it as content. Oh, it's... Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's true. And Brett Failey's got a great comment here talking about pictures of his staff, of his people. Jimmy Lea: It gets so much more traction than any other post that he's doing. And it's so true. It's because you're posting up people. That's right. You're posting up pictures of people, and we're all relationship human beings. That's what gets the attention. Melissa Patterson: You nailed it. Thank you. Yeah. Not everything you capture needs to become a post. Melissa Patterson: That's okay. But paying attention and taking the time to notice the moment, that's a muscle that we really- Yeah ... want to develop. That's what I wanna talk about today. So just simply noticing that moment. And not every single one is for public consumption, right? You can decide what is worth sharing- 'Cause we don't- yeah Melissa Patterson: ne- necessarily think about being a marketer, or maybe things are inappr- inappropriate for public consumption that are happening in the shop, these internal jokes. Yeah. We wanna be mindful of what stays on the internet, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Tanika's got a great comment here about bumper stickers. Jimmy Lea: Some bumper stickers are appropriate to post, and it becomes a, a, a great post, but there are gonna be some bumper stickers that- ... aren't for human consumption. That's- Definitely ... not for delicate eyes. Love it. Melissa Patterson: Yep. So- So I just wanna... Yeah, my goal is to really bring this up. That inside your shop, these moments are happening all day long, but often we're so busy working that we're not even registering those. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. We're just so close, yeah. Sometimes you're blind to what's right in front of you. Jimmy Lea: So true. Buddy, I've got a question for you. How often do you suggest to your clients, "Let's look up and see the vehicles you work on the most. Let's work a, let's look up in your point of sale and find the vehicles that are the most profitable for your shop. Jimmy Lea: Let's focus on attracting those types of cars to your business"? Melissa Patterson: I Jimmy Lea: really- What do you do in those situations? Melissa Patterson: Yes, very much, and those are easy reports. One of the difficult questions that I'm finding is difficult for my clients that I ask the most is, "What are your most profitable services?" Melissa Patterson: And I, that gets confused easily. Melissa Patterson: It's I know what my most common service is, and I know what I want," but what is your most profitable service? Oh. This is a really important one to break down. Jimmy Lea: Oh, for sure. For sure. And to, to Bo- Buckaroo Bob, to John Firm and his fleet business- Melissa Patterson: Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: you know when a great picture to post up is today is box truck day, or today is the f- Ford fleet vehicle day, today's the, the Dodge truck day or the Chevy truck day, and you have a, a parking lot full of Dodge trucks or Chevy pickups or whatever the fleet vehicle of the flavor of the day is and you're posting up those type of pictures, it gives great content for your shop, but also you're posting up somebody's logo out there as well. Jimmy Lea: So you're giving dual content- Melissa Patterson: Cross. Jimmy Lea: ... Cross br- cross-pollinating in multiple different ways. Melissa Patterson: Big time. I love it. I'm just- Yeah ... seeing this comment here. Is there a better platform for different age groups? Boy, th- that's a great question. And throughout the generations, I think having exactly what you listed, TikTok, yes If somebody's gonna do videos, which is one of the challenges with a lot of shop owners. Melissa Patterson: Instagram, absolutely, yes. Twitter, that's important, and Facebook, for sure. That's kind of the fallback resource that we all come back to. So yes, absolutely. Yeah. And- Jimmy Lea: I tell you what I've di- discovered on this, Birdie. Yeah. And s- y- feel free to correct me on this. I find a much younger crowd in the Instagram crowd. Jimmy Lea: And mostly technicians, so I find a lot of technicians in the Instagram crowd. In the Facebook crowd is where I find the majority of shop owners. And why are they there? Because that's where their clients are. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: That's where I engage shop owners is on Facebook. Yeah ... Twitter and Tiknoc, T- Tiknoc Melissa Patterson: TikTok? Jimmy Lea: TikTok and Twitter just really haven't been much on my radar yet. I know that it's a very addictive platform, specifically with TikTok and those seven-second, 15-second quick video clips. Melissa Patterson: So fun. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's a lot of fun, but it definitely attracts a certain, Melissa Patterson: Viewers ... Jimmy Lea: demographic. Melissa Patterson: Big time. Absolutely, yes. And- Yeah ... Tanika brought up a very valuable point, is posting on your Google business page, regular updates, super important. I encourage people my clients to do it three days a week. Jimmy Lea: Oh, really? A Monday, Wednesday, Friday type of deal? Yeah. Or what? Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Melissa Patterson: And Jimmy Lea: what types of posts do you suggest that they put on their Google business profile? Melissa Patterson: I want updates. I wanna, those most profitable services, I wanna know what those five are. I wanna talk about that. I wanna know what vehicles that you wanna see more of, wanna bring those up and create these posts. Melissa Patterson: Showing faces, that's what's most important, is I don't even start marketing until I have actual photo album of really it's- Oh wow, I just drew a blank. Lifestyle photos, that's what I have. I get lifestyle photo shoots into shops, and that's how I get this album. It's really important. Oh, hi there, Austin. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, Austin Redding says hello- Austin, how are you today? ... to his favorite birdie. I know. So when you talk about a, a lifestyle shoot, are you bringing in professional photographers, or are you just using your iPhone? Melissa Patterson: I bring in professional photographers if I can't wrestle my client to say yes to that, then, we find their, church friend, their f- family with a fantastic camera. Melissa Patterson: But generally, eventually, we get professional photos taken, absolutely, and I give them a photography shot list and explain, "We want this expressive. We wanna feel what it's like to do business with you. We want these photos to give a peek and a glimpse on the inside, but truly, we really wanna know what it feels like to pull into your parking lot, what your entry looks like, who is inside, and what that front counter looks like, what it's gonna feel like." Melissa Patterson: So there's already this familiarity. We're always, as humans, we're always looking for this what is the threat? We're not conscious of it, but if we feel comfortable and we're seeing this congruency, we feel, phew, our guard drops. We're more open and engaging and open to receiving that information and learning and taking the recommendations. Jimmy Lea: Oh, for sure. I love that. I love that we're taking pictures and getting professional content for these, these posts. And I'll be... Speaking of the Mars Conference, let's pull up a QR code here for the Mars Conference coming next week, Monday, Tuesday- ... Wednesday. There is still an opportunity. Jimmy Lea: We have, I think, nine seats left. There's only nine seats available. If you are in the area, even if you're not in the area, travel in. It's gonna be worth it. Be there for the conference. Be there for the Mars Intensive, because we're gonna talk about all these different marketing ideas. You're gonna come away with so much information, so much great content to help you in your social media posting a- and just in your marketing in general. Jimmy Lea: And Brett, you and I, we're gonna post a lot from the red hills of southern Utah, where it looks like we are on the planet Mars. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. All right, in those fancy jackets, I hope. Jimmy Lea: Oh, do they have fancy jackets on Mars? Melissa Patterson: The Martians maybe. Maybe. Jimmy Lea: They do if Jimmy Lea's gonna be there. Melissa Patterson: That's it. Jimmy Lea: All right, so what other content are we posting up here about the shop? Jimmy Lea: Things from the shop Melissa Patterson: W- this is where we talk about not noticing, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: We're working inside our shops, and we stop seeing half of what's going on. L- and you touched on this earlier, right? Seeing a vehicle on a lift. That is, eh, it's just another Tuesday, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: That wiring diagram that looks like a noodle mess, holy cow. Melissa Patterson: But how interesting is that to someone who doesn't know anything about a car? Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Jimmy Lea: Here's the p- here's the picture of the wiring diagram. Oh, doesn't it look nice and neat and pretty? Organized. And it's all in order. And then here's an actual picture of the wiring harness. Doesn't that look like your spaghetti dinner? Melissa Patterson: Absolutely it does. And what about having an apprentice? Yeah. Teaching, teaching people. Having the leadership and the mentor and a mentee. Showing that i- within your team, that's special. Jimmy Lea: Oh, that is. And- That's your Batman and Robin. Here's your m- instructor, and here's Robin learning along the way. Jimmy Lea: Have Robin explain it so it connects with the public. Melissa Patterson: And Jimmy, you were talking about pets and how much traction dogs get, absolutely. Yes. So many of us are like, people, we have maybe even dog biscuits at the front counter. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. But Melissa Patterson: w- we're not capturing those moments. That just is a regular Tuesday. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. It doesn't feel like content, but it is. It is. Ordinary is not useless. Things that are worth catching, that could be funny or helpful or a little bit weird. Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. I've got a story about this. I have to share it with you, Birdie. Melissa Patterson: Please do. Jimmy Lea: Gary Sapp Automotive in Pensacola, Florida. There is a beautiful black cat that has adopted the shop. Jimmy Lea: This is the kind of black cat that you don't get to adopt, it adopts you. And this black cat, named Diesel brings offerings all the time. Birds, lizards- Oh ... small alligators. Melissa Patterson: Small alligators. What a generous guy. He's taking care of his family, his chosen Jimmy Lea: family. Melissa Patterson: True story. Jimmy Lea: Brings them and leaves them at the front door or the shop door. Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much. Thank you for letting me you being here. I permit you to continue your operations in my kingdom. ' Melissa Patterson: Cause we're such poor hunters. C- Jimmy Lea: clearly. Melissa Patterson: They're taking Jimmy Lea: pity on us. Clearly. My favorite picture is Diesel the cat eating from his cat bowl and across the top of the cat bowl it the, the cat food dispenser, it says, "Diesel fuel." Melissa Patterson: Oh. That's cute. Jimmy Lea: I love it. And any time Gary posts that up that's one of my favorites. Melissa Patterson: That's a great story. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: And I'm so glad that he's noticing and capturing that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, absolutely. And to, to that point, Tanika points up a, a great point here about the community, and I've seen Jared Fuller do this extremely well with his chamber. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Post up community events. Post up things that's happening in your immediate surroundings. You now become the source of truth. People recognize you, and they see you in public, and you become that demigod, if you will, that, that small recognized person, rockstar in the industry, and they come to you to know, "Hey, what's happening this weekend?" Jimmy Lea: "Oh it's the big pumpkin patch." Jimmy Lea: Or, "This weekend is the parade," and, "This weekend is Veterans Day," and, "This weekend is- Melissa Patterson: Music in the park. Absolutely. Yeah. Farmers markets, all of these things. Yep. You nailed it, Jimmy. That is so valuable, to be that source of truth, that, that resource. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, because it's more than just a Tuesday. Jimmy Lea: For everybody else, it's new news. Melissa Patterson: That's right. That's right. Yeah, and we all like, we get busy, and we stop noticing or remembering these m- moments that a new customer would really wanna know about, where w- our goal is to build this trust, build that personality. We want people to know and trust us, and they have to get to know us first. Melissa Patterson: We gotta show them, and that happens online these days. So we don't have- Okay ... to manufacture our marketing, just capturing those real moments. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Melissa Patterson: So this is a bit of the recipe- When we think, what happened? We wanna know what happened. So you, that's where you're interested. Take- taking a picture and documenting it. Melissa Patterson: And hopefully, like I said, getting a face in there. We all wanna see. We all wanna see you. And then what made it worth remembering? So documenting that, because not every time you don't post it live immediately. So if it's a team effort, bringing that through, what we'll wanna do is ... Maybe it's a, I don't know, a, a group Slack message. Melissa Patterson: How do you ever communicate within your team? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: Could be Jimmy Lea: a chat. It could be a Google Chat message. It could be the Slack message. I've seen so many shops using so many different things. There's even some CRMs that have internal communication where you can communicate with the team. Melissa Patterson: And if you just upload, if you have one house for that, upload the photo, a little bit of context. Melissa Patterson: And that's content right there. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I love this content that you're showing. Here's a, a technician with a scan tool doing some diagnostic work on a vehicle. That's great information. Here, for us to be able to fix your car, we've gotta diagnose what's wrong with it first. Melissa Patterson: That's Jimmy Lea: right. Jimmy Lea: And this Melissa Patterson: is the process- That weird electrical issue you Jimmy Lea: know of. Yeah. This is the process we go through to, to find out what it is that ails your vehicle. Ah. Once we know what ails your vehicle, now we can make a proper recommendation for repair in the future. Melissa Patterson: Chasing down these intermittent electrical issues. Melissa Patterson: Ah. Jimmy Lea: Oh. Melissa Patterson: And what made it worth m- remembering wasn't the frustration, right? It's that the ve- it only happened when the vehicle was hot, or it already been to another shop. Something like that. Yeah. And the answer became this measly little damaged wire. Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Melissa Patterson: But you found it, right? Now there's a story, and that's not because you turned it into marketing language. Melissa Patterson: It's because we caught and captured the details that made the moment interesting. Don't forget that face. We gotta have faces in here. Jimmy Lea: Yes. And hopefully we can get our technician to look at the camera and smile. Melissa Patterson: You're asking. That's a tall order. Jimmy Lea: It is sometimes. Sometimes, but just don't that concentration face is good. Let's make sure it's not an RBF, and make sure- Yeah ... everybody is pleasant as we're working on our vehicles. Get ... The public wants to know that you love working on cars, that you love troubleshooting, you love put- putting together those puzzles and those pieces to make it work. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: They wanna know that you enjoy your job, because they're gonna entrust you with their second most valuable asset. Melissa Patterson: Investment, absolutely. Melissa Patterson: They may Jimmy Lea: have- And for some people it is their most valuable asset You gotta make sure that y- they have the confidence and trust in you that you're gonna fix it right the first time. Melissa Patterson: Perfect, yes. So here's the lens right there, the moment, the story, and the content. And if we mix it up, it's like a random picture, and throw it out there and hope somebody figures it out, that probably won't translate into quality online, a, a great post. We have to have the moment and the detail behind it in order to have something you can really use. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: So again, where should we be looking for these moments? We've been touching that. We don't have to capture every single oil change or half-eaten box of donuts. We... That's not what we're looking for. Jimmy Lea: No. Melissa Patterson: And we don't need fo- 14 posts about your coffee maker either. That, the coffee maker, that is a great feature, don't get me wrong, but if we take a look at this in categories It's the questions that your customers keep asking, something that you keep answering every day, or a conversation where something clicks Maybe your customer tells you why they have been loyal to you for the last 12 years, or you received a thank you note. Melissa Patterson: These are great moments, right? Or an a- advisor spending that little extra time helping a customer understand what's going on with their car so they can feel comfortable and safe. Those are the moments that give people a glimpse of what it feels like to be your customer And then there's team wins. Melissa Patterson: Going to ongoing, going training, getting s- a certification, celebrating birthdays, celebrating anniversaries. We talked about this earlier, technicians helping each other, or an apprentice and a mentor. Sticking through tough issues, all of this. Or what about a win, a new, an apprentice just nailed something for the first time? Melissa Patterson: Yeah. That's worth celebrating, right? We're bringing them up. It's not just for the customer. It can be for the team and the team morale, teaching them the, what you value. There's so many good people behind that RO, and these moments are worth catching. And then of course, there's all the repairs. Imagine you could talk about these, the problem-solving that goes into it. Melissa Patterson: And there's those weird failures or interesting diagnosis, diagnostics, or what about a deformed part, right? It absolutely should not look like that, and it was caught before it became into a bigger problem. The broken part- Oh, Jimmy Lea: yeah ... Melissa Patterson: right? The broken part's not the story, and for sure I'm gonna keep saying get faces in here. Melissa Patterson: You can see fa- faces in each one of these. But it's, the better story is what your team did about it. Jimmy Lea: That's what I think. Oh, I love it. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Craig Zale of Craig's Car Care in Allen, Texas, he has a hall of fame parts. All these parts that failed and broke and shattered and exploded and melted. Jimmy Lea: Oh. Whatever the scenario was, he has cabinets full of these failed parts. Melissa Patterson: Epic. Jimmy Lea: And it really helps in being able to explain it to a customer or client. You can come over and say, "Hey, thi- this control module right here, this is what broke on your vehicle. See how this one melted? Yeah, yours melted too." Jimmy Lea: "Just like that." Melissa Patterson: Wow. Wow, what a great idea. I've never thought of that, a hall of fame of broken parts. Jimmy Lea: Yep, and it usually ends up being a lot of the parts that he's replaced. There was one part that cost quite a bit, a few thousand dollars. It was not returnable, so it's now part of the hall of fame. Jimmy Lea: Because that wasn't the part that made the repair or fixed it. It was a, like you said, a small wire. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: So they were able to keep their whole control module because they replaced the wire, but unfortunately this part now became unreturnable, and so it's now part of the hall of fame. Melissa Patterson: The hall of fame, an expensive lesson learned. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep, yep. Melissa Patterson: And then there's the things happening every single day, right? Everyday shop life, and we- Tend to overlook this, and it's often under- underestimated. If there is a regular, a, a puppy, like we talked about earlier, document it, take a picture, say they said hi. These ridiculous things that people are finding, and of course, it has to be appropriate, so there is a level of editing or choosing what belongs. Melissa Patterson: But things that are found underneath a seat, or a lunch that a customer brought in for the team, or maybe your team has a running joke. The little traditions that make your shop feel like your shop. And it can feel too ordinary for us to be sharing this. But that is what makes your shop feel real. We... Melissa Patterson: There's AI. We want real. We don't want perfect and polished. We want it a little bit messy. We want it a little bit awkward. This is what we're looking for. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. The- ... the buzzword is authentic. Melissa Patterson: Authentic, that's exactly right. We want that authenticity with our customers, our team, the repairs, and things happening every day- Yeah Melissa Patterson: in our shop life. Jimmy Lea: That's right. Melissa Patterson: So if you had to choose one that would be easiest out of these four, what do you think would be easiest in your shop? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I think doing the pictures of repairs would be easy. Melissa Patterson: Okay. Jimmy Lea: And I think second to that is the team or teamwork and getting people to do high fives in the shop. Melissa Patterson: Yep. Jimmy Lea: Hopefully you've got a Golden Lab that is as docile as it appears here. Yeah. But usually my experience with Golden Labs is that they are full of... They- they have more energy than the day is long. They Melissa Patterson: can fit three, maybe four tennis balls in their mouth. Jimmy Lea: Oh, they do. Melissa Patterson: Drooling, and they're sweet and lovable. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Melissa Patterson: The truth is, you don't have to hunt for content. You just need to know where to look, right? These little content- Yeah ... buckets. And when you start noticing this kind of moment, it gets easier to continue to spot more. Jimmy Lea: That's right. Send who pictures? Who gets the pictures? Melissa Patterson: You could have it in a, a Google Drive, you could have it in your Slack, in your messaging group. Melissa Patterson: You could have one appointed person that everybody sends these pictures to. Google Drive is easy for me, the content and the notes on the back end. You can do that. But it's always, the shops that tend, that I have been working with, they're often... I'm, feel like I'm chasing them, right? "Send me pictures. Melissa Patterson: What happened today?" Yeah. And that's where this professional photographer comes in, right? Because if I'm just asking, "Anything interesting come through?" You're limited with what you can share based on what you have for photos. You want it to feel authentic in your shop. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: So sometimes, sometimes I'd get a picture and sometimes nothing. Melissa Patterson: Or of course, "Here's a picture," but no explanation. That looks like a greasy part. And it's not that nothing's happening in their shop, right? The technicians are fixing cars, solving problems. Customers are asking great questions, and they're doing good work, and, there's humor. The shop is full of stories, but they weren't seeing them yet. Melissa Patterson: And then of course, then I started getting photos, and they started noticing, "Hey, you're gonna want this one. Take a picture for Birdie." That is completely different. They weren't waiting for me to tell them what counted. They started noticing it. They started seeing it themselves. Did that shop become more interesting? Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Melissa Patterson: Yes to the customer. It did. But inside the shop, the same things were happening every single day. Yeah. A repair didn't get more exciting. They started noticing. It's all been there all along. But now it's engagement. People are interested in that. You're right. Yeah. And that's the win Jimmy Lea: I agree. Jimmy Lea: So you Melissa Patterson: don't- Jimmy Lea: I agree ... yeah. Melissa Patterson: And I- We Jimmy Lea: gotta show 'em pictures. Melissa Patterson: That's it. And ideally, we don't want someone dependent on, "Take a picture of that. Take a picture of that." We want everyone to notice it. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. So it's the shop, they've started sending me these pictures. Now take a look at this. Melissa Patterson: That's a random picture on the left-hand side, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Is that broken or is that brand new? Is that fresh out of the box? Did we spray it with WD-40? Here. Melissa Patterson: And then Jimmy Lea: you can- There you go ... take Melissa Patterson: a look at that picture plus story. Now that one, you can tell, that, that's what we need to know. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's it. Oh, I'm so glad Alex is working on this. What does Alex say? "The car is driving us nuts. For two days." Oh, no. Melissa Patterson: Right? Look at what we finally found. And it's- But- ... that they're keeping a story with that. There is a- Yeah ... story along that second photo. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Even I'm looking at this going, "What in the world is he showing? Jimmy Lea: What is that part?" Melissa Patterson: Is it a CV maybe? Jimmy Lea: I don't- Oh, it's something with an axle. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. I was thinking it was a CV boot. Jimmy Lea: CV boot? Yeah. Oh. Boy, those are the death of many a car. Melissa Patterson: Ugh. Yeah. Yeah And the simple photo, there it is. The first thing that catches your eye, what are you noticing in this photo? Jimmy Lea: I'm noticing a big old tattoo forearm. Melissa Patterson: Big, that's so funny. Yesterday I was going through this presentation, and my girlfriend said that too. She was my test- Jimmy Lea: She was your guinea pig? Melissa Patterson: She was my guinea pig with this class, and the arrow's pointing straight at his tattoo. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: Yeah, but it, the technician, right? The car, the tools, people are working. Melissa Patterson: Okay. And that, that's what's happening in this shop, but it's not telling us what's happening. Could be Jimmy Lea: that- Melissa Patterson: Yeah ... they're chasing that electrical issue we brought up or- Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see the scan tool now. Melissa Patterson: The... Yeah, it's, the text is covering it. Jimmy Lea: Text is covering it up a little bit, but yeah. Melissa Patterson: Yep, and it's that s- silly damaged wire, but they had to chase it down. Melissa Patterson: Now, that's the context, right? Same picture. Yep. The photo captures the scene, but the context is what saves the story. This is what I wanted to share about. Because without context, you just have a tech working on a car. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, you just got a beautiful forearm. Thank you, Cody, for the forearm, and, Melissa Patterson: And then you can understand why that photo was taken, right? Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. It wasn't to show off artwork. It was definitely- Artwork. Melissa Patterson: Some of it'll show personality, some of these photos, or how you're taking great care of a customer or of your team. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: And what those stories can communicate, we can talk about that maybe with a different class. Melissa Patterson: But we simply don't want the good part trapped in a head. We want the context, the photo plus the context. So that's something you can use. And even- Yeah ... if you're here in class right now today, you could take a screenshot and say you're g- in attending ongoing training. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Melissa Patterson: I spent an hour today getting better at how we share our shop's story. Melissa Patterson: This is great. That's something there. You don't have to manufacture a marketing moment. You've always been doing it, just simply noticing it. Yeah. And it doesn't take big paragraphs of explanation. It can just be simple, three simple things. Melissa Patterson: The photo, show me that quick video maybe, hopefully. I'd love a video. That customer note, whatever it is that caught the moment, and then tell me what happened, right? It's not the polished version. Just tell me what happened. Or the customer brought her dog in Jake finally found that noise, that mystery noise that we've been chasing. Jimmy Lea: Or- it looks like Cody changed his shirt and he's now Marcus. Melissa Patterson: Oh. Jimmy Lea: And that, that beautiful forearm is still there. Melissa Patterson: It's... Jimmy Lea: And it looks like he's explaining something that he finally did find on the vehicle, and, ... the social media content manager is super excited to have this kind of information- Melissa Patterson: Yeah, that's- Jimmy Lea: because it makes for a fabulous post. Melissa Patterson: I love it. I love it. But a picture is worth a thousand words, and you just shared that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Absolutely. I think a picture's worth a thousand dollars. Melissa Patterson: Isn't that true? Isn't that true? Jimmy Lea: Yep. Melissa Patterson: You don't have to become a copywriter or decide where to put it. You just need to have that picture, the context, the detail- Melissa Patterson: Do we ha- have, would we like to give it a try? Melissa Patterson: I have the slide here. You can try it right here. Jimmy Lea: Try what? Try- Take a screenshot ... drop it in the Melissa Patterson: chat? Yeah. Jimmy Lea: One ordinary thing that happened in your shop this week. This week- Yeah ... or last week. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. A- Jimmy Lea: ... Anybody have an event that may have happened? Thank you, Darius. Thank you, Ethan, for showing up in your shop shirts. Jimmy Lea: You guys look great. What's an ordinary thing that happened in your shop this week? I wonder if anybody's able to download events. Jimmy Lea: Or pictures. I wonder if they can upload pictures in the comments. It might be a limitation- Maybe ... I don't know. Melissa Patterson: Maybe or maybe not, or, this could be just something you do with yourself as an exercise, right? Melissa Patterson: We're just trying to build a muscle. So you could drop the experience in the chat, what happened in your shop. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: Or you could put it on your, open up Facebook, type it in there. Well- This context, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah, and I can tell you one- ... that I saw here quite recently that Brett Faidley put up. It was a picture of gratitude. Jimmy Lea: He was feeding the entire shop, had smoked up some brisket, and w- it was a picture of the brisket and everybody sitting around having a great meal together. And it was Brett's way of saying, "Thank you for being here for me," while I had other business I had to take care of with his wife. She was in the hospital. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: And it was just a gorgeous post about gratitude that he had for his people and people that was working on it. Wow. Oh, it was a prime rib. Thank you, Brett. It was an eight-pound prime rib. Melissa Patterson: Whoa. Jimmy Lea: He posted up pictures of it for everybody. Yeah, the, the... It was just gorgeous, beautiful. That was a great picture. Jimmy Lea: I remember that one as being one of those, Melissa Patterson: Poster child. That's great. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. One that I've seen and this wasn't from the shop, Jared Fuller up at All Done, What's the name of his shop? All Right Auto in Emmett, Idaho, he posts up a lot of information about other businesses in his community. Jimmy Lea: He joined the Chamber of Commerce. Melissa Patterson: Oh. Jimmy Lea: And he'll post up pictures of other businesses and their ribbon cutting and stuff that they're doing. Jimmy Lea: I Melissa Patterson: love that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, so he went from posting up information about the shop, DVI water pumps, timing belts, radiators, brakes, shocks, struts, things like that. Jimmy Lea: Then he switched and he went to- ... Facebook Lives that were about the community, about other shops, and about other businesses. And here we are today in front of Taco, and they just launched their brand-new menu, blah, blah, blah, blah. And miraculously, Taco was busy that day. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: That's awesome. That's awesome. And I wanna bring up one other thought about this. Now, the community events, that is beautiful. And video, yes. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: You nailed it with those examples. Thank you. Now, look at this. You have a whole team of eyes, but you can't be everywhere at once, right? So you can create this. Melissa Patterson: Three bays over, a technician could have found something that was fascinated, or maybe up front a customer says that's why I bring my car here." And nobody thinks to capture those moments, right? Those stories are walking right past you. Shop owners are wearing so many hats. People- Yeah ... customers, payroll, all of the things, parts, all the problems that we- no one else even knows about. Melissa Patterson: And being the only person responsible for noticing every good marketing moment sh- shouldn't have to be another hat you wear. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: And it Jimmy Lea: gives a whole- That's a hat we can all wear. 'Cause we can share our photos. We can share pictures that we take. Melissa Patterson: That the whole... Yes, that's right. Your service advisors are gonna hear things that you're not gonna hear. Melissa Patterson: Your technicians are gonna see things that you won't. Your front office is catching moments with your customers, and sometimes the customer hands you the story. You don't have to have everyone creating these posts, but we do wanna ha- encourage more people to notice those moments, and that's a completely different skill set Melissa Patterson: M- and what is it gonna show about your culture, too? If you start talking about this in your team meeting, having it up on the whiteboard- Yeah ... or asking every Friday afternoon. And look at that. If one person noticed and took a photo and gave that context, dropped it in, there's five days worth of posting. Jimmy Lea: Done. Done. That's perfect. Melissa Patterson: You can spread it out. And of course, at first, people might stare at you with that blank look "What?" But then someone said, "Oh, you should have seen what Jake found on that Subaru." "Ah. Did you take a picture of it?" I want the answer- ... to be yes. 'Cause now it's not one person inventing content. Melissa Patterson: You have a whole shop learning to notice their stories. And then people come to you, "Hey, you're gonna want this one," and that is where it starts becoming this habit. Melissa Patterson: So it doesn't have to be one more giant list. We wanna make it ridiculously doable, 'cause you can't be everywhere Jimmy Lea: I love it. Five minutes. Jimmy Lea: That- Notice it, capture it, explain why it matters- Melissa Patterson: And share Jimmy Lea: it ... and share it. Melissa Patterson: That's it. 'Cause again your technicians are gonna see things on the vehicles that you'll never see. The service advisors with your customers, that front office with tho- those moments with your customers, that's never gonna be something that you can be everywhere all the time to catch. Melissa Patterson: But if you have that whole team of eyes and people catching those moments, then it doesn't have to be complicated. It can just be simple, "What happened this week that we should save?" Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Melissa Patterson: So yeah, now we know what to look for, right? It's not that I don't know what to post. Hopefully that feels a bit different 'cause everyone, everyone's pulling together, right? Customer solving customer, answering customer questions, solving problems with the vehicles, and there's funny things happening in your workplace every day, right? Melissa Patterson: And sometimes it's frustrating or weird or helpful. Those ordinary things to you, all of those things happened before lunch, and none of that c- became content because- Too good ... yeah, you nailed it. It was already there all along. So learning to catch that moment, how to keep enough of that story with it, and remember that you don't have to notice it all yourself. Melissa Patterson: You don't have to be the content creator. You just need to be a better noticer 'cause somewhere inside your shop, there's that moment that you could have walked right past before today. Catch it. Save the details. Keep the story. That's what I'm hoping, and I'm hopeful that the people outside your bays will learn about it. Melissa Patterson: And that's worth sharing. A good shop deserves to be seen for who you really are. They wanna feel that personality. They wanna build that relationship and the trust So that's really all I had today. Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's awesome. So what's this QR code for, Birdie? What have you got here? Melissa Patterson: That's for Shop Talk. Melissa Patterson: It's a complimentary 20-minute meeting, and I'd be happy to hop on a call with you. And hopefully, if you wanna look at your shop a bit differently, notice different stories, talk about what's going on in your shop, what you're trying to build, if it's a legacy or culture, love to hear about it from you. Melissa Patterson: Love to connect. Jimmy Lea: Yes. So everybody that's watching this, whether it's live or a recording, pull out your smartphones. Pull it out now. Pull out your smartphone. Pull open your camera- app. Scan this QR code. Let's get onto Birdie's calendar. Meet with her. Talk about your social media pl- posting, your social media outreach. Jimmy Lea: A, a free 20 minute with Birdie is just gonna be such valuable information to really help you focus your message, focus your marketing, focus your Tuesday so it becomes a post for the rest of the week. There's a lot happening before lunch. All you have to do is just pull out your camera and take a picture. Jimmy Lea: Capture it. Melissa Patterson: Yeah. And I'd love to Jimmy Lea: meet with you. Let's post it up. Melissa Patterson: Thank Jimmy Lea: you. Yes, and w- Birdie would love to meet with you. And in fact, if you would love to meet with her live, we have our Mars conference happening Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday next week. Here's the QR code for that Mars conference. Scan the code. Jimmy Lea: Let's get you in front of an amazing group of other shop owners. We only have nine seats left. After that, it is sold out. It is done. We're gonna have a lot of shop owners all together here for this conference. It is in Ogden, Utah, w- at the headquarters for the institute. You're gonna feel like this is a Men In Black experience because previously, the institute w- used to contain a sewing and quilt shop, and previous to that, it was a Goodyear tire shop. Jimmy Lea: So it it does fly incognito right now. It looks like it's a, a sew and quilt shop. You'll feel like Men In Black as you walk through the front doors, and then you'll see an absolutely gorgeous interior, very well laid out just absolutely gorgeous. So Birdie, I look forward to seeing you in Ogden starting Sunday. Jimmy Lea: It's gonna be good. Melissa Patterson: Looking forward to it very much. I can't wait. Jimmy Lea: Awesome. Awesome. And with that, thank you everybody for joining us. This is the Leading Edge podcast. We are here to lock arms with you so we as a group, as a crew, as a, a mob, that we make sure that we all make it together. We at the institute are committed to a better business, and that's for you, a better life. Jimmy Lea: That's the result of having a better business. You will have a better life, and our commitment is to help have a better industry. Better business, better life, better industry. Let's work together. Let's make this happen. Let's not left, leave anybody behind. We can do this, and we can do it together. My name is Jimmy Lea with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, joining today with the Leading Edge podcast, and joining me is Birdie. Jimmy Lea: Thank you, Birdie, for being here. Appreciate you so much. Can't wait to see you at Mars. Melissa Patterson: We're better together. Thank you. Jimmy Lea: Bye, everybody. Thank you.
223 - Retention Is Not a Roll of the Dice: What Actually Brings Customers Back
223 - Retention Is Not a Roll of the Dice: What Actually Brings Customers Back October 14th, 2026 - 00:41:20 Show Summary: Customer retention is built through meaningful relationships rather than discounts. Marta Fuentes of Pitcrew Loyalty shares how automotive repair shops can increase customer loyalty through rewards programs and community involvement. Learn how personalized incentives encourage repeat visits while supporting local charities and strengthening customer relationships. Discover practical strategies for improving retention and increasing car count while protecting profitability. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): Marta Fuentes, Director of Customer Development & Strategy Show Highlights: [00:02:49] – Loyalty rewards encourage repeat visits without reducing service value. [00:04:35] – Community partnerships turn customer rewards into meaningful local connections. [00:06:35] – Charitable giving strengthens relationships and encourages greater customer spending. [00:11:15] – Customizable rewards programs encourage customers to return for future services. [00:13:20] – Proper financial planning protects profitability when implementing loyalty programs. [00:16:45] – Special rewards tiers recognize local heroes and strengthen community loyalty. [00:20:05] – Convenience often drives loyal customers toward competing repair shops. [00:22:00] – Easy appointment scheduling and transparent rewards improve customer retention. [00:30:15] – Starting small makes customer loyalty programs easier to implement successfully. [00:36:25] – Referral incentives help struggling shops attract new customers and increase car count. 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/IES8tCiqZvg 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: Jimmy Lea: Hello, friends. Super excited to be here with you again. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night, depending on when and where you're joining us from today on this live podcast. We are streaming across StreamYard as well as Facebook and YouTube. Super excited for us to have this conversation that we're gonna have here today. Jimmy Lea: It is live. I will be the voice for the audience. If you have questions, comments, concerns, put them into the comments section or the chat section of the whatever browsing device that you're watching this from. And to make sure that you know how to do that, those who are here live, go into those comments, type in your city, state, and the name of your shop. Jimmy Lea: Love to give you a shout-out for those who are here for the live event. Because today, joining us for this conversation, as we are going to be talking about customer loyalty And what is new in the customer loyalty realm, we've got Pitcrew Loyalty joining us here today. And joining is Marta. Marta, thank you for being here. Jimmy Lea: How are you? Marta Fuentes: Hello. Thank you for having me. I'm doing great. Excited to be here. Jimmy Lea: Good. Good. Good. I'm so excited that you are coming back again as we celebrate the demise and the death and the RIP of discounts. Was this- May they- This will be the, Rest in peace. May they rest in peace. Is this the second or third anniversary of that celebration? Marta Fuentes: This officially with the Mars community, it's the first- Second ... anniversary, so second time. Jimmy Lea: Yeah, second event that you're attending, and this will be the one-year anniversary that we announced that. The RIP is still in Cecil's office. He absolutely loves that, death of the discount. Yeah. Super excited that you guys did that at the Mars conference, which is happening. Jimmy Lea: Mars conference, October 26, 27, 28. Scan the QR code there, and let's get you to this conference. It is amazing. It's a conference where you as a shop owner can come in with your marketing department, or maybe you are the marketing department. Let's sit down and talk about your shop, your needs. We've got two days of instruction followed by a third day of workshop, intense workshop that we're sitting down and planning out an entire year of marketing for you, for your shop. Jimmy Lea: And because we sit down and we take time and we plan this out, it is in easy chunks, easy for you to do. And Marta will be there as well. So we're excited for you to join us in Ogden, Utah. So let's talk about that. Marta, you're coming to Mars. You're coming with Pitcrew Loyalty. What is new in the customer loyalty world? Marta Fuentes: So as we know, loyalty programs work. I've recently started joking that we're the Kohl's Cash of auto repair, right? And if you've ever used Kohl's Cash, you know you love it. So part of what is very cool about loyalty rewards is that they are earned. By the customer. And even though that's a very obvious statement about loyalty rewards, it's really powerful because there's a big difference in the perception of why you are getting what you're getting. Marta Fuentes: And it doesn't take the value of what you are doing and change that value every day and make it into this variable affected by the season, and what you received in the mail, or what you were able to capture on the internet. But instead it's about, hey, no, this is what you earned, and also we are rewarding you for being a great car owner. Marta Fuentes: Because at the end of the day, when people are taking care of their cars in the community, things are just better. We have fewer broken down cars on the side of the road. We're getting the kids to school on time. We're getting ourselves to work on time. Things look better. The air is cleaner. And so rewarding people for being a great car owner is such a different notion than discounting to earn their business. Marta Fuentes: And with this in mind, with s- this community lens, one of the things that we look at is how else can we involve the community and maybe make it a little bit fun? Because let's face it, nobody goes to the auto repair shop because they're ready to have a really good time, right? We unfortunately Jimmy Lea: have- Not usually. Jimmy Lea: They may show up for the good coffee and the great conversation, but for the good time? Marta Fuentes: So what we are doing with our loyalty program is we're also creating opportunities for people to engage in the community and make it a little bit fun, right? So there's things like let's involve ourselves in doing something good together, like a charity, right? Marta Fuentes: Yeah. So your shop picks out a charity, and then you can donate your rewards to the charity. Now you're doing something good. Now you're engaging with your repair shop, with your community. You're effectively donating somebody else's money. But you have choices of what to do with your rewards, and that's a really big part, actually, of a rewards program that's successful. Marta Fuentes: Are you giving people autonomy to make choices about what they wanna do? Do you want to apply this to your own RO? Do you wanna donate it to charity? Do you need to transfer it to that college student nephew that needs brakes? And giving people these choices creates a better sense of trust and loyalty, and also fun. Marta Fuentes: We help people have inside the community relationships with other locally owned businesses so that as a rewards holder at Bob's Garage, I all of a sudden also get a free cup of coffee every time I buy a cookie at Brenda's Cookies, and this is all because I'm a part of that loyalty rewards program. Marta Fuentes: So it takes it away from the transactional and brings it into relationships, into the community, and into a little bit of fun. Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. So you're talking- It's just great ... about such great things as community involvement. I love the community involvement side of it, whether we're supporting a, a homeless shelter or the animal shelter or domestic violence, victims of domestic violence and families that are broken. Jimmy Lea: What is your community? Where are your people? So I have a bunch of ideas running through my brain. So as clients come in and they purchase, what is the dollar amount that goes into their loyalty rewards program, a- and at what point do you say, "Okay this is $1,000 that we're gonna give to the Dove Center, and of that $1,000, you contributed, and you contributed. Jimmy Lea: You need to be there for this event because you're, this is your contribution making this happen"? Talk us through how does that work? Marta Fuentes: So it is... So what we see, first of all, is that a person who chooses to use their rewards for good through you by donating it to a local charity, they go on to spend 24% more than those who don't. Marta Fuentes: So this is good creating good, creating community. Now, the way that the whole thing works is as a shop owner, you are in control of how you're going to do this. How much do you want to raise? And what we also know is that it's not about raising $10,000. Raise $250 and the impact is still there, right? Marta Fuentes: And let everybody donate a little bit. You don't have to let them donate their whole rewards, right? Hey, you can donate up to half. You set the limit of how much you want to raise. We make it really easy for your customer. Here's a text message. Click on the link to your own personalized thing. You donate your rewards. Marta Fuentes: You get a nice thank you message, and then the very cool thing that happens is that this charity starts talking about you in social media. So usually as a garage, posting on social media doesn't often result in a lot of shares and likes and loves. But when you're supporting these charities start posting about you, and you start posting about them, and we see huge numbers. Marta Fuentes: We've seen charities that have had 1,000 shares from an auto repair shop because of that connection. 1,000? Yes. Yes. Jimmy Lea: 1,000 shares? Marta Fuentes: 1,000 shares. Jimmy Lea: So their, th- their likes must have been in the five-digit range to get 1,000 shares. That's a lot. Marta Fuentes: Okay, so now that we're talking about it, I am gonna get back to that screenshot and make sure that I'm not lying to you. Marta Fuentes: Okay. And that it was shares versus likes. I wanna... I don't... I wanna get you the true numbers, so I will. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Okay. Marta Fuentes: But the impact is- Jimmy Lea: Either way, this is a really good result. 1,000 people saying, "Yes, we like this information," or it's 1,000 people saying, "This is such good information, I've got to send it to my family and friends and people in the neighborhood." Marta Fuentes: Yes. Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's Marta Fuentes: really good. And then your customers come to these events too. So there's a really fun one about to happen where that it's a turkey bowl where they raise funds for the community, specifically for the holiday season, by having a bowling competition down the frozen aisle of a grocery store with frozen turkeys. Marta Fuentes: And this shop is raising- I Jimmy Lea: am so in. I am so in. Marta Fuentes: And this shop is raising dollars for this. They raised over 50% of their goal already in the first day, and the invitation includes, "Come to this. Come cheer us on. Come participate. Come see it happen." And so I think that if it's related to an event, then your customers can actually come. Marta Fuentes: It just really brings the joy. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. That is phenomenal. That is phenomenal. D- have you, do- is there any data that says it's best to give the check at the facility versus is there more ground for giving away the check at my facility, at my shop? Marta Fuentes: I think it is, the most effective is getting it out there. Marta Fuentes: Yes. I think the biggest thing is just get it out there, get your photos, get your videos. So in, in... If you're gonna do it, do one or the other. But what I see the most is the shop owner going to the charity and being present- Yeah ... there with them, as another sign of making it easy, right? Marta Fuentes: Yeah. We are doing something nice, something kind. We're gonna go to you. We're gonna bring this to you. We're gonna celebrate you. This is about the charity, not the auto shop. And framing it that way- Yeah ... I think is really important. But I think the most important part is get it out there on social media in any way at all. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I totally agree. And it might come down to the shelter or the facility that you're sponsoring. Are they comfortable being viewed? Because there might be residents who should not be out there on social media and maybe you can't do it at the facility because y- and at that point you do need to do it at your shop. Jimmy Lea: So it's case by case scenario. Absolutely. Marta Fuentes: Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: No I love that. So how are you rewarding points for dollars or points for online appointments set, points for on time appointments, they showed up? What do you reward points for? Marta Fuentes: Great question. Marta Fuentes: So everything is very customizable. Each shop is different, has different goals, has a different community, a different history with their customers. So y- you can set it up in whatever way makes the most sense to you. So there's flexibility in terms of percentages. We do work on percentages, but you can work it out of parts and labor, or just labor. Marta Fuentes: You can also do just parts, which I haven't seen yet, but you could. And then you can set all kinds of guardrails where you can make it so that customers can only earn a certain amount per RO. Customers can only have a wallet that's this big with repairs. But fundamentally, they're earning them as a function of bringing in their car. Marta Fuentes: So I earn rewards today, and that secures the next visit, which is such a contrast to a discount that is very much locked in time for that right there. Versus loyalty rewards, those are talking about the next visit. And bringing that customer in for that next time. And that's what keeps them coming back to you versus maybe exploring other options that might feel more convenient, right? Marta Fuentes: Also, we do cool things like help shops have deals that are centered around their loyalty rewards members. Hey, this month, with any RO over 250, we're gonna replace your windshield wiper blades complimentary, and we're gonna add $10 to your loyalty rewards account just for coming in for this. So you're able to add little bits and and incentivize people in that way. Marta Fuentes: There's also fun things that you can do where people can earn more rewards by spinning a wheel, and then you can just go in there and manipulate people's rewards because ultimately it's your loyalty rewards program. Your customers should never know the name Pitcrew. They should only know your loyalty rewards program. Marta Fuentes: You're in charge. You shape it. You change things when things need change. And we're here to support you. We're here to try to make it easy and to keep those customers coming back. We've been at it for 25 years. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. And you're bringing up a really good point here, Marta, that I need to emphasize, and we haven't addressed it specifically. Jimmy Lea: The cost of this program, it needs to become part of your business program, your business plan. If you're not planning for this, then you're just pulling profit dollars out of your pocket to pay for it. It needs to become part of your business plan. So you may have to adjust your labor rate to accommodate for a Pitcrew loyalty program, which p- shop clients, customers are gonna pay 24% more for this program, which is great, but you still need to be able to account for every reward dollar that you're gonna give away. Jimmy Lea: It needs to come from an account. So if you need an analysis, if you need some guidance, if you need some direction, go to your coach, go to your business part- partner, go to your business consultant. Call us here at the Institute. We'd love to have a conversation with you to talk about your shop, your business. Jimmy Lea: Can you afford to do a loyalty program like this? The answer is yes, you can, but we may need to adjust a few things just to make sure that it's not coming out of your pocket, that you actually have an accounting for each one of these items that you want to reward. And I love this idea of Marta. Jimmy Lea: Let's reward the behavior that we want clients to exude. So if we wanna encourage online scheduling, they get points for that. If they get points for showing up on time and points for referring a friend What can we do to Marta Fuentes: incentivize? You can manually add points to anyone. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Marta Fuentes: And just coming back to what you were saying about can I afford to have this, what would it look like to have it, and having that conversation with coaches, there's a really valuable piece too there about how are we presenting this to our service advisors so that- they see the value in it that the shop owner does? So we know that having the loyalty rewards program is going to increase visit patterns by three times and lifetime spend by 40%. However, the service advisor is seeing a different day-to-day impact. They're, they might have a narrower view of it because the loyalty rewards scheme is the long game, and it's not coffee, right? Marta Fuentes: If I get coffee every day, I might earn a cup of coffee in a week, but I should definitely not be at your shop every day, right? So it's very much a long game. And so I think that adopting this requires having the service advisors be all in, and that takes skill. I think that it... we have to bring people into it. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, very true. And, speaking of service advisors, we have a phenomenal service advisor intensive three-day training for the service advisor. Oh, look at that. Scan this QR code. Those of you who are watching this, scan this QR code. This is the QR code for our three-day service advisor intensive. Jimmy Lea: It is amazing. Brian Daly, Aldo Gomez, they do a phenomenal job in taking your service advisor from a zero to a hero very quickly. This is super awesome. You definitely wanna be here. It's in November at headquarters here in Ogden, Utah. In November, it's gonna be absolutely gorgeous up here, so you definitely wanna have your service advisor show up. Jimmy Lea: This program will help them to sell more, which helps fund the program, which helps fund the community. What else have you seen as a successful program, Marta, inside of the loyalty rewards that develops that community? Marta Fuentes: One of the things that I've seen lately that has been really great and I've been guiding shops towards is a local heroes program. Marta Fuentes: So having different tiers is is something that we do for a lot of shops. Hey, everybody starts at 2%. Once you spend $2,500 in a year, you graduate to 3%, so on and so forth. But with one shop, we created a local heroes tier, where if you are a first responder, if you're a teacher, if you're a part of a group that is considered a local hero, you have your very own tier with a higher rewards and just a different set of things that comes for being that local hero. Marta Fuentes: And where sometimes having different programs can lead customers to feel like why am I getting one versus not the other?" When you see that it's for a local hero, you're actually excited for them. You're like, "Yeah, that's right." Yeah. My shop considers those people and gives them more. Yeah, I'm not getting it, but I want to support them because they are supporting those teachers. Marta Fuentes: They are supporting especially, all the medical people as we know from ... We're all so much more aware of our local heroes after everything that we've gone through together worldwide. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, y- and I love that idea. It reminds me of like a bronze, silver, gold are you an A-list member, are you A-list preferred? Jimmy Lea: You create those different tiers, now people want to develop because their loyalty is better. They know that they've been there longer. They ... There's a VIP- ... that happens because I am loyal to Jimmy's Super Shop. Marta Fuentes: Jimmy's Super Shop. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's good. I fly with Southwest, so I am a, I'm an A-list flyer with Southwest right now. Jimmy Lea: I'm not A-list preferred, not anymore. Not flying as much as I used to. Marta Fuentes: So- Jimmy Lea: But I... go. Marta Fuentes: As you're sharing about that, I just thought, last time that I traveled- Yeah ... I'm in the airplane checking my email, and I get an email about the rewards program at a local crafting store, and as Jimmy knows, I like to make things. Marta Fuentes: And I went and got my rental car and mapped that on the way to the hotel. There was one of these craft stores, and I went and I got myself my crochet kit and used my $10 in rewards and came out of there spending 45. And, but, gosh darn it if I was gonna miss out on those rewards. Jimmy Lea: That is so true. Jimmy Lea: It's like those Kohl's dollars. You're, you've got $10 or $20 Kohl's dollars you end up spending $200 to $300 because you're getting all the other things as well. Yeah. No, that, that's very true. That's good. And we talk about this as a loyalty program and a, a ability to keep it loyal. Jimmy Lea: What about clients that are cheating? Oh. Oh, heaven sakes. Did I say that out loud? Yeah, I did. No, let's say it again. So what about what about- Our customers, our clients, the ones that we love, the ones that love us, but they cheat on us every once in a while. What can we do about that? Marta Fuentes: So yeah. So this notion of cheating is a framework that we've been talking about lately, and it... Marta Fuentes: and people just find it so relatable. We have our customers that really like us, and we know they really like us, and as a matter of fact, our amazing CRM just sent them a message saying, "Hey, you need brakes." So now, Jimmy, your favorite shop, let you know that you need brakes. You're aware of this, and then you're driving around and you see a place and it's not Jimmy's, but it's really convenient 'cause it's right there, and you're already there, and maybe they have a discount, and you know a friend maybe went there once. Marta Fuentes: So you end up kinda cheat- cheating on Jimmy at because this place was really convenient, right? Ouch. So what we need to do... I know, right? And our customers are not thinking about it as cheating, right? To them, it's their life. It's their convenience. They still love Jimmy. They still know they're eventually gonna go back to Jimmy. Marta Fuentes: But in that moment, they had a convenience factor, right? And so what can we do to overcome that convenience factor? We gotta give them something else, right? And so that something else is those reward dollars that they get to come in. That something else is knowing that when you go to see Jimmy, you're also gonna be supporting that charity, right? Marta Fuentes: Yeah. So giving them just that little bit extra of how can I be better than that inconvenience, right? Just that little convenience factor. Because it's true that sometimes, because we're an amazing shop and we're sending out these alerts in the CRMs, we're accidentally sending people to other shops because now they know what they need. Marta Fuentes: Yeah. And conveniently, they ended up somewhere else. Not what we wanted. Jimmy Lea: No. So is there a way in the loyalty rewards program or the app or the texting that we can say, "Hey, click here to set up an appointment. We have Thursday available"? Can you come in- Absolutely ... at 8:00 AM too? Marta Fuentes: Yeah, absolutely. Marta Fuentes: Whenever we set up your shops program, we get all your scheduling URLs so that- ... anytime there's a message out, they can click on it, and it doesn't go to your website. It goes to that scheduling window, right? So you're right there with a scheduling window just right away. Everything that we send out has the ways to get in touch with you. Marta Fuentes: And additionally, there is a very cool webpage that we help put on your website so that customers can look up their own rewards balances. So they can go on Jimmy's Auto Works and enter their phone number, see their rewards, and then there's another button they can push, and there's a whole portal that opens with the fun things, right? Marta Fuentes: So they can see your charities, they can see your cross-pollinators. If they're part of an oil change club, that's another reason to not cheat on Jimmy, right? Hey, Jimmy has an oil change club where after I buy three, I'm gonna get that fourth one for free. So of course I'm not gonna cheat on Jimmy. I know I need an oil change because I got that note from him. Marta Fuentes: And no, I'm not gonna go there. They're not gonna give me credit towards my next one. I'm going to Jimmy. So seeing in the portal, you can actually see your things like your oil change count and have competence over what's going on. So giving customers the ability to know what is going on is really powerful, and nobody knows this more than a service advisor, right? Marta Fuentes: If you are trying to explain to somebody why they need brakes, you have to actually explain to them why they need brakes and make them a little bit more of a technician just for that moment, right? So in that same way, when it comes to rewarding customers, when it comes to pricing, that transparency into their rewards is so important, and having that available on your website right there is just really great. Jimmy Lea: Oh, that's really good. The... Earlier this summer, I took my car. I was away from St. George. I was way, way far away from St. George in Idaho Falls. I took it to the Point S shop there in Ammon, Idaho, and I said, "Hey I need my tires rotated." D- I was 700 miles away from my shop. Was I cheating? Jimmy Lea: Maybe a little bit, but I really needed my tires rotated, which is true and my alignment was off, so I had to get the alignment done as well. So they did. Now, here's the good stews- n- news of this story. They said, "Y- your tires are getting close. They're... You don't need to replace them yet, but they're getting close. Jimmy Lea: You're at three-thirty seconds in the front, and you're five-thirty seconds in the back. So you're getting close, so watch this." And I said I'll probably just plan on getting my tires changed right before s- before the winter, before the snow falls," something like that. Because y- that's when you get into accidents, when your tread is too thin and you float on water, you float on ice or things like that. Jimmy Lea: What am I doing tomorrow? I'm getting new tires on the little car so that I back up to a really good tread, and I have really good adherence to the road, because I would like to keep the wheels down. Marta Fuentes: It's important. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah, it's important. So usually I'm not one that will cheat on my shop but you, to your point, yeah, it's the convenience factor. Jimmy Lea: How convenient are we making things like that for our clients to be able to bring them back into the shop over and over again? Marta Fuentes: There's the convenience, and there's also the feeling of having the same values. Yeah. That, and that's really important. As human beings, we are programmed to live in community. Marta Fuentes: It's part of how we became who we became. And so when you help folks be a part of your community by coming together on your values- ... now there's even more of a reason, right? Because being able to apply money to your own repair, to your own rewards, that's one thing, and that's what we call an extrinsic motivator. Marta Fuentes: That's so- that's like the carrot and the stick. It's like a sticker chart for kids. It works. If you've ever had a sticker chart with your kid, you know that it works for a week and a half, and then it stops working. Why? It's because that's just an extrinsic motivator. And it's as important as having a battery to get your car started, but then you gotta have that alternator. Marta Fuentes: You gotta have a reason. And aligning ourselves based on our values is so important. And so that's why we say, okay, pick a hyper local commun- charity. If there was a terrible thing that happened and somebody's house burnt down, that is the perfect kind of place to pop up. I don't like associating perfect with events like that. Marta Fuentes: But the... When we show our community that our values are there, and then we invite them to also show where their values are at, this is another place where that beats convenience every time. Because- ... Marta Fuentes: Our identity comes into it Jimmy Lea: That's so true. A- and I love that you're focusing this on hyper close. Jimmy Lea: There ... I had a very good friend in Santa Barbara, California, and his house did burn down. It was on the national news. When you saw that Santa Barbara was burning and you saw images of it, it was probably his house. Neil's a very good friend, and immediately I started putting out to help my community. Jimmy Lea: We work together. Neil and I, we work together. I wanted to help my friend, and so it ... from St. George, we loaded up the back of my F-150 with a ton of clothing and shoes, all sizes all male, female, boys, girls, men, women, all, all different sizes. There was one family, and they are amongst the giants. Jimmy Lea: I believe the father is 6'9", and one of the families in Santa Barbara was of the giant classification, and tall and skinny is not something you come by very often. Every single bit of that clothing was their new wardrobe. Marta Fuentes: Jimmy, are there lots of people in Santa Barbara with amazing jackets now? Jimmy Lea: Yes, and they've all moved away from Santa Barbara. Jimmy Lea: Yes, absolutely. There are. I, and I took my son with me and it was such a beautiful experience to be able to have this opportunity to share with my friends, with my family, with my people. Marta Fuentes: Yeah. You reminded me just now, there's, we have this great shop in Alaska, and they had a really interesting charity that it only happens in Alaska. Marta Fuentes: They have a local butcher who when you go out and hunt something in Alaska, as people do- yeah ... he comes to your house and butchers the animal and prepares it and everything. And this guy was in an accident- W- In your Jimmy Lea: garage? Marta Fuentes: I think so. That's what it looks like. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Marta Fuentes: Okay, carry on. I haven't done it myself. Marta Fuentes: I haven't participated yet. Jimmy Lea: You don't live in Alaska? Marta Fuentes: No. No. But yeah, my hunting record is also not existent. Jimmy Lea: Zero. I've shot a lot of paper. Marta Fuentes: Yeah, that's it. So the, the shop came together and brought the community together to help cover this person's medical expenses, and everybody knew him because- Oh, wow Marta Fuentes: this is the guy that came to your house, and the shop came together, put together a ton of money for this person's medical expenses. And the thing is that you don't actually have to do a ton of money for this to work. Yeah. It works whether you do $250 or 5,000. In this case, it was a really large amount, and I know that it went really far, but the SMS blast that went out about this was so beautiful. Marta Fuentes: Here's this, this guy, and he's actually holding this plant and these flowers, and he just looks so joyful, and they're trying to raise dollars for him, and they did. And getting to participate in making that happen is really the best part of my job. As I taught public high school for a long time, so the community is really what drives me to show up every day. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. I love that. I love building the community and supporting. So if a shop was wanting to start by building a community, wh- what's a st- a starter kit, if you will, a very small starter kit that Jimmy's Super Shop... And by the way, thank you very much for making me an, a multiple shop operator. Jimmy Lea: I'm Jimmy's Super Shop. I'm also now a Euro shop with Jimmy's Auto Werks, W-E-R- Marta Fuentes: Oh, with a E, yeah. Jimmy Lea: E. Auto Werks. Thank you. Now I own two shops. What's a good easy starter kit to get started? 'Cause my- I think that- I'm... and I'm guessing that most shops have never done this before. Jimmy Lea: Why? Because it's a little bit daunting. It's a huge undertaking the first time you do it, but once you've done it once, becomes easier. How can I get started? Marta Fuentes: So I say sometimes you just gotta go slow to go fast. Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Marta Fuentes: So I say start off with one level. Just everybody gets 2%. It leaves it open for you to grow it. Marta Fuentes: Maybe you start with an oil change club, maybe you don't. And then let's do one charity and just see how that goes, right? The most important part here is you don't have to do everything at the same time. You can just start with one level and go from there. And then as you reveal more things, there's more room for excitement, right? Marta Fuentes: Starting with everything and then not being able to deliver on it because of the overwhelm is gonna work against you. So you know yourself, you know your shop, you know your people, and do it in the order that makes sense for you. But I would say the simplest way is let's just start with a basic percentage, maybe an oil change club, and then after that, just do one quarterly charity. Marta Fuentes: We don't want you doing charities all the time, right? One quarterly charity. Let it roll and see what happens. I have the folks doing the Turkey Bowl, they actually were onboarded about a month ago, and, Oh ... with Thanksgiving coming up and everything, they said, "Let's do it." And I could tell that there was nervousness about what this entailed. Marta Fuentes: But we do so much to hold you through it, right? From helping create the graphics and the blasts, having webinars available twice a week where yours truly is there to guide you through these things and help- Okay ... organize you and help with the communication. And even help with, "Hey, do you have a script for how you're going to approach this charity or this shop? Marta Fuentes: Look, here's your script," right? "This is how you can reach out." And just really meeting you where you're at. Some people are great at talking to other people, and some people have talents in other ways, right? So really meeting you where you're at and supporting you through it, and start small. Jimmy Lea: No you're exactly right, Marta. Jimmy Lea: I agree. There are different skills and the ability to answer a conversation from an inbound, it's c- somebody's coming to me, yeah, that's easy for me to have a conversation. To initiate, it's a different skill set. So yeah you're, you might be right. They might need that script to help them get through it, for sure. Jimmy Lea: And my thought was once a quarter might be a lot, and you're saying, "Oh, once a quarter is a good start." Okay w- let's do one event this year. Let's analyze that. How did it go? How did it work, right? I love the Turkey Bowl idea. Is this down a grocery store aisle? Oh, my gosh. Marta Fuentes: Down the frozen aisle. Jimmy Lea: Down the frozen aisle, of all things. The bumper pads are up. You're guaranteed to win. Marta Fuentes: And I think, what you're saying about having just one in a year, I think that's really powerful. I think that- we don't want to let great get in the way of good or- Yeah ... however that idiom goes, right? So if we can do one thing right now, let's just do that one thing, and that's great. Marta Fuentes: And a lot of times what we think is going to be really hard, once we do it, it feels fine, right? Yeah. It's the, it's that hurdle of let's go through this the first time. Let's do something that we've never done before, right? It's really hard to do new things, and this would be a new thing. And so it feels hard, and that's okay. Marta Fuentes: We're here to support you through it, and we can do hard things. Jimmy Lea: We sure can. We sure can. And when we get here to Mars, what are you presenting to the entire group? We're not gonna give away everything, but what's the teaser for Marta Fuentes: Mars? The teaser is that retention is not the roll of a dice, and that the, it's empowering you to see where are the things that you can control for retention, and it will be framed in a playful way. Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love it. This is gonna be a lot of fun. Retention is not a roll of the dice. I love it. I love it. I'm gonna have to find me a jacket with dice on it or something. Marta Fuentes: Ooh, we need fuzzy dice. Jimmy Lea: That was also on the list. Yeah. That's, ... it's gonna be up there. Oh, that's good. That's very good. So what, there, there's a a shop that's gonna be here, and they're gonna be sharing some of their experience as well. They, one of the challenges issued by the owner to the marketing department was, "Our October and November is very slow. I need you to figure out a way to turn that around." And they did, and it's amazing. Jimmy Lea: It's now their biggest quarter. Q4 used to be their smallest quarter. It's the quarter that they all struggled on. October was difficult. November was hard. Everybody's saving their money. They're going into Christmas. Now, Q4 is their busiest quarter, which is awesome. And those who are here will be able to hear this story, and those who are not here are gonna wonder, what in the world are they doing? Jimmy Lea: So I'm super excited for those who are here to reveal that. And maybe after we have our event, we can talk a bit about, more about those speakers that were here sharing information at the Mars event. So super excited for that. Marta, anything else that we want to share with our audience today as we talk about customers, customer loyalty, customer retention? Marta Fuentes: I don't think we're talking about the same folks, but I do have a client that I was talking to about three weeks ago. We scheduled a meeting, and we were talking, and they said, "Marta, I have never had car count like this. It is so low. What can we do?" And so we decided to put together a referathon month. Marta Fuentes: Ooh. So usually... So as a part of their rewards program, you can set a referral program that works out of your website so that people can just send out referrals that way and then earn more rewards when people actually come in and close an RO. And so we came up with a referathon, where usually his referral amount was $25 for the new person and the existing person. Marta Fuentes: We said, "Okay. This month we double it." Okay? Oof. And we recorded a video, and we sent it out, and sure enough, new customers and those customers that were new were not one time c- are not going to be one-time customers because now they have loyalty rewards. So being able to just very quickly be able to just double the rewards value. Marta Fuentes: You just log in, you double it, and put it out there to the world, and, it's actionable things that you can do right there. Now, I know that this is not the same shop that you're talking about, but this is another shop that was in that same position that everybody's in, where Q4 is just painful sometimes. Jimmy Lea: It's hard. It's hard, yeah. So those who are here for the Mars conference, you will be able to find out who it is that Marta and I are talking about. It is two different shops, and it is two different scenarios, two different solutions, both of which is definitely helping shops to produce more and better for their shops. Jimmy Lea: Marta, thank you for showing up here. I really appreciate it. This has been such a great conversation. Marta Fuentes: I love seeing you, Jimmy. Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here, and I can't wait to meet more of you. I actually can't tell who's here and who isn't, so super ex- I Jimmy Lea: can't tell either. Jimmy Lea: Great. No. R- Raleigh over here in the corner he can see what's going on, but I don't know what's going on, Marta Fuentes: that's fine. It's just you and I, Jimmy. Jimmy Lea: It's just you and I. We're having a great conversation. Having a good time. Yeah, so any questions, comments from our audience? If you've got scenarios that you wanna run past an expert, we have Marta here. Jimmy Lea: She is the expert when it comes to customer loyalty, customer retention customer rewards programs, community involvement. I love involving the community in these types of events. Yes, absolutely love this. This is such a good thing. Such a good thing. And I love the idea of hyper-focusing it on those community support programs that need the locals' community. Jimmy Lea: Super fan of that. Marta Fuentes: Me too. Me too. Jimmy Lea: Very cool. Thank you very much, Marta, for being here. Thank you for joining as we are the Institute, and this is the Leading Edge podcast coming to you from Ogden, Utah. This is our world headquarters for global dominance in the automotive aftermarket. And thank you for joining us early on Mars. Jimmy Lea: If you notice, Marta is joining us from Mars, the rover in the background. That just looks like backyard for me. That's St. George, Utah. Scan this QR code. Look forward to seeing you at Mars. Thank you very much. Have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. Marta Fuentes: Thank you, Jimmy
222 - Ask Me Anything: Do Successful Shops Market Differently?
222 - Ask Me Anything: Do Successful Shops Market Differently? October 7, 2026 - 00:56:52 Show Summary: Successful shops create steady car count through consistent marketing and strong customer relationships. Growth comes from combining digital visibility with community involvement and proactive follow up. Shop data helps identify the right customers while measuring which marketing efforts actually work. Strong service advisors turn those opportunities into appointments by clearly communicating value. Long term success depends on attracting loyal customers instead of relying on discounts or loss leaders. A diverse customer base also protects the business from losing too much revenue when one major account disappears. Host(s): Lucas Underwood, Shop Owner of L&N Performance Auto Repair and Changing the Industry Podcast Cecil Bullard, Founder of The Institute Show Highlights: [00:03:00] – Successful shops use multiple marketing strategies to maintain consistent car count. [00:10:00] – Existing clients can provide immediate opportunities when business gets slow. [00:16:00] – Proactive service reminders help customers stay ahead of needed maintenance. [00:23:00] – Small shops can compete through personal service and trusted relationships. [00:28:00] – Marketing investment should support growth and produce measurable returns. [00:33:00] – Long scheduling delays can waste marketing and drive customers elsewhere. [00:39:00] – Service advisors must believe in the process and communicate its value. [00:44:00] – Loss leaders attract price driven customers instead of loyal relationships. [00:49:00] – Use shop data to prepare marketing before predictable slow periods. [00:53:00] – Never let one customer become a dangerous share of revenue. 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/ARmPzbVnvKw 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: Lucas Underwood: Good afternoon, everybody. My name's Lucas Underwood. I own L&M Performance in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, a little itty bitty auto repair shop. I'm also one of the hosts of the Changing the Industry podcast. Today, Cecil Bullard and I are gonna be doing an ask me anything. We're gonna kick it off with marketing, but as you guys know, Cecil and I, we kinda ramble and go all over the place. Lucas Underwood: So it doesn't just have to be a marketing question. If you have a question about shop ownership, jump in in the comment section and ask your questions. Cecil, good afternoon. How are you, sir? Cecil Bullard: I am fantastic. If I, if I was any better, I'd have to be twins. Lucas Underwood: Oh my goodness. I don't think the world is ready for that. Cecil Bullard: No, it's not. Lucas Underwood: At least most of the people at the institute are like, "Oh no, not that." Cecil Bullard: Not that. Lucas Underwood: Oh, man. Cecil Bullard: Um- Probably most of my clients too, so. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Yeah. I, I... Listen, I don't need any more butt chewyns than I get right now. Um, I, I don't need two of you at the same time- Yeah ... coming and, uh, and ripping my shop apart. Lucas Underwood: So, um- Cecil Bullard: Oh, I don't- Lucas Underwood: Cecil? ... Cecil Bullard: your shop apart. Come on now. You do that yourself. Lucas Underwood: I know, right? Hush. Um- Cecil Bullard: Shut your mouth, boy. Lucas Underwood: That's it. Yeah. That's it. Hey, so let's talk marketing here a little bit, and, and I think where we wanna go with this is let's talk about what differentiates a successful shop from, I don't wanna say an unsuccessful shop, but a shop that may not be as successful. Lucas Underwood: Is, is there something that you're seeing in the marketing? When we're looking at, at how they're marketing their shops, the things that they're doing, is there a tell? And, and here's why I think this is a, such a important topic, such an important question, is Cecil, you see these shops differently than everybody else does. Lucas Underwood: You kinda see them, um, in, in the worst of the worst way. You get to see what's broken, and you get to be part of what fixes it. And so you're able to see so many shops with that very, very precise macro, uh, lens where we can see the inner workings of the shop, and I'm just wondering, do you see trends? Do you see things that are like, "Hey, I keep seeing this in successful shops and I don't see it in unsuccessful shops"? Cecil Bullard: It's funny too c- 'cause this, I just had a conversation with a, with a client, um, who is struggling at this point a bit, and, uh, they were like, "Hey, is everybody else struggling right now?" Yeah. You know, we got an election coming up, et cetera. And- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: there are... Everything's on a bell curve. Like, all data is kind of thrown on a bell curve and kinda analyzed that way. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Probably the top 10 or 15% of the shops that are on the curve- Mm-hmm ... are literally the same top 10 or 15%, give or take one or two shops. So you have shops that will move in there and stay in there. You'll have shops that move in and out a little bit. Um, there's a bottom 10% or so, and then there's the rest in the middle. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And there is a difference, right? Lucas Underwood: Okay. Cecil Bullard: And, and, and let's, we're gonna, I'm gonna try to keep it on marketing, but I wanna make a statement here 'cause somebody is gonna come online, uh, one of the trolls is gonna say, "Well, we don't market our shop. We're busy," and all of that. And I'm gonna say- Yeah, I Lucas Underwood: don't need marketing Cecil Bullard: yeah, I'm gonna say, "God bless you," right? Yeah. You must be doing something right. Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: And, uh, I will say that the shops that are consistently consistent, meaning I've got the kinda car count I want, give or take, um, they are doing multiple things in their marketing. So- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: it's not just one thing, right? Cecil Bullard: When you, when you talk about marketing, you know, uh, I don't know, go back 15 years, "Oh, I need a website." And, and if you had a website, you were ahead of anybody else no matter how bad or how good the website was. You were just ahead. Right. Right? And then it's, um, well, now Google, uh, is looking at keywords on the site, and there are things that Google likes and things that Google doesn't like, and so I need to understand what those are. Cecil Bullard: And, um, you know, kinda probably at that point, you know, having my brother-in-law do my site or having, you know, me doing it, um, got out of, out of our range. Yeah. Right? Um, and so we have shops that have these sites that are six, eight, 10 years old. The brother-in-law originally did it, the mother-in-law, whatever, and, um, it's no longer kind of valid, right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah. It's, it's not- Lucas Underwood: It's not effective in today's market ... Cecil Bullard: it's, yeah, the, the, the algorithm changes, uh, I don't know, last year 300 times or something. Yeah. And there were eight or 10 major changes. Major means, you know, minor is we made a little bump here and we decided that one keyword wasn't what this keyword is. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Major is we're gonna completely almost restructure this and think about this differently. So, you know, you kinda move in and all of a sudden, uh, Google Maps has become probably the most important thing, and that's say, four years ago, maybe five years ago. Uh, I need to be on Google Maps, so I need a website. Cecil Bullard: I need, uh, I need to have the right keywords and keyword phrases, and I know that we've changed language a little bit, but we're, i- in a way, we're still talking about keywords and keyword phrases. Whether it's on my, on my website, on our reviews, on my replies to my reviews, on the blog that I have on YouTube or, or Facebook or on my site- Wherever and everywhere Cecil Bullard: and everywhere else or all of that, we're still in a way talking about keywords and key phrases that Google likes. And, uh, then, then all of a sudden it was kind of important that if I was on Google Maps and someone was recommended to my shop by Google, and that person came into my shop and then went on and, and, uh, did a review and did a good review with the right, you know, good keywords in it, blah, blah, blah, uh, that carried more weight, right? Cecil Bullard: And, and the way I, I look at this whole thing, marketing, even just running the shop in, in marketing You know, he who has the most toys wins, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, when I was a kid, it's like, oh, if you have motorcycles and boats and, you know, money in the bank and a big house, and then you won. But in marketing for any business, whether it's shops or anything else, if you have the most, uh, keywords, if you have the most, um, reviews, if you have the- Yeah Cecil Bullard: best reviews, if you have the most replies, if you have the most blogs, if you have the most information on your site. Which by the way, your site, again, people used to get to your site 10 years ago and see your site and go through your pages and read your stuff and some of them. Um- Yeah ... today nobody gets to your site or very few. Cecil Bullard: Exactly. You know? Yeah. Today it's Google takes the information off, the Google spiders or bots or whatever you wanna call them, crawl your site and see how much of that information you have. Uh, now you have AI. So, uh, in the last two years, AI has started to become more and more important, and I can't see any statistical data yet about all of that, but, but, um- AI is starting to take over more and more of the searches. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And, but AI is, is in a way looking for the same things that Google looks for, but in a different, in a different way, right? Yeah, and- It's looking for keywords and phrases and, you know, happy clients that said these guys were great, uh, and stars and all of that, but it's looking in a lot of other places or it, or it's, it's doing that in a little different way. Lucas Underwood: You know, I, I think it's interesting, and, and this is a little off topic. This is a little kind of side, um, side trajectory here. I was- Cecil Bullard: You've never done that, so- Lucas Underwood: I know, right? Cecil Bullard: But go ahead. Lucas Underwood: I was at a conference, um, a couple weeks ago, and at this conference, it was for food and beverage for the family business, and the greats of the greats were there, right? Lucas Underwood: Like Hershey was there, and all of the snack food companies and all of the drink companies and the beer companies and everybody else, and they were talking about how, uh, there are fads and then there are trends that become how humans behave. They shift how humans behave. Cecil Bullard: Right. Lucas Underwood: And they were talking about GLP-1s and, and how it's impacted the snacking business, and they said, you know, Hershey looked at it and said, "We're gonna see a .1 to a .3% decrease in snacking" right? Lucas Underwood: And, and they said, "Here's what this looks like." They didn't think anything about the beer companies. The beer companies went down by 12.3%, and they can- Yeah ... directly correlate that to it. Cecil Bullard: Potato chips, uh- Mm-hmm ... popcorn. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Any of the snack stuff. Lucas Underwood: And so what was interesting to me about that was this terminology, was is it a fad or is it a trend that's beg- going to become human behavior? Lucas Underwood: And they were saying that the GLP-1 is something that has staying power, where many of the other things, gluten-free, fat-free, all of those- Fads ... things were short-lived fads, right? Fads. Yeah. And so it makes me question, you know. And, and I think when we look at AI, I think AI is here to stay. Yeah, Cecil Bullard: I- I Lucas Underwood: think the algorithm changes- Yeah Lucas Underwood: and the websites and all of those things kind of classify as fads. And I'm, I'm not saying they're not important, but I think if, if we have seen something in marketing in the past 20 years that's gonna shift the way that auto repair obtains clients, I think AI is it. And I, I'm gonna tell you this. I'm dealing with this every day. Lucas Underwood: I know you talk to your clients. They're dealing with it every day. I've got a situation where if you go and you search how much to on Google, it pops up and it shows them what we pay for the part, and it says, "That should be X number of hours." It's nowhere close to accurate But consumers see that and they just take it as the truth. Lucas Underwood: And you wanna talk about something that is having a negative impact on shops, that's doing it. Cecil, we've got two questions, and, and so I wanna make sure we answer these questions as we go. We'll get too far behind if we don't. The first one is, "We are slow right now. I'm looking for ideas to quickly pick up car count." Lucas Underwood: This is something that I went through at the beginning of the year. Cecil Bullard: Mm-hmm. Lucas Underwood: And I'm gonna tell you that especially when it's slow, right? Because there, there are market impacting factors. For us, it was that people couldn't get out of their driveways. Mm-hmm. There was nothing we could do. Cecil Bullard: Ice, et cetera. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And so it was picking up the telephone and saying, "Hey, you wanna bring your car in? I'll come get it" Yeah ... or whatever I've gotta do. I'll get the car here, right? And so that's been a big one for me, is picking up the telephone, calling existing clients, reminding them about services that were needed, that kind of thing to buffer that. Lucas Underwood: Cecil, what, what's your recommendation? Cecil Bullard: Number one, never be desperate like that. So again, going back to, say, the top 15%. Yeah. The top 15% are marketing continuously in multiple ways. So they don't just have a website. They don't just have SEO, SEM. They don't just have, uh, AI. They don't just have social media. Cecil Bullard: They're also involved in the community. They're a member of the chamber. Yeah. They have some kind of a business networking group that they're involved in. Um, they supported- Involved. Lucas Underwood: I, I, I need to stop you ... Cecil Bullard: involved. Lucas Underwood: Involved. I need to stop you right there. Involved. Yeah. Yeah, I- Signing up and paying the chamber bill is not being involved. Cecil Bullard: No, you have to go- Yeah ... and you actually have to, um, put yourself out. Yeah. Uh, I used to corner people who I'd seen at the chamber for two years who'd never brought their car in, and shake their hand and say, "Hey, I haven't seen your car yet," right? Yeah. "You know, when you want the best, we'll be here." And then I'd walk away, but th- Yeah Cecil Bullard: pretty much I would do that, like, eight or 10 or 12 times, and pretty soon that per- person would come in. 'Cause it's... The other thing about marketing is timing. Like, um, you need two things. You need visibility, so the, the average person needs to know that you're there, right? And they may not. And then you also need, um, a reason for them to come to you, right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And it, and it's also about timing. So, uh, they need to have a problem or something going on on th- on their car. So now I still wanna answer this particular question. So number one, don't ever get in that position, right? Yeah. But if you're in that position- Yeah ... you know, um, the first thing I would do is I would look back at, um... Cecil Bullard: We have a thing called 20 calls. Lucas Underwood: Okay. Cecil Bullard: And so we would look, and we would see who had appointments that didn't come in, right? And so get on the phone, and you know, it, it doesn't matter even for the last month and a half, if anybody made an appointment, never showed up, get on the phone and call those people. Lucas Underwood: Yes. Cecil Bullard: Right? Now's a good time. Don't necessarily discount here or anything, but, "Hey, we're just following up. We had an appointment three weeks ago. You didn't make it. You know, does the car still need help? You know, do you still need something?" And if you wanna go pick it up, go pick it up. I mean- Yeah ... holy smokes, right? Cecil Bullard: What, what a service. Um, uh, num- number two there would be, right on 20 calls would be, what about all the people that needed work that didn't buy that work? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So I've got clients that bought half the work but didn't buy all the work, and so I go back, say, 90 days, 180 days, I make a list of those people, and I call 'em up and I say, "Hey, yeah, I'm calling, you know, from, uh, from Larry's, and, uh, I'm just kinda updating, uh, my information. Cecil Bullard: I wanna make sure I have you in this right. And y- you like, you know, you like text, and this is the phone number," and blah, blah, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and you know, uh, I see here that you were in three months ago, and you had these things that you needed. Um, you know, we're at, at, right now, uh, for us, things are, uh, this is one of our slow seasons, and so I'm- Yeah Cecil Bullard: I'm calling really to say, is it time for you to get that stuff done?" And at, this is a point where I might do s- a little bit of discounting, and I might not. I might give them another reason like, you know, every, "For everyone that comes in, we're gonna extend your warranty," or, or something like that, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And then, uh, third, uh, would be, um, uh, looking at TSBs. So I might look up all the people that have XYZ Cadillac or XYZ, you know, Ford F-150s, and I would look for TSBs, and I would say, "Is this an important TSB?" I mean, it, it, it isn't, "Hey, the radio got updated," it's- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: it's, you know, "If you keep starting this thing, it's gonna catch on fire," right? Cecil Bullard: Right. Or whatever. And, and so then I would call people and say, "Hey, you know, um, you know, Ford has issued a TSB. I wanted to make you aware of it. It's nothing to be worried about, but it's, it's- Yeah ... it's probably a good reason to get in and get a look at the car and make sure that that stuff has been taken care of and that everything's okay." Cecil Bullard: And that gives you the opportunity to get it in, uh, get it looked at, and, and look at other things also, and another- Yeah ... chance to talk to that person and sell that person. So those are- That's 20 calls Lucas Underwood: I, I love it. And, and here's the thing is like our shop management software is now, I use Shopware, and so I can see exactly what cars brought me the most revenue- Yeah Lucas Underwood: and what I service the most. And so I could just look up those cars and call those clients and, and, you know, just share information with them about the automobile, right? Call and talk to them about things that are going on, you know, build, build some rapport with them- Yeah ... communicate with them. Lucas Underwood: Especially as a smaller shop, that's a lot easier to do. Um, and so, you know, for me, right, when I started, I was a diesel guy, and so all I worked on was 5.9 liter Cummins for the most part. And there were things that I just knew about those trucks. So I would just pick up the phone and call and say, "Hey, Bob. Lucas Underwood: Hey, listen, that thing has got an oil bottle on the front of the crankcase. They're known to clog the radiators up. I just, you know, I realized I hadn't seen you in a while, and I wanna make sure that you're emptying that, that blow-by bottle to prevent it from cleaning, you know, clogging the radiator up. Lucas Underwood: Have you, have you taken care of that? I just wanted to remind you." Right? And that, that genuine connection makes a big difference. Cecil, let's go to the next question, because this is really a two-part question Well, I Cecil Bullard: wanna get, I, I, I wanna, uh, I, I still need a little more on that question. Lucas Underwood: Okay. Go ahead. Lucas Underwood: So Cecil Bullard: on the, on the 20 calls, one more thing would be if they're past their appointment for when they should be servicing their vehicle. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I look at when they were in. Lucas Underwood: Sure. Cecil Bullard: It's eight months out, we haven't seen them. That car should've been serviced at maybe five months or six months or four months. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I'm gonna make a call, because I am your professional- Absolutely ... who's supposed to be helping you take care of your car and reminding you about those things. And then I'm gonna- Yeah ... put one more, one more- Yeah ... in the pile. And this is something you can't do very often, but, you know, we did a thing, uh, we did a mailer to, uh, our clients, and we said, um, "Hey, uh, you know, February's kind of slow for us. Cecil Bullard: And so, uh, for the next 10 people that call in and book an appointment with us, uh, you get a free large pizza, whatever you want on it, from Giuseppe's"- Yeah ... blah, blah, blah. And I bought pizzas from Giuseppe's, and, uh, on that p- and, and again, we, I only did that maybe once or twice a year on a very slow period. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, uh, I had 18 appointments booked. Yeah. And it was funny to me, because, you know, number 11, 12, 13, no, you didn't qualify, but I was like, "Congratulations, you're number 10." You know? "Congratulations"- That's it ... "you're number 10." Lucas Underwood: That's Cecil Bullard: it. And we booked, you know, we booked 18 appointments just with a, an email to our client base at the time. Lucas Underwood: That, Cecil Bullard: that right- And so, all right, I'll, uh- Yeah ... that's, I just wanted to... There are th- and then also maybe just get out and knock on some doors and talk to the- Hey, I'm Lucas Underwood: telling you, Cecil Bullard: it works ... people within three blocks of your business, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. You know? It works. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: I, I've got a question. When we talk about how many visits a year, right? Lucas Underwood: Because a, a lot of shops are not tracking it. They don't know. Yeah. And so, you know, most of the shop management softwares, I know you can look in, in Shopware and you can see that data. How many visits a year should we be seeing? I, I've, I've been talking to shops that, you know, I'm seeing them .5 times a year, and I'm talking to shops that are seeing them four times a year. Lucas Underwood: And I always thought ARO would be the difference maker, but I'm not really seeing any correlation between ARO and visits per year. What, what is the, the target that we should be looking for, Cecil? Cecil Bullard: Well, it de- it depends on your service schedule. Okay. So we, we ran 300 oil tests at our shop, and, uh, we didn't see real degradation starting until about 5,000 miles. Cecil Bullard: So we created a 6,000 mile service schedule for our clients, and the average person where we were at drove just a little over 13,000 miles a year. So I want to see you at least twice a year. Yeah. Currently, if you, if you look at the stats, and it's probably two years old, it might be a little different now, but the average car came in 1.2 times a year. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Well, the average car a- at least should be in your shop twice a year, in my opinion. And probably for many shops, three times a year, because of the driving habits and the conditions. Yeah. So, and, and the, the thing is, like- We often think like, uh, technicians as owners. So even in our marketing and what we're doing, we think like, "Well, I'm a tech, so, so I know what to do. Cecil Bullard: I know to take care of my car. I know when it's..." I, I can tell you right now, at 21,000 miles, my truck needs to get in and get serviced. Yeah. Um, 'cause it's in my head. But if, if you ask my wife when her car needs to be serviced- She would say, "What do you mean it needs to be serviced?" Right? Right. Yeah. And so my average customer is my wife, it's not me. Cecil Bullard: Yes. They don't remember, so we need a program to get them scheduled, to give them information, to... Even if I have to call them and say, "Hey, you know, you're a month past due, uh, to have your car serviced. Do you know that if you take care of your car it's gonna last you a lot longer, it's gonna break down less, it's gonna save you money and time and aggravation? Cecil Bullard: Let's get the thing scheduled in." Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: I love it. And, and most people that you call are gonna say, "Oh my God, I didn't realize I was past due." Lucas Underwood: That far over. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right, let's move on to the next question. We're gonna do this one as a two-part. Good afternoon, guys. So for a one-man shop, is there such thing as too much marketing? Lucas Underwood: And then also ask what kind of jobs should a one-man shop be doing? Because I, I think that's important, right? I, I learned a valuable lesson. Cecil Bullard: Mm-hmm. Lucas Underwood: You can market to bring anybody you want in your shop, and your marketing can attract a specific type of client. Cecil Bullard: Any types of jobs, types of cars, types of people, et cetera. Lucas Underwood: And I, I'm gonna tell you, I, I learned this lesson, 'cause he's asked another question right down here that, that he says, "Hey, what should we do about all this diesel performance work, 'cause all these people wanna bring their own parts?" And I have lived that life, okay? That's, that's where I started. That's where I was. Lucas Underwood: And I'm gonna tell you right now, a one-man shop, like that diesel performance life ain't for you. Because the- There's Cecil Bullard: no money in it. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. And, and look, yes, they can buy their parts online. Yeah. I started putting the same margin on them I put on everything else, and I said, "Look, you can buy that part, but it doesn't come with my expertise." Cecil Bullard: And many of them- Or my warranty or anything else. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. And many of them opted to go somewhere else because they could buy the part cheaper, and they'd already looked it up, and they'd invested in all this time and energy in what it was gonna look like, what it was gonna feel like, the whole nine yards. Lucas Underwood: And, and what I found with that was is that market is too volatile and too dangerous. Because you get into a time like right now, diesel fuel prices go through the roof, the economy gets tough, guess what they stop spending money on? Cecil Bullard: Yep. Lucas Underwood: They stop spending money on the fun things like that, and they go back to the basics, the necessities. Cecil Bullard: So- Just keeping it on the road. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. If I am a, if I'm a auto repair shop owner and I'm a one-man band, buddy, you can believe that I am attracting folks that need brakes done, that need steering and suspension done, that need basic minor maintenance and repairs. Cecil Bullard: Coolant flush, brake Lucas Underwood: flush- Cecil Bullard: Yeah Cecil Bullard: suspension work, uh, axles. Lucas Underwood: Yes. Absolutely. And I'm, I'm a- And then- Go ahead. Cecil Bullard: There's another piece to this. Yeah. You know, I, I have a client up in the Minnesota area, small business. Mm-hmm. Uh, him and, and two techs, and he's not... They're not doing enough 'cause they don't have enough. Yeah. There's, they've been marketing, they're working on it. Cecil Bullard: Um, I'm not necessarily sure I'm happy with the marketing company they're using. But- Um, they're not doing, like, timing chains or- Yeah ... any- they're not pulling the, the engine apart at all, ever. And I'm like, "How many of those could I have sold last month?" Well, three of them. Well, those are like $3,500 jobs. Cecil Bullard: If I don't have enough work- Yeah ... I'm probably bringing that in and doing it, right? Yeah, Lucas Underwood: for sure. And- If I, if it's in my wheelhouse, if I have the capabilities. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, if I can do it, if I have the tools- Yeah ... and the knowledge and et cetera. But- Lucas Underwood: You know, here, here's, here's what I would say to somebody asking me this question, okay? Lucas Underwood: And, and I have talked to a lot of small shops, and I, I'll tell them the same thing that I learned a very hard way. You are a boutique, right? And, and I'm not saying that you sell flowers and and flowery dresses and pocketbooks and stuff like that. That's not what I'm getting at. I'm saying you're a highly specialized operation, right? Lucas Underwood: And you have a very personal touch, and that means that in most cases, because you're a one-man band, that consumer interacts with you directly. Cecil Bullard: Yep. Lucas Underwood: And so as opposed to going and marketing myself as someone who's trying to say, "Hey, I wanna do brake jobs," what I'm doing is I'm marketing myself as, "Hey, I'm your auto repair professional, and my job is to keep you and your family safe and in a reliable vehicle. Lucas Underwood: So when you bring your car to me, I'm looking it over to ensure that all the maintenance needs are taken care of. If maintenance is important to you, and, and the reliability of this automobile, and having the opportunity to talk with somebody who really genuinely knows you and cares about your family, and you know the person doing the work on the car," like, that's what I offer. Lucas Underwood: Well- And so that in itself brings in more maintenance work- Right ... and it, it creates that environment where they feel more comfortable- Well- ... you know, purchasing additional services ... Cecil Bullard: and, and, and I don't know, somewhere between 80 and 90% of the population, that's what they want. They don't- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: necessarily want the cheapest job. Cecil Bullard: They certainly don't want the cheapest part on their car. What they want is that relationship, right? Yeah. Someone they can trust and feel good about and feel like they spent their money wisely, that kind of stuff. For sure. And so- Lucas Underwood: Absolutely ... Cecil Bullard: but, but there's also games to be played- Yeah ... uh, if we talk marketing. Cecil Bullard: So in, in my shop, we tracked vehicle makes and, uh, how much people spent. And in my shop, the average Jeep owner spent almost $1,500 on their Jeep when they came in. Yeah. And so that was the highest average repair order we had at the time. Right. And so we did marketing that was specific to Jeeps, and this is at a time where it wasn't as easy as it is today. Cecil Bullard: Today- I could have Jeep content, I could do Jeep blogs, I could, you know, uh, in my reviews I could talk about Jeep and your Jeep and what we did on your Jeep and all that kind of stuff. And, um, I could, I could bring more Jeep customers in. And I think the other thing is, uh, you know, when we're talking about if someone's doing my marketing for me, which is really what you want- Lucas Underwood: Mm-hmm. Cecil Bullard: Absolutely. Agree 100% ... um, they are looking at the search terms that people are using, your competitors and in your community that are the highest hit search terms. Mm-hmm. So, you know, i- if, if nobody has a Jeep in my area and nobody's searching for Jeep, I don't wanna be putting a bunch of time and effort into Jeep. Cecil Bullard: If they all have Subarus, then I wanna put time and effort into Subaru, right? Yeah. Or if they're all looking for... I mean, if brakes is ... I may not wanna be the just the brake guy. I certainly don't. I wanna be the, I wanna be the doctor that you come to that gives you great advice about taking care of your car, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: That- that's who I wanna be. But if people are searching using brakes as a term to search in my neighborhood, and that's, you know, in the top 15- Yeah ... then I wanna make sure I have brake data and brake information and brake whatever everywhere that I am out there, whether I'm doing, um, you know, whether I'm doing blogs or whether I'm doing- Yeah Cecil Bullard: some short videos, or whether I'm, it's keywords and, and key phrases on my site or et cetera. I wanna make sure that I'm, uh, I'm... A- and if you're company that you're hiring is not looking at the key search terms and, and adjusting what you're doing 'cause there's games to be played, right? Lucas Underwood: You know, and, and that, that rolls us into something that's important because it, it is one of his questions, how much should we be spending? Lucas Underwood: You know- Mm-hmm ... when you're a one-man band, I, I use Shop Marketing Pros. They do mine. Yeah. Love them. They're great. And one of the things about that is, is that you use one of those companies in a one-man band, it is gonna be a much higher percentage of your gross income as a small shop than it would be if you're a 10, 15, 20 bay facility, right? Lucas Underwood: Well, if you- Of the fees. How, how do we, how do we judge what we should pay? Cecil Bullard: If you look at the whole industry, it's becoming more and more difficult. Um, the, the cost of having a shop, of owning a shop, of starting a shop has gone up. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And marketing, I think, is one of those things that maybe 15 years ago we didn't do much of it, but today I need to be doing it pretty consistently. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And marketing can be hiring a company, make sure I have a website, SEO, SEM. Certainly- Yeah ... to me, and, and social media and, and, uh, AI, that's like basic stuff that I have to have. Lucas Underwood: Yes. Cecil Bullard: But marketing can also be me going to BNI meetings, me going to supporting a local, uh, you know, baseball team, uh, whatever. Cecil Bullard: So marketing- Yeah ... is a, this is broad range. Actually, marketing's even pricing and how my shop looks. If you really get to the real definition- Yeah ... it's very broad. Um- I need to be spend- spending somewhere between 6 and 9% of my income. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So doing 100 grand, I'm probably spending somewhere around 6,000 if I wanna maintain, and about 9,000 if I wanna grow. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And I might even spend 10 or 11 for six months because I wanna grow my business and grow Lucas Underwood: database. But you Cecil Bullard: better Lucas Underwood: make sure it's effective. Well, Cecil Bullard: that's the other thing. Lucas Underwood: You better, you better not set it and forget it at 9% or 10% or 11- No ... or 12. Well- You better be monitoring it. Cecil Bullard: But, but that's the other thing. Cecil Bullard: If I'm gonna spend money on something, I'm gonna monitor and I'm gonna set a ROI, right? Uh, I want, I used to want an eight to one return on investment. And by the way, when I was running my shops, it cost us about $67 to bring a new customer in. Today, that number is probably triple, right? Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Oh, easy. Cecil Bullard: And- Lucas Underwood: Easy Cecil Bullard: uh, so a lot of sh- I, I hear from shops, I look at their stuff, and they're spending 300, $400 to bring a new customer in. I'm, I'm Lucas Underwood: gonna tell you- Cecil Bullard: God, you do that ... you wanna talk about Lucas Underwood: sick as a shop owner. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: When, when you're hearing that advisor let that client off the phone without asking them for an appointment, and you're like- Well, Cecil Bullard: that's the other, Lucas Underwood: that's- Lucas Underwood: that was a $400 telephone call. Cecil Bullard: Right. But that's the other part of this, is that not only do I need, uh, am I gonna spend money, but if I'm gonna spend money- Yeah ... I need to track what's ha- how many calls am I getting, and how many of those are legitimate potential clients, and then how many of those are booking appointments. Cecil Bullard: And- Lucas Underwood: And let Cecil Bullard: me tell you- And I watch, I watch service advisors every day, and it frustrates me 'cause I'm in shops, and I'll hear the service advisor, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no. Yeah. Um"- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... " Cecil Bullard: uh, that's about $600. Oh, okay. Bye." Click. Never asked for the appointment. Yeah. Didn't build any value. Didn't build a relat- nothing. Lucas Underwood: And- Cecil Bullard: And Lucas Underwood: so- And listen, th- this rolls into this next question, okay? Yeah. Because this is where this next question's gotta go. It says, "We have appointment confirmation texts and calls to confirm, but people still a no-show." Yeah. And, and look, I'm gonna tell you, charging them a no-show fee and having a no-show policy is only gonna scare more people away. Lucas Underwood: That's not the solution. The solution's having a good service advisor that knows how to convey the value of what you're offering- Yeah ... and makes them want to bring the car in. Well, Cecil Bullard: and having- And then send Lucas Underwood: reminders and marketing after the fact, great. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And, a- and, and certainly you need to have a good reminder system. Cecil Bullard: We called our- Yeah ... our clients the day before they were supposed to be here, and, and- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you know, uh, uh, talked to 30, 40% of them. Didn't talk to the rest, left a message. Uh, I think we had a 93%, um, made the, you know, made the appointment, showed up for the appointment rate. Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: Uh, pricing and what you're doing, so if you're running, like, discount oil change, or if you're one of the more- Uh, least expensive places- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: you're gonna have a, a, a higher no-show rate. I, I guarantee it. Because when, when someone sees value in what you do and they're willing to pay that price, they're also more willing to show up on time. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And show up where- Yeah. So ... they're supposed to be. And, and- Yeah ... so that, that's all. I wanna, I, I wanna go back just, like, one step. Cecil Bullard: Uh, th- one of the questions was, you know, "I'm a single guy, um, you know, when do I stop marketing?" Well, first of all, I don't think you ever stop. Yeah. But I do believe that it, it, it depends on scheduling and a lot of things. I think that shops need to have the ability to bring a new client in within 48 hours. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Preferably 24, but 48, okay? Lucas Underwood: Amen, buddy. Cecil Bullard: And I think if you can't bring a potentially, a new person never come to you within 48 hours, Lucas Underwood: then- You're Cecil Bullard: not Lucas Underwood: getting them ... Cecil Bullard: and you make an appointment a week out, they're probably not gonna show up. Because they don't know you, you haven't built a relationship yet. Cecil Bullard: Uh, they're just gonna get on the, on the phone or on the internet and- Find somebody else ... make an appointment somewhere else. And if that person... I, I, I had, um, I don't know. Oh, um, my mom had dementia. Mm-hmm. After the surgery, my, my, the brain thing, my memory's not quite as good, especially for names. So I wanna get checked out. Cecil Bullard: And I called the, you know, the brain doctor that my doctor recommended, and they're like, "Yeah, we, we're, we're booking in, uh, April, May of-" November Lucas Underwood: of next year ... Cecil Bullard: next year. I'm like, "Are you kidding?" Yeah. "I might be, you know, drooling by then." I, I don't know, right? And- I Lucas Underwood: don't know that they're gonna change that, Cecil. Lucas Underwood: I mean- Cecil Bullard: No, they won't ... Lucas Underwood: we've been friends a long time. Cecil Bullard: They won't. Depends. But- This is- But- Lucas Underwood: This plays back into the same question, though. Right? Cecil Bullard: Like- Yeah, but I, I booked an appointment with these guys. Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: Okay? In April or whatever, May. Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: And then I got on the, on, online and looked up three other guys, and I- Yeah Cecil Bullard: found one of them that would get me in, uh, I think it's Monday. Like- Right ... a week away. And by the way- Yeah ... he might be the worst, you know- ... brain guy in the world, but Lucas Underwood: I'm- It's in the back of a Chinese Cecil Bullard: restaurant ... I got an appointment. Yeah. It's like a- Above or be- it's below the U-Haul, above the Chinese restaurant or whatever, right? Cecil Bullard: You know. But- Lucas Underwood: Oh ... Cecil Bullard: but y- so scheduling and how you schedule and leaving some time open for that. But if you, if you're at a point where you're booked, say, three days out and you can't get anybody in for three days- Then the money you're spending on marketing, a lot of that money's wasted money. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Cecil Bullard: Okay? Cecil Bullard: Exactly. And I'm not saying stop, but I might slow down a little bit. And then if you're booked- Or, or Lucas Underwood: figure how to make the shop more efficient. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, I, I, yeah, well, that too. Um, just had that discussion with, with one of our coaches and one of the clients. But the, the, the other thing is, if I'm booked out three weeks or four weeks, then I need to raise my price. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? Yeah, absolutely. I, I've got to get rid of the bottom 20%. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Just get rid of them. And I'm not gonna stop marketing- And, and you wanna talk about- ... because I wanna keep bringing in really good people that fit my model, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. You, you wanna talk about driving no-shows through the roof- Yeah Lucas Underwood: you put them out a week. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Right? You put them out a week. Cecil Bullard: And, and it's- You go more than three days, and, and a lot of people are not gonna show up. Now, if it's one of my clients- Yeah ... that I know well and I built a relationship Lucas Underwood: with- They, they will, yes ... Cecil Bullard: they'll wait a week or two. They don't have a problem. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. You put them out a month, they're probably- Yeah, you can forget it ... gonna try to find somebody else. They get worried. Lucas Underwood: You can forget it. Um- And I, I'm gonna tell you something. I talk to people all the time about this, and, and it is not something that, that, um That, that goes over very well, if you will. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. But I talk to them all the time and I say, "Oh, you're a week out. You're a month out. You're three months out." And then I say, "How many technicians do you have?" And they say, "I have this many technicians." I said, "Okay, what's your effective labor rate?" Yeah. And they tell me. And I said, "Okay, now what was your- What's your Cecil Bullard: productivity? Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... exact- Well, I'll ask them, I'll say, "What was your revenue?" And they'll tell me, and then I'll run the numbers and I'll say, "So you're billing four hours a day- Yeah ... but you're booked out for three months." Cecil Bullard: And I have three techs. Lucas Underwood: This is not being booked out, friend. Cecil Bullard: And I have three techs, right? Yeah. I mean, you're like, I- a new client yesterday, I'm, I'm talking to him and I'm like, uh, "So how many techs do we have?" Cecil Bullard: "Oh, we've got four." "How many bays do we have?" "We have six." "Oh, that's wonderful, wonderful. So we're doing about 200,000 a month, right?" And he goes, "No, we did 70,000 last month." I mean, you're, you're at 35% productivity. Right. And no wonder you might be booked out a month. Yeah. And by the way, if you get booked out past probably three days- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: there starts to be diminishing return. Lucas Underwood: And, and let me tell you something else about that that's really important, because this is something we've just ran into with the shop. I am not afraid to talk a- about our dirty laundry here at the shop. Yeah. I am not perfect by any means, and you know that, and I share very openly. Lucas Underwood: We- we've got a series coming out with Eric Joran where we're talking about the financials, and I'm, I'm very open about this stuff. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Um, and one of the things that we saw happen is we had a staff member who has been undergoing some type of personal issue or something, and this was a pivotal member of the team whose production dropped substantially, right? Lucas Underwood: And we're talking about two years ago was at 1,500 hours year to date. Last year was 1,100. This year we're barely at 800 hours. Wow. And they control the throughput of the shop in a lot of ways. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And what happened was it burnt the front-of-house staff because they kept taking cars- They can't Cecil Bullard: work out. Cecil Bullard: Yeah ... and they couldn't get the work out. And now, now the customers are calling and pressuring and- Lucas Underwood: And upset with them, right? And- Cecil Bullard: I'll say my blood pressure's gone up, you know- Yeah ... 100 points. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. And so what did they do? They started retracting and they started scheduling out further and further. Lucas Underwood: But- And then it, it... And so I, I guess I say that to say this: as a shop owner, right, who has not been in the shop that much, I'm over here like, "What? What in the... Why is the world on fire? What's wrong?" Cecil Bullard: Well, Lucas Underwood: that's- And I- I started looking for the simpler explanations as opposed to trying to come up with this huge thing that was wrong. Cecil Bullard: Well, that's the other part about managing is you- Yeah ... you, you have to understand what happens. So when the shop is backed up, all of a sudden there's a lot more pressure on the service advisors. The service advisors, whether they're aware of it or not, whether they're doing it consciously, will start to back off on car count. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: They'll slow it down. Yeah. So they can get stuff out, so they can get a handle on it, get control of it. And, and somebody needs to be paying attention. How many cars should we have had? Oh, we're supposed to have 13 cars. We only scheduled 10. Yeah. Okay, why? Well, we're booked out too far. Yeah. Okay. You know, it's, it's... Cecil Bullard: I was, I was talking to someone again just before, and I said, "You know, you, you're driving a Toyota Tundra and, you know, you could do 90 on the freeway pretty consistently. The, the... If it's a, if it's a good truck, it's gonna run well." Yeah. "But what if you could only do 50?" Right? Would you keep driving it, right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And the answer is no. You'd take it into a shop. You'd say, "It won't go over 50." And then they would diagnose the problem and solve the problem. As an owner, you're looking at your shop and you're saying, "You know, I have three techs. I want... I, I don't know, if my average repair order is where it should be, I, I need about three hours a car. Cecil Bullard: That's where it ought to be. And so that would mean I need three cars per tech, and then I want one extra. So if I have three techs, I want 10 cars a day." Right? And that's assuming that your average repair order's correct, and you're doing good inspections, and you got- Yeah ... good relationships selling. And but what if I'm not getting 11, you know, 10 cars? Cecil Bullard: What if I'm only getting six, right? Yeah. Is it a flow problem? Is it a my service advisor's backing off? I'm spending this money on marketing. My phone's ringing. Yeah. But we're really telling people, "No, don't come here," right? Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Cecil Bullard: Um- Lucas Underwood: Exactly ... Cecil Bullard: and or is it that my techs are standing around with nothing to do because we don't have the car count, and it's really that my service advisor doesn't have the skill to set the appointment, right? Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: And, and, and he can- Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. Doesn't Cecil Bullard: have Lucas Underwood: the ability- Right ... to close it. Cecil Bullard: Can they ho- Lucas Underwood: I, you know, one of the things that we talked about this morning in my shop was is I, I listened to a couple telephone calls, and it's like they were apologizing for our process. Yeah. And I'm like, "Our process is the benefit." Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Right? You're, you're saying, "Well, I'm sorry. You're gonna have to drop that thing off. Is, is that gonna be okay?" It's- Cecil Bullard: No. You, you drop it off 'cause it's the best thing in the world, and it's the best way to take care of your car. Exactly. It's the best Lucas Underwood: thing for you- Yeah ... the consumer. Yeah. Right? And anybody who tells you it's not is lying to you. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Um- And if your people don't... A- again, you know- Yeah ... my staff needs to believe in what we're doing and why we do it, and they need to see that as a benefit to the c- client, the business, and themselves. Exactly. If they don't, then they're gonna be apologizing or making ex- nothing worse to go into a restaurant- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: and you're sitting there, and the waitress is telling you all the sh- the bad crap that the chef does- There's roaches in the kitchen ... and the management does. Yeah. And, you know, and, and you're like, "Okay. Well, I, I don't know that I wanna eat here," right? And- Lucas Underwood: Right ... Cecil Bullard: and pretty soon I'm walking out, uh, because the em- I've s- I've seen shops do it where a tech'll come up and talk bad about the shop or a service advisor- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: to a, to a cus- a client. Yeah. Holy smokes. You never make that. 100%. You never do that. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, Cecil Bullard: for sure. You apologize when you make mistakes- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: but you believe in, in what's going on. There's a- If Lucas Underwood: you don't believe in it, just move on, buddy. Just- Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Next ... Lucas Underwood: just on down the road. Next question, and, and- Please Lucas Underwood: this is, this is kind of an important one because this is something I fell victim to, uh, early on as a one-man band especially. And, and he says, "Hey"- One-man band here. Are loss leaders something that I should be considering? I, I'm gonna tell you, with the amount of work that you can produce as a one-man band, there should never be a reason to have a loss leader to drive cars in that door. Lucas Underwood: You should be able to develop the car count that you need through, through, you know, community outreach- Yeah ... one-on-one with, with your consumers, doing a good experience. Cecil Bullard: Walking around your, your, uh- Yeah ... your business neighborhood and meeting the, the people. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. You Cecil Bullard: know, trying to get with the rotary. Cecil Bullard: You, Lucas Underwood: you should be able to handle more than enough work doing Cecil Bullard: that as a one man. Yeah. And, and by the way, I don't care if you have a, if you have a, you're a one-man band or you have 10 people in your shop. Yeah. Loss leaders are crap. I, I mean- Yeah ... I'm an anti-loss leader guy. You don't think that- Yeah ... the, you know, um, so let's say that the local restaurant said that, "Hey, we wanna get you in, so we have this $2 meal for you," right? Lucas Underwood: Mm-hmm. Cecil Bullard: Um, uh, you don't think that- People understand that you're gonna come in on $2, but you're never gonna spend two. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: You're gonna buy, you're gonna have to buy the drink, and you're gonna have to buy the, the extras, and you're gonna have to buy fries, 'cause it doesn't come with fries, and you're gonna, you know- Yeah Cecil Bullard: and, and pretty soon you're gonna spend 15, 20, $25, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: People, the, the smart people, which by the way, I don't want the dumb people in my shop. Dumb people get in my way. They, they- Lucas Underwood: Well, shoot, Sas, I can't come to your shop anymore. Cecil Bullard: They plug it up. No, you're not dumb, buddy. I know that. So, so you, you got that old country boy thing going on, but it's a, it's a ruse. Cecil Bullard: You're very smart. Uh, so, um, the smart people understand money. Yeah. They understand the value of money. And anybody, I would say e- even coaching companies, stop telling this- Yeah ... to do loss leaders in our industry. Who else does that? I mean, you know, yeah, I get it that the McDonald's has a, a, a dollar menu, or now it's a $3 menu or whatever, but that's McDonald's. Cecil Bullard: I, I'm gonna- Lucas Underwood: You know? Look, I'm gonna kick the hornets' nest. Yeah. Because o- our dear friend, and somebody who has had a massive impact on- Cecil Bullard: Yeah ... Lucas Underwood: who I am as a human being and, and as a shop owner, old Dutch, right? Dutch's beef always was is we're not a commodity. And- We're Cecil Bullard: not ... Lucas Underwood: that, that mentality, right, of I'm gonna be Walmart. Lucas Underwood: You see, here's the thing about Walmart. Walmart has a thousand of those products on the shelf. They have a thousand of those products in the stockroom. And so when they discount the price, what they're trying to do is they're trying to make it up in volume, and they have other- Yeah ... ways. Uh, I mean, I'm gonna tell you something. Lucas Underwood: You know how I talked about that conference that I was at before ASTA? Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: They were talking about how many more profit percentage points you could make by the placement of a pack of gummies in the right place at the Cecil Bullard: right time. The right, the right product at the right place. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Yeah. And the right packaging saying the right thing, right? Cecil Bullard: Well, Lucas Underwood: there's a- There's a science Cecil Bullard: to it ... a sci- yeah, there's a whole science behind that, and Walmart- Yeah ... understands. W- w- I read the- They master Lucas Underwood: it ... Cecil Bullard: I read Walmart book, it's probably been 15 years ago or something. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: They knew when you came in, you bought three items, they knew you spent $69. Right. The average person did that. Cecil Bullard: Yes. And they knew where you bought those items from, right? Yeah. Uh, you bought a lot less items from the top shelf and the bottom shelf than you did from the shelf that's right in front of you Um, you bought a lot more stuff on the end shelves. And they actually, like, if you wanna come in and put your bread on my, in my place- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: um, I'll let you put it on the bottom shelf at no cost, but if you're gonna put it here, it's gonna cost you X. Exactly. And if you're gonna put it on the end, it's gonna cost you more, right? Absolutely. Lucas Underwood: And Cecil Bullard: they get all of that. Uh- Yep ... as small business people in the automotive industry, we think we're a commodity, and we just are- We're not Cecil Bullard: if you are, you're screwed. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Okay? Exactly. And listen, there, there's models. And, and I think folks get really excited about those models, and they hear about how much money they do, and they hear about all this stuff. The, the big thing that I'll tell you about those models is this: is when you see them using that loss leader model, you're seeing them in a big community, and you're seeing them with a shop full of techs, and they've got a massive shop. Lucas Underwood: They've invested a lot of money, and it is all about volume. And so it seems like a really great idea until you understand the logistics of what actually goes behind the scenes to make that Cecil Bullard: happen. So the, so the other thing, uh, you, when you talk about, like, a small business- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: you're starting out. If you build your business on loss leaders and discounts- And then- You just Lucas Underwood: built some Cecil Bullard: really crappy clients Cecil Bullard: two years from now you decide to take those away because now you have a database full of clients- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: those clients are expecting loss leaders and discounts. Yes. And if you're not gonna give them to them, that was the reason they were coming to you. Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: And so that's- Lucas Underwood: Massive client attrition overnight Cecil Bullard: the, the hardest job I have is taking a company that's built their business on loss leaders and, and- Yeah ... discounts and turning them into a value company. Absolutely. Takes a year to two years to do that, and it's very painful. So- I mean, it Lucas Underwood: reaffirms their fears. Cecil Bullard: Yeah Lucas Underwood: Right? Like, have you ever noticed that? Lucas Underwood: It's like, "I'm afraid I'm gonna lose all my clients." Well, right dummy, you are gonna lose all your clients. Yeah, you Cecil Bullard: probably are. Lucas Underwood: You got the wrong clients. Cecil Bullard: Well, yeah, that- Lucas Underwood: What did I tell you? Cecil Bullard: And that's the other thing about marketing, you have to, like, I think you have to understand, like, your business in a sense of this is the kind of business I wanna have, and these are the kind of people I wanna work with. Cecil Bullard: And- Yeah ... they drive these kind of cars, and they make this kind of money, and they live in this kind of neighborhood. And, and when you've determined what that is, now that's gonna determine my marketing. If you just want- Yeah ... anybody, you know, get your shotgun out and, and shoot the gun, and run a- Yeah ... lot of loss leader discounts. Cecil Bullard: And by the way, you're gonna not attract the relationship customer there. And, and not- Yeah ... not like none of them will come in, 'cause I know some people will like, "This is, this will be a hot point," right? Like- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... " Cecil Bullard: Well, that's bullshit, Cecil. We, you know, we run loss leaders, and we do get some, we get good customer, we do a lot of work." Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Well, yeah. Y- but you weed through a lot of chaff, right? Yeah. You, you literally weed through a lot of crappy customers to find a few good ones in the pile. Yeah. I'd rather have marketing that was more effective, that was more direct- That was targeted Lucas Underwood: exactly to who you Cecil Bullard: were ... that was more targeted to the kind of person I wanna- Exactly Cecil Bullard: build my business on. Yeah. And it, it takes a little more time, a little more effort, but if you do that, now you have loyal clients that are gonna recommend you to other people like themselves. Lucas Underwood: You know, look, here, here's a couple thoughts on this, right? For, for one, I can say this as somebody who went from a really small shop to a much bigger shop. Cecil Bullard: Right. Lucas Underwood: It's, it, it made a lot more sense to me why they were doing that when we expanded. Because when that mortgage is due and you gotta pay the bill, like all of a sudden what you're willing to do to get cars in the door is, is shifting very quickly when that payment- Cecil Bullard: Well, if you- ... needs Lucas Underwood: paid ... Cecil Bullard: if, but if you, if you really kind of figured it out and you said to yourself- Yeah Cecil Bullard: "Look, I've got 1,200 clients in my database and I've got a two-bay shop- Okay, that's, that's gonna fill my two-bay shop, et cetera. Now I'm gonna get to a 10-bay shop. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: 1,200 clients in your database aren't gonna do the job. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So what you probably need is a, you said it, um, I don't know if it was the last meeting or one of our conversations or I don't know, wherever, but you kinda said, "I kinda wish I'd stayed in my three-bay shop-" Yeah Cecil Bullard: you know, with- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: with the ceiling and, and everything- Yeah ... for, for longer. And you probably should have, right? Yeah. You should have had 2,500 clients in your database, or 3,000, before you moved into the bigger shop. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And you, you should have been having, you know, 2,500 or 3,000 clients in a, a little two-bay, three-bay shop before you moved into the, the 12-bay shop, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And then you wouldn't have had to run loss leaders and discounts just to try to fill bays up. Lucas Underwood: Right. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. And, and then you also get, uh, people talking about, "Well, I wanna keep my technicians busy," and there is something to that, right? I mean, if you can't fill the bays, you either have to get rid of the tech, or you have to fill the bays with something that'll at least keep them occupied. Cecil Bullard: Right. Might not make you any money But I don't wanna work for free myself- Yeah ... at all. Lucas Underwood: 100%. Last question coming in, Cecil. They're gonna drop this- Okay ... last question up for here, for you here, and we're gonna get wrapped up. We're gonna finish it up. I believe, uh, Miss Angela Mitchell has asked us a question. Lucas Underwood: I think this is a really good question. Says, "I feel like we have a lot of information we could, could," being the key word here, "access in our shop management software, but how do you decide what reports are most important to look at to drive car count ahead of a slow time?" And she, she brings up some really good points. Lucas Underwood: If we know we're going into a slow time, that's the time to be marketing. Marketing doesn't work in 10 days or a day or two days or five days. It works in 30, 60, 90 days. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Well- You're lucky, lucky, lucky if it starts working in 30, right? Cecil Bullard: So you have- So just, we know what we- We have Feb- we know we have February coming up. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And last February was hard on a lot of shops 'cause there were two ice storms that went through- Yeah ... uh, I don't know, a third of the country. There was, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's short three days- Yeah ... et cetera. Well, we know February's slow, so what can I do in, uh, December and January to build February? Cecil Bullard: Right. When I came into my shop, December, uh, was a slow month, and Oct- and November wasn't a great month. And then- Yeah ... so in October we did the, the city had this event that we participated in. We did a big event at the, at the shop. Uh, one of my guys here does an, um, an auction once a year. If you come in and bring your car, you get points for the auction. Cecil Bullard: So for every dollar you spend, you get $2 towards the auction. Right. And so that builds three months before the auction, and then after the auction you've had a lot of people come in your shop that come back. So that gives you a good five months of, of car count that you may or may not have had, right? It, it, it keeps you aware. Cecil Bullard: I need to- Yeah ... I need my clients and my potential clients to be aware of who I am. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So, so yeah, you need to, you need to understand that. You, you need to be running a, a, like, a flow report, or you need to be very aware of what your flow is and when your slow times are. Customer Lucas Underwood: aging. Yeah. Cecil Bullard: I, I- I think you need a, you need a report that talks about what your average repair order is per car type and for marketing type- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: and what your return on investment is for marketing type. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And then also I wanna track phone stuff, and now we have ... Many of the phone systems have AI in them, so I can track phone calls, I can listen to phone calls, I can ... AI will tell me what the intent was, how many of those- 100%. That's what I was gonna say next Cecil Bullard: how many of those people showed up And then what I think what we have forgotten in a way is that I have to make probably about 80% of my clients so happy that they're gonna come back in four months or five months. Um, and I think what happens a lot right now is we're not as, we're focused on bringing that new person in, but I need to be as focused on doing that- Lucas Underwood: On maintaining the relationship Cecil Bullard: with Lucas Underwood: the existing Cecil Bullard: on my, yeah, on, on, on, and, and producing a product That builds a relationship with the client. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Absolutely. And- I, I think that's huge. And, and that- those were the things I was gonna say, is a source report, right? Right. Like, are you collecting the source of where that came from? Because that's how you're gonna determine if the marketing is effective. Lucas Underwood: We're terrible at it. Um, the, the vehicle reports, like what vehicles am I working on? How old are they? Because it helps me target. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Like, it shows you what's in your community. Right. It shows you where the dollars are coming in, what vehicles are you working on the most, and it helps you because now you're working on the vehicles that we're all accustomed to working on, right? Lucas Underwood: We're doing the same things over and over again, and it- it's kind of like, uh, blending your work mix to work very well for you. Cecil Bullard: Right. Lucas Underwood: Um, I use GuestX. Stan Stokes, man, I'm gonna tell you, like, it, it will pop up and tell us if we missed an opportunity with a client. Did our service advisor do a good job? Lucas Underwood: Those are the type of the reports that I use here. And I know we said that was the last question. Um, I do, I do wanna point something out about this last one right here. Uh, Alfred's comment over here is an important one, and I don't know that we can answer that in the time that we have left, but I do wanna say this. Lucas Underwood: If you are a shop that has one big fleet customer- Cecil Bullard: Don't ... Lucas Underwood: or 30% of your business goes to one client, please, please, please, please, please, please, please diversify. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, no more than 10%. My rule is no more- Lucas Underwood: Yes ... Cecil Bullard: than 10% to one particular- Lucas Underwood: 100%. When they walk out the door, buddy, because it, it can happen. They Cecil Bullard: will eventually, Lucas Underwood: right? Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Cecil Bullard: I mean, like, you Lucas Underwood: know. It's going to happen. It can destroy your business overnight if you have too much betting on one client. I, I was talking to a shop owner a couple weeks ago, Cecil, and he was saying that he did all of the ambulance fleet's work, and he said it was something like 107 vehicles. Lucas Underwood: And he said, "Lucas," he said, "over the years, I reduced more and more and more of my customer capacity because they kept growing their fleet." And he said, "Instead of growing, I was reducing my customer count just using them." So this is what I should- Like, they should have been a fleet ... have been doing. It's happened. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. He said, "I shoulda had a specialized person that handled their fleet, or a specialized tech, so that that's all they did." And he said, "Instead what I did was," he said, "I pulled away from customer work." Yeah. He said, "That contract ended for that ambulance company, and the county took it over, and they have their own maintenance garage." Lucas Underwood: And he said, "I found out three days before it happened." And he said, "90% of my business walked out the door." He said, "I let almost all of my employees go." He s- Cecil Bullard: Yeah, almost lost my b- uh, almost- Exactly ... I could have lost my business. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Cecil Bullard: Uh, I'd be lucky if I don't lose my business. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, 100%. Cecil Bullard: In, in, uh, uh, the, the mid, uh, you know, teens, um, I worked with a, a national company. Cecil Bullard: They became 30% of our income. Yeah. And, uh, the owner died. Mm-hmm. They got sold to a venture capital company, and a year later, a year and a half later, the venture capital company said, "We know that this works, but we're not spending the money on it." Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And I lost 30%. That was extremely painful. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And I should have never let it happen because my rule was no more than 10% to one, but it was so much gra- I mean, it was such gravy. Cecil Bullard: It was so good for s- you know, for what it was worth. And Lucas Underwood: such a good relationship. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. You've been all over it. We just like... Yeah, and the guy that was in charge- Yeah ... before they, the company got bought, is still a great friend of mine and still wants to do- Yeah ... business with me, right? Yeah. He's at other places, but I lost 30%. Cecil Bullard: There- It was tough. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. And, and this was the exact same situation is, is the guy said, "Look," he said, "man," he said, "I've been saving up money. I knew this might happen one day." He said, "When we lost that contract," he said, "I'd been putting money back for retirement because I knew that that was a good potential." Lucas Underwood: He said, "Well, you never told me that." And he said, "Man," he said, "I didn't think I had to." He said, "You're a business owner. You- that's your job to know that. I'm not trying to be mean, but I can't protect you from, from the market Cecil Bullard: conditions." From you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so yeah, we, we should be not only, like, building our business on, like, with customers, like clients. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Not just a big, you know, I, I, I just want three fleets and that's it. Um, because if I lose one, it's gonna be so painful it could kill me, right? Yeah. I should be building my business with individual clients, and e- enough of them that that can run my business, pay my bills, and give me some profit. And um- Mm-hmm Cecil Bullard: and then I should be building with the right clients. And- Yeah ... and so what's the best client for me? That's a decision I need to make before- Yeah ... I do marketing. Lucas Underwood: Amen. Cecil Bullard: Now, I gotta put a plug in. You better have Lucas Underwood: that avatar. Cecil Bullard: I bought... I, I gotta put a plug in. We have a Mars Conference coming up, uh- Yep Cecil Bullard: October 26th, 27th, 28th. We have some of the top marketing companies, the top AI people, uh, et cetera, coming in to speak to the attendees of that, uh, about... And, and they'll walk away with a plan and all kinds of stuff from that. Uh, it's been- Yeah ... very good. We've been doing it now, I think this is our fourth year. Cecil Bullard: Um, the clients love it. You can, uh... So we still have a few seats, um, here in Ogden, Utah, and it's a beautiful time of year, so we'd love to see you. Yes, sir. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. Mr. Bullard, thank you so much. Can't wait for the next one, sir. Cecil Bullard: Thank you, brother. Lucas Underwood: All right, y'all have a good one.
221 - AI Search Is Here: Is Your Auto Repair Shop Showing Up?
221 - AI Search Is Here: Is Your Auto Repair Shop Showing Up? September 30th, 2026 - 00:55:13 Show Summary: AI is changing how drivers search for automotive repair and Yelp is becoming part of that discovery process. Shop owners can improve their visibility by claiming their Yelp page and keeping business information accurate. Photos services reviews and messaging provide valuable context that can help customers find the right shop. A strong digital presence across Yelp and other platforms creates more opportunities to reach customers wherever they search. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): Melissa Underwager, Owner/Co-founder, Merrick Marketing Alexandra Goldie, Partner Account Director, Yelp Inc Show Highlights: [00:08:00] – Yelp explains how its review system treats businesses equally. [00:13:00] – Yelp data can help inform local searches through ChatGPT. [00:18:00] – Claiming your Yelp page creates the foundation for visibility. [00:21:00] – Authentic shop photos help customers understand your business. [00:27:00] – Yelp visibility extends beyond people visiting Yelp directly. [00:34:00] – Faster lead responses can improve opportunities to book customers. [00:38:00] – Negative reviews can demonstrate how your shop handles problems. [00:43:00] – Accurate profiles help shops strengthen their AI search presence. [00:51:00] – Consistent business listings strengthen your overall marketing presence. 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/kq1nrxFwW3M 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: Jimmy Lea: Hello, friend. It's so good to be here with you for our conversation and our discussion today. We have some amazing guests that are gonna have some awesome conversations. And hopefully, by the end of this, love it or hate it, but hopefully by the end of this, you fall in love with some new technology, some new information that is changing us, changing our industry, changing the way people find your shop today. Jimmy Lea: My name is Jimmy Lea. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, and you are lead- you are listening to the Leading Edge podcast. I am so excited to be here with you. For those that are here, type into the comments your shop, your city, your state. Would love to give you a shout-out. For those who are here for the live event, and for those who are listening to the recording, this is in every Wednesday at 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific, we are putting up with the Leading Edge podcast. Jimmy Lea: So if you are out there, I will be the voice for you. Type in your questions into the comment section now that you know where that comment section is. We're live streaming on Facebook, on YouTube, and here in StreamYard. So excited for our conversation. Today we are speaking with digital footprints and we are speaking with Yelp. Jimmy Lea: So this is gonna be phenomenal. My guest is from Merrick Marketing, Melissa. Melissa is joining us from Merrick Marketing. Melissa, thank you for being here. Good afternoon. How are you? Melissa Underwager: Good afternoon. Great. Excited to be here. Jimmy Lea: Oh, good. Melissa Underwager: First time, Jimmy Lea: I'm quite excited as well. Yeah. This is gonna be so much fun. Jimmy Lea: For so many years we talk about the digital footprint, and these shops, there's things that they can do themselves, there's things that they can do with some assistance, and then there's things that they need to hire a company to do- ... for them. And Melissa, I am so glad that you're here so we can have this conversation talking about marketing and all these things that help shops in- Melissa Underwager: Yeah Jimmy Lea: their local- Our Melissa Underwager: goal today is it's very educational. So- Yes ... they can have takeaways they can do themselves. Jimmy Lea: Perfect. Perfect. This, that's exactly where we wanna be. And joining us from Yelp is Alexandra. She is joining us as the partner for account director. Thank you, Alexandra, for joining us. So excited that you're here. Alexandra Goldie: Thanks for having me, Jimmy. Super excited to be here. Jimmy Lea: Nice. And Melissa, just like we were talking, this is things that shops can do themselves. And Alexandra, thanks for joining us and having this conversation, because there is a history between the automotive industry and Yelp that hasn't been pretty. Jimmy Lea: So hopefully with recent events and recent things that have been happening, hopefully we can now have a better understanding and fall in love with the new technology. So with that, Alexandra and Melissa, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Melissa Underwager: Great. Thank you. We are gonna address some of your concerns or things we've heard, as we- Yeah Melissa Underwager: have been out there in this industry. And, we've been a big part of educating, which helps change people's minds and see it a little differently. And and Yelp is a leader right now in, paid and organic AI. And we're excited to have Alexandra here. She's a partner. She's our partner at Yelp, and she helps us navigate it. Melissa Underwager: So she's the expert, so we're gonna let her do most of the talking. Alexandra Goldie: Nice. That's- Thanks, Melissa Melissa Underwager: Yeah. Alexandra Goldie: Good afternoon, everyone. Super excited to be here. As Jimmy mentioned, I'm a partner account director at Yelp. I work on the partner team, specifically with agency partners like Merrick Marketing to help local businesses grow, and I'm super excited to be here today with you all. Alexandra Goldie: We're gonna discuss AI's impact on local search broadly, what that means for the auto repair industry, and how you can take action on Yelp to best position your business. Please ask questions, interact in the comments. We wanna hear you. Jimmy will be moderating the comments. So to kick things off here I wanna make sure everyone can see my screen first of all. Jimmy Lea: It's coming up. It's coming up. There it is, buffering. Alexandra Goldie: Awesome. Igniting Jimmy Lea: AI's ground truth. Alexandra Goldie: Awesome. All righty. To kick things off, I wanna have a really brief video intro to Yelp for anyone who might not be familiar. So here we go. Alexandra Goldie: Highlights, Yelp is everywhere. Whether you need an oil change, an AC installed, a lawyer, or a place to grab lunch. But the way people are searching both on and off Yelp has shifted. Over 50% of consumers now use AI to discover local businesses, which is especially exciting for auto repair because drivers are often on the road when they realize that they need a service. Alexandra Goldie: In the past, if my check engine light went on, I'd likely wait until I got home to do retr- research and probably take a really good amount of time searching, reviewing, and contacting businesses before making a decision. Where now, I can simply ask my dashboard or ask ChatGPT while I'm driving, so I can focus on my safety while AI does the research for me Jimmy Lea: So I have a question. Yeah. Is there a, a deeper relationship with Yelp and AI that... 'Cause usually I'm not pulling up chat to search for something while I'm driving, but I might ask Siri, "Hey, Siri, find me something." Alexandra Goldie: That is a fantastic question. So Yelp has a many faceted layers of different relationships. Alexandra Goldie: So you mentioned Siri. We have partnerships with Siri, Alexa, Apple Maps. For more broadly, we also will get into this in just a little bit, but we've recently entered into a official partnership with ChatGPT, and then we also are featured in Dash, so in the navigation systems of several large car brands, as well as in Garmin. Alexandra Goldie: So especially relevant here for auto, and we'll touch on that in a bit. But I think broadly and what this slide here really conveys is how the AI models are trained. They don't actually know if an auto re- repair shop is reliable. Their results come from how that how that training is implemented into their system. Alexandra Goldie: Yelp has over 20 years of user-rich content, which is why Yelp has been so naturally prevalent in AI results over the past year. Yelp brings the human experiences that AI models do trust, and that is why largely we're taking that step back to talk about AI because no matter what AI you're using, no matter what large learning model, Yelp has been the most cited source pretty overwhelmingly this year. Jimmy Lea: Oh, interesting. That's fascinating. Alexandra Goldie: And while there are over one billion weekly users on, say, ChatGPT alone, many consumers haven't trusted AI. So while the adoption's rising, a lot of folks haven't trusted, especially early on. And so while these models are certainly impressive, like I said, they don't really know that th- it's reliable. They don't know where this comes from. Alexandra Goldie: And so some business owners, like many of you here today I'm sure have been frustrated with Yelp's review software and haven't really understood the reason for it. And many think that advertisers get preferential treatment, or that most of the reviews are negative, and that Yelp just like simply doesn't want to get you to get more reviews. Alexandra Goldie: Has anyone felt that way maybe? Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. I've talked to many shop owners that, that really felt like their Yelp accounts because they weren't paying Yelp some monthly fee or whatnot, that all of the negative reviews went right up to the top and all the positive reviews were hidden. That's what I... Jimmy Lea: I've heard it repeated more than 100 times in the automotive industry. Alexandra Goldie: And that is completely okay. If any of you have felt this way many people and many business owners don't know that all local businesses actually receive identical treatment regardless of advertiser status, if you're paying, if you're not paying. Alexandra Goldie: And no one, not myself and not our CEO, can make any changes. So every business really is treated identically the same, and we're striving to support real experiences, whether that be good or bad. Although most reviews actually are four or five stars. And while it is true that Yelp doesn't allow review solicitation, it isn't because we don't want businesses to get more reviews. Alexandra Goldie: It's because we want neutrality. And Yelp does reach out when we think someone's used a local business, which is, I think, something that a lot of people also don't realize. So something along the lines of in an email of, "Did you visit Mike's Auto Repair Shop? How was your experience?" And so all of these factors are what has made our software so trusted and has allowed Yelp to have the advantage in AI. Alexandra Goldie: So while I hear you and I know that there has been some misconceptions and some concerns, we're also going to be linking we can share this after the session, but a link to our trust and safety where there's a lot more information on our recommendation software. And Melissa and I are also always open to further discussion on your business or any questions that you have regarding recommendations further reviews. Jimmy Lea: Here's a question for you. Yeah. With Yelp and reviews, usually, here we are in the automotive industry, it's either a five-star review or it's a one-star review, where they either love us or they hate us, and they hate us because we left a smudge on the hood or something like that. Yes, there are catastrophic and there's the badge that we earned, but there, it's usually a, a one or a five. Jimmy Lea: If there's one-star reviews that we didn't earn it's not a client, is there a way of challenging those one-star reviews on Yelp? Alexandra Goldie: Absolutely. So if it was not a client or if the review is inappropriate in any way and violates our guidelines, there is a channel where you can escalate the review. So while the software generally, so what's recommended versus not recommended, and most of that does have to do, I think in my experience, we'll never truly know 'cause it's out of our hands, but a lot of it has to do with solicitations. Alexandra Goldie: When I talk to clients of businesses and they say, I had five reviews come in today and they're all not recommended," typically it's because maybe they were using a software that reached out and asked for those reviews. And while I understand how that seems harmless to them because those were real folks with real experiences, we again just wanna keep that neutrality and Yelp's gonna be the one to reach out. Alexandra Goldie: But if you have any reviews that you feel should be reviewed by a person like I said, if it wasn't a client or if it's inappropriate in any way or there's any legal matter involved, there is a way to report those reviews. Great question. Jimmy Lea: Nice. And can a client leave more than one re- Yelp review? Alexandra Goldie: If they have multiple experiences, Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... Alexandra Goldie: we, they can edit reviews. So they can make an update on a review. Jimmy Lea: Updates, okay. So similar to Google reviews in that aspect, a client can have a single review, but they can update and add additional information. Here's the family fleet, I brought in my truck last month, and this month it's this, the family station wagon, and next month it's the minivan, and then it's the kid's car and... Jimmy Lea: So they can put in updates. Okay. Alexandra Goldie: Definitely. And we always encourage business owners to respond to those reviews, whether they're positive or negative. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Beautiful. Beautiful. Alexandra Goldie: Awesome. So like I said, this is really why Yelp's had the advantage in AI, because these AI models know that they can trust that the experiences from Yelp, they're real, they're true. Alexandra Goldie: There a- is no way to gamify it. Everyone's treated exactly the same, and it's the best way to train models to be helpful in those inform- pieces of information that they wouldn't know. If I'm asking ChatGPT, if I'm on the road and I'm asking my in car dash, it's midnight or 1:00 AM and I want to find an auto repair shop that's open late, those are the type of attributes that are being pulled in, or reliable service, that's coming in from reviews. Alexandra Goldie: And so when you're responding that also helps with the content that's being pulled in. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Alexandra Goldie: And I alluded to Yelp's partnership with ChatGPT a little bit earlier, but I wanted to just quickly touch on that. We do have a direct relationship with OpenAI, which is to utilize Yelp's content-rich data within ChatGPT, and also to integrate request a quote messaging, which is really a huge breakthrough for organic traffic and organic lead flow off of Yelp. Alexandra Goldie: So now users can actually reach out via message without leaving ChatGPT. They don't have to be on Yelp. They're in ChatGPT, they ask ChatGPT for a reliable auto shop near them. Chat gives them some great recommendations based on, they said near me and reliable. Chat pulled that in, and then they're able to request a quote. Alexandra Goldie: So on your side, on the business owner side, this would go into your normal Yelp inbox. But on the user side, they're actually not a Yelp user at this time. They're in ChatGPT Alexandra Goldie: Any questions on that? Jimmy Lea: No that's interesting. So even if I'm in my ChatGPT asking questions about automotive repair shop near me- Yes ... the information that I'm seeing in chat is coming from Yelp? Alexandra Goldie: That is correct. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Melissa Underwager: Often. Maybe not all, but often, yeah. Alexandra Goldie: Oh, yeah, not always. Not 100% of the time, of course. Alexandra Goldie: Yes. But it's utilizing Yelp's data, so it's using things, like I said, your business hours, your service attributes, the type of jobs you do, if you specialize in certain types of vehicles. Those are attributes that would potentially pull in if someone says, "I have a BMW, I'm looking for someone who really specializes in, you know, my car brand." Alexandra Goldie: Or if you have a more specialized request, and then all of the reviews, the photos, all of that content is being utilized to inform these results for ChatGPT. Jimmy Lea: Okay, so Alexandra, Melissa here, the question for both of you. How much of this does the shop owner need to optimize on their website or how much of this needs to be optimized on their Yelp profile? Alexandra Goldie: Fantastic question. So this is all coming from optimizations on your Yelp profile, and in just a couple of minutes, we're gonna run through actions that you can take today to optimize your Yelp profile and best position your business for success and visibility within AI, whether that be on Yelp or off of Yelp. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Melissa Underwager: Yeah. You still wanna optimize your website, though. Alexandra Goldie: Yes, agreed. Yeah, yes, of course. And Melissa has probably the expertise there on how to best optimize your website. But today we're more focused on your Yelp presence and how that flows- Yeah ... into AI results. Melissa Underwager: Okay. Alexandra Goldie: And so what we've put into other kind of what we've discussed thus far, users generate the content, Yelp verifies that content, which is then used to train AI models and results in high intent leads for your business. Now, you might be thinking, this is all great, but how does this really impact auto specifically? Alexandra Goldie: Historically, when you hear Yelp, you might have thought of restaurants or home service categories, but how does Yelp differentiate for your shops? And so I wanted to take a brief overview of Yelp's focus on the auto repair category. Yelp has integrations, like I mentioned earlier, in Dash with major car brands, as well as with Garmin, Apple Maps, Siri. Alexandra Goldie: And like I said, when someone's on the road, they can easily find an auto repair shop with Yelp's help without having to pull over, without having to wait till they get home to do research. Yelp also has recently acquired RepairPal to further support investment in the auto repair category. Jimmy Lea: Huh. Jimmy Lea: That's very interesting Alexandra Goldie: Any questions on any of these integrations or the acquisition? Jimmy Lea: I'm even seeing DuckDuckGo in there. That's quite interesting. It, does Yelp own that as well? Alexandra Goldie: So Yelp has partnerships and integrations, but Yelp does not own DuckDuckGo. Jimmy Lea: Okay. But a- and you just recently bought RepairPal. Alexandra Goldie: That is correct, yeah. And so Yelp's using the verified data from RepairPal to help inform things like reliability it, to build out a trust architecture to really be a s- to specialize in auto repair. What makes a good auto repair shop, Yelp wants to know. And part of that was what led to the acquisition of RepairPal, and then also informing things like pricing and things like that, which is especially relevant when it comes to request a quote messaging. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Very interesting. Alexandra Goldie: So we've talked about Yelp visibility for auto off of Yelp, but what about on Yelp? I want to briefly touch on this. So a search for auto happens every six seconds on Yelp, and 86% of users don't have a specific business in mind. So they've made the decision that they need new tires, but they haven't decided where to get them. Alexandra Goldie: Users take action on auto pages in under 10 seconds, meaning that they are highly engaged with, and over 80% ultimately move forward with a business that they found on Yelp. So the intent on Yelp is extremely high, and the goal is to make your businesses more visible to capture these customers Alexandra Goldie: So how can we do that? Let's take a look at how we can organically optimize your Yelp pages, actions that you can take today. So first and foremost, maybe we can get some comment interaction. Who's claimed their Yelp page? Can we get some claimed in the comments if you have claimed your Yelp page? Jimmy Lea: I- I'm monitoring the comments here. Jimmy Lea: We might have a shy audience today that doesn't want to volunteer their Yelp page. Alexandra Goldie: That's okay. We probably have a, a mix. We probably have some folks that have claimed their pages and- Yeah ... probably a lot who haven't. Alexandra Goldie: And so first and foremost, we want to make sure that your business page is claimed. Alexandra Goldie: We want to make sure that you're set up with a Yelp account and ideally that you have the app downloaded so that you can easily interact with leads from Yelp. From there, we want to make sure that you have up-to-date and accurate information, so things like your business name, your address, your hours, your phone number, your website, the services that you offer any special attributes to your business. Alexandra Goldie: We want to add content like photos. We want to reply to reviews. We want to turn on messaging. And so optimizing your page might take maybe an hour, maybe two but the benefits really are endless, and this is the data that the AI models are using when making recommendations. So the more that you optimize, the more likely you are to show up in those results. Jimmy Lea: So it sounds like a lot of the information we're putting in on our Yelp profile is information we probably have in our Google Business Profile, and it would be the same data, same information. How important is it to have the exact same spelling of 123 Main Street or Main S-T dot or S-T? How important is it? Jimmy Lea: Does that name, address, phone number need to match exactly? Alexandra Goldie: That's a great question. I, I don't know between s- St. and writing out Street, I think St. Is just fine. That's typically what I'll see, and we're gonna look at some Yelp pages in just a minute so we can take a look. I don't think there's much difference there. Alexandra Goldie: But it is very important that the actual address and the phone number and your website all matches identically to how you'd want customers to be finding you. Jimmy Lea: Okay. And what about photographs? Oh, Melissa, you were gonna say something. Melissa Underwager: Yeah. I was gonna say, when you are managing all of your listings, it is ideal to have them all exactly the same. Melissa Underwager: So from a local SEO standpoint, so Yelp's not gonna preference that probably, but from a local SEO standpoint, you wanna have them as accurate and closely listed as possible. Jimmy Lea: Oh, perfect. Yeah. Alexandra, you were talking about photographs high definition high resolution photographs in your Yelp page. Jimmy Lea: Would it ... Is there any good or bad? Should we have different pictures than we've got in Google? Or sh- can I post the exact same ones that I've got in Google? Is there any advantage of mixing up that, the realm of photographs? Alexandra Goldie: I think Melissa might be able to speak better to differentiating between your Google profile, but I would say on Yelp, just having high resolution photos that are reflective of real experiences tend to resonate really strongly with Yelpers. Alexandra Goldie: So rather than uploading a photo of maybe your logo or of just m- your truck or something like that, or just your shop on the outside, Yelpers love to see your team. They love to see jobs in action. Anything that you can do to story tell there and to show what they might get. Alexandra Goldie: So when someone's landing on the page, they want to see what that experience might be like when they're making the decision if they want to move forward. So happy, smiling team members, jobs in action, those are all things that help support reliability and help Yelpers want to move forward with your business. Jimmy Lea: Nice. Yeah. Yes. Building that relationship is key there. Exactly. Okay. Beautiful. Perfect. Alexandra Goldie: Awesome. So let's take a look at, I'm gonna share this tab here. So you should see now I'm on yelp.com. I just did a really simple search for auto repair in Boston, Massachusetts. That's where I'm located. I thought about doing where y'all are mostly located, but I was like, we don't want any Alexandra Goldie: who knows whose business is gonna come up on here. So probably best to just keep it in Boston. So this is a search page, a search result page. So we'll have a mix of sponsored results, which would be from paid programs, as well as organic. And so something, I know the audience might be a little shy, but does anyone just like immediately looking at this page, is there anything that anyone can notice? Jimmy Lea: I notice the photographs right away. And then the second thing that I'm noticing is the star ratings of those Auto Precision versus Weymouth doesn't have any star ratings that I'm seeing, nor photographs. Alexandra Goldie: Yes, that's a great call-out. And so the photographs here, these are actually portfolio previews. Alexandra Goldie: And so a portfolio is a paid page upgrade but it does really help with engagement and conversion. When shown side by side in search, 94% of Yelpers choose businesses with page upgrades in place, those, versus those without. So for these businesses like Auto Precision with Boston Auto Works, it will preview up to four portfolio posts. Alexandra Goldie: And portfolios are an opportunity to tell a story. So if you have a, like before and after photos, or it's also a great opportunity to intro your team or to have different specialty call-outs on certain services that you want to lean in on. If you want more car count for oil changes, you can do a portfolio post on oil changes. Alexandra Goldie: So we can take a look. And so for Weymouth, to your second point, if we have under three star review Yelp doesn't want to necessarily harm those businesses and deter folks from clicking in, and so that's why you don't see their rating here. And so when you actually click into Weymouth, and I can go ahead and share that one But you can see they have 2.6 stars and five reviews. Alexandra Goldie: And this really isn't too bad. And I will t- say one sto- one good anecdote that I just, we were just talking about with my team, is that Merrick Marketing actually was working with a client who had a couple of bad reviews. It happened to have been from a former owner, and they were really frustrated on it, and we were advertising, and it came to a early, very early on, the shop owner was like, "I don't know if we should do this. Alexandra Goldie: These reviews are gonna deter people. We're not gonna get any traction." And so I worked with Melissa's team to- ... k- give some optimizations and best practices on other things we can do to show the value, and that business is now a four and a half star rated business on Yelp. And so that's just something I submitted for a Yelp internal case study, but I figured I would share that here with the team as it's relevant right now. Alexandra Goldie: But you can see now their reviews, and you could go in and look, and like I said, reply to these reviews. And especially if they're negative always be professional, always be friendly. Don't challenge or get into an argument with someone here, but always reply. That really helps if someone is looking at the reviews to build trust. Alexandra Goldie: And people know some people are just, sharing a true experience, and some people are leading more with emotions and, might not be as representative of your business. Jimmy Lea: Nice. Nice. I- is there a sweet spot in Yelp for an automotive repair shop on the number of star rating? Where should they be? Jimmy Lea: What is that sweet spot? Alexandra Goldie: A- actually there isn't a sweet spot. It very much varies per business. And a lot of clients that I work with in auto repair have under 50 reviews and connect with m- many leads per month. It ultimately varies based on your location based on the competitiveness in your area, based on your organic, if you're focusing on organic presence- versus if you're running paid programs. So it really does vary, but there is no specific sweet spot where we can drive the most value. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And I talk to a lot of shops that are saying, "Oh, Yelp just really isn't relevant in my area. There's not a lot of people using Yelp." And what I'm learning here today and just now is that anybody who's doing a search on ChatGPT or any other LLM, they're probably using a lot of the Yelp data to return information. Jimmy Lea: So- ... think of all the times you're using ChatGPT As your search engine, this is the results that you're getting. Alexandra Goldie: Exactly. And I think the in-dash piece, too, is another element that a lot of shop owners don't realize, and that has ac- has been in place for some time. So you might not think that Yelp's really relevant in your area, but when someone's in their car and they get a flat tire or their check engine light goes on, they're most likely, if they're interacting with any type of AI, whether they're asking Siri, whether they're asking App- looking at Apple Maps, whether they're using their Garmin or in their BMW nav, most likely they're pulling in results from Yelp and using the attributes and content from Yelp to fuel those results. Jimmy Lea: Nice. So the, the Yelp reviews does need to get its own attention now from shop owners, where we have focused a lot on getting Google reviews, on getting website reviews. Now we can add a third review source that has high energy and that is your Yelp reviews. Melissa Underwager: Yeah. Alexandra Goldie: Definitely. And I would say this is where it can get tricky, back to our conversation about shop owners being frustrated with the review software, 'cause we don't want you to ask for the reviews, whereas, say, with Google, it's, totally okay for you to reach out and try to get those reviews. Alexandra Goldie: So the best way to drive more reviews on Yelp is to focus on the things that you can control, which is optimizing your page organically. If you have certain goals or really want to grow your car count or expand your business, then adding paid programs like page upgrades or Yelp ads to drive more traffic to your page. Alexandra Goldie: But ultimately, the more business that comes through Yelp and the more you deliver an excellent experience, the more reviews that you're going to generate. So we can't guarantee, do this and you're gonna get five reviews, but we tend to see a flywheel that, when certain elements are in place and we're driving more business through Yelp, we'll tend to see more reviews uptick, like with one of Melissa's clients that I just mentioned. Melissa Underwager: Yeah. And I'm not sure if you're touching on it on this presentation, but so now with Apple Maps and Apple Maps ads, Apple utilizes Yelp reviews. So those are the reviews. Apple doesn't collect reviews, they use the Yelp reviews, and that's going to be very relevant as we're now launching Apple Maps ads. Melissa Underwager: So- That's a great point ... and ignore it. Jimmy Lea: Okay. So Alexandra, I have a question. Sure. Yelp doesn't want shop owners to ask for reviews or seek for reviews. H- what's a way to build those reviews organically that is acceptable to Yelp? Alexandra Goldie: So if you have a physical shop there you can, put ... We have signage "People love us on Yelp," that's very neutral, that's not asking for the review, it's not, giving 10% off or something if you write the review, but it's just neutrally there. Alexandra Goldie: So we have those options if you want it to be known that you are on Yelp. That is a great way in person to get those reviews and to encourage those reviews. But like I said, ultimately it's just driving traffic through your Yelp page, so driving business, connecting with leads on Yelp. Alexandra Goldie: Yelpers like to leave reviews, and even though it might seem like a lot of them are negative, majority of them are four or five stars. So people are leaving reviews, and they're leaving good reviews. And so like I said, focusing on all of the organic elements of your page, and if want to add any paid elements, and then making sure you're delivering an excellent experience to those users, and then the results tend to flow through. Jimmy Lea: Nice. So what about shops that that say, I've got hundreds of different Yelp reviews but they're being hidden from customers," and these customers are still coming into the shop to this day, but those reviews are hidden Alexandra Goldie: Yeah, so it's a great question. I don't wanna get too into all of the different reasons why something can be not recommended. Alexandra Goldie: Okay. And like I said, we can share a link to the trust and safety, so if you wanna learn more, you can. We won't always know. We can't always look at one client and say, or one, one client from a shop and say, "This is why their review's not recommended." But a few things I'll say is, one, it's dynamic. Alexandra Goldie: Yeah. Sometimes if it's a brand-new user and Yelp just doesn't have that, that credibility and that trust that's an actual user yet and it's not, Jimmy's Auto Repair's brother sometimes it'll go into not recommended. And then as that user uses Yelp more, it will flow into recommended. Alexandra Goldie: Ah. Oh. Another thing, like I said, is when you're using a review recommendation software, sometimes that's as simple as a software that pushes out emails to recent clients, which again, I know seems harmless. But something like that, our software can pick up on and put reviews into not recommended. Alexandra Goldie: Yeah. We really just want to focus on the neutrality, and while I understand that can be frustrating for shop owners, Yeah ... I, that is what has m- made Yelp have this advantage in AI and what have Yelped made Yelp so trustworthy. So while the reviews are probably a lot less than, say, Google, I hear from people all the time of, "I have 500 five-star reviews on Google." Alexandra Goldie: People trust Yelp reviews more and AI trusts Yelp reviews more. Jimmy Lea: Interesting. Here, so if what I hear w- was if I'm a, a one-time Yelp reviewer, I've only left one review, or two reviews, or three reviews I'm still taking baby steps with Yelp reviews, I, what's the number that I need to get to that makes me more credible as a Yelp review leaver as opposed to just having one? Alexandra Goldie: That's a great question and that I don't think that we, fully know the answer to. Okay. I think a lot of reviews, a lot of clients that I've looked through this with, sometimes it's, that's their first review, and then they left a second review somewhere else, and now it's recommended. So I don't, because our software is something that we is so dynamic- Yeah Alexandra Goldie: that's not something we'll always have the specific answer to. But typically as they use Yelp more, so they're using Yelp again, it will drop out of recomm- re- recommended versus not recommended. Jimmy Lea: Oh, interesting. I- is there some sort of like a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day algorithm that Yelper needs to be leaving reviews? Jimmy Lea: Is there a, a consistency of reviews that need to be left? Alexandra Goldie: No, I don't think s- I don't think that there is. This is very dynamic, so it could be today, tomorrow, et cetera. And it's also, I think, different ways that you're just verified. If you're, uploading photos or if you're taking other actions to show you're really a real person, and that's part of it. Alexandra Goldie: And like I said, I think the algorithm, the software is always changing, always learning. Trust- ... as we're here, trust is our top priority. So we'll never really know, and these answers can change each day. But like here's where you'd see if it was recommended versus not recommended. It looks like this business doesn't have any not recommended reviews and they're not advertising also. Alexandra Goldie: I'll say that. They're definitely not advertising, which is why I pulled up this page. I wanted to show an example of an organic page that is pretty well built out. The page is claimed. They do have a category here. You can have up to three categories depending on what you offer. They have 73 photos. Alexandra Goldie: They have some good photos. Their business information is all correct. They do have messaging turned on, so this is what the messaging experience looks like on a web d- web browser. And so what you can see here is they have excellent response quality, which would be really exciting to me as a customer, so they're probably gonna address my p- my project details. Alexandra Goldie: They're probably going to really be helpful, but it takes a day for them to respond. And this is why working with Merrick Marketing is really beneficial because they have an AI responder that helps respond within seconds, so your response time is always gonna be really low, which w- in many categories, especially with more urgent services for auto, speed to the lead is important Jimmy Lea: Oh, so true. Jimmy Lea: So true. Yeah, that's a great looking Yelp Melissa Underwager: account. I think Andrea she talked about it a little bit, but what I've had happen, and I'm not, as an agency, I'm not allowed to leave reviews now but what I've had happen is I look at a restaurant on Yelp or any business on Yelp, and then I may go to that restaurant, and then I get that email saying, "Did you go here? Melissa Underwager: Did you have an experience? Will you leave a review?" That's... They follow... They're able to, ping me somehow and, they can see that I've taken that action. They wait a day, and they ask for that review. Those are the reviews they're looking for. And so then they know that was a verified Yelp user. Melissa Underwager: I did my searching on Yelp. I went into your shop. I booked a service. They reached out for the review, and I left a review. So those are the ones that they're looking for. And when you have a more optimized, Yelp page, you're going to get more of those, and those will be the ones that show up and don't get, moved over. Melissa Underwager: So I do think it is a lot of times that there are some of the programs out there in this industry where they ask for reviews, and you can put your Yelp and your Google business, and you put them all in there. And then, they're leaving the reviews that way, and Yelp knows they never even searched for you on Yelp, so it's not verified. Melissa Underwager: And so it takes a bit for Yelp to say, "This is a true review from someone that we know went to your shop." So they're verifying that you went into the shop. Melissa Underwager: Is that helpful? I think that's... For me, that's helpful when I experienced it, how that happens and how they can tell that I have had that experience and I did the searching. Melissa Underwager: And so that's what they're looking for, but that's why Apple is trusting them and the other, programs that we talked about, we may not all love it, and nobody likes to get their reviews removed. And so we just, we're trying to show you how to navigate through that because it is so relevant now. Melissa Underwager: Just saying, "I'm just gonna ignore Yelp," doesn't work anymore. You're just doing yourself a disservice and your shop a disservice by trying to ignore it. And we don't like every sandbox we play in the beginning, but we learn it, and we understand it, and we do it better, and then we can see how it can build our business, Jimmy Lea: yeah, this is another tool in our toolbox. Melissa Underwager: Yep. Yep. Jimmy Lea: And we need to know how to use it, how to utilize it. Yeah, you can use a screwdriver as a hammer, but you shouldn't. You should use a hammer as a hammer- Exactly ... and a screwdriver for a screwdriver. Exactly. Melissa Underwager: Yep. Alexandra Goldie: That was a really fantastic overview, Melissa. Alexandra Goldie: Thank you so much for walking through that. I think it's really helpful to hear how what's changed like things for you too, and I, that's- ... such a fantastic point that when Yelp does reach out and we get reviews that way, those are going to, be recommended versus the not recommended. Alexandra Goldie: One other thing I- Jimmy Lea: Wait, hold on one second. You're saying that Yelp can ask for the reviews, but a shop owner can't? Alexandra Goldie: Yes, that is true. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So Yelp is reaching out, and the reason is neutrality. So Yelp, when a shop owner or when a r- business reaches out for a review sometimes they also might offer "Hey, leave us a review and get, 10% off," or something like that. Alexandra Goldie: So sometimes there's an incentive piece to it. Alexandra Goldie: But even if there isn't an incentive, it's, there's still implied there's implied- Not, I don't want to say they're guilting you, but when you reach out, like you want them to leave a good review. You're not reaching out to a business and saying, "Hey, leave us a review," even if it- Good or bad Alexandra Goldie: was a bad experience. So when Yelp reaches out, it's much more neutral and they feel more safe and more comfortable sharing their experience. So we don't want you to to be reaching out, but when Yelp sees that you've taken a lead action, we will reach out and say, "Hey, it looks like you visited this auto repair shop. Alexandra Goldie: How was your experience?" And so like I said, focusing all, on all the things we can control and trying not to focus on the reviews you can leave it to Yelp, and we should see those reviews flow through. Melissa Underwager: Yeah. And a lot of those programs do gatekeeping, where they say, "Leave us a ... If you had a great experience, leave a review. Melissa Underwager: If not, email us." Or, if they send them over through there, and so then it does filter out the negative. And you want ... I always say don't do that, because you need those negative reviews too, because it gives you a chance to explain your business and how you handle issues. Because people have had issues with their car, it's why they're looking for a new shop sometimes, and they want to see how you handle objections and problems. Melissa Underwager: And so you need to be able to show them that online when they're doing their research as well. Alexandra Goldie: Exactly. No business is perfect, and so if you have 100 five-star reviews on Yelp, that seems almost unbelievable. I completely understand, especially on other platforms why that's the goal, but on Yelp just focus on what you can focus on and deliver the best experience possible. Alexandra Goldie: One other page I wanted to quickly show was an optimized page for someone who is running some paid programs. So the page upgrades features. So what we show, saw previewed in search are these portfolio posts, and that's what takes up more space in search. And so here they have a before and after. They also have some custom colors and finishes for wheel repairs, which is pretty cool. Alexandra Goldie: And then they have these updates from the business, which is like a social update. So if you have a social strategy and you were running page updates then you can use Yelp Connect to mirror that strategy. And so they have 15% off. We're looking for safety to reiterate that safety. Alexandra Goldie: So these are just all ways to reinforce your credibility and make users more engaged with your page and drive conversion. Any questions before I hop back into the presentation? Jimmy Lea: So what is the range of paid ads? What can a shop expect? Is this like $5, $10, $50, $400, $1,000? Are there different packages? Jimmy Lea: What- Alexandra Goldie: Yeah, that's a great que- Is there- That's a fantastic question. And so the... Typically, I recommend starting off at a pa- a bundled package. So working with Merrick Marketing, you would get bundled rates, which includes the page upgrades at reduced cost or no cost, depending on your budget- ... to really help drive traffic and then also drive conversion. Alexandra Goldie: So I typically recommend a 630 as the starting budget, and then it really depends on the local opportunity in your area. If you reach out to Merrick Marketing Melissa and myself will take a look at that local opportunity, and we'll make a strategic informed recommendation. So we'll look at the amount of searches in your area for your services. Alexandra Goldie: We'll look at y- the peer spend in your area. And some folks might be launching with a 630 campaign. Some might be launching with 2,400. Some might be launching with, 5,000 or 10,000. So it really varies- Wow ... based on your location. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Alexandra Goldie: And so that kind of segues into where I wanted to lightly touch on next, and I know that Melissa will have more time at Mars to go through Yelp ads and further discuss with anyone who wants to take those next steps on working with Merrick Marketing. We also have at the end of this presentation a QR code where you can book some time. Alexandra Goldie: I'm always happy to audit your business and to make recommendations. And if you're looking to grow, whether your goal is higher c- car count or just to expand your services or you want to more efficiently acquire new customers, Yelp CPC ads and page upgrades can help your business reach those goals. Alexandra Goldie: But really, whether or not you're ready to invest in paid programs, an organically optimized page will establish a solid foundation for your business That being said, if you are interested in taking your business to the next level, I highly recommend working with Merrick Marketing when you are ready to learn more. Alexandra Goldie: Merrick's a premier partner. They've been recognized by Yelp for their expertise in the auto repair vertical, as well as for their excellence in client services and innovation. Melissa and her team are really, truly fantastic and they're leading the way for auto repair on Yelp. A few partner benefits, like I mentioned, would be those bundled pricing, the exclusive promotions, proactive campaign management from Melissa's team as well as from myself and my team, advanced tracking and access to their AI responder for messaging. Alexandra Goldie: So going back to those response times that we were looking at, instead of a day or two hours, the AI responder replies in seconds. Melissa's team trains up that responder to sound like an auto repair expert and alleviates that that bandwidth for your team to be able to focus on what you guys do best, rather than on those me- messages. Melissa Underwager: Yeah. One thing we also do with those, so when the AI responder responds, we take that lead. We try to get their phone number. We take that then and we can forward that into your CRM where you're texting, so then now you have it right there. You can pick up the phone, call them, and you didn't have to be watching or monitoring your Yelp page to do that. Melissa Underwager: So that also helps, 'cause it's right in front of them. It's, most of us have a CRM now, and you can, see it in real time right when it comes in. You get a phone number, you can just pick up the phone and call them and try to get that appointment booked, Jimmy Lea: oh, very nice. Very nice. Oh, I love it. Jimmy Lea: I love the optimization here and these are all things that shop owners can do. I love it. Alexandra Goldie: Yeah, definitely. So to summarize, we highly recommend that each of you leave here today, make sure your Yelp page is claimed first and foremost, and then take action to increase your visibility in AI search by confirming or updating your business information, adding photos, responding to review, and enabling messages Any other questions? Alexandra Goldie: Jimmy, anything coming in? Anyone feel free to jump in on comments. Jimmy Lea: C- I'm surprised, I'm shocked I'm baffled I'm excited, I'm energetic of knowing a little bit more about Yelp and about how integrated it is into my life where I didn't even think it was integrated before. But now I'm discovering every time I'm asking Siri for information, it's probably a Yelp review. Jimmy Lea: Every time I'm asking for ChatGPT, J- ChatGPT for some information it's probably posting up some Yelp information. So yeah, it's, this is interesting. It is a tool that we need to understand. Jimmy Lea: And the more we understand it, the better we can utilize it because it is being used quite a bit. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So Alexandra, thank you very much. Yeah. I very much appreciate that. And what's this QR code that's coming up here, Melissa? What are you offering here? Melissa Underwager: What... We just put a way to contact us if there are questions, they can... That goes to the website, so theamericauto.com website. Jimmy Lea: Oh, very nice. And from the website they can request an a- Yep Jimmy Lea: appointment to meet with you guys- Sure, yep ... and have a conversation, talk about- Yeah ... their website, what they can do to improve it? Melissa Underwager: Yeah. Website. So we are full service, and we believe we like being full service because everything's connected. And so just like we said if we help manage a CRM, then we can make sure that leads are getting over to the CRM, even if they didn't originate in the CRM. Melissa Underwager: So just that your ecosystem is, easy to do business with is what we really focus on, and that your lead funnels are strong. You're not missing any opportunities. And, we're invested in Yelp because it is something that a lot of people ignore, and we want to, we've always wanted to educate ourselves on anything that's out there, and then find the best solution for each shop. Melissa Underwager: Because, Yelp, if you're in the middle of, California in a highly, Lots of rooftops, right? It, those, there's a huge amount of opportunity. But there's still opportunity in smaller places in Mississippi or, so what is that? And we try to help you find that balance. Melissa Underwager: And for us, because we're not focused on one thing, our goal is just to find you, or not just, but to find you the things that work for you in your shops. And so we have a lot of multi-location shops that, you know, if they may have two rural shops that we probably wouldn't spend a lot of money on Yelp, but they have sometimes have another two shops that are in, you know, metropolitan areas that have a lot of Yelp usage, and that might be a solution there. Melissa Underwager: So we don't ever say it's a one-stop solution for everybody. It's- ... what's the balance? And where should you be putting dollars or resources, which could be team resources by taking pictures and getting them posted, what, where is it the most important and will have the most impact? Melissa Underwager: And so I think that's- That's what we're trying to provide is, everybody should be doing the things though that Alexander said. There... Right now you need to claim your page, you need to update it, you need to be, encouraging people who do find you on Yelp to have a great experience so they go back and leave those reviews. Melissa Underwager: And so it's not something we should ignore. It's out there. And so how much you invest in it, like Alexander said, we do a deep dive. We run, we see what your com- competitors... If you have competitors spending $5,000 on Yelp, and we can note that, we can't see who they are, but we can have a report, then they're getting all those leads. Melissa Underwager: And so do you wanna, at least test them, test that water, those waters and see if you're gonna pull in leads? Because everyone shops a little differently. We all use different platforms, and we have preferred platforms. So not all of our leads are gonna come from Google Ads. They're not all gonna come from Meta. Melissa Underwager: They're not all gonna be just return. You have to worry about your attrition rate. CRM is important to be optimized and probably your lowest hanging fruit, let's get people in multiple times. But it's good to educate yourself on all of this. And not putting up walls and just knowing what's out there and where you should put your time, I think is really important. Melissa Underwager: And and as AI is creeping into this, we have to pay attention to that now as well, Jimmy Lea: oh, it's so true. It's so true. All right, so everybody grab out your smartphones right now and let's put up that QR code so you, everybody who is here, everybody who is listening to this webinar, you have a strategic strategy session to talk with Merrick Marketing. Jimmy Lea: Take out your smartphone, scan this QR code, set up your appointment so you can meet with Merrick Marketing and talk about your Yelp account, your Yelp presence and what you can do in that strategy. Because there's a lot you can do on your own, and then there might be an opportunity that you work a little bit more with Merrick Marketing and get on with them as a client And then we also talk about, mentioned right here on that slide, MARS, the Marketing for Automotive Repair Shops happening here in Ogden, Utah, October 26, 27, 28. Jimmy Lea: Keep that smartphone out. After you finish setting up your appointment with Merrick Marketing and that strategy session, scan this QR code. This is for your entrance into the MARS conference. Scan this QR code. That'll take you to our website so you can sign up for the marketing intensive that we're doing here in Ogden. Jimmy Lea: You want to be here. We're talking about such great marketing ideas, advice. Two days of impact information into your your head and your brain, ideas that are just absolutely amazing. And on day three, that is the implementation phase. That's where everything you've learned over the past two days, we're gonna sit down and workshop three different workshop classes as we spin and work this into your shop and your existence, your business. Jimmy Lea: And Merrick Marketing will be there to talk about Yelp and to talk about how you can implement this in for your shop. So you've got your smartphones out. Scan these QR codes. This is to help you as an industry and as a a- as a shop owner. With that, Alexandra, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here. Jimmy Lea: Appreciate the Yelp information, the Yelp insight. Alexandra Goldie: It was great to be here, Jimmy. Thanks so much for having me. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Any last bits of advice for shop owners in this modern era that we are here today? Alexandra Goldie: Like I said, local auto repair search is shifting. It's already shifted gears, and you wanna make sure that your business is well positioned to continue to stay relevant or to become more relevant. Alexandra Goldie: Whether you have a shop that's been around for 50 years or whether you just opened up your shop, a month ago, Yelp and all of the organic features as well as the paid features can really help elevate your business, make sure your search is high on Yelp and off Yelp. And like I said, working with Merrick Marketing is the premier partner for auto repair that I recommend, and I'm always here too. Alexandra Goldie: So if you reach out to Melissa and you set up some time with her, I'm happy to join that session or to answer any follow-up questions. We also have some resources, too, that Jimmy, I can share with you if you wanna share around, but this is really basic resources like how to claim your Yelp page, a step-by-step setup guide, a checklist for maintaining your Yelp page, tips for responding to reviews, the recommendation software overview like I mentioned earlier. Alexandra Goldie: So these are all things organically that you can do today to help elevate your business, and then I also have some more information in here on Yelp's AI relevancy from Yelp's blog, but really from a bunch of third parties like Forbes, Axios, Foundation Marketing. So feel free to take a look and, like I said, always feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Jimmy Lea: Oh, yes. Alexandra I would love to have a copy of all those links so we can, so I can look at it, 'cause I'm super interested. But then anybody that is here watching this webinar, listening to this podcast, reach out to me, jimmy@wearetheinstitute.com. We'll get you a link to all of this information so that you can also optimize this tool for yourself. Jimmy Lea: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. You're welcome. And Melissa, last bits of, words of advice for the automotive industry. Melissa Underwager: I think it's, op- optimizing everything right now, right? Your, all of your listings. Your business listings need to be accurate, they need to be up to date, and at Mars we're gonna talk about how those all connect back to your SEM. Melissa Underwager: So you know, your Google ads, your Meta ads, your Yelp ads, it's all connected now. And if you can claim those pages now and start working on them, I think that's, you're one step ahead of most of the competition. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, I love it. Number, stage number one, go in and claim your Yelp page, 'cause if you don't, if your competition goes in and claims your Yelp page, it's gonna take you a little bit to get that fixed. Jimmy Lea: You're probably gonna have to come- Hopefully ... and be talking to Melissa and Alexandra on how to, "How do I get this fixed?" Might take a minute, but yeah, we can work together and make that happen. So with that, thank, thank you so much. I appreciate you being here. So excited for the future. AI is helping us in so many tremendous ways. Jimmy Lea: This is interesting, and thank you for Yelp and the, the steps that you're taking forward here in helping the automotive industry as well. Thank you very much. Melissa Underwager: Thank you. Thank you so much.