215 - Ask Me Anything: Car Count vs. Profit - Why More Cars Doesn't Always Mean More Profit
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215 - Ask Me Anything: Car Count vs. Profit - Why More Cars Doesn't Always Mean More Profit August 5, 2026 - 00:53:54 Show Summary:…
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218 - What Your Opt-Outs Reveal: Your CRM Isn't Broken. It's Being Misused
218 - What Your Opt-Outs Reveal: Your CRM Isn't Broken. It's Being Misused September 9th, 2026 - 00:55:22 Show Summary: Most CRM systems are capable of producing results but the way shops use them can weaken customer relationships. Mass messages often focus on filling bays instead of delivering value customers actually want. Strong retention starts by understanding communication preferences and earning permission before sending messages. Shops can build stronger relationships by creating meaningful reasons for customers to stay connected. Automation can support that process but it should never replace genuine human communication. Returning customers should become a primary measure of success because lifetime value matters far more than a single repair order. A retention focused culture can create steadier car count and stronger long term growth. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): Craig O'Neill, VP of Training Autoflow Show Highlights: [00:02:45] – CRM systems work but shops often misuse their capabilities. [00:06:32] – Mass text blasts can create opt outs instead of appointments. [00:12:10] – Effective communication must focus on what matters to customers. [00:18:18] – Customer retention should create meaningful relationships built on trust. [00:21:08] – Customers should understand why your messages provide real value. [00:27:36] – Promotional mass texts require proper permission before being sent. [00:33:28] – Retention should become a goal across the entire organization. [00:35:02] – Returning customers can reveal more than traditional sales metrics. [00:41:12] – Give customers a compelling reason to return after every visit. [00:45:35] – Safe reliable vehicles provide a powerful purpose for follow up. 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/10RC8L1nKhM 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, welcome. Glad to be with you today. It is Wednesday, so excited for Webinar Wednesday. Coming to you live from the road. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, here at Brian Slater's shop in Eugene, Oregon. This is the North Eugene Auto Repair in in Eugene, and so coming to you from the road. Thank you, Brian. Jimmy Lea: Appreciate you letting me use your office today as we're out and about visiting shops. It's just an awesome, gorgeous weather here in northern U- northern... no. I was gonna say northern Utah. I'm not in northern Utah. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, and this is not northern Utah, but it is gorgeous weather. Jimmy Lea: So if you don't have gorgeous weather where you are, you wish you were here. We're gonna have a great conversation today. Those of you who have comments, questions, comments, put them into the chat section. That chat section comments allows us to have this conversation back and forth. I will be the voice for You've got questions, comments, concerns for our guest, want to make sure that those are voiced for you, put them in the comments section. Jimmy Lea: My guest with us today is ever-present, ever-linguist, Mr. Craig O'Neill of AutoFlow. Craig, how the heck are you, brother? Craig O'Neill: I'm really good, Jimmy. Really good. I was actually thinking northern Utah, as you mentioned Utah, even though it was Oregon. Both places are beautiful. I can't blame you for the distinction issue there. Craig O'Neill: That was- that's all right. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. No it is absolutely gorgeous up here. Now, I will tell you that there is a large lack of mountains in Eugene, Oregon- ... Jimmy Lea: That northern Utah does have, is bounteous mountains. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah. I can't wait. Ogden, a couple, next month. Next month now is October. Jimmy Lea: Yes. October for the Mars Conference. Craig O'Neill: Yep. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Yes. Speaking of Mars Conferences we're gonna put up a QR code for the Mars Conference. If you scan this QR code, it will get you right onto our registration page, and those sticking around to the very end, there is this very special, very unique offer for anybody who wants to attend the Mars Conference. Jimmy Lea: So stick around, scan the QR code. Save that in your smartphones. We are gonna have a great conversation about marketing. Craig is one of our presenters at the Mars Conference, and super excited for Craig to be here. Craig and I have known each other for a couple of years now, and worked together at a couple of companies, and- Jimmy Lea: glad that we are able to still be friends here in this wonderful industry that we call home. Craig, what are we talking about today? Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, this is the, one of my favorite topics to go into. We're talking about CRM systems, of course. Now I have some opinions about CRM systems. Both of us come from a background that deals in these systems. Craig O'Neill: You have opinions as well, and you have some observations, and my observation is simply this: the systems themselves are capable of some pretty cool things- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... Craig O'Neill: but we aren't using them very well. The it's not broken, they're being misused, is the title of our conversation today. Your CRM isn't broken, it's being misused. Craig O'Neill: And I don't like to walk into a conversation with "Oh, you're doing something wrong", or on the opposite side of it, I don't like to walk into a conversation as you guys are doing it right. You're just fine, but other people are doing it..." Like I, I've used stuff wrong. I've made mistakes in how I leverage the different systems and tools that are available, and I just believe, and I hope you just go along with us today, there might be a better way than our way that we're approaching it now. Craig O'Neill: Be open to that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Be open to it, because what they're, what you as a shop may be doing today is working. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. It's not even a debate. It is getting results of a certain level and type that are appearing to be adequate. Jimmy Lea: Adequate for today. And hopefully with this conversation that you and I are gonna have as we talk about the customer relationship management software Hopefully there's something we can expose shops to that might say, "Hey, maybe there is a different way of doing this." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: So what are these ways? What are the five mistakes that shops make the most, or not the mistakes. What, how can we help these shops improve? Sure. I would call Craig O'Neill: them hurdles that we have to get over, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. This one it's an opportunity for us to make it better. It's an opportunity to make it better. Jimmy Lea: This is what it is. It's not a mistake. You're not doing it wrong. Consider this. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. We're gonna talk about a lot of things on this, and I think before we even get into those hurdles, let's talk about the nature of communication today. Yeah. People's attention span today, because I think that there's a couple of different things that we need to understand. Craig O'Neill: And first off, let's talk about why we even wanna leverage a CRM system. And for many shops, you might have a sustainable s- sort of automatic practice here, but when you're a busy shop, you feel very successful, and then all of a sudden things are not as busy as they are. This happens to all of us. All the time. Craig O'Neill: We've ... shop, Jimmy, our transmission shop, family business that I came up, down into grew up in, and like we never had a slow spell. The shops around us always had those little slow spells, and we're like, "Yeah, we don't." And that was a good feeling until it happened to us, too. So we're all vulnerable to it, and the knee-jerk reaction that I see is this. Craig O'Neill: People as eventually hit that slow spell. They check, see if other people are experiencing it, too. We comfort ourselves with the fact that others are doing it, defining it as a, a market-wide symptom of broader events that we have no control over. And so then we can just comfort ourselves with another idea. Craig O'Neill: It's like, "Ah, it'll come back around." And I heard this over, and over again from my family who is owner of the business, my, my dad and my grandpa, because that has been the experience. It always comes back around. Why would we ever be okay with the fact that a slow spell also technically always comes back around? Craig O'Neill: And if our knee-jerk reaction to those moments is then to go into a, a degree of marketing or a degree of follow-up or a mass blast text strategy, like I see a lot of people fall into is like, "Huh, the work needs to be drummed up. We'll turn to our CRM system. We'll construct the perfect message and send it out, and then people will make appointments and fill our bays." Craig O'Neill: Sound familiar? Jimmy Lea: Oh, it does. It does. And if we know those, those times are gonna come back around because it's cyclical, what are we doing? We... It- Yeah ... is preventable. What are we doing that we can prevent this from happening and being that cyclical item? Because- Craig O'Neill: This is, this goes straight into it, because what I see people doing with the knee-jerk response is they're actually crippling their ability to handle the cycles of this. Craig O'Neill: When you do a knee-jerk text blast response, what's the number one reaction that you get to it every single time? Opt-outs. They are the most common reaction to this, and that's what I... If you go on the socials and you look on comment threads of shop owners experiencing a slow spell, they're asking each other "What's the perfect message that you can type out that gets fewer opt-outs and more appointments?" Craig O'Neill: There isn't one. There is no perfect message that gets X number of people. The ratio will never be the same in two demographics with unique people being the customers or clients in every one of the unique repair facilities that we have. There is no perfect message. Jimmy Lea: No. They're not. They're looking for that silver bullet, Craig. Craig O'Neill: Yes. It's silver bullet is the right term for this, and I discussed this on my podcast in an early episode of the podcast Speak Up: Effective Communication on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. It was episode 14. I said, "What your opt-outs are really telling you," and I think that what they are telling us is something we need to listen to. Craig O'Neill: So now on that, let's move into the attention span of the people in the world today versus the past. And Jimmy, I love to read. I love deep thoughts, and we're gonna get philosophical for a second. I know you don't mind. Love it. We love this. Yeah. Let's Jimmy Lea: go. Craig O'Neill: Signature classic, C.S. Lewis. One of my favorites, Screwtape Letters. Craig O'Neill: In the early chapters in that book it's describing... I won't go into the details of Screwtape Letters, but the way that you distract someone if you're trying to distract them from serious thoughts in C.S. Lewis' time period was, and I'll quote here from the book that- Got the guy to think he was hungry, and then I showed him a newsboy shouting, "The midday paper," and the number 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps, I had him into an unalterable conviction that whatever odd ideas might come into the man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of real life, which he meant by the bus and the newsboy, was enough to show him that all that sort of thing just couldn't be true. Craig O'Neill: He knew he had a narrow escape, and then years later was fond of talking about it. I w- I'll skip ahead. But thanks to the process which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. So this is hard to digest 'cause it's C.S. Craig O'Neill: Lewis. You... It's like a tough piece of wonderful, awesome, the best flavor steak in the world that you gotta chew on a whole lot of times before you can actually get to digesting it. But the point is, C.S. Lewis's era, the distraction was you wanted to get them into this stream of events and that's your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Craig O'Neill: Teach it to call it real life, and don't let him ask what it means by real. And that stream is exactly what people are having today. This is a word used by C.S. Lewis before streaming like we are on a webinar, streaming across the web even existed. What distracted a man? Just being on the street with a bus and a newsboy shouting. Craig O'Neill: That's yesterday. That's 1940s United Kingdom, actually, in C.S. Lewis' time. Let's fast-forward Johann Hari's book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, absolutely nails the same point in the modern age and puts a name to it with this term called the f- this frenetic digital interruption, and he says, "Is pulling our attention away from our thoughts and suppressing your default mode network," cool term. Craig O'Neill: I think we're almost in this constant stimulus-driven, stimulus-bound environment, moving from one distraction to the next, and if you don't remove yourself from that, it will suppress whatever train of thought you had, right? And I think that frenetic digital distraction really i- it's just, we have to acknowledge this is the reality we're in today, and there's people that are struggling with notifications and attention, and bombarded with media messages. Craig O'Neill: Every news article you read has the pop-up ads. Are we in that same zone like C.S. Lewis, where a newsboy and the sign on a bus is the only thing that could distract our attention? No. We are under a constant 24/7 assault for our attention span today. That's where we're communicating from, and when your shop gets a little slow and you decide you're gonna have a knee-jerk reaction to the slowness, and you expect a message to land that leads to action with a population that's drowning in this reality, would it be any surprise that it only sees marginal results? Jimmy Lea: Is there any irony that it is called streaming? Is there any irony that it's called a reel? No. Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, it's like the oldest problems are always resurfaced again in our lifetimes today- Yep ... with different technology. Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's totally different. And now it's 17-second blurbs about it's a seven-second commercial, it's a 17-second commercial. Jimmy Lea: We're being bombarded with this instant stimuli to totally distract us from what is actually real- Yes ... and consequential, and you're being bombarded by things that are momentary blurbs of Jimmy Lea: Endorphins Craig O'Neill: Yeah. It, and it just- It's a Jimmy Lea: temporary- Craig O'Neill: You're competing with that- Yeah ... tendency too, to escape with these things. You're spot on. This, this topic is why I lead into these five barriers to that are causing us, like the things that we're misusing in our CRMs, right? Yeah. I consider them barriers or hurdles because we can get over them. Craig O'Neill: Yeah ... and we can decide to lever it right. And number one and we have a slide for this, so I put it up there. I know some people like to read and some people can listen. I wanted to put this quote on there because... And I'm gonna, fatal sin of speakers, I'm gonna read the quote. I know it's on the slide, but I know some of you can't see it, and I know some of you are only listening. Craig O'Neill: Yes. I can't read it. Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry. It's too small. Too small? Oh, that's okay. That's why I'm here. Yeah. So- You can Jimmy Lea: read all of them. Read all of Craig O'Neill: them ... it's a big meaty slide. Problem number one though is we're not communicating to people on what matters to them. That's the problem. And to reference this point the, a great read, and please write this down, pick up this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. Craig O'Neill: Amen. If you're interested in this topic at all, read that book. It's from the Dale Carnegie and Associates. So updated for the digital age. There's so many profoundly good things in this, and this is a quote I pulled straight from the book, and I wanna make sure it gets its proper reference there. Craig O'Neill: But it says, "When it comes to mattering to others, you must discuss what matters to them. Assume all else will fall on deaf, or in this case, dull ears. This is an interesting principle to consider given the spirit in which the vast majority of people are communicating today. Most messages are primarily meant to educate others about our lives, our products, to reveal compelling portions of ourselves we think others would be attracted to. Craig O'Neill: While this appears to be an assertive strategy, it is actually a passive strategy in that it requires others to connect with us." "The trouble is that's marketing monologue, not relational dialogue. It's assumption, not assimilation. When assumption guides our efforts to befriend or influence others, the results end up on the wrong side of memorable." Craig O'Neill: Okay. End quote. That is that's another, like I'm giving you solid food to digest today. That's, that's- ... we don't have time to go this layer of depth in our presentation at Mars, so that's why I'm really happy to have this conversation today. It's a primer. If you walk in primed with some of these thoughts, you're gonna be able to get a lot more out of it. Craig O'Neill: But here's where I go with this. We are communicating from a position of our interests most of the time in the auto repair shop. When it slows down, we're interested in filling our bay. If we were really interested in having those customers come in, we would have done the harder work of relating and documenting and managing the data, all sorts of things differently to have a sustained conversation that they understood the value in, because we understand what's important to them. Craig O'Neill: And that's a whole different thing, and that's gonna come up again as we move into these, these other hurdles. But I think that's the thing, first and foremost, remember what messages right now are you pushing out there that are not memorable? I didn't give this in the slide, but I have an example recently, Jimmy very recently. Craig O'Neill: I turned 43 earlier in August, and I'm not on social media these days. The one thing that was fun is getting all those birthday harvests. You know how you get all the happy birthday thing. It's actually a lot of work. Yeah. Then you gotta go like everything and all that stuff too. But don't worry, I don't miss that entirely because I have been a patron in local businesses that have CRM systems in my neighborhood chiefly my Subaru dealership where we have a, a vehicle leased presently. Craig O'Neill: And I got three happy birthday emails from three separate people in that organization. Two of them were identical emails automatically constructed, and there was a neat little quote in the bottom of one of those emails. It actually said, "This email is automatically generated, and we do not monitor replies to it." Jimmy Lea: Oh my God. That's- Craig O'Neill: But it was a beautiful picture of balloons with the branding of that dealership on it. Oh, it was touching. It was such a great birthday blessing to receive that on Sunday afternoon. Jimmy Lea: Had it been from an actual person and not an automated system would've made it even better, but... Craig O'Neill: Sure. But does the birthday greeting from a business actually land on the memorable side of communication, or is it a cheap and simple automated gimmick to feign that you care with a direct interest that is more for the business's benefit rather than it is for my birthday, right? Craig O'Neill: Congratulations, you captured my birth date in a data field in a system that is automated to generate a joy, because I don't unsubscribe because I love these examples. It really was a gift for me that I get to use and communicate from. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And that's good. That's good. Craig O'Neill: But no, this is a common thing, and we've we've seen this strategy. Craig O'Neill: You and I have been in the CRM space for a while, and you've seen that given as a best practice. We wanna capture the, birth date and month, not the year. Birth date and month. And then you can have these sort of birthday messages go out. All right, maybe you have that strategy applied in your shop. Craig O'Neill: Is that a wrongness? No. Maybe some people really appreciate it. I think a lot of people don't give it a second thought, and that's the majority. Jimmy Lea: They probably don't, but they also aren't sending it from an email that is not being monitored and not gonna reply. Craig O'Neill: Let's hope not. Yeah. ' Jimmy Lea: Cause if Jimmy's Super Shop were to send you a happy birthday message, it would purely be a happy birthday message. Jimmy Lea: There's no other ulterior motives whatsoever. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Jimmy- And you would reply and say, "Oh, thank you so much, Jimmy's Super Shop." We would reply again to say Craig O'Neill: I would hope so. Yeah. Now, my experience in birthdays are one thing, but all sorts of messages. I know when CRM automation occurs, and I'll touch on this at Mars a little bit further the team is not engaged in that part of the process, and it's difficult for them to engage in the inbound Present Jimmy Lea: conversation. Jimmy Lea: Yeah Craig O'Neill: Yep. There's a, a loss of continuity there. So I do feel a lot of times there's automated things going out from a shop, but there is actually no behavior that is being encouraged or directed or accountable any accountability layer for the team to be a participant in that. So it does play in that. Craig O'Neill: But this goes to number two which I think is at the root of the whole problem, and this is, again, another quote from the Dale Carnegie and Associates. First off, problem number two we're not cultivating a community, and this, this principle comes for me from my study in this book. And as I was reading that book, assessing how shops are leveraging CRMs, this stuck out. Craig O'Neill: And it says, and I quote, "Often forgotten is the long-term plan. Businesses call it a customer retention strategy, but it is best thought of as a lively, meaningful dialogue among a community of friends. If the foundation of all long-term success is the establishment of trust-based relationships, then the goal of all interactions should be to convey value as soon and as often as possible." Jimmy Lea: Not just birthdays. Craig O'Neill: Not just birthdays as a data field. What's meaningful for a client in a repair shop? What's meaningful to them in a repair shop? What is the purpose in our community, and how are you articulating the value of staying in touch so we can continue to express what this purpose is and how it benefits you? Craig O'Neill: And by the way, Mr. Client, it's very important, save this number in your phone so that you recognize that we're a contact 'cause you can reach out to us here, and we're gonna be here if you have any questions. And that's starting to get to the sense of community here. And Jimmy, this is getting more important. Craig O'Neill: In today's world, here's a tip for y'all right now. I want you to open up your phone, go to your text message app, look at the spam folder How many messages do you have in the spam folder of your messages app, whether you're using Android or Apple, does not matter. Automatically, messages are going straight to those folders with default settings from the phone's operating system and device. Craig O'Neill: There's a bunch in there, and a lot of it probably is spam, correct, Jimmy? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I'm pretty sure all of it's spam. Craig O'Neill: A lot of times it's very accurate in mine. I- I've only on occasion seen one or two messages in there. Here's how your shop is gonna land in the spam folder. If the client never accepts you as a contact and never engages in the dialogue with you in text. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: And so the manifestation of this, and I've started to see more of this recently, very recently, just this summer people sending a DVI link to their client, for example, but the client claims they never got it. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: But they do receive- Because it went to spam ... messages without the link went to the spam folder because sometimes those links are just being interpreted when it's not saved as a contact. Craig O'Neill: The solution is to get it saved as a contact. Interesting little issue, but that takes a little effort, doesn't it, to keep your client- Yeah ... to add you as a contact. There's some cool tools to do that, simple QR code scans, and lots of things we can do at the counter to help people through this problem. Craig O'Neill: But we need our advisors to express the importance of the communication and why they should want it before they'll ever accept it as a contact. Jimmy Lea: That's right. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So interesting, right? So I think that cultivation of a community, that's the easy entry point. Help them understand the value of the communication that's coming and why we're going to be reaching you and make sure they actually do want it. Craig O'Neill: And that leads perfectly into hurdle number three. Hurdle number three is we are not gaining an opt-in for the purpose we seek. And Jimmy, you know this is true across the board generally for opt-ins and shop capturing, and we're gonna talk just a minute about this here as well. We'll do this after the next point. Craig O'Neill: The next point is a strong one on this. But you want the customer to want the message from you. Yeah. Does that happen automatically that they understand what you're going to be sending them and why you're going to be sending it? Jimmy Lea: Not unless you explain it. Craig O'Neill: Not unless you explain it. What's the value in it for them? Craig O'Neill: Why is there a benefit for them to be on a list in your shop for a certain type of message? I used an example earlier about text blast when it gets slow. And the mistake I see the most, Jimmy, is that shops literally have their all or repeat customer list, and they just hit this whole list with this message like, "Hey, we're slow. Craig O'Neill: Come in." Yeah. What if... just go with me here. Love it. What if you created a list that people could sign up and subscribe to in your shop? It's like, "Hey, if you wanna join our slow day list, there's a couple advantages of this. If you wanna just you have a few lingering maintenance items type of a thing, and we have openings we have a... Craig O'Neill: Maybe there's a promotion rate, or maybe it's just literally we can get you in and out because we know time is important, and we're not a discount culture anymore here, right? So maybe we express the speed of service. We know it's inconvenient to have the car down when it's quiet like this. We'll have loaners or rides available. Craig O'Neill: Whatever. There's benefits for you signing up on this list, so you can gain access to this thing that we're gonna do to make it better for you. Would you like to be on that list? We maybe send one or two of these out-" a quarter and perfect, right? And they sign up for that, so now you've got a warm lead list of people who are ready to fill your bays when they need filling. Craig O'Neill: How hard would it be to create that? Jimmy Lea: Oh, not very hard, and I wanna rename it already. I wanna call it the VIP available spots list. Perfect. Craig O'Neill: Yes. Yes. All sorts of things that you could do. Yeah, you could call it your membership list. Whatever. You go crazy. Have fun with it. Communicate the value of it. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And you have some- My wife does this at art shows. She sells her art in these art shows, and she's found that even just the placement of the sign-up form matters. Like, when it's front and center, people who are waiting in line for the checkout now are able to sign into that book while they're waiting for their turn to check out with the art, and she gets way more signups for her email list. Craig O'Neill: Love it. It's perfect. Yeah, and similar practices are totally possible still today, but what do shops do? We automatically assume everyone wants to get any type of message we wanna have for any purpose, and we never clarify or distinguish any special type of thing, and thus they never get the opt-in. Craig O'Neill: And thus, what are your opt-outs telling you? Man, that's their first chance to talk to you about their preference for the type of communication you send. And you know what happens in an opt-out, Jimmy. You know as well as I do. That number's blacklisted at the carrier level. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: That's hard to undo. Now you gotta communicate to them about the value of reengaging in that by texting the word start to this number, and that's a harder thing for a busy service advisor or customer service rep to be able to engage in. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: We've gotta communicate with them on the level they want in the form that they want. And sometimes those opt-outs are them saying, "Look, I just don't want to communicate in this method." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: But what do they prefer? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Might Craig O'Neill: be. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: What's the conversation? Where have you built the relationship to continue that conversation on their preferred platform? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Look, I cooked my cellphone a long time ago doing demos of AutoFlow at, with multiple instances. Now I get texts that I forget to clear out of their thing all the time. That texting's not the best way to get me during the day. I am, however, in my inbox. And I promise you, you have clients that's the same thing for them too. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Or they don't even want... Now, go with me here. What if we had a list of people who prefer a phone call follow-up, Jimmy? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. And there are. Craig O'Neill: Yes. Jimmy Lea: There's people that's what they would prefer. Craig O'Neill: Yes. 100% yes. And if you don't get the buy-in from that group, and you think everyone wants a phone call follow-up we already do this- You're wrong Craig O'Neill: at Chris' shop, Jimmy. Yeah. You wanna know in about 90 to 120 follow-up calls that we do in a week there we have a gal doing this for us, for Golden Rule Auto Care. Yeah. We get about 10 to 15% of those calls that go out end up with good connections. Like a good conversation. Jimmy Lea: Oh, they actually answer the phone and have a Craig O'Neill: conversation. Craig O'Neill: Actually answer the phone and have a conversation. Only 10 to 15% 10 to 15. Around 120 calls. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I, Craig O'Neill: I- Not a huge number. Jimmy Lea: No, it's not. Because people are busy, and they don't wanna be interrupted. And those that want the conversations, they're the ones that answer the phone. And the other 80, 85%, 90% prefer a text message or an email or a Facebook message or purely nothing at all. Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much. Goodbye. Craig O'Neill: Let me ask you this, Jimmy. You got it, man. And when you get a phone call today from a number that's not a contact in your phone- ... do you answer it? Jimmy Lea: Voicemail. No. I- Craig O'Neill: Or screening? Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: I found the you push the two buttons on both sides, boop, right into voicemail. Done. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. I, I have, one of the call screener things on mine now. If it's not a contact, it hits that pretty much automatically. I don't answer my phone. I don't answer my phone. I then check to see the missed call, and if it is something important, I'll call it back. That's the world we're entering, and it's the same principle that we just discussed with that text message that i- if they darn a contact, same is true for the phone number that you're dialing from. Craig O'Neill: If that hasn't yet been saved as a contact, look, guys, your call isn't gonna be trusted yet. Area codes that are mine are the least trusted. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yes. But that's the world now, and we have to be able to recognize that and combat that. Yeah ... but that involves becoming that contact, agreeing to that type of conversation, and maybe making a note somewhere in your management or CRM system about those preferred lev- levels of contact. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So- that's the hard work here, and I understand why shops that are low staff or only have one service advisor to five technicians, and he's also the CSR, and he handles payroll because he's also the owner, and yeah, it gets really tough really fast. And you have opportunity there when you're overwhelmed to hire someone else who can do these things, that's gonna add value to your business. Craig O'Neill: They'll be able to help cultivate these lists, which ke- it's more retention, guarantees you have the income and the cashflow to be able to support their livelihood, and everything gets better. But the starting point's really tough. Problem Jimmy Lea: Number four Craig O'Neill: Let's go. All right, this one's key. Mass blasts- Oh Craig O'Neill: without express written permission are against the law. True. And this is- True ... the really bonkers part of this is shops are loosely aware of this and yet they do it anyway. I forget what the fine is right now, and I'm not a lawyer. I'm not giving legal advice. Just disclaimer on that if you can put it in bold. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, no. But I think it's a $1,500 fine per offense, and if somebody knows that they did not expressly give you permission to text them very specifically- Jimmy Lea: Yep ... Craig O'Neill: text is what we're talking about here. Yep ... that's something they could sue you for and win every time. Notice a lot of the largest organizations out there with multiple locations do not engage in this method of follow-up Jimmy Lea: Because- They Craig O'Neill: know the targets Jimmy Lea: they've lost multiple court cases. Jiffy Lube is one that comes to mind. You can Google it. Court cases where Jiffy Lube had to pay out multimillion dollars because of their mass texting clients. A- and- and what's makes it worse is that they were mass texting clients who had opted out. Craig O'Neill: Oh. Oh, no. Craig O'Neill: So they had a blacklist failure- Yeah ... which is even another thing. So yeah, this is where, okay, you videcoders out there, I know you're out there, and I know you're even playing with APIs from groups like Twilio. And you might think "Cool, we can do texting real easy." Guess what? Start managing your blacklist because Twilio sometimes doesn't do it properly for you. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And the carrier sometimes doesn't do it properly, and it is still you on the hook every time. And if you're giving your software platform to other people to use, your platform, unless it has clear terms and conditions, could also fall under some scrutiny. Oh, boy. It gets sticky. Investigate that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It does. It really is. So there's a difference between mass sending a marketing message versus pinpointing and being very specific. Craig O'Neill: Oh, I'm glad you bring this up, Jimmy. Yeah we have a slide on this. So CRM permissions are not actually the same across the board in multiple channels. So the- you probably use terms like transactional versus promotional, Jimmy, I'm sure. Craig O'Neill: But industry terms do vary from- from some- And our industry itself is not usually good at taking universal language- ... Craig O'Neill: And carrying it forward. But these three categories of- of text messages, I put this out. This is I don't have the source on here, but I pulled this source from online. Craig O'Neill: Conversational, informational, promotional. I wanna draw your attention to that blue arrow on the screen. It's kind of a bluish-green arrow, Jimmy. It's on that- Yep ... one, two, three, third row down, where it's talking about how that- that message is constructed. Messages promoting a brand, a product, or a service Or anything that prompts a consumer to buy something, go somewhere, or otherwise take an action. Craig O'Neill: That, if it's in that category, requires express written consent to be legal. Express written consent. Consumers may sign a form, check a box online, or otherwise provide consent to receive promotional text message in some fashion. That express written consent is the highest form of consent, and I haven't met an organization that's tracking it yet. Jimmy Lea: And through the TCPA- Yeah ... which is the act that governs over texting and how you can communicate, it used to be that you had to have a wet signature for that promotional message to go out, and you had to retain it for seven years even after you stopped your business. You still had to have it on file. Jimmy Lea: It's now changed. You can track it digitally. Yes. But you have to be able to provide the source, the date, the time, where it consent was given- Craig O'Neill: Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: for you to send promotional messages. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: conversational, reminders, informational. Now and it's interesting you've got informational broke out here that you do need consent Craig O'Neill: Express consent, which is different than express written consent, and this was interesting to me when I started studying this too, and these things are pretty stable. Craig O'Neill: I don't see this element changing a lot. Yeah. But permission can happen over text on that, or on a form or a website, or verbally, and that's an interesting one. And that's just a message that contains information, just information. It's a status update, it's an appointment confirmation or a reminder. Craig O'Neill: Those types of things are information text, and that's handled- Yeah ... very differently than a promotional marketing text that's asking them to take an action. It tips towards promotional anytime you're asking them to click a link to schedule an appointment, for example, on your slow day blast type of scenario. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. That is a promotional text purely. Even if it's a deferred service reminder. Think about those deferred service drips that people have active in just about every CRM system in the world. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: That is asking the consumer to take an action, and this is exactly the type of thing I will be combating in, in, in our session at Mars 'cause we have a better way forward. Craig O'Neill: We can start talking a little bit about that here too. But those deferred work little drips are... Like, it's a strange thing to do. It's the thing your customer said no to during your visit that we're now assuming they want to receive an, a reminder about without any knowledge that this is coming, and certainly no express written consent. Craig O'Neill: And all of the burden is fully on them to take the action to make something happen about that still deferred work. Yeah. We aren't doing anything. We, in fact, automated the whole thing. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So what's- Craig O'Neill: It's a passive reminder, as we discussed earlier, right? Jimmy Lea: What's the better way? Are we gonna discuss that here, or are you waiting for Mars? Craig O'Neill: Oh, we can ta- we can talk on it here. So our better way is, it depends on our sense of purpose here, but I think let's go to barrier number five before we talk about that better way, 'cause I think this plays into the whole topic that we're discussing. And this is really the largest barrier, and it is the, the one that I think needs to be overcome before you fix any of the other ones. Craig O'Neill: We don't have our whole organization truly oriented towards retention as a goal What are we oriented towards then? Is the question I like to ask. And if you really stop and you really think about what your organization is structured to achieve, what is it? And it might be what you consider your most important metric might give you a clue. Craig O'Neill: I think it's an interesting question to ask, Jimmy. I do this a lot in different courses. I ask what's the most important metric for a service advisor or for a technician or for this or that?" I like to ask specifically for our front counter staff, whether it be a CSR, a reservationist, a service advisor, whoever we have working our front counter. Craig O'Neill: What is their most important metric? And you get all kinds of answers. You've probably heard every one of them, Jimmy. Closing rate. Those service advisors are like, "I sell 98.92% of all work I ever write up." Terrible stat, by the way, 'cause that's the work you write up. You can artificially inflate your closing rate on sales by writing up what you know will sell. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. But I th- I'm gonna give you my answer. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Craig O'Neill: Your ratio of returning customers Jimmy Lea: Agreed Craig O'Neill: It's your most important statistic Jimmy Lea: If they're not coming back, you're doing something wrong Craig O'Neill: Correct. Yeah, I don't care what your ARO is really. It's an interesting stat to know. You'll establish baselines for all sorts of KPIs. Craig O'Neill: They tell you useful information. But is our goal to sell all of the stuff we find on every visit? And is our team like, "Is that's what's gonna impress the boss? That's what's gonna make him very happy"? Jimmy Lea: No, returning customers. Totally agree. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, because what's the value of one good visit, right? Yeah. Craig O'Neill: What's the value of one visit versus the lifetime value of a client? Jimmy Lea: Yes. The lifetime value has so much more weight to it. Neck and neck. Tens of thousands of dollars versus- Craig O'Neill: Hundreds. Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: hundreds that, for that one visit. Craig O'Neill: Some, yeah. Yeah. And o- I had family accounts, family accounts- Yeah ... literally in the hundreds of thousands with, For Jimmy Lea: the lifetime value? Craig O'Neill: Lifetime value of that particular individual. He had a lot of vehicles in the family. Jimmy Lea: And, What's the family fleet? Craig O'Neill: It's the family fleet ... it's a family fleet. It's Jimmy Lea: a Craig O'Neill: fleet Jimmy Lea: account. Craig O'Neill: Yep. Yep, but even when the kids grew up, they were still coming in as well, too, and that, the lifetime value of the relationships that turn into more things, like, man, if that's true, though, and we do this. Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, we pay lip service to this all the time in our industry. It's a relationship-based business. It is. And then we go and we emphasize we gotta sell this much, and this is our target for sales, and all this other thing, and it's and how much time really are we putting our human attention on our team's human attention in this frenetic age on retention strategy? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. How involved are they in your team right now towards the goal of getting people back in the door from the beginning of that visit to the end of that visit, and what happens in between, the humans involved? And Jimmy, you've been in this industry. It... Most shops, I hear they say, "Hey, my guys aren't gonna use this. Craig O'Neill: I just need this to be automated." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We'll try and make it sound as personal as possible in that automation, but Craig O'Neill: Yeah, we use those cool little variables. Your service advisor gets filled in with the service advisor's name, all the automated message, and automation has merit. It does. We create, through automation, consistent repeatability of things that we want to have occur That's good, right? Craig O'Neill: It is. Jimmy Lea: Make it personable, and make sure you're responding. Craig O'Neill: And make sure you had a hand in that, and make sure you are responding. Correct. The service advisors know these are going out, they know when it's going out, and they're maybe involved in scanning to see who replied and who didn't, or maybe that's somebody's job in the shop. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And we'll talk about this at Mars a little further. I believe it is somebody's job in the shop. We call... I call it the reservationist. A lot of people have a CSR. Yes ... it's a fun topic because... And it goes deep, and we have podcasts on that too. But dude, it's an orientation thing. It's if it's important to you, you're gonna do something about it. Craig O'Neill: If it's not important to you, you won't do anything about it, and that's the measure that, yeah, like, all right. So I just kinda threw a C.S. Lewis mindset at you. There's like this is one of the things I love about reading some of these, these thinkers, right? It's and of course, he's Christian apologetics and that sort of thing, but he said... Craig O'Neill: i'm breaking it down to just a simple point, like something is important or it's not important at all. Craig O'Neill: That middle ground in this topic, I think this is true, that middle ground's not given to us, which forces us to either have to decide, "Eh, it's really not important and we can continue as we are because we're okay with the results," or, "No, this is a really important topic. Craig O'Neill: Our strategy for getting clients into the shop is of actually critical importance to the ultimate success of our business, and is the most important thing that we should be focusing on to guarantee our success. So we're gonna really put in all of our effort towards this goal instead of just reacting to the chaos, reacting to the things that made it in today." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: Wow. What would happen to your business with that focus? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Man. We wanna exponentially increase it. We wanna rocket fuel this. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: And I wonder what the statistics are. There, there was a, a, a read a while ago that talked about restaurant industry was tracking this. How can they get a client to come back for the second dining experience- Yeah Jimmy Lea: and the third dining experience, and the fourth dining experience? And once they get 'em in for that fourth dining experience, they've got a client for life. Craig O'Neill: True. Yeah. I actually just had a interesting restaurant follow-up. I'm on the email list for one of the sushi joints here in Grand Rapids. I love sushi. Craig O'Neill: Love this place. We go Maru Sushi on Cherry Street. Fantastic. Next time you're in Grand Rapids, wonderful. Love going there with my wife. It's our go-to spot. We had a couple months of a dry spell there where we didn't make it in, and we were busy with art shows and all sorts of stuff. Sure. And I got an email that must have been triggered. Craig O'Neill: It's like their little lost customer reminder. It's like- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... " Craig O'Neill: It's been a while. Here's a free app- appetizer" Okay ... for next, on, on your next visit." It was an interesting follow-up. I thought it was really good. Oh yeah, it has been a while. Man, I want sushi right now, is what I experienced with that. Craig O'Neill: And then, and there's a benefit for me right there in it, and I already wanna go there anyways. It's just been a while. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: It's a great way of getting you back in. I, there, there was the example That the manager would go around and say, "Oh, is this your first time?" They had different colored napkins, so he knew- The servers ask us, they're the new ones that don't recognize us. Jimmy Lea: They ask, "Have you guys been in before?" It's like, "Oh, yeah." Yeah. All right. "You can hold on to the menu. N- unless you need it to show us that you haven't taken the order yet," right? Yeah. Yeah. The the managers are going around and they're giving away, "Hey, on your second visit, make sure you try the cheesecake, and here's a coupon for a free cheesecake." Jimmy Lea: You get me back for a $100 meal for a free cheesecake, is it worth it? Craig O'Neill: Totally. Jimmy Lea: What's that cheesecake cost you? Craig O'Neill: Cheapest marketing. All right. So look- Cheesecake more cost ... how much Jimmy Lea: money Craig O'Neill: do you spend on other marketing efforts for what kind of results? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And we've got to do the optimizing everywhere. Jimmy Lea: We've got to optimize ourself in all the locations. There's, which is true. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: But also how effective, and it's extremely, ex- extremely effective when they're there at your shop enjoying the experience, you give them a reason to come back. Craig O'Neill: Yes. And I like what you said there, Jimmy, and I think that's worth drawing some out a little further. Craig O'Neill: What you described is what I we have an improv club in our Toastmasters club, so the we play a lot of improv games, and we've been taught the yes and- Yes and ... approach. Yes and. Yes and. It is, it's, so it's a rule in improv where one of the people in your troupe are make something, that's truth now. Craig O'Neill: You react with that. It's not, you can't go combat this thing. It's not this or this. It's these things now have to be recognized as, as connected. The reality of Jimmy Lea: what you create. Combining forces for something good. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So you said- Using that idea ... all networks, all channels, and this is exactly it. Craig O'Neill: This conversation that we're having doesn't say "Oh, yeah, we just master this and we won't need to spend as much money in this other area." That's not necessarily the case. Now, although maybe you have have some restructuring of that, it's you do refine your strategy on how your team is engaging retention, and you continue your outreach efforts, and maybe restructure how your phone call skills and other things go into all the m- effort you did take towards generating leads actually gets converted into real clients that come back again. Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. W- I was talking to a shop the other day, "My marketing's not working. My marketing's not working. I need to redo all my marketing." Got digging into his phone call log, discovered 43% of phone calls were- Ooh ... not being answered. No. 43%. Craig O'Neill: This is the world th- that AI assistants are entering. Craig O'Neill: And Jimmy- Yes ... this is this is the deepest, saddest thing in the world for me. AI assistants are one, a thing that is i- in demand and two, that it's sometimes better than the Jimmy Lea: people. If you're not able to answer the phone, you need to figure out either you need a human that's there answering the phone, or you implement this AI answering system- Oh, man Jimmy Lea: that's tied to your point of sale that sees your schedule, that can schedule- Better Craig O'Neill: at containing the context and keeping the notes and everything else ... four different... Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, I know. Jimmy Lea: And it's true. If- I do not support the idea that the AI answering your system is going to replace your advisor. Jimmy Lea: Absolutely not. Yeah. Craig O'Neill: No. Jimmy Lea: You do need to answer the phone as quickly as you humanly possibly can, but if you're not able to, that's where you've got this backup that can take care of business. And it's an interesting thing. Craig O'Neill: And this backup Jimmy Lea: is just that. Yeah. It needs to be backup, not plan A. Craig O'Neill: Oh, not plan A. Craig O'Neill: And in fact, you need to be aware And we were having this conversation in our team, too 'cause our sales guys, when they're calling shops, they're hitting AI- Jimmy Lea: Yes ... Craig O'Neill: systems far more frequently than they ever used to, and it's interesting to see that volume go. But simultaneously, we understand, like, how do you feel personally when you call a business and the first thing you get is an AI? Craig O'Neill: Are you happy or a little sad about that? And in an election year right now, it has turned divisive. And we did tailor- trace this back to this really started about two weeks ago. Even in demos where we're talking about AI features- ... the data center issue is coming up. And, like, all these things are, like, top of mind, front and center. Craig O'Neill: "Oh, I can't believe you guys are engaging with AI stuff in this world right now." And it's oh, wow, hot button issue. You have an AI assistant, you probably are gonna have a 50/50 split. I'm y- I'm talking 50/50. Some people will love it and think it's fine or just tolerate it. The other 50% are going to hate it, hate you, and may never call you again. Craig O'Neill: And congratulations, now we're in 2026. Yep. Jimmy Lea: And I, I think the 50/50 might be a little, Craig O'Neill: I'm just thinking about how the elections play out- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... for two different parties. I propose there's probably a 30%, maybe a 33% that loves it, 33%- Fair ... that hates it, and 33% that's in that middle that says, "Ah." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: I Craig O'Neill: would love to see a strong third party too, Jimmy, but that's neither here nor there. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So look at this though. We talked orientation. We don't have a whole organization structured towards retention. Now I had a great coach. Bob Greenwood was my coach. He passed away 2021. And I talk about this frequently. I echo what he taught me a long time ago, and he described our professional responsibility. Craig O'Neill: He asked the question, "What's our job? What's our job? What is your job?" I remember being the technician in the room that raised my hand, and I told him what he was expecting someone in the room to raise their hand and say. Jimmy Lea: Fix cars. " Craig O'Neill: I fix cars." Yep. He pounced. He was ready. This is what he did. I've seen him do it multiple conversations after that. Craig O'Neill: He said, "No. Your job, your professional responsibility, is to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient. That's the job. And that, Mr. Client, is why we do a multi-point inspection on every vehicle that we do, and we will send this digitally to you, and we won't let you down." And there's lots more that goes into that, but there's a whole underlaying sense of purpose about the service that we provided. Craig O'Neill: And if that is our job, to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient, we owe it to our customers to be participants in that- Yeah ... as a member of the community of which they are also driving in. It has direct benefits to us and the other people we love on the streets. But that's an orientation, right? Craig O'Neill: And if that is what you believe about your purpose in this industry- Amen ... yeah, we're gonna start following up with the strong ability to communicate that sense of purpose, and people will hear the conviction in there and that commitment that you made to not letting them down. And that is not going to be heard in your competitors. Craig O'Neill: If you master this, and you don't, you will stand out, I promise you. Jimmy Lea: It's true. It's true. Yeah. Craig, this is a, a phenomenal conversation that we're having, talking about all things marketing, customers, customer relationships. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Managing those relationships, communicating in their preferred method, form, and fashion. Jimmy Lea: This is gonna continue in our Mars Conference. I can't wait. Let's throw up that QR code again. If you are able to attend, and you are listening to this, today is... What day is today? Craig O'Neill: Today is the 9th. Jimmy Lea: September 9th It's called Wednesday. September 9th, intensive giveaway winners. Oh, don't forget the giveaway winners here, Craig. Jimmy Lea: We've- Oh ... le- but- Great Do you wanna announce the winners first, or do you wanna announce the the special giveaway for everybody listening? Craig O'Neill: Let's do the winners first, Jimmy. I'm excited. So we had a drawing as we had two tickets to give away to Mars, and we have two winners, and we'll be sending emails to these winners as well. Craig O'Neill: Winner number one, Preston Callahan. Winner number two, Jordan Jawarenko. And we will get those emails out to you and hope to see you in Utah. And yeah bring your hiking shoes if you wanna go up in the hills with me. I definitely encourage getting up in the hills. So- Jimmy Lea: Are you gonna be rucking? Craig O'Neill: Oh, see, when I'm in the hills I don't just bring useless weight, I bring actual hiking gear, so I just call it hiking when I'm actually in a mountain. Jimmy Lea: When you're in Utah, you go hiking. Yeah. Everywhere else it's Craig O'Neill: rucking. Yeah. Rucking is what I would call urban hiking. Jimmy Lea: It's for you flatlanders. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yeah. So no, I will definitely be ha- I have a pack, I have I put water in there for weight and snacks that I can eat, and the, the idea is you get it lighter as you go with that sort of stuff, but- Oh ... it's absolutely beautiful. So these- Yeah ... are the winners from the Autoflow drawing that we'd had. Craig O'Neill: Those of you who did not win on that drawing, we'll still email you and hope to see you in Utah. Take advantage of this promotion. I think it's gonna be a great conversation. I've done this intensive multiple times. Jimmy, I gotta give you guys some props on this because this is my favorite format literally in all events that I go to. Craig O'Neill: You're in one room together at your headquarters in Ogden, Utah- Yeah ... which is a cool town. Everyone hears the same presenter. We get everyone here asking those same questions, and then- Yep ... the next presenter's gonna be up, and then we do that. We have great food in between, and then there's breakout sessions afterward where we get to go and break out into groups and discuss everything that's done. Craig O'Neill: No one's missing any of the context from any of the presentations. It's not like you're in one session and then another session is going on and "Man, that would've been a cool talk too, but this is really good." You don't have any fear of missing out on anything that's happening. Everybody's a participant the whole way. Craig O'Neill: It's awesome. Jimmy Lea: Oh, and I love the, the vendors are included. Everyone is in the same- Yeah ... room, and we're having these conversations together. It's not just shop owner to shop owner point of view. We get everybody's point of view in on these conversations- Yeah ... which is super awesome. All right. So if you scan this QR code, grab out your smartphone, scan this QR code, this is a coupon. Jimmy Lea: It is on- coupon, oh, I hate calling it that. Yeah. This is a special member VIP. Because you are watching this webinar, this is a cu- the, this code is good until 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, Pacific Daylight Time The code is, and I have to switch over to my other computer, the code is Mars300. This is $300 off of the general admission pricing. Jimmy Lea: So you and a- anybody of the public that is out there, you will get the webinar, the the whole entire intensive, Mars Intensive at the institute member pricing. So use the code Mars, M-A-R-S 300, and that is good until, for in the next, what? 12 hours? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Where are we? 10, 12- And after Jimmy Lea: you fill that out- Oh, 13 hours. Jimmy Lea: You got 13 hours. Ready, set, go. Go ahead ... after Craig O'Neill: you fill that out, email us and I will tell you my favorite two sushi joints in Ogden, Utah, and maybe we can even grab a bite there. Jimmy Lea: Ooh, that's great. And you know what? We do have a couple of more tickets available. There's not a lot, but there are a few more tickets available for that exclusive dinner with Cecil Bullard. Craig O'Neill: Nice. Jimmy Lea: We're gonna have some great conversations. Those that are speakers are invited to be able to be part of this conversation and it's an exclusive dinner with Cecil, so you're gonna have some really good, intense, great conversations with the speakers of the event, with Cecil being there. These are gonna be some really good focused conversations. Jimmy Lea: Those Craig O'Neill: are my favorite moments, Jimmy. Yeah, the event is one thing, but the conversations that happen throughout and at dinners these... If you're not frequently going to industry events like this is... You owe it to yourself to do this. The ideas that you get to go back with are phenomenal, and the connections that you make and the sense of community that you feel that, that's permanent Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Craig. Oh, yeah. Congratulations to Preston. Congratulations to Jordan. Look forward to seeing you in Ogden, Utah, October 26th, 27th and 28th, right before SEMA Apex. And for those who are the adventurous types rent a car. Let's go drive down through Zion and Bryce Canyon and- Yes Jimmy Lea: I'm sure Craig Craig O'Neill: and- Zion. If you haven't been to Zion National Park, what is that place? It is beautiful. It is. Southern Utah, phenomenal, dude. I could go... We have another hour here, so we can just talk about Southern Utah. Man, dude- ... you guys have got the pocket of beauty in this world. It is phenomenal. Craig O'Neill: Like- Jimmy Lea: It's gorgeous. Yeah. It is gorgeous. Craig O'Neill: Absolutely. You will... And Salt Lake City's no joke either. You fly in there, you're gonna think, "This is amazing," and it is. And then you go to Southern Utah and you think "What is... It gets better?" Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Glad you had a great experience with your family down there in Southern Utah. Craig O'Neill: Dude, my wife and I are flying out a little early. We're staying through the weekend before the Mars Intensive we're gonna be hiking some hills then too. It's hard to get the bigger hikes in between the event stuff. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Craig O'Neill: It gets dark- Yes, it is ... it gets hard on the mountain. Jimmy Lea: It does. It does. Jimmy Lea: Even with that, it's not quite enough. I got you. With that, thank you, Craig. I appreciate you being here, brother. Oh, thanks. Thank you so much. Look forward to Mars- Can't wait ... the Mars Intensive. Let's continue this conversation. Let's get in deeper with these conversations and have a great time. I will see you there. Jimmy Lea: Thank you, everybody. See Craig O'Neill: you soon.
217 - AMA: How the Best Shops are Confident in their Pricing
217 - AMA: How the Best Shops are Confident in their Pricing September 3, 2026 - 01:03:32 Show Summary: Profitable auto repair shops build pricing around financial data instead of fear or competitor rates. Rising technician pay and rapidly advancing vehicle technology make strong margins essential for investing in people training and equipment. Confidence comes from understanding the true cost of doing business and recognizing the value a skilled independent shop provides. Customers are often willing to pay more when they trust the quality and experience behind the service. Strong systems and productive teams also give owners the foundation needed to grow without sacrificing profitability. Long term success requires clean financials clear value and the willingness to charge what the business needs to thrive. 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: [00:01:00] – Rising technician pay makes accurate pricing more important than ever. [00:07:00] – Setting prices based on competitors leaves shop owners flying blind. [00:12:00] – Great technicians use diagnostic data but often ignore business data. [00:19:00] – Confidence means explaining why quality automotive repair costs more. [00:27:00] – Low prices can actually make customers question service quality. [00:31:00] – Build operating reserves before expanding into another shop. [00:37:00] – Create a shared vision to earn staff support for pricing changes. [00:44:00] – Automotive pricing has failed to keep pace with rising costs. [00:53:00] – Independent technicians bring valuable diagnostic skills to complex repairs. [00:59:00] – Clean financials create confidence in what your shop must charge. 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If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com. Episode Transcript: Lucas Underwood: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Lucas Underwood from Changing the Industry podcast. I'm a shop owner here in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, own LNN Performance Automotive Repair, and today I have the honor to be joined by Cecil J. Bullard, and we are talking pricing here, uh, on today's show, and we're talking about confidence in pricing. Cecil, buddy, how are you? Cecil Bullard: I'm great. I'm Lucas Underwood: great. You're not a has-been yet? Cecil Bullard: Not yet, brother. I'm a still-was, I think, or maybe never was. I don't know, man. Lucas Underwood: I'm a something, right? Cecil Bullard: I'm something. Somebody knows who I am. Lucas Underwood: Man, I love it, and, and listen, we're talking pricing today, and it's really interesting. I'm, I'm headed up to Kentucky, uh, for the Survive or Thrive Thoroughbred Diesel event in October, and I was working on a presentation for them, and it's really about my story as a shop owner. And for those who don't know, I, I started in diesel performance. I was selling diesel performance parts, and one of the things that we faced in the diesel performance world is they had these MAP prices, and all of these online vendors were selling their parts for MAP prices, and I thought I had to compete with that. And one of the biggest challenges I ever faced as a shop owner was overcoming that fear of charging what I needed to charge. So Cecil, how do we get these shop owners who are listening, these shop owners who are gonna view this later, to the place that they're confident in their pricing? Cecil Bullard: It, it's, it's a, a combination of multiple things obviously. I mean, we, uh, I think if you understand, um ... So let's ... See, this is gonna jump around like it always does. Uh, you keep me on focus. Um- Bet. I'll Lucas Underwood: do what I can. No promises. Cecil Bullard: Right, right now we, we have this, this, uh, techs coming in. Uh, had one yesterday, uh, you know, uh, one of my clients is interviewing a tech, and the guy's saying, "I want 100 grand guaranteed." And, uh, you know, I would tell you two years ago that was probably 65 or 70 maybe. Yeah. And so now it's 100,000. And so we have this, um, uh, you know, the, the, the shortage, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, uh, we have a demand, and we have, uh, a necessity of probably paying more. So if I understand, you know, what I'm paying and why I'm paying it and what I need to pay, then I also have to relate that to my pricing. Because- Yeah ... um, if I don't charge enough, I don't get paid enough to pay the person that I need to enough to buy the equipment, to buy the training. And y- you know, when I, uh, was, was working as a tech, which is a long time ago, um- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: and, and people will go, "Oh, wow, did the cars have wooden tires?" Yeah. "Or were they rubber?" I was Lucas Underwood: gonna say, I, I Cecil Bullard: can't believe- They, they were rubber, man ... we had Lucas Underwood: cars that long ago, you Cecil Bullard: know? They were, they were rubber, yeah. But, but, um, you know, classes were, uh, few and far between frankly. Mm-hmm. Uh, mainly manufacturers had classes. We didn't have a lot of the aftermarket stuff like Asta that's coming up where we could get great tech training there or- Yeah you know, great management training. Um, and it wasn't ... But it also was very inexpensive in comparison maybe to what training is today. And the cars, of course, were a lot simpler. So there's this idea that, okay, what I'm doing ... Uh, and I think this might be one of the core problems we have with shop owners. They do not understand the value of what they do- For sure ... their knowledge, right? Yeah. Most of them, you know, uh, we still have a, probably a higher percentage of people in our industry that were not ... You know, they don't have a college degree. They didn't, uh, you know, have a master's degree in, in automotive technology or- Yeah or, you know, engineering or whatever that is. Um, and many of these guys, I had a, again, a conversation, uh, Sunday with one of the clients that, um, you know, he's like, "I, I didn't even graduate high school," right? "I, I, uh, I got into drugs. I went to, I went to prison. Uh, I got out of prison. I started to be a mechanic 'cause I, that's, I could do that." And now he owns a shop, and a pretty successful shop. Now he owns a couple pieces of property. And, but- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: I think if we don't value what we do- Or we don't see the value in what we do. And I also think that, that we have blinders on as, uh- Mm ... shop owners because all we really see, uh, we, and, and how we interpret what we see is probably, uh, very limited. So I drive down- Lucas Underwood: Yeah, through our lens. Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: I drive down these five streets to get to work, and there are three shops, and I drive by, you know, Billy Bob's shop, who is the cheapest guy in town, and I know that, and man, he's got a lot of cars parked outside that shop. He's always got a lot of cars. And then my phone doesn't seem to be ringing, and it's- Yeah a real, it's a natural leap to go, "Well, my price must be too high," right? Lucas Underwood: For sure. For Cecil Bullard: sure. Uh, as opposed, uh, as opposed to, number one, I don't know what Billy Bob's costs are. Yeah. I don't know if Billy Bob, uh, is paying rent, you know, how much rent. Uh, I don't know what Billy Bob's- Yeah ... paying his technicians. Don't Lucas Underwood: even know if he's doing any marketing. Right? And frankly- Those could all be comebacks, right? Yeah, and, and- Like, we don't know Cecil Bullard: Yeah, and frankly, I don't even know if he's making any money at all, right? He might be losing three grand a month, and- Lucas Underwood: That, that's a- But- That's a great point, right? Because I, I've been- Right there, done that, right? Because I, I, I was the guy riding by the other shops, looking at the other shops saying, "Oh, look how busy they are. Look at what they've got going on," not realizing that some of those cars had been sitting there for weeks. They hadn't- Yeah, for months ... got anything done. Yeah. Right. And, and a, as I dug in and I started talking to these guys, I'm going and talking to them, I'm realizing, hey, listen, they're doing twice the amount of work for the same amount of money. I'd rather have an empty parking lot and make the amount of money I'm making as I would- Cecil Bullard: Oh, yeah, yeah. If I'm not gonna make any money, I'd rather not work. I mean- Lucas Underwood: Exactly ... holy smokes, right? Exactly, and look, here, here's what I keep seeing, and I talk to shop owner after shop owner, and this- You know, David gets frustrated because we keep having this discussion over and over again. And he said- Yeah ... "Why do we keep having this discussion?" I said, "Because all of these techs leave shops and decide to start their own mobile mechanic business. They decide to start their own shop. They go out on their own and they do their own thing. And so we have to continue to teach them because they were uninterested in this when they were technicians. They didn't care." And eventually what happens is we have these new folks coming in, they get burnt, they're trying to figure out, "Why can't I pay my bills? This isn't working for me. What's going on? Why doesn't this work?" And Cecil Bullard: so then we- And by the way, they- when- Go ahead ... when people see this or, or people that are watching, many of them will be barely making a living. You know? Yeah. They, what they have is a bad job that doesn't- Yeah ... pay well. So I work- Lucas Underwood: Exactly. 100% ... Cecil Bullard: I work 70, 80 hours a week, and I, I can't go to my daughter's play and I can't do this and I can't do that, um, because I'm trying to get this car fixed so I have the money to go in the bank to pay the bills. And, and they're- They're payrolls we- ... trapped in this, they're- Yeah ... trapped in this thing, and, uh, they don't understand that, that you don't have to be trapped in that thing. Lucas Underwood: For sure. Right? And, and here's the thing, is, is over and over and over again, I have this discussion. Right? I talk to, to hundreds of shop owners and techs becoming shop owners through the span of a given month, right? Talk to- Yeah ... tons of them. Get a message every single hour throughout every single day- Yeah, every day ... from somebody, right? Cecil Bullard: I'm glad I'm not you, baby. Lucas Underwood: And so what I'm noticing is, is they're all going out and they're setting their prices, and they're using what I like to call the Oreo pricing method. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: So they've got, you know, shop over here's on the high end, shop over here's on the low end, I'm gonna be somewhere in the middle. And I talk to them and I say, "Guys, hey, listen. I don't know if you know this, but you should probably be using data to set your prices. And that data comes from your financials, and otherwise you're flying blind because you don't know if you're pricing yourself correctly or not because you're not using the data. Now yeah, we can give you some numbers that the industry standard is, and we can get you 90% of the way there," but they all panic when you give them those numbers, Cecil. Cecil Bullard: But I'm also- They have a- I'm also, I'm also not sure there's an industry standard because- That's true ... you know, we still have shops, you know, uh, that are probably under $100 an hour in the industry. Yeah. I mean, there's that mobile guy that's out there for 80 bucks an hour. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, uh, I've got shops that are- And thinks he's Lucas Underwood: doing them favors. Thinks he's doing- Yeah, Cecil Bullard: and I've Lucas Underwood: got- ... the guest a favor, man. Come on now. Cecil Bullard: I've got shops that are in the same- General location that are 250 an hour. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know that there's an industry standard. I don't think there is a standard. But- In fact... Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Here, here's the problem though, is that it- standard or no standard, the reality is, is they're setting their price- Survive ... based on feel. Yeah. They're setting their price based on what the market looks like around them and what they suspect the market will bear. And, and I'm telling you, would you go out and say, "I feel like this car needs a $4,000 control module"? No, you wouldn't do that because that's asinine. That's stupid. Why would you take your business, which has the potential to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue every single year, every single month in some cases- Cecil Bullard: Yeah Lucas Underwood: and take a gamble with it? Why would you do that? You wouldn't do that with a client's car. It just makes Cecil Bullard: no sense to me. Well, you know, we, we don't like... I, I wouldn't go to a doctor that didn't have a degree, and I don't mean this in the sense that mechanic-wise. I'm just saying if I knew the guy was a quack, I wouldn't go there because I don't want somebody- Yeah guessing about my health, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And yet I have this business, and, and my business has done everything for me, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Don't get me wrong, I've also done everything for my business, right? Yeah. But, but my business provides the money that allows me to live the lifestyle, that allows me to help the industry, that allows me to drive a nice truck, that allows me to, you know, have a, a nice coat- Yeah if I want it, that feeds my family. You know, and we can eat steak and, you know, all that. The, the business is the engine that runs your life- Yeah ... in a way, okay? And so I've got this thing that literally can create generational wealth- Mm-hmm ... or it can be a bad job where I work too hard too long and don't, and don't get paid for it. Be a burden take away from Lucas Underwood: my family. Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So, like, I, I'm talking to, uh, another shop a couple of days ago and, and we're talking about, uh, they're gonna- they wanna hire this guy who wants $100,000. And I'm like, "Okay, we can do that," right? Yeah. And I'm like, "Uh, so that's," whatever, it's 50 bucks an hour basically. And, and so, uh, what's our effective labor rate? Well, our effective labor rate's probably not what our po- Our, I think the posted labor rate was between 155 and 175, depending on the kind of car and the job we're doing and- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: and but the effective labor rate was probably 130, 140. And, and so now you're... I'm doing math saying, "Okay, it's $50." Then I've got 30% load, so it's really 65. And then if the guy comes in and he's only, say, 80% productive, then my cost goes from, say, 65 probably all the way up into the high 80s. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And now I'm paying out 55% of the labor I brought in- Instead of 40%. And so that difference of that 15% is the difference in my profit, right? Yeah. And it means I don't make money in most shops. Exactly. Yeah. Many shops are, are not even making 5% profit. Lucas Underwood: Hey. Cecil Bullard: And, and so if you're gonna lose 15% because you hired the wrong guy or you didn't price yourself correctly- Yeah ... or you didn't hold the line or you didn't build value, um, and you're gonna end up losing that 15% and only make 4%, then you have a terrible job with terrible hours and terrible pay. Um- Lucas Underwood: With no return on investment. Yeah. And, and he- here's on top of all of that, like when we look at this and we think about the whole strategy here behind setting our pricing and everything else, like profit doesn't happen by accident, okay? Cecil Bullard: No. Lucas Underwood: You're not gonna just walk into your shop one day and say, "I think the number needs to be X", and set that number and be profitable. Now, you might get lucky. Yeah. You might actually become profitable. But without clean books, without good data, without the ability to look and, and dig into the information- It's very unlikely you're gonna be Cecil Bullard: wrong Well, that's the other thing. That's the other thing that makes me a, a little bit crazy. We have these guys that are really great technicians. And- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: they're great technicians because of, they have the education, they have the hands-on experience, they have the right tools, the right equipment, and they also know how to read the data. Yeah. So, you know, I hook up the car, I get the, this from the scanner. It tr- I track down to the oxygen sensor. I know how to test the oxygen sensor. I know what good is, I know what bad is. I know how to look at a, a wave, uh, uh, form for a injector, and I know what good is and I know what bad is. Yeah. And so they, they do that in their job every day in their life because they think that's important and because it is, but they don't do the same thing in their business. Yeah. They, they literally pull stuff out of the air, or they listen to somebody like me, and they go, "Well, that guy's crazy 'cause he's saying we should be $220 an hour- Yeah. Yeah ... and there's no way we could be... We, every one of our clients- And let emotion drive it ... would run away. Um, you were, you were talking about the, um, the event that's coming up, the diesel event, Thoroughbred. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I was at, at Thoroughbred, uh, last year and the previous year. And so the previous year, uh, you know, I did a thing and, and talked about the numbers and all of that. And so the next year I'm there and I, I said, uh, "Is anyone here that joined up with the institute or became a client in the la- you know, from the last meeting?" Yeah. And there's a guy, uh, raised his hand a- and I said, "Okay. Um, if you don't mind me asking, and if you're willing to share, what is your labor rate, uh, when we started a year ago? When you joined the institute, what was your labor rate when you first came to this?" And he said, s- uh, he was like, "$79 an hour." Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? And I was like, "Okay. And so I'm assuming that you walked away and you said, 'I'm gonna raise my labor rate.'" And he said, "Yeah." And, and I said, "Okay. If you don't mind me asking, what did you raise it to?" Right? He said, "Well, today we're at $180 an hour." Yeah. A year. Yeah. He went up over $100 an hour a year. Now he was- Didn't lose Lucas Underwood: all of his clients. Cecil Bullard: A- no. And I said, "Okay. A- and so how many clients realistically, just, just be as honest as you can, how many clients did you lose? Did you lose any?" And he went, "Yeah, we lost a few." Right? Yeah. And I said, "Okay. And, and who were they?" He said, "They were the people who would never pay us to do the work." I mean- Yep ... he lost maybe 3% of his clients. Yeah. And at, at 3%, so what? I mean- Exactly ... his labor rate- Lucas Underwood: 100%. Cecil Bullard: Think, think about, think about three guys, let's say they're only doing 70%. So- Mm-hmm ... you got three guys doing about six hours a day. You got 18 hours a day. If your labor rate goes up 100 bucks- Lucas Underwood: Yeah Cecil Bullard: that's $18,000 a day, right? Did I do that right? 1,800, uh, 1,800... It's $18,000 a day in a- uh, additional profit that because your labor rate went up 100 bucks, right? And- A- and most people, they're like, they can't even fathom that, right? They, first of all, they don't run the math. They don't figure it out. They're, they're diagnosing based on emotion, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um- 100%. I, I, uh, you know, I had a cl- if you, if you're in this industry, if you're in, in the industry, I don't care where you are, I don't care who you are today, you're gonna deal with price objections- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: every time. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. Cecil Bullard: And, and, and you're gonna deal with a lot of them. Uh, you and I were kinda talking about that before we started. I mean, right now, uh, a lot of people are out of money. They don't know what's going on. The price of gas is, you know, higher than- Yeah ... it should be, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's Trump doing? What's... What, what are the Democrats doing? What are the socialists doing? Um- Yeah. Credit card delinquencies- A lot of them- Lucas Underwood: are through the roof. Yeah. Car loans are through the roof. Delinquencies are through the roof. Cecil Bullard: A- and, and you're gonna deal with price objection. And the problem is, if you don't know how to deal with price objection and, and understand your value and be able to, uh, create value for your client- Yeah ... then you're not gonna win the game. 100%. And, and, and what's gonna h- the other thing that's gonna happen is you're gonna get this emotional response, and the emotional response is, "Wow, I have these people that are beating me up on price. And number one, I, it's uncomfortable for me, and I don't wanna be uncomfortable, so what do I do?" Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: "Well, let's lower our price." Yeah. I've shopped in, um, Tennessee- And, uh, the owner was like, "Yeah, we're really struggling right now," blah, blah, blah. Uh, I lowered the price on a, a, uh, several of our jobs, and I'm... I, I just wanna, like, you know... Yeah. Um, and, and what happened was his marketing was bringing the wrong customers in. Yep. It wasn't that- Reaching Lucas Underwood: the wrong people ... Cecil Bullard: we changed the marketing companies, we changed marketing strategies, and all of a sudden the shop is full and people are paying a full price. They're not discounted, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Here, here's the thing is, is you're right, because it is all emotion. And, and- Yes for so long it's been driven by emotion, it's not been driven by data. And one of the things that we fall victim to, and, and I'm gonna tell you one of the greatest David rants of all time, and I was there to witness the telephone call. Because David, say what you want about the guy, he's extraordinarily intelligent, right? Absolutely. And I'm not saying that because he's my best friend. I love David. I'm saying that... Yeah. Yeah. If you really could get David to show you how smart David actually is, it would amaze the people who have negative things to say about him. Yeah. The man is genius level. I would say he's in the top 3% of- He just Cecil Bullard: gets frustrated. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: He... And by the way, if you're really smart, you get frustrated- Yeah ... easier. Lucas Underwood: Exactly, because everything looks easy to you. You're just like- Yeah ... "Why are you this stupid?" Um, and- And then- That's why Cecil Bullard: we're friends, right? And then if you don't learn how to con- It works ... if you don't learn how to control that, it gets you in trouble. So. But, Lucas Underwood: but here's the thing is we, we were riding down the road one day, and this lady is, is fussing about his price. And he said, "I'm sorry, can you help me understand something?" And she said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Are you an expert in automotive repair?" And she said, "No, I, I, I just own a car." And he said, "Okay, are you an expert in automotive parts?" And she said, "No, I, I, I'm not." And he said, "Okay, are you an expert in automotive diagnostics and testing?" And she said, "No, I'm not." I said, "Do you..." Or she said, "Do I... You know, what, what are you getting at here?" And he said, "I'm asking because I do this for a living. Every single day I make estimates to properly repair automobiles. I, I make sure that I get the torque-to-yield fasteners on. I make sure that I get all the gaskets on. I make sure that I have the part pricing proper so I can stand behind the repair after I'm done." Cecil Bullard: And qu- and a quality part is Lucas Underwood: not a- And a quality part. It's a, I am- And I, I am, I am a professional- Yeah ... at estimating your job. You are not. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but I don't need you sitting here telling me what the price should be unless you're an expert in pricing it. Now, if you want a different quality product, go somewhere else." Cecil Bullard: Yeah, 'cause that's not what I do, right? Lucas Underwood: And she stopped and she said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You can, you can go down the street and you can have somebody do this job with poor quality parts, not using the torque-to-yield fasteners, not torquing things to spec, lowering the time using a, a poor quality technician, and you can do that if you want. If you wanna take that risk, that's your business, but you're getting what you pay for." Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And the lady said Just do the work. Cecil Bullard: Oh my. Lucas Underwood: And so- Right. Yeah ... it, it was so interesting because it's a completely different mentality than most shops take. Because the consumer comes to them and says, "I can't believe you're gonna charge that. That seems really expensive." It is really expensive because it's expensive- Yeah ... to fix a modern automobile. Yeah, I mean- But instead what do we do? We quiver, we shake inside, we get upset, our little hearts beat fast and we're like, "Oh, God, what do we do?" Cecil Bullard: So- And- ... I bou- I bought my first truck, um, uh, 40 years ago. And, uh, shortly after I bought, I bought a Toyota truck, and it was, it was kinda basic. It didn't have a lot of- Yeah ... crap in it. And that truck was, I think, uh, like eight grand or something. Seven, eight grand. It was not much. Yeah. And, and like, uh, two months later my wife was pregnant with our first and so I had to get rid of the truck and get something- Yeah that we had back seats in. But, but- Lucas Underwood: Yeah, they didn't like it- Cecil Bullard: I Lucas Underwood: bought a- ... back then when you put them in the back- Cecil Bullard: Right ... in Lucas Underwood: the snow. Cecil Bullard: I, yeah. In Lucas Underwood: Utah. Cecil Bullard: I, yeah. I bou- I bought a, a new truck, uh, about a year and a half ago. It was $82,000. Right? I mean, that comparison, I, I bought my first house. My dad's house was 13,000, my first house was 100,000. Uh, I think, you know, we're paying somewhere between six and 800,000 for houses out here today. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and you know, everything, what, what kills me is kinda this, you know, I, I don't know, I went to, um, uh, Jack in the Box, uh, this morning and got a couple of, uh, croissants, one for me and- Yeah ... and one for Kent. And, and it was 15 bucks. Yeah. And I was like, "Those used to be two bucks a piece." That was the- Exactly ... you know, two years ago it was $4. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, a- and you know what I did? I gave them my credit card and I paid for it, right? Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Didn't say a word. Didn't Cecil Bullard: fuss. Didn't- And I didn't say a thing. And- Yeah ... I had to fill up the truck on the way home the other day. It was $4 and, whatever, 38 cents a gallon. Yeah. It was $4.38 a gallon. I got a 32 gallon tank. I mean, it was almost $80 to fill up the truck. And, and you know what I did? Filled up the tank. I ran my card through the machine and paid it and walked away. Yeah. I went to the grocery store, right? And, and eggs were, I don't know, whatever eggs are. Milk was whatever milk was. I spent $400 on, I don't know, a third of a basket of food. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and you know what I did? I paid it and walked out and, and I didn't think about it because that's the way it is. Lucas Underwood: You know, my first business coach taught me a very valuable lesson. He said, um, he said, "You're selling from your wallet." Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You're selling from your wallet. Everything's from your perspective. And because you're broke, because you're not charging what you need to charge, everything feels expensive. So when you're pricing it, it does feel expensive." And so later on we had this discussion, we're talking about discounts. Because- Yeah ... it, now listen, I, I don't mean to, like, get y'all enraged here. I know it's going to. But here's the thing is like when we talk about this, all these shop owners come up and they say, "No, no, no, my labor rate's $200 an hour. My, my part margin's 60%." Cecil Bullard: Oh, but then they- Lucas Underwood: Why do you have $150,000- Well, they give it away on the other side in discounts? Yeah. Yeah. Right? And, and so he- Cecil Bullard: I see the financials. I'm like, I'm like, "You made t- $2,000 last month, but you had $12,000 in discounts." Lucas Underwood: Right. Exactly. Cecil Bullard: Help, help me understand that, right? Lucas Underwood: And so he- Cecil Bullard: How... Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Well, my, my first coach said to me, he said, um, "I've, I've got a, I've got a rule that you're gonna implement in your shop." And he said, "This is just a set rule. This is what it is." And I said, "What?" He said, "If you feel like giving a damn discount," he said- Yes, absolutely ... "I want you to keep some money in your wallet- Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Big Lucas Underwood: time ... and I want you to go up here and pull that money out of your wallet." I said, "Well, I ain't got no money." He said, "That's my point. You don't have any Cecil Bullard: damn money." And you, and you, and by the way, you never will if you, if you don't stay ahead on the straight. Lucas Underwood: Keep doing what you're doing. Cecil Bullard: Right. Lucas Underwood: And, and- You have to- But see- ... stay ahead on the straight ... we don't think about that, Cecil. We're so- Yeah ... disconnected because we're focused on fixing the car. And, and it, I believe it's a mindset, okay? Because we're back there in the bays and we're turning the wrenches, and in our mind, the, the desired outcome is that car gets fixed. And so we begin to change whatever it takes to get the car fixed. Well, I could lower the quality of the part. I could, I could reduce my labor rate a little bit. I could give them a discount here. Maybe I don't use that part there. Cecil Bullard: No, Lucas Underwood: it's to get the- Because we're technicians, we're- Cecil Bullard: It's not to get the car fixed. And, and I, I understand what you're saying. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: But it's to get the car in, right? I believe that in order to get that car in, I need to bring my price down. I need to be, quote-unquote, price competitive. Except- Tell me what price competitive is. I have shops- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: I probably have, um, in some areas I have three or four shops that we work with, and the price variance between those shops that are in, within 30 miles of each other can be as much as $60 or $80 an hour. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And by the way, the shops that are most successful are not the cheaper shops. Yeah. They're the higher price shops. Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: Because I think the consumer, there's this thing about price. So I'm, I'm in Edmonton doing a, a gig, and there's a Mercedes shop up there, and this is, I don't know, six, eight years ago, pre-COVID. And, uh, the, the lady that ran the Mercedes shop, she was like, "We can't... Nobody is booking, you know, the phone rings, but nobody wants to come into the shop." And they're a Mercedes shop. And I looked at the shop and it was, you know, it was, it was okay. It wasn't, like, filthy, it wasn't terrible, yada, yada. And, and you know, I called the shop, and it wasn't a bad con- It wasn't a great conversation. It wasn't a bad conversation. And I asked her, I said, "Well, what's your labor rate?" Now, by the way, at the time, say eight years ago, my shops up in Edmonton were between 130 and 160. All right? Lucas Underwood: Mm-hmm. Cecil Bullard: And she was 75 bucks an hour. Yeah. And I said, "Okay, if you own a Mercedes, right, and you're not the fourth owner, you know, the guy that- Yeah the, it's the hand-me-down Mercedes that I got that's not fixed, that's t- you know, falling apart- Yeah ... I have no money. If you're the second owner of the Mercedes or the first owner of the Mercedes, and somebody says, "Well, you know, my price is half of what everybody else's is," what's the first thing that comes into your mind? You know, if you, if you saw, I don't know, if you saw, uh, let's say, uh, tamales, right? You got, uh, tamales. You go in the grocery store, and there's two kinds of tamales. Yeah. They, they kind of look the same, but not exactly the same. And one of them for six tamales is 12 bucks, and the other one is three. Which one are you buying? Lucas Underwood: I Cecil Bullard: know, I'm telling you. I'm not buying the, I'm not buying the $3 tamales. That's a, that's a chance that number one, I'm not gonna like them, and number two, it could make me sick, blah, blah, blah. Might have Lucas Underwood: that listeria added in there. I'm, Cecil Bullard: yeah, I'm buying the $12 tamales. It- Between the ch- I- if I'm thinking about price, right? At all. Lucas Underwood: For sure. I, we, we had those cabins, right, where the shop's at, there used to be nine cabins here. Yeah. And for years they were $100 a night, and they were log cabins. Actual log cabins with a kitchen, with a sleeper sofa, and a living room, and a dining room, had a shower and a, a bathroom. Some of them had hot tubs, had a, a bedroom. And the, the occupancy rate stayed in the 40% range, and my parents were, were content with that. It was paying the bills. It wasn't that big of a deal. They're making Cecil Bullard: enough money to pay the overhead. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. My brother came in and decided he was gonna raise the prices, started charging $225 a night, and our occupancy jumped to 80%. Yeah. Nothing else changed. No marketing, no nothing else changed. And people started coming in saying, "I thought there was something wrong with them. I thought they were gross or nasty or something." ' Cecil Bullard: Cause they were, 'cause they were so cheap. Lucas Underwood: Because they were so cheap. Yeah. Yeah. And, and we don't think about that perspective. And I, I'm telling you, I buy things on Amazon, and I'll see two exact comparisons side by side. Like, I'm not gonna get the cheap one 'cause there's a reason it's cheaper, right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah, when I see the cheap, my, my thoughts are, uh, I just bought, uh, uh, some stuff yesterday and I saw the cheap stuff, and I was like, "I, I don't wanna buy that. It's too risky for me." Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? It, it might not be... It might be some Chinese whatever, because I don't know. I mean, it looks like the product, but it's, it, it probably isn't. At that price, it can't be, right? Lucas Underwood: How... Uh, so look, here's the thing, because we, we're talking about confidence, right? And, and at the root, we, we know that the pricing has to go up in this industry. We know that- Yes ... beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yeah. There, there's no if, ands, or buts about it. Nope. And because we, we need to be paying our guys more. I don't think anybody debates that. And if you do debate that- Man, come on now. Second of all- Cecil Bullard: If you're, if, if you're not making 15% net profit minimum- Yep ... on your business, and your business isn't designed to make 20% net, then- Oh you're gonna end up with Ford and struggle. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Absolutely. Cecil Bullard: Go ahead. Sorry. Lucas Underwood: And, and so here's the thing is, is the confidence piece of this. Because we know that the price needs to go up. We don't have to debate that the price needs to go up. How do we get shop owners to the point they're confident in sharing that price? And I, I think there's a, a, a myriad of things, and I, I think that a lot of small business owners tend to be people pleasers, and that's something that I am learning myself to overcome. And, and I'm trying to work on this concept that if you're not happy, I have to be unhappy, too. And I'm growing and developing in that, but I've, I've realized, like, hey, I can't let that person's emotion dictate my emotion. And so when they- What do you think- Go ahead. Cecil Bullard: What do you think the future of automotive repair... Who do you think are gonna be the existing successful shops, say, 10 years from now, right? Lucas Underwood: Well, I know we're gonna have venture capital and private equity with a bunch of big chain shops bought up. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's gonna be a handful of small independents left that, that could overcome the financial challenges associated with small business ownership and automotive repair in the, uh, in the 2030s. Cecil Bullard: It's all about... It will, it will all, it will all be about a couple of things. First of all- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: it's not about fixing the car. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: You have to fix the car, okay? That, that's a given. That's the base level Lucas Underwood: expectation. Cecil Bullard: That's a, that's a base level. That's not Lucas Underwood: like a... Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Somebody shows up to your shop with their keys and says, "Here you go," they expect you to fix the car, okay? Yeah. It is going to be the, uh, the additional items, the way the customer feels about your service, the way the customer feels about your pricing, the way the customer feels about how you paid attention to them, did you listen to them- Yeah you know, all of those things. And, and by the way, the average person, in fact, I'd tell you 80, 85% of the people will buy the more expensive product if they feel good about the interaction and they feel good about the product. They will always do that. We got a couple questions coming in, so I think- Lucas Underwood: Yeah, I, there's some really good ones in here. Yeah. I've, I've got one, I'm passionate about this one. It says, "How much money should a shop have set aside?" I'm gonna tell you something. The best advice that I was given by anybody before building this new shop was maximize the shop that you have now. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Don't just decide to move. Don't just think that, and run the numbers and figure out what your max capacity is. And I'm gonna tell you, if I learned anything, I wish I had set on that bad boy for as long as I could, just letting it make money and stacking cash. I would get every single dime of money I can in the bank account, because here's what so many people don't realize about expanding They think when they have that small shop, that when they expand, all of a sudden they're gonna have all this demand and they're gonna be able- Yeah to fill up that new big shop. If you, if you build it, they will Cecil Bullard: come. Lucas Underwood: It does not work that way. Yeah. Right? That doesn't work that way, I promise. Cecil Bullard: Well, yeah, three bays, three bays, low roof, uh- Yeah ... no racks, uh- Exactly ... to, uh, what, 12 bays, uh- Yep ... you know, super high roof. Lot of space. You can get anything you want in, and all of a sudden you think, "Why isn't my shop full?" Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Well, wait a minute, you didn't Lucas Underwood: do all the work. Well, uh, we're making more Cecil Bullard: revenue. Yeah, yeah. Lucas Underwood: That was just the limit of the capacity that we had at the given time. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And so, I, I Cecil Bullard: would- And so maximize it. Exactly, man. So I have a client... Lucas Underwood: Maximize what you got and stack the cash. Cecil Bullard: So that particular question, I think, I think the answer is ve- it varies. Yeah. First of all, every shop, every shop owner should have a minimum of three months worth of operating capital in a savings account, period. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? That's before I even think about buying another shop. So- Yeah ... uh, I have a client, uh, we're buying shop number three. Mm-hmm. Um, he's been a client now, I would say probably since 2021. Um, when he started with us, he was making three, four grand a month. Uh, we currently have two shops, we made $87,000 in profit last month. Now, he's got half a million dollars in the bank. His machine is generating between, say, 70 and 90,000 every month. Yeah. The machine that he has built. And, uh, and that's, and that's pure profit, right? It's not, "Oh, I'm gonna have to do this with that or that with it." And then it depends on the deal, because he's gonna buy a piece of property for, uh, a million dollars that comes with a shop on it that just hasn't been operating for a bit. So he's got some- Yeah ... expense for marketing, building it up, tools and equipment, et cetera, that if you bought an operational shop, you wouldn't have. And this is not an owner finance carry. Yeah. So if I'm, if I'm, if I'm gonna do owner financing and the owner's gonna carry it, I might need less cash, right? Yeah. Or if I have to buy more equipment, I might need more cash. Or if- Yeah ... if I have to go through and remodel the shop, I, I mean, I don't think anybody that I've dealt with when they bought their next shop didn't spend at least $40,000 in the move. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? Lucas Underwood: And, and at this point, I think 40,000's an undershoot because- Oh, it's way, it's way low ... things have gotten so expensive. I mean- Cecil Bullard: Yeah, you could... I need, my signage is 40 grand, right? Yeah. I mean, if I'm gonna- Yeah, for sure ... put signage on the building. And- Lucas Underwood: And- Cecil Bullard: And, yeah Lucas Underwood: Uh, here, here's the deal about this, is that, that you think, "I'm gonna go buy a shop," or, "I'm gonna go build a shop," and you get these numbers in your head. I promise you, because everybody told me, you can double it. Just double it. Just- Yeah ... right off the number, whatever it is, double that number. And so they told me- And the timeframe ... $2 million, that's what it's gonna be. Yeah. And I didn't believe them. Cecil Bullard: And Lucas Underwood: the timeframe- Cecil Bullard: And so... Exactly. So by the way, not six months, a year. Lucas Underwood: Oh, yeah. Double the money, double the timeframe- Cecil Bullard: Yeah ... Lucas Underwood: and, and then get comfortable with those numbers or even higher numbers than that. Target the lower numbers, sure, but be expecting for it to be way more expensive than you think it's gonna be and take way longer than you think it's gonna take, and be way more uncomfortable, create way more stress. And, and let me tell you something. If you think it's not gonna impact the shop you have now- Yeah ... when you're in the middle of that- Yeah ... you're gonna find out if you grew a team or not. Cecil Bullard: Well, the other thing, I- Lucas Underwood: Because you're gonna be focused on something else. Cecil Bullard: So the other piece of that is if I have a really great team and I have really good systems and processes, I need less money to open the other shop- Yeah because I don't need... Like, the shop I have, if it runs really well, if it runs, uh... You know, if it's very consistent, et cetera, and it's done that for, I don't know, six months, a year, year and a half- Yeah ... and I have a great team there, uh, um, then I need less money to open up the next shop because I'm, I'm, I'm comfortable. I'm putting money- Yeah ... in the bank routinely, et cetera. There was another part of the question, uh, best marketing strategy in a small town. I, I'll tell you the best marketing strategy, period. Do an unbelievable job- Yeah ... for your client. And, and- Treat people well ... and the other thing is, you know, learn how to answer the phone correctly, and learn how to build value from the start. You know, when people- Yeah ... called me and they said, "Hey, Cecil, um, you know, how much for a water pump on a whatever?" I'd say, "You know- Yeah ... I know price is important to you, but before we have that conversation, can I tell you about, you know, Larry's and, and why we do what we do here?" And I never had somebody say, "No, just give me a damn price." Um, I... Then I was able to say, "Look, we... This is our philosophy of taking care of cars. We, we believe that our customers can drive these cars for 10, 15, 20 years and take care of them, and if they do, it's gonna cost them a lot less over the, the lifetime of the- Yeah ... of the vehicle. So every time you come in here, we're gonna inspect the car. We're gonna do a- Yeah ... complete inspection, and every time you come in, someone like me is gonna sit down with you and have a conversation about what you need and, and, and why you need it- I'm gonna be- ... and be able to tell you exactly what it costs- Yeah ... so you can make a, an intelligent decision. For sure. And if that's good, if that sounds good to you, then I have an appointment on Tuesday or Wednesday. And- I think if you create a product that's different than everyone else's product, that's better, that's superior, that you get that, right? The, the, the person, uh, uh, uh, that the, the, the 80% of the population that's gonna value that is gonna value it. The 20%'s always gonna look for the cheapest price. And- Absolutely ... and by the way, they're not my, they're not my, they're not my clients. Lucas Underwood: Exactly. So- Exactly. And, and that's what they're gonna be going after no matter what. You're not gonna please them. And even if you made 50 cents on it, they're gonna be fussing about that. Yeah. Right? And so it, it doesn't work. Now I, I wanna jump into this next question and, and Steve from Wassbalden Motive, Steve, I really hope that we see you at ASTA. Uh, you're in Durham, it's in hometown, so we'd love to see you there. I'm, I'm gonna post a link down here in the comments, and I, I hope that you, uh, see that, Steve. Because I, I think it's important. Because he's asking the question is how do I get my legacy staff to buy in? And I think this is touching- Shoot them Cecil Bullard: all. Shoot Lucas Underwood: them all. There you go. Um- Shoot them Cecil Bullard: all. I, Lucas Underwood: I think it- No, Cecil Bullard: um- ... Lucas Underwood: starts for me with vision. Yeah. And it starts w- with destination. It starts with what we're trying to accomplish, what do we believe, where are we trying to go? Cecil Bullard: What if we really sat down and had a conversation with our staff that said, "Who are we and what do we wanna be?" Yep. "And what's the image that we wanna portray to our clients," right? Lucas Underwood: Exactly. Cecil Bullard: And, and we built that with our staff because, like, I took over a shop, I went in and, you know, within a week I sat everybody down, I said, "Okay, what kind of shop do you wanna work for?" Right? "What do you wanna be? You wanna be a discount shop, you wanna be a tire shop, you wanna be a transmission shop? Do you wanna be, like, a, a top shop in the industry? Do you want the community to look at you as a top shop, or do you care?" Right? And, and everybody in my shop said, "We wanna be a top shop." Yeah. And by the way... So then we started talking about, well, what does a top shop look like? What does it feel like? How, how do they answer the phone? How do they... What's their comeback rate? What's their, you know, what's, what do they charge? Are they on the lower end, are they on the higher end? Yeah. So you, you have to get your team on your side. You have to get your team behind. Like, if I can't value my own pricing- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: how can I expect my team to value my pricing, right? For Lucas Underwood: sure. 100%. Cecil Bullard: I have to be... My, my dad, and I've said this in a lot of classes and a lot of people, my dad always said I had an over, uh, developed sense of my own self-worth. Yeah. All right? But when I was a, a tech working on cars, I always thought, "Man, we are so cheap." And I've always thought that through the whole thing. Yeah. Even as a coach, I'm like, "Man, there are coaching companies that are a lot more expensive than us. Why are we so cheap?" Um, I'm always thinking that, right? Yeah. And, and what that did at the service counter for we was when we were $158 and everybody else was 100- It made me confident because I thought we should be charging 300, right? Yeah. But- It's, it's kind of the same thing as having that cash in your pocket. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: But when I have cash- Yeah ... in my pocket, I think differently, right? Lucas Underwood: He- here's the thing, i- is for me, right? When we're talking about this staff and we're making this transition, we've never charged any more, especially somebody buying a shop, and they know the fundamentals of shop ownership. They know about financials. They're buying a shop that was from somebody who did not know, and they did not charge appropriately. They didn't have a lot of overhead. Now this person's buying the shop, so they've got payments, they've got all this stuff going into it, and they're trying to retain the legacy staff. And I get how hard that can be, but you can't have a staff member that is the equivalent of the bottom 20% of the clients that cause all the problems. If they believe- Yeah ... that no matter what, you shouldn't be making any more money than you have to make, and no matter what, they know how much you paid for those parts, and you shouldn't be marking those up that much. If that's their mindset, if they have a- Yeah, when- And, and I'm... Look, I mean no disrespect by what I'm getting ready to say. If you have a poor person mindset, you're not gonna fit into that organization well. Not a- If you don't believe people should have money- Cecil Bullard: Not a company, not a company that wants to be exceptional. So the other- Yeah ... thing would be, and, and this is not to tout, say, the institute, but well-trained people. We have a service advisor intensive coming up. You know, it's a- Yeah ... three-day service advisor, and, and after many days with some of the top service advisor trainers, sales trainers, what do we- Yeah ... really came up with? We need confidence. How do we build- Yeah ... confidence in the service advisor- Exactly ... in the product, in the price, in the things we do? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, uh, you know, we have a, a big marketing event coming up. We have, uh, the MARS event, which is Marketing for Auto Repair Shops, coming up in October. And, and if you wanna have a great marketing strategy and you wanna learn what you need to do today and what the shops that are winning today- Yeah are doing, that's the place to be. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So I g- I, I have to, I have to a little bit, you know, sell the, the company and what we do, so. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Um, Lucas Underwood: uh- Cecil Bullard: Uh, this question comes from Steve ... how do we... A- and the other- Go ahead. Go ahead ... one, one more thing on that, on that legacy stuff If I can't bring them ahead, if I can't get them to think correctly, if I can't get them on the page, you can't have, you know, two people that think that you're too expensive- Yeah and that you can't, you can't make a profit or you shouldn't make a profit, and, you know, five people that wanna be profitable and wanna go. You can't have- Yeah ... slugs with, with, uh, super performers. You just- Yeah, you can't Lucas Underwood: have slugs- You can't do it ... with the racehorses. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. It's not gonna work out. You, you, it won't work. Right? You, you're exactly right. The racehorses will run a lot slower and be upset. Lucas Underwood: And, and look- Cecil Bullard: So- ... Lucas Underwood: I'm, I'm gonna tell you something. I used to be so afraid of letting people go, and, and I made a video this week talking about this as, hey, I get that there's a shortage of... And, and I'm gonna tell you right now, this is gonna upset some people, we don't have a technician shortage, we have a skilled and willing worker shortage across all trades, across all professions. There's a shortage of people who want to actually work. And so I get the fear associated with letting someone go, but that person will become toxic and cancerous inside your business if you keep them. They will start telling people you're too expensive if you keep them. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, even your clients, by the way. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, that's what Cecil Bullard: I'm saying. Will start making excuses for you with your clients. Yeah. Exactly. "Well, got this new, got this new owner. I don't know. He raised the price, and you know, I..." Lucas Underwood: Yep, because it's gotta be somebody's fault besides theirs. Cecil Bullard: But here- Yeah ... but here, let me help you out. I'll give you a discount. That's Lucas Underwood: it. Right? Cecil Bullard: We, I had a, I had a shop- Yeah ... out of, out of Arizona. Um, uh, we, we went in, and they were not profitable. They lost, I don't know, he, he did 2 million, they lost, like, 200 grand. Yeah. And so I said, "Next year, what do you wanna do?" He said, "I wanna do 3 million." I says, "So you wanna lose 300 grand?" Right. You go, "Wait a minute." And, and I said, "Why don't we do a million and a half, make 20% net?" Yeah. And, and we went in and we looked at their coolant flush and their brake flush, and at the time they were, like, $39. Lucas Underwood: They were charging- Cecil Bullard: Yeah ... $39. Now, by the way, this is 10 years ago, but everybody else was charging 100. Yeah. And so we instantly, we went to 79, right? These coolant flushes and brake flushes gotta go to 79. And his two sons are at the counter, and a month later we're looking at the numbers, no margin changes, no nothing. So we start pulling work orders, and what they were doing was discounting the $79 down to 39. Yeah. Right? Lucas Underwood: Yep. Cecil Bullard: People have to understand that, that first of all, we're not the, we're not Billy Bob's Auto down the street. And so I don't know what's going on at Billy Bob's. I do know what's going on at Cecil's, right? That's, that's what we're gonna do. And- Yeah ... this is who we wanna be, and if we wanna be that, this is what we need to look at, this is what we need to look like, this is what we need the education in, this, these are the things we need. And in order to get those things, we have to be able to afford them, so we have to charge X price, whatever X price is. Okay. And I'm not trying to set a price, but I can tell you right now by math, at, in 1980, we were $70 an hour in our shop. Okay? Yeah. And we were one of the higher priced shops in town at that time, because I'd been through a bunch of training. If I had started at $70 an hour in 1980, and I raised my price 3% to today, we'd be like 286 an hour. Right. Yeah. And, and we're not. I mean, I think the last survey I saw, which was one of the TechMetrix surveys, and it was like 150-something, 152 or Lucas Underwood: something. Yeah, that's what I saw as well. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, and- Lucas Underwood: That's what I saw as well Cecil Bullard: We're, we're not gonna survive at 152, nor would we be able to- Yeah, Lucas Underwood: and, and none of the other industries have lagged like we did Cecil Bullard: get the Lucas Underwood: cars fixed Cecil Bullard: and deliver the rest. No. Lucas Underwood: None of the other industries have lagged like we did. Now, here's a really interesting question by Steve, and I, I wanna answer this kind of from the technical aspect first. Okay. Because he says, "Manufacturers are making it increasingly difficult for anyone outside their dealer network to service their vehicles. As independent shops invest more in the tools, technology, and expertise required to keep up, how do they confidently price that capability and convince customers they aren't sacrificing quality by choosing an independent shop?" Now, a couple things. The first thing is, and, and I loved your explanation of this, all you have to do is go to a dealer one time and you realize the experience isn't so great. And so maybe this- I, I wanna... I, Cecil Bullard: I need to clarify something here. The dealer expenses I have, experiences I have had, have mostly been terrible, okay? Yeah. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: I have had a couple of decent dealer experiences. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, for Cecil Bullard: sure. Just not very often, and, and, and few and far between. Yeah. And so I'm not saying all dealers suck, but the dealers I've dealt with suck. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, for sure. Right? And, and maybe this is a good one for Steve, too. Yeah. Is, like, Steve, go, go take your team, give them the money to go somewhere else and get their oil changed at a dealership and let 'em see what the experience is like, and they'll come back and they'll say, "We're amazing." Cecil Bullard: And I think you should do- And they will go to a, once a year you should go to a Quick Lube. Lucas Underwood: Yeah, exactly. Cecil Bullard: And get the Quick Lube experience, and see- So- ... how they do what they do, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, here, here's the first thing that I wanna say to Steve, is I personally believe, based on my relationship with a number of manufacturer guys, I personally believe... And there's, there's some folks in C-suites and manufacturers who have a very different outlook on this. But the engineering teams and the people, the boots on the ground, who are getting us tooling, who are getting us access to the information we need, genuinely want us to be able to work on their automobiles. There's a couple that don't. There's a couple manufacturers who are trying to lock things out. The large majority of the auto manufacturers are trying to provide us access in a meaningful yet secure way. And so the reality of that is it is more expensive. But here's the deal, is the car itself got more expensive to fix? The difference be- I don't think- Go ahead. Cecil Bullard: I, I don't think that it's more expensive than what they would be doing at the dealership. Well- And if you look at the survey data and the customer data, currently the consumer believes that the independent shop is a much better place for them to be. Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. All right? All right. But, but here's the thing. Here, here's where I was going with that, though. Right. Is the difference being the, the automobile got much more expensive to fix because the technology increased tenfold. I was in a meeting, and Mary Barra was there, and it was like 10 years ago, and she said, uh, the technology in the vehicle in the next two years, I think she said, will outpace what we've seen in the past 100 years. Oh, yeah. And then we saw her again at another event, and they said in six months we'd already outpaced that. Like, it happened before we realized it had even happened. Cecil Bullard: And- And we're gonna have self-driving cars on the road. I mean, and we have them now- It- ... but we don't, we don't have a mass. The problem- Fully autonomous, Lucas Underwood: yeah. Cecil Bullard: The problem that they're dealing with is data transfer, so they can't get the, the links good enough. So as the links improve, as the- Well- ... you know, StarNet and all that improves, that will happen better and faster. But it, it... There's gonna come a point in time in the future where we're gonna have a bunch of self-driving cars on the road. For sure. And that technology is not today's technology. That's not what I worked on five years ago. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Oh, yeah. You know, the- Lucas Underwood: Absolutely. And Cecil Bullard: the technology- Everything has Lucas Underwood: changed so dramatically ... the technology we're seeing in automobile right now has advanced- Yes ... so much in just the past few years, it's unbelievable. And, and here's, here's kinda what I'm getting at, though. Is that the automotive aftermarket, the independent shops have withheld increasing their pricing like they should, while the technology outpaced them. And that technology outpaced a lot of technicians too. And so we, we weren't investing in training of our people, we weren't investing in the tooling for our people, we weren't doing what it took as an industry to keep up. Now, there's a lot of really great shops that have done a fantastic job. You think of Seth Thorsen's shops, you think of, uh, Matt up there in Minnesota. Yeah. You think of these shops that have really put the work in to learn this technology, grow. Brandon Steckler, great educators out here teaching these guys how to take this next technology. And, and somebody commented the other day, and they said, "Lucas, it's voltage drop, it's all the same stuff," right, but it's theory and operation of these systems, understanding how it works, understanding Cecil Bullard: how the networks- It's also, yeah, how, how does the computer talk to itself? How, how, how do the networks talk to each other- It- and how does that data transfer and, a- and that. It, it's, it's changed dramatically in the last five years. Just dramatically. And Lucas Underwood: so, so here's the thing, though, is like as an aftermarket, we just didn't see the value ourselves. The consumer- I- ... sees the value. Cecil Bullard: I also think- Lucas Underwood: If they want their car fixed, they see- Yeah the value. Cecil Bullard: I, I also think that there are, are shop owners that believe that they can just do brake jobs or- Yeah ... I can still do suspension work, and so I'm gonna do that. Yeah. The problem is, is that- You're right up Lucas Underwood: to- ... Cecil Bullard: all of that's getting- ... Lucas Underwood: putting those piston calipers back in. Cecil Bullard: It's all getting... Yeah, it's all getting tied into the computer systems. Yeah. All, everything is being monitored now, and adjusted and changed as the, as the... And it's gonna get worse and worse and worse. Yeah. And I, by worse, I mean there's gonna be more and more opportunity for the peoples that understand the technology. And you said something that I think I gotta, I gotta make a statement about. So the manufacturers of the equipment are gonna continue to wanna sell us equipment. Mm-hmm. Okay? Yeah. So they want us, uh, uh, to do that. We currently work on, I don't know what it was, 78, 79% of the industry. Mm-hmm. So the independents do almost 80% of the work. Um, the dealerships tomorrow, if, if, if there was a law passed that dealerships had to do all the work or even half the work- Lucas Underwood: They couldn't take the- Cecil Bullard: They couldn't do it. Yeah. They're already, some of them are already scheduled out 8 weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks. Yeah. Because they also can't get good technicians in their shops, and- Yeah ... they have shops with 42 bays, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And, and, and so I don't fear for us as an industry because of that. I look at, at things like, you know, we just went to STX. What did that cost? Lucas Underwood: Oh, Cecil Bullard: yeah. And if, and if Worldpac decides not to support that because they lost, you know, $2 million putting on STX, now where are we gonna get that training that we need? Yeah. You know, uh, ASTA, the big e- uh, the big event coming up at ASTA, and, and I know that it'll be a great event, but that event should be five times the size it is- Yeah because of the training that's needed. And i- if we don't support that additional training and those equipment manufacturers, they're gonna stop supporting us. Yeah. That's the thing I worry about the most. It, it- That's the thing that keeps me up at night. Lucas Underwood: It's so interesting because I'm, I'm in other industries too, and I go to their trade shows. And, and there's one particular trade show, attendance starts at $1,500 a person- Yeah ... and they put approximately 400,000 people in a convention center, right? Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And you think, at $1,500 a person, and- Cecil Bullard: That's not one of our trade shows in the automotive industry- No ... is it? No, okay. Lucas Underwood: No. Cecil Bullard: Just checking. Lucas Underwood: It's, Cecil Bullard: it's, Lucas Underwood: it is a big trade show. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And it's for the amusement industry. Yeah. And, and there's people here, and they're learning, and they're developing, and they're growing, and they're... Right? Lots of opportunities, yet we aren't there, yet we have a bigger footprint. We have a bigger presence. Definitely. Why are we not there? And, and I'm gonna tell you something, Steve. You're talking about these dealerships. There, there had long been a belief that the dealerships were the authority in fixing that brand's automobile, and I'm gonna tell you something. They screwed that Cecil Bullard: though. They Lucas Underwood: screwed it. That's gone. Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Yeah, Lucas Underwood: they screwed it. That's gone. They, nobody believes that. Cecil Bullard: When they- Yeah ... when they decided to try to be competitive with the industry. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: So when they, when they, uh, decided not to have all A-Techs... Uh, 25 years ago, if you came in the program, you were gonna be an A-Tech. Yeah. There was no, "We're gonna have 10 C-Techs and one A-Tech." Uh- Yeah ... they couldn't make money because their expenses are so much higher than ours in general, and so they decided, "We need to make money, and we're gonna cut down on A-Techs. So we'll have one A-Tech-" Yeah ... "and we'll have 10 C-Techs, and that's how it's gonna be." Uh, when they decided to compete on tire prices, and when they decided to do quick lubes in their dealerships, they started competing in an area, and they, they lowered, they took themselves off of that, "We're the best" pedestal. They, they did. Yeah, Lucas Underwood: absolutely. Cecil Bullard: And when, when BMW started, uh, using aftermarket parts and going out to- Yeah ... uh, aftermarket suppliers to get a cheaper part for their customers, they don't even understand their market. Are they... Are you kidding me? You know? Well, Lucas Underwood: look, look, I'm gonna give you the hot take, and, and Raleigh's gonna cut this up, and it's gonna go out as a reel. Cecil Bullard: It wouldn't. Yeah. Lucas Underwood: And it's gonna, it's gonna upset a lot of people, so I'm just gonna put this out here. Cecil Bullard: Go, baby, go. Lucas Underwood: All right, here's the deal. I'm gonna tell you what happened, okay? All these technicians were paid unfairly And they were not treated fairly by the dealerships, and there was favoritism, and there was a lot of BS happening in dealerships. They did not see the value in continuing to develop themselves as a diagnostician because the way the pay systems were set up is they could make a whole lot more money hanging parts than they could truly understanding, learning, and growing how to diagnose a modern automobile. Yeah. So they are pattern failure fixers. They do not specialize in deductive reasoning like we see in the aftermarket industry. Now listen, automotive dealer technicians, that is not me talking trash about you. I'm not saying that. You were conditioned by the environment which you were faced with to behave and learn that way. In the independent aftermarket, we have to focus on deductive reasoning, learning, growing, developing at a much higher level. We work on all makes, models, brands of automobiles, and so we do things a lot differently in the aftermarket than you do in the dealership, and we have a lot more skill in the independent aftermarket that fixes cars that the dealerships can't fix. Cecil Bullard: It's a- Lucas Underwood: And so it's about a value thing in that sense. Cecil Bullard: There's another thing that happened, um, and this happened over the past 20 years, and that is, you know, uh, I know the guys that developed the... What's the, uh, mechanic thing where the mechanics would go on and ask questions, and they would have a whole library of- Lucas Underwood: Like IATN or something like diag.ad ... IATN. Cecil Bullard: Yeah. I know the guys. I was, I was... I wasn't involved with it, but I knew the guys. Lucas Underwood: Jeez, you're old, Cecil. No, I Cecil Bullard: am. I Lucas Underwood: wouldn't tell anybody. I wouldn't tell them I'm a diagnost- But- Let me know Scott Brown. Don't tell him you're 70, Cecil. Cecil Bullard: But, but I'm not 70 yet. Um, not yet. I'm not, I'm not dead yet. Um, but, but what's happened over the past, say, 10 years is with... An- and it's gonna happen more and more with AI, is they're looking at pattern failure diagnostic a- as the, as the key because they're saying, "Well, you know, 9 out of 10 times when this kind of a car with this engine, with this transmission has this problem, this is the solution." Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And so now the m- the guys who are technicians at the dealerships, they haven't had to learn how to fix that, that 1 out of 10. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Right? 'Cause they just don't fix it. They just basically- Yeah ... you know, they throw the towel in and go, "No, thank you." And it goes out to the aftermarket, and in the aftermarket- Mm ... we have to... For some reason, we believe we have to fix the car, right? Yeah. Lucas Underwood: We, we don't send Cecil Bullard: them out. And, uh- Lucas Underwood: What Cecil Bullard: are we doing? No, we, we, we basically don't chase anything away. Uh- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: e- even though maybe sometimes we probably should. But, but I think that the skill set that we have developed in the aftermarket is a much broader skill set, a much better skill set, and I think it will take us into the future even- Yeah ... even better. So I, I agree with you 100%. I mean, the, the flat rate pay system, I, I... And here you go. Here's another one, right? It's not fair to the employee. It just is not. It's not. It puts all the responsibility of car count and flow and getting the right parts on the employee's shoulders. And it, it, it- I mean, I, I talked to a shop last week and they're like, "You're at 40% productivity." "Oh, well that's fine because I'm paying flat rate." And- Okay, so now you have a bunch of employees that aren't making any money. How do you think they wanna work? How do you- Exactly. What's the... How motivated do you think they are? I'm gonna come to work and make $400 this week, uh- Mm-hmm ... 'cause we, we're only gonna have, you know, six cars that I can work on. Um, and it's not because the cars aren't there, it's because the process of fixing the car and getting the parts here and getting the estimate done and getting the inspection done and getting the diag done, those processes are screwed up. Mm-hmm. We don't have a tech shortage. We have a productivity and process issue problem in our industry. Yeah. And if we fix the productivity and process issues in our business, every shop owner, I guarantee you, would make five times, 10 times more than they currently make- Lucas Underwood: Yeah ... Cecil Bullard: if they fixed that- Yeah ... and got their productivity up. And- Absolutely ... most shop owners are looking at the end and they're going, "Man, I hope I make it to the end of the month, and I hope there's still money left at, on the 1st in the account." Yeah. And they're working their butts off when what they should be doing is running their business and, and fixing those, those productivity and those, those process issues in their, in their business to create the machine that runs the best, right? Yeah. 100%. And I don't think we, we un- I don't think we understand our business in that way, right? Yeah. Lucas Underwood: We, Cecil Bullard: we don't- In this, in this industry. Not as a, as an industry. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. We, we've, we have fallen into the, uh, the trap of seeing our businesses as fixing cars. Yeah. And, and that's one of the issues with being technicians be- that become business owners- Yeah ... is we, we get stuck in the mentality of doing what the business does, and it, there has to be a shift. There has to be a- And, and- ... a view of synergy ... and Cecil Bullard: because it's, because fixing the car for us is relatively easy, right? Yeah. Um, you know, uh, uh, Wayne bought a, a, a used Cadillac and, uh, Escalade and the water pump, uh, was leaking and, and he was like, "Ah, I think I'm gonna do that. It looks pretty easy." So we got a water pump. Ah, easiest water pump I ever put on in my life, right? I mean- Yeah ... I think it took all of 15 minutes to take the water pump off and put the water pump... Took more time to figure out the serpentine belt and how it runs- Yeah, Lucas Underwood: figure how, how Cecil Bullard: to route it ... than, than doing all the rest, right? Mm-hmm. We know how to do that because we've done it a million times. Mm-hmm. Because when I started, I didn't, I, I couldn't have done any of that, right? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And so our, our, the consumer sees our value when we don't see our value often, and I think we've also trained the consumer to not see us as valuable 'cause we don't value ourselves. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: Okay? Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: 100%. And until we fix that, until we, until we realize that, yeah, we probably should be upwards of 200, 250 an hour. And, and I'm not trying to set a price. Please, I'm not trying to. Yeah. Whatever it takes you to make 20% net in your, in your place- Amen ... where you're at, in your region with your costs, that's where you should be. That's what your pricing- Yeah ... should be. But- That's it ... if you don't understand how to figure that out, you need somebody that knows how to figure that out. Lucas Underwood: Amen. And listen- Cecil Bullard: So that you can be profitable ... Lucas Underwood: without clean financials, okay? It's gonna be real hard to have confidence in your pricing. But when you have clean financials, then you realize you ain't making no money, it's a whole lot easier to charge that money. " Cecil Bullard: Lucas, we, I think, I think we gotta go up 15 bucks an hour." I know. "Oh, I don't want to, Cecil." "Yeah, but, but we have to, brother, 'cause there's not money in the bottom line." 'Cause you're not paying your bills. Yeah. Well, yeah. Remember those bills that keep piling up? That's it. They're gonna still be there. Lucas Underwood: That's Cecil Bullard: it. Cecil- So confidence in your, in your product, you know, uh, I think the confidence we have sometimes is even weak that we're gonna fix the car. And so we- Yeah ... you know, even a sales guy sometimes doesn't trust the people behind him. Yeah. And I don't think you can sell when you don't trust the staff behind you to fix the car. Lucas Underwood: Amen. ' Cecil Bullard: Cause you're gonna be the one that takes the heat. And so it's more- Yeah ... than just, well, we should be 300 bucks an hour, so I'm gonna be 200 bucks an hour, or 220- Yeah and I can do that and I'll make money. I, I think it's more than, than, hey, I have a skill set that no one else has, or very few people have, and I have people that have that skill set, and there's value in that skill set, right? Yeah. And what we do and how we do it. And, and I think it's even more than, "Hey, if you go to Billy Bob's Auto down the street, maybe you won't get the same service level or the same quality part or, or those things. But here I know that we're gonna do all those things correctly." Yeah. I think it's also knowing that and feeling comfortable that, that in the end for yourself and the consumer, it's gonna be all right. It's all gonna be okay. Yeah. And if you feel that way, if you feel like no matter what I charge, it doesn't matter. What you charge, it really doesn't matter at all. How you treat the customer and whether or not you can build value in what you charge is everything. Yeah. And if I can do that and I feel good about it, then it, I can be very confident in my pricing, Lucas Underwood: right? You're exactly right. Cecil Bullard: Amen. A- and, and it, also, I have to be willing to send some people home Meaning I have to be willing to say, "You're not my customer. You're not willing to pay my price." You know, the guy comes out, I, I had a, um, a water heater blow up or whatever and leak, and guy comes out and, uh, I could go get a water heater at the time for around 1,100 bucks, and I could lug it in, you know, go down to the thing and lug it down and, you know, go out five times to my toolbox to get the right wrenches and, and all of that and, and, uh, then I could hurt my back trying to lug it out of my basement. And guy came in and, and he said, um, you know, how... I said, "How much for the thing?" He says, it's, I don't know, it was $2,200, 20, 26, whatever it was at the time. And I was like, "Okay, great. When can you have it done?" Right? "Oh, I'll, I, I got a water heater in my truck." Yes. "I'll Lucas Underwood: be done." Just Cecil Bullard: go get the water. "Put the water heater in. There you go." That's it. When we were all done, and I, I paid him, I said, "Now, I, I didn't argue about the price. I don't care about the price. What were you charging per hour?" Yeah. "What was your Lucas Underwood: hourly rate?" Cecil Bullard: Well, let's see. He was there for less than 45 minutes start to finish, and the part, uh, my cost at Home Depot was 11. You know, he paid less than that, and he charged me, I don't know, 22, let's say $2,200. I think it was 26, but he charged me $1,000 for being there for an hour- Yep ... and for driving over, right? Whatever that 15-minute, 10-minute... Uh, by the way, he only lives two blocks from me, 'cause I see his truck- That's it ... outside the house, right? Right. Um, but... And, and people tell me, "Well, Cecil, you lie when you say there are plumbers out there that are 4 or 500 bucks an hour." No, I don't. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: I paid it. I've paid it more than once. That's it. And I'll pay it again tomorrow so I don't have to hurt my back lugging the, you know- Water heater ... heavy water heater out of my thing and, and carrying it away. Yeah. Um, and there are- Oh, that's so true ... lots of people in the world that are willing to, ready to, and able to pay that. Lucas Underwood: Yeah. Cecil Bullard: And they're not willing to, to do it themselves, and they want a quality product. Amen. If you're that person, be confident in what you do. Lucas Underwood: Amen, buddy. Cecil Bullard: You'll Lucas Underwood: sell a lot more crap. And, and we, we as the independent auto repair aftermarket are here to serve you. And Cecil, it has been great being here with you today. I'm excited to do the next one coming up here soon. Cecil Bullard: Always is, brother. Lucas Underwood: That's it, and I can't wait to see you guys next time. Cecil Bullard: Soon. Lucas Underwood: That's it, real soon.
216 - Coach the Call: Using AI Insights to Develop Stronger Service Advisors
216 - Coach the Call: Using AI Insights to Develop Stronger Service Advisors August 26th, 2026 - 00:54:51 Show Summary: Strong phone skills can turn more incoming calls into appointments while building trust from the first interaction. Consistent call reviews give service advisors a clear path to improve without making coaching feel like punishment. AI call analysis reduces the time required to find useful coaching opportunities and helps owners identify patterns across their team. Positive reinforcement also matters because great calls give advisors examples they can repeat. Simple habits like smiling asking for the appointment and using the customer’s name can dramatically improve the experience. Better phone performance ultimately supports stronger customer relationships higher appointment conversion and long term shop growth. Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development Guest(s): David Boyd, Founder & CEO of Callinbound Tonnika Haynes, Owner of Browns Automotive, Downshift with Tonnika Haynes Show Highlights: [00:04:00] – Listening to real calls reveals missed opportunities that owners rarely see. [00:10:00] – AI identifies coachable calls without hours of manual review. [00:14:00] – Consistent coaching creates awareness before advisors answer each call. [00:17:00] – Replace a hard no with a plan focused on customer needs. [00:24:00] – Help advisors self coach instead of simply pointing out mistakes. [00:28:00] – Every missed appointment can represent significant lost customer value. [00:34:00] – Asking for the customer’s name immediately creates a stronger connection. [00:39:00] – Scheduled call reviews make coaching normal instead of threatening. [00:43:00] – Asking for appointments helped turn successful marketing into a fuller calendar. [00:49:00] – Call tracking connects marketing performance with actual appointment conversion. 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/fv9ewVBoSks 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: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or good night. Thank you for joining. So excited for us to have this conversation today with some really good friends. Everyone, this is to be an interactive webinar. So you're sitting there, you've got questions, you've got concerns, type them into the chat. We wanna be able to ask those questions of our panel today as we are talking about a very interesting topic. And with us today, first, is our good friend, Mr. David Boyd of Inbound Communication. David, how the heck are you, brother? David Boyes: I'm great. I, I, uh, I fully intended to have my jacket on, Jimmy. Jimmy Lea: Man. David Boyes: So excited to be here. We Jimmy Lea: coordinated on this and everything. David Boyes: I know. I, uh- Next time ... I, I was, I was lucky as, as busy as we've been at Call Inbound to, uh, uh, get up and, and organize and dress today. So I really, uh, it's always great to see you and of course, um, uh, we got to visit a little bit out at, uh, Worldpac STX and, uh, man, I tell you what, your wardrobe is always top notch. Jimmy Lea: Hey, thank you. Thank you. We're glad you are dressed today, just don't stand up. Thank you very much. David Boyes: Great. Jimmy Lea: And joining for us in our conversation today, David, is Tanika, Tanika Hayes with, uh, Haynes with Browns Automotive. Tanika, how the heck are you, sister? Tonnika Haynes: I'm doing good, guys. What's going on? Jimmy Lea: Staying alive. Good to see you. Great to see you. Also at STX, what did you think of the, the conference there with Worldpac? Tonnika Haynes: It, it was really, really good. I was not prepared for the size of it. There was a lot of people. People were peopling. So, um, once I got adjusted to all of the crowds and everything, I enjoyed it. I hadn't sat in a class in a really long time, like at an expo. Ooh. I'm usually just walking around and being nosy, but I picked up some good nuggets, so it was great. Jimmy Lea: Beautiful. That's awesome. Well, if, if the STX was a large conference to you, I would suggest that you really prepare yourself months in advance if ever you come out to SEMA and Apex in Las Vegas. Tonnika Haynes: I will be there this year. Oh, good. I keep hear- hearing that, so I don't know what meds I need to be on to take, To take it all in. But Jimmy Lea: we'll- You- Tonnika Haynes: I'm excited about it ... Jimmy Lea: we, we will talk about that because there is more than you can see within a week, and you really only have three days at Apex, four days at SEMA. You want to map out where you're gonna go, who you're gonna talk to, who you're gonna see- And for you, Taneka, schedule some time to sit down and chill Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. I'm gonna have to definitely do that. You're talking about, um, scheduling times. I'm gonna schedule time to go sit in the corner and recoup. Uh-huh. So where's Taneka? She's in the corner. Jimmy Lea: Yep, and, and I- It's David Boyes: scheduled time ... Jimmy Lea: I, I'm gonna work with you on that because I know the corners, I know the places where you can go and, and find some solitude. Tonnika Haynes: All right. Jimmy Lea: I am. Well, our conversation today is in preparation for making your shop better David, I'm gonna kick it over to you, brother. Let's start this conversation with Taneka. David Boyes: Yeah. Let's, uh, let- let's kinda move into this. You know, we're, uh, talking about communication, and there are so many facets that impact the customer experience. I think that it's important to know that, you know, there are tools and there are, uh, from an owner or, and manager's perspective and from a service provider's perspective, there are ways that we rally around making communication better. Um, you know, one of the things that is common at all shops is, uh, the customer phone call. Tonnika Haynes: Oh, yeah. David Boyes: So you winced a little bit. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Uh, how many times do we, you know, talk about our phone skills, uh, getting better on the phone, understanding the customer, understanding their needs, addressing their needs? And there's so much, you know, revolves around, uh, the phone calls and, and the way that our advisors and our front office team handles these. Maybe you have a CSR, maybe you have, you know, a service manager. Um, but people are, are answering calls all day long, and this becomes important that we understand who's answering the phone- Mm-hmm ... how they're communicating, what, what's the message that's being shared. Every time that phone rings, uh, that, you know, we like to say that's money calling. So Taneka, let me just ask you, you know, what, what are some of the challenges that you see or the, uh, the successes that you have with your team when it comes to managing and, and, uh, getting better on our phones? Tonnika Haynes: I wanna start by saying, um, I think I listened to my first phone call at my meeting with Jen- Jennifer, with the Institute. I'm currently coaching with the Institute, and that is life-changing- Yeah ... to listen to your team answer the phone. So if anybody's out there and they have not done that, they have not listened in on a phone call, figure out a way to do it. I don't know if it's gonna be a little paper cup and a string, but figure out how to do it. Um, and then I, listening to my own phone calls, and I- I'm the boss, right? I still cringe. And so you never know what's missing from those phone calls, what, what, what is standing out. You know, my team, we would not even ask for the appointment. Like, "Would you like to bring this in today?" You know- Oh ... you ask all the questions, they go through the scripts, but then we found that they were not saying, "Hey, would you like to get that done? Would you like to bring that in today or tomorrow? What works for you?" They were leaving it all to the client to say- Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm ... " Tonnika Haynes: What's next? What's next?" Hmm. So they were answering the phone, and they were s- being very polite, but they were not closing. They didn't have a lot of words with closing. And so with inbound, I've been able to coach- You know, when you listen to yourself and you're like, "Ooh, ooh." And you can say, "Do you see what you did there?" Or even, 'cause you know, the team can listen to their own phone calls. "Oh, I see what I did there. I see where I dropped the ball." So that was, opened up a whole bunch of eyeballs around here. Well- It's like, "Oh, it's Monday, it's time to listen to phone calls." Like, "Ah." But you just increasingly get better over time. Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true. And, and the ability, Taneka, the ability to have calls from today- Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm ... Jimmy Lea: or from yesterday or, or even the day before. Uh, there was a time a decade ago when we would have to listen, as coaches, we would listen to calls. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. We're trying to find a coaching call, a call that is coachable, and this might be a call from two weeks ago, three weeks ago. Mm. The advisors are going, "Dude, oh man, that's forever ago. No, man, I, I don't do that anymore. I'm not like that." But David, I, I think you kind of solved a bit of that problem with your phone services. David Boyes: Yeah, thanks. It, you know, it's, it's important to, to recognize. I think every owner I've ever talked with has a similar issue. It's... And a lot of it rev- revolves around time, right? Are, are we aware of what's actually happening- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... David Boyes: on the front line? Mm-hmm. And, uh, some of it is, uh, I wanna keep this a little bit at arm's length because I, I can tell you as an owner, I will have an emotional response when I listen to that phone call. And Taniki, you brought up a great point. For owners and managers here that are on the phone, please listen to your own calls. Yeah. Do it at least one time. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Well, twice. Have to Tonnika Haynes: bite the bullet. Just do it. David Boyes: Yeah. Just do it. And, Tonnika Haynes: and, and be ready. Just like- ... just like, "Oh, that is me." Yeah, that is you. David Boyes: Do it- Yeah do it twice because the first time that you listen to a call, uh, it's gonna just be weird, right? So listening to myself on recordings is always weird, but there's this heavy lift of time, right? Am, am I aware of what's actually happening on the front line, and how are we interacting with customers? And then do I have, do I have a mechanism to understand what's my expectation? As an owner, um, you know, it, it's important to establish that expectation. Maybe you're working with a call coach, maybe you've been in trainings yourself. It's, it's ideal to have a method by which you're going to measure your call handlers. And, um, you know, we wanna be professional. We want to build confidence and, and build rapport with these customers. It doesn't have to be fast, but typically- Mm-hmm ... you know, an incoming call from a customer is likely an appointment setting call or a status call. We're gonna set that status call, uh, bucket aside for a second 'cause we wanna be in front of, uh, status calls instead of having customers call us. But if you're listening to these and you have that rhythm around it, uh, we understand how these small habits can build on one another. Am I, am I smiling when I answer the phone? There's something physically that hap- When I, when I physically smile, there's something that is noticeable in the way that I'm communicating. And, uh, am I, am I clear? So what are the expectations? You know, uh, if you watch your advisors, I have, uh, my little cordless handset here. If they tuck their phone in like this, and, and you know, they're, they're trying to multitask Listen to those calls because likely it's very, very difficult to hear on the other side of this. So listening to calls, uh, helps us understand how, you know, how we conduct ourselves, how we conduct business, how am I representing the business that I, you know, that I'm working at as a professional. But also, what is the customer hearing and what is the customer's experience? So, um, these are, uh, important points, and it starts by listening. Jimmy, you brought up a, um, an important aspect here. Historically, we would listen to call after call after call after call to try to find something I can use to coach. So Taneka, you might do this. You've got a call recording system. It doesn't do much but just record those calls, and now I have to go through this, this process to identify a coachable opportunity. And this is now I think where we can move effectively into technology, right? We all hear so much about AI today, and what's really nice about, uh, having, you know, a, a phone system that records is now you have an asset, and you can use that asset to do something more with it. And we can use AI to help that heavy lift of time and, you know, take 90% of the time requirement off. So instead of having to spend 30 minutes, I might have to spend two or three minutes to take that call, sit down with my service advisor, go through this, and have a meaningful, constructive conversation about the things that work well. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I, I love, David, that your software makes it so easy to find these coachable calls so much faster. A- and Taneka, that's just gotta be a lifesaver for you as well, coaching your service advisors. Tonnika Haynes: It is. I remember, um, speaking with a friend, fellow shop owner, and he's like, "I need you to set aside a time." And so what I did is on my calendar, on Wednesday, that's the day that I sit down and we go over phone calls. And so, you know, you got the dashboard, and that dashboard will say, "This is a coachable call. This is a coachable call." And it is a habit for me as the owner/manager, um, to make sure that I'm staying on top of it all the time because we'll slip into old habits, right? So me listening to the calls and bringing the service advisor or, um, or bring Jay in and say, "Hey, let's listen to this. Let's see how we can get better." You know, you continuously improve on it, and you don't slide back into old habits. Because I'm not on the phone as much anymore. If I have to answer the phone, I know personally, and everything's at stake for me, I slide back into old habits. So we all are capable of it, and so having that dashboard in front of us and said, "Hey, this is a call you need to look at," the service advisor or the person answering the phone does not feel like they're being picked on, but they're being improved upon. So, "Look, I'm just lifting you up. This is what we can do. Do you see how we can make this better?" And it's a we, it's a us, it's coachable, it's there, it's real, and, um, I really enjoy th- that part of the dashboard. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love that. How often, Taneka, do you send, "This is a really good call"? This is a really good call. I Tonnika Haynes: like a really good call How often do you send that to the team? You know what? Yeah. I probably should do that more. But when I see a good call, I, I, I like to share it. And when I get a good review, like I l- literally just got a good review based off of a bad situation that we were able to turn around with proper communication, and the customer l- literally said, he's like, "The communication... The problem was still there," he said, "but the way they handled it and the communication was key." So he was not satisfied when he left, but the way that we dealt with it afterwards, and that recording of how we guided him through the process, and how we, you know, we apologized, we came up with a plan, apologized again, and kept it moving, and that was a great coachable call. It's like, this is how you handle a bad situation. Look how we won here. So yeah, those are just as important as the, as the losses, as the bad calls. "Hey, this is a good call. G- this is a good call." That balance is super important. Yeah, it balances it. Yeah. And then, you know, it's like, okay, I did that right. Even when that client is a client that does not belong to you, and you can hear them tell the customer, it's like, "Hey, you know what? Appreciate your call, but this isn't the place for you." And that's not the word for word, but, "Hey, you handled that good. Thank you for saving us from a nightmare." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Amen. Share it with your team. So you gotta share the wins and the, the misses. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And, and, uh, for a lot of people, I think they struggle in the creative. So if they can hear it, that it's already been done, they can duplicate. Sure. They can mimic. They can do the same thing over and over and over again. So the more we send these beautiful calls, "Oh my gosh, you guys did so well on this phone call. I, I love this part, this part, and this part," they're able to duplicate that, and they'll do it over and over and over again. And then, then you're- The mistakes that are being made become much less because you're showing, you're, uh, mirroring to them these are the really good calls that we wanna hear. Tonnika Haynes: And, and sharing that when you're going over a call, you got the good call here, we can work on this call, but this is another good call. You know, we talk about giving that sandwich. Yeah. And so that's another opportunity you can give that good sandwich. So when it's time to come in on Wednesdays and listen to your phone calls, you're like, "Ooh, I know I got one coming and I think I know which one it is." And then you're like, "Yeah, but you got this one too, so you won here, and, uh, we missed on this one, but next time it's not happening." Right? Right. So it's, you know, it's all in coaching. Jimmy Lea: Oh, David Boyes: it's so true. You just said something that's super important, and, uh, ooh, I think I know which one this is. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Um, there, there's a lot to unpack there. I, I, I love the, the good with the bad. We'll talk about that more too, but, um, creating the awareness. So consistency wins, and, um, I'll say it again, be consistent with the process because consistency wins. And when you have that rhythm where it's familiar and it's expected, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna listen to calls, we're gonna go through this, identify the opportunities, um, it's not good and bad calls, it's, you know, it, it, uh, we call them top calls or champion calls and coachable calls. So a coachable call isn't inherently bad. Maybe we even got an appointment. Tonnika Haynes: Mm. David Boyes: Right? But there's, there's opportunities. So, uh, when we have that rhythm and it's expected, what's really important about what you just said is the awareness. So when I go to pick up that phone, is this the call that Tanika's gonna be talking with me about tomorrow or, you know, Wednesday, whatever our rhythm is? It, it will begin to create that moment of pause that as an a- an advisor when I'm picking up that phone, I can take that breath. Yeah. I can, I can, uh, let that, uh, you know, that technician that just blew me up Tonnika Haynes: Let 'em David Boyes: go. I can let that slide off. I can shake that off. Yeah. And I can focus for a moment to make sure that that customer knows right at this moment they are absolutely the most important person to me right now. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: So that's an important message to convey over the phone, our, uh, the, you know, the way that we speak, the words that we use, my en- excitement and enthusiasm about being on that call all comes through. So as we get through this rhythm and we develop the consistency and it becomes normal, now I've got that awareness on my team that, hey, this next call I'm taking, I'm gonna have the moment of pause to focus because this might be the next one that, that we're reviewing. I want this to be a positive call that, that Tanika's coming to me and saying, "You did really well on this one. Let's continue to develop this," and, you know, replicate the things that are working well. Instead of, "Hey, there's some opportunity here. You know, you didn't ask for the appointment. You were, you know, pricing over the phone. You said 'no'." No comes out in a lot of ways, doesn't it, Tanika? Where- Tonnika Haynes: Oh, yeah ... we, David Boyes: we might be telling somebody, uh, "You know, I'm really busy right", or, or, or "W- we, we're really busy right now, I can't get you in until Friday." Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: That's, that's, we might as well just say, "No, I can't help you." Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. You, that's, that's all they heard was the no. Um, even if you give... And, uh, everybody knows that I'm, I'm big on nos. Like, I can give you a no where there's some healthy nos, but then there's some nos and you have the customer saying, "Hey, um, m- my brakes are making the noise and it just started." And he's like, "Oh, no, I can't see you till Friday." He's like, "Yeah, but I'm gonna die before Friday. I wanna see somebody now." Um, so you don't, you have to learn how to coach them and say, "Yes, so bring that in. Let's take a look at what you've got, and then we'll come up with a plan." You didn't promise that it was gonna be today or tomorrow, but you said, "Bring it in. I'm worried about your safety. Let's see what you've got." Yeah. "Let's see if you should really be concerned about that check engine light. It might be a EVAP code." They don't know that, "But go ahead and bring them in." So and then you, like you said, the cadence in it. This, I'm not gonna make you any promises over the phone, and I would literally say that. "Hey, I don't wanna disappoint you by making a promise that I can't keep. So don't- Yeah ... don't make me, don't put me in that hole. But I need you to go ahead and bring that in to me as soon as you can. Um, and let's scan it. Let's see what you've got, and let's see if you should really be worried, if you can make that trip or we need to bring you in right away. We will help you come up with a plan." So just that solid no. "No, I'll see you Friday." Jimmy Lea: He, " Tonnika Haynes: Meh. No you won't." Yeah. Like, so that's support. That's Jimmy Lea: my- David Boyes: It, it becomes very collaborative in what you just said. Hey, let, let's make this about you, let's make this about your safety and your confidence to drive that vehicle. Maybe you gotta get across town and your commute is 30 minutes. Let's make sure that your vehicle is safe, and then once you're here and we make sure you're safe, let's talk about, uh, when we're gonna have that on the schedule. We'll get that vehicle in Tonnika Haynes: and prepared. Yeah. What are the next steps? Yeah. So let's go ahead and get- let's get your nerves calm- Mm-hmm ... and then let's come up with the next step. Let's come up with a plan. Us, us, us, we, we, we. So Jimmy Lea: yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. And, uh, you talk about s- building a solid foundation for this, the solid foundation for their skills so that the, the ongoing training you're doing really builds on that foundation. Uh, we've got a three-day service advisor with the institute. We're gonna give a shout-out to the institute here right now. So everybody grab out your smartphones, scan the QR code if your service advisor needs a solid foundation. Thank you, David. If you need a solid foundation- Registered now ... and you need to start with... Yeah, get registered. I know you've been to a couple of these, David, 'cause- I have you've talked about all the skills here just really, really well. If your service advisor needs that and you need to go from zero to hero very quickly, this is an intensive that you wanna send your service advisor to, and it will be at headquarters in Ogden, Utah. Fly right into Salt Lake, and, uh, and we got you set up there in Ogden. So, yes, David Boyes: scan that. It's a beautiful drive up from the airport. This class is, uh, it, it, it will help establish the, the fundamentals to build on. Yeah. So you come here, it's, you know, it's boot camp, right? We're, we're going to make sure that we're establishing the expectation and give you something to build on as the owner. Send your service advisors in here. Uh, they'll get those fundamentals, and then you'll have, you know, these, these mechanisms, uh, to improve them over time. I promise you it'll be a, a real game changer for your frontline. Tonnika Haynes: Well, you know what? Beautiful. I wanna piggyback on that. Um, and I wasn't coached to saying this. If they've already been, send them again. Jimmy Lea: There you go. Mm. Tonnika Haynes: Send them again, because here's the thing that I know, and I'm just gonna make it simple. I want you to think about your favorite movie. Like when, when I was in the 20s, for me it was Friday, the movie Friday. And then we watched that movie every Friday after work with the crew that I worked with, and it was just the most ignorant movie and the best movie for my generation. Each time I watched that movie, I would see a different thing. So I want you to think about your favorite movie and, or v- your favorite comedy. Each time you'd watch it, you would pick up something else. So it was like, "Oh, I didn't see that that last time." So even when it comes to training, "Hey, I did this three-day class and I did it a year ago. I grew." Jimmy Lea: Do it again. Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Do it again. Do it again. You, you're never too mu- uh, there's never too much coaching. So just do it again and you'll see it from a different angle. I just wanted to say that. Yeah, 'cause, um, there's been some classes that I, I take, and not just this one, but other classes, like, let me take that class again. Yeah. And you're like, "Aha. I didn't remember that from last time." Yeah. I didn't implement that from last time, 'cause we, you guys tell us, and coaches will tell you, "Just go and implement one thing. One thing." I mean, watch those changes, and then the next time you take the class, let's do one more thing, maybe two, and get, get a little bit better. Right. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So speaking of training, ASTA, A-S-T-A, is coming up here real soon, Taneka. Real Tonnika Haynes: soon. We're less than 30 Jimmy Lea: days out. Let's give them a shout-out. Tonnika Haynes: Shout out to ASTA. Those are the people, not the people that made me, but it's my just one, my just one thing that I took away from there each time has helped build me to where I am. And I am, I cannot say I would not be where I was without them. But I would not be where I was, where I am without them. From those, those people that I met, the village that I met, meeting you, meeting my first coach, just meeting my, my industry brothers and sisters that I can call on at any time when I'm about to flip out, or when I have a win. 'Cause you know as owners and when, when you're a little higher, you can't share your wins with everybody without some jealousy. True. Yeah. So when you have a win and you have that community to call on. Mm-hmm. So yeah, ASTA is the place to be, September 24th to 26th, right here in Raleigh, North Carolina. So I hope somebody shows up. And, uh, I wanna meet some... Well, I know Jim. I'll be there. Jimmy will be there. You will not miss him. David Boyes: He'll have the jacket. Tonnika Haynes: He will have plenty of jackets on. It is a fun atmosphere, lots of community, lots of learning and growing. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna have a jacket war, so anybody who wants to play. David, you're bringing your jacket, so David Boyes: who wore Jimmy Lea: it best? Yes. Yeah. David Boyes: Yeah. I, I wanted to make sure that we were gonna f- uh, be able to carve out some time to do the who wore it best. Tonnika Haynes: Oh, David Boyes: always. I think, so B- Benji will be involved. Brett will probably be involved, right? Mm-hmm. And, uh, you, you two- Mike Allen ... Mike, okay, Mike, yep. Tonnika Haynes: I, I, I feel like we should have a girls version of this, 'cause you know, if the women got involved- Jimmy Lea: We always lose Tonnika Haynes: I mean, we would just throw you guys under the bus. Jimmy Lea: It's true. We tried that, Tanika, and you swept it. Yeah. You swept it. There, there was no- Tonnika Haynes: I don't wanna do that to you guys ... competing with Jimmy Lea: Tanika. Tonnika Haynes: I don't wanna do... Yeah, I don't wanna do that to you, so we'll, we'll figure it out. Maybe I'll make a f- couple phone calls and text messages and see what's up. David Boyes: Yeah. Speaking of phone calls. Speaking of phone calls. Tonnika Haynes: Throw that back in. David Boyes: I have a question for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's, hey, I couldn't have asked for a better softball there, but that's great. Um- ... thinking, thinking about the coaching process, you know, I, I, I had mentioned before it can seem a little uncomfortable, even as an owner. You know, listen to two calls, because that first one, you're gonna be so- Mm-hmm ... consumed by how weird I sound on the phone, right? So, but when you, when you started this with your team, what, how was it received? What were some of the, the challenges, uh, do, you know, h- what feedback did you get about listening to calls and going through the analysis? Tonnika Haynes: So I wanna say that when I first did it in, in coaching, so in a group setting, and you're listening to your team, so they call in, they have to do a call and they'll record a call. And so it's like, "Oh, well this time she did this, and this is the excuse." You wanna come up with excuses. You wanna defend- Right yourself. I wanna defend my shop. And so that service advisor's gonna wanna defend him or herself. Like, "Oh, well, you know, that customer and this was that." I was like, "No." So you get past that, and it's like, okay, like I said, you give the sandwich. Okay, so this is a great call. You tell me what you could have done, could have done better in this call. Right. 'Cause I don't wanna be in... 'Cause if you go into attack mode and say, "Oh, you should do this better, and you didn't follow the script, and you, you, you, you, you," you're gonna get somebody that's gonna put up a guard and be like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I did my best." So I'll say, "I know you did your best on this, this one call, and you did a great job on this call. What happened, brother?" Balls in your court. Tell me how you can improve on this. Mm. What do you need from me to help you improve here? Was there a distraction? What was, what was the problem? So I kinda feel like I can teach them to self-coach. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Tonnika Haynes: I'm, I'ma give you a whole toolbox. You've got this toolbox. You know what a good call to- sounds like. Like, you also have a mirror. There's a mirror right there. Look at yourself. You've got reminders. I've got sticky note reminders on each, each person saying, "Don't forget to ask for the sale." What happened? "Oh, man, I was distracted, I sh- I should've..." Yep, you should've put the mouse down. You should've put the mouse down. So usually people will first get defensive, same. Mm-hmm. Um, then the defense mechanism starts to come down. Say, "All right, okay, so how do we fix this so next time I cannot find a bad phone call?" Jimmy Lea: Bingo. David Boyes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: I love it. It, yeah. I love that you have a mirror there and you have sticky notes there helping as well, Taneka. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's, that's so good. ' Tonnika Haynes: Cause we forget. And- And it's okay- Oh, we do ... 'cause we get busy. But the Jimmy Lea: more Tonnika Haynes: we work on it- And I, Jimmy Lea: I, you... I'm certain that you guys have heard this before, that a fake smile is better than a real frown. Tonnika Haynes: Yes. David Boyes: Yep. Tonnika Haynes: Yes. And I'm really good at that. And so I've learned that because I've been doing it a very long time, so people know that I can really make you... I could, like, really fuss you out, and I would sound so sweet 'cause I'm smiling at you the whole time. "Well, you know what, Jamie? I think that was the stupidest thing you've ever said." Jimmy Lea: And if you do it with a smile, you can Tonnika Haynes: get away with it. And you're doing it with a smile and, and when you're shaking your head. So that smile makes a difference. And when I'm- It does ... picking up the phone out of an emergency, if they are busy up front and I'll see that phone ringing, and I pick it up and I'm not ready personally, I'm not ready to answer that phone, and it's a client that knows me, and I'm not smiling, I will get a, "Hey, Taneka, what's wrong?" You Jimmy Lea: okay? 'Cause Tonnika Haynes: they, "You okay?" And I'll say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I was distracted." 'Cause that's usually what happens, you're distracted, or that service, that, um, technician just rubbed you the wrong way or something's happened at home. So but once you put that smile on- You just fake it till you make it. And now you, I usually don't like to say that, but sometimes you do have to fake it till you make it. Like, yeah, absolutely. And use those words of, those positive words. Absolutely. Let's look into that for you. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Sure. I love it. Love it. We talk about the phone call and how much it's worth. Uh, Bimmer PhD Motorsports is saying, "Can we dig into that a little bit?" How much does it cost to get that phone to ring? How much does it cost to acquire a new customer? You talk about the mindset and you talk about the service advisor- Mm-hmm ... and the smile that's needed to be there, fake or real. How much is that phone call worth, Tanika? Have you analyzed any of that in your shop? Tonnika Haynes: So that was actually a, um, something we did in the 20 group with my coach Jen. We went through that and we calculated how much it costs to sh- get that phone to ring. And I really wish I was prepared and I had that number for you. But once you realize that number, share it with your team. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: And then, uh, the institute probably has, um, a blueprint on how to figure that out. So you're looking at how much your website is, your Go- Google ads, any form of marketing that you have out there, down to the phone bill. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: How much does it cost to make that phone ring? And once you see it as the owner, you're gonna be like, "Whoa." And you share that with the team. Like, every time that phone rings, it costs me this. And then also think about your ARO. Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm. Bingo. Tonnika Haynes: And every time- Yep, yep ... we do not get a y- yes, and we don't get that client through the door, we lost $850. Potential $850, potential $1,100. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Tonnika Haynes: So once we start thinking about, you know, everything, everything's not about money. It is That Jimmy Lea: we keep score. Tonnika Haynes: It is how we keep score. Yeah. Like, you know, we, we talk about we've got the metrics on the dashboard. Numbers don't lie. People do. Your emotions will. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: It costs me $75 every time that phone rings. Mm-hmm. And when you ring it, and when you land that deal, that's a potential 850, or whatever your ARO is, or whatever- Yeah ... that's what it is. And that's, and how long does it take to get that one client to get through the door? Yeah. And also think about how long you can hold onto them as a client. How many years Jimmy Lea: are you gonna- Tonnika Haynes: What's the lifetime value of the client? What's the lifetime of that client? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: So that smile when you answer the phone, yeah, that's worth a lot of money. Jimmy Lea: Tens of thousands of dollars. Tonnika Haynes: Tens of thousands. So go ahead and put your Vaseline on your teeth- Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm ... Tonnika Haynes: and, and start a- smiling. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. That's an old theater trick. Yes. Are you a, are you a musical theater person? Tonnika Haynes: No, but I just know about- Where are you pulling that from? ... Vaseline on your teeth and, 'cause you get tired of smiling. You, you know, at the conference, you have this whole muscle thing. You're like... Jimmy Lea: Uh, yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Keep s- keep, just keep smiling, smiling, smiling. Jimmy Lea: That's right, David Boyes: Dorothy. Those are important numbers, uh, to know how much does it cost to get that phone to ring. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: Uh, in some cases it can be, uh, you know, several hundred dollars depending on really all of those factors around generating those phone calls, and then what that ties into when the phone does ring, um, and we don't ask for the appointment. Has that $850 or $1,100 just walked over to my competitor across town? Yeah. But it also sets the stage when we're talking about coaching and development to bring it back to what's in it for me. As a service advisor, you know, most high performing shops are incentivizing their advisors on these, you know, these GP numbers and, you know, there might be other metrics on Google reviews, maybe have spiffs for these different things. It all requires us to generate the appointments and get those vehicles in so that we can have an inspection and we can, you know, generate the, the estimate and ultimately have a sale, and then make this an amazing experience for the customer so they're gonna come back next time. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: Uh, at the very front end of the phone call, you know, it, it takes X number of dollars to make the phone ring. When that phone rings, the customer, if they're a first time caller- Uh, they're likely y- we as, as a business are likely setting the stage within that first 15 to 20 seconds for the length of our relationship. So based on those initial interactions, we're going to begin setting the stage of how well this customer visit is going to go, uh, how much that we're developing trust with this customer. Do they trust me as an advisor? Do they trust this business, that we're experts and we're gonna help them, and we're gonna do so in a, in a fair and meaningful way? And then also, uh, we're going to set that basis for a repeat customer. Jimmy Lea: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: So that, that's where we get into the, the longevity of our relationship. Interestingly enough, so much of this happens at the very first moments of that very first phone call. And when we acknowledge that as a service advisor, I'm like, "Oh, that does tie back to the paycheck I get." As a business owner, "Wow, that ties back into the stickiness of my customers." I love, you know, repeat customers. I love repeat business. So we wanna drive these skills up front. Uh, Taneka, you talked about, you know, sitting down and going through, um, some of these calls and the, the service advisor reaction. Have you really developed and, you know, share your expectations on how you'd like the, the phone answered? I'm not asking about a script. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: But like that flow, right? We don't wanna create robots. Right. What have you done at, when you, you know, train and develop your team on here's what I would like to hear from you? Tonnika Haynes: So I haven't honed that in 100%, but I, I do know that we wanna thank them for calling. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Tonnika Haynes: We wanna know how did you find out about us? Great. Is this your first time calling? How'd you hear about us? So, so we can track that, right? Yeah. Was it a repeat? Was it a neighbor? Was it a Google? How did you... Was it a postcard? How did you hear about me? Um, what can I help you with, and how soon can I get to it? Can you bring that in today or tomorrow? And, um, and smile. So I have these little things that I want them to say that's on the side- Yeah ... of their computer, and I don't want you to sit there and read and just say, "Oh, well, yes, sir, how can I help you today?" I want it to flow naturally because that's who we are as a shop. We- we're not a scripted shop. We're, we're a bunch of goofy people, actually. People. We just happen to fix cars. Um, and that's who we are. Yeah. And I want that to come through. I want you to be friendly. I want you to re- when they come in with the cat or the dog or whatever, please not a cat, but the dog. I want you to put in the notes, this is, this is that customer's name and this is what their dog's name. If they refer to their, their car, "My car's name is Pearline." If you called my car by his name, I'm not taking it nowhere else So I want you to build that relationship. And so I don't have a script and I don't have a formula yet, and maybe I should work on that. And, um, we do have like a SOP. Yeah. Probably should do a better job at that. But then what you just said made me raise my eyebrow, like, I should do better with that. But we do have some things that I'm, that are non-negotiables. David Boyes: You've got your flow there, which is great. Mm-hmm. And I think you're, you're doing better in that than, than- Yeah ... uh, some owners that, that we talk with. I encourage, I encourage everybody to have a flow, right? Yeah. We, we wanna kind of go through the conversation. I'll tell you the number one, um, deficit that I hear within the first probably 10 seconds of a phone call is asking for the customer name, right? So- Right ... "Thank you for calling ABC Automotive. How may I help you? Um, yeah, I can help you with that. My name's David. What's your name?" Jimmy Lea: Mm. David Boyes: It's so simple. Yeah. And, uh, I listen to call after call after call. I mean, these, they, they pop out because of our AI call analysis, but where we go through this whole process and we've had a 90-second call or a two-minute-long phone call, and at no point ask the customer name. Tonnika Haynes: Right. And then you assume that the name on a caller ID is their name. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Right. Tonnika Haynes: That, that's a problem, too. I know that we were doing... I was doing it as well. Yeah. I would do it as well. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: But, um, and, and with that, I had a little challenge saying, "Hey, I want to see you guys' name on the, the review." Yeah. And it really bothers me when a client calls to check on their car, and I have to, have to answer the phone, "Hey, who was your service advisor?" "Uh, I don't know." What? David Boyes: Mm. Tonnika Haynes: They need to know your name. David Boyes: Mm. Tonnika Haynes: So I had to make sure that everybody had their own business cards when the car was dropped off. "Hey, my name is Stuart. This is who you should call to check on your car. Everybody here can help you, but I'm the main person." So I think a lot of people just don't do that, and say, "Hey, well, my name's Tanika. Who am I speaking with?" Great. "Have you been here with us before?" David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Tonnika Haynes: You know, if it doesn't pop up on the caller ID, "Have you been here with us before?" Yeah. But the caller ID pop up, that's a game changer. Am I skipping ahead? Should we not go that far yet? David Boyes: No, you're fine. Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Thank you, David. Yeah, just be ready. Yeah, be ready when, when David Voigts calls Brown's Automotive, and you call and say, "Brown's Automotive. This is Tanika. Hey, David, how can I help you today?" What is that? What are you doing? You knew I was calling. You know, like- Yeah ... yeah, caller ID exists. People forget about that. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: But- They do. They do. But it, it's just extra special. Yeah. And that's what the caller ID... I know one thing I do when the customer's walking in, and if I know I have a blue Toyota Coro- Corolla coming in at 9:00. "Who is this coming in?" Yeah. "Hey, Mrs. Such-and-such. Good morning. Oh, hey." Instead of saying, "Can I help you?" Yes, you can help me. That's why I walked through the door. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. " Tonnika Haynes: Hey, M- hey, Mary David Boyes: Jane." Or, "Hang on a second. I'll be with you in a second." Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. No. David Boyes: Don't do that. Tonnika Haynes: Don't do that. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: So, um, there's a lot to be said about customer service, and there's a lot to be said about s- calling people by their name. Jimmy Lea: Amen. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: It creates familiarity. Yes. And, uh, when, when we have familiarity, we have a relationship. Mm-hmm. It's in- it's potentially implied. But people love to do business with, with the, the folks that they have a relationship with. Mm-hmm. And they're inclined... You know, this is the fun thing about consumer behavior and human behavior, is when I have a great experience, I wanna rally my friends around that too. I want to include them in the joy that I get to experience when I come see Tanika and her team. Yeah. So I'm gonna- I, I'm gonna be much more likely to tell folks about it. If I have a meh- Meh ... average experience, it's probably not gonna come up in conversation. I'm not gonna stick my neck out there. But, um, how do we do that? Well, we address people by their name. We know when they're calling, right? I might even be pulling that up in my shop management system or my CRM. Just the s- the second the phone rings, it's gonna pop and present that information. "Yeah, I saw you were in three, three months ago, and we had looked at, you know, X, Y, Z on your vehicle. Should we add, add some additional time to take care of that this time?" Right? It, we have an awareness. They have confidence in us. We know them as a person. We know their vehicles. And now we're, we're joining together with our customers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, at, at a common goal, right? And it comes back to their safety. Well, Tonnika Haynes: so what'll happen is you'll get a client, and, um... Sorry about the background noise. That's all right. You'll get a client, and they're not thinking about their car. They, they, they've grown to love you. They've grown to know you. They know you by your name. And then you made the recommendations last time. They trust you enough that they are just gonna be like, "Okay, whatever. I'll talk to you about it next time. Tanika's gonna remember that for me." Say, "Hey, Miss Mary Jane, you remember we talked about..." "I don't remember we talking about." "Well, here's a copy. I'm gonna send that over to you. We're gonna look at it, these things again." Yeah. It's just like having a whole system, and then you become that person. It's like I don't have to remember what my car needs 'cause Tanika and her team have the history, and they know me by my name. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Tonnika Haynes: Right. And they're gonna take care of me. David Boyes: The paradigm shift there is I, you know, as a service advisor, I'm the expert. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: As the service manager, I'm the expert, right? You've come to me because of our and my expertise, and I'm sharing the belief that you wanna be safe and you wanna care for your vehicle. So allow me to make these recommendations. Allow me to, to keep that, those notes about our previous interactions so that when we meet to, when we meet again, we can make sure that w- you know, we're, we're not starting from zero- Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm David Boyes: that we already have this information available, and we're going to improve that experience. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: Um, on the, on the call coaching side of it, um, you know, I, I think at some level you've kinda normalized it in your shop, and I'd love to learn more about how, you know, how did you do that? It's, it's not typical, I would say, that people are just, like, rallying around, "Let's listen to calls," right? 'Cause part of it is, you know, the exposure or this kind of fear of judgment. But once you normalize that and make it consistent, um, I'd love to know how you've done that and, and keep the, uh, the Big Brother mentality out the door. Tonnika Haynes: Well, I don't, well, we've got cameras, and we've got these things recording the calls. And, and first of all, these calls are not being recorded to get you. These calls are recor- Yeah ... recorded to cover your butts from that crazy person that swear they didn't say it. Mm-hmm. These calls are recorded to make you better. Um, I remember Chad say, "Hey, just put it on the calendar. Just put it on the calendar." It's like ha- having that one-on-one for the first time. Nobody knows what to say or to do. I'm not trying to attack you. I'm just trying to make you better. So let's just... I listened to my call. Be vulnerable. Me. Hey, Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... Tonnika Haynes: you don't wanna listen to your call. I didn't wanna listen to my own call. But let's, let's do this. It's just on the calendar. And like I said, the defense will just break down a little bit at a time, and I found that with my one-on-ones again. Like, we do a first Monday one-on-one. If I was late or if I skipped the one-on-one, they're like, "Well, why did, I didn't get my one-on-one. Am I in trouble?" They look forward to it. Everybody wants positive reinforcement. Amen. So if you keep it positive, and then some- like, "Hey, I looked at 10 of your calls, and out of the 10, only 3 of them were coachable." Or, "Hey, you remember when we started out, how you would have, like, a 11 bad calls out of 20? Dude, you only got two this time." So make sure we measure it, okay? Schedule it, measure it, keep it going. Know you're uncomfortable, they're uncomfortable, and just say- I don't wanna do this. Nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to lift that... Well, a lot of people don't wanna lift the heaviest weight for the muscle gain. Mm-hmm. It's gonna be painful, but it's gonna get easier. It's gonna be easier for me and you as the coach and the coachee, or is it a coachee? Whatever. So, I mean, it, it's... I don't know if there's an easy way to put it, but I just know that you just keep doing it, you be consistent, and you let them know if you're uncomfortable. Like I hear shop owners say, "How do you start this one-on-one stuff? How do you start this coaching stuff?" You just start it. And you're just like, "Ooh, hey, I don't know what I'm doing either. Let's do this together." Yeah. "Let's, let's get better together." Like, I'm listening to my calls too. We're all getting better together. So I would just say start it, put it on a schedule, make it, make it pop up, show up. Yeah. Wednesday, coaching calls. Jimmy, one of the- Schedule it. It's ready to go. David Boyes: Yeah. That, that's perfect. I, I, I love the perspective too. And Jimmy, one of the, you know, the things that I share with owners consistently is be consistent. Mm-hmm. So I think the, the technology drives that, right? We're delivering an email with, you know, here, here's a, a top call, here's a coachable call. Here's some additional information. So delivering that is important, and the technology really helps us drive that consistency in this case. So, um, when that, that email comes out, here's a call example, you don't have to do anything with that today, or you can. If you don't, there's another one tomorrow, right? Mm-hmm. And we wanna create that normalcy. And th- this is the part that drives change, is one, you know, we're, we're making this normal. Yep. And Tanika, you were just talking about that, right? We're gonna put this on the calendar. People begin to expect it, right? It becomes normal for them, and that's a super important milestone in the coaching, training, and development process, is that sense of normalcy in the shop. And then, um, u- understanding the expectations and, you know, where do we have the opportunities. Um, Tanika, you know, one, one thought that comes to mind here is, you know, you'd mentioned at the beginning, like ask for the appointment. As you began doing this, you know, what, what did you begin to understand and, and see happening across, you know, the phone calls and across your organization? What patterns began to emerge? And really, what's that aha moment you had where you're like, "This is bringing value to me while I'm bringing value to my team"? Tonnika Haynes: Ooh, that's a good question. So when we start asking for the appointment, you know what? The calendar filled up. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. So the marketing was working. And, um, but the big aha moment... Ooh, that's a good question, Dave. You got me on that one. Should have text me that before you asked me that one. I'd been ready. David Boyes: My Tonnika Haynes: apologies. Phone with you. Aha moments with phone calls. I don't know. I, I really, I can't answer that one for you, but what I do wanna say before I forget the chance, don't get the chance to say it, when they're sitting beside each other up front and they're lis- 'cause they're, everybody can hear everybody's phone calls. Mm-hmm. I can hear them say, "That was a good one. What was that one about?" Or like Stuart would tell Hailey, he's like, "She's, she's had a lot of good phone calls here lately. I can hear the change in the way she's handling the phone calls." So again, um, may have got a little bit off subject, but them helping each other and encouraging each other. Maybe they can only hear one end of the phone call, but there's some key words like, "Oh, you killed that one." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. " Tonnika Haynes: You killed that one." Or making that sale on the phone call. Yeah. "I heard how you delivered that BVI. I heard that delivery. You gave them the good sandwich," and they said yes. Like this morning, she was like, "She said yes to everything." It's like, "God, it's working." Imagine that. Love it. Imagine doing a training, following the instructions, and it actually working. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Gotta David Boyes: love that. It really is the aha moment too, right? Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. David Boyes: You're, you're going through, you're driving consistency. You have, you know, some form of flow and expectations, and you're learning from one another. I love the fact that- Mm-hmm ... they're listening at least to one side of each other's conversations- Right ... in real time. Tonnika Haynes: I David Boyes: think I'm lucky Tonnika Haynes: with that- And then getting to populate from that ... with my team. David Boyes: Yeah. Tonnika Haynes: I think I'm lucky with my, 'cause they're, they're not in competition, and, um, it's like how do you keep them... I don't know. God blessed me with that, but I'm just lucky that way. But encouraging each other- So. Jimmy Lea: It's good. That's good, Tanika. You, you've set up a solid culture there, solid people. They've got great results. You're listening to the phone calls. Consistency, like David's talking about. You know, um, hearing one side of the conversation helps a little bit, but if you, if you, as an owner, if you're only listening to half the conversation and you are not booked up three, four, five, six, seven, eight days in advance, chances are you're missing the other half of the conversation, and you need to listen to it. So you do need a device, a program, a, a hardware. You need a, a phone system that allows you to listen to all sides- Mm-hmm ... of the conversation. You've g- just gotta be able to do that. You gotta be able to do that. Now I'm gonna give another shout-out here as we work in our marketing. So a lot of times I hear shops talking about their marketing. "Well, my marketing's not working. I'm not... It's not working. It's not working." A lot of times it comes back to the phone call. Mm-hmm. How well is the phone call being handled or treated from an advisor? But speaking to the marketing part, we've got a shout-out here for the institute is holding a marketing intensive this October 26, 27, 28. Tanika, I just got off the phone with Brett Faidley. He is signed up. He is coming out for Mars Conference, so if you wanna get signed up as well, sister, we'd love to have you out here. Tonnika Haynes: I gotta get a real flashy jacket for that one. Jimmy Lea: Uh-huh. Tonnika Haynes: Pull out my Jimmy Lea: rhinestones. Right behind that Mars Conference. So if you got your smartphone there in front of you, grab out your smartphone, turn on your camera. There's the QR code right there. Oh, man. Flash the QR code and get registered. The, the, uh, the Mars Conference is going to be awesome. It is a conference where when you are done with the workshops, it's a three-day conference. When you're done with that three-day conference, you have 2027 mapped out, ready to go, and you know what you're gonna be doing month to month throughout that whole next year. It's super awesome. I, I love the Mars Conference. David Boyes: I do too. So Jimmy Lea: come- David Boyes: I was at the last one. Excited to be there. I'm, let me just say I was there as a participant at the last Mars Conference. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. David Boyes: And, uh, one, getting to, you know, to interact with so many, uh, friends across the industry was great, but also, uh, you know, I, I, I don't own a shop. I own a, uh, communication business. I took so much away from that that I immediately applied. I can speak from my own experience. Uh, and I know, uh, you know, many of the participants there that took those components right back to their shop and made immediate changes. So it is, uh, it's not just a, um, it's not just a workshop where you're gonna come away with a flashy workbook and put that in a dusty cabinet somewhere and never do anything with it. I promise you, you attend the Mars Conference, and, uh, you will come away energized and ready to make a real difference in your shop Jimmy Lea: Yep, for sure. For sure. Tonnika Haynes: All right. Like I s- I'm never gonna be at work if I keep coming, following you around, Jimmy. David Boyes: Just imagine your wardrobe, though. Tonnika Haynes: Oh, I know. It'd be so good. Jimmy Lea: It'd be so good. Tonnika Haynes: But no, we'll see. I, I'm thinking about that. I thought about what we talked about the other day, but we're not gonna get off subject 'cause I do that a lot. David Boyes: It can happen. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. David, what else? What else can we talk about with phones, phone systems, programs? Um, can we track our marketing using your phone system? David Boyes: Yeah. Uh, just on that very note, you know, the, uh, uh, we'll talk about this a little bit this year at Mars as well, but, you know, market tracking is important, right? We, we spend a lot of money, and understanding the performance, uh, is important. So with our phone system, you know, we can provide, uh, market tracking numbers if you have different campaigns, mailers, text messaging, website, uh, related, uh, leads that you're generating. Um, we can certainly provide unique numbers. The customer experience is the same, and the, um, you know, the shop experience is the same, except you have all of this additional data about, you know, how many calls were generated. So that's important to know, and, uh, it's also important to, uh, use that as a, you know, a good baseline of information about your capacity to manage phone calls in your shop. So when we look at some of the, uh, the other performance metrics, how long does it take us to answer the phone? Are we answering the phone, right? Jimmy Lea: Mm. David Boyes: In order to ask somebody for the appointment, we have to first answer the phone. Uh, and if you're spending this money on marketing campaigns, there are a variety of reasons, and I'll just tell you one example that I hear often from owners is, you know, they put out a marketing number and they, you know, advisors, uh, might believe that it's, you know, it's generating bad leads, something like that, so they won't answer that phone. Um, but we wanna, we wanna understand, uh, the behavior of what's going on. Is it something that we can control? Um, are, are we effective in the marketing campaign? What information do I have around that? And then additionally, uh, running that into the call analysis, uh, so that we understand are we, are we converting these, right? If we're generating the leads, are we actually generating appointments? And then, uh, from that point, if you know you have the appointment, you can measure your performance, uh, go forward. So there's a lot of data that we can capture, um, other than just sending in all of these phone calls to the main number. Jimmy Lea: I love it. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Jimmy Lea: I love it. I love the, the phone is such a powerful tool. I love when we can multitask that tool and do multiple things with the, the same tool. Very cool. Very cool. But i- if there a- any questions, comments, concerns from our audience, we would love for you to type those in. If there's questions for David or questions for Tamika, go ahead and type those into the comments section. While they're doing that, I will say if you are trying to keep up with me, good luck. But you can find it on our website. The website page is, uh, wearetheinstitute.com/events. That's all of the events that are coming up here in the very near future where you will see the institute participating and locking arms with the industry to help elevate the industry. Our motto, our mantra is, better business, better life, better industry. We're gonna lock arms with you as a shop owner so that you have a better business. The net result of you having a better business is that you have a better life. Tonnika Haynes: Mm-hmm. Jimmy Lea: And not just you have a better life, your advisors have a better life, your technicians have a better life. Your, uh, your partners have a better life. Your spouse Your advisors' significant others, their spouses, uh, their, their technicians and their spouses, the, and their children. Everyone elevates, everyone breathes better, everyone sees a bluer sky and greener grass when we have a better business, a better life, and our commitment is that we will help this become a better industry. Looks like there's a couple of comments that did come through. Oh, no, that's Raleigh posting out the webpage for the events. Yeah. Uh, super awesome. Super awesome. Uh, last final thoughts, final ideas. David, we'll start with you. Tanika, then to you. Yeah. That we can help this industry grow. David Boyes: Tanika, thank you for joining today and, and sharing your experience. It's super valuable for, for me as a provider to our industry that, uh, we understand how we're driving impact. So thank you again for that. Thank you for your trust and support. For the, uh, the audience, uh, Call Inbound is our company, callinbound.com. Uh, we provide communication services, uh, call tracking information, uh, advisor call handling performance metrics, and AI call analysis. But above all, we're part of the industry, right? So, uh, I got my start with, uh, with the institute in a 20 group. Got, you know, very ingrained in the industry, uh, while I was building my company. And, um, you know, I'm proud to say that I'm part of the, uh, not just the automotive aftermarket, but the, the service repair industry. Thank you, Tonnika Haynes: gentlemen. I wanna make, make sure you know that I appreciate your company. Um, I don't know how many employees you have, but it seems like they're all just sitting in the same room waiting to help. I can send an email and I get a response so quickly, and it's always been consistent great service, so I do appreciate that. And, uh, anybody that's on the fence, whether you, you know, I'm like, "I don't wanna listen to phone calls, that's just another thing for me to need to..." Do it. Listen to the phone calls. Start with yourself. Start with yourself as the owner. I always say start, start with yourself. I always assume that I'm the problem, then I can work from there. Listen to your phone calls, and if you think you're good and then you listen to them, you realize how bad you are, think about how bad your team is if you're not coaching them. So get them in coaching call services or what- whatever. Listen to the phone calls. Get everything in order. And not only will you make better sales and better connections, more appointments, but I really truly believe that it could save you a lot of heartache. Yeah, they record bad calls, too. Bad calls from the other end that you're, you know, that you need, I hate to say for court, but anything. It's like, "Hey, sir, we've got that call recorded and that didn't go quite the way you're saying it's gonna go." So that's another part to it that could, that could be very important in your shop. We call that David Boyes: the replay booth. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. David Boyes: We'll take that to the replay booth. Tonnika Haynes: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: It, it, it's an important to CYA. Exactly. You gotta cover your own behind. Tonnika Haynes: There's a great... That's a great tool for that. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Yep, for sure. Well, with that, thank you very much. David, thank you for being here. Taneka, thank you very much for being here. Tonnika Haynes: Any Jimmy Lea: time. Look forward to seeing both of you very soon at our next conference, and to give you a big hug and say hello. Uh, bring your best jackets, David. Say Tonnika Haynes: less. Gotcha. Say less. Back in the David Boyes: studio. Jimmy Lea: Yes, yes. Very much looking forward to working with all of you in the very near future. And for everyone that is listening, thank you so much for joining us today as we talk about building a better business, a better life, and a better industry. My name is Jimmie Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, and we're here to lock arms with you and make a difference. Click on it. Come find us. We're here to help. How can we help you? Let's make a difference. Talk to you soon.
214 - The Future of Shop Training: Why Gear Group Acquired Today's Class
214 - The Future of Shop Training: Why Gear Group Acquired Today's Class July 29, 2026 - 00:47:05 Show Summary: Gear Group Holdings acquired Today’s Class to create a stronger training experience for automotive shops. The platform delivers personalized lessons in just a few minutes each day. Continuous reinforcement improves retention and reveals hidden skill gaps. Shops can develop stronger teams while improving productivity and customer satisfaction. Future updates will expand content and use AI to make training more effective. Host(s): Wayne Marshall, CEO & Industry Coach Guest(s): David Boyes, Founder of Today's Class Show Highlights: [00:03:14] – Daily reinforcement helps employees retain and apply new knowledge. [00:05:38] – Personalized training adapts to each employee and role. [00:09:35] – Shared learning builds motivation and stronger team chemistry. [00:13:12] – Shops need one clear path for complete employee development. [00:18:35] – Investing in training helps shops attract skilled technicians. [00:20:33] – Better training improves efficiency and reduces costly comebacks. [00:24:03] – Training data reveals skill gaps that experience may hide. [00:27:42] – Employee development creates a stronger workplace and business. [00:31:03] – Shop owners must learn business processes and financial performance. [00:39:21] – Working interviews confirm whether technicians can apply their knowledge. 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/16mXEg1aOZI 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: Wayne Marshall: Say hello to today, to everybody that's joined us for Ask Me Anything. Uh, today, Cecil normally does these, but today it gets to be myself as Cecil is traveling, as he is out east on the ASTA Roadshow. But today we have the privilege to bring in David Boies from, uh, Today's Class to talk a little bit about some of the things we have going on here at Gear Group Holding, and some of the things that are changing as we continue to expand, try to be bigger, better, the things that we can offer out to the industry. So I welcome in David. It's great to see you again. Great to have you. David Boyes: Happy to be here. Wayne Marshall: So many of you have seen and pay attention, some of you guys I know have been involved with the Institute at different levels in the past and have seen our change and growth. Some of you are more new, and maybe some are just coming in today for the first time. Uh, for those of you who are newer or coming in for the first time, uh, just to help set the stage, so here recently, a few months ago, uh, the Institute, we created Gear Group Holdings, and it's the holding company that now owns the Institute and still does the things that we've always been doing. And with that, though, we have the privilege of being able to now bring in a cl- a business of Today's Class and the things that they do, which we think is a great fit for everything we got going on with our coaching and our other programs, and we're continuing to look because as we've always said and as our tagline has been, is we wanna create a better industry. And part of helping to create that better industry is we know and understand we need to continue to offer up better things, better content, better programs, better services that can help to elevate all of us in what we're doing. So today we're gonna talk just a little bit of why we have Today's Class, some of the things it does for us and why we're excited, things that it's going to help not only strengthen what we have to offer with the Institute and the holding company, but also how this plays in, and I'll let David even talk about his excitement toward what this does for Today's Class, and some of the things that we're seeing in the future and what we're trying to develop and what we're trying to do. So hopefully, uh, those of you that are with us, if you got a question, we know we have the ability, you can, uh, add those in. You can put them into the chat. We'll try to take a moment or two and answer if there are anything as you listen to what we're having to say and as we share. So anything, uh, opening words, comments, David? David Boyes: No, e-excited to be here, excited to share the vision. You know, since the press release went out a couple weeks ago, there's been some questions about how this all works, so happy to have an opportunity to, to talk through it. You know, explain where we think this goes, explain, you know, how the institute will continue to carry on what it can do and today's class as well, but then also explore some of those opportunities for collaboration to, again, help, help our, uh, shared customers Wayne Marshall: Yeah. So as, you know, one of the questions I know we've been asked, uh, early on when we started to do this was the, you know, well, why? I mean, why, why was the reasoning behind some of this? And when we first got into conversations, we started looking at all this, and one of the things that we know through research and through adult learning and other things that have been done, when we hold a session, and we've done, you know, uh, intensives on different subject matters or different things, we know that when you leave those, those classes, if you don't apply it in short order, it's only a matter of days, and they say within five days you lose about 70% of it. And as the days go on, you continue to lose a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And one of the great things about today's class is it's very interactive. It's mobile-based, as those of you who have seen it and maybe even use it. But being that it's mobile-based, it's a short three to five minutes a day that helps to keep top of mind the things that we're trying to teach and coach and develop in the content. And whenever you can reinforce it on a regular and daily basis, the knowledge and retention just goes up dramatically, and you start to use it and remember it so it makes a difference for what you're trying to do as a business. So talk a little bit, if you would, David. So most know, you know, people get coaching. We teach at different industry events, but talk a little bit about what today's class is, how it functions, uh, some of the benefits, the gamification of, and how it brings the team together, 'cause it is. Even Cecil and I compete against each other when we go on with some of the daily questions of who's gonna be right or not. But just give, you know, the people an overview on that if you could, please. David Boyes: Yeah, of course. So, so generally what we're trying to do is helping to impart knowledge, you know, for, uh, personnel at shops, whether that's a technician, a service advisor, a manager. There's a lot of information that we all need to learn to get better, whether that's new vehicle technology, uh, being reminded of shop SOPs, uh, learning more about finance. There's no shortage of opportunities where, where we need to learn. What we always question was, what's the best way to make that happen? Uh, traditionally, you know, there's the standup instruction, there's traditional online learning, and what we, what we began to explore was, what is a potentially more efficient way that we can connect with somebody? Can we consider how much information that they can consume in a single, you know, in a single session? Can we account for the fact that, as what Wayne just described a second ago, that people forget? Are there ways to, to shift that? Ways to remediate that? So our learning approach is really applied at, at solving those problems. We wanna spend three to five minutes with you each day. That training will flex. There, there's a lot of advanced tools, AI, machine learning, and so forth, that would take my training, given my settings, my role, and make it different than it would for Wayne's training or somebody else's. So it's personalized. So there's a lot of really advanced learning technology underneath that, and then we build content to, to help be delivered through that channel, for lack of a better term. So whether that's training on engine performance, suspension systems, or phone skills, or financials, we've got a great pipeline to be able to, uh, push that information to the learner. But then maybe more importantly, measure what they know. That has historically been a big snag in all learning and development, is to understand, okay, how much did this person really comprehend? Uh, the way that we've often worked around that is to do an end of class assessment or something like that. Uh, but doing that one time may limit the visibility that, that we get. So for example, I might get lucky answering a question. That might be interpreted as I know this, and I don't. On the other hand, maybe I read something too fast and I really do understand this concept, but I got it wrong. So, so our approach through this daily interaction allows us to, to push you forward from a learning perspective, gather that data to really understand where you need help, and then we adjust tomorrow. So from a, from a learning strategy perspective, we think this is a really effective way to train, you know, personnel that are very, very busy, don't have a lot of time to sit down and, and do training. So if we can find that sweet spot operationally, and do it in a very effective way, we think that's a win-win. Wayne Marshall: Yeah. I'll tell you what, it, it's in, in the short time that we have now been working together, we're seeing it move the needle. And this is what gets me excited 'cause even though I am the CEO of, I still coach. So I've been working with shop owners and, and managers, and we talk about some of these things, and everybody's trying to raise the bar. I mean, the technology is constantly changing, and their techs, and even the serv- service advisors are constantly trying to get better, smarter at what they're doing and how to communicate. Going back to your phone skills as an example. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. Wayne Marshall: How to communicate with the consumer. I mean, what we do anymore has gotten very complex, and when you're sitting there and you're trying to communicate that and teach that or explain it, I should say, to the client, this just helps to bridge some of those technology gaps or understanding gaps that you can take the complex into good talking points that the client understands what we're doing and why. And the other thing of it is, is that it, uh, it also empowers a manager to see, are my team learning? Are they going and raising the bar? Because we all know y- y- you might be bringing in a tech, he might be a B tech, but you don't want him to stay a B tech. You want him to be a B plus, maybe an A minus. You want him to start climbing that ladder. This is a way to do it and connect some of those dots. Um, I, I mean, and it, and it is, and it's... It, it reminds me just here, just recently with one of your new, newer, uh, customers that we work together with at the institute. He's using it in such a way as a measurement for his service manager to make sure that the service manager's working with the techs, they're doing their training because part of his comp- you know, his comp plan is you need to coach up and we need to make our techs better. Mm-hmm. So they're supposed to do so much training every month. This is a way to make sure they're getting their training in. David Boyes: Yeah, and, and, and I, what we've found, it's been, well, this started as a very, um, focused learning activity. It's been a very interesting, like, social and, and team experiment. Yeah. And understanding where motivation and teams that are curious and wanna learn more, how powerful that is. Um, there is an element of this, and I think with any business, winning some hearts and minds, if you really wanna develop your team, you know, you're gonna need to get them, you know, rowing in the same direction. Uh, Today's Class has some capabilities that, that can foster some of that. Yeah, Wayne joked a bit about the, uh, the points competition with Cecil and, and there's avenues like that. But, um, we also know how that ties back to learning. So if, if you think about, um, attending an in-person training session, talking to somebody at the break in between, you might share some stories. And, and those things from a, from a memory and retention perspective are very sticky. So when we're able to create environments where teams can, can train together two or three times a week, four or five times a week, and they're talking and they're learning from each other, that's enhancing those memories. That's also building some of that team chemistry. That's exposing where somebody might be really strong, might need, uh, need a little more help, and also has kind of downstream retention benefits as well. So there's a lot of pieces to this that, um, that you really can, can leverage, uh, when implemented effectively. Wayne Marshall: Yeah, one of the early wins for us, excuse me, one of the early wins that I've really enjoyed is many are familiar with our advisor training program. And being able to take some of that content early on, create it into those bits of training, daily bites or bits of training every day when it comes direct to advisors on developing their selling skills or phone skills, some of the other, you know, how to go through that presentation aspect. So not only do they hear it from the coach, but then when they continue to get it every day and they stay on that very specific track, it really reinforces, and it just empowers them to be better at what they're doing faster because they keep getting it every day. And the other thing I think is really cool that I know you're able to do is, depending on what that, like, tech is or advisor, you can customize the track. Mm-hmm. So if, if you've got a young tech who doesn't have all that knowledge, well, you're not gonna give them the same things or content that an A tech's gonna get. So he gets this track, or she, they get this track so they can start to learn and build, and it's the same way that the advisor gets their specific track. So everybody can be on a little bit of different track or the same- Which is really pretty cool when you start to see. And thank you, Aaron. That's right. It is a good product, and it does make a difference. So, uh, i- it's exciting when we see these things all come together Because training is, it's a big thing in our industry. It's really needed, and we hear it from our clients all the time. You hear it. Everybody wants us and they're saying, "Well, we need better, even more tech training or service advisor training, manager training." It just goes on and on to raise this bar. David Boyes: Yeah, and it's, uh, the shops are in a difficult position to try and stitch together all of these different training solutions. And, and this leads into part of- Yes ... you know, where, where we, uh, were very motivated to become part of the GEAR Group. 'Cause Today's Class kinda grew up as more of a, a technical training solution. However, if you're running a shop, you need more than just technical training. Wayne Marshall: Yep. David Boyes: Um, and I, I worry for the shop owner that has to spend tons of energy and hours to stitch together a training program that covers everything fro- from tires, um, to drivability, uh, on the technical side, or basic phone skills up to management and financial training. There's a lot of information there, and it can be very challenging for somebody that's running the business to also put that all together. You know, larger organizations may have a, a training director that, that can support that, but, you know, if you're a single shop, unlikely you're gonna have somebody that's got that bandwidth to do that. So again, collaborating, you know, as part of the GEAR Group, alongside the Institute, we can begin to share more of those resources and get better a- and make it a simpler opportunity for a shop to say, "Look, if, if I need this, this, and this, this is a very effective way for me to go. 'Cause all these pieces fit together and make it very easy for me to roll out and maintain." Wayne Marshall: Yeah. You know, it's... And we talk about this as we have, as we just had here a few weeks ago, a strategy meeting, and we talk a lot about meeting staff, shops, organizations where they're at. Yeah. We have those who really need to start here and then grow. Some others are higher up. We can meet them and still help them and develop. Um, this customization and the things that you're saying, this is what excites me the most, is because, look, if someone comes in, they're like, "We need help on the selling at the front end," we have that track. We have the coaching that can do it. We can reinforce it with Today's Class. We can make it very holistic. And then when they get that mastered, sure, now you get that rock star and we start talking about we want them maybe to no longer be a service advisor. We need them to be a general manager or become- Mm-hmm ... a manager. And hey, we have that track, too. Not only can we coach it and teach it, we can reinforce it with the daily bits and bytes of learning and those snippets of questions to keep it top of mind and continue to grow. And even when it comes into that ownership and the tech work- And what I think is also really cool, um, one of your staff members, uh, Jim, I know he even goes out and does live teaching and training- Mm-hmm ... when it comes to the tech. So it's not just what we're doing online, we're even out there in front of people. I know he's speaking at upcoming industry events later this fall at different places, and that's exciting because we're even bringing it in live and connecting the dots, not just doing it online or through the app and the tool set we got. David Boyes: Yeah. I think, you know, if we look at vehicle systems, right? Do we, do we- Yeah measure things? Do we adjust things periodically, once a month, once a quarter? No. You know, these things are happening in real time. Um- Yeah ... we believe that there's, um, a need for that, for learning, engagement, all those types of things. We've got opportunities where we can, you know, push, uh, knowledge, a webinar, react to, to an audience day by day by day, where we can be a little more dynamic, a l- a little more nimble. That example with Jim Kokonis is a great one. We can see data- Yeah ... today about what's gone on in the past week in today's class, and if we see something that's concerning or we see an opportunity based on this data that we have right now, we can spin up a webinar like we're on right now and say, "Hey, we're gonna dr- jump in and provide, uh, an update on, you know, uh, latest and greatest in, in oil specifications and, and so forth." And because we have the advantage of having, you know, thousands of people log in today, they can see that message. They can see it's there. It's not something where next month they'll realize that, oh, this, this event happened. So we're trying to just shorten- Yeah ... the gap between what, what those shops need, um, and where they are right now. To your point, meeting them where they are and trying to find that path to them. Uh, but, but I believe very strongly that the m- the more work it takes for a shop owner to piece these things together, the less of an impact that they're gonna have. So, so, you know, I tend to see it as the, the more that we can meet them where they are and make that job easier so they can get what they need- Yeah to go perform their services, they'll win, and then we can develop those relationships, and obviously that's, that's good for us too. Wayne Marshall: Yeah, I just, hey, uh, I, I just saw, I'm looking at comments. We got some people sending in notes. Uh, I just shout out to Buckaroo Bob. Yeah, you're right. Jim Kokonis- Mm-hmm ... solid man. You're right. He is the best. Uh, so it made me smile when I saw that come through. And also, you know, and I think Kevin Clark, who also sent a note in, really made a good point here that we, you know, that training is a process, a continuous and process improve- performance improvement. But- Mm-hmm ... but the key is when we invest in people, people now wanna come work. It makes it easier to hire the next tech because in this industry, why it's very large and we got hundreds of thousands of shops, and you got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that work in it It's sometimes a very small industry. And when you look at your community, techs seem to see each other and talk at different events, be it through the parts company and other places. And when they start to say, "Yeah, my owner invests in training. They're in, they're doing this, they're doing this in coaching. They're doing this with today's class. They're helping to raise my game, my skill set to be a better employee and a better technician." And when people hear that, then that tech down the road, when his shop doesn't do it, he goes, "Yeah, I wanna go work for him." Now that becomes an attraction, and it helps bring in better people because they know you're gonna take care of them. They know you're gonna invest in them. So it helps to build a, a better and enhances that workplace culture. So great remark, Kevin. Thanks for sending that in, and as a reminder of why training and what we do from a developmental standpoint is so important. David Boyes: Yeah, and I would build on that and said, um, you know, what, what, what stands out to me with what Kevin said is continuous. Again- Yes ... uh, uh, uh, very commonly training is, is treated like, uh, an event. Check the box. We did this. We're good. I would ask anybody listening to this, you know, when was the last time you learned something, exposed to it once, and just remembered it forever? Maybe you did it 10 minutes ago, and you still got it, but think about something six months ago, 12 months ago. Yes. We need to be aware of that. It is continuous. So if it's gonna be continuous, how can we find these strategies that actually can fit in our day-to-day business world? We gotta start ... If we're looking for different outcomes, we gotta start changing what we're doing. We can't do the same old thing and expect different results. Wayne Marshall: No, no. And you know, it, it is. And I'm smiling again 'cause thank you, Buckaroo Bob. Bob's sending in a couple more notes of just ... And it's true. Training doesn't cost. It ultimately ends up paying because you're efficient. Things, cars come in. They get fixed first, right, correct. They go out. They're not coming back. All that stuff that you don't take advantage of to do it right the first time ends up costing you more. So if you invest in your team, you get a better customer experience. If you have a better customer experience, they come back, and they become sticky, and they stay with you. If you don't, and you have those problems, or it isn't fixed correctly the first time- Now you gotta spend more money in marketing and other things to get that car count back. So no, those are all really solid comments. Thank you for those who are sending in some of the notes and commenting over what we're talking about today, because it is important. And there's a lot, look, there's a lot of competition out there, and there's people who are doing it well, and some aren't doing it so well. So the better we can do and deliver a great experience, and part of that is, is doing the job correctly the first time and keeping the customer happy. So, and you have better employees when it's all said and done. So yeah, very much so. Very, very much so. David Boyes: Yeah, I, I, I tend to look at it in terms of the, the alternative, right? So if I'm not gonna train my team, if I'm not gonna invest in them, you know, what, what results do you expect? So, um- Yeah ... I recognize that it is not easy to develop a team, to take a, take a GST and, and build them up over time. So, so you need, you often need support. And again, that, that's why another reason that we're very excited about, uh, you know, working as, as part of the GEAR Group to, you know, with the customers that we deal with, often they'll say just, "I need more You know- Yeah ... and, and we wanna be able to, you know, say, "Oh, look, let me, let me connect you with, with Aaron and the team over at the institute. They might be able to help you out. Here's some resources that we're familiar with." Um, 'cause again, there's not just one, you know, uh, silver bullet provider that's got everything out there. So, uh, I tend to believe two heads are better than one. You know, so us working alongside the institute I think is a, is a great combination, and, uh, looking forward to continue to collaborate with the team, you know, as we, you know, begin this journey. Wayne Marshall: Yeah. It's, it's... And, and, and we're the same, because we, we, as we've strategized, we have so much content that has been developed that we teach, uh, at different events or that we coach through that we know we're gonna be able to convert and put it inside of today's class. And what even gets me more excited, because as we've talked, I mean, it's not uncommon that you're getting more than 4,000 people come in every day- Yeah that use the software. Sometimes it's more than that. Mm-hmm. 4,000 people that we can start to move the needle to teach, improve their skills, and hopefully, that... And the number is growing. We're getting more and more every week, and that number's getting bigger every week. But it's exciting when you know that you're starting to touch that many people with good information, training them up, getting better at their jobs, that we can deliver and make this industry what we hope it can be. 'Cause it's a great industry. David Boyes: Mm-hmm. It's Wayne Marshall: very rewarding. David Boyes: Yeah. And, and being able to understand where, where the gaps are. Um, you know, again, I think there's sometimes there's, uh, it can be a misunderstanding of where we need to focus our energy. Uh, we have a lot of customers that are surprised when they find out where, where their gaps are. For example, I, let's say I've got a very experienced technician that I thought was a rock star and all of these things. However, they've got major gaps, you know, in key fundamental areas. So we can do that, you know, at scale, and really understand where those opportunities are, and then try to apply a remedy. Um, one side project that, that we continue to explore is this idea of kinda going very broad with beginning to teach shop financials. Yeah. Not to be the headline of folks training each day, but we believe that, you know, if we can raise that bar little by little, and if you could snap your fingers and every, every employee in every shop had a basic understanding of, of shop financials, margins and so forth, I would argue that benefits the industry. I would argue that would promote, uh, better conversations, you know, in the shop. I would argue that better positions somebody to take that next step to become, you know, a, a foreman, a shop manager, and so forth. So again, we think we've got some good opportunities to- To, to make an impact, not just in the technical area, not just in the service advisory area, but as a team to, to overall benefit the shop. Wayne Marshall: Yeah, and that's, and that's something we're spending a lot of time when we talk internally and we're s- trying to, you know, work on our content, strategize, improve our educational material. That is truly gonna raise it up because it really does become your unique identifier. You know, I just... Earlier this week I was in Washington DC at one of our intensives talking to some of the people that were in attendance, and one of the things we got into conversation is is, like, well, what is your differentiator? And, you know, you get those people that start to say, "Well, you know, I offer a warranty." Okay. Does the guy down the street offer a warranty? "Well, yeah, but mine's 36 months. His is only 24 months." Well, the guy on the other side, well, he's offering 40 months, so now- Mm-hmm ... how are you? All of a sudden, well, that's not a differentiator. And you start going through and it's like, you know, what really starts to set you apart, and that's why we do what we do, is, is okay, well, let's, let's become better business people. Let's become better at what we do. Let's become that so, again, we don't have the comebacks, we don't have some of the other things that I was already talking about. Those start to become differentiators. It's how you make that customer feel and they leave happy and satisfied that they wanna come back. And, and it, and it takes time, and it doesn't happen when one, one, you know, one call or one visit. It happens in usually two to three. Um, there's been many a research of what creates brand loyalty. It doesn't happen on the first visit. People talk about going to your favorite restaurant or, shouldn't say favorite- Right ... but you go to a new restaurant. Sure, you have a great experience, but does it make you go right back? No. But if you have a second one and then a third one, and they say by studies by the time you get to three, the odds of someone coming back and becoming loyal goes up to 72% after three visits. So what are the ways to get there? Have good people, have good training, do your jobs well, deliver on that experience, and that's our goal here. That's our goal here at GEAR Group. It's what your goal is, is we want to make your people the best and let that be that differentiator that people wanna come back, and you get to that three plus, that you maintain that 70-plus percent retention. That's huge. That's huge. David Boyes: Yeah, and from a differentiation perspective as well, it's not just to your customers, it's to the job market, the employees. Like if you- Yes ... can create a, a work environment that is truly different, you know, than the other shop down the street- A place where people can grow, thrive, be connected, understand what's going on, have open conversations. Again, I recognize that's easier said than done. Uh, but taking steps towards that is important. And again, if you put in that work, you're likely to see those results in terms of the retention of your team, you know, building somebody up and, and setting yourself up as a shop owner in a more comfortable spot where maybe you don't have to have your hands on it every single day. So the more you invest in your team, obviously that- that's gonna pay off in the long run. Wayne Marshall: Well, and it gives the, it gives your techs even an example, uh, an opportunity to make more money. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of them have a performance bonus, and when they can do better and they become more efficient and more effective in their job, their productivity goes up. They're gonna get a few more hours in, available time over, you know, their clock rate or their clock time. That puts more money in their pocket. Yep. Plus everybody wins. The business wins, the tech wins, the customer wins because they're getting a better job. Everybody wins. And that's what we're trying to really do instead of just, eh, you know. And that's why, that's why we continue to say education in any industry, but especially in automotive, as much as it's changing, is so important to stay fresh and stay on top and keep doing it. So David Boyes: Yeah. Uh, yeah, could- couldn't agree more. And again, it, it's so diverse. You know, there's not just one thing you're gonna learn today that, that's gonna, you know, solve all your problems. You gotta continue to grow. It's gotta be continuous, gotta recognize that you have gaps in every area. Uh, but again, for the individual, similar to what I've said a couple times about shop owners being responsible for ha- stitching together this program, as an individual it's often difficult also to figure out, what do I need to learn? You know- Yeah ... there are these things I might be interested in, uh, but sometimes we don't know what we don't know, and there might be things I need to know to do this job. So again, that's where some of this more advanced technology changes things a bit. So instead of, let's say, looking at a list of, of classes at an upcoming event saying, "That's the one I think I should take," sure- Yeah that, that's fine and good, but there's other alternatives, today's class included, where the system's gonna figure out where you need help, and it's gonna push it. And your reaction might be a surprise, might, might react with, "I didn't realize I had gaps there-" Yeah ... "and I invite that." There could also be the more uncomfortable option where, "Oof, I, that doesn't feel good. I thought I knew this stuff, and apparently I'm a little shaky on that." But those that, that kind of embrace that and say, "All right, cool. Let me figure this out. It's gonna make me better," you know, that tends to be a very productive outcome. Wayne Marshall: Yeah. It's, it's always fun when I... We talk to some of our coaching clients, and they talk a little bit of how they start to build this out and start to really gain this understanding because what we see and you see, a lot of shop owners at one point was a technician. They were the best technician, one of the best technician at that time, and then they transfer into that ownership position. And part of this whole conversation we end up having is, well, it, it, and I'm, and I say this with high respect and regards, they look at the business as a trade because that's how they were taught- Mm-hmm when they went to, you know, to college, community college, went to tech training. They talk about it as the trade it is. But when you turn into a business owner, now it's not only about that trade, it's about the processes. It's about how you run that business, the KPIs you need to look at, why we're building out some of these different financial things so people can understand more what it takes. And it's about putting those things in. So it is exciting when we can build this and reinforce it. It stays in alignment with our coaching- And then you get more snippets of it every day that keeps it top of mind and just keeps building and building and building on that knowledge curve to where pretty soon it just becomes a natural thing. Just as you know when you were a tech and it came in, you could do a good inspection and write up a great, you know, report for the service advisor in a matter of 20 to 30 minutes 'cause you just knew what to look for and you knew what to do. And be able to do this and bring it together to, you know, not only tie it into the coaching and other things we're doing, but to the daily aspect of it, it comes so cyclical that it's just so nice to be able to do. And it's moving the needle, and that's what we see. We see it in the financial reports. We see it in their dashboards, you know, or their point-of-sale, you know, software. Um, that, that's what's exciting. David Boyes: Yeah. What, uh- And, and I, I would say that the... You know, that's not limited to- Oh ... that tech that becomes a, a shop owner, right? And I, and I think those that do that, you know, it does take a little bit of vulnerability, for lack of a better word, to say, "All right, look, I really understand this part well. This other stuff I need some help with it." But again, that's not limited to, to shops. In the spirit of transparency here, you know, like one thing that I'm personally excited about from a GEAR Group perspective i- is learning from, from yourself, Wayne, and, and others on the team in terms of how to grow a business, the, the governance, some of the structures that we at Today's Class, you know, some things that we could do better. Uh- Yeah ... like I said a little bit ago, two heads are better than one. Uh, I think all businesses can, uh, should look inward to see where some of their gaps are, where they, they need some help. Um, you know, we're, we're certainly doing that, and it's, it's been a good, uh, experience for me personally to see, okay, well, sure, we're trying to help shops improve, but we can't be blind to the fact that we also need to improve. Everybody's got those gaps. Everybody's got those opportunities to, to get better. Wayne Marshall: Amen. No, you, you are totally correct. That's why, I mean, even though as I've been doing a lot of this for a lot of years, I'm still learning. And even though I don't, I'm not on Today's Class every day, I have been on it enough. I've learned a few things, and even though I'm a hack mechanic and I do a lot of things in my own personal shop, uh, it's taught me a few little tricks to be a better tech on my own personal vehicles and the things I do. So I enjoy it. I love, I just love learning, and that's what we really see is, is there is a hunger in this industry. So it's great that we can be able to do some things and take this additional content and develop it into the different modules that we can obviously put inside of Today's Class. So- So what's, um... Tell me a little bit. I know there's some things that, uh, you and staff have been working on when it comes to AI. AI's a really big thing out there, and I know there's some things to help to look at how people are answering and how AI can come in to help you take those things and give you other feedback that teaches and shows you those weaknesses. Anything you wanna share? A little bit of some of the new stuff and exciting things you guys are working on? David Boyes: Yeah, so, so from an AI perspective, our approach to it is a little different than what I think most consumers s- see today with, with ChatGPT. A lot of it is more number crunching in, in the background. So if we've got thousands of people training today, we need to use very effective tools to, to see where, where their gaps are, where they need training and where they need reinforcement. So that's one layer. Uh, but then we're getting to other layers when it comes to, uh, evaluating our, our content as well. So we continue to build content. Do we use AI to support that? Sure. But at the end of the day, we need to make sure that our training is effective, meeting our standards. Um, so we use it more as an efficiency tool, but still, you know, bedrock to us is, you know, the ASE task list from, from a technical perspective- Mm-hmm and continue to build that out. Um, you know, we do have some upcoming, um, you know, content areas that we're releasing. That's gonna be something that we're gonna be able to accelerate as we get into the fall. But we're also really beginning to dig more into individual engagement and, and different tactics for, you know, enabling shops to, to drive adoption of the platform, putting some ownership, you know, back on the employees to learn, coming up with some fun and engaging tools for, for measuring that. And then we also, at the end of the year, are expecting kind of a, a big, uh, user interface update, which has been a lot of work- Yeah ... as well. So we gotta continue to, to keep pushing forward. Um, and then lastly, I would say just promoting communication in the platform. You mentioned the webinar approach. We're trying to get stronger and stronger in engaging with our audience, having some two-way communication through there so we understand where their needs are and how we can help. Wayne Marshall: Yeah, one of the, and the one of them that I know, 'cause I've seen some of what you've been working on behind the scenes- Mm-hmm and what I guess I would, uh- Get to tempt the audience to be excited about is when you can take 4,000 plus, 5,000 people who are coming in every day and, and growing, and take all of that information, how they're answering, how they're interacting, and how it can be boiled down to me as one individual to take all of those, you know, I guess, patterns and saying, "Here's what we can do to make you better, Wayne," because we're seeing what's going across. And AI, obviously some of the technology that can process that so much faster and then come back and give me something that's more personalized based on what they're seeing across the industry. Mm-hmm. To me, that's pretty cool when it can- Yeah ... get down to me on a personal level based on all the other things we're seeing to up my game. Yeah, it's gonna be exciting to get that pulled together and rolled out, so. David Boyes: Yeah, absolutely. Wayne Marshall: So, no, this is, th-this is all good. And we, you know, I can't... I know I've said it to you before, but just we are excited for what we're gonna be able to do and how we're going to be able to come together and only enhance what we've got on both ends. I think this is a great win-win because we're able to share our content, we're able to share your deliverables out to the marketplace in different ways. Um, and the consistency of what we're trying to build, that's only gonna make this industry better, our ultimate goal. So it is exciting. Anything else that we should, uh, people should be knowing? David Boyes: Yeah, I mean, I, I would say, again, I, I think the broader, you know, GEAR Group vision. So today it's the institute and today's class. You know, tomorrow, you know, we'll, we'll see where that goes. But I think it's, uh, you know, our, our visions are aligned for how we can, can impact, um, the industry. Um, you know, working in, in collaborative teams, you know, recognizing strengths of, of other parties I think i-is key. Uh, and that's something that, again, we're, we're very excited about in terms of being part of the GEAR Group. Wayne Marshall: So we got a couple questions that came in. First one is from, from Tyler, and thank you, Tyler, for sharing. Um, yeah, those are, those are hard. And I'll, I'm gonna use, I'm gonna use myself as an example. I tell this to people that, uh, could I study for an ASE and be certified? Sure. I could study up. I can understand the content. I could take the test. I could pass. But does that mean I can apply it? Because doing, doing exactly what you just referenced is they're really just memorizing the content. So in the, in the educational space, they always look at this. There's those who are certified and then there's those who are credentialized. And the difference is, is those who have the credentials, they, they have able to apply it. They're able to do it. So how to deal with situations like that is to have people actually show you. And I know one of the things that we're seeing, and I even talked to some people here just when I was traveling these, uh, previous two days, one of the things that you're hearing a lot of shops do, they're doing working interviews. They try to hire a new tech. They're pulling a car in, and they know there's something wrong with the car. They've already done the, the research of or the inspection of, and they're gonna see how well this guy can troubleshoot. And based on the complexity, they're making it harder if it's an A tech and he's at this level to then another, which actually is what they're trying to do to show that they have the credentials or the ability to actually do. And the best way that I could give you as a tip is to do some of that nature Um, one of the things that I know we talk and we coach is, is to do an inspection rodeo. Maybe you've already done this. That's another way to find out if people are really l- learning. Bring in one car, you know what's already there, but take your techs separate of each other, and take each tech and have them do the inspection and see what they see and don't see, and where's the inconsistency. That tells us what we need to do to focus in. That comes back from what they know here to what they actually apply or have that credentials to actually know how to execute it. So that's what we're seeing people do. It's some of the things that we suggest because it's easy to memorize. It's another to apply it and actually execute, and that's what you're wanting to do. Can they actually execute? So do a working interview, and if you're trying to hire somebody that they just didn't memorize the answers or know, but they actually know how to do it, do an inspection rodeo. Have them, have a tech go out and actually show you and do something of that nature. Um, another one that just came in was Brett. Thank you. I see, uh... Oh, you've already answered it Great. You can see you can send an email to David, uh, to get that information, Brad, on pricing and some of the different, uh, offerings that are available, and I know David would be happy to catch up with you and talk and, and, uh, further details on. David Boyes: I'm gonna, I'm gonna chime in on, uh, for Tyler as well. Tyler, another- Yes ... so, so for those that aren't familiar with today's class, one important aspect of it is our daily training sessions are, are question-based. They're... You can think of them like building blocks, but we lead with questions 'cause that allows us to gather data. So what Tyler mentioned is, you know, there are sometimes people that are really, really sharp, real great memories, where they might see question text essentially and just remember what the answer is. It could be just the, the pattern of the question. So Tyler, sometimes another tactic would be to, to take that and rearrange it, like come at the technician with, you know, structuring the question the opposite way, leading with the explanation and, and reframing that. And y- you know, one alternative would be to use an AI tool to kind of type that in, be like, "Okay, give me three different ways to ask this question." That might be a simple way if you're looking to just do a little prompting or nudging to see where this person is. 'Cause, yeah, I mean, if they're just kind of, I don't wanna say getting by, but, like, they're able- ... to leverage their memory to just- Yeah ... breeze through that, um, there could be some gaps. We see a lot of that. I, I was having a discussion with Jim Kokonis on our team yesterday. He's working on, uh, some material essentially on learning strategy. Sometimes we will see people that fly through this stuff and go really, really fast. That tends to be an indicator they're not really taking the time to learn it. So, so we really want to... You know, we can't pump the brakes through the platform on these folks. What we really wanna do i- is try to connect with them on another level and say, "Hey, what, what are we doing this for anyway?" Like, if, if you're really here to, to learn, here are some ways you wanna consider it. Here's how the brain works. Here's the way these are structured. Here's how you can get the most of it. It's not a, it's not a contest to get through your questions the fastest. It's not a contents- a contest to answer the most questions in a, in a given time period. The intent is to learn. The intent is to get you better. So we're gonna, we're gonna put in some more work to try and communicate that to a way with our audience where, a way where, where it makes sense and, and hopefully it can improve, uh, their experience so they can, they can get more out of it. Wayne Marshall: Hopefully, Tyler, that gave you some, uh, nuggets of, of skills or information to apply back to those so they can really show that they are understanding the content and can apply it correctly when they're doing their work. So thank you to everybody. I know we've got a handful of people that have chimed in on different things, so I, I appreciate the comments. Really appreciate some of those questions. So yeah, if there's anybody else out there listening that, uh, we're not seeing, throw them out here, and, uh, in the next, uh, few minutes we have left, we'd be happy to discuss or add in too. But nope, this has been good. I've b- I've enjoyed just being able to talk a little bit more of what we're doing, what we're trying to get accomplished here at GEAR Group Holdings, uh, with the addition of Today's Class and as we grow and expand. Um, and we're not, as you know, d- uh, David, we're not, we're not ending here. We wanna really work hard to continue to expand in other ways and other things that can and will help what we wanna do and the passion we have for this automotive space. So, uh, and thanks. It sounds like, Tyler, I see you h- had us back, so it sounds like that maybe helped you out a little bit. Happy to really do it. So just, yeah, and Kevin, you're right. I ... Just so everybody knows, uh, for those of you that do wanna reach out to David, it's D-B-O-Y-E-S, David Boyes, dboyes@todaysclass.com. Please reach out. We're happy to help. Uh, we're excited for what we're doing and how we're, uh, moving forward in this industry, and we just wanna be able to c- continue to contribute back and make a difference. David, I'll let you have the final words as we wrap this up today. David Boyes: Oh, well, well, thank you for that. Yeah. E- e- excited for n- next steps. Lot of, lot of exciting things around the corner. Yeah. A lot of work to do. Uh, but again, I think, I think we're well positioned to continue making an impact. Um, excited to collaborate, you know, with, with a broader team. You know, lots of sharp people that we're looking, uh, forward to working with and, uh, you know, looking just to continue to grow the experience as we move forward. Wayne Marshall: And thank you, Ken. Yeah, David and the Today's Class team are awesome. He just h- he just hits you up and, uh, and we appreciate that. Ken, Ken's the David Boyes: man. Yeah. Wayne Marshall: You know? Yeah. Appreciate that, uh, feedback. But yeah, they're ... It's a great team. Excited to have them part of, uh, the group and what we're doing. So with that, thanks everybody. We look forward to the next one. Keep the questions coming. Let's keep this building, and let's make this a better industry.