Ep 152: She Grew from Zero to Eight Shops in Four Years?? | Jesse Jackson
With Jesse Jackson
Now playing — The Limitless Leadership Podcast
About this episode
In this episode, Josh chats with Jesse Jackson, CEO and founder of Mango Automotive, about her journey in rapidly scaling her company from zero to…
Key takeaways
- —Rapid growth in the automotive repair industry can be achieved through strategic acquisitions.
- —Creating a fun and positive workplace culture is essential for employee satisfaction and retention.
- —Shop owners should consider forming co-ops to increase their business's value and exit potential.
- —Asking questions and maintaining a growth mindset are crucial for personal and organizational development.
- —Understanding the importance of customer experience can significantly impact a shop's success.
Frequently asked
- What strategies did Jessi use to grow Mango Automotive?
- Jessi grew Mango Automotive primarily through acquisitions, rapidly expanding from zero to eight shops in just four years.
- How can shop owners increase the value of their businesses before selling?
- Shop owners can consider joining co-ops to standardize operations and potentially sell for higher multiples than the typical market value.
- What is the significance of a positive workplace culture in the automotive industry?
- A positive workplace culture enhances employee satisfaction, reduces turnover, and ultimately leads to better customer experiences and business performance.
▸Full transcript
to just call upon Elon Musk. Like he says, you know, it's like being the CEO is sort of like eating glass because you get all the worst problems come to you. So you're just eating glass all the time. But I don't know, I wouldn't have it any other way. You are only limited by your creativity. You're listening to the Limitless Leadership Podcast, the podcast designed to help automotive repair shops learn how to lead, coach, train, and manage their team better by sharing proven techniques and thought provoking interviews from industry leaders.
Are you ready to transform your leadership skills by tapping into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results? Let's get ready for liftoff. It's time to go from great to greater. Here's today's episode. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Limitless Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Parnell, and before we get started, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe. Do all the things you need to on social media to help this podcast impact people and build leaders.
And speaking of leaders, I'm joined by a fantastic leader, one who I've been excited to interview. I was actually surprised to, to hear about maybe having her as a guest on the podcast, but she is the CEO and founder of Mango Automotive. Our guest today is my friend, Jessi Jackson. Jessi, thank you for being here. What's up, Josh? What's up, Jessie? Love the J's there.
All the J's, all the J's. Well, Jessie, if you would, go ahead and share with our audience who you are, what you do, and how you do it. I'm Jessie, the founder of Mango Automotive, and we have grown from zero to eight figures in three years, and now we're at eight shops. So zero to eight shops in four years, and it's been, you know, it's been a fun ride.
It's been pretty quick. I think when you, you know, look at the trajectory of most shops and how fast they grow. In fact, I applied to an SBA program that's sort of like a little mini MBA that the SBA runs for free, and they called me up after I put in my application and told me that they thought that my application was fake, that the numbers were made up because they never— wow— that quickly.
So that's sort of— we've grown primarily through acquisitions. So that's the power of acquisitions. And I, I, we can talk later, Josh, but now I'm also doing something in, in the co-op space where I think your listeners who are shop owners, it could give them an opportunity to sell for a much higher multiple than they might currently be trading at. Excellent. So we will definitely address that later on in this conversation.
I'll first ask you, Jessie, what got you into this industry? Promotive believes great shops deserve great technicians, and they built a recruiting model designed specifically to deliver that. Their team understands today's technician landscape and the challenges shops face trying to hire in a tight labor market. Promotive manages the entire recruiting effort from start to finish. They source talent proactively, qualify candidates with intention, and maintain clear communication with both sides.
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Funny story, but I mean, I think I grew up in the shop world. Like, one of my grandfathers owned a hitch shop and my other grandfather owned an aviation repair shop, so maybe that felt comfortable to me. But really, my trajectory went from environmental engineering to product, like B2B software, and then the last software that I was in just happened to be in the automotive space.
So I knew a ton about the space and saw an opportunity to help owners essentially retire out of their brick-and-mortar automotive repair shops as the industry is undergoing, you know, yet another transformation, however fast or slow, into the possible electric vehicle world. And so I, I made the leap into acquiring brick-and-mortar automotive repair shops for fun. Josh, for fun. For fun. Well, that you, you use that word fun to describe the, the ride so far, the ride being from zero to eight figures.
In 3 years and 0 to 8 locations in 4 years. And you said it's been a fun ride. I can also imagine it's probably been other adjectives other than fun. Can you describe what it's been like to be a part of that rapid exponential growth in a short amount of time? Look, Josh, I have 7 kids and now I have 8 shops.
I do not like to be bored, so I love me some thrill. I think for me, acquiring automotive repair shops is just where I've been getting my kicks. Like we all have to have our thing that excites us. So, but yeah, I mean, to, uh, to just call upon Elon Musk, like he says, you know, it's like being the CEO is sort of like eating glass because you get all the worst problems come to you.
So you're just eating glass all the time. But I don't know, I wouldn't have it any other way. And that having fun is sort of like part of the culture we built. Because I've been, you know, at jobs where I wanted to cry every day, and life is too short. I don't want to have that experience in my life, and I don't want our employees to have that experience.
I mean, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. Like, life is hard. But at the end of the day, I want it to be a place where people enjoy being because they spend a lot of hours there. I love, I love that concept. I love the fact that that is one of the things that's important to you. Um, fun is actually one of the core values limitless leadership as well.
Um, especially in an industry like, it's, it's a dark industry, like let's call it what it is. I mean, there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of toxicity, there's a lot of jaded, frustrated people, um, who, who have never known what it's like to, to be a part of an environment where it's a healthy culture, where fun is a part of the equation.
What is it like to instill this level of fun and other amazing pieces that you do with your brand that creates a culture. You've created and cultivated a culture where people want to be a part of it. It's not like your typical, and I shouldn't say typical, but I'll say we're familiar with other shops and we look at it and we're like, oh, I could never be a part of that organization.
How is Mango different? Yeah, I think a typical shop, I'm sure none of your listeners, but you know, a shop that I have been to, you walk in, there's a pot of burnt coffee on the counter and a couch that has oil stains on it and a 10-year-old Sports Illustrated that's offending over 65% of your customers. And then in the back, the owner's screaming at the tax and threatening them and they don't have health insurance.
There's hardly any other benefits. So I think in that way, Elevating both the customer and employee experience is pretty straightforward, right? Like, there's no magic to having a waiting room that people actually feel comfortable sitting down in and treating your employees with respect and offering them benefits. This isn't like some revolutionary idea. It's just deciding that it should be applied in our industry.
You mentioned 7 kids, 8 locations. I mean, I feel like you're start— you're gonna have 8 kids to match the 8. Look, I mean, I don't— I know we lived in the 7 and 7 world for— how long was I there? For almost a year, which was cute. But no, we've— it was cute. They will never match again. Yeah. Okay. My wife and I have 4 kids, and I know how hard it is with 4 kids.
I can only imagine 7 kids. Um, so hey, hats off to you. Last year was the peak because everyone was still in the house. Now they're starting to age out. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Go to college. So things are actually ramping down a bit. Sure. Okay. Well, so things are ramping down in terms of the kid department, but in the location department, I would imagine it's the other way around.
Um, what, what does the future look like for Mango? Leading a shop can be isolating. Especially when you're trying to grow and still take care of your people. Tectonic 2026 brings together shop teams who care about the same things you hear on this podcast: coaching, accountability, training, and building leaders at every level. Expect hands-on workshops, role-based sessions, and honest conversations you can take back to the shop on Monday.
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It's about putting the right team in place. It's about choosing the right vendors to make you a pro, making pro moves. And when I think about the pros, I think about Shop Marketing Pros. The know, like, and trust factor, that's a real thing. And Shop Marketing Pros understands that. That's why I wanna recommend Shop Marketing Pros to become your marketing partner in your shop.
They get to know, like, and trust you and your business to then help your audience get to know, like, and trust you too, and bring your shop to the next level. So when I talk about making pro moves, this is the kind of move I'm I'm talking about. This is the kind of standard-setting partnership that's going to elevate your shop. So if you're ready to become a pro in your shop, visit shopmarketingpros.com and partner with the best.
Good question. So we've grown totally organically with almost, you know, no backing, almost no investment funds. As most of you probably already know, when you're less than 2 years old, you're completely unbankable to begin with. So, you know, on the backs of my personal credit cards, I think is, is how we got started. And that has definitely affected the speed at which we can grow.
Um, a lot of shop owners— the statistic varies, but I, I think it's at least half of shop owners right now are looking to retire in the next 5 to 7 years. So there's a lot of opportunity, and we actually need shop owners to step up and be willing to help out their fellow shop owners by taking over those shops so that shop owner can retire, right?
It's real sad when you see a shop just close its doors. Um, so that's all of us that are already in the space thinking about how we can help each other out. Um, so I, I think we're continuing to build our existing shops, and on average when we acquire a shop, it grows by 30% year over year. Wow. So in those four walls, and then we put the acquisitions on top of it.
But right now our focus is actually on something else that I think is really interesting. So Josh, are you familiar with multiple arbitrage? I'm not. I've heard of both words. I cannot tell you what either of them mean together. Okay, so I— the concept will be familiar to you, and it's familiar to probably anyone who owns a sizable automotive repair shop that's been approached by private equity or strategic.
So they come to you and they say, look, Josh, like, your shop is doing $500K in profit. I'll pay you a 3x x profit, or sometimes we use this term EBITDA instead of profit. I'll pay you a 3x on that. So your shop is essentially valued at $1.5 million, which is cute, but you could just work at it for 3 more years and get that $1.5 million.
So like, sure, not that interesting. But, um, what are they— and if anyone here— what if anyone listening wants to sell for a 3x, like, call me, I'll buy you. Um, but then what are they doing really? We just just saw a sale, I think it was in January, in, in the automotive repair space that was a 16x. 16x? Yes. And why did they sell for, for 16x?
Well, they had 20— they had amassed $20 million in profit. So this is multiple arbitrage, right? You, you buy at a 3x and you sell for as high a multiple as you can get. You know, 16 is the highest we've seen recently. So then how much money are you making? You're making that, that entire span, 16 minus 3, you're making a 13x on your money.
So that means that repair shop that I bought from you, Josh, for 1 point— that I paid 1.5 for is— I'm going to do my math wrong here— 7.5. I made $7.5 million on your shop if I acquired it. Yeah. And it feels like that's not very fair. And, you know, maybe I gave you some small percentage in it, right? Like 10% so that you could get what we call a second bite of the apple.
So you participated in a small percent of the resale of the business. So we decided if they can do it, we can do it. And this has been sort of our story. Like, we're scrappy. We came into it with no funding, like no money, and And now we see private equity gobbling up shops and they have nothing. They don't have the experience that you have.
Like they might run your shops into the ground, but they just have financial backing. Yeah. They got the money. $30 million in the bank to execute this strategy or $100 million in the bank. Um, and it used to be, Josh, like in 2020 or 2021, you could partner with some friends and just say like, oh, those are my buddies, we're all going to sell our shops together and we want to hire multiple, right?
Because if you hit, you know, maybe $2 million in EBITDA, you might be able to sell for a 7. So that's a doubling, right? But now the industry is really saying, okay, we're not doing that anymore because you guys aren't on the same systems. You're not doing the same, you know, your employees aren't run by the, the sort of same handbook. You don't have the same financials.
So we're not hodgepoding shops together anymore. They have to be a real unified organization to sell at these higher multiples. So, and, and what we found over the course of just talking to so many shop owners looking for shops to acquire is there's a lot of shop owners who would like to retire but need or want a higher multiple. So in order to do that, we've formed the co-op, what we call it, the co-op, where We are partnering with other shops and we're essentially all agreeing to sell together.
And what this looks like for the first 12 months is we're just finding partners. So we're finding who those partners are. And once we amass $10 million in EBITDA, we call that trigger one. At trigger one, we will all become one company. So we'll have a stock exchange where we exchange the existing company's stock for the co-op stock. Okay. And we'll spend about 12 months what's called seasoning the business.
So combining, making sure all of our financials are done together, making sure we're running off the same employee handbook, making sure we're using the same systems and the same tech stock. And then we will all exit together. And it, you know, from our initial projections, it looks like our owners, instead of selling for a, a 3x, will be selling for a 9 or 10x.
So that will be about 3 times their value in the current market. And our goal is just to help everyone win. How does leadership change after TriggerOne? Because when, when you're saying all of them now are combined, um, and then we're, we're all operating off the same employee handbook and we're all doing what I, I'd imagine very similar or maybe the same processes.
Things are, things are run the same. How does that change leadership, uh, across one trigger to the next? Exactly. So until trigger one, everyone, there are certain, you know, tech stacks and systems and processes that we ask our, the partners to put in place so that we can have that work done. Um, after trigger one, our sort of financial and human resources, um, pieces are, exist in corporate, I'll call it, right?
Like they exist in the co-op. And when you were an owner, you're now still an owner, but you know, a smaller slice of a bigger pie, which is going to be much more valuable to you. But we are looking at each owner and what they want, right? So you might have an owner that has a manager in place and, you know, wants to retire that gets replaced by a district manager.
You might have an owner in place that has managers in place and wants to grow in the organization that actually becomes that district manager. So at trigger 1, everyone will get their offers essentially, right? This is your, your, your profit, how we're valuing the company, and this is the percentage of shares you'll get. Um, and this is, you know, what the, the leadership can look like for your company as we move into that seasoning process.
So even though we're banding together before trigger 1, every owner at trigger 1 still has the opportunity to make a choice. Like, this is, you know, exactly what I want. I'm super excited about this. I'm definitely doing this. Or anytime before trigger 1, you can decide, you know, actually this doesn't work. I want to pass this to my son. Or, you know, it's not exactly what I want.
So part of the magic will be putting together the regions and the district managers and the ownership or, or the, the leadership of the company moving forward through the seasoning process. Got it. Okay. And, and, and how many How many shops on average are you looking at in terms of being a part of this multiple arbitrage system? We're looking for about 40 shops to— okay, the co-op.
Yeah, so it's a— that's a pretty big— that's a pretty big number then, 40. And then, and now question: do they all have to be in agreement with how things are going to be running and operating after Trigger One? Do they all have to be in agreement? I mean, I'm not very good at politicizing, so we don't have to be in agreement, but we do all have to do, we have to agree to do things the same, even if we don't like it.
And I think this is sort of, I mean, Josh, that gap between selling for a 3x and a 10x is, you know, in the example I gave you, the difference between selling for $1.5 million versus $5 million. So even if you don't like using our software, like, are you willing to do that for $3.5 million extra dollars? I mean, I can learn to like it, you know, I can learn to like that because it does the, the piece about having, you know, these things uniform is going to control in part the multiple that we're able to achieve.
And so I have a mentor that says like every million helps, so like every extra million helps. So like, you know, and, and even a fraction of a multiple achieved because we're all in alignment, I think is valuable enough that, you know, everyone will be able— be willing to make, you know, adjustments to how they do things. Yeah, we can, uh, no, no, no, that's, that's good.
I actually forgot what I was gonna, gonna ask, but I That I appreciate you sharing that. Um, I am going to ask you to share how our audience can get in touch with you, but I'll wait for that towards the end. So that's just a teaser for all of you listening. You just got to keep on listening to this amazing guest that we have.
And if you're not, if you're listening and not watching, you can also tune in to YouTube at The Bearded Leader and you can watch this entire episode on YouTube. Oh my God, I don't know what's, what is happening. This is awful. Cut, cut. Whoa. I do not know what— That's staying in. Was that you? Was that you saying thank you for choosing Mango Automotive?
No, but that's our hold music. Awesome. Okay. Well, so let me ask you, Jesse, because I asked about how leadership might change from one trigger to the next. Of course, this is a leadership podcast. If I were to ask you, what does leadership mean to you? How would you answer that question, Josh? I feel like when I listen to you talk about leadership, it is very sophisticated.
And like, you just told me that you broke it down in a half-day session at the Vision Conference. So I'm like, okay, that's a lot to say about leadership. So I don't know why you're asking me, but I, I have just two rules that are, uh, not as exciting as your rules. Is my connection Just froze, huh? No, you're good, you're good.
Um, my rules are just have fun, which we already talked about, and no assholes. And both of those are because life is too short. And maybe I have another rule that's not an official rule of the company but is something I personally implement, which is to hire people that are better than me. Oh, preach! Yeah, I think, you know, as I look at my career and how I've grown, I Josh, I used to build websites, and when I say I built websites, I, you know, sold the website and designed it and built it and coded it, like all the things.
And when I was thinking about growing, I realized there was no more space for me to take on additional projects. So I had to add someone, and that person was a designer that I added, and it was So scary because not only was I paying that per— I had to pay them my salary, like it was coming from somewhere, right? Yeah. So it was coming out of, you know, my pocket to pay them.
So that really put pressure on me in the other areas of the business to ramp up. But I just thought, I'm really good at this. Mm-hmm. And not in a conceited way, but my clients are happy. Like, this is one of my strengths. So I think I realized in that moment, like, I just had to feel good about it. I had to hire someone that's better than me.
And I did that. And that's sort of been the policy. Like, our district manager, he epitomizes the Mango culture better than the founders do. We're like, okay, yes, like, you are Mango culture. Like, we love you. And I, at every step of the way, it's just find someone who is better at that than me and I guess not surprisingly, I can always find someone that's better than me.
Well, I mean, I hear the humility and the modesty in your voice, and I appreciate that. I feel like that's, you know, those are some attributes of strong leadership skills. And there's a, you know, Steve Jobs was famous for a number of reasons, but one of the quotes I love that he shared was, at Apple, we don't hire people to tell them what to do.
We hire them so they can tell us what to do. And I wish more leaders saw the value in hiring people who are better than us, who know things, you know, know more, know more things than us, who, who are, uh, um, more qualified, have a better skillset than us. It is not a scarcity mentality that we need to be operating with.
It, there's an, there's an abundance mentality that we can learn and grow from. And I'm just a big believer in the fact that we can go fast alone., but we can go way further together. And multiple minds are better than one. So when we can bring on people who are strong in areas that we may be weak, that's a, that's a huge opportunity that you're capturing.
So I applaud you for that. Um, by the way, the reason I, I like that, I've never heard anyone say I'm sophisticated. I'll just say this, all I do is leadership stuff, Jesse. So that's why you might hear some sophistication in my voice. Um, but the reason I'm asking you is because you grew from 0 to 8 locations. And zero to eight figures in a very short amount of time.
It's because you're awesome and you're great at what you do, and that's why you're on the show. So thank you for being here. You mentioned— Josh, I thought of one other thing that I— Oh yeah, come on. I think my entire job is to ask questions. Oh, and like, preach. Come on, Ryan, my partner, he's amazing and he comes from the industry.
Thank God, because I could not do this without him. But my, from the time that we partnered, my job is always like, to say, well, why do we do it that way? And sometimes he says, well, that's the way it's done. And I'm like, okay. But Brian's amazing because Brian's never attached to his opinion or how it's been done. He just wants to find the best way to do it.
So he's always open to this exploration of, okay, like, that's the way everyone does it. Well, should we be doing it that way?, or is it not the right way? Like, could it be done different? And I think, you know, as I look at how I lead people in our organization, I, I ask a lot of questions because I don't know the answer.
Well, there's, there's power in being curious. You know, when we're in curious mode, we're in learning mode. By the way, Jesse, when you just said, when I lead people in the organization, and then you, you put air quotes around lead, you can drop the air quotes please. I mean, You are leading people in your organization. Okay. I think, Josh, I don't think of it that maybe I just don't think of it that seriously.
It's not like I have imposter syndrome, but I'm just like, everyone in my organization is doing their job. Everyone's doing their thing and we're all working together. And yeah, maybe I'm the one who had the original vision and is sort of driving it and asking these questions, but maybe I'm by the air quotes, I think I'm trying to get away from this.
Traditional organization from the 1990s where the boss says, we're doing this thing and you better do it. Like, that's not the kind of organization that I believe in. So I have a hard time using terms that can— I, I think lead is better than like being the boss or being in charge or some way, but it's still, to me, leaders have made me feel bad ways about myself, and I don't want our team to feel that way, although I'm sure sometimes they do.
Anyway, it's just my, you know, my reaction to that sort of typical, like, organized waterfall organization. Sure. Well, and I appreciate the, the clarification, and, and I— because I don't hear imposter syndrome at all from you., but what I will say is we get to give leadership a positive tone of voice, a positive name. And I, I'm, I'm convinced because of your rules that you have and because of the, the, the, because the fact that you, you implement fun within your organization, your team doesn't feel the weight of your title.
They feel the energy and influence of your leadership. So that's why I'm saying drop the air quotes. I mean, like, it's okay to say that you're leading them because because you're not like bossing them around. You're like, you're leading them in a, like, in a very positive, fun manner. And that's probably why you have your general manager, who is like the epitome of Mango.
Yeah, your DM. Like, that's, that's amazing. And, um, so kudos to you for that. By the way, when you mentioned that your, your job is to ask questions, if I could applaud that anymore, I would. Um, I, I have this, I keep this book on my desk. So for anyone who's, um, not watching this episode, if you're listening, I'm holding up a book called The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier, and it has 7 powerful questions for any coach or leader.
And in my opinion, they're synonymous with one another, but too many of us as leaders are not asking enough questions. We're constantly giving directive after directive after directive, but that doesn't mean we're providing clarity and direction, and we can provide direction through questions. So, Please, if you're listening, if, if, if all you take away from this episode, which I know you won't just take one thing away, but if all you took away was there's power in asking questions, I can't emphasize that enough.
I love that you mentioned that, Jessie. Um, we do not ask enough questions as leaders. And so I, I really, I, I like, I really like you now. At first I was like, yeah, yeah, she's great. Now, no, like you're, you're like, you're a strong leader. This is awesome. The, I think The more you know, the more you don't know. And, and maybe that's cliché, but you become more comfortable in your not knowing.
And I remember a time like when I was on the C-suite, but I felt like I had to have all the answers for my organization in order to be seen as whatever it was, competent. I think I just wanted to be seen as competent, but being at the very head gives you the ability to let that go and to just ask the question because ain't no one gonna fire you when you're the owner of the business, right?
You don't have anything to be afraid of by asking the questions. Well, let me ask you this, 'cause I, I, I like that you're, that you're addressing this topic. Uh, I, I'm a big believer in improving yourself versus proving yourself, and a lot of us feel the need to prove ourselves. When you're in the C-suite, with the organization that you're with. And I, I'm hearing you say to some degree, like, uh, yeah, I wanna prove myself.
Like, I wanna prove that I'm capable, competent, and confident. Speak to the listening audience who is not the owner, who feels the need to prove credibility, prove something, but the opportunity, like you're, you're an owner of a fantastic organization. What are you looking for in your own team members? Outside of them feeling the need to prove themselves? There's one thing that we look for in Mango team members, and this quality, we say if they have this quality, we will definitely hire them and keep them.
And if they don't have it, we won't hire them if we know they don't have it. And if we find out that they don't have it when they're employed with us, that it just never works out. Any guesses, Josh? Oh, I mean, integrity comes to mind, um, but yeah, I mean, I'm intrigued. What, what is it like? That one for us, it's a growth mindset, because I can put you in courses to teach you how to sell or how to change those brakes or whatever it is.
We can teach you that, and we have Mango University, um, where we put our employees in courses and we send them books to read. Ones they choose because we believe that we're all on a personal journey. But if you think you know everything, I can't teach you. Um, so like, those are the ones where we found that's just not a match for us.
And it— because we're growing so rapidly in our shops and through acquisitions. So if you want to grow along with us, it's perfect. But if you don't want to grow, it's just not a match for us. You know, there's a lot of shops that but just stay the same all the time. And, and you might be a great match there and a great leader, but for us, you have to really realize, or, you know, be willing to say that you don't know everything and be willing to, to learn and be better.
Because we're all like— the version of me that said I was gonna start Mango, Jessie 6.0, whatever you want to call me, couldn't run Mango now. Like, and in a way, I think that's why when we set audacious goals, it feels scary because you're aware that there's, there's a leap between where you are now and where you have to be to accomplish those things, and you're not there yet.
But being comfortable not being there yet is, I think, what sets apart people who achieve big things, right? Like, I'm, I'm now, you know, Jessie 8.7, and, and I'm here. But, you know, that Jessie 6.0 certainly couldn't be running this 8-figure organization. Realization. She just didn't know what she didn't know. But part of the fun is in not knowing. I— what's the saying, Josh, about like, um, kind of like you're, you're dumb enough to do it because you don't know?
Like, so I, I call it blind optimism. Yes. Because as an entrepreneur, like, I, it's like I'm, I'm, I'm like, I don't want to— I avoid negative self-talk, but, but I think you guys can hear in my voice, I just call it blind optimism. Like, yes, I don't know what I don't know. I'm just gonna go and just— I'm gonna will this to victory.
Yes, like, I have no money, I've never owned an automotive repair shop, but it's fine. Like, I'll just buy 8 of them, it'll be great. Yeah. And in some ways, if I had no— you know, if I truly understood what I didn't know, there would have been more fear in me. But I just had, yeah, the blind optimism. That is brute force.
I'm just gonna muscle through this. Yeah. I, I like, I don't call it fake it till you make it. I say face it till you make it. But the reality is we're never gonna make it. I mean, we're, if we're committed to being lifelong learners, we're gonna think like a rookie. We're never gonna make it. Jesse, there is a lot of power in what you just shared, and I don't wanna just glaze over this topic.
Um, what you described is quite frankly the, the, the reason why everyone should have a coach. You mentioned earlier that you have, you have a mentor who said, uh, every million matters. Um, or something along those lines. Every, every million helps. But he's funny because no matter what amount it is, it could be like $1,000 or $3.3 million, and he'll answer that amount.
So it'll be like, every thousand dollars helps. Gotcha. Okay, every 3.3— it's usually big numbers with him though. Yeah, every 3.3. And he's right. And, and there's power in, in having someone to help you in that journey from Jesse 6.0 to Jesse 8.7. Um, there's power in having someone who can help you identify blind spots. Let me ask you this, because as a coach myself who serves this industry as a, in, in the leadership lane, what we provide is, um, an interview guide for our clients for them to hire their CIA team members, people who are coachable, intelligent, who have the right attitude.
You're saying have a growth mindset. What, what we provide is a 5-page hiring guide, and if anyone who's listening wants this guide, just Reach out, josh@limitlessleadership.co. I'm happy to send it to you. Send it to me. I'm interested. Yeah, I'll send, I'll send it to you. So, um, yeah, josh@limitlessleadership.co, and I'll send it to whoever's listening. Um, but there's 40 to 45 questions in this document that help you identify if, is this prospective hire coachable, emotionally intelligent?
That's the intelligence I'm looking for. And has the right attitude. Let me ask you, how do you determine if these prospective hires have the growth mindset that Mango is looking for? Josh, I think it's really hard. And one of the challenges in hiring is you get such limited time with someone before you bring them on. When in the tech world, it's a little bit different.
Like you can ask them to do a project for you that you pay them for, or, and I think at Mango, we try to play with the idea of bringing on someone for a half day. So that we learn more about them, but that's not always compatible with their current job, right? That's not always an option for them. So I, I would say Brian and I lean a lot on our instinct.
I mean, we try to ask the right questions. One question to sort of suss out the attitude piece that we ask is, I'll say, Uh, what do you love about your current job? Which is, is a softball question because I'm asking them to tell me the positive. But you will be— you probably wouldn't be surprised, but so many times the response is only the negative.
They go straight to the negative. And that is something for me that I know isn't a match because that's, to me, more indicative of how you see the world. Look, we all move on from jobs, and some bosses are crappy, and some commutes are too long, and there's— we have reasons. And sometimes we just need to get paid more. There's lots of reasons to move on.
But if you can't see the light where you were, it might be your perspective on the world. So I love to walk through that. And then one thing that I do during an interview— Josh, I'm curious if you have this— but that makes people so nervous is I with a service advisor or manager, I just do a role play. Okay. So I'll say, okay, Josh, um, pretend you're, you're working at Mango.
You're behind the front desk. I'm like, I'm a little old lady and I'm walking into the shop and you be the advisor and let's walk through it. And I'll say, okay, I got this postcard. It says you fix everything. I need a new heater box door on my Miata, but the last shop said they couldn't find one? Like, can you fix that?
So I set it up for them and sort of see how they play with that role play. Um, I'm telling all my secrets, so if anyone's listening to this and they're applying for us, oh, smiling is the number one most important thing, which I think sometimes people just get so nervous and you have to feel for that. But for sure, our best managers, you know, smile through that exploration and ask questions and they might even, you know, they do their best, but then they might ask questions afterwards, right?
They'll say like, how do you do this thing at Mango? And that asking of questions during an interview is a sign about a growth mindset, right? Yeah, that's good. Not feeling like you have all the answers, but that you might have questions. And there's a lot of interviews I do that there's not a single question posed, even when I say, okay, great.
So I've asked you so many questions. Like, do you have any questions for us? So nuns are like, no. I mean, you're even saying, I've asked you so many questions, now it's your turn. Um, you know what's interesting is the— so the very first question I ask every client on every coaching call, and they know it's coming because, because I do this with every single call: what are some of your latest wins?
And very much like the question that you had about, um, what did you— what do you love about your last place of employment? When I ask, what are some of your latest wins? I mean, you would guess this, Jesse, they start going into the, the negatives, the, the losses, the things that they've been challenged by. Here's something that I think that you— I've noticed you do very well.
In the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, what we learn is that the sweetest sound to any person in any language is the sound of a person's name. Jesse, you've called me by name at least a dozen times in this interview. I know how important that is to me because of how it makes me feel. I imagine you do that intentionally.
I know that I, I, I'm guessing that you do this with your team members. I'm guessing that you do this with prospective hires. There is power in naming someone, um, looking in, looking them in the eyes, smiling like you talked about, calling them by name. It shows that you are showing up in a different kind of way. And a quote that I love from Maya Angelou, she said, I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Yeah. You make people feel a certain kind of way when you, do all the things that I just described that you've been doing in this entire episode. So, I applaud you for that. Thank you for doing that. Thanks, Josh. That quote inspired something that I wanna share, and sometimes I just wanna share things that we do because I would love to see more people in the industry do them.
Yeah. And we, okay, Mia is, Mia Mango is our little character. We're Mango Automotive. So, Mia Mango is a little mango. She has arms and legs and a smile, and she's a mango body. And so we, we play off of her in what we think are kind of fun ways. So one thing that we do is Mia Money, where we give each advisor, each employee that's interacting with customers, a minimum budget.
And we say, you need to spend this every month to delight a customer. I love that. And I think it's just really fun. And sometimes we get away from it and we have to go back and, you know, remind ourselves that we're doing that, but it's, and it's kind of, oh, whatever. Maybe you think it's silly because we bought that customer, they told us their favorite wine and we bought it for them, or that guy, his car broke down and he's traveling across country, so we paid for his hotel.
But I think at the end of the day, it's just an acknowledgement that we're thankful for what we do and it allows us to make a living. And because of our customers, we get to, you know, make a living and But it's human, right? It's nice to make people smile. Yeah. It's like you and I'm not intentionally saying Josh, but like we're talking to each other.
So, you know, maybe there was a time when this was intentional for me and now it's just ingrained. Like you and I are having a connection and we're human. And that's so easy to forget, especially for our teams who are interfacing with customers and they're busy. Right? They have a million reasons to forget because they're thinking of like, I need this car done at this time and that part hasn't arrived.
And I have to take a call when I'm in the middle of talking to this technician. There's a million reasons to forget. But I think as a leader, the important— you gotta come back to the basics. So whether we have our 6 non-negotiables in the shop for how we do things and on, on the customer and employee-facing side, like what are the basics?
It's what you're talking about. Remember that we're human. Smile, use somebody's name, and you'd be surprised how many times you forget. I mean, sometimes I'm trying to get something done on the phone with someone and I'm not being human with them. I'm just hammering them. Yeah, let's get this move forward. So even for me, for everyone, we have to come back to the basics and remember like we're human and make that connection.
That's so important. Um, You mentioned having a mentor. One of the questions I ask every guest on this podcast is, what is the best advice you've ever received from a coach or a mentor? I'll ask you the same question. You are only limited by your creativity. Oh, elaborate please. Yes. So oftentimes we, I think especially when I was younger, because I, my parents didn't have businesses, I didn't come from this world, I didn't understand how to be successful.
I thought that there was a way that things had to be done, and I think we think this a lot, right? Like whether it's how you're operating your business or how you're acquiring things. So, and, and even so, for me, because we're acquiring other businesses, I thought that I would be very limited in how I could do deals by what you do legally to acquire a business.
This sort of idea that there was something I knew, or I didn't know, but was how things needed to be done. But at the end of the day, when we acquire a business, it's all about what does the owner want or need, and what do we want or need, and is there overlap? And if there's not overlap, it's fine. Like, we tell the owner, I hope you get that.
You know, you, you want $5 million for your business. We used to tell them it's worth $1.5. Like, I can't give that to you, but I, I really hope you find it. And if I find someone who's doing that, I'll let you know. Yeah. And that's sort of, you know, why we have the co-op now, to— for those owners that need or, or want to, um, make more money upon their exit but can wait 2 years, which is our, our time horizon for that.
So everything I've done has been out of the box, right? I didn't go to the SBA and get a loan and acquire businesses. I worked with owners to understand what they wanted in their lives, how they wanted their lives to look forward and thought about how I could get that for them. And the co-op is the same story. Like, this exists in some, I'm sure some iterations, but it's not a common thing that's being done with owners.
How do we help owners get a higher multiple, um, so that they can exit their business a bit more wealthy and in a better place? And I think they deserve that. You built this business for 30 years, 40 years, and You know, you're only going to get 3 years worth of profit. If that's okay for you, great. Call me. Like, I'd love to buy you.
And if it's not okay for you, great too. But how do we get there? And it's just a matter of thinking creatively about the problem. There's, there's always a solution. It, it's just a matter of whether you can think of it and then whether you, you're willing to, or you want to execute it. So I, it can apply to anything. You know, if you're thinking about what your lobby looks like, use your creativity.
If you're thinking about what you say to customers on the phone, use your creativity. If you're thinking about, you know, how you can work with your automotive repair shop neighbor down the street, like, let's get creative and get out of the box because the confines that we think exist in business, in the world, often don't. And this goes for employees too. Like you, might feel like you're not happy in your role or you want it to change.
Have a discussion, ask the questions, like those things, things can happen that aren't the standard par for the course, how someone tells you your life is supposed to go if you're willing to think about it. Jesse, this has been an incredible conversation. I really appreciate you being here. Hopefully this will not be your only time on the podcast. I'd love to have you back in the future.
Can I ask you to share if someone is listening and they are considering selling and they're interested in the co-op or they're interested in just a 3x deal? I mean, hey, you'll take, you'll take, you'll do that too. How can our audience get in touch with you? Okay, so the best way is going to be to send a text to Kevin, and Kevin is my VP of Biz Dev.
So he is really running all those conversations for us and he'll set you up on a call. With me. So his phone number is area code 505-441-4779. So that's the best, most expedient way, but I am happy to also share my email address. But as Josh knows, I ignored his email from 9 months ago. I am not the best at my email, but if it— if Gmail decides that it's important and puts it in my primary box, I'll read it.
But my email address is jessie, J-E-S-S-I-E, e@mangoautomotive.com. And also, Josh, I love to tell people— this is— I'm going to give you advice. Target emails me like 12 times a day. Like, you can send more, more than one message. I got to get— I, I got to get better at that. I, I try not to be a pest, but I, I've had so many people say, Josh, you just keep on sending me stuff until I tell you stop.
I mean, so I, I will, I will. That is— let's talk about that on the next podcast. That is truly like one of our mantras is like, until someone tells me to kick rocks, I just keep going because we're busy. We're all busy. Like, if you're a pest, I'll tell you to go away. Well, very good. Well, so if, if you're listening, uh, you can email Jesse, uh, try at your own risk.
I mean, you know, she didn't, she didn't like my email, but hopefully she likes yours. But at the very least, you can reach out to Kevin. Jesse, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Uh, this is gonna, this is probably gonna air after Tectonic, but I just want to say I'm looking forward to seeing you next month in Houston at Tectonic.
And, um, we will keep in touch, my friend. Okay, awesome. Sounds good. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, Jesse. Bye. Take care.
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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.