Ep 173: How to Upskill Leadership Skills in the AI Era with Jacki Lutz
With Jackie Lutz
Now playing — The Limitless Leadership Podcast
About this episode
In this episode, Josh Parnell welcomes Jacki Lutz, Content Director at the Auto Care Association, to discuss why automotive businesses need to build a strong…
Key takeaways
- —A strong digital presence is essential for attracting both customers and technicians.
- —AI is becoming a necessary tool for businesses, similar to having basic utilities like electricity.
- —Shop owners should focus on controlling their personal brand and online reputation.
- —Embracing change and innovation can lead to new opportunities in the automotive industry.
- —Leaders should model adaptability and encourage their teams to leverage AI for improved productivity.
Frequently asked
- Why is a digital presence important for automotive shops?
- A digital presence helps shops be found by potential customers and technicians, as most people now rely on online searches rather than word of mouth.
- How can AI benefit automotive repair shops?
- AI can streamline operations, enhance customer engagement, and assist in marketing efforts, making it easier for shops to manage their business effectively.
- What should shop owners focus on during times of change?
- Shop owners should concentrate on what they can control, such as their personal branding and how they present themselves online, rather than worrying about external factors.
▸Full transcript
If you're not online, um, it can't find you. Like, that's just how people are searching for things these days. It's less word of mouth, it's more, uh, digital, and, um, people will listen to what AI says. Having a digital presence is just increasingly important. Uh, having AI is gonna be just like having a working toilet. 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 another episode of the Limitless Leadership Podcast. 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 just like the leader I have sitting in front of me today.
Uh, in fact, she is not a, uh, first-timer on this show. She's been on the show before. Jackie, I should have asked you for your title, uh, but Jackie Lutz is with the Auto Care Association Uh, she is a friend of mine and a tremendous difference maker and impact maker in this industry. So, Jackie Lutz, thank you for being here again. Thank you.
I think that I would love for that to be my title, frankly. Okay. Maker. That could be my new title. But I am the content director at the Auto Care Association. So, cover their podcast, manage their podcast, manage their social media strategy, their video strategy, and anything else that they throw at me content-wise. Awesome. And you crush it and you have been.
And so I'm excited to have you back on the show. Um, I think we met about a year and a half, 2 years ago, and, um, you've had a lot of awesome things happening. I mean, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I see you on social media, you're traveling a lot, you're doing a lot of speaking and, and, uh, and the podcast of course is going really well.
So, um, if you would, we're gonna get into that, but if you would share with the audience who you are, what you do, and how you do it before we get into all that other stuff. Sure. Um, Promotive is tackling one of the toughest challenges in the automotive industry: finding and hiring great technicians. Their team is built from people who know the aftermarket, understand technician roles, and recognize what actually makes someone a strong long-term fit.
Promotive builds recruiting pipelines for the shops they support. They uncover talent you won't find on job boards, run intentional and structured screenings, and guide candidates through interview prep and communication so shops can make confident decisions. Shops choose Promotive because their process creates consistency, momentum instead of waiting, clarity instead of guesswork, and a partnership instead of a transaction. If your shop is hiring or preparing for growth, head to gopromotive.com.
You can schedule a discovery call, submit your openings, and see how Promotive supports shops nationwide. All right, folks, as you know, great leadership isn't about doing everything the best. It's actually about having the right partners in your corner to build your shop's success. 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 talking about. This is the kind of standard-setting partnership that's gonna elevate your shop. So, if you're ready to become a pro in your shop, visit shopmarketingpros.com and partner with the best. Like we mentioned, I'm with the Autocare Association, so we really cover the entire automotive aftermarket, which is everything from the shop level all the way up through through the distribution channels, all the way up to suppliers and any service providers along the way.
So really a huge footprint. And, you know, a lot of that is our biggest thing we do is advocacy. So right to repair, big in the news these days, but that's something that is probably, it's our number one priority. But we also help with other market intelligence. We have a lot of services that we provide. And then my job, my specific job is content, the content director.
So, Really trying to educate our industry, using content to inform the industry, also solve problems. So, you know, things like the tech shortage and things like that, trying to get the word out, trying to make our industry look very attractive, getting conversations started that need to be had, and really engaging with our members. So, that's where the podcast has been really helpful.
You know, we're always getting new members, people that you're not used to hearing from, And then also people that you are used to hearing from, but getting them to talk about other things too is kind of fun. But just getting our members more engaged with us is kind of what I do. And as far as how I do it, I think it's kind of a day-by-day thing.
It feels like it's constantly morphing. As you probably know, Josh, I feel like content today is different than content a week ago. It feels like it's just something you just have to stay on top of. It's a lot of work, but, you know, we talked earlier, loving my job. I love what I do, and it's kind of almost like a hobby that I get paid for at this point.
So, just staying on top of things and really trying to find not just new ways for the Auto Care Association to get the word out in a, you know, sometimes entertaining way, sometimes informational way, but also help our members do it better. I really believe that the Auto Care Association really wants to set the bar high for what content should look like in our industry and hopefully bring our whole industry up, you know, and, you know, see our industry start to kind of succeed online.
I feel like we've always been a little bit behind on social media. So helping our industry be seen and heard and hopefully become a very attractive place to be. Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, and I think you're doing a great job of, for lack of better terms, laying the foundation and really pioneering what it should look like from a content creation, from brand building, storytelling perspective.
You've been a phenomenal digital presence for the industry. Talk about what it's like when, if I say digital presence and you know the importance of a shop owner and a shop having a digital presence, what does that mean to you? Digital presence is funny because I don't think everybody realizes how important it is these days. Different now. Um, you know, we used to say for SEO and probably, you know, I don't know if your audience would even know what that is, but it used to be search engine optimization.
It was Google. So if somebody were to go on Google and be like, where should I get my car fixed? Or, um, I'm a technician, where should I work? I, I'm in this area, you know, and you would want to somehow rank on Google. And the way to do that was like keywords. So you would want like your website up there, right?
And then you'd want to make sure there was certain keywords. So that you would rank high in Google. That's still important, but it's even more important for AI these days. So, you know, I could think of 100 reasons, but just one of them, um, say, say there's a new technician looking for a place to go and you're, you need technicians, right? You need good technicians.
Uh, it's important that when they, if they were to type into ChatGPT or something being like, hey, I'm new, this is the career path that I want. This is where I live currently. Um, how much should I be making? Who should I look at to work for? You know, asking all these questions. You want your shop or you to come up as a good, you know, leader, um, or a good mentor.
You know, you would want, you would want to have the right digital presence so that ChatGPT can find you basically. And that goes with any AI agent. Um, but you know, even in the reverse, If you're looking for technicians, it's important now for technicians to have digital presence because if you're not online, it can't find you. Like, that's just how people are searching for things these days.
It's less word of mouth, it's more digital, and people will listen to what AI says, right? So if you haven't taken any time to think about what you're putting out online or what it knows about you, then, um, you kind of don't exist in that world. And that's not a great place to be these days. And honestly, it's only gonna get more important.
Um, it kind of feels like, you know, it's like the internet, right? People waited to jump on the internet 'cause they're like, well, let's see if this sticks. Yeah. I think we're really far past that with AI. I think it's obviously here to stay. So it's kind of this new world that it doesn't matter, blue collar, white collar, whatever. Um, AI is in every area of the business.
Every area of any business anywhere, it's coming if it isn't there already. So, um, having a digital presence is just increasingly important. Leading a shop can be isolating, especially when you're trying to grow and still take care of your people. The good news is you don't have to piece it together alone. Techmetric is the all-in-one platform built for shops and growing operators who want less chaos and more clarity.
Shop management, integrated payments, and built-in marketing all working together in one place. No bouncing between tools, no syncing issues. No missed opportunities, just a cleaner operation, a stronger customer experience, and a business that's built to grow. See how it works at techmetric.com or use the link in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Limitless Leadership because great teams don't happen by accident.
They're led on purpose. If you're tired of wearing all the hats, putting out fires, and wondering why your team won't step up, Limitless Leadership is for you. They help leaders transition from player to coach who develop people and multiply impact through in-person or online leadership training like the Limitless Leadership Blueprint or their Roots to Results coaching method. Their services are designed to help you tap into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results and help you create safety and trust in order to provide clarity and direction.
So if you're ready to stop managing chaos and start leading with purpose, head to limitlessleadership.co to book a complimentary discovery call today. Jackie, I could not agree with you more. And, and, um, you know, when I think about AI, I think a lot of people are, um, reluctant, they're hesitant, maybe scared of what AI, um, is doing, is going to do, um, how it's gonna affect them and their future, um, their future, period.
Mm-hmm. Um, but I think to your point, AI is here to stay, whether we like it or not, it's here to stay. And I'm, and help me understand. I mean, I'm, this is my opinion right now and it, it could change, but I just believe that AI, AI could be an, it could be our ally versus our enemy. I mean, we could look at it as a bad thing, or we could look at this as an opportunity to learn how to use AI, how to leverage AI to get ourself and our shop or our business further than a competitor.
Um, what's, what's your take on that? Like, like how, like what are your thoughts on AI in general in terms of an ally or an enemy, if you will? And, and then like, what direction should we be going in? It's so hard because it feels like AI just feels like something that it's out of, it feels like out of your control, right?
Like we are, we have all seen the movies, right? Where AI goes wrong and yet we're like sprinting in this direction and nobody's talking about like, okay, what, how, like how much is too much? I think that's a question that no one's asking is like, when do we draw the line? When do we lose all of humanity? You know, like your brain can go there because we've seen it.
Right. And when we saw those movies, that was like 20 years ago where that felt like it was like, that's not going to be my generation's problem. And that's not going to be my kids' generation problem. Right. Um, but now it's here and the, and tech, the technology curve with AI before AI was steep and now it's just like vertical and it's just going.
It's getting more and more, and it can get really easy to get caught in your head and full of anxiety around it. But at the end of the day, I think it's important that everybody stay calm and try to find ways to help AI work in your favor. All your competitors are doing it, so you have to get on board now and just think of the ways that it can take some of the mundane things out of it.
You know, um, I think blue, the blue collar world, in my opinion, is, um, it's the safest place to be as far as right now, as far as I'm being replaced with AI. But think of all the other things that you're spending time on that isn't making you money necessarily. Even things like social media. Um, I'm sure that that's not, you know, what people went to school for, you know, who are currently in, um, you know, the blue collar world, for example.
But it's something that kind of needs to be done at the shop level. And like, who does it? Who learns about it? And then if you're not going to do it well, is it even worth doing, right? Where AI can really help you formulate a plan, can help you, you know, schedule the posts, make the posts, write the posts, like do things like that, um, to help engage your community, to help, uh, you have more presence.
You know, the, you know, the digital space is where you take, you know, you can go one-on-one conversations, one customer at a time and building your reputation. Or you can reach thousands and thousands and thousands if you do it right and really become, you know, a trusted place if it's done correctly. And AI can really help you do things like that. And I think that's just one example, but there's many of, you know, if you think about the things that you're doing every day that feel mundane or you don't even enjoy doing, or you don't have anyone to do them, so they're kind of done, you know, they're not wholeheartedly being done and not, not
really helping as much as they could. Those are the spots to be thinking about AI today. Um, don't worry so much about what's happening down the road. You can't control it, sadly, you know, but, um, you just have to work with what you have today. And today, I think AI should be an ally for everybody. I don't think it's anybody's enemy. It's just we have to, we have to figure out how to work with it.
I had, um, somebody on my podcast, Jay Baer. Um, he's a pretty big name in the marketing world. And he said something I thought was really interesting. Um, he said in 5 years, I think it was 5 years, 2 years, maybe very few years. He said, um, with any business being, uh, having AI is going to be just like having a working toilet.
And I was like, oh wow, by that. And he goes, Well, if you think about it, the toilet as we know it today has only been around for like, what, 60 years, something like that. Um, and he said at the time, and you could put a sign on your door at your business and be like, hey, we have, you know, modern toilets.
And that was like a thing, like that was a pull for people where now it's like, yeah, that's kind of an expected thing that you would have. Right. And that's what AI is going to be. It's going to be like, yo, you have electricity. You have, you know, running water and you are working with AI. It's just like, it's just something that every— it's just going to be so integrated into our lives that it's just going to be like, it's not, it's not even going to be a selling point anymore, right?
I believe that. I mean, like, like, what business can you think of that doesn't use the internet? But when the internet came along, it's like, whoa, hold on a second, what is this thing? And right, and yeah, so, but here we are. Or having a website. Right? That wasn't always a thing for everybody or, or having a social media presence that took, I remember when I entered this industry, people were still asking like, we're a business.
Why would we need social media? Right? So, um, that was just probably 15 years ago where that question was still being asked. And now it's like kind of everybody has it because they realize how important it is. And that's where the world is going with, with AI. So it's important to jump on now before you have to catch up. Yeah, it's wild to think how quickly things progress, things move.
I mean, you know, you're talking about 15 years ago, people were asking why, you know, if I'm a business owner, why do I need a social media presence? Well, now it's like, I'm a business owner, of course I need a social media presence. Like, it's understood. I mean, what, 15 years ago, podcasts weren't really a thing, and now everyone's got it. But you and I both have a podcast.
Everybody's got a podcast now. But even a few years ago, Think about the updates and the progress that AI has, that we've seen AI make in 3 years. It is scary. Like, it's scary how much evolvement has occurred in just a short amount of time. So I can only imagine how much exponential growth we're going to see in 3 more years. Yeah.
And so pretty wild. You know, again, it's hard. Hard for me, as you know, to, to stay in the moment and just think about, okay, where we're at today. I literally cannot think that far ahead without doing a little bit of a spiral. And I know everybody feels that way. Um, you know, you see if you have, if you're on social at all, you see how, um, people are already starting to put like AI, AI agents into robots, right?
And I was talking on the, on a different podcast about AI. It was like Practical AI. And I was like, how long do you think before You know, you're registering for your wedding and instead of being like, you know, this is the pots and pans I want, or this is the air fryer I want, you're like, which, uh, smart home robot do you want?
Oh yeah. Wow. Wow. That's where we're headed probably 5 years out. I think you're right. And you think about like the room, the, the little vacuums that go over the robot vacuums. Yeah. Already kind of a use of AI and just wait until you can talk to it. You know? Yeah. Wow. It's coming. It's kind of wild. It is kind of wild.
Kind of wild. Who, you know, you're mopping shop floors. Like, what would you rather be doing with your time? You know, that's a great point, Jackie. A little bit more money. One of the things that I talk about often in trainings that I do is what I reference as the 3 pillars of leadership. And one of those pillars, I believe, is creativity and innovation.
And as adults, we're really not wired to be creative. In fact, we're, we, we, non-creative behavior is actually learned. Like, as a, as, as a child, we have wild imaginations. I know you have a couple young, young boys and they've like, they've got wild imaginations, right? I mean, like they, like you can see the creativity in them, but what happens is we go to school and, and we are told what to learn, not how to learn.
Uh, no, Jackie, don't learn that. Learn this. Don't do that, do this. And it's like, look, we've already studied this, we've already done the research, just do this. So stay in this lane, stay in this box. And what happens is we are, the creativity that we were born with, like we're born limitless, but the creativity that we're born with slowly starts to fade because we're constantly just given directive after directive after directive without allowing us to be creative and innovative.
And by the time that we're Um, 17 years of age, we're gonna hear the phrase, no, you can't, on average 150,000 times. Oh my gosh. Conversely speaking, we're gonna hear the phrase, yes, you can, only 5,000 times. And so what, what we've learned over the years is that non-creative behavior is learned. And there's a popular TED Talk. In fact, it's the most popular TED Talk of all time by Sir Ken Robinson, and it's titled Do Schools Kill Creativity?
And what he identified was that they do in fact kill creativity. And as adults, we are trying to be forward-thinking leaders, which means that we're trying to be creative and innovative, but we, we lost that skill set years ago. It was actually un— it was like practiced out of us. And so, um, you know, so now for us to learn new things, especially things like AI, which is just so far ahead of what feels like our time, and we're not ready for it, we don't know where, you know, it's like A change is gonna come and we don't know what to expect.
And so we're exercising fear over faith and all the things. And now the reminder is, hey, by the way, as a leader, you, leadership is a full-time job. So now you've gotta figure this out along, along with all the other things. Mm-hmm. Help the listening audience. And by the way, if you're listening, you can watch this episode. If you go to YouTube at The Bearded Leader, you can watch this episode as well.
But help the listening audience. Um, maybe understand and identify how, how do we lead through all of these new things that we just don't know yet? Mm-hmm. I think it's by example. I think, um, there's a lot of fear around this. I think through every level, any, anyone I talk and talk to, I talk to CEOs that are, you know, think about and have concerns around AI.
Um, I've talked, I had a, I had an interview with my 18-year-old niece. Uh, who, uh, job shadowed me at one point. And she was talking about how it almost feels like people like, like, um, that generation coming up into the working world and having to make decisions around what they want to be when they grow up and what kind of schooling they need and things.
It's like there's hesitation and they're dragging their feet because they don't want to go to school for something and then have it be redundant. Erased. Yeah. Yeah, so like, you know, I think stepping forward, embracing what you can, looking at your business at a strategic level and being like, what problems do I have today that AI can solve for me? And be that example to your team is one of the best things you can do.
I think when I see my leaders leaning into AI a little bit, which is scary because also, you know, even me, I'm, I'm leaning into AI a lot in my job. And there is a part of me that's like, I'm about to replace myself with AI if I'm not careful, right? Like, at what point do they not need me anymore because I did my job so well that they can pretty much do this for free with AI?
It's a very, it's a very real thing. But, um, I think leaders leaning in and looking at the real problems that they have and where AI can can come in and make their customer experience better, make their employee experience better, and get them more revenue at the end of the day and solve the gaps in their own business. I think that's very encouraging for other people to think differently too, and to look at things through that lens and how they can use it today and in ways that actually just makes them more productive.
I think use of AI is a creativity exercise in itself. There's a lot of ways, there's a lot of software, new ones come out every single day, you know, and it's the people that lean in that are gonna be surviving. I think you just said something that's really key. It's the use of AI is creativity and innovation in itself, which is a powerful phrase to share.
Something I see in you, Jackie, that I just wanna highlight for a second is someone who is I mean, you've got a perma smile on your face every time I've seen you. You're, um, you're always positive, positive energy. Um, you are, you have an infectious personality that I think people really gravitate towards. And I think that's important because when I see the way that you carry yourself, the way that you lead your peers and lead those around you, like people see you and they're like, I wanna, I wanna follow her.
Like, like that is someone who I wanna follow. And the reason I wanna say this and I want you to hear this is because it's easy for people to get flustered or stressed about the things that they don't know. It's easy to get, have anxiety over the unknown and change is hard for people, but you are someone who, you know, it's important that we have people like you in our industry who are carrying the torch and saying, I'm gonna just figure it out.
Like, I'm gonna do what I can. And you've already alluded to this twice now, you're focusing on what you can control and you're essentially not, you know, trying not to worry about what you can't control. And I think that's important. So I just wanna highlight you for a second and say thank you for that. I think that's great. That's, that's, that's a one incredible attribute of a leader and you possess that.
Thank you so much for saying that. I will say that I had a realization a few years ago, actually it was when I got laid off from my previous role. So I was, probably 3 years ago now. Um, almost every time something has shaken my world, it has also provided opportunity. Like, yes, it provided a lot of hurt or a lot of fears and a lot of other things along the way.
But at the end of the day, when you look back at it, you see the, you see the direction it led you in, right? Like, I can think of things all the way down to my teens of bad things that have happened, but because of that, also some good came out of it. And so even when I worked for a company and a bigger company came in and bought it, there was a lot of people, it was like a fight or flight kind of thing.
A lot of people flew away. They're just like, this is too much change for me. I'm out. I was one of the few that were like, I don't know, this could be opportunity too. What are we out for giving it a try? Right? Like, and because of that, it was a bigger company. I was able to have opportunities to go to a global level and manage global teams and see the world and do all this other stuff that I never would've been able to do had that purchase never happened.
And I think of any challenge now or any huge change, whether it's in the world or AI, something like that, or even in my company, you know, lean in, try. What's gonna really hurt at the end of the day? What's gonna hurt is if you, you know, you end up getting behind. And then your competitors are wildly ahead of you. And at that point, you know, it's, it's, you know, a lot more work on your end.
But at, you know, if we just lean in a little bit, have a little bit of faith that it could turn out good, I guess is the optimism that you're referring to. Yeah. To me, it's like you, you either lean in or you, you have to bow out. So there's power in having an abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset. And it's very evident that you have an abundance mindset.
Um, you know, things that happen to us in our life, we can always say like, well, this happened to us, or we can say this happened for us. And, um, and even as I'm sharing it, I realize I just said things that happened to us, but I should have said things that happened for us because the reality is life does happen for us, not to us.
And it's an opportunity for us to, um, recognize, like, for me as a faith-based person, Jackie, I would say like, like, God, what are you teaching me? You know, like, like, it's not a why me? Like, why is this happening to me? No. Like, what are you teaching me? Because everything that you have referenced, everything that you referenced just now, um, I'm hearing you say like, look, these were lessons that I learned and I grew from.
And I, I thought with an abundance mindset over a scarcity mindset. And because of my way of thinking, because of my perspective with, and with perspective, the way that we view things drives the way that we do things. Because of my perspective, it allowed me the opportunity, not an inconvenience, but allowed me the opportunity to go and achieve bigger and better things.
So there's power in how you think, and we know that thoughts dictate feelings, feelings dictate actions, and actions dictate results. So if anyone is listening or watching to this, watching this episode, and they're not— you're not getting the results that you want to achieve, what if we go back to the thoughts that you're beginning with and start challenging those thoughts and questioning those thoughts?
And that's what it seems like you've been doing for years. So again, I applaud you for, for how you do things. That's such a good way to look at it. And honestly, I'm a faith-based person too, and I think that That's actually a bigger part of it than, um, I would have said out loud is that at the end of the day, I'm really not in control of any of it, right?
So you can either have faith that somebody is, or, you know, it's really easy to spiral, like I keep saying. So it does help to have that, that base in faith. And I know not, that's not something that everybody has, but, um, it's a huge part of the world these days. I honestly, I think believing in something a little bit bigger then what is happening here helps a lot with these thoughts and these conversations that we're having.
I agree. And I think you made a good point. Not everyone has faith, but we do know that everyone has fear. And where there's faith, there's fear. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a cause for faith. So, you know, consider that if you're listening or watching and, you know, you're questioning things or you're starting to wonder, just know that the similarity between faith and fear is that they both believe in a future that hasn't happened yet.
Oh, so why wouldn't we choose faith? Oh, I love that, Jackie. My last question for you before we go. On the, on the last episode that we had together, again, year and a half, 2 years ago, something along those lines, um, I asked you what is the best advice you've ever received from a coach or a mentor. This time around, you are the coach and the mentor.
I'm going to ask you to share what is the best advice that you can give to our listening audience. I think it's something we kind of already said, but control what you can. I think that that's really important these days, and I mean that in a lot of ways. Yes, I mean that with AI and, you know, other things happening in the world and feeling like things are just out of your control.
I mean it in that way, but I also mean it personally. I think that's why I do so many talks on personal branding and digital presence, because, you know, I usually end those conversations with a photo of a video I took, um, after I got laid off, basically saying, you know, I'm looking for work, next to a photo of me drinking champagne 2 and a half months later, 'cause I got hired.
Um, and just saying, like, at the end of the day, you can't control your company, right? You can't control the economy and different decisions that they have to make. You can't control whether or not AI takes your job, things like that. But what you can control is how the world perceives you. What's your reputation? What are your values? Do you live those out?
Do people know about them? What have you accomplished? Have you ever mentioned it to anybody, what you've done in your career? Have you put it online so that if somebody is searching for a specific opportunity for somebody, that you pop up? You know, and, um, that's why I think personal branding is so powerful. It's because it's something that you can control. And that you can build for yourself and only for yourself.
And it doesn't belong to any company, doesn't belong to anybody but you, and you have it forever. And I believe the same thing with your digital presence. There's a lot of control over that. Um, so I would say in a lot of ways, just controlling what you can, um, is an important skill and being able to see what you can control and what you can't, and not to take all your brainpower thinking about all the things you can't control.
And instead channeling that energy to something that you can and building something really great. Wow. Uh, Jackie, if you have a mic over there, can you just pick it up and drop it? Because that was, I think that was a great way to end this episode. That was so good. Um, well, Jackie Lutz, thank you for being here. Actually, before we go, I do wanna, I do wanna give you the chance to share with our audience.
Um, if anyone is interested in getting in touch with you, how can they find you? Um, how can they get involved with the Auto Care Association and also Where can we find your podcast, Carpool Conversations? Sure. Thank you. I'm on LinkedIn, just Jackie Lutz. That's where I play the most, and I do a lot of the personal branding kind of stuff. I'm also on Instagram, do a little less personal branding, but more automotive stuff on there.
Having a lot of fun learning Instagram and the Auto Care Association. You can learn more about that at Auto Care Association, sorry, autocare.org. Sorry, I'm about to give you the wrong web address. Autocare.org, you can learn everything about that. And then the podcast, we are everywhere you can get podcasts. YouTube is probably the best place to find us, and that's at the Autocare Association's page.
So, if you scroll down, you'll see the podcast, but it doesn't have its own page. So, you gotta go to Autocare Association to check out that YouTube page. Awesome, awesome. Great podcast, by the way. And this was a great episode. So, thank you for being on the show. Yet again, my friend. Thank you. Thank you so much for a second, uh, shot at this.
This has been fun, and I love watching everything you guys are doing. You guys are doing awesome. You're everywhere all the time. It's so good to see. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Limitless Leadership Podcast. As you know, we look to transform our leadership skills by tapping into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results.
So thanks again, everyone. Have a great day. Don't forget to smile today. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. I'm Josh Parnell reminding you to keep leading well.
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The Technicians Who Get Ahead Do THIS | Bruce Bolen - Ep 40
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218 - What Your Opt-Outs Reveal: Your CRM Isn't Broken. It's Being Misused
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In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry? Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode. 👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/10RC8L1nKhM Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this! Links & Resources: Want to learn more? Click Here Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here See The Institute's events list: Click Here Want access to our online classes? Click Here ________________________________________ Episode Transcript Disclaimer This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com. Episode Transcript: Jimmy Lea: Hello, welcome. Glad to be with you today. It is Wednesday, so excited for Webinar Wednesday. Coming to you live from the road. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, here at Brian Slater's shop in Eugene, Oregon. This is the North Eugene Auto Repair in in Eugene, and so coming to you from the road. Thank you, Brian. Jimmy Lea: Appreciate you letting me use your office today as we're out and about visiting shops. It's just an awesome, gorgeous weather here in northern U- northern... no. I was gonna say northern Utah. I'm not in northern Utah. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, and this is not northern Utah, but it is gorgeous weather. Jimmy Lea: So if you don't have gorgeous weather where you are, you wish you were here. We're gonna have a great conversation today. Those of you who have comments, questions, comments, put them into the chat section. That chat section comments allows us to have this conversation back and forth. I will be the voice for You've got questions, comments, concerns for our guest, want to make sure that those are voiced for you, put them in the comments section. Jimmy Lea: My guest with us today is ever-present, ever-linguist, Mr. Craig O'Neill of AutoFlow. Craig, how the heck are you, brother? Craig O'Neill: I'm really good, Jimmy. Really good. I was actually thinking northern Utah, as you mentioned Utah, even though it was Oregon. Both places are beautiful. I can't blame you for the distinction issue there. Craig O'Neill: That was- that's all right. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. No it is absolutely gorgeous up here. Now, I will tell you that there is a large lack of mountains in Eugene, Oregon- ... Jimmy Lea: That northern Utah does have, is bounteous mountains. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah. I can't wait. Ogden, a couple, next month. Next month now is October. Jimmy Lea: Yes. October for the Mars Conference. Craig O'Neill: Yep. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Yes. Speaking of Mars Conferences we're gonna put up a QR code for the Mars Conference. If you scan this QR code, it will get you right onto our registration page, and those sticking around to the very end, there is this very special, very unique offer for anybody who wants to attend the Mars Conference. Jimmy Lea: So stick around, scan the QR code. Save that in your smartphones. We are gonna have a great conversation about marketing. Craig is one of our presenters at the Mars Conference, and super excited for Craig to be here. Craig and I have known each other for a couple of years now, and worked together at a couple of companies, and- Jimmy Lea: glad that we are able to still be friends here in this wonderful industry that we call home. Craig, what are we talking about today? Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, this is the, one of my favorite topics to go into. We're talking about CRM systems, of course. Now I have some opinions about CRM systems. Both of us come from a background that deals in these systems. Craig O'Neill: You have opinions as well, and you have some observations, and my observation is simply this: the systems themselves are capable of some pretty cool things- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... Craig O'Neill: but we aren't using them very well. The it's not broken, they're being misused, is the title of our conversation today. Your CRM isn't broken, it's being misused. Craig O'Neill: And I don't like to walk into a conversation with "Oh, you're doing something wrong", or on the opposite side of it, I don't like to walk into a conversation as you guys are doing it right. You're just fine, but other people are doing it..." Like I, I've used stuff wrong. I've made mistakes in how I leverage the different systems and tools that are available, and I just believe, and I hope you just go along with us today, there might be a better way than our way that we're approaching it now. Craig O'Neill: Be open to that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Be open to it, because what they're, what you as a shop may be doing today is working. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. It's not even a debate. It is getting results of a certain level and type that are appearing to be adequate. Jimmy Lea: Adequate for today. And hopefully with this conversation that you and I are gonna have as we talk about the customer relationship management software Hopefully there's something we can expose shops to that might say, "Hey, maybe there is a different way of doing this." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: So what are these ways? What are the five mistakes that shops make the most, or not the mistakes. What, how can we help these shops improve? Sure. I would call Craig O'Neill: them hurdles that we have to get over, right? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. This one it's an opportunity for us to make it better. It's an opportunity to make it better. Jimmy Lea: This is what it is. It's not a mistake. You're not doing it wrong. Consider this. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. We're gonna talk about a lot of things on this, and I think before we even get into those hurdles, let's talk about the nature of communication today. Yeah. People's attention span today, because I think that there's a couple of different things that we need to understand. Craig O'Neill: And first off, let's talk about why we even wanna leverage a CRM system. And for many shops, you might have a sustainable s- sort of automatic practice here, but when you're a busy shop, you feel very successful, and then all of a sudden things are not as busy as they are. This happens to all of us. All the time. Craig O'Neill: We've ... shop, Jimmy, our transmission shop, family business that I came up, down into grew up in, and like we never had a slow spell. The shops around us always had those little slow spells, and we're like, "Yeah, we don't." And that was a good feeling until it happened to us, too. So we're all vulnerable to it, and the knee-jerk reaction that I see is this. Craig O'Neill: People as eventually hit that slow spell. They check, see if other people are experiencing it, too. We comfort ourselves with the fact that others are doing it, defining it as a, a market-wide symptom of broader events that we have no control over. And so then we can just comfort ourselves with another idea. Craig O'Neill: It's like, "Ah, it'll come back around." And I heard this over, and over again from my family who is owner of the business, my, my dad and my grandpa, because that has been the experience. It always comes back around. Why would we ever be okay with the fact that a slow spell also technically always comes back around? Craig O'Neill: And if our knee-jerk reaction to those moments is then to go into a, a degree of marketing or a degree of follow-up or a mass blast text strategy, like I see a lot of people fall into is like, "Huh, the work needs to be drummed up. We'll turn to our CRM system. We'll construct the perfect message and send it out, and then people will make appointments and fill our bays." Craig O'Neill: Sound familiar? Jimmy Lea: Oh, it does. It does. And if we know those, those times are gonna come back around because it's cyclical, what are we doing? We... It- Yeah ... is preventable. What are we doing that we can prevent this from happening and being that cyclical item? Because- Craig O'Neill: This is, this goes straight into it, because what I see people doing with the knee-jerk response is they're actually crippling their ability to handle the cycles of this. Craig O'Neill: When you do a knee-jerk text blast response, what's the number one reaction that you get to it every single time? Opt-outs. They are the most common reaction to this, and that's what I... If you go on the socials and you look on comment threads of shop owners experiencing a slow spell, they're asking each other "What's the perfect message that you can type out that gets fewer opt-outs and more appointments?" Craig O'Neill: There isn't one. There is no perfect message that gets X number of people. The ratio will never be the same in two demographics with unique people being the customers or clients in every one of the unique repair facilities that we have. There is no perfect message. Jimmy Lea: No. They're not. They're looking for that silver bullet, Craig. Craig O'Neill: Yes. It's silver bullet is the right term for this, and I discussed this on my podcast in an early episode of the podcast Speak Up: Effective Communication on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. It was episode 14. I said, "What your opt-outs are really telling you," and I think that what they are telling us is something we need to listen to. Craig O'Neill: So now on that, let's move into the attention span of the people in the world today versus the past. And Jimmy, I love to read. I love deep thoughts, and we're gonna get philosophical for a second. I know you don't mind. Love it. We love this. Yeah. Let's Jimmy Lea: go. Craig O'Neill: Signature classic, C.S. Lewis. One of my favorites, Screwtape Letters. Craig O'Neill: In the early chapters in that book it's describing... I won't go into the details of Screwtape Letters, but the way that you distract someone if you're trying to distract them from serious thoughts in C.S. Lewis' time period was, and I'll quote here from the book that- Got the guy to think he was hungry, and then I showed him a newsboy shouting, "The midday paper," and the number 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps, I had him into an unalterable conviction that whatever odd ideas might come into the man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of real life, which he meant by the bus and the newsboy, was enough to show him that all that sort of thing just couldn't be true. Craig O'Neill: He knew he had a narrow escape, and then years later was fond of talking about it. I w- I'll skip ahead. But thanks to the process which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. So this is hard to digest 'cause it's C.S. Craig O'Neill: Lewis. You... It's like a tough piece of wonderful, awesome, the best flavor steak in the world that you gotta chew on a whole lot of times before you can actually get to digesting it. But the point is, C.S. Lewis's era, the distraction was you wanted to get them into this stream of events and that's your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Craig O'Neill: Teach it to call it real life, and don't let him ask what it means by real. And that stream is exactly what people are having today. This is a word used by C.S. Lewis before streaming like we are on a webinar, streaming across the web even existed. What distracted a man? Just being on the street with a bus and a newsboy shouting. Craig O'Neill: That's yesterday. That's 1940s United Kingdom, actually, in C.S. Lewis' time. Let's fast-forward Johann Hari's book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, absolutely nails the same point in the modern age and puts a name to it with this term called the f- this frenetic digital interruption, and he says, "Is pulling our attention away from our thoughts and suppressing your default mode network," cool term. Craig O'Neill: I think we're almost in this constant stimulus-driven, stimulus-bound environment, moving from one distraction to the next, and if you don't remove yourself from that, it will suppress whatever train of thought you had, right? And I think that frenetic digital distraction really i- it's just, we have to acknowledge this is the reality we're in today, and there's people that are struggling with notifications and attention, and bombarded with media messages. Craig O'Neill: Every news article you read has the pop-up ads. Are we in that same zone like C.S. Lewis, where a newsboy and the sign on a bus is the only thing that could distract our attention? No. We are under a constant 24/7 assault for our attention span today. That's where we're communicating from, and when your shop gets a little slow and you decide you're gonna have a knee-jerk reaction to the slowness, and you expect a message to land that leads to action with a population that's drowning in this reality, would it be any surprise that it only sees marginal results? Jimmy Lea: Is there any irony that it is called streaming? Is there any irony that it's called a reel? No. Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, it's like the oldest problems are always resurfaced again in our lifetimes today- Yep ... with different technology. Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's totally different. And now it's 17-second blurbs about it's a seven-second commercial, it's a 17-second commercial. Jimmy Lea: We're being bombarded with this instant stimuli to totally distract us from what is actually real- Yes ... and consequential, and you're being bombarded by things that are momentary blurbs of Jimmy Lea: Endorphins Craig O'Neill: Yeah. It, and it just- It's a Jimmy Lea: temporary- Craig O'Neill: You're competing with that- Yeah ... tendency too, to escape with these things. You're spot on. This, this topic is why I lead into these five barriers to that are causing us, like the things that we're misusing in our CRMs, right? Yeah. I consider them barriers or hurdles because we can get over them. Craig O'Neill: Yeah ... and we can decide to lever it right. And number one and we have a slide for this, so I put it up there. I know some people like to read and some people can listen. I wanted to put this quote on there because... And I'm gonna, fatal sin of speakers, I'm gonna read the quote. I know it's on the slide, but I know some of you can't see it, and I know some of you are only listening. Craig O'Neill: Yes. I can't read it. Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry. It's too small. Too small? Oh, that's okay. That's why I'm here. Yeah. So- You can Jimmy Lea: read all of them. Read all of Craig O'Neill: them ... it's a big meaty slide. Problem number one though is we're not communicating to people on what matters to them. That's the problem. And to reference this point the, a great read, and please write this down, pick up this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age. Craig O'Neill: Amen. If you're interested in this topic at all, read that book. It's from the Dale Carnegie and Associates. So updated for the digital age. There's so many profoundly good things in this, and this is a quote I pulled straight from the book, and I wanna make sure it gets its proper reference there. Craig O'Neill: But it says, "When it comes to mattering to others, you must discuss what matters to them. Assume all else will fall on deaf, or in this case, dull ears. This is an interesting principle to consider given the spirit in which the vast majority of people are communicating today. Most messages are primarily meant to educate others about our lives, our products, to reveal compelling portions of ourselves we think others would be attracted to. Craig O'Neill: While this appears to be an assertive strategy, it is actually a passive strategy in that it requires others to connect with us." "The trouble is that's marketing monologue, not relational dialogue. It's assumption, not assimilation. When assumption guides our efforts to befriend or influence others, the results end up on the wrong side of memorable." Craig O'Neill: Okay. End quote. That is that's another, like I'm giving you solid food to digest today. That's, that's- ... we don't have time to go this layer of depth in our presentation at Mars, so that's why I'm really happy to have this conversation today. It's a primer. If you walk in primed with some of these thoughts, you're gonna be able to get a lot more out of it. Craig O'Neill: But here's where I go with this. We are communicating from a position of our interests most of the time in the auto repair shop. When it slows down, we're interested in filling our bay. If we were really interested in having those customers come in, we would have done the harder work of relating and documenting and managing the data, all sorts of things differently to have a sustained conversation that they understood the value in, because we understand what's important to them. Craig O'Neill: And that's a whole different thing, and that's gonna come up again as we move into these, these other hurdles. But I think that's the thing, first and foremost, remember what messages right now are you pushing out there that are not memorable? I didn't give this in the slide, but I have an example recently, Jimmy very recently. Craig O'Neill: I turned 43 earlier in August, and I'm not on social media these days. The one thing that was fun is getting all those birthday harvests. You know how you get all the happy birthday thing. It's actually a lot of work. Yeah. Then you gotta go like everything and all that stuff too. But don't worry, I don't miss that entirely because I have been a patron in local businesses that have CRM systems in my neighborhood chiefly my Subaru dealership where we have a, a vehicle leased presently. Craig O'Neill: And I got three happy birthday emails from three separate people in that organization. Two of them were identical emails automatically constructed, and there was a neat little quote in the bottom of one of those emails. It actually said, "This email is automatically generated, and we do not monitor replies to it." Jimmy Lea: Oh my God. That's- Craig O'Neill: But it was a beautiful picture of balloons with the branding of that dealership on it. Oh, it was touching. It was such a great birthday blessing to receive that on Sunday afternoon. Jimmy Lea: Had it been from an actual person and not an automated system would've made it even better, but... Craig O'Neill: Sure. But does the birthday greeting from a business actually land on the memorable side of communication, or is it a cheap and simple automated gimmick to feign that you care with a direct interest that is more for the business's benefit rather than it is for my birthday, right? Craig O'Neill: Congratulations, you captured my birth date in a data field in a system that is automated to generate a joy, because I don't unsubscribe because I love these examples. It really was a gift for me that I get to use and communicate from. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. And that's good. That's good. Craig O'Neill: But no, this is a common thing, and we've we've seen this strategy. Craig O'Neill: You and I have been in the CRM space for a while, and you've seen that given as a best practice. We wanna capture the, birth date and month, not the year. Birth date and month. And then you can have these sort of birthday messages go out. All right, maybe you have that strategy applied in your shop. Craig O'Neill: Is that a wrongness? No. Maybe some people really appreciate it. I think a lot of people don't give it a second thought, and that's the majority. Jimmy Lea: They probably don't, but they also aren't sending it from an email that is not being monitored and not gonna reply. Craig O'Neill: Let's hope not. Yeah. ' Jimmy Lea: Cause if Jimmy's Super Shop were to send you a happy birthday message, it would purely be a happy birthday message. Jimmy Lea: There's no other ulterior motives whatsoever. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Jimmy- And you would reply and say, "Oh, thank you so much, Jimmy's Super Shop." We would reply again to say Craig O'Neill: I would hope so. Yeah. Now, my experience in birthdays are one thing, but all sorts of messages. I know when CRM automation occurs, and I'll touch on this at Mars a little bit further the team is not engaged in that part of the process, and it's difficult for them to engage in the inbound Present Jimmy Lea: conversation. Jimmy Lea: Yeah Craig O'Neill: Yep. There's a, a loss of continuity there. So I do feel a lot of times there's automated things going out from a shop, but there is actually no behavior that is being encouraged or directed or accountable any accountability layer for the team to be a participant in that. So it does play in that. Craig O'Neill: But this goes to number two which I think is at the root of the whole problem, and this is, again, another quote from the Dale Carnegie and Associates. First off, problem number two we're not cultivating a community, and this, this principle comes for me from my study in this book. And as I was reading that book, assessing how shops are leveraging CRMs, this stuck out. Craig O'Neill: And it says, and I quote, "Often forgotten is the long-term plan. Businesses call it a customer retention strategy, but it is best thought of as a lively, meaningful dialogue among a community of friends. If the foundation of all long-term success is the establishment of trust-based relationships, then the goal of all interactions should be to convey value as soon and as often as possible." Jimmy Lea: Not just birthdays. Craig O'Neill: Not just birthdays as a data field. What's meaningful for a client in a repair shop? What's meaningful to them in a repair shop? What is the purpose in our community, and how are you articulating the value of staying in touch so we can continue to express what this purpose is and how it benefits you? Craig O'Neill: And by the way, Mr. Client, it's very important, save this number in your phone so that you recognize that we're a contact 'cause you can reach out to us here, and we're gonna be here if you have any questions. And that's starting to get to the sense of community here. And Jimmy, this is getting more important. Craig O'Neill: In today's world, here's a tip for y'all right now. I want you to open up your phone, go to your text message app, look at the spam folder How many messages do you have in the spam folder of your messages app, whether you're using Android or Apple, does not matter. Automatically, messages are going straight to those folders with default settings from the phone's operating system and device. Craig O'Neill: There's a bunch in there, and a lot of it probably is spam, correct, Jimmy? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I'm pretty sure all of it's spam. Craig O'Neill: A lot of times it's very accurate in mine. I- I've only on occasion seen one or two messages in there. Here's how your shop is gonna land in the spam folder. If the client never accepts you as a contact and never engages in the dialogue with you in text. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: And so the manifestation of this, and I've started to see more of this recently, very recently, just this summer people sending a DVI link to their client, for example, but the client claims they never got it. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: But they do receive- Because it went to spam ... messages without the link went to the spam folder because sometimes those links are just being interpreted when it's not saved as a contact. Craig O'Neill: The solution is to get it saved as a contact. Interesting little issue, but that takes a little effort, doesn't it, to keep your client- Yeah ... to add you as a contact. There's some cool tools to do that, simple QR code scans, and lots of things we can do at the counter to help people through this problem. Craig O'Neill: But we need our advisors to express the importance of the communication and why they should want it before they'll ever accept it as a contact. Jimmy Lea: That's right. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So interesting, right? So I think that cultivation of a community, that's the easy entry point. Help them understand the value of the communication that's coming and why we're going to be reaching you and make sure they actually do want it. Craig O'Neill: And that leads perfectly into hurdle number three. Hurdle number three is we are not gaining an opt-in for the purpose we seek. And Jimmy, you know this is true across the board generally for opt-ins and shop capturing, and we're gonna talk just a minute about this here as well. We'll do this after the next point. Craig O'Neill: The next point is a strong one on this. But you want the customer to want the message from you. Yeah. Does that happen automatically that they understand what you're going to be sending them and why you're going to be sending it? Jimmy Lea: Not unless you explain it. Craig O'Neill: Not unless you explain it. What's the value in it for them? Craig O'Neill: Why is there a benefit for them to be on a list in your shop for a certain type of message? I used an example earlier about text blast when it gets slow. And the mistake I see the most, Jimmy, is that shops literally have their all or repeat customer list, and they just hit this whole list with this message like, "Hey, we're slow. Craig O'Neill: Come in." Yeah. What if... just go with me here. Love it. What if you created a list that people could sign up and subscribe to in your shop? It's like, "Hey, if you wanna join our slow day list, there's a couple advantages of this. If you wanna just you have a few lingering maintenance items type of a thing, and we have openings we have a... Craig O'Neill: Maybe there's a promotion rate, or maybe it's just literally we can get you in and out because we know time is important, and we're not a discount culture anymore here, right? So maybe we express the speed of service. We know it's inconvenient to have the car down when it's quiet like this. We'll have loaners or rides available. Craig O'Neill: Whatever. There's benefits for you signing up on this list, so you can gain access to this thing that we're gonna do to make it better for you. Would you like to be on that list? We maybe send one or two of these out-" a quarter and perfect, right? And they sign up for that, so now you've got a warm lead list of people who are ready to fill your bays when they need filling. Craig O'Neill: How hard would it be to create that? Jimmy Lea: Oh, not very hard, and I wanna rename it already. I wanna call it the VIP available spots list. Perfect. Craig O'Neill: Yes. Yes. All sorts of things that you could do. Yeah, you could call it your membership list. Whatever. You go crazy. Have fun with it. Communicate the value of it. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And you have some- My wife does this at art shows. She sells her art in these art shows, and she's found that even just the placement of the sign-up form matters. Like, when it's front and center, people who are waiting in line for the checkout now are able to sign into that book while they're waiting for their turn to check out with the art, and she gets way more signups for her email list. Craig O'Neill: Love it. It's perfect. Yeah, and similar practices are totally possible still today, but what do shops do? We automatically assume everyone wants to get any type of message we wanna have for any purpose, and we never clarify or distinguish any special type of thing, and thus they never get the opt-in. Craig O'Neill: And thus, what are your opt-outs telling you? Man, that's their first chance to talk to you about their preference for the type of communication you send. And you know what happens in an opt-out, Jimmy. You know as well as I do. That number's blacklisted at the carrier level. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: That's hard to undo. Now you gotta communicate to them about the value of reengaging in that by texting the word start to this number, and that's a harder thing for a busy service advisor or customer service rep to be able to engage in. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No, it's true. It's true. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: We've gotta communicate with them on the level they want in the form that they want. And sometimes those opt-outs are them saying, "Look, I just don't want to communicate in this method." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: But what do they prefer? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Might Craig O'Neill: be. Yeah. Jimmy Lea: What's the conversation? Where have you built the relationship to continue that conversation on their preferred platform? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Look, I cooked my cellphone a long time ago doing demos of AutoFlow at, with multiple instances. Now I get texts that I forget to clear out of their thing all the time. That texting's not the best way to get me during the day. I am, however, in my inbox. And I promise you, you have clients that's the same thing for them too. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Or they don't even want... Now, go with me here. What if we had a list of people who prefer a phone call follow-up, Jimmy? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. And there are. Craig O'Neill: Yes. Jimmy Lea: There's people that's what they would prefer. Craig O'Neill: Yes. 100% yes. And if you don't get the buy-in from that group, and you think everyone wants a phone call follow-up we already do this- You're wrong Craig O'Neill: at Chris' shop, Jimmy. Yeah. You wanna know in about 90 to 120 follow-up calls that we do in a week there we have a gal doing this for us, for Golden Rule Auto Care. Yeah. We get about 10 to 15% of those calls that go out end up with good connections. Like a good conversation. Jimmy Lea: Oh, they actually answer the phone and have a Craig O'Neill: conversation. Craig O'Neill: Actually answer the phone and have a conversation. Only 10 to 15% 10 to 15. Around 120 calls. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. I, Craig O'Neill: I- Not a huge number. Jimmy Lea: No, it's not. Because people are busy, and they don't wanna be interrupted. And those that want the conversations, they're the ones that answer the phone. And the other 80, 85%, 90% prefer a text message or an email or a Facebook message or purely nothing at all. Jimmy Lea: Thank you very much. Goodbye. Craig O'Neill: Let me ask you this, Jimmy. You got it, man. And when you get a phone call today from a number that's not a contact in your phone- ... do you answer it? Jimmy Lea: Voicemail. No. I- Craig O'Neill: Or screening? Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: I found the you push the two buttons on both sides, boop, right into voicemail. Done. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. I, I have, one of the call screener things on mine now. If it's not a contact, it hits that pretty much automatically. I don't answer my phone. I don't answer my phone. I then check to see the missed call, and if it is something important, I'll call it back. That's the world we're entering, and it's the same principle that we just discussed with that text message that i- if they darn a contact, same is true for the phone number that you're dialing from. Craig O'Neill: If that hasn't yet been saved as a contact, look, guys, your call isn't gonna be trusted yet. Area codes that are mine are the least trusted. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yes. But that's the world now, and we have to be able to recognize that and combat that. Yeah ... but that involves becoming that contact, agreeing to that type of conversation, and maybe making a note somewhere in your management or CRM system about those preferred lev- levels of contact. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So- that's the hard work here, and I understand why shops that are low staff or only have one service advisor to five technicians, and he's also the CSR, and he handles payroll because he's also the owner, and yeah, it gets really tough really fast. And you have opportunity there when you're overwhelmed to hire someone else who can do these things, that's gonna add value to your business. Craig O'Neill: They'll be able to help cultivate these lists, which ke- it's more retention, guarantees you have the income and the cashflow to be able to support their livelihood, and everything gets better. But the starting point's really tough. Problem Jimmy Lea: Number four Craig O'Neill: Let's go. All right, this one's key. Mass blasts- Oh Craig O'Neill: without express written permission are against the law. True. And this is- True ... the really bonkers part of this is shops are loosely aware of this and yet they do it anyway. I forget what the fine is right now, and I'm not a lawyer. I'm not giving legal advice. Just disclaimer on that if you can put it in bold. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, no. But I think it's a $1,500 fine per offense, and if somebody knows that they did not expressly give you permission to text them very specifically- Jimmy Lea: Yep ... Craig O'Neill: text is what we're talking about here. Yep ... that's something they could sue you for and win every time. Notice a lot of the largest organizations out there with multiple locations do not engage in this method of follow-up Jimmy Lea: Because- They Craig O'Neill: know the targets Jimmy Lea: they've lost multiple court cases. Jiffy Lube is one that comes to mind. You can Google it. Court cases where Jiffy Lube had to pay out multimillion dollars because of their mass texting clients. A- and- and what's makes it worse is that they were mass texting clients who had opted out. Craig O'Neill: Oh. Oh, no. Craig O'Neill: So they had a blacklist failure- Yeah ... which is even another thing. So yeah, this is where, okay, you videcoders out there, I know you're out there, and I know you're even playing with APIs from groups like Twilio. And you might think "Cool, we can do texting real easy." Guess what? Start managing your blacklist because Twilio sometimes doesn't do it properly for you. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And the carrier sometimes doesn't do it properly, and it is still you on the hook every time. And if you're giving your software platform to other people to use, your platform, unless it has clear terms and conditions, could also fall under some scrutiny. Oh, boy. It gets sticky. Investigate that. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It does. It really is. So there's a difference between mass sending a marketing message versus pinpointing and being very specific. Craig O'Neill: Oh, I'm glad you bring this up, Jimmy. Yeah we have a slide on this. So CRM permissions are not actually the same across the board in multiple channels. So the- you probably use terms like transactional versus promotional, Jimmy, I'm sure. Craig O'Neill: But industry terms do vary from- from some- And our industry itself is not usually good at taking universal language- ... Craig O'Neill: And carrying it forward. But these three categories of- of text messages, I put this out. This is I don't have the source on here, but I pulled this source from online. Craig O'Neill: Conversational, informational, promotional. I wanna draw your attention to that blue arrow on the screen. It's kind of a bluish-green arrow, Jimmy. It's on that- Yep ... one, two, three, third row down, where it's talking about how that- that message is constructed. Messages promoting a brand, a product, or a service Or anything that prompts a consumer to buy something, go somewhere, or otherwise take an action. Craig O'Neill: That, if it's in that category, requires express written consent to be legal. Express written consent. Consumers may sign a form, check a box online, or otherwise provide consent to receive promotional text message in some fashion. That express written consent is the highest form of consent, and I haven't met an organization that's tracking it yet. Jimmy Lea: And through the TCPA- Yeah ... which is the act that governs over texting and how you can communicate, it used to be that you had to have a wet signature for that promotional message to go out, and you had to retain it for seven years even after you stopped your business. You still had to have it on file. Jimmy Lea: It's now changed. You can track it digitally. Yes. But you have to be able to provide the source, the date, the time, where it consent was given- Craig O'Neill: Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: for you to send promotional messages. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: conversational, reminders, informational. Now and it's interesting you've got informational broke out here that you do need consent Craig O'Neill: Express consent, which is different than express written consent, and this was interesting to me when I started studying this too, and these things are pretty stable. Craig O'Neill: I don't see this element changing a lot. Yeah. But permission can happen over text on that, or on a form or a website, or verbally, and that's an interesting one. And that's just a message that contains information, just information. It's a status update, it's an appointment confirmation or a reminder. Craig O'Neill: Those types of things are information text, and that's handled- Yeah ... very differently than a promotional marketing text that's asking them to take an action. It tips towards promotional anytime you're asking them to click a link to schedule an appointment, for example, on your slow day blast type of scenario. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. That is a promotional text purely. Even if it's a deferred service reminder. Think about those deferred service drips that people have active in just about every CRM system in the world. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: That is asking the consumer to take an action, and this is exactly the type of thing I will be combating in, in, in our session at Mars 'cause we have a better way forward. Craig O'Neill: We can start talking a little bit about that here too. But those deferred work little drips are... Like, it's a strange thing to do. It's the thing your customer said no to during your visit that we're now assuming they want to receive an, a reminder about without any knowledge that this is coming, and certainly no express written consent. Craig O'Neill: And all of the burden is fully on them to take the action to make something happen about that still deferred work. Yeah. We aren't doing anything. We, in fact, automated the whole thing. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. So what's- Craig O'Neill: It's a passive reminder, as we discussed earlier, right? Jimmy Lea: What's the better way? Are we gonna discuss that here, or are you waiting for Mars? Craig O'Neill: Oh, we can ta- we can talk on it here. So our better way is, it depends on our sense of purpose here, but I think let's go to barrier number five before we talk about that better way, 'cause I think this plays into the whole topic that we're discussing. And this is really the largest barrier, and it is the, the one that I think needs to be overcome before you fix any of the other ones. Craig O'Neill: We don't have our whole organization truly oriented towards retention as a goal What are we oriented towards then? Is the question I like to ask. And if you really stop and you really think about what your organization is structured to achieve, what is it? And it might be what you consider your most important metric might give you a clue. Craig O'Neill: I think it's an interesting question to ask, Jimmy. I do this a lot in different courses. I ask what's the most important metric for a service advisor or for a technician or for this or that?" I like to ask specifically for our front counter staff, whether it be a CSR, a reservationist, a service advisor, whoever we have working our front counter. Craig O'Neill: What is their most important metric? And you get all kinds of answers. You've probably heard every one of them, Jimmy. Closing rate. Those service advisors are like, "I sell 98.92% of all work I ever write up." Terrible stat, by the way, 'cause that's the work you write up. You can artificially inflate your closing rate on sales by writing up what you know will sell. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. But I th- I'm gonna give you my answer. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Craig O'Neill: Your ratio of returning customers Jimmy Lea: Agreed Craig O'Neill: It's your most important statistic Jimmy Lea: If they're not coming back, you're doing something wrong Craig O'Neill: Correct. Yeah, I don't care what your ARO is really. It's an interesting stat to know. You'll establish baselines for all sorts of KPIs. Craig O'Neill: They tell you useful information. But is our goal to sell all of the stuff we find on every visit? And is our team like, "Is that's what's gonna impress the boss? That's what's gonna make him very happy"? Jimmy Lea: No, returning customers. Totally agree. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, because what's the value of one good visit, right? Yeah. Craig O'Neill: What's the value of one visit versus the lifetime value of a client? Jimmy Lea: Yes. The lifetime value has so much more weight to it. Neck and neck. Tens of thousands of dollars versus- Craig O'Neill: Hundreds. Yeah ... Jimmy Lea: hundreds that, for that one visit. Craig O'Neill: Some, yeah. Yeah. And o- I had family accounts, family accounts- Yeah ... literally in the hundreds of thousands with, For Jimmy Lea: the lifetime value? Craig O'Neill: Lifetime value of that particular individual. He had a lot of vehicles in the family. Jimmy Lea: And, What's the family fleet? Craig O'Neill: It's the family fleet ... it's a family fleet. It's Jimmy Lea: a Craig O'Neill: fleet Jimmy Lea: account. Craig O'Neill: Yep. Yep, but even when the kids grew up, they were still coming in as well, too, and that, the lifetime value of the relationships that turn into more things, like, man, if that's true, though, and we do this. Craig O'Neill: Jimmy, we pay lip service to this all the time in our industry. It's a relationship-based business. It is. And then we go and we emphasize we gotta sell this much, and this is our target for sales, and all this other thing, and it's and how much time really are we putting our human attention on our team's human attention in this frenetic age on retention strategy? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. How involved are they in your team right now towards the goal of getting people back in the door from the beginning of that visit to the end of that visit, and what happens in between, the humans involved? And Jimmy, you've been in this industry. It... Most shops, I hear they say, "Hey, my guys aren't gonna use this. Craig O'Neill: I just need this to be automated." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. We'll try and make it sound as personal as possible in that automation, but Craig O'Neill: Yeah, we use those cool little variables. Your service advisor gets filled in with the service advisor's name, all the automated message, and automation has merit. It does. We create, through automation, consistent repeatability of things that we want to have occur That's good, right? Craig O'Neill: It is. Jimmy Lea: Make it personable, and make sure you're responding. Craig O'Neill: And make sure you had a hand in that, and make sure you are responding. Correct. The service advisors know these are going out, they know when it's going out, and they're maybe involved in scanning to see who replied and who didn't, or maybe that's somebody's job in the shop. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. And we'll talk about this at Mars a little further. I believe it is somebody's job in the shop. We call... I call it the reservationist. A lot of people have a CSR. Yes ... it's a fun topic because... And it goes deep, and we have podcasts on that too. But dude, it's an orientation thing. It's if it's important to you, you're gonna do something about it. Craig O'Neill: If it's not important to you, you won't do anything about it, and that's the measure that, yeah, like, all right. So I just kinda threw a C.S. Lewis mindset at you. There's like this is one of the things I love about reading some of these, these thinkers, right? It's and of course, he's Christian apologetics and that sort of thing, but he said... Craig O'Neill: i'm breaking it down to just a simple point, like something is important or it's not important at all. Craig O'Neill: That middle ground in this topic, I think this is true, that middle ground's not given to us, which forces us to either have to decide, "Eh, it's really not important and we can continue as we are because we're okay with the results," or, "No, this is a really important topic. Craig O'Neill: Our strategy for getting clients into the shop is of actually critical importance to the ultimate success of our business, and is the most important thing that we should be focusing on to guarantee our success. So we're gonna really put in all of our effort towards this goal instead of just reacting to the chaos, reacting to the things that made it in today." Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Craig O'Neill: Wow. What would happen to your business with that focus? Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Man. We wanna exponentially increase it. We wanna rocket fuel this. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: And I wonder what the statistics are. There, there was a, a, a read a while ago that talked about restaurant industry was tracking this. How can they get a client to come back for the second dining experience- Yeah Jimmy Lea: and the third dining experience, and the fourth dining experience? And once they get 'em in for that fourth dining experience, they've got a client for life. Craig O'Neill: True. Yeah. I actually just had a interesting restaurant follow-up. I'm on the email list for one of the sushi joints here in Grand Rapids. I love sushi. Craig O'Neill: Love this place. We go Maru Sushi on Cherry Street. Fantastic. Next time you're in Grand Rapids, wonderful. Love going there with my wife. It's our go-to spot. We had a couple months of a dry spell there where we didn't make it in, and we were busy with art shows and all sorts of stuff. Sure. And I got an email that must have been triggered. Craig O'Neill: It's like their little lost customer reminder. It's like- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... " Craig O'Neill: It's been a while. Here's a free app- appetizer" Okay ... for next, on, on your next visit." It was an interesting follow-up. I thought it was really good. Oh yeah, it has been a while. Man, I want sushi right now, is what I experienced with that. Craig O'Neill: And then, and there's a benefit for me right there in it, and I already wanna go there anyways. It's just been a while. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: It's a great way of getting you back in. I, there, there was the example That the manager would go around and say, "Oh, is this your first time?" They had different colored napkins, so he knew- The servers ask us, they're the new ones that don't recognize us. Jimmy Lea: They ask, "Have you guys been in before?" It's like, "Oh, yeah." Yeah. All right. "You can hold on to the menu. N- unless you need it to show us that you haven't taken the order yet," right? Yeah. Yeah. The the managers are going around and they're giving away, "Hey, on your second visit, make sure you try the cheesecake, and here's a coupon for a free cheesecake." Jimmy Lea: You get me back for a $100 meal for a free cheesecake, is it worth it? Craig O'Neill: Totally. Jimmy Lea: What's that cheesecake cost you? Craig O'Neill: Cheapest marketing. All right. So look- Cheesecake more cost ... how much Jimmy Lea: money Craig O'Neill: do you spend on other marketing efforts for what kind of results? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. And we've got to do the optimizing everywhere. Jimmy Lea: We've got to optimize ourself in all the locations. There's, which is true. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: But also how effective, and it's extremely, ex- extremely effective when they're there at your shop enjoying the experience, you give them a reason to come back. Craig O'Neill: Yes. And I like what you said there, Jimmy, and I think that's worth drawing some out a little further. Craig O'Neill: What you described is what I we have an improv club in our Toastmasters club, so the we play a lot of improv games, and we've been taught the yes and- Yes and ... approach. Yes and. Yes and. It is, it's, so it's a rule in improv where one of the people in your troupe are make something, that's truth now. Craig O'Neill: You react with that. It's not, you can't go combat this thing. It's not this or this. It's these things now have to be recognized as, as connected. The reality of Jimmy Lea: what you create. Combining forces for something good. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So you said- Using that idea ... all networks, all channels, and this is exactly it. Craig O'Neill: This conversation that we're having doesn't say "Oh, yeah, we just master this and we won't need to spend as much money in this other area." That's not necessarily the case. Now, although maybe you have have some restructuring of that, it's you do refine your strategy on how your team is engaging retention, and you continue your outreach efforts, and maybe restructure how your phone call skills and other things go into all the m- effort you did take towards generating leads actually gets converted into real clients that come back again. Jimmy Lea: Oh, yeah. W- I was talking to a shop the other day, "My marketing's not working. My marketing's not working. I need to redo all my marketing." Got digging into his phone call log, discovered 43% of phone calls were- Ooh ... not being answered. No. 43%. Craig O'Neill: This is the world th- that AI assistants are entering. Craig O'Neill: And Jimmy- Yes ... this is this is the deepest, saddest thing in the world for me. AI assistants are one, a thing that is i- in demand and two, that it's sometimes better than the Jimmy Lea: people. If you're not able to answer the phone, you need to figure out either you need a human that's there answering the phone, or you implement this AI answering system- Oh, man Jimmy Lea: that's tied to your point of sale that sees your schedule, that can schedule- Better Craig O'Neill: at containing the context and keeping the notes and everything else ... four different... Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. Craig O'Neill: Yeah, I know. Jimmy Lea: And it's true. If- I do not support the idea that the AI answering your system is going to replace your advisor. Jimmy Lea: Absolutely not. Yeah. Craig O'Neill: No. Jimmy Lea: You do need to answer the phone as quickly as you humanly possibly can, but if you're not able to, that's where you've got this backup that can take care of business. And it's an interesting thing. Craig O'Neill: And this backup Jimmy Lea: is just that. Yeah. It needs to be backup, not plan A. Craig O'Neill: Oh, not plan A. Craig O'Neill: And in fact, you need to be aware And we were having this conversation in our team, too 'cause our sales guys, when they're calling shops, they're hitting AI- Jimmy Lea: Yes ... Craig O'Neill: systems far more frequently than they ever used to, and it's interesting to see that volume go. But simultaneously, we understand, like, how do you feel personally when you call a business and the first thing you get is an AI? Craig O'Neill: Are you happy or a little sad about that? And in an election year right now, it has turned divisive. And we did tailor- trace this back to this really started about two weeks ago. Even in demos where we're talking about AI features- ... the data center issue is coming up. And, like, all these things are, like, top of mind, front and center. Craig O'Neill: "Oh, I can't believe you guys are engaging with AI stuff in this world right now." And it's oh, wow, hot button issue. You have an AI assistant, you probably are gonna have a 50/50 split. I'm y- I'm talking 50/50. Some people will love it and think it's fine or just tolerate it. The other 50% are going to hate it, hate you, and may never call you again. Craig O'Neill: And congratulations, now we're in 2026. Yep. Jimmy Lea: And I, I think the 50/50 might be a little, Craig O'Neill: I'm just thinking about how the elections play out- Jimmy Lea: Yeah ... for two different parties. I propose there's probably a 30%, maybe a 33% that loves it, 33%- Fair ... that hates it, and 33% that's in that middle that says, "Ah." Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: I Craig O'Neill: would love to see a strong third party too, Jimmy, but that's neither here nor there. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. So look at this though. We talked orientation. We don't have a whole organization structured towards retention. Now I had a great coach. Bob Greenwood was my coach. He passed away 2021. And I talk about this frequently. I echo what he taught me a long time ago, and he described our professional responsibility. Craig O'Neill: He asked the question, "What's our job? What's our job? What is your job?" I remember being the technician in the room that raised my hand, and I told him what he was expecting someone in the room to raise their hand and say. Jimmy Lea: Fix cars. " Craig O'Neill: I fix cars." Yep. He pounced. He was ready. This is what he did. I've seen him do it multiple conversations after that. Craig O'Neill: He said, "No. Your job, your professional responsibility, is to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient. That's the job. And that, Mr. Client, is why we do a multi-point inspection on every vehicle that we do, and we will send this digitally to you, and we won't let you down." And there's lots more that goes into that, but there's a whole underlaying sense of purpose about the service that we provided. Craig O'Neill: And if that is our job, to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient, we owe it to our customers to be participants in that- Yeah ... as a member of the community of which they are also driving in. It has direct benefits to us and the other people we love on the streets. But that's an orientation, right? Craig O'Neill: And if that is what you believe about your purpose in this industry- Amen ... yeah, we're gonna start following up with the strong ability to communicate that sense of purpose, and people will hear the conviction in there and that commitment that you made to not letting them down. And that is not going to be heard in your competitors. Craig O'Neill: If you master this, and you don't, you will stand out, I promise you. Jimmy Lea: It's true. It's true. Yeah. Craig, this is a, a phenomenal conversation that we're having, talking about all things marketing, customers, customer relationships. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Managing those relationships, communicating in their preferred method, form, and fashion. Jimmy Lea: This is gonna continue in our Mars Conference. I can't wait. Let's throw up that QR code again. If you are able to attend, and you are listening to this, today is... What day is today? Craig O'Neill: Today is the 9th. Jimmy Lea: September 9th It's called Wednesday. September 9th, intensive giveaway winners. Oh, don't forget the giveaway winners here, Craig. Jimmy Lea: We've- Oh ... le- but- Great Do you wanna announce the winners first, or do you wanna announce the the special giveaway for everybody listening? Craig O'Neill: Let's do the winners first, Jimmy. I'm excited. So we had a drawing as we had two tickets to give away to Mars, and we have two winners, and we'll be sending emails to these winners as well. Craig O'Neill: Winner number one, Preston Callahan. Winner number two, Jordan Jawarenko. And we will get those emails out to you and hope to see you in Utah. And yeah bring your hiking shoes if you wanna go up in the hills with me. I definitely encourage getting up in the hills. So- Jimmy Lea: Are you gonna be rucking? Craig O'Neill: Oh, see, when I'm in the hills I don't just bring useless weight, I bring actual hiking gear, so I just call it hiking when I'm actually in a mountain. Jimmy Lea: When you're in Utah, you go hiking. Yeah. Everywhere else it's Craig O'Neill: rucking. Yeah. Rucking is what I would call urban hiking. Jimmy Lea: It's for you flatlanders. Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Yeah. So no, I will definitely be ha- I have a pack, I have I put water in there for weight and snacks that I can eat, and the, the idea is you get it lighter as you go with that sort of stuff, but- Oh ... it's absolutely beautiful. So these- Yeah ... are the winners from the Autoflow drawing that we'd had. Craig O'Neill: Those of you who did not win on that drawing, we'll still email you and hope to see you in Utah. Take advantage of this promotion. I think it's gonna be a great conversation. I've done this intensive multiple times. Jimmy, I gotta give you guys some props on this because this is my favorite format literally in all events that I go to. Craig O'Neill: You're in one room together at your headquarters in Ogden, Utah- Yeah ... which is a cool town. Everyone hears the same presenter. We get everyone here asking those same questions, and then- Yep ... the next presenter's gonna be up, and then we do that. We have great food in between, and then there's breakout sessions afterward where we get to go and break out into groups and discuss everything that's done. Craig O'Neill: No one's missing any of the context from any of the presentations. It's not like you're in one session and then another session is going on and "Man, that would've been a cool talk too, but this is really good." You don't have any fear of missing out on anything that's happening. Everybody's a participant the whole way. Craig O'Neill: It's awesome. Jimmy Lea: Oh, and I love the, the vendors are included. Everyone is in the same- Yeah ... room, and we're having these conversations together. It's not just shop owner to shop owner point of view. We get everybody's point of view in on these conversations- Yeah ... which is super awesome. All right. So if you scan this QR code, grab out your smartphone, scan this QR code, this is a coupon. Jimmy Lea: It is on- coupon, oh, I hate calling it that. Yeah. This is a special member VIP. Because you are watching this webinar, this is a cu- the, this code is good until 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, Pacific Daylight Time The code is, and I have to switch over to my other computer, the code is Mars300. This is $300 off of the general admission pricing. Jimmy Lea: So you and a- anybody of the public that is out there, you will get the webinar, the the whole entire intensive, Mars Intensive at the institute member pricing. So use the code Mars, M-A-R-S 300, and that is good until, for in the next, what? 12 hours? Craig O'Neill: Yeah. Where are we? 10, 12- And after Jimmy Lea: you fill that out- Oh, 13 hours. Jimmy Lea: You got 13 hours. Ready, set, go. Go ahead ... after Craig O'Neill: you fill that out, email us and I will tell you my favorite two sushi joints in Ogden, Utah, and maybe we can even grab a bite there. Jimmy Lea: Ooh, that's great. And you know what? We do have a couple of more tickets available. There's not a lot, but there are a few more tickets available for that exclusive dinner with Cecil Bullard. Craig O'Neill: Nice. Jimmy Lea: We're gonna have some great conversations. Those that are speakers are invited to be able to be part of this conversation and it's an exclusive dinner with Cecil, so you're gonna have some really good, intense, great conversations with the speakers of the event, with Cecil being there. These are gonna be some really good focused conversations. Jimmy Lea: Those Craig O'Neill: are my favorite moments, Jimmy. Yeah, the event is one thing, but the conversations that happen throughout and at dinners these... If you're not frequently going to industry events like this is... You owe it to yourself to do this. The ideas that you get to go back with are phenomenal, and the connections that you make and the sense of community that you feel that, that's permanent Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Jimmy Lea: Agreed. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Craig. Oh, yeah. Congratulations to Preston. Congratulations to Jordan. Look forward to seeing you in Ogden, Utah, October 26th, 27th and 28th, right before SEMA Apex. And for those who are the adventurous types rent a car. Let's go drive down through Zion and Bryce Canyon and- Yes Jimmy Lea: I'm sure Craig Craig O'Neill: and- Zion. If you haven't been to Zion National Park, what is that place? It is beautiful. It is. Southern Utah, phenomenal, dude. I could go... We have another hour here, so we can just talk about Southern Utah. Man, dude- ... you guys have got the pocket of beauty in this world. It is phenomenal. Craig O'Neill: Like- Jimmy Lea: It's gorgeous. Yeah. It is gorgeous. Craig O'Neill: Absolutely. You will... And Salt Lake City's no joke either. You fly in there, you're gonna think, "This is amazing," and it is. And then you go to Southern Utah and you think "What is... It gets better?" Jimmy Lea: Yep. Yep. Glad you had a great experience with your family down there in Southern Utah. Craig O'Neill: Dude, my wife and I are flying out a little early. We're staying through the weekend before the Mars Intensive we're gonna be hiking some hills then too. It's hard to get the bigger hikes in between the event stuff. Jimmy Lea: Yes. Craig O'Neill: It gets dark- Yes, it is ... it gets hard on the mountain. Jimmy Lea: It does. It does. Jimmy Lea: Even with that, it's not quite enough. I got you. With that, thank you, Craig. I appreciate you being here, brother. Oh, thanks. Thank you so much. Look forward to Mars- Can't wait ... the Mars Intensive. Let's continue this conversation. Let's get in deeper with these conversations and have a great time. I will see you there. Jimmy Lea: Thank you, everybody. See Craig O'Neill: you soon.
From Garage Beginnings to Master Tech: Ly Khoa’s Hustle and Humility
Glenn Piccolo interviews Ly Khoa (Master Lee), a top-performing technician, about his journey from lowering Hondas in high school to trade school, corporate shops, running his own business, and returning to tech work. They discuss efficiency, organization, parts management, shop culture, benefits of 7-day operations, and the realities of owning a shop versus being a master technician. Ly shares practical advice for technicians who want to increase hours and earnings—focus on skill mastery, maintain a great attitude, stay organized, seek out work proactively, and understand when entrepreneurship is (or isn’t) the right path. AutoShopAnswers.com Auto-Shop-Media.com