Ep 91: Turn Failure into Success with Jimmy Lea
With Jimmy Lea
Now playing — The Limitless Leadership Podcast
About this episode
Become a Pro today by partnering with Shop Marketing Pros for your shop’s digital marketing services. Stop wasting your marketing dollars and connect with them…
Key takeaways
- —Effective leadership is about serving your team and helping them succeed.
- —Collaboration within the industry can lead to greater overall success than competition.
- —Coaching can significantly improve shop performance in a short time frame.
- —A thriving mindset can change the atmosphere and productivity of a shop.
- —Setting clear, ambitious goals can drive a shop towards greater achievements.
Frequently asked
- What is the importance of a thriving mindset in leadership?
- A thriving mindset allows leaders to operate from a place of abundance rather than scarcity, positively impacting their team and business.
- How can coaching benefit automotive repair shops?
- Coaching provides tailored strategies that can quickly improve shop efficiency and profitability, often resulting in significant gains within months.
- What should a shop owner do if they struggle with public speaking?
- Joining organizations like Toastmasters can help improve public speaking skills, allowing leaders to communicate their vision more effectively.
▸Full transcript
They're able to feel differently. The air is different, the grass is greener, the sky is bluer. They feel different because the owner is not operating in scarcity anymore. They're now operating in a thriving mindset. Collaboration is so much more powerful than competition. So first of all, leadership is— 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. All right, everyone. Welcome back to the Limitless Leadership Podcast. Before we get started with today's episode, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, do all the things you need to on social media to help this podcast reach people and build leaders. That, of course, is our mission statement, to reach people and build leaders. Go to YouTube, subscribe at The Bearded Leader. And speaking of leaders, I'm joined by a good friend of mine, a leader in this industry. I'm pumped to introduce the VP of Business Development for the Institute.
He is a certified speaking professional. Our guest today is Mr. Jimmy Lee. Jimmy, thanks for being here. Hey, thank you very much, Josh. I'm so excited to be here. And amongst all that pounding the subscribe, let's also share this with your best friend, somebody that needs to know this information. Josh is bringing us leadership, and I'm honored to be on with you today to talk about leadership. Awesome. Well, I'm glad you're here, man. I know the audience is going to get a lot of information, a lot of just a wealth of information from you. I also failed to mention a couple, couple other titles that are important to you.
In your life, and that is you're a husband and a father to an incredible family and 7 children, correct? 7 children. Yep. Yep. 7 children together. Yep. Love that. And so, Jimmy, go ahead and share with the audience who you are, what you do, and how you do it. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. We are a coaching and training company for advisors, managers, owners. We have 20 groups. We have mergers and acquisitions. We have high performance groups for those that are looking to become or are currently multiple shop operators. So we are the one-stop shop for all of your coaching and business needs for improving your shop, improving your business.
Most shops that come on with us, they within 3 months to 9 months see a significant move in the needle. And that's— we turn them around very quickly. And very quickly, they— the natural progression is to join the Gear Performance Group, which is our 20 groups, our masterminds. Excellent. So you've been with the Institute now for— it's been a couple of years, correct? 2 years. Yeah. Maybe 2 years. Talk about your journey into the Institute, where you were compared to where you're obviously where you're at now. Well, that's a— that's a long journey. We're going to have to go back a little bit further than just coming into the Institute.
I'll say that I was at Log My Calls., which was also ContactPoint, coaching and training for customer service skills and sales skills over the phone. At ContactPoint, the automotive became my vertical. So I called probably every shop in North America. Wow. That's a lot of them. Selling call tracking phone numbers. Yeah, that was a lot. And from there, I demoed— I met Bill Haas at an ASA national conference in Dallas, Texas. And I said, Bill, this is who I'm looking for. Where do I need to go to sell these call tracking? And he says, go here, go here, go here, go here, go here. Well, I sold, sold, sold, sold, didn't sell, but didn't sell turned in to be the next job.
He says, I, I, I love your passion. I love your energy. I need a speaker. I've got this big thing coming. And it was AutoVitals. So I worked with AutoVitals for 4 years. That's where I lost the bet and got into the automotive industry. 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 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. You're gonna work for me. And I said, no, I'm not.
And he said, yes, you are. And clearly I lost that bet. 4 years later, 4 years after Auto Vitals, I went over to Kukui. Was with Kukui for a glorious 5 and a half years. Love Kukui family. They're the ohana. They are part of, of me and part of what we do. And Kukui was a beautiful platform to land, a beautiful launching space for automotive shops, automotive repair websites, CRM, postcards, everything that a shop needs to increase their average repair order and, and engage their current customer base to keep them coming back over and over and over again. Now to the point. I was at a summit meeting for the Institute.
I was repping Kukui. I'm sitting in the very back of the room. Cecil and I have known each other for, well, about 5 and a half years. When I was at a previous company, he didn't really want to associate with that company, but when I came to Kukui, he's like, hey, come visit me, come see me. He was one of the first places I stopped in Ogden, Utah with the Kukui van, which I traveled all over North America visiting shops. Going into shops to see what makes them awesome and amazing. Well, here I am sitting in the back of the room and Cecil's— this— there's a speaker up there that basically says, turn to the person next to you and bare your soul.
I was like, oh gosh, okay, well, here we go. And he's bared his soul to me and I bare my soul to him. And before you know it, February became May and May, I jumped over to the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. And it's been just one heck of a ride since then. We've doubled the business and just keep on trucking, man. That's the plan. So we just keep going. And the results that we see are amazing for shops. The results that we see, not only does it affect the shop owner and the shop owner's family, it affects everyone that's on staff, all the advisors, all the technicians. They're able to feel differently.
The air is different. The grass is greener. The sky is bluer. They feel different because the owner is not operating in scarcity anymore. They're now operating in a thriving mindset and in an abundance mindset. It's totally different. It's totally different to go from barely keeping your nose above the water, barely staying alive so you're not drowning, to walking on water. Okay, bad example, but the analogy is true. That everything changes when shops come in with us, not only for the staff, the techs, the advisors, even the clients, even the customers. Their vehicles are safer on the road. They're smarter.
They're making better decisions. And it's all because of this coaching and training that you get from the Institute. It's different than any other training company out there. We don't have any long-term contracts. We are month to month. Why are we month to month? Because you are also working for the rent every single day. Mm-hmm, yeah. We gotta work for the rent too. I love that. Every single day. If we're not bringing you value, time to bounce. Yeah, and that's great. I think it's great that you're not encouraging long-term contracts. It's one of those things where ultimately we know that there are a lot of great coaching companies out there.
There are a lot of folks who can do some great things, but if it's not a right fit right now, then that's fine. We're gonna press pause on it. I love the fact that you mentioned the scarcity versus abundance mindset. If you're listening, you know that, like, you and I both work for different coaching companies in the industry, but you and I, Jimmy, and we spoke about this at the Sunrise Automotive Training and Expo this past weekend, we talked about it's about collaboration and not competition. I don't view you guys as a competitor. You guys are great. You guys do a lot of great things that I don't do and that I don't offer.
And, and quite frankly, that I can't offer as a, as a, as a small growing company. But ultimately, with this abundance mentality, what we're collectively able to do is help change the industry. We're able to help shift perspective. And with perspective, the way that we view things drives the way that we do things. So to help shift a perspective in one person at the shop, it does affect everyone else, including their families, because ultimately, when the leader gets better, Everyone gets better and everything gets better. Even like you talked about the vehicle repa— the repairs that happen on customers' vehicles, everything improves.
And all it takes is someone like yourself and coaches within the institute to help shift a small perspective. And it's not this massive 180-degree shift. Sometimes it's like a 2 or 3-degree shift. It's something just so, so minute, but it helps change the trajectory of what— where they're going.. And, and ultimately they can achieve massive success because of it. Oh, 100%. 100%. And, and you know, by my estimation, and this is my estimation, there's no— it's, it's a swag, a scientific guess. I guess I'm estimating that somewhere between 5 and 10% of the industry is being coached and trained right now.
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And of all the companies that are there right now, mm-hmm, we could not service the entire automotive aftermarket. Yeah. Collaboration is so much more powerful than competition. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. So, um, Jimmy, I'll ask you because one of the designations to your name, and even, even if you're, if, if you're listening to this episode, you can watch this episode on YouTube at The Bearded Leader, and you'll even see at the bottom of Jimmy's screen, it says Jimmy Lee,, CSP, the institute. CSP stands for Certified Speaking Professional. And as far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, you are the only CSP in this industry.
And for those listening, anyone who's been to any training event, any conference, you probably know or at least heard Jimmy Lee. And if you didn't, if you didn't hear him, you saw him because he's typically wearing these amazing flashy jackets at these conferences. But Jimmy, talk to the audience about what it means to be a CSP and how you achieve that designation. Yeah, a CSP is a designation like becoming an Eagle Scout. I would not dare to equate this to becoming a SEAL in the Navy, a Navy SEAL. No, no, no way. But an Eagle Scout, I'll say it's a little bit harder than becoming an Eagle Scout because the amount of time it takes.
You've got a 10-year time period that you can do it in, and the quickest would be a 5-year time period. So within those 5 years, you have to have at least 250 presentations, and within those 5 years and that 250 presentations, you have to have made from your speaking at least $50,000 per year. Now, by the way, that is a moving target. Every year it changes. So what I'm telling you this year, it's going to change for you next year. They take submissions once a year. September 1st, submissions are open. It's open until January 10th. So you've got to build the ship, submit the entire packet, and hope and pray that it comes through correct.
So 250 speaking engagements over the course of 10 years. Yeah. Uh, and so we're looking at 25, at least 25 a year. And if we're breaking it down even more granularly if that's a word, slightly over 2 per month. Man, you're a busy man. Like, you are regularly jumping on stage and setting the stage at these conferences, which, by the way, you are amazing at. But yeah, keep going. I see you got something. Well, so my submission was 425. I did 425 within the last 10 years. And this is the speaking engagements that I could prove, because I didn't know about the National Speaking Association until a couple years ago.
And I was like, wait a second. I want in. I want, I can do this. I, this is a designation. I'm going to go after it. So I submitted last year, failed, failed on phase 3. Then I submitted again this year after getting a lot of feedback and a lot more recordings. I submitted again. A friend of mine submitted this year, uh, Christoph Merrell, 1,802, 1,802 presentations within the last 10 years. That's a lot of presentations. That is one every couple days. And he didn't pass. He failed at the same place I did, which was my video. So when you submit, you've got an option of sending in two 20-minute videos or two— or one 40-minute video.
Okay. So last year I failed because my video, you couldn't hear the audience very well. There wasn't the audience participation. You there was an audience view. So, the suggestions was, well, do a virtual meeting. And I had 52, 57 people in on a live presentation with R.O. Ryder. And we did this live presentation. It was really good, high engagement. It was really good. So, that was the video that I submitted this year. And it passed with flying colors. So, I'm super excited. One of 570 active CSPs in the world. That is incredible. 1 out of 570. 1 out of 570. By estimations, there's 18,000 public professional speakers in North America.
By all estimations, you can go to ChatGPT and search it the same way I did, 40,000 to 50,000 worldwide. The CSP is a worldwide designation. You do have to qualify in the United States according to the United States rules to to achieve it. And this year there are some international recipients. Of the 33 that are getting it, I think there's like 6 or 9 that are international— French, Germany, Bulgaria, uh, uh, India. So this is a designation that's pretty amazing and pretty elite. Brother, I applaud you for this designation. This is no easy task. I mean, this is— you, you just scratched the surface of how challenging it, it is to get the, the designation.
But man, um, I am, I'm proud of you. I'm excited for you. And that's, that's a, that's a massive achievement. So congratulations to that. Jimmy, I'll ask you, because, you know, this of course is a leadership podcast, and we know how important it is to effectively communicate as leaders, as people rather, for that matter. But, but speak to the audience, speak to the listener who is, is a leader in their shop, but they struggle with leading team meetings, or just the thought of public speaking absolutely terrifies them, which I'm sure you've heard this, but public speaking is, is a, is a greater fear for, for, uh, for, for more people than death actually is.
So, so there are more, there are more people who would rather be in the coffin at their own funeral than giving their eulogy at their funeral. Speak to the listener who's like, "Man, I struggle with public speaking. Where do I begin?" What advice would you give to that person? Oh, man. Okay. So, there's a lot to unwrap there. There's so many different avenues to talk about. Number 1, speaking is the most feared event over drowning and burning by fire. Yikes. So, people would rather drown or burn by fire than to speak publicly. So, to that, where can you start? Go to Toastmasters. Toastmasters is a great platform to get into.
Are you the best man at a wedding and you need to be able to toast in front of 200-300 people? You don't want to stammer. You don't want to get cottonmouth. You've got that good 7 to 8 minutes? Toastmasters champions at this. This is the level where you develop yourself. And you will be able to speak in front of a small group. The chapter here in St. George, we have 20, 25 people. There's 45 members, but on an average week, there might be 20 to 25 people that show up for the chapter meeting. Go to those meetings. Start there. When you are speaking about something that you're passionate about, it's easier for you to talk about it.
So, Josh, if I was to ask you to speak about underwater basket weaving, You may struggle to put together a 20-minute presentation about underwater basket weaving. Truth. You ask somebody who is passionate about underwater basket weaving, 20 minutes is just the start. So, if you're talking about your shop, your culture, your company, your business, if you're talking about those things that you are passionate about, it becomes easier. And as you're talking to your team, your family, your team, Share the vision. Where do you want to go? And there may be a problem there, Josh. They may not have a vision.
They may not know where they want to go. As a shop owner, what is your legacy? What do you want to be known for? What do you want to be remembered for? That becomes your passion. So, as you talk about this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it and this is where we're going to go. And today, we're here. At, I'm just gonna use a number, $600,000 a year. But next year, we wanna be at $1 million a year. And what does that look like? You know, we're gonna have to hire another technician. We're gonna have to install another lift. We're gonna have to hire another service advisor.
So I've got all of these milestones along the way that helps us to know that we're going in the right direction so that we can get to that million dollar a year. And once you get to that million dollar a year, now what's next? You do it over again. You do it over again. You make a new target, a new target for you to shoot for. And what if you were to double it and say, okay, next year we're gonna do $2 million, like this huge, audacious, big, hairy goal. The behemoth. $2 million. We're gonna go from 1 to 2. How do you get there? Chances are you're going to need somebody in your corner to help navigate that path for you.
Someone who's been there and done it before, someone who knows where the speed bumps are. When you think you've run into a mountain or a wall, chances are if you've got a coach, they solved that yesterday. They solved that on Tuesday. This is what you need to do. Da da da da da. All right. Solved. Let's move on. What's next? Yeah. So, you've got this goal of $2 million. What if you don't get it? What if you fall in at 1.8, 1.7? Look at what you accomplished. Yes, thank you. That is a huge increase, a huge increase. Applaud the victories. That is a victory. Did you get the goal? No, but let's set another goal.
Now that we know that 2 is only $200,000 out of reach or $300,000 out of reach, Well, what's that? A month or two? All right, let's revamp this baby and we're going 2.2 next year. That's so even you describing that analogy and that example, Jimmy, when I think about great speakers who I've listened to, and you fall in this category, by the way, when I think about great speakers who are clearly passionate about what they do, I've noticed that they're passionate. Passion turns into conviction. Like a great speaker, they have this conviction about them where they could tell me that the sky is green.
And because they are so convicted in what they're delivering, we believe them. It's like, "Yeah, I'm on board. You know, you are influencing me." I don't feel the weight of my leader's title. I feel the influence and the energy of their leadership. And when we can get in front of our team at a daily huddle or a team meeting or just having a good team lunch together, and someone delivers this passionate conviction-based speech or monologue, if you will. Yeah. How can you not get on board with someone like that? Yeah. Because they believe in what they are— they're striving for. And we will always find evidence in the things that we believe, which means if we are at a $600,000 shop and we're striving for $1 million, but someone on the team doesn't believe we're gonna hit that $1 million, we will find evidence that backs up that that limiting belief.
However, when we can identify the opposite and say, you know what? It's going to be tough. It's going to be challenging. It's going to be big, hairy, and audacious. I'm going to find evidence that supports why we can do it as well. Jimmy, I'll ask you. You've delivered, at this point, thousands of speeches or messages in your life. I'm going to put you on the spot. Is there one or two that stood out that stands out to you as This was the greatest keynote I've ever delivered. That's a really good question. I've got 3 that are my top favorites: teamwork, leadership, and resilience. Okay. Teamwork talks about going from the viewpoint of me to we, and it's the journey of the I's.
You go through this journey. There's 17 different I's that I've identified, but I'll just share with you a couple. First, you've got to inquire. You've got to find out and ask yourself while you're in this fetal position, rocking back and forth, how did I get myself here? Inquiring. You're asking questions of yourself. I need help. I need a team. I need more people. I can't do it all by myself. So second, you're going to gather information, as much information as you possibly can from the public library, from business classes, business courses, free videos, YouTube videos, gather as much information as you can about that subject, about that topic and about that interest so that you can now make an informed decision, because that takes you into action.
In action, you need to implement, and that'll be your fourth eye. In implementation, it's Sifas. You're pushing the stone up the hill. It's hard. You will require some inspiration along the way, and there's your fifth eye. Along the way, you need inspiration. Who's going to inspire you? Who's going to inspire you to take those next steps? Some people have it within themselves to cheerlead themselves. Others need a chief cheerleader. Others need a coach that says, hey, you can do this. You can do this. Keep pushing. Keep pushing. Yeah. Remember your vision. Remember where you're going. Remember the why.
Into leadership, don't leave anybody behind. There's a story about me being left behind on a high— on a mountaintop at Boy Scout camp. I was 11 years old, brand new Boy Scout. Share it. Come on, let's hear it. I, I was left on, on this mountaintop and the Scoutmasters, they, they all got down to the church and they're sending everybody home, backpacks and everything. Oh, whose backpack is this? Oh, it's Jimmy's. Where's Jimmy? I thought he was with you. I thought he was with you. Okay, man, the leadership has failed. They give the backpack to one of the Scoutmasters and says, nose goes, you lose.
You get to take this over to mom and dad and tell them that Jimmy was left on the mountain. Don't worry, they said to my mom, dad, don't worry. He's resourceful. It's Jimmy Lee. He's resourceful. He's a good kid. He's 11. He's, and, but that's what my dad said. He's like, yeah, but he's 11. So here I am up on this mountain and I, I, I'm at the closing ceremony. They tap out, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Hey, we're out of here. We didn't win the grand prize. We're not going to stay for the closing song. Camp's loaded, packs are loaded, let's go. So they took off and went home. I turned around to a vacant parking lot.
Hello, where'd y'all go? I run this camp, they're gone. I run to the parking lot, they're gone. Well, I better start walking home. So I'm on the road walking home, trucks are whizzing past me full of Scouts. I figured I might be one of those Scouts that, you know, you just want a knucklehead I might have been one of those kids, but yeah. Anyways, they all went whizzing past me and here I am almost to Boulder Highway in Las Vegas. I'm almost to Boulder Highway. I'm going to walk home. No, Blue Diamond, Blue Diamond Highway. And the last car pulls up. The two camp directors are in the car and they roll down the window.
Where are you going? Walking home. Why are you walking home? Well, my troop left me, so I got to get home. I'm going to walk the 28 miles across the desert to get home. I'm 11. Resilience. I figured this out. Yeah. So the scoutmaster drops it and says, good luck. You know, yeah, no, we're not going to go get him. And the next thing they know, they dropped to their knees and prayed. And the next thing is me walking through the front door saying, hey, I'm home, dusty, but I'm alive. Unbelievable. And they were just in total shock. Yeah. So as a leader, are you accountable? Do you take care of all your people?
Are you willing to leave somebody behind? If you do, are you going to go back? Are you going to make sure we all make it there together? I was a scoutmaster for 18 years, and I'll tell you, the first camp that I went on with those scouts where I was the, the, the person in charge, I did not sleep. I was so anxious. Are these kids going to wake up? Are they going to walk away? Are they going to sleepwalk? Is there going to be a big coyote come get them? A bear? We were in Death Valley. There's no coyotes. There's no bears. But I was still afraid. Yeah. Yeah. And the final one, talking about resilience, is your determination, your desire.
How committed are you to your goal? How committed are you to fulfill that promise that you've made? Mike Rowe likes to say, because his dad said, a promise made is a debt unpaid. Mm-hmm. A promise made is a debt unpaid. I was to speak in Alaska. And here I am leaving my house in St. George, Utah, 2:30 in the morning. Why so early? Well, it's a 6 AM flight out of Vegas. 2:30, I wake up. 3 o'clock, I leave. It is snowing. It's snowing a lot. It doesn't snow a lot in St. George, Utah. It's knuckle driving all the way to Vegas. It's a 2-hour drive normally. It was a 3-hour drive that day. Okay, bad decisions, Bad life choices.
It was a 3-hour day and white-knuckle the whole way there. I get there, we get on the plane. Nah, no worries, no issues. I finally think this is the first time I'm going to check my bag. So I check my bag, all I have is my backpack. I get on the plane, I fall asleep. Bam, I'm out. We're on the tarmac waiting in line for the de-icing liquid. It is actively snowing. Did you know there's two types of de-icing liquid? No, I didn't either. There's two types. One is for active snow. One is for standing snow. Okay. It was actively snowing in Las Vegas. Wow. They ran out of de-icer. Captain comes on and says, this flight's been canceled.
We're headed back to the gate. Good luck. Good, good luck. Good luck's what you say to somebody buys a Kia off Craigslist. This isn't good luck, get to Alaska. Yeah. So we're frantically, everybody on the plane is like, oh, find the next flight, find the next flight. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. They're all gone. Like seagulls on a French fry. They were, it was all gone. No flights. I get off the plane and I'm like, oh man, I have to get to Alaska. I'm speaking tomorrow morning at 8 AM. So I call, and this is the only time I've flown Alaskan Airlines. I've called Alaskan Airlines and I said, I don't care where you have to reroute me.
She's like, everything in Vegas is gone. I know, I know. I'm here. I'm here. So I run down, I get my bag. I said, I don't care where it is. Phoenix, Burbank, California, LAX, Ontario. Put me on a plane, get me to Alaska. I got to speak tomorrow morning. So she's like, type, type, type, type, type, type, type. I get to the point on the freeway. It's either left to Phoenix or I'm straight on to California. Where are we going, sister? Come on. Where are we going? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We're going to California. There's more options. Okay. Okay. California. Burbank, 5 o'clock.
Ontario, 3:30 or LAX at 1:30. Dude, it was like 9:45. It's a 4 hour and 45 minute drive from LA. Las Vegas to LAX. Mhm. That doesn't compute. There's not enough time. I said, book me, I will make it, I'll be there. Zoom, under the radar. By the way, LAX, have you ever been there? I, I have been to LAX, yes. Have you ever driven to LAX? No, nor do I plan on it. Experience, 7 parking lots, 9 terminals. Which one do you pick? There's a sign, Terminal 5. Okay, Alaska Airlines, Terminal 5. So I park, I run across, they're not there, they're in Terminal 6. So it's a half-mile hike across. Mm-hmm. Dress shoes.
I'm running as fast as I can, but I am determined. I am not going to miss this. I get to the gate. Hey, you made it just on time. Hey, go get in line. You're good. You're good to go. You're, you're Right on time. So here I am thinking we're on the plane. No, they put us on a bus. We go out to the very back of the airport. I mean, like, has this plane just been fixed, repaired, and we're the first flight? I'm not feeling so good about this. Yeah, we're going way out there. So we get out there, we load us up all on the plane. We're sitting there and the captain comes on. He says, hey, you know, this plane has new fittings and this water truck has old fittings.
It's not working quite right, but in only another 5 minutes, we should be full of potable water so we can go. Great. Half an hour later. By the way, my layover is an hour in Seattle. And then, okay, tick-tock, tick-tock. I'm feeling it go. I'm feeling it go. I'm feeling it go. 30 minutes later. Okay, we're full of water, but look out to your left. See those clouds? Big, huge storm. I mean, this was like The Mummy storm was blowing in. Are we going to make it? Are we going to make it? Hey, we got clearance. Where do we go? Foom, foom, foom. Plane takes off. I fall asleep mid, mid-lift. I awaken as we descend into Seattle.
Thank heavens the gate was just next door. Get on the plane. Okay. I arrive in Alaska 4.5 hours after I was supposed to. Mm-hmm. That's a 4.5-hour drive to LAX. Wow. But I made it. I made it. And the lesson learned there was control the things you can control. Yeah, that's so good. And give away those that you can't. You have no control over the weather. You have no control over Mother Nature. You have no control over flights. You have no control over the de-icing liquid that an airport stocks or doesn't stock.. But I was determined to make that presentation and make that speech and fulfill my promise.
And Jimmy, I'm sure you killed it. You know, determination, resiliency, the amount of mental real estate that the uncontrollables take in our mind that we allow to take over in our minds is, it's unfortunate. And this is where coaching like the Institute can offer this concept of shifting perspectives. We know that our thoughts dictate feelings. Our feelings dictate actions. Our actions dictate results. And many of us are not achieving the results we're destined to achieve because we simply don't know how to manage and control the thoughts that we're having, right? Yeah, I mean, you're pointing to your brain right now.
It's like, can we challenge these thoughts and question these thoughts? I wanna go back to, you know, we're talking about— first, thank you for sharing all this. Facts tell, stories sell. You are a great storyteller. If you're listening to this episode or watching this episode, Jimmy is clearly animated. Like, Jimmy is your guy for your next speaking event. Let me ask you, and I'm kind of putting the cart before the horse, but if you're listening to this episode thinking, "Hey, I'm looking for a keynote speaker. We have an event coming up in the next few months or next year. I want to at least jump on a discovery call with Jimmy."
How can our audience get in touch with you to do this? Oh, my cell phone. You can text me, 435-669-4940. My email, jimmy@wearetheinstitute.com. Excellent. Please reach out to Jimmy. I can assure you, you will get way more than your investment. So you're going to get an ROI on the investment with Jimmy as a speaker. But let's go back to determination and resilience. Those are great attributes every leader should possess to be an effective leader. If I were to ask you, Jimmy, what does leadership mean to you? How would you answer that question? That's a good question. And I've been thinking a lot about this.
You gave me a little bit of a warning a couple days ago to think about what leadership means to me. And with, with so many years in the Boy Scouts, that is a very strong foundation for me with the Scout Law, the Scout Oath, the Scout Motto. Leadership to me is service. It is becoming that servant leader where you don't work for me, I work for you. What can I do to help you do your job better? What obstacles are in your way that I can help remove those obstacles and make it easier for you to do your job? So, first of all, leadership is service. Leadership, second of all, is ownership, accountability.
Ronald Reagan was a phenomenal leader, and he stood up in front of the entire nation and said, "It was my fault." Was it his fault? Ultimately, yes, he's the president. But it was Colin Powell that made the mistake. Reagan owned it because at the end of the day, he is the leader. He is the CEO. And I saw this demonstrated very recently with Wayne Marshall, CEO of the Institute. He stood up and said to the entire company, guys, I made a mistake. That wasn't his mistake. But at the end of the day, it was his mistake. And the level of respect that you guys have for someone like Wayne to do that, that is— I mean, that's a leader I want to follow, right?
Yeah. And because I'm behind the scenes and I know what happened and I know where he's going and what he's doing, my level of respect for him is 10x what anybody else in this company is looking at and seeing. Yeah. Leadership is also going first. It's courage. Leadership is courage. Leadership is going first and trying out that uncertainty and pioneering and trailblazing, going where no other person has gone before. You know, Star Trek. Well, Jimmy, so I'm glad you shared this because we know why people don't often take action and really go that next step or that next leap because it is often rooted in fear.
I'm afraid. I'm afraid of success or failure. I'm afraid of not— making it. Speak to the listener who struggles with taking action because their, their, their, their beliefs are rooted in fear instead of faith. Oh, interesting. So I'll tell you from my own personal perspective, I failed as a business owner. I was not good at the paperwork. That is not my jam. That's not my, um, that's not my strength. My strength is in telling stories, in the presentation, in making the complex simple and easy to understand so that you can take action and do what you need to do. So, if fear is crippling you, get yourself a coach that will help guide you.
So good. You need an Obi-Wan Kenobi. You need a Yoda. You need a guide that's going to help take you there so that you understand the Force, so you understand the business, so you understand. And then from a position of strength, you're no longer afraid. You're empowered. So good. You're encouraged. A philosopher takes the simple and makes it complex. A communicator takes the complex and makes it simple. You are a great, effective communicator. I'll ask you, you alluded to the BHAG earlier, Big Hairy Audacious Goals. If I were to put you on the spot, Jimmy, and ask you, what is your next BHAG.
What would you say to that? I have some personal ones that I'm not gonna share. Okay. Professionally and publicly, I will share that we are gonna grow the Institute by another 100% next year and 100% the year after that. That's awesome. You guys are growing quick, and you just, you just shared that you've already grown it by 100% the previous year, correct? We did, we did, absolutely. So we, we've got the secret sauce, we've got the formula, we've got the recipe. It's just now churn and burn and continue to grow. We've got some really cool things going to start happening in August. Okay, can you share that?
So, uh, the cool things is, is in our reach, we're developing more, a bigger reach, a broader reach. Right now we're— I figure we're hitting maybe 10,000 to 11,000 shops of a 250,000 rooftop business. Yeah, yeah, there's so many. There's so many to be able to reach. And so we're barely scratching the surface where we are. So we're implementing some really, really neat, really cool tactics into our marketing that's going to reach even broader than what we're doing today. Jimmy, in terms of what's next for you, I know you're going to be at the ASTA Expo. Speak to the listener who is considering going to the Expo, which by the way is September 25th through the 27th in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Raleigh Convention Center this year.
What can the— what can I expect if I were to attend the ASTA Expo this year? Well, let me give you a little history of ASTA to tell you that they have doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled and doubled. They've outgrown facility, outgrown facility, outgrown facility, and this will be the first year at the convention center. They— it could house anywhere from 1,200 1,800 to 1,800 and 2,000, 2,000 people could come to this conference. By the way, that's a big conference in the automotive aftermarket. Yes, it is. That's a big conference for us to participate in. This is a conference where you could bring your entire shop.
Technicians, you have a tech that wants to learn about diesel? Great. Gas, gas engine, internal combustion engine? Not a problem. They want to learn about EVs? Not a problem. They want to learn about how to use their PicoScope better? Not a problem. We've got all of that at this ASTA conference. Advisors that need to be more confident selling on the phone, answering the phone, being more confident with giving an estimate, asking the customer to buy. These are the skills that an advisor needs. Managers, you need more humanistic, human-centric training, leadership training. How do you get somebody to do something that they don't want to do and it's their idea that they want to do it?
It's not manipulation, it's leadership. You're helping them to see the vision of why they need to do it. That's true. To owners, and owners need this same sort of leadership training. Manage yourself, time management, scaling the chaos, going from chaos to process and procedures. Are you writing down your process and procedures? By the way, you should, you need to, and save it as a Google Doc. It's a living document. Continue to add to it, add to it as the shop grows, as things grow, as people become bigger and the shop becomes better, you want these processes implemented because is there a better way to do it?
Okay, let's analyze it. Now we're going to put it as part of our process, as opposed to, I'm a tech, I came from another industry, I came from another shop. This is the way we did it and it's better than yours. Okay, but this is my shop and we do it this way. Let's analyze it to find out which one is better, and then we'll do it. And sometimes you find out this takes twice as long, we do have the better way. Or flip it, this is a better way, let's adopt it. And, and I'm noticing that even the verbiage that you're using, it's we, right? It's, it's a we before me mentality. You mentioned manipulation earlier, and, and I believe that manipulation is moving people for, for personal benefit, whereas motivation is moving people for mutual benefit.
And that's the we before me. That's the connection before the content. It's the abundance before the scarcity. My last question to you, Jimmy, is what is the greatest advice you've ever received from a coach or mentor? Man, greatest advice, greatest advice, greatest advice from a coach or a mentor. I'll also ask you this too. If, if you want to share what's the greatest advice you believe you could provide to the listener, you can answer that question instead. Well, so we can flip this both ways. Greatest advice I got from a coach, and I'm going all the way back into high school and college. When I was on the ballroom dance team and I was on the dance team and I was the drum major of the high school band, Gary Sassenberg and Alan Lewis and Mary Reif said, in your performance, reach the back row.
Hmm. So for you as a shop owner, let's translate this to you. What does this mean to you as a shop owner? Reach those that are unreachable. Reach those that don't have the same capacity or capabilities to do what you're doing. Reach the— spread the wings and reach as many people as you possibly can, all the way to the back row. So, what does that back row look like to you as a shop owner? You definitely need to know where your bread and butter is. Focus on that. Build that. Build it, build it, build it. You can't feed hungry mouths from empty shelves. You've got to fill the shelves. Now you can reach to the back row.
Love it. So good. This is actually my final question, 'cause I do wanna make sure that anyone listening who understands now the importance of hiring a coach, looking for the right coach, the right fit, how can our audience get in touch with the Institute? Come to the Institute, come to our website, wearetheinstitute.com. We have a channel on YouTube, we have a Facebook, Uh, we, we sponsor a few different podcasts in the industry. wearetheinstitute.com, click on book an appointment or book a demo or book a, a business analysis. That'll put you with one of my business associates that's going to sit down with you and talk about your shop and your business.
What is your process procedures? What is your average repair order? What is your door rate? What is your labor rate? What is your rent? What is your insurance? What are all your fixed costs? Labor costs. What we find is that most people in the industry are operating at about a 2 to 3% net profit. And very quickly, we help to turn those dials. It's a fine-tuning process that we fine-tune those dials. And now you go from, uh, oh, great example. Shop came to us. I, I'm not going to name them specifically, but if you ask me about it, I'd be happy to tell you who it is. This shop came to us and said, hey, look, man, I'm stuck at 7% net profit.
Big family business, 14 bays. I'm stuck at 7% net profit. I've been to other coaching companies and they tell me to raise my average repair order or to increase my car count. At the Institute, we come and meet you where you are. So he says to me, he says, if you are gonna talk about car count or average repair order, we'll just save a lot of time and say thank you very much, but no thank you. We'll still be friends, but I'm gonna part ways. And I was like, bro, we got you. We're going to meet you where you are. You need shop proficiency. You need shop efficiency. And he says, you're exactly right.
That's where I want my focus to go. His average repair order was $650. By focusing on his shop efficiency, what happens? Shop becomes more productive, more proficient. Average repair order goes up and car count goes up. Love it. Well, and that's a testament to how you guys, like, you're listening to the voice of your potential customer. In this case, it is your customer. Owner. That's so critical for the success. Within 9 months, he went from a 7% net profit, broke all records in his shop, 24— 23.9% net profit. Amazing. And then the next month broke that again. It was 24-point-something net profit.
Um, phenomenal shop. If you're listening and you're thinking, hey, I can use this kind of results in my shop, go to wearetheinstitute.com. Jimmy Lee, man, thank you so much for being here. This will not be your last time on the Limitless Leadership Podcast, my friend. Yeah, because we didn't even get to talk about developing others. We didn't even get to talk about integrity in leadership. But what— that's something to look forward to. Hey, guess what? So I'll, I'll be, uh, I'll be doing this podcast at the ASTA Expo. I'm gonna save you a spot. We're gonna do this live in person next time. Love it.
Let's do it. Cool. Awesome. And thank you for being here. As you know, every episode we look to transform our leadership skills by tapping into unrecognized potential to achieve limitless results. So thanks again, everyone. 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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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.