AutoVitals CEO Jon Belmonte is joined by shop owners Doug Brackett and Frank Scandura to discuss their journeys to becoming auto repair shop business coaches. Doug Brackett and Frank Scandura discuss the key factors that help determine a shop’s success, like the importance of:
- Stepping away from the day-to-day operations of the shop
- Using proven industry best practices
- Hiring a great team
- and more!
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated with Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you identify an error, please contact us at [email protected]
Lauren Thunen (00:00):
Thank you everyone for joining us. We’re super excited to have The Digital Shop Talk Radio back. It’s been a minute since we’ve had an official episode and I can’t think of two better people to join us For our first episode back, we got Doug Bracket and Frank Scandura. Could you both introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you do as a business coach and then also about the shop that you own and operate. Frank, why don’t you kick us off?
Frank Scandura (00:24):
Sure. Be happy to. Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. I’m glad you guys have decided to relaunch the program. It’s always been a lot of fun to be a part of it and anything to help shops is really exciting. I’ll start with my shop, Frank’s European Service in Las Vegas. We are a 12,000 square foot 14 bay facility, somewhere between 18 and 19 employees. I think we’re doing just a tick under 4 million a year, so pretty exciting. I started Frank’s in 2001 with two lifts, myself, mechanics, helper, and a porter. So we’ve come a long way in the last 23 years and it’s been a very, very exciting journey by transition to coaching or what I’m doing is I specifically help shop owners get out of their own way, help them understand that you are not the best person for the job.
In fact, you’re probably the worst person for the job. Just because you own the place and have the keys doesn’t make you the best manager, doesn’t make you the best technician, doesn’t make you the best employees. So I try to really help them transition from that thought process and it’s usually from a technician to a shop owner to help them get out of the technician mindset and that super technical mindset. In fact, I have a saying, and I don’t mean any disrespect to technicians, I used to be one, but a shop, an automotive shop needs to keep technicians away from the humans in most cases. So it’s really important to know that. And so I help shop owners run really great operations and help them understand the dos and don’ts and nuts and bolts of it.
Lauren Thunen (02:10):
Awesome. Thanks Frank And Doug, could you go ahead and introduce yourself?
Doug Brackett (02:13):
Yeah. I own Downtown Automotive. We’re a Napa Auto Pro location as of a couple years here in beautiful, sunny southern interior of British Columbia. I’m Nelson. I’m an outdoors person by passion. My shop is a lot smaller than Frank’s. We’re about 6,000 square feet. We’ve got six bays, four technicians. We are seeing a lot of growth in the shop these days with the type of service that we provide. So what really got me into coaching, I had honestly some pretty good struggles a couple years ago with being a little bit fed up of what my daily routine was and working in the shop and managing shop the whole time. And I needed to rekindle my passion for this industry and that really came from working with other shop owners. I’ve been on the shop for almost 18 years now. Come through a lot of lessons in doing that and being able to pass on a lot of that learning to other shop owners and at the same time really rekindle my passion for what we do on a daily basis and learn from all of my clients as well too has been a huge part of what I love about being a coach.
I specifically coach with an eye on software implementation, so pretty different. There’s not a whole lot of people in our space that look at it that way. I see myself as a software nerd in a lot of ways. I’m also a technician. I took that journey up into the front office and then into the back office. And I believe I’ve got really good insight into software setup that is often a big blind point for shop owners and process development and change and things like that. And I really appreciate Frank’s statement of getting out of the way. I am constantly impressed at how well my shop does when I’m not in their way. So I just got back from a two week vacation last week and everything went absolutely fantastic. So I’m pretty excited to be here today with you guys and to kick off a new season of Shop Talk Radio. This has always been super fun.
Lauren Thunen (04:33):
Awesome. Sweet. And then of course we have AutoVitals fearless leader. Jon joining us as well. Jon will be taken and moderating most of today’s session. So I’m going to hand it over to Jon in just a minute and I’m going to pop back and turn my camera off. Anyone who has questions, dump them into the q and a section on the bottom of your zoom tab. If it comes up naturally in conversation, we will answer it as we go through. If not, save them till the end and we’ll make sure to leave at least five minutes to answer your questions if you have ’em as they come up. So Jon, why don’t you take it away?
Jon Belmonte (05:04):
All right, awesome. Thanks gang. Frank, Doug, great to see you guys again.
Frank Scandura (05:08):
Hello. Good to see you, Jon.
Jon Belmonte (05:10):
Yeah, so I’m glad we talked a little bit about, I appreciate you guys walking a little bit through your transition into coaching or what got you excited about coaching. What would you say are what the hardest things, what are the hardest things you think? Let’s start right there. What are the most challenging aspects you face in your coaching business? Frank, do you want to start us off?
Frank Scandura (05:40):
Sure. The biggest challenges helping the men and women that I coach understand they have to let go. They really think control is the answer to success and it really isn’t. And if you’re constantly battling with your employees on process, I want cars, I want you to walk around the car before it comes in and point out any damage to the customer. Okay. Boss is usually the example and then it doesn’t get done and they’re fixing scratches and dents and damaged bumpers because they’re not pointing it out to the customer. And if I say, look, what’s going on? I thought and I were in agreement that were going to start doing that. And their usually something like, well, they won’t do it. They being the service advisor or the staff. And I’m like, oh, and why are they still working there? Tough love. So getting to understand that you’ve got to let go you to learn to hold yourself accountable. You’ll never be able to hold your team accountable if you don’t hold yourself accountable. You have absolutely no authority to tell them what to do and expect them to do it.
Jon Belmonte (06:59):
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Doug, how about you? What’s one of the toughest things that you’ve faced as you’ve started to build out your coaching practice?
Doug Brackett (07:12):
Yeah, I’m going to relate this back to when I was being coached as well too, which of course I still have a coach and I hope everybody out there has a coach. But I would always poke fun at my coach as we would bring things up in our meetings with, oh, I do it this way and I do it this way and I do it that way. Shop owners are anarchists is what I would tell ’em. Everybody wants to do it their own way. Everybody has tried to solve the same issues in different ways with different approaches. Some of them are similar, some of them aren’t. But it is getting shop owners to realize that there is some very, very well documented ways to go about what we do. There’s things that work and there are things that are proven not to work, and there’s always a lot of, well, that would never work for me kind of thing. Right.
Frank Scandura (08:10):
I love that. Yeah, I love it when I say that. I said, oh gee, that’s funny. It works for everybody across the country in every climate and you’re the only shop it won’t work for. Come
Doug Brackett (08:20):
On. Yeah, totally. So I think this is very much along the same lines as Frank, right? It’s getting into shop owners heads to get them to see more than what they were seeing before, right?
Jon Belmonte (08:36):
Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, again, we’re not as AutoVitals, we’re not on the coaching business, but we are in the onboarding and the training and we provide best practices and advising along the way, which is part of the reason that these partnerships with coaches work so great for us. And we face that too. It’s convincing shop owners and managers and then in turn employees of why they want to make these changes genuinely. Are they showing up to coaching or training sessions thinking, well, I know I should be improving and I know I should be investing some time and money in this, but I don’t really have my head around the fact that I’m going to have to make some changes or it’s going to work, or if I really put my energy into this or commit that I’m going to get their results.
(09:30):
It’s a funny thing, people, everybody has their own best intentions at heart. It’s kind of a strange thing to say, but we find a lot of times we’ve got to really get underneath and get them to understand and agree, okay, so we’re in agreement that a system and a process is good, right? Chaos and free flowing is not good and we all want the same results for the shop. Okay, great, then we’re going to agree that we’re going to implement this and really try it. And if you can convey that to shop owners, then you can help them convey it to their team because the difficult technician or service advisor, Frank, that you were referencing, that holds ’em hostage, so to speak, if you get them to agree if the manager or the shop owner gets ’em to agree, well, we all want the same thing. We want the shop to be successful, we want our clients to be successful, we want the shop to make more money, then you do better. Do we all agree that that is our goals? Awesome. Then let’s agree on the way to get there. And I’m sure you spend a lot of your time, both of you trying to convince clients and shop owners that
Doug Brackett (10:41):
Well. And I think you’ll understand this very well in AutoVitals from the sales process, shops are looking for silver bullets and they’re not out there. There are definitely far, far better tools, guns, I suppose, in this analogy, but it’s how they get used that is the critical piece.
Jon Belmonte (11:04):
Yeah, agreed. So Frank, how do you get past that? How do you get a shop owner to really buy in and then convince them to get their team to buy in?
Frank Scandura (11:17):
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. So we start with measureables. What is it that you’re measuring? What is it you’re looking for? I’m really amazed at how many shop owners don’t track gross profit dollars, don’t track inspection rates, don’t track inspection sent rates. It’s almost like, oh, everybody’s doing digital inspections. I need to do a digital inspection. And they take three pictures. Jon, the work we’re doing at Autotech IQ where we are actually evaluating the inspections that you are doing shop owners from the customer’s point of view. And when we show them to you from that point of view, you’re going, oh my gosh, this is not as good as I thought it was. So how do we measure the success on it? And especially one of my favorite stats is a RO with and without an inspection, it’s like eating as if I’m on an episode of my 600 pound life and not understanding why I don’t lose weight without doing an inspection. It truly is that mind boggling. It’s like, you know, need to do better and you’re not doing it honestly.
Jon Belmonte (12:28):
Well, it’s like signing up for a diet program or a gym membership and then not going, or not following through on it and then not understanding.
Frank Scandura (12:35):
Perfect analogy. I saw a joke about that where somebody says, I signed up for the gym six months ago, I’m going to go down there and find out why it’s not working.
Jon Belmonte (12:43):
Right.
Frank Scandura (12:46):
That’s great. And stop using your digital inspection program as an expensive camera. You have to learn how to give value to the inspection process. You have to learn how to hold your team accountable to do all that. But you touched on something too. I don’t think I’ve ever met a shop owner who was doing really well and said, I wonder if I can get a coach and do a little better. It’s usually the guys and gals who are like, I want to set the building on fire, but the insurance company will just repair it and I’ll have to keep doing this. I’ve got to do something different. I’m hitting my head up against the wall, I’m working my butt off. I’m not making any money. What am I doing wrong? Alright. And I’ve had clients that I’ve worked with that have said, alright, but I’ve tried everything else, so everybody else has screwed me. So now it’s your turn. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not how it works. I’m going to share with you what I learned, how I transitioned my mindset from an employee to a business owner because it’s completely different.
(13:48):
Jon Belmonte, could you take a tablet and do an inspection?
Jon Belmonte (13:52):
Sure.
Frank Scandura (13:52):
Okay. And I’m surprised because I wouldn’t expect that from you. I expect you to run the company at a
Jon Belmonte (13:57):
Level. Well, I probably think I could. Okay. I probably think I could. And then I’d probably go take three or four pictures and I’d probably do a B minus inspection because I haven’t had all that training and I haven’t had the follow through and looked at my data.
Frank Scandura (14:11):
But my point being not your job,
(14:15):
Okay, your job is to put people in place that know how to do it. My job is to put people in place that know how to do it. And that’s what you guys need to understand. You need to treat your job like the business that it is to quit treating it like a job. And that’s what happens. Most shop owners, they’ll spend 20, 30 years frustrated and they’ll go to sell it and they realize they’ve got no retirement, they still have debt on their house, they’ve got car payments, they’ve got credit card debt. Now I need a million dollars for a business that’s worth 250 or 300,000. So it’s get a coach. I have a coach, Doug said he has a coach. It’s a game changer. And AutoVitals, you’re kind of into coaching business because some of the stuff that we worked on years ago, the drop off script, picture policies, having things in place, creating consistency in your process. And I see a lot of familiar names on the attendees list. If you’re not fully using all the functions of the automation in auto models, shame on you because having text automatically put on pictures and notes automatically put on there. And these things that are just one, two clicks, one two clicks, one two clicks is game changing. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of different systems and I’m like, I’m flabbergasted on how they’re claiming to be a great DVI process. So
Jon Belmonte (15:41):
Yeah, one of the sort of mantras I guess that we have around here and that I have in management and in coaching and things like that is, and I challenge the people around me with this question all the time, especially when I’m talking to, so for me, I’m often talking to managers or leaders in my organization about how they work with their teams, but it’s very similar to a shop owner or a shop manager. And what I put out there all the time is, does that person want to feel successful or do they want to be successful? And that is a question I ask all the time and I try to put either people on the spot or managers or I will put out to a group. So the behavior of somebody who wants to feel successful is I’m going to translate this into let’s say shop ownership.
(16:35):
I signed up for DVI or I’m making sure we have tablets and people are taking three pictures or we enable the internal chat or I’m paying more for services or whatever the case is, right? I told people they have to use it. That’s all about feeling successful. I’m checking the box and doing the things that I’m supposed to do. But the real question is, are you doing the things that are going to make you successful? Are you committed to being successful? Are you going in and looking at the data? Are you going in and following up on that difficult employee who it’s the best thing for them and for the organization and for the shop to be following through on the best practices and doing those things, doing the hard stuff. It’s not just showing up and doing what you’re supposed to do, it’s showing up and then following through and fighting through the challenges or going three layers deep. So let me shift gears a little bit. Let’s talk about this balance of coaching and ownership, Doug. So how have you kind of balanced that, right? What’s your balance between coaching and shop ownership look like? What’s kind of enabled you to do both and how have you approached that?
Doug Brackett (17:57):
Yeah, I mean I really dove into it. I guess head first. I take things on right from the front. I’ve really learned to enjoy doing that hard work. So it’s been about communication with my staff, letting them know what I’m doing with my coaching. I talk to them about taking on new clients who we’ve got we’re working with, and I carve out pieces of my day, my Tuesdays and Thursdays at least for all the middle part of the day are set aside so that I can work on my coaching business. If the coaching happens to be slow that week, I can dive that back into working on the shop business as well. But, and it’s been about time management, but also being really transparent with all my staff on what my goals and intentions are, where I want to be as well. I don’t think I can emphasize enough what you just said about doing the hard work. It takes a lot of energy to get into that stuff. We often build it up so much in our heads that we’re so afraid to make these changes and do the hard work, but once you really get into that, the rewards that are there are incredible.
And I love that piece of do the actions actually line up with the outcome that I want from this? And so much of the time in so many areas of people’s lives, they dont. And it frustrates them and puts them behind. We know there’s a lot of frustrated shop owners out there that are not taking the actions that line up with the intent that they want to have happen. So one of the big challenges I see in this coaching stuff is that process development. We see people get new tools and try to jam the new tool into the old process. That’d be like trying to figure out how to get your air hose hooked onto your electric impact. It seems crazy, but it happens all the time with shot process. Sometimes we just have to toss that baby out with a bath water and start all fresh.
Jon Belmonte (20:20):
And that’s a really interesting point because there’s a lot of elements to being a successful shop owner and shop leader and manager and whatnot. Some of it is inherent, some of it is some of is going to be specific to your shop, but a lot of it is going to be, a lot of it is going to be best practices that have been tried and are well known. Well trot and ground, right? I mean, Frank, you’ve been there. I’m sure you could talk about this a bunch. You’ve probably tried tons of new processes, new things, new systems, new everything in your shop, and you stuck with the ones that worked and you abandoned the ones that didn’t. And to me, that’s one of the real values of, it’s one of the real values of having a coach and it’s one of the real values of obviously using a platform like AutoVitals and our best practices in our systems.
(21:13):
But you get to learn off of the backs of other people’s experience and mistakes. And when you’re a coach, you’re so well networked also, not only have you seen what worked really well in your shop and didn’t work in your shop, you’ve talked to a lot of other shop owners. You’ve gotten on to live through their experiences. You’ve talked to other coaches and whatnot. So Frank, are there any things that you can kind of build on there in terms of best practices that you’ve learned, worked or didn’t work and why it’s really valuable for people to be able to learn off of your experiences and other coaches’ experiences?
Frank Scandura (21:50):
And I started when I realized that this isn’t working. I’m doing something wrong. I got a coach and I capped out. I got to where, okay, I need more. And then my next move was a 20 group. And then you’re in a room of people doing things and sharing ideas and then capped out. I hit that ceiling. I needed to break through and get more. And that’s when I joined a Transformers Institute as a shop owner in their mastermind, which is absolutely next level. And as a coach for Transformers Institute, one of the things we hammer home is the book Rocket Fuel. And most shop owners are visionaries. And that means we have crazy ideas all the time. And when we walk in the room and go horror, it’s great idea. And we walk out of the room, everybody goes, well, I don’t know what to do with that. So the Rocket Fuel Book talks about having that integrator, that’s that person who can take that idea and put the rubber to the road, create the process to it, or tell the sometimes crazy visionary, we can’t do that. You don’t have $8 million for us to do that, so it’s not going to work.
(23:06):
And the whole premise of that is now you get a strong visionary with a strong integrators like adding rocket fuel to your business and it launches. And that’s the whole point of hiring people better than yourself. Most managers are really, really good integrators. Most visionaries are really, really bad managers. And I did a presentation for auto vials a few years ago on this, so it’s probably floating around somewhere. And it was from shop beating to shop meeting is what it was called. And owners can relate to this. Things go wrong. You get everybody together, you’re yelling, screaming, you say, here’s a new process. I’m so sick and tired of this crap. Go do your job better. That’s a shop beating, right? When you learn how to properly care for your people, you get them together on a regular basis. We do it once a week and we have a shop meeting where we talk about issues, we talk about wins, we talk about losses, we talk about goals.
(24:00):
And then the old days of having 24 point all caps font on a new process Frank made when he was screwed into the ceiling now becomes a group effort. Everybody gets input, everybody gets feedback. One of the having a lot of employees, 18 employees, you can’t all discuss what needs to be done. You have to have things documented. And one of the things we struggled with is when we park cars inside and you park under another car and that car is dripping fluid, you can’t park under it. And we learned that we would tell a person, don’t park under that car. Nobody else knew and somebody else parked under that car and Frank’s painting a hood. So we all came together with a process on how to identify, and it was a real simple process that nobody parks under that car, but we did it as a team and it became a process everybody was involved in and everybody was on board with it. Everybody understood the why and I don’t freak out anymore. So the secret is learning how to create these processes, learning four bullet points sometimes is all you need. Look at that. They found it. Shop meeting to shop meeting, webinar.
Doug Brackett (25:07):
There you go. I remember that webinar, Frank, and it made me really look at what our meetings look like. Absolutely. And part of what you’re talking about there is process development is a big piece of that. And I really think the leaders in this industry really understand that rapid process development and implementation is a huge component of successful shops like yours and mine, Frank.
Doug Brackett (25:32):
And that’s not something that can be dictated. This is a team effort. Come up with an idea, try things out, but you need everybody’s feedback to know whether this is something worthwhile or not.
Frank Scandura (25:44):
And as a visionary who’s trying to come up with a solution to a problem, I’m not in the trenches. Jon, I kind of picked on you a little bit earlier. I’m not in the trenches, so I want to speak to the people who are in the trenches who are going to say, if we do that, this may happen. I didn’t realize that. Okay, let’s take another angle at it. And if you’re the kind of manager owner says, all right, all right, we’re going to fix this problem. Let’s hear some ideas. And then somebody said something and you go, that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Who’s next? And everybody’s just going to go,
(26:14):
Got nothing for you, boss. Sorry. And you probably have some of those problems. If you have a high turnover, you probably have some of those problems. If you don’t have people knocking on your door and going, Hey, man, I heard this is a great place to work. I’d really like to talk to you about it, and I want you to really think about this process is getting it out of your head and documented for everybody else for consistency. And if you don’t do that, you hire somebody, you tell them what to do, and then the next hire is told by that person, the next hire is told by that person. And the next thing you know, it’s the game of telephone and the person on three, four people down goes, oh, I didn’t know we gave rides. Oh, I didn’t know we did free inspections. Oh, I didn’t know that. So
Jon Belmonte (27:01):
Really formalizing it, formalizing it, make sure it’s solidified from the very beginning all the way through. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that you touched on and you both touched on that I find super interesting is I know in our business it’s easy for us as trainers or as we’re onboarding folks and training them on the platform and the solution and the best practices, it’s easy for us to try to convince the implementer, the shop owner or the shop manager on why they should want to use the tools or really adopt them or follow through on the data or what the benefit to them is going to be. But in the end, we really, the most important thing we’re doing is what you’d call almost like a train the trainer methodology. So I think we’re most impactful when we convince a shop owner or a shop manager during implementation of how they then go and convince their team and their employees why it’s important to them.
(28:00):
You touched on this point, which is, look, we’re going to be doing this and here’s what I think you want. You want some autonomy, you want me trusting to do your job really well. You want want to work in an environment that’s really under control and not chaotic, depending on how your shop compensation plan is set up. You want to make more money, you want to feel great about your job. These tools will enable that. I think a lot of times shop manager or shop owners, they kind of skip past that part and they’re like, Hey, we signed up for this solution, or we’re going to implement this best practice, or we’re going to start doing this thing. And it’s more of a kind of top down as opposed to explaining like, Hey, here’s why these things are really great for you. Are we all on agreement? Are we all on board that this is going to be really great for results and for our customers and for, yeah, it’s going to be great. And then to your point, if you’re sticking to the data so it’s not personal, it’s like, Hey, I told you this and we didn’t do this. Just start going through the reports. Let the reports and the data speak for themselves. You
Frank Scandura (29:07):
Can’t manage what you don’t measure. The numbers never lie.
Jon Belmonte (29:10):
Right, exactly. And if you’re not following up, then people know it’s not important,
Right? If you’re not following up in team meetings or individually. So I want to ask a coaching question that I’m kind of fascinated about because I think a lot of people are on this Zoom or on this webinar, are interested in coaching. They’re either coaches or they’re interested in coaching. They may be interested in getting a coach and whatever the case is. So tell me about how you transition from giving away a ton of free advice, just being a good guy, being a mentor. How do you transition from being a mentor to a coach? We all do it. If you’ve been doing something for a long time, people come and ask you questions or in my case, they don’t ask me questions, but I just tell them anyway. How do you go from giving that away for free to kind of being in that business? Doug, why don’t you start off and then Frank, I know you’ve done lots of these so you can give a more varied answer.
Doug Brackett (30:12):
Yeah, Frank is going to blow my answer out of the water. I’m sure here because I’m new at this, so I just started my consulting in January. I’m still figuring out where I fit into this whole world as well too. So I do provide lots of free advice and have worked on what my value is to my clients, and I’m in a pretty different space from working for a larger coaching company the way Frank is and things like that as well too. How do we build that up? I am incredibly confident that the work I’ve done over the last 18 years in my shop has value for more than just my shop. And it’s the realization that this can help a lot more people than who I’m reaching right now than are in my immediate, relatively small group, which let’s be honest, is pretty darn successful shops anyway.
(31:11):
So it’s about how do we reach more people? What are we giving back to this industry as coaches, what is your purpose? So after getting into coaching a little bit, I had some really serious thoughts about why am I doing this? What is my purpose here? And had to, I’ll reference Simon Sinek in the Infinite Game. I love that book because I love the thinking that’s in there and it’s about what is the vision that’s larger than me, that’s larger than my company, that’s larger than my consulting. And for me, that’s the progress of this industry, the professionalization, the moving this whole industry up. We have so many challenges in the outside perception of what we do and who we are that are not actually representative of the people that work in this industry. I don’t think there’s 1% of shop owners out there to rip people off. I really, really don’t. How often do people feel ripped off by their mechanic shop? I would argue all the time.
Jon Belmonte (32:24):
Sure. Right.
Doug Brackett (32:25):
And why is that? We have communication struggles. We have self-image problems. So I think the value is in what I can bring to that for people. And I’m pretty lucky I get to work with, again, pretty awesome shops to begin with, and we are looking to elevate. I don’t take on the really small project kind of broken situations. I want to be the guy pushing that to the next level. And that’s what I think really excites me about it. And when I’m excited about what I’m doing, that’s just infectious.
Jon Belmonte (33:06):
That’s awesome. Frank, how about you? What was the transition from Free Frank to paid Frank?
Frank Scandura (33=:19):
I have a number of friends in Las Vegas who own shops, and it’s not uncommon for me to go to their shops, spend time with ’em, and it’s hard for me to connect with men. And so when I find guys that I could connect with, I’d really cherish those relationships. And I walk into their shops and says this, did you look at this? Did you notice that? Did you see that? It don’t matter. Nobody cares. It don’t work here. And it’s really disappointing because they look up to me for the business I built, and it made me realize that the prophet has no value in his hometown. The definition of an expert is somebody who goes to another town to tell someone how to do something. They already know what they should be doing. And there’s a lot of truth to that. I have done hundreds of webinars and podcasts between auto AutoVitals and Carm copy’s stuff and Autotech IQ stuff, and I love helping people, but the truth is, you can hear the information, but are you prepared for implementation?
(34:30):
And that’s where the one-on-one coaching really makes a difference. That’s where the group coaching really makes a difference. And part of the mastermind process is, okay, this is what I’m trying to implement. I’m struggling here. And then you get people who, the mastermind itself is phenomenal. You’ll have people who’ve been there done it and say, this is what I’ve done, that’s worked. This is what I’ve done. That’s worked. And then all of a sudden the brain power just starts kicking in and ideas just start flowing, right? It’s really quite miraculous. So getting people to understand, look, you can read all you want, you can read all the books you want. What are you doing to implement what you need to do? And that’s why, that’s the value I bring. I’m going to help you do it. I’m going to hold you accountable or I’m going to fire you. I’ll fire clients. There’s nothing more frustrating to have the same discussion every two weeks. Did you do it? No. Did you do it? No. Did you? I’m busy. I had to Right service, I had to order parts. I had to go drive a customer. Okay. When you’re ready for change, let me know.
Jon Belmonte (35:27):
Yeah, yeah. Building on that point, I’ve read a number of times, creating and building a successful business is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It’s coming up with the idea whether it’s the new idea that start the business or how to change things or whatnot. 1% of that is like aha. Right? All the work and all the results come from busting your butt and really kind of committing. Have you guys come across situations where folks have asked you to coach them and you’ve had conversations, you’ve said, you know what? I don’t think this is a great fit, or I’m happy to give you a little advice, but not, I don’t think this is a great fit. We shouldn’t do this.
Frank Scandura (36:18):
Yes. And I have to be honest, and it’s like just because you can afford to pay me doesn’t mean I’m entitled to your money. I want to know we connect. I want know you’re going to listen. I want to know you want to make changes. I have one gentleman reach out to me, he owns a used car lot, and he’s thinking of opening a repair shop. So I said, are you opening the repair shop to feed your used car work too, to get discounted order repairs? He said, yes. I said, don’t do it. I can’t help you. If you want to open a repair shop to serve your community to bring value to people, including your used car customers, then I’ll help you. But if you’re just looking for discount auto service, you want to learn how to open that shop, I’m not your guy. I’m not going to help you do that. That’s not a good business model in my opinion. So that it’s a perfect example of, no, we can’t work together. And the other side is true, where they talk to talk, we can’t walk the walk and it’s like, Hey, man, I’m going to cut you loose. I’m not making any progress. I have got to know I’m making a difference in your life. I’ve got to know I’m making your life better and I’m making your company better. And if you won’t implement anything, we talk about, let’s save your money, you’re just wasting your money.
Jon Belmonte (37:36):
Makes
Doug Brackett (37:36):
Sense? Yeah. I think what you’re talking about there really is how do you decide what kind of coaching to go after as well too? What are you looking for if you’re ambiguous about that and you’re like, I just need a coach, it doesn’t matter which coach, let’s get a coach, hire him, spend my money. You better come into that relationship with some expectations and goals and where you want to move with that. And I think part of what Frank was saying as well too, the personality fit for your coach is going to be at least as important as any particular lane of coaching, let’s call
Frank Scandura (38:22):
It. That’s really important because I’ve heard people say they’ve hired a coach and the coach just says, demands, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. And never has a why behind it never understands the culture of the company and the mission of the owners and what their true vision is for their company.
Jon Belmonte (38:38):
Yeah, agreed. Well, and establishing it as a formal professional coaching relationship, it just creates that level of commitment. It creates not only a level of commitment by you, the coach, but by the person who’s receiving the coaching. And that’s important. If the person is willing to step up and say, yes, I’m going to do this, and it puts you in a position as a coach to constantly go back and say, you’re paying for this. Let’s follow through on these things. Let’s follow through anything I saw know come through a minute ago. So what would you say to somebody I know to wrap up some of your thoughts on this, what would you say to somebody who is thinking about going into the coaching business? What’s one or two tips that you could give them in terms of how to figure out if it’s for them or maybe how to get started or whatever those the case is? Doug, why don’t you start?
Doug Brackett (39:45):
I think the starting point has to be figuring out your why. It really does. Why do you want to do this? What is fueling this passion for people? And then the second component of that is what are your qualifications? Why? So I think most of us get into this coaching space somewhat organically. As Frank said, we’re out there, we’re visiting other shops. Shop owners have so much in common. When the personality fit is there, we have great friends that do similar things, right? So is that what you’re looking for? Do you want more of that contact? Do you feel like an outsider in this industry? Well then maybe coming into the coaching space of it isn’t going to work for you, and what are you looking to work on? I would argue that getting into coaching has helped me so much with my leadership skills and my shop.
Jon Belmonte (40:58):
Makes sense. Frank, let’s take the opposite side of that, which is what would you say to a shop who’s thinking about getting coaching? So shop who has not really done coaching, they’ve seen other people do it, or maybe they tried it once, they didn’t love it. What would you say to them as they evaluate if coach if getting a coach is right for them?
Frank Scandura (41:19):
So treat your coach like an employee in the respect that you’re going to vet them and interview them and understand their process and their style. I know a coach who leaves it up to his clients to schedule meetings and he is got like a 90% no-show rate. I say, okay, Thursday’s 3:00 PM twice a month, I’m going to send you a calendar invite. I expect you to accept it, and they’re going to get notifications. That’s when we meet, clear your calendar. Don’t waste my time is my attitude because I’m not going to waste yours. So interview your coach, make sure you guys connect and make sure that your goals align with their teaching style.
(42:01):
If your goal is to grow your company, get the maximum out of your building and build a really first class operation, that’s completely different than, look, man, I only want to ’em be open Monday through Thursday. I want to have enough money to go to the beach every other week and I’m cool. So completely different styles and just truly understand what you’re getting into. If you’re signing a contract, understand clearly what the contract is. I don’t have a contract. If you call up Transformers Institute and we don’t get along after three months, we’re done, don’t worry about it. Move on. We’re not going to get to a fight over that. So it’s just really important to understand the company, what they offer, digital assets, training it a lot of depth. It’s not just about, Hey Frank, what do I do?
Jon Belmonte (42:53):
Yeah, I have to say, Lauren, before I wrap up, any questions or any things that we want to go through?
Lauren Thunen (43:04):
Nope, no questions from the audience. I of course have a few questions if we have some extra minutes, but go ahead and wrap this up.
Jon Belmonte (43:10):
No, go ahead. Ask a couple other questions.
Lauren Thunen (43:13):
Cool. Well, one thing, Frank that stood out to me is kind of your either get on board or you’re out the door mindset. And with 14 bays, I’m sure there’s some people in the audience that are like, how do you keep your bays full if that’s your mentality? That’s one of the biggest things I hear from shop owners who are nervous to implement a new tool is that their employees will walk out. How do you kind of manage the hard line of if you’re not on board, you’re out with the current shortage of our industry for good technicians and staff?
Frank Scandura (43:42):
Yeah, so good people want to work for good companies and good companies pay well, offer good benefits, offer flexibility when necessary. A few years ago, I had a tech who couldn’t get there on time every Tuesday and Thursday and I said, dude, what’s going on? What’s going on with Tuesdays and Thursdays? And he was really upset and distraught. He goes, my wife works early those days. I have to bring my kids to school. I says, no problem. Can you be here by eight 30? He goes, yeah, pressure gone, problem solved. And now he can take care of his family. So you need to understand how to really treat people. You’ve got to learn how to be a leader.
(44:21):
We’re in a different world today. People are different. We’ve got to teach accountability. You’ve got to hold yourself accountable and people need boundaries. If you’ve got little kids, they need boundaries. If you’ve got employees, they need boundaries. When there are no boundaries, then everybody runs a muck. And then you’ve got those really good people in the background going, this place sucks, man. They’re completely out of control. They don’t see what that guy’s doing there all the time. He sucks to break fluid out, calls it a break flush flag in 1.2 hours, I’m out of here. And you don’t understand why he left because you don’t have a good communication system. You don’t have boundaries, you don’t have expectations, and you don’t have measurements.
Lauren Thunen (44:59):
Awesome.
Doug Brackett (45:00):
Speaking on really quickly here, sir Lauren, go for it. But when you do a really good job as a leader to train your staff and set expectations, I’ve found that the people that aren’t on board with that will take themselves out of the equation, hire for personality, not skills. Build the skills,
Frank Scandura (45:25):
Build the skills.
Doug Brackett (45:26):
Yeah.
Frank Scandura (45:28):
I love when a shop owner hires a new service advisor and goes, okay, you’re experienced service advisor, thank goodness. Go do your job. And he goes hide somewhere. And he comes out and he goes, who the heck showed you how to do it like that? What are you an idiot? That’s not how we do it here. And there was zero training, zero onboarding, and it’s like, and you wonder why we’re burning through people in this industry.
Lauren Thunen (45:51):
Yeah, no, great answer is that if you have an attractive place to work, people will want to work there. And if you train them, they’re going to do better than if you don’t train ’em. Last question for you, Doug. I know you just went on a two week vacation. You’re managing two businesses for most shop owners that probably even just taking a week vacation might feel years out. Was there one moment or change that you made that enabled you to free up some time? So you weren’t working 60 hours a week in your business, or was it gradual in? How long did that shift take for you?
Doug Brackett (46:28):
I feel like it was fairly rapid when I got into the coaching, and it came down to things that Frank kicked off right at the beginning of this was getting out of their way, hiring people that are better at their jobs than you are, which really encourages that I’m going to get out of the way mentality. Very much so. This has been the most time off I’ve ever taken in a year. I took, I think seven weeks of vacation this year. Went to Europe, went across the country, rode my motorcycle for weeks on end, went down into Moab in the States with my oldest daughter. And it’s actually amazing to me how much those vacations help me be so much more effective when I’m here. So step back so that when you can get back to Intuit, you’re fresh, you’re engaged, you’ve got, and honestly, I spent a little over two weeks by myself on my motorcycle visiting shops.
(47:37):
There were a lot of shops. I stopped in and on the way. I know people all over this province and it was awesome introspection time for me. It was time to think about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it where I’m at, and God, I love shop owners. What an incredible group of people. So much fun out there. People are amazing. It is so good to see. And I think so much of the time we focus on the things that are the challenges with shops and man, we live a good life as shop owners. So enjoy that and then come back to your shop with renewed vigor to dive in and help your team.
Jon Belmonte (48:21):
Doug, how does, I have one last question I ask each of you and then we’ll wrap up. I know we’re at or around time, but there’s always more time. How does your use of AutoVitals at your shop help enable your coaching business? Whether it’s gives you more time, gives you more expertise to help folks, how would you tie those two things together?
Doug Brackett (48:47):
Well, interesting. I’m sure like Frank, we’re power users in AutoVitals. We have developed a lot of our internal process to leverage the tool as well as we possibly can. And hey, guess what? We are still working on it. We’ve just been doing some DVI service advisor training, in fact with Frank as well too. So Frank’s one of my coaches and it’s constant development, but taking that into that space where shop owners go, they’re not using the tool as intended, and it gives me really good perspective to be able to see you’re circumventing things. Why are you doing that? They took old process and tried to jam new tool into the old process. And really we just have to start with that development. So if there’s one thing that shop owners and implementers can really work on is how do we develop process in such a way that makes sense for the tool? And that requires a lot of collaboration with the people that built the tools, right? Both Frank and I have had the benefit of working very closely with AutoVitals over many, many years to help direct development. And that has given us the opportunity to elevate our shops to the point where they are now with our partners. You’re not on an island as a shop. It
Jon Belmonte (50:21):
Makes a lot of sense. Frank, what about you? How has your reliance and adoption of AutoVitals in shop, how has that helped support you as a coach? Whether it’s frees up more time for you to spend on coaching or provides insights or success or whatever the case is?
Frank Scandura (50:39):
Yes, and that’s exactly what I was going to say. It frees up time where I can instantly couple clicks away from seeing how we’re doing, understanding inspection rates, inspection, sent rates, customer view times, and here’s a feature request. Let’s do open rates. Let’s see how many of those inspections got opened. I know I can do it manually is critical, right? Because before I had the ability to go click, click, click. How come he’s not sending inspection, 99% sent rate over here and a 40% rate over there. Hey, we talked about this. Remember you were in agreement, you’re going to send all the in. So it frees me up from worrying about what’s getting done. I don’t have to stand over somebody to make sure they’re pushing. It gives me a really incredible tool to help shops set expectations. I’m doing this, this is my result.
(51:37):
That’s why I’m do this. So you can have the same result. And then to be able to, anybody who’s seen me online knows and been coached by me hundreds of times. I’ll show my dashboard. I’ll show my today’s vehicle. You’ve got 50 cars in a parking lot. You don’t have a clue what’s going on because you don’t have a workflow process. You’ve got people running around looking for cars, wasting time. Look, this is valuable. So it helps me. It’s definitely been part of my success. I think we had a $450 a RO before we started with all the vitals. Now we’re 1500. So is it all AutoVitals? Most of it, because I’ve got high quality inspections and high quality standards and high quality expectations, but I’m measuring it and I couldn’t do it without automobile. So we couldn’t manage, we’ve got 80, 9800 cars at any given time in our parking lot. There’s no way to manage that without a nice, well laid out digital inspection process.
Jon Belmonte (52:38):
Great. Well, I have to say, so let me wrap up with a parting thought, which is part of the reason that we wanted to organize this webinar is that there really is a very close, logical, natural connection between AutoVitals and coaches and coaching. So we love working with coaches, individual coaches such as yourself, coaching organizations, transformers, a TI, companies, auto Tech iq, repair shopper tomorrow. I mean, the list goes on and on. We love working, we love working with coaches. And candidly, we love working with shops who work with coaches because it shows that they’re committed to their shop success, right? That’s a term that we’ve used for a number of years, which is we’re here to help shop owners maximize their shop success for themselves, for their employees, for their customers. And if you’re committed to a coach or you’re part of a 20 group, you’re part of a coaching organization, you have an individual coach, then we know you’re committed to being objective about your business, investing in your business, not just box checking.
(53:51):
Because most folks who do get in with a coach and really start going through the program, they’re not box checkers. They’re not the folks who say, oh, I signed up for this thing. Good. I can move on. It looks like I’m doing what I need to be successful. They’re actually committed to their own success and the success of their employees and their community and whatnot. So we love it. So I would appreciate it. We’ve learned so much from you guys over the years, and I’m excited. DSTR is back, and we had said we weren’t going to go a full hour because people said it was just too much time and too much commitment and too much content. And here we are at 54 minutes basically there. I also want to want to recognize and credit UVA Klein Schmidt and Tom Dorsey, the originators of the DSTR, the OGs, the DS TR OGs. And I’m confident that we’ll actually have I, I’m very confident we’ll have at least one of them on a future DSTR, and maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll even get both.
Frank Scandura (55:04):
We’ll have to drag Tommy away from bringing a grandfather.
Jon Belmonte (55:06):
Exactly. I know, I know. Sydney just came back from maternity leave. She works here and she’s thrilled. And yeah, I’m excited that we at least get to work with one Dorsey.
Frank Scandura (55:17):
There you go.
Jon Belmonte (55:18):
But maybe we’ll get Tom back on the show. Yeah, grandparenting and sandwiches.
Frank Scandura (55:23):
Yeah. And some good food, man. If you guys are ever charged, you’ve got to go to,
Jon Belmonte (55:27):
Yeah, if you’re a venturer, you got to get out there
Frank Scandura (55:29):
And which, yep.
Jon Belmonte (55:31):
Alright. Awesome. Well, Doug, thank you very much, Frank. Thanks very much, Lauren. I appreciate you as always making the trains go and getting us started on time and look forward to the next one. We’re excited. Thanks again, fellow. Thanks everybody
Frank Scandura (55:47):
Very much for having me. Thanks everyone. Yeah. Appreciate being here. Thank you.
Jon Belmonte (55:50):
Yep. Bye.
Lauren Thunen (55:51):
Bye.