KUKUI

Your KUKUI Website Just Got Smarter for AI Search

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 19:44:00 GMT

What We Built, Why It Matters, and What’s Coming Next

You may have heard the term AEO recently.

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. If SEO is about showing up in search engine results, AEO is about showing up in AI answers. When a customer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google’s AI Overviews for a recommendation, AEO is what determines whether your business gets mentioned.

Both matter. Neither replaces the other. They’re companions, and there’s significant overlap in what drives them.

We’ve been writing about this for months in our AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map blog series . We’ve published research on what drives AI visibility, how AI reads your reviews, what signals AI trusts most, and what doesn’t work. If you haven’t been following along, the full series and our free white paper are available at kukui.com/ai-insights .

But we haven’t just been writing. We’ve been building. This post is about what we’ve done, and what’s coming next.

What’s Already Live on Your Site

These improvements have been deployed across all KUKUI client websites.

Improved content accessibility for AI. We’ve enhanced how your website content is rendered so that AI search platforms can read and interpret it more effectively. When tools like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or Gemini evaluate your business, they can now access more of your site’s content directly. This makes your website a stronger signal when AI decides who to recommend.

Enhanced structured data. We’ve improved the structured data across KUKUI sites to help AI platforms better understand each shop’s services, specialties, and business information. Think of structured data as a machine-readable summary that helps AI make sense of what your site offers without guessing. It’s the difference between AI having to interpret your site and AI being told exactly what you do.

llms.txt files. We deployed these across all KUKUI sites in September 2025. They provide AI models with a structured overview of your site, including page listings, meta titles, and descriptions. They update automatically whenever you publish or edit a page. ( We wrote about this here. )

Together, these improvements make KUKUI websites more readable and more useful to the AI platforms that are increasingly shaping how customers find local businesses.

AEO Is Bigger Than Your Website

Website improvements are important. But AI visibility is driven by more than your website alone. Our blog series has covered this in detail, and it’s worth summarizing here because a lot of what drives AEO is work KUKUI already does.

Reviews. AI reads the text of your reviews, not just your star rating. Responding to every review is an engagement signal AI can see. Our AI Review Responder ( https://www.kukui.com/ai-review-responder ) was trained specifically for auto repair and helps shops respond consistently without it becoming a time sink.

Google Business Profile. GBP is one of the primary data sources AI pulls from when deciding who to recommend. Categories, services, photos, posts, hours. Gemini pulls directly from Google’s own data, making your GBP especially important for Google’s AI features.

Directory listings and NAP consistency. AI models cross-reference your business information across the web. Conflicting information makes you less likely to be recommended. Our Yext integration keeps your listings consistent across directories automatically.

Social media engagement. Social engagement was recognized as a local ranking factor for the first time in 2026. Our Social Toolkit handles consistent posting across Facebook, Instagram, and Google Business Profile.

Email and CRM. This is the newest frontier. Google’s Personal Intelligence can now reference a customer’s Gmail inbox when generating search recommendations. Every appointment confirmation, service reminder, and follow-up email your shop sends is a data point AI can potentially use. Your CRM work just became AI visibility work.

Call insights. AI Call Insights ( https://www.kukui.com/ai-call-insights ) analyzes your phone calls, scores conversations, and surfaces patterns. It doesn’t replace your team. It gives them better information to coach from, which improves the customer experience that drives reviews, referrals, and the reputation signals AI trusts most.

What Our Research Shows

We’ve been running AI visibility audits across hundreds of locations since March 2026. Here’s what we can share:

AI visibility is primarily driven by Google local search presence. ChatGPT Search and Gemini surface businesses from the same core signals as Google Maps.
Core SEO and web authority work produces the most durable improvements, with a 6-10 week lag before results show.
Mass-producing content does not improve AI visibility. Quality beats volume in every search environment.
The businesses that show up consistently across AI platforms share the same traits: strong reviews, complete GBP, quality content, consistent business information, and community presence.

We’ll be publishing detailed research findings in an upcoming blog post. The data is still maturing, and we want to share conclusions we’re confident in.

What’s Coming Next

The improvements described above are live now. We have additional AEO enhancements in development that will continue to improve how AI platforms interpret and recommend our clients’ businesses. These will be applied automatically as they become available.

We’re also continuing our AI visibility research. Every month gives us more data, more patterns, and a clearer picture of what actually moves the needle. We’ll keep sharing what we learn through the blog series and through direct communication with our clients.

The Bigger Picture

AEO is not a replacement for SEO. It’s not a separate product you need to buy. It’s the natural evolution of what good digital marketing has always been: making your business findable, credible, and trustworthy wherever customers are looking.

The places customers look are expanding. Search engines. AI tools. Review sites. Social media. Community forums. Email inboxes. The shops that build a strong presence across all of these channels are the ones that show up everywhere.

That’s what we’re building for. Not a single ranking factor. Not a shortcut. A foundation that works in every search environment, today and whatever comes next.

For the full picture on AI and your marketing: AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map blog series and The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing . Both are free and available to any shop owner.

If you’re new to the series:

Catch up on the series: Post 1 • Post 2 • Post 3 • Post 4 • Post 5 • Post 6 • Post 7 • Post 8 • Post 9 • Post 10

For the full framework: The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing .

Heather Myers is the Chief Technology Officer at KUKUI, where she builds marketing and customer engagement technology for independent auto repair shops. Before joining the automotive technology space, she built information systems for public and academic libraries.

This is the eleventh post in our ongoing series, AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map . New posts publish every two weeks.

The AI Signals You Can't Fake or Force

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 15:42:00 GMT

Why the Sources You Don't Control Matter the Most

Throughout this series, we’ve talked about the things you can control to improve your AI visibility. Your Google Business Profile. Your website content. Your review responses. Your service descriptions. All of that still matters. It’s the foundation, and without it, nothing else works.

This post is about the additional layer that most shop owners aren’t prioritizing yet.

Reddit threads. Facebook group recommendations. Nextdoor suggestions. Car forum discussions. Yelp reviews. These are places where real people talk about real experiences with real businesses. You can’t optimize them. You can’t pay for them. You can’t automate them.

There is no single smoking gun for AI visibility. It’s not your website alone. It’s not your GBP alone. It’s not these uncontrolled channels alone. It’s everything working together. But this layer is the one most businesses are ignoring, and it’s worth understanding why AI pays attention to it.

Why These Signals Carry Weight

AI models weigh different sources differently when deciding who to recommend. Your website and GBP are important because they’re detailed and structured. Your Google reviews are important because there are a lot of them, and they’re easy to verify.

But uncontrolled sources carry their own kind of weight, precisely because they’re hard to game.

You can write your own website content. You can craft your GBP description. You can manage your Google review profile. AI models know that businesses control those channels. That doesn’t make them less valuable. It just means AI also looks for corroborating signals from places you don’t control.

A customer recommending your shop in a local Reddit thread? That’s unsolicited. Unpaid. Unscripted. It’s one more data point that confirms what your website and GBP are already saying. When the controlled and uncontrolled signals align, that’s a strong recommendation.

The data backs up how much attention AI pays to these sources. The 5W AI Platform Citation Source Index, which analyzed over 680 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other major AI models, found Reddit at the top of the citation hierarchy across most platforms. Not because Reddit is more trustworthy than your website. Because it’s a different kind of evidence that complements everything else.

The Sources AI Is Reading

Beyond your website and Google, here’s where AI models are pulling information about your business:

Reddit. Local subreddits like r/[YourCity] are where people ask "who do you trust with your car?" and get real answers. AI models see these threads as peer recommendations. Most subreddits have strict rules around self-promotion, and posting about your own business will get you downvoted or banned in many of them. Some have specific windows for it (like weekly self-promotion threads), and shop owners can always participate as community members by being genuinely helpful. But the mentions that carry the most weight with AI are the organic ones: a real customer recommending your shop without being asked.

Yelp. Here’s something most people don’t know: Yelp is licensing its review data directly to OpenAI. Your Yelp reviews aren’t just on Yelp. They’re being fed into the AI models that power ChatGPT search. A strong Yelp presence with detailed reviews is no longer optional. It’s a direct input to the system.

Facebook groups and Nextdoor. Community recommendation threads (“Does anyone know a good mechanic?”) are exactly the kind of content AI models use to identify trusted local businesses. These conversations happen every day in every market.

Car enthusiast forums. Niche communities where people discuss specific vehicles and repairs. If your shop specializes in a particular make or type of work, forum mentions from satisfied customers carry significant weight.

Third-party review sites. CarFax, RepairPal, BBB. AI models cross-reference reviews across platforms. A shop with strong reviews on multiple sites sends a stronger trust signal than one that only exists on Google.

Industry directories. ASE, ASA, AAA Approved Auto Repair. These are professional trust signals. Being listed in recognized industry directories tells an AI model that your business is established and credible.

The Baseline: What Tools Handle for You

Before we talk about what only you can do, let’s cover the foundation. There are tools that handle the consistent, repeatable work that keeps your digital presence active and accurate across platforms.

Consistent posting. Social media needs to be active. Not once a month when you remember. Consistent. KUKUI’s Social Toolkit (shameless plug) handles two professional posts per week across Facebook, Instagram, and Google Business Profile. That keeps your profiles current and signals to AI that your business is active.

Directory listings and NAP consistency. Your business information needs to match everywhere. Name, address, phone number, hours, services. Every discrepancy is a trust signal in the wrong direction. We offer Yext as an add-on that syncs your information across directories automatically. (Also available bundled with Social Toolkit.)

Review responses. We’ve covered this in depth over the last few weeks. Responding to every review, on every platform, consistently. KUKUI’s AI Review Responder handles this, trained specifically for how auto repair shops talk to their customers.

This is the floor. It keeps the lights on across your digital presence. And it matters. AI models do look at posting frequency, listing accuracy, and review engagement.

But it’s not what separates you from every other shop in your market.

The Layer Only You Can Add

Two posts a week keeps your profiles active. What makes them real is the content that could only come from your shop.

The photo of your tech holding the weirdest thing they pulled out of an engine this week.
The post thanking a customer by name for ten years of loyalty.
The before-and-after of a repair that shows your team’s work.
The community event you sponsored. The Little League team. The car show.
The answer you gave in a local Facebook group when someone asked a car question. No pitch. Just helpful.

None of this can be automated. That’s the point. AI models are learning to distinguish between a business that has a social media presence and a business that has an actual community presence. The automated posts tell AI you’re active. The real content tells AI you’re trusted.

This also applies to how you engage. Responding to comments on your posts. Answering questions on Nextdoor. Being genuinely helpful in Facebook groups without ever mentioning your shop name. The shops that do this naturally are the ones that get mentioned when someone else asks for a recommendation. And those mentions are the signals AI values most.

What You Can’t Control but Can Influence

You can’t write your own Reddit thread. You can’t script what someone says about you in a Facebook group. You can’t make a customer post about you on Nextdoor.

But you can be the shop they think of when the question gets asked.

Every Reddit recommendation, every Facebook group mention, every forum thread where someone says “go see [your shop], they took care of me” started the same way: a customer had an experience worth talking about.

That means the single most effective thing you can do for AI visibility in these uncontrollable channels is exactly what you’d do anyway if AI didn’t exist:

Provide exceptional service.
Communicate clearly.
Follow up after visits.
Handle problems honestly.
Be visible in your community.

AI didn’t create the value of reputation. It just made reputation visible in a new way. The shops that have been doing this for years are discovering they have an AI advantage they didn’t know they were building.

Monitor What’s Out There

You can’t control these channels, but you should know what’s being said. A few simple steps:

Search your shop name on Reddit. Go to reddit.com and search your business name. You might find nothing. You might find a recommendation thread you didn’t know about. Either way, you should know.

Set up Google Alerts. Free. Takes two minutes. You’ll get an email whenever your shop name appears on a new web page.

Ask AI about your shop. We covered this in Post 2 . Open ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude and ask: “What can you tell me about [your shop name]?” Then ask: “Who would you recommend for auto repair in [your city]?” The answers tell you where you stand.

Check your reviews beyond Google. Yelp, CarFax, RepairPal. Are your profiles claimed? Are reviews being responded to? These platforms are feeding AI directly.

The Bottom Line

AI visibility isn’t one thing. It’s everything.

Your website. Your GBP. Your reviews. Your content. Your directory listings. Your social presence. And the conversations happening about your business in places you don’t control. No single channel wins on its own. They work together. When a customer finds you recommended on Reddit, then sees a strong GBP profile, then reads detailed reviews, then lands on a website with real expertise? That’s how AI recommendations become phone calls.

And those calls are different. A customer arriving from an AI recommendation has already been informed. They've already been told your shop is the one to trust. They're not browsing a list and comparing five options. They're closer to a decision before they ever reach your site. That's a fundamentally different kind of traffic than traditional search delivers.

Tools can automate the foundation. Consistent posting. Directory accuracy. Review responses. That’s important work, and it’s worth doing well.

But the signals that complete the picture are the ones that can’t be automated. A real customer recommending your shop to a stranger on Reddit. A detailed Yelp review describing a specific experience. A Facebook group thread where three people all say the same shop name.

We can automate the foundation. Nobody can automate your reputation. And AI knows the difference.

What’s Next

Next in the series, we’re tackling a question shop owners keep asking AI: “How do I compare to my competitors?” AI will happily give you an answer. It’ll look like competitive intelligence. We’ll show you why it’s not, and what a real competitive analysis actually looks like.

If you’re collecting reviews (or thinking about how to collect more of them), you’ll want to read both.

Catch up on the series: Post 1 • Post 2 • Post 3 • Post 4 • Post 5 • Post 6 • Post 7 • Post 8

For the full framework: The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing .

This is the ninth post in our ongoing series, AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map . New posts publish every two weeks.

What the Fastest-Growing Multi-Location Auto Repair Shops Have in Common

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:09:00 GMT

New KUKUI Data Reveals How Leading MSOs Are Scaling Revenue, Improving Customer Retention, and Driving Measurable Growth

Growing from one location to several is one of the most challenging transitions an auto repair business can make.

As businesses expand, complexity increases. Marketing becomes harder to manage. Customer communication becomes inconsistent. Operators lose visibility into which activities are driving revenue and which are wasting time and money.

The most successful multi-location operators solve these challenges by building systems that make customer engagement, marketing performance, and operational reporting measurable.

To understand what drives growth among high-performing operators, KUKUI analyzed five years of performance data from multi-location auto repair businesses between 2021 and 2025.

The findings reveal a consistent pattern: businesses that centralize customer communication, marketing attribution, and customer retention initiatives are growing faster than those relying on disconnected tools and manual processes.

Revenue Growth Accelerated When Shops Built Repeatable Customer Acquisition Systems

Between 2021 and 2025, revenue among KUKUI multi-location clients increased approximately 85%. The businesses that experienced the strongest growth were not relying on a single marketing channel or occasional promotions.

Instead, they built repeatable customer acquisition systems that allowed them to consistently generate demand across every location.

These operators typically implemented:

Website visitor tracking
Search engine marketing campaigns
Google Business Profile optimization
Online scheduling
Trackable phone numbers
Marketing attribution reporting
Automated follow-up campaigns

Rather than guessing where customers were coming from, they were able to identify which channels produced appointments, repair orders, and revenue.

One Hawaii-based multi-location operator generated more than $26 million in annual revenue while continuing to grow year after year. A large Texas-based repair group surpassed $20 million in annual revenue using similar customer acquisition and tracking strategies across multiple locations.

The lesson for owners is simple:

Growth becomes easier when every location follows the same customer acquisition process and every marketing dollar can be measured.

Marketing Attribution Became a Competitive Advantage

One of the strongest findings in the dataset involved matched revenue—revenue directly connected to marketing activity. Between 2021 and 2025, matched revenue increased approximately 270%, significantly outpacing overall revenue growth.

What changed?

The most successful operators stopped treating marketing as an expense and started treating it as a measurable business system that guided return on investment (ROI).

Using KUKUI's attribution tools, they were able to track:

Website leads
Online scheduling conversions
Calls generated from marketing campaigns
Email campaign performance
Text message engagement
Digital advertising results

This gave leadership teams visibility into which channels were producing actual revenue.

Instead of asking:

"Did our marketing work?"

They could answer:

"Which campaign generated the most revenue and should receive more investment?"

One multi-location operator generated several million dollars in marketing-attributed revenue while significantly improving visibility into customer acquisition performance. The result was not simply better reporting. It was better decision-making.

Text Messaging Became One of the Highest-Performing Revenue Channels

Text-attributed revenue increased more than eightfold between 2021 and 2025. This growth was driven by a simple reality: customers respond when communication is convenient.

The highest-performing operators used automated text messaging to:

Send service reminders
Confirm appointments
Follow up after visits
Promote maintenance recommendations
Re-engage inactive customers

Instead of relying entirely on outbound phone calls, these businesses built scalable communication systems that worked across every location.

One six-location operator in the Mountain West region generated substantial year-over-year growth in text-attributed revenue while improving customer engagement across all shops. Another large multi-location operator generated more than $400,000 in text-attributed revenue through customer communication programs.

The takeaway is clear:

When customers receive timely, relevant communication, they are more likely to schedule appointments, return for service, and remain loyal over time.

Customer Retention Improved Through Consistent Engagement

Many operators focus heavily on acquiring new customers while overlooking one of the most valuable growth opportunities: retaining existing customers.

The strongest-performing businesses in the dataset consistently invested in customer retention programs.

They used KUKUI tools to:

Track customer visit history
Monitor service intervals
Send maintenance reminders
Launch customer loyalty initiatives
Automate follow-up communication
Re-engage inactive customers

As a result, customer engagement increased significantly. In 2025 alone, KUKUI multi-location clients generated more than 650,000 leads while maintaining strong customer interaction across multiple locations. Several leading operators generated between 18,000 and 20,000 annual leads while continuing to expand revenue and shop count.

The most successful businesses understood that retention is often more profitable than acquisition. Every retained customer lowers acquisition costs and increases lifetime value.

Operational Efficiency Improved Through Platform Consolidation

As businesses grow, software sprawl becomes a serious problem.

Many operators end up managing separate systems for:

Text messaging
Email marketing
Lead tracking
Reputation management
Reporting
Scheduling
Marketing attribution

This creates complexity, duplicate work, and inconsistent data. The highest-performing operators in the dataset increasingly moved toward centralized workflows.

By consolidating customer communication, marketing performance, reporting, and engagement tools into a single platform, they were able to reduce operational friction and improve visibility across all locations.

Leadership teams could see:

Marketing performance
Customer activity
Revenue attribution
Appointment trends
Retention metrics

When the teams were able to see the data in a single unified system, they had better decision-making, improved accountability, and stronger execution across every location.

What This Means for Multi-Location Operators

The data suggests that growth is not simply a function of opening more locations.

The fastest-growing operators are building systems that allow them to:

Measure marketing performance
Improve customer retention
Automate communication
Track customer behavior
Simplify operations
Scale consistently across every location

KUKUI helps make those systems possible by bringing customer communication, marketing attribution, online scheduling, loyalty programs, website analytics, reputation management, and reporting into a unified platform.

The businesses that embrace these capabilities are creating a competitive advantage that becomes more valuable with every new location they add.

Key Findings at a Glance

Revenue among KUKUI MSO clients increased approximately 85% between 2021 and 2025
Marketing-attributed revenue increased approximately 270%
Text-attributed revenue increased more than 8x
KUKUI clients generated more than 650,000 leads in 2025
High-performing operators consistently invested in measurable marketing and customer retention programs
Businesses that consolidated customer engagement and marketing workflows achieved stronger operational efficiency and visibility

Ready to See What's Possible?

The most successful multi-location operators are not relying on more effort—they are relying on better systems.

Schedule a demo to learn how KUKUI can help your business streamline marketing efforts, improve visibility, strengthen customer retention, and drive measurable and profitable growth across every location.

Google Changed the Rules on Reviews

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:01:00 GMT

What Every Shop Owner Needs to Know About Review Gating

I talk to shop owners every day. And over the last few months, the same topic keeps coming up: reviews.

Not whether reviews matter. Everyone knows they do. The question is how you’re getting them. And for a lot of shops, the answer is a process that Google just made very clear is not OK.

In April 2026, Google updated its review policy with some of the biggest changes in years. No announcement. No email. The rules just changed. And if you’re collecting reviews the way many businesses have been, there’s a good chance your process now violates Google’s policy.

I’m writing this because I don’t want any shop owner to find out the hard way.

What Is Review Gating?

Review gating is the practice of filtering which customers get asked to leave a public review based on how satisfied they are.

It usually works like this: after a visit, the customer gets a feedback request. If they respond positively (4 or 5 stars), they’re directed to leave a Google review. If they respond negatively (1 or 2 stars), they’re routed to an internal feedback form where the issue can be handled privately.

The logic makes sense on the surface. You want to resolve problems before they become public. You want your Google profile to reflect happy customers.

The problem is that Google has always prohibited this. And as of April 2026, they’re actively enforcing it.

What Changed in April 2026

Google updated its Maps review policy on April 16 and 17, 2026. Here’s what’s now explicitly banned:

Review gating. Filtering customers by sentiment before sending a review link. This was always against policy. It’s now being actively enforced.
Asking for reviews while the customer is on your premises. This includes verbal requests at the counter, review kiosks, and tablets in the waiting area.
Review kiosks or shared devices. Any setup where customers leave reviews on a shop-owned device is now explicitly against policy.
Staff review quotas. Setting targets like “we need 10 new reviews this week” or running leaderboards for which service advisor gets the most reviews.
Asking customers to mention specific content. Directing customers to name a specific employee or mention a specific service in their review.

Google’s enforcement systems blocked or removed 292 million policy-violating reviews in 2025. Those same systems are now applying the new rules. This isn’t theoretical. Reviews are being removed. ( You can read Google’s full review policy here )

Why This Matters More Than You Think

I know what some of you are thinking: “I’ve been doing this for years and nothing has happened.”

That’s changing. Google’s Gemini AI now actively scans for review gating patterns. It can detect when a business consistently receives only positive reviews through a particular collection channel while negative feedback never reaches Google. The pattern is the signal.

The consequences are real:

Google can remove individual reviews or all of your reviews at once.
Your GBP visibility can be reduced or your profile can be suspended.
The FTC has authority to pursue civil penalties for deceptive review practices. In 2022, they fined Fashion Nova $4.2 million for hiding negative reviews.

And there’s a trust issue that goes beyond enforcement. 96% of consumers specifically look for negative reviews before making a decision. A profile that looks too clean actually raises suspicion. Customers are smart. A 5.0 rating with nothing but glowing reviews and zero criticism doesn’t build trust. It breaks it.

The Software Problem

Here’s what I want every shop owner to understand: many of the tools that facilitate review gating are built into reputation management software. If your current provider’s “reputation management” feature sends customers to one place for high ratings and another for low ratings, that’s review gating. It doesn’t matter that the software is doing it automatically. The practice is the violation, not the method.

Google has started targeting the software tools that facilitate gating, not just the businesses using them. If your tool is built to gate, you’re at risk whether you realized what it was doing or not.

This is worth a direct conversation with your provider. Ask them: “Does your review request process send all customers to Google equally, or does it filter by rating or sentiment first?” If they can’t give you a clear answer, that tells you something.

What the Right Approach Looks Like

The compliant approach is simple. It’s actually simpler than gating:

One request. Send the same review request to every customer. Not just the ones you think had a good experience. Everyone.
After the visit. Not while they’re standing at the counter. Send it after they’ve left. Email, text, whatever your process is. The timing matters.
Neutral language. Don’t ask for a five-star review. Don’t ask for a positive review. Ask them to share their experience. “We’d appreciate it if you could share your experience on Google” is compliant. “If you had a great experience, please leave us a review” is gating in disguise.
Paced as a drip. Don’t send 50 review requests on the same day. A steady, consistent flow of requests looks natural because it is natural.
No incentives. No discounts, no loyalty points, no free services in exchange for reviews. This has always been against policy and the enforcement is getting stricter.

That’s it. Equal treatment, sent after the visit, in neutral language, at a natural pace. The shops that do this well build review profiles that are authentic, diverse, and credible. That’s what Google wants. It’s also what customers trust.

How Our System Handles This

I work with our Reputation Management tools every day with clients. So let me walk you through how it actually works, because this is something I get asked about constantly.

Review requests:

When a repair order is closed, the customer receives a review request via text, email, or both. Same request. Same language. Every customer. The only personalization is their name.
The system has safeguards to make sure customers aren’t overwhelmed. Limits on how many requests go out across the system and how frequently any individual customer is contacted.
There is no satisfaction filter. There is no split path. A customer who had a great experience and a customer who had a frustrating one both receive the same invitation.

Follow-up:

Our Follow-Up module gives shops a checklist of customers to call and check in with. Thank-you calls after a visit, reminders for recommended services, check-ins with customers who haven’t been in for a while. These personal touchpoints build the kind of trust that naturally leads to reviews, referrals, and repeat visits.

Review management:

Our Reputation Management module lets shops see all their reviews in one place, across Google, Yelp, and other platforms. No logging into five different sites.
Shops can respond to reviews directly from the module. Manually, or using our AI Review Responder (https://www.kukui.com/ai-review-responder), which was trained specifically for the auto repair industry.
The AI Review Responder gives you options: generate responses one at a time, auto-generate with the ability to review and approve, or auto-generate and auto-post. You choose the level of control that works for your shop.

On your website:

We also have a module that displays your reviews and your responses directly on your website. This helps with search crawlers, AI models beyond just Google, and it shows potential customers that you’re active and engaged before they ever check your Google profile.

We built all of this to be compliant by design. Not because the policy required it (although it does), but because it produces better results. A review profile built on authentic, unfiltered feedback is more credible to customers, more useful to AI, and more sustainable over time.

If you’re a KUKUI client and want to walk through your review settings, reach out to your Client Success Coordinator. We’ll make sure everything is set up the right way.

What About Negative Reviews?

This is the part that makes shop owners nervous. “If I send review requests to everyone, I’ll get more negative reviews.”

Maybe. But here’s what I’ve seen after working with shops for over 30 years: the ones who respond to negative reviews well actually build more trust than the ones who try to suppress them.

A thoughtful response to a negative review shows potential customers that you care, that you listen, and that you’re willing to make things right. Research shows that 44% of customers will continue doing business with you if you respond to their negative review. And 80% of unhappy customers say they’d even leave a positive follow-up if you resolved the issue.

A negative review handled well is not damage. It’s a conversion opportunity.

But here’s the tough love: if you’re consistently getting the same kind of negative review, the answer isn’t to hide them. That’s a signal. A one-off complaint about wait times is normal. Five reviews in a row mentioning the same issue? There’s one thing in common, and it isn’t the customers.

This is where tools like KUKUI’s AI Call Insights can help. It analyzes your actual phone conversations, scores how your team handles calls, and surfaces patterns you might not see from behind the counter. If there’s a service or communication gap driving negative reviews, Call Insights helps you find it and fix it. That’s a better solution than filtering which reviews make it to Google.

And for responding to the reviews themselves, KUKUI’s AI Review Responder helps you draft thoughtful, personalized responses quickly so nothing goes unanswered.

What to Do Right Now

If you’re not sure whether your current review process is compliant, here’s what I’d tell you in a meeting:

Ask your provider how their review tool works. Does it send the same request to every customer? Or does it filter by satisfaction first? Get a clear answer.
Stop any on-premises review requests. No kiosks, no counter tablets, no services advisor asking for a review.
Review your messaging. Make sure your review requests don’t ask for positive reviews, don’t mention star ratings, and don’t ask customers to include specific content.
Respond to the reviews you have. Especially the negative ones. This is where trust gets built.
Don’t panic if your rating dips slightly. A 4.3 with authentic, detailed reviews is stronger than a 5.0 that looks manufactured. Customers know the difference. And increasingly, AI does too.

Why This Connects to AI Visibility

Our CTO Heather Myers has been writing about how AI is changing the way customers find repair shops ( AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map blog series ). One of the key findings: AI models don’t just count your stars. They read the actual text of your reviews.

That means authentic, detailed reviews from real customers are more valuable than ever. Not just for trust. For visibility. A profile full of gated five-star reviews that say “Great service!” gives AI almost nothing to work with. A profile with genuine reviews that mention specific services, vehicle types, and real experiences gives AI the context it needs to recommend your shop.

Summer Lee’s post from earlier this week goes deeper on how review content shapes AI visibility ( Read the Post Here ). If you haven’t read it yet, I’d recommend it.

The bottom line: doing reviews the right way isn’t just about compliance. It’s about building the kind of review profile that works for you everywhere. With customers. With Google. And with AI.

Lori Metzler is the Senior Director of Client Success at KUKUI. She has spent over 30 years in the automotive industry and over 10 years at KUKUI, helping shop owners grow their businesses through marketing, technology, and genuine customer relationships.

The Impact of Customer Reviews on AI Visibility for Auto Repair Shops

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:42:00 GMT

Why detailed customer reviews are becoming one of the most important signals for AI-powered search and local business recommendations.

For years, online reviews have helped auto repair shops build trust with potential customers. A strong Google review profile could help your shop stand out in local search, earn more clicks, and give drivers confidence before they ever pick up the phone.

Now, reviews are doing something even bigger.

As ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI-powered search tools become part of how customers find local businesses, the words inside your reviews can influence how AI understands, describes, and recommends your shop.

In other words, reviews are no longer just reputation signals. They are training signals, context signals, and visibility signals. For auto repair shops, that means the content of a customer review matters.

AI Search Is Looking for More Than a Star Rating

A five-star review is valuable. But a five-star review that says, “Great service!” does not tell AI very much.

A detailed review, on the other hand, gives search engines and AI tools specific information they can use to understand what your shop is known for.

For example, compare these two reviews:

“Great shop. Highly recommend.”

Now compare that to:

“I brought my Toyota Tacoma in for a brake inspection and oil leak diagnosis. The team explained the repair clearly, sent photos of the issue, and had everything done the same day. Honest pricing and great communication.”

Both are positive. But the second review gives AI far more useful context.

It mentions:

Vehicle type: Toyota Tacoma
Service: brake inspection
Repair concern: oil leak diagnosis
Trust signals: honest pricing, great communication

That kind of detail helps AI-powered discovery tools connect your shop with searches like “Toyota repair near me,” “brake inspection,” “oil leak mechanic,” or “honest auto repair shop.”

Google has said local rankings are based on relevance, distance, and prominence, and review count and review score can factor into prominence. Google also notes that complete, accurate business information helps it better understand and match businesses to searches.

Why Review Content Matters for AI Visibility

AI tools are created to summarize, compare, and recommend. Instead of simply showing a list of blue links or map results, AI search experiences often generate an answer.

A customer might ask:

“Who is the best BMW mechanic near me?”
“Find an honest auto repair shop that works on Subarus.”
“What shop near me is good with check engine light diagnostics?”

To answer those questions, AI systems look for patterns across available information. That can include your website, Google Business Profile, review platforms, directories, forums, social media, and other third-party mentions.

Google’s own AI-powered place summaries are designed to help users understand places faster by summarizing useful information from Maps data, reviews, and other place-related content. Google has also expanded Gemini-powered experiences in Maps, making local discovery more conversational and recommendation-driven.

That means AI doesn’t only consider whether your shop has good reviews, but it looks closely at what customers repeatedly say about you.

If reviewers consistently mention “diesel repair,” “European vehicles,” “fair pricing,” “quick diagnostics,” “women-friendly shop,” “transmission rebuild,” or “hybrid repair,” those phrases help define your shop’s online identity.

Google Reviews Becomes AI Training Data

Google Reviews remain one of the most important sources of reviews for auto repair shops because they are directly connected to Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Business Profile, as we emphasized in the last blog. When customers leave detailed Google Reviews, they help Google understand your shop’s relevance for specific services, vehicle makes, locations, and customer needs.

This matters because a customer is not always searching for “auto repair shop.” They may be searching for a very specific need, such as their specific make or a specific service. The more your reviews naturally reflect those services and experiences, the easier it is for Google and AI-powered search tools to associate your shop with those searches.

Yelp Reviews Are Becoming AI Fuel, Too

Google is not the only platform using AI to summarize and recommend local businesses. Yelp has been investing heavily in AI-powered local discovery. Its newer Yelp Assistant is made to answer questions, make recommendations, and help users take action, such as booking appointments or connecting with local service businesses. Yelp has also introduced AI-powered Review Insights that analyze customer reviews to surface common themes and sentiment.

More importantly, Yelp data has also appeared in broader AI ecosystems; reporting from AP noted that Yelp had licensed some of its data to OpenAI for use in ChatGPT in February 2026.

That does not mean every Yelp review, forum thread, or third-party review automatically appears in every AI answer. But it does mean your shop’s reputation across the web can become part of the larger information ecosystem AI tools use to understand local businesses.

Reddit, Facebook Groups, and Community Mentions Matter

As we’ve covered in our other blog posts on AI search visibility, reviews do not only happen on traditional review platforms.

Auto repair recommendations often happen in community spaces, including:

Reddit threads
Facebook neighborhood groups
Local community forums
Car enthusiast forums
Nextdoor discussions
Local “best of” lists
Specialty vehicle groups

For example, someone might ask in a local Facebook group:

“Does anyone know a trustworthy mechanic in Portland who works on MINI Coopers?”

A past customer might reply:

“KUKUI Auto Repair has worked on my MINI for years. They diagnosed an electrical issue the dealer missed and explained everything clearly.”

That type of mention can directly influence human customers. It may also help AI systems connect your shop with specific services, vehicle makes, and reputation themes if the content is publicly accessible or cited by search tools.

AI visibility is built from repeated signals. The more consistent those signals are across the web, the more confidently AI can understand what your shop is known for. It’s important to note that you can’t control or buy your way into a local community group. And you can’t force someone to recommend you on Reddit. So, what can a shop owner actually do about these spaces?

You focus on providing the exact kind of specific, remarkable service that forces people to talk about you. Because when local community members look for recommendations, they seek specific evidence.

What Makes a Review AI-Friendly

An AI-friendly review is not fake, forced, or stuffed with keywords. It is specific, honest, and written thoughtfully by the customer.

The best reviews often include details like:

The service performed
The vehicle make or model
The problem the customer was trying to solve
How the shop communicated
Whether the repair was completed on time
What made the experience different
Whether the customer would return

An example includes:

“We use KUKUI Auto Repair Shop for our small fleet of Ford Transit vans. They help us stay on top of oil changes, brake repairs, inspections, and unexpected issues so our vehicles stay on the road. Great communication and quick turnaround.”

This review helps connect the shop to fleet maintenance, Ford Transit service, preventative maintenance, brakes, inspections, communication, and turnaround time.

What Auto Repair Shops Should Encourage Customers to Mention

Shops should never tell customers exactly what to write. Reviews need to be authentic and based on real experiences. But you can encourage customers to be specific.

Instead of saying, “Please leave us a five-star review,” your team might say:

“It helps other drivers know what to expect. Feel free to mention what service we helped you with and anything that stood out about your visit.”

Those details matter because AI tools look for meaning, not just ratings.

The Big Mistake: Chasing Stars Instead of Stories

Many shops focus only on getting more five-star reviews. That is understandable, but it is incomplete. A strong star rating builds trust. A high review count builds credibility. But detailed written reviews build context. As mentioned in Blog 8 of the AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map series, research shows the ideal average Google rating is between 4.2 and 4.5 stars. An overall perfect 5.0 can undermine trust because it looks too good to be true.

Context is what AI needs. If one shop has 300 reviews that mostly say “Great service,” and another shop has 150 reviews that repeatedly mention “fair pricing,” “brake service,” “clear communication,” and “same-day diagnostics,” the second shop may give AI more useful information to work with.

The goal is not just to collect reviews. The goal is to collect real customer stories that explain why someone chose your shop, what problem you solved, and what kind of experience they had.

Review Responses Can Strengthen the Signal

Your responses matter, too. When your shop replies to a review, you have another opportunity to naturally reinforce important context.

A shop response may look like this:

“Thank you for trusting us with your brake repair. We’re glad our team could explain the work clearly and get you safely back on the road.”

That response reinforces “brake repair,” “explained clearly,” and “safely back on the road” without sounding unnatural.

Responses also show customers that your shop is active, attentive, and engaged. In local search, Google encourages businesses to respond to reviews and keep their information up to date.

The challenge is finding the time. Between managing the front counter, coordinating with techs, and keeping the bays moving, sitting down to craft personalized responses to every review rarely makes the priority list.

Strategies for Building a Steady Stream of Reviews

Getting high-quality reviews consistently takes more than good intentions. It requires a process. With the right message, shops can encourage customers to share honest reviews that reflect the services provided and their experience.

A few traditional ways to build a steady stream of reviews include:

QR Codes: QR codes work well on printed materials that customers take with them, such as receipts, appointment cards, and invoices. Google's own documentation supports this as a compliant approach. What you want to avoid is collecting reviews while the customer is still in your shop.
Postcards and Direct Mail: A well-timed card sent after a visit with a simple review request can reach customers who aren't on their phones.
Text or Email Campaign: Sending a text or email a few days after a service keeps the request fresh. Including a direct, one-click link to your review profiles makes it incredibly easy for customers to share their feedback.
Personal Phone Call: Make a quick courtesy call after an appointment is an excellent way to ensure satisfaction. If the customer is happy with their experience, it creates a perfect, natural opportunity to invite them to leave a review.

As AI becomes a bigger part of how drivers choose local car repair shops, your reviews become more than social proof. They become part of how your shop is understood online.

How KUKUI Helps Shops Maximize Review Visibility

To bridge the gap between knowing you need reviews and actually finding the time to manage them, KUKUI offers automated tools built specifically for busy auto repair shops.

KUKUI's AI Review Responder (KAI): KAI analyzes the content and sentiment of each review and generates timely, personalized responses that feel genuine. You get the reputation benefit of responding to every review without pulling your team away from the work that keeps your shop running.
KUKUI's Follow Up Module: This tool helps your service advisors connect with customers by phone at key moments after a visit, including thank-you calls, reminders for recommended services, and check-ins with customers who haven't been in for a while. These personal touchpoints build the kind of trust that naturally leads to reviews as well as referrals and repeat visits.
KUKUI's Email and Texting Campaigns: Utilize KUKUI's Email and Text Marketing campaigns through KUKUI’s CP. You can seamlessly launch automated campaigns to ensure review requests are sent in a timely manner. The system automatically deploys service-related messaging as early as when a repair order is closed.

The Words in Your Reviews Matter

AI visibility is not just about ranking first. It is about being understood clearly enough to be recommended.

When customers describe your shop in detail, they help AI answer questions like:

What services does this shop specialize in?
What vehicles does this shop work on?
Is this business trusted by real customers?
What do people consistently praise about the experience?
Is this shop a good match for the searcher’s specific need?

The more specific, authentic, and consistent your reviews are, the stronger your shop’s AI visibility can become.

So yes, keep asking satisfied customers for reviews. But more importantly, encourage them to tell the story of their visit. Because in the age of AI search, the contents of the review may be what helps your next customer find you.

SOURCES

https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474050?hl=en

https://support.google.com/business/answer/10286840?hl=en

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/review-summaries

https://openai.com/policies/how-chatgpt-and-our-foundation-models-are-developed/

https://www.yelp-press.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2026/Yelp-Delivers-Record-Net-Revenue-in-2025-Accelerating-Investment-in-AI-Transformation/default.aspx

https://www.yelp-press.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2026/Yelp-Launches-the-New-Yelp-Assistant-Transforming-Local-Discovery-from-Search-to-Answers-and-Actions/default.aspx

AI and Your Google Business Profile

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:17:00 GMT

What's Changing, What Matters, and What to Do About It.

In Post 7 , we talked about how customers are starting to use AI to find repair shops. Google AI Overviews. ChatGPT. Gemini. Claude. The way people search is changing, and the businesses that show up in AI-powered results share a common set of traits.

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is at the center of almost all of it.

GBP has always been important for local search. But in 2026, it’s become something more: a primary data source for AI. When Google’s AI generates an overview, when Gemini recommends a business, when any AI tool tries to verify that your shop is real, credible, and relevant, your GBP is one of the first places it looks.

This post covers what’s changing about how AI interacts with your profile, and what you can do about it today.

AI Is Reading Your Reviews

AI models don’t just look at your star rating. They read the actual text of your reviews. The language, the detail, the sentiment. A review that says “great place” and a review that says “they diagnosed a misfire my last shop couldn’t find, explained everything clearly, and had my car ready the same day” are very different signals to an AI model.

The detailed review gives AI something to work with: what your shop is good at, how your team communicates, and what kind of experience a customer can expect. That’s the information AI uses when it decides who to recommend. And it’s not just Google. Yelp, CarFax, RepairPal, Reddit, Facebook groups. AI pulls from all of it.

Responding to reviews matters too. AI models see your responses. Thoughtful, specific replies in a timely manner signal that your business is active and engaged. Google is even testing an AI-powered reply feature inside GBP right now. It’s a step in the right direction, but a general-purpose tool built for every type of business doesn’t understand how an auto repair shop talks to its customers. The tone, the language, the way you handle a five-star review vs. a frustrated customer. That’s industry-specific knowledge.

Shameless plug: this is exactly what we built. KUKUI’s AI Review Responder (https://www.kukui.com/ai-review-responder) was trained specifically for auto repair. It matches the tone of your shop, not a generic template. And it’s integrated into your workflow so you can review, adjust, and approve before anything posts.

We’re going deeper on this topic next week. How review content shapes AI visibility, what makes a review “AI-friendly,” and a critical policy change Google made in April that every shop owner needs to know about. Stay tuned.

Your Profile Is Your AI Resume

Think of your GBP as the resume AI reads before deciding whether to recommend you. Every section matters.

Categories and services. Don’t just list “auto repair.” Use the detailed service descriptions to write clear, specific descriptions of what you do. “We specialize in brake diagnostics, engine performance, and fleet maintenance for domestic and Asian vehicles.” That’s information AI can use. “Full service auto repair” tells it nothing it doesn’t already assume.

Photos. Google’s Vision AI now scans the photos on your profile to verify your business category, services, and location. High-quality, regularly updated photos are no longer optional. They’re a signal. Photos of your actual shop, your team, your work, your waiting area. Not stock images.

Products and services section. This is one of the most underused sections on GBP. Most shops skip it or fill it out once and forget it. AI reads this section to understand exactly what you offer. Keep it current and specific.

Posts. GBP posts are fresh data points. Each one tells AI that your business is active and current. Seasonal tips, service highlights, community involvement, special offers. Posting consistently signals that someone is paying attention. (Shameless plug: KUKUI’s Social Toolkit makes this manageable with twice-weekly posts not just on GBP, but across Facebook and Instagram too, keeping you consistently active without the extra full-time effort.)

Hours and business information. Sounds basic, but inaccurate hours are one of the fastest ways to lose credibility with both AI and customers. If Google’s AI cross-references your hours with another source and finds a conflict, that’s a trust signal in the wrong direction.

Social Engagement: A New Ranking Factor

For the first time ever, social engagement has been recognized as a measurable local ranking factor. This comes from the Whitespark 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors report, which surveys the top local SEO practitioners in the industry.

This doesn’t mean you need to go viral on Instagram. It means that consistent, authentic social media activity sends signals that your business is real, active, and engaged with your community. AI models and search algorithms are now factoring this in.

For most shops, this means:

Posting regularly on the platforms where your customers are (Facebook, Instagram, Google Business Profile).

Engaging with comments and messages, not just broadcasting.

Sharing real content from your shop, not generic automotive tips from a content library.

One More Thing We’re Watching

In our AI search testing, we’ve observed a pattern worth noting: shops running Local Service Ads (AKA Google Verified Ads) through their GBP appear to have a slight visibility advantage in AI Overviews compared to shops that don’t.

There’s no published research or industry confirmation that running Local Service Ads directly improves your chance of being recommended by AI. As running LSA’s require shops to go through a process and receive a Google Verified badge, which is then a trust signal AI can see (and now appears in some AI Overviews).

Or, what’s possibly happening is a correlation, not causation. Shops that run LSAs tend to also have:

• More reviews (LSA ranking depends on review quantity and rating).

• Better response times (LSA rewards fast answers).

• More active, complete GBP profiles.

So shops that do well on LSAs are also doing the things that independently help with AI visibility. We can’t say LSAs cause better AI visibility. But the shops running them tend to be the shops showing up. That’s worth noting.

What to Do This Week

You don’t need to overhaul your entire online presence. But there are things you can do right now that will make a difference:

Respond to your recent reviews. Start with the last ten. Make each response specific to what the customer said. If you’re a KUKUI client, use the AI Review Responder. If you’re not, use the prompts from Post 3 or Google’s new feature.

Update your GBP services section. Make it specific. Write short, clear descriptions of what you actually do.

Post something to your GBP this week. A seasonal tip, a team photo, a service highlight. One post. That’s it.

Check your hours and contact info. Make sure they match your website and every directory you’re listed on.

Upload a recent photo. Something real from your shop. Not a stock image.

None of this takes more than thirty minutes. All of it feeds the AI signals that determine whether your shop gets recommended.

What’s Next

Reviews are so important to AI visibility that we’re dedicating two posts to them next week. First: how the content of your reviews shapes whether AI recommends your shop, and what makes a review “AI-friendly.” Then: a deep dive on review gating, a practice Google made major policy changes around in April 2026, and one that too many businesses are still getting wrong.

If you’re collecting reviews (or thinking about how to collect more of them), you’ll want to read both.

Catch up on the series: Post 1 • Post 2 • Post 3 • Post 4 • Post 5 • Post 6 • Post 7

For the full framework: The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing .

This is the eighth post in our ongoing series, AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map . New posts publish every two weeks.

Your Customers are Using AI Too

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:18:00 GMT

How AI Search Is Changing the Way People Find Your Shop

For six posts, this series has been about how shop owners use AI. How to prompt it. How to evaluate its output. How to tell the difference between a fact and a guess.

This post flips the lens.

Your customers are using AI too. And the way they find and choose a repair shop is changing because of it.

This isn’t a future prediction. It’s happening now.

What’s Changed

For years, finding an auto repair shop meant one thing: Google. You searched “auto repair near me,” you looked at the map pack, you checked the reviews, you picked one, you called.

That’s still the most common path. But it’s no longer the only one.

Google AI Overviews now appear at the top of many search results. Before the map pack. Before the blue links. Before the ads. A generated answer that summarizes what Google’s AI thinks is the best response to the query. Sometimes it recommends businesses by name.

Meanwhile, more people are searching directly in AI tools. ChatGPT. Gemini. Claude. Instead of typing a query into Google, they’re asking an AI: “Where should I get my brakes done near me?” or “What’s the best auto repair shop in my area?”

The results don’t look anything like a Google search page. There’s no map pack. No ten blue links. No ads. Just a recommendation. Maybe two or three. That’s it.

If your shop isn’t showing up in those recommendations, you’re missing a growing segment of potential customers who never saw you at all.

Is Organic Search Dead?

No. Let’s get that out of the way.

Google is still where the vast majority of customers find local businesses. Traditional search, the map pack, the blue links, the ads. That’s still the primary path to your phone ringing. AI-powered search tools still represent a small fraction of total search volume for local services.

But “small fraction” today doesn’t mean small fraction next year. The trajectory matters. More people are using AI tools to search every month. Google is integrating AI into its own results. And the shops that start paying attention now will have a significant advantage over the ones that wait until it’s obvious.

Think of it this way: the shops that took Google Business Profile seriously in 2015 had a two-year head start over the ones who waited until 2017. The same window is opening with AI search right now.

So no, organic search isn’t dead. But it’s no longer the only conversation. And the good news (we’ll get to this below) is that the same work that helps you in organic search also helps you in AI search.

The Consistency Problem

Here’s something about AI search that’s fundamentally different from Google: the same question doesn’t always get the same answer.

Try it yourself. Open two fresh conversations in ChatGPT. Ask the exact same question in both. You’ll often get different shops recommended, in a different order, with different reasoning.

Now change the phrasing slightly. “Where should I get my brakes done” vs. “I need a trusted mechanic” vs. “cheapest brake repair near me.” Different results again.

This isn’t a bug. It’s how these models work.

And there’s another layer. In Post 2 , we talked about how some AI tools have web search enabled, and some don’t. The same is true here. Whether an AI tool is searching the live web or answering from its training data changes the results entirely. A recommendation from ChatGPT with web search turned on and ChatGPT without it can be completely different shops. The customer has no idea which mode they’re in.

In traditional search, ranking is relatively stable. You can track your position. You can see where you stand vs. competitors. AI search doesn’t work that way. There’s no fixed position to rank for. The results are fluid, contextual, and different every time. That’s a fundamental shift from what we’re used to.

What We’re Seeing

We’ve been actively testing AI search visibility across platforms. Here’s what we can share so far:

Results vary significantly across platforms. Ask the same question on Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, and you’ll get different businesses recommended. A shop that shows up consistently on one platform may be underrepresented on another. There’s no single leaderboard.

Results vary within the same platform. Same query, two different conversations, different recommendations. Phrasing, conversational context, and whether web search is active all influence what comes back. This is not the stable, trackable environment that traditional search was.

The businesses that show up consistently tend to share the same traits. Strong reviews (quantity and quality). A complete, active Google Business Profile. Content-rich websites with genuine expertise. Consistent business information across the web. FAQ-style content that directly answers the questions customers ask.

Nobody has cracked the code. Not in this industry. Not in any industry. This is early days, and it’s reminiscent of the early Google era when ranking factors weren’t published, and the only way to understand what worked was through testing. That’s where we are right now with AI search. The platforms don’t publish how they decide which businesses to recommend. The only way to learn is to test, observe, and adapt. And what works today may not work the same way in six months, because these platforms are evolving faster than anything we’ve seen in search.

What Actually Helps

Here’s the good news: the fundamentals that drive organic and local search visibility are the same fundamentals that feed AI search. You don’t need to start over. You need to do what already works, and do it well.

Reviews. Probably the single strongest signal across every AI platform we’ve tested. Not just the number. The recency, the detail, and the sentiment. AI models are reading your reviews, not just counting them.
Google Business Profile. Complete, accurate, and active. Categories, services, hours, photos, posts. Gemini pulls directly from Google’s own data, so your GBP is especially important for Google’s AI features.
Content that demonstrates real expertise. Service pages that explain what you actually do, not generic descriptions. FAQ content that answers the questions your customers really ask. Blog posts that show you understand your craft and your market.
Consistent business information. NAP (name, address, phone) consistency across every directory, listing, and mention of your business on the web. AI models cross-reference multiple sources. Conflicting information makes you less likely to be recommended.

And it goes beyond your website and Google. AI models pull from a wide range of sources when forming recommendations:

• Third-party review sites. Yelp, CarFax, RepairPal. Your Google reviews matter most, but AI models see reviews across platforms. A shop with strong reviews in multiple places sends a stronger signal than one that only exists on Google.

• Industry directories. ASE, ASA, and other professional associations. These are trust signals. Being listed in recognized industry directories tells an AI model that your business is established and credible.

• Online forums. Reddit in particular. AI models reference forum discussions when people ask for local recommendations. If your shop gets mentioned in local Reddit threads, that’s real-world word of mouth that AI can see.

• Social media presence. Active, consistent social media signals that your business is real, engaged, and current. (Shameless plug: KUKUI’s Social Toolkit [LINK] helps shops manage this without it becoming a second job.)

Most of these are things you or your team need to build and maintain directly. They’re not things a website provider can do for you. But they’re part of the picture AI models see when deciding who to recommend.

On the technical side, we’re also working on ways to help AI platforms better understand our clients’ websites. Last year, we deployed llms.txt files across KUKUI sites, which provide a structured summary that helps AI models read and interpret site content. ( We wrote about that here . ) We’re continuing to test and develop new approaches as the landscape evolves.

What Doesn’t Work

There’s a temptation to hear “AI search is the future” and respond by generating hundreds of pages of content. More pages, more chances to show up, right?

Wrong. Mass-producing thin, repetitive content doesn’t help you in AI search. It doesn’t help you in traditional search either. Google already penalizes this as scaled content abuse (we covered that in Post 4). AI models are likely to treat it even more harshly, because they’re curating a single recommendation, not serving a page of ten results. They’re looking for signals that you’re a credible, relevant answer to the question. Volume doesn’t create those signals. It dilutes them.

Quality beats volume. Every time. In every search environment.

A Word of Caution

If you’ve been in this industry for any length of time, you’ve heard the pitch: “We’ll get your shop to the first page of Google. Guaranteed.”

That was the magic elixir of the last decade. A lot of shop owners paid for it. Some got results. Many didn’t. And the ones who got burned learned an expensive lesson about promises that can’t be kept.

AI search is going to produce the same kind of promises. “We’ll get your shop recommended by ChatGPT.” “We’ll guarantee AI visibility.” “Our proprietary system cracks the AI code.”

Be skeptical. The platforms don’t publish their recommendation criteria. The results change from conversation to conversation. Nobody has a reliable, repeatable formula. Anyone who guarantees AI search placement is selling the 2026 version of guaranteed first-page Google rankings. Same pitch. Same problem.

The shops that will come out ahead aren’t the ones who find a hack. They’re the ones who build a strong online presence that works everywhere: traditional search, AI search, and whatever comes next.

Where We Are

To be transparent, this is early. The platforms are changing constantly. What works today may not work the same way in six months.

That means doing the fundamentals right. It means working with providers who are actively studying this and adapting. And it means not chasing shortcuts that trade long-term credibility for short-term visibility.

We’ll keep sharing what we learn as we learn it.

What’s Next

Next in the series, we’ll look at how AI is specifically changing your Google Business Profile: AI-generated review summaries, business descriptions, and what Google’s AI features mean for how customers experience your listing before they ever visit your website.

Catch up on the series: Post 1 • Post 2 • Post 3 • Post 4 • Post 5 • Post 6 • Post 7 • Post 8

For the full framework: The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing .

This is the seventh post in our ongoing series, AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map . New posts publish every two weeks.

ChatGPT vs. the AI Powering Your Software

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:41:00 GMT

What Shop Owners Need to Know About the Difference

Everyone says AI now.

Your marketing platform says it uses AI. Google says your ads are AI-powered. Your CRM has AI features. Your competitors are talking about AI. And you’ve been using ChatGPT on your phone.

It all gets called the same thing. It’s not.

And the most important difference isn’t technical. It’s this: who stays in control? In some setups, AI gives you better information so you can make better decisions. In others, AI makes the decisions for you. Those are fundamentally different relationships with the technology, and they lead to very different outcomes for your business.

The shops that get AI right will be the ones that understand that difference. Let’s break it down.

ChatGPT: You’re Driving

When you open ChatGPT, you’re in the driver’s seat. You ask the questions. You evaluate the answers. You decide what to do with the output.

That’s a good setup. It’s what the first five posts in this series have been about: how to use these tools well, how to evaluate what they give you, and how to spot the places where they get it wrong.

But ChatGPT has limits that matter for your business:

It doesn’t know who you are. Every conversation starts from zero.
It doesn’t have access to your data - your CRM, your customer list, your call recordings, your campaign performance. None of it.
It can’t take action. It can draft an email, but it can’t send it. It can suggest a follow-up, but it can’t trigger one.

ChatGPT is a thinking partner. You control the conversation, you evaluate the results, and you decide what happens next. That’s its strength.

Platform AI: Same Engine, Different Vehicle

When a company builds AI into its platform, it’s using the same underlying AI models (through something called an API) but in a fundamentally different way.

The engine is the same. The vehicle is built for your business:

It’s connected to your data. Your calls. Your customers. Your campaigns. Your performance history. That context is what makes the output specific and actionable instead of generic.
It’s built for specific tasks. Not “answer any question.” Score a phone call. Analyze a customer interaction. Draft a review response. Flag a trend.
It can take action inside your workflow. Trigger alerts, update records, surface insights without you having to copy and paste between tools.
Your data stays controlled. The company building it controls how data is handled, where it goes, and what the AI can access. That’s a different privacy model than typing customer information into a public chatbot.

This is where the control question gets interesting. Good platform AI still keeps you in control. It surfaces information. It scores calls so your team can coach better. It drafts responses so your people can review and approve. It identifies patterns so you can make better decisions.

The human is still in the loop. The AI just made the loop faster and smarter.

Where Control Gets Lost

Not every implementation of AI keeps the human in the loop. And this is where shop owners need to pay attention.

Fully automated ads. Platforms like Google will happily let their AI manage your ad spend. Automated bidding. Automated keyword selection. Automated everything. It will optimize, but it optimizes for what Google measures, not necessarily for what drives real customers to your shop.

A general-purpose AI doesn’t know that “transmission repair” converts at a completely different rate than “oil change” for your type of shop. It doesn’t know the negative keywords that waste budget in your industry. It hasn’t spent years learning which search terms bring in real repair orders and which ones bring in tire-kickers.

That kind of knowledge is institutional expertise built over years in a specific industry. When a platform combines that expertise with AI, you get optimization that’s tuned for your business. When you let a general-purpose AI run your ads unsupervised, you get whatever the algorithm decides is efficient. Efficient and effective are not the same thing.

AI agents replacing human communication. Some tools promise to handle all customer follow-ups, status updates, and scheduling through AI. The pitch sounds great: fewer staff, more efficiency, less overhead. The reality is often chaotic. Contradictory messages. Wrong appointment times. Customers who feel like they’re being managed by a bot instead of cared for by a person.

The independent auto repair industry is built on trust. Trust is a human thing. AI can support the people who build that trust. It should never replace them.

What This Looks Like Done Right

Here’s the pattern to look for: AI handles the analysis. A human handles the relationship.

Call insights. AI listens to a call recording, scores the conversation, identifies whether the caller booked. Your service advisor still made the call. Your manager uses the insights to coach the team. The AI didn't replace anyone. It made the humans better at their job. (Shameless plug: we've already built this. KUKUI's AI Call Insights is in beta right now and launching soon.)

Review responses. AI drafts a personalized response to a Google review. Your team reads it, adjusts the tone, and approves it before it posts. The customer gets a thoughtful reply. Your team saved ten minutes. Nobody lost control. (Another shameless plug: this one's live. KUKUI's AI Review Responder does exactly this inside our platform.)

Customer insights. AI identifies which customers are overdue for service, which declined services have the highest close rate on follow-up, which campaigns are driving real repair orders. Your team decides what to do with that information. The AI surfaced it. The human acts on it.

In every case: AI does the heavy lifting. The human stays in charge.

Questions to Ask When a Vendor Says “We Use AI”

Everyone says it. Not everyone means the same thing. Here’s how to dig deeper:

Is the AI connected to my actual business data, or is it working from general knowledge?
What specific tasks does it perform? Can you show me?
Where does my data go when the AI processes it?
Does the AI take actions on its own, or does my team stay in control?
How much of this is your expertise and how much is a third party’s AI running on autopilot?
How is this different from what I could do myself in ChatGPT?

That last question cuts through the noise fast. If the answer is “it’s basically the same,” that tells you something important.

Both Have a Place

This isn’t ChatGPT vs. platform AI. Both are valuable. They do different things.

Use ChatGPT for:

Brainstorming and ideation
Drafting content and communications
Exploring marketing ideas
Evaluating your messaging (with the prompts from Post 3)

Expect platform AI for:

Working with your actual customer data
Automating tasks inside your workflow
Generating insights from your real business performance
Applying industry-specific expertise that general-purpose AI doesn’t have

The thread that connects them: in both cases, the human should be making the final call. The tool that takes the decision away from you isn’t serving you. It’s replacing you.

What’s Next

The AI landscape is shifting fast. In the next post, we’re going to flip the perspective: your customers are using AI too. Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, voice assistants. How people find and choose a repair shop is changing. We’ll break down what that means for your visibility.

Catch up on the series: Post 1 • Post 2 • Post 3 • Post 4 • Post 5 • Post 6 • Post 7 • Post 8

For the full framework: The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing .

This is the sixth post in our ongoing series, AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map . New posts publish every two weeks.

Does Google Penalize AI Content?

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:20:00 GMT

What Auto Repair Shop Owners Need to Know

This is the question we hear the most right now:

“Can I use AI to write my website content? My blog posts? My emails? Will Google penalize me for it?”

It’s a fair question. With tools like ChatGPT, it’s easier than ever to create a service page, a blog post, or an email in minutes. And there’s no shortage of people online telling you that Google will punish you for it.

The short answer: no. Google does not penalize AI-generated content.

The real answer is more nuanced. And the nuance is where shops either save a lot of time or quietly hurt their visibility.

What Google Actually Says

Google has been clear on this, and their position hasn’t changed: they evaluate content based on quality, not on how it was created.

Their exact framing: they reward “helpful, reliable, people-first content, however it is produced.”

That means:

AI-written content can rank well.
Human-written content can be penalized if it’s thin, generic, or unhelpful.
The creation method isn’t the issue. The quality is.

Google’s own team has used the phrase “human-curated” rather than “human-created.” That distinction matters. They’re not asking whether a person typed every word. They’re asking whether a person reviewed it, verified it, and made sure it actually serves the reader.

What Google Does Penalize

If Google doesn’t penalize AI content, what do they penalize?

Scaled content abuse. That’s their term. It means mass-producing content primarily to manipulate search rankings. Google added this as a specific spam category in their guidelines, and it applies equally to AI-generated and human-written content.

Common examples in auto repair:

Dozens of city pages with identical content and different ZIP codes swapped in.
Generic service pages that say nothing a customer would actually find useful.
Blog posts that don’t go beyond basic definitions anyone could find in a Google search.

The penalty targets the behavior, not the tool.

A Simple Test for Your Content

Before publishing anything, AI-generated or not, ask yourself:

Does this actually help a customer make a decision?
Is this specific to my shop, my services, and my area?
Would someone feel more confident calling after reading this?
If I removed this page, would anyone notice?

If the answer to any of those is no, the content has a problem. How it was written isn’t the issue.

Where AI Content Works

AI is genuinely useful for content creation. The key is understanding what it’s good at and keeping a human in the loop.

AI is strong at:

First drafts. Getting past the blank page is the hardest part of writing. AI can give you a structured starting point in seconds.
Generating ideas. “Give me 10 blog post ideas for an auto repair shop heading into summer” produces a list you can pick from and refine.
Organizing information. If you have rough notes or bullet points about a service, AI can turn them into a clear service page, a blog outline, or an FAQ.
Editing and clarity. Paste in a draft and ask AI to check for grammar, simplify technical language, or adjust the tone from stiff to conversational.

Every one of these is a starting point. Not a finished product.

Where AI Content Falls Short

AI doesn’t know your shop. It doesn’t know your market. It doesn’t know your customers. And this is where most shops get into trouble.

It can’t write from experience. A page about brake repair that says “brake repair is important for safety” is something any AI can produce. A page that explains what your technicians actually look for during a brake inspection, what questions customers typically ask, and what to expect when they bring their car in? That takes a human who knows your shop.
It can’t verify its own claims. AI will confidently list services you don’t offer, mention certifications you don’t have, or describe your process incorrectly. Every factual claim needs to be checked before publishing.
It can’t sound like you. AI writing tends to be polished, slightly formal, and generic. Your shop has a personality. If every page on your site reads like it was written by the same chatbot, customers feel that.
It can’t add local relevance. What your community cares about, what the driving conditions are like in your area, and which vehicles you see the most. This is what makes your content genuinely useful and genuinely yours. AI can’t provide it.

The Right Process: AI Draft to Finished Content

Here’s the workflow that gets you the speed of AI without the risks:

1. Use AI to generate a draft. Get the structure, the outline, and a starting point on the page. Don’t worry about it being perfect. That’s not the point.

2. Add your real expertise. Your process. Your experience. Your customer insights. The things that make your shop different from the template.

3. Verify everything. Check services, claims, certifications, anything factual. AI doesn’t know what’s true about your business. You do.

4. Make it sound like your shop. Adjust the tone. Make it conversational, local, and specific. If it could belong to any shop in any city, it’s not done.

5. Ask the real question. Does this help a customer? Does this answer the questions someone would have before picking up the phone? If yes, publish. If not, keep working.

How We Use It at KUKUI

We build websites and create content for auto repair shops every day. AI is part of our process. Here’s how:

Ideation. Generating topic ideas, exploring angles, brainstorming headlines.
Rough drafts. Getting a structured first pass that our team can then rewrite, fact-check, and make specific to the shop and market.
Editing. Catching errors, tightening language, checking readability.

What we don’t do: generate a page and publish it.

Every piece of content goes through human review. Someone verifies the facts. Someone makes sure it sounds like the shop, not like a template. Someone checks that it actually helps a customer.

We’ve seen what happens when that step gets skipped. Inaccurate service descriptions. Generic pages that could belong to any shop in any city. Content that technically exists but doesn’t perform.

Google’s quality raters have a specific flag for this: AI content that “lacks human oversight and review” gets rated as the lowest quality. Content that’s been edited, fact-checked, and improved by a human doesn’t get that flag, regardless of how the first draft was created.

The Real Question

The question isn’t: “Can I use AI to write content?”

The question is: “Will this content actually help my customers?”

If AI helps you create something that’s accurate, specific to your shop, written in your voice, and genuinely useful to someone looking for your services, use it. Google doesn’t care how you got there. Your customers don’t care how you got there. They care whether the page answers their questions.

If AI gives you a generic draft that you publish without reading, without verifying, and without making it yours, you have a problem. Not because Google will catch you. Because your customers will. A page that could belong to any shop doesn’t give anyone a reason to choose yours.

What’s Next

Next in the series, we’re going deeper on the fact/inference/guess framework we introduced in Post 2 . More examples, more practice, and a method you can use every time you get a report, an audit, or a recommendation from an AI tool.

If you’re new to the series:

Catch up on the series: Post 1 • Post 2 • Post 3 • Post 4 • Post 5 • Post 6 • Post 7 • Post 8

For the full framework: The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing .

This is the fourth post in our ongoing series, AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map . New posts publish every two weeks.

KUKUI Launches AI Education Initiative

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:57:00 GMT

KUKUI Launches Education Initiative to Help Shop Owners Use AI Wisely

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of how automotive repair shop owners research marketing strategies, analyze competitors, and evaluate their online presence. But as AI tools become more accessible, many shop owners are discovering that AI-generated insights aren’t always reliable.

To help the industry navigate this shift, KUKUI has launched a new AI education initiative for independent auto repair shops , focused on helping owners understand how AI tools work, where they provide value, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

The initiative provides practical resources designed specifically for shop owners who are encountering AI-generated marketing audits, demographic reports, and website analysis tools.

“Independent shop owners are the backbone of the automotive repair industry,” said Eric Harber, CEO of KUKUI . “They deserve access to the same level of information and analysis that any professional marketing team would use. Our goal is to make sure AI becomes a tool that helps shop owners make better decisions—not another source of confusion.”

Why AI Education Matters for Auto Repair Shop Owners

Across the automotive repair industry, shop owners are increasingly experimenting with tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI platforms to evaluate their websites, generate marketing ideas, or analyze local competition.

While these tools can be helpful, AI-generated output often appears authoritative even when the underlying data is incomplete or inaccurate.

According to KUKUI Chief Technology Officer Heather Myers , the issue isn’t the technology itself.

“AI tools can be incredibly useful,” Myers said. “But the responses they generate are often mistaken for verified research. Our goal is to help shop owners understand how these systems work so they can separate valuable insights from unreliable conclusions.”

This challenge is becoming more common as AI-powered tools produce detailed-looking marketing audits and competitive reports that may not reflect real market data.

The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing

At the center of KUKUI’s initiative is a new educational resource created specifically for the automotive repair industry:

The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing

What It Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Use It Without Getting Burned

The guide helps shop owners understand how artificial intelligence systems generate answers and where those answers can sometimes go wrong.

Topics covered include:

How AI tools analyze websites and marketing data
Common mistakes when interpreting AI-generated reports
Where AI can provide real marketing value for repair shops
How to write better prompts when using AI tools
How to verify whether AI recommendations are trustworthy

The goal is to give shop owners a clear framework for evaluating AI-generated information before making business decisions.

“AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map” – New Blog Series

As part of the initiative, KUKUI has also launched a new educational blog series exploring how artificial intelligence is reshaping automotive marketing.

The series, titled “AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map,” takes a practical approach to topics such as:

How AI-generated website audits actually work
What AI tools can (and cannot) tell you about your competitors
The role AI is beginning to play in local search and SEO
How repair shop owners can safely experiment with AI tools

The goal is to provide ongoing guidance as AI continues to evolve.

AI Education at Automotive Industry Conferences

KUKUI is also expanding its conference education programs to address AI literacy in the automotive repair industry.

Upcoming sessions will explore topics including:

How artificial intelligence is changing local search results
What shop owners should expect from marketing providers in an AI-driven world
Responsible ways to use AI tools in day-to-day business operations
How to evaluate AI-generated marketing recommendations

These sessions are designed to help shop owners develop practical AI skills rather than rely on hype or speculation.

A Background in Information Literacy

Before joining the automotive technology industry, Heather Myers built information systems for public and academic libraries , helping researchers and students identify reliable information sources.

That background shaped the philosophy behind KUKUI’s AI education initiative.

“My career has always been focused on helping people find trustworthy information,” Myers said. “The tools have changed dramatically over time, but the challenge of evaluating information hasn’t.”

Download the Guide: AI for Auto Repair Shop Marketing

Shop owners who want to better understand how artificial intelligence is influencing automotive marketing can download the guide here:

The Shop Owner’s Guide to AI in Marketing
What It Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Use It Without Getting Burned

You can also explore the AI Is a Flashlight, Not a Map blog series for ongoing insights.

About KUKUI

KUKUI provides data-driven marketing and customer engagement solutions designed specifically for independent automotive repair shops.

Founded in 2011, the KUKUI platform helps shops attract new customers, retain existing ones, and grow their businesses through an integrated marketing system that includes:

By combining marketing technology with industry expertise, KUKUI helps repair shops build stronger customer relationships and improve long-term growth.

KUKUI Social Toolkit

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:30:00 GMT

Your All-in-One Hub for Social Media Success

In today’s digital world, consistency is everything, especially when it comes to social media. That’s why we’re thrilled to introduce the new KUKUI Social Toolkit: a powerful, easy-to-use platform that puts you in full control of your social presence.

The KUKUI Social Toolkit allows users to create, schedule, and publish content across multiple platforms from one simple dashboard. No more logging into different apps or juggling reminders. With the KUKUI Social Toolkit, everything you need is in one place.

Whether you’re sharing promotions, celebrating your team, or keeping customers informed, the KUKUI Social Toolkit makes it effortless to stay consistent and on-brand. And because it includes real-time performance insights, you can track what’s working and adjust your strategy on the fly.

Because the KUKUI Social Toolkit is made for self-management, you get to create content in your own authentic voice. You don’t need to be a marketing expert. Just bring your ideas, and the tool takes care of the rest.

With centralized workflows, an intuitive interface, and powerful analytics, the KUKUI Social Toolkit is here to help our clients strengthen their online presence, connect with their community, and grow one post at a time.

Ready to take control of your social media? Contact us today to learn how to get started.

Modern Marketing Tools: QR Codes

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 16:13:00 GMT

Running a busy shop means making every marketing dollar count

Modern Marketing Tools: QR Codes

Running a busy shop means making sure every marketing dollar counts. That’s why more auto repair businesses are turning to QR codes—the small, square barcodes customers can scan with their phones to bridge the gap between offline promotions and online actions.

An Emerging Marketing Trend

QR codes aren’t new, but their popularity has surged in the past few years as customers have grown comfortable using their phone cameras to connect instantly. Restaurants, retail stores, and event venues now rely on them daily—and auto repair shops are quickly joining the movement. Adopting QR codes today helps your shop stay ahead of competitors and shows customers you’re keeping pace with modern marketing tools.

Why QR Codes Work

Instant Engagement
Customers simply open their camera and scan. In seconds they can schedule an appointment, view a service menu, or redeem a special offer—no typing or searching required.
Trackable Results
Each QR code can point to a unique webpage or coupon, so you’ll know exactly how many people scanned, providing you with valuable insight for deciding where to invest your next marketing dollar.

Smart Ways to Use QR Codes in Your Shop

Service Reminders: Print a code on maintenance cards that links directly to your online booking page.
Promotions & Coupons: Include a scannable code on flyers or mailers for seasonal discounts.
Customer Reviews: Make it easy for happy customers to leave a review by scanning a code at checkout.
Social Media Growth: Place codes on window decals or business cards that lead to your social channels.

Check out April Product Blog for more marketing tips: Text Marketing: One of the Most Valuable Tools in Your Shop

Getting Started Is Simple

With our new QR Code Generator, KUKUI clients can create, customize, and track codes directly inside the KUKUI Control Panel—no third-party tools required. In a few clicks, you’ll have a ready-to-print code that helps turn casual interest into booked appointments. Create your first QR code today!

Your Website Just Got Smarter: Introducing Automatic llms.txt

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 12:55:00 GMT

A behind-the-scenes upgrade that helps AI and search engines understand your shop’s website.

We’re always looking for ways to keep your shop’s website ahead of the curve. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new feature now available on all KUKUI websites : automatic llms.txt files.

This may sound technical, but it’s actually a big step forward in making your shop more visible online. Let’s break it down.

What Is llms.txt?

Think of llms.txt as a roadmap for AI tools and search engines. It’s a special file, automatically generated on your website, that gives these tools a clear outline of what’s on your site.

Every time you publish changes to your website, your llms.txt file is instantly updated with:

A complete list of all your live web pages (including blog posts, if you have them)
Each page’s meta title and meta description (the short summaries that show up in search results)
Automatic updates every time you add or edit a page

Why Does This Matter for Your Shop?

Search engines like Google and Bing already crawl websites to understand their content—but now, with the rise of AI assistants (like ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, or Google’s AI Overviews), there’s an even greater need for websites to provide structured, accurate information.

Here’s how llms.txt helps your shop:

Improved discoverability – AI tools and search engines can easily find all of your important pages, blogs, and services.
Faster updates – As soon as you publish a new page or edit existing content, it’s reflected in llms.txt—no delays.
More accurate results – By including meta titles and descriptions, AI assistants and search engines can display cleaner, more relevant information about your shop.
Zero extra work – This happens automatically. You don’t have to configure or maintain anything.

In other words, llms.txt makes sure your shop is presented correctly and consistently across today’s—and tomorrow’s—digital platforms.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Online visibility is changing. It’s no longer just about ranking on Google—it’s about being accurately represented in all the places potential customers look for you, including AI-driven tools.

With automatic llms.txt files, KUKUI is making sure your shop’s website is prepared for this next phase of search and discovery. It’s part of our ongoing commitment to give you a modern, powerful online presence that works as hard as you do.

No Action Needed

The best part? This feature is already live on your website. Every time you (or KUKUI) publishes changes, your llms.txt file is refreshed—keeping your site up to date automatically.

Final Thought

Your website should be more than a digital business card—it should be a tool that constantly works to bring new customers through your doors. Features like llms.txt may be behind the scenes, but they make a real difference in how people (and AI) discover your business online.

And this is just one of the many ways KUKUI continues to innovate for auto repair shops like yours.

KUKUI Promotes Lori Metzler to Senior Director of Client Success

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 05 May 2025 23:26:00 GMT

Here at KUKUI , growth isn’t just something we talk about with our shop owners, but it’s something we live, nurture, and celebrate, especially when it starts from within.

That is why it brings us so much joy to announce the promotion of Lori Metzler to Senior Director of Client Success.

Lori’s name has become synonymous with care, dedication, and indelible industry knowledge. She joined KUKUI ten years ago as our very first fully remote employee, bringing over twenty years of automotive experience and a heart for service that would shape not only our client success team but the culture of our entire company.

From her early days as a Client Success Coordinator , where she helped shops grow and thrive, to leading onboarding, training, and sales operations, Lori has touched nearly every corner of KUKUI . She’s been a guiding hand to teammates, a trusted voice to shop owners, and a source of steady encouragement in an industry that never slows down.

“Lori’s unwavering commitment to our clients, extensive knowledge of the industry, and deep understanding of our operations make her the perfect fit for this role,” said Eric Harber, CEO at KUKUI . “Her promotion reflects our dedication to recognizing and celebrating top talent from within our organization.”

A Heart for Shops

Ask Lori what makes a successful client relationship, and she’ll tell you it starts with truly listening.

“Listening, understanding, and trust, those are the foundations. I need to understand my clients and what their goals are so when we meet, we’re focused on what really matters to them,” Lori says.

She’s never believed in a one-size-fits-all approach. Every shop is different, which means every meeting with Lori is too. Whether it’s helping shop owners hit revenue goals, getting the right cars in the bays, reviewing website performance, diving into marketing strategies, or simply being a safe space to vent, Lori shows up with one goal in mind: make sure the client knows they matter.

And they do. Ask Joe, Jeana, Dave, Colleen, Mike, or Suzanne. They’ll tell you Lori is the real deal.

A Vision for Client Success

As Senior Director of Client Success, Lori is focused on elevating the role of client success across the board. Her mission? To help every Client Success Coordinator not only become a product expert but also a trusted advisor as someone who understands the shop, the numbers, and the bigger picture.

“Our platform is powerful, no doubt. But what makes KUKUI truly special is our people. Our client success team is more than support. We’re storytellers. Data is just numbers until someone helps you understand what it all means and that’s what we do.”

She wants every coordinator to bring that same heart to the table. To love the industry. To lean into the stories behind the spreadsheets. And most importantly, to help shops succeed.

A Hug Worth Flying For

If you want to understand who Lori is at her core, there’s one story that sums it up best.

“About six months into my time at KUKUI , I was working with Joe Sevart at I-70 Auto Service. He was in a tough neighborhood and determined to grow his Euro car count. One day, I got a call from our CEO. Joe wanted me to come to Kansas City, not for a business meeting, but to give me a hug. He was hitting his goals and just wanted to say thank you. So my son and I flew out, had world-class BBQ, and yep, I got that hug. It’s one of the highlights of my career.”

Lori Metzler is more than just a team member. She’s a heart, a mentor, and a force of good in this industry. She sees the potential in every shop and every person she meets. And now, in her new role, she’ll keep doing what she does best, lifting others up.

Congratulations, Lori. We are so lucky to have you.

Text Marketing: One of the Most Valuable Tools in Your Shop

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:34:00 GMT

Your Customers are Just a Text Away

If you own or manage an auto repair shop, you know how important it is to stay connected with your customers. Whether it’s reminding them about routine maintenance, promoting a seasonal service special, or simply saying thanks after a visit, communication drives business. And when it comes to cutting through the noise, nothing beats text messaging.

With an open rate of nearly 98%, texts are one of the most effective ways to communicate with customers.

But here’s the key: to make text marketing work, you need a high-quality list of customers who’ve opted-in to hear from you. Without that, even the best promos won’t move the needle.

KUKUI makes it easy to grow and manage your opt-in list, while creating effective, personalized campaigns that drive results. Whether it’s through your website, social media, or in-shop promotions, KUKUI has the tools you need to build a loyal subscriber base and keep customers engaged.

Grow Your List, Drive in More Business

Growing your text marketing opt-in list doesn’t have to be complicated. With a few simple, yet powerful strategies, you can start collecting opt-ins and building a valuable customer database. Here are some proven methods that will help you grow your list quickly and effectively:

1. KUKUI Website Strategies

Your KUKUI website can be equipped with a few key features that encourage opt-ins without disrupting the customer experience.

Appointment Form : KUKUI adds a simple checkbox option to your appointment scheduler/form, making it seamless for customers to subscribe while booking their next service.
Website Pop-Up : A well-timed website pop-up can grab visitors’ attention and offer them a compelling reason to subscribe, encouraging your customers to opt-in right away without interrupting their browsing experience.
Subscribe Button : Add a "Subscribe" button on your KUKUI website that directs customers to opt-in. This simple, visible option makes it easy for visitors to join your list and start receiving exclusive offers and updates right away.
Dedicated Opt-In Page : All KUKUI customers using our text messaging services are provided a dedicated opt-in page for their website. This page can outline the benefits of receiving text message updates, making it easy for visitors to sign up and start getting exclusive deals and service reminders.

2. QR Codes

Utilizing QR codes can make it easy for customers to opt-in to text marketing. By placing QR codes on service receipts, in-store signage, or promotional materials, customers can scan the code with their phone and quickly sign up for exclusive deals, appointment reminders, or special offers.

3. Keywords

Customers can easily opt-in to your text marketing by sending a keyword to your shop’s dedicated phone numbers. Simply promote a keyword like "JOIN" or "SPECIALS" through QR codes, in-store signage, social media, or email campaigns, and customers can text it to sign up instantly.

KUKUI makes setting this up a breeze—allowing you to customize keywords and set up automated responses to ensure your customers are seamlessly added to your text marketing opt-in list. This quick and straightforward process helps you grow your list effortlessly while offering maximum convenience for your customers.

4. Exclusive Deals

Offering exclusive deals is a powerful way to encourage customers to opt-in to your text marketing. When you provide discounts or special offers that are only available to your text subscribers, you create an incentive for people to opt-in. For example, offering a 10% discount on their next service or a $15-off birthday special can motivate customers to subscribe. These kinds of offers make customers feel valued and provide them with immediate benefits, increasing the likelihood that they’ll sign up for your text marketing.

5. Instant Service Discounts

Encourage customers to opt-in to your text marketing by offering a sign-up bonus when finalizing their order. Offer a 10% discount on today’s service or a free gift in exchange for their subscription. This instant reward makes it easy for customers to see the value of opting in right then and there. Offering a tangible benefit—like a $10 discount—right before they pay can be more effective than a future-use coupon because it gives customers an immediate reason to sign up while they're already engaged with your business. To make it even easier, you can combine this strategy with your keywords and QR codes.

6. Convert Your Existing Followers

Your existing social media presence and email list can serve as powerful tools for boosting text marketing opt-ins. If customers are already engaging with your brand online, converting them to text marketing subscribers becomes much easier. Add a link to your social media bio pointing to your KUKUI website’s dedicated opt-in page, making it easy for followers to join. You can also offer a unique incentive to your existing email subscribers, such as exclusive text-only discounts, to encourage them to sign up for both communication channels and maximize engagement.

Set Expectations, Build Trust

If you want to keep your list strong and engaged, it’s important to set expectations. Tell your customers what kind of messages you’ll send (like appointment reminders, exclusive offers, or service alerts), how often, and how they can opt-out anytime. When customers know what to expect and see the value, they’ll stick around—and keep coming back to your shop.

Keep the Value Coming

While building your text marketing opt-in list is an important first step, keeping your subscribers engaged is essential for long-term success. Consider these strategies when texting your customers:

Content : Make sure your messages are relevant, helpful, and valuable to your customers
Communication : Text messages provide a great opportunity to open conversations. Encourage your customers to respond, and be prepared to answer promptly.
Cadence : Find the right balance—don’t overwhelm your customers, but keep your texts frequent enough to stay top of mind.

Unlock the Full Potential of Text Marketing with KUKUI

Text marketing isn’t just a way to reach your customers—it’s a powerful tool that can help you connect with them, keep them engaged, drive in more appointments, and ultimately boost your shop’s revenue.

If you need assistance getting started or optimizing your text marketing efforts, reach out to your Client Success Coordinator or KUKUI Support. We’re here to help you make the most of every customer interaction.

To see how KUKUI can help take your text marketing to the next level, schedule a demo today!

2024 Year in Review

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:25:00 GMT

As we look back on 2024, we’re taking a moment to reflect on what was an incredible year of growth and innovation at KUKUI .

It has always been our priority to empower our clients with tools that simplify operations, improve customer engagement, and ultimately drive success. We delivered on that mission with some of the most impactful updates and features we’ve ever released.

2024 was all about helping you save time, connect with customers, and stay ahead in a competitive market. Whether it was automating review responses, optimizing Google Business Profile management, or revolutionizing appointment scheduling, every update we launched was designed with one goal in mind: empowering your business to thrive.

Let’s take a look at the highlights of 2024!

AI Review Responder

10DLC Compliance

Google Business Profile Management

2-Way Appointment Integrations

Live Scheduler

AI Review Responder

Save Time, Build Relationships

Keep You Compliant

Updates for 10DLC Policies

The telecommunications landscape continues to evolve, and staying compliant with the latest 10DLC (10-Digit Long Code) policies was a priority for KUKUI. In 2024, we implemented critical updates to ensure that our platform met the latest standards, helping our clients send SMS communications securely and confidently. Compliance may not be glamorous, but it is essential—and we’re committed to keeping your business ahead of the curve.

Google Business Profile Management Enhancements

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is often the first impression customers have of your shop. This year, KUKUI introduced significant enhancements to our GBP management tool, making it easier for shop owners to update their profiles, post photos, share promotions, and keep their information accurate. The result? Improved search visibility and stronger local presence for your shop.

2-Way Appointment Integrations

In order to allow for real-time appointment scheduling between KUKUI and your shop management system, we proudly launched two-way appointment integrations with some of the industry’s leading shop management systems, including NapaTracs, ShopMonkey, and Protractor.

Live Scheduler

Revolutionizing Appointment Booking

Pushing forward in 2025

Off to a great start in 2025, this year we’ll be rolling out some game-changing features that will further empower you to streamline operations, boost online visibility, and enhance customer engagement. Some of these features are focused around multi-shop website capabilities, content and SEO, and more AI-powered tools.

We at KUKUI want to extend a heartfelt thank-you to all our clients for trusting us to be part of your journey. Your feedback and partnership drive everything we do, and we’re excited to continue building solutions that help your shop thrive in 2025 and beyond.

How Shop Owners Like You Drove $3 Billion in Revenue with KUKUI

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 15:27:00 GMT

Let’s talk about what really matters,

THE RESULTS.

You want results that fill your bays, boost your bottom line, and build lasting trust in your community. In 2023 alone, shop owners just like you harnessed the power of KUKUI to achieve incredible milestones.

With KUKUI You Generated Over $3 Billion in Revenue in 2023

That’s right. In 2023, shop owners using the KUKUI platform drove more than $3 billion in revenue.

To put that into perspective, in the United States, General Repair Garages generated around $60 billion last year according to reports from the Auto Care Association ( Auto Care Association , 2025 Auto Care Factbook.
Out of that massive total, you— using KUKUI—contributed over 5% of the industry’s revenue.
That’s $3,069,245,980 , the sum total of countless hard-fought battles in your shops, where every invoice, every transaction, and every satisfied customer added up to success.

With KUKUI You Closed 5.6 Million Repair Orders

In 2023, you didn’t just repair cars—you transformed lives. Think about the hustle and grind it takes to close over 5.6 million repair orders . That’s 5,635,464 customers that got back on the road, driving better because you took care of them. Across the industry, millions of vehicles are serviced annually, but it was you—supported by KUKUI—who made sure those repair orders were completed better, faster, and more efficiently than ever before.

With KUKUI You Sent Nearly 600,000 Text Messages and Generated $23 Million in Revenue

In a world where mobile communication is king, you know how to keep your customers engaged. Shop owners like you sent nearly 600,000 text messages in 2023—597,783 to be exact . And those texts weren’t just casual conversations; they were strategic moves that generated over $23 million in revenue. That’s $23,295,289 directly attributed to text messages that drove customers back to your bays.

Best of all, every single message was sent with your customers' consent, following 10DLC guidelines and ensuring no spam – just well-timed, effective communication that works. The result? A steady stream of business that proves just how powerful a well-executed text message can be.

Text Messages Converted into Real Business

Texting isn’t just a convenience—it’s a conversion tool. Out of those 597,783 text messages sent, you saw an average response rate of 45% . That means nearly 270,000 of those texts led directly to customer engagement, appointments, and, ultimately, revenue. In an industry where customer communication is crucial, these texts weren’t just messages—they were opportunities.

With KUKUI You Sent Over 15 Million Emails and Converted 778,000 Customers

Email marketing remains one of the most effective tools in your digital toolbox. In 2023, shop owners like you sent over 15 million emails—15,460,998 —and turned 778,270 of those into paying customers . That’s nearly 800,000 people who chose your shop over the competition because you reached out with the right message at the right time. With an industry-average open rate of around 18%, your emails outperformed the competition, leading to real, measurable business growth.

These aren’t just numbers. They’re your numbers. They’re proof that when you’ve got the right platform backing you up, there’s no limit to what you can achieve.

2024 isn't over yet! We’re already seeing bigger numbers for this year. Imagine what you and your shop can do with the right tools in your corner.

So, keep pushing, keep growing, and know that KUKUI is right there with you, every step of the way.

About KUKUI

KUKUI is the leading marketing and customer relationship solutions platform for the automotive aftermarket, providing a SaaS platform with website, lead generation, and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that drive revenue growth and customer retention for automotive repair shops.

Repair shop owners can also take advantage of customer engagement and trust-building solutions like digital vehicle inspections as well as automated postcard, email, and text marketing campaigns.

TL;DL Servant Leadership

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 20:14:00 GMT

Podcast: Ratchet+Wrench Radio

Episode Title: The Impact of Servant Leadership

Karim Morsli, of Winkler Automotive, has a daily reminder posted in the shop that reads, “If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you.” Karim, who transitioned from a career in engineering and IT to owning an automotive repair shop, shares how the servant leadership style he adopted transformed his shop. He emphasizes that leading with empathy and understanding isn’t just about improving the shop’s environment; it’s about lifting the entire industry. By focusing on serving others, Karim believes that shop owners can retain skilled employees, avoid having to fix cars themselves, and ultimately create a positive, efficient workplace that benefits everyone.

Key Highlights

Quote 1: “Shop owners must stop underpaying and paying employees under the table.”

Whoa, what a truth bomb. It honestly blew my mind. Paying employees fairly and transparently is not just a moral obligation but a practical necessity for the long-term health and success of the automotive industry. It supports workers' financial security, ensures accurate industry data, attracts new talent, and a fair and stable industry for everyone involved.

Quote 2: "A selfless approach as a shop owner can change not just the shop, but the entire industry."

When you put your employees and customers first, you create a culture of support and collaboration. This doesn’t just boost morale and productivity in your own shop; it sets a new standard for the entire industry. Happy employees provide better service, leading to satisfied customers and a thriving business. Over time, this selfless mindset can inspire other shop owners to follow suit, revolutionizing how the industry operates from the ground up.

Quote 3: "Empathy and understanding are core to effective servant leadership."

Karim Morsli's definition of servant leadership focuses on a leadership philosophy where the primary goal of the leader is to serve others. There was a time in his first three years of ownership when he was left with only one of the original ownership’s technicians and accused of being too progressive. Fast forward to a decade later and his method of business is thriving, paving the way for standardizing institutional knowledge, leading with empathy, and focusing on the service of others.

Stay tuned for more insights and keep driving forward! ��✨

TL;DL [Too Long Didn't Listen] Introduction

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 20:30:00 GMT

Welcome to "TL;DL: Too Long Didn't Listen," a new mini blog series where I'll be recapping my favorite industry podcasts. As someone deeply passionate about the automotive industry and constantly on the lookout for fresh insights and ideas, I'm excited to share my thoughts and highlights with you.

About Mackenna

With 7 years of experience in the automotive industry, I've had the privilege of working closely with shop owners, understanding your challenges, and developing solutions that make a real difference. My journey with KUKUI has been incredibly fulfilling, allowing me to combine my love for the industry with my passion for marketing, geography, and innovation. When I'm not visiting shops or diving into the latest industry trends, you can find me tuning into the best automotive podcasts out there.

Format of TL;DL

In each post of the "TL;DL: Too Long Didn't Listen" series, I'll be recapping one of my favorite industry podcasts. I'll quote or elaborate on the standout parts that resonated with me, providing you with a concise and engaging summary. Whether you're looking to catch up on missed episodes or discover new podcasts to follow, TL;DL will keep you informed and entertained.

Stay Tuned

Join me on this journey as we explore the most insightful and thought-provoking conversations in the automotive world. Stay tuned for the first episode of TL;DL, coming soon!

Love & Aloha,

Mackenna

The Garage in Renton Celebrating the July Alaka`i Award

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 02:53:00 GMT

Congratulations to The Garage in Renton for earning the July Alakai Award in the Shop Success Drivers category!

This award recognizes automotive repair shops that have successfully utilized KUKUI's productivity tools, including the CRM, digital vehicle inspections, and marketing management tools, to drive their business to new heights.

Symbol of Success

In Hawaiian culture, the humuhumunukunukuapua'a symbolizes streamlined, efficient movements and adaptability. This spirit perfectly embodies The Garage in Renton ’s approach to optimizing their operations with KUKUI’s tools. Just as the reef triggerfish adapts to its environment with precision, The Garage in Renton has harnessed the power of KUKUI’s features to enhance their attention to detail and boost productivity.

A Strong Partnership

Our collaboration with The Garage in Renton has been a tremendous success. With their recent adoption of the Live Scheduler and the addition of new content to their site, they are continually optimizing their workflow and enhancing customer satisfaction. Their use of the Text Connect Platform and commitment to leveraging our tool's capabilities truly sets them apart as a leader in the industry.

Commitment to Excellence

The unwavering dedication of The Garage in Renton to harnessing KUKUI’s comprehensive suite of tools is truly commendable. Their focus on continuous improvement and excellence in service delivery not only enhances their operational efficiency but also fosters long-term customer loyalty. This commitment to leveraging technology for superior service sets a benchmark for others in the industry.

Please join us in congratulating The Garage in Renton on this well-deserved recognition. Their dedication to utilizing KUKUI’s tools to drive success is an inspiration to us all.

Introducing Live Scheduler: NOW AVAILABLE!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 19:10:00 GMT

KUKUI’s New Game-Changing Add-On for Auto Repair Shops

Why Live Scheduler is Essential for Your Auto Repair Shop

The ability to book appointments online is not just a convenience—it's a necessity. Research shows that businesses offering online scheduling options see significant improvements in customer satisfaction and conversion rates. According to a study by Tech Report, 94% of customers prefer booking appointments online, and a study by GetApp shows businesses that offer this option can see up to a 30% increase in bookings.

For auto repair shops, the implications are clear: implementing an online scheduling system can lead to higher customer retention and increased revenue. In fact, Tech Report shows that companies that use appointment schedule software can potentially increase revenue anywhere from 30% to 45%.

How Live Scheduler Improves Conversion Rates

Live Scheduler is built to enhance your shop's efficiency and customer experience. Here's how it can benefit your business:

Increased Convenience: Customers can book appointments 24/7, without the need to call during business hours. This flexibility meets the expectations of today's tech-savvy consumers and reduces the chances of missed appointments.

Higher Conversion Rates: By providing an easy-to-use online booking system, you can convert more website visitors into paying customers.

Improved Customer Experience: An intuitive and efficient scheduling system shows customers that your shop values their time, enhancing their overall experience and loyalty.

Decreased no-shows and cancellations: Utilizing KUKUI’s Live Scheduler along with appointment reminders will reduce no-shows.

Developed with Your Needs in Mind

KUKUI has been dedicated to serving the auto repair industry 13 years. Throughout the development of Live Scheduler, we collaborated closely with various clients eager to be the first to test the product, gathering invaluable feedback to ensure the product meets the unique needs of auto repair shops.

From Chris C. at Cardinal Plaza Shell , “KUKUI’s new Live Scheduler makes online appointments a breeze! In the ever evolving world of convenience and simplicity, the Live Scheduler takes the pain out of scheduling auto service online and helps generate more appointments, quickly! To be able to view service history, prior recommendations AND schedule service all from one simple button on your website is awesome! Our customers have loved it and our employees love how easy it makes it all!”

Our Commitment to Your Success

KUKUI’s purpose is to provide solutions and guidance to small and medium-sized automotive repair businesses, helping them attract and retain customers, succeed in their businesses, and positively impact their local communities. Our mission is clear: advancing technologies that drive success for automotive aftermarket shops by providing an integrated marketing platform with comprehensive analytics. This enables our customers to understand and maximize their marketing dollars, leading their shops toward increased profit.

Join the Revolution

We invite you to integrate Live Scheduler into your shop's operations and experience the transformative benefits it brings. With Live Scheduler, you can stay ahead of the competition, enhance your customer service, and drive more business to your shop.

To learn more about Live Scheduler and how it can elevate your business, click the Get a Demo button below, or contact our support team for a personalized demo.

Together, let's drive the future of auto repair!

References:

GetApp: Customer Preferences for Online Booking
Tech Report: Online Appointment Scheduling Statistics in 2023

KUKUI: Empowering Auto Repair Shops for Over a Decade

KUKUI has a proud history of serving the auto repair industry, providing innovative solutions that help businesses thrive. Our continued commitment to quality and customer satisfaction is what drives us to create products like Live Scheduler, designed to meet the evolving needs of our clients and their customers.

Embrace the future of auto repair scheduling with Live Scheduler from KUKUI.

Partnering for Performance: How KUKUI and Tekmetric Drive Efficiency

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 16 May 2024 15:00:00 GMT

The Power in Partners

In today’s automotive repair industry, technology is as essential as the physical tools in the workshop. However, facing these challenges alone is increasingly difficult. This is where the concept of a 'partner ecosystem' proves invaluable. More than just corporate jargon, it represents strategic alliances that drive business growth and adaptability.

We collaborate with leading organizations to provide auto repair shops with a comprehensive range of tools and technologies tailored to their unique needs. Our aim is to foster an inclusive and integrated ecosystem that not only supports but also propels every repair shop towards success.

These partnerships are pivotal for the future of innovation and growth in the automotive sector. Through our collaboration with Tekmetric, a leading shop management solution , KUKUI helps enhance operational efficiency and accelerates business growth, creating a network of adaptable solutions that deliver immediate results and pave the way for long-term success.

Consider the broader impact: McKinsey forecasts that nearly a third of global sales will be driven by partner ecosystems by 2025, while Accenture predicts these ecosystems could unlock $100 trillion in value over the next decade. These figures highlight the transformative potential of robust collaborative networks.

With partners like Tekmetric, we're reshaping the landscape of automotive repair, not just by matching marketing expertise with operational acumen, but by forging a comprehensive network of solutions that empower shops to work smarter and grow faster.

How KUKUI and Tekmetric Work Together

The Tekmetric and KUKUI integration offers a seamless two-way appointment integration that significantly boosts the functionality of each platform. Appointments made through Tekmetric's shop management system automatically synchronize with the KUKUI Control Panel, ensuring that any bookings or updates made in one system are immediately reflected in the other, eliminating the need for redundant data entry.

This integration operates like a well-oiled machine, allowing shop owners to focus more on customer service and efficient management rather than on manual coordination between different systems. The Tekmetric and KUKUI integration creates a nearly seamless ecosystem, simplifying operations, streamlining workflows, and improving customer satisfaction by maintaining consistency and connectivity across platforms.

To learn more about Tekmetric’s shop management solution, click here .

Celebrating Pals Ocala Auto Repair's Award for Community Service

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 08 May 2024 21:25:00 GMT

Pals Ocala Auto Repair Recognized for Exceptional Community Involvement

We are thrilled to announce that Pals Ocala Auto Repair has been honored with the May Alakai Award. This prestigious recognition comes in light of their significant contributions to the community, partnering with many local organizations like The Boys and Girls Club of Marion County, Interfaith Emergency Services, The Humane Society of Marion County, and Ocala Business Leaders.

Pals Ocala has set a stellar example of how businesses can effectively support and uplift their communities. Their involvement goes beyond financial contributions, extending to active participation in community events, fundraisers, and more, truly making a difference in the lives of many. Their dedication not only enhances the community but also builds stronger, more meaningful connections within it.

By visiting the Pals Ocala Auto Repair website , you can view a detailed page dedicated to their partners. This page showcases each organization they support, highlighting their roles and the events they’ve participated in together. Moreover, Pals Ocala’s approach to community involvement is holistic. They believe in proactive engagement, where they not only contribute resources but also encourage their employees to volunteer, leading by example in corporate social responsibility. This approach not only enriches their team's work experience but also solidifies their reputation as a community pillar that genuinely cares about local growth and well-being.

Congratulations again to the team at Pals Ocala Auto Repair for their well-deserved award and their continuous efforts to make a positive impact. We encourage everyone to visit their partner page to see firsthand the breadth and depth of their community engagements and to get involved in or support these commendable initiatives. Their actions inspire others and demonstrate the powerful role that dedicated businesses can play in enriching their communities.

KUKUI's AI Review Responder – Watch the Sneak Peek!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:07:00 GMT

Aloha! Whether you’ve arrived here through our social media channels or just stumbled upon our page, we’re thrilled to have you!

Dive into KAI (KUKUI's AI Review Responder) through our latest sneak peek video.

Experience firsthand how our AI technology revolutionizes customer interactions, offering timely, accurate, and personalized responses to online reviews. This tool not only enhances your reputation management but also turns customer feedback into actionable insights, driving your business forward.

Witness the power in action and see how KUKUI's AI Review Responder can transform your approach to online reviews, making every customer feel heard and valued.

Don’t miss out on this game-changing tool! Watch our sneak peek video now and take the first step towards revolutionizing your auto repair shop’s online presence.

Watch the Power in Action! ➡️

Ready to save time and energy at your auto repair business?

Click the button below to schedule your free, no obligation demo and experience the full potential of KUKUI’s AI offerings.

Revolutionizing Customer Engagement: AI for Shop Reviews

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 17:46:00 GMT

AI Review Responder

In the evolving culture of customer service, shop owners face unique challenges in maintaining a good reputation while managing day-to-day operations. With the rise of online reviews as a critical factor in consumer decision-making, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to respond to reviews is becoming a game-changer for enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The Importance of Responding to Reviews

Online reviews today have a major influence over consumer behavior, particularly in industries like auto repair. Potential customers often rely on reviews to gauge the quality of service, professionalism, and reliability of shops before making a decision. Prompt and personalized responses to reviews can significantly impact customer perceptions and influence their willingness to choose your shop over others.

Responding to reviews manually can be a time-consuming task. The volume of reviews, varying sentiments, and the need for timely responses pose significant challenges. Manual responses may also lack consistency in tone and messaging, potentially diluting the brand's image and customer experience.

The Role of AI in Review Response

AI-powered review response tools offer an innovative way to respond to customer reviews. By leveraging capabilities of AI, you can streamline the process of responding to reviews while delivering personalized and timely interactions with customers.

Key Benefits of Using AI in Review Responses

Efficiency and Time-Saving: AI automates the process of analyzing reviews and generating responses, freeing up valuable time to focus on core business operations.
Personalization at Scale: AI algorithms analyze the content and sentiment of reviews to generate tailored responses that resonate with individual customers, enhancing the perception of genuine care and attention to customer feedback.

In conclusion, embracing AI in responding to reviews presents a forward-thinking approach enhancing customer engagement, reputation management, and overall business success. By leveraging AI-driven solutions, you can establish your business as a leader in customer service excellence and build lasting relationships with your valued customers.

Are you ready to revolutionize your approach to customer engagement? Explore the possibilities of AI with KUKUI’s new AI Review Responder. Click the button below to schedule your demo.

My Garage is LIVE

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 18:41:00 GMT

Fluctuating car counts and retaining loyal customers are tough challenges we face in the automotive world.

That's why we're excited to announce our latest feature release: KUKUI’s My Garage, our innovative solution designed to strengthen the bond between your shop and your valued customers. Imagine a scenario where your customers have their own virtual dashboard, a portal that offers them a comprehensive view of their vehicles' history and upcoming needs.

With My Garage , your customers can:

Review current upcoming service appointments.
Dive into their vehicle's service history.
Discover and act on those previously missed service recommendations.

It's like handing them the keys to confidently navigate their automotive journey, ensuring they always turn to your shop for their vehicle's needs. And the best part? My Garage seamlessly integrates with your KUKUI CRM and your existing website. Your customers can easily access My Garage through a button on your website.

So, let's drive customer loyalty together and keep those bays busy!

At KUKUI we are here to ignite profitability, streamline lead management, and foster customer engagement with our all-in-one solution for all your shop marketing needs. Fuel your growth with the auto shop marketing platform trusted by 2,000+ shops. If you have been waiting on taking the leap of faith with KUKUI, we feel confident there is no better time than now.

Book a free, no obligation demo with KUKUI and see how our websites and services can help your auto repair shop succeed in today's digital age!

Click the button below to get started...

Navigating the Fall Slowdown: Proactive Tips for Your Auto Repair Shop

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 17:12:00 GMT

As the leaves change and the air gets crisper, many auto repair shops begin to notice a familiar trend: the fall slowdown.

With dropping temperatures, there often comes a drop in leads and car count. But just as you'd prepare your vehicle for the colder months, it's essential to gear up your business strategies to weather this seasonal lull.

While this dip is a common occurrence in the Fall and early Winter months, it doesn't mean your shop has to take a hit. There are proactive measures you can take to keep the momentum going and ensure your customers keep coming in.

Here are some strategies to consider:

1. Seasonal and Holiday Email Blasts:

The festive season is right around the corner. Why not tap into the holiday spirit? Sending out seasonal promotions, discounts, or even a simple holiday greeting can remind your customers of the services you offer. It's a gentle nudge to get their vehicles checked before their holiday travels.

2. Review and Revamp Your Campaigns:

Take this time to review your email and text campaigns. Ensure everything is functioning smoothly and reaching your intended audience. A well-timed reminder or promotion can make all the difference in bringing a customer through your doors.

3. Leverage Your Google Business Profile (GBP):

Did you know you can now add posts to your GBP directly from your Control Panel? It's a fantastic way to showcase current promotions, share shop updates, or highlight customer testimonials. Regular updates can boost your online visibility and engage potential customers.

4. Mine the Gold in Follow-Up:

Your Follow-Up Module is a treasure trove waiting to be explored. Reaching out to customers to schedule previously declined services can not only boost your business but also reinforce your commitment to their vehicle's health and safety. A simple call can remind them of the importance of regular maintenance, especially as the colder months approach.

In Conclusion:
While the Fall season might traditionally be a slower period for many auto repair shops, it doesn't mean you have to accept the slowdown. By being proactive, leveraging the tools at your disposal, and maintaining consistent communication with your customers, you can navigate this season with confidence. Remember, at KUKUI, we're here to support you every step of the way.

Let's make this Fall season a fruitful one!

Book a free, no obligation demo with KUKUI and see how our websites and services can help your auto repair shop succeed in today's digital age!

Click the button below to get started...

From Profile to Performance: Leveraging Google Business Profile with KUKUI

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 12:01:00 GMT

At KUKUI, we’ve made it easier than ever for our clients to keep your profile updated with our new Google Business Profile Management integration.

Having a Google Business Profile is an essential, free tool to improve visibility, build trust with customers, facilitate customer communication, and contribute to overall marketing efforts for your shop.

Keeping your profile up to date with posts, specials, and up to date business info helps to maintain accuracy, relevance, and trust with your customers.

With a solid profile comes solid numbers. Google has made it easy to view analytics and insights into how your customers are interacting with your business profile, which helps you make decisions about your marketing.

At KUKUI, we’ve made it easier than ever for our clients to keep your profile updated with our new Google Business Profile Management integration. Just as Google previously had a dashboard to update and make changes to profiles, KUKUI has added an easy to use dashboard directly in the Control Panel where essential profile updates can be made.

The KUKUI GBP Integration automatically imports a client’s profile information exactly as it is in Google once integrated. Clients then have access to do the following:

Update/change Business Info
Update/change hours and holiday hours
Create and edit posts, specials, and events with images
View profile performance analytics and insights

Lastly, we also capture and provide real-time analytics and insights about your profile directly from Google. These insights provide a high-level view of how customers find shops and what actions they take once on the profile. This data provides a snapshot of how the profile is performing.

For KUKUI clients with a verified Google Business Profile, you can head over to the KUKUI Control Panel and begin making updates and changes to your profile today!

Book a free, no obligation demo with KUKUI and see how our websites and services can help your auto repair shop succeed in today's digital age!

Click the button below to get started...

The Benefits of Responding to Reviews - YES Even the Positive Ones!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 15:14:00 GMT

Is it worthwhile for automotive repair shops to respond to all reviews, including the positive ones? Absolutely, and here’s why.

While addressing negative reviews is a common practice, many businesses in the automotive sector undervalue the power of responding to positive feedback.

Benefits of Responding to Positive Reviews:

Customer Appreciation:

A simple "thank you" can go a long way in showing customers that you value their business and positive feedback. It’s a small gesture that can leave a lasting impression, fostering a sense of appreciation and mutual respect between the business and the customer.

Encourages Loyalty:

Acknowledging a positive review can make customers feel seen and valued, which can significantly increase the likelihood of them returning to your business and becoming loyal patrons.

Enhances Reputation:

Publicly thanking customers for positive reviews can enhance your business's reputation by showing that you are engaged, attentive to customer feedback, and appreciative of their support. It reflects a business’s commitment to customer satisfaction and service excellence.

SEO and Visibility:

Some platforms, like Google, consider the frequency and quality of your responses to reviews as a factor for ranking businesses in search results. Regularly interacting with customers through reviews can improve your business’s online visibility and drive more traffic to your site.

Social Proof:

Responding to positive reviews can encourage more of them. When people see that you're active and appreciative, they may be more inclined to leave their own positive feedback, contributing to the social proof that can attract more customers.

Additional Marketing:

A response can serve as a subtle opportunity to market your business further. For example, you could mention a new feature, service, or upcoming promotion, providing customers with additional information about what your business has to offer.

Sets a Standard :

Responding to all reviews, both positive and negative, sets a consistent standard for customer engagement. It demonstrates a balanced and fair approach to customer feedback, reinforcing the credibility and reliability of your business.

Conclusion

Responding to all reviews, especially positive ones, is a crucial aspect of maintaining a positive online presence and building lasting relationships with your customers. It’s not just about damage control; it’s about appreciating the good and ensuring customers feel heard and valued at every step of their journey with your automotive shop.

By embracing a proactive and appreciative approach to all reviews, your business can enhance its reputation, foster customer loyalty, and set a high standard for customer engagement in the digital landscape. So, the next time you receive a glowing review, don’t forget to acknowledge it. Your customers, and your business, will thank you for it.

Book a free, no obligation demo with KUKUI and see how our websites and services can help your auto repair shop succeed in today's digital age!

Click the button below to get started...

KUKUI Appoints Eric Harber CEO

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 17:16:00 GMT

KUKUI, the leading provider of integrated marketing automation and business analytics solutions for the automotive industry today announced that Eric Harber has been named the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to succeed Lorie Sharp. The Board of Directors would like to thank Lorie for her leadership over the last 3 years.

Harber is an experienced and accomplished executive with a demonstrated track record of building and growing companies by driving transformational business initiatives. Most recently, Eric served as an Operating Partner for Diversis Capital, a software company focused Private Equity firm, where he served as an adviser to CEOs, Founders, and Boards of Directors. Prior to Eric’s Private Equity Operating Partner experience, he served as CEO of Flowroute Inc, a SaaS software business, where he led transformational growth for the company. “Eric is a seasoned executive with experience in software product development, sales, marketing, and customer success and we are excited by the future potential of the company under his leadership” said Hunter Witherington, SSM Partners. The appointment of Harber demonstrates KUKUI’s Board of Directors’ commitment to build on the success of the company over the last couple of years and most importantly, to invest in new technologies to address the needs of KUKUI’s customers as rapid advancements in technology change the landscape of the automotive aftermarket industry. Harber brings over twenty-five years of experience leading and transforming global software companies through ever-changing competitive landscapes.

“As an experienced SaaS software leader, I am honored to join KUKUI as CEO and am excited to build on the company's leadership in the automotive aftermarket by providing repair shops with integrated and automated marketing, CRM, and analytics. I look forward to working with the KUKUI team to provide innovative products, serve our clients and help those clients achieve their goals.”

“The Board of Directors looks forward to our next stage of evolutionary growth as we continue to invest in our customers' success through technology, and Harber is the perfect CEO to lead us there,” said KUKUI Executive Chairman, Jim Tallman.

About KUKUI

KUKUI’s All-in-One Success Platform® provides auto repair shops with a branded, SEO-optimized website, robust CRM, PPC management, call tracking, online appointment setting, online payments, text communication, review management and intuitive analytics. Repair shop owners can also take advantage of customer engagement and trust-building solutions like digital vehicle inspections as well as automated postcard, email, and text marketing campaigns.

The Power of Personalization: Segmentation in Text Marketing for Auto Repair Shops

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 19:00:00 GMT

Unlocking Customer Engagement Through Tailored Messaging

Segmenting your text marketing campaigns to target specific demographics or customer groups is not just a possibility, it's a best practice for automotive repair shop owners. By tailoring your messages to different groups within your customer base, you can greatly enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Consider this: a regular customer who comes in for routine maintenance will likely respond to different messages than a first-time customer who's just getting to know your services. Similarly, a customer with a vintage car might have different needs and interests compared to one with a brand-new electric vehicle.

Segmentation allows you to tailor your messages to these different groups, delivering content that's more relevant, personalized, and impactful. You could send maintenance reminders based on individual service histories, offer promotions tied to specific vehicle types, or even target messages based on the customer's previous feedback or preferences.

And the best part? With KUKUI's CRM, segmentation is relatively straightforward.

Remember, the more relevant the message, the more likely your customers are to appreciate it and take action. So, instead of blasting out generic messages to all customers, take a moment to segment your audience and craft tailored content. It might take a little more time, but the ROI can be well worth it.

Of course, it's also important to continually monitor and adjust your segments based on the response you're getting. What works for one group might not work for another, and customer needs can change over time. But with a little trial and error, segmentation can become your powerhouse marketing tool.

Book a free, no obligation demo with KUKUI and see how our websites and services can help your auto repair shop succeed in today's digital age!

Click the button below to get started...

Auto Repair Shop in Each U.S. State According to AI

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 18:55:00 GMT

Join us on a (virtual) road trip across the United States, where we asked AI generation to draw the most characteristic auto repair shop in every state. From the heartland's family-owned garages to the coastal states' high-tech hubs.. Which one is your favorite?!

Hover over the photo to see the name of the state!

How do you think they did? My personal favorites are Colorado and Vermont. A log cabin auto repair shop?! Count me in! For more content make sure to follow us on all our social accounts. Mahalo!

Craig's Car Care Wins Alaka'i Award for Innovative Marketing Strategies: A Hawk-Eyed Approach to Automotive Repair Marketing

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 13:37:00 GMT

In the fast-paced and competitive world of automotive repair, standing out from the crowd requires innovative marketing strategies that capture the attention of customers.

Craig's Car Care , a leading automotive repair shop in north Texas, has set the bar high by winning KUKUI's very first Alaka'i Award for their exceptional marketing efforts. Leveraging KUKUI's powerful marketing tools and features, Craig's Car Care has successfully executed creative and effective campaigns that have driven tangible results, such as increased web traffic, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, more sales. Let's dive into how Craig's Car Care embraced the spirit of the Hawaiian Hawk, or i'o, to soar above the competition with their automotive repair website.

The Hawaiian Hawk Symbolism:

The i'o, or Hawaiian Hawk, embodies the spirit of innovative marketing strategies. In Hawaiian culture, the i'o is renowned for its sharp eyesight and strategic hunting skills. Just like the i'o, Craig's Car Care demonstrates the ability to identify and target the right customers with their marketing messages and campaigns. By adopting the hawk's keen vision and strategic approach, they have elevated their marketing efforts to new heights.

Harnessing KUKUI's Marketing Tools and Features:

Craig's Car Care recognized the importance of utilizing cutting-edge technology and marketing platforms to reach their target audience effectively. Leveraging KUKUI's robust marketing tools and features, they harnessed the power of data-driven insights and responsive website design to transform their online presence and drive measurable results.

Data-Driven Insights:

With KUKUI's analytics and reporting capabilities, Craig's Car Care gained valuable insights into their customers' behaviors, preferences, and trends. This data served as the foundation for crafting highly targeted marketing campaigns that resonated with their audience. By understanding their customers' needs and desires, Craig's Car Care was able to tailor their messages accordingly, resulting in higher conversion rates and increased customer engagement.

Responsive Website Design:

In the digital age, a seamless user experience across devices is crucial. Craig's Car Care recognized this and partnered with KUKUI to develop a responsive website design that ensured optimal performance and user-friendliness on all devices. This enhanced accessibility and convenience led to improved web traffic and customer conversion.

Being the first recipient of the Alaka'i Award for Innovative Marketing Strategies is a testament to their commitment to staying ahead of the curve in the automotive repair industry. By embracing the spirit of the Hawaiian Hawk, they have harnessed the power of KUKUI's marketing tools and features to develop and execute creative campaigns that drove measurable results. Through data-driven insights and a responsive website design Craig's Car Care has successfully targeted and engaged their audience, resulting in increased web traffic, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, more sales. Their achievement serves as an inspiration for other automotive repair shops looking to soar above the competition through innovative marketing strategies.

TireConnect and KUKUI Join Forces to Enhance the Automotive Industry

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 18:24:00 GMT

[Las Vegas, NV] – TireConnect, a leading provider of tire and wheel quoting, sales and procurement solutions, and KUKUI, the leading provider of digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry, have announced their partnership to provide innovative technology to enhance the automotive industry.

The partnership aims to bring together TireConnect's expertise in tire management and KUKUI's experience in digital marketing to offer comprehensive solutions to tire retailers and automotive shops. The combined offering will help businesses to streamline operations, increase customer engagement and drive sales.

"We built our business on creating partnerships that enhance our offering and bring additional value to our dealers, which is why we are thrilled to partner with KUKUI to offer our customers a more comprehensive and effective solution for their businesses," said Chance Harrington, Director of Business Development, Sales and Marketing for TireConnect. "Our joint solution will bring together the best of both our worlds and provide real value to our customers."

"KUKUI is always looking for ways to provide the best possible experience for our clients and this partnership with Tire Connect will allow us to do just that," said Mike Giblin, Sr. Director of Partner Development for KUKUI. "By combining our expertise, we can offer a one-stop solution for businesses to manage their tires and marketing efforts seamlessly."

The partnership between TireConnect and KUKUI will provide a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to improve their tire & wheel procurement, sales and marketing efforts. The companies plan to roll out their joint offering in the coming months.

About TireConnect:

TireConnect is a leading provider of tire and wheel quoting, sales and procurement solutions for the automotive industry. Their mission is to provide their customers with innovative and effective solutions to help manage their tire operations.

About KUKUI:

KUKUI is a leading provider of digital marketing solutions for the automotive industry. Their goal is to help businesses increase customer engagement and drive sales through their innovative technology and marketing expertise.

For more information, please contact:

Mike Giblin, Sr. Director of Partner Development at (877) 695-6008 or

Chance Harrington, Director of Business Development, Sales and Marketing at (888) 792-7072 x3

KUKUI's Jimmy Lea to Join the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 20:20:00 GMT

Growth happens when your mission aligns with what lights you up.

Our Product Evangelist Jimmy Lea is taking a bold step forward in his career. No, he didn’t own KUKUI, but he’ll definitely be taking some KUKUI beads with him. Next month Jimmy will be joining The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. Lea has been a part of the KUKUI Ohana since 2018, helping auto repair shop owners make the most of their marketing efforts proven by data driven analytics. With his extensive experience in the automotive industry, Lea is a perfect fit for The Institute.

Jimmy Lea was initially drawn to KUKUI due to our focus on providing auto repair shop owners with the tools they need to succeed (and let’s be honest, the KUKUI beads). With KUKUI, Jimmy saw an opportunity to help automotive business owners make their dreams come true, and his. He appreciated our commitment to creating a positive and open culture, as well as the dedication of KUKUI to its team members and shop owners. This combination of positive attributes made Jimmy feel at home and inspired him to become a part and stay a part of the KUKUI Ohana.

KUKUI is the choice for auto repair shop owners who want to understand and increase their success. The KUKUI All-in-One Success Platform® offers the features to help your business engage customers and build trust. Features include real-time business messaging, digital inspections, call tracking, online appointment setting, social media management, and online reputation management. Additionally, KUKUI's single analytics dashboard allows shop owners like you to easily measure the impact of their efforts with quantitative data like return on investment, customer retention rates, and areas in which they can improve their business. With KUKUI, you can gain invaluable insights and take your business to the next level.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Jimmy Lea is joining The Institute for Automotive Excellence, a KUKUI partner, as a new addition to their incredible lineup of instructors and coaches. With Jimmy's experience working with KUKUI, he brings a newfound level of enthusiasm and insight to the team.

Jimmy's focus at The Institute will be on building successful partnerships, customer service, and improving operations. He will provide resources, experience and knowledge that will help automotive shops become more efficient and successful.

Jimmy has been an asset to KUKUI and will continue to bring that same level of expertise and energy to The Institute. With his knowledge of the industry, he will be able to help businesses grow and reach their goals. We are excited to see how Jimmy Lea will contribute to The Institute and how his addition will help improve the industry.

The collaboration between KUKUI and The Institute for Automotive Excellence will continue to benefit the lives of auto repair shop owners for years to come. With Jimmy Lea’s leadership, both organizations are working together to provide business owners with the tools they need to maximize the success of their marketing efforts. The combination of KUKUI’s software technology and The Institute’s expertise in the automotive industry allows businesses to have access to the most up-to-date information and services available. By locking arms together we can weather this crazy storm of the ever-changing world of automotive repair.

Farewell to an era, but we cannot wait to see what the future holds!

A Recipe for Success

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 18:36:00 GMT

"No one starts at the top. You have to climb."

This Shop Owner Success webinar is for every shop owner who has put in the time and effort to make it to the top. It's for the shop owners that want to build their business and expand to multiple shops. This month we're featuring a shop that was struggling to pull in more than $100K annually.

The last I had spoken with AJ Nealey of Nealey Tire and Auto Service, he owned 3 locations. Now he owns 5 and has an aggressive growth plan to own 100 by 2035. His marketing plan was instrumental in his success. Even when his car count was down, it was paramount that he stuck to the plan.

Join Jimmy Lea, KUKUI's Rock Star host, and AJ Nealey, owner of Nealey Tire and Auto Service, as they discuss how AJ's marketing plan helped shape is success!

Online Visibility

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 16:08:00 GMT

How do I know my website is working to bring me in the right customers and the right cars? How do I set up my website to attract new customers to the shop?

Join Jimmy Lea, Product Evangelist for KUKUI, and Nina Shields, Client Success Coordinator, as they discuss how to understand your online presence and make it impactful!

Close the Back Door!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 17:31:00 GMT

"Are you losing customers faster than you can attract them?"

The back door of your shop is wide open and customers are leaving faster than you can fill the room! How can you measure this number and correct this behavior?

Join Jimmy Lea, Product Evangelist for KUKUI, and Judi Haglin, Co-Owner of Haglin Automotive as they discuss the ways you can shine a light on this problem and close the backdoor to your shop.

Join us for the discussion and find out!

$60K in a Day

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 20:12:00 GMT

"Most shops are thrilled if they generate $60K in a month!"

Are you afraid you have to recreate the wheel when it comes to operating your business? Let's take a step back and see what can be done to make your shop experience better. This was the approach taken by Todd in 1986 to improve his shop, business, culture, and customer experience.

Join Jimmy Lea, KUKUI's Host-with-the-Most, and Todd Hayes, COO of Adams Automotive #1 Automotive Service Center in the Country and Co-Founder of Now Auto Care. Now Auto Care's revenue for 2022 exceeded $30M! What are the tools, concepts, theories, methods, and culture that encourage such high Average Repair Orders and monthly bookings?

Join us for the discussion and find out!

Time to Think About Profit and Loss

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 12 Dec 2022 20:40:00 GMT

"Oh yeah! I have a peayanelle!"

Ok. Seriously. We're talking about a P&L. Profit and loss statement. Maybe you're more familiar with an income statement? Either way, this is big stuff. Just because you're not in the RED, doesn't mean everything is working the way it is supposed to.

We're going to break this down and put it in simple terms. If you're a shop owner who is a total newbie or just looking to brush up your financial skills, this is the webinar for you.

Join our resident Rock Star Host, Jimmy Lea, and Travis Troy, Owner of Honest Wrenches, as they discuss the profit and loss statement from a shop owner's perspective.

Webinar Transcript:

So this is super awesome. Thank you everybody for joining. We're gonna have a great conversation, especially when it comes to talking about those numbers, the numbers that are your business. And there's so many that feel like, oh, yeah.

The numbers the numbers are good. I'm sure they're good.

And and thank you to KUKUI for sponsoring this webinar. KUKUI helps with those numbers. We help with the marketing, and, we are the best of the best when it comes to software in the aftermarket, the automotive aftermarket. Our software is the best of the best to prove what marketing works and what doesn't. So we bring that together to bring to you a proving ground, a platform that allows you to see what's working and what's not. And so there's many shops, many shop owners that feel, oh, you know, my numbers, my p and l, it's good. As long as the numbers aren't red, well, then I'm doing just fine.

Oh my gosh. Well, yes and no. There's so much more that goes into that, and that's where it comes into understanding the profit and loss, the p and l of your business. So my name is Jimmy Lee.

I am Kukui. I'll be here to be the voice for you as we welcome our guest, mister Travis Troy of Honest Wrenches. Travis, thank you for being here this morning. How are you?

Not too bad. How are you, Jimmy?

Fabulous. Thank you very much. And by the way, I am in afternoon now. So I'm so rote in saying good morning that I'm in afternoon now. So I'll say good afternoon to you as well because, Travis, you are also afternoon. Right?

Yes. Yes. I am. I just just clicked twelve o five.

So Twelve o five.

Well, with that, Travis, I'm super excited to have this conversation about profit and loss, about shops and shop owners.

The slide deck is yours. I believe you have control.

Let's talk about what it is we can do to help shop owners understand their p and l so they know what's working and what's not.

Absolutely. So I think, you know, one of the biggest things that we gotta start off with is is understanding KPIs and benchmarks, what they should be and and why.

I hear all the time that, you know, a lot of people are always wondering what to track in their business. There's so many different, I guess, ideas and and benchmarks, and and what do you actually track. So little bit about myself. I am Travis Troy. I have, two shops in the Des Moines metro area with my business partner, Josh.

While attending college and working a full time job, at night as a diesel mechanic.

We graduated in twenty twelve and opened the shop full time, while still working our full time jobs, at night. And then in twenty fourteen, we both threw everything in, quit our full time jobs, and went, full in with honest wrenches.

Fast forward to twenty twenty two, we've got, twenty seven team members, and we'll do roughly four point three million in annual revenue between our two locations.

So as we get, get rolling in here, what is a KPI?

A lot of people always, you know, wanna know what what KPIs do you track? What truly is a KPI?

So a a KPI is I I guess, to to make it easy, it's it just enables the team the ability to make smarter business decisions as well as track their performance based on the key performance indicators that were actually set.

And then we talk a little bit about benchmarks.

A benchmark is a standard or a point of reference against which things can be compared to or assessed within your industry or company. So we have industry benchmarks, and then we also have benchmarks that we set with inside our organization.

So your benchmark in another person's shop might be slightly different than mine depending on what our goals and aspirations are of our actual organization.

So we've got a ton of different KPIs, and it's crazy to think as I was putting this together, the amount of KPIs that are out there in the industry.

And I know Kukui does an absolutely outstanding job with our dashboard that we get to use to be able to it does a lot of this math for us.

One thing that I always like to know is is how does it get to that math in case of for some reason, I didn't have that in front of me right away. So as you can see, all of the all of the different KPIs that are that are continuing to drop in, it can become extremely overwhelming.

So let's go into the meeting and and how to calculate some of the KPIs.

So some of them may seem basic to some but advanced to others. So we're just gonna roll through them. So average repair order, it's your total sales divided by your number of ROs.

Hours per RO, it's your total build hours divided by your number of repair orders.

And then effective labor rate is your total labor sales divided by your total billed hours. And, obviously, we've got our total repair orders and then our total build hours and our GP percentage. So that would be your profit divided by your sale times a hundred gets you your GP percentage.

Any questions so far, Jimmy?

Yes. In fact, here's a question.

And the question is about the average repair order. Do you include, the zero dollar invoices on your average repair order when you look at this?

In my organization, absolutely.

Every ticket is calculated within, everything that we do.

Now depending on your situation and depending on your organization, you may wanna back some of that out in order to be able to see, I guess, a a different number. But for our organization, we we throw everything in, whether it's a zero dollar ticket, a warranty ticket, a set of wiper blades they just dropped in for. All of that we throw in. Now, I've heard shops that do in our state, we don't have, state inspections. Okay? So, you know, states that have that, you may wanna back that out and be able to track that two different ways, in order to be able to get a slightly more realistic number because you're almost kinda running two businesses with inside one management system. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. So what would be the advantage or disadvantage of not including a zero dollar invoice? Maybe somebody just came and had their tires checked for air or, like you said, the windshield wipers.

Why would a shop not include zero dollar invoices?

Yeah. I mean, if it just depends on what you wanna look at.

If it's a ticket, it's a ticket in my opinion. Whether it's zero dollars or ten thousand dollars, a ticket's a ticket, and we wanna take all of that into consideration.

That's, an opinionated it can go either way. And and I'm not saying one way or the other is wrong, but it's something that as long as you know which way you're tracking it and you track it the same way every time and stay consistent, that's really what matters.

So then we've got technician efficiency, technician productivity, shop efficiency, and shop productivity, And I've got in here all of the different ways that you're able to, perform those calculations and calculate them. Now what I will say is a lot of our management systems nowadays are going to calculate a lot of this for you.

Me personally, I still think it's extremely important that you have the ability and and the know how in order to calculate this in case if for some reason we don't actually have that, in our management system that that calculates it or if we wanna trust and verify.

Maybe we think that the management system's off a little bit, so this gives us the ability in order to be able to do that.

And then different types of of profits. You hear a lot of people talk about, net income, net profit, net operating profit, net operating income. You've got EBITDA, SDE.

So I just wanted to touch on a little bit of different ways on how to actually calculate your profits.

So net operating profit is the profit after subtracting all of the operating expenses from the revenue generated. Net income is profit after subtracting all of the operating expenses, interest payments, and taxes.

And then EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization.

So it's pretty similar to SDE, but seller's discretionary earnings is gonna allow if an owner's got, you know, their boat in there, their airplane, and all that other stuff, and they wanna back some of that in, that would more or less be sellers' discretionary earnings, and that's how you calculate those.

Okay. Travis, question for you, if you go back one slide. Mhmm. And and and this is a question for me.

Why why would we calculate our profit at these different levels? Why not just go all the way down to the earnings before taxes and interest amortization? Why not go all the way to e EBITDA? Why do we why do we have these different levels?

Why would we track that?

A a lot of it's gonna be based on your institution of whether you're trying to get a loan or, you're looking at business evaluations.

There's a lot of different reasons on why you would look at it differently.

For me, I'm big on just looking at net. I don't leverage my business on a personal level a ton.

So net is is is pretty net's probably the most common, but I think it's important that everybody knows and understands that there's other ways to be able to look at it.

Okay. Okay. Cool. Thank you.

Yeah. Absolutely.

So we've learned a little bit about KPIs, and, I guess the next thing is is how do we use the KPIs to set benchmarks for our business?

And I think this is extremely important that all of us know and understand is that we can have a good average repair order. We can have a good hours per hour, a good gross profit, an amazing car count, an awesome average written repair order, outstanding technician efficiency, productivity, etcetera, and and we can still lose money.

So if we don't look at the big picture and figure out truly what our breakeven is and set those benchmarks, we can look at a dashboard and think that we're doing really good, but but at the end of the day, we're not putting any money in the bank. We've got more going out than we do coming in. I think that's really important.

So one thing that I utilize that I think is extremely important is a breakeven sales calculator.

And what a breakeven sales calculator is is this allows you to take data from your profit and loss and, for me, also your balance sheet and perform some calculations to determine what sales are needed in order to break even. There's a few different ways that we can do this calculation based on your current expenses, current GP percentage in order to determine what you currently need. Or if you're looking to bring on a new expense or loan, you can add this into your calculation in order to determine what your new breakeven sales number would be.

So in order to calculate your required sales in order to break even, you're gonna want to follow the formula listed here. So I personally like to take no less than six months worth of data.

So take six months worth of your monthly expenses and divide that out by six, and then you'll take that divided by your gross profit percentage.

So what are your monthly expenses? I wanna make sure that everybody knows what a monthly expense truly is.

You're gonna wanna add up anything any monthly expense, cell phone, car payment, fuel, management systems, all of that.

In my shop, I exclude service adviser sales cost, parts cost, sublet cost, tire cost, and technician cost. Some people are gonna put, service adviser cost below the line as an expense.

There's no right or wrong way. Just make sure that you stay consistent whichever way that you do it.

Add all of that up, divide it out for the number of months that you're calculating it by. Like I said, I like to really do from a six month window.

The most important thing here that we have to make sure that we identify is any debt payments. So any payments that you have that's debt comes off of your balance sheet. So that's not gonna come out of your p and l. You're gonna have to look at your balance sheet or go through and look, okay. What debt payments do I have? So you're gonna wanna add your monthly expenses and your debt payments up in order to get yourself an accurate number of what your true monthly expenses are.

So let's talk about gross profit. So in order to calculate your gross profit percentage, you need to make sure that your p and l is accurate and that it has all of your cost of goods sold in there.

Parts, tires, technicians, labor costs. I touched on service adviser costs a little bit.

That can go one way or the other. You can either put it above or below the line.

Sublet costs, shop supply costs. Once you have all of that completed and and laid out nicely in your p and l, it makes this calculation extremely easy.

So what you'll do is you're just gonna take your gross profit dollars divided by your total sales, and that's gonna give you your gross profit percentage.

So we've been able to now figure out what our average months monthly costs are. We've just now we're able to calculate what our gross profit percentage is.

So now we're gonna be able to go through and really start doing some math and figuring some stuff out.

I just threw some numbers together for an example.

This is actually my numbers from a while back when I first did this years ago.

But this data is taken from six months of expenses, add it up, and divide it by six.

So our average monthly expenses plus our balance sheet items was sixty two thousand five sixty three, and we are carrying a fifty four percent overall gross profit percentage, for that same time frame.

So if I take those numbers, divide it by point five four, our required monthly sales to breakeven was a hundred and fifteen thousand eight fifty seven.

Do we have any questions so far, Jimmy?

Yeah. Another question here about the, average gross profit percentage. What's Yeah. What's normal? What's usual? What's healthy?

What's Yeah.

Absolutely.

Awesome and amazing?

Yeah. I mean, fifty five to sixty percent is going to be your your benchmark that you're really gonna wanna set.

Now there's some variables within that. If you're a high performance shop, if you're doing, you know, exotic cars, that might drop a little bit.

But realistic numbers for a general automotive repair shop, you're really gonna wanna be in that fifty five to sixty percent range. It was a really good question.

Okay. So if somebody's operating at a average GP percentage and they're up north of seventy percent, what would that say?

I would ask what they all actually have calculated in their gross profit numbers.

So if they're north of seventy percent, they probably don't have, service adviser costs involved in that. They may possibly also not have their technician costs involved in that.

Okay.

Okay. Cranking and or they're just cranking and doing really, really well.

But one thing that we'll do is is let's say that somebody was was less than this fifty four percent. Okay?

And let's say that they were running forty eight percent. Okay. So if you did the math, the sixty two five sixty three, and took that divided by point four eight, that changes their monthly required sales to break even to a hundred and thirty thousand dollars.

So a very small change in your gross profit determines what your monthly required sales are, and that's a staggering number. So the better gross profit percentage that you can carry, really the less sales that it takes to to make everything happen.

Oh, yeah. Everybody would love to do more with less, and I think that's what you're getting at here with a healthy GP percentage at a hundred and fifteen as your breakeven. So if you're going up and you're you are cracking the nut at one thirty, you're doing that much better because you're you're holding that GP percentage.

Absolutely. Yeah. I guess my point was is if you were only carrying a forty eight percent GP, it would require a hundred and thirty thousand dollars in sales in order to break in order to break even. Now let's say that you were carrying a sixty percent GP, that drops that one fifteen down to a hundred and four thousand.

So a six percent increase in your GP drops you about ten thousand dollars a month in sales required.

Oh, that's great.

That's great.

Pretty awesome. Pretty staggering numbers for sure.

Yeah. Sobering for sure. And to see that, oh, gosh. All we'd have to do is just tweak this little lever here just a little bit on our GP percentage, and it makes a world of difference.

You hit the nail on the head. It's it's pulling levers and knowing what levers to pull, and not, not pulling them too hard. I mean, we can certainly, stiffen ourselves up a little bit too much and and cause the the exact opposite of what we're wanting. So you've really gotta find that happy medium for your location, your organization, and, what your, you know, market will bear.

Nice.

So, I guess the question that I always ask when I go through this is is are we in the business to break even? Because we shouldn't be.

So if we're only focusing on what it takes to break even, and we set that as our as our goal or our benchmark, we're always just gonna break even. So I don't think that we should be in business to to break even. So I think it's important that now once we figure out what that true break even is, and this was extremely important for a lot of people in in the COVID years, making sure that they were able to manage our expenses and and know exactly where they had to be.

Now we can take our monthly expenses, loan payments, and desired profit. So you've got our monthly expenses and debt payments, which was sixty two thousand five hundred and sixty three, and now we say that we wanna make an additional twenty three thousand dollars a month in net profit, that puts our expenses at eighty five thousand five hundred and sixty three.

If you take that divided by your fifty four percent, your now required sales, okay, is a hundred and fifty eight thousand four fifty, and that gets you profit for your business so you can continue to grow.

And I think that's that's really important that we now know that range. Okay? So in my business, what I'm gonna do, I'm a the absolute minimum we can be in order to keep the lights on is a hundred and fifteen thousand. And in order to keep the business healthy, we need to do a hundred and fifty eight thousand. So we need to be able to put those with inside and and have our ranges, of where we need to be.

As you can see here on this illustration down below, I've created a sheet that I use, and I do this, in my business. I do it once a quarter, and I go back six months each time just to make sure that I run a current breakeven number, and I run a proposed if we were to change or add anything. So you'll see over here on the right, it says monthly expense average, new expense.

That's where you're gonna add in that new expense. If you're looking to add something or take on a new debt, or, you know, maybe possibly hire some admin help, an office person to help you and you know how much that person's gonna cost a month, you put that in there and it gives you your new breakeven sales number.

I wish I woulda had that years ago when we just didn't have any direction. We didn't know what to do, and we didn't know if we could afford anything or what we had to do.

Super powerful, information to be able to just kinda lay it out and and run your numbers.

So Travis.

Yep.

Question there on that that new expense.

Is this also the exercise that you would do, say, for, equipment if you were gonna get a a new alignment machine or new tire machines?

Would you add that as that new, monthly payment expense?

Absolutely. Yeah. So you've got your current total monthly expenses right now, and you're looking to add a eighty, ninety thousand dollar alignment rack and and machine, and your payment's gonna be, you know, fifteen hundred a month. You throw that fifteen hundred dollars in there, add those two back together, and then you'll get your total new proposed expenses.

Divide that out by your gross profit percentage, and then I'll tell you where you need to be on on sales.

Nice.

And and that's assuming you don't change anything.

Now if you made some increases on some other things, maybe you bumped some parts margins a little bit or maybe some labor rate adjustments, none of that will really reflect in this. This is assuming you change absolutely nothing in your business.

Correct. Right. Yeah. And so when you're running this for six months, you're doing it month by month. Correct?

No. I you wanna have a six month window. You don't wanna take a window too small.

So it's a six month window, but you're averaging all of that out for a month. Correct. So I'm taking six months of expenses and and basically dividing whatever that total is by six to to run monthly numbers.

Oh, okay. So you you've got a rolling six month average. That's what you're calculating?

Yeah. It's important that you know, I mean, there's times where, you know, maybe we had to go out and buy all new computers, one month or so. We wanna spread those out as far as we can. And for me, a six month window is is fair enough that I think, you know like, for us personally, you know, we just signed, you know, our entire team up for vision, at the beginning of this month. So if I looked at it just in the month of November, it would it would look pretty painful, You know? But it's it's all good stuff. So that's why we wanna keep that six month window, in mind, to help average out some of those onetime costs that we have throughout the year.

Got it. Got it. Very cool.

So this is kinda where it starts getting fun, and this is where I always got lost. Once I figured out the the breakeven number, I didn't know what to do next.

I'm like, okay. I gotta breakeven. Now what do I do? Here's where I gotta be. So our needed sales is a hundred and fifty eight thousand four fifty. That's what we need in order for us to be able to have a healthy business.

The questions that I ask myself, well, how many cars do we need? How many hours do we need? What does our ARO need to be? And how do we break this down so everybody inside our organization can utilize these benchmarks to help steer the ship. And it's not just me pointing fingers at them telling them, hey. Here's what we have to do.

So if we break this down, we start by breaking it down into a week. So we take the one fifty eight four fifty divided by four point three weeks in a month gives us thirty six thousand eight hundred and forty three point eight three dollars a week in sales.

Our benchmark that we created in our shop is seven hundred and fifty dollars for an average repair order, so that gives us a starting point of figuring out how many cars we're gonna need. So we take that thirty six thousand eight hundred and forty eight eighty three divided by a seven hundred fifty dollar ARO, that's forty nine cars a week.

So here's what we know so far. We've got to do one hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars a month, which is thirty six thousand eight hundred and forty eight dollars a week, and we need to carry a seven fifty dollars ARO with forty nine cars a week. We're starting to break this down into some more bite sized pieces that are easier to understand and easier for our team to be able to understand. You look at a hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars for a service adviser, and they're already stressed out, stressed to the max, and they don't know what to do, and it just it just totally derails them. But if you break it down to it's forty nine cars a week at a seven hundred fifty dollar ARO, it just makes so much more sense to them.

So we've been able to make some benchmarks that our service advisers are able to track and manage, but we're leaving somebody pretty integral out of the equation.

We have technicians with goals. So how do we make this make sense for them?

They don't really care how much the business does in sales. They care about what they have to get in hours, and that's what we've gotta start figuring out. So we've gotta figure out what our effective labor rate is and our parts to labor ratio. So for this example, we're gonna assume that we're at a hundred and twenty five dollar effective labor rate, and we've got a one to one parts to labor ratio for an x set of math. So if we assume that, we can recap. We've got the one fifty eight four fifty, the thirty six eight forty eight eighty three with a seven hundred fifty dollar ARO at forty nine cars a week, and our effective labor rate's one twenty five with a one to one parts labor ratio.

So if all of that is accurate, we'll take our needed sales per week, which is thirty six eight forty eight eighty three divided by two. We now know we need eighteen thousand four hundred and twenty four dollars in labor sales needed.

If we take that divided by our effective labor rate, we now know that we need a hundred and forty seven hours a week needed. Now this is where it starts to get kinda tricky depending on your current shop layout and stuff like that. Do you have the staff in order to be able to do that?

So we've got everything, and it's all kinda starting to fall in into place. So for this example, I'm gonna say that we have four technicians. Okay? So technician one, our goal is forty five, tech two is forty, tech three is thirty five, and tech four is twenty seven.

His general service helps clean up the shop, stuff like that. So he bills about half the hours that he's there. Now if your shop doesn't have four technicians and maybe you only have two technicians, now we've got to start looking at what we're what it's gonna take and what we truly need in order to make our breakeven make sense and start putting those people in place. So if you only had two technicians, do you think you're really gonna be able to, you know, crank out a hundred and fifty hours?

It's roughly seventy five hours a week per technician. It's probably not realistic.

So once you start figuring the breakeven out, then the puzzle pieces and everything start coming together, and you're able to say, okay. Now I maybe need to add another technician, or maybe you've got eight technicians, and your breakeven's only that and you've got a hundred and forty seven hours. Maybe you're a little overstaffed, or maybe you've got the capacity to be able to do more. So once you start getting some of these numbers together, everything really just starts falling into place.

So, Jimmy, I'm gonna put you on the spot here.

So we've got our monthly sales goal, our weekly sales goal, our ARO, our car count, our effective labor rate, and our labor sales goal, our build hours goal, and our technician hours goal. And maybe we can even ask the the audience that's out here watching, what is our hours per RO goal have to be based on these numbers?

Hours per RO, well, I would see the, one forty seven divided by the forty nine car count.

Absolutely. So roughly three point something hours per ticket?

Three hours per ticket, which is totally doable. Right?

So that's that's that's right in the wheelhouse of where we wanna be. So all of these numbers are matching up. It's passing the sniff test of a lot of different things.

Forty five hours, forty hours, thirty five, twenty seven, all those are realistic, easily obtainable numbers for a business, for a technician to even turn. You know? Possibly even a little a little under what what it could be.

So Yeah. One thing that you can do is you can take this deeper if you'd like.

Personally, we leave it into a week in our organization. You can take it down to daily goals, hourly.

If you take it down to hourly, it might make you sick, because you you figure out really what it takes per hour in order to make everything go.

We stop at a weekly goal. We have jobs that roll into several days.

So we just we run it that weekly, but you can totally continue to break this down, if you'd like. So we spent a ton of time on KPIs, benchmarks, breakeven numbers.

But, Jimmy, what are we completely missing out on?

I I think it's the, the the folding money in my pocket.

Does your four walls give you the ability to do what it takes to break even?

Is your shop capacity give you the ability to do what it takes in order to break even, to do what it takes in order to make a profit for the business? Do you, one, have the staff, and do you, too, have the amount of base that it requires in order to be able to do this?

And so this is something really cool that I'm able to do is is we run a shop capacity drill.

And with a shop capacity drill, it really kind of tells you it brings the rest of that in. So it rolls your shop capacity in, confirms that your staffing model works, and confirms all of that. So myself, I'm an ATI client.

We're alumni now, and so this is actually a spreadsheet that I get to utilize as an ATI client from them in my business that allows me to be able to run through and and determine this. So if you put your labor rate in, put your, mechanical sales, so we said we're one to one, so fifty percent, put the hours per day that you're open and the days per week that you're open, and then you also wanna put in how the shop hours. How long is the shop there versus how long is the technician there?

And the number of technicians that you have. Now for us, we're gonna consider any oil change guy, stuff like that as as a half a technician. We know that they really don't have the ability to bill forty hours, and then everybody else is gonna determine. So as you see in our previous slides where we had the three technicians and then we had that one guy that was around twenty hours, we put him in as a half hour. We've got five and a half bays in this example. So we put all of that in and it starts doing some math for us.

So what it does is it says that if we are ninety percent productive, we can do thirty six thousand dollars a week in sales with that current staff.

If we're a hundred percent productive, we can do thirty seven thousand eight hundred. Jimmy, do you remember what our needed sales were in order to be able to breakeven and have a profit for the business?

It was that the one fifty eight number?

Yep. What was that a week?

One fifty eight divided by four is thirty nine thousand something something.

Four point three would put us at thirty six thousand eight hundred.

So we've got we gotta be somewhere right between ninety five and a hundred percent productive in the shop with our current staff in order to achieve that goal.

So everything becomes fully realistic.

Point three instead of four.

Yep. So we've got, on average, four point three weeks in a month.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Absolutely.

So all of this makes sense, and it and it passes every sniff test that we've kinda put to it. And now we know that if we're somewhere in the ninety seven, ninety eight percent productivity with our three and a half technicians based on our current labor rate, based on our one to one parts to labor ratio, all of this is totally doable.

Now if we increase our productivity, we can do even more than that.

One thing that I did wanna hit on. So you'll see over here, it's got if your shop was a hundred percent efficient, you your shop annual capacity is three million eighty six thousand dollars. Now one thing that I wanna make sure that you know is if we go back to this, it's got number of bays at five and a half bays, but we've only got three and a half technicians.

So when you go to shop capacity, it's saying that if you had a technician in all five and a half of your bays, that is truly what you could do as a one hundred percent maximum capacity.

Now me, personally, I think that's a little bit of an inflated number. It is a real number, but it'd be be extremely difficult in order to be able to achieve that. I mean, you have really, really gotta be we we shoot for about eighty percent.

If we can really run eighty percent capacity of what the actual shop is, we are extremely happy at that point.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I would think running it at ninety five, ninety seven, a hundred percent capacity.

Productivity? Productivity or yeah. Because I'm not thinking of it as productivity point of view. It it's like, if you're running at a hundred percent all the time, you can't last that long.

Right. Yeah.

I mean, it's And this is a little bit different.

It is. So on a productivity side, we're we're accounting for that technician to be a half. So we're not putting him as a full. So it kind of it makes the numbers a little bit more realistic.

So you you should be able to ride that ninety five percent productivity.

Now on the shop efficiency side at that one hundred percent efficient with every single bay, that makes it kinda tough because that's assuming that every bay is turning the same amount every minute of the day. And and we know that's not a hundred percent realistic in in our outside world. On paper, it looks really good. But if you can get somewhere around eighty percent of that number, you're you're doing very, very well. You should be proud of yourself.

Nice. Nice. Very cool.

So we've got our total repair orders, our average repair order, our hours per RO, our labor sales, all of this stuff that we went through, we've got all of our goals for everybody.

So this is gives us the opportunity to either add or adjust our benchmarks based on all of that. So we've got a ton of data. Now we've just gotta tweak and adjust, but we're we're right in line. We're right where we need to be.

And then it really kinda puts it all together for us, and this is what we utilize with our sales team, with our entire organization of all of our technicians and everything. This is what they get in order to be able to know what it takes to get where we have to go. So each technician has their hours goal.

We have the benchmarks set for the service adviser team. They know what we've gotta be on on an average repair order. They know what we've gotta be on an hours per hour. They know all of that stuff. And if we do all of that, they know about where we're gonna land.

So we put it all together and we present this to the team.

And and you it's broken down into bite sized pieces so that way they're not just looking at that hundred and fifty eight thousand dollar a month deal thinking I'm already we're only doing a hundred and thirty thousand a month now, and I'm already exhausted. I don't even see the the path on how to even get to a hundred and fifty eight thousand. We broke it down for them. And, hopefully, we did this with them together along the way so they get to have a better understanding and and a clear understanding of how some of that goes.

So here's one thing that, there's a lot of different management systems out there. So can you trust the numbers that you get from your management So So they are unable to account for things like employee vacations, lost parts, or unreturned cores, monthly expenses, debt payments, variable tax and benefit loads, which all of that has an effect on our gross profit and stuff like that, and those are the numbers that our management system is gonna spit out at us. But those numbers can be skewed. Hopefully not a lot, but they can be skewed depending on, you know, maybe tech a was on vacation all week and you had to pay them, but they didn't bill any hours. Your management system doesn't know that. So it's important that we utilize our management system as a guide, but we know that the truth is truly in our profit and loss, and we have to make sure that our profit and loss and our balance sheet is updated and accurate at all times.

So when we have a problem, how do we diagnose it? So first of all, in order to know that we have a problem, we've got to identify it. Somebody needs to identify that we have an issue by monitor monitoring our KPIs and benchmarks, whether that's our accountant coming to us and saying, look. You guys are not making any money at all, and you're just sitting here spinning your wheels.

We really gotta work on doing something. Or maybe your team and the technician brings it to the table and says, look. I'm not getting the hours that I want and need in order to be able to live the life that I wanna live and make the money that I wanna make. Somebody has to identify it.

Maybe you as the owner. You go through and do an RO audit or something like that, and you find out that, our average written estimate is not where it should be based on the mileage of the vehicles that are coming through our door.

So somebody's gotta be able to identify it. And then what we've gotta do is we've gotta start researching it. We can't just assume.

We've all assumed before we always get ourselves in trouble. So then we wanna research it. We wanna make sure that it's real and that the numbers that we're seeing are accurate.

Go back to our management system. We may see something in our management system that gives us a red flag. Okay. Let's go to the p and l and make sure that it's accurate. If it's not accurate, then we gotta figure out the difference between the two and why it's not accurate.

Did we fat finger something into, p into our p and l, or did back office maybe screw up if we're utilizing back office in our business? There's a lot of different variables that can happen then. And then we've got to, you know, investigate. Begin investigating on what's going on by pulling data on a broad range until we dive down and actually find that issue.

Once we find the issue, we wanna go in and evaluate it.

Dive deep. I mean, we have to we have to assume no fault, assume that it's all on us and dive deep to figure out is is it a single team member? Is it the whole team?

If you're running service adviser teams where you've got, like, a service adviser with a team of technicians, is it just one team that's seeing the issue, or is it both teams that are seeing the issue? What's going on? Nobody's at fault. We wanna use blameless problem solving when we're doing this, but we wanna we we've gotta be able to dive deep and be able to figure out truly what's going on with it.

So once we get that done, then we've got to present the findings to our team.

Once we get those findings, present them to your team, educate them on the findings, and teach them how to track, manage, and fix the issue before it's too late. What we're doing in this case is we're doing a a reactive investigation, basically. We found something that's an issue, and now we've gotta be reactive.

So if we go in and educate our team and teach them how to manage, fix, and track it, then we're then we can start taking a proactive approach, and they can take a proactive approach. They can start seeing whatever it is slip and be able to to make adjustments in order to be able to do that. The next thing that we wanna do after we educate them is we wanna follow-up on it.

This is something that I've been able to learn in our organization that's helped us out tremendously is I'm I'm big on set it and forget it, and that's the the most inaccurate and wrong way and wrong way to do things that, it's human nature that we've got to they've got a lot of stuff on their plate anyway. All day. Our entire team does. But then we throw something new at them.

You've gotta be able to follow-up on it. So follow-up on it in two weeks and then follow-up on it again in four weeks and make sure that everybody's still on the same page. Make sure everybody still knows how to manage it. Make sure everybody still knows how to track it, and make sure that they're able to to identify the issue.

And then from there on out, all you have to do is manage it. You've got your team that manages the issues for you, not you having to go in and be reactive finding the issues. Your team is now proactive, and they're managing it for you, which allows you to focus on the other side of the business that you really should be focusing on, which is the growth and the people and just taking care of of everything else, not having to sit there and and dive in and investigate stuff.

Any questions, Jimmy?

Yeah. A couple of questions.

Everybody's wondering about these slides. Can we get a copy of these slides? Are you okay sharing these?

Absolutely. I'd love to.

Yeah. So we'll we'll send this out. We'll make sure that we share with everybody. And to Billy's question, yes, it is recorded, and, you will be able to watch this again later.

So Mike has a question, and this kinda goes back a little ways in determining how many hours per technician.

Yeah. How do you determine that?

Yeah. So if I know your Internet's a little laggy, but, are you able to go back to that slide?

This one here?

Yeah. There you go. So the the the question was determining hours per technician?

Yes. How do you know that technician one is forty five, technician two is forty, thirty five, twenty seven? How did you come up with those?

Yeah. And who asked that question?

Mike.

Mike. Mike, thank you so much for asking that. I completely skipped over it. So one of the things that is extremely important as we're putting this together is you have a one on one with each of those technicians.

Okay? And what we wanna do is we wanna talk about what their goals and aspirations are that's part of this. So we sit down with tech one, and tech one says that I wanna hit fifty hours a week. Okay?

And we start doing the math with them, and we realize that fifty hours is an unrealistic number for what they're currently doing.

So then we dial that back a little bit, and we agree that forty five hours is now a realistic number. So it's something that we ask our technicians for, and we make sure we do the math together based on how many hours they're gonna have to turn per day, how many hours are actually in the building, what their current productivity and efficiencies are, and we make sure that it's a realistic number, and we do that with each technician. One on ones in our organization is extremely important. It's something that we do not miss out on. We do one every month with every single team member, and I know that you guys saw at the beginning of the slide, there's twenty seven of them. We do twenty seven of them a month every single month. We I mean, our team looks forward to it, and we really look forward to it.

That's how we stay on the same page when we make sure that we're continuing to achieve our technicians' goals. That was a great question.

Nice.

Awesome. Thank you, Mike.

Alright. Let's see if I can go forward here for you on the presentation.

Number eight, manage. I believe we are right here.

We're at we're at the recap, and we've got little bit little bit of time left for some more questions. But here's the good part about this. So we've been able to know what the KPIs are and how to calculate them. We know what our breakeven number is.

We we know that we need to build some benchmarks around our breakeven plus. You'll see that I put that plus there. You need to do both. Know what your breakeven is.

Know what your absolute minimum is, and then know what your plus is. Get yourself that range so that way you know what your sweet spot is. We need to know the capacity of our shop and the capacity of our shop and the capacity of the team that we have with inside of our shop and know that we have either have growth opportunity or maybe you're at eighty percent capacity of the of the four walls that you have, and now you've gotta start figuring out what your next steps are in your in your business. Are you gonna go to a second location?

Are you gonna add on? What do you want, and, truly, what does your team want?

And then we found out that we cannot trust everything in our in our management system.

You can trust a lot of things, just not everything. It's it's not an accounting software. And then when we have an issue, use your eight step diagnostic procedure in order to be able to dive in and figure out what's going on with it.

Nice. Okay. Another question. Question coming in from John. What is a good net profit percentage?

Yeah. Absolutely. So a good net profit percentage is gonna be between twenty and twenty five percent net profit.

Between twenty and twenty five percent, you said?

Yep. Absolutely.

Okay. Okay. Cool. Other questions, comments, concerns? Type in those questions and, oops, and we'll see. Oops.

Here's the here's one thing that that I wanna I wanna hit on if we, if we just go one more slide.

Uh-huh.

This is something that dawned on me. What does KPI stand for again, Jimmy?

Key performance indicators.

Keep people interested, keep them informed, keep them involved, and keep them inspired. And when I started living by that, the the the key performance indicators just show up. Okay?

If I try to hide stuff from my team, if I get worried about them knowing the numbers inside the organization and stuff like that, I'm I'm a firm believer. Keep them wanting to learn and know more. Don't be afraid of that. Feed them.

If they want fed, feed them, and keep them involved in it. Let them work on some of this. We've got our team members that are bringing this stuff to us now, and I think it's extremely important that if they wanna get involved, let them get involved and teach them along the way because they're gonna be able to run and manage your your business, in most cases and then even in our cases, much better than we could. We build some great people, and and then they start to do it.

And and that's that's the cool part about it. I love this slide. I actually saw it on LinkedIn, and and I knew I had to slide it in there because it's just it's so true. It is so true.

Dude, I love that. I love it. The the better you're informed, the better decisions that are made, the better direction that everyone takes. Yeah, man. That's super awesome.

Keep people informed.

And so now here's a question for you. Oh, Mike's asking a question. Mike is asking, who's your ATI coach?

Kevin Allen.

Kevin Allen. So shout out to Kevin Allen. Super Yes. And Mike, who's your ATI coach? We'll give them a shout out as well. Right. So for for the Travis Troy Kingdom, for your empire that you and your partner have been, building over the last quite a few years.

Yeah. So we've been in business, we've been in business for just over ten years, but really full time since twenty fourteen.

Right.

And so if we look at that kingdom, you've got two locations. Does it look like we're adding a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth, or does the two give you the the lifestyle that you and your partner are looking for?

Yeah. So it's really not about lifestyle for us. It's about the impact that we can have on other people.

So we are focusing heavily on on our people right now and pouring every resource that we can into them and giving them runway and a path for growth.

So as we grow our our team and we bust through the seams of two stores, if they're happy where they're at, then we're happy. If they wanna grow and add more levels of leadership to our organization, which would potentially require more stores, then at that point, by all means, absolutely. We have no issues going to three, four, five, six. I mean, as many as it takes, but we're not doing it or running it as a money aspect of I need this amount of money. We're running it as if I have this amount of people that wanna continue to grow and improve and change lives of others, then that's our motive to want to continue to grow. So two stores right now, we are absolutely happy.

We can pour a ton of resources into our team. We're growing some amazing leaders.

And when they get to that point where, you know, they just feel capped, at that point, that's when we'll have to start looking at, potentially a a third or a fourth store. And, you know, they always say two stores are okay. You go three, you gotta go four or five really quick. So, we'd have to make sure that structurally we're sound.

I mean, I know a lot of people I just had a podcast go out, with Ratchet and Wrench yesterday and about our culture. And when we went to two stores, our culture suffered immensely. I mean, it was it was bad. Our culture really went in the dumps because we're strong really thin.

And we were able to bring that back. Our team made us aware of it. We built it back up, and now we focus on building the leaders. And now the leaders and the culture and everything stays with inside the organization even when we're not there, and that's extremely powerful.

Anybody that's looking to go multilocation, if you cannot leave your business and and leave the culture there, if the culture leaves when you leave, it's not ready for a second location yet. Don't do it because you want a second store. Don't do it because you want more money. Do it because your team wants it, and it will be way more successful. If I woulda had just that little nugget when we went to two stores, holy smokes.

Yeah. Really, we could probably be at ten by now.

Oh, wow. At ten. Yeah. You know, I I saw it said the other day. And by the way here, everybody, this is, Travis's contact information if you wanna reach out and ask him any additional questions.

Please. Absolutely. I'm an open book.

Yeah. That's awesome. I I saw the other day on oh, it was just an inspirational thought that, this person was saying, I'm not here to be rich. I'm here to enrich.

Absolutely. I love that.

Yeah.

To enrich other people's lives Yeah.

Is more powerful than being rich.

Totally. To me, that is rich. Yeah. I'm I'm a rich man.

I am I am extremely rich because of what we do for our people. To me, money is wealth. Okay?

Yeah. And inside of me, I am rich, and and I teach my kids that.

My my daughter talks all the time about being rich, and I ask her what riches, and she says it's a lot of money. I said that's incorrect.

If you have a lot of money, you're wealthy. Be rich. Be rich with your life. Be rich with your family. Be rich with your team.

I am rich.

I am extremely rich.

I have an amazing team, an amazing family, and that's that's what makes me rich.

Oh, that's super cool. So we're gonna give a shout out to Eric Twiggs. Eric Twiggs is the coach for mister Mike.

Eric's good stuff.

That's awesome.

Eric Twiggs is also the coach for seventeenth Street Automotive, Billy.

Billy. Billy Kading Kading?

Billy Billy's the guy Billy is, like, here, like, super early every single time. I want you guys to know that. That's freaking awesome. Right?

Thank you, bud.

I want you to know that that is that's awesome.

You are hungry for knowledge, and I want you to know that that is gonna take you places. That is gonna take you places.

Be hungry for knowledge.

So true. Any other questions, comments, concerns, everybody?

Type them in. We've got Travis here for a few more minutes.

And Billy says, oh, yeah. Super hungry. Nom. Nom. Nom. Nom.

That's awesome. I love it.

I do too.

I do too. Hey. You've got your smartphone real close to you. That's my cell phone number. That is my email address.

Snap a picture. If you want a copy of this deck, text me over your email address, and I'll send you over a copy so you can, review it with your business partner, with your team, with your accountant, with your spouse so you can discover what is the optimum breakeven. What is the number that we need as a stretch goal because we wanna profit twenty three thousand a month? What what is our car count? What do we actually need to have here?

Just so so awesome that that this information is here and available. And, to everybody, thank you for being here. You guys are super awesome.

John Powell, you will be early next time. We know you're hungry for this knowledge and information as well. So thanks for being here and your excuse for being late.

Great information. Mike's giving you super props, Travis.

Thank you, Mike.

Yeah.

Oh, Mike, you're you're putting in email addresses in this chat. And, you know, as soon as I close it down, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to see this again. You might have to, text it to me.

Super awesome. Thank you so much, everybody. My name is Jimmy Lee.

I'm here to help you. We are Kukui. We're here to help enlighten you as to what's possible, what you can do in your shop. And to everyone, aloha.

Thank you very much. Merry Christmas. Hope you have a fabulous holiday season. A merry Christmas.

Happy New Year. Happy everything.

Thank you, Travis.

Better Customer Retention

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:55:00 GMT

"What do my customers prefer?"

There is a Fortune in the Follow-up!!

Do you know all of the methods available through your KUKUI All-in-One Success Platform?
How do you know which method of communication your clients prefer?
Which method gets the most conversion?
What are the easy steps I can take in my shop to ensure I stay Top-Of-Mind with my clients?

Join Jimmy Lea, Product Evangelist for KUKUI, and Charlie Myers, Senior Client Success Coordinator as they discuss the many ways KUKUI’s All-In-One Success Platform can help you to retain current clients!

Up Your Retention Game!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 22:33:00 GMT

"Am I losing customers faster than I can attract them?"

Every shop owner I know is clamoring for new customers. Proof of this is the percentage of their marketing budget that’s focused solely on attracting new blood. But what happens after you get them? You don’t ignore them; you work hard to keep them!!! In this fast-paced webinar I’m going to show you:

Why a single-minded focus is dangerous and expensive
Introduce you to the concept of the loyalty ladder and why it matters
How to intentionally create a program to move your new customers to raving fan clients

Join Jimmy Lea, Product Evangelist for KUKUI, and Rick White, President and Coach of 180BIZ as they discuss the information and strategies you need to up your retention game.

Webinar Transcript:

We've got a phenomenal, phenomenal discussion gonna be happening today. We've got some great information going to be shared with us as shop owners, raving fans, retention of customers.

Gonna be amazing. I'm super excited. So, thank you for everybody that's joining in. Type in the questions box. That is where you want to put your information.

You've got questions. We've got the answers. Go ahead and type them in. Maybe you've got a comment. Maybe there's the topic of discussion we wanna talk about. Put it into the questions box, and we will engage with our illustrious guest here on our webinar today to talk about our raving fans and keeping them coming back into the shop.

So who are we? We are Kukui. Anybody else that wants a shout out, put into the questions box where you are joining us from today. You are super awesome, and and my friends, it's good to see you.

Good to see you. Is from the automotive industry. We have run shops. We have turned wrenches.

We have managed the front counter, the front desk. We have we've done that. We've done that and more. And we we've coupled together with the best of the best for developers, computer software, software as a service industry.

Couple those two together, we're bringing to you shop owners the best of the best Kukui software. It is a proving ground for what marketing is working, what doesn't work. We are your website. We are your, customer retention, your email, postcards, texting, you you name it.

We we're we're the proven ground, all in one success platform with your marketing. Super look forward to working with each of you on this platform, on this program to help you be the best of the best in your market, in your patch, in your area. And I'm super excited to be today with Lighthouse Automotive because they are expanding their reach. They have, purchased another shop here in North Carolina, and it's about two miles up the street.

So the kingdom is growing. Super awesome. Great for that to happen. And, you know, I'll be traveling to many different areas.

You if if you are open for it I'm I'm in Genie Lights' office right now. I'm I'm in their office.

If you're open for it and we can do a webinar from your shop, love to love to stop by. Drop us a drop me a note. Drop me a text. Let's connect on that one.

We are talking about raving fans and customer retention. Super excited to have this discussion. My name is Jimmy Lee. I'll be the host today. I'll be the voice for you.

Go ahead and type your questions, comments, concerns into the questions box so that we can have this discussion today. And joining me today is the ever illustrious and super awesome, mister Rick White.

Rick is, managing partner of one eighty biz. He is super awesome. I met him. And, Rick, I don't know if you remember when you and I met for the first time.

Are you there, Rick?

My hair was brown.

It it it okay. It may have been.

I'm not certain on that. But Rick and I met at ASTE Yep. And it was, Lucas Underwood was there, and and Lucas was just singing the praises. You had come in and helped to coach and train him and turn his business one hundred and eighty degrees to actually being profitable.

And and and to Lucas' credit, he did what you said. He took to heart what you said and and implemented it. So that's super awesome, And and I appreciate you for doing that. I I appreciate Lucas for listening and and taking what you said to heart to be the shop he is today, to inspire the industry the way he does today.

That is just that's awesome. That's awesome.

And then I gotta meet your wife as well, miss Brenda. Yep.

She's awesome as well.

Oh, that's And she's rocking purple hair these days.

That's pretty cool too.

Yeah. She is.

Yep. So I've turned the screen over to you. Throw your, slide deck I know. Up there.

Screen now.

Boom. Shaka locka. Client retention. I see it. It's got the black bars on the side. If you wanna make it super awesome.

Tell you what. Hold on one sec.

Throw it up a little bit larger there. Larger than life as we are.

Let's see.

KUKUI Carl says, hello, Rick. Hello.

And, KUKUI Carl says, he loves your short ten minute daily Just One Thing.

Please get them coming.

Oh, we will. We will.

Alright. Yeah. Your presentation looks perfect. It is big and bold, and I can read it.

Well, that is awesome. Okay. So let's get started. What do you say?

Let's get started. The floor is yours, brother.

Alright. Hello, everybody. Please, as Jimmy said, my name is Rick White from one eighty biz. We're down here in beautiful Harrisonburg, Virginia.

So I'm really excited to be talking with you today and sharing some thoughts that maybe you haven't had before. You know, the reality is there's a lot of stuff we've already heard, and and my goal isn't so much to give you all new stuff. My goal is to give you some new stuff that you haven't thought of or heard of before that builds on what you have, but also to challenge you as to what you are doing.

There is a gap between knowing and doing, and my goal here today is to help you get that gap to be a little bit shorter. So please put your questions in. There'll be plenty of time at the end. I wanna make sure that we have, your time to get your, questions answered.

I want this to be a blessing and a help for your business. So let's get started. You know, today, we're gonna talk about, clients and, you know, kind of a a single-minded focus that I've really found to be dangerous and expensive in shops. I wanna talk to you about what I call the loyalty ladder and why it matters, and then I wanna show you how you can create a program to move your new customers to to raving van clients.

That's the whole thing. And and why are we talking about this? Because it seems like there's a lopsided focus on attracting new clients versus keeping them. You know, closing that sale you that you just made, you know, that great sale you just had, that's great.

But what you're not aware of is you just lost your best prospect.

Now what?

Typically, it's who's next, and I I wanna kinda get away from that a little bit.

Instead, what I want you instead of thinking of continually pursuing new clients okay?

Because a lot of times, what I see shops doing is it's like this giant machine just eating and eating and eating, and it's dumping refuse on the other end, either people that didn't buy or people that bought and and then but they're done. And that is not a healthy relationship to have with the community that you serve. You I'm gonna tell you, yes. You wanna grow your business, but most of your attention, in my opinion, needs to be on building the base that you have now on growing a deeper connection with them.

Because otherwise, that single-minded focus on new clients only is very, very dangerous and expensive. Let me show you what I mean. The typical buying process looks like something like this. First step they have is they have awareness of an issue.

They got a problem.

Now they're starting to get interest in, okay, what can I do about it? Who can I go to? What are my options? These are the things they're going through. And then they get to a decision.

Okay?

Once they get to that decision, now they take action.

When you're with a new client years ago years ago, and I'm gonna use my little pointer here, years ago, we would start here at the awareness phase, and then what would happen is they would come to you to get information. That was before Google, right, before the Google. They would come to you because you were the keeper of all information.

But today, that's not the case. Today, they can learn more about what's going on in their car than you know in ten minutes.

Okay? Today, they're not engaging you until the decision making process.

And that puts you at a real disadvantage because sometimes you gotta back up. You gotta get you know, you they're gonna think, hey, man. I need this. I need this. I need this.

You gotta be able to stop them, slow them down, and say, okay. Wait a minute. I understand that's what you believe you need. What are you trying to solve? Write that down. What are you trying to solve?

Because a lot of times, people will come to you with a mistaken solution.

I see it with shops coming to me all the time. I need better help. I need more cars. Those are the two things that I hear all the time, and a lot of times, that's not the issue.

That's not the issue. God bless you, Jimmy.

So that is a big deal. But here's the thing.

When you because when they get when your client gets down to your new client gets down down to this action notice here, and please forgive me. I'm looking at my screen over here that I'm presenting. When they get to here, now they get to decide, okay. Am I done and I'm not going back, or am I coming back and I'm gonna repeat?

And the goal is to get them to repeat, and I'm gonna show you why this is so important. Okay?

And and what's cool about it is the awareness and interest part, the skepticism, the doubt, the fear, as you get that connection, that relationship built with people, that drops.

Right? Those things drop, and it makes it easier for you to help somebody because they're not worried about your intentions.

And that's really, really important.

There's a perception of self interest at all times. You wanna make sure that you're keeping yours as low as possible.

The easiest way I have found to do that, that we train our clients on, is to when you go and answer the phone or or greet somebody, just be curious and expect nothing.

Just be curious. Can you help?

That's all that you should be coming into. If you start pushing in on, let's get you in, let's do that, let's do this, and people are feeling pushed, you're going too fast.

So you wanna be able to know where they are in their buying process.

Right? Where are they in their buying process?

And make sure that you are somebody they wanna talk to.

Okay?

Now besides their buying process, your client has a decision making process. You might wanna write this down. They're five questions they ask themselves every time. You do the same thing when you're a customer.

Okay? So here's the first question. Do I like you?

Now understand that liking you doesn't mean I'm gonna do business with you. It just means I'm gonna let you on the field to play.

Doesn't mean you're gonna win, but you got a chance. So do I like you?

Do you listen to me? That's the second thing. The second question they ask, do you listen to me?

Do they feel seen and heard and appreciated? How are you showing that up in engaging somebody right off the bat?

Are you trying to impress them with all your knowledge, which, by the way, doesn't work?

Or a much better way is to be completely obsessed about what they're going through when they're doing most of the talking. That makes all the difference in the world. Number three, do you make me feel important?

Do you make me feel important? And let's face it. If you listen to them and you're hearing them and you're asking questions to clarify, and at the end of it, you're using reflective listening and saying, hey. You know, Jimmy, based on what I hear you saying, this is what's going on. Is that correct?

So that I'm sure I'm asking questions that nobody else has asked. I wanna ask you questions no one's ever asked, and I wanna get you thinking about your problem with me as the solution.

That's my goal.

Okay?

Now as we go through this whole process, it's very, very time consuming to do with new people all the time. It gets way easier when you're doing it with the same people over and over again. Okay? So let's talk about some marketing definitions that are really important to client retention today.

And I've got a super, super cool giveaway at the end. I actually built a series of web not web. A series of Excel spreadsheets that you can use to measure your effectiveness with client retention. And I'm gonna give that away to you at the end.

Okay? So here's what's gonna happen. Our first definition is a client acquisition cost. This is basically the cost related to acquiring a new customer.

That could be the campaign itself. It could be in, discounts, etcetera. But those are all there. You wanna measure those, okay, so that you understand what your acquisition cost is.

I'm telling you today, it's not unusual to see a two hundred, two hundred fifty, even three hundred dollar client acquisition cost today in our industry.

That's a lot of money.

Then we have what's called client lifetime value. This measures the value of that client to the business through their full lifespan.

Now the problem I have with this is it's on retail sales.

I've got an intrinsic problem with this. Okay? Because our next talk is about a break even point.

This is where the sum of the profit from a client overcomes the amount of money that you invested in acquiring them. Okay? That's when you've covered your initial cost in getting that client to come into that customer to come into your into your shop.

That's a big deal. And then the last one we wanna be watching is what I call an attrition rate. That's where you wanna measure how many people you've lost over a given period of time compared to the number of people that are coming in as a percentage.

I'm going to tell you that through my experiences over the last hold the five. Hold the phone. Ninety five. Two thousand five. Two thousand fifteen. For almost thirty five years, I have found over and over again that the average shop loses somewhere between seventeen and twenty one percent of their database a year.

That is a real number. You start looking at it, it will surprise the heck out of you. But it's an important number to understand. We're gonna go into each of these as we go forward.

So now your client acquisition cost is simply the marketing dollars divided by the number of new clients that you got through that. And what let's give you an example. So you have a thousand dollars in marketing.

Right? Two hundred dollars in discounts, that's twelve hundred dollars.

You got four new clients from that.

That's a three hundred dollar client acquisition cost.

Okay?

Now think about this, though, for a second. Let's say you have one guy come in one time, one visit. That's it, and it's two hundred bucks.

Okay?

So think about that. Annual value, two hundred dollars. He never comes back again. Two hundred dollars. So you're thinking I'm upside down a hundred bucks.

No.

You're upside down by the amount of that profit. What if the profit on that two hundred dollars is ten bucks?

You're down two hundred ninety dollars.

You can go out of business chasing new clients to the exclusion of anything else if you're not aware of what your what your acquisition cost is and what your breakeven is. Okay?

So, again, look at this. You got two thousand in advertising. Here's another example.

Two thousand in advertising, five hundred dollars in discounts. So that's twenty five hundred dollars. You get a hundred new clients.

That's amazing. Right? Because that's a twenty five dollar acquisition cost. But that's fantastic.

But wait a minute. What about the lifetime value?

Right? Because if they come in at twenty five, right, and they come in, their life hundred bucks and you made five dollars, then you're losing twenty dollars on every vehicle that's coming in.

Twenty bucks.

That's not good. So there's a couple of different numbers you really wanna watch that I didn't talk about today.

When someone comes into your shop the first time, please understand they're a guest.

What I want you to do is find out what percentage is coming back a second time.

Now they become a customer. It's my job to get them from customer to client and from client to raving fan. We're gonna go through that. Okay?

Now you don't wanna be losing twenty bucks on each one. Look at it this way here. You have the original investment in the marketing right here.

And then based on the profit that you generate from that those the the work you do with that person, you're gonna have some period of time, and it's gonna be different for different shops. And it's gonna be based on two things, your client acquisition cost and your profit model. Right?

So if I have a five percent profit model, which is a national average is five to seven percent, that's gonna take me four times longer than if I have a twenty percent profit model.

Okay? But what happens is, and I really hope this is showing it to you, you don't actually break even on this client until right here, the payback.

Then for that entire time going through here, right, continuing on the on this, spectrum, now the green is the profit. This is where you actually get to benefit from the relationship.

And what we wanna be really careful about is the churn.

I was talking to one shop who very proudly told me they had eight hundred new clients in a year.

And I said, wow. That's really amazing. And then very quietly, I said, how many came back?

Less than a hundred.

Less than a hundred. So there's something to be said to make sure that your marketing message is going to the right market, right, the right client base, but it has the right message and the right method of getting it in front of them so that it resonates with them. Basically, marketing is simply recognizing a problem your ideal client has, and the marketing is a promise that you can fix it.

And the better you can do with your marketing as far as getting it in front of the right message, in front of the right people, your churn rate will be really low. But when you're going after just price and you're just, you know, trying to fill the base, you're gonna find that your churn rate is much higher, and you're not gonna be happy with that. You're you're gonna find that it's disappointing, and you're gonna feel like you're always chasing your tail. So this is a very, very important, diagram to be aware of.

You gotta be aware of your lifetime value with your clients. If you don't know, do some studying and find out. Okay? And if there's anything you need help with, anything I'm recommending right now as far as implementing, you run into a snag, you reach out to me, rick at one eighty biz dot com.

I will help you through that snag. There's no cost, no expectation.

Ultimately, I I grew up in this industry, and I know it's it's filled with the most honest people.

I'm here to help you get better. That's my goal. That's my crusade. Okay? So this is a very, very telling diagram.

So now let's talk about attrition rate. Attrition rate, right, is comparing the number of clients that haven't been in for a given period of time compared to the number of new people you've attracted over the same. And, ultimately, your database is gonna do one or two things. It's either growing or it's shrinking.

And, you know, a lot of times, people aren't aware of it shrinking until they're on the react side of it. All of a sudden, I don't have enough work. I don't have enough work. What happened?

Oh, we're too expensive. No. It's not that you're too expensive. You've been losing people and not aware of it, and because of that, your database is shrinking.

So you wanna make sure that's there because I need you to understand that there's a huge difference between attracting somebody and keeping them, and that's where the loyalty ladder starts. Right? That's where it steps in. So the loyalty ladder, what this is is the first thing we do is we start with suspects.

These are people that don't know you even exist.

Now this is hard to understand, but we because when you own the business, man, it's everything to you. Just about every breath you take. Right? Every move you make.

Sorry. That's a song pun. But every breath you take is revolving around your shop. That's normal.

But I guarantee you there are people driving by your shop every single day that don't even know you're there.

So we have suspects. And your goal when you don't have when you have people that don't know who you are is to make them a prospect. And that's where they've come to know that you exist, but they haven't done business with you yet. Right? They don't know enough about you and what you do to justify the hassle of changing.

Because let's face it. A lot of times, people will wanna change their providers, but you gotta fight the devil you know versus the devil you don't know.

Okay? So that is your major factor here. It's not the competition.

It's getting them to feel safe enough to do business with you.

That's really important.

And if you could change your focus on that, like, how do we make it safe? How do they know that when they come here, this is what we're gonna be do? This is how we do it. This is the way we're gonna do it. That's your marketing.

Please understand that your marketing is there to show them that you can address their problem in a very unique way and do it in an amazing way. How are you doing with that?

That's the goal.

That's why today you can't think anybody with four wheels, I can fix their car. That's getting harder and harder to do anyway, isn't it?

I mean, holy crap. I was talking to one of my clients, two weeks ago about a Land Rover that had a computer for the damn steering wheel. Come on.

It's a steering wheel. Right? But these are things you gotta be aware of. So now once you've got them past that hump, they've seen you online, they've seen your your your maybe, hopefully, you're doing some videos, and and you've got testimonials on your website or on on your social media, And now all of a sudden, they're like, okay.

I'm coming in. So now they're a new customer, but I don't call them a customer.

I call them a guest because they've gotta try you on for size.

Number one, are you who you say you are? Do you do what you say you're gonna do? Will I get what I what you say I'm gonna get?

Does it feel good to do business with you? This is important. You know, I see people all the time, you know, stressing the quality of the work they do to get a Google review.

Quality doesn't get you the Google review.

Experience gets you the the Google review. How you made them feel while you were doing business with them, That is what gets you the review.

So now we got a new client. Right? They're a guest. So now they become a repeat customer. They've done business with you more than one time. And as they do business with you, right, and there's a we have a whole another thing on this.

As long as what you're doing is what you said you were gonna do and, you know, you're who you say you are and they're getting what you said you get every single time, then trust is gonna build or it's gonna go away. If consistency isn't there, if caring isn't there, if credibility isn't there, then you're gonna lose them. Right? This is where they become an ex customer, where they have done business with you in the past and they don't anymore.

And, typically, it's either a lack of trust or a lack of perceived value, where they don't understand what they're getting from you. Okay?

So that's really important. But if you can circumvent that and I'll tell you what, you can use marketing to the people that left, and you can do some pretty amazing things.

Excuse me.

Now one of the things I started to tell you was if you got somebody that comes in one time and they never come back again, call them up.

Ask for their feedback.

Find out what what were they expecting, what did they get, what what can you do differently.

Because if you're having a problem retaining new people, that is a really good place to go because you may have the wrong message to the right people, or you may have the wrong message, to the wrong people, right, to the right people. But you just gotta know whether it's your message or who you're going after, or is it execution that is a problem? Because I tell people all the time, there's only one thing worse than not marketing, and that's marketing something you can't deliver consistently.

If you can't deliver it consistently, then don't talk about it.

It's gotta be something you can do every time, every time, every time. Yes. Consistency is boring to a service provider, but it's safety and comfort to our clients.

They wanna know that they can depend on a certain experience.

That's important.

But now that we have the repeat and they keep going, we go to relational now. This is where they've done business with you multiple times. The relationship's grown, and they no longer see you as a salesperson, but, hopefully, they either see you as an adviser or, even better, their advocate, where they got an issue with their vehicle and they know that you're gonna step up as their advocate in the shop and help them achieve the goals that they're looking to have.

Right? Now the whole team should be, but when you can position yourself as that advocate, the amount of trust that goes with that is off the hook good.

Then our final rung is raving fan.

These are people where they are advocates of your business. Right? Well, they'll walk down the street and top peep stop people going down the street telling them they gotta come to see you. It's absolutely amazing when you can get that. And I'm pardon me. I'm willing to bet.

I'm willing to bet that if I could see you right now, we were staying I was standing in front of you asking you this question. How many of you have raving fan clients now?

And people will raise their hand. Everybody will.

So now I'm gonna ask you one more question. How many want more?

And everybody's hand goes up all the time. What I need you to understand is the raving fans you have now, honestly, it's been kismet.

The way you're doing stuff is exactly what they want. They love it, and they become raving fans, and that's a natural byproduct.

If you wanna grow your raving fans and be more intentional about that, then you have got to step up and do something different. Let me show you why.

Let's say we calculate the lifetime value of a raving fan.

Let's say they got two vehicles. They're going to come in between two or three times a year.

Very, very conservative numbers here. Three let's say it's three hundred dollars, average invoice, which is really low.

Then that would give us an eighteen hundred dollar a year annual value. And let's say they stay with you for five years. I know you've got people that have stayed longer. You have some that have stayed less. Let's say the average is five years.

Then that would give you a lifetime value of nine thousand dollars for that client, And that's pretty cool. But let me ask you a question. How many clients do you how many referrals do you get from that one great client? Right? That raving fan. Let's say really, really conservatively, you got one per year.

Now think about this for a second. They're gonna be referring people that are just like them. So birds of a feather flock together. That's the rule. Right? It's not it's not the hard and fast, but for the most part, they're gonna they're gonna send you people that are just like them. They're gonna hang out together.

That lifetime value is gonna be worth about nine thousand dollars per, which gives you a value of referrals of forty five thousand. Now we could actually go out even further than that.

Excuse me. I'm getting over a cold.

You could go even further than that and go multigenerational, but we're just gonna keep it on this single level. Your value of referrals of forty five thousand, So that gives you fifty four thousand dollars for that one client.

Now I've got this built into an Excel sheet so you can figure this out, right, using your numbers, so you can figure out what the natural value is.

Okay? It's in the Excel sheet. You don't even have to worry about this.

But then what creates a one time client? So now we've gone well, if we don't get if we only get somebody comes in once, we're not gonna get our money back on what it cost us to get them. But if we get a raving fan, that's amazing. So now let's step back and talk about what are some of the things they're gonna make someone come in once and never come in again.

Number one, they feel like a number.

They feel like a wallet with legs. If you've ever seen Madagascar, the movie with your kids or grandkids, you know, the lion at one point's looking at the zebra, and it's a steak with legs.

Right? I I just love that graphic.

How many people go into an auto repair shop today, change the dealers, etcetera, and they feel like a wallet with legs?

That's a big deal. You don't want them to feel like a number. You wanna create an experience for them. You don't wanna make it miserable for them. You know, in every interaction with a client, you have one of three possibilities.

You can create moments of magic, moments of mediocrity, or moments of misery.

You wanna make them moments of magic. And what's the amazing thing about this is?

You, because you're the owner, are the author of that story. You get to decide what that story looks like.

So be intentional about it. Don't be so busy doing it, doing it, doing it that you don't step back and get you and your team to see the people you're working with and for, because that's a big deal.

What else creates a a one time client, A one time customer? A lack of trust.

Right? When they feel trust has been broken, hey. I'm gonna have your car done tonight. Oops.

Sorry. Not tonight. Oops. Sorry. Not tomorrow. Oops. Sorry. Not the next day. Or, hey. Right?

Because that's a character issue.

Trust part of trust is character. Part of trust is caring. Part of trust is credibility.

Part of trust is consistency.

These are all the different ingredients in trust. If you fall short on any area, then you're have a problem.

Right?

I have people I trust. Like, I trust the person, but I don't trust their skill.

Like, I don't believe they're credible in doing some of the work that I need done.

How have they taught me that? Because I've brought them something with my car. I live in Virginia. I bring them my car.

They can't fix it two, three times. I love you to the end of the earth, but I can't keep bringing it back to you. I gotta find someone that can fix this. So it's a lack of trust can cause a onetime customer.

And the last one, and it's the worst one, is no connection.

When you have advisers on the front counter that are like Joe Friday from Dragnet, and if you don't get that, Google it. But it's just the facts, ma'am. You don't wanna connect with the client. But the reality is until you can connect with them, you can't get to the wallet.

You can't get them to see you as a valued provider until they understand how much you care, how much you see them, how much you wanna help them.

This is really, really important.

Your number one goal should be to keep people safe, not fix broken cars. Yes. Keep the vehicle safe, keep it reliable, and keep it efficient.

My goal when I had clients come in, I wanted them to have their car to five hundred thousand miles, and I wanted them to have it fifteen to twenty years after they bought it because that's when the car made money for them. Think about that for a sec. If you've got a five to thirteen year old vehicle in your shop, I'm finding that's about the average, fleet age right now in a shop, getting your clients to invest twelve to eighteen hundred dollars a year in maintenance and repair is like a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars a month.

Compare that to a used car payment of six hundred plus today.

Used car.

And the average loan is seventy seven months.

So you gotta have that connection.

What I need you to understand with this loyalty ladder, it's very simple. What fuels the climb, it's trust that fuels the climb up. When they feel like you're in their corner, right, when it's not about making a sale, but helping them get to where they wanna go, and when they know you've got their back, that is when you become that trusted advisor or advocate, and you both win.

So how do you deal with this?

Jimmy, before I get going on any of this, do we have any questions?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We we actually have a ton of questions.

And I are you good to answer questions right now? I mean, you're opening this up, so we it's yes. There are questions. Are you ready?

Alright. Tell you what. I've got six more slides. Let me finish the slides.

Okay.

And then we can get to the camera so we can see each other and talk.

And I think that would actually be a a little better. What do you think?

Okay. Six slides and and the questions will come. So everybody, type in your questions. Use the questions box.

Put in your questions there. Keep asking them because I've got a lot of questions. So I know you have a lot of questions as well because we're we're hearing some some great information coming from Rick, and and I can't wait to ask these. So go ahead.

Type those questions in, and, Rick, back to you.

Alright. Appreciate that. So how do we deal with this? There's really two ways to do this.

For you to keep your client retention and to get it so that you're more profitable quicker, there's only two ways to do that. Number one is to lower your client acquisition cost.

Right? When you can go from three hundred a ticket, right, for off the street refer you know, off the street, got somebody off the street through a bunch of ads and such to maybe a referral from a great raving fan, now it's significantly lower.

Okay? Now the other way is to increase the lifetime value amount, where you can keep them in working with you for a longer period of time with you helping them get to where they wanna go. So it's not so much, you know, when you're in a shop and you're just fixing broken cars, your customer is the one instigating the visit every time.

When you switch that to keeping people safe on the road, now you are instigating the visits.

So you wanna instigate those visits in a moral, ethical, and legal way and help them achieve the goals that they're looking for on that vehicle. And it's really important that you understand what those goals are. But let's look at the different stages of a client relationship.

Okay? These are the the seven phases. Number one, they gotta get to know you, like you, and trust you. Now I'm gonna push back on trust a little bit.

Trust is a big word to use. Trust is earned over time. Here's what I'd like to say instead.

You're credible. They know you. They like you, and they believe you can do what you say you can do.

That's not trust. That's the beginning of trust. Right? So trust is gonna be coming over time. And, again, caring, character, consistency, credibility, all of those have gotta be there every every time.

And what's really cool about this, please understand that every relationship you have, I want you to imagine an imaginary trust account right here.

And every interaction with that person, I don't care if it's a client, a vendor, an employee, a or a team member, a, family member, your spouse, significant other, mom, dad, I don't care what it is. Every interaction you have is either a deposit into that trust account or a withdrawal out of it. Let me give you an example. I'm married. I'm sure a bunch of you are.

I have done something stupid.

I'm a man. I have done something stupid in the past. And when the trust account is high between my wife and I, she just laughs it off. It's no big deal.

But when the trust account is low, that same stupid little thing has momentous proportions to it, not because of what I did, but because it's a reflection. Her reaction is a reflection to where the trust account is. So I'm gonna ask you, if you get nothing else out of this, I'm gonna ask you to make sure that you're intentionally making deposits.

Okay? Now the other thing I think I did, and I wanna forgive please ask for forgiveness.

Five questions we ask in a buying decision.

Do I like you? We talked about that.

Do you listen to me? Talked about that. Do you make me feel important?

Got that.

Do you get me in my problem?

I apologize. I did not talk about that.

Do you get me and my problem?

The only way we can show them that we get their problem is when we let them talk.

Don't listen to somebody for thirty seconds. Go, oh, yeah. I know what it is. And then in an attempt, honest attempt, to show them that you know what you're talking about, you diminish what they're going through, and you're like, oh, it's no big deal. It's just this. We'll take care of it.

That does not make them feel heard, and it does not make them feel important. It doesn't make them feel like you've got their problem.

Listen to them. Yes. It might be the thirtieth time you've heard this, but it's the first time they're saying it. It's really important they feel good about it. So that's the fourth question. Fifth question, do I trust and believe you?

Again, trust is more a belief. Do I believe you can do what you say you can do? Credibility.

But those are the five questions each and every one of us ask every time we're in a buying situation.

So now let's go back to this know, like, and trust. Now we do try. That's where they're a guest.

Now they buy, and they repeat.

And then at the end, they're raving fans, and they refer.

Please understand that referrals are the highest form of flattery that you can get, bar none, highest form of flattery. So watch your referrals.

Watch your testimonials. Are you tracking them? How many a month are you getting? What percentage are you getting based on the ticket you're working on? What if you set a goal up for ten percent? I wanna get ten percent referrals. I wanna get ten percent testimonials and reviews.

Rick, you're on drugs. Maybe.

But if you're only getting two or three a month now and you go you kinda jump onto the dark side with me, right, And and all of a sudden, you're saying, holy crap. Now I'm getting thirty, forty, fifty a month?

It works.

So please understand that as you're going through the different relationships, right, the different stages, your marketing method and message is gonna change as you go throughout. In other words, what got people to start doing business with you isn't gonna be the same message that keeps them doing business with you. So you've gotta be aware of that. So let's talk about some strategies.

Number one, be consistent.

Right? Consistency means you feel the same every time. You're gonna make people feel safe and they're gonna have confidence in you. Secondly, offer value.

You gotta know what what differentiates you from your competitors.

I can't tell you how many shop owners, when I ask this simple question, If why would I, as a prospective client, drive by three of your competitors to do business with you? You'd be amazed at how many people can't shop owners can't answer that question.

And that's scary because if you don't know what your value is, then the only thing you can compete on is price, and it's a race to the bottom.

Next, deliver on your promises. Keep your world, keep your word. It's pretty rare in the world today to have someone that does that, and the best way to do that is to stop overpromising.

If you think like, I I've seen it before. Advisors are looking. It's one o'clock. Right? And they're thinking, man, it's a three hour job. If I get the parts, you you know, when they say they're gonna be and the tech can get on it and everything goes right, I can get it done today at five.

So they make a promise for today at five.

I have a very simple question to y'all.

When when does anything ever go perfectly the way it's supposed to?

Never build that into your presentation.

If you think it's gonna be done tonight, tell them tomorrow night.

Better to be done early and and and amaze them than to have something go sideways, and you've painted yourself into a corner, and now you're just killing that credibility.

So deliver on your promises.

Number four, make it an experience. Go beyond just fixing or servicing their vehicle. You wanna see them. You wanna hear them.

You wanna appreciate them. You wanna make it easy for them to do business with you. Right? That's the big thing.

You wanna get this so it's just so painless to get their car serviced and repaired. I'm a tell you now. If I had a shop in this area, because I've I've been here now for seventeen years. I still haven't found a shop, man, that can do stuff the way I wanna get it done.

If I had a shop that called me up and said, hey, Rick. Your truck's due for service. Can we pick it up tomorrow?

I gotta tell you something. I would just about fall on the floor, catatonic.

That would be the that would mean the world to me.

How easy can you make it with your clients?

And then next, set reminders and follow ups. You wanna make sure that you're helping them keep that vehicle on the road safe, reliable, and efficient. The way you're gonna do that is by staying in front of them with the things that you found.

You're not there to sell them anything.

You're there to let them know what their vehicle's condition is, know where they wanna go, and then show them a path that's gonna help them get there. That's it. And then the next thing is stay in touch with me.

I don't wanna hear fumia only when you need money.

I want you to stay in touch with me. Send me an article that you think I might like or, you know, hey. Let's talk about something or, you know, you you you just different stuff, man. It doesn't have to be a big deal, but stay in touch.

Newsletters.

You know, one company that's amazing at this is American Express. Even today, we have the, American Express, American Express gold and platinum cards, and they're in touch with us twelve, fourteen times a year, but it's with relative data. Like, it's stuff we want to get.

What are you doing to stay in front of your team? Your your your clients, I should say. And then last, ask for reviews. Ask for referrals.

It's really, really important.

Okay?

Now the other thing as far as staying in touch, use live videos.

It amazes me how many shop owners will not put the time into put using a video because they're afraid of how they're gonna look.

I hope that my time here with you has dis you know, just dispelled that whole myth right there. I have been anything but perfect, but my heart is in the right place, and I wanna give you a great message. And I'm hoping that that message will overcome and cover up any improprieties as far as the words I've used or starting a sentence and kinda change in midstream. That's really important.

Okay? And then the last thing is use technology.

Use technology, texting, messaging, email, snail mail. Man, whatever works, do it. Okay?

Next, the secret weapon that very few shops consistently take advantage of, excuse me, that is connecting.

Right? It's creating a relationship that goes beyond selling repairs and maintenance. It's getting it's about getting to know them and and becoming their car guy or car gal. And there's really four easy ways. There's an acronym of doing this, and it really works out well in getting to know them. I call it FROG.

Okay?

FROG stands for family, recreation, occupation, and goals.

So here's the thing.

I've got seven grandkids.

You wanna start talking grandkids? You better pull up a chair. I got so many stories and just some insights and stuff that I've had as my in my journey as a grandfather. Or recreation.

I love camping, and I'll I've I've worked with, the scouting, the the scout organization for years and years. I'll talk to you about that and the difference it's made.

I love it. I'll talk to you about the impact I get to make every day with people and what an amazing blessing it is. Or I'll talk to you about some of the goals I want, how I wanna make that impact even bigger. So, yeah, these are things that you can talk to people about.

It's good to ask, and you can use little, signals around. Like, you see car seats. Wow. Kids or grandkids. Now you gotta be careful with that one. Some people might get pretty offended if they're, you know, parents.

Or you see a, you know, an honor student sticker on the back of the you Okay? So now here's what we're gonna do. I promise you that Okay? So now here's what we're gonna do. I promised you that Excel sheet. I, put that together especially for you guys, for.

Just bring your camera up on your cell phone.

Don't take a picture of the QR code. Just scan it, and you'll see a little button pops up. It'll say open in Chrome or Safari. Click that, fill it out, and you've got it. Or you can text retention to eight three three six zero two eight four six three, and you will get sent it will send you back a link in text so that you can get that Excel sheet. It's very, very cool. It's completely yours to use, and it's my thank you for being here today.

Now in conclusion what's that, Jake?

Rick, we got questions, brother.

I got one question.

Go to conclusion. You better you better whip it out quick, brother.

I'm gonna. Number one, track what you're spending on marketing. That's a big thing. Don't just spend money.

Nineteen o two, John Wanamaker, father of the department store, once said half my advertising is wasted. The problem is I don't know which half. Today, that's a sin. There's no reason for it.

With Kikuy and everything like that they've got, the tracking numbers and everything, you should know. And please understand that when you're tracking your marketing, you wanna track your marketing to phone calls.

That's it. Don't compare it to the campaign spend. There's too many pieces in between.

So number two, measure the number of people it brings in. Calculate your your acquisition cost, measure your current long term value lifetime value, and then create a program around connection that's gonna increase the lifetime value exponentially, making your days easier, brighter, and more profitable.

I'm done.

Okay. Now, Sue, I've got questions here. And and, Matthew, thank you very much. He sent in about six questions all in. One one one little post here.

At the beginning, you mentioned that it is How do we get our cameras showing, Jimmy?

You gotta stop sharing your screen.

Stop sharing your screen.

It should come right up.

There we go.

Okay. So, alright, so to Matthew's question, I'm gonna ask his questions first because, my questions can wait. To his question, you mentioned at the beginning, it's isn't always about just getting the customer in.

You mentioned at the beginning that it isn't always about just getting the customer in. Can you explain this more?

Absolutely.

Once you've got them in like, I'm gonna start off expecting nothing. Right? So low perception of self interest.

That way, they're they can see me as making their agenda my agenda. That's the goal. Okay? Mhmm. But once I get them in, I had no problem telling somebody, Jimmy, if you brought your car into my my shop, I would say, hey, Jimmy. Listen. I'm not here to fix your car today.

I wanna become your car guy. Like, if anything goes wrong with the car, my goal in this relationship is that I'm the guy you're gonna talk to. In fact Mhmm. I don't wanna be your car guy. I wanna be your kid's car guy and your grandkids' car guy.

That's the kind of relationship I'm looking for.

Okay. So so to that idea, don't we want to get those customers in so we can show them that we can be trusted, that we can be the guy?

Yes. Absolutely.

Because I think we're talking about two different things here. Go ahead.

It's two different well, we definitely wanna have new people coming in because, again, remember, about twenty percent of our database is going away every year. So because of that, you wanna have I tell shops all the time, you wanna have a twenty percent growth rate to maintain and thirty to grow, thirty to thirty five to grow. Okay?

It's really, really important to understand that while you're doing that, that's important, but most of your time and effort should be spent on the people you already know and do business with because you get a lot more bang for your buck with people you've already doing business with versus new people you gotta pull in off the street. Right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, there's always a fortune in that follow-up, and and if you can get those customers to come back in a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth time, man, now you've got them as the raving fans. Now you've got them as that referral source for you. So, yeah, there there's a fortune to follow.

You mentioned, to call and call those one time customers. So I'm thinking specifically of that shop that said, oh my gosh. We had eight hundred new customers this year. How many came back? A hundred. Okay. So they've got seven hundred phone calls to make.

Are you are you really saying make seven hundred phone calls?

If they had time and could make the time to do it, what kind of information could they pull out of it?

I think they could pull valuable information for sure. Absolutely.

It's bigger than you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful, Jimmy, because if I only call five people, I don't think that's a big enough, spread.

Yeah. It's not a big enough sample.

Right? It's not a good data sample to get.

So I wanna get because here's the truth. As an owner, what happens? You see eight, seven hundred people not come back. You're already telling yourself stories inside.

My my prices are too much. We we try to oversell them, and it's all crap that's not true. Right? Typically, it's a bad match.

Right? Either they weren't the right person to be bringing in, or you were making a promise you couldn't keep, something like that. So you wanna it it's a way for you to fine tune your market, your message, and your method. That's what we talk about all the time when we're coaching.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. K. So I'm gonna I'm gonna summarize the this final question that I have for you into the message, into customers, retaining customers versus new customers.

You mentioned a little bit about that the message will change. The message that got them in is not the same message that will keep them. So my question is, with all that in mind, do you treat a returning customer the same as a new customer?

Yes.

K. Like, now? What? To what degree?

Go ahead. So let's say I'm gonna give you a real quick here's probably the best example. Let's say you've got a really good customer. He throws you the key, says, just fix it. You don't give him an estimate. You just fix it.

One of the most dangerous things you could ever do with a relationship in the world. Here's why.

Because that great relationship you have, what you're not aware of is that client, that raving fan right now, is walking out of the shop with a price in his head.

And as long as whatever you're doing is at or below that price, you guys are still in love, the honeymoon's going, and we're all good.

But if that price is more than what he expected or she expected, They're not gonna be mad at you. They're gonna be upset with themselves for not keeping control of it, but they're gonna blame you.

And it's gonna take remember I talked about deposits and withdrawals in that trust account?

Mhmm.

That's a withdrawal in the trust account. What I see shops do is we work all this time really, really hard doing this and this and this and this to build these great relationships, and then we stop doing it.

We start taking shortcuts because I don't have to.

My recommendation is you treat them just like the day they came in the first time, right, so that they never feel like they don't matter.

Right? Let me give you another quick example, Jimmy. I have a shop. I I got two cars that are supposed to go tonight, but only one can go. One's a new client. The other one's a really, really great client.

Right?

Nine times out of ten, the shop will ask the great client if they can hold their car one more day so that they can impress the shit out of this new guy. Pardon me. I'm sorry. They can impress the new guy. Right? But for me, that's like a bird in the bush versus a bird in the hand.

I am always gonna take amazing care of my great clients first because they're the ones that got me here. They're the ones that are gonna keep me coming here. They may tell you it's okay, but I guarantee you, you just did a withdrawal on deposit, you know, in the trust account. So for me, don't stop. Don't take shortcuts with your best clients.

Do everything you possibly can to do everything to keep them there.

You just hit on exactly what I wanted to hear.

Good. You only took me an hour.

Care of those customers that got you there and continue to impress the crap out of them because you've got them as that raving fan. Continue to keep them as a raving fan. Don't try and convert the new client that you've never met, that you've never taken care of before.

It's like how do we treat family versus friends versus associates? Some people treat associates and friends better than they do family. Mhmm. Don't do that. Treat your family the best you can possibly at all costs. The family is the most important.

And and raving fans are the most important.

Absolutely. It's like being married, Jimmy. If you're married and you want a great relationship, but you're not willing to put the work into it Yeah. You just give and give and give to that relationship, it'll never become what you want it to become.

And at some point, they don't feel valued, loved, and important anymore, and they go away. Yeah. What is the leading cause of people leaving a business? Sixty eight percent indifference of an employee.

Yeah.

That's a sin. That's a sin. Oh, it is.

That way. It's terrible. Well, thank you very much, Rick. Really appreciate your time today. Mahalo, brother.

You you definitely helped us out. Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. Everybody, this is my cell phone.

Give me a text message. Give me a phone call. This is my email address.

What can we do? Let's lock arms so that together we can be that driving force in your market so that you're the best of the best in everything you do. With that, thank you very much, and we'll see you again.

Customer Acquisition

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 19:31:00 GMT

"Feed Me Seymour!"

My retention is high, and my time per ticket is strong.

I need more new blood into the shop.

I have the space, capacity, and ability to service more new customers. How can I use my KUKUI All-In-One Platform as the magnetic tool of Acquisition?

Join Jimmy Lea, Product Evangelist for KUKUI, and Ben Boyce, Customer Success Specialist as they discuss the many ways KUKUI’s All-In-One Success Platform can help you to attract new customers!

Should I Join an Association?

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 15:27:00 GMT

Why would I ever want to join an automotive association? I'm only one shop, what can I contribute?

Many hands make the/our job easier! What is the job you ask of an association?!? To provide value to the industry via education and training, networking, learning from fellow shop owners, trade shows, conferences, and keeping you aware of current government events.

Your participation protects the Independent Automotive Industry from overreaching government laws and regulations. You will not be asked on day 1, nor day 365, to run the entire program. It's all voluntary and one person can't do it all.

Come join Jimmy Lea, KUKUI Product Evangelist, Sheri Hamilton, Executive Director of MWACA, and Travis Troy, Honest Wrenches shop owner, as we discuss what an association can do for you and your shop.

Webinar Transcript:

This is a webinar talking about an association. Why have an association? What's the value of an association?

Is there any value for me to be part of an association? Oh, you know what? I get value from an association even if I'm not a member. But that's not the point. The point is that together, all of us can lift this behemoth and make things happen. Together, we can be a value to each other. This is going to be a great discussion, a great conversation.

The questions box is where we want to put in those comments, questions, concerns in your question box. So go ahead and go to your questions box on the control panel and type in where you are joining us from today in that questions box. Go ahead and type in where you are joining us from today because I will be the voice for you to make sure that these questions are asked of my guest form today.

Super awesome. Thank you, Joan. Joan is logging in from Denver, and Bobby's from Leesburg.

Who else is here? And Carl from Renton, Washington. Carl, thank you. Mike from Santa Cruz. Rick from Phoenix.

Who else is here?

McKenna from Texas.

Oh, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm super excited.

Awesome that you are here. Awesome that we can have this discussion together.

And for those of you who know, that's what we're here to have as a discussion. Kukui is about bringing value to the industry, value to you as a shop owner.

Kukui, are these beads that I am wearing. Kukui, the word, has deep meaning to our company. It's the name of our company, and the name the word Kukui translates from Polynesian to English to say, enlighten or to enlighten or enlightenment.

And that's what we're here today to provide is enlightenment for you so that you can see what the future holds or what you can do in your patch, in your area, with your people.

This is super awesome. I'm excited to be able to bring this to you. And thank you to KUKUI for sponsoring our event today as we are discussing an association.

There are associations all across the country. Which is the right one? Which one should I get involved with? Which one is has the value for me?

Where are we gonna go? So my name is Jimmy Lee. I will be the host for you today. I'll be the host with the most the product evangelist for KUKUI.

You've got questions. We've got the answers, so go ahead and type those into the questions box as we are going along. We'll go ahead and ask those questions of our panel. Speaking of our panel, our panel is made up of some awesome, awesome people, really good friends.

I I love to call them friends. I'm honored to call them friends. First is mister Travis Troy with Honest Wrench. Travis is a co owner of Honest Wrench, went through college and university thank you.

To be a technician and now finding himself as a co owner. Thank you, Travis. I appreciate you being here, brother.

Appreciate you having me on. Thanks a lot.

Cool. Thank you. Thank you. As well is mister Brian Kelly, owner of Valley Automotive Repair and Electric. Brian, good to see you. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Thank you, Jimmy. Appreciate being here, and, looking forward to the conversation.

Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. And, let's see who else. And we also have miss Sherry Hamilton, executive director of the Auto Care Alliance.

Thank you, Sherry. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate you being the voice of all associations today.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

Nice. Thank you. So we we have some awesome things to talk about, specifically going into associations.

What is an association?

What is an automotive association?

Sherry, what is what is an automotive association?

An automotive association is a group of automotive repair shop owners and others who support the industry. They come together, they group together, and they're working, networking, training together. They have mentoring programs together, benefits, a lot of resources that are difficult to find if you're just out in business, kind of doing business on your own day to day, you know, doing your eight to five or or some, it's more six to six AM to ten PM, and you don't have time to get out and connect. This gives you a form, a platform to be able to meet and connect with others with like minded issues and challenges.

And, you're not in this alone. That's the best thing about associations is you are not in this alone.

Yeah. I agree. There's a lot of shop owners that really feel like they're on this desert island that they're the only ones.

And this allows them to rub shoulders, rub elbows with others in the industry that are also part of the industry.

And I I wanted to add to that and just say, you know, they're an association's about relationship, and that is so much of what you find when you get into any association.

It's it's relationship. It's it's the people around you. It's so much of of what you you mean. Sure. You said it beautifully when you said you're working nine to five. Where do you have the time to find these other things unless you can go for that network exists? And and I to me, that's always the backbone.

Well, and like Sherry said, most shop owners are working just over just a little bit more than a half a day. You know, that six AM to ten PM, that's just a little bit more than half a day. Where do you find the time? So, Brian, to you, you opened this up here. What does what does the ACA what does it do for you? What does the Auto Care Alliance do for you?

So when I think of the, ACA, the first thing that, the obviously, the first thing that comes to mind for me, as I said a minute ago, is relationship. It brings people who are in the industry and who care about the industry and are dedicated to the industry together. And and being in a room full of those people, I mean, I I think back to the first first time I ever attended a meeting even before I was a shop owner. And the amount of love that I saw in the northwest, just true caring for people, caring for others' business.

And and it spoke to me ever since. And I you know, I've been a member, I mean, pretty much, I think, the second within two weeks of opening my shop doors, there was somebody there to tell me about the association, and I was a member. And, you know, that's back in two thousand four. So I I think back, and and I I can tell you I wouldn't be where I am today were it not for the association.

I would have taken probably a much different path, much more painful path.

And I I can tell you the success that I've enjoyed would look much different. And maybe I wouldn't call it success. Maybe I just straight call it failure.

You know? And there's and there's a good story to share at some point that, that I I may put out there to to even even emphasize where that goes. So that's that's really what speaks to me in this.

Alright. Well, let's get Travis's idea on what the association does for him, and then I'm always good for a good story.

Absolutely. I mean, you guys you guys have hit some amazing points.

The association for me, I mean, deep down inside it, it means everything to me.

Josh and I, when when we opened, back in two thousand and eleven and and couldn't rub two nickels together, you know, trying to figure things out and and learn, you know, that the current now president of Midwest Auto Care Alliance, Tim Davidson, stepped into our doors and introduced himself, and, that's how we got a part of the association.

And this, you know, this association here, that I become extremely passionate about, I I would not be where I am today, you know, without the help of the association and the people that I've met along the way on a local level. And not only that, on a national level, you know, we've got, members all across the country. So, those connections, those people that you can reach out to and talk to and and just get advice from or provide advice to.

That's really what an association is. We've got that ability as independent shop owners to be a part of that where you've got, you know, large franchises and or dealerships and stuff like that. They're large enough that they have those resources.

Us smaller independent shops, we don't have those resources. We need to be a part of an association, in order to be able to to be a powerhouse and have those resources and work together.

Yeah. Yeah. So so we're all we're all working together. And I appreciate you saying that that this is where we can come together.

And I think both of you probably have a similar story about the success or failure of your shop and how it is that the association helped you, which is really what I wanna get to. This isn't just a a a banner on your wall. You know, Travis, you've got the Milwaukee there behind you. It's just not just a banner and a a ribbon and and a meeting once in a while, the dinner once in a while.

There is more to it. But before we get into that, Brian, what what is your story of your success or failure of your business?

As I was listening, one other thing occurred for me as well, which is I really haven't heard the benefits, you know, the financial benefits mentioned so far. And, you know, that's often the case for long time members. The financial benefits mean so much less than the personal benefits. And the story I was gonna share really is about that personal side, and I found myself locked in a and I'll make this as as brief as I can because it's a it's a ten year story.

And, I found myself locked in a just a absolutely awful, awful legal battle that I've been fighting for. I think I was at at the ten year mark at this point, and, I was fighting with the city. I was fighting with the county. I was fighting with a neighbor who, I mean, just when you when you see what was going on at her level, the only word I can use to describe it is, chaotic and and borderline crazy.

And as this as this, was, you know, tumbling down in my world for ten years, I mean, it took it took a toll on me. And I found myself, you know, becoming more ingrained in the fight than I was in the business.

And and I continued to fight because I justified it in my head that if I didn't fight the fight, the business would fail and then everything fails. And so my focus became really about winning this battle. And, you know, ten might have been close to twelve years, and then somewhere in that realm, we went to an association meeting with, my local guys from the northwest.

And little did I know they had another agenda.

And, that agenda involved I think this is twenty thirteen or fourteen. Yeah. So it's right on the ten year mark. They, they dragged me into a hotel room, four of them.

And I I I always explained it as verbally assaulted me for the next two hours, fed me a few cocktails, and then booted me out the door. And, and the whole intent of what they did was to to really bring to bring my awareness up to what was happening. And they cared enough to speak truth. They cared enough to literally just cram it down my throat and then stuff me out the door so I had to think about it.

And, you know, it well, I'm gonna tell you it was about midnight, maybe one o'clock in the morning when they booted me out of that hotel. There's no cab service. I mean, I I had to find my way back to a room with all of this going on in my head, which is the greatest thing they ever could have done for me. And and that's what positioned me to later on within two months of doing this, I found myself knocking on a person's door to purchase the building that my shop exists in now.

So were it not for that conversation, were it not for that that heavy handed approach that they knew that I needed. And and really, it all all came out of love in their heart because they could see that this battle I was going through was it was insignificant. It was about land. It was about a building.

The real the real answer was go get another building.

And they brought that clarity to me. And and they did it they didn't do it because they had to. They didn't do it because anybody paid them to do it. They did it because we we had gotten to know each other through this association, and they cared enough to to make that impact on my life and complete world of change. You know, it it I I can tell you to this day, I would I it was a high chance I might be divorced.

There's a high chance that I wouldn't have my business, and my life would look completely different. Did did those guys not drag me into that room and, as I always say, verbally assault me for two or three hours and and boot me back out in the world. And and and that's the kind of stuff that happens when you build relationship, when you're when you're willing to get real in the association and draw upon the other people around you because they have stories to tell. They've all been through something. I guarantee you. You don't go through ten, twenty years of business and not have a story.

And and how else do you get to hear those stories than put yourself in a room full of people?

I agree a hundred percent. And, Brian, I've actually never heard that story. That is that is pretty powerful. And, you know, our our local association has had several of those success stories, you know, where we've been able to step in and and help local shop owners. You know, we had a a very small, one man operation, and it was too him and his wife. And, you know, he fell out of a tree and and broke his collarbone.

And, he was the technician.

That was him. And so, you know, several of us local shop owners conquer, divided, and we went to town and started sending our technicians down there fixing cars for him while he was in, you know, recovery and and bringing cars to our shops. And, that's really what an association is. You have got not just you. You don't have the people inside your four walls. You've got an entire association that cares about your well-being and your success, and it doesn't matter if you're right next door. That's that's really what it is.

Yeah.

It's family. I mean, it's it's another layer of family is what it becomes.

Exactly. And where else would you find that type of community?

That quickly. So being connected. And if you join an association and you just sit back as a member and you don't get involved, you don't attend meetings, you don't get involved in, you know, online training and other networking opportunities, you have a really hard time getting connected to these type of resources. And where else could you find something like that if you're a shop sitting on the corner all by yourself with no connections?

This gets you immediate connection, And there's no, oh, you're my competition. I'm not gonna help.

That doesn't that doesn't exist. I mean, this this is a community that, is just what the what I've seen happen in the way of they become friends, they become your family.

You know, I grew up in this industry and my parents had a repair shop and were members of the association.

And to see that love and support that they received when they had their business, when they retired from their business, and then when they had health crisis later on, is absolutely amazing. So this is this is really more than an association. It can become a family, but it takes action on your part. You can't always expect the association to come to you. You come to them, and then you're gonna experience that outreach very easily and with open arms.

So so you're saying, Sherry, that that the, verbal assaultment that Brian got, that's not normal.

That's not encouraged per se.

No. No. No. No. No. That that is a very rare but much needed situation in that.

I I'm sure with the the leaders that I don't know that that verbal assault is the right word, but Right.

Yeah. His words.

I'm serious. I think It's the right it's the right word. It's it's a loving assault. And It was And you'd have to know me you'd have to know me well enough to know that nothing else would work.

Right. And they and they loved me enough to know that. And they cared enough about my family, the the business, my employees to say, hey. You know what?

Brian's Brian's not gonna just listen to a casual conversation.

We're gonna have to disarm him, and we're just gonna have to lay it out there. And once once you once you beat him hard enough, he'll you know, I'm thick headed. I don't I don't just, you know, I don't just do. So they but they knew that well enough to to do it.

And and where else would you find that? And where else would you find the quality of people and the experience and and all of the things that are needed to cause what I what I call a mental shift. Because when you're locked and loaded into something, all you see is what your aim is is pointed to. And and in my case, in that scenario, my aim was to win the court case.

And I was I was over three hundred and eighty thousand dollars of financial cost at that point. And, I mean, there was still another there was still another hundred and twenty to go from that point. So so when you when I say locked and loaded, you know, I'm an all in guy. And I was all in, but I was all in for the wrong target.

I was all in to win the fight, not not the war. And and they, you know and when I say verbally assaulted, that's what I needed. But Yeah. But again, they knew me.

Yeah. They knew me well enough to know. If they did anything else, I was just gonna blow it off and and move on. And I don't know where else should find that.

I've never experienced anything to that level other than in the association world amongst the people who are dedicated to one another and who care enough to actually do it.

And that's and that's the part that speaks to me.

Yeah. And and I love that we can come together as a group. We can lock arms together, as a group.

Guys that are longer in the tooth have been around a while, as well as the younger guys that are just coming out of college thinking, oh, hey. We're gonna go start a business, Travis.

Or start it while you're in college. I mean, hey.

Hey, Josh. We got, like, eight months left of school. Let's go start a shop.

Right. Yes. Yeah. That's, you know.

That's the bold, brave move out of, I call it, ignorance or arrogance. I don't know which one, but you guys you guys went out to do it.

And and for those that are starting brand new, this is this is a great story that helps those that are starting new with the the with the help and assistance that they need. What what's your story here, Troy Travis?

Yeah. So, you know, Josh and I, we were met in college. We were working, you know, in a garage and, got shut down by the city, and we were just working to to pave our way through college. I mean, this wasn't a business. And, got shut down by the city and went in. Eight months left to college, went in and and opened a legitimate company in a storage unit. And, we we had a four hour gap between classes, so we'd go work on cars while we were still in college and then work a full time nighttime job after that.

And when we finally graduated college, then we worked at the shop full time and then stuck up our full time jobs for another four four years.

So, twenty When you say you went worked at the shop, is this the storage unit?

Yeah. So we're in the storage unit for just over a year. And then after that, we found another shop. Actually, right down the street from the from the place that I was working at at night, I was a diesel mechanic.

And, so found that. And so it was pretty easy for me to just basically walk down the street to the to my other job. And, so yeah. I mean, we worked, close to eighteen hour days, for about four years straight, and, I can't get the eighteen hour days out of me yet.

I'm still working on it. I'm getting close. I just it's a passion of mine. So, but, you know, when that time came, we said, hey.

We've either gotta, you know, sink or swim. We gotta put all of our all of our chips on the table and go all in with the business, and that's when we did. And, extremely thankful. That's when, you know, like I said earlier, Tim Davidson came along and and scooped us up and and brought us into the association at that time.

And, you know, a lot of a lot of times, it can become extremely intimidating when you get yourself surrounded by a lot of of heavy hitters, is what I would call it or or extremely successful people. And we didn't take it as intimidating. We took it as I wanna be them, and I'm I'm willing to do whatever it takes in order to become them. And I may never become them a hundred percent, but if I can become them eighty percent, that's eighty percent closer to than where I'm at.

You know? And so as we as we have new members joining, associations and stuff like that, it can be extremely intimidating.

And Yeah.

You you've gotta set the ego aside and the intimidation aside and going with open arms and open ears.

And, you're gonna have more value to provide than you think, and you're gonna be able to gain so much more than than than you might think as well. And that was what was really powerful for us, when when we jumped in. We we didn't bring an ego in. We didn't bring intimidation.

And and the other thing is is you're gonna hear so many different ideas.

And and I've learned along the way that not one idea is the only is the only way. Okay? Right. And if you're not willing to try different things and your way you're stuck in your way, you are stuck in the mud. And that was one thing that I feel, and a lot of people have said along along the years short years that we've been in business, is that, you know, we we go to these associations, we go to these meetings, and we grab these takeaways, key takeaways, and we debrief afterwards.

And then we create action, and we take off, and we're not afraid to try this stuff. We're not afraid to fail.

And what happens is we've probably failed more times than we've succeeded, but look to where we've where it's got us today. Right? And that's really what it is. But every time we fail, we've got a huge family of an association around us to help pick us back up, keep us on the straight and narrow, and keep pushing us. And that's really I mean, it's it's amazing. It's it's amazing.

That's awesome. Sherry, are are you surprised, shocked?

Is it planned? Is it oh, yeah. That's exactly what we wanted to do. Are you shocked by some of the stories you hear that come out of the association?

Actually, I'm not, simply because of my personal experience with the association, my parents' experience with the organization, and the changes that I saw evolve in their business.

And so I come from a different aspect of seeing the organization, so I understand the challenges that the shop owner faces and that they take home with them and the impact that it has on the family.

And so I see and I understand I've lived the bigger picture, and that's what gives me the passion to do what I do on this side and to keep this you know, keep the organization going and growing is because I I get the impact that it can make if somebody gets involved, and and becomes part of an association. And it's not just you can connect with them during the meetings. I mean, so many of our members have a problem, have a question in the middle of the day, and they'll pick up the phone and they feel comfortable and have to call another shop owner across the city, across the state, across the country and say, hey.

I've got this. What would you do? Where else do you get something like that? You don't you can't always go to Google, Google dot com.

It won't always it won't get you the answers, or maybe it won't get you the best the best answers that you need. So to have experienced people that you can also rely on as that, as your, what do they call the, the number you your, phone a friend.

You know, you you've got that and a great a great panel, you know, a great resource of of tons of members to do that with.

Oh, I love it.

I wanna I wanna interject real quick.

Yeah. Go on.

So Sherry brought something up that I I think kinda struck a nerve for me. She brought up about the association and who leads that association and that team.

That is extremely, extremely important in the success of an association.

In Sherry's team, I mean, we've gotta give it up to them. They are absolutely hands down phenomenal at every aspect of managing this association and making sure that they provide everything to the members at a flawless flawless every single time. I mean, it is phenomenal to see the inner workings of what goes on and the amount of powerhouse of a team that she truly has.

And that's that's a big, big thing that it takes in order to make an association truly successful. It's not all of us shop owners. It's not all of us phone a friend. It's not all of us get together just on a local level. It's what they do behind the scenes that I honestly feel they don't get enough credit for that that really makes all of us look good.

You know, inter interesting, Travis. You you go down that path because I I have a a slightly different take on it as well, you know.

And I I wanna I wanna, you know, flush Sherry up and make her feel good too, but I'm gonna I'm gonna pull back just a hair because I think this this radical ask right now that needs to happen at the membership level.

And Sherry's got a stellar team. We've got a a stellar team over here in in in in Nuwaka side. And what what occurs to me is that no matter how strong that team is at the top, it requires the shop owners. It requires the small boards. It requires the small chapters.

And and this notion of leadership, you you can have the best leaders at the top, but if they're not bringing it down through the whole organization and and, sure, you do a great job with it. You know? So this isn't taken away from you. But this is just saying that we have to have the others stepping up into those positions because that that is where I have seen the actual the the the fruits occur. And and quite honestly, I mean, if you look at where we are in the industry right now, we are at a changing of the guards.

And and, frankly, the change isn't happening in a way that I think is it meets up to where the guys are exiting.

And so the the younger guys and I'm I'm kind of in the middle, so I I don't really fit the the the old I you know, I'm I'm somewhere in between both ends of the spectrum.

And and when I look at it today, I don't see the guys coming. I don't see the young faces. And I didn't see the young faces when I was the young face in the room. And whatever whatever's going on, we aren't grabbing their attention like we should be.

And And maybe part of it is Travis, maybe it's your story, my story. It's the it's the stories that happened because maybe they're not hearing those. But but without that group, I mean, it it it becomes a daunting task for the very top to run all of the things that need to happen. And and I think when they when they really operate effectively, it's really done where you almost don't see anything from the top.

You know, the top is almost almost quiet and and non observant, and it just happens. And you and you take them for granted because it runs so smoothly because all the other things have been put into place. The leadership training's been there. The people below are bought in, and they're running with it.

And and that's my cry. That is my cry to get those people out there, get them involved, and get them building our industry even further than it is today.

You are so right, Brian. And and what we have to realize is leaders grow leaders. Right?

And so when we get to that that local level, that local chapter level, those leaders need to be growing their replacements.

And and we we do that by you know, when I was on the on the local level board, it's it's a huge honor for me to be a part of that. And, you know, if we don't show that and and make it known that that is that is something special. There is four seats on a local level, and there is a lot of members. And in order for for me to have that opportunity, I took that, I mean, as, like, a holy cow.

They actually thought that I could be here. Wow. I really need to provide for our members. And I think when you bring that and then you lead that, lead that group and then always be looking for your replacement.

And and we need to do that in our businesses as well. And you do that by by growing yourself as a leader first and then growing leaders below you, and then you get two, three leaders below you, and then those two, three leaders are now building two or three more leaders. And so, you know, before you know it, you've just got a powerhouse of leaders, and, that's that's really what we've gotta focus on.

Sherry?

Well, you know, this generation, this new generation of shop owners, I think, you know, the younger shop owners, it it's hard to find a way to get them to connect. They relate a lot differently to organizations. You know, they would rather text. And so I think as associations, we have to reach out and modify how we're reaching, how they learn, all the different things to to get to this younger generation. But there are so many incredible things that they will get involved, that they'll just take the step that where they can learn incredible leadership skills that will enhance their business, make their business even stronger, and they get more connected and more knowledge about the industry, and get partners. And then as they as they grow their business, they now have a network that comes across the country.

But getting that young shop owner, if they're, you know, talking to any young shop owners out there, you just need to get connected, get out of your comfort zone, and I promise it will pay tenfold.

There that's that's our challenge for organizations today.

Yeah. The key is being uncomfortable.

They enjoy the discomfort, and and you'll go a long ways. And that's that's not just in the association world. That's in life, and that's in business. Enjoy the discomfort.

Hundred percent.

So one one thing I haven't heard us talk about, which I love, are vendor relationships.

You know? And and, in my business, we have a thing called the wind wheel, and it's four quadrants. It's, it's the business. It's the internal customer. It's the external customer, internal customer being the employees, external customer being who pays the bill. And then and then lo and behold, it's the vendor. And and I always say, if all of those are in balance, the wind wheel serves the community.

And and I I look at this, and I I talk about, you know, vendor relationships, and you look at what the association brings in vendor relationships.

Where else can I get a one on one connection with the person who is in charge of, we'll say, the entire department of my my parts my parts delivery? Right? So I don't just I know the bottom, which is the person who hands it to me, the person who usually takes the most flack for, you know, lack of any other word. They show up, they're late and then, you know, everybody's upset it.

I'm here. Or maybe they're your best friend because they got it there on time, but they they live in the seesaw world. Right? And and, unfortunately, we get to know them when we're in our shop.

And maybe that's a fortunate thing because I've met some awesome delivery people, and I've met some that some that don't care so much. But but at the same time, how often do I get a hold of the the top end? Because you might get the salesperson who delivers to you, or you might get the salesperson who makes the call to your shop, but do you get who's in charge of it all? And through the association, we get to meet all of the contacts.

And when there is a problem or when there's something going well that you wanna you want maybe to even assist with, you pick up the phone and boom, who do you have? And they they know you by face. They know you by name, and and that relationship's already established.

So it's not they're not questioning whether or not you did what you said because they've met you. They know that you're a person of integrity.

And and when something goes wrong, they're going, you know what? Let's let's let's jump into this and let's get it fixed for you because I agree that shouldn't be happening this way. There's no barrier to correction and and getting things where it needs to happen. And, again, it's relationship, but but it's so key to have those vendor relationships. And I don't know of another place that you get them all, short of the association.

And many times, they come to us and ask us for solutions. You know, hey. We're needing some insight on this. How is this working for you? Or, hey. Can you participate in in this survey or this advisory board or, task force to to tackle a problem? So there's many times where you do your voice is heard much louder than it is as the independent businessman on the street, when you're part of an organization.

It's true. It is true. It is true. I love it. I love it. And I see this, Sherry, that you are the gardener, and you are you are laying the ground, planting the seeds, fertilizing it, watering it.

You know it's going to happen because of your past experience in the industry. You know that these stories are gonna be there.

I love the stories. I find them, amazing. I find them awesome. I find everyone unique in their story of how they came to success or how they got there.

And I see a lot of association being the value of the association. I I wonder if this next gen is questioning the value. What are they gonna get of the value of being involved in association? How much time is this gonna take, you know, because this they want that balance to happen, which I I don't know what balance people are thinking they're gonna get.

I we work half days, whatever it takes. Right?

What what what is balance? Balance, balance will be coming down the road a little bit.

How how can we how can we recruit more? How can we get that value translated to this next gen? What what can we do to get that new shop in here? Maybe even an old shop.

So so balance we all have twenty four hours a day. So we're all balanced in within twenty four hours a day. Right?

And we put more time towards stuff that we're more passionate about.

Right.

So I think our true goal is to get them passionate.

And when they become passionate, it's it's no longer more of a balance.

Okay? It's them chasing their passion.

So our true challenge is is we've gotta get them passionate about this. And in order to get them passionate about this, we've gotta bring them in. We've gotta make them feel welcome. And not just make them feel welcome, make them welcomed.

Okay.

And get them involved.

Let them get a taste of what it's like, and then they start building that. And it doesn't happen overnight, especially with the younger generation.

It takes even longer. But as soon as they become passionate about it, they become passionate about video games or YouTube or whatever. That's where they spend their time.

Yeah.

Okay? Get them passionate, and then it's no longer a balancing issue.

Yeah. You hit on a keyword there being welcomed. I I think of have you guys ever been the new kid at school?

Oh, it's so awkward. It's so difficult. I don't have any friends here. Who am I gonna talk to?

Make them feel welcomed.

Bring them into the family. Make sure that you introduce them to everybody and introduce yourself to them and find out who they are, where they are, all this. Yeah.

Brian.

Yeah. So as I was listening, you know, one of the things that's occurring for me right now is, Travis and I think we're all guilty of this, so I'm not picking on you here. But I heard you refer to them as them and them and them and them and they.

I and I think that's part of our problem. And and as I think about this and and this is I was listening to this occurred to me, but, I think all of us, myself included, refer to us as them because we are in this together.

It's not them. It's not us. It's we. We are all together in this. And you nailed it a second ago when you just said, what's it like being the new kid?

We we aren't none of us are new kids.

We are all together working in this industry. And until we can embrace that and and fully, fully bring ourselves to it, it's gonna be a it's gonna be a them, and it's gonna be I want they, and and and we're gonna we're gonna struggle with this. And I I don't have the answers perfectly on this one. I just know that in order to do it, the inclusivity has to be there. And we have to be embracing, and we have to involve all of the entire industry. And and when you think about the independent world, we we have seminars that are set up to talk to the millennials, and here's how Gen X works, and here's your baby boomers. Screw that.

We are all automotive shop owners. We are all automotive shop industry.

Mhmm.

And and and create that group and and I love Travis on your passion because you are spot on. My my I was just I was getting excited when you said that because that's what it's about. We make we we create a space that we can be passionate about what we believe in. We didn't we didn't come into automotive because we don't like cars.

We didn't come into automotive because we just happened to fall into a shop. And and there's something about us that drove us here because it's not an easy profession. There's nothing there's nothing nice about getting your your knuckles beat up and and oil in your face and, you know, my favorite diesel or gasoline in your eyes. There's just there's nothing nice about that.

Right? So nobody subjects that self to them unless they have passion to begin with and and continues to stay in it unless they have passion.

So when you talk about building that passion, how do we get them to have that same passion that keeps them under that car in our group?

And how do we all embrace each other and say, this is the network that we need, and this is the network that we should have? And quite honestly, I believe the network that once existed at a stronger level.

You know? So so bringing that back together in that sense of community is critical.

And the more we the more we have seminars on how we speak to Gen x and how we speak to the millennials and now it's Gen z, In a lot of cases, I think we were actually doing ourselves harm. Because I I have a millennial who works for me and I love him to death. And he says, if I hear one more thing about how you should talk to me, I'm gonna lose my freaking mind.

And I go, well, then you tell me how to talk to you because I'm not good at it.

But but the more we focus on us and them, I think the tougher it becomes. And, you know, that's that's my thing is we need to embrace it all and know that we're all in the same thing and we're all cut from the same cloth.

We all put our pants on one leg at a time at the end of the day.

Well, Sherry does both his I'm a double legged.

You just I just run it. Boom. Snap.

Well, you know, and I think for shop owners that say, I don't have time.

My day is so busy, and then I wanna get to family, and they're already feeling the pressure at both ends.

They need to take the time. Just that little investment of time, what you can come away with from a meeting can make a difference in your day, in your month, in your month end, in a challenge that you're dealing with that's keeping you at the shop late at night, that's keeping you awake at night.

Just make the commitment and that time, it will pay off. What you invest in the organization pays off personally and professionally.

Truth.

Truth. That's the that is that that's a hard lesson, though. These guys I mean, I walk into a lot of shops, and I've I've spent weeks and weeks working with our outside sales guy going into shop after shop. And and I I mean, I I when we walk into certain shops, I almost chuckle because I go, oh god.

Here we go. You know? And and the first thing that happens is the guy comes up from the back and he's he's the owner and he's covered head to toe. He didn't stop to wash his hands before he walked up front.

And I the first thing I always say is, hey, I'm really sorry. What do you mean? Obviously, we interrupted you, so I'm sorry for that. And I, you know, I I we probably should have called and set something up, but but we're here anyway.

How is this how is this working for you?

And and that always gets quite the interesting reaction. What do you mean? Well, you you seem pretty busy. Yeah. I just I've got no time. Oh, okay.

By the way, I own a shop too, and I'm out here visiting you. And it's not because I'm some different guy or I'm I'm some high intellect or I'm I'm just some some ultra driven dude. It's it's because I I manage people, and and I care about my my team, and and I care about the industry. And I I think you do too. But for some reason, you've made a choice to to grind it out in the way that you are.

And it's enticing people and getting them to understand there's other ways of doing things, and and there's nothing unethical about it. There's nothing that you're you're less of a hard worker. It's it's there's better ways to do things. And the only way you gets to see you know, the only way to know what you don't know is to see others who do know.

And and that is so often the key is to get them to you can if you can give them that that realization that, oh, gosh. What I'm doing, other guys did this, and I don't have to do it this way. And so when I go into that shop, I always I almost try to, you know, once I've apologized, once I've set the stage, then I almost try to get them angry with me. And because I want them to have to think about what's going on around them. I wanna challenge their belief, and I wanna create friction. And I I want to make them, you know, get them agitated to where they actually think about it.

And and so many times, it comes down to what Sherry just said. They think they're too busy. But in reality, they're just busy being busy.

There's no there's no there's there's no order to what busy is. It's just the next fire on top of the next fire on top of the next fire. And you if you can explain to them that fire prevention works a whole lot better, then all of a sudden their whole life changes. And and back to what Travis said a minute ago, that's where the passion comes from.

The minute they see that their life can be different than it is, and it can be exponentially better than it is today, that's where that passion comes from. And and that's where that's whenever I think about the tension I create, that's what I'm thinking in my head. Yeah. This is uncomfortable even for me because I've had guys almost throw stuff at me.

Right?

Who the hell market practice.

Yeah. What are you thinking? Oh, oh, hey. I just I just questioned something you're doing.

But but to me, that's where the the meat really comes down, and that's where caring about the industry comes down because they've got a family. And I've watched too many guys go out of business. I've watched businesses burn down to the ground and because they didn't have the right coverage, because they they wouldn't come to events that I'd invited them to for over a year or two, I've watched them lose everything. I've watched guys take and remortgage their house to pay for their shop that they didn't correct.

They lose their house. They lose their business. They lose their wife. Their kids hate them.

And then they they end up working and and become an alcoholic on top of it. And Yeah. And you watch these spirals happen, but yet there's resources out there that can pull people up. And and you don't have to be at the bottom to get pulled up.

Sometimes it's just walking into the group.

And, you know, I've seen it happen too many times that when I stand there now, that's what goes through my head. Hey. You're you're busy being busy. Let me show you another way.

So no matter how how bad that tension might become, it's it's worth it to me because I don't wanna see another one of them go through what I've seen people go through.

Like a great evangelist, you're going door to door, Brian. I appreciate that.

Helping to bring people in. That that is super awesome.

That's what it's all about.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It really is. So, Sherry, I I know that the, Auto Care Alliance, does stretch all across the United States.

If a shop did wanna get involved Yes.

How do how are they gonna do that? How do they do that? Is there is there a chapter everywhere?

So there's not a chapter everywhere, but we do have what we call a virtual chapter where they have access to resources, our training library to, we're gonna be kicking off the SOS or shop owner support groups that are gonna be virtual.

They have access to everything no matter where they are, and then, hopefully, they will want to start a chapter there locally. So they'll want to work. And so we'll work with them if they don't have something in their area to where then they can, get like minded shop owners together. And we will help support a chapter and the growth of a chapter to where we can begin getting this concept across to even more, more of the country. So we're really excited. There's some there's some great opportunities ahead, and it's been finding those new leaders. And those leaders in those local areas very well have an opportunity to be, you know, national leaders, within our organization, with other other, organizations and industry advisory boards.

There's really there's really no limit, and I'm excited to make the opportunities available. So all somebody needs to do is go to auto care alliance dot org. We have a site in there that says where you are. Depending upon what state you're in, we do have some alliances that already have an organization, open and, functioning. You would join one of those organizations. Or if you're outside of those areas, you would join the virtual, which would which is under the umbrella of the Midwest Auto Care Alliance.

We have the the support and everything to, already online, there's over a hundred different management and technical training classes that you have access to in a library, as well as numerous other resources and benefits.

Beautiful. So real quick, Brian. You brought up a pretty strong point that our industry has a lot of issues with, and that is, you know, substance abuse or, maybe that's alcohol.

I might put Sherry on the spot here a little bit.

But is there a benefit that might be releasing really, really soon that could, potentially help with some of that stuff?

Actually, yes. There is a there's an email and press releases that are going out this week. We have an employee assistance program. So many times, a small shop can't afford that.

And, you know, if you work for a large corporation, you have that where you have access to a counselor, who can help you through. Maybe it's, you know, putting a parent in. Maybe it's the death of a loved one. Maybe it's struggles with a child.

Maybe it's your child needs some assistance. And this EAP program will actually help all of your employees plus their household family members.

And we've come together, and we're ready to announce the SHOP care benefit program. Thirty dollars per employee per year is all it costs.

Did you hear that? Per year.

Yes.

When I heard that, I about fell backwards.

Yes. Pretty much.

You get you get twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty five days a week. If you have anything at all, you pick up, call this number, and you've got somebody within seconds to help you navigate through whatever issues it is, whether that's substance abuse or marital issues or, it it doesn't matter.

That is a enormous benefit.

And that that again is is another reason why it's so important to be a part of association. A small company like us, we can't afford to to bring some of those large, large benefits to the table.

Those are multibillion dollar organizations that can do that.

So having an association that backs you and supports you in those ways, that's just another huge reason why it's so important to be a part of association.

So we do Let's flip that on its head too, Travis. There's no way for thirty dollars you could provide this level of No.

Not a chance.

No. No. So, you know, we're really taking the care of the shop owner and their shop family, to heart. And so we've unfortunately experienced, several employee suicides, shop owner suicides, So and some really difficult times, and I think the last couple of years have really brought us to, really look at things differently, having some some challenges emotionally, mentally, as well as our children. And we need to address those, and those impact the shop. And those impact your team culture and your efficiency.

And you know what? Let's let's find a solution. So we went out. We found this EAP program that we can implement on a nationwide level for all of our members for just an incredibly low price.

And, you know, if you end up with a situation and, heaven forbid, you have a shop you know, you have a shop employee that, you know, commits suicide. There's a support program that you can enact. It does cost extra for that support program, but you don't have to scramble on what do I do because it impacts everybody in your shop, and we've seen it happen. And we don't want any any other businesses to experience. And so let's try to find the solution ahead of time before it reaches those crisis points. And we're we're really excited. It's, ShopCare is what we're calling it, ShopCare, and it's an employee assistance program.

You have to register before December first for an open enrollment, and it's good for a year.

We've really we've had some some incredible response to the announcement, and there'll be official announcements and press releases going out this week.

Oh, that's super awesome.

Great stuff. You know, so one thing we we haven't mentioned either, and I think this is actually another one of the largest things that the associations offer, is tech training.

And and you look at and you look at what goes on there and what that requires from a shop. And and and were these associations not in place, there's absolutely no question that we couldn't we could not compete at the level we do without them. And, you know, whether it's vision, whether it's, oh, gosh, whether whether it's vision, whether it's ATE, I mean, we've got shows across what what was that? Bimmers. Bimmers. Yeah. Bimmers.

You know, as you as you talked about all the Saturday.

There's so many of them.

Yeah. And were it not for those, I think it's just what the cost alone would be to train our technicians. And, you know, in some cases in the past, I brought in trainers to the shop.

You try and catch some of the parts ones that challenge there. If it's done by a parts vendor, how much of it is their mantra that they wanna stick into into it?

And and when you when you have the associations in charge of it Yeah. We're gonna push out and say, hey. It's gotta be to the subject. You know? It's gotta be education.

Exactly. It's not a sales pitch.

Not a sales pitch. Yeah.

And that and that to me is one of the the greatest pieces that's been put out there. We're not trying to brainwash our technicians to where you're only gonna buy this brand of part. No. Here's how you fix the car. Now figure out what part's gonna work. And and we can show you the advantages of certain parts, but but it's not just about that manufacturer. And and to me, that's that's one of the biggest benefits of the associations that are out there right now.

I love it. I love it. Thank you. Yeah. The training is freaking amazing and awesome. I wanna throw one last one out as well, and that's the legal, the lobby, the government.

Yes.

I I've been a lot of shop owners, people aren't aware or don't know that there's a lot of laws being passed or proposed that benefit or to the detriment of our industry. How does the association help out there?

So we have an eye on the legislation.

In Missouri, the Midwest Auto Care Alliance, we actually have an on staff, lobbyist now, to represent us. And then we are working on something nationally, as far as grassroots efforts, that will be announced soon, as well as some other partnerships to have representation and have a voice in that legislative arena. There is a lot coming down on the national level, you know, federal level, and state level.

We're we're very excited about some of the, the new, partnerships and and organizations. So the ACA is now getting the recognition of other organizations who are now coming to us and saying, hey. We wanna partner with you. We love what you're doing. We wanna partner. And so there'll be there'll be a lot of new developments that you'll be hearing about over the coming months as, as all of these come together and some some big meetings coming in Vegas at Apex and CEMA and, and even more. So I you'll you'll be hearing you'll be hearing from us.

Nice.

Beautiful. To to piggyback on that, though, don't be afraid at your local level. And and I've spent a lot of years at my local level, at at both the, I would say, even county all the way to state level, fighting for what you know needs to happen. You know, don't be afraid to go to, your legislative days where they walk on your capital.

Don't be afraid to join up with some of your business groups to go experience what's out there so that you can be a voice. And and the associations need people at grassroots level. We need people at the national level. And and it's critical that, again, it's back to be involved.

Because if you don't do it, you might be the one who's getting the hatchet. So find the people who are passionate about it. You know, it doesn't happen by itself. And Yeah.

And with as many states as we have in the union, it's not it's not like one person can do all of it. Although they do have nice software, if you if you're into it, they can they can find a lot of the details for you. So so, again, it's it's so much of it is still just get involved because you'll find out where the needs are too.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Well, let's put a a beautiful bow on this. Any last thoughts, words, comments, Travis, then Brian, then Sherry, and and we'll close this thing out because I I tell you, this association talk is strong, and I love it. I love it. Travis, to you.

Yeah. I mean, final thoughts is if you're not a part of an association, it's a must.

It's it's how you grow. It's how you continue to to take this industry and transform it, to what you see and and what you want, and then also learn. Learn and grow. Learn and grow.

So So the first thing that comes to mind, I hear people say, well, it's the association.

And my response is always, it's not the association. It's our association.

And and understand that the ownership is right here for every person. It's not it's no one else's association other than yours. And to not belong to an association, you're just flapping in the wind. I mean, we we have so many, not just benefits, but people that wanna stand with you and for you.

That if you're not a part of it, I quite honestly, I think you're lost. And and that's the that's the piece that sticks out to me. It's our it's always our association. And and that's that particular comment came from one of my past presidents of NWACA.

And and when he said that to me, because we were talking about and this started in monetary context at the time, that is our money that we are spending. This is our association.

And that's right. We make the decisions. We drive it. And the more people we can get to understand that, the stronger the association becomes.

How do you, how do you top those two, two good closures?

You know, I would say if it's not you, then who will it be? If you want changes in the industry, you can't keep looking to other people to make those changes. If it's not you, then who?

Get involved, be part of it, and you will benefit, leaps and bounds beyond, what you ever imagined. Just give it a try.

Totally agree. Totally agree. Dropped.

Boom.

As we focus on collective we, the collective us, the collective family, we're gonna lock arms and together we can do this. It reminds me of an experience I had recently. We were trying to move a piano. Shuffle shuffle shuffle, person person person shuffling around, and we had, like, ten of us around this piano trying to move it. And finally, we said, alright, listen. Everybody just stand where you are and lift.

And we did. And together, we were able to move the piano. Grand piano, huge, big, heavy duty. Mhmm.

This our industry our industry, us, let's lock arms. Let's us together make the difference because we can and we are.

And this is our industry. This is us.

With that, my name is Jimmy Lee. Aloha to you all. Mahalo. Thank you very much for you being here, Travis and Brian and Sherry and those of you who are listening, whether it is live or in the recording. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much. We look forward to seeing you at our next event.

Technician Magnet = Careers Page

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 21:15:00 GMT

Does your shop need to hire more technicians? You’re not alone.

The entire industry needs more technicians. Don’t worry though.

We might just have a solution for you.

Join Jimmy Lea, Product Evangelist for KUKUI, and Bryan Stasch AMAM, ATI Vice President of Program & Content Development, as they discuss how to attract more qualified help through your website!

Webinar Transcript:

Kukui. Who is Kukui? What are we about? Well, we're about to make this an interactive webinar. And to make sure that you know how to be interactive in this webinar, want you to go into the questions box because you're gonna have a lot of questions as we're having this discussion today, talking about a technician magnet.

Go to the inbox inbox question box. Go to the question box and type where it is that you are joining us from today, city and state. Tell us where you are joining from so we can see everybody that's on here. And and a little shout out to Dory. Dory Dory was the first one on.

Wanted to make sure they didn't miss anything. So, Dory, where are you from? We got Rich from Baltimore, Maryland, John from McAllen, Texas.

John, glad to have you here. And, John Powell from Richmond, Virginia, Scott Brown from Springville, Virginia.

You guys are awesome. Thank you for joining. Thank you for typing in because this is going to be an awesome conversation that we're gonna have talking about your technician Magda and what you can do to implement this in your shop. I mean, this is stuff you can implement.

Take notes. Do it today. This is stuff you can do today. So it's gonna be awesome.

Jenna from San Antonio, Scott from Temecula.

You guys are awesome. Thank you for joining.

Thank you for joining. Anybody else gonna be joining in? Type in the city and state in the questions box. So this is so you can ask the questions. I'll be the voice for you, and we're gonna ask my guest today about your questions that you have for your technician magnet.

So who is KUKUI? Why are we doing this? What does this have to do with your KUKUI software? Well, a little bit to do with KUKUI software, but a heck of a lot to do with your shop and your success. And that's the greatest judge of success in my book is your success. Your success equals Kukui's success.

What is Kukui? Kukui are these beads that I'm wearing. Kukui are, this is the the the nuts that fall from the kukui tree. They contain a high level of oil content. And with that, they're able to burn like a lamp, a candle, a lantern. And and to translate the word kukui from the Polynesian language to the English language is to say to enlighten.

We're here to enlighten, to inspire. We're here to enlighten you as a shop owner as to what you can do in your patch, in your market to make a difference with your techs, with your people.

So I'm excited for this discussion today. Kukui, the name Kukui has deep meaning for us, and we're glad you're here joining me today for this Kukui enlightening conversation as we're gonna talk about who Kukui is and what we can do. So technician magnet. So how is it that this works with Kukui software? Very little portion of that. It goes towards your about us page.

How are you using that? What does your about us page say? What does it do for you? So we're gonna let's jump into this.

My name is Jimmy Lee. I am KUKUI. I'll be the voice for you today. You've got questions.

We've got answers.

We've got a great discussion gonna happen right here, right now. Joining me today is mister Brian Stosch.

Brian is the, VP. How come this is not advancing? There we go. VP of, programs and content for ATI. Brian, good to see you. How are you doing, brother?

I'm doing great, Jimmy. And thank you for having me, my friend. Thank you for having me.

You are so welcome. You are so welcome. And you're coming through loud and clear, so we've got connection. It's, you and I here right now as we're gonna have this discussion.

So here we are talking about a technician magnet. How can the about us page become or be a technician magnet?

Well, you being the website expert, my friend, there's definitely two things in a website that I think really are gonna help, but you mentioned that the about us page.

And to me, that really is the owner's opportunity to tell the world who they are.

What is their story?

What do they believe in? Who do they wanna be? What kind of shop do they wanna be?

What is their mission and what is their purpose?

Did I say what do you believe in and what are your goals?

Now Yeah. At at ATI, we work with a lot of different things. And I work with members on several things, and a lot of times they wanna talk about compensation models, comp plans.

And the only problem with comp plans is it doesn't motivate all. And this goes right back to what we're talking about with your about us page because I'm two believers at two two or a believer in two ways to motivate humans. Yes, one is money, but the other one is give them something to believe in. Most people want to be part of something bigger.

And by you demonstrating who you are, what's your mission, what do you believe in? That's just your opportunity to give somebody a feel that you are something bigger, and they want to be part of that. And I hope that makes sense, Jimmy.

Yeah. So so does your about us page, does it demonstrate who you are? Does it show your story of your shop?

And what you're talking about is a tribe. People wanna belong to a tribe.

They do.

Is your tribe attractive to them? Does your tribe show who you are as a shop?

Yes. Definitely. And and and I don't wanna use this term, the younger generations of workforce, but that's that's who we're or we're trying to find. That's yes.

They do. And again, that even and I'm a Gen Xer, but and I've always wanted to be part of something bigger. But, yes, this is your opportunity. But some things I also think need to be part of their helping you with the tribe, helping you with the story is on that about us.

I love pictures of the team.

And a little bit about who they are, what type of skill levels and search do they have, and maybe how long they've been with you.

And we'll get to the, careers page in just a minute. But also some other things that I think help, what work do you do in the community? What things do you do as far as charities? What where do you give back? And I still think that all fits back into who you are, what do you believe in, your story, your mission, your purpose.

Right. Right. So pictures go a long way, especially pictures of the little league team with you having, what, putting out a pizza party for the team that won the championship, what whatever that picture might be or look like. Maybe it's the launch of the season.

Yes. Yep. You know, and Jimmy, and you've seen this happen at our conference. We like to give away humanitarian awards. But my point, you know, my point about this is there's a lot of them out there in this industry that just give a lot back. They give a ton back, whether it's time, people, resources, And they really are kinda bashful about that kind of things, and I think they should be proud.

Yeah.

It it it they're bashful because they're not doing it for the glory. They're not doing it for the spotlight. They're doing it for the goodness of their heart to give back. And and this is a scenario, a situation where on an about us page, you do wanna highlight it. So if you're sponsoring a little league team, if you are are are doing the the boy scouts and the girl scouts, their merit badge classes, if you're you're putting that information out there for people to see.

Maybe it's a a women in auto care. This is a a a car care clinic.

Yep. Awesome. All great.

So we put all these in the about us page. Is there such a thing as too much information on an about us page?

I'm sure if you knew a website expert kidding. He might be happy to but I I don't believe so. I don't believe so either. I but I'd want them to know truly who you are and what do you believe in, because people like doing business with people like that as well as people like to work with people like that.

Yeah. For sure. Now on the about us page, what about putting in video?

Video is cool. And I and and again with the careers page. Now couple different things. And in this world of trying to recruit technicians, and and I think we all know this that ads and typical ads, newspaper ads, even the Indeed and stuff like that, they're really not as effective as we would like them to be.

And the one and the ones that we find that are effective, yes, are videos.

But two different types, two different resources. Do I talk about videos on social networking, Facebook pages, and all that kind of stuff where somebody could simply do with one of these?

Yeah.

And they're cool and they're fun and people like fun. People like seeing people.

When it comes to an about us or a careers page, and with careers pages, yes, I love video of your people talking about what it's like working with them.

Right.

But I think that's a little different. Facebook social networking is cool.

But and again, you'd probably recommend to all the all of your folks that you work with. But when it comes to putting video and stuff like that on a careers page, it's gotta be a little bit different level.

I think that needs to be more of a professional level, but I see grade.

Yep.

It's more permanent and not meant to be I don't wanna say not as fun, but probably a little bit more serious than the social networking.

But a lot of the members that we work with or even websites I've seen or people that don't have issues finding, attracting people have great videos of their people talking about what it's like to be there, what it's been like, what has it done for them. So, I that's that's gotta be a different level, but I want videos. I want people talking about what it's like because that's what seems to get the attention today.

Yeah. Well, and and, you pointed out an interesting thing here, Brian. Not only do I see that being attractive to the next technician that wants to come work for the shop, but I also see a prospect coming in here and and searching around to see the careers page.

And here, they're looking at a technician talking about the great environment, the the meals on Fridays and Wednesdays or whatever the the training that we do, the training we provide.

And we're seeing I, as a consumer, am seeing a technician who likes to work on cars.

Yes. Definitely.

And along with those things that you just mentioned, I mean, things that you'd want in there are also anything culture related, anything teamwork related. And again, from both sides, whether it's a prospect or whether it's a customer.

And you also picked on something, and I don't know if you realize how important that really is.

One thing I don't think we do well as an industry k.

We don't do a good enough job sharing with people what kind of a career path this really could be for a young technician. And when I'm looking to attract lifers, I wanna talk about the training. I wanna talk about what type of career path there is for you here at Brian's Auto. So career path and train. Yes. Jimmy's super sharp.

But, yeah, I I I'd ask them I I mean, the the importance of it, I think we've kinda conveyed Yeah. That, yes, it's a professional image. It is well done.

And I'm not saying you have to spend a million bucks, but it's gotta be a next level above something like this.

Yeah.

It's gotta look well put together.

It's gotta look professional.

And again, talking about your team, talking about their tenure, what it's been like working for you, the culture, the teamwork, what what they've trained, what training potential.

I don't think think we do a good enough job at the career path.

Yeah. You know, I was just at, Christy and Donnie Hudson's shops in, Troy, Michigan, and they have a lot of what I would I would call it a lot of apprentices. They have three apprentice at one shop, three at another, and two at another. That's a lot, and they're they're homegrown these. And I was talking to Christie about it, and she says, Jimmy, my apprentice program, anybody that comes to my shop to work for me now, BTECs, CTEC, ATEC, it doesn't matter. They've gotta go through the appearance program to demonstrate our level of understanding.

Yep.

So an ATEC could just go whipping right through those exams. Right? I mean, this is second nature. We we know all this information.

Bam, bam, bam. We're done done with the apprentice program in in a week or or whatever the scenario is. Right? Yeah.

So anybody that comes to work at their shops has to go through the apprentice program. Those that are truly apprentice starting out as a GS, they're gonna work their way up.

Yes. And couple other little points on that if this is okay. Yeah. If not, I mean, yes, I'd love to be able to show a young technician that over x number of years, I'm gonna get you to a position to be an a technician or master technician.

And what's that timeline look like? And I'd love to demonstrate what earning potential should look like. But Yeah. And I wanna talk about our apprentice program because I dig it, and I love everything Chrissy said about it.

But also thinking about areas that they're having troubles or or rechecks or comebacks on. When is it time to put a BTEC or back end of something training? So agree with everything you just said. We just don't do a good enough job demonstrating that I'm gonna get you there.

And why there's a lot of go ahead.

I was gonna say Well, to that point to that point, is the careers page the appropriate place to put out that outline?

Outline, no. The verbiage, yes. Default that, yes, is what you do. I think something like that might be a little bit more behind closed doors or even in in the interview process.

But I want them to see that message along with what it's really like working for you, what benefits, and stuff like that, but that there is a career path.

Yeah. And we're gonna provide the training. And if you wanna be that master technician at someday, we're the place for you because we're not hiring, we're mentoring, which I think is just really cool.

Okay. You bring up a good point. How do we convey that we're not just hiring, we're mentoring? How can you convey that?

And this is why I like, in the videos or even on just about us, who the technicians are. In that description or along with title, the mentor and their training levels, and the and their experience.

But in there, a little bit more talking about that that they are the mentor, and they're young like, growing young technicians. And how we would do that would be with the curriculum timeline, the proper skill steps, and some of the accountabilities that go with it.

And, that's a really good question you hit me with there, Jimmy. No. I don't wanna put that in my careers page, but I want someone to understand that we do that, and I'd want the technician talking about how we did it. And, no, maybe even some of their apprentices on that page.

Yeah.

Career telling about what they've learned so far working with Jimmy Lee.

So Yeah.

Yeah. Because at Jimmy Super Shop, we have Brian Stosch, the the lead ATEC, the also the mentor, the instructor, and and you can talk about what you have done in instructing and bringing up the next generation.

Then we also, on the flip side of that, have the next generation talking about what they have learned, what they've implemented, the process procedures, the training that they have learned, the trainings they've attended, the raises that they've gotten?

And where I am today compared to where I started at Jimmy Super Super Shop. So yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. I like that. I like that. And and so it's showing the the culture, showing the training, showing the career path. We can do this with with video.

We can do it with pictures. We can do it with some content. Yep. Interesting. And and those that are listening, I wonder what they are doing in their shops to show that next gen the possibilities, their career paths.

Because I've seen them. I've seen it, Brian. I've I've seen thousands of websites that you go to the careers page, and it is fill out the form, drop us your resume, Shazam. And somebody will contact you maybe.

And along with that list of requirements for the job and a list of responsibilities, nothing that make it look really attractive, at least to the level that it really needs to look today compared to what it did ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. And video gives you great opportunities to do that, as well as a careers page and about us page.

Yeah. Yeah. Here's the question.

Can a customer customer can a customer be used as a technician magnet?

Oh my gosh. Yes.

And Okay. How?

Well, I know Jeff likes to talk about Jeff as an instructor that works with me at ATI and works with a class on employee engagement, staffing, and hiring.

But, he talks about six degrees of separation and that everybody knows somebody.

So that this is why talking to your existing customers, letting them know that you might be looking for someone if they have somebody because you never know who they know, nieces, nephews, so on and so on. Social media is so important because of that six degrees of separation. You just don't know how many or who this message is really gonna hit. It may not always be looking for or hitting somebody that's looking, but it might be somebody that's hitting somebody that knows somebody that's looking or an interest.

So great point, my friend. Great point.

Yeah. Six degrees to Kevin Bacon. I think that's what the game is.

Yep. Yeah.

So yeah.

Yeah. Customer testimonial, they that could show their elation, their joy, their love of the shop, and and that could attract that next person or the person that they know. There there was a shop owner that I I I'm trying to remember who it was. I was visiting their shop, and they introduced me to the friend of the friend. They were hunting technician number two, but he wasn't available. He was happy. He was good where he was.

So this the the the the shop owner asked the beautiful question.

Okay. But who do you know? Right.

Who do you know that's looking for a job? Because technicians know other technicians. They went to school together. They worked together. They've they've busted knuckles together.

And this guy, technician number two, knew a technician that was looking for a new shop to be at.

Exactly. Yep.

Yeah. Oh, that that's cool. And and okay. What about, resources available to technicians? Do we do we list this out on on the careers page, on the about us page? Where where do we list out toolboxes and scanners and brake cleaner and shop towels. I mean, you know what I mean.

Yeah. I think this probably be better suited for the careers page compared to the about us.

Yeah.

So in that careers page, I mean, yes, there's why would you wanna work there? Any of the resources, whether it's digital inspections, each technician has their own individual workstation with the tablets and things of that nature. So me, that would be probably better suited for, the careers page, but Yeah. Always willing to try to learn more.

And then on that careers page, few great reasons why to work here. What do we offer that and I hope I say this right, that the next shop does not.

What do we have to offer? Because you gotta remember, not only I talk about value proposition a lot and what makes you different to a consumer.

But the reality is you need to talk about what makes you different than any other repair facility that's also looking for that technician. And you need to be the most attractive one on the list at the time. Just just my humble opinion.

Yeah. Yeah. No. That's very true. What separates you from the competition? What makes you special?

I I was at Seth Thornson's shops in, where is he? Minneapolis, Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, And his shops are amazing. Every technician has a toolbox at the shop.

It's provided.

Yep. Awesome.

Oh my gosh. That that's amazing. I mean, that's thousands of dollars that you're providing as to the tech.

Exactly. And it really looks cool. It sounds cool, but the reality is one of there's several reasons that push young folks away from our industry, and that is one of them right there. They realize that you have a huge investment.

And for the business owner to be able to provide that definitely eliminates one, and to pay for the training would be another. And we don't wanna go down that road, but, yes, Jimmy. I'm a dude that probably invested sixty or sixty or seventy grand in the tools and boxes over my career. And it would have been much more attractive to work for somebody that was gonna provide that with me and for me, especially a young tech about to enter the industry that has a lot to learn, a lot to go, a lot to grow, help them acquire those as a either basic hand tools or as they meet certain growth levels to be able to provide that. What a great motivator. So I'm glad you brought that up.

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I'm gonna grab something here real quick.

I I I was at Eric Prosser's shop. Eric Eric has this, toolbox.

The toolbox alone is, like, eighty thousand dollars. It must be, like, twenty five feet long and, like, ten feet tall. And there's probably three hundred thousand dollars worth of tools in there. Now that's his toolbox.

Uh-huh.

He converted his old toolbox to be the scanner box. So any technicians that come into his shop, they have access to any of the tools that they need to do the job. Awesome. Awesome.

It was super cool. And and at at Eric Prosser's, shop, his GS's, when they come in, they have a certain color of uniform. And then a a c tech has a color of uniform, and a b tech has a color of uniform, and the a tech. And then the the shop foreman has his own color of uniform for easy identification. You can look around in the shop and see right where right for the people you're looking for. I thought that was brilliant.

It is. It's brilliant. Very good one, Eric, because I really haven't heard that one before, but very cool. Very cool.

And go back to what you said about the tribes. I think that fits in there about a tribe. I think that fits in there with a young wanna make it to that next level, get to that color uniform, under that color uniform, or that I I just think that's kinda cool. Heck, I might even steal that one from him.

Yeah. Well, give Eric a call. Because I think I think the GS is when they come in, they have a a gray uniform, and then it as a c, it's like yellow or orange, and then it goes to a blue and then to a red, and then the the, shop foreman is a green or something like that. So, I mean, as you as soon as he pointed it out to me, I was able to look right around the shop, and I could tell exactly who was where Right. Because of the color of the uniform.

And that kinda goes along with something that me and the coaches at ATI been bouncing around because I think we gotta change our thinking with a GS tech, a C tech, a B tech, an A tech. And that's what most of us grew up with.

I mean, but at some point, does that really sound condescending? And do people want to be a general service or a C? So I kinda love that make it to the next color compared to a number one, two, or three, or an a b. I I kinda like that, because I've been looking for a solution for that, man. I've been looking for a solution for that.

There you go. There you go. And his GS is equal to an apprentice.

Yeah.

And he has a couple of apprentices to shop as well.

Yep.

Cool. Yeah. Mister Coleman is online, and he says it's almost like the belt colors in martial arts.

Yep. Everybody wants to achieve that next level. Awesome. I really dig that.

Yeah. You're right. I might have to reach out here. Oh, gotcha. I got that one. I got that one.

I bet. I can't keep it up here anymore. I have to write it down, Brian. I I forget. I just forget way too quick, man.

Oh, I know how you feel, sir. I know how you feel.

Yep. Yep. I think Don Donald Donald? Yeah. Donald Cousin, he's raising his hand. I don't know if he has a question or if he is agreeing or applauding or giving us a high five.

Cool. Good. But we'll take that one. Yeah. Alright. So we we we talk about the story, their mission, their culture, their goals. This is on the about us page.

Also, to in include community involvement, charities.

One that that I've seen here recently, we didn't even touch on it yet, is recycling.

It's on my list. And, yes, a hundred percent agreed.

And there's a lot of people that that really means a whole lot too. What do you do with that waste? And they wanna make sure you're there to protect that environment. So I'm glad you brought that up, my friend.

So how? Where where are we putting in because I I think in sustainability, there's a couple of different areas. One is the recycle area, but also we've got creation area.

Cool.

So where do we put recycle, scrap metal? Go ahead.

The fluids, the chemicals, all that. And Yep. But I had that down under my notes, and I don't have to be right, but originally on an about us page.

Yeah. Because I think that that fits again, goes to internal as well as external customers, prospects, and, it means a lot to people. And they wanna know that you fit right there in with it and not doing anything that's gonna wreck our environment.

Again, our industry doesn't have a great reputation.

So anything we can do to raise that level of thinking to anybody would be would be great.

So Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. We're we're not pouring those chemicals down the drain. We are recycling them. And and now let's go to creation too because I I go across the country, and I get to see this. This is so awesome. The solar panels on the roof of these shops.

Yep. Yep.

The creation of power.

So in Vegas, totally makes sense. Three hundred and sixty days of sunshine a year. Yep.

Do you know I see more shops with solar panels, Midwest, Northeast, Northwest.

This is places that have a hundred days of sunshine a year.

They're still implementing these solar panels Right.

Yep.

In a strong method.

Anything that would help and reduce that impact, I think that'd be very good. Even in like, my friend Rich on here earlier from Baltimore.

Rich, I'm from Baltimore, a little town in Pasadena, just south, where I wish I would have three hundred and sixty five days, but, any little bit can help, man. Any little bit can help.

Yeah. Yeah. And it does help. It does go a long way. There are some tax benefits. There's some some ramifications that come from that that just really help out, and and that's cool.

That's cool.

What it really goes towards is what we're doing to make things awesome and amazing.

LED lights in the shop, they're so much brighter. They consume so much less electricity and power. Yep.

I was in, I was in, let's give a shout out to Fred Geswicki.

Geswicki. Fix it with Fred. Yeah.

Fix it with Fred? I was in his shop. I'm like, dude, you seriously gotta change out these mercury light bulbs. He's like, dude, they're all LEDs. So he had the old dome, and he had converted them all and changed out the transformers and everything. It was so cool. It was super cool.

Cool. Good.

Because the old mercury bulbs, you'd have to heat them up.

Yep.

Once you did, then it was pennies to keep them operating. But he switched everything over to LED now and super awesome. So I I love Fred's. Alright. To, to technical resources, we talk about in the careers page that career path, what they can expect, the training that you're gonna attend. Maybe you're going to Bimmers.

Maybe you're gonna attend vision. Maybe you're going to ATE or ASTA or ASTE in North Carolina.

What what training do you attend as a shop?

Love that as well. I love that as well. And again, that goes back from the consumer's perspective as well as a prospect because my guess is a young technician wants to see a future. They wanted to see that someone's changing their mindset, learning to go and grow with their business so they know that there's a future for them here as well. Because I know a lot of people don't think about this and I mean, the chance for business ownership in our industry is much stronger, at least in my opinion, than others.

Something else to think about for the future of that shop, a future of the of the next generation of technicians or whatever, but also a great point, Jimmy. Love it. Love it.

Yeah. Yeah. And and so take this to the mentoring idea too. If and I agree with you, but there's a lot of technicians in our industry that go on to be shop owners. It's a totally, completely different skill set being able to turn a wrench versus twirling a pen. Yeah. Maybe that's not the right way to put it.

Managing a business.

What about what is there a place in a careers page to say that I'll mentor you into owning your next shop?

I believe there could be. I believe it could be.

Yeah. Because you never know what what they might be looking for. So anything that you think what separates you from the next and I hate using that term, the next shop, but what would truly separate you?

What makes you more of an attractive option than the other shop that they might be looking at or in their market or whatever?

So, again, I love that. Love that. And I love this concept of of mentoring the the technician. So so you're gonna enroll him into all these management classes and HR and bookkeeping and and and and and all the business law, business ethics courses that you can, management classes.

And and what I what I see happening is two different things. One, a technician is gonna grab a hold of it, is gonna love it, and say, yes. This is the path I wanna go on. I have a five year plan.

I have a ten year plan. I have a fifteen year plan that by that fifteen year plan, I will be running my own shop and pulling in five, ten, fifteen million a year running the shop. Or plan b says, oh my gosh. Running a shop is way more than I wanna do.

I know how to fix cars. I can fix them really well.

I'm gonna dig in and not only be a a master technician. I'm gonna be an inspiration. I'm gonna be a mentor. I'm gonna provide the instruction for that next gen coming through so that they can obtain the same skill set, so that they can have the same passion, the same love for repairing cars.

Yep. Just a lot of options out there for a young technician, anybody that wants to get into this industry.

And I think they get rifled down into, as you said, the tech world. So anything you can do to open somebody's eyes up to what's possible, I think should be in a okay, a careers page.

What about, so because we talk about individual workstations, toolboxes, tool shop tools, scan tools, all that sort of thing. What about where does a a digital inspections fit into careers page or about us page? What what are your thought what are your thoughts there?

Both.

I think people like hearing about technology. They want you to be cutting edge, and anywhere you have opportunity to demonstrate that, I would do so.

And that the generation of not only workforce has changed, the generation of consumers changed. So I want that on both sides of the who who are we, the about us, but definitely the careers page. So and I think it just helps attract somebody that's grew up with this in their hand.

Digital natives? Yes.

Yes. Yes.

That's what I call it. Digital natives, they they were born with a smartphone and Shazam. They're in like Flint. So to the digital inspections too, I think technicians who have done them and done them successfully, digital inspections, have seen the difference. They've seen the amount of additional jobs that they can sell because the pitcher sells the work.

Yep. Pretty much.

So if a technician is comfortable with digital inspection, sees that your shop is doing its digital inspection, they're gonna be drawn towards that, attracted towards that because their bonuses, their raises, that they know that they will be able to book more jobs, book more hours, book more services because of your shop having digital inspections.

Earn more of this as well as help them go and grow. I mean, it's the digital inspection has been a game changer for this industry and just phenomenal. Love it.

Alright. Question coming in from, mister John Powell.

What about the recruitment of the experienced technicians?

Where do you find that?

I'd still think that would go if you're asking where this might be on the website. I'm a believer, and all of this still goes into, a careers page, but also with what are your other options of looking at, how do you attract techs, how do you find how do you get them to even look at you? And, there's a list, and some of you do a lot of this, some maybe not. But I think all that applies to whatever skill level of technician we're looking for. What really is attractive about that role, and what do you have to offer for that role.

So Yeah. Mister Silverman, thank you for joining. Appreciate you being in here. We get to travel the world. You get to see shops all over the place. To John's question, what about recruiting the experienced technicians? Where can a shop find experienced technicians?

Well, I don't know what you talked about going into this call. So so I was, late to the party. You might have already covered it.

Level zero and and go.

Level zero and go.

Personally, if I'm going to poach somebody, I'm gonna poach from the dealerships, and and I'm gonna do it very politically correct. I I went with one of our members out to lunch, and he took me to a really cruddy taco place on a Tuesday. And he said I said, why'd you go here? We're paying for this. And he said, well, it's Taco Tuesday. And I'm like, okay. I'm paying for this.

And then he walked around the room and he gave out his business cards to the guys that were there wearing dealership shirts.

Wow.

And and because they were all going there because it was Taco Tuesday. That's the most simple target thing you could do.

Target, Rich. I mean, yeah, that talk about shooting fish in a barrel. Holy cow. That was easy to finish in right there.

So are you talking about recruiting cards, Jim?

I am. This this particular shop owner said, hi. My name is, and handed out his card and said, I've got a shop down the street, and I'm, you know, full of work, and I need people to work. If you know anyone looking for a job, please reach out to me.

And and he did that, and that was how he got his experience, guys.

And I love that that he asked that you know anyone, not just that one particular person he approached.

Yep. Who do you know? Yep.

I followed a there was a there was a string on the Internet this week about people going after their tool truck driver.

Yep. Tool truck.

And and and I understand that, and I love the idea because the tool truck drivers know everybody. My concern has always been he also knows all of my guys for the other person that's asking for technicians.

And hopefully, your shop has the right environment, the right culture, the right people, the right satisfaction, the right tribe that your tribe never wants to leave, never wants to go. Cool. So I agree with you. I I think the tool truck driver, while they do know everybody in the industry, that might be just a who do you know question rather than a recruiting, and I'll pay you a thousand bucks if you get me a technician question.

Yep. Have you ever heard of the oil filter stickers, Jimmy?

I have, and I thought that was brilliant.

I do too.

But Tell us about it. Because because there's people there's people that don't know about it, so you gotta tell us now.

I got a list, of course, but, anyway, the oil filter stickers is just basically that.

When when you service a car, when you change the oil on whatever service you're doing, unfortunately, we will lose that customer here or there for light services for an so So on every time you do an oil service, there's a sticker that has your shop name on it, a little bit about you guys, and talk about things could be tired of working weekends, tired of working nights, working for a four day work week. What do you have sexy? This is what we have to offer at Jimmy's super shop. Now this is a love it or a hate it idea, but a lot of people are putting the oil change stickers on an oil filter, who they are, and why it might be cool to work for Jimmy's Super Shop. And some are getting phone calls or going to the websites and their career pages and stuff like that, off of an oil change sticker. It goes on the filter, not the windshield.

So Yeah.

I I love that. And in fact, Brian, you lightning has struck my brain while you're saying that.

Here's a technician under the car getting ready to change out the the filter. Here's a QR code. Jimmy Super Sharp QR code.

Love it. And now that now you got said something made me think too because we're talking here about probably a more experienced technician, which had a question got brought up.

So why not also a sticker that goes under the hood right on the core support that tells you a little bit about are you looking? Because I used to put them out there with Liberty Auto. I want just the services we did and when.

But instead of that, why not change that to a recruiting effort and put that onto the core support that, yes, I'm looking for technicians. If you're interested in looking at a place that has this, this, this, or this, hit this QR code. And I love the QR code idea. Imagine that from a a technical guy like yourself, Jimmy.

Right. So here here's here's my vision of what I'm seeing, and and I will I can't wait for a shop to implement this. I scan the QR code and, Shazam, the first thing that pops up is a technician testimonial talking about how awesome it is to work at this shop. Yep. Awesome.

Love the QR. You got my attention.

Oh, I'm picturing his attention.

An experienced technician.

I'm picturing him dropping is I'm picturing the shop owner saying, what are you doing there with your cell phone under that car?

It's gonna happen anyway, brother. It's gonna happen anyway.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Try and mitigate it as much as you can. But, yeah, I that's a brilliant one.

What else have we got? How else you say you've got a list, Brian. You got any others off the top of your mind?

We've talked about the career pages, which I don't think enough shop owners put enough effort into that. So please do so. And again, Facebook, it is more than just checking out the people you went to high school with and the kids. There's a lot bigger efforts than that. I love Jim's tool raffle. I love the recruiting cards. I love the oil change stickers.

And some have great success approaching the military, trying to get in touch with former military or veterans that, because remember, they also have their motor pool, they have technicians there, whether it's airplanes, tanks, cars, trucks, whatever, just other different resources.

And, again, the six degrees of separation, I don't know how many others really work that as hard.

Current employees, whatever a a recruiting bonus to the customer's recruiting.

And, again, years ago, Jimmy, when I opened up a cup I opened up three independent shops over a period of thirteen months, myself and a partner.

And I some people love this or hate this.

I visited all the quick lubes in that area. I was looking at those because I'm looking to find somebody that had walked with a purpose, seemed to have some pep in their step, and that's where you might use that recruiting card. This is who I really am. And if you're looking to be that master technician or have a mentor to help you grow your career, this might be the one to call. Now I've had some people not like my efforts there, but, boy, did I hit the ground running with techs that already did belts, hoses, filters, and fluids. They're taught teamwork and they're taught how to sell.

So there's my typical list.

And and you know that you're getting somebody that, feels like they're working below their capability because they're only working they they think I'm a great mechanic. Why am I working at a quick loop? And so, you know, you've got somebody that wants to grow. They they're perfect for a mentoring program like ATI has, and they're perfect for for, somebody that wants to bring on an apprentice.

Yeah.

And I think and I hope this comes out of me right, I just think way too many business owners put all their recruiting efforts into one basket, whether it's Indeed, whether it's this. You need multiple different avenues to be able to hit the right people at the right time to hit as many people as you possibly can. So as many times as you can get your name in front of people or QR codes, which I just love that idea, and utilize that careers pay. I the more eggs, the better. Not just the one. Bingo. Bingo.

And also, Brian, you did talk about you did talk about asking your your customers to refer technicians to you. Right?

Yes. I did, sir. Okay.

Yes. So we've got two suggestions that just came in on the questions box.

Ed is saying that the QR code links to the careers page on the website. I love that. And I'm wondering, Ed, is that something you're already doing, or are you saying, wow. That's a brilliant idea that I'm gonna implement that?

Number two, and I'm gonna work this into a story here in one second. John is saying, love the filter idea. The QR code should also go to on your business cards, Jim. So you passing out on Taco Tuesdays, QR cards I totally agree.

In fact, KUKUI has gone to this as well. We have a QR code on our business cards that say, you know, fill out this information for for a demonstration.

Ed says he's not yet, but he needs to, and it's Nate. Nate. Nate. Glad to have you here, brother.

Nate is sitting in, so Nate's gonna do this. Alright. So here's the story. And and this is a George Siekes, Tammy Shoemaker, Chris Shoemaker story.

The challenge was go out on a Saturday with Gatorade bottles and have your business cards attached to these Gatorade bottles. In the middle of summer, go on a Saturday to all the big box, to all the dealerships, to to places where people are working, they're outside, they're sweating, they're hot, and you're gonna hand those technicians cold bottles of Gatorade with your business card.

Hey.

I'm tired of working weekends.

Yeah.

I'm tired of working weekends.

Tammy did this. She went out and and as Tammy tells me this story, the way I heard it was George has given out this challenge for a decade and nobody's ever done it. She went and did it. And in doing so, she handed her card to a gentleman who said, I'm in school right now.

I need nights and weekends because I've gotta finish my schooling first, and then I'm going to be ready to move up. Well, he finished his schooling. She didn't think he even sang about it, but this is the rest of the story. She he finished his schooling, and this shop kept him pushing a broom.

They wouldn't even let him do the lube oil filters, changing wiper blades, changing bells, nothing like that. So here he is, a a trained technician, still pushing a broom, still taking out the trash. He calls Tammy and says, hey, Tammy. I don't know if you remember me, but, you know, three or four months ago in the middle of the summer, you handed me a bottle of Gatorade and a business card. I'm finished with schooling.

Is there an opportunity?

Oh, heck. Yeah. There's an opportunity. And he is now working at her shop, working right up the ranks. They have a career path. They have the training outlined so that he is absolutely killing it on his future career path. And he has gone from a shop that did not appreciate him, had him pushing a broom and taking out the trash to he's now doing the majority of the work at Tinley Automotive.

Awesome. That's pretty cool.

Yep. So on those business cards, the next step for the next time you go out, have that QR code that links that technician right to your shop to show what's amazing and awesome about you. Love it. Love it.

Nice. Very cool. Very cool. Okay. We we've talked about a lot. We've talked a lot about the, careers page. We've talked about the about us page.

Doing video, recording video with your cell phone, definitely appropriate for all social media outlets.

Definitely wanna be on the Facebook. You wanna be on the Instagram. You wanna be on the TikTok, because this is where technicians are spending their time. This is where they are putting their time, effort, and energy.

So as a shop, you need to be there. Yep. And as a shop, you need to demonstrate that your company culture and tribe is there.

Link that to your website where you've got the professional grade, professional videos, good lighting, good audio, great questions.

Give a technician two, three takes. Yep. Might take him a minute to put his words together, and that's okay.

Right. Yep.

Nice. Final words of wisdom. Jim, we'll start with you, Brian, then to you.

Well, okay. So you invited me to come sit in on this panel, and I said why? But because, again, you know, it's royalty. And plus, once Brian's in the room, no one knows as much as Brian.

So I'd like to just be among greatness. So, thanks for letting me come in here. It's the culture is why you work for a company. And and if your culture is not right, it's gonna be hard to attract and retain somebody.

So so keep your culture good, and and that's what I'm gonna say. And so and I didn't get the message on the black shirt either. I apologize.

So thank you all for, letting me come in for a few minutes, but, it's really all about Brian and Jimmy, and I'm just here to support. So thank you.

Cool. Thanks.

Brian, to you, brother.

I'm gonna go back to and I could be wrong about this, but I don't think a a lot put enough effort into that careers page and the mentoring and the training and what makes you different than anybody else. And you gotta think about what does everybody else's marketing look like or their recruiting.

Looking for a a certified technician, looking for the experience, a must have, must have. That doesn't work. That doesn't excite anybody. What makes you different in the technology, the cool tools that are available for service advisors and technicians out there are just really attractive, and you look cutting edge, especially for somebody that wants to be cutting edge.

So that would be my main message.

Yeah. The the the bait that you're putting out there, are you hunting moose or are you hunting aardvarks or armadillos? Yeah. If you're hunting moose, you've gotta use the right bait.

Yes.

So you're looking for that that top quality technician. I I agree with you. I echo everything you guys have said.

You're looking for the right people. You've gotta put it out in the right places, the right information. I love the lube oil stickers.

I love the QR codes, the business codes. I love Taco Tuesday. That's an awesome way of getting those technicians.

Social media.

The Gatorade idea? Yeah. Saturday? Take a Saturday. By the way, she went out four Saturdays in a row.

Tammy did. Tammy Shoemaker went out four Saturdays in a row to, pass out Gatorades. And she had them in her car, nice ice cold, brought them in, handed out to the guys, and, and there you go. She because Chris was turning the wrench.

He was eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours, fourteen hours. He did all the work, and he can't he can't sustain that.

Nope. Not at all.

He need three, four technicians in that shop.

So they they've done a great job. Absolutely love it. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your knowledge, your information.

Thank you for, inspiring the industry.

Thank you for leading the industry, helping us to take those next steps in the right direction. You guys are awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you to all of you who have joined us today.

You've got questions. We've got some answers. This is my cell phone. This is my email.

Send me a text message. Let's connect. Let's see what we can do to take your shop up to the next level.

Your Greatest Asset

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 21:38:00 GMT

When talking about your business do your eyes light up? How about when you talk about your people? When you get into the people business, beautiful things occur.

Join Jimmy Lea and Julianna Sih, the Founder and Head Coach of Crescendo, as we discuss the most valuable asset in your business, Your People.

Learn what you can do to improve the relationship and communication with the greatest asset to your legacy. Take interest in their health, wellness, and vitality. Expand leaders and develop a happier life!

Don't Overpay the IRS!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:09:00 GMT

Why are you insisting on overpaying the IRS in taxes every year?

In this month's Shop Owner Success Webinar, Jimmy Lea is joined by shop owner Tommy Keeter from Christian Brothers Auto Care in Oklahoma as well as Derick Van Ness, a Wealth Strategist who is passionate about helping people reach their full potential.

Why are you insisting on overpaying the IRS in taxes every year? Why are you not taking advantage of this HUGE tax deduction? Most shop owners have been able to get back $20,000 - $35,000 using this simple tactic. Don't just take my word for it, listen to shop owners who have cashed their checks

Postcards for Acquisition and Retention

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 16:09:00 GMT

How your KUKUI All-In-One Success Platform can be used to capture future customer attention.

This month Jimmy Lea is joined by our Sr. Client Success Coordinator, Charlie Myers to talk about how your KUKUI All-In-One Success Platform can be used to spread a large net over specific neighborhoods and zip codes to capture future customer attention. Discover which of these neighborhoods should get your full attention and support.

Special Event or Announcement you need to make to your entire customer base? Learn the power of postcards in raising awareness for a good cause. Jimmy will also be joined by Leigh Anne Best and Laura Frank, the founders of the Breaks for Breasts organization. They will be talking about this wonderful organization and how KUKUI shops can get involved.

Don't Go It Alone. Take Your Friends With You!

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 16:09:00 GMT

Three incredible shop owners discuss the impact that business development groups have had on their success.

In this month's Shop Owner Success Webinar, Jimmy Lea is joined by 3 incredible shop owners as they discuss the impact that business development groups have had on their success.

Troy Vaninetti of Graham Auto Repair, Jeff Hazeline of American Import Auto, and Aden McDonnell of McDonnell's ATS will discuss the insight and support they gained by being a part of these groups. Learn from their experiences and help shape your vision of success.

Join Jimmy, Troy, Jeff, and Aden and learn why they feel their participation in these groups was the absolute best decision for their businesses.

New Features: Texting and Webchat

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 22:14:00 GMT

What are today's preferred methods of customer communication?

These days, many customers actually prefer texting and web chats rather than having conversations on the phone or in person.

KUKUI’s brand new Live Web Chat is here!

Live Web Chat provides customers and prospects an easy and convenient way to communicate with you directly through your KUKUI website. Using the KUKUI Control Panel or a mobile app, you can manage incoming web chats to answer questions and help book appointments. This feature is now available as part of the Text Connect Platform or as a stand-alone product to clients with a KUKUI website.

Auto Shop Owner Success Drivers with NAPA TRACS [WEBINAR]

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 20:26:00 GMT

Do you struggle to improve your Customer Retention, to increase your Car Count, or to better your New Customer Acquisition? Get the most from your Shop Management System and KUKUI’s All-in-One Success Platform. Tune in to learn how to stop leaving easy money on the table.

Join shop owners Greg Buckley, Alex Woodie - CPA, Ben Dexter, and Jimmy Lea to sharpen your skills as a Shop Owner.

Utilizing KUKUI Reports

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 01:12:00 GMT

Deep dive into the Reports Module Learn the great information about your shop that you never knew you wanted to know. Learn what cars are most seen in the shop. Learn which cars are the most profitable.

KUKUI: Auto Shop Owner Success - Defining Success [WEBINAR]

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 02:20:00 GMT

How do you define success? Is it by the money in your pocket? Or, Money in the bank?Join Jimmy Lea with Nyles Todd and Ryan Clo as they outline the numbers that are most important for their shop's success.

KUKUI Tips on Texting Your Customers for Auto Repair Shops

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 02 Dec 2020 00:54:00 GMT

By: Kaeli Hall

We’ve all been there. Three days into an email thread that has been going back and forth, you realize that a call or a text would have had this conversation wrapped up in 10 minutes. Whether it’s text messaging, calling, emailing, postcards or hand-written letters, all of these channels are important parts of any business communication strategy. However, not all communications are created equal.

Some channels of communication are much more effective for certain types of messages than others. Take a look below for some tips on when it is the right time to send a text message to communicate to your customers.

Text Message Do’s and Don’ts

Do:

Send your customers updates that they should read right away: Is there an update on a service already in progress? A text message is a great way to get your customers' attention no matter what they are doing.
Encourage back and forth communications: Text messages are conversational tools! Take advantage of the seamless chat in text messages.
Share valuable business information that is time sensitive: Introducing a new service that your customers have been begging for? Putting on a special customer appreciation event? If you have an unusual and pertinent business announcement, a text message might be the right choice, just make sure it’s worth their while.
Share limited time, widely used special offers: Text message specials should be useful to most of your customers, and as much as possible, they should be relevant to the recipient. Stick to services that everyone can use, or are specific to the recipients.

Don’t:

Share small updates about business operations: Only a handful of customers will be impacted if you’re going to be closed for a major holiday, and getting a text message can interrupt your customers' days. Updating your Google My Business, posting on your Facebook and other social media platforms and sending an email are better ways to communicate that to your customers.
Advertise specialized services to big groups of people: Some services, while important, are only needed once every few years, or only needed for certain customers. Try to stick with offers that most people will have use for, or target your texts to the customers who need that service.
Send messages that need a detailed explanation: Text messages have some limitations, including character limits. If your message needs a detailed explanation to be clearly communicated, emailing or calling might be a better choice.
Send messages without a call to action: We keep our cell phones on our person most of the time. Wishing your customers a happy holiday is great, but it doesn’t need to be communicated right away. A postcard or email will work better for that.

Used correctly, text messaging can be a powerful tool to increase business at short notice. Following these guidelines can keep your opted-in customer list high and keep those opportunities coming!

Want to learn how Kukui can help you with texting? Learn more about our Text Connect Platform here !

KUKUI Partners With Shop-Ware

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 20:00:00 GMT

The Shop-Ware shop management SaaS platform is now a part of the KUKUI Certified Partner program. With KUKUI’s Shop-Ware integration, users of both platforms will have unrivaled access to performance metrics and tools to make their shops successful.

Shop-Ware users will have complete transparency in the performance and effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. Google Ads, Facebook/Instagram, Yelp, SEO, texting, email, postcards, shop videos, and review management are all clearly displayed using the KUKUI dashboard. This provides shop owners with a better understanding of their shop’s performance and the ability to identify areas of improvement and focus on efforts that are driving the most success.

Carolyn Coquillette, Founder and CEO of Shop-Ware says “KUKUI and Shop-Ware share a common purpose to deliver the professional-grade software solutions that this industry needs and deserves. We’re thrilled to partner together, to supercharge services to our mutual customers as well as to their customers, the vehicle owners.”

Being a part of the KUKUI Certified program means that Shop-Ware is committed to upholding a set of standards that is focused on supporting the success of shop owners and the independent aftermarket industry alike. Lorie Sharp, CEO of KUKUI believes that "Shop owner success is our top priority. Our experience and our software have helped thousands of shops across the country. We are thrilled to partner with a company like Shop-Ware that is just as dedicated to helping shop owners maximize their potential.”

About KUKUI

KUKUI is the maker of the All in One Success Platform® which empowers each of its clients with advanced business intelligence powered by an integrated suite of business marketing solutions and custom-built websites that are optimized for high sales conversion. KUKUI clients drive their business decisions with a single intuitive analytics dashboard that provides at a glance quantitative data showing their return on investment, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business. The KUKUI platform enables clients with customer engagement and trust-building solutions through real-time business messaging, digital inspections, call tracking, online appointment setting, social media management, and online reputation management. KUKUI lets business owners focus “on the business.”

About Shop-Ware

Shop-Ware delivers professional-grade innovation to independent automotive service providers. We are the industry’s premier enterprise-grade SaaS platform for shop management, and we are committed to developing sophisticated tools to help the automotive aftermarket thrive and grow. Industry-first features include: fully digital, cloud-based repair orders with native vehicle inspections, rich media, and customer live chat; realtime shop workflow and “Expeditor” dispatch; realtime parts allocation tracking for each job in progress; parts gross-profit “Optimizer” that automatically seeks and attains your parts GP target; native advanced analytics across unlimited repair facilities, and much more.

KUKUI: Auto Shop Owner Success Myths & Truths [WEBINAR]

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 17:36:00 GMT

A discussion about the right and wrong ways to increase profitability and establish a legacy.

Jimmy Lea - Kukui

Mike Bennett - ATI

ADAS Panel Discussion with Owners

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 17:35:00 GMT

Lessons being learned from owners actually doing it along with the real opportunity for Body Shops and General Repair Shops.

Keith Manich - ATI

KUKUI Appoints Lorie Sharp CEO

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Tue, 03 Mar 2020 20:35:00 GMT

Kukui Corporation , the leading provider of integrated marketing automation and business analytics solutions for the automotive industry today announced that Lorie Sharp has been named the organization’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sharp succeeds Todd Westerlund who, after leading the company’s transformation over the past several years, will continue to lead Kukui’s sales and marketing machine as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO).

The selection of Sharp underscores Kukui’s Board of Directors’ commitment to invest in and support the needs of Kukui’s customers as rapid advancements in technology change the landscape of the automotive aftermarket industry. Sharp brings over twenty years of experience leading and transforming innovative global automotive companies through ever-changing competitive landscapes. Most recently, Sharp served as the Managing Director of asTech, a global provider of vehicle electronic systems for the automotive industry.

“Kukui is a vibrant company with a strong brand at the forefront of marketing innovation for the automotive aftermarket industry,” said Lorie Sharp. “It is an exciting time of unprecedented growth and opportunity in the automotive industry at large, and I am honored to be joining Kukui to continue its mission of supporting the success of automotive businesses worldwide.”

“Building Kukui into the industry leader that it has become was an amazing experience for me,” said Todd Westerlund. “In the next phase of our growth, I am excited to be able to provide my laser focus to driving our sales and marketing teams.”

“I’d like to personally thank Todd Westerlund for his transformational leadership and laying the foundation for Kukui’s future success over the last couple of years. As we usher in a new era of growth, Lorie Sharp’s deep understanding of the market opportunities and challenges facing the automotive aftermarket industry, combined with Todd’s sales and marketing expertise, will provide the strong leadership team we require to meet the evolving needs of our customers,” said Kukui Executive Chairman, Jim Tallman.

About Kukui Corporation

Kukui is the maker of the All in One Success Platform®, which empowers each of its' clients with advanced business intelligence powered by an integrated suite of business marketing solutions and custom-built websites that are optimized for high sales conversion. Kukui clients drive their business decisions with a single intuitive analytics dashboard, providing at a glance quantitative data concerning their return on investment, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business. The Kukui platform enables clients with customer engagement and trust-building solutions through real-time business messaging, digital inspections, call tracking, online appointment setting, social media management, and online reputation management. Kukui lets business owners focus "on the business."

All Inquires:

Patrick Egan
VP Marketing - Kukui
Patrick@Kukui.com
(805) 403-3462

KUKUI's Vision for 2020 & Beyond

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 20:30:00 GMT

Kukui Corporation, the leading provider of integrated marketing automation and business analytics solutions for the automotive industry has hit the ground running in 2020 with the addition of industry heavyweights to the company line up and powerful new product features.

6 months after receiving its’ record-breaking investment from SSM partners, Kukui demonstrates that it has established a solid game plan for market expansion and growth. The company has made several strategic placements in sales, marketing, and business development to provide focus on stronger partner support and a deeper industry knowledge base, Luke Kusher has joined as the new Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. Luke comes to Kukui from MechanicNet, now Epicor, where he led their business development efforts for over 15 years.

Kukui has also expanded its’ marketing team to support new product initiatives with the addition of Rick Sage as Director of Marketing and Creative Services. Rick brings over a decade of marketing and branding expertise most recently as Vice President of Marketing and Brand Strategy with Honest-1.

Additionally, the expanded Sales line-up includes Karl Coleman, a 20-year sales veteran with both MechanicNet and Mitchell1, and Connor Tracy who spent over 15 years as a store manager with Firestone, Sears, O’Reilly, and others.

Kukui has also invested in substantial additions to the client services and development teams and has implemented an Agile Scrum methodology for the entire technical organization to support an iterative release schedule.

According to Todd Westerlund, CEO of Kukui, "Kukui has had an amazing couple of years with month after month of non-stop growth topped off with the investment by SSM Partners in 2019. But, I know that to continue to be the best in our industry and to continue to provide our customers with the highest levels of success we have to continue to add to our collective expertise. So, I sought out the best people who could bring new perspectives and a wealth of experience to the Kukui family. I am really excited to learn from all our new team members.”

In addition to the new team members added, Kukui has launched several new components of the All-in-One Success Platform including; Kukui Connect for two way business messaging, Kukui Shop Videos, designed to increase a shops SEO and customer engagement, Advanced Customer Reports, Follow-Up version 2, and an all-new email marketing tool.

About Kukui Corporation

KUKUI Launches Digital Vehicle Inspections Feature: KUKUI DVI

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 18:40:00 GMT

Kukui Corporation , maker of the All-in-One Success Platform®, has announced the availability of the Kukui DVI, anin house developed addition to the Kukui suite of products, that is designed to help substantially improve the way repair shops communicate with customers during and between visits to the shop. The product is being shown for the first time at the Ratchet and Wrench Conference Sept 24-26. The Kukui DVI is now available in limited release. More at Kukui.com/dvi

As part of Kukui’s mission to produce products that help auto repair shops be successful, the company sought the direct input of shop owners and industry thought leaders to focus its development efforts. Much of this input was gained through CEO, Todd Westerlund’s nationwide tour. So, after 18 months of research and development, and 15,000 miles of travel visiting shops for their input, Kukui is releasing the first of several new additions to the All-in-One Success Platform, the Kukui DVI .

“We decided to make our initial entry into the highly competitive digital vehicle inspections marketplace with a straightforward, simple product that meets a few basic requirements of the shops we talked to,” said Chris Price, Chief Product Officer of Kukui. “ It had to be easy to use without the overhead of unnecessary and distracting features or technology. It needed to be a very lightweight, mobile app that would work equally well on a phone or tablet. It particularly needed to be a native, IOS app for speed, and reliability. And most importantly it has to integrate seamlessly with their management system, and the Kukui CRM.”

The Kukui DVI creates full transparency for the motorist into the repair process providing them updates with technician notes, video, and pictures of affected components. The customer sees exactly what the technician sees so they can make informed decisions about servicing their vehicle.

Between visits, DVI integration with the Kukui CRM enables shops to send reminder or recommended service messages and postcards that include pictures of declined service. Kukui’s research shows that consumers are substantially more likely to make buying decisions when presented with visual images of the affected parts on their vehicle.

According to Todd Westerlund, CEO of Kukui, “This first release of Kukui DVI is just the beginning of the upcoming additions to our platform. We learned so much from our shop visits about what people really want and need to be successful, you should expect to see a continuous stream of game changing announcements in the next few weeks.”

About Kukui Corporation

Kukui enables success. The Kukui All in One Success Platform® empowers each of Kukui’s clients with quantitative data showing their return on investment, the number of new clients based on their POS system, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business through the tracking of phone calls, appointment forms, digital inspection results, and feedback from customer reviews. Kukui enables shop owners to focus “on the business.” For more information visit Kukui at Kukui.com or call (877) 695-6008.

KUKUI's Mission to Visit 1000 Auto Repair Shops

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 18:35:00 GMT

San Jose, CA - September 14, 2017: Kukui Corporation , maker of the All-in-One Success Platform®, is excited to announce that CEO Todd Westerlund has embarked on the third leg of an ambitious year long project to visit over 1000 auto repair shops to hear and see first hand how shop owners across the country achieve success.

Kukui’s mission is to help auto repair shops be successful and grow. Last summer, Westerlund ambitiously set out to visit 100 shops in 100 days. The plan was to hit the streets and gather feedback directly from shop owners, whether they were Kukui customers or not, and hear first hand what made them successful and understand what else they needed to continue that success.

After those first few weeks, it became apparent that the scope of this project needed to grow to reach shops across the country. So, with the deployment of the Kukui Van, a Mercedes Sprinter wrapped in the Kukui logo, Mr. Westerlund set out to visit at least 1000 shops in 2017.

“I worked in the shop for over 15 years, and have used that experience to help me drive the vision of Kukui.” Said Todd Westerlund. “But, there is such a valuable wealth of expertise in the minds and hearts of our customers that I had to go out and hear it first hand.”

Next week Todd will embark on the 3rd leg of the tour taking the Kukui Van from North Carolina up the East coast visiting dozens of shops throughout Virginia, Maryland, DC, and New York. Finally, the tour makes a final run back across the middle of the country reaching Chicago on September 24 for the Ratchet and Wrench Conference where the company will announce the next generation of their All-in-One Success Platform. These most recent updates are based exclusively on feedback from this nationwide tour. You can follow Todd and his progress with the Kukui tour on facebook at facebook.com/kukuicorporation/

About Kukui Corporation

Kukui enables success. The Kukui All in One Success Platform® empowers each of Kukui’s clients with quantitative data showing their return on investment, the number of new clients based on their POS system, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business through the tracking of phone calls, appointment forms, and feedback from customer reviews. Kukui enables shop owners to focus “on the business.” For more information visit Kukui at Kukui.com or call (877) 695-6008.

KUKUI & AutoShopFollowUP Partner to Improve Shop Customer Retention

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 18:32:00 GMT

San Jose, CA - August 2, 2017: Kukui Corporation, maker of the All-in-One Success Platform®, and AutoShopFollowUp.com, an auto customer retention expert, have just formed an official partnership that enables repair shops with next level customer retention solutions.

It can cost up to 30 times to as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain existing customers. Kukui’s new Lost Customer Module identifies which customers have not been in the shop for a while, but contacting them all is sometimes a challenge. Through this partnership AutoShopFollowUp.com will handle the follow up calls consistently and affordably.

AutoShopFollowUp.com will utilize Kukui's innovative web platform to offer a more robust and comprehensive marketing platform helping automotive shop owners more effectively communicate with and retain customers. This process leads to boosted profits by adding follow up phone calls and handwritten thank you cards to Kukui’s Lost Customer Module. AutoShopFollowUp.com will also gain access to Kukui’s All-in-One Marketing Platform, which is designed to build greater customer loyalty over time.

“AutoShopFollowUp.com is excited to partner with Kukui Corporation in this renewed effort to help our client’s boost customer retention rates and ultimately profitability. Embarking on this partnership together enables us to play off each other’s greatest strengths and offer in-depth solutions that are truly hard to beat. We understand the retention challenges that auto shops face and are always seeking new ways to help address them through hands-on support at every step,” said Mike Carrillo, CEO, AutoShopFollowUp.com.

Kukui CEO, Todd Westerlund, echoed similar sentiments: “This partnership with AutoShopFollowUp.com is just the beginning of a long line of innovative solutions that will transform the way automotive industries interact with clients. Our integrated web marketing platform gives us the opportunity to offer a range of analytic, marketing and communications services to change the fortunes of several companies in a highly competitive auto and auto ancillary industry.”

The new partnership is set to transform the way auto industries operate and interact and follow up with customers in a competitive environment.

About AutoShopFollowUp.com

AutoShop FollowUp is a customer retention expert with a special focus on the auto industry, highlighting how a 5 percent customer retention increase can boost profits by 25 to 80 percent. The company follows up with auto shop customers through phone calls and thank you cards to help auto shops better understand how to interact with customers. Through a series of detailed reports and review studies, the company helps auto shops build a new base of loyal customers through frequent interactions.

About Kukui Corporation

Kukui enables success. The Kukui All in One Success Platform® empowers each of Kukui’s clients with quantitative data showing their return on investment, the number of new clients based on their POS system, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business through the tracking of phone calls, appointment forms, and feedback from customer reviews. Kukui enables shop owners to focus “on the business.” For more information visit Kukui at https://Kukui.com or call (877) 695-6008.

KUKUI Adds Vehicle Inspection Analytics to Auto Shop Marketing Platform

administrator@kukui.com (KUKUI Administrator) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 18:30:00 GMT

Kukui Corporation, the leading provider of integrated marketing software solutions for the automotive repair industry has partnered with Repair Shop Solutions, to integrate invaluable data collected during the inspection process into the Kukui Dashboard ™.

With digital inspection applications like Repair Shop Solutions, repair technicians collect a wealth of detailed data about the health of a vehicle including pictures, videos, and detailed notes. This data streamlines the process of making repair recommendations, and gives service advisors valuable information needed to sell those services to motorists.

Through this integration, 4 key metrics are assimilated into the shop’s reporting data, and displayed in a new set of dials on the Kukui Dashboard;

Inspections Performed During Period, indicating how many digital inspections were performed.
Technician Average RO, which indicates the average dollar amount recommended by each inspection.
Percent of recommended work sold, which points out how many jobs were sold compared to the total number of jobs recommended.
Inspections to RO Count, which shows the percentage of inspections performed versus total number of repair orders in the time period. These metrics allow a shop owner to easily track the success of their digital inspection program and the efficiency of each team member.

“Repair Shop Solutions digital inspections give shops the ability to take the guess work out of recommending services and provide complete transparency to the motorist.” said Scott Osborn, President of Repair Shop Solutions. “Presenting the data collected during the inspection process as part of the Kukui Dashboard gives shop owners an unequalled tool to best gauge team efficiency and pinpoint shop operations that are most successful.”gauge team efficiency and pinpoint shop operations that are most successful.”

According to Todd Westerlund, CEO of Kukui, “The inclusion of inspection data into the Kukui dashboard gives our customers another key advantage over their competition by featuring team and process efficiency prominently on the dashboard they use to drive to success.”

About Kukui

Kukui enables success. The Kukui All in One Success Platform empowers each of Kukui’s clients with quantitative data showing their return on investment, the number of new clients based on their POS system, statistics revealing their customer retention rate, and areas to improve their business through the tracking of phone calls, appointment forms, and feedback from customer reviews. Kukui enables shop owners to focus “on the business.” Follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kukuicorporation/