mmotley

0.6 includes a digital MPI

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention about loaner vehicles is that, as a shop owner, you should be taking full advantage of having a loan car fleet personally. My company has three loaner cars, but I don't own a car. I also don't pay car insurance, but the company does. I also don't have car repair bills, maintenance, or fuel expenses, but my company does. Just thought I'd throw that out there

Ron, I'd like to hear your thoughts on actually advertising more when you're busy and less when your slow. On the surface that sounds like a terrible idea, but I once heard someone explain it as follows. If you're always slow every November, why would you spend all your advertising dollars in November if people just simply aren't spending money on their cars (instead, they are probably spending money on holiday items/events). However, if you are busy in July and people are spending money, that's the time to run your specials and advertise. Up until this year, I agreed with your point of view, but since I had it explained to me this way, it really got me rethinking my advertising. It also makes sense with how you explained forgoing an advertising budget. However, if you take 7% as your advertising budget and base it off monthly sales figures, you should be fine in the slower months since your 7% is based on a smaller (monthly) budget, and not your annual figure. I've also noticed the same theory in big box stores. BBQ pits, lawn mowers, and lawn furniture all go on sale in the spring and summer months. Holiday decorations for halloween and christmas go on sale in the fall and winter, along with coats, jackets, and hand warmers.

*wrong topic

I'm curious how many shop owners on here have an actual WRITTEN budget for their operation expenses. Not just a budget for advertising, but for all expenses. Last year, my sales grew quite a bit, but I managed to ignore the expense side of things. I would also be curious how some of you came to set budgets/benchmarks for things such as uniforms, utilities, accounting, shop supplies, office supplies, phone/internet, etc. And how often do you review your expenses. I'm currently toying around with a spreadsheet, but I kinda feel like I don't know where to start on something like this. Any input/advice would be appreciated.

I should add, when I moved my techs to commission pay, I did the math to make sure I was going to hit my margins, no matter how many hours they ran. I made a spreadsheet with formulas and entered all sorts of different combinations of hours...

There is a podcast called 'remarkable results'. Listen to episode 193 with Kirk Richardson. You might get some ideas from that

Intuit also

This week my techs are starting a base salary + flag... I told them Thursday at lunch time. My SA told me Friday morning he can already tell they are turning out work quicker :/ ...I shouldn't have waited so long

I agree with working based off your technicians pay, at least for a starting point. 70% GP is the standard I was taught (not loaded). That gets you where you need to be to make your proper margin. From there, shop around. You might be leaving some on the table. I called a few other shops around town and once I explained who I was and why I was asking (I didn't want to the 'that shop' that isn't charging enough), everyone was glad to share their rates. I ended up raising my labor rate and I never heard any complaints. Sure, there are some jobs I probably lose to pricing, but only to those customers who care about the price and price only... and those aren't my ideal customers

Agreed with what everyone posted mostly. At the end of the day, you have to make your margins to stay open. That means you're not always gonna get the job. Focus on getting quality customers through the door and the rest should take care of itself

Bolt on digital multi-points are the best.

Garage equipment supply just delivered our 4th lift

Mark, would you mind sharing some details on your profit sharing pay scale?

Oh man, if someone took the time to go through my post history from beginning to now, you'd see what kind of help you can get from this forum. I've almost been tempted to go back and delete some of my 'less than impressive' posts! But hey, we all start somewhere, right?

Don't know why we didn't think to use a DA. I have one laying in the shop, just collecting dust. Any particular brand clear coat you recommend? And are your guys spraying 1 coat, or multiple coats? I was charging $147 and still dreaded selling the service.

Unfortunately, we work on a lot of luxury vehicles. I've seen a RX350 set of headlights cost over $2,000 just for the parts, not counting labor, so selling a new set is out of the question sometimes 😬 and I'm over the comebacks. At this point, we've stopped selling the service. Until we can find a better solution that is profitable and doesn't have as many comebacks, we're going to continue holding off.

Curios to hear what other shops are doing for headlight restoration services. We used to just wet sand then polish with a bottle of some turtle wax headlight cleaner. They looked great when we finished, but the problem was it didn't last. We then started using a product called Light Rite. It takes much longer to use this product since you are having to tape off a good bit of the surrounding area when you spray on the clear coat. It looks great most of the time, but we've had issues with it flaking later one, or not going on real evenly. It's also difficult to charge enough and still come out ahead time-wise. So I'm curious, what is everyone else doing and what are you charging? What kind of warranty are you offering on the service? I'm to the point that today I told the guys we are not selling the service anymore until we find a better way.

I also loath discounts. I have no advertised discounts right now and we're staying busy. I'd go with what wheelingauto said. Offer something of value. Free pick up and delivery? Car wash with any service? Longer warranty? Shuttle service? I'd also look up if they have a 'national nurse day' or something like that. I'd make sure to send tons of cookie trays, goodies, and business cards on that day to the hospital. I'd also look into a teacher day or do a school supply drive for the university. Or see if you and your crew can do a volunteer project at the university... Anything but discounts.

Jeez, I wish I got that!!! O'reilly's hardly gives me any discount. I've seen where it's cheaper for a customer to walk in and get it. I'm getting ready to drop their certified auto program because of it and look more towards worldpac. Worldpac delivery is hard for us since we don't have a local one, but sometimes it's worth it. It's certainly not worth O'Reilly's threatening a $100 membership fee if I don't buy enough.

I think on the old forum, you would be told who liked a post you made. The new style just tells you 'somebody like a post'... I thought it was nice to know who agreed with you. Any chance we can have that feature back?

I would think if you are hitting the proper margins (while paying yourself an appropriate salary), doing enough in sales, and not living an extraordinary life style, becoming a millionaire (in the bank) is not impossible. Based on what I've seen you post, I would bet that you are pouring a lot of your money back into your business to grow. That's fine, but it will certainly hinder how soon you can have that much money saved up. A saying comes to mind “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.” - Dave Ramsey. He is talking about watching your personal expenses and habits right now and saving, so later on in life you will have enough saved up to live life comfortably. If you can forgo the 5 year deadline, compounding interest will definitely get you there. Plenty of good books out there that touch on this topic (again, Dave Ramsey does a great job at explaining it). If you're not hitting the proper margins and sales goals in your auto repair shop, I would think it would be a bad idea to go getting into other business types. Personally, from what I've read, I'd say having 3 months of operating expenses saved up would be the best starting place, then look at investing in the market. I'm nowhere close to what you would call a financial advisor, but I have read a few books on the topic. To answer your question though, I'm not a millionaire. And I don't think it happens overnight for most people either. I think it's probably a slow, methodical, well thought out plan that you have to continue working at. Edit* Thought I would add this one thing. When you have a goal you want to achieve, I've found it's easy to work backwards. IE, Your goal is 1 million dollars saved up in 5 years. That means you will need to be accruing $200,000 each year. Or, $16,667 a month. With that, you can figure out ,based on your margins, how much you need to do in sales to be saving that much a month. You can also calculate daily sales requirements, how many techs you're going to need to do those sales, etc, etc.

Strange, the message I just posted ' Hmmmm, don't know how to edit on this new forum layout, but make that 3 5-star reviews in 2 days!!!' has the edit option, but my first post does not. I only have the option to quote it... I use Kukui, which generates an automatic follow up email when we close out a invoice. Anyone who leaves a five star review through their system I send another email asking: "Mrs. Jones, thanks so much for the review you left on our website! If you have a spare moment, I'd really appreciate it if you would take the time to share it on Google, also. A lot of people look at our rating on Google, but never take the time to check out our website. You can leave us a review on Google at: https://goo.gl/qkvRVO Thanks, Matt"

Hmmmm, don't know how to edit on this new forum layout, but make that 3 5-star reviews in 2 days!!!

Got two 5-star Google reviews in the last 2 days thanks to this. Definitely going to add it to my daily check list