Hands On

Couple snippets form the article: a. "We partner with the repair shops, and when we are on board with our partner, we agree with them on the fixed labor costs and labor hours." b. "We have developed an advanced software that enables us to find, in real time, exactly how much it will cost for a particular job. " So which is it, b. the software determines the cost, or a. you and the shop come up with an agreed to cost? "Based on our contractual agreement, the repair shop will have to provide the services at the price we’ve calculated. " "We control and agree with a repair shop on how much the shop can earn from the service. " So do you control the shop, or agree with the shop? I don't think you can agree with the shop and control the shop at the same time, unless, by huge coincidence the shop already charged what you calculated. If the shop did already charge what you calculated you provide no service to the consumer and just add cost to the shop in a different form of marketing. "When we come to a repair shop, we show a simple calculation of how much they will earn with us, and that they will be able to increase their capacity rate because we provide stable traffic." I read all of these sentences and my brain translates it into one sentence: "We talk to shop owners to see how much they need to make for a service, then we tack on a fee and advertise it to customers guaranteeing the price." The guy is selling a form of crypto currency to generate 12 Million dollars to start this. We are all doing life wrong.

What I have heard from a local owner is that if you can do 650 with 3 people your not going to necessarily get 1.3 by adding 3 more. I think I would add a second shop before I made a shop bigger. Easier for one person to manage two techs then one person to manage two service writers and 5 production staff.

I think that is a real bad idea. Keep in mind anyone can view these forums and sign up, there are plenty of non garage owners here. Also, this kind of thing is what some people worry about. Just my opinion.

You know, it is funny the things they say. I do not need the flat rate carrot dangled in front of me to produce. Then why would you not want the extra money from all the flat rate time you could make?

I had another interview this week, fellow does not want to work under an incentive based pay plan. I am afraid to hire him because I feel I will just end up in the place I already am in, with guys that do just enough to get by and never shoot for bonus. I pay out my guarantee every single week. It is getting old.

Now, you finally understand why everything in the world is expensive. Nobody wants to run a business that does not make 20% profit or more.

I have this same dream. Still not sure if I want a sloop or a catamaran.

I would also think you have to factor in where you are in your life. I figure I have the potential to run my shop for another 20 years easily. If I am doing well I am netting 250k a year from my shop. Why would I trade 250k x 20 for 250k x 3? Why would someone trade 500k x 20 for 500k x 3. I think it harks back to earlier where someone said you need another factor for the seller, like age, health ect. If that is the case most of those shops may go the way I hope mine goes, in which I put someone in place to run it for me and take a reduced pay while living on all the other investments I made while living humbly off my net. Or giving it to family or a tech/writer that stuck with me towards the end.

I am dredging up this old post because they are getting more aggressive with it, and it sounds like this guy is a testimony that some good techs are willing to make the leap in order to try to branch out on their own. I was heading to Zip Recruiter to try out the new recruiting site on the block. I started by searching to see who is looking for techs in my area during what is normally a slow time for the other shops. Only one posting showed up for my town. Can you guess? : ***EARN UP TO $1,500/WEEK - FIX CARS AS A MOBILE MECHANIC*** YourMechanic Longmont, CO 80503 USA BECOME A MOBILE TECHNICIAN WITH THE LEADING AUTO REPAIR COMPANY YourMechanic is a mobile mechanic company. We offer car repair services at our customers' homes and offices. With no shop overhead, we pass the savings on to our customers and provide our technicians better pay. We handle all the marketing, appointment scheduling, parts ordering, invoicing and customer support for our technicians, leaving the technicians to do what they love- fix cars. EXPLORE THE POSSIBILITIES GREAT MONEY: Earn 2-3x what auto shops and dealers pay you. <-------- SOME GUYS ARE GOING TO TRY THIS OUT, AND WHO KNOWS IF IT MAY BE WORTH THE HEADACHES. COMPLETE FLEXIBILITY: Set your own hours (full time, weekends, evenings, weekdays). DO WHAT YOU LOVE: Work on cars while we take care of everything else (appointments, support, parts, warranty). WORK DIRECTLY WITH CUSTOMERS: Get to know your customers, speak to them directly about repairs, and show them what a great experience auto repair can be. I am dealing with the AirBNB phenomenon right now as a member on my HOA's board. That is really hurting the B&B industry and the hotel industry. Hotels are acknowledging that they are feeling the pain now. Does everyone really still think that this will never hurt us? I feel like I have positioned myself in such a way that my best customers will not be calling something like this, but if it does start to gain a lot of traction, people will use it just to try something new, and it may start to hurt, if even only for a year.

Part of the problem might be I can not imagine selling my shop when we are doing well. When we are not doing well it can be all I think about.

I dance on thin icer around these types. Once in a while a car makes it into my shop that has no business being there. Once I realize the mistake they made I top of all of their fluids make sure all drain plugs are tight and let it go for free. I usually apologize for not being able to get to the vehicle in time and refer them to a local budget shop. If they were real rude along the way I maintain composure and rerfer them to the thieving shop down the street. We do have one fake review on our yelp page. I used it as an opportunity to disprove every thing they said by talking about all we do right.

This is something I believe is happening to me also, one of the two reasons I got them out. I asked for account statements so I can make sure they credited all of my checks. I asked for these almost two months ago and nothing. I have not finished paying them yet so I may just let it go to collections and settle it for half.

My accounting is done through my bank deposits, not my invoices. I write a full priced invoice for work to my own cars, then do the work myself or have the guys do it. When I sell a car I show these full priced invoices to help bolster the value of the car. It skews my end of month reports in manage a bit, and I pay a little bit of sales tax (2.9%). When I file my sales tax I get a tiny bit of the sales tax bill back as administrative costs (the state gives this discount every month) so it is offset. I do not pay the nvoice so my accountant does not show it as income in my books but I do show the loss as parts money coming out.

I used it for a bit and got some good info. I imagine if you fiind the right coach things could go well. One downside is a lot of features are alla carte on top of your monthly fee so to get all the benefits you will be paying a lot of money.

Does this happen to you a lot? Is it possibly due to the demographics around You? I think once or twice we have had someone complain that something was broken that was not related to what we did. One fellow I did blow off. Daniel was his name he is one of our negative Google reviews. There was no saving him.

Do they continue to return to you?

This. I have found that some of my best customers are the ones I took care of a problem for no questions asked. They have also given me some of my best ever reviews with things like: Tom is a man of his word or Tom stands behind his work. These are golden sentences that I know have steered a lot of new business my way. When the cost of getting a new customer can be $250 or more why would you even have to think about writing $150 check for a windshield?

I do not know what out bay per car is, but I do know people have to drive past 80 shops to get to my little hole in the wall on the outside of town One good thing is there is another town forming to the east of me so I will be dead center of to very big towns

More customers for us as quality drops to line executives pockets.

I love yelp. It has been very good to us. I have one negative review that I thought was a competitor, but you guys have me wondering now if the negative review is a yelp employee. I do spend the bare minimum to get a few features from it. I have canceled here and there and noticed no difference in my reviews. Yelp does seem to place more trust in its more active users. I think resteraunt have the biggest issue with them because there is more volume and more chance for each "client to have a bad experience. If you are on top of everything going into and coming out of your shop you should have just as good an experience with yelp as I do.

I was paying 500 a month for adwords and getting calls for everything but people looking for me. I realized my adwords were set to broad form match. Changed this to phrase match and now I pay much less for only relevant calls and clicks.

We fixed a car for free for a customer who was having a tough time this year, then contacted a local paper to do the story and posted it on our Facebook. Win win all around.

I write the check. If your doing all the right stuff all the time these checks will be few and far between, and they give you and help maintain a reputation that is worth more then any advertising you can find out there. Arguing with the customer gets you one or two things only, a bad review and plenty of bad word of mouth, it just is not worth it. I bought a customer a Remanufactured engine once years ago when I had no way to really afford it. He Jas paid for that engine twice now over the years and continues to refer people to me. My ROI was huge.

It is a shame that I am looking forward to getting older so I can get my social security and medicare.

Old post I know but I wanted to say Good point Mario. I do not know how many of you are in this habit, but when I start receiving advice from someone here I always Google their shop and read their Google and yelp reviews before decidiing on how to take the advice or how to respond.