Transmission Repair

Have you ever watched a movie for the 2nd time? Is it just me, or has anyone seen stuff the second time around that you didn’t catch in the first viewing? Well, that’s exactly what happened to me with this book, “The Dark Side of Franchising”. This book is the Kindle edition as most of my more recent purchases are. No, I don’t have a Kindle reader. I have the desktop version of the Kindle reader app. It has a feature known as Text-to-Voice that I used the second time. My eyes followed the words as the Kindle app read the book for me. I read this book the second time around in just one 2-hour sitting. It was great.

YouTube was founded on Feb. 14, 2005. I’ve been using YouTube to sell work since 2008. Since then, I’ve influenced many people to start selling work that way. The attached video is from an online friend named Rich who works at a Ford dealership. He saw what I was doing and basically copied my sales method. Good for him! I try to keep my videos 3:00 minutes or less. In this example, Rich's video is 7:49 long. To me, that's way too long, but it is what it is.

I just finished reading a book entitled "The Dark Side of Franchising: How to Avoid Being Swindled and Make an Educating Investing Decision". The book is a real eye-opener. The author, Robert Edwards, runs a company named Franchise City. They basically advise, consult, and recommend franchises that match the buyer's talents, goals, and exit plans to an appropriate franchisor. His contention is that the franchise industry should be regulated like real estate agents, doctors, and lawyers. I was shocked to learn there is absolutely no regulation in franchise sales. According to the author, the opposite is more true than not. The industry is rife with somewhere between a used car salesman and a con man. There's too much government in our lives and we need less, not more, government. But on the topic of franchising, that should be regulated. Even a barber or anyone who drives a car needs to be licensed. I’ve been recently looking into franchising myself. That’s what prompted me to come into contact with Robert Edwards of Franchise City. Everything that the author said in the book, I personally experienced. I purchased the book on my own with no prompting from the author. If anyone was to consider purchasing a franchise, I would highly recommend this book.

It's no secret that inflation is causing the prices to go up on everything. For many shop owners, their first knee-jerk reaction would be to try to reduce expenses. Instead, I want to offer a suggestion that may give you a different perspective on handling runaway inflation. For argument's sake, let's suppose that a shop's costs have gone up 15% from what they used to be. Instead of trimming expenses by 15%, I will offer a different way to do it. I would say raise your prices by 15%, and here's why. In our shop, expenses run 40% of revenue. We did $100K/mo. in total gross sales. Expenses were $40K/mo. 15% of $40,000 in expenses is $6,000. However, 15% of $100,000 in gross sales is $15,000. Going up in price by 15% makes you 2.5 times more than cutting expenses by 15%. I suggest that even during non-inflationary times, it is always more profitable to go up by a percentage than cut your expenses by the same percentage. However, while this might sound easy, it creates another problem. That problem is sales skill and value building. This is why it's so important to get professional sales and telephone training. There's no shortage of professional trainers in our industry. One of the most significant breakthroughs in my professional career is when I quit going to technical seminars and training. Instead, I went to professional sales and telephone training. My life became so much easier, and so can yours by raising the sales price with professional sales, telephone, and marketing training. No increase in price will help if you can't sell it.

I'm having a hard time believing this article, but check it out... https://jalopnik.com/ford-ceo-wants-to-abolish-the-dealership-experience-as-1849007700

This piece was written in 2008 when we were looking for a new location. It's written by Roy H. Williams who eventually became my business coach/adviser/copywriter. It's well worth the read/listen. I prefer to listen because he has a radio voice. Follow the Sound of Bulldozers

Location is a huge part of marketing. A business guru once told me, "Expensive rent is the cheapest advertising you can buy." To that end, I wrote an article titled, "How Changing Location, Changed My Life". It's a 1,400-word 7-minute read and chronicles the benefits of doing mindful due diligence in selecting a location. I want to thank Joe Marconi in writing this article. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NXBSu9a22bCWnQVh6dRM1dMu76gESAr0MImFrjpOtWk/edit?usp=sharing

I agree a business should not do their own payroll. We used Intuit's payroll service and it was great. We used QuickBooks Desktop Pro. We did, however, calculate our own payroll and print our own checks. Intuit would make our 941 deposits and do our quarterlies by logging into our system and run all the reports. My wife is an accountant and has a degree in economics, so this may not work for everyone, but it worked for us.

Yep. At least I have the time to do what I want.

How to calculate your Effective Labor Rate (ELR), 4:43 https://youtu.be/impbO1QXUIE HourofLabor.pdf

The second video at the bottom of this page will help members to calculate a labor rate. While this was specifically designed for dealerships, a lot of the same principles can be applied to our shops. No need to see what others are charging, we charge off our costs. https://chriscollinsinc.com/training-videos

F ord Issues Park Outside Warning for 2021 Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators

Risk of fire if left unattended...

Yeah, that video was shot in 2009. I've gained weight and aged a lot since then. 😞

The recall below says it all...

This is a repost from another forum. Things could be worse. There are two different transmission shop owners in the Salt Lake valley who are still working every day. The problem is that both of them are in their 80s. :-( I've done consulting for both. As soon as I get the ship turned around and leave, they go back to doing the same thing as before. Frustrating. It's a sad situation. One of them still works the counter and the other one runs around between his 4 locations. They both desire to retire but either can't afford to or don't want to. It makes me feel so fortunate that I was able to retire when I did. All I can say to the other members of this group is "Don't let this happen to you."

I found this handy-dandy shop valuation tool. Check it out! https://autoleap.com/business-valuation-calculator/

Joe, as I said in my original post, one of the conditions was that I would ONLY use the video on our website, and no other medium. In other words, no TV, social media, or other commercial use. The TV station was not involved. The guy did it "on the side" so to speak. It was difficult to quantify the results, but we did see a definite increase in business; about $35K/mo. As an update, soon after, the reporter left the TV station and his son took his place. The reporter then turned what was originally a side job into a full-fledged business that became known as Gephardt Approved His son is https://ksltv.com/our-team-members/matt-gephardt/

Depending on how many hours a tech is flagging, $40/hr. can be tough with the rampant inflation. My question would be, "why didn't the shop offer to at least match the dealership?" It may well be there's more to the story than just pay. How about working conditions?

Happy Mother's Day! There are lessons to be learned from my following post. Back in 2010, I contacted an investigative reporter for a local TV station. Most markets have at least 1 TV station with such an investigative reporter. I asked him if he would help me do a promo video for our shop. He agreed but said "a small fee" would be involved. The deal was for $800 and that I would only use the video on our website and no place else. I agreed. A week later he shows up with a camera crew and the video was shot. They did all the video editing. The video gave our shop instant credibility because it was done by a trusted local investigative reporter known for being a consumer advocate. We experienced a significant increase in business due to the video being on our website. That, coupled with having the top spot in Google search results was an awesome 1-2 punch. I'm not posting this to brag or say "Look at me." I'm posting this so others may honestly learn or possibly do something similar at their shop. 3:03 https://youtu.be/Loo6V7Nln-o?list=PL1ua0YI0uLXvZq0qWPNO-ujc7XTpgmLOV

I have no experience with Kukui, but I know of them. Personally, I would not hire anybody who doesn't use call tracking so you can SEE the effectiveness of your PPC. Paid call tracking is much better than Google's free call tracking. Not enough data with Google. Check this spreadsheet out:

Hiring a PPC company is how 95% of the shop owners handle their PPC marketing. You're not alone, there. I devoted a huge amount of time learning through reading, YouTube, and a lot of trial & error. The reason I spent so much on PPC was I was always #1 at the top Google whenever anybody searched anything related to transmission repair. I thought of it sort of like a "contest" to always be listed at the top simply because that's usually the default choice for most people searching. With that being said, most shop owners don't have the energy or time to learn PPC marketing like I did. I usually stayed in my office and once I got home, I would try to learn more or come up with more keywords. I started out with well over a 1,000 key words and over time, I whittled down to only 30 or so. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. However, when the new owner took over the business, one of the first thing he cut was PPC expenditures. Transmissions aren't like regular automotive repair shops where you develop relationships and get repeat business. If we get repeat business, it's more that likely a warranty job or somebody with very bad luck. 😞 I learned transmission are normally a 1-shot deal and a prominent listing at the top of Google is much more crucial than in general automotive repair. The only way I could actually measure effectiveness of PPC was to use call tracking That way, I knew what jobs came in from PPC and which ones didn't. I used edit[1]

Get A Life We sometimes get so buried in our day-to-day stuff, we often forget about promoting our business to keep us busy. Let's not confuse busyness with profitability. We juggle things at home and in our businesses. In the early days, I would commit to a full-page Yellow Page ad. However, I would put an unlisted number in the ad to where if the full page ad didn't work out, I could simply cancel the number and not have to be responsible for the ad. The full page ad was $1,000/mo. OUCH! I never found it to not be profitable until YP was replaced by the internet. I moved from Yellow Page thinking to internet thinking and it was quite the transition. I learned the internet was so much more powerful. With a few mouse clicks, I could turn off or turn on my paid ad. Wow! I hired internet ad agencies but wasn't happy with the results. I eventually decided to do all my internet advertising myself via a crash course in learning by trial and error. I not only watched a lot of YouTube videos on the subject, but I also read. A lot. More than a lot because I love to read. That's how I learned transmissions and now, it's how I would learn paid advertising online. It was an awesome change for me. My mouse and keyboard suddenly gave me an infinite amount of power. I became my own internet promoting service. I felt better about every dollar I was spending because I was in control. It cost me nothing except for the ads themselves. There was no need to pay someone else $$$$ to do for me what I learned to do for myself. It was great. I slowly learned the MORE I paid for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, the more business I would get. I eventually learned the ratio was 12-to-1. For every dollar I spend on PPC ads, I would get $12 worth of new business. Annual sales went from $700K to $1,2M seemingly overnight. And I was only spending about $50K/yr. for my advertising, all in. Spend $50K to get half a million more in business? I'm in. I suddenly (2 years) went from a builder to a PPC expert. Anything to get me off the bench. 🙂 lol! I was simply getting older and was happy about the change. My advise is for you to do the change. I simply learned that rebuilding didn't pay near as well as well as running my internet PPC ads. It was simple 2nd grade math. My best advice is to follow what I did. It will pay you ENORMOUSLY.