Kaleb Nimz on How Auto Hospitality Transformed 98 Shops

Hey, good morning, everybody. This is Todd Hayes with Auto Shop Answers. I have a great guest on today, Caleb Nims. He is the president of Gramaud Enterprises.

They run 98 precision tune units across the country. He is an absolute wonderful guy. It is so great to visit with him. I have to tell the story about this.

Obviously, Auto Shop Answers is a faith-based company, and we were praying because Joe Adams, who just got married. Lives in Atlanta and commutes to Houston. And we're praying, you know, God, put someone in our life that is faith-based, that loves you, and that we can work with, with Key to Key to Callback. And guess who it was?

Boom! It was perceived. Hey, what's going on? And Caleb just opened up the podcast with a beautiful prayer.

He's just such an amazing guy. And, man, we love him and his family so much, you know. So, Caleb, welcome to Master Tech to Millionaire. Boom.

Man, thanks for having me. That's a great intro. So, God be the glory. If we can do that to start off.

I mean, it's all downhill from here. That's right, man. Yeah. So, we started working with Caleb and his team.

We're coming off of a, why don't we talk about what we spent about a year now. We have been working together, something like that. Caleb is one of those rock stars, young gun in the business, you know, second, I guess it's probably second generation business, correct? Third?

I'd be considered third generation. Third generation. I married into the third generation, yep. Right on, man.

And he spearheads the company now. And I must admit, he's such a great guy and doing such a good job. I'm so proud of him. But, you know, back about a year ago, Caleb came through.

We had met through, and I got to give a shout out, to Jeremy Glasgow from, what's it, um. AppFuel, who actually introduced us well over a year ago, and we flew into Savannah, and that was the first time I met Caleb and his family, and we did about an hour presentation, and fast forward a year later, and Caleb and his team hosted. Will you tell me, what did you guys just host last week in Houston? Yeah, so I need to give my own shout out to Todd Hall, my Todd.

He connected us with Autoshop Answers, Jeremy Glasgow, brought it all together. So without him, I wouldn't be sitting here. But no, so a year ago, we had our annual meeting. So every year in the springtime, we get all franchisees together within our team.

Uh, and we brought, um, you and Brian Rhodes from auto shop recruiting in, uh, to do kind of a section of that, uh, that lit the fire. Uh, and then this year, uh, after going through training each month throughout this year, uh, with our team and kind of getting them introduced to it and moving in, uh, we were like, let's just change our whole annual summit from a kind of leadership conference into a training conference. And so this past week, we flew out to Houston, had our annual summit there, and just did a full-on training session with Charlie Zalakos, with Mike Quinn. You were there.

I mean, it was the whole team. It was an incredible event. Exceeded our expectations, hands down. Just, you guys always go above and beyond.

So, can't say enough. Well, you know, it took off. Oh, no, I forgot. Todd Westerlin.

Man, I can't believe I left him out. So Todd Weston put it all together, man. Yeah, well, I tell you, you definitely had a star-studded lineup from Houston-Boston Partnership and Autoshop Answers. You know, Charlie Zalakos and Mikey Quinn, they actually let me stand up there for a couple minutes.

But, you know, here's the thing. Let's just talk about, you know, how has Autoshop Answers helped your business, Caleb? You know, can you talk about that? maybe before and after? What are you seeing uplift in units?

And then we'll tell some funny stories that you and I have personally had over the last year. Yeah, absolutely. So kind of the summary I would say is we have great operators and we have a great brand. We're just, it's been inconsistent with the process over the years.

And we've kind of fallen into that auto repair process, Lowell, if that makes sense. And I guess something I'd like to say is, so I stepped in, I'm married into third generation in our business as an area developer, Precision Tune Auto Care. Precision Tune has been around for 50 years. And 47 of those years, we've been operating Precision Tunes through that in the family.

And we've grown through the business. And so we talk about bleeding yellow a little bit because we've been so much a part of the brand itself and we want to see it continue to go forward. And when I stepped in, I came into this business 12 years ago. I was learning from the ground up.

I came from a different industry. And so learning automotive service and repair was just kind of the first step. But I wasn't too happy with the experience we were given to customers. And that's grown over the years.

And when I stepped in, it was almost a year ago this week, it was, excuse me, it was April 26th. You guys talk about, you can't unsee it. I couldn't unsee it. And I remember getting on a phone call when I landed here in South Carolina, where I live the Sunday night getting back. and it was like midnight.

And I was talking with my father-in-law, David, who's the CEO of our business, as to put me back into a store. I was like, you can take my role. You can take all my responsibilities. I'm going back into a store because that's the opportunity that I saw a year ago sitting in key to key.

And one of the things that we talk about with our team and as they've gone through it from operators, district managers, the whole level, service advisors, is if someone is not asking to be put back on the field or put back in the store. They probably didn't get it. They probably didn't get it. Probably not the right guy.

Correct. But see, and that's also why I really connected with you, Caleb. I recall that. I recall you sitting through key to key, and it's like anything else.

When you're having a class of 50, 60 people sitting there, you can tell who gets it and who doesn't, period. You can tell who's going, oh, my gosh, what is this? This is a game changer. And then you can see the ones that are kind of puffed up and want to shoot holes in it, which you can't.

You know, I mean, it is pretty much perfected business model that people want to shoot holes in it, just can't execute. And that's it. and then you went back and the next time I saw a picture of you dude you were scrubbing walls in one of your stores. Getting after it. You got to get in the trenches with your wrenches.

It's the greatest leadership there is. And, you know, people talk about leadership. Well, you can't lead in this business by spreadsheets. I mean, I certainly love my numbers.

You know, I'm very good with numbers, love getting numbers. But leadership happens when they see the leader in the trenches with the wrenches. And that's going to lead to one of our favorite stories, I'm sure. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but, you know, so I know that Precision Tune has been very committed to Key2Key. And then we launched, and I'd love your, you know, I'd love you to give me an overview of how Key2Key has helped you. And then from there, we'll maybe segue into, you know, our newest program, which you have gone through now, Courtside.

Is that crazy or what? Oh, man, it's so good. It was awesome. So good.

Yeah. So, well, you know, we had about, I don't know how long ago it was, but Randy, who is, tell me what is Randy's position with you guys again? Yeah. So he's in operations.

He's had every role in our business. He's been a part of our team for over 30 years. He's been David's right-hand man over those years and 100% customer-focused, brand-focused, and wants the best business. For everybody in our business and even like people outside of our business he wants the best i know he is really just a wonderful guy well your whole organization yeah i mean you have this great organization in that and that starts from the top down you know um you can tell when you have great leadership is when you have great people um randy for one is just this great guy and we kind of tussled.

And Caleb was sitting next to us. This is such a fun story. And Randy was telling me how I did not understand. And because of the pits, you know, because they have bays and they also have pits where you crawl down and they're changing oil.

And I go, no, Randy, I promise I really do understand. No, Todd, you don't understand. And I said, Randy, what if I said I do understand and you don't understand? And he goes, no, I understand.

You don't understand. I go, well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hop on a little birdie and I'm going to fly in and I'm going to show you I understand. And Randy goes, okay, you do that.

And I mean, it was really just a sweet thing i mean it was really a fun fun tussle you know and so i did so iron sharpens iron huh yeah iron sharpens iron iron sharpens iron yeah and so um the day came you know i flew in and went to the noonan store and um did i crawl in that pit caleb you were with me oh man caleb and i had caleb and i now have so many great stories the best part about it is uh As soon as you're down in the pit, I was walking up to grab an extra flashlight from someone. And you know how it reverberates when you're in the pit? Oh, yeah. All I hear is, I didn't see you.

Where's my flashlight? Where's my flashlight? Everyone in their shop's head just went. Like everyone's flashlight came out it was so good yeah and that was i think that was pre-weight loss so i was a pretty fat boy then crawling down in that pit i waddled down into that pit randy came right behind me joe adams had never been in a pit joe adams gets in that pit and dude were we barking it out you know we had the underhood going on i had instead of what you call We have our full rise.

The only thing we didn't have was a mid-rise. I could certainly look at tires. I just really couldn't inspect brakes. But did we identify concerns, take pictures, chat, GTP, closed deals?

I do believe that was a record day that day for that store, wasn't it? Absolutely. I mean, they've been just since Wayne went through Key2Key, every month's been a record month. Oh, Wayne.

Yeah, Wayne. Isn't it great? Shout out to Wayne, man. Yeah.

And that whole team. I know we're going to give Wayne the credit, but he's going to turn around and be like, I know it's the whole team. It's the whole team. But yeah, absolutely.

And so by the time we wrapped up spending some time at that store, Randy goes, oh yeah, you do understand that. So the great news too is, great news, double great news. There you go, great news. Where's Rob?

Randy has been the biggest advocate of using technology and influencing the stores that he's connected with. Both he owns and operates, but also franchisees and other people in the business to where he's doing his own little tour and having people come visit Noonan, that location, uh showing them how to use the technology and work working alongside them walking through it so it's it's cool to see the evolution of uh the you don't understand conversation uh sitting in the accounting first class uh down in houston to being in the pit and noonan uh and then now bringing other people on the same path i mean it's just it's incredible it's such great what key to key opened up yeah and it's all out of love because you know we all we all work for god so it was it was just such a sweet moment and um last weekend when you guys were here he actually stood up and we had this little banter on it and it was just so cute with that big smile because they're crushing all their all-time records and i do believe they're now the number one store um in precision tune is that correct yep so they've gone back and forth the past couple years but uh this year. And Wayne is, he's channeling his inner Nick Saban. Let's go, Wayne!

Shout out to Wayne and Team Noonan, Precision Tune. You know, Wayne is so sweet. He sends me texts all the time. And we correspond probably at least once or twice a week.

He also talks with Charlie. He's all in. Your team is all in. which is um which is so nice but you know let's talk about some other things that happened there is um boy that store um so i have not been there now for i don't know maybe six months or so and so i flew in and visited the store um uh let me see it's probably been maybe three weeks ago it was for joe's wedding so about three weeks ago and um again rob picked me up shout out to rob true euro oh man we have such a good time don't we yeah oh yeah they're such a great family i mean we we just have you know it's so much more than business in what we do and um and that store was beautiful you know you guys have redone the floors redone the image how has that assisted you in understanding the the importance of image you know number one and then you guys have embraced auto hospitality. Todd Hall is like the biggest fan there is.

The Todd Posse. Yeah, yeah, the Todd Posse. Yeah, and then the world-class service. So why don't we walk through that?

Because I do have to tell you, I drove in on, I mean, they really didn't know I was coming. I let them, I let, I think Wayne knew that I was going to stop by, but they wouldn't know what I'm driving in. I didn't know what I was driving in. Rob had picked me up in his Cadillac.

And I wanna tell you something. We drove into that store, and parked on the side. And man, we had a young guy, buttoned up, polished man. He was doing a meet and greet at the door of my car.

And I went, wow. He had no idea who I was. And I said, hi, I'm Todd Hayes. I said, do you do this with every customer?

He goes, yes, sir, I do. And I went, wow, boom, right on. See, that is the first start of major auto hospitality right there. So why don't we walk through how auto hospitality, cleanliness, and just the things that you have incorporated in that store.

Man, so quick story. Yesterday, I'm talking with Wayne, and he's recruiting. I never stop recruiting or always be recruiting. ABR, ABR.

Yep. And with that, he was like, the third guy I talked to, he was like, you guys are the ones with the clean floors, right? And he's like, absolutely, we are. And I went right into it, and the guy was like, yeah, I'll be over there this afternoon.

We'll talk. It was immediate, but the cleanliness, the presentation of the facility is huge. It's huge. And it's a business card left out there that anybody can see on Google.

At any point, someone can pull up photos of your shop. It's not like you have to go and get your house clean before some guests come over. It's always there. We always have guests coming over.

So the cleanliness, the bright lights, like everything inside the bays is so different than what people expect. And exceeding that customer's expectations is what it's about. And that's where it like flows into the automotive hospitality is if you're exceeding their expectations, you're giving them a higher level of service. That's not service anymore.

It's hospitality. And you're meeting those needs before they have those needs. So, all right. It's my little soapbox.

No, man, it's great. Keep going. No, because, you know, there's something else that happened when I walked in the door. Then certainly they know who I was, but they proceeded on to give me a shop tour.

I was like, oh, wow. No, I mean, now the attitudes of your front of the house, they are so good. How important is attitude? How important is that shop tour.

You know, walking your guest outside, showing them you have your presentation stationed up, kind of walk us through how that has assisted you in that business. Yeah, absolutely. So that location, I think the thing I remember from that first visit when you came to Noonan with Joe Adams and Rob SQ was the amount that you guys commented on how the team hustled. No one was ever standing still.

They were always attentive to the customer, attentive to the next technician next to them, whatever they could do to help. That's how they are all the time. And so when you pull up into those first two spots or pull around the corner on the lot. Someone's run into that car to greet you to make sure that you don't have to hand touch a door or handle getting out of your vehicle, uh, that the keys go in their hand before you even walk inside and they'll get the door for you along the way.

And so your car, uh, is going to be pulled in probably before you check in with that first, uh, service advisor at the front of house. And so, uh, with that, the, the comment that always comes back in my mind is. Uh, my wife and my, father-in-law talked about his dad who started in this business in the 70s and his phrase was just take care of the customer yes if you're greeting him on the lot you're taking care of the customer if you're giving him a shop tour and telling him about why you are different than other businesses you're taking care of the customer and we haven't even got to the performing any maintenance or repairs or service on the vehicle that's expected that's i mean we're automotive service repair business if you're coming to us and you don't expect that we got an issue like and so uh from there and then it's just every step of the way how do we communicate so from the first phone call uh if i got on this well how you know this was something else that was really fun how important is the word yes in our industry because so important it's so important and so you know one thing I'll tell you is they were very happy to show me cars wrapped around the store and the other parking lot that I guess that they're actually renting now. Two other parking lots.

Two other parking lots just to park the cars because they have now found the magic word when the phone rings and that is yes is the answer. What is your question? You know, so how important is that to learn to just say yes to your customer? Oh, it sets the tone.

If we got on here and I had zero energy, would you want to have a conversation with me? No, no, no. You would have been like, all right, podcast over. We're done.

If I get on here and I'm excited about the business, I'm excited about just sharing how that how automotive hospitality, how auto shop answers key to key has impacted my business. Man, I'm fired up. I'm ready to go. I want to get after it.

But saying yes on the phone is just the starting point. Because if you say yes, every step of the process. And with that, when you set the tone from that initial phone call of the customer before they even come into your facility, before they've seen your service or if it's a new customer, it determines where you're going. And the industry, I would say even us as Precision Tune of the past, said no without saying no.

So, oh, well, we're busy or what time can I get you in or can I make an appointment for that? And those days are gone and the new standard has been set and it's only going up from here. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I tell you, you know, whenever you learn that the customer does pay for everything, I mean, they pay for everything. They pay for everything. They pay for you remodeling your stores.

They pay for every uniform. They pay for every vacation. They pay the salaries. We just allocate money that the customer gives us to our team members.

And if you can get your entire team to understand that the customer truly pays for everything, how do you not want to serve them and give great customer service? We actually were talking about during your program about the old days of what I call Yestrotech, which is nothing more than yesterday's service, hospitality to a gas station with today's technology, which is like Yestrotech. I wish I could say I coined that phrase, but that was Bob Lutz. He coined that phrase with the Viper, and I was like, wow, that's a great phrase because that also is a great phrase for customer service.

You know back years ago you would hear that bell ding ding and most of the people in the room. That work for you and are in the industry. Even my dad had a gas station, you know, Phillips 66. And you go, yeah, Peter's sitting next to me.

And yeah, he started in a gas station. I started in a gas station. Who would know that it would turn into this spectacular career? But man, that customer would drive on the drive.

And man, you're out there because there was no such thing as self-service. It was full service. You want to put premium fuel in there. You're going to wash the windshield.

You're going to lift the hood. You're going to check the oil, check the air filter, PCV valve, make sure there's no leaks there. You're going to get down and make sure the tires are pressurized all the way around. Check the tread on the tires.

Kind of look up, make sure that shocks aren't leaking. Well, we were doing a PMI on the drive. Wiper blades were all good. Right on the drive.

And that is how so many families survived. For so many years. And unfortunately, what happened was the oil companies said, man, we're getting a lot of complaints. You know, we're getting, you know, the technicians that are running these businesses were kind of angry and not nice and saying no.

And all of a sudden, that service fell off a cliff. And it really did. And so the oil companies said, yeah, we're out. And so they started buying these guys out, kicking them out, and put in convenience stores and C-stores.

I mean, I can sell pizza. It doesn't complain. And then independent shops started opening. They weren't open seven days a week, which they used to be because gas stations never closed.

Your great-grandparents, they kept working. A lot of them had, we were talking about, a lot of them had homes behind the business, which is crazy. It's amazing. But see, now our business, the industry now has been frozen in time so long that what differentiates your business?

And now you see the power of differentiation. You know, your store looks better than any other store when you're driving down that road going to Noonan, when you're advertising, when you're sending out shop tours and videos and you're doing a shop tour presentation station. Well, why wouldn't they want to do business with you? You know, why would they want to go anywhere else?

Yeah, they wouldn't. Yeah, it's... The way, so it's such a missed opportunity people. So when they think about the automotive industry, uh, there's probably a lot of negativity that comes around the stereotypes of our business and it doesn't have to be that way.

And what we're doing is changing that dramatically, uh, and changing the perception to where, when you talk about what differentiates us, I think about the opportunities. I've got three young girls under the age of 10 that are learning the scripts inadvertently from the book. Like I'm sitting at quick story. I'm sitting at the dinner table probably a couple months ago and we're teaching them to clean up after themselves, put the dishes away.

Like, and I see that the trash is overflowing or about to overflow. And I say, Genevieve, can you take the trash out for me? She goes, absolutely. Is now a good time?

She starts taking the bag and putting it together. And it's like just the opportunity that comes from being, from differentiating ourselves and business. That's a marker of that. That's like that legacy marker.

That's going to show us where we're going to go down the path or where we're going to go in the future, walking down that path. And it starts with clean shops. It starts with saying yes to the customer and just going through that whole process of automotive hospitality. And if you put all of those things together and you stack the chips in your favor, it's.

I mean, there's no way the customer is not going to come back and they're not going to tell their friends. So, you know, you run a big operation. I mean, you know, 98 stores, that's a large company. You know, how do you roll that out to all your franchisees and developers and get buy in?

How is that working for you? Yeah, so over since April of last year, we've consistently sent five to 10 people, operators, people from our team to Key2Key. And so I would consider that as like the entry point of this whole process. You can try and do it on your own.

You can search online and find videos here and there. But until you sit there and you see the intensity of joe adams and glenn piccolo and people that have lived it out and they're communicating every step of the way and rubber hits the road they're not just teaching it they're living it uh that's where it changes and so like sending our team through that was step one uh we have quite a few team members that, went multiple times last year. I ended up going with the team eight times. And then January, when you launched Courtside for the first time, I was like, I've got to be in there because how am I going to lead my team if I'm not there with them?

No, Caleb, Caleb, you are on it right there. You know, you have, you know, you, you know, so many times, you know, you'll have companies send their people, but yet the guy running the company doesn't come in. Well, it doesn't work, guys, because, you know, you're an ivory tower guy then. And, you know, obviously, I run a pretty big operation also.

And I'm an in the trenches guy. Man, you know, hey, hey, why get in the trenches, Caleb? Oh, yeah, I'll get in the trenches, man. Absolutely.

Barking out orders. I'll PMI cars. You know, people don't understand that when you're scaling a company it starts with one you know you start with one you know when we started scaling our company it started with Adams you know when Adams was already doing respectable numbers you know to I'm averaging about 250 million dollars I mean 250 thousand dollars a month three million a year or so, And those are very respectful numbers. But then we were able to scale it up to a million dollars a month.

As a matter of fact, we did a million just last month out of Adams at 1010, which is not a sustainable number. Our record here is 1.2 million. Now, I don't even look at that as a sustainable number. I like the number about 800 or so with a good gross profit with super happy customers.

You know, but it's always fun to do that. And then you launch another store and then you launch another store. And I have always believed in control growth. Now, you, on the other hand, man, you're walking into a 98 store chain, soon to be 100.

I know that you guys are relocating some stores. You know, it just seems what are some of the things that keeps Caleb up at night. You know, running such an operation? Because, I mean, it's a big company.

Yeah, absolutely. So kind of the first part of that, how do we roll it out? I said, just come and see. So initial, picked the kind of top operators in our system, the most engaged team members and said, come and see.

So we brought them to Key2Key. And there's a famous, I say famous line, there's a line that stood out to me, Joe Adams, Key2Key that first time I went. and he's holding up the script book that everyone gets. And he goes, 95% of you are going to put this on the shelf. It was like the other 5% of you're going to take this, you're going to memorize it, and it's going to change your business.

It's going to change your life. And so seeing that, the goal was to get the 5% in that room for me, because I know if I put the right people in that room and give them the right tools, they're going to take it and run with it. And so that was the first kind of process of getting it rolled out with our team. There's still certain team members that haven't been through key to key yet.

And we had several people come through our summit this past week who walked away and I'm getting text messages to say we're leaving so much money on the table. It's unbelievable. Where was this a year ago? And I was like, it was here a year ago.

It was here a year ago, yeah. Well, hopefully they're signed up. Let's go. So for me, there's kind of three phrases that's the lens that I'm looking at our business through.

So I want to honor the past. I want to lead the present and I want to grow the future. And so what does honor the past means? Well, it's taking those principles that built this business that I have the privilege of stewarding.

I wouldn't be in this seat without the people that came before me. Right. I mean... But that's only half of it, because if I take what I've been given and do nothing with it.

I mean, that's on me. That's not on anybody else. And that's not going to happen on my watch. And so I want to put our team in the best possible situation.

And when I stepped into key to key in April of last year, it was a cohesive system or process that I could see every step of the way to roll it out into our business that would change the trajectory of any one business. And then it's just growing legs from there. Uh, and you know, the, the top operators, they want an edge. They see it.

And when they see it, they can't unsee it and they take it and they want to go and they want to push the boundaries on it. Yeah, they literally, exactly. Yeah. Your players will run to it.

Let's, let's kind of walk over, um, since you were at the very first, um, um, court side. Yeah, that was a fun vision to have come true. Mike Quinn and Charlie Zalakos, you know, if you've listened to any of the podcast on Charlie, you know that he is an absolute superstar in the industry. Um i do believe um um georgie was up from true auto was visiting with him for the last couple days and just was like wow this changed my life you know working with charlie you know and um the rack attack program that we have but um you know our good years tour adam's good you're up in the woodlands i was sitting there one day and um you know at you know it was kind of a junk room to be honest with you.

And, you know, our training center here had turned into our recruiting company because we outgrew the space upstairs and we moved it over to the hotel. But man, I always thought, wow, wouldn't it be great if we could do a whole in-shop training program on Key2Key? I mean, man, it's live. You're doing the reps.

You're in the shop. And so, So I put together a little budget, which was busted. I mean, I'm like, wow, that's a big TV. Is that a big TV, Caleb, or what?

Yeah, it's the wall. Jumbotron. Oh, boy, is it a big TV. I'm like, yeah, we kind of crushed that budget.

Yeah, but it's such a beautiful facility. We turn it into, you know, really, we built a great podcast studio over there. We have Peter Handles' podcast studio here. He's such a stud.

And then we put together this program that's spearheaded by Mike Quinn, who is just an absolute freaking superstar. You know, we gamified our business back in 86 when we started auto hospitality. The great book, Jack Stack, a great game of business, gamify your business, you know, make it a great place to work where people want to show up. And, Ben, you walk into your Noonan store, do they want to work there?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can feel it, man. They want to be there. And that closes deals.

See, they are happy to answer the phone. They're happy to do shop tours. They're happy to do those meet and greet. They're happy to shoot great videos.

They take a sense of pride in making sure that video goes out or get the customer out to the car and do a great show-sell presentation. I don't call it show-sell. I like to call it a show-and-tell presentation because if I find you have bad breaks, I'm not selling you breaks. I'm just showing you something that needs your immediate attention.

And, I mean, the attitude of that store replicated over 98 stores. Caleb, you will be legendary, and I know that that is your mission, and I know you're going to do it. I mean, you know, you have the drive, the ambition, and the thing about you, Caleb, that you're like us. You're a grinder.

You know, man, you probably don't have to be, but, see, you understand the grind. You understand being in the trenches now. And, man, it's just so fun. But kind of walk me through, you know, man, you were the first group to go through key to key.

And again, boom, I wasn't there. So you opened it up with prayer. Yeah, absolutely. God is for you.

Who can ever be against you? Kind of walk me through some of the takeaways from courtside for you and your team. Yeah, absolutely. So with courtside, I'm going to use an analogy.

So I'm a runner. I can talk about running. I can tell you how to run. I can tell you what to do, how to tie your shoes, all of that.

But if you're a runner, you want to go run. And so courtside is taking what you learned in a classroom and implementing it immediately. And so I kind of saw it as like a pre-season training camp. It's like, I get to go sit at Woodlands, which is a beautiful shop, amazing team, great, like customers, everything.

It's just perfect. I get to sit there and I get to listen to coach Charlie and coach Quinn basically train me and then I get to go out into their shop on play on their field and go through it and get reps in and get like fine-tuned where I'm like soft where I need to tighten up and then I get to go back in and try again and I'm going through every step of the process with that I mean it's truly priceless I mean yeah absolutely my opinion any any athlete would pay to have Nick Saban spend a day with them yeah right or pick your favorite coach and you get two yeah you get two days uh and just the the interaction with it it's like everyone in that room is there to work and to go through it and so you don't want to be the weakest link and so when I'm telling my team and they're everyone's like hey how was courtside I'm like it's awesome it's like you need to go through key to key one more time uh you need to step up because you don't want to be the weakest link in that room holding the holding the group back when you're getting in there doing your reps uh and so but with that big takeaways it's interactive uh it's hands-on uh michael quinn and charlie are there with you uh rack attacking vehicles shooting videos doing shop tours the whole team at woodlands is walking through helping you strategize on tickets that may be difficult or going through that of how to best present it uh and. It's not like you shut the shop down for a couple of days. It's like customers are walking in.

So you're getting live reps and they're saying, oh, hey, like, why is like, why are all these people here? It's like, oh, they're here training to make your experience better and to make it better elsewhere. And the customer becomes part of that process. It's just incredible.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just thinking, maybe we'll do one of those for precision tune. I was thinking, yeah, why don't we take the house with just precision tune and do a private. Let's do it.

I was just thinking, man, that would be really hot just to see, you know, the reaction of all that. So, hey, maybe that'll be one of your future programs where I'll bring them in. Yeah, we'd love that. Yeah, just take that over.

It just was so fun. But, yeah, it is very special. And it doesn't matter what your demographic is. You know, we talk about that all the time.

Even if, you know, when you were young in business and you picked a poor demographic maybe, Well, if you're the best in that demographic, you will have more revenue than anyone else. And you can make a lot of money at that. People, I don't care who the public is, they want to be respected. And we have access to money for them.

And so I had a store, and not me personally, but one of my clients had a store... In a horrible demographic and um but man he did everything right you know he had a clean facility he made it the cleanest door in a bad area which is number one number two answer the phone saying yes number three his prices were more than anybody else in the area and he would the the the guests would walk in the door and he would just start filling out the credit application right then And he became the number one easy pay, number one easy pay shop in America because they wouldn't qualify through synchronicity. And so we just shipped him over to easy pay. And he blew that business out.

See, it doesn't matter the demographic as long as they still need that demographic. Their cars break. Their cars are older. and we're already running about it. The average vehicle is about 12 years old right now, which is amazing.

People are holding on to their cars. And I'll also tell you about job security. You know, AI, I tell people this, and I tell it during our training program, AI will not take your job. Someone who knows AI will take your job.

And Caleb knows, and you guys hear me talk about AI. We have a whole AI division. My company's infected with AI and we're three years into it and it's phenomenal what we're doing and we continue to explore AI at a level I can't even fathom. What's your position on AI, Caleb?

Oh, it's mandatory. I mean, the fact that it... When I hear people talk about AI and technology, it's this kind of elusive, like magic ball. And the reality is it's not, it's just, it's there and it's going to be in everything that we do.

And so prior to being in the automotive industry, I was in the design tech world. And having some of the tools that I have today, if I would have had them back then, man, it would have been incredible the things I would have been able to do. But every step of our business can be made more effective and efficient using technology, whether it's from listening to phone calls and analyzing phone calls and getting better at that to on the back end when we do our monthly financial review, going through the numbers, having the summaries ready to go and it analyzing it for us. So it gives us talking points or it helps us navigate that financial review faster.

Because we all know in business, the faster you have information, you know, the scoreboard, the faster you can pivot and change and either like change the way you're playing, review the film or get better or not. But if we're not getting better, we're going to get benched. I mean, whether we choose to ourselves or someone chooses to bench us, if you're not progressing and you're not utilizing technology. Business is sport, guys.

If you're frozen in time, you won't make it. I mean, it's that simple. Business is sport. You know, we're leveraging AI technology, especially on another subject you brought up.

You came through the Accounting First program and the importance of accounting, you know, which my industry out there, they really, truly do not understand. The importance of the precision it takes to counter money. Can you walk us through precision, tune, their commitment to number one, integrity throughout their company and how you look at accounting? Yeah, absolutely.

So I manage three bookkeeping offices. So across 98 stores, that's housed in different areas. And, uh, in that accounting first class, I mean, we talk about fraud almost every other sentence because this is a phrase I use with my girls, but if you're not counting your money, somebody else is. Uh, and I wonder where you heard that from.

Exactly. Exactly. But that, that's the reality of it. Uh, money goes to the people that count it.

And if, and if you're not looking out for your business and you're not stewarding it, the way it needs to be steward, there's going to be theft. There's too many ways... To lose money in our business. And so from that standpoint, we talk about financial education.

We're all about transparency here. So similar to you guys. But with that, we review our full P&L and balance sheet with our manager every month. Right on.

Good. I mean, how many businesses do that? Yeah. And I don't understand why they don't.

How can you... There's nothing to hide. Yeah, and how can you possibly try to drive numbers that they don't even understand, you know? Yeah.

And without showing them the numbers, they actually think you make way more money than you do. You know, if you say, wow, man, we did $250,000 last month. They think you made $250,000. No, no, no, no, no.

It does not work that way. Correct, yeah. But that's that financial literacy. that comes with, if we want to, so in Precision Tune in our business, Grimaud Enterprises, and the stores that we operate, we... Offer minority partnerships or partnerships with the operator in the store.

That's something that Joe Germod, my grandfather-in-law, started with his first business. And through that, we grow through kind of sharing the pie. And so one of the things that we talk about often is that the pie isn't just so big. There's always more room in the pie.

There's always more slices. There's always more pie to go around. We can grow that pie. We can grow it.

We can share it. Find the right people, make it a great place to work, give them a financial stake in the outcome of the business and train them. How do you know you have the right people? Immediate impact on sales.

Immediate impact. Customers love doing business with them. Their team loves working with them, and they have to make money because we have to make money to be a good steward of our money because obviously your family serves the Lord. We serve the Lord here. and so it's not like you get a wheelbarrow of money and you're going out buying stuff.

You're doing a lot of good out in the industry. Talk about the auto hospitality and attracting talent to your company. Yeah, so the. Technicians managers in our industry know what stores and their markets are doing well they they they're so tuned into the business uh and so when we started rolling out automotive hospitality and really kind of those those key shops that have started implementing it and moving forward with it uh you start getting the phone calls and first it's like the haters are going to be out there and they're going to be talking trash, doing whatever.

But then they realize it's not like a one and done situation. And it's like, oh, they're here to stay and they're changing. And then it levels up, levels up, levels up. And then you start getting the phone calls from technicians that you haven't heard in a while or from managers that you tried recruiting that are now super interested.

And so it's one of those things that the best players want to play on the best team uh they want to get that championship ring they want to hustle they want to move forward and so when you're doing things right and you're doing automotive hospitality you're going to attract amazing people and amazing talent uh and kind of back to your point about demographics whenever it frustrates me whenever i hear people talk about lower demographics or poor demographics uh because it's like when they say that it's like that human just because they're in a low demographic area, you don't treat them like a human. They're still a human. They still want hospitality. You still treat them with care, with excellence and move them or help them move through that process.

It doesn't matter where you live i mean it doesn't matter what area you're in you still treat them with with kindness you know i'll be honest whenever i hear that i call it a cop out you know you've already surrendered you know you've already just surrendered to um man i'm not that good you know because you really and truly again no matter what demographic you're in you can't i I don't care if it's a restaurant. You know, think about it. You know, if you had a restaurant, you know, every restaurant can offer great customer service. Well, it's the same in what happens the minute you shift to auto hospitality, you have no competition.

Yeah, none. None. See, none. See, you have no competition.

Now, if you want to stay in the auto repair business, you have repair centers at every corner. I mean, you can throw rocks across the street. I remember hands-on recruiting. We used to work with the Crossroads Automotive on the other side of the freeway up in Noonan.

And I think that they did a private equity deal with Main Street. And, man, I went down and I was recruiting. and I have hands-on recruited out of my area, and oh, how fun is it now? But you know, that Jiffy Lube down there, and you're right, technicians and front of the house, they wanna win, and so when you see your store, and it's cleaner. It's got cars everywhere.

You want to go to that restaurant, but they want to work there. When you have a shop tour and you shoot a shop tour video and you send that to a technician if you need to recruit them. I mean, I hate to break it to you, but this is not – I say this all the time. This is not rocket science.

It's just not. But as Joe Adams said, it's just advanced common sense customer service. And that's all it is, advanced common sense customer service. Just take care of the customer.

Where did the industry lose it? People freak out that we're open seven days a week. Car doesn't know what day of the week it is, what month it is. You know, my industry wants to excuse out poor performance by telling me the rodeo's in town, it's first quarter, tax time, people are on vacation.

Heck, if I listen to all those excuses, well, there's never a time to be open. When is a good time to be open? You know, versus why don't you just focus on executing great for the customer? Because most of your competitors are not.

One of my favorite exercises of all time has to be the phone skills exercise at key to key at the very beginning. I don't know. Do they do that at courtside also? Yes or no?

Yes. I think they've changed it up because they were doing it on Sunday. And our industry is closed on Sunday. The good news is we control the market on Sunday.

You know, it's wild because of our inbound call center that we're working on. This will blow you away. We had 115 calls on Easter Sunday. Yeah.

Just through our company. Is that crazy? That's crazy. See, I mean, we're an essential business.

The government calls it an essential business because things break seven days a week. And people need nurses need their cars to go to work. You know, doctors need their cars. Every other person out there needs a car to go to work.

How many people went to brunch on Sunday? Cars broke. You know, things, the world still happens. How many people drove to the airport, flew away?

Man, they're utilizing their cars. You know, these things, man, the population does not stop. Just somewhere, you know, our industry got frozen in time, and actually they got angry. You know, they're angry at the – you see a lot of shops are angry at the customer.

They don't really care about the customer, and they're just a transaction. You know, and auto hospitality is about building a long-term relationship with a customer. You know, I mean, key to key to callbacks. You know, when that customer calls in, being nice, not hard.

It's not hard. It seems like he can't imagine that that has to be. You know, talk to people like, God, you got to be nice. What if your mother called, you know, I, you've heard me use a phrase all the time.

Would you talk to your mother with that mouth? You know, like, wow. You know, Hey, son, my car won't start. Yeah.

I can get two in a week. You know, what, you know, and now man, you're going to take care of it. I think you nailed it. It's just the industry's frozen in time.

And that's, it's sad, but there's opportunity everywhere. And if you're making excuses, you've got a fixed mindset. If you're seeing opportunities, you've got an abundance mindset. And so you're driving for those new opportunities, and you're growing the pie.

And that, you know, Caleb, you know, and again, I saw your light go off right away. And Todd, oh, my gosh. You know, he becomes an evangelist for auto hospitality. He really does.

He was like, oh, my God. And, you know, I had another pretty major client. Hold on. Shout out to Todd Hall.

Todd Hall! About a year ago, we started every Wednesday morning. We do our ring-ring call for the whole group. Boom!

Let's go! We have all of our take fives throughout in their own areas, but he does. He leads a full ring-ring session with everyone. Well, talk about that.

My gosh, man. You know, that's that ongoing training. You know, people always ask what's one of the most important things that you can do. When you leave um key to key and that is your daily take five at the unit level and um i know wayne is um always posting take fives and sending me pictures his whole team so you're talking earlier about uh the team getting excited about the business his whole team shows up to the take five they they decide on their own to come early he doesn't make them uh, technicians, everyone in the whole business wants to be there because they want to be a part of it.

And he's passing the baton. He's letting them lead the take five from what they did yesterday or the day before or last week. And even kind of another shout out, he's throwing on meta glasses and he's making each one of them go around and do a shop tour. So he's seeing a shop tour from so many different perspectives, from a technician all the way up to a manager throughout the whole business, but it starts with that take five.

And, uh, right now. So one of the blessings of having 98 locations is through that I can step into probably one. I can choose out of six take fives every morning where I want to pop into, uh, whether it's a zoom one, whether it's someone mads me on FaceTime, but I can be a part of the take five and be in that location. Even if I'm here in South Carolina and they're in Texas or if they're in Alabama.

It's just, it's incredible to see the leadership development happening in every shop in the morning through that take five. And that's the, it's just consistency. It just builds and builds and builds. Yeah.

It's incredible. And if you do it every, every morning, you know, whether it's 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever it is. And then you get into your day, My gosh, man, the amount of Synergy training. Again, I have been committed to Take Fives for so many years.

It is ridiculous. I mean, it's like, it's just, it's religion with us. You know, as you know, many of our Take Fives and it's mission critical. The phone skills training, ring, ring, you know, once a week.

You know, back years ago, I was doing once-a-week phone skills training, which is wild, with a RadioShack recorder. And we would listen to the calls with a RadioShack recorder with a suction plugged into it. And we would wear those tapes out, you know, listening to these phone calls and then role-playing and role-playing. Well, today, with the advancement of AI— Oh, it's so much easier.

Yeah yeah we'd wear the tape out you know what do you say what do you think yeah i think we need a new tape bob yeah yeah yeah or you have the pencil you know because yeah using your pinky trying to get it trying to get the pink trying to get it fixed you know but um you know and then so who would ever believe that but yeah instrument that's so amazing you know todd hall again became an evangelist of it, of auto hospitality. And you just see, but also you see the joy in your team's spirit because their close ratio goes up. That means their numbers go up. That means their sales go up.

That means their close ratio goes up. That means they're happier when they go home. You always talk about a low close ratio is, you know, if you have a 50% or lower close ratio, that half the people are coming in your shop telling you no. Well, that is, can you imagine getting rejected 50% of the day? 50% and more, actually as low as 30% getting rejected.

No, no, button it up. No, no, no, no, no. Oh, my gosh. And then you have to go home.

And I'm like, wow, man, you can have a very high close ratio because the key is being nice on the phone, transparency, take pictures. Treat your customer like family, just like you were talking to your mother, father, brother. It's not that hard. And then when that customer comes and pick up the car, be nice.

Show them what you've done again. You know, be almost over-explain- And then, you know, we do callbacks on every customer. We make sure I call every customer and thank them for their business. And where else are they going to go?

See, they're so... If they said no to... They're saying yes to somebody because their car is broken. And so, does it take that much more effort to be nice?

No. To sound excited on the phone? It sounds crazy. To like take a pause and be like, hey, good day, Mr.

Hayes. How are you doing today? I did a LinkedIn post, you know, talking about my 40 years in the business. And I show mobile car care, then repair one, and now the company that we're scaling atoms and the rest of the family of businesses.

And, you know, it's hard to believe that the success has always been auto hospitality. That's why we chose the business to clean it up and to answer the phone positive, have positive people. Polaroid cameras is now shooting digital videos, MotoVisual, send it out to the customer. Let them watch it, call them up, explain it to them, close the deal.

I mean, wow, this is not rocket science. And a strong meet and greet again when they're picking up the car. Why wouldn't you want to do business with that company? How can you, you know, just as an operator, you know, the term that we use all the time is you can't unsee it.

Well, see, a customer can't unsee it. See, once a customer comes into your Newnan store. And he sees this positive attitude. He sees the videos.

He sees a shop tour. The car is fixed. That's amazing. He fixes a car, but that's a given.

That's expected. You know, you guys get them home or whatever you do for your transportation needs. Then you get them picked up. You do your invoice review.

You blow them a little kiss when they're leaving. Why wouldn't they come back? Why would they ever go anywhere else? see and they don't see they don't and that's where that that car count keeps going up and up and up and up well i'm so excited for you caleb um boy we're we're up on our hour here so i better wrap up peter's giving me the uh no i i do love you so much um i thank you um you know thank you lord for introducing um us to caleb and in the precision tune team you know we're just honored to work with you guys. Continued success.

Caleb's a runner. I'm a walker. But when Caleb's in town, he's up with us, man. We get those steps in.

Hey, how many steps you got right now? Right now? I've got... Come on, lay it on me.

I changed my goals. I've gotten harder. I am at 8,344. 86, 28, baby. You got me.

Yeah, I was up there. I was crushing it, you know. It's so funny, you know. Caleb has known me a pre-healthy Todd, you know.

And so, man, yeah, I'm up and at it, and we get our steps. And that's also a really fun time when Caleb's in town because, you know, we get to talk business the whole time. We got Charlie's Lackos, Caleb, myself, Eric from VIP if he's in town. You know, we just get this crew of guys, you know, that love to walk and talk.

And it's a beautiful hour spent together getting our steps in. So anyway, Caleb, thank you so much for joining us on Getting Air to Master Tech. We love you so much. I'm so glad you're part of our world and family, and I'm looking forward.

I guess I'll see you this week, and you're coming in for Adam Coffee. By the way, guys, if you're listening to this Adam Coffee live on Sunday, this Sunday at the Marriott, 8 o'clock Sunday after Tectonic, same hotel. So if you're coming in for Tectonic, we have Adam Coffey, who will be talking about private equity, the private equity playbook. He's written three bestsellers, actually four bestsellers.

Adam's coming in. He is our special advisor to Houston-Boston Partnership. So we are bringing him in to actually speak on private equity to a neat group of people. and so you're coming in for that, correct, Caleb? I can't wait to see that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yep, that... So go ahead, Caleb. No, I was just going to say, man, it's been a pleasure.

And thank you for helping change my life, my business's life, but also to help change where we're going in the future. And so to God be the glory, baby. To God be the glory. It's a privilege and so thankful that our paths crossed a couple of years ago.

Well, again, Caleb, continued success with Precision Tune. I'll see you this weekend. I can't wait to see you. and also David's coming and I do believe that's going to be a really fun time. All right, guys.

Again, Todd Hayes, Caleb Nips from Precision Tune. We're going to be signing off from Master Tech to Millionaire and we will talk to you soon. Thank you, guys. All right.

Thank you. See you.