Bonus Crossover Episode 2: Bill Brusard on the Howie Carr Show

Welcome to Meet the Experts with Howie Carr. If you're an auto shop owner or know one, then this is an episode you're going to want to listen to. This episode could double your income in 2026. Many people go into business for themselves knowing they're good at what they do, but not knowing how to run a successful business. Bill Broussard of JB Auto Care in Weymouth was one of those people, until he attended an Auto Shop Answers seminar where he learned to streamline and perfect his business model while also elevating the quality of service and experience for his customers. In addition to being the owner of JB Auto Care, Bill is also a partner at Auto Shop Answers, imparting the same advice and training he received years ago to thousands of automotive repair shop owners from around the world. Auto Shop Answers hosts monthly seminars, with one coming up March 21st and 22nd, so don't delay. Visit AutoShopAnswers.com to learn more, or call 925-980-8012.

That number again, 925-980-8012, or visit AutoShopAnswers.com. Here's your host of Meet the Experts, Howie Carr. Welcome to Meet the Experts. Our guest is a guy who's been on the show before, Bill Broussard from JB Auto Care in North Weymouth, and he also has a segment on my show, a very popular segment, where he gives the listeners advice on how they can keep their cars in working order. Bill is back with us today to talk about a new project that he's been involved in it for a while, but now he's going more public with it. Bill Broussard, first of all, welcome back to Meet the Experts. Thanks for having me, Howie. It's always a pleasure. Tell us about this project that you're unveiling to the public. Yeah, so we're getting more public with it, but it's a company that's been around for 20 years, so it's called Auto Shop Answers. What we do is we teach shop owners on how to grow and scale the business, how to be

more profitable, add more staff, which will add more sales, and we teach them auto hospitality, which is a different spin from the auto repair business. As we know, the auto repair business, most people think of the dirty mechanic with the dirty shop, but in our case, that's not the case. We teach people a different way of doing business. I'm a mechanic who became a shop owner who stalled out in first gear like most shop owners because you don't know what to do next. You're a great mechanic, people like you, but you peak out pretty quick when a couple of cars show up, so what do you do next? So that's exactly what we show people, what to do next. If you're not an auto shop owner, and if you know someone who owns an auto shop, you should probably listen in here because you might get some tips that you could pass on and some phone numbers or websites that you could pass on to your friends because this is really

a good opportunity to get some advice that can be very valuable to auto shop owners. And I think probably, Bill, as we go through this half hour or so, you're going to be giving some tips to people who just own other small businesses. There's certain things that apply across the board, aren't there? Any service industry, any business at all. I call it the curse of the small business. You're good at a certain craft, so you're like, yeah, I can open up my own business. This is exactly what I did and exactly what most small business owners do. They're good at a particular craft, like a plumber, electrician, mechanic, so they open up a business. Hey, I could do it better and cheaper. And then they quickly find out it's not about their craft anymore, it's about running a business. So this is where, if you don't get help, you'll just stall on first gear, your dreams will basically go by the wayside. I've known shop owners in business for 40 years, they went into business, they want

to kill it. They wanted to take on the world. They hired people, fired people, hired people, fired people, and 40 years later, they're frozen in time and they're 70, 80 years old and they're like, it never worked out. We all drive past all kinds of businesses like that. They've been around for 30 years and the guy is still there and he's aging out and he has a good product or a good service in many cases, and they've somehow never been able to move to the next step. So that's what auto shop answers is all about for auto shop owners. And again, there are more general rules that could be used by anyone who wants to move into small businesses, but you're the best person to talk about this. What is auto shop answers? Auto shop answers, we teach business owners, we perfected the business model in the automotive space. So the founder, Todd Hayes, he started a repair shop back in 1986. He launched a chain of stores and he started with one.

So he can't change oil. He's not a mechanic. So when I first met him, I was blown away. I'm like, what do you mean? You're not a mechanic. You don't have a repair shop. He's like, nope. And I had 35 of them and I sold it to a venture capital company. So I'm like, I need to learn, I need to learn that. How did you do that? So I went to every class he had, which at the time it was a different company. It was called client one. Then it evolved into auto shop answers. So he just showed me stem to stern, you know, how to put budgets together, how to recruit the best people, you know, how to actually put a plan together, read profit and loss statements, how to attract customers, how to treat that customer with world class service. I was taught as a mechanic, you just fix a car and you missed a wonderful after that, but you're doing a different thing. You're offering auto hospitality, just like a hotel or a restaurant to customers.

And now it needs to duplicate, it needs to be scalable. So he gives you basically a whole manual on how to run your operations. And then if you want, you can duplicate it at, you know, at minimum, it's going to make you a better business owner, more profitable, which you can pay your employees more and you can serve the customers better. You can reinvest in your facilities. So when I first met him, I'm like, wow, if you could run 35 of them with this concept, I can run one really good. So I set it up when I had a management team, you know, five or six people, and it was a lifestyle business and enabled me to, you know, I stayed at home with my wife and raised my kids and chaperoned trips and took them. We had a blast and it was a win win for my management team and myself. So now as I got older, my kids are grown, like I said, I was playing checkers at that point. Now I'm playing chess. So we're taking this to a different level and we're growing multi-units.

So now I'm a multi-shop owner and it's very scalable. We have over 200 employees and we have a business with an enterprise value of, you know, in the nine figures. So it's a whole different strategy of business, but it's available to you if you go through AutoShop Answers. This is just a way for an AutoShop owner to grow his business, to make it more efficient, and then through the efficiencies that they can learn, they can maximize their profits and maybe even expand. So what exactly, Bill Broussard from JB AutoCare in Weymouth, what is your role in the company? So my role, I'm one of the partners there, and it's also, it's a way of us giving back to the industry. You know, when I was, when I opened up my shop, you know, I was struggling financially. It's like, you know, I was spending a lot of time in the shop and, you know, that's not healthy for a relationship, especially if you're married and you have children.

So we show these owners how to, and it transforms people's lives. You know, we're talking, it could be for generations. So my role there is I'm a coach, I'm a trainer, you know, I teach certain classes and I help these shop owners better their businesses, which actually just serves their community better. And it raises the bar in the industry. We should tell people how to learn more about AutoShop Answers if they want to take part in this program. What's the website? The website is www.autoshopanswers.com. It has all the schedule of dates. We do a class once a month in Houston. You can fill out a form there. So there is one seminar a month. How long is the seminar? So it's a two-day seminar. Bill Broussard from JB Auto Care, another one of our Howie Car Show advertisers is also involved. Tell us about that. So his name is Charlie Zalacos and he's one of my business partners, one of my dear friends. So I met Charlie, he was one of our clients about 12 years ago.

So he has a shop in Newton in Watertown and he started out in Watertown with a two-day shop. One of his vendors had him give me a call because he's just like, you know, Charlie is a great guy. He's an unbelievable mechanic like myself. But he stalled out in first gear, kind of like I did. So this vendor had him call me and he's like, hey, can you help me? I said, I absolutely can. So you know, talk to me about your history of your business. So he said, you know, I'm a great mechanic, I opened up this shop, but you know, how do you get customers? So I'm like, that's a great fundamental question. How do you get customers? I thought he was in business. Yeah. He thought he would just roll his toolbox in there and customers would just start showing up and unfortunately that doesn't happen. So I went down to his shop, you know, we talked a little bit and I'm like, you know what, you need to meet my mentor, Todd Hayes.

So let's get together and you know, we'll mentor you. So you know, that was back in like 2012. So from there, Charlie is now a partner of ours. You know, he's part of this, you know, nine figure enterprise company. He's an unbelievable trainer. He's just really come into his own. He's just a powerhouse. Now he's a Greek immigrant. He came here from another country with no money, no one. He only knew four words. Now he's a multimillionaire. It's a great American success story. How many independent auto shops are there in the country or in Massachusetts or, I mean, how many thousands of people are we talking about here? Every city, a town has multiple shops. So there's hundreds of thousands of repair shops across the country. So like you said, I'll listen. If you're not a shop owner, I'm sure you know a shop owner because every town and city has multiple shops there and you know, this information can change their lives.

Is it harder for these independent shops now with the electronic components in the vehicles? We talk about this when you're on the show, on my show once a month, how tough it is and how different it is from the old days when everybody had two bays at a service station and was doing repair work. I'm not going to say easier, but the information is easier to access. You know, when I first entered this industry back in the eighties, late eighties, you know, they had those big Chilton phone book manuals, right? And if you didn't own one, you know, you had no access to the information because you know, the internet didn't exist. So if you were lucky enough to get one, well then you had to open the 2000 page book and try to find the information and it really didn't. It didn't talk to you. You know, you couldn't Google information. So it was tough to be a mechanic to me back then. So you had to really know your stuff and you do not.

So you still need to know the theory, but now it's very computerized so that you can plug it in, it will guide you in the right direction, but you still get to know electricity and plumbing. You know, that's the thing about being a technician, automotive technician. You have so many trade skillsets, you're a mechanic, you're a plumber, you're an electrician and you know, you need over a hundred thousand dollars in tools to repair these vehicles. You know, the industry, the bar is starting to raise in it to being more respected as an industry. It's wow, this is, it is a very hard industry where it was frowned upon before, you know, the mechanics would look down upon, but it's an actual industry where it's, you know, it's, it's like, wow, you're a technician. This is not a easy skillset and it, you know, it can be backbreaking work. So you have to, you know, love it with a passion, which we do. And you know, then you have to have access to this knowledge.

You know, the computer is making another level of challenge. You have to be good with computers. A lot of technician though, they work with their laptops, which, you know, before you didn't have the, you know, want to turn the computer on. For the record, by the way, I would say I've never looked down my nose at any auto mechanic who could get my car back up and put me back on the road. I don't think most people do. No, and I don't think it's, but typically, you know, the shop, you know, you pull up to shop is dirty with speedy dry and it's, you know, it's never thought of as auto hospitality or the Ritz Carlton. But over the last few years, the industry has raised the bar. You're starting to see these mega dealerships, you know, they'll look like, you know, shopping malls. In our shops, they're impeccably clean and we have professional people with, we used to have ties at the front counter that they polish or, you know, everyone's in uniform.

So we're raising the bar for auto hospitality. We're bringing professionalism into the auto repair space where it was lacking years ago. We're talking to Bill Broussard from JB Auto Care. You know him from my show, talking to the listers about what their automotive needs are and he's now involved and is trying to get people interested at getting into the seminars at auto shop answers, auto shop answers. It's for auto hospitality to teach auto shop owners about this. Bottom line, Bill, if you're an independent auto shop owner, why should you attend one of the upcoming seminars offered once a month at Houston for two days? Everyone that comes through, it will change your life. You'll rethink business. So we've perfected a business model and we've perfected it in the automotive space where you don't have to think about anything. All you have to do is read the manual on what to do next on how to make your shop look,

the appearance of your shop, how to answer the phone to invite the customer in, how to say yes to a customer so they don't have to wait two weeks for an appointment just so you can write up a repair order. I have a newer vehicle and I had to wait two weeks for an appointment. When I dropped it off, they said, you know, we'll get it in sometime next week. I thought this was my point. No, this is your appointment just to get the ticket written up. I'm like, what? Yeah. So the, if you call a dealership, you know, there's a two weeks wait, who can wait two weeks when they have a broke car? So we teach you how to say yes, how to staff for that. So how to have speed of service, speed of sales. It's fast for the customer and they get the car back quickly, efficiently and professionally. So, so again, a lot of this is just servicing your clientele, giving the customers a good experience that's going to lead to good word of mouth, which is going to lead to increases

in business. Yeah. And it's no magic sauce. This is advanced common sense. Everything makes sense. So you can run the cars through quicker and faster and bring much better world-class service to your customer. You know, I drive by a couple of places down here in South Florida and they look like they've been around for 30, 40 years. I think they, Bob's it's on the Dixie highway. Yeah. And I mean, Bob's good. You know, I could imagine if Bob was listening to this, he would say, damn, you know, I got to, I got to work every day. I got these people coming in and you know, I need a paint job on this place and you know, how am I going to take two days out and spend some money to go to Houston? Yeah. So what do you tell Bob? Well, I tell Bob, you know, if you don't, if you live in another 40 years from now, let's say 10, 20 years from now, you're still going to be saying the same thing. So when I went into business originally and you know, I couldn't get out of my own way.

My first class I took, and it wasn't with Todd Hayes, it was a different coaching company that taught me, I'm going to say high school level business. It was way more than I knew. So that was life changing in itself. So that cost me at the time, $7,500, which I did not have. I put it on a credit card and I'm not saying, you know, go broke over this, but it was so important that I had this information and with a month or two time, you know, I was able to pay that back. You know, I started running a profitable business, you know, and it was at a more of a high school level, like I said, a lifestyle business, which was great. And when I met Todd, it, you know, it transformed it to a whole nother level. My point is, what's the price of going to Harvard these days? It's what? Yeah. A hundred thousand. Let's say a hundred thousand a year. Their objection to that. They're like, you know, like a hundred thousand dollars a year.

The price of ignorance has gone up. So you know, you went into business to be a business owner. So I highly suggest you get educated on, on this so we could help Bob, you know, what is two days out of your life. You probably close those two days anyways, because it's on a Saturday and Sunday. You know, most shop owners are open five days a week. You know, we're different. We're open seven days a week. We're retailers. We're in the retail business. So Bob could go to this program and Hey, if Bob's not happy, we give his money back. We're not doing this for the money. We're doing it to give back to the industry. Yes, we make money, but it's a ministry to us, but it's not a nonprofit ministry. But if Bob is not happy, Bob gets his money back. If someone wants to learn more, Bill Broussard from JB auto care, where do they go to learn more about auto shopping answers and to sign up if they desire? Yeah. So go on, open your computer and go on www.autoshopanswers.com.

How far away do people come from to go to the seminar? So we're in Houston. We have people coming from all over the map. Canada, I'm on the East coast. I fly in. We got people from the West coast. We had a shop owner come in from Australia. So it's, it's becoming a worldwide event. You know, like I said, it's advanced common sense. You can implement this business model and do any business. This is a professional. Like if you got your MBA at Harvard, you would learn, you know, business and you would probably learn this style business. Like how do you grow a chain of auto repair shops? We've cracked the code. We've had perfected a business model and we teach you how to do that. And it's two days, it's a, it's a weekend at Houston. How many seminars have you done with the auto shop answers now, Bill Broussard? So, I mean, we've been doing them for 20 years. So I'm going to say hundreds, I've lost track, but hundreds, and we've transformed thousands

of people's lives. Matter of fact, there's people that come through our program and then they spin off and open up a company up trying to help people do what we do. There's been many people like that in this, you know, I caution you in this industry too, and this is true in any industry, you know, I call them, you know, the fake gurus. So they, they'll take our information, never owned a shop, and they're trying to teach other shop owners how to be successful. So I caution you with these people. So you know, what's their resume? It's like, I'm a master mechanic who became a business owner. I've been doing it for 30 years. Never been stumped once on my show, by the way, I'm really impressed by that. But I also, you know, but now it's like I transitioned into CEO and that's a tough transition because it's a different mindset because I can't unsee what I know about being a technician. You know, as you know, with the people hammering me with questions, I hammer back with the

answer, you know, so I still know how to do it and I still like to do it, but I have to, I can't run my business out of my toolbox. So it's actually, it was a sad day where I actually had to take my toolbox home because I couldn't stop, fix the cars myself, but I had to be able to run my business and become a master of that craft. Do you ever have these in New England? Because people have said, I, gee, if I could just go to brain tray here. Yeah. So it's funny you say that, Howard. So we'd had one actually last summer where we call them like a peer group and we had one in Boston where Charlie and I spearheaded that group and we gave them tours through our shop and then we debriefed at the hotel afterwards and it was very fruitful to the people going there because there's nothing more powerful. It's one thing me telling you how to do it from a classroom, but when I can bring you to my shop and show you how I do it, like we can set ourselves up.

We're not gurus, we're gurus. We own a shop and we will show you how to do it. We'll show you our numbers, you know, we're the real deal. Do you think you might have some down the road if people want it to wait or is it just better to. Yeah. So we do plan on hosting one this summer, but we have scheduled events every month in Houston. So hop on a plane and you can, you know, we have shops in Houston too. We got, we're going to tour you through. You can come to Houston or you can wait this summer. I'm just not sure on the dates yet. We haven't pinned that down. Last summer we did it. I think it was September. So if somebody said, you know, just saying, geez, I gotta, I gotta do something. I'm a, you know, I'm spinning my wheels here in this auto shop. I want to get down as soon as possible. How soon could somebody get down if they wanted to? So you can check the calendar, go to auto shop answers.com and we have the whole year

mapped out and sometime we add dates in there also, but we have the whole, at least one per month mapped out for the whole year. I know this is a, is a technical seminar that you conducted auto shop answers, but can you just give the listeners a sample of the kind of tips that they're going to get? You know, whenever I have you on, you always say we are open seven days a week and that's always blows me away that you're open seven days a week because I've never heard of an auto shop open seven days a week. And you also say you have loaner cars, which dealers sometimes have, but very seldom independent auto shops. But those are just two things that stick out in my mind. But is that the kind of tip you give people? And give me some more examples. So it's me, but I can camp out on that just for a second. So the seven days a week, you know, it's a turnoff to a lot of shop owners because right now they're turning the crank every day.

So they're like, Oh, I got to be there seven days a week. Well you don't, you can do it on, I don't care if you're open one day a week, but it will be the best day open possible. So let's say you still want to be open five days a week. That's perfectly fine. So you can run, you know, there's some shop owners, they adapt the four day work week, you know, cause the low culture that's been out there kind of crept in, but that's not really serving the customer. If you're not open on the weekend, you're not serving it. Now it's a five day work week to your employees. And also, so we're in new England. We just had a month, a 28 day month in February. Now what also happened in February? We got a historic snowstorm that shut me down for like three days. So I just lost three days. So I was only open 25 days this month. You know, sometimes in business you don't break even to the 25th of the month. So when you're open those extra days, now I can break even on say the 20th of the month.

So now I have 10 extra days to produce a profit. Now you can say yes to customers, Hey, my car's broke. The car doesn't know what day it is, right? It's not going to, Hey, it's Monday morning. Let me, let me drop my fan belt on the ground. It's like, it could be Sunday morning. Yeah. No, I remember when the blue laws were abolished in Massachusetts and the liquor stores had to open seven days a week and all these mom and pop liquor stores are going, oh, let's keep the blue laws. So it's only open six days a week. Yeah. You talk about short sighted, short staff. They don't know what they don't know, right? That's more of a, it's a lifestyle business. So they're thinking I'm going to be open seven days a week. Uh, so, but if you think on a retail, it's like, you know, some people like, well, you know, be, be closed Sunday to go to church. We can go to church on Saturday night, Saturday night. So if you went to a mall or Walmart or Starbucks and they, you saw them close on a Sunday or

a Saturday, wouldn't you be like, what's going on here? Or a gas station, right? All those mom and pop liquor stores that were complaining. They're all gone now. Yeah. Are they, are they sold there? The people that ran them before are gone. Yeah. This is like industry disruptors. You know, we talk about the medical field too. It's like, you know, a doctor is open five days a week. You know, these new urgent cares, these are industry disruptors that are coming in. It's like, wait, I can get my shots on Sunday. So it's, it's better. It's you serve the customer. It doesn't matter what day though. It's still a five day work week to your employees, but you're open for customers is about customer service. So this is part of your, uh, auto hospitality that, that you've been talking about. Give me another couple of examples before we move on. Sure. We have loaner cars for the customer. You know, every customer needs a ride.

We also set up Uber services, but one of the big things we do, and this is a big nugget, we take pictures and videos of everything a customer needs and we make presentations to our customer when we call it the rack attack. So when a car comes in, typically you're, if you go to anywhere automotive, they'll just take the repair order, give it to a technician and Hey, look through this car and you know, let me know what the thing needs. Well, the technician, you know, you might have maybe an unethical technician and you might recommend a car needs break. So it doesn't like to fix oil leaks and doesn't write up the oil leak, whatever. So we do thorough inspections with the managers, the owner, myself, and we take pictures and videos or the customer for total integrity. So we show the customer exactly what's wrong with the car. And so after the job is sold, then we can transfer that ticket over to the technician.

Now the technician, he doesn't even have to look at the car. We're just giving them a ticket with what parts to replace. So it's more efficient to him and it's a better service to the customer. So it's quicker. So it speeds up the process. So in turn, you can run more cars per day and you can say yes to more customers rather than like I said, when I originally opened up, it was me, myself, and I, I can only say yes to two or three cars a day, if that, and then I had to fix them. How many people are, uh, will be lecturing or presenting new, uh, techniques or ideas to the people who come down to Houston for the seminar? So we have two gentlemen teaching one class and then we just open up another class at one of our other locations. So there's four instructors right now for right now. And as it grows, we can add instructors in that we have coaches like I'll coach other shop owners through the month. I also host a boardroom where I'll go through companies, profitable off statements, make

recommendations, just answer any question they have. No question is off limit, you know, a lot of these coaching companies, Oh, if you want the answer to that question, you have to sign up for this class. We don't hold back. We're in it to win it. We're in to help you win it. It's a, it's a ministry to us. If someone's an auto shop owner, uh, signs up and comes down to Houston and takes part in the two day seminar, if he needs some, uh, advice or counsel later on, can he just call you or Todd or one of the other people involved in a auto shop answer? Sure. We can give them tips. And now if we have to go more in depth with them and if he wants us to work with them on a weekly, monthly basis, then he can sign up to it. Like we have coaching programs, but I assume you also could give people advice on, uh, you know, when the time is to expand. If they want to 100% where the locations are that they should be looking at if they want

to expand. Right. Yeah. So analyze locations for you. Cause if you have a miss on a location that could take you out, that's what makes people get cold feet. If they own businesses, they don't want to expand. We've all known people who tried to expand and they've ruined a successful one shop or two shop operation. Sure. Cause they, maybe they got lucky on the first one. They did. Okay. And then we're like, Oh, I can do this twice. And then they're not doing okay. So that's a different now when you start going multi units. But when you partner up with us, you have a board of directors. We're doing it. And we did it like Todd. He grew a chain of 35 stores and sold it off to a venture capital company. By the time he was 35, he's brilliant. We're talking to bill Broussard about auto shop answers. It is a, basically a two day seminar for auto shop owners, and they will take a look at your business from top to bottom, give you all kinds of tips and it's two day seminar

at Houston. So tell people again, bill, how they can get involved or if they want to learn more about it, where should they go? So go to our website, it's www dot auto shop answers.com. Okay. Bill Broussard. I think we've covered everything. Auto shop answers. There's a new seminar coming up March in Houston. If you want more answers, you can go to auto shop answers.com auto shop answers.com. And this is a chance to really, uh, energize your business and make a heavier profits. If you have an auto shop, it seems like a very good opportunity. And bill Broussard, if you want to listen to him on the show once a month on my show, you will see how, how much he knows about the motor vehicles just directly. I mean, he's not some guy from Harvard business school. He knows the business from top to bottom bill. Have I, have I missed anything? Do you want to say anything else before we check out? Yeah. Let me finish up by saying, so you're saying, you know, I'm a mechanic and I didn't just

go to Harvard business school. So it's like, I've done this, there's nothing in this business that I cannot do and haven't done at an expert level. So look, we all went into business because we love fixing cars and we want to help people. But if you don't have the correct information, you're going to stall out. So I highly recommend if you want to run a more professional, profitable business, you know, come to auto shop answers, and then we'll teach you the next level of what to do next. If you want to run one shop or multi-owner shops and you want to do a private equity transaction one day, which I highly recommend because that's to maximize your return on your investment. You know, I highly recommend you come to this class and what I believe you have. If you have the ability to do this, you have the responsibility to do this. Bill Broussard from a JB auto care in North Weymouth and it's a, it's a great, great place.

And it's very clean too. On top of everything else. The first time I went there, I thought they, you know, wow, we're doing a remote. They cleaned the place up and then I, then I found out it's like this 365 days a year. That's just, that's just one of the little tips. And like you said, you, you don't, you never look down to mechanics, but your perception was you expect it to be dirty. I was expecting nothing else. Yeah. But if you walk into a restaurant, if you walked into a restaurant that was dirty, you probably wouldn't eat there. No, I wouldn't. Yeah. Bill Broussard. This has been a very informative episode of meet the experts and I look forward to having you on the show every month. And again, if you want to learn more about auto shop answers, how to really energize your business, if you have an auto shop, or if you know somebody that has an auto shop, go to auto shop answers.com and check it out. There's a seminar every month, two day seminar.

Bill Broussard, thank you so much for being with us here on meet the experts. Thank you for having me on. So sign up now for the next auto shop answers coaching seminar on March 21st and 22nd in Houston. Visit auto shop answers.com or call 925-980-8012 again, 925-980-8012 or visit auto shop answers.com. Thanks for joining us for another episode of meet the experts with Howie Carr. We'll be back soon with more interesting guests you're sure to learn a great deal from.