SmartAutomotive

I did the same thing you are doing. Kudos. I also did Sundays too. Three months of that and I finally just quit my job and went headfirst. You can do it alone man! Plan on spending any down time on getting business education. Learn and implement marketing(not advetising) first then focus on learning reading financials next. You will grow so fast you will wonder why you ever worried.

Mitchell requires too much effort to reliably track tech efficiency. I track weekly productivity using the old time stamp clock on the wall. That works well but is a productivity killer when used to track job efficiency. I plan on hopping on the autovitals bandwagon soon.

Ati is good and bad. My business took a major downturn after starting with them. We were doing ok but struggled to get to the next level. We went from ok to barely making it after implementing their approach. We moved from an extremely low income area to a much better location and voila we are now doing better than ever. The moral is the ati approach is great in most circumstances. The advisor training is worth the price of admission. They do offer a lot more than you would think at first. All said, I would do it again.

Same boat here. I struggled for 3 years to improve my business doing tons of different things, always with a focus on customer service, and made it barely to mediocrity. My income for those three years was about $25k a year give or take a few hundred. I hired a mechanic and started woodworking in the back corner of the shop just to forget about it all for a couple of months. Then things changed when a retiring shop owner approached me wanting to sell his business and building. He found us based on the many 5 star reviews posted online. We moved in and everything changed. Now I struggle with keeping up, renovating, and finding the right staff to keep up with production. The moral of this story is if you keep doing the right things and plugging away, eventually the universe (or god, however you want to look at it) will throw you a bone. Don't give up, never surrender. Perseverance is the name of anything worth having in life.

Looking into buying a machine but am unsure of which to purchase. I don't like the BG bladder type machines because I have watched too many C techs do incomplete flushes because they can't easily see the fluid levels in the machine. PROS and CONS for your machine please

All of the appointments are made by phone. We have an appointment setting feature on our website but nobody has used it so far and it has been up for 2 months. We do send appointment confirmation texts and emails.

I am grateful for the responses. I decided to call 3 of the no shows to possibly get some answers. One didn't answer. The other two said they found it cheaper or a friend did the work. I am also amazed at the number of people that do ask to bring their own parts in. I knew before moving to this neighborhood it was going to be an adventure but I never expected so many people to give their word on something and then break it. It just aggravates me the lack of integrity in such a great majority of people. Maybe that is why the median income in this area is around $30,000 a year. Maybe I can take beer as payment and start a new business reselling beer and cigarettes.

I am grateful for the responses. I decided to call 3 of the no shows to possibly get some answers. One didn't answer. The other two said they found it cheaper or a friend did the work. I am also amazed at the number of people that do ask to bring their own parts in. I knew before moving to this neighborhood it was going to be an adventure but I never expected so many people to give their word on something and then break it. It just aggravates me the lack of integrity in such a great majority of people. Maybe that is why the median income in this area is around $30,000 a year. Maybe I can take beer as payment and start a new business reselling beer and cigarettes.

Thanks for the reply. That is what I was thinking but sometimes you just have to hear it from somebody else. Plans are to move within the next 1-2 years. Got to start somewhere.

Just don't show up ever. Only about 40% of appointments actually show up. Our shop is in a poor neighborhood and we are not the work for a six pack of beer mechanic they are used to. It just bothers me and I don't want to be uppity and start asking for credit card numbers to charge people for not showing up.

I am a new shop owner and I am having problems with customers not showing up for their appointments. I even signed on with Kukui and we are sending out appointment reminders. People are responding to the reminders but they still don't show up. Any tactics on having customers actually come in? I wonder if it is just because we have been in business for a year and don't have a solid reputation yet or possibly that we are not building trust with people on the phone. All help greatly appreciated.