Joe Marconi

Not a problem, I enjoy the conversation.

I'm glad to hear that you understand the need for growth. One thing to remember, create a stradegy for steady, contiunous growth. It's not one thing you do that will make your business a sucess. It's a combination of everything you do. Work hard on your business and understand the numbers. Like Walt Disney said; "Dare to Dream"

Yes. Depending on the position and after certain goals are met, a bonus will be paid. The precenages vary per person and goal.

Everyone needs direction and everyone needs deadlines. We would never conduct business without knowing when parts are going to arrive, when jobs need to be done, how long jobs will take to complete and every other aspect of running a repair business. What’s vital to your business is to understand the amount of work needed (labor hours and parts sold) in order to reach your sales goal, which translates into profit. In other words you establish deadlines and goals on a daily basis. You probably do it so instinctively that you don’t even realize you’re doing it. Construction is a bit different. Although it’s your project and you have a General Contractor (G.C.), you are at times at the mercy of a particular contractor. I have gotten tough over the past few months and talk frequently to the G.C. about the progress of the construction. With any construction project, establish goals and deadlines from the start. Meet with the G.C. and the all the contractors and establish a realistic deadline for completion for each contractor. Review those deadlines often and make the contactors accountable. This may be hard. What happens in the construction business is that if they land another contract, they try to do both at the same time, yours and the other job. They don’t want to loose the income so they over extend themselves. I can’t blame them, but your main concern is your project and this needs to be conveyed to the contractor. The General Contractors on my project is extremely good at making sure contractors hold up to their commitments. My job is to have periodic meetings with the G.C. to review the progress and to make sure we’re still within our budget. Cost overruns and extras can kill you. There will be countless extras that each contractor will want to up sell you. Stick to your game plan. If the extra saves money in the long term, carefully consider it. If it’s a “nice to have”, but not a “need to have”, it might be best to pass on it. There will be enough unexpected expenses for you to worry about. We are coming down to the wire, with about 2 months to go. Every waking (and sleeping) hour is devoted to this project. Excited? Yes. Scared? A little. Nervous? You bet! Stay tuned!

Eric, if you want to grow and thrive in this business you will need to expand. With your present situation, it will very difficult to increase sales and productivity. Even with the addition of another tech. You need to look into expanding your bays or finding a new location. If you find a new location, try to go as big as possible. Trust me, I have been in business for 29 years and having bay space is a distinct advantage. Another recommendation I can make is to slowly remove yourself from the bays and into the office. Or get someone who can run the service counter. I used to think that no one could do as good a job as I could. That’s bull! There are good people out, find them! Your mindset will also dictate your ability to grow. If you go to work everyday and your focus is on fixing cars, you will become very good at that. You need to go to work with the mindset on growing your business. If your focus is on that, you will eventually become good at growing your business. I am in the process right now of expanding my shop. We are going from 6 bays to 10. It’s a huge undertaking, but one that I believe will be my retirement. You can read my blog (Joe’s blog) about the process of expanding. Good Luck! Joe Marconi

Before I pay anyone (Service advisor, tech, foreman, etc) I establish goals. I factor in my breakeven, previous sales, return on investment and then set a bonus for a percentage after that figure is reached. I have found that to pay a percentage of sales without a benchmark goal takes away their incentive to do better.

We really should consider the chat session, please contact me. Joe

I understand what you are doing. My only concern is that some of those dealer ads are misleading. For example: Timing belt $199.00. If they come to you with a coupon, it's up to you to inform them that this probably does not include the water pump, coolant, drive belts, etc. The cusotmer may think that YOU are trying to up sell them. I don't like price wars. I need to be competetive, but profitable. I don't mind competing apples to apples, but I rather take my chances building my business based on value proposition. In other words, what makes my company stand out against others? We all sell the same things, what can I do that will make people come to me. If it's only the price or for a discount, it won't be long untill you're pricing yourself out of business. I have plenty of customers that tell me I am sometimes more than the dealer but they come to me for all the other reasons: the ride home, the while you wait service, friendly staff, clean shop, etc. Just my thoughts, what do you think?

There is a future in the auto repair buisness. 150k is a lot on money for any career. It's not impossible but you have to work really hard and dedicate yourself to the trade. There will always be work for us in this business, inspite of the economy. You just need to be good and be the best.

Just wanted to bring up this subject again: Welcome Walk-ins and don't be too tied down to a rigid schedule. I understand you need structure and have to organize your work, but people today are frustrated and fed up with poor customer service. Try to accommodate people on their time. We have and it’s has paid off, especially in this climate.

My techs get paid according to their experience, ability and ASE certifications. All techs are paid a salary plus a productivity bonus. Each tech must produce an hour of labor for each hour worked. If a tech books more hours than he worked, he will get a bonus for those extra hours. For example: If a tech works 42 hours in a week but produces 46 hours, he will get paid an additional 4 hours in his pay as a bonus. My lead tech will make an average of $26 to $40 per hour, depending on how good the work was. Less experienced techs will earn from $18 to $25 per hour. We have 4 techs at the present time, one service advisor and a shop foreman. The 4-bay expansion is not yet complete. We will open this spring and add another tech.

Sounds like a good idea. Benchmarking and share ideas is a good thing. I will do some homework and see what I find.

No, sorry. how would that work? There's no actual interaction, or shop visits?

Sometimes when the owner is also the lead tech, there is not enough time to devote to running the business. Your ideas and thoughts about running the business are right on track. The big problem you will have is getting your father to believe in the concept that he must run the business and hire people to work with him. This will allow him to gow the business and also reduce stress.

Doing repair work with pits is a hard way to be productive. You need to have lifts to be more productive. Pits are nice for some service work, but only having pits is a hard way to make a living. We make it a point in my shop to be an organized and as clean as possible. The way I feel is that if you are going to spend 8 to 10 hours a day working, it should be a nice place to work. I don’t if it’s possible to convert your layout so lifts can be installed. You mentioned moving your location; that might be a better option. In any case, having lifts, tools and the right equipment makes all the difference in the world. Advertising is important in order to maintain and grow a business. The most important form of advertising, although, is to your existing customer base. Advertising to your own customers is cheaper and you stand a better chance of getting these customers to respond to your advertising. Most of my advertising and marketing is to my own customers. We send them service reminders, seasonal promotions, newsletters and we also collect email addresses and send people email reminders for service. We also have a web site and use google and yahoo search engines to direct people to our web site. I don’t do yellow page advertising anymore and stopped all print ads in local newspapers. For me, they don’t work anymore. We started TV advertising this past summer and it’s been very good. I also purchased local mailing lists and send these people post cards with offerings. This works good also. The best advertising is word of mouth. Provide excellent service; be polite and accommodating to all your customers. When people are treated nice and the job is done well, they will return. That’s how you build a business…. one customer at a time. Just wondering; do you share our dialogues with your father?

People are starting to drive more and that's a positive thing. Heating oil is down also. Let's hope this stays for a while so people can catch up on their bills.

I know exactly what you are talking about and it frustrates me too! I too often think I'm running a kindergarten, instead of a business. Lead techs can butt heads and make waves. They are good and they know it. We work hard at balancing the jobs among the techs. It's not easy, but I will not tolerate “attitudes” anymore. The most qualified techs will get jobs that we know they can handle and the younger techs will more of the grunt work. But, even the C techs need to move up the ladder and must be challenged. Have meetings with your people and explain your action plan. You are the leader, be fair and balanced and they will follow. Maintain morale also. You want all your people feeling like they are all being given the same respect. Hope I helped...Joe

Issa, a lot of techs and shop owners from your father's generation have bad feelings about the auto repair industry. And, being from that generation, I completely understand. When I started, work was terribly hard in horrible conditions. I worked long hours, six days a week for little pay. Even when I went into business I worked too hard for too many years. I didn’t know any better, because no one taught us how to run a business to make money. Guys like me thought that the only way to be successful was to work harder and harder. But that only gets you bitter and old. I have learned that in order to be successful and make money I need to be a businessman. I now work hard on growing my business to make money to pay my people a decent wage. I want the best people and that means I need to pay them well. Times are changing and there is money to be made. Your father has a good point about UTI and other trade schools. Like any school, you get of it what you put into it. In the end you have to do what makes you happy. Being an auto tech made me happy, that's why I stuck with it. Being in business still makes me happy, that's why I still do it. But making a profit makes me happier. I recommend working in field for a few years after high school, just to make sure you like it enough to make a career in the auto business. Then you can think about a trade school or other forms of education. Talk to father and tell him how you feel, he will warm up and help you. He's got a lot of knowledge under his belt and in his hands. Keep the questions coming! Joe

We had a smaller than avergae increase in sales, but an increase is an increase. Overall gross profit was also up. So, I am not complaining at all. The tough economy made us realize that we needed to make changes and pay more attention to our customer's needs.

We are in the final stages of construction. The exterior siding is almost complete along with the electrical work, plumbing, security system, heating and air conditioning. We expect the building to be complete within six to eight weeks, barring any unforeseen obstacles. Photos of the project will be available soon. A great deal of time has been spent on the design and layout of the not only the building, but the parking lot layout and the workflow process, as well. One thing I have learned in the past 28 years is that productivity is the key to profit. How your technicians move through the day can be the difference between making money and losing your shirt. Our old parking lot was a nightmare. We would park 25 to 40 cars in a lot designed for a maximum of 18. We would stack cars 3 to 4 deep and found ourselves on many an occasion moving 2 to 3 cars to get to the one we needed. This killed productivity and morale. We can now park 50 or more cars which greatly improves productivity and traffic flow. Also, an inviting, organized parking area means a lot to customers. They know where to park, and find it easy to navigate in and out of the lot. Perhaps the most important is in bay design. The existing 6-bay shop will be reserved for the bigger repair and maintenance work: transmissions, engine repair, analysis, timing belts, etc. We will staff this building with 3 techs, a foreman and a service advisor. Each tech will have 2 bays. With this design, a tech can bring a car in one of his bays, diagnose the problem and have the other bay available to start on another car if he needs to wait for parts to arrive. Or, if an unexpected vehicle arrives with a problem, having an extra bay available is convenient. This eliminates having to put cars back together when waiting for parts or having to work on jacks outside the bay due to lack of room. Again, I can’t stress enough that productivity is the key to profit. Keep the techs flowing smoothly throughout the day will make you more money. The new facility will have 4 bays and will primarily be used for more express-type service: oil change service, tire rotations, state inspections, tires, alignments, batteries, etc. One of advantages of designing a building from scratch is that you design it the way you want. Everything aspect about the new 4 bay shop is tied to productivity: The location of the office, phones, computer information system, inventory, bathroom, tire machine, balancer, floor jacks, jack stands, part delivery entrance and other equipment. Each bay will have overhead access to an air line, droplights, electrical power and metered oil reels. Each tech will have a cart complete with chemicals, rags, oil drain plugs, oil drain gaskets and other hardware. You don’t want techs walking to the far side of the shop for an oil filter and then to the other side for a drain plug gasket and then across the bays for an air line. That wastes time and kills productivity. Everything a tech needs must be within reasonable reach. The new facility will have three techs and one service advisor. We will install 3 Rotary Lifts: two 10,000-pound lifts and one 12,000-pound lift. The fourth bay will be the alignment bay. A flush-mounted Hunter alignment machine will find its home in this bay. Although we will promote while-you-wait service, we will not position ourselves as a quick lube. However, contrary to what many people in our industry believe, we welcome walk-ins and actually encourage it. I do realize that smaller shops with 2 to 4 bays may find it difficult to accommodate people walking in without an appointment, but the consumer's mindset has changed the way it expects service. For small shops and larger ones, I recommend developing a system that accommodates customers on their time, not yours. People don’t always have time to make an appointment to drop their car off for service. And they certainly will not make an appointment to drop a car off for an oil change. Performing simple services like oil changes, tire rotations and state inspections will build a customer base that will eventually lead to more profitable work. To expand your business will require an increase in your customer base and a different business model. At our shop, we no longer tell people when to bring in their car; we ask them when they would like to bring it in. Building a business is about building relationships, one customer at a time. Make it easy for the customer. Don’t get bogged down with a rigid schedule. It will take time to develop and your people may resist change. Our entire workflow process is designed to maximize productivity in order to boost car counts. An increase in car counts gives us the opportunity to sell more work and prosper. Find ways to prosper, it’s a lot more fun. Stay tuned! Latest Photos:

Robert, it makes me proud to have a fellow shop owner read my blog. My goal is to help other through my experiences. I wish you the best of luck. I was 25 years old when I opened my shop. I rented 4 bays in a large building shared by two others business. And although that was 28 years ago I remember it like it was yesterday. As you may know we grew to six bays and soon will have 2 facilities with a total of 10. As far as obstacles go, I would have to say that the biggest obstacle I had was to learn how to be a businessman and not just a tech that happened to own a business, there were so many business skills that I did not have, and that actually hurt my business for a number of years. When I left the Ford dealer I was an A rated tech, performing everything from transmission overhauls to engine rebuilding. But, what I did not know is that being the best tech does guarantee success in the business world. Marking and advertising are two key elements in growing a business. In my opinion, marketing is more important because advertising may get them in the door, but how you market your business keeps them coming back. The best brake job in the world means nothing if you were rude to the customer or did not get the car back to them when promised. If a marketing strategy or advertising promotion works, stay with until it does not work. Don’t be afraid of trying things new. If something does not work, no big deal. Learn from it and move on. Don’t give too much away either. Sell value, not price. Remember, if price was the only factor people cared about, people would be driving Yugo’s not Honda’s and Toyota’s. Yugo was about price, not value. Let’s keep in touch and please ask me anything. I will be making a blog entry this weekend and will be posting photos soon. Joe Marconi

Glad to have you with us. At 16 years old, you have the entire world ahead of you. If you want to successful: work hard and learn all you can about the new technology. If your working with your father, that's great. Another tip...learn about business also. Running a shop is more than just fixing cars. Good luck and stay in touch. I will help you in any way I can. Just Ask. Joe Marconi

A word of caution. Many commercial accounts have issues with paying on time. Establish the ground rules at the start. The money is good....only when you get paid.