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Failing at Retirement: Building Eight Shops in Eight Years [THA 486]
Failing at Retirement: Building Eight Shops in Eight Years [THA 486]
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About this episode
Eight shops in eight years is the headline, but the real story is how Craftsman’s AutoCare built repeatable systems: digital inspections, clear roles, and a customer experience that feels like “their house.” Guests Matt and Judy Curry share how they started with limited visibility, scaled by training managers and technicians from existing stores, and strengthened growth with Google reviews, clean facilities, and a “10 foot rule.” They also discuss retention benchmarks and how their approach reduces “one and done.”
Cars:
Chevrolet Trax
Thanks to our Partners, NAPA TRACS, Today's Class, KUKUI, and Pit Crew Loyalty
Watch Full Video Episode
Carm Capriotto talks with Matt Curry and Judy Curry of Craftsman's Auto Care about building one of the automotive industry’s most respected multi-shop operations twice.
After growing Curry’s Auto Service to 10 locations and retiring in 2013, the Currys returned to the industry with a new vision, launching eight Craftsman’s Auto Care locations in eight years. Matt shares his role as the visionary leader driving momentum and ideas, while Judy explains how operational discipline, marketing, and customer experience keep the business grounded and scalable.
The conversation explores their “5 Ps” philosophy: People, Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Profits, along with their commitment to employee development, strong culture, customer transparency, and community involvement. The Currys also discuss how Digital Vehicle Inspections and an intentional customer experience helped them earn nearly 10,000 five-star Google reviews.
What You’ll Learn
- How Matt and Judy Curry scaled multiple successful shop operations
- Why leadership balance and “staying in your lane” matters
- The “5 Ps” framework for building a strong shop culture
- How employee investment drives long-term success
- Why transparency and DVIs build customer trust
- How culture and customer experience fuel growth and retention
Sustainable growth in automotive repair comes from more than technical expertise. It requires intentional leadership, strong systems, a healthy culture, and a commitment to both employees and customers.
Matt and Judy Curry, Craftsman Auto Care, 8 locations, Virginia Thanks to our Partner, NAPA TRACS NAPA TRACS will move your shop into the SMS fast lane with onsite training and six days a week of support and local representation. Find NAPA TRACS on the Web at http://napatracs.com/ Thanks to our Partner, Today's Class Optimize training with Today's Class: In just 5 minutes daily, boost knowledge retention and improve team performance. Find Today's Class on the web at https://www.todaysclass.com/ Thanks to our Partner, KUKUI Stop juggling multiple marketing tools. KUKUI’s integrated platform delivers 4x better website conversions, automated follow-up, and real-time ROI tracking. Get industry-leading customer support with KUKUI at https://www.kukui.com/ Thanks to our Partner, Pit Crew Loyalty You’re probably tired of chasing new customers who never return. We understand. Pit Crew Loyalty ends the one-and-done cycle, turning first visits into lasting, reliable revenue at https://www.pitcrewloyalty.com/ Connect with the Podcast: ...
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Chevrolet Trax
"workflow, efficiency and profitability. Trax always has the flexibility to do business how you..."
The Chevrolet Trax is a small SUV made for regular driving and everyday tasks. It’s meant to be easy to park and handle, and it has room for people and cargo. That’s why it can be useful if you need a vehicle that can handle different kinds of work during the day.
The Chevrolet Trax is a compact crossover SUV designed for everyday driving with practical space and easy maneuverability. It’s often discussed in business-focused conversations because it can fit a variety of day-to-day needs while staying relatively efficient for its class. The “flexibility to do business” angle typically points to how it can support errands, deliveries, or transporting tools and gear.
Term
inspection ticket
"We know that inspecting cars. We didn't do it digitally before we did it with an inspection ticket that the technicians used to get."
An inspection ticket is like a checklist the mechanic fills out when they look over a car. It helps make sure nothing important is missed and that the shop can explain what’s wrong (and what needs fixing).
An inspection ticket is a structured checklist/work order that technicians use to document a vehicle’s condition during a diagnostic or pre-repair inspection. It helps standardize what gets checked and ensures findings are communicated consistently to the shop and the customer.
Term
Red, green or yellow
"They had to check it out. Red, green or yellow, we did that on paper for 17 years."
Red, yellow, and green are a simple way to rank car problems by how urgent they are. Red is usually “fix now,” yellow is “watch closely or plan soon,” and green is “looks okay.”
Red/green/yellow is a common service-communication scheme used in auto shops to categorize inspection findings by urgency. Typically, red means immediate attention, yellow means soon/priority, and green means no action needed.
Term
full inspection
"We still test drive every vehicle before we work on it. We do a full inspection on every car, but from day one when we opened up, we were doing full digital inspections."
A full inspection is a comprehensive shop assessment that goes beyond a quick look, typically covering multiple systems and documenting findings for repair planning. In practice, it’s the foundation for deciding what work is needed and what can be deferred.
Term
full digital inspections
"We do a full inspection on every car, but from day one when we opened up, we were doing full digital inspections. We were embracing the technology and all that."
Full digital inspections mean the shop records the car’s condition using computer tools instead of paper. It can make the results easier to understand and faster to share with the customer.
Full digital inspections are vehicle assessments documented and shared using software (instead of paper forms). Digital workflows can improve consistency, speed up reporting, and make it easier to show customers findings clearly.
Concept
5Ps
"I said something I teach and some of my classes called the 5Ps. They only gave you four of them, but it's all about the people, policies, processes, procedures and profits."
The “5Ps” is a simple checklist for running a business. Here it means people, rules, how you do things, the step-by-step procedures, and making sure the business stays profitable.
The “5Ps” is a management framework the speaker uses to structure how a shop succeeds. In this episode, it’s defined as people, policies, processes, procedures, and profits—emphasizing that all five must be “dialed in” for consistent results.
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This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.
Hey everybody, Karm Capriotto,
a remarkable results radio in another town hall academy.
Look, I have Matt and Judy Curry from Craftsmans Auto Care.
We're going to talk about a whole bunch of really cool things,
their growth story, what their superpower is.
Can't wait to hear that.
How they have worked so hard to stand out in a real crowded market.
We're going to talk about culture, personal growth,
and the dynamic of this husband and wife team.
But before we get going, great words from our sponsors.
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Hey, everybody.
Look at, don't forget, we have got our app out there for you to jump on.
We've got QR codes just about anywhere you look.
It's for your smartphone.
It's the ultimate professional automotive repair playlist.
You can read the show notes, see our videos.
It's all there at automotiverepairpodcastnetwork.com.
And we always thank all the great people that have come on the show for 11 years now,
and have brought their great stories.
And not to be outdone.
Matt and Judy Currier here from Craftsman's AutoCare.
Hello, Matt. Hello, Judy.
How are you?
Hey there. Hello.
All right, here's what I know about you guys.
You just don't know when to quit.
Yeah, we're working quitters.
And that's part of the story.
There's currently eight locations in Virginia of Craftsman's Auto.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but they also owned 10 curry auto stores.
Oh, maybe what, 89 years ago?
Well, we had 10 stores.
We started in 1998.
We opened 10 stores in 60, almost 17 years.
And then we built up 10 stores.
We sold retired.
We're number 47 years old.
It was in 2013.
We weren't very good at retirement.
And now we have eight stores in eight years and we've got a few more coming on.
So yeah, we're having a lot of fun, man.
We're having a blast with it.
And just when we thought we were done, you know, it's like,
what more could you do in this industry?
And Matt, I'm sure we'll get into it in more detail.
You know, Matt's just opened up a whole new area for us to explore
with training and sharing all of our expertise.
So that's been kind of fun.
It's keeping us busy for sure.
You've won all kinds of great awards.
Top Shop in North America Motor Age.
Top three shops in NA by the Tire Review Magazine.
Inc. 5000.
Five times.
Wow, cool.
Entrepreneur of the Year by NIFTA.
Wall Street Journal's best-selling author.
Best-selling author.
Yeah, that was pretty cool.
I mean, one thing I did when I retired for four years is,
2014, I published a book, The ADD Entrepreneur.
How to harness your superpowers to create a kick-ass company.
Yeah, it was number eight on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
I beat Tom Brokow, which is kind of cool,
but Tom Brokow has 27 books and I only have one.
I'm not to his level or anything.
But we're number one.
I was number one on Amazon in 10 different categories for like three weeks, too.
So super cool.
It's a fun book.
It's an ADD book, so it's only 100 pages,
it's an hour to read, but it kind of has our values
and how we ran our business and how we grew our business
and kind of maybe 10 rules.
Each chapter has a rule to it, I think,
and lesson to be learned.
And I've gotten a lot of great feedback on the book, so it's pretty cool.
Can we still get it?
Got great feedback?
Or yeah, I mean, the book still sells, I mean, but not as much.
There's a big push in the beginning of it.
Okay, but we can still get the book on Amazon?
Absolutely.
The ADD Entrepreneur, Matt Curry, just look up, it's still available.
We're willing to send you a free copy, too.
It's just a fun story and all that stuff.
And Judy's pushing me to actually read it in another book,
and I'll be talking to some publishers here probably shortly.
Well, from a marketing perspective,
it's brilliant to have free copies of his book in our showrooms.
Yeah, isn't that cool?
And I know some other shop owners that have done that, Judy and Matt,
and they basically just give it to their clients.
Yeah, it's our story, and it's something that we love to share.
And like Judy said, we always have like 10 copies on display at all of our stores.
Customers are welcome to take them for free.
We're proud of our story.
We want our story to be known because a lot of it is also giving back to the community
and how we started a whole youth football or athletic program
that has 2,000 kids a year participating in it and the charities that we support.
Because if we do good, we feel like we serve the communities we service, right?
So a lot of it's about giving back and helping people out as well.
You guys seem to have either the culture or the strategy
that should be emulated by all the other shops in America.
And I guess I can't help but think having done a discovery call with you a couple of weeks ago,
and now we're actually in the studio recording that there's this Matt and Judy dynamic somewhere.
And there's a ton of husband and wives, spouses, significant others that are in business together.
How does it work? Where was the magic? How did it happen?
Well, back at the beginning, I was in corporate and living the life
and I graduated from George Mason University and just had a great time in the corporate environment
until I saw some of the flyers that Matt was handing out to some of our customers.
He came home and he was so excited.
He's like, look, honey, I put every flyer on every single car in the whole community
and then he held it up and showed me what it looked like.
It was pretty bad.
I was like, oh, so you handed this out to everybody?
And I was like, yeah.
So anyway, I knew then that there is definitely something that I can do to help with the shop at that point.
And anyway, so I just loved being able to contribute something that he's good at marketing,
but I'm even better.
So it's something that I just realized that I loved.
So the corporate world was fine, but it was time for me to go on to something that allowed me
to really be creative and have a lot of fun doing it.
Well, really what happened, I'm sorry.
Let me just interject here.
So we started Curry's Auto Service on $103,000 on the 13 credit cards
and a $35,000 loan from her father in the back of a really terrible industrial park.
No visibility and four parking spots.
It was not a great car or your product with four parking spots.
So, you know, I was literally working, it was me and two technicians open and closed six days a week
and Sundays I'd come home and Judy taught me how to do like Excel, accounting a little bit.
And so paying bills on Sundays and having like the print shop make me flyers and all that.
And then Judy started taking over the accounting because she's like, honey,
you have no idea what you're doing.
And then she saw those flyers and she really had no idea what you're doing.
So we just had our second child and she's like, hey,
and she worked for a communications company except in the corporate world.
And she's like, hey, you know, we don't want to drop our kids off in childcare.
You know, we're going to grow our own kids, you know, and she said,
I can do the accounting and I can do the marketing.
And it was just a beautiful thing.
I can concentrate on operations and people and training and being awesome in the automotive shop.
And it was great that, you know, while we were raising our kids when they were young,
they were involved in the business.
They saw us, you know, show up and, you know, paint the walls and, you know,
clean the bathrooms and dust.
So they got to see firsthand, you know,
the hard work and everything that needed to go into this business.
You guys just seem, since I've gotten to know you in a very short time to have fun,
number one, and it sounds like what I'm hearing.
And I think this is important for our listener is that you've got a lane.
You each have a lane that you stay in that you have responsibility for.
Matt, if you were going to make a really tough strategic decision,
obviously, Judy is part of that, right?
Yeah, but ultimately that decision is mine.
So I get involved in marketing.
I love marketing.
It's one of the fun sales and marketing.
This is the most fun part of the business, right?
So I do get involved in marketing and I have some good ideas, I think,
and they run with it and I, you know, say, Hey, I think we should do this.
I think we should do that or whatever.
And but like knowing today's nuances in marketing with AI and just with all the
Instagram and Facebook and all that, I can't do any of that.
Judy and her team do that.
So she never gets into operations because she doesn't work operations,
but she does get involved in like, we're opening a new store up or making the
stores, sure, the stores are clean, visiting our stores like I do and holding
for being a people of standards.
So she, we stay in her own lanes, but we merge sometimes as well.
And we have marketing meetings that I'm part of and we have such an amazing
team that Judy put together with Asha and Lindsay.
I stay involved, but I don't have to.
I mean, they just got it.
Well, but the channel that you stay in, Matt is all about motivating our
employees.
He shows up and rallies, you know, yeah, let's go team.
You know, you guys are rocking it.
You're awesome.
And he goes around to all the locations and motivates everybody daily.
And so that's something that I'm really not that good at.
I'm more behind the scenes.
So one of his superpowers is motivation and culture.
And obviously, Judy, yours is marketing.
Now, when Matt comes to you with his wild S idea, that's the right phrase.
Wild S idea.
That's generally what it is.
Yeah, I'm relating to you, Matt, in a very big way, by the way, because I do
that to my daughter, Tracy, who's our executive producer.
And I say, Trace, I got an idea.
Oh, no, dad.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
I get that a lot.
And into the point, Judy, where you hear his passion, he's so strong about
this, we have to say, OK, let's take this little seed and make it into a plant.
Yeah, we try to dial it back a little bit because he's always just humongous ideas.
And a lot of times it's the volume of the stuff that he wants to do.
It's this constant returning and trying to get all of these events together and
continue with all of our marketing and everything.
So yeah, it's just more about loving his ideas and then taking it and making it our
own.
So you rarely say no?
Yeah, usually not.
We alter it a little bit.
He's got great ideas.
He's a good marketer.
Judy's very, very clever and very creative.
But Matt will say, ooh, this isn't going to work.
And sometimes I'll just say, well, I'm just going to try it.
And sometimes it turns out great and sometimes it doesn't.
OK, the top three strategic superpowers of the business.
I'm going to assume one of them is marketing.
Yeah, I think one of them is marketing.
I think that really super duper is a big saying of mine.
So people ask me how to do it.
I say super duper.
So I think the super duper superpower we have is putting together amazing teams.
I mean, we have the best auto repair people on the planet.
I mean, I've got some of the best technicians on the planet.
We fix all sorts of different European garden work on everything.
All your makes the models for like 40% of what we do is European.
And we do all the hard stuff.
We do the diagnostics.
We do the programming.
We do all.
So, you know, I think the number one thing is being able to put together amazing teams
because we have 126 people now and keeping them and motivating them and paying them
and just amazing team members attract other amazing team members.
So that I think marketing and I think, you know, I would like to think that giving back
to the communities and the charities that we sponsor is a really big,
especially at this time of life being the second go around, you know,
and kind of not needing the money.
So, you know, because we want to make it a bigger impact on the communities
and the charities that we support and that we like and where we can do it.
You know, man, I can't help but stop and think of our listener who's listening to you
and saying, oh my God, I just can't believe it.
He's got the best automotive, you know, specialists in the industry working for his company.
How's he do it?
You started to explain this in his community.
It's the core of our team.
There's an outreach.
People want to come and work for people that are having fun.
Does your social posts reflect that kind of camaraderie and fun that you're having?
I think what a lot of it is, is almost 10,000 five-star reviews and our average 4.9 stars
at all of our stores.
Seven of our stores have 4.9 star reviews on Google with some of them over 2,000 reviews
and our newest store in Reston in about four months has almost 305 star reviews.
It's a perfect five-star.
So not only do customers want to come to us because 93 to 97%, I just gave a presentation
at Techtronic this past week into 100 other auto repair shop owners, 93 to 97% of the
people on the planet, on the world will search for a place on Google before they go visit
it.
So if you're in Houston, Texas and you want to go to a restaurant and you say, best restaurant
in Houston, Texas, you're probably going to search it number one.
I know I do.
Right.
And you're going to put to something that's 4.5 stars or more.
You want to get a good place, right?
I think our reviews obviously attracts customers who work on 5,000 cars a month almost, but
it attracts employees too.
And other great employees attract employees.
Unintended consequences of us being so amazing on Google and having such amazing reviews
of having such an amazing team.
It has attracted other employees and say, hey, I want to work there, man.
I want to work at this place that has 10,000 people love them and rave about them and all
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Okay, here's the question.
Now we understood part of your how.
I want to understand how do you find the talent out of the people who want to come and work there?
And how do you continue to keep up the level of education for your current team?
So that's a great question.
So about probably 40% of the people who work for us now at Curry's.
I have people that have been with us for 25, 30 years.
Vernon and I, my right-hand man, have been together for 30 years.
Andrew Gunn has been with us.
He and I have been together probably 25 years and all three of his sons work for us.
Yeah, we have some generational employees too.
Their brother, their sibling has come to work for us too.
We've got several of those two brothers.
We probably have three sets of brothers besides all the gun kids, three gun kids and the father.
So we have a generation of people that work for us and that's part of the, I want to work there.
We pay really well.
We pay 80% of their health insurance.
We want them to have like a month off a year.
So a talent attracts talent.
We're a well-known entity in what we call the DMV, District of Columbia, Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland.
So we're a known product in this area for treating people well, paying people well,
having the cleanest, the most organized facilities, having the best equipment, having fun, okay?
Like doing golf addicts.
We just had a great annual party like a month ago or a couple of weeks ago even and almost 200 people there with spouses and stuff.
The thing is, is we have 126 employees, but we have to look at it like each of them is married and has at least one kid.
So we don't have 126 people that we have to take care of that we're shepherding, so to speak.
We have 400, you know what I mean?
So the decisions we make every day can affect the lives of 400 people.
And we want to make that intentional in how we affect their lives in a positive way.
The extended family, I absolutely love it.
And in fact, if you're listening carefully to Matt and Judy, you're hearing an awful lot of the secrets that they have gotten into, used and continue to develop to bring in great, great talents,
including all the great benefits you mentioned.
You have a female-friendly place, Judy. Do you have anything to do with that?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely, yeah.
So, you know, the auto industry is known for like their dark, dingy, dirty showrooms and the floor.
Oh, don't get me started.
So that was one of the things that I wanted to make sure that every single customer, every time that they come in, they're going to feel like they're in their house, that they're in their family room and they're sitting down and they're relaxed, they're comfortable.
You know, they've got snacks, beverages there, Wi-Fi, a nice TV to watch if they want any programming, just to feel like they can, you know, kick up their feet and just relax.
And it's not necessarily about, that's just aesthetically part of the customer experience.
But what's more important is the communication.
So to be female-friendly, it's kind of an old term now.
I don't think it's accepted widely anymore.
But basically, it's the way you communicate with your customers, whether they be old, young, female, whatever, every customer has to be treated equally and with respect.
And with the time and a lot of, I know from a female perspective that you walk into this male-dominated industry, you know, you feel like you're going to be taken advantage of, you know, that you're going to ask stupid questions.
So I wanted to make sure that every single person that comes into our store, our employees take the time to listen, you know, to answer the questions.
And we have a show-and-tell service that we call it.
But if there is something that we can, you know, help them with and see right then and there, we'll walk out to the shop with them, walk to their car and show them what we're seeing.
We have digital inspections right now that kind of replaces that.
But regardless, we want to take the time to make sure that we're providing the knowledge to our customers so that they know exactly the overall health of their vehicle and they understand their options.
Whether it's, you know, something that is a safety issue or something that they can budget, you know, on down the road.
So it's all about communication. Yeah, the bathrooms have to be clean.
I'd like them to be. I mean, it is still a shop environment. You still have that dusty grease that settles on everything, but yeah.
I don't know. We don't have that in our bathrooms.
They're pretty sparkly.
Yeah. So I've had customers come out of our bathrooms and say, God, that bathroom is nice as my bathroom at home. I've literally had that happen. It's funny.
Our branding is orange, as you could tell. And so we try to infuse our, especially our bathrooms with air fresheners that smell orange.
So it comes down to the details, too, to have fun with it.
Oh, my God. So I was going to ask you a question about what's a great experience for a customer. And I guess they would walk away saying, I feel orange.
Her orange, you glad you came to Craftsman AutoCare.
She has a big thing about it.
Big marketing orange, you glad, you know, so it's in our bathrooms.
It's so corny, but it's fun.
I made you laugh. It's just a fun way to approach auto repair, something you would not expect.
The legacy is so interesting to me with the 10 stores and so many years later, the eight.
And when I heard you say, oh, they used to work for me at the first place.
So obviously the magnet of the husband and wife Curry team brought these people with you.
What does the dynamic of stepping away?
Because I think you talked to me that we want to travel, do things.
We got a great leadership team. How many days?
I mean, you're working three days, four days a week, or are you just staying away?
We could leave our business for a year and it would be absolutely fine without us.
I mean, we did that once.
When we sold 2013, we literally took 12 to 18 months and traveled all over the place.
And then after about a year, you know, I was like, what do I do now?
So now I'm 48 years old. What the hell am I going to do for the rest of the next 40 years?
So what I realized was I was traveling the world anyway.
I mean, I've been to 84 countries. She's probably been to 70 or somewhere close to that.
So we traveled around anyway, we have the freedom.
Our team is so dialed in and our people are so good and my operations guy is so good.
My son is so good. We could walk away for a business for a year.
I mean, I would miss it. It would miss me.
We're working hard, but I think from our knowledge of being in this career and doing the same thing,
is that we're just working more efficiently and smarter.
Yeah. So to answer your question, like this week's been a busy week for me.
We just got back from TechTronic conference where we won actually a huge award, unexpected award.
It was super cool in front of 1200 other auto repair shop owners and over 15,000 TechMetric users.
We were the number one, what they call DVI powerhouse digital vehicle inspection powerhouse,
where a Fairfax store took over 300,000 pictures last year to prove our transparency to our customers
and show that we actually do the full DVI inspection.
So that was a really incredible award.
So I came back from that. I had a bunch of people.
I had people contacting me and calling me and emailing messaging me.
You know, hey, I want to talk with some advice.
So I had a bunch of meetings set up.
So I think I have a meeting or two tomorrow.
I'll come back to work on Monday.
So we work hard when we need to work hard.
We can take a week off. We can take a month off.
We have a place in Vale, Colorado to choose out there for five weeks skiing.
You know, we have a place in Florida that we want to visit for a couple of weeks.
So when you have what I said, what I call the five P's policies,
profits, people, people, procedures, you know, you can rock and roll.
I mean, get all that dialed in and you're in good shape.
Have you done much coaching, Matt?
I did some coaching after I retired the first time and I've done quite a bit of consulting.
I do it on a limited basis.
If it's a place I want to go.
So I have to go to your location for two days and look at everything.
And we do a lot of stuff in advance of that.
And then I go on site for two days and then we do a download.
And then I follow up with phone calls and some written reports.
Yes, I've done quite a bit of that.
It's not a core business of mine.
It's only available to certain people in a certain place when I want to go there.
You know, just because my time is number one limited just like everybody else's number two, it's valuable to me.
And number three, I mean, I've got 400 families to care for 120.
When you go to a place, it's like a firestorm. Are they prepared for you?
No.
I've never found one shop.
You know, when I go in there and they're like, holy cow, man, what the hell?
But they get results.
I mean, they get results.
I get people.
I don't like to hear what everything that you are honestly sharing or honestly, you know, like you go into a shop and they tell me,
they tell me they're doing DVIs and you walk in there and you can tell the first hour.
I mean, and going through their paperwork before that, they're not doing DVIs.
They're doing like a 40% job.
That's typically what we see.
We do 100%.
That's why we got honored this last weekend from over 300,000 pictures at one store on their DVIs.
So it's pretty incredible.
But there was policy and procedure to make that happen.
Yes, absolutely.
And people, we were a couple of locations we recommended changing most of their staff.
So that didn't go over very well.
You know, nobody wants to hear that, but you have to have a team that works.
You have to have the right people in the right positions.
I don't know if this was a quote you told me or something I looked up, but you didn't succeed in spite of ADD.
You succeeded because of it.
That's my whole books.
That's what it's about.
That's what the books about?
Yeah.
I mean, I was one of the first Ritlin babies.
Ritlin was an ADD drug.
I was one of the first Ritlin babies back in 1978.
My parents sent me to Mass General Hospital in Boston.
I went to two days of testing and putting square pegs in round holes and ink blotter tests.
I mean, literally.
And then the third day, a couple of doctors came in and white lab coats and me and my parents were there.
And they said I had severe ADD and slight dyslexia.
And then I was going to have to work two or three times harder than anybody else to have any type of success.
So they said, well, we've got this new drug.
It's not proven.
We don't know what it does.
Really.
I mean, it's just on the market.
But that was one of the first people to start taking it.
And then I'd go to the nurse's office every day between six and seven on seventh grade.
People would go down the hall of my friends after lunch.
I'd go to the nurse's office and take my magic pill.
And that year I've got five A's in the bean every semester.
They didn't know the long-term consequences of Ritlin.
So they took me off of it.
So I went back to an average PC student, never really studied.
I was born to sports and girls and, you know, everything else and working.
I mean, I've been working in the automotive business since I was 15.
I was in the cars.
I had cool cars when I was in high school and I was working, changing tires and oil and cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors.
I never even thought about it.
I mean, I just, ADD allows me to go in 10 different directions, allows me to, you know, lead teams and to firestorms.
It gets people behind you.
I mean, so if I didn't have ADD, I mean, I'd be a totally different person.
I think, of course, I wouldn't have all the energy that I have and be able to, you know, do what I do.
I guess.
He's a firestorm.
I mean, I love listening to this guy.
Well, that's why it's so successful and it works with our company and dynamics with us is that, you know, he'll go into one of our locations and everybody like, oh, Matt's here, Matt's here.
And Matt, he's like the Tasmanian devil.
He'll just come in and chaos just everywhere.
He'll say, oh, that needs to be done or, oh, we need to do this and then he leaves.
And then I come in and we're kind of like, okay, let's figure this out.
So, okay, yes, we need to put attention into this area.
We need to work on this.
And it's a good thing.
I mean, it's something that, you know, you have to get used to.
But once it does happen, you're like, oh, wow, that was really great.
And look at the results that came of that.
So Matt's the icing and you're the cake, Judy.
I like that.
You like that?
Oh, yeah, because that's kind of what I'm hearing.
Yeah, we got to do this.
This is great.
And everybody loves to see Matt, but then we seriously have what?
We got a KPI problem here.
We got an issue over here.
And it doesn't seem like Matt's the man who is going to bring the disciplines
or get anybody to want to get in line or online.
Then someone else, either your son or the general manager, Judy's going to come in
and do the heavy lifting.
To Judy's credit, she visits the stores that I do.
I mean, my favorite thing is visiting the stores and visiting my employees
and customers and go in there and thanking them for coming in
and thanking them for their hard work and all that.
So when I go to a store, they're not scared that I'm there.
They're happy in there.
I mean, we're friends or generally so.
But if a store is dirty, I mean, I came into my McLean store
after coming back from Houston and was here Monday and got here about 10 o'clock
and they did like $20,000 a Saturday.
They were swamped.
We've had windstorms sweeping in all.
I mean, it's been 20 mile an hour winds for the last like week here.
And I was like, and this is our headquarters.
This is our offices.
I'm like, Ray, who's one of our super power managers guys.
I'm like, dude, your shop's the mess man.
You know, he's going to start.
You got to take everything out, clean it up, sweep it.
I know it's been windy, you know, but, you know,
it's just a little nudge in the right direction.
And they know, I mean, the guys keep it there.
I mean, they take pride in having a clean, organized shop.
But sometimes you get really busy and it's a messy business as Judy said.
Sometimes you just need the corrective action, you know, here and there.
And we just pointed out.
Yes.
The reminder that, you know, we're watching this is important is all we need to
really do sometimes and I'll go in and just sit in our showroom from a
customer's perspective and just sit there.
And yeah, you just, you kind of look around.
You're like, oh, you know, there's some dust that needs to be cleaned up.
And, and usually what I do, I have this detailed checklist that has just
every single thing that you could possibly wipe, change,
upgrade in our showrooms and a little bit in the shop.
And it just kind of reminds everybody that, you know,
you need to wash the floorboards down and there's dust underneath this curio
cabinet that you probably would never clean, but customers might see that.
So it's little detailed stuff that we'll point out and mention.
And I actually, I like showing up with snacks.
I'll bring a whole haul of snacks for our teams.
We have refuel stations that we set up in the back for the guys.
So I'll come with all their favorite.
Well, actually they're my favorite snacks, which they turn out to be their
favorite snacks too.
I mean, he doesn't like a bag of cookies.
What is it?
Give me an idea.
Butterfingers, Oreos.
Oh, it's no Snickers and Doritos, donuts and cookies, basically.
Can I rely on you if I see you, Judy, to open your purse and get me a Snickers?
No.
She's not going to give it up.
She's not going to give it up to you.
It's all about the guys.
They had to support them and make and have it fun.
So when Matt does visit, sometimes it'll leave it a little chaotic.
And I come back and come in and, you know,
calm everybody down with snacks and say, Hey, you know, let's, let's get this done.
Is paperless in our future?
I hope so.
It's not my future.
This is a thing where we disagree and I thought it'd be fun to go back and forth on it.
So we work on almost 5,000 cars a month, right?
I mean, I've got cars that we're working 50 cars a day and I want to be able to follow
the paper trail.
We have a way of doing things.
A work order ticket.
I want to follow through the shop and all that.
And I like having that now.
I know shop owners that are successful have done it and it's being done.
It's out there.
We're closer to that than we've ever been in terms of updating everything in the
computer.
They're like in progress waiting for parts done.
My guys are really good at that.
I mean, just, I maybe call me old school.
You know, it's not that much paper.
It's one piece of paper per customer per day.
And I just, I couldn't imagine trying to keep up with 50 cars a day without having
a paper trail, but Judy, I'll let you talk about.
Well, the technology that's evolved in our industry.
I'm just so excited about it.
And it allows us to be able to enhance the customer experience, you know, to make it
more efficient and more convenient for customers, you know, to be able to literally
drop your car off and not even, you know, you make the appointment, but you can drop
it off.
You don't have to, you know, some people just don't like talking with people.
They just don't want that interaction.
So, you know, to be able to drop their car off and then pick it up the next day and,
you know, pay online or, you know, text to pay and have the DVIs sent to you so you
can see exactly what's going on, authorize whatever work you want done.
I just think that whole experience is really, really cool.
And, you know, people are expecting it nowadays.
How many times have people asked you when you check out, you know, wherever you are
at your retail location, they'll say, would you like a print receipt or emailed?
So, you know, we kind of have to accommodate what the expectation is out there now.
The problem is though, and just like I said, plain devil's advocate of this.
And Judy's exactly right.
I mean, you text to pay and all that stuff.
The text to pay number one, it costs a half a percent more to do it.
Merchants are tough.
Services company charges you for that.
And number two, if there's a credit card dispute, you'll probably lose because you don't have
a signature on it.
So there's other reasons from an operational standpoint that you don't want to do that.
We don't.
I mean, our customers love us.
We get very few charge backs, but I'm just saying you do help yourself up for other possible liabilities.
Guys, text to pay was big during COVID.
You know, it really found its legs.
Is it still big now?
Not really.
I think people like the option.
But yeah, I think that the use of it is not, hasn't been so explosive as we thought it would be.
Let's go back to the 1998 to 2013 and your growth of 10 shops in 15 years.
And then you retired and you decided, hey, we're going to come back and we're going to become craftsmen's auto care.
What did you learn that you took into building craftsmen from that period of time?
Because you didn't just start on day one because you told us the story.
You know, you were in the end of an industrial park.
What were the magical pieces of the great strategies you took to come up to your eight stores today so quickly?
We really dialed it in at Curry's Auto Service.
I mean, again, I've been doing this from, for instance, I was 15 and I had some really good bosses and some really shitty bosses.
So I took the lessons I learned from the good bosses and throughout the bad ones.
And I've been perfecting this operationally for 30 years plus.
Okay.
And we know what works.
We know that inspecting cars.
We didn't do it digitally before we did it with an inspection ticket that the technicians used to get.
They had to check it out.
Red, green or yellow, we did that on paper for 17 years.
We didn't change how we approached anything.
We still test drive every vehicle before we work on it.
We do a full inspection on every car, but from day one when we opened up, we were doing full digital inspections.
We were embracing the technology and all that.
But as far as operationally, how we run our stores and how we go to market and really the policies and procedures and processes are the same.
And we just repeated it and made it better with our partners like TechMetric and other partners that we have that have this technology.
And we utilize technology.
Judy said they have to keep them amazing communication with their customers so they can clearly and precisely understand what they need and why they need it.
And then we're just honest and we prioritize stuff for them and we come up with a game plan.
And so I hit on something before and I didn't do it right.
I said something I teach and some of my classes called the 5Ps.
They only gave you four of them, but it's all about the people, policies, processes, procedures and profits.
Because you got to have all five of those things dialed in.
You got to have obviously amazing people, really good policies, process to carry out those policies, procedures to carry out those policies and what happens if something goes wrong.
And you got to have profits so that you can treat your people really well and be able to expand and do all the great things that you want to do.
So that's a really, you know, it's kind of a key to the way we look at things.
And we look at things for our people, I think, and for our customers first.
We make decisions in this order.
Is it good for the customer?
Make the customer feel good about crafts with AutoCare?
Is it good for the company?
Does it put a company in good light?
Is it good for people in the company?
And then it's good for me.
Do I feel good about personally doing it?
So that's part of a class I teach.
That's the decision-making order that we go in and we give our managers the authority to make those decisions to take care of our customers.
It sounds incredible that what I heard you say is we got it dialed in and if not, we're always improving it.
And so it's not hard to go from five to six to seven to eight because you're, I hate to say this, but rubber stamping the next operation and continuing to learn from the ones behind it
and bringing it to the new one and then the new one comes in and you're learning to be a bigger, better company all the time.
Well, and we're able to scale so quickly because whenever we do open a store up,
we always put at least one store manager and one or two technicians in there who already work for us at another store.
And then they help train the new staff and then we have a training program that I'm really excited about.
We've always done training.
We've done in-house training.
We send people out to training, but we're actually promoted one of our guys to a director of training role.
And we're going to have even more incredible technical in-house training as well as management and sales training.
And we're bringing that in-house and something I always wanted to do at Curries and never really did.
And we're super excited about that initiative.
And I don't know when you're releasing this car, but I told Judy, I told one of my VP of operations,
Richard, my guy who runs operations and my son that we're not opening any more stores up this year.
You know, we're just going to, it was just over the store up four months ago.
And then I just looked at it in the store yesterday.
So it might be happening there.
That's the chaos.
Nice stores in nine years and it might happen.
Matt, all right.
I get it.
Something I just learned about you.
You like to stretch the truth or...
It just came up.
It was a false narrative.
I'm sorry.
I was just kidding.
One final thing you mentioned education.
I talk a lot about it.
Are you paying for all of this for your people?
Quick answer.
Yes.
We pay for all their education as well as we pay them to go there.
So we pay them pay for the classes.
We pay for them while they're there to do the classes.
We give them a per diem, like, you know, so they can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And we pay for their hotels and we pay for their fights there if they need to do fights there.
So, yeah, of course.
People are like, how do you do that?
Oh, he's got the five P's and the most important P and there is profit.
Okay.
Now, I got to ask you a final question you brought up education and training.
It seems to me that the CSR, that counter training is becoming more important than ever.
You agree with me?
Yeah, absolutely.
Customer service apps.
So, yeah, we call everybody a manager.
So we have a store manager, a service manager, an assistant service manager,
or maybe in some stores on another assistant service manager,
because we call everybody managers because they all need to manage, right?
They need to manage our customers.
They need to manage our operations.
They need to manage, help manage the shop and all that stuff.
So that's why we do what we do.
But as soon as somebody walks in the door, you're going to have a friendly greeting.
We have what we call a 10 foot rule.
It goes for everybody in the company, every technician to anybody.
It's if you're within 10 feet of a customer, you stop, you look out in the eye and you say,
hey, thanks for coming in.
My name's Matt.
We appreciate you coming in.
We appreciate your business.
So we're truly like, have amazing people that are just friendly and, you know, want to help.
You know what I mean?
When you come in, you're getting greeted properly.
You're in a happy environment where we have a lot of fun with it.
I mean, we have a, we have a hell of a lot of fun here.
I don't want to do anything that's not fun.
That's what I tell my guys.
I don't have to.
And part of the fun is taking care of people and being so highly rated,
being one of the highest rated, most reviewed auto repair shops on the planet.
That's my guys take that very seriously, all of our employees so that they'd love it.
We just had a big company bash like two or three weeks ago.
It was so fun.
We had, it was casino night and we went to a beautiful country club.
Oh, nice.
I love it.
Judy, does he sleep?
Yeah, he does.
Like six hours a night.
That's enough, Matt.
That's what I get.
He does stop and relax.
That's for sure.
This was a blast.
I'm excited to have had you on to learn your story and to have so many of our listeners
think through all the stuff that you said and say, I want to be like Matt.
I want to be like Judy.
I think we can do this stuff, but I go back to the 10 foot rule.
The point to that is not only is it important in recognizing it.
It was a rule.
And there's a lot of us in business today that just don't want to make rules because
they don't want to piss off our people, but they don't necessarily understand that we
have rules for marketing.
We have rules for cleanliness.
We have rules for all this.
And I don't care if you call them protocols, processes or procedures.
We have to live within all of those if we want to make a magical company like you guys
have.
I didn't make that up.
I got that.
I was in a 20 group for about six years at Curry's Auto Service.
It was 20 amazing auto repair entrepreneurs.
It had multi shop organizations.
Everybody had two to 10 stores.
We just loved the people who came, dear friends with a lot of people in the group.
And that was from one of the guys, Kim Sigmund, got arrested.
So that was from Kim Sigmund, a community tire in Arizona and Howard Fleischman.
And they had that rule.
So I stole that rule from them.
You asked us what I did differently with Casanova that I did with Curry's.
I said, not much.
We didn't want to reinvent the wheel.
We just want to take all the better ideas and come up and just keep refining what we
got, right?
Because what we got down is pretty damn good.
But you can pick up new lessons from other people.
You should, right?
We want to make sure that no matter what we do, all of our processes or what have you,
we're having fun, like Matt said, but we're respectful to all of our customers.
We're honest with our employees, with all of our customers.
I mean, that's basically, you know, the core to everything.
Yeah.
I just heard Matt say R&D, rip off and duplicate.
In a good way.
Absolutely.
Oh, wow, I got the 10 foot rule.
I love it.
I'm going to take it and bring it to be mine.
But it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to smell and look like the person you borrowed
that from.
It's going to become part of your culture and part of the things that you do.
And for someone not to want to take an idea from someone else, embrace it.
Maybe even ask Matt, tell me more deep about why you do this and tell me about that rule.
And it comes inside into your business and your culture becomes, it takes the flavor
on of your business.
So rip off and duplicate is not a negative thing.
R&D, baby.
I learned that about 10 years ago from a shop owner in California.
It's a compliment if somebody wants to take one of our ideas.
I'm like, go for it.
Right.
It's a compliment.
And being part of that 20 group was a really powerful thing for us.
We received even more than we gave and we gave a hell of a lot to the group.
So we had a lot of good ideas, but we got a lot of great ideas from some really good
players and we got to meet some very dear friends, you know, out of it too.
So, you know, if you don't have coaching or training or, you know, somebody you can rely
on, you know, or you're not involved in 20 group, get involved in 20 group.
It was one of the best things we ever did.
We now teach it.
Like, dude, we haven't talked about our level up.
I mean, we will have 40 people in here in a couple of weeks, 40 or 50 other auto repair
shop owners that we do.
We do a level up training.
It's a two day deal.
We give them a tour of our stores, about three of our stores.
We get a lunch.
We do a half day of training.
We might have a speaker or two come in and then we do the next day of full day of training,
a full 10 hours of training.
And it's all about how we've done what we've done.
And it's called level up.
We call it level up.
We charge $1,000 for it.
It's 100% just a charity.
We actually match 10,000.
So we'll hopefully raise $50,000 for charity.
We're in a food sacrifice.
Give back to the food pantries and such as well as an organization called Great Vibes,
which my assistant Susan and Jim Boone started for.
Adults with disabilities.
Yeah, it's an event that they put on every season, hopefully more often, but it just
gives...
Four times a year.
Five times a year.
Those adults, just a social atmosphere, something to do because there's nothing out there for
them.
So it's a great charity too.
So it's for 18 and older adults that are mentally challenged and all that.
It's a great thing because they had a child with Down syndrome and faith and she was just
amazing and amazing people.
We like to give all that money that we do for training and consulting pretty much all
of it goes to charity.
So I know it's probably too late this year, but if I wanted to come the next time, how
do I get there?
We're way over booked for this time, but we're going to do one and...
Because I get in people that every day we're getting queries.
I think we're going to do one in August or early September and I'd like to do one, another
one before the end of the year.
You and I are going...
That's the chaos.
We're going to Australia for a month.
We're going to Australia and New Zealand for a month in September, October.
But yeah, we're getting so many requests.
Love for you to come out and maybe we're going to try and do one in late August, early September.
I'll come in and do my keynote.
That would be great.
We love it.
We love that.
What's cool about this level up is that it started just as our internal training.
Oh yeah.
Matt just invited a couple of people on this shop owners hangout Facebook page that he was
just talking about how he's his policies and they wanted to learn more.
So Matt was like, why don't you come to our sales training that we're doing next month?
So it just turned into a thing.
So it's fun to be able to share with anybody in the industry that wants to do better.
We're sharing everything that we know.
Why not?
It's a great point.
I mean, to start as an internal class that we gave to all of our employees,
new employees and all that.
And then I was getting calls from people on one of my best success stories and I've got
a lot of them.
But real quick, I'll leave with this.
The guy had a two shops in Ohio.
They were doing like $10,000 a week each.
So they're $20,000 a week between two shops in Ohio and he was open nine to five.
He wasn't open Saturdays.
He wasn't doing DVIs.
He came back.
He's doing it now like $160,000 a month out of each of his shops.
He just took his wife to Thailand.
She's from Thailand for a month after they had their baby.
He's allowed to leave.
This was within like six months after coming to visit us.
I mean, he extended his hours.
He did everything I told him to do.
He did all his DVIs.
He brought in some new people, got rid of some people and just put policies and procedures
in place and duplicated her deal.
His business went from $20,000 a week to $100,000 a week.
I mean, basically.
So he five times his business and now he is living the life that he can give his wife
and children and just it's amazing to see.
It's amazing to help.
What a perfect end of this episode.
I mean, you basically summed it up.
Get out there, learn, kick yourself in the ass.
Have someone kick yourself in the ass.
This was great.
Matt, Judy Curry from Crestman Auto, eight locations in Virginia.
I had a good time.
I had a blast.
Oh, so fun.
So fun.
We loved our story.
And you know how to tell a great story, both of you.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
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