AI shows up as a strategic thought partner for auto repair leaders and beyond—helping streamline shop workflow, hiring, documentation, and customer communication. Chris Cloutier of AutoFlow discusses using algorithms to move from inbound appointments to work assignments and promise times. The hosts also cover how to prompt AI for better context, turn transcripts into structured outlines, and rewrite repair-order notes so customers understand issues. Across the conversation, “trust but verify” and quality control keep recommendations grounded.
In this forward-looking conversation, Carm Capriotto and Chris Cloutier, CEO of AutoFlow and owner of three Golden Rule Auto Care locations, explore how artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the automotive repair industry; not as a replacement for people, but as a powerful tool that helps shop owners lead smarter, communicate better, and operate more professionally.
Chris shares firsthand experiences using AI inside both his software company and his repair shops, revealing how the technology can dramatically reduce time spent on leadership and administrative tasks while improving workflow efficiency and customer communication. From refining technician notes to helping build business plans and expansion strategies, AI is becoming what Chris describes as a 'thought partner' for today’s shop owner.
What You’ll Learn:
Why AI should be viewed as a strategic business partner, not a threat to the automotive repair profession
How effective prompting and providing context can dramatically improve AI-generated results
Ways AI can streamline major business tasks such as SBA loan preparation, SWOT analyses, and growth planning
How AI-powered technician note rewrites improve customer communication and strengthen professionalism
Why clear, polished communication acts as a “curtain of professionalism” that builds customer trust
How AI can help bridge language barriers by translating repair orders and inspection results
The risks and humor of “AI versus AI” hiring practices, where both employers and applicants rely heavily on artificial intelligence
Why Chris believes today is the least expensive AI will ever be, and why shop owners should begin learning it now
The biggest takeaway from this episode is simple: AI will not replace highly skilled automotive professionals, but it will absolutely enhance the shops that learn how to use it effectively. From improving efficiency and communication to elevating the image of professionalism, AI offers tremendous advantages for modern repair businesses. However, Carm and Chris emphasize one critical principle throughout the conversation: trust, but verify. Just like quality control in the service bays, AI-generated information should always be reviewed carefully before being shared with customers or used to make important business decisions.
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"And what technicians, I have not seen this yet, service advisors and
those resumes that we do feed into the machines to say, hey, let's look at some of their qualifications,"
A service advisor is the person at the repair shop who talks with you about the problem, writes up the job, and keeps things moving with the mechanic. They help turn your description into a clear repair request.
A service advisor is the customer-facing role at an auto repair shop who interviews the vehicle owner, writes up the work order, and coordinates with the technicians. They’re often the “translator” between what the customer reports and what the technician diagnoses.
"If you got a Facebook or, you know, I know there's some
legalities around, you know, you're not supposed to do some of this stuff. But, you know, I think that
allowing it to kind of go and do some background checks for you is okay."
Background checks are ways to verify information about someone before you trust them for a job. The speaker is saying AI can help do some of that research, but you have to handle it legally and with proper notice.
Background checks are a screening process to verify information about a person (for example, employment history or other records). In this context, the host is discussing using AI-driven research to flag concerns during hiring or resume review, while noting legal/consent considerations.
"So at your stores, Chris, are you saying to your service advisors, whatever you call them,
client advocates, to use AI to improve RO descriptions and for your guys in the back"
“RO” usually means repair order. The RO description is the written explanation of what the customer says is wrong and what the shop plans to do, so the mechanic has the right info.
“RO” typically means repair order, and the description is the written summary of the customer concern and the shop’s planned work. Clear RO descriptions help technicians diagnose faster and reduce misunderstandings about what needs to be fixed.
"Yeah. So a practical sense was auto flow back a year and a half ago,
we launched AI technician rewrite notes. Where is exactly that? And Karma, I wrote this,"
This is AI used to rewrite the mechanic’s notes in plain, clearer language for the customer. Instead of confusing wording, it helps explain what’s wrong and what can be done.
“AI technician rewrite notes” refers to using AI to rephrase or improve the technician’s written notes before they’re shown to the customer. The goal is to make the explanation clearer—e.g., stating what’s leaking, why it’s happening, and what remedies are available.
"so-and-so, he likes to use the word sipping
whenever there's a hose leak instead of seeping, he puts sippi ng versus sepa, which is a simple
mistake."
A hose leak means a hose in the car is letting fluid escape. The point here is that the shop should describe it clearly so the customer understands what’s happening.
A hose leak is when fluid escapes from a rubber or reinforced hose in the vehicle’s cooling, vacuum, or other fluid systems. The speaker’s example contrasts confusing wording (“sipping”) with clearer phrasing (“leaking”) so customers understand the issue.
"it's all based off tokenized data and right now we're getting in at the ground floor"
It means the AI turns words and text into smaller chunks it can understand. If the chunks are good and relevant, the AI’s answers tend to be better.
“Tokenized data” means text is broken into smaller pieces (tokens) so an AI model can process it. The model learns patterns from those tokens, which is why the quality of the input data affects the quality of the AI’s output.
"in autoflow we're about to launch AI rewrite everything so that's from any time there's any type of writing back to the customer"
They’re talking about using AI to automatically rewrite messages customers receive. Instead of sounding like a template, the goal is for updates to sound more natural and personal.
This refers to using AI to automatically rewrite customer-facing text. In an auto repair context, that typically means generating clearer, more natural messages for updates like check-in, inspection progress, and work status.
"we've improved our prompting and all this right because what we've noticed is yeah why go one place to generate"
Prompting is the instructions you give the AI so it knows what to write. If you phrase the instructions well, the AI tends to produce better results.
“Prompting” is how you instruct an AI model—by giving it a specific input or set of instructions—to get the kind of output you want. Better prompting can improve tone, accuracy, and consistency of customer communications.
"any type of customer communication whether it be the workflow message carm it's the same thing every time right"
They’re talking about the messages a repair shop sends customers during the process. The idea is to make those updates feel more personal instead of using the same canned wording every time.
“Customer communication” here is the automated messaging flow between an auto repair shop and the vehicle owner. The speaker describes using AI to make those messages more personalized and less scripted by leveraging data about the customer and the vehicle’s status.
"they're scripted we could do so much more with unscripting those and making it very seem very natural"
They want to stop using the same fixed template replies. Instead, AI should help write responses that fit what’s happening with your car so it sounds more human.
“Unscripting” means reducing rigid template-based responses and replacing them with AI-generated text that can vary by situation. The goal is to sound more natural while still reflecting the correct vehicle/work context.
"because we understand the inspection is not necessarily a good thing it's so
[1767.5s] yes dvi is a good thing but carm when you have 20 items you got to go look at and you got to go
[1773.0s] through all these different sections and you don't really understand it gets confusing"
In an auto repair context, an inspection is the shop’s process of checking a vehicle to identify issues and determine what work is needed. The hosts are pointing out that an inspection report can be overwhelming when it lists many items without a clear, prioritized summary.
"what your service advisor does but in a more natural language way of communicating
[1784.1s] with the customer I just love what you said"
This means describing what the car needs in normal, easy-to-understand language. Instead of a confusing list, it’s meant to be clearer about what’s important and what can wait.
“Natural language” communication means explaining repair findings in everyday wording rather than technical jargon or raw lists. The goal is to make inspection results easier for customers to understand, prioritize, and act on.
"if that can be stronger to this client then the perceived value coming back is professionalism
[1832.9s] that's it carm we have great people in our shops"
Perceived value is how “worth it” the customer feels the service is. Even if the work is the same, better explanations and professionalism can make customers feel more confident and satisfied.
Perceived value is how valuable a customer feels the service is, based on experience and presentation—not just the underlying work. In this episode, they connect clearer, more professional communication (including wording and summaries) to higher perceived value.
Term
AI
"you always say this you know you said it before AI is that man this is just not
[1866.7s] going away it's only going to improve it's only going to get better this is the worst it's ever
[1872.5s] going to be which means that wow if this is the worst what we have is going to be amazing I'm"
AI is computer software that can help with tasks like writing and summarizing information. Here, they’re saying AI can help shops explain car inspection results more clearly to customers.
AI (artificial intelligence) refers to software that can generate or assist with text and decisions based on patterns in data. In this episode, they’re discussing AI as a tool to improve how repair findings are summarized and communicated to customers.
"in the shop your specialists in the bays are they using AI maybe to punch in look for a TSB
[2237.3s] or a code or anything we have used the chat GPT in some of the AM models to see and try and go down
[2244.0s] diagnostic trees to see what's going on"
A TSB is a manufacturer’s “here’s how to fix this known problem” document. Shops use it to make sure they’re following the right troubleshooting steps for a specific issue.
TSB stands for Technical Service Bulletin. It’s an official manufacturer notice that describes known issues and the recommended diagnostic or repair steps for specific vehicle problems.
"or a code or anything we have used the chat GPT in some of the AM models to see and try and go down
[2244.0s] diagnostic trees to see what's going on I'm not going to promote any tools there's some on the
[2248.8s] market that are starting to rise and pop and then it goes to okay how well of their is their data
[2254.8s] trained right"
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot. In a repair shop, people use it to help think through troubleshooting steps—like asking for the next thing to check based on what you already know.
ChatGPT is a generative AI tool that can produce text-based answers and reasoning prompts. In an auto-repair context, it’s being used to help interpret information and suggest next diagnostic steps (for example, by working through troubleshooting logic).
"we have used the chat GPT in some of the AM models to see and try and go down
[2244.0s] diagnostic trees to see what's going on I'm not going to promote any tools there's some on the
[2248.8s] market that are starting to rise and pop"
Think of diagnostic trees like a decision guide. You check one thing, and depending on the result you move to the next check until you find the cause.
A diagnostic tree is a structured troubleshooting flow that branches based on test results (symptoms, codes, measurements). It helps technicians narrow down causes step-by-step instead of guessing.
"okay how well of their is their data
[2254.8s] trained right so you have these large LMS these smaller LMS we're not going to get the technical
[2258.9s] details but like some of the bigger ones your chat GPTs and your quads like they're not bad"
Here, LMS means AI language systems. The idea is that some are trained on more information than others, which affects how well they can help with troubleshooting questions.
In this context, LMS refers to large language models—AI systems trained on lots of text to understand and generate language. The speaker contrasts larger models with smaller ones and discusses how “trained” the data is for diagnostic usefulness.
"there are some in the industry they're now
[2273.1s] trying to train models specifically with repair data so say take this data set leverage it with
[2278.1s] this data set and let's get more specific"
Repair data is the history of what mechanics saw and how they fixed it. If AI learns from that kind of real repair record, it can give better troubleshooting suggestions.
“Repair data” is the real-world information collected from past diagnostics and fixes—what failed, what was measured, and what ultimately worked. The speaker’s point is that training AI on repair-specific datasets can make it more accurate for shop use than generic training alone.
"more and more Karm I mean in
[2282.9s] the future what is our front counter going to look like will there be one person at the front
[2287.3s] counter and two texts in the back of the shop and that's all you're going to need right because
[2291.3s] your phones are going to be answered by an assistant"
The front counter is the shop’s customer-facing intake area where service requests are handled and communication is coordinated. The speaker is describing a future workflow where an AI assistant handles phone calls and outbound communication, reducing the number of people needed at the counter.
Select text to request an explanation
This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.
Everybody, Karm Capriotto, welcome.
Remarkable results radio, 11 years strong today.
Sitting in the background somewhere is Chris Cloutier,
and he is the most perfect person to come on and talk about AI.
Thinking a little bit about AI,
we've been talking about AI for years just like we were in
DVI and people just weren't quite sure what they were going to do with DVI.
If you think back a little bit, and then we keep saying,
ah, it's not going to be anything.
It's going to be obsolete in a short, and I completely disagree with that.
And I want you to get that out of your thinking.
We're also going to talk about front of house,
back of house, recruiting and production and productivity.
AI can help me with that, really?
You're going to just love this episode.
Trust me, and thank you so much to our sponsors on the podcast.
Hey, welcome back. Don't forget about our app, everyone.
For your smartphone, the ultimate professional automotive repair playlist.
Read sure.
Watch the videos linked with our sponsor partners.
Get all the shows in our network.
There's the wording, automotive repair, podcastnetwork.com, forward slash app.
And thanks to all the guests who've come on over all these 11 years,
who've contributed to our automotive podcast network shows.
I appreciate you giving nature and to help support the industry.
Let me introduce my friend, Chris Cloutier.
Hello, Chris.
Hey, Karm, how are you?
I'm great, sir.
CEO, founder, autoflow.com and CRM for your auto repair shop.
Yeah, and then proud owner of now a third golden rule auto care in Dallas, Texas.
We just opened up a third shop at the beginning of the year and it's been wildly successful.
So yeah, multi shop owner, auto repair shop extraordinaire.
Sometimes I'm the windshield and sometimes I'm the bug.
And in a day, I'm usually both and you can understand that, right, Karm?
I am a truly a serial entrepreneur.
We won't even talk about the real estate company that I own on the side, right?
That's right, Chris.
Yeah, your entrepreneurialism just kind of comes out.
It does, yes.
So I wrote to Chris a bit ago and I said,
I've been thinking about the power that Amazon and others have in logistics.
You may remember this.
I can't imagine the code, the algorithms that they have to decide on
delivery, product movement, purchasing storage, shipping workers, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm reading from this.
I got me thinking about the future shop flow, work flow from inbound appointments
to work assignments to meet promise times, writing algorithms, AI stuff into software.
And since you are the cutting edge person in our industry who thinks about this every minute of the day,
I thought of Bayflow and wondered if your software is an integral part
of a larger AI algorithm.
I said, come on and do a show and he goes, okay, I will, but first you got to read a book.
So Chris prepared me for this episode.
It's the book called The AI Driven Leader by Jeff Woods.
He talks about having AI be your thought partner and that AI doesn't replace humans.
It enhances you.
It's not going to replace you.
Your role will evolve with AI.
Six to 10 jobs today didn't exist back in 1940.
These are all kinds of things from the book.
Improve the productivity of your people and goals are too small.
Goals are a compass.
It's a really comprehensive book.
He brings up a lot of great examples and he actually taught me how to talk to AI
and get back what my expectations were, Chris.
That's it.
And it's a great, I would say starter guide for a lot of people.
And they're like, I hear the term AI, AI, AI, AI.
How do I use AI?
Where do I play AI?
Oh, I talked to AI the other day and I asked it a question.
It gave me the wrong answer.
Sure.
But at what context did you ask that question, right?
What were the parameters that you gave the machine, the AI, to understand what it is
and give you a better answer, right?
And in the book, it does a really great job around, like you said, executing and prompting,
as well as helping you understand, as a leader, this is going to become a strategic partner.
So here I am joking about, I run multiple companies, multiple shops, software company,
real estate company.
What I've really experienced is it has become my Jarvis.
It has become something that's allowed me to do jobs and do tasks that used to take me
a while to do.
Now, almost instantly, trust but verify karma.
I'm not saying I trust the machines wholeheartedly.
I'm saying I trust but verify and the amount of work and the amount of things that I do
when it comes to processing spreadsheets, data, a lot of things that leaders do,
we're allowing ourselves to exponentially get to our answers quicker and our solutions
that much faster.
So I think this book, it should be required reading.
Now, I'll give one guy on my team, Scott Smyer, I just come back from a conference
and it was an AI conference and it just blew my brains about, oh my God, like what have I
been doing?
And then he said, hey, I just read this book, you need to read it.
And pretty much everybody on my team has read it in the leadership capacity on my
software team.
And it's had a major impact in the way that we're moving into AI.
And I appreciate you calling me an expert karma.
I'm like everybody else.
I'm as lost as everybody else.
But like you said, I'm constantly consuming it, reading about it, trying to understand about it.
You know, once I read the book, it allowed me to have AI become my friend.
Let me explain.
I had no idea how much it was really knowing about me.
And it says, in the vernacular karma of the things that you've said before and where you're
taking your company and this or that, let me offer you this bit.
And I'm sitting there saying, what's it?
You mean it actually remembers the stuff that I ask it and the stuff that it writes for me
or the stuff that it comes back?
For example, I'll take a transcript, Chris, from a discovery call that I have with guests.
And I'll take that transcript and I'll feed it up to AI and I'll say, look,
I really know what I want to do here.
You know, Fathom will give me the outline, but I wanted AI to give me more of a wonderful,
a little bit better structure than I was willing.
You're buried, you're busy.
Everyone who I'm talking to, the top shop operators are listening to this.
Please get this down to the lower tracks for us, please.
And we're so busy and crazy.
I have been relying on AI to make me more efficient, Chris,
and relying on the things that is telling me back because it's gotten to know who I am.
Without question.
And you know, there's a lot of fear around, oh, you know, telling the machines too much
because they'll, Craig brought this up and Craig's part of your network.
And he brought this up, which was brilliant.
And he goes, Chris, how long have we been using Google Docs for?
And I'm like, man, for 10 years, 12 years, 15, he goes,
yeah, they've already been stealing our data, right?
I mean, all their models are built out because it was free.
And it's free.
You're the product, right?
I'll give you a good example, Karma, of how it saved me in buying this third shop, right?
Anybody who's gone through and gone through trying to get an SBA loan,
there's a lot of documentation paperwork that's going to go with it.
There's forecast projections, all these other things you need to do.
Usually it takes some time.
Now, all the financials and stuff, I have a good accountant, so I was able to get that quick.
It should start getting caught in the minutiae of all these little documents you've got to provide.
Karma, I was able to return this around in hours.
Here's my old projections.
Here's what my current business is doing.
Hey, go fill this sheet out that they need for me.
And within a couple of prompts and a couple of different massages,
here I had all this information that Karma, that was going to take me a week.
And I know how I work, and I probably work like a lot of entrepreneurs.
I'm going to start here, I'm going to work on it, and then, oh, squirrel, I got to go over here.
Let me go over here, and then I'm going to go back to it.
And we know that context switches are super expensive anytime we've got to switch from task to task.
So it allows you to focus on this thing, get a good result very quickly, and then massage it,
and then really complete it versus this context switch going back and forth.
But I'm telling you, Karma, I save days and of paperwork that I would get for this SBA.
Like you're using it, here's just one of a thousand examples of how you can leverage once again the machines.
Thousands, were you the one who told me that you loaded up some resumes?
My funniest story about the resume is that me and Cody, which works for my software company,
we had this brilliant idea that we're going to get AI to write all our job descriptions of what we want,
which was great. We fed it. Now, here's the thing, what's going about AI?
It's as dumb as you want it to be, but it's as smart as you allow it to be.
So we loaded it with all the things we wanted and all the criteria and all this.
And so we posted this job ad. And then we started getting these really great, you know,
resumes, but we started getting flooded with resumes. So we took and I'm like,
I got this idea, let's take them all and let's put them back to the machine
and let the machine go through and grade them. Well, then we started grading them and getting,
you know, really good ABC based off this criteria. Here's what we see.
Karma, the problem was, and this is in tech. I don't, we haven't seen this over in auto repair
shops with technicians, but for software engineers, what we started seeing was,
wow, these resumes start looking very similar to the last ones we got. Oh, and the last ones we
got. And so you've got AI versus AI. You've got AI writing the resume and then you've got AI
grading the resume and then you've got, and I swear we did one interview, Karma, where we were
talking to a guy who was using AI. It was not a person. It was really like an AI persona of this
guy and it was insane, but it was taking a couple seconds to respond and it was just this real awkward
interchange. So yeah, we thought it was funny AI versus AI and it was just crazy.
Wait a minute. You didn't hear Will Robinson, danger, danger.
Close, Karma. It was insane. The delay was like, hold on, this is weird. Like, why are you waiting?
You think you got duped?
Well, we didn't hire them. So without a question, there's a lot of people that are leveraging it
in all kinds of different ways. And what technicians, I have not seen this yet, service advisors and
those resumes that we do feed into the machines to say, hey, let's look at some of their qualifications,
anything that stands out, any red flags that stand out, go do a little research on them.
See if you can find more on them. If you got a Facebook or, you know, I know there's some
legalities around, you know, you're not supposed to do some of this stuff. But, you know, I think that
allowing it to kind of go and do some background checks for you is okay.
You know, as long as you're, I don't know, if you're having somebody
file a resume and you tell them you're going to do a background check and all that on them, then
it's all legal, right?
So at your stores, Chris, are you saying to your service advisors, whatever you call them,
client advocates, to use AI to improve RO descriptions and for your guys in the back
to write a little bit better pros to send up front?
Yeah. So a practical sense was auto flow back a year and a half ago,
we launched AI technician rewrite notes. Where is exactly that? And Karma, I wrote this,
you know, here's the thing, you know, I'm going to claim to be still a shop owner who is still
writing software for the industry and I eat my own dog food. I do. So I had one of my technicians
who had a problem with English. He's just not great with English.
We had this joke and it was like, oh, you know, so-and-so, he likes to use the word sipping
whenever there's a hose leak instead of seeping, he puts sippi ng versus sepa, which is a simple
mistake. I could probably make the mistake too. And so we're like, how can we solve this to where
a customer doesn't read it and go, oh my God, what is, how can my hose zip? So we wrote the AI
technician rewrite note to where you can click a button and then basically it rewrites it to say,
hey, this is leaking and here's the reason why it's leaking and here's, you know, some remedies
for it. Now, it's funny, as of recently, I've had shops come back on me and they're like, oh,
your AI notes is not very good. And I'm like, okay, once again, context of what it is helps.
So, you know, if you have something and it's like air filter bad needs replacing or air
filter dirty needs, like the more you tell it, the better it is versus air filter bad.
Okay, like, how bad is it? Like, it's with any human that you communicate with,
to what degree do they interpret what you're trying to tell them. So once again, the more
context you can put around what it is, they're, it's trying to rewrite for you, the better the
outcome will go. And once again, I've come you probably got 1000 examples of people have come
to you and said, I just don't work. I tried to chat to you BT, I put in like, it wiles the world
round and it gave me a bad answer or, but as an example of just AI technician rewrite notes,
give it a little context. And it does a great job, Carm, of making your shop
seem very intelligent and your technicians seem 10 times more intelligent than
what they appear to be, even though we know technicians are extremely intelligent,
but they didn't go to school for grammar. What I just heard you say about people
trashing something that comes back to them that they don't like, or they don't believe in,
I'm an individual and I think like you, I have a wider attitude on things.
And I think people have to have a wider attitude and not jump on the first time
you are uncomfortable. And because I always believe garbage in, garbage out, you lived
this your whole life having been in software. And so if you're going to say something that's not,
AI is not going to understand three words that I'm asking it to do something for me. It's just
not. And that's what the thought leader book brought me is you've got to really communicate
with that AI bot or whatever. You've really got to tell it a little bit more about what you're
looking for and a little bit of the why you're looking for it. Then it's going to come back
and even ask you a question. Oh, in the vein of the last time you did this or blah, blah,
blah, and I can do this and then it writes something, you don't have to accept it.
You could go on and say, do this, shorten it, make it right. I'm loving the fact that,
damn it, Chris, I'm having a damn relationship with a computer.
So in the book, it talks about that, right? It talks about prompting and saying, hey,
tell it that it's your strategic thought leader and that you're going through this drill with
financials and then say, hey, ask me a question one at a time until you get enough context behind
understanding what it is that I'm trying to do. A lot of people don't realize you can tell the
machines to ask you the questions one at a time and then you can get that context like you're
talking about. So it gets the context of what you're truly trying to do.
Yeah, the one at a time thing. He repeated that in every chapter, one at a time. Please ask me
these questions one at a time. I found that to be so powerful. It was an alliteration inside of
that book. He was talking about, and again, we'll always bring this down to our industry,
but he's talking about big corporate executives looking at strategic plans and working with
their executive team trying to figure stuff out. And I started to think about,
I'm ready to buy my third store. Chris sounds familiar, right? In the bank, my partner needs
to give me some money because they know I can pay it back. And I've got a great plan to pay it back
in five years, but they want to see a business plan from me. I go to my account, he's busy,
it's tax season, blah, blah, blah. This machine, this computer, this quantum, whatever, can help you.
It can. Carm, this story, I'll back up. We had a third property we were looking at.
And my brother, who's my partner? He's been partner in shops for a long time. He was Technician Patrick.
We kept going to the shop and I'm like, Patrick, this is the one we need to buy. We
And he was like, man, I just don't have a good feeling about it. So I'm frustrated.
I'm negotiating a price. I get a good price. And so I'm working with AI and I'm like, okay,
you know, what is worth? What are some of the comps around blah, blah, blah. And lo and behold,
Carm, I find the third property that we purchased in communication with AI. It's like, hey, here's a
comp. This is being sold here in this area for this much. But and I'm like, why do I not know about
this? I have business brokers. I have loot net. I have people that call me all the time. And I did
not know about this funny thing, Carm. When I then started me and my brother drove out to her,
we're like, this is amazing. Then everybody's like, oh yeah, we've known about that property forever.
And it's like, but the machine helped me guide me to, you know, not only negotiating on this,
you know, trying to find this one property, but then getting all the documentation together
to purchase this property when it comes to business plans. I have business plans. I'm a
business guy, you know that. But my business plans aren't always up to date. So running it through
and saying, hey, let's update a couple numbers, up tape a couple slides in here. It is once again,
something that has exponentially allowed me to do things in a much quicker fashion.
As a leader, right? Versus, oh man, it's gonna take me some time. You know, as a leader,
Carm, and you do a lot on leadership in your podcast, leadership, a lot of times we're doing
one off tasks, right? When you get to true leadership position, you're not doing the things
over and over again, because you've already hired somebody to do those things over and over again.
So the one off tasks are those things that you have to think about. They're the strategy sessions,
they're the forecast, they're the SWOT analysis, they're the this, the that, you can't go give it
to an admin, you can't give it to, you have to put thought through it. So I think once again,
what I've learned with AI is, wow, I've really allowed myself to exponentially expedite some
of these tasks that I've done as far as leadership goes. Now that you know what it takes to become
a Napa Gold Auto Care Gold Certified Shop, let's talk about the real value, what you get when you
achieve gold. This isn't just about status, it's about tangible benefits that grow your business.
Gold certified shops receive premium placement on NapaOnline.com at no additional cost. With millions
of site visits each year, your shop will be one of the top options consumers see
when they search locally. That visibility, it means more cars in your bays. You'll also get
$1,500 annually in marketing funds for pre-approved co-branded messaging, helping you connect with
your community while benefiting from the national reach of Napa branding. Combine that with preferential
referrals and you've got a powerful marketing advantage. Gold certified status enhances consumer
confidence with an extended 36 month, 36,000 mile peace of mind warranty and local labor coverage,
proving you stand behind your work. You'll also gain access to award-winning Napa Auto Tech training
for technicians and service advisors, helping improve efficiency, reduce comebacks and support
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