0:00 / 0:00
The Growth Tax: What Every Shop Owner Must Pay to Move Forward [THA 449]

The Growth Tax: What Every Shop Owner Must Pay to Move Forward [THA 449]

Remarkable Results Radio Podcast Sep 05, 2025 43 min
0:00
0:00
Immersive Mode

About this episode

Shop owners looking to elevate their business will find valuable insights in this discussion with Bill Haas and Matt Wagg. They explore the importance of coaching, effective business practices, and the mindset shift required to transition from technician to business leader. The conversation highlights how successful shops listen to their customers, embrace specialization, and focus on profitability. Matt shares his journey from being coached to becoming a coach himself, emphasizing the growth that comes from teaching others. This episode is packed with actionable advice for anyone in the automotive repair industry.

Topics: coaching benefits owner mindset business profitability customer service specialization effective labor rates team development industry trends leadership challenges
Select text to request an explanation
This is the Aftermarket Radio Network.
Hey, everybody, Karm Capriotto.
Welcome, remarkable results, Radio Another Town Hall Academy.
Glad to have you here, hanging out for the last 10 years.
God, I can't believe that, Bill.
10 years.
10 years.
I've had to know you for...
Seemed like yesterday.
I know, it was.
It's fun.
It's like Groundhog Day, baby.
Anyway, it's so good to have you all.
Thank you for the dedication of my listener for all these years and your commitment to listen
to learn just one thing, but yet you got to implement an idea that you take away.
Please, a reminder about the Breaks for Breast campaign.
We've done a great episode of recent 2 million bucks has been earned in the last 15 years.
This cancer research is real.
It's legit.
It's at Cleveland Clinic.
We're involved as an industry in it.
I need you to get behind it on Breaksforbreast.com.
I appreciate that.
We work so hard creating and bringing you this episodic education, and thank you so much to
our great sponsors.
Hey, did you know that Napa Tracks has on-site training plus six days a week support?
It all starts when a local representative meets with you to learn about your business and
how you run it.
After all, it's your shop, so it's your choice.
Let us prove to you that Tracks is the single best shop management system in the
business.
You can snap a Tracks on the web at N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C-S dot com.
Hey, how well does your team know their stuff?
Test their automotive skills with the today's class basic advanced or service advisor quizzes.
It's a quick, effective way to spot gaps and grow stronger teams.
Take the quizzes now at today's class dot com forward slash T-C quiz.
Shop owner stop juggling multiple marketing tools.
Kukui's integrated platform.
They deliver four times better website conversions, automated follow up, and real time ROI tracking.
Get industry leading customer support with Kukui.
That's K-U-K-U-I dot com.
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.
From the web at pitcrewloyalty.com, we're recording part one here with my friend Bill
Haas from auto ignite management.
Hello, Bill.
Hello.
How are you?
Good to see you, Bill.
Matt Wagg is here.
Accelerated diagnostics and automotive, Bennington, Nebraska.
Hey, Matt.
Hi, Carm.
Happy to be here.
Thank you.
Are you coaching too?
Yes, sir.
With who?
Who's the guy you're working for?
He might be sitting next to me here on a different screen.
Mr. Haas.
I got to know you through Bill a long time ago and says, this guy is really interesting.
You got to go back and listen to some of Matt's episodes.
I don't want to take our listener through, but work for the dealership.
Wanted to start your own business.
This is all I remember, Matt, presented a business plan.
You got rejected.
You had to go back.
You went to school.
It is an incredible story of how you got where you are.
And then when I found out that you went from being coached from Bill to coaching clients,
I said, this man, you're really probably have never yet seen the stride you're going to reach
in life because there's nothing you can't do, it seems to me.
You know what?
I take an immense amount of pride in being in this industry and I look back and I've
had a lot of blessings throughout my career that sometimes I've taken advantage of or
not really given the right appreciation to and I feel so much pride and so much care to
give back to these people in our great industry and I feel I've been given a gift to share
with others and the ability to help others and guide others.
It's just I have a natural drive to help.
That's part of why I went into business was to be able to share the skills and also
to create a great work environment for people to come work at and I feel that I'm at
a point now where I can help other shop owners and that was something that Bill and I talked
about, you know, a year or two ago, probably two years now on Bill.
Yeah.
I want to talk about this a little bit later in the episode because I think there's an
interesting dichotomy here of going from, you know, struggling shop owner to being
coached to then becoming, you were the student and now you're the teacher.
I think it's a great story to talk about.
What's on my mind is the shops that are thriving today.
Nobody knows I get on my soapbox and I'm an advocate for coaching because when I learned
what coaching was about 10 years ago and saw some of the greatest coaches that we have
in our industry and I heard about the success stories, I became a beacon, if you will,
for coaching and when friends of mine in the industry finally decided to get up
and out of their own way and get a coach, some of them were willing to come and
say you were right, the coaching people were right.
Why didn't I listen earlier?
Business is thriving to a degree, I can't imagine where I would be for the last five
years if I had not done it earlier, et cetera, et cetera.
And the shops that are thriving, let's make an assumption that coaching was important,
but there's also so many other things that are going on in our industry, guys.
Continuing education, great business practices, exceptional customer service.
Let's cover some of those that you guys are seeing, you're feeling that you're talking
about with your clients because as an advocate for professionalism in our industry, I love
interviewing guys like you to come in and tell these stories because maybe we can knock
someone off top dead center.
You know, the thing about what are the shops doing differently that are being successful,
right?
I would say it starts with number one, they listen.
Number two, they pay attention.
They're not living in a vacuum.
They're not doing what they've always done the way they've always done it.
They've decided that to have the opportunity, you've got to pay attention to what's going
on.
You got to listen.
I think, and Karm, I have to give you a lot of credit for this.
I think the podcasts are a big part of that.
The opportunity for shops to be able to take time out of their week to listen to
a podcast and hear other people and what their challenges are and things that they've
done and changed, implemented in their stores that are helping them overcome that problem,
right?
And it's like, man, maybe it's only 30 minutes.
Maybe it's only 40 minutes in that podcast, but there's some real value there, okay?
It's the same with coaching.
As a coach, I don't get to go and be in the day to day of their business.
I get about one hour of their time a week in most of the coaching that we do, right?
So there's some time I spend in preparation for that meeting, and then there's that one
hour that I get to spend with the client, and then there's a little bit of time afterward
in what I call cleanup, right?
I don't get to go spend the day in the shop or a week in the shop, but they're
paying attention.
They're listening and they're paying attention, and they're seeing that there are opportunities
for them to do some things differently.
To me, that's the big part.
Hey, Matt, let's go back to when you originally were coaching.
One of the things I loved about what Bill just said is listening, and you know what
I wrote down, Bill?
I wrote down, listen for real.
Just let that sink in for a minute.
Don't listen to answer.
Listen to hear, but listen for real.
Be really hearing.
When you, in your first four or five months, Matt, and Bill was kind of guiding you, teaching
you, showing you, maybe telling you, did you do something with it, or did you say, well,
it'll be next week, and you know, Bill will cut me some slack.
Bill will cut me some slack.
Bill will keep cutting me some slack, because I didn't get a chance to get this stuff.
Or did your commitment to coaching, was it so high that you just rocket shipped?
That's a really good question.
I love that I have the opportunity to answer this one, particularly.
I think I've said this before, but a good friend of mine, Sherry Stock, she was like
a mentor to me, great person, and one of the pieces of advice she gave to me before
I opened the shop.
I went and saw her.
We went and talked, and she said, as soon as you can afford a coach, she goes hire
one.
Well, I don't know if there's ever a point once I got into business that I knew
I could afford it.
But I'll tell you what, it paid for itself almost immediately.
Now, I've spent a period of my career in education.
So I'm a believer that there's always more we can learn.
There's always things we can improve on.
We're never perfect, and we're never done learning.
And I think you've got to go into any sort of situation knowing that I can get better,
I can improve.
Also as business owners and being small business owners, part of us go out on our
own because we want that freedom, we want that independence, we want to do things
our own way.
We can do it better than who we worked for.
But sometimes you get to a point where it's you don't know what to do.
You don't have that person to go ask.
You don't have that person to tell you how to do it differently to get the results
you're looking for.
And that can be our worst enemy at times, but it can also be our best friend
if we use it properly.
So when I started working with Bill, Bill was very up front about,
I'm going to challenge you to improve.
I'm going to focus on the numbers of the business.
I'm a metrics person, and that's how we're going to,
one of the things we're going to use to measure the performance.
And I said, great, because I don't necessarily know what I'm doing here.
I picked a lot of my numbers that were running the shop on just out of pure air.
There's no science behind it.
There's no data to back it and prove it that it works.
And I'm hoping I'm making enough money at the end of the month to pay the bills.
When you work with a coach, the coach is going to have proven methods
and proven systems and proven processes that they're going to present you.
I went into coaching hoping that I was going to get that individualized
attention that I needed, that I felt our business needed.
And Bill obviously provided that for me.
And that's why I believe very much in what he does
and why I went to work with him now as a coach.
But it gets scary and when a coach comes on board
and you've been doing things your own way for so long,
they're going to challenge you to things you're uncomfortable with.
And I think that's where it comes in.
And it's like, you know what?
I'm paying for this service to improve my business
with somebody that I need to place my trust in
because he has reasons and he has a lot of people he works with
that he's already proven these tactics out with
over many, many years, he's owned his own businesses.
I need to try this.
It was very uncomfortable, but I did what he said and it paid off.
And sure, I was stubborn at times.
There's things that I was uncomfortable with
and Bill had to get tough with me at times.
And I think that that's normal and that's good.
I needed to be challenged on my viewpoints and my standpoints.
And Bill needed to say, hey, you need to do this.
And you know what?
Our business wouldn't be nearly where it is
without the guidance of a coach.
That's why I'm just such a believer in it.
I heard a couple of very important things.
They're number one, uncomfortable.
Bill, I'm sure that a coach's perspective
is not to make a client feel uncomfortable,
but there's a certain point to your honest admission, Matt,
that I wasn't quite sure I knew what to do and how to do it
and that I really even wanted to do it.
But, you know, Bill was relentless
and he was going to do that to me.
And since you admitted you weren't an expert,
there's a lot of people today
that are running hobbyist type businesses
that feel they're an expert.
And they're getting paycheck to paycheck,
if you will, in their own business
and they're going out to social media
to get the answers that they want
because everyone's an expert.
Two, three words to describe a bad experience
or a bad product or a bad supplier.
It's like crazy.
No substantiation is just blurting.
But thank you for the analysis.
If you wouldn't mind, I want to pull this back a little bit
into since you guys are too successful
business people here in your own rights.
And I'm starting to think about
what is helping businesses thrive today.
One of the words of specialization
and differentiation keeps coming to me.
That would be, you know, eight ass or Euro.
And some other places where people can say,
hey, listen, we're really good,
but we also do this really well.
Is that a place for our future to be concerned about?
Oh, I think it's huge.
And, you know, you immediately went
to a couple areas of specialization, right?
A. Das, EVs.
How about this?
And this is something that shops really struggle with.
Why is the oil service that they do at their shop not special?
So here's a conversation I've been having with a lot of shops.
We're pushing really, really hard
to improve the effective labor rate in stores.
We've got to stop doing things that we don't get paid for.
And we got to stop getting paid correctly for the things we do.
All right. That is effective labor rate.
So the scapegoat is always the oil change.
They're like, well, Bill, I can't apply my door rate to my oil change.
I have to use a maintenance rate.
I have to use some lower rate.
And when you spend a little bit of time with that,
what you find out is they're doing that
because they want to compete in the oil change market.
So they want to compete in the oil change market on price,
but they're not competing at all.
Because when you think about the oil change market,
what you have to get them to understand is,
what does your technician do when they do an oil service in your shop?
And they come up with a whole list while we do this and we do this.
And it includes our DVI and I'm like, but that's not the oil change market.
The oil change market is a customer drives over a pit.
Somebody's down in a pit that drops the oil in the oil filter.
Somebody's up on top that puts the new oil in
and maybe checks a couple fluids and closes the hood and you drive out.
To be fair, let's really compare apples to apples.
So when I take your oil change and if you're at two tenths or three tenths,
and that really doesn't matter.
But what matters is when you apply your door rate
to the amount of time that you're assigning to that task,
it changes the price of an oil change by a little bit.
But once you explain to the customer that this is the price for a professional
to do a complete service to maintain this vehicle that you've invested in,
that specialization, why are we missing that?
You take a maintenance program like that and you kick it up about five notches.
I mean, there's other things that we can do to make it feel special.
And one of the things that's interesting in the shop where we've done that,
where we have applied the door rate to the oil change time
and we've started getting paid for the DVI, customers are paying it.
And the few customers that have left because they didn't like the price
anymore, we haven't missed make everything that we do special.
I'd love your idea of there's some specialization,
but we're missing some opportunities with things that we do make them special.
Do I have a moment to add in to Bill?
No, not at all. No, Matt, I'm sorry.
You're just a good looking guy standing.
No, yes, you do, of course.
OK, so to add on, I'd like to respond to that question in two parts here.
So to add on to what Bill was saying, I'm going to get on the oil change
oil service train real quick here.
I've challenged a couple of clients that I've worked with and I challenge
about anybody to call around and see what these oil change competitors
are actually charging because you're going to be quite surprised
that most of them are probably just as much or way more than you're
charging for the oil oil change.
And they're not getting the comprehensive service completed
that we're providing in our industry.
You know, if we're inspecting the vehicle, if we're checking all the fluids,
if we're checking the tires, we're we're giving them a report on the safety
and the condition of their vehicle, yet we're cheaper than one of the other
Lube competitors down the street that's not doing a quarter of that.
We need to look in the mirror and realize, yeah, in regards to specialization,
I think Bill's right there.
And we've got to differentiate ourselves as professionals.
But, you know, the landscape is changing vastly with vehicles.
And I think that's one thing that even me as a shop owner,
we're looking into and what does that look like in five to ten years from now
for us to be sustainable in business?
You know, we're not seeing as many large intimate repairs
that we used to see big engine repairs or big engine replacements.
So you've this is where I think to working with a coach has so much value
because we need to understand what these trends in the industry really are.
What are other shops experiencing?
What are consumer spending habits looking like?
Because that is stuff that is invaluable to me as a shop owner
in regards to how I'm going to plan for the next four to five years.
What am I going to invest in training?
Who do I need to bring on my team?
What skill sets do I need?
What does that look like for my customer service staff to be educated enough
to advise our guests on what their vehicles need
and how all these complex systems work and operate?
It's something that we talk about quite often.
And I think we as shop owners live too much in the here and now
rather than where's our business going to go?
What's going to happen to the longevity of this?
What's the future of my employees?
What's the future look like for the people that depend on us
that bring our cars in?
Let's face it, your shop management system is the single most important
tool in your shop, period.
Napa Tracks was built from the ground up
to make your business more profitable and efficient.
We provide an extensive set of tools to increase and track
profitability in real time.
Napa Tracks offers the industry's best post sale support hands down
and we train your people on site.
Yep, on site.
And we offer remote refresher training 10 times a week
and customer support is open six days a week.
Give us a call, visit the website or join our Facebook community
today to learn more.
We'll prove to you that Tracks is the single best shop
management system in the business.
Napa Tracks is always customized and tailored for you,
whether you're a one man shop or a large multi bay or multi
location company.
After all, it's your shop.
So it's your choice.
Visit us on the web at Napa Tracks.
That's N-A-P-A-T-R-A-C-S dot com.
Transform your team with today's class
where automotive training is easy, quick and fun.
Just five minutes a day on our app can eliminate hours
of looking up forgotten information later.
It's perfect for technicians, advisors and managers alike.
Keep critical knowledge fresh and top of mind
ensuring your team operates at peak efficiency.
Today's class is impactful, accessible from anywhere
and a bit of fun too.
And we're not talking about after hours pizza either.
For training that gets results, turn to today's class dot com.
Shop owners, we know you are overwhelmed with a flood of missed calls,
empty bays and disconnected marketing tools.
Cacui has spent over a decade building one integrated platform
for auto repair shops, one login, one dashboard and mobile first websites
that convert four times industry average, smart, innovative CRM
with automated follow up, 24 seven online booking and real time ROI tracking
with 900 plus years of combined team experience.
We feel the growth of 2,200 plus shops
and have influenced three billion dollars in revenue.
Stop working harder.
Start working smarter.
Get industry leading customer support and book a demo with Cacui.
That's KU-K-U-I dot com.
You know, most shop owners feel trapped spending on ads
while half their first time customers never come back.
It's frustrating.
It's exhausting.
And it's not your fault.
The industry average is 54% and one and done.
We understand how discouraging that can be.
Well, pit crew loyalty changes the story.
Our clients cut that rate by up to 38%,
raising lifetime value by more than 50%.
Loyalty members visit nearly three times more often,
creating predictable revenue without extra ad spend.
Pit crew loyalty where customers stay and shops thrive.
On the web at pitcrewloyalty.com.
I got a comment on the quick oil changes, Matt and Bill.
Look, if you think about rent, heat, light, payroll,
they can't do it.
Twenty nine, ninety nine oil change anymore
just because of the pure rise in costs
that we've all been having to deal with.
So but sometimes what we do as a business person,
I don't care if I'm a modeling shop or an art store,
we hang too much on legacy in our mind.
We're struggling, but we don't want to make the mental shift
that our competitors are struggling just as much as we.
And they probably raise prices.
I love your point.
Please go shop your competition.
And what you just described, Karm, is emotion.
When we allow the emotion to drive our decisions,
instead of when we ignore the data
and allow the emotion to enter into the process,
we've got a problem.
But I keep thinking, let's stay in the circle of specialization.
And I love the fact that we do oil changes like no other people.
We comprehensive maintenance service,
whatever it is that you want to call it.
But also we have had some of the hottest weather.
Well, I've joined the complaining group
because here in Buffalo, we've had 90 degree days
like we have we're going to have another one Sunday.
And we probably have had ten of them, Bill.
So I'm empathy with you, right?
And when I think about the knowledge that we have
and the feel we have as consumers, when I tell people
I'm a thermal management specialist, I'm sorry, guys,
that used to be the words air conditioning specialists,
but thermal management today, because we're going to heat pumps
and EVs and all that stuff.
So why not say I'm the check engine light specialist?
The point of it is, is that we all are suffered with heat.
We all see check engine lights.
We have EVs.
We have hybrids have been around for 20 some years, right?
Eight as calibration, big arguments of late.
I'm not going to do the alignment if we can't get this thing
brought back to, you know, we calibration specs.
Customer doesn't want to do the three hundred dollar alignment.
They only want the ninety nine dollar one
from the guy down the road who says you don't need a calibration.
And it's like, oh, my God, we have to almost somehow ignore that.
Be proud of what we want to offer and give
and hold strong on the specialization
that we want to provide our client.
So we've been struggling with a desk thing with a lot of shops, right?
They fall into two categories.
There's a shop that won't do the alignment without a desk.
And then there's the shop that shouldn't do the alignment without a desk.
Right. Perfect analogy.
You decide what shop do you want to be?
Do you want to be the shop that won't do it?
Or do you want to be the shop that shouldn't do it?
You get to decide.
Won't or shouldn't. I love it.
That's a great way to think about it.
Keith Perkins did this incredible class at tools.
And I just recently asked him if I could have some of his graphics
because I think the graphic to show the client what the one degree
off on the radar sensor happens, you know, a thousand feet down the road
when you're playing with adaptive crews and all that stuff is supposed
to work the right way, lane, keep and everything.
So I think we're kidding ourselves
because we don't want to invest in the equipment.
So we're never going to say it's important
or you have the equipment so you say it's important. What?
Where's the do right rule in our industry?
Where is it?
You better have a moral compass that puts you right where you belong.
Exactly, Bill.
Oh, what's the new equipment that you've recently pursed?
What's adapting than the modern technology?
Are you using AI?
All of this stuff where people are on the on the sidelines
looking for quick shortcuts or not wanting to invest
because they don't have the profits in order to invest.
You know, Bill, I'll bet you one of the first things you do
in the first month of having a client, you too, Matt,
is to say, I want to teach you what profits all about, by the way.
I want to teach you what that word profit means.
It's not a dirty word, it's not a four letter word, it's a five letter word.
But it's important because we can't buy equipment.
We can't give raises.
We can't do all this stuff if we don't have profit.
So we have to have it.
The degree of profitability allows us to be strong and grow.
Here's a quick profit story from Matt.
So Matt wanted to buy some alignment equipment.
So Matt found some alignment equipment.
Matt was ready to buy alignment equipment.
Like always, the equipment people had a program
for how you could buy this alignment equipment and pay for it for the rest of your life.
Not the rest of your life.
Pay for it, you know, with a reasonable monthly payment for a period of time.
Let's put it that way, right?
So Matt's looking at this alignment equipment
and he's talking about this program.
He can use with this equipment provider.
Matt had another, you know, idea that maybe
I don't want to do that, maybe I just go to the bank and I borrowed the money to do it.
I said to Matt, I said, Matt, there's enough money in the bank
to buy the alignment equipment.
Yeah, but that's a little bit cautious, right?
Matt's like, well, I don't want to use all the money that's in the bank.
I'm, you know, that's kind of intentional to put that money in the bank, right?
Yes, it is there.
I said, but here's what we're going to do.
We're going to take the money out of the bank
and we're going to buy the alignment equipment.
And every month, you're going to put that payment
that you're going to make to the equipment people.
You're going to put that back in the bank.
You've self-financed the purchase of the alignment equipment.
What did you do, Matt?
That's what I did.
That's exactly what he did.
Exactly it.
You know why he could do that?
He could do that because he was profitable.
How many business, I would challenge businesses today.
How many businesses today can do that
that they could actually go to a bank account,
take the money out and make the investment
in the piece of equipment they want?
Why are we paying interest to banks and equipment,
finance, lease equipment?
Why are we doing that when self-financing?
That's how you do those things.
So, you know, what are successful businesses doing differently?
To me, I think that's a great example.
That's a great example of what a successful business does differently.
And we've used that same tactic.
You know, that was a good learning,
like a pinnacle moment for me to realize,
like, wow, we were actually in a spot
where I have the money to do this.
And then, you know, you look back from a standpoint now
as being a coach and having Bill set me up
to be in a position to where we were able
to just make that big purchase.
And I've been in several other scenarios
as a business owner where we've had big
unexpected equipment failures
or we've had vehicle accidents or mishaps.
And it's just like, you know what?
This stinks, but guess what?
We run a profitable, very well-ran business.
We have the money here for these things when they happen.
And it's not even a scary thing to think about it anymore.
Sure, does it stink?
Do we care?
Yes, but you know what?
That's the benefit of doing this
and being profitable and charging the right rates.
Great profit story.
Thank you so much.
You know, we can also talk about marketing
and culture, team development, all that cool stuff.
But I wanna ask you a question about
taking on a new client and even you, Matt.
Bill, when you approached Matt in the beginning,
was there anything to teach a client
about an ownership mindset?
Because in my mind, if you don't feel that you're an owner
and you're just not the guy working on cars in the back,
you'll never make it.
Yeah, so for us, we start with,
we actually have a owner's job description
that gives them specifically the task
that the owner needs to perform
for this business to be successful.
Things that are not on that task list
are things like changed oil in a customer's car,
fix a flat tire for a customer's car,
order parts for the tech,
I mean, all that stuff's off the table.
So we're very specific in making sure they understand
where we're moving them to in terms of
what they're responsible for,
the tasks that they need to perform
as the owner of a business.
The duties and the role.
Call it, we call it owner mindset.
Did that happen to you, Matt?
Yeah, I mean, now, I think that was one
of the biggest obstacles for me to overcome
was I had to figure out how to get out of my own way,
as Bill put it nicely,
and get out of the way of others.
Because as a business owner,
you feel in control of all these things
and I gotta do this and I gotta do that.
And nobody's better than me at fixing these cars
than I am, that's why I'm successful
and all these customers come here for me to fix their cars.
And what we need to realize at the end of the day
is if we're gonna have a business and not a hobby,
we've gotta have people in place that we can train
and we can trust to do these tasks.
And I remember vividly when Bill gave me
that job description and duties of an owner,
and I looked at it and I said,
oh, fixing cars isn't on there.
And that was at a point in the business
we had so much growth and I needed
to start doing different things
because I had quite a few members on our team.
I think I had four or five employees at that point
and I'm still out trying to wrench and fix cars
and do marketing and do bookkeeping and accounting.
And I mean, you can only do so many things great
at a mediocre level.
If you wanna be great or excellent,
you've gotta narrow that task list down.
And what Bill said is that you've gotta get to a point
where you're not doing the work
but you're enabling others to do the work.
You need to be there to help put this team together
and that's what I view myself as now.
And it was hard to get out of the shop.
It really was.
I mean, I'm losing a little bit of my identity
in that process, I feel.
But for me, I've found so much enjoyment now
in managing and running the business
that that to me is just as satisfying
as problem solving on a car.
Mac, did you have that in you
to wanna lead and manage the business
because there's some people that they're so afraid of that
that they just can't get out of their own way.
And they're just, they continue to be in business
and they continue to hurt the professionalism
of our industry because they're taking shortcuts.
All right, Bill and I, we're talking about this
this morning, this is great
because I think going into owning a business,
we know that we're really good at what we do.
We know that I'm really good at fixing cars.
I can make a lot of money doing it
but what most people that own a shop
and most shop owners are former technicians,
a lot of us don't have extensive management background
or business training and leadership.
And when you start to take on team members,
the game changes.
Now, I have had a different career path
than a lot of people
and I've been in management roles
and leadership roles nearly my entire career,
but I didn't realize how ill-equipped I was
as a true leader and an owner until I opened a shop.
And I think that this is one of the biggest challenges
I see right now with many shop owners
is we don't know how to properly lead.
We don't know how to properly guide.
We just don't know.
And so we're doing the best we can
and most of us as technicians that were really successful.
I mean, you think of a technician role,
sure there's some team focus to it,
but we work really on a solo basis.
There's not somebody with us that we're responsible for
and so we get used to being really successful,
but we're doing it more on our own terms and by ourself.
And when you become responsible for,
I've got to make sure all of these people are successful.
That's what makes me successful, the game changes.
And it becomes to where I thought I was a good leader,
but I didn't realize how poor of a leader
or how improved I needed to be
until I started hiring employees.
Bill, did you discover that Matt had those capabilities
early on in your relationship?
Oh, absolutely, yeah.
I mean, from his previous experience
and other things that he had done,
he definitely had the bandwidth for that.
But regardless, I think it's different
when you're the one that's responsible
for all the paychecks on payday.
All those mouths to feed.
I don't think people think that through.
All those mouths to feed.
And you think about that, right?
Because if you're someone like Matt,
Matt doesn't just think about the employee
in terms of that technician or that service advisor.
He's thinking about that technician that has two kids.
Oh, and his kids are starting school this week
and they're having to deal with
getting the kids ready for school.
And then there's another employee
that maybe doesn't have kids,
but he's getting married in the fall
and he's gonna start a whole journey,
a whole different journey.
That's how Matt approaches it.
How do I make sure that we're taking care of everyone?
I love what you just said.
Every time I listen to somebody,
I get inspired by the mouths to feed.
And some of our people don't quite realize
the extended families who work for them.
And I was thinking,
I wrote the words family, food and fun down.
For these particular reasons,
family is home, housing, right?
Needs necessity.
Food is survival for everyone
and fun is to the enjoyment of life.
And if you're making enough money
and you're paying your people well enough,
you can hire some superstars to come in and work for you
because you've got the word P, the P word.
You got profit.
Then you can provide family food and fun
and that you're a magnet for great people.
We see that all the time
in the work that we're doing with the hiring, right?
We're spending so much time now with what you're aware
of what Sarah's doing with the hiring stuff
and it's phenomenal, right?
But the interviews I've been involved in,
when I get to talk into a technician
or a service advisor about how much money
will this new job pay you?
And there's always this hesitancy,
like, well, how much do they pay?
I said, it really doesn't matter.
What really matters is how much money.
I said, here's the thing, let's look at it this way.
There's two people in his conversation right now,
me and you.
I need to know how much you need to make
because if you don't make enough money
to take care of yourself and your family
and whatever's necessary for you to function,
I said, this job's off the table.
I said, so my job is to find out what you need to make
and then build a program that will show you
how you can make that much money here.
It's not about, oh, this is a $20 job or a $30 job
or a $40 dollar job.
It's not about that.
It's about making sure people get what they need.
How do we do that?
It's amazing the split we have
in the successful people and the non-successful people
in our industry and every time I come in the studio,
flip the microphone on,
I'm hoping that I'm helping one more,
two more, three more out of the hole
that they've dug for themselves
and that they could stop and realize I can do this.
I need to learn more, listen to the show,
implement something, call a coach,
get in a networking group.
There's so many ways to improve yourself.
I never thought 10 years ago, Bill,
I would be striving or driving to improve
the people that maybe they don't want to be improved
or maybe they're having triple thoughts every night.
I know I need to change it.
I know they can do this.
They're gonna get out of my way.
Then go find a quick answer
and fall back into a rut or a routine.
It isn't easy to be super successful.
It takes a lot of hard work
and it takes a partner to drive you to do it.
And sometimes you need someone to hold you accountable.
Exactly right.
As humans, we're not gonna holding ourselves accountable.
That's a discipline that's very hard to develop, right?
So when you have someone that's accountability partner
is a huge part of coaching.
You could ask every coach I know
and they're gonna echo that.
A big part of what I do is hold people accountable
for them to be able to realize
that they can achieve what they're set out to do here.
Look, we're gonna do a part two of this episode.
We're gonna come back, we're gonna talk about systems.
So keep an eye out for the episodes
that fall into your listening app, listen for that.
But in the meantime, Matt,
I can't help but stop to think you hired Bill
then you became a coach.
Tell me about going from being coached
to coaching clients, going from student to teacher.
I find what you have to say
probably extremely fascinating.
This has been a whole nother journey of life for me
is what I'll put it as.
And it's been really cool.
And that was one of the things is,
when Bill and I started talking about this coaching journey
I asked him, I said, do you think I'm ready to do this?
And he goes, I know you're ready.
And there's always that feeling that, hey, you know what?
Do I have the abilities and the skill set
to help somebody improve?
And you're thinking about it and you're like, gosh,
I hope I'm the right person to help these people out
and to get them the success that Bill got me.
That makes you humble, that makes you humble.
You know, and I'm looking at it
as I've got some big shoes to fill working under Bill
because of what he's done for me.
Now, I got to make sure I can go do that for others.
But when I went into, and I don't know if many people know
I spent eight years of my career as a training instructor
for a community college and then also for a manufacturer.
The one thing I learned was that
as somebody that's helping and training and guiding others
it makes you even better at what you do
because you have so many different things
you're gonna learn from helping others
that help you just view the world differently
or have a different perspective or outlook on situations.
And so, you know, when you, I told Bill, you know,
like I think I've got a lot of great experiences
that I can help people work through and overcome.
And I had a pretty unique path in how I got into business.
And one of the things that you really get into
when you start coaching people is you see that,
hey, these are some of the same things
that I had to deal with when I started out.
These are the same problems.
And you start hearing it amongst multiple people
and you start talking to more and more shop owners.
And the thing is, is we all have a lot
of the same challenges in business.
And, you know, you become very involved again
and like, hey, you know what?
I'm back to square one again
with trying to help these guys out
and getting them to believe in the things that I did
or the advice Bill gave me
or hey, why don't you look at it this way?
And so I've been able to relive a lot
of the first couple of years in business for me
and draw back on my experiences
and some of the challenges I had
and maybe some of the pushback I gave Bill.
And I look at it from a whole other perspective on,
gosh, had I not done this,
here's what the outcome would have been.
And it's really fun to be able to share those stories
with the clients that I'm working with.
When you teach, you learn.
And you know, Bill, it took me a little while in my life,
a long while in my life to realize how important that was.
But when I was out working for corporate America
and I had many different roles traveled nationally.
And when I would get out and had a chance to present,
it doesn't matter what it was,
it was marketing sales, it was finance.
And you create your presentation,
you're confident with it, you get up there.
Did you ever have, I've had these all the time,
did you ever have a moment?
Just a, if you're watching me on YouTube,
you'd see my mouth gaping open and my mind saying,
I'm speaking, I'm teaching,
but I had this huge learning moment.
It became constitution.
It came inside me, it was like hardener on body filler.
And that's gotta be what's going on with you, Matt,
because you're out teaching what you've learned
and all of a sudden it becomes
one of those unbelievable moments.
And I had them bunches of times
and it took me so long to realize
when I was teaching I was learning.
That to me is if you're involved in a networking group
and you're sharing with each other,
you're learning as you're sharing
and talking and preaching.
Absolutely.
Oh, it's a great story.
Look at guys, thank you so much for this.
We're gonna come back and do a part two,
bringing both of you back
and you've got such a great perspective on the industry
and we're gonna talk about systems
because I think systems win wars.
And that's always been a favorite quote of mine,
systems win wars.
Bill Haas, A-I-M, auto ignite management.
Thank you, Carm.
Daughter Sarah, good friend of Tracy's,
they're out doing teaching stuff together.
Oh my God, it's just.
That's pretty cool.
They're on fire, those two.
And Matt Wag from Accelerated Diagnostics and Automotive
in Bennington, Nebraska and then AIM coach.
Thanks guys for being here.
Thank you so much, Carm.
Now whatever you do, my listener,
whatever you do, go out and do it well.
Thanks for being on board to listen and learn
from the Premier Automotive Aftermarket Podcast.
Until next time.

Request an Explanation

Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.

Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.

Want to learn more?

Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.

Explore Terms

More from Remarkable Results Radio Podcast

From Data to Loyalty: How AI and Hospitality Are Redefining Shop Growth [THA 488]
Jun 5, 2026
Stop Hiring in Panic Mode: Build a Recruiting Pipeline for Your Shop [RR 1094]
Jun 2, 2026
When Personal Stress Walks Into the Shop: How Leaders Protect Performance [THA 487]
May 29, 2026
From Guesswork to Process: Modern Diagnostic Strategies for Auto Repair Shops [RR 1093]
May 26, 2026