Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated using Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you notice an error, please contact [email protected].
Tom Dorsey (00:00:06):
Good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to this week’s edition of The Digital Shop Talk Radio. I’m Tom Dorsey, and today we’re talking with Dan Garlock from Silver Lake Auto Tire Centers out of Wisconsin. Four location operator. Been with AutoVitals for quite some time. We kind of met him through ATI. So he’s been involved in improving and helping and learning for a long, long time. And matter of fact, right before we just went live, we were having a little discussion about kind how Uwe and Dan got together and we’ll explore that throughout the show. Have a pen and paper ready because you’re going to want to take notes, have your questions ready, use the q and a button, use that chat function to ask your questions live, and we’ll make sure we get them answered for you. And we’ll follow up before the end of the show. We’ll give you some contact information for Dan Garlock, so in case you want to follow up with him, which you probably will off air, you can do that. And of course you can always get ahold of him through the Facebook forum or any of our guests, as it were in any of our expert panel of experts right there in the AutoVitals Facebook forum. But without further ado, welcome Dan Garlock.
Dan Garlock (00:01:18):
Yeah, thanks guys. Thanks for having me on. I’m looking forward to my first ever live podcast.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:24):
And I got to tell you, I mean, I was talking last week, I had a panel on it and I was thinking to myself, how in the heck have I gone this many episodes and not had Dan Garlock on my show yet? So I really appreciate you taking the time, buddy to come on, and it’s going to be a good one. So let’s jump in if we can. Oh, and always, sorry, didn’t mean to ignore you, Uwe, our founder and CIO Uwe Kleinschmidt joining us as always, welcome Uwe.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:01:52):
Thank you. I would’ve made myself proud. Don’t worry.
Tom Dorsey (00:01:57):
Yeah, so if anybody knows, it was not really a shy person, but that’s good. That’s how we got to the position that we’re in. That’s how we get such a large following because we like to challenge the norms. And so we’re going to be talking a little bit about that today as a matter of fact, and look forward to your engagement. So gentlemen, if we could, let’s kind of get started and Dan, if you could just kind of kick us off with a little bit of, tell us how you’re doing, how did 2020 treat you and what are the big lessons learned coming out of this pandemic?
Dan Garlock (00:02:34):
Yeah, so that’s a great question. I think that could be its own episode. And how did 2020 treat you and you learn from it? I’m be honest, I probably have a little bit different take on 2020. I look back at 2020 with some fondness. It really taught me a lot of things. It opened my eyes up to some spots where I was blind previously. We did really well as a company coming through that I really found that my company needs me to be the strongest leader it possibly can be, and there really wasn’t any option around that at all. I took that time and took that opportunity to really surround myself with some other really good leaders, spend some time talking with them, some really good coaching and to really help navigate my company through a lot of that. So that was probably the biggest takeaway for me For 2020, it really was a good time for me to refocus on the things that were important with my family. I spent a lot of time with my family, what else are you going to do? I spent a lot of time talking to my friends and sometimes commiserating with my friends and other organizations that we were actually solving problems while we were having that time talking.
(00:03:58):
We really took that opportunity when things slowed down for us to actually slow down and put some things into place. We realized really early on that the name of the game had kind of changed. It wasn’t how fast we could run it was how well we could grab opportunity, realized opportunity and find opportunity and how do we actually capture that and retain that opportunity. So we put a lot of things in place to really just kind of sharpen the saw a bit, get better, and ultimately really focus on the profitability of our company so that we can endure whatever the next pandemic or next quarter or whatever the next thing is coming around a corner that’s going to try to knock our legs off from underneath us. So I could talk about that for a week. It was a good year. I learned a lot that year.
Tom Dorsey (00:04:45):
Yeah, no, it’s amazing. And it really is it almost this hard line division between people who rung their hands and said, woe is me and struggled. And people who said our very own Bill, Connor likes to say there’s no problems, there’s no challenges, there’s only opportunity. And when you look at it from that perspective, there was a lot of opportunity. And yet I think you nailed it right, is before the modus operandi has always been get ’em in, bang ’em out, get ’em in, bang ’em out. And really, with covid and the restrictions and kind of the touchless expectations, you really had to think outside of the box. You really had to slow down and really refine a lot of your best practices, really make sure you were consistent in the application of those best practices. And when you did that, folks had some really great results.
(00:05:40):
And I mean, we’ve had folks on the show opened up second locations during the last year, maybe 30% down in car count, but 50% up in revenue. I mean, that’s incredible when you think about it. And you’ve got to be saying to yourself, why wasn’t I doing this all along? And so what is your plan as a team to continue that application of the best practices? Once everything returns to normal, you get crushing again, you get busy. How do you make sure you stay focused on doting every I like you’ve been doing to drive that high ARO that you guys have?
Dan Garlock (00:06:21):
Yeah, so muscle memory is the key We have really taken. We learned that when by slowing down, we actually became faster and actually became healthier by doing that. So we spend a lot of time developing the leadership in our company to really stay aligned with that thought process. We can’t take what we learned in 2020 and then just all of a sudden revert back to the way it was pre 2020. There isn’t any going back to normal. Every day is the new normal and every day provides new challenges and new opportunities. And for us really developing that leadership so that they can have that foundational approach. So we stay aligned and we’re slowing things down, making sure that we don’t take for granted any one of our customers, our business with our customers, interact. Any interaction that we have with those customers that we cherish those and hold ’em to extremely high value.
(00:07:26):
And we just don’t push ’em off and go, okay, there’ll be a next one. Maybe that customer is not, we didn’t give that customer the full attention and it deserves because we don’t know when the next customer is going to be coming through the door. I mean, it’s busy now for us. It’s been busy for us for months now, and we’ve kind of held true to that and we’re seeing some of the results that we’re looking for out of that through our profitability and through our customer retention and through ultimately the Google reviews and feedback from our customer just saying, Hey, you’re doing a great job. People demand that Now.
Tom Dorsey (00:08:02):
That was genius advice. I think that’s a Navy SEAL saying, isn’t it? How does it go? Smooth is fast or slow is smooth and smooth is fast, or something like that. But that’s brilliant advice for folks because it’s really what happens is that when you slow it down and you analyze and audit your process, how your team is doing inspections, how your team is doing intake, we talked a lot about staggering appointments and staging the interaction over the last couple of weeks on the show. And when you do these things, what happens is you find and weed out some inefficiencies and you become actually faster. So when you take that time to slow down and look at the big picture, the end result a lot of times is becomes a more efficient operation that’s much more effective. And like you said, it gets noticed by the customers, right?
(00:08:55):
Reviews, increased repeat visits, customers holding your team accountable for telling them the complete story. Don’t cut corners on me. You sent me this inspection last visit, whether it was three weeks ago or a year ago, but hey, talk to me about these other things that you had brought up in this last visit. I want to know an update. Do I need to replace those? What’s my prioritization? And they start to work with you closer as a partnership around maintaining that vehicle versus just a single transactional type of interaction. And hey, maybe we see ’em again if we don’t. Well, there’s always more fish in the sea,
Dan Garlock (00:09:35):
Right? When the automotive industry is noisy, and when I say it’s noisy, everybody is fighting for the same customers. We’re all at the same attention. I want our customers to leave knowing that the only place that they’re going to get the attention that they deserve is at our place and that they’re accustomed to and that their customers are demanding these days. To the point where that noise kind of just quiets down there really isn’t, there isn’t really another option other than coming to one of our locations. And that takes time, that takes intentionality with every single visit. That just can’t happen occasionally. And when there’s time or when it’s slower, when we need that extra car count, it has to happen every single time. And that consistency is probably one of the largest challenges that we face in maintaining our brand and our identity.
Tom Dorsey (00:10:34):
Well, and then it becomes even more difficult when you have multiple locations, right? Because it’s one thing to get it cooking well in a single location, but how do you replicate that across, in your case, four locations, and then how do you make sure that every location is following those best practices? You can’t be in four places at once. What is your secret to making sure and not to let the cat out of the bag, but we’re looking at a future episode with Dan where we’re going to be talking about developing leadership, where we’re going to be talking about surrounding yourself with leaders. And I would imagine that’s part of how you are able to maintain such consistency across your four locations,
Dan Garlock (00:11:18):
Right? So you got something?
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:11:23):
Yeah, I promised I’m going to insert myself. So was there a particular thing, event, what happened or some feedback by customers or of any kind which made you not panic, but take a step back and say that’s an opportunity to improve and look at this from a different angle. What triggered your change?
Dan Garlock (00:12:01):
Well, there was a marker that I remember in the beginning of Covid that was like, crap, if our business is built to be a certain size and generate a certain amount of revenue, and that is through car counts and visits, and if people are going to be staying at home, they’re not going to be going to soccer practice and running their kids all over the place and they’re not going to be going on trips. Their need for their car has greatly diminished working from home. And the game just changed considerably. So I knew very quickly I was watching our checking account and I knew really quickly how long we had in order for us to last year at this time, beginning of April, to be able to have the size weeks that we were having with the car count and that if we did not change and we did not adapt that the road was really short for us.
(00:12:58):
And we also at that time were tracking to open up our fourth location and we kind of pumped the brakes on it a little bit during Covid and bought some time with doing that. And ultimately, once we were able to stabilize our business plan and business model moving forward that we could endure what was about to come, then I felt better. I actually felt better for not just opening up the fourth location, but I felt like, okay, we can figure this out. We can figure out anything. And so it was kind of that realization about a year ago today in that time period that it was like, you need to be an amazing leader, a visionary for your organization. You got to figure this out for the sake of the 40 some odd team members and their families that we have in our organization. Otherwise we’re going to be furloughing laying off right sizing, whatever you want to call it, and it’s going to have a cascading effect on the culture and the mindset of my team and their livelihood. So it just was an awakening Uwe, I guess, on what it needed to endure this and be successful coming out of the other side of it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:16):
And was it a rocky way or did you really, once you realized that it fell in place?
Dan Garlock (00:14:22):
Oh, it was all perfect. Everything I do was perfect. Nothing ever goes bad. Everybody was happy.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:14:28):
You have the wrong podcast.
Dan Garlock (00:14:31):
No, I mean, I make lots of mistakes. I’m good at making mistakes. It’s the best way for me to learn is through mistakes. I’m very adventurous in that way. I don’t mind trying something out and watching to fail and go crap. I should have probably did this a little differently and I’ve been accused of moving a little bit too fast and I need to slow down. I’m working on that. But honestly, it was fairly smooth. I had the staff’s attention I committed to them. We had some really good heart conversations during this and they could see the angst and the pain and that I was kind of going through in the stress of trying to figure this out. And they had my back and I had theirs.
(00:15:21):
They were willing to try just about anything. And they also knew the urgency of this. So kind of wrapping back onto Tom’s question is having that strong leadership team around me to be able to communicate to their teams. I can’t be the person who does it all anymore. It worked for one location, two locations, maybe even three locations. It doesn’t work for four and it doesn’t work effectively for four, and it’s not healthy for me to do it for four. So we had an amazing team around us and still do. And yeah, I guess that was long answer to the question about it, but it was fairly smooth.
Tom Dorsey (00:16:07):
And it’s a great point. And one thing that I’ve always kind of noticed about you, we probably met eight years ago, I think, at ATI, matter of fact, I think the first time I met you, it was you and Darren. I met you at, I want to say Palm Springs or something at an ATI super conference. And I think you were new. I think you were new to ATI and man, you had a bunch of goals and eight years on, you’ve crushed a lot of those goals. But one thing that I’ve always really respected about you is that you’re willing to say, Hey, here’s things I don’t know. And network and ask advice and work with other leaders in the industry and ask those questions. What advice would you give to folks? Because a lot of times people think they’re in the boat all by themselves, rowing away towards the trying to escape the waterfall. And it’s hard to do when you’re the only one rowing,
Dan Garlock (00:16:57):
Right? I mean, I surround myself with, I love surrounding myself with people who think I’m big and very, they understand their limitations, but on the other hand, they understand that working together that we can solve anything. The 20 groups that I’m in have been amazing for us to be able to foster that growth and challenge each other. And the 20 group I’m in now, it seems like everybody is trying to outdo each other with how many locations and how well they can have their teams engaged. And we’re all trying to outdo each other, but we’re not trying to outdo each other. We’ve all realized that this is the way, this is the only way that really business can be run. And I remember also early on last year was really kind of pushing ATI to, we need some CEO training as a CEO of the organization. I need other CEOs to talk to and to have conversations with and be able to problem solve and be smarter and bigger and better than we are. So Uwe knows this. I like to challenge other people that we’re surrounded with to make sure that we’re providing benefit and value to each other all day every day. I mean, that’s how I first met Uwe, is I challenged him to throw a tablet across the concrete patio and he did it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:18:25):
I’ll never forget that
Dan Garlock (00:18:26):
I like him. Alright, I like, I’ll talk to him. So we ate lunch and breakfast like five times and just because he was willing to throw a tablet and see if it broke or not.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:18:38):
So for everyone, the story when that was the first ATI summer conference went through Fair was outside and
Dan Garlock (00:18:47):
Arizona.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:18:49):
In Arizona, and we proudly present our tablet-based inspection program as one of the first ones. And along comes then and says, does it even work in the shop? You, does it survive? I took the tablet and dropped it to show him that it worked.
Dan Garlock (00:19:09):
Yeah, that was the reach of my thinking at that time. Well, technicians are going to break tablets and here I throw it. And no, it didn’t break. And he got lucky. It didn’t break, but it didn’t break. Alright,
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:19:21):
Hey, hey, hey,
Tom Dorsey (00:19:24):
Don’t throw it like an East German.
Dan Garlock (00:19:27):
It was a ginger throw
Tom Dorsey (00:19:27):
Got to throw that thing like a baseball player. But you know what? What’s funny is that for years after that I dropped tablets at trade shows. I mean almost every single one you started a trend. Maybe you don’t know that, but we would do that to the point where we were kicking the things we’d punt them. Yeah,
Dan Garlock (00:19:45):
Yeah. I look back at that time, you were such a little thinker back then, you just so small about all you cared about was if you got to buy tablets. I mean the tablets are so valuable right now, I should buy cases and pallets of them because if we break ’em, okay, fine, we buy another one, they make money.
Tom Dorsey (00:20:02):
Yeah. But it just, nobody knew had. But it’s
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:20:07):
Just natural progression, right? I mean,
Dan Garlock (00:20:10):
You’re
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:20:10):
Facing something new and see the cost and not the value yet. And so you have to take a leap of faith.
Tom Dorsey (00:20:18):
And it was funny too, a lot of the diag tablets at the time, I mean these things were built like tanks. They were had cladding and casings and they looked like they could go through nuclear war and stuff. And so people did. They put a lot of effort into making those tablets as strong and robust as possible. But to your point, it’s almost unnecessary. And as a matter of fact, as experience has taught us, they don’t break. They really don’t. I mean, you slam ’em in a hood, they’re going to break you leave it on a bumper and go on a test drive, they’re going to break. But for the most part, everyday usage, they last. They last pretty good.
Dan Garlock (00:20:56):
Right, right.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:00):
So real quick, if I could, Dan, I’ve got your business control panel up. I’d like permission if it’s okay to show, because I really think in a nutshell, I’m looking at the last 365 days and I’d like to show the audience if that’s possible. I’ve got your inspection rate, your ARO number of wrecks per vehicle and your average weekly revenue visible. Is that okay?
Dan Garlock (00:21:25):
Does it look good or does it look bad because it looks bad? No, you can’t
Tom Dorsey (00:21:27):
Share looks. It looks fantastic, buddy.
Dan Garlock (00:21:29):
Oh, alright. Alright. We’re going to show it.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:31):
Awesome.
Dan Garlock (00:21:32):
Appreciate it. But it’s boring if it’s all just fantastic.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:36):
No, it’s not. It’s actually really important. But thanks for your It is
Dan Garlock (00:21:40):
Boring. I agree. It is boring. We’ll make it exciting. We’ll tell more stories. Yes.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:46):
Can you guys see my screen?
Dan Garlock (00:21:47):
Yep. Yeah.
Tom Dorsey (00:21:49):
I mean, here’s the lockdowns right here. That’s when the lockdown started, right? You had one month where you dipped in your revenue, but look what happens here in your inspection rate just goes on a tear all the way through the rest of the year. So I mean, in a nutshell, it just shows how lockdowns happen. Business dried up and instead of lighting your hair and fire and running around in circles, your team just pulled together and started doing those best practices more consistently and improved month over month, week over week throughout the entire length of the year up until today. And you really had one low month,
Dan Garlock (00:22:33):
April. Yeah, April. April was that month. That was that month for us to really come together as a team and figure out how we can not make this two months, three months, four months. Originally I remember, oh, this will be over in two or three weeks. And here we are a year later and it’s still affecting us. And that time for us to take a second and pivot and change our direction is, like I said earlier, it’s huge for us. Long term, it really proved to us that this is the way forward, one of the ways forward, but the way forward that we want to take to provide profitability and longevity. Our company,
Tom Dorsey (00:23:17):
And I’ve got a question from the audience for you too, is they’re asking, do you have staff meetings with your managers and they pass it on down to the staff? You have kind of an all shop meeting the evening?
Dan Garlock (00:23:32):
Yeah, we’re getting really good at meeting. We meet a lot. So I’ll go through our progressions of meetings. Our teams meet every morning, 15 minutes before we start, and we have a morning kind of to set the tone for the day, just kind of clean house from the day before, talk about what went well, where we need to improve and set the path for that day. So every morning we have a team huddle, and that’s led by the department heads. We have the technician department head, the foreman and the sales lead meet with their team. So every day we have that.
(00:24:14):
So weekly the teams meet and have a little bit more longer conversation, talk about some other strategies that they may need to be going through. And that’s usually where things come passed down from some of the other meetings that we do. But they spend a little bit more time talking about strategy in those meetings. It’s where the manager brings it to the teams We have every other week and they’re on opposite weeks. We have a leadership meeting, which is me and my leadership team. We get away from the business for about an hour and a half. We talk about leadership and how we can best be the best leadership. We’ll either listen to a podcast, bring up a topic, talk about how we can build trust amongst the leadership team so we can really have safe place to say, Hey, that’s not good enough to each other and have those kinds of conversations.
(00:25:04):
So every other week we have that. And then opposite week of that, we have our strategic meeting. So for example, our strategic meeting next week is going to be on the topic of rechecks. Some people call ’em comebacks, but rechecks and how we track it, how we communicate it to our customers, how we communicate it in our teams, and how we track that so we can learn from those. So we’ll have those strategic meetings. And then the last meeting we have we’re starting is our quarterly company wide meeting. So every quarter we meet at a different shop that shop hosts and we do new member introductions. I talk about the state of the industry. We do some employee recognition, recognizing years of service, maybe top performers. We’re going to recognize top performers from the production standpoint, top performers from a sales standpoint, and then some other standouts that the leadership team wants to recognize.
(00:26:11):
So that is our meeting structure. So lots and lots of meetings, we meet a lot. And then sometimes we’ll throw another meeting inside of there if we have a topic that we need to address that needs to be more urgently. But yeah, we’ve really committed to meetings in the last year or so, just so we can watch for what’s coming around the corner that’s going to knock our legs out from underneath us and to develop the leadership around us and to continue developing leadership all the way through the corporate structure. And so we’re all just kind of pointed the same direction and aim the same direction on what we’re trying to do. And it takes a lot of time and conversation. That’s part of that slowing down to speed up. It feels like we got a busy day here today. I don’t know if we can take an hour and a half as leaders and have a conversation about rechecks and comebacks. Let’s just get through the day. No, these are very, very important conversations. Same with the morning huddles. It’d be great just to get and get going and start working on cars. But yeah, we’ve actually sped up by having the time to stop and invest and talk to each other about what’s going on. But the meetings have to be meaningful. They can’t be a waste of time, they cannot be superficial. They have to really have some real meat behind them, otherwise it is a waste of time.
Tom Dorsey (00:27:38):
Well, I thought you said some really brilliant advice in there is that instead of having a meeting where you’re just dictating marching orders, you make ’em an interactive, it’s a two-way street and you split your meetings up to where you only have the stakeholders, the relevant stakeholders for that topic involved. So you don’t get people who are thinking, what am I even doing here? Wasting my time, twiddling my thumbs and it’s going in one ear and now the other, you really focus the meeting on the people who need to be in the meeting and then make those meetings a two-way discussion so that you learn and you’re not just kind of giving orders.
Dan Garlock (00:28:18):
So we’re going through some corporate restructuring right now that we’re going to be launching next week. I spent a lot of time inviting the team to educate me what am I not thinking about? What am I not, what am I thinking over? What don’t I know? I want their feedback. I want them to challenge me too as a leader to make sure that I’m not just steering them down the wrong path. And we have some ground rules that we put into place on that. It can’t be, the conversations can’t be just about them protecting their own position or their own agenda. This has to be company good for the company and they have to come with not just criticism and they need to come back with real feedback and some ideas so that we can move from that. But we really are trying to shift that mindset of our team to more of a corporate mindset than just an individualistic independent contractor coming into a meeting and saying, well, I’m going to protect my little area. And that may not necessarily be what’s best for the company.
Tom Dorsey (00:29:30):
That’s amazing. So real quick, Carlos Contreras was asking what shop was that that I was showing? And that is Silver Lake Auto Tire Center in Oconomowoc Wisconsin. Thanks for the question, Carlos. And then our very own, John Long part of our expert panel of experts. Welcome back, John into the audience. I haven’t seen you in a while because I’ve been watching, but he has a couple of interesting points. And the first one was, and he was kind of agreeing, and this is something that any of you should be doing and could be doing. You just bought a couple of tablets, put ’em on a shelf, they were on sale recently. And so keep your eye open. A lot of times through your cell phone provider, you get these free tablet deals or through some other functions, cash back on your credit card type thing. And a lot of that can go to building an inventory of tablets, waiting for it in case something breaks. Or if you’re going to be doing expansion and hiring at some point, then you’re ready with inventory. So I thought that was great. And another real interesting point is he said that comebacks equal RBO s relationship building opportunities. I thought that was a good line there.
Dan Garlock (00:30:40):
That was good. We might steal that. Thank you.
Tom Dorsey (00:30:43):
Yeah, right. The RBO Bill Connor said that a really important question for your meetings to ask your team, especially the operational team, is what are the things that make you stop doing what you should be doing? And I really thought that was a brilliant kind of way to phrase that because it gets right to the heart of the matter, and that’s how you really get them to open up and feel, Hey, this person is actually listening to me to help me improve what I do on a day-to-day basis. Just be prepared for just don’t take it personal, be prepared to listen and learn and then take action to improve.
Dan Garlock (00:31:25):
Yeah, I like that.
Tom Dorsey (00:31:27):
And we also have, from Carlos, did you have any roadblocks with workflow management at the front counter? And I’m assuming Carlos, did you mean an implementation in the transition from paper to digital, or is it just in general or is it a question regarding multiple locations? Consistency?
Dan Garlock (00:31:53):
Yeah, I don’t know how to answer that question. Do we have any roadblocks? I mean there always feels like there’s some kind of roadblock coming around the corner that wants to slow us and knock us off track. My team has been, like I said, is very open to trying some things. So kind of backing up a little bit, I felt like we had a lot of tools in place already before covid. A lot of people went to concierge services, pickup up and delivery. We were doing that a long time. Digital work, orders, estimates, inspections. We were doing that a real long time, texting, emailing. So I felt like we were really built for what we’re actually all doing now ahead of the curve, which is something our shop has always been really forward looking and now we’re looking at what is that next thing that’ll separate us from everybody again. Now I feel like everybody’s kind of caught up with what we were doing ahead of time because of covid. So it was more of a refining than it was a redevelopment. It was more just kind of a reinvestment and a recommitment to what we had been doing. This was the clear path going forward. So did he ask? Yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:33:16):
He did follow up and he’s saying how to properly dispatch work to maximize daily traffic.
Dan Garlock (00:33:22):
Oh, I think we’ve always been good at that. I mean, we have a full-time dispatcher in our Commonwealth location. Jim, who’s been with me for a very long time. His job is to do nothing more than to analyze and make sure the right guy gets the right job so that the job is done right the first time and it’s done as efficiently as possible. We’ve had that boy since the beginning of this move. I think that we’ve had that person that’s been doing that. We believe that that is a big, big piece into growing your capacity and making sure that you’re staying efficient as a team. So I know not all shops have the volume that we have and it’s a little bit harder to support that payroll, but for us it works really, really well. There’s no gaps in that at all.
Tom Dorsey (00:34:21):
And Bill’s asking an tire store environment or with part shortage is extremely hard to have all the tires in stock. Do you pre-order tires before the customer drops their vehicle off?
Dan Garlock (00:34:32):
We stock no tires. It is too expensive to stock tires. There are too many partners. There’s not enough space in the world to stock all these tires. It is impossible for us to stock tires. And I was actually just, I met this morning with a manager of our local Firestone Complete and we were talking about that a little bit. And with having four locations, we have some leverage these days with our suppliers and we are blessed to be able to get delivery from retire manufacturer, our tire delivery, us auto force four times a day. So we also, with our concierge service, we have a full-time person that can chase. So we utilize that person if we need to for that emergency tire run to go get ’em from our supplier who’s about a half hour away, so about an hour of drive time. So I do not have, I think that is a horrible investment.
(00:35:31):
My opinion is inventory, the return is horrible. You lose it, it gets old tires expire. I mean they don’t sell, you can’t return ’em. They get discontinued. There’s recalls on ’em. I do not want to be in the inventory management business. I want to be in the auto repair business, and I lean very heavily on our vendors these days for the support that we need to run our business that way. Whether it’s brakes, batteries, wiper blades or tires. We stock very little at our stores these days. The things that we need right now, nuts and bolts bulbs, things like that, we stock, but we really don’t stock much anymore. We just demand a lot from our suppliers and then we schedule and schedule the vehicle accordingly when all the parts are here just to kind of make the technician efficient too. We don’t want ’em to have to pull that car back in and out three, four times as the parts show up.
Tom Dorsey (00:36:32):
Well, and that’s where Jim comes in, does he works to put all those moving parts together to make it as seamless and with the proper dispatch and at the proper time, I would imagine?
Dan Garlock (00:36:45):
Correct, correct. Yeah. So our three stores are not the same size as Oconomowoc. They’re about half the volume that we do in Oconomowoc, each one of ’em. But we have a very similar model with the sales manager kind of takes over that role and that responsibility that we’re able to delegate to Jim just because of their workload. To have a sales manager be able to do that along with what Jim is doing with the car current we have would probably be, it wouldn’t get done. It would be pretty much impossible. And again, that’s the leadership and the clear defining of the roles, the accountability. When there’s an issue, we know exactly who owns that role and how we can help them be successful in that role. We can go and talk right to that team member.
Tom Dorsey (00:37:34):
Yeah. Real quick, Dan, Jeremy Neff is asking, he says, what advice would you have if you’re 200 miles away from your parts vendor as far as that inventory question goes? You can’t just run down and pick it up.
Dan Garlock (00:37:49):
Yeah, I thought that too when I was saying that this is what works for Silver Lake Auto. This is as Uwe would say, the Silverlake Auto solution, and it works for Silver Lake Auto, doesn’t work for everybody, but all ever smart ass answers lean on your vendor, tell ’em you need their support. They need to help you figure it out. Tell ’em to build a store close view or something. Fancy
Tom Dorsey (00:38:16):
Trucks. Yeah.
Dan Garlock (00:38:18):
One of the things that we do, because I think we’re all dealing with park shortages these days, it feels like there’s just a supply issue with getting parts these days. I think across the company we own something like 30 loaner vehicles that we give to our customers. We’re very good at buying additional time with our customers through One of the big pieces we do is we give them loaner cars. Hey, take this vehicle for the night. I’m not going to be able to have the parts here until tomorrow and I want to make sure we get the right parts and do it right the first time. Customers are very sympathetic to that. Trying to find a way to buy time with your customers and lean on that relationship that you have with your customers so that you can explain to them and service them correctly.
(00:39:01):
You’re going to find that the customers are very open to that and they’re accommodating and want to help you, but give them some tools that you can bring to your company that that’ll help overcome some of those objections for us. A big one is loaner cars. We buy 2014, 2015 Camrys. Whenever we see ’em and we put ’em in, they cost us 10 grand and they make us money and they buy us a lot of time and it helps solve a lot of problems, especially if you’re out in a rural area and people need their cars to travel. They can’t Uber, they can’t call Lyft. It would be a good investment for you. Give me a call on that. If you want to talk on that, I’d be more than happy to tell you how we do it.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:39:43):
Yeah, that is brilliant. That is brilliant. Can I pick up a question from Carlos? I think he’s hiding showroom of course, because I had the same question. Your name mentions tires. There’s no way of getting a 600 a OO with tire or tire related businesses only. How did you do the transition?
Dan Garlock (00:40:08):
All right, so originally name was Silver Lake Auto Center, and that was when my dad owned it. When I bought my dad out, we had to create a new LLC so we could start the depreciation schedule all over again, which saved us some money. So I said, let’s add the word tire because I like selling tires and I enjoyed selling tires. Several like auto and tire centers. Our name got really long, but we added tires in there. What has happened since then, that was back in 2015, tire market has changed. Tire industry has changed. My idea of selling tires has changed for our company, there’s very low margin. We have to sell the tires at minimum markup for a lot of these manufacturers in order to compete with them. So we’re making 10, 12% on these tires and I got to pay my service advisors, they get paid off of the tires.
(00:40:58):
So at the end of the day, I’m making very little and I have to sell some volume in order to get the backend money for tires to make that up. Now we charge a good amount for installation. A set of tires installed is an hour and our hourly rate is $130. So we charge $130 to install the tires so our technicians could win through that. Our mix of tires, because Uwe was asking me this the other day too, our mix of tires these days is probably around 10% of our business. It is very, very small for a tire store versus the guy I was talking to this morning where it’s 60% of their business, 40% of their business is service. We are not heavy tire guys. We look like it. We sound like it. We build our branding for it and we do a fair amount. We’ll probably do 80 to 90 tires a week out of our Ocon walk location.
(00:41:54):
So yeah, that was one of the things that I noticed is that when a customer comes in for tires, that’s all they have the money for. They’re not going to do anything else. They didn’t budget another set of tires, 900 bucks now. So to me, always that thought, well if you’re at a high tire store, you should have a higher ARO because you can’t put a set of tires on a car for under $700 these days, so you better have a higher roll. Plus you throw the alignment down there. But the other things that come along with being a tire dealer, like you’re going to do the free tire rotations and the road hazard for free that delivers car count. But the problem is when the customer comes in, they’re coming in for a free service, I’m coming in for free service, I’m going to leave not spending a penny.
(00:42:32):
They come in with the mindset of they’re not going to open a wallet. So when you do a courtesy inspection and you show them a dirty cabin air filter or some of these other things, it’s really hard to get them to move from that ideal that they had to come into location, that it was going to be free, and then they start second guessing. Well, the reason they do free tire rotations is so that they can sell me stuff. And that’s a hard spot to move that tire customer off of. And I haven’t figured that out yet. And the way that I’m figuring it out is kind of just really focusing more on the general service and taking the tire business as it still comes. And I’m not really hunting a lot for tire business these days. I had been, but we still are a really good option for tire stores. But the other thing with us being open five days a week now instead of seven days a week when we used to be that the tire consumer is used to buying tires on Saturdays and Sundays and we’re not going to be open on Saturdays and Sundays, we’ve committed to that. I would love to figure out a way to be open four days a week, but we’re not going to be open on Saturdays and Sundays. So that kind of works against us with the tire opportunities too.
(00:43:45):
Yes, and the OEMs adding tires too. It’s another very noisy market.
Tom Dorsey (00:43:54):
And Carlos is asking also, how does your hourly rate compare with other independents around you?
Dan Garlock (00:43:59):
I don’t know. I don’t care. We set our rate, what we need our rate to be. I don’t call everybody else and ask ’em what the rates are. I don’t look at their estimates. Honestly, I could care less. Henry Ford said the competitor to be feared is the one that goes about their own business. I know what I need to do for our company. I know what our rates need to be. I want our guys to be paid well and I want the right clientele. If I really cared about being other discount places and that I could go after that business and change my whole business model, but it’s not really who I’m, so I’ve thought long and hard about that. It probably comes out by the shortness of my answer that I don’t care.
Tom Dorsey (00:44:44):
Yeah, no, it was well received, resonated. Everybody in here saying, man, that’s the great answer. That’s a perfect answer. Great answer. You charge what you’re worth, Bill Connor says always profit first and then work your way back. Read the book profit first. So that’s really great. And you’re right. And from that Henry Ford quote, it really enough said is you do you and you let them do them and you just focus on delivering that quality and delivering what you need to deliver it at. And if you’re growing your business, you’re doing it right.
Dan Garlock (00:45:25):
I look at the airlines, Southwest Airlines, they knew who they want to be. They are. Get on the plane as quick as we can. We’re not going to charge you for your bags. There’s no assigned seats. And if you value those things, we value you as a customer versus an American Airlines, if you want to fly first class, you can pay a little bit more. We’re going to charge your fees and this and that. And they very much know who they are and who their clientele is and what their clientele wants from them every single day. And there’s not a one size fits all model out there that fits everybody. Everybody should do it this way. My model would not work very well for some of the big box tire stores. They would starve. They would not know how to do it. So yeah, definitely know who you want to be as a business owner and find those customers that are aligned with you and that’s how you’re going to be successful and happy in your business instead of trying to be something you really don’t want to be
Tom Dorsey (00:46:28):
And sleep well at night and have a lot less stress in your life because you’re not always, I mean, the ones that are kind of always fishing for discounts and always kind of causing is nothing’s ever right. I mean, they just beat you up, you stress over ’em, they leave you poor reviews. You get all this extra effort and work that you have to put into your day just trying to manage ’em. Let ’em go, let ’em go. If Covid showed you anything, you can really grow your business. You can really drive revenue with a lot less cars coming through your shop if you’re doing it right. And let that be a big lesson for you and carry that forward.
Dan Garlock (00:47:10):
You can be successful taking care of that clientele. I mean, there’s no doubt there’s a lot of people that are out there successful taking care of that clientele and that model works great. If that’s what you want to be, then there’s resources out there for you to be the best at that. Go be the best at that. And if that’s who you really want to be, it just wasn’t what we, it’s not where I want to be.
Tom Dorsey (00:47:32):
Yep. That’s awesome. Know your identity. Tracy asked a good point real quick, Tracy, I just want to bring Tracy’s comment. She says here, the best time to sell tires is when the customer does not need them. Sell the green from the start and every visit thereafter. I just thought that was a great point.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (00:47:53):
So Motorless research time, I don’t know whether you are willing to share what you shared with me yesterday, but it plays a big role in how you manage expectations in the shop. Would you mind sharing what you want to share?
Dan Garlock (00:48:16):
Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll share the whole spreadsheet if that’s, I’ll just describe it. So I like things simple. I hate it when things are complicated and research time. And so one of the metrics that came out of COVID for us was average estimate value and making sure that your average estimate is in a range, right? Too high is not good. You burn customers out and let’s not talking about averages. There’s some cars that just need high estimate, right? And too low is also not good because you’re not giving yourself enough opportunity. So we have a range that we’re looking for our average estimate to be in. And how we came upon that average estimate was just looking at historically what the cars are coming into our organization are. And we took at that and we looked and we knew where that number kind of needed to be.
(00:49:16):
And then we said, okay, a good service writer should be able to convert 30% of that bare minimum. Any service writer should be looking for 30% of them. Service advisor probably 40, 45, maybe even pushing 50% are really, really good service advisor. So we said, okay, our average estimate is like $1,800, so 30% of that $600. So we kind of picked the number $600. $600 is about 30% of that is 30% of that, 33% of that. So we wanted our requirement for our service advisors to hold the 600 ARO with an $1,800 average estimate. And as we work our service advisors to get them better and more proficient with the relationship with the customer, we’ll watch that closing ratio go from 30, 35, 40, move on up and be in a window. So the best way for us to ensure that they’re giving the estimate enough value and enough weight was through research time.
(00:50:20):
That was one of the key metrics. So we watch research time daily by each advisor to make sure that they are setting themselves up. And it starts really at the drop with research time to making sure that they’re encouraging the motorists to do research time to formulate any questions or any concerns that they may have so that when we’re presenting the estimate with them that we can address those at that time. The other piece that we watched, so really the four things that we watched, right? Average estimate conversion arrow research time is the fifth, is picture editing. So one of the things I think we do really well and also is picture editing. Because if we know, if you take your inspections and pictures of parts of your car and you give it to your significant other or somebody else in your family who’s maybe not as in tune in your car, you say, what are you looking at here?
(00:51:19):
They’re going to go, no clue. What is that? What is that a dishwasher? I don’t know. I don’t know what that is. We have to control, that is part of our presentation and we have to control the conversation even through the picture, through pointing to it, circles to it, highlighting it, dimming it, and then also through text on the picture. I wish we actually were much better at text on the picture. We can actually, this is your valve cover. You can see where it’s shiny. That’s the oil leaking on it, on the picture. It just jumps out. Oh yeah, okay. That’s what I’m looking at. So we know that by very good picture editing, it invokes research time and through research time, it invokes customer engagement and relationship and transparency and all those other things that go that you guys have done, what 114 other podcasts about.
(00:52:13):
So we simplified it. So we have a dashboard that we watch every single day that we watch those metrics on by the advisor and then actually feeds into our other capacity model, our location capacity model so that we can make sure that we’re matching our efforts to our capacity of our organization so that it’s kind of like a health report. How is each individual doing and how is that individual functioning as a team and how is that location doing as a team? So every single day the advisor has to look at their number of research time and they can compare it against the rest of the team individually. And there’s merit. Nobody wants to be the person who’s low on research time. Nobody wants to be the person who’s low on average estimate or ARO. They all own that number. And instead of a report, just spitting it out to ’em and saying, here it is. They actually own that number every single day. And with them owning that, there’s a different level of commitment and pride coming from the individual when they actually take that number and they put it in their spreadsheet and they display it for the whole company to see every single day. So that was a long answer to no, it was good. Uwe’s going to create it for us.
Tom Dorsey (00:53:38):
Yes, that was a covert feature request right there. I like it.
Dan Garlock (00:53:44):
Oh, is that what that is? Hashtag feature request
Tom Dorsey (00:53:47):
Real quick, Joe Mullaney. Great. He’s asking what SMS are you using and do you answer your phones live or automated? We’re also a tire dealer doing 80% mechanical ABOs shop. He said, thanks guys. And they’ve been new to shop wear and 56 years in business. Congratulations, Joe.
Dan Garlock (00:54:08):
We use our role writer, that is our shop management system. We have a brand new phone system that we just put in place here earlier this year that we do answer every single call live. Each service advisor has their own direct phone number. So we haven’t implemented this yet, but this is part of it where if an inspection is sent from my service advisor, Mike, that his phone number will be directly on, it’ll ring directly at his desk. We want customers to get to the relevant team member as quick as possible to alleviate any errors or missteps along the way. And it just feels much more personal. We really value that personal touch and we’re going to be getting that knocked out here once I put some other things behind me. But we really want to, that is how we answer. We do have some automated phone numbers that we do use for other marketing efforts.
(00:55:13):
Our phone system is pretty sophisticated. So for example, we have an emission testing here in the state of Wisconsin and we have what we call the emission testing hotline. Just in O’Connell walk alone. We do 700 emission tests. And it’s always the same question, are you open? What do I need to bring with me? So there’s an automated response that answers those questions. And if they need to talk to another customer, they can or a person, they can hit the button and they ask the same question that we just told them on the automated part. So we have a pretty sophisticated phone system for that.
Tom Dorsey (00:55:45):
And Carlos is asking, do you measure those phone conversations? Are you recording and listening and kind of analyzing and auditing the phone conversations? The live ones?
Dan Garlock (00:55:57):
That is the worst job in the world is to listen to phone calls and audit ’em. Man, it sucks. We do have the availability and ability to do that, and we do that from time to time for training purposes. But what way our setup is, is our sales manager, our lead manager is sitting basically in the middle of the whole service advisor huddle. So they are hearing real time part of the conversation they can tune into when things are not going and they can usually address ’em on the spot. And if we need to go back to the recording, we’ll go back to the recording and use that. But anybody listening to the phone recordings, they got to have something messed up in their head. Man, those are the most painful thing in the world. I used to do it. It was horrible. All you do is get frustrated the whole time. Why did you say it this way? You use that pronoun instead of this down. Why was that?
Tom Dorsey (00:56:49):
Oh, it curls your toes, man. I did it for years listening in sales conversations at Ottawas and it’s, it’s so embarrassing because you’re like, man, how many trainings have I had where I helped told you how to do this? And you’re just not listening to me and I don’t even want to talk to you right now. Oh man. Especially if you listen to your own. Yeah, yeah. Hey, real quick, Joe has a
Dan Garlock (00:57:12):
Follow up. Mine are perfect. I don’t have to listen to mine.
Tom Dorsey (00:57:15):
Right. What’s a good thing to do though? And I used to do this, is let your team, when you’re listening to their conversations, let them audit yours and score you and then come back and give you feedback. And it really is a good way to say, Hey, I’m in this boat with you and here’s an opportunity to beat up on the boss a little bit. And it’s all in good constructive type of a manner. And it’s fun. It helps build culture. And at a lot of times too is then they pick up on a lot of the things that you do and then they start to emulate that as well. So it’s a great way to do some covert, what’s
Dan Garlock (00:57:54):
That? Our phone system has the ability to record so they can record it and email it to themselves and then they can email it out to the team. So occasionally when we have a new hire, the manager will say, record two conversations this week. We’re going to listen to ’em together and go off them. But yeah,
Tom Dorsey (00:58:10):
And I’ll tell you the,
Dan Garlock (00:58:11):
I’m not going to decide you on the
Tom Dorsey (00:58:13):
Fearless like that. The top producers tend to be the ones who will say, Hey, listen to my recording and give me feedback. They’re not afraid. They’re not embarrassed. They’re really open to learning. They do learn and it really shows them the results. And if you can foster that team environment where nobody’s afraid, they’ll role play together, they’ll give honest feedback. It really helps everybody on the team real quick, Dan Joe has a follow-up and when he was talking about answering the phones, but inspection is his main focus on that and 50 calls a day, 50 calls a day for inspections, and he wants to automate that extension. It’s also his highest SEO keyword. So I don’t know where you are, Joe, and I don’t know what your secret sauce is, but that is a pretty amazing problem to have, buddy.
Dan Garlock (00:59:09):
Is that so tight? I’m going to get hearing that. So am I hearing that tires is this key word that’s driving that?
Tom Dorsey (00:59:13):
No inspection? No digital inspection.
Dan Garlock (00:59:16):
Oh, inspections. Oh, inspections. Yeah. It
Tom Dorsey (00:59:18):
Was a day for inspections. It’s
Dan Garlock (00:59:22):
Incredible. See here we have motor vehicle inspections for the state of Wisconsin, so it kind of gets confusing.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:31):
Yeah, it might be state,
Dan Garlock (00:59:32):
Right? Yeah. So you’d have to listen to that. What is it? Is it actually bringing good customers in? George is making the phone ring.
Tom Dorsey (00:59:40):
Yeah. And in that case, Joe, yeah, if it’s state inspection requests, then automating that would be fantastic. And just give all of that kind of information on what’s required for them to bring what the process looks like. Because most states I think have rules in place, laws in place that say you come in for that state inspection. I’m not even allowed to kind of upsell you on anything. And so you’re kind of limited in that way. And then if there’s a way to give a little bit of information on that recording as well for follow-up visits right after the state inspection is done and other services that you provide legally, that’s a great way to kind of slide that in as well. Yeah, he said, yeah, state inspections, chance to earn trust. Exactly. Exactly.
Dan Garlock (01:00:25):
And that’s what we’re doing with our inspection hotline or emissions hotline. It’s the same type of thing. We automate that. So many,
Tom Dorsey (01:00:34):
I can’t believe we’re at the top of the hour already. So Yeah, I told you Danny and Dan, for being this first podcast you’ve ever been on, you’re like a pro at this. I think you have a side hustle now in your future where you’re going to be on, I mean A, I’ve had just nothing but engagement from the audience, which is, I’m not going to say it’s rare, but we usually don’t get this many questions and just compelling show. I mean the time flew by and I want another hour. I got to tell you, I’m glad you’re coming back on soon.
Dan Garlock (01:01:04):
Sure. I’m looking forward to it. It was fun.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:06):
Yeah, buddy. No, it was fantastic. Thank you everybody in the audience as well. Please, if we didn’t get any of your questions answered, I know there’s still some stacked up in here. Take ’em to the Facebook form. Danny, how can folks reach out to you directly?
Dan Garlock (01:01:21):
My email is probably the best place, Dan [email protected]. If you go to our website, I think it’s on there too somewhere, but you got D-A-N-G-A-R-L-O-C [email protected]. Feel free to email me and we can connect and set the world on fire.
Tom Dorsey (01:01:43):
Yeah. Yeah, buddy. Well, you’re already doing it. I mean, it’s been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking the time, Dan, to come on. Like I said, I’m kicking myself. I haven’t had you on a year ago because I just remember when we first met, when first got started together, and you have always been one of those shining examples that Uwe likes to always refer back to. So around here, this place, Silver Lake comes on a pedestal a lot of times as an operator that, like you had said earlier, is just innovative, is just looking and always kind of learning and willing to say, Hey, I don’t know everything. I probably don’t want to know everything. I want to learn. I want to be on this journey. I want to bring others along and help them to improve and learn from other folks and build that network out.
(01:02:40):
And I think that if you take anything away from the show today, if you take away that mindset and that mentality that’s going to help you to be more successful starting tomorrow, it really is. Get ahold of Danny Bring, like I said, bring your additional questions to the Facebook forum and we look forward to continuing the discussion there. And then look for Dan in an upcoming episode because we’re going to be coming in, we’re going to be talking about leadership with him and a guest, somebody that he networks with. And I think it’ll be one that you do not want to miss. Yeah, A lot of thank yous from the group. Dan, really appreciate you buddy.
Dan Garlock (01:03:21):
Yeah, thank you all. Thank you Tom. Thanks Uwe. It’s fun. Nice to hang out with you. Thank you.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:03:26):
Yes.
Dan Garlock (01:03:27):
I hope it wasn’t too boring for you.
Uwe Kleinschmidt (01:03:29):
It was not at all. Bye. We really appreciate you coming on and often there are little things people in the audience pick up and can implement. That’s all we’re here for, right? Yep.
Tom Dorsey (01:03:45):
And a lot of times it just takes somebody else saying it to inspire me to do something and it take an action. And I think we did a lot of that today, so it was fabulous. I really appreciate it. You make my job easy, buddy. Made my job easy.
Dan Garlock (01:03:56):
Perfect. That’s my job.
Tom Dorsey (01:03:59):
Yes. Alright, thanks. Get out there and make some time. Thank you. Do it like Dan.
Dan Garlock (01:04:07):
Thanks guys.
Tom Dorsey (01:04:08):
Yeah, thank you.