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Power does not always come from pushing harder. Sometimes in life and in business, the smartest move is to slow down so you can move forward with control, clarity, and intention. Just like a great driver, growth means looking ahead, preparing for the climb, and knowing when it is time to change gears.
Becky Witt [00:00:00]:
Everybody knows the customer is always right. Right? To quote my hero and role model, General Bullwright, off of the old laugh in thing, I'm a happy poppycock and bull feathers malarkey. You will never have a happy customer until you first have happy workers. Everything in your business needs to be designed around keeping your staff happy. Screw the customer. Welcome to Downshift with my sis, Tanika Haynes. We all know as shop owners, sometimes you gotta slow down in order to speed up. And that's what this podcast is all about.
Becky Witt [00:00:41]:
It's time to downshift.
Ashley Kaplan [00:00:48]:
Good morning with the Twinkies. That's so funny.
Becky Witt [00:00:52]:
Good morning. Oh, my gosh, look at you.
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:59]:
Cause why not?
Becky Witt [00:01:00]:
Oh, my gosh.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:03]:
That is so funny because I am
Becky Witt [00:01:06]:
just setting up my Valentine's Facebook post. Oh, I don't know if you can see this.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:15]:
Huh?
Ashley Kaplan [00:01:16]:
Yeah.
Becky Witt [00:01:17]:
Oh,
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:19]:
so Twinkies.
Becky Witt [00:01:20]:
Oh, yeah. That's for my car.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:24]:
It's being served. I love my car.
Becky Witt [00:01:28]:
It's all blurry. But the wine is a special wine.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:36]:
You're not supposed to laugh at your own jokes.
Becky Witt [00:01:38]:
Yeah, well, too bad I can't see.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:40]:
What does it say?
Becky Witt [00:01:42]:
Transmission red.
Ashley Kaplan [00:01:46]:
That's hilarious.
Becky Witt [00:01:48]:
It's from one of the automotive video conferences. What is Jerry Lauers.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:54]:
I love it.
Becky Witt [00:01:55]:
Is Paul's wife. They own Avi and she was. She was a winemaker, and so she made a special special wine for the O4 conference.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:05]:
Oh, that's.
Becky Witt [00:02:06]:
So here we are.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:08]:
Here we are. I'm excited about this one. I remember you. My first time meeting you. I have been in love with Miss Becky, with Aunt Becky since then.
Becky Witt [00:02:16]:
Was that. Was that when. When you were sitting with. With a little thing on your leg, or was it. When was it. Was it in Raleigh?
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:26]:
It was in Raleigh, but I don't think I had to cast. I think the first time I was in the back and just kind of hiding and just sitting there like, yeah, I'm not crazy. She's right. Yes, yes, yes. Somebody that gets it. And then I think the next time I had to cast on my leg because I had to cast them on last year. Year before last. It's been so many years.
Ashley Kaplan [00:02:44]:
You're just crazy.
Becky Witt [00:02:44]:
You're just an absolute spark plug. I just love you. You're just everything about what's right about people that should be in this business.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:53]:
Oh, my goodness. Sometimes I misfire, but I'll take spark plug.
Becky Witt [00:02:57]:
We all misfire once in a while.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:59]:
Once in a while. Ash, do you misfire every day? Every day. Misfire. Cylinder number four foul. I misfire so, Becky, so just in case we've got a person that's been living under a stone, tell the world who you are. You have to introduce yourself.
Becky Witt [00:03:24]:
Talking to me?
Tonnika Haynes [00:03:25]:
Yeah. You have to introduce to people that don't know who you are. Whatever doesn't know who you are.
Becky Witt [00:03:31]:
Excuse me. My name is Becky Witt. I am a repair shop owner. Now I am a career automotive person. From the time I knew what a car was when I was a kid, we didn't have air conditioning and so everybody sat on the front porch and at about three or four years old, I could name every kind of car that went by. And I've just always been about cars. And so I rode a bicycle and I carried tools in my pocket so I could work on my bike. And the day I turned 16, I walked to the nearest gas station which was about three, four blocks away.
Becky Witt [00:04:08]:
And I got a job. I was a technical installation engineer for Texaco Petroleum Products. I pumped gas. This, this, what is that? This, this was before self service gas. I see. I'm so old that my Social Security number is 2. I hope this doesn't get, I hope you bleep that out so it doesn't get. Thank you so much.
Becky Witt [00:04:34]:
So I, I, I, I ended up in my family. We were all required to get a four year college degree. Dad said, I don't care what else you do, but you're getting a degree. He only had an 8th grade education and he said, I'm sending you all to college. So I went to college. I got a degree in business. I majored, I majored in business with a minor in psychology and political science.
Ashley Kaplan [00:05:01]:
Wow, okay.
Becky Witt [00:05:02]:
And I worked for a few years doing jobs that you would do if you had that degree. But you know, every time I went into a car repair shop, I love the smell, the smell of the solvent and the rubber and all this stuff, the sweat. I love that. That was my home. And I thought my dad was going to freak when I quit my job and I got a set of tools and I went to work as a mechanic in a gas station. So I spent three or four years as a real mechanic. Then I had a falling out with the management like most technicians do because I don't feel like I was being managed fair. And I said, I wonder where I could go.
Becky Witt [00:05:55]:
And I thought, okay, what I'm going to do, I'm going to go through the yellow pages because that's how we made phone calls back then. I'm going to go through the yellow pages and I'm Going to look for all the repair shops, and I'm going to try to find the one that had the best customer treatment. Because I figured if they're treating their customers well, they're going to treat their people well. So I went to work for the Oldsmobile dealer. They had an Olds and a Honda place, and I really wanted to work on Oldsmobile. Honda was brand new. This was in the early 70s. They'd just come out and they only had an opening at the Oldsmobile place.
Becky Witt [00:06:32]:
No, I know what. No, I took a place at the Honda place. I wanted to go Olds, but they said, no, you got to be Honda. So I went to work in Honda and it was dull. It was boring. The cars didn't break hardly when they did. When they did, it was a water pump, and you could hear it from two blocks away. The water pump was noisy.
Becky Witt [00:06:50]:
And I was a service writer. I wanted to be a mechanic, but I was. They didn't have any openings, so they made me a service writer. And. And I worked my way up from being a service writer to being an assistant service manager to being the service manager to being the service and parts manager. I left there, I went to work at another place. I've worked for, I think four different dealerships, and I've been a service and parts director. I've been to all the Honda management schools, both service and parts.
Becky Witt [00:07:24]:
Honda was so impressed with my participation that they asked me to appear in a training video on shop marketing. And I was in a training video for that. I got very good relationship, and they asked me to be in a training video for parts. So I've appeared in two Honda training videos. I've won Honda's most prestigious awards for service management and again for parts management. Three times. I've won the top awards for top, top 10. Top 10 in the nation.
Becky Witt [00:07:58]:
Out of a thousand dealers, not 10%. Top 10.
Tonnika Haynes [00:08:02]:
Wow.
Becky Witt [00:08:03]:
All right. So I'm working for a dealer that I'm just not getting along. And I don't play well in corporations. And I don't like how techs get treated. I don't like how the customers get treated. And I got fired. I got fired. And I come back home and I said, do you know anything about Nebraska football? We sell out every home game, every home game since Kennedy was president, since 1962.
Becky Witt [00:08:33]:
I think like 3, 400 consecutive. Consecutive without. Without missing a single one. And I've got season tickets. And I said, you know, I can't leave town. I. I gotta stay here. I got season football tickets.
Becky Witt [00:08:47]:
Lincoln is My home. I rented a one bay stall in a storage building and that's where I started my company.
Ashley Kaplan [00:09:00]:
Wow.
Becky Witt [00:09:01]:
And it was on a dead end dirt road. The key to my success was low overhead. My overhead at the time was 22 bucks a day. I said the phone only has to ring once.
Ashley Kaplan [00:09:12]:
Wow.
Tonnika Haynes [00:09:14]:
What year? When did you start?
Becky Witt [00:09:16]:
Yeah. So from there I outgrew that in six months. I moved to a three bay. Outgrew that in six months, I moved to a five bay. Outgrew that in a year and a half. And then I'm in my current 10 bay shop right now, which is too big. But what the hell, I got a lease. So I'm stuck.
Becky Witt [00:09:33]:
When I talk about this industry, I want everybody to know, whatever job you've done, I've done it. Don't tell me that I can't do something. You know the one thing. Tanika, you'll understand this.
Tonnika Haynes [00:09:47]:
That's right.
Becky Witt [00:09:49]:
People who say it can't be done are particularly irritating to those of us who are doing it.
Ashley Kaplan [00:09:55]:
The word impossible is my biggest pet peeve.
Tonnika Haynes [00:09:59]:
Like my grandmother used to say, can't was a four letter word.
Ashley Kaplan [00:10:01]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:02]:
And she was.
Becky Witt [00:10:02]:
Well, look, if. Whether you say you can or whether you say you can't, you're right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:10]:
I don't think people understand what that really means.
Becky Witt [00:10:14]:
I know.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:14]:
Yeah. But they don't know what it means.
Becky Witt [00:10:18]:
The thing that was going through my head this morning is you don't know what you don't know. Each of us sees the industry through our own lens.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:28]:
Right.
Becky Witt [00:10:30]:
If we've been attacked for one place, then we think that's how the whole world revolves.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:36]:
Yeah.
Becky Witt [00:10:37]:
One of the first things that I learned very early on is the difference in clientele at the Honda shop. Well, I got transferred to the Oldsmobile shop. Yeah. I was so excited because it was such a challenge. And that's.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:58]:
You can't laugh at your own jokes.
Becky Witt [00:10:59]:
I can't help it. It's when Oldsmobile came out with a diesel, so I got it. So now I'm writing service on the service drive for people that have diesels that won't run 150 miles without blowing up or something. So security. So I learned about the difference in clientele. And. And what I found was that the average Oldsmobile owner was old and cranky. They'd come in, slam the door and demand to know where's my ride to work? And.
Becky Witt [00:11:28]:
And at this time, the average Honda owner would pull in, pull out their 10 speed out of the back and pedal off to work. And you didn't dare ask the Oldsmobile owner that was in for their first oil change, is there anything else? Because this huge list would come out and at the Honda shop, their first oil change, is there anything else? Nope, we're good. And you don't even want to start me talking about Volkswagen owners not going there.
Tonnika Haynes [00:12:02]:
We don't have enough time to go there.
Becky Witt [00:12:04]:
No. No, we don't.
Tonnika Haynes [00:12:05]:
So is that why you.
Becky Witt [00:12:06]:
Time constraints?
Tonnika Haynes [00:12:07]:
Yeah. Couple. I mean, we got 24 hours. Is that why you chose to be a Honda specialist, or are you just Exactly.
Becky Witt [00:12:15]:
That is exactly it. When I started out at the gas station, we were in. We were in a nice neighborhood, people had money, and we worked on everything. I even worked on a Rolls Royce. Not kidding. Jaguars, Fiats, whatever you got. Yeah, we can do it. And that's where I first learned that people that don't like their cars, their car doesn't like them.
Becky Witt [00:12:42]:
Swear to God, you. You'll back me up on this? Because you. There's some people, they got the car from hell, and that car is like saying, oh, yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet. Yeah, you just wait.
Tonnika Haynes [00:12:51]:
Just wait.
Becky Witt [00:12:52]:
Yeah, you just wait. This is why you never watch. You never want to work on a car for the fourth owner of a. Of a BMW, not even a second. Yeah, well, okay. Thanks.
Tonnika Haynes [00:13:04]:
No, so. So you decided. How far until into your shop ownership did you decide to go? Only Honda. Did you just start that way? Because you say you've worked on everything, but when did you decide. I'm not dealing with these other jokers anymore.
Becky Witt [00:13:19]:
Well, when I got to the dealership and I saw the difference between Oldsmobile and Honda, and I realized, you can fix a Honda, you can't fix an Oldsmobile diesel. And I watched Oldsmobile take themselves right down the tube when they're believing their own balderdash. I watched the PCD get overactive. That's the product cheapening department.
Tonnika Haynes [00:13:51]:
Product cheapening department.
Becky Witt [00:13:52]:
Yeah, the product cheapening department. Pcd.
Ashley Kaplan [00:13:55]:
That's good.
Becky Witt [00:13:58]:
They just kept making stuff crummier and crummier.
Tonnika Haynes [00:14:03]:
Yeah, but you were making all the money writing it up and selling it and selling it. Right.
Becky Witt [00:14:07]:
Well, so, see, they just. They believe their own balderdash. They kept saying, you know, this is. This is what I found out about the Germans is, is the Germans will never correct a fault, because to do that would be to admit they made a fault. Well, they can't do that. Their standard answer when you point out an engineering flaw is, this is the finest German Engineering. Okay, thank you. And nothing is more irritating than to have somebody tell you everything's fine.
Becky Witt [00:14:40]:
When you complain, I see it isn't.
Tonnika Haynes [00:14:42]:
That's true.
Becky Witt [00:14:44]:
So after, after my tour of duty with Honda owners, Acura owners, I got hired to be the service manager and Acura dealer. And I thought, oh man, this is going to be murder. Because the owners of the Honda, some of them were just terrible to deal with some of them. And the guy buys an Accordant, it's supposed to be the perfect car, and he keeps pointing out all these little flaws that you can't fix. And I'm thinking, oh boy, the Acura dealers, they're going to be terrible. Well, the Acura owners were fabulous. What I found was the average Acura owner had a nice life. They had a nice house, they had a nice career.
Becky Witt [00:15:30]:
Life was good. The car was just part of that was just something. It was not your identity. It was just a nice possession. Yeah. That they have and they loved it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:15:40]:
Yeah.
Becky Witt [00:15:42]:
Okay. And I also, at the same time, I was the service manager at an Acura dealer. He also owned a Honda dealership, which was. This was in Omaha. And the, the Honda dealership was across the river in Council Bluffs. So the demographics for that, for the, the Omaha was, was well to do and across the river was the lunch bucket people. And they were a whole different group.
Tonnika Haynes [00:16:11]:
But you can hang on since you don't want an easy customer, do you?
Becky Witt [00:16:16]:
Well, I. What I have learned, I have not. In addition to my, my payroll experience, I've been. I've been a paid consultant to several other dealers. One in. One in. In Minnesota, one in. In Arkansas.
Becky Witt [00:16:36]:
And I got experience in, in soup in Salt Lake. Every place is different. So you go to Salt Lake. I took the job as a service manager there. I was. It was a career. No, it was a charter Honda dealer. He was, he was, he like, he started with Honda and, and he grew it into a big place.
Becky Witt [00:16:59]:
It was like 50 mechanics. Big, big place. And, and he said, we just, we just not making people happy. He said, we've even put out coffee and donuts in the service drive and it's not affecting our customer satisfaction. I said, your customers don't want donuts. They want their car fixed. They want the car fixed. Right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:20]:
Right.
Becky Witt [00:17:21]:
So I came and within three months, I had increased customer service pay by 30%.
Ashley Kaplan [00:17:30]:
Wow.
Becky Witt [00:17:32]:
Yeah. I was on fire. I didn't get along with them. I quit.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:39]:
So you.
Becky Witt [00:17:41]:
I could get mad. I just quit.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:42]:
I quit. I quit. I quit.
Becky Witt [00:17:43]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:44]:
So you've learned a whole lot through trial and error and you just go in there, figure out some stuff and then you quit. Go in, figure it out and quit. And then you opened your own shop and you had all the answers to all the questions, right?
Becky Witt [00:17:56]:
I didn't have a clue. So.
Tonnika Haynes [00:18:03]:
I mean, so you, you were, I mean seriously, you think that's a good point because you got to think about technicians because you're a service advisor. Technicians that are at a shop and they hate the way management is doing everything, everything is stupid. The front office is stupid, the whole world is stupid and they know everything and they open the shop and then they get the aha moment of oh crap. I don't know.
Becky Witt [00:18:25]:
Yeah, it's a, it's a completely different job. Yes, I, I am fortunate. I have a dream technician. He is a true unicorn.
Tonnika Haynes [00:18:38]:
He frogs. Did you have before you had your unicorn?
Becky Witt [00:18:42]:
A lot?
Tonnika Haynes [00:18:42]:
Lots of frogs.
Becky Witt [00:18:44]:
A lot.
Tonnika Haynes [00:18:44]:
Are you to fire person or do you try to work with them?
Becky Witt [00:18:48]:
Well, yeah, both. I fired some, some quit. I've been through a lot of people, a lot of people and I, I was not an easy person to work for for a lot of years and I made a lot of people's lives hell. And to any of those people that are watching today, I'm sorry for what I did to you and I accept that, that I was, I was horrid at times.
Tonnika Haynes [00:19:12]:
Yeah. So this unicorn you talk, is this the same unicorn you're talking about like all the time? How long is this guy been with you?
Becky Witt [00:19:17]:
This is the guy?
Tonnika Haynes [00:19:18]:
Yeah. How long has he been with you?
Becky Witt [00:19:20]:
Three years.
Tonnika Haynes [00:19:21]:
Three years. So you work two days a week? You got one, two days?
Becky Witt [00:19:25]:
Well, two and a half. We work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We open at 6:30 in the morning till 5, Monday and Tuesday, Wednesdays we knock off at noon and 10.
Tonnika Haynes [00:19:37]:
Based shop. And you don't want more, more, more, more, more to reach all your KPIs and make all the money,
Becky Witt [00:19:48]:
you know, everybody. This is an important thing. This is critically important. I cannot emphasize this enough. There's a lot more to life than money. Each of us has to be decide what, what is it that we want? What is it that we. What really drives us psychologically? They say that it's money or it's recognition or it's security. So a secure person will stay at a job that sucks just because they know payday's Friday and they're going to get a check and it's going to clear the bank.
Becky Witt [00:20:30]:
It may not be very much. It may suck Working conditions may be terrible, but it's a job that's security. You got money. Those people may work well, very well on flat rate because they can control their own destiny. They get to say, how much do they make? Recognition is the third motivation. And that is they want to win awards, they want to stand up and, and be the one that gets the trophy. And it ain't a participation trophy. They want to be the one that gets recognized for whatever it is.
Becky Witt [00:21:02]:
They really, they have the money, that's okay, but you know, I'd rather get the recommend, the recognition. So those are three different motivations for workers. So in the case of my unicorn, he just has a tremendous amount of pride in his work. He is all about perfection. He has been the top producer every place he's been. His favorite part in a dealership was the used car mechanic because he could come in. He hates people, by the way. He hates people.
Tonnika Haynes [00:21:36]:
Don't say that.
Becky Witt [00:21:37]:
He did. Now he really, he really hates people. When I, when I checked his references and I called his previous employers, they said he hates people. He doesn't, he doesn't bond with the others. You know, when we have like a pizza party, he doesn't care. And he won't, and he won't run cars in and out in the morning or the afternoon. He won't sweep his floor, he won't take out his trash. I said, does he fix cars? Oh yeah.
Becky Witt [00:22:05]:
Does he fix cars? You know his work quality? Oh, his work quality, you can't find any better. So as the, as the used car mechanic at a dealership, he could come in at like 3 in the morning, there's nobody around, knock everything out. And he told me stories of like 11, 12 o', clock, going to his service manager, I'm going home. What do you mean you're going home? It's only known while I've done all my work. And he punches it up and he goes, holy, 22 hours you turn today. Yeah, that's why I'm going home out of work.
Tonnika Haynes [00:22:42]:
Can you imagine how many shop owners would have someone like that? And if they came and they turned 22 hours for that day and they wanted to go home at 2 o', clock, that that shop owner would have a fit?
Becky Witt [00:22:53]:
Well, that's a great question and that's a great issue. And, and I, I address this in my Becky Witt shop management, where it's my way or the highway. You know, it's more important to control people than it is to reap the rewards and use them like the fine tool that they are.
Tonnika Haynes [00:23:10]:
Yeah, because I think that's ego. With a shop owner, you're going to just. You need to stay on the clock. We're open, we're open to six. I can get more out of you. I can get more out of.
Becky Witt [00:23:19]:
It's my way. Or way. Yeah, it's my way. And by golly, if you can't do it, we'll get somebody in here who can. Well, I know. Why do you think I quit all my jobs?
Tonnika Haynes [00:23:37]:
I can't imagine you as an employee. That would be funny. Can imagine how many W2s you got on the January at the end of the week because you had quit so many jobs. So like the, the whole technician thing, it, I, it's an ego thing, but. Well, I'm not going to say ego. It's like a leadership thing. It's a leadership problem, I think, you know, we try to get the technicians we treat all like the same sheep and they're supposed to all have the same personality and do the same thing. But if you have a unicorn and this dude can knock out 22 hours before 2 o' clock and he gets it done, he gets it done, right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:24:09]:
And he's like, boss, I'm ready to go home. And I'll be like, okay, you want me to drive you?
Ashley Kaplan [00:24:13]:
Yeah, right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:24:14]:
Yeah, right. You want me to put. I'll put you on my back and take you home, brother. But I can't imagine how many opportunities I lost because shop owners just cannot bend and understand and learn that technician and learn how to lead that specific person. They want to leave the whole shop the same instead of seeing who that person is, what they need, and how I can get the best production out of them. Like you said, Becky, it's either my way or the highway. And that is. That's not going to work.
Becky Witt [00:24:42]:
You're exactly right. I think the biggest problem with our industry is the people who own shops think that because they can fix cars, they're going to be a great shop owner. And I think that we have too many shop owners who were mechanics who just not only do they not understand business, they don't understand psychology.
Ashley Kaplan [00:25:10]:
Yes, thank you.
Tonnika Haynes [00:25:11]:
But that psych, that stuff hurts your feelings when you have to look at yourself and figure out who you are. Because if you don't know who you are, you can't lead. And I'm learning this. I'm still a student of all of this, if any. I'll go to anybody class. I need to know what's up and what I Do not know. Like you say, you don't know what you don't know. But when the ego gets in the way, you're affecting your paycheck.
Tonnika Haynes [00:25:30]:
At the end of the day, I think if people would just get out of their own way a lot of times and listen to different ideas and actually learn and open themselves up to learning and learning more about themselves and just assume, I tried to assume for the last couple years that I'm the problem, I'm the drama, I'm the problem. I gotta fix me. So then once I get right, then I can trickle down to my team and I can help them do their job right instead of me micromanaging. I'm the boss. This is my damn shop. We're going to do it my way. I mean, didn't they done that still do it some days?
Ashley Kaplan [00:26:04]:
Do that again.
Becky Witt [00:26:08]:
Well, now, okay, now we're down to it hurts to change.
Tonnika Haynes [00:26:12]:
It does hurt to change.
Becky Witt [00:26:14]:
It hurts to change. So when you're confronted with a new idea, what's the first thing you do? You push back.
Tonnika Haynes [00:26:21]:
Oh, no, we don't like that. That's stupid.
Becky Witt [00:26:24]:
Well, this is the reason that you are such an amazing pinnacle of success. Yeah, don't look at that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:26:35]:
No, I am a work in progress. I am trying, trying, trying every.
Becky Witt [00:26:41]:
All a work in progress. There's some that just haven't started on it yet. So. If you want to get what you want, you have to help other people get what they want. Until you do that, you're not going to get what you want.
Ashley Kaplan [00:27:01]:
Right.
Becky Witt [00:27:03]:
All right, so you. Okay, now I'm going to talk about management by the minute.
Tonnika Haynes [00:27:12]:
Let's do it.
Becky Witt [00:27:14]:
One thing that you do not do with a flat rate technician is hold them up. You don't hold up the authorization. You don't hold up them getting to work. You don't interrupt them. You don't go back and talk to them. You're. You ask me, Tanika, why don't you have a cast of thousands? I did. I had five mechanics, I had two service writers, I had a parts person, and I had a person to shop steward to keep the place clean and give people rides to work.
Becky Witt [00:27:56]:
We opened at 7. First customers came in at 7:30. The mechanics all stood around and smoked cigarettes. Because that's what you did back then. And talked for 30 minutes. I'm counting this up and I'm going, you know, we need to get people here at 7. These people need something to do. And.
Becky Witt [00:28:20]:
And the service writers, they looked at me like I've got Two heads, you know, Then they're thinking, why don't we just, why don't we just wait to open till 7:30? And I, I counted it all up about how much we, our sales were per hour. I said, you know, you know what I said? We're losing 4, 47,000 dollars a year in sales because we don't have any work at 7:00 until 7:30.
Ashley Kaplan [00:28:48]:
Oh, wow.
Tonnika Haynes [00:28:49]:
Yeah.
Becky Witt [00:28:50]:
I said, imagine, imagine if I came to you and I said, hey, I got a job for you. What do you got to have to do? Well, it pays $47,000 a year. All you have to do is sit in your chair and take appointments and fill up the schedule from 7 to 7:30. And once you've done that each day, you can go home and I'll pay you $47,000 a year and maybe you work an hour or two. What do you think? Oh, so absolutely, yeah, we'd have some takers on that. And, and you know, I, it was just so much damn trouble to manage all those people. I'm just not, I'm not cut out to do that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:29:29]:
Yeah, it is a lot. Managing cash.
Becky Witt [00:29:32]:
It's a lot and it requires a lot of money.
Tonnika Haynes [00:29:35]:
But those little things like you just said with the, that, that 30 minutes each day costs so much money. I don't think people miss that. And with my service advisors, I'll look at them, say, okay, it's 7 11. They're still standing there. What do we got? What do we got? Encourage those customers to drop off overnight. They can drop off overnight. Let's get them to wrench. Because technicians, they, they're ready to wrench.
Tonnika Haynes [00:29:56]:
They're ready to work. Yes, they're sitting around. I mean, if you gave them something, let's go, let's go ahead and get it done and get this day over with so they'll go by faster. Nobody wants us to, they don't want to stand around. And then the whole thing, I think it was you with having the parts ready the day before. We have everything down to the oil filters ready and labeled for each job. It's way to go. Yeah, I've been listening to her.
Becky Witt [00:30:18]:
Paying attention, aren't you?
Tonnika Haynes [00:30:19]:
I've been paying attention. That's why I'm so excited to talk to you. Because I think people, some people just think they don't need coaching. It's not that you need coaching, that you don't know what you are doing. We're not saying that. We're saying there could be a better way for you to do that. That could save you time and money. Now, if someone came in there and you threw a Twinkie at them and you gave them a donut and they did not like that donut.
Tonnika Haynes [00:30:42]:
You know what? You don't have to eat it. Spit the donut out, but don't not taste the donut. Taste the donut. I'm like, serious. People are so stuck in their own ways that they're so blind to all the opportunities that it stand in front of them. I think, like, people that are with the same coaching company for, like, years and years at the time. Like, you haven't had any other experience with any other coaching company or any other training to look at things from a different perspective? No, I've been with them for 30 years. Oh, okay then.
Tonnika Haynes [00:31:19]:
Because even if I'm with a training company, I'm still gonna say, oh, there's a Becky Witt class. Sign me up. What is she doing? What does she have? Okay, I like that. Oh, I don't like that. Oh, I like that. I can do that. You go in the shop, you implement it. If it works.
Tonnika Haynes [00:31:33]:
If it doesn't, try it again. If it works. If it doesn't, then don't try it again. But at least try. At least open your mind up to change and coaching and not just at work, just in life, period. Like Ricky, do you have any idea how much impact that you've had on the industry? Like, with other shop owners when they're in your class, everybody just lights up. And we don't know. We should be laughing or crying half the time.
Becky Witt [00:32:00]:
But that's true.
Tonnika Haynes [00:32:04]:
It is, like, the best atmosphere for learning, and it's so matter of a fact. And the stories from. I don't know, how do you come up with those stories?
Becky Witt [00:32:15]:
What, you've been to Frankie and Louie?
Tonnika Haynes [00:32:22]:
Oh, like the donut stories. And when we're. I was like, listen, here's another story. Like, can't nobody take you seriously, woman with you in these stories. But that's the thing. If you can break it down to them with all the. Without all the big words, all of the. All the statistics, all of the big numbers, and just keep it simple so they can eat one donut at the time and not end up with diabetes.
Becky Witt [00:32:46]:
It's very true.
Tonnika Haynes [00:32:47]:
It works.
Becky Witt [00:32:49]:
The stories help you remember, right? That's what the stories are all about. Who can ever forget about Everett? Since you.
Tonnika Haynes [00:32:58]:
Ever. Since you.
Becky Witt [00:33:01]:
Now, what I have found interesting is every single trainer has used some of my material.
Tonnika Haynes [00:33:10]:
Well, that.
Becky Witt [00:33:11]:
That's. That's that's, I got copyrights on it.
Ashley Kaplan [00:33:14]:
Yeah, yeah.
Becky Witt [00:33:16]:
This, this gross profit per hour. I wrote a class in 2000, I was a featured presenter at Vision. It was all about gross profit per hour. Nobody'd heard about that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:33:28]:
You're a pioneer.
Becky Witt [00:33:30]:
Yeah, yeah, I'm a highly trained unpaid pioneer.
Tonnika Haynes [00:33:37]:
But why is that? Because you do not ask for a lot with asta, with fueling connections that we have coming up. You're not a trainer that comes in and says, I need $10,000 in a five star hotel in Dasani water. Dasani sucks or what? A seltzer water, room temperature. You're not that person. Why do you not ask to get paid for your knowledge?
Becky Witt [00:34:06]:
You ask a great question. I've never wanted to be a coach. I wouldn't know how to be a coach.
Tonnika Haynes [00:34:14]:
I say the same thing.
Becky Witt [00:34:16]:
I, I, I, I, all I ask is pay my expenses. Every other, every other coaching company has an agenda. They want to send trainers to these events so they can sign people up. And people all need to be signed up. I mean, I'm not, I'm not putting them down for doing that. They need to get paid for what they do. This is their marketing. So early on I just opened up and what I wanted to know are what are my financial guidelines, what should my, how do I set my pricing, you know, this, that and the other.
Becky Witt [00:34:58]:
And this is way back when they had Management Success. Mike Lee was the guy who started Management Success and he was constantly sending out advertisements and he was putting on a class in Kansas city, which is 180 miles away, and it was $180 and I signed up for it and it was a two day class and I'm a college girl, I'm a professional student. When I go someplace, I take notes. So I sit through the first morning from 8 till noon and all I heard from Mike Lee is we need management training. Boy, do we need management training. And I'm just smoldering now by noon and I finally grabbed one of the assistants at lunch and I said, I paid $180, I drove 180 miles. I don't know. I don't need somebody to tell me I need management training.
Becky Witt [00:35:59]:
I'm here to get some. Can I please get some? Here's what I want, for the love of God. So I went home. I think it was, it was R.L. o' Connor had, or it was Horizon Training group that, that did a similar thing. So they had a three hour class. I went to that. I filled up two pages of notes Single spaced.
Becky Witt [00:36:23]:
I was on fire with all the cool ideas I had. And they had a program where it was, it was four days of training about a month apart. So it was, it was, it was a day of training and then, then you wait a month and implement that and then another day of training. So I've had some, some formal training from, from the industry. That pretty much was it. And when it came to the one on technician time management, this is, this is what really fired me up. I closed the shop and I took the whole staff and the guy said, I've never seen anybody do this before. Where you close the business.
Becky Witt [00:37:02]:
This was during, this is a workday. Close the business and brought every side. Never seen anybody do that. Well, when we came back, we're all fired up and I mean it just changed everything. And that, that right there enabled me to realize that the best run shop is when the technicians understand what management's trying to do.
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:24]:
Yeah,
Becky Witt [00:37:26]:
see the same movie, you all get the same notes. Now everybody understands here's where we're going. Without a clear definition of our goals. Yeah, you don't know.
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:39]:
That's scary though. It's scary coming from a shop owner. You know, you got to share your numbers with your staff. You need to do this, you need to do that. You're thinking, you don't want them to think that. Okay, so you made a million dollars in sales. That means the boss lady took home a million dollars. No, I, I didn't.
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:56]:
That's not how the world works. Like some technicians don't even understand their paycheck.
Ashley Kaplan [00:38:01]:
Right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:38:02]:
Like how taxes work. Like, okay, yes, you made a thousand dollars. You went home with 800. It's probably worse than that. So what'd you do with my $200? I didn't do anything with it. I gave it to the government and they asked me to give some more to the government. So your paycheck wasn't $1,000 that I paid you, it was like 1200. They don't understand that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:38:21]:
So I think if technicians understood the cost of doing business and that, that would be an easier conversation when it came to getting paid.
Becky Witt [00:38:31]:
That's a great, that's a great one. I remember, I remember way back we, we were offered bonuses for whatever and this one mechanic said, I don't want a bonus because I get a bonus, they'll take more taxes out. I said, no, they can't. There's no such thing as 120% tax bracket.
Ashley Kaplan [00:38:48]:
Right.
Becky Witt [00:38:48]:
You know the other, going to take out more taxes. But you're going to get more money, they're going to take more. They're going to take more out of my check. Oh, for the love of God. Okay.
Ashley Kaplan [00:38:59]:
It was important, though, to, like, being transparent with the numbers. Helps for other reasons, too, like technicians.
Becky Witt [00:39:05]:
All right, I'm having trouble hearing you. Can you get closer to your mic?
Tonnika Haynes [00:39:09]:
There you go.
Ashley Kaplan [00:39:09]:
Yes. Is that better?
Becky Witt [00:39:11]:
That's much better.
Ashley Kaplan [00:39:13]:
Technicians that want to become shop owners but have no idea the cost involved to run a business. Like, I feel like you're doing them a service by being transparent, even though it's uncomfortable, but, like, understanding just simply payroll tax, like, payroll tax in itself is a whole thing. Workman's comp, insurance. Insurance for this, insurance for that. Uncle Sam. And every insurance company wants anywhere they can take money from your business. And I think that that's something that's overlooked by a lot of employees. It's something I've always been curious about when I was.
Ashley Kaplan [00:39:47]:
When I was an employee. So luckily, I knew going into it how expensive owning a business was. But I think a lot of people don't. And so they go, I'm going to go open a shop. I'm gonna go be my own boss. I'm gonna go do this and do it my way. And then they realize how hard it is to take money home for yourself.
Tonnika Haynes [00:40:05]:
Yeah. They don't know how to pay themselves first anyway because they don't have the cash flow. They haven't set up their labor rate correctly because they're looking at the labor rate basis. I'm going to be the cheapest guy. I'm cheap in my boss, right?
Ashley Kaplan [00:40:17]:
Okay. My neighbor's 150.
Tonnika Haynes [00:40:18]:
Yeah, my neighbor's 150. I'm going to do one 120. And I'm not going to mark my parts up, and I'm not going to do that. And I'm going to save the whole community. And in the meantime, they're at home broke, and the wives are like, what the heck did you do all day? Because we have no money to buy the bacon and fried up in the pan. They cannot buy the bacon fried up in the pan because they are not properly charging. So, like, that's why I think some of the common sense stuff that you say, Becky just hits home. And I think that's what makes you such a great teacher coach.
Tonnika Haynes [00:40:48]:
Whether you want to be that or not is because you don't make things overcomplicated. You just make it very simple. The whole kiss method. And I love it. But when you're Teaching or even on your social media page. What is one thing that you think that service advisors or owners resist? Things that you say, try this. And they're like, oh, that'll never work. No, that'll never work.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:14]:
And then they come back like, okay, you were right. Like, is there one thing that you're just like, do it because this is the way it should be done, or you should try it. And they're like, oh, heck no. That's just ridiculous.
Becky Witt [00:41:24]:
I think probably the biggest hurdle is asking people for money. When we fix our own car, we can buy a water pump for 100 bucks. So we're thinking, okay, somebody's got a broken water pump. It's going to be a hundred bucks. No, it's going to be $800. Well, I can't do that. The biggest obstacle is our own false belief that I can't charge. Whatever it is, I can't charge that.
Becky Witt [00:41:55]:
And I remember starting out and I, you know, competing shop, he put in a battery. And I mean he, he charged like twice what I charged. Put in a battery. I'm going, how can you survive? Well, he survived very nicely, thank you.
Tonnika Haynes [00:42:11]:
Very, very nicely.
Becky Witt [00:42:13]:
Well, we, we, we get, we get too wound up. And as a matter of fact, that's, that is this week's donut. Okay, Is going to be the three types of people that come to our door. We have clients, we have customers, and we have people with broken cars. The clients trust you, they love you. They've been coming to you for 27 years. And if you tell them a water pump's $800, they ask you, will it be done today? The customer, now the client, they'll just, they'll do whatever they're. They client means you have a special relationship with that person.
Becky Witt [00:43:02]:
A customer is someone who comes in, they understand it costs money. They may shop around, they may not buy everything from you, but they don't drive you up the wall. The person with the broken car is the one that's going to ask you to discount the work heavily, stay late till 11 o' clock to get the job done because they need it, and then give you a one star review because you were late.
Tonnika Haynes [00:43:29]:
She broke it down for you people.
Becky Witt [00:43:31]:
Yeah, well, last week, last week's donut was, was, was about diagnostics, selling diagnostics. And several people said, well, I suggested charging double charge an hour and give it a report a half an hour. So we're supposed to find everything in half an hour? Nope, you're going to adjust that. But, but one guy actually said, no, you. You just leave your best guy on it all day if that's what it takes. But when you get it fixed, you got a happy customer. Yeah, and. And your kids are hungry because you can't afford school lunches.
Becky Witt [00:44:15]:
Yeah, well. Oh, but he's on salary. Well, what difference does that make?
Tonnika Haynes [00:44:20]:
Have to pay him. But people are trying to save the world and then they're hurting themselves. Because that is ridiculous.
Becky Witt [00:44:26]:
I know. This is.
Tonnika Haynes [00:44:28]:
I've been guilty of that. And that's why I've been guilty of pricing out of my own pocket. Oh, well, they know that they can go buy that part at AutoZone for a hundred dollars. How can I charge this? Well, the way I can charge this, because I had to buy the part after warranty apart. I have the building, I have the technician, I have the lift, I have the tools, I have the knowledge, I have the database. Because I can also go and get three pieces of chicken and fry it and make some mashed potatoes and a biscuit for less than $10. But you know what? I don't feel like it, so I have to pay for it. So it's the same thing.
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:02]:
Like we. We discount ourselves just out of emotions. And a lot of customers don't even go in there with that mindset. We just say it. You just say, well, you know, they don't even ask for a discount. We're discounting before we even open our mouths. But I had to learn that. I had to learn.
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:19]:
I mean, in the last two years, I fixed my parts matrix, I fixed my labor matrix, I did all of that. My coach that I have right now, she's like, you need to fix this parts matrix. I was like, there's no way people pay for that. And I said, you know what? Get out of your own way, Ms. Haynes. Okay. And then I did it. And I drank the Kool Aid, and the Kool Aid was good.
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:39]:
And I got rid of a lot of. What do you call it? Broken car people. What's the last category?
Becky Witt [00:45:44]:
People with a broken car.
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:46]:
The people with a broken car. The people with the broken car. That someone was just on a pod and they were saying, okay, you do the oil change, you do the dvi, you give them a list of things that needs to be done, and then the next time you see the car, all the stuff is done.
Becky Witt [00:45:59]:
Exactly.
Tonnika Haynes [00:46:00]:
And they're back for another cheap coupon oil change. And then you're like, oh, would you like to do any of those previous recommendations? Oh, I got it done somewhere else. They were cheaper. Well, I'll tell you what. You take your little happy tail back to the place that you got it done. Why are you here? Why? Because you allow them to be there and use it. Use you, in my opinion.
Becky Witt [00:46:19]:
Well, okay, so this is great. So how do you tell these people? Do you just stand there and said, no, I'm not going to work in your car anymore? That's very difficult thing to say.
Tonnika Haynes [00:46:29]:
Well, not for me, but we need to tell other people.
Becky Witt [00:46:32]:
Well, not for you.
Tonnika Haynes [00:46:33]:
Yeah, well, because I will tell people when they want to just. State inspection in North Carolina is 13.60 in my county. That's it. When people want to come for an inspection only or oil change only, I'll say, you know what? You know, I think it might be best if we don't have this relationship anymore because we have made recommendations and you tend to go somewhere else for all of your other work. And it's not fair to my technicians because it's like you going in a restaurant and ordering just a cup of water and taking a table for an hour. And so it's not fair. And then some people say, you know, eyebrow raised, like, oh, I never thought about it like that. Well, I'll go to the dealer for everything else.
Tonnika Haynes [00:47:08]:
Well, then you probably should go there for your inspection. It's a long drive. But you're so convenient. I know I'm convenient. We have a nice office, we do a great job. But you don't trust me with anything else. So that is not fair to me or my, my technicians or my service advisors. For us to spend our time and energy for a job that nets negative $8.
Becky Witt [00:47:28]:
This is exactly why I don't do free DVIs. There was a time when I, you know how big of an impact I've had on this industry? I'm going to tell you I do.
Tonnika Haynes [00:47:41]:
Do you know how big of an
Becky Witt [00:47:42]:
impact the dealership model to Fast lube? Back in 1988, I became the service manager at a Honda dealership, and the dealer principal had hired. Had hired a consulting company to come in and said, how can we increase our revenue? And they said, you can't. You got the market saturated. Well, I evaluated this whole thing and we got. We had 10 techs and I said, you know, there's always somebody that's going to be between jobs. So how about if from, say, I don't know, 8 to 11 in the morning and 1 to 3 in the afternoon, we do. No appointment needed. We'll do an oil change while you wait.
Becky Witt [00:48:31]:
We increased customer pay, labor sales by 30%, 20%. First year when they said we couldn't do it all, well, I was just. I was even back then. I'm measuring minutes, so I'm looking at. I got somebody between jobs. What the hell, let's run it in. Do an oil change. So the pay for the technicians was.
Becky Witt [00:48:53]:
Whatever you find that needs doing, you get that work when it comes back. Okay, fine. So pretty soon I had mechanics coming to me and saying, I'm not getting my fair share of oil changes.
Tonnika Haynes [00:49:07]:
Yeah, wow.
Becky Witt [00:49:10]:
We're just going crazy. And. And. And Pennzoil and Honda both are flying me all over the country to talk to service and parts managers clubs on the benefits of doing oil changes while you wait. Nobody done that before. This is when it got started. Huh.
Tonnika Haynes [00:49:26]:
Do you do waiters now?
Becky Witt [00:49:29]:
No.
Ashley Kaplan [00:49:31]:
Full circle.
Becky Witt [00:49:33]:
I have completely come full circle. What Covid taught me. See, I was. I used to do. I was doing weight oil changes up till Covid. As a matter of fact, I have the unquestioned nicest customer lounge. It is 12ft by 24ft. It is separate from the office.
Becky Witt [00:49:57]:
You sit in there and you don't hear anything. I think having customers wait while you've got service writers on the phone or talking to customers is a bad thing to do.
Tonnika Haynes [00:50:08]:
Oh, my God. They want, how does the coffee machine work? How long is it going to be? Then they want to talk.
Ashley Kaplan [00:50:15]:
Well, it's awkward, too, when you're talking somebody else about, like, yeah, step car.
Becky Witt [00:50:19]:
And I got no clock.
Ashley Kaplan [00:50:20]:
Waiting room is like, are they gonna come do that to me, too?
Tonnika Haynes [00:50:24]:
Yeah, we have. We do two waiters still in the morning. We got from seven to nine. Two waiters. That's it.
Becky Witt [00:50:32]:
All right. So what I found was the people that waited never bought anything extra because they wanted to get going. And I also found that I had a whole legion of people that never bought anything. I finally said, okay, okay, here's what we're going to do. I had taken a long time. I think it took me six years to transition my whole fleet from regular mineral oil, motor oil, to mobil one extended performance.
Ashley Kaplan [00:50:56]:
Wow.
Becky Witt [00:50:57]:
And I said, it'll go 8,000 miles in Lincoln, Nebraska, without any problem. I said, Gee, 8,000 miles? What else needs to be done at 8,000 miles? Well, that's when the tires need to be rotated, the brakes need to be inspected. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to do it. What I'm going to do now is an annual maintenance. It's important that you have names for things that ring so that they pick up on it. It's an annual maintenance. You come in once a year or 8,000 miles.
Becky Witt [00:51:31]:
And we'll start off with a road test your car to see does it leak, does it squeak, does it pull to one side, does it do anything it shouldn't? Then we're going to bring it in and check under the hood, put it in the air, lift it up. We're going to check all the lights, check under the hood, lift it up in the air, check the steering, the suspension, pull all the wheels, inspect all eight brake pads, which nobody ever does. Rotate the tires, computer, balance the tires to go to the front, put on a special oil filter designed for extended service, put in our fabulous oil. And when we're done, we're going to do a second road test to make sure that everything's okay. All, all this is only $450 or about 35, 40 bucks a month. You can't buy a bus pass for that. What do you think? Is that the level of care that you're looking for?
Tonnika Haynes [00:52:19]:
Well, that's just crazy. All I need is an oil change because I don't drive that much.
Becky Witt [00:52:23]:
I know. So I'm sure that there's a lot of places in town that do oil changes. I'm just not one of them.
Tonnika Haynes [00:52:31]:
Well, you don't want my business.
Becky Witt [00:52:34]:
Well, you are not, you're not selling, you're not buying what I'm selling. There's no harm in that, you know, you don't buy tomatoes at the meat market. So we have, we have an issue here where this is what I'm selling. You can buy what you want. And I had one guy, I perceived that he was a really good customer. When I first did this change, it was instant. It's here from now on. And the guy said, so.
Becky Witt [00:52:59]:
So this is it, huh? I said, I never said this is it. You're the one that said this is it. I'm just telling you, here's what I'm selling. You decide what you want to buy. I looked up his history. In five years, he'd never even bought an engine air filter. What happened was I was losing money on every oil change that they didn't buy anything else because you got to be competitive. And I had to hire, just to be sure that I lost my behind.
Becky Witt [00:53:33]:
I had to hire an extra service writer to write these up and hire an entry level technician to do them. Because even on a weight basis, people aren't right there. You've got gaps, you've Got unsold time. You can't do this. If I tell you come in at 8, well, maybe you're at 8. 15. That's close enough. So.
Becky Witt [00:53:54]:
So now you've got to be careful how you space these out. And it was just a horrendous loss of money. I lost 30% of my clientele.
Ashley Kaplan [00:54:05]:
Wow.
Becky Witt [00:54:08]:
And my average repair order doubled.
Tonnika Haynes [00:54:12]:
That's what I was waiting for.
Becky Witt [00:54:14]:
My sales went up.
Tonnika Haynes [00:54:15]:
Yep.
Becky Witt [00:54:16]:
My gross profit went up. And I was able to get rid of two people. And then I'm looking at this, and I'm going, wow. Okay. It cost me $50,000. This is old numbers. It probably cost me $60,000 a year to give rides. My shop is not in a neighborhood area.
Becky Witt [00:54:38]:
You got a. It's a cheap location. It takes a map and a Sherpa guide to find me.
Tonnika Haynes [00:54:45]:
It's a destination.
Becky Witt [00:54:47]:
It is. It is. It's a destination. And I said, you know, for $60,000, I wonder how many loaner cars I could get. So I currently have a fleet of eight loaner cars. We do about six jobs a day. Average is two and a half hours. So.
Becky Witt [00:55:05]:
So we're putting out about 15, 18 hours a day, and we just give you a loaner car. It's all figured into the cost of doing business. Is there an extra fee for that? No. So it's free? I said, no, nothing's free. But, you know, there's no extra charge for it. And they're all old cars. They're all over 20 years old. They all have, like, 200,000 miles on them.
Becky Witt [00:55:28]:
They're all former client cars, and they look like nobody's ever sat in them. They don't leak, squeak, rattle, or creak. And they drive great. They even have brand new tires on them.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:42]:
I mean, testimony of maintenance.
Becky Witt [00:55:44]:
That's exactly what it is.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:46]:
I have older loaner cars, too. And they're like, oh, that little thing can go. Mine are Camrys.
Becky Witt [00:55:50]:
Yes.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:51]:
And it's like, yeah, 2002, 2004 Camry. And they're like, oh, it's really nice. I was like, yeah, if you take care of them, they'll take care of you.
Ashley Kaplan [00:55:58]:
Yeah.
Becky Witt [00:55:58]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:59]:
So do your maintenance.
Becky Witt [00:56:02]:
And I've. I've had. I've had more than one person tell me, said, you know, I wasn't sure if I should. If I should invest the money in my old car. But after driving yours, it's cheaper to keep her. See, it can last.
Tonnika Haynes [00:56:14]:
So there's people. Hopefully there are people out there watching this, because who knows if they're going to watch my podcast. I heard that they're going to watch it. Do you think they're going to watch it, Becky? They're gonna watch you for sure. They're gonna watch you for sure. So that's no doubt. So they're gonna be watching this.
Becky Witt [00:56:32]:
So I can only hope your Aunt
Ashley Kaplan [00:56:34]:
Becky is my great aunt.
Tonnika Haynes [00:56:35]:
Yes.
Ashley Kaplan [00:56:36]:
Is that how this works?
Tonnika Haynes [00:56:36]:
That's how it works. Okay, so you've got. Yeah. You've got great Aunt Becky. She's my auntie. I love it. For the people sitting in the back, sitting in the audience, sitting on the YouTubes and the face space. What is the one thing if a new shop owner is listening right now? They're listening to your voice.
Tonnika Haynes [00:56:55]:
If you've got all of their attention, what is the one thing that they should stop or start doing immediately to make a difference in their shop?
Becky Witt [00:57:05]:
I love this question, and I've got the perfect answer.
Tonnika Haynes [00:57:08]:
Let's do it.
Ashley Kaplan [00:57:09]:
I'm ready.
Becky Witt [00:57:10]:
All right. Everybody knows the customer is always right. Right? To quote my hero and role model, General Bullwright, off of the old laugh in thing, I'm a happy Boulder dash, poppy cock and bull feathers malarkey. You will never have a happy customer until you first have happy workers. Everything in your business needs to be designed around keeping your staff happy. Screw the customer. I don't do anything while you wait. I don't care if you have a light bulb out.
Becky Witt [00:57:52]:
I'm not going to disrupt my mechanics by having them be interrupted on a job. Walk away so they can put a bulb in for you. And I'm not going to be open seven days a week. And I'm not going to do free inspections. You want your car inspected, you'll pay me to do it. That's what an annual maintenance does. I'm not going to take pictures. That takes too much time.
Becky Witt [00:58:20]:
You just come in because I'll fix your car. Right. And you're going to trust me to do that? I don't need to show you a picture of some mangled piece of rust that even I couldn't tell what it is. It's a thermothrockle. It's our most profitable item. The left one. The left. The left one has leaked so bad, we gotta change both sides.
Tonnika Haynes [00:58:51]:
Thermal thermo throttle.
Becky Witt [00:58:53]:
Yes.
Ashley Kaplan [00:58:53]:
The sad part is that is what a customer hears.
Becky Witt [00:58:56]:
Yeah. So, yeah. You know, people say, I need my car by two. I used to ask people, when do you want your car done? And they tell me, and that became. That became, hurry up and you tell your mechanic, hey, hurry up. This goes at 2. She's waiting like, you can't. Nobody can work like this, right? When my customer says, I need my car by two, you know, you know what I tell them? Well, I hope you get it.
Becky Witt [00:59:24]:
Here's a keys to a loaner car. I really do say that. Here's a keys to a loaner car. Well, when's it going to be done? I said, when it's finished. Well, what you can't tell me? I said, how am I supposed to know? I take in what I think I can do in a day, but I don't know what I'm going to find. I don't know who's going to say yes. And I have no idea where the parts are coming from. So don't start me to lie, because it ain't what I do.
Becky Witt [00:59:51]:
It gets done. When the guy doing the job is satisfied, it's as right as it can possibly get. So here's a loaner car. It is yours to use for whatever you need. I had one guy, we had a real problem. It was a fairly late model Honda with fuel injectors, and they're buried inside the engine. You can't just change one. You got to take the engine all apart.
Becky Witt [01:00:13]:
And we had his car like two weeks. He drove my car to western Nebraska. He drove all through the sandhills, all over the place, but that's the deal. So my, my advice, you want my advice for? The best thing for any new business is do your management to make your technicians and your staff happy. Everything needs to be about making them happy. Now you're going to have some people that aren't grateful, and they're going to take advantage of you, and they need to find someplace else to be happy because it ain't going to be here. But once you got like my unicorn. Oh, he's a happy dude.
Becky Witt [01:00:57]:
He'd been with me about, about a year. And I said, so what's the chance you're going to be here in another year? He said, I'm dying here, man. This is it. And when, when, when you're. When your mechanics start bringing their own stuff in and bolting it to the floor, you know that you've arrived.
Ashley Kaplan [01:01:14]:
That's cool.
Becky Witt [01:01:15]:
This guy? Yeah, this guy that's antisocial. He's the most social guy you'd ever want to meet. His favorite thing is to come in the office, pull up the chair that people are sitting on, put one foot up there and talk to us. And, and our favorite word Is dumbass. Whenever somebody makes a mistake, it's always dumbass.
Tonnika Haynes [01:01:41]:
This has been, like, the most fun I've had recording. My face hurts. It's too early in the morning, smiling this much. Such a Valentine's Day gift. I'm so happy to have you, and I'm so happy to have met you. And just being allowed to be in the same space. Like, your humor with just giving a lesson makes it so much easier to swallow. And I really hope people just listen and hold on to all the things that you have to say.
Tonnika Haynes [01:02:06]:
And like I said, just try it. And if it doesn't work for you, spit the damn donut out. But not trying something just because you're afraid, you just don't know what the other. The other half of it, the other side of it's going to look like is no excuse not to even try. So how do people. You got to tell the people where to find you if they want more donuts.
Becky Witt [01:02:26]:
Thank you very much. It's a Facebook page. Becky Witt shop management. Becky Witt Shop Management. Just all you got to remember is Becky Witt.
Tonnika Haynes [01:02:35]:
And where are you teaching in the next couple months? I don't know when this will be out. I know you'll be in North Carolina in April. Yes.
Ashley Kaplan [01:02:46]:
Are you doing vision?
Tonnika Haynes [01:02:51]:
Oh, maybe.
Becky Witt [01:02:55]:
No, I. I don't do vision anymore.
Tonnika Haynes [01:03:00]:
Okay.
Becky Witt [01:03:02]:
I actually, I don't do any live training. You want to know how special you are? Tanika, you've got me to North Carolina. I have no other obligations. And. And actually, I'm taking my own advice right now because you can get trainers for free. I'm just not one of them. Nobody wanted to pay me good money. I mean, real good money.
Becky Witt [01:03:34]:
My. The value of the time in my repair shop is 8 bucks a minute right now.
Tonnika Haynes [01:03:38]:
Wow.
Becky Witt [01:03:41]:
And. And I. For 20 years, for 20 years, I was a pioneer for training. I have taught at every venue there is coast to coast, north to south Minnesota to Texas, Rhode island to Los Angeles, and points in between. And I. When it all came down, I didn't. I didn't make minimum wage for all the time it took me. My class on advanced pricing strategy was based on a university level textbook on cost accounting.
Becky Witt [01:04:19]:
400 pages. I read the whole book. I took the principles in that book and I applied them to owning, to running an automobile repair shop. This is where I came up with the concept of eliminating steps that cause cost. Money that add cost but not value. Steps that add cost but not value. And I spent 140 hours to write that class do you know how much I've made off of that? 140 hours.
Tonnika Haynes [01:04:52]:
I'm scared.
Becky Witt [01:04:52]:
Not a lot. Not much, no. So I've decided, okay, I'm just not going to go anymore. And I used to. For my material, I wrote out everything. My class on being a Service advisor is 50 pages. 50 pages. I wrote.
Becky Witt [01:05:13]:
I typed that all out. And the next year, well, what are you going to teach this year? I'd write another 30 pages for that one. And putting together all the PowerPoints and doing all of that, it just wasn't fun. Tanique, I have to tell you what I'm doing now for North Carolina. I pitched a number that will pay all of my expenses to come out. None to teach, but will pay my expenses to come out. I'm a biker now. You want to know what I do? I work three days a week.
Becky Witt [01:05:51]:
It gives me four days off. You know what I do? I ride a motorcycle and cook.
Tonnika Haynes [01:05:56]:
Becky Ecky.
Becky Witt [01:05:58]:
Yeah, I ride a motorcycle. I am. I have been described as my girlfriends in the biker. My girl biker gang as a pad scraping. Ride it like you mean it, woman. I have written. I'm a Harley road captain. I teach people how to ride safely.
Becky Witt [01:06:18]:
I have ridden 180,000 miles on a motorcycle. I have ridden through 49 states. Alaska is the last one. And I probably won't be doing that. I've got a Honda Gold Wing. It's like brand new. It's a seven speed automatic transmission. It has all the features a car does.
Becky Witt [01:06:38]:
Stability assist, analog brakes, hill stop assist. And it's a six cylinder. It's even got reverse.
Tonnika Haynes [01:06:49]:
You're living your best life.
Becky Witt [01:06:51]:
Thank you. And you're helping me do it.
Ashley Kaplan [01:06:54]:
Oh.
Becky Witt [01:06:55]:
So on the way out, I'm gonna ride 400 miles to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. And I'm gonna ride a road called the. The Pig Trail. Then I'm gonna ride down to. A town in Louisiana. From there, I'm going to go to a port along the Gulf coast, then over to Jacksonville, Florida, then up to Charlotte, then over to your location for your class.
Tonnika Haynes [01:07:31]:
Where are you going? Jacksonville.
Becky Witt [01:07:33]:
What's that?
Tonnika Haynes [01:07:34]:
Where are you going to go in Jacksonville? Jordan's moving to Jacksonville next weekend.
Becky Witt [01:07:38]:
There is. There is a lovely Marriott right on the coast of Jacksonville. It's right next to one of my favorite seafood restaurants.
Tonnika Haynes [01:07:50]:
I bet I know what you're talking about.
Becky Witt [01:07:52]:
Yeah, it's, it's. It's right on the coast, just right off of where the interstate is there. So I've mapped it out. It's 3200 miles round trip.
Tonnika Haynes [01:08:05]:
I love it. I love it. This has been great. So make sure we find Becky on Facebook. Get all your donuts there. You are such an inspiration. I am just, I'm telling you, I'm so tickled right now, I'm going to eat a Twinkie.
Becky Witt [01:08:25]:
You're a big inspiration for me. Oh, I'm honored that, that you got me here. And I'm very, very pleased with what you've done to help get me out to North Carolina. And I. I gotta tell you, you know, people in my class are having fun. I'm having more fun than anybody we can tell.
Tonnika Haynes [01:08:45]:
And that's the best part. It's the best part. It's so engaging. It's so real. It's so common sense. Keep it simple. Everybody's engaged. Nobody ever has their head down.
Tonnika Haynes [01:08:56]:
No one leaves the class. You know, the first two hour or whatever, you're in the class, and then there's 20 people in the class, and then the next one in your class, it might be 40 to start, and at the end of the day, there's 60 sitting in there on the floor.
Becky Witt [01:09:09]:
Yes, you're right.
Tonnika Haynes [01:09:10]:
Engage. So, so excited. I'm so excited for feeling connections and getting to see you after your big road trip and all of that good stuff. So I'm so excited, too.
Ashley Kaplan [01:09:20]:
Every time I've gotten to meet you, I've been working a trip, the trade show right on the floor. So I've never been able to sit in one of your classes. This is the first year I'm not doing a booth, so I'll actually get to sit in. I'm excited.
Tonnika Haynes [01:09:34]:
You, it's the best downshift with Tanika is where we slow down long enough to have real conversations. Hosted by myself, second generation shop owner Tanika Haynes. This goes beyond your car count, your KPIs. We want to talk about leadership, legacy, mindset, and the messy, beautiful journey of building something that lasts. You will hear stories from shop owners, technicians, and other industry leaders who are figuring it all out by themselves in real time. This is a space for growth, tough love, laughter, and leveling up.