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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (0:00 - 0:06)
When someone calls and you're like, yeah, I'm booked out two days. And they're like, all right, let me think about it. They're not thinking about it.
[Mike Allen] (0:06 - 0:07)
Yeah. They're calling the next number.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (0:07 - 0:13)
Yes. They're going on Google and calling the next number. And you know, it's crazy too.
It's like you, you're spending all this money on marketing.
[Mike Allen] (0:13 - 0:14)
I paid $4 for that click.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (0:15 - 0:18)
Right. And you, and like, you just did marketing for your competition.
[Intro] (0:21 - 0:49)
The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we, or our guests may say, do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show.
So if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen with Confessions of a Shop Owner presented by Techmetric.
[Mike Allen] (0:51 - 1:20)
So I think it's pretty funny where we're recording. It is August 25th when we're recording this and it might be, I don't know, a week or so before we release. But yesterday was the seven year anniversary of you coming out to visit Carfix and do the onboarding of what was at the time Turnkey's kind of VIP level stuff.
That was awesome. You were here for, was it a full day or was it like a day and a half? It was, it was one day.
It was just one day.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (1:21 - 1:29)
And you had just slept in one of the bays because you were putting it in and there was no door on it yet. You slept at the back.
[Mike Allen] (1:29 - 1:59)
That's right. So the back, the back half of the building was a tire warehouse at the time and it didn't have any bay doors. And so we had cut the center block wall open for a RV size opening.
And the garage door company was supposed to put the door in the same day and they did not. So we had like boarded up this giant opening and I had slept overnight at the shop in case we got any visitors overnight. Yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (1:59 - 2:14)
You were giving me a tour and you were like, don't mind the sleeping bag. I was like, where am I? I don't normally sleep here, but last night I did.
I was like, all right, cool.
[Mike Allen] (2:15 - 3:05)
So, you know, when Carfix was new to us in 20, 2004, 2005, November, 2005, we actually turned one of the extra office rooms into a bedroom for a period of time because I lived over an hour away. And so, you know, my dad or I, whomever was at the shop at that time, sometimes we'd just crash at the shop overnight because there's a full bathroom and shower room and a kitchen and everything else. So, you know, we'd bachelor it up every now and then for a day or two at a time.
But that was obviously before I got married and wanted to be home every night. So, I guess the jaded argument could be now that I'm 20 years in, I'm thinking about putting another bedroom and kitchen in there so I can know. Is that how that goes?
[Intro] (3:07 - 3:07)
Sometimes.
[Mike Allen] (3:09 - 3:13)
I think that Amanda would be more likely to be like, hey, why don't you just go sleep at the shop?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (3:13 - 3:31)
Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. I was like, so my husband cooks and not like we don't cook anything fancy. I'm talking like tacos a couple of times a week and easy things.
But he is more of the cook in our house. So, as you're saying this, I'm like, I wouldn't want to do that because I would starve.
[Mike Allen] (3:34 - 4:02)
Well, in honor of today's episode, I'm wearing my throwback turnkey marketing jersey. I know that this is, I think I got this shirt seven years ago. I think so.
And in that time frame, I have gotten skinny and then big again and I'm trying to get skinny again. So, I'm going to get some new turnkey swag soon with the updated branding. But I just, I knew that I had it and I wanted to in honor of this.
But for this is like, is this your third time on the show?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (4:03 - 4:05)
Yeah, at least. Yeah. Third or fourth.
[Mike Allen] (4:05 - 4:27)
Yeah. So, this would be episode like 115 or something like that. And so, this is going to be a little bit different than your previous times on the show.
So, for those listeners that maybe haven't been listening since day one or that have been living under a rock or have short term memory issues, why don't you introduce yourself real quickly and your company?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (4:27 - 6:14)
Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm Carrie Lynn Rodenberg. I'm the owner and founder of Turnkey Marketing.
And we work with just auto repair shops. We focus in, we were like the first person in our industry really 13 years ago who started doing what we do. And essentially, we're like an outsource director of marketing or like an outsource marketing department really.
So, like with you, I mean, we have all different levels, right? But essentially, shop owners come to us all the time and they're like, hey, I want to grow to this revenue and this car count, and here's where I'm at. And everything in between, like, how do I get there?
And also, I don't love being in the weeds. Like, I don't love doing all the reporting. I don't love talking to the website vendor and the Google ads and, you know, mail houses and all those different things.
So, we say like, all right, here's where you're at. Here's where you want to be. We're going to figure out the strategy to get you there.
We're marketing experts, so we know the levers to pull when it comes to doing good marketing. And then we're going to go get it done. So, we're going to work with your website vendor, Google ads vendor.
We're going to do your social media, your Facebook ads, your Instagram ads. We're going to manage if you do any kind of like direct mail, we're going to manage that. Or if you have a CRM, well, you should have a CRM, but we'll get in your CRM and we'll change it so that it sounds like it's really you when you're talking to your clients and your customers.
And we make sure that you're not sending them too frequently, you know, text messages or emails or too infrequently. I think when we first started with you, if memory serves me right, we got in, I can't remember if it was you or like someone else, I'm kind of going back and forth in my mind, but like a bunch of text messages were never turned on. There was nothing going out.
And who, if it was you, was it, does that sound right? Does that sound like you?
[Mike Allen] (6:14 - 6:20)
It sounds like something I would do that I would think that, Hey, you know, it's a great idea. Look at this awesome new tool I've got. And then never use it.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (6:21 - 7:32)
Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, it's like any other tool. Yeah.
We get these things. Like I am the queen of being like, I want to get into this new hobby. And I like buy the thing to get into this hobby, like the tennis racket and the tennis shoes and stuff like that.
And then I'm like, I used it a few times. Now I'm on to the shiny new thing. But we're all like that, especially as entrepreneurs, right?
Like we were like, this is a cool tool. And you get in and then you're like, squirrel, I have this fire to take care of, or this other marketing thing I want to do, or this other, you name it. And then it's like, all these tools are kind of running and they're not totally running at full gear, right?
They're just like, they're there. And so it happens all the time, like whether it was you or someone else, like it happens all the time where we log in and we're like, hey, you know, you're paying for this CRM and you have like one email and one text message going out a year, or which actually is even worse. We log in and we're like, oh my gosh, you know that you're texting like your entire customer database every single week and they don't want to hear from you every single week.
So now you've gotten like a million unsubscribes.
[Mike Allen] (7:32 - 7:33)
Yeah. Yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (7:33 - 7:54)
So that happens all the time. So basically we get in, we use the tools that you have and we use them like an actual director of marketing would, like a marketing expert would. So that they actually get you a really good return on investment instead of just like throwing things at the wall and hoping they stick and hoping that they're actually going out or whatnot.
[Mike Allen] (7:54 - 8:44)
So I think I met you at Hackers and I won a drawing for a free marketing review. Yeah. Which is, you got to have like an incredible closing rate on that.
It's like a free second opinion. There's no way you lose. And of course I signed up and I think I signed up for social media management only.
And this was like 2017, 2018. Yeah. And then eventually I wanted to buy back some of my own time and sanity.
And so I decided to bring Turnkey on at a higher level. And that's when you came out. I understand now that you guys, that's not viable to do that with the scale that y'all are at right now.
But that's when we got those pictures that were online yesterday.
[Mike Allen] (8:45 - 9:10)
And every time I see those pictures, I'm like, I'm going to take better care of myself. And so like three years later, I was like, ah, I can do this myself. I kind of put some management in place and I was getting a little bit bored and I thought, you know, I can do this.
And so I went away from Turnkey for a hot minute.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (9:11 - 9:26)
Yeah. Like five years later. Cause we got through COVID.
Remember you would just open the Raleigh shop and then we got through COVID and that was rough. And we did all those gift cards giveaway. Like we gave away a ton of gift cards to local restaurants in your area.
[Mike Allen] (9:27 - 9:37)
Started marketing to convenience and valet service very heavily and pickup. And yeah, that's right. It was after store number two was really well established and before store number three.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (9:37 - 9:42)
No, we started store number three with you. Oh really? The one right on the college campus.
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (9:42 - 9:46)
Yeah. I just remember thinking that I'm bored and I have time to do more.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (9:46 - 9:47)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (9:47 - 12:09)
And it turns out I was wrong. And so I came back with my tail between my legs and asked you to take me back. And you were kind enough to do that.
So thank you for that. Anyway, that's a little bit of history, but what I do want to talk about is why we're having this conversation. So some of the best feedback that I've gotten from listeners and viewers over the last year and a half of doing this show is the value that they get from just kind of sitting in and being a fly on the with my monthly coaching calls with Matt Lofton and elite and getting a window into what it's like to have a coach and accountability and somebody who is a consummate professional guiding you and pointing out weak points and that kind of thing. And it seemed like a natural transition to say, well, I have a monthly call with turnkey already.
And I think that's an area that a lot of shop owners struggle with. Maybe they're really good at fixing cars. Maybe they're really good at building relationships and talking to customers.
But when it comes to designing a direct mail piece or figuring out how to manage their AdWords budget or having a marketing budget at all and understanding if they can afford to sponsor the booster club for the marching band or whatever it might be, that gets a little overwhelming. And I think if they got the opportunity to sit down and look at our calls and our reviews and how we manage budget and how we measure return and I think there's a lot of value to be had there. So it might be one month we talk about how the shops are doing and how car count is and how call volume is and how the website is performing.
And it might be one month we talk about reviewing our direct mail and doing penetration reports and picking carrier routes and what makes a good mailer versus what makes pretty versus effective, right? Because you can have beautiful mailers that don't drive traffic, right? So I just think there's a huge opportunity to bring great value to our listeners and also for them to see why I love turnkey and why I think they will too.
So yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (12:09 - 12:09)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (12:09 - 12:10)
Thanks for being willing to do that.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (12:11 - 14:13)
Yeah, absolutely. No, I like was so excited at this opportunity because probably just because I'm a marketing nerd and I, you know, have a captive audience here, so they just have to listen to me talk about marketing, but no. No, but seriously, marketing is kind of this like mythical thing to a lot of people where they're like, I get it, but just in case, tell me again, you know, like, I think I get it.
But then you go to put your dollars to use and it's scary. It's like every mark, every dollar that we get as owners, it's like we, I always say we have this small pot of time and this small pot of money. Right.
And with this small pot of time and money, we have to decide where our marketing goes. And not only does it cost us money to invest in marketing, but really the biggest thing is like, what if you're marketing is bad? What if you spend your little pot of money on marketing and you waste that money, but really the bigger waste is you're not getting the return that you could have gotten.
Right. So like if marketing works really well, maybe you got a hundred new cars in or you got, you know, you increased your revenue by 15,000, 25,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand dollars in a month. Right.
But what if you did it, you did it poorly and you didn't get that hundred thousand dollars. You didn't get that $50,000. Now your bad marketing has not only cost you that $3,000 you invested, but it's cost you the other, the other hundred thousand dollars that you lost an opportunity.
That's called opportunity cost. And that's the, that's the thing that people don't think about. And that's like the huge, huge, huge expense.
You, you, it's hard to quantify and people don't think about, but that's where I'm like, oh my gosh, don't just throw things at the wall. Use like a sniper approach and do an awesome freaking job to give your team at bats so that you can increase your revenue and increase your car count exponentially instead of like dabbling.
[Mike Allen] (14:14 - 14:21)
Yeah. Well, or, or like you said, spray and pray marketing where you just throw an enormous amount of money out there and hope something sticks, you know?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (14:21 - 14:21)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (14:22 - 14:46)
Um, as opposed to being a sniper and, and knowing exactly what your target audience is and how they, what they engage with and hitting them there. Yeah. Um, real quick.
Yeah. When we first started working together, you were like, uh, the technician in the shop who's the master tech and helps the apprentice tech and writes the estimates and manages the parts and does the everything.
[Mike Allen] (14:47 - 15:17)
And I remember you calling me to break the news to me that, uh, that you were breaking up with me because you had grown to the point that you needed to go work on your business and not in your business. Uh, and now, like you said earlier, you've got a team of 45 working at turnkey now, and you have pods that work with groups of shops and that way you have continuity. If somebody's on vacation or out sick or whatever it might be, you don't have lapses and that kind of thing, which is great.
Um, but how long has it been since you've done monthly review calls?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (15:19 - 15:33)
Probably since I broke up with you, which was probably when I had my first baby. I've had three since. So altogether.
So probably since like 2021, I want to tell you something, Carolyn. Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (15:33 - 15:40)
This podcast is all just one long con to get you back to doing success.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (15:40 - 15:41)
You want me?
[Mike Allen] (15:43 - 15:48)
Here I am like 115 episodes to get us to this point.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (15:50 - 15:51)
I feel so cared for.
[Mike Allen] (15:53 - 16:24)
It comes across as a little bit creepy when I say it out loud. All right. So one thing that I remember thinking, um, when we first started, uh, working together, um, with director of marketing role, um, I had just read the book story brand.
And you came in and we were working out kind of our, you know, differentiating factors and who our target client was and what our messaging was going to be like. And I thought she is 100% following story brand methodology.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (16:25 - 16:25)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (16:26 - 16:40)
Um, and is that still the case? But I know that methodologies evolve over time. Uh, so is that still kind of, uh, a cast upon which y'all y'all build your, your plans?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (16:40 - 18:16)
Yes. I'm really glad you asked. Yeah.
It's so interesting to me, marketing and marketing companies, because lots of times the whole thing with story brand, okay. So pause and come and come back to story brand. The whole thing with story brand is you're making your customer the hero.
So what does that mean? It means that your marketing is all about your customer and what they care about and what they need and what they need to hear, what they need to see, what they're interested in. Right.
So you capture their attention because what do people care about day in and day out? They're thinking about themselves. Yes.
They care about themselves. And so when I get something on Facebook or I get something in the mail, or I see something on Google, if it has nothing to do with what I care about, then I don't even see it. It's like when you're driving to work, it's like you could pass, you do pass so many stores and doctor's offices and logos every single day that you would have no idea you see because it's just white noise.
Right. So, and I would say probably about 80% of markings, probably like the 80, 20 rule, 80% of marketing misses this. And almost all small businesses miss this.
They forget to talk to and about the customer and they just focus on themselves. So they talk about what they want to talk about, what they care about, what they want to be important, what they want their customer to care about. So like, they'll be like, oh, It's ego driven, man.
[Mike Allen] (18:17 - 18:17)
I think it's all ego.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (18:18 - 21:02)
It's ego. It's definitely ego. And it's also the curse of knowledge.
So if I start talking about, you know, cost per click, and I get like, or really, really intense about AI and AEO and really intense to like, you know, UTM and pixels, and I, you know, I get really, really technical with you, you're going to glaze over, even though I'm like, no, this is really important. You should listen to me, Mike. But the truth is like, you want to know, is it working?
Right? You want to know, are my calls increasing? Are my leads increasing?
How am I doing on the phones? Are we converting people? The same thing is true when it comes to our marketing.
Like, we can't get too technical. It's like, you wouldn't send a technician out to talk to Mrs. Jones because he's going to over, over talk them and talk over their head with the best intentions. It's the same with marketing.
And so story brand, what you're asking about, the whole focus is like, Hey, make your customer, the hero, make your customer, the focus of your marketing. Yes. You're going to talk about yourself, but you need to attract them with talking about things that they care about or showing them pictures of things that they care about or giving them offers of things that they care about.
So to your question, do we still use that? Yes. We don't always go through the same, um, the same onboarding process that you and I went through.
Like I took you through basically like similar to a story brand process where we talked about your benefits and, um, and your offers and how, what the customer cares about and things like that. So now we've kind of got it on, like, we, we kind of have like a formula. We kind of have like a system that we're like, all right, if you're in this part of the country and you're, you know, they have these kinds of customers and we're going to talk to your customers about, you know, this way after talking to you, um, we interview our clients.
So you're probably interviewed by someone on my team at some point, right? And they ask you a ton of questions and really get to know like the heartbeat behind you and Carfix so that we can use that in all of your marketing and communicate that with your customers because customers care about that. Customers want to know that you're a real person, but we also map out all of your offers too because customers care about how much things cost.
Customers do care about value, but they don't understand yet. It's like for you, you know, we talk to shops all the time and they're like, we're like, all right, tell me your, you know, let's talk about your competitors. They're like, oh, we don't have competition.
And a lot of you listening might feel that way. You might be like there are 20 people in my area, but they're not competition because they do things differently than I do.
[Mike Allen] (21:03 - 21:14)
Right. Do you ever, if somebody new moves into town, who's your ideal customer, they don't know that you don't have competition. All the shops in town are your competition.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (21:14 - 22:19)
Exactly. You might think that they're not your competition, but someone who's looking at, at what you do, they have no idea. And you might think, ah, that person's not my competition.
Google them. Sometimes they have terrible reviews, but lots of times you'll be shocked at how good their reviews are. You think like, wow, they do a terrible job.
Everyone must hate them. And then you look, it's like, I was telling you before this call began that I just got a new roof and they somehow, the roofers, you'd think that they would know how to do this. They forgot to seal anything on my roof.
So water got all into my house. My family, you know, I have a four-year-old, a three-year-old and a 10-month-old actually just turned 11 months old yesterday. And, um, we're all like moving around in our minivan, you know, going like to Airbnb to Airbnb and like, because our house is having to get the whole top floor is like down to the studs.
And I felt like an idiot for hiring them. And I look back at their reviews, they have hundreds of reviews, 4.8 stars. So another roofer.
[Mike Allen] (22:20 - 22:23)
Hey, let's just name and shame right now. Just what's the name of the company?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (22:23 - 22:34)
No, no, no, no, no. We're giving them an opportunity to make it right. You know, I, I always say like the measure of a good, of a business isn't their best days.
It's their worst days.
[Mike Allen] (22:34 - 22:35)
That's how they fix a problem.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (22:36 - 23:55)
It's how they fixed a problem. Just like you and I, just in our companies, just like everyone listening, we, you know, we would love to bash them in our, like heated moments, but you know, who doesn't make mistakes? Who doesn't make a bad hire every now and then who doesn't, I don't know, this is kind of crazy, but it's kind of over the top.
But at the same time, if I'm talking to someone, they're going to be like, Oh, what a terrible roofing company. But someone who moves in and is new and they're looking at the roofing company I use versus one of their competitors. And they're going to be like, Oh, they're both great.
Meanwhile, one might be have an awful process, an awful team, but what they're seeing online isn't telling the whole story. So all that to say, like you said, when someone new moves in, they don't, they don't know why you are better than your, you know, quote unquote competition or the other shop down the street. You have to, you have to give them a reason to experience it.
You can say we're better. You can trust us more. We're the most trustworthy, but everyone says that, right?
So you have to give them a reason to try you out and then to fall in love with you. And you want to, you want to like be doing both of those things in your marketing, building that trust, giving, talking about what they care about, giving them a reason to come in.
[Mike Allen] (23:57 - 24:30)
So that is a question that I have is like, so when you go to a conference or an event or, you know, you're in a group of small business owners and you say, what makes your business different? Right. Well, we have really high quality technicians and we use great quality parts and we give great customer service and you know, our people are our key.
Now we say all those things and we believe all those things, but everybody says those things.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (24:31 - 24:31)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (24:32 - 24:41)
So how do you really establish a differentiating factor that makes you stand out amongst the echo chamber that is all those things we just, I just said?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (24:42 - 27:12)
Yeah. Well, a few things I would say. One is you have to like be it.
You know, when people go to your shop, you actually have to be that person. You actually have to be that shop. That's one of the things that I find really distinguishes shops is they're like, they say all those things that you say, and then like, we'll listen to their phone calls and their service advisors are rude or mean, or, you know, they're, they're not calling customers back.
And so customers are calling in. And so there's this dissonance, this disconnect between what they say, what the shop owner says and believes and versus like what's actually happening in the shop. So that's one of the big ways.
The other way that you can distinguish it is by being really loud. Lots of times the winner is the one that's the loudest. And so how do you be loud?
You do a lot of marketing. You do multi-channel marketing, meaning like you're showing up everywhere so that people can't miss you. And even though you think, oh, they can't miss me, they're probably still going to miss you.
So you have to be there over and over and over and loud, loud, loud. And every single avenue that you can be, you have to be there because lots of times there's amazing, amazing people, amazing shops, but no one knows they exist. Or only a few people know they exist.
And the vast majority of the community doesn't know they're there, even if they're great. So if you think about it this way, it's like, you know, if you had to have surgery and you had to go to the hospital and there was the best hospital for heart surgery or whatever kind of surgery you needed and it was right in your backyard, but you didn't know about it, but you knew about, you know, St. Luke's down the road and that's the one you went to, does that mean that the really great hospital wasn't really great and was the better option? No. It just means that you didn't know that that better hospital was there and was a better option for heart surgery, right?
So sometimes the big distinguishing factor is letting people know that you're there. And that's how people like compete well with each other, even if they're both equally as good or whatever, you have to be kind of in the ring and in the arena and let people know.
[Mike Allen] (27:13 - 28:00)
Well, and I could be in Ms. Jones's down the street mailbox with my mail piece every three weeks for a year before it happens to get in her hand when she's shuffling through the mail after getting home from work and remembers that her oil change light just came on. Right. Because people don't think about, you know, whatever the service is until they need it for the most part.
So, you know, I hear over and over and over for years, drug mail doesn't work. It didn't work for me. I wasted, you know, $5,000 on it.
Well, you tried it for 60 days.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (28:00 - 28:00)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (28:01 - 28:07)
You know, it's a long game. So totally. Yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (28:07 - 29:00)
Yeah. It's not like restaurants or, you know, even clothing where it's like, I go home and I'm at a stoplight and I'm searching through Facebook as I'm like, you know, I'm just like doom scrolling as I'm at a stoplight and I see an ad for a restaurant and I'm hungry. And it's like this mouth watering burger.
And I call my husband and I'm like, hey, we're going to go to BRGR because I'm, I really want BRGR. And I might go there and he's like, why do you really want it? And I'm like, I'm just really hungry.
I might not even say, well, I saw this Facebook ad. Right. You can't really, it's not the same thing with new brakes.
It's not like you see a picture of a car and you're like, oh, or, or brake pads. And you're like, I don't need new brakes, but honey, let's go to Carfix and get new brakes. Like that's just, it's not the same.
Right. So you have to be there when someone actually needs new brakes.
[Mike Allen] (29:00 - 29:01)
Yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (29:01 - 29:06)
Which makes it challenging. It's challenging in our industry for that reason. It's not an impulse buy.
[Mike Allen] (29:07 - 29:39)
It does open up some interesting ideas for outside the box thinking. And that's the kind of stuff that I really want to talk to you about over the coming months and episodes. But our goal is to do this once a month and just talk about how Carfix is doing and what our marketing goals at Carfix are and, you know, car count and inbound call volume and, uh, some of the services that y'all got when y'all, you know, sometimes I think things are going great.
And then I get your call review report and I'm like, oh, huh. Huh. Super.
Um, we all have to your point.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (29:39 - 30:20)
Yeah. We all have like blind spots or people breaking our businesses at any given moment, you know, when you have three shops or you have 45 employees or you have even one five employees, like you are not, you can't be micromanaging there's training and retraining and checking in and accountability, but you always need to have a finger on the pulse because people change, you know, we get, we have turnover, like different things like that.
And so you think something's going on and then you listen in, you look at the numbers, you look at the calls and you're like, Ooh, ouch.
[Mike Allen] (30:20 - 31:45)
Ouch. Yeah. So if you ever want to ruin my day and look, I've got, I've got really good service advisors who like truly desire to do a good job of what they do and want to help people.
I don't have any bad apples right now. Right. Uh, but still you want to ruin my day.
Let's go listen to phone calls just because they don't answer the phone the same way that I would answer the phone or they don't respond to questions the same way that I would respond to questions. And let's be honest, they're all better at service advising than I am now. Right.
Because I'm a decade or more out of practice. Right. And it's a, it's a, it's a perishable skill.
It's like in so many other things. Um, but, uh, yeah. And that, one of the reasons is that, uh, I have, we used to go really deep into the weeds about measuring return on investment for different marketing efforts.
And I, I imagine that you have clients that, that want to do that. Uh, to this day, I just want to measure the number of unique inbound phone calls I've got because I can see, because if you, you know, the marketing's job is to drive, drive traffic to the website or to make the phone ring. And if I screw it up or if my service advisor screw it up, that's not a result of bad marketing.
That's, we didn't follow through. So if I'm going to measure the effectiveness of marketing, I want to know, did it make the phone ring?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (31:46 - 32:31)
Totally. Um, so, um, And we, we want to like measure the ROI of each thing too, but I think you're wise and we do, but I think you're wise and realizing like marketing's marketing is like a web, like it all plays together. You know, like you can't just have one piece of marketing and say this existed in a vacuum.
And you know, I sent a mailer out and they never saw my signage or they never saw my sponsorship or they never heard me on the radio or they never saw my Facebook ad or never saw my Google ad. It was only because I sent this mailer. It's just not true.
Just think about the way that you interact with brands and the way that you interact with companies.
[Mike Allen] (32:32 - 32:55)
Well, and attribution is so hard to track down. Especially if you have a well-rounded marketing plan, you know, and I know that I'm doing Google ads and I know that I'm doing remarketing and targeted ads and I know that I'm popping up on Candy Crush Saga and that we're on YouTube TV commercials and we're in direct mail and maybe they saw me at the strawberry festival or whatever it was. Right.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (32:55 - 32:56)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (32:56 - 33:08)
Um, and then they come in and your service advisor said, Hey, how'd you hear about us? I, I saw you on TV. Well, they got 150 impressions of the company before they saw us on YouTube TV.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (33:08 - 33:09)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (33:09 - 33:14)
And we're going to credit that to YouTube TV only.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (33:14 - 33:14)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (33:15 - 33:16)
So yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (33:16 - 35:17)
Although there is there, I will say there is one kind of marketing that we do and it's called direct track. And that's where we are showing people, like we're sending them an email and we're following it up with like YouTube TV ads, like commercials. And then we're following it up with, you know, banner ads and display ads on their apps and on their phone and on, you know, their websites and stuff like that.
And they're seeing all of these things together. And that one is kind of creepy because it uses AI and it uses machine learning. And it actually finds people in your area who have opted into something that indicated that they need auto repair right then.
And we can actually take out your customer list and only send it to people who aren't your customers. And the second they open that email, we can see their physical address is where it gets creepy. And then we can show them those ads on every streaming service, every device in that house and like geofence at one house.
And then if they come into your shop, they've never been in your database before. So we get their email address. If you're good at getting email address, which a lot of service advisors are not the best at getting email addresses.
So it's super important regardless of what kind of marketing you're doing. It's super important to get email addresses. It is not dead.
But once we get that, we can see like, or we get their physical address, we can directly track it back to, hey, you got this ad and it was, you know, maybe you saw these other things too and you probably did. But as soon as you saw this ad, you came into the shop. We can tell like that person came into the shop and so we can directly track it back.
And it's crazy. And especially when you're doing other good marketing, like you are, like that's when something like that is super effective because it's this, even though we can like directly track it back, it's really the web of marketing, the multi-channel marketing that makes marketing super effective. And you've always been really good at that.
Always.
[Mike Allen] (35:19 - 35:45)
Well, it's like a cool, shiny object, right? To think about like, so I was just thinking while you're talking about that, I was like, well, I'm thinking that we could geofence the service department at the mega dealership down the road and capture Mac IDs for the devices that are in that service department and then feed help wanted ads to those devices because they're likely to be technicians.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (35:45 - 35:48)
We've done that before for you. Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (35:49 - 36:11)
So it's just, it's fun to think about what's possible with things like that to get creative and try to do things that maybe our competition doesn't do because in the automotive, in the independent aftermarket, in the automotive space, we are not nuanced marketers for the most part, right?
[Mike Allen] (36:13 - 36:29)
And in densely populated large metro areas, there's going to be more competition, right? Just for anything. Yeah.
But if you're rural, and I mean, you might not have anybody who's got a really focused, targeted ad campaign going, right?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (36:29 - 36:31)
So it's exciting to think about.
[Mike Allen] (36:31 - 37:01)
Yeah. So anyway, half hour has already gone by. I apologize.
I have a tendency to blather on, but so let's, if we step back and we say, hi, you know, my name is Mike from Carfix. I've decided to use turnkey marketing. I want to use your VIP director of marketing services.
What does onboarding look like for a new client with turnkey these days?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (37:02 - 41:13)
Yeah, that's a great question. So with onboarding, our team is going to do a bunch of research and really get to know your shops before they ever meet with you. So we're going to show up and we're going to be like, Hey, here is, you know, here's what we're seeing about your shop.
Here's some areas that you're really killing it with marketing. Here's some gaps. And here's, we're going to make a plan on how we're going to really execute your marketing.
So you show up better than all your competition. And so you can have the right budget, the right marketing plan, the right incentives, the right messaging, the right pictures, right? The right marketing mix, the right, you know, everything.
So you're really strategic because like I was saying earlier, everyone has a little pot of time and a little pot of money. So we want to make sure like when we're doing marketing, there's a million things like we're talking about. Like there's so many things you can do when it comes to marketing and lots of them are good, but you have to decide which ones are going to be best.
So you get the best return on investment and you can capture all that opportunity, all the people that are out there and make that dollars in your shop and dollars in your bank, right? So we're going to create that plan. We're going to look at like, how are you showing up on the web?
How is your SEO? How are your ads? How is your AEO?
How are you showing up to AI bots? Which is a huge, huge thing that people are kind of talking about, but a lot of people don't know what to do, right? Like they don't know, okay, what, where do I go from there?
So we're going to take that and we're going to be like, hey, here are the areas that you need to grow. Don't worry, Mike, we're going to go get this done. You don't have to be the one chasing down every little aspect of your marketing.
You don't have to be the one compiling it into data reports. You don't have to be the one telling the story based on that data. I mean, my goodness, like you asked me earlier if I, how long it's been since I've been like the marketing technician, since I've been the one like doing these, I'm like, oh, it's been about five years.
So you had asked me to, you know, be on the show with you and kind of go through this with you. And I was like, all right, but Mike, like, I know the, I know the big picture, but it, you know, before we're meeting, I'm like messaging people on my team, like, where do I find this file? Where's this spreadsheet?
Where's this thing? And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is the, this is just the natural growth of a shop. Just like a lot of people listening started out as technicians and now they're shop owners.
Right. But as I was kind of like, where do I find this? And like asking my team, like, all right, so you can pilot all this data, right?
Like, I'm just going to, I can take this and like read it. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, it almost, I like resold myself. Like, whoa, there's so much work that goes into like, not only the creation of good marketing, but the tracking and looking at the data, aggregating it, figuring out how it's all playing together and figuring out what needs to be changed.
Where can we dial back? What is the story that this is telling me? What is this telling me about my car count?
What is this telling me about the budget that I need to do? Do I need to increase? Do I need to decrease?
You know, like even I was like, oh my gosh, there's, it's just so much work to do it well. And again, yes, it's, it's, you want to spend, you're spending $1,000 on Google, let's say on Google ads or $2,000 on Google ads a month. Well, you don't want to make that, you don't want to spend a thousand or $2,000 wrong.
But the really big thing is you don't want to lose out on the $50,000 of opportunity if you got that, if you got that right. Right. And also you don't want to lose your technicians.
Like how many shop owners you talk to who are like, oh my goodness, it's so hard to find good technicians. Well, what happens when you're, you have a bad day or you do bad marketing and then you don't get the calls and the cars that you need? Technicians are out, right?
[Mike Allen] (41:13 - 42:34)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I do have, I do have a confession that I want to make today.
Rachel is my account manager and she has been awesome to work with and I am certain that I have got to be her worst client. I am so bad about follow through and responding to messages and attending meetings and that kind of thing. And so whereas this was a, you know, a seven year long or however many years has been play to get you back to doing my monthly reviews and managing my account.
I know that I've not been giving it, like returning to you guys what you need to be able to do your job as well as possible because the shop's just been busy. So I'm like, okay, we're good. And by committing to these monthly calls with you that I've got to record and share with the world, I feel like I'm much more likely to actually carry my end of the bargain a little bit more effectively.
Like I get, like I always get the monthly emails with like the shopping list for the thank you gifts and everything. And it's been nine months since I've actually, like, and it's so easy. You send me a list of here's what it looks like and here's all the ingredients and here's the links where you can buy it on Amazon.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (42:35 - 42:38)
By ingredients he means like, here's the link to Doritos.
[Mike Allen] (42:39 - 42:49)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it's like whatever the theme thing, like here are the little clear cellophane bags that you can use to package it up all nicely and I'm just the worst.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (42:51 - 42:57)
I mean, it's hard to do like the big things and the little things. Like it's, you just have so much.
[Mike Allen] (42:57 - 43:02)
I'm really trying to do none of the things and that's the problem. So I feel like you're going to be my accountability buddy, okay?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (43:03 - 43:03)
Yes.
[Mike Allen] (43:03 - 43:08)
You're going to make me be awesome at helping you guys do your job.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (43:09 - 43:20)
Do you want me to jump in with one thing? I know like we're running out of time, but I did have one thing that might be confession worthy. For you.
This is kind of fun. Can I do your confessions?
[Mike Allen] (43:21 - 43:23)
You're going to call me out on how I've been dropping the ball.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (43:24 - 44:27)
Do you want to hear something? It might be a little ouchy. All right.
So I was looking, so, you know, I'm jumping in and I'm like, all right team, like where are these reports? And I'm looking at all the numbers and I'm thinking it through. And it was actually super fun because this is what I love to do and what got me back at, you know, what got me into marketing all those years ago.
What made me start Turnkey 13 and a half years ago. But I'm looking at, um, your numbers and you were saying, like, you know, everyone really cares about the ROI of like each little thing. But the really big thing that is important is like, how many leads am I getting?
Like how many calls am I getting? Right. So help me understand.
Cause I'm just jumping back into your account. I'm looking at Garner, which is your flagship store. Your first store.
It's a store that I visited seven years ago. And, um, your call conversion is about 24.5%. Okay.
[Mike Allen] (44:27 - 44:29)
What's a good target for that number?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (44:30 - 44:36)
If it were my shop, I mean, if it were my shop, I'd want to be at like 60 or 70, a hundred percent.
[Mike Allen] (44:36 - 44:39)
Well, well back up, define call conversion.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (44:40 - 44:55)
So this is even just first time callers. Okay. So a first time caller comes in and then, so you have a hundred people, first time callers, you get 10 cars, 10 new cars in the shop.
That's a 10% call conversion. Okay.
[Mike Allen] (44:56 - 45:14)
So, um, so what you're saying is that I guess we could divide like car count into unique inbound calls and say this many inbound calls equals one car for you. And this is what it should be. Yeah.
So here like Garner, less than half of where I should be is what you're saying.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (45:15 - 45:44)
Yeah. Like Garner, it's like to give you the actual numbers, Garner had 229 first time callers. I can't remember if this is just in July and they had 56 new cars.
So that's whatever the math is, like almost 200, 175 ish, 180 new callers didn't convert into actual customers.
[Mike Allen] (45:44 - 47:04)
So I think what we've got is multifactorial, right? Yeah. It's definitely, it's definitely an ouchie is, um, like, for example, a year ago, early 2025, we had, uh, nine technicians and five advisors and a couple of GSs and we were open on Saturdays and, uh, the numbers, the revenue and car count were huge.
Right. Um, and then, uh, I failed to manage the business appropriately. Lots of shit went wrong.
Um, so now we are, uh, last month, if we're looking at July numbers, we were four technicians, one GS and two advisors up front. And then we have kind of an expediter shop foreman type role. Um, and, uh, frankly, a lot of that was we were running at red line and we didn't have that.
We were missing an enormous number of phone calls because we couldn't get to them. Um, and so, uh, this month we have added a technician, we have added a service advisor, um, and we should be, that should be coming around a little bit, but, uh, ultimately being understaffed was leading us to say no when we should have been saying yes.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (47:04 - 47:04)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (47:05 - 47:19)
Um, so, and I believe that if we listened to the calls, which for the love of God, we're never going to record an episode where we listened to calls. Um, if we listened to the calls, we wouldn't hear them saying the word no.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (47:19 - 47:20)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (47:20 - 48:26)
We would hear them saying no with, well, I can probably get you in, uh, if you wanted to drop it off with us and I can call you maybe tomorrow by the end of the day, if we get a chance to look at it, which is no. Right. Um, and they're just running a red line, man.
And so, uh, you know, that's actually something we've been talking about in morning meetings for the, uh, on and off for the last couple of weeks, because we're now four weeks into having, uh, three weeks, three and a half weeks into having, uh, an extra advisor on the front counter there. And so, uh, you know, you're dividing up this effectively the same car count at this point between three guys. They have a lot more time to work our process appropriately and to set the next appointment and to do the intake process and the, in the checkout process, uh, appropriately.
And so, you know, that's one of those things that should also be happening is that we should be missing fewer phone calls and we should be comfortable saying yes more often. And we're about to add another technician too. So that'll put us at, at six and three, which is kind of the ratio I want to be at.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (48:27 - 48:33)
Good, good. Yeah. Because I mean, like how far out have you guys been booking people?
[Mike Allen] (48:35 - 48:39)
Um, not, not a long way, a couple of days.
[Mike Allen] (48:40 - 48:58)
Uh, but I mean, people want service right now. You know, we're not a specialty shop. We're not a diesel shop or a shop.
We're a general repair, Asian domestic. And you know, we're not in a hyper competitive market, but you know, all the major chains are within a mile or two and you're in a pretty dense market. Yeah.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (48:58 - 49:06)
Even if you weren't, even if you're in like the country and there's other options who can get people faster. Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (49:07 - 49:14)
So just frankly, we're, we're still in the process of recovering from me dropping the ball in late 25.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (49:15 - 49:15)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (49:15 - 49:17)
And kind of rebuilding from that.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (49:17 - 49:29)
Yeah. So that's hard, but kudos to you. But no, like, but seriously, kudos to you for being like, all right.
Cause what owner doesn't drop the ball at some point? Like life happens, new shiny objects.
[Mike Allen] (49:30 - 49:33)
Get on the internet and check all those owners are awesome and perfect and they've never made a mistake.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (49:33 - 50:00)
Right. Totally. Totally.
But like you're getting it, like you're, you're, you're grabbing the bull by the horns and you're getting back, you know, you're getting back up and you're doing what it takes to turn these numbers around. Right. So you're welcome, bud.
No, but seriously, like it's hard to do and it's hard to do publicly. That's hard to do. I mean, confessions of a shop owner.
That makes sense.
[Mike Allen] (50:01 - 50:02)
There it is. Right.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (50:02 - 50:08)
Yeah. But so I think like, I'm really hopeful knowing that, that those numbers are going to increase.
[Mike Allen] (50:10 - 50:16)
Yeah. I think you'll see a noticeable increase or a decrease in missed calls.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (50:17 - 50:17)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (50:17 - 50:24)
And also because they were running at red line call volume was up because customers were calling to get status updates because we weren't updating in a timely fashion.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (50:24 - 50:24)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (50:25 - 50:43)
So call volume, I think will trend down a little bit because we're hopefully getting rid of those status update calls and missed calls will go down, but conversion should go up significantly would be my hope as we expand our technical capacity and our advisor bandwidth.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (50:44 - 50:46)
So yeah. Yeah. What's your ARO?
[Mike Allen] (50:46 - 50:50)
It's like last month, last month was 838.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (50:50 - 51:08)
Yeah. 838. Okay.
So 838, if you had gotten like, I mean, not to like add salt to the wound, but if you'd gotten half of the ones that you turned away, that would be $84,000, basically 83,000.
[Mike Allen] (51:09 - 51:09)
I mean, that wouldn't suck.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (51:10 - 51:13)
That wouldn't suck. And a lot of that would just be like straight profit.
[Mike Allen] (51:15 - 51:38)
And so, but here's the, here's the funny thing. You guys have been doing the work, making the phone ring. The opportunity's already there.
Yeah. The phone calls have come in and we've just failed to convert those calls into customers at $838 a piece. And so good job on the part of turnkey.
Now I just gotta get the capacity and the bandwidth to be able to take advantage of it.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (51:39 - 52:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then like, that makes me, you know, marketing is such an art and science at the same time, because like some people are like, Oh, well, I'm really busy.
So I should turn marketing off. But what you said earlier is so right where it's like marketing takes a while to really get going. Oftentimes it's like a delayed service.
So you turn it off now, you're still going to have the leads coming in now, but three months down the road when you really need it, they're going to be, it's going to be dry.
[Mike Allen] (52:12 - 52:31)
Right. Well, direct mail especially seems to be like a three month lead time. Oh, totally.
To start seeing the results. So it's like, you know, it's like August, September, like, man, we're great. We're flush.
We got all the cars. Let's go ahead and turn off marketing. And we're not going to have any impact on August and September.
We're going to have impact on December, January, February when we need more cars.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (52:31 - 52:31)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (52:32 - 52:45)
So and certainly in December, January, February, when maybe car count is not what it is in the middle of summer, we're not thinking I should turn off marketing. We're thinking I need to do more marketing. Right.
And then it comes in time, just in time for the spring rush.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (52:45 - 52:54)
Right. Totally. It's like you should have done the marketing three months ago, like late summer, early fall.
So you had it during your naturally slow time.
[Mike Allen] (52:56 - 53:36)
Well, and that's one thing that we can talk about in a future episode is like, I know that February is always the slowest month of the year for us because it's not a travel season. We're not a winter destination. People have kind of blown their their wad on the holidays and it's a shorter month and all those things.
And so with your guidance many years ago, we now have a recurrent we have some specialty marketing pieces that only happen in February that are done to kind of drive return clients and previously declined services and that kind of stuff back in the door in February to help kind of take the valley out of the peaks and valleys.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (53:37 - 54:02)
Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Because when people are holding onto their money, Mike, like you have to lean on the people who've already given their money to you. So it's much easier to get someone who has already opened up their wallet and run their credit card at your shop. It's much easier to get that person to spend money again than it is to get a brand new person who's like trying you out.
[Mike Allen] (54:03 - 54:05)
Yeah. The cheapest customer is the one you've already got.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (54:05 - 54:05)
Yes.
[Mike Allen] (54:06 - 54:31)
Right. And if you ever do the math to figure out what your new customer acquisition cost is, you'll really appreciate keeping the ones that you've already got for as long as possible. So we actually talked about that this morning in the staff meeting at 745.
We were talking about how we've fallen back out of the habit of pre-booking the next appointment for the annual inspection and for the oil service and how that's just we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.
[Mike Allen] (54:32 - 54:39)
Because what's six months from now? Six months from now is a slow season. Why wouldn't we be booking all these cars to come in in the slow season?
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (54:39 - 54:42)
Yeah. So how has it worked for you historically?
[Mike Allen] (54:44 - 54:46)
I've never been able to get it off the ground.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (54:47 - 54:47)
Okay.
[Mike Allen] (54:47 - 54:51)
Where we do it consistently for six full months to get through a cycle of the database.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (54:51 - 54:51)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (54:52 - 55:06)
I have several peers in Elite who do it and have done it for over a decade successfully and it's a driving factor. I mean, if you got, I mean, I expect it from my dentist.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (55:07 - 55:07)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (55:07 - 55:13)
It would be weird if I left the Right. I would think that they weren't doing their job right.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (55:13 - 55:14)
Right.
[Mike Allen] (55:15 - 55:43)
So if you train your customer base to accept it, you know, Hey, Ms. Jones, you know, one of my jobs is to, you know, just handle anything that has to do with your car for you so that you don't have to stress about it. I went ahead and made it and a reminder in my computer to call you in six months when you're due for an oil change. Yeah.
You've got the sticker up there, but I never pay attention to the sticker in my car. And you might not either. I'm just going to call you in six months and say, Hey, you're due.
And then we can set a time that works for you. Does that sound good? Great.
And then set the reminder in the computer and freaking call them. Yes.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (55:43 - 56:02)
Yeah. You asked, you asked earlier in the episode, like what sets people apart? I think convenience sets people apart.
Convenience. And that's why like when someone calls and you're like, yeah, I'm booked out two days and they're like, all right, let me think about it. They're not thinking about it.
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (56:02 - 56:03)
They're calling the next number.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (56:03 - 56:09)
Yes. They're going on Google and calling the next number. You know, it's crazy too.
It's like you, you're spending all this money on marketing.
[Mike Allen] (56:11 - 56:12)
I paid $4 for that click.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (56:12 - 56:59)
Right. And you, and like, you just did marketing for your competition. Cause you agitated, you like poke the bear.
You're like, Hey, Hey, you're warning lights on. Hey, Hey, you have an oil change light on, you know, an oil light on, you know, and they're like, Oh my gosh, finally I need to, I finally have a second with the dogs, not barking. The kids aren't pulling on me.
Like I'm not making dinner. I'm not going into the office to pick up the phone. They call you.
They know that they need it. They finally have a second to do it. You can't help them.
They, you're only a day out. You're only two days out, but they're like, no, no, I need it in the morning because I'm going on a trip soon. This is happening.
Like I'm busy. So if you make it easy and convenient for them, they're like, yeah, I can get you in. I can come pick up your car.
You might not do that anymore, but, or we have a, we have a loaner car for you.
[Mike Allen] (57:00 - 57:22)
Yeah. So what you're saying is, and I don't know what, I'm going to be totally honest. I don't know what my cost of customer acquisition is right now.
I haven't looked at it in a long time, but let's say it's a hundred dollars. New customer acquisition is a hundred dollars. If I do all that marketing and they finally pick up the phone and they call me, I just spent a hundred dollars to send them to my competition because I couldn't help them.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (57:23 - 57:23)
A hundred percent.
[Mike Allen] (57:25 - 57:25)
Super.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (57:25 - 57:48)
That's exactly it. And not only that, but you lost whatever your customer lifetime value is. So if, if you are a good shop, right.
And you're like, when people come to my shop, they love me and they stay at this shop forever. Well, if you figure it out, like what is that customer, the lifetime value that customer to you, right?
[Mike Allen] (57:48 - 57:59)
If they're going to, it's twice a year at $838. And let's say I keep them for 10 years and they've got two cars. So that's $3,200 a year for 10 years.
That's $32,000.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (58:00 - 58:21)
Yep. That's a lot of money. So now you lost, you paid a hundred, you lost a hundred dollars because you, you paid a hundred dollars worth of marketing for your competition.
And it's like, crap, a hundred dollars, damn it. But really you lost, would you say $32,000 in the opportunity? Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (58:22 - 59:37)
Okay. So this episode was just about kind of reintroducing what it is that Turnkey does and what the idea is for these calls. And so we're going to have monthly marketing review.
And so next month we're going to do an episode. And I think it would make sense for us to focus on the Garner store. And to whatever degree, I don't know if it would be problematic to break out all of this one store from all of the stores, because there's some overlap in what's done, but we'll figure that out.
And it's just going to be what it's like to be a client of Turnkey and what the things are that we review. And I'm just going to ask my dumb, uninformed, ignorant questions and get the feedback. And I know that I'll still have conversations with Rachel and the team there because you're running a big organization and you got a lot going on.
But I will likely be much more engaged and responsible because I don't want to tell you that I don't know and that I didn't do the things that I was committed to doing. Like you've been asking me to send updated pictures for three years and I have not done it. And so we're still using old pictures and that's all 100% my fault.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (59:38 - 59:39)
That's okay. You know what?
[Mike Allen] (59:40 - 59:42)
I bet you get new pictures before next month.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (59:43 - 59:45)
All right, let's do it. You guys heard it here.
[Mike Allen] (59:46 - 1:00:11)
All right. Super. Well, I'm excited.
I think this is going to be awesome. I think our listeners are going to enjoy learning a lot about how to do this and kind of what goes into it. And if they're in a place where they can do it themselves and their business, great, they're going to get better at it.
And if their business has grown to the point that they need to buy that time back and hire an expert, then they know where to go. So it's going to be fun.
[Carrie-Lynn Rodenberg] (1:00:11 - 1:00:14)
Absolutely. Awesome. Thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
[Mike Allen] (1:00:14 - 1:00:52)
Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner where we lay it all out. The good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes.
So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink. You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover, or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email mikeatconfessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number is 704-CONFESS. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, or follow.
Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode.