Transcript
Aniz Lavji: All right, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Shop and Tread Talk podcast. My name is Aniz and we've got Frank with us as usual with a perfectly trimmed beard today.
Frank Wiebe: That's
Aniz Lavji: If you can't recognize him, that is Frank, okay?
Frank Wiebe: right.
Aniz Lavji: It's not AI.
Frank Wiebe: No, ah maybe.
Aniz Lavji: Well, maybe it is, yeah. we're We're getting pretty high tech these days.
Frank Wiebe: Maybe. so
Aniz Lavji: Today, we've got Comran and Saurav. um You guys want to introduce yourselves?
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, you want to go first?
Aniz Lavji: and Just kind of tell us ah who you are what you do, and kind of you guys have an interesting story how you got to where you are now. And so if you can kind of fill us in the Cliff Notes-ish version of how you ended up in automotive.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, um I'll give it the short snippet and Cam, you can probably dive in a bit. deeper My name is Saurav. I'm the co-founder here at 47 Consulting, slash 47C, 47 Consultants, really all all the name aliases right there. Cam?
Kamran and Saurav: Camarand, the other guy. Yeah, the co-founder at 47. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: And do you want to give little, you want me to do the background story? Yeah, yeah, go for it. I did it last time, so might as So TLDR, Sarv and I met for like three seconds back in 2013. wife and him went to the same college and we bumped into each other one time.
Kamran and Saurav: Then like many years later, we started talking on WhatsApp over like crypto. We had never met in person.
Aniz Lavji: Yep. Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Starting like 2017, we were both in software and i was kind of in the middle of my career. He was in the early part of his career and I started coaching him on basically how to navigate the politics of an organization and mobility within an organization. And we talked couple of times a year.
Kamran and Saurav: And several years ago, I got laid off. And so I had a lot of time on my hand and I happened to move closer to him. And by happenstance, we were at at somebody's wedding reception and we see.
Aniz Lavji: of course.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, exactly. It was an Indian wedding reception, too. And and so I see him across the way and i'm like, that guy looks like ah someone I've seen on WhatsApp.
Frank Wiebe: Thank you.
Kamran and Saurav: And we lock eyes.
Aniz Lavji: but
Kamran and Saurav: And then from there, we get it off and we kind of stayed in touch in person this time. And we were kind of exploring, you could say, various aspects of entrepreneurship.
Kamran and Saurav: And I mean, essentially like an opportunity presented itself. And we were kind of wondering what we should do on our own. And we were like, Hey, there's this opportunity that's presented itself. do you want to just do it together? And then it was pretty much a long meandering path into automotive. We, we, we we were like in like 13, 14 different verticals before we stuck in automotive. So we really got uh,
Kamran and Saurav: understand that like automotive for sure the one thing that we learned is ah generally speaking the business owners have a really really really high degree of business sophistication compared to like any other industry we we've uh yeah yeah very different yeah just to add on
Aniz Lavji: it's It's different for sure. It's not a normal business at all. No.
Frank Wiebe: It's an ever-changing business is what it is. It's never it's never the same.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, and you know you guys would be surprised.
Aniz Lavji: No.
Kamran and Saurav: The business acumen that you know auto auto repair shop owners have is far beyond what any other industry actually has. i know And you guys may not believe that, because but we we've had visibility into all these different verticals, and those folks have no clue what they're doing.
Kamran and Saurav: And you guys might think you guys don't know what you're doing, but you guys are far beyond the fetch of it, right? You guys are open to trying out new things and, you know, connecting with people. And the best part is the auto shop industry is normal.
Kamran and Saurav: It's is's just there. There's obviously, you know, the exuberant side of of the auto repair side. You know, we all know some names on that. But then mostly people are normal, chill.
Kamran and Saurav: They want to be able to, you know, take care of the employees, take care of the families, you know, work only to a certain period of time and weekends thereafter as well.
Aniz Lavji: Oh, yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Bless you.
Frank Wiebe: Thanks.
Kamran and Saurav: And yeah, and and when we ah and then there was kind of like a, so why what ended up happening, and we'll we'll just we'll just say what it is.
Frank Wiebe: I feel better.
Kamran and Saurav: So Saru had cold called the shop and um got into that shop and Basically, after about four or five months of working with a shop, we were like, oh, this is interesting because there's all these things we're doing for the shop that we were doing for like these 13, 14 other verticals. But for whatever reason, the shop sees a lot more value in what we do than like all these other verticals.
Kamran and Saurav: So we were like, OK, this is just me. I'll speak for myself. I didn't want to get into automotive. I was like, this seems really freaking boring. How is this going to be?
Aniz Lavji: And that's the end of the podcast. No, I'm just kidding.
Frank Wiebe: laughter
Kamran and Saurav: I was like, how the hell are we going to make this fun and interesting?
Aniz Lavji: Mm-hmm.
Kamran and Saurav: I just couldn't wrap. I was too married to the other verticals we were into. But I was like, you know, we got to look at the numbers. This is obviously working with this shop. Are there other shops like it? So we pretty much went on a freaking escapade.
Kamran and Saurav: cold calling and form filling the CEO of every automotive repair software company, Techmetrics, Shopgenie, Pick Who Doesn't Matter. And one of them responded. We gave them a demo.
Kamran and Saurav: And then they were like, this is interesting. Let me introduce you to an MSO. Got into that MSO. And then after that, the rest is pretty much history.
Aniz Lavji: So you you weren't sure if you were going to drink the Kool-Aid yet. You just kind of wanted to make your own mix and see what happens, basically?
Frank Wiebe: You just got to get your feet wet in the industry and then you're hooked.
Kamran and Saurav: Perfect.
Frank Wiebe: It's just literally hungry.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. and it's um
Aniz Lavji: it It really does suck you in. Like, you're... You're, you know, like you guys said, I'm, again, I'm assuming that you kind of got started. You got some clients. You're like, okay, well, this is actually doing something.
Aniz Lavji: And all of a sudden, boom, you're like, oh, now this is actually, we can make money doing stuff like this.
Frank Wiebe: I think everyone's story is the same. When it touches automotive, you just kind of get your feet wet a little bit and all of a sudden you're sucked in. Same with that last episode that we had. Just needed to fix your car just a little bit and got sucked in and now she's um she's a full-time mechanic.
Frank Wiebe: So, yep.
Aniz Lavji: Do it.
Frank Wiebe: You know, maybe you guys have become mechanics yet too because, you know, it's such a good industry.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: sweet We've actually talked about that in the past as well. Even just recently, we're like, you know, we've become so intertwined with the auto repair industry that we're we're like, you know, at a point it'll make sense for us to actually open our own shop here locally in Washington state and and support, you know, the local community, right?
Aniz Lavji: do it
Kamran and Saurav: In the end of the we're in the business of decommoditizing the industry one shop at a time, building trust with the local community. And we see the impact
Aniz Lavji: yep
Kamran and Saurav: felt by the community locally, you know, and these are like just normal folks, moms, pops, grandpas, grandmas, et cetera, nieces, nephews, all people that either, you know, the vehicle, you're not just an, you're not just a mechanic, you're somebody that's providing a way for, for a livelihood to exist, right? I got to drop off my kids somewhere. I got to go to the hospital. I got to go to work or whatever that might be. And that happens in the vessel of a vehicle. And if you're not,
Kamran and Saurav: you know like the regular world out there you look at the auto repair industry uh and you're like ah they're all the same but when you dive a bit deeper it's it's very different it's each you know it comes from top down from the owner all the way down to the the shop culture the employees of how they actually feel that their work is um is valued right and so it's been a sticking point for us and and last point on that is you know marketing um
Aniz Lavji: Mm-hmm.
Kamran and Saurav: The way it works is that you may think it's going to go one way, but the market in the end of the day tells you what it wants. And that's similar what happened with us as well, with the auto industry, right?
Kamran and Saurav: We thought we wanted to go towards this side, but then we the way we positioned ourselves, it was actually made for the auto repair industry, right? Granted, you know we the way we mix in with...
Kamran and Saurav: our practices and what we do is a higher ticket as well.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: You know, we we we've been on the restaurant side, right? You're flipping, you know, $10, $12, $20 tickets versus auto repair, 1500, 2500 plus and more.
Kamran and Saurav: And the impact has felt just much more grander. And it just compounds on top of one another, really.
Aniz Lavji: And the referrals are gonna be two people that are in the same boat where they need your services that are not gonna be 100 bucks, 200 bucks. Like auto repair shops, you know if you tell them spend 1,000, 1,500 bucks and this is what your potential ah ROI is,
Aniz Lavji: we don't mind writing a check and we're like, okay, well, if it's going to get this, let's try it out. Because, you know, ah Frank will probably agree. We've all tried many different avenues for marketing and theyre trying to get the the name out there.
Aniz Lavji: And again, like we both have businesses that have been open for a long time. So, you know, we got tons of return to dust.
Frank Wiebe: Mine's not very long. Not as long as yours.
Aniz Lavji: I've been 20 years, but you're still, Frank, you've been there for a while. But still, you know, we've all got our or returning customers, but that doesn't mean that we can we can use more
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: So some of those shops that see the return on investment for what you guys are doing, and that, again, goes to another MSO, or you get into an MSO that's got 10 shops. Because in the States, that is something that is somewhat normal. Someone would could have five or 10 shops. like Here in Canada, like if you talk to someone that's got five or 10 shops, you're probably thinking like they're they're way up there. Like, oh my God, like can I meet you? like How do you
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, no.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. even
Frank Wiebe: So now explain your services to a guy like me who, let's say, no one knows nothing about what you do. what what What is it from you?
Kamran and Saurav: yeah oh
Frank Wiebe: You call you said you cold call a company. And from there on, what's what's what's the process?
Kamran and Saurav: You know, the opening line on that is pretty much we help the the regular consumer, the customer build trust with your shop before they ever actually have an issue with their vehicle.
Kamran and Saurav: Right. And so we're in the business of actually building relationships and trust and credibility and decommoditizing the industry one shop at a time. And now how do we do that? We do that through the vessel of of creating media.
Kamran and Saurav: Right. We're not talking AI images on GPT or cloud or whatnot. We actually go on site. We have a full strategy that's put together with the scripting for each video, what picture carousels we're gonna take. We go on site, we film, we we guide, you know, we'll guide you, Frank. um Hey, Frank, I need you to say this line, walk like this, use your hands like this, smile like this, do this.
Kamran and Saurav: Then we'll take that media home and we'll put it together, do post-production on it, and then we'll distribute it across various platforms like similar ones that you know, like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Google Business Profile.
Frank Wiebe: Okay.
Kamran and Saurav: And then we run very specific ad campaigns that are non-transactional. and What that means is that we're not trying to sell $49.99 oil changes. We're not trying to sell a special, you know, or anything.
Kamran and Saurav: We're we're trying to educate the masses about their vehicles and and and more so the shop culture, right?
Aniz Lavji: Yep. Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: And when you do this in in in tandem over a period of time, you compound brand equity, right? You actually are building something that belongs to you, right? Like our clients that work with us, we're not we're not trying to go viral.
Kamran and Saurav: We don't want tens and thousands of views. We want localized attention. We want people that are within a five, 10, 15, max 20 mile radius to know who the shop is,
Kamran and Saurav: and And I'll tell you this straight, Frank, no one cares about auto repair shops, but they care about Frank. They care about Anise. They care about Mike. They care about Kamran. They'll come and do business with you specifically.
Kamran and Saurav: And then your ladder, your branding, it leaves an impression on them, which builds that equity over a period of time as well. So, and then all in all, to sum that up, In simple terms, we manage social medias for shops to be able to get you local visibility, which drives in foot traffic. They aren't in revenue. And you guys are able, instead of, you know, having a 2% growth over a year or 5%, we've been blessed to see clients hits just drastic numbers on top of that, you know?
Aniz Lavji: That's awesome. That sounds really cool.
Frank Wiebe: and that's ah That sounds real nice. i like the I like the aspect of having actual footage from within the shop or within the within the business to post online instead of the um AI version.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: i I did a campaign this month and it has some AI images in it and I'm not happy with it.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: So it's definitely not
Aniz Lavji: Well, you probably gave yourself three arms.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Frank Wiebe: Well, but it didn't give me a smile I don't normally have. So, and, and, and it didn't represent my, my, the color of my facial hair. So I'm like, it just, it wasn't, it wasn't legit.
Frank Wiebe: Right. And I'm like, and my son texted me. He's like, dad, you got to stop with these AI images. I'm like, Oh, what the heck?
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah,
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: He's like, no, check your Instagram. It sucks. And I'm like, okay, well, uh, 25.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah and how how old is your son?
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: See, they get it. They don't want to see what we call AI slop. they want They want to see regular people on camera. like It's better for you to do a selfie video and post that with it with a nice caption than for you push that other media because not to get boring into details, but AI slop is essentially a shadow band online, meaning any platform is not going to show that to your local community, right?
Kamran and Saurav: It's not going to show a fraction of your own followers, actually, because it adds no value.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: It's better for you to add value by putting a selfie video up and talking through whatever you're doing on the day to day than for an image like that. it just
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, that's exactly what he said too. He's like, your your regular images or regular videos that you do, and I do a lot on TikTok, he's like, that's way better content than this.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: And I'm like, yeah, I get it.
Aniz Lavji: I think the
Frank Wiebe: Definitely not going to continue it next month.
Aniz Lavji: The AI images, like if you're putting up like a help wanted ad, or if you're putting up an ad for, you know, a special that you're running for seasonal attire change, you got some cool graphics in the background and you wanted to email that out, I think that's fine. But when you start getting into stuff that you're trying to represent your company,
Aniz Lavji: and you're having you know a random working in the garage that's not your garage. Because when that, you know, Mrs. Smith comes into the garage, she's like, well, why aren't there 27 hoists here? You've only got five.
Frank Wiebe: Exactly.
Aniz Lavji: I in the right spot?
Frank Wiebe: Yeah. Yeah. This doesn't look like your shop.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: You know, you know, a AI does have its purposes and it's to make a screen captures of your special someone that normally would do a different pose and what you'd like.
Frank Wiebe: like, I like making, I like making beer posters and I'm like, Oh, let's make a beer poster. She
Aniz Lavji: Frank, your your wife's going to listen to this and be like, Frank,
Frank Wiebe: doesn't listen to this podcast, so I can say what I want.
Aniz Lavji: I'm going message her right after and be like, make sure you listen to this episode.
Kamran and Saurav: she yes
Frank Wiebe: She won't listen to it.
Kamran and Saurav: your is israel Your wife is running for some sort of office, right?
Frank Wiebe: She's running for town council. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, I vote for Margarita. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: I don't know if you can vote from all the way there, but if you have a way to to do that, I mean, I'm not going to be anyone that's going to tell.
Kamran and Saurav: I can get a proxy representative. They're from Ontario. I can get multiples.
Frank Wiebe: yeah that's great Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure there's going to be virtual voting, so why not? You you can figure it a away.
Aniz Lavji: Hey, what the hell?
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, not to get into a proxy.
Frank Wiebe: all we All we need is like 300 votes and then she would be she'd even be deputy mayor, so that'd be all right. mean, it's about 10,000.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. How many people are in your town, Frank? Okay.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right.
Kamran and Saurav: 10,000, but is it like...
Frank Wiebe: yeah
Kamran and Saurav: and thousand but is it like ah because I've only been to like the GTA. So you've got like 800,000 here and then 40 minutes away, it's like another million. are there like satellite cities around your town?
Frank Wiebe: um Yeah, so like we've got – there's about 25,000 town, city, about 12 kilometers.
Frank Wiebe: i I say kilometers to you guys, but it's about 12 minutes away. The other way is another one about ah about the same size, and then we can go north to London. That's got a quarter million.
Frank Wiebe: Something like that.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Okay.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Of course, that's pretty big.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: In Washington.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, so so, yeah, I mean, we've we've got a pretty decent the area around us, but...
Aniz Lavji: You know, with with Frank only having 10,000 population, like, he's killing it.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, and and in a in a small town like this, we've got, I think, about 10 garages.
Kamran and Saurav: you
Frank Wiebe: It's ridiculous.
Kamran and Saurav: Oh, yeah, you would be...
Frank Wiebe: Yeah. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: um Well, I would say even we get surprised sometimes the the ability to captivate a smaller community. yeah they can do a lot better than than than you would imagine.
Kamran and Saurav: But I've always been kind of curious about how the economics of running a shop in Canada plays out compared to the US. Because you guys have like actual, like the Red Seal program where you guys actually have to have like, that's mandated in order to work on this?
Frank Wiebe: Yes.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, so we don't have that here. Okay, anyway.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: No, Barry, you can...
Frank Wiebe: And we're learning a lot that of we're as we're interviewing guests that are a lot in the U.S., right?
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: because We don't know how your system works out there, but basically anyone can say, hey, I want to be a mechanic. boom, there you are.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. Hmm.
Frank Wiebe: No certification, no nothing.
Kamran and Saurav: Hmm.
Frank Wiebe: But here, I mean, you could do that, but there's things you can't do, right? You can't ah do any safety checks, which you guys would call state inspections. Um, so any vehicle transfers are mandatory for seat checks or, or any commercial vehicles have to have an annual inspection.
Frank Wiebe: So those are the kinds of things you can't do legally. You can't technically touch brakes and stuff like that, but I mean, people do, but yeah, the certification is pretty, i don't know if I would call it really intense, but it is, it is a kind of a drawn out process.
Frank Wiebe: Cause it really takes like between three and four years, depending on how class schedule is and stuff like that.
Kamran and Saurav: Thank you.
Aniz Lavji: I'd say it's rigorous enough, Frank, compared to the latter, like in the States.
Frank Wiebe: And,
Aniz Lavji: I mean, literally, if you've got amount of dollars and you get a loan from the bank, you can open up a shop in two weeks.
Frank Wiebe: Well, you can do that, but the certification part, like if you if you if you think back to that podcast with Olivia, she talks about um getting, go she's worked for Toyota and the training that Toyota put her through to get her ASE and all that kind of stuff.
Aniz Lavji: You don't have that one.
Frank Wiebe: That sounds way more intense than the apprenticeship program that we have here.
Aniz Lavji: Oh yeah. oh yeah
Frank Wiebe: Like, honestly, if look back at what my apprenticeship was, and I mean, that was a few years ago, but it wasn't like they didn't really teach a very in-depth electronics, all that kind of stuff.
Kamran and Saurav: That's it.
Frank Wiebe: I'm sure it's better now already, but when I was here, honestly, when I was here, it was garbage.
Aniz Lavji: But cars are very different now, Frank. like Like, look at cars now, it's compared to when when you were doing your apprenticeship, like, it's a, you know, there's like a million wire million miles of wire in the car, like, in compared to what you were working on before, right?
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Well, that and and in lines of computer code, like it's ridiculous.
Aniz Lavji: Modules and...
Frank Wiebe: Oh, yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: You guys are talking about
Frank Wiebe: So, I mean, it is a it is a completely different world, but I think that i think that when the ASE certification that you guys have um probably is more intense than what we do.
Kamran and Saurav: Okay.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Probably, yeah.
Frank Wiebe: But again, you're like you say, you're not mandated for it. And here we have to have it. But here, the other problem is that once you are licensed, there really is no moving up from there unless you're at a dealership and doing dealership training.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Whereas whereas I think out there, you guys can always get a different, even if you're a master master tech, you can still get more certification, more certification. So that that's where I think the majority of the difference is really.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, you were talking about the Toyota training.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: that ah is that I think it's called T-Tan or something like that.
Frank Wiebe: Yep. Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah, that is. that
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, so like... um Just anecdotally, we from what we've seen, the people that go through that T10 training when they become master techs, they either get like really gnarly salaries ah as Toyota techs, or they kind of top.
Aniz Lavji: right
Kamran and Saurav: and and like I talked to one guy in and in i think San Antonio, which is a low-cost-of-living area company.
Aniz Lavji: I used to live there.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, used to live there.
Aniz Lavji: used to live in San Antonio, yeah?
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, that guy's like...
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, i don't even know where that is.
Kamran and Saurav: That guy said he he's making enough money so his wife can stay home.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: He makes like $150,000 a year total USD. And i'm like I'm like, interesting. And then the only other T10 guys we know, so they just go up and ah end up opening up their own shops and and they leave the dealership.
Kamran and Saurav: And I think there might actually be some substance to that training because those guys are out like really making shit happen to to to put it the night.
Frank Wiebe: yeah but That's what I've been learning from that.
Kamran and Saurav: and
Aniz Lavji: yeah it's It's a different animal there for sure.
Kamran and Saurav: Well, what... Okay.
Aniz Lavji: like When you compare a lot of different business aspects from the way it works in the States compared to Canada, we have to jump through major hoops to to really get anything done.
Aniz Lavji: i mean were like In the you know the groups, you'll see people that are you know buying shops, they'll advertise, you know I've got this shop for sale with the land for you know, 300 grand or 350. Like if we saw something like that, I'd be like, give me three.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Because you cannot buy land. You cannot buy shop for that kind of money on this side. Like you're talking, you know, triple to quadruple that to find good land.
Aniz Lavji: That's in a good area with a garage. Like it doesn't exist here for 300 350
Aniz Lavji: Like you're, you're going to well over a million dollars to find a good property with, uh, you know, three bays, maybe it's, it's a different beast.
Frank Wiebe: No.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah. And there's one for sale near me and it's 1.7 million. It's technically four bays, but it's not set up great. And it's like, damn, that's, that's a lot of money.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, I
Aniz Lavji: And you think about what you could buy over there for 1.7, you get like a Ford dealership that was closed, closed down or something like that.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Frank Wiebe: Yep.
Aniz Lavji: Like,
Frank Wiebe: yep
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, the ah so like there's ah just the economics of of of a shop in the US side, like typical specs we see, right, for a shop.
Aniz Lavji: Thank you.
Kamran and Saurav: Let's just say it's like middle of the road, doing good enough. They might have, i don't know, for four lifts and they might be doing 35 to 40 cars a week, an ARO of $800, $900 USD, of 62, 63%.
Kamran and Saurav: usd a gp of sixty two sixty three percent decent net. And then if they go and sell it to, let's say, if they can pull themselves out of the business, like they're an absentee owner and they can sell it to private equity, we're hearing like four, sometimes up to 16X multiple on your EBITDA.
Aniz Lavji: yep
Kamran and Saurav: So like technically, like let's say if you're a shop owner and you're EBITDA, your single location and your EBITDA is $400,000 USD and you sell it for just even on the low range, 6X, $2.4 million dollars USD. I mean, that's depending on your lifestyle, you could kind of, and your age, you could retire, you could take 20 years off from working. But I'd be curious, like what's that look like in Canada? Like full life cycle, that same thing.
Aniz Lavji: you're You're not gonna get you're not going to get people coming in to buy buy your place like that unless unless you've got something going on.
Aniz Lavji: hi Margarita. and
Kamran and Saurav: Thank you.
Frank Wiebe: you said vote for margarita you want to say hi thank my hair is all nice your hair looks fine
Aniz Lavji: But um on this end, if you're gonna be getting offers for your property,
Frank Wiebe: i need to
Aniz Lavji: A lot of the times they're not going to really want the business part. They may want the property because they've got some bigger projects that are going on.
Aniz Lavji: For example, like directly next to me, there's a property that was sold about three years ago and they tore down the whole corner and they're building 650 units, three towers directly my next door neighbor.
Frank Wiebe: So love.
Kamran and Saurav: This in Waterloo, right?
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. So basically like I can touch the building.
Kamran and Saurav: Okay.
Aniz Lavji: If I stand on my property line, I can touch the building. So I've got three towers coming in next to me with 600 units commercial on the bottom and they're building a road in between like all kinds of stuff. So I wouldn't be surprised if closer down the road, there's someone that comes in that wants to purchase my property as a investment.
Aniz Lavji: I mean,
Kamran and Saurav: I see.
Aniz Lavji: i I don't know. i don't really care. I'm not really interested in selling it because I'm kind of playing the long game. I'm going to have 400 to 500 new customers directly in that store.
Aniz Lavji: So I don't really care to sell because like, why would you, unless it's something ridiculous.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Aniz Lavji: And again, I'm the kind of guy that if I, If I won the lottery, I even told my wife that she laughs. If I won the lottery, I'd tell them that they'd have to I'd have to pick up the check on Sunday when we're closed.
Aniz Lavji: and that's
Frank Wiebe: Workaholic. I thought I was the only workaholic here.
Aniz Lavji: No, I got customers on Saturday. I'm not picking up no check on Saturday. Sunday's good.
Frank Wiebe: Oh my God.
Kamran and Saurav: ah be Yeah, cause i because cause like stateside, the headlines within the automotive community, it's like automotive is just going gangbusters, you know? And is it is it pretty similar? Is there a similar sentiment in Canada?
Aniz Lavji: i Frank, what do you think? I think it's pretty common in comparison. You don't hear private equity at all scooping stuff up.
Frank Wiebe: I wouldn't say so. ah No, I've been hearing that. I heard that on a, on a podcast the other day talking about that, but I don't, not in our area anyway, maybe in the GTA, they're doing something like that, you know, in the bigger cities or something like that, but not any local small towns. Like that'd be kind of an interesting concept to see somebody coming in and swooping up and buying up.
Frank Wiebe: Maybe I might do that, but it's, would would be would be one of my goals. Like if I get my shop all up to snuff and puff and like exactly doing what I want it to do and go to town and say, hey, I want to buy your shop and buy another shop.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: You know, like this guy I met on the weekend, he he's bought five shops. And within three years, he bought five shops or running five shops.
Aniz Lavji: Jeez.
Frank Wiebe: all ah yeah And he's he's doing it all remotely. But I'm like, damn, that'd be cool.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah Did you get his autograph?
Frank Wiebe: it It'd be a hell a lot of stress, but it'd be cool.
Aniz Lavji: I...
Frank Wiebe: Maybe I can, Maybe I could drive a Lambo like he does. So that'd be kind of fun.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Man. i
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, but.
Aniz Lavji: Lambos are nice, but they take gas.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Frank Wiebe: a Somebody asked him, so what was your maintenance cost in the first year? He said 10 grand.
Aniz Lavji: Mm-hmm.
Frank Wiebe: Holy shit.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So then I got to ask politics aside. If somebody said that in a turnkey process, you could have your same shop and all that stuff, everything stays the same. All things stay stay constant. All the people you care about, your family, your house, everything you want. If somebody said, hey, we'll just lift this up and move it to stateside and you can you can have your shop here, would you guys make the move given given ah the economic incentive?
Frank Wiebe: I would. I'd have to convince my wife, but I would.
Kamran and Saurav: Okay. Yeah, okay. How about you?
Aniz Lavji: i I would, and it'd be very easy for me because I'm a dual citizen, so i can just cross the border and open up something tomorrow if I wanted it to. It'd be extremely easy for me.
Kamran and Saurav: and well And what would be the the main motive behind that?
Aniz Lavji: it'd be very It'd be difficult for me to do it just because like safety-wise, i feel like here... um I do feel a lot safer on this side, just with all the stuff going on right now.
Aniz Lavji: And I think I'd i'd have to really, well, politics aside if and all that, yeah, I mean, it it would be a a no-brainer.
Frank Wiebe: But he said politics said politics aside.
Kamran and Saurav: All things aside, the whole other thing constant.
Frank Wiebe: Like,
Kamran and Saurav: Okay, that's what I was curious about because like if you look at a um gosh, if you look at any industry, what okay so so Waterloo, great example.
Kamran and Saurav: It's it's one of the top in computer engineering hubs in the world.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: And what did they do or what they did at least when I, when I was working in software is the kids would go to school over at Kitchener Waterloo and do their little rotation working in the States, you know, one semester.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Aniz Lavji: And then they're gone. They're never coming back to Waterloo.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. They're like, I'm in this like,
Aniz Lavji: They get into Silicon Valley. They're making $250 a year. They're driving Porsche and Range Rovers. They buy a house the first year. They talk to their friends back home.
Aniz Lavji: Hi, how's he going over there? Oh, we're trying to buy a house.
Frank Wiebe: Oh,
Aniz Lavji: What are you doing over there? Oh, we bought our second house. Yeah. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Frank Wiebe: yeah. 100%.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, it's it's a killer out here to try and and and make progress that way because it's just ax to death.
Aniz Lavji: no one
Aniz Lavji: And then two two, three years later, they're like, yeah, you know, we just paid off the mortgage. it was getting annoying.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah must be Yeah, with their stock options or whatever.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. yeah
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, know oh yeah that's that's where I was trying to understand if there's a similar dynamic with the automotive. Because even if you look at your guys' ass celebrities, it's like... Drake is not American. know He's from Canada, but he's here. And and the same thing with Justin Bieber. We're curious because we've talked to a number of shops in Canada and it definitely seems like things are different for sure.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: It's a different vibe. And I think the pace is extremely different. Like ah we're our were busy, i think in a shop on a main road in in the States that has a lot of traffic, our busy would be like a extremely slow day where management would probably be calling and being like, hey, like, are you guys even open? What's going on?
Aniz Lavji: So it's it's a different pace completely, I think.
Frank Wiebe: Well, so that you mentioned the shop on the main drag, we visited a shop on the weekend when we were in Minneapolis and it's the, the shop is on a main road, apparently like 35,000 cars pass a day, three bay shop.
Kamran and Saurav: Oh, man.
Frank Wiebe: And they're pulling pretty much the same numbers that we are. And now like us dollars.
Aniz Lavji: That's
Frank Wiebe: Right. So I'm thinking like, with that much traffic, if you know if you would look at where my shop is, if you look on a map, it's out of town about minutes, eight minutes on a side road right beside a ah shooting range, middle of nowhere. and And my parking lot is overflowing this week. It's unreal. We're parking outside the fence. It's it's that much.
Frank Wiebe: And If I had a shop like that with 35,000 cars rolling past me every single day,
Frank Wiebe: i don't think I think my numbers would be astronomically better than what they are. so So then you wonder, what's wrong with that shop? What's wrong with the dynamic?
Aniz Lavji: Very, very simple what's wrong with the shop.
Frank Wiebe: what
Frank Wiebe: So management, advertisement,
Aniz Lavji: If you've got 35,000 cars going by the front and like, you know, Frank, you and I, I think we both do good numbers, but if you're doing, if you have 35,000 cars and three bays, if you're not advertising and pulling in the right customers through the door,
Aniz Lavji: And there there could be 34,000 cars that pass by that ah that don't even know you exist because they're not looking right, they're not looking left.
Frank Wiebe: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: That's right.
Aniz Lavji: But those 1,000 customers that know that you're there, maybe they don't pop in because they don't see a reason to.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: And then, you know, you've got your regular clientele that have been coming to you that are just keeping you afloat. But if you are depending on the people just keeping you afloat, you are not going to be able to create generational wealth.
Aniz Lavji: You're going to be sitting there and you're like, oh man, you know what?
Frank Wiebe: Oh, yeah.
Aniz Lavji: We did 5,000 more this month than we did last July. That's not bad. No, that's crap.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: That's nothing. That's not annoying.
Frank Wiebe: No.
Aniz Lavji: That's what is that? That's doesn't even cover taxes.
Frank Wiebe: No, with that much traffic, the potential would be phenomenal, right? Even in a very small shop, you could do, but it's all management, right?
Kamran and Saurav: yeah uh i wasn't say about the them i've i've never been to minneapolis but the whole 35 000 cars a day i don't know if that's a lot or not a lot in terms of traffic flow but i don't know about you but when i drive a regular route to and from a place wait let's just say to and from work every day like like and you said i'm not looking left and right you you you can drive that same route for 40 years
Aniz Lavji: Hmm.
Kamran and Saurav: And when you finally got to go on Google or whatever, and you need something for your car and you just call in down every shop to see who's going to pick up.
Aniz Lavji: Mm-hmm.
Kamran and Saurav: One of those shops might be the one you've been driving past every day for 40 years and the GPS takes you there. like, holy shit. I didn't know this was here. Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: yeah i could do it
Kamran and Saurav: yeah In a smaller town, it's slower paced. yeah You're not in a rush. As a driver, you might actually be like, oh, there's a corner shop there, and I wonder what they sell in that restaurant. and yeah There might be something to it. I don't know. In the U.S., there's like a a couple hundred thousand shops, right? um And so...
Kamran and Saurav: People always have an opportunity, like they have the opportunity to choose different ones. They all think it's just a commodity. Right. Versus if you're in a small town, it's there's only X number of shops there.
Kamran and Saurav: Right. And then that's how you're able to get flooded by that.
Frank Wiebe: Thank you.
Kamran and Saurav: Right. And like we've worked with clients where like customers will come in through and they're like, I had no clue this shop even existed. I live right across the street. And then we found them because they're deliberately doing, you know, media approach, right?
Kamran and Saurav: Advertising and whatnot. And I come from the business development world before software side.
Aniz Lavji: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Kamran and Saurav: And like um the best sales that you can do for or the best thing you can do for yourself in sales is go hunt yourself. Right. Inbound and everything is really good, but you have to be able to go hunt for yourself. And that's where in America you see a lot more people that are open to actually, you know, kicking off, you know, doing advertising and different avenues to actually bring in people. Because we've spoken with a number of you know Canadian shops and it's different, as we've mentioned before. Right. that They might be a little hesitant. They might not know another shop that's even tried this out before. In the U.S., people are gung ho on ready to ready to try it out. They yeah, five thousand doesn't tickle them. Right. They want to have a much bigger, bigger increase to their to their flow.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, ah that I had another thought. there's a I don't know what the benchmark is in Canada, but here they say like benchmark for your returning customer rate is like 80%.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: And like it's not uncommon for a shop to say, I'm really busy and ah basically I have all the customers that I need. And let's say that the return rate, which more often than not is between 75 to 80%.
Kamran and Saurav: And let's say you're doing 200 cars a month. Well, that means there's like 45 cars a month that are never coming back. 45 cars.
Aniz Lavji: yeah
Frank Wiebe: Yeah. not
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. Yeah. ours and i
Frank Wiebe: And for a small job, that's a lot of cars.
Kamran and Saurav: yes
Aniz Lavji: You always gotta to be recruiting new customers. You can't be satisfied with just the status quo of, Oh, I've got this many customers coming in through the door, but you know, things happen.
Kamran and Saurav: a yeah
Aniz Lavji: People move, people die and things happen. And, uh, you know, or they could, they could have just randomly because you couldn't do one thing in your shop because you did not want to, which is the right thing to do. You did not want to attempt a job that you thought maybe is going to open a can of worms, but they ended up going to another shop and they took care of it.
Aniz Lavji: They're not coming back to you.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: And sometimes that's good and bad because they're not the right fit because they may have been expecting too much from you or whatever the story is. But if you're not always recruiting new customers, trying to get the word out that, hey, we've got room for more people. You know, we can do this. We can do this.
Aniz Lavji: You're going to dry out eventually. Because every other shop is recruiting. Every other shop is bringing in new technology. They're bringing in different companies like yourselves that are bringing in different types of people that maybe would have never come into this particular shop ever.
Aniz Lavji: But now they see a video that was cut up beautifully and posted here, posted here. And then they come in and say, oh that's Frank. You're right. His goatee and everything does look perfect.
Aniz Lavji: Just like the video, it was in 4k and yes, it's amazing.
Kamran and Saurav: Thank you.
Aniz Lavji: And he does have more than 97 hairs on on his nose. Like everything that from that media and the video, it all comes into the shop. And when they walk into three d auto, they're like, okay, well this is the guy from the video.
Aniz Lavji: And you know, I looked up his reviews online and this is a straight shooter. This is where I want to get my car fixed. And Frank didn't have to do anything other than be in that video and say, okay, let's get it done and and everything's posted or whatever it is. And now he's getting organic people coming in.
Aniz Lavji: And it's really,
Frank Wiebe: See, I wish that I wasn't in the video. I could make my service writer or my wife or somebody else be in the video so that when they come to the shop, that's who they see.
Kamran and Saurav: I
Frank Wiebe: Hey, that's who they was in the video instead of me because I don't want to talk to the people. I don't want them to come and see me. I want them to come and see the shop, right?
Aniz Lavji: So you got to fire yourself, Frank.
Frank Wiebe: I mean, I love the fact that I got to clone myself what I got to do.
Aniz Lavji: You got to hire another tech. You fire yourself and you open another shop.
Frank Wiebe: I just want to clone myself like five times.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, you know, um customer acquisition is is the most costly thing that you could do for your business. The best thing that you could do is customer retention, right?
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: um A lot of people think that, you know, obviously, with the work that we do, we're bringing in new customers. Hands down, that happens, right?
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: But then our primary, it's like an iceberg, right? That's just the tip of the iceberg. ah Bottom of the iceberg is what we're really focusing on. right retaining existing clients, right? You have to be able to serve them.
Kamran and Saurav: You have to be coming up on top of their mind consistently, periodically. So that way, you know, you're always at top of mind and they're choosing your shop.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: so A customer that hasn't been to your shop for three months, four months, when once they see a video, of you online, you know, because they're thinking, again, shops are commodities, man. They're just trying to find the cheapest price.
Kamran and Saurav: They see Frank on all that video. They're like, actually, oh crap, I actually have an issue with my car. I'm like, I got to go into Frank's now, right? And so it's a lot more cheaper to retain an existing customer because then you can upsell them a lot more faster.
Frank Wiebe: Right.
Kamran and Saurav: You know, your your ARO is is a lot higher because one, they're almost, they're already used to you. And then the new folks that come in, they might, you know, if if you've built trust with the new folks, they tend to spend a lot more higher time on your business than for for people that might just find you through Google, right?
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Then you're paying for a Google tap on there, a link tap or whatnot, call LSA, whatnot. They're going to try you out maybe for an oil change to get the experience. Whereas when we're bringing the new people into the shop, these AROs are like 15, 16, 1700 bucks a pop.
Kamran and Saurav: And that's because they are you built that trust with them and they're ready to come and um and spend money and mostly be taken care of.
Aniz Lavji: They also get excited when they walk in because, you know, they may, they kind of feel like, oh, know, I've watched all, you know, 10 videos of of Frank and like ah this guy's kind a little bit of like a celebrity to me because I've seen 10 of his videos and I'm going in, I got an appointment. I got an appointment at a shop.
Aniz Lavji: to to go and get work done. So when they walk in and Frank's like, ah you know, you need, here's your DVI, you need front and rear pads, rotors, new engine transmission, and every single line under the sun, it'll be, you know, $37,000.
Aniz Lavji: They're like, please, you know, I, but I, but want you to fix it, Frank, because, you know, you're the one that I trust.
Kamran and Saurav: Holy.
Aniz Lavji: And.
Frank Wiebe: Sounds like you're talking about that Honda Civic that's on the hoist right now. It needs everything under the sun.
Aniz Lavji: and
Kamran and Saurav: That's great.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: But, you know, it does make a difference when you've built that trust over media because we all, and I'm guilty of it too, we all spend way too much time scrolling on our phones. and ah And then at least if you're scrolling on your phone, you're getting some education out of a video. And if it's consistent, because if you're posting videos and you're not consistent with it, you may as well not have posted the first one.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, i think I think for my actual social media, I would say maybe new customers, probably 2%. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: yeah
Kamran and Saurav: 2% come from social media.
Frank Wiebe: I would say something like that.
Kamran and Saurav: mean, that's not bad for doing it yourself. Yeah. Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: like i've I've never really kept track of it, but I do i do have, I always tell my service advisor, if a new customer comes in, try to find out why are they there?
Frank Wiebe: Like, how did they get there?
Aniz Lavji: yeah
Frank Wiebe: is it Is it, did they search it on on Google or did they hear it from somebody else or did they watch a video or anything that? I'm curious to know because I want to know like, what what am I paying for and what's actually giving me some kind of return?
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Because if I'm if i'm spending like 90% of my budget over here, it's giving me 2% return.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Sounds like that's a stupid idea, right?
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: So let's let's switch it up and let's put let's put the effort in in a different platform.
Aniz Lavji: And
Aniz Lavji: you also want to know that, you know, all this time that you're spending, like doing your TikTok and stuff like, it's fun and everything is one side, but is it actually making a difference and bringing in those customers that are spending some dough, right?
Aniz Lavji: if you're If it's not, then when you're doing your videos, like if for me, when I'm doing the videos, I'm not expecting massive returns because I do it more for fun.
Frank Wiebe: the detect
Aniz Lavji: And if I do get a customer from it, fantastic.
Frank Wiebe: Exactly. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: But it's different.
Frank Wiebe: No, i I would say I've gotten a couple from from TikTok, but but more um like Facebook has definitely been way more than than TikTok.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Oh, cool. Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: So yeah, the TikTok, like you said, Anis, the TikTok videos, I do it for fun.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah, you know. Like we both have a good time and Frank, you, you've, you've got some really good guests off a tick tock as well, which even for me, like besides monetary wise, like I've been able to meet so many new people on there and I've, I've been able to get a few guests on, on the podcast from there. And,
Aniz Lavji: you build friendships.
Frank Wiebe: Oh, the networking has been phenomenal for that. that that that i That's how you and I met. And if if it hadn't been for that, we wouldn't be sitting here today.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. let's go
Frank Wiebe: So, I mean, yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Exactly.
Kamran and Saurav: You know, what's funny is, you know, ah Josh Parnell, you know, his guy on the team, Bobby McGraw.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Bobby, Bobby...
Kamran and Saurav: Bobby McGraw. I'm not going to say what his title is because I'm probably going get it wrong, but he's he's on the leadership team at Limitless Leadership. But and from what I understand, he's a newer team member.
Aniz Lavji: Did he just join or he's been there for a bit?
Kamran and Saurav: But Josh, from what I understand, met on TikTok.
Aniz Lavji: Okay. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Oh yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: So, but but I think to Frank's point, there are some like technical underpinning as as to why um you would see more return from Facebook over TikTok.
Frank Wiebe: That's cool.
Kamran and Saurav: I mean, basically Facebook, they've just built that entire platform to be community focused. That's why Facebook groups, Facebook marketplace are so popular.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: That's why you'll see a random post in your feed from some local, it could be a person. It could be a business that you don't even follow. It's in your feed. That's just like the nature of that beast. TikTok is they don't, they don't have as many parameters.
Kamran and Saurav: as like, it could be like anybody seniors.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: There's not, it doesn't seem like there's much effort, but ah Frank, I liked that part about how you, um, make it a part of the process at front to figure out what brought the person in.
Frank Wiebe: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Cause otherwise you're running blind.
Frank Wiebe: Yep.
Aniz Lavji: Definitely.
Kamran and Saurav: Like that's like a, that is like a, like Saurav is very big on this. He ends up, he usually ends up training like the folks at the front, literally he's your SOP. This is the question you're to every freaking time.
Aniz Lavji: Yep. Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Cause, and then you get into tech metric and then you're going to be able to see it in this specific reporting tech metric.
Frank Wiebe: Congratulations.
Kamran and Saurav: Now it's in the system, you know,
Aniz Lavji: Well, there's an option for it. Like, you know, ah I ask every customer, how would you find us? So, you know, from this person or this person or like today, i had a customer that towed in their Sienna and i said, how'd you find us? it was like, well, my car was broke down the side of the road and somebody was walking by and said, take it to Anissa Dalletire.
Kamran and Saurav: Hehe.
Aniz Lavji: And it was random and she didn't get a name from him, but it was just a random person that was in a plaza at a grocery store.
Frank Wiebe: Oh, that's cool.
Aniz Lavji: well So like, you know, you, you'll get referrals. Sometimes you can't really track cause I can't really tell who the person was, but like we were advertising on the radio for a while. And then, you know, online, most of my people that are coming in are a lot of word of mouth, or they're just going to go on Google and search, you know, auto repair near me or, you know, EV or Tesla service near me or something like that. Mine's mostly, mostly that way.
Aniz Lavji: Well, you know, it's it's not easy, like you're saying, for customer acquisition. If you don't have some sort of process in place, um you know, there's one thing i i was going to mention. Frank, I was actually going to mention to you because you you do printing and everything.
Aniz Lavji: There was a someone that had posted, i think it was in one of the groups where they actually have these little teddy bears and they print um they print out their logo on on the shirt of the teddy bear and they strap it into the car seat in the back seat.
Kamran and Saurav: Oh.
Frank Wiebe: yeah. Yep.
Aniz Lavji: And then they put a little note there. Thank you for trusting us with your vehicle and your most precious belongings. Like imagine doing that. You don't even tell the customer, but their kid goes to, you know, get in the car they see a teddy bear and then they hand it to their parents like, Oh, what's this?
Aniz Lavji: And then their parents read it. And then like they all turn to mush and they're like, wow.
Frank Wiebe: As long I don't think it's creepy or something like that. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: ah But you know, if you have a little, and ah a classy note there something, you know, you don't want to put a picture of like a white cargo van saying with someone hanging out there with candy.
Frank Wiebe: Free candy.
Aniz Lavji: It gets weird.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Aniz Lavji: But, you know, if you make it classy and you don't have like a ah weird looking bear that, you know, looks like he's on coke or something. I mean, you know.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. Doesn't look like Ted.
Frank Wiebe: Now, when I heard that, I thought i thought that was a fantastic idea.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: The coked out bear or the regular bear?
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, definitely the cooked
Aniz Lavji: oh we Okay. Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Personalization goes a long way. yeah One of our clients has been doing that for the last number of years and and they do goodie bags, right? They'll do a personal note written on on the in the bag, but the end they'll also give ah a couple of candies and whatnot as well, right?
Kamran and Saurav: People people love that final touch, right? like
Frank Wiebe: out one.
Kamran and Saurav: It keeps them coming back.
Aniz Lavji: Oh,
Frank Wiebe: ah This one shop that we buy our AC compressors from,
Aniz Lavji: yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Every time, a bag of candy. My wife loves it.
Aniz Lavji: The radiator, one hundred Yeah, yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Yep. Yep.
Aniz Lavji: Oh, yeah. we We get the bags of candy.
Frank Wiebe: Bag of candy.
Aniz Lavji: We stash those away. That's great.
Frank Wiebe: See, I don't eat the candy, but she she comes back, to big smile on her face, bag of candy.
Aniz Lavji: Mm-hmm.
Frank Wiebe: That's really cool. Uh, no.
Kamran and Saurav: I got to ask a question, probably a question a coach would ask, but if there's no wrong answer, you won't get in trouble. So do either of you guys do follow calls with your customers?
Aniz Lavji: i
Frank Wiebe: No.
Kamran and Saurav: Okay.
Frank Wiebe: The short the short end the shorter answer is no.
Aniz Lavji: oh i
Frank Wiebe: The long answer is sort of and working into doing that.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Aniz Lavji: so I guess I can say yes, because wonderful tech metric kind of does it for me.
Kamran and Saurav: Oh, how's that?
Aniz Lavji: Well,
Frank Wiebe: Well, you have it automatically set up to to email them or text them or whatever.
Aniz Lavji: if you want to play, you got to pay.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: So we it it just automatically sends them an email or a text. Hey, this Dial-A-Tire. Just making sure that everything was okay with your last service. If there's anything that we can do to improve or if there's anything that you're concerned about, please reach out to us right away. you can reach us by text. You can reach us on WhatsApp. You can go to the website. You can book an appointment, you know,
Aniz Lavji: And it lifts off and with links and everything. So it just makes it really easy just to get a hold of us. And i've I've got tons of people that respond back. Oh, thank you for reaching out.
Aniz Lavji: We really appreciate it. The car hasn't blown up yet. No, everything's good.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. I'd be curious to see if you guys ever did like an A-B test on that. You know, that message there is really good, but it seems kind of canned. If you guys did more of a candid ah message approach, right? Like, hey, John, ah this is, you know, so-and-so auto repair. Thanks so much for visiting our shop.
Kamran and Saurav: ah
Aniz Lavji: It is more like that. I'm just kind of giving a more of a ah longer.
Kamran and Saurav: Okay.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: yeah i um It is more of a chill message than sounding like a robot. No, no, it's more chill.
Kamran and Saurav: It goes a long,
Aniz Lavji: It's more like, Hey bro, is your car good? um You know, hit me up fist bump emoji.
Frank Wiebe: Yep.
Aniz Lavji: Like, yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, it where it goes a long way. Then, you know, um phone calls, though, they they go, they take you home for sure. Like,
Aniz Lavji: But you've got to have the process and the person to do it.
Kamran and Saurav: 100%, for sure.
Aniz Lavji: So.
Kamran and Saurav: And that's the customer retention part. If you can put together a position to actually follow up on your thousands of customers that you have had, you're going to have work to do for every single day.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Aniz Lavji: Definitely. Definitely.
Kamran and Saurav: And I'm not saying do like 100 calls a day, but just start with like 5, 10, 15, 20. It goes a long way. And people love personalized touch.
Aniz Lavji: You know. You know, we we store tires for customers, right?
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, exactly.
Aniz Lavji: So I've got 300, 400 customers that store with us. So up until about two years ago, I would call every single customer personally to schedule their appointment.
Aniz Lavji: So that's 400 phone calls while I'm already busy with you know dealing with other customers, other things. But you know they got used to it after a while. And then now like we got we have our system and it text I can text them. So I've gotten away from that. But you know i was doing all those phone calls and I wish that I can go back to it. But now if I try doing that,
Aniz Lavji: I don't want to have a phone call where I don't have enough time to spend with them on the phone and have a real conversation and not just, Hey John, you know, it's a, you know, there's 30, there's two feet of snow outside. you want to bring your car in and get them put on?
Aniz Lavji: No. Okay. Bye.
Frank Wiebe: I really...
Aniz Lavji: So I want to make sure if I'm going to do the phone call, i want to I want to make sure that I'm intentional about the phone call and it's not just a phone call to get them through the door you know as soon as possible, right?
Aniz Lavji: So the the personal touch on those phone calls, that you're right, it does go a long way.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, I guess so if if, let's say if I was a ah really busy shop owner and let's say I'm seeing, i don't 140 cars a month, I would probably select like three or four calls a day to do.
Kamran and Saurav: And I'd be prioritizing the customers that haven't... Top spenders. Top spenders and then customers who have not come in for six months. Because really what I would be looking for, for the top spenders, I'd be trying to figure out, okay, what makes them the top spender?
Kamran and Saurav: like let Let me learn.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Do they have more cars? They got more family members, whatever.
Aniz Lavji: Audit all the ah r ROs and see like, well, what are they actually spending money on? Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: And for the people that haven't come back in six months, that now this is the time. This is like the best way to diagnose a retention problem. Like that's just my perspective is get them on a call, them a call.
Kamran and Saurav: Haven't seen you whatever. i saw you last June. How are you doing? They might tell you, oh, I moved out or i switched. They might tell you something like we've actually heard this. They'd say, I switched, I got an EV, so I didn't see a need to come to the shop anymore.
Kamran and Saurav: I'll go, no shit, I service Teslas. You can bring your shop instead of going to a Tesla service center.
Aniz Lavji: and Well, if it's been in six months, you haven't done your break service. They're probably seizing the holders. So, hey, you need to spend $1,800
Kamran and Saurav: But the point was
Frank Wiebe: called I called one customer that I hadn't seen in a while and I said, yeah, you know, just haven't seen you around, just seeing if anything we could do. And he said, oh, well, actually, we started going to the other shop.
Frank Wiebe: And his reasoning was that for for the convenience that he could get, his wife could get a car, like a loaner car.
Kamran and Saurav: Oh,
Frank Wiebe: I said, oh, that's fine. But when they were our customers, we saw them for two things, oil changes and the seasonal wheel swap. That was it.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: okay.
Aniz Lavji: No.
Frank Wiebe: Honestly, I wouldn't give you a loaner if you're just for an oil change anyway.
Aniz Lavji: no
Frank Wiebe: like i I talked to somebody one time about loaner cars, and I said, like how do you decide who gets the loaner car? like You've got Mrs. Jones comes over here just for an oil change, and then you know Mr. Tom over here, and he's got to drive – forty 40 miles to work or whatever and whatever. And Mrs. Jones just going home to big cookies.
Frank Wiebe: So ah who gets the loaner card? Let's say you only have one left and these two people show up. Who gets the loaner card?
Aniz Lavji: It's got to be a minimum spend.
Frank Wiebe: Right?
Kamran and Saurav: You're like airlines, man. go If you've got gold status, you've got a million dollars spent on us. We'll do whatever you want.
Frank Wiebe: Right?
Kamran and Saurav: Just like yourself.
Frank Wiebe: Right?
Aniz Lavji: It's got to be a minimum spend, minimum a minimum ARO, and it's it's baked into your repair order.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: if the guy's you know like Let's say someone's doing a a brake job front brake job, $600, $700. Here's your car. you know I'll see you back in two or three hours.
Frank Wiebe: versus Versus an oil change that you're going to make $30 on.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah, and I'll tell them right to their face, you're not getting a loaner card. Like, I'm losing money. I'm making $37 this. like,
Frank Wiebe: yeah so When I talked to that customer, I was like, okay, that's fine.
Aniz Lavji: like
Frank Wiebe: Appreciate it I hope everything goes good. If you ever run into something that they can't handle, you know where we are. Okay.
Aniz Lavji: so But the thing is, when you tell them if there's anything they can't handle, they're only going to come back to do the tire change the entirere swap and the oil change, right? Because they got some backyard mechanic probably coming to their house and fixing it.
Frank Wiebe: No, no, because because we don't have a loaner car, so they won't come back to us. I'm like, that's totally fine.
Aniz Lavji: But you know what? they They weren't a high priority customer if they're if that is the reason.
Frank Wiebe: No, we're.
Aniz Lavji: They could have said, Frank, can you send me home in an Uber or can you help me out? You probably would have done something if they did some work with you.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah, we dropped them off, right? Yeah, but the the only reason I call him is because he had left his tire storage in our facility and I wanted to know what are you going with him?
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: And he's like, oh, well, I guess I owe you storage fees, so I've just given to you and I'm like, OK. So if anybody needs caravan rims and tires, winter tires, I got to set for sale. Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, I would really ah like look at the the airline model.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: You know, they've got the different stats. You could do it do it in a different packaging so nobody feels offended by it. ah But I would look at the airline model like it's pretty much the more you spend in a lifetime or in a period of time, the more perks you get.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: Essentially like a loyalty. I don't want to put a label on it because then we start pigeonholing into like the label, but it's kind of like loyalty program, you know?
Frank Wiebe: Good job.
Aniz Lavji: yeah
Frank Wiebe: Exactly. 100%.
Aniz Lavji: Even going back to what you're saying is like the follow ups, if you haven't seen a customer for a long time, like again, with tech metric marketing, bringing that up again, but it it has the automatic function where if they haven't been to your shop in six months, I have it set automatically to email or text them.
Aniz Lavji: And ah usually I try to do email because sometimes the text message, they may they may find that it's a random number or something. like But email, usually they'll they'll bring it up and I make sure the subject line is, hey, haven't seen you in a while. need some dial-a-tire. So my name is kind of unique. So there's not many of us around.
Aniz Lavji: So, oh yeah, I remember that guy. So I make sure it's set. If they haven't come in in six months at all, RO has been made, it immediately sends out an email exactly at six months.
Frank Wiebe: Oh, wow.
Aniz Lavji: So
Kamran and Saurav: Do you typically get a higher response rate on on email versus text for those?
Aniz Lavji: I have it set to send to both.
Kamran and Saurav: But do you do you do get, you can you see the response? Does TechMetric Marketing tell you that the response rate or the open rate of the message is this much for email, this much for?
Aniz Lavji: it will show It will show the open rate, yeah. Have i have i looked at it much?
Kamran and Saurav: was.
Aniz Lavji: Honestly, no. I just don't have have the time to. i should. um Ever since I've been talking more about Frank, because he's with a really good coach right now, I've been looking a little bit more into different like employee tech hours and stuff like that. I've been monitoring a bit more.
Aniz Lavji: um in all in all i know pretty much where everything is just because we've got enough work that's filling up the bays all day long so i know there's no issues in that sense again some jobs may take longer but it is what it is right
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. Awesome.
Frank Wiebe: Exactly.
Aniz Lavji: but um well what's uh what's next for you guys what's what's your big plans now now that you're you guys have You know, your game developers, you guys are in in the middle of, um you know, taking over social media and videos for shops. What's next? What's your next plan if you can share it?
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, continue having an impact, you know, one shop at a time, right? We have nowhere to go. Luckily for us, there's a couple hundred thousand shops and no certification is required for anybody to open up one.
Aniz Lavji: Hmm.
Kamran and Saurav: And so as long as they have the dough and they're forward thinking, we want to have an impact on the communities that we serve.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: And, um you know, when I say community, I'm not talking just, you know, where we live, community as a whole, all of the United States and, you know, God willingly, to Canada, be able to go into that.
Kamran and Saurav: We really believe in the work that we do. We're passionate about it. When clients see us, they feel the energy. you know We'll have technicians or employees that they thought would have never been okay with getting on getting on camera.
Kamran and Saurav: Then we get them just chill and hop on. one shop at a time, man, have ah have a strong impact. It's always quality over quantity for us. And we're not chasing a dollar.
Kamran and Saurav: Obviously, you know, initially when we started the business, we had to pay for mortgages and whatnot. Now that those things are taken care of, we're taking care of all of our employees, hiring the best of the best individuals that can handle the backend processes and systems and support our clients.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: Right. um that that's That's really it from our side, man.
Aniz Lavji: So I know you guys you guys met Josh Parnell, so I can tell some of the little tidbits that are that are coming out right now, i can tell you guys have that servant mindset going on.
Frank Wiebe: Nice.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah. All right.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: And, and you know, people before profit.
Kamran and Saurav: oh
Kamran and Saurav: That's right. That's right.
Aniz Lavji: yeah
Kamran and Saurav: our Our Slack bios, we were just laughing about it earlier, is um its it says we' we're glorified 47 servants, right?
Kamran and Saurav: For all of our employees, we're not we're not boss, we're not the head honchos. were We're your servants. You tell us what you need and we're going to be there. right We're not here to direct you guys. We hired you because you're autonomous living thing that can make decisions on your own, allow us to complement your whole process there. right And so we want to connect with people. And then you know one thing that we've always believed in, any deal that we do with our clients, the clients should be winning. they They should be at the winning end of the stick of of the deal itself. right um And that philosophy has has gained us our footing.
Kamran and Saurav: you know, networks and and whatnot.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: We're always here to give before we ever need to take. And again, we're blessed to to have an abundant mindset and we have everything that we need. We just want to slowly just continue inching on forward, man, and leave a legacy behind with that.
Aniz Lavji: I feel like I should just change this podcast name to Josh's Limitless Leadership Podcast.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah.
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Maybe just like part two.
Kamran and Saurav: exactly
Aniz Lavji: that a musted I'm listening to all the little tidbits and I'm like, yep, that sounds exactly what Josh says. The only one you didn't say is, ah oh my gosh, Connection. be Oh my gosh.
Kamran and Saurav: get a
Aniz Lavji: Content.
Kamran and Saurav: Connection for content.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah, see? Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: we just We just finished this book. but the yeah the The only ah thing I would add to that is ah you know we've been in the industry long enough to see that there are problems between both shops and customers and then within the industry.
Kamran and Saurav: And Trust us, like it's all the complaining is in our feed. And so it's it's like, we don't want to do that. Like, we don't want to talk about the problems. We want to solve them.
Aniz Lavji: Yep.
Kamran and Saurav: And so we want to solve them through actions. And we're doing that in different ways. And so the the real question is, for us is always like, how does this better everybody that's involved in the industry?
Kamran and Saurav: how does How does what we do make this a more appealing industry for people to want to work in, for shop owners to take more pride in what they do, for customers to...
Frank Wiebe: Yeah.
Kamran and Saurav: I mean, ill i mean like i I would love it to be like, if you if you tell someone that your kid's a doctor, they see that with high esteem, I would love it for to be, you tell tell someone your kid is ah a technician, i want to I want to see it like that.
Kamran and Saurav: And so really like... if If whatever we do does not do that, then we're not interested. and
Aniz Lavji: You know, you you guys are taking the the right steps. And again, Frank, correct me if I'm wrong. i mean, you guys are not just dipping your toes into the automotive realm.
Aniz Lavji: Like you guys are all in. i mean, you guys are going to training events. So you're going to be at ASTA in Oh,
Kamran and Saurav: Still undecided on that, but possibly.
Aniz Lavji: and
Kamran and Saurav: yeah okay
Aniz Lavji: You lied, bro. You lied.
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, we're still on this side. We need to...
Aniz Lavji: Probably. yeah Cameron, you have a good excuse. so
Kamran and Saurav: Yeah, I have an exceptional excuse.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah. Frank, I didn't tell you. Well, anyways, we'll talk off camera. But, you know, obviously, if you're able to make we're both going to be there. It's going to be awesome.
Frank Wiebe: Gonna hopefully be a great time.
Aniz Lavji: end of End of September. So it's going to be a good time.
Frank Wiebe: Yep, looking forward to it for sure.
Aniz Lavji: But guys, it's been a really, really good time. Thank you so much for joining us. um We're pushing over an hour here and Frank's getting a little sleepy, I can tell.
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Frank Wiebe: Bedtime for sure. definite
Aniz Lavji: But thanks a lot, guys.
Kamran and Saurav: that
Aniz Lavji: hang Hang on the line. And if anybody wants to get a hold of you guys, what's the easiest way to reach out to your company and for both of you?
Kamran and Saurav: um Two options. You can go to our IG, 47consulting. And then you can also go to our websites our website, We got because
Aniz Lavji: All
Kamran and Saurav: somebody squatting that domain and trying to sell it for so exorbitant amount of money. and So you can get us through there.
Aniz Lavji: right.
Kamran and Saurav: um Those are going to be the best things. I mean, we could give you your email, but then we'll probably get tons of spam. a Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: Yeah.
Aniz Lavji: that's That's great. So yeah, definitely if anyone's looking for those services, reach out. And if if you guys are coming to Canada anytime soon, reach out.
Aniz Lavji: We'd definitely love to hang out with you guys for sure.
Kamran and Saurav: For sure. Absolutely.
Frank Wiebe: Absolutely.
Aniz Lavji: Just hang on the line. And thank you, everyone, for listening to the Shop and Tread Talk podcast. You can follow us on – oh, my gosh, where can you follow us? It's so late. You can follow us on Facebook at the Shop and Tread Talk podcast.
Frank Wiebe: When posted.
Aniz Lavji: I know I'm getting better, Frank. I'm getting better.
Kamran and Saurav: him
Frank Wiebe: That's
Aniz Lavji: Frank, have to throw – you know what, Frank? you' The only reason you're saying that is because I keep doggling your Chevy Cruze, but it's okay. i deserve it.
Frank Wiebe: right. it's a
Kamran and Saurav: yeah
Aniz Lavji: But thank you, everyone. And signing off. Guys, hang on the line here.
