How to Develop a General Manager for Your Auto Repair Shop [THA 503]

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is the Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Carm Capriotto (0:06)

Hey, everybody, Carm Capriotto. Welcome to Remarkable Results Radio to another Town Hall Academy. I got a great episode for you today. I'm not sure what to call it. When we had our pre-call with Shawn and Will, it was like, hire another me, yes, another you, to be the number two in the business. But I'm not necessarily sure that's exactly right because Shawn wasn't looking to hire another one of him. He was looking actually to hire an implementer. So if anyone appreciates and knows EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, you're going to appreciate this episode. And if you don't know enough about it, you're going to at least see the foundational workings of trying to find and get yourself a number two so that either you have a life, you could find something else to do, you can buy another business, run another business, add some stores. And all those other things that you may have in your dream tank, right? Hey, look, thank you so much to Napa Tracs, Today's Class, Kukui and Pit Crew Loyalty.

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Hey, welcome back. Don't forget, another great push for ARPN.app.

It's our app, and I'm going to tease you with version 2 is coming out, and you're going to actually fall in love with it. There's so many neat new things that are going to be there. Yeah, it's been, I think, maybe a little less than a year. But you know my mind, I'm always thinking, and I'm always improving things. So be on the lookout for that. When it comes out, we'll announce it in a big way. Well, welcome to Shawn Gilfillan and Will Barkiewicz. Shawn Gilfillan, CEO and owner of Automotive Magic, two locations, and here's where I always have a problem. I always have a problem saying one of his cities, Lake Hope Act Con in New Jersey and Kenville. If anyone has ever seen the skydiving video of me and Tracy, it was Shawn who was responsible for getting us on that airplane. When we were going up in there and I looked in the co-pilot seat, it was him who was in it.

I said, do I feel safe or not? Thank you so much. We were down for a conference that you and your teams were holding, and we had a blast. So thank you for my greatest induction into skydiving. Will, General Manager. And let's start this out by saying, Shawn hired Will as a technician. Yeah. That's kind of cool. And now he's the number two. Evolution, talk to me.

Shawn Gilfillan (3:55)

Like when you said we hired Will as a technician, we were running some ads for technician to come in, and Will's resume came through on our platform there.

It's like, wow, this guy's managed a couple of Valvoline shops and why is he applying for the technician role? I just picked the phone up, gave him a call, and I mean on our first phone call. The synergy was just amazing. Our values in life and family and things like that really resonated. So we got to talk and then obviously we brought him on board to run our maintenance center. And he's been doing such a fantastic job with that. We moved him on up to more of a general manager over both locations and he's really become an integrator. We are running EOS in our business as you had said earlier, Carm.

That's something that I've been hunting for as a founder and entrepreneur mind for a long time. Here he is. We wanted to talk today a little bit about how we've been able to create the relationship between the two of us that's workable. You think about the episode of more of a, I need another me. Well, it necessarily wasn't another me, but it was the other half of my brain that needed to stretch out, right?