Emphasizing Excellence

Shop Owner Perspective: Jeff Perreault, Mike’s In Out Oil Change of Alexandria, Minnesota 

Jeff Perreault runs his shop with a smile—literally. Making people grin and laugh while they’re at Mike’s In Out Oil Change is a huge win in his book. This focus on positivity finds its way into the shop employees and their workflow. Perreault spoke with NOLN about a few components of this approach.  

As told to Hanna Bubser  

Repeat business is our biggest thing we aim for. 

But I also told my staff just this morning, “If I start driving this thing with only profit in mind, we’ve already had the wheels fall off. We’ve got to drive it putting the customer first, so we do a consistent job every time, so the customers want to come back.” We do have to do it fast and efficiently but going too fast on short staff; that's when mistakes happen. So, I think our mission statement is let’s just do it right and do it with a smile. 

If you can make them laugh, they’re coming back.  

We try to make the customers comfortable while they are waiting in line; make them smile. As for my write-up people, I work really hard at that—trying to make the customer smile—and I’ve got to make sure I have personalities in place that CAN do that. But also, between my cashiers, or whoever is closing the sale or whoever opens the door for the customer will say, “Hey, go do something fun the rest of the day,” or “Take the rest of the day off.” We always say that just to close it and the customers kind of chuckle, you know?    

I’m the king of practical jokes, but I also expect (my team) to practical joke me.  

It’s a two-way street. It can’t be just one-sided. I have a 16-year-old homeschooled young lady who works here. When she started, she looked at the floor, and she had trouble interacting with everybody. She’s been with us almost a year, and now if I go outside and put something in a dumpster—she'll lock me out, because she knows my keys are on my desk! That’s exactly what we want. This young lady wants to go into the car business and I feel this job is a great stepping stone for her. She learns how to interact with other employees, and she learns how to interact with the customers.    

We are a pipeline to our local farm equipment dealers for their scholarship programs. 

These young gentlemen or young ladies, whoever wants to go into the agriculture/diesel business, we’re a pipeline.  

We partner with our local farm equipment dealer for sponsorships to help get their tuition and tools paid for.  I don’t just send anybody there; they have to be a good fit. I’m happy to say that we have about eight guys and gals that went into the agricultural or small engine fields after working here and then graduating from college.  

They work for us part time and then when they do their internship, they go to work for a local farm equipment or powersports dealer. But in that process, they’ve had their two years of school. It’s a great resource for me, and for the kids too.  

An example of team comradery at the shop:  

We have a gentleman here, he’s one of our managers. He’s 50 years old. His family has a history of heart problems. Well, he went to get a stint put in yesterday. I texted him before he went in for the procedure, and one of the other employees saw me doing that and she said, “This is why I work here. You honestly care about us.”  

That was one of the greatest compliments anybody could give me. He went through the procedure and now he needs open heart surgery ... so, we all know we’re going he’s going to be out for six months, but we’ll just work around it.  We are more concerned about his health than we are about being shorthanded. 

Six years ago, when we bought this (shop), this thing was going really well already.   

It was up and on its way. The previous owner wanted to retire, and he said, “This thing’s going to do double the business in two years.” Well, it does better than that. We had four employees when we started, and we have 18 right now. We keep the shop clean and up to date, that along with our culture is noticed by our customers when they’re sitting in their car or in the lobby. They hear how we interact. They hear how we give each other a hard time, just for fun. 

I also enjoy listening to our customers. My office is right off the lobby, so I can hear the customers interacting with each other. I often hear customers comment on how fun it is to hear our guys having fun and enjoying what they do.   

I think that, for me personally ... that is a great compliment to see the employees smiling and laughing out there, because the customers pick up on it. They feed off it because then they’ll chime in. I think that’s what I’m trying to build here—and we’re not successful every day, but you’ve got to look at the big picture.

Shop Owner Perspective: Russell Hotchkiss of All Tune and Lube Total Car Care of Cedar Rapids, Iowa 

Russell Hotchkiss’ shop embodies productivity through employees who are committed to a timely and high-quality work output.  Motivated employees at All Tune and Lube Total Car Care invest in their own success—which funnels into success for the shop. Hotchkiss gave NOLN some insight into how this mentality plays out in everyday operations.  

As told to Hanna Bubser 

We want to treat people the way we want to be treated.  

And then, we even go one step further: We treat you or your family or friends like you would want your grandmother treated if she was 3,000 miles away.  

But you’ve got to go to where the core of that came from. I own two other businesses, and I have over 20 vehicles in a fleet and over 23 years in business.  

Up until I opened this (shop) ... nine years ago, I thought I had friends taking care of my vehicles at different automotive shops—and they weren’t. So, I opened my own to take care of my own fleet, and if we could help other customers not get screwed along the way—then that was a benefit.  

There’s a front and a back to an automotive repair facility.  

The front—those guys are very fun, very knowledgeable, (and) can speak with the customers. They’re down to Earth, they make (the customer) laugh and feel at home because they’re interacting directly with the customer.  

However, on the back end, those guys are—not that the front isn’t—they’re after the pay. They want to make sure that they don’t have comebacks because they don’t want that docked from their pay or (to) have to work on something a second or third time—which takes away from their ability to make money—because then they’re losing money because they have to redo something and all they’re on is the clock and not on their commission.  

We look to see if (potential new hires) actually have entrepreneurial spirit.  

Are they getting certifications at their other place? Have they been in a leadership role? Do they understand we’re trying to beat the clock—understanding that we can’t have comebacks? It just looks bad on not only them, but on the company itself, even though we weren’t the ones that had the hand on the equipment. So, we’re looking for those types of things: making sure they understand (that) time’s money. The more time you waste, the more money you waste.  

Did they get their ASE certifications or any other certifications—whether it’s from a dealership or third-party vendors? Did they invest in themselves? Did they buy their own tools? How much do they have in tools?  

We look to see if they’re hungry and whether or not they’re confident enough to invest in themselves—because if they don’t invest in themselves, then why are you asking me to do it?  

We’re laid back and low-key, but we’re also fun-having and slightly competitive.  

I’m an open book (with) management, so they actually see: How much did we generate? How much did each of them generate? What was their proficiency? They see all those numbers week in and week out. So, they know who’s pulling their weight and who isn’t.  

It’s not like when you go to the dealership and all the work is given to just the most senior person there.  

If you can show your worth and that you’re comfortable doing things, we will give you more work. We don’t play favorites. Well, we kind of do—we play favorites to the ones (who) are productive, not just the ones (who) have been there for a long period of time, have their tenure in, and we’re just feeding them to keep them happy.  

It’s going back to that slightly competitive thing—but also proving that you can handle what’s been given to you. And they do help each other out because they know that if they can help that other person out, then if they get in a pinch later and need some help, they’ll get it reciprocated to them.  

The ones who do well here, they understand what their goal is.  

Obviously, the goal is to have the highest proficiency (and) not have the comebacks—which translates into dollars weekly, which increases their paycheck, which increases the overall revenue of the company—those things. They get here, they get it done, they don’t complain, (and) they understand the more that they can get through in a shorter period of time, the more they make, the more the company makes. Those are the successful ones.  

The ones (who) aren’t successful sit there and complain and stay on their ... phone and their proficiency is only 50% instead of 100% and they’re not doing the weekly revenue goals, they're doing half of that. Basically, their proficiency tells you, they’re only doing half of what they could do. We have benchmarks and measurements that we go through every week.