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Episode 214

Tim Winkeler

VIP Tires & Service

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Tim Winkeler is the President and CEO of VIP Tires & Service, a multi-location tire and auto repair company operating nearly 80 locations across the Northeast. With decades of experience in automotive retail and operations, Tim has played a key role in scaling the business through disciplined growth, strategic acquisitions, and a strong focus on operational consistency.

Under his leadership, VIP has prioritized long-term customer relationships, clean data, and systems that support both employees and customers at scale. Tim’s perspective is shaped by running a large, complex organization while staying grounded in what actually works inside the store and after the vehicle leaves the bay.

In this episode…

Auto repair shops are under more pressure than ever to retain customers, protect their reputation, and operate efficiently across multiple locations. Yet many owners still treat what happens after the visit as an afterthought. This conversation focuses on why auto repair customer follow up has quietly become one of the most important growth levers in the industry and why ignoring it now comes at a real cost.

Tim Winkeler explains how intentional communication, automation, and clean data change customer behavior without relying on discounts or constant promotions. The discussion highlights a growing gap between shops that deliver great service once and shops that stay connected consistently. For owners trying to improve retention, reduce no-shows, and build long-term trust, auto repair customer follow up is no longer optional.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:03] Who is Tim Winkeler?

[01:21] Discussion of repeat guest appearances and long-term industry relationships

[08:09] Overview of VIP Tires & Service footprint and current store count

[09:49] Decision to transition CRM and customer communication systems

[10:34 ] Immediate impact of CRM change on Google reviews and customer engagement

[14:07] Consolidating reputation management into a single platform

[15:25] Challenges of CRM transitions and the importance of clean customer data

[18:55] Integrating customer data with phone systems

[20:44] Announcement of VIP Tires & Service approaching its 100th anniversary

[22:24] Plans for customer and employee events tied to the centennial celebration

[25:11] Why longevity and consistency matter to customers and employees

[26:53] Emphasis on relationships as the foundation of auto repair service businesses

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“I can tell you that the month that we turned over all of our CRM, our five-star Google reviews tripled.”
“Our mission as a company is to earn a customer for life.”
“So much of the experience is teed up prior to the visit and also post visit.”
“Digitally, you have to be connected to your customers.”
“Our customers are looking for reliability, stability, and consistency.”

Action Steps:

Audit your current auto repair customer follow up process to identify where communication stops after the visit.
Implement automated appointment reminders to reduce no-shows and improve vehicle count.
Clean and consolidate customer data to avoid duplicate records and inconsistent messaging.
Centralize reputation management so reviews, feedback, and responses live in one system.
Treat auto repair customer follow up as a core operational function, not a marketing add-on.

Transcript

00:00
I can tell you that the month that we turned over to cinch all of our CRM and everything, our five star Google reviews tripled. We review, we review that every week. Suddenly went to like 400 a week out of the box. I mean it was unbelievable. It tripled.

00:19
Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business. I am Mike Edge, your host and I have the privilege of interviewing the tire dealers, shop owners, counter sales reps, technicians, industry executives and other thought leaders of our industry. This episod this episode is brought to you by Tread Partners. Tread Partners is the leading digital marketing agency that specializes in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations down to five locations. Get a professional, unbiased opinion and let Tread Partners review what you’re doing. It starts with a simple conversation. To contact tread partners, visit treadpartners.com so let’s get started. Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business.

01:03
My guest today is returning guest Tim Winkler, President and CEO at VIP Tires Service with close to 80 locations in the Northeast. He is making his third interview with us at Gain Traction. So, Tim, welcome back to the Gain Traction Podcast.

01:17
Thanks Mike. Great to be here. Great to see you again.

01:20
You too. I think you’re actually, I think I’ve had people on here for little short snippets like when I’ve met Sema, but I actually think you’re the first one to do three full. This will be the third interview. So welcome back.

01:33
So you got like a crown or something or I think I.

01:36
Might send you one or a St. Louis Cardinal hat.

01:38
You know, I’ll take that. I’ll take all of that.

01:41
So just for the audience’s sake, we’re both Cardinal fans and that makes Tim a great guy out right out of the gate. But just on a personal note, you had told me about your favorite movie. Everybody, when I meet people when I travel, they know my questions now and they know they get a kick out of them and everything. So people are always asking me, what’s your favorite movie? Or what’s your favorite food? Or what’s your favorite. This. Yours was Tucker and I thought that was really cool because you’re the only one that’s ever said that to me and we both had seen the movie and you were, you jarred my memory last time. But you said you had a list of movies. Is there anyone, any other ones out there that just pop right now?

02:15
Well, I mean, yeah, there’s Some traditional ones. I mean, for this time of year, you know, A Christmas Story. Love the leg lamp. And, you know, It’s a Wonderful Life, you know, that’s seasonal as well. I. I love It’s a Wonderful Life, but, you know, the other one that my family sort of makes fun of me for, which is the story of Tucker, you know, that we talked about already, my family just is like, they think. I must be the only person that thinks Tucker’s like this cinematic masterpiece. The other movie that I absolutely love, I’ve probably seen a dozen times or more, is Raising Arizona.

02:54
Oh, that is funny. And I’ve seen that in a long time. And you know what line I like. I don’t know why this sticks out to me, because I don’t remember the movie real well, but it’s Nicholas Cage, and he’s up there. He’s. He’s robbing the place. He goes, just give me the diapers, old man. Remember that? Do you remember that?

03:10
Or.

03:10
And before that and before that, the guy. I just remember this. The guy goes, you got a panty on your head. Didn’t he say so?

03:19
It’s. It’s the most absurd movie. And, you know, I love Nicholas Cage. I love John Goodman. But the guy. My favorite character is the guy who plays Nathan Arizona, and he owns that furniture store. And when they’re interviewing him because it’s his baby that they’ve stolen, and when they’re interviewing him and. And he starts like, they’re. They’re saying, you know, was it true that your name was formerly Nathan Huffheims and that you have changed your name to Nathan Arizona because his. His store is called, like, something Arizona? And he says, well, yeah, nobody would. Oh, it’s called Unpainted. Arizona is the name. He sells unpainted furniture. And he says, well, yeah, nobody’d buy furniture from a place called Unpainted. Huffheims. Finally lets loose on the. On the policeman in his. In his house.

04:18
Because they keep just interrogating him and his family, and he’s like, all I know is y’ all are in the one place my baby is. Not that true. Oh, my gosh. That movie, I.

04:31
That is a throwback, man. I tell you. Oh, God. I’m trying to think of who the producer was on that, but, you know, there’s a.

04:38
That was the. Wasn’t that the Coen brothers or something?

04:40
I mean, I can’t remember.

04:42
It might have been the name. Guys, it’s either the Coen brothers or it’s some Other group like that, they made several movies that were just kind of absurd and out there. And yeah, I just find them hilarious. And most people in my family look at me like I got three heads when I’m just sitting there laughing and laughing as I watch that movie.

04:59
Well, we’re both kind of like, I’m, you know, I’m in Kentucky, some Southern Midwestern boy. And you are to some degree, and then you got, you grow up there. And that humor level is the same. And what I always loved Harold Ramos as an actor too, but as a director, as a producer and everything. And so any one of his movies, I was always a huge fan of in the 80s because I, I could still laugh at them, all of them. And I saw him in an interview one time and I, I like biographies and everybody listens to this show knows that. But I saw him in an interview and they were talking about John Belushi and he was talking about when he first met him and he said, you know, he said, I, I was in that second. What was it called?

05:39
Second street or.

05:40
Oh, yeah, the one that fed into snl. Yeah.

05:45
Is it called Second Street? I think it is. Okay. Anyway, he was in there in Chicago and everything, and John Blue she shows in the scene. And he said, then, you know, we’re all forced to do a skit together. And he goes, all of a sudden this guy just takes over and he goes. And then I just, you realize I’m not the lead guy, I’m the supporting guy. And he goes, because when you get a personality that big, you start to learn your spot. And I was the one liner. I knew how to throw it up dry or whatever. And he was great at that. And he acted a lot with Bill Murray too. And it’s kind of cool to see an actor understand his spot, but he was involved in so many great movies.

06:21
But he knew his spot and he knew the talent around him. And I like people that recognize talent. And anyway, it’s, Yeah, I think.

06:30
Didn’t Ramus do Stripes?

06:32
He did and he acted in it. Yeah.

06:34
Yeah. That’s one of my favorites.

06:35
Oh, yeah. I mean, John Candy’s in that, by the way. I know I’m going off on a tangent, sees me to do this, but have you seen I Like Me, John Candy?

06:45
I have not.

06:46
It’s the documentary on his life now. It just came out in October. It’s either on Netflix or Prime. It’s fantastic. You’re going to love the guy more than you ever liked him.

06:54
Wow.

06:54
It’s a. Yeah, he’s a great guy, but it’s. It’s just a great story. But the people they interview to talk about him. Yeah, it’s. It’s phenomenal. I mean, what they say about him. Do you have this. Do you remember the scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles where he says he’s. He’s the. What’s his name, Romans or something like that? Gabriel? No, something where he’s. He’s in the hotel room with Steve Martin. And Steve Martin is just belittling him, Right. And he goes, well, I like me, that’s where they got the title for the diagram. But Steve says in this interview, he says, man, he was so convincing. I felt bad. The little.

07:32
You know.

07:35
And he goes, and I’m on set and I know. We’re, you know, it’s just. I’m just, you know, we’re just doing a scene. But, man, he came off so authentic, that. Right. I felt bad about what I said to me.

07:45
Oh, yeah. From stripes. Dewey Oxberger. My name’s Dewey Oxberger. My friends call me the Ox.

07:53
What about what Candy’s talking about, his weight? Because everybody probably could tell I’m a little overweight. No, no.

07:58
Doctor. Yeah, Doctor. Doctor says I. I swallow a lot of aggression along with a lot of pizza.

08:06
Well, you’re a good one, Lotter. You remember them well. All right, let’s get to the talk on VIP tires. So what’s the count? I say close to 80. What’s the count that you guys have?

08:15
We’re getting close to 80. We’re at 76 today that we operate. And we’ve got a 77th shop that’s scheduled to come online in February. That’s an acquisition down in Connecticut. So that’s breaking news. We’ve got three in Connecticut today that we’ve acquired in the last year and a half, and this will be our fourth into Connecticut. We’ve got several others sort of in the funnel that’ll hopefully be opened later in 2026.

08:42
Fantastic. So acquisitions still a big part of the game right now for you?

08:47
Acquisitions are a big part. You know, we. We also have done a few new stores where it’s not an acquired business, where we just go in. We’ve bought a couple old dealership buildings where car dealers move out. You know, they. Sometimes the manufacturer requires them to go build a big new building to their spec or whatever, so we come in behind them and. And buy the real estate and Typically that’s a pretty good recipe for us. In certain markets we’ve done that. But it’s a quicker ramp up for sure for us to be accretive early in the process for us to acquire a business.

09:26
And, and we’ve become selective in terms of we’re really looking for a business that’s already humming pretty good, you know, without having to go in and do a huge lift and drive the business and double or triple it, we can take over a really busy shop and add another say 20, 30% to the volume and that’s a great recipe for us.

09:49
That’s huge. Well, that leads to this question and they’re sponsoring this show. But I know you guys use Cinch and since the last time I talked to you guys, I mean you made a big change to, to using Cinch as a software. Talk about what they do and where that helps you, if you don’t mind.

10:05
Yeah, no, they, you know, that’s been, there’s a lot of little things that you have to kind of do. Right. To keep the business growing every year. And when we made that change to Cinch about a year and a half ago, I can tell you the one place where I saw it immediately. There’s all kinds of other benefits that our marketing team talks about in terms of usability of the administration screen and all the things they can do. The custom campaigns for our customers, email and text and all that. I can tell you that the month that we turned over to Cinch, all of our CRM and everything, our five star Google reviews tripled. We review that every week. And we used to be solidly with 70 stores or so.

10:51
We used to be solidly between 120, 135 star reviews a week, which sounds like a lot, but when you got 76 stores, you know, that’s really only like two per store. Yeah. Suddenly, right, with Cinch went to like 400 a week out of the box. I mean it was unbelievable. It tripled. And, and you know, it’s the whole follow up text campaign, follow up email campaigns. They just do a great job of keeping us connected to our customer. And you know, our mission as a company is to earn a customer for life. And today as much as anything that’s, you know, a lot of that is how they get treated when they’re in the store. Obviously you have to deliver a great experience in the store, but so much of it is teed up prior to and then is also post visit.

11:39
There’s a lot digitally you have to be connected to your customers. And so the emails we send out now on declined services or your oil changes due or your rotations due or, you know, a plethora of other things. The other thing that was cool is probably 6 or 8 months ago I was actually in one of my dealer meetings with a bunch of other dealers and somebody was talking about the fact that their system was sending out appointment reminders, you know, like the day before or a couple days before every appointment. And so I got on a call with our marketing team and Cinch and within like three weeks we had appointment reminders that were being texted to all of our customers where we had a mobile number.

12:23
And that has increased our overall vehicle count because it has reduced the number of times that we have no shows. And we didn’t hear from that person who needed to change their appointment because we have a lot of customers who call and they’ll book an appointment two or three weeks ahead of time. Not because we’re forcing them to, but because, you know, they’re calling in October, they want their winter tire scheduled for November on a certain day or. And then if they forget about that, we send them that text message appointment reminder. Cinch makes it easy to do all that stuff. So we feel like digitally we’re as well connected to our customers as we’ve ever been. And a big part of that is Cinch.

13:00
It sounds fantastic, but that automation and having everything in place is such a key because I just think in my own experience, and I use one just recently for me in a totally different industry. But my doctor visit, I do my annual, you know, they schedule you a year out for your annual, right? Every annual. And I’ve got it on the calendar, I know it’s there. But, you know, life happens and you start having things pile up on your calendar, work wise. And then all of a sudden I start getting these texts and they send out like a couple to me in a week in advance and then a couple days in advance or whatever. And I mean, I appreciate it.

13:39
It’s the one text, you know, because then I know cognitively I’ve got to make sure I got a little buffer on my schedule, just not to have, you know, get rushed to be there or whatever. And then sometimes if you know, my doctor likes me to have labs done each year. So it’s like, okay, I don’t want to do the labs after the visit because then they want to talk to you. I want to do them before. So we got something to talk about or whatever. But all of that automation is just huge. Another thing is they get into reputation management too, don’t they?

14:06
They do, yeah, absolutely. No, they’re, they have a dashboard that our team uses for all the different reviews, the different social channels and everything. I mean, we used to use a separate reputation provider, if you will, you know, with sentiment scores and all that. And that’s the cool thing about Cinch also is it’s all wrapped up into one solution now. And I can tell you, Art, you know, not only do we operators, you know, really like what it’s done for us on the reviews, but our marketing team loves just being able to work in the software. Everything’s intuitive, really easy to use.

14:43
You know, I don’t, I never ever want this platform to feel like it’s an infomercial. So I want, I want our listeners to understand why we’re talking about since. Because you’re. I mean, you’re a guest and you’re a previous guest too, but you’ve had such a great experience that I think it’s relative to the industry that people need to know this. These, there’s products out there in particularly sense that can help you run your business. Extremely effective and I mean reduce stress in a lot of ways. I mean it takes a lot of the. Like you said, you had a separate tool for reputation, but now it’s incorporated in the same tool. And I know the question I wanted to ask you, how difficult of a transition was it for you guys to get completely over to Cinch?

15:33
It was not a heavy lift and in fact one of the benefits when we made the change was our data. We knew we had a data dupe problem and we had a former provider that their integration with our point of sale system caused there to. It was way too easy to create duplicate customers, duplicate customer records, sometimes multiple duplicates. And so, you know, that’s one of those things where, you know, for anybody out there who does have a CRM provider or is looking at different CRM providers, you know, there’s other great ones out there besides Cinch. This isn’t just about Cinch, but, you know, you have to make sure that you’re dealing with people who are all about clean data. And that was something that we didn’t do our homework on the first time. And so that was something.

16:25
I think there were several hundred thousand records that got cleaned up within our data, which just makes it so much better from the brand perception of customers. Not getting duplicated messages or not going into a store and are people in the store seeing sort of? Well, I have two profiles here. Which one’s the right profile? Stuff like that. The guys at Cinch are very much about clean data and they know their stuff and that helped us tremendously. The other thing that I would say, you know, lastly about them is they just, they get our business and it’s not like they have work in our business, but they do enough work with other auto repair and tire shops that they get our business. A quick example of that is I mentioned the appointment reminders.

17:14
When we turned those on pretty quickly we realized there was an issue with it and that was that sometimes we have stores that have a lot of drop offs and you know, it’s not like everybody’s waiting for their vehicle. They get a whole bunch of cars in the morning and a whole bunch of pickups at night. Well, our managers are taking those appointments, taking those vehicles and they’re moving them to different times in the day to different technicians. So they’re planning out their work for the day. Well, if they do that ahead of time and then the 24 hour mark before the appointment hits and we’ve moved a drop off appointment that’s coming in on Thursday, we’ve moved it to 2pm, let’s say for that technician to work on.

17:52
Suddenly when we first launch the appointment reminders, the customer’s getting a text saying you’ve got a 2 o’ clock appointment tomorrow. Yeah. Even though it’s not a 2 o’ clock appointment, they had scheduled to drop off the car in the morning. We quickly got on the call, on a call with Cinch and within like three days they had programmed it so that every appointment’s either marked as a drop off or you know, an actual waiting appointment and it allows us to move those drop off appointments anywhere throughout the day and it doesn’t impact that reminder that the customer gets.

18:23
So oh my gosh, that’s got to be huge.

18:25
And just little things like that, like I said, they just, they get the business and they put solutions in place that makes sense for our business.

18:33
Well, I think about the people I know directly in the business that work the counter and stuff like that. I mean just that headache of communication and the stress level it causes, it’s causes stress at the store, causes stress for the customer. And you’re eliminating that altogether with just automation, right?

18:50
Absolutely.

18:51
No, no, that’s, yeah, that’s fantastic.

18:55
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean they came to our conference Our annual conference back in August. And I actually, as one of our action items out, I’ve gotten their CEO in touch with our telephone provider because they have CINCH has this vision to integrate into our phone system as well so that when that phone rings, we could actually serve up to our service advisor the customer profile and history and everything about them right there on the screen. So I pick up the phone and I’m like, you know, hey Mike, good to talk to you again. You know, I see you were in here last month for your oil change on your BMW. You know, what you got going on today?

19:35
You know, man, you know what’s so great about that is because if you’re like me, I, I one time I had, I think we had five cars as a fleet in here, maybe six, I can’t remember exactly. We had so many drivers. But you know, just as a dad managing it all, I didn’t keep good notes. I was glad they had the little sticker in the window reminder for oil changes on cars. And then, you know, I would go out to each kid’s car, check it once in a while. But you know, I had to be cognitive of it, whatever. But man, if you got reminders, yeah, it just takes a lot of headache away. Or by going to the same shop constantly and they can tell me, well, you already did this on this car.

20:13
Oh, I got that mixed up with the last one, you know. Yeah, yeah. And you know, you keep your tire rotations right, all that stuff and somebody that just keeps the notes for you, it’s worth it. It makes a, it’s a huge value add.

20:26
Absolutely, absolutely.

20:28
As a consumer, I love it. Well, on another Note, going into 2026, any big news for VIP or any big plans, changes things you see on the horizon?

20:37
It’s funny, we got some really big news or a big campaign I should call it. So next year is going to be our company’s 100th anniversary.

20:47
Congratulations. That’s fantastic.

20:49
Yeah, yeah. So, wow. Our owner, John Quirky, his grandfather started what was called Cork Tire Company back then in 1926 in Watertown, Massachusetts. And so next year will be 100 year anniversary. John Cork, our owner, is third generation owner of the business. Of course he acquired VIP as a separate company about 25 years ago. But the company that VIP operates as today, even though it is called Vip, is actually the original company that his grandfather started 99 years ago, soon to be 100 years ago. So you’re going to see a lot of special promotions. We’re going to be doing customer events. We’re going to be doing employee events next year all throughout the summertime and into the fall. We’re going to be celebrating 100 years big time next year for VIP. So that’s going to be something that.

21:50
That’s awesome.

21:51
Yeah, it’s worth celebrating. We’re. We’re going to. We’re going to celebrate big next year.

21:55
I love that and I love. You guys are going to do that because, look, there’s something that’s nostalgic about, you know, a family company that survived this long and then not only that, but has grown from the one store to where you’re at today and that you’re thriving. And just, it’s a. It’s just, it’s. It’s what, you know, it’s what we call the American dream. I mean. Right? And then. Yeah, and it’s small business America, you know, in small town America as well. So. Congratulations. That’s fantastic.

22:22
I love that.

22:22
And I’m glad you guys are going to celebrate it.

22:24
Oh, yeah, we’re going to lean into it. Our marketing team, we’ve created a big committee to plan all the regional customer and employee events that we’re going to do. Our marketing teams already talked about. We’ve got. They’ve identified different team members at VIP who own cars from each decade. Oh, we’re going to have, like, employees highlighted, you know, from the 20s, from. Who owns a car from the 20s. We actually had. I was out in our Windham main store the other day, and we had a Model T there that our master technician in Windham was working on. So we’re going to have some of it might be customers as well, but we’re going to actually show, like, decade by decade, different vehicles since the 1920s.

23:09
And I think the, you know, like, for the one going forward, we’ve got one of our employees here, owns a Rivian. So we’re gonna go from like the Model T to the Rivian and every decade in between. It’s gonna be a really fun thing to celebrate.

23:25
That is cool. So are you gonna make it like a video? Because I’d love to see it. I mean, like, the. Some type of. Is that what it’s going to be? Is it going to be a video?

23:33
I assume so. I. I mean, I’m picturing it as like 10 different videos, but then we could probably create almost like this montage of like, decade by decade, like, showing the progression and showing, you know, how automotive technology has moved forward in 100 years that we’ve been operating.

23:50
Oh, my gosh, I can’t wait to see that. That’s going to be really cool. And it’s all kind of. I mean, it’s inclusive to your brand and your people. That’s what’s awesome.

23:57
Absolutely.

23:57
Yeah.

23:58
Absolutely. No, that’s. That’s our. Our marketing team was at an event called Brand Week this past month ago or so. And it was funny because they said one of the big themes at this big conference they went to was what they called brandiversaries, like celebrating brand anniversaries. And so they took all kinds of notes and they’ve got all these different plans and things, and we’ve created a special logo with the 100 year anniversary in it. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun.

24:28
That’s cool as heck, man. I’m very happy for you guys. That’s exciting. Congratulations.

24:32
Yeah, thanks. No, that’s, you know, outside of, you know, continuing to grow and continuing to just keep executing our process, that’s gonna be. The big 2026 initiative is just celebrating the 100 years and helping our customers be a part of that, too. We’re actually going to. Another idea that we’re implementing is letting each store sort of choose a customer appreciation promotion and have, like a celebration at each store. And every store is going to. The team at that store is going to get to decide what that promotion is, what that event looks like, and they’ll have ownership of it for the people in their community.

25:09
That’s beautiful. You know, you spur me to say this because I think every brand that’s out there, even if you’re. You’re a small shop or whatever, you should celebrate your milestones.

25:20
Absolutely.

25:20
I think it’s good for your employees, it’s great for your customers, and it’s. It kind of. I don’t know what you want to call. It reinforces your brand and who you’re trying to be to the community.

25:29
Yeah, well. And, you know, there’s a part of our customers out there, all of us in this industry, our customers are looking for someone to trust. They’re looking for reliability, they’re looking for stability, they’re looking for consistency. Like all these things that play into a consumer’s mind when they’re trying to choose a shop to take their car. Celebrating anniversaries obviously provides this great message of, hey, we’re here and we’ve been here. You can count on us. We’ve been around and we’re going to be around for you know, in our case, hopefully another hundred years. Right. I mean, you know, you can count on us, and, and we’re going to be here when you need us.

26:11
That is a great point. And to add to that, it’s even important for your employees and prospective employees, right? Oh, yeah, because we all. I. I’ve actually feel like I’ve been in this conversation multiple times on a podcast recently. But, you know, and I’ve had people ask me because they know I’ve had several kids and, you know, mine are older and what’s it take? And I’m like, consistency. And that’s the hardest part. Consistency and stability. You got to give kids stability and consistency for a platform to, you know, jump from and thrive. Well, it’s the same thing in a work environment. People want stability and consistency, but so do your customers. They want stability and consistency, predictability, they can count on you, et cetera.

26:52
Yeah. Because it’s all relationship based, Mike.

26:55
Right.

26:55
I mean, whether it’s our family members, our friends, or a business we trust our car to, it’s a relationship. And that’s one of the things that our team talked about, is that people have typically have a relationship with a brand. If you think of the different brands that, you know, any one of use, we have a certain relationship with that brand. Sometimes it may not even be a positive relationship. Sometimes it could be a negative impression or perception of a brand. But we all have these different relationships with brands. And in our business, it’s so important for that customer who relies on you and the people in your stores to have that relationship, that very positive, you know, relationship where you are the person that they turn to for help. Right? That’s what we’re. That’s what our business is about.

27:43
We’re in the service business. We’re here to serve other people.

27:46
That’s it.

27:47
Right? So we have to. We have to lean into that relationship and say we’re here, and we’re going to be here when you need our help. And that’s why we. That’s why we come to work every day.

27:57
That’s a good note to end on. I’m going to leave you with that one.

28:00
Awesome.

28:01
Tim, I really appreciate you coming back on and being on the Gain Tracks podcast for the third time. I got to come up with something to send you and maybe a St. Louis Cardinal hat, bud.

28:13
I will wear it, and I’ll wear it on my fourth visit.

28:16
All right, we’ll do it. Hey, thanks. And I hope you guys have a great new Year in with VIP and celebrating and everything else and look forward to seeing the news on that.

28:25
Awesome. Appreciate you, Mike.

28:27
All right, take care. To all our listeners, thank you for being part of the Gain Traction podcast. We are grateful for you. If you’d like to find more podcasts like this, please visit gaintractionpodcast.com if you’d like to make a guest recommendation, please email [email protected] this episode has been powered by TREAD partners, the leader in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. To learn more about Tread Partners, visit treadpartners.com.

Contents hide

1 In this episode…

2 Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

3 Resources mentioned in this episode:

4 Quotable Moments:

5 Action Steps: