Using Technology To Establish Customer Trust With Keegan Wentz, President of McMahon Tech Center

Keegan Wentz is the President of McMahon’s Automotive Technology Center, a family-owned service and repair shop based in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His vision and dedication have transformed the company into a pioneering automotive technician training and career development institution. Under his leadership, McMahon’s has implemented a comprehensive training program that imparts technical skills and focuses on professionalism and ethics. An ASE Master Tech with a rich background in training others in Original Equipment technology, Keegan has significantly enhanced the service quality and customer experience at McMahon’s. His commitment to staying abreast of emerging vehicle technologies, including electric vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems, positions McMahon’s at the forefront of the industry.

In this episode…

When a customer brings a vehicle to your shop for repair, do they automatically believe you’ll figure out the problem? How do you establish that trust between customers and repair technicians?

According to Keegan Wentz from McMahon’s Best-One Tire and Auto Care, a Digital Vehicle Inspection is a transparency tool, bridging the knowledge gap between the workshop and the people in the waiting area. A DVI is akin to a vehicle’s report card, detailing its condition with supportive photos and videos, enabling customers to see exactly what the technicians see. Using DVIs, Keegan points to McMahon’s emphasis on openness, using it to document, recommend, and transmit vehicle information to customers via email or text. Keegan notes that it’s part of a broader commitment to professionalism in the automotive industry, aiming to combat its negative reputation by fostering trust and transparency, one customer at a time.

On this episode of Gain Traction, Keegan joins Mike Edge to discuss the importance of establishing trust between the repair technicians and customers — and utilizing technology to build that trust. Keegan reveals his method for maintaining a lean and efficient operation while recognizing deficiencies in his team’s process and fixing or improving them. He talks about the value of technological advancements in tire and auto repair and the goals for his company moving forward.

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

• Keegan Wentz shares how he got started in the automotive industry 
• When Keegan became interested in technology
• Putting McMahon’s Best-One Tire and Auto Care at the forefront of technological advancements in auto repair
• The methodology Keegan uses for implementing and maintaining a lean, efficient operation
• How deficiencies are recognized and improved at McMahon’s
• Keegan’s goals for McMahon’s moving forward

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Keegan Wentz on LinkedIn
• McMahon’s Best-One Tire
• Don Detore on LinkedIn
• Kim McMahon on LinkedIn
• Kaizen
• The 5S method
• Autoflow
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn
• Tread Partners

• Gain Traction Podcast
• Keegan Wentz
• McMahon's Automotive Technology Center
• McMahon’s Best-One Tire and Auto Care
• Mike Edge
• Tread Partners

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now let’s get started with the show.

Mike:

Welcome To the Gain Traction Podcast. I am Mike Edge, your host today. The Gain Traction Podcast is where I talk with top automotive business leaders and tire leaders in their respective industries.

This episode is brought to you today by Tread Partners. What is Tread Partners? Automotive partners that put more cars in your base by direct efforts that become predictable and reliable. MSO Tires and auto repair shops is the only focus. They make all your stores winners. To learn more, visit treadpartners.com.

I’d like to give a shout-out to my new friend, Don Detore, editor of the leading tire publication, Tire Business. Don has a great story, from being a sports editor in Cleveland to editor of Tire Business. If you haven’t listened to that episode, please check it out.

All right, today’s guest was highly recommended from Kim McMahon. If you might remember, Kim McMahon is president of McMahon’s Best-One Tire in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Kim was a guest on our show almost a year ago. Kim was Tire Business’ Humanitarian of the Year last year. So our guest today is Keegan Wentz, the president of McMahon’s Tech Center. Keegan, welcome to the podcast.

Keegan:

Yeah, and thank you for having me on.

Mike:

Man, glad to have you. I mean, you really came highly recommended. I’d reached out to Kim, and I do this periodically with past guests, and she said, “You got to have Keegan.” And she goes, “I’ll ask him first.” So I was thrilled to get the introduction and then learn a little bit about you after we talked, and so excited to let our audience know what you guys are up to at McMahon’s.

Keegan:

Yeah, yeah. It’s going to be hard to live up to the standard that she puts forth for me, but we’re going to try our hardest here.

Mike:

Great. We keep our podcast biographical in nature, let’s back up. Let’s tell our audience some, who are you? I mean, kind of where are you from? And I know, personally, you’re from Fort Wayne, Indiana, but tell us a little bit about how you grew up.

Keegan:

Yeah, I’m born and raised at Fort Wayne, Indiana, a surrounding area out in the country. Actually, a little east of here, a little town called Woodburn. I’m the oldest of five kids. My dad’s a Fort Wayne police officer. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, so a lot of interesting situations, younger, being the oldest, I got three brothers and one sister. She grew up with a lot of protection, let’s say.

Mike:

Yeah, absolutely.

Keegan:

Yeah, so my uncle actually owned an automotive shop and that’s really where I got started in the business, sweeping floors when I was 12, 13, looking at what he was doing, changing tires every once in a while, that kind of stuff, and it all grew from there.

Mike:

Did your siblings do this with you as well?

Keegan:

No, actually I was the only one that really showed an interest initially in automotive, but actually two of my brothers work for McMahon’s now as well. One’s a manager, and the other one’s a service advisor.

Mike:

That’s awesome. So it’s turned into a family business then with Kim?

Keegan:

Kind of, yeah, and that’s really what McMahon’s is all about. We have a lot of multi-generational employees here and she really drives that home. We’re family-owned, family-operated, a lot of our employees have multiple family members that are also working here with us.

Mike:

Well, I know we’re going to get to what you do for them, but you kind of grew up a techie, didn’t you? Kind of tech guy, interested in technology all the time?

Keegan:

Yeah. My parents always said if I got a new toy, it was taken apart almost immediately to see how things worked, and put it back together, and then I’d play with it in its total function. But I was always interested in how things worked, how things ticked.

Mike:

I think it’s so cool that certain kids are that way. And I put you in that category where you’re like, I’ve got an older cousin, and he was the same way. I mean, as soon as he got something, he had to tear it apart. I think his mind needed to know how it worked, and you sound the same way.

Keegan:

Yeah. Yep. That’s curiosity, I think, that’s a big thing. I always keep an open mind, always want to learn something new, searching for those answers.

Mike:

Yeah. So being president of McMahon’s Tech Center… The other day, I was just fascinated by what all that entailed. It’s not just the technology aspect in the company, it’s implementing it and it’s simultaneously training everybody on whatever the new technology is. And you said something to me that really resonated. McMahon’s really wants to be a leader, even nationally, technology and how the industry changes.

Keegan:

Yeah, exactly. That was going into it, creating the tech center was… First and foremost, we wanted to make sure that we were doing right by the industry as a whole. Right?

Mike:

Yeah.

Keegan:

You picking that up? Doors opening?

Mike:

Hey, you’re in a shop, man. It’s all good.

Keegan:

Yeah, I know.

Mike:

I love this happening on a podcast.

Keegan:

Yeah, no, that was the whole premise of creating it. It was establishing where we wanted to be in the industry, where we saw the industry going forward, and what those technologies would bring about as far as the aftermarket service.

Mike:

So when you got started with Kim, I mean, because as a kid, obviously you explained your curiosity, did you come in after she hired you and said, “Hey…” And I know you worked with her husband and everybody else, but were you seeing opportunities for efficiencies or opportunities to implement technology and you kept pushing this or were they pushing it? How all that work?

Keegan:

Yeah, no, I have to say that I’m the main force behind the efficiency push that we’re doing in our whole service operations. And that comes from my experience in the manufacturing realm where, in manufacturing, it’s very, very… It’s huge, the amount of time-saving that you can get, even by saving 15 seconds.

Mike:

What do they use the word, lean a lot?

Keegan:

Yeah, lean manufacturing, 5S, Six Sigma, that kind of stuff. So there’s a couple different programs that manufacturing uses on that. And actually, that’s kind where it started. I wanted to bring the 5S mentality to the automotive shop, right? I kind of adapted it to what we see in our shops, and then it all branched out from there with DBIS and our shop management system, and all that has to be intertwined for it to work properly.

Mike:

I think it’s fascinating that you connected the two and there’s so much, I think, when you did get a little experience outside of tires and automotive repair. I think it’s always cool when someone learn something from another industry that can be applied to a different industry, right?

Keegan:

Sure, yeah.

Mike:

Sometimes those guys are great for… I mean, it’s great to grow up in an industry, but sometimes you kind of get blinders, right? You just don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. But when you step out of something, it seems like you were able to pull in something for manufacturing and almost treat it like the service side is a manufacturing opportunity. It’s your efficiencies, et cetera.

Keegan:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And at the bottom line, it’s creating value for the customer. So the more efficient we are, the more value that we’re providing to the customer when they come in the shop. They get their cars done faster with efficiency and having all of the proper systems in place, there’s a lot less mistakes that can happen. If they do, you have remediation that can be called upon immediately to help facilitate the quickness of the service.

Mike:

Well, I guess the focus of your process is, when there is a problem, are you able to identify where it went wrong easier?

Keegan:

Yeah. We also have a kaizen mentality put in place where our shops get together every week. They’ll take a specific problem that happened, and they’ll sit down and say, “Okay, we know this was a problem. We know that there was a mistake made. How do we go about fixing it?” And as we do that, we take input from all of our team members and then develop a course of action to make sure that that doesn’t happen in the future. So it’s about communication with the team members.

Mike:

For the sake of our audience, I think the word “kaizen” is really cool because doesn’t it mean, in Japanese, constant improvement?

Keegan:

Yeah, yeah.

Mike:

Yep. So from the manufacturing world into your environment, I’m going to try to paraphrase what you’re saying there, basically, you’re looking up each week and you’re saying, “Where can we tighten this down even more?” And the whole process, it isn’t about… I mean, just constantly, they don’t believe that you ever reached the end. It’s all about journey of constant improvement.

Keegan:

Yeah, no, and that’s the thing. There’s a lot of talk about perfection. We’re the top of perfection or we’re the vision of perfection. We don’t even use the word perfection because it doesn’t really exist. We can’t reach perfection. We strive for excellence here. And with kaizen, it’s small improvements over time and create a lasting, long-term effect. That’s awesome.

Mike:

What’s your sports team? Just curious, in college, who do you root for?

Keegan:

Purdue University.

Mike:

I mean, with Purdue, you grew up, I probably wouldn’t know it. What was Notre Dame’s famous quote about practicing? Wasn’t it something like… I had to ask you a question first because I know you’re an Indiana guy, so I’m thinking he could be-

Keegan:

Yeah.

Mike:

But I thought they had a cool quote literally like 40 or 50 years ago. It was, “Perfect practice makes perfect play,” or something along those lines. They were always focused on making practices where you had your answer. Well, that’s about playing great, think about practicing great, or something along those lines.

Keegan:

Yeah.

Mike:

Yeah. So where are you guys going in the future? How are you leading the industry?

Keegan:

Yeah, so the big thing, I think, is opening the doors to the shop for the customer. That’s a huge focus that we have right now. We want to be as open and honest, with the customer about what’s going on in their shop, as possible.

So we’re doing that with our DVI specifically, doing that with even the shape of our service operations in the shop, the flow and stuff like that. So I think there’s too much disconnect between the waiting area and the shop in general, just the amount of knowledge that makes it to that chair that they’re sitting in the waiting room. And DVIs are a big, big part of that, where anything that we see wrong, we’re going to document: videos, make recommendations, take pictures, everything. All of that gets transmitted to the customer via email or text. And we’re basically the stewards of their vehicle for them.

Between that, we really focus on professionalism in the industry as a whole, from technician to service advisors, really focusing on, “We’re professionals. We need to act like it.” And unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad actors out there that have given the industry kind of a poor reputation, and we’re trying to fix that. One tech, one customer at a time.

Mike:

That’s also, I think… And people know the difference when they come in stores like yours, but they have to get there, right?

Keegan:

They do, yeah.

Mike:

Yeah. And then hopefully the word spreads. Just curious, and you don’t have to do this, but just for the sake of our listening audience, they’re out there and these are a lot of shop owners and operators listening. What type of technology do you use for DVI that they may be interested in using?

Keegan:

Sure, yeah. We use Autotechme, or AutoFlow now. We use MaddenCo as our shop management system, our tire management system, and they integrate with MaddenCo. So actually, I researched about eight different companies for that specific system that we needed to use. And it just so happened that AutoFlow and MaddenCo worked together really well. And AutoFlow, or Autotechme, has a great product. They were one of the top products that we demoed.

Mike:

No, I’m glad you said that. I know the guys at AutoFlow, and formerly, Autotech. But Craig and Chan, great guys, and it is a very cool product. I mean, actually, just for my own knowledge, I had them walk me through it for a demo’s sake, and I was literally blown away by the simplicity of it. You can make it complex if you choose-

Keegan:

You can, yeah.

Mike:

You can add as much as you want in there or you can simplify it for your team as much as you want. But yeah, I wanted to ask you that because I didn’t ask you that the other day in just prepping for this call and everything, and I was just curious as to thinking about it, if my listeners wanting to know some tools out there that you’re using. That’s great to know.

Keegan:

And I will say one thing about Autotechme that’s blown me away. And not a lot of people think about it initially, but their support after you’ve signed up, or if you need any help with anything, is second to none. They get back with me immediately. I mean, they’re doing everything right on the support side of things, so kudos to them.

Mike:

Isn’t that the be-all, honestly, when you’re buying anything related to technology?

Keegan:

It is, yeah.

Mike:

You don’t know until you go through that bad experience and we’ll all do it. It’s somewhere in our life, in the beginning, when you’re buying something, you’re going to go, “Well, hell, this one’s a lot cheaper,” or, “This is whatever, I’m going this route or whatever.” And there’s no support like this.

Keegan:

Yeah, exactly.

Mike:

Bobbing out there in the ocean begging for help.

Keegan:

Yep, yeah. Not the case with not the case with them, thankfully, because it can be challenging to manage 10 stores worth of compilation, setup, and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, they make it easy.

Mike:

That’s awesome. So tell me about the techs. I mean, you’re looking for a certain type of individual to be a technical man. I mean, what does that entail for you?

Keegan:

Yeah, so we really like to start when they’re fresh so that we can build them in our-

Mike:

You want the blank mind then?

Keegan:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we’re really looking for attitude. I mean, in most cases, we can teach in the apprenticeship, the mechanical skills, knowledge, and experience that you need to get the job done, but you’re not getting very far with a bad attitude. So that’s number one. You got to have a great attitude and we really hire off attitude for those positions.

If it’s not there or you don’t have the drive to learn, even with technicians that maybe have a ton of years of experience, and they’ve been doing it a while, you still have to have that learning mentality, that learner’s mentality. You’re never going to know everything. Especially in automotive, because it’s such a fast-paced industry. Manufacturing, they’re coming up with new technologies every day. You have to have, to have, to have, to have that learner’s mentality. So attitude is huge. I think that’s probably the most important thing that we look for when we’re hiring and choosing guys for moving up the ladder.

Mike:

Over the years, I’ve heard guys put it in different terms, and you can probably imagine the different terms, but the one thing they’ll say is, “I can’t teach, I care, or I give a crap.”

Keegan:

Yeah.

Mike:

I mean, I find that guy that cares and he gives a crap. He said, “That’s the guy I want because I know he’ll help me figure it out or to make the effort, but I can’t put that in his heart, soul, mind, whatever. But I look for those people,” is what I’ve heard over the past.

Keegan:

For sure. Yeah, that’s huge.

Mike:

Well, that’s awesome. And man, you guys are obviously doing something right, well, this leads us to our next little segment here. I always have a little spot in the show for make us laugh. Is there a story you can share with the audience, somewhere along your career, whether it’s pertaining to you, something happening in the shops that you guys found extremely funny? You can be self-deprecating, obviously. Just keep it clean, but do you got a good story for us?

Keegan:

I do, yeah. So it’s one of my most memorable things that happened when I was a tech. So we had just opened our first heavy-duty shop and we were in a brand new facility to us. It used to be an old warehouse that we were converting to a semi and tractor trailer shop, basically.

And I had a newer apprentice lube tire guy, and he was emptying our oil drain containers. We have the pressurized oil drain containers, you can pressurize them, and they empty into a larger containment system. And he hooked it up, put it in, put the hose into the drain, and he must’ve been… I don’t know, his mind was somewhere else, but he let go of the hose, and this is all diesel oil. And all of a sudden, it’s like fire hose with nobody holding it, and it is 50 gallons of diesel oil just spraying everywhere. And he’s running after it, slipping on the floor. He eventually gets hold of it and he puts it back in the hole. But then he’s like, “Oh, I got to clean this up,” and he lets go again. It’s the same thing all over again.

All said and done, it empties itself basically. And he got it hold again. And it looked like he had struck oil. I mean, we were either rich or… And that hearkens back to attitude, right? I mean you could have walked out, but he was black from head to toe like he was working in the oil field in Texas somewhere.

Mike:

Oh, man.

Keegan:

And it was a brand new shop too.

Mike:

Wow. Yeah, but y’all gave it that good old look real quick.

Keegan:

We christened it right away.

Mike:

You’re saying he stuck it out after that, huh?

Keegan:

He did. He stuck it out. He ended up being a pretty productive individual for us, great attitude. One of the best attitudes I think I’ve come across in the industry.

Mike:

That’s fantastic. Well, good story, that’s a real good story.

Keegan:

Yeah.

Mike:

I’m just curious, how long did the exercise last for him? Was he chasing that hose, how long was he doing? Did it feel like eternity?

Keegan:

Yeah, I was just staring there watching in a basement, but for him, it probably felt like, yeah, an hour or so. It probably was five minutes, I bet. He was chasing that thing between the first time and the second time. Yeah.

Mike:

Oh, that’s funny. Well, before we close out, another question on the personal side. What’s your all-time favorite place to visit?

Keegan:

I would say the Grand Canyon. We drove a buddy of mine that actually worked with McMahon. We were into adventure racing, so like Tough Mudder, that kind of stuff. So we drove out the toughest Mudder from here to California basically. It was in Las Vegas. We visited the Grand Canyon.

We went in the morning, and it was all foggy. We walked up to the canyon, you could only see maybe 30 feet in front of you. And over the day, the fog lifted, and then all of a sudden… I mean, the people say pictures don’t do it justice, and man, are they ever right. That place is… The grandeur of it? You can’t imagine it. You got to see it up close and it really puts in perspective the size of things.

Mike:

I would agree with you. Yeah. So you said it best when you said, “Yeah, pictures look nice, but they don’t give the scale.”

Keegan:

It’s mind-boggling, mind-boggling. So very, very cool experience. I’d go back in a heartbeat.

Mike:

Yeah. My brother and I got to visit it together one time, and we were down in the canyon at one point. And our guide was like… We were young, we were like 18, 19. We started yelling, trying to get an echo. He goes, “You want an echo?” “Yeah.” He goes, “You’re not going to get an echo.” He said, “That wall is a mile away.” And we’re like, “It’s not a mile away. I can throw a rock to hit it.” I mean, it looks like it’s that close to you because it’s so huge.

Keegan:

It is.

Mike:

Yeah. You could tell he’d experienced that a million times. And look at these two knuckleheads, he knew exactly what we were trying to do. Get the echo and there was no echo, it’s too far.

Keegan:

Yeah. It blew me away.

Mike:

Very cool. Well, I tell you what, Keegan, Kim was right. Appreciate you coming on. It’s been a pleasure having you on the podcast today.

Keegan:

Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity. It was exciting to talk about the industry. I could do it all day.

Mike:

I understand. I do that and I enjoy it. It’s a great industry, great people, and you guys make it that way at McMahon’s as well. So thank you.

Keegan:

Yeah, thank you.

Mike:

So to all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of a podcast as usual. If you’d like to recommend a guest to us, please email me at [email protected]. Till next time, be safe and have a great day.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to the Gain Traction Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.