124 - From Wrenches to Leadership: How Culture, Systems, and Weekly Meetings Create a Shop That Works

124 - From Wrenches to Leadership: How Culture, Systems, and Weekly Meetings Create a Shop That Works
May 28th 2025 - 00:59:13

 

Show Summary:

In this inspiring episode, Jimmy Lea hosts Tim Chakarian and Johanna Reichert of Bimmer PhD in Pasadena, CA, as they open up about their journey from humble beginnings to building a thriving, purpose-driven auto repair business. Tim shares his roots from working in his uncle’s restaurant to becoming a BMW master tech, and how these experiences laid the groundwork for his leadership style. Johanna recounts her leap from the postal service to becoming a cornerstone of the business’s administrative and cultural success. Together, they explain how investing in leadership development, clear communication, and intentional culture-building turned their shop into a place people love to work. Their unique practices around team meetings, accountability, and recognition reveal how to create a business people feel proud to belong to.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Tim Chakarian, Owner of BIMMER PhD Motorsports

Johanna Reichert, Vice President at BIMMER PhD Motorsports

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:03:20] - Tim shares how his love for fixing things triumphed over family pressure to pursue other trades.

[00:05:22] - Restaurant experience gave Tim unexpected sales, management, and leadership training.

[00:08:03] - Tim’s 10 years at BMW taught him the critical importance of precision, mentorship, and attention to detail.

[00:13:34] - Johanna describes transitioning from USPS to becoming an integral part of the shop—starting with a terrifying first phone call.

[00:15:35] - Shop expansion forced Tim and Johanna to face the realities of leadership and begin shaping culture intentionally.

[00:17:13] - Leadership training transformed how they approach communication, staff development, and accountability.

[00:24:02] - Weekly meetings are structured around shared goals, technician performance metrics, and problem-solving.

[00:27:09] - Introduction of the “Actualizer” tool empowered team members to self-direct projects and own their responsibilities.

[00:43:33] - “Love it and Learn” rituals at weekly meetings foster camaraderie, gratitude, and internal recognition.

[00:54:01] - Tim and Johanna outline how mission, vision, and courageous hiring/firing decisions protect and nurture a strong culture.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry? Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSELe--ljA

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer
This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.

 

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening or goodnight, depending on when and where you're joining us from. It's a bright, beautiful day outside. Absolutely gorgeous. So excited to be here with you, my friends.

Jimmy Lea: And I agree you don't have to go this journey alone. We are gonna go with this journey together. It's a crazy storm out there. Not all the ships are created equal. Let's lock arms together and make sure nobody's left behind. 'cause together we can make this happen. We've got a phenomenal conversation gonna happen today about your shop, about your business, about your company, about your people, your staff, your technicians, your service advisors, your managers, your parts people, all of the people inside of your shop, including you.

Jimmy Lea: Joining today in our conversation, and if you've got questions, go ahead and type them into the comment section. Joining us for our conversation today is Tim, Ian and Joanna from Bimmer PhD in Pasadena, California. Some really good friends. They have a phenomenal shop. They have a phenomenal program. And I'm just super excited that we are gonna have this discussion today.

Jimmy Lea: Tim's here. Joanna's here. Thank you so much for being here. You guys. Good morning. How are you? 

Tim Chakarian: We're good. Thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. 

Jimmy Lea: It's a pleasure to be here. Nice. Oh yes. That's gonna be interesting. You guys are in the same room, aren't you? 

Intro: Yes. Oh, that's you. 

Jimmy Lea: We will figure this out and we will make it work.

Jimmy Lea: So, phenomenal. Tim and Joanna came to our summit conference in Amelia Island, Florida. What did you guys think of the conference? Awesome. Yeah. That was top notch, wasn't it? Phenomenal speakers. It's really good. Yeah. Phenomenal speakers that were there. It was just absolutely amazing. And so, gosh, dang, Tim you gave such a great presentation talking about your company culture and what it is that you've done.

Jimmy Lea: I, I wanna weave in your story first to talk about the history. Like when you started, when it is Joanna joined the team. When you moved up, when you, I wanna I wanna document this for posterity. That's my history channel moment here. Tim, how did you get started in the automotive aftermarket? 

Tim Chakarian: It was interesting because 

Jimmy Lea: you see that's a big old long breath.

Jimmy Lea: A big old si out. Well, 

Tim Chakarian: no, actually I'm gathering my thoughts, I'm gathering my thoughts. Usually it's just like a barrage of thoughts coming out. But I got started in automotive industry when I wanted, I had a passion for fixing cars growing up, always fixed cars, and my parents tried to deter me from being a mechanic technician as it were.

Tim Chakarian: So they got me involved with my family that taught me the pool business, the construction business, the restaurant business. But ultimately I, I loved taking things apart. I love fixing things. I love making 'em better. So, when we moved back up from to San Diego after I spent several years working at my uncle's restaurant business you know, I went to West Valley Occupational.

Tim Chakarian: I wanted to get certified. And I applied at every dealer I could. And BMW picked me up in Westlake, about 45 minute drive from my house, and I was super excited because that was, oh, Johanna's joining me here, they want me to, all right. So, and that, that was the start of it. I was so excited to be working at A BMW dealer that I didn't realize the possibilities and where it would lead me today, but.

Tim Chakarian: Ultimately I was happy to be working at a dealer, consistent income. They were gonna teach me and mentor me. I had some tire experience beforehand. In high school. I took auto shop. I stunk at all the other classes, but auto shop, metal shop and wood shop. I got an A in and

Jimmy Lea: yeah, very tactile, right?

Jimmy Lea: I mean, you get to touch stuff, you get to do things. Oh yeah. Okay, well now I gotta pause for a moment here. Let's rewind just a second. You worked at a restaurant. What did you do in the restaurant? 

Tim Chakarian: Since it was my uncle's restaurant, he didn't wanna have any kind of favoritism, so he started me from the bottom.

Tim Chakarian: I started out as a buser and I had to do all the menial chores, like cleaning and, you know, sweeping and catering after people. Seeding people. Yeah. And finally I worked my way learning the menu and learning what the. What we pitched, what we sold as it were as a server. Love, love it. And then from a server, I worked my way to managing the servers so I can understand whose shifts did what, when was the busy time, when was the slow time how to move people around and who, what, what happens when people don't show up to work?

Tim Chakarian: And eventually when my uncle went on vacation for two weeks, I got to. Order food and control the kitchen. And I thought, oh my God, this is huge. But what I didn't know at the time, and they say everything happens for a reason, is life was preparing me for what lay ahead, which is owning the business today.

Tim Chakarian: And the customer service people business 

Jimmy Lea: works. Yes. Oh, and you know what I just heard there was you had sales training. You had sales training, this is what we pitched, this is what we want to have. You had to study the menu, then you had management training, and then you got some leadership training. And then it was like business ownership training where you're having to order all the inventory and all those things.

Jimmy Lea: I love it. What kind of restaurant was it? 

Tim Chakarian: Being Armenian. It was our Armenian restaurant. It was called the Armenian Cafe, and we had kebabs and chicken and salads and humus and, you know. And,

Jimmy Lea: did you ever 

Tim Chakarian: cook? Were you ever chef? No. I'm I can cook here and there, but if you like your food chard, then let me cook it.

Jimmy Lea: Well, we, you know, when you do chard, it takes out all the calories, so then you can eat whatever you want. 

Tim Chakarian: Johanna's a much better cook. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay. Well, very good. Well, and are you cooking Armenian as well, Johanna? 

Johanna Reichert: You know what I do? I do try some dishes, but there's some things I won't try because I know I'll never live up to his mother's cooking when it comes to that.

Johanna Reichert: And I'll leave that. That's hard. But I do some simple dishes and it's really good. It's healthier food too, so it's, I like that. 

Jimmy Lea: Love it. Love it. Rocky took me out to dinner and we went and had some Armenian food f phenomenal amazing. Life changing. It was so good. I just can't wait to do it again.

Jimmy Lea: Okay. From there onto BMW. You're working at the dealership you're a tech, you're doing tires, you're doing the whole thing. At how long were you at the BMW dealership? 

Tim Chakarian: I spent about 10 years there. When I first came in, I came in as an apprentice, and that's really what I liked is because I'm not gonna lie, I was intimidated.

Tim Chakarian: You know, BMWs are complex and you know, they have electrical issues 

Jimmy Lea: and 

Tim Chakarian: so I was very blessed to go into a mentoring program with the shop foreman. And I basically became the shop foreman's pet. And whatever he told me to do, I would do. And let me tell you, he was not easy on me, Jimmy. I mean, I got my butt handed to me one day because it was 10 Newton meters, not 10 pounds.

Tim Chakarian: And you know the difference between 10 Newton meters and 10 foot pounds? 

Jimmy Lea: I don't, but it sounds metric in standard. 

Tim Chakarian: Three foot pounds and you would've thought it was the end of the world. 'cause I tightened the gasket. But the, what I learned at that time, or what I learned now that at the time I was getting my tooth handed to me was three pounds.

Tim Chakarian: Is the difference between the gasket lasting 80,000 miles and the customer having reliability and you doing the job again a year or two or three years down the line. Oh my gosh, isn't amazing. So attention to detail was the bottom line. The attention to detail, that is it.

Johanna Reichert: Yeah, he started in 99 when the dealerships were a little bit different than they are these days. They had an apprenticeship program and I think that was key because you know, they're willing to take on people and to train them and to give them a mentor. I feel like they don't do that these days, which is actually in our.

Johanna Reichert: Our advantage because it helps us to make a better shop culture and a better culture for people coming into the industry. 'cause you can't, it's very difficult to just, you know, leave school and go straight into a dealership and be able to hold your own and not feel overwhelmed or not have them just kind of, you know, treat you like a number basically.

Johanna Reichert: So he was actually fortunate to get in when they were less like that. And so they did. Yeah. You know, I'm sure they treat a little bit like a number, honey, but, you know, they gave him a mentor. They gave him somebody to train him and teach him and pass along their skills to him.

Johanna Reichert: And so he really did benefit from that because of when he started. 'cause in that day and age, that was, you know, a little bit more normal than it, than, it's not normal these days for I feel dealerships to, to give their younger tech mentors and people to look up to and to train them and to teach them their experience.

Tim Chakarian: They don't, yeah, the. I worked my way from being a certified tech to a diagnostic tech to being a master tech. And when I finally was a master tech at a local dealer here they gave me an apprentice and I was so excited to be mentoring somebody else. And they're like, in 90 days he's going on the line and fixing cars.

Tim Chakarian: And I was like, 90 days. I was an apprentice for 18 months and I still didn't know Jack. So in today's era now. Recently they have kind of changed and understood that, you know, these guys are not successful. They're not setting them up for success. They're actually setting them up for failure. So finally, after all these years, they're going back to a mentoring program where somebody does watch over them, but it's not the same it doesn't have the same personal touch.

Tim Chakarian: And I'm sure we're gonna get into that, but that's was the growth part. You know, if we're looking at it from the time where I was at the dealership, that was a growth part. The part that had meaning for me was always worked under Mark, or I always worked under Steve. You know, Steve was a, he wasn't as old as Mark, he was closer to my age.

Tim Chakarian: But man, that kid could fix anything. He could weld brackets, solve problems, ac, so it was like. This dude's my idol, you know? And years later you progress and learn from that. You go to another dealer, you find another mentor, somebody else that takes you under their wing. And all of these experiences help build beliefs.

Tim Chakarian: Beliefs that we can do this, we can tackle anything. And, you know, guiding it into what we're learning today, those experiences, those truth tapes. Those are what built the foundation, the second foundation of what I'm experiencing to be able to mentor others in my shop. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. You got such a solid foundation there working at BMW and then at some point you, with that solid foundation, you decided, oh, you know what?

Jimmy Lea: I want to go and create my own. And so you opened up a shop. And how long of you being on your own with a bucket and a wrench and a phone and a computer, are you doing this on your own that Joanna joins the team? Because I know that there was a time period that she was doing the after hours books and then finally came on to the full-time.

Jimmy Lea: What does that look like? 

Johanna Reichert: About six months. 

Tim Chakarian: Yeah, about six months. I had left the dealership and I was doing everything on my own. We, I rented a, an 1800 square foot back shop and I opened the door, I dropped the customer off, I picked up the parts, I washed the car, I did everything myself. And it was only a matter of time until, you know, there's so much, these two hands can get done in one eight hour.

Tim Chakarian: Oh yeah. At the time, Johanna was still she was a mail carrier at the post office, so she said, you know what? I believe in you. I'll take care of the bills at home. You just concentrate on building the business and, you know, do what you need to do. And yeah, there's we had one weekend we had gone dirt bike riding and she did a wheelie on the trail and bashed up her knee.

Tim Chakarian: And after that she got some time off from the post office and, so she said, you know what, we're always talking on the phone. Why don't I come help you out in the shop? And I was like, perfect. So she came, thank you. Started answering the phones, helping me with the paperwork and you know, you wanna tell about your very first experience of answering the phone?

Tim Chakarian: My first 

Johanna Reichert: phone experience? Yeah. And I'm. I'm not an extrovert. I know you know me fairly well, so it doesn't seem like that, but I'm a little shy and a little bit quiet and kind of to myself when it, when I first meet people, so Tim's like, I need to answer the phone. And I was like, I don't know how to answer the phone.

Johanna Reichert: And he's like, just pick it up and say PhD. And I literally, I picked up the phone and I froze and I went, I can't. I put it on hold and I handed it to Tim, like the customer must have thought I was crazy, but I literally like, I can't do this. And then I gave it back to him. But now you would have no idea that was my beginning.

Johanna Reichert: In the shop. I, now you, yeah there's a night and day difference, but I just have to get used to things and acclimate myself to them to become more confident with them. 

Tim Chakarian: Now she trains all of our new guys and our service advisors on our outline of how to answer the phone. You know, thanks for calling Bemer PhD.

Tim Chakarian: This is Johanna who may have the pleasure of speaking with, and that way we can start engaging on the relationship part of it. But yeah, I mean, you love, you gotta start somewhere and all these. You know, inexperiences are part of the journey of who they build, the character of who we are today and how the future looks in our industry from, based upon the experiences and the lessons that you've had in life.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, for so, so for sure. So, so you've had this great trail. You come together, you're building the business. You're now hiring more people, more technicians coming in. At what point did you discover, oh my gosh, we need to work on our culture.

Tim Chakarian: The culture I think came from when, so from the backdrop, our landlord came up to us what about two and a half years into it and said, Hey, you know what the front building was a parts house and it was about a 3,400 square foot. Square building. It had parts in it and the guy had been there 25 years.

Tim Chakarian: So, when Albert retired the landlord came up to me and said, you're so busy back here that you have to take both buildings or move out. Go get another shop. And it was like, whoa. Oh my gosh. Another huge milestone in our lives. Right? So 

Jimmy Lea: it was a big 

Tim Chakarian: gulp. Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely. But you know, every time life throws you lemons, you make lemonade.

Tim Chakarian: So that's what we did. We built the front shop. We added three lifts. We made the, we built an office for ourselves. We built a waiting area, put windows in so that the clients can see inside. And now we had to fill it with some bodies. And unfortunately, I. I was not a people person at the time, you know, and I tell the story of I got into cars because I love fixing cars, but I didn't really like people 'cause the car did what I wanted it to do versus 

Johanna Reichert: car doesn't talk back.

Tim Chakarian: Car doesn't talk back. I used to say, right. Occasionally they do, but Right. But what a long ways from, you know, today I understand it's about the people. Yeah, I can fix the car. But it's more about the people now. Yeah. 

Johanna Reichert: I think we learned along the way that, just jumping into this from being a mail carrier and a technician and really knowing nothing about leadership and running a business, which happens quite a lot with shop owners.

Johanna Reichert: It's usually just a technician or a service advisor who decided that they can do it better than the dealer did, and so they kind of jump in with both feet, which, you know, it's a lot of bravery, but there's a lot that you don't know and you don't know that you don't know it. So when we first started up the shop, I don't think we had a bad culture, but I don't think anyone really knew anything about it.

Johanna Reichert: And then, you know, being a shop owner, you get, you have frustrations throughout the day and you're the one worried about the finances and making the ends meet. And so you can be stressed out and you can. Can, your attitude and your mind frame can bleed into the staff and you don't even really realize it because you're kind of caught in your own world.

Johanna Reichert: And so we just kind of started realizing from feedback from, you know, our staff that maybe the way we were handling things and dealing with things personally. Because, you know, it's hard to work together, live together, do everything together, just constantly be around each other. It's not I don't think we were meant to do that.

Johanna Reichert: So, you know, that can take a toll on you if you don't know how to handle it correctly. It can affect things. So, we started taking leadership training. We started taking management training. We started taking any kind of training that we could possibly find which I feel like maybe five, 10 years ago that wasn't as readily available.

Johanna Reichert: It was all technician training and service advisor training, which don't get me wrong. We did find the service advisor training very beneficial. One of our first technical trainings was when Cecil was working with worldpac and he had the Service Advisor Academy, and we took his class two clients and we got so much out of it, not just for service advising, but you know, he talked about personality types and things like that.

Johanna Reichert: Now granted, he talked about that when it came to customers, but that's also applicable when you're dealing with employees, learning what kind of personality type you are what kind of people you're dealing with. So how to 

Tim Chakarian: communicate with those personalities. Yeah. So I think 

Johanna Reichert: that's kind of where we started to realize that, use some of that information in the shop as well and try and benefit that.

Johanna Reichert: I used to tell Tim we would go to summits and, you know, trainings and I used to tell him, look at what we did by accident. Imagine what we can do with actual proper training. And so yeah, I think that's where we started realizing, start building a culture, start building a place where people actually want to work because you know, I used to work at the post office, and don't get me wrong, it wasn't a bad job, but you had service, not service advisors, supervisors who were who had mine, not my power trips.

Johanna Reichert: And you know, they just loved having the power. And you were just like, dude, I don't wanna deal with this. I just wanna go and do my job and enjoy myself and go home and have a good life. I don't want to have stress and. Dread going into work and dealing with certain personalities and certain people and all that.

Johanna Reichert: So you kind of start realizing in your own workplaces. Now we're creating a. You know, these people, sorry, we're creating this atmosphere. People are coming in and Yes, and working for us. We're creating jobs and lives for these people to have incomes and live in California, which is not easy. And have families and, you know, have homes and things along those lines.

Johanna Reichert: And I don't want them to be miserable coming in to do it. So we want, our main thing now is that we really want people to enjoy working here and create a really good comradery. And so we've done a lot of 

Jimmy Lea: different 

Johanna Reichert: things to kind of get into that, but I'm sure you're gonna ask us about that down the line.

Jimmy Lea: And that's gonna be my next question here. So, but first I wanna say thank you for pointing out, look what we did by accident, but imagine what we could do on purpose. I. Focus. 

Johanna Reichert: I've said that to him multiple times. Back in the day, I was just shocked. Like I, I was shocked because I was proud of the fact that we had done so well and it really was accidentally, I mean, it was through a whole lot of hard work, but it was without knowledge.

Johanna Reichert: Right? It was without having the pre knowledge of, Hey, I went and got an MBA in business, or, you know, whatever. We didn't have any of that. And yet we were, you know, we were being pretty successful and we were, we created seven jobs for other people other than ourselves. There's nine, including Tim and myself.

Johanna Reichert: So that's something to be pretty proud of. And we did it completely without any kind of education. So imagine, you know, with a little bit more education and training, imagine how much better we can be. 

Jimmy Lea: I love it. Okay, so now you get this training. Now you're going down this road of purpose. We're gonna do this on purpose.

Jimmy Lea: We're gonna create this culture on purpose. What are those five elements, those five pillars that you've identified, Tim, that, or Joanna, that you guys work on in your shop? What are those five pillars? I. 

Tim Chakarian: Well, I think it starts with leadership, right? Everything rises and falls with leadership. So understanding, like Johanna said, the mindset that we're in before we come to work, are we in that positive mindset?

Tim Chakarian: Are we solution-based and can we have a positive influence on the team? Starts with you, and I wasn't necessarily. Trained on that until we started going into the groups program and seeing how other shops are doing it and seeing the success, seeing how you can actually implement this. Because again, being text textile, hand driven, textile.

Tim Chakarian: Textile, thank you. That I have to see it in the works. Right. So, yeah. Now I understood. Okay, cool. In order to have a productive team, I need to be having meetings. I need to be getting experiences out and teaching them this is the right way, this is the wrong way, instead of putting it on them and expecting them to know, right?

Tim Chakarian: Everybody wants that perfect tech. The heavens are gonna open and the perfect child is gonna fall out of the sky and he is gonna know every single thing about cars and BMWs. It ain't gonna happen. You have to grow. That is not gonna happen. And the way to do that is to constantly have clear goals.

Tim Chakarian: The way we have clear goals, clear definitions, is to meet with people regularly, you know, have a weekly meeting. So we started implementing the weekly meeting, and I didn't know what to talk about in the weekly meeting, so we're like, so how was your week? What did you do? What's, you know, what's going on?

Tim Chakarian: And then we started learning, oh God, there's an outline of things we should be talking about. 

Johanna Reichert: We joined a few boards too. We just, we joined some voluntary boards for associations in California, the A-S-C-C-A, and we got to see how a meeting's run. And then Tim's like, well, why don't we take the agenda that we have from the board meeting and try to kind of use it as a template.

Johanna Reichert: In our meeting with the shop. And then that way, instead of just, Hey guys, what's going on this week? Oh, I don't know. What do you think? What's going on? You know, nobody has anything to add because they don't know what the structure is. So Tim's like, finally structure. And at first I was like, oh man, more work.

Johanna Reichert: But then we, you know, we just kind of made a little template of like a manager's report and an administrator's report and a service advisor's report and a technician's report, and then it's just kind of, it kind of grew from there. So like it 

Jimmy Lea: evolved. 

Johanna Reichert: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, Tim would share. What he feels is going on.

Johanna Reichert: And then our service advisor who turned into our service manager, he we share the numbers every week with our guys. Like, how do we do last week? What was our sales? What was our average repair order? Did we meet our goal? You know, just the numbers of everything that goes on for the week.

Johanna Reichert: And then the technicians like to see, you know, who got better productivity. We pass around a little report and they all like to look at their hours and see who got you know, who got hours and which ones. And it's a friendly competition. I've never seen anybody get upset or frustrated with anybody.

Johanna Reichert: It's always just kind of done and fun. And so, you know, we, they enjoy seeing that and seeing how they're doing and seeing if the goals are being met. And that helps. And then, you know, I'll it's a good place to say, Hey, what's needed in the shop? Is there a piece of equipment that's broken down or needs maintenance, or we need to bring in somebody to work on it.

Johanna Reichert: Is there a shop supply that we've run out of? Is there something that we're not aware of that needs attention? And then that actually grew from, from just verbally doing it. And then we'd write it down on the agenda and then we'd forget about it till the next week. 'cause we'd get busy and then we'd look at the agenda and go, oh crap, we didn't do this.

Johanna Reichert: We said we needed to do it. So then we evolve that. Do you wanna talk about the action? 

Tim Chakarian: Yeah. And then also in the groups program with the Gear Performance Groups program we're in. We hold each other accountable in that program. Right. Our awesome group facilitator is Jennifer Holbert and man, she is on top of it.

Tim Chakarian: She's, 

Johanna Reichert: when I grow up, I wanna be Jennifer. Yeah. 

Tim Chakarian: She is just absolutely amazing and we learn so much from her, from Erin, from the other shops in our groups, and we learn to hold each other accountable. And how we do that is we use a platform that the institute has that's called, that's the institute's created, called the Actualizer.

Tim Chakarian: What do you wanna accomplish? Who do you wanna accomplish it with? By when do you want to accomplish it? And what is the status of that? So we started implementing that not only in our groups program, but also in the shop what needs to be fixed. 

Johanna Reichert: We asked permission first. 

Tim Chakarian: Of course. And so, oh yeah.

Tim Chakarian: And recently, Kent has created one specifically for shops, for those in the groups program. So now we can go ahead and our team puts down what we need to accomplish by when do we need to do it? Who's in charge of that, and when is it gonna be done by? What's the progress? It's not meant to say, why didn't you do it, but more so not to have that, oh, I showed up to a meeting not doing what I need to do.

Tim Chakarian: Because you do that once or twice and your self-motivation, your self-accountability now kicks in and you go, all right, well, I don't wanna let my team down. I don't wanna let my members down. I don't wanna let my boss down. More importantly, I don't wanna let myself down. I wanna build self-confidence, you know, so that I know I can accomplish the things that I set to accomplish.

Tim Chakarian: And that gives me the dopamines, the feel goods. 

Johanna Reichert: You know what I love is that at first, you know, it started with us, right? We're the ones like, Hey, we should start doing this. And then, you know, they were open to it. They didn't resist us, but it wasn't theirs. They didn't own it. So it was like, okay, we'll go along with it and kind of see how it goes.

Johanna Reichert: So then, right, I'm along 

Jimmy Lea: for the ride. I'll buy a ticket. Yeah. Okay. I'm in. Yeah, 

Johanna Reichert: exactly. And then what? So we used it for the first quarter. Then when the second quarter came along, it was getting long, so I was like, maybe we should make a second one for a second quarter. So I made one for the second quarter, so it was a little bit shorter 'cause all the things that were done, we didn't need to worry about that anymore.

Johanna Reichert: So I made one for the second quarter and then now what I love is we've had something that's been on our agenda for, a couple weeks that we haven't gotten to. And then my my shop foreman in training goes, Hey, you know, I think we should add this to the actualizer now. And I was like, yes, I love it.

Johanna Reichert: Go for it. Like it's, I dunno why we didn't think about it. Like we didn't think, oh, maybe we should add it to the action. We keep talking about it but not doing it. And he was like, Hey, I think it's time we add this to the actualizer. And in my head I was like, go James. Like that's what I wanna hear. I want you to be, to start thinking about you know, this is what we should be doing.

Johanna Reichert: This is how we do it. We're not doing this the way you've taught us to do it, and that we've now all got accustomed to doing so, hey, why don't we do that? So it's like, awesome. So now even our team's holding us accountable when we forget the process or we don't always follow the process and that's when you know you're doing a good job and everybody's on board and everybody's bought in because now they're starting to tell you, Hey, this is what we do.

Johanna Reichert: Why don't we do that? It's like, oh, great. Like. I love it. Let's do it. So we did, and I just remember being really impressed by that that he just, on his own, he was like, Hey, we should probably add this to the actualizer. 

Jimmy Lea: Thank you, James. That's amazing. I, to reiterate what you're saying, if you're not having company meetings with purpose, you are having company beatings by accident, not on purpose.

Jimmy Lea: Because those company meetings, you've got an agenda, you've got the actualizer. If you're not, when do you have company meetings? When there's a problem? When there's an issue. So it's a beating, it's not a meeting, it's a beating. And they walk away depressed and disappointed. You've created that environment where they feel safe, they feel a part of the team, and James has that input to say, Hey, you know what, Johanna?

Jimmy Lea: We really should add that. Yeah. So this, 

Johanna Reichert: and he got scared to say that, right? He knows that this is how we do it, this is what we should be doing. 

Tim Chakarian: Jimmy, this was one of the points that Dr. Jessica Kringle brought out at the summit, and that really hit home because I was able to build confidence in what we were doing.

Tim Chakarian: So, so far we've talked about leadership and accountability with the owners, right? We've talked about conducting and having regular meetings that are not time wasting, that are productive. Now comes problem solving, right? Okay, so here's the problem. What are the challenges that we have? What are the solutions and our goals?

Tim Chakarian: And what this is doing is it's building a pyramid. And the pyramid is the experiences that we're having. Again the stories that we're telling that is allowing the staff and ourselves to have those beliefs. This is our vision and mission. This is how we do it. So when we don't align our actions with that, we go back and understand what was our mission, what was our vision?

Tim Chakarian: We were trying to build something that made an impactful difference that was educational and had a excellent result, because that's what we're driven for, right? Fueled by passion, driven to excel is one of our mission statements. Yeah. Oh, I love 

Jimmy Lea: it. 

Tim Chakarian: Quality without compromise is one of our mission statements.

Tim Chakarian: So is the actions that we're as a team producing align with that? If they do, now you have buy-in from the staff, right? So you have the stories, the experiences, you have the beliefs, aligning up our beliefs and the team's beliefs together. Now you have an action. That action can now produce a result once you're able to produce a result.

Tim Chakarian: I think magic happens. They start doing it on their own because now they're self-motivated. I'm not holding, you know, I'm not probing 'em as it were to say, why didn't you do this? Or Why isn't this done on time? You know, it's more like, did we do this? If not, what can I do to help you with that? Is there something that I can help you achieve?

Tim Chakarian: Those goals that we set out together. 

Jimmy Lea: All right. I've got a question. Sure, go ahead. I've got a question about your company meetings. You're having a company meeting once a week, is that right? 

Tim Chakarian: Yes. 

Jimmy Lea: On Wednesday. Is this a Wednesday meeting? 

Tim Chakarian: Yes, that's a Wednesday. Meetings. We shut down the gate closes, you know, the phones go offline.

Tim Chakarian: We don't do anything when a customer walks in, you know, obviously we have the door open for parts deliveries, our front door, and we just let 'em know. Sure. Put parts down on the counter right there. If a client walks in, they automatically walk in and they're like, there's a big screen and they're doing something and everybody's together.

Tim Chakarian: So they're like, oh, did we miss something? And we just kindly tell 'em yeah, we're having a quick staff meeting. Go ahead and leave your keys or your phone number and we'll get right back to you afterward. The purpose of that is to let them know how important this meeting is to us, because that's hundred percent's the foundation of how we build the good customer service, the good teamwork that we're able to provide them afterward.

Jimmy Lea: I totally agree. I love that. So if you're having the meetings once a week, do you also have any sort of a standup meeting and by standup meetings, these are five minutes. You bring the team on the daily, do you have any daily checks, pulse checks with the team? That the team all comes together? Or is it the company meetings on Wednesdays?

Tim Chakarian: No, the daily checks, so we started with eight o'clock James, our junior shop foreman. He'll, when he gets here early, he'll check with Kevin, our service manager to see what's on the agenda for the docket for today. How many appointments are coming in? Are they jobs? Which jobs should be going to which technician?

Tim Chakarian: We've got two level a technicians. We've got a level B technician. We've got a C technician and an apprentice that's all five of the guys in the back. So he'll kind of de decide how the day looks, and then they'll do a check in again at about 11 o'clock. So in the morning it's a, who's gonna get what job?

Tim Chakarian: Delegation, 11 o'clock. Now comes the check-in. Did we get the diagnosis or the testing and analysis done? Are we on point? Because now advisor one's gonna go to lunch at 12. Advisor two's gonna go to lunch at one, everybody comes back. We even during the week, the guys know to shut down. At 12 o'clock, everybody stops working except for the one person answering phones.

Tim Chakarian: And then from there at two o'clock is our next check-in. So eight o'clock, 11 o'clock, two o'clock. And then finally at four o'clock, are we on point to be able to get this car out Because they built role in the shop, 

Jimmy Lea: The eight o'clock, 11 o'clock, two o'clock. Those aren't company meetings. That's quick standups.

Tim Chakarian: Five minute check-ins. Are we on point? Did we hit our mark? Did you put it to a status change? Are you gonna be ready to pass the baton off to the next individual, which is gonna close out the paperwork and make sure that the quality control inspection is done? All the check marks love are identified. If there's a repair that the client didn't buy, did it go into the CRM?

Tim Chakarian: Did it go into what is lost sales? And now the system is gonna reach back out to the client 'cause that's very important. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Oh, that is important. Now to Jason's question, so I was building up here because I was inquiring for myself to Jason's question, which is you have these, he started doing weekly meetings with his technicians on Monday mornings.

Jimmy Lea: How long are your weekly meetings? You guys do lunch? 

Johanna Reichert: We do lunch. We purchase lunch. So per an hour? Yeah, it's an hour. We have one of our, our second service advisor kind of headed out. He figures out what everybody wants to eat. We have a budget of $15 per person, and we figure out where everybody wants to eat, and then we will order it, go pick it up and have lunch at noon.

Johanna Reichert: And it usually goes from noon to one o'clock. And the first 15 minutes we'll spend obviously on eating. And what we'll do is we will choose some kind of training video. One the the tips from the institute were super helpful. We would watch the tips quite often when we went through all of them.

Johanna Reichert: So actually we went through all of 'em and then we kind of went back and listened to a few of 'em that we felt were really good to kind of go over. 

Tim Chakarian: Technician, time management. Yeah. Communication between advisors. This is really the time where the owner let the put your CEO hat on and say, okay, if I'm the owner of this business, how do I wanna cultivate the team mindset?

Tim Chakarian: And this is now how you can use that to mold your team for the first 15 minutes. Because now it's, we call it, it's part of lunch and learn. Right. So 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, we learned. What we're gonna be educating ourselves on. And then we'll go ahead and start the meeting agenda. And it's, we try to keep it to about an hour max 15, I'm a little bit of a chatter, so 

Johanna Reichert: Tim sometimes goes over, give or 

Tim Chakarian: take 15 minutes, 

Johanna Reichert: but that first 15 minutes we do the training so everybody can eat and not have to worry about talking.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. That way they're listening. They're watching, they're listening. They can eat. To Jason's question, would you be willing to share your meeting agenda? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. 

Tim Chakarian: As a matter of fact, I sent a I did a follow up from the last from the summit. There's a quick little video that I created. I'm gonna be putting it on. You saw that as to how to do the meeting, how to set it up, and then there was another one that we created that was 28 minutes. That really had the entire meeting recorded. I, now, I regret not having the lovetts and learns on there because the Lovetts and learns have become my absolute favorite part of the meeting.

Tim Chakarian: Tammy, I think 

Johanna Reichert: it's everybody's favorite part. 

Jimmy Lea: Then we need to record one of those. 

Johanna Reichert: Ha, yeah, definitely. 

Jimmy Lea: Okay, so now to Betty's question. She's asking why are you doing your meetings on a Wednesday? Shouldn't it be like a Monday or a Friday type of deal? What why did you choose Wednesday? Which I'm inquiring as well.

Tim Chakarian: Good question. Wednesday's a good middle point because we want self-accountability. So if we have it on Monday, you kind of lose that steam, as it were. So from Wednesday to Wednesday gives you enough time because when you come in on Monday. It's a written agenda. You know what you ought to be doing.

Tim Chakarian: So when I come in on Monday as an owner, I know these are my management and marketing things. I gotta do Management Mondays, marketing Mondays as an owner, this is what I gotta do. So if I'm acting this way, then the staff is acting this way as well. So they go, okay, cool. What did I, what promise did I make on the last Wednesday meeting that on Monday I gotta start acting on.

Tim Chakarian: On Tuesday, if I, let's say I'm offbeat, right? Monday. Monday I did. I wasn't on point on Monday. Now I have Tuesday to be able to go, oh yeah, I said I was gonna run to Home Depot and get X, Y, and Z, right? Because when Wednesday comes now, you gotta have committed to what you're doing. Oh, by the way, we don't conduct the whole meeting.

Tim Chakarian: We have our, James our shop foreman. He is the secretary as it were. So he'll start the meeting on time. We have a timekeeper who keeps the time, and then you'll, he'll give a I'll do a operations and managers report. Johanna will do an administrator and HR safety report, and then he'll go back to James.

Tim Chakarian: Then he'll switch it on over to. Kevin, who's our service manager, and Kevin's basically he go, goes over the financials, Hey guys, this was our goal for last week. Like Johanna said, what was our gross profit? Dollar per hour. What's our a RO? You know, how are we doing? Who needs assistance to do what?

Tim Chakarian: We use the dashboard of the institute to understand where our numbers are. Johanna and I set the goals at the beginning of the month, and then the staff weekly works towards achieving that goal. So Wednesday gives you a good middle point to make sure to stay on your schedule, stay on point so that you can get to what you need to, and it still gives them the freedom without us having to micromanage and, you know, get all into their business.

Tim Chakarian: Self-accountability. Yeah. 

Johanna Reichert: To, oh, I love that. A better answer. Betty's question too. Wednesday works for us. It gives Kevin time to put the numbers together. Mondays are usually super busy for us. Fridays are really busy for us, so I feel like if we try to put a meeting in on a Monday maybe, but Friday it would just be disastrous 'cause there's so much going on Fridays.

Johanna Reichert: Everybody wants their car back before the end of the weekend. So that would just be, for us, it would be too difficult. But I would say. Do whatever works best for your shop? Our shop does run a little bit differently than a lot of shops we're very heavy on upsells and keeping cars in for a little bit more than a day.

Johanna Reichert: We're, we don't often like, get you in, get you out immediately 'cause. You know, we do inspections. We try to let you know what's going on with your car. We try to see if we can get you know, upsells and things along those lines. So, a lot of times we have cars in for multiple days. So we're not an In-N-Out shop, so I feel like In-N-Out shops it might be a little bit easier to do a different day.

Johanna Reichert: This just works out for our shop. So I would say kind of see what works out best for your shop. It's just kind of how it works for us, but I'd say check out and see how your workflow goes and everything, and then kind of choose accordingly from there. 

Jimmy Lea: I was gonna a hundred percent say exactly what you just did.

Jimmy Lea: Thank you, Joanna. What works for your shop? That's exactly it. Wednesdays work for you, Betty. Maybe for you it might be a Monday or it might be a Friday, who knows? Yeah. For Bimmer PhD it's Wednesday. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. 

Tim Chakarian: And Jimmy, we can use this as a tool as well. I'll give you a quick example of it. When we were hiring Jesse, our second service advisor.

Tim Chakarian: We tried something a little bit different this time. You know, we do have a, motto in, in the shop. We hire together, we train together, we fire together. You know, so we all do everything for each other. One, one for all and all for one. Love it. So when we're attracting you talent for example, you know, Jesse applied with us.

Tim Chakarian: He was working at the local BMW dealer. I wanted him to come meet the team, right? So we invited him for our Wednesday meeting so he can see how our. Team meshes together how we play together, how we get along, and he came in and I introduced him to the team. The techs got to meet him. So it's not like this.

Tim Chakarian: Who's this new guy that the owner hired? Are you gonna take my job? Who's getting fired? Blah, blah, blah. It eliminates all of that because it now shows how united and the culture that we have, what is acceptable, what is not acceptable. So it starts acclimating from day one, new hires, and believe me, from the work environment that we see around us.

Tim Chakarian: It's 180 degree difference, and it was like after the meeting, I got a text message from Jesse that said, when do I start? 

Jimmy Lea: Right. That's the only question. I mean, it 

Tim Chakarian: just shows, you know, how strong the culture is when you work at building it together. And we're not shy. If you're new to our team, you know you're gonna do a love it and learn as well.

Johanna Reichert: Yeah, I usually ask somebody who's visiting. We have a lot of shops ask if they can send their service advisors, their managers, their, you know, kind of their higher up people, key players. Yeah. Yeah. They will actually act often or even themselves. We have a lot of shop owners that will come and visit with us.

Johanna Reichert: And they'll come for a Wednesday meeting and we just include them. We get them lunch as well, and we kind of show them what we do and they're usually blown away. So we, that happens quite often. Yeah. I dunno why I started that, but it's been useful. People really find it to be. Very useful to their shops too.

Jimmy Lea: Are you asking the guests to give the lunch and learn as well? Yes. 

Johanna Reichert: Yes. Oh, absolutely. You ask them, I say, Hey, I don't wanna put you on the spot. Thank you for reminding me. I say, Hey I don't wanna put you on the spot, but this is what we do. So let me explain the love and learns, 'cause we kind of talked about it but not really explained it.

Johanna Reichert: So we like to end the meeting on something, not that it's not positive, but something really positive. Right? Something fun. So, Tim actually started it out and so basically we like them to tell us one thing that they loved about the prior week and one thing that they've learned in the prior week.

Johanna Reichert: And at first we would just do it verbally and everybody was really uncomfortable because nobody had time to think about it. And then we'd be like, oh no, like, who wants to go first? And nobody would want to go first because we'd be like who's think who could think of something quickly enough? And then some people would be like, I can't think of anything.

Johanna Reichert: And it was, I remember I would always feel on the spot 'cause I would have a hard time thinking of something. So then what we changed it to is we would have them, we would give 'em a slip of paper and it says. Your name, love it. Love form, love it. And learn and just write down your love it and learn before the meeting.

Johanna Reichert: That way you don't have to worry about coming up with something at the meeting. And then I wanted to make it a little bit more fun and I thought, well, how about we, well, two things. I wanted to make it more fun. Number one, I thought it would be nice to recognize somebody for doing something good in the shop.

Johanna Reichert: Yeah. So we now it's love it and learn and recognition. So I add an extra line recognition. So if somebody you know, you're a technician and you're having a hard time diagnosing something, and another technician came in and said. Hey, what about this and this? Why don't you try this? And gave him a little clue or gave him some advice or helped him to diagnose it?

Johanna Reichert: Well, he may say, Hey, I wanna recognize this technician for coming over and helping me when I was trying to diagnose this car. Or we have like a shop Porter, who's kind of like our apprentice as well. He like learns how to keep the shop clean and the flow of the shop, but also he's learning how to work on cars and maintenance and things like that.

Johanna Reichert: So a lot of times people will recognize him because of the fact that, you know, he keeps the shop flow going and he is trying to help out and he is trying to, you know, anticipate what the technicians need so that they can be a little bit more productive. So it's nice for to have the recognition so that way you can feel good about recognizing somebody who did something good for you.

Johanna Reichert: Then to make it one step more fun. I got this little, I went on Amazon and I found this little tire candy dish and it has a little cover and we put a little BM BMW rondell on it, so it's a little tire. And then I have everybody do their lovetts and learns and recognitions beforehand. We fold it up really small.

Johanna Reichert: I shake it up and it's almost like a secret santa, so I pass it around and say, somebody choose one. Make sure you don't get your own. So now you don't even have to read your own. So everybody, so. You know, Tim will be like, okay, I got James'. And he'll read what James loved about the week, what he learned in the week, and who he recognized.

Johanna Reichert: And so we all go around and we all read another person's love it and learn. So it's just kind of fun. Everybody enjoys doing it. It's a fun way to end the meeting, a positive way to end the meeting. And then James will puts James, who's a secretary. He'll put together who won who got the most recognitions.

Johanna Reichert: And then another shop, when we were telling 'em about this, they said, Hey, you know what you should do with that? You should at the end of the quarter find out who got the most recognitions and then give them some kind of reward. And we were like, that's a great idea. So we're gonna do done. We're still talking about like what the reward should be.

Johanna Reichert: We're thinking like maybe like 

Tim Chakarian: last week we a 

Johanna Reichert: bonus or last 

Tim Chakarian: week we threw it out to the team. Yeah. And we said, what do you guys want to see? And, you know, the consensus I got was a paid day off would be nice. You know, a hundred or $200 bonus would be nice. Yeah. So we were thinking 

Johanna Reichert: for the quarter we'll do a bonus of some sort and then whoever won it for the year, we'll give them an extra day off paid day off the next, the following year.

Johanna Reichert: And everybody liked that again. Love it. So, yeah, it's, oh my gosh, it's just kind of fun. It's, everybody enjoys it. It's a nice way to end the meeting and to, on an uplifting and positive point and it, everybody kinda looks forward to it. 

Jimmy Lea: That is awesome 

Tim Chakarian: and if I can add to it, cool. What that really does for me is it for the moment while that person's reading it, it gives you the opportunity to put yourself in that person's shoes, right?

Tim Chakarian: The love it and learns actually came from John Maxwell. I'm a big John Maxwell fan, and John Maxwell would always say, you should take some time to reflect. At the end of the week, we're going a hundred miles an hour. What does. The experience that you had mean to you? What was a real takeaway that you had that you really loved?

Tim Chakarian: And I'll give you an example. Our seed technician, Shane, he's super awesome. He's 21 years old. He's been an apprentice for 18 months and then now he is doing another 18 months learning to be a, a. A C technician being able to do parts replacement. So he was doing a transmission rebuild, right? So his little alert was, make sure you drain the fluid before you take the pump out first.

Tim Chakarian: And the reason that came about is because, you know, he's young, he is inexperienced. He didn't know he took the bolts out and all the fluid leaked out. And so that's what he put in his loves, love, learn it. His learns, he put, I love the fact that I was able to rebuild the transmission. My learn is make sure you drain the fluid before you take the pump out.

Tim Chakarian: And my recognition is to James for helping me put the transmission back together and that it runs. And for that moment, you just see it from his point of view and you think. You know.

Tim Chakarian: Have opened up an opportunity. But as owners, it's not our job to do the job. It's your job to provide jobs and teach them to be able to do the job and they love it. And that gives me such a warm feeling. It's the same feeling that I get when I put the car together and I press that start stop button or turn the key, you know, it's running on its own.

Tim Chakarian: It's better and everybody's working together in a way that. The customers really see that. 

Jimmy Lea: They can see it, they can feel it, they can sense it, they can smell it, they can absorb it, they can touch it. You can, it's paddle pool in shops when you know that it's a good environment or a toxic environment.

Jimmy Lea: I've been in shops all over North America and it is absolutely. Paramount. So what I, here's a question for you as we wind up this hour. I can't believe it's already been an hour, by the way. Okay. What advice would you give to shop owners that are struggling to maintain a culture in their company, in their shops when they're trying to grow their teams, they're struggling to maintain culture struggl.

Jimmy Lea: What advice would you give them? 

Tim Chakarian: I would say there's two ways that you can approach it. There's two beliefs. There's the blame it on everybody else belief, which is, let's just wait and see what happens. And it's not my fault. I didn't know, you know, and we'll call that below the line thinking, right?

Tim Chakarian: It's not me. It wasn't me. It was it's blame, it's victim. Yeah. Right. Or there's the above the line thinking, right. And this is the belief that I can do this. So we need to start with, do you see it? Do you own it? Are you able to solve the problem yourself and what needs to be done about it? And this way, what it does is it believe it, it builds a self accountability system because now the person, whoever, whether it's the owner, the service advisor, all the way down to the shop helper, right?

Tim Chakarian: What was your contributing factor? How did you own the solution and how, what else could you try differently? To make it work for the team and then now that builds you the confidence to be able to go, I can do it. And once you get to that point, now you can help somebody else with it. So tho those would be the two ways that I see it.

Tim Chakarian: Especially past the summit, I really took away a lot of good points from Dr. Jessica. She was, I urge you guys, if you watching the Carm Capto podcast. Watch that one just came out that she had on there. Yeah. Yeah. Just came out. It was recently. It's very good. And those, it's basically like tools, guys, you open your toolbox or oh, you're always going to the snap-on, or the macro track building tools.

Tim Chakarian: This is your business tools that you're putting in your toolbox. You know, a scanner's no good if you're not using it. So these skills are no good if you're not actually implementing them and trying them, and you're gonna fail at first. But what do they say if at first you don't succeed? 

Johanna Reichert: Try again.

Tim Chakarian: Keep trying. Yep. I would 

Johanna Reichert: say it's so true. Build your vision and your mission and your purpose. 

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yes. 

Johanna Reichert: What kind culture do you want in your shop? And once you've created that with yourself or you and your business partner, or you and your manager. Figure out what it is that you want that culture to be, and then you need to share that culture with your team.

Johanna Reichert: Or you know what, you can even include your team on it. Hey, I feel like maybe we can improve our culture here. What do you, what kind of culture would you like to see? Yeah. In the shop? And then get the, 'cause that actually creates buy-in. So sometimes that's even better. So you wanna have a conversation with them, you wanna include them, you want them to.

Johanna Reichert: Be on board with you. And then the hard part about creating a good culture in your shop is if you have a person who's not on board with your culture. They might be a high producer, they might be a high seller, but if they're not on board with your culture or they're toxic in your shop it's really hard to let those kinds of people go.

Johanna Reichert: But you usually find out afterwards that you're much better off without them and even sometimes your people who you thought weren't. As good producers, either salesmen or technicians they will usually rise because before they were being held back by that toxic person, sometimes those people percent rise and you'll be floored how talented they are.

Johanna Reichert: There was one shop that we knew that had two service advisors. The one service advisor was, he was a star. He would sell everything, but he was a little bit toxic. Not crazy toxic, but a little bit toxic. They finally got rid of him. And the second service advisor who they thought was just kind of average, oh my goodness.

Johanna Reichert: He rose to the top. He is amazing. He's there, he's still their number one service advisor. And I see him all the time at like our meetings and stuff. 'cause he is local here in, in our area in Southern California. And he is the nicest, sweetest guy. And he is making them all kinds of sales and the shop's happier and everything.

Johanna Reichert: So, I would say that start with your mission, vision, and purpose. Figure out what you want the culture to be with your shop. Make sure everybody's on board with it. If they're not on board with it, you need to get rid of them. Because if you start showing some employees that you're willing to put up with people not being on board, then why was, why?

Johanna Reichert: Why would the people who are willing to be on board feel like they need to be on board? Well, you're not making the other person be on board, so why do I need to worry about it? And then when you're hiring, you need to start hiring for your culture. 'cause if you're gonna hire, you need to make sure that those people fit into your culture.

Tim Chakarian: And you know what will happen? Jimmy is the bad apple Betty was talking about. The bad it takes one, the bad Apple will find his way out because he'll see that one of these things doesn't belong like Sesame Street. Back to the basics. One of these things doesn't belong and you can hide. But ultimately you know, we had a scenario where we had somebody that had to go and the team said, Hey, they gotta go.

Tim Chakarian: Wow. They took the initiative to say, this is not good for us. It's not good for you. And. This is a decision, and it was one of the more quiet members of our team, and we listened. Interesting. When it changed, we were all like, wow, now you give a lot more admonition to the person that rose to that occasion to say like, wow, that was really brave of you to, you know, call that person out on their mistake.

Tim Chakarian: Yeah. Or their outcome as it were. And so, or 

Johanna Reichert: their attitude. Or their attitude, and that employee would act differently around us than they would around 

Tim Chakarian: correct 

Johanna Reichert: the rest of the staff. So we necessarily didn't see it. But because we listened to our staff, we saw that they weren't a correct person in our culture.

Tim Chakarian: So it's all, it's nonstop ever-growing teamwork. Jimmy 

Jimmy Lea: Evergreen. Yes. Ever-growing? Yeah. For sure. Thank you so much for sharing. I've got some I wanna go to some quick one word answers, rapid fire culture questions for you. You ready for this? Joanna, you answered first favorite, and then Tim. Okay. Okay, so, and you got five seconds to answer and then I go on to the next question.

Jimmy Lea: Culture in one word. Joanna. 

Johanna Reichert: Atmosphere. 

Jimmy Lea: Tim. Belief. Your leadership style. Joanna. 

Tim Chakarian: Chill. 

Jimmy Lea: Tim. 

Tim Chakarian: Clear communication.

Jimmy Lea: It's two words, but I'll still take it. Most important value in a team. 

Johanna Reichert: Comradery. 

Jimmy Lea: Love it.

Jimmy Lea: Ethics.

Jimmy Lea: Ethics. Oh, I love that. Your shop's vibe. 

Johanna Reichert: Fun. 

Jimmy Lea: Fun. Nice. Biggest culture killer.

Johanna Reichert: Anger, 

Jimmy Lea: deception. Ooh. Yeah that's good. What drives your team 

Johanna Reichert: vision? 

Jimmy Lea: Unity. Love it. One non-negotiable in your shop 

Johanna Reichert: attitude. Good attitude. 

Tim Chakarian: Do the right thing. Love it. Success 

Jimmy Lea: feels 

Tim Chakarian: like.

Johanna Reichert: Making other people successful.

Tim Chakarian: Winning. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for joining today and talking about your company culture. Tim, we didn't even get to talk about your employee that came back and said, I don't care where I work. You could put me under whatever. I don't care. I just want to be here. I guess we 

Tim Chakarian: need a round 

Jimmy Lea: two then.

Jimmy Lea: You, you have established a phenomenal company culture and Tim and Joanna you are. I'm down. Let's do it. We'll do it again. 

Johanna Reichert: Thank you. 

Jimmy Lea: Absolutely. For sure. Thank you so much you guys. 

Johanna Reichert: We appreciate it. Have 

Tim Chakarian: a great day Today we made a lot of the things that we. Successful with the things that we learned from the institute.

Tim Chakarian: So we wanna give a shout out to you and the entire team at the institute, all the coaches, all the people in the background that, you know, some of 'em even get embarrassed when you name them or put 'em on the spotlight. But you know what, if it wasn't for all of those people, we wouldn't be where we're at today.

Tim Chakarian: So together teamworks makes the dream work. 

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true. The final slide that's gonna come up here, it'll be up for about 30 seconds, so get out your smartphone, scan the QR code. Let's connect. Let's see if the institute is a good solution for you to help you have a great foundation to build a company culture that you enjoy, not one that you endure.

Jimmy Lea: With that, thank you very much. 

Jimmy Lea: Have a great day.