Start With A Win - How does Culture affect your Business? With CEO of Christian Brothers Automotive, Donnie Carr

Starting point is 00:00:00 What does it take to start at the bottom and work your way to the top in a great organization in franchising? Today, we find out. Welcome to Start With A Win, where we talk franchising, leadership, and business growth. Let's go. And coming to you from Start With A Win headquarters and Area 15 Ventures, it's Adam Kantos with Start With A Win. Today, I have an awesome guest on. On this episode, we have the honor of hosting Donnie Carr, the president and CEO of Christian Brothers Automotive. It's a franchise company that franchises automotive repair shops. With 18 years of experience within the company, Donnie's journey started as a service writer, and he has since held key roles that contributed to

Starting point is 00:00:43 the growth and success of the franchise. Join us as we dive into his insights on leadership, business, and living a fulfilling life while making a positive impact in the community. Donnie, welcome to Start With a Win. Thanks, Adam. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I just got to start with this. Okay, you're in an automotive franchise. Isn't it ironic that your last name is Carr? It is very ironic, but I will tell you, you do not want me working on your car. Wouldn't go well. All right. Well, it's good to know. You got to run the business though. So let's start with a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about yourself personally.

Starting point is 00:01:22 Where did you grow up? Maybe a few key moments or lessons that you would say prior to Christian Brothers created who we're talking to today. Yeah, I grew up in Houston, Texas. My wife, Beth, and I have been married for 13 years. We have two, I would like to call small people that live with us, my 10-year-old daughter, Harper, and my eight-year-old son, Hank. I would say some of the early on moments that I think, and these probably aren't impressive moments that helped shape me, is one, I like to say that I finished college early. They were done with me and I was done with them.

Starting point is 00:01:57 And so a year and a half into my journey at a university called TCU, I realized that I no longer had a place there. And I think it was through that time of having to figure out, hey, I need to go get a job. I need to figure out life. And I need to pay for things on my own. And I also think it also helped me put a little chip on my shoulder of, man, this is embarrassing. This is a massive failure, and it's something that moving forward I would love to overcome. Did you ever go back? I did not.

Starting point is 00:02:37 So I actually started working. I got turned down by multiple places. I couldn't get a job at Chuck E. Cheese, Adam. I couldn't get a job at TC E. Cheese, Adam. I couldn't get a job at TCBY. And finally Quiznos hired me. I'm not the reason they went bankrupt, but I did that. And then I worked, I had a friend that they were starting some Jimmy John's franchise. And he said, Hey, why don't you go learn their product? You can be a eventually assistant manager and general manager. And I just realized that I learned so much better hands-on. And my dad didn't go to college. I was kind of first generation. My brother did.

Starting point is 00:03:15 But just to really learn and grow. And so I said, hey, you know what? I enjoyed college a little too much, clearly. But this thing, this, this getting in the office or getting behind the, the, the glass at Jimmy John's, um, really helped me kind of learn about the business, what it looked like. Uh, and, and you were forced to grind a little more. That's awesome. You know, it's, it's fascinating because I'm a two-time college dropout myself and, you know, so, uh, power to the people there, Donnie. It's funny. I had to go back and get my MBA because we're a public company in order to get into the C-suite.

Starting point is 00:03:52 With that, the board of directors asked I do that. And I'm like, sure, why not? So I will say going back later on in life is a heck of a lot easier than the first time when you're, you know, we'll just call it distracted by everything, all the other opportunities we have. But anyhow, let's get into your professional career at Christian Brothers. How did you start at Christian Brothers and take us through the path to CEO that you were on there? I started at Christian Brothers. So the gentleman that founded Christian Brothers is actually my dad. My team prefers that I reference him as my daddy. They just feel like

Starting point is 00:04:32 that's more appropriate for what I've, the opportunities I've been given along the way. But so during that time, that time of getting kicked out of college, working at Jimmy John's, doing those things, there was a Christian Brothers in the DFW area, and I wanted to stay in that area with some of the relationships I had made. And so I went to work as a service writer. I'm proud to say that I was one of our lowest paid employees. I was making $400 a week, working 55 hours a week. And it was a great opportunity for me to really get to experience what it's like for our team members in the store day in and day out. And even though it's a five day week, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of effort. And you really got to invest in serving your guests and those around you, which was a really neat experience for me. So I did that for

Starting point is 00:05:22 a year. I then actually joined our home office in 2007. At the time, we had 12 team members in 46 locations. Did that for a little while. And then about five months into my time there, we had a store that was opening in Houston that we had a franchisee back out last minute. And so about 30 days before the store opened, they said, hey, Donnie, we're going to need you to go run that store. I'm in my early twenties at the time, looking back on it. I don't know how that was a good idea. But I went and opened that store, attempted to build a team and a customer base. I skinned my knees a lot, but I really got the second opportunity to learn what it's like for one of our franchisees when they go and open one of these businesses brand new. We didn't have a ton of training at

Starting point is 00:06:10 the time. So I had luckily had some experience in store. And so I leaned on that. But it was a really neat experience that, hey, when a franchisee opens this brand new business, I didn't have the weight of the debt like they did, but all the other scary things that they did experience, I had to go through, which really gave me some good perspective moving forward at the home office. And so did that for close to a year, came back to the home office and kind of grew with the organization on the operational front. Got to be a part of putting our coaching and peer group program together as a director of store performance. Eventually had the opportunity to be our vice president of operations and lead

Starting point is 00:06:52 some of our service development training, some of our recruiting, and continue with that coaching program until eventually in 2018, I had the opportunity to become our president. And then when my daddy retired in 2021 of July, I got to become our president and CEO and attempt to lead this organization. Awesome. Well, taking over in the middle of COVID, you know, congratulations to you on that. Not an easy time to step into the role, but also, you know, kudos to, air quotes again here, Daddy, for growing an amazing business leader in this process. So that's really something special. So for everybody who maybe is unfamiliar, and I can't imagine there's a whole ton out there,

Starting point is 00:07:42 but tell us, what is Christian Brothers Automotive? Yeah, we're a full service automotive repair facility. So we're going to do anything from oil changes to engine replacements. The only thing we really don't do is body work, but we consider ourselves an upscale aftermarket automotive service facility. And so we want you to have a wow experience, whether it's with clean, nice lobbies, whether it's with team members that really want to take care of the guests. We want the guests to be in control of their journey. This is one of a few things in life that they have one of their larger financial investments in. And that's something that we take very seriously as an organization. And so we want to help guide you through that process.

Starting point is 00:08:27 How long are you going to keep this vehicle? What are some of the things that you're using it for? And how can we come alongside you and make sure that it's running and working the way that you want it to? From a larger scale, we have 275 locations in 30 states. And we are amazed that we will do close to about $730 million in revenue as a brand this year. Wow, that's awesome. And the cool thing I really like about Christian Brothers is you guys, you understand the customer. It's not just pull in, get your oil changed, tires changed or whatever, and leave. You guys actually, like you mentioned, you kind of come alongside everybody. And, you know, and that's part of your value proposition is you set up like a service plan and things like that for

Starting point is 00:09:15 the customer. Tell us a little bit about how you take this from just providing a service or a product to making a lifetime experience for the customer. Yeah. And lifetime is exactly right, Adam. We want this to be a long-term relationship. This is not, hey, you're in our lobby. Let's get as much from you as we can right now. We want to do business with you for 10, 20, 30, 40 plus years. And so what that looks like is you bring your vehicle in, you let us know, hey, this is what you're concerned about. And then we offer a courtesy inspection. If you want us to do it, great. If you don't, we don't have to. But if you do, we're going to look over the vehicle. We're going to tell you, hey, here's some safety concerns.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Here's some things that maybe we might want to take care of now. Here are some things that address your concern, what you brought it in for. And then here are some things that you don't necessarily need to do now, but in the future, we just want to make you aware of. Maybe we can revisit them next time you bring the vehicle back to us. Awesome. And a big part of your organization is your culture, right? Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Because running franchise organizations, the hardest thing you have is to translate that culture from the franchise headquarters through the franchisees down into the employees to the customer. What is your culture about and how do you overcome that challenge? Yeah. At the very top level, it is love your neighbor as yourself. We want to make sure that, hey, we want to treat you the same way that we would want to be treated. We want to take care of you at a high level. And so we've kind of broken that down because what does that mean? excellence and joy and then underneath each and every one of those we have four culture

Starting point is 00:11:05 commitments of 16 total that kind of speak directly to who we want to be uh as an organization so i'll give you an example of one of those which is um be what you expect of others right and so at any every level of this organization uh the expectations for you are no different than they are for me. If there's trash on the ground, I'm picking it up just as much as you're picking it up. And so one of my favorite things is we borrowed this from Rich Carlton. We have these little trifolds that have our culture commitments on it, and then they also have our standards of excellence for our stores. So one side is how we treat each other, and the other side is how we treat our guests. And so one of the things that I think we've learned is you got to talk about them all the time.

Starting point is 00:11:55 And not only do you have to talk about them, but you have to embody them. You have to make sure that they're seeing you lead in that manner. And it's something that you got to hold dear and you got to get the entire organization on board with holding everyone accountable and that nobody is above or below who we say that we are as a brand. It's a fascinating concept that Donnie's talking about here, because when you take a look at when organizations start to falter, when they start stagnating or moving backwards or failing, things like that, it's almost always because of the culture. And it's the culture that is set by the leaders in the organization.

Starting point is 00:12:37 Everybody's going to do what the leaders in the organization are doing. We do that through, we mimic through mirror neurons, and we're likely to act as our crowd acts and how the leader of that crowd acts. So Donnie's absolutely right in talking about this. It's really fascinating when you listen to it, because if you struggle in your business to grow your business, to create performance measures that your employees can be held accountable to, and Donnie used the word accountable, as well as do you know when you should continue to promote or develop people or maybe pass them on to the marketplace because they're not performing at this level. When you have set values like Donnie's talking about, this is not as difficult as it might seem because

Starting point is 00:13:22 they're clear to everybody and they're known and they know what the expectations are. Donnie, how do you think these values have separated you and your culture and things of that nature from your competitors? That seems to me like one of the things that set you guys apart extensively. Talk to us about how that differentiates you. Yeah, I think, Adam, one of the biggest things is everyone knows that we are in this for each other. And you can get the kumbaya and all of that. But more importantly, we have all come to understand that the way that we are most successful is when those around us are even more successful, right?

Starting point is 00:14:06 And so if my concern is how do I make sure the eight people or 10 people on my team are better tomorrow than they are today, I as a leader am going to win. Because if I'm sitting here focusing on how to just I get better, then I'm the only one improving. But if those 10 are getting better, and then they're taking the 10 on their team and they're getting better, the trickle effect, the impact that it can have is significant. And so that's one of the things that we talk about all the time here is, hey, nobody here says that's not my job,

Starting point is 00:14:39 even though there's lots of things that aren't our job. And we are focused on, hey, if you need help, if you need us to come alongside of you, if you're falling short in area, how can we bolster you? How can we support you and help you get better? Awesome. So let's jump down to the franchisee level for a second here, which, you know, really that's your business. You're not in the business of auto repair. You're in the business of servicing franchises that are in the business of auto repair. So, you know, and helping develop them. What are the top challenges your franchisees, maybe one to three challenges your franchisees are facing right now, and how are you helping them overcome those? Yeah, so we have three franchisee facing initiatives that we've begun at the beginning of this year. One is non-bay revenue. So our franchisees are confined with space. Most of our stores have nine or 10 bays. You can only get so many cars in and out on a Monday through Friday. And so how do we help them grow in other areas of just that location. So one of the things that we're currently looking at is mobile care.

Starting point is 00:15:46 What does it look like for us to bring excellent service to our guests in their driveway or their neighborhood or at their place of business? Second big one is technical expertise. So trades are not in great supply. Automotive technicians are not in great supply. Automotive technicians are not in great supply. And so how do we come alongside our franchisees and help them grow that next generation of talent? And so that's with online training, that's with additional classes here at our home office. And we're looking at building a dedicated facility just for training technicians. And then also bolstering relationships

Starting point is 00:16:23 with technical schools. I know in Colorado, we have a great relationship with one of our technical schools there. And then the third one is our digital guest experience. That's something that we don't feel like we're doing an amazing job at. We know when you come into our stores, you call us, we do pretty good. But the experience that you're getting online is not great. And that's something as a home office, we need to do a better job for our franchisees in enabling them to give that amazing guest experience digitally. Awesome. So you mentioned a little bit, you know, the technical or technology type pieces. The automotive industry is, I mean,

Starting point is 00:17:03 it's crazy that it's gone in 27 different directions technologically, you know, between hybrids and electronic vehicles or, you know, just your stand, you might have somebody with a 75 Camaro roll in that has a, you know, four barrel carburetor or something like that. And you know me pulling it in my new bronco something like that i mean it's how do you guys keep up with you know somebody could come in with anything and like a dealership they have this advantage of knowing you're coming in with that brand but for you guys it could be anything how do you keep up with that? Yeah, Adam, it's a great point. And it's one of the things that makes me appreciate. I love our technicians, but even more so the breadth of knowledge that they have to have and their ability to fix so many things constantly amazes me.

Starting point is 00:17:57 But we have a we have a pretty fantastic online portal called our Flywheel, which constantly is being updated with new training. We also have an annual conference, which we call Mastering the Difference, because here at Christian Brothers, we're a nice difference, where we invite all our technicians in and our service managers for three days of ongoing education and training, where we're constantly talking about the latest and greatest thing, as well as we've partnered with several pretty neat technical training facilities out amongst our stores. And then we also just recently launched regional training. We're going to go to them and help continue to educate and grow them on their skills. Lifelong learning. That's what solves it. Donnie, what is your biggest

Starting point is 00:18:46 leadership takeaway in running a growing franchise brand? I think it's that you've got to constantly communicate. And Adam, you and I talked about this before we started about just, man, that value of constantly being in front of your franchisees and those team members, right? We have close to 4,000 team members across 30 states. And how do you make sure that they're hearing the vision, they're hearing the why, they're understanding that you do care about them, and that they're not a number, they're a valued member of this organization? How do you do that with excellence? How do you do it with consistency? And how do you make sure they're hearing that from you on a regular basis is probably what I think one of the largest challenges is. Awesome. What a great answer

Starting point is 00:19:32 from a great leader. Hey, Donnie, where can we find out more about Christian Brothers Automotive? Yeah, so you can go to our website, www.cbac.com. You can find if there's a location near you, find if there's franchising opportunities near you, but we would love to tell you more about us. Awesome. And Donnie, I have a question I ask all of our amazing guests on the show. We get some pretty cool answers here, and that's how do you start your day with a win? Yeah, so my day starts with a win, man, with a little bit of quiet time. I like to get up and read. My goal this year is to read through the New Testament. Personally, I'm a believer, and I have found that there is a lot of wisdom in that book. Whether you believe Jesus is for you or not, it's a great opportunity

Starting point is 00:20:26 for me to sit down, take some time, some peace and quiet, and just kind of opportunity to grow. Awesome. Well, Donnie, it's been great having you on Start With A Win today. For everybody out there, make sure you check out Donnie and Christian Brothers Automotive at CBAC.com or stop by one of their local locations and poke your head in and say, hey, I just heard Donnie on Start With A Win. Donnie, you're a great leader running Christian Brothers Automotive as the CEO and president. We wish you all the best in franchising and same store sales growth. It's a cool place to be running your own business, being in business for yourself, but not by yourself in franchising. Thank you for being on Start With A Win. Thanks, Adam, so much for having me. Thanks for joining us on Start With A Win. Be sure to like and subscribe to this episode and share it with your friends. Also,

Starting point is 00:21:22 be sure to check out Adam on YouTube, Adam Panto's CEO, as well as on all the social media platforms. And don't forget, start with a win.

Your Ad Here

Start With A Win - How does Culture affect your Business? With CEO of Christian Brothers Automotive, Donnie Carr

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.