Roots to Revenue

How a struggling mechanic TUNED up his marketing and turbocharged his revenue

• Robbie Lynn • Season 1 • Episode 15

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This weeks podcast is a story about a car repair shop owner in Newtownabbey. 

Big G shares his story of how he struggled to become a successful business owner with the help of family, friends, and hard work.

He discusses the challenges of starting his business, the importance of customer trust, and his advertising strategies

What worked in the past and how his marketing has changed over the years 
Big G emphasizes the significance of maintaining customer relationships and continuously improving services. 

Additionally, he talks about the unique way he deals with stress in his downtime  

The episode highlights the value of perseverance, community backing, and adapting to new marketing methods in growing a small business.

Try out Jobber for FREE with a 14-day trial with your exclusive discount Root to Revenue https://go.getjobber.com/premierlawns

Big G:

You look about sometimes and see, obviously you have friends and all, that still work in big places, and you hear about the kind of money they're making. Some weeks when you've paid all your bills and you're going home with fairly little, you're like, I could be doing maybe what they're doing. But you type in the EAL, you're looking at your car repair or whatever. He says, I can do this here for you. A good friend of mine, he pays for it in Molusc. He come up number one every time in the top five, so there's like a top five bar box, and then the rest of the mechanics are below them, and if you pay me, I'll get you in the top five, I can't get you number one, but the two, three, four, and five, every time somebody clicks on it, if you're in number two, then you'll bounce down to five and move up the list again, between two and five, it's okay, so I was actually sitting there smiling my face when I said this to him, and I was like,

Robbie:

Welcome to the Roots to Revenue podcast. This is a podcast that helps small businesses grow. This video is in association with Jobber. Jobber is scheduling and invoicing and quoting software that I've used for the last 10 years to run my own business. Not only does it get me paid faster, But my customers love it. In the studio today we've got G, and G went from zero to hero. So G, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself

and what you do?

Big G:

I own a car repair shop, Newton Abbey, do mechanical body shop. How I came about was I was working in a large factory, got paid off, and with the help of family and friends just got in to start my own place.

Robbie:

Before you worked in the factory, do you want to give the viewers a wee, just a wee bit of history about How you originally became a car mechanic or

Big G:

yeah, my dad owned a breaker's yard when I was younger and I was like most young boys just absolutely car mad scale that tricks and stuff like that for Christmas and toy cars, but I still have some of them sound mad at some people, but any of the kids come to the house and stuff, they'll get My mum used to keep them in a Kentucky fried chicken box. Which

Robbie:

is a typical Noren Arn thing. Did you work for yourself before that? Was that the first

Big G:

time you'd been self employed? I'd done a bit of taxing years ago and done a bit of paint work and stuff, but I'd never really had the confidence just to go I'm doing this.

Robbie:

It's a big step, especially to open your own premises

Big G:

and No, I started straight into the garage. My father in law, your guy that had a unit down there. Him and the other guy, Herbie, really helped getting me a unit. So they put a good word in for me. And that's where it all started. Yeah.

Robbie:

Whenever it started, what sort of money was it to take the unit on at the start? Do you know what?

Big G:

I don't really know because that's where my father in law he stepped in and he done the deposit thing. I think I had the first month's rent, he had the deposit and then he actually bought me my ramp. He just says, pay it back when you can.

Robbie:

That's a pretty nice. That was awesome. That

Big G:

was, getting that confidence from somebody, people backing you like that, just going, you look after my grandkids. Go ahead, do your thing, you know what, it was massive, it was really massive.

Robbie:

Because whenever you, anybody watching this, whenever you start a small business, the cost is just crazy and even trying to get working, but trying to get a garage off the ground is, for the likes of me, I started my business already on the side and you buy the van. But to go from nothing to all of a sudden to buy a garage, that's quite a bit. And then trying to get the work in at the start. So at the start, whenever, how did you advertise yourself? Or how did you initially get your first 100 customers, for

Big G:

example? The first couple of months, we printed our own leaflets and stuff and just posted them through letterboxes and stuff like that. One of my best friends. Spent hours and hours in his house designing this stuff, which I thought was pretty good at the time. It was like cartooning, cartooning and stuff. But maybe not too professional looking at it, eye from this point of view, but it must have been okay.'cause we got customers out of it.

Robbie:

How many flyers did you print? Did you get them printed locally or did they We've done it all in, in

Big G:

Johnny's spare bedroom. Oh, only your friends of the mall. Yep. To be honest with you, he didn't even charge me for the ink or anything. I maybe supplied the paper and he'd done everything else.

Robbie:

How many flyers did you get printed originally? I

Big G:

think we'd done, we started off with 500 and we had them posted out like really quickly. I'm nearly sure he'd done me another thousand. Like I say, all in his bedroom. Just And just it felt like another backer, somebody standing behind you going, somebody

Robbie:

taking an investment in you.

Big G:

I would say opening a shop or something like you have a shop front on a main street, you're just waiting on people walking by or whatever, you're trying to get people to trust you lots and lots. Because they do you're maybe like a doctor in some ways, because people only ring you when they have a problem. You're one of them problem, Problem

Robbie:

people. Did you get any help from the local council or did you do go for a program or anything like that?

Big G:

I wouldn't even have knew where to go at the time. I was over 30 and I know there was a project for under 30s for starting their own business, but that was the only one I ever heard of. And only because a friend of mine done it. Anything after that? No, I didn't even. Didn't apply for anything. Didn't know how.

Robbie:

Anyone watching this, one of the best things to do is to approach your local council and speak to the business, ask to speak to the business department. It's amazing that sometimes there can be support there. You're not going to get financial support, but a lot of times they'll give you an advisor. And that advisor can help you with all sorts of things. If you wanted to expand your business on out, I actually get an advisor with me whenever I wanted to hire an extra member of staff. Yeah. And help me find ha. That help me find Jason. I don't think I would have found as good an employee without the help that I received. If you're watching this and you're, if you have any problems with your business, or you're thinking about starting a business, 100 percent talk to your local council because you might be surprised. Good. The support that's there in the gopher program, or

Big G:

it might sound weird. I wouldn't be somebody going asking for help straight after talking about the help that I got. But that was like I wasn't really asking for it. They were just going, you should do this. They believe in you to do the belief. If I want to get something to try and save up for it, or if I want to buy new tools, I save up for them. If I want to try and get better or something. I'm always trying to improve. Every job I want to make better than the last one. Whenever

Robbie:

you first started your business and you, so you did your first 500 or 1500 flyers, did you find them work started to come in? Was that? Yeah. You go for nearly

Big G:

nothing to have a couple of jobs a day. And then because I really find how you treat people and how you talk to them. I always try to explain. Especially the ladies, not talking down to them, talking on the same level and really simplifying what you've done. Not going too deep into it, but listen, this is your suspension arm. There's play in this part. It would feel the MOT and that's why we need to change it. And a lot of companies would try and upsell, just upsell, I try not to do that. Maybe I should a wee bit more because the likes of somebody say their brake desks. listen we'll get a new set of pads out of these ones and then in another six or eight thousand miles we'll change the discs. People don't really want to hear that. They want to know that they don't have to come back, no do it now because it's nearly like an inconvenience. Rather than you trying to save them a couple of quid, they're thinking they'll have to come back in six or eight months time again just paying more money.

Robbie:

If you said to me, oh you'll get another two months out of that, I'd rather you just change them and then I'm not having to worry, but. And

Big G:

you have enough to worry about running your own business and doing other things rather than I have to remember this for two months time, to bring it back again and then the inconvenience of you may be having to get a lift up, get a lift back again, stuff like that.

Robbie:

There'll be things that you learn as you go. And you can only really learn that from getting feedback from your customers. So always asking people for. I,

Big G:

You lose out a wee bit. You actually tend to forget to ask your customers, how did you feel about that at a really good one? A couple of weeks ago. Beautiful Audi SQ5. You always love working at sports cars, and that's like a sports family car, comes in with an injector problem. Sorted out for the guy. He actually drove it for a week and rang me. That car, even when I bought it, that car never drove as nice as what it did. Until you fixed it there, with fixing the injectors. So yeah, wee phone calls, I think that's really good.

Robbie:

So you got there just to go back to you got your first. Few customers. Yeah. What did you do then to keep the work coming in yale.com? I can remember before we, we start talking about Yale, I can remember whenever we were talking pre-comm you said that whenever you first opened for the first five or six months, you had the cleanest guards. Yeah. The cleanest guards and the cleanest tools anywhere. Yeah. Clean tools aren't always, they could claim filters are a good sign, but claim workshop is a sign of a,

Big G:

it can be a bad sign. Yeah. I still get customers now. I actually say. My workshop is one of the tidiest I've been in. I don't think so, but yeah, back then it was like brand new for five or six months. It was okay. Every morning you come in, it was lovely to look at, lovely clean floor, lovely white walls. I had a lovely. Big pictures of sports cars up around the walls. No, it was a good place to be, but it just wasn't busy enough. Obviously, it doesn't pay the bills being a nice place to come. But I think when people started coming, I would say every customer was shocked with how tidy it was. And, and I think it transfers into, they know they're getting a tidy job done.

Robbie:

I'm going to say that BT is actually my car mechanic and I remember him saying that you were struggling to start to get the business in and you were thinking to yourself, is it, is this isn't working? How am I going to, this isn't working?

Big G:

Yeah.

Robbie:

Is it time to give us up and go back to employment?

Big G:

You look about sometimes and see Obviously you have friends and all that still work in big places, and you hear about the kind of money they're making. Some weeks when you've paid all your bills and you're going home with very little, you're like, I could be doing with maybe what they're doing. I'm so glad, so glad I really kept at it.

Robbie:

Yeah.

Big G:

In some ways it made you put your head down and work harder, and really trying to like opening the body shop part to try and make it like a Trying to do everything in one shop, for your customers, rather than you just needing breaks or service done, if you damage your fan, then you can ring me the one stop shop. We actually looked at putting a slogan like that in a really good trade customer. And I would bounce a few things off him. Really smart guy. He buys some nice cars. I always love working on, but the likes of that there, I would bounce off him and he was like, Yeah, it sounds good. And then he comes back to me a couple of days later and he says, I think, like on Facebook or whatever, it might sound a bit tacky, so we decided not to go with it. One stop shop, it's

Robbie:

yeah, it's if somebody calls themselves Honest Joe, you're like, if you have to call yourself honest, that's it. It's nice having customers that you can bounce stuff off and they can help you. It's amazing that the people you come into contact with your business that are happy to, it. are happy to help you grow your business. So your first few months was a bit of a struggle. Your first five or six months was a struggle. And then you decided to start advertising in Yale. Did they come to you or did you go to them? I

Big G:

think I seen it advertised somewhere, but I ended up talking to a really nice guy. He knew a few people that I knew and I knew them. And we didn't know each other, but it was one of them. I got it set up and stuff. And he tried to upsell me. As a dude? Oh aye, as a dude. You type in the Yale, you're looking. Like your car repaired or whatever. He says, I can do this here for you. A good friend of mine, he pays for it in Molusc. He come up number one every time in the top five. So there's like a top five bar box. And then the rest of the mechanics are below them. If you pay me, I'll get you in the top five. I can't get you number one. Cause Arthur has it. But the two, three, four and five. Every time somebody clicks on it. If you're in number two, then you'll bounce down to five and move up the list again. Yeah. Between two and five I was like, okay. So I was actually sitting with a smile on my face when I said this to him. And I was like, have you, you're the l. com open yet? He says, type in car repairs. He types it in Newton Abbey, types it in, hit center. There's my name. And he was like, I see what you've done there with the name. So yeah, that's what people,

Robbie:

that's what people search for.

Big G:

Yeah. That was a really good phone call. Cause the guy just says to me, yeah. That's awesome. What you've done there with your name.

Robbie:

A lot of people starting out don't really think about their name that much. And I've said this in other podcasts, whenever I started out, I chose Premier Lawns because I thought, Oh, that sounds really good. But it's a wee bit too generic. Yours is quite generic, but it says exactly what you do. If somebody's searching for it online, car repairs that's what I do.

Big G:

It's like the logo as well. I've been talking to a couple of boys in England at snooker tournaments and stuff when they look at your Facebook, which everybody does after they ask you a question or whatever, they're straight on having a look, is this boy full of malachite or is he, is he for real? And he's I know, like I remember that. So he, whether he's seen it through Facebook ads or other people talking about it or whatever,

Robbie:

because the podcast, if you're listening, if you're watching this on YouTube, happy days, you might be listening to this on Apple podcasts or. Spotify or Amazon. Just, can you describe your logo to anyone that's listening to this on audio? So is there no

Big G:

Yeah it's basically the outline of a sports car and has black, silver and green. It just really tried to It just pops? to pick an eye catching colour, yeah.

Robbie:

It pops really well. So on, on Yale, did you find then Yale was bringing in lots of work?

Big G:

Yeah, that was really good. And you could actually go on and change, but I don't do air con stuff like that. I only had general service and stuff on it at the very start. And then I went on and changed it to do clutches and heavier work. If you do a heavier job for somebody, you nearly always get the light service and work. I want him to look after my car. If he's on a good job. And if you've done a good job, I like repeat. Yeah. And that's, everybody needs it. That's how your business thrives, yeah. Everybody needs repeat customers. that's what I think. Anyway, you always, you do need new ones. If you look after the customers you have, they'll keep coming back. They keep coming back. You're generally in a good place. Do you still advertise in Yale? I actually haven't

Robbie:

for a good few

Big G:

years.

Robbie:

We talked about this off camera. It was actually you said, whenever yellow pages used to be this size. Yeah. And then it was this size, and then it was this size, and then it was online. I think maybe his, he else maybe had it. I don't think, nobody necessarily goes on to do. Are you yelling now to search for stuff? No, I think you

can just fire it into Google. Whenever I'm searching for anything, it's just Google. into a specific search. It's just,

Robbie:

is Google my business or Google business profile now? It's so strong.

Big G:

I don't know why. I don't know how it works or whatever. But I think years ago, if you typed in Car Repairers Google, it took you all over the place. And you had to go to the likes of Yale or, I don't know why, but every time we talk about Yale, I always see the two guys running down 118, 118. But it's the same as that, like that business appeared really quickly. And now all of a sudden Nobody needs that. I would never know anybody that Yeah, you don't hear it, it's gone, aye? It's like telephone boxes too,

Robbie:

isn't it? So what way do you find to

Big G:

advertise yourself now? I actually advertise very little, but I did run one there. December was really quiet in the body shop. December's usually absolutely crazy, bit of ice, bit of snow, people pregging their cars and stuff. Ran a couple of Facebook ads, just ran it for five days. Phone blew up again. From Even existing customers, so I would do work through accent management company too. I was actually really surprised that loads of my customers didn't know this, even though I have the leaflets and stuff in my office, I would just think. Unless you tell people,

Robbie:

unless, so you have

Big G:

to. Yeah, it's mad that I thought if I was standing in your office, I'd be looking around, if there's a leaflet sitting and try

Robbie:

and

Big G:

remember, oh,

Robbie:

he does that for my business through jobber. I collect, I obviously collect people's emails and then jobber is actually tied into MailChimp and MailChimp as a newsletter platform. So we can take segmented customers and just target them off the tags for email campaigns. It's the worst thing you can say is whenever a customer says the, I didn't know you did that. Yeah. That's a field. that's a field. That's a fill in your parts. So different for me, because I have their email addresses and they don't, they've opted in for me to contact them, but it'd be a lot harder for you to maybe, because you don't necessarily have email, their customers emails. Maybe you want to start to, but that could

Big G:

change today because when I leave here, I have a zoom call set up with a company and that's what they do. So I log, say I'm working at your farm. I log all your details, your telephone number, your email address. It may take a wee while for me to set it up with all my customers, and when it comes to time to service your fan or your MOT, my system will automatically send you an email reminding you that your MOT is coming up or your fan needs service. So I'm really excited about that later on as well. Get ready for the emails, Robbie. No,

Robbie:

that's really good. I think I get the fan service too often, but a lot of my tools, I'd service in the morning. really regular basis because I just learned that it's easier. It's better getting the service more often than the minute. Maintain rather than

Big G:

repair. Yes. 100%. And it does, people think it works out there, but it doesn't like it. It never, ever does. if you're maintaining and especially if your fans getting your older file is getting plenty of miles on it. So I would always recommend to go down. What do you call the system that you're looking at? Didn't really want to say on the podcast yet, just in case it doesn't work out. Because there's a, there's several companies do the same thing. Okay. Had I had the zoom call like before the podcast, 100 percent of what I said, but I just, I want to keep my options open to cause the whole, he's going to take me through the whole process of it. See if it's easy enough to work. The speed of doing everything. Yes. It's going to take time to set up. He put everybody's numbers and all in and cost is going to be massive. As it going to cost, We were talking about something there cost 100 a month, is it worth it? It's worth it. Sometimes it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Robbie:

if it saves you 10 minutes a day. It's not only that, it's customer's perception of your business. So from my point of view with JobWorks, JobWorks is so polished, people go, loads of people, loads of customers comment on it and say, That system you have is amazing. And that tells me, Yeah, So if you have something like that and they're getting email reminders all the time for the service of the car, one less thing for them to worry about. Yeah. You're going to be the first port of call for them. Yeah,

Big G:

I would try and be old school and just treat people nice and try and explain to people the likes of what I've done to their car or whatever, and just generally be nice and have good manners. You do need to push

Robbie:

on and get stuff like that. I'd imagine it'd be good from the point of view, from the customers, from the customer point of view from your point of view, cause there'd be a full record of. everything that's been done to the car. Yep. So if the customer says to me, oh the brakes, look your brakes haven't been done for x many years, months, weeks,

Big G:

all that. Whereas now you're lifting your receipt book and flicking through it, you're trying to use your memory as well, like you're going, I worked at Robbie's Farm at the end of July and then you're flicking through your receipt book, like goodness knows how many receipts you have at the end of July. Hopefully loads.

Robbie:

But yeah, whatever it is. Just to go back to your advertising about Yelp, and then you don't, you didn't use Yelp. Have you done any other advertising apart from Facebook?

Big G:

I've done the, I can't even remember the name of

Robbie:

it. Like ads for free, or you're not being touched, something like that. I've done a lot of that myself as well, but it can be expensive, because it goes out to say 16, 000 homes, but you maybe want to target two or three different areas. Yeah. And then you need to advertise for two or three months before. They recommend for that sort of advertising, if you're going out on an ads for free type magazine or a magazine that's free for the homeowner, you should be on it for three or four months to build up that can be expensive then if you're I actually

Big G:

looked into it and was able to go to a couple of the businesses were advertised in them already and ask them, is he just trying to upsell me here or, get an extra couple of months out of me. I think they were every three months anyway. And then when I rang the guy back, found out a couple of wee details, rang the guy back and says, listen I'll do, I'll probably do the year with you, which is four magazines. And he done me a slightly better deal again. And he was like, I don't know if he says this to everybody, but he was like, please don't tell anybody. you're telling me you're going to do it for a year. This is what the cost is going to be rather than that. And it worked out really well. I think actually the first couple of jobs got out of it. paid for nine months of it. It was, it worked out really well.

Robbie:

Before I was doing the videos, because the videos are so time consuming, we're doing a lot of driveway cleaning.

Big G:

Yeah.

Robbie:

And that's, I was getting my driveway cleaning from the Lexos magazines, but it's quite expensive. It can be, yeah it can be quite dear. And then we've had people in the podcast and they've talked about the only advertised digitally now, because it's so much cheaper. And I suppose that's why you're on. Probably

Big G:

because it's so easy to because you just, of everything. It only takes time the first time. And then if you want to change a couple of pictures or something, or you want to change a couple of sentences out of what you're saying, bang, stick it on. You do nothing after that. you tell Facebook, I'm not sure whether the fuse you get are true or not, but if you only want 2000 people, and you pay appropriately for the 2000 people, or if you want 20, 000 views or, I added the WhatsApp button the last time I'd done the advert seemed to be really good rather than having people, messaging you through Facebook. So it's hard, it's

Robbie:

harder to keep track of everybody whenever it's coming through.

Big G:

It is. And especially when you have your Facebook's split. So like I have my personal Facebook. the car repairs one and the body shop one. So I had to have a page for the car repairs one and the body shop one. So I've actually five Facebooks and it's really hard

Robbie:

because of the, again, cause the YouTube is quite successful. I had to take the numbers off my website. So you can't find my number anywhere. And again, the only way people can contact me is through the, it's through the form, which is again, Java, but I, it's really good having it just all in the one place. if anybody messaged me on any of the other social networks, there's an auto responder, and maybe that's it. Yeah,

Big G:

that's what, I think Messenger does have the auto responder, but it was like really easy to set up on WhatsApp. I was actually getting Dents fixed for a guy there through the week, and the Dent man had the auto mailer message as well. The bit of a pain I noticed through the week about it was every time I messaged him, I got the automatic message, even though we were having a conversation. So it messed that up a wee bit. I don't know if there's a setting there to stop that from happening for a conversation. Something I'm actually going to look into. let me know for a customer for somebody else. Yep. I'm looking at it going do my head in. So that will probably do

my customers head in too. I have seen that on the Facebook one before that I've messaged somebody a question in the past, but then it's gone straight into like just the messages and then when I've gone back to ask them the same questions like a couple of months later it's then gone back to the old. So I don't know if it's an option for a time frame. There may not be, there may not be but

Robbie:

I think if there's a bit of a break in it at all the autoresponder like you say you can probably sell it for a certain time frame if anybody knows. Yeah. Drop me a comment down below, let me know. If you're enjoying this podcast, if you could smash that like button and subscribe and also if you think a friend would benefit from watching or hearing this, send them a text or an email and just share it with people. Running your own business,

how do you best unwind out of work?

Big G:

Sometimes it makes you feel like you're unwinding and sometimes it winds you up, but

Robbie:

a place in the growing pool. He doesn't just, he's being very modest. He's been very modest. Yeah. Yeah. Big T used to play Pulver, Northern Ireland. Ah I still

Big G:

do for the seniors A team. we're preparing at the minute to go away to the Yorkshire for the nation's cup. But seeing you're pushing me on it, I'm also the under 18 A team manager. which I get. I wouldn't say forced towards, but much like the business starting. Actually, I wasn't 100 percent confident that I'd be really good at it between the wife and the secretary of the NIPA. Really? I don't know. It's called blowing smoke up your arse or just making you feel like, just the odd, you're having conversation. You'd be really good at that. You'd be really good at that. Look at the way the kids look up to you, look what they're like when you're practicing with them, stuff like this here. So I had a bit of a think about it and I agreed to do it. I had a wee list of things that I wanted, but it was for the, everything for the kids, like not, none of it was for me. I just wanted, is this going to be for the kids? And that was just all for them. Do you want to give a wee shout out to your sponsors? Aiden from ABL and the Folly Business Center in Newton Abbey as well. He does a bit of electrical work and looks after catering equipment and stuff. Massive thanks to him and Alex, Lindsay, Carberts and Feina. He used to be in the Folly Business Center in Newton Abbey and he's now moved down to the Shore Road. Absolutely two awesome guys. And. what they've given me for the under 18s is just absolutely phenomenal. Listen,

Robbie:

thank you very much for coming on the podcast. And I don't forget that. Don't forget to smash the like button.