Tektonic: Two Days of Hard-Hitting Sessions for Shop Owners

Tekmetric's Tektonic Auto Repair Conference in Houston, Texas, on April 11, featured two days of high-caliber general sessions, eight keynote speakers, 75 breakout sessions, and over 900 attendees. The running theme: the shops that win are the ones that lead well, manage by the numbers, and embrace modern tools and technology.

The event opened with remarks from Tekmetric CEO and founder Sunil Patel and a video tribute to the late Aaron Stokes, setting the purpose-focused tone that carried throughout both days.

Day 1: Character, Belief, and the Cost of Average

Marine Corps General Robert B. Neller followed Patel in the morning general session with a talk on his path to success, grounding his message in three core tenets: character counts, effort matters, and you can't quit. Several of his lines landed hard in the room: "Mission first, people always." "Take some risks, or you're never going to be able to change." And: "The people who I've met who are successful have a drive to win. It doesn't mean they didn't listen, but they kept their focus until they got to that point."

Michael Rosenberger, CEO of Shopfix Academy, followed with one of the morning's most emotional talks, drawing on lessons from his friend and mentor, Aaron Stokes. He spoke candidly about learning of Stokes's passing while on a drive to Disney World with his family and wrestling with the fear and doubt of carrying on that legacy. His framework for navigating that uncertainty came down to three elements of a belief system: your why, your leadership, and your decisions. "Your why impacts your leadership, your leadership impacts your decisions, which strengthens your why," he said. He closed by urging shop owners to act rather than wait for better circumstances, drawing on the story of Union General Joshua Chamberlain's bravery while outnumbered by Confederate forces at the Battle of Gettysburg.

A shop owner panel, "What It Really Takes to Win," moderated by PJ Leslie of Tekmetric, covered hiring and retention, leadership, consistency, transparency, and the journey from single- to multi-shop operations.

The morning closed with keynote speaker Codie Sanchez, founder and CEO of Contrarian Thinking and bestselling author of “Main Street Millionaire: How to Make Extraordinary Wealth Buying Ordinary Businesses.” Sanchez, who captivated the audience with her wit and candor, spoke on what it means to lead and grow in today's technocentric environment. Her opening set the tone: "Today, we have to make ourselves superhuman in the age of AI." She challenged attendees to review and automate their processes, maintain a fanatical focus on speed, diagnose problems before moving to solutions, and break annual goals into quarterly sprints. On talent, she was direct—hire A players who are smarter at their jobs than you and get them excited to build alongside you. Two of her sharpest lines: "It's more important that you move fast and in the right direction," and "You are paid exactly as much as the problems you solve are worth."

Day 2: Data, Coaching, and a Platform Built for What's Next

Day 2 matched the energy of the first. Sebastian Jimenez of Rilla opened by drawing a parallel between elite sports analytics—referencing the Michael Jordan-era Bulls and Tom Brady's Patriots—and shop sales performance. He challenged service advisors in attendance to listen more and ask better questions. Data from tens of thousands of analyzed service calls showed that top-performing advisors talk 45%–65% of the time, ask five times more open-ended questions, and speak at roughly 184 words per minute. Rilla uses AI to analyze inbound calls and coach advisors toward those benchmarks.

The Coaching Showdown, moderated by Mike Allen, shop owner of the multi-location North Carolina-based CarFix and host of “Confessions of a Shop Owner” podcast, brought eight shop coaches together to tackle some of the industry's most pressing issues. On the tech shortage, several coaches pushed back on the framing—arguing it's less a pipeline problem and more a leadership failure. On trust, Josh Parnell, founder of Limitless Leadership, said shop owners must create safety first: "If I don't have safety, I can't trust you." On private equity, Cecil Bullard, founder of The Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, didn't mince words: "I don't think I've seen a private equity deal that has gone well for the shop." On AI, the panel reached a clear consensus—shops that adopt early will grow faster, just as early DVI adopters did.

Keynote speaker Mike Michalowicz, author of 10 books including the best-selling “Profit First” and newly released “The Money Habit,” delivered one of the most practical sessions of the conference. He challenged shop owners to stop trusting what customers say and start trusting what they spend. His framework for growth started with identifying his best customers, then asking them three things: what am I doing right, what's wrong with my industry, and where do you hang out. The answers, he argued, tell a shop owner everything they need to know about where to focus, how to connect, and how to grow.

Lauren Langston, president and COO, and Jared Haleck, chief product officer at Tekmetric, closed the conference with a data-driven look at what separates the top shops on their platform. They shared a sobering reality check: while 9 in 10 shops expect to grow, only 3 in 10 outpace inflation, and just 1 in 10 achieve profit margins above 20%. With the average vehicle age now at 12.8 years, the opportunity is there for shops, but capturing it requires intention. According to Tekmetric's data from more than 15,000 shops on its platform, the best ones share four traits: they repair more cars, make more money, improve the driver experience, and operate more efficiently.

They closed with walkthroughs of four new platform innovations—Tekmetric Digital Ads, Tekmetric Phones, Smart DVI, and Personalized Service Plans—each designed to help shops attract customers, build trust, and run a tighter operation.

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