What Results Do Auto Repair Shops Get From Business Coaching?

The results show up in three places: more profit, less debt and your time back. When an auto repair shop owner does the work with a business coach who knows this industry, net profit usually grows faster than turnover, tax debts come down, and the owner starts taking holidays the business can survive. Our Engine Room clients add $250,000 or more within 18 months and work toward 20% net profit.

You're right to want proof before you spend a dollar on coaching, so here it is in our clients' own words and numbers. Each result below links to that owner's full story.

Over 13 years we've helped more than 10,000 auto repair shops across five countries, and generated over $175 million in additional profit for them. The pattern below holds whether you run a mechanics workshop in a country town, an automotive workshop in the city or a garage in the UK.

What changes in the numbers?

Here is where each of these owners started and where they got to.

Marcus Skilbeck, Skilly's Tyre & Auto, Heathcote, Victoria. Marcus was three weeks from closing his doors. He started reading his real numbers instead of his bank balance and built systems so the shop stopped depending on him, and six months later he was back in profit. Read how Marcus turned it around.

Sandy and Zac Green, SSkids Tyres, Eudunda, South Australia. They were charging $100 an hour for everything and using next month's money to pay last month's bills. They swapped that flat rate for a labour rate for each kind of job, and in their words, "We went from $450K to a million in mechanical with the same technicians, and $250,000 more in profit in the last 12 months." Read how Sandy and Zac got out.

Stella and Selwyn King, JDM Motorsport, Brisbane. They had a $55,000 ATO debt and a shop full of cars. They took their labour rate from around $120 an hour to $175, and went "from $50,000 a month to between $100,000 and $120,000." Read how Stella and Selwyn fixed their BAS.

Tanya and Godfrey Nardone, GTN Services, remote Western Australia. For about two months they paid their team's wages out of their own pocket. They raised their labour rate from $120 to $150 an hour, did less work for more money, and within a short time had $60,000 put aside. Read how Tanya and Godfrey turned it around.

Cassie and Josh Lole, Auto Air Electrical. After eight years of what they now call winging it, they set targets from industry benchmarks and measured themselves against them. Their bottom line went up by roughly 50% in their first six months with us. Read how Cassie and Josh stopped winging it.

For a lot of owners the first result is the debt coming down.

Megan and Adam Walters, John Dale Motors, Morisset, New South Wales. "This time last year we had an $80,000 tax debt. As of nine o'clock this morning, it's zero." They gave the tax money its own bank account, moved money into it on set days every week, and got their prices to where the business could afford it. Read how Megan and Adam cleared $80,000.

Regan Crook, Ramp Auto Group, Perth. In his words, "we were always busy but never actually made any money." He didn't need one extra customer to fix it. Knowing what money he had, deciding where it went before it got spent and being held to that every week put him on track, by his own estimate, to have close to half a million dollars in debt paid off. Read how Regan turned it around.

We've had clients pay off $250,000 of debt to the ATO because of the cash management model we help them put into their business.

Then there are Brad and Joanne Lowe, who run Geelong Transport Repairs, a heavy vehicle workshop. They had a great turnover at the end of every year and no money in the bank. When they first rang us in May 2020, they were sitting in their office in tears, ready to close the doors. Two years later their total revenue was up about 23%, and their net profit was up 78%. They'd bought an investment property, and the bills were getting paid on time every month.

What that gap looks like in dollars. Brad and Joanne didn't share their dollar figures, so here's an example with round numbers to show how it works. Take a shop turning over $1,000,000 a year at 8% net profit. That's $80,000. Grow revenue by 23% at the same margin and you'd make $98,400. Grow it by 23% and lift net profit by 78%, the way the Lowes did, and you make $142,400. That's $44,000 a year in profit that came from better margins and better money management, not from more cars. Run the same sums on your own turnover.

That's how the Lowes' profit grew more than three times as fast as their revenue. When you know your numbers, track your technicians' efficiency and productivity, and control where the money goes, you keep more of every extra dollar that comes in. The Engine Room is built around exactly that.

Will I get my life back, or only a bigger business?

Growth only counts if you get some of your life back with it, and the changes our clients talk about most are the ones at home.

Sammy and Zac McPherson, McPherson Mechanical, Mount Gambier, South Australia. They were "way oversubscribed, way underpriced" and working 60 to 70 hours a week. They fixed their pricing first, then made running the business somebody's actual job, and now work 38 to 42 hours, with pretty much all of their debt paid off in the first nine months. Read how Sammy and Zac cut their hours.

James Walker, Ballarat Roadworthy Centre, Ballarat, Victoria. James was at the shop nearly every day, weekends included. "It just felt like we worked so hard but we're getting nowhere." He built the systems and the team, his whole shop has now run a four day week for two years, and he has signed contracts to buy the property it sits on. Read how James got his shop running without him.

Megan and Adam got their time back too. Six months after joining The Engine Room, all five of their mechanics were working four days on and three days off, on a rotation, with the shop still open five days a week. As they told me in the studio, "I feel like the business is finally working for us, not us for the business. And this is after 16 and a half years."

Belinda Zeuschner runs Brooks Motor Works in Legerwood, Tasmania. "I used to knock off at 8 o'clock every night and my kids would wait for me in the car. Quality time with my family is the biggest thing that's changed."

Brad Lyons at Lyons Mechanical in Mansfield, Queensland: "I've gone from working every day and working back at night to having trouble filling in what I actually did during the day."

Daniel Barry at Danbar Automotive in New Norfolk, Tasmania: "Ten days away and not one call. The team said, we didn't even need you."

When I first spoke to one of our clients in regional Victoria, he was wondering whether he'd be able to open the doors of his shop the next day. Ten years later, he left his thriving business in the hands of a great team, and he and his wife spent six weeks travelling around the USA.

Why do some shops get results and others don't?

Not every owner who hires a coach gets these results, and I'd rather be honest about why. Three things separate the shops that change from the shops that don't.

They do the work, even on the bad days. Brad and Joanne turned up to almost every weekly webinar we ran for two years. They booked their one-on-one calls with the coaches, took their action items away and put them in place. It wasn't always pretty. Brad admits there were coaching calls where he got off the line, kicked a chair and said, "This is ridiculous, I'm not doing this anymore." Then he'd tell himself to pull his head back in and get on with it. As I said to them on the podcast, when you do the work like that, a 70-something percent improvement in net profit happens naturally.

Nicola Van Huenen from Coastal Autos in Papamoa, New Zealand, put it plainly. About four months in, we held her and Brett accountable for carving out time. Her advice: if you can't carve out two to four hours a week to work on your business, don't start. Once they found the time, they took it one week at a time. Their turnover is now up 70% on the year before, and Nicola says they "could sell our business tomorrow as a complete package."

The coaching is built for auto repair. Before Cassie and Josh joined us, they sat down with a generic business coach. What tipped them our way was industry-specific metrics, numbers that had already been tested in other automotive businesses, not the "generic basic indexes" a general coach brings. We have 15 benchmarks we work our clients' results toward, plus productivity and efficiency, and every one of them comes from inside this industry. Every coach on our team is a current or former auto repair shop owner.

They ask for help early. Through 2025 we were hearing about liquidations in our industry at about two a week, and most of those owners came looking for help as a last resort. There are warning signs long before that point. You go onto a payment plan for your tax for the first time in years. You fall behind on your team's super. You halve your own pay. Your average repair order, or average job value, drops by $200. Suppliers put you on stop credit. Each one turns up on its own, so you don't add them together, until one month you go to clear the bills and you're $50,000 short.

For a good chunk of our clients, those red flags come from never being shown how to handle them, and within 90 days we've overhauled the cash side. The ones who wait too long sometimes can't be helped at all, and we turn away as many people as we accept into our paid programs.

Hear it from an owner instead of me. In under six minutes, Cassie and Josh explain why they picked industry coaching over a generic coach, how their bottom line moved, and what changed at home with five kids in the house.

Questions auto repair shop owners ask about business coaching results

How long does it take to see results from business coaching?

The cash side usually moves first. For a good chunk of our clients, we've overhauled the cash side within 90 days. Cassie and Josh saw their bottom line rise by roughly 50% in their first six months, then by another 75% on top of that over the next twelve. In The Engine Room, clients add $250,000 or more within 18 months.

Is my shop too small to get results from coaching?

No. Stella and Selwyn King started at $50,000 a month and at least doubled it. Nicole and Ben, who run a workshop in Warrnambool, Victoria, had been in business only three years when they told us that, a year after joining, they could take time away while the shop ran itself. If you're under $50,000 a month, Auto Superstars Academy is built for where you are.

What if my business is already doing well?

Coaching can still find money you're leaving behind. Megan and Adam had a business that was "going well" on paper and still found the things that weren't right once they looked properly at the books. If you're already at 20% net profit with the business systemised, we'll tell you that, and we won't take your money for it.

Can a general business coach get the same results?

A good general coach can help with goals and habits. What they don't have is the benchmarks for an auto repair shop: what your labour rate should be (the labor rate, in a US shop), what your technicians should produce, and what your service advisor or service writer should be selling. Those industry numbers are what made Cassie and Josh choose us over a generic coach.

What can I do tonight?

Write your "before" down. Take one page and record last month's turnover, your net profit, what you paid yourself, how many hours you worked, and how many of those warning signs above apply to your shop right now.

It takes ten minutes, and whatever you decide to do next, it's the only way you'll be able to answer "from what, to what?" a year from now.

Related questions:

• Is Business Coaching Worth It for an Auto Repair Shop?
• How Much Does an Auto Repair Business Coach Cost?

See what changes for the people who do this work. On our Our Clients page, auto repair shop owners, named and on camera, tell you what actually changed in their shops and their numbers.

More on this topic: all Performance articles.

Whenever you're ready, here's how we can help.

• Not ready to spend anything yet? Start free with Shop Talk, a 30-day reset for auto repair shop owners on our YouTube channel, and our free resources for auto repair shop owners.
• Running an auto repair shop under $50,000 a month? Auto Superstars Academy builds the foundations, delivered online, with one-on-one coaching on demand from a business coach who is a current or former auto repair shop owner.
• Over $50,000 a month? The Engine Room changes how the whole business runs, with one-on-one coaching on demand, group sessions over Zoom and three two-day intensives a year.