A Free Trip and New Shop Management Skills, Too!
A Free Trip and New Shop Management Skills, Too!
Mitchell 1 welcomes winners of the “Shift into High Gear” Facebook sweepstakes to San Diego
A trip to San Diego was not originally in the summer plans for Andy Kovesdi and his wife Andrea, owners of Garfield Auto Center in Garfield Heights, OH. Then one day in June, Andy got a call from Mitchell 1 telling him that he was the winner of the “Shift into High Gear” Facebook sweepstakes. He’d “liked” Mitchell 1 on Facebook and won a trip for two to San Diego to attend the Shop Management Super Workshop. Very quickly, San Diego became part of their summer schedule.
“I was in complete disbelief when I got the call,” said Andy, about being notified that he’d won the trip. “It seemed too good to be true, but it was for real!” Andy, who has owned the business for 21 years, works as a technician, does service writing and runs the business using the Manager SE software, along with ProDemand repair information and SocialCRM marketing services. Andrea joined him as Office Manager about nine months ago and is learning the business. She handles the accounting and supporting tasks including parts ordering and additional service writing.
From left: Instructor Tim McDonnell, Sweepstakes winners Andrea and Andy Kovesdi, and instructor John Dwulet.
Garfield Auto Center is a located in a former Sohio gas station and has five bays and one technician, in addition to Andy. Since he’s been there, they’ve never sold gas, but there is an antique Sohio gas pump in the shop lobby. Andy says they can handle just about any type of repair job, and as an E-Check facility licensed by the state of Ohio, they get a lot of failed emission check business. He adds that the secret to his success is being honest and fair with everyone: “My father used to say, ‘Be honest and do good work and the money will come.’ That’s true and it’s how we run our business.”
While he’s been using Mitchell 1’s Manager software since 2006, this was the first workshop Andy has attended. The training helped him and Andrea discover additional functionality in the software that they’ll now be able to put into use in the shop. Andy said, “We learned a lot about features we’ve seen in the program but ignored because we didn’t know how to use them. I’m going to update our system to the 6.5 version as soon as possible to take advantage of the new information we learned,” he said.
Spending time with other shop owners at the workshop also provided helpful insights and an opportunity to network and share ideas and information. “It was so nice to be with other people in the industry who have the same issues and experiences,” said Andy.
Andy and Andrea enjoyed the workshop so much they’ve already signed up for the next one, to be held Oct. 9-11 in Nashville, Tenn.
- Click to read the press release about Andy winning the sweepstakes
- Click for more information about the Nashville workshop: workshop registration website
