Shop profile: 25th Street Automotive

“From my early days,” he recounts, “it was never about sales objectives, that employees have to do this or sell that to keep their jobs; I believe everyone ought to be on performance-based pay, but there ought to be ethical ways for them to make a respectable paycheck. It was about understanding needs and presenting them to the customer. We didn’t sell things to people, we let them know what their car needed.”

To help accomplish this, Coniom and staff formulated a 25-year plan. “We looked at modest goals: how the gross sales would change over the years, even if only to keep up with inflation, and how long various employees intended to work here,” he explains. “Then we worked backwards from there. If someone retires in 2019, am I going to have to hire somebody years in advance to train them? Now we’re looking 5-10 years ahead for a key employee to figure out when I have to recruit and train a replacement, and transition when they’re ready to go.”

Coniom champions the concept of servant leadership. An ancient philosophy putting “the needs of others first and helping people develop and perform as highly as possible,” it was codified for modern business by Robert K. Greenleaf in a series of essays back in the 1970s. (Source: Wikipedia)

“One of my goals when I became a manager was ‘can I make a difference?’” Coniom explains. “What can I do for my employees, what can I do for the community?; that’s the way I run my life. I owe it both to the motoring public and the staff at my shop to remain profitable so that I can be here to honor our 24-month warranty, to hire the next generation of technicians, and to serve their children — for we’ve now been here long enough to serve multiple generations.”

The second of two shops, the first was founded by Coniom’s business partner Tony Guido. A former gas station, this facility grew until it couldn’t anymore, at which point Guido decided to expand. “You either get bigger or you go multiple,” says Coniom, “and it wasn’t our business model to get bigger.”

Coniom relates that he was a dealership technician when Guido hired him, “in the hopes of opening up another facility that I would run,” he says. “He hardly knew me and he’s handing me plane tickets to go to California and take training. Kelly Bennett and Bob O’Conner of one the Bottom Line Impact Groups had put together a series of classes for technician time management, service advisor skills and in-depth management training.”

They found a little shop for sale only a few miles away on 25^th Street, “close enough that we could be a support structure for each other, but far enough that we shouldn’t be eating away at each other’s customer base,” comments Coniom. With the original shop already an industry leader, the pair opened the new facility 15 years ago.

“I’m considered the managing partner of this business,” he explains. “Tony gave me half ownership of this shop, making the same offer to the manager at the other shop. It’s sweat equity; in addition to my manager’s salary, the longer I work here the bigger the stake I have in it.

However, Coniom found the new shop didn’t have much of a community reputation. “We came straight in, knowing that we wanted to make changes,” he said. “We started off by joining the neighborhood association because we’re right near a lot of residences; we attended those meetings and brought cookies and things. We put a stop to ‘blasting’ up and down the street test driving cars and became a part of the community to where we were more appreciated. 

“I assumed that we could take the (original) business model in its entirety, its marketing, everything, and just move it over here,” he laughs. “It’s still Phoenix, it’s only a few miles away — how different can it be? And it wouldn’t work. The first problem was that while it’s an affordable piece of small real estate, it has no major frontage. 25^th Street is not a main road; it’s more of a residential street, so there is not a lot of traffic. The other thing I found was that the people who live in this neighborhood are less likely to have someone at home who can drop a car off for repairs. They go to work and the neighborhood empties out. So I had to focus more on the neighboring businesses.”

For this, Coniom had a secret weapon — Krispy Kremes. “Three mornings of the week — not in the summer because the donuts melt too fast — I would get 8 dozen assorted donuts,” he explains. “Then I’d run by local businesses and say, ‘excuse me, but if I left some Krispy Kremes, would your staff appreciate them?’ I would go in everywhere — fitness centers, didn’t matter. It made a good impression. It brought us a lot of our new customers during that portion of our growth period. Of course people try to be healthier now; Krispy Kreme doesn’t get as much mileage as it once did.”

Now Coniom has a new business model that is more community oriented. “We’re a little family shop,” he smiles. “We only have two full-time technicians here, but we really do what we can. The Salvation Army was having trouble with a water drive, so I reached in the cash drawer and had our part-time trade school helper buy some cases of water and take it to them. When things need to be done, we do them, because it’s our culture to do what’s right, whether it’s the people in the building or in the community.”