Business By The Numbers

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Do you actually know how much money your shop made last month? If 90% of new clients walking through Hunt's door don't, what are the odds you do? In this episode, Hunt Demarest, CPA, goes solo to call out the four most common ways shop owners are unknowingly sabotaging their own profit and loss statements — and the p...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Why does the IRS really pick a tax return to audit? And if a CPA who does this for a living can still get dragged through a three-year fight, what chance does the rest of us have? In this episode, Hunt Demarest, CPA, steps out from behind the desk to tell his own story — a three-year audit of his 2023 tax return that...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Why is a shop charging $300 an hour in Texas still taking home less profit than a shop in Maine charging $30 less? Does where you're located actually decide how much money ends up in your pocket — or is something else driving the gap? In the final installment of a three-part dive into the 2026 Auto Shop Benchmark Rep...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Is your shop growing in revenue but shrinking in profit? Are you convinced that raising your labor rate is the fastest path to the bottom line — only to discover that your highest-charging competitors are losing money? And what if the real difference between a shop that keeps 35 cents of every dollar and one that los...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Your technicians got more productive in 2025. Your labor rate went up. Your parts margins improved. So why is the average shop owner keeping almost exactly the same percentage of every dollar as they did the year before? The answer is hiding in your effective labor rate — and most shop owners haven't looked at it onc...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve What if the government — and a few well-known billionaires — were offering to deposit cash directly into an account for your child or grandchild, no strings attached, starting July 4th? Would you sign up? In this solo episode, Hunt Demarest, CPA at Paar Melis & Associates, breaks down everything currently known a...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Is your shop management system telling you one number while QuickBooks says something else entirely? Are parts credits going unclaimed? And if someone were quietly skimming off the top, would your current process ever actually catch it? In this episode, Hunt Demarest, CPA at Paar Melis & Associates, sits down wit...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Is your advertising budget working for you, or quietly draining you? Are you paying a credit card processing premium you didn't even know existed? When did insurance stop being a routine expense and start becoming one of your biggest threats? And is that rent number on your P&L actually telling you the truth? In...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Are your PTO policies scaring off the technicians you actually want? Could a $100-a-week tool allowance or a reimbursed truck payment beat a $10,000 raise — and cost you less? In today's tight labor market, the shops winning top talent aren't always paying the most. They're being the smartest. Recorded live at the Vi...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve You bought a slower machine to save money. You kept the cheap tech to avoid risk. You sent the customer home with the cheaper repair to do right by them. What if every one of those decisions quietly cost you more than the thing you were trying to avoid? In this solo episode, Hunt Demarest, CPA at Paar Melis & Ass...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Are you leaving money on the table every time a parts price goes up — without ever realizing it? Most shop owners focus relentlessly on labor rates and rightfully so. But the slow, silent erosion happening inside your parts matrix may be quietly bleeding your gross profit month after month, even while your top-line s...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve What if the biggest fraud threat to your shop isn't a dishonest employee or a shady vendor, but your own customers? What if the payment you accepted last week could be reversed today, and there's nothing the police will do about it? And what if four shops across the country just got hit with the same scam, and yours...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve Every auto repair shop owner knows the feeling: a monster month followed by a stretch that barely covers the bills. But most owners assume they're doing something wrong. The truth? Even the best-run shops in the country don't make money every month of the year. In this episode, Hunt Demarest, CPA with Paar Melis &amp...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve What does the COO of the most widely adopted shop management software in the industry actually see when she looks at your data? In this episode, Hunt Demarest sits down with Lauren Langston, Chief Operating Officer of Tekmetric, for a candid, numbers-driven conversation about where the auto repair industry stands tod...

Thanks to our partners Promotive, WickedFile, Maverick Shop Owners, and Overdryve What if the reason your car count is down has nothing to do with your marketing — and everything to do with your people? And if you don't know who your ideal customer actually is before you spend a single dollar on advertising, are you really marketing, or just hoping? Hunt Demarest sits down with Mike DelaCruz, foun...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File You know comeback work costs money, but do you know how much? Most shop owners look at what they paid their technician and stop there. Hunt Demarest shows why that number is almost always the smallest part of the loss. In this episode, Hunt breaks down the real math on a client's comeback situation — where a perceived $500 problem was actually close...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File What if the reason your team isn't hitting your numbers is simply that they don't know what the numbers are? How do you go from being the guy fixing the cars to the guy running the business — and what does it cost you if you never make that mental switch? Hunt Demarest sits down with Brian Rooney, a client, shop owner in Iowa, and author of Protecti...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File What if that empty bay in your shop is costing you $175,000 a year? What happens when your best technician walks in on Friday afternoon and says they're not coming back Monday? In this episode, Hunt Demarest welcomes back Chris Lawson from Technician Find — the first returning guest on Business by the Numbers. Chris tackles the question shop owners...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File Would you swap out wiper blades for $500? Probably yes. Would you replace an entire engine for $500? Absolutely not. But here’s the real question: what if the math behind why you said yes to one and no to the other is the same math that’s silently costing your shop thousands of dollars every month? I In this episode, Hunt Demarest breaks down one of...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File You already know how to pay your technicians, but what about everyone else? Your service advisors, your counter staff, your shop manager... how do you build a pay plan that actually motivates them to perform? In this follow-up to last week's technician pay plan episode, Hunt Demarest walks through the three most common commission structures for fron...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File What if the pay plan you've been debating isn't actually the problem? In this solo episode, Hunt Demarest tackles one of the most argued topics in the auto repair industry: how to pay your technicians. After seeing it debated online once too often, Hunt pulls from hundreds of real shop benchmarks to cut through the noise — and his answer might surpr...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File What if you left college with an engineering degree and an MBA, only to realize your best opportunity was back home in the family auto shop? In this episode, Hunt Demarest sits down with Brad Templin of Scott's U-Save, a fourth-generation automotive professional and second-generation owner running multiple locations across the Midwest. Brad shares t...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File Should your shop carry life insurance on a key employee? What if one employee's unexpected death could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars? In this episode, Hunt Demarest tackles everything you need to know about life insurance for auto repair shop owners and their teams — covering key person insurance, term vs. whole life policies, tax implic...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File Are you unknowingly doing things that make the IRS take a closer look at your shop? What if one “small” filing mistake dramatically increases your audit risk this tax season? In this episode, Hunt Demarest walks through the most common tax mistakes that raise red flags with the IRS — and why many well-intentioned shop owners accidentally put themsel...

Thanks to our partners Promotive and Wicked File Are you sure you’re capturing every tax deduction your shop — and your employees — are entitled to this year? What if missing one small detail hands more money to the IRS than necessary? In this episode, Hunt Demarest kicks off the new tax season by breaking down the most important tax rule changes shop owners need to understand for 2026, and just a...