188 - How Your Auto Repair Shop Can Use AI to Turbo Charge Your Business

188 - How Your Auto Repair Shop Can Use AI to Turbo Charge Your Business January 21, 2026 - 00:59:31 Show Summary: Brand strategist Ernie Harker shows auto repair shop owners how AI can quickly produce professional marketing content without expensive designers or long turnaround times. He explains how large language models and image generation work, then demonstrates building a custom GPT trained to match a shop’s brand voice and customer tone. The session also covers AI video avatars that turn photos or short recordings into usable on camera style videos for social posts, FAQs, and internal updates. He stresses responsible use with human review, transparency, and avoiding fabricated testimonials. The main message is that consistent content creation is now faster and easier, giving early adopters a competitive edge.   Host(s): Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development   Guest(s): Ernie Harker, Branding & Keynote Speaker Show Highlights: [00:02:00] – Audience self rates AI experience from beginner to advanced [00:03:00] – AI speeds up marketing collateral without relying on designers [00:05:00] – Creative professionals feel threatened but shops can benefit immediately [00:08:00] – AI makes high quality visuals possible without creative skill [00:10:00] – Clear explanation of how GPT uses context and probability to write [00:12:00] – Quick demo turning a sketch into a usable logo concept [00:14:00] – Photo to video avatars create spokesperson content in minutes [00:18:00] – The hamburger method prompt AI then review and polish [00:24:00] – Live walkthrough building a custom GPT for a shop brand voice [00:40:00] – Avatar workflow in HeyGen upload photo choose voice paste script generate video In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry? Share your story with us at [email protected], and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.   👉 Unlock the full experience - watch the full webinar on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-9vqJmoF7lU Don’t miss exclusive insights, expert takeaways, and real talk you won’t hear anywhere else. Hit Subscribe, drop a comment, and share it with someone who needs to hear this!   Links & Resources:  Want to learn more? Click Here Want a complimentary business health report? Click Here See The Institute's events list: Click Here Want access to our online classes? Click Here ________________________________________ Episode Transcript Disclaimer This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at [email protected].   Episode Transcript: Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, or goodnight depending on when and where you are joining us from today. It is a gorgeous day. Thank you for being here, my friend. I am so excited for this conversation that we are gonna have. My guest today is Ernie Harker. Ernie is er Burn. He is the voice and the power behind the brands that you know and love the brand that we know and love as Maverick. Jimmy Lea: Maverick is my favorite convenience store. Ernie, thank you for all you've done to make the adventure starts here. Ernie is also a member of the north not the Northwest NSA National Speakers Association. We are members together in the Utah chapter called the Mountain West Chapter. And from the first day of meeting Ernie, man, we've been tight, good friends. Jimmy Lea: So excited to have you here with us, Ernie, as we're talking about artificial intelligence, and not only artificial intelligence, but what can a shop owner do in their shop that utilizes artificial intelligence? We're gonna talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Jimmy Lea: This is, these are things that you can do. Jimmy Lea: These are things that you should do, and this is probably something you might wanna hire somebody to help you to do. Jimmy Lea: And so with that also, those of you who are listening, Ernie has written a book. The book is. Your brand sucks straight and to the point. Ernie, thank you for doing Ernie Harker: this. It's not accusation, it's a probability. Jimmy Lea: Chances are your brand sucks. The beauty of this book is it goes into all the things that you can do to change your brand so that your brand becomes that recognizable source of truth that everybody wants to participate with. Oh. One more shout out right before we get started. My good friend, my good brother, my good friend Sean Tipton, St. Jimmy Lea: Augustine, Florida. Sean, it is good to see you, brother. I'm gonna call you when the webinar's done. It's been a long time. We need to talk. All right. With that, Ernie, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Let's talk about those things that shop owners can use Jimmy Lea: AI in their business. What can we do? Ernie Harker: Absolutely. Let me first start, I wanna get a sense of like, how many of you have some experience with AI chat, GBT, grok, whatever it is. So in the chat, I want you to rate your current familiarity, how you'd rate yourself in in AI kind of savvy. Zero is, I totally suck. 10 is I totally rock. Ernie Harker: Don't even know why I'm listening to this guy. And five, as I've used it, gimme like a range from zero to 10. I just wanna get a sense from like where you are. Let's see. Jimmy Lea: Jimmy's at a seven. Tyler's a 7.5. Evan is at a five. Heather's a five. Mike is a zero curb is a six, a five, a 7.5. Sean thinks he's better than me. Ernie Harker: We've got some familiarity and we've got a handful of people who are like, gosh, you know what, I'm starting from scratch. Let me kinda show you some real quick things that I think are pretty interesting. So last time I'm going, okay, how quickly can I create some marketing materials for the industry that, that look pretty professional? Ernie Harker: 'cause one of the challenges we face as small business owners is. We depend on creative people. I'm gonna say creative people, marketing people to produce the marketing content that we need. Oftentimes that is either expensive or it's time consuming or it's frustrating. I've dealt with creative people my whole life and I know that creative people can tend to be a little bit fickle. Ernie Harker: They want to be, they wanna do things that are cute and pretty and not necessarily driving the bottom line. So what I wanna do is show you I wanna explain to you first, y you can actually create agents level, industry leading marketing collateral just in a flash with ai. And here's some things one of the things I did real quickly is I created like for a Valentine's Day thing, some of us love our cars. Let's talk about like how much we love our cars. Let's give our cars a gift for Valentine's Day. So I quickly created this item. I wanted to convert that to a Instagram post. I wanted to create a billboard. Look at that, skip the flowers, skip the chocolates, give me something that lasts and I created my own company. Ernie Harker: Earnings Automotive. I also wanna could I create a TD commercial? Let's see if I can take, create a TD commercial. Here's the image I created. And I actually made it come alive, Jimmy Lea: Ernie. That is an amazing commercial where we can see her mouth moving. We don't hear anything coming through at the moment. Ernie Harker: Oh, man, it's too bad because man, she's toxin such a sultry voice. I want to buy her shocks that I know that's what she needs and wants Jimmy Lea: right. Ernie Harker: Let's see if I can, I wanna make sure I can like my audio. Ernie Harker: Can you guys hear my audio okay? My Jimmy Lea: voice right? Yeah. Yeah. Your audio's coming through nine by nine. Okay. I think it's just this video. You might need to optimize it for the video setting or something like that. Ernie Harker: Okay. Okay. Lemme give you a little bit of background. Why would you even listen to me? Ernie Harker: When I was 11 years old, my parents got rid of the tv. They carried out their threat. We're gonna get rid of that stupid idiot box my mom called it. So I spent my free time drawing. I got. Pretty good. Now. I still suck when I was a teenager, that Sweet Dragon and Ninja, but I got better and better. Ernie Harker: This was a painting I did for a wedding gift that is not hanging anywhere. It's atrocious. Just to show you, I did suck bad, but my teachers told me to focus on drawing heads and hands and bodies because if I could draw those really well, then I could pretty much draw anything. So I spent a tremendous amount of time instead of watching tv. Ernie Harker: Drawing faces and hands and heads from magazines. My first job out of college was working for an ad agency where I was doing storyboards like this. I would do hundreds of these frames outta my head to represent a scenario in a TV commercial or doing mockups like this that would represent a photograph that the photographer would then use as a reference to make a real photo. Ernie Harker: So this is the kind of stuff I did, and this is for fun. I'm like, I'm gonna do pinups. This is using Adobe Illustrator. I learned how to use Photoshop, Conti, cran watercolors, acrylic paints. Gosh, every freaking medium. I had to learn anatomy. I had to learn composition and textures and all the vocabulary that comes with art. Ernie Harker: So I spent a tremendous amount of time getting really good. These are three of I did portraits of my daughters when they were younger and what's really sad is I spent 30 years drawing and learning to draw and getting really good at drawing. These were some of the I was in, I was at a podcast one time and the host asked me, like my background. Ernie Harker: I told him I was an illustrator. Then he asked if I was any good, so I sketched a picture of him after the event, after my podcast sent it to him. He freaks out. He says, you gotta do this every time. So since that time I've drawn, portraits of people to get their attention or to express my gratitude. Ernie Harker: And about a couple years ago, I've done like hundreds of these. About a couple years ago people started asking me if ai, if I used AI for this. And I'm like, please man, AI can't do this. Do you know how much time and effort I spend getting good at this? And then I realized, holy crap, AI can totally do this. Ernie Harker: The one on the right is me. You may recognize the guy on the left. That's Jimmy. And I'm like, that actually looks what I would do, and it did it in seconds and mine took hours. I'm screwed. And I think a lot of times people look at AI and go, man, I'm, I feel threatened by it. Creative people do. Ernie Harker: They felt threatened by it. And so you're creative people, you're designers, your marketing people. They're the probably the most resistant to using AI tools. But what I want you to think about is get the, this idea that AI has leveled the playing field, where you no longer have to be talented, creatively talented to produce marketing content, promotional content. Ernie Harker: You don't have to have a camera, you don't have to have lights. You don't have to have years of experience learning how to draw or anything like that. You can actually. Do this stuff and if you can do it, man, your marketing people can crush it with this stuff. So first of all, what is generative ai and then how can you use it? Ernie Harker: I'm gonna talk about large language models and just kinda give you a brief intro to what they are and how they work. We'll talk about image generation and also some video generation. Large language models. You see these Claude Gemini, grok, and there's more. There's lots more. And basically what they do is they're trained to speak and understand human language and just give you a background like how they work so you can use them. Ernie Harker: Imagine a generative AI program being trained to watch a text conversation. One conversation is not gonna give them enough information to be able to come up with to understand context, to understand the meaning behind those words. Because computers can identify words and then have a de a dictionary definition of those words, but it really doesn't understand context. Ernie Harker: But if you multiply the training to include like gazillions of conversations now the AI model. The program can start to see patterns and can start to infer meaning behind words. G GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer. Generative means supposed to be creative, which means oftentimes. You can get frustrated if you're trying to get something out of it that you're being very explicit about and it's not giving you what you want. Ernie Harker: It's trying to be creative, and if you want something that's to change a little bit, but it changes everything. It's meant to be creative, so it won't be giving you the same thing every time. Pre-trained means it's been trained for a specific amount of time, the model's released, and then it's no longer learning. Ernie Harker: In the meantime, the developers are working on the next model to be trained. Then transformer basically means that every word needs to be converted or transformed into a number. So when you say mouse, how does the GPT know? If you're talking about a rodent or a peripheral a computer device, based on context, it will take that word and turn it into a the right number to mean the right thing. So that's what large language models are. And so when I ask like, how are you doing? It'll respond with a, it'll respond with a with copy. That is the next word is a mathematical probability. I am, it thinks of all the English language. What's the likelihood of the next word being octopus? Ernie Harker: I'm octopus. How many times it seen that? None times I am probably doing is probably the next best word I am doing. And then there's probably some other word that follows that because in its learning, it's never seen I am doing, and then that's the it and that's the end. So that's what image generation is. Ernie Harker: That's what large language models are. I'm gonna just jump right into like image generation. It learns the same way we do by looking at lots and lots of pictures. It starts to see the similarities and then it gets really good at seeing those those similarities. And then it will, it can create phenomenal images based on all the things that it's seen and been trained to do. Ernie Harker: So if I wanted to surprise kitten with blue eyes playing with yarn. It could totally give me what I want because it's researched so much an image. When an image is generated, it's not finding something and modifying it. It's not like an image search, it's actually creating something for real. Okay. What I wanna do too to make sure that you guys get the most out of this time is I wanna focus a little bit on like how to use like a video avatar, because I think there's a ton of ways that you guys might be able to do that. Ernie Harker: So video. The same way. If you wanna create an image, oh, I wanna show this to you too. You don't have to be a great artist, to be a great designer. Like I doodled out this little logo I uploaded to Chad, GBT, and I had a little prompt that said, create a logo out of this. This is what it looks like. Ernie Harker: Freaking awesome. I don't have to be a great designer. I can get me most of the way there. I can also use images as a prompt. To describe something that I want, upload this image, and I said, ACHI, I says, describe this image in a way that I can create a new one, but using a bald, handsome guy wearing a red suit, so I get this instead. Ernie Harker: Now, the reason I showed this to you is because oftentimes really creative ideas can be expensive to produce. You have to have hiring models and locations and stuff like that. Generative AI makes it so you don't have to spend money or time finding models looking for locations and things like that. Ernie Harker: So you can be specific about the type of like car or automotive part by typing in the name or model number of that part, and you'll get an image of that. About a year or more ago, you wouldn't be able to do that, but today the AI is so good, you can get very specific content. So you, many of you saw the video of Cecil. Ernie Harker: Hopefully you did. You're not gonna be able to hear him speak. I don't think so, unfortunately. Let's see. AI Cecil Bullard: Hey, shop owners. Ernie Harker: You don't hear 'em, do you? Cecil AI Cecil Bullard: Bullard? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. It's coming through. It's in the background. Ernie Harker: Okay. AI Cecil Bullard: Slightly mess. Grumpy version of Cecil. Learn how to create videos for social media and training and stuff just like this one in a matter of minutes. AI Cecil Bullard: You'll learn from Ernie Harker, one of the smartest minds in branding and AI for local businesses. He is gonna show you how shops are using AI right now to get more cars in the bays, more calls on the phone, and more money in the bank without hiring more staff. It's Wednesday, January 21st from 11 to 12 Mountain Time, and it's completely free. AI Cecil Bullard: Just head over to we are the institute.com/upcoming events and click join us. Ernie Harker: Okay. So what you saw is I just took a picture from the internet. I uploaded that picture of Cecil, and then I, import it into a video generating software, and it created that video. He didn't have to be on camera. I'm not, I'm gonna, what, Jimmy, what are you thinking? Jimmy Lea: So a comment just came up and this is true. Everybody on this call knows exactly what Cecil sounds like, and that didn't sound like Cecil. Why? Ernie Harker: Because I didn't have a voice sample to use to train the model. Jimmy Lea: So you could make my voice come across as a sultry female. Absolutely. You could make Cecil be a sultry female. Jimmy Lea: You could. You could make Cecil speak Cantonese. Ernie Harker: Yes. I can have him speak probably from one of 127 different languages. So Jimmy Lea: mind blown. Ernie Harker: But in order to if you wanna do a clone of yourself, Jimmy Lea: yeah, Ernie Harker: you'd have to record yourself speaking. For about three minutes and then you upload that. I didn't have any samples of Cecil, but that's how easy it really is. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Big deal. That's easy. Ernie Harker: Which is what's awesome about it, is that if you have a video of yourself, 'cause I'm not sure, let me see if I can move on a little bit. Can you guys see me? Where you're not seeing my slide, right? You're seeing me? Jimmy Lea: We see a slide. It's got Cecil and two Nies on there. Ernie Harker: Okay. Cut. Cut to me. Okay. 'cause here's the deal. If you guys have ever tried to do like a selfie video, and this is kinda, we're gonna go into a real case study of this, of using this process, using the videos here's what typically happens. You go, okay, I've got this cool thing I wanna say on social media, or I got this training idea, or whatever. Ernie Harker: And what you do is you have someone to hold your phone. You go, Hey, hold my phone. Okay, here's what I'm gonna say. And you go, okay. Hey everybody, I just, okay, hold on. Let me get this, I'll get this. Just gimme a second. Are you rolling? Yeah. Rolling. Okay. Okay. Hey everybody. Ernie Harker. Ernie Harker: I just wanted to give you a, oh, I forgot what I was gonna say. Dang it. Okay. You know what, we'll just edit this later and you guys, it's a freaking dumpster fire. And then you end up after five minutes of this and you go, screw it. We're not doing videos anymore. Jimmy Lea: I, I think every shop owner is feeling the same pain as what you're saying because we'll set up a tripod. Jimmy Lea: Hit record, and then it's oh my gosh, after 12 attempts, I finally got it right. But it took me an hour to get there. Ernie Harker: Yep. And you're going, this is not, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Yeah. It's just not. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can skip through. AI Cecil Bullard: Hello. CRN Ernie Harker: I'm Okay. I'm gonna get through those. Ernie Harker: What I've learned is that I'm using generative AI and I'm saving at least two to three hours a day for marketing communications. Now, this is not gonna turn wrenches, it's not gonna talk to people, but use, using generative AI and generative AI can help you reach more customers with messages that you want them to hear because you're able to produce marketing content and collateral. Ernie Harker: Faster and easier than ever. Your website, your social media, your flyers, your your handouts, your counter signs, your posters, all that kind of stuff you're doing. You can do it in like a fraction of the time and you don't need to pay some expensive graphic designer or wait so long to get it. So how do you do that? Ernie Harker: I'm gonna make sure that if you guys will send me this email, [email protected] and in the subject put five ways. I've got a PDF that shows you, first of all, how to train your brand to create your own GPT, which we'll do in just a second. And also five ways you can use, a clone your avatar. Ernie Harker: So send me an email, [email protected], and then I'll just say five ways and I'll send this to you. So when you think about ai, I want you to think of using it responsibly in a sandwich, a hamburger. You're the human bun, okay? You do the initial prompt. AI does the content, and then you have to finish it off. Ernie Harker: You have to review it, you have to approve it. It's saving you a ton of time, so make sure that you make sure that the content that it provides to you is accurate or on brand. So let's do this demo. Okay. I wanna show you, I'm gonna use chat, GPT. Can you guys see my screen okay? Jimmy Lea: Yep. Where should we begin? Ernie Harker: Okay, so where should we begin? I've created a prompt, and that prompt is in the PDF. I'm gonna copy this prompt. I'm gonna pace it right in here and I'm gonna personalize it a little bit. Can you let me zoom in a little bit? Yep, Jimmy Lea: we can see it. Ernie Harker: Okay. So here's, I'm gonna, I created this prompt that will become the mastermind brand assistant for all my marketing content. Ernie Harker: Okay? I will use this prompt every time. And you can do this in just a single, a chat thread, or you can create your own GPT. I'm just gonna a chat thread for now. Okay. 'cause you can always go back to this thread and have it help you produce marketing content. So here's my prompt. I'd like your help producing marketing content for my auto repair business that is consistent with the tone, personality, and reputation of my shop. Ernie Harker: My business is called Ernie's Autocare. We're an automotive repair and maintenance shop that serves busy working families and commuters who depend on their vehicles every day. That gives them context. What do we do and what's the name of my company? We specialize in keeping cars safe, reliable, and road ready by servicing tires. Ernie Harker: This is what I do. This is the product I provide them with. Okay? I do tires, windshield wipers, shocks, and struts. This is where you would put your stuff, what you do. Okay? My brand can be described as here's what I want what do I want people, my customers, to describe my brand? How do I want them to describe it? Ernie Harker: Honest, blue collar, friendly, no nonsense, dependable. Now, one of the things I would suggest is to create some descriptions that are not common in your industry. Okay? Otherwise, your GPT is gonna sound like Bills shops. Okay? I would put something like fun professional premium, maybe it's a little, maybe I do a lot of work for the construction world. Tons of work for the construction world. And so I'm gonna be a little bit off color and masculine be a little funny. I like to tell jokes. Okay. Now I want my customers to feel, how do I want my customers to feel? I want them to feel. Ernie Harker: Happy, relieved, and well taken care of. That's going to, that's going to give the chat, GBTA goal or target to create language around that will be on brand the way you want your customers to feel. Because 95% of all purchase decisions are emotionally driven. Let's give them a target emotion. To get to my brand uses words and phrases like, we've got your back, we'll get you back on the road. Ernie Harker: No surprises. Treat you like family, we've got you. I use words and phrases like badass. I hope it's okay for me to say that. And awesome. Okay. Those are words that I use and I wanna use that in my brand. So then I'll just say really simply, do you understand? The reason I do that is otherwise if I don't, it's gonna start just throwing ideas at me. Ernie Harker: I don't want it to gimme ideas right now. I just want to understand, 'cause I have some ideas here. Here's what it tells me. Now imagine you taking that same paragraph, dropping into chat, chat GBT, and then personalizing it to your brand. Okay? Any questions so far? We doing okay? Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Yeah. Ernie, we're doing great. Jimmy Lea: This is some really good information. One of the questions is when we're putting this information into chat, GPT, who owns the results? Who owns the interaction? Ernie Harker: Awesome. If you have a paid, if you have a license or a, an account, you don't even have to have a paid license. If you have an account, you're not just using free. Ernie Harker: The stuff that you put on is your stuff. It's not being shared. Okay. That's what they say. Do I believe it? Jimmy Lea: I want Ernie Harker: to. I'm having a hard time. I have a hard time saying, people say we don't share your information with anybody. And I get emails from some random financial shop, so don't put anything on here like pricing or. Ernie Harker: Coca-Cola should not put their ingredients and their recipe in here, but branding and marketing stuff is totally fine. 'cause even if I knew that your shop says things like badass and awesome in your language what's that gonna do for me? I don't care. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Ernie Harker: So make sure that the content you put up here is something that you would be okay with if somebody found it. Ernie Harker: All right. But they are supposed to keep this private onto your account Jimmy Lea: because you have the paid account. Ernie Harker: Either you have a paid account or a you have a license. Okay. Okay. And I just use you guys. I have the plus account. I don't even have a pro account. I spend like less than 30 bucks a month on this stuff. Ernie Harker: And I use it every day, all day long. Okay. So you don't need to pro, does that answer your question? Oh, by the way, yeah. One other thing there's gonna be some inherent biases into ai. It just, it is because it was developed by people and the way it learns is from people develop content and people are biased naturally. Ernie Harker: So you're gonna get some biases. Any other questions? Jimmy Lea: Oh, this is great information. Yeah. Keep going into this because I I'm super excited for you to get into the part where we're able to create our own GPT. Ernie Harker: Yes. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Ernie Harker: Yes. So here's in fact, gosh, you guys, I'm gonna do this instead. Ernie Harker: I'm gonna take this same paragraph that I just did, and I will show you how to make your own GPT super easy. On the left hand side because what you, the reason you want to have a GPT is that you have a locked and loaded version of chat, GPT, that is trained to speak in your voice every time. So over here in GPTs, I'll scroll down to the bottom. Ernie Harker: I got a ton of GPTs, but right here, there's an Explore gpt. Click on explore GBTs, click Create. If you don't have. A a subscription. You won't see this Okay. On the left hand side. Jimmy Lea: To do this, you've gotta have the paid account. Ernie Harker: Yeah, just, yeah. Just use your plus account cheap. Jimmy Lea: Okay? Ernie Harker: Easy. Ernie Harker: Okay. Your interface is divided in half. On the right hand side is kind like your lab to test your GPT on the left hand side. You've got two different ways to create your GPT. We're gonna start with create, and I want you to think about using create as. If you're talking to a developer, speaks human language, you're just gonna tell you, tell it what you want, and it's gonna respond back like a person. Ernie Harker: It's going to, it's going to write down the programming notes and configure. We'll see both. So here's what I'm do. I'm gonna paste in that paragraph that we just did. I'd like your help producing marketing content, my business. Okay. It's called earnings auto care, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just gonna hit send. Ernie Harker: What it's gonna do, it's gonna go, okay. I'm gonna start to take notes. I'm gonna figure this out. I need to, we need to name this thing. We need to come up with an icon for it so that it's easy for me to find it in my GPT library. Ernie Harker: Come on. Come on computer. Jimmy Lea: So the icon that you're using, that's just for you, it's not for anybody else. It's not correct. I wanna use my company logo or anything? Ernie Harker: Yep. Correct. This is not the only way you'd, the only person you'd wanna share this with is anybody that helps you produce marketing content for your company. Ernie Harker: Okay? So if you have a few executives or people that want to use this, just share it with them and I'll show you how to do that. This says, Hey let's lock in a name for this GPT Ernie's Auto Care Marketing Assistant. Fine. I'm gonna say great. Ernie Harker: I don't care what it's named 'cause it's, I'm the only one that's gonna be using this right now. It's gonna come up with an image for me. Ernie Harker: And that image. You can change it if you want, but I don't care. Oh, cool. There's Ernie. The guy should be bald, but I don't care. I'm gonna say this is great. Ernie Harker: Okay. At this point in time, I can just hit create here. 'cause right now it's not saved. Okay, I'm gonna hit create and that basically saves it. Here's my options to share it. Do I want only me to have access to this? Can I share it with anybody with the link or do I wanna publish to the GPT store that the whole world can access? Ernie Harker: Don't do that. Just use anyone with the link. Right now I'm the only one with the link, so I'm gonna hit save there. What it's doing now is it's taking the conversation that I just had. Putting that information into configure. Here's the name, here's the description, here's my instructions. I can open this up. Ernie Harker: And based on the paragraph that I gave it, this is what it understands. I can go into this anytime and edit it, change it if I wanted to. In fact, one of the things I'd like to do in here is I'd say my brand personality can be described. Ernie Harker: As a mix between Bob Ross, the artist, Bob Ross, and the Dose Eckes most interesting man in the world. Okay. If you have a, if you feel like there's a personality that's a celebrity, that would be an awesome, like type of person for your brand voice, put it in here. Like Matthew McConaughey, Ryan Reynolds, they all have their own personality and you can get a little of that taste from this GPT. Ernie Harker: Okay. I close. Now on the right hand side, I'm gonna hit update real quick on the right hand side. I can now test it. Okay. I can say write a short social media post for windshield wipers as a gift for Valentine's Day. Ernie Harker: Okay. Now it's gonna use my branded voice, my branded tone. Okay. Rosa Red vs. Blue. But nothing says I love you like windshield wipers that actually work this Valentine's Day. Skip the chocolates and give a gift that keeps them safe, drying, seen clearly rain, sleet, or surprise puddles included. New wipers equals better, better visibility. Ernie Harker: Safe drives, and one less thing to worry about. That's real love Swing by Ernie's Autocare. We've got you and your Valentine covered. See, we've got you covered was one of the things that I have in my language here. Okay. No surprise. Just smooth streak free romance. Awesome. Now I can say create an image to accompany this post. Ernie Harker: Now I could let's do this. Now I can even give it a little more. If I have an idea of what I really want, I can put it in here. Green Image company. This post of bouquet, bouquet of windshield wipers Ernie Harker: wrapped in a red bow. Okay, but just describe whatever you want or no description at all and it will know what your concept is about because you just wrote that and it will come up with an image for you now. Now, right? Right now I'm just in the preview mode. When you do something in preview mode, it doesn't remember, so I'm just testing it. Ernie Harker: This is my testing lab. When I exit this GPT creation, all this stuff will be gone. Okay, Jimmy Lea: so let's you, and let you do what, how do you, how do, so if you click on the update button, does that take everything that you've done so far and save it? Ernie Harker: It saves the GPT, but not the images. Jimmy Lea: Got it. Ernie Harker: Not this, anything in this preview area that goes away. Ernie Harker: So if I really like this stuff, I'm gonna go, man, that was awesome. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna grab all this. Copy it, paste it into a Word document or whatever, and then I can download this image right here. Just hit that's how pretty that is, and then you save this, save that image. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Ernie Harker: But what I'm gonna do now is IM gonna hit update. Let me show you how to access this. I'm gonna leave. The GPT, it's going to be, it's gonna be in my GPT listing here in my library. If you don't see anything, it's because this little arrow is closed. Click this little arrow and you'll scroll down. Ernie Harker: Scroll down and you'll find your, ah, here it is, Autocare. I click on that. Now I can create content that will stay on my account. Any information that I create will stay on my account. So one of the things I might do is, Jimmy Lea: so's an So you copied that previous paragraph. If you paste it in here, it becomes part of the full program. Ernie Harker: Yes. I can say, hey so I could do is I just take the same the same question I had, write a social media post. But if I don't need to paste in here 'cause I don't think of your GPT as a library of content use. Use chat, GBT or other AI tools to create content that you save somewhere else, okay? Ernie Harker: Because what I, the last thing I wanna have happen is have Chad g Bt come up and say, we have a new, we have a new model. Boom, everything you had is gone. And I don't want, it's not intended to be like a hard drive. Okay? So copy your stuff that you like and put it into a hard drive. So what? Ernie Harker: Let, hey Jimmy, let's pretend you have a shop and now you have this brand. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Ernie Harker: What kind of content would you want to create? Jimmy Lea: Let's see, let's let's, Ernie Harker: Let's do it, let's do a video. Let's do a video. Okay. Jimmy Lea: Okay. We're gonna do a video and it's gonna be about uncle Cecil's oil service. Ernie Harker: Okay. I've got, let's use Ernie's Autocare because I've got his brand name. Jimmy Lea: Uncle Ernie's Oil Service. Ernie Harker: Oil service. Okay. Yeah, Jimmy Lea: And what's specific about this, Ernie, is you're typing this out, is we're not just gonna do a lube oil filter. We're not just gonna do an oil change. This is an oil service, and so it includes more things than just. Jimmy Lea: Changing the oil. Ernie Harker: Okay, so let's take a look at this. Who is our audience? Who are we gonna target? Jimmy Lea: We are gonna target the soccer moms. Ernie Harker: Okay. Soccer Jimmy Lea: moms bands. Ernie Harker: Okay. I'm thinking soccer mom. Jimmy Lea: Any Ernie Harker: soccer mom want to listen to or watch a video of a woman her age, or a sexy man? Jimmy Lea: She'd probably wanna see a sexy man. Ernie Harker: Okay. Who does this guy look like? Jimmy Lea: This guy looks like somewhere between George Clooney and Matt Damon. Ernie Harker: Okay, cool. Okay, so now I know the t type of personality. I want. The first thing I'm gonna do now is write a script for Ernie's Otto in the voice of this person. It's not gonna be Ernie, okay. Ernie Harker: It's going to be a, maybe it's a mechanic that kind of looks like a guy that works for me that. That will be like, all the girls want to come and see this guy. Now I know there's people listening, going, we have a dude like that. We have a George and all the guy, all the ladies want to come and watch George turn ranges. Ernie Harker: So let's do this. I'm gonna create a script first. So write a short script to introduce or to invite women with children. Ernie Harker: To come in for a, what do you call, an oil service? Jimmy Lea: Oil service, yeah. Earnings oil service. Ernie Harker: That includes, what does it include? Jimmy Lea: It includes a full digital vehicle inspection, topping off all fluids, Ernie Harker: fluid, top off, Jimmy Lea: Filter. Yeah. Ernie Harker: Oil. Jimmy Lea: Huh. Conventional oil. Ernie Harker: Do we wanna have a price point on that or no? Jimmy Lea: No. I guess we could because that's a quick, simple, easy Ernie Harker: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: Service. Our oils, this one is gonna be $129. Ernie Harker: Okay. One $29. And that's let's do something like it's a spring break, like prep for spring break. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Okay. To prepare you for all those sporting events happening this spring. Ernie Harker: Okay. What's cool is I didn't spend time polishing this, okay? But it already knows my language and tone for Ernie's Auto Care. Let's hit submit and see what happens. Ernie Harker: Hey, moms Spring is coming in hot between practices, tournaments, road trips, and spring break plans. Your car is basically part of the family. Nice. Ooh, that's great. At Ernie's Autocare, we've got $129 oil service designed to keep you moving without the stress. We'll get conventional oil, a new filter, full fluid, top off, and a complete digital vehicle inspection with photos and notes sent straight to your phone. Ernie Harker: Now I'm, I didn't know. Jimmy Lea: Correct. Ernie Harker: That would be great. Jimmy Lea: That does happen. That's a DVI digital vehicle Ernie Harker: inspection. Okay. Awesome. Okay. It know what is, no surprises ever. It's quick, it's transparent. It's one less thing on your plate before the mile. Stack up the spring, come see us. We'll take care of your car. Ernie Harker: Here's what I wanna do. I'm gonna say make this shorter and add a little flirt. For the actor to read this script. Okay. Ernie Harker: Hey, moms Spring's, packed games, road trips, spring breaks. You're basically run a logistics for a small army. Bring your car to Erie's Auto Care and let us spoil it a little. Our 1 29 Well service includes blah, blah, blah. You handle the kids, we'll, handle the car swing by before spring break, we promise to treat you right. Ernie Harker: Okay, great. I'm gonna grab this script. Okay, I'm just gonna copy it now. I need an image. I need an image of this person and I'm, if I don't need it to be branded, I won't use Ernie's Auto Care GPT. Okay. The only reason I wanna use Ernie's Auto Care, GPT is for branded marketing materials for me, so I'm just gonna create a new chat. Ernie Harker: Just a brand new chat here that has nothing to do with Ernie's Automotive, and I'm gonna say please create a professional photograph of a auto, of a very handsome and rugged auto mechanic inside a garage. Okay. Is there a specific. Like description that you would say as an auto garage? Ernie Harker: Is it like a repair shop or auto garage? What would you say? Jimmy Lea: Yeah, it's an automotive repair shop. Ernie Harker: Okay. Jimmy Lea: Inside of a, inside of the bay of an automotive repair shop, Ernie Harker: because I don't want to think, oh, it's in some dude's garage. Jimmy Lea: Yeah. No. You want it in the bay. You want to have rotary lift in the background and a huge snap-on toolbox Ernie Harker: inside of an, of a lar, I'll say a large. Ernie Harker: Professional. Jimmy Lea: Yep. Ernie Harker: Automotive repair shop. Okay. Create a handsome, professional, handsome, rugged he's smiling Ernie Harker: at the camera, holding a shop towel in his hands. Okay. Handsome. Okay. What I'm gonna do is I'm based, hopefully this image will turn out really good and I've still, I'm still in chat, GPT by the way. I haven't gone to some other platform while this is baking. Okay. And it takes just a second. I'm gonna introduce you to the software that we'll use to create the video. Ernie Harker: Okay? It's called Hey, Jen. You can do this for free for one avatar, but it's you guys. This is so crazy simple. I'm gonna click over here on this avatars and click plus I'm gonna create a virtual character, upload a photo, go back to my dude. Look at this handsome devil. There he is. I'm gonna download this dude. Ernie Harker: And I could actually put a logo on his chest if I wanted to. So I'm gonna say this is, mechanic dude. And I'm going to put him, just gimme a second here. Desktop. Go back over here. Upload desktop mechanic. Dude, where are you? Mechanic three up. There we are. My eyesight is total crap. And I'm gonna go upload. Ernie Harker: It's pretty dang quick. Continue. So I got this dude, I'm gonna name him. This is Jim. Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's Jim. Okay. Jim's good. Ernie Harker: Jim's good. He is early middle age. He's a man. He is a white guy. This is just, you don't have to do any of this stuff, but it just knows. And now I need a voice for Jim. There's you guys, there's like a ton of voices that you can choose from gobs of them. Ernie Harker: Just listen to him like but I want to use, I've got a guy named Ben in here that I kinda like. Jimmy Lea: Ben's voice One. Ernie Harker: He's a little southern. I'm gonna grab Ben's voice here. Ernie Harker: Come on. Ben's voice. Ernie Harker: Where was he? There it is. Sorry guys. Ben's voice. Save that voice. Now. Ben's voice is locked into Jim. Let's create a video with Jim. Ernie Harker: Okay. Awesome. Awesome. Jimmy Lea: So a, as a shop, I can create this for my shop as a single or free in Hey gen. I can do it for one avatar. Ernie Harker: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: So I can have one gym, whether it's Jim or it could be me. So if Sean could be like his avatar, it could be him. And this is free just for him being the one single avatar? Ernie Harker: Yes. Yep. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Ernie Harker: Yep. For one. They can change that anytime, by the way. Jimmy Lea: So we can come back and change it to yeah. To Ben or Doug or Tyler Ernie Harker: Or, my concern is that Hey, Jen will go, oh, by the way, no more freebies, no more Jimmy Lea: free for you. Ernie Harker: Yeah. Jimmy Lea: They become the soup guys, Ernie Harker: I'm gonna go here. I'm gonna paste that script. Ernie Harker: Hey, moms Springs, packed games, road trips. Let's hear what it sounds like. Okay. Let me just. I gotta, Jimmy Lea: is it your play button? Ernie Harker: Here we go. If this generate that says Go for it. And I don't want to go for it yet, so I'm going to ch make this. Sorry. I've got it so zoomed in. I can't even see anything. So let's hit let's hear it. Ernie Harker: It won't show the video, but it should show the audio. Ernie Harker: Hold on a second. Doing Ernie Harker: S voice. Good, Ernie Harker: good good. Jimmy Lea: Not seeing the play is it In the bottom left hand corner? Right above the small thumbnail icon. Ernie Harker: Usually it's right up here. Jimmy Lea: Go down to the right one inch. There's a play button right next to a series zero, zero. Yeah. Is that it? Ernie Harker: That plays this thing? Let's try Jimmy Lea: this. Okay. Jimmy Lea: So if you can hear it on your end, we're not hearing it on this end. Okay. Ernie Harker: I can hear it. I can hear, but basically it reads this in that guy's voice and I just hit generate right here. I'm gonna call this Jim Mechanic, submit that. And the shorter it is, the faster it goes. But what's crazy, like even this one right here, this started with the photograph, but the animation. Jimmy Lea: The animation's pretty dang good. We can't hear what she's saying, but that looks quite natural. Ernie Harker: Yeah. So the que, while this is baking, let me just kinda describe some of the ways you could use this character. First of all, if I were you, if I was a business owner, one of the biggest things that employees want, they wanna know what's going on with the company and you don't have time to produce videos that you know are updates. Ernie Harker: It would be great for you to create a clone of yourself, and all you have to do is spend about two minutes getting in front of a camera, and it doesn't matter what you say you're basically giving content for, hey, Jen, to create a virtual model for you. And so what I would do is I'd get in front of a camera, I'd say, this is me talking. Ernie Harker: I'm really not saying anything in particular. I'm just talking. Maybe I just talk to a friend that's right in front of me, because even the words I'm saying right now doesn't even matter. But what it's doing is it's capturing my voice print, it's capturing my behavior, it's capturing my expressions. So really you just talk like this for two minutes, and then you've got the video footage, it has your voice and it has your actions. Ernie Harker: You upload that and it takes a little bit longer because it's more than just a photo that it's using as your character, your information. Then you have a version of you. Then I would get chat, GPT, my GPT to say, Hey, will you write a short script for my clone to read? That gives like a address. Ernie Harker: I'm like, things we need to remember around the shop, or we've hit this goal last month and next month it's gonna be this, or whatever it is. It will write the script for you so that you can go through it and go, oh, I'm gonna just modify it, change it. Remember the hamburger bun, you do the prompt, it does the script for you, and then you let and go, oh, this is good. Ernie Harker: This work. I'm gonna just copy this, paste it into my, Hey, gen clone, edit it just to touch and hit send. You could be in the freaking Bahamas. Sip, sip, and pina coladas when you do this, it doesn't matter but here's my only thing I would suggest is when you do that. There are some times when it's, when your audience can see that they know you really well. Ernie Harker: This isn't really him. So what I would do is I would suggest that you have that clone in the script. Say, Hey, the real Jim's not here, but he's asked me to share some really important information with you. So now it's like I'm being transparent about that. I'm not really Jim, but the content is really important. Ernie Harker: And that's what's, that's what's, that's what's important. So be transparent about using this content. For your ai your, Jimmy Lea: your avatar. Ernie Harker: Yeah, for your avatar. But another thing don't don't create testimonials that didn't exist. That's morally wrong. Okay? Man, Ernie's Auto Shop is the best. I've searched everywhere and nobody treats me better than Ernie. Ernie Harker: It's don't do that. But what you can do is get a real quote from people. Put it into an avatar and then just you can ev easily put I'll show you this real quick. You can easily add text to it. Go. I just want add text to it right here. And this is this Jimmy, this is Jimmy Brown's testimonial, but, the AI generated image, real testimonial, but AI generated image that make sense? So it's Jimmy Lea: oh yeah, Ernie Harker: we're being transparent. This is a real testimony, but we're being transparent about, the image that we're using. Really easy ways to use this tool for social media. You have a special, nobody cares that girl is not real. Ernie Harker: Nobody cares. You don't have to have a disclaimer and say, this girl isn't really real because. We're used to getting talent on TV commercials and radio commercials that are not employees of the company. We get Ernie Harker: Paid actor. This is basically a paid actor that you don't have to pay. Ernie Harker: And I use it for HR videos. You guys, oftentimes we'll use HR videos, either canned videos that somebody else provides us with that are like really boring. Or you create your own avatar, you put the logo on the chest, have somebody in Photoshop just drop a logo on the chest. Or even have Chad, GPT, put a logo on the chest. Ernie Harker: That person works 24 hours a day for you. Doesn't charge you any money, delivers it perfectly almost every time. And you don't need to edit. It's 'cause one, one of the things that happens in HR videos is Susie, the lady that did the video, she ends up leaving. And starts working for the competitor. And then you got Suzy as your HR video. Ernie Harker: No thank you. Let's just man do promotional videos, do HR videos. I've got in my, the PDF that I promised to send you, it has five different suggestions on how to use it. Gosh, one of my favorites is like FAQs, do FAQs. Hey. Just do one little FAQ for each video and you have a little graphic that says, Hey, here's the how, when do I not need to know my tires need rotated, or, and it's super, super easy in here to add a scene and then just grab some other footage and put it in here so you don't have to like, be a great editor, just add another scene and add more videos. Ernie Harker: It's just so easy you guys. Anyway. Jimmy Lea: Okay, so we're all dying to see what Jim, the mechanic Ernie Harker: said. Should we take a look? Let's see what Jim looks like. Ernie Harker: And I'm gonna turn it up really loud. Jimmy Lea: Can't hear it. Ernie Harker: You can't hear it? Jimmy Lea: No. Dang it. Can't hear it. Ernie Harker: I can hear it. Great. I turned it up like crazy. Jimmy Lea: Sorry. Ernie Harker: You know I'm, do, lemme do this, I'm gonna share this, copy the link and I'm gonna paste it into the comment and everybody can watch it at their leisure. Jimmy Lea: There you go. Ernie Harker: Everybody take a quick second and check this out. Jimmy Lea: Ernie, we've got, we've, that's gonna be awesome. I, everybody's gonna be clicking on this and watching this. This is wonderful information. So much knowledge that we're sharing here with the automotive industry. This is stuff that a shop owner can do to sit down to get comfortable with it. And now within a few moments, you can have an entire month's worth of oh, marketing content. Ernie Harker: Yeah. Ernie Harker: And use your GPT when you want creative marketing content, go back to your GPT and just type in this really quick prompt. Hey give me some social media ideas every day for Jimmy Lea: March. 'cause it's St. Patrick's Day. Ernie Harker: Perfect. And then it's gonna come up with all these different ideas. Okay. Now that I have that scr that, that content grab a little piece and say, will you write a video script for Jimmy to use? Ernie Harker: So create a social media post. So use that same structure to create marketing pieces that you can get out there. Because the problem today is that it's getting more and more difficult to compete with this ocean of content if you are not producing content too, Jimmy Lea: right? Ernie Harker: You've gotta do it, otherwise you will be lost. Ernie Harker: And lemme close by saying this, you guys several years ago I wanted to learn how to surf. I surf behind a boat all the freaking time in Utah. There's no oceans here. I know how to surf. So I went to the ocean, rented a surfboard and nearly killed myself for three hours. Could not stand up. So the next day I hired a surf coach and he basically told me where to stand on the board. Ernie Harker: I'm like, oh, I wasn't standing on the board the right way and where to put my body when I'm paddling and when to paddle and like how to pop up. And I'm like. Oh my gosh, I didn't realize all these things. It was easy to do once I had the information. All you need is the information. You can do this. Ernie Harker: You just saw me do it. The more you practice like the piano, the better you'll get the difference between the piano and ai. Piano takes forever to learn to play music. Anybody can s sell the keyboard and make mu make noise. But it takes a little bit of instruction to turn that noise into music and you guys will crush it with generative ai 'cause your competitors are not doing this. Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love it. I love it. Thank you Ernie. Such valuable information and I agree. Yeah. The more we get familiar, the more we play with this, the better it's gonna be. For my friends that are listening, what do you think is this valuable information, something that is immediately actionable for you and for your shop, for your marketing? Jimmy Lea: Is this something you can do? Put a comment and let us know. Should we have Ernie back for another? Presentation. Should we have 'em back for another webinar? Gosh, Ernie, we've only scratched the surface here. Ernie Harker: I know. Jimmy Lea: And Doug's saying Doug's saying session. When's the second session with Ernie? Jimmy Lea: Is it tomorrow? Can we do it next week? Please? Thank you, Doug. Appreciate that. Ernie Harker: Hey and Brad said that the link didn't work correctly for him. Does anybody else have a problem with the link? If it, if you did, we can probably put, I can download it and send it in a, like a Dropbox so that you guys can send it later. Jimmy Lea: Okay. Yeah. Brad says, give us more. Sean says, extremely helpful. Angie says It's pretty interesting. Definitely something I'd like to try out. Wonderful. Thank you so much. We, at the institute, we work really hard to be able to bring to you my friends in the automotive aftermarket valuable information that helps you as a business to build your business. Jimmy Lea: Our mantra is better business, better life, better industry. We're gonna lock arms together. We're gonna weather this storm because not every ship is created equal. And this storm, some of the ships are gonna sink. If we lock arms together, we can survive this storm, better business, better life, better industry. Jimmy Lea: My name is Jim Jimmy Lee. I'm with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. My guest today, Ernie Harker. Thank you very much, Ernie. Appreciate you being here, brother. Ernie Harker: My pleasure, bro. Jimmy Lea: Oh, phenomenal. And yes I think we need to plan our second round to come back around and dig a little bit deeper. Jimmy Lea: Because Doug's, we already know Doug's gonna be up all night playing with his new toy. Ernie Harker: Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, bro. It was awesome. It was super fun. Jimmy Lea: Nice, nice. Awesome. Thank you very much everybody. We'll see you again next week. We'll have another webinar together very soon. Jimmy Lea: Thank you so much.