147 - Ballet Shoes to Bay Floors: How Julia Reynolds Streamlined a Small Shop for Big Results
September 16, 2025 - 00:33:39

 

Show Summary:

What happens when a former professional ballerina trades the stage for a service bay? Julia Reynolds, General Manager at RDS Automotive Service (GA), shares how she rose from apprentice to operations lead—building a transparent, commission-free culture and turning processes into profit. In this episode, Julia breaks down the exact systems her 5-person team uses to communicate faster, sell smarter, and deliver dealer-level trust with indie-shop heart. If you’re wrestling with volume, deferred work follow-ups, parts sourcing chaos, or going paperless, you’ll steal playbook-ready ideas you can implement this week.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Julia Reynolds, General Manager of RDS Automotive Service

 

Show Highlights:

[00:00:34 ] - From ballet to bays: Julia pivots careers after an ankle injury, earns ASEs, starts at Ford in 2020, and joins RDS in August 2021.

[00:03:16 ] - Ground-up growth: She begins as an apprentice, sweeps floors, learns under master tech Paul O’Brien, then shifts to the front after a wrist injury.

[00:05:10 ] - Small shop, tight crew: A five-person, commission-free team feels like family and collaboration beats push-pull leadership.

[00:06:17 ] - INTJ ops brain: Templates, spreadsheets, and standardized parts lists make complex jobs faster and cleaner.

[00:08:59 ] - DVI is the crown jewel: AutoServe1 + Protractor + AutoOps boost transparency with photos/video/audio and easy online booking.

[00:11:30 ] - Paperless vision: Tablets in-bay and one-platform communication would cut walk-time and raise tech efficiency.

[00:15:33 ] - Parts in one pane: Consolidating with tools like Nexpart/PartsTech would simplify VIN-driven estimates and ordering.

[00:17:06 ] - Volume bottleneck: Local zoning and neighborhood shifts reduce car count, so marketing and deferred-work follow-up are mission-critical.

[00:23:04 ] - New audience, new work: Target late-20s/early-30s enthusiasts who want upgrades (not just maintenance) to grow revenue.

[00:26:50 ] - Leveling up: Prioritize electrical diagnostics training, dealer-level programming, and evaluating all-in-one shop software on the Windows 11 refresh.

 

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 info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.

 

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, or goodnight, depending on when and where you're joining us from. My name is Jimmy Lea. I am with the Institute and this is the Leading Edge podcast. Joining me today is Julia Reynolds. She is the general manager for RDS Automotive out of Georgia. So excited to have you here with me, Julia, how the heck are you?

Julia Reynolds: I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Jimmy Lea: Well, good. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to jump right into this and ask you about your journey into the automotive aftermarket. What did that look like for you?

Julia Reynolds: So it's, it almost sounds like a lie when I say it out loud, I promise you a hand on a Bible.

Julia Reynolds: It is real. I was a professional ballet dancer. I ended up breaking an ankle and retiring at about 2021. I taught for a bit after that. I. Essentially, I had a couple of jobs here and there. I worked with Shutterfly for a bit. Worked with Lifetouch, had a, you know, great group of people there.

Julia Reynolds: Very supportive still of my career change today. When I was deciding kind of what I wanted to do next with my life, I remembered growing up in. Essentially we had a service station that had a equipment shop underneath, and my happiest memories growing up were being in the shop with my grandfather and my uncles and my dad and my brother, you know, whether I was watching them or because I had little hands, you know, reach in here and twist that because, you know, I'm a girl.

Julia Reynolds: Our hands fit in places that a lot of burly guys hands don't. Oh, that's so

Jimmy Lea: true.

Julia Reynolds: And it just, when I thought back on all those memories, I was like, I. It doesn't feel like work. And I had also restored vintage, like I had a Nissan Dotson two 80 or not a two 80. My brother had a two 80, I had a 300.

Julia Reynolds: And then my brother also has a fair lady as well. So we kind of grew up in the restoration game with that just for fun, you know, kind of a bonding project with our dad. And yeah, I took the leap went and got my a SC certifications. I started out at Ford. Went through all of the Ford School Ford training back in 2020, and then I started here at RDS in August of 21.

Jimmy Lea: Nice. Congratulations. So you just ashad yourself sha Oh, I'm saying the wrong word.

Julia Reynolds: No, you got it. It's Shae

Jimmy Lea: Ade. You're away from ballerina into, the front desk. Oh, congratulations. A professional ballet. Thank you. I was not a professional ballroom dancer, but I was a ballroom dancer through high school and college.

Julia Reynolds: That's awesome. That's how I met my husband.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, really? Ballroom

Julia Reynolds: dancer? Yeah.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my word. Congratulations.

Julia Reynolds: Specifically like West Coast. West coast swing and blues dancing.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, I love West Coast. West Coast. It's so much fun. Yep. Yep. So much fun. All right, so, back to your you went from ballerina into the automotive into Ford, ended up at RDS, right?

Jimmy Lea: It sounds like outta school, you went right into RDS, is that correct?

Julia Reynolds: Correct. Correct.

Jimmy Lea: Okay.

Jimmy Lea: Did you go straight into management with RDS or did you start on the front counter? What, how did that work out?

Julia Reynolds: I started as an apprentice. I mean, I started from the bottom and worked my way up. When I came to RDS, like I said, I was fresh out of Ford School.

Julia Reynolds: And I just said if you take a chance on me, I promise I'll work as hard as I need to prove myself. I know I'm a girl in this industry and it is not normal for a. You know, 27-year-old female to walk into a shop looking for a job. So, you know, I paid my dues, I swept the floors, I put the tools away.

Julia Reynolds: I got to apprentice under our master technician, Paul O'Brien. He is incredible. One of, in my opinion, one of the best Toyota mechanics in the city of Atlanta. So I got to spend two years with. And then after that I ended up having an injury with my wrist. I tore the cartilage here, so I was in a cast and it's kind of hard to work on cars in a cast.

Julia Reynolds: So that's when I started learning more about how the front runs and how we, you know, do bookkeeping and all that good stuff. So my boss kind of. He and I swapped. So he took my position on the floor as soon as my apprenticeship was over, and then I kind of started learning the backend until my brother came on board with us from Subaru, and now he's our service manager.

Julia Reynolds: So he handles all of the customer facing interactions and then I handle all the backend.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, interesting. So he went from teching with Subaru to service advising here with RDS.

Julia Reynolds: Correct.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my goodness. And so you're running everything behind the scenes and he's running everything front of counter.

Jimmy Lea: Oh my gosh. That's phenomenal. So what's one of the things that you love the most about leading this team you've got at RDS?

Julia Reynolds: With RDS? I know it's kind of a taboo thing to say that work feels like a family, but as a very small shop. Yeah. We do feel like a family. I mean, there's only five of us, the owner, his wife, my brother, me and our master tech.

Julia Reynolds: That's it. So, you know, it's a very small operation and I love that we all can come together, we can troubleshoot and problem solve and feed off one another. And when it comes to leading it, it doesn't even really. Feel like I'm having to push or pull or, you know, make things happen. It's really a co