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AMi Promotes Elite Worldwide Invitational on June 2-3, 2021 in San Diego, California. Do You Want To Get Your Shop Lightyears Ahead Of Your Competition AND Take A Summer Vacation To America’s Finest City?   Then the Elite Invitational is the perfect opportunity for you to do BOTH.   Join us for the first of its kind, most in-depth, start-to-finish event on cultivating customer experiences that help you disrupt your industry and gain a leg up on your competitors.   Join us for this 2-day, 4-part workshop and learn… • What Your Customers REALLY Think About You and Your Shop • How to Identify the Perfect Customer for YOUR Shop • Marketing Tips that Your Competitors WISH They Knew • The Secrets to Keeping Your Customers For a Lifetime & Turning Them Into Raving FANS   This jam-packed 2-day event, brought to you by Mitchell 1 and JASPER, will feature presentations from industry icons such as Kevin Vaught, Joe Marconi, Darrin Barney, as well as Harvard faculty and current UCSD Marketing Professor, Uma Karmarkar. We will also have speakers from the esteemed Ritz-Carlton to share their secretes on creating the ultimate customer experience. Most notably, the Elite Invitational will feature a Customer Panel to dive inside the minds of your ideal customers, facilitated by Bob Cooper (and yes, you can ask the panel your questions!) There’s no doubt about it – The Elite Invitational will change the trajectory... read more

The Automotive Management Institute (AMi), the industry's leading nonprofit provider and collaborator of administrative and management education for the mechanical and collision automotive sectors, is pleased to announce the development and launch of a new professional designation focused on the technician in a leadership role: AMi Accredited Shop Foreman. The new designation is designed to provide training focused on the unique requirements of the foreman/mentor role. The accreditation represents ten months of industry work to identify and develop requirements, based on interviews and subject matter expert input. AMi President, Chuck Searles, states, "Often, mentors in the shop environment receive technical training and that’s it. To be successful as a leader, they have to pick up the rest as they go. The shop foreman accreditation fills that gap with soft-skill courses from AMi approved industry training providers.” This new designation requires multiple categories of training, including shop management basics; coaching, mentoring, team building, and five all-new courses focused on the shop foreman role. For more information about AMi's Shop Foreman Designation and requirements,click here

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, TEXAS, Sept. 1, 2020 - The Board of Trustees at the Automotive Management Institute, the industry’s leading provider of management education for automotive service and collision repair professionals, is pleased to announce that Chuck Searles has been selected as the organization’s new president, effective immediately. Searles will succeed Jeff Peevy, who left to return to I-CAR as VP of Technical Products, Programs and Services in late July. Searles brings to the position a wealth of knowledge in the industry. He has been an active part of the automotive service and training community for almost 28 years. His career began as a Dealer Service Technician in 1992. During nine years as a Service Technician Chuck was employed by three different Dealers in two different states, Alaska and Arizona. This diversity helped expand his skillset and knowledge base, which eventually led to a Technical Service Support position with Nissan North America in 2001. Over the last nineteen years he has served in four different Nissan training roles; Technical Training Instructor, Sales Training Senior Planner, Technical Training Operations Manager, and Technical Training Instructional Design Manager. “I’m honored and excited to serve the Board of Trustees and the ever-expanding client base as President of AMi,” Searles said about his new role. Searles can be reached at [email protected] "We are ever so pleased to announce Chuck S... read more