Sunrise Automotive Training Expo 2026: A Recap

The most memorable part of the Sunrise Automotive Training & Expo was stepping off the plane and getting hit with 113 degrees of pure dry heat. Maybe one day we’ll understand why the training was held in the middle of summer, in one of the hottest parts of the country. That’s a rabbit hole for another day.

The point of this post isn’t to talk about the weather, though. It’s to share the key takeaways from the shop-owner classes we attended.

In this recap:

• Communication and delegation, with Josh Parnell
• Getting found on Google, with Jimmy Lea
• Branding, with Lola Schmidt
• Is it worth going?

Communication and delegation, with Josh Parnell

On Friday afternoon, Josh Parnell and Limitless Leadership ran a three-hour class on effective communication and delegation. You could argue almost anyone would get something out of it, but it’s really built for shop owners, especially the ones still involved in the shop day to day, along with shop managers and honestly any people manager.

Our main takeaway was this: for people to follow a leader, that leader has to earn their trust, and you earn it by building connection. As Josh put it:

Connection over content.

Most of the communication side was about creating a real relationship with each team member, then putting systems in place to support it: daily huddles with the whole team, one-on-ones, performance reviews, even company offsites. Once the connection is there, those meetings keep everyone aligned in real time. They give you a way to get feedback, communicate changes, and create a forum for your team to bring ideas to the table, so you as the owner can actually learn from your people and let their ideas shape the business.

The second half was delegation. A lot of it came down to setting clear expectations, often with KPIs and performance numbers. But delegation kept coming back to communication, and communication came back to connection. You can’t just dump work on people. The shift that stuck with us: you delegate in favor of your people, not just to get something off your plate. When you understand where a team member wants to go, you hand them the opportunities that line up with their goals. Delegation stops being about the owner’s convenience and starts being about growing your people.

Getting found on Google, with Jimmy Lea

We also sat in on Jimmy Lea from The Institute, on building a real presence through Google. You might not expect a coaching organization to have a strong take on digital marketing, but as a media marketing company ourselves, even we had plenty to learn from this session.

He got into the layout of your website for both desktop and mobile, the specific KPIs Google factors into how it ranks you, and how to get more Google reviews the right way without getting yourself in trouble. There was enough in it that we gave it its own post, where we break it all down: Getting your shop found on Google.

Branding, with Lola Schmidt

Then there was Lola Schmidt’s branding class, which honestly earned the “master class” label. What made it work was that she asked the audience simple but genuinely hard questions. What makes your shop different? Why should someone come work at your shop? Those are tough to answer honestly. The common answer was something like “we offer a 3-year warranty,” and Lola pushed shop owners toward something more unique than that.

She also shared a framework for finding your shop’s story. Every shop has one, and it usually starts with the background of the current or original owner. When you trace what happened from the day the shop opened to where it is now, a story emerges. Upheld, that story guides the culture of your team, and that culture becomes the basis for your brand. The way we interpreted it, a shop’s brand is the point where the shop’s understanding of itself meets the customer’s understanding of the shop.

That sounds complicated, but it isn’t, because she gave specific examples of how to get real feedback from your customers through ongoing conversations, about what the shop does well and what it could do better. That’s how you learn how customers actually perceive your brand, and you factor that back into your own brand story.

She’s had real success with this in her own shop, and not just financially. It’s shown up in the community they serve, the people they employ, and the opportunities they can offer technicians down the road. Because good talent will come find you if you have a good brand. Build it, and you’ll see the results. That, in a nutshell, is what Lola shared.

Is it worth going?

The vibe was intimate. Only a few hundred people, which is different from a lot of the thousand-plus conferences like Tektonic. Because it’s smaller, you actually get time to know people, past just the surface level, which we liked.

So is it for you? Our honest take is that there’s a pretty rich community here, and because it isn’t a massive event, there’s a lot of depth to it, both in the people and in the classes. It’s not that people at bigger events don’t have depth. It’s that depth takes face time, and a smaller room gives you that. If that’s what you’re after, we think it’s worth it.