HEART Certified Auto Care's Brian Moak: A Man of the People

In 2016, about seven years after he took over his father's auto shop, Brian Moak stood in front of his team and told them the family-owned business was broke.

So broke that Moak, who had taken on approximately $1.4 million in factor loan debt, couldn't even afford to buy brake pads.

What happened after that humbling moment was a remarkable professional and personal turnaround that has made Moak, president of HEART Certified Auto Care in Illinois, the 2025 Ratchet + Wrench All-Star Award Winner.

Today, HEART has three high-performing shops with $15.5 million in projected annual revenue, a 96.5% customer retention rate, and goals to expand to six locations and double its revenue by 2031. Moak has also become a trusted mentor to other shop owners.

"The problem was me, and I had to take full responsibility for all my mistakes," Moak says. "Then we rebuilt from the inside out. There was no silver bullet. Just a relentless commitment to doing the hard work."

Pairing that hard work with a people-centric approach, Moak has helped his team succeed with good performance-based pay, updated technology and tools, a comfortable working environment, and continuous coaching and training.

Moak has also implemented a thorough data analysis system to make more informed long-term business decisions. For customers, HEART offers perks such as 98% same-day service, transparent pricing, free loaner cars, and a three-year warranty on work.

HEART team members say they have flourished thanks to Moak's integrity, empathy, and enthusiasm, especially over the past nine years.

"Brian is very fair and just sticks to his goals," says Chris Cannon, a technician who has been with the company since 1996. "He sets his sights on something and doesn't stop until he achieves it. He's good at getting the best out of people."

A Connection to His Dad, and a Rocky Start

Moak's father, Glenn Moak, bought the business in 1983 and ran it for 26 years. To Brian, Glenn was a 5-foot-9-inch giant—a man with a larger-than-life, type A personality who taught him and his sister the value of a strong work ethic and problem-solving with outside-the-box thinking.

"I idolized my father," Brian Moak recalls. "I didn't know what I wanted to do as a kid, but I just knew I wanted to be like him."

Early in his childhood, Moak became obsessed with cars. He collected auto magazines to the point that he had about 500 piled in stacks in his bedroom. He dreamed about the European luxury cars that he would own one day.

Moak even admits to swiping sets of keys and secretly playing inside cars that were in line for service and repairs at his dad's shop. He clearly remembers his joy when a customer dropped off one of the "it" cars of its day, a 1992 Lexus LS400.

"Other kids my age were mostly focused on sports, but for me, it was all cars," he says. "It became a real point of connection for me and my father."

Three days after graduating from Indiana University, where Moak earned a bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts, he began working at the family shop. He bought the business five years later, at age 27.

In hindsight, Moak realizes he was over his head. The responsibility of a $55,000 per week employee payroll felt overwhelming. He also had an unhealthy obsession with proving his worth to others—team members, customers, and vendors alike—which led him to make impulsive decisions, based only on gut instinct, and frequently snap at his staff.

As the business began to flounder, Moak faced repeated denials for bank financing. Instead, he took out loans with interest rates above 30%.

"The combination of my ego and my temper was a powder keg," he says. "I created a really toxic environment and got in my own way. People were tired. We were days away from going under. I had to stop pretending. One day, it was really like a light switch went off in my head."

The Transformation

Over the next several years, Moak, now 43, undertook what he calls a "messy, painful and honest" journey that included going to therapy to understand himself, his past and his emotions. With the help of a business mentor, meanwhile, he arranged a refinancing deal with a bank and gradually climbed out of debt.

The list of changes was long. Moak opted to close on Saturdays to give his team full weekends off for rest, relaxation, and family time. He was happily surprised when revenue actually increased and has kept shops shut on weekends to this day.

Moak fully remodeled his shops, including installing air conditioning, replacing flooring, repainting, and adding more computers. He upgraded tools and equipment for technicians and promoted team members who had greater expertise in specific areas than he did.

As for his volatility, Moak realized that even if he was stressed or angry, he never had the right to be rude. He found he had much more success in his fast-moving industry by keeping a level head, focusing on the bigger picture, and staying grounded through inevitable highs and lows by relying on his business's tagline: "Every decision is data-driven and gut-approved."

"We deploy kind communications," he says. "We built systems. Structure. Coaching. Performance-based pay. We launched a real 401(k). We started having real conversations. And we stopped running the business on reactionary feelings and panic and started deploying data and asking 'what would happen next?' on every decision."

Danny Rosenbloom, HEART's vice president, says the difference has been night and day. Rosenbloom joined the company at age 16 as a custodian during school breaks and has been a full-time employee since 2010.

One of Rosenbloom's early encounters with Moak was when he offered to help his boss with a cleaning job. "His response was to tell me it should have been done already, pretty loudly and aggressively," he remembers. "I was taken aback."

Rosenbloom also remembers Moak focusing only on numbers and results, not employee development or personal connections. During HEART's transformation, however, Moak began offering weekly and monthly coaching sessions and holding meetings with each team member to discuss future goals and five-year plans with actionable items.

One day, Moak brought in a financial advisor to give group presentations at each shop. He then offered to pay for one-on-one sessions for any employee who wanted to discuss budgeting, saving for retirement, and, if needed, resolving personal debt.

"People in this industry often work for years with little to show for it," Rosenbloom notes. "Brian doesn't want that for us. His biggest shift was when he started thinking about the people in his shops rather than the numbers—and from there, everything took care of itself."

The strategy is based on Moak's redefined vision of powerful leadership: "I don't think it's about charisma. I think it's about alignment, accountability, grace, vision, and a relentless pursuit of what matters. I want to build a place where people feel proud of their work. Where they feel seen. Where they grow as humans—not just as employees. And it's working."

Consistent Success

With 30-plus team members across its three shops in Evanston, Northbrook, and Wilmette, HEART Certified Auto Care has an average employee tenure of 13.7 years. Moak is also proud of the business's 4.9-star Google rating—up from a past score of 3.0—more than 3,400 five-star reviews, and "a leadership team I believe in, and a frontline team I'd go to war with."

Rather than follow a "trickle down" theory of economics, Moak embraces the opposite. By optimizing employee growth and providing good pay and benefits, he has encouraged high-quality work and outcomes that, in turn, lead to profits "trickling up" to him.

This year alone, Moak has invested about $250,000 in upgraded technology. Team member income has steadily grown over the past six to eight years, in some individual cases by as much as 10 times.

Every year, Moak commits to his employees to continue that upward progress. "Everything is optimized toward employee growth," he shares. "My job is to provide them with the coaching, resources, and tools they need to succeed, and their part is to work hard and do their work better than anywhere else. And they are."

Incentive plans are team-based, rather than individual, and accountability is required. "If we do well, everybody wins," Rosenbloom says. "It's not about one person doing great without others doing the same. For customers, we always stand behind what we do and what we say. We don't give anyone the run-around."

Moak doesn't use the word "family" to describe his team, although they are a close-knit crew who know details of each other's lives outside the shop. Instead, he thinks of them as a Super Bowl-winning football team that simply hates to lose.

"We all play a different but important role, and we're incredibly supportive of each other," he says. "Many of our highest-performing employees are homegrown, having thrived because of our development, training, and empowerment programs."

Rosenbloom has met all of his professional goals to date and continues to meet with Moak to develop more. One of his latest missions, for example, is to become more fluent in Spanish to better serve customers who speak the language.

Cannon, who started out working for Glenn Moak as a porter shortly after high school, is appreciative of the company's camaraderie and opportunities to keep learning as the industry transforms. HEART receives all types of cars, including hybrids and some electric vehicles.

"This is a high-energy place where everybody gets along," he says. "We know customers by name. We're serious, but we have a lot of fun, too. We have great attitudes about being at work, and there's no drama. I know that's not true at many shops."

Cannon is currently the top-producing technician at HEART Certified Auto Care, Moak reports with pride. That kind of success story fuels him as an owner.

"I love what I do," he says. "I love helping my team achieve their dreams. I want them to be able to buy homes, have nice cars, take nice vacations, and send their kids to whatever schools they want, which a lot of people in a blue-collar environment don't think is possible. But it is."

Diversity, Inclusivity, and Community Service

Moak doesn't fit the stereotypical mold of an auto shop owner. He describes himself as naturally shy, even if many people assume he is an extrovert. As a gay man, he also has had the past experience of walking into a car shop and overhearing conversations that made him uncomfortable.

Rather than hiding his life, Moak has shared it, actively striving to create an accepting environment for team members and customers of all backgrounds.

"We celebrate people for exactly who they are," he says. "I know that experience of feeling out of place somewhere, and I don't want anyone to feel that at my business. I'm really proud of the environment we have built here."

A devoted family man, Moak has two sons with his husband, Matt Moak, a publicist by trade: Noah, 14, and Joey, 3. He and his spouse love to travel the world, attend Broadway shows, and go to professional tennis matches.

Moak's other interests include shopping, interior decorating, watching movies and television, and staying active and healthy by playing tennis, walking his dogs, working out with a personal trainer two or three times a week, and doing Pilates another two or three days weekly.

"I've known Brian a long time," Cannon says. "I know about his family and his kids and his hobbies, and he knows about mine. That makes everything feel very personal and caring."

Supporting community organizations that better the lives of children is another passion for Moak, both as an individual citizen and a business owner.

Take the HEART Certified Auto Care exhibit at the Kohl Children's Museum in Glenview, Illinois, which Moak's company underwrites on an annual basis. The hands-on display explores car design, technology, and scientific concepts such as gravity.

To learn about car parts and machine function, kids can change the tires, mufflers, and batteries of model cars; build vehicles to race down ramps and/or toy cars to test on different tracks; drive through a play car wash with flaps, rollers, and drying nozzles; and pick out a book from a selection of auto-themed books.

"My toddler is totally obsessed with it," Moak says with a laugh. "It's so much fun for kids, and maybe it will get some of them interested in our industry."

The Future

Moak's past struggles made him hesitant about expanding for several years after HEART Certified Auto Care began to thrive. Today, though, he is ready.

In July, Moak signed a lease on a new location in Bannockburn, Illinois, where he will build a new shop from the ground up. That fourth site is expected to open in about 10 to 12 months; within the next six years, Moak hopes to have two additional shops up and running.

Depending on the results, Moak doesn't rule out more growth after that. "We're just getting started," he says. "This is a really exciting, energizing time for us. We've found all the inefficiencies in our team, our foundation, and our systems, and we've squashed all of them. It's time to really go—to really take off."

But, he added, HEART Certified Auto Care will not compromise its culture and values: "We want to prove that high performance and high retention can coexist in the auto industry. We want to protect what we have and inspire the industry to think bigger, build better, and lead with more heart."

As for potentially keeping the business in the family down the road, Moak shares that his two sons are both fascinated by cars. Noah, about to get his learner's permit and eager to score a driver's license, is particularly fascinated by extravagant sports car brands—Bugatti, Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Porsche. Joey loves anything with wheels.

As for his own boyhood thoughts of buying a fleet of luxury cars, Moak has had the chance to drive almost every model he once dreamed about. His current ride is a 2025 Porsche Panamera with 700 horsepower. "It's a whole lot of fun," he says. "It's a privilege. A joy."

To Moak, winning the 2025 All-Star Award is recognition of his messy, painful, and honest journey—and, in particular, the team members and customers who stuck with his business through hard times.

"I could never repay them," he notes. "The team had every reason to walk away. The customers gave us another shot. This award reminds me of why I do this. To lead differently. To build something that lasts. To change lives—starting with my own."

At the moment, Moak's email template includes a quote not from an industry leader or business magnate but from Abraham Lincoln: "Whatever you are, be a good one."

"We're not perfect," he says. "But we're consistent, and people trust us. That's everything."