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Power does not always come from pushing harder. Sometimes in life and in business, the smartest move is to slow down so you can move forward with control, clarity, and intention. Just like a great driver, growth means looking ahead, preparing for the climb, and knowing when it is time to change gears.
Jeff Compton [00:00:00]:
This is the problem when I butt heads with some people. I'm like, I only wanna call the customer once. That is such a stupid, old, tired narrative about how to actually do business.
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:09]:
This is lazy.
Ash Kaplan [00:00:10]:
So dumb.
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:11]:
This is lazy. This is dumb as hell.
Jeff Compton [00:00:13]:
Thank you. I only wanna call the customer once. Then sell them the—
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:17]:
Sell them a new car. Sell them a new car.
Ash Kaplan [00:00:19]:
Thank you.
Jeff Compton [00:00:20]:
Welcome to Downshift with my sis, Tanika Haynes. We all know as shop owners, sometimes you gotta slow down in order to speed up. And that's what this podcast is all about. It's time to downshift. My goodness, this is kind of cool.
Ash Kaplan [00:00:41]:
I like your shirt.
Jeff Compton [00:00:43]:
Thank you.
Ash Kaplan [00:00:43]:
That's a promotive.
Jeff Compton [00:00:44]:
Nice.
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:45]:
Promotive. Yeah, yeah, I do like those shirts.
Ash Kaplan [00:00:48]:
We love some promotive.
Jeff Compton [00:00:49]:
That's my family right there.
Tonnika Haynes [00:00:51]:
Those girls are cool. They're ladies.
Ash Kaplan [00:00:54]:
Lisa is the sweetest human on the planet, maybe second to Tanika.
Jeff Compton [00:01:00]:
Samantha's fun as hell.
Ash Kaplan [00:01:01]:
I love— yeah, she's so sweet.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:04]:
So sweet. Every Sunday I've got my blanket.
Ash Kaplan [00:01:06]:
Can you see it?
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:07]:
I'm sorry, how professional is this?
Jeff Compton [00:01:09]:
That's all right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:10]:
I got cold. Jeff?
Jeff Compton [00:01:12]:
Yeah?
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:13]:
Today we're flipping the script. You're in the hot seat with us.
Jeff Compton [00:01:16]:
That's cool, I don't mind that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:18]:
So yeah, you usually like controlling the whole microphone and you're the leader of the pod. Now I'm the leader of the pod.
Jeff Compton [00:01:27]:
I, I try not to take over the conversations, but when I listen to some episodes, I'm like, I steamrolled that one. So that's fun. The guest just— sometimes you have to, right? It just depends on the guest.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:38]:
So, well, I don't know yet. I'm just starting.
Jeff Compton [00:01:41]:
So yeah, you're gonna get it.
Tonnika Haynes [00:01:43]:
Ash is a talker. I'm not a talker. I know people think that I am, but I'm not really a big talker. But I'm excited. You're like, Ash was number one We had an episode earlier today. We just talked and vibed and jived. But now I would say you're officially the first guest. I don't know how Braxton will put it out there though.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:03]:
We'll see.
Jeff Compton [00:02:04]:
Oh, so Braxton's doing your— okay, cool.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:06]:
Yeah, yeah, Braxton's doing it. He's— he was the last straw. He kept poking me, Miss Tanika, you should do it, Miss Tanika. I'm just like, why? Who wants to hear from me? And apparently people do. We'll see how many. Oh, once this is released, we'll get 3 likes.
Jeff Compton [00:02:21]:
Lots of people want to hear from you, both of you guys, 100%.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:25]:
Ash is awesome. Yeah, so I told you. Yeah, you—
Ash Kaplan [00:02:30]:
whatever, tell the truth, please.
Tonnika Haynes [00:02:33]:
Tell the truth. You're great, you're great, you're a great young lady, and you've got so much work to do. Yeah, yeah, you've got a lot ahead of you, like work, like industry work. You're gonna be doing it.
Jeff Compton [00:02:48]:
I think you're sitting on something very, very, very groundbreaking. So yeah, I think that's a good thing, and I think that's what it needs. And you know, this— that kind of development in the industry, I think, is, is really like— it, it gives me hope and motivation, but at the same time, I have to remind so many people, like, it's still being used by like maybe 5-10%. You know what I mean? Of the whole industry, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:03:14]:
They're scared.
Jeff Compton [00:03:15]:
Yeah, whenever people come at me and they're like, oh my God, like you really let that person have it, or you came across this way, and I remind people that, you know, it's not an echo chamber, but sometimes we're still in our own little bubble and we're talking to that, you know, 10% of the killers out there that recognize that there's a problem and want to do something about it. I'm not yelling for them. I'm yelling for the other 90% that don't even maybe know we exist. Or they've never even thought of this particular perspective. And that's why I wake up every day and try to do, right? It's just get the other 90% that aren't even in the conversation to somehow find it and either decide, I want in, or go, those guys are nuts, I want nothing to do with that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:04:02]:
What do you think? People just think it's easier not to have the conversation and stay in their own lane and just stay stuck?
Jeff Compton [00:04:10]:
So I don't think any— here's the— this is going to ruffle some feathers. I don't think that most of the other 90% are stuck. I think that they don't even know there's another way around or another way to be. Because so that's not stuck, that's choosing. Stuck is your, your lady that you were talking about earlier trying to get up the hill in the snow, right? That's right. If you don't even put the damn thing in drive, you're not stuck, you're choosing to be parked. And there's a difference. And the people people that won't look at this industry as needing an improvement, either because they don't want to see it or they think that it can't, or whatever excuses— and I've heard them all now, and I used to, I used to sling some of them.
Jeff Compton [00:04:56]:
Um, I don't— how do I say this the right way?
Tonnika Haynes [00:05:00]:
Don't say it the right way, just say it.
Jeff Compton [00:05:02]:
I don't care if we pick them up and carry them along.. But I'm going to grab them and shake them and say, you're effing up. And whether you choose to follow or not is cool. But at some point, they're going to have no choice. They're either going to go away or they're going to pull up their socks and get to work because nobody's stuck. I see these same conversations pop up week after week after week. I took this job on, I should have never done it. And how do I handle it? The, the time to have the conversation is already passed.
Jeff Compton [00:05:37]:
We shouldn't even be— the right way is do what's right, as sure would my guests. So just do what's right, right? The conversation, when we should have had it, was before that car ever got booked in, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:05:47]:
The intake process.
Jeff Compton [00:05:49]:
Well, even the, the vetting of the customer process, right? Right. And, and, you know, so much of this comes back to there's still so many of us operating that they need every car that they can possibly get just to pay the nut. And I understand struggle, but man, if you're turning around in the next minute and, you know, emotionally discounting or you're not marking up your parts or you're letting customers supply parts, then I don't want to hear it. You got none of my sympathy, none of my empathy. You're just choosing to not take that first step. And, you know, it's a choice. Yeah, it really is.
Ash Kaplan [00:06:25]:
Some people take the first step, which is working with Golden Hour Garage, We write their estimates, but then they go, wait, but this is way higher of a quote than where you sell. Yeah, you said you wanted to have this so that you didn't have emotional discounting, and now you're complaining because the price is higher than what you expected. Of course it's going to be higher than what you expected. Your people have been discounting and discounting and discounting.
Tonnika Haynes [00:06:51]:
And pissing off the techs in the back because they're doing the DVI. All right, you're not presenting like, she loves me, she'll forgive me. But I did have a service advisor and a close ratio was dropping, whatever. And she was like, well, I want to improve the DVI process. I was like, well, maybe we should focus on selling what we've got first. That's a trigger for me. I go to the back and tell these guys to do one more thing and we're not closing. I know what I would say, and, and I'm the, the boss.
Tonnika Haynes [00:07:21]:
Yeah. So, but she got it. So I think people have to be open. I don't know what in the world that was. You have to just be open, and some people just get in their own way because they're just so— just got the blinders on, man. You're the problem. I always think that if I have a problem in the shop, that I'm the problem. I will make sure I look at myself, and I look at the process, and I'm trying to figure out, am I being— am I asking too much? Am I asking the wrong way? Did I do this wrong? What did I do.
Tonnika Haynes [00:07:51]:
And if I can't find any error in myself, of course not, um, then, you know, we'll look for the rest of the situation. But most of the time it's the owner is the problem. I think if you fix the front desk, the back works perfectly. Not perfectly, because you still have some techs that are just terrible, but not that many.
Jeff Compton [00:08:07]:
And, and it's human nature. Like, we're all— everybody's going to make a mistake. Unfortunately, when the tech makes a mistake, it normally costs more money than just like— or can cost a lot more than money. Than if we forget to put on a part on the invoice and we had to eat it. You know what I mean?
Tonnika Haynes [00:08:23]:
That's money.
Jeff Compton [00:08:24]:
Yeah. When a tech makes a mistake, somebody could get hurt. Exactly. You know, your whole reputation could be flushed from a simple thing. So that's where it's always been like for me. I have so much respect for people that are thinking forward in, in the front side of the business. But for me, it's just like the liability is— yeah, it's my business, I get it. Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:08:48]:
But if I have an accident happen and somebody dies, like, I carry that for the rest of my life. Yeah. You know? Yeah. As you would too, as a shop.
Tonnika Haynes [00:08:58]:
As a shop. But as a tech, that would have to be a lot more personal. I never thought about it like that.
Jeff Compton [00:09:05]:
Yeah.
Ash Kaplan [00:09:05]:
It's different. Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:09:06]:
If you're doing your job right and if you're doing it right for the right reasons. Like, because you want to be proud of your work.
Jeff Compton [00:09:12]:
I've seen mistakes happen over somebody comes out and goes, Mr. Smith is asking how much longer than this, and he's in the middle of torquing a wheel, right? And he, you know, proceeds because they come with two questions, never with one. So you stop torquing that wheel and then they ask you the second question and you go like this and you walk over and you go do something, or you take them out and show them the part in the parts department that they need for the second car they're asking about. Guess what happens? You're 10 minutes gone. You walk out, you put your tool, your torque wrench away. 3 of the tires didn't get torqued, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:09:43]:
I remember I had a tech and I used to— I'm sorry, you— I have a bad habit of wanting to finish the car, and I closed the hood on the car and he was not finished. That was his indication that I'm done with the car, and I closed it. And so I guess he's thinking, I must have closed the hood, I'm done. But he wasn't done. So that happened years ago. That like happened my first year of running the shop. And I can't remember exactly what the result was, but I learned to never close the hood again. We're not rushing this.
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:14]:
Let him focus on it because like, if I go back there and ask 3 questions and he's like, like you said, did I torque that? Did I not? Whatever. We're putting too much pressure on them. And that's another thing. What do you think about I lost my train of thought, which is going to happen a whole lot on this podcast. So I was going to think, like, how do you— what do you think is the best way to fix the communication issue between the front and the back?
Jeff Compton [00:10:44]:
Are you asking Ashley?
Tonnika Haynes [00:10:46]:
Well, Ashley, I want to hear both sides because she's worked the front, you've worked in the back, and I want to stay out of it as the owner.
Ash Kaplan [00:11:01]:
Ash? Well, I know, right? The problem with my take is because I, without going into a whole nother hour episode like the last one, explaining, re-explaining, I did go to technical school because I love working on cars and I always have, but I wanted to know the proper way to do things, not just the self-taught and the dad taught me way. And I strongly felt like if I was gonna be a service manager and manage technicians, that how could I tell them to do their job if I didn't know how to do it? So I was joking with Tanika recently, like I was essentially one course away from the master technician certification, which we all know through school is not a, it's not a real master tech, just on paper. So I am an ASC certified technician, but I don't work in the back. So I do work in the front. I do, I would, occasionally run out and help like when they needed something. I've done many, many, many brake jobs, many, many flushes, tuneups, minor stuff just to help close stuff out for the week. But I don't work in the back. So for me, we're talking about communication, right, Tanika? That's what you asked.
Ash Kaplan [00:12:10]:
Yeah. I think it starts with respect and it's really hard to get mutual respect when you have low close ratios or you have service advisors that don't care. Yeah. So it's really, it's a hard thing to teach. Because if I'm gonna walk in the shop and go ask for a status update, I'm watching what the technician's doing before I even open my mouth because I can tell if he's torquing something to leave him alone, turn around and come back in 5 minutes. Or I can just peek my head out and see the progress where he's at. I don't have to ask. So there's a big gap missing between the front and the back of the house and it's education.
Ash Kaplan [00:12:47]:
And I think that Just like law enforcement has to go through certain training to enforce law, why aren't service advisors required to go through technical training? So the communication would be fixed if there was mutual respect, and there's no mutual respect on both ends for various reasons, and they're valid reasons.
Jeff Compton [00:13:10]:
I catch a lot of flack lately for how I seem to always be picking on service advisors, right? And It's a funny conversation to have because sometimes when we're calling out a lot of service advisors and I can tell as soon as I call them out, some people get really, really miffed at me. And I'm just going to say it because most of the time then when I'm calling them out, I'm calling out their wife, girlfriend, daughter, something like that. And they take it very personal when I say that she's probably a liability and she's probably got all the great qualities that make her awesome. But she might not be the best person to put in that position.
Tonnika Haynes [00:13:51]:
And so you're saying like the owner's wife and girlfriends, that they just stick at the front desk without training?
Ash Kaplan [00:13:57]:
Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:13:57]:
Oh, I think that that is— I'm gonna challenge people that are listening to this. If you start a business tomorrow, say you're young— I hate— listen, we're, we're gonna— the gender, traditional gender role, right? So you're a young technician and you got yourself a girlfriend or wife and you're opening up your own business. Immediately, that's the, the go-to person that becomes the service writer because you're going to be in the back fixing cars. The person that you trust with your whole life is going to be up front handling the customers. I get it, I understand why it happens, it's cool, right? And they're struggling and they're not getting enough training themselves for the technical stuff, let alone the coaching for the business and the service writer. We really need to think if that's the right thing to do, is put somebody that doesn't have a whole lot of understanding about how to fix the car and a whole lot of business of what it actually really takes, and then if you take a really empathetic, sympathetic person and put them in that role too, I think you set yourself up for failure in your shop for a long time before you might have a coach come in. Because listen, I've talked to the coaches of the coaches of the industry, right? And behind the scenes they all tell me, you know how many times I've told them to, you know, get their wife or girlfriend out of the shop because she's costing them money? A lot of times, right? And that's not me singling them out. I've worked in it, I've watched it happen.
Jeff Compton [00:15:16]:
And, and it's hard to discipline that person as an employee because you have to go home and eat dinner with them, right? You have to go home and raise the kids with them. But a lot of them, I don't believe, should be in that role of deciding what is Mrs. Smith's brake job going to cost. All that kind of stuff. I think they— it's, it's the wrong person to put in that role. I think the better thing to do would be to hire a neutral service advisor, an experienced service provider, put them in the shop, say this is the numbers that we want to hit, these are our goals, go to work. Because I've watched it where Mrs., you know, John Smith opens a shop, Jenny Smith, his wife, gets on the counter. Jenny Smith has never written service in her life, gets to know— she's a great people person, gets to know all the customers coming in.
Jeff Compton [00:16:02]:
Pretty soon she's feeling very emotionally invested in every customer's car problem and their financial problem that there then it brings. That is not what I want on my counter ever. And it's not my— I, I don't even have a business and I know that I don't want it in the counter. Because when you put that on the counter and you put 10 techs in the back, 5 techs in the back, 6 techs in the back, and you're all like production, production, production, production, do your DBI better, and they're doing DBIs and the car's not getting the work done and getting sold, guess what the problem is? Retail Mrs. Smith. Yeah. And how do you then fix young Jenny Smith, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:16:43]:
Sorry, you're in trouble for that one, man.
Ash Kaplan [00:16:45]:
Listen, if you're listening, we're not talking to you.
Jeff Compton [00:16:49]:
I have made several service advisors cry. In shops I've worked in.
Tonnika Haynes [00:16:55]:
So you don't want women working at the front desk and you like to make the women cry?
Jeff Compton [00:17:00]:
Nothing to do with women.
Ash Kaplan [00:17:01]:
Nothing to do with women. Braxton, please don't clip that part. No women, get your ass in the kitchen, make me a sandwich, make me a sandwich.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:11]:
Well, okay, so Susie and Zeb work together.
Jeff Compton [00:17:14]:
Yeah, well, exactly, because Zeb has an absolutely— like, the, the goal Zeb has always set for Zeb, you haven't been able to deviate. And it's always been very clearly understood. Listen, we are going to be the shop in Arkansas. We are going to be that. We want to be the shop in the world.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:36]:
We want world domination.
Jeff Compton [00:17:38]:
That's— they understand that. She understands his goal is her goal.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:44]:
Right, so it probably could be coached. We could coach Mrs. Smith to understand and not estimate out of her own pocket and her heart.
Jeff Compton [00:17:52]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [00:17:53]:
Oh, I'm like, yeah, yeah. If you don't pay attention to it, it can definitely be a problem. And how do you think controversial?
Jeff Compton [00:18:00]:
Yeah. And how many shops are sending their advisors to training?
Ash Kaplan [00:18:05]:
What did we just talk about, Tamika?
Tonnika Haynes [00:18:07]:
I just talked about that. We just talked about that. How many shops haven't been to training?
Ash Kaplan [00:18:12]:
The majority of my career was Ash being a rockstar and being hidden in a shop because God forbid other shops find out Ash was a rockstar and they start poaching. So I didn't know training existed. So I'm gonna say something really controversial. Uh-oh. Braxton may have to just edit it out, but— No editing. So you're talking about Zeb and Susie, which are, you can't compare any other husband wives. No, they're super different. They're completely different.
Ash Kaplan [00:18:40]:
What I see is Zeb respects the ever-loving shit out of her. I wish it wasn't the case, but in a lot of marriages, the husband does not respect the wife as much as they should. Then they put them at the front counter. The leadership style is different. You're going to lead your wife different than you're going to lead an employee, so you're not going to hold them accountable to the same level you'd hold an employee accountable. Amen. It's too messy. It's why family doesn't work.
Ash Kaplan [00:19:09]:
You're like, don't—
Tonnika Haynes [00:19:11]:
well, I mean, my dad— but you know what I tell people? I never worked for my dad. Didn't work for him. I do know that I worked for William Brown.
Jeff Compton [00:19:23]:
Yeah, your dad was hard on you. He expected— oh God, yeah, you— than he expected as somebody else, for sure. A lot of employers, especially when, say, say the marriage gets a little fractured— we're going down a rabbit hole here— say the marriage starts to get a couple chinks in the armor right? Then what happens? Maybe we dial it back, and when we should be really correcting the behavior right at the moment, we don't because maybe we're all up last night fighting about something else. And now if it's going to seem— so we don't.
Ash Kaplan [00:19:50]:
Well, leave your personal problems at the door when you walk in. You literally can't do that when you're married to your work, the person you work with.
Jeff Compton [00:19:58]:
No, nope. It's, uh, and I look at Christy and, and Then Benji, my brother Benji.
Tonnika Haynes [00:20:06]:
Well, I think Benji's scared of her, as he should be.
Jeff Compton [00:20:09]:
Well, but he also says that like her coming in and becoming involved in the shop turned the shop around.
Tonnika Haynes [00:20:16]:
She's an educator, she's a teacher, she is about it.
Ash Kaplan [00:20:19]:
I do see that when the wife comes in later in the business, then it seems to work.
Tonnika Haynes [00:20:24]:
Well, maybe because they've had all the pillow talk and she understands the problems that he's been having and she can see it from a different angle when she walks in the door. And if the marriage is strong enough, then maybe the wife can look at him and say, well, you're the damn problem, and let's find a solution. Let's find us a coach. And they go through that whole process together.
Jeff Compton [00:20:45]:
Because that might be— if I'm the shop owner, head mechanic, and I have to say to her, you're the problem that we're not making any money because you're not holding the line on what I actually billed out, and you, you know, you gave her $50 off, or like, we had it in policy that we don't install customer-supplied parts, but we had a customer come in twice with customer-supplied parts. Now it's written in the policy that that shouldn't happen, but why was it happening?
Tonnika Haynes [00:21:11]:
Because she was cute and it was a little old lady.
Jeff Compton [00:21:14]:
No, they needed help. It was a middle-aged man with a, with a Kia.
Tonnika Haynes [00:21:20]:
So I tried.
Jeff Compton [00:21:22]:
Oh, I know we want it to be somebody that's helpful, but most of the time— or somebody that's in need of help— but most of the time it's not. It's somebody that is just looking to have us abandon the process for their benefit. And I won't be back. Yeah, it's my business. I'm in charge, right? It— if, if you don't like my process, that's okay. No, no hate. Well, people don't know how to tell people no because it goes back to we need every damn car we can get, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:21:52]:
I can't say— well, you can— yeah, I can't say no. But that's, you know, we talk about, and I say it all the time, it's like Um, when Rick White told me to slow down my car count, I thought he was absolutely mad. I thought he was the craziest person I ever met in my life. He's like, you got to slow down to speed up. Hence the name of the podcast again, plug. Um, downshift, slow down, slow down, Tanika, lessen your car count, spend more time on that car, get that process right, get the DVI right, get the sales process right, and it'll fix itself. Yeah, but my hard head, the first couple times I didn't listen to him. I thought he has lost his mind.
Tonnika Haynes [00:22:27]:
That doesn't make any sense. More cars, more money. Nope, less cars, more money. And it really worked out. But again, how many people don't get coaching, or how many people stay in their own way guilty because you know every damn thing, right? Because I'm the boss and this is my shop and I don't need no coach telling me nothing. Like, you don't have to eat everything that the coach gives out, but you really should kind of taste it.
Jeff Compton [00:22:51]:
Essentially, then the people that say, I don't need a coach and I don't need anything, and that— put your numbers up and show us your growth every year. If you're not gonna do that and you don't have anything to show, shut the fuck up. Shut up and let the people that are like doing what you should be doing talk.
Tonnika Haynes [00:23:10]:
Yeah, it is hard, especially if you're a hard-headed person, to listen to people all the time, but everybody needs a coach. I mean, not only the automotive industry, every industry needs a coach. And if you think you're too good for a coach, then I mean, what?
Jeff Compton [00:23:24]:
Your coach can be podcasts. That is true. You know, you're cool. We're putting out enough content now that if you can't afford a coach— and I have conversations with people and it's like, well, I've heard about this podcast, but I don't really listen too often. It's like, you have all these problems and all these type of customers coming in, but you're having all these problems. Why the hell are you not 'Okay, I can't afford a coach.' Why are you not listening every week?
Tonnika Haynes [00:23:48]:
On the way to work, change— just change what's going in your ears instead of listening to the news. Okay, somebody got killed. Okay, uh, RIP. The weather, it's going to be hot, it's going to be cold. Okay, yeah, actually change whatever you're listening to, change your tracks.
Jeff Compton [00:24:06]:
So actually, you made a good point where you talked about some people were using your service to try and avoid some of the emotional discounting that was happening at the counter. And you know what, Honestly, I never even considered that as a benefit of your, of your product. I always thought, you know, it's dealing with the extended warranty companies, all that kind of stuff. But what an awesome opportunity that is to eliminate some of that by just using the third party.
Ash Kaplan [00:24:31]:
That's so cool. It causes friction because we have a very tight process. There is room for tailoring preferences to shops' needs. So like a lot of the repeatable questions I get in every discovery call is like, well, how do you know which parts to do? I said, We have a really extensive survey that you fill out. I mean, it's really extensive. Every single system I have detailed that I want to know what part do you like, what vendor do you like it from? Do you like any preferences? We want to know and we customize those things. Everything else is within our, our process. Then we do an intentional onboarding.
Ash Kaplan [00:25:08]:
This is our process. Welcome. We're getting married, but I come with my stuff. You come with your stuff and One of the, one of the things is we don't manipulate pricing. So however you have your pricing matrix set up in TechMetric is how the estimate's going to come out. With the exception of tires and batteries, we'll use whatever preset matrixes you have for those. But across the board, it's whatever you have your markup at is what your markup is at. You put it there for a reason.
Ash Kaplan [00:25:36]:
So we are just following a process. I'm a process person. Step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4. I get onto my people if they skip a step and I find it in a mistake later when I'm auditing workflow. "Hey, you skipped this step and that's why this mistake happened. Let's go back to the basics." There's a process for a reason because I can't hold the shop accountable if we aren't following the process we told them we would be. So that's a big part of it, but it causes friction because they're like, "Well, I know, but sometimes we just round down on this anyways." And I'm like, "I'm sorry, we won't." That's surprising to hear that people still do that.
Jeff Compton [00:26:11]:
Round down? You never round down, you round up.
Ash Kaplan [00:26:15]:
No. And the other thing is I, I get a good feel for people during discovery calls. And even though I'm a small business and yes, we should say yes to more shops, there are shops that I don't follow through with on purpose because one of the shops I had, I had, I've only had 2 shops that were ever not a good fit. We onboarded, they were just not a good moral fit. And so we let them out early, like no penalty or anything, refunded completely. One of them was a shop that we wrote up the work and maybe we served them for about 2 weeks and they said, I thought the whole point of this was to save us time. I said, it is. So let's talk.
Ash Kaplan [00:26:56]:
Why are we not saving you time? They said, well, our service advisors are having to spend more time deleting things off the estimate. And I said, that's— What are you deleting? That's a big problem. Let's stop right there. Yeah. So if the car has a bunch of things written up, we just kind of pick and choose what to recommend to the customer.. And I said, I'm sorry, but I don't agree with that. You're doing a disservice to both the technician and the customer because now that customer cannot make an informed decision if they approve $1,500 because they think, okay, $1,500 to get my car back into tip-top shape, I can make that investment happen. But really it needs $10,000 and you didn't present it.
Ash Kaplan [00:27:33]:
And now that $10,000, when it comes back to bite you in the butt in a month, the customer's like, had I known all that I needed, I would've invested this money into a more reliable vehicle.
Tonnika Haynes [00:27:43]:
You screwed this up. You just lied to the customer.
Ash Kaplan [00:27:45]:
You lied to the customer. And what is the point of having a technician do a 48-point inspection if you're not going to present every single thing in the inspection? You're not even gonna send it to the customer. Why are you spending the money on TechMetric? Why are you having technicians DVI the cars? Just have a loop tech look it over for 2 seconds if you're not gonna present everything. But you're having a flag rate technician not get paid to do a DVI and you're not presenting anything, no wonder you have such high turnover.
Jeff Compton [00:28:13]:
And then that shop owner at the end of the month makes a post in some group somewhere saying that his tech can't produce shit. There you go. But yeah, we didn't sell all the work to the customer.
Ash Kaplan [00:28:22]:
We can't keep technicians. Good technicians don't want to work for us.
Jeff Compton [00:28:27]:
Yeah, I wouldn't either. Yeah, yeah. And that's my whole thing with flat rate, right? Like where it's everybody's like, oh, you won't work it. Uh, no, I would work it.
Ash Kaplan [00:28:37]:
I would work it. My texts were happy on flat rate, let me tell you.
Jeff Compton [00:28:40]:
I would control it 100%, which means whatever I write down for the labor that something needs to be within reason. Then listen, I'm not a thief, okay? Yeah, that— if that gets deviated at all, we don't do the job. It's just as simple as that. It's not up for discussion. If I say I need 4 hours to do that job, it's 4 hours. It's not 3.1 or, you know No, it's, it's— you can charge them $3.1, my pay is going to say $4.
Ash Kaplan [00:29:08]:
Right, right.
Jeff Compton [00:29:08]:
That's how that works, first of all, from flat rate. Secondly, you know, it's— I love the DBI, but I hate how it's painted as this fix-all that's ever— it's going to solve every problem in the industry. Because I'll give you a really personal, I-lived-it situation. We had a customer that we had the time it was in before, it was a little like, I think it was a Honda CR-V. We had recommended a belt, we had recommended a brake flush, we had recommended brake service, and we had recommended tires. And when the car came in 4 months later for its next oil change, somebody went and did the same DBI. Of course, we found the same things again, and we found all those same recommendations. Right? So this time, even though it was only here for an oil change, not a complete inspection, I went ahead and took the wheels off and inspected the brakes.
Jeff Compton [00:30:04]:
Because now guess what? We couldn't service the brakes. They had to be replaced. They were past the point of service, was not, you know. Um, and so all the wrecks have been there previous. When the customer booked the appointment, nobody could be bothered to mention to Mrs. Smith, that, hey, your recs from last time, are you interested in doing that? Nobody thought to do this, so we didn't do it. So the technician, because he wants to be productive— and I wasn't flat rate at the time— I, I looked at TechMetric history, saw all the recommendations, did the inspection over again, the DBI, and tabled the same estimate. We had a different advisor call.
Jeff Compton [00:30:44]:
She approved the work. They had to, though, give me shit— sorry, discipline me— for taking the wheels off the car to inspect the brakes because she wasn't in for a brake inspection. So I sold $1,800 on the car, but I had to be disciplined because I took the wheels off.
Tonnika Haynes [00:31:04]:
Now, what is the discipline? I don't understand that.
Jeff Compton [00:31:06]:
Like, they really had a conversation with you for taking the time to take the wheels off? No conversation with the person that didn't bother to make the recommendations to the customer when the appointment was booked. No conversation was had about maybe this is the process we should adopt going forward, is whatever wrecks were made on the DBI last time, we should make sure that that's in the conversation for this time so we don't have— so when I, when I see people talking about the DBI, I'm going to tell you right now, outside of the shops you guys deal with This is the very real reality of why it does not work a lot of the time, because it's being failed on the front. So the DBI does not fix everything for the technician perspective. It will fix a lot for the shop perspective if you have strong advisors that convert an inspection, because otherwise on the third time that it comes in— that's my rule, right? Like, if I look in the history and the work has not been done and it's been recommended twice, two other times it's been there. The third time, I'm not doing the DBI. They're getting the oil change that they came in for, then they're going out the door, and I'll pull in the next one. And when they go, you don't have a DBI, go— I'll go, it's the same as the last time. And see, they hate that, right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:32:22]:
They hate it. Well, it makes sense. I'm like, dude, we told you this before. Like I told you before, just copy and paste.
Jeff Compton [00:32:30]:
Yeah, and it's, it's bad, right? Because it seems like I'm— but it's like everything else. We talk in this industry all the time about this fixes this and this fixes that. This is all systems, and like you two ladies know, it's a process of several variables working together at once. If you have a weak link, throw the freaking process in the trash and continue doing what you're doing because it got you at least this far. If you can't accept that I need a killer as an advisor, I need a killer technician, and I need the two of them to work together, and I don't need somebody getting in the friggin' way of both of them, then it works. And that friggin' person getting in the way of both of them is somebody that's empathetic to, oh my God, I can't believe this is such a higher amount than we normally charge these customers. Yes, and Do you want rules for 2026 or not? Isn't that what you want?
Tonnika Haynes [00:33:31]:
I thought it was. So do you think the technology— like, we've got TechMetric, we've got the DVIs, we have Detect Auto, we have all these great things going on, um, we've got the podcast, we've got so much information— do you feel like it's getting better? It's a communication gap getting worse? Are we just talking really, really loud about it now? Like, it's just everybody's talking about it, nobody's doing anything about it.
Jeff Compton [00:33:52]:
Go ahead and say something, Ash, and then I'm gonna drop it on you for 2024.
Ash Kaplan [00:33:57]:
Oh, let's do it. If you throw a wrench at a car, does it fix the car? Nope. So if you are handed tools to help fix your business, how do you fix the business? You use the tools. Sure. Then that, this is the bit I can get on a whole soapbox about it, but like I had a shop that's really struggling. They asked for my help. Pitched, like offered to go in for a week, go into their shop for a week. I have a whole process Monday through Friday on how I can help turn, turn their shop around and grow them by half a million dollars in the first year.
Ash Kaplan [00:34:29]:
I love it. Just, I'm talking bare minimum, bare minimum, half a million dollars in the first year. Well, they came to, well, I only want the DVI portion of your training. Okay, here you go. Here's the DVI portion, which I have a great doc, I have a great resource I've built on how to do efficient DVIs in 15 to 20 minutes as a flat rate tech. 'Cause we didn't pay for DVIs in my shops and I had a great relationship with my technicians 'cause we sold all of the work. So they didn't mind not getting paid for it 'cause they got paid for it later. So get them to do them in 15, 20 minutes, but it doesn't work if it's not getting sold.
Ash Kaplan [00:35:05]:
So that's why my training is a week long and it's every aspect of the shop. Everything from teaching you how to scrub the toilet better to how to do a DVI better, because it's all part of the process to fix your shop. You can't just change one thing and then expect your shop to flip upside down overnight. So anyway, please, please take over and let me stop talking.
Jeff Compton [00:35:26]:
Uh-oh, I'm gonna say it for 2026, you people that are listening, and I've said it before, but I'm gonna really say it now. I challenge you Don't send your techs to training, send your flipping advisors.
Tonnika Haynes [00:35:42]:
You work, but they can't leave the office because if the advisors leave the office, if we have to shut down the office, then we're not going to make any money.
Jeff Compton [00:35:51]:
Well then, no, because we, we bring the whole team to these training events, right? But I mean, I can tell you that if we leave—
Tonnika Haynes [00:36:00]:
here's where you close your shop, don't you? I close my shop. We close our shop for training. We go to ASTA. I wish there were more trainings closer, but yeah, we close. Everybody's gone. But see, because the knowledge they receive, yeah, it's just like, I adore— adore is probably not the best word, but I love going back to one of my tech's work area and he's got notes that he's taken from each expo on his wall. Yeah, he's taking pride in his education. I love that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:36:31]:
I hired a tech maybe 2 weeks before ASTA this year, and he's been in the industry, I want to say, between 8 and 10 years. He kept saying, I have never had training, I've never had training. And he worked as a service advisor, as a manager, and never had training like we put on an expo because we just think it's about soft skills.
Jeff Compton [00:36:53]:
Make the customer smile, make them feel good. It's got, it's got F all to do with that, right? It's not about making them feel good. Shocker, it is about making them understand how the severity of what they're bringing here, when the brakes are not right or the car sometimes doesn't want to start, the severity of that. And then you sell that to them. You have to make them understand. You have to communicate the consequences and the repercussions. That's what a powerful advisor do. We want to sign up techs every day and take little 5-minute tests and all this.
Jeff Compton [00:37:23]:
Stuff on what did you learn today. Do we do that for advisors? Yeah, the programs are out there, but I bet you if you ask, you're going to say that every shop out there is like, I got to get all my techs signed up for this. Uh, let's get your advisor set up. Oh, they don't have time, it's so busy in the morning, you know, like I got 20 drop-offs and 4 waiters and they don't have time to—
Tonnika Haynes [00:37:43]:
man. Yeah, uh, so next month he's going to Atlanta.
Jeff Compton [00:37:46]:
Yeah, why, why do technicians expected to do 40 hours of paid— of unpaid or paid training? You know, that's the number that gets thrown around, right? I want all my techs to do 40 hours of training next year, right? How many hours of training should some of the advisors be doing next year? Hundreds, because they got a lot of catching up to do, right? Let's look at some of these DVIs, and I'll tell you, because I talked to, again, technicians all over the industry, right? Some of them in the dealer realm, their DVIs are so thorough, so polished, so submitted to the customer, the advisor is not doing anything Nothing. And the customer— the client is saying yes to this, just how David Roman talks about it, right? Yes, it is. The customer— the technician in the bay gets the authorization, goes and gets the parts, puts them on the car. Never spoke to the advisor. The advisor didn't even necessarily speak to the customer. All done through the DBI, all done through 40. Why is that such a great tool? Because we take the emotional element out of it. So we don't get somebody on the phone, go, oh, Mrs.
Jeff Compton [00:38:50]:
Smith, I know, you know, you talked about your mom's going in the hospice and money's probably really tight and all this kind of stuff, but like, your Jag needs 4 tires and brakes front and rear. Yes or no? Yeah, buckle up, Mrs. Smith, it's going to be $5,000. Instead of having that conversation and bringing the emotional empathy into it, the technicians in the back is pointing, going, these are shot, these are shot, these are shot, these are shot. I have Here's your evidence that it's shot. Here's the evidence that it's your car. Um, somebody's going to send you an estimate. Have a nice day.
Jeff Compton [00:39:25]:
And then they wait. This is why that's such a powerful tool, because I take— because here's the thing, the advisors, if they're not being trained on how to separate themselves from that where it can go sideways, I don't want them. I'll spend more time doing a DBI. I'll go out and sell the work myself. I have done it. A lot in my industry.
Tonnika Haynes [00:39:45]:
Get out of my way, I'm selling my damn self. That's right.
Jeff Compton [00:39:49]:
Ain't nothing wrong with that.
Tonnika Haynes [00:39:51]:
There is nothing wrong with this. How are we gonna— listen, I want to change your name. I'm gonna change the name of your podcast. Let's Google it. What's the opposite of jaded? What is it? The Happy Mechanic. How do we turn you back? Have you ever been unjaded? Mechanic. Is that a word? Unjaded mechanic. Like, what— who was Jeff? I told you I was going to ask you, who were you 20 years ago?
Jeff Compton [00:40:16]:
You told me you were mean. I was, I was the kind of guy that would grab a parts guy by the, by the shirt collar and pull him over the counter if he was lackadaisical about getting me the parts, because I had 2 advisors, 3 customers, yeah, they were screaming about how come this wasn't done yet. I was that guy. Right?
Tonnika Haynes [00:40:35]:
Because I mean, if you tell me I'm gonna still sound like that guy sometimes, though, I can still be that guy.
Jeff Compton [00:40:41]:
I have to work every day to keep that guy from coming out. It's a, it's a— I— the mental gymnastics I have to do to unprogram myself from a flat rate life is still an everyday challenge for me. And people don't see it. They're like, oh, he seems pretty relaxed now. Every little thing that I still see go wrong where I feel my advisor or parts or whatever does, it wants to trigger me. Because in my brain I'm still clicking off 1/6, 1/10 at a time. 6 minutes, 6 minutes, 6 minutes, 6 minutes.
Tonnika Haynes [00:41:08]:
So you have flat rate PTSD. Yeah, right. How do you— what do you tell people? How do you tell people not to go there? So you're talking to a young tech, you're talking to Jordan, right? Yeah. You can't do that. You have to worry about your health. You have to worry about your stress. You have to realize that I know that you want everything to be perfect, But you also have to know that that raises your blood pressure, that puts your heart at risk.
Jeff Compton [00:41:33]:
What do you tell a 20-year-old tech? I tell every technician, it doesn't matter the age, the secret is to realize that this— you have to be the best you can be, okay? You have to be the best in the room. You have to be the only option to solve that problem that that car has.. Because then what happens is nobody can say to you, it shouldn't have taken that long. Who else is going to fix it? No one. Put your hands up. No hand goes up. Well, guess what? It got fixed. Guess how long it took? As long as it took.
Jeff Compton [00:42:08]:
As long as it took this guy to fix it. That's the reality, people, right? And that's where, again, it comes to this, you know— Ashley's looking like, oh my God, he's way more unhinged than I thought.
Ash Kaplan [00:42:21]:
No, he's not.
Jeff Compton [00:42:22]:
I love it. It's, it's this whole thing of where I put diagnostic techs on, on a pedestal, and Lucas yells at me all the time for this and kind of stuff. And, and people say, listen, it's, it's— if, if the customer at the end of the day, what they want is a problem solved, they really don't give a flip about the conditions of their fluids and all that crap. They have a car that sometimes doesn't want to start or doesn't want to shut off or does a warning light or won't rev up or whatever. If you bring them in and you have somebody that can get to the root of that problem, that's what they want. If you don't have somebody that can get to the root of that problem, don't tell them that you do, and don't hit them over the head with all this other stuff that this car needs, right? Dutch is adamant about that. If you don't address what they're there for— and that's the big problem I have with the DBI— they're there for a recall. Or they're there for an oil change.
Jeff Compton [00:43:17]:
And we— yes, we have to advocate and let them know. But my God, if they're there for a diagnostic problem and we point out struts that are leaking some oil, or we point out a front cover that's seeping some oil, and then we go and do a repair that doesn't fix the drivability problem, guess what? In their eyes, their drivability problem cost $4,000 to fix the total bill, even though they got struts, brakes, tires, whatever, and it still wasn't fixed. That's the customer mentality, right? They don't break it down. They took a broken car in, they got a bill to fix a broken car, the car left broken. Yeah, we have to stop that, which means if you have somebody that problem solves versus installs parts or services fluids It's a different game. So the young techs, I tell them, learn that game. Learn how to fix the car, not how to make hours, because the make hours thing, it's a game.
Ash Kaplan [00:44:20]:
It's all— it makes so much more hours too if you learn to fix the car correctly the first time. Yes. Yeah. If they trust me— let me just give the quick point too, or a quick hour here, quick hour of that. I get so frustrated, like, I I have a lot of technicians I've worked with that have mad respect for me. You could call any one of them on the, any one of them. They're like, I wish she was back in my shop right now selling these tickets. But I do have a handful of shops that I have pissed off because don't bring me a diag that says P0420 and say replace cats, spark plugs, those two sensors and fuel service and send the customer up the road.
Ash Kaplan [00:44:58]:
Show me what you tested. Yeah. Well, it's always a catalytic converter.
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:02]:
No, it's not.
Jeff Compton [00:45:02]:
No, it's not.
Ash Kaplan [00:45:03]:
No, it is not. No. But they're not trained in diagnostic, but they're being handed diagnostic. And so I used to dispatch accordingly and I've had technicians, well, that's not fair. Why is he getting that and he's getting that? I'm dispatching according to skill level. If you want this ticket, go up your skills. Yeah. Don't give me a half-assed diagnostic because I'll give it back to you.
Ash Kaplan [00:45:28]:
You wanna get an hour paid for a diag and take 30 minutes to do it? You can do that after 10 years of learning how to diag more efficiently.
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:36]:
But you gotta say that for the people in the back.
Ash Kaplan [00:45:38]:
Definitely say that for the people in the back because I think you cannot get an hour paid diagnostic and do it in 30 minutes if you don't know how to properly diagnose the car. I will send you back to go spend 2 hours on it instead of 30 minutes. And guess what?
Tonnika Haynes [00:45:53]:
You're getting paid an hour. But what about the people like— what about the techs? They're not listening to you. That's why you piss them off. You're pissing them off. Because you're touching their feelings. They know what they're talking about. What about these texts that know what you're saying is absolutely right and they don't know what the hell they're doing? And then they go listen to Jeff and they pick out one little smidget of what he said. They're like, yeah, I'm right.
Tonnika Haynes [00:46:20]:
And like, no, you're not right. You didn't listen to the whole message. You're listening to the little snippet that came up. Listen to the whole message. Dude, you're the problem. He's not talking about you. He's not talking about— you're not a great tech. You don't know what the hell you're doing yet, so you don't qualify for that conversation yet.
Tonnika Haynes [00:46:36]:
I told you about that. I'm so proud of you. Use my word, yet.
Ash Kaplan [00:46:39]:
I have it.
Jeff Compton [00:46:40]:
It's right here. I have to use that word a lot more too.
Ash Kaplan [00:46:43]:
I want you to make the most money you can possibly make. If there is any person on the front counter that's a bigger advocate for technicians, it is your girl. I want 6-figure technicians all day Go make $200,000, $300,000. You've earned it if you've earned it. But you're not gonna get that by handing me this, oh, replace the mass airflow sensor and retest. Well, why does it need a mass airflow sensor? Yeah. Well, Identifix says no. Ashley says go do it again or give it to a different technician and you lost that hour.
Jeff Compton [00:47:17]:
Sorry. What about the technician that like you got an hour sold and their average time to do the diag is about 80 minutes?
Ash Kaplan [00:47:26]:
But they have zero comebacks. Then we're having a conversation on what I can do to help them make more money because I'm gonna, I value if they're taking extra time to make sure it's done properly. 'Cause I had a technician like that. He was a, I called him a master diagnostician and every day he said, I'm a nobody, I'm this, I'm that. I'm like, no, you are a master diagnostician. You take your time to ensure you have ruled everything out before he would turn in a diag to me. One, he would sit next to my desk and he would talk me through step A to step Z. I do everything he tested.
Ash Kaplan [00:47:58]:
He would— it might take 10 minutes and he's not getting flagged for that, but he wanted to make sure that I understood all of it. And he also wanted to talk through it to make sure he didn't miss a step. So he would go through every— and it would take him about an hour to an hour and a half to do every diag, but they were never wrong. Never wrong. I'm okay with that. But it made me reframe quoting diag at the counter a little bit to, okay, your check engine light's on. We're gonna start with 1 hour. We're gonna get a little bit into it.
Ash Kaplan [00:48:32]:
And if it's straightforward, pretty simple, then this is all you'll pay. But I'm gonna call you if it turns out to be something pretty complex and we need some more time. Then I never had a problem when he's 45 minutes, an hour into it, calling the customer before I even ask the technician, getting an extra hour approved and adding it to the ticket. And then the tech refreshes their page and he goes, there's another hour on here. I'm like, yeah, because this is not a simple diagnostic. You're— when I can walk out there and I see you've got a wiring diagram pulled out, let me go get 2 more hours sold.
Tonnika Haynes [00:49:04]:
And the level of diagnostics, you know, like this is level 1, level 2, level 3. Yeah, service providers don't know what that means. Yeah, because they've never had coaching. But I remember I gave Joe, I was like, listen, Here's a timer. Let's turn this on. Because a good tech doesn't want to get beat up, right? He's like, I want to fix this problem. And then you go down a rabbit hole. And next thing you know, when you look up, it's an hour and a half.
Tonnika Haynes [00:49:25]:
So it's like, no, once it goes off, 45 minutes, not an hour. Say, stop, I need more time. And then like you said, go ahead and prepare the customer. Hey, we're going to start with an hour. We'll see how far it gets. If we need to come back to you, see if you need some more, you know, we need some more time to go deeper in it, I'll give you a call. But right now, let's go ahead and let's start here. Or if you already know that it's got 1,800 codes in it and it's been to 7 other shops, like, listen, we need to start about 3 hours.
Ash Kaplan [00:49:53]:
Yeah, and if they walk, they walk.
Jeff Compton [00:49:55]:
Yeah, not all money is good money. Let me bounce the scenario off you two fine ladies because you both probably have seen something similar. So you get a car come in, has a check engine light on, customer says, I'm there for a check engine light diag. Customer shop pulls it in, technician into the shop, excuse me, performs a DBI. Now I'm a stickler for this. I look at the window and if I see that the oil change service, right, and it's overdue, I'm already slightly triggered because the advisor in my perfect world would have gone out, walked out, got the mileage, got the keys, floor mat, seat cover, looked up at the window and said, oh shit, it's overdue for oil change. Absolutely. Walked back in and sold it, but they don't.
Jeff Compton [00:50:39]:
Okay, so the technician pulls the car, truck in, It's a Hemi truck. Just play with me here. We pull it in and it's got, um, uh, it's overdue for oil change. It's down 2 liters of oil and it has faults for the essentially the cylinder deactivation system not being able to function properly and, and go from 8 cylinders to 4. That's what's turned the code on, saying that system's not working properly. Now ladies, what does that system need in order to work?
Tonnika Haynes [00:51:10]:
I know what's wrong with it.
Jeff Compton [00:51:12]:
Ain't got no oil in it.
Ash Kaplan [00:51:15]:
It needs clean, proper engine oil. Yeah, because if the oil is dirty, it throws that code and it shuts it off as a failsafe.
Jeff Compton [00:51:21]:
So as a technician, I walk in and I go, okay, first step in this, just like, here's the printout. Because I would do that, right? I'd put the sheet out and say, first thing right there, has to have clean, good oil in. If not, oil change, retest. And that would be my diag, would be done. Until the next step could be completed, right? And listen, I would catch hell for that because the customer's not there for an oil change. They don't even get their oil change done here.
Ash Kaplan [00:51:48]:
Okay, so how does the customer know what, what they're in for when it's a check engine light that they don't know how to fix?
Tonnika Haynes [00:51:54]:
They are in for an oil change. You are in for oil change, love.
Jeff Compton [00:51:57]:
No, but they're going for— they go to the Quick Lube for the oil change, but they're at my shop for the diag on the check engine light because the Quick Lube place doesn't do diag.
Tonnika Haynes [00:52:05]:
But they're overdue for the oil change. That's part of the diagnostic process. No, we need to do an oil change here. But no, that's— we check in, we check in, we do the pictures of all four corners. You're not going to tell me that wasn't there. We take a picture of the tag, check your inspection status. We take a picture of the oil change sticker. We take a picture of the mileage.
Tonnika Haynes [00:52:23]:
We take a picture of all lights on dash. We take a picture of everything because what you're not going to do is say, well, ever since you—
Ash Kaplan [00:52:30]:
oh no. Oh, I have a customer that came in his little Nissan Frontier on a tow truck 'cause all 4 tires got slashed, which should have told me the first problem. This customer is a problem.
Jeff Compton [00:52:42]:
His tires were slashed.
Ash Kaplan [00:52:42]:
Did you sue the guys too? No, they weren't that lucky. But we replaced the 4 tires. It's a Progressive Insurance claim. We literally just dolly the truck into the shop, put 4 tires on it, drive it, pull out of the parking lot, make a U-turn, pull back into the parking lot to make sure it drove straight. He declined DVI, declined all the other things. We're like, hey, your car's ready, or truck's ready to be picked up. He comes and picks it up and he starts getting in my face screaming that we drove his truck 300-something miles, used up all the gas in his truck. And I said, ain't no way, ain't no way.
Ash Kaplan [00:53:17]:
But because we're thorough and follow processes, it showed the mileage in and out and it went up 1 mile.
Tonnika Haynes [00:53:24]:
Yeah, yeah, just cover your butt. It's like, cover your butt. People do not do it. It's like, nope, take a picture of everything. You will not get me. And I love to show it because like, actually, no, we can zoom in on that.
Ash Kaplan [00:53:36]:
And oh man, crazy, it looks like it was actually there before. But hey, we actually have a really great body shop, we can take care of that for you.
Jeff Compton [00:53:46]:
Sorry. That was my— always my biggest thing is because especially from the diagnostic standpoint of, of the conversation, sometimes the diag tech really knows before I can go further, I have to address this. Right? And it's like, I'm not talking about the 4— but we'll go down that 420 DTC again, right? With the catalytic converter thing. Now, if you bring me a car and it's got a 420 DTC and the flex pipe underneath the oil pan is split, rusted, rotten, leaking, the cat might still be bad. But if it's sucking air into the cat ahead of it, unmetered air diluting the oxygen sensor signal, We have to repair the exhaust before I can then test the catalytic converter further, right? So it's one of those things where I've always been hard to deal with from the advisor standpoint because I, I flood them with knowledge and testing results.
Tonnika Haynes [00:54:43]:
No, they don't want to. I would love to just learn all the things because I'm not very technical.
Jeff Compton [00:54:48]:
I need that though. It breaks the norm. Right? It breaks the norm. I'm going to give you every scenario likely that could be happening here. Yes, you might need a cat. I need to know how long has the light been on? Oh, it's been on like 9 months. Okay, well, how long has the exhaust been leaking? They only just started hearing it 2 months ago. Okay, we could still have a bad cat behind that, but first step is let's fix the exhaust so that all the pollutants that are supposed to go through the cat are going there so the oxygen sensor can measure them properly and then give us an evaluation of what that cat's doing.
Jeff Compton [00:55:21]:
This is the problem when I butt heads with some people. I'm like, I only want to call the customer once. That is such a stupid, old, tired narrative about how to actually be lazy.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:32]:
So dumb. This is lazy.
Jeff Compton [00:55:33]:
It's dumb as hell. Thank you. I only want to call the customer once.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:38]:
Then sell them the—
Ash Kaplan [00:55:40]:
sell them a new car.
Jeff Compton [00:55:42]:
Thank you.
Tonnika Haynes [00:55:43]:
Sell them a new car. No, we had used the words— okay, this is where we need to start. We have to fix this exhaust leak first, bro. Yeah, all right. And then, you know, we'll get that done and blah blah blah, all the things that Jeff just said.
Jeff Compton [00:55:53]:
These conversations are what have made me the way I am, because like everybody thinks that I'm like— it sounds so simple when we talk to the 5% of the people in the industry that actually listen, but it's the other 95% that I tell technicians to go work for, and they're not in these conversations. And they're, they're— I had a guy message me yesterday, said he's had the worst 2 weeks of his career. He's just recently got his license, which appears means he's a master technician, and he feels all of a sudden like he can't fix a car to save his life. He's had his butt kicked all week. I don't know what— I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. He feels like he might be burnt out. Maybe he isn't cut out for this. Now, to get his license, he's at least 5 years invested in the industry, at least 5.
Jeff Compton [00:56:37]:
But now he's feeling all of a sudden like this might not be for him. And so when I talk all the time to these young— and my phone blows up now, like, it's absolutely ridiculous with how many young technicians are calling me saying, like, I listen, oh my God, blah blah. It's, it's a lot. But sometimes it's really hard for me to go out and say, yeah, just like tough it out, or it'll get better, bro. Because like, man, until some of these shops get with it, it isn't going to get better for them.
Tonnika Haynes [00:57:14]:
And that's hard for me to, to be this advocate for them because I like— that's your assignment though. Like, do you realize how many techs see you as their voice in the industry? Like, I know you probably didn't sign up for that, but that is actually— that's part of your ministry, dude. I'm so sorry. Oh God, no. Yeah, he did not sign up for it, but that is, that is your job. Well, it's my job.
Jeff Compton [00:57:43]:
It's your job, my son. It's the weight. And I mean, I'm proud that people have chosen me to do that for them. I really am. I, I take pride in that. Yeah, but man, like, the obstacles I'm facing are not like the, the technician's competency. You know, people are like, our technicians, average technician can't solve shit. Listen, I can show you a lot of technicians that worked at one shop and they were successful there.
Jeff Compton [00:58:12]:
They found where they fit, they made them a fit, and they put them in that role. And then they come into your shop and all of a sudden you want a fish to fly and you go, you're useless to me, I can't do anything with you. What did you provide for them? To learn how to fly? Nothing.
Tonnika Haynes [00:58:28]:
Yeah, well, they're ASC Master certified.
Jeff Compton [00:58:29]:
They should be able to fly by the damn self. They should— he's the ASC Master certified, he should know how to program everything that comes—
Ash Kaplan [00:58:36]:
wait a minute, whoa, things are changing every day too. Like, let's, let's be for real. Yeah, our technology is ever-changing every single day, so you need constant training.
Jeff Compton [00:58:47]:
Go look at a night— go look at a 2018 Chevy Silverado and then go look at a 2021 Silverado, and it's only 3 years difference, and look at difference in technology in those two trucks.
Ash Kaplan [00:59:02]:
Yeah, completely different machine. Kinda picking back off of what you were talking about. Yeah. You were talking about the vehicle that came in for a check engine light and the first step was an oil change. Yeah. So, I've had service training service advisors how to be confident and firm in, the diag, like keeping the diag on the ticket when we didn't have to recommend a fix. Right. You know, like a real fix.
Ash Kaplan [00:59:33]:
That is a whole thing I could do a TED Talk about. But if you brought the car in, you started the diagnostic tree, and the first process of the diagnostic tree is the oil condition, and you fixed the oil condition, and then you completed the diagnostic tree and it turns out that the oil change solved the problem, yes, you get an hour diag. That's right, as you should.
Tonnika Haynes [00:59:57]:
Yeah. Yes, you charge the customer.
Ash Kaplan [00:59:58]:
So people take that off the ticket?
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:01]:
And guess, yes, every day. Oh my God, I need to meet these people and slap them.
Jeff Compton [01:00:05]:
Oh, I wanna slap them right upside the head. Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:07]:
That is like, when I hear this stuff, it's so unbelievable. I'm like, am I doing it?
Ash Kaplan [01:00:12]:
Like, are people doing it? They're like, oh, but the customer's not gonna understand, we just did an oil change.
Tonnika Haynes [01:00:16]:
Then make them understand.
Jeff Compton [01:00:17]:
You're not getting just do an oil change.
Ash Kaplan [01:00:20]:
Thank you, Ashley. Thank you.
Jeff Compton [01:00:20]:
Make them understand.
Ash Kaplan [01:00:22]:
It's the service advisor's job to make them understand. Advise. I hate sales rep, blah, blah, blah, service writer, blah, blah, blah. Just stick to advisor because that is your job. Advise the damn customer. Yeah. It goes back to my statement. Every service advisor should be in technical training.
Jeff Compton [01:00:41]:
Yeah. Because here's me sitting here in the back and the technician, right, who's working flat rate and judged on his production. If the customer is pissed because they got a $150 diagnostic charge because they let their oil change go too far and then went to the shop just for a diagnostic and not bothered to think about the oil change that's overdue while they're there, life sucks.
Tonnika Haynes [01:01:03]:
That's called a lesson, ladies and gentlemen.
Ash Kaplan [01:01:05]:
Next time, change your oil on time, baby. Hey, guess what?
Jeff Compton [01:01:09]:
Actions have consequences.
Tonnika Haynes [01:01:10]:
Welcome to adulthood. Yeah, it's the same thing when people bring their car in Oh, it's not running, it won't start, and you figure out it just needs gas. That's all it needed?
Ash Kaplan [01:01:20]:
Yes.
Tonnika Haynes [01:01:20]:
You're gonna charge me for that?
Ash Kaplan [01:01:22]:
Yes. You just wasted my damn time. Well, I put gas in it and then I continued to test to make sure there were no other issues. Yeah, you earned that day out. And that's what, so Tanika and I were talking on the last episode, one of the things that I'm big on and I talk about bringing more females into the industry is great and all, but before I welcome them with open arms, there's process for a reason. And women are very good at process, which is why if a woman takes the time to go through tech school, most of the time she's gonna outperform most of the technicians, most of the male technicians around her because we're very detail-oriented, stick to a process.
Jeff Compton [01:01:57]:
That's why they're diagnostic. They're samurais when it comes to diag. The women are fantastic at it. They never deviate from the process, never deviate from the process.
Ash Kaplan [01:02:05]:
There's processes for a reason. And the technicians skipping process are the reason why other shops have to give away free diag to make it valuable because so many shops are misdiagnosing. No, and I'm not hating, sorry, I'm not hating. This is gonna get clipped. I'm not hating on diag. I understand. You're not supposed to bring that up. It's okay.
Ash Kaplan [01:02:24]:
I understand why they have to do it and I see both sides of it. Right. Auto repair is not one size fits all anymore. No, it's not. Because there's so many people playing the game by their own rules. As they should and they can. And you can, but if you don't continue to enforce policies to be followed and processes to be followed, you have those technicians that think they can diagnose something, can't diagnose their way out of a wet paper bag, charge a customer for it, customer's upset, and now the shop says, I need to get cars in the door, so this is my, this is the way I can get cars in the door. And all the power to them.
Ash Kaplan [01:03:00]:
They have to do that. The other shop has to do half-off oil changes. The other shop has to do $100 off brake jobs. Every shop is gonna find what works for them to get the cars in the door and earn the trust.
Jeff Compton [01:03:10]:
I just hate that we've gotten to the point that we have to do that. I hate the whole term of free diag, that I do free diag, because if you're gonna say you do it, you have to say you do it 100% of the time. And I know shops that do free diag, a lot of the initial is free, but if they find that there's a problem there that is gonna need more fleshing out, They are tabling and selling or presenting, whatever you want to say, more additional testing die egg time. Maybe they don't use the word die egg, but they're selling more testing time. So not all the die egg is free. I'm giving them a block of time for free. And Mike explained this to me and all, and I completely understand it, and it worked, and it's good. Do I think it's good for the industry? No, I think it devalues what we're trying to do.
Jeff Compton [01:03:54]:
It's the same as like— Lucas and I had a, had a quite a conversation about how like my myth is people should not grab a reader, scan tool, whatever, and walk out to the parking lot and plug it into the car and tell the customer what it is. Shouldn't— in my opinion, because I worked at the dealer where the service advisors learned how to use it, and they would go and get it and plug it in in the drive-through and go, oh, it's just an EVAP code, you can keep driving. And I'm going, I made $1,000 diagnosing EVAP last week. You should not be telling that customer they can drive on.
Ash Kaplan [01:04:27]:
But even then, what happens when it's in the— never mind.
Jeff Compton [01:04:30]:
EVAP can be a safety issue, guys. Sure it can. If the purge solenoid sticks open, although Ford, anything after— I know what you guys are talking about— and it floods the engine out and you can't pull away from the gas pumps, you know, and you panic or do whatever, or like, it— hello, it's affecting the drivability of the car. It's not like our grandpa's EVAP system where the light was on but the car Ran the same.
Ash Kaplan [01:04:56]:
Well, and just having a DTC is going to cause other systems to not run at full optimization. So all you're doing is pro— like, you're prolonging this problem and open—
Jeff Compton [01:05:05]:
it's opening a can of worms. So now when your torque converter clutch fails to start working now and you're burning your transmission up, but you're driving around thinking, well, the service advisor told me to keep driving because the light's on because it's just a gas cap.
Ash Kaplan [01:05:22]:
You have one check engine light, it's not going to pop up 5 different times when you have 5 different codes. They should have different levels of check engine light. Well, well, no, you should just take your car to the shop when the check engine light comes in.
Jeff Compton [01:05:36]:
Tanika, they don't look at the lights anyway. Listen, remember my TPMS conversations?
Ash Kaplan [01:05:40]:
They don't care about lights. My check engine light is back on. Ma'am, that's your tire pressure sensor because it just dropped 10 degrees yesterday.
Tonnika Haynes [01:05:51]:
Oh my goodness. So great people, Yeah, everybody calm down. Here's the last question. You don't like my voice?
Jeff Compton [01:06:00]:
Everybody, you're sweating. Give everybody hope.
Tonnika Haynes [01:06:02]:
Fat, I sweat a lot. What in this industry actually gives you hope right now, Jeff?
Jeff Compton [01:06:09]:
All the young people that are telling me that they love fixing cars, because that's what we need.
Tonnika Haynes [01:06:18]:
That's what we need. We need more parents to understand that they need to let these kids dream and let these kids make the six figures by getting their hands dirty. Dirty hands, clean money, all day. I love it. I love it too. I loved all the young people in the industry right now. I love seeing them at the expo. That was great.
Tonnika Haynes [01:06:34]:
I mean, like, Ash, I know you're only like 17, but like, you guys just make me so happy when I see the— she's drinking wine, she's 21. Yeah, okay. Yes, thank you. So, but yeah, the youth, I would have to agree with the youth.
Jeff Compton [01:06:50]:
Yeah, in the industry, for me it's so important to try and change because I can't change the technology, I can't change the, the prices of tools, I can't— that's all stuff out of my power. But I can certainly change the culture of this industry by telling them that they do not have to accept being treated the way I was treated. And listen, I wasn't treated— I wasn't the worst treated, not by any stretch of the imagination. There's guys that had it way worse than me. The difference was I knew there was better out there. Some of them got into that role and that was their life, and before you knew it, they were 30 years, 40 years at a shop that they went to when they flunked out of high school in 10th grade. And they walked into a shop and they were there 35 years and they smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. Their back is shot, their knees are shot, their hands are shot, and they have never made $60,000 a year.
Jeff Compton [01:07:49]:
That's the person that I don't want to see anywhere in this industry in the next 20 years. I want them to all age out and be gone, and I want the young people coming in going, I'm gonna start what that old person made. That's my starting point. And if it's not— if you're not going to meet me there, somebody's gonna. And then they have to build themselves into something that they need. That's the key. It's not about putting parts on fast, people. It is about understanding how to truly truly fix what the customer is concerned about.
Jeff Compton [01:08:32]:
Yeah, when you can do that, you can make as much money in this industry as you want because they will trust you 100%. And with that carries a big weight because they're— you're their advocate for their car, for their family, for their safety. But you have to be that level. It isn't about how many hours you produce, it doesn't matter how much time you made, it isn't about your paycheck at the end of the year. I F that, I don't care. You have to be that person that somebody says, that's the only person in this town that I want looking at my car, because when somebody else couldn't get it, they got it. That's my person now. When you build yourself up every day and you try to be that, the rest of it takes care of itself.
Tonnika Haynes [01:09:18]:
Amen. Listen to Uncle Jeff, kids. I love it. That was perfect. That was a perfect ending to our conversation. I'm so proud to be sitting here with both of you guys.
Jeff Compton [01:09:31]:
You guys are great. Ash, we're going to have to do an episode. We're going to have to dig further into this.
Ash Kaplan [01:09:36]:
Yeah, you can get me going talking about shady practices and terrible service. I want to train more advisors because I— if they listen to me, I can make them really great advisors. Yeah, but the problem is, is my approach is I'm not everybody's cup of tea because I'm going to hold you accountable. Listen, I'm not either. And tell you to like buckle up, buckle up, buttercup. Like, oh well, boohoo, move on. Are we still recording?
Jeff Compton [01:10:02]:
Yeah.
Tonnika Haynes [01:10:03]:
Are we still— yeah, we're still recording. Okay, everybody tell them bye, we're gonna stop.
Jeff Compton [01:10:07]:
All right, Braxton.