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My name is Jeff, and I'd like to welcome you on a journey of reflection and insight into the tolls and triumphs of a career in automotive repair.
After more than 20 years of skinned knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspective and hear other people's thoughts about our industry.
So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.
Swell AI Transcript: weatherford.mp3
00:08 - 00:47 SPEAKER00 Confident qualified is the shortage. You have them, you got to retain them. I've already gone down a path where I've got some tools for a guy already feeling kind of scoring because when I see the toolbox, there's no pride right here because they didn't earn it. I hear through the podcast and there's this like, why should we require these people to buy their own tools? And I'm like, I get that. Right now I'm working with a shop where my shop, these guys have their own tools. So when I bring on someone new, it's like, okay, I can train and develop this person. And really I can't do it. What my opinion is right now is I can't, or I don't want to do it when they first start out. It's like after 60 days, maybe they're doing well. It's like, hey, here's your set of tools.
00:48 - 01:47 SPEAKER01 Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to another exciting thought-provoking episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast. My name's Jeff and I'd like to thank you for joining me on this journey of reflection and insight into the toils and triumphs of a career in automotive repair. After more than 20 years of skin, knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspectives and hear other people's thoughts about our industry. So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation. With me tonight was somebody I don't know very well. Mr. Jason Weatherford reached out to me about he is a shop owner and reached out to me about coming on and discussing some of the shop owner side of things. So without further ado, everybody say hello to Jason. Jason, how are you, man?
01:49 - 02:11 SPEAKER00 I'm good, Jeff. I'm good. And yes, I am a shop owner in the humid South. I'm in Mississippi, North Mississippi. I don't know what it's like for these big winters that y'all talk about and this ice fishing and all this stuff. I do know fishing, but not in the extreme cold, more of the extreme hot.
02:11 - 02:57 SPEAKER01 yeah the crazy people go ice fishing that's not my that's not my gig at all that's just that's a lot of like freezing and waiting for fish and i don't like even when i fish i don't wait for fish i cover a lot of water and move around and um ice fishing up here is more of just uh and a different way to for people to drink beer and socialize the fishing becomes like fifth on the priority list of what you're actually trying to get out there, right? You're more trying to catch a buzz than catch a fish, which is, hey, not hating on it. It's just, it isn't my thing. I don't mind the cold, but the cold with the boredom, not my thing. I can stay at home and be cold. I don't have to be. out there staring down a hole trying to get smaller fish to bite.
02:57 - 03:09 SPEAKER00 So you're in Mississippi. We're shifting into the SEC football season. So there'll be a lot of people trying to get buzzed on the weekends with their football.
03:09 - 03:12 SPEAKER01 Yeah. It's hot there, I imagine.
03:12 - 03:22 SPEAKER00 Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've had some⦠The last couple of weeks have been very hot in the hundreds. But humidity, it's more of a heat index. It'd be 99 degrees, but heat index is like 115.
03:22 - 03:56 SPEAKER01 Yeah. We had a couple of days where we were griping with our index. We were up over 100, which we're not used to that here, right? They put out warnings and stuff like that, right? Oh, you can't. Oh, yeah. Don't do that. And it's yeah, it's only like 80 something, but then the humidex pushes it way up above. And then that's what makes it really hard. I don't mind a dry heat. I can stand that. But when it's just so thick, it's just not fun. So give us your story, man. Yeah.
04:04 - 05:42 SPEAKER00 I guess kind of start from the beginning. I wanted to be, uh, go down the mechanic route years ago when I was in high school, I was in vocational school. But it was like, you know, you had two hours a day working in the shop. Um, very, very lax environment. I think probably what turned me away at that time from doing the automotive world was my teacher. Just, he had us reading books all day, every day. He was a retired GM mechanic and he didn't spend a lot of time hands-on with us. I was like, I want to learn how to do things. Yeah, we learned how to mount and balance tires and we hooked up an alignment machine one time. We could use a two-post lift and, you know, it was just like, funnel metals are spoken about. It wasn't really a good shop scenario. So I think that kind of pushed me away from the automotive world for a while, but I've always been an automotive guy. But I went to college and got the four-year degree and went into finance and lent people money for a living for 13 years. Had some success there and started looking to get back into something that was my own instead of making somebody else a bunch of money. Kind of led me to the path of a franchise opportunity where a guy was looking to sell out three locations and over a period of about a year, we worked out arrangements and, and, uh, I am a new shop owner. I've been a shop owner for, uh, uh, going on, you know, five months.
05:42 - 05:47 SPEAKER01 So you didn't, did you go work for this gentleman as an employee in any kind of fast?
05:47 - 06:27 SPEAKER00 No, I did not. It was, it was a takeover right on. It was, uh, I met the guys on a Sunday and Monday I was there, you know, new, new shop owner and, and then, uh, started. to realize a lot of things that, you know, it doesn't matter how much due diligence you do ahead of time. There's just things that you don't know. And, you know, when I came on there, I mean, I had guys that were like, okay, we were about to quit, but let's, uh, see what the new blood is about. And, uh, we've, we've had some early success. So, and we've kept some good people. I've replaced some people that should never have been, been in a shop.
06:27 - 06:27 SPEAKER01 Right.
06:28 - 06:44 SPEAKER00 Um, it's been a lot in the last five months and we have a lot of good things happening right now, but it doesn't mean I don't have challenges. I mean, I just had a, had a guy that, um, you know, put a harmonic balancer back on wrong and now we got a knocking motor.
06:44 - 06:55 SPEAKER01 So can we talk a bit about why, why that gentleman was trying to get out of it? Like what the, what was he doing wrong? I guess in a, in a condensed form, what was he?
06:57 - 07:24 SPEAKER00 What was he doing wrong in a condensed would be he wanted so badly to be an absentee owner. Okay. He pushed off all the problems and not a lot of support with the guys. But you know, if you don't feel supported then you're not working hard to really try to make a difference on anything. I'm not looking to be an absentee owner. I'm looking to grow the business and do it with the right people.
07:24 - 07:25 SPEAKER02 Right.
07:25 - 08:19 SPEAKER00 And these guys, they didn't have a lot of motivation, so I've just tried to put some of that in place. I've had some really good feedback, and I'm trying to get to the point to where these guys feel like this is a career instead of a job, and we're getting there. It takes time, it doesn't happen overnight. The thing is that I don't shut people down, I listen. He didn't do a lot of listening and a lot of ordering around and griping about not making money, I suppose. He had cameras at the shops and he would send snapshots of things to them. I've seen it. It was weird. Hopefully, he doesn't hear this podcast, but there you go.
08:19 - 08:30 SPEAKER01 Did he stay in the industry? No, no. So he may, he may never hear. Was he a long time owner or was that no, no.
08:30 - 09:03 SPEAKER00 So just, uh, yeah, it was kind of a weird situation. The longtime owner, he was getting out of it. And, uh, and they, the franchise passed it on to somebody else for a short period of time with the promise that, you know, Hey, you take this over for this amount of time and we'll find a new owner. And that's how it kind of, okay. I think he took it over in 2019. And then, of course, he added someone that stole money from him, and then COVID and things like that, and maybe that burned him out.
09:03 - 09:41 SPEAKER01 Yeah, that would be fair to assume. I've seen a lot of people go through this. That's been a pretty challenging time, right? The end of 2019 and onward. In some perspectives, it's still a very challenging time, but I think we're coming out on the other side of it finally now, you know, of recovering from it. It's a different world for sure. Prices of stuff is, is through the roof. So, so you got the opportunity and took over and you said you've had to make some changes with personnel, but do you feel like you've kept the bulk of the staff for the three stores?
09:42 - 10:52 SPEAKER00 Yeah. I mean, I came in with no intention to eliminate anybody. Um, it was just more of, you know, I worked with the people, uh, fortunately had some really good management in place that were, you know, running the stores and they, all of them were, you know, prior technicians and a lot of industry experience. Uh, and you know, so I've retained all those guys, you know, we had, You know, not to sound degrading, but we had some like in one store had some guys that were claimed to be able to fix anything, but you know, their only experience is working at Walmart. Yeah. And, uh, they would, you know, all they wanted to talk about was getting paid more money. And I just was like, you know, I'm happy to have this conversation, you know, and, and I would just look at their, their numbers and results and say, Hey, you know, I can't, afford to pay what you're asking for based on this. But if you, I tell you what, if, if you're like, Hey, I got to pay these bills. It's like, let's, Hey, give me a week and let me look at this a week from today. I'll come back here. We'll sit down. I'll look and see how you did.
10:53 - 11:37 SPEAKER00 And, um, and they quit. So I didn't, I didn't really fire anyone. They just, they walked out and that, that worked out really well. Instead of coming in and try to guns blazing, just going, I just had real conversations with people. Um, on the goals and targets of the future of the company, and it's made all the difference. And when we get the right people in place, we, I pay to keep them. So I've, I've given a lot of people the ability to make a lot more money and through their, you know, hourly or salary and, uh, you know, bonus opportunity, they didn't have a bonus opportunity in place. So I put something, I put that in place and, and, uh, it's been pretty successful so far.
11:38 - 11:44 SPEAKER01 So do they work predominantly flat rate or are they all hourly with a bonus?
11:44 - 11:46 SPEAKER00 All the technicians are hourly with a bonus.
11:47 - 12:00 SPEAKER00 I do not have any flat rate techs. It's kind of in the area, there's not a lot of people that want to go flat rate is what I've been picking up on. A lot of people don't like flat rate over here.
12:00 - 15:20 SPEAKER01 It's a shift in the industry that's definitely happened. I've seen it with my own eyes in the last five years, how much more, because I've been talking to a lot of people for like 10 years online about different things, just different tech groups and stuff like that. And I can remember at first when there were so many people that that's all they wanted, that's the only way they wanted to work was flat rate. And then I think, I can't say necessarily what the shift was, maybe it was COVID, maybe it was just a new layout of technology hit, I'm not sure. But now I'm predominantly seeing that there's at least 50% of the people have no interest in it. they want to be some kind of a guaranteed paycheck that they can earn and then be, you know, if they're hustling, then they're producing, they'd like a bonus on top. And I don't know, I can't put my finger on what it is. I've heard people say that COVID hit them really hard and they felt all of a sudden like they would never go back to that unknown of what they could earn. based on what customers were coming in because I think for a lot of people when they saw that everybody just that could stay home stayed home you're right up here we had a man we still have a large part of the population that's still working from home they were able to do it so they stay and work home now that doesn't mean that those people got rid of their cars, but let's be real, if you used to drive 20,000 miles a year just as a round number to commute to work, and now you only commute to go for groceries or errands or whatever, so you may cut that mileage that you put on that vehicle down to a quarter of what you were. Well, that thing doesn't break as often and it requires maintenance, right? And that's where I think that has been the real effect is that You know, people were not even, dealerships weren't even having people coming in for recalls, you know, because they didn't come in. Everybody felt so like, oh my God, if I go out of the house, I'm going to get sick. So they stayed home. Now we kind of, that's not the case, but it's still a lot of people adapted to being able to stay at home, and they're home. And I think that was a major factor. And I think the other thing is, is the technology gets more and more, and as sometimes I think as the OE's cut sometimes, like you hear now everybody talks about, you know, at the OE level, they don't get paid for DIAC. Now, that's kind of a not 100% truthful statement. They get paid, but they don't necessarily get paid enough. So, I think that if they're choosing a dealership, as an example, they want an hourly paycheck because, you know, at least that way, if it takes four hours to find the brake and harness or whatever, they get paid their four hours, right? And the car leaves fixed. So I think that's been the shift too, is that we've seen more techs, um, get away from the nuts and bolts and have to go into, you know, and approving of why you may have to put a camshaft in as an example or something like that. They're needing, they're needing that hourly time. What, what happened with your crank balancer, your harmonic balancer? Was that on a Ford with the, they didn't lock it before they took it?
15:20 - 15:23 SPEAKER00 It's actually an old, uh, it's a Buick Lucerne.
15:26 - 15:34 SPEAKER00 Um, crankshaft, uh, car, car wouldn't run. And if it did, it wouldn't run for long. Crankshaft position sensor.
15:34 - 15:39 SPEAKER01 Yeah. So the tolerance or got damaged.
15:39 - 16:42 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Putting it, putting it back on the technician didn't pay attention and it looks like it may have got off, uh, off the key. Yeah. And, and, uh, it would, it would run, run rough and then, uh, you know, that the managers that had him pull the pulley off and put it put it back on right and ran ran like a sewing machine but had a knock okay yeah so yeah so you know maybe a main bearing or something like that because it ended up getting driven down the road in the wrong position so it was you know basically off time he didn't drive it on by a hammer by chance I mean, I don't think anybody's admitting anything right now. But yeah, that's the thing is trying to figure out, you know, what I do know right now is that I've got to find an engine tomorrow.
16:42 - 16:44 SPEAKER01 And he kept his job?
16:44 - 16:54 SPEAKER00 Well, we're going to see. Yeah. We have to get the engine in. He's going to be participating in that. He's actually a really good technician. I don't know what happened.
16:54 - 17:13 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes we just have things happening. It's, it's hard to, it's, it's hard to know sometimes. I mean, I'm not perfect. I've made mistakes, so I've seen lots of other, you know, really just happens to be a pretty big one. Yep. It is. It is no doubt.
17:13 - 17:19 SPEAKER00 I'm fortunate. We have the ability to change the engine. So yeah.
17:19 - 17:22 SPEAKER01 How's your customer customer handling it?
17:23 - 17:27 SPEAKER00 Uh, well, you know, we had a call to him today. He hasn't returned a call, so we'll see.
17:28 - 18:06 SPEAKER00 But you know, the, the thing is, is that, you know, the engine, the car came in, when it came in, it was running really rough. Right. And it's, it's got some, uh, you know, things going on with it. It's got 200,000 miles. It's, it's missing, uh, like the whole glove boxes out the panels under the steering column are gone. And we're like, you know, yeah. You know, there's a, there's a path here that is, you know, this is like, you got the angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other, which is like, you know, there's a path here. You know, you can put it on them. There was something wrong with this motor before we put the sensor on.
18:06 - 18:10 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Yeah. That's, is it a three?
18:10 - 18:10 SPEAKER00 Is it a what now?
18:10 - 18:13 SPEAKER01 Is it a 3.6? It's the 3800 series Buick motors. The 3.8 liter V6.
18:13 - 18:56 SPEAKER00 The older one. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just like, you know, I just really, I think at the end of the day, we have to try to do the right thing. No matter how bad it may hurt. But yeah, that's that. And, you know, I mean, you just, you know, you just, when you're running three shops and you're just like, you're just running the things that, you know, you try to, you try to be working on the business and not in the business and being proactive and not reactive. And when you're, when you're, just a few months in and you know, you're going to run into things that just, you know, make you shake your head.
18:56 - 19:08 SPEAKER01 Oh yeah. Yeah. You'll never be, you know, you'll never not have, you know, problem free. It's that's a, that's a myth of anybody in the business.
19:08 - 19:36 SPEAKER00 It's just how you handle them, you know, you got to have your process. It's high pressure no matter what. But yeah, you had to, you know, like a, I had a guy that, I had a guy that wasn't, you know, that actually got a, Arrested and and that was this week too. That was in the show It's interesting the things that you are Experienced it. Yeah, you think it's seen a lot but you can always see something new.
19:36 - 20:21 SPEAKER01 Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's um, I Well, actually, I saw a service advisor get arrested one morning. That was a first, because normally, traditionally, you'd think that it's the mechanics that would get arrested, but no, it was a service advisor. We need to always remember that, just because You know, we can't always say it's the techs that are going to be the ones that are doing, you know, questionable things and getting the cops show up. This was the case, this was an advisor. So, you know, it's a, it takes a straight, it's, it's a strange bunch of people that work in this industry sometimes, you know, you're, it's a Midas franchise, correct?
20:21 - 20:26 SPEAKER01 Yeah. Right on. It's pretty good. Pretty big company.
20:27 - 23:34 SPEAKER00 Yeah, obviously they have a lot of stores around the nations. I think it's close to 1,100. I've got three. As far as the franchise goes, I think sometimes that's frowned upon. But for me at the time, it was the right thing for me to move into franchise, especially with a business that was already open and operating, you know, we've got equipment in place. So, you know, when I took over in March, the doors were open and we were, you know, turning wrenches and talking to customers and stuff. So I was, you know, more or less, you know, yes, I was distracted by a lot of things. When you change ownership, there's a lot of things that have to happen. You know, it's like buying a house times 10 and then you add you take that from one store to three stores, it's, you know, times 30, but it's, you know, it had a lot of, I had a lot of good help and things like that to, you know, see it through. Um, now I'm going to kind of point now to see, okay, what is, you know, the future of, um, our, our, our, our three stores in this franchise. And like I said, we've had, I mean, we've had, and really, anywhere from 80% to 100% increase in sales month over month compared to last year. So we've had a lot of really good progress and it's just by being engaged. I have conversations with my guys when I'm in the shops. I'm present, I'm around. My two other shops are almost an hour away from my home shop in Tupelo. So I still go there. I have another, you know, kind of person to lean on. That's, uh, my area manager, uh, new into his role, uh, did a really good job when I started. And, you know, he was someone that I was going to have to, you know, that I've been mentoring since I took over to, to get a step into a role to where he can be in charge of that day to day operations and give more flexibility to me because as far as trying to build a business and network and all those things. Like I said, the stores are improving. We don't want them to plateau. So that's kind of where I'm at. I don't want it to plateau. I want it to keep improving and we are doing the right things by our customers and having good service. We've done things like moved over to digital inspections, which is all the rave. And I use multiple softwares to ensure I've got good communication with my customers and has a good follow-up process and that kind of thing.
23:35 - 25:04 SPEAKER01 Yeah, the DBI is key. I think we're seeing that become such a trendy thing. And it's not necessarily new. But I think it's really as it becomes more and more commonplace, where the customers are beginning to almost expect that that's how the interaction goes between, you know, the shop and themselves. They expect now to get like some pictures and an email and, and so on and so forth. Instead of just, I can remember back in my day, At the dealer, it was just like they were in the waiting room and occasionally they would come out and look at the car. or they just got a phone call. There was nobody was thinking about sending them photos, right? It wasn't a thing. I mean, we had email, but when we had smartphones, but nobody ever was like using it to that level. I think it's a good thing because it's like, you know, we talk all the time, the customers really don't know, you know, about a lot of what's going on underneath the hood or underneath the car. And you can say, oh, yeah, the strut is leaking oil, but to them, what does that really mean? Well, if you take a picture of it and show them that, yeah, here it is, and it's not meant to leak oil, you know, and it's going to cost X amount of dollars to repair. I think that makes them feel a lot better than just being told they have leaky shocks and it's going to cost X amount of dollars to repair, right? When they actually get a visual confirmation, I think that really helps build some of that, that, that trust back.
25:04 - 25:09 SPEAKER00 You sound like the DVI salesman. Right there. You got it. You got it.
25:09 - 25:16 SPEAKER01 You got a future. I mean, I networked with a lot of, you know, as you do too, right?
25:16 - 25:19 SPEAKER00 True. You're right there. You're right on. I mean, that's it.
25:19 - 27:39 SPEAKER01 Yeah, I'm trying to transition eventually. The long, the end goal for me is to move out of the bay and into an advisor role or something like that. So not in the immediate, immediate future, but in the near future, you know, I'm not, I'll be closer to 50 than 40. So I don't want to be 60 and still having to be pulling on wrenches. Right. It's, it's hard on the body, but. I definitely see how that way of doing business, I think is definitely going to help, you know, trust is still a thing that's really lacking. A lot of customers, you know, still don't know really what they're getting. And I think that with most of us now, this generation being such a visual learners, everybody's very comfortable with software and, you know, smartphones and tablets. And we live on these devices that I think that it's just the natural way that it has to go. I think if you're not doing a DVI. you're behind. I'll admit my shop doesn't, but it's my shop's a little different. We're predominantly like a fleet shop. So we don't have to, you know, my boss, it's, it's his fleet, so I can bring him downstairs and show him on the vehicle, right. And when it's a lot of the same vehicle over and over again, he's not even interested in seeing he already knows, you know, why we're doing it and just gets done. It's good. But you know, DVI I think is is definitely a step forward. How are you finding, like so when you were talking about techs don't want to work flat rate in your area, are you finding that you're getting people that at least will answer the job postings? Or are you finding like the tech shortage is a real, real thing at the moment? Because we hear some people and they're like, I got all kinds of applicants, you know, and are people that like, you know, I've had, I've talked to a couple owners and like, I don't really think this, this shortage is, is a real thing. There might be a shortage of competent qualified, but there's not a shortage of applicants. Some people that run a really good business, they have a lot of people just waiting for an opportunity to work there. So what do you, how are you experiencing that? As far as the competent⦠Both things, both things.
27:39 - 27:56 SPEAKER00 Yeah, the competent qualified is the one that I would agree is the shortage. And so when you have them, you got to retain them. Right. Yeah. And as far as getting someone that can fill a spot, no problem.
27:56 - 27:57 SPEAKER01 Right.
27:57 - 28:31 SPEAKER00 Yep. You just got to try to find somebody that has some good common sense. I mean, a lot of these, you know, uh, if you, if you got, you hire someone as a lead tech and they don't have a lot of experience, you have to be really careful, make sure they get on board at the right way. I've already gone down a path where, um, got some tools for a guy and, you know, I'm like already feeling kind of scoring because when I see the toolbox, I'm like, there's no pride right here. You know, it's like, cause they didn't earn it.
28:33 - 29:52 SPEAKER00 And so I've been kind of thinking of other ways because, you know, I hear, I hear, you know, through the podcast and others that, you know, there's this like, why should we require, require these people to buy their own tools? And, and, uh, and I get it. I hear that. I'm like, I'm like, I get that, you know, but right now I'm working with a shop where I, you know, my shops, these guys have their own tools. So when I bring on someone new, it's like, okay, I can train and develop this person. And really I can't do it. What my opinion is right now is I can't or I don't want to do it when they first start. It's like after 60 days maybe they're doing well. It's like, hey, here's your set of tools. And after 12 months, they're yours. Something like that. But I've got to really figure out how I want to do that because obviously there's an expense there and it's just like with The simplest thing is like a uniform. I mean, I got some motivation just by telling the guys I would get them uniforms. The prior owner wouldn't get them uniforms, which is like one of the basic standards in the industry. He said, if you want a uniform, buy your own.
29:54 - 30:20 SPEAKER01 I would think they must be in a corporate store though. Franchisee, but still corporate. They must have to look somewhat similar. You know what I mean? I would think they would have to have the same t-shirt on. Maybe they could change their pants up or something, but I would think that they would all have to have like a Midas logo somewhere on their shirt to identify them at least as an employee and not just a random customer walking around.
30:22 - 31:15 SPEAKER00 Yeah, I mean, there's a contract with Centos nationally that gets us a certain pricing for this stuff. They already have everything. I just have to pay for it myself. So, just getting something that was so simple. And the thing for me is the image of my store is I want When someone comes up, I don't want them to be like, do you work here? Yeah. For sure. Like, Hey, okay. Yeah. You got there. Here's your name. And there, you know, it says minus and they work here. So I just, I've had to go through a lot of those little things. I mean, just even the, I mean, gosh, the, I'm not, not getting certain pieces, you know, there's certain equipment that wasn't working right. And, you know, it wasn't that complicated to get fixed. but it wasn't getting fixed.
31:15 - 31:41 SPEAKER01 He just sounds like a guy that was just pinching pennies, right? Just trying to, you know, it's sad. It's sad that there's still people like that and don't take this the wrong way. I've often wondered sometimes exactly how qualified somebody has to be to take over, you know what I mean? A franchise location.
31:41 - 31:43 SPEAKER00 Yeah, I mean, it's all about the finances side of it.
31:44 - 31:55 SPEAKER00 If you're on the franchise side, I mean, you got the money that I mean, yeah, they're they want to they want you to be participant. They don't want you to say, hey, I'm going to be an absentee. Right. They don't want it. They don't want to hear you say that.
31:55 - 31:56 SPEAKER01 Right.
31:56 - 32:02 SPEAKER00 Yeah. OK. But you also could just not say that and then do it how you want.
32:02 - 32:30 SPEAKER01 But it's not cool that they don't look at it and go, OK, so before you can take over a store, we'd like you to have, you know, some kind of experience. within the industry, you know, at some kind of technical level in terms of you understand it, you know, not just okay, you're a business person, but you don't know a lick about cars, or how shops should run. Okay, yeah, but you've got the financing. Here's your store.
32:30 - 33:37 SPEAKER00 That's, it's a weird, it certainly can happen just that way, you know, and I've always worked on my own vehicles as those I know enough I'll joke around, I know enough to be dangerous, right? But I do have to rely, and I'm able to rely on the knowledge of others because I know, I mean, I've done that for most of my career. I can't be the smartest guy in the room. It's just not gonna work. But I am pretty intuitive and I'm a good problem solver, so don't try to paint a farce. I can see through. But it's, I think, With the franchise side of it, they have requirements they have to have legally, right? Like, you know, I had to do two weeks of franchise training and I had to do, you know, before they awarded me a franchise, they had, you know, they had to interview me and my wife was even involved with that. And, you know, they just, they wanted to see if it was going to be a good fit. I don't know what that criteria on their side was, but it seemed fairly loose.
33:37 - 33:38 SPEAKER02 Right.
33:40 - 34:32 SPEAKER00 There were some things that were some hurdles because they really don't want you to have three to start. They really want you to have one. So I was able to get them to agree to let me take three. But I didn't want to do just one because I wanted to be able to focus on it and not be relying on income from something else or something. I wanted to be able to say, hey, this is something that I can take a chance on to where sink or swim. I mean, you might be talking to me a year from now, and there'll be a lot of good things to talk about, some challenges we overcome. But overall, heading in the right direction. Or a year from now, I could be completely broken down. I don't know. I'm just trying to move forward a little bit every day, get a little bit better every day.
34:32 - 37:33 SPEAKER01 That's what it has to be. And by the sounds of it, you're on the upswing, for sure, with this business. Again, not throwing shade at the former owner if he should ever hear the podcast, but it sounds like you didn't have to do a whole lot to really make some improvements, right? Just give the staff some leadership, give the staff some motivation, and it will take care of itself. A lot of it, the machine will run if you put some fuel in it, and that's what fuel is, is motivation and some leadership. From that standpoint, the uniform thing just makes me shake my head because I've never worked in a facility yet where they didn't provide a uniform. It's not even thought of. I don't wear my work pants right now because I wear shorts, but I never don't have a shirt on. unless I got it covered in grease and oil and I'm in my t-shirt underneath but I mean that happens but I go and get a clean shirt eventually like it's the idea that just walk in and they could be wearing any t-shirt they wanted with anything on it walking around t-shirt not tucked in or whatever and it's just so so on it's not it's not a professional working environment that way it's just not no and it starts with like and it starts with that I mean I've seen some dingy shops that looked, you know, they needed improvement in terms of their image. But everybody inside the shop had the same uniform on. It might have been a dirty uniform, but everybody's uniform was dirty. At least they looked like a team. They looked like they belonged there. You know, they didn't look like somebody that had been dropping off parts or something, right? Like, and that's not hating on parts, people. Please don't take it that way either. So, yeah. Well, I'm happy that you seem to be moving up. The competency thing, that's a very multi-layered onion of a topic. We can delve into that. You know, we've got some people on one side of the argument that say that a lot of techs need to do more on their own in terms of learning the skill set. Right. And then we have the other shop owners that are very much proactive about training, getting them signed up for training, getting as much as they can. Does Midas have any training sent down from corporate? Like the reason I ask is because I'm up here. Midas is a pretty big organization in Canada, but Canadian Tire, if everybody's ever heard of that, listening, and the Canadians obviously will, they're the largest player in the industry up in where I'm from. And they have their own training materials that they send down. But does Midas have anything for you guys like that?
37:33 - 38:18 SPEAKER00 Or is it just- They do have training. They have a training academy. But it is up to the, you know, owners to ensure that gets, you know, filtered down to the, you know, whoever it is, whether it's service writer techs, managers, you know, things like that. And they have, we have, they have regional sales managers. So I have a guy, you know, when I run into a thing, I have a guy I can call, you know, if I've got an issue with, you know, like right now I've, there's some marketing stuff that is going out that I have some questions about. So I went to him for that, but you know, he comes around to the store, he has a territory and he comes around to the stores.
38:18 - 38:40 SPEAKER00 You know, you know, maybe I may see him once a month or every other month and you know, he, he, uh, wait, wait, confide to me anyways, that he, uh, he likes going to my stores cause he feels like, you know, he actually has an impact and he, cause he has, He's going to some of the franchises and they're just like, you know, you know, him Han.
38:41 - 40:36 SPEAKER01 They don't want to sit here. They want to run it like it's their own business and not like a franchise store. which I get, but then at the same time, if you sign up to be a franchise store, you pretty much, you know, have to somewhat resemble what it is that they want to do. You know, and people think that that's so unheard of, but I mean, dealerships are the same way, right? There's more and more push every year in the dealerships that like, people have heard me talk about it, they want the dealership in Toronto as an example, to appear the same as the one in Tucson in how it looks and the experience of it and everything else. So, you know, your district managers and stuff that come around and are there to make sure that that's being done, there's no sense getting upset at them. They're just doing their job. But I think training is the big issue right now with so many shops and I see it all the time and they talk about you know this happened or you know my tech struggles with this or my tech struggles with that sometimes it's just we take in cars that we shouldn't take in but then if you take in a car that is is a problem car you have to be providing them with the training or the resources or even call a friend if it takes that to get the answers that you need to be able to fix the car. Otherwise, you shouldn't book the car in. It's that way. You can't be bringing in a bunch of drivability in a shop to get solved if you predominantly just have re-and-re-type techs, techs that are really good at taking parts off and putting parts on, but if you've got a car that's running right, there's some training there and to understand why to really make it an efficient manner to why it's not running right. And if you're not investing and not in your tax, you're only shorting yourself as a business. I'll say this, you know, everybody wants.
40:36 - 41:34 SPEAKER00 I can't, I agree with you so much right now. I just, I, you know, like this is something I've been thinking about and this part of the reason I'm here and found your podcast and all these things is like, I'm trying to figure out like what, You know, because very early on, this was like the first week I remember telling some of the guys like, if you're having a turn away business, I want to know about it. I'm not saying we're going to do it. I just want to know about it. So I can figure out if there's something I can do on my end to ensure it doesn't happen. Right. Again, or figure out a way to get it, you know, what we need to be able to do it in the future. Yeah. For example, the module programming and things like that, I don't have any programming capability as it sits right now. I don't have ADOS capability. I don't have anybody calling for ADOS.
41:36 - 45:53 SPEAKER01 Yeah, I see that as, and I don't want to say that it's specialized and it's not that lucrative, but the investment to make yourself, make some profit in that. is a very substantial amount of investment. And then the tooling is not just the investment, the tech that can utilize those tools to sell that work is also not a cheap tech to get, right? They're a tech that requires above average pay. So when I see shops and they reach out and they go, Oh, I want to, you know, I want to get into programming. you've got to have a tech that is absolutely top-notch in solving drivability before I think you need a tech that's going to get into programming EEPROM. I think that so many miss the boat on the sense that if you look at the car and you can tell that there's you know, that the software could be updated. And you can find a bulletin that says addressing this software, for example, fixes a shift flare or fixes a bump or fixes an idle surge. Just being able to find that information and being able to figure out, OK, how do we sublet that now to get it done for our customer is much more valuable, in my opinion, then trying to buy a tool, get a subscription, going through the headache of trying to get that tool to work on that subscription on that day with the tech and make sure everything goes smoothly just to get the program into the car, that's not what I would call low-hanging fruit. I'm not trying to advise that everybody go after the low-hanging fruit, but you understand what I mean. You wouldn't want your tech to be trying to fix every misfire with a tune-up. when there's updates that can be done software-wise, and they're doing the process of actually finding that, yes, okay, this might need a software correction before we go after, you know, selling a part for the car. Because that's what, from my experience at a dealership, I fixed a lot of cars that had a lot of new parts on it because I just did a software update. that had been there for a year, two years. There was a printed bulletin about it. It wasn't like it was some secret thing. So nobody likes to see when a customer's car gets a new fuel pump or a new idle air control motor or throttle position sensor, yada, yada, whatever, oxygen sensors. And cats were another one. They'd put on a catalytic converter and would still have a cat code. And then it comes over and it's like, oh yeah, there's a software flash for that. You never needed the cats in the first place. If you've got a tech that can actually find that kind of information and come to your your staff and say, hey, before we do replacements, it should have this. That's a tech that you want to retain and keep. And that's your tech that you can mold into somebody that if you're going to go to more advanced repairs and programming and so on, that's the tech that you keep in mind for that, because that tech already has the process that you need. Right. If you just have somebody that like loads the parts cannon, as you heard the term being used. And then when it still broke, says, okay, it must need software to be fixed. Oftentimes when that winds up at the dealership, yep, sometime or not necessarily a dealership, but hypothetically, uh, it winds up there and it gets the software fix. That customer's really jilted or it goes over there because it's a software fix. And that person that's really familiar with that engine and that car as an example goes, no, these are known for burning valves. Like it was never going to be fixed with a tune-up and an injector and a cat and everything else. It's got burnt valves. So if you've got a tech that can do the DIAG, invest in the training and the diet before you invest, in my opinion anyway, in the programming and the ADOS and everything else from your standpoint, where I would say your store. Now, this is just my opinion. I don't, I don't know. I don't, I'm not a franchisee owner. So, you know, I'm just a tech with a lot of years of experience and have seen some things. So, but you understand what I mean?
45:53 - 46:33 SPEAKER00 Subletting subletting labor has been, has come, been coming up a lot. And my conversation is, you know, we know it needs this, you you know, let's send it to the dealer and not worry the customer about. Because that's what it's had to be in a couple of cases where we had to get the dealer to go program it or something like that, right? So, you know, put the part in, program it, sublet labor. And what we're missing in kind of my area is we don't have any, you know, I think I was listening One of your podcasts where a guy makes a living going to shops and helping them do those kind of things.
46:33 - 46:34 SPEAKER01 Tanner.
46:34 - 46:39 SPEAKER00 And yeah, and we don't have that in our area.
46:39 - 46:51 SPEAKER01 So for all the strong diagnostic guys that are thinking about going mobile, there's a- North Mississippi. Come to Mississippi if you don't mind the heat. The people are nice, but there's an opportunity there.
46:51 - 46:55 SPEAKER00 Large metro area nearby, Memphis.
46:55 - 46:56 SPEAKER01 So- There you go.
46:57 - 47:07 SPEAKER00 I think there may be some stuff up in Memphis. Maybe I should branch out, but that's the main problem for me with that is, you know, they're going to have to charge me hourly for the drive because it's going to be an hour and a half drive.
47:07 - 49:42 SPEAKER01 So what I always saw when sublets went wrong, um, from the standpoint and not necessarily went wrong in the sense of getting the car fixed, but here's what I saw happen is too many times somebody just shoves the keys across the customer's desk or to the customer, uh, bills of maybe a half an hour for a scan or something and says, Oh, it's got to go to the dealer. Well, the way you handle that, in my opinion, is that you set up the appointment with a dealer, you get the car there or the, or a programmer or another shop that can program. Right. And you take care of it for the customer and you charge for the time to do it. You keep that customer in your bay, right? In your shop, they have a rep, they have a relationship with you. The last thing you want to do is send your customer into your competitor's bay. to get something as simple as an update done. Because we just had Chris Craig on the other night. Chris is a fantastic advisor. There are advisors out there that are not necessarily as ethical as Chris and would try to then, while the car is there, upsell a whole bunch of other things on the car. Now, I'm not against an upsell, but it has to be what the car needs. Do you understand what I'm trying to say, Jason? So if you send that customer over there and you go, oh, you should get this done, they may go over there when they get that done is when they're also going to get their next oil change because people like to make, you know, one trip, not two. Well, they all of a sudden might on that in on their DVI, they might end up with a whole bunch of work sold. So that's why I've always been a proponent, if you're going to sublet, you handle it, you take care of it. You have somebody come to you, or you take the car yourself and get it done. Don't leave it in the hands of the customer. The customer will appreciate that you take care of it for them. They won't mind paying the additional what you have to pay to do it, because let's be real, they may have never heard of a software update, they have no idea what it costs. So if your dealer's gonna charge you 139 to do it, and you have to cover your expenses and some time to get it dropped off and shuttled back, whatever, if you charge 179, they're not gonna bilk about that. If you keep them, you know what I mean? You can't lose money on it is what I'm trying to say, and you have to keep the customer within your service area, not the competitors. That's how that works. If you're not going to invest in the technician and the tooling to be able to do those kinds of software updates. That's how I saw for my years of doing it at the dealership, right?
49:42 - 49:57 SPEAKER00 Like I, I, we're in sync on the mindset with that because I, you know, last thing you want to have is, you know, You want to have repeat business. I hate going to the dealer but as soon as you send them to the dealer that kind of goes out the door.
50:01 - 53:38 SPEAKER01 I can tell you as a former dealer tech, I stole a lot of independence customers by how effective and efficient I was with doing that update because I didn't just do the update. I explained to the customer what the update was, why we were doing it, why it needed it, why and here is the sorry part, why what had been done in an attempt to fix it that didn't fix it when it only needed the update. It's not hard to steal that customer from that shop that, I don't want to say drops the ball, but approaches it from a different perspective, right? I've got no, like, hear me out. I have no objection if there's something, old caravans used to have a bulletin and they would miss when they were cold. You did fix it with software. But at the same time, if it was up in a certain mileage, they were also prone for ignition wires to go bad, spark plugs, just like any other car. So we had cars that came in a lot that had new wires and new plugs in it and they still misfired. Well, what we would do is we would do the software update and if the mileage was correct, we would sell the tune up. We fixed the car, right? That was the difference. So you can't, we're, customers don't want to hear the excuse anymore, as sad as it is, that you can't put the software in the car that they need. They don't want to hear that. They think that by now we all have the same access and we should be all doing it. And that's a different conversation. That's not what I'm trying to say, but that's how I successfully stole a lot of, brought a lot of customers into my dealerships was because how I approached that particular scenario. And it happens every day, happens every day. It's a, it's one of those, I've got an extra advantage when I worked at a dealer from having that software and being so familiar with it and the ability to just flash the car. Why did I do it? Because I do a lot of them. I was trained on how to do it. We have the OE tooling. OE tooling really helps a lot when you can do it. You can do it without it, but it really helps when you're using OE tooling to be able to get that done efficiently and effectively. So that's my advice for sublet. What else? Because I'm not trying to tell you, I'm not, this isn't me just trying to sit down and tell you how you should run your shop. But going back to diagnostic processes is a key thing. There should be, if you've got multiple techs in your facilities that do DIAG, there should be a definite process about how they get it done. I'm not a fan of one tech does it one way and one tech does it another. I think there should be a clear laid out, some basic tests that you do on the vehicle when you bring the vehicle in to look at it. to start the process. I think there should be some similarity. Now, intuition plays a huge part of it. I rely a lot on my years of experience and my intuition when I'm fixing the car. So, but we all kind of start the same. You know, if we're approaching, you talk to some of the top techs almost everything starts with a scan and looking at data and then you know if they're looking at a misfire a lot of it starts with a relative compression test or a clear what we call a clear flood crank how does it sound that kind of thing can save you a lot of time if you start to get familiar with that and know what it sounds like when it's a good Even engine you don't waste your time moving coils and plugs around if you can start to hear that It's got a dead cylinder just by how it sounds you save yourself a lot of money. So That's what I mean by the process as an example. Sorry.
53:38 - 53:55 SPEAKER00 I got long-winded there Now it makes a lot of sense, you know, I think that's an area that I've that I've continued to kind of be focused on is our diagnostic process and ensure that when we You know diagnose a vehicle it's It's truly going to fix the problem.
53:56 - 54:15 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Whether it's looking at the, uh, live data or what it is to confirm, you know, don't just jump to exactly what your, uh, machine is saying initially, just, you know, I think it's important to, you know, truly just, you know, let's, let's confirm. Um, and that way we do the work one time.
54:16 - 54:38 SPEAKER00 Yeah. And we don't have a customer that we have to call back and say, oh, I mean, sure, that's going to happen from time to time, but I like the method of, hey, this is what your car needs to be fixed, and then no surprises.
54:38 - 54:50 SPEAKER01 Your techs are familiar with ScannerDanner, I assume, and do they do online? Do you have techs that are eager for the Diag, or do you have kind of the attitude as they've kind of grown and don't really seem that interested?
54:52 - 55:20 SPEAKER00 I've got one or two that are eager and I've got some that are just, I know what I know. I've got one guy that he's going to be a suspension, front end guy, that's it. He's going to be hanging parts until he decides to quit. He has no ambition to further his knowledge and he already says he doesn't do electrical.
55:23 - 57:06 SPEAKER01 He's going to be unfortunately, well, I mean, again, we can get into the incentivized pay plans and how that sometimes can reward the people that do not, you know, do the actual complicated work. I hate to sometimes use that term, but that can be the reality, right? He can still make a very lucrative living if he's fast and he's just hanging parts. The industry needs to not necessarily stop rewarding that, but there's got to be a shift to where more guys want to stay cleaner and not do as much heavy lifting and make more money because they can actually solve the problem versus just putting the part on. That we've too often in this for too long, we've rewarded the speed of putting the part on and the reasoning for why we put it on has been lost or has only been able to be handled by a percentage. The dominant percentages should be who people should be the ones now going after doing diag and electrical, because that's when we look at, you know, what the future of the automobile is, there's always going to be guys that have to do suspension, tires, brakes, the NEV still has all of that. But, you know, we shouldn't think that the guy that works at Tesla that would only be doing, you know, suspension work at a Tesla should make more money than the guy that can fix the drive motors and such, because he can do the suspension faster. That's not how it should be, right? The guy that can ultimately make the thing go down the road should get paid way more money than the guy that just slapped some tires on it or some brakes. That's my, that's been my crook in this industry for too long. So.
57:06 - 01:01:12 SPEAKER00 the big big challenge and adapting for the future I think is just you know that's why I'm so like I put a lot I'm put a lot of focus on what we're doing for diagnostic is because I've got I really want to change my scan tools and things like that and I want to pick the right one and we're demoing one from snap-on right now but it's you know you know I've heard So many different opinions on scanners and all that stuff. And I'm just, you know, really, I'm just trying to, I understand there's not going to be one tool to do it all. And although that would be great, it's just not going to happen that way. Um, so I've got, you know, I've got a lot of things I got to work through on that. Uh, I'm definitely a fan of scanner data, but, uh, been watching some of his stuff and, And I'm just trying to shift the mind. I don't think there was a lot of mentoring going on, not just here, but in the past at other places that they've worked at. And just having that like, hey, the guy that was a professional basketball player, he didn't become a professional basketball player just by his mere ability. He had to work on that. to get really good, so you wanna become a professional mechanic, you've gotta work on all the things that, you know, kinda fall behind that name of mechanic or technician, whatever you wanna, you know, whichever word you prefer. It's just, you know, really, you wanna be, if you wanna be a well-rounded mechanic, you've gotta get a foundation in all that facets of what you're doing. But I think what's gonna set you, what can set you apart in the future is your ability to diagnose, especially electric. You know, we had a problem vehicle in the shop not long ago. It was a Hummer H3 2008. It was throwing a throttle body code and I was clearly having a throttle body problem with the way it was running. And we put it on there and Our tool will do throttle body learn, but for some reason, our coverage from 2006 to 2008 on that five cylinder engine with the throttle body, it did not, it would not program that throttle body. So I took it to the dealer, talking about sublet, I took it to the dealer and had them program it, come back, and it was running the right way. But, it was still going into a limp home mode. We're like, okay, alright, well here's a new issue, so what's this issue, right? It took a little while, but what it ended up being was a chafed wire on the frame. You gotta be able to find that stuff, I feel like. It's just the throttle body, So the question comes in, you know, from a customer perspective is, did I need a throttle body? So, and it's, you know, it's like, it's a fair question. It's like, well, when we put the new throttle body on, it was definitely running better. Um, but we still had this intermittent issue that was coming up. You could drive it for 30 minutes and then all of a sudden it would go into this lymphoma, but it wasn't like it was gasping for air or anything like it was before, but it was, uh, it was just kind of a Unique situation that you're not going to run into every day, but man, it's, you know, looking at the car, I mean, the wiring harness was bad. I mean, it had so many issues. I mean, you know, whether the customer understood at the end of the day or they just kind of shrugged off, you know.
01:01:12 - 01:02:44 SPEAKER01 And so I gotta ask you a question, when you, how good are you guys at your stores of when you look at a car and you do your preliminary inspections of it and you see issues like that, are you good about saying to the customer and saying to the techs, You're going to need more time to eliminate more variables, or are you kind of stuck with, OK, well, I have a really hard time selling additional diet? Because we hear that conversation pop up from time to time about, depending on the competency of the technician, a lot of people are reluctant to sell more diet time because they're not sure they're giving value when they sell more than an hour or two hours, right? And I can see both sides of that. I've had some cars that it took me three hours to find the issue and fix it. Now my situation's a little different, because again, it's a fleet shop, right? So we own it most of the time. But even when we do get into some customer work, we tell them up front, we don't work at the one hour at a time, and then I call you back and get another hour. We are going to need a few hours because of the condition of the car. And if we find it faster than that, we're obviously not going to whack you the full three hours. But we do do that where it's like, if we look at it, and you know, it's a car that lots of people have been working on, and the harness has been manipulated and screwed with. We charge much.
01:02:44 - 01:02:48 SPEAKER00 This car had a new, nice new ground that was put on the block.
01:02:49 - 01:05:18 SPEAKER01 Yeah, so somebody's obviously been working on it to try and rectify that and they didn't get it. So, and that's always what frustrated me because it just drove me nuts that was like, okay, so it's been somewhere else and they couldn't fix it. You know, why is it not back there? And then I realized that, well, they're not back there because there's no faith in that person that attempted the repair, right? It didn't, or they've washed their hands of it and said, I don't know, I can't fix it. So people that are listening, when you get those cars, like you heard Paul Danner, you know, put a video up a couple, I guess a little over a month ago, get that retainer charged for that. You're going to, you're going to be invested in this car, this vehicle to get to the problem. Don't just think, well, the policy is we charge 150 for initial diag and my tech has to find it within that timeframe or, or make a guess. This isn't about guessing, right? Tests don't guess, Paul says. I'm not saying we have to pull the wiring harness out of every car to try and find that intermittent thing, but when you've got time to do the shake test and the wiggle test and really, really analyze the data and what's going on, you know, that takes a lot of pressure off the technician because then they can just focus on what it is they're doing and not when you only got an hour to diagnose something and I mean, I did it for years. You start you're always looking at the clock how much How much time have I got left? Shit, I only got 15 minutes left and I'm no further ahead than I was at minute one when it's now, you know, 45. And see, the reality is, we say we got an hour, but they don't ever walk out to the advisor at minute 59 and say, I need more time. They're all going out at 15 minutes too. and saying, I'm still not where I need to be. We're going to need more time. And then that last 15 minutes that should be applied to the car is in a negotiation between the technician and the advisor for more time. And the advisor's going, I don't want to call the customer. And the technician's going, well, I don't know what to do. It's not acting up for me. Or I've found this, and that has to be done, but it's not Do you understand what I mean, Jason? Like there's more to it. It's there. The customer at that point is not really getting even an hour. They're getting about 45 minutes. So this idea that we only sell an hour is, is just BS. You have to be selling.
01:05:18 - 01:06:00 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Yeah. I think the, the diagnostic thing is just, it's, it's a really difficult, it shouldn't be, but it is. And then when you tell the customer, you know, like, Hey, um, this is our starting diagnostic. And you know, if it takes longer, it's going to cost you more. They don't like that open-ended feeling. And it's like, okay, well how long is this going to go? And then you go back to, you know, where a store manager or myself, you know, thinking about, okay, well this technician may be able to figure this out in 30 minutes, but this one may take an hour and a half. You know, I mean, there's that too.
01:06:00 - 01:06:00 SPEAKER02 Yeah.
01:06:01 - 01:08:54 SPEAKER00 So it's, so I think you got to kind of start from that point of, okay, when the car pulls in the bay, look at it like, whoa, this has got a lot going on down here. You know, we've got a bunch of chain points in the harness and we've got some extra, you know, wiring and we're here because there's some kind of electrical issue, running issue, running rough, you know, that could be very much caused by this. And then, you know, the thing is, is that if the customer is going to go and say, well, you know, I don't want to do that. I just want to find out what that check engine light is. It's like, well, I can read the code and tell you what, you know, I can find out what it's going to tell me to say, do based on that code, but that's not going to fix your problem. And then what we're thinking on our side is, well, if we fix, if we did do that, just, you know, just three parts of the problem and, and that doesn't fix it. Are you going to be, you know, happy with that? You know, like, No, they're not going to be happy with that. They want you to fix it. And I think, you know, like you don't go to the doctor and say, you know, I've got this, give me that. So like, you know, this is, you know, you're here at our shop, we're going to look at your vehicle and fix it. You know, like it should almost be like a generally, this is where we're going to start, you know, You know, when we get to an issue where it's taking, you know, multiple hours to really diagnose what this issue is, you know, we'll communicate that with you. But, you know, I think it's, there's gotta be some kind of way to better message to where, uh, the customer is going to just be like, you know what? Fix my car. And that's what I am trying to drive is the fact that I want to be your car guy. Like I don't want to be the guy that just fixes your car. Okay. Uh, or just, just put some parts on it and send you down the road. Like I want you to, you know, say, Hey Jason, here's my keys. This is what I, this is what's going on. Just call me when it's fixed. You know, we should, we should be, that's, that'd be great with every customer, but obviously that's not going to happen. But I do want to go for that interaction. Like it's just, you know, I'm not going to, people can trust us. You know, I'm a local guy. I grew up in the area these stores are in. I know a lot of people in this area. I'm not trying to, screw anybody over. I'm trying to be here for a long time. So, and I want to have a successful family business. So, I want people to come in and just, but we hurt ourselves sometimes. And I think that's where we've just got to get better at how we communicate is like, Hey, we're going to fix your car, right? That's what we're here to do.
01:08:54 - 01:14:47 SPEAKER01 So a couple of key points there. when you talk about different technician levels. The thing that I've always seen too many people when it starts to screw the process up is if you have a more challenging vehicle, just by the inclination of how it is. A customer comes to me and says, it's been an ongoing issue. I can't, you know, two other shops have tried to fix it, for example, or my uncle and my dad both tried it and they couldn't fix it. And you've maybe got two technicians and one's really, you know, pretty competent and the other ones can get through it sometimes. Stop looking at what the scheduling is and make sure that you put the best, number one rule, always put the best tech that you can on the job that needs to get done. And this is the reality that too many people want to be stressing about the scheduling and not getting the best tech. If that best tech is in the middle of, he's got three, four other ones before he can get to that one, oh well, right? The customer can schedule for when he's free. Because too often when you put the guy on it that is, and this is not me, you know, talking down to a younger tech, that isn't as strong, you wind up with a misdiag. And then once you have the misdiag, guess what? It's like that old saying goes, there's never enough time to fix it right the first time, but there's always enough time to have to do it over again. Right? So that's what you try to avoid. So you've got to look at your strengths of who you're dispatching to. And if he's, if you're, if he's dispatched a lot of die eggs and he's getting through them and they're complicated, that's a good thing. Okay. That's a good thing. Cause he's getting through them. They're getting fixed. That's what you want. At the end of the day, it can't Trump at all. You know, he dropped it off on Monday and here it is Wednesday and we haven't even got to it. Okay. Like maybe then he shouldn't have been told that we would look at it by end of day. Maybe somebody should have been honest with the customer and told them, he is deep in the weeds on like three others. It might not be until Tuesday or Wednesday that he can look at it. Customers appreciate that honesty way more than just the BS of saying, we'll get to it as soon as we can. And then when it doesn't go right, they don't care that you got to it as soon as you could. They're still mad because it's not fixed properly. So that's something that more owners, I feel, need to listen to. Because in a perfect world, we would all have a bunch of, you know, Paul Danners in a shop somewhere and everything was getting fixed really quickly and diagnosed, you know, perfect and out the door and just massive turnaround, all kinds of car count going through and great money. That's a pipe dream for a lot. With the situation that we're in with the, like you said, the technician competency and this technician shortage, if you want to do accurate, good diet, it takes time. There's no sense in having the customer try to dictate your process, dictate your schedule. That's the two things that when we get ourselves in trouble is we let the customer dictate the process and we dictate the schedule. It's your business. You have to have a process. The customer doesn't come in and say, I want a tune up done because a car runs rough. Right? If you tell the customer, okay, we'll do your tune up. If you say that that should fix it, you just set yourself up for a very disgruntled customer because it may fix it. But oftentimes it doesn't, right? It's got a misfire caused by something else. And now you have a customer that feels like they were ripped off, even though they came in and told you they did the diag and what they want it done. You're the professional, you're the expert, you can take that in consideration. But there's still the pitch should be, okay, well, we're not object, you know, we don't object to doing a tune up Mr. Jones, but do you want the car actually diagnosed as to what the tune up fix it or not? And understand, I don't have a problem with like, taking a spark plug out and if there's no electrode left, yeah, he needs a tune up. He's not lying. But the diligence still should be that it's like, okay, are the coils all firing? No, there's not. Okay, Mr. Jones, you need a coil and a tune up. Or maybe we should recommend all six coils and a tune up. Because it's safe. It's a Ford product. That's not that unrealistic to try and sell. But if you do all six coils, all six plugs, and it's still got a burnt valve or a bad injector. Now you're into a problem. So you see what I mean? The process still, as you get to the diag first, and you know, this Jason, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but this is where, where the customers screw it up for us is by. They want to be in control and that's an unpopular opinion, but they're not in control. You are in control. It's your shop. It's their car, but it's right. That's how, that's what saved me a lot of headache at the dealerships and the, all the shops I've ever worked in. Customer doesn't come to me and ask for a tune up. And even when they do, they don't get a tune up until I know that. okay, yeah, it definitely needs a tune-up. But I can't remember the last time I did a tune-up and it fixed it by itself. It was like I had a Honda that needed a tune-up, but it also needed two coils. I've done our whole fleet of Fords. Yeah, they need tune-ups, but they normally, of the six coils, three of them are bad, right? We had one that the mass airflow sensor is shot, plus a couple bad coils. Like it's just, you know, Everybody comes in thinking they need a tune-up. Tune-up's a stupid word anymore. It doesn't mean anything. Right?
01:14:47 - 01:14:58 SPEAKER00 Yeah. So⦠No, I mean, I had that happen while a shop guy came in. He was like, I want to get my coils and spark plugs changed. I'm like, what's going on with your car? Yeah.
01:14:58 - 01:14:59 SPEAKER02 Right?
01:14:59 - 01:15:19 SPEAKER00 And he was just, you know, he's an older gentleman. He just, he's just used to doing that, you know, changing the, you know, cap and rotor and wires and plugs and you know, that as part of a normal tune up to a vehicle. And I'm like, well, I mean, is there a reason you want to change your coil packs?
01:15:19 - 01:15:19 SPEAKER02 Yeah.
01:15:19 - 01:15:56 SPEAKER00 You know, I'm like, Hey, we'll, we'll, yeah, we'll certainly, you know, you get, you're at a hundred thousand miles. We'll certainly put the plugs in, but you know, typically, I mean, um, unless you just want to do it, if your coil packs are functioning and I'm not going to recommend a replace it because it's got a hundred thousand miles on it. You know what I mean? But if your desire is to replace that coal pack because you drive a lot of miles and you just don't want to risk one ever going out, then yeah, I get it. I'll do it. I think sometimes you got to educate. Take a step back and educate, not just look at the dollars. Yeah, I can do that.
01:15:56 - 01:16:04 SPEAKER01 For sure. For sure. And you've got to be making good choices too with the parts that you pick to put on, right? Because everybody, you know, it's- Oh yeah.
01:16:04 - 01:16:06 SPEAKER00 Yeah, get all the auto lights, right?
01:16:08 - 01:16:30 SPEAKER01 So how does that work with, um, with, I was going to ask that question being that it's a corporate thing. Is it like, are you guys pushed to use certain, certain brands, like, or go through, like, are you pushed to go through Napa or do you get slapped on the wrist? If you call the dealer too much and put OE parts in or.
01:16:30 - 01:16:37 SPEAKER00 I mean, we're using the part houses, you know, dealer would be our last call really can't get the part. So.
01:16:38 - 01:16:40 SPEAKER01 Why is it?
01:16:40 - 01:16:51 SPEAKER00 But, you know, I just, I use, um, yeah, our first call is going to, you know, typically be, uh, Napa or AutoZone for a lot of our parts.
01:16:51 - 01:16:52 SPEAKER02 Yeah.
01:16:52 - 01:17:51 SPEAKER00 Um, and that's just kind of how our system is set up to begin with anyways, to have that, we have a communication, you know, with, with the, with their inventory and their stores. So if I'm needing, you know, something as simple as an oil filter, I don't have it on hand. I know what they have. and what the hot shot over to my shop. Now, I mean, yeah, I mean, it'll show up those, you know, low cost, you know, plugs, but we know if we put those on there, they're gonna be coming back probably with a problem. So we try to go, when it comes to spark plugs, we try to go to OE, but it's categorized that way. But we try to go with the OE recommended plug that's at the part house, because they have it segmented that way by brand. So I can pull the different ones.
01:17:51 - 01:19:53 SPEAKER01 We're getting to where we're only using OE on any ignition pieces? and we're definitely, it's about 50-50 in terms of when we put an oxygen sensor in, if we buy it from the dealer or if we buy it from an aftermarket source. The beauty for us is that oftentimes if we know, say for example, Denso was the original manufacturer of that oxygen sensor, well you can buy a Denso from a parts store, like a parts house. But the key thing is you've got to use the same part number when you're looking that up because Denso can put, I've seen it more than once now, can put different heater elements depending on if it's a California emissions car or if it's a federal emissions car. So you'll get a Denso that will look the same and plug in, but it will not run properly or will not fix your oxygen sensor fault because it's got the wrong heater in it. And then you're into issues like that where you jump from brand to brand. Chrysler for years, the OE oxygen sensor was an NTK. If you put a Bosch in there, that car did all kinds of weird things and it's got to do with heater compatibility and the parts stores are always like the number one thing they sell is a Bosch because you know they're pushed to do that well you might as well take it and throw it right out the window or leave the broken one in the car it made all kinds of nonsense and there's Mr. Danner's done case studies on that and everything else, but I'm very lucky that my boss realized a long time ago that when I was saying I wanted to use OE as much as possible, there was a very good reason for it. Because, again, going back to, I fixed a lot of cars at the dealer when they came to me with new parts in it, because I just put the OE part that was supposed to be in it in the car fix. That's an even bigger kick in the butt, because the tech wasn't wrong on their diet. They didn't do anything wrong with the repair. They just put a subpar part in. So it's, you know, I've learned my lesson.
01:19:53 - 01:20:02 SPEAKER00 Yeah, we've, we've certainly run into some situations where You know, bad parts, you know, we recently had some situation with a bad rotors and pads.
01:20:02 - 01:20:04 SPEAKER01 Yup. We're getting that too.
01:20:04 - 01:20:55 SPEAKER00 And, uh, you know, we had to upgrade, make sure we're just selling upgraded packages on pads and brakes. And, you know, we had the ones that come back, we're worrying to warranty them out and, uh, put new pads in sometimes having to do rotors. But, you know, I just, you know, we, we got to a point where we called, uh, parts house was like, look, something's got to give here because I mean, this is not one car. Okay. This is coming back. You know, we're, you know, we're getting too many back and you know, we can only blame it on the part so much before the customer gets pissed off. So, um, they would typically, they would, um, what I've seen is that they would automatically just give us an upgraded part, but you know, we just don't, We don't want to get into that. We don't want to have return. Return business is the worst.
01:20:55 - 01:22:11 SPEAKER01 It doesn't, yeah, because even if the proper repair should have been $900 and the customer chose a $600 option from using cheaper parts, if they have to come back, they still feel ripped off. Even if they forced your hand on the $600 and people warned them that it may have issues, they still feel ripped off. It's the way that they're wired. They feel like, you know, that customers feel that all parts are the same. That's the thing I've found is why so many people want to come in with their own parts is because they feel that all parts are the same. And then what you buy on the internet is the same as what you buy at the parts store. And all you're doing by buying it on the internet is skipping the middleman and saving a bunch of markup. We all know that's BS. That's not the truth. There's some really junk on the internet. There's some good parts on the internet too. But if I buy it from the internet and put it on your car, I can't, I can't warranty it. I can't stand behind it. And we need to be selling, you know, value when we sell a repair, which is that protection, not that, you know, I stand behind it because I chose it. You choose it. You get what you get, you know? So, right. Yeah.
01:22:11 - 01:23:08 SPEAKER00 Yeah. There's certainly. Probably, you know, some places that are choosing the lower end part for a lot of things to try to save on that cost or whatever it is, but we just try to ensure that we're using the best product we can with the reason to ensure that they're not coming back to fix the same problem later. I just, I've already seen it too many times and, and we were using what we thought were the right parts for in some cases. And, you know, We had a switch who we were buying the parts from, you know, I mean, just, just, it is what it is. And I think it's just, you know, the, the manufacturing process has changed and caused quality issues or, you know, quality assurance is just not there like it used to be. And, you know, you got, you know, places that, you know, not to get off on a tangent, but like turning rotors, like not a lot of people are doing that anymore.
01:23:08 - 01:25:27 SPEAKER01 No, I, I used to do, I've done thousands of them. And I'll tell you when we used to do them is when the, when you're at the dealership and the car is like not too, not even two years old. Right. And it's got some rust up here is a big deal. Right. So you get a lot of surface rust or, or. You know, or the customer wears the pads out. They don't groove the rotor, right? They don't heat the rotor up. It's just a worn pad. I've had lots of success of taking that rotor off and just machining it, taking a light cut, putting the new pads on, been fine. But it offsets very quickly by the time the customer pays for the labor. Once the car is a few years old, and the aftermarket kind of catches up with the pricing of a replacement rotor, or even the dealer gets what we call, you know, a value line rotor to put on, which is still a good part, it offsets the reasoning to machine them, because you're giving the customer a better, a lot of aftermarket rotors are still a better option than a machine, OE rotor for several reasons, right? You heat the OE rotor up after it's been cut, we all see a pulsation come back after that. Sometimes if it takes a couple hammer swings to get it off the hub, like up here in Canada, you're not going to machine that true, not without going past the minimum. So, you know, I've had to machine more drums than I've ever had to machine rotors as of late because it's way easier to get a rotor that will work than a drum that's not out around. And that's a tough thing. That sucks because I put lots of rotor drums on and then had to take them off. And at the shop I'm currently at, I don't have a lathe. Every other place I've worked up to now, we've had a lathe. So, you know, you just walked it over there, stuck it on the machine, went back and did something else. That's the trick I'm finding. But again, we're not seeing a lot of drum breaks anymore. You know, there's, are they still out there? Sure. They are. But, you know, I mean, they, they last a lot longer most of the time. So, yeah. Yeah. Do you have a, do you have other customers bringing you or trying to bring their own parts in?
01:25:27 - 01:25:30 SPEAKER00 Uh, we do, we do see that pretty often.
01:25:30 - 01:25:31 SPEAKER01 How do you handle that?
01:25:33 - 01:26:05 SPEAKER00 Well, right now, and I hesitate because it's something I keep talking about is just, yeah, you bring in outside parts, we're going to charge you, you know, labor plus 20%, our standard labor rate plus 20% to put it on. You know, I just, you know, just we had a customer come in, they're putting brakes in, they're bringing their own brakes and put them on. I was like, well, by the time, we put them on, I mean, another 50 bucks, you would have, you could have got our break package.
01:26:05 - 01:26:07 SPEAKER02 Yeah.
01:26:07 - 01:26:40 SPEAKER00 And you had yet you still had all new parts. And on top of that, you would have had a warranty, a warranty. And you can tell him, it's like, yeah, I can put your parts on, put you in your warranty. But again, it never comes back in your favor. If there's something that goes wrong, because the power of the internet, they can go write all the bad things they want about you. This really was them and their Amazon coil pack or whatever it was.
01:26:40 - 01:30:34 SPEAKER01 We had a scenario two weeks ago. A new customer came to us kind of as a referral from a new employee that we had, and they showed up with a 2006 Chrysler 300. All kinds of, yeah, it's an old car. Long story to that. And they showed up with a backseat full of front and rear brake pads and rotors for it. So it goes onto the hoist and gets all torn apart. Well, all the parts were ordered wrong, wrong application. So now I'm not of the school of thought that I'm going to put that back together and put it outside and let that customer source the parts again. I don't give them the option to screw it up twice. So now they're getting the job done the way it should have been done, which is the first one, because every caliper on it was shot. I mean, it's why wouldn't it be? It's a 2006, right? You're talking almost 20 year old calipers, you'd be a sucker to reuse them. And all the parts are wrong. So what they had thought was going to be $200 in parts or $400 in parts wound up being, to get the right stuff and the stuff that we can put on and stand behind the warranty, $800, $1,000, right? And they grumble about it, but we're not tying up our hoists and waiting for them to play parts man on the internet. and try another set to see if they're the right application. We just do it ourselves. And that's the other thing that too many times when I see shop owners and like, oh, I'll put them on. They're not telling how many times that what they brought in wasn't right. You're tying up a bay. There's no way you're making any money if you're not charging them for the time that the bay is wasted. for the proper stuff to come in, right? I'm not, if you do the job twice, if you have to put it back together to push it outside, they should be paying for that. If the parts are wrong, you don't want to pay them, charge them for that. And you now got to hold that bay hostage while the parts come in. You got to be charging them for that too. It's just the way it goes. That's why we don't allow it. And this was, you know, first time customer in the shop. They learned. You're going to learn today, as the kids say, right? You're going to learn today. Because we don't, you know, there's a reason that we do it and we don't buy the parts from the online place. It's because we want to get the right part the first time. So allowing the customer goes back to, like I said, your process is your process. You allow the customer to dictate your process. The wheels tend to fall off. It doesn't tend to go the way it's supposed to go because it's not their process. It's yours, right? They don't, they're not, they don't appreciate our time factor. They just think we're trying to rip them off or we're trying to, you know, overlook what they want to do. It's not that. If Rock Auto was the best parts supplier in the world, every shop in the world would use them. There's a reason they don't. Because Rock Auto makes mistakes. Online parts sources make mistakes. They're selling a level of part to a different type of customer. It doesn't mean it's junk. It just means it's not what we need to be doing as the industry is putting on customer supply parts. And I probably sound like a hypocrite, because we did. Or if we let one in the door, but it doesn't normally happen. And I don't intend to let it happen again. Because there's no reason for it. They can go, and this is the thing, they were intending to do the job at home themselves. This is how this started. But then they couldn't get the rotor off. So now they bring it to a professional. Good. I'm good with that. I don't mind it. I'd rather everybody brought it to a professional than do it themselves. But once you're in my bay, I dictate the process, not you. Right? If you want to dictate the process, you do it at home yourself.
01:30:34 - 01:31:46 SPEAKER00 Right. I mean, it's a valid thing, I think, because I know it's happened to where, you know, you got something to part, and it's like, OK, we'll slap it back together real quick. And then until you come back, it's like, no, we've got to be compensated for this time. And there's a reason you probably, very well, they could have called two, three other shops and said, no, we don't install here. We don't install after market or your supply parts. We'd had a misfire come in on a, it was like a 03 Toyota 4Runner that had a cylinder five misfire. and go to look at it. It's a brand new cool pack sitting there on it already. And it was not, I've never seen this part name in my life. So there's no telling where they bought it from. But I do know one online one that I've had good experience with would be, well this is just when I was DIY, my BMW or Mercedes that I had or whatever that I was working on, I would buy from SCP Euro and I never had any issues with their parts.
01:31:46 - 01:32:11 SPEAKER01 I think that's might be the company that Lucas and David did a podcast with that. Maybe the president or the people that founded that company. Anyway, I could be totally wrong, but I remember them having somebody on that was strictly like Euro online selling. Like he said, they sell the same part that the OE would have exact same part, you know,
01:32:12 - 01:32:33 SPEAKER00 Yeah. They, they put together these packages that are, you know, nice. I had a, you know, had to do an intake, uh, manifold on a E-class and I had those little, he has those little plastic, uh, uh, we call the, for the controlling that different airflow in there, the airflow I'm forgetting, but yeah, the active intake.
01:32:33 - 01:32:34 SPEAKER01 Yeah.
01:32:34 - 01:33:14 SPEAKER00 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they, uh, you know, they, they fail their plastic bread get brittle. So, where they had a nice, fully set up package with all the, everything you would need to, you know. So they're just thoughtful in what they put together on, you know, for that DIY guy, or maybe, I don't know if some shops are using them. I'm not using them for my shops, but, because it's always two, three days out, minimum. So, it's just, I think there are some good ones out there. I mean, I've bought parts from Rock Auto myself, when you couldn't find them. Rock Auto had it for whatever reason, but.
01:33:14 - 01:34:53 SPEAKER01 I find as the vehicle gets older, like I, up until last year, I was still driving a 96 Cherokee and OE parts were getting hard to find, really hard to find. And it wasn't even a question of price. It was, but they would have, I can't remember what it was I needed. And the dealer's like, can't even get that anymore. But Rock Auto had one. You know what I mean? So it's just a situation of there's nothing wrong with them when they're used properly. I think it's Ivan from Pine Hollow Auto Diagnostics on YouTube. He buys a lot of parts from Rock Auto because he's got his business set up where it's like he looks at the car, the car's sitting out the end of his driveway, and he normally gets delivery of Rock Auto the next day. So it's not terrible if you can schedule your work where you can look at it and he's not a big facility, right? So the parts arrive, but he's also, I'm sure the parts have been wrong or the part didn't work. That can happen to whoever we buy from. There's no perfect scenario yet. Lord knows I worked at the dealer and I got parts right out of the box in the dealer that did not work. They got the part wrong. all kinds of times. It didn't matter. It's just going to be part of the part of the business. What do you see the biggest challenge right now then in your in your in your business? Is it the technician shortage or is it technician competency or is it what's the biggest issue?
01:34:53 - 01:37:41 SPEAKER00 I think the biggest issue I have now is that I'm trying to work through is ensuring that front end piece is done correctly on the service manager, service writer, and handling customer objections and being a professional in the sense of this is why your vehicle needs this and being confident. not freezing up at no. I think that's just a big part of the sales process on the front end that I continue to work on and focus on and see a lot of the weaknesses that I kind of pick apart because I can talk to a customer face to face and if they ask me a question I don't know the answer to, I don't skip a beat. I will pause if I have to, get the answer if I need to, but generally I don't skip a beat, I don't get tripped up. But it goes all the way down to just that, just the customers that are calling it. You got people that are calling in price shopping, and how do you handle that? There's just so many things. I was listening to a podcast that really addressed that with the price shopping, and they never give quotes over the phone. I think it was off a Changing Industry podcast that I was listening to. You know, I just, you know, just trying to instill that in the mindset of like, hey, when someone calls in and say, how much does it get brakes done? Like, don't just say, you know, our package number. I mean, it doesn't apply to every vehicle, by the way. And I don't, and I've actually said this even recently, don't start a customer off with a lie. Like, you're like, we don't know this customer. Don't start your relationship with that customer off with a lie. It's like, hey, why do you think you need brakes? You know, what's going on with your car? Show some care for them and what they're trying to get done And then you know, it's like hey come to the shop. We'll uh, we'll certainly go over What you need on the vehicle will keep you in part. It will keep you involved in the process. That's why we're doing the dvi. It's like we want to Get the customer involved and what's going on with their vehicle show them what it is And get them to approve the repairs you know, yeah, so Understanding that and the bigger picture of it is the biggest thing I'm working on in my shops. And I think it helps as we get better at it, it helps with our overall process and sales and all that.
01:37:41 - 01:37:45 SPEAKER01 Have you looked into service advisor training?
01:37:45 - 01:37:52 SPEAKER00 Yes. And right now it is me, the service advisor trainer. Okay. But no, I got to diversify it.
01:37:55 - 01:38:30 SPEAKER01 Lucas and David just came back from the name of Escapes Me. I think it was a two-day course or three-day course that they just came back from that was focused solely on bringing up your service advisors. From all accounts, what I've heard is it was really good. People have heard me say, This is not me ripping on service advisors, but I think that you could make the argument in most shops right now that there's more training that needs to be done on the front counter than on the back, out in the back shop.
01:38:30 - 01:38:32 SPEAKER00 That's kind of where I'm at right now.
01:38:32 - 01:39:06 SPEAKER01 You know, and that's an unpopular thing to say because we talk all the time about the technician competency like we've talked about it tonight, but I believe that if you spend a little more time with focus on your service advisors training and their processes, you'll eliminate a lot of the problems that happen in the back of the shop and yet it can't work the other way the same. You know what I mean? You can have a competent tech and a competent repair and if it's not handled properly by the advisor, they're still going to give you a crap review.
01:39:08 - 01:40:46 SPEAKER00 So yeah, and the technician is going to be, you know, felt score is like, well, yeah, it's like every time I make them make these recommendations, like I don't get anything approved, you know, like what's the deal, you know, or just everybody's that everybody's that cheap, you know, you know, for us on our franchise side and our business side, we even have, you know, financing options for our customers. So there's, there's ways we have to try to help them. Yeah. The big, uh, Case in point, just today, just being in one of the shops, the technician does a really good job on his inspections and very good communication between him and the shop manager who was acting as the service rider manager. It's like, hey, the car's coming for an oil change. The car needed rear brakes and needed two new rear tires. And that's what he made recommended. And it happened so fast, he was already doing the work. I was like, I look back and I was like, you know, I saw the guy come up and maybe I got distracted, come back and they were doing the work on the car. And I was like, oh, okay, well, there you go. Well, you know, you made the recommendations and tell the customer and he said, go for it. So we got, we got right on it. That doesn't happen that well every day or every time. And that's, and that's, that's what we got to get better at is just the technician brings it, you know, the finalized inspection to the service rider and the service rider gets right on it to talk to the customer on what the car needs and gets approved.
01:40:46 - 01:41:18 SPEAKER_01 Yeah. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASOG group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.