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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Kirby Sawyer [00:00:00]:
80% or maybe more of our junkyard sales go through the shop and turn parts that we're installing on cars. Right. So we sell a used part for half a new. They get half the warranty you just made.
Mike Allen [00:00:10]:
Half of our listeners automatically think that you're a hack because you're using used parts.
Kirby Sawyer [00:00:14]:
Yes.
Mike Allen [00:00:14]:
You're a terrible human being. You're going to. You're going to automotive hell, dude.
Bryan Pollock [00:00:17]:
I pulled a purge valve off of a 98 Grand Prix one time and put it right on a Land Rover because the closest one was in South Africa. Okay, you ain't gotta tell me nothing. The following program features a bunch of talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we or our guests may say do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So, without further ado, it's time for Confessions of a Shop Owner with your host, Mike Allen.
Kirby Sawyer [00:01:01]:
Mike's sitting in front of me. I feel a little od, actually.
Mike Allen [00:01:04]:
Yeah, you're kind of a. I mean, you're kind of a podcast poser if you don't have a mic and headphones.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:08]:
Is that the deal?
Mike Allen [00:01:09]:
And a wacky waving arm, inflatable tube, man, in the background.
Kirby Sawyer [00:01:12]:
I love it.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:13]:
Well, you know, 100. 100% of podcasts and videos are just done for views anyway, so it's not really that important.
Mike Allen [00:01:19]:
Yeah, I mean, that's. I spend hours picking out the reels and the short video clips that we're going to use for maximum irritational factors. And. And by hours, what I mean is, I have never once been involved at all in the choice of our reels or shorts. It's 100% Braxton that chooses them, and he does a wonderful job of picking the things that will make people the most irritated at me, so. He's very good at that.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:48]:
Yeah, it. I got to feel some irritation this weekend. I didn't have to call my doctor.
Mike Allen [00:01:52]:
About it, but, man, evidently everyone was blowing you up about that clip. I didn't get that much about it, man.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:00]:
I got a lot of messages this week about that, which I said, you know, I said, that's actually perfect because.
Mike Allen [00:02:09]:
It was a clip from the Jack Shields episode where we were talking about. You mentioned that we're talking about free diag, and you mentioned that the bigger problem is not shops that are giving free diet, it's shops that are charging for shitty diag.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:24]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:02:25]:
And then Jack said, well, that's, you know, that's the technician's fault for not bettering themselves. And I said that all the problems in a shop are the result of shitty shop owners. And, you know, so it was three hot takes all at once and it was very spicy. So what kind of were you getting about it?
Bryan Pollock [00:02:43]:
Just, I don't, it was, it was just, you know, whose fault is it? This. That and the other thing. And the issue was is that I guess, I guess when you get to a certain point in the industry, you realize that there's a lot of, there's a lot of shops that are doing it. Right. Right. Like whether they charge for the diagnostic or not. They're, they're doing what you do, Mike. And what we do, they're, they're shutting down, they're taking their people to training, they're doing whatever.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:08]:
Right. But, you know, this was, this was aimed at the shops that, you know, we don't need training so we don't send our guys.
Mike Allen [00:03:15]:
You know, I think one of the best things about your comment and about the shit that you got was a lot of your friends that you talk to every day are high level mobile diagnosticians.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:25]:
Yes.
Mike Allen [00:03:26]:
And they're coming at you hot. And your point was you have a job in a business because all these shops that are shitty at Dyad, one.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:34]:
Of them, who's an extremely successful high level mobile diagnostic guy, not just diagnostic skill set, but makes a lot of money doing mobile diagnostics, says, I'm well aware of the lack of training in the field because I've been paid a lot of money to replace fuses. And I'm just thinking in my head, I'm like, well, that's great. And he go, and he goes, but it's not the shop owner's fault, it's the tech fault, blah, blah, blah. I go, I'm thinking, what happened one minute after you left? And that shop owner had to deal with the fact that he just paid you 250 bucks to come out and put a fuse in. Do you think he fired the guy or do you think he goes, well, it all works numbers wise, so we're just gonna keep on trucking. Right. They just charge, there was no disciplinary. Right.
Mike Allen [00:04:20]:
They charge the customer for your mobile guys 250 plus their markup. And they charge the customer for your initial diag.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:26]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:04:26]:
So that Customer just paid $400 in.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:28]:
The modules and the module they put in the car. They charge the customer for that too. They charge the customer for the module, they charge the customer the 250 for the dye, they charge for the initial diag.
Mike Allen [00:04:38]:
And so that is.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:40]:
I get it. And it was a hot take. And to be fair, it's a. It's a multifaceted issue for sure.
Mike Allen [00:04:46]:
Not have time for nuance and understanding that there could be multifactorial.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:50]:
Yeah, no issues.
Mike Allen [00:04:51]:
It's got all black and white.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:53]:
So everything has to be black and white. And there's only one way to do everything.
Mike Allen [00:04:56]:
Well, you know, there are plenty of technicians who don't invest at all in their own development and improve their base skill sets.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:04]:
I agree. Huge problem.
Mike Allen [00:05:06]:
And I still default to it as the owner's fault because the owner allows that to be acceptable.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:11]:
Yeah. And the reality is, is a lot of. I think a lot of the people I got feedback from were like, holy crap, dude. Like, what the heck? We're doing the best we can. We're shutting down. I go, dude, I get it, I get it. At Wilco Auto Care, we shut the whole place. We want a freaking award at tools for bringing the most people one year, right? You shut three shops down.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:32]:
Completely down. That's not the shops we're talking about. We're talking about the other, unfortunately, the other 80% of the shops in the industry.
Mike Allen [00:05:42]:
So we're five minutes in. Should we introduce our guest and ask for his input?
Bryan Pollock [00:05:46]:
Who the fook is this guy?
Mike Allen [00:05:48]:
I don't know. Just the link. He just showed up.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:50]:
All right, I'm ready.
Mike Allen [00:05:52]:
All right. Who the hell are you and where are you and what do you do?
Kirby Sawyer [00:05:55]:
I am Kirby Sawyer from Super Repair in Boulder, Colorado. And we.
Mike Allen [00:06:00]:
It feels to me like it would be easier just to be called Subaru Repair, you know.
Kirby Sawyer [00:06:05]:
So the story goes, we started life as Super Rue and Fuji Heavy Industries took up a dislike to that and sent us a few really nasty lawyer written letters saying no more using that and gave us these very strict guidelines for advertising. And the font where it says Subaru has to be smaller than the name and da da da da. So we fought with that for several years and then finally they just have now left us alone.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:32]:
But freaking car companies have a way of doing that. There's a pretty high level BMW tech support deal that had to scrub their websites of any BMW logos or anything like that. Which is. Which is wild because they did BMW better than the dealer or the manufacturer did BMW repair. But that's besides the point.
Kirby Sawyer [00:06:54]:
Crazy.
Mike Allen [00:06:55]:
So there's a dude in Raleigh, North Carolina named Amnon Nissan and he's a computer guy. He's a computer Repair guy. And in the 80s and 90s he had Nissan Repair in Raleigh and he went through a long, drawn out legal battle with Nissan. When Datsun brought the Nissan brand over to North America for Nissan repair. He's like, it's my fucking name and I'm not in the automotive space.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:25]:
I would have changed.
Mike Allen [00:07:26]:
I've been doing it since before you were here.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:29]:
Nissan, Nissan is the Chrysler of Japanese car companies. First thing, let's get that straight. Like I would have if they brought it over. I would have changed my name out of shame. I would not have wanted to be associated with them. Yeah, I do not want to be associated with this car company that's producing recycled pop cans. Goodbye.
Mike Allen [00:07:50]:
All right, so Super Repair in Boulder, Colorado, I put in between the lines. You may or may not be a Subaru specialist.
Kirby Sawyer [00:07:58]:
Is that absolutely 100% all we do. Like, we don't do even oil changes on any other brand.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:05]:
Really.
Mike Allen [00:08:05]:
You got a world class customer who's like, hey, I need to bring my Camry in. And you're like, sorry, absolutely.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:11]:
Well, he's in, he's in country. So nobody has a Camry. It's all Subarus.
Kirby Sawyer [00:08:18]:
Yeah. I mean the thought about opening another shop is all the same. You know, it's hard to keep the 25 guys I have here like happy. How am I going to go find, you know, 10 more to work on a Toyota somewhere? And yeah, I don't, it's been, you know, I was thought about. It's never been anything more than a thought, but.
Mike Allen [00:08:39]:
And so you are, you came in as an employee, became a manager and you're now in the process of buying the, the current owners out. You're a minority partner now and you're moving towards that, Is that right?
Kirby Sawyer [00:08:53]:
That's right. Yeah. So I've been here almost 15 years.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:56]:
Okay.
Kirby Sawyer [00:08:57]:
We started the buyout process about seven years ago. So yeah, just every year take a little more share of it and then when the 10 year mark hits, I'll have a very sizable down payment to buy the business.
Mike Allen [00:09:13]:
Copy that. That's awesome, man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:09:15]:
It's good. How, how big is the shop I've got? We're actually up to 26 employees now. So I mean. Yeah, it's pretty good size. We'll do. We should get pretty close to four and a half million this year in sales.
Mike Allen [00:09:29]:
Nice. Nice. Yeah, I remember back in the day when dad and the chambers were in the same 20 group together and he would. It was. What was the, the Subaru motor that every head gasket always leaked every time.
Kirby Sawyer [00:09:52]:
90S through mid 2000s. Two, five. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:09:54]:
Okay. Yeah. And he would wonder at the fact that y' all just had built heads ready to rock on the shelf for every variant. And it was. You could do that job in a half a day.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:05]:
And you had to have built heads ready to go because they cracked between the exhaust valves. Right. You couldn't. You couldn't just rehead gasket the cars because a lot of them had cracked.
Kirby Sawyer [00:10:12]:
Cylinder heads, mostly only on the turbos. Those two liters, early two liter turbos all cracked between the valve seats on them.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:19]:
Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:10:20]:
But no, we still keep. They like to drop guides. So we still have probably got to have at least 20 pairs of heads ready to go right now.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:29]:
This is excellent. I love this.
Kirby Sawyer [00:10:30]:
So, yeah, we have a.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:31]:
You're my kind of people. I like keeping parts in stock, too.
Kirby Sawyer [00:10:34]:
Yeah. So it's good. I mean, we have a small Subaru junkyard, so we sell a lot of used parts.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:40]:
Yeah. Got to have a couple old cars out back. Yep.
Kirby Sawyer [00:10:43]:
Well, yeah, and right now we probably have 50. I mean, we got a lot of Nice. So, yeah.
Mike Allen [00:10:48]:
How far stripped down does it have to be before you ship it off to the crusher?
Kirby Sawyer [00:10:51]:
We're actually getting more refined now. Like, we're stripping them all the way down. So, like, we've got a guy. We. We put. We separate out brake rotors. They go in a separate bin. We separate out, you know, our aluminum, obviously.
Kirby Sawyer [00:11:04]:
Wheels and radiators, condensers all go in a separate pile. Then we have just the. The car body, and we fill it with struts and any sort of metal trash we can.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:16]:
The stuff you're stripping off them are the hard parts that are not obtainable anymore.
Mike Allen [00:11:21]:
Do you also fill the tanks with. With. With, you know, waste oil and gas onto that?
Kirby Sawyer [00:11:28]:
They're on that. So.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:29]:
Yeah, this is all news, Mike. You can't do that anymore.
Kirby Sawyer [00:11:32]:
We were putting, like, waste paint from the body shop in there. No, we never did that. If there's any epa, they're paying kids.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:38]:
Paying kids to throw rocks in the doors.
Kirby Sawyer [00:11:40]:
The best one I got caught for, like, we have out back. There's no semi trailer that's full of, like, glass from, like, 1980s model Subarus. Who's gonna. Nobody's fixing those cars, let alone buying a new window for me, you know, so there was hundreds and hundreds of pieces of side windows and quarter glasses. So we were smashing them and putting them in the spare tire wells. Yeah. So essentially we were getting, you know, three or 400 pounds of sand in every car. We were saying everyday they could Bosch that too.
Kirby Sawyer [00:12:11]:
All the crushers now make, they'll. They'll drain the tank on site. So they'll drill two 2 inch holes in the gas tank to make sure there's nothing but gas in there when you bring them there. Yeah, so they're pretty strict. But scrap is back up right now. It's about 150 a ton for just Incubator.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:31]:
So we had a bunch dragged out. Yeah, we kind of play that game. We build up a bunch and it works out good. You rob some parts.
Mike Allen [00:12:39]:
Sanborn. Lots overloaded, right?
Kirby Sawyer [00:12:41]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's 50 plus cars of that we're working on right now out there, plus our cars that we're getting ready for the car lot. And so we have one of those too. And the cars that we're stripping out, I mean that's just customer cars.
Mike Allen [00:12:54]:
All right, so break it down for me. Four and a half million dollars in revenue. How much of that is car sales? How much of it is junkyard business? How much of it is repair and maintenance?
Kirby Sawyer [00:13:02]:
Oh, that's just the repair and maintenance.
Mike Allen [00:13:04]:
Oh, so car sales and junkyard separate.
Kirby Sawyer [00:13:07]:
Correct. The junkyard sales, I mean the 80% maybe. Yeah. Or maybe more of our junkyard sales go through the shop. Internal parts that we're installing on cars. Right. So it's like we sell a used part for half a new, they get half the warranty. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:13:23]:
You just made half of our listeners automatically think that you're a hack because you're using used parts.
Kirby Sawyer [00:13:28]:
Yes.
Mike Allen [00:13:28]:
You're a terrible human being. You're going to, you're going to automotive hell, dude.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:32]:
I pulled a purge valve off of a 98 Grand Prix one time and put it right on a Land Rover because the closest one was in South Africa. Okay, you ain't gotta tell me nothing.
Kirby Sawyer [00:13:42]:
It's all about choices, right? Like, customer has a choice, you want to use one, you want a new one.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:47]:
Do you want this Land Rover to run evap monitor or do you want to never get an inspection sticker again? Because nobody's going to get that thing from South Africa.
Mike Allen [00:13:55]:
I don't want to. I don't want to get this wrong because I don't know all about cars, but I interviewed a service advisor this morning who never been in the. Never been in the automotive industry. He's a sales guy in a different industry altogether, but he's a car guy. Right. And I don't know if that's a Good or a bad thing. But I asked him what his driver was. It was a 98 or 95.
Mike Allen [00:14:17]:
Maybe a 90. I don't know, 90, 90 something. Cavalier Z23. Is that a thing? I don't know. Something like that.
Kirby Sawyer [00:14:24]:
Could have been a Z24. The Lumina.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:28]:
Oh yeah. He could have had a Z20. Oh yeah. My uncle Kevin had a Z24 Cavalier. He used to pull a 19 foot boat with. It was pretty, pretty neat setup. Yeah, he did a lot of tire smoking at the boat ramp. It was pretty cool.
Mike Allen [00:14:43]:
Cavalier was like one of the worst cars ever made. Right? Like just terrible.
Kirby Sawyer [00:14:47]:
Oh, I don't know.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:48]:
I don't know if I'd say it was the worst car ever made. They didn't do well with corrosion. If you live in an area that uses salt, like there's none left up here. But as far as you know, they're pretty economical to own. The older models, a guy could slide a head gasket in there in 15 minutes with an engine crane and some willpower. And you know, had put a timing chain in here and there. Back in the day, I mean back in the early 2000, you could buy a brake job, a white box brake job for a cavalier for 20 bucks. You buy pads and rotors for cavalier for 20 bucks.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:23]:
Back in the early 2000s, the rotors were like $6 and the each and the pads were like 8.99 or something like that. That was like the used car lot special. Yeah, I don't know if I'd say they were the worst vehicle ever built. Parts were pretty accessible, you know. Were they built for longevity? No.
Mike Allen [00:15:45]:
But anyway, I wanted to get Kirby on. Kirby and I have known each other for what do you think, 10 years? Yeah, yeah, we, we met at a 20 group meeting. And at the time I think I maybe hadn't yet started buying shares from my dad. Maybe I was just a service advisor manager for my dad. And I think you were maybe still just an employee at the time. And I feel like we made poor choices together at the bar later and that's how we bonded.
Kirby Sawyer [00:16:14]:
That's been known to happen.
Mike Allen [00:16:15]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:16:18]:
But luckily I remember zero of those choices. Like it's only told to be they didn't happen.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:24]:
Yeah, that's how that works.
Kirby Sawyer [00:16:25]:
Allegedly.
Mike Allen [00:16:27]:
I'm going to withhold all names for this, but I was recently at a gathering of automotive shop owners and management teams. And after the day long meeting was over and the dinner and everything was over, we went out afterwards and we went to this Big bar complex, had live music and everything. And this dude had pre made cards in his pocket. And it said on one side, in big block letters, it said, Choose 1, 2, 3 or 4. Just pick a number, right? And on the other side, it says, all sex fiends picked three. They said, look, if you go up to a group of people, 75% of them are going to pick three. It's just like a, b, C or D. And multiple choice.
Mike Allen [00:17:09]:
If you don't know, you just randomly pick C. And it is instant icebreaker. Hilarious. You've got a group of friends immediately. And he, of course, chose to do this with a specific subset of the population with frightening levels of success. It was amazing. So I'm going to get some of those cards made just for conversational purposes and use them to great embarrassment next time I go out with Lucas at a bar. So it's going to be fun.
Mike Allen [00:17:45]:
Anyway.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:45]:
Oh, my gosh.
Mike Allen [00:17:47]:
So anyway, so Kirby and I text back and forth sometimes, and Kirby said to me that he wanted to come on to talk about the huge success that they're having giving special discounts to first responders and. And others. So he's got a great program with that. You want to tell me more about it?
Kirby Sawyer [00:18:06]:
It's actually really well. And you guys can. You could test it out. The next time you go into an emergency room and they try to hand you a bill, just say, don't you have a deal for automotive service professionals? And that'll tell you what their value on what we do is, right? I mean, they have zero value for what I do, but I should drop my pants every time one of them comes in and needs an oil change, right? I mean, I don't get it.
Mike Allen [00:18:35]:
But. But law enforcement.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:37]:
This is a man who's been ticketed for burning during the burn ban. I already know this.
Mike Allen [00:18:44]:
Firemen, nurses, people, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:18:46]:
I'll burn when I want to. Oh, gosh, this is great.
Kirby Sawyer [00:18:51]:
No. Or like Mike was saying, I mean, first responders as well. Next time you get a speeding ticket and they hand you and it has a fine on it, be like, I think you messed up. I work at a shop. That $240 should be at least 10% cheaper and they might tase you. They're definitely not going to laugh. Maybe they'll think the next time they go in they're not entitled to anything free.
Mike Allen [00:19:16]:
What about. What about. What about if someone is 65 years old should get a discount, right?
Kirby Sawyer [00:19:21]:
Absolutely. They do. On the free air. Yeah. Yeah. Free diag. Yeah. No, I actually that's one question I really don't think I've.
Kirby Sawyer [00:19:37]:
I honestly can say I've never had anybody asked for a senior citizen discount because most of the people that come in here that are old have been coming here since like the 80s.
Mike Allen [00:19:46]:
Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:19:47]:
You know, they're on their fourth Subaru. They know they've got to spend money to keep it on the road. This is their last Subaru. It's always the last one they're gonna buy, you know, because they're not going to be driving any longer. And then, you know, six years later, you see them in a brand new outback that, you know, I'm here for my first oil change. It's been a year. It's got like 1800 miles on it, you know, it's like. And we have to send them promptly to the dealer to get the engine resealed under, under warranty.
Mike Allen [00:20:17]:
So I, I would tell you that it's happening less frequently, but first responders, healthcare professionals, teachers, military veterans.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:29]:
Do you feel like they're always asking for discounts?
Mike Allen [00:20:31]:
It was a big problem for us early on in Covid.
Kirby Sawyer [00:20:36]:
Every walk in, it's like, well, I, I'm an essential employee. I need this to get to work.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:41]:
As they're staring at you sitting behind the counter, as you're at work, as you look around and you realize I'm at work.
Kirby Sawyer [00:20:48]:
Right? Like, I too am essential. Do you want to pay me extra?
Mike Allen [00:20:52]:
Is the, is the urgent care giving a discount for essential essential workers this month?
Kirby Sawyer [00:20:57]:
Dude, right? Never, never once have I got. Yeah, just I, you know, I'm, I'm in a giant brace, I tore my bicep off two weeks ago. And I go into the orthopedic surgeon, he says, you know, my son is actually a customer there. And I went, here we go. This guy's gonna ask for a discount. As he's like getting ready to write my procedure code to, for me to pay. Right. But he knew, I mean, he knew.
Kirby Sawyer [00:21:23]:
I think somebody schooled him once before because he said, we're happy to pay you guys because you do such good work. And I was like, you're one in a million.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:31]:
Nice.
Kirby Sawyer [00:21:32]:
You know, so nice. And then I gotta get back from surgery two days later and his son's car is actually here and boy, I hawked it to him, buddy.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:42]:
Man, I, I really didn't.
Kirby Sawyer [00:21:44]:
But he worked. He drives a hundred thousand mile wrx, so it needs everything.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:50]:
I was at an ER with a sprained ankle one time and a Subaru owning doctor had me in the parking lot at 11 o' clock at night on crutches, answering questions about his. It must be a Subaru owner thing. I don't know, man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:22:04]:
It is. He must not have had Reddit.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:09]:
This was, this was years ago. This was, this was like. This was like 2013. This was.
Kirby Sawyer [00:22:14]:
Okay, yeah, so he didn't have Red.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:15]:
I don't think Reddit was a thing in 20.
Kirby Sawyer [00:22:17]:
He doesn't need you anymore.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:18]:
Yeah, now, yeah, he doesn't need me now he can just go on Reddit and it'll tell him how to fix his car.
Mike Allen [00:22:23]:
Well, I'll tell you that basically for him, we don't need technicians anymore because I accurately diagnosed my dad's problem over the phone by asking ChatGPT and then I ran it by you guys and you all agreed it was the fuel pump control module for sure. Now, I. I guessed crank position sensor because GTP told me it was one of those two things because I don't know all about either one of them. But no came in and that's surely what it was.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:52]:
Were you surprised at your cost of the fuel? Is that the cheap one? Like, I remember I said it was like.
Mike Allen [00:22:58]:
It was like $67.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:59]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We keep one on the shelf. The tow truck drivers around here keep them on the truck because it's easier to slide under there and plug it in than it is to like the Highline trucks with the push button shifters. It's easier to slide under there and plug a new one in and drive it onto the tow truck than it is to try to get one of the Highline trucks in neutral.
Kirby Sawyer [00:23:20]:
Crazy.
Mike Allen [00:23:22]:
Well, anyway, I still paid my technician the hour for diag, even though we didn't charge the customer, my dad, for it. And so dad limped the truck to the shop and picked up my car and took it home. And my mom promptly backed her forerunner into my car and so fixed dad's truck. And now I got two body chop trips ahead of me.
Kirby Sawyer [00:23:45]:
Nice.
Mike Allen [00:23:45]:
But.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:46]:
Well, you know, Mike, you got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. What can I tell you?
Mike Allen [00:23:50]:
So my mom was devastated and super upset that she had done this. And so dad called me and was like, hey, look, I gotta let you know what's going on with your car. And I was like, does my car have a problem? You know, and he's like, your mom back? And I just started laughing. And he said, you don't understand how shook up she is.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:07]:
And so you don't understand how many employees I've had bang Cars together and how much this doesn't bother me right now, that thank God it's a car I own and not somebody else's car.
Kirby Sawyer [00:24:16]:
Car.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:16]:
Like, who cares? You hit my car.
Mike Allen [00:24:19]:
I'm not gonna get a one. I'm not gonna get one.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:22]:
Yeah. I'm not gonna get a bad Google review over this car I'm fixing. Anyways, this is fantastic.
Mike Allen [00:24:27]:
So mom and dad come to meet me to trade the truck back for the car, right? I met him halfway at the farmer's market. We went and got some watermelons, everything else, whatever. And I was on the phone with Ben Prickett, who, you know, out of Cordeline, Idaho, and talking to him about some stuff he had going on. And I said, hey, man, I'm gonna have to call the phone. My mom up my car. I said that while she was standing there.
Kirby Sawyer [00:24:50]:
Oh, my God.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:52]:
Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's terrible.
Kirby Sawyer [00:24:59]:
Would be like, strangle her. She messed up your car. Ben's a very angry man.
Mike Allen [00:25:03]:
He's a very angry man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:25:04]:
He is. He is.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:06]:
Did he move. Did he move to. To Idaho? Is he the person I know that moved to Idaho because Texas was getting a little bit. A little bit late? Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:25:17]:
Yes, that is him.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:17]:
Yeah. Okay, that's what I thought.
Kirby Sawyer [00:25:19]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:25:19]:
Yeah. Stupid liberal Texans got to go somewhere where they actually know what's going on, God bless them. I remember during. During the pandemic when they were having all the. The riots in the big cities, the. With the racial tensions. He was like, they better not come to Coeur d', Alene, man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:25:36]:
We're out.
Mike Allen [00:25:37]:
And he was sending pictures of, like. Like, dudes on the corners of the street in downtown Coeur d' Alene with their ars. I was like, bro, you're in the whitest town in the widest state in the world. You think there's going to be race riots in fucking Coeur d', Alene, Idaho? Come on, man.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:55]:
You can't even get to Idaho. Like, how do you even get there? Like, are the roads even passable into Idaho for a bus full of protesters?
Mike Allen [00:26:04]:
Because they weren't real protesters. They were all paid by, you know, even the lizard people and bust into cities to cause problems.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:12]:
All that aside. Like, can you even. Can you even get there from here? Like, don't you have to go across, like, so many dirt roads? Like, don't you have to have, like, a Toyota Tacoma to even get there?
Mike Allen [00:26:23]:
No, you have to have, like, the third world country Hilux version with 50 cal in the back, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:26:28]:
Yeah, 50 cal. That's what I was going to say.
Kirby Sawyer [00:26:30]:
Absolutely.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:32]:
For sure.
Mike Allen [00:26:32]:
All right, so you're a specialty shop in Colorado in a town where every third car is a Subaru. So that makes sense. I would assume because you're a specialty destination shop that there's no real reason to do coupons or discounts or loss leaders or anything like that. Is that right?
Kirby Sawyer [00:26:50]:
So we've recently like just started advertising with, you know, Chris Matson took over the stuff and like November, October, November, something like that. So. And we just. The beginning of June up started in the Google Ad world and so, yeah, we're throwing a little bit of money out. Like we did a 50 off AC coupon last month and you know, wrangled 30 appointments out of it or something. You know, we throw one out there, you know, two or three times a year.
Mike Allen [00:27:26]:
Do you do loss leader oil changes?
Kirby Sawyer [00:27:27]:
I do not.
Mike Allen [00:27:30]:
Should look into that. And free diag. That's good.
Kirby Sawyer [00:27:34]:
Change here is like 65 bucks. I get asked at least once or twice a week if we'll match a price. And I said yes, we will. If they'll match a quality part and oil that they're putting.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:42]:
Oh, 65 bucks. Yeah. You're doing, you're doing like what Mike and I do. Yeah. You're not making, you're not making the normal margin you would make on a job.
Mike Allen [00:27:50]:
He said the cheapest guy in his market is 65. He didn't say he was 65.
Kirby Sawyer [00:27:54]:
No, that's me. I'm 65.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:55]:
Yeah, he's 65. Yeah. So he's doing what you and I do.
Kirby Sawyer [00:27:58]:
That's with Castrol Oil.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. That's how we are. We don't have, we don't have any, we don't have any conventional oil in the shop. It's. It's all synthetic. It's high.
Mike Allen [00:28:08]:
We got an angry, we got an angry social media comment last week because we have a boosted ad for a full synthetic oil service for 69 bucks. And it was. That's highway robbery. Too expensive. Go somewhere else.
Kirby Sawyer [00:28:20]:
Right. So, okay, I gotta. I got an angry social media comment for not doing a battery check on a 60, 000 mile service that the customer was getting done at 73, 000 miles and his battery died two months later. And I should have checked it while we had it here.
Mike Allen [00:28:41]:
Yeah. Can't believe you didn't do it.
Kirby Sawyer [00:28:42]:
Selling diagnostics is hard, right? Can you imagine saying, hey, I know your car starts fine, but I recommend you do a starting charging system check on it. I get crucified.
Mike Allen [00:28:51]:
Do you not do a battery test on every dvi? Really fucking hack. You're fucking something.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:58]:
Can I tell you something about battery testers? These freaking half these battery test reports on these capacitance testers. If you've got a battery, these newer batteries. So few years back, China bought all our lead. Remember when lead was through the roof and battery cores were worth more to the scrap guy than they were at the store? Remember that you're better off scrapping the batteries because it was like 15 bucks versus 11 bucks. Anyways, China bought all the lead. So all these batteries are back. All this leads back in circulation. And the way these batteries are dying.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:26]:
I can, I can show you car after car after car after car where the battery tests. Good on you. Name you. You bring in your favorite brand of capacitance. Tester capacity style. So not toaster style tester. You can wipe your ass with a report. It don't mean nothing.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:42]:
It doesn't mean.
Mike Allen [00:29:42]:
So how, how should a battery state of health be measured?
Bryan Pollock [00:29:47]:
Accurately with the starter motor.
Kirby Sawyer [00:29:49]:
Exactly. My thoughts exactly. Because that's not a battery tester anymore. That's a battery seller. Yeah, that's all it is.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:58]:
So starter motor and a scope. So like just like he said about.
Mike Allen [00:30:04]:
Preventatively selling batteries before they die and about how she sells a ton of batteries as preventative maintenance like before they even test. Bad.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:16]:
Really?
Mike Allen [00:30:18]:
I mean, more than one way to get. Right.
Kirby Sawyer [00:30:21]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:30:22]:
She's also. She's also open three and a half days a week, right? Or is it two and a half? Is it two and a half or three and a half?
Bryan Pollock [00:30:28]:
I think it's three and a half. I'm pretty sure it's three and a half.
Mike Allen [00:30:31]:
She's open like 16 hours a month.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:34]:
So that's not, that's only two days a month, Mike. That's how. That's how he gets his free diag math to work out. We just freaking cracked the code, man. We just cracked the code. I can't do math on camera either. It's okay, Mike.
Mike Allen [00:30:51]:
You send your guys any training events?
Kirby Sawyer [00:30:53]:
Nope. You know why? Because it's hard to find Subaru specific training. Right, Right. Like, not going to do me any good to send them somewhere to learn how to read waveforms of a fuel pump. Because you know why? Subaru. Subaru fuel pumps don't fail. I mean we replace, you know, 10 a year when we're working on, you know, 5,000 cars.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:14]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:31:15]:
So does Worldpac not have any super specific.
Kirby Sawyer [00:31:18]:
They do not they offer one course a year maybe.
Mike Allen [00:31:23]:
So do you try to build any internal stuff?
Kirby Sawyer [00:31:26]:
You know? So my strategy is to hire somebody that's worked at the dealer recently, every couple years and then they get my guys up to speed. I actually have a plant working at a dealer now. He was an employee here for five or six years. He wanted to go become a senior master tech. Right. Like that was his always his life goal. So we went back to the dealer. But we, we talk every week now.
Kirby Sawyer [00:31:49]:
So as soon as he's complete we're going to make a deal for him to come back.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:54]:
Diabolical. I love this. I like how he said, oh, he goes, I actually have a plant working at the dealer right now. Like he's a CIA. That was awesome. I freaking love this conversation.
Kirby Sawyer [00:32:07]:
He's way more overt than CIA.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:09]:
He's way more covert.
Mike Allen [00:32:12]:
So what do you do for like that's awesome? You get all your service advisor and management training from Elite?
Kirby Sawyer [00:32:17]:
Yes.
Mike Allen [00:32:18]:
Okay, so you've been using their master's program and fly with the Eagles? I assume so.
Kirby Sawyer [00:32:22]:
I, I actually don't have a service advisor left here that's been through that class. Two, two of my three guys that are in the counter now were ATI trained guys before they came here.
Mike Allen [00:32:33]:
Okay.
Kirby Sawyer [00:32:34]:
We've had some, you know, some odd turnover in that area. Actually last month I lost a 35 year employee who moved out of Colorado to move to Tennessee who was my shop foreman. So that was a, a bit of a step back but it's fine. The guy who like my lead tech behind him is just a, just an hour killer. Right? I mean the guy flag 65 hours, he works like 35, he's just a stud. So I bit the bullet and just made a pay plan that he wouldn't ever go backwards. And the guy's an and admit it, I mean it's just really, really hard to get along with. And as soon as I did that it was like a switch flipped and he has taken so much pride and like he is so happy to be teaching kids what he knows.
Kirby Sawyer [00:33:23]:
So like and this has been two weeks now and my two general service techs came to me in the last week and we're like hey man, after a couple weeks we feel like we learned more in the last six months. Like so it's like, and I'm already seeing you know, we their hourly paid but they still keep track of flat rate hours. They're already gone from like you know, two and a half hours a day on oil change, inspections up to like seven to eight hours a day doing inspections and light bulbs and they're finally grabbing all the low hanging fruit. So that's been really good for us to do that. But the guys in the front, I know I need to get some training on, but the ATI kind, you know, had them in a pretty good place and they're really teachable. So it's like I finally have a crew. Like two of my three over there would take some training, but it's been so busy I don't want to send them.
Mike Allen [00:34:13]:
Yeah, so it's not the time of year to have people out.
Kirby Sawyer [00:34:17]:
It is not.
Mike Allen [00:34:18]:
It's profit season.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:19]:
Gotta make hay while the sun shines.
Kirby Sawyer [00:34:21]:
That's right.
Mike Allen [00:34:24]:
So what is your structure? Are the chambers still involved day to day?
Kirby Sawyer [00:34:31]:
No.
Mike Allen [00:34:33]:
So you're running the show or do you have any other management structure? Is there like a front of house manager and a back?
Bryan Pollock [00:34:41]:
Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:34:41]:
So like my shop foreman's supposed to be in charge of the technicians.
Mike Allen [00:34:44]:
Right.
Kirby Sawyer [00:34:44]:
Like he's that. And then Sam, my dispatcher, he'll write, you know, a couple tickets a day, but he still hand dispatches tickets.
Mike Allen [00:34:52]:
I got you, I got you. Sounds like a pretty tight operation, man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:34:57]:
It does. You know it, it's all great when you're busy because people only know I've got to get this stuff going through and you slow down. It seems like that's when all the, the trouble happened. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:11]:
We make about per. Per capita. Right. Mistakes per car. Right. I guess would be like per capita. I would say that when we're busy, the mistakes per car we make are about 1/4 of when we're slow.
Kirby Sawyer [00:35:28]:
Absolutely.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:29]:
When it gets slow, we will f up a free lunch. So thank goodness we've been busy for like 10 years now because I remember when it was slow and everything was after when it was slow. And I know exactly me. When you got guys that do really good work and are motivated and they just, I mean, I, I, I get frustrated with mistakes because I'd really like it. The way we're set up, I'd really like it to not happen. But man, our guys, I mean for the volume we do, these guys run tight.
Mike Allen [00:36:04]:
Well, when you're running wide open, you kind of get in a zone, right. And distract you and you don't. Yeah, you don't stop and surf Facebook or the freaking.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:12]:
The vehicle checkovers are better. Everybody's more thorough. You know, when you get slow, you know the car gets parked and the state inspection was missed and the fact that it needed this Was missed, and the oil change light wasn't reset. And, man, if you're screaming along and these guys don't have time to do nothing but work, like, everybody just. I don't know. It's a good dynamic we have. Everybody hits on all cylinders when we're busy.
Kirby Sawyer [00:36:35]:
Same way here doesn't. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:38]:
So now we just overbook all the time. We just slam the schedule full. And it takes care of, like, most of those problems. Like, we don't really have those problems when we're slammed.
Kirby Sawyer [00:36:48]:
It helps. And luckily, I have the car lot, you know, so we're still. And our specialty is reconditioning cars. Right. So inventory. We buy from existing customers. It's like too much money for them to feel comfortable repairing their car, you know, so.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:05]:
Right.
Kirby Sawyer [00:37:05]:
I go through it with them. I'm like, here's what your car is worth. If everything's tip top. Right. Here's what I can sell it for. Because they want to base their. The market on what I sell them for, you know, so it's like, okay, Your car's worth 10 grand, you know, but it needs $6,000 worth of work.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:21]:
Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:37:22]:
Right now, you know, so I'll give you two grand for your car. It sits in the corner till we have time. Somebody will put an engine in it, you know, and then we'll resell it so we don't have a lot of downtime.
Mike Allen [00:37:38]:
I had a client who needed $5,000 worth of work on a 2012 accord that was cosmetically in very good condition. No rust or anything like that at 300,000 miles on it. And she's like, I'm just gonna get a new car. And I was like, that's fine, you know, whatever. And she. I said, you know, I might be interested in taking it off your hands because I'll. I'll fix it up and make it a loaner car or whatever.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:07]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:38:09]:
The problem is that I know that it needs $5,000 of the work, and it has 300, 000 miles on it. It's like, I'll give you $1500 for it, you know, but the dealership doesn't give a. They'll give her 3, $500 for it and ship it right off to the auction.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:23]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:38:23]:
And so I'm losing the opportunity to buy loaner cars because we know the condition that they're in.
Kirby Sawyer [00:38:31]:
The. The local dealer here is a hundred percent backwards of that. Right. Like, they could take a car in there, not know anything's wrong with it, and offer somebody $500 for it on trade in. And I can look at the same car, know everything that's wrong with it, and give them a thousand because they're.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:49]:
Well, that's a, that's a situation literally because they're selling Subarus, right? And I don't have to tell you Subaru has a cult following.
Kirby Sawyer [00:38:55]:
They do.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:56]:
So people, people will, you know, the dealer knows they only got to give somebody 500 bucks for their old Subaru because them people, they want a new Forester, damn it. You know, come hell or high water, I'm getting a new Forester. I don't care if I got to burn my house down.
Mike Allen [00:39:11]:
Can I ask, can I ask an insensitive question? Is an abnormally high percentage of your customer base made up of lesbians?
Kirby Sawyer [00:39:20]:
It is not.
Mike Allen [00:39:22]:
Okay.
Kirby Sawyer [00:39:23]:
You know, though, I will say that like some of our best sales customers lately, like at the car lot sales, it's, it's like the community of LGBTQ community is like onto us. They love what we do. They love that we warranty our cars. They, you know, and I think great.
Mike Allen [00:39:41]:
Community to be on the end with, man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:39:43]:
And I think in the last three months we've sold, you know, seven or eight cars to this group. And I mean, they're all tight knit friends. It's like they'll literally come driving in in the car they bought from this last month with a new girlfriend and she wants to look at a, you know, a Forester or an Outback. You know, if they. And truth be known, if you drive an Outback in a Forester, you're usually not buying the Forester when you're done, you know, like you're buying the Outback because they're way nicer. They are, they're considerably nicer to drive, in my opinion.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:13]:
There you go. Something I didn't know.
Mike Allen [00:40:16]:
Do you drive Subaru?
Kirby Sawyer [00:40:18]:
I do.
Mike Allen [00:40:19]:
What do you drive?
Kirby Sawyer [00:40:20]:
Well, it depends. Whatever's done at the end of the day through the recon process.
Mike Allen [00:40:25]:
Fair enough. There you go.
Kirby Sawyer [00:40:27]:
No, the best Subaru is drive like my wife's legacy's 2016 six cylinder. And these cars are great. You can pass people with the air conditioning on. It's amazing. Pull out into traffic. They have plenty of power to like keep up with the flow of traffic on the interstate.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:43]:
Laughs and diesel.
Kirby Sawyer [00:40:45]:
Yes.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:47]:
Yeah, I can pass, I can pass people with the air conditioning on to pulling £16,000. It's no problem.
Mike Allen [00:40:52]:
I'm, I am concerned about things do wheelies. I'm concerned about if Brian and I are going to make it from the airport to downtown Raleigh for the ASCA Expo. Because the, the total load capacity for.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:06]:
The total payload capacity for your car.
Mike Allen [00:41:08]:
Yes. 404 pounds.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:09]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:41:11]:
And. And I think I'm currently 205.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:15]:
Well, here's the deal. We can make it happen, but you're gonna have to get down. I just weighed myself this morning. You're gonna have to get down to six pounds. That's how much you're led away. Because I've been exercising every day and let me tell you, this is bullshit. I've been doing this for a while. I've got like, I'm like 15, 18 days into this and I am.
Kirby Sawyer [00:41:37]:
I'm. I'm running on fumes.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:39]:
Man, this is tough.
Mike Allen [00:41:40]:
So I think we're. Helper spring. We're putting helper springs on the Miata so that we can get from the airport to the convention center.
Kirby Sawyer [00:41:48]:
My concern is the tires.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:50]:
What is the load rating of the tires? Because you don't want to have a blowout map.
Kirby Sawyer [00:41:54]:
You do not. Absolutely not.
Mike Allen [00:41:56]:
Wonder if I can get some 13 inch trailer tires and put just like some bias ply trailer tires.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:02]:
Carlisle supers on it.
Kirby Sawyer [00:42:05]:
Bias fly.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:06]:
Yeah, bias fly.
Mike Allen [00:42:09]:
Ride like a dream, baby.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:10]:
He's in airport parking with his mobile tire inflator, cramming 80 psi in the right rear tire and unbolting the front seat so I can sit in it.
Mike Allen [00:42:20]:
We did search for how we can get a dude who's six foot four and a bit on the heavy side into a Miata. And we'll have to have the top off and we'll have to take the glove box out and slide the seat all the way back. And you should be able to.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:33]:
They suggested relocating the pcm.
Mike Allen [00:42:36]:
Yeah, well, I said the floorboard of the passenger side.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:39]:
Okay.
Mike Allen [00:42:40]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:40]:
That's where my feet will go in the Miata.
Kirby Sawyer [00:42:43]:
Do you have like a George Michael CD that's just stuck in there all the time?
Mike Allen [00:42:47]:
Oh, no. I've upgraded the radio System. I've got CarPlay, so I can.
Kirby Sawyer [00:42:50]:
Nice.
Mike Allen [00:42:51]:
I can stream all of my favorites.
Kirby Sawyer [00:42:52]:
Nice.
Mike Allen [00:42:53]:
My special playlist. So girls just want to have fun, baby.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:57]:
Pink Pony Club. Pony Club. I've had that song stuck in my head since I made that thing.
Kirby Sawyer [00:43:04]:
And then.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:05]:
Barbie girl. Barbie girl.
Mike Allen [00:43:08]:
It's true. Hey, man. Just. I. I believe in my. I believe in myself and I'm. I'm proud of what I do. So.
Mike Allen [00:43:23]:
So I was gonna ask you if you're going to training because I was gonna invite you to come to the ASTA Expo. Because it's the best party in town.
Kirby Sawyer [00:43:30]:
When is it?
Mike Allen [00:43:31]:
End of September, September 25 through 27 in Raleigh, North Carolina. And.
Kirby Sawyer [00:43:39]:
Is that the same week Hank's hosting?
Mike Allen [00:43:40]:
It's the same week of Hank's meeting. And he has given me no end of about the fact that I can't go.
Kirby Sawyer [00:43:45]:
Well, I haven't told him yet that I'm not coming either, so.
Mike Allen [00:43:48]:
Oh, you.
Kirby Sawyer [00:43:49]:
Yeah, we have, we have stuff here. My wife had something here. So we're going the week before to Michigan.
Mike Allen [00:43:56]:
So that. So elite Pro Service 20 group process. You have meeting every year where everybody gets together at a destination. And then twice a year you have. Actually they do six times a year, but members are expected to go to two. You go to do a shop visit, shop tour and kind of break down and that kind of thing. And so in September they're going to Hank Roge shop, Rogge Automotive in Hartford, Connecticut. And Hank's a good personal friend and also has a badass business.
Mike Allen [00:44:29]:
And I'm really bummed that I'm not going to be able to make it there, but I'm pretty sure that the ASTA crew would murder me if I didn't come to the Expo.
Kirby Sawyer [00:44:36]:
So we've got a shameless plug now that's three shameless ASTA plugs, so.
Mike Allen [00:44:42]:
And Elite.
Kirby Sawyer [00:44:43]:
And Elite.
Mike Allen [00:44:44]:
I mean, yeah, wonderful sponsor of the podcast, but I will say that Confessions of a Shop Owner is sponsoring the hospitality suite at the expo. So from nine to midnight every night, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the party is happening. We're going to have a confessional video booth. We're going to have a 360, a selfie video camera. We're going to have the throne from the logo for you to get your photo ops in. You know, our sponsors are going to be doing some stuff. I know. We're still figuring out what they're going to do.
Mike Allen [00:45:18]:
I'm thinking I want to bring a poker table and just have like an ongoing poker game every night. Maybe not Casino Night, because that might steal from the actual Casino Night event.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:26]:
But I'm.
Mike Allen [00:45:28]:
And then we'll be in talking with.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:29]:
Some people and I think we can get the Miata in there.
Mike Allen [00:45:35]:
I mean if they're told enough will let us get the Miata in there, then we should 100 have the Miata in there.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:42]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:45:43]:
I don't want drunk people up my Miata at midnight though.
Kirby Sawyer [00:45:45]:
Wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought this was a joke. You actually drive a Miata? Oh my God, I feel terrible for Making the joke. I'm sorry.
Mike Allen [00:45:56]:
Why? It's the whole point of the Miata is the joke. No, I paid $500 for it about six months ago. It hadn't run in 15 years, and my son and I worked on it a fair amount, and then when it got to the point that my son and I didn't want to work on it anymore, I paid my people to.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:12]:
Work on it, and they set it on fire.
Mike Allen [00:46:15]:
Yeah, it did catch on fire once. So it's the crispy fried Miata is how it's referred to in the shop. Thanks, Kurt. If you're listening to this, for burning my car and. No, I've been. I've been having a ton of fun driving, man. It's like a go kart. It's great fun.
Kirby Sawyer [00:46:31]:
Yeah, sure.
Mike Allen [00:46:32]:
Yeah, very.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:35]:
You've got me looking for an eccentric automobile to drive. Now, the last. The last thing I just looked at on Marketplace was actually a diesel Mercedes. Like a 19 3.
Mike Allen [00:46:47]:
Like an old school.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:48]:
Yeah, 1993. Yeah. And I've been looking at stuff I do have. I checked in my garage. I do have a tractor flapper in my garage. So once I get it, I can reroute the exhaust.
Kirby Sawyer [00:47:01]:
Nice.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:02]:
Yeah, we're gonna put a hater pipe on it. We're gonna do all that stuff.
Kirby Sawyer [00:47:05]:
Yeah. Nice.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:07]:
This is. Is this exhaust? Is that exhaust? Oh, yeah, officer, that's stuck. No problem.
Mike Allen [00:47:14]:
It was a limited edition. They made in 83 only.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:17]:
Yeah, that was. I got that from a friend of mine who had a fender exit on a 6.0Powerstroke, and he got pulled over and he goes, oh, yeah, Officer, that stock. It was violent. It was. It was painful to have him drive by you. It physically hurt you when he drove by and told the officer it was stock. It was fun.
Mike Allen [00:47:37]:
One thing that I have been intentional about doing is I've always got my head on a swivel when I'm in traffic, looking for big diesel trucks to avoid them like the plague.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:47]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:47:47]:
Because it's a thing to roll coal into the side of a Miata window. And if I was a big diesel truck guy, I would probably think that was funny as shit. But.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:01]:
If I didn't live in commie New York, I would saws all my exhaust off just so I could do that. But I have to follow the rules. I don't want to go to federal prison.
Mike Allen [00:48:12]:
I think Lucas L M Performance and Blowing Rock, North Carolina, will do a custom delete and roll call tuning package.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:21]:
No, they won't. That's not you know what?
Mike Allen [00:48:26]:
If you're the epa, please visit Lucas.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:28]:
I love picking on Lucas, but that's not even funny. Yeah, like, if you've. If you've been involved in diesels and seen people going to jail, it's not.
Mike Allen [00:48:37]:
Well. And also, you could go through that business with a fine tooth comb for 10 years and not find any hint of that having ever happened in the last decade. No, but still.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:47]:
No, we don't. We don't. It's so. It's so funny. We have a. There's a great, great person I know, and I had to tell him no, and he's like, come on, man. I'm like, no, dude. He's like, do you know anybody? He's like, do you know anybody? I said, only shitty hole in the wall places that will do it for cash.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:11]:
I said, I don't know anybody who's got anything worth losing that'll do it. I tell him no. I go, dude, I'm driving around, my truck's freaking five years old now. I'm driving around with all my crap still on mine. I go, do you think I would do that if it wasn't that serious? Like, I can't. I can't do it, man.
Mike Allen [00:49:29]:
Now we're going to be involved. Too much to lose.
Kirby Sawyer [00:49:32]:
So.
Mike Allen [00:49:32]:
Yeah. Well, Kirby, is there anything else that you want to get off your chest, man? I feel like we've just kind of totally bogarted the entire time.
Kirby Sawyer [00:49:40]:
Oh, you're good. I. Not much on my.
Bryan Pollock [00:49:43]:
I got a lot of Subaru education. That's kind of cool.
Mike Allen [00:49:48]:
Do you have any confessions of things that have fallen right apart at the shop recently that you want to share with us?
Kirby Sawyer [00:49:57]:
Really had a pretty severe meltdown from a customer yesterday. It was kind of fun, but I felt really bad for her, actually. She misread her authorization that we text her. Like she authorized a bunch of work. And then we called her back with an inspection where you need this, this, and this. And, you know, each line item was separate on the text message. And she said, sounds good. Do it all.
Kirby Sawyer [00:50:19]:
And then she showed up, and she thought the last line item was her total. And we're like, well, shoot, you know, that's like 895 bucks. But you authorized, you know, 700 when you got here for this repair, did you really think we were doing all these things? Yeah. And then she just absolutely melted down. I mean, I felt really bad for her, and I'm like. She's like, I don't have the money. And I'm like, Okay, I get it.
Bryan Pollock [00:50:47]:
Whatever.
Kirby Sawyer [00:50:47]:
You know, I'm sorry. Here's. Here's the deal. We. I don't feel like we did anything wrong. Just me. Your credit card. Pay your credit card now.
Kirby Sawyer [00:50:54]:
Give me your credit card. We'll pay what you thought you were going to pay today. I'll keep a card on file. You call me next month. We'll run the remainder of it. I don't make this awkward on you. I don't, you know.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:05]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:51:06]:
How much. How much more was the bill than what she expected?
Kirby Sawyer [00:51:09]:
It was basically double. It was like 1700 as compared to 895.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:14]:
That's nothing. Zeb just went 12k over the estimate on something.
Kirby Sawyer [00:51:18]:
But I felt really bad for. You know, I've got a shop dog. My little. I don't know where he's at, but my little Australian shepherd comes to shop with me, and she's crying and crying, and he went up and he put his chin on her knee, you know, like, trying to make her feel better. And I thought, man, this works every time, right? And she stood up and let out this shriek and started shaking her hands. And she's falling and she's screaming in the lobby, oh, just leave me alone. And I'm like, oh, my God. Shop dog backfire.
Kirby Sawyer [00:51:46]:
That was like, odd to me, you know, because usually he's like the defuse.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:50]:
I've never seen the shop dog not work.
Kirby Sawyer [00:51:53]:
Dude, I know.
Bryan Pollock [00:51:54]:
He's uncharted territory.
Kirby Sawyer [00:51:55]:
It is. Yeah. It's a thing, though. That's where we are in 2025.
Mike Allen [00:52:00]:
I mean, you're in Colorado, which is like the most dog friendly state ever. And you're a Subaru specialist, right? Those are dog people, right? It's weird.
Kirby Sawyer [00:52:10]:
Yeah, pretty weird.
Mike Allen [00:52:11]:
I think. I don't think you need that kind of customer. If they don't like dogs. I don't want that.
Kirby Sawyer [00:52:14]:
It was her first time here.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:15]:
If they don't like dogs and they don't think they got to spend. Spend two grand on the Subaru, I don't think they need to come in.
Kirby Sawyer [00:52:21]:
Yeah, I felt really bad because, you know, I know it just made her, like, uncomfortable because she was, you know, blindsided by it. But yeah, at the same time she, she did, as she was crying, walking away, said, I guess I should learn to read. And I'm like, hey, maybe reading comprehension.
Mike Allen [00:52:39]:
Is important for life.
Kirby Sawyer [00:52:40]:
It got even worse because then she left here and the car was a Crosstrek with rally Armor mud flaps, because gotta have rally armor mud flaps on your Crosstrek. Right. And so when we picked it up.
Bryan Pollock [00:52:51]:
The little crying over, like 800 bucks, but it's got like 500 in mud flaps on it. Is that what you're telling me right now? Okay. I'm just making sure I'm following. And I'm also making sure that everybody else can follow. Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:02]:
Our lift arm bent one of the little supports for it.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:05]:
Oh.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:07]:
First time she turned and hit a bump, it made a horrendous noise. And so she probably.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:12]:
You're wishing you were Mike and your mom just backed into your car instead of damaging the customer's car. Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:16]:
Right. Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:17]:
Yeah.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:17]:
So she had to come back.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:20]:
Oh, I hate that stuff.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:21]:
It was. It was. Yeah. It was not a good afternoon.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:24]:
But I.
Mike Allen [00:53:25]:
Well, it's not often that I say that that's not my customer, because I believe that every customer deserves great service.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:30]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:53:30]:
But if Shop Dog doesn't like you or you don't like Shop Dog, fuck you. You're not my customer.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:35]:
I felt really bad for the dog. I mean, like, he's like, everybody tells me I'm cute. We have me.
Bryan Pollock [00:53:41]:
We have a tribute to a shop dog that's been dead for 10 years on the wall in the office. We have a picture of the dog, like, and everybody knows the dog, and everybody misses the dog. Like. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if. Oh, gosh.
Kirby Sawyer [00:53:56]:
Yeah. One of my.
Mike Allen [00:53:57]:
One of my service advisors has, like, a full adult toucan that comes to work with him that I guess those things live, like, really long, long lives or whatever. He's had this bird for a long time. And so we don't have a shop dog at that store, but we do have a shop toucan.
Bryan Pollock [00:54:16]:
So I'll never forget a young lesson that I heard from a farmer that they were. It was. It was at a church. They're interviewing a new preacher to come out. And this, that and the other thing. And the guy was from the city. This old farmer goes, how do you feel about shotguns, pickup trucks, and puppy dogs? That was what he needed to know. That was.
Bryan Pollock [00:54:33]:
Yeah. I mean, I'm like, I don't know, kind of. That was my age.
Mike Allen [00:54:38]:
Based on that.
Bryan Pollock [00:54:39]:
Yeah. How do you feel about shotguns, pickup trucks, and puppy dogs? I thought that was. And the guy's answer was, what's your.
Mike Allen [00:54:45]:
Feeling on four stroke versus two stroke?
Bryan Pollock [00:54:48]:
Yeah, two stroke. Thank you. Billy's. Billy's mom says that he should get a four stroke. So Billy's dad got him a KX 250 and a new mom.
Kirby Sawyer [00:55:03]:
All right, well, I told my girlfriend I was gonna buy a four stroke and she said we should both see other men.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:08]:
Yeah, she got me a Mother's Day card. Yeah, we should both see you.
Mike Allen [00:55:15]:
I think on that note, we could probably wrap this show up.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:18]:
We've completely jumped the shark.
Mike Allen [00:55:21]:
We've been entirely insensitive in multiple ways over the last hour. So, Kirby, thanks for coming on, man. You should just. You know what? You should totally just come to all the non Subaru training possible at Asta Expo and you can come teach a class about Subarus.
Kirby Sawyer [00:55:44]:
That's tough.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:46]:
I would take it.
Kirby Sawyer [00:55:49]:
Easiest car in the world to diagnose.
Bryan Pollock [00:55:51]:
I mean, I know, but that's. I'd still take it. Yeah, I take classes I could teach all the time. It's not a big deal. You always learn something.
Kirby Sawyer [00:55:59]:
That's right. Teach all the common league points.
Bryan Pollock [00:56:02]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:56:03]:
Well, Brian, you are teaching a class, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:56:06]:
I think multiple.
Mike Allen [00:56:08]:
What are the names again?
Kirby Sawyer [00:56:09]:
Real quick?
Bryan Pollock [00:56:11]:
I don't know that we've decided. Well, one's Control. Control Alt. Control Alt Reboot. Maybe. I think we called it. It wasn't Control Alt Delete. I don't think.
Bryan Pollock [00:56:20]:
Maybe it is Control Alt Delete. Control Alt Reboot we're doing. You don't know. 2.0. Luna, chill out, man. My dog's going crazy back here. And then I'm helping with a multimeter class too.
Mike Allen [00:56:33]:
Cool. Nice. All right, Kirby. I'll see you, man.
Kirby Sawyer [00:56:36]:
All right, guys. Take care. Thanks for having me on.
Mike Allen [00:56:39]:
Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out, the good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink? You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover? Or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email Mike confessions of a shopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number 704 Confess. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to, like, subscribe or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode.
Mike Allen [00:57:33]:
Right.
Kirby Sawyer [00:57:35]:
You know I said Jeff.
Bryan Pollock [00:57:45]:
You know I said Jeff.