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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.
Mike Allen [00:00:00]:
Brian Pollock calls Mitchell the covered wagon.
Jordan Mosely [00:00:02]:
The old school people love it though.
Mike Allen [00:00:03]:
Like, they got to get the way they've always done.
Jordan Mosely [00:00:05]:
They got to get with time.
Mike Allen [00:00:06]:
And you know what they love is they love the 27 add ons they're paying a subscription for. Yeah, to be able to make it work the way they want it to work.
Jordan Mosely [00:00:13]:
Well, I think that's part of the conversation with the AI company was he's like, what are you doing for this? I'm like, I got this company. He's like, what are you doing over here? I got this company. Like all these logins. He's like, my God, Jordan, you have like 19 subscriptions. I said, I know. Because they don't all do it great. It's a pain in the ass.
Mike Allen [00:00:32]:
The following program features a bunch of doofuses 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, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shop Owner presented by techmetric, the best software in the history of ever. It's lunchtime, Day two at Matt Curry and Craftsman's Auto Care. Level up.
Jordan Mosely [00:01:09]:
Yes, sir.
Mike Allen [00:01:10]:
And I'm here with Jordan Mosley out of Fort Worth area.
Jordan Mosely [00:01:14]:
Thanks. Yeah,
Mike Allen [00:01:18]:
day one in the morning was interesting. In the afternoon we had Josh Parnell and Mike De La Cruz and then we had a happy hour at one of Matt's shops. And then we came back to the bar and drank more than we should have.
Jordan Mosely [00:01:33]:
Absolutely.
Mike Allen [00:01:34]:
And we came up here and tried to record Drunk Podcast and it was just too much of a shit show. There's no way that that can ever be released.
Jordan Mosely [00:01:43]:
Not you and I though. It was the other people, but yeah,
Mike Allen [00:01:45]:
yeah, we were totally in control. It was the other ones that were out of control.
Jordan Mosely [00:01:49]:
Herding cats.
Mike Allen [00:01:52]:
It was definitely an add fueled rage fest. So maybe we'll get a couple of short clips out of it, but I don't know. But today Josh talked about leadership. Yesterday, De La Cruz talked about managing your marketing and utilizing new AI tools. And the tour of the shops, I think we saw three shops.
Jordan Mosely [00:02:14]:
Three shops. Yep.
Mike Allen [00:02:16]:
And that was all good. But today has really been kind of Matt opening the Curry's playbook and their processes. And not unlike how Autoshop Answers started. It was essentially inviting other people into their Service advisor onboarding program.
Jordan Mosely [00:02:36]:
Correct.
Mike Allen [00:02:36]:
And so it's their sales process, it's their phone skills training, there's role playing. There's more stuff going on right now. They're going to be going for another four hours at least.
Jordan Mosely [00:02:48]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:02:50]:
And I think I might have said this yesterday when I was talking to Adam Rath, but I really expected this to be just like a rebranded. Not rebranded, just a different version of the same stuff that you get at Auto Shop Answers. And there are some similarities, for sure.
Jordan Mosely [00:03:06]:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:03:07]:
But there's some stuff that is significantly different. And so you can see that there are some real variances in the way that they do it. And both of them have very successful businesses. And so for me, it just reinforces that drive, that no one playbook is required how to do this business. It's just find the playbook that works for you.
Jordan Mosely [00:03:30]:
And I think stick with it is the key that I've been talking to a few people here, newer, younger guys, is find a playbook that you like and enjoy, that you think is replicable, replicatable, and stick with that. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Pick one guy that you like and kind of stick to that is what is the advice I would give on that. And that's where we met was the first time we met each other was at an Auto Shop Answers thing a couple years ago down in Houston. So here we are.
Mike Allen [00:04:05]:
Most of your business is not full service auto repair.
Jordan Mosely [00:04:08]:
Correct.
Mike Allen [00:04:09]:
Most of your business is Quick lube business?
Jordan Mosely [00:04:11]:
Yeah. Quick lube, Yep. Fast lube. Quick lube, yep.
Mike Allen [00:04:14]:
So has things like Auto Shop Answers and level up opened your eyes to automotive repair and made you more interested in automotive repair or are you like, this is fucking stupid. I'm going back to Quick Lube.
Jordan Mosely [00:04:27]:
Quick lube is definitely easier than auto repair. So we do have auto repair in. So we have 12 locations. One is a straight auto repair shop, just like Matt Curry's stuff, Auto Shop Answers. The others are a mixture of quick lube and auto repair combined in the one location. So we were high car counts. So I've taken what I've learned from Matt, learned from Auto Shop Answers. I've had to modify it a little bit based on some of our locations just because it's a different model.
Jordan Mosely [00:05:00]:
But ultimately it works out great.
Mike Allen [00:05:03]:
Have you been exposed to any of the other kind of gurus in the industry?
Jordan Mosely [00:05:09]:
Yeah, I mean, I kind of always keep my eyes open and my ears and see what everybody else is doing. But honestly, I think just doing the rack, attack the rack and go whatever you want to Name it, I don't give a shit. Yeah, pit crew. Pit crew. I mean, there's a ton of variations out there. And I think they all sat in a room probably one day and we were like, okay, we're all gonna do the same thing. And you call it this and you call it that, I don't really give a shit. But I think they're all, they all will make you money if you have to do some variation of it.
Jordan Mosely [00:05:44]:
So. Yeah,
Mike Allen [00:05:48]:
so one of the things that was interesting at happy hour last night before we left Craftsman and came back to the, to the bar here at the hotel, I'm always interested to learn about other business models and how they do. And so you've got quick lubes and you've also got car washes. And I've been enamored with car washes for a while because they're popping up everywhere. The tunnel. Tunnel washes with the subscription based plans. And they've got to be highly profitable or they wouldn't be popping up all over the place in high traffic, high visibility areas. It feels like. So it's like storage unit, mini storage from 15 years ago, right?
Jordan Mosely [00:06:30]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:06:33]:
How does that compare in your experience? Like, do you go to training events that are. Car wash training events?
Jordan Mosely [00:06:38]:
Yeah, yeah. So there was just one last week it was in Nashville. Can't remember the name of it, but it's a. It's the huge ICA trade show. International car wash show. That's what it is. So. Yeah, I mean, I didn't go to it this year, but I try to go every couple of years.
Jordan Mosely [00:06:56]:
They're getting heavily into AI currently. I mean, everybody is. The equipment fluctuates, but ultimately it's soap, it's friction. You got a chain or you got a conveyor. They're high volume models. I mean, you have to wash 10, 15, 20,000 cars a month to make some money. So.
Mike Allen [00:07:18]:
Yeah, I mean, they're 10,000amonth.
Jordan Mosely [00:07:20]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Allen [00:07:22]:
Holy fuck.
Jordan Mosely [00:07:22]:
Yeah. And. And that. And I would say that's probably on a lower end for a newer location. I mean, those things are four to seven million dollars to build at a nice one. You have the pay stations
Mike Allen [00:07:36]:
and.
Jordan Mosely [00:07:36]:
Yeah. So you have to be washing about 15,000 cars a month to.
Mike Allen [00:07:41]:
So if you run. If you ran 15,000 cars a month through your car wash, given the expense structure, what type of net does it drop?
Jordan Mosely [00:07:49]:
Oh, well, we don't. So it's highly competitive. Just like you mentioned earlier. We have a lot of big names around us and we're on A side street. So we watch about half that. But our cost is right. We bought it low, put some money into it. So yeah, I mean, we'll drop.
Jordan Mosely [00:08:09]:
I mean, you can drop 20% the higher volume ones. Obviously it's economy of scale. Your employees are the same, but your chemical costs. So now you're, now you're penny pension. You're really looking at pennies when you're, when you're washing cars. So, yeah, I believe that. And kind of like the oil change business, the lube stuff. So oil prices have gone up with this Trump Iran thing.
Jordan Mosely [00:08:32]:
So when we're changing oil on 150,000 cars a year, a dollar increase on a gallon, that's 150,000 off the bottom line. So we watch our costs very carefully. And I think that's something that I've brought over to in my group of locations is the, the, the small changes in automotive that put a lot of net to the bottom line. And so I'm, we're used to counting our pennies on our oil filters, counting our dollars on our oil. So moving that over into the automotive game. And it's been, it's been huge for us.
Mike Allen [00:09:09]:
I think maybe I was talking with you or maybe I was talking with Richard, the VP of operations at Craftsman yesterday. We were walking back from lunch and I was talking to you about my expense structure. And it was like I could see whichever one of you I was talking to, I apologize. Cringing at how out of control my expenses are.
Jordan Mosely [00:09:26]:
Oh, yeah, the labor thing. Yeah, yeah, your labor. Yeah. About 10 points off. It's all good.
Mike Allen [00:09:31]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been told that for years. My payroll is way out of whack.
Jordan Mosely [00:09:36]:
Yeah. So in a lube game. So most, most of our guys are hourly. I mean, we have our technicians, our flag hour, just like most shops are. That's a whole different conversation. I'm sure you have 19,000 podcasts about flag hours, but yeah, I mean, all of our guys are hourly. So if we're not changing oil in a car, I mean, that clock is just burning. So we have bad weather back at home right now.
Jordan Mosely [00:10:01]:
So if we had six guys scheduled, we need to probably cut one or two to get our labor margins where it needs to be. So in our game, 2%, I think we did the numbers, was about 600,000 extra labor dollars that we would spend just on 2% difference. So we monitor that a lot.
Mike Allen [00:10:22]:
So, yeah, it kind of draws a connection to something that I wrote down that we were talking about in class earlier this morning. Was how much money we spend to make the phone ring and how important every inbound phone call is. You think if your average repair order is $800 and your organization, your store is fumbling two calls a day, maybe one call a day, call it two, whatever. Well, that's $1,600 a day, and you're open 210 days a year if you're five days a week or whatever the number is. So that's 360,000, $320,000 a year in lost revenue because, well, I mean, we do pretty good on the phones. We only probably drop the ball once or twice a day. Yeah, it's $300,000 a year, man.
Jordan Mosely [00:11:07]:
Yeah. So big numbers, big dollars.
Mike Allen [00:11:10]:
If you think about it, it really does make an impact, the simple things. And, you know, as one of my guys always says, it's just blocking and tackling, man. You just got to stick to the basics.
Jordan Mosely [00:11:20]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:11:20]:
And it's hard for me doing team meetings. I kind of think is like, 15 things that we need to talk about during morning team meetings. And it gets repetitive, and it gets. To me, it's like, I feel like we talk about, you know, sense of urgency all the time. I feel like we talk about saying yes all the time. I feel like we talk about. Well, we do, because those are the things that are most important.
Jordan Mosely [00:11:46]:
Absolutely.
Mike Allen [00:11:47]:
And if you don't talk about it all the time, it starts to slip by the way.
Jordan Mosely [00:11:49]:
Yeah. And we're the same thing. And that's something we could probably get better at is the morning huddle things. But again, it goes back to that labor thing, so. But yeah, I mean, it's the small things that add up to a big thing, and it's. We have AI cameras. We have sensors in our bays. We're working on a lot of AI projects right now.
Jordan Mosely [00:12:12]:
On our whole dashboard, we're listening to our AI calls. So we have an AI call agent on one.
Mike Allen [00:12:22]:
What software are you using to monitor and grade your calls?
Jordan Mosely [00:12:26]:
So we have Rilla, and then I have another AI company that we are using to kind of modify certain things. And so we're going to build our. We're building our own, basically.
Mike Allen [00:12:37]:
I think there's a lot of folks that are just building their own.
Jordan Mosely [00:12:39]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:12:39]:
How has your experience been with Rilla?
Jordan Mosely [00:12:41]:
Rilla's been great. Yeah. I mean, it's been. It's not cheap. It's expensive, I think. But I think overall, if you use the tool like you should, I think it. It's gonna. It's gonna add Benefit to it, to any shop.
Mike Allen [00:12:55]:
Honestly, we had a lot of pain with the onboarding. It was a painful process.
Jordan Mosely [00:13:00]:
It was painful. I have a great guy, I have a great rep. But yeah, the, the front, the front end, I thought it was gonna be a lot smoother than what it was. Even the transition to getting it hooked up with tech metric. It's hooked up. It's not hooked up now. It's finally hooked up. So I don't know whose fault that
Mike Allen [00:13:18]:
was, but yeah, a lot of passing of blame around. We're waiting on this, we're waiting on that.
Jordan Mosely [00:13:24]:
That's any vendor. I think it's not my fault.
Mike Allen [00:13:26]:
I don't know. I ended up giving up and waving the flag and canceling the service after launch because I couldn't get. You put in a service ticket and be like two weeks later and you're doing the follow up.
Jordan Mosely [00:13:37]:
Hey, yeah, that's never happened with me. Yeah, no, my guys, my rep's been great. So that's, that's.
Mike Allen [00:13:42]:
It seems like an awesome tool, so.
Jordan Mosely [00:13:44]:
Yeah, it is awesome. You just got to use it like anything else. Yeah. Multi shop owners. I mean, it's a little harder too. So it's keeping my manager requiring certain amount of hours or time for our advisors to use it. And that comes off their compensation plan. So if they don't put a certain amount of hours into it, you're getting docked because I'm paying this to make you a better advisor.
Jordan Mosely [00:14:07]:
You need to use the tool and
Mike Allen [00:14:09]:
it reports how much time they've actively been using guidance and stuff.
Jordan Mosely [00:14:14]:
And you can also see, like, how many people are answering the phone. Who's your number one phone answer? So I have a lady at one of our stores. She's murdering it. She kills it. She answers the phone 75% of the time.
Mike Allen [00:14:26]:
And so she is of more value to the company than the one who's answering at 25% of the time.
Jordan Mosely [00:14:31]:
Right? Yeah. Or we just stick the best person to answer. It's a lady. So most of our customer base is female. So I think having that female voice on the phone versus our manly voices. Right. Kind of sets the tone for the shop. So it works out well.
Mike Allen [00:14:48]:
Well, you're the fourth person I've talked to in the last month who said that I'm using this tool, but I'm building my own.
Jordan Mosely [00:14:55]:
Yeah. When I mean own. I hired a company. They're out of Canada. It's Trillix is who we're using. Great guy Mohammed. They can build out anything. It started out Just automating some reports.
Jordan Mosely [00:15:10]:
And then I was like, hey, can you do this? He's like, absolutely. And then it was just one more thing like, can you do this? He's like, absolutely. Like, can you do this?
Mike Allen [00:15:17]:
He's been in some training, was told to say yes.
Jordan Mosely [00:15:19]:
Yeah. So he's definitely. I've got a long list on our Kanban board. So it's, it's exciting stuff. So
Mike Allen [00:15:30]:
some of the other folks. Yeah, it's definitely exciting. The other folks don't want their name said that they're doing these kind of things because I think maybe they're hoping to build a business out of it once they've executed on it themselves.
Jordan Mosely [00:15:44]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:15:45]:
But it will be interesting to see how some of these vendors that have been serving our space pivot because the use of things like clog code and other tools that are out there are allowing non tech savvy or entry level only tech savvy individuals to go out and build tools that would have required a much higher skill set A year, two years ago. I think the conversation that I had the other day was Wicked File is a great service, but how do they maintain relevancy when you can build your own agent to do what Wicked File does?
Jordan Mosely [00:16:28]:
Yeah. Are you using Wicked File? No. Were you using Wicked File?
Mike Allen [00:16:31]:
No.
Jordan Mosely [00:16:32]:
No.
Mike Allen [00:16:32]:
Okay. I've sat down and talked with them a couple of times.
Jordan Mosely [00:16:36]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:16:38]:
But I feel like I'm gonna be able to do that internally.
Jordan Mosely [00:16:42]:
Yeah. We, we did the trial for 30 days and it was a little clunky on my end. I don't. That's probably my error, but I just canceled it.
Mike Allen [00:16:53]:
Yeah.
Jordan Mosely [00:16:54]:
And they didn't really call me either, like right after. Usually you have the 30 day. Like I need. I want to get sold too. Right. So we work for our customers money. So I need somebody to work for my money.
Mike Allen [00:17:07]:
Otherwise I'm spending a lot of money. Yeah.
Jordan Mosely [00:17:08]:
It's like, damn, you could at least gave me a call.
Mike Allen [00:17:10]:
I'm gonna go get a boat.
Jordan Mosely [00:17:11]:
Yeah, that's where I'm going next.
Mike Allen [00:17:14]:
So. Well, so you know, you are, you have contracted with somebody that you trust to build out the tools that you want the way that you want them. I think that's going to become more and more common.
Jordan Mosely [00:17:29]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:17:29]:
Either contracting out with people who can build the tools you want or learning somebody in your company or you personally learning to build the tools that you want. I think it's going to change the landscape of the support vendors in our industry. Now if you talk like Seth Thorsen, he says that people are going to be building their own sms. He thinks that a.
Jordan Mosely [00:17:49]:
Well, so that was one thing I did. I said, hey, I need this software. I run two softwares. I have TechMetric and I use Lubesoft ISI for the, for the lube center stuff because it's just quicker, it's faster. And we've already looked at replacing that with another company. They really need to just merge together. And my AI guy is like yeah, I can do that, it's easy. So we currently working on a little workaround where you can build it within techmetric and then it'll shoot it over to my other automatically because right now we're having to do double entry.
Jordan Mosely [00:18:23]:
So that's a little cumbersome.
Mike Allen [00:18:24]:
That's a pain in the ass.
Jordan Mosely [00:18:25]:
Yeah, very pain in the ass. It's not fun in an industry when
Mike Allen [00:18:29]:
you want to turn a car every 10 minutes.
Jordan Mosely [00:18:30]:
Yeah, well on the lube side it's fine. But when you have auto repair and you're trying to do that and we bill out everything in one system. Okay, build all of our estimates in techmetric. Techmetric's by far the superior of everything I've tried. We had Ro Rider for the days, got fucked on that deal. Had to pay 15 grand what 10 years ago when you had to buy it. And then six months later they started doing the software thing. So I got screwed on that bill.
Mike Allen [00:19:00]:
Yeah, well I mean you didn't have to switch. Did they force you to switch to subscription?
Jordan Mosely [00:19:03]:
Well I complained about it and they're like, well you can roll on this program for a while but once everything gets caught.
Mike Allen [00:19:11]:
Update.
Jordan Mosely [00:19:11]:
Yeah, yeah, I mean it was a year later and that was money was just poof. Yeah it was. And for a new startup for one store, that was a lot of money for us.
Mike Allen [00:19:22]:
Well, our writer was the bee's knees
Jordan Mosely [00:19:24]:
back in the day. Yep.
Mike Allen [00:19:26]:
Until it wasn't. And they just, I mean the same thing for Mitchell. You know, Brian Pollock calls Mitchell the covered wagon because it's just so old and rickety.
Jordan Mosely [00:19:36]:
And the old school people love it though.
Mike Allen [00:19:39]:
Like that's the way they've always done.
Jordan Mosely [00:19:41]:
They gotta get with time.
Mike Allen [00:19:41]:
And you know what they love is they love the 27 add ons that they're paying a subscription for to be able to make it work the way they want it to work.
Jordan Mosely [00:19:50]:
Well, I think that's part of the conversation with the AI company was he's like, what are you doing for this? I'm like, I got this company. He's like what are you doing over here. I got this company, like all these logins. He's like, my God, Jordan, you have like 19 subscriptions. I said, I know. Because they don't all do it great. They might have text messaging, but they don't do it really good. So I don't use it.
Jordan Mosely [00:20:10]:
So I use this guy. These guys do postcards and this guy has this thing. It's a pain in the ass.
Mike Allen [00:20:16]:
Truly unified. And I think that's what TechMetric and Tenille are working towards, is trying to become one platform for everything.
Jordan Mosely [00:20:23]:
Yeah, I'm just not sure that's possible.
Mike Allen [00:20:26]:
Yeah, I mean, well, it's. Because what's perfect in everything for you is not perfect. Not perfect in everything for me. So, you know, if they have Tekmetric marketing and it checks all the right boxes for me and there's a couple things that it doesn't do right. But I don't care about those two things. Somebody else. Those are the two most important things. So I think there's still got to be some functionality for whatever that dude needs to be able to work with.
Jordan Mosely [00:20:53]:
Absolutely.
Mike Allen [00:20:54]:
And I think there will be. But I don't see anyone developing as quickly as what TechMatric is doing right now. I can't wait for their DVI updates that they teased at Tectonic to be released.
Jordan Mosely [00:21:11]:
Yeah, I've heard about. I think we mentioned that, talked about it a little bit last night.
Mike Allen [00:21:14]:
So hopefully by the time we release this episode. It's live.
Jordan Mosely [00:21:17]:
It's live. That'd be sweet. I'm excited that Tectonic went well. I'm sad that I missed it, but like I told you last night, I usually film when someone's first event's a shit show and I wasn't about to be a part of that. So I was pleasantly surprised that it went off without a hitch.
Mike Allen [00:21:34]:
It was the most professionally executed trade show event I've ever been to.
Jordan Mosely [00:21:38]:
That's exciting.
Mike Allen [00:21:39]:
Counting Apex and sema.
Jordan Mosely [00:21:40]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:21:42]:
So it just shows what possible. What's possible when you go full bore on everything. And that's what they did.
Jordan Mosely [00:21:49]:
I mean, and you cheap out on one part of it and everybody knows. So yeah, it's got to be a
Mike Allen [00:21:56]:
food and beverage entertainment, logistical quality. The, the signage was on point. Nobody was lost, wondering where they needed to go.
Jordan Mosely [00:22:04]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:22:05]:
The communications were good, the sign up website was good. I mean, and all that stuff is hard to execute on for a trade show.
Jordan Mosely [00:22:15]:
I'm sure they had some counseling maybe on it, some outside.
Mike Allen [00:22:19]:
Well, I'm sure they went and Paid a pro, right?
Jordan Mosely [00:22:22]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:22:24]:
That's one of the things that we maybe can learn from is stop trying to figure out how to bootstrap everything.
Jordan Mosely [00:22:33]:
Well, that kind of segue. I was gonna say it earlier, but I guess I'll say it now. I don't understand maybe like a one shot person doing the AI stuff on their own. But like, let's stay in our own lane. Right. Let's fix cars, let's sell service, let's take care of labor and control that side of it. Like, why we're trying to burn two candles on both ends and learn how to code. And I'm gonna do my own marketing and I'm gonna get my own grass.
Mike Allen [00:22:57]:
The guys who do this all have a little touch of the tism and they just get hyper focused on something.
Jordan Mosely [00:23:01]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:23:02]:
And they're already very technically sound. Right. And they're like, oh, this is a cool new thing that I'm gonna get hyper focused on.
Jordan Mosely [00:23:08]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:23:09]:
Because that's what I do. That's why I've become an expert.
Jordan Mosely [00:23:11]:
Right. You know,
Mike Allen [00:23:15]:
not me, not me. That's what they're thinking.
Jordan Mosely [00:23:17]:
No, my adds, I'm good at about 80% of the way there. Getting anything across the finish line because I got 1900 different lines I'm running in. As I'm sure you don't experience that at all.
Mike Allen [00:23:30]:
I. I am absolutely an agent of chaos within my business. Absolutely. Because I walk in, I'm like, hey, guys, how's it going? Great to see you. High five, high five, high five. Let's change these seven things and do it totally different, starting now. Okay, I'll see you guys next week.
Jordan Mosely [00:23:43]:
Yeah. And then you pick up the broom and start sleeping in the corner and straightening up the chairs.
Mike Allen [00:23:51]:
And the guys are like, what the fuck just happened Then?
Jordan Mosely [00:23:53]:
It's noon. It's like, wow, what the hell did I do this morning? Nothing.
Mike Allen [00:23:56]:
Yeah.
Jordan Mosely [00:23:57]:
Correct add for sure.
Mike Allen [00:24:00]:
You know, I think the first step in addressing the problem is admitting that there is a problem.
Jordan Mosely [00:24:06]:
Oh. That's why we all need therapy.
Mike Allen [00:24:09]:
Oh, man. Have you seen Shop owner Therapy? Auto shop Owner Therapy?
Jordan Mosely [00:24:18]:
I haven't.
Mike Allen [00:24:18]:
It's a YouTube channel. Josh Coombs, he's a. He's a small shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He's a veteran, so he's all tatted up and got the big beard and everything, but just a good, good dude. But he's just living life. He does like a video diary every evening after he closes the shop, talking about what they're dealing with, employee struggles the vendor struggles, the customer struggles. The cars are kicking their ass.
Jordan Mosely [00:24:44]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:24:46]:
And it's like his therapy couches the Internet, and he's just. And if one of them catches the algorithm just. Right. And starts spreading and then all the comments come in and the comment. Internet comment sections are the most toxic fucking place in the world, I'm sure.
Jordan Mosely [00:25:01]:
If you want to feel bad about yourself, go read the Internet.
Mike Allen [00:25:05]:
We got somebody. Somebody left a shitty comment on a YouTube video this morning talking shit about Brian Pollock. And. And I was like, dude, don't. Don't respond to that. Just let it go, man. He's like, I can't. I can't not tell this person.
Mike Allen [00:25:24]:
I can't not tell this person that they're stupid.
Jordan Mosely [00:25:26]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always gonna be somebody smarter than you, allegedly.
Mike Allen [00:25:32]:
Yeah, they're happy to tell you about it.
Jordan Mosely [00:25:34]:
Yeah. It's those Internet keyboard warriors. I think that started back in the 90s even, or 2000s. We had, like, car groups and stuff, and we would all just talk shit to each other. Your car's slow and.
Mike Allen [00:25:46]:
Well, I mean, there was call people out. ITN was absolutely savage in that aspect of it. Yeah. It was like, hey, I got this car and this code. What do you think it is? And they would just be eviscerated because the expectation was a certain level of competency and that you've done some work already and you're not looking for a silver bullet. And they were just so fucking mean to each other.
Jordan Mosely [00:26:10]:
Yeah. But instead of a community trying to help and lend a hand, it's, well,
Mike Allen [00:26:14]:
if you came in and said, here's what I've got. Here's the test that I've done so far. Here are the results of those tests. Here's what I'm thinking next. Open to any feedback. Then it was a constructive conversation.
Jordan Mosely [00:26:25]:
Right, right, right.
Mike Allen [00:26:26]:
When it was obvious that this was not a dumb ass looking for an answer. It was a technician who's doing the work, who's looking for help. Right. So.
Jordan Mosely [00:26:35]:
Well, that's kind of like the identifix thing, right? Like, they did that for a while or didn't. Could you comment on that? I thought you could pay, like, $30 and they could tell you you could call in on. On identify.
Mike Allen [00:26:46]:
Oh, it's like, phone a friend.
Jordan Mosely [00:26:47]:
Yeah, basically. Yeah. It'll give you, like, the chart or. These are the most common issues. So we kind of go through that. If we get stuck, then I think it was like, I'll phone a friend.
Mike Allen [00:26:57]:
Like, I mean, so I think the new Altel Ultra S2 or whatever has effectively that you can hit a button and facetime with the technician. They can log into your scan tool.
Jordan Mosely [00:27:12]:
Nice.
Mike Allen [00:27:12]:
And like a master tech who's sitting in a desk somewhere and help you out.
Jordan Mosely [00:27:16]:
Well, that's a good segue. So what about. What's your thoughts on like an AI virtual, like Service Advisor? So we have these cameras here, right. So we have locations that aren't busy enough because we're model, like call it a modified version. Right. Lube and automotive. You set up a camera and then you have your service or your store manager on the loop side. Just like press play.
Jordan Mosely [00:27:38]:
And then now you're talking to another service advisor from another location that knows about cars and everything kind of gets.
Mike Allen [00:27:45]:
So it's not an AI Service Advisor, it's a remote.
Jordan Mosely [00:27:47]:
Yeah, it's a remote. Yeah. Or remote advisor. Not an AI advisor. That'd be my next question though, too. AI answering for automotive repair.
Mike Allen [00:27:56]:
Also, there's some banks that have made that switch locally for me, I think Coastal Federal Credit Union and Navy Federal Credit Union both. You go in and you go to a kiosk, and the kiosk automated services can do most of what you need. But if what you need of it is beyond what the kiosk can do on its own, and the screen goes from a prompting screen to just. You're on FaceTime with somebody and they talk you through it and, you know, they can open the window and you slide the paper through and the window closes and there's maybe 10 kiosks and there's probably two people back there, you know, working when one of the kiosks needs human, you know, and I guess that helps control payroll or control overhead in that aspect. But I personally don't like it. There will be some customers, I believe, that don't like it, but there'll be a lot of customers who are fine with it. The entire generation of kids who grew up during the pandemic who are young adults now.
Jordan Mosely [00:28:58]:
Oh, yeah.
Mike Allen [00:28:58]:
That's all they know. Interpersonal skills. Right. They would rather talk to a fucking robot than a human.
Jordan Mosely [00:29:03]:
That's true. So you think it's possible though?
Mike Allen [00:29:07]:
Yeah.
Jordan Mosely [00:29:08]:
So you have three stores. So let's say you had a guy call in sick and you have one advisor. You already have everything set up.
Mike Allen [00:29:16]:
Well, so I've. I've done that before when we were super short and I would go in and work the counter or something, which is a fucking disaster. But I can greet people and write them up and check them out. But you don't want me making the sales calls. I'll be like, yeah, you know, I call every the other storm, be like, hey, man, you know, log in, call this customer and sell this stuff because you'll do better than me. Right, right, right. So that's not like a video conference. That's just.
Jordan Mosely [00:29:43]:
Yeah. So our thought was like, have the technician or the mechanic then do the rack, attack the rack and go stuff and then put all that information in tech metric. You have your sales guy 20 miles away at another location, he's doing all the cells and then everything comes through on techmetric. Parts ordered. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:30:02]:
Easy squeezes. I don't think that's a problem at all.
Jordan Mosely [00:30:05]:
You know, anybody doing that or if anybody's out there doing that.
Mike Allen [00:30:07]:
Well, so there was a. There was a group of seven stores in my market that got bought by private equity a couple years ago. But their whole model was they had entry level, low wage personnel on the front counter, three or four for a big store that were essentially cashiers. Like cashiers at the dealership. They greeted you, took your keys, got the details, smiling faces. Hey, Billy's going to call you with the report when we know what's going on. And Billy was in the back at a desk with four monitors and all the tickets. And he was just the sales hammer.
Mike Allen [00:30:45]:
And all Billy does all day is pick up the phone and call and make sales calls. He doesn't take inbound calls at all. He's just outbound calls only.
Jordan Mosely [00:30:53]:
Interesting.
Mike Allen [00:30:55]:
And then the smiling faces at the front counter are the ones who check it out when the customer picks up. Yeah, that's an option too. You know, they had. These are stores that, you know, were probably 15, 20 bays and they'd have three counter dudes and one sales hammer.
Jordan Mosely [00:31:12]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:31:13]:
And so that worked really well for them. And private equity came in and changed it all right. There was a floor flood of resumes of dudes who had been working for that company for 15 years or suddenly looking for a new home.
Jordan Mosely [00:31:27]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:31:30]:
So I think if your customer base is used to being sold over the phone anyway, I don't see why it wouldn't work. Then the question becomes like, there was a shop in my market that tried to go 100% remote.
Jordan Mosely [00:31:49]:
How'd that work out?
Mike Allen [00:31:49]:
There was no counter person and he was living in Florida and he had customers put keys in the Dropbox and they would pick up their keys from the lockbox. And he was an early adopter and he had an AI generated face, voice. Everything that Would send videos to the customer. Like Vimeo type videos of hey, I'm your service advisor.
Jordan Mosely [00:32:14]:
And.
Mike Allen [00:32:15]:
And that was before the technology was ready for that. And it was a disaster. And you know, one star review after one star review, after one star review. Yeah, bad communication. But I don't think he backed the idea effectively. I don't think he executed well on it. Someone will do well with virtual advisors.
Jordan Mosely [00:32:35]:
Yeah, it's the execution part. Back to my other 80%. I think I can get most of the way there, but I think something that's going to be this. You have to do it 100% like all the way. You got to spend the money, 10, 20 grand, whatever it is, to get it set up, do it right, do it virtually. Have the lights, everything looks good, it's not dim and dark. We were in a 20 group for oil changes that were actively looking for new members as well. So if you have over five lube centers, we'd love to talk to you.
Jordan Mosely [00:33:10]:
One of them had they pull up and they have a kiosk, but the lady's inside the building. It's kind of like a drive through almost. She pops up on the screen, goes through all the menu items and stuff and then kind of tells you which bay to get your car in and wait and stuff like that. It was very cool. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:33:28]:
And are any of the members in that group executing on that yet?
Jordan Mosely [00:33:31]:
Well, so they got bought out by private equity. So if you're in private equity, you get bought out. You can't be in our group. Well, private. That's. Let me. Some private equities will let people be in there. We had a group that had 215 stores.
Jordan Mosely [00:33:50]:
They got bought out by a publicly traded company. So they instantly said no way.
Mike Allen [00:33:57]:
So that's a question that my 20 group process has had this conversation and I've not been a part to the outcome of the conversation. Right. Because I'm not on staff. But my trade association has also had the conversation. If we represent the independent aftermarket, how many rooftops does a company need to have before they're no longer part of the small independent aftermarket and they're just another Mavis. Whatever it is, is it get 150 stores, you probably need. You probably have all of your own training needs being met already. You already have all of your processes in place.
Mike Allen [00:34:35]:
You don't need us.
Jordan Mosely [00:34:36]:
And yeah, I think.
Mike Allen [00:34:39]:
Is it 10 stores? Is it 50? Is it?
Jordan Mosely [00:34:42]:
Yeah, that's a great question. A one shop owner has its own difficulties in a two person and then a three person, you have 10 stores that you have different, different problems. So we kind of want to have like minded and people that are dealing with the same struggles. We wouldn't have a single person or even two shops come in with, with our group just because they're having.
Mike Allen [00:35:03]:
Yeah, we're just, they're at a level
Jordan Mosely [00:35:05]:
that they're at a different level than us. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:35:06]:
You know one of the things that I've noticed when I go to trade shows and they're the dudes who have 10, 15, 20 locations. Right. They're coming to that trade show for different reasons than the dude with one or two or three. Right? Yep. The dude with one or two is coming for training and to learn to be better at how they do what they do. And the dude with 15 or 20 is already very confident in what they do. And they're coming to look for acquisition opportunities or to recruit management personnel or to meet with vendors and have high level vendor conversations.
Jordan Mosely [00:35:44]:
Yep, absolutely. That's what I do. I go there. I mean obviously I like the training stuff, that's why we're here. But yeah, looking, trying to be always one or two years ahead of where I think we should be. New software, new equipment, things like that. So I think it's important as a, as a leader of a huge company, multi shop owner to be looking 12 months, 18 months ahead.
Mike Allen [00:36:14]:
I feel like with you owning multiple lube centers and knowing the nature of the lube business, it's gotta be a good opportunity to get a confession in. Okay, when's the last time you had like a real train wreck oil out situation?
Jordan Mosely [00:36:30]:
Train wreck one like just disaster? Yeah man.
Mike Allen [00:36:34]:
Like I got a new Porsche in and we drained the transmission and double filled the oil.
Jordan Mosely [00:36:37]:
Oh, Subarus. All day long. We have big red flags, flags that pull up on Subarus now because you get a new recruit underneath the subaru and there's 19 drain plugs. One of them's definitely for the differential, not the oil. Yeah, we've bought a few differentials on those transmissions as well. So Subarus. I don't like Subarus.
Mike Allen [00:37:04]:
So if a Subaru comes over, do you gotta have one of the older guys go down in the pit or one of the more experienced?
Jordan Mosely [00:37:09]:
Yeah, that's a manager. Just raise your hand, man, I need a manager over here. Yeah, so put a manager call on that. And yeah, it's always been fun on those.
Mike Allen [00:37:20]:
What's the turnover like in the lube industry? Us young dudes and young ladies?
Jordan Mosely [00:37:25]:
Yeah, I mean it's more of an entry level stuff to get someone that may be interested in cars. So I think it's a great first step for somebody looking into getting into cars. I don't know our exact number, I should probably know that. But it's definitely higher than automotive just because the, the barrier of entry is less. If I had to guess, probably 30% probably leave. So you have your. Just at any automotive you have your core people and then you have your floaters is what I call them around it. So you're always training, always doing something, always recruiting.
Jordan Mosely [00:38:06]:
We always have ads out.
Mike Allen [00:38:07]:
So what is your onboarding and entry level training program like?
Jordan Mosely [00:38:13]:
Oh, it's fucking trash right now, is it?
Mike Allen [00:38:15]:
I was. You gotta have it on lockdown though, right?
Jordan Mosely [00:38:19]:
Yeah, I have it all on paper.
Mike Allen [00:38:19]:
You need to have it on lockdown.
Jordan Mosely [00:38:20]:
Yeah, it's all on paper. That's what working with a dashboard. So we have over 100 employees now. So it's definitely time to just again I got 19 lanes and we have district managers and we have an ops director that are over them. So they do a great job. They've all been in the industry for 20 plus years. So they do a great job at hands on training. I just want to be more strict about it.
Jordan Mosely [00:38:46]:
This is the process. So that is my six month project.
Mike Allen [00:38:53]:
Onboarding process is something that I have wanted to develop for all the years and failed to develop for an equal length of time.
Jordan Mosely [00:39:03]:
Yeah, it's difficult. It's always ever evolving. I think you and I probably are the same on that. It's like you get it there and then you read over it again and then you change it again and then you're just always tweaking something and I'm very bad about that. So I think just need to just get it all out there and then just let it run its course and then make the changes. I think that should go with anything.
Mike Allen [00:39:25]:
So you know 90% and launched is better than perfect. But never.
Jordan Mosely [00:39:31]:
Yeah, never launched. Yeah, yeah. Failure to launch. Yeah, yeah. Because. And even a product with, with a vendor or something like you just got to get it out there. Like you could be thinking this is what the market wants but it's completely different. And I think it's important just to throw it out there, do a beta test or something.
Jordan Mosely [00:39:52]:
Just get it out there and get some feedback versus your internal own feedback. That doesn't make any sense.
Mike Allen [00:39:57]:
Yeah, for sure. So what's, what's 26, 27, 28 look like for business?
Jordan Mosely [00:40:05]:
More acquisitions. Hopefully oil prices go back down and oil price Changes.
Mike Allen [00:40:10]:
Oil prices will come down before the election because I don't think we're going to have midterms and have $5 gas. That's.
Jordan Mosely [00:40:16]:
Well, we definitely need gas to go down for summertime because that's obviously our haymaking season for all of us. So people won't be traveling as much if gas is five, six, eight dollars a gallon. So hopefully that happens in the next couple months. Yeah, just actively just getting better 1% a day. That's what I tell my guys. Just 1% better every day. And if you can execute that and actually live it and breathe it, I mean, you're unstoppable. I think probably get another store or two.
Mike Allen [00:40:47]:
Are you looking for more lube centers or more auto or more?
Jordan Mosely [00:40:50]:
Yeah, just more hybrids or lube centers. Straight lube centers. We buy on locations. We're in the Dallas Fort Worth market heavily. And I would say I think we're probably the largest independent lube owner.
Mike Allen [00:41:05]:
What's the name of your business?
Jordan Mosely [00:41:06]:
It's quick car lube and tune. So some of them are franchises, some of them are not. We are not. We're independently. So, yeah, it's been a good business.
Mike Allen [00:41:17]:
So if you're in the Dallas Fort Worth area and you've got a lube center and you're looking for a way out, call that guy.
Jordan Mosely [00:41:22]:
Call me. I will write you a check tomorrow.
Mike Allen [00:41:26]:
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on, dude.
Jordan Mosely [00:41:28]:
Yeah, thank you.
Mike Allen [00:41:29]:
Appreciate it. We'll get back down to class and try to pick up some more nuggets.
Jordan Mosely [00:41:32]:
Always pick up a nugget.
Mike Allen [00:41:34]:
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 mikeonfessionsofashopowner.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.