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My name is Jeff, and I'd like to welcome you on a journey of reflection and insight into the tolls and triumphs of a career in automotive repair.
After more than 20 years of skinned knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspective and hear other people's thoughts about our industry.
So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.
Eric the Car Guy [00:00:00]:
I can be salty if I'm working hard and not being paid. Right. I don't think that that's a solution. And as far as whether flat rate has anything to do with that or not, I don't think it does.
Jeff Compton [00:00:15]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:00:16]:
I think either way, if you're new, you're going to have trouble, you know, figuring it out. But I also think you should be making the effort. I don't think you should be standing there on your phone for half an hour for doing whatever. If you're looking up how to fix something, if you're watching Eric the Car Guy videos, great. But if you're not doing your job and you're there, do the job. And that's the business. That's what I think that you forget as a technician is that it's a business.
Jeff Compton [00:00:42]:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic Podcast. It's a little noisy here this morning. We're at Apex SEMA in Las Vegas, 2025. It's my birthday, so please feel free to send cake, cards, presence, money, whatever you have. Everybody give a little bit. And I'm sitting here with somebody that I just happened to bump into who has been a big, big influence, I think, a lot of our careers, a lot of our lives. And to say that he needs no introduction is probably. Yeah, you can almost say that.
Jeff Compton [00:01:16]:
But he. I'll introduce him nonetheless. So I'm gonna say I'm sitting here with Mr. Eric Cook, and when you hear his voice, you're gonna know that I'm speaking with Eric the car guy.
Eric the Car Guy [00:01:25]:
Greetings, yours or listeners.
Jeff Compton [00:01:27]:
There it is.
Eric the Car Guy [00:01:28]:
Greetings, listeners.
Jeff Compton [00:01:29]:
So I bumped into you, I don't know, an hour and a bit ago, and I was like, eric. And I flagged him down because he was walking around kind of catching footage for his B rolls. And. And then I had a, you know, rather long conversation about who I am and. And he hadn't heard the podcast before, which is cool.
Eric the Car Guy [00:01:44]:
I will now.
Jeff Compton [00:01:45]:
Yeah. But I think he's gonna listen. And you're a guy that, like, I have. I said to you, and he's got an amazing beard. For the people that are only listening. I've watched and it's. I can remember when it wasn't quite so gray. Eric.
Eric the Car Guy [00:01:58]:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeff Compton [00:01:59]:
Yeah. So how.
Eric the Car Guy [00:02:00]:
Wasn't even there. Yeah. It started out as a goatee, and then the rest filled in later.
Jeff Compton [00:02:05]:
I can remember one of your first episodes was ever was you were doing a wheel bearing in a. In an old school Honda. It's A trapped rotor. That's how far back we're going, like 14, 15 years. So, I mean, you've been around a long, long time.
Eric the Car Guy [00:02:17]:
I have, yeah. I'm still here now.
Jeff Compton [00:02:19]:
How does that feel?
Eric the Car Guy [00:02:21]:
It's. It's been a wild ride. You know, it hasn't been smooth sailing the whole time, but I'm certainly. Let's put it this way, this is the best job I've ever had, if we want to call it that. Just because of the diversity, because of the people I get to meet, the people I get to interact with, and the people that I know that happen to. I'm not sure he was. I was getting instructions off camera, so I'm sorry about that. I'm not very good at dividing my attention.
Eric the Car Guy [00:02:51]:
Where was I?
Jeff Compton [00:02:52]:
Well, you're talking about the people you met through.
Eric the Car Guy [00:02:54]:
Oh, yes, yes. I think in. In my view, in my world, people are currency, and I consider that of more value than. Than money in many ways, because I found that there are many times where I've. I've needed something, and money wasn't necessarily the answer. Maybe somebody I knew or something that they knew that I could glean from them. I could say, oh, hey, you know, do you know this? Or do you know so and so? Or can you help me get this? And that is value to me.
Jeff Compton [00:03:22]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:03:22]:
As. As far as my world is concerned. I don't. I don't know. I never really went after the shiny red ball kind of thing. Yeah, I. I always felt uncomfortable in a way, in that world, because I.
Jeff Compton [00:03:34]:
Can say that with you, like, as long as I've known you. So we kind of know your. Kind of share a little bit of your story. You were a guy that worked at a Honda dealer.
Eric the Car Guy [00:03:42]:
Acura, actually.
Jeff Compton [00:03:42]:
Accurate. Okay, sorry.
Eric the Car Guy [00:03:44]:
Yes. It was almost the same thing. I was an Acura master technician. Yeah. In fact, I achieved that status about two weeks before I was fired.
Jeff Compton [00:03:52]:
And the fire story is kind of always. Because it kind of delves into what we talk a lot in the podcast about the culture of some shops. And I kind of know the story because I can remember it, but there was somebody in the shop that was kind of like the golden child, you know, kind of allowed more leeway. Different. Different sets of rules necessarily. And you kind of clash with that.
Eric the Car Guy [00:04:14]:
No. Well, actually, the reason I was fired was because I aligned myself with the wrong person. And the way it all went down specifically was this person was actually the parts manager.
Jeff Compton [00:04:25]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:04:26]:
And being a technician in a. In a dealership, let's just say sidewalk Is frowned upon.
Jeff Compton [00:04:31]:
Yes.
Eric the Car Guy [00:04:31]:
However, I was good friends with this parts manager and say people would come in to buy parts from them, and they would say, hey, are there any mechanics out there that do side work that can help me install said parts? And given that he and I were friends, I sort of got preferential treatment in that regard. Plus, I had a shop of my own. My original shop that you saw those videos from was my side workshop. That was how I set it up. In fact, I owned that building at that time and rented it. Had two apartments and a beauty salon in the front. So it was like. And it.
Eric the Car Guy [00:04:58]:
I also hear that it was the original post office for Westwood in Cincinnati. That was there. It was dedicated by Ulysses s. Grant in 1845. Wow. That's what I was told. That's what I was told. Now, whether or not that was true or not, I'm not sure.
Eric the Car Guy [00:05:11]:
But anyhow, where were we?
Jeff Compton [00:05:13]:
So you were talking about you were doing side work for this. This customer referrals.
Eric the Car Guy [00:05:18]:
Yes. Anyway, on this particular occasion, there was a woman who had a Legend coupe, is what it was, if I remember correctly. And I'd always had a soft spot for legend coupes because they just. The lines and everything. And. And I think this one was a manual transmission as well. So it was. I have to admit that I was.
Eric the Car Guy [00:05:36]:
I was pretty excited about the car, but this was one of those cars that you really don't want that actually probably should have been in a salvage yard kind of a thing. She brought it in, and not only was the engine having issues, but the transmission was having issues. She needed a new car. Yeah. Okay. She didn't need this thing fixed anyhow. At the time, our work schedule, we were working and we worked on a team system, and there were two other people on my team. One of them worked on an Acura Vigor, and he did a valve adjustment or some.
Eric the Car Guy [00:06:04]:
No, actually, he did oil seals for the spark plug welds. So he had to take the whole cam cage off and he put it back on. Somewhere in there, one of those rocker arms wasn't aligned properly. And the sad thing is, is that engine ended up dropping a valve because of that.
Jeff Compton [00:06:18]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:06:18]:
And. And it was really sad because they were a good customer. In fact, they had bought that car new in, like, the mid-90s or whatever, and this is, like, early 2000s. So they were a good customer, and we just destroyed their engine. We were in a bad place. I advocated. I said, you know what? Why don't we just take them over to the new car department and offer them a killer deal on a new car. And we'll just write this thing off.
Eric the Car Guy [00:06:40]:
But somewhere along the line, somebody decided that they wanted to repair this vehicle, which needed an engine. The parts department ordered the engine from a salvage yard. It showed up and was sitting on the floor. The car with the blown engine had been sitting outside for some time during this period is when the legend coupe lady came along. And I said, aha, well, okay, I should actually back up. So the engine's there, the car is there. And then they suddenly decided to sell the guy a new car.
Jeff Compton [00:07:06]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:07:06]:
Instead of that. So now we've got an engine and a car that are sitting there. And to me, I'm seeing a solution to a problem that the parts guy brought me. I'll come in, I'll put the engine in the car. I even involved the dealership with it. I said, I'll come in on a Saturday. I'll do my thing on a Saturday. You don't have to pay me or anything.
Eric the Car Guy [00:07:23]:
I'll put this engine in. I was going to end up with a legend coupe and a few hundred dollars, or I think what it was like. I said I really wanted the legend coupe. Anyhow. I did the work, put it all together. The used car department of the dealership sold that car. They turned around, sold that car to her. What I didn't know is that the engine was on a parts bill that was not a used car bill.
Eric the Car Guy [00:07:44]:
So the used car department did not absorb the cost of that engine.
Jeff Compton [00:07:47]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:07:48]:
What had happened was, unbeknownst to me, is that parts manager basically said that that engine was paid for when she came in to pay for it. But the dealership never saw that money, and it was about $900. So he pocketed the money for the engine and rather than paying the dealership, and then he hid it in the paperwork. Halloween. On Halloween, I was fired. So every Halloween, I have this memory, 2007, of walking in that morning, and they're like, come into the office, and just because I was affiliated with the whole situation, they fired me and him.
Jeff Compton [00:08:19]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:08:19]:
So it was a managerial kind of thing. It wasn't that I was causing trouble or anything like that. It was like, $900 is missing. You two are working together on this. You're both gone. So it was unceremonious at best. So I. I was like, no, I'm.
Eric the Car Guy [00:08:34]:
I'm. I'm out. I'm not going to do this. Then I ended up at. At the other Acura dealership in the city and worked there for a while. But the whole time I'm thinking, this sucks, because I had built up my reputation at the original dealership. And if you're working as a flat rate technician, you know, you got to know your service writers, you got to know your parts guys, you gotta, you gotta know everybody so that you can keep things moving along during the day. Yep, I know.
Eric the Car Guy [00:08:56]:
I met a really close friend of mine there, so I did walk away with that. But I spent my time reading books on how to edit video. That whole time I was there, I was teaching myself how to edit video. And this was back before, like it was easy.
Jeff Compton [00:09:09]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:09:10]:
Anyway, and it came to a point where I started moonlighting and doing wedding videography and corporate work and other things. I started my own production company on the side. I was more interested in that than doing any mechanic work because I felt like I would. Pretty screwed over from the past experience.
Jeff Compton [00:09:25]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:09:26]:
So I worked there for a number of years and. Well, actually not a number of years, it was like two years. And one day came where I could either take the day off and make $800 or go to work and maybe make 50 after sitting there all day waiting for the next oil change to come in. Because going back to the whole flat rate thing, I wasn't necessarily in the rotation or whatever and I didn't get along with one of the service writers. It was. It was not a good situation, just bad. So I came in the day after taking the day off to do my video work. And I'd asked ahead of time, can I take the day off? And they never gave me a definitive answer until the day after when they fired me.
Jeff Compton [00:09:59]:
Yeah, which. Well, the answer was no.
Eric the Car Guy [00:10:02]:
Which, yeah, honestly was a good thing because at that time I went bankrupt. I was also, like, I said, I own that building. That building went into foreclosure, so I wasn't able to cover my bills. And I had a series of bad tenants that also drained my bank account and everything. So my credit cards were maxed out. I had no money, I had no job, I had nothing. So when I started Eric the car guy, that's where it was. It was an act of desperation.
Eric the Car Guy [00:10:23]:
I said, okay, well, I've got nothing to lose. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Just like the song says, right. So I said, well, I'm going to. I'm going to embrace that. And then I threw myself into making these videos. I said, you know what? Screw this whole industry. I'm going to give up all the secrets.
Eric the Car Guy [00:10:39]:
I'm Going to give away all the tricks, I'm going to give away all the stuff that's been making me and the rest of us money all this time. And if that helps people and they're able to game the system and not have to deal with that, that's what I want. That's my revenge. My revenge is basically making it so the customer now has the power in a dealership or whoever doesn't.
Jeff Compton [00:10:58]:
And I could totally back then relate to where you're coming from because I was in a very similar situation where I had been, you know, terminated from my dealer job. My first main dealer job that I absolutely adored because I was the quote, unquote, I was the goal behind Fixer because I was an hourly tech. But I was passed over for a pay raise, passed over for opportunity because I was just a straight time guy. And they looked at me as like. So I immediately resonated so much what you had done with like, yeah, I get it. I'm gonna start letting people in on know on how actually I am paid and how we're paid and how little we take versus what they get. And, and I could totally. You were like somebody that was like, okay, he gets it, you know, because a lot of people out there were like, you were showing how to fix things.
Jeff Compton [00:11:43]:
But you're also talking about the industry and its infancy of what now it's very invoked to talk about. But back then there was no other technicians that were talking about it the way you had a platform going. They treat us like dogs some days, you know. And so I really, I really appreciated you back then, what you were doing. And you know, it took guts. It took a place of, I think, I believe sometimes in divine intervention. And you know, something just will fall into your lap when it's supposed to. You don't look back and have any regrets of that happening.
Eric the Car Guy [00:12:14]:
I look back and say, how fortunate was it that I taught myself video production? How fortunate was it that I was familiar with the camera? Frankly, I never wanted to be in front of the camera ever. That was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to record these things, but I couldn't have anybody else's hands or something like that. So I had to be that personality that I created called Eric the car guy. And I think anybody that spends time in front of a camera, yes, it's authentic, but it's still a performance, you know what I'm saying? So it's, it's different when you turn the camera on. I just try it yourself. Just sit there with Your phone and try to say, hey, and try. Just try to talk for a minute.
Jeff Compton [00:12:46]:
Oh, it's still hard for me.
Eric the Car Guy [00:12:47]:
It's brutal. Yeah. Sometimes I do 20, 25 takes. Point is, I, I pushed through that, the. That I was fortunate enough to have the equipment, like through the bankruptcy and everything. I. I filed 13 instead of chapter seven. So I was able to keep my camera equipment and everything.
Eric the Car Guy [00:13:01]:
And I used said camera equipment to start Eric the car guy and then continue my video production business on the side a little bit at the same time. So I was still taking in some video jobs. I was. Some of that work that I was doing that you were seeing in the videos, I was getting paid for some of it, not all of it, but I just. Just being scrappy, anything I could find, anything I could bring in.
Jeff Compton [00:13:20]:
What was the first thing that you remember doing that you said this might be an avenue to. To sustainability?
Eric the Car Guy [00:13:27]:
It was, it was right from the get, Right. Like I sat. I sat down with a notebook.
Jeff Compton [00:13:31]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [00:13:32]:
And I came up with the whole concept and I said, okay, well, this is what I'm going to do. Because I'd been in video production. I know if you go in with a plan, you're much better off than when you just go in blind and you just try to pick up the pieces in the edit bay. But if you have a plan going in, then you can stay focused on task and you're much more likely to have that outcome you're looking for at the end. So I had that going in and I said, okay, it's going to be how to auto repair. And again, I was going to focus on all those things that, you know, the way I could do a timing belt in 40 minutes. That bill's four hours.
Jeff Compton [00:14:01]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:14:01]:
Kind of thing. This is how you do it. These are the steps. These are the things that I learned over doing like a few hundred of these things. Now, you take that knowledge and you just run with it and don't go to the dealership and pay those jerks that fired me. Just, here you go.
Jeff Compton [00:14:15]:
Now you and you have a tie into somebody that I. I said in this morning's episode has probably left the biggest footprint in the industry that we've seen. And that's Mr. Paul Danner, a friend of mine. You have a tie in with him. You.
Eric the Car Guy [00:14:29]:
I wasn't a student of his. We both went to the same school.
Jeff Compton [00:14:31]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:14:31]:
In fact, he was a student that graduated two years before me.
Jeff Compton [00:14:34]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [00:14:35]:
So we went there during the same time. So I wasn't his student. But I believe I knew his brother more than him.
Jeff Compton [00:14:41]:
We didn't.
Eric the Car Guy [00:14:41]:
We weren't in the same circles at that time.
Jeff Compton [00:14:43]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [00:14:44]:
But I do distinctly remember, I think it was like a 66 Nova or Chevy 2, I guess it would have been, that they had. That they brought in and had like, 1101 compression. And that thing just sounded amazing when it pulled into the shop.
Jeff Compton [00:14:55]:
I think that engine is now in the car that's still sitting in James's shop that you see in some of the videos of Nova pushed off in the corner.
Eric the Car Guy [00:15:02]:
I just. I distinctly remember just the Danners being involved with, like, that killer Chevy 2 or something like that. That was about as much as I knew of him until after the fact when our alma mater, Rosedale Technical Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they reached out to me and wanted to do some promotional stuff. And then that's when we reconnected and I found out more about what he did. And, you know, and I remember watching.
Jeff Compton [00:15:21]:
That video and I'm like, this is the coolest thing, because I was one of the first people that I can remember ever. And you know how the beauty of the algorithm was back then. Right. We talked this morning about, like.
Eric the Car Guy [00:15:31]:
Well, they had a page for automotive.
Jeff Compton [00:15:33]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:15:33]:
Like, you could go to YouTube and there was an automotive page that you could go to and find your favorite automotive YouTubers. It wasn't any algorithm kind of thing. It was just like, there's a handful of us out there doing it.
Jeff Compton [00:15:41]:
Yeah. And like, we talked this morning. If it hadn't been for you, I would have never known about real fixes real fast. You know, another person that doesn't get the exposure or I agree that he should because he's been around a long time and taught a lot of people and taught them from a level of, like, he's never wavered in the expertise. It's always been professional right from jump. You know what I mean? He is a fantastic instructor.
Eric the Car Guy [00:16:06]:
There's a. There's a thing, though. There's. There's being a fantastic instructor and there's engaging an audience. And unfortunately, those two things don't necessarily align all the time. And I think that's why they're lesser known.
Jeff Compton [00:16:16]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:16:16]:
Not because their. Their material is not good in any way, shape or form.
Jeff Compton [00:16:19]:
Form.
Eric the Car Guy [00:16:20]:
It's just that it doesn't hook an audience in the same way that some things do. And again, going back to when I said that Eric the car guy, in some senses is a character that's part of that whole thing. And I have that in my mind. And I have to keep that in mind because that's part of what keeps people engaged in what I'm doing. And it doesn't make what anybody else is doing any less at all. They're just more skilled at other things than presenting in front of a camera, which, as I mentioned, is not what people think. Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:16:46]:
What I've always admired about you is it's never been like you immediately hear your name and know a product that you're aligned with. You know what I mean? You've never written the term sellout. I don't like that. But I mean, like, I. When people think of you, they don't think of you and immediately think to a particular brand other than the brand you built. That's. That's a key thing. Right.
Jeff Compton [00:17:04]:
Brian's mobile one is another one that is excellent.
Eric the Car Guy [00:17:07]:
Like that great guy.
Jeff Compton [00:17:08]:
Like another one of my favorite human beings watching forever.
Eric the Car Guy [00:17:11]:
Yes.
Jeff Compton [00:17:11]:
And he.
Eric the Car Guy [00:17:12]:
He was doing it before me, actually. If I'm. If I'm not mistaken, he was posting Subaru videos before I started posting my.
Jeff Compton [00:17:17]:
Videos and Subaru videos. And then I would. I would look at the stuff that. He was the first guy that I ever saw that was so uber organized about his bolt. Like, it was incredible. Bolts, nuts. Like, it was.
Eric the Car Guy [00:17:28]:
That's. That's Brian. That's what is also Brian is he skis down mountains shirtless in a Viking hat. Yeah, well, he did it one time. Anyway, that's what got me about Brian. I'm like, that's badass.
Jeff Compton [00:17:38]:
Yeah, he's a guy. Another one that is this, like, completely. I'm gonna make my own way. Oh, you know, we.
Eric the Car Guy [00:17:45]:
We had a few years back, this thing put together by a company called Garage Monkey. It was called Road to Sema. And it's interesting because they have that this very year, Road to Sema. And they've taken a bunch of influencers and that kind of thing. But before their Road to Sema, we actually had. It was me, Chris Fix Engineering explained Homo mechanic, Busted knuckle films, Bleepin Jeep. I think Saab. Kyle was in there too.
Eric the Car Guy [00:18:07]:
Yeah, and Rob Dahn was also in there. But anyway, Dodge outfitted us with a bunch of really great cars to drive from LA to Las Vegas. And that's. I don't know where a lot of those friendships and things were forged in a way through that, Through. Through that experience. And the funny thing was, is none of us really knew what was expected of us. It was before all this. So we're just like, oh, we got a bunch.
Eric the Car Guy [00:18:31]:
We got Hellcats, we got, you know, Fiat 500s and stuff. Let's just go have some fun in some mountain roads in California. I can do this. But as far as filming, somebody else should handle that. Yeah, I need to watch the road.
Jeff Compton [00:18:44]:
So what, like, as you, as you. What was the end goal? Not for the channel, but what did you see yourself as? Like, this amount of automotive content will be what I'm trying to get through to people. Like, did you. Did you do, like, when somebody calls you up, says, eric, I have this car and it needs this repair. Did you. Did that weigh into what you wanted to put out?
Eric the Car Guy [00:19:07]:
Well, that was everything that I put out. Like, initially, whatever I was repairing is what came out.
Jeff Compton [00:19:12]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:19:12]:
And it was really frustrating because people would be like, oh, can you do this on this car? And I'm thinking, I'd love to, but in order for that to happen, I need that car to come in with that problem and I need time to film it. So it just became evident really early on that I was never going to be able to cover the amount of material that needed to be covered out there. So I made friends with other people that were making other content and I helped promote them. So in my mind I was like, okay, I can't help you, but this person can.
Jeff Compton [00:19:37]:
Right?
Eric the Car Guy [00:19:37]:
You know, so if nothing else, I can become a hub and say, okay, you go here. So then I spent a whole lot of time developing my website because the other thing I began to notice was the more popular I became, the more people reached out with questions of their own about, you know, my car is doing this or that. I spent two years writing articles for my website about how to solve a no start problem, how to deal with an overheat, and, you know, added all the videos and everything that I had with it and made these really concise, tight articles and basically built my website around that whole thing, right? As a way for me to copy and paste a response to all these emails that said, okay, I can't answer this right now, but here you go, you go to the website. I've done this stuff and a lot of this stuff is pretty cool, cut and dark, cut and dried, as far as what you're dealing with. So I. And then as far as producing content, which I believe was your original question, like, what was the goal? My goal was just try to hang on by my fingernails because it got to a point, especially after I started the ETC1 channel, which was in 2010. So I started Eric the Car Guy in 2009. I started ETC1 in 2010.
Eric the Car Guy [00:20:41]:
Mainly because I realized that there was another voice there to Eric the Car Guy besides just the repair stuff, as you mentioned earlier, the connection to technicians and other DIYers and things like that. And I didn't want to muddy the waters of Eric the Car Guy with that. I thought, Eric the Car guy should stay as a repair channel. And then I could talk about stuff on etc1. So then I started doing that and then I came up with the idea, well, if I, if I produce exclusive content for members of my website, I can gain another source of income. So I started that. So here I am on a weekly basis producing videos for Eric the car guy, etcg1 and anything I could to try to make premium content as well. And I was on that hamster wheel for I don't know how many years, but it literally broke me.
Eric the Car Guy [00:21:24]:
It literally came to a point to where I was sitting at the keyboard and I just could not edit another frame of video. I just couldn't. I physically could not do it. It was like, I quit. I cannot do this. So I, interestingly enough is, it was about that time that I lost my shop.
Jeff Compton [00:21:42]:
Okay?
Eric the Car Guy [00:21:43]:
So losing my shop gave me an excuse to sort of step back a little bit, collect myself. I actually spent some time in therapy about two years to try and get it all sorted out. And this is all on me. It wasn't the situation where, you know, the videos I was making or any of that. It was me working myself to that point, me imposing those deadlines, me doing those things that put me in that position and recognizing that helps me stay away from it now. But I didn't see it at that time. To me, I saw if the harder I work, the more results I'm going to get for it. Which was wrong thinking sometimes it's, yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:22:17]:
It takes drive, but sometimes the smarter work is what is gives the longevity, right? There's hustle, there's muscle, and then there's.
Eric the Car Guy [00:22:25]:
You know, going back to the plan. I didn't have one. You asked me if I had a plan for the videos. At the end of the day, I didn't have a plan. I just started producing content. It happened to take off and I happened to ride that wave as far as I could because I was like, this keeps me from a real job. I'm going to keep doing this as much as I possibly can. In addition to all that, you get this fire hose of opportunities that comes your way.
Eric the Car Guy [00:22:46]:
And I was one of the first people, first channels to experience that because companies were not used to doing YouTube or any kind of social media. So they would come to me early on, and neither one of us knew what we were doing.
Jeff Compton [00:22:58]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:22:58]:
So we were trying to figure it all out. And in addition to me trying to produce all the content I was trying to produce, here I am trying to make additional income through all these other opportunities that are coming in, trying to conform to what they need. So I pulled myself in ten different directions. Yeah. And if I'm to put any advice out there for my story, I would definitely say have a plan. Have a plan of what you're looking for, and I think you'll have a much better outcome than just trying to keep up with what's there.
Jeff Compton [00:23:26]:
I don't want to lift up a band aid or poke anything too sensitive, but to lose the shop. Can you kind of share what happened there and why?
Eric the Car Guy [00:23:32]:
Oh, yeah, that was. That was a complete poop show.
Jeff Compton [00:23:36]:
So I love your. How frank you are. I got to appreciate that.
Eric the Car Guy [00:23:40]:
Really. Well, it's. I. Why not be direct, you know? Anyhow, so I was renting that shop, and I was actually in pretty tight with the owner of it who had moved to Florida. In fact, he was a diesel mechanic most of his life, and he owned a diesel shop, and he was wore out, ready to move to Florida. I was giving him rent money every month, no problem. He. I never missed a rent payment ever, so he never bothered me.
Eric the Car Guy [00:24:03]:
Nothing.
Jeff Compton [00:24:03]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:24:04]:
Well, funny thing is, is there's a guy that owns a used car lot and some other things in my. My world in. And, yeah, we'll call it Westchester area in. In Ohio. Anyway, he bought the building that was actually next to mine. So it was. It was a place where they serviced tractor trailers and things like that. And he was looking to start a business of servicing tractor trailers in addition to his used car business.
Eric the Car Guy [00:24:30]:
And he's gonna make more money. Well, he got there and I remember him coming over to me one day and saying, you know, how tall are the doors on your. On your shop? I'm like, I think they're 16 foot or whatever. He's like, huh. I was over here measuring and stuff like that. And the reason he was doing it is because when he bought the building next door, he didn't realize he couldn't fit a tractor trailer inside the building. So he started very good planning again. You got to have a plan.
Eric the Car Guy [00:24:54]:
Amen. So he looks at my space, and MySpace apparently was the only space that he could use for that and asked me to sublet at that time. I'm like, dude, look around. There's no place you're going to pull a tractor trailer in here while I'm working and I do video production. So I'm not going to have your. Your working on the background of my stuff. It's just not going to happen. Wasn't like a few weeks or a month later, I get a knock on the door and it's an appraiser coming in to take photographs.
Eric the Car Guy [00:25:16]:
So nobody told me anything. I found out when the appraiser came to take pictures of the place that it was sold, and I was like, oh, okay, you're going to be like that. And to back this up even further, the guy that owns the used car lot, one of those opportunities that I had coming to SEMA one year is I got involved with a company that did cabin air filters.
Jeff Compton [00:25:34]:
Okay?
Eric the Car Guy [00:25:34]:
I produced 30 cabin air filter videos, 30 cabin air filter installation videos at his used car lot for of charge to him. I said, all I need is the vehicles. Because I thought to myself, where am I going to find 30 vehicles? So I went to a local used car lot, found him, like, this is long before this ever happened. Found him and said, hey, man, I'll give you a bunch of free cabin air filters if you let me film here. He said, okay. So you'd think with a guy like that, we had that kind of rapport. He would at least say, oh, dude, by the way, I bought the building. Yeah, none of that.
Eric the Car Guy [00:26:02]:
So it gets worse. I said, all right, well, I need to find a new space. I went literally up the street, around the corner, and there was an industrial park kind of thing that you can rent a shop at or something like that. And I found a space that I thought would be perfect. It was literally not a few tenths of a mile from my original shop. I was like, could it be better? But it wasn't available at that time. I had to wait a couple months. So those couple months went by and I go in to sign a lease.
Eric the Car Guy [00:26:28]:
And he's like, oh, by the way, the place that I showed you that I was going to rent you is no longer available. I'm going to rent you this place instead. And the place that he was going to rent me was the worst place in the entire complex. Not only did it have like a split wall, so like one wall went to the other unit, but that other unit had the breaker box in it. That other unit had the thermostat in it. And that belonged to his landscaping people that took care of the landscaping for around the whole place and all that. So I'M thinking, okay, they're going to have landscaping equipment next door, you know, really loud equipment.
Jeff Compton [00:27:01]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:27:01]:
If you've ever heard lawnmowers, they're pretty loud. They don't really work well with video production, anything like that. Not that they'd be. Well, I don't know what they'd be doing, frankly. The space was barely big enough to fit anything into, including all my tools and all that. And I said, dude, I'm out. Well, actually, I started asking him some questions, and then he got in my face about it because I'm like, okay, the lease says that you're going to jack my rent up like 2% every year. Like, how does.
Eric the Car Guy [00:27:22]:
How's that going to work? You know, where's that going to come in? And all these other things. I think he was just upset by the fact that I was upset with him because he wasn't going to give me what I'd asked for or what I thought I was to going. Getting. Anyway, that whole thing fell through and then I moved into storage instead because at that point I was like, you know what? I give up. I. I didn't have time. I didn't have any more time. I needed to move out.
Jeff Compton [00:27:41]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:27:41]:
So everything went into storage at that point. And yeah, it was hard. It was really, really hard.
Jeff Compton [00:27:46]:
And you just stuck to do production on other things that wasn't your.
Eric the Car Guy [00:27:50]:
Well, again, again, just before this, I. I was at the computer and I couldn't do it anymore. I. I literally stopped. I froze. I was just like, I cannot do this. And it was. It was hard.
Eric the Car Guy [00:28:01]:
It was really difficult to deal with. You know, my whole life I'd been hard work, solved all my problems. Yeah, you know, I just. Work harder. What's your problem? Work harder. Well, that was not my problem. Yeah, my problems were with me that, you know, I'd been ignoring most of my life. And here I am putting myself in a position to where it's all got to come to a head.
Eric the Car Guy [00:28:20]:
It's all got to be out in the open. So I think in some ways we're our own worst enemies. At least I have been my own worst enemy. But I'd like to think that I've learned some things from that. And I'd like to think going forward, I'll. I'll do a better job.
Jeff Compton [00:28:32]:
Well, I think by nature we're fixers. We believe that it's the same thing. Like it. It. And I. I equate it to. I had a guest, we talked about, like, the dealership put this goal on them if they hit. I think it was like 240 hours in the month.
Jeff Compton [00:28:46]:
They bonused up pretty high.
Eric the Car Guy [00:28:47]:
That's a lot.
Jeff Compton [00:28:48]:
So he put himself into this like where I'm going to, I'm going to hit this metric. Unfortunately, I also have seven days booked off that month for other things. So I'm still going to try and hit it. And I'm like, dude, Curtis, Curtis is his name. I can't see that happening for you, man. He's like, no, some days like I can hit over 20. I know, but how many times do you hit 20 consecutively? Well, not that many and, but he just was like, I'm going to knuckle down and do this. And I think that's, that says a lot about where we think we're because we're fixers.
Jeff Compton [00:29:15]:
But then the flat rate mentality mechanic is like if I could just hustle, man, I don't eat, I come in early, I stay late, I can fix this problem. Right. Whether it's I need to pay my rent, my car blew an engine, I need to buy an engine, I can fix this by just working harder. And life doesn't necessarily work that way unfortunately as, as it is.
Eric the Car Guy [00:29:35]:
Well, at least in my case it was things that I wasn't necessarily aware of or I was ignoring or putting off or just not paying attention to. So the signs may have been there, but I was ignoring them in favor of, like you said, harder work. And I think that as you mentioned comes from being a quote unquote fixer and thinking that I can fix anything. Well, it's, it's not necessarily the case and I think it's pretty humbling when you find that when you, when you hit that wall, you realize that, you know, you're not all that.
Jeff Compton [00:30:02]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:30:02]:
And that you know, you're flawed and fragile and you probably need some work.
Jeff Compton [00:30:07]:
So what's been kind of this, this trajectory moving forward, what, what kind of kicked it start, kick started it back for you to, to you know, feel revitalized, feel ready to go again?
Eric the Car Guy [00:30:20]:
I was broke.
Jeff Compton [00:30:21]:
Okay. Desperation. Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:30:24]:
Once again coming back to the original theme. That's what started it to begin with. So then I came back to it because if you don't post videos to your channel for three years, your income is going to go away.
Jeff Compton [00:30:34]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:30:34]:
And it's going to be hard to get back, I'll tell you that right now. But I'm just happy to have the space, I'm happy to have the opportunity and I'm happy to be here because not everybody gets to be where I'm at. Not everybody gets to be the success that I've become.
Jeff Compton [00:30:50]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:30:51]:
And that says something to me. You know, no matter what, they can take away my shop, but that's not going away.
Jeff Compton [00:30:57]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:30:57]:
You know, that, that part of me, that work that I've done is never going away. And people are still watching those videos and still being helped by those videos. People are still being helped by my website. People still tell me they're inspired by that stuff that I did years ago. And you know what? That's enough for me.
Jeff Compton [00:31:09]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:31:09]:
You know, if. If that's where I am and I, And I plateau now and the stuff that I'm producing now doesn't, you know, do what it used to, which I don't know what to expect, frankly, that won't matter nearly as much as the fact that I'm out there doing it. And if I'm able to pay my bills, I'm good, I'm good. I don't need anything.
Jeff Compton [00:31:24]:
Was there a big fallout when you kind of went away and just said, okay, I'm going to step away from this? Did you get a lot of people that were like, hey, you owe us this, or hey, waited. Wait a. Leave us in the, in the high and dry.
Eric the Car Guy [00:31:35]:
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how great my fans are. Because they did not.
Jeff Compton [00:31:40]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [00:31:40]:
And anybody that did was not a fan. And what I find with those quote unquote haters you find in the comments, if you just ask the question, like, where are you coming from, Man.
Jeff Compton [00:31:50]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:31:50]:
Or woman, or whatever, I think you find that there's some pain or some. Something inside of them that they're projecting onto that question or that statement that has absolutely nothing to do with you. So if you talk about developing a thick skin, like you have trouble doing that.
Jeff Compton [00:32:04]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:32:04]:
The way I do that is I say to myself, that person is probably hurting. That person has probably got a crap life and I'm the only outlet they have. If I come at them at the same attitude, at the same energy.
Jeff Compton [00:32:17]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:32:18]:
Then that's not solving anything and it's not making me feel any better. And I'm not going to lie and say that, oh, those, those negative comments don't affect me. It's just the opposite. It's funny how, like, you'll have a hundred comments to talk about how great the video is, but that one that doesn't. That one that just. And, and it might just sink it right. Just in that right spot. And you're like, dang it.
Eric the Car Guy [00:32:38]:
And you don't want to give them that power. You just don't want to. But, yeah, they have it. They know it. But on the same time, I know that they're probably hurting and they need to hurt somebody else in order to feel better about themselves. Yeah, that's the way I see it. So going back to how great the Eric the Car Guy fans are, they've been so supportive of me over this time. Some of them have reached out to me and.
Eric the Car Guy [00:32:58]:
And encouraged me to get out and go to car shows or just encouraged me to keep going. Just said, you know, hey, you were what got me through tech school. You. Your videos are the things that actually inspired me to start doing this in the first place. Now I own my own shop. How many people can say that? Like, I. I can go back and talk about the money I made and spent. That means absolutely nothing to me.
Eric the Car Guy [00:33:19]:
But the fact that somebody says, you helped better my life.
Jeff Compton [00:33:22]:
Yeah, Paul, Dan and I have that talk a lot, right? Where it's like. And he. And he's such a humble, humble man of, you know, he's real. And. And I. You know, when I have. When I first started going to these, you know, events, a lot of people didn't know who I am yet. And then now I come to it, and people stop me and shake my hand and say, thank you.
Jeff Compton [00:33:43]:
Like, you inspired me. You know, your story of how you felt at a dealership made me quit the job and go find a better job. Like, that weight that that puts on me is one that both is, like, heavy sometimes. And then at the same time, it's very uplifting because I feel like I have a responsibility to be real and authentic and true. But I also, at the same time, it's like it. It lifts up when I have some days where a car's kicking my tail or I have a someday where, like, I do something stupid, I have to go back and refix it. Then I remember that it's like, you know what? All these people that I speak for have all had those days. And it's my just, we're not on an island.
Jeff Compton [00:34:23]:
You know, we're together in this.
Eric the Car Guy [00:34:25]:
We want to think we are, but we're not.
Jeff Compton [00:34:26]:
We're not. We're not. There's nobody, you know, out there breaking new ground that we, you know, we've all not. We've all done everything, but we've all been challenged. We've all been kicked and undervalued. And that's the big thing with me. Like, Your story resonates with me still, because it's like you're a guy who said, oh, yeah, watch this. And went to the establishment of what we talked about in the dealerships and say, I'm not going to accept that anymore.
Jeff Compton [00:34:54]:
And I did. I walked off of a job, out of a job, over half an hour's time on my pay that wasn't there. And so the backstory is, Stacy David from Gears had a truck that he'd done years ago for Cherry Bomb. And the truck came to a local parts store that was local to me in Ottawa. And I went at lunch. It was a free barbecue lunch, and you could see the truck. I come back, the brake job that I had inspected and done the inspection for was gone. Somebody took it off.
Jeff Compton [00:35:25]:
No problem. The next day, I flagged my hours. I said, what happened? Oh, somebody finished that brake job. Okay, cool. They finished it. I don't even get paid for the inspection. No, we couldn't pay for the inspection. Oh, really? Why not? I did the inspection.
Jeff Compton [00:35:38]:
Well, because you didn't finish the job. It was 11:30 right before lunch, and it wasn't flagged as a waiter. Could I have not taken lunch? No. Apparently she was waiting, which was, again, BS. I said, okay, that's fine. This is 8:50 in the morning. I closed my toolbox. There's three cars sitting out outside waiting on diagnostic parts modules, stuff.
Jeff Compton [00:35:58]:
And I went home and I took another job.
Eric the Car Guy [00:36:02]:
Yeah, you couldn't. You couldn't sit at the keyboard any longer.
Jeff Compton [00:36:05]:
Right. So. And when I came back in and my service manager, like, I'm wheeling my box out, and I'm there with my father. God, Rip. Dad. And he goes, we're really sorry to see him go. You know, we really like him here. He's.
Jeff Compton [00:36:20]:
He's smart. We need more techs like him. And I'm going, I just can't stand the amount of a holes that are here. That's what I said to him as he's standing in front of my father. My father's just laughing at me, grinning, and wheel my toolbox into the back of the truck, and away we go. And that was, for me, a very powerful thing, because it's like I knew at that point that I was never going to let somebody that would have been as upset as I was tell me that I couldn't be upset and I should handle it any different.
Eric the Car Guy [00:36:47]:
Yeah, that's. That's minimizing.
Jeff Compton [00:36:49]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:36:49]:
Everything you're feeling, which is so wrong.
Jeff Compton [00:36:52]:
Yeah. So when I saw you, how you. You Went out on your. On your thing. I'm like, you know what, man? Like, he's not out there, like, building one shop and then two shops and three shops and glorifying, oh, look at this, you know, incredible thing that I diagnosed or whatever. You're just putting out content, consistently helping people. I'm like, that's pretty cool that he didn't let something that would. Some people would say, because a lot of technicians there leave the industry.
Jeff Compton [00:37:18]:
We have a big problem right now.
Eric the Car Guy [00:37:20]:
Leave the industry.
Jeff Compton [00:37:20]:
Yeah, but leave it all together in terms of, like, now I do H Vac and I never even touch YouTube. Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:37:26]:
So I did leave the industry. You can't say that I'm still a part of the industry. I still work on cars. I still feel that pain. But I'm not doing it for a living.
Jeff Compton [00:37:34]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:37:34]:
I do content for a living. So, yes, I did leave the industry.
Jeff Compton [00:37:38]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:37:38]:
I. I can't say I didn't, because I don't. I don't work as a technician. Like, a technician works as a tech. I think that does a disservice to them to say that that's what I do. I try to give a window into what they do. I try to give people empathy for what they do, but that's not what I do. What I do is something completely different.
Eric the Car Guy [00:37:55]:
And anybody that's done any kind of video production, I think, would agree with that because it's a totally different discipline. It's a totally different mindset. It's a totally different mindset when I go to, quote, unquote, fix a car. Because I'm thinking to myself, okay, how can I show what I'm doing? In fact, my definition of a good video is my ability to turn the sound off and still be able to glean the information. Right? If I can watch that video with no sound and I know and I can get that information out of it, that's a good video.
Jeff Compton [00:38:20]:
That's pretty good.
Eric the Car Guy [00:38:21]:
And that's in my head. When I start out, when I start shooting, it was like, okay, how am I going to share this? I'm not thinking, how quickly can I fix this? Or what tools am I going to use? And that kind of thing so much I'm thinking, okay, I'm my audience's eyes right now, now in years, and I need to take them on a journey of disrepair, to repair, from broken to fixed, to confidence. I often call myself a confidence builder.
Jeff Compton [00:38:46]:
Okay?
Eric the Car Guy [00:38:46]:
Because that's what I want to do for people. So even if. Even if a person watched my video and they didn't go out and fix it themselves. If they watch the video and now they understand why it's going to cost them fifteen hundred dollars for that repair. They have that understanding, you know, because how many times does a customer come in and said, what do you mean it's going to cost me fifteen hundred dollars for that? And you're like, I'm sorry, but the part is $1,000 and it's buried underneath the car in some place that I need to remove everything to get to it. And it's going to take me all day and then some to do it. And I'm sorry for that. I didn't build the car, but I'm here to fix it and that's what it's going to cost.
Jeff Compton [00:39:18]:
How do you deal with the people when they talk about. You go back to your timing belt example and you say like that it charges them four and a half hours and you do it in 45 minutes. And the people go, you're ripping the people off, Eric, by all those people that the dealership charges.
Eric the Car Guy [00:39:32]:
That's an absolutely fair question. First of all, I didn't set the flat rate time. Second of all, 99% of the flat rate times that are out there are not beneficial in that sense.
Jeff Compton [00:39:42]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [00:39:43]:
Timing belt jobs are few and far between. Warranty work is way more prevalent than timing belt work. By the time you add it all up, that equates to nothing. Yeah, absolutely nothing. And as far as my ability to do something fast, if you want to piss me off, tell me I'm fast. I am not fast. I'm efficient. If I was fast, I'd be skipping steps.
Eric the Car Guy [00:40:03]:
Yeah, efficiency means that I did that timing belt in 45 minutes. I didn't skip one step. In fact, I developed a process of doing that timing belt because I did a hundred of them right. I know how to do it in 40 minutes because I lift goes up once, lick goes down once. That's it. Everything up and down in between. That's time. So I took the time to say, okay, if I do this while it's down on the ground, I don't have to do this while it's up in the air.
Eric the Car Guy [00:40:29]:
I have all my parts ready, they're ready to go. So it's not like that 45 minutes came just with me just going, I do that in 45 minutes. No, that 45 minutes came from the seven other jobs that I did before that. That got me to that level of efficiency that made that flat rate advantageous to me. So I worked for that 45 minutes. It didn't just drop out of the sky.
Jeff Compton [00:40:52]:
What do you. And again, when I read comments all the time online from anybody's channel and I always see the disgruntled people that are talking about, well, I had my car into the dealership, or I had my car into the shop six times and they couldn't fix it. That always tugs at me because. And I used to be the guy that's like, oh, you're not a technician. Fu. I don't even care about your complaint. And now as I've gotten to really dig into what they're trying to say, they're having a very dissatisfied experience with the whole industry as a whole. Oh, yeah, right.
Jeff Compton [00:41:23]:
And that's why I'm here, is to try and bringing up the technician competency and the understanding. Well, and I tell people flat out, what are you trying to have an intermittent electrical problem. Okay, cool. Do you know how many few technicians might actually be employed at some of these places to be able to get to that? Do you know how they're paid? Oh, you don't know how they're paid. Okay, so they're gonna spend three hours to pull your brand new. Somebody talked me about a brand new Wagoneer for a parasitic drain. Hit nine hours into the car. There's like over 60 modules on a brand new Grand Wagoneer.
Jeff Compton [00:41:53]:
Four different communication lines, like networks that have to all shut down just to get the car to go to in sleep mode, different levels. Is like a three hour process. Do you know what he's getting paid? Nothing. Until he actually fixes that car. When you start to give these people the facts, the little nuggets about how we're actually treated, I find it tends to quiet them down. But then others, Eric, just want to be like, I don't care. I paid X amount for this. And it's bullshit that, like, it can't be fixed.
Jeff Compton [00:42:17]:
You're right, it is. But here's the reality. It's built by humans, it's worked on by humans, and humans make mistakes. You know that guy that assembled it who's paid way more than any technician I know. Like he might have had a cigarette in his hand when he was doing it. And now something's not clipped in quite right. Something's rubbing. Now we could create a monster in the machine.
Jeff Compton [00:42:36]:
The guy that or gal that can go in there and exercise that machine. One in a thousand. And your situation of when you want it fixed? Right now, Monday morning. Because I've had it three months and it's unfair and it's costing me and I have to drive my old clunker because this thing's under warranty. It's so hard for me, Eric, to reach out and feel empathy for that person. You know what? It is, because I've been a technician that I've never bought a brand new car in my life.
Eric the Car Guy [00:43:01]:
You know, maybe empathy is not what you're looking for. Maybe understanding would be better. And going back to my earlier statement about the hater commenters, I think they come from the same place.
Jeff Compton [00:43:10]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:43:11]:
I don't think that auto repair is the problem. I think that they may have some other issue that's happening in their life and the auto repair issue is one more thing and you happen to be at the other end of it. So you're going to get the brunt of whatever it is that's going on in their life that you don't. You're not necessarily connected to, but they're using you as an opportunity to vent or what have you. I'm not saying that's fair. I'm not saying that's good. I'm just saying that I think many times that has little to nothing to do with you or the job or the repair or anything. In fact, I've said oftentimes people wear their cars like clothes.
Jeff Compton [00:43:43]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:43:43]:
If you give me somebody's car and let me go through it for 10 minutes, I could probably tell you a whole lot about that person.
Jeff Compton [00:43:49]:
Yes.
Eric the Car Guy [00:43:49]:
And I do that inadvertently just. Just by looking at the car. Because if my diagnosis begins with that, I look at the car and see how it's maintained.
Jeff Compton [00:43:59]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:43:59]:
I look and see how they're taking care of it. I look and see the interior. Are they trashing it is a rolling dumpster. You know, perhaps that bowling ball that's rolling around in the trunk is the cause of that noise, sir. Okay. You know what I'm saying?
Jeff Compton [00:44:12]:
Empty wine bottles.
Eric the Car Guy [00:44:13]:
Yeah, empty wine bottles. Exactly. And believe me, I've seen it and then some. But yeah, I. I think people are bringing their baggage along with them with their vehicles. Again, like they're wearing their clothes. I used to say it's an hour projection of who they are.
Jeff Compton [00:44:27]:
Yeah. I used to say he must be going through a divorce and that's his wife's car and she's chewing his ass about how this thing is broken again and he just doesn't want his ass chewed anymore.
Eric the Car Guy [00:44:36]:
Maybe that's. The spouse is always at fault. Yeah. It doesn't matter who you're talking to. The spouse is the one that did it. You know, my wife ran this. Whatever over. Or my wife hit this.
Eric the Car Guy [00:44:46]:
Whatever the. Or she heard this.
Jeff Compton [00:44:48]:
She's the one that forgot to do the. Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:44:50]:
And that's. Yeah. The dudes are the worst, actually, because they know the least and they want to pass it off on the ladies. But the ladies are actually, I think, smart enough to know that they're not necessarily knowledgeable. So they start asking questions. They. I like the way they approach it a little bit better.
Jeff Compton [00:45:05]:
Yeah. I don't like them when they come at me with like. They come in and assuming that I'm going to rip them off.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:09]:
Yes.
Jeff Compton [00:45:10]:
Because I. I've. I've told lots of ladies, listen, I. It's much easier if I wanted to take advantage of. Pull a wool over a customer's eyes. I can much easier do it over a man's than I can a woman. Yeah, it's much easier.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:21]:
Oh, yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:45:21]:
I just have to make him think that he has something in common with me and he will open his wallet.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:25]:
Or just let him know he's right.
Jeff Compton [00:45:26]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:27]:
About everything.
Jeff Compton [00:45:27]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:28]:
It's.
Jeff Compton [00:45:28]:
Whereas they are really simple creatures. Yeah. What do you want to see about the industry change? I mean, that might be a big question.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:36]:
No, no, actually, I believe I have an answer.
Jeff Compton [00:45:38]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [00:45:38]:
I would love to see us move towards an apprenticeship program, personally. Yeah. We talked about this briefly earlier and I say that because I think our system is broken and not working. And I'm not saying that there aren't schools out there that are excellent teaching, excellent technicians and everything else. But as I mentioned to you earlier, in my view, doesn't matter how good a student you are. I graduated top of my class. Okay. There were 13 people in the class, but I graduated top my class.
Jeff Compton [00:46:05]:
Yep.
Eric the Car Guy [00:46:05]:
The thing of it is, I didn't know jack until I started turning a wrench in a bay. When I actually started working, actually turning a wrench, then I could see what applied from that knowledge that they were downloading into my head, which was. Was there. The basics were there. It was like a foundation. You build a house, you know, and that's the foundation you build off of that education. So I feel like I. I got that, but I feel like a lot of people these days could use some mentorship.
Eric the Car Guy [00:46:32]:
And it's not just the educational aspect of it, just the guidance on how to behave as a technician so that we don't come off as people trying to rip people off as we come off as professionals that are trying to help people and do our jobs. And that type of thing. And I think I got this idea from my viewers in Europe mostly because they're always telling me how the apprenticeship program in Canada or Europe or other places in that are not US based, how they work and that you're an apprentice for years and years before you do this. They don't just let you go out into the shop and do brake jobs, you know, and you think that that's an easy thing and to some it can be. But you can, if you don't do a break job. Right. Somebody could die.
Jeff Compton [00:47:09]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:47:10]:
You know, so it needs to be taken seriously. And I think if you've got somebody there who's got experience can help pass on that experience and that professionalism along with it. So it's not just an education, it's a way to act as a technician. I think that would help the industry a lot. And as far as pay goes, obviously I think we need to be paid what we're worth. But I think if we start acting like we are, that we, we, if we start acting like doctors act, if we start acting like other professionals act, I think we will start to get more of that respect and more pay come along with it. And especially if we're effective at what we're doing. I don't want to hear this.
Eric the Car Guy [00:47:46]:
I've taken this to three other shops and they can't fix it. Well, that may be on you. You can't take your electric problem to Quick Lube and expect them to take care of it while they're doing your oil change server. Madam, you know, we have to manage your expectations as far as that's concerned. But if you're bringing a vehicle to us and it has this given problem and we say that we're going to take it on, I think we, it's incumbent upon us to do the best job we can possibly do. To not live up to that reputation of being, you know, people that are just out to take your money.
Jeff Compton [00:48:12]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:48:12]:
You know, not throwing parts at something.
Jeff Compton [00:48:15]:
I've always found that what the biggest thing that was lacking in, because I did a two year college program before I ever stepped foot in this industry. Right. So. And it was like I remember them. And then even going through the apprenticeship we used to have, you know, applied fundamentals and all this good stuff. There was a lot of things that were like wasted in that. Well, here's how you braise two pieces of metal together Right. When the mig welder sitting right there.
Jeff Compton [00:48:36]:
So there's some processes that maybe we could have skipped. We should have had a class on this is how you survive this industry. This is how you conduct yourself as a professional in this industry. We should have been more about that and not to get into the what is morally right and what is morally wrong, but in terms of how to survive it. You're going to come in. I can still remember a really good friend of mine, we had an argument way back when we were both green, green, green. And he's like, well, when I get to the dealership, they're going to be. Somebody's going to be mentoring me and somebody's going to be watching me and teaching me.
Jeff Compton [00:49:05]:
And I'm like, no, I'm already been there. And that's not reality at a lot of places. Now, he did have some people that mentored him a little bit, but he had this idea that it was going to be like that European thing with the old craftsman and, you know, it was quality checking your work and all that kind of stuff that isn't real life at a lot of shops. And I think that that's how we have to if we're going to turn these kids loose into these dealerships that are less free, real. The OEs are pumping all the money right now into the funding of all these college programs. You want to go get GM certified ASAP. You know, BMW training. We have all seen the UTI and you know, Wildtech ads.
Jeff Compton [00:49:41]:
They're all funded by the OEs. They need to teach them that when you get to the dealer, they're going to have a mark on your back and you're going to do a lot of these recall over and over again. And the old guys over there may going to hate you because you're like, you're going to get a gravy ticket. They will.
Eric the Car Guy [00:49:54]:
Because your back is still good.
Jeff Compton [00:49:55]:
Yeah, right. Your knees aren't.
Eric the Car Guy [00:49:58]:
You still have all your teeth and your back is good. I hate you.
Jeff Compton [00:50:01]:
But that's what we have to teach them is how. So that's been my platform where it's always like, listen, pour into yourself. Always do the extra learning you want to be. I've always said for me, I want to be the smartest guy in the room. Now I keep finding myself in bigger rooms as I. As I go in through this career. And I'm not the smartest guy. And again, even back when I look back, I probably wasn't the smartest guy then, but I had an aptitude and an ability to do one thing really well.
Jeff Compton [00:50:29]:
And I leveraged it to make it work for me. I believe that that's what they have to do. If you are ate up with passion about something, you have to develop on that. And I think you have to pour into it and it means. And then when you have to value it and know the value that it means, I'm gonna go and take that comeback because I'm good at diagnostics. But in turn, I want to know, like, what are you gonna do for me? And I don't just mean it like, oh, we're gonna give you another good ticket. I mean, it's like, what can you help me learn so I can become better at that? Sign me up for training. Sign me up for, you know, can we get this new tool that.
Jeff Compton [00:51:05]:
An oscilloscope as an example that helps me do some of this stuff better.
Eric the Car Guy [00:51:09]:
So if I'm hearing you correctly, the apprenticeship program that I'm advocating for isn't necessarily like you've actually experienced it, isn't necessarily the fix all. There's still some areas there that could use work as well.
Jeff Compton [00:51:19]:
So what happened? Here's how it is in Canada. I'll give you a real nutshell. When they signed them up as an apprentice and enrolled them, they get their wage subsidies, like 25%.
Eric the Car Guy [00:51:28]:
Okay?
Jeff Compton [00:51:28]:
So then we take them or bring them in and we say, okay, that's your quick lube bay. Or and when there's no more quick lubes, I need you to learn how to do this door latch recall. And you're gonna do a lot of that and a lot of it and a lot of it and a lot of it until you're gonna be burned right out on quick lubes, tires and door latches, right? And if you hit a problem, that old guy over there, I know he's grouchy and he's got signs on his toolbox that say, don't F with me, but I need you to go over there and ask them very nicely to come in and help bail you out. And he's going to go into a tirade on you, Eric, but let him. And then pay attention. That's what happens a lot that I've been exposed to in this. In the thing and in the dealerships especially are chewing these guys up. The independent shops are chewing their young people up right now too, because we're not laying out a program that says, okay, you're going to start doing the basics and then I need you to learn this fundamental.
Jeff Compton [00:52:18]:
And then that fundamental, that fundamental. They kind of just throw everything against the wall, see what it sticks and go. You're good at Tires. So you're going to be a tire guy or you're good at brakes and you're going to be a brake guy or you're good at front end and you're going to be a front end guy. That's how the dealerships were. My experience was we had a guy that he just only did air conditioning, almost only air conditioning. I did a lot of drivability because I had a knack for it. I did a lot of electrical diet because I had a knack for it.
Eric the Car Guy [00:52:41]:
Do you think that that salty older mechanic that you're sending the young mechanic to talk to might have an effect on that young mechanic's attitude towards the hundred percent? Well, maybe. How do you think that older guy got that way? Was, did he come into it that way or did he become that way over time?
Jeff Compton [00:53:00]:
It's called the Jada mechanic for a reason. Because it's like they earned that right. They had to sweat, bleed and starve to sometimes get that knowledge. And to be. Just to say you're expected to give it away. Well, we call that old guy maybe a gatekeeper. It's not a gatekeeper. In my opinion.
Jeff Compton [00:53:17]:
He's protecting what he had to fight to earn.
Eric the Car Guy [00:53:21]:
But he might be misplacing his angst 100%.
Jeff Compton [00:53:25]:
He is.
Eric the Car Guy [00:53:26]:
Because this is. I mean, if, if he would see that young technician as the future, I think that would be more appropriate. And, and that's the kind of thing that I'd like to advocate for. And I think what you're describing is just how human beings interact, especially old guys and young guys. I think that's like. But Eric, since time began, when he.
Jeff Compton [00:53:45]:
Sees the old guy that you were talking about earlier, you know, he's the young lad that's three hours texting on the back of his phone, the corner of the shop with the broom, you know, gathering breasts. Is he wrong?
Eric the Car Guy [00:53:54]:
60 years ago he was listening to Elvis Presley. Yeah.
Jeff Compton [00:53:57]:
You know.
Eric the Car Guy [00:54:00]:
So, you know, what, what's. What is the next phone? What is the next thing that's going to be there at the same time? Maybe he's on the phone looking at tutorials for the work that he's doing for the day or she's doing for the day. I'd like to put that out there too, because I think we spend too much time talking about he in this profession. Yes. I think we need to empower everybody, not just the boys.
Jeff Compton [00:54:21]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:54:22]:
I think we need to make it available to the girls also, just from a young age, there's a lot of, like, Here's a wrench. Here's a welder. What do you want to do? Try it. Try it. Just try it like we used to have in the United States, like home EC and shop classes and things like that, just for the exposure. Like I learned how to make a dress. Not a dress. I made a Hawaiian shirt when I was in, when I was in class.
Eric the Car Guy [00:54:40]:
Did that mean anything to the rest of my life other than this conversation right now? No. But I did it. I had that experience. And it doesn't mean I'm going to become a seamstress or anything like that. It just means like, oh, okay, I know how sewing machine works.
Jeff Compton [00:54:53]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:54:54]:
You know, and I'm glad to have that knowledge today. I was laughing the whole time I was sitting in typing class and what do I do all day now? Freaking email 100%.
Jeff Compton [00:55:02]:
Yeah. What when you see a young person. Maybe I already know the answer, but what do you see when you see the young people now? Where do you see like the potential? Lie.
Eric the Car Guy [00:55:13]:
I see them with a lot of potential. I'm worried more about the industry than I'm worried about the people. And I think I'm more worried about the industry because the industry is all sky is falling at the moment, it seems, because I don't think anybody really knows what to do with what we are and where we're at. And I, I don't know if we're doing it right personally. Of the kind of things we're doing and the directions we're going. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I'm just one person.
Jeff Compton [00:55:42]:
Now touch a little bit more on that and what on who is doing what that you don't agree with?
Eric the Car Guy [00:55:47]:
Well, I'll just, I'll just come out and say it. The whole EV thing. Okay, I think that's all bs. Yeah, I do, personally. And, and the reason I say that, and I'm not saying that zero emissions vehicles aren't, you know, great for the environment in some situations. But I struggle to comprehend how making more stuff and throwing away a bunch of stuff solves an environmental problem. I just, I just, it's just that simple.
Jeff Compton [00:56:08]:
It doesn't.
Eric the Car Guy [00:56:09]:
It doesn't, it doesn't. So like if we take all of our cars now and throw them into a landfill or wherever and we replace them all with these other cars, that makes somebody a whole lot of money. That's what I see. And I see dealerships, I see manufacturers struggling right now because if you're going to switch your propulsion system from internal combustion to electric That's a retool of your entire process. And I don't think people realize this. That's a global process. We are sitting in Apex right now. And guess what? Just about every country is represented here.
Eric the Car Guy [00:56:41]:
And there's a reason for that, is because we get these things from all over the place to put them together into these things that we call vehicles and we drive and register and all that, that other kind of stuff. So a lot goes into that. And I think that we just, we need to take a different look at that. I believe if we're truly trying to solve an environmental problem, because it doesn't really seem that way to me.
Jeff Compton [00:57:01]:
And, and it's not. And I don't want to go down the political thing, but I like where I come from, they want to have a mandate by 2035, there is no more internal combustion engine cars.
Eric the Car Guy [00:57:10]:
I understand the, the push behind that because I understand where the science is and what the science says. Because here's the other thing. You can't just keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and say that nothing's going to happen.
Jeff Compton [00:57:21]:
Right?
Eric the Car Guy [00:57:21]:
You know, everything's going to be fine. You just can't. The science doesn't work. I mean, I'm a mechanic. I. I deal in science. To me, I use the scientific method to solve problems, okay? Ignoring facts is not going to make me money. Ignoring facts is going to get me screwed.
Eric the Car Guy [00:57:38]:
So I like to try to stick to as many facts as possible. Like actual facts, not something that somebody pulled out of some whatever. Like actual facts.
Jeff Compton [00:57:46]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:57:46]:
And then, frankly, I spent a lot of time studying, like astronomy and astrophysics, weirdly enough. But I just, I'm fascinated by where everything comes from.
Jeff Compton [00:57:55]:
I just think the grid won't support it. And then I believe that once the grid doesn't support it, it becomes a very elite thing to own a car.
Eric the Car Guy [00:58:01]:
I don't, I don't know if the grid's a problem. I really don't think so. No, the grid is not the problem in my mind. The problem is the fact that we have to get in our cars to do everything. That, in my opinion, is the problem. If we get up our. Well, some people can't walk. Some people are elderly like that.
Eric the Car Guy [00:58:17]:
But if we started walking more and creating situations where we didn't have to drive to the store and maybe we could walk to the store or bike to it or do something else other than use a car to do it, I think a focus on that would be much more productive than trying to make a bunch more Things to solve a problem that's a result of having too many things. And that's, that's my look at it anyway. But as far as the young people that are coming into this, I think it's always been a poop show for all of us. Like me when I started out, it was the transition into fuel injection.
Jeff Compton [00:58:48]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:58:48]:
And all these other things, you know, that was just getting started. We, we still had a few carburetors out there that were electronically controlled and we had to mess with those things and, and all of that. And they were telling us, oh, everything's going to be fuel injected. It'll all be computers in the future. Well, they're right.
Jeff Compton [00:59:02]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:59:02]:
But you know, it didn't really solve anything. It just made like now I gotta find that one out of 60 computers that's in that car that's bad causing that parasitic draw and I gotta wait for four hours for everything to shut off so I can even find out that it's doing it. So the challenges have always been there.
Jeff Compton [00:59:16]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:59:17]:
And maybe before that it was Northstar head gaskets. You know who it's. I think there's always going to be that challenge. That's, that's the job in my mind because if it was easy, everybody would do it.
Jeff Compton [00:59:27]:
So going back to, did you have a mentor that you can really say formulated where your direction.
Eric the Car Guy [00:59:36]:
That's a good question because I can't really point to any one mentor and I can't say that it was really involved with this industry because I've done a lot of things besides fixed cars. I made fixed trees for a while.
Jeff Compton [00:59:47]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [00:59:47]:
I made scarecrows at a farm where people came out to like go through a haunted pumpkin patch and I did all the pumpkin displays and everything and all that kind of thing. So I've done a variety of occupations, but they all have a common theme. There's somebody making money and there's somebody employing you. And if you're employed, then you're a drone right now.
Jeff Compton [01:00:14]:
So kind of as car repair, somewhat self taught then I could. Would that be fair to say?
Eric the Car Guy [01:00:21]:
Okay, maybe you could say born into it because my father was not an auto mechanic, but he worked in manufacturing on plastic molding machines.
Jeff Compton [01:00:29]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [01:00:30]:
So he worked for a major toy company most of my life growing up. And then after that that toy company shut down and moved away. And then he started working for another company in plastic molding. So he was always doing that. My grandfather on my mother's side was kind of a fabricator. He worked on Things like Three Mile island and maybe I shouldn't like share that. But that wasn't a result of any build errors, by the way.
Jeff Compton [01:00:52]:
Way.
Eric the Car Guy [01:00:53]:
No, it's so. And also at that house that I lived at for a while, there was only eight other houses. Eight houses on that street. And in the back was a driving range. So we had an abundance of golf balls. And my grandfather had a workshop in the basement. I wasn't allowed to use power tools, but I had a bucket of golf balls and a bunch of tools. So I had been, you know, nothing to do.
Eric the Car Guy [01:01:18]:
Like there was nobody around or anything like that. So I was playing with tools and doing all the stuff. Taking things apart since as long as I can remember. So maybe I was born to it or what. Whether I was doing this. I wanted to be a doctor for a while. And I'm kind of glad I'm not because being a flat rate doctor I don't think would have worked out too well.
Jeff Compton [01:01:32]:
Yeah. No.
Eric the Car Guy [01:01:35]:
But taking things apart, I think is where it started. How about you?
Jeff Compton [01:01:39]:
My dad was a collision auto body guy, so I grew up kind of out of his knee. And then I never. I never wanted to be a collision. I sanded on cars from the time I was seven until like, I had a summer job with him in high school. Standing on cars. And I said, never again. I wanted them to go fast. I didn't give a shit if it was in primer.
Jeff Compton [01:01:57]:
I didn't care about a dent in every pen. How fast does that thing go? Like, do a burnout. I was one of them dumb kids, right?
Eric the Car Guy [01:02:03]:
I wouldn't call it dumb. Well, but yeah, who doesn't want to see a burnout?
Jeff Compton [01:02:09]:
Getting speeding tickets is not very smart.
Eric the Car Guy [01:02:11]:
But that just means you got caught.
Jeff Compton [01:02:12]:
Yeah, so I always was. I looked, not looked down at him, but I was just like, I'm not interested. And now my father's gone. He's been gone a while and.
Eric the Car Guy [01:02:22]:
Sorry to hear that.
Jeff Compton [01:02:22]:
Yeah. And I remember what he told me about this industry. He said, don't do it. If I ever catch you with a wrench in your hand, I'm gonna smack you. And.
Eric the Car Guy [01:02:30]:
And he put sandpaper in here.
Jeff Compton [01:02:31]:
Yeah. And he. I was lucky enough that he got to see the level that I got at the dealership, but he was proud what I could do because he knew that it was like, he's not just another guy working here. He's kind of their guy. He's the guy in this place. And that made me proud, that I made him proud. And, you know, he would brag about me to everybody and you know, oh, that's good. Yeah, you know, you got a car that's hard to not run around or something.
Jeff Compton [01:02:58]:
Let my son take a look at it. So I came about it. I think naturally I am not one of these people that I talk about the puzzle pieces. I, I'm not one of these guys that can like take a puzzle apart and then put it back together repeatedly. Rubik's Cube, all those kind of things. I'm not of wired that way. I'm wired of a visual reading, a roadmap kind of thing. Here's a wiring diagram, here's some papers on how something works.
Jeff Compton [01:03:21]:
And then I digest it and I start to, I'm more, I think, engineering versus yes.
Eric the Car Guy [01:03:26]:
You know, you sound like an engineer.
Jeff Compton [01:03:28]:
And maybe I should have gone that way. Elon Musk went to Queens University, which is where. Right in Kingston, Ontario. So hey, shout out to Elon. We're linked there too. But I never thought I was smart enough to be an engineer. And now I have an engineer friend and he'll like, he'll ask me questions about how to fix his truck and I'm like, that's pretty cool.
Eric the Car Guy [01:03:46]:
Well, in my experience that's common.
Jeff Compton [01:03:48]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:03:48]:
I had a job where I worked in Cincinnati, just down the road from General Electric.
Jeff Compton [01:03:53]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [01:03:53]:
So we serviced a lot of the vehicles for those people that worked there as engineers. And yeah, they, they're very good at being engineers.
Jeff Compton [01:04:03]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:04:04]:
And I hate to say this, but my son is also a software engineer for a major car company as well. So I teach him stuff, you know, at. Engineers are a certain skill set and it's not necessarily a hands on skill set. It's a different type of skill set. Not saying that they, they don't have value, but they just, they're on a different, as you pointed, a different level, a different way of thinking. And I think that's a big part of it now.
Jeff Compton [01:04:31]:
And I got to say I'm not, I've never was a slow mechanic, but I was never the fastest mechanic either.
Eric the Car Guy [01:04:36]:
So that sounds to me like you were doing diagnostics.
Jeff Compton [01:04:38]:
I can't see a lot of diag. But then like if there was no diag, I got right in line with the rest of the pigs at the trough and I took whatever it could. And if it was a steering rack in a caravan, I talk about that all the time or whatever the recall, I got her done. But if the car came back like I saw, guys put complete transmissions in because they were in Limp mode. They wouldn't shift at a second. It's an electrical problem. It's a rotten wire in the harness. I would fix those cars and then I would like, it doesn't start and it's got a new battery and new starter.
Jeff Compton [01:05:03]:
And I would fix those cars. Or it just went that way. Because when I started out straight time in the dealer, they handed me everybody's comebacks. And I worked second shift at a dealer where second shift brought in, I don't want to say less skilled guys, but they weren't like Chrysler trained guys, weren't Chrysler certified guys. They were just like, second shift was a lot of oil change, a lot of tires, a lot of brakes. And once in a while a check engine light would come in. They'd be like, give it to Jeff. He, you know, he's straight time.
Jeff Compton [01:05:29]:
These guys. I need to get this work done. Until it was like, oh, this is a Chrysler DRB3. And I'm look at this. I can do this with it. And I could do that with it. And then I started to learn how to navigate the service information and how to work the scan tool. Till before long I was doing like, not really advanced stuff, but the guys that had worked there like five, six years were like, I didn't know you that could be done that way.
Jeff Compton [01:05:49]:
Yeah, I can just reach over here with this tool and turn this on. And I just cut my diag time down to 1/3. Like you would have taped it off and maybe looked at it. And I'm like, how can I make that work with the tool?
Eric the Car Guy [01:06:00]:
You're following the roadmap.
Jeff Compton [01:06:01]:
And then I got into flashing at the OE level with the, with the DRB3 and then the WideTech and all that kind of stuff. Before long I was like, that's just what cars back again for check ins. Like give it to Jeff. And until it burnt me up. It really did. Where I was so frustrated with because I felt like I was always behind trying to hit 50 a week or 40 or whatever. The, the top gravy sucking guy was hitting 60 routinely. I'm just trying to get to him because we're all paid the same per hour.
Jeff Compton [01:06:27]:
So I'm trying to get that kind of paycheck because I want that truck he drives. I don't want to drive my old Cavalier forever. I'd like to be able to make a truck payment.
Eric the Car Guy [01:06:34]:
Good point.
Jeff Compton [01:06:35]:
So. And it was. But I was always behind the ball trying to get this done and behind this done, get this done. And till I had A service manager. So retail drivability, electrical, paid time and a half for every hour you were on it. Now, if the car came back, you owed them an hour right away, unpaid. And I signed up for that. Then my paycheck started to get on level with the guys who were producing a bunch of hours.
Jeff Compton [01:06:57]:
That was the only way they incentivized it, Eric, in the, in the dealership, for guys to want to go start doing what Jeff could do. Because otherwise why would you. They saw me, I was aggravated. I was, I was a gatekeeper. I was, I was like, guys would come over, I got a car and I'd be like, get the. Away from me. Like, you know, I'm not going to tell you how to fix that. Oh, you tuned it up and it only needed DGR valve.
Jeff Compton [01:07:17]:
How much does that tune up pay? Three hours. How much does ECR pay? 0.6 F. You. You know, that was the kind of where I was at and it wasn't a good place to be. But I defend myself in the sense that that's what that culture made me.
Eric the Car Guy [01:07:32]:
I agree with that.
Jeff Compton [01:07:33]:
I'm not proud.
Eric the Car Guy [01:07:34]:
There's a flat rate culture, just like you said. And I think that that is probably the biggest problem with it. But I wonder if that goes away if you take the flat rate system away, because you're still going to have people that are angry and not happy with their job or their work.
Jeff Compton [01:07:47]:
So that was going to lean to my next question. Do you think that flat rate really needs to go away in the industry? Because you, like, there's on the fence. It's a big hot button topic about, like.
Eric the Car Guy [01:07:57]:
Yeah, it is. And with good reason. Because there's two sides to it, obviously. Because on one side of it, you've got the kid on the phone that's sitting there for 45 minutes on the phone and you're getting no work out of them. Well, how do you get work out of them? Well, you're only going to get paid if you're doing something right. Not standing there. You're not hourly, because if you're hourly, then you have the core unquote privilege to stand there on your phone forever and ever. But at the same time, if you're new and you're trying to make flat rate and you don't know anything, and you get into a car and you get over your head and the guy that can give you help says, get out of me.
Eric the Car Guy [01:08:34]:
Get out of here. Don't touch me. Get out of my toolbox. So, I mean, that's That's a really difficult environment that I think you're just going to create more of you in that situation because that's the learned behavior. Okay, well, I can be salty if I'm working hard and not being paid, right?
Jeff Compton [01:08:53]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:08:53]:
And I'm just gonna make another me. I don't think that that's a solution. And as far as whether flat rate has anything to do with that or not, I don't think it does.
Jeff Compton [01:09:03]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:09:03]:
I think either way, if you're new, you're going to have trouble, you know, figuring it out. And. But I also think you should be making the effort. I don't think you should be standing there on your phone for half an hour for doing whatever. If you're looking up how to fix something, if you're watching Eric the Car Guy videos, great.
Jeff Compton [01:09:18]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:09:19]:
But if you're not doing your job and you're there to do the job, and that's the business. Okay. That's what I think that you forget as a technician is that it's a business. And that business is about customers ultimately, in my mind. And if you're not taking care of those customers, you're kind of just taking their money and screwing them over. And in my mind, that's not right. So whether you do it at flat rate, whether you're doing it hourly, I think the important thing is that you take care of the customer. Now, how you handle your employees to get that done is how you handle your employees to get that done.
Eric the Car Guy [01:09:51]:
But technicians got to work, and owners got to respect the technicians and pay them accordingly. How that happens, I don't know.
Jeff Compton [01:09:59]:
I love that. So what. You know, and we'll wrap this up. What can we expect to see from you coming up?
Eric the Car Guy [01:10:06]:
I would very much like to be posting regular videos again. Now that I've got all of my tools under one roof, I really don't have an excuse anymore. And I think I'm in a place where I've got my head right, and I. I really like where I live now, and I want to stay there. So I'm motivated to keep the paycheck coming.
Jeff Compton [01:10:22]:
Right.
Eric the Car Guy [01:10:23]:
So. And then again, my focus is always going to be on how can I help that person? How can I help that person understand that problem? You know, it's fix the car themselves. More importantly, understand it. If they understand it, I think they can fix it. And if they can't fix it, they understand why.
Jeff Compton [01:10:40]:
Good.
Eric the Car Guy [01:10:41]:
That's what I'm.
Jeff Compton [01:10:41]:
That's what I'm doing on social media. What do you like to watch, if anything.
Eric the Car Guy [01:10:45]:
I don't.
Jeff Compton [01:10:46]:
No. Eh.
Eric the Car Guy [01:10:46]:
No. Well, I. Okay, okay. I can't say that I don't because I do find myself scrolling through Instagram, watching people fabricate things.
Jeff Compton [01:10:55]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [01:10:56]:
I. I want to be fabricator. I wish I was good with metal. Like, I see the people that I watch on some of these things, like on these reels and like that. I wish I could do some of the stuff they do with metal. I would. That's what I would aspire to, I guess. I guess what I would say to that is I look for things that would inspire me, and those things are the people that can like, do things with metal that I am in awe of.
Eric the Car Guy [01:11:18]:
And sometimes you see them at shows like this, you see those kind of skills on display.
Jeff Compton [01:11:22]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:11:22]:
And I. I would love to learn how to do that. I would love to.
Jeff Compton [01:11:25]:
That's what I was always amazed with my father going back, he could take a piece of flat sheet metal.
Eric the Car Guy [01:11:29]:
Yes.
Jeff Compton [01:11:30]:
And form a quarter panel patch out of that had complex curves.
Eric the Car Guy [01:11:36]:
And from a piece of tape that he might have like put on the.
Jeff Compton [01:11:40]:
Outside of it an old propane cylinder and, you know, a sheet metal break that he bent and all this kind of stuff he fabricated all himself. And I was just like, I didn't appreciate that at the time and now I wish I did because I realize now my dad, he was an artist, and we're all artists in some way, I think. And you kind of have to be a little bit wired for that because you want to take something and not. Yes. Sometimes we just install broken part and we have fixed car, but sometimes we get to really do some really cool things and fabricate some cool stuff or we need to. We. We get to go down a completely different path that nobody else saw to solve a problem. That's still.
Jeff Compton [01:12:14]:
Creation is as well. And I think that's really cool. And I think we need to. In the industry to get back to that and celebrate a little bit more. So.
Eric the Car Guy [01:12:22]:
Celebrating it. Yes. I just wish we had the time for it. And there's. There's so little of that though. Like, say you're working on an ev. I was talking to the guys here a little bit ago. They didn't even get dirty.
Jeff Compton [01:12:31]:
Yeah.
Eric the Car Guy [01:12:31]:
You know, so where's the craftsmanship in that? It really is parts replacement.
Jeff Compton [01:12:35]:
Do you watch Rich Rebuilds?
Eric the Car Guy [01:12:37]:
No, I do not.
Jeff Compton [01:12:37]:
Okay.
Eric the Car Guy [01:12:38]:
I should.
Jeff Compton [01:12:38]:
You and I. You and I, when we. When we go from here, I'll share some. Some links with you that I think you really enjoy.
Eric the Car Guy [01:12:44]:
I know of him Yeah, I just. I just haven't watched it.
Jeff Compton [01:12:46]:
Okay. He's. He's. He's one of these guys that. It's like he's. He's looking at alternative ways to. To get to the same result, a fixed ev, but he does it in some really cool ways. And.
Jeff Compton [01:12:56]:
And I appreciate that. I. I cheer for the underdog. Right.
Eric the Car Guy [01:12:59]:
But what do you watch?
Jeff Compton [01:13:01]:
I've. I'm ate up with this car stuff still, so I. I watch you. I watch Scanner Danner. I watch Royalty Auto Service. I watch Eric O. Eric Owen, Ivan from Pine Hollow.
Eric the Car Guy [01:13:13]:
Yeah, they're real technicians.
Jeff Compton [01:13:16]:
Brian's. You know, Brian's Mobile. I'd be love Brian. I haven't watched him as often as I should.
Eric the Car Guy [01:13:22]:
I don't know how much he's putting out these days.
Jeff Compton [01:13:23]:
Yeah. Like, it seems to be like we're some of the old guard and some of the new guard, and we're getting some mingling. But it's tough. It really is a lot of the tough, you know, so. And then, yeah, I enjoy watching the. The guys create stuff. You know, I was a hot rodder. That's what got me into this.
Jeff Compton [01:13:42]:
So when I see somebody at a hot rod shop take something, you know, like on Motor Trend TV and they dragged it out from the mud somewhere, and 27 months later, it's a, you know, a resurrected Studebaker pickup truck. And, you know, I'm just. I'm still ate up by that. I'm still ate up by it.
Eric the Car Guy [01:14:01]:
Same.
Jeff Compton [01:14:02]:
It doesn't go away for me because I see that craftsmanship back in there, and that was what got me into. That's what I wanted to do. And then the industry got a hold of me and said, no, there's no money there. Go do this. And I went, okay, I'm going to go do that.
Eric the Car Guy [01:14:17]:
I think we followed similar paths in that regard. Yeah, I really do.
Jeff Compton [01:14:21]:
So the. The Peach appearances and the Chip Foose and those kind of guys, they were my. They were my inspiration. But I went a different way, and I'm not sorry that I went a different way. Like Stacy David, you know, we talked about him. There's so many guys that just had a profound influence on me, and I. I wish that. I mean, they've been given a lot of credit and they've been.
Jeff Compton [01:14:43]:
They know the impact they've had. But I see that going away because I don't see the young people necessarily falling in love with the EV idea of a car. It just becomes. It's an appliance to them. It's a cell phone with wheels. And whereas Chip and all those guys have always been about the way it sounds and smells and feels and all that, that's a different level.
Eric the Car Guy [01:15:02]:
It's an experience.
Jeff Compton [01:15:03]:
Yes. And I believe that a Tesla is a very impressive machine.
Eric the Car Guy [01:15:07]:
It's an experience. It's not the same experience, but it is an experience.
Jeff Compton [01:15:10]:
And that's what I think. If we could get back to selling the experience to our young people, we get some more interest in this industry. But this has been. This has been awesome. You, a guy that I've been wanting to talk to for a really long time, you guys had a big influence on me and an impact and. And, you know, we've gone different ways, you know, and I just want to say that, like, you have really shaped some people's careers, and that's. That's a testament to you. I'm glad to have you here.
Jeff Compton [01:15:38]:
I'm glad to have you back and keep doing what you're doing, man. And, you know, if you walk away from it all tomorrow and you don't put out another video, you have nothing to worry about or feel sorry for. You have done more than most of us ever will.
Eric the Car Guy [01:15:52]:
Appreciate that very much.
Jeff Compton [01:15:54]:
I just want to say thank you, man. Thank you, everybody. Thank you for listening. We'll see you all again soon.
Eric the Car Guy [01:15:59]:
Stay dirty.
Jeff Compton [01:16:01]:
Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.