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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Bryan Pollock [00:00:00]:
If you walked into your shop in the Loop Bay and you saw a GS with a breaker bar taking lug nuts off with a breaker bar instead of his impact gun, you'd probably have a WTF moment. Right? So what's going on with these service advisors that aren't using the tools? It's the same concept, right? They're choosing to use a breaker bar to take lug nuts off instead of removing them with an impact on.
Mike Allen [00:00:17]:
They're choosing. That's the way I've always done it.
Bryan Pollock [00:00:18]:
Which we get it. And the point is not to pick on advisors necessarily.
Mike Allen [00:00:22]:
I feel like this conversation is kind of pick on advisors. The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive of aftermarket.
Bryan Pollock [00:00:32]:
The stuff we or our guests may
Mike Allen [00:00:34]:
say do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show. So if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen with Confessions of a Shop Owner presented by techmetric, simply the best software ever made. When in doubt, always choose workplace violence. Is that what you're saying?
Bryan Pollock [00:01:08]:
Yeah. When in doubt, if raising your voice doesn't work, it's time to raise the hand. Mike, that's from the movie McClintock. Did you know that?
Mike Allen [00:01:17]:
You know, I don't know that I've seen the movie McClintock, but I think I know who the main character was. The star. Yeah, he looks like somebody in our industry, actually.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:26]:
Yeah, John Wayne. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:01:28]:
Anyway, that's the one. So I wanted to get together and chat because I just wanted us to, you know, get to know each other ourselves a little bit. Hi, my name's Mike.
Bryan Pollock [00:01:37]:
Oh, yeah, I'm Brian. I like long walks on the beach and auto repair.
Mike Allen [00:01:42]:
I used to have a T. Oh God. Is it going to go this far off the rails right away? I used to have a T shirt that I would wear before I got. Before I met my wife, when I was even more obnoxious than I am now. And it was like an 80s style silhouette with a sunset in the background and two people walking hand in hand down the beach. And they said, I love long walks on the beach after anal.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:04]:
Oh my gosh. You were ahead of your time. Really?
Mike Allen [00:02:11]:
I got it. It was a website called T Shirt Hell and they had a section that was called Worse Than Hell.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:16]:
Worse than Hell. And that's where you got it from?
Mike Allen [00:02:18]:
Yeah, it was perfect. Really horribly offensive stuff. I have one that on the front, it was counter went up big block letters that said free hugs. Nice. Because of the anal joke. Yes, free hugs on the front. And on the back it had a trophy with a wreath around it and it's a world champion slut hugger.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:37]:
Oh, my gosh.
Mike Allen [00:02:38]:
And so you go into the bars and like, oh, you hug. And then you turn around and walk away and wait for their reaction.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:46]:
Oh, that's it. We're canceled.
Mike Allen [00:02:48]:
Poor choices. I mean, choices were made. It's a miracle I'm alive still.
Bryan Pollock [00:02:52]:
Oh, gosh.
Mike Allen [00:02:54]:
But anyway, we haven't had an episode together in forever because our travel schedule has taken us to different events and we've had lots of good conversations. I mean, there's vision tectonic. You just got back from Tools where you did a bunch of great recordings that will probably be far more technically sound and reasonable because I wasn't there. So that's good.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:16]:
I tried really hard to stay away from any actual technical type conversation. Why?
Mike Allen [00:03:24]:
That was your opportunity to not have my obnoxious.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:26]:
I don't think. I don't think that's the. I don't think that's the whole point of this. I tried really hard to stay on task, which is hard for me because I have weapons grade adhd.
Mike Allen [00:03:35]:
So it's.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:36]:
I mean, I put in my best effort, which will be subpar compared to the average effort, but, you know, that's what you get. You. You chose me. You know, what can I say?
Mike Allen [00:03:44]:
Our ADHD combined makes for content that is amusing to other people who suffer from our affliction and annoying to some people who are more focused in their life.
Bryan Pollock [00:03:57]:
Definitely.
Mike Allen [00:03:58]:
As a matter of fact, in the entire world of mediocre automotive podcast, there is one mediocre automotive podcaster who was really disgruntled with our level of adhd.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:08]:
Really?
Mike Allen [00:04:09]:
Yeah. It was funny. Weird.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:12]:
Oh, that's right. Almost forgot squirrel. It's funny. He's still liking the posts. That's weird.
Mike Allen [00:04:21]:
Anyways, I mean, it's because. It's because you're awesome.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:24]:
Probably. He probably feels really good.
Mike Allen [00:04:28]:
So I wanted to get together and talk because one of the events that I went to and I recorded at that you weren't able to make it to was fueling connections from asta. And the speaker and trainer that was there was Becky Witt. And you know, she's known throughout the industry for being hyper focused on efficiency and being.
Bryan Pollock [00:04:51]:
What's your shop? Yeah, what's the shop time? Cost per minute, right?
Mike Allen [00:04:55]:
Yeah, cost per minute. Right. And you Know, her whole thing was trying to get so crazy efficient that they could produce in two and a half days what a normal shop produces in five days.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:10]:
I think it's possible.
Mike Allen [00:05:12]:
Well, and I think she said that they're really more at like three, three and a half days. Right. But still to produce a five day shops volume in three days is pretty damn good. Right?
Bryan Pollock [00:05:23]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:05:23]:
And so I took that and I was thinking about, you know, I went back to the shop and we were talking about technicians time in terms of dollars per minute.
Bryan Pollock [00:05:36]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:05:37]:
And you know, she's not the first person to utilize that tool as a teaching tool. Sure. You know, breaking down revenue parts and
Bryan Pollock [00:05:44]:
labor parts, labor hour, all that good
Mike Allen [00:05:46]:
stuff, that kind of thing. But she does articulate it well. And so why don't we do the same thing with our service advisors time? Because I combined that with a conversation I had with Hunt Damris from Parmelas, who also has another great mediocre automotive podcast that's focused on the book side of it. And we're all mediocre, dude. None of us are good at what we do.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:14]:
No.
Mike Allen [00:06:15]:
And he was talking about. We were at, I was at my elite 20 group meeting in, in Colorado and we were in Fort Collins at Huska Automotive in Fort Collins, which is an incredible organization.
Bryan Pollock [00:06:31]:
Oh, I think you told me about that. Yep.
Mike Allen [00:06:33]:
Yeah, they're doing bigger numbers than the self professed biggest auto repair shop in the country every month. And they're doing it kind of like the way that we all did it. They just do it better than us and bigger. But anyway, Hunt was talking about how shops that are really zeroed in on their processes and have good margins are typically two technicians to an advisor or more. Two and a half up to three. And then there's a point of diminishing return when it's more than three.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:12]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:07:13]:
So you want to be in that 2.2 and a third to two and a half range text per advisor. If you get your systems right and you're doing things right, that's going to be your best, most effective way. Right. And I was more like 1.8, 1.9 across the company. And so was like, you know, I don't. And everybody's telling me I need to hire another adviser, we need another advisor. We're just too busy. We got too much going on.
Mike Allen [00:07:42]:
And so Stephen.
Bryan Pollock [00:07:44]:
But are they? But are they? But are they?
Mike Allen [00:07:52]:
Stephen is my director of operations and he started digging deep and he started listening to every phone call and inbound, outbound.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:00]:
And Steven put A flat rate time on how long it should take to make an appointment, didn't he?
Mike Allen [00:08:05]:
So I think we're.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:06]:
Why are we on for 14 minutes when an appointment can be made in two?
Mike Allen [00:08:09]:
Well, we're going to switch our advisors over to flat rate and they're going to get paid. They're going to get paid 1/10 per appointment booked. And you know, if it takes them an hour and a half to book the appointment, that's fine. They're just going to get paid 110.
Bryan Pollock [00:08:23]:
Could you imagine?
Mike Allen [00:08:25]:
Could you imagine? So we had a company wide meeting earlier this week and we broke it down and we're like, all right guys, here's the deal. Our service advisors on average work about 10 hours a day. So you have a 10 hour day. And we've, we've looked at every single inbound and outbound phone call for the last period of time. And on average across the company, a service advisor spends two and a half hours on the phone per day. So now we're down to seven and a half hours. And we said, how long do you think a really good intake process and write up process goes from the time they walk in the door to the time you hang the keys on the dispatch board? What's that time frame? Right. Like if, if on average, because you have some big ones and some, some quick ones.
Mike Allen [00:09:06]:
Right?
Bryan Pollock [00:09:07]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:09:07]:
And we agreed that that's 10 minutes. Okay, 10 minutes. And how long from the time that they walk in the door until they leave with their keys to check out? Right. And if we've done everything right along the step, that's probably a five or six minute conversation.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:21]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:09:22]:
So 15 minutes per customer. Yeah, we're doing 6.8 cars per advisor per day. So call it seven.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:29]:
Seven.
Mike Allen [00:09:30]:
We rounded it up to 20. So that's two hours and 20 minutes a day. You know what, let's round it up to 2 hours and 30 minutes. Now we're at 5 hours of the day. We got 5 hours left.
Bryan Pollock [00:09:40]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:09:42]:
Well, you know, we need to audit repair orders, review the repair order, make sure that all the right parts are on there. Sometimes we got to go back and ask questions with the technician, that kind of thing and make sure that 10 minutes go right. Yeah. So we told them 20 minutes per car on that too. Okay. We're trying to be really giving on that. So again, seven minutes or seven cars a day rounded up two and a half hours now. Now we're at seven and a half hours.
Mike Allen [00:10:02]:
So we get two and a half hours. So if it's not if it's not on the phone. Because the sales conversation happens on the phone. Right. And that's already accounted for. And if it's not greeting a customer or checking a customer out and it's not RO audits, what are the other two and a half hours going to? And I said we need to start thinking about this in terms of, you know, a high level technician knows their job and they put all the tools they need for that job or they expect a need for that job in their cart and they roll over the car so they're not trekking back and forth to the toolbox. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:36]:
What would the industry do if every technician in every bay had two and a half hours a day unaccounted for?
Mike Allen [00:10:42]:
I bet they do. On average.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:44]:
They probably do.
Mike Allen [00:10:45]:
That's why the industry is so jacked up, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:10:47]:
Yeah, that's why it's so checked up. Right.
Mike Allen [00:10:48]:
They're high level, efficient technicians.
Bryan Pollock [00:10:50]:
That's why people are on Facey space complaining about tech efficiency. Right?
Mike Allen [00:10:53]:
Yeah, well, but if you think about it, every time we, we talk about like superstar technician, we're talking about efficiency and productivity, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:11:03]:
Yeah. Accurately addressing the issues efficiently.
Mike Allen [00:11:09]:
Why don't we do that with our service advisors?
Bryan Pollock [00:11:11]:
I don't know.
Mike Allen [00:11:11]:
Why don't we judge their efficiency and have them clock in and out of every repair order to judge how much time they're doing?
Bryan Pollock [00:11:18]:
Is it that because tech efficiency, because of the flat rate manual. Right. Is it because tech efficiency is so much easier to measure that we hyper focus on tech efficiency? And when it comes to front end efficiency, we say eff it. And when you start looking into things, a lot of times when there's a productivity issue, it's getting communicated. It has to do with a holdup in the front end. And I'm not saying all the times, don't get me wrong, there's crappy text that just burn the freaking clock, man. There's no doubt in that. And I'm not here to argue that
Mike Allen [00:11:53]:
there are shitty performers in every position in the industry.
Bryan Pollock [00:11:56]:
But I mean if you take, if you have a company where you've hired for attitude over ability and you have everybody facing the same direction on the same page trying to do the best job, where do you think the efficiency hang up typically is. Do you think it's typically in the bay or do you think there's. Even if it's. Even if we don't have to blame it on one thing or another, maybe it's half and half. Well, do you think we should address Both halves or just one half? Right.
Mike Allen [00:12:24]:
I think in the average shop it's death by a thousand paper cuts. There's inefficiencies in every step of the process, but the one that we as an industry always get hyper focused on is the technician. Yeah. And I feel like. So, I mean, we had this conversation in the company meeting and it was like, well, it's not like your phone time is a two and a half hour solid block and then you're not on the phone for the rest of the day. So there's mental gear shifting going from, I'm looking at it, 100% agree to taking a phone call.
Bryan Pollock [00:12:48]:
The same conversation we have about taking technicians off of big jobs to handle some BS that you didn't schedule properly. Oh, what do you know? Mental gear shifting, oh my gosh. It's not efficient. I can't believe it.
Mike Allen [00:12:59]:
So there were some uncomfortable. There's some uncomfortable people in that conversation. At the shop when I started talking about, what the fuck are you doing? Probably, oh, wait, you're cool. Saying, what the fucking.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:10]:
They're advisors and not techs and they don't have to live that every single day of their life, selling their soul six minutes at a time. Time for 25 years. Oh, sorry, did I say that out loud?
Mike Allen [00:13:21]:
Well, so here's the funny thing. Like I didn't draw the analogy to technicians life the whole time. So the technicians were just kind of sitting back watching the conversation and the service advisors were getting more and more uncomfortable. Right. And then I was like, but wait, what? The conversation we're having right now is the entire life of technicians for the last 40 years.
Bryan Pollock [00:13:43]:
Yeah, right.
Mike Allen [00:13:44]:
They are judged minute by minute, footstep by footstep. Oh my gosh, enormously in tools to make themselves more efficient. And then I went over and we had already talked about, you know, all of our software solutions for efficiency. I was like, and here are all the softwares that we have subscribed to so that you can be more efficient as advisor and you're not learning to use it.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:07]:
The process in the shop, not only is it judged by people who are hyper focused on efficiency, even me now, I'm not, you know me, I'm not a hyper focused on efficiency type of guy. I need the job done right, dude. If somebody, you want to see me start vibrating, put somebody on a job that's got three hours on the ticket and put them in a different bay than what their toolbox is in, I will start vibrating. I'm like, why is that guy walking an extra eight steps every time to go get his tools. I'm like, this is freaking crazy. What do we mean?
Mike Allen [00:14:36]:
That should, that shouldn't happen. Sometimes does happen. Yeah, but he should also have a cart that he can learn all shit and roll over.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:43]:
And I agree with that.
Mike Allen [00:14:44]:
But that's probably works great.
Bryan Pollock [00:14:46]:
Probably doesn't work great in the Rust Belt because you don't know what size socket you're gonna need for the 15 millimeter bolt because it might be 10 millimeters by the time you're done. But anyways.
Mike Allen [00:14:55]:
Well, I mean, but if you think about it, the really nice roll cartoon is an innovation developed by technicians to increase efficiency so that they didn't have to walk back and forth 100%.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:08]:
And to your point, you're investing in all this software, all this training, and all these tools. How many front of house subscriptions do you pay monthly for service writer aid? Not counting techmetric.
Mike Allen [00:15:22]:
Well, there's techmetric. Right. And I want to come back and talk to you about techmetric. And you're finally leaving the covered wagon and moving into the new age. So proud of you. But there's like Tech 8 IQ. So we have Tech 8 IQ, Golden Hour, Garage detect, auto shift, auto. Because they all do something.
Mike Allen [00:15:43]:
There's an overlap for all of them. And they all do some things differently. And we're trying to figure out which ones are the best for us. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:15:49]:
A half dozen. Long story short, probably a half dozen monthly subscriptions to eight advisors.
Mike Allen [00:15:55]:
Yeah. Thousand dollars plus per month easily. And it's like, just use the tools. I understand that the first time you use the tool, it's not going to save you time because you're learning to use a new tool.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:07]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:16:09]:
You have to. I mean, you have to learn how to use the tool properly before you can find out if it's going to be.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:14]:
Absolutely. But that being said, if you walked into your shop in the Loop Bay and you saw a GS with a breaker bar taking lug nuts off of the breaker bar instead of his impact gun, you'd probably have a WTF moment. Right. So what's going on with these service advisors that aren't using the tools? It's the same concept. Right. They're choosing to use a breaker bar to take lug nuts off instead of removing them with an impact on.
Mike Allen [00:16:37]:
They're choosing. That's the way I've always done it.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:39]:
Yeah. Which we get it. And the point is not to pick on advisors necessarily.
Mike Allen [00:16:45]:
I feel like this conversation is kind of to pick on advisors.
Bryan Pollock [00:16:49]:
I'm really trying not to, but they do the darndest things.
Mike Allen [00:16:52]:
Mike of all the jobs in an auto repair shop, it's the one that I have the most time doing. Before I became a terrible boss, I
Bryan Pollock [00:17:00]:
have no interest in doing it. What I've actually found is typically when a customer walks in the office, the best thing I can do for this entire business is walk out the back door of the office because they're going to say something illogical. And I have, you know, I have a thing where words mean things and I hyper focus on when the wrong things are said that are incorrect and I have to go straight to correcting them instead of just shutting up and collecting the money. So the best thing I can do is walk out the back door and it's less frustration for me. So, yeah, I don't want the advisor's job. And I think at our place, you know, I think at our place, our advisors do a fantastic job. They really do. That being said, we have our advisors handling more than a typical advisor would.
Bryan Pollock [00:17:47]:
They don't do as much data collection up front. So they don't. We don't have a process where they really go walk around the car with the customer in the parking lot or meet the customer at the car or whatever, which is. And they will sometimes if, you know, the customer has a complaint where the advisor thinks they need to go look at something, they absolutely will. We don't have a process like that. But man, as far as simple estimates go, I would say our Advisors write probably 90% of the estimates themselves. And that is.
Mike Allen [00:18:16]:
Do you have a threshold where they need to review the ticket with a technician before they make the call?
Bryan Pollock [00:18:22]:
Every single ticket.
Mike Allen [00:18:24]:
Every ticket. So for us, anything over three hours, we need to have review.
Bryan Pollock [00:18:28]:
No, every, Everything. If the technician says the thing needs brakes and the technician has brake measurements right now, soon to not be, because we're actually onboarding with Tech metric right now. So there will be pictures available for them. Justin or William or Jeff out in Lockport, or Seth across the street at the fleet shop is getting up, stopping what they're doing, walking out in the shop, putting their actual eyeballs on those actual brake pads before they sell that job. Every single job.
Mike Allen [00:18:55]:
Well, there's a value to being able to say, I personally looked at this vehicle and yep, you know, the pads are down.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:01]:
That's the way we've done it for years. When it was just Jim and I, Jim would come out in the shop, look at the vehicle before he called the customer. No matter how small and that's what he's made the guys do forever. And you know what? It's. It's worked very well. I think that there's been. Does I say dozens? We've been in business 16 years, probably hundreds of embarrassing situations saved over the misinterpretation of a condition or something like that. Right.
Bryan Pollock [00:19:31]:
I don't think them getting up out of the chair to come do it is helpful with our efficiency, which is why I'm excited for Tech Metric. Because if we can show that in a video or something and they can stay seated at their desk and just watch the video, I mean, that's a lot better, right? We're not even. We're not even super fired up about sending those DVIs to customers right now. We're excited about being able to get that information from back to front without somebody having to walk somewhere.
Mike Allen [00:20:02]:
When do you go live?
Bryan Pollock [00:20:04]:
June 1st.
Mike Allen [00:20:06]:
Okay. How many open repair orders do you have in Mitchell right now?
Bryan Pollock [00:20:10]:
That's not important. What is behind you is not important.
Mike Allen [00:20:16]:
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:18]:
You know what, though? Here's the thing. We've. We've already been saying that about our open roof. Well, we gotta. We're gonna have to take this taken care of. We're gonna have to get this taken care of. You know what? We'll be getting that taken care of in 2030. If we don't just.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:30]:
We're gonna have to do something, man.
Mike Allen [00:20:32]:
Well, we're talking about it a year ago, and you're like, yeah, we have TechMetric. We're just not ready to go live because we got to clean up our work in progress. Yeah, yeah, just do it, man. Bite the bullet.
Bryan Pollock [00:20:41]:
That's what we're doing. Some people are uncomfortable with it. Most of our crew is young, and so they all have their. Their temporary login to play around with it right now, right? Like, even the tax. Everybody's got the. The temporary thing before the data migration and all that stuff. And most of the guys are like, oh, my gosh, what have we been doing? Why didn't we have this before? You know, my one. I got.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:03]:
I got a couple guys that are hustlers, and these guys are all hourly, but they get excited about getting jobs done fast. And they're like, oh, my gosh, this would have been so great to not have to wait on somebody to come back here and look at this thing before I know what I have to do next, right? Whether I'm keeping it in, whether it's going out, or this, that, or the other thing, right, because if it's a big job, but parts are available, sometimes we don't unrack and re rack. Right. If I got, if I'm putting a guy. If it's a five hour job and Napa's got everything in stock and they're going to have it to me in 25 minutes, I'm not gonna, I'm not pushing, I'm not pulling that car out. The thing's already lifted. The thing's already lifted. The wheels are already lost off.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:40]:
Right. If I can get the thing sold. We're doing the job then we're not doing this ring around the Rosie BS that some of these shops do.
Mike Allen [00:21:48]:
Well, I think you've also got a full staff, right, in the capacity to do that.
Bryan Pollock [00:21:54]:
We are, we are one tech per bay. Yeah, it's, it's busy.
Mike Allen [00:21:58]:
Wait a minute. One tech per bay? That makes you an evil shop owner. I remember Lucas had his video talking about how one tech per bay is where the math works. And he got crucified by all the technician keyboard.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:11]:
I think that one tech per bay is. I wish there was two bays per tech. But to get done what we have to get done, we have no choice. We have to. And that's, and that's a whole other conversation with a problem.
Mike Allen [00:22:29]:
That spot available behind the bay.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:31]:
On each bay there is. But I mean the way we operate, flat spots really don't help us out much. I mean almost every car is getting under work under car work done. Every car has to go in the air and get checked over. You know, it's. I guess it's okay if you gotta shoot some plugs in or a purge valve on or something like that. But it doesn't really, you know, and that then that creates a problem. I think people will be surprised.
Bryan Pollock [00:22:59]:
We're relatively high volume, you know, parking cars, disabling a car behind a car that's on a lift doesn't really make sense for us. That's, that's a tricky deal.
Mike Allen [00:23:09]:
Well, one of the, one of the tools that I think you should check out pretty quickly after you get your feet under you with TechMetric. And TechMetric is working on, you know, their new DVI Live DVI updates. But detect Auto has one now where you just hit record and you walk around and you're taking pictures in real time while it's recording your video or your audio narration.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:37]:
Okay.
Mike Allen [00:23:38]:
And it automatically puts the pictures in on the DVI and automatically puts your words in and corrects for camera.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:45]:
That might be a Little tricky for our shop. We like to have a little bit too much fun to have a live microphone phone in the shop, I think. I don't know how.
Mike Allen [00:23:51]:
So I've, like, one of my stores has an industrial plant right behind it, and we have the doors open and there's a enormous amount of white noise.
Bryan Pollock [00:23:57]:
Oh, I'm not talking about the white noise. I'm talking about the word said.
Mike Allen [00:24:01]:
Well, I mean, if you think you can get them to stop, you know, dropping MF bombs for 90 seconds, it's
Bryan Pollock [00:24:06]:
a pretty shoppy shop, Mike. I don't know. It's very shoppy. The shop is very choppy.
Mike Allen [00:24:13]:
But the point is, it's.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:14]:
I understand what you're saying, though.
Mike Allen [00:24:15]:
The DVI development process time from, you know, 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes down to seven or eight minutes.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:21]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:24:21]:
So if you're cutting half the time out of the DVI for every dvi, that's a huge time saving our, our
Bryan Pollock [00:24:28]:
current system a lot of it. Especially with the shop across the street, them guys, they're literally taking pictures of stuff and texting it to the writer, and they're literally taking a picture of the checkout sheet and texting it to the writer. So now you got to read a handwritten checkout sheet. Like, it's just. We're all excited about TechMetric.
Mike Allen [00:24:47]:
And then you got to make sure that your service advisors press down really hard when they're writing on the triplicate. Ro. Right. So the pink copy gets the. You can read the pink copy as well as the yellow copy.
Bryan Pollock [00:24:57]:
We'll probably still have printed tech sheets.
Mike Allen [00:25:01]:
I mean, you can do it the way you do it, man. You guys make money.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:05]:
We do all right.
Mike Allen [00:25:06]:
I'm not here to judge. Yep, you do better. You do better than I do, so.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:10]:
Yeah, yeah. Who knows? They have to look at the numbers, I guess. Who's gonna do that? Not me.
Mike Allen [00:25:17]:
So our travel season is kind of coming to a close right now. We're coming into summer. We have the summer break.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:23]:
Spring show season is over.
Mike Allen [00:25:24]:
Yeah. Kid. Kids are home from. From school. So 15 year old's gonna be coming to work this summer.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:31]:
Nice.
Mike Allen [00:25:32]:
See how that goes.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:33]:
I like it.
Mike Allen [00:25:35]:
The 11 year old has lots of summer camps planned, and the 13 year old is like, no, I think I just kind of want to sit at the house and do nothing. And he's going to be sorely disappointed when that's not an option.
Bryan Pollock [00:25:48]:
You know, that's kind of how Jim's son started with us. He was on summer break and it Was like, I was going to say three, but I don't think it was that many days into summer break. It was like maybe the second morning of summer break. And Jim told him, get in the truck. He ain't sitting home. He's like, that's enough of this.
Mike Allen [00:26:06]:
That's pretty much how it started for me when I was 13.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:09]:
Yeah, we ain't doing this.
Mike Allen [00:26:11]:
They didn't trust me. Left home alone with the four wheeler and a bunch of woods. They're like, they're gonna have to come looking for the body. They left me home all summer. But how was. Tools. Tools. You just finished that.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:25]:
I'll tell you what, it was really great. All star crew. Just a really good time. A really. I'll tell you what too. That event, the level of training there is like underrated. I think everybody thinks because it's a small event that there's maybe the same great trainers, right? Yeah, it's like all the same people. All the same people are there.
Bryan Pollock [00:26:50]:
The training was really good. What's that?
Mike Allen [00:26:53]:
The same core group of trainers?
Bryan Pollock [00:26:55]:
Yep, yep, the same core group of trainers. They had a lot of good classes, it seemed like to me. They had classes for all levels as far as the technical side. And they had a real good list of management style classes. Everything from numbers to marketing to delegating and everything in between. It was. There was a whole. I think Rick White did a whole class on delegation.
Bryan Pollock [00:27:20]:
It was pretty cool.
Mike Allen [00:27:20]:
Speaking of management, trainers sat in on Lucas and Seth. They did a Facebook live on the diagnostic feed debate. Right. But you know, it's not going to be a debate because Lucas and Cecil. Yeah, yeah. It's really going to be the two of them kind of parroting their, their methodology. Right. And I really wanted to go in and troll hard, but I did not.
Mike Allen [00:27:44]:
I resisted. But I did comment a few times. And you know, Cecil, Lucas made a joke about how, uh, it's a good thing Cecil doesn't have, you know, omnipotent power because he would be out killing some of these people when Cecil referenced some of the talking heads that propose other methodologies. And so I just put in the comments. I'm going to need a list of who Cecil would smite. And. And Lucas read it out to Cecil during the live and he said, mike's not at the top of the list, but he is in the top five.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:21]:
Oh, gosh.
Mike Allen [00:28:22]:
And he said, and I'm thinking about buying a shop after he provoked me so badly on the tectonic stage. So you heard it here first. Free Diagnostics is the reason Cecil's buying a shop.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:35]:
Oh my gosh.
Mike Allen [00:28:36]:
You know, Cecil's gonna buy a shop and start doing free diag.
Bryan Pollock [00:28:39]:
Not for nothing. Not for nothing. I've seen some of the diag that comes out of these shops and some of them should consider not charging because that's about all it's worth. But anyways, some of your dye, I'm not saying that's all your diag is worth, but, man, there's a lot of people who are like, oh, not charging for dye is stupid. And I like, look at what they did. And I'm like, bro, you should probably not be charging that person for whatever that is that you did there, because that's not got nothing to do with the price of tea in China. And the car still broke at the same time.
Mike Allen [00:29:11]:
Sometimes percussive testing is worth an hour.
Bryan Pollock [00:29:13]:
I tell you what, people want to talk about technician efficiency and they want 17 fricking pages and four pictures of documentation and everything else. And when the cam solenoid is stuck and you hit it with a hammer and the car starts running. Right, I think we're done here.
Mike Allen [00:29:31]:
Look. When I first opened my shop, I thought my old systems would keep up. The software that I had would continue to evolve. But as we grew the slow estimates, scattered workflow, increasing downtime, it really just. It was becoming a real problem. That's why I switched to techmetric. It's not just software. It's a complete shop management system that makes my life easier.
Mike Allen [00:29:53]:
Smart jobs, instant estimates, integrated payments, integrated financing options. I mean, it allows me to focus on the work that actually makes me money and not get bogged down in the other details. My shop's repair orders have jumped over 300% since switching to TechMetric. And when I need help, their support team responds in real time. I actually was online with them asking questions just this week, and I got answers in minutes rather than having to wait for callbacks and emails days later. If your system is holding you back, it's time for a change. Tap the link in the show notes and see how techmetric can help you move your shop forward.
Bryan Pollock [00:30:26]:
I think three sentences, knowing where to
Mike Allen [00:30:29]:
swing the hammer has some value, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:30:32]:
I provided a great service. You know what? That car had a. That car had a timing code. Some super duper I charge for diag shop. The technician would have saw the timing code. They would have done a DVI that he called looking at the data on the scanner. With the cam out of time and the timing code and the dvi, their first hour of diagnostic and then they would have wrote a three hour testing routine to use a lab scope to tell the customer the thing was out of time when the scan data told us it was out of time. And who knows, who knows, maybe sold a timing chain on an engine.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:04]:
It was a Volkswagen. So the engine has to come out of the car. The engines got to be removed from the car because the timing chains on the wrong side of the engine and all that stuff. And you know, I just took some common sense in two minutes and pry bar and a hammer and hit the cam solenade with a hammer and freeze it. Freed it up, right? I don't know. It's a little.
Mike Allen [00:31:23]:
Your hack.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:24]:
Yeah, apparently so.
Mike Allen [00:31:26]:
I had a. I'm a hack.
Bryan Pollock [00:31:27]:
I'm a hack that doesn't not spend 8% on marketing because I don't write three hour test routines when it's not necessary.
Mike Allen [00:31:35]:
I had a conversation last night with a friend of ours that is a, is a shop owner and he has very high standards and expectations and he's struggling to staff technicians because, you know, the technicians that come in don't follow the same processes that he does. And so I said, hey man, like as a leader, my understanding, and I may be wrong here, is to, to set the goals for the organization is to equip the, the people that I put into the organization with the right tooling, training and opportunity to, to achieve those goals. And as long as they achieve those goals with proper ethics and proper profitable profitability, I shouldn't micromanage how they get there.
Bryan Pollock [00:32:24]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:32:26]:
And so if this testing procedure has, you know, 12 steps and it takes three hours and the technician comes in and through experience knows, wait a minute, I can just put this pry bar here and tap the hammer. And if the solenoid starts working again and the problem smooths out, I have given you the answer to the problem, but not documented all 12 steps of the diagnostic trouble tree. Does that technician need to be lauded for their knowledge, experience and efficiency or do they need to be corrected for not following the procedure?
Bryan Pollock [00:33:10]:
And who made, who made that shop owner diagnostic God? Who says that they're the ultimate authority on if, if somebody uses a method. This is such a complicated.
Mike Allen [00:33:26]:
It's a nuanced conversation.
Bryan Pollock [00:33:27]:
Yeah, yeah, this is a complicated conversation because Mike, let's say, let's say we both have a car that has the same exact problem and you're better at this than me. So you solve that problem in an hour and I take three hours to solve the problem. What was the problem worth. It's not worth three hours just because I took longer. And I just had this conversation with somebody, literally. I typed a comment out this morning. There's a ton of brilliant technicians out there that can get to the bottom of the problem. The issue is a lot of them, the process they would take in the hours and hours and hours and hours it would take to do that, because we're, you know, everybody's got to get the scope out.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:08]:
You know, we'd have to get the scope out and check timing this, that, the other thing. How sellable is that to the customer, right? And we run into a situation where a lot of technicians want all this extra time. They don't want to have to swing a hammer all day. Here's the uncomfortable truth. If you don't want to have to swing a hammer all day. If you want to diagnose cars all day long, you better be able to get through eight a day, minimum. You better be able to consistently turn out eight cars a day. Because 95% of cars are not that complicated.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:36]:
90%, 95% do not require a second hour. I do a ton of diagnostics, like
Mike Allen [00:34:42]:
a made up statistic.
Bryan Pollock [00:34:44]:
50% of the time. No, seriously, 1 in 20 cars requires more than an hour. So at 1 in 20 cars requiring more than an hour, statistically you only have to go an hour or two every three days.
Mike Allen [00:34:59]:
So if one in 20 cars requires more than an hour for you. But I would posit that you are on the leading edge of the bell curve as far as experience and systems understanding and diagnostic capability.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:15]:
That's what these technicians present themselves as, Mike. Well, so if they present themselves, the
Mike Allen [00:35:23]:
value of the job, I would argue, is what the top of the bell curve would take to diagnose it. Not the trailing edge, not the leading edge, but the average technician.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:33]:
Are you ready to get hate mail? Are you ready to get hate mail? I think the middle. I think the meat of the curve is so untrained, I don't think it's fair to the consumer to charge them for that skill set. That's where I think we're at in this industry.
Mike Allen [00:35:48]:
I think the curve is too far to the left anyway.
Bryan Pollock [00:35:51]:
Yeah, I honestly do. I really.
Mike Allen [00:35:56]:
You're saying is the average technician is too stupid to call themselves a technician?
Bryan Pollock [00:36:01]:
I'm saying that the average technician thinks they're. That they're way better than at this, than they actually are.
Mike Allen [00:36:07]:
The average person thinks that they're way better at whatever it is they do than they actually are.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:13]:
So should the consumer have to pay for that. And let's talk about the marketing.
Mike Allen [00:36:18]:
They have to pay because it's a business. But maybe how many. I wish that we had like a universal aptitude analysis tool where we could set the labor rate based on the skill set of the people working on the car.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:34]:
That's what I always say when people talk about transparency. Do you set the labor rate lower for your less skilled technician doing breaks? Then do you pay the A tech or do you charge the customer the same for the A tech and the C tech to do the brakes? Right. And they do.
Mike Allen [00:36:50]:
I know that my CPA firm has partner, and if the partner's spending his time, it's this cost. And if the associate CPA is spending their time, it's this cost.
Bryan Pollock [00:36:59]:
Sure.
Mike Allen [00:36:59]:
And if the assistant to the associate is spending their time, it's this much.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:03]:
And I'm not saying we have to do that, but I am saying that people, people love to blindly say, we need to charge all this money. We need to charge all this money. And can you. Is the money there? I mean, the free market determines what the time is worth, right?
Mike Allen [00:37:20]:
Well, we need to provide the value.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:22]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:37:22]:
And we charge the money. You got to provide the value.
Bryan Pollock [00:37:24]:
I mean, we talk about advocating for the client. Do we have the, what do they call that? The fiduciary responsibility to spend the client's money wisely and determine that when the technician took a wrong turn and overlooked something simple, but still has all these. The technician did all this testing, has all these results, but should have caught it on step two of 12. I think we have a responsibility to not charge for steps three through 12. That's my opinion. Right. And that's an unpopular opinion in the diagnostic world. It's probably an unpopular opinion in the business world, but I sleep on a soft pillow and we make a lot of money.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:04]:
Can I say.
Mike Allen [00:38:05]:
Well, I mean, one of the things that you pointed out at tools that I've heard you say before is you pay the bills with the first 40 hours of your week and you create your legacy with the second 40 hours.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:18]:
Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's a point I made. If, if, if everybody wants. That's another thing. That work life balance is a real hot topic of the last few years. And that's fine. And I don't, I don't fault anybody for that. And it's just, I think that people need to get used to the idea that that's totally fine.
Bryan Pollock [00:38:38]:
If you would like to put in the average effort that there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being average. Just go on the U.S. you know, the U.S. economic website and look up the average technician pay in the US and expect to collect that for a paycheck. Don't expect to collect 150,000 a year for your average effort. That's right. I mean, does that not make sense?
Mike Allen [00:39:01]:
So it makes sense to people who have an entrepreneurial spirit because they're used to working 80, 90 hours a week, always be thinking about work. I think folks who have no desire to own their own business, who want to have a job that they do well and that they leave at work and they go home and, and their defining characteristic is not their career. They're like that, I'm not gonna go home and spend another 40 hours a week studying or learning.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:28]:
And that's great.
Mike Allen [00:39:28]:
Then you're average, right?
Bryan Pollock [00:39:29]:
Yeah, you're average. That's great. You're. And it's. And it's fine. It's fine. But you don't get to do that. This, this thing everybody says, you know, about the aging body and this, that and the other thing.
Bryan Pollock [00:39:39]:
Well, you don't get to. You don't get to bring a half a day's worth of production to the table all of a sudden at 40 years old, because you don't want to turn wrenches anymore and still get paid more than you would have, you know, doing a full day's production. Like, that's, that's not how this works. Like, you can't sell that to the customer, right? Like, what's the, what's the breaking point, right? Look at your GP per hour on pads and rotors. What's, what's the breaking point for what we can charge per hour diagnostic. I think that if I went out and collected a bunch of diagnostic people together and I said, guys, I got great news. We're taking a step ahead. We're charging 300 an hour for diagnostic.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:18]:
Everybody a cheer, right? Everybody would cheer if I said, I'm going to charge, I'm going to charge. Except the customers. Everybody in the diagnostic world, a lot of these techs turn shop. Everybody else, they'd all cheer, right? And they talk about, why can't we pay a guy to do diagnostics all day and be profitable. Well, 300 per hour, that's probably gonna crack maybe the same GP or a little bit less than using that bay to do a brake job. So.
Mike Allen [00:40:48]:
Yeah.
Bryan Pollock [00:40:49]:
So if you want to know why shops can't be profitable for diagnostic for having a guy on Diagnostics all day. Especially if he can't turn at least eight hours of it. There you go. There you go. Even at 300 per hour, if I'm limited on base space, I'm better off doing pads, rotors and wheel bearings in that bay. Sorry.
Mike Allen [00:41:12]:
Not sorry.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:13]:
And then what kind of marketing? Then you end up like a. If you charge that much per hour for die, you end up like a 300% rule shop. And you got to spend a bass boat worth of money on marketing to outrun your fricking poor estimating decisions.
Mike Allen [00:41:24]:
So what you're saying is you'd rather be good at fixing cars and have a bass boat?
Bryan Pollock [00:41:28]:
Some of them I don't know.
Mike Allen [00:41:29]:
I think you need to get a cigarette boat for the big lake.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:32]:
I was just looking at one. I was looking at them this morning. A Chris Craft Stinger. Actually.
Mike Allen [00:41:37]:
I want a party barge. I just want a big pontoon with a nice sun shade and a good
Bryan Pollock [00:41:42]:
radio and with a big ass outboard on it. Would you get one with a ridiculous outboard?
Mike Allen [00:41:46]:
I mean boards.
Bryan Pollock [00:41:48]:
What if you. What if you get what if. Have you seen the tritunes?
Mike Allen [00:41:55]:
No, I haven't seriously looked at them like. Because I'm not ever gonna get a boat like that because I have enough toxic, expensive behavior trades. I don't know.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:04]:
I think, I think, I think you need a tritune with two 300 Mercury's on it. That's what I think.
Mike Allen [00:42:12]:
Sounds like a great idea. Can you get one and just let me borrow it?
Bryan Pollock [00:42:16]:
I think the shipping back and forth would kill us.
Mike Allen [00:42:19]:
Oh, you can just store it down here in North Carolina, be fine.
Bryan Pollock [00:42:21]:
Oh, just store it. Hold on. I live 500. Yeah, 505 minutes from the largest freshwater fishery in North America. But I'm going to store it at Mike's Micro Lake in North Carolina. That makes sense.
Mike Allen [00:42:34]:
It'll be the coolest boat on the lake. Dog. I will own this bitch. I want to circle back real quick just because we got to talk about the class that we got coming up. Part of the conversation about monitoring advisor time for efficiency in the same ways that we do it for technician time and giving them the tools to be as efficient as possible. Stemmed from the conversation about this class that we're doing with Seth in June. So it's come down Friday, June 12, and we're doing live shenanigans at Carfix at the. Actually at the Confessions of a Shop Owner lounge on the second floor of the downtown location of Carfix.
Mike Allen [00:43:20]:
But so shenanigans Friday night and then all day Saturday. Seth is teaching a full day version of the three hour class he did at Vision. It's on building your own AI agents. And it's all about increasing efficiencies without increasing expenses in your business. So like my office manager slash bookkeeper, slash HR manager slash house mom is very overwhelmed because she's got four businesses that she's trying to do the books on all the time. And you know, there's just a lot of transactions coming in. It's like, well, we can build an AI bookkeeping bot that does a lot of the monotony for her.
Bryan Pollock [00:43:55]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:43:55]:
And she is not an HR person, but she takes HR training classes so that she can answer questions and keep us legal. But we can build an HR bot to answer the HR questions for our employees to save her time and steps. Right. My service advisors, we can build an online scheduling bot that we own. We can build a service advisor sales training bot rather than going out and paying thousands of dollars a month for one of these ones that we've not
Bryan Pollock [00:44:23]:
even building bots, just other tasks that you just. I mean, I've been writing some process stuff about some basic diagnostic things and laying out tables, man, it'll produce a table in 30 seconds and you have to go in there and make five minutes worth of edits.
Mike Allen [00:44:41]:
And Well, I think the incredible thing, and I've talked to Seth about it some, I've talked to Keith Perkins about it a fair amount also is every aspect of your life can be made more efficient using these tools. And so many of us use ChatGPT or whatever at a very surface level.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:57]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:44:57]:
It's just become our new Google.
Bryan Pollock [00:44:58]:
And this stuff ain't going anywhere. I shared with you, my friend runs a 5 billion with a B$AI project up here on the lake 8 minutes from my house. And I toured it a couple Sundays ago. This isn't going anywhere.
Mike Allen [00:45:12]:
Can you hear the cooling fans for that plant from your house?
Bryan Pollock [00:45:15]:
No. And, and he explained to me how the newer fans they use have some sub. Sub. Not subsonic, there's another word for it, but the tip speed. Yeah, the tip speed is at a frequency where you can't hear, you know, they, they've made improvements on that. Companies are not investing. And furthermore. So there's a $5 billion one there and they're going to do one about 25 minutes southeast of my house that's going to be bigger than this $5 billion one.
Bryan Pollock [00:45:45]:
So big business is not investing in this for it to go away. And I Think I get some feedback from people in the industry and man I feel like man some of the people they talk and I get it, people have concerns or whatever but you see the talk and it almost mimics what I imagine the talk about fuel injection was in the 80s. I don't. This fuel injection's never gonna take off a carburetor is the way we're gonna do it forever. And dude, I think this is a spot where you either hop on or get left behind. I really do. I'm. I'm as conservative as you could imagine and I'm using AI on a daily basis because you're either going to hop on or a job.
Mike Allen [00:46:27]:
Yep, it's coming for the job of the people who don't learn how to use it.
Bryan Pollock [00:46:31]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:46:31]:
Right. It's going to be jobs eliminated. But if you become proficient in using these tools it's going to turn and
Bryan Pollock [00:46:37]:
even on the technical side I think it'll turn an average technician into a good technician and it's going to turn a good technician or a real good technician who's invested in using it into a frickin monster.
Mike Allen [00:46:51]:
Well it's going to create really is technician service aids like it's going to go ahead and pull all the OEM service information up for you and have it already there for you and you're going to be able to say what's the torque spec on that bolt? And it will tell you without you having to look it up.
Bryan Pollock [00:47:05]:
I can, I can copy and paste my explanation, my technical explanation of what I found. Right. I can leave that in the repair order. I can copy and paste it into chat GPT and I can tell it to, you know, summarize this for somebody who is not in the auto repair industry at an 8th grade reading level and I have something that a service advisor can read directly to a customer no matter what that customer's walk of life is. And I created it just like that. And there's no more of this technical BS that nobody can understand.
Mike Allen [00:47:34]:
So these tools are coming and we're all going to use them. The question is are you going to spend thousands of dollars a month in subscription fees to have the tools that somebody else built? Are you going to learn to build your own tools and put that money in your pocket? So I can go get a. You can go get a tritune with two Mercury's. So we'll put the link in the show notes to the class. It's next month so I know it's a tight window but I've been talking about it for a little while. If you weren't paying attention, that's your own damn fault. But you know what? I'll also put a coupon code in there for a discount on the ticket. I don't know how much the discount will be, but I'm sure it'll be spectacular.
Mike Allen [00:48:15]:
So use Use Code Confessions. I gotta. Don't let me forget to go make that use Code Confessions for a mystery discount off the price of your ticket. And it'll be awesome. So.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:30]:
Oh, I love it.
Mike Allen [00:48:31]:
Oh, and we gotta hurry up and get the design in order on the hood. Everybody who comes is getting a hoodie and swag bag and that kind of stuff. So I'm. I've been humping Brandon's leg about setting up our our merch store on the new new website's launching, like next week. Excited about that too.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:47]:
It's gonna be great.
Mike Allen [00:48:48]:
It's gonna be awesome.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:49]:
I love it.
Mike Allen [00:48:51]:
Love you, buddy. Oh, by the way, 300% stores are stupid.
Bryan Pollock [00:48:55]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:48:56]:
Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out. The good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros scratch screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink? You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover? Or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email mikeonfessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number 704-confess. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to, like, subscribe or follow. Join us on the screen.
Mike Allen [00:49:30]:
Crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode.