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This podcast is dedicated to changing the automotive industry for the better, one conversation at a time.
Whether you're a technician, vendor, business owner, or car enthusiast, we hope to inspire you to improve for your customers, your careers, your businesses, and your families.
Kent Bullard 0:00
So what we're gonna do is kind of a reaction video today,
Kent Bullard 0:04
like a reaction video.
David Roman 0:06
One on one. This sounds complicated.
Kent Bullard 0:10
You don't like reactions?
David Roman 0:11
No, I'm okay. Well, we do reactions all the time. It's just, this is a podcast. i How am I supposed to make that work?
Kent Bullard 0:18
Well, if this will be the kickoff for the conversation, we're going to watch two short reels. We're not going to watch them we're gonna listen
Kent Bullard 0:26
to okay, even better.
Kent Bullard 0:28
Hopefully there's no ads. I'm not logged into my YouTube
David Roman 0:31
log into your YouTube thing. Why Why wouldn't you? Hold on that's the that's the Shopware that one's a premium so you're on top left hand corner says premium got no ads here. Okay. What's that you don't have to take your your lanyard off. You guys can keep it on. He doesn't want it to click I don't want the jingle jangle. I appreciate that.
Cecil Bullard 0:55
There that jingle jangle jingle
Kent Bullard 0:57
Alright, so Okay. In the group, right. Good friend of ours, Paul. Bearish
David Roman 1:06
Hold on, hold on. We're gonna react to me tasting was gonna bring me one or I know I feel bad. That's why I kind of left
Kent Bullard 1:16
I need some energy drinks.
David Roman 1:17
Microcenter I had to go get something on mice. And I feel I really do feel bad. i That's why I left it in there. I'm like, I'm not gonna drink it. Because I should have gotten to but you know, when I was like, Well, when I was walking out gone. It's got those banks did you get through all those banks? Yeah. What? Yeah, I
Kent Bullard 1:38
got one left for in the morning.
David Roman 1:40
That's my staff. Do how many were in there? 12.
Kent Bullard 1:43
How's your blood pressure? Are you feeling okay?
Kent Bullard 1:45
I'm fine. Just fine.
Kent Bullard 1:47
I had to cut back my my anxiety was just going not too much.
Kent Bullard 1:51
I've only I only drink one a day.
David Roman 1:54
Oh, man. That tastes like you're drinking more heads.
Cecil Bullard 1:57
Well it probably is liquid warheads. So at least it was on a
David Roman 2:02
sugar though. Zero sugar. Um, yeah,
Cecil Bullard 2:05
that other stuff that aspartame and stuff like that. That's much better for you. Yeah, yeah.
Cecil Bullard 2:10
It's not gonna kill you. Nearly Do you remember?
Kent Bullard 2:12
I'm pretty sure David I'm pretty sure. Next aspartame in the dictionary is cancer. So yeah.
David Roman 2:18
So an Alzheimer's just to throw this back in your face. It's sucralose. Aspartame, sucralose. Oh, that's cool that
Cecil Bullard 2:25
that foods your body thinking it has sugar. That's even better.
Kent Bullard 2:32
I love it. Like straight up put you in your place.
Kent Bullard 2:36
Technically, technically, sucralose is actually 30% more sugary than sugar is, is it? Yeah, at least that's what your body thinks. Yeah, that's my month reads better because we've got 70%
David Roman 2:47
monkfruit It's got a funk.
Cecil Bullard 2:48
I hate my it doesn't. Like I just ate shit now. I hate it
Kent Bullard 2:53
when that happens. Hey, how would you how would you guess that's
David Roman 3:00
how he's saying metaphorical kit.
Cecil Bullard 3:01
I had an older sister so I do know what she tastes like just so you know
Kent Bullard 3:13
that that became that became the YouTube channels most famous.
David Roman 3:24
Oh, this is being filmed to behave. Stevia you're good with stevia. Yeah. It's just
Cecil Bullard 3:35
cools your body into thinking. I'm sure it's the rest of the time. But it's better. It's better than some of the other
Kent Bullard 3:41
better than aspartame or?
David Roman 3:43
No stevia stevia is is not it's a no no, no. I know. Better than aspartame. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. CVS naturally, naturally derived
Kent Bullard 3:52
resveratrol in the stroke and all that.
David Roman 3:54
Oh, yeah. You know,
Kent Bullard 3:56
got someone had a stroke off. Rather to oh, they really there was
David Roman 3:59
a chordal correlative effect, or correlative data showing that a higher intake of Earth with Hall was leading to was a stroke or heart attack, stroke,
Kent Bullard 4:12
heart attack, or something else I
Cecil Bullard 4:14
don't want to take I want to have a stroke instead. You just lose one half. Yeah, that's half of me.
Kent Bullard 4:19
But here's the thing is they said everybody in that study had had our underlying
David Roman 4:24
Yeah.
Cecil Bullard 4:26
Yeah. And then
Kent Bullard 4:27
is the study legitimate? Yeah, they're drinking. They're drinking energy drinks most of their life and switched. Right. It's funny, all of these people had heart attacks. It was alright, what are we talking about?
Kent Bullard 4:44
Here laugh all day. I'm good with that. So,
David Roman 4:48
one, real quick. You made me drink this and now I'm worried. I had several comments the whole time but we're here talking about the puck. cast. Oh it's better when it's live. And I go I hate doing them live I don't like stress word to just sit in my office and and they go in the habit the banter back and forth so much better. Really? Yeah so what they were telling me is I need to be meaner when we're doing it on good Wait a minute. Wait not to me, okay. Okay, I got you covered.
Kent Bullard 5:30
So, here's what I'm gonna bring up. I'm gonna bring up two videos, our friend Paul Danner, scanner, Danner released a video a while back. And man, he got hammered by these people saying like you you should not be charging to learn how to work on vehicles. Now. This is probably one of the most elite diagnosticians in the world. Yeah, right. And so if he's saying, I have to do some r&d here, we're not talking about a situation where this is not basic r&d. This is not like I'm learning to work on your car. This is I'm learning the system that is your car. Right.
David Roman 6:07
So learning the intricacies
Cecil Bullard 6:08
plus it changes all the time. So frankly, in order for me to keep my skill set up, I have to charge your doctors who, well we can have this conversation. But you know, your doctors, your lawyers, they're taking continuing education who's paying for that continuing education, you are okay. And by the way, when they have something new some new disease or whatever, that they're not recognizing something they haven't seen before. They're going to do research and who's paying for that?
Kent Bullard 6:34
Well, and so we'll listen to these two videos. But But that leads me to a question I've been wanting to ask you. Okay, because we I pose this question in the changing the industry group. And that question is, is it labor rate? Or is it labor hours? Right? Because if we if we raise our labor rate, it's neither. Okay. How
David Roman 6:57
interesting.
Cecil Bullard 6:59
Labor? It's a labor charge. We'll get there.
Kent Bullard 7:02
Okay, let's let's do it.
Paul Danner 7:04
Research, learn your systems on the job training every day that we do. This is what it is, we should be charging for that. And I know in the past, I've said, Yeah, we can't really towards all the time we have. And I'm rethinking that. Yes. This was on the job training. Yes. I had like four hours in this truck. Can we build for that? Can we build for that? Absolutely. We shouldn't be billing for that. There's no way we should be working for free. It doesn't matter that we had to research this system. Did we fix the car when we were done? Did we make the right call? Yes, we did. Then we should be charging for all of that time, charge for your time. Let's make some money. Let's change this industry. There's no reason why we should turn down these kinds of jobs to take easier jobs that we make money on these should be moneymakers doesn't matter how much time we had into it. customer pays for it. That's what needs to happen. Research, learn your systems. What do you think?
Cecil Bullard 7:59
I love it. Frankly. I watched I watched the podcast almost daily, or not the podcast, but the online banter. Yeah. And there are things that are very concerning to me as a consultant, a business guy. And one of the things is that you have a lot of technicians saying we're not being paid enough in this industry. So on on that hand, and I absolutely agree with that. I'm the first guy to say that, like an a technician, should probably not make less than, I don't know, 150,000 a year, probably more frankly, you know, they ought to be on the level with one of the best doctors or, you know, the best programmer out there. What does that guy get paid? Because that's where we're at today in our industry, okay. On the other hand, you have a bunch of guys jumping down the throat of somebody who says charge for your time. And even if you're doing research, and to me, how do I pay the technician what he's really worth? Or how do I get a even a junior tech, C tech trained up? And who pays for that? I think I think these I think a lot of shop owners, they think there's some magical money tree that pays for the training and all of that other stuff. Like it's it comes out of their wallet in their wallet is just going to kick out $100 bills for all this stuff, and nothing comes out of your wallet, right? If the customer doesn't pay for it in some way, then you don't have the money and you can't pay the technicians what they're worth and what they deserve. And I'm going to go a little deeper here on this. We're in an industry where we cannot attract good people into our industry that can become trained, because we can't start them out at a point where they can take care of themselves or where they think they can take care of themselves. And just because when I was a kid, you know 1000 years ago and and the the minimum wage was $2.55 and the Sharp was charging 11 bucks an hour when I started that dates me. But that doesn't mean that we should be charging 11 bucks an hour today, we need to be charging a viable rate where we can pay a viable wage even to an introductory guy. And I'll tell you right now, if if I go to the doctor, and the doctor sees something, I don't know, I get some spot on my skin or whatever. And I'm, like worried I'm gonna die. And I go to my doctor and he doesn't recognize what it is. And he says, Well, you know, I'm gonna get back to you, Cecil. He's gonna go and research that, yeah, he's gonna go into his vast library online, he's going to have one of his assistants look it up or whatever. And I Guaran damn tee you that I'm going to end up paying for that?
Kent Bullard 10:46
I agree with you. And so here's the thing, and I've felt pretty frustrated over this lately. Okay. And my thought is this is that we keep having these guys who complain about the pay right? Now. Now, look, I'm gonna say this, and it's gonna hurt some feelings. There's some guys and some of my close friends. And I've been talking to him. And they're like, Well, why? Why does everybody say that? We're clearly not shop owners? Well, because you don't understand the perspective. And it's very clear, you don't understand the perspective, you don't understand what we actually have to go through shop owners. And I'm not saying like, they don't have their struggles, and they don't have their problems, too. They do. But they don't, they clearly don't have the perspective or the understanding. And maybe that's on us, because we've not given enough information for them to understand it. Right. No doubt. But I'm gonna say this, though. If we're talking about PE, right, I got into an argument a while back. And we're talking about PE and paying technicians. Well, these guys are arguing that, well, I need to do side work, and I'm going to undercut I'm gonna, I'm gonna charge less, I'm not going to charge for market parts. That's not right. My boss is charging too much. And that's why we can't make enough money to pay me more. But and it's the exact opposite. Exactly. And that's what I'm saying. Like, take a step back and look at it. They don't have that 30,000 foot perspective to understand. Yeah, they're part of what's causing the damn problem. Well,
Cecil Bullard 12:03
there's this whole thing in this industry that busy means money. Yeah, busy does not mean money. Exactly. And so a tech is not busy, and they're not getting paid. They think, Oh, we don't have enough car. So if we lowered our price, we'd have enough cars, and then I could get paid more. That that stinking think and that's not exactly it's crazy and crazy, we need to be raising their There he goes again, raise the lid, right, raise the labor rate ding the bell, but if we can, but if we can't afford to pay our people, what they deserve, and I mean, they deserve it. Yeah, then then we're not charging enough period as an industry. And while these other guys are going along without buying insurance, and taking the liability and paying for the building and all the other crap, you know, and then they're charging, you know, $70 an hour. $80 an hour. $60 an hour. And competing against my shop that cost me I don't know, couple $100,000. A year to have. Yeah, right. Yep. I how do I compete against that and charge enough that I can pay my technicians what they really should have.
Kent Bullard 13:11
But but we've done a really good job of of getting to the shop owners that are willing to learn, but we've not reached that are what,
Cecil Bullard 13:19
what, what percentage of the shop owners? Have we really gotten to a quarter? Yeah, maybe if we're lucky. I'll tell you that, that some people are saying it's only maybe 10%?
David Roman 13:29
Yeah, right. It's way less than that. But we're not
Kent Bullard 13:33
know, a quarter of a percent. Yeah, of
David Roman 13:35
course. Yeah. That's what we're saying. And I
Kent Bullard 13:38
would probably tell you, we might be getting to 10%. Maybe, but but what's the other 90% doing? They're their technicians that have quote, unquote, become shop owners, but they don't even know what that means. Right? They don't know what a shop owner, they don't know what the financial that means, etc. But, but I guess my question is, is how do we, and that was the purpose behind the group, right? Because we didn't have a place where everybody came together. And there was a lot of infighting to begin with, and it's starting to call now. I hope so. But there was a lot of infighting and
David Roman 14:08
we're gonna get a whole mess of new people that come in and the whole thing's gonna start over.
Cecil Bullard 14:13
But all shop owners are bad. They're bad. All right. And
Kent Bullard 14:16
here's the thing is the technicians were saying that and the owners were saying all techs are bad all techs are bad. I can't believe you all would say that. I can't believe you all do that.
Cecil Bullard 14:24
So I have a I have a client and he really has a struggle with the technicians he has. He's got one that's an alcoholic. Yeah. So the work is inconsistent at best. Yeah, he's got another one that's just not smart enough to even remember that you're, you know, you tighten the lug nuts with a torque wrench. Right, you know, and he's another tech that's that's learning. And, you know, he's he's telling me that the fault is always the technicians fault, right. It's a text file, that's a text file and I'm going wait a minute, you know if the shop doesn't have have the systems processes if we can't pay if we haven't trained these guys, right, right. And and, frankly, we're in this hole as an industry right now we're in a hole, right? Are we bringing, I don't know, 175,000 techs in the industry every year, and we're keeping 34% of those people,
Kent Bullard 15:18
right? We need what 875,000 To fill the current day,
Cecil Bullard 15:22
not yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that number is going to be a million and after that, it's going to be million two. And, and even that a lot of the texts we have and again, maybe I'm gonna piss some people off. Yeah, but even a lot of the texts we have, they don't have the skill set that they need. And it's very obvious. And then we have some techs, that their ego is so big, right that, well, we shouldn't charge for for research, because I don't ever have to research. Well, I'm sorry, bullshit. Yeah, exactly. I'm a business consultants been doing this for a very long time, I'm at the top of my game. You know what I do sometimes, recent research. And you know, who pays for that? My customers end up paying for that. Because if they don't, I can't make my mortgage. And my wife gets mad at me. And we can't buy groceries. And if I don't get to eat, I'm really grouchy. And
Kent Bullard 16:11
now we're in a situation where we can't serve the client. Yeah, now we're back to where we started. Because now we can't serve the client. That's what I keep getting older, these people about the shop has to make money. Because if something goes wrong, and you've got to serve the client, if a tech gets hurt, and you've got to do something to help that tech, and they don't have any money, like it's all over, right, like, you know, there's no point. And so this leads in to the next video. So let's listen to the next video.
Paul Danner 16:37
Just a quick word today for you technicians out there. And actually, for the customers who follow what we do here on social media, I just have one thing to say to add to the stuff we've been talking about, about charging for our time and changing this in industry. Here's the key talking to the technicians, you have to be right. If you're correct in your calls, and you are not wasting the customers money by needlessly throwing parts at that car. If you take the time to finish your diagnostic process to say this is my problem. You absolutely should be paid for that time. And your customers that are listening. You want to pay this guy because these parts are super expensive and shotgunning parts at your car is way more expensive than paying for that diagnostic guy.
Cecil Bullard 17:35
So so let me tell you a quick story. My son in law love that love him he's a great guys great great father to my grandkids great husband to my wife. But he grew up in a in a relatively poor family meaning daughter nine kit my my my son in law and my daughter. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, my son over here is going wait a minute, wait a minute. But But he's so when he thinks he thinks I need to find the cheaper route out. Yeah, so he's driving. I don't know, this is a few years back, but not that many years back. He's driving a 94 Dodge in I don't trip it or something like that
Kent Bullard 18:12
right around those little dodge, but I thought it was a Nissan it was a little blue Nissan
Cecil Bullard 18:16
No, it was a Dodge. So So anyway, it it it it throws the power steering belt, okay, so he loses power steering. And of course the engine lights are all on and blah, blah, blah. And he's he knows he needs to go somewhere. Now there's a shop in town a couple of shops in town that we've worked with. And he knows that if he goes there that the initial cost is going to be higher, the rate will be higher, right? So he's thinking okay, I'm gonna go over here to a quick lube because I know the price is going to be cheaper. So he goes and they say you got a problem with your power steering pump. Somebody didn't put the the pulley on correctly the pulley came off that's what happens so we need a new power suit. I know Dave is looking at me like what the hell and and any smart technician would go What the Hell yeah, so So anyway, so they sell them a power steering pump and a belt and they put it on in a new pulley and they put it on the car and a week later it throws a power steering pump so now he doesn't go to those guys he goes to another inexpensive place names I don't want to mention and another chain operation where he thinks it's going to be an expensive and they go well you know the power steering pump is missing a bolt it wasn't put on crew wasn't installed correctly. So the belt came off and oh by the way now your rack and pinion is leaking. And so you need a rack and pinion and the rack and pinion is 1200 bucks and the pump is 800 I think he paid like 500 to do the pump the first time which I'm thinking holy crap in my shop that would have been 1000 bucks, you know, right. So anyway, so So he goes back to the original guys and he goes those guys told me you didn't do your job right and now I need a rack and pinion blah blah blah and they go look, instead of charging you 1200 For the rack and pinion, we'll do it for eight, and then we'll redo the other job. Okay, so he does he pays the 800 bucks, he hasn't redo the job that they did put a new rack and pinion on the car. And a few days later, it throws perishing belt. Okay, now, so, so he doesn't know what to do. And I'm in Chicago or somewhere I'm on the road. Yeah. And I get a phone call from my daughter, Dad, what do we do? Right? And I know the story because my wife's telling me the story, right? And I'm like, well, first of all, don't go back to either of those guys. Right? I'm gonna call my shop. They're gonna pick up the car. They're gonna check the car out. They're gonna let me know what's going on. Yeah, so I call up my guy. Tom, can you pick up the car he goes, picks up the car. The power, the rack and pinion is is done incorrectly, right? The bellows is now inside the rack. Because when they did the alignment on the car and tried to bring the alignment in, they twisted the thing without releasing the clamps on the bellows. Right. So now it's inside the rack and pinion, it's worked its way inside as you steer back and forth. Right. All right. So it needs a new rack. Yeah, the power steering pump only has one bolt holding it on the dam. Yeah, the lift the bolt. Yeah, and the and the, and the sway bar end links are missing off the car completely. And there's a couple of the engine ground bolts that you would have taken off, you know, they'll do the rack to do the rack and some of the other stuff. And the engine grounds are not where they're supposed to be. They're just outlay and nowhere, right? Yeah, so he's like, Cecil, it's gonna take about $2,400 to get this fixed. I think I can save the rack and pinion, but we got to put this, we got to do this, we got to do that, etc. And oh, by the way, while we're in there, guess guess what the tensioner for the power steering was, you could put your finger on it and move it. So what was the original problem? The tension, the tensioner? Probably, and maybe they would have said look, you got to tension or we could put a tensioner on everything will be okay. But you need belts are you need, you know, this thing needs maintenance or whatever. And there was a power steering leak. Even then, you could see where someone had folded the power steering pressure hose in half, to get it out of the way. Right. Right. And it was leaking from there. Because it's old power steering pressure hose, right? So I call the the place that did it. I get some kid and I'm lucky we weren't face to face because I wouldn't you know, and he's the manager of this store. And he's like, Well, you know, we have to go through corporate and we it's not our fault and blah, blah, blah. And he I said Okay, give me the number of corporate he gives me the the email to put my complaint in and, and the phone number. And guess what he gave me? fake emails. fake phone. Really? Yeah. of corporate. So I have to look it up. I call corporate. I say look, here's the situation. I have pictures I wrote out look, here's your what you guys did. Here's what you didn't do. And now I'm thinking what kind of power steering pump is on this car? What kind of rack is on this car? What did what kind of garbage they put on this car. It cost me $2,400 To fix this car. Now they sent us a check back for the 800 and the 500 that they did. But they didn't send us a check for all the damage that they created and all the other stuff. So was cheap, cheap, actually cheap, right? Yep. And, and so we, we have we have problems in this industry. Okay, we don't have enough technicians. And it's obvious to me if nobody else, that the reason we don't have enough technicians is we think we can start a guy out at $18 an hour, even if he's 18 or 19. And he can support himself and have a life at 18 bucks an hour, well, we train him and then we don't train him. We put him out in the bay. And when he F's it up, we get upset, because he should know how to fix the car, except nobody's really showed him how to fix the car. There's all kinds of data about how people learn and the time it takes you want to be a master at something, it's 10,000 hours of doing that task, right? So master technician, I would tell you, it's a minimum of five years,
Kent Bullard 24:14
do you know how many shops I've sat down and talked to that, you know, legitimate well known shop owners who attempt to bring in an apprentice who attempt to bring in a high school student and so will he you know, he went to he went to tech school he went to the high school program he should already know how to do this no three to five years five years for him to become a technician I don't have that kind of time but you have to you're not gonna have a choice.
Kent Bullard 24:42
Yeah, if you if you compare the medical field to our industry in terms of aftermarket what you consider after your schooling training, right so once you've got your doctorate or once you've got your you've graduated from Tech College right, and you're in your position, the additional edge Haitian every single year in comparison, ours to the medical field is like this, right? And then the next jump is about 12% 12 or 13%. And I can't remember, I think it's legal, might not be legal. But if you look at that, and how much education it takes for us to remain proficient in what we do, electrical, chemical, mechanical, all of that stuff that you have to continually learn right, after you've already gone through schooling, it's insane to me that you would even think that somebody coming out of this, this college would be able to churn ours, like the other technicians you have in your business.
Kent Bullard 25:38
Right? Well, okay, so, so, we know it's a problem. There's zero doubt it's a problem, right? We know that.
Kent Bullard 25:46
Okay. So how do we, Lucas?
Kent Bullard 25:49
Hey, although, let me let me let me share a story with you. David knows the story I've talked about already. And we, I want to preface what I'm getting ready to say with the we could have been wrong. But we had a lady that got into the shop that was not, should not have been in our shop was the wrong client. Okay. And I knew from the very get goes the wrong client, I knew right away, oh, here we go. There's a reason she got into the shop, it's okay. It is what it is. Sometimes this is going to happen, we're going to work through it, we're gonna go on, right. It's trying to take care of it, right. And so we do the testing routine that needs to be done. And I know that my, as a matter of fact, I was going to make a social media video out of it. And like, videotape, part of the process. I was there when he did the testing. The lady calls back and says, or she emails back and she says, what you charged me for another shop just did for free, because I didn't trust you. They did it for free. The testing, and they found that you were wrong. Now what she's talking about is an airbag concern. Okay. And the way that we tested this concern was is we removed the airbag, we installed an airbag simulator. We function tested the system, the light did not come back on the technician disconnected the harness on the other end at the controller, and then force fed voltage through and load tested the wires going through the clockspring all the way up, and it passed the test now is it possible we missed something? Yes, it is. It could be that you turn the steering wheel. You did this? You did that something changed? Absolutely. We make mistakes. We're human beings. We don't always get it right. That happens. I'm not afraid to say that. But the reality is, is that if that is the case, the light is on I unplugged the bag and I plug a simulator in and the light goes off. What does that mean? That means that the bag had to be bad no matter what. So I asked for documentation. And she took it to a shop and the shop charged her $80 to replace her clockspring. And they charged her $324 for a clockspring that cost me $294. And she tells me he is clearly a more competent, and and more capable. Right and honest. Right? And so, you know, I look at that. And every day, every single day, we had a we had a Volkswagen super nice lady. She was it was really cold. And it had gelled up. And so she brought her car in because it wouldn't start we pulled it in the shop, let it warm up. And she came she's like you guys have got a cancer treatment, I've got to go is there any way I can pick my car up, I said we've got fuel treatment on the way for the car. But that being the case, like it's warm enough, it's not going to gel back up, go ahead and drive it, just stop and get some fuel treatment, go into the store, tell them you need diesel fuel treatment. And they will find a treatment that's suitable for your car and they will help you get it well what they gave her was a box of blue DEF fluid. And so she got pumped through the fuel system caused all kinds of problems when she goes to the shop. And when the car comes back in for basic maintenance, and I said I would like to be able to attach that service history about what happened to the car to our information. So if anything ever comes up, I can look at that and reference that. So we know and she gives us the ticket. And I noticed every single service on there, they've got their labor, a lowest labor rate in town written across the top of the repair order $80. But every single job on there was about 120% more labor than what we add with our matrix right so a job that was two hours was five hours. Yeah, and their cheapest labor rate in town is all of a sudden 170 $580 an hour. How do we compete with people doing that like if we're going to raise the industry if we're going to fix this if we're going to start charging what we should charge if we're going to take it to the next level? How in the hell are we gonna do it with people doing that?
Cecil Bullard 29:56
The other the other shops in town i'll get together and and they all go over there, they pull the guy out behind the barn and beat him to within an inch of his life. No.
Kent Bullard 30:08
Joking, everybody.
Cecil Bullard 30:10
It's seriously a joke. We'd certainly like to you know, when you, when you, when you look at at a bell curve, you always have like the top, top 10% You got to toss that away, you got the bottom 10% We're always gonna have, we're always gonna have some people in our industry that are just Yes, and Dirtbags and whatever. And by the way, there isn't much we can do about that, you know, you would hope that when you when you're when you're a service advisor, I had a lady come in the shop, and she needed motor mounts, and we went to the local Chevrolet dealer to buy the mounts and I gave her price. And she calls me back later. And she says, Well, yeah, but the dealers cheaper. And I said, okay, the labor is cheaper, or not the labor but the parts are cheaper, right then the dealership because I'm marking the parts up a little more than the dealer because I have to make a certain margin on those parts. And I'm given a better warranty and all the reasons that that happens. And she says what will the parts are cheaper at the dealership, and I said, okay, but the whole job at my shop is about $150 less, right? Because I'm going by my labor plus 20%. And the dealer is, is going by their labor plus 100%. Right? So their labor is much higher than mine. Yeah. And, and, and I talked to that woman, till I was blue in the face for at least 30 minutes about it. And she would not let me fix her car because the parts were more expensive from my place than that place, even though the whole job was more at the dealership, and she actually took her car to the dealership and had the house replaced and paid more money. Right? Right. And so sometimes you can't, you can't make sense of it. It doesn't make sense. But I'm gonna go back to we have these problems in our industry, right, we have a problem that we can't find and attract good people, because basically, we just can't afford to pay them to learn over two years, make the mistakes they're gonna make, etc. We can't pay attention to them. 24/7 all that and we think that a guy goes to a tech school and he should know how to fix a car. No, I can tell you every guy I ever got out of a tech school. He didn't even know what how to do a front brake job. Right? Because he never had his hands on it. There are two things that you absolutely need for expertise. One is education, knowledge, you have to have the knowledge. And the second is experience. And you could only get the experience one way. And that's by putting your hands on the car and working on the car. I mean, there's a good technician has a touch and a feel for things. Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it, but I put a billion lug nuts on cars, never wants to use a torque wrench in my entire life. I knew my torque gun. I knew what it was to tighten that that correctly. I've been doing it all my life. That's how I was taught, right. And it wasn't until way later in my career that they came up with torque sticks and all of that. And then we started using those. I just knew my tools because I had used them so often. Right? Right. And you cannot expect some young person coming out of school or even some old person coming out of school to have that knowledge because they don't have a hands on. We have another problem. We have a bunch of technicians. Maybe it's not the majority, but it's certainly a loud enough voice that are saying all shop owners are dirtbags because they've treated me poorly and they don't pay me enough and yada yada yada. You have a bunch of shop owners, frankly, they're saying, well, technicians are all idiots. Okay. And neither one of those people are correct. Exactly. And then you have a bunch of technicians saying and some shop owners saying that all coaches are bad because all coaches are saying raise your labor rate. Well, holy shit, if we don't charge it, how are we going to pay it to people who deserve it? Yeah. And raise the level of the industry.
Kent Bullard 34:03
I had a I had a heart to heart with a good friend of mine who's a technician the other day. All right. And he was terminated from a job completely unaware. And we've talked a lot about the dangers of an echo chamber. Right Yeah, because if we get into a if we get into groups make sense Exactly. An echo chamber well, and if we if we let it roll, right we get between two or three people and we're going back to that was a super unfair I can't believe he got treated that way that was oh, he's this he's that and all of a sudden that voice gets louder and louder until it convinces us that it was somebody else's fault. Now I am a firm believer everything that goes wrong in my life is my fault.
Cecil Bullard 34:43
It's not it's not in my life. No no, it's everybody else dude. I am literally perfect.
Kent Bullard 34:50
But your Cecil I mean that's completely
Kent Bullard 34:53
that was a joke everybody.
Cecil Bullard 34:56
smile on my face here.
Kent Bullard 34:57
No, can't agrees with you. Yeah, he knows that. through your his dad, and it's okay. But But 100% ownership. And it's not because like I genuinely believe everything is my fault. It's that if I acknowledge everything is my fault, I can begin to do something to
Kent Bullard 35:16
it puts you in control to fix it. Yeah. Right. When when you when you put it on other people you blame everyone else you are you're except you're basically saying, Look, I don't have any control over that I can't do anything about it. It's on exactly.
Cecil Bullard 35:29
You become it can't change the
Kent Bullard 35:31
situation. Well,
Kent Bullard 35:32
and so in this case, right. technician people prefer it
David Roman 35:35
that way, though. Yeah,
Cecil Bullard 35:36
they do. There's a lot of indications that we have been teaching people to be victims for a very long time, because it gives us control. Right?
Kent Bullard 35:47
Well, in this case, right? technician says, I've been treated very poorly. I was terminated. It's clearly because the shop owner wasn't a very good diagnostician. And I made a joke that he wasn't a good diagnostician. And so we began to talk. And I said, You know what you should do? We were actually at the summit when this conversation happened. Because I recognize that one of the chat groups, we were all in, had turned into an echo chamber. Yeah, can I know? And they were talking and they were saying, no, no, no, it's, it's him. It's him. It's him. So I reached out and I said, Hey, listen, I want you to call him. And I want you to set up a meeting. And I want you to do a debrief and understand where he's coming from. Right. And so they did the debrief that began to talk about it. And he calls me, and he's like, Hey, I recorded the whole conversation, I asked permission, I recorded the whole conversation where you listen to it. And and we had a discussion and the discussion really came down to, is it possible that you had become that toxic employee that you thought you'd never become? You were frustrated, because you had one expectation, he had one expectation, neither expectation was met, you weren't as good of a technician as he thought you were. And and he had an expectation of that you had an expectation that he was going to reward you this certain way. He didn't reward you that certain way, because his expectation wasn't met. And now because we're not communicating, you've become bitter, you've become mad, you've started speaking poorly about him. And guess what happens? Now we get into this circle where toxicity begins to grow? And what have we done? You've become cancerous, you've become an employee that had to go. Right. And all it took was a conversation. And look, I wasn't advocating for the shop owner, I think the shop owner did the wrong thing and didn't handle it. You're advocating for clarification? Absolutely. Right. And one of the topics we talk about in the show all the time is seek first understand, you have to understand what is going on? Yeah, you can't just like jump the gun and go at something and say, Well, this is how I feel about it. So that's what it is. But
Cecil Bullard 37:49
think, think about this. Think about if first of all, my expectations as a technician were clearly stated, documented. With the owner, yeah. Okay. And by the way, if I came into a place as a technician, I would want to know that my expectations were clearly understood by the owner. Yeah. So that I could be more assured that I would get what I need out of this. Alright. And I don't think that's like, well, I demand this, and I demand this. But look, if I come here, and I do this, here's what I expect. And here's how I expect to be treated and blah, blah, blah. Now, imagine that the owner clarified his expectations with the technician, nice job description, maybe a contract that kind of stated, when you do this, I'm going to do this, here's what we expect, show up on work on time, here's what that means, etc, etc. We have this idea that will they work for other people, they should know how we do it here. Right? Right. And the fact is, they work for a lot of other crappy people who didn't know how to manage who didn't know how to create good expectations. Most of the problems in our industry and frankly, in our lives, our communication problems. Yeah, okay. Yep. We're, we're sitting back with an expectation, Lucas, I have an expectation of you. I expect that when you and I go out and have dinner, you're going to get a nice steak and you're going to drink some whiskey, have some constraints and bourbon of some kind, you know? And so if we go out and you don't get bourbon, I'm starting to think, Oh, my God, I wonder if he's realized he has an alcohol problem. Or, you know, I wonder what's going on? Is he is he got a medical issue? You know, blah, blah, blah, all of a sudden, I'm, I'm carrying this thing out. Is he
Kent Bullard 39:28
related to Dutch? Does that Yeah. But but
Cecil Bullard 39:32
so so in my mind, I'm creating this whole thing about you didn't have a drink, right? And what is that? And so now I walk away from you. I don't even ask you. I don't say hey, I know you're not drinking tonight. What's up? I don't say anything. We don't communicate. But I've already decided what the problem is. And then I come go to Dave and I say, hey, you know, Lucas has got a problem. He's got a medical issue. He's, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And pretty soon everybody thinks you're dying, because you didn't have a drink because I didn't communicate with you and And you know, that's a that's a funky example, frankly, yeah, but this kind of thing happens in the business every day. Yep. You know, when the guy starts to become cancerous? Why don't I bring him in my office and say, Hey, I know she did this and this and this, you know, what's going on? How can I help you? You know, am I not meeting my expectations with you? Right. And I always tell people, there's only one. There's only one person I can control. Right, right. I cannot. What what David does. I don't control? Yeah, I might have some influence. I mean, I certainly know I can get him riled up if I want to. Right. Right. But But I don't control what David says or does, because that's David. Yeah. But the way I treat David, the way that I communicate with David, right might make the difference in the way that David acts with me. Absolutely. Okay. And so, you know, we have this, we have this thought in our head that I'm going to hire this guy. He's an a technician. And he knows how to do this, this, this, this and this, and he should know. And I'll go back to we have a bunch of egomaniacs in our business that think every technician should be as good as them. Yeah, right. Now Oh, well, wait a minute. You've been in the business 25 years? How many mistakes have you made? Yeah, right. When you were in the business two years, don't tell me that you didn't break a bolt on something. You use the wrong tool. Don't say that never happened? Because I know it happened. It happened to me many times, I have made more mistakes than anybody else. I know. That's how we learn. Yeah. And so if we have these egomaniacs that think everybody should be as good as me. Well, that's the only way we can charge the customer. Because it's not it's not fair to charge a customer because somebody has to research or learn. No, I'm sorry, you're absolutely wrong, you'll go broke.
Kent Bullard 41:48
And here's the other thing that's caused, if you think about this, the other thing that it's caused, and, you know, we talked with the guy that works for Cas, just a little bit ago, right, and talked about his experience and what he'd gone through and, and so much and, you know, look, when we talk about, we have this big ego, right? Remember the Tim kite video I sent you. He talks about the difference between a strong ego and a big ego. And, and so when we have this big ego, and we're afraid to be wrong, I remember when I first started going to trade shows, and I started going to training. I thought I was the only person who didn't have comebacks, right. And and there's a lot of shops who go into this situation. They think they are so great. They think they are so wonderful, right? And what you find is that when they really begin to understand and really take care of the client, they realized they're not nearly as great as they thought they were. They realized that they were in a situation where they were talking about themselves that they didn't have a true picture of what their organization was, what their business did. And they were having comebacks. They just weren't coming back. Yeah, we're going to another shot. Yeah. Right. Because they weren't being treated. Well, whatever it was. And so what did they do? They went and they talked about that shop to someone else. But well, this came to me from such and such. And look, I've never had a comeback. Boys. If you're working on cars, you ain't had to come back. You ain't working on enough cars. Yeah. Oh, you're
Cecil Bullard 43:15
not working hard enough. Exactly. So you make miss if you're if you're not making mistakes every once in a while, then you're not doing anything extra. You're hiding it.
Kent Bullard 43:25
But the problem is, is it starting this thing where shops are talking about other shops, and they're speaking poorly about other shops or speaking poorly about technicians. Same with technicians. They're talking poorly about shops or talking poor man, we've got to stop this crap of talking crap about each other. And if somebody's making a mistake over and over again, for God's sakes, column and help, because in my opinion, all of a sudden, we're not talking about, I'm better than that shopper that shops better than me, all of a sudden, we're talking about, there's a client driving down the road with their family in a car. And it might not be safe because that shop owner doesn't know there's a problem.
Cecil Bullard 44:01
Well, and I think I think the other aspect of that is we're actually, instead of changing the industry positively, we're changing the industry negatively, because we're just talking crap about everybody else, because you know, our poop don't stink. Yeah, I got news for you. You know, I make mistakes. I really hate the generalities. You know, I hate this will. All coaches, they're worthless, because you had a bad experience with a coaching company. Yeah. It doesn't mean that all coaching companies suck. Because you had a bad experience with a boss doesn't mean all bosses are bad. Yeah. And if you had a bad experience with technicians look in the mirror, babe. Yeah. Because if we communicated properly, and we knew what the expectation people don't go into a job, wanting to fail. Yeah. Nobody walks in the door in the morning. It says I want to fail today. Exactly. They fail because we don't define what the win is. And we don't define what failure is. And then when they do fail, we don't help them and pick them up and say Hey, here's how you win, let me help you understand how to do that. And if we don't get together as an industry, we're going to fracture ourselves and the private equity companies are going to come in, they're going to buy up a bunch of shops for pennies on the dollar. And they're going to take over our industry, and then the consumer is gonna get crap service at an unbelievably expensive price. Yeah, we know that we've seen that in other industries, the insurance companies are going to control the, you know, the prices, etc. And all the while we're sitting here pointing fingers at each other, saying, you know, alt, well, technicians are just crap, or owners are just crap, or consultants are just crap. We have to stop the backbiting and the bickering, I agree. And we have to come together now. 10% of the guys, they're never going to play nice, they're never gonna play fair. And what we do with those guys, is we just ignore them. We just don't support them, we just walk away. But the other 90% We need to get our stuff in a pile. And we need to start working towards a better industry, we needed to find what that looks like, what we think it looks like and we need to move forward together.
Kent Bullard 46:10
So what's the first step then?
Cecil Bullard 46:12
Stop, stop eating each other alive. And by the way online, in the in the online stuff. When somebody says, you know, my owners a turd, don't say, well, all owners are turds. Okay, I'm really sorry that your owner is uttered. Have you ever thought that maybe you should talk to him about whatever problem that you have with apps? Right? Let and by the way, if he really is a turd, what you should do is quit and go find somebody that's not a turd. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?
Kent Bullard 46:37
And, and look, one of the biggest things that I will say is that if every shop you've worked in the owners uttered,
Cecil Bullard 46:44
yeah, there's a problem. Well, yeah, yeah. Because it's like when you're interviewing somebody like
Kent Bullard 46:48
common denominator here.
Cecil Bullard 46:49
Yeah. You're like, Well, tell me why you left the last shot, but tell me what you're thinking about? Well, the owners and ass and the owner this and the owner did that. And you know, he promised me all this stuff, and he never delivered in and etc, etc. And then you're like, okay, oh, okay. I understand that. I've certainly heard that. Well, tell me up the owner before that, why delete the visible eye. That owner was really an asshole. And he like the last five guys that worked for word, asshole. I'm like, I'm not hiring this guy. Because I'm pretty sure I got asshole all over. I ain't perfect baby. But, but if we if we said, look, I'm looking in the mirror. And I have created some of this. Some of this is my problem. Yeah. And I'm going to change my behavior. Right. So online. Let's stop talking crap about each other. Yes. All right, period. Yeah. And by the way, Lucas, if you and I, we go out and get a drink. And, you know, kind of late in the night. It's only you and I, let's talk a little crap about somebody. Right? But not publicly. Not? No, not David. I won't talk crap about Dave. I actually liked David. I liked the back and forth with him. So I gotta
Kent Bullard 47:56
be honest with you. There. How many people are at vision?
Cecil Bullard 48:01
I would say 500 to 500. Maybe?
Kent Bullard 48:05
Well, Cecil, you're in the 1% then, because the rest of them don't like playing I'm just playing. I'm not serious.
Cecil Bullard 48:13
I mean, that stands up for what they believe Amen. And a willing to go to the mat for what they what they believe whether it's right or wrong. story, but that's, you know, that's so so the start is stop backbiting. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Number two, just because another shop is more expensive than you in town, doesn't mean that they're ripping somebody off. Yeah, stop. If you're a technician, and you're not being treated fairly, the first thing to do is, you know, think about what that really means. Decide what that should be and go talk to the person that's treating you that way. And because that's the only person that can can affect Yeah, right. When I had in my, in my business, not before this one, because we don't do backbiting in this business at all right? It's like almost a core value. But in my other my shop, like if one of the technicians started talking bad through the grapevine I'd pull them in my office, I said understanding of a problem was so and so they say, oh, yeah, that service advisor, he's a real, he doesn't like me, blah, blah. But I'd say hang on a minute. I bring the service advisor in the room, I say, Okay, let's work this out. And most 99% of the time, it was bullcrap. Yeah. It was just he did something I didn't like it pissed me off. And now everything he does is wrong, right. And so we need to get together as an industry. And, and it's more than 1% that has to act together. Otherwise, we can't affect real change.
Kent Bullard 49:38
I think back to a situation that I've been through and think back about a technician who is making a lot of mistakes, right? 1000s and 1000s of dollars. And there was a discussion of why I've not got enough hours. And I'm like, Hey, listen, the reason you don't have enough hours is because we can't trust you. We're doing our very best to like work through Do this and give you some time to figure things out. But I'm not putting you on for one. I'm not doing it. Right. And I was talking to a friend about that. He said, You told him they're Damn straight. I said, Yeah, of course I did. He said, Man, I've got a bunch of situations like that my shop and I just, I feel so bad because they're not getting the hours they need, but I don't feel like I can tell them that because I don't want to offend them. And I'm like, Dude, if you don't tell them, You're gonna offend them. Right? Like, if you're not helping them get better.
Cecil Bullard 50:28
A good manager's job is to help everyone else. Succeed. Yes. Okay. And so if you have someone that's working for you, that is not succeeding, it really is your duty, morally, and and to draw business wise, it's your job, to to identify what the problem is, what the shortcoming is, and then help them overcome that shortcoming. Yeah. Now, there's a difference between I've got a guy that I keep teaching him and he can't learn and he's not smart enough or whatever. Yeah. And frankly, that's a guy that you need to say, Okay, bye. Or you put him on what you know, he can do. Right. And that's it. But, but we have so much of this. Well, I think my boss isn't us, because he doesn't pay me enough. Well, and the boss is like, That guy doesn't put out enough hours. I mean, how do I pay him more money, he doesn't put out enough hours. And then, but they're not talking about the real problem in solving the real situation, which is, he just doesn't really even know how to read an ohm meter. Or he doesn't know how to really test a short in a system. No one's ever showed him. Right? They all said, Oh, it's easy. You just do this, this and this, but he didn't get it. Right. Right. We have to stop assuming that everyone knows what we know. And everyone is as good as we are. Because that's not true.
David Roman 51:48
Let's go back to the apprentice thing. I have an issue. I have an issue paying someone to then teach them. They go to a tech school. What's a tech school cost?
Cecil Bullard 52:04
$23,000 or something? It's yeah, it's fairly yours. Yeah, yeah.
David Roman 52:09
I'm not getting paid $23,000 for you to show up at my shop and me teach you how to do something.
Cecil Bullard 52:14
I got news for you, buddy. Get over it. I mean, I'm serious. Get over I understand.
David Roman 52:17
I understand that we need to move forward in a different direction.
Cecil Bullard 52:22
And maybe we need to say I have a problem with that. Yeah. But also maybe as an industry, we need to stay just go to the tech schools and say, you're not getting the job done.
David Roman 52:32
I think the My perspective on tech schools changed when we had Eric wasn't an arrogant, he goes, I don't think you understand what we're doing out here. What we're doing out here is teaching them how to not kill themselves. Yes, or hurt. The basic understanding is how you wreck a car. Yeah. And do it safely. And this is how you shake it before it goes all the way to the top. And this is like this is how to not kill yourself or hurt yourself at the jump. That's it. Then they leave me the 23,000 miles they show up here and I'm like, Okay, do some brakes. And like, I haven't done any brakes. What they teach you I know what brakes are. Yeah,
Cecil Bullard 53:06
but I've seen a wheel with brakes behind it and a caliper. Exactly. I don't know how to take that all apart and do it safely. And also, I remember I got I gotta I just gotta say this, you know, I did brakes for years. And then all of a sudden, like Corvette came out with a, like a ratcheting caliper, you know, the piston would ratchet. And if you tried to force it back, apart it would you tear it up, guess what I did the first Corvette that showed up? Yeah, I destroyed it. Because I didn't, I'm so used to just like, oh, you put the primary in there, and you pry it back a little and it builds, you know, pushes the pressure back. And, and, okay, we're great. And, you know, I tried to do that. And so I use more force and more force and more force until snap, you know, and, and I was a veteran technician at that time. So, can I expect someone else to not make that same mistake that I made? Yeah, you know, I agree with you, you know, 23,000, you would think that guy would at least know how to do brakes and really change oil and maybe be able to knock
David Roman 54:08
my mind it's like, Well, how about we make the cost 50,000 You pay 25 to the tech school, and you can pay me 25 And I'll teach you whatever I need to teach you to make sure after four years, no, leave so proficiently. So okay,
Cecil Bullard 54:19
take your 25 in a different way. All right. So now what's I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you what's your what's your labor rate, but 145 140 Okay, so, so I'm going to hire some young person, guy or gal doesn't matter. Okay. And they're going to come in fresh out of a tech school, they're going to be 20 years old, 21 years old. They will have some knowledge of the system, maybe some really good knowledge about the electrical system, etc. But they will not have been able to do the job. Now, I got a master technician, I'm $140 an hour, which means I can pay that master technician about 60 loaded in keep my margin to where it needs to be. So probably paying my mastertech, 45, maybe 48. And then I got the rest that's pays the FICA and the food and all that stuff, I'm going to hire this person, and I'm going to pay them 25 or 30 bucks, okay. And that's what I'm going to do today. Because if you tried to pay somebody $18, even if you're in deepest, darkest Arkansas, I don't think you can get away with that and have anybody that you could really train, okay. And then I'm gonna take my master technician, and I'm gonna pay my master technician four bucks an hour for whatever this guy produces for mentoring that that person. So now I'm into it less than 40 bucks an hour, I'm still making extra money, because I'm paying my mastertech 48, right, and I've got that $8 difference. And so over the next two years, I'm making my 25,000 back. Okay, as this guy grows, and as he grows, I'm going to give him more and more money until I can pay him just like I pay my master or until I can take my master away from him. And when I take my master tech away from him, where he doesn't have to look over shoulder anymore, now I'm going to take that $4 that I was going to pay the master tech, and I'm going to give it back to the guy. And and Or maybe I'm going to give him two and I'm going to keep two and get my 25 grand out of it. Right. So we have to think about this differently. Because if we think oh, they're not paying me, so therefore I can't train
David Roman 56:18
dealerships do it that way. A lot of dealerships are sort of the framework that you laid out. Yeah, the a lot of dealerships do it that way. And they have one guy, watch maybe one or two guys, and they kind of split the revenue. I'm looking at more of these, the mindset of the person coming out of tech school walking into the shop, they need to understand that, hey, you still have three more years of education that you need to do.
Cecil Bullard 56:44
So let's have that conversation in the interview.
David Roman 56:47
Right? I may be having that conversation, but guarantee equals of five other shops. They're not talking about it. So again, a weird play. I look like a weirdo because I'm like, Hey, listen, we need to talk about the next three years, this is going to be a roadmap to you want
Cecil Bullard 57:04
to be a master technician, do you really want to have a skill set? That is the best skill set in the industry? Let's have that conversation. And that's what it's going to take. And you know, I've seen guys that are like, talented, who you can go, here's a car, you show him a brake job once and they can do brake jobs on any cars without, you know, mistakes, right? I've seen those guys. But for the average guy, he's gonna have to do four or five brake jobs before he realizes how all that works. Yeah. And and so you are the weirdo, right? Be the weirdo and dies. Yeah, but the guys who do hire are the right guys because they have the right expectation.
David Roman 57:45
Sure. If the narrative changes, though, I think I'll fight less. I'll be swimming less upstream than button. Okay, so I am right now. Because I've had younger guys come work. You laid it out. 20 something out of tech school. I've already had that conversation with Eric. So um, I know that this guy, the only thing he knows is how to not kill himself. Yeah. Now he's tinkering on cars on the weekends and at home and a little bit here a little bit. They're probably working on things that he shouldn't be touching. But whatever, right? He wants to do that. That's fine. So the conversation let me comms hate the education that that degree that you got is absolutely not enough. Let's say it's worthless, but he paid money, whatever. Yeah. So I need you to start working on online education. I need you to log into these classes. Here's the CTR log in and you just start knocking out and I map out his classes. Yep. And I go this is the school has not stopped for you. It hasn't stopped
Cecil Bullard 58:51
it won't forever.
David Roman 58:53
Forever. Well, sure. But it's it's yeah, the hands on stuff is going to come as you learn theory of operation and understand the processes understanding how they work. I'm going to then put you into a role where you can do some breaks you can do so we start with some oil changes some tires you broke my entire machine up every which way you can possibly break entire machine. Whatever right you sort of just take those licks Yeah. But his desire his mind hit I'm telling you in his mind, I'm done with school I'm good.
Cecil Bullard 59:28
Well, so obviously whoever in school is not giving them the right mindset. Absolutely. Because you know, I'm so let's let's put the five top business guys in automotive in a room and I don't mean like shop owners. I mean, like coaches, consultants, guys that have got a lot of experience that really understand this. Let's put five of those guys in the same room. Am I in that room? Do you think I'm in that room? Okay. I learned stuff all the time. Yeah. One of the tenants for my company is that we have to stay relevant. Yeah. Right. So I have to keep learning. And so maybe the expectation at the trade school needs to be look, you started your education. But this is a lifelong education. And by the way, that's exciting, at least to me that I'm not going to learn whatever in in 10 years, and then there's nothing else for me to learn. Sure. Right. And so, I don't know, maybe we, instead of beating the crap out of each other on the on the Facebook group, we should be saying, Okay, let's recognize we have these problems. And we have some owners that are real assholes. Yes, I know, some owners that want to be really good guys are really good women or whatever. But they just don't know how to do it. And you don't know how to pay they want to pay, they don't know how to pay. Okay, great. I can't see the path forward, we have a problem. All right. Now, let's talk about what the solution would be. Because if we don't get to the solutions, if all we do is bitch, bitch, bitch, then everything we do is wasted. Yeah, it's completely wasted. And I am tired of wasting my time. Yeah. You know, because the older I get, the more the end, you know, looks like it's coming in sight. And there's only so much time I have left. I can't waste it. Right. So, you know, I, I don't I rarely participate on anything on the online forum, although I watch it all the time. Because I'm afraid if I say, Okay, here's what I think you ought to do. I'm going to have 53 people come on there and try to argue with me or tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.
David Roman 1:01:29
Well, that comes with the territory. But you know, I think reading through that, we use it to just Yeah, gone on YouTube. But, you know, for you guys, it's an opportunity to see like, this was this was what's on the ground. You have? Yeah, it's perception. It may not be reality, but in their mind, it's it's reality.
Kent Bullard 1:01:49
And here's the thing is that that if everybody is saying it, right now, it can be that this echo chamber set up, right, we've let social media because
David Roman 1:01:59
the echo chamber No, there's
Cecil Bullard 1:02:00
there's some realities to this. Oh, there is. Oh, the techs aren't getting paid enough. Yes, we know. We know that shop owners aren't getting paid enough. We know that customers in many cases are not getting the kind of service or the kind of job that they should have for what they pay. Yes. All right. We know that all that exists. So now we have to say, Okay, if that exists, what actions can I take that would help to alleviate so
Kent Bullard 1:02:26
would require more resources? Yeah. And planning. If you plan to train, the new guys that are coming in, if you plan for that three year, journeyman training to happen, and you've got a plan, that means that you can charge for the resources that would help you execute that plan, right, I need to charge I need this much money in order to pay them a living wage, because right now inflation is rampant. And kids coming into school can't even pay like I could make 18 bucks at McDonald's and it's less work, less training, less involvement.
Cecil Bullard 1:03:01
And am I might be able to own a McDonald's one day.
David Roman 1:03:04
That's no. Well, maybe it will maybe I think most people walk into McDonald's, they don't have that kind of expectation. I'm not sure why they would go do that.
Kent Bullard 1:03:15
I watched. I was at a presentation a while back, you know, Jason Rainey is yes. And so Jason's done a presentation on the apprenticeship program. And I know how Jason feels about the apprenticeship program. We've talked about it, very passionate about it. And I watched him have to dampen it back. I watched him have to be careful how he presented it to shop owners because he was watching the room. And he was seeing how they were responding to I watched him have to change how he was explaining it. I watched him have to say, you need to understand what these kids are coming in as. Right. And and so there's a whole subset of our industry. I did a panel and somebody on that panel is talking about. You just gotta pay your guys as little as you can possibly pay him. I don't have a guy that works for me that's under 18 or that's over $18. Now, you got to pay him as little as you can. Because it's the only way you're gonna make money because I can't charge more so that on a
David Roman 1:04:17
panel, I don't believe you. I do. middle-way on the open. Yes, I know. There's lots of people that believe that
Cecil Bullard 1:04:25
there are operators, coaching companies that are saying, the only way to make money is make sure you pay your technicians as little as possible and drive them as hard as possible. And drive as many customers to your shop as you can. It doesn't matter if you're where your people out build. You'll get more
Kent Bullard 1:04:41
bait your vendor. Yeah, go to your tech and say, Hey, you got to take one for the team. I'm gonna need you to take one for the team.
Cecil Bullard 1:04:49
That is that is is out there and it's being taught. Oh my god. It makes me I want I want to choke somebody. Right? It's just so wrong. Um, let me let me ask you a question because this is going on in my mind. So scanner Danner, one of the top techs in our industry. Yeah. But again, again, if I put the five top guys, yeah, maybe the 10 top guys in a room? He's there. Absolutely. If that's a guy that says, I have to research some times, then tell me about the the average ordinary guy in our industry. You mean we shouldn't charge for them? If he has to charge for research? Then why are we fighting against charging for research? Why are we having that argument live,
Kent Bullard 1:05:33
if charging for research is such a problem. It's like, it's like making the assumption that the customer is going to do their research for the problem to fix their vehicle.
Kent Bullard 1:05:41
So let me ask you this, then. Because the I think the issue that came up was is all these people attacked him for saying that? Yes. And and the thing is, is there's only so much you can fit into that time, right? Because he did it in a real, there's only so much you can fit in. And so in the comments, we talked a little bit about the process of how it's done. You have to know what the damn process is, you have to have a system for it. You have to have this set up the right way. You can't just go and say, I'm just going to charge for all my research and all my tests, if you're not doing a good job. That's called rip and decline.
Cecil Bullard 1:06:20
But if you're not if you're not training these tags, and actually training them where they're learning Yes, so that they get better and better. And then, like, right now we have a problem in our industry, because the best technicians are saying, well, I could do that job in three hours. Well, you probably could. But when you first started, it took you 12 Yeah, and we can't charge. We prompt, maybe we shouldn't charge 12. But we can't charge three, you know, if the average guy is going to take seven or eight hours, then we need to be charging seven or eight hours for that job.
David Roman 1:06:49
It's the same thing as old diesel thing. At some point, we need to move away from the hour. That's what I was gonna just go to this is the cost of the repair.
Cecil Bullard 1:06:56
Yeah, well, before you this, you said is it? Is it hours or is it dollars? What's the thing? And I said neither one. It's not this is what I this is my hourly rate. And it's not this is how many hours I charge. It is in order to do this job correctly.
David Roman 1:07:11
This is what's awesome. And that's it well in this
Kent Bullard 1:07:13
sentence. So So let's think about let's think about what's happening with warranty times. And manufacturers right now. You've heard you've seen it, they're dropping like
Cecil Bullard 1:07:23
they are they're they're losing their butts, because they're not selling new cars. And they, they got to make money. So they're going to try to cheat it out of whoever else they can get it from
Kent Bullard 1:07:30
but but this has been going on for years, they've been dropping it little by little every chance like Yes. Okay. And so I wonder if we've not gotten into a vicious cycle with this. Because, for instance, there was a I think it was, it was a Ford vehicle that you had to pull the doors off, to get bolts out to get the dash out. Or maybe it was blend or something I can't remember what it was. But it was like a 16 hour job. And technicians started finding a way around that job. And they're like, Hey, I gotta make hours on this. Now they were originally getting paid X number of hours for it. And they figured out a way around and they shortened it. So what happens, they lower warranty to write the manufacturer figures out these guys have found a way around this, we need to lower the time because we're paying for stuff we're not getting right. And so now all of a sudden, oh boys are out here changing parts, the time goes down. They're like, well, that's not fair, I gotta find a way to do it faster. And each time I'm not gonna say that the quality dropped, but the quality changed, right? If you're drilling
Cecil Bullard 1:08:25
holes to get to the bolts in the in the frame or in the right, then yes, the quality dropped.
Kent Bullard 1:08:31
Absolutely. And you know what I'm saying? There's there is a shift in quality, the mindset, and that's something I've said for a while now is maybe we need to rethink this whole thing because ours makes us focus on getting the work out the door, I need to go fast. It's not about fixing the car. It's not about the client, but there
Cecil Bullard 1:08:51
has to be there has to be balance. You can't say okay, ours don't matter. No, I agree with you.
Kent Bullard 1:08:56
I'm not saying that hours don't matter. I guess at the end of the day what I'm saying though, is that maybe we should be charging based on the time that we're spending within reason, right we're not we're not just going off of a book time. We're not just setting a book time and going at that we're saying hey, this is how long it takes to do this job.
Cecil Bullard 1:09:16
So as as a as a tech when I was a tech it was all flat rate. And it was actually flat rate was a percentage of labor. And so in order to really make a living I had to beat flat rate. So I got good at shortcuts Yeah, okay, I made tools I melted down heated up, rearrange change, so I could like I could get freeze plugs done in an hour that the book time was six and a half. Yeah, okay. But I worked hard to get there. I created templates for door panels. So I knew exactly where to drill to pull the bolts and I didn't have to like read the book every time or you know, try to I had Got it all down. So I could do this hour and a half job in 30 minutes. Yeah. And that's how I got paid as owners in this business. If we pay for what the time the tech takes on the car, we now have a problem with our customers, because one time they come in, and I give it to David, who's a really sharp tech, yep. And he does it in two hours, and I charge you I don't know, 250 and labor or whatever. And another time I give it to Ken, and he's my worst tech and he takes seven. Now I'm charging you, you know, $800 900 bucks to do the same job. Yeah, that's an issue. And as an owner, when my tech is efficient, and does the job well, and I can charge what would be a normal price for this job. But he does do it faster. She does it faster. I'm now making money, yet is one of the few ways in my company today I can I can put some money in the bank, right? Yep. And so there has to be some kind of a balance between all of this. And if you're a shop, that's only charging what your tech time takes, then I don't know that I want to bring my car to you. If the only guy you got at your shop today is your crappiest tech. Yeah. Right. I agree. Nor do I want you to dispatch my car to that guy. And having worked with text my entire life. I don't care how many ticks you have in your shop, you might have a couple of superstars. But you also have a couple of guys that aren't as fast as those guys. It's, you're never going to have all superstars. You just you can't. Right. And, and as a customer. I mean, I guess I like to bring my car only to you when your fastest tech, your best tech is there. That's right. So they're the best tech? Well, no, I don't think that's true. I think there's a lot of they're the best tech, but I don't think it's every tech, but but also, you know, if I'm a customer, I walk in the car, and I say okay, get in your shop and I say I don't I don't want that kink guy to work on my car. He's too young. I want that David guy. He looks like he's seasoned. Well, first of all, I might be full of crap. I mean, David, I might suck. And Ken might be your best tech. But what's the owner gonna tell me? Right? Well cancel my best tag. He's the guy who's gonna work on my car. He's my best tech and as a consultant, a trainer. I'm going to tell you, whoever's working on your car today is my best tech. Yeah. You know, because they have to be today. That's their job. Yeah, right. So I'm just saying, Stop eating each other. He's lunch all that?
David Roman 1:12:23
Have you seen some of these? The some of the training courses, some of these coaching companies have put out? Obviously not you guys, but we were reading through some of the materials and some of the verbiage
Cecil Bullard 1:12:33
I try not to look at any of that. Let me let me tell you, because this is me, I
David Roman 1:12:37
know this won't be super happy about this. So some of the verbiage is if you own a Lexus, and you come in part of your pitch is to tell them that you guys are experts at Lexus, I've got a guy who's fantastic. He's an expert at this, that it's not true. You're just feeding them aligned. But that's verbatim the language that they tell like every one of your technicians is an expert in whatever car you happen to.
Cecil Bullard 1:13:08
Close and I have I have actually said those words in front of a class. Okay. In my shop, we had our Toyota Honda Nissan guy. Yeah. And he got 80% of his work was Toyota Honda Nissan, and when he took classes 80% of the classes he took were on those jobs. We were a generalist shop. I had my Mercedes BMW Audi guy. Yeah. And that's his education was that in most of the work he did was that and I had all ATEX I didn't have any C tags or any and if you were an apprentice in my shop, there was an a tech looking over your shoulder. Sure. Okay. So when my customer came in and said I've got a Subaru I said a man I have a great Subaru guy cuz I had a great Subaru guy. Yeah. Oh, I
David Roman 1:13:51
say it all the time too. If if But yeah,
Cecil Bullard 1:13:55
if you have a crappy Subaru guy don't be telling your customer you got the greatest Subaru guy don't say you have a crappy guy but
Kent Bullard 1:14:03
I'm not gonna say well
David Roman 1:14:05
I'm just saying that customer comes in with a Fiat I'm not telling them to go oh, we have we are excellent. And I tell them we
Cecil Bullard 1:14:17
will send you there.
David Roman 1:14:17
We worked on Fiats Yeah, we've had a few come through here. We're familiar you want to bring it down? Well, we'll take a look at it. We have processes happy to look at it. Yeah. But I'm not feeling them aligned. Now when they come in with a Honda Yeah, I'm gonna gloat own on my Honda guy. I come in with my with my land. He hates Land Rovers. You know, he told me there's so much money and Landrover. Well, what? So I have a tech here and I hired him, like three or four months later, he's like, Hey, I'm gonna have to put on my notice and I go what are you talking about? And he's like, Yeah, this shop up the street. Screw that shop by the way there. He's like they called me I had applied there before I came to work for you. I really wanted to work for him because the guy races cars on the weekends and he works on these Land Rover Jaguar. I think that's it, and he does some bends. And that's what the car those are the cars that I want to work on. And I go dear, the reason why you're saying that is because you haven't actually worked on them. And once you work on a few you're gonna realize that God bless piles us everyone was he mentally defective? This experience, okay, is what it was. He's a steel beam by the time he gets done working for, but he had driven several home when we thought these are cool cars, and he looked at the technology and he's like, man, these are cool. And he and I can, you know, I throw a bunch of money at him and this that and the, all these concessions, I'm gonna do this for you. And he's like, he's like, Okay, I'll, I'll stay he only stayed. And he's been working for me for a few years now. And oh, man, when I pull up the Land Rover, and I'm like, there you go, buddy. He's like, I hate you. I hate these cars. I'm so glad I didn't leave here and go work for that guy. I would have hated my life.
Cecil Bullard 1:15:59
It is funny what we, you know, we have these expectations based on what we've heard or how we feel. There's no reality to it, because we really haven't been there. We haven't, you know, work on land rovers for a couple of months. And then tell me how much you really sad. And I think every maybe not every but a large portion of the guys that the people that go to these trade schools, they think they're going to get out and build racecars. Right. They want to do or they think they're going to, you know, you have these shows on TV where they're putting these hot rods or these whatever, and you're like, that's what I'm going to do with my trucks. Wait a minute. That's like saying,
David Roman 1:16:34
we've got a commercial to come back the panels and they're like, oh, yeah, that's how it's gonna be.
Cecil Bullard 1:16:40
I think, you know, I wanted to play basketball when I was young. And, and my whole goal in life until I was like, 21 was to play professional basketball. And you know, how many people got guys actually play professional basketball out of all the people that want to play basketball? 100 out of a billion people? And yeah, it's it's, yeah, it's amazing. You know, unfortunately, we're not creating the right expectations in the schools, probably. And we can't we can't do anything about that. Or maybe we can if we get together as an industry, but as long as we're as fractured as we are nothing. It's almost impossible. And as long as we're continually backbiting. Yeah, it there's very little possible for us, right? I agree. So we got to, we just have to stop that.
Kent Bullard 1:17:24
We need to get around a campfire. We need to sing some songs by hands.
David Roman 1:17:29
How they'll screw that haven't gone from trying to screw it up. It really pissed me off. This is right on COVID. Like COVID hits. COVID hits, I hire my third tech COVID. And now he's my fourth. Yeah, and no, no, I'm sorry. He was my I hired a second tech in this guy was my third. That guy had made this this guy an offer. And then when COVID hit, he rescinded it. And he goes, Man, I don't know how this was gonna go down. I didn't, because I'm an idiot. And I go, you know, screw it. I don't want to lose out on this on this talent. It cost me a little money. It's okay. I'm going to be really tight. And I'm freaked out and I'm not going to be able to afford it. But you know what I need to I'm not going to lose out on this person. And after COVID hidden all the the daddy Trump money starts hitting then everybody's going while the PPP, PPP and not the STEMI checks all hit and everybody's just spending like crazy. All of a sudden, he's like, Hey, buddy, how you doing? Come on down. It's like, dude, he didn't take a chance on you. And what
Cecil Bullard 1:18:34
do you think the minute that his business was was risky? What was going to happen? Oh, yeah, he's gonna throw that guy to the wolves. Yeah, I mean, there is some there is something to loyalty to Frank. Yeah. I mean, but I, you know, we need to communicate better. Instead of blaming other people. You know, if I've got a problem with you, Lucas, I damn will guarantee that you and I are going to have a conversation. Absolutely. You know, absolutely. And the other thing that's happened in our society today is if you don't agree with me, or if you make me mad, you're a bad person. Yeah, absolutely. Got to Stop that crap.
Kent Bullard 1:19:07
It's ridiculous. You know,
Cecil Bullard 1:19:08
we don't agree we're not there things David Knight we absolutely don't agree on. I guarantee we start talking about money. David and I are gonna, we're gonna have some heated words. Hey, but we still like each other.
Kent Bullard 1:19:19
Did you know? I just want you to hear this. Okay. Did you know that he only needs 25 hours per tech per week from his shop? To all he needs? Only 25 hours shop is completely profitable. He's good to go. And he doesn't have to go in at all. He doesn't even talk to him. He doesn't have anything to do with the
David Roman 1:19:41
shop. That is He is fluffing that story up. numbers might be slightly
Cecil Bullard 1:19:46
over the last couple of days. I've heard stop fluff in this story.
Kent Bullard 1:19:50
25.68 Okay.
David Roman 1:19:53
I talk to my texts on a daily basis and we have meetings and the whole night.
Cecil Bullard 1:19:59
It's fine. I don't care. I want my guys doing 40 Because at 40, I got money in the bank at 40. I can pay them more than anybody else. And they can have a happy life. So for families,
David Roman 1:20:10
I'm probably trying to reinvent the wheel. But we went, I went on this whole, like tangent at full blast recording. And I said, Look, I it's not the hours. It's not the hours. It's the it's the revenue. Yeah, like you were saying, there's a balance. Yeah, literally, those words came out of my mouth. If there's a bouncer, I'm telling you, do you think we disagree on everything? prising Lee, we agree on just about everything.
Cecil Bullard 1:20:36
I was sitting in my chair in my office, and all of a sudden I got, I started shaking, what's going on came in balance. A moment,
David Roman 1:20:46
that's not the hours for me, and I almost want to move away. And I told this to my guys, and they've kind of looked at me, they're like, What do you mean, we're not gonna track our revenue at this much margin and this much, that's, that's all I care about. And it's, it's not in what I told him as well is, I don't care how long the job takes you, I don't care. The the revenue we need to hit is this number this I make I break it down to a breakeven number for them. And I said, we need to hit this number. And that means that maybe you do a little bit more, you do a little bit less than this. And we all share jobs, and my guys are all salary. So we just kind of hand each other jobs and this guy does the inspection. This guy does Diag, this guy does the r&r. It's whatever. But I said, at the end of the day, we need to hit this revenue. And the only thing I don't care how long it takes you, and I don't care how you manage your time, you want to sit and watch YouTube videos. You want to take two hour lunch. I don't flippin care, as long as we all have revenue, the day and I said it's not even that. The revenue is it has to hit Yeah. And we have to hit our our expected finish times for because we start. Yes, we promised our customer gets told Tuesday, and we have a cut off time at 430 The car's not done if it's not done at 430 I don't care that you finish that. Five, it's gonna third Well, I got
Cecil Bullard 1:21:59
a customer in my office at 545 Waiting for the card, please do come to me and tell me you need something else. They go we fix.
David Roman 1:22:04
So it's 430 is the cutoff time that's on the cars don't. And I said all that matters is that you finish that car by 230 or by 430 on a Tuesday because that's what we told the customer and that's what you told us. I said after pass that I don't care they need to take off early. I don't need to. I don't care. I don't care. You guys are all adults. So these are all grown ass men handle your business. And then they because I think I told them that the environment that I created in my shop the environment, he's he's right now he's on the numbers.
Kent Bullard 1:22:38
He's fluffing the story. Okay, they're all grown ass men. Okay, I know better. I know these boys.
Cecil Bullard 1:22:44
He wants to treat them all like grown grown ass man. I told you guys
David Roman 1:22:48
are all grown ass man. And here's the thing. I don't want them. I told them I said that you cannot. We we run our shop. salaried with a profit bonus. And, and loosey goosey on one time you get to work loosey goosey. And when you take a lunch loosey goosey. And when you leave, we are like, we just kind of hang out. And I said that's how we run a shop because that's how I am. And I'm not going to get to work on time. That's not be a thing. So I'm not going to expect you guys to get to work and I just don't know it's just
Cecil Bullard 1:23:20
the way I am. But if the customers are coming in at eight o'clock, someone has to be there at eight o'clock.
David Roman 1:23:24
No, we have an 830 start time. Yeah, we have a we have this is the line and the customers are gonna show up. But you know, sometimes they get 30. But if you want to do
Cecil Bullard 1:23:33
630 and start a job and do it, I don't care if you want to leave at 330 that's fine, too. I don't care. As long as the work gets done,
David Roman 1:23:39
and I don't care you guys manage your time. The problem became though, is that they had an employee. And I told them, it's you guys. Some shops run like a factory. This is the amount of production we need. And we need to fit as much work done in this amount of time as possible. We're going to load up the cars, we're going to walk you like borrowed meals and then out the door. Lots of money shop on his boats. Not that there's anything wrong boats. It's whatever. I said we don't run our shop here. You guys don't have to be here on time. You guys can leave early. You guys can take to our lunches. You guys can watch YouTube. You guys can play around on your phones. I don't care. You guys want to take it to our poop break, go take a two hour poop break. But but here's the caveat. You can't have it both ways. The employee mindset is when I take my day off. Don't call me about the car. When I take my day off. That's not my problem. Somebody else has they make up for that work. Yeah, because it's I'm out it. There's no There's I punched in I punched out when I punched out. I'm done. And the fact that that card didn't get finished isn't my problem. You call the customer. No, no, no, no, no, no. You wanted to leave early, which is fine. But this is your baby. That job has to handle your baby. Right. Make sure that baby has a babysitter. Did you find a babysitter for your baby? Moo. So we have a problem now? Yeah, because it
Cecil Bullard 1:24:59
got late. left out in the in the last one was screwed over.
David Roman 1:25:02
You're expected me to pick up your slack, which if we have the conversation, I'm happy to have that conversation with the customer. And we can talk about it. We can work something out, but get something worked out. Don't leave so and so hanging because oh, that's their job, not mine. No, no, no, that's not where we do things here. You decided you were going to watch YouTube videos for 30 minutes. And now the car's not done on time. You didn't manage your time properly. Now, now there's a conversation that should have happened earlier in the day. And you didn't do that. Now we have a problem.
Cecil Bullard 1:25:30
So I gotta say, I got I just got to say something because my heart is like fluttering. It's missing beats right now. Because David and I have agreed on three things. Oh, my God this weekend. Oh my god. Last couple of days. This is the third thing. Let me so my guys, we had a 9.6 hours a day or 48 hours a week as kind of that's the goal. That's the target. And by the way, not at, you know, not at if you can, but 4048 hours a week.
David Roman 1:26:00
Sure.
Cecil Bullard 1:26:03
Sorry, got all of a sudden I'm choking up maybe it's because
Kent Bullard 1:26:06
No, right. I thought I saw a little tear over there a minute ago.
Cecil Bullard 1:26:09
So. So I told my guys, I said if you want to take off on Friday, if you got your 48 hours on Thursday afternoon, and you want to take off, and we don't have a customer's expecting something. Yeah, you know, that's fine. If my service advisor needed to leave, I don't care. You can leave. But make sure the other service advisor knows what you got going. So the customers aren't left in the lurch. We ran our shop the same in a way. Right. Yours is you're saying we got to have this revenue. I said these hours because it equals that revenue. Yeah. Hope. Yeah. So. So one day, I'm working for a guy named Larry Moore. If you know, Larry, if you're on the West Coast, you probably know Larry, he's been in the business forever. So really great guy, but a very much D personality like me. Very aggressive communicator, etc. He comes through the shop. And he's slamming doors and everything and he comes in my office and he starts yelling. I mean, he's he is worked up. And I'm like, Okay, first of all, Larry, take it down a couple notches. Cuz I'm not gonna let you yell at me and I don't want you waking up in the hospital. Okay, so just stop right and he so he comes down a little magnetic okay, what's got you worked up? Those effing cell phones, I walked through the Shabbat got three guys on cell Fogra. I don't want to see cell phones, I want cell phones outlawed you know, blah, blah, blah. I said, Okay, Larry, before we have that conversation, and happy to have that conversation. But But before we have this that conversation, I want to ask you two questions. Okay. What's our productivity in the shop for the last six months? What's the productivity in the shop is a well, it's 120%. That's the goal. Right? I said, Okay. And what's our comeback rate? Well, less than 1%. That's the goal. I said, Okay, shut up and get out of my office. I don't hear about I don't care if they talk on the cell phone all day long all day long. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me if they can do their job. And take a two hour poop break. Take a two hour appropriate but if there's a customer expecting to pick their car up and you take a two hour poop break, and their car isn't ready when that is there. It also you should have clenched Yeah, you shouldn't blow your bolt on baby.
Kent Bullard 1:28:18
Are you gonna start taking two hour poop breaks now? Start you know, there's always this weird echo. We have all these meetings and these zoom calls. I'm starting to wonder. Like, is that how you got to
Cecil Bullard 1:28:33
the bathroom? The bathrooms are good as long as the goal.
Cecil Bullard 1:28:41
Cares. It's private. Nobody's coming in. It's great. Don't get interrupted.
Cecil Bullard 1:28:50
Oh, that's terrible. sped up the phone? Oh, she Lucas's faces bright red. Flash. Wait a minute. All right. So so you know, David, I think you're absolutely correct. And by the way, these these are grown ass men are grown ass women. They they they if you if you want someone there's a whole there's a whole psychological study on how you treat people. Yeah. And if you treat people like they're adults, most people will be adults. Yeah. And I think you know, we also have owners that think, well, these are all children. And in a way they kind of are and sometimes you have to say, wait a minute, you know, yeah. You don't say, Hey, you're being childless. But you say that behavior is not okay. Here's how we have to act. Yeah. But if you create the expectation with them, and then you help them to have the tools and I don't necessarily mean wrenches, but wrenches might be part of it, to meet that expectation, and if you all agree on the expectation, so if you sat down and you said, well, we need to do $40,000 a day. And then you got your three Texas says, Well, you can take a poop break if we do $40,000 a day. Well, that's not reasonable exactly right? Absolutely. And so if you have the conversation with with your your people who are adults, and you say this is the expectation and they agree to that expectation, then you should be able to let them manage themselves. Amen. As long as you pay attention and, you know, modify and help and move along.
Kent Bullard 1:30:19
It is long as you verify,
Cecil Bullard 1:30:23
yes, yeah, trust but verify. Plan for the plan. Plan for the worst hope for the best. Exactly. And also, I think there's one more thing you know, you're in a bit you're in a business that's that's an interesting business if you work on cars. First of all, if you work on cars, I don't care. I don't care if your scanner Danner, yeah, you're gonna have a car. It's gonna eat your lunch. Absolutely. Yeah. And you got to you got to look at that in a in a different way. You got to say, Okay, this this month, this is mine. Yeah, right. Yep. And you got to take it when it comes. Yes, you're going to have mistakes, you're going to have bad days, you're going to have things you know, days where your phone doesn't ring. And if you get paranoid and you start, you know, beaten up everybody else around you because of that. Yeah, you can't do it. You send the wrong message, and then people don't want to work for you.
David Roman 1:31:12
You okay, really? My cleaning lady is on my office, set the alarm off and everyone is going bananas.
Cecil Bullard 1:31:20
hate it when that happens. Every time they she goes in my office. She sets the alarm. Ah, yeah, she's got She's got her own mind does to your own code. But yeah, I can't figure it out.
Kent Bullard 1:31:31
Man. Oh, man. Okay, thank you. Well, okay. Yes, sir.