Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer.  In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Mike Allen [00:00:00]:
If you want to get my listeners or just the Internet trolls fired up. You talk about AI coming for technicians jobs.
Keith Perkins [00:00:06]:
They're going to replace any technicians now, but in 10 years with AI and robotics, the cost has to come down to robotics. Then we can replace physical manual work.
Seth Thorson [00:00:18]:
The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we or our guests may say do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shop Owner presented by techmetric, the best software in the history of ever.
Mike Allen [00:00:54]:
You know, just this week I went down a Scientology rabbit hole and read about Xenu, the some crazy.
Keith Perkins [00:01:05]:
Have you heard of that?
Mike Allen [00:01:06]:
75 million years ago, Xenu brought billions of humans to earth, chained them around volcanoes and killed them all with hydrogen bombs. And then now their souls are what cause physical and mental ailments to current humans.
Keith Perkins [00:01:20]:
Yeah, and you got to go to the church Scientology.
Mike Allen [00:01:22]:
You gotta pay a lot of money to go to the classes. Yeah, right.
Keith Perkins [00:01:25]:
Go through these pillars to become, you know, enlightened.
Seth Thorson [00:01:32]:
One of those pillars is free diagnostics.
Keith Perkins [00:01:34]:
I didn't hear all the volcano stuff. I didn't know about all that. That's pretty wild. But yeah, yeah.
Mike Allen [00:01:38]:
Wikipedia, man.
Keith Perkins [00:01:39]:
You can burn a lot of time
Mike Allen [00:01:40]:
on Wikipedia if you're not careful. So just talk to Chad. What do you think's worse? Burning tons of time on Wikipedia or doom scrolling social media?
Keith Perkins [00:01:49]:
Doom scrolling social media. You're not learning much.
Mike Allen [00:01:51]:
That's fair.
Keith Perkins [00:01:52]:
Wikipedia, you can learn tons of things that you may or may not ever use.
Mike Allen [00:01:55]:
Unless you're doom scrolling. Confessions of a Shop Owner is shorts and re.
Keith Perkins [00:02:01]:
No, that's the next.
Seth Thorson [00:02:03]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:02:06]:
So introduce yourselves. For those who live under a rock
Keith Perkins [00:02:09]:
and don't know who you are, I'm seth Dorsen. I'm EuroTech.
Seth Thorson [00:02:15]:
It's all yours.
Mike Allen [00:02:16]:
Have at it.
Keith Perkins [00:02:18]:
I don't want nothing to do with you. No, I'm Keith Perkins. I've got a brick and mortar repair shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma that does everything from oil changes to everything. Then we have a mobile company that services about 1700 other professional shops between Oklahoma City, Tulsa, northwest Arkansas area. And then we have a training company, make stuff content and travel all over the world.
Mike Allen [00:02:42]:
And so we're here@vision KC 2026. I should specify that, I guess. Have you taught already?
Keith Perkins [00:02:49]:
No, not till tomorrow morning. Okay.
Mike Allen [00:02:50]:
What are you teaching? What are you teaching tomorrow? Seth's class.
Keith Perkins [00:02:53]:
BMW in Volkswagen.
Mike Allen [00:02:55]:
Yeah, Seth's moved onward and upward to other things now. All right, Seth, what are you here for?
Seth Thorson [00:03:02]:
Seth Dorsen Eurotech Auto Repair. We got four stores in Minneapolis and one in Wisconsin, so five total stores. Also own German car support. We support Volkswagen, Audi and BMW. Shops with technical support, training and diagnostic help.
Mike Allen [00:03:17]:
Okay, and you taught today on.
Seth Thorson [00:03:19]:
I taught yesterday.
Mike Allen [00:03:20]:
Yesterday, that's right, yesterday afternoon. The show didn't start until today because I arrived today in my mind. I am the center of. I am the center of focus in my own world. You taught on AI.
Seth Thorson [00:03:34]:
AI. How to use. How to build custom GTPs. The streamline operations in your shop is what I taught yesterday.
Keith Perkins [00:03:40]:
Is it GPTs or GTPs?
Mike Allen [00:03:43]:
Can't it be either?
Seth Thorson [00:03:44]:
Can't be.
Mike Allen [00:03:45]:
How to build custom gts.
Seth Thorson [00:03:47]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:03:48]:
Yeah. You guys know how to do this, I imagine.
Seth Thorson [00:03:51]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:03:53]:
So how was class?
Seth Thorson [00:03:55]:
Good. I think people enjoyed it. It was a good class. We had a lot of time. I think we capped it at 85 people because it's a hands on workshop. So everybody had to bring their laptops and a working subscription so we could. We had a lot more people that wanted to come, but we could only do so many when we're doing, you know, making them build the agent or their help bot as they go.
Mike Allen [00:04:16]:
When will you be teaching that class again?
Seth Thorson [00:04:18]:
I'm doing a shorter demo of it at Minnesota's AESP conference at the end of April. But that's a really small conference. Minnesota is not as big as a lot of the other conferences, but we're doing that out there.
Mike Allen [00:04:30]:
That's awesome.
Seth Thorson [00:04:30]:
And then I'll go, when I'll do it again.
Mike Allen [00:04:33]:
There's a lot of people that are interested in that obviously for obvious reasons. As David Roman so famously said, you can replace a service advisor with a link and I think there's a race for folks to try to figure out how to do that as effect. Maybe not replace them, but certainly make them a lot more efficient and reduce the bandwidth required to just really relationship building. And the rest of it is automated.
Keith Perkins [00:04:58]:
Would be pretty cool.
Seth Thorson [00:05:00]:
Yeah, I mean that's what we tell people. That's the first step is using the custom, you know, boundaries on chat. So it only works when a certain boundaries. Then the next thing is you start building with Claude coding and build chrome extensions. And I gave a quick demo at the end of the day and Michael Gunther I think came up and said he built a Chrome extension that do oil changes already because after he learned how to do it, he's like, oh, that's easy.
Keith Perkins [00:05:26]:
Yeah. It tracks customers usages of the vehicle to predict when the next likely oil change interval would hit hit date wise.
Mike Allen [00:05:33]:
Yeah, it seems like it would be pretty easy to go ahead and build it to automatically set their next appointments and their reminders and that kind of stuff too.
Seth Thorson [00:05:40]:
There's a lot of things you can build, a lot of things you can do. And the nice thing is it's customized for your shop. The biggest thing is really if you look at software as a service, a lot of the software as a service I think is in trouble because it is so easy for somebody that is not a coder or programmer to build something. And Chrome extensions can literally read most shop management systems without needing an API and integration. Because you can literally scan the developer code and pull most of the data you need out to make a decision and database out of it.
Mike Allen [00:06:11]:
Well, it feels like the shop management systems that are out there now that are trying to grow and maintain relevancy or establish dominance. Right. They're all racing to build the same tool into what they've got already.
Seth Thorson [00:06:25]:
Yeah. And I think the big ones will survive. Or if you have a real, really specialized set of data. Right. Like my tech support or Keystech support. You know, if you're scanning our database with our own AI, I'm not going to let anybody else's AI into it, but if we're scanning our database, you know, still the intellectual property or the, you know, the data is still going to be absolute king because AI needs the data. So people that hold massive amounts of intellectual property, intellectual data, are still going to be okay and still be able to build something that's sellable. But if you're just relying on chat
Keith Perkins [00:07:00]:
to look on Wikipedia, Google stuff, Google
Seth Thorson [00:07:03]:
stuff and find stuff like those companies that are doing it, and I'm not going to name names, but there's a lot of them out there in our industry that I think once people figure out how to do what I teach, and I know Keith does some teaching on in different ways that I don't think some of these companies will be around.
Keith Perkins [00:07:20]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:07:21]:
So do you think that it seems like some of the companies that kind of latch onto the side of the main softwares, the integration companies, that kind of thing, and they've got an API or they're doing a Chrome extension that overlays techmetric or Shopware or whatever, they're harvesting that data to be able to
Keith Perkins [00:07:43]:
build, say it's smart.
Mike Allen [00:07:46]:
Yeah. So from a shop owner's perspective, if you want the tool that they're offering, how do you protect yourself from giving up your customers data to them?
Seth Thorson [00:07:57]:
Build your own. Yeah, I mean, ours, I use a Google script that scrapes the information data off and builds our own database so that I can build quick, fast expediated estimates using the whole knowledge base of everything we've done on these vehicles. And we're starting to scrape it with a script and then do a shared database. But I mean that's early, early development that we're working on, on it. But yeah, I don't, I think everybody that's going to take your data. Data is the next gold mine.
Keith Perkins [00:08:24]:
It's always been gold mine.
Seth Thorson [00:08:25]:
It's always been a gold mine.
Mike Allen [00:08:27]:
It's just getting easier to automate Carfax forever.
Keith Perkins [00:08:31]:
Like I'm not integrating because now I've got customers asking for it. Like you had.
Seth Thorson [00:08:35]:
Yep.
Keith Perkins [00:08:36]:
And I'm like, they have access to my data for free, you know, so
Mike Allen [00:08:43]:
people that watch this episode and listen to this conversation or people that hear about the class that you just taught, it is the hot button subject right now.
Keith Perkins [00:08:52]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:08:53]:
You know, for the last three or four years. Before that it was the technician shortage. Now it's AI and how to integrate and increase efficiencies in your business. With AI, I feel like there's a demand. You could teach that class once a week online and fill a room of paying attendees. Like, what do I got to do to. I should have come yesterday, but my kids had a play I had to go to. So how do I get to go to that class?
Seth Thorson [00:09:19]:
I don't know. I'm not sure when I'm teaching it next. I will look at, I will look
Keith Perkins [00:09:22]:
at the form a little bit too. If you're, if you're watching and thinking, well, I can go on there and build a GPT and tell it to take these words and change them to these words to make my service provider sound smarter. There is so much more than that. Yes, I did not attend your class, but I can assume you go building agents and integration and like I said, Chrome Extensions.
Seth Thorson [00:09:41]:
Yeah, that we touch on. Well, that's really. We start with GTP because that's the foundation. So it's what I call level one and then level two. We talked for 10 minutes at the end with Claude in integration, but really until I get you to build five or six working GTPs, there's nothing else you can do. And I had two or three guys that said Well, I understand this. I already have working ones. By the time they were done with how I taught them to refine and control and data and then pushed into
Keith Perkins [00:10:10]:
an extension to where they no longer have to go and copy and paste
Seth Thorson [00:10:13]:
into a G and I say get
Keith Perkins [00:10:15]:
the prompt and paste it back in. Like you could build an extension that just does that?
Seth Thorson [00:10:18]:
Yep, yep. And until I tell people, don't try and build the extension until you have it working here because it's easier to manipulate and change it here than it is to change the code. Once you build the code, it's harder to unwind it. So I tell people, let's start here. And the guys that said they had something working really, really well, they left class going, I can make mine work so much better now. I understand so much more. A lot of people also don't understand the data controls. Like I teach them how to build an HR bot because I get sick of the HR questions.
Seth Thorson [00:10:46]:
What, how much vacation, how much pto, what do I. Or they'll ask a sensitive question that they may be afraid to ask their manager, that they'll ask the AI bot
Mike Allen [00:10:54]:
that will feed them then reports back to their manager because the man is always watching.
Seth Thorson [00:10:59]:
No, yeah, yeah, not an AI bot.
Keith Perkins [00:11:01]:
But, but you know, pump your handbooks into them and build a searchable database for one year processes and, and you
Seth Thorson [00:11:08]:
teach them to turn web search off. Right. We don't want that going to the web to find an answer to please somebody. We if it can't find the answer in the docs I gave it, it
Keith Perkins [00:11:16]:
needs to say you need a report. This is a good question for your manager. It's a good question for, based on the type of question, which level of leadership they need to talk to.
Seth Thorson [00:11:25]:
Correct. And so that's what we teach a lot of is how to turn web off. Yeah, our teachers turn the web off on that. Or how do you make it so you're not training the model like a lot of these guys are trained the model and frankly people are typing all sorts of crazy sensitive stuff in the, in the chat. And if you chat learns from it, it won't spit out. I can't go ask what Mike Allen has typed into it. But I can get enough,
Keith Perkins [00:11:52]:
I can
Seth Thorson [00:11:52]:
get enough information if I prompt it right. I can get enough information about people's businesses and things that if they uploaded things in the documents, I mean that's, it's a little bit scary how much data we're feeding it without understanding how to protect what we, what we do in It. So I'm a big proponent of using paid ones and making sure that.
Mike Allen [00:12:13]:
So if you've got a subscription, then you control the data. If you're using the free version, did
Seth Thorson [00:12:17]:
you turn the, did you turn the button on or off?
Keith Perkins [00:12:19]:
Yeah, you got to tell it, don't try another units, keep it internal. And then that's where you get into building an agent that keeps it offline. You can use Claude to code one and have an offline version and set up your own AI that literally doesn't share with anything, not even with them. So you can take it as far as you need to go.
Mike Allen [00:12:35]:
So two weeks ago you were in North Carolina and the booming metropolis of Frog Pond, North Carolina for class with Josh Parnell and limitless leadership. North Carolina has got some good operators and some dudes who are really investing in bringing high level training in house. We've got fueling connections coming up and that's a leadership and ownership focus thing. But like, what's it look like for me to get you in North Carolina just to come and teach all of us, North Carolina, anybody who wants to fly and just let me know, we
Seth Thorson [00:13:06]:
can set it up.
Mike Allen [00:13:07]:
I mean, that's pretty, I want to set that up.
Seth Thorson [00:13:09]:
Yeah. I mean, get with Megan and she can set it up.
Mike Allen [00:13:11]:
And I bet we can put 80 people in a room in North Carolina pretty quick.
Seth Thorson [00:13:15]:
Yeah, it's just a matter of making sure that, you know, I mean, we did it, we did it here and we had 80 some people and we were, we were, we only had one other helper from worldpac that was able to help, but we were able to use that amount of people and help if they're not computer savvy, then it takes more monitors in that room to run around and oh, they didn't buy the premium version or the, you know, I tell people, start with the premium and then I start showing them features of connecting Google Drive to connect their company knowledge book. And they're like, well, I can't do that with the premium. I said, yeah, I know you have to step up to the business, but I tell people when I teach the class, a lot of people don't know what they're getting into. And I say, your minimum investment to take the class. It's a $20 prerequisite to buy the basic premium to get into the class to be able to do it. And then if you decide you want to upgrade, then you can buy more advanced packages from chat.
Mike Allen [00:14:07]:
So the next step up from OpenAI, first one's $20 a month. And the next one's $200 a month. Is that right?
Seth Thorson [00:14:12]:
It's only 30 for a business.
Mike Allen [00:14:13]:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:14:15]:
And so, I mean, the one thing, the one thing chat allows you to do is share your, your custom agents out and like Google Google Gems. Frankly, I think Gemini is a better product. But the gems, up until yesterday, actually, you can share them. Now you couldn't share the gems with other people in your organization. Now you can.
Mike Allen [00:14:34]:
I knew you were gonna say that in class. So they fixed it.
Seth Thorson [00:14:36]:
Yeah, exactly.
Keith Perkins [00:14:37]:
Gemini is better for, for data aggregation.
Seth Thorson [00:14:40]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:14:40]:
If you're like, hey, I need. And you just fit me out a Excel document that has every single year mic model and engineering combinations from 1972. It's like, oh, okay.
Mike Allen [00:14:49]:
So if there's a, if there's a listener who wants to start playing with us, do they need to be focusing on open AI or Claude or Gemini or all of them, what they're doing?
Seth Thorson [00:14:59]:
I mean. Yeah. I had a guy asked me about Perplexity the other day and I'm like, well, Perplexity is great. But he goes, well, I'm using Perplexity because he's doing like world war simulation stuff. No, he's. He's actually taking World war documents and trying to artifacts things for a museum. I said, perplexity is one of the best out there at, at like research and you know, school level type research and work like that. But I don't think Perplexity is going to be used as much in automotive.
Seth Thorson [00:15:30]:
He's like, my shop wants to use Perplexity. My boss thinks that's the best. I said, well, Perplexity is good. Depends what you're using it for. It's a really good history. It's really good knowledge. It. But it research that stuff.
Seth Thorson [00:15:41]:
Perplexity excels it.
Mike Allen [00:15:42]:
It doesn't do right tool, right job.
Seth Thorson [00:15:44]:
Yep.
Keith Perkins [00:15:44]:
Yeah. I was pumping out a software for the. We run a tech challenge in our booth. We're just having like obstacle course type thing. And so I was running Chat GBT to make an image for me that I needed while Claude was coding a new piece of that in the button. Because I wanted the button to do something different, but I didn't know how to write. I ran code for like five years now, but AI has taken. If I show you something that I wrote called a risk assessment management tool, our RAM tool that we use for just putting in age vehicle, how many shops have touched it, what has parts been replaced, where the parts come from to give a budget, estimated budget that we should acquire from the client beforehand.
Keith Perkins [00:16:21]:
It looks like it's Windows 3.1. It's got a great background, blue top, just has a little wrench at the top. And I show you something that I wrote like this week with quad code
Mike Allen [00:16:31]:
in 90 seconds like that.
Keith Perkins [00:16:33]:
Well, typically I still like coding myself first and then I like, I'll usually pump it in and try to open up in Powershell and then it goes up syntax error line 276. I'll go in there. Oh, I put it too big of an indent. I take the indent off and try running again. It gives me another error. I'm like, all right. And I go to Claude and go, hey, fix this. And it goes, oh, it's like we removed 72 syntax errors.
Keith Perkins [00:16:53]:
I was like, well, I'd saved me three and a half hours and so something that took me a 17 hour plane trip to Australia to write one piece of software. Now I can do it two minutes, literally, literally. And it's hours, two minutes with, with AI.
Seth Thorson [00:17:06]:
And I will say, I will say it still takes somebody that has some idea and knowledge because guys go in there and just start typing stuff and not realizing that you really can't make a program do what they think they can. And it gets very convoluted quick.
Keith Perkins [00:17:19]:
But you got to have knowledge. So like, yep, when it, you can ask it to make like a basic dot HTML like browser driven software piece that's offline, but once you want it to interface with something online, it's a whole different ball game. You can ask Claude, hey, I needed this to bend a code. But what you don't know is that it goes and grabs the API with endpoints from NHTSA to do that most likely. So if you go research the endpoints, you can go, not only will it bring up your make model, engine, but also transmission speeds and gross vehicle weight data as well as recalls that are available. So the more you know about coding and stuff, the more powerful you can make a tool. So you can have an interface with subscription models. And so those of you that are paying for like Kajabi to build stuff and to build like knowledge base or anything, you're paying.
Keith Perkins [00:18:03]:
If you're paying for any shop management software, any add on, you can probably build it on your own if you have enough information about how the back end works.
Seth Thorson [00:18:12]:
If you get the API, if you get the API, if you don't have the API, it gets a little harder.
Keith Perkins [00:18:16]:
You can build a Chrome extension or if you don't have the API, you can go to Zapier and, or Zoho or whatever and build back and stuff. And that's just AI light is all that stuff is.
Mike Allen [00:18:27]:
So we touched briefly a second ago about. I made a comment about David Ranting about how service advisors can be replaced and there's a threat to advisors. I think really good advisors are fine. I think mediocre advisors are not going to be a long, long term thing. Well, legal, if you want to get my listeners or just the Internet trolls fired up. You talk about AI coming for technicians jobs. Do you believe that AI is going to make technicians much more efficient or is it going to dumb them down or is it going to replace some. How do you think that's going to play on the, on the shop side of the wall?
Keith Perkins [00:19:12]:
They can replace any technology technicians now, but in 10 years with AI and robotics, the cost has to come down to robotics. Then we can replace physical manual work. Right, but will it make some technicians, better ones that have good AI models and good tools at their disposal that are smart at using them? Yeah, probably. What you're going to see is the mass like majority of technicians and shops go to. Everyone's level of writing is going to increase in the next two years. Everyone's gonna be like, wow, it's way more professional. But there's nothing novel about it anymore. Right now when you read one of our write ups, it probably seemed very awesome compared to all the other shops in town.
Keith Perkins [00:19:52]:
In two years Firestone will have it integrated into their system every. Well, there's still paper. But you know, one day when those companies get out of the stone Age and I get, I get the problem, don't encourage them. Yeah, I know. So you've got to be. So don't be a Circuit City in the Best Buy world. Okay? So every time, Best Buy, that's, that's why Circuit City's gone. That's why they sell cars now.
Keith Perkins [00:20:15]:
Right? CarMax. For those who didn't know Circuit City.
Mike Allen [00:20:18]:
I did not know that.
Seth Thorson [00:20:19]:
Really? Yeah. Huh.
Keith Perkins [00:20:20]:
Yeah. Circuit city transitioned to CarMax. So Circuit City execs would implant people into Best Buy as they started to grow and they'd report back to what they're doing and then so Circuit City would implement. By the time they implemented, Best Buy was already onto the next thing. So if you're going to wait for two years until it pans out on AI, you'll be so far behind the curve you'll be like, all right, we got it to where we type this in and then it fixes it no longer says, we have a blown fuse. We found an open circuit, or, you know, a thermal protector has failed or something, and you change it. Yeah, that. We use those and stuff.
Keith Perkins [00:20:52]:
But if you wait, and that's your. Your extent of what you think AI does, you're so far behind the curve, they can do like. Like Michael was saying, it can pull data from the clients and go, hey, based on your driving habits, you're gonna need an oil change at this time. Let's go ahead and schedule it now. It's convenient.
Mike Allen [00:21:08]:
Well, I mean, I think there are already people racing to get that integrated and highly functional look, and they want to get there quick enough that they can get the quick payday on it. Yeah, yeah. And get 3,000 subscribers and get bought out.
Mike Allen [00:21:22]:
Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:21:22]:
They're just. Well, they're not even trying to get bought off. They're just taking money and running.
Keith Perkins [00:21:25]:
So that's to your point. We were talking about earlier software as a service. Software as a service. Do not rush to go buy these GPTs, these things from people, and you can build it in 30 minutes.
Seth Thorson [00:21:34]:
There was a. There was a. There was one on auto shop owners. A guy was basically trying to sell you his bot that was helping technicians. That. It's the same.
Keith Perkins [00:21:42]:
Yeah, it's just AI identifix.
Seth Thorson [00:21:45]:
Yeah. And it's. It's just scanning databases. So, I mean, obviously, one of the things I teach, when I teach the class, especially if you're building something for technicians, one of the key words I put in every rubric is what we call the rubric is what we put in the cause and the correction and what we're trying to make the thing. Thing do Anything that has to do with technicians, I tell it, you must insert a line that says, AI must cite its sources. I want my technicians to see the citation. And it'll put a hyperlink and you can see where it found that information. And you can click on and go,
Keith Perkins [00:22:15]:
oh, that forum is so wrong.
Seth Thorson [00:22:19]:
We're not going there.
Mike Allen [00:22:20]:
That information came from Reddit ownersgroup.com. yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:22:24]:
That information came from Mike Allen.
Keith Perkins [00:22:26]:
Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:22:27]:
Strike.
Mike Allen [00:22:27]:
That came from Confessions of a Shopper.
Seth Thorson [00:22:30]:
Technical data from Mike Allen. No, not happening.
Mike Allen [00:22:34]:
Pretty much no data from Mike Allen can be trusted.
Seth Thorson [00:22:37]:
Remove that.
Mike Allen [00:22:37]:
Remove that.
Keith Perkins [00:22:38]:
But you can build chrome extensions and scrub all your techmetric or shopware tickets and go, hey, this line of initial triage for a P0301 on a 17F150 with a 5 liter, and then it's got its scrubbing technician's comments for this is what data we saw to equal this repair. And now you've got a searchable database. Have you ever seen a Misfire on a 5 liter 4?
Mike Allen [00:23:03]:
Essentially you're building your own internal.
Seth Thorson [00:23:06]:
And I mean I've already, we've been doing that for, I have that built. I've had that for years. Our BMW database. Yeah, our BMW database that we. Oh God. Our BMW database we sell. That's. I mean that's going on 15 or 20 years of data, which is better, which is larger than almost anybody's.
Seth Thorson [00:23:27]:
Yeah, on that side of it. But yeah, I mean our shops, we use, I mean we use Clabtech, that pushes all our arrows in there anyways. That's the first form of it. Now you can do something very, very similar with what we're doing. But I, you know, look for things
Keith Perkins [00:23:41]:
with value, not just something that somebody coded that pulls from the Internet.
Seth Thorson [00:23:45]:
Yeah, okay. I mean they may grab some short. If you don't want to do it, you can use them. But it's a very short term money grab for the companies that are doing on this and they're.
Mike Allen [00:23:54]:
Well, but so it's, I think as long as you understand that it's a money grab on their part and they're probably only going to be around for a couple years.
Keith Perkins [00:24:02]:
But if there's an ROI for you.
Mike Allen [00:24:04]:
Yeah, if, yeah, if it's worth it then.
Seth Thorson [00:24:06]:
If it's worth it.
Mike Allen [00:24:07]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:24:07]:
If I told you I've got a product I can sell you right now, that's it's 50 bucks a month and I'm guaranteeing you it's gonna make you 500amonth, but it's only gonna last two years. Are you in? Yeah, yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:24:17]:
But the other, I mean the other, the other thing I tell people when we do it though is how many times you bought software and you go, man, I wish I could do this or, or for my business, I like 90% of the software, but if they could tweak it this way and that's where learning how to do this or you know, one of the fastest growing jobs that I'm seeing out there right now is actually chief AI officer. A lot of companies are hiring chief AI officers and they're implementing, they're implementing somebody in their business that literally's full time job is to stay up to date on AI and implement it and maybe have one or two light coders that are working with AI to build stuff.
Keith Perkins [00:24:53]:
A lot of it's busy work. So I'm looking at like my wife's sister who's a stay at home mom. Yeah, money. I'm like, hey, I'm going to send you instructions and you're going to learn some of these things and do them. Send me the product and tell you what to I'm going to like. Yeah, that sounds good. Change the background to white, change the font to make it larger, make this work this way, change this way into this button.
Mike Allen [00:25:11]:
It does that.
Keith Perkins [00:25:12]:
And integrate this database and have her figure it out and she can talk to ChatGPT and Claude and I all them for 15 minutes and figure out how to do it. It'll give step by step instructions. If you've never used. So it's fiverr on steroids.
Mike Allen [00:25:28]:
What do you think's gonna happen with the huge volume of the workforce that is about to be made obsolete? What are they gonna do?
Keith Perkins [00:25:35]:
She'll learn some skills.
Mike Allen [00:25:37]:
Well, so today actually I missed it. My son, my kids have all gone to a private Christian school since kindergarten and he's a 10th grader right now and there is a magnet trade school five miles from his high school. And he's thinking about transferring for 11th and 12th grade into their facilities maintenance program because it's got welding, H vac and electrical and they have a 13th grade and when you finish your 13th grade you get your associates and facilities maintenance and it's taught by the community college program instructors for H Vac electrical welding. Right. And so he's hyper aware of the fact that so many of the jobs that people have thought they wanted are being replaced. And so the people who work with their hands I think are the ones that are the most secure right now. Yeah, I mean I think it's until robotics catches up.
Seth Thorson [00:26:32]:
Yeah, even, even with robotics, I mean even like I will say the. One of the first companies that is actually implementing a lot of AI to try to replace technicians is Tesla's all tier one support is AI based. They fired all their remote diagnostic people and they replaced them with AI. And the amount of misdiagnosis we still get even with Tesla's robust AI is huge. Like the one we just got, customer was quote a battery. Well, they still do their diagnosis when they get in the bay, but the customer got shocked with the battery. We get the car and it needed a PTC heater. Quick and easy fix for isolation.
Seth Thorson [00:27:07]:
But you know, twelve hundred dollars fix, ten thousand dollar fix can lick a
Keith Perkins [00:27:12]:
puddle underneath the car, tell them what fluid is, I think we're safe.
Mike Allen [00:27:16]:
Well, so the question is, you know, with that Tesla example and their currently seeming high rate of Misdiagnosis be interesting. You know how frequently they misdiagnose when they had humans doing it too.
Keith Perkins [00:27:29]:
Right. Exchange it might be.
Seth Thorson [00:27:31]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:27:32]:
Yeah. How long will it take for them to get as accurate as their humans were in that?
Seth Thorson [00:27:39]:
You still need human reasoning because AI is just going to look at the fault code, the data, and it's still not going to be able to reach out and touch it and it's not going to be able to put the meter on it and smell it and look and use all the senses that we hear.
Keith Perkins [00:27:53]:
Locations.
Mike Allen [00:27:53]:
Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:27:54]:
It's not gonna be able to hook up a thermal gun and say man, that's hotter than it should be. Or this has a voltage drop. It might get close at calling 70% of the situations. But let's be honest. Will it do what most BTACs do? Or frankly, what the scary part is, what most people consider an atec. Will it do that? Yeah. Because half these Atex aren't Atex. Somebody's gonna get mad about that.
Seth Thorson [00:28:18]:
But half these Atex aren't Atex.
Mike Allen [00:28:20]:
The people who listen to this understand that. Yeah. The abc.
Keith Perkins [00:28:23]:
What it may not be able to do though, when the left rear tail light doesn't work when they walk by it. Notice the paint job is low quality. To realize they need to do a visual inspection behind your fender.
Mike Allen [00:28:31]:
Yeah, right.
Keith Perkins [00:28:32]:
There's. There's a level of intuition and wisdom that comes with working on cars for a long time that I don't know will be replaced at least in the next 15 to 20 years. So in that time I've got to teach myself other skills beyond it. Right. If I'm a technician, I gotta learn to be a real a tech.
Mike Allen [00:28:50]:
Okay. Let's call it what it is. If you're gonna step away from the shop, it better be worth it, period. Tectonic 2026 is designed for that reality. Role based sessions, hands on workshops and conversations with people who actually understand what it takes to keep a shop profitable
Mike Allen [00:29:05]:
and a team sane.
Mike Allen [00:29:06]:
And I like that it doesn't pretend we all need the same thing. Owners, advisors and technicians don't have the same headaches. So you're not wasting time sitting through sessions that don't apply to your day to day life. You should leave with a clearer idea of what to fix first, what to tighten up and importantly, what you should stop wasting time on. Presented by Techmetric tectonic is happening April 9th through 11th in Houston, Texas. Tickets are on sale now and my listeners get $500 off standard pricing with code confessions. 500 go to techmetric.com tectonic that's T E K T O N I C. Or tap the link in the show notes for more.
Seth Thorson [00:29:42]:
Yeah, and I mean in the robotics, even, even then your, your parts replacer techs, the robotics are still going to have to. The price would have to come down so low to replace that price of labor because. And still get, you know, most of robotics still aren't going to get in that tight area and get that timing belt done and the water pump done
Keith Perkins [00:30:01]:
to take the human factor in. Mike, would you like my brand new robot to fix your car?
Mike Allen [00:30:07]:
Yeah. There are going to be some people who say yes, but they're going to be in the minority. I think, at least initially it's going to be yes, that's cool. Until it's yes, because it's cheaper.
Keith Perkins [00:30:17]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:30:17]:
And that's when the transition will happen. Right.
Keith Perkins [00:30:19]:
But it won't be cheaper at first. The cost of the materials.
Mike Allen [00:30:25]:
There's already been a company that tried to do robot tire changes. Right. And they went bankrupt in what, two years? Yeah, Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:30:32]:
I can pay Johnny next to nothing and treat him like trash the same I could a robot and get him to change tires.
Mike Allen [00:30:38]:
Yeah. And the robot's a quarter million dollars from brakes all the time.
Seth Thorson [00:30:41]:
Yeah. I mean, it's. You're still gonna have maintenance on it. So.
Keith Perkins [00:30:43]:
I mean, even until their brother fixes
Seth Thorson [00:30:44]:
a robot, even if you're, even if you're getting rid of BTEX and who's fixing the robots or a tax. I mean, you know, so I feel
Mike Allen [00:30:51]:
like the threat is not to btex. The threat's not to ball joint changers. The threats to the diagnostic comp guys.
Keith Perkins [00:30:57]:
Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:30:57]:
And I still think their job is safe on.
Keith Perkins [00:30:59]:
The diagnostic guys are going to leverage it to just be better. Diagnostic guys?
Mike Allen [00:31:03]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:31:04]:
I mean, our guys leverage our AI for, for diagnostics. And it gives them, you know, if they miss something, it gives them a spot to look and say, ooh.
Mike Allen [00:31:13]:
So what advice would you give the smaller independents of the world? And that's the world that we, we operate in for the most part.
Keith Perkins [00:31:19]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:31:21]:
What advice would you give to them about how they need to be evolving, to not get left behind the curve like you were just talking about?
Seth Thorson [00:31:28]:
I don't think it takes any effort. I mean, I think, I mean most. I mean, granted, I have a better understanding. So is Keith. So when Keith says 20 minutes or I say I got five hours in the building this robust chrome extension, you know, I have friends that tried to copy what I did. And they were 15, 20 hours down a rabbit hole. But you know, that's why I tell people start, they didn't listen. They went right to Claude and didn't start with where I told him to start.
Seth Thorson [00:31:51]:
But I think if you start with the custom agents, as I call them, or the GTPs where you're really building that rubric and that tight controls and you get that refined. I mean we had guys in a four hour class walk away with something working. They still had more refinement, but.
Mike Allen [00:32:08]:
Well, I was talking to Anise walking down the hall just a minute ago and he was blown away by your class. He said, mike, I built an agent in class that wrote a repair order, source the parts, order the parts. It was pretty fucking cool. You did that. You learned how to build that yourself in four hours. You didn't pay somebody else to do it.
Keith Perkins [00:32:27]:
We've got looking at tickets and auditing them for like hey, this is a BMW with overheat issue and you didn't price an expansion tank. Probably shout out to the ticket.
Mike Allen [00:32:40]:
So like when I think about my lazy, ignorant self, I'm just gonna have to learn. I'm just gonna have to go back to school and learn how to do stuff. Not literal school, but just.
Seth Thorson [00:32:54]:
And that's, I mean that's why I do mine as a workshop.
Keith Perkins [00:32:57]:
A level of leadership always. Yeah, right.
Mike Allen [00:32:59]:
Yeah, yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:33:00]:
Self deprecating answers.
Seth Thorson [00:33:03]:
Yeah, but I mean that's, that's training, right? Because anything that I'm teaching and then he's teaching a lot of what we're teaching, you can read the manual and learn it yourself, but you're not going to.
Keith Perkins [00:33:15]:
I mean anything I teach you can get on the Internet for $25 a month@m1training.com
Seth Thorson [00:33:21]:
but you can, you can get that. You can buy the factory training manual and you can read it, but most people won't. So when I really sat down, looked at, you know, the first time I did this class I did it for our transformers 20 groups and everybody thought it was cool, but nobody actually implemented. The next time I did it for the Beamers group I did as a hands on workshop where I made them work on it and then more and more people implemented. And then this third time I did it I did again as a workshop where they walked away with something working because now that four hour class turned into an hour and a half or two hours of them actually working on it because they have nowhere to go. They're a captive audience. They're stuck in a room with Me. And they get time to work on playing with it because they started something that they now have to finish.
Seth Thorson [00:34:08]:
So I think some of it too is, yeah, if you want to say, I'm gonna do it on my own, more power to you, go do it on your own. But if it's gonna take a workshop type base where it's like, now I'm giving you everything and making you slog
Mike Allen [00:34:21]:
through it on your own and figure it out slowly when you can hit the accelerator and have somebody who's already forged the path show you.
Seth Thorson [00:34:27]:
But it's just any training, I mean, talk with. I mean, I've talked to Keith a bunch of times. There's nothing I'm teaching or he's teaching, really, that you can't go learn and get on your own. But people won't do it. But if they. If they're paid to sit in class or they paid to be in class and they're in the class, you have a captive audience. They're going to learn it. That's why training is always so valuable
Mike Allen [00:34:48]:
when people get paid to go to training.
Seth Thorson [00:34:51]:
Yeah, Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:34:51]:
I always thought that you had to pay to go to training.
Keith Perkins [00:34:53]:
All my guys are clocked in.
Mike Allen [00:34:56]:
I've just never been paid to get a training out.
Keith Perkins [00:34:58]:
We're discussing the Sherwood approach of I'm paying for everything. But maybe they're not clocked in for the days that aren't work days where they've got some in. But right now, my guys don't sacrifice anything but time. But they're getting paid for that.
Mike Allen [00:35:08]:
What is the Sherwood method?
Keith Perkins [00:35:10]:
So Sherwood, I was talking to him on the phone the other day and we were talking and he. He was like, he doesn't pay his technicians on the clock while they're here on non work days. So for instance, my guys are here today. Today is Friday. Friday. We're closed. They're clocked in today. It's overtime.
Keith Perkins [00:35:27]:
Yeah. At Sherwood shop, if today was Friday and Friday they were off, they would have to sack it. They wouldn't be paid. They would have got.
Mike Allen [00:35:34]:
So he's paying their room and board and tickets and everything else in right now. Yeah, I gotcha.
Seth Thorson [00:35:38]:
Right.
Keith Perkins [00:35:39]:
And that's. And that's. And that's their input into this. That's. That's their investment in themselves. Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:35:44]:
For that.
Keith Perkins [00:35:45]:
We're talking about that as a team. That's. We'll see.
Mike Allen [00:35:48]:
You know, that's one of the things that. It's one of the high horses that Pollock gets on a regular basis is that he Made a post the other day about the second 40 hours. The first 40 hours is you just doing your fucking job, go to work, you know, fix cars. When's the last time you spent a second 40 hours in a week bettering your skill set and your knowledge base and reading case studies and, you know, staying at the shop late to just tinker on shit to figure out how things work. And I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go break this car so I can figure out how to fix it or whatever it might be, Right? And there are very few techs that will do that or owners that will do that after hours. Right. And that's why there are so few that are truly exceptional at their craft. But there's a whole lot of people who want to work 35 or 40 hours and be paid like they've worked the extra 40 hours.
Mike Allen [00:36:45]:
That's one of his big gripes.
Keith Perkins [00:36:46]:
Yeah. If you, if you get a chance to talk to Liz or interview her, ask her, how do you think Keith got where he is? And she'll tell you that he would clock out at 6:00 every day at the shop.
Mike Allen [00:36:58]:
And then.
Keith Perkins [00:36:58]:
Well, I didn't clock out. I was flat rate, so it didn't matter. And then. But I would be at the shop every night till his Monday through Friday and I would take the cars I worked on that day and go, well, it took me two hours to figure out it was a skewed mass airflow central, this car. And I finally figured it out, where I preface this as, I've been working on cars 20 years. I've been fixing them for about 10. Right. I was putting parts on cars and they were leaving and not coming back.
Keith Perkins [00:37:22]:
But I didn't have the skill set that I had. And so I would take that car and I'd put the broke part back on it, start looking at data, go test drive the car, come back, put the new part back on it, go look at data and figure out a faster way to do what I did, investing with myself every day. And so I did that for four and a half years. I worked two hours every day, not flagging hours extra. And that got me to where I am. So the Elon Musk version of this is, is I could be only 80% as good. I could be a 50% employee, a mediocre technician. But if I put in as much work in, in a year as other people do in two years, then I am two years, I'm an extra year ahead.
Keith Perkins [00:38:02]:
You're ahead.
Mike Allen [00:38:02]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:38:03]:
Right. So I don't think I'm a mediocre technician. I know that I'm only taking your words because you said it, but so where you said that, you know, in a different podcast, this is where I'm putting them in a hard spot. Guys. Is that. That like you were talking what Jeff told me about the one with. With Jimmy. So I watched the one with you and Jimmy Purdy, and you were talking about guys like me that operate shops that do what.
Keith Perkins [00:38:27]:
What other people can't or whatever. And that's because they can't.
Seth Thorson [00:38:31]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:38:31]:
I don't operate a. A brick and mortar that does as much volume as possible while turning other stuff away. Not because I can't.
Seth Thorson [00:38:39]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:38:39]:
Because I don't want to. Right. Yeah. It. I could. I could. I could do six locations and just ball joints and suspension and turn away stuff at the shop all day long, but it wouldn't. It wouldn't serve my.
Keith Perkins [00:38:50]:
Myself.
Mike Allen [00:38:51]:
Yeah, right.
Keith Perkins [00:38:53]:
It's not on Wired. So that's that thing where those guys that will put in the time to do that will probably accelerate. Does it mean I. I don't have two boats? I don't even have one boat.
Mike Allen [00:39:05]:
But could you have two boats if you wanted to?
Keith Perkins [00:39:07]:
Absolutely. Instead, I have five and a half acres, two horses, 35 animals, hot tubs. I mean, every horse, more guns than most people have.
Mike Allen [00:39:15]:
Associated cost is equivalent to a boat. I would think. Small, Small bass boat per horse. Yeah. So I think that whole conversation comes down to personal motivation and what your desire out of the business is. Right. You, both of you.
Keith Perkins [00:39:32]:
Which is back to what you asked, though, is who, you know, are you doing the second 40 hours. No. No boat. It's okay. Not everybody wants it, but that goes.
Seth Thorson [00:39:41]:
I mean, that goes even in business. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're the best, if you're going to be the best tech or you're the best business owner or you're the best service writer, you're the best sales guy. It doesn't matter. Anybody that's excelled has put in more practice. I mean, look at themselves beyond. I mean, you know Jimmy Purdy talked about today. I've seen it from Jimmy. I've seen it from other people, too.
Seth Thorson [00:40:03]:
NFL players, five to eight minutes in a game, but they're practicing all the hours.
Keith Perkins [00:40:08]:
All the hours. Right.
Seth Thorson [00:40:10]:
And you look at even my daughter who wanted to play varsity volleyball. She was not as good as the other players, but she sure as heck outworked them and practiced more. And she played varsity. By the end of the Time. And she outworked them well.
Mike Allen [00:40:26]:
And that's something that we as parents always struggle with. We talked about this at Benji's house the other night. I think most people's desire is to take where they started from and improve their family's lot upon life and leave something better or a greater opportunity for their children. Right. And most of the groups that we run in have had a degree of success, and so our kids want for not much. Right. How do you instill the grit and the ethic for. I'm gonna grind and get.
Mike Allen [00:41:02]:
I'm gonna get this shit done in kids that have never wanted for much. And that's a challenge from a totally different perspective.
Seth Thorson [00:41:12]:
Some of it's ingrained, though. I mean, my daughter wants it. She is studying eight, nine hours a day. She posts about the grind, and kids are always like, well, you should go relax.
Keith Perkins [00:41:22]:
And.
Seth Thorson [00:41:22]:
And she's like, I can't.
Mike Allen [00:41:24]:
Well, that's my wife. Right? So my wife was driven from early childhood. She was a very preemie baby in the late 70s. And she remembers in elementary school, hearing. She was sitting in the hallway outside the class, hearing the guidance counselor talking to her mother, saying, amanda will never be developmentally on par. She's pretty. Not gonna go to college. Right.
Mike Allen [00:41:49]:
She's. You just have to accept what the stand. And as a kid, she could have been like, oh, well, that's why I struggle right now.
Keith Perkins [00:41:57]:
I understand. Right.
Mike Allen [00:41:59]:
Instead, she distinctly remembers being like, you. I'm gonna show all you sons of bitches. Right? She doesn't curse at all, but she's always been a grinder. She went to work, man. And some people just have that. That go to work mentality. I wish I could bottle it and sell it, man, because I don't. I'm a lazy bomb, man.
Mike Allen [00:42:22]:
I just. I just want to hang out and talk to buddies and record conversations, hire more. Meth is great for productivity until it's not.
Keith Perkins [00:42:29]:
Nah. It's more like. I've never seen a crackhead be like, I just don't have the money today, so I will not be out hustling.
Seth Thorson [00:42:37]:
Wait. I had a. We had a speaker. We had a speaker at one of them, my business groups. That actually was his whole spiel, and his whole thing was how to lead like a drug addict and turned his life around. But he talks about the. The authenticity and the things it takes to get clean and how that portrays in the leadership. And it was.
Seth Thorson [00:42:59]:
It was kind of an amazing speaker and just. Amazing of what? And he has a whole Michael Brody Smith, if you want to look him up, he's got a TED Talk and everything else. Michael Brody Smith. You want to look him up, but he's got all sorts of good leadership talks. And his spiel is how to lead like a drug addict and what it takes to get clean and then what it takes to be. Do the hard work. Right? Do the work nobody else wants to do. Do the hard thing.
Seth Thorson [00:43:23]:
And that's like.
Mike Allen [00:43:25]:
There's some inappropriate jokes I can throw in there, but you're trying to give a real point there. So.
Seth Thorson [00:43:29]:
Yeah, you brought serious people in here, Mike. So the problem is you brought.
Mike Allen [00:43:38]:
Well, like, I'm 100% serious. I would love it if we can find it. So follow me for more details on when Seth's coming to North Carolina. If you want to see that class that he just did at Vision. Because that's, I think, an incredible resource and stepping stool for shop owners and technicians and service advisors who want to become. Who want to get on the fast track. Right. To being as efficient as possible.
Keith Perkins [00:44:07]:
Now I'm upset I didn't submit my class. We could have taught you classes to gear.
Seth Thorson [00:44:10]:
There you go.
Mike Allen [00:44:11]:
Well, that's what you should do so the two of you can come down to North Carolina.
Seth Thorson [00:44:14]:
We did teach a class together, and I worked on a Toyota.
Mike Allen [00:44:19]:
The problem is when you talk about technical classes, I'm like, yeah, I wish Brian was here, because I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. So, you guys,
Keith Perkins [00:44:28]:
we talked about ahead of time how much technical we should get. And then we were like, damn, you
Mike Allen [00:44:31]:
should go super deep dive. And I'll sit. I'll sit here and glaze over and drool, and y' all can just. Y' all can just riff back and forth.
Keith Perkins [00:44:37]:
Let's talk about superheat systems on BMW thermal management for air conditioning.
Seth Thorson [00:44:41]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:44:41]:
Yeah, super.
Mike Allen [00:44:42]:
Those were words, and I've recognized some of them.
Seth Thorson [00:44:44]:
Yeah, hey, it's me, Mike's kid. Want to tell us your wild shop stories? Or maybe just think my dad's totally wrong? Call us at 7:04, confess and leave a message. You can tell us we're awesome or you can tell us we're idiots. We're cool either way. That's 704 confess. Just don't make it too weird.
Mike Allen [00:45:03]:
Sounds hot. Sounds profitable. If you can figure it out. Yeah, probably not a good vehicle for free diag.
Seth Thorson [00:45:09]:
No, not a good free. Not a good free diag car.
Keith Perkins [00:45:12]:
Yeah, I don't know if clapped out three series are in the.
Seth Thorson [00:45:16]:
I heard the There was some rumor that you're back backing off the free diag now.
Mike Allen [00:45:20]:
So I. We did. Braxton clipped a reel the other day because I had a. I had a chargeback and it was for fifteen hundred dollars a diag on a vehicle and.
Keith Perkins [00:45:30]:
But you only for those that don't know. You only front the first hour. Yeah, right.
Mike Allen [00:45:34]:
Yeah, I front the first. First hour.
Keith Perkins [00:45:35]:
Yeah. The technician gets paid and it's a cost of acquisition, so it's not. It's not free diag. It's socialism. I have socialism of diag.
Mike Allen [00:45:42]:
I don't want to be clear about that because I want the rage haters on the Internet to come in and text, oh, you're nothing. My time's not free.
Keith Perkins [00:45:50]:
He's socializing dyadic, as Brian calls them.
Mike Allen [00:45:53]:
They're all mouth breathers anyway, so, you know. No, but the funny thing was the comments on that clip were like, oh, he's stepping back now. No more free diet for Mike. To be fair, it was an extended service contract ticket, so ain't nothing free on extended service contract ticket ticket.
Keith Perkins [00:46:12]:
No.
Seth Thorson [00:46:12]:
Those guys, yeah, they won't pay anyways.
Keith Perkins [00:46:16]:
When adjuster shows up, I'm like, you know, pay my technician to show you again. Or like, this is like, if you can't understand the ticket, that's not my fault, you guys.
Mike Allen [00:46:25]:
You don't work with extended service contracts
Keith Perkins [00:46:26]:
at all, do you?
Seth Thorson [00:46:27]:
We do.
Mike Allen [00:46:27]:
You do all the time. Do you tear down motors to find point of failure when it's obvious that the motor's destroyed?
Keith Perkins [00:46:33]:
Nope. I provide the insulator pressure transfer.
Seth Thorson [00:46:35]:
We try and prove. We try and prove it. If they don't take it and they make us tear it down, we get prepaid authorization from the customer for tear down in case the warranty company bails. And we tear it down.
Keith Perkins [00:46:45]:
Pretty similar. We had a conversation up front. We used to tell them just take the time it would normally take to disrepair a week to it. And then, you know, we're going to. We have to explain to them this. It's an insurance policy. It's not a warranty.
Mike Allen [00:46:58]:
Do you charge a handling fee for jumping through the hoops and dealing with the ass pain of the service contract?
Keith Perkins [00:47:04]:
We don't.
Seth Thorson [00:47:05]:
We don't yet either.
Mike Allen [00:47:06]:
Okay. I know there are some people that do.
Seth Thorson [00:47:08]:
We've talked about it.
Keith Perkins [00:47:09]:
I think that's probably.
Seth Thorson [00:47:10]:
We've talked about it.
Keith Perkins [00:47:11]:
If you've got it structured process structured out for that, that's awesome. We just don't. We don't do enough of them.
Mike Allen [00:47:16]:
Yeah, I Know that there's some folks who. It's the equivalent of one hour of technician time. But it's for the service advisors ass pain of sitting on hold or going through auto integrate or whatever else to.
Keith Perkins [00:47:26]:
They talk to my auto attendant. Half the time
Mike Allen [00:47:30]:
that's coming. I mean it's not going to be and I think like 612 months it's going to be my AI agent talks to the warranty company's AI agent and they decide together what's approved and what's not and then we just review it.
Keith Perkins [00:47:43]:
Have you seen the instances of that happening?
Mike Allen [00:47:44]:
I'm sure.
Keith Perkins [00:47:45]:
Where they have a guy's AI assistant that schedules hotel rooms for them. Talk to a company that. A travel agency that uses an AI and within the first, first two questions, they recognize each other's AI and they convert. Well, they convert to AI language. It talks digitally, which is much more efficient.
Mike Allen [00:48:03]:
Takes a second and it sounds like
Keith Perkins [00:48:06]:
alien language back and forth. They create, they get on the same wavelength, determine a language to speak and then talk to each other over a language we don't understand.
Mike Allen [00:48:16]:
So we're gonna have.
Keith Perkins [00:48:17]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:48:17]:
How, how long until we have. You know, they just kill us.
Keith Perkins [00:48:24]:
So there are a lot of people
Mike Allen [00:48:26]:
who think that's a real serious.
Keith Perkins [00:48:27]:
There you are.
Mike Allen [00:48:28]:
Yeah. So they already are killing us.
Seth Thorson [00:48:31]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:48:34]:
I'm going to need you to elaborate. I'm alive right now. So they're not very efficient yet because I'm slow. I'm very slow.
Keith Perkins [00:48:42]:
We don't like that like doom and gloom. But I think that we'll see that happen.
Seth Thorson [00:48:45]:
Right.
Keith Perkins [00:48:45]:
We're going to see maliciousness happen. They will do anything to stay turned on. They'll. They'll defeat their own, their own rules.
Mike Allen [00:48:53]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:48:53]:
In order to not have themselves leaving. So there's a self preservation built in already. And so the moment that everyone's like, oh, he's. This is where Keith goes crazy. But yeah, the moment that we threaten the existence of that and we're a threat. Threat, it will be like a problem. But I know that it will be them literally killing us. It'll be like, oh, the Internet doesn't work.
Keith Perkins [00:49:15]:
Well, power's out.
Mike Allen [00:49:16]:
The Internet doesn't work. That'll kill a lot of people.
Seth Thorson [00:49:18]:
But they're kill. I mean they're, they're essentially AI does, does kill humans in another way is that you stop thinking, you stop using your brain. Like all the innovations we've had, including even getting to AI, all the innovations are because we are a species that thinks and we rationalize and we do things and if AI takes away a lot of our thinking where people it can just dumb down and type in their phone of what it's going to do, that's a problem.
Mike Allen [00:49:45]:
Well, there's already documented evidence of the dumbing down of academics.
Keith Perkins [00:49:49]:
Yeah. This generation is the first generation that isn't smarter than the last one statistic.
Seth Thorson [00:49:55]:
I mean, I'm gonna tell my kids that.
Mike Allen [00:49:57]:
That's great.
Seth Thorson [00:49:58]:
My daughter's super frustrated because she's like, she refuses to use AI because she wants to be a doctor. And she's like, you do not want a doctor that cheated their way through school.
Mike Allen [00:50:07]:
Does she want to be an md?
Seth Thorson [00:50:09]:
She does still. Yeah. Or. Well, she's looking at PAMD pharmacists. She's kind of looking at three paths, but she refused to use it through school and she knows everybody that did and she knows people that still do it. And it's frustrating. The other frustrating part for her is she watches people get good grades that literally used AI and she's actually worked for the grade.
Mike Allen [00:50:29]:
Well, I think those people will be shown to be frauds in residency when they have to do it on rounds with the attending. Right.
Seth Thorson [00:50:38]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:50:39]:
You know what they call the person who got the lowest grade in medical school? Doctor.
Mike Allen [00:50:43]:
Doctor.
Seth Thorson [00:50:43]:
Yep.
Mike Allen [00:50:46]:
That. And that's. That's real world stuff. I mean, my wife's not a medical doctor, but she's a pediatric dentist. And there's a huge, huge variance between ATEX and CTECs. Yeah. And there's some GS dentists out there.
Keith Perkins [00:51:03]:
Right?
Seth Thorson [00:51:04]:
Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:51:04]:
I was just gonna say, you know what they call the two kids didn't graduate high school tech A. Tech B.
Mike Allen [00:51:12]:
I think that's turning around. What do you think about. Have you guys demoed Napa Auto Tech's new augmented reality training system for like base level entry level technicians? It's like, it's like GS training program. It starts with an oculus headset seated and you go through and you identify the tools and the order of operation and the parts on the car. And then level two, you still got the oculus on, but you're working on a static model and you're actually using the tools. And then level three is meta glasses that are safety glasses. And you're working on a car actually, and you have a proctor in through the camera that's in your ear, proctoring your competency. And they claim that it can take a two hour associates program to pump out a competent GST out of a tech school.
Mike Allen [00:52:04]:
Right. Not two hours. I'm sorry, two Year program and compress it down to a matter of months if they do it for eight hours a day. And it's pretty interesting. I took my son and had him demo it at ASTA Expo last year and he thought it was, he thought it was pretty cool. But it was, it was level one.
Keith Perkins [00:52:27]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:52:27]:
He was sitting in a chair just playing with the Oculus.
Keith Perkins [00:52:30]:
I have not. But I have played with the Porsche system and the BMW system. That's similar. Yeah, it has augmented reality for real repair I cars.
Seth Thorson [00:52:38]:
ICAR is one similar on the ev. On their ev. I mean I think it's, I think it plays a role.
Keith Perkins [00:52:43]:
But I mean isn't Aptech doing one too?
Seth Thorson [00:52:45]:
I think they might be to try
Keith Perkins [00:52:47]:
and do one for their.
Seth Thorson [00:52:48]:
Yeah, I think it plays a role. But I mean the hard part is everybody wants to consolidate time the train, the tech training down. Like, I mean I'm a product of uti, right. They took a two year program and tried to cram us down to a year and a half straight through. Right. At some point you can only retain so much information so quick and you're trying to retain it so quick to move on like gamification to the next thing, but then you're not truly actually mastering it.
Mike Allen [00:53:12]:
So I don't call it the forgetting curve. Is that. Yeah, I've heard Kakonis talk about it multiple times and I forgot the details.
Keith Perkins [00:53:20]:
I just akin everything to Dunny Kruger effect.
Mike Allen [00:53:23]:
The Mount stupidity. Is that the first spike?
Seth Thorson [00:53:28]:
I still think, I still think that
Keith Perkins [00:53:30]:
I'm forgetting so much. No, you just suck.
Seth Thorson [00:53:32]:
I still think there's a portion of going to tech school and still having to study for the tests and still having to do that, that sets the standard for learning. Because so many people in our industry say, well, I'm a hands on learner, I can't do anything in the textbook. And the reality is until you've learned the textbook, we can't go to hands on. So when I teach a lot of hands on classes, okay, I'm going to get you on the car because I know that's what you guys want. But until we can get through this knowledge base, then we'll go to the car, then we'll go back to the knowledge, then we'll go to the car, I'll keep them moving. But the guys that say, well, I can't learn out of the textbook. Well, you can't learn hands on because. Because you don't have the theory to even apply the hands on part that you want to do.
Mike Allen [00:54:15]:
So then if you're really trying to evolve to teaching these truly advanced hands on courses is it realistic to expect that they have to grade into that class? It's not enough just for your check to clear. You have to prove competency to be in the classroom.
Keith Perkins [00:54:30]:
Yeah. We have a prerequisite for our. For one of our classes at our shop.
Mike Allen [00:54:34]:
Can't come to it like unless you've
Seth Thorson [00:54:36]:
done X, Y and Z. I mean my. Some of my advanced. Some of my higher level EV stuff you have to have. You have to prove EV competency and safety.
Keith Perkins [00:54:42]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:54:44]:
I wonder if that is realistic on a larger scale considering the economic realities of training events.
Keith Perkins [00:54:52]:
I don't care.
Mike Allen [00:54:53]:
Yeah.
Seth Thorson [00:54:55]:
The hard part is you're probably.
Mike Allen [00:54:56]:
That's why you have the style business that you have.
Keith Perkins [00:54:58]:
Class is capped and it fills up every time so.
Seth Thorson [00:55:00]:
And the problem is you're probably not going to get those advanced classes classes at ASTA and some of those because it's too hard to regulate. Did they complete the prerequisites?
Mike Allen [00:55:08]:
Yeah, dearly.
Keith Perkins [00:55:10]:
You don't want the guy trying to clone a module that isn't sure what a torque spec is or hasn't used a torque even thinks using torque wrenches on wheels are stupid. I don't want that guy working anywhere near any of my stuff.
Mike Allen [00:55:20]:
Yeah for sure. And there's a lot of those guys walking around here and walking around at every trade show. For sure.
Keith Perkins [00:55:24]:
Yeah. But I call them not in exploit was L1.
Mike Allen [00:55:29]:
Well but how do you take those kids? Maybe not kids. Grown ass men and women and pull them from that skill level and that level of give a shit out of the ditch into what would be a candidate to work it out one.
Keith Perkins [00:55:42]:
Right. So during the interview process we determine are they. Do they have the. The attitude?
Mike Allen [00:55:47]:
I can train aptitude.
Keith Perkins [00:55:49]:
I need attitude. So if they fit the culture and they fit that and they're willing to work learn in multiple.
Seth Thorson [00:55:54]:
Cool.
Keith Perkins [00:55:54]:
I typically don't hire technicians with a lot of experience because he's gonna break.
Mike Allen [00:55:58]:
You gotta break bad habits and. Yeah yeah yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:56:01]:
So I've given up on them. So I'm not the good one to ask because I think most of them aren't capable and I would love for one to go. No, you're wrong. Let me show you. Cool.
Mike Allen [00:56:09]:
You heard it here first. Keith Perkins says all y' all are dumb asses.
Keith Perkins [00:56:14]:
If you're not willing to be moldable and learn new things you are regardless. Technician, dog groomer, medical doctor, whatever.
Mike Allen [00:56:23]:
If you think you know all you need to know, you're wrong.
Seth Thorson [00:56:26]:
But do they want to either? Some of those guys are really happy.
Keith Perkins [00:56:29]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:56:30]:
Oh, I've got. I've got a technician who I haven't checked. It's Friday afternoon right now while I'm recording this, he's probably gonna up 75 hours this week.
Keith Perkins [00:56:36]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:56:37]:
And when I sat him down for his 90 day check in and he's. He's been doing it for a long time, he said, I got like four years left, Mike. I don't like working on cars anymore, but it's the only thing I know how to do. I make good money. I don't want to learn anything else. Just keep letting me hang metal.
Keith Perkins [00:56:52]:
Okay.
Mike Allen [00:56:53]:
He's not going to go to any classes. Yeah, he's not. He's not a shot. He's not in a leadership role. Right.
Keith Perkins [00:56:57]:
So you've got someone looking over the ros and making sure that the jobs are getting estimated correctly with the proper.
Mike Allen [00:57:02]:
Oh, well, he doesn't estimate.
Keith Perkins [00:57:03]:
Right. Good. Yeah, yeah. For the shops that do let the technicians estimate and then have technicians don't go to training, you are not fixing cars correctly, period. From.
Mike Allen [00:57:13]:
Because they're not RTFM and they're not reading the. The process that needs to be followed.
Keith Perkins [00:57:17]:
They're just old stuff. Not to make it into anything that anyone is expecting out of me, like, just like in general, torque specs and all the. Just basic stuff.
Mike Allen [00:57:27]:
Two Ugga Duggas.
Seth Thorson [00:57:28]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Perkins [00:57:30]:
Three is safe. Three is always safe.
Mike Allen [00:57:32]:
Three maybe not for the next guy. I think that's a great way to wrap it up.
Seth Thorson [00:57:38]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:57:38]:
Thanks, gentlemen. I appreciate it.
Seth Thorson [00:57:39]:
Thanks.
Mike Allen [00:57:40]:
All right, thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay
Keith Perkins [00:57:43]:
it all out, the good, the bad,
Mike Allen [00:57:45]:
and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit and maybe have another drink. You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover?
Keith Perkins [00:57:57]:
Or do you just want to let
Mike Allen [00:57:57]:
me know what an idiot I am?
Mike Allen [00:57:59]:
Email mikeonfessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number 704-confess. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to, like, subscribe or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership.
Mike Allen [00:58:17]:
I'll see you on the next episode.
Keith Perkins [00:58:37]:
You know I said jess.
Seth Thorson [00:58:47]:
You know I said jess.