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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.
David Roman [00:00:09]:
You ready to roll?
Lucas Underwood [00:00:10]:
Ready to do this?
David Roman [00:00:13]:
Other than a plaque, what do you get.
Tom Schearer [00:00:17]:
Bragging rights? I'm not sure. I don't know yet.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:21]:
Yeah, I don't either.
Tom Schearer [00:00:22]:
I get to go up and talk about it a little bit tomorrow.
David Roman [00:00:26]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:00:27]:
Still got to figure that out.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:28]:
No, you'll do just fine.
David Roman [00:00:32]:
You have. You haven't prepared a speech?
Tom Schearer [00:00:35]:
I'm working on it.
David Roman [00:00:36]:
You're.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:37]:
Dude, just go. Just get up there and just do it.
Tom Schearer [00:00:39]:
Right wing it.
David Roman [00:00:39]:
Don't listen to him. That's the way he does it. Get up there and just start rambling. Yeah. You want to talk about your history, philosophy? What do you.
Tom Schearer [00:00:53]:
I only got five minutes, so it's.
David Roman [00:00:55]:
Got to be just five minutes.
Tom Schearer [00:00:57]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:00:57]:
Oh, yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:01:00]:
That's the thing. You know, it's. All right. Great. So, you know, you kind of, you know, you want to talk about the award, talk about things that we got there. How we got there. But, you know, how do I keep from going into the weeds? I just keep on. I'm taking notes, and I just keep going into the weeds with all this stuff.
Tom Schearer [00:01:25]:
So I gotta figure out weeds.
David Roman [00:01:27]:
Like, what does going into the weeds mean? Like, what are you getting into that you feel like this is irrelevant?
Tom Schearer [00:01:33]:
Not that it's not irrelevant. Just way too much detail. So I gotta figure out how to shorten it down. I talk too much.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:39]:
You, dude, I can barely.
David Roman [00:01:42]:
You barely tell you.
Tom Schearer [00:01:46]:
Once I get going, it's hard to get me to shut up, so.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:49]:
Well, I'm excited for you all. Star of the year for Ratchet and ranch. You know what I like about it is for the longest time, this was, Chris is gonna kill me. This was a very clicky event. Right. And a lot of people, the perception.
David Roman [00:02:03]:
Was that it was very clicky. Try to keep it politically correct here. Neutral. Neutral. It was believed by some, see, to be very clicky.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:16]:
But I'm just saying, like, people like me and you typically weren't in the runnings for things like that. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're a runner up.
David Roman [00:02:24]:
2021.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:25]:
Yeah, but I'm just saying, like, that was, like, it felt like up until those past couple of years that it was particular organizations that were involved, and it's cool to see that. It's very diverse right now. Lots of people involved. Lots of people involved.
David Roman [00:02:40]:
I think they chose user runner up the year that they were rioting in the streets, and they're like, nobody's gonna show up for this thing anyway. So who do we put up?
Lucas Underwood [00:02:47]:
Yeah, that. That's probably true. Makes sense. That was intense. There were furries, and so I. It's.
David Roman [00:02:56]:
It was furries and riding or just furries?
Lucas Underwood [00:02:58]:
It was both.
David Roman [00:02:59]:
Really?
Lucas Underwood [00:03:00]:
Yeah, it was. It was the moment that I knew Chris Messer was an all right guy. Because I'm gonna tell you what. We're standing in the front lobby of this hotel in Minneapolis, right? And all of a sudden, this, like, entire line. I mean, it's like down the whole front of the hotel of furries comes walking in the door, and Chris is standing at the front door, and I see the look on his face when he sees what's happening. And, I mean, it is just like this. Oh, my God.
Tom Schearer [00:03:29]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:03:29]:
Like, what do I do now? And so, you know, it got funny, and we just ran with it. Did you know that furries have a particular odor if you get stuck on an elevator with them, they do not smell nice.
David Roman [00:03:44]:
You imagine the suits are very hot. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:47]:
And it was like 90 degrees out, and, you know, I know there were riots. I walked through the middle of some of them, and those people were perfectly kind to me.
David Roman [00:04:02]:
Did you go that year? Have you been to.
Tom Schearer [00:04:05]:
This is my first retro.
David Roman [00:04:06]:
Really?
Lucas Underwood [00:04:08]:
So some big things have been happening for you lately, right? A lot of traction, a lot of movement. It's things that we had talked about for a long time. I think most listeners know that Tom and I are good friends, but a lot of things that we've been talking about for a long time have been happening for you. And one of the things that I really aspire to, that you do, that I want to eventually get to. And it's something I'm working on right now as we speak. But you've. I don't want to say you're completely hands off with the shop, but the staff has taken the shop, and the staff does what the shop does on a daily basis.
David Roman [00:04:42]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:04:42]:
You're involved. You're engaged, but not like you were, what, five years ago even.
Tom Schearer [00:04:47]:
Yeah, for sure. Now. I will say, you know, the last month, two months, I have been more hands on than in a long time, and only for a reason, to kind of. We've kind of plateaued. Okay. And, you know, you know, Mike, my service manager, very good friend of mine, just was struggling a little bit, needed help, a little bit of direction. So, you know, he asked me to kind of come back in and help, oversee help and, you know, guide him some more. And kind of area that I've struggled with is providing the right guidance for that role.
Tom Schearer [00:05:28]:
So, you know, we've worked at that and kind of, I should say, picked up on a bunch of holes.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:38]:
Right.
Tom Schearer [00:05:38]:
So we're working on that. And it's definitely helped us get pointed back in the right direction, that kind.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:44]:
Of 30,000 foot perspective. Would you care to share some of the holes that you illuminated when you came back?
Tom Schearer [00:05:52]:
Process stuff, you know, you know where I learned, you know what, you know what we do.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:59]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:06:00]:
You know, I mean, I'm all in with Rick's philosophy.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:03]:
Yeah, for sure.
Tom Schearer [00:06:03]:
And, you know, things like parking lot scheduling.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:09]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:06:09]:
We scheduled to our capacity, and that kind of went out the window. You know, something that, it's not always perfect. You know, we work on the averages. Right. And we had a few instances where we ran short on some work. Well, that just triggered this whole thing of now we need to bring more cars in.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:32]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:06:33]:
And all of a sudden we went from three cars a day per tech to four, sometimes five. And, you know, I understand the thought process. It's okay. I'm helping to prepare and protect, keep my guys working, but it overloads them. It doesn't work for the philosophy that we use and the averages that we work on.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:57]:
And it can spiral a little bit. Right. Like, it's easy to get into a thing where we start trying to make changes because something's not working and we panic and we start making too many changes or we make the wrong change, and then it has a consequence, and so we change something else, and then that has a consequence, and we get away from, like, that base core operation of this is how we do business. Right. And that's something that I've ran into for sure. You know, what else, what else did you.
Tom Schearer [00:07:26]:
One of the other big things that we ran into is, again, every day we have a new set of, it's a new day and we start over with our work. So in the morning, every job that's scheduled for that day gets evaluated, diagnosed, inspected, and we move on to the next. When we're done with that, then we get back to our carrier from the day before it started that, well, yeah, we just have a little bit of work done to do on this one yet. We're just going to keep this in and wrap this up. And the technician mindset is what brings that thing to a screeching halt and messes that up every time they think, oh, well, I can just get this done. I can just wrap this up real quick and just, it's going to be fine. Then I can move on to my new stuff, get that old stuff out of the way. What they don't keep in.
Tom Schearer [00:08:19]:
What they don't take into consideration is we have a responsibility to get to our clients by noon with an update as far as what their car needs. And also, we're working on deadlines with our parts deliveries and our parts ordering. So we move everything back half an hour. And, you know, a half an hour never is half an hour. It always turns out to be 45 minutes or an hour and a half or something like that. And, you know, all of a sudden now everything's pushed back. We missed our port sorting deadline. So it just screw, it just messes up the whole rest of the day.
Tom Schearer [00:08:56]:
And not even just that day, it just goes into the following day and just, it just, you know, unravels. So getting back to that, you know, this is, this is a hard. We will do this. You know, there's no deviating from this, obviously. I mean, we sell a 20 hours job, we schedule that. We're not jamming in new appointments when somebody's trying to do a 20 hours job. So, yeah, they go through, they wrap up on Monday, they go right into a Tuesday and. And just keep on going until they're done.
Tom Schearer [00:09:28]:
But when we have scheduled jobs that take priority, that has to be done first.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:32]:
Yeah, for sure.
Tom Schearer [00:09:32]:
And that's definitely helped out a lot.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:35]:
Right back to that centering thing. And, you know, I relate to that because I've got two technicians, one that sometimes goes through some stuff personally and then another one who was just trying to buy a house. Right. And two days from closing, the mortgage broker calls to do income verification on them. Right. And his went through no problem. But his wife was terminated the day that they called to get the income verification. And so, believe it or not, they called and they were giving the income verification, but it was 0.6 hours below because she had had a health issue.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:19]:
So she ended up in the hospital and it was 0.6 hours below 40 hours. And so they didn't qualify for the loan anymore and they had to move out in like a week. And so we're human beings, right. And we have emotional responses to things. And so guess what? His performance went haywire. Right. And I connect with that because that downhill slide, it affects everybody in the shop because now this technicians behind that means that I have another technician who is now definitely behind, too, because I have to put additional work on them. And it throws the whole flow of the shop off.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:59]:
And if you don't have something to center you to bring it back to, it's really hard to get the shop back engaged and flowing again, if you don't have that true center that you come back to.
Tom Schearer [00:11:10]:
Yeah, absolutely.
David Roman [00:11:11]:
Was your service manager a tech?
Tom Schearer [00:11:13]:
No, no, no. So it's. There's just got to say it's influence from the rest of our team. Yeah.
David Roman [00:11:23]:
Techs don't get it. I have not found a good way to communicate that. You tell them, but they don't. They don't grasp. I mean, they can understand it intellectually, but you. Without getting on the phone and talking to those customers and realizing it's 11:00, that car hasn't been looked at, and then that conversation you're having to have the customer, and that what that does to your sales, your sales opportunities tank, because now you're passing the 01:00, 02:00. Now they just want their car back, and they haven't even heard what's wrong with it, and they haven't game planned. All of that gets pushed back because that tech wanted to just finish that wrap up, that job.
David Roman [00:11:59]:
Yeah, they have. They don't understand. I haven't found a good way to communicate that with the text. They all know it. They all understand it. They don't quite grasp it until they get in the front counter. And I don't know if it's a. Hey, you're gonna spend a week at the front counter just so you can deal with this nonsense?
Tom Schearer [00:12:18]:
Just to experience it?
David Roman [00:12:19]:
Yeah. I don't know what a good solution to that is.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:22]:
I think that was something that really woke Noah up. Noah had written service before, but he's writing service this week, and he sent me some messages saying, like, whoa, I might have been wrong here. I might have been a little pushy. Right. Because it's. The front counter is a lot.
Tom Schearer [00:12:38]:
It is.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:38]:
And you're dealing with a lot of people and a lot of telephone calls. So, I mean, completely get it. And over the past couple of months, I've been talking Jeff out of a corner a little bit from time to time with his current employer, because he's been extremely frustrated about the process and the flow of the shop, and things aren't going like they're supposed to, and his is a little bit different scenario. But I think tech see this one track, right? And the goal is to fix the car. It's like, why are you getting in my way of fixing the car? I just want to fix the car. They don't understand the nuances that we have to deal with when managing the clients and managing parts and managing other things. Now, that's not to say that in Jeff's case he's all wrong. Right.
David Roman [00:13:19]:
We're just not articulating it properly. I mean, you can say there's nuances to it, which is 100% correct.
Tom Schearer [00:13:28]:
Well, there's something to be said about over communicating, and my mind's kind of scattered. But there's a book that I just finished up. I don't even. I can't even think of the name, but, you know, it's. They talk about, you know, one of the. One of the strong key points is to over communicate your values, your.
David Roman [00:13:47]:
Your.
Tom Schearer [00:13:48]:
Your mission and everything. And maybe. Maybe that's the answer. You know, just keep on pounding that in and pounding that in and until, you know, they get sick hearing it.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:00]:
Yeah, but.
Tom Schearer [00:14:02]:
And it's. I have to say, it's kind of something that I've almost been working on in the background just to make sure that our values are communicated to them and constantly in front of them, you know? Cause, I mean, we got a great team. You guys all got a great team. You know, it's not. There's nobody out there that wants to purposely mess things up for you. It's just that they have this. They have this deep, ingrained mindset, and they, you know, they may just, you know, just slowly comes out over time that it's like, well, and they work to. And it just sways your.
Tom Schearer [00:14:41]:
Your thinking and your. And your thought process and everything. And so you start to, okay, well, let's. Let's just do this. Let's just do this once. And, you know, with the. Working on the carryover, you know, a few weeks ago, I mean, it kind of really came up and bit us hard. You know, Monday morning, we come in, and there's a.
Tom Schearer [00:14:57]:
You know, I remember as clear as yesterday, there's a Mercedes sitting on the lift yet. And, you know, I come out, I kind of join in on the morning meetings. We have one for the advisors, one for the techs, and 15 minutes later, that car is still on the lyft. All right, well, maybe his jobs didn't show up or something like that. Hour later, it's still on the lift. So finally it's like, you know, and I'm trying to sit back and observe and not jump in and, you know, react and take over things. So I just reach out, hey, Mike, what's going on with x? And he's like, I don't know. Let me check.
Tom Schearer [00:15:38]:
And we come to find out that it was a miscommunication. It was. They thought that we only need to do x with 15 minutes worth of work or something yet. Well, in reality, that part wasn't even there yet. And there was other stuff that needed to be wrapped up on the job. Well, so now I know Aaron was feeling the pressure of. He knew what he needed to do, so he knew he needed to get that car out. Rushing around.
Tom Schearer [00:16:09]:
They broke something. Well, there we are at 1030 in the morning.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:13]:
We started at 730, and now we're really backed into a corner.
Tom Schearer [00:16:17]:
Yeah. So it's nobody's fault. You know, we're all just. We're trying to do the right thing. Yeah, but, you know, that really brought it out to light and just kind of made it a. You know, this is. This is what we do, and we're not deviating from this process.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:33]:
You know, I think in. In Jeff's case. Right. Because there's some similar things to what you're saying and hearing what he experiences. Right. And I think that having a coach is key because, like, what the coach does is it settles and it gives us a direction. Right. The coach says, hey, here's what we're working on, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:54]:
And I'm working with Cecil right now on some stuff in my shop. And it's okay, we're going to do a, B, C and D, but we're doing a first. Right. Let's get through a right, and let's make sure we get a right. And so what I watch Jeff going through is a shop owner who's going back and forth and saying, no, no, no, we need to do this. Oh, well, why didn't that happen? Oh, my God, we need to do this. And it's just like this constant slew of. And I keep going to Jeff saying, like, hey, dude, slow down and try to understand what he's trying to accomplish.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:20]:
What is. What is it that he doesn't like about where he's at? Well, he says it's the revenue, and he says it's the clients aren't getting this. And he says this and he says this, and this is the problem. And that's the problem. And this is the problem. I said, dude, somebody's got to slow him down. Somebody's got to settle him down. He needs to focus on one thing at a time, fix it, and put something in place to solve the problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:41]:
Right. And I think that's what is so important about having a coach, especially as an owner, to say, hey, man, like, stop. Let's just deal with this one thing. Let's just fix this one thing, right? And especially when you're looking at a number and you say, I should be hitting this number, and everybody around me is hitting this number. I must not be doing something right if I can't hit that number. Now, David, on the other hand, David doesn't really care. David's like, I. Whatever number, roll with it, huh? Yeah.
David Roman [00:18:11]:
I mean, other than that. If you don't, you'll stress yourself out. I would have lost it on that car still sitting there 3 hours later. I wouldn't have worn it.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:22]:
There would have just been a little beanie floating through the shop, jerking back and forth through the air, screaming and yelling. You know, I don't know if you saw that video, but so many people were like, man, we always knew David was crazy. I'm so glad I don't work for him. I'm like, y'all don't understand. That was just like his animated joke. But so many people are like, see, I told you he's a piece of garbage.
David Roman [00:18:46]:
Nobody said that. What are you talking about? Get out of here with that. I was yelling about an air filter. Somebody got upset over $52 for an air filter? I was just making the point that this thing was made, planted the trees to make the paper, they pulled the oil out of the ground to cast, the plastic, got shaped, shipped halfway across the world, and now it is being professionally installed, all for dollar 52. And you're going to complain about the price? Get out of here.
Tom Schearer [00:19:20]:
It's like he didn't pre qualify as.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:22]:
I know. Right. Exactly what happened.
Tom Schearer [00:19:25]:
What happened with your discovery conversation?
David Roman [00:19:28]:
What's that? No, we. We just had a podcast where you don't do discovery conversations. You just give away the free diag. You tell it. Hey, yeah, we do free diag here. Come on down.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:38]:
You only. You only estimate red stuff. You do free diag.
David Roman [00:19:43]:
Without being sarcastic. It was interesting. I could see I'm. I'm already doing 80% of what he's doing. The only difference is I charge for that 1 hour. He does not.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:56]:
And, you know, he talks to his clients. You don't talk to yours. You just send them an email.
David Roman [00:20:01]:
We talked to them at drop off. Yeah, but I don't want to know, like, hey, what's your pet's name? I gotta write this down. Do you do that? Yeah, see, I can't do that. It seems so, like, disingenuous. I'm sure you mean it. I wouldn't mean it like, I don't care what your pet's name is.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:20]:
David says that. Hey, I don't care about your dog. Please don't tell me about your dog. No need to know why your dog shit in the backseat. I don't care.
David Roman [00:20:30]:
I can tell they have dogs because there's dog hair everywhere inside their cars.
Tom Schearer [00:20:34]:
You know what makes it even better, you know, when I. So I'm not at the counter anymore. Rarely do I get on the phone, and, jeez, nobody wants me on the phone. But having Kylie, Kylie's OCsr, she's amazing. But having her on the phone, having Samantha on the phone, things like that. And they hear those little details and they act upon them. Yeah, they talk about their daughter's birthday. Well, all of a sudden, we're getting birthday card or birthday presents for them, you know, and, you know, they talk about something going on and we.
Tom Schearer [00:21:15]:
We act upon that. Whereas me, when I was at the phone, at the counters and on the phones, I mean, yeah, I would. I would know that, and I'd want to. I mean, but I was trying to want to do it, you know? But it's just, man, I'm going, yeah, 30 different directions for sure. So it's great to have somebody else who, you know, kind of takes charge.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:33]:
Women are much more likely to listen to that and to truly care about what the person's saying. It's not that we don't care. It's just that they care in a different way and they see that differently. My wife tells me all the time, I don't ask the questions that she would ask now. I always just hear that and chuckle and say, well. Cause I don't care about those things. Right? Like, I'm not trying to be mean, but. But she's got a pretty.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:57]:
A pretty valid point that the things that are important to her and the things that are important to most women, we don't necessarily connect with that.
David Roman [00:22:06]:
But this is. I just. I hate the whole dog and pony show. I absolutely do. I can't. I can't go full transactional. It just bothers me too much. But at the same time, like, you're coming in to fix your car, like, do you want me to fix the car or not? And if not, fine, go away.
David Roman [00:22:21]:
Go get your car poorly fixed somewhere else.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:25]:
But you're. I mean, like, if somebody asked you a question, like, what's your birthday? It would just. You would just be extremely upset. You would hate that if somebody would bother me.
David Roman [00:22:33]:
Like, what do you want to know?
Lucas Underwood [00:22:35]:
Right. Well, that's what I'm saying. But I guess my point is, is, like, a lot of people, and my wife included, and a lot of people that come through the shop would probably appreciate someone showing that gesture of kindness.
David Roman [00:22:47]:
Why?
Lucas Underwood [00:22:49]:
You're just a miserable human being.
David Roman [00:22:51]:
This is a transaction. Like, I'm buying something from you. Why do you want to know my birthday? So you can make me feel good about buying. If I didn't feel good about what I'm buying, I wouldn't buy it. I wouldn't even be here. Like, this would not be happening right now.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:07]:
I mean, I just think it's, I.
David Roman [00:23:09]:
Hate the happy birthday emails.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:10]:
I think it's just about connection.
David Roman [00:23:13]:
Like, you know, you buy, you buy. I don't know, you buy a cup from some company and then they start sending you, like, their newsletter. It's like, okay, fine. The newsletter's fine. I like those. Sometimes you copy some of the copy off of it. It's whatever. But then like, hey, happy birthday.
David Roman [00:23:31]:
You don't mean that. This is just a automated email.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:38]:
I'm sorry.
David Roman [00:23:39]:
You don't care? Like, does it really matter? You don't care that I don't care.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:45]:
But I mean, I, that's just a.
David Roman [00:23:47]:
Billion people on this earth. There's a lot of people having a birthday today. I'm sure you want me to feel. I don't. I don't. A lot of people are going to be born today. A lot of people are going to die today. Who cares?
Lucas Underwood [00:23:58]:
We'll get you a death day card.
Tom Schearer [00:24:02]:
And predict it.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:07]:
I just think that more people appreciate it than not. And I think that women ask more questions and build more connections with other human beings in that setting than men do.
David Roman [00:24:23]:
Maybe, I don't know. I, is that what I need to do? I need to hire someone, a woman that cares?
Lucas Underwood [00:24:33]:
I mean, maybe you could just get Juan to care. Just a touch.
David Roman [00:24:37]:
No, he's like, that's what I appreciate about him. Nothing bothers him. Like, I get all, like, amped up, like, oh, we gotta get this. It's a fire. Somebody put out the fire. They're like, he doesn't, he's like, it'll smooth. Like, it'll, it'll settle down. It'll be fine.
David Roman [00:24:59]:
Like, it'll, it'll burn out. No, go get a fire extinguisher. It's like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Let it go. You sure? Yeah. All right, I'll be back later. And then he was right. He was right.
David Roman [00:25:12]:
I shouldn't have freaked out. But, you know, like, so he's, he's very much the opposite where I freak out and he doesn't. Yeah, I, but we're both the. Yeah, I do not care about your dog. I don't care. I mean, it's cute. The dog's cute. And so it's like, you pet the dog.
David Roman [00:25:30]:
That's it, though. Like, I'm not gonna send you toys for fluffy.
Tom Schearer [00:25:34]:
Well, I mean, there's. There's lots of different ways to do business. Right? You just talk about. I'm not sure who you were talking about. That sells only the reds.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:45]:
Oh, it was Mike Allen.
David Roman [00:25:47]:
Oh, yeah. We'll throw him on the bus. This is Mike Allen.
Tom Schearer [00:25:50]:
But, yeah, he's a successful guy, right? So, I mean, there's many different ways of doing things. And. Hey, you don't like the dogs. That's all right.
David Roman [00:25:58]:
No, no, I don't like that answer, though. I don't like the. We can all listen. I can also scam old ladies and be wildly successful. Scamming old ladies. Does that make it okay? No, no, don't be like that. No, I'd be like, you know, some old ladies, they got enough. No, no, it's wrong.
Tom Schearer [00:26:16]:
It's wrong. It's life, you know? I'm just joking.
David Roman [00:26:22]:
Yeah, that's funny. I'm saying, like, you should. There's certain ways to do things that are just. They're evil. I don't know. They're evil. They. They.
David Roman [00:26:32]:
You are maybe manipulating. I'm not saying Mike Allen is doing this, although I don't know that Mike Allen wouldn't do this because at the end of the day, he wants the money. Fine. There's certain ways to manipulate the transaction to make the customer feel a certain way. That is. I feel is skeezy.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:57]:
But.
David Roman [00:26:58]:
And I think sometimes when you're asking about the dog and you're like, oh, the dog. How's Fluffy? And you're. You don't care about Fluffy. You only care about Fluffy cause you're trying to up your ar o. I think that's skeezy, too. Now, I'm not asking about Fluffy because I don't care about Fluffy. But also, I know that I'm not gonna ask about Fluffy just to up my arro. It is what it is, you know?
Lucas Underwood [00:27:24]:
Look, I'm not gonna say anything bad. I love the God of death. And so Mike Allen, right? It's really just because he's an extremely insecure human being, okay? He's had a brother that's far superior to him his entire life, okay? Dude was a fighter pilot and is now like a big dog at Delta. And so his dad always told him that the shop is. Is never going to do more than this. And Mike has always been trying to just get his dad to say, I'm proud of you, son.
David Roman [00:27:54]:
And so we all have daddy issues, and that's what it is. At the end of the day, it must be.
Tom Schearer [00:27:59]:
Maybe if you just sold the yellows, maybe he had revenue he could get there.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:04]:
See, I'm telling you.
Tom Schearer [00:28:05]:
I'm sorry, Mike.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:07]:
His dad would say thank you.
David Roman [00:28:08]:
I don't say I'm proud. They don't sell the. It's not that they don't try to sell the yellows. They don't estimate the yellows to try to shorten the estimating window time.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:16]:
And then I can see how that would make sense.
David Roman [00:28:18]:
And then they don't want to overwhelm the customer. Because if it's a yellow, it's not immediately right. It doesn't need to be immediately done. It's something that can be done, or it's a maintenance item, or it's a, hey, this will prevent something later down the road, or just something to that effect. It's not a, if you drive out of here without getting this done, the car is going to explode and you're going to die. So he tries to just put the reds in there. So the customer understands that this is the immediate condition of the car. Like these things immediately need to be done.
David Roman [00:28:47]:
And this is the price tag to it. Once you start adding the yellows and the greens and all that, it starts to rack up and then it's a $7,000 estimate. And then this customer could have left here with a $2,500 repair. The car been perfectly safe. Not peak reliability, but at least they are made aware of the yellow and the green items. Then they drive off, but the red at least got done. For the $2,500, you collect the 2500 they left on a safer vehicle. Everybody wins a as opposed to giving them a $7,000 estimate that has absolutely everything.
David Roman [00:29:21]:
And then the customer's like, oh, I'm just gonna go get something else.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:24]:
My pushback to that is that I feel like if I don't give them the yellows and I go make that repair, or if I don't give them the yellows and they go down the road with this idea that I just spent x dollars on the car and I'm in good shape, I don't feel like it's, you're gonna feel that way anyway.
Tom Schearer [00:29:45]:
I think it's important to, and I wanna be very careful here. It's important to know when you're presenting this stuff. Okay. There's a line where it becomes for your customer, and you cross that line and it's no longer about the customer.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:09]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:30:09]:
Okay. And for me, that line is before we work on the car, before we touch that car. Okay. I feel it's very important to let that customer know what's what we know about that car. That way they can make an informed decision so that they can spend that $7,000 or decide to go and get something else. They're going to make that decision with our guidance as well. Based on what we talked about with the discovery conversation, what are their hopes and dreams of the car? What are their plans? Are they going to run it in the ground?
David Roman [00:30:50]:
Who's making that discovery conversation? Is it Kylie having that conversation? Or.
Tom Schearer [00:30:55]:
The majority is Kylie. She's the first point of contact at the counter and the phone. And from there, our advisors, which we got some new ones. Jason just started this week.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:09]:
Oh, nice.
Tom Schearer [00:31:10]:
Yeah. So he pretty much stepped in a little bit and did some good work for us, but, yeah. So getting off track. Priscilla, Jason, Samantha, they will pretty much back up Kylie and they'll do discovery conversations. Brenna, she's our parts manager, she handles the phones as well. So any one of them will do the discovery conversation. And we take those notes, and just like the dog's name, we'll write that in shopware, and that way everybody knows it, so we can refer back to that later on. And the important thing is to actually refer back to it.
Tom Schearer [00:31:49]:
Okay. You don't want to do that discovery conversation just to check off a box and move on and go sell everything to them. That's not what this is all about, okay? It's about taking that information. Our technicians still do the same thing. Doesn't matter what their outlook is on the car. We still have a requirement to responsibility to make that car safe, reliable, and efficient and make recommendations based on that. So they're going to do the same thing no matter what. What changes is what the advisor presents.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:21]:
To the client based on what they want to accomplish. Right?
Tom Schearer [00:32:24]:
Yeah. And, you know, let's say, you know, they're not interested in doing any maintenance or anything else. They're looking at keeping the car for another year. We all know that changes. Right. So we don't not estimate on that stuff. We're going to estimate on everything. And we may have that $7,000 estimate, but we're going to prioritize it and we're going to focus on these three things here.
Tom Schearer [00:32:49]:
And, you know, it's going to be mister customer, you know, as we discussed, your priorities are to do x, y, and z based on those. You know what we have there. This is what we recommend to do. Okay. I have some other recommendations down in the bottom here. You're welcome to take a look at it. I estimated on those, just so that you are aware, in case your needs change. So you know what you're looking at.
Tom Schearer [00:33:14]:
Investing into the cardinal. But this is what's important, and I think it's really important to put that out there with a price tag for everything on there. Obviously, there's a line, right? We get that clapped out. 92 Audi a four. That's just. Whatever. There's not even a 92 Audi a four. What am I talking about? But you know what I mean.
Tom Schearer [00:33:39]:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:40]:
But Audi a four s were clapped out from the factory, just so you know.
Tom Schearer [00:33:44]:
No, they're not.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:45]:
I'm driving one.
Tom Schearer [00:33:46]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:46]:
It's got 30,000 miles on it. Every warning light on the dash is on.
Tom Schearer [00:33:50]:
That's because the right person's not working on it and servicing it.
David Roman [00:33:53]:
What was the best a four? The second gen one, wasn't it?
Tom Schearer [00:33:58]:
I don't know.
David Roman [00:33:59]:
I'm gonna say the second gen.
Tom Schearer [00:34:00]:
I don't know.
David Roman [00:34:01]:
Second gen. S four with the v eight, dude.
Tom Schearer [00:34:04]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:04]:
Those were slick.
Tom Schearer [00:34:06]:
So, Mikey. Mikey has one. They have to ask Mike tomorrow. Ask him about his s four. He's got a nice one. So it was one of our clients that I bought from him, and it was sitting for a while, bought it, serviced it up. And as we're finishing servicing it up, he says, you know what? I think I want to sell this. But Mike ended up with it.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:29]:
I see.
Tom Schearer [00:34:30]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:31]:
I'll have to ask him about that. I'll have to ask him about that. I'm going to change gears a little bit. A few years back, you and I were having some hard conversations. We were talking about your mom, and.
Tom Schearer [00:34:46]:
Don'T make me cry.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:47]:
I'm gonna do my best not to. And, you know, I just went through the same thing. Right. And we. And I appreciate a lot of the advice. Right. Because it definitely came into play.
Tom Schearer [00:35:00]:
Likewise.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:01]:
Same. And my kids got to spend some time with her and got to see her before all that happened. At that time, you were in a place that I think a lot of shop owners end up. And from my perspective, what I saw of that was, is that you had, like, found this success, right? And maybe success is not the word, but you found a plateau, or you found a spot where you had kind of achieved the things that you had in your head you wanted to achieve. And from my perspective, and it's something that I've ran into myself as the reason I bring it up. From my perspective, it seemed like you were almost kind of just floating in outer space at one point or another, saying, okay, now what? Like, what do I do now?
Tom Schearer [00:35:50]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:35:50]:
Because, like, this was my purpose for so many years. I wanted this shop, and I wanted this shop to look like this, and I wanted this shop to do this. And then, like, right in the midst of that, you know, your mom had always been involved with the shop, and so now everything happens with mom, and it feels like, who am I? Where am I? What am I doing? Why am I even doing this? What is the purpose of all this? Would you agree that's kind of how that felt right about that time or something similar to that? Is that a yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:36:23]:
Yeah. I've never had, never imagined being at this, a point like this in my life. You know, I mean, I've always just been that. Just working, working, grinding, fighting towards getting something to be, to do something better.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:43]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:36:44]:
And I never imagined to be able to step past that. And not to say that I'm nothing, working hard, everything else now, but it's just different, you know? And I've definitely, yeah, I mean, I've definitely been kind of just trying to figure out where I'm going, what I'm doing, what direction we need to take the company and everything else.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:14]:
What was the thing that started kind of bringing that pathway back around, right. Because it felt like after a while, you started finding your center again. You started finding that purpose to kind of like, get back in gear and take a direction and go for it. What were the things that contributed to that?
Tom Schearer [00:37:33]:
Um, I'm gonna be a fanboy for a little bit, but a lot of what was going on with Rick helped me because, you know, they say, you know, some of the best form of learning is to teach. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:55]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:37:56]:
And so getting more involved with, with Rick and 180 biz, albeit in the background, more so, and just kind of learning and getting more used to teaching, mentoring, training other people, that has kind of helped me look at that and say, man, I'm not doing this. I better get my crap together.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:25]:
Yeah. If I'm going to tell somebody to do it, I better be doing it right.
Tom Schearer [00:38:27]:
You know, it's pot and kettle. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:30]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:38:30]:
So, you know, that's helped out a lot. And, you know, I still struggle with where, you know, what's the next step. You know, it's there's. There's a bunch of different directions that it can go. And, you know, what I've kind of decided upon is that no matter where I'm going, I need to have a good, solid, you know, just unbreakable company.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:00]:
No.
Tom Schearer [00:39:00]:
So that's kind of where my focus is now. Okay? It's just we have a really good team in place. We have good, solid foundation and base and everything. But how do we build upon that, whether it be replicating it, teaching that to somebody else, whatever? So my focus right now is to, you know, just continue to build that and get that. Get everything really solid in the back end.
David Roman [00:39:32]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:33]:
To get it squared back up. Well, I think that that's what happens to a lot of shop owners, right. Is that they go through that period like you, and you say, well, I've achieved it. I'm here. I've gotten here. Now what. What do I do with it? What's my purpose? What is. And they don't realize that.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:48]:
That the whole time they have to be holding the shop accountable. They have to be holding staff accountable.
Tom Schearer [00:39:54]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:54]:
So one day they turn around and look, and it all fell apart. Right?
Tom Schearer [00:39:57]:
Absolutely.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:58]:
And so it's. It's like, well, I've. I've accomplished it. I've achieved it. I was commented on a post last night, and it was a. It was a shop owner talking about the fact that he had shared this post, and there were. He had a. Had accomplished a fleet account of 300 vehicles, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:18]:
And then it was a memory, and he shared the memory, and he said, I just lost this account today, and it was like a six or seven year old post. Right. And he said it was because of a staff member. And everybody in my circle told me that I was too hands off, that I was burnout, and that I had just delegated everything to the people in the shop and that people were not getting the experience they should from the shop. And he said, so I lost a multi million dollar contract or agreement with these people because of one staff member. And I just thought that was so insane because, like, as shop owners, we tend to, you know, and I hear texts and I hear advisors talk about it sometimes. I think the number one reason that we do it is we get burnout and we get, like, tired of the stress and the pressure, and we're like, somebody comes in and just runs the shop and they do an okay job of it. Sounds good.
Tom Schearer [00:41:10]:
Absolutely.
David Roman [00:41:11]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:11]:
Let her burn.
Tom Schearer [00:41:12]:
Yeah. And, you know, to that, I mean, I have something similar with a fleet, and I think it comes down to, you know, the amount of proactive and reactive we have in us. Okay. You know, being the euro focused, we don't have a lot of fleets and everything, but that wasn't always the case. You know, when we moved out of Mertstown into Wescoesville, where Adam and allot is now, you know, there, we had a really big domestic and asian presence. So, you know, we took on a couple of fleets and everything, and one was a really good one, and, you know, we lost that one. It's by me being reaction, being reactive. You know, they had a fleet manager who just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and the guy who ran the local store kind of knew that, and he was kind of able to keep him.
Tom Schearer [00:42:14]:
Keep him away from me. And one time, he was, you know, they were. Things were just out of sorts a little bit. And so that fleet manager reached out directly to inquire about something, and I just did not like that tone, and it just set me off, and I. That reaction took away $100,000 a year, $150,000 a year, something like that. And I know that's not a lot for a lot of fleet shops, but it was a lot for us. So it happens. I think the proactive versus reactive is very important.
Tom Schearer [00:42:58]:
And just with everything we're talking about now, as soon as you start to become reactive to everything.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:04]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:43:05]:
That's when shit's gonna hit the fan.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:06]:
Yeah, buddy. I'm telling you what I learned that left.
David Roman [00:43:10]:
So you're not gonna take your hands off the reins and let the manager run the thing?
Lucas Underwood [00:43:14]:
No, I'm absolutely gonna let him run it. I'm gonna get out of the way and just let him do whatever he wants to do. It's exhausting. It's exhausting.
David Roman [00:43:24]:
It is exhausting.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:25]:
Is it exhausting for you still?
Tom Schearer [00:43:28]:
Some days more so than others, yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:30]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:43:31]:
But, you know, it's. I'm really lucky to have, you know, Mike with us because, you know, he's a legit guy. He is. He is. You know, it's. And he truly and honestly wants to. He wants to do good, and. But he comes from that background that he's a doer, he's a get shit done type of guy.
Tom Schearer [00:43:56]:
And being a manager is a different role. It's a different responsibility. We no longer have to get that done. We now need to empower our team to get that done and lead them and grow them. So while it's a struggle at times, just knowing that he's got that drive and desire to want to do this, you know, it just. It makes it, you know, when you step back and you get frustrated over something, you know, it's. You think, man, that's. I know he wants to do better, and, you know, if I can just figure out how to properly teach him and educate them him, he's going to get it.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:39]:
What type of training do you do for him? What's the training profile or strategy for your manager?
Tom Schearer [00:44:45]:
So we don't have anything specific. He's been working with Rick. Rick's been developing a manager training program, and he's been using Mike to help build on that, to work through some things. So we're working with that there. And then just looking at some different opportunities, whether it be podcasts, books, different little training venues and things like that for more leadership guidance. Leadership is just so important. You can learn to be a manager and get all kinds of training and everything, but if you don't have that ability to lead your team, you're just not. It's not gonna work.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:47]:
The guy that I keep talking about, the Billy Ray Taylor guy that I said we're gonna have on the show next week when we get back and record remotely one of the things that his book is about, I started listening to the book because I thought, well, if we're gonna have him on the show, I should be able to, you know, and he's a. His entire concept of management is I have to make sure if I delegate a task, they understand who owns that task. Right. And that. That real. I shared the other day, he said, if. If two people own the dog, then the dog doesn't get fed. Because everybody says, well, I thought you fed the dog.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:21]:
No, I thought you fed the dog. He said, so the whole thing that changed that Goodyear factory in Fayetteville was the fact that he gave ownership and then said, you own this. This is yours. This is your task. Nobody else is going to own this. Nobody else is going to do this. This is solely your task. You have to handle this.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:40]:
That is something that I have been terrible at, because what happens is I get nervous it's not going to get done, and I just jump in and do it. I'll never forget. I recognize this now. When I was working for my brother at the hospital, he asked me to show, I think it was a radiologist, how to do something on their PC. And I said, you click here, click here, click here, click here, click here. Then go here, type this in, click here, do this, click here, do this, click here, do this, click here, do this, and I turned around and looked and they were standing there going, we didn't see any of that. And I'm like, okay, let me show you again. Click here.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:18]:
Click here. Click here. Click here. Click here. In my head, that's how I move. I move fast. I move through things like that. I have found I do not have the ability to slow down and teach somebody how to do something.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:32]:
I just. I try and I, like, try to slow myself down and I blow it up. I've downloaded this app called Scribe to try. Hopefully it can record that fast.
Tom Schearer [00:47:44]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:47:44]:
That's how I work. I don't know what else to do.
Tom Schearer [00:47:47]:
I tried that for about 30 seconds.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:49]:
It didn't work.
Tom Schearer [00:47:50]:
It's somewhere in the background. I don't know. Oh, man. Maybe it'd be better for you.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:57]:
This is like a web app, and it records your screen as you go. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. I've not used it at all. I just downloaded it. How does it work? Tell me about it.
Tom Schearer [00:48:06]:
It's been so long. I just know every once in a while when I. We have a user based server base. I don't know what we. What our system is back at the shop. But, you know, everybody has their own, you know, logins. And every time I log into a different computer for the first time, I get this scribe thing pops up and it's like, what is this? But, yes, but yeah, it. It records your.
Tom Schearer [00:48:33]:
Your movements and everything with their. With right within to help teach and replicate, guide whatever you want to put.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:40]:
But I'm gonna have to try it and just see if it actually works.
David Roman [00:48:44]:
That works fine for a computer, but, like, how do you rack a car properly so you don't die? Describe that.
Tom Schearer [00:48:53]:
Somebody's gonna. Somebody needs to teach it.
David Roman [00:48:55]:
Yeah, ask what I'm saying, scribes. Not gonna do that for you. What do you mean? Ask Eric?
Lucas Underwood [00:49:00]:
That's what I tell him. I don't know. Ask Eric.
Tom Schearer [00:49:05]:
Eric's the guy to teach.
David Roman [00:49:06]:
Yeah, that's fine, but what's Eric telling them?
Lucas Underwood [00:49:12]:
I can't repeat anything Eric would tell. They'll cancel us.
David Roman [00:49:19]:
That was supposed to be the thing with, like, train, y'all, and learning lms or training element, whatever that the other company was.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:27]:
Didn't seth have a big one like.
David Roman [00:49:28]:
That, that he had developed the full, like, manual?
Lucas Underwood [00:49:31]:
I was gonna sell it or something. You may still be gonna do that.
David Roman [00:49:34]:
I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:35]:
Turn on the light switch.
David Roman [00:49:37]:
Turn on the light switch. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:40]:
I don't know if I can handle that. Well, Tom, what's next? What have you, have you figured out?
David Roman [00:49:48]:
He said he was, what he's doing. He's teaching, mentoring, and he's fulfillment in that and he's having a good time, obviously.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:57]:
I know that. I'm just asking him, like, what's the, what's the point?
David Roman [00:50:01]:
Are you gonna open a second shot?
Tom Schearer [00:50:03]:
I don't know.
David Roman [00:50:05]:
That means no, that's the, we've been.
Lucas Underwood [00:50:08]:
Talking about that for every bit of four years at this point. It's been, do I go into this? Do I do this? Do I do that? Do I do this?
Tom Schearer [00:50:15]:
And that's where I'm at. I'm preparing for the ability to go anyway. So with, with what we're doing right now at, at the shop, I got some big ideas that I'm not willing to share yet. Okay. But getting my foundation really solidified and in place, that will help this. But, I mean, outside of that, you know, it's, I'm definitely getting more involved with the coaching with, with Rick and everything. So there's, we're going to take, you know, a couple bigger steps in the near future with that there. And again, that's going to help me as well as others because, you know, I'm going to be learning while I'm on teaching training.
Tom Schearer [00:51:08]:
So, you know, there's that part there. I'm definitely going down that path. The multi shop, I'm putting the processes in place for, if I decide, you know, it's, I'm at a point where I don't want to keep on working like, I've worked my whole life, so I want to be able to step back and do some traveling with Christy and maybe incorporate some work with that travel, you know, visiting other shops, things like that. Maybe some training, but also just take some time off. And with, if I am looking to go multi shop, if I'm looking to get more involved in the coaching and everything, something else needs to, I can't just replace this with that because I'm never going to be able to go and do that traveling that christy and I want and what she deserves, for sure.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:07]:
No, 100%. And I think that is something that so many shop owners, they never plan for it. They never look at it and say, I'm going to get here. Yeah, I was it Ziggler that said, someday I'll write, like, one day, I'll just be there and I'm gonna accomplish this if I just work enough and I just do this. And I see a lot of guys who say, well, I just have to fix enough cars. I just have to fix enough cars. And it does not happen unless it's an intentional movement. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:35]:
I'm gonna plan to do this, and I'm gonna put a date on it that I'm gonna do this right.
David Roman [00:52:41]:
I think I've decided to go to more conferences. Then it's work related. Conference. You have a nice time. For example, Orlando.
Tom Schearer [00:52:51]:
Yeah, last one.
David Roman [00:52:52]:
It's a good time.
Tom Schearer [00:52:53]:
St. Louis.
David Roman [00:52:54]:
That was St. Louis. Did you go to the arch? Yeah, the arch is a good time.
Tom Schearer [00:53:01]:
We went to the arch.
David Roman [00:53:01]:
It's interesting. Lewis and Clark, they have a whole thing down there. And Lewis and Clark. You're a history guy.
Tom Schearer [00:53:10]:
I loved it out. I loved. I wasn't in love with the area, you know, I was on edge the whole time I was out there.
David Roman [00:53:19]:
St. Louis? Yeah, it's not that bad.
Tom Schearer [00:53:22]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:22]:
Go to Kansas City.
David Roman [00:53:24]:
I was good.
Tom Schearer [00:53:25]:
I was. Some dude was following Christy and I. And St. Louis. Yeah. Finally.
David Roman [00:53:31]:
What part of St. Louis did you go into? The north side. We went too far north, didn't you?
Tom Schearer [00:53:36]:
That was from the arch. How familiar are you?
David Roman [00:53:40]:
I live there.
Tom Schearer [00:53:41]:
Okay. The cathedral. So we were coming out of the. Coming past the cathedral there, and there was a mustache. Has been having some type of group there, and so there's a lot of people in that area, and one guy is like, hey, I'm just going to follow you guys. And it was who he was, you know, and, you know, so finally, the crazy part was when we got up to the, you know, the stadium there, where it gets a lot more people around, that's when he started getting more aggressive. You know, he actually was starting to come up towards. Cause I was kind of, you know, playing the.
Tom Schearer [00:54:25]:
Using my peripheral vision a little bit, just so I could see what was going on and watched. I. Wherever I was, he was on the other side of Christie. Okay. And so we, uh, we got up into that area, and there was a lot more people, and all of a sudden he started, you know, when I saw him getting closer, I kind of grabbed her out of the way and, you know, just confronted him then, and he's like, oh, you know, made up some kind of stuff and kind of disappeared. But I was like, man, that was crazy. Eric Bach, their son, was there with us. Megan and Eric's son was there, and somebody was following him around, just kind of walking in that area.
David Roman [00:55:05]:
Eric's packing. You don't worry about anything.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:07]:
He's from New York. I don't know if he can.
David Roman [00:55:09]:
No, he can't in New York. But in St. Louis. Everybody's carrying in St. Louis, including the homeless people.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:17]:
Yeah, pretty quick.
Tom Schearer [00:55:19]:
But it was, it was a, it was a, it was neat conference, you know, that was. Well, that was a Rick live event. That was last.
David Roman [00:55:24]:
Oh, okay. Yeah, that's cool.
Tom Schearer [00:55:25]:
That was good.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:26]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:55:26]:
Went to visit Greg Ritter.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:28]:
Oh, nice. His new shop looks really nice.
Tom Schearer [00:55:31]:
Really sweet. He did a really good job.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:33]:
I love it. It's really nice. Yeah, it's really beautiful.
David Roman [00:55:37]:
But that's, what, 2 hours from St. Louis? That's a haul, isn't it?
Tom Schearer [00:55:41]:
Yeah, it was. I think Paul and Gus were an hour and a half. Greg was 2 hours or vice versa, something like that. So, yeah, it was a good time. They both got really good shops.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:53]:
Yeah, for sure.
David Roman [00:55:54]:
So he. He needs to find shops in nicer areas. Nicer.
Tom Schearer [00:55:59]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:01]:
Memphis.
David Roman [00:56:03]:
Yeah. That's where he's gonna find a whole bunch of shops in Memphis. Whole bunch of shops in Baltimore.
Tom Schearer [00:56:10]:
Baltimore. That's where. That's good going on there.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:12]:
Yeah. It's a rough place.
David Roman [00:56:14]:
There's this guy. This is real. The guy was. Was just dropping map markers on Baltimore, and he's like. He's like, everybody kept messaging him, going, you're not gonna find a nice area in Baltimore just anywhere on the map. Just drop it in Baltimore. And then look. So he kept pulling it up and go, bloop.
David Roman [00:56:34]:
And then he'd zoom in and do the street view, and he's like, ooh, okay, okay, okay. But let's try over here. Bloop.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:40]:
Ooh.
David Roman [00:56:41]:
That's not nice. Boop. Oh, this looks okay. Oh, no, no, no. He kept doing it. He couldn't find a nice area of Baltimore.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:51]:
You know, I saw some statistics the other day that said everybody's moving out of cities anymore. Right? Like, the cities are depopulating at a astonishing rate. And a lot of it's because of.
David Roman [00:57:02]:
That, that they're trash. Yeah.
Tom Schearer [00:57:06]:
St. Louis, that was just so weird. I mean, it's just how empty that place was.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:12]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:57:12]:
You know, so St. Louis, that's always been that way. So the downtown area is so grossly mismanaged. When this was, I don't know, 15 years ago, they had a big mall downtown. It was an outdoor. They had the Union station. It was all nicely done up. They had just built the stadium brand new there.
David Roman [00:57:37]:
And then there was a big downtown mall, and there were a lot of little restaurants, and just there was stuff going on downtown. I don't know what they did. They started over taxing and whatever. The mall became unsustainable and they started closing up and it became like this, like, big thing where this giant facility with three stores inside of it, and it became an area where, like, hoodlums would just come hang out inside all day long and just bother patrons, stuff like that. And so nobody would go in there. It would became sketchy. And then they kind of shifted everything to Union Station. And they're like, oh, we're just going to develop this thing.
David Roman [00:58:14]:
And that turned into whole thing where everything was closing up. In Union Station, too, they couldn't find a nice area. Now there's no nice area in St. Louis. There's just nice areas of St. Louis. And then if you go further out, there's more affluent suburbs, the hoity toity areas, they're not bad, but they're not interesting and eclectic and, like, what you expect to find in a nice city with nice little restaurants, locally owned, nice, you know, just places to visit, things to go see. St.
David Roman [00:58:48]:
Louis doesn't have any of that. It is a cesspool. Great italian food in a sketchy area. You gotta go down to the hill, but everybody ventures down there to go get some really good italian food. And it's just italian restaurant after italian restaurant just for miles, just one after another, and it's packed. But if you walk through there, or if you get on the maps and look through there looks. It looks rough.
Tom Schearer [00:59:14]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:59:15]:
It's not Salt Lake City, but it looks rough.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:18]:
Salt Lake City kind of seems that way, too.
David Roman [00:59:20]:
Really?
Lucas Underwood [00:59:21]:
Yeah. Have you been, like, into the city recently? It's.
David Roman [00:59:24]:
Salt Lake City was Salt Lake City for what? When we go to, we go to Ogden immediately. Beeline at Ogden.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:32]:
Salt Lake City is a nice city, but it seems like it's anti anymore. Just doesn't seem like there's anybody.
David Roman [00:59:37]:
No. That's a, like, sparsely populated city. Yeah, there are a lot of people in Salt Lake City. It's not like Chicago or should be. St. Louis should be packed. It's not. Cause it's sketchy.
David Roman [00:59:51]:
It's always been sketchy. And that whole, the whole river. That should be done up nice. It should be. Look in the nines. It's nothing.
Tom Schearer [01:00:02]:
That was easy.
David Roman [01:00:03]:
Yeah, you will get. Yeah, nobody knows. You get to like, hey, this should be like this. This is the Mississippi. This is the gateway to the west. This should look awesome. It doesn't. It's dilapidated factories and tatted, like, tagged up buildings all up and down.
David Roman [01:00:20]:
And then on the other side, the Illinois side is even worse, though. Like the sketchiest part of America. I'm sorry. Is up and down the riverfront on the Illinois side of the Mississippi by St. Louis. It is sketchy. It is just sketchy. Strip clubs.
David Roman [01:00:39]:
Yes. And yet lots of. Lots of that. It is sketchy.
Tom Schearer [01:00:45]:
There you go. So when we were out there, I think it just had heavy rains the week before. So you go down there by the riverfront and there's these stairs to go down. If you walk down the stairs, you're into the. Into the river?
David Roman [01:00:57]:
Yeah. Well, yeah. So when the river's low, you can walk down there, and when it's not, you just. Yeah, stay out of there.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:02]:
Yeah.
Tom Schearer [01:01:03]:
So.
David Roman [01:01:03]:
But they don't. It's not like they've got all this. It's. You been to Branson?
Lucas Underwood [01:01:09]:
No.
David Roman [01:01:10]:
Branson's got something called the landing, and there's this big river that runs through in these beautiful bluffs. And they have built that all up with restaurants and, like, just goofy Branson stuff. But they have the shticky part of Branson in the middle of town with all of the shows and the goofy stuff and all the tourist trap stuff. But you go down to the landing, it's really nice. 100%. Go down to the landing. Just go hang up. And they have a restaurant by Paula Deen.
David Roman [01:01:41]:
My son bought a shirt there. Everything's better with butter. He walks around with his little poochy belly. Everything's better with butter. It's the cutest thing in the world. Anyway, they have, like, four things on the menu. It's all you can eat. Four things on the menu.
David Roman [01:01:53]:
You pick one of the four things and it's all you can eat. It's fantastic. Love that recipe.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:57]:
Mashed taters.
David Roman [01:01:58]:
They. Oh, they had the mashed taters. Fried chicken. Like, it's all southern food. Yeah. And it's one price. You walk in there, you get the starter, you get the main, and then you get dessert. All for one price.
David Roman [01:02:10]:
All you can eat.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:11]:
Are we gonna go to Charlie's tonight?
David Roman [01:02:13]:
I just look that you can't make reservations.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:16]:
What do you mean?
David Roman [01:02:17]:
Not through open table? I don't know.
Tom Schearer [01:02:19]:
Come on, man.
David Roman [01:02:21]:
Only open table. That's it. If you're not on open tables, there's no reservations. I can't do anything with you. It's gotta be. It's gotta be. Yeah. Thank you.
David Roman [01:02:29]:
It's gotta be really high end, like there. We went to a couple restaurants. Can't say you couldn't make a reservation open. Yeah, but it's frustrating because I want my points and everything's all in for everyone. Hit one button and I'm done.
Tom Schearer [01:02:41]:
And send my invites. Text my invites, and then I want to send the.
David Roman [01:02:46]:
Yeah, I want to text the invites. I don't have to do anything. Just a couple clicks and I'm done. Instead of like, are you going to call? Call. I don't want to call anybody. I'm going to have to call. Talk to them on the phone.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:59]:
It's miserable.
David Roman [01:03:00]:
It hurts. It is. It's physically like, ugh, I shouldn't be a business owner.
Lucas Underwood [01:03:07]:
You probably shouldn't.