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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.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:00]:
Yourself talk.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:00]:
I like to do myself talk, too. It's terrible. It's really bad.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:04]:
Plus, it's, like, really hard to hear you talk anyway.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:06]:
What?
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:06]:
That's all right. I'll just read your lips.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:09]:
It is not that hard.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:10]:
At least you're not in my headset, so that's a good thing, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:00:13]:
Well, I mean, it throws you off, right? It really does. So, I mean, it is what it is. I'm going to blame David.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:20]:
I will, too.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:22]:
Good. I'm glad we're on the same page.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:24]:
I need to get my shirt on. When he gets know.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:27]:
That's going to be cute.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:28]:
Is it?
Lucas Underwood [00:00:29]:
That's going to be cute. You know, he gets in at midnight tonight.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:31]:
He really likes California. I heard he's a fan of California.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:37]:
He is.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:37]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:38]:
He's probably going to move to California. He loves their politics. He loves everything.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:42]:
He likes their politics. Why you stay in California?
Lucas Underwood [00:00:47]:
I think that's David's whole thing. I think he loves their politics. He says he doesn't because he doesn't want to be the outlier.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:52]:
Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:52]:
I think that's really what it is.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:53]:
He likes paying taxes and watching them spend the money on things that you don't really need in the state.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:59]:
Waste it away, part of it. Just waste away.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:01]:
Waste. Just like. Cool. That's exactly what I would have spent my money on, too. I appreciate you doing it for me.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:07]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:09]:
When you live with your parents and they give you an allowance and then they charge you for things you don't need, it's like that.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:15]:
Where do I sign up? Where do I sign up? This sounds like something I would do, right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:19]:
Okay. Well, they got really good food.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:21]:
They do have good food.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:22]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:22]:
I'll give you that weather.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:24]:
It's really nice, too.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:25]:
It is. The last time I was in California, there was a. What did they call that? It was called an atmospheric river.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:34]:
Okay. That happens once every ten years.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:38]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:38]:
So you were lucky.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:39]:
Yeah. It was like, I got to see what it's like when it's rainy in California and all the people there acted like they had never seen raindrops before.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:46]:
That's very true. Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:48]:
Jimmy Purdy. What's up, buddy?
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:51]:
How are we doing?
Lucas Underwood [00:01:52]:
I'm good.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:52]:
How are you? Vegas, man.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:53]:
I know. This is a crazy show.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:56]:
It's crazy.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:57]:
How many times you been here?
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:58]:
This is the third year in a row.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:59]:
Wow.
Jimmy Purdy [00:02:00]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:01]:
Have you ever seen a trade show of this size and magnitude before?
Jimmy Purdy [00:02:05]:
Size? I mean, honestly, without sounding like I've been under a rock. I mean, I don't do a lot of trade shows. I mean, aste was my first time this year. Yeah, this is all new to. And you just put your head down, you do the know, right. You listen to what you can, and then as your resources grow, you start finding people, you're making friends, connections, and then it just starts unraveling.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:31]:
One leak. This has been here the whole time? Yeah, absolutely. So I think everybody in the group knows, but you're one of the podcasts. Tell us about your podcast.
Jimmy Purdy [00:02:41]:
Yeah, the Gearbox podcast. I enjoy it. I learned so much, and it's part of my journey, my process, as I've been going through tech, to shop ownership, to focusing more on being a shop owner and being manager. Right. Because we're all a technician. We're a manager. We're an entrepreneur. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:04]:
Yeah. And if anybody knows that book, they can probably reference what I'm talking about.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:08]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:08]:
For sure. And you have these three competing thoughts in your head all the time. And so, learning, listening to other podcasts, listening to YouTube channels, getting out to trade shows, meeting people, I realized that's a big deal. And I've done a radio show for a long time, so I got comfortable with the mic. And I think that's the biggest problem, is a lot of people don't like to hear themselves talk or like, I.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:30]:
Don'T know, hearing yourself.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:32]:
Hearing yourself and sitting down recording. Like, what am I going to talk about? Right. It's like when you get on stage, you get the stage fright, and it's like the same thing happens when you get in front of a mic.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:40]:
Right, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:41]:
But I've learned through having that radio show in my local town. Okay. I got comfortable with it. Right. And it's like, if I can pull people and talk to them one on one, they just start opening up. Yeah. It's amazing. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:53]:
In that process, too.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:54]:
Right, of course. Well, one of the big things about it is we go all over the country and we host these polls. Right. And when we host the polls or not polls, but panels, when we do those, one of the things I tell the people that are on the panel is like, hey, slow down and listen to what the other person's saying. Don't think about what it is that you're going to say. Don't be preparing what your topic is. And so, both of our shows, and Jeff's two, are all very much founded on this concept of having conversations. Like, real conversations, not bullshit conversations, not like up the wall conversations where they're polished, and we talk about a very specific thing in a very specific way.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:32]:
It's about having real conversations with people who are in the shoes that everybody that listens to the show is in right now. Right. And I think that's probably one of the biggest things about doing the show and listening to your show and listening to Jeff's show is that there are so many people who could benefit just from listening to these conversations. And a, understand they're not alone, but b, really begin to understand a different creative aspect. So a guy stopped by the booth this morning. He was telling me about this product that he offers, and he was telling me about what he was doing. And somehow we got onto the subject. We have an advisory council meeting that's coming up here really soon.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:11]:
Are you that deaf?
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:13]:
I can't.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:14]:
Yeah, you want me to yell? Okay, I will yell very loud.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:18]:
You want to talk just a slight bit louder? I'm already half deaf. And it's like, yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:23]:
Did you say something?
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:23]:
Exactly.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:24]:
Yeah, there it is.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:27]:
There's that bullshit again. Here we go.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:29]:
But here's the thing, is that we're talking about this event that we're having at the local high school. And this local high school is basically a working auto repair shop, and it's for the students to work on the teacher cars, right? And so the instructor teaches them all the way through the process, and he said, wow, that's really cool. And I was telling him about Asta. And one of the things that we do with ASta is that we really believe that, hey, we want to expand their horizons. We want them to understand coming into automotive doesn't just mean you're a technician. It could mean that you're in marketing. It could mean that you're in web development. It could mean that you're in engineering.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:07]:
There's so many things you can do in automotive, and you come to a trade show like Apex, and it opens your eyes. You really see that. You see what the potentials are. That creativity, that willingness to branch out and to think outside the box is really a lot of what, in my opinion, I'm not going to put words in your mouth or tell you what your show is about, but, like, listening to your show, that's a lot of what your show is about for me, is because I'm listening to what the other people are saying and hearing their different takes on it and their different perspectives. And so now I'm not in this little box closed in. My mind opens up, and I think about the way other people think about things, the way other people see things. How did the radio show start.
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:48]:
Local shop guy. I looked up to my younger days of becoming a technician, right? Yeah. And it was all part of getting into schooling. We have a local college, and similar to what you're talking about, the auto shop department is massive, okay? It's where the state referee runs his operation out of. You can go in there and from getting your smog license to getting into the bay and pulling out a teacher's transmission and rebuilding it, putting back in all that stuff would happen. Right? That's where I got my smog license. So in this smog class, I remember seeing this guy. He'd be in that class.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:25]:
This guy's in his late 50s, early sixty s at the time. Wow, this guy is still learning. It blew my mind. I'm like, he owns a shop. He's been doing this.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:33]:
He should already know everything.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:35]:
He's still here learning. And it gave me the confidence, because nobody wants to go learn, because then you feel like you're stupid, right? Yeah. And it's like, that's why I still go to training classes today, and I always will, because you can always pick something up, always learn something, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:07:48]:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:49]:
I think the issue a lot of people have is they don't want to be asked a stupid question. They don't want to look like they're the one that doesn't know anything. So anyway, to get back to him, it was like that kind of. So I always looked up to him because he's always learning. He's always continuing his education. And his shop was kind of down the street, maybe 100 yards from me. Well, he was selling a shop at the time when I was purchasing the one I was getting.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:11]:
Okay.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:11]:
And I knew he did the local radio show. It's an AM radio station. Every Saturday he got on. I didn't listen to him all the time, but I'd listen, and people call in, he'd give this advice, and he was so humble and just the nicest guy, and I thought it was just so cool. So I went and asked him about it. Oh, I'll probably do it remote. And I just went down to the radio station and said, hey, look, I don't know if there's, like a list or anything, but if I can put my name down to maybe get involved in this, let me know. He's like, why? What's happening with Jeff? I was like, well, he's selling a shop.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:41]:
I figured he's retiring, and that kind of like, blew the cap off of it. And I was, oh, man.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:46]:
I didn't mean, to like, man, was he upset?
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:50]:
No. I mean, he's way too nice of a guy to even if he was. So I went and asked him and talked to him, like, look, I didn't mean. Oh, no, that makes sense. And he was supposed to go for two more weeks, and he ended up stopping the show, like, the first week of the month. So his not contract. But I talked to Kevin, which was the owner of the station. He said, ok, you're going to be starting at the beginning of next month.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:16]:
Well, Jeff was the guy. He came in and he stopped it that week. And then for the rest of the month, he's like, he wasn't going to go in. Yeah. So I had to start a little early, and I got the vibe because he did that, that maybe he was a little Perturbed.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:31]:
Do you ever talk to him?
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:33]:
Oh, yeah. So a lot of his equipment he was selling. Yeah. I went and just pretty much bought whatever he had. I was like, you just name your price, let me know what you want, and I'll buy it. I don't know if that helped or not, but.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:44]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:44]:
I mean, honestly, I felt like I kind of stepped on someone's toes a little bit, but I wanted to do it. I was like, I want to do this. This is the coolest thing I've ever, and I've listened to this am station my whole life. I grew up in the town. It's like a big deal to me.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:58]:
Yeah. Well, look, I know of a couple instances where I found myself in a similar situation where I said something or I did something and I didn't realize the consequence of it. You know what I'm saying? I didn't think about that and kind of like you did, you went in there because you were excited about it and said something, and that kind of kicked the ball rolling. You didn't mean for it to work out the way it did. And look, I've been through that multiple times where I've been like, oh, my God, I cannot believe I've done that. Right. That's life. That's part of being a human being.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:27]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:10:28]:
And it happens every day. It's going to keep happening.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:30]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:10:32]:
I don't know. Try to stay humble about it.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:34]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:10:35]:
Make an apology if you need to, but honestly, if you're doing it for the right reasons, I feel like that's just the nature of the beast. That's just absolutely par for the course. If it wasn't me, it was somebody else. And that goes like the same thing with running your shop every day. If you don't let your clients know about an issue with your vehicle, the next guy will. Right. But they might see things, other things are going to sell, so they're not going to give you the same quality service that you could give your client. I think it's a big hang up.
Jimmy Purdy [00:11:05]:
I noticed with a lot of other shop owners in my area, it's like, well, I just don't want to scare my client away. If you don't do it, the next guy's going to.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:14]:
I hear it all the time. That won't work here. You don't know my client. And look, I posted a reel, or I've got a reel that I need to put out. It's in my phone right now. And I've said this so many times, look, when we talk about the 300% rule, I'm not talking about selling stuff. I'm talking about my job as a professional. Right, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:36]:
My job as a professional is to tell them about their car and educate them and make them aware of the condition of the automobile, make them aware of any potential incoming cost. Right. To the best of my ability. I don't have a crystal ball. I can't see into the future. But if I can provide them as much information as I can and give that to them in a way that they can dissect it and understand it, that's my responsibility as a professional.
Jimmy Purdy [00:11:59]:
And allow them to make a professional decision based on.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:01]:
Exactly informed. We want them to be informed. And so, so many people get caught up in that. This is about selling something. No, it's not about selling something. It's about providing them information. And I think that's one of the major hang ups in our industry or the major roadblocks that we've got is because there's so few shops that follow that process and do it the right way, that we're in a situation where the consumer doesn't know that's how it's supposed to be done. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:29]:
And the consumer. So what do they say? Well, they're trying to sell me something. No, I'm trying to educate you about your car. I'm trying to make sure before we go spend money. And I tell people all the time, dude, I've said it many, many times, it was a deal where a lady came in and she decided that she wanted a transmission put in her car. She knew the transmission was bad, and I put the transmission in the car. That's what she asked for. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:49]:
And this was when I first started the shop. So I put the transmission in the car. And we go in, we put it in, we're doing all this cool stuff. She says, hey, great, thank you. Picks the car up, goes on about her way. We're good, no problems. Love it. Two months later, differential comes out of it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:13:05]:
Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:07]:
This sucks. Well, I know I told you I didn't want to know about anything else and I just want transmission put in it. But if you knew the differential was coming out, isn't that kind of your fault? I would have never spent that money in the car. Oh, crap. Right. Because now I'm looking at it. The shop owners, typically their motive or what they're saying about this is, well, if I'm telling them about it, it could be selling them something they don't need right now. Right? Well, they do need it.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:38]:
They might need it six months from now. Right. Like it's wearing now. It's not completely failed at this point, but at least if I'm informing them, they can prepare for that. If I'm not informing them, in my opinion, I'm ripping them off. Because now they might approve a big repair and then something else fails that I knew about.
Jimmy Purdy [00:13:57]:
Absolutely.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:57]:
Whose fault is that? That's my fault.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:00]:
The shop that I bought, it was transmission shop. Still is. I don't build as much, so I wouldn't technically consider what we do a transmission shop. We definitely specialize in that genre. I will build them. I understand the process. I can diagnose them. All that stuff.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:18]:
Right. So one of the main issues from the previous owner was exactly that. We are a transmission shop. We don't change oil, we don't do brakes. Don't look at the rest of the vehicle. It comes in here because it's on the hook and it's got no drive, no reverse, no whatever. We're putting a transmission in and see you later. I couldn't tell you how many times that happened.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:38]:
Oh, dude, come back. Screaming. Screaming. I would not have spent at the time $2,500. So this is a long time.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:44]:
Yeah, I know, right? In California. Wait a minute. Transmissions were ever $2,500 in California?
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:50]:
There's a local guy and he's still doing in house rebuilds for 2500 for pretty much. So anyway.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:56]:
Holy crap.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:57]:
So to talk about this won't happen to my. You can't charge this much because there's this other guy. Trust me, we're all dealing with it. Right? Yeah. This is a guy I know, I've known a long time. He owns a property, he owns a building, he owns the shop. He does the work. He's looking at selling the shop, but he does pretty much anything.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:13]:
$2,500? Yeah. Bring it in, drive it out. Your bill is going to be $2,500 for a rebuild. I don't know what he's putting in the rebuilds. Doesn't matter. It works when it leaves. But anyway, regardless of the point, that was the problem I had with that shop before I took it over, was that nothing got checked, come in for the transmission, you do that and leave, and six months later, it'd be a problem. So day one when I took over, when the vehicle comes in, we're charging the client $150 for our basic hourly rate to look this vehicle over.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:45]:
Not a free DVI, not a free inspection. No. It comes in. And that was the conversation I have. Each and every one of them clients said, well, what I got to pay for? Okay, so if you think you need a transmission and we do that, and you spend $6,000 and you come back to me two months later because your brakes are grinding, because your water pump is leaking, because you need a differential, are you going to be happy about spending another $5,000?
Lucas Underwood [00:16:05]:
Absolutely not.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:06]:
And that was the conversation had. And I was like, oh, I get it. Yeah, let's look at it. Let's put everything out on paper that we can possibly see, and that way, you know, are you spending six or seven? Are you looking at spending $10,000?
Lucas Underwood [00:16:18]:
Right. I think that maybe we've derelicted our duty as professionals, as automotive technicians and automotive shop owners. And I guess by saying that, what I'm trying to say is that we've allowed the standard to creep. You know what I'm saying? You ever experience creep in your life? Like experience creep or a financial creep where your bills start going up? You see what I'm saying?
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:43]:
Bills going up, but your income stays the same.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:46]:
Staying the same, and maybe you get a little more income, and so you go out and you spend a little bit more money and a little bit more money and a little bit more money, and you don't realize that you're doing it, and so it slowly creeps, and you don't realize it's changing. And so I think, I'm not going to say that our industry has ever really got this right. I don't mean that I don't know.
Jimmy Purdy [00:17:05]:
If any of them really have on your point, of course.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:07]:
But I also see that we're creeping in the right direction now. Does that make sense? In other words, like more and more shops are acting as professionals and treating consumers the way consumers bring that up on that point.
Jimmy Purdy [00:17:18]:
So last night, we went to Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, right? So we sat at the chef's table, which I don't recommend a. I think they got definitely, they showed us this chef's table. But the cool part about it was we got to talk to one of the lead chefs or head chefs during our meal, right? And what we had brought up, which kind of jokingly, I was like, hey, we're in Gordon Ramsay. He's like, everything good? Everything you guys like? And everything's like, I haven't heard anybody yell yet. And I've watched a lot of Gordon Ramsay. I was like, I was looking forward to someone getting yelled at. And he kind of took it a little more seriously. And he's like, look, we have systems and processes in place that allows everyone to do their job, so there's really no need for yelling, because everybody knows what they need to do.
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:01]:
And if they don't want to do that, we just replace them. And it was like, whoa, light bulb. Right? And the generations has changed. And this is a younger guy. He was probably in his mid thirty s, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:18:12]:
Well, the next generation won't tolerate that. Yeah, the next generation will not tolerate it like we used to.
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:17]:
But it's not in the chefs. It's the same as the shops, kitchens, everything. It's all changed.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:26]:
I know that it frustrates the heck out of people like Dutch. Right? It really drives him nuts, because he came from that tough generation. He came from the tough love generation. And I've even got a reel where he's talking about that, like, hey, it's not their fault, it's mine. Like, I failed them. I didn't teach them. Look, I don't necessarily think that the next generation is a problem. Right? I think every generation that's gone before looks at the next generation says, whoa, we've really dropped the ball.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:55]:
I don't think that's the case. I think this next generation is different. Right? Remember the Seth, I don't know if you had a chance to watch it. We're at Apex. You probably should not have had a chance to watch it yet. But the Seth Godin video that I.
Jimmy Purdy [00:19:06]:
Sent you, I got about halfway through it.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:08]:
The other, a whole different. And, like, I think there has to be a paradigm shift in automotive and as business owners as a whole, we have to start looking at this in a different light. We have to start. Tim kite, I always talk about his videos on here, the focus media, or I can't remember focus. Three. Leadership coaching is what they call the business. But one of the things that stands out to me is in one of his videos, he's talking about leadership, and he said that if you are going to lead people, you have to be going on a journey. You have to be going somewhere.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:49]:
And so if you're not going on a journey and taking people with you, you're going on a personal trip, right. And so I think that this next generation really needs to be led, and they want to go on a journey. They want to accomplish something. The more people that I talk to, and, dude, I get on these ubers, right? Like getting the uber and head down the road. I'm a talker, so I'll start asking questions. And last night, David rents an Airbnb. Okay, let me put this out there for you. David rents an Airbnb and it's an hour and seven minutes away from here.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:21]:
From here, yeah. And he's like, yeah, but it's only 30 miles. I was like, dude, in Vegas, 30 miles at 1 mile an hour. That was a $212 Uber.
Jimmy Purdy [00:20:32]:
We're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:36]:
We're going out there, and it's a completely silent ride out. And then on the way back.
Jimmy Purdy [00:20:43]:
I'm.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:43]:
Talking to him and he says, I want to be an automotive technician because we told him why we were here. We're at SEMA and Apex. And he said, I want to be an automotive technician. And we begin to talk, and we're talking about his vision for the future and what he's looking for. And he says, I don't have any experience, so I went to Uti. I spent a lot of money going to Uti. I'm in school right now. I've gone to Subaru, and I've asked for a job, and I'm trying to get this job with Subaru.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:08]:
And so I began to ask questions like, hey, where do you see yourself in five or ten years? And he's kind of planned it out, right? Like, he's got this vision in his head of where he's going. And I know a lot of younger kids, they don't have that yet, but I was so inspired to see this guy has this vision and this idea of where he's going. And so I realized that nobody had been there to refine that vision for him. Nobody had been able to be there to set realistic expectations and to define what this journey is going to look like and what he should expect and what he shouldn't talk.
Jimmy Purdy [00:21:42]:
How relatable is that?
Lucas Underwood [00:21:45]:
Know, the Andy Andrews deal where he talks about Cortez, right? And Cortez was a conqueror. And he said, know, he takes them up onto the boat and he's telling them like, hey, here's what to expect, and here's how your children are going to live, and here's what we should expect from this. And here's what we should expect from that. Creating vision, creating a journey for them to follow, a pathway for them to follow. And it may not go 100% according to plan, but if we begin to paint pictures for the young people in America today, to give them some trajectory, give them a direction to follow. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:22:21]:
That's tough, though, because you don't want to blind. I mean, you just don't want to be pulling them and tell them where.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:27]:
You want them to go.
Jimmy Purdy [00:22:28]:
It's got to be their idea, right? I mean, we all know this. You got to gently course guide the ship instead of taking the wheel and jerking it. You got to sails and all of a sudden, before you know it, you're heading a different direction.
Lucas Underwood [00:22:40]:
Right, right. Well, and here's the thing, though, is that we need to be able to provide them realistic perspectives, right? We have to be able to tell them what they should expect and what they shouldn't expect in our industry. The older guys have just said, I ain't doing that. Right. And it can be because of the way we paid, it can be because of the way that shop owners didn't feel like they were respected by the technicians or whoever it was or the service advisor. There's tons of reasons, but the problem is that because we didn't think they were listening, we stopped talking. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:23:11]:
Maybe part of that. And also the human brain just thinks that's the only option once you're stuck in a rut. This is where I live. Obviously now with the Internet and all the information out there, you can see the different ways. And some people might not want to run a shop. The way we talk about it, they don't agree with it. Maybe they like Scotty Kilmore and they appreciate what he does.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:31]:
Bro, I might kick you off the show. I can't believe you even brought that.
Jimmy Purdy [00:23:35]:
But the point is, even for what he puts out there, there's got to be. I don't know what the right word for it is, but it's content out there that gives people the opportunity to see different perspectives, and that's what's important. Give you enough information, just like with a client, give them enough information to make an informed decision to what they want to do with their vehicle, with their life. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:57]:
Well, I tell you, when you say that, it makes me think about that video, one of the videos that I sent you over, because he's talking about the Internet opened our world, right? So he said, look, you used to be able to market to this box, and this is the product that we built. And so we want to market that to the entire market. We want to market that to the entire market share. He's like, that doesn't work anymore. Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:23]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:24]:
There are different people who want different things, and they're unique, and they believe they deserve that different thing. Now, as professionals, we have to set professional standards.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:32]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:32]:
You don't go to the doctor and say, well, hey, my knee blew out. I just want you to replace the part of my Knee that's broken right now. And by the way, here's my part. Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:40]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:42]:
I think we have to have professional standards that says, hey, I'm sorry, there are certain things I can't do, but I'm also willing to serve you the way that you want to.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:50]:
And that's based on experience of making mistakes. And so, you know, the first year in business, bring in whatever you got. Bring me your parts, I'll give you a discount. I just needed to get cash flow, right? Yeah. Is there something wrong with that? Is that a bad thing? I mean, you can have these standards, but if you don't got the cash flow, if you don't got people coming to your front door, you got a bigger problem than trying to set standards. So it's difficult. You have to evolve.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:16]:
There was a conversation a while back, and Scott Hicks was on the show, and Scott's wanting to start a mobile diagnostic company, right? And David just absolutely rages out. And he said, look, he said, it doesn't make a hill of beans. If he wants insurance, if he wants this, if he wants that, if he wants the other, if he has no clients to pay for it, oh, absolutely. It doesn't matter. And so I really see that point. But in the same respect, if we're going to go be a business owner, and I've told people this before, I would not go into this underfunded. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, if I'm under capitalized, getting ready to try and make this happen, that's true.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:52]:
Because if I jump into this and I don't have the money to take care of things, and David says, well, I mean, what are they going to do? He's a fly by night mobile diet guy. He burns a shop to the ground, like they're going to sue him. He doesn't have anything. So they just take whatever it was that he did have and he just starts over and whatever, right? Or maybe he doesn't give them a paper receipt, so there's no documentation that even did it. But my problem with that is then that leads us right back to where we're at right now, that we have people creating a bad image for our industry. Right. And if we're professionals and doing the right thing, I believe we have to create a better image for our industry. I do believe, though, and for those who ask those questions, like, hey, do you really believe this crap? I genuinely believe that we're fighting an uphill battle, right? We're never going to win the hearts and minds of those people who believe in operating that way.
Jimmy Purdy [00:26:42]:
Well, if you don't have the capital, you don't have it. And I could point the finger at myself. I did the same.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:47]:
I didn't know what I didn't.
Jimmy Purdy [00:26:48]:
Right. And we all kind of start there, and then we have this expectation that the next person opening a shop is going to know everything we know and do it all. Right? And not get in touch with EPA and hazardous waste and get your insurance and all that. And then we all base everything on the worst case scenario. Oh, well, you're going to kill somebody because a technician that you're underpaying isn't going to tighten something. He's going to roll over a car and kill a bunch of. Run into a school bus. Right? Yeah, that's not really going to happen.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:16]:
Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:16]:
We hope it's going to.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:17]:
We hope.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:18]:
I mean, there's a slim chance that it's a possibility.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:21]:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:21]:
We've all started, I mean, definitely me, bootstrapped and had less than $5,000 in my bank account for three years, hiring guys and paying them at minimum wage. Because in California, that's what I had to do just so I could meet my status quo. I didn't get sued that way. And then I had a guy, total vehicle front end collision right after a $6,000 ticket. It's like I've had these bad things happen to me, but I got up and put my boots on and got back to work the next day forward.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:53]:
Look, I look at all the problems in life, right? And sometimes we become. I was telling a good friend of mine the other day that we fall in love with our problems. You know what I'm saying? Like, we love our problems so much that we're unwilling to let them go. And so when we talk about problems, right? I got a tax bill today that hurt me in the feels, right. I was really sad about it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:15]:
Do you ever like those?
Lucas Underwood [00:28:16]:
Do they ever make you feel, God, this one hurt. This one really hurt.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:19]:
Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:20]:
This one really hurt. And I didn't expect it, and I didn't know it was coming. It was all my fault, physically and emotionally.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:26]:
Yeah, like your first girlfriend in high school kind of.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:31]:
It was worse than that. It was like standing up here on this bridge that's in front of Hoover Dam and standing square in the middle of it and looking over the edge. Right? Like you get that tingle. You know what I'm saying? You get the tingle.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:44]:
Boy, is it tingled like when you're going skydiving that very first time and you drop out and you realize you're not sure if the earth's coming to you, you're going to the earth, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:28:53]:
One of the two is going to happen one way or another. Well, so I think about that and then I'm like, but you know what? A few years ago that would have been bankruptcy, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, a few years ago that would have been impossible. And now I'm like, oh, that makes me mad. That upsets me. Wait a minute, you asshole. You can pay it. You know what I'm saying?
Jimmy Purdy [00:29:15]:
Fair point.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:15]:
Yeah. We're taking steps to get better and better. I think that that perspective or that ability to step back and look at things from the outside, looking in and say, wow, we're taking steps in the right direction here. We're moving and I see our industry moving.
Jimmy Purdy [00:29:32]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:29:32]:
Like, I know the guys deep down in it don't see it, but I have seen movement over the past couple of years where we're moving in a good direction. One thing I am curious about, and I'm sure you saw it, there was a post going around the other day, and I'm going to do a whole podcast on the post later today. But I watched and read through the comments in this post where they were talking about like, hey, we're going to see economic struggles in the auto repair space. And I have asked many technicians, many service advisors, many owners, I've asked many business coaches. We did a panel a while back, is this sustainable? Right? Because a lot of technicians, what do they want right now? They want way more money and they're asking for more and more and more and they want more benefits and we want to improve the industry. We want things to get better. Well, what do we have to do, we have to raise our rates. And this post said, look, the shops that are charging exorbitant rates are not going to fare well if the economy crashes.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:31]:
So they'll probably end up backtracking. So that means they won't be able to pay those technicians. So that will free those technicians back up in the market. Now, I've talked to my team and I've said, look, we've not overextended ourselves technician wise, and tried to hire everybody we could potentially hire and fill the new shop right away. We want to do this in a sustainable way. And I've got your pay configured in such a way that we can be sustainable even if things slow down, even if things change. Right. But is it sustainable, these guys that are out here making 110, $120,000 a year, are they going to be the first ones that go when the economy crashes? If the economy crashes, yeah, it's a fair point.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:11]:
I mean, in California, this is a median. So I guess we're definitely having two conversations about what our tech should be paid. But on the point of overpaying and having them leave, like the dealership, that's what's happening right now.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:25]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:26]:
You go to the dealership because you want to be busy and you want to get paid good. And I think that's being lost right now. Texts are leaving the dealerships because it's like, wow, I'm not flagging the hours. I came here flat rate because I wanted to make my 120, right? But it's not guaranteed. And now these shops, independents, are offering this guaranteed. You don't need to be flagging this kind of hours. You just come work for me, I'll pay you your 100,000 in California. That's what's happening.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:52]:
Well, I mean, that's what's happening. I think it's all over the country. And I've been very cautious. A lot of it was not intentional. Right. I'm not going to say that my caution was intentional, and I planned for economic downturn. Now, I've been to two or three events recently. As a matter of fact, we sat here two or three years ago, and Seth was talking about.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:14]:
Seth Thorsham was talking about a conference that he went to that was for ceos of Fortune 500 companies, and they were talking about this economic thing. And he was saying that expect a good time, expect things to go really well for a while. Expect it to downturn a little bit, turn and come back and then crash. Right. And that's what the greatest economic minds in the world think is going to happen.
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:34]:
That's just the cycle, right? If you're in a stock market, if you have a portfolio that's just go look at your portfolio for the last ten years, that's tough because we had Covid, but you know what I'm saying? That's just what happens.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:46]:
And that's true. And Covid has been remarkably good for the automotive business up to this point.
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:51]:
Up to this point. But did that set a house of cards right?
Lucas Underwood [00:32:56]:
Exactly. Well, the american savings is the lowest it's ever been. Well, maybe not lowest it's ever been, but it's pretty low right now. The amount of money in the american saving account is pretty slim Pickens right now. And so it makes you say, hang on now, are we in for something here? And so if that happens, I guess my question for you is, what do you think happens to these technicians in these overextended shops? Like I said, I wasn't going to say that I was cautious because I was worried about the economy crashing. I was cautious because I didn't want to overextend myself and start promising things because everybody around me was telling me there may be changes. And so if I go offer my guys who I really care about, $100,000 a year, and nobody's come to me and said, like, hey, I'm thinking about going somewhere else and I need more money, I'm not going to overextend myself to the point that if it all crashes down, I have to let them go.
Jimmy Purdy [00:33:48]:
Yeah, you're better off paying them something than nothing, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:33:51]:
Well, I mean, that's the thing, is like that sustainability of a business. And that's what I worry about. For all these guys who are out making $110,000 a year, $80,000 a year, whatever it is, if the economy crashes, are they going to be the first ones to leave those shots?
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:05]:
And I think worrying about it and taking an action about it is two different things. And kind of back to your point about getting in a business and it's having the confidence to know that it's just going to keep moving forward. And I think having that mental shift from day one through day 365, your first year owning a shop, you don't want to invest in all these things, right? In quotes. I don't want all this stuff. This doesn't make me any money. All I need to worry about is marketing. Get cars in the door, fix the cars and then get paid. I don't need all this other stuff.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:36]:
It doesn't make me any money. But as you progress, you start realizing all those things are just as important, right. As you move along business, it's balanced. But it's also like, well, you don't want to be fined, you don't want to get audited. So do your taxes, get a bookkeeper, get a CPA. Don't do it yourself because an audit will put you out of business. Right. During the first year, you're not worried about it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:57]:
As long as I got money in the account, I don't need to worry about that. I don't even worry about that.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:00]:
In your first year, you don't really have anything they can take anyway. Bad point.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:05]:
But like with Hazmat, right? So then you realize EPA starts roaming around and you got to be hooked up with your county hazmat to make sure that oil is being recycled. And if you don't have a permit, you're going to get fined. And all these things happen years down the road. But in that first year, you're not worried about it, right? I don't need to do it. But then as you evolve, you start realizing these things are important, and then you gain the con to know, like, okay, well, I can't afford it the first year, I can afford it the second year. And as you move along in three years, four years, five years later, down the road, you start realizing, okay, it looks like a big stretch, but it's going to pay for itself. It's going to pay for itself and I'll have the money. The money is going to come in.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:42]:
And so right now, what's going to happen? I don't know. How much time do you spend worrying about it? Pay your guys what they need, make sure you're being profitable, and just have the confidence that what you're doing is the right thing and that you don't pay back.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:57]:
Here's the big one, is that when trouble does come, don't panic.
Jimmy Purdy [00:36:01]:
Don't panic.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:02]:
Think about what you're doing. Think about where you're going, right. I remember my business coach. One of the first things that we ever talked about is he was telling me a story about two businesses, same town that he worked with, and he was saying, look, here's the situation is, I've got a business over here. 2008 happens, and he says, oh, my gosh, I don't have any money. Nobody's going to fix their cars. We're going to go out of business. There's nothing we're going to be able to do about it.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:27]:
I need to save every dime I can and the other business says, well, if there's no money, what are they going to be doing? They're going to be fixing their car. They have now because new cars are expensive. Used cars are expensive of. They are going to end up fixing the used car anyway if they buy it. And most consumers are smart enough to see through this. So what are they going to do? They're going to fix the car that they know and it's paid for. And so we talk about it. And he said, so the one shop says, I'm going to advertise and I'm going to tell my consumers that.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:55]:
The other shop, what do they say? They say, oh, God, I can't advertise. I need to put that money in the account. I don't have the money to advertise. And so what happens? One goes out of business and one thrives.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:05]:
Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:37:06]:
And so I've always remembered that story because I think about how many shops they get in their field so quick that they don't make rational decisions. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:15]:
Emotion is bad based on emotions or based on fear. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:18]:
Emotion is a bad place to make decisions. Fear is a bad place to make decisions because you're not making them out of education, you're not making them out of fact.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:26]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:26]:
You're making them out of this imaginary thing. Right. And I tell people all the time that when we talk about anxiety, I had this anxiety issue. I go to a therapist and he points out, and he's like, you know what anxiety literally is defined as? And I said, what he said, it literally means something that may never happen. Right. And I'm like, okay, what's your point? He's like, you're afraid of something that has not happened yet, and it may even be an irrational fear and it may never happen. But you're focusing such a large portion of your energy on it that your mind is looking in a different direction. And he's like, so you're going to make it happen because you're so worried about it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:38:08]:
I mean, it sounds easy when you say it like that.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:10]:
I know, right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:38:11]:
But when it goes back into your brain and they start coming up, it's really hard to talk yourself out of it. And some of it you just have, I don't know if you have to be blind or put your blinders on and just have your vision, have your mission, know what you need to be done. And even though you're having these thoughts of all this, just keep pushing forward. And that's where having a coach comes in, because just keep doing what you're doing, man. Right. But I don't want to just keep doing what you're doing. You got to put your head down and tell yourself to shut up, sit down, take a seat, and keep moving forward, man. You're going to be fine.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:45]:
Now, do you have a coach for your business?
Jimmy Purdy [00:38:47]:
Yeah, I'm with the institute.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:49]:
Very cool. Now, let me ask you this, because this is something that I've asked a lot of shop owners about. And just out here mingling, talking to shop owners, when I talk to them, one of the questions I have is, what's your vision? What's your destination? And did your coach help refine that? Right. Because one of the things that I thought was really interesting in my past couple of experiences when dream building and vision building, right. One of the big things that I thought was so cool about that is I had people in my life who said, hey, now, hold up. I don't know how realistic that is. Or, hey, maybe you're undershooting. I don't think you've clearly defined that.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:25]:
Right. And so it's been really cool. And the last one of those, when I had a coach, he sat down and we really talked through, what is the vision? What is it? And have you really broken that down with them yet? Have they reviewed that?
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:39]:
What's your why?
Lucas Underwood [00:39:40]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:40]:
No, yeah. To be perfectly honest, my why was to take the shop and make it better. I was so sold on this shop because it was in the community for 40 years, and I could not see it die. I wanted to bring it back to life. Yeah. I don't know why that's what I wanted to do. I was like, I'm going to take this. I'm going to make it better.
Jimmy Purdy [00:40:09]:
And I have. Right? And then I had the goal, okay? I really want to have a million dollar revenue shop in California. It's not that big of a deal anymore. And that seemed to be how the carrot's been dangling for me. Right? Like, I need to make enough to afford a $250,000 home. You make enough to do that, and then the houses go up another 100,000. Just keep Daniel care in front of me. Right? And so even though I've made that goal and this year, we're on track to break a million dollars.
Jimmy Purdy [00:40:34]:
So in my mind, I'm like, well, what's next? And it's a scary place, because then you lose that fire, you lose that passion, and that's not what you want to do. I need to get what the next. What do I want? And so I'm constantly like, what do I do next? And it's like, keep the motivation, keep it going, because I don't want to lose what I got. Right, right.
Lucas Underwood [00:40:54]:
Well, how many shop owners do we both know that have said, I want to be the best? Okay.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:00]:
Yeah. What else would you do?
Lucas Underwood [00:41:02]:
Right. I want to be the best. Well, what is the best and the best for you looks different than the best for somebody else.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:07]:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:08]:
And that's one of the big things that, when we started working through my vision, it's like, nah, man, that's not enough. That's not enough to sustain you in hard times. You don't understand what the destination. You don't understand where you're going. You can't smell it, see it, taste it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:20]:
And I think Dutch said it the best. It's like, if you want to own a shop and be closed at 03:00 and go fishing with your son, that's your win. Yeah. You want to own ten shops, that's your win. Whatever your win is, you just go do that.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:34]:
Right. But you have to define it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:36]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:41:37]:
And sometimes the problem is that defining that is harder than just saying, this is what I want. Because we're short sighted creatures. And one of the things that I've always heard, I think it was Jordan Peterson who says, we're aiming creatures, right? So we think about something, we envision something, we aim at it, and we go in that direction, and so we follow that pathway. It doesn't matter if the aim is a good aim or not, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:02]:
There's no other options. This is the way I'm going.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:04]:
Exactly. We may be going in the wrong direction. We may be going in a spot that's not what's best for us. And we don't understand that or we don't see that. And so, man, I'm telling you, I think that talking to your coach and talking to your people about, hey, what is the vision? What is the destination? I've been laying this out over the past couple of months for my team. What is it we're trying to accomplish?
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:24]:
And then what happens when you achieve that?
Lucas Underwood [00:42:30]:
Why you got to do that to me?
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:33]:
That's the real thing. And it's something that until this year, I haven't even thought. Like, that wasn't even a thought. It's just like, for five years, it's been six years, seven years, I don't know. I'll have to look at a calendar to figure out, tell you how long it's been, but you just put your head down you show up, be the first one in, last one out, and you just keep refining your systems, refining your systems, talking to people, right? Finally. I wish I would have got a coach a long time ago, but I didn't have the money. It's a chunk of money now that I'm doing. It's like, yeah, I wish I would have done it sooner, but there was no way I could have.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:10]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:43:10]:
And now I've listened to so much and retained so much information that a lot of the coaching I'm getting is kind of just reinforcing the practices that I've been putting into place or, like, redefining. And it's still important because it's like, oh, this is what I've been trying to mold and create. And all you got to do is like this, oh, boom. And they click together and it all goes in place, like, boom. Then it's done. And it's like, in the last six months, because we started the beginning of this year, and just in the last six months, it's just like, everything's just clicked together. Click together, click together. All the foundational stuff was already.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:43]:
So to that tune, like, a coach can take you and get you to that next level. Absolutely. They can usually pay for themselves. Oh, yeah. I use Rena with empowered advisor to coach. Our advisors love her death. She's fantastic. And so one of the things we talked about is like, hey, this is an expensive program, but this is a valuable program.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:04]:
And so I've watched our advisors develop as human beings, not just as advisors, but as human beings, and learn communication skills and learn how to communicate and see things differently. Right? And so when we look at that growth, the amount of growth that that monthly investment makes for you, right? Because all of a sudden, we're not just talking about, hey, by the way, we're going to come in here and we're going to tell you what's wrong with your business. We're talking about, we're going to create a plan that not only pays for the coaching that you're paying for, but we're going to create a plan that gives you that time off because that's what you want. We're going to create a plan that gives you that ten shops because that's what you want. Like, that's what your vision, that's what your destination is, is what you've set for it. And so because they have this outside picture and we were talking about emotion, and, like, emotion will lead you in the wrong direction. These business coaches, being on the outside, have this perspective that doesn't have emotion involved.
Jimmy Purdy [00:44:57]:
Absolutely.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:00]:
I want to be a $10 million a year shop, Will. Yeah, I understand that, but you got three bays. It's not going to happen.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:06]:
I want a minute. A toilet made out of solid gold. But it ain't cards, baby.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:09]:
Exactly. Why would one want a toilet made out of solid gold?
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:15]:
I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:17]:
It sounds cool.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:18]:
I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:20]:
Would it have a benefit, you think? I've never had one.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:25]:
If you get one, let me know how it goes. But on the point of solid gold.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:31]:
Streak free.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:37]:
A lot of red meat this week in Vegas. So I don't know how Vegas does it with your sewer system, but, oh, it's rough. Not to derail, but on that note, like with technicians, and one of the things with me, with coaching, wrapping my head around was return on investment. So they make their money and then they make you money, but showing you to pay a tech and what that will do if you pay them appropriately. Right?
Lucas Underwood [00:46:03]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:03]:
And you can't just throw a number at the wall. I'm going to pay them $50 an hour. For what? How do you know? Right. And as a tech turn shop owner, like most of us out there, we know what we were paid. And you just can't wrap your mind around paying someone else more than that to come into your shop because you're the best technician.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:22]:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:22]:
I was the best technician. So if me as an AZ certified master technician and transmission builder, never got paid more than $30 an hour, there's no way I'm paying anybody more than $30 to work in my shop, right? And it's like, well, I was in a shop that was not well managed, and now I'm not a technician. I've moved to being in a manager. In my mind, it's like, now I have to see, and I just wouldn't have seen that without a coach. Look, if he produces this, you can pay him x amount.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:48]:
Well, man, I'm telling you, I think in so many cases, that's why we always say that technicians make terrible business owners, is because they have this mindset. And one of the worst flaws I ever had was I kept trying to hire people and teach them to be technicians, and I never wanted to hire somebody that was better than me. And now, looking back, what a dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb thing to do, right? Like, how stupid is that? That's ridiculous.
Jimmy Purdy [00:47:17]:
Yeah, it is.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:18]:
Why would you ever do that? And so now I'm like, hey, it makes a whole.
Jimmy Purdy [00:47:22]:
It still makes sense to me. It still rings a bell with me.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:24]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:47:25]:
Even though you say, I mean, it is dumb, but you can relate to it because that's what you go through.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:29]:
I think it's our security. Right. And I think when we make a decision in life that I don't have to feel secure all the time, I don't have to feel okay all the time. Right. And I know that sounds like this terrible, cliche thing to say, right. But when we make a decision in life that there are going to be hard times, there are going to be things that do not feel nice. I'm going to go through struggles. I'm going to go through things where other people in the room are smarter than I am.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:57]:
Right. I can't remember who said it. They said, you want to get good at tennis, play somebody that's better than you because your game will rise to their level.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:03]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:04]:
Well, that's what your business.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:05]:
Don't be the smartest guy in the room.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:07]:
Exactly. Ever. And so I think that we build this circle around ourselves because that gives us confidence, it makes us feel substantial. Right. And the reality of it is the only way to actually truly become substantial is get outside of your comfort zone, because growth doesn't happen in your comfort zone. Right. You will remain right there in that zone forever, but if you'll push yourself out of it, you'll see true growth. And look, not just in your business.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:34]:
That's why I think coaching is so powerful, because it grows you as a father, it grows you as a husband, it grows you as a human being, grows you as a business owner.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:42]:
There's so much more mental aspect to it than just looking at the financials.
Lucas Underwood [00:48:47]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:48]:
Even though that's important, you got to make sure your numbers are right. Otherwise you can't pay your guys. And if you're not paying your guys and you're stressed because they're not showing up and they're not producing, they're not making, then you can't even get yourself in the mental space to start working on yourself. But.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:02]:
Exactly.
Jimmy Purdy [00:49:02]:
You have to back up a little bit and work on yourself and realize, man, I'm not a good teacher, I am not a good leader, I'm not a good boss. And you think that you're going to own a shop and you're not going to be that numbers pusher. You're not just going to sit in the office and tell people what to do. You're going to get out there and you're going to work shoulder to shoulder with your technicians and you're going to teach them all your ways, and then you're all going to have beers at 05:00 right. These dreams of Laurie and grandeur, and it's like, you can do that, but you have a long ways to go before that's like.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:36]:
Exactly. Well, and that's just. It is that. It is a long journey. It's not an overnight journey.
Jimmy Purdy [00:49:43]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:44]:
And I think that awareness is the most important part of it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:49:48]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:49:48]:
I think awareness of weaknesses, awareness of strengths. We always talk about swot analysis and pest analysis, the willingness to sit back and write down, like, hey, where am I not good at? So often? I think as business owners, especially when we're in a situation where we don't have any formal business owner training, we think weakness. Well, I don't have any weakness. And it's really that we're unaware of the weakness or we're unwilling to look at the weakness. But until we recognize the weakness. I pissed a bunch of people off the other day, and I said, hey, I said, we're talking about the 300% rule. And I really upset a couple of posters. And it was the guy who was talking about the Subaru engine and the timing belt.
Lucas Underwood [00:50:31]:
Idler Pulley failed. You know what I'm talking about? Did you see that was an Asog? No, it was one of the idler gears. The bearings went out in it, and it looked like it had a semi new timing belt on it. And I said, look, here's the Deal. I said, if you didn't put on there that this vehicle needs a timing belt every however many miles, then you're somewhat responsible for this. And they said, how can you say that he didn't cause that to fail. Of course he didn't cause it to fail. It's not about him causing it to fail.
Jimmy Purdy [00:50:59]:
He didn't advocate either.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:00]:
He didn't advocate, but here's the thing.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:02]:
If you go to the doctor, he didn't tell you have same thing. Why did you tell me I have cancer?
Lucas Underwood [00:51:07]:
But it's bigger than that, right? It's bigger than that for me. And here's why it's bigger than that. And it was the whole purpose of my comment, and I don't think they heard me. I don't think they saw through it to see what they heard.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:17]:
They just said, listen.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:18]:
Well, here's what it was. It was extreme ownership. It was that if I take responsibility for said failure, then, by God, I can fix said failure. Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:31]:
Very good point. Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:32]:
And it has nothing to do with whose fault it is. The damn cars broke. The point is, the car broke. What could I have done differently? And they said, well, but it's not his fault it broke. If he goes to court, he's probably not going to look.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:44]:
Doesn't even matter.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:44]:
Doesn't matter.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:45]:
It's focusing on the wrong part of the conversation. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:49]:
What could I do to change that scenario? Well, if I put it on the ticket and said, hey, it needs a time about this many miles. It has this many miles on it now. Just want to make you aware of it, and the client says, no, I don't want to do that, then at least I've done my part to educate the consumer. Guess what? Now it is a moot point. If I go to the judge and say, well, we did right here. Tell her, need to be done. What's the judge going to say?
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:10]:
Another. Another point of just going to the worst case scenario. It doesn't even need to get to the judge, doesn't need to go to court. And I hear it all the time on the Facebook group, on the page, too. It's like, oh, well, you need to do this because you need to justify yourself. How many of us have gone to court over this kind of stuff?
Lucas Underwood [00:52:25]:
Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:25]:
You go to small claims, worst case scenario. Right. And so I've always said someone comes in, upset it, which we actually don't get a whole lot. I mean, Leanne does a fantastic job of advocating and treating clients. Right. And educating.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:39]:
Jimmy just buries the bodies if they're upset. So they don't count anymore.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:42]:
Yeah. So don't piss her off, because then.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:44]:
I got John firm.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:47]:
But, yeah, they come in, they're upset, and it's like. So I see both sides of the story here. Bottom line is, you came to me, there's something that went wrong, and you're not happy with it. How do I fix this? What do you need? How much money do you need? What do you need for me right now?
Lucas Underwood [00:53:03]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:53:03]:
No, I would just want to tell. It's like, no, we don't need to argue about this. You're right, I'm wrong. How do we fix this? Yeah, maybe you can apply that to marriage counseling, too.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:12]:
Oh, dude, I'm telling you. I'm telling you, that is the most powerful.
Jimmy Purdy [00:53:15]:
I should probably do that more with her, too. But to the point of running the shop and taking the ownership, it's like, just, dude, even if it's not yours, it's still a learning opportunity for when it becomes your problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:28]:
If we ask somebody, look, more than anything, man, I took this lesson super hard because it was scary for me. And the lesson was that to ask clients what you can do to make them feel better about the situation. What do you need from me?
Jimmy Purdy [00:53:46]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:47]:
And the same thing in our personal relationship with my wife. Right. One of the things that I've noticed about that is she said, just the other night we were talking about, and she said, I remember when we would argue about everything, and she said, now we talk about everything. Right. Like, we have a conversation about it. And we both matured, we both grew up, we both understood that wasn't healthy and it wasn't a good environment. It wasn't like we fought like cats and dogs.
Jimmy Purdy [00:54:09]:
You're just trying to win an argument and fix a problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:12]:
Exactly. And so when you go to the consumer and you say, what do you want? I think it's so scary for shop owners. Why is it scary? Because they think it's going to cost them a bunch of money. Do you know that 90% of consumers say, I just wanted to be heard. I just want you to understand, I wasn't happy. I didn't like what was going on. I didn't think you understood what I was trying to say. And so if we say, hey, I am so sorry this happened, help me understand what it is I can do for you, because I want to make sure we take care of you.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:36]:
Is there anything you need? Tell me how you feel. Let them vent, let them get it out. And then you ask them, what do you need from me? They're often going to say, man, I just want you to hear what I.
Jimmy Purdy [00:54:45]:
Had to say, and thanks for listening. Exactly. I'll be back next week.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:50]:
Imagine that. And I think we look at it and we have this idea in our head that it's going to turn out way worse. And they want $100,000 or something like, come on now.
Jimmy Purdy [00:54:57]:
And on the point of financial and being scared, you're going to have to pay out. Well, what's your time worth? You want to argue with this guy for 30 minutes to not even solve the problem? Because you're not going to win an argument with a client that's upset about their vehicle. It's an emotional.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:13]:
You will never win an argument with a client.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:15]:
No.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:16]:
Even if they will in my end.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:17]:
Right. You're going to win.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:19]:
You've lost no matter what. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:22]:
You're never going to get back into their pocket again. Right. And they're going to tell at least three people they know. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:28]:
And they're going to tell three other people.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:29]:
Right. And then you've still wasted 30 minutes of your time as a shop owner arguing. And that was really hit me when I was going through that process of like, how do I fix this? How do I deal with this upset client? Right? And I realized how much time I'll spend it. And it got to the point, like, look, we're not even going to start arguing because I don't have the time for this. I have other things I need to be doing, right? So how do I cut to the chase here? And I looked at it as if my time is worth $200 an hour. Even if I were to refund him the $200 or whatever it is, it's like, you just do that cost analysis and it's like, wow, if I could be done with this conversation in five minutes and save myself $195.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:07]:
And here, even on top of that, one of the reasons that I think we do that is because we have this vision in our mind that what's going to happen is we're going to get a completely unreasonable or crazy client, right? And look, the eviction client that I catch such a hard time over, right? How stupid was that?
Jimmy Purdy [00:56:30]:
What was eviction? What did that mean? I always wanted to ask, you know.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:35]:
You didn't see the.
Jimmy Purdy [00:56:35]:
No, I saw everything.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:37]:
But that's not the right word. I know now, Kim and Brian were.
Jimmy Purdy [00:56:41]:
Like, did you choose that word?
Lucas Underwood [00:56:45]:
Okay, so here's what a lot of people didn't know about that story is that my back had gone out the week before and I could barely walk, right? Like, I couldn't feel my feet and I could barely stand up straight. I was in excruciating pain and I heard it. And I had a really important meeting I had to be at. And so I hardcore worked out, trying to stretch out what was hurt, and I ended up pinching the nerve worse. And so I could barely get my feet up to walk, right? Like, when I would take steps, I couldn't tell where my foot was. And so I was in excruciating pain in the first place. And so then she comes at my staff and I go up and I try and solve it. So I'm already stressed out to the max because I don't feel good.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:28]:
I'm miserable in the first place. And so here I am, and she comes in, and I don't know if it was a stress or what, but I just randomly picked the wrong f and word.
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:37]:
Okay, that's fair.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:39]:
It worked into all of our advantages, I guess, because now it's made a thing. It was completely accidental. It was not on purpose. I am that stupid. Never mind. We all make mistakes under pressure, even not under pressure.
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:56]:
Just being in a situation like that, it just goes to show it doesn't matter. I thought maybe you chose it on purpose or if it was like a North Carolina thing.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:09]:
I'm not that smart. It's not North Carolina. That was pure stupidity.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:14]:
Because in California you can't evict anybody, so we're not allowed to use that word. Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:18]:
They took it out of the dictionary in California. Well, but I mean, that's less than 1% of the clients you're ever going to.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:24]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:26]:
It's such a low percentage of people that you're ever going to run into that that's going to be a thing.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:31]:
And you're going to base your whole business practice and your sops based on the 1%. Come on now.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:37]:
Right? And so what do you do? You talk to them, you say, look, hey, man, help me understand. Help me. That's one thing that I'm learning and developing as a business owner is trying to find myself in all this. And I've talked about that in the show before. When we were in three bays, we had like, a perfect metric set up to where the shop just did what the shop did. Right? It was maximized. It ran at full throttle all the time. It did in three bays, $125 to $130,000 a month.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:04]:
It just did what it was supposed to do. And then we moved and I recognized that I did not have enough consumers. Right? Like, my clients are really fantastic clients, and they all buy into the process, but there weren't enough of them who bought into that process on their own that said, hey, we're going to be clients of this business because this is the service we want. Remember that video I sent you that I keep bringing up? What's he talking about? He's talking about, you got to build the product for the consumer. Right? You don't get to build a product and tell the consumer that's their product. Now, you.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:37]:
Unless you're McDonald's.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:38]:
Yeah, exactly. And so that's his point, is like, hey, you have to develop this thing for them. And so now I'm looking and saying, okay, how do I redevelop myself to fill that void? How do I develop myself to grow the shopping, to get it to where it's.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:53]:
And that's getting to the next goal, just like I said, once you meet that goal, and that's exactly where I'm at. So now that we've hit this ceiling in a sense. I don't want to call it a ceiling, but we've met that goal. Everything really does need to change. And I've been so stuck on not doing oil changes, not doing maintenance. I don't want to deal with that. I want the big stuff to come in. We got $1,400 aro.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:18]:
We achieved all these things I set, but that put us in a direction where now we have to backtrack a little bit. I don't know if I call it backtrack, but we definitely need to course correct and change the way we do things a little bit to bring in a new base client, right?
Lucas Underwood [01:00:33]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:33]:
And it's like, how do you do that without sacrificing your set goals or your set. I don't know what the word is for it.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:43]:
The standard.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:44]:
Right. Yeah. Your own standard practice.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:46]:
We have a standard, and we don't.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:48]:
Call it standard necessarily, I guess your own personal kind of standards.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:51]:
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing is like, we have our own standards. Our industry does not really have a set standard in a lot of ways, but we have a personal set standard for our business and we have this idea of what it needs to be and how it needs to run. And so I think that you bring the institute in is a fantastic idea because they're going to look at this from 30,000ft and say, maybe there's a better way to do this.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:16]:
A different way. Yeah, I think there has to be a different way.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:19]:
You just hate the idea of somebody else having a better idea. You hate the idea of somebody having a better idea.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:24]:
Yeah, of course. I'm a technician.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:27]:
All right. So how can people find the podcast? And give us a hint what's coming up next over the next couple of months for the.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:32]:
I got some cool stuff coming up. I got a really good one lined up. We're going to talk about the technician shortage. Got some guys in the transmission specialty field. Mr. Jim from Sonics.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:46]:
Oh, nice.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:47]:
So he's going to come on with David Tang and then talk about the shortages. And then I got Paul Danner coming out pretty soon. We had a good conversation with him and his wife at.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:03]:
It's a slow.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:03]:
It's a slow rolling ball, but like I said, I enjoy it. And then I still got to run the shop, too. There you go. Definitely. You know how it is.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:12]:
Where can they find the podcast?
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:13]:
All your national podcast.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:17]:
Listening apps.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:19]:
What'd you say?
Lucas Underwood [01:02:20]:
Listening apps.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:21]:
Listening apps. Yeah. Spotify, bro. My favorite is the Apple Store. So place to find it is going to be on your podcast app, on your iPhone.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:33]:
What's the name of the show again?
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:35]:
It's the gearbox podcast with Jimmy Purdy. Awesome.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:38]:
Thank you for being here.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:39]:
Yeah, man, this is good.