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The Gearbox Podcast brings on industry professionals to explore the day-to-day operations of owning and operating a shop. From common frustrations to industry-wide shifts, this podcast covers it with fun and insightful conversations.
My name is Jimmy Purdy, shop owner, master tech, transmission
builder, and the host of the Gearbox Podcast. Here I talk with new
and seasoned shop owners as well as industry professionals about day to
day operations within their own shops and all the failures and
successes that come along the way from what grinds your gears to having to
shift gears in the automotive industry. This is the Gearbox
podcast. This is all
about you. What do you mean, it's about me? It's all about you.
We're here to talk about you. You, occasionally. We'll talk about
me occasionally. You should have told me that shit from the get go.
We got to do an introduction now. So this is the Gearbox podcast.
So introduce yourself. My name is Christian Mercado. I like it. Hell
yeah. What's your name?
What would you say that your title is? How do you view
yourself? A man of all trades.
Wow. Kind of a jack of all trades. A master of none? Yes.
But it's better of being a master of none. Yeah. Is it good like that?
I don't know. Jack of all trades but a master of none. But it's better
than being a master of none. That does not make sense.
No. How does it go then? Jack of all
trades but a master of none. But it
beats being a master of one. That
makes more sense. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. Okay, I screwed it up. The other
one. We'll edit that other stuff. We'll just edit that stuff
out. So smog shop?
Yeah. That's what you do? Yes. Okay. Smog.
So why did you choose smogs? Why? Because it was
easy. Okay, that's fair. Well, it was easy for me. Yeah? You still find
it easy? Yeah, that's the easy money on. Yeah. Super
fast ten minutes. I can't stand smogs. Why? I don't know,
man. I don't know how you do it. What do you mean? Like when people
fail. Like, how do you deal with that? No, I say you fail. Just fix
it or go do what you need to do with it,
I guess. I don't know. I did it for a
few years. That's right? Yeah. That was my very
first dabble in the auto industry, was smogs
shit. And you didn't like it? No, I was test only, though. Back when test
only was still a thing. Memory test only? Yeah, back when I was at
Mobile. Yeah, that's right. You were at Rocket. Rocket Small?
Yeah, I was the Rocket Man. Damn. A long ass time
ago.
So you were test only? So you didn't do any repairs? So when they failed,
what did you tell them? Can't do it. Even if I knew what was wrong,
I can't do anything. You couldn't even tell them? I couldn't even tell them.
So you just give them a piece of paper? Hey, you failed.
Yeah, it was difficult. It was hard to I mean, I don't know if it
made it easier because I wasn't allowed to say something. But of course everyone
thought I was lying. Everyone thought I knew what it was. Yeah. Can't
you just tell me what it is? We don't know? I don't know. For
one, I honestly have no idea. I was, like, 19 years old.
I can make a pretty good guess if you want me to.
But even if I could, I remember it was like they come in, the check
engine light would be on, and you got to fail them. Especially because we
were tests only. So we were, like, monitored by how many fails. Just like the
way Gold Chill is now or what is it called now? Star.
The star stuff. Yeah. You have to fail them. Like the way they come in.
And I remember I'd pull them in, and then I always got
in habits. Like Check Engine Light was always like, hey, go get that fixed. It's
going to fail. And your buddy over
at Bar which one? You know which one.
The guy that drives around and monitors all the smog shops.
He was in checking the shop out at the time. And he was doing,
like, checking the paperwork when they come in and they do the audits. And I
was right in front of him. He was like, in the office. And I was
like, hey. And I told the client that was in there like, hey, look, this
is going to fail. So go ahead and get it fixed. He lost his mind.
You can't do that. Like do what? You have to fail
it if it comes in. That's messed up. And the client was sitting right there.
You want me to fail and have them pay money when I know it's going
to fail? And I was like, they didn't care. He didn't care. And I remember
the look. I still remember the look on the guy's face. He just was just
like, look. He's like, who are you from? I'm with the Bureau of Auto
Repair. He's like, what do you do? I do checks and balances on shops to
make sure everyone's doing the right thing. He's like, you think the right thing is
failing my car when he can tell me and save me money?
Oh, the customer. Yeah. He like right to his face. He's
like, you think that's the right thing to do? And it was like, oh, my
god. I don't remember the rest of it. I had to get out of there.
But that was a long time ago. Yeah, that was
my first interaction with that certain individual. I won't say who it
is, but you know who it is. Yeah. Seen them once or twice. You might
have. Yeah, I couldn't believe that. After that,
I was like, yeah, you got to fail them every time. Don't matter. And after
that, it was like, every time I pull it in, do the whole
thing. And it always so irate. You made me wait
here. You knew the whole time when you pulled it in and Check Engine Light
and you knew it was going to fail. I can't do anything about it.
Sorry. I have to fail. And I was already upset about
having to do that to somebody, and then, of course, I get the backlash from
that. It's like this sucks. Double slapper. Yeah. I don't want to do this.
This is terrible to people. Yeah. I still do it sometimes.
Yeah. Then I tell them, hey, look,
it's this at the end of the report. It tells you what the lights on
for, right. And you can give them an idea, and then they're like, okay, well,
we'll reschedule and we'll bring it back. All right, cool. Yeah.
So to me, it brings me more work. I see with
you if it was a test, only you don't get any work, so
it opens a door for more work. Well, that's a good thing about
being in California, because most of that stuff people wouldn't fix anyway. Yeah. You
think anybody's going to fix an EVAP code in freaking Minnesota? Hell, no.
EGR code? No. I don't even know what that is. Check Engine Light has been
on for the last ten years. Why would I fix that? I don't know.
Ideal? Yeah. I mean, I guess I could see that on the other side of
it, but, man, it's a tough gig. Especially, I don't know, I
guess if you had someone dedicated to just doing that day in and day out,
$50 a pop, I can see that being some gravy work, but
I think I just got a little burnt on the deal.
Starting as early as I was and as inexperienced as I
was, like, getting the short end of the stick at the same time, I
don't know. I got my license at I
was 20. Yeah, that's about time I got it. It was a lot
easier for you than it was for me, though. Probably
to get my inspector license. Super
easy to get the repairs. We
went to go take the test together, failed twice, and then
I went the third time, and I failed again. I
guess it was a little harder. Well, I had that when it
was what was the classifications back then? It was like A one A
or one B or something like that. A one AA. And l one. No, those
are the ASCs. But, like, the actual Smog license, because
they don't have it set up like they do now with the way they have
the test and then the repair license, it's like all in one.
No, it's not all in one. No. I mean, it was all in one for
me. Yeah, it was a different time. And then I had the
enhanced endorsement. So I could do the enhancement. The Dino.
Yeah, it was a lot. It was, like, almost three
grand at 19 years old. I mean, every penny. I had to
go to this school, and by the school I meant it was like
somebody's shop. And I went in the back of their shop, the back of their
garage with like, four other dudes, and we're like, what the fuck is this? It
was like some sort of like I don't know what it was, like training
thing. I don't know. It was kind of weird. Yeah, I did
that too, down in St. Louis. The back of somebody's shop? Yeah,
St. Louis Auto Repair, I think it was called. Yeah, it was a
weird deal to try to get it and then you had to get the ASCs
too, at the same time. And it was expensive. Yeah, see,
I tried the ACS, didn't work. Then I took the alternative class. Oh, there you
go. With Leonard. Okay. Yeah, your buddy. That's the
guy. There he is. I knew he'd come back
up in conversation organically. Now he's a teacher. Yeah, good for
him. So, yeah, we did that and I
got it and then I did
the bar test. So still making money for
you. That's good. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that's good.
You like the auto repair too. So how did this all
start for you? This is where it gets juicy here. Where did I start?
Yeah. What drove you to buy a
shop, open a shop and just open shop?
Well, it all started probably. So I was at Springstree
Mobile as a night cleaner, I
guess. Clean up all the oil, put restock
oil, and then I started.
Matt Smogg was actually the manager there. So your day to
day was sweep the floors. Yep. Sweep floors,
mop, restock oil, make sure all the tools
were back where they need to go.
I feel like that position has long since
been forgotten. Oh, yeah. Because you were damn good at it a bit.
Oh, yeah, you were damn good.
Yes. I think that position lasted. I was
there doing that part for like three months. Well, not for you, but I think
for the industry as a whole. I don't think you can hire somebody, a kid
that would come in and do that for you anymore. You know what I mean?
I don't know. It just seems like the ways of those days
have long since been forgotten. As far as the new era,
kids yeah. They're not going to come in and sweep the floors at a shop
and come in and like so do I get to build transmissions now or
I've been here for 4 hours. What
you can do start the bottom of a ladder. Bro, I don't even know
what bottom rung that is. I don't think they know there's a ladder anymore. That's
not fair. There's a lot of good people out there that are trying hard. But
you know what I mean? Those days of you having that
job and you said about three months you did that. Yeah.
Then they moved me to days, started busting
tires, and slowly moved into
engine repair stuff. How did that transition work?
Was that something you pushed for or you just made sure
you were there when you needed to be there? You did what you were told
and. They I didn't push for it.
They asked me to move into days and then
slowly started putting me on little jobs, and
they must have seen that I was doing pretty good, so they kept bumping me
up, bumping me up. So you never really had to
have that call. You just organically started moving into
a different position. That's also something that I think needs
to be addressed, too, in the industry.
Yeah. Everybody that comes in is like, you say, when do
I start building this or when do I do the cool stuff? Yeah. When can
I build that hot rod? Yeah, you got to start from the bottom.
Yeah. But I think on the other side of it, too, I think there's too
many owners out there that take advantage of the shop
boy or maybe not promote someone soon enough. I feel like three months is a
pretty nice that's a pretty good little time to have you start from kind of
nothing, because before that, where were
you before even sweeping floors? Why did you initiate that conversation? To
get a job at the mobile station. So
before that, I was actually working at San Miguel
Bakery, and then
the owner of the shop talked to my dad, saying that one of the night
guys was leaving or if he knew anybody that would come
and just clean and yeah, he introduced me
to him. So you didn't really have any sort of, like, drive
to be at a shop? No, just fell into
it. So you had to go from basically
no experience, and within three months, they're like, hey, you know what? Why don't
you start busting tires? See, that's a cool way to
treat that situation. Instead of waiting a year,
like, throw you into the fire, throw it to the wolves, see what he does.
What's the worst that can happen? Just tires,
and he's cleaning the shit out of this place.
What was the drive? Just because it was a job and
it's like you're making money so you can do the right thing. Yes. So I
had bought my first car then, so I needed money,
and they were
consistent. They kept me for four nights out of the
week and one day out of the weekend, and it
just progressed to five days a week,
and eventually I got to six days a week. I only had one day off.
Making money, though. Yeah. Paying my car payment. That's all I was worried
about. Yeah, I was just worried about money. Making sure the car was paid. That
was the motivation. Do you ever look at anybody else in the shop be like,
oh, man, I want to be like, that guy or you're just grinding away? No,
I was more focused on my cool car, I guess I
could say my high school car. Just wanted to make sure you had money to
pay for. Yeah. And leave. So you started breaking tires. How'd that transition
go from breaking tires to the next evolution?
That's the jump from the tire breaking. Sure.
Someone can pretty much automate someone kind of monkey work, right?
Yeah, it's not hard. I mean, it's hard, but it's not
skilled. Yeah. The diagnosing is it takes a
little bit of skill to learn those damn tire machines, but to make that jump
from that to start working on the engine stuff, that's where it takes a little
bit of knowledge. So, did someone take you under the wing, teach you that
stuff? Kind of self taught. I mean, there was no Internet
back then. No, it was pretty much self taught and
asking a lot of questions, so
yeah. Good thing. I had some people that would answer the phone
when I had a question. They'd tell me what to check, which
route I should go, and that's pretty much how I
got through the first part of it. But what
motivated me was a brake job that my dad
did that was like it was on a, I think,
91 454. He
took it in, and I think they charged him, like, $900
to put on brakes on a truck, and I was like, I think I can
do that. We'll go get the parts. They're, what, $60
and yeah, that job in that truck, I remember.
And then he asked me to do the other ones, and then I just slowly
started figuring it out. Yes. He's got a few
trucks for the landscaping stuff, right? Yes. So, helping the
landscaper. Yeah, that's where it started.
That's when I started doing his oil change. Now,
did you do that to save him money, or did you see it as, like,
an opportunity to make money? Like, wow, that was a $900 job. I could
probably do that. Was that, like, trying to save him money,
or was that, like, the motivation? Like, wow, I could really make money if I
learn this more? Yeah, no, it was to save him the
money. Okay. Yeah. I feel like that's how a lot of us start.
We see how much we want cool cars. We want nice stuff. We want to
help our family and friends out. And then it's like, I can
probably help you with that. I think that mindset sticks around for too
long, though, because to this day, it's like you're still trying to help
people and run a business.
You get in for the right reasons, but then you got to realize you got
to lose that mindset. But I feel like we all start from
there. I can't afford to pay someone to fix my car, so I got to
figure out how to do it myself. And for you. I can't have my dad
spend that kind of money when I can do it. Yeah, it's interesting
to think that. I think most of us get into this
field. It just lands that way. It's like, I can figure that out.
Hey, dad, save that money. Yeah, like you said, I think I could figure
it out. And then when you do it's, like, what's next? Yeah, go on to
the next one. That wasn't that bad. Yeah, pretty
easy. Yeah, that's where it started.
From that point forward, what was the educational path for
as far as you learn how to do breaks? I mean, in this
day and age, you can Google anything. Right. But back then it was not the
same. It doesn't seem like that long ago. But I guess
it was 2011.
Yeah. So you still had Internet? I didn't have
Internet when I first got into it. But you had a little
bit more than I did. I think you at least had dial up or something,
but yeah. AOL, to say the least, asking questions. Right. And
everybody but was there any schooling or anything that went along with it? It was
just kind of like trial by fire. Yeah, it was just
no schooling until
I moved Matt Smog. And then Matt
actually offered to pay for the school to get my Smog
license. Yeah, that's cool. So that's
where the first part of the schooling came in. That was basically just get your
Smog license just to make more money, though. Yes. There wasn't a drive. Like, I
can't wait to be a Smog tech because it's like, it's the coolest thing in
the world. I can make how much more if I did this?
Yeah. So he's like, hey, get your Smog and dollar raise. All right,
cool. That's what a dollar did, eh? A
dollar? It all took back then. Get your ass in school. I'll do that.
If you're paying for it, I guess it's a free dollar if you don't have
to put nothing out for it. No. Doesn't seem like a very good raise
for becoming from a GS to a Smog tech,
but that's all right. It is what it is. Yeah. More money is more
money. Well, when I moved to Matt's, I was already I guess you
can call a parts changer. Yeah. So he was a parts
hanger? Yeah, some people call him a Smashy bear.
Why is that? You just smash parts on the okay.
Yeah, that's what I was doing. Some of the other people that I know of
call them smashy bears. Smashy bears? They just smash parts.
I don't know what that means. It sounds cool.
Yeah. He did all the diagnosing and it was just me and
him for like a year,
a year and a half. He would do diagnosing and I would just change
everything. And then a year and a half later, then we got
Carlos. I believe it was just the three of
us for a while. The early beginnings.
Learned a lot though. Oh, yeah. I watched
him do most of every diagnosis,
and then that's where I picked everything up. You had a lot of side work
too, right? Yeah. I mean, that's kind of how you've
made yourself to this point, right? I mean, just keeping your head down at a
shop, you wouldn't have been able to build the clientele that you have now.
So what was the incentive of the side work? Extra
money. Okay. I
mean, obviously that's probably why everybody does it, but some
people have different motivations to do that, and I think side
work is a big one right now. We can touch back on that in a
minute. But yeah, it's just interesting, the side
work. You got a good shop, you're at a good shop, they're growing, you're making
a good paycheck, but you still have the incentive to do side
work because. You weren't getting paid enough. No, the side work
went back to the same trying to save
people money so I knew what they would pay at the
shop. Oh, I see. And then it was people
that they need a little bit of help. So I'd be like, hey,
I'll do it after work. It'll be way cheaper and I'm
helping you. Right. You were, in a sense, poaching
clients to help save the money. But of course, at this time, this day
and age, or this time in your life, you didn't realize what it costs to
run a shop. Right. It's kind of like
you're just trying to help. Yeah. And then most of the people that
I would do it for, it'd be friends. It
started with friends and then a. Friend of a friend and a friend of a
friend of a friend, and. Then it just got bigger and bigger and it grew
very fast. So what was the
tipping point for you to leave that shop that you were
at at Matt's? Once you decided to leave? What was
the turning point? Was that you like, seeing,
wow, I can do this on my own, I got enough work. I
don't have time to be at work now because I have so much side work.
No, I actually enjoyed working for
he. Everybody's got his up and downs,
but I liked working for Matt. But
my turning point was when I actually got let go.
Or working for Matt. Okay. So I got let go. At that
point, I knew most of the
stuff that I was capable of doing. So that's when I just
said, let's go. We're going to do this shit
out of parents garage. Whatever happens, happens.
Take us back a little bit. Where was the turning point for him to let
you go? Obviously, you're growing, you're motivated, you're dedicated,
things are you've made a lot of progress in the last three years at
this. What he
had to let me it I was doing
towing on the side besides working for
Matt. And I was doing tows either on
my lunch after work, before work, and I would drive my
tow truck to work. And then the landlord
didn't like the tow truck being parked in the
premises. Oh, I assume so.
I guess he asked Matt something one night or
one day. And then the landlord was there when I pulled up in the
truck on lunch. And he's like, can't be parking there. So
me and him got into it. So that put Matt in a bad spot.
So he told Matt like, hey, you gotta do something about this. So then that's
when I got let go. I can see. So definitely put someone
in a bad.
It was that was the end of everything. Yeah. And you bounced
around a little bit after that too. I did. So I started well after
that. I did a bunch of side work
out of my parents garage and then I went with my
cousin, did a little bit of work there. Then I went over with
you. So basically I was
trying to find a location to where I could work on these side
jobs because I was just getting kicked out of everywhere else.
And then eventually I was like, I think I can do it. I found a
spot for sale and then I hopped all over it. Yeah,
that's a pretty big cut too there. Feel like there's a lot in the process
between bouncing around and trying to find a home and then I'm
just going to buy this whatever. Yeah,
I didn't think I could do it. That was a long shot for
me. Who's going to do that?
I didn't think it was going to happen. Yeah, how's that mindset work though?
I think a lot of people kind of get stuck in that position too, that
you're in. And they're doing the exact same thing. Working out of a storage container,
working out of a storage facility, like
whatever. They can find somebody's working out of a shed, right. Whatever you can
find. Mom's house, dad's house, freaking whatever. Whoever's got a
garage, right? And a lot of people are that, but they can't make that
pivot to invest to buy
something. I mean, right now it's around here. You'Re not going to find anything. But
even just to look at, I'm going to open a shop and rent it. And
they look at that payment like, oh man, I don't know if I can afford
it. I was scared
when I went into looking at this building.
I think I had like $5,000 in my bank account.
And that was it. That was all I was rolling with. I was
just moving in 5000. That was it. So then I talked
to some people and people borrowed some money, talked
to the realtor and he's like, yeah, we could probably make it work.
So how did that process really kind of lay out? Day
one, you found the shop, you want to buy it, right? I mean, I
obviously remember that whole situation. You and I were both in
the same spot. I remember you going through it. But how does
that play out for you, making that next step
and the obstacles along the way? Is
there a certain obstacle or just play through the whole process? Like, what was
going through your mind every day? You're going to have to
borrow money. What came up along the way that was your biggest
obstacle? The biggest
obstacle that I ran into while doing all the
paperwork for that place was proving
that I was still having income coming in.
That was like, the biggest one. So
we just made some shit up, to be honest. We just
wrote it up and we sent it in. We were crossing our
fingers. It flew because at that point in time, it's not like you had an
established business. No. You didn't have a DBA. You didn't have
anything. Right. It was just cash. Right. You didn't have a point of sale
system. Like, there was working on people's car where you can and it
was all cash. Picking it up from their house, dropping it back off, cash
just down and dirty.
No profit margin numbers, no parts.
You just give me the part and I'll put it on, it'll be $250.
Right? Exactly. And it was like that for
a little over a year, so a little over a year. I couldn't prove any
income. My last income was Matt. As far as
solid, like paychecks, you
made the transition from being a tech to owning a
shop. And in this whole time period, we're talking,
was it about five year time span from when you started at Mobile until
you found the shop and put an offer out on it? What's that time
span? So I started at
Mobile in 2006,
and I bought the building in
2015. Okay, so that was
about nine years. Nine years? Yeah. So we had just enough
experience to be wet behind your yeah. As far as
automotive repair, but as far as
running a business, you just walked in. It was you.
And who wants to help? Yeah, me and
Mauricio and the the two
gremlins that stuck with me
everywhere I went on my side. Oh, okay. So you had a couple guys that.
Were I had two guys helping me out. Helping out on this one? Yeah, one.
Manny. He knew what he was doing. Mauricio
was learning. He was like me
cleanup boy. Yeah. For whatever kind of cleanup you needed.
How did it paying them going through? So
how they got paid was by the job. So whatever they did
and then I don't remember what I was charging back then,
but they would get $20 an
hour. I know Manny was beginning $20 an hour per job,
but it was book time. It wasn't
the amount of hours you i. Mean, you didn't have like a computer program or
software for quoting jobs. You just a water pump on
a Chevy truck. How do you find out
how much you should be paid for that at that time? So at that time,
I still had
access to a repair program.
So you had a little bit of something going on. Yeah, so I would look
it up and then it would tell me labor and all that. So I
did have that. Yeah, just something to help. I mean, obviously when
you're paying someone to do a job, you got to know what it's supposed to
take. I did have
that. So moving into moving in, right? You get
the shop and you're moving in. What's that mindset like, how do you.
Oh, man, I was scared. I was like, dude, I got
$4,000 payment coming up. We got to make this shit happen. With
5000 in the bank. With 5000, we only have one month.
Not even a month. No, that didn't
include bills, nothing. So what does that look like?
Going through week one, trying to manage now, you got to
realize, I got to be legit. I got to start getting payroll,
I got to start paying taxes. So the first year
I was steady in work, so I knew I had cars lined up.
But first day we moved in, I
remember we had to clean the place because there was shit
everywhere. So we were there, it
was just cleaning. Right. And then we would clean,
we'd fix a couple of cars, go back to cleaning, painting.
Yeah, it was like that for a solid week. And the
guys were there. They were all helping out. Yeah. So you're not like closing the
shop, cleaning up and then opening up on Monday, right? No, it's like
twenty four, seven, seven days a week there's a car on the lot. We're fixing
it and paint it later. Or paint at the same time.
Yeah. If there's one car, one person is there and two people
are cleaning. If another car came in, one person stopped
cleaning, started fixing a car. Right. Every
day. Every day. There's no time to shut down and try to have a grand
opening. No, never try to do a grand opening. We
did the second year. Okay. And then at
AutoZone was the one that helped out in that
they bought they bought all the drinks, they bought the food,
they sent people out there to help us out. Yeah, that's cool. So
we did a little grand
opening. Day one is like, it's time to start making
money and figuring out as you go. But at the same time you're running a
tow truck too, right? Yeah. So that's something we got to get into a little
bit, too. So meanwhile, all this stuff, you're still towing
cars, and that's a pretty lucrative
source of income for you, right? I mean, that's next to Smogs, I would say
probably one of your biggest poles. Right?
And that's not something where you can schedule it. No, that's
like on the fly. They call, they're on the side of the road, they're
waiting. They're waiting for somebody. And if you're there first and obviously you're
on CHP rotation, too, so there's an accident,
and that's got to be big money for you, right? Yeah, I don't do too
many of. The CHPS, but at the time, I mean, if you're on
rotation, it's like. You got to be there. Drop everything you're doing. No
matter what it is, you got to be there. I think a lot of
people like a linear style of buying a shop,
pay for the shop. These next four days, we're going to clean, we're going
to paint, we're going to open on the fifth day. It's just like
they want this linear process. If I'm going to do these
jobs on these days or I'm going to schedule in the morning and then
I'll do the work in the afternoon. It's nice for people to have
that sense of
keeping things organized in their mind, like having processes in
place. And I think the way you did it
is obviously nowhere near having any sort of
plan vision, so there was no theme to it
as far as keeping yourself organized. Get
in there. Whatever happens, happens. Someone calls me, I got to
go get it. Someone pulls up, drop everything you're doing. Yeah, that's what I was
doing. So if somebody broke down, I'd be the
one to leave to go get them, and then I would bring them back. Obviously,
you didn't have an essay, you didn't have a service advisor at the time. You
just had someone answering the phone. Maybe even no, it was all through my cell
phone, all through me. So you're on the road towing. Yeah, I got to bring
this car in right now. And of course, I think at that point in time,
too, the clients you had at that time were probably a little more
pushy than they are now. Yeah, some of
them were. I still got a lot of my clients that
were with me since I was bouncing around. Yeah, I still have most of them.
That's good. But obviously most of them at the time is like, you were the
go to guy. You were motivated at the time. You didn't have all this other
stuff going on, so you could literally help them at any point. But now
it's like, hey, I got bills to pay, you're number two now. And I'm sure
a lot of them didn't like that. A lot of them
did leave. I do have most of them still. But, yeah,
you can't help me anymore at a drop of a hat, like when I need
you, whether that be something with towing and that's got
to be tough, too, to try to figure out what's more important at the
time on the financial side of it.
How do you look at that every day? Was that something that you
even thought about as far as, like, okay, I got this repair in, or,
I got to go do this tow. What's the calculation? Like, what pays
more money or is, like, this car is in the shop, so I don't need
to worry about it. I can push this off. I'm just going to go pick
up the car. It was just like, that's exactly how I thought. I was like,
dude, the more cars I have here, the more money is secured. All about car
count. Get as many on the lot as you can. Figure out the money later.
Yes. So I figured, well, the way I thought back then
was, if I have a car on the lot, I
know it's money sitting there. So I was just going to go out and grab
whatever I can, and then when I didn't have anything to go
get, that's when I started fixing what was already there. I see.
And then I did talk to the customers.
A lot of them understood, like, okay, cool. I mean, you're two, three
days. All right. And they were lenient. There was a couple of people
were like, no, I can't wait. Then come get your car.
Yeah. How do the financials work
in the very early ages, the very beginnings? Right.
I mean, it's something I still work on. I mean, everybody works on it every
day. You're lying if you say you're not, like, looking at your
financials every week, every month, every quarter, trying to figure out how to
tweak this and tweak that. But in the very early beginnings, you don't have
the money to ask for help. You don't have the money to even stop and
think about it. How do you look at a car?
Does your price change? Day one? When you moved into that
shop, did you know instinctively, like, I need to start charging more? Or are
you in that mindset where, like, if I charge more, I'm going to lose
all these people, and I'm going to lose everything? Well,
when I went into the building, everything
stayed pretty much the same as I was working out of my parents garage.
I didn't raise my prices. Everything stayed the same.
After, I believe, three months, I did go up a little
bit. I think I went up, like, $10 and just
slowly started going up, going. Up until what was the motivation
behind you doing that? Bills. Bills were racking
up pretty fast. Yeah. What was your calculation? Was it
like, I'm just going to bump it up to something that doesn't seem too much,
so you don't want to scare anybody away and just kind of see if that
makes any more money? Yeah, that's exactly what it was. Okay, that's
fair. Like you said, I didn't want to go up too high to where I
was going to start scaring customers. I think a lot of people look at it
and they're like, I don't know if I want they don't want to up their
labor rate because they want to scare people away. I think that's the number one
thing. But the second one I feel a lot of people come across is they
don't want to up it because they don't know how. What do I do? I
do a dollar. $5, $10, $15.
Where do you just up it to? And they think there's a fancy calculation, which
there is, but whether or not that helps or not, I don't know. Sometimes it's
just like, by the seat of your pants, right? And you're just like, I'm going
to bump at $10. At that time, did you know how many hours
of work you had put in the month before? And you were like, well, if
I do $10 and I had 30 hours of work last week, I'll make an
extra $300. Was there anything like that going on? It was just
like, I need an extra $10, I'll do
$10, and we'll. See where it goes. Where it goes. How was the parts? Was
that something that was being marked up that you kept a close eye on? Yeah.
So parts I did. I mean, the local part stores gave.
Me credit, but as far as your parts markup,
so obviously before that, you were just selling parts at cost,
right, and just charging labor, like, go get me your part, and I'll just
charge you to put it on. Right. Was that like, the main? So now you're
in a shop, and these people have this I don't know, this
expectation of the same thing. They know how much the part they can go down
to the part store for, and so they're not going to pay you any more
for that because they've been working with you for the last two years. The last
water pump, you just charged me what it was at the part store. Did you
start charging more for your parts right away, or
how long did it take before you start putting a margin on them? The margin
on the parts I was already doing from before, so
that just stayed up, and then I used that. So you weren't given parts
at not. No, I was at the beginning of my
parents'house. Okay. After that, when Manny
and Mauricio started working, that's when my parts I
started making money off the parts. Okay. How did that conversation
go? How did you learn or how did
that come across? How did it come across? I needed extra money. Okay. And
then every time I would buy a part, I would see what I would pay,
and then I would see what they would sell it for. Okay. The list.
The list price. So I just started going off of the list price. Okay.
So it wasn't very much, but that's what I started doing. Yeah. I
mean, sometimes it's more, sometimes less. I mean, they give you something. So you
just went off the receipt. It was like, this is the list price, I'll take
the list then. Yes, exactly what I was doing.
Was that something you were tracking in the first year once you've got into the
shop, or you're just like, I'm just going to keep it like that and then
just worry about the labor? Yeah, I didn't worry about it. No, I wasn't tracking
nothing. Just keep it rolling. Now on the tow side of it, was
that like an hourly thing or how did you make the income? The
way I did the towing was based on location
where they were at and where they were going. And then I would just base
it off my hourly rate as I was working at the shop.
Oh, I see. So you just took your shop rate. And inclined it into the
total. Just Google mapped it and whatever it. Took to get to them and
whatever it took to get to where they were going. I see. And then
it was point to point. Simple, keep it
simple, but obviously for a while, a little bit of
a struggle. Oh, yeah, I'm still
struggling. Not lucrative. Well, this has been
so you got about another two or
three years into it now. Where at since you bought the
shop? You got it in 2011, right? 2015. 2015.
So we're in what, 2023? Yeah. Those, what, eight years?
About eight years, yeah. Eight years in this thing. Yeah.
I'm surprised. Still there.
How have things changed for you between the
day you got the keys and you walked in to now
in your mind, what have you seen grow,
change, stay the same? Your mindset
as far as being motivated, how is it
personally, financially, and business wise changed for you? So now
the way I think about it is it's not money wise, I
guess I could say. I mean, it's always money, but now I think of it
like, oh, now I got people to take care of. I got to make
sure they have enough work
so we can all make money. So now I know
there's four people depending on me.
I hear that, I hear that. So,
yes, we do need to charge what we need to
charge. But that's like the
biggest one. Back then, it was like, I need to charge or,
I need this much money to pay my bills, or I need this much
to pay mortgage or the parts. So literally,
month. Month, literally just, I need to make four grand to make
mortgage. Paid it. Let's go on
day two of the next month. All
right, let's do this again. Like that for a whole
year. That's grinding. That's called grinding. A lot of
people have that in them to keep that going through. But I mean, there's got
to be motivation other than money at this point in time to keep it
going. Yeah. So motivation at this point in time
is I don't want to be doing this
forever. I want to be able to leave and leave that place
running for the guys that are there. Right.
Was that ever a motivation when you first so what was the mindset walking
in day one, owning a shop, doing it? Yeah, day one,
was. That always a
goal? I'm going to buy this place because I want it to be self sufficient.
I want to be an absentee owner. Was that like the
vision when you. First moved in or was no, that vision came
later. So the vision when I went in there was, I'm going to come in
there, I'm going to start fixing stuff. I'm going to get people to
know me. I'm just going to pay my mortgage, pay my
mortgage. And that was it. Yeah, have fun with it.
No vision. It's like, whatever. We're just going to smash in
there. We're going to go in there and we're going to fuck shit up. They
call that smashy bears earlier. Yeah. There you
go. You just get in there and start making stuff happen. All of a sudden
there's a paycheck like, smashy bears. Cool. I'm not making money,
but I don't know anything. And I ate.
Yeah. So we good. We're good. I got food
and everything's paid. What's happening next month?
When did that vision start changing for you and
realizing, like, you own the place, you run the
place, you can't be a technician? I think
that is the biggest for me, anyway, that's been my biggest still challenge,
is realizing I am no longer a technician. I put
myself in the position where I own the place, I run the place, and I
have to do that. Yeah. Otherwise, everybody
shows up and they have no leader because I'm too busy
fixing cars. And it's hard
to wrap my mind around making that transition. But
for you, you moved in, you had a couple of guys
obviously not like they're career technicians,
but they're not with you anymore as far as working in the shop, right?
Correct. And you've gone through a few different replacements in the
meantime. And now you got some guys that are there that want to be there,
that are doing the work you need them to do. You are getting the idea
of like, wow, I need to get systems and operations, but when does that
change for you? Where it's like, okay, I need to stop working
to take care of them.
Was there a pivotal moment when that came to you? Or is it just slowly
getting to the point where you just burned yourself out and you're like, I can't
do this and I need people?
So that I noticed when I had a
crew of I think I had
six people at one point, and that's when
volumes were high. And we got
a contract through Transit Pros to move
insurance claims for towing. Okay. So
that's when it changed. That's when I knew I had to
put stuff in place for these people
to go do. I couldn't be stuck fixing cars.
And that happened in, I think, 2018.
So it was the tow gig that kind of pushed you in the direction of
actually taking more of a leadership ownership role
when you're like, I had. Six people to control, and
yeah, I just didn't have any time to be stuck under a hood anymore.
I had to be on the phone. I had to be on the computer
and telling people what to do. Yeah, you had six drivers
out, basically. And obviously, you can't be in all those six places at
once. No. So I was, like, constantly tracking them. Pure
necessity. There's no way I can do this. No, you can
fix six cars or six cars pulled up to your shop. You could probably repair
all those. I'll get to those. I don't need someone here. I can
do that. But you can't be in six places at once, so that's an
interesting way where
the necessity forced you to turn into somebody that you had no
idea that you were going to be. Right? Because you didn't really think about it
when you first moved in. Like, the responsibilities
of being an owner leader. I mean, obviously the responsibilities are there
when you sign the loan documents, you're. Responsible
for this payment. But for you,
you cleaned up, you broke down tires, you worked at a smog shop for a
little while. You got your smog license. You're like, that's all I need to do.
Right? You didn't really see the behind the scenes. Obviously. We all know there's something
going on behind the scenes, but I don't think we really realize the
enormity of what that is behind the scenes. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Nobody and we figure it out every day,
but to go in there and when I got this place, I kind of had
an idea of what I needed to do as far as being an
owner and making that transition. I bought it. I
was there, and I saw those roles, and you kind of started from basically
nothing and just found a shop, and you're like, I'm just going to
take all my side work and work here. This looks good.
Exactly what it was. This looks like kicking me out. Everybody's got
a landlord right here. I'll be my own. Yeah. And it's like you're, in
a way, I guess, forced into it. I
don't know if that's a strange way to look at it, but
you're pretty much forced into buying a building, which is strange
because a lot out there want to buy a building. They can't find
nothing. They want to buy a shop, they want to open a shop,
and they don't. And it's interesting what the mindset
is between that and where you started and where you ended
up. You just had a drive that was like, this needs to happen and it's
going to happen. There was no no, right? And there still isn't a no for
you. It's just this is what needs to happen. This is going to happen.
And I don't care what you say pretty
much. And it wasn't like, driven by an automotive background
necessarily, right? No, it was just like, this is the path that I was put
on. This is working for me, and I'm going to keep doing it and you're
not going to stop me. Right. That's the bottom line.
It's still like that till this day. And it's
interesting. I mean, maybe not having the emotional attachment
to the auto industry to begin with maybe changed that a little
bit for you. Maybe a lot of people are so scared of failing because they
love this industry so much, they never take that risk to make
that next jump. You know what I mean? Yeah, I can see that. I
mean, obviously, I don't want to take light of the fact that you bought a
shop with $5,000 in your back pocket. It takes cajones. I don't
care who you are.
I was desperate, I guess. But if you look back on it, if you had
the emotional attachment that you do now to the auto industry, would you do it
again? I probably would, yeah.
That's fair. But you know what I'm saying? Now you have this
attachment and now you know,
and you obviously like the industry. You love the industry. You've stayed in it this
long no matter how many people throw stones at you.
And you just keep doing it, waking up, doing it the next day anyway. So
there's got to be a little passion for the fact of knowing how to do
this in this field. Right. Meeting the people in this industry, learning
how to fix the cars. Yeah, it's what drives us all to help
everybody to learn this stuff and to then
take that passion and then think about failing. It makes it
so much worse than if you're blind to the whole thing. Like, I don't know,
I'm making money. Let's just see what happens here. If it fails,
it fails. I don't care. But you're not emotionally attached to the industry at that
point in time. You're just like, hey, if this works, it works. If not, I
can fail. I got something else I can go do. I'll go back to the
bakery or whatever. But now you're like, you're so involved
in it and invested in it, in my opinion. I feel like
it makes it harder to make that next jump to think about
failing, because I think about it a lot too. What if I bought a building?
What if I hired another tech and that was one too many? What if I
have six guys on payroll and all of a sudden the economy takes a turn?
What if, what if, what if? And it's like, I'm so invested and intertwined
in this industry as a whole. If I were to
fail now, it would hurt so much more than when I was just starting
out. Right. It's just that emotional attachment. It's like,
well, of course I could go find something else to do. I'm not old.
Yeah, I got other skills. I got skills. I can do other stuff. But it's
like everywhere you go, like, oh, what's up with the shop? It's like, oh, I
actually failed and shut down. Like, what? Everybody
knows me as the transmission guy. And it's like, you you're the small guy
that does the tows. Like, if you stop towing it's, like, no one would know
what to do anymore. Yeah. Freak
out a little bit now. Who do I call? And that, of course, if you
were pushed out of it, it would be so much worse to have to deal
with that emotionally or mentally. Yeah. I don't know.
It's interesting the stupid things we do when we're young. And it's
amazing how some of us get out of it. And there's a lot of stories
just like yours where they don't make it.
Yeah. Because all the older guys that have been doing
it for a while, it's like, dude, you got like five years. Five years is
your mark. Like at five years, you'll know if you're going to make it or
you're not going to make it. Yeah. The infancy period,
supposedly. That's what I was told. I didn't
know. Yeah. I was like, fuck it. If I make it, I make it. I'm
making money. It's working right now. Let's keep going. Yeah. Whatever happens,
happens. Who cares about five years? Five
years is so far from now. Yeah, it's like forever. And now it's been, what,
seven, eight years now? Yeah, eight years ago. I mean, they say that the
infancy is five years, but I don't know. I feel like that's just a whole
bunch of business nonsense, probably. I don't know. I
never felt it. I don't know. I mean, I've been up and down. Up and
down, maybe in the but it's so
easy now to market yourself. Social media.
Yeah. It's just so much easier to get back on your feet when something
goes south or down. And the volume of cars, the
volume of people in this industry is never going to be a shortage of vehicles.
But in the business sense, I don't know if there's maybe another industry
that that applies to more. But like, in the auto industry, as long as you
get up every day and you just get to work
five years, you're going to fail. There's always going to be another car. Like, you
really got to be doing something wrong to not have a car come to your
door the next day. You know what I'm saying?
There's just so many out there, and there's so much different things to
do you can specialize in. And it's like yeah. The only way
you're going to fail in five years. If you burn yourself out and you start
getting into drugs or alcohol or something like that, I feel like maybe that's what
it is. Like two, three years in, you're like, wow, I'm doing it, I'm
making money. And then you just start coasting,
maybe. I don't know, you just lose the. Drive, lose the motivation.
How do you stay motivated after that much and not
seeing your bank account grow for years and years and years. And you're just like,
stay motivated? I mean, obviously you could have failed and you could have walked away
from them. I feel like the mortgage really ties you down. It's like a marriage
opposed to, like, a rent where it's like, you know what, I'm not doing this
anymore. I'm not paying you rent anymore. If you were renting, would you have
kept doing what you're doing now? If I was
renting, say, instead of. You buying that shop, you found a shop to
rent and now you're three. Or four years I would have been kicked out,
dude, everywhere I went, I got kicked out. Yeah, everywhere I went. But
beyond, beyond, I probably wouldn't be doing this.
Beyond you getting kicked out, would you have quit
or this isn't worth it? If you had the
same payment but instead of mortgage it was rent,
would that have been a driving force to get you, this isn't worth
it, like, three or four years in? Or would you have just kept pushing it?
Like, no, I'm going to keep pushing it. I'm going to eventually find something to
buy. It could have pushed me away.
So, yes, the mortgage has kept me there because
I know I can do something else if that fails, I
know I can do other stuff. If the auto industry
fails on me, if it was rented, I think I probably would
have gave up. Yeah, it would have been way too much.
Would have been kind of no point. So having that there and
knowing that's your backup and knowing that this will be mine as long as I
keep showing up every day and doing work, huge motivator, right? Oh,
yeah, for sure. And then all the upgrades I've been able to
do definitely made me. Yeah, it's
hard. I mean, it's easy to pay rent when
you're successful and you're doing good. Well, it is what it
is. It'd be nice if it was going to something else, but to be
going into the red and then taking money out of your own pocket to pay
rent on a shop, that's not making like you're paying to be
there. Yeah, there's no way.
No giving somebody else money to show up. No, not a chance.
I would have started figuring something else. Out, like, no, I'm not doing that now.
I would have focused on the towing. Probably
would have got more guys again, because that
year, the 2018 year, when we had the. Big fire
up north in Chico. We were stationed up there for
three months, and I mean, those guys were just killing it over there.
That year was really good. Solid year.
Yeah. So at that point, that probably would have been a tipping point for you.
I'm going to keep paying rent. I'm just going to get a storage yard. And
just when we were doing that, I
had six guys up there, and then I had two guys at the
shop. And then I was just doing all
the running back and forth. I had two trucks break
down, so I had to run up, grab one, leave one for those guys that
keep going the next day, bring the broken one back, fix it,
and then ship it back up when it was done.
Crazy. Yeah, it was nuts. And I did that shit
twice. And it was in the middle of the
night. I would take off at 06:00 at
night. I'd be up there at two in. The morning and I
still had to turn around and come back. Right. Towing something back.
Yeah, I towed a truck up and I towed one back.
Right. Towing the whole time. Yeah. It
was like the behind the scenes kind of shit. You said,
nobody knows what the fuck I'm doing. Right. I'm just making sure those guys are.
Able to keep working the next day. And then they call you in the morning.
They're like, my Jimmy hurts. I don't think I'm going to be able to do
this today. You're like, oh, yeah, you're going to get shot, dude.
Make another phone call real quick. Hold on.
Excuse me. What? You're what now? Well, I've been driving
all week and I'm tired.
I don't want to do this today. The smoke is really
bothering me. Yeah, it's a
crazy all night stuff like that. I can't do that
anymore. Yeah, I probably couldn't, but it was good
money. I'm motivated. I'm like,
dude, let's go after it. Right?
Time to get it. Yeah.
Having that kind of being a saving grace,
I guess, as far as the mortgage, is that something you always looked at?
Always kind of drew you back in? As long as
I just make the mortgage, I just keep paying, I'll own it, I'll be able
to do what I want. So it's not really about having an auto
shop then, in a sense. Right. Obviously
now, like you've said, you got to take care of your people, and it's
important to bring in the work to take care of your people. But has
there ever been a vision of, like, I want this to be
the best auto shop in the nation? Or how does the
vision look for you for actually owning that auto shop? Is it just
basically been like a sense of income for you and now you have this responsibility
of taking care of the people that are taking care of you? Or is it
like, I want this to be a really good shop. You know what I'm
saying? There's a difference there. I'm doing it
basically for the community. I guess I could
say I want to be able to help the people,
the locals, because I'm not really advertising for outside. I'm
not looking to grow bigger.
I'm trying to be a good shop for the locals, I assume, and then
trying I know because there's a couple of
bad what do you say?
The mechanics that charge for not doing anything? Yeah.
Subpar those guys, the unethical
ones. Yeah. Just trying to be an honest
trying to be as truthful as I can with everything we
do. So there's a driving force behind actually running the shop. It's not about
just making the income and owning the property. There's definitely
a driving force behind you. To actually give back to the auto industry as a
whole can't help but suck you in. Been this over
a decade for you and now it's like this has become
you. I want to give back. And
it's the same bug that bites us all. It's nice
to help people out and you realize you got to make money doing it
too. And then it's
amazing how it changes in the mindset of going from
not trying to be the cheapest, but you're just trying to help people out and
it's hard to charge someone for. Yeah. You know what I mean?
See someone on the side of the road, pull over and help them because you
know how someone pulls in, they're on vacation with their kids and their wife and
they're going to Disneyland or whatever, they break down, they pull into your shop. You
want to drop everything you're doing and help them, right? Yes.
But then you realize, I can't do that
because that doesn't make me any money. And if I want to do this next
month, I got to charge them for that. I can't
just stop everything I'm doing with these paying customers now and help this guy out.
Even though you want to. You can't be pulling over on the side of
the road when you're on a test drive with someone else's car because you see
someone else broken down on the side of the road but you want to and
you want to help them.
I don't have a word for it. But it's hard to
be put in that position because that's the reason why you started. The whole reason
why you started is to help. And now you realize
the only way you can keep doing it is by not helping. Isn't
that weird? Yeah, not helping or I mean, if you do
help, your time is money at that point.
You're making a living off of it. Right? Yeah.
It's weird how that changes
very slowly, but you quickly understand what it takes to actually make that
happen. It's like what other
having multiple sources of revenue helps a lot.
Right. But if you were to look back and see
where you started at and what you're charging. Now
you've become the shop. Now, that when you
started, you were trying to get everybody away from, right?
In a sense, yeah. You were doing the side work because you didn't want them
to go to a shop, but now you've become the shop that you were doing
the side work to keep everybody out.
And I see it with some of my employees now
they got a family member, and
they don't bring it into the shop because of that. Right. Like
how it's too expensive, let me do it after work kind of thing. So I'm
like, hey, dude, now I see where I was.
And that's why I wanted to touch back to the side work. And now we're
back to the side work conversation I wanted to bring up later. Now here we
are. We landed on we're on the rock. Yeah. So
that does not bother me one bit. No, it does
not. So when they say, hey, I'm going to do it after work, more power
to you, dude. If you want to use my tools, go for it.
And if they want to stay there late, go for it, and it doesn't
bother me at all. There's plenty of cars out
there for everybody. Yeah. The side work is a big controversial topic.
As far as having your techs do side work,
I don't think it's all about paying them enough. They say, well, if you pay
them more, then they won't do the side work. But I think it's more than
that. Yeah, they'll still do it. Yeah, but it's not financially
driven. No, of course it is. It's nice to make the extra money, but like
you said, it's more about just helping somebody else out. That's not in
the position to pay correct. The shop rates.
That's why it doesn't. So when I see my employee
or I see like, this happened last week,
his cousin's car or his AC stopped working. They
ordered the stuff. He didn't have the money to pay for it through the
shop. So he asked, hey, can I do it after work? Sure. But they're
like, hey, we're going to buy the parts through you. I was like, okay, cool.
I'll make a little bit of money. You want to stay late? You want to
use the shop? I mean, go for it. I still think of it as
me helping him help his cousin out. So I'm
still helping down the road. Does
it bother me? My answer is no. Not even a little bit. A
big it's a big topic. A lot of guys, I've heard
they will fire someone if they find out their text or jones at work. Yeah,
I've heard that, too. And I'm like,
Maybe they see you different. I don't know. Yeah, I see it
because I went through there. But you also don't see it as, like, them
making income or stealing work from you because you
realize they don't have the money to pay you no matter what.
Even if they were to say, no, it needs to go through the shopper, I
can't do it. Well, they're going to probably find someone else to do it cheaper,
right. So it's going to get done by somebody else regardless.
And who knows who that Joe Blow is, right?
Who knows? Maybe not do it right. Whatever.
So they're not going to pay for your shop rate anyway, so what's the point
of trying to milk a dry cow?
Yeah, they're not going to get anywhere. There's nothing left
there. There's nothing to squeeze. And so that's how
I look at it, too. It is damaging to the industry
to an extent where these customers or clients,
they get accustomed to this rate, this side work, where they're
getting charged $50 an hour and the work is good.
You guys are talented. They do the same work after hours that they do during
hours at the shop. So it's not like it's unskilled labor. It's
skilled labor, and it's deeply discounted. And I
think people just get accustomed to that and then they get
sticker shock when they go to an actual auto shop, a facility
that's charging $165 an hour. It's a little bit of a
sticker shock, right. And I think that's what the problem is.
But if they don't have the money, they don't have the money.
And what's that car going to do if it's not fixed by
a qualified technician? So in a sense, the skilled
labor is at least keeping that vehicle on the road. It's at least keeping it
from an unsafe hands, from a kid sweeping floors
that wants to do it on the side and not
know what the hell he's doing. I mean, luckily for you, you had
trucks that your dad had and you were able to learn on them. So if
something went wrong, you knew about it right away and you could fix it. But
you think about the kids that are out there doing that, and they're like, oh,
I'll make $50 an hour doing breaks, and they have no idea what they're doing,
and they don't care to know what they're doing. They're just trying to make some
extra money on some random person's vehicle.
That's way worse for the industry than side work
from the guys at the shop. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I
go back and forth with it. I don't
have the same mindset as you, but I'm definitely not as extreme as to
say I don't want that at all. There's
a little bit of that, like everyone should just take
their vehicle to a shop to make sure it's done correctly and that we promote
the industry and that I can pay my technicians as much as I
possibly can. That's my goal. The more cars I can get
here, the more work for them, the more I'm comfortable increasing their
rate, the more knowledge they get, so the more I can increase their rate.
And that's how I see it. So the side work pulls that away,
but I have yet to see a dent in the workflow.
But that's just in my mind of like, what if what if
this happens? And it's like, well, that's not going to happen. And then the other
side of it, now you got your guys doing this side work, and now they
can't show up to work on time, or they're tired because they worked all
night, and now they're not motivated, and they're not, like, sharp and ready
to go the next day. But also, it's like we went all went through
that. You're driving up to freaking
NorCal all night. Come back, run the shop,
buck up, get it done. I don't care how tired you are.
You're the one that worked all night. And I think that just builds character, right?
As my dad always told me. Yeah, it does. They
say it builds character, I guess. I don't know. Maybe I don't.
Yeah, you'll get super drunk and stay up all night, and then you got to
go to work the next day. That generation is long gone.
You probably only do that once, and. You'D be like, I did that a
lot. I was part of that generation.
I don't care if you up all freaking night, like, you get your ass to
work the next day, it's like, oh, God, I can't let anybody knows up all
night drinking. So you just show up and you just do your thing. But now
everyone calls in sick because they had one too many beers. Like, come on, man.
Yeah, man up, dude. Get the job done.
It builds character.
That's funny. Well, cool. That was quite an
adventure we went on, I think. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Yeah, not
bad from start to finish there. Was it basically for
you? Yeah. It took your whole life and
condensed it down to, like, just under an hour. No shit. Yeah. It
makes you feel like you didn't get to do anything. No mean, you
should. What have you done? What have you done with yourself? It's like
coming down here on work hours and just fucking sit here with you. Yeah, that's
true. And I go back, you got five smocks waiting. Oh, shit. I was going
that long. Holy shit. So we got to take a quick
takeaway.
What's one of the biggest takeaways that you think you've kind of
learned in just the last ten? What do you mean? Takeaways? Just something
that's really stuck with you that's changed, or
maybe something that from starting from sweeping
floors to learning the stuff to buying a shop,
is there something that really stands out to you in your mind as far as
this whole kind of journey that we just went through? As far as what you
might have changed or done differently. Someone maybe in your position right
now, that's like doing the same thing, looking at buying a shop, looking at
renting a shop. Any advice you could kind of give someone in
that similar situation?
Definitely. You got to know what you're getting into.
All these newer cars, it ain't the stuff that I learned back at
Mobile. Right. But I mean, what I mean is stepping into that position
of taking that jump, taking that leap, that
step, I got nowhere to go. You were forced in this situation. Maybe someone's thinking
about and they're not forced in this situation, but they're like, maybe thinking
about doing it. I don't know. I got this. Good job.
Would you incentivize them to make that jump? Would you do it again
if you didn't have to? If I didn't have to, would you. Have still done
it like that? I probably would have done it a little different, but, I
mean, I like the adrenaline. I like to live on the
edge. Yeah. I mean, always on the edge.
That's just me. That's something you enjoy. Yeah. The
thrill to feel like you're going to get
shut down, I guess, but you're smashing through whatever
gets in your way. Okay, that's fair. It's not for everybody, I
guess. No, there's a lot of people that are scared. I mean, I was scared,
but did. That feed yourself, too? The more you
started realizing you're making it next month, you're making it next month, you're making
it? That was like a driving drove me hard.
And then the years just fly by. Yeah. Living on the edge,
yolo.
Nice. You heard? Yes.
So moving into the shop, what would be something that you would have
changed? Moving in, like, organization?
Organization? Yes. Focus on organization. Yes,
definitely. I was scrambling, scroll nuts. But
you probably weren't too worried about it to begin with, right? No, I wasn't.
Now, from looking back, I do see, man, if I was
organized and if I had a system in place,
I think I would have been a little bit better off
versus doing what I was doing. I was just gobbling
whatever came my way. So you mean organizing
workflow or organizing the shop? Organizing or
organizing workflow. Okay. So like I told you before,
I was just collecting cars. I mean,
I was just stacking them up, and if I
organized myself and be like, yo, look, I know I can do
five cars. I'll collect six in case
I finish one early. I still got some, and then just
keep doing that versus collecting 20 to 26
cars, and then they're just sitting there. Yeah, I
can see that being a problem. I can see the mindset of wanting that,
though. I 100% get that. Like,
moving in cars mean money. Car count
means money count. I'm collecting it. So that's all
money. That's exactly what my vision was. But obviously
that goes the other direction. Yeah. It's like I can't get anything
done because I got too much stuff here. That's a good
takeaway. I started getting the city hounding me for cars
again. So if I was organized,
organization would. Have been just, I guess relax a little bit and
realize the cars will come. Don't stress.
Focus on what you can do today. Get that done,
and then line it up for tomorrow. That's a good way
to put it. That's a good mindset to have. I think that's
how most successful shops end up turning to,
you realize, like, I need a schedule. A schedule is the most important thing. And
the sooner you put a schedule in place, the more, like, you said, organized you
become. Then you realize, like, oh, wow, I don't need 40
cars here to be profitable. Just get the ones that
come and then send them on their way. I like it. So, yeah,
that's definitely one of the things I would say. Organization.
Nice. Well, cool. This has been fun.
Do you enjoy yourself? Yeah. Told you it was going to be all about
you. Yeah. When you told me, come do this shit, I was like, what the
fuck? I don't even know what I'm going to talk about. We got to talk
about diapers. You talk for all hour. Talk about diapers.