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My name is Jeff, and I'd like to welcome you on a journey of reflection and insight into the tolls and triumphs of a career in automotive repair.
After more than 20 years of skinned knuckles and tool debt, I want to share my perspective and hear other people's thoughts about our industry.
So pour yourself a strong coffee or grab a cold Canadian beer and get ready for some great conversation.
[00:00:00] Ben Dellaria: Just don't give in to the people that are online that you see doing things. I'm not gonna say you're not gonna be the next star on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. You could be. You could be the next MrBeast or something like that, but build a business and take care of your family and just do things right.
[00:00:36] Jeff Compton: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. So, um... Oh, wait. Good. Yeah, we're recording. Recording. Sorry, we're having a little bit of glitches here, ladies and gentlemen. So, um, tonight with me, joining me, um, is a real power couple within the industry, um, and a very popular channel on YouTube, um, Ben DaLaria and his lovely wife, Jenna, from Three T's Automotive.
[00:00:58] Jeff Compton: How are you guys doing tonight?
[00:01:00] Jena Dellaria: Good.
[00:01:00] Ben Dellaria: Pretty good, man.
[00:01:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Doing
[00:01:01] Ben Dellaria: all right.
[00:01:02] Jeff Compton: Is it hot there?
[00:01:03] Jena Dellaria: Very.
[00:01:04] Jeff Compton: It, it's humid.
[00:01:06] Ben Dellaria: This weather s- it sucks.
[00:01:08] Jeff Compton: Same. Everybody thinks up here it doesn't get, it doesn't get hot, but I mean, we had, this past week's been 80-something, but with the humidity we're pushing 90s, which is a lot.
[00:01:18] Jeff Compton: Is, is, is not enjoyable for August up here, not normal.
[00:01:22] Ben Dellaria: No, and I would suspect it's not enjoyable when you're not used to it all year long.
[00:01:26] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Yeah. Like, we were much hotter, uh, end of July. Like, I had lots of days I'd go out and we'd be over 100, you know- Oh, wow ... on the tarmac, which is hot for Canada. But the, this humidity level now is almost worse because it just, it's heavy in the air.
[00:01:43] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Yeah, you walk outside, you can't breathe, and you sweat within seconds.
[00:01:46] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And I heard you, Ben, talking about, like, you were saying you were feeling your age the other day. Like, the, it was really beginning to feel like the heat for you was making you think about, you know, going away from the mobile side and, and, and into a traditional what we would call brick-and-mortar.
[00:02:03] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:03] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Um, when you started this journey, did you think you'd ever get there?
[00:02:07] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I did. It was always what I wanted. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, even I remember being, when being in school in the, what, 2001, 2002, I, you know, telling everybody, "I'm gonna open a shop one day. I'm gonna open a shop one day."
[00:02:22] Ben Dellaria: And then of course, you know, when the time had come, COVID was here and-
[00:02:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:02:27] Ben Dellaria: ended up mobile, and it's just kinda like one of those things. It's like, well, you know, you get yourself into a position in life where you're kind of stuck. Mm-hmm. So, like, you know, the debt, the, the issues, you know, the amount of money you spend here and there, and now, you know, saving money for our daughter's wedding, you know, that side of our life has kind of been put on the back burner.
[00:02:48] Ben Dellaria: But- Yeah ... you know, we're still relatively young. I'll be 45 in October. She'll be 45 in February. I think so. Yeah. So, you know, our time is, uh, it's not up yet. We still got 20 years' worth of work, and I'll probably continue to work even past that, so who knows? But yeah, it's the... Oh, there's a lot of factors, and I think I was mentioning it in some of the, my YouTube videos that- Even just for her.
[00:03:16] Ben Dellaria: Like, you know, sometimes she's standing there staring at me do the work where she could be in a nice office- Yeah ... and, you know, doing the things she needs to do, like here, you know, where she's doing the billing and the invoicing and QuickBooks and things like that. Out there she's got an office, but it's hot and it's crappy in that trailer.
[00:03:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:03:35] Ben Dellaria: And yeah, the age part of it kinda is, is getting there, 'cause it's getting hotter and hotter, and I'm getting fatter and fatter every year, and it's -
[00:03:43] Jeff Compton: Same ...
[00:03:44] Ben Dellaria: harder and harder to deal with the weather outside.
[00:03:47] Jeff Compton: Now-
[00:03:47] Ben Dellaria: But yeah, I'm... My entire life I've worked outside. I've never, I've never not been out there.
[00:03:53] Ben Dellaria: Always, you know, growing up with my dad cutting grass in South Florida is a different type of temperature. But, you know, for, I, you know, just my 40 years of being outside to work is sucks, you know? And that's what it was. Six years old I was working with him b- using a blower and everything, and yeah, my...
[00:04:10] Ben Dellaria: And some days I tell her, I'm like, "I want an office job." I just want, you know, let's go build some other type of company- ... and let's go just be in the air conditioning. She's like, "Babe, you're gonna be 300 pounds by the time you're done with that."
[00:04:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah. I know. Now, when I had you on last, Ben-
[00:04:26] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm ...
[00:04:26] Jeff Compton: um, Miss Jenna had not come into the picture.
[00:04:29] Jeff Compton: I mean, she was in the picture, but she was not out riding around with you yet.
[00:04:32] Jena Dellaria: Nope.
[00:04:32] Jeff Compton: And I think it's really cool to see that kind of develop on, on YouTube and online everywhere, and I mean, I know you guys have, you know, an ever-growing fan base, and I just, I'm a sucker for strong, strong relationships and strong families, right?
[00:04:50] Jeff Compton: I really enjoy seeing it. I think it's so refreshing and, and important in today's society that we see that, and I just have to tip my hat to both of you for putting yourselves out there, because I know some days I can see the frustration, and I can hear it in your voice with her when, when things are...
[00:05:05] Jeff Compton: You know, 'cause Jenna, you know what it's like when it's not, the job's fighting them, right, and it's not going right. Yeah. We get a little snappy or we get a little sharp sometimes. Mm-hmm. And, and, man, you know, it's different, eh, Ben, when it's like they're just your coworker. But when they're, they're your partner- Yeah
[00:05:22] Jeff Compton: your sp- your wife, um, it's, it's tougher too, eh? And it's like, do you guys come home sometimes just like, "Okay, you know, um, I need an hour away"? Do you do that?
[00:05:34] Jena Dellaria: Sometimes.
[00:05:35] Ben Dellaria: Sometimes, yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:36] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. It's, uh, it's more she needs an hour away from me. I don't usually ever need an hour away from her. She's... I said to him, blow in the face, that's why everybody, the animals, everything's just, everybody gravitates towards her because she's never mad.
[00:05:51] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:05:52] Ben Dellaria: If she's mad, you really don't ever know it. Or you'll know she's mad at me, but that's it. But like you said, it's, when I get into like a diagnosis that's rough and I'm like frustrated, I'm not yelling at her or, or yelling in general, but my frustration isn't even at her either. But she's there and she's seeing what I go through and it's not, not easy.
[00:06:14] Ben Dellaria: 'Cause the, that side of the mobile world is what a lot of people don't talk about. So like, you know, you could talk about Richard or Chuck, that's all he does, right? Not me, I'm working, you know, eight, 10 cars a day. We're, we're going to do this just like being in a shop. Yeah. I built it the same way. So if I'm like, "Shit, I got this diagnosis that's beating my butt and I gotta get somewhere," I s- you know, my mind starts to play tricks on me, and I start to get frustrated.
[00:06:40] Ben Dellaria: So shop atmosphere would be nicer in that position. But
[00:06:43] Jeff Compton: yeah. Now, JeanAnn, I gotta ask, because you've obviously, you've been with him a while, and you've heard all about the struggles of what it's like to be this as a career. But what was it like when you first got onto the trailer on the truck with him, and then you saw it in real life?
[00:06:56] Jeff Compton: Was it... Did... Were you expe- was it more than you expected in terms of like, "Wow, I didn't know it was that tough"?
[00:07:03] Jena Dellaria: Some days, yeah.
[00:07:04] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:07:04] Jena Dellaria: Some days I would say I agree with that.
[00:07:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And, and it's- But- Go ahead, sorry. I didn't mean to-
[00:07:11] Jena Dellaria: It's okay. I grew up with my parents owning their own shop down in South Florida.
[00:07:15] Jena Dellaria: So I- Oh,
[00:07:16] Jeff Compton: you're cool.
[00:07:16] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. So I kind of know- Mm-hmm ... but never actually did it, so.
[00:07:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah. It's oof. I mean- ... and you're familiar. You've seen it, right?
[00:07:27] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:28] Jeff Compton: Um, I know 'cause I, I speak of my ex and, you know, she would hear me come home and rant, you know, back in the unhealthy portion of my life when that's what I did a lot of- Mm-hmm
[00:07:38] Jeff Compton: till I found outlets. Um, and she would, she would know the language and the verbiage and what it meant and like sh- you know, all the kinda things. But I don't... She never got the... She never got to see me work on something that was like kicking my butt-
[00:07:55] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm ...
[00:07:55] Jeff Compton: because I just, she didn't have to come to work and see it, right?
[00:07:58] Jeff Compton: Right. And I would, when you would come home, you would unplug, and it wasn't there. And then- Mm-hmm ... even when I would work on her own car at home or, or, you know, in the shop and she'd watch, it was, it was easy stuff. It wasn't frustrating. It wasn't the kind of stuff- Yeah ... that made you pull your hair out, you know?
[00:08:11] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Um, that when you combine the heat and the camera and the, the sometimes the pressure, I'm sure I couldn't do it, you know? Yeah. My hats off to
[00:08:20] Ben Dellaria: you. It isn't easy, no. Yeah. It's, there's days I do- I put the camera down- Mm-hmm ... and I don't record, you know, at all. Uh, you know, sometimes I'll take two or three days where I don't record anything because I need that mental break of not doing it and not frustrating her or taking anything out on her 'cause that's, like you said, it's not easy.
[00:08:38] Ben Dellaria: I've had people sometimes You know, "Oh, well, h- look at how he talks to his wife."
[00:08:44] Jena Dellaria: Ah.
[00:08:45] Ben Dellaria: Fuck you. Like, get out of here. Delete. Mm-hmm. You're blocked from my channel. Yeah. Like, if you're that type of Karen on my YouTube channel... Because we're not, when we're out there, we're not husband and wife. Mm-hmm. She is a owner or an employee.
[00:08:59] Ben Dellaria: Like, that's- Yeah ... how we try to turn off while we're out there. Mm-hmm. But sometimes you can't, you know. You have to live with that person, so you have to watch, you know, y- you, you can't re- I can't be the owner, the service writer, but I also have to teach her at the same time, and my way of t- I've never had to teach anybody to do this.
[00:09:17] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. I've always just been the one that was training with someone to learn how to do this. Yeah. So now that I had to train her, it's been a year. We're, we just passed a year that she's- Mm-hmm ... been here. And to see the evolution of her, I'm like, "Wow, I did something right," you know? Like- ... she's doing great.
[00:09:33] Jeff Compton: Yeah, she is.
[00:09:33] Ben Dellaria: And... But man, it's, it's difficult. It's really hard.
[00:09:37] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Well, I, I watched one of your recent videos and you said, "Babe, can you get me the load cage?" You know, shout out to Chuck and to Chuck. And, like, she knew what that was.
[00:09:45] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:09:46] Jeff Compton: You know? I'm like, that is so, so flipping cool. You'll say, "Babe, you know, I need a, a 40 amp, you know, case, JK's fuse," and she hands you the fuse box.
[00:09:54] Jeff Compton: Like, she knows where all that stuff is. Yeah.
[00:09:56] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:09:56] Jeff Compton: Yeah. It's so cool to see that, like, she keeps her cool, you keep your cool, but I was gonna ask you, some days it's gotta be... Having a camera going has to be a distraction when you're trying to get through the, through the diag. 'Cause like we s- we watched a lot of Chuck's videos and we know that, like, he's already gone in and figured it out, now he's filming for the content sake, right?
[00:10:17] Jeff Compton: You, most of the time, you're right live in it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like pull up, flick the camera on, then start to go through your steps. And I love it 'cause we see your process right there, live- Yeah ... as it's happening, right? But I also see the frustration come through, and I'm like, "That's my boy."
[00:10:32] Jeff Compton: You can
[00:10:32] Ben Dellaria: read it on my face.
[00:10:33] Jeff Compton: Yeah, man. So. Yeah.
[00:10:35] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:35] Ben Dellaria: But, um, that's why I like keeping the camera on. Um, uh, you asked something right there, but it slipped my mind. Um, I like to keep, I like keeping it on and going through that- Yeah ... and I just deal with it, you know, on the edit side, 'cause I, I edit everything myself.
[00:10:52] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Ben Dellaria: Um, but damn, you asked a question and I, I lost it. Just- What was the question?
[00:10:56] Jeff Compton: If you found, if you found it to be distracting sometimes.
[00:10:58] Ben Dellaria: Oh, no. I, I, for how long I've been doing YouTube now-
[00:11:03] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:11:03] Ben Dellaria: it's, uh, second nature. It's easy. For sure. Um, it doesn't bother me at all. I think the biggest thing that bothers me is when I have to do something.
[00:11:12] Ben Dellaria: So, like, when I turn the camera on and I'm like, "Hey, guys, what's going on? Welcome back to the channel," I screw that up probably 10 times every single morning. And then the same thing with my endings of the day, 'cause it's like, "Oh, I gotta do an intro. Oh, I gotta do an outro." Man, why can't I just stop doing it, just be natural?
[00:11:29] Ben Dellaria: And it works so much better for me when I do it that way.
[00:11:32] Jeff Compton: But see, when we start, 'cause that's the same thing for me when I started, right? I thought everything, and even again, some of the people that were guiding me in this told me, "It has to look like this. It has to, you know, have an intro and an outro and a, and a, and a, and a formula and a plan."
[00:11:46] Jeff Compton: And, pff.
[00:11:47] Ben Dellaria: No.
[00:11:47] Jeff Compton: Throw that out the window. Go watch Logan do a podcast. There is nothing-
[00:11:51] Ben Dellaria: Nothing ...
[00:11:51] Jeff Compton: contrived, planned. It's, it goes, it breaks all the rules, eh, Ben? Like, it goes- Yeah ... two hours minimum. No set script. Yeah. People interrupting, language, and, and it, and it's working. So, I mean, I think that- Yeah ... our audiences are out there are looking for genuine.
[00:12:09] Jeff Compton: And I think w- like, we were talking before we got on here about some of the people that are, are genuine and some of the people that are not, and how you can kinda see how their platforms are a little more polished. But man, they're not hitting what they wanna hit. Their metrics- Yeah ... are not what they...
[00:12:23] Jeff Compton: Because people Real recognizes real, as I've heard some fighters refer to each other as, right? Real knows real. Mm-hmm. Yep. Um, athletes say that term a lot, and it's, it is truth in life. It's truth in life. Real recognizes real. So- Yeah. Mm-hmm
[00:12:38] Ben Dellaria: And I think the, the hard part about that, though, is that the ones that are real don't get the recognition and/or the visualization and the- Yeah
[00:12:48] Ben Dellaria: all this u- this view shit that we talk about all the time, and I think that's what the lure of all that that steals people away and sticks them into that.
[00:12:58] Jeff Compton: Well-
[00:12:59] Ben Dellaria: So, you know- We,
[00:13:00] Jeff Compton: we- ...
[00:13:00] Ben Dellaria: they get, they get flustered by all that, like, "Oh, the money I could make on the views. S- screw my," what would be the word? Uh-
[00:13:08] Jeff Compton: Mon-
[00:13:09] Ben Dellaria: What would be the...
[00:13:09] Ben Dellaria: Huh?
[00:13:10] Jeff Compton: Monetization.
[00:13:11] Ben Dellaria: No, no, like, uh, whatever I feel in my heart.
[00:13:15] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:13:16] Ben Dellaria: Uh, what's... It's such a simple word. It's like
[00:13:17] Jena Dellaria: values.
[00:13:18] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Screw my values, I want the money from the views instead. Mm-hmm. I don't- I'll never do that. Like, I, I'll always, my YouTube channel will always be us, real life. That was what it was supposed to be about.
[00:13:29] Ben Dellaria: It was supposed to be this is the real life of running this business, day in and day out. If we catch the phone calls, you're gonna hear 'em. If you, you see us screw up, like the other day we just recorded, uh, it was a Escalade. We did a compressor, um, and a condenser for just a locked up pulley, nothing major, but we're doing the condenser as well.
[00:13:51] Ben Dellaria: Well, the freaking condenser was trashed when I opened the box, or when she opened the box. I'm like, "Shit, I can't put that in the car."
[00:13:57] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:13:57] Ben Dellaria: On the video, call up AutoZone, "Hey man, I got the store manager. Steve, this condenser's busted. This is the address of where I am." Not even 10 minutes later, the dude, the driver came and brought it to me at the customer's house.
[00:14:10] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:10] Ben Dellaria: So, like, sh- that's not a scripted thing. That's... It's a real life thing, and I, I think that's what sets my channel apart from others.
[00:14:19] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:19] Ben Dellaria: But again, there's not a lot of people that care about watching an hour and 15 or hour and 20 long video, but that's okay. I don't care. I'm doing what I wanted to do, which was- Change the perception of what people think of the mobile world.
[00:14:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:14:35] Ben Dellaria: But that has been changing in my mind over the past couple years ever since we've been on, because the world is just full of a bunch of idiots, and it's very difficult to, uh, to keep going on the same path when we're, uh-
[00:14:49] Jeff Compton: Uh, yeah ... '
[00:14:50] Ben Dellaria: cause I always thought, "Oh, well, I'm gonna change, I'm gonna do my best to change the way the customer thought."
[00:14:55] Ben Dellaria: I don't think... The trolls that come out of the woods and get in our comments section are the ones we argue with, but those aren't the ones I'm talking to. No. I'm talking to the customer that really actually is the one that's probably lurking in the background and is just waiting to hear everything. And I tell this to my guys all the time in my school, "Listen, you, you might be commenting on all the Facebook c- posts, but you don't care about that customer.
[00:15:20] Ben Dellaria: You want the hundreds of thousands of people that are reading the comments that don't say anything that go to your page. That's who you're looking for, the people you don't see." So the, I have to always remember that, that even though I get the trolls, especially on TikTok-
[00:15:33] Jeff Compton: Yes ...
[00:15:34] Ben Dellaria: they those aren't the people I care about.
[00:15:37] Ben Dellaria: I care about the people that send me a private message, "Man, thank you so much."
[00:15:41] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[00:15:42] Ben Dellaria: I appreciate everything you have done, and I was able to start my business the right way instead of seeing these other guys, and I'm successful and I'm taking care of my family. And I'm doing it the way you teach and the way you tell us to do it."
[00:15:54] Ben Dellaria: And I think that's, that is awesome. So I had to kind of change my perception on who I'm really helping, and it's, it's those people, not everybody else that everyone sees on the internet that praise... It's like praising an athlete. Why would you praise these people if they're not doing anything for you?
[00:16:11] Jeff Compton: Yeah, they don't even know who you are. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you're, you're wearing their hat or you're wearing their number on a jersey or something, but To them, you know, you are a faceless entity within the crowd. And, you know, I'm, I'm good with the fact that, like, I'm going to have my detractors, and I'm gonna make some people angry with how I-- how blunt and abrupt I can be in terms of, of getting my words out.
[00:16:38] Jeff Compton: But I don't ever want anybody to be confused with what I'm trying to say. Like, I speak- Yeah ... the way I speak with a very direct manner so that there is no confusion. He really did mean that. You know what I mean? Because I don't want it to be ever taken out of context. That's what I-- worries me because it comes back to, again, it comes back to so much information online.
[00:16:58] Jeff Compton: It's so much that's not accurate about even people, and what's an accurate opinion really? It's an opinion. It can't be accurate or inaccurate. But I want the truth. I only wanna put out truth, I guess what I'm trying to say. So it's like I'm very sometimes blunt because I think that y-you can s- you can swing a hammer, man, or you can swing a feather, but, like, the, the hammer will get attention, you know?
[00:17:23] Jeff Compton: Um, and I've, I think that it's just like we talked about before we got on, you know, the particular video that I'm seeing getting so much traction from Sherwood today, and then the comments on it, and it really, as, as strong as we are and as, and as steadfast in my beliefs, man, sometimes, Evan, it's really hard to continue to keep wanting to, like you said, change this industry and, and teach people a better way.
[00:17:50] Jeff Compton: When you see the comments In our, in our feeds about, um, you know, you can't be efficient and quote a job for 40 hours and do it in 30, and if you still bill 40 you're, you're, you're steal- stealing. I cannot, I can't stomach all that down. I can't keep it inside. Makes me so-
[00:18:10] Ben Dellaria: I just don't get why they, uh, it's always our trade.
[00:18:14] Ben Dellaria: I just don't see why it's always the automotive industry. I don't know where that originally... I mean, obviously it's social media and because in reality, like if we try to think back to like the '80s when they like, you know, retread tires and did shit like that, yeah, we had bad shops. They were, you know, oil down shocks and do bad things, but nobody talked about labor times.
[00:18:35] Ben Dellaria: No one talked about, you know- Yeah ... oh, this job says it pays you two point... You know, it was a different world, so like the internet I feel has just, has really destroyed it because you can jump on any place, you can go and buy a part and just hire some jackass to do it.
[00:18:52] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:18:52] Ben Dellaria: And that's what hurts the auto industry so bad, and it's, it's, a- and no matter how big our voice gets, I think it's still going to be, we're still on the losing side, and it's going to be a long time until that, that side changes.
[00:19:06] Ben Dellaria: And, but I do think it will change in time, but it's unfortunately probably not gonna be until you and I are not doing this anymore.
[00:19:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah, like, and I can understand people getting fixated on price. You can say, "Ben came and put brakes on my hou- uh, my house, came to my... and put, put brakes on my house." That's a good one.
[00:19:24] Jeff Compton: "Put brakes on my car at my house and he charged me, you know, $800." And somebody can go, "I went down to wherever and I had brakes put on for 550 bucks. Ben must have ripped you off." Yep. And we have this conversation all the time where it's like, I, I almost tune out those conversations anymore because unless you're showing me paperwork that shows you used the exact same part numbers, billed the exact same amount of labor hour timewise, right?
[00:19:49] Jeff Compton: I don't even care about the thing because we're, we're, one's buying a fish and one's buying a chicken, you know, in the market.
[00:19:55] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. It's not apples to apples.
[00:19:57] Jeff Compton: But when I, when I see people now and we, you know, everybody can say Well, Rock Auto sells this part for this amount, and then ChatGPT told me the-
[00:20:10] Jeff Compton: pro demand stated time to do the job is 2.1 hours, so at a door rate between 110 and 220, this is what you should pay for labor. Not expect to pay, this is what you should pay for labor, you know- Yeah ... with that variance. And everybody goes, "That's the most I'm ever gonna pay."
[00:20:28] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:20:29] Jeff Compton: And that frustrates me because your process a- and my process can look completely different in, in quality control, verification after the fact of the repair.
[00:20:40] Jeff Compton: You know, I, I'll put my hand up, I was one of those guys in the dealer that, like, I knew the product so well I could slam the part in and park it. I didn't do any kind of verification after 'cause I knew I'd done three EGR valves yesterday, and it all fixed that code, it was gonna fix this one too.
[00:20:55] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:20:55] Ben Dellaria: But- Pattern failures ...
[00:20:56] Jeff Compton: yeah. When we're out here, and all of a sudden it's like, "I need to charge more time now to put the part in and do the verification," everybody all of a sudden is like, "You're ripping me off." It's... We go back to this brake conversation now, and it's like all these people going back and forth about disposable fasteners and why they can't be reused.
[00:21:14] Jeff Compton: Well, we know what the, the process is. It's because they come treated with Loctite. If you say, "Don't dispose of them," that means that you have to then add time to clean them, reapply Loctite, and reuse them, check them for stretch, all the things. So it's easier to just say, "Replace them." Yeah. But now if we were to go and tell everybody this is the process without replacing them, well, shoot, that's more labor, and now you're ripping me off because so-and-so did it for this amount without charging that labor.
[00:21:44] Jeff Compton: That's why I get onto so many people when they give so much away. Yeah. That drives me crazy.
[00:21:50] Ben Dellaria: I can't stand that.
[00:21:51] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Ben Dellaria: It really... It, uh... We talk about it all the time when we're at work, like it just- Like when we're listening to you or listening to Lucas or something like that, it's... Or just scrolling around, I can't stand- I, I just, I can't.
[00:22:05] Ben Dellaria: I can't stand it. I can't stand these guys that are out here just like, "Oh yeah, you know, $50 an hour, I'm okay," or, "Hey yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this job for, for this much because this guy said he's gonna do it for this much." And why? Why are you doing that? I just, I don't understand. I don't understand the thought process of diminishing yourself, feeling like you're, it's okay to do it.
[00:22:27] Ben Dellaria: 'Cause everybody, I think I made, made another video about this. It was like the guy who put, "I made $1,500 today."
[00:22:34] Jeff Compton: Oh, yeah.
[00:22:35] Ben Dellaria: No you didn't. You didn't make shit today. If you- If, you know, come on. Like, even a guy in my comments section, I'm not, if you're listening dude, I ain't being rude to you, but he said, uh, what'd he say?
[00:22:47] Ben Dellaria: Oh, he was trying to say he, he told me some numbers and I'm like, "Dude, that's like 75%. What, what is your... That, that's just parts. Where's your labor cost? What do you..." And he didn't say anything back. I'm like, "I wanna know what your COGS were." Mm-hmm. Cost of goods sold. That's parts and labor. That is your gross profit.
[00:23:05] Ben Dellaria: You have a revenue, you have a gross profit- Yeah ... after your COGS, and then you take your expenses off and that's a net. That's every business. Why are we assuming that the auto industry's different? Because these guys don't take into account all of that cost of what it really takes to build the business.
[00:23:20] Ben Dellaria: They just look at the end dollar and they're like, "Oh, perfect. I can pay my bills, I can buy some beer and cigarettes, and I can move on." Yeah. And they'll go on to the next job. No insurance, no nothing. It... Oof. Geez.
[00:23:34] Jeff Compton: Now- JeanAnn, were you, were you shocked by some of the people that when the phone rings, what they're actually expecting or asking?
[00:23:43] Jeff Compton: Yes. Like does it still shock? Yeah. It does. Tell me about
[00:23:45] Jena Dellaria: that.
[00:23:46] Jeff Compton: I can
[00:23:47] Jena Dellaria: see Beth laughing. It's, it's crazy. Yeah. 'Cause some... I, I don't hide my facial expressions very well. Mm-hmm. So when he sees me answering the phone, he's like, "Calm down." Um, but the questions and like for instance, a lady called the other day.
[00:24:07] Jena Dellaria: Her car won't start. She wanted us to come out that day, and I told her unfortunately we couldn't do that. We're not a service like that. We're scheduled out. So I told her we could put her on for next week, and she's like, "Okay, well can you tell me, um, who's, who's cheaper than Uber to get me around so I can go to work?"
[00:24:28] Jena Dellaria: Um, I said, "You can carpool with a friend." I mean- Call your auntie ... what else?
[00:24:35] Jeff Compton: She's
[00:24:35] Jena Dellaria: cheaper.
[00:24:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:24:36] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. Like, and that was just recently, but I mean, there's other ones that have been pretty crazy too, and I just, I shake my head.
[00:24:46] Jeff Compton: It's... Yeah, because as much as people when, when I can take a phone call from somebody, rarely, but it does happen, and they, and they're...
[00:24:54] Jeff Compton: The technical thing that they don't understand is one thing. But then I'll get comments like that where somebody'll just, like, "Well, what, what am I supposed to do?" Mm-hmm. I don't know your situation. Right. Like, you could have two more cars at home. Mm-hmm. Or you could be without a car. I don't know that.
[00:25:10] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. So your situation after we hang up the phone is your situation. It's not mine. I'm only communicating, you know, this particular vehicle at this particular time. Mm-hmm. And I just shake my head sometimes 'cause it's like... I think I wanna say, Ben, that they're, it's because of the stress that they're under that sometimes, like, the, you know, the, the hamster comes off the wheel or something.
[00:25:31] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:25:32] Ben Dellaria: There's- Yeah ...
[00:25:32] Jeff Compton: there's-
[00:25:33] Ben Dellaria: But that goes... So, like, I, I always get these guys that are always like, "Oh, who are you using for an AI answering service?" Fucking nobody. She is it. Because she or myself, she's learning from me. Mm-hmm. I can learn how to un- I know how to- Listen to that customer and understand where they are.
[00:25:53] Ben Dellaria: That's why I say AI is no good for this section of it. AI is good for certain things, just not this.
[00:25:58] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:25:58] Ben Dellaria: I can understand their nervousness, frustration. They've only got one vehicle, and I can help calm them down, ease them, and make them feel comfortable with my company. AI can't do that. And she's learning that because she's like, "Well, is this your only vehicle?"
[00:26:13] Ben Dellaria: "No, it's not." "Okay. Well, if it's not an emergency, we can get to you at this prescribed timeframe." And she's very, she's getting very good at keeping the detractors on the track. Mm-hmm. So you get these customers that constantly wanna try to steer the train or steer the boat, and she's good at bringing them back and putting them back on path to make sure we sell diagnosis time.
[00:26:35] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Selling our initial charge to come out, and she's doing all that, and she's getting all of the information, asking questions. "So is it a crank no start? Is it just a no start? Was it this? What is that? What kind of vehicle? What kind of engine?" Sometimes she misses it, but sh- when I tell her, "No, this is what you should ask when they say this," and she learns along that way, and she's been doing that very well because she's learned now that when you get the people like you're saying, they're not on our list.
[00:27:03] Ben Dellaria: They don't get a phone call from us. I- Or they don't get on it.
[00:27:06] Jeff Compton: I watched one of your recent videos too, and you were in the middle of a repair and had a gentleman walk across the street from another place to start asking you about, you know, could you check out his Toyota for a battery light?
[00:27:17] Ben Dellaria: And, uh, the Ford, yeah.
[00:27:19] Jeff Compton: I, excuse me, yes. And I had so much respect for you because it was like I would've come unglued at that point.
[00:27:25] Ben Dellaria: I, I wanted to. He did. But he's the one that-
[00:27:28] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[00:27:29] Ben Dellaria: I originally did jobs for, and he gave me the three across the street, and then the guy across, around the corner. So I was like, "Eh, I'm gonna hold my tongue on this one."
[00:27:38] Ben Dellaria: But he is the one that if you watched the next video, I don't know if it's out yet, he's the one that kept saying, "Is there a cash discount?" "No." Oh my gosh. "No. There's no cash discount here, buddy. Just 'cause you're... "You know, "Well, you know, that's that used car salesman coming out." And I go I don't care. Yeah.
[00:27:56] Ben Dellaria: I'm not gonna take the risk of giving you your tax back for me to get a gigantic fine and then get audited by the IRS because you don't wanna pay tax. I don't think so.
[00:28:07] Jeff Compton: And I'm not gonna agree to it while the camera's rolling.
[00:28:10] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:28:12] Jeff Compton: So what I-
[00:28:13] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:28:14] Jeff Compton: What is, what's Fauci famous for right now recently, right?
[00:28:16] Jeff Compton: Is, "I plead the Fifth. I plead the Fifth." So-
[00:28:18] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, exactly. Uh, come on, man. Like, I don't know. But that's, I mean, that's the name of the game. You're... I got that in the shops too, though. It's not just us being out here being mobile. The things that I see here, some of the horror stories I hear from other guys I've never run into.
[00:28:34] Ben Dellaria: I don't know, maybe it's just 'cause I can judge customers better than most people. Yeah. Because I've, I, like, I tell these guys all the time and they say, "How do you do this?" And I say, "I don't..." Like, teaching her these phone call things, it's taken a year for me to teach her these things. You can't just put someone in a class and teach them.
[00:28:52] Ben Dellaria: You're not gonna get every complaint, every emotion, every whatever in order to be able to tell them how to do this. So when I knew that I always wanted to be a shop owner I made sure that the jobs I had, I could follow someone. So in the dealer, I sat in the corner and I listened to the service writers.
[00:29:13] Ben Dellaria: They didn't like it much, but I didn't care. I would go get coffee and kind of just hang out if I didn't have cars, and start listening to things, see how it goes. Service managers, uh, the dispatchers, and then when I worked in the shops, the same thing. I would watch the diag guys or the major diag guys, and then the owners and the ser- every aspect that I could get my hands in or asked if I could follow them, they al- they allowed, I did it.
[00:29:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:29:38] Ben Dellaria: Because I knew that one day today was gonna come, that I was going to be in business for myself, and I was not going to be in business for myself if I didn't know how to do it, because I was gonna fail. Yeah. I mean, my lawn service proved that. I had-- I started the lawn service, and I was like, "My dad was suc- successful.
[00:29:55] Ben Dellaria: I'm gonna do it the same way." And I failed miserably at it because it's a different area, and that didn't work here.
[00:30:00] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:01] Ben Dellaria: Down south, grass grows all year. Where I live, it doesn't grow all year. Four months out of the year, the grass goes dormant. We have Bahia, and it, it's not... You don't cut grass. You stand around and do nothing.
[00:30:12] Ben Dellaria: So I screwed up, but I had to rebuild that business into something else. So the same thing here, I had to make sure that I was not gonna be a failure at this and that... But that's what I... I don't remember where I was going in that. I go on a rant sometimes, but-
[00:30:27] Jeff Compton: Well, you, you... I, I was very much the same way.
[00:30:29] Jeff Compton: Like, when I didn't have a car, I was probably harassing the service writers. Not harassing them, but I would just kind of stand there and listen to the, the conversations go down, right? Um, part of it back then was because, like, you had to, because, you know, it was... And it wasn't always malicious, but you had to know sometimes what the customer actually said- Yeah
[00:30:50] Jeff Compton: so that you could... when it was dispatched to you, 'cause you only had 36 minutes. You know, what you heard versus what they wrote down, what you heard was truth, and what they wrote down was maybe what they were trying to skew or think, right? And we, we don't want that. We, we want the r- legit real complaint.
[00:31:06] Jeff Compton: Um, and the other thing, it was, it was just because, like, I wanted to better understand when the customer was in that head space, what their attitude looked and sounded like, you know. Because it would help me better understand them, and maybe I'd fail miserably, but maybe be a little bit more sympathetic to where they are.
[00:31:24] Jeff Compton: Um, you know, and it's at... I'm not as sympathetic as I should be because it's like I, I was beat down for so long in the, in the flat rate world, you know, that it's, it's really hard for me. Like I'll, I'll comment, and people just kind of shake their heads 'cause I'm like, "They all have the money. Stop telling yourself that they don't have the money.
[00:31:40] Jeff Compton: They have the money," right?
[00:31:42] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. But I mean, you know, I don't mean to cut you off, uh, but what do, what do you need... If you're a technician being flat rate, what sympathy do you need to have? I have
[00:31:51] Jeff Compton: sympathy for my coworker
[00:31:53] Ben Dellaria: You have a j- yeah, you have a job to do, and their job is to do this, your job is to do this.
[00:31:57] Ben Dellaria: Pay me to do the job, you get paid to do the job. Let's not freaking beat around the bush here. If you can't get the information for the customer, I'm gonna go get the information for the customer 'cause I need to do my job and get paid.
[00:32:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:32:07] Ben Dellaria: I can't just continue to put no problem found on every freaking ticket.
[00:32:11] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:12] Ben Dellaria: But, you know, you can go back to that. I, I didn't mean to interrupt you at all.
[00:32:16] Jeff Compton: JeanAnn, what's some of the weirdest requests that you've heard?
[00:32:21] Jena Dellaria: Hmm. Way to put me on the spot. Um-
[00:32:24] Jeff Compton: I will do that from time to time.
[00:32:27] Jena Dellaria: Um...
[00:32:29] Ben Dellaria: What was that, um, well, the guy recently that was being a jackass to you that we ha- so out front we have a Hemi long block that we're doing.
[00:32:39] Ben Dellaria: Um- Okay ... so he recommended us to somebody else. And that's the guy, just- I remember ... it's like he didn't understand how to, what the word no is.
[00:32:47] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:32:47] Ben Dellaria: Go ahead, babe.
[00:32:48] Jena Dellaria: So he called and he said, "I want to, I want you to rebuild the engine." I said, "We don't rebuild engines."
[00:32:56] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[00:32:57] Jena Dellaria: And he said, "But you're putting an engine in so and so's truck."
[00:33:01] Jena Dellaria: And I said, "Yes, but we're swapping out the engine."
[00:33:06] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:06] Jena Dellaria: And he said, "So you'll ro- rebuild my engine?" "No." I literally went back and forth for probably 15 minutes. And, "Well, I just wanna make some, some, um-" I wanna
[00:33:18] Ben Dellaria: buff it up ...
[00:33:19] Jena Dellaria: yeah, I wanna buff it up. I wanna make it more beefy, so if I get a new engine, then can you change a couple things, like the cylinder head?
[00:33:27] Jena Dellaria: The... I was like, "No, we don't do that."
[00:33:31] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. It was-
[00:33:32] Jena Dellaria: I'm not the
[00:33:32] Ben Dellaria: guy for you. Yes.
[00:33:34] Jena Dellaria: It was very frustrating.
[00:33:36] Ben Dellaria: What about, there was the, the guy, uh, I don't think you got this phone call, but, uh, when you were at a te- when you were out with Walker and I went to go do that, uh, at Logan's house, John.
[00:33:46] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:46] Ben Dellaria: He had, I don't...
[00:33:47] Ben Dellaria: It was a Nissan.
[00:33:48] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:49] Ben Dellaria: He had something else that's got a turbo on it, and his text message to me was, he's like, "I want it to ma- Can you do a blow-off valve on this?" I was like, "No." Mm.
[00:33:57] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. "
[00:33:57] Ben Dellaria: I'm not doing that. Why would I do that?" And he's like, "Well, I want it to go whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop when it drives."
[00:34:01] Ben Dellaria: I'm like, I'm like, "What the fuck was that?" I'm like, "No, dude." I'm like, "You need to get lost." I'm not doing anything to your car. I put a active grill shutter in the Nissan, and then I'm not touching anything else.
[00:34:13] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. 'Cause I saw you, like on a couple times, you were in the guy's garage with, um, was it an old Chevy?
[00:34:20] Ben Dellaria: The
[00:34:20] Jeff Compton: green? There was a Corvette. There was a Corvette I saw you do, like, a, a radio head unit in. And then the- Oh,
[00:34:25] Ben Dellaria: no, that was a Corvette.
[00:34:26] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Mm-hmm. And then I've seen- Yeah ... you do a couple of the other older cars, and I'm just like, I'm just grimacing, right? Because there's so many of us, you see in the, in the, in the, in the channels we run in, Ben, people say, "I don't touch, like, enthusiast cars.
[00:34:39] Jeff Compton: I don't touch restoration cars." Yeah. We talk about, you know, um, our friend, uh, Mr. Master Tech. Yeah. How he posted about how he did that transmission for, you know, I'm gonna say one of the local hot rod guys. Yeah, yeah. Hot rod club, and how it's haunted him to this day, you know, ever since, right? And it's, they're gonna kill his name through the local, you know, uh, the local ave- you know, collec-
[00:35:02] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, yeah
[00:35:03] Jeff Compton: will have
[00:35:03] Ben Dellaria: it. That's okay. You can kill my name and those people, who cares? That's... I don't know why I say yes to that shit, Jeff. I don't know. I don't. I, every time, you ask her, I go to some jobs and I go to get ready to do it, and I look at her and I'm like, "Why the, why did I agree to this? Like, what am I doing here?"
[00:35:21] Ben Dellaria: Like, this is the dumbest thing I could have ever done to- Mm-hmm ... frustrate myself on a Monday. Because when I do the schedule I'm like, "Oh yeah, I can get that done. Let's make some money. I can do this, I can do that," and then I forget, like, how stupid our job is sometimes. You know? Like that Corvette, that was horrible.
[00:35:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:35:38] Ben Dellaria: Um, but then, what's the other one, the green one? The green, uh, it's a Corvette.
[00:35:44] Jena Dellaria: Cobra, right?
[00:35:44] Ben Dellaria: Uh, no, Cobra. Yeah. Okay. The, the guy... It's the green KITT car- Mm-hmm ... and he's got, uh, you know, the coyote thing in it. He had a rat in there that destroyed it, so I went to go look at that. But then the people that built it built it half-ass.
[00:35:59] Ben Dellaria: They used-
[00:36:00] Jeff Compton: Uh, yeah ... uh,
[00:36:02] Ben Dellaria: you saw those connections they used, and I don't know. I, I like electrical stuff, so like I'm doing, uh, he's not really a customer, he's just a, a more of a friend, but he's down the road. He's got that '53 panel.
[00:36:15] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:15] Ben Dellaria: Uh, there was a couple of episodes I had put some stuff out, but then I didn't 'cause it didn't go well, but the car was great.
[00:36:22] Ben Dellaria: I rewired, I gutted it, I put a Ron Francis wiring kit in it.
[00:36:26] Jeff Compton: Ah.
[00:36:26] Ben Dellaria: We recently have done a cold air kit in there, which was actually, uh, one that is a direct fit that fits perfect under the dash for that truck. Um, we, she's deaf, um, but she can, she has cochlears now. She's been deaf her whole life, but she wanted a stereo system because she can feel it and she knows what she's hearing, 'cause she can learn now to hear based on the pitches.
[00:36:51] Ben Dellaria: So we put all that in for her, and now we're doing a big, uh, radiat- We just sent the radiator over to, it's called Berry and Radiator. They, they re-core them and clean them and re-weld them and everything for you. Um, and we had to figure out what that was. I figured out that the radiator was for like a mid-'70s B van.
[00:37:09] Ben Dellaria: Right. Um, in this '53 panel that's got a 350 in it. So like, even that, like I like doing it, but I don't like doing it as a job.
[00:37:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:37:19] Ben Dellaria: Like, those are jobs that like, no, I just, I need to stick to my everyday work, make money, take care of cars like I'm supposed to, and move on. Those are the ones, like you said, they keep you awake at night and they frustrate you, and it's like...
[00:37:33] Ben Dellaria: 'Cause it's never-ending. It, they're never, like this '53, it's, it, that thing, I'm the only one that knows anything about it, and I will be bothered by that thing until they don't have it anymore.
[00:37:43] Jeff Compton: And it'll never be done. You know what I mean? No, it
[00:37:45] Ben Dellaria: won't.
[00:37:46] Jeff Compton: It's never done. That's the thing. I, I try- Yeah ... to prove to people is like- Project cars are project cars, but project cars owned by enthusiasts are in a constant cycle of being worked on- Yeah
[00:37:59] Jeff Compton: improved, broken, and fixed. Yeah. And it's, you know, oftentimes it's the owner that's got a hand in every part of that, and I, I don't, I don't want that for myself.
[00:38:09] Ben Dellaria: No, not at all. Like- And that's why this one's a bit different. They have, they moved away from a modern car. These are their everyday drivers.
[00:38:17] Ben Dellaria: These are not like, uh, they don't take it to, like, car shows.
[00:38:21] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:38:21] Ben Dellaria: Um, they wanted it normal. They just wanted-
[00:38:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[00:38:25] Ben Dellaria: for her to be able to use it and function, and so we, you know, soldered all the connections- Mm-hmm ... heat shrinked everything, used connectors where connectors were warranted, like on the inside the stuff.
[00:38:36] Ben Dellaria: Um, but yeah, it's an everyday driver, so, but still it will be, until all the kinks are worked out of it, it's a pain in the ass. I'm lucky enough that they're the type of person that's like, "Just come by whenever you can."
[00:38:49] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:38:49] Ben Dellaria: You know, and they live right down the road, which is cool, but still, like, I can't wait to, to not have it on my schedule-
[00:38:57] Ben Dellaria: 'cause I don't wanna deal with it.
[00:38:58] Jeff Compton: Well, and, and I remember you, hearing you speak of the car in a couple different, but I kept thinking, "When are we gonna see the video? When are we gonna see the video?" Yeah. And, yeah, you know.
[00:39:06] Ben Dellaria: There's a couple of videos that are out of when I had tore the wiring out and stuff like that, and then I think there's a couple where you see me working on, they have a, uh, '86 Chevy G van, uh, the cream-colored one.
[00:39:20] Ben Dellaria: Um, and I had showed the red '54, uh, F-150 he's got, and then I had showed the gray panel every once in a while. Um, and yeah, they, they pop up in some of the videos here and there, but, um, it's those long project jobs that are really hard to film because- Well- ... they take up so much space.
[00:39:40] Jeff Compton: And what's, what's the parts obstacles like for those kind of jobs?
[00:39:44] Jeff Compton: Like
[00:39:44] Ben Dellaria: that- Uh, Summit is a big component. Yeah. We get a lot, we, uh, we get a lot from Summit, and they're usually, 'cause the place that gets from Summit, we can usually get it almost next day. Yeah. Comes right out of Georgia, uh, or Alabama or something right there. So, you're- 'Cause we're only, like, four mi- uh, three hours from the north border.
[00:40:01] Jeff Compton: So, you're sourcing the parts. You're not most of the time letting it-
[00:40:03] Ben Dellaria: Back and forth sometimes. Uh, just depends on those types of, on that type of job. Um, like if it's, uh- interior parts and things of that nature, you do what you want. You wanna do that. If it's the electrical and the engine, the water pumps, and things of that nature, I'm choosing that stuff.
[00:40:20] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:21] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Like, you know, your typical everyday things. Those are the ones... And I- that's what I don't like doing too because you know we, I don't... I do it because I enjoy that, and I like them because we're friends with them, but it's very hard to have friends that are customers. This is, like, the only one that ever has been- Mm-hmm
[00:40:38] Ben Dellaria: because they're so laid back and so easygoing, but still, like, I don't recommend to anyone listening to do that because you're gonna piss someone off, and you're gonna end up hurting a relationship if you do that too much. So, you know, everyone's always like, "Oh, well, friends and family price." They're gonna expect more from you on that.
[00:40:59] Jena Dellaria: Mm.
[00:40:59] Ben Dellaria: You know, we should definitely get into that.
[00:41:03] Jeff Compton: Well, 'cause, you know, the, the thing that I've al- you've seen the same statement, you know. If they're really your friends, they'll want you to succeed. Yeah. They'll wanna see you succeed, which means that they'll gladly pay full price.
[00:41:14] Ben Dellaria: Exactly. Yep. Oh,
[00:41:15] Jeff Compton: that's them.
[00:41:16] Jeff Compton: And I heard that years ago from somebody. Yeah. And it, and it's one of those, you know, five or six key takeaway statements that have stuck in my brain and built my vernacular around what I believe to be my truth. Um, you know, and it's, it's all these people's, "Oh, what's the cash price? What's the... You know, um..."
[00:41:35] Jeff Compton: Eh, the cash price is the same, dude. Like- Yeah. You know it's the price, man. There's no credit card fees maybe, but- Yeah ... it, it's still the same. Like, we don't know, and, and I, I just, I get, I just shake my head with some of the times with how people will say, "Well, you know, this one time I went there, and I put in their parts 'cause they were really in a, in a bind, and, uh, the part didn't fix.
[00:41:59] Jeff Compton: You know, it didn't fit. Excuse me. Wrong part. And now the car's tied up and tore apart in my bay," and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just, I'm reading the comments just pulling my hair out. Smoke's blowing out my ears going, "Are you people not paying attention? Are you not learning?" You know, because what I learn, I learn more from people's mistakes than I ever do making my own.
[00:42:18] Jeff Compton: Yeah. I want people, you know, make the error of judgment or the error of execution, then I go, "Don't do that, Jeff." And I think that's, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I have a twin brother. So I, like, I would... We were developing at the same speed, same rate, you know, like all that kind of stuff. So you could watch him trip 'cause his shoes weren't tied up, and go-
[00:42:41] Jeff Compton: "Always tie up
[00:42:42] Ben Dellaria: your shoes." Oh, let me, let me do that. Yeah.
[00:42:43] Jeff Compton: For example, right? And sometimes you just wanna yell at these people in the conversations, go, "Tie up your damn shoelaces," because, like, it's... I mean, that's not really what's happening, but you guys get what
[00:42:52] Ben Dellaria: I'm- Yeah, I get it. But it's, it's an everyday thing.
[00:42:55] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. I see it all the time. So like you said, you know, like them, I've gone through that before with them, but on me. Mm. Thinking like, "Oh, man, it, like, it's expensive to do that," and she's like, "I didn't ask you how much it was." Yeah. "I asked you if you could do it." And my answer is, "Yes, I can do it." She said, "Good, I'll write the check."
[00:43:13] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. And that's what she does all the time. All the time. Same with him. They're like, "I didn't ask you how much this costs. We know that this is gonna be a money pit, but this is what we have prepared for, and we know what we want. And you, we trust you, so we want you to do the job." Other customers are not like that.
[00:43:31] Ben Dellaria: Other people are not. Not everyone is like that. I've been lucky enough to build my client base that way, but going back to the people in the comment section, yeah, I don't understand. I don't understand why they put... I mean, I get it, 'cause I put myself in stupid spots all the time. But I mean, l- like, come on.
[00:43:50] Ben Dellaria: You know, you do it once, shame on you. Do it again, you're a fucking idiot.
[00:43:54] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Shame on me. Now, you mentioned earlier you've got, you know, I think you said a Charger or something that you're doing a Hemi in.
[00:44:02] Ben Dellaria: Now- A Dodge Ram pickup. Yeah. Okay.
[00:44:04] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And you, because we forget sometimes that you have, you have another...
[00:44:08] Jeff Compton: Like, you'll do some of the bigger jobs, you'll bring them home and do them, right? Yeah. You don't tend to film that as much. Your, your content is, you know, what you guys are doing four days of the week out in the, you know, in the, in these subdivisions. In the
[00:44:19] Ben Dellaria: field. Yep.
[00:44:20] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Um, how does that work for you guys?
[00:44:23] Jeff Compton: Like- From a pricing, an estimate, uh, you know, a promised time, all those kind of things. Like, how do you find the time, Ben, when you're not... You know, like, you go, you guys do four-day weeks, which is awesome. But is, like, the Friday, do you go out into the shop then and kind of pop away on those jobs, or is it an after night thing?
[00:44:43] Ben Dellaria: Usually at after the day is over. Um, sometimes it'll be a Friday. Like, I tried to go out there this morning to do it just 'cause I needed to get my body moving, and I didn't wanna... Yesterday we spent the entire day sitting on the couch.
[00:44:55] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:44:55] Ben Dellaria: And I can't do that, 'cause I eat junk, and then I feel really bad.
[00:44:59] Ben Dellaria: I have to move. We did. Our daughter and her fiance came over. They wanted to watch a TV show with her, and I- Mm ... didn't wanna watch it, but I did, and I got stuck into it and got interested in it. Mm-hmm. But, you know, we had chips and dip, and pretzels and dip, and then you eat junk. Yeah. And then we ordered in some dinner, you know, just a nice evening in the house.
[00:45:19] Ben Dellaria: But God, you know, my stomach hurts, my body hurts, I'm aching. I ate too much salt. I need to move. So I was gonna go work on that engine. It didn't work out, so I didn't do it. But yeah, it's usually every day. Mm. Uh, if I plan, if I know I have this job, I plan accordingly. So, like, right now- Where's the damn internet?
[00:45:40] Ben Dellaria: Right now we have for next week, I know I really can't show this to you, but I've got Monday we got one, two, three, four, five, six, and then Tuesday, one, two, three, four, five, six. But some of those are, like, big jobs. Mm-hmm. A muffler m- I'm sorry, that's seven. Muffler Man is another shop in town. I gotta go diagnose two cars for him, and then so on and so on.
[00:46:05] Ben Dellaria: Then one, two, three, four, five. Oh, that's, uh, the drop-off. I have another drop-off outside, which is a 3.5 EcoBoost timing kit job. Same thing, you know. It's Motorcraft parts. I'm not doing anything without-
[00:46:18] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[00:46:18] Ben Dellaria: you know, Motorcraft stuff. So and then, you know, it's a timing kit on Thursday for a Honda Odyssey on top of three other diagnosises and a starter and, and that 53 panel.
[00:46:29] Ben Dellaria: So yeah, it's every day, I pack every day as tight as I can, and I am pretty, like, insistent on the schedule on how I do it. Sometimes I really overbook it, but, um... So going back to the timeframe, I tell them it could be a week, it could be two weeks.
[00:46:45] Jena Dellaria: Yep.
[00:46:45] Ben Dellaria: It just depends. If the rain holds me back, I'm not working on it.
[00:46:49] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:46:49] Ben Dellaria: You know, it is what it is, and if you can deal with that, you can deal with that. This truck was down-
[00:46:55] Jena Dellaria: Three months ...
[00:46:55] Ben Dellaria: for a couple of months before we got to it anyway. Mm. And this ac- this truck is, it beat me up, too. This has been one that, well, really fought me 'cause it doesn't... So I'll ask you, you're a Chrysler man.
[00:47:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:47:08] Ben Dellaria: So- Yeah ... originally when I first got to this before... So all right, this Hemi, if one cylinder fails- Mm ... it's still gonna run, right?
[00:47:18] Jeff Compton: Yep.
[00:47:19] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, so it'll run fine. This truck won't run. You can't crank the truck and start it. It does not run at all. You have to open, you have to step on it to get it to start.
[00:47:28] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:47:28] Ben Dellaria: And once you start it, you can feather it and keep it running about 1,500, 2,000 RPM, nothing else. It'll, it'll die out. Um, I finally had gotten to the point where I did a relative compression on it, found cylinder two was dead. Um, the rocker fell off, the valve was stuck. Um, we're putting an engine in it anyway, but I found these two pinholes in cylinder two in the intake.
[00:47:53] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:47:54] Ben Dellaria: There was holes in the damn intake that had sucked in and melted all of cylinder two. Yeah. I still don't know if the thing will run when I put the engine in.
[00:48:04] Jeff Compton: You're replacing that intake, obviously.
[00:48:05] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, yeah.
[00:48:06] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think you're gonna be okay.
[00:48:08] Ben Dellaria: I know I will, but in reality, that one beat me up because when I was looking at, like, scope patterns and stuff, the 12 versus the 13 is hugely different.
[00:48:18] Jeff Compton: Yes,
[00:48:18] Ben Dellaria: it is. And I had to reach out to, uh, Ryan, um-
[00:48:21] Jeff Compton: Ryan
[00:48:22] Ben Dellaria: Mullen ... uh, Mullen. Uh, I, I, I reached out through a friend of mine, Faraz, 'cause I don't talk to Ryan directly, just I never have reached out to him that way. Um, and he sent me one, and I was like, I was like, "No. Send something back to him and tell him I think that's for the 12," and he did, and he's like, "Oh, shit, you're right."
[00:48:38] Ben Dellaria: And yeah, the 13 is so different on the scope pattern on the crank and the cam on the, the how wide it is. It's not a typical square. It's very, very short. Yeah. And that threw me off big time on it, and amongst other things. But I finally got to the bottom of it and, you know, it, it, the engine replacement is not why it won't run, though.
[00:49:00] Ben Dellaria: The engine replacement is because the engine cannonballed and fell apart- Yeah ... on that cylinder two.
[00:49:05] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Yeah, it's, I remember I had a, you know, and those are a funny thing because, like, you'll talk to the guys that have done the dealer path, and they'll tell you, "Oh, I, I chuck lifters and cams in those all day long, and I never worry about low oil pressure later on or any of that kind of stuff," right?
[00:49:21] Jeff Compton: And then we'll talk in our channels where it's like, "Nope, I won't... You know, so many miles, I won't open it up," right? It's getting, you know, a, a known good used or, uh, you know, rebuilt with a warranty, all those kind of things. And I can remember one of the ones I diagnosed for lifters, and it didn't take me long to diagnose.
[00:49:39] Jeff Compton: I knew what was going on, right? I, I'd kinda been around the block a while. And, uh, I pulled the valve cover off real quick, and it's like, yeah, it's not moving. It's, they're collapsed. Okay, cool. And we lost the job because we got really zealous with trying to sell an engine. Hmm. And, um, you know, we pulled the lift...
[00:49:57] Jeff Compton: Like, I had the head off in no time, the lifter out, you know, inspected the cam with a borescope, no damage. So, like, it would've really been probably okay with some lifters, but we would've been really okay with some, a cam and lifters, right? Like, we didn't need to probably put an engine in this. They caught it early enough, but we lost a job.
[00:50:16] Jeff Compton: And, and since then it's been kind of like, because I've been saying a lot more lately that we gotta be a lot more fluid and flexible in this industry because a- as things are changing and, you know, access to information and all this kind of stuff, training and who gets it, and what it's gonna look like and, you know, everybody's saying there's, you know, not my customer, but there's a customer, you know, for everybody.
[00:50:40] Jeff Compton: We're, we're getting sometimes too regimented in what we think is the right way to do things. And, uh, you know, going back to, say, the, the disposal of bolts thing for the brake jobs, you know? Like, there's... Do I replace them all? No. I clean them and re-Loctite them. That's what I do. Because by the time I get my advisor squared away on, "No, actually this is the published," air quotes, "process"-
[00:51:05] Jeff Compton: and, and, you know, we've gotta wait an extra day now for the bolts to come in at the dealer because they, they don't keep them in stock. They don't... You know, they reuse them, too. Um, you know, it, it just throws a monkey wrench right into the whole machinery.
[00:51:17] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:51:17] Jeff Compton: And so that's where, I guess, without me going on a little really long rant, is sometimes we're not, we're not flexible enough.
[00:51:25] Jeff Compton: Um, and that's where I think that it goes back to networking. You know, there's a few things that I draw a really hard line on with people and I'll say, "No, that's just wrong." But I don't normally say to people, "Well, you doing that is wrong." You know what I mean? It's, it's, we have to be, we have to meet our customer where they are, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
[00:51:45] Ben Dellaria: Um- Yeah. Um, I think the one thing that we have to continue to just say that they're wrong on is when people are talking about The money aspect- Yeah ... the, the what to charge for, and charge shop supplies, charge markups on the parts, but buy the parts at a reduced cost. Mm-hmm. Don't buy it for what the customer can and then sell it for more.
[00:52:07] Ben Dellaria: That's stupid. Do the right procedures. Be a commercial account, do all that. But yeah, I get what you're saying. Like, so I give customers, I, I gave him an option. Mm-hmm. And I told him, I said, "You can either, you can put a cylinder head on this because you obviously destroyed it, and an intake," I said, "but I would have to do some more tear down and you're gonna pay for that to make sure that the cam's okay and everything's okay," I said, "but, or I could take this head and I could send it out and it could be redone.
[00:52:33] Ben Dellaria: Or, and there's only gonna be a year warranty on that, and that's it. Or I can put in, uh, a long block and it comes with a four-year unlimited mile manufactured warranty that's nationwide." Yeah. And that's what sold him, and it's a nine, a little over $9,000 for the job. Mm-hmm. So, you know, they didn't flinch. Uh, he flinched at it.
[00:52:54] Ben Dellaria: He's an older guy. He had to borrow a couple bucks from his daughter, but he's like, "I need the truck indefinitely. I don't..." You know, and I told him, I said, "I don't know if you did damage to the other side of the engine."
[00:53:05] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[00:53:05] Ben Dellaria: I can't answer that," I said, "unless you wanna pay this or pay that for me to pull, pull that valve cover and go through this and go through that," I said, "but right now cylinder two's dead, and you have a vehicle that doesn't run because of lack of maintenance and things of that."
[00:53:20] Ben Dellaria: And I'm glad he did, 'cause when I pulled the oil pan, there's sludge in there and there's crap in there. So something more came apart, and that's what I told him, too, when I was in his driveway and I took the initial payment for the engine. As I said, "There's one thing you're gonna have to understand here is you're gonna hire me to come back and do your oil changes."
[00:53:38] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. "If you can't hire me to come back and do your oil changes, you're going to void this warranty." Yeah. I said, "Eh, you know, in reality they'll probably give you one," 'cause that's usually what some of these manufacturers do. They'll give you one. It's ATK, uh- Mm-hmm ... which is owned by, uh, what's that giant, uh, used part- LKQ?
[00:53:57] Jeff Compton: LKQ. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:53:59] Ben Dellaria: Um, and they own a couple of different places now, but they're really easy. I've had to do a transmission one recently, and even when I told the guy, I said, "Listen, this is on the customer. The customer had a leak and they didn't take care of it," he's like, "We don't care. We're gonna give them one, and we'll pay you for it, and that's it."
[00:54:14] Ben Dellaria: I said, "Okay. You know, that's fine as long as you're not coming back and not paying me for it." He's like, "Oh, no, no, no. That won't happen. We'll always pay you." He's like... But-
[00:54:21] Jeff Compton: I, I, I gotta ask this question. Yeah. Do you guys kinda feel better- I gotta be careful how I word this. When you know that it's in a neglected pile and they haven't done their maintenance, is it easier to give the customer bad news?
[00:54:38] Ben Dellaria: No, I don't care about giving them bad news. I give them honest news.
[00:54:41] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[00:54:42] Ben Dellaria: And I tell them straight up. So I've had a lot of people where they get the timing codes- Mm-hmm ... you know, B0011 or whatever it is, and they're like... And I look up at the sticker and I go, "Is this accurate?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, it probably needs an oil change."
[00:54:55] Ben Dellaria: I go, "This was due in April last year." I said, "It's been over a year. You haven't had an oil change?" She's like, "Oh yeah, maybe I haven't." I go, "Well, we're doing that first." Yeah. "Otherwise, we're not doing anything." I said, "I'm charging you for my time today, and I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna do an oil change."
[00:55:10] Ben Dellaria: That's why I wanna start stocking oil filters, because this happens a decent amount.
[00:55:14] Jeff Compton: It does.
[00:55:14] Ben Dellaria: So I can start just, "Let's do the oil change right now. We're here. We're gonna clear your codes. We're gonna freshen it up. We're gonna send you on down the road, and you're gonna let me know in a week if this code comes back."
[00:55:24] Jeff Compton: And yet- Take
[00:55:25] Ben Dellaria: it or leave it ...
[00:55:25] Jeff Compton: and you do not give them the, the diag away because you think- No. Fuck
[00:55:29] Ben Dellaria: no ...
[00:55:29] Jeff Compton: it only needs an oil change. You don't do that. Mm-hmm. People have heard you rant about, you know, former employers that would be like, "Oh, so it only needs an oil change. I don't have to charge her for the diag."
[00:55:38] Jeff Compton: No, this is how they learn that they cannot go over, because engines burn oil now. They used to not or whatever, or even if they did, they didn't go out of time, and now they go out of time. Yeah. So now we have to teach these people, our, our motoring public, that maintenance is even more critical. Oil changes are still cheap.
[00:55:53] Jeff Compton: Still 100 bucks, right? Mm-hmm. For, I mean, up here you can get them still for $80. I mean, I wouldn't go there.
[00:56:00] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[00:56:00] Jeff Compton: But you can get it.
[00:56:02] Ben Dellaria: Uh- Yeah, it's like 60 bucks at Walmart.
[00:56:04] Jeff Compton: Yeah. So you're getting synthetic oil, you're getting a filter that passes some kind of standard and, you know, keep on that. And if it still is out of time, well then we have a problem.
[00:56:13] Jeff Compton: But when you go- Yeah ... out there and people go, "There's no oil in the engine, I have a timing fault," the first step in any published service literature is to get the oil and filter up to spec and then- Yep ... reevaluate.
[00:56:26] Ben Dellaria: And then reevaluate.
[00:56:27] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[00:56:28] Ben Dellaria: It's real simple stuff. Yeah. They don't, they don't understand that.
[00:56:30] Ben Dellaria: I'm actually, now that you say that, I think a really good option for us would be to stop putting the mileage on some people's, uh, things Stickers Stickers. Mm-hmm. And just put the date, 'cause they're like, "Oh, but I'm not at the mileage yet." I'm like, "It's not a pick one, it's a whatever comes first." Like, why are we still...
[00:56:49] Ben Dellaria: 'Cause there, it's still that mindset that we argue with these people about all the time.
[00:56:53] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm. "
[00:56:53] Ben Dellaria: Oh, well, this one happened. I don't wanna spend another $100. I'm gonna wait till this one happens." Now you wanna spend nine grand with me because you didn't do it on purpose, or you didn't do it when you should've done it.
[00:57:04] Ben Dellaria: You can only- Not just once, but you did it so many times.
[00:57:07] Jeff Compton: Yeah, I was gonna say, you can only throw that pair of dice so many times, and it's gonna come up snake eyes, right? Because- Exactly ... you get away with it, you push the interval. But all of a sudden now... I always found it was, like, much easier for me to, to, and again, I'm not a sympathetic person, but it always, it didn't bother me nearly as much when I knew that they were not good at looking after their investment, and that we had to handle a big bill, because I always was hopeful that maybe this will be the lesson that, you know- Teaches them
[00:57:33] Jeff Compton: steers them. That'll,
[00:57:34] Ben Dellaria: yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:57:35] Jeff Compton: In life. But I-
[00:57:36] Ben Dellaria: I, I think my tone changes.
[00:57:38] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:57:38] Ben Dellaria: If I go back to what you asked me, I think my per- D- m- I'm, I'm always honest and I'm never rude, but I'll tell them straight up like, "Hey, you didn't take care of the car. This is a lack of maintenance problem. Like you screwed this up."
[00:57:54] Ben Dellaria: If it's a person that's like, "Man, I did all the maintenance, I did all this," I'm like, I'll tell them more, "I really feel bad for you. You got the crap end of the stick here unfortunately." Or they bought something because they were trying to just get a car for their family and they got the crap end of the stick on something, I'll be a little more sympathetic, but not on my price.
[00:58:13] Ben Dellaria: My price is still gonna be what it is. It's still identical to what I would charge them if they screwed up. Yeah. But yeah, maybe my, my tone might change or I might add in a little bit more of a, you know, I might give them something a little bit more. I'm not gonna give them a discount or anything like that, but I might be like, you know, "Here's...
[00:58:31] Ben Dellaria: I'm gonna give you the oil change on this. You don't need an oil change on this, but here's a free oil change for later on down the road."
[00:58:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[00:58:38] Ben Dellaria: When you need us, we felt bad for you because this costs so much. This is what we can do to help you." Because then they're gonna feel a little bit w- it's like that restaurant thing.
[00:58:47] Ben Dellaria: You know, the, you, the, it's 33% chance they're gonna come back again or something he says. So he says, uh, on the first time they go around you go over and you talk to them and you give them something to come back. And then the second time you give them another thing to come back and a free dessert. "Oh, you gotta try the chicken or you gotta try the steak."
[00:59:05] Ben Dellaria: We've talked about that before on how to implement that in our company because, and it's just a, it's just simple things. You know, it's a, "Here's an inspection," right? You want a six-month evaluation. You know, HVAC companies do it all the time. "Oh, we come out and give you a six-month evaluation that you pay yearly."
[00:59:22] Ben Dellaria: I'm not doing that to my customers, but if I see someone in that position that's what I'll do.
[00:59:27] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[00:59:28] Ben Dellaria: And it doesn't happen much, but if it's a dash job or a cylinder head job they're st- they're gonna pay whatever the other person's paying too. It's, you know, I'm not, "Oh, you, you bought a bad car. Pay for a pre-inspection next time then."
[00:59:41] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Exactly. And w- you and I have had interesting conversations about in the last couple weeks about sympathy and, and trying to help too much, right? And we kind of have been... And I, we're not putting anybody on blast here, people, so please don't take it that way. But you know, we saw a friend of ours kinda do an engine job for a customer.
[00:59:59] Jeff Compton: Um, you know, and do it for a absolutely very generous price. That's the most polite way that I can probably say that, Ben, is a very generous price and-
[01:00:08] Ben Dellaria: Very ...
[01:00:09] Jeff Compton: I know that he's coming from a good place in his heart but I also, you know, in conversations with him have said to him that, like, the problem is, is when we put that out there on the internet that we're doing that.
[01:00:22] Jeff Compton: And it's getting us a lot of likes and follows, and people are te- you know, blowing his phone up saying, "Can you do my engine?" And so on and so forth. What we ha- now somebody in your shoes has a really hard time going and doing that same job for that, for what you need to charge, that's the key here, because Ben's job is Ben's business.
[01:00:44] Jeff Compton: This other person, they have another regular job. This is just some fun money for them and, and a, and a, and a way to feel good. But all of a sudden when that's out there on the internet somebody says, "You shouldn't charge more than that because he charged $25 an hour and he was there from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 that night."
[01:01:03] Jeff Compton: And, you know- Yeah ... um, and I get it about wanting to help people, but when we put that out there to, to show something about ourselves, are we damaging the industry, Ben?
[01:01:17] Ben Dellaria: Oh, all day every day.
[01:01:18] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:01:19] Ben Dellaria: All day every day.
[01:01:20] Jeff Compton: We-- JeanAnn, do you get calls like that where somebody says, "No, but I saw it and it should only take this long"?
[01:01:26] Jeff Compton: Yes. Or how is that handled?
[01:01:30] Jena Dellaria: Uh, sometimes I have to put them on hold and ask him because I'm not really too sure how to answer them.
[01:01:36] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:01:36] Jena Dellaria: Um, because I don't wanna say the wrong thing basically. Right.
[01:01:40] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:01:41] Jena Dellaria: But yeah, they have called and said, "Well, it, you know, I looked it up on YouTube and it only take, should take, you know, two hours instead of the four hours you're telling me that it's gonna cost."
[01:01:52] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:01:53] Jena Dellaria: Well, that might be true, but We don't know until we get there.
[01:01:59] Jeff Compton: Kind of a two-part question. When they call sometimes and you answer the phone, Jenna, do they try to disregard you and, and say, "I wanna talk to the mechanic?" Because- Yes ... my good friends Frank and Margarita that have been on, right? My, my Canadian friends up here that are from Aylmer, Ontario, 3D Auto, they got their podcast, and, you know, they're big on TikTok too.
[01:02:17] Jeff Compton: Um, that was a big thing at first that drove Margarita nuts- Mm-hmm ... is the people come in and not wanna speak to Margarita. They only wanna speak to Frank.
[01:02:24] Jena Dellaria: Yes.
[01:02:25] Jeff Compton: Um, how do you handle that? Does it start to... Like, you- you're pretty even-keeled. Like Ben was saying, you don't get mad about nothing, but does that?
[01:02:32] Jena Dellaria: Sometimes it bothers me. Other times I'll just push it off 'cause that's just my nature. It was different
[01:02:39] Ben Dellaria: in the beginning.
[01:02:40] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. In the beginning- Because- ... I would always- Yeah ... give, uh, "Hold on a second," 'cause I wasn't- No ... really sure how to.
[01:02:47] Ben Dellaria: No, I think it's more the customers didn't... We have, I would say, 80% of our phone calls are return customers.
[01:02:56] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. So they were used to talking to me. Mm-hmm. So when she's answering the phone, they're like, "Is this Ben's 3D?" Yeah. You know? Yeah. And she's like, "Yes, I'm his wife. I answer the phones now." And then, and most of them have done that, but there's been one or two that are like, "Well, I wanna talk to Ben." And I'm like, "I'm not fucking talking to them."
[01:03:11] Ben Dellaria: "I'm not talking to anybody. This is the point 'cause I, I want to work on the cars." Yeah. And she's like, "Okay, I'll do it. I- I got it. I'll get it, I'll get it." And she puts them in their place real quick, and she does good at it.
[01:03:21] Jeff Compton: Good for you, Jenna. Yeah. 'Cause I, it, it has to be, like, I would see the frustration when we, when I did the interview with Margarita, and you could see it, the frustration in her face, and it doesn't happen as much as it used to, but it still had to happen a lot.
[01:03:34] Jeff Compton: And some of that was, like, Ben, uh, or not Ben, excuse me, Frank enabling it, like Frank would just, you know, oh, that customer, it's the same as they say they walk right into the shop wanna talk to Frank. And Frank, you know, directs them, "No, you gotta go to the office." But it's those- I don't wanna say sins of our past, but it's the way we used to do things that can still, what seems so innocent, right, and so casual and whatever, man, they can haunt us forever.
[01:04:00] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. '
[01:04:01] Ben Dellaria: Cause you don't know how to change it.
[01:04:02] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[01:04:03] Ben Dellaria: I had customers like that in the beginning where when I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I'm like, "Oh, well, that customer, I never charged him from the beginning, so I don't know how to charge him now." You know, that would happen w- years ago.
[01:04:15] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:04:15] Ben Dellaria: And I had to get over that. They're not my customers anymore-
[01:04:19] Jeff Compton: Right ...
[01:04:19] Ben Dellaria: because they don't wanna get charged. And that was my own fault when I first started that I screwed up, and we don't have that problem today, obviously. Yeah. But yeah, that was, uh, that was... That, that happens because you ha- you build that rapport with that person, and that's what, that's what some of these people online don't understand.
[01:04:38] Ben Dellaria: You keep starting your business out at super low prices, those customers are gonna be there, and then when you raise those prices to the right one, if you go super slow, maybe you'll get it, but when you go from like, you know, 80 bucks and not charging for parts to 130 bucks and charging for parts, you're gonna lose all those customers.
[01:04:56] Ben Dellaria: You're gonna start all over. Yeah. Just start at the right price. That's right. Build a real company. Like, don't, don't do that stuff. It's like, so like going back to what you were saying about people doing that on the internet I understand doing something for people. We've done it before, but we don't do it for views.
[01:05:13] Ben Dellaria: I usually don't even put that stuff on the internet.
[01:05:15] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:05:16] Ben Dellaria: The one that I did put on the internet, which was early in the year or last year, uh, the guy, we do it because Jenna had cancer 15 years ago, and, uh, it, so it sticks with her. Like, so we care about people that have that. So this guy, he couldn't afford to fix the car for his daughter, and the grandfather called us, and we went out, and when he told us what it was, we ended up quoting him the job, but then he, he agreed to the job too.
[01:05:49] Ben Dellaria: He's like, "Well, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out how to do it." And I was like, "You know what?" I said, "Just don't worry about it." He's like, "What do you mean?" I said, "Just you don't, you don't need to pay us for the job. We'll, we'll take care of the job." And he's like, "I don't understand." I go, "Let me explain something to you."
[01:06:02] Ben Dellaria: I said, "I own this company. I'm gonna go buy the parts. I can not pay myself." I said, "It doesn't, in reality it doesn't really cost me anything. I can just tell myself I'm going out on a weekend to help a friend." Yeah. I go... And he, the guy broke down in tears and everything. I did put it on the internet because it was part of our ride along, and that was the one where that Karen lady's like, "Well, he gives away a job, but has he talked to his wife like this?"
[01:06:26] Ben Dellaria: And I'm like, "Fuck this." You know? So I don't put that stuff out there anymore because I, I don't need to have recognition for helping somebody. Mm. And I don't want monetization from helping somebody because it's the wrong thing in my eyes, and that's where I think social media destroys our industry. I'm all for people being on the internet, building a business, being a content creator, doing all kinds of stuff, but when you do it on the backs of my industry, I have a problem with it.
[01:06:53] Jeff Compton: Well, and, uh, you and I, you and I have talked so much about how you can build your whole platform by simply saying that the other shop didn't do it right, they screwed them up and ripped them off. There's no second... They never get a chance to put their hand up and go, "Wait, I was in that other shop, and they came in and demanded that we only do this."
[01:07:10] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "And that's why it's now broke down in a parking lot somewhere." And, and some fraggle hair is, you know, f- fixing an overheat problem, right? On a, on a car. That's the second side that we never get to show. So, like, when I see people that build their whole damn platform on that, I'm just like, I, I just flick the damn channel because it, it's just, it's, it's rage bait at that point.
[01:07:30] Ben Dellaria: It is. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[01:07:31] Jeff Compton: But it's, it's-
[01:07:31] Ben Dellaria: And I'm, I'm so, uh, I'm fault of it at times. I get pissed at times, and I'm like, "All these fucking pe- why are they doing this to people?" And, uh, you forget, and I should know it, that there's always two sides to every story, and I, and I always tell people this. I learned it from the, the lawn care world too.
[01:07:49] Ben Dellaria: You'd go to some lady's house.
[01:07:51] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. "
[01:07:51] Ben Dellaria: I don't know why he stopped showing up." "What do you mean? I figured out in three months why he stopped showing up, because you stopped paying the bill."
[01:07:58] Jena Dellaria: That's right.
[01:07:59] Ben Dellaria: You know? So it's the same thing, and I have to learn that too. Or I have to remember it when I'm in the heat of the moment that- That stuff happens.
[01:08:07] Ben Dellaria: 'Cause I just, I just went through it the other day with a lady that we're going back to on Monday morning. We have to, we went out there and I said, "What is the main problem with the car today?" She said, "The battery light is on." "Okay, let me diagnose the car." Diagnosed the car, didn't test drive, can't do anything.
[01:08:23] Ben Dellaria: The thing doesn't really work. It's putting out, like, 15 and a half, 16 volts. I'm like, "I'm not driving this. I'm gonna melt the car."
[01:08:29] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:08:30] Ben Dellaria: I go back, we solder an alternator. Now we solder this alternator because some other mechanic soldered an alternator, plugs, coils, all kinds of different things to try to make it run better, 'cause their initial concern was that it was running rough.
[01:08:41] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. It needs a catalytic converter. It's got 10, 10 PSI of back pressure. I won't- It dropped down to about five PSI after you started it. And I'm... As soon as I put the alternator in, I'm like, "Oh, this thing is great. It started up. It's got perfect voltage. The battery light's out. Let me go run it down the block, make sure everything is okay."
[01:09:01] Ben Dellaria: It doesn't go anywhere. I'm like, "Ma'am," I got mad. I was like... And I didn't get mad at her, I, and I got mad at the husband. I go, "Can you please tell me why you hired me?" Yeah. I go, "I asked you the other day why you hired me, and you said just the battery light, and you said it was running rough." And I was lucky enough that I told that customer, I said, "Once I put the alternator in it and I can actually drive it, I can't answer if the car is gonna be fixed or not."
[01:09:23] Ben Dellaria: I told her that that day I diagnosed it. And she said, "Okay, I understand." 'Cause she even said the alternator was, like, $711 to do the job, and, uh, she's like, "Well, what about the diagnosis fee?" I go, "You paid it already." And she's like, "But it doesn't come off the ticket?" I said, "Nope." "That does not come off the ticket.
[01:09:42] Ben Dellaria: That's for my time." And she's like, "Okay, no problem." Ding, tech metric goes off because they approved the job. She just asked a question, and I was just honest. I didn't, you know, expect her to say, "Well, I want this," or, "I want that." I just answered the question, and she's like, "Okay, great." And then when I did this and I told her, "Sorry, but, you know, this other guy jacked you around."
[01:10:01] Ben Dellaria: So in that video, I got really pissed. It's not out yet. It won't be out for two weeks, but I got really, really mad that somebody would do this to these people that are just trying to... They're just like, "Okay." But she was smart enough that finally said, "You know what? Stop."
[01:10:17] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "
[01:10:17] Ben Dellaria: I'm not spending any more money on this until I get somebody else out here to look at this car."
[01:10:22] Ben Dellaria: And she did, and she actually went two other places that told her-
[01:10:26] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm ...
[01:10:27] Ben Dellaria: I don't remember what they told her, but she didn't feel comfortable, and then she had called us, and when I told her all this stuff, she agreed to it immediately. And I think we're into it, like, almost 15, 1,600 bucks. It'll be fine once I put the cat in it, it'll drive fine.
[01:10:38] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. As long as, you know, no O2 sensor codes or anything like that or anything got melted. But there's a reason why the cat failed.
[01:10:44] Jeff Compton: Well, it has to be, for sure, right? Yeah. So- I mean, yeah ...
[01:10:47] Ben Dellaria: and that's what I told her, too. I go, "There's a reason this is happening." I go, "And that's gonna rear its head eventually as well.
[01:10:52] Ben Dellaria: You need to understand that, too." And she does, hopefully, so we'll see.
[01:10:56] Jeff Compton: It's frustrating though, right? When you go to these cars and they wind up looking like a science project because it got a bunch of parts maybe that it didn't need, or it got the w- like, we took off some really good parts, and we put on some terrible aftermarket, you know, Am- Amazon, eBay, whatever, you know, ignition coil.
[01:11:15] Jeff Compton: You're starting over, and then you're fighting that battle of the, "Oh, it can't be that because the coils are all brand new." We see it now. Uh, that's- Oh, we see it
[01:11:23] Ben Dellaria: all day ...
[01:11:23] Jeff Compton: what the industry is. We're showing more and more people are putting out examples of parts being put on That didn't fix anything or made it worse.
[01:11:32] Jeff Compton: So I think the general population is starting to see that, like, wow, the parts quality's really crappy. Like I can- It is, yeah ... understand how, you know, Ben is at my place telling me I need an ignition coil even though the guy, a different guy was here last month and put an ignition coil and the car is still broken, right?
[01:11:47] Jeff Compton: It's just who do we hold accountable for that? Because, I mean, the parts pe- manufacturers are not gonna stand up and go, "We're sorry. We're gonna take the high road here and only turn out stuff that, like, meets the standard." They're not gonna do that.
[01:12:03] Ben Dellaria: No, they're not gonna go back to old school Delco Remy days and making really good alternators and starters that they used to in the, you know, '80s and '90s and stuff like that.
[01:12:12] Ben Dellaria: They're not gonna do it. They're, they s- they still, they have to do the same thing. They're changing their way to combat with the cheap parts to be able to be on the same price level, to be able to stay in business, so they hire the cheapest person to make their parts now just to keep them relevant and keep those parts going.
[01:12:27] Ben Dellaria: So it's all the same thing. So you have one falter in our industry that starts somewhere, and then the whole thing just... It's like a domino effect. Every, every aspect of it has started to fail over the years. Eventually, if nothing's changed by the time we're done and retired, I'm afraid to see where the auto industry will be.
[01:12:47] Ben Dellaria: I'm really afraid to see what it'll be in 20 years if we don't get a handle on it and get it changed soon. And unfortunately, and I don't, like I've told you before, I don't want the government stepping in, but it's like that whole thing in, at, sitting at AutoZone in that parking lot. Yeah. Somebody needs to step in.
[01:13:02] Ben Dellaria: I don't care who the hell it is. Someone needs to step in and take those guys out of there. And now-
[01:13:08] Jeff Compton: Go ahead, please ...
[01:13:09] Ben Dellaria: I, I've, I, y- do I feel bad saying that 'cause some of these guys are just trying to take care of their family? Yeah, but you're putting people's lives at risk, and you're hurting the industry that has helped me take care of my family, and I freaking care about the industry.
[01:13:21] Ben Dellaria: You got people that- You might have football players that care about the NFL and will go through whatever they have to go through to make sure the NFL is great, and then they retire and they become part of the NFL to continue to make it great. Same thing with us. Why am, why am I the jackass that wants to make the automotive industry great again?
[01:13:40] Ben Dellaria: Oh, I sound like the other, that guy. But I didn't mean to say a political thing. Like, I don't pay attention to politics. But-
[01:13:47] Jena Dellaria: Oh ...
[01:13:48] Ben Dellaria: uh, it's just, it, it's true though. Like, just come on man, like stop faltering me because I want the automotive industry to be awesome again. I want the parts to be good. I want, I want people to make money.
[01:13:59] Ben Dellaria: I want the industry to keep flourishing. But, you know, you just got someone always trying to tear you down for a million views because I'm gonna make money telling you that you guys suck.
[01:14:10] Jeff Compton: And see, that video went so rampant. I mean, it seems like almost every week now there's a video that just absolutely blows the doors right off, right?
[01:14:17] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And, you know, the backstory is that supposedly that's happening in the parking lot adjacent to the parts store, so they're not responsible. The parts store is not liable, all blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[01:14:28] Ben Dellaria: But- Somebody is. Somebody owns that parking lot. That's right. And someone's gonna get sued when someone gets crushed under a car.
[01:14:34] Jeff Compton: And it became so political so fast, where people were like, it was within the first 10 comments, somebody made a Trump comment and somebody made something about people from south of the border, and that's what was hap- And I'm like, it's got nothing to do with that. No. We're not trying to shut it down or say maybe we should look at this with a different lens because of any of those factors at all.
[01:14:52] Jeff Compton: It had nothing to do with it. It's because of the attitude of somebody standing there with a $400 wristwatch on going, "Uh, somebody like Ben came and quoted my AC and wanted 1,000 bucks, and, and this guy that I don't even know his last name, and next week he might not be here in this parking lot, is gonna fix my AC for 200 bucks.
[01:15:14] Jeff Compton: The... Ben or somebody at the other shop is just trying to rip me off, and I'm so tired of being ripped off." And I sit there and look at it and I go, you know what? Like, man. And everybody's like, This is the part that starts to drive me nuts because it's just such a cop-out answer, is go, "They're not your customers.
[01:15:30] Jeff Compton: Don't worry about it." Well, they're not my customers. I wouldn't want those customers. But it's my flippin' industry. When they're saying that they're in my industry, and yes, they have tools and they repair cars, they're in my industry, albeit there's no Basic level of competency shown So
[01:15:51] Ben Dellaria: standard
[01:15:52] Jeff Compton: Standard that says they're not hurting somebody.
[01:15:55] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Exactly, 'cause if someone gets into an accident and actually kills somebody or actually hurts somebody, that guy is gone. He ain't gonna find him. He ain't gonna pay for it. Yeah. You know? I mean, it's... You can even say the same thing about me. Like, I'm doing this job here at my house. That's technically not supposed to be done.
[01:16:14] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:16:14] Ben Dellaria: But where's the cross, right? I'm a mobile service. I would, I could do it at the other guy's house, but I can't do it at my house? Right. Where's the, where's the limit on that? Where's the, where's the line before it's crossed, right? If you wanna open a shop and you gotta open a brick-and-mortar, you have to do all these things with the EPA.
[01:16:32] Ben Dellaria: You have to only open it where it's zoned. You can't have a business at home.
[01:16:37] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:16:38] Ben Dellaria: But yet they can go do that, and everybody can drive by and not say nothing.
[01:16:42] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:16:43] Ben Dellaria: Right? Like, so I don't... It's just, it still goes back to s- I think just still stupid political stuff and money grabs, right? So, like, our town used to be such a nice town.
[01:16:53] Ben Dellaria: It was a, it was a farming town. Um, there was farms everywhere, and now whoever's in charge of our freaking county is just, they're allowing every house known to man to be put up, rip down all the farmland, and they're putting up houses and hospitals and banks and storage places like there's no tomorrow.
[01:17:13] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:17:13] Ben Dellaria: And we have almost quadrupled the amount of people that live here in the past three years, even just on my block. I used to have trees everywhere. Now there's houses everywhere. I don't mind the neighbors, and that means there's more customers, but-
[01:17:26] Jeff Compton: Sure ...
[01:17:27] Ben Dellaria: it's the same thing. Like, it's whatever makes them money they go do, and they don't care about the mobile people at all.
[01:17:34] Jeff Compton: Like- Well, and I come from this place up in, you know, as people like to call me, and one guy got right up in my, you know, and if I could've reached through the screen, I would've. Um, but, you know, calling me Communist Canada, right, where I have- Yeah ... to have a level of certain certification before I'm allowed to call myself a mechanic.
[01:17:50] Jeff Compton: I cannot say that I am a mechanic, you know, unless I have taken some type of training and got a government-recognized certification. And I'm not trying to say that that's the fix for the industry, but free- It's
[01:18:05] Ben Dellaria: a good start point ...
[01:18:06] Jeff Compton: well, yeah, because, I mean, all of those people in that c-
[01:18:10] Ben Dellaria: They're not gonna go take the test
[01:18:12] Jeff Compton: they probably, not one of them has ever probably taken an ASE test.
[01:18:15] Ben Dellaria: No, and not a single one of them has liability insurance. Yeah. Not a single one has a business checking account, uh, you know? But again- How are we gonna, how do we change that? How do we... You can't. You know, it's almost like-
[01:18:31] Jeff Compton: You can't ...
[01:18:31] Ben Dellaria: saying, you know, all the w- you're not allowed to sell drugs, but people do it anyway.
[01:18:36] Ben Dellaria: It's not on the same scope and caliber.
[01:18:38] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:18:38] Ben Dellaria: You know, but there's no, but the police are policing that, but there's no police policing this. There's no, there's no automotive industry. Like who's... They always used to say, "Oh, the ASE, the ASE, the ASE." The ASE is good in one thing in my mind, and that is making sure that I can stay up on today's stuff.
[01:18:57] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Someone said it on your podcast once, and that has stuck with me ever since, and I don't remember who said it, but the ASE is a very valuable way to train yourself on where you need help. Mm-hmm. Okay, cool. So who regulates the United States with, uh, us? Nobody.
[01:19:17] Jeff Compton: No one.
[01:19:17] Ben Dellaria: No one at all. So you're, it's up to that county in Austin, Texas, where those guys are at, it's up to that county to put its foot down and say, "We wanna do better by our area," and they don't care.
[01:19:29] Ben Dellaria: Mm. So it's the same thing here. We have, we have a light that, or a stop sign at the end of our road here. It's all 55 mile an hour roads. There are more accidents and problems at that intersection, and we've been begging the county and the city to put a light in. Their answer back to us is there's not enough deaths That's the answer on why they won't put the light in.
[01:19:50] Ben Dellaria: What my son was almost, and my daughter was almost one of those deaths, on both accounts. Both of them got into accidents. My son, lucky that he's alive in his, with the accident he got into. And my daughter, it was a fender bender to a point, but she pulled out, and 55 mile an hour took the front of her car, the bumper off.
[01:20:08] Jeff Compton: And, and you and I know sometimes in the real life world, it's not even how many numbers, it's who happens to pass.
[01:20:17] Ben Dellaria: Yep. Exactly.
[01:20:18] Jeff Compton: The people of influence. It's the people of, that, that laws get changed. A
[01:20:21] Ben Dellaria: judge or something.
[01:20:22] Jeff Compton: Yeah ... a writer, a local politician, or prominent business person, whatever.
[01:20:27] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:20:27] Jeff Compton: And I caught some flack because I said, "You know what?
[01:20:29] Jeff Compton: Like, I respect any of those people in the parking lot. I respect that hustle. I really do." Mm-hmm. Because I, I-
[01:20:35] Ben Dellaria: I respect them taking care of their family. Yeah. I do not like that they're hurting my industry, and my way of life, and the thing that I have put over 20 years into.
[01:20:43] Jeff Compton: And see, you and I have talked before, and it's an unpopular conversation, but there's a lot of people that are out there doing the mobile thing that wouldn't be able to survive in a, in a brick and mortar.
[01:20:56] Jeff Compton: Like, they, they, they didn't have it. They couldn't cut it. They either, maybe they just weren't, like, employable in the sense that, like, they wanna be able to set their own hours. So they don't wanna come in at 8:00 in the morning every day, right, and work, you know, five days a week. They wanna have a very flexible schedule.
[01:21:12] Jeff Compton: I can ex- I can respect that.
[01:21:14] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:21:15] Jeff Compton: But it's the people that probably maybe were in one, two, three, four shops, and somebody kept saying to them, "You, you just don't have it, kid." Well, they, they, they wind up in a parking lot underneath a jack stand telling Joe Public that, "I'm just as good as the guy down the street that's had a brick and mortar for 20 years," and, uh, uh, "I'm just as good as Sherwood Cook, you know, at Royalty.
[01:21:39] Jeff Compton: It's just I'm, I'm half the price. I'm a mechanic-" Yeah ... just like him No, you're not
[01:21:45] Ben Dellaria: No, you're not. We got a kid here that's like that
[01:21:48] Jeff Compton: And
[01:21:48] Ben Dellaria: s- And he... I tried helping him. His name is, uh, his name is Matt. Mm. He, uh, I've gone behind him a lot, on a lot of cars, and he gets blasted on Facebook all the time saying, "This kid came here and he has employees, but yet he shows up in an Uber and-
[01:22:07] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm
[01:22:07] Ben Dellaria: uh, he left all these bolts loose and did all this and that," and I'm just... We couldn't help him at all. He didn't, he, there was no, no saving him to make him understand what he was doing wrong, so we had to, we had to boot him and, and get, you know, block him and everything. But he- Because- ... he's that ...
[01:22:24] Jeff Compton: what you've done is you've started this school where essentially you're teaching other people that are just like, you know, um, I don't wanna say just like you and Jenna, but, you know, are mobile technicians, and you're, and you're empowering them with like, these are some of the, the hurdles that you can avoid by listening to what you and Jenna teach them.
[01:22:43] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Right? Uh, so it's Skool, S-K-O-O-L. Yeah. Um, we've got almost, like, 1,600 members in there now. Mm-hmm. Um, and there's, there's a l- a lot of activity to a point. People get more active when I'm giving them tools. Um, but yeah, that's the whole point. Like, so there's a classroom in there. Um, so I have like, you know, I have videos on startup, you know, get your insurance, get sh- how to go about getting insurance or why it's available, you know, the five keys to success I called it.
[01:23:17] Ben Dellaria: Um, I have videos on how to set labor rates, and that video is based exactly on Cecil Bullard-
[01:23:23] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm ...
[01:23:24] Ben Dellaria: of his math and how he does it, and how to figure out, with a little bit of a twist on how to figure out productivity for mobile versus a technician, 'cause he's setting that up as a business owner for a technician.
[01:23:36] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:23:37] Ben Dellaria: You have to kind of set it up for yourself. So, like, the same thing. With all of the stuff that's on my schedule, I keep my windshield time to a minimum, so we drive a distance in the morning, and then I'm 10 minutes in between jobs, maybe 15, and then back to the house. You know, so we try to stay in pockets to keep that productivity up.
[01:23:58] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. So we teach them to try to do that, and it's, it works out really, really well for most guys that actually follow it to a T. Uh, other guys it doesn't. They're still having trouble grasping what we say and how to do it 'cause they're just afraid. That's usually what it comes down to. But yeah, there's a community board, a diagnostic board, uh, a tool board, and a place for them to kind of showcase their stuff and their setups.
[01:24:24] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, that's the whole point of it, is to encourage them that- You can do the revenue we do, which is well over 200K a year in re- in total revenue, but you can also still pay yourself, you know, six figures a year with doing mobile the right way, and not doing it for beer money and actually building a, a business.
[01:24:49] Ben Dellaria: Something that you can transition into a brick and mortar and/or stay doing forever if that's what you wanna do. It's even scalable and/or sellable at some point.
[01:25:00] Jeff Compton: That's what I was just gonna say, because, you know, if you build it the right way, like you and I saw that one gentleman, I think he was on about a month or so ago, and he talked about, you know, if you set your labor rate at 100, at $100 an hour in your first year, I'll show you how to make, you know, six figures.
[01:25:15] Ben Dellaria: Oh, yeah, that $80 guy. MO- MAOS or whatever the fuck it's called.
[01:25:18] Jeff Compton: Yeah. And- You know, I, I just kind of sat back and went, the math isn't mathing for me because I know that at that l- rate, for me to pay myself and be able to clear six figures, man, I gotta put a lot of hours in or I gotta, like, you know, I gotta cut a lot of expenses out of what I think most people starting with insurance would be.
[01:25:42] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. You
[01:25:43] Jeff Compton: know? And, and, and you know, I'm not saying that he's wrong, but he left out a lot of convenient things about the difference between what he was trying to advocate for and what you try to advocate for.
[01:25:55] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. Um, he, he does that a lot on a couple other platforms. He just... And now he's doing the same thing.
[01:26:02] Ben Dellaria: His videos are rage-baiting type things to get views, 'cause that's what he wants. And it's another guy. There's a couple of guys like that on TikTok. They try to sell a platform, or they try to sell a program. They're trying to, uh, they're coming up with programs that are, like, identical to Jobber. They're trying to compete with TechMetric, and that's cool.
[01:26:23] Ben Dellaria: Like, build something, do something, but don't, don't expect me to tell you that that is gonna not work, is not gonna work. Is it the puppy?
[01:26:32] Jeff Compton: Yeah, she's barking for whatever crazy reason. I don't know why.
[01:26:36] Ben Dellaria: Um- ... you know, and the thing that I didn't like about, I don't like about it is I don't like you trying to tell all these other mobile guys that this is the only way to go and the best way to go, because that's wrong.
[01:26:49] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:26:49] Ben Dellaria: Um, you don't need to buy leads. We've proven that, and we've proven it time and time again that you don't need to buy into these programs and buy leads from other mobile mechanics. That's not gonna work, especially the ones that, you know, are just loving to make memes. You know the guy I'm talking about.
[01:27:06] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:27:07] Ben Dellaria: Um-
[01:27:08] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:27:09] Ben Dellaria: it just, he did, the, the thing he's doing with Chuck he tried to do to me once too. Mm-hmm. And I had a big long talk with him about it and, uh, it, it, we ended it well, but he's just, you know, whatever. Um, but yeah, the school community is, that's what it's for. It's to, to help people do that. Oh, so that's what I was saying.
[01:27:29] Ben Dellaria: So like, yeah, all these guys that are on here trying to make money on the backs of the mobile world pisses me off.
[01:27:35] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:27:35] Ben Dellaria: I almost went that route at the be- end of last year, 'cause a lot of the guys, I have a, a just a regular group of, like, four guys that I talk with that have been my friends since the beginning, plus another couple of guys on Snapchat that I just don't use, but-
[01:27:51] Ben Dellaria: it's like, yeah, you should do that. You should, you should build, you should build a program that's training and this and that. And then, but when I was coming up with it, I felt dirty doing it. Mm-hmm. I felt horrible, and I was like, "I'll never do that again. I'll make my money from the-" collaborations and things like that, like we're doing now with Techmetric, and let my community always be free to help these guys understand.
[01:28:15] Ben Dellaria: I'm not gonna force them to pay me to give them answers they can get for themselves.
[01:28:19] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That whole thing that went down between him and Chuck, um, to me seemed so out of proportion, blown out so fast. Because i- if you've spent, you know, and you've talked a lot with Chuck, and I have ta- spent a lot of time with Chuck.
[01:28:34] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:28:35] Jeff Compton: He's similar to me in the sense that when he just says something, he's not saying it to be malicious, but he just knows it to be truth, right? Yeah. When somebody, when he corrects somebody, and that's it, he catches a ton of crap.
[01:28:47] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:28:47] Jeff Compton: Just because he corrects things that are just not true.
[01:28:50] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:28:50] Jeff Compton: And I love people that do that because I, the one thing I hate on the internet is misinformation.
[01:28:55] Jeff Compton: It drives me bonkers when somebody says, you know, like, um, "Changing my ABS speed sensor stopped my car from stalling." Like, I can't, I can't, I can't, I just can't take it. I can't fathom it. In some weird universe it could cause it to happen, but as soon as somebody says it, and then somebody else believes it, and somebody else repeats it, it's very hard to get that genie back in the bottle.
[01:29:18] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:29:18] Ben Dellaria: Well, it's- So when- ... kinda like the same thing we're talking about.
[01:29:20] Jeff Compton: Yeah. So when Chuck is going out there and correcting people, and let's be real, he's built himself a platform by now and proved himself to be creditable enough that he has the right, I think, to be able to say, "You're wrong, and I can teach you why you're wrong."
[01:29:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah. "Here's examples. Here's real world testing," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But for somebody to just get all butthurt about it because they got called out and they got shown, and then to escalate it to that, it's not a good look for us.
[01:29:48] Ben Dellaria: Mm-mm. It's not, and that's the thing. Like, the conversation I had with him, uh, he blatantly said it.
[01:29:54] Ben Dellaria: He's like, "Well, you're for the automotive industry and I'm not." he, that was his comment back to me in the comment section, uh, in a, in a, in a private chat.
[01:30:04] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:30:04] Ben Dellaria: Um, because he, he tried to call me out on something, and I was gonna call him out on the things he was doing. Um, and then the post, oh, I, I had made a stitch of another company and it got taken down by TikTok.
[01:30:20] Ben Dellaria: Right. And he immediately was like, oh, he put up an AI thing of him getting mad at me and being all Mr. Funny and this and that, and I was like, "Listen, buddy. First of all, TikTok took it down." I said, "We're not gonna play that effing game with this whole meme thing back and forth." I said, "'Cause I'm not gonna play into it."
[01:30:36] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:30:37] Ben Dellaria: And I said, and I sent him a private message, and I talked to him like a man, and I told him, I said, "I'm for the automotive industry. This is what I want. This is what I'm advocating for. I don't give you a crap about what you're doing. You go do your own thing and let me do mine." And he agreed. He took it down and, you know, 'cause I talked to him about it, but I don't follow, I had never followed him, but now I, I blocked him 'cause I don't wanna see the stuff he's doing to Chuck and everything.
[01:31:00] Ben Dellaria: I don't want that childish crap on my page, and I just, I can't, I can't deal with that stuff. 'Cause the same thing, I wanna rip, g- I wanna drive to his house and I wanna kick him in the nuggets. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I just, I can't stand people like that, and that's childish for me to say, but it's, it's angered.
[01:31:16] Ben Dellaria: I get so freaking triggered with these guys.
[01:31:19] Jeff Compton: I gotta ask you, what's his, what's his grounding or thinking for why he's not for the industry? Is he one of them ones like I spoke about that probably didn't make it and-
[01:31:29] Ben Dellaria: I don't know. He never really said, um, but I mean, you know, that's, y- if you're just... I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't know.
[01:31:37] Ben Dellaria: I'd, I could look back into it and see if I could find it, but I don't think there was a reason that he told me he was not for the automotive industry. Maybe it was, like you said, like, you know, he has a thought process of the automotive industry was never there for him. I mean, listen, the automotive industry was never there for me either because there is no real automotive industry.
[01:31:56] Ben Dellaria: There's, the industry is you and I. Yeah. It's the ones who make it. It's all of us together. Like Paul, Paul is the top.
[01:32:05] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:32:06] Ben Dellaria: Steckler is the top. Yes. These guys, Cecil Bullard. If you give everybody a, a section, those guys are the top of the automotive industry, and, and it all trickles down into the rest of us of what we're all trying to do for it.
[01:32:19] Ben Dellaria: But when you got guys like that that are just like, you know- Tearing it down and always just out there for the views and making money that way. Good hustle. You're good at making content. You're not-- I wanna see you come and diagnose a CAN circuit. Right. I wanna see you do that and do it in real time and not fuck up and do what everybody else is, is doing.
[01:32:42] Ben Dellaria: Oh, you don't care about that, that's fine. Then we're not on the same level and you're-- we're not on the same conversation. It's not that you're not the... You're just someone that doesn't... It doesn't-- You're not in my view. Uh, you're not there. I don't care about you. I'm gonna move on to the people that actually care-
[01:32:58] Jeff Compton: And I-
[01:32:58] Jeff Compton: I'm gonna
[01:32:59] Ben Dellaria: help them ...
[01:33:00] Jeff Compton: I take, and I probably shouldn't, but I take some satisfaction in seeing people that I've been engaging with now sometimes going back two years on this plat- on TikTok at least, but whatever, on social media a lot longer. And, you know, I might have had them on as a guest and they, you can see their content and they were like, "This is my truth.
[01:33:18] Jeff Compton: This is my reality." And I say as the older guy, I'll be 51 in November, right? "This is what I've been there, seen that. This is where I think." And they go, "Oh no, man, you're wrong." And then I see their situation change, and all of a sudden they're now saying, "Flat rate, like flat rate really sucks here. I loved it when I worked at this facility- Yeah
[01:33:39] Jeff Compton: but now it's terrible and I'm not working that anymore." And I go, "See, this is the thing." Or, "Flat rate worked for you, but then remember that guy that you talked about in the shop over there that he could get through any problem that they gave him? Any one, it did not matter. But he, hours-wise, production-wise, looked not great to you.
[01:34:01] Jeff Compton: And you, some of you put your hand up and said, 'He's not motivated. He's not hustling. He's not- Welcome to the reality of where it changes when you get a different perspective. And that's all this is about. The, the amateur psychologist that I am is always fascinated by what makes people... Jenna's smiling, right?
[01:34:18] Jeff Compton: She's like, yeah. 'Cause what makes them, what makes them respond? I remember, you know, Eric the Car Guy, who is one of the OGs, right, talking about when he started his platform, he looked me right in the face and, "I started my platform because I wanted to get back at the people that I had worked for, for how they, what they did to me."
[01:34:36] Ben Dellaria: Oh, they traded him rough.
[01:34:37] Jeff Compton: And I can totally, totally resonate with that, totally relate to it. But at the end of the day, I keep saying it over and over again, we, if we're gonna put ourselves out here, we have a responsibility to be positive and to show the positive. And y- there's a local, a local guy, a new guy that's building a huge platform really quick.
[01:34:59] Jeff Compton: You know, it's down to two minutes, and he works in the dealership, and it's, you know, I, I'm gonna put this in and, and, you know, it's supposed to pay me eight hours retail, but it's only gonna pay me four, so he takes a can of brake clean, he sprays it on. Now, that's gonna blow up for him and, and, you know, he's gonna get a bunch of whatever.
[01:35:15] Jeff Compton: He does not care if the comment is laughing at him or if the comment is telling him he's a crook, because his, he's hearing the cash register only.
[01:35:23] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:35:24] Jeff Compton: And that's cheap, easy pop, right? We can all get pops that way.
[01:35:28] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:35:28] Jeff Compton: But it's not helping the industry. No, it's not. And that's why I'm, I'm still doing what I do, and you're still doing what you do, I think.
[01:35:38] Jeff Compton: And, and- Yeah ... you know, JeanAnn, did, if you'd have known that it was gonna be like this, would you have, would you have said, "Oh yeah, Ben, I still wanna come out on this road and do this with you?" Or...
[01:35:48] Jena Dellaria: Yes.
[01:35:49] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[01:35:50] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. Cool. Well, you- I, I was ready to be out of my,
[01:35:55] Jena Dellaria: out of pharmacy. I would've done it either way.
[01:35:57] Jeff Compton: That could be frustrating too.
[01:35:59] Jena Dellaria: Ugh.
[01:35:59] Jeff Compton: For sure.
[01:36:00] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:36:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:36:01] Ben Dellaria: No, I would- All those years working for corporate and all that crap.
[01:36:04] Jena Dellaria: Yeah. From management- I'm
[01:36:06] Ben Dellaria: just glad that we- ...
[01:36:07] Jena Dellaria: to pharmacy ...
[01:36:09] Ben Dellaria: I'm glad we did what we did and how we do it. And like, and everyone listening, like, it isn't because I got a collaboration deal with TechMetric.
[01:36:16] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. That's not why. That deal didn't get put through until, uh- Four months ago ... April this year. That was when it started. Yeah. And that was because TechMetric reached out and they're like, "Hey, you talk about us all the time." I go, "Yeah, because going with your program changed our company for the best and made me understand my numbers."
[01:36:37] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. And they're like, "Well, since you talk about us so much, let's work something out." And that's what we did. Right. So now it's, it, now it has grown into the fact that, like, we're more of a brand ambassador for them. Yeah. Um, so you know, I, like we were saying, like, next year I'm pretty excited to see what's gonna happen with us because-
[01:36:54] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm
[01:36:55] Ben Dellaria: after this wedding is paid for and done, it's in, it's in December, our daughter's getting married. Um, December 7th.
[01:37:03] Jena Dellaria: Yep.
[01:37:03] Ben Dellaria: It's a pricey one. Jeff, we almost, I was, we were talking a couple weeks ago on how we could try to swing this and, and get to ASTA this year, and it just- Yeah ... we can't. Yeah. But next year, I'll tell you what, next year we are gonna go to Techtonic, we will be at ASTA.
[01:37:20] Ben Dellaria: I'm hoping to be at Tools as well.
[01:37:23] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:37:23] Ben Dellaria: You can guarantee that as long as the stuff we're doing continues, we will be there. Yeah. But you can also guarantee that no matter how much I make from any brand deal, any anything, the same message that I am putting out today will always be the message I put out.
[01:37:40] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. I will never sell out the automotive industry for views.
[01:37:44] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:37:44] Ben Dellaria: It'll never happen.
[01:37:45] Jeff Compton: I'm not... Yeah, it's the same as I'm not gonna go out there and start telling everybody that this is the greatest You know, uh, widget of the week Yeah And then next week when that widget deal falls through, I'm gonna go and, and, and badmouth them.
[01:38:00] Jeff Compton: And I don't, I don't operate like that. That's not professional, right? Yeah. And there's a new widget this week. I'm trying not to ever have to do that.
[01:38:07] Ben Dellaria: No. You know? Um- Yeah, you talk about tech, you talk about Promotive, um, you talk about Asta, you talk about tools, you talk about all these places because it's what you do, it's what you believe in, it's what you care about.
[01:38:17] Ben Dellaria: Well, it's- And that's the thing that I think drives us nuts about the internet, is that these guys are doing these things that they don't care about. They just care about that dollar amount later.
[01:38:24] Jeff Compton: If Lucas had never taken me to Asta, and I say taken, because he took me. He provided me the means to go. At that particular time, I financially couldn't have made it.
[01:38:35] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:38:36] Jeff Compton: Couldn't have made it. I was, I was unemployed, right?
[01:38:39] Ben Dellaria: Oh.
[01:38:40] Jeff Compton: And so if he hadn't have provided that for me and then, you know, pushed me to do this- I'd probably be working at a parts store right now, right? And I'd probably be a grade A jerk telling them how she's gonna call up, ask
[01:38:56] Ben Dellaria: why- 'Cause you probably would've been.
[01:38:57] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. You would've been mad at the industry so much at that point.
[01:39:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah. That I, I would've been telling them on the phone, "That's not gonna fix it. Quit wasting my time," and hang up, you know? Um, and it's because he put me on this path that, like, I, I still find the love for the industry. Like I s- you know, I get absolutely eaten up when somebody gives me a diagnostic problem, and then because, A, like a lot of what I do is rin- rinse, wash, and repeat now.
[01:39:20] Jeff Compton: Like, it's not complicated stuff. I can do it standing on my head with literally with one arm.
[01:39:25] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:39:26] Jeff Compton: And, you know, so I'm still in love with the, the fixing and the solving the problem. I love that. Yeah. Love it. But man, like when... If I'd have known that I was gonna get the slings and arrows that I have from, from, from taking this on, some days it is very tough.
[01:39:44] Jeff Compton: When, like I say, going back to the comments of people, we're not supposed to win, you and I. We are not to win. People are to hate us because... And it goes back to what you said at the beginning, if you don't understand why people resent us so much, and it's... I, it goes back to this. You can, you can hang a new T- I just bought a new TV yesterday, right?
[01:40:05] Jeff Compton: I can put that in my room, and I went from a 43-inch to a 50. Yeah. That's, I'm looking at that, that's an investment in my house, as crazy as that is, right? But whereas somebody, as soon as they put a tire on their car or brakes or something, it's a depreciating asset. And I, and I get that. It's, they're terrible investments.
[01:40:23] Jeff Compton: But by God, they're frigging, you know, so
[01:40:27] Ben Dellaria: then what- It's a different type of investment. It's an investment. It's not an appreciation investment. It's not for the long-term money grab. It's to keep you safe. It is to get you to the job so you can do, you can make the money safely and take your family around and do the things you have to do.
[01:40:41] Ben Dellaria: It's travel. It's an- If you don't wanna, go buy a horse and buggy.
[01:40:43] Jeff Compton: It's an investment in your freedom. Yeah. Is what it is. Yeah. Right? Because I was one of those kids that I lived out in the rural sticks where I didn't, I didn't have transit that could get to where my friends were.
[01:40:53] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:40:53] Jeff Compton: So by the time I was 16, I was wanting a car bad.
[01:40:56] Jeff Compton: 'Cause I wanted to get out of my little situation that I was in, my home, I wanted to be able to escape that for a little while, and pedaling a bike wasn't gonna get me where I needed to go, right? So I appreciate people's cars and what it means to them, but by flipping God, man, I'm so tired of people, because I wanna be profitable, and I wanna be sustainable, calling me a crook and a thief.
[01:41:21] Jeff Compton: I'm tired of that with this industry, and I don't know if I'm gonna get over it. I don't know if I'm ever gonna one time be able to hang up my hat and go, "I'm good with it. They don't, they don't have to like me. They don't have to respect me." But
[01:41:33] Ben Dellaria: I don't think... I don't know. If, if the day comes where we all hear that you have quit worrying about it is the day that I would say most of us are in, in a lot of trouble then.
[01:41:44] Ben Dellaria: Because if you feel like you're done, then... I mean, that's how I see it. I've always... Everything I've ever heard from you is my own same thought process. Like we've said last time, we're like cut from the same cloth. It's-
[01:41:57] Jeff Compton: Yeah ...
[01:41:58] Ben Dellaria: if you're saying you're done, then I'm nearly done. And I say it sometimes too. I'm like, I tell, "Babe, I can't do this anymore."
[01:42:05] Jena Dellaria: Yes.
[01:42:05] Ben Dellaria: Like, the, the mental strain of all of it. And I think a social media si- taking on the, the, the job of social media has been difficult instead of just running a company.
[01:42:18] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:42:19] Ben Dellaria: But it's like running multiple companies, and I'm okay with that 'cause I always do. I want it to be more. I, more than what my parents ever thought, my family ever thought.
[01:42:26] Ben Dellaria: But if there's a day where Jeff says, "I'm done," we all, we need to go find Lucas. Because that means that if you're giving up on it, that means there's no end to it. And like you said, or like I said before, I, I think that it's going to be a downhill battle, like for all of us no matter what, because we're never going to...
[01:42:49] Ben Dellaria: It depends on who we fight with, okay?
[01:42:51] Jeff Compton: Okay.
[01:42:52] Ben Dellaria: So do we fight with the trolls and the people that are always in the comments section? Like the, if you look at my most recent, uh, YouTube Short, which is the same thing on TikTok, there's a different type of person that's commenting. The people on YouTube are saying, "Well, yeah, it's because you're doubling and quadrupling the price of the part."
[01:43:14] Ben Dellaria: That's not the person I wanna argue with.
[01:43:16] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:43:16] Ben Dellaria: You can be the troll and make me my views on there and, and spread my word, so to speak. Great. Go ahead and do that. I'm not gonna argue with you. And then you got the other people on there that are like, "Well, if you buy it for 80 and then he buys it for 100, and you sell it for 160," and I'm like, "It doesn't work that way."
[01:43:35] Ben Dellaria: That's not the numbers, so your head is on crooked. You don't understand that. I can't help you. I can't change your mind. I can continue to change the people coming into the industry's mind and help them understand. Like who was that young kid recently that posted saying he was quitting the dealership and he was gonna go do something else?
[01:43:55] Ben Dellaria: It sucked- Oh ... that he so- that he was doing that because he just hasn't found the right shop. He hasn't found the right owner. He hasn't found the right service manager to take care of him and to teach him those ways, because there's not many Sherwood Cooks out there. There's not many L1 diagnostic places out there.
[01:44:14] Ben Dellaria: There just isn't. So when we find more of those and more of those people are visual, great. So then our word, everything that we talk about, if we can help him, I'm happy. The amount of text messages and the te- and things I get is why I keep doing it, because I keep getting the message saying, "Man, I'm so happy that I found you because now I'm doing this," like I said before.
[01:44:40] Ben Dellaria: So I guess to help me and you on who to, to not hang up our hat is who are we gonna argue with? We can argue with these guys all day long if we wanna have an argument because kind of it's fun, right? Like, we enjoy it at times. But I think the people that we're really helping is the people that truly want to be in the business that don't talk back to us, the people that don't see us.
[01:45:03] Ben Dellaria: Because in reality, if- All, let's just say that Sherwood Cook was never on the internet. He's one of the greats, right? Mm-hmm. Let's say Paul was never on the internet. He's one of the greats that believe everything we talk about. They probably aren't in the comment section fighting with the trolls because they don't care.
[01:45:23] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:45:23] Ben Dellaria: And those are the people we don't see. Just like you said before, how, um, we don't get to see the second end of the conversation where the other shop was like, "Hey, I didn't get a chance to, uh, defend myself." No. You know, "Come on. Why are you talking shit about me? The customer's the wrong one." Usually the customers that are bitching are the wrong ones, and we're fighting with them where we could just keep putting out that good word, and the good...
[01:45:50] Ben Dellaria: And the customers that are on the fence, we don't realize how many of those we might be changing their mind in the background, truly. I think I, if, when I continue to remember that, uh, only because I get the messages and only because I hear it from my customers, like, I tried so many other people and I'm really glad I found you because I always felt like I...
[01:46:13] Ben Dellaria: Like Dave Ramsey says, "If you feel like you have to take a bath after dealing with someone that's trying to sell you something, they're not the person for you."
[01:46:20] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:46:20] Ben Dellaria: Make them, make it so that that person, you feel like you learned something, that you feel good about something and- I think that's the people we will change that we have no idea that we're changing them.
[01:46:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Uh, and, you know, my, my inbox is like yours. It fills up with people that talk about, you know, how you touch them, you know, and change their trajectory or change their perspective, and that's the, that's the, that's the fuel that keeps me going.
[01:46:50] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:46:51] Jeff Compton: You know, it, it's, it's so hard sometimes when you're having a conversation to know, are you talking to a customer or are you talking to somebody that's your, for all intents and purposes, your brother and your sister in this industry?
[01:47:04] Jeff Compton: And the customer side of it, like i- if you're there, you're just background noise, and I probably shouldn't engage with you, but the way I'm wired, I'm a Scorpio, I'm gonna engage 'cause, like, if you push me, I can push you back.
[01:47:14] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:47:15] Jeff Compton: My brother and sister sometimes, that, that-- going back to that hammer or feather analogy that I was talking about, sometimes I just hit them with the hammer, and I've, I've, I've pushed them away, whereas I should've been like, "Come here.
[01:47:28] Jeff Compton: I'm trying to-" Yeah. You know, my, my delivery sucked, but hear the message.
[01:47:33] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:47:33] Jeff Compton: And that's why even my detractors and the people that, like I, you know, I, I, I say, "Man, I really don't like what they're doing in our industry," I wish I could reach them and, and, and, and hear that story. Why are you the way you are?
[01:47:51] Jeff Compton: Why are you so angry? Why are you going out there and, uh... Or are you really? Is it just an act? You might absolutely love working there, right? And you might love the industry. You might, you might be making, oh, maybe you're making well over six figures a year working at the dealer, and you just, you're getting pops because you want this money for something else.
[01:48:08] Jeff Compton: Yeah. I don't know that.
[01:48:10] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:48:10] Jeff Compton: But it's like, why are you doing it then? And then, you know- Am I the one to say you shouldn't do it because it doesn't put us in a good light?
[01:48:20] Ben Dellaria: Hell yeah. I
[01:48:21] Jeff Compton: would, you know.
[01:48:21] Ben Dellaria: Hell yeah. I think yes. I think yes because you have the platform for it, and I think yes because you've lived it and breathed it.
[01:48:28] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:48:28] Ben Dellaria: Same with me. We've been in it for over 20 years, and we've lived and breathed every aspect. We've been in the dealership world, we've been in the independent world, we've been in the fleet world, the outside world. You've been in all those aspects too, so I think you have a voice that should be heard.
[01:48:42] Ben Dellaria: When you have the guys that have been doing it for less than five years, no, I don't think their voice is quite ready to be heard yet just because I don't think that they have lived it. Mm-hmm. They haven't been through all of it. They haven't seen what this industry can and cannot do for you, or being in this type of field.
[01:49:04] Ben Dellaria: Um, but they're gonna say the same thing about us. So it's na- it's natural for you to feel that or say that. But to me and to everybody that follows you and cares about what your voice is and what your platform stands for, yeah, we say keep doing it. Yeah. We say keep going the way you are. Yeah. Do we all get a little bit testy and shitty in comment sections and stuff like that?
[01:49:28] Ben Dellaria: Sure. But like you said, I don't know if this person is A technician. I don't know if that commenter is this. All I can do is stay true to myself when I answer that one back, but sometimes I am. You know, it's taken me a long time to scroll past.
[01:49:46] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:49:47] Ben Dellaria: I ha- was not able to for a long time, and I would get really upset, and I would dwell on it really bad, but I've gotten better on it now, and now it's like, "Eh, don't care about you."
[01:49:57] Jeff Compton: I had a guy call me a communist Canadian last week, and, um, make a bunch of derogatory remarks about the fact that I'm Canadian. I have to say, first of all, that I'm not in love with how my country's being governed, but I am but one person that, you know, practices my right to vote as I see fit. Yeah. And I don't love it, but you cannot judge me by that.
[01:50:17] Jeff Compton: But then when I go back and it's like, first of all, we're not, this is, we're discussing automotive, not political. But then they go to that level, and it's like, then I go look at their profile, and they deliver for DoorDash. Why are you in the comments?
[01:50:30] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:50:30] Jeff Compton: Why?
[01:50:32] Ben Dellaria: You don't have a voice in this.
[01:50:34] Jeff Compton: And then they, they come in and claim they're some kind of great custom car builder, and, and all-
[01:50:39] Ben Dellaria: Oh, yeah, right
[01:50:40] Jeff Compton: sure you are.
[01:50:41] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:50:41] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. But if I had done everything that he claims he has done and who he claims he is, my profile would not say, "Drive for DoorDash."
[01:50:49] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, no.
[01:50:51] Jeff Compton: Right? I would be so flipping proud of all these show-winning cars that I supposedly built and these-
[01:50:56] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, the pictures would be there, and everything else, and yeah, no.
[01:51:00] Jeff Compton: No. And,
[01:51:01] Ben Dellaria: and- I mean, and no, no, no, uh, hate for him driving for Door- people driving for DoorDash, but still, like, don't... Uh, you get that all the time. Yeah. People always... Huh?
[01:51:11] Jena Dellaria: Don't put your two cents in where it's not needed.
[01:51:13] Ben Dellaria: No, not at all But that's how the internet is I got- It's full of idiots ...
[01:51:18] Jeff Compton: I got so many cents to give, though.
[01:51:23] Jena Dellaria: No, no, not you. Them.
[01:51:25] Ben Dellaria: Yeah, them. Yeah, the, the, those people.
[01:51:28] Jeff Compton: Well, it's relative c- it's relevant conversations. Like I'm- Yeah ... not on there complaining about door delivery services and, and why I think it's a rip-off or justifying the c- I'm not in there. Right. But they seem to come to our industry and run amuck about how they're, we are so terrible.
[01:51:46] Jeff Compton: We are so-
[01:51:47] Ben Dellaria: You should do that straight back to him, 'cause that's how DoorDash is. So like- ... you know, DoorDash is... Well, I could go in the store and buy that sandwich for $12, but why are you at DoorDash selling it for 14.95, plus charging me a delivery and charging me a fee and charging me this? But no one's bitching about that.
[01:52:03] Jeff Compton: No. They're happy to get their shitty, overpriced, cold takeout delivered- Yeah ... to their house 'cause they maybe don't have a car or they didn't wanna get out of their jammies and go, you know, through the drive-thru. That's me. I don't know, right?
[01:52:17] Ben Dellaria: That's me all day.
[01:52:19] Jeff Compton: And I'm not... It, it was wrong for me to throw it under the bus and say, "'Cause hey, at least they're working," right?
[01:52:26] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Okay, at least they're working.
[01:52:27] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:52:28] Jeff Compton: But I just wonder what bring, what is it about my industry that brings them into the conversation when they're not in my industry? Mm.
[01:52:35] Ben Dellaria: I think the internet is what has brought them in. And the internet has made us, like, so... And now, okay, I say it has brought this in, and we say that maybe it doesn't happen in plumbing or HVAC or construction.
[01:52:51] Jeff Compton: Mm.
[01:52:51] Ben Dellaria: We don't know. We're not in it. Yeah. We don't follow that content. We don't go there. We don't do that. I was in home HVAC, but that was before the internet. Mm. You know, so I have no idea what that world on the internet brings. I don't know if they say those things. I don't know if they are part of that or, or have to deal with it the way we deal with it, and I'm not going to go there and try to find that out.
[01:53:15] Ben Dellaria: I mean, I could sit here and try to chase a bunch of plumbing videos or pool construction people, but we're not part of that world, so we have no idea. If we just start reading the comments section, we don't know if that's a, a competitor. We don't know if it's just a pissed off homeowner. We don't know, you know, any of those things.
[01:53:33] Ben Dellaria: So it just goes back to the same thing. No matter what, I'm gonna just keep doing what I'm doing.
[01:53:39] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:53:39] Ben Dellaria: It's what I, it's what I care about. I've questioned it so much, but if I keep coming back to it, then I feel like I'm doing right, you know? And if I keep saying that the guys that are doing it wrong are doing it wrong, m- I think I'm convincing enough good ones to keep doing it right.
[01:53:58] Ben Dellaria: I'll never convince the guy that's doing it wrong to not do it wrong.
[01:54:01] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:54:01] Ben Dellaria: You never know. I don't know. Some, some guys have reached out that, you know, were doing it wrong and they realized how to change, and they've changed for the better, and that's awesome. Mm-hmm. You know, they've gone with TechMetric and, you know, from our recommendations, there's...
[01:54:16] Ben Dellaria: I mean, I think I've had almost, like, 60 people already sign up to TechMetric just from our recommendations and stuff over the past, you know, two years.
[01:54:24] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[01:54:24] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:54:25] Jeff Compton: That's
[01:54:25] Ben Dellaria: crazy. But the, uh... So how many have, how many have actually started charging for parts or actually changed their markups and used a, a parts matrix now?
[01:54:37] Ben Dellaria: Well, probably a lot of them. Like, so I think that's what you and I really just have to always remember too, is just there's so many people we probably have touched and that haven't reached out to us.
[01:54:48] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[01:54:48] Ben Dellaria: We're always gonna get mad at the trolls. It's just the way it is.
[01:54:51] Jeff Compton: I gotta ask, because JeanAnn, I feel like sometimes we're just sitting there admiring you and we're not engaging you enough in the conversation.
[01:54:59] Jeff Compton: And what's some words of advice for somebody that's, like, working with their spouse day in and day out? Like, what, what can you kinda say? 'Cause I, I feel like you guys, you genuinely have fun when you're, they're working together. Like you- Mm-hmm ... you wanna be there and- Yeah ... he wants you there for sure. But what's some...
[01:55:15] Jeff Compton: Because there's lots of other people that are, that are side by side i- in shops all day long, spouse teams, and Lord knows I, man, I sometimes get on them because it's not always a From the employee side of things, it's not always the best combination. But what's some words of advice you have for people that are in that role, JeanAnn?
[01:55:35] Jena Dellaria: You just have to remember that when you're working with your spouse, it's not your spouse. You're working with a partner. It's... The best way to go about it is y- you guys have to work as a team. It's not, "That's my husband, that's my wife." That's my partner. Mm-hmm. We're here at work, and that's what we're doing.
[01:55:55] Jena Dellaria: It... I mean, that's really the only way that I can explain it. It's if you look at it as, "Oh, that's, you know, my husband over there," it's... I don't feel that that really works for anybody. You have to be able to separate the two.
[01:56:08] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Defined roles almost, right? Right. Like, this is key players in a certain position- Mm-hmm
[01:56:13] Jeff Compton: just like in any other successful business.
[01:56:16] Jena Dellaria: Right.
[01:56:16] Jeff Compton: I guess that's what you have to see it. Don't-
[01:56:18] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm ...
[01:56:18] Jeff Compton: don't take it home with you at the end of the day. Like, when he snaps at you-
[01:56:22] Jena Dellaria: Yep ...
[01:56:22] Jeff Compton: it's not because he doesn't love you. It's just because- No ... the, the car is not cooperating and it's frustrating him. It's hot.
[01:56:29] Jeff Compton: Exactly. You know? Mm-hmm. Like, yeah. Yeah. I totally get it, you know? Somebody has been there before him and butchered the, you know, cross-threaded the bolts in or, like, we could go on, right?
[01:56:40] Jena Dellaria: You know, Ben, like- It's crazy. I never imagined- It's hard ... half of the stuff that I have seen just in the past year. I would've never imagined any of those things.
[01:56:49] Jeff Compton: Ben, do you share the moments with her when you find the, I'll say, the ghost in the machine? Do you go, "JeanAnn, come over here, you gotta see this. Look at this. Look how stupid this is." Yeah.
[01:56:55] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. I'm like, "You need to see," you know. She... 'Cause most of the time she's not... Like, when she's not in the camera- Mm-hmm
[01:57:02] Ben Dellaria: she's usually right there.
[01:57:03] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Okay.
[01:57:03] Ben Dellaria: Like, she's not, um, she's not usually in the trailer, like, always on the phone or always on the computer. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. She's usually right at the back doors 'cause she's the one handing me tools all the time. Yeah. And it w- it was never meant for that either. She just figured it out and has, she's gotten to the point now where she almost knows what I need next.
[01:57:22] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[01:57:23] Ben Dellaria: Which is really cool. Because in the beginning she had no idea what the hell a quarter-inch socket was versus a half-inch socket. Yeah. And she's just, like, handing me things, and I'm like- That's not that ... "You need to go away." Like, that's not even close. But, uh, yeah, she's... I don't remember your question.
[01:57:41] Jeff Compton: Hmm. No, just, yeah, that was kind of good. Um, do you ever feel like, JeanAnn, that you wanna, like... or maybe could we see it where you guys could work on two cars at a time? Like, JeanAnn, do you wanna become a mechanic, or are you just not-
[01:57:55] Jena Dellaria: No, see, uh, he did teach me how to do brakes one time. Mm-hmm. That was fun.
[01:58:00] Jena Dellaria: Um-
[01:58:00] Ben Dellaria: Right when I hurt my arm, yeah.
[01:58:02] Jena Dellaria: But, um, hmm, no.
[01:58:06] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Probably good, you're probably good at bleeding the brakes by now, right? Like, you know how to do
[01:58:09] Jena Dellaria: that? I think so. Well-
[01:58:10] Jeff Compton: I
[01:58:10] Jena Dellaria: think I'm better
[01:58:10] Ben Dellaria: at it. No. No, because still- ... it's like every Monday morning, it's like she, the weekend comes, then Monday she's like, "I'm fresh at this.
[01:58:18] Ben Dellaria: I have no idea what we're doing." And I'm like, "What are, what are you doing? Like, this is not the procedure." "Oh, yeah, okay." It's like, "Holy shit." But
[01:58:28] Jena Dellaria: in my defense, sometimes you call it different things, and I'm like, "That's not what you called it two weeks ago." No,
[01:58:32] Ben Dellaria: no, no, no, no. Bleeding brakes is never different.
[01:58:35] Ben Dellaria: When I say, "Okay, we gotta bleed the brakes," you're like Like, "What are you doing?" Like, "Push the pedal."
[01:58:40] Jena Dellaria: Deering it like-
[01:58:40] Ben Dellaria: And then she's like, she'll be in there pushing the pedal. I'm like, "What are you doing?" "I'm pushing the pedal." "Are you gonna talk to me?" Like, I don't know when the third time was you pushed it, and you're saying, like you gotta, "Holding."
[01:58:53] Jeff Compton: Yeah,
[01:58:54] Ben Dellaria: holding. Like-
[01:58:54] Jeff Compton: I know. I, that's-
[01:58:55] Ben Dellaria: You know, "Okay, go ahead."
[01:58:59] Jeff Compton: In Jenna's defense, I struggle a lot every time I start somewhere new, because it's like everybody has a different vernacular or, or, you know, uh, script that they're going off of. Like, you know, how many times are you letting the p- Like, you know, with the new guys, you might have them h- pump it like 12 times before you crack it.
[01:59:16] Jeff Compton: You don't need to. Yeah. Right?
[01:59:18] Ben Dellaria: But just to screw with them.
[01:59:20] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:59:20] Ben Dellaria: Just to screw with them. But I'm not screwing with her, it's just another Monday morning.
[01:59:25] Jeff Compton: You know what that shows though, Ben, is that she's gotten very good at disconnecting from what we do. You and I have not.
[01:59:31] Ben Dellaria: No, not at all. I can't not think about, ah, geez.
[01:59:35] Ben Dellaria: Mm. That's the one thing that's definitely difficult with owning a business is-
[01:59:38] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm ...
[01:59:39] Ben Dellaria: no matter how much I try to shut off, it's difficult to shut off.
[01:59:42] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:59:42] Ben Dellaria: Social media has made that worse, but,
[01:59:44] Jeff Compton: uh- And, and there are, there are cars that haunt you, isn't there?
[01:59:47] Jena Dellaria: Yeah.
[01:59:47] Ben Dellaria: Uh, yes. There's cars that'll haunt me because I'm like, "Ah, man, I don't know if, I don't know if this is gonna fix this."
[01:59:56] Ben Dellaria: You know? I, and that's the one thing that has been pushing me towards possibly, you know, getting to a shop is being able to disconnect from that car and go do something else for a little bit.
[02:00:05] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm.
[02:00:05] Ben Dellaria: Mobile does not allow that at all. Yes. We are stuck with being at that customer's house and getting an answer.
[02:00:15] Ben Dellaria: There's, if... I, I don't do a lot of drivability, because we don't run into it very much. So when I do run into a drivability, I'm like, "Okay, hold on. I need to reset myself here." I know the, you know, okay, you know your basics. Y- you know, lean, rich, what codes you got. Okay, is this a false lean? Is it not a false lean?
[02:00:34] Ben Dellaria: Hold on, let me rev it up. Oh, crap. What did Paul say in that video- ... when the, the fuel trims were going back, you know, together? 'Cause in my head sometimes, you know what I think back to? Early or late '90s Tech 2, 128 on an O2 sensor. Not voltage, I'm thinking milliamps and everything back in the day. And when he said it the other day in one of his videos, I was like, "Holy shit, that brought me back."
[02:00:57] Ben Dellaria: You know? But so you can't let that stuff go. You, you have to stay there. Mm-hmm. So that's when I have to make the decision on what we're going to do next, and that's another reason, and for how busy we are. I know I'll lose a lot of customers when I go into a, a location, um, but I'll build a whole nother set of clients at that point, and I'll build a better set of clients.
[02:01:23] Ben Dellaria: Um, even though my clients now are amazing, I don't have the bad ones that much.
[02:01:29] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[02:01:29] Ben Dellaria: But it's, uh... Yeah, that's why. That diagnosis stuff and being in the weather and everything else is... I don't mind the weather as much as Being able to, to go into a building, it's the, it's that it's me on the job I'm doing, and the timeframe and the mental stability is gonna be better in a shop.
[02:01:50] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now I gotta ask you, and we won't keep you much longer, w- did it make you a better technician when all of a sudden, like you can't... 'Cause you know how it was at the dealer, right? You would go throw that job on hold and you go grab something else 'cause you had to clear your mind, right? You hit a wall.
[02:02:03] Jeff Compton: Yeah. You have to back up, slow down, reevaluate, circle, pivot, whatever you wanna call it, right? Is this force, has this made you a better mechanic on the sense that, that you cannot do that?
[02:02:14] Ben Dellaria: No. Um, it has, uh, it hasn't... It's made me... Okay, so it's made me a better technician on how to find answers and read.
[02:02:25] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. 'Cause I am not a good reader. I dropped out of high school twice. I am, I'm pretty damn illiterate when I come to reading things. I skip over words and things like that, and I actually read things and read them in a completely different way than what was really there. So I have a hard time with that.
[02:02:41] Ben Dellaria: So it actually makes me more frustrated, and it takes me time. So like that Dodge or other things like the, the Nissan recently or the Toyota that had the, the O2 sensor problem, I'm surprised I got to the answer out there. Yeah. Um, because having my mind in a controlled environment in a shop, I was always able to focus.
[02:03:07] Jena Dellaria: Mm-hmm.
[02:03:07] Ben Dellaria: Because if I needed to slow my mind down, I had an out. I start to constantly stress the next job. Okay. And because I stress that next job, I start to make rash decisions, and I'll go to her and I'm like, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I got, I can't do this anymore. I gotta, I gotta quit." Like, that's how my mind will get out there.
[02:03:29] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. But that's just me. That's not because of mobile. That's just how my ADHD brain works and- I do- ... my anxiety and all that shit. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a give and take. I'm better at certain things, but I'm not as sharp as I was. And I'll tell you what, when I took the break from running a lawn service, I lost so much information and so much- sharpness, I guess I could say again, if I had stayed in it, I'd be such a better technician than I am today.
[02:03:59] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[02:03:59] Ben Dellaria: But maybe I won't be where I am today as a business owner.
[02:04:04] Jeff Compton: I, I was like that too. There was two things that made me start to... Not made me, but I look back now and I go, if I could have just not focused on how long the job was taking me, because it was costing me money, right, from a flat rate standpoint, how good would I, my skills have developed to?
[02:04:24] Jeff Compton: And then secondly would be like, if, if I have... Like the worst thing an advisor, like, can come and tell me is that I have three appointments that day. Yeah. It's the worst thing you can do. Because I'm on job one, and I'm thinking about job two and three. Yep. And that's like, and so my hat's off to people that like, like you, that have a schedule in front of you all the time, 'cause that, like that starts to really play with my brain.
[02:04:49] Jeff Compton: Like we talk about lab scope, I don't use one. Yeah. Not that I don't know how, but I'm so not confident in my ability with it that I'll almost find another way to get to the answer without you pulling it out of there, right? Yeah. And I'm resentful of how I came up through my career because I flat rated a dealer like you didn't do that.
[02:05:12] Jeff Compton: You didn't grab it and yank it out. Now I understand the comments are gonna follow, "Well, I use it all the time." Cool. Yeah, exactly. Well,
[02:05:17] Ben Dellaria: I
[02:05:18] Jeff Compton: didn't have one in the shop, dude. Yeah, didn't own one.
[02:05:21] Jena Dellaria: So move on.
[02:05:21] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Right? So I'm jealous of all these people, jealous isn't really the right word, but I'm jealous of them and the fact that their comfort level with it is so good.
[02:05:31] Jeff Compton: Like when I look at Chuck or I look at Ryan or I look at all, Brandon Steckler, all these guys that are just wizards, wizards. Sherwood. When I watch Sherwood, I'm like, oh- ... I can't live enough years to be as good as he is.
[02:05:49] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[02:05:49] Jeff Compton: Right? But at the same time, I don't beat myself up because like I, my, my successes speak for themselves.
[02:05:57] Jeff Compton: My record speaks for itself. Yeah. I managed to get through, um, you know-
[02:06:04] Jeff Compton: And, and fix a lot of cars. I've saw some pretty cool stuff. Yeah. And, and I, I try to empower people with like ... It's like social media is the devil, right? Because we see everybody's highlight reel, we see everybody's thing. But here's the thing, my fellow technicians that are listening to, to Ben and I in business, in, in the shop, whatever, don't compare yourself.
[02:06:26] Jeff Compton: Be, be ... Celebrate your own little victories and celebrate your own journey because you can get there. And just because you're not there now doesn't mean you're never gonna get there. It does take work, it takes perseverance, it takes that second, you know, as my friend Brian Pollock says, it takes that second 40 hours a week.
[02:06:46] Jeff Compton: You and I know what that looks like now, right? We're probably putting in, you know, those kind of hours maybe that should be developing our craft into developing our platform, but it- it's one and the same. You know, don't look at everybody's highlight reels and start to say to yourself, "You're never gonna get there.
[02:07:03] Jeff Compton: You can never be." Celebrate your victories and, and, you know, take solace in the fact that you're better than you were yesterday. Yeah. You know? And, uh, and that's worth something. And, uh, you know, just keep trying to do that and, and this will all start to make a lot more sense and go a lot easier if we just keep getting
[02:07:25] Jeff Compton: And you know, I ... The only reason that I'm not pulling the plug on, on my, you know, frustrations and platform is because I can come on and meet really cool people like Jenna and Ben, and hear their stories and talk about their struggles and, and bear our souls to each other. And we realize that, like, we're not alone.
[02:07:44] Jeff Compton: We're not alone. And that's the key thing for everybody to remember here, so, you know. Closing thoughts, Jenna and Ben.
[02:07:51] Ben Dellaria: Close what?
[02:07:52] Jeff Compton: Closing thoughts. Closing
[02:07:54] Ben Dellaria: thoughts. Man. Babe, you wa- you got anything you wanna say? She's nervous. She doesn't know what to say. You're, she's- Uh, if you're g- I'll give you a couple.
[02:08:03] Ben Dellaria: If you're gonna start, if you're gonna do something with your wife, y- pick and choose where she's going to be and let her come up through that where she needs to. There's ... You know, I got some people in the group, I got one that actually lives around the corner from me, they're just starting out. Okay.
[02:08:19] Ben Dellaria: She's at home with the kids, and she's trying to do it go, you know, good luck. He, but, but find where you're gonna be. If he's in the field, you know, he's gonna, you know, you might be able to field his phone calls and things like that. But give her, give her small jobs. Answer the phone, don't answer the phone, do this, do that.
[02:08:41] Ben Dellaria: She has kinda jumped in headfirst since the beginning. Um, and she's taken it really, really well, uh, even with my not so friendliness. I'm, I'm not the nicest guy in the world. I'm, my dad- Stop ... and me, we, we definitely have some anger issues, but that's besides the point. Mm. Um, she knew what she was getting into before she did this, so I'm lucky enough that she is what she, you know, is what she is, but.
[02:09:07] Ben Dellaria: Um, and with the business side, guys, mobile doesn't have to be sh- shit. It doesn't have to be cheap. Um, and I think that I've changed a lot of people's perspective on that over the years, especially like, like even like Chris Enright. Like- Yeah ... in the beginning, like he just did not have any... He's like, "No, that's, that's not good."
[02:09:32] Ben Dellaria: And I, I agree with him. It's not good if you're gonna do it a certain way. But now when he makes content, he says, "So what do you shop owners and mobile guys have to think now?" Mm. You know? So like, you know, and the same thing like even with you, I think like when we first got on, which was a year and a half ago now, you know, you didn't know what to expect or who I was, if I was gonna end up turning into, you know, the other internet people, and I refuse to be that person.
[02:09:59] Ben Dellaria: And like I said, next year is going to be... You guys watch our content next year, it's going to be vastly different. You'll s- you're gonna see if I keep growing the way I'm growing with my, my content, it's gonna help us achieve what we need to achieve, and we're gonna be one hell of a force to be reckoned with when it comes to other shops in our area and what we do.
[02:10:21] Ben Dellaria: Uh, at least in my eyes. I might not be that way to everybody else, but- ... it's, uh, I will never live for that content. The content is second. Mm.
[02:10:29] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[02:10:30] Ben Dellaria: It's always second.
[02:10:31] Jeff Compton: Yeah, I think it's in, you know, 'cause you and I have talked about as soon as you can get where people's main idea is to develop the content to where it's the biggest money f- factor, then I think you've lost sight of what you really were, you know?
[02:10:43] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, and that, and I think that that's a slippery slope that all of a sudden it's like I can stick my toe in the controversy side of this a little bit and it'll blow up.
[02:10:53] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[02:10:53] Jeff Compton: And then pretty soon it's like I'm nothing but controversy, and I'm, I'm... It doesn't even matter. I could pull the plug on the business, and I could, uh, and you know, my, my creation create, you know, would, would carry me.
[02:11:07] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[02:11:08] Jeff Compton: You're not- th- that's not the end goal, or shouldn't be the end goal.
[02:11:13] Ben Dellaria: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it shouldn't. If it, it's, it should, you should always remember, like anybody's content can get demonetized at any moment.
[02:11:23] Jeff Compton: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[02:11:24] Ben Dellaria: And that's why I don't care as much about my subscriber count or the views or anything like that.
[02:11:30] Ben Dellaria: I care about that because I care about reaching more people- Yeah ... that I think I can help in business or do right by this industry, like we have said this entire two hours. But I will always, and I'll never use something or promote something that I don't personally use myself or that I personally believe in myself, so.
[02:11:53] Ben Dellaria: Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know. There's so much. We could j- I could sit here for another two hours and talk with you. But- Well- ... uh, closing statements would just be that, just don't give in to the people that are online- Mm-hmm ... that you see doing things. You're, you're not gonna... I'm not gonna say you're not gonna be the next star on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube.
[02:12:14] Ben Dellaria: You could be. You could be the next MrBeast or something like that, but- ... build a business f- and, and take care of your family, and just do things the right way. Mm-hmm.
[02:12:23] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Yeah.
[02:12:24] Ben Dellaria: At least my perspective on it. You don't, you don't have to listen to my perspective. You can, you can tell me to kiss my butt, I don't know.
[02:12:31] Ben Dellaria: Whatever you guys wanna do. I,
[02:12:32] Jeff Compton: I appreciate you both being here. I absolutely adore, you know, seeing your content, and I mean, I watch it-
[02:12:38] Ben Dellaria: Thank you ...
[02:12:39] Jeff Compton: obviously. Like, I just, you know... And, and I think that that's, you know, it, I relate... Like I said, I'm, I'm a sucker for seeing the family group thing. I really enjoy seeing that.
[02:12:50] Jeff Compton: Um, and I, and I think it's, it's a testimony, testament, excuse me, to your, you know, the strength of your relationship by how you guys can work together and, and, you know, have those days. And going on a year, like we're, you know, everything is going well, and, and we're not seeing divorces and all that jazz. I would hate to see that, right?
[02:13:12] Ben Dellaria: Yeah.
[02:13:12] Jeff Compton: Yeah. Yeah.
[02:13:13] Ben Dellaria: But, uh, I'll touch on that one last thing before you end it. Yeah. That's something else to keep in mind. You can't grow everything at one second. Mm-hmm. So I grew this company alone. Mm-hmm. Last year, I ended the year at my best year ever. This year will not, because I took this year to build the business with her-
[02:13:39] Jeff Compton: Yeah
[02:13:39] Ben Dellaria: to make sure she got trained well. Now that she is trained well, we will... That's why I said next year will be a humongous different transition. I want to be able to prove that the mobile can do 300 a year. We're- $58,000 off of that. Oh my God. Uh, last year's revenue. So last year I did 242. This year I'll probably do just under 240 or so at the rate we're going, because like I said, I haven't focused on that side of it.
[02:14:13] Ben Dellaria: So next year... And that doesn't count that TechMetric stuff. That's, that's, that's a separate company. That never is included. Um, so I hope that in 2027 we can prove that what we're doing can be that kind of company if you just follow what the top people in the industry say.
[02:14:34] Jeff Compton: Yeah.
[02:14:35] Ben Dellaria: So.
[02:14:35] Jeff Compton: Yeah. I, I, I think you guys are killing it, and I mean, and, and it's always, you know, I know you have so many irons in the fire, and that's the other thing.
[02:14:44] Jeff Compton: It's not just trying to- We lost him Yep. ... bring JeanAnn up to speed. The, the, the wedding is a lot of focus. You know, you've talked, I've talked to you and there's been some days where Jenna's been tied up and busy and all that kind of stuff, and it's just, it's the way it's gonna go, you know? Um, I don't think that- Oh, we
[02:14:58] Ben Dellaria: lost you for a second there.
[02:15:00] Jeff Compton: Yeah, you're back. You're back.
[02:15:01] Ben Dellaria: Okay. Um,
[02:15:02] Jeff Compton: I was just saying though that, like, I know that the wedding is, is, um, you know, taking some of the focus. It's, it's taken some days out of the, you know, calling it early and all that jazz. And you guys are doing am- amazing numbers, and I mean, and that's the only thing, the reason I showcase the people that I showcase in this industry is 'cause I think not only are they doing the industry the right way, but they truly have something to offer in the way that they do it to other people.
[02:15:27] Jeff Compton: Appreciate it. Yeah. And that's why, so just like you, I, you know, you and I talked about how You just mentioned my name one day in a video, and I was sitting there eating my cereal- ... waiting to go to work, and there he's talking about my podcast, and it's been, it's been a joy to me to see-
[02:15:44] Ben Dellaria: Yeah ...
[02:15:44] Jeff Compton: the platform grow and to see you, you know, uh, sharpen your tools as per se, as we would say, and, and, and develop that, you know, that confidence and that voice.
[02:15:55] Jeff Compton: Yeah. That's what we love to see. And, uh- Appreciate it ... Jen, JenAnn, it, you know, it's been great to see you come along, too. So I mean, you guys- Thank you ... you'll be back again.
[02:16:04] Jena Dellaria: Yep.
[02:16:04] Jeff Compton: You know, as always, uh, it's, it's a pleasure for me to be able to, you know, showcase these people and, and I, I can't do it without, you know, TechMetric and Launch Tech.
[02:16:14] Jeff Compton: Like, they are two of the, the companies that truly get what I'm about and what I'm trying to do. Yeah. So I mean, I don't say it enough, but I try to say it as often as I can, is that they empower me to be able to do this.
[02:16:26] Ben Dellaria: So- It's
[02:16:26] Jeff Compton: true ...
[02:16:26] Ben Dellaria: you
[02:16:27] Jeff Compton: know, and everybody, you know, as always, I love yous all. If you're fighting with something, it doesn't matter if it's got a car or, or where you are at, where you're at in this industry right now, reach out to me, please.
[02:16:39] Jeff Compton: And you know, my apologies if, if you've reached out to me and I haven't got back to you right away. Don't give up on me. Please keep pounding on the door, because there's so many things going on right now. It's not that I ever don't wanna get back to somebody, it's just that the, the inbox will quickly overwhelm me.
[02:17:00] Jeff Compton: So you know, if you've reached out to me and I haven't got back to you, reach out to me again, please. And, um, you know, we've got Asta coming up in less than a month away, like we were talking about. Um, I'm gonna be there. If you wanna sit down and have a conversation with me, please start letting me know now.
[02:17:16] Jeff Compton: We'd like to try and book some of that going forward. Probably by the time this one... Well, this one might come out in a week or two, this episode. Um, so get ahold of me and say, "Hey, you know, uh, I wanna have a beer with you," or, "Hey, I wanna record with you." I would love nothing more than to spend as much time as possible meeting people as always at Asta and all these events and, um, and getting to hear your story and, and h- you know, showcase you.
[02:17:39] Jeff Compton: So- Awesome ... um, Ben and JenAnn, I'm sure I'm gonna see you guys at an event pretty soon.
[02:17:45] Ben Dellaria: You
[02:17:45] Jeff Compton: will. You know, I, I feel like Florida's a long ways away, um, from-
[02:17:50] Ben Dellaria: About as far as you can get from Canada ...
[02:17:52] Jeff Compton: Kingston, Cana- you know, Ontario. But I, at the same time, like, I know that we will meet up at some point, and then I- We will Yeah
[02:17:58] Jeff Compton: definitely will share a meal and share a hug and have a good time talking about this because, you know, it's, it's a lot to put ourselves out there. Um, but I mean, when I have people, like, that I surround myself like you guys, it makes it easier, so thank you for that.
[02:18:13] Ben Dellaria: Awesome, man. Thanks.
[02:18:14] Jeff Compton: And everybody, I love you.
[02:18:16] Jeff Compton: Thank you for all the support. We'll talk to you soon.
[02:18:20] Ben Dellaria: See
[02:18:20] Jeff Compton: ya. Thanks, guys. Mm-hmm.
[02:18:23] Ben Dellaria: Hey, if you could do me a
[02:18:24] Jeff Compton: favor real quick and like, comment on, and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change.
[02:18:43] Jeff Compton: Thank you to my partners in the ASA Group and to the Changing the Industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing ten millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time