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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
Mike Allen [00:00:00]:
Why not build the estimate for the thing that Ms. Jones came in for? And if Ms. Jones buys that thing and we tell her about all the other things, then we estimate the other things, too? Is that an efficient use of your advisor's time to have them spend 45 minutes building an estimate when they're not going to buy anything? Correct.
Adam Rath [00:00:16]:
Yeah. 100% agree with you.
Mike Allen [00:00:21]:
The following program features a bunch of dufuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we or our guests may say do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers or sponsors or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So, without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shop Owner, presented by techmetric. The best software ever invented for any purpose ever.
Mike Allen [00:00:57]:
Just like that, we're recording. So this is my first time. There's less stuff now than there's ever been with our travel kit. Okay, so I bought the dinky little Amazon tripods for the cameras because they're half the weight and they pack down in smaller form. I'm trying to get everything into one 50 pound case and protected.
Adam Rath [00:01:21]:
I will. This is what I'm gonna say. All this has convinced me that I never wanna have to do podcasts or so, you know, more power to you.
Mike Allen [00:01:31]:
It's way less than it used to be. Right? Because it used to be. We had those big pod mics on a stand and cables run to here. So this is my first time doing the wireless mic setup. And if this works well, I can have up to four channels going wireless with gain adjustment. And we'll see if that works. Because I tried Lucas's wireless mics at Vision and they weren't adjustable gain.
Adam Rath [00:01:59]:
You end up with somebody way louder than.
Mike Allen [00:02:03]:
Yeah. And also because it wasn't equipment that I was used to using and Braxton wasn't there, I screwed up a couple of recordings. Like, I had Tanika in one and her mic was off, but we could hear her in the background of the mic of the person next to her. So Braxton had to go through and manually jack up the volume every time she was talking and then turn it back down to normal to try to get it functional. And it sounded terrible, but it was at least usable.
Adam Rath [00:02:32]:
Yeah, Tanisha's loud anyway, so it's probably it.
Mike Allen [00:02:35]:
Yeah, she needs to turn it down a little bit anyway. I think we can all agree that she needs to turn.
Adam Rath [00:02:40]:
That was the subliminal signal to Her.
Mike Allen [00:02:42]:
I don't do subliminal. I'm very. I don't do subtle. It's not in my wheelhouse. I think we've established that. Alright, so here we are. We're towards the trailing end of day one of Level up and we're in Fairfax, Virginia. We spent the morning touring around some of the Craftsman Auto care facilities.
Mike Allen [00:03:03]:
This is an event being put on by Matt Curry. I think this is like the third time they've done it, he said. And I'm going to be honest, I'm going to record with him later and I'm just going to ask him what's the motivation behind doing this? Because I can't figure it out. I know that originally it started off as just onboarding for new hires and that kind of thing. Talking about company culture and kind of what they do and how they differentiate themselves and that kind of thing. And it feels. Have you been to Houston to see Auto Shop Answers? Key to key class?
Adam Rath [00:03:39]:
I have not. I've taken some of Todd's classes just at various industry events.
Mike Allen [00:03:44]:
But yeah, so it feels like there are some similarities there, but some very definite and very clear differences. But in any concept there's going to be overlap. Right. Do dvis try to go fast, you know?
Adam Rath [00:04:01]:
Well, I think one of the interesting things is if you look at whatever we want to call it, the coaching companies that push a similar model to this, most of the origins all seem to kind of.
Mike Allen [00:04:15]:
They were all in the same room
Adam Rath [00:04:17]:
at some point together and then split up. And each of them kind of took their own little twist on it, which I think is cool. I mean, it's the same perspective that we've heard, but done just a little bit differently. And there's just so many little neat things that we can walk away from it with.
Mike Allen [00:04:35]:
Well, it seems to me like shopfix. And while shopfix is like a full spectrum coaching organization. Right. And then Autoshop Answers is kind of a concept and all the ancillary services that they offer that can support that concept.
Adam Rath [00:04:51]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:04:52]:
And I think they have some other things in play too.
Adam Rath [00:04:54]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:04:55]:
And then this, I feel like, is. I mean, I feel like this is probably a conversation I should have with Matt.
Adam Rath [00:05:03]:
I feel like Matt is just a genuinely nice guy and hopefully wants to help the industry and seems like what
Mike Allen [00:05:10]:
he's doing, his business is kind of running on autopilot and he doesn't have a lot that he has to do on it. He was like, you know what, fuck it, let's just invite people over and show them what we're doing and maybe we can help them out.
Adam Rath [00:05:21]:
I'm assuming you know this as owners. When we get bored in our business and like we run out of things to fix and everything else, we just go around and break things. So then we have things to fix. Yeah. So no, I totally. You know, this is probably better use of his energy than, you know, micromanaging his.
Mike Allen [00:05:38]:
Well, I think he got his shit much more in a row than I ever had mine before. He. I just started breaking shit because I was tired of doing the things that I was doing poorly already, so.
Adam Rath [00:05:50]:
But anyway, do some more things poorly then.
Mike Allen [00:05:52]:
Well, and here we are. All right, introduce yourself. Tell me about your shop. Where are you from?
Adam Rath [00:06:00]:
So I'm Adam Rath. I own a seven bay, six bay plus an alignment rack in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Mike Allen [00:06:09]:
Best town in the country. It's Allentown.
Adam Rath [00:06:13]:
Debatable. We are the third largest town or third largest whatever metropolitan area in Pennsylvania. So it's Philly, Pittsburgh, Allentown.
Mike Allen [00:06:23]:
So you hesitated a lot there when I tried to compliment your town. It was a stupid joke about my name, but still.
Adam Rath [00:06:30]:
Oh, I missed the whole joke then. That's. See normally the joke with Allentown goes Billy Joel. And then we're like, he's. It was actually about a whole different town. It's. And. But yeah, yeah, I'm sorry I missed the joke.
Mike Allen [00:06:44]:
Is Allentown.
Adam Rath [00:06:45]:
It was, it's much more hilarious.
Mike Allen [00:06:48]:
Is Allentown like a shithole? I don't know. I've never been there.
Adam Rath [00:06:52]:
It depends. Where we are now is phenomenal. And we're 100, $110,000 median income. I mean, it's a really, really nice area. Where we started, I think we were $24,000 median income. It was, it was very difficult, let's put it that way. But we figured things out. We figured out how to make things work and then moved into a much nicer facility that we own.
Mike Allen [00:07:19]:
That on the. On the right side of town.
Adam Rath [00:07:21]:
Yes.
Mike Allen [00:07:22]:
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Rath [00:07:22]:
With the right clients and, you know,
Mike Allen [00:07:24]:
the neighborhood matters a lot. Right?
Adam Rath [00:07:27]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:07:28]:
So that is actually one of my biggest beefs with coaching companies or concept pitching organizations that say you have to do it this way, you have to do it this way, you have to do it this way. And it works. And all the coaches will say, I hear it every day. I've been hearing it for 20 years. That won't work in my town. And look, to a degree, there is excuse making about how that won't work in my town. But to say what will Work in Your community of 110,000 average household income versus in your own location of $24,000 household income. Those are not the same businesses, they're not the same customers.
Mike Allen [00:08:08]:
The same methodologies don't work and don't create the same outcomes. And so I do get beef with people who say you have to do it this way.
Adam Rath [00:08:18]:
I think there's a piece to this and we can talk a little bit more about what I do that I know we had talked about before. But I think there's a piece to this where early on it really helps to know, like, okay, this is the right way, or there's not 20 different ways, like we know there really is to do things. It's, hey, this is the best way to do it, do it this way. Because I think a lot of us, we especially come to an event like this and you're like, wow, this piece here and this one. But then I'm going to take this from over here and all of a sudden you end up with all this stuff. And then instead of taking action on it, it's like, well, maybe that's not the right combination. Maybe I should do it. And so I think there's a place in time for that.
Adam Rath [00:09:00]:
Hey, this is the way to do it. And then at some point we need to step back and kind of take a look at what's reality. And I think it's more recently that I've kind of realized, like, you know, we preach this 60% GP, and that's great, but there's other ways to get there. And it doesn't have to be 60% GP, and in a really poor or really rural area, that's probably not gonna fly.
Mike Allen [00:09:29]:
So not as easily, at least.
Adam Rath [00:09:31]:
Right?
Mike Allen [00:09:32]:
Yeah. I think if you think about, like a musician learning, developing their skill with an instrument, they need to learn the bass level of the music and need to learn how to play the instrument and how to read the music effectively before they start riffing and trying to.
Adam Rath [00:09:51]:
100%. Yes.
Mike Allen [00:09:53]:
And so, like the 300% rule, I think, is a great example of that. If you've never been to a coaching organization or been a part of a coaching organization or been to a training event, the first time you hear about the 300% rule and internalize it and start practicing it, truly, it changes your business overnight and it can change your life. And so it is natural that I went from a $250 ARO to a $750 ARO in three months because I implemented this, then that is the Gospel forever. I get that that's human nature. But when all of your other systems come up and you start going to all the training events and all the coaching classes and you get raise your rates and you hear that a hundred times and you raise your rates until they're maybe a little bit too high for your market. I don't know. Or maybe you've outpaced the value that you're offering and you've got this and you've got that and you're doing all these different gimmicks and suddenly all of a sudden 300% rule equals a tech average quote of $4,500. And you're totaling cars that are in perfectly good condition.
Adam Rath [00:11:06]:
I thought that's where you were going to go with this because it's funny that you and I've heard you guys talk about this on your podcast.
Mike Allen [00:11:13]:
I've only got like three things to talk about over.
Adam Rath [00:11:16]:
But it's. But this has become. And so recently in my own business, we run on eos. We probably won't. Whatever. That's like a whole whatever. But I have some fractional integrators that are doing just work for me. Like specifically just on certain, like working with my sales team, working with our ops team.
Adam Rath [00:11:36]:
So they're just really focused on specific pieces of the process that was brought up. And the lady who brought it up who is doing work for us, non automotive background, her background is in franchising. But she looked at what we were doing, looked at our average quote and said holy crap, you're sticker shocking all your new clients. No wonder we don't get as much repeat back out of them. And so it just probably I would past three, four months, I've kind of started to shift my. You know what really makes sense here? Should we 100% of the time go in with your car needs this $2,000 worth of maintenance and brakes and you
Mike Allen [00:12:19]:
know, or well, you give them a
Adam Rath [00:12:20]:
$7,000 estimate, write the estimate for what's really important right now, make them aware of the whole situation and just focus it down to what has to happen right now. And that's.
Mike Allen [00:12:33]:
I think your obligation to the customer is to inform and educate. Right. So yes, we need, I believe that we should go hard in the paint on the red items and the yellow items. We're informing and educating. They need to know about all of the things on the checklist before they do any of the things. Correct. But giving somebody a $7,000 estimate because their shocks and struts are old but not blown out and.
Adam Rath [00:13:01]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:13:02]:
You know, if it. And if 5,000 of it is maintenance and they say $7,000, either I'm getting rid of it and getting a new vehicle or I'm gonna go get a second opinion. And the next guy says you need $2,000 worth of stuff, he's ripping you off.
Adam Rath [00:13:15]:
Right. And then we end up looking foolish. So, yeah, there is a absolute. The other piece of it too is. And I think a lot of us skip it is, you know, we're. Most of us say, hey, we're a relationship based shop. We take in a new client. We have no idea what the goal is with the vehicle, how long they want to keep it.
Mike Allen [00:13:31]:
Do they actually, we don't have a relationship yet.
Adam Rath [00:13:33]:
Do they? You know, whatever. Whatever that whole picture needs to look like. And I think that's something just, you know, I know in my own organization, we're working on getting better at that, really. Understanding. Before we present a $7,000 estimate, is this a customer who loves the vehicle, wants to keep it for the next 10 years, or are we looking at. They want to get six months out of this.
Mike Allen [00:13:56]:
Yeah. The lease is up in four months.
Adam Rath [00:13:57]:
We're still going to do the dvi, Right. But the DVI gets done the same way no matter what. Nothing ever changes. But the way we present it is going to change depending on what we learn ahead of time.
Mike Allen [00:14:09]:
Well, and how much time. I mean, obviously this is a rapidly evolving subject too, is the process of doing a DVI and building an estimate is getting more and more efficient with the tools that are being developed right now. Right, but how much time does it take you or your advisor or your technician and advisor together to build a $4,500 ticket on average? Well, sometimes it's one part. Right, I get that. But on average, there's a lot of stuff being built in there. So why not build the estimate for the thing that Ms. Jones came in for? And if Ms. Jones buys that thing and we tell her about all the other things, then we estimate the other things too, once she's.
Mike Allen [00:14:47]:
Because, I mean, are you. Is that an efficient use of your advisor's time to have them spend 45 minutes building an estimate when they're not going to buy anything? Correct?
Adam Rath [00:14:55]:
Yeah. No, And I would 100% agree with you. I mean, it just, I mean, it's, it comes back to that education and everything else. And yeah, if we know they're not.
Mike Allen [00:15:06]:
So 100% of vehicles get inspected, 50 to 75% of the items found on the inspection are estimated 100% of the findings are reported to the customer. So I say that we're like 250, 275. So what?
Adam Rath [00:15:24]:
And we've. We're doing. We're. Because we're looking at this. Does this make sense? We are still estimating 100% of everything. We're just going into tech metric and just deselecting it and just not showing that piece of the estimate to the customer.
Mike Allen [00:15:39]:
Showing that part. You're showing the entire dvi.
Adam Rath [00:15:42]:
Oh, yeah.
Mike Allen [00:15:42]:
But you're just not showing. Yeah, but I mean, if.
Adam Rath [00:15:45]:
If we know that a. We know it's a lease, so there's no reason to do maintenance on it or we know the customer is trying to trade this thing in. In two weeks, they need to get it through a Pennsylvania state inspection. I'm not gonna show them a whole bunch of maintenance that like. And then I would just tell them, yeah, it's $2,000, but I don't recommend doing any. Why even have that conversation? Just.
Mike Allen [00:16:04]:
You're not gonna give them the full BG enema.
Adam Rath [00:16:08]:
It just. Let's do what makes the most sense for the client. I mean, our value proposition is to be convenient and painless. And I think part of that painless experience is.
Mike Allen [00:16:19]:
Yeah.
Adam Rath [00:16:19]:
If we're showing them a incredibly uncomfortable estimate that we don't believe they should actually do, it just comes a painful interaction every time.
Mike Allen [00:16:31]:
So the big thing that I see here in Craftsman so far, and I might be wrong because I'm only, you know, we're a half day of time spending with him.
Adam Rath [00:16:41]:
Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:16:43]:
Between this and what I've tried and frankly failed to execute on with the autoshop solutions concept. Autoshop answers concept. So many fucking.
Adam Rath [00:16:53]:
All the names.
Mike Allen [00:16:57]:
The Todd Hayes concept down in Houston, they all do their speed of service concept and they're all trying to find the thing that Ms. Jones came in for, find the answer to her primary question as quickly as possible, and get approval for that item as quickly as possible. And I'm probably oversimplifying and I'm sure they'll come in the comments to correct me where I'm wrong. But at Adams Adams Automotive, the Todd Hayes thing, Auto shop answers just one thing. They're gonna sell the first thing that Ms. Jones came in for or the most visually compelling safety related need that they find on a maintenance service and they call it the ISO. They're gonna sell that. They're gonna get Ms.
Mike Allen [00:17:49]:
Jones packed up and then a loaner car or in an Uber or back Home or whatever, and tell her that they're gonna call her with the remainder of the findings shortly. And then they call in an hour or whatever, 45 minutes or an hour, and sell the other red items on the dvi. And then they call a third time to say, hey, all the parts are here. We're getting ready to get started. Also while we're here, there's some maintenance items that are due or coming up. And then that's when they try to sell the yellow items. So they're breaking the sale up into three different conversations. Painful, that is.
Mike Allen [00:18:31]:
I mean, a lot of heartburn there. So I never got to that point. We tried to do ISO and pmi, and we're still trying to do ISO. ISO is call number one. PMI is what they call call number two. We're still trying to do that to varying levels of success and speed of service. For that is one of the things that we struggle with, is getting back on the phone in a timely fashion because we're just doing too many things right. Or maybe we're too inefficient with our.
Mike Allen [00:18:59]:
With our time. But what I saw here is they have the ISO conversation and the PMI conversation as two different approvals in the same conversation.
Adam Rath [00:19:13]:
Right?
Mike Allen [00:19:13]:
And it's, hey, Ms. Jones, you know, we found out what's going on with your check engine light on. It needs a muffler slide bearing and a headlight fluid exchange. And that's going to be, you know, $900. I can get that done for you by the end of the day today. Would you like me to move forward with that? Okay, great. I'm gonna get the parts on the way and we'll get started with that. By the way, we've completed our vehicle inspection that we always do to make sure that your car is safe and reliable, like we've always done for you.
Mike Allen [00:19:38]:
Every time you're in, there's a couple other things I want to review with you. So they get the yes to the first number, and then in the next breath on the same conversation, they talk about the other red items and they educate and inform about the yellows.
Adam Rath [00:19:53]:
So, I mean, and something. I mean, even. I really like what we saw with the. Well, he calls it the. What is it? The rack and roll. But the rack attack. The.
Mike Allen [00:20:01]:
It's just him not saying rack attack because he doesn't want to, you know, get into a pissing match with the guys in Texas. But that's my. That's my opinion. I could be totally wrong.
Adam Rath [00:20:12]:
I don't know. I feel like everybody needs their own, their own little name for the same process. But I mean. And everybody takes their own twist on it. But, you know, I think there's a couple coaching companies who really preach that one thing that whatever and Shopfix does too, right? Yes.
Mike Allen [00:20:28]:
It's very similar. They call it just the one thing, find the one thing.
Speaker D [00:20:31]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:20:32]:
Yeah.
Adam Rath [00:20:34]:
We have tried to implement it a couple times, and every time we've tried to implement it, let's just try this for a couple weeks and see how it goes. And the immediate pushback I get from technicians, advisors, everybody else is this just feels slimy. It doesn't feel right. And maybe that's on us. Maybe we're not doing it the right way, but we're not educating our customer. We're educating the customer about one little thing and then trying to like, sell that with the bait and switch that, oh, there's going to be a whole bunch more behind it. Surprise. And it just didn't exactly follow our.
Mike Allen [00:21:09]:
Of course, I don't think the spirit behind it is bait and switch or. Got it. If that is the spirit behind it, I hope that they're never dumb enough to say that out loud.
Adam Rath [00:21:16]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:21:16]:
And I don't think that's the spirit behind it. But like, so the show and sell concept, I think, is what Shop Fix teaches.
Adam Rath [00:21:22]:
Correct.
Mike Allen [00:21:22]:
And it's a. And it is a. It's like a little play, you know, Ms. Jones comes out under the car and you've got your clean cut technician with his gloves on and your service advisor introduces him and the technician takes his glove off and shakes hand and
Adam Rath [00:21:36]:
you know, the whole thing. And the flashlight.
Mike Allen [00:21:38]:
Yeah, you gotta have a flashlight. And you can get a flashlight that has the red laser pointer too. So you can do that as well. Super nice.
Adam Rath [00:21:44]:
That's the advanced method, but,
Mike Allen [00:21:49]:
you know, that is theater to get the sale. And then it's. Well, you know, and technician Timmy is going to be telling Ms. Jones about all these things. And then Ms. Jones is going to say, oh, gosh. Well, I definitely need to take care of that. How much does that cost? Well, I'm not sure, but service advisor Billy will let you know.
Mike Allen [00:22:07]:
And service advisor Billy then takes it back over and ushers them back up front and says, timmy's gonna complete his inspection. I'll let you know if we see anything else. Right. And so they're setting the table for further conversation. And I don't have a lot of heartburn from that. As long as they never start the work on the car. Until Ms. Jones knows about everything they're gonna recommend.
Mike Allen [00:22:27]:
Because then it's just a different way of presenting it. To make her more comfortable and have less sticker shock.
Adam Rath [00:22:35]:
Yes. I. Yeah, I. I mean, I think. I think for us, our. My shop's issue has really been we're. We're just not very good actors. So when it's, you know, oh, hey, miss.
Adam Rath [00:22:46]:
It just doesn't come across the way we're expecting it should. It's.
Mike Allen [00:22:52]:
And, well, the only way it's acting is if you've already. You've already completed the DVI and you know, everything you're going to estimate.
Adam Rath [00:22:59]:
But it's, you know, my sales team, once a week, we do a sales training meeting for them. They go over phone calls.
Mike Allen [00:23:08]:
Do you role play? Is it the most awkward thing ever?
Adam Rath [00:23:11]:
Well, there's a reason that I'm not involved with it because I wanted to do that, and then I couldn't get myself that. So I have a sales team integrator that just handles that every week. But we can see the results with that. The more and more we do it, the better we are on the phone, the more rehearsed it sounds. And we did not do that. When we've tried to roll out something like that to the guys in the shop. And it's probably. Yeah, we.
Adam Rath [00:23:39]:
We probably should have practiced it more and had, you know, something that Josh
Mike Allen [00:23:44]:
Parnell was just talking about downstairs was the J curve of implementation. You know, you've got. I think it's a chart. You know, you've got. I'm trying to think reverse. Okay, so this is company performance on this axis, and this is time on this axis. And right now you're running along at this level and you implement a new process and there's going to be a dip because it's new and you're breaking away from old habits before it comes back up and you actually see a performance improvement. But what happens is a lot of people never make it out of the dip because this is uncomfortable.
Mike Allen [00:24:16]:
This is new, this is not working. Numbers are down. This is terrible. Right? Let's go back to the old way. And then you just, you maintain, and all you have from that is the loss during the upset of the change, and you never realize the benefit of the increase.
Adam Rath [00:24:30]:
And I think it's, you know, our employees are always going to be the first ones that anytime we implement something new, it's not working. It just made everything worse. And I think the real key there has been quantifying with them, like, you know, you're saying it's worse, show me it's worse. Why is it worse? And then if it is worse but we still believe in what we're doing, what do we need to change so that this is not continuing?
Mike Allen [00:24:55]:
Well, invariably it's because they're not using the tool or technology or process to the intent or appropriately. Right. I had exactly this with Detect Auto has this badass new app assistant for the DVI process, right. And you can just start the recording and go through and talk your way through it. And it's going to take your words and put it on the correct line item in the DVI and check the green, yellow, red. Is it perfect? No, but it's getting better every day. And it significant like it cuts down the need to type in your DVI or to create package line items that you drop down menu and select the ones that you've got. And it's putting the pictures in.
Mike Allen [00:25:39]:
And I mean it is a tool that will make you significantly faster in filling out the dvi. And I go, ah, it's fucking terrible. How many times you try it once. How many times have you done it the other way? 10,000. I wonder why it's not as good.
Adam Rath [00:25:53]:
So I will say the key. And it's funny that this exact example comes up. We're literally rolling this out right now. So we. I'm not a fan, I'm not a huge fan of the techmetric DVI because it. And this is going back many, many years. Just when we switched.
Mike Allen [00:26:08]:
Do not besmirch the name of the best software in the history of all softwares continue.
Adam Rath [00:26:13]:
Besides the DVI piece. We just weren't a fan of it. We loved everything else. We used another DVI software, auto vitals or what? AutoFlow.
Mike Allen [00:26:23]:
AutoFlow.
Adam Rath [00:26:23]:
Okay. And very happy with it. Had the layout we wanted. Just takes a lot of time to do and speed of service. Important. Like we've really tried been trying to increase car count. So we need to cut time down somewhere. We also had kind of had the issue of like recommending services that had already been done.
Adam Rath [00:26:45]:
So we had gone to Detect Auto mainly for that piece of it. And then we're like, well, you know, we want to see the DVI tool. But I had my manager on the call with me. He actually scheduled it and I was more like, I'm just gonna hang out in the background. He's the one that immediately was. He's like, this is how we're gonna increase. We can do a DVI and 10 minutes with this tool. This is incredible.
Adam Rath [00:27:07]:
Like this is what we need to be doing.
Mike Allen [00:27:09]:
It's almost like you don't need 37 people swarming on a car to do a DVI.
Adam Rath [00:27:14]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:27:14]:
You can do it with two in five minutes. Right. 10 minutes.
Adam Rath [00:27:18]:
Right.
Mike Allen [00:27:19]:
So I'm excited about it. And do you use the service advisor assistant, the write up that Detect Auto has? So every technician in America has wanted to murder their service advisor at least once because they got a ticket that said check noise. Right.
Adam Rath [00:27:33]:
Oh, oh. For the symptoms at the beginning.
Mike Allen [00:27:35]:
So the questions to ask. And then it puts it into a cogent paragraph and puts it in. So my advisors who are not super tech savvy, it's a really useful tool for them in that capacity. So how many you've got? One advisor, two advisors.
Adam Rath [00:27:47]:
Two advisors. Well we had three.
Mike Allen [00:27:48]:
But are they technically sound?
Adam Rath [00:27:51]:
Not. No.
Mike Allen [00:27:51]:
So a little bit. I would encourage you to use that.
Adam Rath [00:27:54]:
Yeah, no, that's. I mean we. And so we've always done what we were doing with literally sheets of paper. Like so I mean it just. Yeah. Really is.
Mike Allen [00:28:03]:
Again, it's just gaining efficiencies. Right. That's what all this new technology is doing for us. It's gonna change the name of the game for advisors first and technicians a little bit later. I think it's just making us better at what we do and more efficient. So I think one advisor will be able to do what one and a half or two can do because so many of the monotonous tasks that they've spent their time on in the past are going to be taken off their hands and they can just build relationships and have conversations and educate and inform and talk their way through.
Adam Rath [00:28:40]:
Funny you say. And I'll throw this out there if anyone else is considering this. I've shared this with many people already. We had at one point hired a remote estimator in the Philippines. We found somebody who was an. He was literally a mechanic in the Philippines and just was. And it's. I don't know what it cost us fifteen hundred dollars a month.
Adam Rath [00:28:58]:
I mean it was nothing. Yeah. And their schedule, same as our schedule, they're. I mean they're 12 hours opposite of us, but literally they stay up all night just so they can win. We just have them on the whole
Mike Allen [00:29:09]:
industry that does that. Right.
Adam Rath [00:29:10]:
We, they'd be on slack with us on the video chat thing during the day and they just would handle.
Mike Allen [00:29:16]:
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Rath [00:29:18]:
We ended up parting ways for other reasons. I think overall we just didn't find the right person when we did it. It worked. It didn't work as well as it could have.
Speaker D [00:29:27]:
Look, when I first opened my shop, I thought my old systems would keep up. The software that I had would continue to evolve. But as we grew the slow estimates, scattered workflow, increasing downtime, it really just, it was becoming a real problem. That's why I switched to techmetric. It's not just software. It's a complete shop management system that makes my life eas, smart jobs, instant estimates, integrated payments, integrated financing options. I mean, it allows me to focus on the work that actually makes me money and not get bogged down in the other details. My shop's repair orders have jumped over 300% since switching to TechMetric.
Speaker D [00:30:04]:
And when I need help, their support team responds in real time. I actually was online with them asking questions just this week, and I got answers in minutes rather than having to wait for callbacks and emails days later.
Mike Allen [00:30:15]:
If your system is holding you back,
Speaker D [00:30:17]:
it's time for a change. Tap the link in the show notes and see how techmetric can help you move your shop forward.
Adam Rath [00:30:23]:
Had we tried a little bit harder to get the right person to do that, I think it could have been a very viable option. And the whole idea is great. If my advisors don't have to waste that 40 minutes writing an estimate and they can spend that time working with a client, let somebody else handle that piece of it.
Mike Allen [00:30:41]:
So early on in the podcast, one of our early sponsors was hubshop Solutions, which was a remote estimating service. And a couple of things happened with that. First they were great, and then the controlling forces in the background, the money in the background said, we're going to ship all the estimators over to Philippine outsourced, and the quality and accuracy of the estimates tanked. And then the turn time on the estimates skyrocketed. And then either they terminated or quit. All their North American estimators were either terminated or quit. I don't know all the details, but. So I ended up parting ways with that relationship from a business perspective and from a podcast perspective, just because I couldn't be like, hey, you should use this service when I didn't believe in the service anymore.
Mike Allen [00:31:28]:
Right. One of the early managers for that organization was Ash Kaplan. She's been on a couple times and she now has a golden hour garage.
Adam Rath [00:31:38]:
Well, here we can, we can lead right into the. The other piece of this if you want. So, yeah, we've actually had Ash came to the aceog mastermind as a guest speaker, maybe February this year. It was just recently. So yeah, I mean, they do. And we've talked with them a little bit about this because we definitely recognize there is something to be said for remote estimating.
Mike Allen [00:31:59]:
Yeah, yeah. And so I have like when we have our company wide meetings and we go through all the different vendors that we're using, we're like, how are they doing, points of improvement, what's going right, what's going wrong, that kind of thing. We get to golden hour and invariably there's some guys that want to bitch about estimates being wrong. Well, how often were estimates wrong when we were doing them in house? And you know, how often are you having to go in and adjust something on an estimate or correct something that's wrong on an estimate? Probably 20% of the time. So 80% of the time you're not having to do that. Okay, so you want me to fire them and you go back to doing 100% of the estimates? No, no, that's not what I'm saying. So my.
Adam Rath [00:32:47]:
Well, it's your team getting down into the bottom of that J curve and now coming back out of it. Oh, this is terrible. Maybe it's not too bad.
Mike Allen [00:32:58]:
But anyway, I want to go back to something you said. You referenced it twice now. I think you call them fractional implementers.
Adam Rath [00:33:05]:
Integrators.
Mike Allen [00:33:06]:
Integrators. So you're talking about eos, which is for some of our listeners who might not know, the entrepreneurial operating system is based around or the book traction is based around that system. And there are visionaries who set.
Adam Rath [00:33:25]:
We're the visionary for the company that we set the objective, plot the course and where we're going, what we're doing. And then as we probably well know that Sometimes we have 50 ideas in a week and we're like, these are all going to be great. Let's get everything implemented and we're going to make it happen. Now the other piece of that is we are horrible at getting new ideas actually implemented. So like here's the 50 new things that we're doing this week. Guys, I've made some notes over here on this piece of note paper here. I'm going to give that to you and that's how I want you to make all this happen.
Mike Allen [00:34:05]:
I'm going back to the house.
Adam Rath [00:34:07]:
So the integrator, the fractional integrator is that missing link there. So they're taking my ideas and filtering them and saying, that's great, that's great. The rest of these are horrible. I don't know what you were thinking with these other 48 ideas. We're not going to be doing any of that. And then they're going to take the two good ideas and they're going to work the plan and I'll work it with them. But on here's how we're going to put this into play.
Mike Allen [00:34:31]:
So how long have you been trying to work the EOS system?
Adam Rath [00:34:36]:
We have. So we worked with a. And this is where it'll get really interesting. Worked with a professional implementer, which is the person who teaches us the EEOS system for two years now. I have for the past year. And this was actually, actually it was right after Tools last year I hired a fractional integrator. So for anybody that doesn't know shop marketing pros, I don't know if we can say them here, but they're not a sponsor. But Brian Walker, good personal friend of mine, and they run on EOs.
Adam Rath [00:35:06]:
They ran their shop on Eos. So we had a ton of conversations at Tools just about Eos. And I'm like, you know, I do this. And he's like, what, what's going on with your integrator? I'm like, well, I don't really have an integrator. I'm sitting in both seats. And he's like, right, you need an integrator. I'm like, brian, I'm a pretty good integrator. And there's a test for this.
Adam Rath [00:35:29]:
So there's a crystallizer assessment. If you just Google crystallizer assessment, you take a 40 question test and it tells you where you are like visionary integrator. I think I'm a 93 visionary and like a 42 integrator. Like it's very clear which seat I should be sitting in. So came back from Tools, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna hire a part time, a fractional integrator and let's just see what happens. And so we kind of hired somebody. I didn't know what to expect. And it was just all the little stuff that had previously been falling through the cracks.
Adam Rath [00:36:02]:
It just stopped and things got completed.
Mike Allen [00:36:05]:
And so did the listing for this part time fractional integrator, did it say fractional integrator or did it say parts manager?
Adam Rath [00:36:18]:
Literally it isn't it. So they, they do nothing in my business. So the, the gentleman that we hired there, and there's thousands of fract, maybe not thousands, there's probably is fractional integrators. There's a. Yeah, there's a very large community of people that, I mean they'll, they'll work for multiple different companies at the same time often. So I needed somebody 10 to 15 hours a week. There was a local guy here. Turns out that he was like multiple connections, went to church with my sister and just so you know, real good feel for him.
Adam Rath [00:36:53]:
He used to own his own foundry, but very high integrator score, not super high visionary score. And he was kind of like, I'm just getting ready to retire, I got a couple months left. He goes, but you know, I really like it. I've never worked in the automotive industry. Yeah, let's do it. And so I think he was with us from June till January of this past year. And yeah, it was just eye opening. What can happen when you start getting the right people doing the right things.
Mike Allen [00:37:23]:
There's so many really high performing organizations that I've gotten to know over the last few years. And one of the consistent drum beats that I hear is eos. One of my good friends through Elite that I met through Elite, but he's just a really good friend now is Harrison Rusk out of Houston. And he's just on Cinco de Mayo. He closed on his fifth store. So Cinco on Cinco. And he's all in with the os and then two of the best players in the North Carolina market Chapel Tire Group. I think they've got like 15 stores or something and they have like just, they're beautiful facilities and their teams seem to be very happy and they got a great training organization built into their company, EOS about it, right, Harold Tyre and Automotive in eastern North Carolina.
Mike Allen [00:38:15]:
I think they've got 12 stores EOs.
Adam Rath [00:38:19]:
But I just keep hearing, I mean this all pretty much Josh just hit on this downstairs when he was talking about, you know, kind of driving the vision, driving the core values. I mean that's all EOS stuff. Like we live by our core values. We, we're constantly talking about where we're going. So once a quarter as it just, if you're following like true EOS the way you're supposed to do it, we have a state of the company address which is what happened last quarter. What did we learn? Where are we at right now and then where are we going next quarter? And that is like just religiously something that the more we have just stuck to that meeting happens every quarter. We actually have now gone to the point where I make slides, we record it on loom, we go through welcome new team members. But we go over all the financials.
Adam Rath [00:39:12]:
What do we do? What was the gross profit? Where are we headed as a company? What's Changing, what can we all expect to see? And it is just so much clarity for everybody. I mean, our employees will say, our team members say, I've never worked somewhere that we knew this much about the company. We feel like we're just a part of it. I had shared last week, I shared with a bunch of guys last week. We had a record week. We did about 65 grand. My manager was off, and on Monday, our new service advisor, who really wasn't fitting in, basically just decided this wasn't for him and it was no hard feelings, and that was the end of that. So that's.
Adam Rath [00:39:55]:
So my manager, who normally backs up the service writers, not there. So I'm down to just two writers and five techs. And like, we kind of said, like, hey, guys, it's gonna be a rough week, you know, whatever. And they're like, crushed it. They said, you know what, we're gonna show Scott how to do this while he's off on vacation this week. So end of the day, we use a whiteboard to track everything. And then it's, you know, what do we do today? Where are we at for the week? So Friday, obviously, end of the week, where are we at for the week? And we take a picture of the whiteboard after we write everything on it. And then we have an end of day channel in Slack.
Adam Rath [00:40:29]:
So I open it up because I knew we were gonna have a really good week. I knew where we were at and, like, I kind of was getting all the, you know, hey, just what do you see? What do you see? What do you see? And so not only is it a picture of the whiteboard, two of my techs standing there pointing at it, and then also kind of there was a middle finger, which I'm assuming was going to our manager, who they knew was gonna open it up to see what we did that week. But the clear thing was they knew that was a win. They knew what we had to do. They knew what the goal was. They knew why the goal was what it was because our. Our daily goal equals the weekly. The weekly equals the projection for the quarter.
Adam Rath [00:41:07]:
And if we don't hit our projection, then we can't do certain things. Everything is built around the projection. So, you know, they knew this is where we have to get to. And they knew it was a win.
Mike Allen [00:41:19]:
That's awesome.
Adam Rath [00:41:20]:
I think that has really just been the key with eos is just everybody's on the same page. Everybody knows where we're going. They know what a win looks like. They know what we have to do to get there. And when we make changes, there's typical resistance. But it's, hey, we know why we're making this change. We're switching to Detect Auto because it's speed of service, because we want to start servicing more cars, because we have a pretty big goal for the year. So, you know, it just.
Adam Rath [00:41:47]:
Everything kind of makes sense to everybody.
Mike Allen [00:41:50]:
So Monday morning, team huddle, where they're like, hey, man, you need to go on vacation again. Just get out of here.
Adam Rath [00:41:59]:
There was some talk about that, but you know what? It was, I was really proud of Scott, our manager. So long story short, and I guess be a little plug for Josh here, but Scott, our manager, a lot of stuff going on in his personal life. He was part of our leadership team, just as our general, like, shop manager, not manager, manager. And we asked him to take a step down from the leadership team. We actually demoted him. And the only thing I had done at that time is I've been talking with Josh Parnell. I bought his blueprint program, and Scott, my. Who's now our.
Adam Rath [00:42:36]:
And this is. This is last summer. So a couple months ago, took like, watch the first two or three modules. We. He came in, we talked about it, and I'm like, Scott, like, this is great. Like, I'm really, like, I can see you're really growing from this. I said, you know what, why don't we plan, like, we'll do, you know, two modules a week, and then you and I will sit down and we'll talk and, you know, we'll kind of coach each other a little bit. We sat down.
Adam Rath [00:43:02]:
A week later, he had finished the whole stupid thing. He's like, dude, it was awesome. I want more. I emailed Josh. I'm like, what, what? What? Who is this guy? So just, you know, kind of leaning into him, realizing we hadn't given him the leadership skills to do what we were asking him to do. And I think both of us being humble enough to say, like, I screwed up and, you know, kind of, here's what we're going to do to try and fix this. And I think he recognized, like, yeah, I'm in over my head, but I appreciate, you know, I want to be here, and I appreciate that they're going to give me that whatever to make it happen. So I credit EOS to that, too.
Adam Rath [00:43:40]:
But I mean, again, that was shortly after I'd hired the first fractional integrator, and it was a conversation I would have left him on the leadership team probably forever. I just really not quite doing what we want. But it was a conversation with the fractional integrator.
Mike Allen [00:43:55]:
Right person, wrong seat.
Adam Rath [00:43:57]:
Exactly. And we made the seat change. We kept working on him and then made him basically really kind of skipped the seat. He went from. Well, he went from managing the shop to kind of just like our lead tech to manager of the store. So.
Mike Allen [00:44:14]:
Great.
Adam Rath [00:44:14]:
Yeah, great.
Mike Allen [00:44:17]:
I do want to be cognizant of the time. 40 minutes has already gone by.
Adam Rath [00:44:21]:
Oh, goodness, look at that.
Mike Allen [00:44:23]:
It's not that hard. I want to talk about your work with ASOG and with the Mastermind. I've had a bunch of guests on in the last year and a half. We're coming up on 100 episodes. By the time this is published, It'll be over 100 episodes that have been through the ASOG mastermind. And you're. You have a title. Are you the director? Chief, bottle washer?
Adam Rath [00:44:48]:
I kind of hate titles, so if anybody ever. I don't know, maybe I'm too much of a team player. I don't know what it is. I just call myself one of the facilitators there.
Mike Allen [00:44:57]:
You're the big dick in charge.
Adam Rath [00:44:59]:
But I pay for the Zoom license
Mike Allen [00:45:04]:
every year, So I get $179 a year. I own this bitch.
Adam Rath [00:45:12]:
So for anybody that doesn't know, I guess, little known secret. ASOG has a free mastermind group. And the origins we could, whatever, go back years and years. Basically, David Roman started it.
Mike Allen [00:45:25]:
We refer to him as he who Shall Not Be Named.
Adam Rath [00:45:28]:
He shall. He who Shall Not Be Named.
Mike Allen [00:45:32]:
Perfect.
Adam Rath [00:45:33]:
Started this maybe 2016 somewhere in there, and it was just kind of this informal, hey, let's get together on a Sunday night and chat and see where this thing goes. That really led into just a very close group of friends who have stayed in contact and just whatever throughout the years come about, like, Covid time. We all still in contact, had messenger chat groups. We were still meeting some. And Luke has kind of called all of us and said, hey guys, we've got a lot of really struggling shop owners that need help and they can't afford to pay for coaching, which is what most of us had. We kind of got it together a little bit as a part of this group. And then everybody went and hired whatever coaching company they were going to hire. But we're seeing this influx of people who, I mean, like, just in bad shape, not knowing what to do, just missing all the.
Adam Rath [00:46:27]:
All the core fundamentals. And Lucas kind of had this. And I guess in true leadership fashion, Lucas had this idea and called all of us together to see who was going to take this thing over so he could just delegate it and walk away from his.
Mike Allen [00:46:41]:
Lucas loves, I call that a conversational hand grenade. He'll stick his head in the room and say, hey, how about this, that and this and that and hey, I'm busy, I got to go. Love you. Call me if you need me. Click.
Adam Rath [00:46:50]:
Yeah, that's pretty much how this went down. He's, I will say he's been a supporter. He's in one of our chats, so he does chime in every now and then. At the end of the day he was right. It was a good call. There is so many people that we've been able to help over. I mean it's, I don't know, probably almost six years now since we've kind of restarted it. So we had initially a bunch of members that were part of the original Mastermind group and I had actually taken a step away from it for about a year.
Adam Rath [00:47:19]:
We had moved the shop, I'd done a huge renovation, came back to it and now that's probably four and a half years ago almost. And since then it's turned into, I think the I am the only guy now from the original group that's still there.
Mike Allen [00:47:36]:
How many facilitators do you have right now?
Adam Rath [00:47:38]:
Oh boy. Eight, nine, something like that. So. And the way we are hoping and we're currently making some changes to this group but basically our goal is we run people through the group in about 12 to 18 months, get them all the core fundamentals so they can get to a point where they can go pay for coaching and kind of get to that level up. Since we're here, take care of all that low hanging fruit stuff, the 300% rule, knowing your numbers, understanding gross profit, all the stuff that is going to move the needle in a big way very quickly. And then at that point, you know, if these people are in a good spot, they can help other people. Try and bring them into our coaching program, encourage them then to, you know, give back, give back to the group, go get their own coaching or we'll work with them. We have years of experience now as a part of our leadership team.
Adam Rath [00:48:36]:
The shift that we're kind of currently making to the group is we would just bring people in. Like there's on there, there's a website for asoc. So if anyone does not know the Facebook auto shop owners group is actually, what is it? A 401, 413? Yeah. Something non profit. There's a Facebook or there's The Facebook page. But there is a website ASOG site and there's a page on there all about the Mastermind group and applying for it. Of course, we don't really mention it anywhere in the Facebook group except for just recently. But yeah, if you're out looking for it, that's where you can find it.
Adam Rath [00:49:13]:
So somebody would go there, they would apply or somebody would mention, hey, there's acehog Mastermind. We'd bring them into the group. First night they'd meet with me, we'd try and triage everything, figure out, you know, what do we got to do? We throw them into the mix and then we work in small groups and then once a month we have a guest speaker come in. But they would just go into random small group and topics will vary. There's no real set format. It's whatever people need the most that night. And what we found is like pretty effective for a lot of people. But then we also have people who've been in the group for six months a year and something comes up and they're like, oh, I didn't know about that.
Adam Rath [00:49:55]:
How did they not get taught this already? Nobody's mentioned this.
Mike Allen [00:50:00]:
So there wasn't a core curriculum checklist.
Adam Rath [00:50:02]:
So the change that we're making is we're going to. We had our members make a whole bunch of videos, post them in asog, say, hey, we're taking new members right now. We're going to be, once we get up to 10 max, we're going to be capped for the next four months. We're going to take those 10 people, run them through basically three different rooms. So four months in each one with just specific topics of understanding financials, building estimates, DVIs, you know, what is 300%? Just all those little things.
Mike Allen [00:50:36]:
We'll do just the foundation.
Adam Rath [00:50:38]:
Our favorite is we'll do live invoice audits and have people share their tech metrics with us.
Mike Allen [00:50:43]:
And that's painful.
Adam Rath [00:50:44]:
We'll just see what's going on.
Mike Allen [00:50:46]:
You want to make it even more uncomfortable, just pull up the VoIP system and do live phone call audits.
Adam Rath [00:50:52]:
I think that'll be a room to thing. But yeah, we're thinking about something like that. Could be a.
Mike Allen [00:50:57]:
If you want to ruin my fucking day, make me listen to my own phone calls. Oh my God, so bad.
Adam Rath [00:51:04]:
So I'm sorry, I don't listen to mine ever. Occasionally I knew I had a really bad phone call and I pulled it and sent it to somebody and said, I don't want to listen to this. But Just tell me what I did wrong.
Mike Allen [00:51:19]:
The bad part is I do pretty well when we role play in our team meetings. I know all of our scripts. And our point is, like with the musician, you need to learn the script really well before you're allowed to riff and go off, because you can bring it back in when you need to. Right. And then in the heat of the moment, when it's time to actually talk to a customer, I'm just like, yeah, sounds great. Bring it in. You know, which we should be saying in its own way, but, you know, I just. I circumvent all the rules and policies that we put in place that I know the reason we put those rules and policies in place, and the reasons are fucking good.
Mike Allen [00:51:56]:
And I just. I just fail anyway. That's why they don't want me answering the phone.
Adam Rath [00:52:01]:
I was gonna say. This is why I'm not. Can we talk about. No, not call inbound.
Mike Allen [00:52:08]:
I'm not familiar with them.
Adam Rath [00:52:09]:
They're the AI. Automotive.
Mike Allen [00:52:12]:
Yeah, whatever. There's a dozen of them right now. There's rilla and there's aix, which is just rebranded rilla, I think.
Adam Rath [00:52:21]:
Okay, well, so we.
Mike Allen [00:52:22]:
Whatever.
Adam Rath [00:52:22]:
That's who we use. I'm gonna keep scrolling up.
Mike Allen [00:52:26]:
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Rath [00:52:28]:
Every day we get a daily email with the best call and the worst call in. And anytime I have answered the phone at my shop, when we get that daily email, the next day, I'm the worst call every single time. So, yeah, I don't answer the phone.
Mike Allen [00:52:48]:
We did a phone call audit two weeks ago, and 20% of the inbound calls at one of my stores were customers calling asking for status updates.
Adam Rath [00:53:03]:
Yeah, well, at least you know what to coach on right now.
Mike Allen [00:53:07]:
Man, I don't know. I think I talked about this last week with Brian, but it's just the loss of efficiency by not following our. Like, we know what the processes are, we know why they're there, and yet we still choose not to follow them. And it makes life harder for us. So does that mean that we're dumbasses or we're lazy or. What was the Chris Voss quote they have in there? When the pressure's on, we fall to our base level of training, not our level of attention or whatever.
Adam Rath [00:53:43]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I sometimes wonder, does it go back to people just not understanding why we're doing a certain thing and, you know, have we just not shared enough of that why, whatever. But whether that, I. And I can't tell you. That's the answer. But I think that's where my brain goes to with it every time. And, and you know, then you're just trying to beat that into everybody's head and hoping they're listening and understanding.
Mike Allen [00:54:11]:
And what are you gonna do?
Adam Rath [00:54:14]:
That's what we have integrators for.
Mike Allen [00:54:15]:
So what is the next step for ASOC mastermind? You're gonna have a formatted three rooms, four months per room. And then after the 12th month it's like, get the fuck out and go get your own coach.
Adam Rath [00:54:28]:
I tolerate people being in places like my own business longer than they should be.
Mike Allen [00:54:32]:
But so realistically, it's a 12 month for wayward boys.
Adam Rath [00:54:37]:
We'll allow people to stay up to 18 months. Unless my leadership team starts pushing back on that, then maybe we'll go back to 12. But so realistically that's, that's the format change that we're gonna. We're sort of making there. What will happen is basically once a month or I'm sorry, twice a month, we do small groups. So we meet three times a month on Zoom for. It's supposed to be an hour and a half meeting, it's always two hours. But so we do small groups and then we do a once a month guest speaker.
Adam Rath [00:55:02]:
And we've had all sorts of different industry guest speakers and just various people coming in to just try and give us some different perspective. We've kind of focused down now more onto just bringing in various coaches because our hope is, hey, we get people through our program. They've resonated with a coach somewhere along the way here, or maybe they've stayed in contact with one and then they've moved on to that.
Mike Allen [00:55:30]:
We alluded to this earlier on the bus.
Adam Rath [00:55:34]:
So there is a very interesting thing that we have found has happened with the, specifically the ASOG mastermind. So we know there is a bit of a divide between Shop Fix and asog. There's whatever that has gone on there.
Mike Allen [00:55:51]:
I think it's all Dutch and Lucas.
Adam Rath [00:55:54]:
I have no other comment on it.
Mike Allen [00:55:56]:
And David,
Adam Rath [00:55:59]:
the thou who shall not be named is that.
Mike Allen [00:56:01]:
Yeah,
Adam Rath [00:56:04]:
so something. So whatever. Not to say I've spoken negatively about Shop Fix, but I've not always said like, hey, they're, you know, they're the best. But I try and leave things very neutral and I don't push people in a certain direction. You're Switzerland, right? Like if I'm teaching to them, here's what we do at our shop that works. And here's what doesn't work. One of the interesting things that never occurred to me though, is like, years and years ago, I bought the original driving growth program from Shop Fix, and we use a lot of that stuff that is in that. That's just part of our core program.
Mike Allen [00:56:43]:
Yeah.
Adam Rath [00:56:44]:
So that's a lot of what we teach to the ASOC mastermind.
Mike Allen [00:56:47]:
Now.
Adam Rath [00:56:47]:
I've coached with Rick White, transformers, Ron, IPACs, you know, I had several whatever. And got great things from all of them and sort of was like, you know, this Shop Fix thing, like, yeah, sure, half my business practices probably came from those, but I don't think that's a group, you know, that's not the right group for me.
Mike Allen [00:57:10]:
Yeah, we talked about this earlier. I think there was a lab somewhere in, like, 1997 that just had some wild Shop guys that they were injecting serums into, and it birthed Auto Shop Answers and Shop Fix and a couple of the others.
Adam Rath [00:57:27]:
So here's the really strange thing that we started to observe is we'd have members leave our program and they would go for coaching. We're like, that's awesome. You know anybody I connect you with? Where do you. And they're like, oh, I'm talking with this guy. That guy. Almost all of them were ending up in Shop Fix, which I'm like, this is a little bit strange. Like, we've never even had a guest speaker in from Shop Fix. So how is this even happening?
Mike Allen [00:57:52]:
Well, I think they're so much larger than every other coaching organization. I would venture the guess that all other coaching organizations combined are smaller than Shopfix.
Adam Rath [00:58:03]:
Could be. I believe 1500 shops right now.
Mike Allen [00:58:07]:
Maybe ATI. I don't know what ATI's numbers are like, but. But
Adam Rath [00:58:12]:
for
Mike Allen [00:58:15]:
in the last six, seven years since the pandemic, the majority of people that got coaches for the first time got Shop Fixed because they had the most visibility and the most online hype. So it's natural that if they were graduating through the ASOG program and they were looking for their first coach, they probably went to Rick White or Shop Fix.
Adam Rath [00:58:35]:
Right. Yeah. No, I. And I almost wonder if a piece of so many people ending up with Shop Fix was like, it's elusive and hidden and we don't talk about it in asog. And, you know, it's.
Mike Allen [00:58:49]:
Well, and the people who ended up at 180 biz.
Adam Rath [00:58:51]:
Let's see.
Mike Allen [00:58:52]:
Because of Lucas. It was because of Lucas and Rick was why they went to 180 biz. Right.
Adam Rath [00:58:58]:
Yeah. Somebody that. Clearly, this worked. It's, you know. Yeah.
Mike Allen [00:59:01]:
So nothing wrong with that. It's just how it worked out.
Adam Rath [00:59:04]:
The. I don't remember exactly when this was, but I talked with our leadership team, and I'm like, hey, guys, Like, I don't normally ask, but who are you guys using for coaching? Like, what? What? What are you guys doing? Like, I know sometimes we'll have dialogue about stuff, and in our one chat, but I know most of the guys had gone and got. Turns out that over half of our leadership team was also coaching with Shop Fix. I didn't even realize.
Mike Allen [00:59:26]:
So they're actively coaching for Shop Fix also, or they were coaching clients of Shop Fix.
Adam Rath [00:59:32]:
Coaching clients of Shop Fix. Yes.
Mike Allen [00:59:34]:
So you heard it here first, folks. ASOG officially endorses Shop Fix Academy.
Adam Rath [00:59:39]:
And that'll be the end of the mastermind group.
Mike Allen [00:59:43]:
Dutch is gonna murder you.
Adam Rath [00:59:48]:
The piece of it. And the piece that I love with our leadership team, and something I've always shared with the group is you're gonna hear all these perspectives as you grow, and you need to take what's gonna work in your shop and leave the rest behind. And the guys on our leadership team who had gone there embraced that. They took what was gonna work and implemented it. And it worked. And it just.
Mike Allen [01:00:10]:
Look, there are a dozen different ways to skin this cat in this industry. You've heard me say it before if you ever listen to this show. But Becky Wet drew a picture at Fuel, and Connections was like, look, this is a buffet. So think about coaching and talking heads and fucking podcasts and everything else in the automotive space. All the guys who know all the answers, right, all the gurus, think of it as a buffet. You cannot eat at all. You have to pick the pieces that are good for you. And you can't eat too much because it'll make you sick.
Mike Allen [01:00:47]:
So get the pieces that you like and get just enough to be full and don't overeat and don't try to eat everything, or it's going to make you throw up everywhere. So every one of these coaching organizations has content that I can learn from and that I can improve my business with. And a lot of them have content that I'm like, that's not right for me. And that's okay, too. I mean, in all honesty, it's one of the reasons that I've been with Elite as long as I have been one. They're not territorial. They don't get all pissy if I want to go check out this guy or that event or whatever else. Right? I like that.
Mike Allen [01:01:24]:
And they don't have a fixed concept that they coach. They get to know what your business is and what you're trying to do. And as long as you're ethical and as long as you take care of your people and take care of your customers, they just want to help you make money. Right. And reach your goals.
Adam Rath [01:01:37]:
So. And this is so not that we're officially endorsing anyone, anything, whatever.
Mike Allen [01:01:42]:
I'm endorsing Elite.
Adam Rath [01:01:47]:
We have now had several coaches from Shop Fix come in, including Michael Rosenberger, who's now the CEO there. And when we first did this, there was a lot even amongst the leadership team who's mainly already all with Shopfix. Like, boy, I hope that it doesn't, you know, this doesn't blow up in our face. And the beauty is it's, you know, yes, here is the core way that shopfix believes this should be done. However, we're not going to shove that down anybody throat. And even Berg, when he came and talked to us, I mean it was just, it literally probably one of the best guest speaker meetings we've had. I have share and actually we have a member here at this conference who said he was re watching it on the way here, but I. We recorded that zoom and then we shared it with the group.
Mike Allen [01:02:33]:
Well, and there are a couple of Shop Fix coaches that are here today.
Adam Rath [01:02:36]:
Yes, Yep. Yeah, we'll name any names, but it's just, you know, we got just such great information perspective and you know, hey, this may not flat rate may not work for you and that's okay. And we'll explain why and we'll explain how to build a pay plan that will work correctly for you. And you know, it's. I think we, sometimes we hear something from a coaching company and then we put them in a certain box and there's just so much more going on and there's so many more perspectives there that.
Mike Allen [01:03:09]:
You mean that there should be space for nuance and thoughtful discourse rather than 30 second sound bites that make for good rage bait.
Adam Rath [01:03:17]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know.
Mike Allen [01:03:18]:
Well, not on this podcast, sir. So we're over an hour already. This is super easy. I feel like we could do a part two and just keep going probably, but I think we gotta go downstairs and sample the beer at the hotel bar to make sure that it's cold
Adam Rath [01:03:35]:
enough before I'm on board with this plan.
Mike Allen [01:03:37]:
So thanks for coming on.
Adam Rath [01:03:41]:
Dude, are you still doing the confession thing? Are we supposed to confess to something? Because I'm going to tell you I spent at least 40 minutes thinking about it. Braxton actively.
Mike Allen [01:03:49]:
But Braxton wants to thank you for this. Because he's like, dude, the name of the fucking podcast is Confessions, and you don't do that anymore.
Adam Rath [01:03:54]:
So this is what I wanted to confess, and I felt like it's. And there's a. I'm going to. We're going to do this quick so this doesn't get too long. But I was a very lazy leader in my business and used to hang on for people that I knew deep down. Not even deep down, just like, they were the wrong fit. They shouldn't be there. Whatever.
Adam Rath [01:04:12]:
I had an employee like that, and I come in, I was going to get rid of him, and I'm like, no, you know what?
Mike Allen [01:04:17]:
He's not that bad, but he's a nice guy, right?
Adam Rath [01:04:19]:
So we have a waiting customer there that day, and my technicians are not supposed to come through the waiting area. They're supposed to go out the back door. But this guy, again, someone I needed to get rid of, decides he's going to come through the waiting area area. The customer says to him or says to my technician, oh, are you. Are you going to work on my car? And he says, is your name whatever? And, oh, yeah, it is. And she looks at him and says, do a good job. And he looks back and he says, well, I'm glad you said something, because I was about to go fuck shit up and walked out the door. Why am I doing this to myself?
Mike Allen [01:04:59]:
I mean, I've thought that to myself, that's awesome. But to verbalize it.
Adam Rath [01:05:05]:
Yeah, Yeah. I did let him keep working the rest of that day and then got rid of him at the end of the day.
Mike Allen [01:05:11]:
What did the customer say? Did she have a good attitude about it or just a little shock?
Adam Rath [01:05:15]:
No, that was last time she came in. I wasn't sure what to say to her. I was at that point just kind of like. I think at some point there, I just considered that maybe I had gone into the wrong field and I just needed to go.
Mike Allen [01:05:26]:
Go home, but I'm just gonna crawl under a rock and not come out. Oh, my God. So I. I am learning to go ahead and take action when I start realizing that something's not right. So I have a long history of a lot. A lot of different things, like failing to equip and train and support properly and then letting somebody hang on a vine until they wither and. And fail. Right.
Mike Allen [01:05:53]:
So that's 100% my fault. But I've also brought in people into the company that were not good fits for the company and not done anything about it for Extended periods of time until it had a negative effect on culture. But recently I've had one come through. And like a good person, great work ethic, wants to succeed, but just wasn't the right culture fit for the company. And, you know, that's part of Eos is right person, right seat.
Adam Rath [01:06:23]:
Absolutely.
Mike Allen [01:06:24]:
And it became immediately, not immediately, it became quickly obvious, this is not the right person. And so rather than just let it drag out and be unhealthy and unhappy, I was just like, it's not working, man.
Adam Rath [01:06:37]:
Here's the next level of all this, and this is what we found probably in the past, I don't know, six months when you get to that point, especially with Eos, that you have that much culture in the company, that every single person has to be all headed in that same direction. And then you bring in that new person who's the wrong fit, they'll push
Mike Allen [01:06:57]:
them out, they quit.
Adam Rath [01:06:58]:
The rest of my team will push them out because they're not getting on the bus and they'll just come in and quit. And it's, it's. We haven't had to fire anybody in forever. I mean, they just, it's. And they don't last long. It's maybe a month. And they're like, I made a bad decision. This isn't the right environment.
Mike Allen [01:07:13]:
I need to get an automotive experienced EOS implementer to come on the show and talk about Eos and traction and getting it fired up in shops. And every one of the guys that I just named, and you have all had implementers that helped you get it started. So I'm sure there's no shortage of.
Adam Rath [01:07:31]:
I can connect you with Tim, who we work with now. He's actually looking. He's used to own shops, never worked with this shop or maybe worked with one or two here or there. Started working with us now since January, has enjoyed it so much. He's like, I would rather shift all just back to automotive. So there we go. Maybe he'll be a podcast sponsor.
Mike Allen [01:07:57]:
I think that's a great idea. All right, thanks, man. I appreciate it.
Speaker D [01:08:00]:
Thanks for listening to Confessions of a
Mike Allen [01:08:02]:
Shop Owner, where we lay it all
Speaker D [01:08:03]:
out, the good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink? You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover?
Mike Allen [01:08:16]:
Or do you just want to let me know what an idiot? I am.
Speaker D [01:08:19]:
Email mikeonfessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number 704-confess. That's 704-266-3377.
Mike Allen [01:08:30]:
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure
Speaker D [01:08:32]:
to, like, subscribe, subscribe or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership.
Mike Allen [01:08:37]:
I'll see you on the next episode.