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The Gearbox Podcast brings on industry professionals to explore the day-to-day operations of owning and operating a shop. From common frustrations to industry-wide shifts, this podcast covers it with fun and insightful conversations.
Jimmy Purdy [00:00:13]:
My name is Jimmy Purdy, shop owner, master tech, transmission builder, and the host of the Gearbox podcast. Here I talk with new and seasoned shop owners, as well as industry professionals, about day to day operations within their own shops and all the failures and successes that come along the way from what grinds your gears to having to shift gears in the automotive industry. This is the gearbox podcast. You're just. Are you just starting a shop? Is that right?
Austin Goodlett [00:00:41]:
Yeah. So, I've been in business for two years now, okay? And it's been a rocky road. But all of this past year, I've just spent learning. Learning business, learning numbers, you know? After my first six months of business, I quickly found out I cannot run a business like this.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:01]:
Yeah. So you can't afford to. No, you can't.
Austin Goodlett [00:01:06]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:07]:
And do it like that. But you're gonna afford it very long.
Austin Goodlett [00:01:09]:
No, definitely not. Yeah. It was the first six months, that's for sure.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:15]:
What's. What's your. Your biggest takeaway in that time? Right? So, like, you start out, and it's so interesting. Like, I don't know, there's so many huge changes that happen, and, like, the first few years, even. I mean, even. I mean, I'm not that seasoned. So even the first decade, there's just so much that changes, but it seems like everything starts getting kind of smaller and smaller and smaller. You don't have these big epiphanies anymore.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:39]:
What was, like, a big takeaway in the first six months for you, man?
Austin Goodlett [00:01:44]:
Where do I start? So many. There's so many.
Jimmy Purdy [00:01:48]:
I know. I think, though, you know, that's, like, the motivating thing.
Austin Goodlett [00:01:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. The biggest epiphany for me was probably, you know, you always hear you have to charge more. You always hear you need to make money on parts. You always hear you're not charging enough and all of those things, but it doesn't always click until one point, and I read the e myth, and that's when it all clicked, and I was.
Jimmy Purdy [00:02:17]:
Like, that's a good book.
Austin Goodlett [00:02:18]:
You know, I'm understanding why I need to charge for parts. I'm understanding that I'm not just a technician anymore. And when you start a shop, you're only billing for the labor hours. Well, that only pays the technician. So, how do you wrap your head around how you're paying for your time? Even as a one person shop, I'm still multiple employees in that shop. Well, how do I pay for my time of doing the calls to the customers? How do I get paid for the time that I spend into estimates, because some estimates you can spend a long time on, especially if it's not a job you've done before. So how do you pay for that parts person, that service tech that, you know, you're the manager in the shop. How do you pay for that time if you're only billing for labor hours for the technician?
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:07]:
That's a huge thing to get right off. I mean, right off the bat, really, because I think we don't value ourselves enough. That's like, the biggest thing in the industry is like, technicians turn shop owners. We just don't think we're, we're an invaluable shop owner. We're a great technician, and we don't mind charging, you know, our tech rate is, but we don't, we don't deserve shop owner. We're not a shop owner. We're not a leader. We're, and it's like, in the back of your mind, it's like yelling at you.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:31]:
So you try to put this big number for your hourly labor rate, and you're like, oh, I can probably whittle that down a little bit. I can probably charge a little bit. Right? And it's like, but how do you replace that, those four or five different positions that you're taking over? It's like that for me. I'm like, I relate to that because it's like, wait a second. If I need to hire somebody to answer the phones the way I want the phones answered, I can't do, I can't. I gotta try. I gotta pay them. I'm gonna do it for free.
Jimmy Purdy [00:03:59]:
And they're not gonna be happy about it like I am unless they're paid what they want to be paid.
Austin Goodlett [00:04:05]:
Right? Yeah. And I think that as shop owners starting out, if you were a technician, odds are you became a technician because you had to work on your own stuff because you didn't want to pay for a shop where you couldn't pay for a shop.
Jimmy Purdy [00:04:18]:
Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:04:18]:
So I think that a lot of times we go into it with the mentality of, we'll help them, we'll be cheaper, and, boy, does that get you in a lot of trouble.
Jimmy Purdy [00:04:27]:
An interesting takeaway. That's an interesting thought, because it's exactly what it is, too. I mean, yeah, I don't think there's but maybe 2% that are like, you know, it's a good investment. Auto repair, you know, and you go into it, it's just like all the businesses that I could own in franchise, I think I'm gonna take my life savings and invested it into opening an auto repair shop. It's like, no, I don't think so. It's like, like you said, you start fixing your own and you're like, hey, I'm kind of decent at this and everybody needs me. And, you know, and it does take us, it does take a special mind to be able to, um, you know, take that kind of stress and fix a vehicle. And you're like, I can do this.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:07]:
You start making money, you're like, I should probably buy. I should probably get a shot. That makes sense. Just seems like the natural progression. And then all of a sudden, yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:05:15]:
And you think like, oh, I'm going to make $100 an hour. I'm going to make $120 an hour and up. And then you don't think of the expense of it. There's so much expense when it, when you're trying to do it proper, man, it is not cheap. And it, you don't realize it until you're in it. And you're like, I need to learn my numbers quick.
Jimmy Purdy [00:05:35]:
Yeah. Because you can't keep just charging more to make up the difference, right? It's not like, it's not like a big, a big pilot. You can just keep throwing money at it. You know, it's like you're just burning at that point and now you're going to burn yourself out of the, out of the area because there's always someone doing it cheaper, always and always doing better. And it's like, yeah, yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:05:55]:
And like, you can't just keep raising your rates without knowing why you're raising your rates because then you end up getting in your feelings and you're like, oh, you know what? I could probably do that for less. Or you feel bad about sending the estimate and you can't, you can't sell it if you don't feel good about it like that. I think that that goes through to the customer and they feel that also.
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:17]:
Oh, yeah. Emotional discounting is a huge one, but. Exactly. Not having the confidence, you know, whether it's you selling it or you have a service advisor that you have working for you, like that. Confidence bleeds to them, whether it's him or her. Right. And it's like if you're not confident in the number you're putting them to put down on paper to call the client, they're not going to be confident. And it's a good point to bring up, too, because it's like, so how do you feel confident in that sale? What do you have to do besides just looking at the numbers.
Jimmy Purdy [00:06:48]:
Sure. You run the numbers, and you're like, okay, so calculate this out, you know, and I got to be at 178 and $0.39 an hour. Right. However your calculation comes to it. But then you look at that number, and it goes. It still goes back to square one. Could I afford to do that? I couldn't afford to put a transmission in this vehicle for $6,000. Well, it's not your pocket.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:10]:
You're not paying for it, man.
Austin Goodlett [00:07:12]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:13]:
You don't know what's going on in their life, and it doesn't. Not that it doesn't matter, but it doesn't really matter. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, and so it's a lot of times, we.
Austin Goodlett [00:07:21]:
We care too much. You know, we didn't design the car. And when you hear technicians say that all the time, I didn't design the car. It's not my responsibility to keep it running. But I think, as shop owners, most of the time, we want to help people. And you see that big number, and if you don't know why that big number is what that big number is, you don't feel good about selling it. And if you don't know why you're charging what you're charging, I just think that's a bad path to go down, really.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:51]:
Oh, yeah. You. I mean, how can you feel good about that, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:07:55]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:07:55]:
And so your technician background, how did that start out for you? How did you end up in the. In the industry?
Austin Goodlett [00:08:04]:
Uh, I've been a little bit everywhere. So I started off going to college, Elizabethtown community college, and they taught me it was for automotive technology, so that's where I learned about scopes and diagnosing cars. They had a drivability test there where class. Drivability class. And they would drive in bugged cars, and if you fixed them, you passed. If you didn't, you failed. That's how that class went. Do what?
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:34]:
A bugged car? Is that what you said?
Austin Goodlett [00:08:36]:
Yeah, yeah. That the instructors would bug the car, so you'd have to pull it in there and diagnose what's wrong with it. There'd be.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:45]:
Not like a tracker. Not like the CIA watching you. Like, they would know. Connect this. I was like, you're taking me back to my smog days a little bit. Like, what are we talking?
Austin Goodlett [00:08:55]:
Right, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:08:57]:
Sensor or sabotage it in a better.
Austin Goodlett [00:09:00]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:01]:
Sense of the word.
Austin Goodlett [00:09:01]:
Or.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:02]:
Or, like.
Austin Goodlett [00:09:03]:
Like, switch the wiring around on the harness or something like that to.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:06]:
Really. That's pretty cool.
Austin Goodlett [00:09:08]:
Make you dig into it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:09:09]:
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Austin Goodlett [00:09:09]:
And that's where I got my start. Cause I went there. I was already mud bogging and doing some off road and stuff in high school. So I went to college to learn the sensors and everything on the electric side of the car. Cause, you know, I was messing with carburetors and doing all of that stuff. And when it came to sensors and computers, I was lost and I just had to know how to do it. So I went to college for that. And then after college, I tried getting on at different dealerships and independent shops.
Austin Goodlett [00:09:39]:
Well, at that point, I'd only had the experience I've had as a hobby, not professional. Nobody wanted to hire me. So I went and tried getting on. Well, they would get me on as like a lube tech, but I don't know what they were starting at like eight or $9 an hour back then. So I went to being a heavy equipment mechanic in a mine because they started me out at $14 an hour. So I went there, worked on heavy equipment, became a diesel mechanic. And that same thing transferred over to mining equipment. They used sensors on the drills to calibrate where they're going to drill into the walls and all of that.
Austin Goodlett [00:10:15]:
So I did that, left there, went to a fleet garage working on semis. And there I was the diagnostic tech for all of the after treatment stuff. So everything with SCR's and DP's, all the emission stuff on diesels, we worked on reefer units. I became a 608 certified for reefer units. And yeah, while I was working at the fleet garage in the mine, I always worked on cars at home. Ran my side business. And that side business ended up becoming a full time business. After I left the fleet garage.
Austin Goodlett [00:10:57]:
I left the fleet garage because it was a second shift job. And I worked a lot of hours. Well, I was going through problems in my personal life. Ended up going through a divorce, left there, went to work at a dealership. And after working at the dealership for about three months, when the divorce was final, I opened up my shop full time. And that's the position that I was in.
Jimmy Purdy [00:11:22]:
Just dove right in.
Austin Goodlett [00:11:23]:
Yeah, so yeah, I was starting the. I was starting the shop before the divorce. And the divorce hit like weeks before opening date of the shop. So had to. Had to replan things. And yeah, I've been a shop owner ever since.
Jimmy Purdy [00:11:42]:
So transitioning from the heavy equipment or the mining field into like the civilian, I guess you'd call it auto repair. You said you did it a lot on the side. But as far as formal training or like getting into the auto repair, is that just it just a. Just you had a knack for it or was it something you've always wanted to do more versus than going down the route with the heavy equipment?
Austin Goodlett [00:12:07]:
Yeah, I've always wanted to be automotive.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:09]:
Okay.
Austin Goodlett [00:12:09]:
For my training and automotive, when I went to diesel equipment, not to make any diesel guys mad, but it wasn't that in depth, like the automotive technology is really in depth and diesel stuff now. Yeah, they're getting some sensors and they're, they're being more technologically advanced. But as far as the heavy equipment went, there wasn't that much thinking that had to be done. It was all just big get dirty work. Hard stuff.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:39]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:12:40]:
Heavy.
Jimmy Purdy [00:12:41]:
Pretty obvious when it's broken.
Austin Goodlett [00:12:43]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and then the semis we worked on, I worked in a fleet and they got rid of them at 750,000 miles. And those semis, they just run for 750,000 miles. Like, there's not much that goes wrong with them except for the after treatment stuff. So that's why I went into that, because it was more reading scan tools and digging in deep on electronics. I like doing that stuff. That's what I've always been is the diagnosing kind of guy.
Jimmy Purdy [00:13:09]:
I see.
Austin Goodlett [00:13:10]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:13:10]:
So when you pivot into your shop, is that what you tried to specialize in? How was your, your first kind of year of like sifting through everything? Right. Like, eventually everything comes out in the wash and at the end of a couple of years you realize, okay, well, I guess this is what my shop's going to do. But was there a direction you tried to push it?
Austin Goodlett [00:13:28]:
I tried to push it towards diag.
Jimmy Purdy [00:13:30]:
Okay.
Austin Goodlett [00:13:30]:
And as our industry is famously done, we've never charged properly for diag.
Jimmy Purdy [00:13:36]:
Yep.
Austin Goodlett [00:13:36]:
And man, did it hurt me. And I had to reevaluate how I was doing things, how I was charging for it. And that's what I advertised the most. You know when you open up a shop and you're advertising, you get what you asked for. And I was asking for diag stuff. I was advertising that I could diagnose things. Shops were sending me things. There was cars coming from 3 hours away that nobody else could figure out.
Austin Goodlett [00:14:01]:
And I spent so much time on them problem cars that it really just, it broke the bank, you know, in that.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:08]:
Just a sad state of affairs. Oh, isn't it?
Austin Goodlett [00:14:11]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:12]:
I mean, like, it just takes a different individual to have the. Well, for one, the confidence, and then for two, the tenacity to stay after it and know, you know, know what you're looking at, right? For one. And then. Cuz there ain't no book for that. Like you can't. Hey, what's the sensor? So what's the range? I mean shoot, you can look up ohm specs or whatever but we all know that's just nothing. I mean everyone's looked through a flow chart. Like, yeah, this is garbage.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:37]:
Like this doesn't help anybody do anything when it comes to a complicated problem. Right. And it just.
Austin Goodlett [00:14:44]:
Flow charts.
Jimmy Purdy [00:14:45]:
Yeah, like, right, like, yeah sure. It's great to get in the habit of like going through a process. That's it. Like not even the process that they're showing you. But just like if you're not good with going through a process that's about all it teaches you.
Austin Goodlett [00:14:57]:
Like, like I didn't even know that flow charts were a thing until like a year ago because in college, my instructor, John Chisholm, he always throw out plugs towards him. But he didn't teach us no flowcharts. He didn't teach us with identifix, he didn't teach us with any of that. You either passed or you failed. And I've never used a flowchart. Sometimes I look at them now just as a reference for some stuff. Because sometimes you need a spec and it's in that flowchart.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:27]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:15:28]:
So sometimes it's useful, but.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:30]:
And sometimes you get so caught up in your own head, you just need like somewhere to, you know, somewhere. The whole. On a second here, I feel like I'm. I'm in the town like 10 miles over and I need to get back to home base here for a second.
Austin Goodlett [00:15:42]:
Oh yeah. Spinning circles.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:44]:
Right, right. But on that point of like knowing how to do that, it's so much mental. It's like. And. And we're just not paid enough for that. And it's just crazy. It's a crazy thing. And.
Jimmy Purdy [00:15:56]:
And it's always something that, that, that I think about when it comes to some of the other shops. Right. And you get the. The parts cannon.
Austin Goodlett [00:16:05]:
Yeah. Or.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:06]:
Or the parts changer, right?
Austin Goodlett [00:16:09]:
Yep.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:09]:
Well I plugged a mister Paul Danner and like, don't be a. Don't be a parts changer. But you look at that situation and you have a repair that costs a client to $1,000. They don't care how you got there. Was it $900 in parts and a $100 labor? Or was it $900 labor and $100 in parts? Right, right. Doesn't matter. Car was fixed for a $1,000.
Austin Goodlett [00:16:31]:
Yep.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:32]:
We both know which way it should have been fixed.
Austin Goodlett [00:16:35]:
Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:36]:
Right. That $900 should be going to a skilled labor. Not supporting, and I love doorman, but not supporting doorman or standard or anybody else. Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:16:46]:
I just made a tick tock on doorman.
Jimmy Purdy [00:16:48]:
Yeah. I mean, it's like, and so, like, supporting that and putting the money where it needs to go and taking the time is like. But it's such a difficult conversation. And I'm sure that's something you go through too, as well, is like trying to educate the client. And it's like, is there?
Austin Goodlett [00:17:03]:
Yes.
Jimmy Purdy [00:17:04]:
Like, how do you process that situation, too? You're a high level diag guy. So how do you communicate that process to try to get that money for that diag?
Austin Goodlett [00:17:12]:
Well, it's hard to paint a picture that no one else paints the picture of. So what I started doing was I started making videos and putting them on YouTube and putting them on TikTok, and I'll use them as a reference. I'll explain to them every diag that I do. It's not going to be cheap. I do more of a retainer style, like what scanner Danner has put out there as an idea. I have three levels of dag, and I basically, I use them. I will four levels of diag and I use them four levels as how many systems do I think that I'll have to diagnose on this car if you have a misfire? I can already suspect that I would have to diagnose ignition and fuel. So I do that by 2 hours.
Austin Goodlett [00:17:58]:
And then if it's something that, say, is a problem car that other shops couldn't figure out, I just go ahead and say it's going to take 4 hours. So I charge 4 hours of my diagnostic rate, which my diagnostic rate is a time and a half of what my shop rate is. And that's just kind of what I've started using now. And it's helped tremendously more than what I've used before trying to do hour by hour. But I let them know, you know, you can look and see what my diagnostic procedures are on YouTube and TikTok, and whenever I diagnose your car, you'll have everything sent to you in a DVI. So I take videos of the tests that I do with, with a description of what that means and all the work that I do, all the testing you will get. It's not that you just have to pay $400 and you just think that I plugged up to it and said that you need a new intake.
Jimmy Purdy [00:18:55]:
Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:18:55]:
That's not the way this is going to go. So I think it's more just establishing trust, and that's the way that I've tried to go with it. And I tried to establish trust through transparency.
Jimmy Purdy [00:19:08]:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think. Yeah, I think the pictures and the videos are always great.
Austin Goodlett [00:19:14]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:19:15]:
But I mean, if you really want to be the devil's advocate, you could say, well, you just have a portfolio of pictures and videos that you send out. Right? Like, sure, sure. Yeah, that's what I do.
Austin Goodlett [00:19:25]:
Right. But I feel whenever I do it, like, I'll take a video and show the actual car.
Jimmy Purdy [00:19:30]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:19:30]:
Smart things like that to show that it is yours. But the main thing that I try to drive home is just trust. And, I mean, I'm a new business owner. I'm learning I may be doing all the wrong things. Who knows? But so far it's worked. And people have really enjoyed that. I send the videos and pictures, they say, wow, no other shop has ever done this.
Jimmy Purdy [00:19:51]:
Right. Well, and it's like that. Like I said, it's. It's not like that's a standard, but there's definitely a 1%, right?
Austin Goodlett [00:20:00]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:20:00]:
And you're in the 1%. Right as far as these top shop owners that are doing things differently.
Austin Goodlett [00:20:07]:
Yep.
Jimmy Purdy [00:20:07]:
But you don't see that, right. Because you're right in your shop. You're not in anybody else's shop. So you're just. You're just constantly doing, involving and trying to keep it more and more and more detail oriented. And you don't realize you make a small mistake, like, no one noticed that because you're already at such a high level. Like, yeah, you might have slipped up, you made a mistake there, but it's like everything else you're doing is like, you're so far divorced from what everybody else in quotes is doing. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:20:33]:
But on the note of, like, that diagnostic thing, the problem I have is you get to the point where you have a few technicians, maybe more than you can manage or really pay attention to, and you. And you get this diagnostic rate and now it becomes an SOP. So you're charging $400 for this misfire diagnostic, or I like to call it an advanced assessment. I don't like using the word diagnostic, but regardless of that, you. You have this. This, uh, these billable hours that are being charged, and you get down to the last bit of it and, hey, boss, I didn't really find anything. Everything looks good. And come to find out had low compression.
Jimmy Purdy [00:21:08]:
Right. And it's like something that should have been checked off in the first five minutes.
Austin Goodlett [00:21:13]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:21:14]:
You know, and I think that's a big problem when it comes to the, to the diagnostic stuff. It's like a gut punch. Right?
Austin Goodlett [00:21:19]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:21:20]:
Especially someone in your shoes that takes pride in your diagnostic capabilities. And you hire somebody and this technician is high level and he does a great job, and then all of a sudden just misses the. Misses the mark. And now that dollar 400, like, how do you explain to the client, look, so we found out you have low compression, you charge, and, you know, and it's going to cost you dollar, $400, $500, 600. That's a tough conversation. You know, it's like, yeah, and it's like, how do you backpedal from something like that?
Austin Goodlett [00:21:46]:
I honestly think that with something like that, it's just, how do you sleep good at night? You know? So I'll start and say, okay, it'll be $400 for me to diagnose your car. And it's happened to me before. I skipped over one. I did a relative compression check on. There's even a YouTube video out on it, and I counted all the cylinders, and it was eight cylinder, and there was only seven compression strokes.
Jimmy Purdy [00:22:10]:
Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:22:11]:
And for some reason I counted eight, and I continued on and chased my tail, and it had a dead cylinder the whole time. And what I did with that client was I just didn't charge them that whole amount. I charged them what I thought that I should charge them.
Jimmy Purdy [00:22:24]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:22:25]:
And, I mean, people make mistakes. It's just, you know, that's another thing with shop owners. It's like, everybody makes mistakes. It's what are you gonna do about it that makes you good or not? And a fair point. I've chased money for my whole life, and after divorce, money ain't the most valuable thing. So.
Jimmy Purdy [00:22:44]:
Yeah, isn't that like the biggest, most calming thought? And I think, I mean, it helps to have a little bit of money to relax. So once you get, like, definitely once you get a little bit in the bank, it's easy to sit here and say, oh, you know, just relax. But the first couple of years when you're like, you know, hey, I got, you know, $2,500 in the account right now, and I got a $2,000 payroll coming up, and then rental, and it's the last week of the month. Oh, boy. And then everyone starts calling out sick, and you're like, what am I gonna do? But you get through it, and then you're like, it's cool, you know, it's like, yeah, but man, like, you're just.
Austin Goodlett [00:23:22]:
The life I've been living right there. Just, you know, I got, I got, I think I got $2,500 in the bank right now. And it's like, I don't know how much parts bills are coming up. Like, I got to look at that. There's probably 2000 coming out. But I still think, you know, just the way that my life has went, money is not the most valuable thing. Yeah, it's, I've had, I've made really good money and I've made really bad money. Time with my kids is the most valuable thing.
Austin Goodlett [00:23:48]:
So if it means that I just got a knockoff a little bit. So I feel good about, I wouldn't say misdiagnosing, but chasing my tail longer than I should have. It is what it is.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:00]:
Yeah, it's, it's a tough, uh, it's tough. And as the, I think for me anyways, the years go on, you just have to try to manage it more closely, you know, and try to put more systems in place to ensure that doesn't happen again because you can't become a pattern. Right. And so.
Austin Goodlett [00:24:16]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:16]:
Really detailed and almost, almost asinine procedures that I've put in place where it's like, hey, if a car comes in for a crank, no start, this is what we do. But I want to look at, this is what we do, but I want to. This is what we do.
Austin Goodlett [00:24:30]:
Like, yes, every time something eats, like every time that I have to eat something new. Sop.
Jimmy Purdy [00:24:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. It's the smartest way to do it. There's no, there's really. What are you going to do? You're going to go through that again and have it hurt you again? It's like the fool once. Fool me twice. Right. Like you, like, be smart enough to like write it down and take five minutes out of your day to say, hey, look, that hurt this at, right? Yeah, let's not let that happen again. Yeah, and some of the guys, yeah, some of the guys I've hired is like, they look at these sheets, is like, what do I need this for? Is like, trust me, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:25:04]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:25:04]:
And I've even had people in my, you know, technicians I've hired come in and I have a, an employee handbook and everything, and everything's written out. It's all detailed, like what's expected and it's, you know, 1015 pages long and it gets page longer every year. Right. And I've had one guy like, oh, you've been burned before, huh? Like, why do you say that? He's like, oh, I was just reading through the handbook, and I can tell you've been burned before. Like, I hope it's pretty apparent there. Like, that's why I put all that in there. It's like, yeah, because I don't want this to happen again. I want to make sure we're very, very clear about what's expected from each other, not just me being a dictator and you coming and showing up and getting a paycheck, but, like, what's what you should expect from me as well, right? Like, that's important.
Austin Goodlett [00:25:44]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:25:44]:
Guys don't want to work somewhere and be, like, have questions about any of that or not know what to ask or when to ask. It's like, it's. It's a lot, right? Have that conversation, that lengthy conversation with every single body you hire. That's crazy, right? Write it down and then have them read it. You need to read this. This is really important, right?
Austin Goodlett [00:26:04]:
Yeah, 100%.
Jimmy Purdy [00:26:06]:
Yeah. The technician sops, and throughout the whole shop. I mean, and I I see it a lot, too, with shops in the area or shops I visit where, you know, they're constantly yelling, constantly yelling, constantly saying the same thing over and over, you know, constantly locking the keys in the car. Like, why do you like the key? Well, the guys always forget to roll the windows down when they pull it in the shop. Like, so write it down and have a meeting and have everybody read. Give them that. When you pull a car in the shop, the window goes down. Like, stuff as simple as that, it just blows me away.
Austin Goodlett [00:26:39]:
That's.
Jimmy Purdy [00:26:39]:
That. It's like, that's not covered, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:26:43]:
Yeah, yeah. And this whole time, you know, while I'm a one man show, I'm like, I'm making policies on everything that eats me and writing it down, and I forget which book it was that I read. And they talked about how McDonald's is a franchise and franchising your business, making it to where everybody that's under you can follow this script and have the same outcome every time. And I took note of that. So now every time that something happens, I just make a new policy and write it down. New standard operation operating seed procedure, and I just write it down every time.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:18]:
Yeah. And it's. It's another one of those easier said than done.
Austin Goodlett [00:27:22]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:23]:
Between actually writing it down, then actually implementing it, and then actually having people read it and follow it.
Austin Goodlett [00:27:29]:
Yeah. I haven't got there yet.
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:30]:
That's where that's where the management comes in. That's a whole nother thing of, like, actually having a manager that's on board that wants to follow and they want to listen to them, and it's like a whole freaking, like, oh, my God. I thought, you know, you think you just write it down and people would, like, follow it like the Bible, because. But they don't realize the struggles you've been through are going through, you know? And you're like, dude, this is important. They're like, why? I don't care. I get my paycheck. I mean, not that you got to.
Austin Goodlett [00:27:51]:
Tell them a story so they know how bad you got burned, right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:27:55]:
And. And hopefully they care enough to actually, like, care about it. Like, well, that sucks to happen to you, right? Not saying that they're all bad, but I mean, no, I mean, it's smart. I mean, that was something I never did in the first couple. I mean, the first few, it was like, you just show up, and for me, it was, like, working. It's like every. I just made mixture dedicate every hour, every hour I got, like. And I start realizing, it's like, why does it feel like I get the same amount of money in the bank whether I'm there for 5 hours or I'm there for 10 hours, you know? And it's like, if I can, like, cut my time at the shop in half and then my take home per hour goes up, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:28:35]:
It's like, yep, I know exactly what you mean.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:38]:
Why is it you're not making any more by pushing yourself to be there, but you want to, you know, it's like you got this. This weird urge or something of, like, you just need to make sure you're there all the time. You're the first one in and the last one out all the time. All the time. Work harder, work harder. Nobody cares. It's like, yep.
Austin Goodlett [00:28:54]:
More cars. More cars.
Jimmy Purdy [00:28:55]:
Yeah, the car count, right? Like, oh, man, how much is the car count really matter? It's like, does it really matter? Or do you focus on your. Your ar o or what's. And it's. Yeah, I've had plenty of other friends open shops where they're like, I just need these many cars. And you're just going around all the tow. Tow yards. Hey, send me all the cars. Like, bro, why do you want that work, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:29:16]:
And not, not, not say what you're doing, but why would you want all the diagnostic work?
Austin Goodlett [00:29:21]:
Like, advertise breaks now?
Jimmy Purdy [00:29:23]:
Yeah. So you learn, though, and it's like, you're not beating your head against the wall, you know, and it's like. Exactly, it's like, take a step back. And how, how were you able to take a step back and see that? I mean, what was that epiphany for you to realize? Maybe I'm not going down the right path.
Austin Goodlett [00:29:40]:
My epiphany happened after six months of opening the shop. So after six months, it was Christmas time and, you know, I was just, more cars, more cars. Get the work done. Get the work done. Fix more cars. And then it hit me. I was $14,000 in debt and I couldn't afford to get my kids much for Christmas, and I don't ever want to feel that again. So that's why all of 2023, I just stayed on, on ASOG and stayed on changing the industry and talked to everybody and learned business, learned how I was doing things wrong.
Austin Goodlett [00:30:16]:
When I started, I was running all of my shop management software through Alldata, basically using it to do estimates and things like that. And I developed, well, I got techmetric. Now I use techmetric better SMS. I learned what parts tech was and sped up my process doing all that. And then after that, it was all just learning numbers. Like you said, arro, gross profit per hour. Just everything that you need to learn financially about owning an automobile. Automotive business has been my priority for all of 2023.
Austin Goodlett [00:30:53]:
It wasn't about car count. I just needed enough to pay the bills. You know, I just advertised enough to get the work, to pay the bills and focused on working on the business instead of in the business.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:05]:
And how does your ego take that? I mean, as far as. As far as you having this vision to be the best diagnostic shop and then coming to terms with, like, that's not realistic.
Austin Goodlett [00:31:17]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:18]:
And making that pivot. Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:31:20]:
It doesn't pay to be a hero, that's for sure.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:24]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:31:25]:
You know, like, it has to make business sense or you shouldn't do it. Like, I still do some custom work. There's a lot of people that will turn away all the custom work. I work on old hot rods, I'll lift some trucks, things like that. But because of the extra time spent, I've been adjusting it, too. Just like I do the diagnostic work. It's a higher labor rate. You have to evolve or you're going to go out of business.
Jimmy Purdy [00:31:51]:
Yeah. And, and then there's part of it to where if there's no work, that's better than no work. Right. Yeah, but you also don't want to do that high level work with a terrible, er, an effective labor rate on it. If, right, the next day you're gonna have some gravy work come in, right. That's gonna have a big profit margin. So sometimes you get stuck in that rut where, well, I don't really have anything going on today. I don't know what's coming in tomorrow.
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:18]:
And someone comes in, hey, you want to lift this thing for me or whatever?
Austin Goodlett [00:32:21]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:21]:
And you're like, oh, man, I don't really make that much money, but I got nothing going on. So you take it in anyway, and.
Austin Goodlett [00:32:27]:
Then, and then breaks come four in a row, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:30]:
The next day, like, you can't do.
Austin Goodlett [00:32:31]:
Them because the lists full, right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:32:33]:
And like, the lift kit that your buddy brought in with this truck is wrong. And now you're waiting a week because you got the thing torn apart. And, I mean, how many times you been in that situation where it's like, I should have just said no.
Austin Goodlett [00:32:43]:
So I did this lift kit, and the customer was great. He was understanding about the whole thing, and I didn't make bad profit on it, but. So I took on this lift kit, and it already had a lift kit on the truck. I took the lift kit off. Somebody had cut off all of the control arm brackets on the bottom for that lift kit. So the new lift kit that I got bolted up to them control arm brackets. So then, now that two day turnaround job turned into a two week turnaround job, because now everything that I took off I had to cut off with a torch because it was a nightmare rust situation. Had to go to the junkyard and get the brackets off of the other frames and put it back on this frame and weld it all up.
Austin Goodlett [00:33:25]:
I wouldn't have took on that job if I wasn't a good welder and fabricator. Like, that is not a job that somebody should just do, you know? And it was to the point that, like, it was just cut off truck up on the lift, nothing hanging off of the frame. Like, it wasn't a good situation. But I explained it all to the customer, showed good pictures, sent it all through the DVI, and told him that we would have to fabricate it back up. And he understood. And he understood charging more for it. But that's another good example of what you just said. Like, you take on that lift kit because you're slow.
Austin Goodlett [00:34:02]:
And for the time that I worked on that lift kit and fixing the frame back and finishing it up, I could have done several brake jobs and made more money.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:10]:
Yeah, it's like how how do you even charge for that? To be fair, right? Like, right, because, yeah, you can't compensate that rack time. There's no way. But then also, what are you gonna charge this guy eight grand and do this lift kit, you know? And then you always have that in the back of your mind. And you. You want to make sure you stay profitable. You want to do the right thing. But then they go asking around, hey, man, he charged me, like, eight grand to do that. How much? And it's like everyone's, oh, man, that's way too much, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:34:37]:
Right. And see, I don't know the whole story. And it's like whenever people go window shopping, like, they'll go asking for a break job over here, over there, over there. Then they come to you. Well, you're not getting the same thing with those estimates.
Jimmy Purdy [00:34:50]:
Absolutely.
Austin Goodlett [00:34:51]:
You know, somebody says a brake job for your car for $150, that's not the same as the person that's charging $500 for your front axle for brakes, but giving you a three year warranty with it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:01]:
Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:35:02]:
It's not the same at all with.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:04]:
The proper parts, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:35:06]:
Right. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:07]:
Brand new rotors. Right, right. I mean, nice stuff, actually, you know, cleaning the slide pins and re lubricating them and all the standard practice stuff that we know of. But there's actually shops out there and guys out there that. That don't care to do that. You know, they pull and pin pin out, and they swivel the caliper up, they slap the pads on, they slap it back down. They're done in 25 minutes.
Austin Goodlett [00:35:28]:
Leave the rotor on it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:30]:
Yeah. Worry about the rotor, you know, or even, you know, like, just on the car brake lathe real quick. I mean, hopefully they're at least doing that. But it's. It's crazy. Like, the amount and, like, the spectrum of how these repairs go and how that's so unknown to a client, you know, even though they can go get a cheeseburger at McDonald's. Right. Or then get a cheeseburger at Ruth's, Chris.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:51]:
Right. And it's like you're going to say, that's the same. It's a cheeseburger, right?
Austin Goodlett [00:35:55]:
Right. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:35:57]:
You sure? It's the same.
Austin Goodlett [00:35:59]:
And I like the analogy of the people wanting to bring their own cheeseburger and them just cook it. Yeah, I like that analogy. When it comes to bringing your own parts, I've gotten ate by that a lot, too. So I had a customer bring a used transmission to me. I won't do used transmissions anymore. And, and I won't do used parts anymore.
Jimmy Purdy [00:36:20]:
I don't blame you. There's no reason to do that. You know, first six months of business, I don't think. Yeah, I don't think there's ever a situation where that ends up going right. It just.
Austin Goodlett [00:36:32]:
No, never.
Jimmy Purdy [00:36:35]:
Never.
Austin Goodlett [00:36:36]:
And even, like, I'm not a transmission specialist like, like you are or were. I'm not that guy. And at first, I was taking apart transmissions because, I mean, I learned about them and I've rebuilt some old three hundred fifty s, four hundred stuff like that, some manual transmissions, but after you take apart a couple of them and you get it to work again, but then the next time you put it in reverse and don't have reverse, you just stop doing that. I don't even open transmissions. I do a direct replacement where there's a great transmission specialist that's like an hour from me and I'll refer you to them.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:08]:
Yeah, I think I might be a little. I might be a little on the spectrum, because for some reason, when that happens to me, I just need to get back in and figure out what I did wrong. But I think there's something wrong with me. That's why it worked. Why not? Again, I'm pulling it back out. I'm going back into it. Like, are you serious? I think a lot of people would have just given up. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:37:28]:
I don't know why.
Austin Goodlett [00:37:29]:
But you had a dodge dart that sat here for like, four months. Because I would pull it in when I'm slow and mess with it and kick it back out. And it was like, I just stopped charging the customer. He was up to $1,000. He got all the stuff that I needed or all the stuff that, you know, I had already done. But at that point, I was just too invested. I just brought it back in like you said, and I was like, well, I mean, it's not going to do you any good sitting in your yard, so just leave it here and I'll keep tinkering with it. Yeah, finally, I threw in the towel.
Austin Goodlett [00:37:58]:
It's the only one that's got away.
Jimmy Purdy [00:38:00]:
Yeah, I mean, it happens, you know, just the odds of percentages. It's like, comes a point in time, there's not enough time or not enough money to spend on it, and we all have one. You, you know, I don't care who you are, you're listening right now. You have a car that kicked your ass and you weren't able to figure out guarantee it. But I think starting as a shop owner and like, you think you're going to fix everything, you know? And you let that one eat you up so much, it's not even worth it. And it's like, you look back, you're like, why did I even. Like, even the client didn't care as much as you did, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:38:33]:
Yeah, that's how this was. He didn't care that much.
Jimmy Purdy [00:38:36]:
You cared more than he did. He's like, dude, it's not a big deal. Seriously, like, I'm just going to sell this thing. Like, no, I can figure this out. Don't get rid of it. And you're like, yeah, when he came.
Austin Goodlett [00:38:44]:
To pick it up, like, he paid for the $1,000 for the dag, but he was so appreciative of all the time that I spent on it. And, yeah, I valued fixing that more than he did. For sure. For sure.
Jimmy Purdy [00:38:57]:
It just becomes a mental challenge for you to, like, figure it out, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:39:01]:
Once I'm so invested, I got to know it still eats at me every day.
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:04]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:39:04]:
So I network with another guy, and he's another good dad guy here. He just started a shop about the same time I did. And every time one kicks our butt, we're always snapchatting each other. What's kicking our butt? And he just sent me one the other day, and it was a. What was it? A jeep. He had just worked on a jeep, put a flex plate back on it, and he put the flex plate on 180 out. He found it that it had. What is it? There's 15 on the cam, crank correlation.
Austin Goodlett [00:39:35]:
On the crank wavelength, there's 15 wavelengths, and then it pauses and goes to 16. And he found out that he mounted that thing 180 out.
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:44]:
Wow.
Austin Goodlett [00:39:44]:
And he sent me that after it kicked his butt, and he couldn't figure it out forever. He sent that to me in a snapchat, was like, do you think that's what happened to that dart? And I was like, that dart's out of my mind, dude. Don't even bring it up.
Jimmy Purdy [00:39:55]:
Don't even bring it. You're gonna call him up? Hey, you wanna bring your car back down? I don't wanna spend any money on. No, no, just bring it down. I'm gonna do it for free. What? Now? That's the weirdest call anybody's ever gotten. Hey, this guy wants the car back to figure for free. I don't understand that at all. Yeah, well, I mean, and how important is networking on that point, too, though?
Austin Goodlett [00:40:16]:
Like, that's all I've done all year, is network.
Jimmy Purdy [00:40:19]:
I mean. And it's like, how big is that and how much. That is so underrated. And everyone else, we're in competition with each other, right? Like, oh, that's your competition down the street? Like, what are you talking about? There's more cars than we would ever be able to fix on our own in our lifetime. And. And why is this, like, a competition thing? Why are we. Why are we chasing ourselves to the bottom of a barrel with our pricing?
Austin Goodlett [00:40:43]:
I network with everybody around here off. I'll see. I just reached out to a mobile mechanic today. He's tagged a whole bunch in one of the Facebook groups and I reached out to him and I always tell everybody whenever I reach out, you know, I don't believe in competition. The gas stations that make the most money are right beside each other.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:03]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:41:03]:
The ones that are out by themselves always go out of business.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:06]:
That's true.
Austin Goodlett [00:41:07]:
So I don't believe in any competition. Like you said, there's cars out there for everybody. So I network. I network with everybody and I tell everybody about a sog and changing the industry and. And all of the. The Facebook groups that what I believe all the great owners are in.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:24]:
Yeah, it's definitely a 1% and it's even as big these. As these groups have become and are becoming, it's a. It's big numbers here. Right. And it's only 1%. So there's so many more out there.
Austin Goodlett [00:41:39]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:41:40]:
And maybe they are on the same page, maybe they aren't. But it just. It is kind of mind blowing to see how many other shop owners and how many other shops, how many out there, how many technicians are out there to staff these shops and then to say there's a technician shortage, I don't know. It's. I don't know if I'm really bought into that. I definitely think there's a lack of leadership, there's a lack of proper owners and a lot of guys getting out of the industry because they just, you know, they go to ten or 15 different shops and they realize, man, this is just how all shops are ran. I don't like this anymore. Because the shops they're looking for are the ones in the 1%.
Austin Goodlett [00:42:18]:
Yes.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:18]:
It's a drop in the bucket. It's very difficult for them to network and get in communication with the shop they're looking for. Now, granted, there's plenty of guys that don't want that. They just, you know, and it doesn't matter. You don't have to change everybody's attitude, but there's I feel like there's a lot of pull of technicians, managers that want a better shop. They want somewhere to work where someone cares enough to advance their opportunities and advance the industry as a whole and feel like you're doing something. I mean. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:42:51]:
It's reason why we fix cars. Right. It's like to make a difference, you know? And there's nothing better than taking a car that comes in off the hook and then driving it down the road, down the street when you're done with it.
Austin Goodlett [00:43:01]:
Right. I agree 100%. After starting up my shop, if I found a shop around me that was in that 1%, I wouldn't be an owner.
Jimmy Purdy [00:43:11]:
Right.
Austin Goodlett [00:43:12]:
It's difficult.
Jimmy Purdy [00:43:13]:
It's. It is. And it's. Well, and what, and what's, what's the. What's harder, you know, doing it on your own or finding that 1% shop owner?
Austin Goodlett [00:43:22]:
Oh, it's way easier finding the 1% shop.
Jimmy Purdy [00:43:24]:
Maybe the needle in the haystack. I mean, realistically, it seems like we're all surrounded in these groups, and we all talk and we. And, you know, we have these conversations. It seems like this is our world and this is how it is, but it's not. It's such a small. It's a. It's such a small bubble that we're in. Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:43:42]:
Yeah. For most, it's really difficult. And even though, you know, we see it on our feet all the time and we're always talking about it, we always see it and are actively playing a role in it, it's not the reality for most. And it kind of sucks. And I can see why a lot of guys will just venture out on their own. I mean, for me, it was to get out of a bad environment and to build a shop where I could advance technicians. I could hire someone with a mindset like me and advance their career and pay them more than I was ever paid. And one of the biggest hurdles for me was, was getting a technician in and paying him more than I was ever paid as a technician, you know, and then realizing, wow, this is working.
Jimmy Purdy [00:44:21]:
Like we're both profiting, but he's making more than I ever did.
Austin Goodlett [00:44:27]:
That's what I did. So I got a helper right now, and he's a real good friend of mine, and he was actually my biggest customer the last couple years. And he mows grass. He owns a grass mowing business, and he's not a mechanic, but, you know, he's. He's been poor ish before. You know, he worked on a lot of cars, so he's helping me out, and I haven't, I don't have enough car count, and I don't have enough income to figure out how much I can pay somebody hourly right now. For me, it's a roller coaster. I'll be busy as heck, and then I'll have no cars, and then I'm busy as heck, and I'll have no cars.
Austin Goodlett [00:45:04]:
So right now I'm paying him flat rate, but he's using my tools. I got two toolboxes stacked up or stocked up, and I'm paying him 35 an hour flat rate. And that's more money than I've ever made, flat rate. Around here, you don't really get that much money, flat rate. So, yeah, I definitely relate to that. And I want to be that shop. That, that is the environment for technicians. You know, right now my shop is ac and heated, and that's unheard of around here, and I want to keep it that way.
Austin Goodlett [00:45:36]:
You said something about the power of networking, so I've been networking, and I've been networking with different business owners and other industries also.
Jimmy Purdy [00:45:44]:
Absolutely.
Austin Goodlett [00:45:44]:
One of them is an electrician. And because I networked with him, he bought a property for his business, and he built a shop on it. He messaged me and he was like, hey, I built you a shop. It's going to be this much a month. Okay, sweet. So I'm moving into a shop, and it's. It's cheaper than anything else that I could find. And it's all because I networked with them.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:06]:
Yeah, yeah. That's.
Austin Goodlett [00:46:07]:
I mean, networking is a huge, powerful tool.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:10]:
Just show up, be there, do the things. It's amazing how many opportunities present themselves if you just get up and go to these things, you know, whether it's a chamber of commerce mixer or a city meeting in the morning, like, there's so many things that you can get to that doesn't cost you a dime. I think one of my big one, my biggest marketing one was when I was doing jujitsu. I was, I was going to the dojo. I'd go after work and go roll, right? I picked up so many clients from that gym, it just blew me away. And it didn't even think about it. Like, I was going there for myself. And so I tried to keep, like, I don't want to talk about cars because as soon, you know, as soon as you start talking about it, everybody wants.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:49]:
Has something, right? Everywhere you go, right?
Austin Goodlett [00:46:51]:
Always.
Jimmy Purdy [00:46:52]:
I just didn't realize, like, in a jiu jitsu gym, it's kind of expensive. And so most of the guys are either correctional officers or CHP or police officers or they're usually high ranking individuals in the community and they can afford this, you know, repairs. I mean, of course, at the time, I didn't think about it that way, but once I started realizing they started coming into the shop, I'm like, oh, I should probably let them all know what I do. Like, yeah, they're just looking to trust somebody. They don't have time to their day to, like, start sifting through. But if, man, when you're getting intimate on a mat like that, there's a lot of cuddling going on and, you know, get to know each other pretty intimately and, you know, like, you build this trust pretty quick. But it was just. It was just a really cool, you know, to think back on it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:47:35]:
Like, wow, that was like, it was pretty cheap, you know, on the grand scheme of things to, like, for networking, but it just goes to prove the network of in, like, showing up somewhere, going to the gym, and, like, actually talking to people instead of, like, putting your earbuds in and just putting your head down and walking around. Like, man, if you're a shop owner and you're trying to pick up business, just tell people, you know. But it's. It's pretty tough because we all know you go to any family function or anywhere you go, as soon as you say you're a mechanic, everybody wants, wants, wants.
Austin Goodlett [00:48:04]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:05]:
So how do you take that conversation and twist it into a marketing opportunity, you know, become the salesman without looking like a salesman?
Austin Goodlett [00:48:13]:
Yeah. You know, and that. That's gonna be a hard one for me. That's my goal for this year because I'll be moving into that shop here in a month. I'll have three times more space. I'll have more parking for cars. So I'm gonna be trying to get a whole lot more car count in because I can fit it, and I'm not. I'm not good with being a salesman.
Austin Goodlett [00:48:35]:
Like, that's not me. I just try to market trust.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:39]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:48:39]:
And, I don't know. It's hard for me to walk up to somebody and try to make a sale for everybody.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:47]:
I don't think that ever gets easier either. It's weird. And I. It's extremely tough when you got to make the sale and then do the work.
Austin Goodlett [00:48:57]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:48:58]:
I mean, right. And so having that separation, even one layer, even having some body in there, that. That, like, you got someone on flat rate, just that one level of separation where you can say, hey, why don't you bring it in. We'll get it taken care of. But then you got to trust them, too, because there's that moment in time when you first hire someone that you're not sure if they're going to be able to do that job the way you want it done. So you're not confident in that sale, right? Like, you're in the back of your mind, even though you're not actively thinking about it, you're like, look, I don't know if this guy's really going to do it. And so you got that little momentarily, that little hesitation in your sales pitch and everyone can see right through it right away. Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:49:38]:
And so it's tough. It's really tough to like, and then even if you were the salesman, like, oh, I know I can do it, but I'm so freaking busy. And sometimes that works better because people want, like, it's like, yeah, if you feel, if you act like I'm so busy, like, all of a sudden everybody starts feeding into it, it's like the rich get richer, you know? Like the more money you got, the more free shit you start getting. Like, how the, how does that work? Why do all the rich and famous get free stuff like that? Doesn't make any damn sense. But it does. How the world goes around, you know? But, yeah, it was always tough for me. Yeah, it's always tough for me trying to sell something when I had to do the work or even in the first initial stages of hiring technicians. And even though they're great, you still, in the back of your mind you're like, they're not going to do like I am.
Jimmy Purdy [00:50:20]:
And so, yeah, it's, it's hard, it's hard to be that sales guy, but it's even harder to have the conversation with somebody or like, try to avoid those conversations. Like, you know, if you bring it up, you know they're going to ask you about it and, you know, you don't have the answer you, you can give them. So it's like, you know what? Just lean into it, you know, just, yeah, be mister sales guy, you know, bring it in, you know, yeah, I.
Austin Goodlett [00:50:43]:
Get in those positions and I just dread it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:50:46]:
Right, right. Absolutely.
Austin Goodlett [00:50:48]:
It's almost like when you're tagged in a, on Facebook, like, you're tagged somebody wanting a, what's the word? A reasonable mechanic or an affordable mechanic, and I get tagged. It's like, I just, I don't want to comment.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:07]:
Like, I don't know exactly what you're talking about. Yes.
Austin Goodlett [00:51:11]:
Like, you appreciate the tag.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:13]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:51:13]:
And you love seeing your name put out there when it's like, it's like.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:16]:
Like a family member.
Austin Goodlett [00:51:18]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:19]:
Like, like your mom, you know?
Austin Goodlett [00:51:21]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:22]:
I love you.
Austin Goodlett [00:51:23]:
Yeah. Appreciate it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:51:25]:
But, you know, it's not going anywhere. It's not going to be profitable. And now you have to, like, explain yourself. Uh, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I think the biggest, yeah. Biggest one for me is when I stopped getting tagged in those Facebook posts from the local stuff. Anyway, it was like, okay, yeah, there we go. That's how you know you're not the cheapest anymore, which is a good place to be.
Austin Goodlett [00:51:45]:
Yeah. Like, I don't want to be tagged with everybody that just post pictures of their business card. Like, that's how it is here in the local. In the local, you know, Facebook groups. It's, it's a whole bunch of pictures of business cards and I don't know, like, I appreciate the tags, I appreciate the advertisement, but odds are if they're looking for someone that is affordable or reasonable, seems like they use those words a lot. They're looking for someone cheap.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:16]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:52:16]:
And I'll talk to them. You know, if they message me, I'll talk to them. I'll give them a little. I say an estimate, but it's not really an estimate. It's more like, yeah, sure, I'll have to look at your car. It'll be this much for me to look at it. I always throw the number out there.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:32]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:52:33]:
First. And that seems to separate the people that expect something for free and expect to pay for quality work.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:40]:
So I've, I've begun using those as, as opportunities. And I've never given prices over the phone initially. Eventually you have to.
Austin Goodlett [00:52:50]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:52:50]:
In a transmission shop, like, you can't just, like, keep dangling this carrot to get the vehicle in because then you're just wasting everybody's time. Like, if you told me been six grand, I wouldn't have towed my car in here. Right. So it's like, right, good. You got to set the standard. Like, it's going to be in this area. But a lot of time with that situation you're talking about on Facebook is like a great educational time to. Look, let me explain to you why you don't want the cheapest guy.
Jimmy Purdy [00:53:15]:
And let me explain to you what I'm going to do for you as a service and what I'm going to provide on the back end. And so, and it takes a lot of time, but I feel like it is a necessary evil, and I feel like, it's something where it's a, you're not going to get through to everybody. But I think it's just important to educate, especially local, you know, and some guys might just blow it off and whatever. Like, okay, well, then that's fine, but at least, you know, at least you're understood. Like, if you hear my name or hear our shop's name and hear that we're expensive, right? And that's going to happen as your rates go up, it's like, oh, I'd never go there. They're way too expensive. And it's just negativity. Right? And it's fine.
Jimmy Purdy [00:53:54]:
Do what you got to do. I don't really care that much. But the more times you can explain your process, it's like, it just kind of takes a little bit of that edge off. It's like, yeah, I heard he's expensive, but I also heard. Right. And just like, the more times you can get it out. And it's a lot of work, but I think it's important to advocate, you know, and make people understand the auto industry is not just all cut and dry. It's not black and white.
Jimmy Purdy [00:54:18]:
It's not a break job as a break job, as a break job. It's, it's all different. And let me explain to you exactly what is different about it. Right. Right. I just think that's important, and a lot of people understand that. And I think a lot of times when they ask how much, they just don't know what question to ask. Like, right.
Jimmy Purdy [00:54:35]:
You know, and for both of us, we've never really taken a car. I've never taken a car somewhere for a repair. I don't even know what that looks like from the consumer side. What would I ask?
Austin Goodlett [00:54:46]:
Like, how that was me after I opened up shop, I'm like, you know, I was asking people that I already knew beforehand, like, well, how did that look? Because I've never paid for auto repair. I don't even know what it looks like on your end.
Jimmy Purdy [00:54:59]:
How much is it supposed to be? What do you ask? What is the conversation like?
Austin Goodlett [00:55:03]:
How much did you pay before?
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:05]:
Right. Another great question. And it's like, it's always like, with, like, the dentist's office or the doctor's office, you know? And I just recently had made a doctor's appointment, and it was like that same thing where I didn't want to ask how much. I was like, I've, like, sold myself on my own process so much. Like, I didn't, I didn't want to like, so it's like, what do you want to make an appointment for? Like, I don't know. Like to do, I don't know. Do you like a checkup or something? Can you give me like an inspection? I don't know. Well, what's wrong? Well, nothing's wrong.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:36]:
I'm just, I just want to make a doctor's appointment because I don't have a doctor and I, it's like I.
Austin Goodlett [00:55:40]:
Don'T want to come in for a service.
Jimmy Purdy [00:55:41]:
Yeah. Like, can you just like, yeah, is there an oil change I get or something like that? Like how does this work? Is it every like 40 years or something? But I don't want to, I don't want to do that one yet. We'll wait a few more years for that particular one. But you know what I mean? It's like how, where do we like, and it's, it's interesting because I can only imagine if you've had a vehicle for, you know, ten years or so and you haven't had anything majorly catastrophic happen and you don't have like your mechanic, you go to, what do you ask? What, like, and so the only thing you can think of is like, well, just ask how much it's going to be, you know.
Austin Goodlett [00:56:14]:
Yeah. And I've said, I think that's a lot of it.
Jimmy Purdy [00:56:17]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [00:56:17]:
A lot of people will say like, oh, well, I need this on my car. Well, how do you know you need that on your car? And I, I'm working through those processes and, and I don't know if you talked to Lucas Underwood, but he is a smooth talker. Yeah, like, I'm taking notes.
Jimmy Purdy [00:56:35]:
Well, all you guys, all you guys with your southern accents have like, yeah, I got a handicap because I got this California accent. So it's not smooth. You know, it's like very brunt and a blunt and you know, say somethings like, hella. Even though I've heard that, I've heard that and, uh, from other people too. But, yeah, but, yeah, you got that smooth, that smooth southern accent. You could just pretty much, uh, sell anything. You know what they say, ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves. It's like, no problem.
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:02]:
Right? Yeah, but no, it's, and a lot of that too is, is training too. And I don't know if you've looked into any sort of coaching or training programs, but that was a game changer for me, like getting into a coaching program and, and for a long time, it just seems like they're just going to tell you to raise your rates. Just raise your rates. Just raise your rates. And I think a few months in, you're kind of like, okay, I'm not really learning anything. And you look at some of the Facebook groups and you're like, I can learn the same stuff here that I'm getting taught by my coach. But it's. But it's different.
Jimmy Purdy [00:57:32]:
It's a bigger network. There's a lot of other things, but the institute's got some other ones. Like, Cecil is the smoothest talker I've ever met. Like that guy. I don't know if you've ever sat in any of his classes. No, that guy is like that. His phone skills are like next level, you know, and he's got like, that type of thing where he can be like, talking and then go, hey, misses Jones, how's everything going? And he's like, all of a sudden, like, totally different person. You're like, dude, how do you do that? And he's got an answer for everything, you know, it just.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:02]:
And there was a. Who was I talking to? I was talking to Mike Allen. He was a. He was talking about chat GBT, the 4.0 version. And they're using that to have, like, conversations. So you can hire a service advisor or yourself. You can go in there and say, hey, I want to sell you break jobs. I want you to deny me three times.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:22]:
So I want you to deny me four times. Right? And then you can do your thing in this thing. Chat GBT will argue with you, not argue with you, but, you know, you. You got to do a kind of a hard sell with it to try to sell this break job. Like, yeah, that's pretty cool. You know, like stuff like that. That constant friction is what makes you grow and, like, getting. When people say no and you're like, what an awkward situation.
Jimmy Purdy [00:58:46]:
Like, I don't want to sell them any harder. I don't want to be that high pressure sales shop. But it's like, I don't know, it's. It's. I don't even know how to, like, put it into words. But you kind of have to. But you kind of don't. And it's like this special skill.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:00]:
You have to have to be like, well, what's the obstacle here?
Austin Goodlett [00:59:03]:
Right?
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:04]:
What? Like, your vehicle is important. It's here. Now. If you don't do it here today, these brakes are going to start grinding, and then somebody else is going to sell it to them. So you have to get that cell to make sure that that vehicle is taken care of at your shop, you know, not at. Not at the local fast lube or whatever, because it's going to happen. You know, it's like eventually it needs it. So it's.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:28]:
It's a little bit of that, too. Like, if you don't take care of it, somebody else is going to. So you almost have to push that cell on to them to make sure you can do it, even though that sounds kind of a little arrogant, but.
Austin Goodlett [00:59:41]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:42]:
You know what I mean? Like, I mean. Right. But it's like the right thing to do because, you know you're going to do it right and it's going to be taken care of. And they don't want to do it because they just. They just looking at the money part of it, like, look, I have to take care of your vehicle. I have to. I'm going to do it right. And it's tough, man.
Jimmy Purdy [00:59:58]:
It's like, it's so tough to wrap your brain around that situation, right. And not turn into Mister salesman.
Austin Goodlett [01:00:05]:
I definitely need to get some coaching on my salesman, you know?
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:09]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [01:00:09]:
My sales tactics. There's not good being pushy, that's for sure.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:13]:
Yeah. And I don't know if you have to necessarily be pushy either, because it's. It's such a. I don't know, it. There's so much gray area in the middle there where, you know, you brought up Lucas and it's like, he's not pushy. He just makes it make sense. Right. And that's the thing with the word.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:30]:
You just got to make it make sense. And it's not like you're being, you know, untruthful about it or unfair about it. You're just. Look, you're just relaxing, taking a few breaths and like, look, this is the situation. It needs it, right. And it's like, this is your vehicle. Do you want to take care of it or not? That's the bottom line. And do you want to get towed back in here or do you want to take care of it today and not have to worry about it for the next three years? And.
Jimmy Purdy [01:00:55]:
And, yeah, I mean, the tactics are all over the place. And there's tons of other companies I've seen that have the high pressure sales tactics. You know, free inspections. Right. Inspect all vehicles and do it for free. And then high pressure sales, all the stuff you find. So that way you can pay your taxes. Like, no, no, we charge for inspection.
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:13]:
So vehicle comes in, we're charging, like, right off the gate. Like, I'm charging you to look at your vehicle, and then I'm charging you for what it's coming in for. That's just how we roll. And if you don't like that, then, then this is not the relationship we can grow on because anybody else is going to do that. They're going to do the high pressure sales tactics based on. Of a free inspection. It's like, nothing's free. Nothing.
Austin Goodlett [01:01:33]:
So do you do the 300% rule or do you charge for every inspection?
Jimmy Purdy [01:01:37]:
Both. So I'm an, I'm an advocate to charge for the inspection, but we are 100%. Five c's, 300% rule. Like, that's every time. And then, and then follow up. We have CRMs that go through and, you know, do the 15 day, 30 day, 60 day, 90 day reminders, follow up phone calls and all that stuff. Because if you do all that work and then you don't follow up on it, it's all for nothing. Right, right.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:00]:
But the main thing was, starting from the beginning, if we do an inspection and it's free, we have to sell something on that car. And sure, if it's me and my wife, we're gonna. We're going to be able to take care of that. And for the most part, 99% of guys out there that you hire or girls that you hire, they're not going to want to do that. But there's always that chance that you get to a point where you have the system in place and you're doing these free inspections, and everyone's banking on their sales to make up for that free inspection. Something's going to go sideways. Like eventually someone's going to be sold something that they didn't really need because we're having a slow week or whatever, and it's like, we're not even. I'm not.
Jimmy Purdy [01:02:38]:
It's not even going to be a thought. So it comes in, they get charged an hour, we do the inspection, and most of the time we can solve the client's problem with that inspection because we're taking an hour and looking through every part of the vehicle. And so a lot of the time we can find what's going on, why it was there for, you know, it's got a shit going down the road. Well, we're inspecting tires in our dvis. Hey, the tires got a freaking bubble on the side of it. We solved. We solved a problem, right. Sometimes it's not so, you know, sometimes a little more complicated than that.
Jimmy Purdy [01:03:08]:
So we have to say, hey, we need an advanced assessment to check on the codes or, or whatever. It ends up being. And honestly, it all comes out in the wash. If it came in for an advanced assessment, normally it's gonna be three or $400 for. For that high level assessment. Well, if we combine the inspection with an extra hour, ends up being the same, right?
Austin Goodlett [01:03:30]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [01:03:30]:
$400 to. To go 300. $400 to go through and check what it is, but also gives us the opportunity to say, hey, look, do we need to do an assessment at, say, 150 an hour, or do we need $210 an hour? Because we got a can bus communication fault code, right. So it just sets the standard, and that's what we tell them every time. Look, you come in, this is just our starting point. This gets us all on the same page, lets us know what condition the vehicle is in, what codes going on. Do we have road damage going on? Like, what does this car look like? Is it rusty? Like, there's so many different possibilities that it's like, I don't even know where to set your advanced assessment at because we don't even know what the car looks like yet, and you can't. For me, it was so hard to say, well, we'll just set a standard labor rate at 170 an hour.
Jimmy Purdy [01:04:15]:
Is that fair, though? Some cars need some cars. We do a lot of classic car stuff. Those cars, they require a higher level. Higher level skilled technician. Right?
Austin Goodlett [01:04:26]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [01:04:26]:
Somebody that's a little bit older that might know a little bit more. So that's going to be higher labor rate. What if it comes in and it's a freaking 2010 Honda Civic? So the brake job on that car is the same labor rate as a brake job on a 1965 Chevy Impala? I don't think so. You know, it's like. So.
Austin Goodlett [01:04:42]:
And the parts, finding the parts. It's going to take longer to find parts and all that. Not as available.
Jimmy Purdy [01:04:48]:
Yeah. Or the Honda Civic with 80,000 miles, as opposed to the Honda Civic with 210,000 miles that spent half its life in New York. Two different cars. Two totally different. Same exact year make model, right. Two totally different cars. So it just. It just set the standard.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:02]:
But it's like, how. How could I ever not charge for that initial intake? It just doesn't make any financial sense to me. I. Yeah, and. And I get pushback on it, sure, but we all get pushback on everything, but at least that way, it filters through, and it lets me know, hey, this. This client's here to fix their car, you know?
Austin Goodlett [01:05:23]:
Yeah.
Jimmy Purdy [01:05:23]:
And not just fix it, but. But maintain it and keep it on the road, and it's like, if they're not willing to make that initial investment with. With us in our company, then there's really no relationship moving forward, because it's always going to be, just fix what's broken, and it's like, no, I don't. I'd rather not do anything. I'd rather just be standing around. Then if you don't want me to completely maintain your vehicle and keep it on the road, you know.
Austin Goodlett [01:05:49]:
Yeah, I'm the same way. And it's weird. As a. As a new shop owner like you, there's so many growing pains. Like, you don't want to charge more for things. And right now, I'm looking at, like you said, the effective labor rate, how much time am I spending versus what I'm charging? And right now, I do the 300% rule, but I don't charge for inspections. I do it like, if the job is, say I'm getting a van coming in for brakes, I'm inspecting that van while my helper is doing the brakes. Um, but I believe that, like you said, we should be charging for all of our time.
Austin Goodlett [01:06:27]:
But it's. It's a growing pain for me to think about how to charge for an intake inspection. I don't even know how to word that, but it's something that I definitely want to do for sure.
Jimmy Purdy [01:06:39]:
I look at it as I think the inspections take a high level skill to be able to properly look at a vehicle and know what's good and what's bad. That is not something you just are born with. Or you gain in a year or gain in two years or three years, maybe three years, maybe to get to the point where you can actually confidently look at a vehicle in a reasonable amount of time and look at all the different aspects of it and be able to call out, hey, this has got a hundred thousand. These are the items that are probably going to be needed, right? Yeah. Some of it's easy. Sure. Everyone can look at brake pads and know that they're worn out, but do you know how to pull the plug on an all wheel drive Honda Cr v? Be able to check the transfer case fluid, you know?
Austin Goodlett [01:07:22]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [01:07:23]:
Comes the transmission levels. How many of them have dipsticks anymore? You know? So you got to look up the damn procedure to check the freaking level of the transmission fluid. What color?
Austin Goodlett [01:07:31]:
Everything has a procedure.
Jimmy Purdy [01:07:32]:
Yeah. What colors is it supposed to be? You know, is it CVT? Is it not like there's a lot of. And then even as a 20 year, 20 years in, you're still. I'm still looking up, like, what is this thing? Is this a CVT? Is it not? And if I'm doing that, you know, and not say, like, I'm on the top by any means, but it's like, I've been doing this for a little while, and it's like, if I'm looking this up, this takes a high level of skill. Why is it free? Why is it.
Austin Goodlett [01:07:59]:
I think a lot of times we don't think of ourselves as professionals when we are.
Jimmy Purdy [01:08:02]:
Oh, absolutely not. No. Imposter syndrome. Right. How long does it take before you feel like you're actually the owner of the shop?
Austin Goodlett [01:08:09]:
Right.
Jimmy Purdy [01:08:10]:
I haven't got there yet, so I don't know.
Austin Goodlett [01:08:12]:
Yeah, I don't know that we ever will.
Jimmy Purdy [01:08:15]:
You're always just, like, just learning every day, you know, and it's like. And you just think you get to a point where you're gonna know and everything, but then the next year comes around and there's a whole new set of vehicles with a whole new set of different problems and. And different things that are in them, you know, it always reminds me, reminds me of a guy told me years ago, he's in his late sixties now, but he said he worked for so long, and he felt like he was getting so comfortable with the way automobiles were. And this was like, in the late seventies. It had to be in the late seventies. He said he remembers the very first car that came in with disc brakes. And he's like, yeah, I almost rolled my toolbox out and quit because it was like, I'm not learning something new. I got this stuff down, right? He's like, had jump break.
Jimmy Purdy [01:08:56]:
But come to find out, it was so much easier. But it's like, there's constantly something new. And I think a lot of techs have a problem with that. They think they feel like you should know everything. And that I think that filters up to the service advisors, up to the owner. Like, you're expected as a shop owner to know everything, right? And it's like, yeah.
Austin Goodlett [01:09:14]:
Being, you know, going into being a shop owner, it made me have a different perspective. It's like when you have your first kid, you always thought your parents just knew what they were doing. You went home with a baby and you didn't know what to do with it.
Jimmy Purdy [01:09:27]:
You know what I mean?
Austin Goodlett [01:09:27]:
Like, you become a business owner and you just realize that all the businesses that you walked into that were small, like they were kind of winging it. Yeah, maybe a calculated winging it. But they were learning as they go.
Jimmy Purdy [01:09:39]:
Absolutely.
Austin Goodlett [01:09:39]:
And it's the same thing with shop ownership. You don't, you don't know what you're doing, and until you learn it, you know, I always say, you don't know what you don't know until you know it.
Jimmy Purdy [01:09:49]:
Yeah. And you always, and you always don't know. So you always, yeah.
Austin Goodlett [01:09:55]:
Like somebody says, oh, I got this code from autozone, and it says it needs this, so I need my intake. And I'm. And it was just a customer that just called me, and I explained to him, like, I don't. I can't say that it's the intake. I mean, from my experience, you have two codes that could be a million things.
Jimmy Purdy [01:10:12]:
Yeah.
Austin Goodlett [01:10:13]:
So.
Jimmy Purdy [01:10:14]:
And how hard is it to stop to not do that as well? When you see a code and you kind of shoot yourself in the foot and you say, oh, I've seen this so many times, it's probably this or over. That's my problem. I over complicate things. When I pick up the phone here in the office is like, I go so far into this, like, technical jargon that the client has no idea what I'm talking about, but nobody wants to seem like they're stupid, so they're agreeing with me. I'm like, wait, are you following me? It's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. No. No idea. No idea what I'm talking about.
Jimmy Purdy [01:10:45]:
As long as you keep rambling on. Right. And that's my biggest problem was like, I just need to shut up. Like, I just need the damn car and the door. Just get the car here. That's my job. That's all it is. And I just can't help myself.
Jimmy Purdy [01:10:57]:
But try to help. Right. And it's like, you're not helping anymore. That's not helping. And it's like, I feel like I am. Yeah, I'm giving knowledge away for free. Isn't that helping? Is like, no. Now they come in with an expectation, and it's like.
Jimmy Purdy [01:11:12]:
And it's. And you were wrong. Like, I wasn't wrong. They just didn't give me all the information. Then the ego comes in, and the whole thing just goes sideways. And I should just never answer the phone to begin with.
Austin Goodlett [01:11:25]:
Yep.
Jimmy Purdy [01:11:27]:
It never works out great, you know? And I don't know. It's pulling the ego out of, like, out of that and having that technician, like you said, with the EMA. Technician to manager to entrepreneur and trying to find your spot in the shop and find, well, when do I make that transit? When. When can I become the manager? When do I get to be the entrepreneur, and that's. I think that's, like, a really difficult conversation. Have with yourself. Is that what you want to do? You know, and for some, they don't. They wanted.
Jimmy Purdy [01:11:58]:
They want to be in the shop and work. Okay, well, then you need to hire those other positions. Well, I can't afford that. Well, you got to do something. And just like, just like you said. Well, I took a deep look inside, and I thought, I'm not making money, so it's time to put my ego aside and start doing breaks.
Austin Goodlett [01:12:13]:
Yes. You know, same, 100% the same. Like, stop asking for the hard stuff. Stop advertising lifted trucks, stop advertising the diag stuff. Yes, I'll still do them, but I'm advertising three year warranty on brake jobs.
Jimmy Purdy [01:12:31]:
Yep. Like, and you start looking at your numbers and looking at your KPI's at the end of the year, and you start realizing, hey, you know what? I'm making a lot of money on suspension work. I'm making a lot of money doing AC work. I'm doing a lot of, like. And you don't even realize it in the time because you're just doing it right. But you have, like, this ego and this vision of, like, I want to be a diagnostic shop. I want to be a whatever shop. I want to be a transmission builder, be the best transmission builder in the county, in the country.
Jimmy Purdy [01:12:55]:
And it's like, all of a sudden, you start looking at your numbers. It's like, well, it looks like I'm doing ball joints and tie rods. That's what my shop, because that's what I'm making money. And it's like, it's so hard to make that transition. It's like, well, that's. You don't really get to choose. Like, whatever happens, happens. And sometimes I think you can push that buck a little bit, but once it come to a point where, you know what? I think I made a mistake, and I need to pivot.
Austin Goodlett [01:13:22]:
Yeah. Yeah. You need to stop working. Like, like they always say, you need to stop working in your business and start working on your business. You gotta reevaluate and pivot. And that's what this whole year has been for me, just pivoting.
Jimmy Purdy [01:13:33]:
So this next year, what's your, what's your vision? What's your goal? You're moving into a new shop. You got a lot of things going on. You're doing all the right things. You got. I mean, you're on the right path. You're definitely big things are gonna happen for you. What's your what's your end goal? Like, how do you see yourself in the next year? The next five years? That's the question of all questions, right?
Austin Goodlett [01:14:02]:
Yeah. I mean, I'm always somebody that looks one year and five years ahead, but to say what that goal is exactly, I don't know. In five years, I would like to be an established shop that has enough work to hire employees and be the owner. You know, manage that shop, be answering the phones, have the time to explain to customers more, because the more that I get to talk to people, the more the trust is built and the more my shop's brand is trusted, I guess the more that I get to talk to customers. When I'm a one man show, it's extremely hard. And since I got this one helper, it's more than quadrupled my income. January was a record month for me, and for this year, I want to get in that new shop and get enough car count coming in that I can for sure hire one technician and have that one technician and see what our. What our profit is at the end of the year.
Austin Goodlett [01:15:05]:
That's my main goal for. For this next year, is just get in there, hire somebody, and see if we can, you know, see how much profit we can make, and then grow from there. Really?
Jimmy Purdy [01:15:20]:
That's awesome. So you're looking at. You're looking at expanding your team. You want to take a role that's a little bit more divorced away from the shop, take a role more in the office, and then eventually kind of move your way into.
Austin Goodlett [01:15:34]:
Yeah, I think that, I mean, me as a. As a diagnostic guy, I can diagnose cars, but there's a lot of people out there that can put on some brakes. There's a lot of people out there that can do some ball joints, change a strut, things like that. And those people are working in shops right now that don't have ac. They might not be well lit, they might not be paid. The greatest. I know when I was working at a tikia dealership, they only wanted to pay me $21 an hour flat rate. Like, that's not enough here.
Austin Goodlett [01:16:05]:
I can't even live on that. So I want to be the shop that can pay technicians well and not really work in the office, but help doing the diag stuff, because there's so many things that go on behind the scenes of an auto shop that you don't even think about as a technician. You just think about turning wrenches. So I went from being a mechanic that could, you know, work 40 hours a week, turn 40 or more hours a week with warranty work to turning like 13 to 20 hours a week because I do so much out of the scenes, you know, looking up parts, doing estimates, doing everything that it takes to run a business and educating yourself at the same time. So that's. That's really my goal, is get a technician, you know, treat that technician well, pay him well, and see where the year takes us. And then from there, I'll know more of. Okay, I might start out my technician flat rate because I don't know how much I can pay him, but once I know how much we made that year, I'll know an hourly rate that I can afford and then benefits and things like that, and just elevate myself as an owner because I don't know what.
Austin Goodlett [01:17:18]:
I don't know until I know it.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:20]:
That's true. It's an awesome vision, man. I highly. I highly recommend looking into a coaching program.
Austin Goodlett [01:17:26]:
Yeah. But, yeah, I definitely want to get coach.
Jimmy Purdy [01:17:29]:
You gotta have money for that, too. I guess so. That's a tough one.
Austin Goodlett [01:17:32]:
That's the hard part right now, because right now, the new shop, I'm looking at two more lifts, and I'm looking for Ali certified lifts. And, you know, I'm getting signs made and I'm getting a website built, and, you know, every time I start up, it's minimal, $30,000 just to open up the door. So, you know, I got a shop set up before I got a divorce. I got a shop set up after the divorce, and now I'm doing another one. So hopefully this is the last one for a while.
Jimmy Purdy [01:18:03]:
You'll be an expert before we know it.
Austin Goodlett [01:18:05]:
Oh, I know a lot about lifts.
Jimmy Purdy [01:18:09]:
That's par for the course, man. You got to learn live and you learn is what they say, I guess. And you're young, so you got plenty of time to make it back up. Right on, man. I appreciate you coming on and spending some time. There's a lot of good information, a lot of good conversation, and I think you're. You're prepped for greatness, man. You're.
Jimmy Purdy [01:18:28]:
You're way beyond I ever was at. At the infancy.
Austin Goodlett [01:18:33]:
Well, I appreciate that.
Jimmy Purdy [01:18:34]:
Yeah, I just. I. Until this. It's been. How many years? Has been seven years. I didn't even know any of this stuff until about a year ago.
Austin Goodlett [01:18:46]:
Really?
Jimmy Purdy [01:18:46]:
Like, the groups, the camaraderie, the networking. I mean, yeah, it took me five years to get my head out of my ass and, like, realize that. That I'm. Yeah, that. That we're all in this together. I'm just. Yeah, I was just burning the grindstone.
Austin Goodlett [01:19:04]:
Groups before all the groups. I was ready to go be an h vac tech because I had already. That was right when I found out I was $14,000 in debt. And that'll do it. You know, I was like, well, I have to sell my car. I sold my car to a guy in California. He came all the way down here and got it. Had to sell a gooseneck trailer.
Austin Goodlett [01:19:24]:
I had, you know, to get out of debt, and I was just like, you know, this industry, I didn't realize how bad the industry was until I became an owner. And it's like, you know, I knew that I was underpaid before, but until I seen why they were paying me so little, because they were charging so little, they really put it in perspective, and I was ready to get out of the industry, and I met all the people in the groups and learned everything I learned and started seeing improvements.
Jimmy Purdy [01:19:53]:
Started drinking the Kool aid. And now you're.
Austin Goodlett [01:19:55]:
Yep.
Jimmy Purdy [01:19:57]:
Now you're going to look back in five years. You guys are a bunch of assholes, man. Why'd you do this to me? Right?
Austin Goodlett [01:20:01]:
Yeah. Should have gave me half a honey bun. Nice.