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Confessions of a Shop Owner is hosted by Mike Allen, a third-generation shop owner, perpetual pot-stirrer, and brutally honest opinion sharer. In this weekly podcast, Mike shares his missteps so you don’t have to repeat them. Along the way, he chats with other industry personalities who’ve messed up, too, pulling back the curtain on the realities of running an independent auto repair shop. But this podcast isn’t just about Mike’s journey. It’s about confronting the divisive and questionable tactics many shop owners and managers use. Mike is here to stir the pot and address the painful truths while offering a way forward. Together, we’ll tackle the frustrations, shake things up, and help create a better future for the auto repair industry.
[Eric Joern] (0:00 - 0:04)
Looking forward to it. And I did come prepared this time.
[Mike Allen] (0:04 - 0:37)
So my man, you know, um, when in doubt, nothing like a little, uh, brown water to help, help get you flowing, get the conversation conversation. Yeah. It, uh, you know, social lubricant, it might not actually make you more intelligible.
Uh, it won't make you more intelligent, but it'll make you think you're more intelligent. So you say more stupid shit. That's been the key to my success is, uh, being confidently incorrect over and over and over.
And just leaning into my idiocy has been a real key.
[Eric Joern] (0:37 - 0:56)
So everybody knows the best time to ask me for advice is at a conference on the, they got the open bar going a few of the, a few of, uh, the brown waters down and the truth serum sneaks up on you. Sometimes sure does all the go, all the golden nuggets come out then.
[Mike Allen] (0:56 - 0:58)
What, what's the next conference you're going to be able to go to?
[Eric Joern] (0:59 - 1:01)
Uh, I'll be a STX.
[Mike Allen] (1:01 - 1:02)
Okay. Very cool.
[Eric Joern] (1:03 - 1:06)
Yeah. Not right, right around the corner here. Well, yeah.
[Mike Allen] (1:06 - 1:10)
Are you going to buy time? This is launched. It'll be a STA or apex.
[Eric Joern] (1:10 - 1:15)
Yeah. We'll be at, uh, I'll be at STX and ASTA. No apex.
[Mike Allen] (1:16 - 2:06)
Well, that's okay. Uh, ASTA is the best of all of the events and shows anyway. So it doesn't matter.
Um, and the hospitality suite. You might, you may or may not have heard this, but the hospitality suite is sponsored by the best podcast in the industry. Um, remarkable results, radio, um, no confessions we did last year.
It was so much fun. And we're in a new space. We get even more space this year because it was full of, uh, arcade games and, uh, and a poker table and a full, not a full bar, but almost full bar.
And it was open and it was, we had to shut it down every night. And yeah, it was, uh, quite the event. So I'm looking forward to it.
I'm actually going with Tanika Haynes next week to go scope the space and lay out the furniture layout and where the games will go.
[Eric Joern] (2:07 - 2:12)
Oh, shoot. You guys are, you guys are in, in thick then on, on arranging one of those, huh?
[Mike Allen] (2:13 - 2:36)
Uh, yeah. So, I mean, you don't want to leave it up to like the hotel. You're like, Hey, I need a space for, for a bad-ass party three nights in a row.
Um, it'll be weak sauce. So you just get like, I have a moving, I have, I have a whole set of furniture and games and everything else that a moving company is going to come load in and load out to the hotel for me. So, uh, it should be a good time.
It should be.
[Eric Joern] (2:36 - 2:43)
What, what nights are the, are the, are the hospitality suites rolling is out Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night.
[Mike Allen] (2:44 - 3:01)
So, um, you know, the, the event is Thursday, Friday, Saturday. We're trying to decide if we're going to do something Wednesday night just for podcast listeners, you know, it would be totally separate from, from the expo because their insurance doesn't want to do anything with me, but, um, let me know.
[Eric Joern] (3:01 - 3:09)
I, I've not booked yet, so I I'll, uh, I'll amend my travel arrangements to, to what the happenings are.
[Mike Allen] (3:10 - 3:23)
Well, you know, uh, you know, it'll be good, whatever it is. So, um, real quick, introduce yourself. I apologize.
Sometimes I make it like 15 minutes in before I even have my guests have a chance to speak, say a word edge wise. So I'll let you get in there.
[Eric Joern] (3:24 - 4:00)
That's perfect. Well, I appreciate you letting me in early on this one, cause we're only about three minutes in. So maybe we set a record.
Uh, I'm Eric, Eric Jorn, uh, partner with Kaizen CPAs and advisors, uh, also host of under the hood CPA podcast, which is coming to your listening devices here in the next, uh, in the coming weeks. Uh, if not, by the time this is released, it might be live. So go find us on, uh, YouTube, Spotify, whatever your favorite motive of plan listening, exactly.
And subscribe.
[Mike Allen] (4:00 - 4:08)
Um, you are scheduled to be released on September 15th, sir. So my guess is you'll be seven or eight episodes deep by then. So they love it.
[Eric Joern] (4:08 - 4:41)
So September 15th, great time. It's, uh, that's also when, uh, third quarter estimated taxes are due. So it couldn't have landed in a better spot.
It's also when, if you have a C or S corp or a partnership tax return, those are also due. So, yeah, which reminds me, I'm like, mother, you know, well, to be fair, right, money should be set aside already and should be on auto draw. And you might not even know what happens if things are working.
[Mike Allen] (4:42 - 4:49)
If I managed my finances responsibly, do I strike you as the type of dude who plans ahead and manages things responsibly?
[Eric Joern] (4:49 - 4:52)
If somebody else does it for you, maybe.
[Mike Allen] (4:54 - 5:40)
If only there were an organization designed specifically to do things like that, that would be, that would be pretty interesting if that existed. But I think, um, uh, I had, I had a dinner with Lucas over the weekend in Charlotte and he was telling me how, like his books were, had been historically a bit of a struggle and that he signed up with you guys with all of his businesses, I think. Right.
Uh, and how you guys had cleaned it up and sorted it out and organized it. And it was just so refreshing to have clean, timely books. Um, so like shout out to my onboarding team, man.
[Eric Joern] (5:40 - 5:43)
They, they are the, they don't mess around.
[Mike Allen] (5:43 - 5:50)
How often when you sign on a new client, is it an absolute disaster in their books?
[Eric Joern] (5:52 - 6:52)
Ah, well, uh, so probably nine out of 10 new clients come in the door with books that we say, we're just going to start a new file and move forward. So what I call them absolute disasters. No, not all of them.
Probably 50% of them are absolute disasters. Right. Where you, you, you, you pop in the file and you're like, this is nothing time for new file.
The other half, we got to do a little bit of work to figure out, you know, Hey, is it worth, is it worth going back and fixing all these things or, or, Hey, let's cut it off and move forward. A lot of it depends on, you know, Hey, how much, how much reporting did you rely on? Are you in like a, some sort of composite group or something like that, or, or reporting group that, that you have all this historical data reported.
And if we just blow all that up, um, is that going to cause a mess? So we'll make a, we'll make a thoughtful decision, but I'll tell you probably nine out of 10 times, we're starting brand new QuickBooks files for somebody.
[Mike Allen] (6:55 - 6:59)
Um, you guys only work with auto repair or do you do several industries?
[Eric Joern] (7:00 - 7:35)
Uh, we do several industries right now. Our firm is about 50, 50, 50% automotive repair, 50% other industries. Um, we're newer, I guess you'd say in the automotive space.
We're an old firm. We've been around since I think 1965, if it goes back to my partner's dad, who started the firm's roots. Um, so it was local, local small business accounting firm.
We always did monthly books and tax. So that was always the thing is, is the books drove the tax process, which really has stayed true. It's what, it's what a small business needs.
[Mike Allen] (7:36 - 7:41)
Um, how many podcasts do you do the books for? Because I know of a podcast that has really shitty books.
[Eric Joern] (7:44 - 7:51)
No, uh, just one, just one right now. And, and it, uh, they were shitty books and we cleaned them up.
[Mike Allen] (7:54 - 8:19)
We might have to talk when we get offline about that. I, uh, I logged into QuickBooks for the podcast today actually. Uh, and looked at it and I hadn't done any matching in three months.
Uh, so I, I put up the PNL and it was like, uh, all income. And then the only expenses shown were the QuickBooks payments processing fees. And that was it.
[Eric Joern] (8:20 - 8:26)
Yep. Auto add, auto add, click, click, click, click. And all of a sudden it's like, Oh, I got 400 grand in the bank.
Nice.
[Mike Allen] (8:27 - 8:32)
Yeah. It thinks that I am, uh, it thinks that I'm doing way better than I actually am. Weird how that works.
[Eric Joern] (8:32 - 9:08)
So it's generally how that shakes out. Yeah. Um, yeah, so Kai, that's what we do, right?
We, we get people who either don't understand their books or they don't have books that are usable, or maybe they paid an accountant, they were promised to get books and they just never got them, uh, from the book standpoint, that's about what we hear normally, sometimes on the tax standpoint, I'd say I got a surprise tax bill, April 15th or September 15th or whatever your deadline due date is sucks every year.
Um, our goal is to change that.
[Mike Allen] (9:08 - 9:20)
Well, if it sucks every year, at least that means you're making money, right? That's because the tax day doesn't suck if you're losing money. Well, you might not have 364 days suck.
[Eric Joern] (9:20 - 9:39)
That's fair. That's a good point. That's the one good day, right?
Hey, Oh, we got a refund. That's a, that's a, it's a bad, isn't it weird how that turns into a bad thing at some point in time? It's a good thing when a business owner realizes if I have to pay taxes, it's actually probably a good thing.
It sucks to do, right?
[Mike Allen] (9:40 - 9:58)
I just want to pay as little taxes as I can legally. Like, how do you, how do you, uh, how do you dance along the edge of like, I want my CPA to be comfortable with some borderline shit, but not over the line shit, um, technical term.
[Eric Joern] (9:59 - 10:37)
Yeah. Uh, I got a very technical response for that. It's, uh, in my opinion, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
I want to be a pig. I don't want to be a hog. Fair enough.
So, so what that means is the tax law is pretty loose in how it's written, um, allows for lots of interpretation and allows you for you to do action, which validates that interpretation in turn allows you to take a legal tax deduction for something that probably seems stupid and outlandish. But if you can justify it's ordinary and necessary for your business to be successful, it's a legal tax deduction.
[Mike Allen] (10:37 - 10:39)
What's your take on the R and D tax credit?
[Eric Joern] (10:40 - 11:13)
Oh, uh, you know, that's that, that one does get very philosophical, doesn't it? Like, like something that's supposed to be very scientific, all of a sudden it's very now theory based of like, um, is changing a process is changing a process R and D. I mean, theoretically you are following all the same exact steps as you would if you were developing a specific technology or science or whatever it may be.
I mean, I don't disagree, right? The either one way, the goal is progress, right? And you're funding progress.
You're founding, founding innovation.
[Mike Allen] (11:14 - 11:27)
Um, what if I spent like 10 hours a week and Claude code and GTP and all these others developing Chrome plugins to use in my business?
[Eric Joern] (11:28 - 12:29)
A hundred percent. Um, now there are very specific rules on whose wages and whose cost that, that, that is involved in it. Um, so if it's me as the owner bearing, my cost in something carries far less weight than when you pay employees or contractors to execute that work and you have more hard costs to it.
Um, but Hey, like why, why take it off the table, right? If it's a possibility, it's worth exploring. Um, the fortunate part is most of these companies that do these R and D studies are very sales focused too.
So they're going to jump in there and try to find a way to make this thing happen. You got to do a litmus test of like, man, does this sound absolutely ridiculous? And if it sounds so far fetched and ridiculous to you, who's going to get cash in their pocket as a result of it, it's probably gonna be really hard to sell to an auditor.
But if it sounds reasonable and like this is what we did and what we spent and what we invested in it, I think we got a good chance of selling that to an auditor if it ever gets questioned.
[Mike Allen] (12:30 - 12:35)
Okay. So, um, and I talked about R and D credit.
[Eric Joern] (12:35 - 13:02)
When I, if I do a tax course, I'll talk about R and D credit. I think it's, I think it's tangible. I think it's, it's a little out there for somebody like most of our listeners are not going to be in a position where they invested enough capital into something for the, for the cost of having a proper study done and being well documented, defensible, et cetera, to get the credit.
But, um, Hey, if you're doing something, explore it, learn, grow, expand. Why not?
[Mike Allen] (13:04 - 13:11)
Which major tax benefit program of the last several years have you seen abused the most? Has it been the employee retention tax credit?
[Eric Joern] (13:12 - 13:32)
ERTC and we did a ton of ERTC, but man, uh, if I, if I can go back in time, I probably could have made a ton more money. Um, which, Hey, we all, you know, we run a business, um, and we all file them for clients and then take a percentage.
[Mike Allen] (13:32 - 13:38)
So you went out and shop for clients and say, Hey, I'll, I'll do the paperwork and I get 10% or whatever.
[Eric Joern] (13:38 - 14:18)
So we were so proactive in it that we were filing for the credits live on their live filed nine 41s. Um, so like, as soon as, as soon as that program was extended, that you can have PPP and ERC money. We already, I built a tool that we could export from our payroll software, drop that in.
It calculates the credit. I mean, we had to go through the vetting process. Did they qualify?
We were a little bit more picky on that. Um, the, you know, most auto auto repair shops didn't qualify. We had some circumstances where it did, but I mean, it was really hard to justify like a shop that made more money that was restricted from.
[Mike Allen] (14:19 - 14:20)
Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (14:20 - 15:33)
Yeah. Now restaurants, they kind of got the, they got squeaked by and some retail got squeaked by where they had to reduce capacity. And that was very clearly written in the law.
And a lot of those restaurants probably made more money during that COVID period. But they, I mean, it was clearly written. It was kind of a slam dunk.
And, and the audits now that have happened, you know, the restaurants did it. We worked with a bunch of franchisees and they did very well on it. We saw a lot of businesses that their life cycle was extended because of it.
So the program wasn't all bad, but man, those ERC companies they came in and they gave anybody and everybody qualification for that credit. And, uh, and they charged like 25% of the fee or whatever the credit was or 20%. Um, we did a very small fraction of that because we were too early to market when we decided to value the company that I used to 10% they did.
Oh, that's good. I think that's reasonable. Then I, I can almost gauge like, do I trust what they did by how much they charged?
Because if I'm, if I was going to go out on a limb and go on, go on something that I thought was risky, I'd probably want to charge a bigger percentage of it because I'm absorbing risk in my business.
[Mike Allen] (15:34 - 15:41)
So what you're saying Eric is going to get you like totally on the record here. Cheaper means more trustworthy.
[Eric Joern] (15:44 - 16:02)
That's interesting. When it came to ERC, yes. Everything's in context.
Yes, I do believe the $500 corporate tax return is probably the most accurate trustworthy tax return out there. Man, I really set myself up for that one.
[Mike Allen] (16:04 - 16:12)
Uh, it's just, uh, yeah, so free diag must make the most trustworthy shops in America are the ones that do free diag.
[Eric Joern] (16:12 - 17:21)
I mean, yeah, man, I'll tell you, I wrote service and that is, that's been an enigma for forever, right? It's been a huge thing forever of, so you were a service advisor, you said for how long? It was about five years.
So I started, I was in college, I was just trying to get a job to make some money. I was, so I, I, I, I got a job as a porter at a dealer and I was bored. Um, so I'd go to the service.
I saw the service advisors, they're super busy. I just went to him and I said, Hey, how can I help? How can I help?
So I'd run tickets back and forth. I do all sorts of things. And then one day one of them hands me a tickets like, I don't have time go tell this person that they need a water pump.
And I didn't have that much of a mechanical background. So I winged it and I went up to him and I said, Hey, Hey, your car. I knew that.
I knew that a water pump was meant to cool the engine. I knew that much. I knew the result of it.
And they said, Oh, so what exactly does it do? And I was like, well, it pumps water to cool the engine. Hey, they bought the water pump.
[Mike Allen] (17:22 - 17:39)
The way you sell that, Eric, and this is free advice. Um, it's gonna miss Jones. Question.
How much do you love your children? Because they ride in this car, right? Uh, because I mean, probably the water pump is like the fire extinguisher of your car and anyone in it with a broken water pump is probably going to burn to death.
[Eric Joern] (17:41 - 17:44)
So it's probably just get it done. Yeah. Unless you want your kid to die.
[Mike Allen] (17:45 - 17:51)
Or, or, you know, look, if they're, if they're a little shit bags, then, you know, we never had this conversation. Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (17:51 - 17:53)
We didn't see anything to let it go.
[Mike Allen] (17:53 - 18:01)
That's classic dealership service advising, right? You did that for five years. You were just, just tearing people, just making stuff up, turn people apart for five years.
[Eric Joern] (18:02 - 18:48)
No, it's, it's super. It did. Right.
We did any, anything for a buck, right? Honestly, the worst part was what the thing that pissed me off the most when I wrote service, aside from like, they didn't pay me fairly. Um, cause I was just a punk kid that was still in college, um, was the damn sales guys hawking all over our clients the whole time that they were there.
Nothing pissed me off more than I had a good, I had a great, great estimate to go, to go deliver, right? Hey, this is a, this is a good car still needs, needs a little bit of work, but at longterm it's going to last. Oh my God.
Oh my God. The salesman, Oh my God, ma'am, you can't go spend $3,000 on that car. You might as well go buy a new one.
[Mike Allen] (18:49 - 18:53)
Don't go solve a $3,000 problem with a $50,000 solution. Right.
[Eric Joern] (18:55 - 19:03)
Fortunately, cars, I don't think they were quite that expensive back then, but man, it's really crazy. You work for Toyota.
[Mike Allen] (19:03 - 19:05)
Uh, yeah, those are good. Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (19:05 - 20:45)
I got to live through the unintended acceleration period too. So I got, I got worked, but then we all, like we did a bunch of warranty work and it was super gravy at the time. And, and we did a ton of frame replacements.
Uh, and I had texts that would knock that out in like 10 hours and they paid like 40 or 45 hours. We sent out a couple texts to like Hertz lots and they do the shave the pedal and reflash the ECMs and they're booking just, it was just insane hours. That was, that felt, it was probably like ERC is now.
Yeah. Or was, was a few years back for us as a dealer. Uh, but yeah, that's a, man, that was a whole different, whole different world.
But it is interesting. Like I have a different perspective now when I hear, you know, I go listen to some of the presentations on, you know, how do you present an estimate? How do you write up everything?
What are the 300% rule? Um, and man, I knew, I knew what technician I would get an in-depth inspection for. I knew what technician would recommend anything and everything because of that, just who they are, that like the technician, every single car needed a power steering flush.
They needed every, every fluid change, a PC valve, PCC, PCVC. Yes. Well, it's been a while, man.
It's been a while. Uh, valve replacement. Um, I'm like, what, what, we're doing it by time and time and mileage now since when?
Um, it was just, it's just different. But Hey, I learned that actually taught me a skill. Like how do I adapt my presentation to something to a customer?
Right. Cause I don't want to scare a customer off and say your car is going to need all this. Otherwise it's going to burn and kill your kids.
No, you couldn't do that.
[Mike Allen] (20:45 - 20:46)
Literally just said that's how you sell stuff.
[Eric Joern] (20:46 - 20:53)
Nine. I already, I have a short term memory, very short term, like two minutes, two minutes ago.
[Mike Allen] (20:53 - 20:55)
How much do you love your children? That's how you sell.
[Eric Joern] (20:57 - 21:03)
Maybe that's how we got to approach selling tax. There we go. How much do you love your business?
[Mike Allen] (21:04 - 21:08)
I have some very hard hitting questions that are specific to your industry. Is that okay?
[Eric Joern] (21:09 - 21:10)
Yeah. Let's get into it.
[Mike Allen] (21:10 - 21:13)
Uh, first question. Why does QuickBooks online suck?
[Eric Joern] (21:13 - 21:15)
Cause into it's the devil.
[Mike Allen] (21:16 - 21:23)
Um, so the problem is, I have to click out of a half dozen ads every 30 seconds in the software I'm paying for.
[Eric Joern] (21:24 - 22:03)
And the problem is it's the best, the core operating system underneath all that crap that they do. And then like the service enhancements that they do that they charge you more money for. It works really well.
It's the leader in the marketplace has the most integrations. If you're a U S cause base company, company, you have to dance with the devil. I mean, we have to dance with the devil.
They literally advertise against us. Like they want to steal the work away from us and have their people that they hire and pay $17 an hour. Go do the work from the Philippines, from probably from not maybe from the Philippines or who knows?
I think they found them underground or something.
[Mike Allen] (22:03 - 22:03)
Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (22:04 - 22:06)
But uh, yeah, no, it's annoying.
[Mike Allen] (22:07 - 22:09)
It has been sunset, right? It's, it's gone.
[Eric Joern] (22:10 - 22:24)
Um, they, they don't support it. You can still operate on it though. I mean, it's still a desktop based application as long as you got a computer that has a software.
But if it goes kaput on you, you're kind of, you're, you're, you're in a tough spot.
[Mike Allen] (22:24 - 22:28)
Still got a windows PC, a windows XP computer and you can still do a desktop.
[Eric Joern] (22:29 - 22:32)
That'd be, that'd be awesome. That'd be, that'd be a lot of fun.
[Mike Allen] (22:33 - 22:40)
But yeah, do you have any clients that are running protractor in their, uh, their bookkeeping software as their accounting software?
[Eric Joern] (22:40 - 23:20)
Like they're using it to close books. We had a client, um, we tried to make it work working with them. The problem is like we can't a, we don't really want to tunnel into their PCs because that creates a, uh, an opportunity for us to get infiltrated.
Like I don't know what you're doing on your computer. So the only way we could help them is through a sandbox PC, which like, it's like, you know, if it takes you 20 minutes to pull something in your shop to make it work, it's not working. Yeah, it is too much friction.
Uh, but it's an interesting product. Like, like the people who love it, love it. Right.
[Mike Allen] (23:20 - 23:27)
Yeah, absolutely. Are there any other viable bookkeeping software programs out there right now?
[Eric Joern] (23:28 - 24:44)
People like zero. Um, do you got somebody who's just an early, early stage QuickBooks online? You're going to end up with roadblocks that are kind of annoying.
Um, anything else really gets too, um, too big for the need. Like you're, there's no point to go to like a sage or a net suite or something like that unless you're, you know, a massive enterprise. I mean, what was that crypto company that was running on QuickBooks that, that they went under and got, yeah, we don't have to dig into that.
But yeah, they were running on QuickBooks to like, they're like 250 or $300 million. Uh, it was probably not well, but yeah, we work with some big companies that run on QuickBooks. They have their whole new enterprise system.
Um, but you know, for a shop you're, you're stuck, right? We, we are stuck. The accountants are the worst in, in driving progress in industry.
Uh, actually I, I say that, right. And we also, and you guys turn around and say the same thing about shop owners, right? Cause we're, who's listening to this is probably in like what 10% sliver of the industry that cares about progression and doing something that, that might change and evolutionize the market.
[Mike Allen] (24:45 - 25:01)
Whereas, I mean, to be fair, if they're listening to the confession of a shop owner, they're probably top one 10th of 1%. Um, yeah. Our listeners are the very creme de la creme of the industry.
Everyone else listens to Lucas.
[Eric Joern] (25:01 - 25:42)
So, but I got, I got that from hanging out in his Facebook groups. I think honestly that's part of the reason why I decided to start a podcast. Uh, a specific one is man, I would see some posts in there.
I'm like, what the hell are you guys telling this poor soul? And then half the people say they'd say smart things like go talk to a CPA or yes, you do need a shop management system. You can't run a shop out of QuickBooks alone for invoicing.
I mean, I guess you can, but it's the dumbest advice ever, right?
[Mike Allen] (25:42 - 25:52)
Yeah. It's there. There are absolutely shops that do it because I've looked at shops for potential acquisitions that were doing invoicing out of QuickBooks.
I mean, what a mess.
[Eric Joern] (25:52 - 26:00)
Well, what's, what's tech metric costs if you want to start our package? Like 300 bucks a month, maybe four or five, it's called 500, right?
[Mike Allen] (26:00 - 26:07)
It depends on how many of their optional services you have, but it's not bad. And it pays for itself with the quickness.
[Eric Joern] (26:08 - 26:17)
Imagine how miserable it would be writing a repair order in QuickBooks. I mean, right. You do some billing out of your, for your podcaster, right?
Like you build an invoice manually out of your podcast.
[Mike Allen] (26:18 - 26:18)
Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (26:18 - 26:38)
Like imagine doing that and building out all these different services and entering the parts of the inventory. Yeah. Like, like, like that's what ran through my head.
It's like how, that's gotta be so miserable to do. Oh, but I'm saving $300 a month, 3,600 bucks a year. I'm like, you devalue your time that much.
You know what they're doing?
[Mike Allen] (26:38 - 26:46)
They're doing handwritten repair orders and then their wife sits at home at the desk at night putting the handwritten repair orders into QuickBooks. I bet.
[Eric Joern] (26:47 - 27:03)
One of my favorite things is when we hear somebody that's working, what they say, Oh, my wife does the books and she loves it. And if we can get their wife in a one-on-one conversation and say, how much do you love spending your nights and weekends doing that? The room gets pretty damn silent.
[Mike Allen] (27:04 - 27:04)
Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (27:04 - 27:21)
Some do. Hey, some do. Some like it.
Right. Hey, it's like cleaning and organizing in a way. And it's methodical.
They feel like they contribute. Right. But is that really like, like is that what they pursued?
Like did they want to go to college and learn accounting so they can do that? Probably not.
[Mike Allen] (27:25 - 27:37)
Um, so you hung out, you you're part of the, uh, Lucas's orbit, right? And that's how you got sucked in to doing a podcast. Tell me about how the podcast was born.
[Eric Joern] (27:40 - 28:14)
So I saw, I actually, I went to, I went to Lucas and I said, Hey, I see the different kind of orbits of podcasts that exist in that, in that circle. And I said, you don't have a finance based podcast. And I know Hunt's got his podcast and it's super great.
Yeah. And it speaks to an audience. And, and like, I honestly, I listen, I like, uh, the stuff that Hunt says, I'm like, dude, did he just, did he sit in one of my classes and listen to that and write that down and steal it?
Like, uh, you heard it here first.
[Mike Allen] (28:14 - 28:18)
Hunt Damaris steals his content.
[Eric Joern] (28:20 - 28:38)
That's exactly it. Exactly. There is another firm that I know a hundred percent would steal content from us because we'd come across their stuff and we're like, we just wrote that like three, three months ago.
And they did not change enough of it to not like, like literally both of both our pieces of content would show up on a Google search.
[Mike Allen] (28:39 - 28:40)
That's awesome. No.
[Eric Joern] (28:41 - 28:51)
Yeah. You know what? It's flattering.
It's very flattering. Um, I was, I got caught, um, I think it was Matt Fanslow's like, Oh, you're like a mini Hunt. I'm like, Oh, that's nice.
That makes me feel so good.
[Mike Allen] (28:53 - 28:55)
And I think I want to be just like Hunt.
[Eric Joern] (28:56 - 29:05)
And you know what's funny is I told him that once and I, he's like, he's like, aren't you older than me? And I told him how old I was. And he's like, Oh, Oh, you're, you're a lot younger than I thought.
[Mike Allen] (29:05 - 29:10)
You're just an old soul is what it is, right?
[Eric Joern] (29:10 - 29:16)
I guess I'm an old soul, I guess. Where were we going with that?
[Mike Allen] (29:16 - 29:32)
I think we were leaving vision last year when somebody called in a bomb threat to the airport and they emptied the terminal out onto the tarmac and ended up standing out on the tarmac with Hunt for an hour or two. And he's a funny dude and uh, he's fun to talk to.
[Eric Joern] (29:33 - 29:47)
I always look forward to vision. We end up, we always end up sitting at the bar talking shop, right? Cause it's not, it's really not that easy to go find other accountants at accounting conferences and we always end up finding each other somehow.
[Mike Allen] (29:47 - 30:10)
Well, and y'all have the shared experience of dealing with the bullshit that shop owners give you, you know, I'm sure that every small business gives bullshit to their client, uh, to their CPA, but it's probably some unique characters. Like I bet auto repair shop owners have a much higher instance of trying to hide drag race cars in the books and the expenses and justified as a marketing expense.
[Eric Joern] (30:11 - 31:18)
I, we definitely have more questions around it. Um, I'll be honest, like compared to construction contractors like and restaurant owners, are you kidding me? Like, especially, you know, certain types of restaurants, um, shop owners, the hardest part, honestly, and it's probably because it's the market we operate in is, is, you know, we're largely working with shops that are probably coached or with the coaching organization.
They want to do better. They want to run it like a business. Um, even though sometimes they struggle to get through that hoop of like, I'm a technician and I'd rather work on cars, but I know my coach has been beating it in my head that I need to run it like a business.
Um, but man, they're more interested in the financials. Um, they're probably a lot more picky around things. Um, sometimes to the detriment, but sometimes like, Hey, I'd rather have somebody that's picky and engaged that somebody that's disengaged.
And I like, we got to call them constantly to say, Hey dude, what was this? $50,000 transaction. And you're just like, I don't know.
Like, what do you mean? You don't know what you spent 50 grand on? Like, are you kidding?
[Mike Allen] (31:18 - 31:21)
I aspire to be at a place in life where I can not know what I spent 50 grand on.
[Eric Joern] (31:21 - 31:51)
I will tell you though, uh, I looked at my credit card statement this last month and uh, I found, I got, I got hit with some fraud. I was a bunch of Apple charges, but the, the nice part is when you only use credit cards aside from going into debt and paying a lot of interest if, unless you pay it off every month is they reverse the money like two days later instantly. So, so there's a, there's a plug for, for credit card usage.
If you can be somewhat fiscally responsible and pay it off.
[Mike Allen] (31:51 - 31:54)
If you've got responsibility and the cashflow to pay it off. Right.
[Eric Joern] (31:54 - 32:13)
But it was like $2,800 over a course of, uh, it was like a month and a half. Like they started out just like drip, like these little like 99 cent charges and I just blew my Amazon is hooked up to the same card. And, and you know, if you're married and you got an Amazon account, like life gets complicated really quick.
[Mike Allen] (32:14 - 32:52)
So I won't name a name. Uh, I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually listen to the show, but one of my buddies is in my 20 group with me and I remember distinctly it was probably five years ago we were in our monthly call and we were viewing financials and we're going over expenses and we're like, dude, the fuck is this? $50,000 one month, $40,000, $32,000, $48,000.
Oh, that's a, that's the Amazon bill. The fuck are you spending on? What are you getting from Amazon?
I don't know. My wife has the card and she just get, there's boxes every day. Lots of boxes every day.
[Eric Joern] (32:52 - 33:00)
How do you get that much though, man? I know it's death by a thousand cuts, but man, it, that's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff, man.
[Mike Allen] (33:00 - 33:06)
I don't know. We, we wrote his ass so hard to clean his books up that he actually, you know, made her start using the personal credit card for that.
[Eric Joern] (33:07 - 33:17)
I got, I got questions around like who's cutting up those boxes. I mean, I feel like, uh, it pisses me off more dealing with the damn boxes and then spending the money.
[Mike Allen] (33:17 - 34:16)
Like I, I, uh, I think there's an opportunity to store up your Amazon boxes and then retape them and then go to like my put rocks or whatever and the way I'm done and then like go to your buddy's house who has a wife who has a spending issue and just leave like 20 boxes on his front step one day. Uh, I don't know. It's kind of fucked up.
But, um, what is, uh, so you approached Lucas and said, Hey, I think there's an opportunity here. Um, and y'all started recording it. Now you've got five or six episodes in the books and you're going to launch again.
It's going to be on Spotify. It's going to be on Apple podcasts. It's gonna be on YouTube, wherever you consume your preferred media.
And it's under the hood CPA, right? You got it, man. Yeah, super.
Yeah. I want to hear one or two horror stories and you can anonymize whatever you got to do about just total bookkeeping slash tax shit shows that you've experienced in the automotive space.
[Eric Joern] (34:17 - 35:06)
Can we bring on Lucas? I mean, he's been really open, right. And with a lot of, you know, his struggles, he, uh, his stuff, um, his shop stuff's not bad as family business.
I mean, he's like, yeah, yeah, man, that's super unfortunate. And it's, it happens though. Like that stuff happens unfortunately way more than it should.
But man, the, Oh, the biggest masses, uh, man, we've got people that I'll tell you the most impactful. I'd rather talk about like impactful. Um, cause this happens frequently enough of, I started a shop, right.
And, and I might even be using, I'm doing some things right. Right. I got a bank account.
I have a shop management system. I actually have insurance.
[Mike Allen] (35:06 - 35:07)
Like that's great.
[Eric Joern] (35:07 - 35:52)
It's a step in the right direction and I'm collecting sales tax, but I didn't know I actually have to go and file a sales tax return and remit it. And then I'm like, you know, I think unfortunately what happens is they, they, they start getting to get to figure out that like something I was supposed to do something. And they're just kind of waiting for somebody to go to them and say, Hey, you need to be doing this.
You need to be doing this. And nobody ever does. Right.
Cause until you're on the radar, you're not on the radar. And then there are two or three years into it and they're 60, $80,000. I mean probably we probably pick up about five of those clients a year that are like that.
And they got, you know, a forever installment payment on on sales tax or payroll tax because they didn't, they didn't do that.
[Mike Allen] (35:54 - 37:48)
So my second shop it was had an incredible reputation in the community. Everyone loved them because they did exactly that except it was payroll tax. And it was like six or seven years before it caught up to them.
And I don't think it was intentional or malicious, but effectively what happened and no, I don't know all the details, but it came down to they owed so much that 100% of their profit was going to be taken by the government to pay back the tax debt. So they started paying the tax in real time as they were going. So they didn't accumulate any new debt, but they had no motivation to be profitable.
And so they were cheap and they were, they never tried to sell anybody anything. All they did was repair broken stuff and do the oil change that they came in for. So, you know, if your breaks are down to two millimeters, just, you know, call us back when, when you're ready.
You know, there was no, we should do this now. Um, and so their business had no value. Uh, and when I, when I toured it, uh, and looked at the books, I was like, I mean, your business is worth assets and they're like, they didn't even want to sell because anything that they collected in the sale was going to go straight to the government.
So they were just going to walk away and I had to like work a deal to get them to let me buy the business to buy the assets of the business. Yep. Um, and not, not three months after I executed on that deal.
Um, the like badged officer with a gun on her hip and a badge came in and was like, you're the proud new owner of a major tax liability. I was like, no, the fuck I am not. Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (37:48 - 37:49)
I bought assets.
[Mike Allen] (37:49 - 37:59)
Here's the deal. Here's my new EIN. I bought the phone number and the name and I'm, and she's like, pretty lucky.
I thought I had somebody that wasn't going to pay the bills.
[Eric Joern] (38:00 - 38:30)
So, um, yeah, it was, that sucks. Right. That they're willing to try to attack.
I know if like, obviously we advise against buying stock in most scenarios, right? Hey, if you're, there, there are some scenarios. PE likes to buy stock.
They buy, they buy equity and they don't buy assets often most of the time. But uh, man attaching somebody else's debt like that. On a, but I, if I had bought the shares of the business, it would have been my debt.
[Mike Allen] (38:30 - 38:31)
It would have been my debt. Right.
[Eric Joern] (38:32 - 38:55)
So, um, to the extent of your investment in that entity, you don't, uh, the trust fund, fortunately the trust fund responsibility doesn't move to you personally like it did to the person that was responsible for that originally. So that, that is saw a slight nuance of like, Hey, you can just shut the doors and walk away and that your liability is what you have invested in it. But man, that's still massive liability.
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (38:55 - 39:03)
Yeah, for sure. My dad always told me that if you're buying, you want to buy assets and if you're selling, you want to sell stock.
[Eric Joern] (39:03 - 39:04)
Yep.
[Mike Allen] (39:04 - 39:09)
Um, for the most part, obviously there are obviously situations where that varies, but.
[Eric Joern] (39:09 - 40:56)
And you can be more, you can be pretty strategic too. So, um, not as many deals in the automotive space that I, that, uh, I've encountered, but, um, I worked with a company and they were selling for 25 million and, um, he had a lot of IP, so intellectual properties and patents. So they need to buy the equity of the business.
Um, and there's a, um, there's a structure, a three, it's called a three, um, man, I'm going to nerd out here for a second, a three 38 age 10. So what gets me excited about that isn't like the law itself. It's the fact that we, I can save you a ton of money with it, but it's a three 38 age 10.
So it's a, it's a stock sale, but for tax purposes, you both jointly elect to treat it as an asset purchase. And we, uh, it was like a 99% Goodwill transaction, which for the most part, it's taxed the same as stock. So sellers still got their favorable tax treatment.
Buyer now can amortize that Goodwill over 15 years. So they get a tax benefit from it. If they buy the stock, they get no tax benefit.
When you buy stock, it's just stock, right? It's basis in the stock. You don't get immediate tax benefit for it.
So I went to him and I did a time value money calculator, again, nerding out, time value money. Well, it's a present value of that 15 year amortization of that Goodwill value at 25 million. It gets pretty material.
And I said, Hey man, let, since, since we came up with this tax strategy, they didn't even, they didn't even do it. I said like, let's ask for another two or $3 million in purchase price on it because they're going to get about a $6 million present value tax benefit out of it. Um, they actually accepted that and then COVID hit and the deal fell through.
[Mike Allen] (40:56 - 40:57)
Oh, fuck.
[Eric Joern] (40:58 - 40:58)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (40:58 - 41:05)
That sounds awesome, man. So what are the limits? What are the limiting factors to being able to do a deal like that?
Does it have to be a specifically big deal or something?
[Eric Joern] (41:06 - 43:00)
Um, so to do, to do, to do a three 38 H 10, it's just everybody needs to be able to agree to treat the structure the same. Um, there are particular, um, entity to entity circumstances that need to exist. But for the most part, like it's usually a, an entity buying an entity, um, to make that happen.
An individual couldn't buy the stock. So if I'm, you know, if Eric is buying, uh, your shop stock, I couldn't execute that transaction. But if I had an entity that was buying your stock, you can execute it.
Um, it's similar to like, we're talking people in the C corps again. Um, once they went to the, the qualified small business stock, um, you can get a hundred percent of the capital gains, um, excluded for selling small business stock shops qualify. They're pretty much slam dunk.
You just need to fit, fit some of the legal bounds of it. So it needs to be a new C corp opened after I think like 1996. Um, it's some random day in the nineties, uh, or, or dates in the nineties.
It's a, it's a weird cutoff. It's not even like a one, one. Um, but essentially you, so we did a financial intensive with the Institute a few months back.
And, um, I was talking to these guys and they're like, all my accountants ready to file the S corp election. I'm like, wait, like let's talk about what you guys want to do with this thing longterm. Because before you do that, we might be able to, you might like, we can still get your good tax treatment by doing some entity layering and some nonsense like that.
But then you can exit that business tax free one day. And I mean, you know, if you have high aspirations of, you know, a $10 million exit, I mean, we're talking, you know, 20% plus savings on that, 2 million plus dollars. I mean, that's, that's real money.
[Mike Allen] (43:00 - 43:01)
Yeah, it's huge.
[Eric Joern] (43:01 - 44:19)
Um, so we're working through with, uh, with, uh, guys, a, uh, I think it was an investment banker. Um, he's got, I think he's about on shop number 10 and we're real, uh, we're working with a company to reorganize all of his entities under a C corp structure, um, with some pretty significant complexities to, so there's a cap at $15 million. He's got, you know, sites at 60, maybe even a hundred million dollars of a, of a PE exit one day.
But, uh, there's ways to do some really super interesting things. Obviously you need scale, right? If you're a shop owner and you're pulling 30 K on a W two and maybe 50 K on a, you know, on your K one, there's not a whole lot we're going to do and you're in like a 10% tax bracket.
Like, are you going to really go through all the exercise to save a thousand dollars in taxes? I know thousand dollars might be meaningful, but you might spend 10 hours to go save that thousand dollars. And you really need to spend that in investing to grow your business.
Once you start making some really good money, like it gets pretty interesting. And your options are pretty wild and what you can do. But if you want to hang on to cash, if you just want to put cash in your pocket and go buy toys and spend it, you got to just pay tax.
[Mike Allen] (44:20 - 44:24)
Well, I think there is probably a happy medium somewhere in there.
[Eric Joern] (44:25 - 44:26)
There's some structuring you can do up front.
[Mike Allen] (44:28 - 44:40)
Yeah. Um, there are a lot of different coaching organizations out there. And I imagine that you have clients who are in a lot of different coaching organizations.
Which ones have the most damnable pain in the ass requirements for financial reporting?
[Eric Joern] (44:42 - 44:55)
Uh, probably the one. So we work really closely with the Institute, but their, their reporting requirements are pretty, pretty tight. Um, so probably, probably them.
Everybody else is a lot looser that we work with.
[Mike Allen] (44:56 - 44:59)
Breaking news. Cecil, Eric thinks that your requirements are a pain in the ass.
[Eric Joern] (45:00 - 45:45)
I don't, but it's a good pain in the ass, right? It's like, Hey, we need our financials submitted by the 20th. Otherwise the, the, the program cuts you off and you can't participate in that peer group reporting for the period.
So it's a good, like, it's a good purpose, right? Yeah. But you know, what really sucks is we work really hard to try to deliver that financial by the 15th at the very latest, but they won't, you know, if the shop owner doesn't respond to us and we can't get the answers, either we send them, we send them out a pile of crap and they can get the reporting done.
My guess is probably, you know, and this is, I'll call this head trash, right? So, uh, if, uh, the, the person who doesn't respond probably also doesn't put their numbers in the composite anyway, so it probably doesn't really matter.
[Mike Allen] (45:46 - 45:50)
So, um, our deadline is the 15th.
[Eric Joern] (45:50 - 45:50)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (45:50 - 46:07)
But I've always thought, man, what do I got to do to make it the 10th or the seven? What types of, um, processes do I need to put in place to close that timeline down so that I'm not waiting weeks to look at the final numbers?
[Eric Joern] (46:08 - 47:32)
Well, so, so like us as a firm, when we're looking at our books, I'm already, a, I'm peeking at the books all, all throughout the month, which means we want to do what we call live bookkeeping. And that's an, our, our goal is to move our firm from something called after the fact bookkeeping, meaning we're, we're doing most of the work after the month ends to live bookkeeping or we're doing the work as the, as the month moves along, which says, Hey, we're going to do, you know, 80% of the work before the end of the month. And that allows us to turn around the clothes as fast as possible.
Cause I know like me as a business owner, right? I want to probably by, by the end of the first week, I want to know solid, solidly, like this is what we did. And we got, you know, we got some complexities, right?
We got to calculate commissions that get turned in the end of the month and all those things that we can't really forecast throughout the month in our books. But man, I want to start seeing the trend. Like I want to anticipate like, Hey, let's crack the whip.
What? Right. We got to bring some more stuff in the door if we want to hit budget.
Right. We have, I mean we have a set budget we want to hit every month. We know what we want to spend every month and we've got to know when it's time to, you know, time to accelerate, decelerate, you know, cramp, clamp down on things.
And that's what we ultimately want to provide our clients. So that's our, our longterm goal is to move to what we call live bookkeeping service. So we're working on it live throughout the month.
[Mike Allen] (47:33 - 47:59)
What is if you could give like make one request or wave the magic wand and have one behavior change from your clients? These are not problem clients. These are just your rank and file clients.
Like my guy, he's like, look man, don't make a big fucking purchase until you've talked to me first. Just call me and we'll talk for three minutes. Uh, what's the one thing that you wish your clients would do to be a better client to you as a CPA?
[Eric Joern] (48:03 - 49:32)
I would say if I want to be selfish and talk about like what would make our firm better is if everybody uses like the same same bank or the same set of banks. One of the biggest complexities we deal with is is getting access to the data that we need to do our job. And you know, God, I want to support your local credit union, your local bank and everything like that.
But their platforms suck and then they have terrible MFA setups. They can't create delegate access. Like I'd rather my team have read only access.
I don't want to use your login and bug you to get a code to get into the bank to get the data we need to do the job. I think ultimately if we're doing our job more efficiently, we're going to provide a better product to our clients. But what's more impactful to our clients is like, Hey, come talk to us before you can go make a big decision.
I mean, you know, fortunately we've, uh, we converted to, um, we do quarterly strategy sessions with all of our clients. So meaning we actually go out and we say, Hey, here's a link, come like book a call with us and let's talk through, like let's go through your financials. Let's go through your tax projection.
Let's talk about what you got going on, what's at top of mind, et cetera, about your business. We're going to actually bring some topics to the meeting as well. Um, which gives them the forum to bring up like, Hey, this is what I'm thinking about doing ahead of time.
That's been really helpful for us to get ahead of that. Um, but if we, cause if we purely relied on clients to call us before they make a decision, you know, it's very reactionary.
[Mike Allen] (49:33 - 50:43)
Um, so as much as we love it, we're bumping up against some, some time deadlines here and I got two more questions I want to ask. Um, you said that you do quarterly planning sessions with your clients. Um, one of my goals, and this is something that my father used to do that I always thought was, was a really wise practice that I'm still not setting into place.
But, um, he would have a quarterly board of advisors meeting and it was his CPA, his financial advisor, his attorney, his insurance guy, and then the facilitator of his 20 group. Uh, and the five of them would all be on a call and they would all have all of his information laid out. We talk about the health of the business, the health of his personal finances, longterm plans, you know, goals, aspirations, that kind of thing.
And because so often I'm talking to a CPA and he's like, well, you need to talk to your financial advisor and vice versa. Or you need to talk to your insurance guy or whatever it might be. Is it realistic to expect a group of those four or five people to all have rapport and work together at the same time for one person's goal if they're not worth a hundred million dollars or something crazy?
[Eric Joern] (50:44 - 51:57)
You know, we tried. Um, so, so we got, we got many arms of that. So we, we have the payroll company, we do the books, the tax work, the tax planning.
We have a partner that's a financial planner, runs a financial planning operation. They also do, he's a certified exit planner, does all that. Uh, we started a Kaizen risk management entity, which was a pay-as-you-go workman's comp, um, plus, um, um, property and casualty insurance provider as well.
Uh, that one, that one we found was really hard to start a scratch agency. So we shut the doors on that, but we really wanted to be able to provide that whole back office team. Um, we had a hand, we had, uh, uh, some larger law firms that we could use.
The hard part is right. With the national reach, you deal with national law. You need to work with either a big firm that can play in every state or have some relationships with firms and pockets.
Uh, that's usually the biggest issue. But man, when I work with our partner on the financial planning side of things, there's so much more harmony. Um, but Hey, if you can, at least you need to get your CPA and your financial planner in the room.
If you can get your attorney in there too. Great.
[Mike Allen] (51:57 - 52:02)
Um, but it's an expensive couple of hours, right? Because they're all billing for the time, but yeah, yeah.
[Eric Joern] (52:02 - 52:10)
You better come prepared, right? If you are going to do that, you should probably make sure that like you don't get everybody on a call and say, okay, so everybody tell me what's up. Right.
[Mike Allen] (52:10 - 52:10)
Yeah.
[Eric Joern] (52:10 - 52:54)
No meeting should ever go like that. Right. Every meeting meeting should have a purpose and agenda to it.
But um, man, having that all, all work together is, is, I mean it is a game changer. I mean, we were on a call with, uh, with a client of ours in the last few weeks and they had their, their financial planning team on there too. And even though it wasn't our internal team, like we built a good rapport and we were able to do a lot offline to work together to really move them forward instead of like this whole, like everybody's pointing fingers at each other thing that normally is what happens.
Um, so having everybody on the same page, man, it, it pays, it pays some dividends in your, I mean, your dad did some really smart things by doing that.
[Mike Allen] (52:54 - 53:05)
Yeah, for sure. He's, he, I mean, there's no doubt that he's a super smart guy and all the drugs in college made me a little bit dumber. So dumb and smart and dumber, whatever.
[Eric Joern] (53:05 - 53:11)
Maybe more creative is what they tell you, right? When you're doing the drugs, you're going to find some little stuff.
[Mike Allen] (53:11 - 53:35)
If you are a listener and you have enjoyed this conversation and you thought that Eric sounds like a pretty smart dude and he's probably, uh, figured out what the fuck's going on better than Joe, the CPA down the street from you who you're the only mechanic that he, uh, or a mechanic shop that he's ever worked with. Um, and they want to get in touch with you or with Kaizen. Uh, how, what is the best way for them to do that?
[Eric Joern] (53:35 - 53:55)
Yeah. Our website by far, uh, just www.kaizencpas.com. K-A-I-Z-E-N.
You got it. K-A-I-Z-E-N-C-P-A-S. Here you go.
I'll give you a little, if you're, if you're watching a little visual, uh, there you go. Uh, it was upside down.
[Mike Allen] (53:55 - 54:04)
It was upside down, sir. That was on purpose. That hat, that exact hat is on the dashboard of my pickup truck.
That's one of my regular everyday hats.
[Eric Joern] (54:04 - 54:52)
I love it. I appreciate that. Um, we have a ton of stuff on our website.
Like if you want, if you don't want to have a sales conversation, right? A lot of us are not comfortable. You can probably get 80% of what you need to know before you even pick up the phone from our website.
We have deep dive into pricing, our process, everything that you need to know about like what it's like to work with us and what you should know. But we also put a ton of tools and resources on the page. So aside from podcasts, we have a shop valuation tool.
Um, I hope everybody's updating their labor costs per hour inside of their shop management system on a regular basis. If you're you have a quasi accurate gross profit reporting in your hotel, cause you're probably using that to pay your commissions, right? From your shop management system.
Cause you've got to get payroll in super quick, but we have a calculator.
[Mike Allen] (54:53 - 54:54)
You guys are paying your techs.
[Eric Joern] (54:54 - 55:18)
I know it's smart. We have a calc pizza parties. We have a calculator on our website to calculate that as well.
Um, and a few other tools. So, uh, even if you don't want to have a sales conversation, you don't want to reach out and you just want to get some free value. Go to our website.
It's a good place to hang out. It's going to be like the, the, um, the lounge at the, at the ASDA conference.
[Mike Allen] (55:18 - 55:20)
There you go.
[Eric Joern] (55:20 - 55:22)
You can even drink bourbon while on the website.
[Mike Allen] (55:23 - 55:36)
Kaizen CPAs.com CPAS. So it's plural Kaizen CPAs.com. There's a shop profit leak diagnostic tool.
Um, I'll tell you what the biggest shop profit leak is in my company.
[Eric Joern] (55:38 - 55:38)
Yeah.
[Mike Allen] (55:40 - 55:53)
All right. Eric, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with us. I can't wait to listen to your podcast.
Um, and I look forward to being on it as well. I think, have we already sat down and recorded? We did record.
[Eric Joern] (55:53 - 56:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We already recorded, but I'm going to bring you back on because like, this is a great conversation. I think anybody who listened to this probably got good value and maybe they got lost.
[Mike Allen] (56:03 - 56:08)
They got good value from your part. They could, I, they could isolate the audio on my line and just listen to you and be great.
[Eric Joern] (56:08 - 56:18)
But you ask good questions. You ask good questions. You ask hard questions.
And you, you got me caught at least once or twice in this podcast on the good thing. So I, I love that.
[Mike Allen] (56:18 - 56:25)
I don't want it to be easy. All right, dude. I'll talk to you soon.
I'll say, Hey, I'll see you at ASTA expo and the hospitality suite.
[Eric Joern] (56:26 - 56:28)
Love it. We'll see you there. See you.