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This podcast is dedicated to changing the automotive industry for the better, one conversation at a time.
Whether you're a technician, vendor, business owner, or car enthusiast, we hope to inspire you to improve for your customers, your careers, your businesses, and your families.
Rich Poisso [00:00:00]:
You.
David Roman [00:00:03]:
I almost got it.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:07]:
What's up?
Rich Poisso [00:00:08]:
What's going on?
Lucas Underwood [00:00:09]:
Come up close to the mic.
David Roman [00:00:12]:
Yeah, you got to be close on the mic.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:14]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:00:14]:
If you're not smelling that pop filter.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:17]:
It'S not yeah, if you don't smell the last dude's breath. There you go.
David Roman [00:00:25]:
Exactly what Lucas does. He writes his nose all let me.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:28]:
Tell you about my experience in Chicago. Okay?
Rich Poisso [00:00:34]:
Okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:35]:
The executive director tricia of this show, and I had a meeting at ICAR. And so we go up there, and I think we both knew we were supposed to have a meeting in north Chicago, somewhere like northwest Chicago, but I wanted to go see you 505 downtown, and she wanted to go to a baseball game.
David Roman [00:00:58]:
Now, I should have which park did you go to?
Lucas Underwood [00:01:02]:
Wrigleyfield.
David Roman [00:01:03]:
Okay. North part.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:05]:
Well, this was way north, like, 15 or 20 minutes from ICAR. And so, long story short, I guess I didn't connect the fact that if she's going to a baseball game, there's going to be people at the baseball game, and if there's people at the baseball game, there's traffic at the baseball game.
Rich Poisso [00:01:26]:
Oh, yeah.
David Roman [00:01:27]:
You were driving.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:28]:
Oh, yeah.
David Roman [00:01:29]:
You weren't taking the Metro?
Lucas Underwood [00:01:30]:
No. And so I was downtown, and she sends me a message, and she says, hey, we're supposed to be at dinner at, like, 530. And I was like, Where? She said, Right next to ICAR. And I said, Yo, it's 04:00.
Rich Poisso [00:01:48]:
That's a problem.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:49]:
I don't think we're going to make it, dude. I rolled in and we still beat everybody else there.
Rich Poisso [00:01:53]:
Oh, my God.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:54]:
Swear to God.
David Roman [00:01:54]:
Now you're driving like an ahole, though, right?
Lucas Underwood [00:01:57]:
When we got there, when we got there, her fingernails were like funny colors.
David Roman [00:02:01]:
Where she's like, I was getting sick driving with him.
Rich Poisso [00:02:04]:
It's every day on the way to work. Every day on the way to work. People GTI. It's the whole street. It's GTA. Whatever.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:12]:
That's how they like one really weird thing about Chicago is the narrow lanes in some spots.
Rich Poisso [00:02:20]:
Oh, yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:21]:
That's like the weirdest thing to me. It's like, why are the lanes so narrow?
Rich Poisso [00:02:24]:
You'll go from, like, two cars, and then it'll look like you can barely fit one, and then it's back to two again. It's terrible. And then they'll use the part, the shoulder where people are supposed to park.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:32]:
Yeah.
Rich Poisso [00:02:33]:
They'll hurry up and get in that to try to see if they can beat, like, a line of cars and then come back out in that lane at the end, and sometimes they hit people.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:40]:
Yeah.
Rich Poisso [00:02:40]:
It's just how it is.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:41]:
And the cars, if they're tour all two pieces yeah.
Rich Poisso [00:02:44]:
They are a mess, dude. They pull up to the light. There's like two spots, and this side of cars are supposed to be parking on if they want to. And they'll hurry up and they'll come up to the light, and then it's like three cars are ready to drag race all at the same time to see if this car on the side can hurry up and get out in front before he makes it to the other side.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:00]:
It's insane. I mean, it really is insane. It's rough. I enjoy it. I enjoy the adrenaline rush. It was a rental car, so I need to bump and grind a little bit. It doesn't hurt my feelings at all.
Rich Poisso [00:03:13]:
They don't care.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:15]:
Like, I went up and I was telling the dude, I was like, hey, this one's got a scratch. He said, bro, you find a car in this lot that does not have a scratch on it.
Rich Poisso [00:03:25]:
I returned a dodge charger to the Chicago enterprise. One of the ones I rented one for a month and I was here from military leave and I rented it for a month while I was here, and I ripped the whole front bumper, the bottom portion off on a parking, like one of those stumps. And when I went to back up, it ripped the bottom portion off. It was just hanging there. I drove it around for like a couple of weeks that way. I never even tried to fix it. I said, the hell with it, right? And I pulled up at enterprise and I was like, hey, man. He's like, don't even worry about it, man.
Rich Poisso [00:03:57]:
This is what zip ties are for. You're good, man. We ain't worried about that car. It'll go to auction.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:04]:
That's crazy, dude.
David Roman [00:04:06]:
Now where is your that was the worst chicago story I've ever heard in my you there.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:12]:
The food is really good up there.
David Roman [00:04:13]:
The food is awesome.
Rich Poisso [00:04:14]:
You want to know some juicy chicago stories in the future? Kankake, illinois, all the way down to kankake. Kankake is one of the most hostile areas rated and there's things I don't want to say because it's obviously going to get put on air sometime, right. So there are certain keywords I don't want to use. But I tell you some stories from back when I was a kid that people hear me tell it and they're like, wow, you were that kind of kid. I was just hanging around with the wrong people. It's not who I was, though.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:45]:
All right.
Rich Poisso [00:04:45]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:47]:
And I guess I should introduce our guest, rich.
David Roman [00:04:52]:
Thanks.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:52]:
Paso ford boss me.
David Roman [00:04:55]:
He's been practicing this whole time.
Rich Poisso [00:04:56]:
That's good. He's perfect.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:58]:
Good. There's isaac rodell, right? You know who isaac is?
Rich Poisso [00:05:04]:
I don't know, but he's rubbing his so I'm okay with that.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:07]:
Yeah, he's like the most brilliant EV trainer ever. Really cool guy. If you ever get a chance to.
David Roman [00:05:12]:
Meet, the windows are distracting you. They didn't get to the first, like, on the first episode, but I know, but here towards the end of the day, is it the headache?
Lucas Underwood [00:05:24]:
It might be the headache.
Rich Poisso [00:05:25]:
It is. Or maybe he's just more relaxed now.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:28]:
He's not. So yeah, I know what this episode we're going to have a good time with this episode, we're going to talk smack.
David Roman [00:05:34]:
If it's not a good time, I'm going to be a little upset because I'm getting a little tired.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:38]:
Bro, you are always upset. I mean, like, if you weren't upset, I would genuinely be worried.
David Roman [00:05:47]:
What do you have for breakfast?
Lucas Underwood [00:05:49]:
A cookie.
David Roman [00:05:50]:
That's all you've eaten today?
Lucas Underwood [00:05:52]:
Yes, that's all I've eaten today. That's what I was trying to tell you. I've had a cookie today.
David Roman [00:05:57]:
Okay, I'm sorry.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:59]:
It's okay. We do this all the time. We're good.
David Roman [00:06:03]:
Do you? You don't seem like you do.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:06]:
I do the keto shakes in the morning. And lunchtime.
David Roman [00:06:09]:
And lunch.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:10]:
So those are only 250 calories apiece.
David Roman [00:06:14]:
Okay, that's not bad. Yeah, you need you some protein though, you do.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:19]:
I'll eat flies.
Rich Poisso [00:06:20]:
So the keto shakes have some protein in it, but they also have like beta hydroxybutyrate and stuff in there as well. So there's other sources of fuel other than just that your body fuel. And I love it. I lost my first little over 100 pounds on it. Started my own group. Then I kind of fell by the wayside when COVID hit. Then about four weeks ago, five weeks ago, I started doing it again. I started losing like my face started getting skinnier, my clothes started fitting better.
Lucas Underwood [00:06:46]:
I noticed that.
Rich Poisso [00:06:47]:
Yeah. And then I'm like, okay, I've lost like 28 pounds now. Maybe I just need to stay on it. And then I've even been selective since we've been here at the event. I'll eat, don't get me wrong, but I'm picking and choosing the best I can to keep the sugar down as much as possible and I still feel great even being here.
David Roman [00:07:04]:
The problem with keto is the sustainability.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:11]:
Here's the thing though, is that I don't know if it's the fact that my dad's got diabetes and maybe I've got issues there. My blood sugar looks good though. Blood sugar did look good, but I feel better when I eat keto. Yeah, me too. And for me, the feel better is worth. That makes it sustainable. But then we go do stuff like this and we go somewhere that has crack rolls.
Rich Poisso [00:07:39]:
Here's my question to you though, because of the time I did and the amount of weight I've lost already, what makes it not sustainable? Nobody can actually 100% answer that question. A lot of the foods that we're eating are already natural foods that we have Add and we continue.
David Roman [00:07:54]:
If you are measuring your ketone level no. Okay, then that's what I'm saying. If you're measuring your ketone levels, you will see how little it takes for you to fall out of ketosis.
Rich Poisso [00:08:08]:
Oh, sure.
David Roman [00:08:08]:
And if you fall out of ketosis, then you're not really doing anything. All you're doing is cutting out.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:13]:
That's not true though, because if you read what was it? The sugar lie or any of those where they talk about the red carbs processed stuff. Dude, if I eat carbs. I puff up, I swell up, my.
Rich Poisso [00:08:28]:
Joints start to hurt.
David Roman [00:08:29]:
Yeah, absolutely. But I'm saying, though, to fall out of ketosis means that your body is no longer using ketones as fuel, then all you're going to end up doing is gaining weight because you're packing in an immense amount of calories with a very small amount of food. And I like to eat a lot of food.
Rich Poisso [00:08:58]:
I guess it comes back to the person like you're talking about. A lot of that has to do with discipline in general. And me, I loved it so much that I did almost an entire year and then still had my cholesterol and everything checked on. Nothing but organs, meat, fat, bacon, beef, whatever. And I had only green supplement drinks. I didn't actually go eat vegetables or anything. Almost an entire year. When I got my blood panels and stuff done and the doctor was like, how do you feel? And I said, I feel great.
Rich Poisso [00:09:29]:
She said your LDL looks amazing. Your HDL is awesome. Your triglycerides are completely in check. I don't know how you're doing this.
David Roman [00:09:36]:
But that sounds more like the carnivore diet.
Rich Poisso [00:09:38]:
It doesn't sound like but they incorporate the two together.
David Roman [00:09:42]:
Yeah, but keto see, a lot of people conflate, and that's what ends up causing some confusion. Keto is high fat and then medium to low protein and almost no carbs. Your green drink is fine if it's a low carb green drink.
Rich Poisso [00:10:06]:
Where do you get that info, though? Because there's multiple different doctors that teach it multiple different ways and influencers, and it's not if you went back to the way that it was done way back when. They're talking about the Inuit and stuff, being in natural ketosis all the time because they didn't have everything else. It's different than what we do it today, and there's so many different variations of it.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:28]:
Yeah, like a dirty like, you look at Jason Whitrock. Jason Whitrock teaches one type of keto where it's extremely aggressive. That's the one that got me into know I told you I flew back with a urologist from that, and he laid it out perfectly. He's like, man. He's like, that's where your kidney stone came from. He's like, if you eat that way and you set yourself up, he said, you're asking for kidney stones. And he said, So you have to do something very aggressive to keep from getting kidney stones. That's what kicked me in a whole different direction.
David Roman [00:11:01]:
How aggressive was your originally?
Lucas Underwood [00:11:04]:
It was super aggressive. I was counting carbs, counting calories, and I would not go over five carbs a day, five net carbs a day and had no sugar, alcohols, no nothing. And so I ended up like, I felt great. I had tons of energy.
David Roman [00:11:19]:
Yeah, you feel amazing if you keep it, especially like, I was 15 net carbs would be my max, but I was typically around five. Like you're saying, well, and so what? I still count calories, you still keep on completely different.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:34]:
Where I screwed up is that I went and I was lifting one night and we had this, like a timeshare condo, and the whole family and everybody was there. And I would give myself, like, a carb day, and I would eat carbs, and it kept getting worse and worse. I started with like, I would have one meal and then it would be like, I would have a day, and then it would be a weekend and then it had slipped a little bit. Well, the first time that I ever went balls to the wall with carbs, we get pizza and we eat the pizza, and I decided I'm going to work out and work this off. So I really lifted heavy. And when I got back to the room, I was hot. I was burning up. And so there was a Wild Cherry Pepsi in the fridge, and I just opened it, the whole two liter, right? And so I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like, hey, Alex.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:26]:
She's like, what? I'm like, I don't feel so good. And she's like, whatever. And she goes back to sleep, and a few minutes later I'm like, hey, I don't think this is a normal not feel good. And she's like, okay, whatever. And she's very grouchy when you wake up. And so I'm like, all right, this is just belly pain. I'm going to go to the toilet. And so I get up and I go to the toilet, and I'm trying to be quiet and go to the front bathroom.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:53]:
And I'll never forget this, dude, because it's coming out of both ends at this point. And I'm like, it is miserable. And I'm like, this is not normal. This is about food poisoning or something. So I'm telling the urologist about this, and he's just dying, right? And I'm like, dude, I think I'm going to die. I really think I might die. I think this might be the end of my life. This might be it.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:16]:
And he's just, like, laughing. This is the funniest shit ever. So I go back in there and I'm like, writhing in pain, going in and out of consciousness, laying in the floor, and I'm like, I feel like I'm going to die, dude. And my wife's like, would you either shut up or go to the hospital? I'm like, okay, fine. And so I end up at the hospital. I go in, take my wallet, and I throw it at the person behind the counter. And she's like, I just need your information. I'm like, I don't want to talk.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:42]:
Just take my wallet. I go back, and the first thing I said to the nurse or whatever in there is like, I don't want any pain pills or anything like that. It's like, dude, I know you're in pain. Like, I can tell you're in pain. I'm not thinking that tell me what's going on. And I'm like, I don't know. If I knew, I wouldn't be here. And so they go back and they sit me down on the hospital bed.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:02]:
When I sit down, the pain goes away. I get up and I'm walking out the door, and the doctor, she's walking in and I'm walking out, and she puts her hand on my chest, and she pushes me right back. You're not going anywhere. And I said, I feel better now. I'm fine. And she said, no, you're not. I said, I'm completely fine. Everything is good.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:21]:
And she holds out this jug, and she says, Pee in this. And I said, but I'm fine. I'm going to go. And she said, no, you've got a kidney stone. And it's probably a bad one from the way that you're expressing yourself. And so, sure enough, kind of had a kidney stone. They wouldn't do an X ray and everything else. And that urologist was like, man, they've.
David Roman [00:14:42]:
Got a way to break those up now, don't they?
Lucas Underwood [00:14:44]:
Oh, he said, don't do that.
David Roman [00:14:46]:
Ten X.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:47]:
He said, sound waves. He said, man. He said, you want to talk about the worst pain of your life? He said, if they ever have to go in and get one out, he said, you can. Just like he said, it is so.
David Roman [00:14:57]:
You have to pass it.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:58]:
He said, it is there a new.
David Roman [00:14:59]:
Way to break it up once their forms?
Lucas Underwood [00:15:00]:
I have no idea. Well, that's what he tells me is he said oh, his exact words where he said, that's where you fucked up. And I said, what do you mean? He said, you drank that two liter Pepsi. And he said it caused it to break loose. He said the acid in the Pepsi broke it off. And he said, there's probably more floating around in there. And then he's like, hey, do you get these almost like a pulsation or something or like a spasm near your kidney? Yeah. He's like, yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:26]:
You got more kidney stones.
David Roman [00:15:29]:
Keto is not going to cause that.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:30]:
Oh, yeah, he said it absolutely will cause it. He says probably one of the number.
David Roman [00:15:33]:
One causes what is it? Within the keto diet, because you said fat.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:38]:
He said that it causes a certain type of acid to build up in your urine when you're on keto. He said, keto is extremely hard on your kidneys.
David Roman [00:15:50]:
It is diuretic, yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:51]:
And he said, so the problem is, he said, you end up but you.
David Roman [00:15:55]:
Have to stay hydrated.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:59]:
If you're going to do it, you need to do that. But he said if you do keto, he said, sooner or later you will get kidney stones.
Rich Poisso [00:16:07]:
I did it for a long time, and I felt great on it, and I stayed hydrated. I drank all the time, though.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:12]:
What made you stop?
Rich Poisso [00:16:15]:
I moved. Lifestyle changed and COVID and then trying to figure out stresses at the shop. And stuff and then finally one day I was like I didn't prepare for today. I was on like a three or four day fast and I've been up to seven days. Dr. Jason Fung and I read his book and stuff and Dr. Eric Westman and the Power of Fasting. And I felt amazing.
Rich Poisso [00:16:39]:
Well, it was a day where I was extremely stressed. I moved and jobs and everything else and I had no food around me to fall back on. I was not prepared and I went out and just started eating pizza and right after that COVID and I was like, life happened. Life happened.
David Roman [00:16:55]:
See, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. It's unsustainable because you have to be very careful. Like what's a quick go to? It's like eggs.
Rich Poisso [00:17:05]:
Yeah, that's a quick go. And I wasn't prepared.
David Roman [00:17:07]:
Yeah, and you're like sometimes you just want flipping pizza. You just want pizza.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:12]:
Did you notice that the weight went back on in a different way?
Rich Poisso [00:17:17]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:17:18]:
You're not that old. You look like a baby. How old are you?
Rich Poisso [00:17:21]:
37.
David Roman [00:17:22]:
Yeah. See, both of you look like babies.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:26]:
What happened to you?
David Roman [00:17:28]:
Life a shop ownership. He'll get there. Hey, this was what? In about six years. You look in the mirror and you're going to see salt and pepper wrinkles in a disdain for.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:45]:
Am going to.
David Roman [00:17:46]:
I didn't get the answer. By the way.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:48]:
I'm going to be very careful because I don't want it to turn into an interview because david hates interviews and dude will like pitch the biggest fit of anybody ever seen and if I don't give him opportunity to it.
David Roman [00:18:01]:
Did you have a uric acid stone?
Lucas Underwood [00:18:03]:
Yes.
David Roman [00:18:04]:
Is that what it was?
Lucas Underwood [00:18:05]:
If I don't give him opportunities to derail the conversation and turn this into like 5000 different topics instead of hey, real quick.
David Roman [00:18:13]:
So the one we did this morning, he's like yeah, I didn't get to finish my story.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:20]:
David hates stories but no stories are good.
Rich Poisso [00:18:24]:
Which one?
David Roman [00:18:26]:
We did podcast, but when we were.
Rich Poisso [00:18:30]:
Up there talking, he found a stopping point. And that lady came up to me afterwards, I don't remember what was her name? Was that Cecil's wife or who's the lady that was standing at the end of where we were speaking at?
Lucas Underwood [00:18:45]:
I couldn't remember.
Rich Poisso [00:18:45]:
She said what happened? What's the end of the story?
Lucas Underwood [00:18:48]:
And I said have to go watch the video.
Rich Poisso [00:18:51]:
I said Lucas found a stopping point because he needed to stay on track and I get it and I said, here it is. And she was like oh my God, I can't believe all that know, it was crazy.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:02]:
Well, so David here hates stories and so just saying that I'm just pointing this out.
David Roman [00:19:08]:
I'm just saying that dude couldn't finish the story because we kept jumping off of different.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:14]:
If he derails you, you can't ignore him and just keep talking. But you've got a super duper unique, like one in a million story. You've been through, excuse my language, earmuffs kids, you've been through some fucking shit.
Rich Poisso [00:19:30]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:31]:
Tell us a little bit about it, and then we'll jump in and we'll talk about the shop stuff a little bit.
Rich Poisso [00:19:36]:
But I'll fast forward through some of it. Just in a.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:40]:
I want you at least tell the hard stuff, because there's a lot of people out there who will resonate with that and who will connect with that, and they'll say, I didn't know that. And here I am. I've been telling myself, I can't, and you can. And there's people who have been through way worse than what I've been through, and they're okay.
Rich Poisso [00:20:01]:
Yeah. So my mother, she got pregnant with us or with me when she was 18, and then my sister when she was 19. What ended up happening is my grandparents really treated their kids poorly growing up. Back in the day, it was everybody got a whooping for doing something wrong. You got grounded. They weren't afraid to put their hands on their kids back then, and all their kids got that treatment. You did what you were told when you were told to do it. So as generations change and our grandparents and parents learn the world's changing, they change the way they do things, too.
Rich Poisso [00:20:34]:
So Grandpa thought, well, we could just adopt him from our daughter. Who does that? Who tries to take their grandson away from she was doing all right with me. They got custody of it, of me. There's enough money. Back in the day, you could make a court system pretty much do anything like that. And they had enough money, so they got custody of me. And she went on about her life, and they passed away. Ended up getting custody of my sister before they passed away as well, because now, this time, my mother was on drugs.
Rich Poisso [00:21:06]:
My uncle and an aunt by marriage ended up getting custody of us because they were the only brother and sister that could take care and make it a full family with, like, a mom, a dad, the kids, stable jobs, both of them. My uncle tried to get us, but he was a truck driver. And they're like, what are you going to provide for children while you're on the road all the time? You don't have a wife or anything. So that was a shot that couldn't happen. So I ended up seeing, growing up, a lot of different people coming in and out of the you know, here I am living off Devon and Western in Chicago, three story apartment building, and eventually my uncle leaves my mom. I was so young at the time, I was calling her mom. I didn't know any different, right? And I had seen pictures of me with another woman, an older woman, which was my grandmother, and another woman, which was my mother. But I never put two and two together.
Rich Poisso [00:22:08]:
I always felt like I was in the wrong family, right? This didn't belong to me in my life or whatever. This was not my mother. But that's all I knew, so I kept calling her mom. And these other two ladies that I had seen in these pictures were indeed my mother and my grandmother. I just never put the connection together completely. So in and out of this. She my uncle leaves, leaves us with her. I'm going to Daniel Boone Elementary School in Chicago.
Rich Poisso [00:22:37]:
And I think it's like the Rogers Park area is what they call it. And about the 6th grade, I get pulled out of school. She's like, dating, potentially going to end up marrying the right hand man of, like, an Irish Mafia drug lord in Chicago. And this man is the one that called in the shots for the drug ring. When this boss man, which was her grandfather, would tell people what to do, where to go, where the money needed to be delivered or picked up or drugs, this man would enforce it and make it done. Well, he's now with my aunt.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:14]:
Oh, man.
Rich Poisso [00:23:14]:
And this happened for years. My aunt's 27, 28 years old, and this guy's like 65, 66 years old when they got together. He ends up getting her pregnant with a couple of kids. I'm living this life of seeing these drugs and stuff in and out and different people my whole life, like, kind of growing up in and out. I don't know who these people are. And they're storing this large amount of cocaine for this operation in our apartment.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:43]:
Holy crap.
Rich Poisso [00:23:44]:
And then the 6th grade, they pull me out. They make up some fictitious story. Like my birth father came and took me to another state. The school never followed up to figure out why we can't transfer his records to the next school or any of that stuff. And they started making me part of this. You get a garage door opener, and then you would go down these random alleyways, and you would push the trigger on the garage door to open the garages. And whatever one opened, you would go in that garage and close it behind you. And you'd search through the garage and find the kilo or two kilos of cocaine, and then you'd transport it back.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:16]:
Holy crap.
Rich Poisso [00:24:17]:
And there was like large amounts of cash involved and guns and stuff. And we had, like a big 30 some gallon garbage can that was in this room with a padlock on it in our apartment that was full of cocaine all the time. Kilos upon kilos upon kilo. I mean, like 17, 1819 kilos, 20 kilos, right? This was millions of dollars worth of stuff at the time. There's a newspaper article. It's 13 year old boy. I always find it by 13 year old boy turns in parent. Chicago, 1999.
Rich Poisso [00:24:45]:
That's what I type in. Google it's long, but the article comes up and then they said something about 17 pounds. It wasn't 17 pounds. It was like 17 kilos. That was worth $4.5 million.
David Roman [00:24:57]:
You were the 13 year old.
Rich Poisso [00:24:59]:
I was a 13 year old.
David Roman [00:25:00]:
You turned in there, you thought your parents but it was your aunt.
Rich Poisso [00:25:04]:
I was getting a friend. I did. I was getting abused, and I couldn't figure out why I was the only kid out of all the kids that were there that would get abused. I mean, there were days where she would send me the store to get something that she wanted, and it was like you remember the bags of Okie Doke popcorn? The flaming hots?
Lucas Underwood [00:25:22]:
Yeah.
Rich Poisso [00:25:23]:
She fiend on that stuff when she was high, and she loved her Diet Coke and her more menthol cigarettes. And as a kid, you used to be able to run to a liquor store and you could buy your parents cigarettes. They didn't care how long you had a note or something like, you know, times have changed. You can't do that no more. I used to go pick up her cigarettes and stuff for her and pay the bills at the currency exchange right on the corner of Westerner and Devon. I think still to this day, that same one's there, the neighbors would see me running the neighborhood, doing all these family things that you would normally see an adult doing. It was a kid doing so by the time I turned 13 years old, I'd run away several times. There's scars and stuff all over my body where of skin missing in my back and stuff, where this lady had literally beat me, tortured me, strapped my hands and feet down, and just for an hour, hour and a half holy shit.
Rich Poisso [00:26:09]:
Blood down my back, blood down my legs and stuff like that until I couldn't walk. I mean, I've got scars in my knees where she'd stick me in the corner in the kitchen and just start throwing knives at me with the two little kids and tell them, Grab it, throw it at him. And it was a game to them. And 13 years old. I kind of got tired of it. And I'm standing that day, she just got done choking me out pretty bad. And the tub was full of hot water. The water heater was turned up so high in the apartment building, she filled it up with hot water, and she took me and shoved me down inside it and was holding my head underneath the water, and my body began to go numb.
Rich Poisso [00:26:58]:
She would pull me out, let me breathe, and put me back and put me back, and she would do it long enough to where I was about to pass out, but she would let me get enough air and then put me back down. And she did this for like seven or eight minutes, ten minutes straight, and my body went limp. I couldn't move. So she drugged me out. Of the tub, and she left me on the floor, and it took me a couple of hours to come too. My body started getting the blood, and I could get my muscle, my feeling and stuff back. That was the last day that I could take it anymore. I was standing in the dining room.
Rich Poisso [00:27:30]:
Everything was dark. They were watching TV in the front living room, which was turned into her bedroom with mirrors all over the walls. And there was a security system underneath the entertainment system, and it would face the bed. She would make sex tapes with random guys on that bed in that living room with all the mirrors. It could be a coworker of the old man that she was with, the shot caller. It could be anybody that they know. His son would come in from Kentucky and sleep with her sometimes, and they would make videos, and there was just hundreds of these tapes that they would record doing this stuff. And as a kid, that was nothing to me.
Rich Poisso [00:28:04]:
I was exposed to that stuff. That was nothing. You walk in on them, oh, okay, I'll go back.
David Roman [00:28:09]:
How was she doing with the videos?
Rich Poisso [00:28:10]:
She would save them for herself. They would watch them together. Because of his age, I mean, he wasn't functioning all the time, but he could still function. And then he would jump in the videos with his son sometimes. I walked into the room one time with the door open, and I seen both of them on the camera with her at the same time. And here I am, 1112, 13 years old, seeing this stuff. That day that she did that dunking me in the water and stuff, and I knew I was going to die. I had already run away several times, and it seemed like the older I got, the beatings got worse.
Rich Poisso [00:28:48]:
The cuttings, the stabbings, and stuff got worse. And I ran. I waited till it got dark out. I waited till they were in the front room, relaxed. The kids were in bed. And I looked at the front door, and I was like, Turn to lock, deadbolt back switch, drop the chain, run. And I'm standing there looking at the door. Can I do this? Am I going to be able to do it fast enough before they come right out of the front room? That's only 5ft away.
Rich Poisso [00:29:14]:
I got to do it. And I'm convincing myself, and I'm standing there like, you can do it, dude. Just do it. Just go. Don't ever come back. Just don't stop running. And I did it. It was perfect, too.
Rich Poisso [00:29:24]:
It was boom, slide. I mean, I had it down. I was practicing this in my head. And I ran down the stairs. I left the door open. I ran away from the house as far as I could, and I just kept running and running and running and running. And then I never quit walking. I walked and walked and walked and walked for, like, hours through the night into the next day, and then kind of started getting dark the next night again.
Rich Poisso [00:29:48]:
And I never quit because I knew I didn't want to be there anymore. And there was 1819 year old teenager standing on the street. He's, hey, young man, what's going on? Why are you on the street? So the street lights are out. Aren't you supposed to be home? Back in the day, our parents told us, when the street lights are off, you're home. And that's how we were raised. Well, he sees me on the street, and he's like, Why are you out here? And he sees the tears and stuff in my eyes, and I'm all banged up, and this wound is still fresh in my head, still scabbing over, and I just look tattered up and beat up. And he says, I think I need to help you, man. Come here.
David Roman [00:30:25]:
Come here.
Rich Poisso [00:30:25]:
And I go over to him, and I just let it out. I'm crying. I'm balling my eyes out in between this guy's hands. He's holding my head.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:32]:
How old were you?
Rich Poisso [00:30:34]:
13. And he said, we got to call the cops. We have to. So he got the police involved. The detective, she started crying immediately when I got into the police station. And she took me into a room and put me in a gown and came in and started taking pictures. And they had, like, this paper, and there were areas of the body with, like, hands, and they were circling all the puncture wounds all over my body. And then she just was bawling her eyes out and couldn't finish.
Rich Poisso [00:31:06]:
And then a male detective came in, and he finished doing all of and it looked like connected dots all over my body and stuff like that. And they were like, this is crazy, man. Can you tell us where the drugs and stuff are? And then I instructed them. I said, look, the old man gets off work at about 530 at night 06:00. If you park on the western side, western is here, and Devon is here. If you park in a big open parking lot, you can go through the gangway between the two garages and go up the back, and they won't know you're coming. And you go up to the second story, and if you go through the back, the kitchen, however you guys get in, walk through the kitchen, and as soon as you leave the kitchen, you'll be in the dining room. And there's a door to your left.
Rich Poisso [00:31:52]:
And then immediately on the right, there's a padlock door right there. All the drugs are in the far corner. The guns are under the bed. The money is on the back of the door that you're going to go through. There's, like, $1,000 stacks. I mean, I learned how to divvy it out. I learned how to cut it. I learned how to weigh it.
Rich Poisso [00:32:08]:
I learned how to do everything that you would do to sell drugs as 1011 years old. And here, go put the spoon in the sink after we're done cutting it with baking soda and stuff like that. Lick the spoon. No, mom. No, mom, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. No, do it. And then you lick it, and then it feels like your tongue's falling back in your mouth.
Rich Poisso [00:32:31]:
Your mouth goes numb and stuff like that. So I was exposed to coke at 1011 years old, and that was a game to her. That was a way for her to pull me in and make me feel like I was a part of the operation. My first foster parent was Miss Gloria Jean Johnson. I lived 63rd and green. It was an all black neighborhood. Went to an all black school. No white people, only me.
Rich Poisso [00:32:54]:
I call her mom to this day. She took care of me for a while, and then my parents, stan Stanzick and Antoinette Stanzick, they were my second foster family. They're still my mother and father today. But the foster care system is so corrupt and so dismantled in general that they were letting counselors and caseworkers call shots that superiors should have made and not them. And if they don't like the way you look, talk, the way you act, they can pull the child out of the home, even though the child is very well taken care of and in good order. So they moved me from miss Johnson's house to the Stanzix, and I was with them. I was very happy. Romeoville, Illinois, yuppie area.
Rich Poisso [00:33:35]:
Very nice school, very nice homes, all brand new. Something that I'd never experienced before. Real love between these two foster families, miss Johnson and the Stanzix. And then they moved me from home to home to home to home, and then nine foster homes later.
David Roman [00:33:50]:
What was the justification for bouncing you from home to home?
Rich Poisso [00:33:53]:
Some were temporaries in between. Some were really bad excuses that I never actually ever understood. I didn't understand what happened to me until I was, like, 25 years old, and I just started going to UTI. My father's the financial director there. The stanza, really, he's the financial director there. So I come back from Iraq. I'm out of the military. I get all my surgery and stuff done.
Rich Poisso [00:34:19]:
We didn't get into that later portion of my life. And my dad sits me down one day while I'm in his office, and he's like, I called you to the office. Not to interrupt your class, but I've had something weighing on my mind, and I just want to tell you exactly what happened when you were a kid that I've never told you. You didn't get pulled out of our home because you did anything wrong. And I know for years you probably thought you did something wrong, you disappointed us, or you were a bad kid. It wasn't. It was the people running the system that didn't like me and your mom, and they used that as a punishment to us because your case worker hated us. She didn't like the way we parented and we did things.
Rich Poisso [00:34:59]:
They were, like, the most awesome parents ever, because my family is very large, and there's a lot of children involved in my family, meaning their family, that I could call mom and dad today. And dad always had me when I was there. He'd always be like, well, go fix this. I'll pay you that. And then let's have, like, a savings envelope. Let's have your spending envelope. 75% goes in savings. 80% goes in savings.
Rich Poisso [00:35:25]:
The other goes in your pocket. So he taught me early on how to work. Go fix this, go fix that in the garage. Go tear up the lawn, and let's put all new sod and stuff down. So through the transition of going to all these different homes, I would always find my way gravitating back to the Stanzix, my mother and father today. And then I spoke later on. I wanted out of the foster care system, and at 17 years old, I was like, I'm done with this. I want emancipated.
Rich Poisso [00:35:52]:
I want to be my own adult. So my foster parent, the Hammonds Donna and Dan Hammond, great foster parents in Bradley, Illinois, he signed my lease for me, helped me get into my own apartment and stuff like that. I became a janitor at the YMCA from midnight to, like, 04:00 in the morning, and then I'd leave and go off to the job site. And I worked with a guy named Brian St. Aubin from Innovative Insulation. He gave me a shot at a young age to come out and work for him and learn how to start blowing cellulose insulation. All brand new homes, retrofit old homes, old barn homes and stuff like that. And I learned trades early on.
Rich Poisso [00:36:31]:
I'd pour concrete and do siding and stuff like that. And I went to work for these different companies, and then I became a supervisor at Chicago Tribune, and I left the trades for a little bit, and I went like 19 years old to go be a supervisor and run employees. I would go in at 01:00 in the morning, download all new subscribers and stuff like that. By the way, I dropped out of high school. I never finished high school at the time. It was just too much for me through all the different homes and stuff like that. I wanted to be done with all that.
David Roman [00:36:58]:
How do those parents handle that? I don't know that I could I couldn't take a kid in a kid like you. You provide them a home stability, and then someone just takes them from you.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:11]:
I couldn't handle it.
Rich Poisso [00:37:12]:
The cold truth to this whole thing is the money.
David Roman [00:37:19]:
Whose money?
Rich Poisso [00:37:21]:
So there's a couple of ways that this works that I didn't know about until I was leaving foster care, I got this notice in the mail stating that what my grandfather's Social Security was used for. And because my grandfather had so much Social Security stowed away, the state can either take their money, like deceased parents, grandparents and stuff like that, or they go from the taxpayers money or however the agencies are funded. But because he had so much money put away that nobody ever disclosed to me, they were using that money to fund the monthly check for me to be in these foster homes. So you might a regular child with no medical conditions and stuff like that, foster parent might make close to $500 a month for special needs child, they might get close to 800 and $5900 a month for and a lot of these foster families, a lot of them are really good. I'm not talking bad about them. There's definitely a need for it, just like fostering dogs and everything else, there's a need for it. But a lot of these families will get so caught up into, well, our home is big enough. Let's get another child and another child.
Rich Poisso [00:38:23]:
You get five or six children at $500 to $900 a pop on top of your regular job. At the end of the month, you're making some pretty good cash. When it's all said and done, go to Aldi's, do some cheap shopping for food and stuff like that. Give them the bare minimum. Stick them downstairs in your home. You live upstairs.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:42]:
It's interesting because grotesque, though, that's a.
David Roman [00:38:46]:
Certain level of monster. I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:48]:
What's interesting to me is that you talk about all of them, but there's a difference about your parents when you talk about them. Yeah, there's something different about that. What's different about that?
Rich Poisso [00:39:02]:
They never made you feel like you were anything other than part of the family.
David Roman [00:39:07]:
Yeah, you can tell. But I don't know how you can get into that situation with the children that are coming out of those situations like that and not want to do that for them. You see what I'm saying?
Rich Poisso [00:39:22]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:39:25]:
You see what I'm saying? You just want to provide them a home.
Lucas Underwood [00:39:28]:
Right.
Rich Poisso [00:39:30]:
But see, I didn't want to be a statistic. And they were loving enough. Even though I was pulled out of their home multiple times, where I knew that I had somebody that loved me and cared for me, I just had to make it to a point in my life where I can. Enjoy that love and care and be a part of their life and love and care for them consistently without moving from home to home. And my answer to that was emancipation. I want to emancipate. I want out of the system. I want to be my own adult so I can go back to my family that loved and cared for me.
Rich Poisso [00:39:58]:
And it was awesome. I got emancipated. I continued my life with my parents from time. But I had my own apartment. I never went back home after 17 years old, I never went back home to live. Then I went to the military, and I spent some time in the military, got hurt in the military. I was in Operation Iraqi Freedom 2007 to 2009. We were the first tour through that.
Rich Poisso [00:40:25]:
They told us that you're going to be 15 months. So we went for 15 months, and I ended up getting like a mobile Dysentery. It screwed up my digestives. I got pictures and stuff on Google. I used to be a big dude. Big shoulders. I was all massive and stuff. Because my answer to all the anger and the things that have happened to me in my life is I would lift.
Rich Poisso [00:40:44]:
I would just eat and I would just lift. And I was getting huge, 235-24-5255. And dudes were like, this is a big dude, man. And then I was outside in the rain in 2008, and it felt great. And I didn't know why people were screaming at me to get back in the building. And I ran back in the building when my lieutenant came out and was like, what's paso get back in the building. So I go back in the building and I was like, what's wrong? And he's like, this is not clean rain, man. This is like the sewage spills and stuff around here.
Rich Poisso [00:41:17]:
They don't have solid, like, sewers over there. It's all busting out of the ground in spots. You can't be out here in this rain. And I got sick. I was throwing up like black bud. I was losing a ton of weight. I couldn't keep like I was crapping on myself. I almost died.
Rich Poisso [00:41:35]:
And the aid station hold on.
David Roman [00:41:37]:
You got to describe this rain thing here. I don't understand. You thought it was it water coming up from the ground to spraying?
Rich Poisso [00:41:46]:
No, it's raining. Regular rain. And I'm standing outside in like 120 degree weather over there.
David Roman [00:41:53]:
That feels good.
Rich Poisso [00:41:53]:
And it felt amazing.
David Roman [00:41:55]:
Is it because the water that's evaporating to feed the rain is so contaminated? That's so messed up.
Rich Poisso [00:42:02]:
Yeah, there's areas where you can literally see it, seeping out of the ground where they don't have real sewer systems.
David Roman [00:42:07]:
You hear that in Brazil and stuff. That in Brazil. In the real rough parts of the cities, they just dump the sewage because you go into a bucket and then they just throw it out the window and it just runs down the streets. But you never hear that. Oh, by the way, the side effect also is that don't go out in the rain because all of that is going up into the air.
Rich Poisso [00:42:31]:
Wasn't it like back in the day we ended up getting those, like the plague or something like that? Because that's how people used to dispose of things.
David Roman [00:42:39]:
That's always been the deal. Apparently. Life expectancy was always very short all the way up until they had sewage. We have good sewers now. You don't have to crap into a bucket. All of a sudden, our life expectancy shot 20 years because you weren't getting sick, so you get massively sick.
Rich Poisso [00:43:04]:
And I had to be, like, escorted to the bathroom. My sergeant would take me from where we were at and he would walk with me with his arm treating this. They were they were trying to figure out what it was. They were about to fly me to Germany because it was getting so bad. And then there was finally, like a breakthrough. I don't know if it was like penicillin or whatever it was that they gave me with some combination. All of a sudden I started to come out of it and they were able to treat it, but I never actually was able to seek professional.
David Roman [00:43:31]:
So you're like, out in the field and they're just giving you whatever they.
Rich Poisso [00:43:36]:
There'S. There's Baghdad and then there's Solder City, and we were outside of it. Solder City was never really completely cleared to that day. A lot of mechanized units and stuff didn't want to go through there because there's a lot of bombs and stuff still on the road, still built into the walls. There's still a lot of attacks. We just had an XO of one of the companies actually get his face blown off or something like that because they tried to go through the area and an EFP went off and took off his face. So we're in this little compound right outside of this little nook where everything happens and there was really nowhere to go. And I'm stuck in this compound with minimal help in a small aid station.
Rich Poisso [00:44:14]:
And they're trying to do everything that they can. So there was either they fly me out to Germany now, or they try to do everything they can to stabilize me right there. And they eventually ended up getting it, but I never had the proper medical. They were like, this is like some type of a mobile Dysentery thing from Rain. And after that, my digestive system went to crap. Later on in life, after getting out of the military and having my ACL and everything fixed, the VA was like, you definitely have some problems with your digestive system. It's not normal. And I would get these excruciating pains where I would just be laying in bed and it would be like you were taking a dagger or the meat puller things for like you take pulled pork and it felt like somebody was trying to rip open your stomach.
Rich Poisso [00:45:00]:
And I would be in pain on the ground, like, crying, like literally, grown man in tears, crying because it hurt so bad. I checked myself into the VA and they were like, this dude's got some problems, man. You need to stay away from a lot of the roughage. It's going to inflame a lot of things that are going to get into little pockets and things down there. More solid vegetables when you eat them. Don't be afraid of eating meats and stuff like that just right now, because that may be more subtle to your digestive system than a bunch of roughage. And that's how I ended up finding keto and stuff like that eventually in the future. And I started losing the weight and stuff all over again.
Rich Poisso [00:45:43]:
How I got in this industry from all that is when I was in the military, I had a lot of people come up to me and be like, hey, you're pretty good at fixing things and stuff like that. I was doing brake jobs and tires and everything else. And I'm taking in people's cars, doing customization, and then I start buying my own, like, Camaros and Mustangs while I'm on base. And there's so much more to this story than all this, but we're not going to get into all of it. I ended up meeting somebody after being two years abstinent. No sexual stuff, no nothing with anybody. Just me, myself, and being deployed and being in the military and stuff and soaking all that in. When I came back, I met a lady at local strip club.
Rich Poisso [00:46:31]:
The guys wanted to take me out for my birthday. They said, hey, man, you're 23 years old. You want to go out for your birthday and stuff? And I'm like, of course I do. Where are we going? Oh, we're going to go to this strip club over here. And I'm like, oh, I've never been to one of them before. That's like the nudie lady thing, right? And they're like, yeah, okay. I mean, I don't know how I'm going to be like I've never been before. And I walk in and there's this Asian girl standing there.
Rich Poisso [00:46:55]:
And I'm like, bro, she's hot. Like really hot. And they're like, oh, yeah, she's here all the time. She's like this security lady. She takes your money at the front door. But she used to be a dancer back in the day. And I'm like, man, I want to talk to her. Like, you don't have a chance if we didn't.
Rich Poisso [00:47:10]:
I said, yeah, but I'm bigger than all you guys. You guys are like I'm like stock strong, like huge muscles and stuff back then. And I'm like, I got this. So I go up there and I pay my little door fee. And she says, all right, put your arms up. I'm going to search you. And I put my arms up and she goes to searching me. And I said, hey, you know this is the best part of my night, right? And nothing happened of it, right? I thought it was she thought it was cheesy.
Rich Poisso [00:47:31]:
And I was like, whatever. So I go on, next weekend, we go back again. Next weekend we go back again. And I kept using that same line over and over again, and I never gave up. And I said, are you going to ever let me give you my number or something? And she was like, I thought you were never going to ask. So I got her number. We started talking. Three months later, we got married.
Rich Poisso [00:47:51]:
A year and a half later, we got divorced. I didn't know she wasn't a citizen. She used me to oh, man. I think she cared about me initially at first, but then it became more about money. And she seen me buying all the cars all the time. And I'm always like, mechanic work while I'm in the military. I was making a ton of money, and I had enough to fund these projects. $5,000, $10,000 engines here and there and stuff.
Rich Poisso [00:48:19]:
And she was, like, using my money however she wanted, taking trips and buying stuff for herself. $300, $600 purses, $400 pairs of shoes and stuff like that. And I seen what was going on, and I was like, so I'm done with all this. I came back from a trip, and there was a dog in my house that I didn't buy. No dog. I don't know what this is. It looked like a triple stuffed oreo cookie. It was all smashed together like a baby shih tzu thing.
Rich Poisso [00:48:45]:
It was like a black head and then a white ring, and then a black ring and a white ring and a is. I thought we'd talk about stuff as a couple before we have a baby or bring a dog into the house or something like that. And she's like, oh, I thought you'd be okay with it, or you just thought I'd be okay with it? And then I'm like walking up the driveway, and I see the volkswagen. I had bought a volkswagen. I want to do an engine swap because the engine was trashed. I bought it cheap, so I put an engine in drove great after that. And I'm like the car's plated. Oh, yeah, I signed the title and everything, and I like that car better than the car you bought me.
Rich Poisso [00:49:21]:
So I put that car in my name. Get out. You're done. Get out. I'm done. At this point, I was like, this is not happening, man. So I got a divorce and took a couple of years to do that, but stayed in the automotive industry. And I was going to college at the time at black river technical college in pocahontas, arkansas.
Rich Poisso [00:49:40]:
And I went for body school. And I was working for an old man on 1958 to 1966 thunderbirds. I was living at his home. It was a church that he turned into his home. And he would travel the country selling customized poker chips. And when you were into poker games at, like, casinos and stuff like that, you could, hey, I'm still in the game. I'm going to step away. And you'd put your chip there, indicating that you're still in the game.
Rich Poisso [00:50:03]:
You just need a break for a second. And casinos would make deals with him, like give us 2000 of them at like a $15 a chip rate and he'd make a killing because it only cost him like $6 to make them right. So he'd make a killing. He'd be like, I want any young smart guy to live at my house and work on all my classic cars. But this dude had cars from all over the country. 1950, 819, 60, 1960, 419, 66. I went and picked up an 64 Oldsmobile, starfire, 3D, Cadillac, all these cars just all over the place and stuff. And I was at his home building these cars, painting them, engine work package, tray, upholstery stuff, seat stuff.
Rich Poisso [00:50:46]:
Who would trust some young kid that only has a few years experience, even wrenching on anything with their classic cars? But he did. He saw the value in me and he gave me a flat $500 a week on saying if it was taxed or not. And I had all bills paid. And I was young, I didn't need anything, I didn't pay anything. So $500 a week to me was like, okay, I could do this. And then he stepped it up, like $700 a week and then $800 a week. And then the better I did and the more cars I got done, the more money I made. And I was like, angry.
Rich Poisso [00:51:21]:
At the time, though, I was still dealing with a lot of things that happened from my past. A lot of those things were coming back. My nightmares were there and stuff. The stuff with Iraq was still there. But the more I wrenched and the more I really started getting involved in this industry, the more it started changing my life. And then eventually I was like, this is what I want to do. This is where I'm at. Man, this makes me feel so much better being a part of the automotive industry, no matter what, at the end of the day, this is always going to be like my true love.
Rich Poisso [00:51:48]:
People are like, it's not the military. No, it's not. I mean, I did that because that's what I had to do. I needed structure in my life and I didn't have that. This is what saved my life. I don't know that I would be here today with my thoughts, the suicide things that I thought of at times and how I could just I used to think maybe I could just go down the interstate, like 100 miles an hour and just crash right into that pillar of that bridge and just be done this over with. It'd be done just in seconds, not even fill a thing. And once I started working on cars and I started spending my time with that putting energy that I had in my body into something else, my life changed.
Rich Poisso [00:52:28]:
And I went know, after going to body school and then going to UTI and like the automotive, the diesel, the Ford fact program, the international. MSAT program and then going from them to working in the dirt sorting field and earth moving field, and then back and forth to Ford and stuff. And now I'm a co owner of an independent shop, general manager there. But I have money invested in the company as well. So I tell everybody. It's not like I'm just a general manager. I have money in the company. I have stake in the company.
Rich Poisso [00:52:59]:
So it's different. I don't own as much as he does, but I own.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:05]:
So a couple of weeks ago, just.
David Roman [00:53:07]:
So you know, if anybody doesn't have a story like that, don't bother telling.
Lucas Underwood [00:53:15]:
That wild, isn't it?
David Roman [00:53:17]:
You downplayed it quite a bit, and that's the clean you should be ashamed of.
Rich Poisso [00:53:22]:
You that's the cleaned up version of everything, because we would be sitting here forever. That's the cleanup.
David Roman [00:53:27]:
That's wild, dude. You need to write a book. I will buy that copy of that book.
Rich Poisso [00:53:33]:
I started writing it, and I got about 250 page written written in Iraq, and I was writing it up.
David Roman [00:53:41]:
You still have those 250 pages?
Rich Poisso [00:53:43]:
No. Here's why. We're in the middle of a war zone. There's people that are it's not like the, oh, man, people are dying left and right. No, we did have people die. We had members from the unit we were replacing die while they were leaving in the last couple of days of being there. It's called Right Seat Ride. Left seat ride.
Rich Poisso [00:54:05]:
You ride in a certain position of the vehicle. Right Seat Ride is you ride in the right seat, they ride in the driver's seat. They show you the area. The second week, you ride in the left seat, they ride in the right seat. You show them that you know the area, and then once they're comfortable, they can leave. We had people get hurt the last couple of days of being there because that's some of the most critical times. So I had a lot of bad thoughts.
David Roman [00:54:35]:
Did the people know that you were switching troops and would get more aggressive? Like, what do you mean by that?
Rich Poisso [00:54:41]:
They could tell. They could tell different people that they would normally see in the driver's seat. All of a sudden, switching different people in the turret, different people dismounted on patrol. When you're going door to door doing, like, information knocks in people's homes and stuff.
David Roman [00:54:56]:
And then that's when they would try to do something.
Rich Poisso [00:54:58]:
They knew. They knew that there was this transition going on. Either they could try to take advantage of you then, or they could wait for that unit to leave and the newbies the Cherries would be on the ground, and they didn't know the area as quite as well as they should, and they would try to set them up trigger points.
David Roman [00:55:16]:
Oh, my goodness.
Rich Poisso [00:55:16]:
It could be all kinds of different things.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:19]:
So I've got a lot of questions, and I think the first I want to know is your parents hold on.
David Roman [00:55:29]:
The book.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:29]:
The book.
Rich Poisso [00:55:31]:
I would get to reading what I wrote, and I would get so emotional and those bad thoughts would start, and I would feel like I wanted to just start punching people and just throwing stuff. And I would get so mad when I would start reading this story, and I'd go to tear it up, and then I couldn't. And then I'd go to tear it up and I couldn't. And then one day they had the fire pit out back, and I was really angry that day. It was a day that we had went through like a 14 hours patrol, and I took that and I threw it away and I deleted everything off my laptop and I said, I don't think I'm ready for this right now. I think in my adult life, once I get older and more mature, maybe.
David Roman [00:56:13]:
You were still a baby then.
Rich Poisso [00:56:14]:
I just couldn't handle it.
David Roman [00:56:15]:
Yeah.
Rich Poisso [00:56:16]:
And I can now. I just don't have with the business and everything now and then I'm trying to think, when is the right time?
David Roman [00:56:25]:
You're a talker though, dude. Just into an audio into an audio file, and then it can get transcribed and then edited. You got to get it out there, dude. That's a wild story, man.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:38]:
I think my biggest question is your parents now, right? When you talk about them, I can feel the emotion and I can feel that connection. You know what I'm saying?
Rich Poisso [00:56:50]:
We just reunited after almost six years because I just took the job at Dundee Ford back in the day, and I'm standing out front of, uh I got done really dirty at a Ford dealership down in Louisiana. And they I told them, I haven't given you a one month notice. My father's in the hospital. He'sick I'm going to go back home to my family and stuff like that. But you got a month to find a certified tech. It's not easy to find a fully certified Ford tech in a month. There's not somebody in a small town that's ready to walk up and say, hey, I'm ready to be your Ford tech. And he was upset, and I get it.
Rich Poisso [00:57:28]:
I assume some of that responsibility. But then at the same time, the business is still business. The guy didn't want to pay me. He withheld my pay. And then I found out how this is maybe topic in the future for us. This is how screwed up the system is that a lot of shop owners, they either don't know or they know how to use the system or techs don't know. When you are working in an industry like we're working in and you leave the business or you get fired, your contract with that business doesn't matter if you're making $40 an hour or not, is not legal in most states. To the actual labor board, that's between you and me.
Rich Poisso [00:58:09]:
That's what you're paying me through this agreement on paper, but the labor board only has to enforce what minimum wage is times the amount of hours clocked in. Anything more than that, I have to fight you in small claims court or civil court. They can't make an employer adhere to.
David Roman [00:58:28]:
If they're worthholding your wages.
Rich Poisso [00:58:30]:
Right. And that's what happened, is the guy just flat out refused to pay me. It was like, $2,700.
David Roman [00:58:36]:
Sue me.
Rich Poisso [00:58:37]:
And he said, you're not going to sue me because you're going to spend just as much money in court trying to sue me as you are.
David Roman [00:58:43]:
That's in Louisiana. It's a state by state thing. I think they get really aggressive in other states, and they get did you ever see the oily penny thing?
Rich Poisso [00:58:54]:
I don't think so.
Lucas Underwood [00:58:55]:
Yeah, we did a video about oily.
David Roman [00:58:56]:
Pennies where this was in Georgia. The guy was withholding a check, and he finally acquiesces the shop owner. Acquiesces said, okay, fine, I'll pay you. But he paid the guy, like, $910 in pennies and then oiled them up in gear, oil, and then dumped them out in the guy's driveway, which is hilarious.
Lucas Underwood [00:59:20]:
But the state, I guess it depends on which side you are.
David Roman [00:59:26]:
Very vindictive. Don't do that. Bad juju for you. Bad karma.
Rich Poisso [00:59:31]:
I went to the labor board and I told them what was going on, and they're like, look, you have a case, but it's not a case for me to get you all your money.
David Roman [00:59:37]:
Yeah, the state law only says, yeah, but in Georgia, the labor board found out about that deal and came after the shop owner. And at that point, now it's a full audit. Now they're going through all your timestamps and how much you paid them and who got shorted, and then you're getting fees on top of every penny that they find off.
Rich Poisso [01:00:02]:
That's why it's so important for technicians. I know they don't want to do it, but as a shop owner, as a technician, you're trying to make sure you're getting paid somewhat of what you're owed.
David Roman [01:00:15]:
Yeah.
Rich Poisso [01:00:15]:
At least especially in a situation like this. A lot of technicians have this mindset. I'm flat rate anyway. I don't need to be on the clock. Whatever, they'll fix it later. That will bite you. That will bite you.
David Roman [01:00:27]:
That's good advice.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:28]:
Yeah, that is really good advice.
Rich Poisso [01:00:30]:
Good advice always be important, no matter what.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:32]:
Very important.
Rich Poisso [01:00:33]:
Because a situation like this, I didn't have a way to actually prove because I was one of those technicians that thought, after this, I never did that again. But wait a second. I spent, like, 60 hours a week at this place. Can I prove that? No, I can't.
Lucas Underwood [01:00:47]:
Well, even back to job clocks, because we did a video a while back, and a lot of techs hate job clocks, and we did a video with Murray Volth talking about job clocks, and he's like, Dude, it has nothing to do with policing the tech. It has to do that. You can show them like, hey, I'm actually working on this car and here's the time it's taking me. We can make sure the rest of the business is efficient, right? But it always comes back like, hey, no, we don't want to do that because they always feel like it's watching them and it's monitoring them doesn't have anything to do with that. And so you're right. A lot of techs aren't trying to clock in and out. They're not trying to watch their hours. And I tell my guys all the time, like, hey, clock in and out properly because then we can tell if we're efficient.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:32]:
We can tell if our utilization is good. And more than anything, it protects you if something ever happens. You know what I mean? What happens if something happens to me?
David Roman [01:01:41]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [01:01:41]:
And whoever else comes in doesn't know. And then they go back and they look at all those labor hours and they see that you were clocked in 120 hours a week because you forgot to clock in and out. And you know what I'm saying? That's one of the things we deal with in the shop is they forget to clock out. And so they'll be clocked in the whole week.
David Roman [01:01:59]:
The entire week, you know what I mean?
Rich Poisso [01:02:00]:
Yeah. I left that job to come back home. I came back home. I got in a union job. I have opinions on unions. I've already spoke about that, good and bad. It was a good job. They treated me well, though.
Rich Poisso [01:02:16]:
They really did. And when I was like five or six months into this job, the foreman came out and when I had told him, I was like, I'm going to quit. I'm going to take another job, I just told him straight. I was like, look, man, I'm going to end up quitting. I'm just telling you. I love this place and I love working for you. I love the work that we do. I've learned a lot since I've been working on heavy duty stuff, right? But I'm not going to be here long term.
Rich Poisso [01:02:41]:
I've already got another job offer for $5 more an hour. Medical benefits paid nonunion. There's no more dues. The medical is better than what's here. And it's an independent owner. It's a chain, but it was an independent owner that owned everything. And he's making my benefits better than being in the union.
Lucas Underwood [01:03:01]:
So while we're on this, let's talk about that for a minute, because that is one thing that we keep hearing from technicians who say, we need to unionize, we need to unionize, we need to unionize. And they automatically go back to us and say, well, you don't want us to unionize because you're shop owners. We literally want what's best for technicians, and we want what's best for shop owners, and we want what's best for service advisors, right? Because that's the only way on the panel. We talked about it today. I've said it over and over again. We get where we're going by working together. If we're divided constantly, we're not moving forward in one direction. We're not getting anywhere.
Lucas Underwood [01:03:43]:
We're in constant mode of infighting. Nothing ever changes. And so that's one of the things that we believe in fixing is like, hey, let's all get on the same page, whatever that page is. And I don't know about you, but I don't know that the union is.
Rich Poisso [01:03:56]:
The answer to me. I don't think it's the answer. What I like best is a shop owner that comes out to his employees. He makes them feel wanted. I do want you here. I do need you here. I can't do this without you. We're all part of the same family.
Rich Poisso [01:04:15]:
I'm going to pay you fair. I'm going to make sure I'm taking care of you, respectively, across the board. I don't need a union to make sure that I'm sending you training and that I'm taking care of you. And if I can keep that extra stress out of my life and more people start following in suit by trend or whatever, the fact that we're doing the right thing and we're doing that for our people and more and more people start to do that then we don't have to see these articles and stuff in the news and the paper about some union executives or whatever that are being toted off to prison for extortion and embezzling and all this other stuff. We're handling that at our own level with our own people keeping the extra stress out of it. More money in their pockets, more money for the business. And I know there's a purpose for unions. Maybe 30 years ago there was.
Rich Poisso [01:05:04]:
I'm not seeing the purpose anymore. And that's the opinion of mine that most people don't like and they try to attack me on, is because I've been union. I've been done wrong by union, but I've also done the people that are running the company under the umbrella of the union or something like that. They have to be good. They have to want to do that.
Lucas Underwood [01:05:25]:
Just because it's a union does not mean that it's all good and it's all well and that it's honest and it's ethical and things work like it's supposed to.
Rich Poisso [01:05:31]:
And I get tons of people since I've started speaking out about this whole UAW striking stuff, and I have got messages of Foreman that are telling me, hey, man, I just watched your video and you're 100% right. This whole UAW strike thing, none of this makes any sense to me. Because now we're being told because of the strike, my guys that support some of these, like this particular manufacturing plant, they're going to be laid off. In a few weeks because now we don't have work for our guys that do the painting or the building or making sure the machines are running right.
David Roman [01:06:06]:
It's going to affect us too. I can't get parts.
Rich Poisso [01:06:09]:
Yeah, it's going to affect us. The first day it happened, there's a guy on TikTok called Diesel Daddy. Real humble guy, funny, big old teddy bear. And he said, I just went to Chrysler and I tried to get four TPMS sensors for a 3500 cummins or Dodge. She said, I think he said cummins or something like that. I knew what he was talking about. And he says, I went to the Chrysler dealer to pick it up, or the Ram dealer, and they told me that because they just officially started the strike at 03:00. Something about they have to re inventory everything that they have and that they can't sell me the TPMS sensors right now because of everything that's going on, and that it may end up getting to a point where their dealership has to have everything by Vin to even get it.
Rich Poisso [01:06:55]:
You can't just go in there and say, I need these parts now. They're going to have to track what's going out because they need to be able to monitor their inventory because they don't have the extra stuff to give to people because they didn't prepare for it. So now it's hurting him. It's going to hurt that dealership, everybody. It's going to mess with everybody. And I talk about these things and then you get the workers that are like, man, my union ain't never had a problem. We ain't never done anything like and I'm like, oh really? You work at the Chicago Plan or you work at the Iowa? I just saw two other UAW workers in my comment section that work at the same plan as you that's saying you're all chewed up. I mean, what is to are you just trying to protect them? I'm trying to make sense of this stuff right now.
Lucas Underwood [01:07:40]:
Yeah, for sure.
David Roman [01:07:41]:
How do you think from an economic standpoint, the administration has quite the conundrum because they have to have a strong, vibrant economy going into the election season. Not one that's had old with massive hiccups because of a strike, but also he can't come out and say, hey, we got to end this and end this now.
Rich Poisso [01:08:10]:
No, they moved it to what they were just a few locations to 38 locations. And now they're like, we're going across.
David Roman [01:08:17]:
The born country like this.
Rich Poisso [01:08:18]:
It's going to be crazy, it's going to be bad. And then this is the only time that he shows support to the American workers. And now he's going to be out there picketing with them and stuff like, come on, man, let's forget the photo op here. I understand it's for the tabloids, but let's be real here.
Lucas Underwood [01:08:34]:
Let's serve the American worker.
Rich Poisso [01:08:36]:
Yeah, you could fix this. Like Brandon from Performance Transmission, me and him were talking and I was like, so let's look at the numbers. And he said, let's do some research here, both of us, and let's figure out based on statistics. He was like, It's $7.1 trillion the shareholders made. How do people make that much money? And the executives continue to make that much money while the workers don't make anything. Why would you go after the consumer in this aspect and other unions that support your union, take them or put them out of work and lay them off for them to find other contracts with other facilities and stuff? I would be going to the people that are making all the money saying, hey, no, how about we just stop working for you completely unless you're willing to pay where's all the money at? I know it doesn't quite work that.
David Roman [01:09:30]:
Way, but the problem is that the executive pay is an issue. I don't begrudge that. At the same time, from their side of the argument, that's what it costs to bring in a talented executive. For me to bring in a talented CFO or CTO or CEO, it costs as much. I can't do anything about what it costs. That's just a prevailing wage. I could see that that's their argument. I don't know, maybe we could argue that one.
David Roman [01:10:06]:
The money that goes down to the shareholders, though, that's the grandma that's living off the pension, that's the school teacher that's got invested in 401K. Those are regular, normal, everyday making $45,000 a year Americans. That's who has a chunk of because it's inside of a mutual fund and the mutual fund is purchased by the individual. Part of that is feeding that mutual fund in that they have an obligation to funnel as much money to them as possible. Like, that's their job. The job of the executive is to make sure that every penny is pinched and that as much money goes back to the shareholder as humanly possible. There's no way around that. And it's in fact, illegal for them.
David Roman [01:10:56]:
Not that's why the whole dei thing is getting a little sketchy or the environment, governance and social EGS stuff that stuff there. If they abandon their obligation to the shareholders in order to push some societal agenda, it can get a little hairy with the laws, because all of a sudden they've abandoned their obligations. And now the shareholders have a way to sue these executives for not doing their job. Their job is to maximize shareholder value. That's their job. Sure, but to demand 32 hours work weeks? Yeah, come on.
Rich Poisso [01:11:39]:
Well, demand 40 in 32 they want.
David Roman [01:11:42]:
To pay to be 40 hours a week in 32 hours. And then they want guaranteed pensions.
Rich Poisso [01:11:48]:
Guaranteed pensions, which was what bankrupted them in the, like a 40% increase over the next four years or something like that.
David Roman [01:11:58]:
How do we not look back and go, hey, what ruined the American Auto Workers 40 years ago? Let's do that again.
Lucas Underwood [01:12:07]:
Yeah, how's that even I think a lot of it comes back to those sitting at the top of those unions have to make a grandiose statement. I think they obviously know they're not going to get everything they want out of this.
Rich Poisso [01:12:23]:
Sure.
Lucas Underwood [01:12:24]:
So they're trying to shoot high and they want them to come back in the middle while they're saying, look, we're not even going to be able to come back in the middle. We're going to have to go like way down here off the chart, down below that. I don't know the answer to that.
David Roman [01:12:42]:
I understand the need for the union, I really do, especially in this particular situation. But if you're just a guy that wants to go to work, you move to Tennessee and you go work at the Nissan plant.
Rich Poisso [01:12:58]:
They're non union and it's huge.
David Roman [01:13:01]:
And they're still working.
Rich Poisso [01:13:03]:
They're still working. Toyota's still working, honda's still working.
David Roman [01:13:06]:
And you're just like, hey, I'm really good at this. I like doing this factory job. It affords me a lot of flexibility and freedom. I'm not going to deal with this BS.
Rich Poisso [01:13:15]:
I'm bouncing stone cold like blue collar people or whatever they're like. If you don't like it, then go get a job where you like it. I mean, I understand it's not that easy for everybody, but it is easy for a lot of you. And there are other places that will really take you that want your talent, that want something that you there's an.
Lucas Underwood [01:13:35]:
Aspect of fear there that they're afraid to make that move and they know what they have right now. And the unknown is far scarier absolutely. Than the known. Right? And so that's one of the things that we keep telling techs is like, hey, there are good shops out there. We know there's good shops. If you're being treated like shit, get out of your shop. Leave. Why are you staying? Because the problem is if we don't ever make a statement and get away from where we are right now and stop tolerating the bad behavior, it doesn't get better.
Lucas Underwood [01:14:10]:
Right? And I think in a lot of ways there's a misconception that that's what's happening right now. No, that's not what's happening right now. Maybe a little bit, but what's happening right now is there's no text coming into the industry and there's no text coming into blue collar trades whatsoever. There's no one that wants to do hard work anymore. I've got the report. I'll show you the report. Yeah, what the statistics?
David Roman [01:14:40]:
That's what the dude was saying. That's a marketing issue. He was making the argument. To a certain degree, I think he's right.
Rich Poisso [01:14:48]:
So where I went with that so dundee ford. I go work for Dundee Ford. They give me the raise, they pay for everything. You were asking about my parents and I kind of took a we haven't talked in like about six years, but we've recently rekindled everything.
Lucas Underwood [01:15:02]:
So I want to ask, why had you not talked in six years?
Rich Poisso [01:15:06]:
So what ended up happening is I wanted to take this job at Dundee Ford and I wanted to leave the union. And I'm standing out front of my house in Rockford, Illinois and talking to my father and I said, yeah, I'm going to take a new job at this. It's much more promising. I understand the whole union pension thing and everything else, but do I want to really be working on over the road equipment long term? I'm never going to go anywhere with this big company. I'm always going to get taken care of. Don't get me wrong, they do take care of you. The union was great, the pay was great, the benefits were great, but I want more for myself. And I feel like with my certifications and all my schooling and stuff like that, I would be much more appreciated going to this Ford dealer that's not at the time, I think they were 140 plus locations.
Rich Poisso [01:15:54]:
They're like the largest truck dealership, repair shop in the entire world at the time. And they were worried. I think people worried about them monopolizing. They continued to grow and shut down other shops and turn them into rush truck centers and stuff like and they're a great facility, great people to work for. And I just wanted something different. So I was telling him about it and my father was like, I don't know, rich financially, the pension stuff. I don't know if I would chase the $5 an hour. I said, dad, do you understand what that equates to at the end of the day? The end of the week, the end of the month, the end of the year.
Rich Poisso [01:16:24]:
And I'm not putting in dues. It's 100% platinum plan paid for. That's a big deal for somebody to bring a tech in that they don't even know just from word of mouth and say, I'm willing to give you all this. Come work for me. All you got to do is meet with my service manager. If you guys kick it off and you're good, you're hired. So I said, that's what I want to do. And he said, I don't know.
Rich Poisso [01:16:48]:
I don't think it's a good idea. I think you should stay exactly where you're at. You're already starting to establish yourself. You're doing really good. And I said, no dad, let me worry about my financial stuff. Man to man. I'm in my thirty s now. At this point I'm like, let me worry about my financial stuff, please.
Rich Poisso [01:17:06]:
Pops, I'm here for you no matter what. But I know me, I know this industry. I've been in long enough now to know where it's not uncommon for a technician or a mechanic to move from location to location to location. It used to be frowned upon back in the day, right? But now it's common. Now in this industry. We know that they're typically either they're shitheads or they're trying to better themselves. It's one or the other. And you can get a feel for that.
Rich Poisso [01:17:30]:
As an owner, you know how to feel that out. And I said, I really like these people. They seem sincere. They seem like they'll and I loved it the first few years of working there. Me and him never talked again after that, I mean, for six years, because he didn't like the fact that I was downplaying his advice to me, and he didn't like the fact that I told him. I really wish that he would let me deal with my financial stuff and not kind of get involved in that. I haven't needed money or anything from my parents in years. I'm an adult now.
Rich Poisso [01:17:58]:
I should be able to take care of this and make these decisions. But I'm sitting at home, like, two months ago, and I'm thinking about everything that I've been through. Some of those old feelings and stuff started coming back, and I'm like, man, I'm about to get married next year, and I don't have my mom and my dad. It's time to put this ego stuff away. Just call my pops up and just be like, look, dude, I apologize, man. I don't even care if it was my fault or not. I don't care. I love you, man, and I want you to be a part of my life.
Rich Poisso [01:18:28]:
I want you to be in my wife's life, my future wife's life, my daughter's life and stuff like that. The daughter is not her daddy, never wanted to be in her life. So my fiance has a little girl by another man that never wanted to be part of it. And I took her under my wing, and she's my everything, and I want you to be a part of their life. And my mom's crying on the phone, and my dad's crying on the phone. And then he's like, oh, my God, let's schedule a dinner where we can all get together. And we all got together and my dad's crying when he's meeting the family and stuff like that. He said, please don't ever do anything like that to me again.
Rich Poisso [01:19:03]:
I love you, man. You're everything I got and stuff. And I was like, Pops, I don't sorry it took me so long to suck that ego and stuff up, but I am sorry. I just want to be here. I want to be in your life. And it was so emotional when we were leaving because he started crying all over again, saying goodbye to everybody and stuff. He's lost a lot of weight. He's in not the best of health, but he looks better than what he did before.
Rich Poisso [01:19:35]:
It was nice seeing him. He's 100 pounds lighter than what he was, so this is almost a completely new man to me. All my cousins have had two and three kids over the last six years now. And now one of the cousins, his father in law, turned over the construction company to him, and now he's the boss of the construction company and stuff.
Lucas Underwood [01:19:59]:
When you look back at that six years, I don't want. To say, was it worth it? It's not what I'm trying to get.
Rich Poisso [01:20:08]:
I wish I would have never done it.
David Roman [01:20:09]:
Yeah.
Rich Poisso [01:20:11]:
I wish I would have just shut my mouth and let him be a part of my life. I would have still made the decision politely. I didn't have to say, Just let me be an adult and I'll deal with these things. I could have just said that, I appreciate what you have to say. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to make the best informed decision I could possibly make, and I love you no matter what. And it would have been fine.
David Roman [01:20:36]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [01:20:37]:
I look back at so many decisions I've made in my life, and I realized that it doesn't matter if they were right or wrong. In other words, what my family, my dad, my mom, what they were telling me, it doesn't matter if they were right or wrong. It was that they would have never given me advice that they thought was wrong. You know what I'm saying?
David Roman [01:20:57]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [01:20:57]:
And so they thought they were giving me the best direction possible. And so sometimes when we're young or sometimes when we're full of piss and vinegar and we look at that situation and somebody's there trying to give us advice, emotion overweighs fact. And they're sitting there and they're trying to pour their heart out and say, don't make the mistake I made, or don't do the thing that I did. And I was so blessed because and I say this almost every episode, my dad, every time I went to do something stupid, would just sit back and chuckle at me and just laugh, and it always pissed me off. And now I'm looking back and thinking, he knew I was going to do what I was going to do anyway. He told me. And that was his way of saying, son, this is a stupid idea. Why are you going to do this? I'm telling you, this is stupid.
Lucas Underwood [01:21:52]:
And now I look back and I think, all of the division that I caused, all of the pain that I caused them, all the pain I caused myself, didn't have to happen. Right. But the fact that they're willing to forgive us for that, you know what I mean? At the end of the day.
Rich Poisso [01:22:11]:
That has been bothering me for the last six years. Not being able to pick up the phone and talk to them, not being able to communicate, not having them a part of my life through all my successes over the last six years, and my mom and my dad, they're asking, so do you still work at the Ford dealership? I said, no, I moved on from there. And I was talking to Navistar, and I was talking to Rush Truck Centers all over again, and they want me at the corporate level to run the shop and run the work at Navistar as a main diag. They were interviewing me for a job that I would be a liaison between the dealership, the truck dealerships, and the customer. But also be in the middle of is the engineers responding? Are the tech line guys responding properly? Is the dealership doing what they're supposed to do? They wanted me in a Tattletail position of checking in on everybody to make sure the customer is being satisfied at a corporate level. And my job was to evaluate them and make sure the engineers are getting back hotlines, getting back. The dealership is doing what they're supposed to, the customer is checking back in. And I was like, that's an interesting job.
Rich Poisso [01:23:14]:
I could probably learn a lot from that position and get all sides of what's going on. And then I thought, I don't want to go in in a suit every single day. I don't want to go in all proper in like an office and stuff every single day. And then they wanted to interview me for writing the wiring diagrams and the tech line or the Pinpoint test. And I was like, I've got another offer as a co owner GM type situation, and it pays the same money. I'm not done being a mechanic. I mean, I love this. There if we're ever in a spot at the shop where I'm down a guy or like my lead guy, I know I can resoot up, get out there and I'm on the floor, and then get back to doing what I'm doing if I need to.
Rich Poisso [01:24:02]:
I still got it. I still teach them all the time and the difference in and I guess you can say that it may upset some people when you say certain things. Dealer versus independent shop. What I benefit coming from the dealer is all the structured training. And when I bring that into the shop where I'm at, where these guys have worked at the Mina Keys, did mom and Pop, independent shops and everything else is a lot of them have never put their guys through formal training. So they don't know how to look at a wiring diagram, or they don't know what load testing a wire or something is, or voltage drop, or they don't understand those. Like they know, but they don't yeah.
Lucas Underwood [01:24:44]:
It doesn't make sense. They're just numbers on the screen.
Rich Poisso [01:24:46]:
It doesn't and then I bring that aspect into it and they're like, hey, I'm having a problem getting this ball joint out of this thing over here.
Lucas Underwood [01:24:53]:
And I'm like, all right, yeah, pretty big guy.
Rich Poisso [01:24:58]:
Suit up for a second, and I got three guys on the same ball joint and they can't get it out. And I said, Fellas, you're overthinking this process. You're trying to take a hammer and then use this hammer to hit into that hammer so you don't damage the control arm. But there are strategic strike points that they build into these because they know sometimes you're going to have to do that. That's why you see fatter areas in some areas than others, and we use that as a standard practice. Move out of my way for a second. I'll show you. I'm like, you're using your purse over here with this two or three pound hammer.
Rich Poisso [01:25:27]:
Let's grab this five pound hammer over here. And I'll whack that sucker right in a sweet spot and drops right out of there. And they look at me like, man, how did you do that? All the experience, man.
Lucas Underwood [01:25:39]:
So, talking training?
Rich Poisso [01:25:40]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [01:25:41]:
We're at ASTE 2023. You've taken management classes?
Rich Poisso [01:25:48]:
Yeah. The highlight for me so far has been Malin's class. I mean, there are so many things that this gentleman talked about that I didn't even realize I could be so much more efficient in other areas and taking care of things. And if you can just get one thing out of this entire class, it would be like a Cecil or Mailing class that would be just absolutely amazing. And his class covered so much in my life, in my business and stuff in general, that I'm sitting here thinking about these things, and I'm like, man, I'm making this so much more complicated for myself. Had I have not known and then you reaching out to me and being like, hey, man, I got something for you.
Lucas Underwood [01:26:36]:
Get in it at least one time.
Rich Poisso [01:26:38]:
And then I'm here, and I'm like, dude, what have I been missing out on? This is so.
Lucas Underwood [01:26:47]:
I the dealer. Guys never realize that something like this exists, right? They're never told about that because David's always talking about they don't want you to know how the sausage is made. Well, that's what this is, right? The dealers don't really or the manufacturers don't really want you to know what's out there. As far as this goes, technicians can come here, and they can take management classes, they can take owner classes, they can take service advisor classes, they can take technical classes like nothing you've ever seen before. Advanced, advanced classes, right? And so the opportunity to sit in these classes and if nothing else, Rich, the ability to understand unconscious incompetence, right? To understand. I didn't know that. I didn't even know that was a thing. And because I didn't know it was a thing, and I didn't understand that it was a potential effect on my business, right? And now all of a sudden, to at least have conscious incompetence, right? Now, I know that this exists, and I know there's this information.
Lucas Underwood [01:27:50]:
It becomes a journey, just like your journey, right. We begin to take.
Rich Poisso [01:27:57]:
Keep it's been playing in my head since yesterday when Malin started talking about it, and he said, one of the things that employees lack the most is direction and expectation. Are you doing that? Are you really doing that?
Lucas Underwood [01:28:13]:
Right?
Rich Poisso [01:28:14]:
Because a lot of owners, managers, they don't give that direction and expectation. And if you set that, those employees will learn how you want things done. So when you're not there, they're still getting done.
Lucas Underwood [01:28:31]:
And here's the thing, is, how many owners do we know that don't set the expectation? Because they want to be nice guys and they think that's what their employees want, right. But the employee really wants direction. The employee really wants guidance. The employee really wants information about, hey, here's what a win is and here's what a loss is. And if you don't give me that information and I don't know what that is, then I'm always in a state of wondering, am I doing good? I doing bad? Am I winning? Am I losing? Right? And so that's been a big thing for me.
Rich Poisso [01:29:08]:
Yeah, I talked to my partner and stuff about it, and then I got a text message from him. It made me feel good. I'm not tooting my own horn, but I keep it as now. I got a receipt now. And he says, hey, man, I'm in Cecil's class right now. And a lot of the things that you've told me that you've learned are exactly what he's saying. And I said, I've learned it from guys like him. That's why and I'm just trying to pass it off to you.
Rich Poisso [01:29:34]:
I'm not trying to be a burden to you, and I'm not trying to make you feel like you're not doing something correctly, but darn it, if you're not doing something correctly, you're just not doing it correctly. And these guys will set you straight. And that's how it is.
Lucas Underwood [01:29:44]:
I'm excited for him to be here because I've heard some of the pain in your voice with some of the things that have happened, and for him to be here and him to be listening, him to be taking it in, I think you're going to go back to a very different experience.
Rich Poisso [01:29:59]:
When he was done with Cecil's class, he said, I think I'm going to go back and fire everybody. Don't do go to go to Malin's class first before you decide that, please, because he will talk to you about the answer is not always firing people. It's coaching them up. It's trying to make them a better person. The expectation and the direction can fix a lot of things. And then some individual stuff honing in on how to make them a better tech or employee can't make them. But you can try amen. And it's there.
Rich Poisso [01:30:33]:
You just have to be willing to put in the effort to do it and maybe understand at their level what's going on. And I said that's what I took away from his class changed my whole perspective on how I'm and it wasn't bad, how I was doing business. It's just so many open areas that all these gaps are filled.
Lucas Underwood [01:30:48]:
Things could improve everything.
Rich Poisso [01:30:50]:
Everything.
Lucas Underwood [01:30:51]:
Make life so much better.
Rich Poisso [01:30:52]:
Yeah.
David Roman [01:30:53]:
Awesome.
Lucas Underwood [01:30:55]:
Thank you for being here, brother. That was a killer episode.