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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.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:00]:
Talking. Somebody would be going to get off the elevator and they would hold the door, and they would stand there and talk and talk and talk.
David Roman [00:00:04]:
You should probably close.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:07]:
Yeah, why don't you go close that door?
David Roman [00:00:09]:
Dang it dirty dirt.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:15]:
I in case you haven't figured it out yet, I live to make his life hard. And and it's really because, see, he thinks he makes my life hard and he loves to, like, semi troll me all the time.
David Roman [00:00:27]:
I'm his sidekick.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:28]:
Yeah, sidekick.
Paul Danner [00:00:30]:
You need to watch that movie. I told you about it.
David Roman [00:00:33]:
I'm sure my kids have seen. I know, exactly.
Paul Danner [00:00:37]:
It's worth it. It's really actually a good movie.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:39]:
The kid movies are always the good movies.
David Roman [00:00:42]:
Yeah, movies are not the good movies. Have you seen the movie with the four dogs? They're like they're little puppies and they talk. They are awful.
Lucas Underwood [00:00:52]:
Which one?
David Roman [00:00:52]:
Like spooky budies.
Paul Danner [00:00:53]:
Well, it depends. The Iron Giant.
David Roman [00:00:58]:
Iron Giant is fantastic. That's a work of art.
Kristen Danner [00:01:01]:
Family movie, not a kids movie. A kids movie would be like cartoon type thing. Like a family type.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:09]:
Know. I don't know. Those movies, like you get into the serious stuff, david just can't maintain the attention span that long.
David Roman [00:01:16]:
If it's a good movie, I'm into it. Hey, David, I love the that's a that's top notch, see? Top tier.
Paul Danner [00:01:25]:
So I offered some constructive criticism to Lucas the other day, and he maybe shared it with you.
David Roman [00:01:31]:
Yeah. Don't tell him anything that you don't expect to get screenshot and blast it to everybody.
Paul Danner [00:01:36]:
Oh, to everybody?
David Roman [00:01:37]:
Everybody ever.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:38]:
Have you noticed?
Paul Danner [00:01:39]:
In fact, I love it.
David Roman [00:01:40]:
In the middle of the night, he'll send those messages out to the people that he shouldn't send those messages out to, and they open it up and they're like, what in the hell is.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:49]:
Going that was a 03:00 a.m. Email.
David Roman [00:01:52]:
Okay, I'm just saying screenshots.
Lucas Underwood [00:01:55]:
But you also notice he is everybody, right?
Paul Danner [00:01:57]:
What's that over some bourbon? Luke drinking late and screenshotting.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:01]:
That's right.
David Roman [00:02:04]:
And if you notice just one thing, if you notice he sends everything by voice text. He'll talk. And then there's because he can't get screenshot. And half the time, if you try once, the message hits, like three or four days, you can't forward it. The message doesn't load because the servers don't hold on to that.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:22]:
No, actually it's because I'm usually driving or walking. You can do voice to text, man. I've tried. It doesn't pick up. I did it that one time. And look, all it knows that I can say is, I hate you. Good job with that.
David Roman [00:02:40]:
It needs to learn your accent.
Kristen Danner [00:02:41]:
That's what I was going to say. The accent.
Lucas Underwood [00:02:43]:
Messes it up. Yeah. It does not say what I say. And I can do it over and over and over again, and it just does not learn it.
David Roman [00:02:48]:
You got to teach.
Paul Danner [00:02:49]:
This stuff is fun. And I agree. And so I shared one of their podcasts with my rant, and for the first minute and 47 of the video, it was something like this.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:02]:
This is what we do if you.
Paul Danner [00:03:03]:
Don'T know who they are, right? You've already clicked off. That was my butt.
David Roman [00:03:09]:
They did get the view. Still counts.
Paul Danner [00:03:15]:
I love it. I just didn't want you to feel attacked. I would say take that clip if you want to keep it and put it at the end. Put it at the end.
David Roman [00:03:25]:
I cried when I saw that message. I'm like, I can't believe Paul.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:33]:
He does remind you of Sheldon, doesn't he? Especially when he does that. You know, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Does he not remind you of Sheldon?
Kristen Danner [00:03:41]:
I didn't get that vibe.
David Roman [00:03:43]:
Thank you.
Lucas Underwood [00:03:44]:
Thank you.
David Roman [00:03:44]:
I like her. She can stay. You got anyway, I went back into yeah, you guys, like, right into the mic. Like, almost right into it. I went back and watched that video because I'm like, what video are you guys talking about? He sends me the link, and I open it up, and I'm watching for a minute, and I'm laughing, and I'm like, that's funny.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:05]:
Oh, I see what he's talking about.
Paul Danner [00:04:08]:
Well, no, because for real, it was a minute 47 of friendly banter, which is cool with your normal audience, but then you had your sponsored commercial, and then, of course, I get a YouTube commercial right after that. Literally. That was the progression, right?
David Roman [00:04:24]:
I don't ever consider that because of YouTube premiere. And so I never, ever watch my staff will be like, hey, watch this YouTube video. And they'll pull it up and then commercial. I'm like, what is that? What is that? He's like, it's a commercial. Hold on. You just got to watch it for, like, 15 more seconds. And I'm like, no, click that.
Paul Danner [00:04:43]:
But I'm learning a lot how all that works and how you're above all that. Put your hook at the beginning.
Lucas Underwood [00:04:52]:
Well, like I told you in my don't respond.
David Roman [00:04:55]:
This is literally all he's been telling me for forever. And I'm like, do you have any idea how much editing that requires? I don't have a Caleb. I am the Caleb. So I have to find the clip and like, okay, I'm going to put that at the beginning and then do a whole thing.
Paul Danner [00:05:10]:
Do that at the end as you're going through, as you're watching it and you're editing, and you're like, oh, that was really good. Then you just put a little flag there.
David Roman [00:05:18]:
Bookmark that. Look, I take the screens.
Lucas Underwood [00:05:21]:
Split, okay? Drop, export post.
Kristen Danner [00:05:25]:
That's how I do it. Got no time for that. Fancy.
David Roman [00:05:31]:
If you go back to our earlier videos, like really early videos, when we first started doing that's how they were, and it would take me hours and hours and hours, and I'd be like, oh, I can cut another, like, 3 seconds out. And I'm just trying to get them just right.
Paul Danner [00:05:47]:
What do you use for your editor filmora? I don't even know what that is.
David Roman [00:05:51]:
Yeah.
Paul Danner [00:05:52]:
You should switch to Adobe Premiere.
David Roman [00:05:54]:
Okay. That takes work and then a lot of learning.
Paul Danner [00:05:58]:
Give me one of your podcasts. We'll just take care of it for you. For nothing. I'll have Caleb I'll have Caleb do the edits and show you. It doesn't matter.
Kristen Danner [00:06:08]:
He gets paid.
Paul Danner [00:06:09]:
He's on the yeah, he works for So. And then I'll have him I'll have him put notes in what he did and how he did it and give it back to you. What do you think? If you want offers on the table yeah. But that means you have to start using Adobe.
David Roman [00:06:28]:
Yeah, that's so I told Lucas there's a particular plug in Adobe that just came out and it looks flipping awesome. And if it works the way it says it works, then I 100%.
Paul Danner [00:06:43]:
I hated Adobe when we started using it. I made the mistake of using Power Director, which was an easier CyberLink Power Director for years and years. And then when brought Caleb on, I said, listen, all of the big names. From what I hear, Adobe Premiere is the one you want to use. I'm like, I sat him down. I was like, watch every YouTube video you can to learn how to work this software in this program. That's what we're going to start using. And so now Caleb trains me on what to do.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:08]:
Oh, that's awesome.
Paul Danner [00:07:09]:
That program, I love it. Now there's so many little intricacies. What's the word?
Kristen Danner [00:07:14]:
Intricacies.
Paul Danner [00:07:15]:
Intricacies with it. But once you know what you can do with it, you're like, why was I not using this so much?
David Roman [00:07:24]:
I get that. That's just a lot of effort.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:28]:
It is.
Paul Danner [00:07:28]:
But as you guys grow, things to.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:30]:
Consider as you grow well, what I found with David, and here's the big problem with David is David does things that entertain David. Right? David doesn't care about listeners. David doesn't care about followers. David does what makes David laugh.
Kristen Danner [00:07:43]:
I think that's how Caleb does it, too.
Lucas Underwood [00:07:46]:
I've seen some good videos of you recently that I was like, I have children. I've got a daughter who loves to edit video and she loves to do fun stuff. And I just keep thinking, oh, that's going to be me one day. That's going to be bad.
Kristen Danner [00:08:02]:
Caleb gets paid to roast his dad, and of all of our children, I mean, he's the one that probably shouldn't.
Paul Danner [00:08:08]:
Have the we know when he's found something good because he'll be upstairs. Because he comes to my house to edit sometimes and he'll be upstairs just like I'm paying for his entertainment for the next hour.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:23]:
What do you think of ASTE so far? This is your second year.
Paul Danner [00:08:27]:
Have we been recording already?
Lucas Underwood [00:08:29]:
Oh, yeah.
Paul Danner [00:08:29]:
Oh, sweet. That's the way to do it. That's perfect.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:32]:
You don't even know that's the way it's supposed to be.
David Roman [00:08:34]:
Done.
Paul Danner [00:08:34]:
Yeah, I keep telling other people, too, you should hit record before we even because there's B roll stuff in there. There's clips in there. There's YouTube shorts in there.
David Roman [00:08:42]:
It's straight YouTuber. He's like the YouTube mind. Just click, click.
Paul Danner [00:08:48]:
That's your marketing.
Lucas Underwood [00:08:51]:
It's more than that, because as somebody who works on cars, right. The thing about cars, for me, that made cars entertaining was twisting this knob or finding that wire or doing this and seeing an effect of something else. Doesn't matter what it like. I like to be able to do something here and see a change here, and that's what excites me about everything. So it's like with Jeff's channel, even though that's not the purpose of show, like, to be able to make a change and see a difference. Over here, to me, is super cool. Like, optimizing anything is where I get my kicks. And so I love to research that and learn about the algorithms and how the algorithms work.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:32]:
David, on the other hand no, I don't care.
David Roman [00:09:34]:
I don't care about any of that.
Lucas Underwood [00:09:35]:
5 seconds and he's done.
Paul Danner [00:09:37]:
But, I mean, his blood pressure is probably a lot better than mine and yours, because I think I operate like you do, and my mind's just running all the time.
David Roman [00:09:47]:
Oh, my mind's running all the time. He's right. If it makes me chuckle, if I'm laughing the whole way, the whole time.
Paul Danner [00:09:53]:
I'm editing, you seem laid back like my brother is. I bet your blood pressure is better than mine.
David Roman [00:09:59]:
I have really good blood pressure.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:03]:
It's a byproduct. His mind is running all the time.
Paul Danner [00:10:06]:
Right. But there's a calmness about him.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:09]:
There is, but it's what his mind's running about. Okay. You're a simple fella.
David Roman [00:10:21]:
Okay, thanks. So what do the mic, dear. I got to tell him that. Don't worry about it'll. Be.
Lucas Underwood [00:10:36]:
Uh I guess it was a week ago, we were in Denver, and he didn't have headphones, and so David's always moving like this. I would know.
David Roman [00:10:47]:
I haven't listened back to them. Are they bad?
Lucas Underwood [00:10:49]:
They're terrible. I told you that. I kept saying, hey, David, into the mic, and yeah, well, that's going to.
David Roman [00:10:56]:
Be terrible to edit. I'm going to be depressed the whole time. Editing. See, those aren't fun to edit.
Paul Danner [00:11:03]:
Those are not fun. I've had some of those using a new camera, and all I hear is a cooling fan running under the hood of a car.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:09]:
That sucks.
David Roman [00:11:11]:
That's okay, though. That's part of the aesthetic.
Paul Danner [00:11:13]:
Yeah, but not when it's like yes. And then the voice is like high pitched treble and no bass, and it sounds like you're talking out of a tin kid.
Lucas Underwood [00:11:24]:
One of the very first recordings we ever did with anybody that was anybody, they came on and their audio was terrible. And so for an hour and 22 minutes, david and I fought through every time we would speak. About a quarter of a second later, we would hear exactly what we said, and then he would respond. We would hear what he said twice, and then David would talk, and he'd hear what he said twice. And so we're trying to balance. And I'm paying attention to, like, when I hear David finish talking the second time, that's when I need to talk to make sure that we're not.
David Roman [00:12:04]:
So the whole thing, we're pausing in between talking, we told the guy at the beginning, you're like, hey, you need to put headphones on because it's coming through the speakers. The MIC's picking it up, and so we can hear everything up. And he's like, oh, I do these all the time. I know what I'm doing. That's what he told me.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:21]:
Like a nightmare.
David Roman [00:12:23]:
Yeah. And I went through and I edited every single one of those double and all of the spacing where we were waiting to talk, I took them all out. It took hours. The other one that was terrible was poor Stefan. He was, like, wrestling a bear in the background. I don't know what he was doing. He was like, talk. Talk.
David Roman [00:12:43]:
And then I'm like, what is going on? And he's like, oh, man, I'm sorry. And then he would mute himself, and then he'd click and he'd talk. And then you'd hear the wrestling in the background. Oh, that wasn't good either.
Lucas Underwood [00:12:58]:
Yeah, that was pretty tough. That was pretty tough. We're at ASTE 2023.
David Roman [00:13:04]:
You already did that part.
Paul Danner [00:13:05]:
No, actually, he didn't.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:07]:
You started talking.
Paul Danner [00:13:08]:
This is a necessary part.
David Roman [00:13:09]:
It is?
Lucas Underwood [00:13:10]:
Yeah.
David Roman [00:13:10]:
Why?
Paul Danner [00:13:11]:
Because this is your cut right before this.
David Roman [00:13:14]:
Oh, no.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:14]:
He's putting all this in there where he starts talking.
Paul Danner [00:13:17]:
And the rest of this is broll and shorts and fun stuff that you produce later.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:21]:
If you can listen, I will wait till I come. I will pay you money.
David Roman [00:13:27]:
I'll send you the clips.
Paul Danner [00:13:28]:
But listen, if I'm sending people because I want to, there's real need in our field for what you guys are talking about. And as I'm sending people your way, I want them to pay attention and listen. And the YouTube audience, they're fickle people.
Lucas Underwood [00:13:41]:
They leave quickly.
Kristen Danner [00:13:43]:
Like, I can just short attention span.
Paul Danner [00:13:46]:
Short attention.
Kristen Danner [00:13:46]:
You want it right now.
Paul Danner [00:13:48]:
But that's not just YouTube. That's the algorithm of the world now.
David Roman [00:13:52]:
It's TikTok. Ruined everybody's brain.
Paul Danner [00:13:54]:
It was before TikTok. TikTok was developed because of that. It wasn't created for it.
David Roman [00:14:03]:
Have you heard of TikTok?
Lucas Underwood [00:14:04]:
What I said?
Kristen Danner [00:14:05]:
That's quite the social commentary.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:07]:
Thank you.
David Roman [00:14:10]:
He's glowing.
Kristen Danner [00:14:12]:
Thanks.
David Roman [00:14:13]:
Have you heard of TikTok brain?
Paul Danner [00:14:16]:
Not that.
David Roman [00:14:17]:
They did a study and they did a study on teenagers specifically. It disproportionately affects the teenage male brain.
Kristen Danner [00:14:26]:
And they can't afford it.
David Roman [00:14:27]:
It makes them more depressed.
Lucas Underwood [00:14:29]:
Wow.
David Roman [00:14:30]:
It makes them more anxious. And there's, like, all of these terrible mental issues they were studying, specifically, TikTok and what it was doing to but it also does it to both the teenage brain but they call it TikTok Syndrome or something like that. What's it called?
Lucas Underwood [00:14:48]:
I don't know. Earmuffs for just second checks in the mail. Thank you.
David Roman [00:14:53]:
What?
Lucas Underwood [00:14:53]:
Just say?
David Roman [00:14:54]:
Yeah, checks in the mail.
Paul Danner [00:14:57]:
You got to let them finish, Lucas, before you start.
David Roman [00:15:00]:
No, there's no finishing.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:03]:
This is David. This is what happened.
Kristen Danner [00:15:06]:
There's no finishing.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:07]:
This goes around and around and around. It never stops. Ken Robinson so talking about TikTok brain, I think we've talked about Sir Ken Robinson was his name.
Paul Danner [00:15:20]:
I'm not sure.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:21]:
He did a Ted Talk, and he was talking about education. And one of the things that he pointed out was he said, so the educational system that we have developed in, especially the Western countries was developed in the Industrial Revolution. It was developed in the Enlightenment. Before that, there was no public education. Now, I don't listen, folks, I don't agree with everything this dude says. He says some crazy wonky stuff and other stuff, but the Ted Talk is brilliant because he talks about the fact that we have been educating children on an assembly line. It has nothing to do with their skills. It has nothing to do with their personality.
Lucas Underwood [00:15:55]:
It has nothing to do it's really just like an assembly line. This is your born on date, and this is what matters, and this is how we're going to educate you. He said, It's not that we intentionally do it and it's bad. It's just what we've done. And nobody's like and he kept saying, like, hey, everybody says we need to raise the standards. We need to elevate education. He said, well, obviously, because why would we lower that doesn't make sense. But he says, So we're trying to take kids, and we're putting them in this educational system that was designed when there were no external distractions, and now we're trying to educate them amongst those external distractions, and we're saying, you don't need to do any of those things.
Lucas Underwood [00:16:35]:
You need to sit here and listen to something that's extraordinarily boring. And we force them to do that. And now we're like, well, why aren't they listening? So then we begin to medicate them. And he said, So we anesthesize them, and all of a sudden they're numb, and we just made the problem that much worse. Especially over the past couple of months, we've talked a lot about unintended consequences. Like what we do has an effect, and we don't always understand what that effect is until it's too late to do anything about it. And so I think that the educational system as a whole is somewhat broken. You probably didn't see it that much.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:12]:
At. And Eric Mortensen is here. Eric is the Wataga High teacher. And so the Wataga High program and we just met with a guy from IMR last week in Denver. The Wataga program is a one in a billion school, okay? So it has college classes, and it has high school classes in the same room or in the same facility. You've never seen a high school shop like this. You've most likely never seen even the highest end dealership look like this. This is an autotech class that has a Dyno in it.
Lucas Underwood [00:17:46]:
It has millions of dollars worth of tools, every kind of scan tool you can imagine, every kind of tire changer and balancer and alignment rack, everything. And so it has been so freaking cool to watch this because then Structure came in as a Volvo Master technician, and you got to be crazy to be a Volvo Master technician. Like, you have to be broken up here in the first place. Anybody that wants to work on that is just crazy, right? But it's so cool because what he's done is he came in and he said, wait a minute, I want to do this different. Let's figure out how do we do this different? How do we engage them, how do we get them excited because they're excited about all these other things. What do we have to do different that engages them? I think you probably know about this, but a lot of the high school instructors are ex techs that they've said, oh, I'm going to get my retirement gig. I'm going to come in here, and I'm going to do this thing where we're going to jump in and we're going to get benefits, and we're going to get a pension, and we're going to get whatever it is, and this is how it's going to work. And not too worried about the teaching part of it.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:52]:
I'm just worried about yeah, there's we.
Paul Danner [00:18:54]:
We get a lot of guys come into Rosedale with that kind of mentality on their resume we never hired, so.
Lucas Underwood [00:18:59]:
So here comes Eric, and he's like, no, I want to do this because I love doing this, right? And so he goes in and he develops a complete program in Wataga High that is, we're going to run an actual running shop, and we're going to bring teachers in, and you're going to work on their cars, and you're going to see the entire process. We're going to do the bookwork. We're going to do all the things we have to do that they tell us we have to do. But we're going to run this like a shop, and you're going to be part of it running. You're going to be part of what it does. And so it was the coolest thing I've ever seen. It is cool. Months, I want to say two, three months in.
Lucas Underwood [00:19:35]:
He calls me and he says, hey, I need you to come up here. I went up there, and the advisory councils typically had, like, five or six people in them before he started, and now we've got 250 people attending the advisory councils. And so here we are. I go up there and he says, hey, I need you to talk to this young lady. She came into my class for autotech, and it turns out she went into autotech just because she had to have a class to finish high school. And it was the only thing that she had not excelled at, like, in a big way and blown it out of the water and finished early. So she went to autotech, and she comes in, she says, I want to be a business owner. This has taught me I want to be a business owner.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:11]:
Show me how to be a business owner. I'm like, that is the coolest thing ever.
Paul Danner [00:20:14]:
The coolest thing ever.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:15]:
You know?
David Roman [00:20:16]:
Did you tell her to run? That's a terrible idea.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:20]:
No, she's not like you.
Paul Danner [00:20:22]:
I am a you know, as Lucas is talking, I'm reminded of that shop in Senegal, Africa, that we are affiliated with. They're doing something similar, minus the millions of dollars of equipment, but they're doing that exact thing where they're training their techs to it's a school, but they get paid, and they're working on customers cars, right. And doing that in Senegal, Africa, you.
Lucas Underwood [00:20:46]:
Think of what Oscar's doing and think about not just students, but people everywhere are hungry for knowledge. That's what made you successful in a lot of ways, right. Like, there were people that were hungry for it. And so the fact that autotech classes are empty, the fact that there's no progress, there's not people coming into the trade, signifies that something's wrong. Because if people are hungry enough to come onto YouTube and look for knowledge from you, they're hungry enough to go pay Oscar and say, I want to learn how to do this, then it means we're missing the bar somewhere. Means we're not getting to them.
Kristen Danner [00:21:22]:
Well, I think what I'm hearing, even going back to what you said about education, because we homeschooled for a while, because of just education isn't one size fits all.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:33]:
Exactly.
Kristen Danner [00:21:34]:
And it's not to blame the teachers. The teachers have to do what they have to do, and I would not want to be a teacher today. I would not. My dad was a teacher for many, many years. I don't know how you would do it, but they have all these standards to meet, and so they're teaching to the test, and the kids take the test. And do they remember anything after that test? No, they don't.
Lucas Underwood [00:21:54]:
Exactly.
Kristen Danner [00:21:55]:
And what we got to experience through homeschooling is my youngest son, who actually has dyslexia and dysgraphia is, of all my kids, the one who loves to learn the most. Because he wasn't being taught to a test, he wanted to learn. He was able to explore what he wanted to learn. And then looking at the program that you're talking about, I think what they're capturing there is it's not just here's what you can learn, but here's a vision for your future, because that's what kids don't have. When you're in school, you're just trying to get to the next grade, to the next grade till you can graduate. But where's the vision for, wow, I could be really successful? What kind of life could I lead doing this? And we were just talking to a shop owner this morning, and she works, what, two and a half days a week? She has a successful shop.
Paul Danner [00:22:43]:
Unbelievable.
Kristen Danner [00:22:44]:
And has people working for her that she can trust, and she doesn't have to be there all the time. And she's created a great life for herself because of that. So it's giving students the vision for what can your life be?
Lucas Underwood [00:22:57]:
Exactly. And remember Shasta Nelson?
David Roman [00:23:01]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:01]:
So Shasta had been on the podcast a while back, and she posted something the other day that I so resonated with. And she was talking about the fact she was going to teach this class. And she said, I am so nervous to be speaking in front of I want to say it was something like 10,000 of the most elite Fortune 500 CEOs in the country. Right? Like a massive pile of very important people. And she said, I am telling myself this morning that I am going to enjoy the experience and that I'm not going to say I'm just trying to get through this because there's so many things I realize now that I've missed in life because I was in so much of a hurry to get through this and to move past it and to be done right. And I look back at my experience in school and I say, that's what I was doing. I was just trying to get through it. Now I'm like, I wish I'd done that.
Lucas Underwood [00:23:58]:
And I think part of that's maturity. So in some sense, there's things that you're not going to realize that you want to do until it's later. I've talked about my daughter. Both of my kids are home schooled, and so my daughter is the one who when she got into public school and you're right, they're trying to deal with so many different people, and their values are different than my values. Now, I don't have a problem with them having different values. We're all human beings. We're afforded that right to have different values. But the big rule that we teach in our house is, like, you're responsible for your actions, and if you lose, you lose.
Lucas Underwood [00:24:34]:
That is what you do. And you just learn to get better, and then you win next time. Because if you don't experience that, you never get better. And so I've told it before, but the guidance counselor comes in and long story short, she made it to third place in a spelling B, and she gets upset about it. And we'd been dealing with this thing where she was always upset, and the teachers were calling and saying, she's upset, she's upset, she's upset. We found out that they were rewarding upset because then when she didn't want to do her work, they gave her a pack of Skittles and said, sit in the hallway. And so then she gets into the Skittles. Specifically skittles are Eminems.
David Roman [00:25:09]:
Seriously?
Lucas Underwood [00:25:09]:
Yes. And so then they had little packs just for that. And anytime a kid pitched rewarding a.
Paul Danner [00:25:14]:
Puppy for pooping on the floor.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:16]:
Exactly.
Paul Danner [00:25:16]:
Did you hear we have a puppy, by the way?
Lucas Underwood [00:25:20]:
I saw them. Okay.
Kristen Danner [00:25:23]:
Plug for our puppy.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:27]:
The spelling bee thing happens, and they lay out the rules as clear as day. I mean, there was no way she didn't know. She was upset because she didn't make it to first place. She made to third place out of 20 kids. Come on, now. That's life. That's going to happen. Instead of my wife's got her out there, she's got her by the arms, and she's saying, you did a good job and you tried your very best, and that's what's important.
Lucas Underwood [00:25:51]:
But now here's what you have to do next time, and let's coach through this so you get better next time. Right. And so what happens? The guidance counselor comes up and pulls our daughter out of my wife's arms and says, sweetie, we feel really bad about what happened. We're going to change the rules, and we're going to put you back in the competition. And I'm like, you all stopped a spelling bee. You did a disservice to the kids that are already in the spelling bee, and now you're coming out and you're pulling her away and teaching her the exact opposite of what we've tried to teach her. Right. Wow.
Lucas Underwood [00:26:21]:
And I'm sure that's just that one guidance counselor. But when I've told that story, I've heard from all these other people. They send me messages, and they say, this is what education in the states is today, because we're so worried about offending somebody, and mom and dad are going to come complain.
Kristen Danner [00:26:35]:
Well, we have now a generation that lives based on their emotions. And if their feelings are hurt, then they've been traumatized, and feelings are king. That's what everybody's running around basing everything off of. How do I feel about it? And everybody's a victim. Because when you're a victim, you don't have to take responsibility for yourself. You can claim that status as a victim.
David Roman [00:27:00]:
You're going to get us banned on YouTube. Red dye number three was banned in California, along with a whole bunch of other chemicals, and it was the reason it's an ingredient in Skittles. The reason why they were banning it is because it was linked to hyperactivity and other neurobehavioral effects in children.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:21]:
Really?
David Roman [00:27:22]:
Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:23]:
Wow.
Paul Danner [00:27:23]:
That's a double whammy, then.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:24]:
Yeah, I know, right? They made it worse.
David Roman [00:27:26]:
Yeah. And so this kid is acting up, and they're like, here's some red dye number three.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:31]:
Wow.
Paul Danner [00:27:32]:
That's crazy.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:34]:
I'm a big World War II buff. And what you said resonates with me because did y'all stay for the keynote last night at the dinner? No. Holy cow.
Kristen Danner [00:27:45]:
Well, now you busted us. That we did. Not.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:49]:
Guilty.
David Roman [00:27:51]:
Oh. This guy's story was wild. Yeah.
Lucas Underwood [00:27:53]:
And Rich had just been in here, and I'm watching I turn around and look, and I'm watching Rich, and he's just got tears pouring down his face. And so, man, I'm like, trying not to tear up because I know at some point somebody's going to come talk to me. And I'm like and I'm like looking at my phone, trying to distract myself. You look back at World War II, you look at what that guy last night went through, and to come through it and to say, you know what? I can't go back and change what happened. That is life. It's okay. All I can do is march forward.
Paul Danner [00:28:25]:
Can't believe we left early. Why did we do that?
Lucas Underwood [00:28:27]:
Oh, man. There was not a dry eye in the place. It was intense.
Paul Danner [00:28:31]:
I looked at the clock, it was like 757, and I thought it was over at eight. And I'm like, it said six to eight on the schedule, didn't it?
David Roman [00:28:39]:
Listen.
Paul Danner [00:28:42]:
And then no one said anything. And I'm like, I'm not even sure there is a speaker.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:49]:
Blame Scott Palabo.
Paul Danner [00:28:52]:
Part of it, though, is like, it's hard to come to these events, and I was all peopleed out.
Lucas Underwood [00:28:58]:
Yeah, for sure. I completely resonate with that, people.
Paul Danner [00:29:03]:
Well, I do too, but to a point. I love hearing the stories. I love hearing lives changing, and it was awesome to have my wife here with me as part of that. But there's just a level where the.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:18]:
Emotional bank account well, yeah, because you.
Paul Danner [00:29:20]:
Want to be just as excited to the next person about meeting them, too, and there's just not a whole lot of that left just because it's hard to definitely and I don't want to be rude to whoever else I meet in the bathroom.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:36]:
Dude, let me ask you.
Paul Danner [00:29:39]:
I heard your story yesterday. I wanted to shake your hand in the bathroom.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:42]:
Like, let me urinal.
Paul Danner [00:29:44]:
Yes.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:45]:
I'm standing at the urinal and dude sticks his hand out.
Paul Danner [00:29:49]:
Let me wash hands first.
Kristen Danner [00:29:51]:
That was a bold move to stick your hand out.
Lucas Underwood [00:29:55]:
We were in Florida at the Institute summit. I was walking out of the bathroom, and Cecil is like, just absolutely big spirit. He's loud, you know what I'm saying? And I walk over and I wash my hands, and this other guy walks in, and they walk in to use the bathroom. And as I'm walking out, all I hear Cecil say is, OOH, that's know. And I just crack up as I'm walking out, and it's Cecil's show. And he's like, It's not what it sounds like. And I'm like, okay.
Kristen Danner [00:30:31]:
So back to the World War II veteran.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:33]:
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, nice. You should have her on.
David Roman [00:30:37]:
Keep us on track. Let's finish that story.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:42]:
She's our new moderator. We're the host. She's the moderator.
Kristen Danner [00:30:45]:
I'm a mom. I know how to do these things well.
Lucas Underwood [00:30:47]:
So the Band of brothers all the history. I had researched all of that. And that saying that hard times make strong men and strong men make good times, and good times make weak men really resonates with me. Because those guys, when they came back in the 40s, they came back from the most horrendous life has to offer, right? And they saw things, and they saw how evil humanity could be for no reason. They saw some really terrible things, and there was zero reason for it. It was power. It was control. But the things that they saw were a result of that need for power and control.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:30]:
But that wasn't what made it okay to do what they did. It was war that made it okay. And because nobody's watching and there is no rule. There is no law. It doesn't matter. We're in control. We'll do whatever we want, right? We had the bigger gun. And so these guys saw the worst that humanity had to offer.
Lucas Underwood [00:31:46]:
They saw what uninhibited human beings would eventually do if allowed. And they came back and they built the greatest generation of Americans there ever was, right? They made them strong. They made them tough. And we found ourselves back in the weak cycle, right? And you see that man that was up there last night? And he says, I was laying there, and I knew I was in trouble when they folded my legs and I was looking at the bottom of my feet.
Paul Danner [00:32:14]:
Wow. And he said, oh, I saw a guy missing legs. That was him.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:25]:
He goes on to, it was a.
Paul Danner [00:32:26]:
Fantastic I'm really mad that I didn't think there was a speaker. It was 757 and there ain't no speaker.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:33]:
And nobody blame Scott Palaba. Scott Palava organized the event.
David Roman [00:32:38]:
He tried. He did the best he could.
Paul Danner [00:32:42]:
Sorry, Scott.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:42]:
Yeah.
Kristen Danner [00:32:42]:
I mean, it's a lot to put together. It is, yeah. I would have loved to have heard that.
Lucas Underwood [00:32:46]:
Well, so he goes on and he explains what the next most of these speakers say, I went through this really hard thing and look how successful I am. But instead, he went through the next 30 minutes of his life right up to the point when he said, I felt cold and I realized what was coming. And he said, I said to my best friend that was still alive my two other best friends were dead. He said to my best friend that was still alive, I want you to tell my family that I love them. And he said, no, you're going to tell him yourself, and I'm going to get you home. He said, the next thing I remember, he said, it was eight days later, and I woke up Walter Reed. And he said, you know what?
David Roman [00:33:23]:
The wildest part of that? He tells whole. He builds it up, then you find out what happened to him. And he had an IED. He was in a the what was the vehicle in front of him.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:36]:
The Bradley the Bradley missed it by three inches.
David Roman [00:33:39]:
The Bradley misses it, which would have taken the hit. Instead, they end up rolling over. It hits the Hummer, flips over, blows.
Lucas Underwood [00:33:46]:
The doors off of it. He's 20ft away from the Hummer, arm broken, legs broken.
David Roman [00:33:51]:
Another guy gets pinned underneath the Hummer, and he's going through all this. And what do he say at the end? I would go back there again if I could.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:00]:
Yeah, if he had to do it.
David Roman [00:34:01]:
Again, he'd do it again. Despite the fact that he's missing his legs. And the reason why was he believed in what they were doing. He believed in this country. He believed in everything it represents. And therefore, you got to have people like that. No country survives without people like that.
Lucas Underwood [00:34:20]:
And the fact that after what he's been through and after what he's seen and after, we get so caught up in the world that it is today and whether it's political, whether it's religious, whatever it is, we can find all the things that are wrong with it. But yet he says that I would still go back and do that, right? And he says, if you look at any other country in the world, your rights and freedoms here far outweigh what anybody else has, right? And so we take that for granted. And I think that's part of like I said, that's part of that weak part of the cycle is that because we are taking it for granted, we don't respect it. We don't respect that we have the opportunity to do great things and for these people to hear us. And, you know, we see a lot of technicians, for instance, who are really upset about all of the things that they've endured and all the things they've been through. But what we don't see is a lot of them working to make it better, a lot of them working together to make it better, a lot of shop owners and a lot of technicians. And it's starting to change, right? We're seeing it come together, but for what? The past ten years, we've seen them divided, and we've seen them instead of trying to create dialogue and create conversation, we've seen them continue to try and divide it. Well, he's a greedy Sob.
Lucas Underwood [00:35:48]:
I shouldn't have done this and that, but the reality is that if we want to actually change this profession in this industry and make things better, what has to happen? We have to work together. We have to talk about what we don't like. We have to talk about what's wrong, and then we have to start taking steps to fix it.
Paul Danner [00:36:07]:
You guys are doing a great job on that front.
Lucas Underwood [00:36:09]:
Well, thank you, sir.
David Roman [00:36:10]:
We just yak into a microphone. We don't do anything.
Paul Danner [00:36:12]:
You have the right people around you feeding the words to yak into the.
David Roman [00:36:16]:
Mic, something like that. And the only reason why anybody listens to us is because you keep sharing our so we're like, hey, nobody's watching. Oh, Paul Danner shared a video. Somebody's listening now. You know what the coolest thing was? Learning about Brandon Steckler and Jim Morton in their Diagnostic Mastermind. Do you hear that story? They used to get together just to learn.
Paul Danner [00:36:43]:
I knew Jim mentored to go all.
David Roman [00:36:47]:
Him and a bunch of other technicians would go to his shop and they would just talk diag and break down. And this is what we worked on today, and this is what a scope and they would just talk. And it was a mastermind. Yeah, they didn't recognize it, but it was a mastermind. These technicians were just they were dying to learn and they wanted to be around it. You don't hear it, anything like that. And I talked to one of my techs and I said, we should do something like that here. But man, it's almost like, where do you start? Who do you reach out to? Nobody's going to show.
David Roman [00:37:18]:
So nobody's going to show for like a year. You're just going to have to muscle through and make a commitment. And this is what we're going to just do. And hopefully there'll be some results, but a lot of times there isn't. And most people would give up. Most people give up.
Lucas Underwood [00:37:36]:
We did that here. So Brandon Dills started grabbing a group of people and they would go shop to shop. The problem is, shop to shop up here is like, it's 3 hours to my shop from here. So for Brandon, it's a two hour drive. And so to get 50 people to drive to my shop and it doesn't need to be that big, but you know what I'm saying?
David Roman [00:37:58]:
It can be eight people, and it doesn't need to be. We gotta go to Lucas's job.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:02]:
And here's the problem, though, that I have found or that I have seen the percentage of really quality technicians, and I'm going to get myself in trouble here. The percentage of really quality technicians in any one given town that's actually genuinely interested in learning is pretty small, right?
David Roman [00:38:22]:
Genuinely interested in learning is probably larger than you think.
Lucas Underwood [00:38:28]:
Skilled or knowledgeable or willing to invest the time.
David Roman [00:38:33]:
That's always the issue. You were talking about it earlier. I think there's plenty of people that are willing to learn and want to get into the trade, but they want to get paid to learn. You put an application out there or a job ad out there, you get bombarded with people that call you and say, I like working on cars. I don't know anything, but I'm willing to learn. Okay, but you want me to pay you to learn? Is that what we're going to do here? You normally would pay a college rosedale doesn't pay the students, right? The students show up, they pay the school. They want me to pay them to, then learn how to do the job. I need them to do.
David Roman [00:39:17]:
That doesn't make any sense. How does that work for me? It doesn't like, great. You're going to have these skills you're going to learn and be able to take with you for the rest of your life. Meanwhile, I'm paying you to learn. This doesn't make any sense. But that's the mindset of most people. I don't know how we change that. How do you shift that and go, hey, if you want to get into it, great.
David Roman [00:39:37]:
There's all these resources available. Go utilize one of those resources. I had a GS call me. He was looking for a job. He wanted to jump because he was stuck on the oil chain track, and he'd been there for almost a year. He was making, like, $15 an hour in Kansas City. $15 an hour is low pay. And he's like, Man, I just need an opportunity.
David Roman [00:40:03]:
I want to learn. This is what I told him. I said, Give yourself six months. I said, I sent me your link scanner. Dana Premium. It's, like, $99, and said, Get your little Uscope. That's what I told him. I said, Get those two things, go through the whole program, like, bust through the program at 100 miles an hour.
David Roman [00:40:23]:
And in six months, I guarantee you, somebody will give you a job. Minimum $25 to $30 an hour, probably more. And if you can't find anybody, come talk to me. Six months later, I message him he had joined Nice. I have no idea if he went through any of the material. Another six months goes by. I message him like, hey, how are things going, Ghosted? Nothing. I was offering them a job.
David Roman [00:40:47]:
I was just checking in on them, and everybody just wants to be given something. Yeah, let me give it to you, dude. Put your head down. And I've given you the tools that's literally all you have to do is just go through the program, learn how to use that scope. You walk into any shop, I don't get it. We say this all the time. These technicians don't get it. You walk into any shop I've got my own scope.
David Roman [00:41:16]:
I've been through the standard endorsement, entire program. I know how to use it. I can diagnose most things. They will throw money at them. Here, take the money. Go.
Kristen Danner [00:41:25]:
Not everybody has a vision for that, because, say a young guy, young girl, you're coming out of school. You're like, I just did school. I did that. I've learned what I need to learn. I just want to work now. I don't want to do that. And if I'm working 40 hours a week, do I want to spend time taking more classes? And so there's a lot of that, and we have a lot of people whose shop owners pay for them to take his classes. Some take advantage, some don't.
Kristen Danner [00:41:50]:
But then we see other people who grab it and fly through the material.
David Roman [00:41:56]:
But it's got to be a small.
Kristen Danner [00:41:56]:
Percentage, but then come back and say, I was like the gopher guy, and now I'm like the top guy and I'm making this money. And I think people need to hear those stories and catch a vision for what it could mean because they just can't see it.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:13]:
Well, okay, so when I went through that material, it was all on the line.
Paul Danner [00:42:20]:
You wanted it, Lucas.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:21]:
Well, I know you wanted it. I more than wanted to see the.
Paul Danner [00:42:24]:
Ones that want it because I hear from them all the time.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:27]:
I more than wanted it. It was crash or burn. I had to have it. If I didn't have it, everything was going to fall apart. And so I sat in the floor, and she still talks about it today. I sat in the floor of our living room with my three year old, and I would watch Scanner Danner videos, and she would watch her cartoons, right? And so we watched Scanner Danner videos together for years. That's awesome, right? Yeah. And so Alex would be sitting on the couch, and she would be doing paperwork.
Lucas Underwood [00:42:55]:
I would be laying in the floor, and I would have the book out, and I would be studying that. My daughter would be laying beside me, and she'd have her tablet out. And that's what we did for four or five years, right. And the key difference for me was is I was going to survive and thrive or I was going to fail. And that was the only option. And we go back to that guy last night, or we go back to the guys know, Band of brothers, for instance. There was no option, you know what I mean? It was life or death. It was win or fail.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:27]:
Those were the only options.
David Roman [00:43:30]:
It doesn't need to get to that point.
Lucas Underwood [00:43:32]:
I know it doesn't, but here's my point, is that the current generation and the people that we have right now and I shouldn't say the current generation, our current mindset, not the generation, it doesn't matter what generation you're from. The current mindset is, well, if I don't, somebody's just going to hand me something anyway. Well, there's no technician, so I'll be able to get a job no matter what. I don't have to put it in. If I don't succeed for my family, oh, well, right. Somebody's going to pay us, we're going to get government benefits. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is I could fail. But the problem is, and so many people get aggravated at them for this, I feel really bad for them for it.
Lucas Underwood [00:44:19]:
Because eventually in life comes a time when you look back and you say, oh, shit, I am out of time. I look at and I know it's okay to tell a story because he told it on Jeff's show. George and I have been friends for over 20 years, okay? George has been through prison george has been through drug addiction. George has been through abuse as a child. George has been through everything you can imagine, right? He's had the world thrown at him when he worked for me. We put him in scanner danner and we put him in CTI courses, and we put him through all these things, and he would try to and he he would try to get it, and he would put the work in. He would put the work in. He would put the work in.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:00]:
And I'm always talking to him, man, you gotta be putting some money back. You gotta be smart about your money. You got to be thinking about the decisions you make because time will run out on you. You will eventually run out. And now you look at George, and he's in a situation where his wife goes and runs around with somebody else and leaves him. He's got a child who he's thought that the best things for them were what was happening. It turns out that wasn't what was happening. And he now has to put in the work, and he has to learn to be a dad overnight.
Lucas Underwood [00:45:33]:
You know what I'm saying? He's been the breadwinner. He's not been the dad. And now all of a sudden he realizes, oh, no, I've got to be a dad, and I don't know how. And being a dad, like, being a single parent, you know what I'm talking like, there's a lot of things that we're parents and we're dads, and we'reinforcing where they're taking care of them. There's a lot of things that moms do that we never realized that had to be done and had to be taken care of. And George found all those things out like that. It just was overnight. And then he's like, I got to get back in my scanner danner.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:10]:
I got to start doing things different. And he's like, I don't have any savings. I don't have any money. I don't have anything. I'm living by the seat of my pants. And I think about how many people are going through that and they wait until life happens. And now it's too late. Now I don't think it's too late for George.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:29]:
I think George has got opportunity. He told me the other day, he said for the first time in my adult life, he said, I've got $1,300 in my checking account. He said, that's the first time I've ever had any money to my name. It and I didn't realize why it was happening. There's a lot of reasons. There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that he didn't know about. But the point is that don't wait for life to happen to you and then try and clean it up.
Paul Danner [00:46:53]:
Yeah, it's never too late, though. No, it's never too late.
Lucas Underwood [00:46:56]:
No, but that knowledge is what gives you the tools to where you're never on the brink of disaster.
Paul Danner [00:47:02]:
Yeah, 100%.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:04]:
And I think that's what we miss. We've got time. We've got time. We talk about our health sometimes and it's like you always think, well, I got time.
Paul Danner [00:47:13]:
None of us are promised tomorrow. No, that's what we're trying to view, what position we're in and platform we have to try to do something even better and together. That's why she's here.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:29]:
Tell us about it. Tell us about it.
Paul Danner [00:47:32]:
You're up. You're up. Kip. That was a Napoleon Dynamite quote.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:39]:
Yeah.
Kristen Danner [00:47:41]:
It's been a privilege just the past several days to get to share more about what we're doing.
Paul Danner [00:47:48]:
Put your face on that mic unless.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:51]:
You can smell the last person who talks breath.
David Roman [00:47:54]:
Quit telling people that.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:55]:
That's creepy.
Paul Danner [00:47:56]:
That is kind of creepy.
Lucas Underwood [00:47:59]:
Now.
Kristen Danner [00:48:00]:
I don't want to do it at all. Anyway, what he's referring to is just the next iteration of Scanner Danner and the changes that are being made because it's been, in a sense, like a one man show all these years. Because he's scanner. Danner. Nobody else is him. Nobody else thinks like him. Nobody else does what he does. And we have the team behind the scenes supporting that and making that happen.
Kristen Danner [00:48:25]:
But he can only be that guy for so long. He doesn't want to chase that. He doesn't want to chase like, what's this guy doing? What's that guy doing? I have to do it more. I have to do it better. He could he could make that choice. That's not the way he wants to live. And we have a family that losing you.
Paul Danner [00:48:43]:
Yeah, I was losing her in it.
Kristen Danner [00:48:45]:
Right. Because it's all consuming and we've seen this just being here. I mean, he can't walk to the bathroom. It takes half an hour. And it's such a privilege because these are people that are just so encouraging and literally support our family. So there is not one bit of appreciation that we're missing there. We're just so thankful for that. But now we're just getting to a different phase where we've been thinking like, okay, well, what's this going to look like in the future? He's going to be like 90 years old being Scanner Danner.
Kristen Danner [00:49:21]:
To some people, he probably will be. So what can we do? And how can we do something together, too? Because just as his career changes, mine is too. I've been home with four kids, and now we only have two left at home and they're in high school. So it's like I said, I'm just slowly being fired from my job, like, bit by bit. Once my daughter can drive, I don't even know what I'm doing. So we've just been mindful of what do we want it to look like for us when the kids are gone. That second phase, and it's kind of coinciding with what do we want Scanner Danner to look like, too? And so we have an opportunity to change things on the business front and bring in creators and give them a platform and bring more value to our customers. And also that allows him more time to work on the charity SD charities that we've started where we can see, you know, where does God want to send us, George?
Paul Danner [00:50:20]:
We would step in in a heartbeat.
Kristen Danner [00:50:22]:
For a guy like right? And we're, and we're using the contacts that he's made over these years, people that we know and trust, to say, here's a need, here's a need. And we'll just fill those needs as they come. And we're just trusting again, just trusting God to put the people in our paths that he wants us to bless. And just all of this, the success, money, whatever, we hold it loosely because it's not ours. It blesses us, it feeds us, it clothes us, but how much does anybody need?
Lucas Underwood [00:50:56]:
Oh, man.
Kristen Danner [00:50:56]:
Right? We always say, like, to what end? To what end do we need all these things?
David Roman [00:51:02]:
That conversation sounds very familiar.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:06]:
I know it does. Almost makes me tear up a little bit. Makes me think about the story with my dad that's to the T. I've watched my dad do that for years, over and over and over again, community service programs and and just like, people who did not deserve right.
Paul Danner [00:51:30]:
Do any of us deserve right?
David Roman [00:51:31]:
Right.
Lucas Underwood [00:51:31]:
Well, that's the thing that got me, is like, these are yeah. And my dad's out here pouring his heart out to them, whatever they and like, I've watched him time and time and time and time and I've talked to David about it and shared with David how frustrated I used to be and he would just continue to give. And I remember at one point that there was this pastor and this pastor goes to my dad and he says, it's 2008. They were in a business deal together and it was all falling apart. And the pastor said to my dad, listen, if you don't step in, this ministry is going to fail if you don't take my part of it was $48,000 a month in payments. I was like, okay. And I'm like, what are you doing? Oh, my God. And he's like, It'll be okay.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:17]:
I'm like, yeah, but we need that money. This is how we're going to survive. And he's like, It'll be okay. Stop worrying about it. It's just money, paper, who cares? What are you talking about? It's just paper. Who cares? It will be okay, right? And so I've watched that and if you knew the number of people that had walked up and said, your dad changed my life, your dad saved my life, and they mean it.
David Roman [00:52:46]:
It's not just words.
Lucas Underwood [00:52:47]:
It's not just that means way more than dollar bills to me now. I don't realize it until it happens. And so I was so mean and I feel so bad about it now. And I look back and I'm like, what in the hell were you thinking? But he was way smarter than I was, the older I get, the stupider I feel, and the smarter he seems, because he was making the decisions to create opportunity for us, and not just opportunity for us, but to make the world a better place step by step by step.
Paul Danner [00:53:20]:
And he was also, at the same time, and I don't know the rest of the story, but he was also lightening his burden. Because when you look external to your own situation, when you're only focused on what you have and what you're doing.
Kristen Danner [00:53:40]:
How do I hold on to it?
Paul Danner [00:53:41]:
How do I hold on to this? How do I make it more? How do I grow it? These are all good things in themselves, but when that's your only focus, it brings on anxiety and fear and worry and burden. But when you just say, I want to look outside of myself and see what's around me and who I can help and what I can do, it's the most freeing thing that I can describe.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:09]:
I remember a point in my business when I finally said, you know what? If this all fails tomorrow, I'm going to be okay. My family's going to be okay. If this doesn't work out, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. Like, we're still here. We're still living. We're still breathing. It's not the things that we have.
Lucas Underwood [00:54:29]:
And we put so much pressure on ourselves, and there's so many business owners, and I feel so bad for them because there's so many business owners who would be so embarrassed to tell where they're at right now and so embarrassed to share. The thing is that usually that can be saved. And if it can't be saved, we can at least get them to a position that it doesn't hurt so bad when they do have to do something like that, when they do have to go work for somebody else, whatever it is, but they're so embarrassed to share. Like, hey, I'm on the verge of bankruptcy. There's so many people that are right there right now, and they shouldn't be embarrassed about it, right? We talk about this often is the fact that our businesses still have struggles. There's times that money is still tight. There's times that things are still hard. But on social media, we put out these highlight reels, and it seems like, oh, look how great it is.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:20]:
Oh, we've made it. And people come in here all the time. Oh, man, I wish I was like you, and I wish I had a big shop like that. And I wish that once I get there, I will have made it. No, that is not where success is, right? I think about my dad. I don't mean to tell the story again. Long story short, San Diego dude walks up to me and says, hey, your dad changed my life. He actually saved my life.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:43]:
And I'm like, I'm not from here. I don't think you got. The right person. He said no. You're Lucas Underwood, right? And I'm like, oh, shit. And he says, yeah, your dad saved my life. And I said, okay. How? And he said, well, I was doing community service at Appalachian Heritage Museum.
Lucas Underwood [00:55:59]:
And he said, your dad realized I had a thousand hours of community service. I'd been caught with a bunch of dope. He said, I was running around with all these people. And he said, your dad looked at me and said, he's got the piece of paper, and he's writing hours down. I'm probably going to get dad in trouble for saying he's writing hours down on it. And he folds that piece of paper up, and he hands it back to me, and he hands me a $1,000 cash and literally gives me clothing. And he said, you need to get the hell out of here. If you don't get out of here, this is never going to change.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:28]:
You need to get the hell out of here. He said he bought me a plane ticket. He said, landed in San Diego and met my wife emptying the trash can in San Diego and started business in San Diego.
Kristen Danner [00:56:36]:
Amen.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:36]:
Right? That's awesome. And so that means more to me.
Paul Danner [00:56:41]:
I knew I liked Lucas from day one. I don't know why. Guess we know why.
Lucas Underwood [00:56:45]:
It means way more to me now than the money does. They created massive, right? Like, I taught a class the other day, and people asked I wanted to give the answer. I told you about the Andy Andrews thing, and he said that he was living under a pier. And he said, is life just a lottery ticket and some win and some lose? Or were there things that made people successful? Whether there's things that made me successful, my parents made me successful, right. My grandparents made me successful, because the decisions they made were smart ones. Was not me. I did not get me here. My parents got me here, right? At the end of the day, you got me here.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:31]:
He got me here. The people in my circle, the people I surrounded myself with. And at the time, I did not know I was doing it, but those people got me here.
Paul Danner [00:57:39]:
You know, I'm a man of faith. I would say God got you here, of course, through all of those people.
Lucas Underwood [00:57:44]:
Of course, through the right people at the right time, at the right setting, and the right path crossed in the right way. Yeah. But it wasn't me. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. It wasn't me. And so these people that come in here and say, well, I just need a big shop, and I just need this. I just need this. No, if you can't be happy right now, if you can't be okay right now, you can't be happy and you can't be okay.
David Roman [00:58:10]:
Because that's what I was trying to tell that shop coach that we talked to at Ratchet and Wrench. That's what I was trying to convey. We were talking about that business model that gets pushed. Their agenda is not necessarily, I'm going to screw the customer, I'm going to screw the technician. Their agenda is to transform the life of the shop owner and make them wildly monetarily successful at all costs. It doesn't matter. The ends justify the means. They won't phrase it like that, but they want that shop owner.
David Roman [00:58:47]:
And then once you have they're looking at us as the teacup. Fill your teacup up and then give away what overflows. The teacup can be whatever size you want it to be, by the way.
Paul Danner [00:58:58]:
It never fills.
Kristen Danner [00:58:59]:
Right?
David Roman [00:59:00]:
And for some people it does. For some people it does. You see people that are in that program that are giving away a ton of money and doing a ton of charity work, and they're giving away car repairs and they're fixing cars on the weekends for free and they're giving cars away, and you see just all this work that they're doing. But again, at the end of the day, do the ends really justify the means? All this charity work, does it mask how you got there? And you do get to the point where enough isn't enough. And it's like, oh, I could get more, but the methodology to get to that end is a bit skeezy. And are you really justifying it? Are you really saying that getting there was the way I got there was okay? Because now you're doing all this extra charity work and now you just want to do more of it, but you still have to do more of what got you to that point. And all of it is a little slimy, but they're like, well, but look what all of the good I'm doing. Yeah, but the process, you end up losing your soul along the way.
Kristen Danner [01:00:11]:
Well, are you doing that same good within your own household?
Lucas Underwood [01:00:14]:
Hey, man, right?
Kristen Danner [01:00:16]:
So you can be given away a million dollars. Ask your kids, ask your wife or your husband or whatever.
David Roman [01:00:23]:
Yeah. No, they will for themselves.
Kristen Danner [01:00:29]:
Right. Do they feel that you are present because they don't give a hoot how much money you're giving away?
David Roman [01:00:37]:
For the most part, I think that's not the issue. I think they're okay in their family lives. I'm looking at them as individuals. What have you decided is okay? That wasn't okay before because the end result is the pile of money. Does that make sense?
Lucas Underwood [01:00:56]:
Yeah.
Paul Danner [01:00:56]:
Well, I think there's a scripture verse on that too. It talks about when you're bringing your gift or your sacrifice. If you have a problem with your brother, don't give it. You go handle that first because I don't want it otherwise. That's God's standard with giving. So if you have some wrong behind you, you need to fix first and you're going to give to somehow appeal.
Kristen Danner [01:01:22]:
As a wrong right, which we all do. I mean, we all have some issue that we're dealing with, otherwise nobody's going to meet that standard. Right, I just meant from his. Yeah, exactly.
Paul Danner [01:01:34]:
I would agree. What they're doing to customers and people and using your words, I don't know if you said screwing them over or whatever, but getting as much as you can from that person, regardless of their whatever, if you think that's right and you need to be schooled in how wrong that is, I mean, that's not our place to do that. I don't know.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:01]:
The problem is I guess you've heard me say it 100 times.
David Roman [01:02:07]:
The problem is heard everything you've said so far, 100 times, all of it.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:14]:
The problem is the frog in the pot of water. Right. Because it was cold when he got in. Yeah. And slowly we move the morality and the ethical compass compass in a different direction. Little decision by little decision by little decision by little decision. Now here's my thing, is it's not just the one person that we're affecting, okay. Because when we talk about changing the industry, how do you do it? Will you affect one person? Right.
Lucas Underwood [01:02:43]:
Like you affected me and because I knew there was training out there, what did I do? I went to this show, right? I was done with the shop. I want to learn to be a better technician. I know there's training out there because he's training people. So I go to ASTE, I learned to be a manager and now that's affected more people because I was given an opportunity just through luck to have a bigger voice. And so I told people what I learned. And then that got more technicians involved with you. That got more people involved with AST to learn to be better owners, better service advisors, better technicians that improved their lives, that made things better and they didn't know about those things prior to that. Right.
Lucas Underwood [01:03:16]:
Well, the problem is it works both ways. And so if you teach somebody to do something that is unethical little by little by little and they teach more people to do something that's unethical little by little by little, and they decrease the professional standard of which it is that we rule by or run by what happens. So we're always I don't want to say fighting a war, we are, but there's two camps and one's going to be winning and one's going to be losing when it comes to this.
Paul Danner [01:03:45]:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, some of it too is defining winning. There's a wide difference in opinions on what winning looks like. Winning can be being in a cabin in the woods with hardly anything.
Kristen Danner [01:04:06]:
That sounds very specific.
Paul Danner [01:04:08]:
Yeah, you're kind of minimalist. You don't need things, materials irrelevant or.
Kristen Danner [01:04:16]:
Winning is having a million followers.
Paul Danner [01:04:19]:
Yeah, I think we need to keep sight of that as whatever our plans are and whatever we're doing, we should just keep that in mind the destination. Winning might not necessarily be material success. It doesn't have to be.
David Roman [01:04:36]:
And just like you were saying, at what point you're like, what else do I just like I was saying, it's no longer okay to stay at the Fairfield Inn. Now I got to stay at the JW Marriott. And that's why I want more money, and that's why I got to have the extra salary. I want the Lexus. I don't want the Toyota. What's the point, right? To what end?
Lucas Underwood [01:04:59]:
Who cares?
Kristen Danner [01:04:59]:
Exactly. And in and of itself. It's not because we joked about the one year when we go to the beach every year we got a house with a pool, which we hadn't had before. And we're like, okay, every year we need to have a house with a pool because we have our kids and our granddaughter, and we spent all our time there. So for us, that's valuable. There's nothing wrong with those things. But it's like, what are you chasing after? And what value is coming back to us? There is value in spending money on that pool because that's our family time. But do we all have to have fancy cars when we drive to the beach house? Do we have to have the biggest beach house? There's got to be a point where that return is just not worth it.
Paul Danner [01:05:42]:
And then also being kind of almost married to what your idea and success plan is, when you live in a way where you can afford all those payments to all these different things, and then comes the worry and fear of how do I keep it going so I can pay my bills? We kind of approached it from a standpoint of let's pay off all of our debt and then see where it goes from there. Because that, to me, is ultimate freedom. Because then if I don't want to work today, I don't have to because I don't have debt. And if it all crashes and burns, I'll just go work at my brother's shop, right? I'm okay with that in my mind, too. Even with this path we're on now with the charity is know, some people will say, well, why aren't you front and center, continuing with scanner, Danner? And we're going to do everything we can to make that even better for people, because we know we have the material there still to change the lives of those that don't know anything and need to get that foundation poured and then come to events like this and build on top of that. But we know we have that. But to be able to say, you know what? If it does crash and burn, that's okay, too. Because we positioned ourselves in a way that if I can just keep the roof over our head and pay the bills and keep the fridge full and be able to take the kids somewhere and do something together and be together, to me, that's winning.
Lucas Underwood [01:07:15]:
Very cool. 100%. Those beautiful guys. Sweet. Whoa. Good.