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Ep 7 - Dutch Silverstein Says Dutch Type Things
362 Plays2 months ago
If something is just a bit "off" at your shop, you could be using the wrong Shop Management System. Do what I did and switch to Tekmetric. Learn how HERE
Feel like you've hit a wall as a shop owner but want to keep getting better? Check out some of the best auto shop coaching the industry has to offer with Elite Worldwide. Sign up HERE
In this episode, Dutch Silverstein shares his stance on pricing, saying many shops simply miss the mark. Dutch then enters the confessional, and you'll hear him share some crazy stories.
00:00 "Moral Compass Mid-Course Correction"
07:08 Free Diagnostics in Repair Scenarios
15:22 "The 5% Dilemma in Auto Shops"
17:18 Pre-Approval for Repair Evaluation
24:20 Flexible Diagnostic Retainer Policy
30:30 Finding Top Dead Center
36:07 Effective Communication & Responsibility
39:24 Pay Structures in Auto Repair
47:53 Labor Rate Posting Rules
51:41 "Mixed Signals: Pizza Amidst Pay Cuts"
53:57 "Secret Pizza Party Advice"
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Transcript
Introduction and Disclaimers
00:00:00
Speaker
This man doesn't really need an intro, but we had a lot of fun with Dutch Silverstein. If you don't know Dutch, you need to know Dutch or get to know him in some of his content online. He has a very clear picture of what he believes right and wrong is. And there is no room for interpretation and there's no room for another way to do it. So I always love having Dutch on to tell me how wrong I am and how many different ways I'm wrong. I think you'll enjoy it too. Let's do it.
00:00:27
Speaker
The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we, or our guests may say, do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So without further ado, it's time for Confessions of a Shop Owner, with your host, Mike Allen.
Trailer Talk and Anecdotes
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, that's because now that I have the pillows in my chair for the proper head space, I really can't flat foot my chair right now. Like I got toes. Come on. I feel like I'm sitting on a child's go-kart in a regular office chair. You also have way too much You have way too much head space. Do I really? Is it a thing? That's better. There you go. That's it. Oh, gosh. Oh, and you're wearing your strokers hoodie. We didn't even know that until you set up, right? and Of course.
00:01:36
Speaker
Always. ah You're not allowed to wear a Stroker's hoodie unless you've got a 16 foot trailer. d um I zb posted a picture of his lowboy today and I posted a picture of my 40 foot fifth wheel in the comments. So I think qualifies as at least a 16 foot trailer with a bathroom and and put them in the in the appropriate groups with the hashtag. I mean, a couple air conditioners, a couple fridges, television,
00:02:01
Speaker
it might have a You have a trailer with multiple fridges. Yeah, it's got inside fridge and outside fridge. It's got an island in it. It's got an island in it. Nice faucet. Oh yeah. Fireplace. It's got a fireplace and a furnace. Yeah. and mike I literally have like a 16 foot trailer. Like just a dual axle 16 foot trailer that I used to like pull shit around on. I don't have big boy trailers like what y'all have. I just have what he talked about 15 year olds in Arkansas by.
00:02:30
Speaker
Well, you know, my kids like camping and I like to not have to like do the whole tent thing and set up tents and shit. Yeah. Yeah. It's got auto level. It's the greatest. I, I didn't know it was a feature until I bought a nice one, but you unhook it from the truck, you open the little side door and you hit a button and it levels itself.
00:02:51
Speaker
And then it's got auto reconnect. So like instead of jacking the fifth wheel all around and sweating your balls off in August and you're cranking this thing all around, you hit auto reconnect and it goes to the height that you set the landing gear at to disconnect from the trailer. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty tits. That's some highfalutin shit right there, man. It's probably expensive to fix when it breaks, but I know a guy. Evidently charging for Diag works. Yeah, it turns out. yeah Ain't a bad way to live, Mike.
Introducing Dutch: Ethics and Morality
00:03:21
Speaker
I feel like at this point, we should probably introduce ourselves. um I think everyone knows Brian and I. ah Hey, ah Jolly Old Jew, Jolly Old Jew. Would you like to introduce yourself? Oh, what kind of anti-Semitic shit is that? You backward ass country bumpkin. Really? Is that what you can do? I feel like it was complimentary. I called you Jolly. You called me Jolly, which means you don't know me very well, does it? God damn.
00:03:50
Speaker
He does have the beard going. You know, I mean, really. Yeah, Dutch. Hello, everybody. Nobody cares. All right. So, yeah, there you go. What's up, Dutch? How are how are you today, sir? I'm peachy. What the hell over? Every day above ground is a good day. yeah for for If there's anyone who's listening in, look, everybody knows who Dutch is, right? Let's not kid ourselves. But if there's anyone who listening who's listening who has been living under a rock for the last decade,
00:04:18
Speaker
or three, give or take. When did you first get on ITN? Holy crap. ninety Early 90s? Early to mid 90s. Back when all the email addresses were AOL. I got thrown off of there twice.
00:04:41
Speaker
That was awesome. Yeah, this is true. Yeah, Yup. And I'm like, Dutch has been a personality of the ban hammer. Personality in our circles for a little while. um And also, he is very effective at telling me how very wrong I am very frequently. And so I wanted to have you on to have an opportunity to tell Brian and I both how we're both wrong.
00:05:10
Speaker
um in so many different ways. I have at hand several different scenarios that I'd like to run by you so that you can tell us how both of us are unethical, incorrect, or just unintelligent, one of the other. Or a combination of the three. I think that's really grossly overstated. I don't think that you guys are really unethical at any stretch of the imagination. Otherwise, I wouldn't associate with you. I just think that sometimes your moral compass goes askew.
00:05:41
Speaker
And when that happens, I step in to let you know that you're being a fucktart. That's pretty much about it once that happens. And then then you straighten yourself up. We call that an aviation and mid-course correction. um You get that mid-course correction going on and you can proceed to your destination in an uneventful manner until you you know screw up again.
00:06:05
Speaker
That's it. I feel like the goal should be to reach your destination in an uneventful manner every day, right? Yeah, that that should be. Len Morgan, who's a very famous aviator, said that um flying was countless hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. And, you know, that's pretty much the way you you want to run your career here. I mean, you you don't want to get heart pounding excitement because you found that ah One of your texts left the lug nuts loose and now it came off of the vehicle and hit the bus full of blind children driven by the nun. You know, I mean, that's not the way you want to start your day.
00:06:49
Speaker
Well, if the wheel's gotta come off and hit someone, I'd rather it be the bus full of blind children driven by the nuns, because they they don't have good ah good attorneys. like If it was it was hit by, like you know if it hit Dutch, and we'd be fucked, because he's got good attorneys. Yeah, but you wouldn't want it to hit a bus full of New York Yankees is what you're saying.
00:07:11
Speaker
yeah Because you know that the Catholic Church has no money, right? Yeah. You can't afford yeah decent attorneys. It could be car fix by Catholic Charities.
00:07:26
Speaker
Same mother's sisterhood of car fix. Yeah. Our lady of perpetual donation, bring your car on down. Yeah, for free diag. um All right all right right, so that does take me back to a conversation that we had. um in the messenger in the last 48 hours. So and i I posted in one of the groups a question that was born from that, and it got like 130 comments. You ever have one of those posts where the comments get out so out of control that you don't even keep up with the comments anymore and you just like, whatever. Yeah. um And it was, ah but let's say there's a hypothetical scenario where a client comes to you and they've had their car at three other shops.
00:08:12
Speaker
And they spent like $3,000 on Swapanostics or shotgun ah repairs or whatever else. That's still a problem. It comes to you and you do whatever your diagnostic process is. Like for me, I don't charge for the initial diagnostic, right? But I know that that's not super popular.
00:08:33
Speaker
um But let's say that you start off at one hour, you start off at five hours, whatever it might be. That's what you got approval for. You find the problem in 30 minutes. It's a bad ground. You fix it and it solves the problem. Now at this point, the customer has spent over $3,000 to reach a repair, a final repair. What was the value of your time and effort? And what should you charge the customer?
00:09:02
Speaker
You asking me or are you talking to Brian? You're asking so me first. so I'll be by Dutch first. Hey everybody, I want to take a minute to tell you about the coaching organization I've been involved with for, gosh, over 20 years now.
00:09:20
Speaker
Elite. Elite Worldwide, they don't give you a one-size-fits-all solution. They tailor the coaching specifically to you and your shop. They pair you with an experienced coach who is either a current or a former shop owner, and they turn strategies into actual action and accountability and results. Whether it's improving your service advisor's sales, growing your shop, growing to multiple locations, they really have you covered. Clients of Elite really see results. Higher profits, stronger teams, a better work-life balance.
00:09:49
Speaker
If you're ready to take the next step, visit EliteWorldwide dot.com to schedule your discovery session. That's EliteWorldwide.com to start working on your business rather than in it. Tell them that you heard about them on Confessions of a Shop Owner so
Ethical Billing and Shop Management
00:10:04
Speaker
that I get a pat on the back or maybe a box of chocolates or something that would be awesome. Thanks. Well, I don't know if I said I would charge $3,001. I don't know if I said that. We know who said that. We know who said that in that chat group.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. I said, I said, wouldn't the repair be worth $3,001?
00:10:26
Speaker
No. Dutch says no. No. Absolutely no. Is it worth 2,999? No. What's your hourly rate for Diag?
00:10:38
Speaker
If you get so therein lies the question. And so me asking that question in the group was a trap, right? Because I wanted to get the whole spectrum of answers. Right. So you have people who said it's whatever your initial diag was, plus whatever you charge for repairing the damage that you found right in the background that you found. And you have others that say, well. You have a really good technician who was able to find that when three other Maybe good, maybe bad, maybe mediocre technicians were unable to find that. You should charge a premium for that. And so maybe it's worth two times, whatever it is. And to that, I would say, well, then that's what you should have charged because it's a really good technician. And you have those who say, well, it was a $3,000 repair. They should go get their $3,000 back from the first three places and maybe you charge them $1,500 and they're happy.
00:11:35
Speaker
And those people, to those people, I say, well, what if they had come to you first and not gone to the other three shops versus it's still worth $1,500? Or is it worth what? That is a tricky question. Is it not really $1,500? Dutch says not really. No, it's not. All right. There are two issues here, not just one. The first issue is that when the other two shops couldn't repair the vehicle. Okay. Didn't reach a satisfactory conclusion.
00:12:04
Speaker
didn't guarantee the repairs. They should not have charged the customer ethically. You don't charge 100% agree. Okay. You couldn't fix it. You don't get to charge. I don't care that you put parts into the car that you pay your technician. That's not my problem. Okay. the Preach being the consumer. All right. You guys couldn't do that. I'm sorry. As a shop owner, you're going to eat that cost.
00:12:30
Speaker
And you're going to find out why it happened and you're going to hopefully train so that doesn't happen again. That's what you need to do. They never should have paid the three grand. Now it's not my responsibility to make sure that they do what they're supposed to, you know, other, other people are supposed to do, but my rate is predicated on what I need to be able to provide for my business. And that doesn't change because of somebody else's screw up. So no, there are two issues, not one.
00:13:00
Speaker
Right? Those who say that they want to charge more are justifying this behavior. And there's a word for it, and it's called consequentialism.
00:13:12
Speaker
consequential Consequentialism is a philosophy essentially that the morality of an action is judged by its outcome. It's okay for me to charge 1,500, 2,000, 2,500, or 3,001 because we were able to do something that somebody else wasn't. I'm sorry, that's not the way it works. That's not ethical. What if, what if, um like, and this is not realistic, but what if they came to us first?
00:13:45
Speaker
And you said, gosh, Ms. Jones, this is a really complex problem that you're describing to us. It's going to require our highest level diagnostic technician um and his labor rate or the charge for him to inspect that problem and determine the cause of your issue. We get a retainer of $2,000 to start. And if it becomes more than that, we'll call you.
00:14:10
Speaker
Okay. What about it? And they approve it. Say what now? All right. So you say you got the $2,000 retainer, right? And they approve it. Now he finds it in 30 minutes. Okay. Great. Well, I didn't say what my hourly rate was. I said it's $2,000. It's not relevant. It is relevant. did bo You think so? Yes. So what is an acceptable hourly rate then for us for a ah top 5% or tech?
00:14:37
Speaker
$4,000 an hour. That's a half hour for $2,000. $4,000 an hour. Yeah. The only guy he's got to do is basically work an hour a week. yeah
00:14:52
Speaker
No. No, it doesn't work that way. Hey there. I'm going to tell you about something that has completely transformed how I run my shop, TechMetric. As a 20-year shop owner, outdated systems used to slow us down, everything was clunky. From check-in to estimate building to customer updates, it all felt just super inefficient. Switching to Techmetric has changed everything. With Techmetric, you get a powerful shop management system that includes DVI, quick and easy estimate building, inventory management, real-time reporting, amazing customer communication, and it's really easy for your employees to learn how to use the software. I'm talking like a one-day learning curve.
00:15:30
Speaker
On top of that, TechMetric has tons of other tools to make you an even better operator. Stuff like integrated payments with buy now, pay later options. It's a huge asset. Ask me how I know. And recently they've added a CRM component with their partnership with ShopGenie, which I'm a happy ShopGenie customer already. So I'm super excited about that.
00:15:50
Speaker
Obviously, there are a lot of factors at play here, but I want to give you some facts about my business since I made the change to TechMetric. In September of 2020, when I switched to TechMetric, my ARO was $293. In September of 2024, we were $916. That's over 300% growth.
00:16:07
Speaker
Now I'm not saying that TechMetric created all of that change, but I'm 100% saying that I couldn't have come this far without TechMetric. It's a key factor in our growth and success. If you're ready to level up your shop, TechMetric has everything you need. Productivity, revenue, customer experience. Measure up by every measure with TechMetric. Tap the link in the show notes to learn more. I can ah i can provide a realistic scenario that um actually has happened at our shop. All right. um 11 or 12-ish BMW 5 Series um gets towed in and out of three shops including two Euro specialty shops but you know how that goes. um Won't key on, initial initial evaluation shows it really won't key on, powertrain can isn't firing up, no terminal 15 anywhere, um the wiper cowl stuff is missing so the floor is wet and there's a bunch of dash panels off and some stuff unplugged.
00:17:06
Speaker
um After initial inspection, you got to start at five grand, right? 4,000 was the number. And $4,000 was approved. um we put What did we put in it? A reef and truck? A tire pressure module? I went full German there for a second. I call it a reef and truck. A tire pressure? That's just that that's just showing off. Yeah. RDC? Yeah. Reef and truck? Reef and as tire, truck is pressure. Get cultured, Mike.
00:17:34
Speaker
um Anyways, killing the pronunciation, but I'm not saying nothing. bad I don't care. I'm not. dream Um, if a sound more and then, um, the, because the wiper cowl was out, we ended up finding that the, uh, the VTG controller, which is the transfer case controller that's in the passenger floor was swimming. So we, uh, fixed that, put wiper cowl on it. And we did not have, I mean, if you add up the time and material, we didn't have 4,000 bucks worth of time and material into it. But, um,
00:18:10
Speaker
Like at what point, I mean, so I feel like on this stuff, sometimes people people speak out of both sides of their mouth. They'll say, well, I don't want to be that shop. I want to do the 95% and I'll ship the five to somebody else. But then they'll be like, Oh, well that wasn't very fair. Would he charged? Well, you just said the juice ain't worth the squeeze on those 5% of cars, right? Right. How many times have we heard it? Being the hero doesn't pay. And then somebody goes, well, if I'm going to freaking screw with this car for half a day,
00:18:39
Speaker
And I'm going to put $700 worth of parts in it. I'm going to charge 4,000 bucks. I don't know what to tell you. Right? And is it really wrong? That's the question, right? Is it really wrong to charge, you know? If there's no one else in the marketplace who can fix it and you can fix it and the customer agrees to that price, is it wrong? And and I'll point something out. I know.
00:19:05
Speaker
one shop 20 minutes south of us and one shop 30 minutes south of us that can fix that car, but they won't. If you call there and you say, I have this car, it's been dragged out of three shops. There's some stuff taken apart. I'm not your guy. That's what they're going to say. And both, both those guys, I'll guarantee you, them two guys can fix that car. They're just going to say, thanks. Yeah. They're just going to say, eh, juice ain't worth the squeeze. I don't want to get involved.
00:19:35
Speaker
So is it unethical to charge that $4,000 retainer and it comes out at, you spent 3,100 and you keep the extra.
00:19:49
Speaker
I don't know if this is a rhetorical question or not. I'm, I'm waiting to get blasted. I'm ready. Let me have it. If you think so, if you quote a $4,000.
00:20:03
Speaker
preliminary estimate, right? I need good faith deposit of $4,000. What you're telling that that's a nice way to say it, right? Because I don't know how long this is going to take. And I'd rather get this money pre pre approved so that I don't have to call you several times during the course of the day or the time days plural that takes for me to evaluate this vehicle. So they give you the pre authorization for X amount of dollars. Okay.
00:20:32
Speaker
So in your mind, you have budgeted a certain amount of time to complete that repair or to get to the point where you know, what's a solution to the problem is going to be. Right. Because you said, yeah, and a four grand. And I based on the the rate, we're going to make something up of $400 an hour, because I am the super special tech.
00:20:57
Speaker
That's what I am. good And you're doing this to yourself. You're not saying. And um and a lot of and a lot of times I'm not going to be selling a lot of parts on that repair. I'm going to be doing a lot more. That's the laboring that I am putting parts in. Right. So you you want to keep your gross profit dollars per hour up to where you need it to be. Right. Because you're not selling a lot of parts on this thing. We have the potential for not selling a a lot of parts on this thing. So if you allotted yourself 10 hours and you find this this solution to this problem.
00:21:27
Speaker
and get the car going again, in 2000, you refund them the difference. Now, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Great news. We're able to save you money. we were Because of our expertise, we were able to do this job that others did. OK.
00:21:48
Speaker
Because of my expertise, I can put a six seven long block and an F three 50 that pays 26 hours. I can install that motor 14 hours, pushed in, pulled out. Do I refund them the difference between 14 and 26 hours when I do that job? That's an eternal question that is in this business. is What do you want to do in so far as ethics? Do you charge? Are you charging per hour or per job?
00:22:14
Speaker
If you're telling the person that you're charging them per job, then it doesn't matter if if you could do an I dream of Jeannie and do that, then you're going to charge them that, right? yeah But I mean, certainly on nut and bolt repairs, if we do them faster than the book time, right, if we're gonna pull the book out, and we're gonna go buy the book. and And for the record, we don't use a labor multiplier. So it's not the book time times 1.5 or whatever, we don't we don't use one. And i'm I'm not saying it's bad to use when I'm just saying we don't. So there's no funny business there. If the job pays 26, and it's nuts and bolts, and I get that 26 hour job done in 14 hours, and I tell everybody, nobody says discharge less than 26 hours.
00:22:55
Speaker
But meanwhile, while we're doing diagnostic work, if I take some expertise and I get through some diagnostic work faster than anticipated, we have to refund back to straight time. And that's where I've always had a problem with it. well That's a super good argument. No, it's not really. Why is it not? Okay. Um, because the,
00:23:20
Speaker
Because you should give the money back for higher skilled work than you should for nuts and
Pricing Models in Repairs
00:23:24
Speaker
bolts. No, the guide that's being used for labor is completely, essentially arbitrary. Because we can have the same job. But it's the accepted standard. It's the accepted standard. Why who? Arbitrary or not, it's the accepted standard. Wait a minute. You're using motor. I'm using Mitchell. Somebody else is using all data and we all have three different. So what are you going to do?
00:23:47
Speaker
They're all over 20 hours and we're all I'm gonna do all of them in 12. You're going to do all of them in 12, three, three of them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm of already yeah i'm just, um' I mean, I'm just saying it's realistic though. It's realistic. Even right down to ball joints. When I, when I put uppers and lowers in an F two 50 and it pays six and a half hours due upper and lower ball joints, I bang it out in two and a half. Ain't nobody refunding a customer for hours. Cause the guy's got a thousand dollar snap on ball joint press and some hustle and he's banging the ball joints in the thing.
00:24:20
Speaker
And why what? And if you did refund them, then you are teaching that technician that they make more money when they are slower. Depends on how they're paid. Yeah, well, yeah, you know, if they're all if they're all paid hourly, it doesn't make that's another. That's another thing I want to talk about is technician compensation tonight. Yeah.
00:24:42
Speaker
That was a good segue, but I'm not ready to run away. I'm being serious, Dutch, just respectfully. We've never really discounted the nuts and bolts jobs out of the book time when the technician does it faster. But if we estimate, oh man, this car could take all day and it takes the guys four hours, all of a sudden we feel like we owe the customer to only charge them four hours for the highest skilled work.
00:25:07
Speaker
because what you did you didn't quote a job you quoted a range this could take up to right $4,000 so you didn't quote a job you didn't say the hard and fast price for this Mrs. Smith is going to be $4,000 you said I need a deposit of up to or $4,000, right? You didn't, you didn't. And then there's the potential that you might call back and ask for more. And then there's the ball joints. You're not going to call back and ask for more. You're not calling back and ask for more. Is that exactly right? That you're comparing, you're not comparing to say you quoted a price it's going to take but to complete because the ball joints are known circumstance, right? You know, because you've done a hundred of them.
00:25:49
Speaker
how much it's going to take you to to knock the ball joints out. sure instantly Sure. So you quote the price that the book says it takes six hours. I'm doing it in two and a half. Cool. That's the finite. Okay. Now, if for some reason you run into a problem on that job where it doesn't take you two and a half anymore, now it takes you more than you're six for whatever reason. Okay. What are you doing then?
00:26:16
Speaker
You're going to call the customer up and say, Oh, by the way, this, this took, I didn't tell you about this before we began, but because you had this extra layer of corrosion or because of this or because of that, or because I didn't discuss this with you now, it's going to cost you more or are you going to stand by your word and, and do it for the amount quoted. And in both situations, I would have, it was, I'm going to need $4,000 to fix your car. I didn't say up to.
00:26:46
Speaker
Well, that's why I didn't get that car fixed for four grand. I wasn't calling her back for more. If it took, if it took me six days and I had 3,100 bucks into it, she was leaving with a fixed car. That's how, that's how we played it. And that's how we play those jobs. I have another Jeep right now. That's similar. It's not a $4,000 retainer, but now when when I was doing it to shop, when we used to get science projects that came in and that's, that's what we call. I love that term. Yep. From other shops.
00:27:16
Speaker
I started out with a $750 retainer. Okay. This is what the, the base amount it's going to take for me to begin on this project. And we're going to work up through that. If I could have to continue to do additional testing to isolate the cause that I'm going to call you back and you're, I'm going to wait for you to give me ah an authorization and then we'll continue. But that's completely different than saying for $750, I'll fix your car.
00:27:47
Speaker
Well, 750 is too low. You can't even buy a couple of PCMs for that, Dutch. I know. I know what you mean. I'm just teasing. You know, but I have a good pizza party in place of a raise for the freaking 750. I don't know where you're going. Because really, because that's the pizza here is 28 bucks for for pizza. And I don't buy dominoes at that crap. You know, funny I'm not buying dominoes. You can get three dominoes for twenty eight dollars.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, I might as well just put ketchup on the cardboard and eat that. All right. then umma So, so our official Dutch ruling, we're going to call it the Dutch ruling because that is the standard to which we will all be dutch judged by. Oh, people have nuts and bolts in the die egg. What's that? nuts and bolts and die egg are two different very, very, very different things.
00:28:35
Speaker
Especially diag is more challenging and requires a more skilled technician. So therefore it should be at a different more flexible than nuts and bolts at a different rate, at a different rate per hour, a different rate per hour. Right. So how but can I ask you at your shop? How much different was your diag rate than your repair rate? I'm sorry to say again, it's ratings. I can't hear.
00:28:59
Speaker
What was at your shop before you, before you sold, what was the difference in your direct rate and your repair rate? Well, it was a difference between time and, uh, the rate depending on whether it was. Domestic agent or Euro because Euro we had a higher labor rate on. Okay. So we were at, at one 74 80 or one 78 40. I don't remember for Euro. And then I used.
00:29:29
Speaker
I broke that down into the starting, the very first one, the first testing block had to be at 1.5 of that because I had to make up, I based it on a 50-50 split between parts and labor. So that's the way that I did it. Because it was easier at the front counter than doing the 62, you know, I mean 38 the way we used to have it or whatever the it was. Yeah.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yup. So, um, then it would be 1.5 is this gumption. Then the second hour went up and every hour thereafter went up. So the 1.5 starting block was 1.5 times your rate to the customer and one hour to the technician or 1.5. So then the rate was one 70, whatever it was.
00:30:23
Speaker
good right which What was your require what was your and was your Euro repair rate for the ball joints on that Euro? What was the rate? Well, no, it was 170 times 1.5 was the rate that they were getting paid. He was getting paid an hour and a half on that on that block, even though that block- And you were charging 250 something for one seven for that hourly. Yeah, almost 300 bucks. Yeah.
00:30:52
Speaker
Okay. And then, and then the second tier went up because he got more money. That was the whole point was to reward that. i I wasn't, I didn't, it didn't make sense for me to penalize achievement. Does that make sense? If the guy can work, I don't want to penalize achievement for that. So if you're doing work, that's more difficult. I want you to be better rewarded because of it.
00:31:19
Speaker
same That's why I charge $4,000. That's because you're Dutch and I are doing the same thing. We're taking different roads to get there. You know, this ain't that much different. You know, basically, that's good. I want to go back and talk about when.
00:31:42
Speaker
um When I break a plug off in a head, doing a job, and i maach if I hammer the broken part of the plug down into the cylinder, can I then turn the motor over to try to grind up the porcelain and spit it out of the exhaust and sell the customer a motor if it damages it? Is that is that something that we can but can do? did you Did you ever see that post, Dutch? No. I can tell you a very funny story about a pencil, but yeah, no.
00:32:12
Speaker
i will i'll I'll do a little bit more detail. The guy's working on a Honda Odyssey, right the ones that follow the plugs out, goes to change the plugs. um One of the rear plugs doesn't come out. um Instead of stopping and calling the customer, he decides to break it off instead. and When he breaks it off, the porcelain falls in the hole. and He can't get the porcelain out of the hole, so instead of pulling the head, he still hasn't called the customer yet.
00:32:36
Speaker
um Can't get out of the hole, so instead of ah calling the customer, he decides to use the starter motor to crank, to to crush the porcelain up a bunch of times. And then he wants the customer to split the cost of repairs to the engine with him after he's done all this.
00:32:52
Speaker
um I don't think in the group posted it. And I don't think we really need Dutch's ethical and moral compass for this one. I think the answer was pretty obvious. Like, why didn't you call the customer when the plug wouldn't move? Really? What kind of retor they were like problem before you do it? What kind of fucking retard do you got to be before you think? What kind of lying, cheating piece of shit do you got to be before you think that fucking but are you out of your goddamn mind? All right. I don't think it was satire.
00:33:24
Speaker
it I'm gonna tell you a story about a pencil. Okay, a long time ago in a land far, far away when somebody you know had hair, okay? And he was just starting out. He had to do a job on an engine and he remembered from his high school shop days that if you wanted to find top dead center on a Chevy 350, what you used to do was take a pencil.
00:33:53
Speaker
and you would drop a pencil inside the engine in the combustion chamber and you would watch, you would rotate it by hand and then you would watch on the pencil rise and fall. And then when you knew that it was on the apex, you knew that it would be top dead center. Now this never failed him when he was working on the 18436572s.
00:34:19
Speaker
that he loved, that was a firing order for a Chevrolet, the old Chevrolet, years ago. Years and years ago. And small block Dodge. Except there's a little bit of a difference in the small block Dodge. And that is that when you drop the pencil in there, there's this thing about called valves.
00:34:41
Speaker
So you drop the pencil in and you take... yeah Oh my god, I can't believe I'm admitting this. It wasn't me. um You take your long handled ratchet and you begin to rotate the engine waiting for the pencil to rise. But it gets stiff. And you're like...
00:35:05
Speaker
That doesn't make sense. So you back it up and certainly don't go backwards. Oh, you did back it up. You backed it up. I went back with just a little bit. ah Not me. You know, somebody else went backwards a little bit. And this time now using the additional leverage of having the handle at the higher height, you push it down. Oh, you give it a sauce. This stuff i know sauce and the top of the pencil makes a very nice pirouette.
00:35:31
Speaker
and rolls right off the head and the bottom of the pencil with the eraser in it goes right inside the combustion chamber. I look at the guy who it's renting the shop from and I go, holy shit.
00:35:46
Speaker
he said hang on He goes over to the edge of the bay, he's holding himself and literally pisses his pants. Has to call his wife Sue to come over and bring a set of trousers because he's pissed his pants laughing so hard. yeah I looked at him and I said, Tim, what do I do now? ah And he goes, well, you could try to run it and see what happens. And he's just like, so,
00:36:15
Speaker
you know, that head came off and that's the, that was an expensive lesson. Yeah. I remember. And you certainly didn't charge the customer, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Obviously. No, no, no, no, no. Really? Really? When I come down to it, I told him what I did and was hoping that I wouldn't have to blow him. Really? I mean, that was,
00:36:36
Speaker
you know or get my wife to do it or something i mean this this was oh my god no this was hard so so situation two There's another one that was posted within a day. They were like back to back in the same day. Back to back, poor decision-making. A customer ah brings a Volkswagen TDI in. They want the timing belt maintenance done, and they do want the water pump replaced, but they do not want to pay to have the tensioner replaced. What kind of shit is that?
00:37:11
Speaker
brand X decides to put a timing belt on and a water pump and abide by the customer's decision because the customer is so smart they did it themselves. They documented the customer declined it on the repair order. Yes, they documented the customer declined attention. On the test drive, it launches the timing belt and starts banging shit together in the engine.
00:37:32
Speaker
You know, I got to spend more time on Facebook. I'll tell you that because it's so magical. You will feel so good about yourself when you haven't, when you're having a bad day, when you're like, man, man, today's the day I would F up a free lunch today. I would F up a free lunch. You go on Facebook, you'd be like, I got this. Let's say my screw ups ain't even that bad. My screw ups are cheeky and harmless. So did this person erroneously believe that because they documented it,
00:38:01
Speaker
that they were not responsible? Yes, they did. I wanted to know how how best to charge the customer for a motor. For a used and where to get a used, where to source a used engine. So did he call Todd Hayes and ask him? ah Oh my God. That was, that was and da was unsolicited violence. That was unnecessary, uncalled for. Oh really, you're objecting but you're laughing. Yeah. I mean and didn't say it wasn't funny. Nobody said it wasn't funny. yeah You could have said Carfix, you could have said Lucas, you could have said any number of things. You could have said anybody. yeah well Oh my gosh.
00:38:48
Speaker
That was a good one. So yeah, these are the real things that happen. And, um, which makes me feel good about my slightly unethical retainer. According to you, I'm not crushing people's spark plugs with their starter motor and charging them for it. You know, it's, it's, there's an old expression, right? It ain't what you say. It's how you say it. So as long as you give people the opportunity, you respect their autonomy, you tell them what the plan is, you give them the opportunity to make that that choice free of any pressure at all.
00:39:18
Speaker
Then you've done your job and you can then go about your business ethically, as long as you've explained all of the consequences, the potential consequences to the very best of your ability to them. That's it. But that doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of acting in a professional manner when you're doing a repair.
00:39:40
Speaker
making sure we put the timing tensioner in. Right. You know, this, you know, now if it was an oversight and the guy was saying, okay, look, um, we got busy and and we screwed up and I assume responsibility for it. Okay. Then the remedy for that is completely different. All right. ah Absolutely. yeah Yeah. We call those liability dollars. Yeah. Basically it would agree and you're making money. You got money back in the bank and you know,
00:40:08
Speaker
Oh, is that the, wait a minute. That's not the beer. That's looks, was that bourbon? Yeah. It had ice in it. I don't think Mike, but this is West bottoms whiskey company, American blended malt whiskey, uh, proudly made in Kansas city, Missouri. This was given to me by Caroline Rodenberg of turnkey auto marketing last week. Uh, when I saw her in Dallas at the elite ignite 2025 event.
00:40:35
Speaker
She and Joe Flamer gave me this. They wanted me to have some good Kansas City whiskey, and so I am partaking tonight. Thank you, Carrie Lynn and Joe. She's a sweetie. She really is. Yeah, she is. She's awesome. Also, a sponsor of the podcast. Thank you so much. Turnkey marketing.
Sponsor Acknowledgment
00:40:55
Speaker
Wow. All right. Super excited.
00:40:58
Speaker
We get all the best people, man. We're special, Dutch. Yeah, you're special. I used to tell me. You are definitely special.
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. Mike, what's our next- Software, the best marketers, the best coaches. We get it all, man. We got everything. Mike, what's your next ethical quandary for Dutch?
00:41:20
Speaker
Let me pull up my ah we pull up my show notes over here. Oh, he's got he's got a list. Show notes. Excuse me, Mr. Fancy Pants. i want to okay ah so you You gave me the perfect segue 20 minutes ago and I didn't take advantage of it because I felt like we still had some steam in this, but we talked about what depends on how the technician is paid. right Had a conversation last week in Dallas actually about um clear ah Harrison Rusk, ah who's got four shops in Houston, he's a close personal friend, he made the statement that unspoken expectations are premeditated
00:42:02
Speaker
what did What was it? Premeditated resentment. Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentment. and That came from a conversation about how I um believe that there is ah there's a spectrum of technician paperlands from flat rate with no guarantee, which passes all of the risk off to the technician.
00:42:25
Speaker
assuming you have enough base space that it doesn't matter if a technician is nonproductive, it passes 100% of the risk off to the technician, all the way to like straight salary, which passes the risk off to the shop owner, right? And there's a myriad in between. um And on the flat rate side, it's just as long as you get enough base, it doesn't matter if your producers are not, because it didn't cost you anything, to the salary side. And we're talking about the minimum level of acceptable performance across that whole area and communicating it clearly and and I've got flat rate individuals with no guarantee that are just driven and they want to just grind it out and I've got flat rate with a with a guarantee and i've got um so I've got hourly, I've got salary with a bonus and I've got pure salary in my organization because I've always said
00:43:21
Speaker
However you want to be paid is how I'm going to pay you if I want you to be part of the team, but there's going to be a variable level of expectation.
Technician Compensation Strategies
00:43:29
Speaker
And so the point that was made was every pay plan requires management. but You either have to manage.
00:43:36
Speaker
ethics because flat rate requires you to manage ethics if you're not careful. Depending on the size of your organization, like if there's a four-man shop, you know everybody like the back of your hand right and you don't let anybody who's unethical in there. But if you get 30 technicians, you don't know all of their hearts. right um and so You have to manage ethics or you have to manage effort because if their salary and they're lazy and you have to manage effort, right? So they're lazy. He says, well, I mean, my salary guys are not lazy. So I don't have that issue. I just get to the shop in the morning and walk around and clap pretty much. Just be a cheerleader. Yeah. That's all you got to do is just clap and yell. We'll shoulder rubs, you know, whatever. Yeah, definitely. But we did have pizza this week. We did. Who was it that posted about, uh,
00:44:31
Speaker
pumping waste oil for their heater and finding like pizza floating in the waste oil tank. No way. That was satire. that could that was it Was that real, do you think? It was all one of the groups. I didn't see it. It was all one of the groups. They were talking about how funny it was. I think it might have been one of Josh Coombs' posts talking about buying a heater for a shop, or maybe he was commenting on that thread. Oh my gosh. And they were talking about how they all the techs were laughing because Well, I got to pull it. OK, so different let's set the thread where the guy said if you want heat this week, you need to do more oil changes. It it feels like it was the same. um I had a guy a freaking scumbag. I'm worried about how much of this that I can share because it might be too easily identifiable. This is an extra. No, you got to be careful.
00:45:28
Speaker
Um, I got to scroll back a few days, but essentially you know talk amongst yourselves. I'm going to find that it was too good. I can't get it wrong. I gotta, I gotta to treat it to you. So Dutch, yes, sir I don't know what Mike was going to say, but this is where I'll, I'll talk a again. So now we have.
00:45:49
Speaker
So we've talked about the nuts and bolts, we've talked about the diagnostic and the nuts and bolts I had based on straight time. A lot of shops are taking that book time and they're using labor multipliers and some of them have ah increasing or decreasing labor multipliers depending on the situation. Like for example, the first hours by 1.5, second hours by 1.25, third hours 1.25, fourth hours one. what we're what's I never understood I never understood the flat across the board labor multiplier, no matter what car you're working on. Uh, we've, we've never done that. We take for nuts and bolts, we take our, uh, the job we're doing and we multiply those hours by our labor rate. And that's what the labor charges on the job. Um, with no multiplier, um, any multiplier at all. No.
00:46:45
Speaker
No, if the job pays, if the job pays 10 hours, and our labor rates 148, then the bill is 1480 labor, right? Okay. um Pretty, pretty simple. Pretty simple.
00:46:57
Speaker
um
00:47:00
Speaker
So what I guess Mike, what did you do when you ran into problems like rusted fasteners? This is Buffalo, New York, baby, if you can't make time on rusty cars, you need to move south.
00:47:14
Speaker
Well, but I mean, I get it. I get it. gas and that's what You get the gas ax out and you cut the bolts off and you keep on trucking. It's no problem. but Like the the trope is that the labor guide was written on how to replace that part on that car when it was new. Pull it in, rack it up, pull the bolts, replace the part, put it back together, back it out. So you should have a labor multiplier if you're in the rust belt and you're dealing with vehicles that are more than a couple of years old. Right.
00:47:46
Speaker
That's fair enough. i'm just i'm just say I'm just trying to find out why that's acceptable and charging $4,000 fixed car isn't. Well, think how many more boats or airplanes you would have by now if you had been doing it that way. All right, so there's this man mike there's a term for what he's doing, all right? And I just want you to know it's called perseveration. Hold on, I'm putting my seatbelt on. Is it obfuscating? No, it's perseveration. He's fixated on one thing.
00:48:14
Speaker
All right, this this is what what happens. Now, many of you guys know have that effect on people. um That this is something that happens, you know, like with my son is challenged, obviously, with me being his father, this it's readily explainable, but um so he can focus on one thing and he dwells on it So, and that's called perseveration. So basically. Is this similar to the white dirt situation? Is that what you're saying? He's very similar to the white dirt situation. He's really much about his personality that perhaps we hadn't considered before when he perseverates. That's just saying I'm on the spectrum is what he's saying. You're flat in it. um you You're up to your deck.
00:49:05
Speaker
right down the center, top of the bell curve, baby. so So the argument, the argument for the labor multiplier is we're working on cars that aren't brand new in the factory. Right? Now, we don't see consistent labor multipliers. Some shops have Some shops have a flat labor multiplier no matter how many hours it is. Some shops, um I heard, I was talking to a guy at ah at ah at an industry event one time. His first hour is two hours. His second hour is an hour and a half and his third hour is an hour on every car he works on because his AR, his average labor hours per hour was like three and a half or something like that. um Yeah. I've never heard of that before in my life. Well, he was from Pennsylvania. What can I say?
00:49:54
Speaker
Um, that that's looking at you, Brett. faley It was not him. It was at the event and he runs, but it was not him. Oh, this guy's talking about working on Porsches for 120 bucks an hour. And I'm like, I don't really think that makes a lot of sense. And then he like explained his labor rate and I'm like, Oh, you're working on Porsches for $240 an hour. And then a little bit for 200 an hour and then 175 an hour, the third hour. That makes a little bit more sense.
00:50:24
Speaker
I can, I can understand that. um but yeah we're in another Excuse to make it more palatable to potential customers of asking what his labor rate is. It seems shady. It seems like you're posting a labor rate on the wall. It's mainland it's misleading. Right? yeah That's the case. So that's his aim. So when you have a labor rate sign on the wall,
00:50:51
Speaker
Do you guys, did you ever have your labor aid on the wall Dutch? did did Did they require you to do that in New York state? Okay. In New York state, they don't require you to post your labor rate. Oh, everybody thinks you're required to. You're not. You are required to post how you calculate your labor. So, um,
00:51:11
Speaker
you know, as standard rate times flat rate hours, so on and so forth. So if I'm from what I'm understanding in New York State, if we were to use a labor multiplier, we would have to say we're using a labor multiplier. And if every shop in America followed wage and hour laws appropriately,
00:51:33
Speaker
Mike says, just break the law to be less transparent. Gotcha. I'm just saying that the discussion on pay plans would be very different right now. Right. Right. So is it, I mean, is it misleading to not post your labor rate? Is it misleading to take the book time and charge, charge different? It depends on the circumstances. You know, every situation can be different if you're required.
00:52:01
Speaker
under law to post your labor rate, then you post it. If you're required under law to post how you arrive, the calculation necessary, then you post it. If you're not required to post it, you're not required to post anything, but a customer wants to know, you tell them because they have the right to know okay how it is that that that's it. I mean, i I don't hide. I was never, I never was sure opinion that I wanted to hide what I was doing, or I had to be afraid of telling people what I was doing for fear of an adverse reaction. I didn't do it. You want to know what I'm charging? This is what I'm charging. This is how I'm doing it. You can either play you know the game my way, you can do business with me or not. And if you don't, that's okay. I understand there are other people that you might be able to be better suited for. I just didn't care. That's so much more kind and polite than the way that I choose to hear it in my mind.
00:52:59
Speaker
where you're like, this is the way I'm going to do it. And if you don't like it, go fuck yourself. Well, look, you know, I'm from the Bronx, so I could definitely go into that if I need to. But the fact is that um I typically weed out the bottom 20 percent. I'm not I'm not looking for I'm looking for the value shopper, not the price shopper. Right. So yeah yeah agree.
Customer Relations and Shop Productivity
00:53:21
Speaker
One hundred percent. You think it's you think it's just the bottom 20 percent? Yeah, it's the Pareto principle.
00:53:27
Speaker
It's bottom twenty percent i would divorce twenty one the bottom I used to think it was higher than 20, but I really, I thought it was higher than 20. And I'm like, I'm going to pay attention to this. And I realized that it's.
00:53:43
Speaker
I mean, in our shop, it's it's honestly not even the bottom 20, because we've been we've spent 15 years weeding people out, right? So it's not even the bottom 20% anymore. We're like... yeah All right. but i want to read I want to read this text message to you. but Okay. This is an individual who works in our industry that I've known for many years. um Their shop changed their pay plan um recently,
00:54:08
Speaker
and it has effectively made this person take about a $20,000 a year pay cut. o um Grease the wheels, baby. Well, it used to be yeah, grease the wheels is exactly right. It used to be a ah like it was ah it was a team setup. And it's not anymore. And um anyway, oh, so he sucks.
00:54:31
Speaker
No, he's a heavy lifter, but in a different capacity. Oh, gotcha. So he said, hey, I said, I said, that's how to motivate one on one is what my statement was. And he responded exactly. But hey, we got pizza today for lunch is their way of saying they appreciate us after manager name bought a new Raptor and owner bought. Very expensive vehicle for 16 year old child.
00:55:01
Speaker
Mmm. So it's like manager shows up in a Raptor owner buys expensive new vehicle for a child. They change their pay plan. Everybody takes a pay cut pizza party. I was like, that's a fucking cliche. They just did the exact cliche. Yeah. But you know, when you look at it and you apply critical thinking that it doesn't mean anything, right? Because correlation doesn't equal causation on this. It may be that the manager buys a new Raptor and went into a hack up to his ass in order to do it. And it's just proud of the truck. Right. So he's paying 18% interest. I'm making something a ridiculous up. Okay. yeah That he did that. It also may be that, that the daughter, um, who's 16 got the really good grades. Like she said, she was going to for the last four years. And this is the payoff. You don't know what the circumstances proximity does not indicate relationship.
00:55:55
Speaker
So it's at the same time, at the same time, optics matter and being tone deaf matters. Yes. Optics do matter to those those who are weak.
00:56:07
Speaker
I mean, I'm here to tell you, I don't buy pizza for my crew anymore. I yeah buy barbecue. I buy chicken. Yeah. yeah I mean, we'll, we'll get subs. Buffalo pizza and North Carolina pizza are two different things. It's kind of like, it's kind of like getting something nice when you get it around here. It's good. It's good stuff. Like people look forward to it. It's not like, Oh, another pizza party. They're like, Oh, you got Garfallos. This week I did go out and meet with one of my managers and shop foreman and we went to a pizza place.
00:56:37
Speaker
but we didn't have it at the shop. It was offsite. So it was like under the table pizza. It was like secret pizza. Under the table beatsa good seek your pizza? pizza. Hello, Mr. George. um Secret pizza. Listen, you can't tell anybody about this pizza party. That's awesome. You know, people spend a lot of time. I, I, uh,
00:57:04
Speaker
I've had this conversation with a couple of people over the years and it was before I was actually in charge of anything ever. Um, actually it was the last time I had, I, I had that conversation was when I worked at a flat rate shop. And I think the words that came out of my mouth were if you worried as much about turning hours is you do about the hours that guy turns you to turn more than he does. Yeah. So if, if sometimes.
00:57:32
Speaker
if you worry about perfecting louder for skills on the back If you worry about perfecting your skills, as much as you're worried about anything else, um, all of a sudden you're not the manager buying the Raptor, you're the floor employee buying the Raptor. So and you not what i i' dead I'm quoting that in the group right now.
00:57:52
Speaker
If you worried more about i'm earning hours, um everybody's always worried about whatever this, what's this guy get paid? What's that guy get paid? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I'm just going to work harder. So I get paid more than all of them. So I don't really care. You know, it always struck me as, as really, I mean, knowing what I know about human nature, it makes sense, but it it just always perplexed me. The guys that were the weakest, not necessarily the weakest in skills,
00:58:20
Speaker
but the weakest upstairs, not stupid, but just emotionally weak, um they would find fault with everything, especially if you dispatch to strengths.
00:58:33
Speaker
so you have one guy who's really good gosh and tell me about it doing x right i mean this guy's phenomenal yeah seldom any comebacks does correctly you never have to worry about him he doesn't leave a mess that's not on the floor i mean he does when he does this job you looking at him and youre just in awe of of of the professionalism, the the craftsmanship, and the care that he takes to do the job because i he likes doing that job. So you dispatch to him because he does a really good job. and everybody's making Now you have somebody else who does an okay job. They're competent, not good. They're competent
00:59:13
Speaker
but they look and see how many hours that guy said, well, how come I'm not getting that? Well, cause he's better than you at that job. That's why he gets that job. That's his strength and they lose their crap. They absolutely lose, but that's not right. That's not right. I've been here longer. I've been, I don't care.
00:59:32
Speaker
Meanwhile, meanwhile, they couldn't do that job as nice, as efficient, as fast and as mess free if somebody had a gun to their head. Yeah, that's that right. it it It'd be that you give them that you give them the same job that they want and it just be a whole shit show with a comeback. Yeah, right. But they're worried about this other guy. Oh, we give this guy that job, you know, favoritism, blah, blah, blah, this, that and the other thing. And the the one that really gets you is I used to I don't know. I don't know who's listening to this. It used to work for me, but there was I had texts during my career that were faster than other texts at doing the job. OK, literally, I mean, they could knock this this stuff out. I deliberately dispatched the job to the guy who took book time or occasionally longer because he didn't have a comeback.
01:00:25
Speaker
Right. If you dispatch to a guy who could knock this stuff out, like it's going out of style, but he has to come back and and read to the worst case scenario, it's a day off. And now I have to assign that work to somebody else. And I have to make that guy.
01:00:43
Speaker
to do when the fastest, when the fastest guy in the shop has 30% of his work show back up in the Foreman's Bay under internal. It's a real problem. Yeah. And the real problem is um sometimes that fastest guy doesn't see the big picture and he's got his chest puffed out because he's the fastest guy in the shop.
01:01:10
Speaker
But when you subtract the 35% of his work that comes back and has dealt with unbuilt internal in the shop Foreman's Bay, he ain't shit.
01:01:23
Speaker
yeah that's becomes average at best. Yeah, at best. And he makes you look like a dumb ass. So now, if you're a shop that's spending money on marketing, you're spending, let's say five or 10,000 a month on marketing or whatever the number is, I don't know, we don't do any marketing, I couldn't tell you. Let's imagine it's 10,000 a month you're spending on marketing, you've got this frickin ass wipe, taking your marketing and pushing it the opposite direction. Right? Because Whatever, you know, as VP as VP. Yeah, whatever you want to call them. It's as drive me nuts. What did you ask VP? It's like Italian asswipe.
01:02:05
Speaker
oh as
01:02:08
Speaker
I'm sorry. I just totally derailed you there. You're on a rant. I shouldn't have done that. I got to learn not to interrupt the ranch. The rants are good for the, for the, for the clips. Oh boy. But seriously, you're spending all this money on marketing and you got this guy who thinks he's a fast in the shop and he's hurting you the most.
01:02:26
Speaker
Not just is he only average.
Closing Thoughts and Humor
01:02:28
Speaker
Let's say it brings him down to everybody else's average. Well, it's really below that because right. Like at the end of the day, you have to spend marketing dollars to over, to, to, to, to outrun your shortcomings, right? To over come with us where he pisses off. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you're, you're, you're spending all this money and this guy thinks he's the fastest in the shop. Not only is he not the fastest, but once you subtract the marketing, you have to use the offset. He's probably the worst guy you got.
01:02:57
Speaker
Hey guys, yeah this has gone by super quick. This has been so much fun. I really want to do this again. Dutch, just so you know, in the time that we've been having this conversation, ah you've been called a national treasure. Someone said that we need to protect you at all costs. Someone said that ah We need we should put a security detail on you. ah So ah we're going to have to have you back. You know what we need is we need like ah we need to get like a ah like an all star cast and just have the greatest hits all at one time. We might reach critical mass and just implode at that point, though. Well, why don't you do me a favor, right? You want to have some fun? Get me somebody who who vigorously disagrees with just about every damn thing that comes out of my mouth.
01:03:47
Speaker
Let me go head-to-head with somebody. That's all I want. Just let me really go head-to-head with somebody. Who do we get? Now I'm really thinking. yeah so but Here's the deal, is that you love arguing. Yes, I do. and You are like the building inspector, Dutch. the people who are At some point, you realize the guy loves arguing. The people who are most diametrically opposed to your viewpoint of business and also are argumentative either would get upset and offended and log off and rage quit or would never take the conversation in the first place. Pussy's. Well, I was going to say sissy pot pies, but don said it better, I guess. All right. So I'm going to let's wrap it up with pussy pot pies and we'll do this again sometime very soon. I hope the opportunity I really do.
01:04:45
Speaker
um you know At my age, just being able to stay away from the house is a blessing. so Because if you were married to me, you would want to be around me really when it comes down. I'm just proud of i'm just proud of you for not having to go to the restroom for over an hour. Well, how do you know?
01:05:03
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out. The good, and the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes, so why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink. You got a confession of your own, or a topic you'd like me to cover, or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email Mike at confessionsofashopowner.com, or call and leave a message. The number is 704-Confess. That's 704-266.
01:05:31
Speaker
three three seven seven If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode.