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Episode 8 Johnny Dice Triple 6 Auto Repair
87 Plays26 days ago
Episode 8 of the 3T’s Mobile Mechanic Podcast is live with Johnny Dice from Triple 6 Auto Repair. 🔧🎙️
In this episode, we dive into Johnny’s journey through the automotive industry, how Triple 6 Auto Repair got started, the ups and downs of running a business, and what it really takes to survive and grow in today’s automotive world. From shop life to mindset, this episode is packed with real conversations, lessons learned, and experiences every mechanic can relate to.
If you’re a technician, shop owner, or thinking about starting your own automotive business, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy Episode 8 of the 3T’s Mobile Mechanic Podcast. 🚗🔥
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Transcript
The Evolution of Mechanics and Mobile Services
00:00:20
BEN DELLARIA
All right, everybody, welcome back. Today, we have got Johnny Dice on with Triple Six Auto Repair. Johnny, man, what's going on? How you been?
00:00:28
Johnny Dice
Doing well, sir. um I appreciate your time having me on here.
00:00:31
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, man, thanks for coming on. it's ah
00:00:33
Johnny Dice
Of course.
00:00:35
BEN DELLARIA
It's the whole point of it, to get everyone's kind of perspective and just kind of talk to people and get more stories out there so we can all just do better with our mobile service.
00:00:44
Johnny Dice
I think that's the perks of having this ability now. You know, we didn't have this 20, 30 years ago, you know, so everybody kind of looked at mechanics a little differently now.
00:00:48
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. Yeah.
00:00:52
Johnny Dice
and Hopefully this gives some insight. Let's see other guys come in and grow.
00:00:57
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, you know, because i don't think, actually, we were of talking about this on TikTok with some guys the past couple days, um and I think sometimes people get heated or maybe lose the the thought process because it's a text. It's not a visual like you know conversation. But we all have our way of doing things. But I think it's really good to have the conversation and hear everyone's story because times change, people evolve, and not everything works the same way for everybody.
00:01:30
Johnny Dice
100% agreed. And i think that's a I think that's the hardest thing for most people nowadays is understanding there is going to be a lot of change, whether that's with the vehicles, how you operate your business now. Truthfully, how you diagnose or repair a car now is not what it was.
00:01:42
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, yeah. No, yeah, that's vastly different. And everyone's got their own routine as long as you're getting to the same answer. Doesn't really, as long as you're going about it safely, you're not hurting the car or wasting the customer's money, the diagnosis, as long as you have your way and it works for you, it's great.
The Risks of Cheap Repairs and Aftermarket Parts
00:01:59
BEN DELLARIA
And same thing here. I think that's what TikTok and this podcast has taught me too, is originally I was very, very, and I could be such a narrow minded schmuck sometimes that, you know, no, no, no, this is how you do it. This is how the industry does it.
00:02:16
BEN DELLARIA
You have to do it this way. I'm, I have learned lately with, over time that, you know, no, man, if if this guy wants to do it this way, just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean it's not right.
00:02:26
Johnny Dice
Yes.
00:02:27
BEN DELLARIA
just doesn't mean I don't i don't have to do it that way, but I don't have to knock that guy ever doing it that way. you know, more power to him. Let him do it his way. If he's making money and he's being safe and and, you know, making a profit, that's all that matters. As long as we're not going out here doing free work and doing it cheap for everybody, that's the thing I want to work against.
00:02:49
Johnny Dice
Funny you bring that up. I just actually had a customer, she had gone to Walmart, had an oil change, which, hey, no shame. A lot of people can't compete with those prices that Walmart offers, so I totally get it.
00:03:01
Johnny Dice
But she met a young guy, he was about 18, and he noticed she needed brakes apparently. Now I don't know the thickness of the brakes, i don't know the condition of the rotors. She had them come over, charged $25 for front brakes, $25 for rear brakes. And that, to me, should have been her first red flag.
00:03:18
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:03:18
Johnny Dice
She proceeded and it had electronic parking brake and it has been a headache. He destroyed the parking brake actuator. She bought one on Amazon. I gave her the whole spiel. Hey, this is probably going to be problematic. I'm happy to help because, you know, as much as I try to avoid putting parts on, i understand there's a lot of single moms in my area.
00:03:38
Johnny Dice
We're all struggling. I went out there and sure enough, a week and a half later, it failed. Uh,
00:03:43
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:03:44
Johnny Dice
You know, and I try to express now it's, you know, I understand the prices are high, but there's a reason we charge these prices. You know, the extension of tool costs nowadays alone, but the knowledge, you know, to know that when you get in there, oh, no, there's a parking brake that's electronic.
00:04:00
Johnny Dice
You have to go about the whole job differently than a simple push in caliper, you know,
00:04:05
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. I love seeing those ones where like, oh yeah, just take the motor off and do this. I'm like, oh boy.
00:04:11
Johnny Dice
You know, that used to work in the early years of the parking brake system because you didn't have so much tied in with the VSA modulators
00:04:12
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:04:14
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
The Advantages and Challenges of Mobile Mechanics
00:04:19
Johnny Dice
anymore as you do now.
00:04:19
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
00:04:21
Johnny Dice
And, you know, I didn't really mess with those very often. We used have guys that had little lawnmower batteries and they take two alligator clips and roll back in, which is great. ah But it makes me nervous doing that now because one way it it'
00:04:32
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. I don't feel like having to pay for a module.
00:04:35
Johnny Dice
it the module, parking brake actuators alone, not even including if you destroyed a VSA, but just the parking brake modules.
00:04:40
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:04:43
Johnny Dice
I think the one she got was from O'Reilly's. It was about 400 bucks.
00:04:45
BEN DELLARIA
Hmm. Jeez. And that's even aftermarket O'Reilly stuff.
00:04:49
Johnny Dice
Yeah, which I wasn't fond of. I try to avoid electronics from aftermarket. I try to go OE. You just...
00:04:56
BEN DELLARIA
Yep. Or at least a good brand if it's in the if we're buying it from an aftermarket store.
00:04:57
Johnny Dice
100%.
00:05:01
Johnny Dice
ah hundred percent And that's...
00:05:02
BEN DELLARIA
Not like your typical. I don't want to buy like a store brand Durlask Redbox special.
00:05:07
Johnny Dice
No, and that's, you know, it's hard with customers. You know, the the days have changed. Money's a lot tighter now, I think, especially right now in this moment with everything going on anyways.
00:05:14
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
00:05:17
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:05:17
Johnny Dice
It's a struggle.
00:05:18
BEN DELLARIA
We have to evolve if we're going to make it. But I still think as long as we're having as long as we're having the discussion, I'm not saying like, you know, go buy everything on Amazon or anything like that because that's, let's face it, I get get a lot of hate when I say that, oh, everything on Amazon is the same Chinese stuff. It's not. You're a consumer. You're a guy that fixes your own things. Stop with that conversation because you're wrong.
00:05:42
BEN DELLARIA
It's not the same. The tolerance is, there's a guy that shows it real well when he pulls open a fan clutch for a diesel truck. They sell it on, they sell one on Amazon, and then you buy the OEM one, and then you buy the one in the aftermarket store.
00:05:57
BEN DELLARIA
They're all different. They're all vastly different on the fluid. The clutch disc size inside, there's a reason why it costs less. It costs less because it's a cheaper part. it's not as The quality's not there.
00:06:06
Johnny Dice
Mm-hmm.
00:06:08
BEN DELLARIA
The amount of what's needed is not there. The durability, the cheaper materials, there's a reason why it costs nothing. I'm not saying there's other things you can't use. you know You can buy a headlight assembly if you want on eBay or Amazon. That's probably not a bad thing. But I'm not going to buy you know belts. I'm not going to buy brake pads. i'm you know i don't care. Now, I don't know how it works. So like maybe there's like an ACDelco store that's on Amazon that sells ACDelco parts.
00:06:40
BEN DELLARIA
Maybe, but the last time I ran into that where a customer wanted to use, she had used ah AC Delco parts she bought on eBay. They were counterfeit.
00:06:51
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:06:51
BEN DELLARIA
the And I saw the boxes she gave me.
00:06:51
Johnny Dice
Correct.
00:06:53
BEN DELLARIA
I would have noticed it, AC Delco and the parts themselves. But when you actually took an AC Delco plug and put it next to the other plug, that's when you could clearly see that. like That's not even close. like It's like with women's purses and things like that.
00:07:09
BEN DELLARIA
So I get it if you're like a your own DIY and you want to buy it, go buy it. But me as a business, I'm not taking the risk, not taking the chance on it. And that's where a lot of these consumers and some supposed mechanics are like, oh, I don't care. I'll use it. Just put it in your paperwork. And ah yeah, I get hate for that too when I tell them I'm not doing that because I don't trust people.
00:07:33
BEN DELLARIA
I'm not going to put my faith in a piece of paper over a lawyer or someone dying. I'm just not doing it. I don't care if it's – people are telling me I'm fear-mongering everyone else and i you know kiss my ass.
00:07:39
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
00:07:45
BEN DELLARIA
I don't care. It's my company. I can do what I want with it. You don't have to agree, but you can't say I'm wrong.
Social Media's Impact on Automotive Industry
00:07:52
BEN DELLARIA
you know yeah But I agree that the world is ever-changing, and we have to evolve or die.
00:07:57
BEN DELLARIA
And if we have to do things slightly different from the way that the industry standard is, fine. But make the profit. Do good things. Don't use cheap super super, super cheap junk. And stay offline buying that shit, because...
00:08:15
BEN DELLARIA
It just, I don't know, man. the The warranty aspect of it for me is why I don't want to do it. Amongst a million other things, but regardless.
00:08:22
Johnny Dice
The warranty process is hard, you know especially when you're trying to sell a product. It's almost a selling point to offer that with a warranty, but
00:08:26
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:08:30
Johnny Dice
If you've got to get it offline, now you're talking three, four days before they'll send you one. Sometimes you've got to send that part back and then you're a week, week and a half. What happens get booked all the way out? Now you have a customer that's expecting you when that part arrives to immediately come and do that job now.
00:08:39
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
00:08:44
BEN DELLARIA
That day.
00:08:44
Johnny Dice
Yes. And it just doesn't work that way for us, especially when being mobile. It's a little different when you're in a shop and you might have 10, 15 guys working on you.
00:08:54
BEN DELLARIA
But it's the same thing. I'm still not going to buy. So like I get it, or or I assume it. I have no idea if I'm right on this, but I assume Rock Auto is Amazon in its own sense, meaning it outsources.
00:09:09
BEN DELLARIA
If you want to buy... i I'm going to talk about a compressor, a GPD compressor from Rock Auto that comes from this reputable place, and all they do is drop ship it to you.
00:09:23
BEN DELLARIA
I think in my head that's how Rock Auto works. Awesome. But they don't have the same standard as... Amazon or the ah the amount of volume as Amazon, where if i you buy something on to Amazon, like a vacuum or a shirt, you can send it back and they they're fine. They give you your money back as soon as the shipping label is printed.
00:09:43
BEN DELLARIA
Rock Auto is not. If I buy that compressor, sorry, I got freaking allergies going like crazy.
00:09:49
Johnny Dice
Of course.
00:09:49
BEN DELLARIA
If I buy that compressor and it fails and I have to warranty it, I have to buy the other one, pay to send that one back and wait for that to get to me.
00:09:49
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:09:57
BEN DELLARIA
That is why I do not recommend people using parts from Rock Auto. If you're one that doesn't care about your warranty for your customers, go ahead and use it. I don't care.
00:10:10
BEN DELLARIA
But that shows who you are as a company if you're not offering that warranty for them. And like we talked about it recently, I offer a three-year 36,000-mile part labor warranty.
00:10:21
BEN DELLARIA
Even if the part I choose is only a two-year warranty, I'm still warrantying my stuff for three years because I have faith in it. I have faith that this Four Seasons compressor is going to last because they do.
00:10:33
Johnny Dice
100%. Right.
00:10:34
BEN DELLARIA
Do I have to warranty sometimes? Of course I have to warranty sometimes. It happens. Parts fail. But I don't buy Redbox Special or CarQuest Special. I buy Delphi, Denso, ACDelco, Motocraft, NGK, NTK. Those are the brands that we try to use, and that's what we warranty. Or the OEM.
00:10:56
BEN DELLARIA
We're not warranting. I'm not buying the other stuff, so I'm not going to warranty those because I'm just not going to buy it. um But that's why we don't buy online because now that customer is screwed for how long?
00:11:07
BEN DELLARIA
And that's a long time for them to be waiting when I can just like, oh, that compressor is dead.
00:11:07
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:11:13
BEN DELLARIA
I'll be back in two days. I ordered it now. It'll be in tomorrow. This is the time slot I have available. This is when I'll be back. And I don't have to spend money and I can file the warranty claim. You can't file a warranty claim ah with Rock Auto in a way that is very simple, even if they do offer it.
00:11:28
BEN DELLARIA
I don't know because I don't deal with them in that way. And I never i never will. If it gets to the point where you can't buy parts anymore, then i I'll do something else.
00:11:36
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
00:11:36
BEN DELLARIA
you know ah just i'm not so I'm not going to do that for my customers. I think it's really bad.
00:11:42
Johnny Dice
I prefer the face-to-face anyhow, for the most part, or at least over the phone to where can send a text to my parts guy because it gets to a point now. I just had
Building Strong Supplier Relationships
00:11:51
Johnny Dice
this instance on a Kia Sorento.
00:11:56
Johnny Dice
a <unk> sorrento
00:11:58
BEN DELLARIA
Hmm.
00:11:59
Johnny Dice
Needed fuel injectors. Well, needed one. She was recommended six. She wanted to proceed with all six. Well, it was that mid-range year where it only came up with a specific one. so she ordered it and got it all sent over and I was good with where she ordered it from. She, her uncle was from out of state or whatever. it was mechanic and got her a discount. I was like, Hey, can't knock that.
00:12:21
Johnny Dice
So go to pick them up. And I'm looking at them. I'm like, these are the wrong ones. And they're like, well, that's the only listing we have. And I said, well, hold on a second. How is that the only listing? Like this is opposite of the factory injector that came out.
00:12:32
Johnny Dice
Turns out it was one of those late production years and it registers in the system as a 17, but the injector I needed came out the last year was 16.
00:12:41
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:12:42
Johnny Dice
So somewhere in there, they had that break into production. You're dealing with Brock Auto, it does.
00:12:45
BEN DELLARIA
It happens.
00:12:47
Johnny Dice
But if you're dealing with Brock Auto, you're another week out, customer's down.
00:12:47
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:12:51
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:12:51
Johnny Dice
you know it just It becomes a hassle and thankfully I was able to get that one handled up for the customer. but
00:12:57
BEN DELLARIA
And that is those ones where you take that risk of wasting time. And that's why I teach like not to do it, only because in my experience, when it happens, it always happens wrong. And then then you're just, okay, now, for so for me, if I'm scheduling six to eight people a day, because that's what we do,
00:13:17
BEN DELLARIA
It's not that big of a deal, but that means i had, let's say I had like a two and a half hour time slot for this customer because it was like a six, $700 job. That job is now wasted that I could have put on for another paying customer to turn into another job.
00:13:31
BEN DELLARIA
So that's wasted money. It's wasted time. So for me, because it's I'm not just starting out anymore, I don't do that anymore. But like anybody that's starting out, I did it in the beginning.
00:13:42
BEN DELLARIA
I took customer supply parts, but that's where I learned, like fuck, like come on.
00:13:43
Johnny Dice
Of course.
00:13:47
BEN DELLARIA
like This is just getting aggravated. Every time I show up, The part is not right. the The diagnosis is not right. And it's wasting my time and it's frustration and then it makes us question what we're doing and there's no end to this. I can't make any money.
00:14:04
BEN DELLARIA
When I evolved out of that is when we really started to grow in that revenue side. and But it takes time. I i can't ah can't force everyone to do it right off the bat. After a couple of years, when you start getting busier and busier and busier, those things will change. But that's again, that's the I used to say, don't do it, stop doing it, you don't need to do it. I have since evolved into, I get it, I remember my startup, it's cool to do it. you know But you but you've you just dealt with that. So like you know what do you do?
00:14:35
BEN DELLARIA
There's nothing you can, nothing you can do, you can't. I used to try to say the beginning, I was like, all right, well, if you're gonna supply that, but just so you know, if it's wrong, you have to pay this for me coming out, because it's wasting my time.
00:14:47
BEN DELLARIA
People would agree to it, but I would never do it because they were pissed to have to do it.
00:14:51
Johnny Dice
Right.
00:14:52
BEN DELLARIA
And I'd be like, ah it's just easier for me to stop doing this because it and I'm the one that's going to look bad. I'm the one that ends up having to look like the piece of trash because the customer is not going to portray that online that way.
00:15:03
BEN DELLARIA
The customer is not going to be like, well, I ordered the part that I did wrong. He charged me to come out, so I'm okay with – or for him to come out, I'm okay with that. He'll come out another time and then charge me again to put the part in.
00:15:15
BEN DELLARIA
It makes us look like crap because the consumer world – that's the way it is. So if you don't want to, don't do it. But again, to each their own, whatever they want to do. But you learn that, like that one's a rough one. That's a, that's a unique thing that happens a lot, but it doesn't happen every day. It's not like just a customer being like, Oh yeah, AutoZone told me this will fit.
00:15:35
BEN DELLARIA
Well, AutoZone's ran by a minimum wage, you know, 17 year old. So it's a little different.
00:15:42
Johnny Dice
I have a lot of people that swear by AutoZone. I use them as a last resort. If it's something that I got to have that day, um that's about the last the last resort chance I go to them.
00:15:53
BEN DELLARIA
Really?
00:15:54
Johnny Dice
I typically deal with Napa. ah
00:15:55
BEN DELLARIA
Oh.
00:15:56
Johnny Dice
My Napa guy out here, I've known him for almost two years. They own about three stores here locally to me, a bunch of stores out in East Texas. They'll source from anywhere.
00:16:06
Johnny Dice
They'll call the dealership for me.
00:16:07
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:16:08
Johnny Dice
They'll call. I mean, they just know different companies out of Fort Worth, Dallas. So it's just a better business to business operation, whereas AutoZone's kind of to me, I still feel like I'm a consumer in a sense when I go in there.
00:16:12
BEN DELLARIA
in
00:16:18
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:16:22
Johnny Dice
They're kind of clueless. I'm still navigating them to navigate their system, you know.
00:16:27
BEN DELLARIA
and And I have the opposite of that. autos My commercial guy in AutoZone has been in the industry for so many years. Used to be a technician and then service rider for the Goodyear stores.
00:16:40
BEN DELLARIA
and So I'm like lucky with that. But my advanced CarQuest, is like what your AutoZone is. The guys that are in there or the employees, it's like, holy shit, you know you tell them you need this. and so If I'm not ordering it through ParchTech and I'm like, hey, man, I'm looking for this.
00:16:58
BEN DELLARIA
ah is it What kind of vehicle? like No, fucking stop. I don't care about the vehicle.
00:17:03
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:17:04
BEN DELLARIA
This is what I need. It's like beating my head against the wall because it's just a kid that doesn't know what he's doing. But my commercial guy, yeah.
00:17:11
Johnny Dice
But here's the thing with those parts, guys, they don't learn unless you help them.
00:17:15
BEN DELLARIA
No, they don't.
00:17:15
Johnny Dice
and it And that's what a lot of people fail to realize. The good guys never got there from the jump.
00:17:21
BEN DELLARIA
Nope.
00:17:21
Johnny Dice
And I find a lot of people, 100%, you have to give them that bone every now and then because that will either make or break.
00:17:22
BEN DELLARIA
Took them years.
00:17:28
Johnny Dice
Either they'll realize the same for them or they'll be able to make it happen. And then they become an asset for you.
00:17:35
BEN DELLARIA
And that's what like my, so my AutoZone store, it's like a family when I walk in there now, because over the years, it's the first store I started with. And then my store manager, my commercial manager left.
00:17:48
BEN DELLARIA
My store manager left, went to advance. So I was using them a little bit more. But the commercial guy that was running the counter, just it wasn't working out. So I was continuing to use AutoZone, but now at AutoZone, I walk in.
00:18:01
BEN DELLARIA
There's an older lady there, Jamie. She hugs me and my wife every single time we come in The guy, John, we talk to him all the time. i go back. I have my own shelf. All my parts are always there when I order because I ordered everything yesterday. I'll go pick up today or tomorrow.
00:18:16
BEN DELLARIA
everything's already there. All my invoices. And I walk behind the counter all the time. I go back there, I get my stuff and I'm like, Hey John, I need this. Yeah, go get it. Whatever. You know, I know where the parts are. Like it's, you know, and every employee in there knows who we are.
00:18:26
Johnny Dice
Right.
00:18:30
BEN DELLARIA
Store manager, everyone. they' Hey man, come back here to the office. Come, you know, come talk with me. know, it just advanced was like that as well too, when the other store manager was there and it's still like that a little bit today, but My O'Reilly's is not like that. They're super strict. I have my own shelf and stuff in these stores, but there's very strict on like their process. I can dump all my oil at AutoZone and Advance. I can't dump any oil at O'Reilly.
00:18:57
BEN DELLARIA
um Napa.
00:18:57
Johnny Dice
Really? Yeah.
00:18:59
BEN DELLARIA
Napa's really good. used to be really good. like That old school day, it's ah it's the old store where the ceiling's low and there's millions of shelves and like paint in stuff and stuff.
00:19:10
BEN DELLARIA
Where we live, there's lots of farms, so it's really heavy on that side. um I don't use them because they're still behind on the times. like I can't go online and look at my invoices. I can't pay online. I can't do anything, and their price point is really way off for me in my area because it's still run owned by a guy that's like,
00:19:29
BEN DELLARIA
120 and isn't up with the times yet. So we'll see what happens when he sells to his kids or they, someone else takes over, but.
00:19:36
Johnny Dice
I hate to hear that about Napa because, man, I have LinkUp on Napa ProLink. So i it's kind of like using PartSec. PartSec's a lot easier and faster because it's integrated because I use TechMetric too.
00:19:43
BEN DELLARIA
yes Yeah.
00:19:46
Johnny Dice
But my Napa store, I can look at invoices.
00:19:48
BEN DELLARIA
There you go, guys. Another tech metric user. Yeah.
00:19:51
Johnny Dice
I swear by it. Man, I was hesitant. I pulled the trigger before I even went full time.
00:19:55
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:19:56
Johnny Dice
Best thing i ever did. It just smooths the entire operation.
00:19:58
BEN DELLARIA
That's two guys today that are not 100% full-time or you
Digital Tools and CRM in Auto Repair
00:20:03
BEN DELLARIA
know just at full-time. The guy I just talked to, ah Kyle Roland, just did his podcast an hour ago. He's got TechMetric, but he still works at the dealer.
00:20:11
Johnny Dice
I was actually working for the municipality out here as a fleet mechanic.
00:20:16
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:20:16
Johnny Dice
I've been there year and a half. It was okay.
00:20:19
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:20:19
Johnny Dice
little different world than I could get down with. um
00:20:23
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:20:24
Johnny Dice
But yeah, probably about two weeks before I left, i was... And for the last year, I've been running my business on Facebook, doing side work, you know whatever you want to call it.
00:20:35
Johnny Dice
And TechMetric actually found my Facebook somehow, and then they called me.
00:20:38
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:20:41
Johnny Dice
I wasn't even looking, and they were like, hey, look, just let us give you a demo.
00:20:41
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:20:45
Johnny Dice
And we had used Manager Plus. I forget what the actual company is. That's what we use in the municipality, but it was basically TechMetric for a fleet system.
00:20:56
Johnny Dice
um so And I've used Xtime. I don't even know. yeah We use Reynolds and Reynolds and stuff, but When he showed me everything in TechMetric, the first thing in my head was, okay, what's price? And then he told me, and I was like, I don't know that I'm there yet.
00:21:11
Johnny Dice
And something in me said, you don't want to get into the bad mentality from the jump on pen and paper, losing track, doing this, and then convert over.
00:21:24
Johnny Dice
Do it now. I pulled the trigger, and I haven't looked back, man. I get i just send the invoices.
00:21:28
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:21:30
Johnny Dice
i send the estimates.
00:21:33
BEN DELLARIA
which um Which tier do you have, first or second?
00:21:36
Johnny Dice
I have the first. So being mobile for me, and being smaller, they suggested I start with that and kind of get a feel for it.
00:21:37
BEN DELLARIA
Okay.
00:21:42
BEN DELLARIA
Mm-hmm.
00:21:44
Johnny Dice
um I've got the payment incentive system integrated on there. And that's, my gosh, that's been a lifesaver because i my Zelle is linked to my personal bank and it's going to take more to transfer the business. TechMetric just automatically deposits.
00:21:58
Johnny Dice
I don't have to directly talk with the customer about everything. I just send the invoice, send the estimate. um There's a lot of great features I'm probably still missing out on because of where I'm at.
00:22:07
BEN DELLARIA
Oh yeah. I have the second tier, but I only have it for one reason, but I actually am curious to know. and ah You try this out for me and let me know what happens. Do you use um smart jobs in there?
00:22:22
Johnny Dice
Kind of. ah
00:22:24
BEN DELLARIA
So for people listening, Smart Jobs or Can Jobs, Can Jobs is different than Smart Jobs. Smart Job, what it does is you click on, like, just click on Alternator, and it'll automatically put the labor onto the ticket and start pulling up the parts from your vendors on the ticket.
00:22:35
Johnny Dice
Right.
00:22:42
BEN DELLARIA
You don't even have to go to Parts Deck. It just does it for you. So I'm curious. My tier, the only reason why I have it is because it has the integrated labor times.
00:22:54
BEN DELLARIA
um And you can't link all data. I don't know if you can link all data in tier one. So if you use a smart job, does it put a labor time on the ticket?
00:23:05
Johnny Dice
It does not.
00:23:06
BEN DELLARIA
Okay.
00:23:06
Johnny Dice
And I don't even know if Can you link all data or is it Mitchell that it wants to link?
00:23:06
BEN DELLARIA
So you still,
00:23:12
BEN DELLARIA
I have all data. Like you can link Mitchell to um or shop key or whatever it calls in there.
00:23:13
Johnny Dice
Okay.
00:23:17
Johnny Dice
I use all data, but... um
00:23:19
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, I have, when I pull up my labor, um because I have the second one, again, the only reason why I have the second tier was the labor guides. I can click on, I can leave it there or click all data and it pulls up my, ah it has its own form of the way all data looks integrated into TechMetric.
00:23:36
Johnny Dice
Okay.
00:23:37
BEN DELLARIA
But that's, you know, the smart job.
00:23:37
Johnny Dice
See, that would save a lot of time.
00:23:38
BEN DELLARIA
I was curious, I sent my, ah the lady at Tech's that I deal with um for, all the stuff I deal with with TechMetric, I asked her that question the other late yesterday.
00:23:50
BEN DELLARIA
i haven't heard back from her yet, but that answers my question then, that you still have to have the second tier to have the labor guide integrated.
00:23:55
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
00:23:58
BEN DELLARIA
and
00:23:58
Johnny Dice
It's kind of limited on that first here, but kind of getting the ball rolling. I mean,
00:24:05
BEN DELLARIA
Even that that, all the stuff that we use in mobile... um i If it wasn't for the integrated labor guide, there'd be nothing else I really need.
00:24:16
BEN DELLARIA
Granted, the third tier with the marketing that they have for it, I used it for a few months earlier in the year. It's really good. They have some work to do on it, and I've been in talks with them about possibly changing some of that stuff to help us in the mobile world because I promote them so much.
00:24:33
BEN DELLARIA
um But... Once that happens, I'll probably go to the third tier and restart their marketing again. It's not cheap, but when I was using it, I was getting a thousand more reviews, all of my customer feedback.
00:24:50
BEN DELLARIA
I could send um all the campaigns and things. It's a great CRM program that's built into it. Yeah. the
00:24:58
Johnny Dice
I was curious how how well that actually worked because you know they gave you the full spectrum of what each tier did.
00:25:02
BEN DELLARIA
yeah
00:25:04
Johnny Dice
And I was like, I don't know if we're there yet.
00:25:05
BEN DELLARIA
The CRM is great.
00:25:08
Johnny Dice
It's hard when you're when you first get that jump into this industry on your own. i mean, because I've never been a business owner. i never you know I've always worked in a shop. So that initial jump was like, all right, i still got a mortgage.
00:25:17
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:25:22
Johnny Dice
Still got regular bills.
00:25:23
BEN DELLARIA
enough Yeah.
00:25:23
Johnny Dice
yeah ah How do I bring on extra debt? And and i don't want to say it's debt really because you're paying for a service that's going to make you more money.
00:25:31
BEN DELLARIA
It's a tool, man.
00:25:33
Johnny Dice
So it's not really a debt, but you have more obligation monthly. And by not knowing what those numbers were going to be, ah it kind of put me in a sense of fear. So I just staggered kind of like, I know I need the base.
00:25:46
Johnny Dice
I'm start here.
00:25:47
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, it's a good place to start.
00:25:48
Johnny Dice
It,
00:25:48
BEN DELLARIA
i I suggest everyone starts at that because it's just one only one thing you have to add, and that's go to your other program and just look up what the labor is.
00:25:49
Johnny Dice
it
00:25:57
BEN DELLARIA
No big deal.
00:25:57
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
00:25:59
BEN DELLARIA
Compared to having just having parts tech so you can integrate all of like your parts purchasing, you don't have to open up all the other tabs across the top of the computer.
00:26:10
BEN DELLARIA
It still saves you a ton of time. um But going back to that CRM, It's really, really good. um the It's two-way texting in inside of TechMetric. So if a customer texts the shop phone number, it pulls it up in there.
00:26:27
BEN DELLARIA
So like if I'm at the computer here in an office day and we're working, my wife's over there working, both of us can answer the customers instead of worrying about the phone. um We can text them back. We can send, like I said, we can send all the campaigns. We can ask for reviews um in the but the amount of marketing and the things you can change different times of the year. If it's a holiday special, if you're sending um you know gift cards or you know virtual gift cards to customers, um and you can choose you know who you send that to. You want to send it to customers that are like...
00:27:04
BEN DELLARIA
You've seen them ah this amount of times in the past, or they spent this much, you can market those people. You can set up oil change reminders. Okay, oil change closed. So if you used a can job for an oil change, it knows in six months, it's going to send that customer an email reminder, and you can change how they look in the email and the text message and all that stuff.
00:27:25
BEN DELLARIA
um There's so much. But The one thing that they have a lot of their focus on, which is their scheduler or their booking the ah the this booking scheduler, it allows customers to choose a date and time because it's really set up for a a shop. It's not set up for us.
00:27:44
BEN DELLARIA
If they can set it so we can not have allow the customer to choose a date and time, I'll go back to it and use that because I would prefer if a customer come wants to get with me instead of having to send me a text or call me, they can just go to the my page ah and they give you a website. The website was beautiful.
00:28:05
BEN DELLARIA
um They can go to my website and they can say, request appointment. And they'll hit it and then I'll get the notification that they want an appointment and I can just get back to them and say ah directly through the system or a regular text and say, this is the date and time that we can put you on for. Instead of them saying, well, I want Tuesday at four o'clock.
00:28:24
BEN DELLARIA
No, Tuesday at three o'clock. I'm on that side of town. That's an hour away from me. I can't do that. That was the main reason why I didn't pay for it any longer.
00:28:30
Johnny Dice
Right.
00:28:34
BEN DELLARIA
Because like that stuff doesn't work for me. But it will it will eventually with all the beta testing and things that they do.
00:28:38
Johnny Dice
I know those
00:28:42
Johnny Dice
Well, I know they're really good on the customer service side about, you know, listening to things that, you know, you could use.
00:28:47
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
00:28:48
Johnny Dice
And as much as it wasn't necessarily directed towards us as mobile guys, ah you kind of made a comment when you made that. It triggered the ah memory of what happened. When I first started, they sent me up on PartsTech. So I went through the whole spiel, you know, got my account set up, signed up PartsTech. Well, PartsTech calls me.
00:29:06
Johnny Dice
And the guy's like, hey, is this Johnny with triple six? I was like, yeah, man, how's going? He's like, great, I'm with Parts Tech. ah Are you a mobile mechanic or do you run a shop? And I said, no, I'm mobile. He said, well, I hate to tell you, but we don't help anybody with mobile. Our system's not designed for mobile. And I was like,
00:29:24
Johnny Dice
that's kind of odd because I know quite a few mobile guys that are using parts tech. I said, but okay, cool.
00:29:27
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. Hmm.
00:29:29
Johnny Dice
No problem. So I didn't use it.
00:29:31
BEN DELLARIA
e
00:29:31
Johnny Dice
So the the guy that I was onboarding with, Roger, he reached out and was like, hey, man, what's going on? Are you using parts tech? So I told him. About, i don't know, two hours later, another guy from PartsSec calls me. He goes, hey, man, I don't know what happened. I'm really sorry. We are able to assist mobile guys. It's it's more push for the shop side, but it does work with mobile guys. So I'm not sure where that information came from. So I think what's happened is is we're at that transition point where mobile is a lot larger than what it once was.
Changing Perceptions of Mobile Mechanics
00:30:03
Johnny Dice
And everybody was always, it's... Brick and mortar shop. This is what we designed our system for. And now we're going to be the change in this industry. I really think we are as a whole collectively.
00:30:13
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. I think, and the good ones, like, you know, I think it is the things that we've been doing and the way that the world has been changing to assist, to help us.
00:30:25
BEN DELLARIA
It's just like how the, you DoorDash became one of the norms and Uber Eats became one of the norms. Um, can you close those blinds a little bit for me? Um, the, uh,
00:30:38
BEN DELLARIA
There's a lot of guys that I've spoken to in the past that just, no matter what, they didn't... That's good. Perfect. um They didn't think that what we do is worth anything, and a lot of their views have changed. And i saying not worth anything, but they just like didn't understand it, and...
00:30:55
BEN DELLARIA
There's a lot of them now, especially on the platforms that are talking good about us and they're adding us into the conversation instead of just saying, no, we're no good. I want to know what you shop technicians have to say. Now they're saying, i want to know what you guys think. And you mobile guys, what do you guys think? Because they're ah they're realizing that we're not just leaving the shops because we can't hack it. they're We're leaving the shops because we're like, we want something on our own.
00:31:19
BEN DELLARIA
But it's sometimes it's not realistic to be able to have a building because not all areas ah allow it. I would have to drive over 45 minutes away to find a warehouse building for me to have a brick mortar location because all of the stuff that's near me does not allow it. It's not zoned for an auto shop.
00:31:38
BEN DELLARIA
And the ones that are zoned for an auto shop, they refuse to allow us in because they don't auto shops are dirty. They're messy. They're oily. They don't want it. And there's a lot of cars around. So I can't.
00:31:49
BEN DELLARIA
And that's my main reason why I didn't do And I went mobile. um So like that persona of all that I feel is changing amongst the professionals. And,
00:32:00
BEN DELLARIA
I don't think it changes amongst the ones that don't like the automotive industry, and that's fine. If you don't like the automotive industry and you're in it and you're a mobile guy, i mean, I can't help you. I can't change your tone. I can't change your view. I can just tell you what we experience on a daily basis. But there's a lot of mobile guys that hate the automotive industry, and they insist on doing it their own way, and that's cool. I mean, you do you, and we're going to we're going to be a good advocate for the automotive industry if we can.
00:32:29
Johnny Dice
Well, I mean, you know, I've actually noticed our local Ford store here in town, they've got a mobile repair set up. They got a big transit. They're running around doing, I mean, they do recalls out on the side of the road, at house calls now.
00:32:41
Johnny Dice
And I'm like, okay, well,
00:32:42
BEN DELLARIA
I just met up with a guy the other day and looked at his trailer for that.
00:32:45
Johnny Dice
you know, and that's great.
00:32:47
BEN DELLARIA
Or truck, sorry.
00:32:48
Johnny Dice
I think it's awesome. I think personally the best bang for business in a dealership would be doing recalls at homes because it's not the customer's fault. It's not from a drivability concern of their own fault, pothole, whatever.
00:33:01
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:33:02
Johnny Dice
I think it's a great atmosphere for the customer, but I think that's really starting to become the norm being mobile because not everybody can conveniently drop their car off.
00:33:13
Johnny Dice
I mean, I don't know what it's like where you are, but our shops are two to four weeks out on before they can even look at your car.
00:33:18
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:33:19
Johnny Dice
whereas Most of us, I can be there within that week, three, four days, come out, diagnose it, figure it out, fix it probably same day or next day, depending on parts availability. you know And that's that's truly the key now is I've kind of rotated my mindset. It's it's not necessarily about me just going out and fixing the car.
00:33:37
Johnny Dice
I mean, that is the overall goal, but what can I do to best assist the customer? Because if I can provide the best kind of service, if if you're stay-at-home mom and you've got five kids and you work from home, you go into sitting in a dealership or sitting shop for three, four hours to get some you know work done, it's not feasible.
00:33:54
BEN DELLARIA
No, especially with little ones running around that don't want to be there and screaming and yelling.
00:33:58
Johnny Dice
Exactly.
00:33:58
BEN DELLARIA
And it makes the mom feel uncomfortable, but most of us don't really care.
00:34:01
Johnny Dice
But then they get to be in the comfortability of their home.
00:34:02
BEN DELLARIA
But. Yep.
00:34:04
Johnny Dice
We're out there doing what needs to be done. And, you know, TikTok has enlightened the world on mobile mechanics. It's also created some.
00:34:13
BEN DELLARIA
But also destroyed it.
00:34:14
Johnny Dice
Yes. I'm finding a lot of guys that don't have the experience. You know, I find myself.
00:34:18
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
00:34:21
Johnny Dice
They use the AI guy and I love my favorite thing. $50 for a starter. So I go post the old starter under the intake on the Toyota Tundras back in the day. I'm like, Hey, you still doing that?
00:34:31
Johnny Dice
Cause if you are, I'm calling you when I get one, I'm gonna pocket my rate, you know?
00:34:35
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, exactly. to sell it to this and I'm going to sublet it to you.
00:34:36
Johnny Dice
And it's, it's not to to call you out and be rude.
00:34:38
BEN DELLARIA
It's
00:34:41
Johnny Dice
It's just a, you can't give a base price for every vehicle.
00:34:43
BEN DELLARIA
realistic.
00:34:44
Johnny Dice
you can't, every vehicle is different.
00:34:44
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, there's no way. But that's, unfortunately, there's a difference between a content creator, there's a difference between us that are just putting their life and their story out there.
00:34:47
Johnny Dice
Um,
00:34:57
BEN DELLARIA
So some people can want to complain and they want to call me a content creator and I don't think I am. I think I'm just someone that is – I just wanted to let people know what we're doing.
00:35:09
BEN DELLARIA
So like I'm not Parker. I'm not Matthew Parker. I'm not – there's another guy that's in Orlando that just –
00:35:20
BEN DELLARIA
pisses me off. But anyway, I'm going to say it anyway. So he's a very nice guy. the Not the Parker guy. He's a dummy. But I'm talking about this other guy in Orlando.
00:35:32
BEN DELLARIA
he um he's got He was mobile, but he was you know just he's doing it at this caliber. He was working for a buddy or something. They made a ton of money online.
00:35:46
BEN DELLARIA
I don't think they made a ton of money in their business. I don't know their numbers, but again, that's one of those ones that's like, oh yeah, make $1,000 a day and you're at midnight putting an alternator in. What?
00:35:57
Johnny Dice
You don't even have to say his name, but is this the guy that just transferred over to being non-profit?
00:35:57
BEN DELLARIA
What is wrong with you?
00:36:02
BEN DELLARIA
Nonprofit.
00:36:03
Johnny Dice
I know.
00:36:03
BEN DELLARIA
Like, what are we doing?
00:36:03
Johnny Dice
Yeah,
00:36:04
BEN DELLARIA
Like, I get it if you're strictly going to be doing something good for people, but you're doing it off the backs of us. That's how I look at it.
00:36:16
Johnny Dice
because now we have to – it's almost we're in a competition with you still.
00:36:16
BEN DELLARIA
And I have to. Yeah, exactly. Because you now can't run a business. I don't know if you can. I'm just my assumption is you make more money from this.
00:36:29
BEN DELLARIA
And he keeps saying, well, it's God's plan. It's God's plan. All right. you know, we're not going to cross ah that that religion political bridge here, but my point is that pick one, right?
The Role of Social Media in Shaping Customer Expectations
00:36:40
BEN DELLARIA
So like me, if I just, if I stop all social media tomorrow, I have a very, very successful business and I will never have a problem. This is just extra. And I don't even make money off my podcast. I don't make money on TikTok.
00:36:53
BEN DELLARIA
I make a couple of bucks on YouTube, but nothing substantial. It's like four or $500 a month. So granted, I don't have the millions of views that these guys have, but my point being is that he chain he builds a shop and then says, we're going to go out of business and we're going to do a nonprofit.
00:37:11
BEN DELLARIA
Why? I don't get it. I mean, i maybe more tax write-off, maybe more money. And then, you know, because you were paying too much tax on the income you were making on the videos and this is your way of doing it. Cool. Good job.
00:37:22
BEN DELLARIA
But it's making the consumer think that all these guys that all of us should be cheap and free is what my view is on that. And that pisses me off so much.
00:37:30
Johnny Dice
When I saw that video, it threw me for a loop because I was just like, you know, you're giving away free and I'm charging.
00:37:31
BEN DELLARIA
But you can't change that.
00:37:36
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:37:39
Johnny Dice
Everybody's going to go to the free guy, which I'm all about great work, great repair. But this is still an industry that makes money and provides a service that should be paid for.
00:37:50
Johnny Dice
I mean, that's truthfully what it boils down to.
00:37:50
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:37:52
Johnny Dice
um
00:37:52
BEN DELLARIA
Exactly.
00:37:53
Johnny Dice
But that guy, man, he posted a video and I was mind blown.
00:37:54
BEN DELLARIA
The
00:37:56
Johnny Dice
He posted it. Did you happen to see the video when he backed his trailer into his fence? He was trying to back the scrap trailer in. He posted the whole video, but ah whatever the guy's name is that went nonprofit,
00:38:02
BEN DELLARIA
ah the guy in Orlando, Tyler?
00:38:08
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, his name Tyler. It's him and his wife, yeah.
00:38:09
Johnny Dice
i was I was like, well, I guess if that creates views, that's great. But, I mean, the man knocked his almost knocked his whole fence down back in his... And I was just like, dude, you... You know, I don't know.
00:38:20
Johnny Dice
I mean, I guess maybe I'm not the content creator. That's why I don't make a million dollars a year off of that stuff, you know?
00:38:24
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, exactly. That's the same thing.
00:38:25
Johnny Dice
But i just...
00:38:26
BEN DELLARIA
I know.
00:38:28
Johnny Dice
It's changed. Social media has changed us. TikTok, you know, everything has changed. The whole operation, you know we got... I don't know his real name, TE Videos. He worked at Honda.
00:38:40
Johnny Dice
He always flips it.
00:38:41
BEN DELLARIA
I've seen some of his videos, yeah.
00:38:41
Johnny Dice
Hey, bud.
00:38:42
BEN DELLARIA
Or ive I see the name, but yeah.
00:38:44
Johnny Dice
he He went full-time out of his house, I believe.
00:38:44
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, yeah. Didn't he just change something?
00:38:50
BEN DELLARIA
Okay, I just saw a video yesterday or last night on something, and he was doing something with a lift or something like that. I think I saw that, yeah.
00:38:59
Johnny Dice
maybe the Was it the scissor lift? Yeah.
00:39:02
BEN DELLARIA
Maybe, something, I don't know.
00:39:03
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
00:39:04
BEN DELLARIA
But i get I know what you're saying, but yeah. i did And that's the thing, too, is like... So if you're if you're, you know, I think I was talking about this on, I always talk about it, but I would like to have one at a shop at my house.
00:39:16
BEN DELLARIA
Like it would be just nice for me to be able to pull my own car in there and and do an oil change or change the tire, know, brakes and stuff.
00:39:23
Johnny Dice
course.
00:39:24
BEN DELLARIA
But you see these guys like um like ah Chris Enright, he's got a shop at his house. He's allowed to though.
00:39:31
Johnny Dice
Beautiful setup over there.
00:39:33
BEN DELLARIA
Huh?
00:39:33
Johnny Dice
Beautiful setup over there that he has.
00:39:36
BEN DELLARIA
to a point like he can't stand under the car because the ceilings are a little too low. So he has to sit on a stool. So, I mean, that's, you know, think I would rather lay on the ground than have to sit on a stool to like work up there like that.
00:39:50
BEN DELLARIA
Um, but I, you know, never really done it besides standing under a lift, but, it would be really nice to have one at home. He's allowed to. So like, are some of these guys doing that? Are they crossing that over? They have a shop at home and they get enough cars coming in. So the city, they're doing it for no money. So the city can't give them a hassle because they're actually just doing, making money on the videos or something like that. But again,
00:40:17
BEN DELLARIA
I think that that shows the consumer, all the people, we were we were talking about content creators. They follow these guys, they praise these guys, and they get all these views because they're accommodating to the people that under that want the free. They don't want to spend money compared to the customers that we have that understand, I would like to pay value for that because I want it done right. I don't want it done by some TikToker that is going to do something wild and do something crazy. And then my car is burning on the side of the road type of thing.
00:40:54
BEN DELLARIA
There's less people like that than there is the people that are like, Oh yeah you're doing awesome. I'm going to bring my car to you. I'm 14 hours away. Oh, Jesus, you're going to drive 14 hours because you want free work instead of just going to a quality shop near you?
00:41:06
BEN DELLARIA
What the hell is wrong with you? What has our society brought us to today?
Johnny's Journey and Personal Experiences
00:41:10
BEN DELLARIA
That's what it has brought us.
00:41:13
Johnny Dice
It's a it's going to be interesting to see where all this leads to in the next five, 10 years, you know,
00:41:19
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, yeah. I am curious. And I'm glad that I'm... like i you know Online, i don't I don't watch a lot of automotive stuff online. I watch a lot more like video game stuff, you know like what I have in here. And I watch some of these guys, like ah like some of these top Fortnite streamers.
00:41:39
BEN DELLARIA
They got in... to the industry industry They got into streaming right when, or changed over to Fortnite right when it got huge. And they're bazillionaires today because of the streaming world. But they still play video games all day.
00:41:54
BEN DELLARIA
And it built the video game world up, especially that game. So like in my head, I'm like, oh man, you know, like... I didn't get into something at the right time. Well, I feel we all have now.
00:42:05
BEN DELLARIA
If we're part of this world now in some of the first names in the mobile world of doing it the right way that we believe in, I think in five, 10 years, we will be some of those more top names in the automotive mobile world, not the the shop world that people be like, oh man, like you guys started out, you encouraged us to get going and the world is getting better and better.
00:42:25
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:42:31
BEN DELLARIA
and the the cheaper go down and down and down, they're still going to pop up, and that's one of the fears. like You see guys in the group all the time post, like, oh, man, all these guys are cheap. They're not going to be around next year. They're either, a going to be in jail, or they're going to go do something else because they can't make any money because they don't want to charge the fair rate that they need to charge, and they can't make money. So don't stress them too much. Eventually, they will all disappear, but you're going to keep getting new ones that come up, and then they go away. New ones that come up, and then they go away because that's just the nature of it.
00:43:00
Johnny Dice
Of course. And there's there's so many people that are out there now. it's Everybody's trying to find their niche, find it out where they fit in. And truthfully, it's come down. Everybody just wants to make a million dollars as fast as they can.
00:43:12
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, pretty much.
00:43:12
Johnny Dice
That's that's that's the hardest part. to it you know You don't create that. And you know to kind of reiterate on mobile mechanics, the new guys coming in and kind of like to the parts guy thing,
00:43:23
Johnny Dice
dude it takes years of experience i mean i've been in this industry 10 years professionally and uh i thought i was the biggest bad as joe when i first started you know i mean we all do you go in swinging you're like yeah a fixed car i mean i was turning 20 hours a week my first six months i thought i was something but then after five six years i was doing 70 80 100 120 hours in a week time diagnosis heavy line all that you know it's all it is it's the experience is the time but
00:43:25
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:43:33
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:54
Johnny Dice
it's a It's not for everybody.
00:43:55
BEN DELLARIA
I try saying that. No, it's not. And i I try saying that a lot. And I think, you know, obviously, i mean, it's online. So like I use programs to pull clips out of these podcasts and I post them. And one of the ones I had posted recently was talking about how I think,
00:44:11
BEN DELLARIA
If you're just coming, I get questions from people like, oh, I'm just graduating tech school. I'm 20 years old and I want to start a mobile mechanic service. What should I do? Go get a job.
00:44:21
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
00:44:22
BEN DELLARIA
And then I get people that are on TikTok that are, you know, they've got hundreds of thousands of followers and they don't. but that's that's their money stream, right? They're mechanics. They're out here doing it.
00:44:36
BEN DELLARIA
But, you know, they're like, oh, you're fear-mongering these people and you should encourage them to go in business. I'm like, no, that's not what the fuck I'm going to do. I'm going to encourage them to go get the training because they have no idea how to be a service writer.
00:44:46
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:44:48
BEN DELLARIA
They have no idea how to be a business owner. They might know a little bit about how to be a technician or they might be a unicorn and a genius at diagnosis. Okay, cool. But you still don't know how to talk to customers.
00:45:01
Johnny Dice
You got to have that background.
00:45:01
BEN DELLARIA
You still don't have that experience. And you're not going to get that experience just by going to school. When I worked in the field, I had the same stupid mentality. When I first started, I was like, I was in school and I'm like, I'm going to open a shop. I'm going to do this. And I'm just this gung-ho, stupid-ass, you know early 20-year-old kid.
00:45:21
BEN DELLARIA
And you know same thing. My first job, I'm like... I didn't start as a lube tech. I'm awesome because I started as ah in fleet um working for Bell South. I had my own personal two bays, two lifts, tire machines, my own parts room, and my own office.
00:45:39
BEN DELLARIA
All of my cars were brought to me every day, so it inflated my head to like this big, and I thought I was freaking king of the world. And we're doing, you know, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week because I didn't have to sell anything.
00:45:52
BEN DELLARIA
if therere If the job ticket was over like X amount of hours, I had to send it off to a boss and they had to approve the job.
00:45:59
Johnny Dice
Right.
00:45:59
BEN DELLARIA
But other than that, I was doing PM maintenance. So I was rotating tires, changing the brakes if need to, putting wipers on, changing the oil and fixing anything that the technician that drove the vehicle had complaints on. If it was AC or this or that.
00:46:14
BEN DELLARIA
toe-ins, whatever we had to diagnose and fix, we just did it. So we were making, I was making money like mad on my first job. So I didn't get my rude awakening until I went to the dealer.
00:46:25
BEN DELLARIA
but When I went there, I was like walking around like I'm head honcho, and I'm like, I'm stupid. I have no idea how to fix a car.
00:46:31
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:46:33
BEN DELLARIA
You send over a PO 171, no problem found. I had no fucking clue what I was doing. you know Heater circuits, you know I had no idea because at this time, I'm only like my third year in as a mechanic.
00:46:38
Johnny Dice
Um...
00:46:46
BEN DELLARIA
So like I get, I've been in that world. So when I got into the independent world and I was like, you know what? My dream was always having a shop. I'm going to have to go learn it because I learned that humility and getting told by the older guys, like, dude, slow down.
00:47:00
BEN DELLARIA
You're stupid. You have no idea what you're doing. And they didn't say I was stupid, but you get what I'm saying.
00:47:05
Johnny Dice
ah hundred percent
00:47:05
BEN DELLARIA
um You know, some of them probably told me I was stupid or yelled at me, but you know, I was like, okay, Let me figure out the training now. Right. Let me figure out what the hell I'm doing.
00:47:17
BEN DELLARIA
So I didn't care about the training in the dealership. I did it because I got paid for it. I didn't do it to actually learn it. Cause I was like, I'm better than this. I don't care. I'm not doing that. It's I can't do it.
00:47:28
BEN DELLARIA
So then i was like, Oh, Well, there's more aspect to this. like After like my eighth or ninth year in, I was like, yeah, i really need to learn everything. So I started learning how I looked for a shop where I could advance. Can I be a service writer?
00:47:42
BEN DELLARIA
Can i shadow someone in the office? So when I found shops that allowed that, that's what I did. That was the only way I could be as as successful as I am in my mobile service today because I learned how to be a service writer.
00:47:55
BEN DELLARIA
I learned how to be a businessman.
00:47:55
Johnny Dice
Yep.
00:47:58
BEN DELLARIA
When I left the automotive field, I opened a lawn service. I ran it the way my father ran it down in South Florida, and it didn't work. Because down there, for him, when he ran it in the 80s and 90s, worked.
00:48:11
BEN DELLARIA
Granted, or he, you know, 80s, 2000s, 2010, he ran it for like 45 years, but his way of doing it worked for him. It didn't work for me. So running it here, I didn't make any money. I sold the lawn service for a good amount. I sold it for like 25 grand, but it wasn't a successful company. and That's why I hated it because I didn't know how to run it.
00:48:33
BEN DELLARIA
And that taught me something about more about my valuing my time and my dollar versus you know the way some of these guys are running it this way. So life experience, I get it.
00:48:47
BEN DELLARIA
You want to be mobile and you want to go do it. And if you're going to do it, go do it I'm not going tell you not to, but if you want to be really successful and you don't want to keep losing a ton of money, go work in a shop for a couple of years and go be a service writer for a couple of years.
00:48:56
Johnny Dice
percent
00:48:58
BEN DELLARIA
What? Come on. Look at doctors. They don't just get to be like, oh, I graduated. Now I'm a freaking brain surgeon. No, you have to Go work in the hospital for X amount of years and get the training and get all this stuff. Now I get it. Saving lives is different than fixing on a freaking car, but it's my point. If you want to be great and you want to be successful, go get the training for it.
00:49:19
BEN DELLARIA
We'll do it.
00:49:19
Johnny Dice
You know, we ah we didn't really get to kind of go in my background where I came from, but
00:49:24
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, so far, but we could go as long as we want, but I want to know about that a little bit with the drag racing and stuff.
00:49:27
Johnny Dice
Shoot.
00:49:30
Johnny Dice
Well, that's why I want to kind of touch on it because, you know, there's a lot of guys that come in this industry with zero experience in cars, no background in it.
00:49:33
BEN DELLARIA
Oh,
00:49:39
Johnny Dice
um You know, I mean, Man, before I was born, my mom was drag racing. She was street racing. She got pulled over. you know so i mean, she was taking guys out. She had a Camaro back in the day. My dad had a Nova that was pretty slick.
00:49:52
Johnny Dice
um My parents got divorced when I was younger. my mom found a guy that was a mechanic. They were together about 15 years of my life from the time I was born. Both of them in the drag racing. Both had race cars. Mom had a 84 Monte Carlo.
00:50:08
Johnny Dice
I don't even know what motor was in it. We were running a real street 6.0 class back in this time when I was younger. She got away from all that street racing. But, you know, I was out there helping take the wheels off the car, you know, using an impact, you know. So I grew up around it.
00:50:24
Johnny Dice
Naturally, they didn't want me touching the motor, you know. I mean, there's a lot of money in this stuff.
00:50:29
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:50:30
Johnny Dice
So as I got older, I got into middle school, you know, drag racing was my life. I was running junior dragsters, you know, so we'd go to the track and it'd be my mom there, myself there. stepdad would be there with us. You know, he was basically crew chief slash tuner, mechanic, whatever you want to call it.
00:50:47
Johnny Dice
By the time I hit high school, dude, I thought I knew it all. I thought I was the coolest kid on the block. And ah man, I'll have to share this whenever you get it actually posted up. It was a guy that lived down the road from me. Bob Eddie was his name.
00:50:58
Johnny Dice
Bullied the hell out of me. We fought all the way through high school. Guy never, ever went and worked a job in a mechanic field until after we got out of high school probably. dude knew way more than I did.
00:51:10
Johnny Dice
He could pull a carburetor, put a carburetor back together. He was pulling three fifties apart, uh, four fifty fours pulling Honda motors apart. I had never even seen the inside of an engine physically other than, you know, pictures from my mom's brace motor.
00:51:24
Johnny Dice
Um, and that was really the hard part was I thought I was somewhere else because of what I grew up in.
00:51:30
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:51:31
Johnny Dice
So when I hit the industry, I mean, I hit the floor running. I was like, yeah, I don't care about it any of y'all. I'm gonna take all of you down and, First three years, that I was humbled, man. I mean, i I really learned that I didn't know anything. And I was very headstrong. And want to say about the fifth or sixth year, was working at Dodge.
00:51:48
Johnny Dice
God bless anybody that works at Dodge because that's that takes some heart to do warranty work all day. um That was where I learned diagnostics, man. I was doing left and right PCM diagnosis, electrical diagnosis. And that was the stepping stone to going,
00:52:06
Johnny Dice
I don't know everything. I've got to learn it.
00:52:10
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:52:10
Johnny Dice
And man, I contemplated, I wanted to get out of it. I hop dealers a lot. I hop shops a lot. I went to some independence, work for Toyota, work for Dodge, uh, eventually became a used car tech because I didn't like being stuck on one brand. I wanted to work on everything, Mercedes, Audi, BMW, whatever.
00:52:29
Johnny Dice
um
00:52:29
BEN DELLARIA
Adventurous.
00:52:30
Johnny Dice
Yeah, I mean, it just got so monotonous. Toyota was great, man. If if you're working at Toyota, I mean, i haven't been there in years, so with all their motor recalls, it might be worse now. But Toyota's was easy to make money on. it was It was all PM work. It was honest work. You weren't BSing the customer. You were doing plugs, PCV valves, you know, the brake flushes and, you know.
00:52:52
Johnny Dice
That's a whole topic for another discussion. But, ah you know, it was hard to to finally find my niche. And then when it finally hit, I started really growing. And I watched my pay scale climb up because I was turning more hours. And then, man, in August of 23, was working at a Honda dealer. I was a used car tech over there.
00:53:13
Johnny Dice
And, man, I can still see the car to this day. it was an orange Jeep Renegade. I literally was in it.
00:53:20
BEN DELLARIA
it's like
00:53:21
Johnny Dice
put the battery in, tighten it up, and I turned to my left and probably about five feet from me was where my tool cart was. you know I got a big long, what is six or eight drawer snap-on cart, whatever it is.
00:53:34
Johnny Dice
It was about five feet from me. And as soon as I turned to my left, everything went numb on the right side, completely numb, lost all my speech. And in in the moment I knew what was happening, I was like, well, this is a stroke, so what do I do?
00:53:44
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:53:45
Johnny Dice
So I walked over, grabbed the edge of the cart, held myself up, came out of it Turns out I had already had a stroke prior to that that I knew nothing about. And now I got, well, TIA is what they call it.
00:53:54
BEN DELLARIA
TBI. TIA, what do they call it? Okay.
00:53:58
Johnny Dice
Yeah. So I had a TIA that day, found out I had a traumatic brain injury from a previous stroke that I knew nothing about. And they were like, hey, you got brain damage too. And I was like, hold on a second. Like, I don't know how to process this. I mean, I'm 28 at the time going 60-year-olds talk about strokes, not 28-year-olds.
00:54:19
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:54:21
Johnny Dice
So I got a wife, two kids, the whole shebang house, whatever. Was trying to figure out what to do. um My local municipality had that job open and I went there.
00:54:32
Johnny Dice
ah That was an experience it was a little slower than what I was used to. and Finally, i I woke up one day and I looked at my wife and I was like, this ain't it.
00:54:42
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:54:42
Johnny Dice
I'm not happy. this I don't know. I don't have any satisfaction from doing this work. I'm not happy going to work every day. And she just looks at me and she goes, aren don't you do it for yourself?
00:54:54
Johnny Dice
You've talked about it for since I've known you. Just do it. I was like, yeah, but what about this? And I'm giving all the excuses.
00:55:00
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:55:02
Johnny Dice
So about six months went by and finally I pulled that trigger and
00:55:08
Johnny Dice
I can say I'm a hundred percent happier. I'm in control of everything. I'm doing more for customers. And that gives me a lot more pride and joy than just waking up to a nine to five.
00:55:15
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:55:18
Johnny Dice
I still struggle. We wonder, you know, shoot, we got three open days this week. Am I going make my bills this month? And then all of a sudden I'll get 10 phone calls and I'm like, okay.
00:55:29
Johnny Dice
And you know, I looked back on my first two months in business and I'm only three months in full time with myself. And I've,
00:55:36
BEN DELLARIA
As of right now?
00:55:37
Johnny Dice
Yeah, as of right now, that's full-time shebang.
00:55:38
BEN DELLARIA
Jeez.
00:55:41
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:55:42
Johnny Dice
ah This month is the third month and it's been the best thing I ever did. I mean, it's a struggle.
00:55:48
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, hell yeah.
00:55:49
Johnny Dice
There's a lot to learn. I didn't know the business side very well yet. I was kind of on the service side because I've been doing side work for a while. So that gave me the initiative to learn how to be an advisor, how to communicate with customers.
00:56:01
Johnny Dice
So I kind of already had that, but... It's been a ride, man. And i that's what I try to tell everybody. You got to get your feet in like we discussed. You got to go to the shop. You got to learn that. You got to have the older guy looking at you going, hey, dude, you don't know what you're doing, so I'm not going to give you this work right now.
00:56:14
BEN DELLARIA
Nope.
00:56:18
Johnny Dice
But if you want to shadow me, I'll teach it. Cars, you can't look at a book and read a book or go do a PowerPoint and then go put it in place. it I'm sorry. I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't work that way.
00:56:30
BEN DELLARIA
Not at all.
00:56:30
Johnny Dice
That information, what it is, It's a glue in your mind. So probably for six years, five years, you're not going to use that info. But then all of a sudden, one day you're going a car and go, wait, what did that class tell me?
00:56:43
Johnny Dice
Oh, yeah. And then you figure it out. But it's the experience. You've got to have your feet wet. you gotta You've got to leave a caliper bracket bolt loose one or two times and go, okay, we've got to slow it down.
00:56:54
Johnny Dice
Or, you know,
00:56:55
BEN DELLARIA
Slow down a little bit here.
00:56:56
Johnny Dice
It's part of it, but the key is is you got to just do it.
00:56:56
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:57:00
Johnny Dice
And that's why i try to tell everybody. I get so many younger guys who are like, I want to be a mechanic. I'm like, just do it, bro. They're like, what do I'm like, go get hired on our mom and pops.
00:57:06
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:57:09
Johnny Dice
Find somebody that knows what they're doing, and you'll know who those guys are. If you don't have any experience, you can go into any shop and look at a guy and go, that guy knows what he's doing, and that guy acts like he knows what he's doing. It's obvious. It always is.
00:57:23
BEN DELLARIA
I'm going to cut you off real quick just because like, so if anyone's listening for the past 15, 20 seconds, this is what I wanted to say is that if you're listening to Johnny talk, like that's what I'm talking about. Like you can hear it in your voice. You can hear it in your tone and in the words you're using that you have the time you have the experience you've done this.
00:57:47
BEN DELLARIA
When you hear guys talk that are just saying some really wild ass stuff, it's like you' you don't have you're too young. you just you don't have You don't have it yet.
00:57:59
BEN DELLARIA
And it takes time to get there because this isn't just again, this goes to the guys that are just out here trying to talk shit about me all the time. It's like you guys aren't seeing it because you're just so mad at the world and you decided to just go out there and do breaks all day long because that's, that's where you think the money is at. And you think this, but it's not like more power to you. If you just want to be a break guy, I don't care. but It's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to express that.
00:58:26
BEN DELLARIA
If you're listening to Johnny talk, like he, just Just take a second to stand backwards, stand back and listen to his words. The experience about service advisor, service writer, not someone that can sell.
00:58:41
BEN DELLARIA
It's a difference in tone and and, you know, whatever the, I never graduated high school, so I don't even know what words I'm supposed to use in this type of setting. But y'all get what I'm saying. Like, you don't, just don't go out there and rush the shit, man. Like, just do it right.
00:58:59
Johnny Dice
Well, you know, to kind of reiterate and attach onto that, my stepfather always made a good point. He was a flat rate technician, worked at an independent shop. He's been, he works for a large electrical company out of Northern Virginia. He's a fleet guy over there in their 20 some odd years.
00:59:18
Johnny Dice
But his one line that he's always said to me that stuck and it took me a long time to learn, don't chase the money, just do the work.
00:59:27
BEN DELLARIA
Nope. Just did work.
00:59:28
Johnny Dice
And a lot of people have a bad habit of every day going, dang, I didn't turn eight hours today. How am I paying? Don't worry about the time during the week. You do the work. The hours will always come to you at the end of the week.
00:59:39
Johnny Dice
Always. They always do.
00:59:40
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:59:41
Johnny Dice
That's all you have to do. And it took me a long time to understand that, man.
00:59:43
BEN DELLARIA
Especially in flat rate. Yeah.
00:59:45
Johnny Dice
and's And it rings true in our industry. I mean, we're not we kind of are flat rate in a way because our our work is based, but it's a little different because we have a lot of odds and ends that come in to make it as a whole.
00:59:50
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
00:59:58
BEN DELLARIA
it's like you said it on those three days where you were like slow for three days. Just just stick it out. going be good.
01:00:03
Johnny Dice
Yep.
01:00:03
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, things are slowing down. Like, am I going look? No, you're going to fine. Plan a trip.
01:00:07
Johnny Dice
Yep.
01:00:08
BEN DELLARIA
ah Someone said, i plan a trip. Go work on your own project. The phone will freaking ring because it's going to take your time away from being idle for a few minutes. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I'm busy again. Like, you're going to be good.
01:00:18
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
01:00:19
BEN DELLARIA
If you're building it right and you're not chasing the dollar, just chase the journey and the experience and build a business and You're going to get busy. Things are going to take off. It's just the way it works.
01:00:31
BEN DELLARIA
Fate, not fate, whatever y'all want to believe, it's going to work. Just do it. And the ones that are saying, oh, ah it that doesn't work in my area. Nah, I don't believe in that.
01:00:41
BEN DELLARIA
I believe in... you creating your own, you know, outcome. You just, if you want to blame it on every other excuse and the customer doesn't want to do this and my area doesn't provide that, i don't want to hear that shit. I mean, you you don't live in freaking Uganda or something like that. Like you don't live in the middle of the rainforest. You're fine.
01:01:01
BEN DELLARIA
You know, go, this is America.
01:01:04
Johnny Dice
You know, I think a lot of people struggle with that.
01:01:04
BEN DELLARIA
Freaking just get your ass moving.
01:01:09
Johnny Dice
But here's here's where my mind's always kind of going. Take a look at the population in your area. How many cars are averagely at most homes nowadays? it's You're not struggling with cars.
01:01:18
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
01:01:20
Johnny Dice
There's cars in every neighborhood. There's minimum probably two cars in every household nowadays. So if you're in a small little neighborhood and you've got 50 houses, you're talking about 100 cars. You're going to tell me you can't gather up 25 of those in a month?
01:01:35
Johnny Dice
I mean, 25 of those at a good rate, good parts margin with good quality work push out. I mean, you're not going to make 500 grand a year, but you're going to be where you're comfortable, where you can manage and still do life. But here's the other thing.
01:01:50
Johnny Dice
What I found was hard for me. I was so used to working seven days a week because I was working a full time and then doing this gig. When I went full time, I had more time to myself. And I'm like, what do I do?
01:02:01
Johnny Dice
Man, now I've got more time with my kids.
01:02:03
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:02:03
Johnny Dice
I've got a little bit more time because I play video games, too. I've got time to enjoy my PC. My wife plays. So we play together.
01:02:10
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:02:10
Johnny Dice
But. Like I told my wife, I said, eventually it's going to grow and it's going to come to Monday to Friday, Monday through Thursday, kind of like what you do. And then my weekends will be my off days, but we'll never have to think about, are we going to be slow this week? Are we not going to have the money this week? It'll come together. But if you can't enjoy those short moments where it's not busy,
01:02:31
Johnny Dice
you're almost always going to be miserable.
01:02:33
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, you know, you stress out all the
01:02:33
Johnny Dice
So like you said, you got to find – yeah, like you said, go somewhere, do something. you know You could do training. Dude, there's free training all over the place. Even if you just do an electrical course and just brush up on some ohm systems, you know voltage readings, voltage drop, whatever, that's still a positive for you.
01:02:50
Johnny Dice
It still takes you somewhere.
01:02:50
BEN DELLARIA
time.
01:02:52
Johnny Dice
It's going to be useful. and you know I'm not saying go – re-watch all the same things you probably possibly already know but all of those are perks that you can do on those slow times and then like you said the moment you think it's going to be dead it blows dude i mean it blew apart on me and i was just like okay what do i do i got five people calling me they're all their cars are broke down right now they need me now what do i do why couldn't this have happened three days ago when i wasn't busy
01:02:56
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:05
BEN DELLARIA
It's going to pick up.
01:03:18
BEN DELLARIA
I just scheduled it. Yeah, that's how it is. you You brought up training. um What do you think about these training events? Are you that something you want to do, something you you have done?
01:03:29
BEN DELLARIA
I'm talking about big-time events like ASTA, tools, ah vision, things like that.
01:03:30
Johnny Dice
you know,
01:03:36
Johnny Dice
yeah. I mean, I want to try to do as much as I can. ah
01:03:39
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, that one, you just missed the one in April. That was right near you ah for Tectonic.
01:03:44
Johnny Dice
yeah. Yeah. I, uh,
01:03:46
BEN DELLARIA
I was supposed to be there, but I didn't move forward with that for multiple reasons.
Skills Development and Influences in Auto Repair
01:03:51
BEN DELLARIA
But.
01:03:52
Johnny Dice
you know, the saying goes, like we've said, you got to spend money to make money.
01:03:56
BEN DELLARIA
Mm hmm.
01:03:57
Johnny Dice
Uh, my goal is to get myself to a position, you know, uh, I don't claim to be a transmission guy. I don't claim to be some programming guy, tuning. you know I don't and don't do all that.
01:04:07
Johnny Dice
But my goal is to get somewhere where I can start getting more in-depth. I have a good background on transmissions. I know how they kind of operate. you know I don't pull them apart. But those advanced transmission diagnostic classes would be great.
01:04:20
Johnny Dice
um And my goal is to get there. you know i don't I'm not saying I'm going be out there as a mobile tech pulling a transmission on the side of the road or anything like that. But What if it's not always the transmission and I don't have the knowledge to take care of that for the customer?
01:04:31
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:04:33
Johnny Dice
Now I'm losing out on that. And then now they got to
01:04:36
BEN DELLARIA
Well, you're on TikTok, right?
01:04:38
Johnny Dice
Yes.
01:04:39
BEN DELLARIA
So do you watch ah Mr. Master Tech and Brandon Sloan?
01:04:43
Johnny Dice
I do. um Them, Check Engine Chuck. Yep.
01:04:45
BEN DELLARIA
So yeah, for transmission stuff, I would watch definitely Brandon Sloan. He's he's more of the dealer side and that side, but he talks a lot of the the recall and the problems that these things are having. um But Mr. Master Tech, a little bit more of like the us and and mobile. ah Originally, was he was thinking about doing mobile. I think he recently went into a shop with at someone.
01:05:06
BEN DELLARIA
um But those guys I watch, especially with you know transmissions and stuff like that. So definitely check them out.
01:05:12
Johnny Dice
Yeah, I use a lot of the ah those videos and, you know, Brandon does a great job with when he's doing a breakdown on a transmission and that's, I can't sit in a class and look at a bunch of pictures.
01:05:13
BEN DELLARIA
That'll help little bit.
01:05:20
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:05:24
Johnny Dice
Brandon breaks it down. He's like, yeah, you got to have this check ball, this check valve is here, this is here, this, and this is what it does. And if you, experience this you're missing you know and check engine tuck does the same thing when you're doing i mean he tells you all the time he's like hey man i took that video down i messed up uh he did i saw the same video you know and i pride guys on that because i i wouldn't say i follow them to a t you know i kind of use it as stored information you know like what can i gather from you um but it's great to know that these guys are like yeah i went out there
01:05:34
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:05:40
BEN DELLARIA
He just said that this morning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:05:57
Johnny Dice
I found this problem with a power probe. And then I'm going, hold up, I use a power probe pretty often. What are we discussing here? Because I need to be aware of this if I'm doing electrical diagnosis.
01:06:05
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:06:06
Johnny Dice
you know
01:06:06
BEN DELLARIA
and he And that's what's cool about Chuck, too, because Chuck is such a heavy proponent on the Power Probe. He even changed a little bit of what he said, but ah his original thing on that made me... I never really used a Power Probe, and I still had... yeah have a new one now, but when I had done this with this old this Equinox, I still had a Power Probe, too.
01:06:27
BEN DELLARIA
That was...
01:06:28
Johnny Dice
Right.
01:06:29
BEN DELLARIA
you know old school, no digital, just a green light, red light, make ah make a noise. um But he had said, he's like, ah and something I never realized because I never took training classes. I never paid attention to the power probe.
01:06:41
BEN DELLARIA
He's like, yeah, testing this, it turns red, it's got power, but it's not beeping. So there is no, it's a back-fed power or it's not a full 12 volts. I'm like, well, I didn't freaking know that.
01:06:54
BEN DELLARIA
I was doing a... a left front turn signal on an Equinox. I don't remember what year, but the way the Chevrolet is designed on the circuit, the front is on its own separate circuit than the rear is per left and right-hand side. So there it's actually four separate circuits.
01:07:16
BEN DELLARIA
And I don't mean it's just a fuse. So this customer's car was a left front turn signal did not work. Had ground, had no power. The body control module is what controls the power.
01:07:28
BEN DELLARIA
Well, there's nowhere in description in operation that mentions anything about this, and there was it was pretty vague in the wiring diagram. um Granted, the repair was there was a freaking fuse missing, but...
Knowledge Retention and Industry Nostalgia
01:07:41
BEN DELLARIA
I didn't realize it until I had already put a BCM in it to fix the problem. So like, the BCM is not sending power out to this. It's got to be the BCM because all of the powers and grounds going to the BCM were there.
01:07:50
Johnny Dice
Right.
01:07:54
BEN DELLARIA
So I'm like, it has to be there. There's no other question about it. The problem is is there's two fuses that feed the BCM but not as a power circuit, and it's meaning it's not of an ignition power or a ground or a straight voltage power for you know brain to to keep it alive. There's no whatever, 12 volt, and there's no constant and there's no ignition. Okay.
01:08:18
BEN DELLARIA
These weren't part of that. So it was nowhere in that information that said, oh, by the way, we don't use the power that's feeding the BCM in the board. There's this one dedicated fuse that goes in and then comes right back out on the driver to feed that turn signal on the left front and the right front.
01:08:39
BEN DELLARIA
So for some reason, I had stuck the power probe onto the right front. I'm like, Wait a minute, that's making a noise with the power probe. I put it on the left one and there was nothing. And that led me down the rabbit hole to start chasing things and found that there was a fuse missing out of the interior fuse box that someone took out because they were fucking around with the radio.
01:09:00
BEN DELLARIA
And that was, I only remembered it because of Chuck's video. And I'm like, oh, son of a bitch. I'm like, but because it kept turning red. And I'm like, there's a, there's power there. I know there's power there. it's turning red. And I wasn't, because I wasn't using a ah ah load cage. I'm like, I'm not putting that load cage on the BCM. There's no way I'm touching that. And I'm not applying power. And I was like, you know what?
01:09:18
BEN DELLARIA
This is my body control module. I'm going to put power to it. And I hit that button and turn signal worked just fine. I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me. That's where I found that the fuse was gone. Because there was a misleading... It's not misleading. It's just very vague on the information.
01:09:34
BEN DELLARIA
and I even showed in the YouTube video where I finally had found it. And I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me. Like, this is so stupid. But because of Chuck, we were talking about that with the Power Probe thing, I wanted tell story.
01:09:44
Johnny Dice
Right.
01:09:45
BEN DELLARIA
Because, like I said before we got on, I tend to go off in different directions sometimes like an idiot. But...
01:09:49
Johnny Dice
No, but it's good because some of these conversations, you know, from me watching your other ones, these conversations can help some other guys where you could be on a doom squirrel at 11 o'clock at night, can't sleep, whatever.
01:09:52
BEN DELLARIA
if
01:10:01
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, yeah.
01:10:01
Johnny Dice
And you might go, oh, wait, wait, you know, let me watch this one. And then he gives you just that. two piece bit of information out of a five minute video and it sticks with you.
01:10:13
Johnny Dice
And that's, that goes back to the experience, man. You know, you've got to be able to take that info in store it and use it as it's needed when it's needed, you know?
01:10:22
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, yeah. that's I think my biggest problem is... I do a lot here. So like my business in general is a lot. We have, we're so busy and I run so many things, but outside of my business with long form content on YouTube and the editing and the filming, and then I have to make separate videos for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, the pictures, and now the podcast.
01:10:49
BEN DELLARIA
When I try to think back, when I watch these guys' videos, I'm so burned out on car in a way that like I just can't remember it. i can't i have such a bad...
01:10:57
Johnny Dice
Right.
01:11:00
BEN DELLARIA
It's not a memory. like I can't remember. I can't recall it. And I'm like, what the fuck? like I don't know if that's just because of how busy I am or I'm just getting older now. But in my head, I cannot remember a damn thing.
01:11:13
BEN DELLARIA
other day, went to look at Nissan that had... ah a nissan the had a bank two sensor to heater circuit code. I'm like, just staring at it. I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do?
01:11:25
BEN DELLARIA
Like it took me a good five or 10 minutes before the process of just oming out and testing the amperage going to a heater circuit on an O2 sensor.
01:11:37
BEN DELLARIA
Like sometimes I have to go watch a video and I'm like, oh, okay, there we go. Get it from the back of my head. Get everything else out of my brain that I'm worrying about with company and money and business and this and that and the content.
01:11:49
BEN DELLARIA
Let me get the diagnosis back. it It comes to like organization with all this. Like that's why I take Fridays off. and lately we haven't been, is far we've been moving things around.
01:12:01
BEN DELLARIA
So that way Friday, i could just do everything I have to for video sake and recording and everything else.
01:12:04
Johnny Dice
Right.
01:12:08
BEN DELLARIA
So Saturday and Sunday can just be my days again. But with the amount of you know content we're doing, I have to record at times you know the podcast and everything else because I want that information out there. But like I don't even know why I was telling you that because I've already forgotten.
01:12:21
BEN DELLARIA
But...
01:12:22
Johnny Dice
Well, to kind of go off of what you were mentioning, you know, you said something about not being able to remember some of this stuff sometimes.
01:12:27
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:12:28
Johnny Dice
Uh, and you brought up age, uh, which is, which is a great point because my stepfather, uh, he worked for a guy named Wayne Rogers back home, Chantilly, Virginia. a Great guy. If anybody watching this knows who he is, a guy builds race transmissions. He's owned his own transmission shop his entire life for that. I knew him.
01:12:45
Johnny Dice
Uh, he built some transmissions for the street outlaw guys and stuff like that. Build all of ours. One of parents were racing and, uh, Long story short, Wayne had mentioned to my stepfather and my stepfather told me this comment and it's always stuck with me. And it was, I will forget more than you will ever learn.
01:13:03
Johnny Dice
And it's a factual statement because what those older generations learned are not being used today and now they're forgetting them. And I know that kind of doesn't apply like to the O2 heater circuit, but that is factual.
01:13:15
BEN DELLARIA
but It's just the point.
01:13:15
Johnny Dice
You have so much information.
01:13:15
BEN DELLARIA
If I haven't seen it in forever, i'm not going to remember it.
01:13:17
Johnny Dice
Exactly.
01:13:19
BEN DELLARIA
i mean I brought that up recently with – so like crank sensors work the same way, but an old – I was watching – I can't say his name, Lazer, laser um with advanced level diagnostics.
01:13:19
Johnny Dice
Exactly.
01:13:31
BEN DELLARIA
He was recently working on an old Chevy that had you know the three coils on the ICM you know there, and you got 3X and 18X crank signal.
01:13:42
BEN DELLARIA
So you know those two different crank signals, we used to have to check those two different crank signals. we don't do that anymore today. So when he was doing it, I was like, oh my gosh, like I forgot all about it.
01:13:48
Johnny Dice
Yup.
01:13:52
BEN DELLARIA
Cause you forget how you don't do that anymore. So like, when's the last time, Well, some of you guys listening actually changed the lower intake gaskets on an old Chevy 3.4 or 3.8.
01:14:05
BEN DELLARIA
It's been years since you've had to do it because they're just done. it just when It's like you're a kid. When's the last time you had a sleepover? it just All of a sudden, you just, boom, that was the last sleepover and you were just never had a sleepover again. and You don't think about it for 30 years and you're like, holy shit, I'm not a kid anymore. you know So it's all those things. like you just if you If you stop doing it, you don't remember it. So like...
01:14:27
BEN DELLARIA
If we're not diagnosed, I could go up two months without having to do a CAN circuit diagnosis. i'm going to It's going to be a little bit before I start remembering voltages on that stuff or what a Linn bus is or you know anything else. It's just this the way it is if you're not remembering half of this crap. Yeah.
01:14:46
BEN DELLARIA
and
01:14:47
Johnny Dice
Yeah, I mean, it's it's funny you bring that up. ah You remember the old W Springs? I think they were on the Cavaliers for GM, the big W Spring for the drum breaks.
01:14:56
BEN DELLARIA
if Yeah, from the drum brakes.
01:14:58
Johnny Dice
I know they had a tool for them, and
01:14:59
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, they're on the Cavaliers. I never had one.
01:15:01
Johnny Dice
I did one and man, I flung that thing across the shop past my head and it gave me a flashback and I was like, wow.
01:15:06
BEN DELLARIA
yeah
01:15:09
Johnny Dice
I mean, I, you know, but with my age, I kind of miss the bulk of that era.
01:15:09
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:15:13
Johnny Dice
I miss the bulk of drum breaks.
01:15:14
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:15:15
Johnny Dice
I mean, I go on a topic about that, man. I think I've done and my entire career, 10 drum breaks in my lifetime. So people call me and they're like, Hey, i need you to do drum breaks. I'm like,
01:15:28
Johnny Dice
Yeah, it I'll do it, but it's it's going to take me a little while, you know, because i I just, you know, my stepfather tells me all the time, I can do drum breaks faster than you can do disc breaks.
01:15:38
Johnny Dice
I'm like, dude, there's no way there's four volts. What do you mean? And he's like, I can do it, you know, but...
01:15:40
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. I got two sets of drum breaks next week.
01:15:45
Johnny Dice
Man, I got sit on Tuesday. I got to do. And that's what kind of triggered that was I was like, wow, I don't know the last time I actually did drum breaks on anything.
01:15:49
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. and
01:15:54
Johnny Dice
But those W springs were super common. You had to buy that special tool for them. They were just very different.
01:15:58
BEN DELLARIA
I never had it Bell South, we had all Chevy, so I had tons of Cavaliers. So we would run into all that. I just used, I had this pair of big ah angled, 45 degree angled needle nose and I just, wham, just, I would pop them out just because I got used to the easiest way for me to do it at that time.
01:16:14
Johnny Dice
Yep.
01:16:17
BEN DELLARIA
But yeah, it was freaking bitch.
01:16:17
Johnny Dice
Same with putting them back in.
01:16:20
BEN DELLARIA
um You had mentioned your mom raced out, did you say she raced outlaw class?
01:16:25
Johnny Dice
It was a 6.0 Real Street class. They now call it a 590 Outlaw class.
01:16:28
BEN DELLARIA
Six, okay.
01:16:31
BEN DELLARIA
okay
01:16:31
Johnny Dice
It's based out Northern Virginia. So basically it's 8th Mile Racing, Index, Setup, Full Pro Tour, the whole thing.
01:16:34
BEN DELLARIA
my yeah my father-in-law raced uh 608 outlaw down south um to all like from braidington know all the way south through south florida his car 67 uh chevelle he had it on the cover of uh
01:16:43
Johnny Dice
Oh, wow. Okay.
01:16:55
BEN DELLARIA
Was it Hot Rod? think it was Hot Rod Magazine. Just sitting there, just pull you know pulled straight up at the line.
01:16:59
Johnny Dice
Nice.
01:17:00
BEN DELLARIA
you know Not full wheelie, just a little bit. you know Both wheels straight up.
01:17:05
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
01:17:06
BEN DELLARIA
Just cool shit. He's still got the car. you know doesn't Doesn't race or use it anymore today, but... Yeah, that's cool stuff, man. And he it it's the same thing. So like he's the type. I was doing it out back. Dodge 1500 had a rear end to do on it.
01:17:22
BEN DELLARIA
And I was having some trouble with it because it's the one where you got to put the long tool down both tubes to adjust the carrier left and right.
01:17:32
Johnny Dice
Yep.
01:17:33
BEN DELLARIA
So he's the type. A lot of you guys wouldn't won't believe it you'll call me bullshit, but he's the type. When he laid on the ground, no tools. We're talking back and forth, left and right, and my pinion depth. I put new crush sleeve in it. So I'm sitting there, this fucking truck's on the ground or just up on jack stands, and I'm pulling to put the torque because like I don't have any movement. I can only move like this much from the ground to the suspension to tighten this thing. No tools as far as like dial indicators. He does it by hand and feel.
01:18:06
BEN DELLARIA
He just is under there, and he's like, go to that side. Good. Go to this side. Good. All right. We're good on the pinion. Sure. Shit. We go drive the thing down the road. It's fucking perfect. That's just how he is because he's older. He's is six, uh, late sixties. He's always done his own builds. He's always owned his own shop.
01:18:26
BEN DELLARIA
And you know he's the type that you know that's a dying world. the And he's so he's you know that old school machine and dye maker type. you know
01:18:35
Johnny Dice
Yep.
01:18:36
BEN DELLARIA
My grandfather was the same way. He welded and built shit for NASA. and But my father-in-law, when he does that shit, you know especially carburetors, just... It's just in his head. It's just his ears, his hands, the way he can feel those things and just do the the most tiniest things to make something work so much better.
Challenges of Being a Mobile Mechanic
01:18:54
BEN DELLARIA
But watching him do a rear end without tools, like without dial indicators and stuff like that. And it to be so precise is insane. And he'll sit there cleaning things and he's miking, you know, shims and stuff like that.
01:19:11
BEN DELLARIA
and he's like, no i don't like that one. I don't want that. I don't want this. I was like, fuck God, just hurry up. Like, you know, it's just cool stuff.
01:19:16
Johnny Dice
Just pick on.
01:19:19
BEN DELLARIA
But like you said, that's a dying art and it's going to be gone one day. And there's not, it's almost like engine. It's almost like the transmission rebuilds. You see these guys that are doing it, and there's just it's going to fall out.
01:19:27
Johnny Dice
I had a
01:19:30
BEN DELLARIA
And the guys that know it, you know, that are younger, like Mr. ah Master Tech, that he's a younger guy. you know, in another 20 years, if he's teaching guys the same way that he has learned, it's going to it'll continue on.
01:19:45
Johnny Dice
I had a back in 2018, I did a side job for a guy on a Corvette with the LT1 in it. He wanted a camshaft, exhaust manifold, cylinder heads, all this whole shebang.
01:19:57
Johnny Dice
I had never been near an LT1. Didn't know what an Optus Park was yet.
01:20:01
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:20:03
Johnny Dice
this is a whole, I hadn't even done ah a camshaft yet. You know, I mean, I knew the inner workings of the engine at this point by 2018, 2019 area. So I put this whole thing together.
01:20:14
Johnny Dice
i fired up. It ran great. And i heard thunk. And I was like, well that didn't sound good.
01:20:16
BEN DELLARIA
Hmm.
01:20:18
Johnny Dice
So I shut it off, pulled the valve cover. Sure enough, I met a push rod. was like, fuck. So my stepdad's like, you're going to have figure it out. I'm like, I don't know what to do. He's like, I'll give you a phone number somebody. So a good buddy of his was a master GM technician for years.
01:20:32
Johnny Dice
His name is Dave Klopp. So he gives me his phone number. I call Dave. I'm like, Dave, I put this LT1 together. I bent a push rod. Obviously, I don't know how to adjust the valves on this thing. I followed what all data said, and it I bent push rod. I got to figure it out.
01:20:45
Johnny Dice
He's like, well, what are you doing tomorrow? I said, nothing. He said, I'll be out there tomorrow. Okay. So I think he's going to come over and do it for me. I'm still young, fresh industry. like, cool. Let me get this done. I'm going to make like $3,500.
01:20:58
Johnny Dice
He comes over. He goes, all right, get your socket. I'm like, okay. He's like, all right, start on that cylinder. I'm like, all right. and I'm waiting. And he's like, what are you doing? I was like, you're not going to guide me. you He's like, no, just start turning. I'll tell you when to stop.
01:21:11
Johnny Dice
Okay. So I'm turning the nut on top of the rocker. Stop. All the way through. Fired this thing up. It ran perfect. I said, Klopp, how'd you do that? He said, I've done them so much. I know exactly how much pressure you need on that spring.
01:21:23
Johnny Dice
And I can tell you when it's in the, in you know, in the good area.
01:21:26
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:21:27
Johnny Dice
Thing ran like a top. Guys had it for the last 10 years. Never had a problem out of it.
01:21:31
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:21:32
Johnny Dice
I'm blown. I mean, just to watch somebody do the work without feeling it, that takes a lot of experience.
01:21:36
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. Yeah, that visual. It just, but old school cars were like that. And I'm sure that people eventually will, they'll talk like that about Ryan Mullen. They'll talk like that about Chuck in, you know, 20 years that they just know, you know, Steckler and all these top names in the industry today in 20 years, when we're either done or gone, people will look back at, we'll all look back at them and be like, oh, they were that way, the way we talk about our grandparents in that way, you know?
01:22:05
BEN DELLARIA
and my grandfather having this giant slab of granite because he used to build his own silencers for weapons and stuff like that. Like it just, you know, it's insane that, that type of world.
01:22:19
BEN DELLARIA
Oh, let's go back. Some of the, some of the mobile stuff and in reality. What I, like you said, you you were laying there in bed and your wife's like, don't do it for yourself. What made you go mobile versus a ah shop?
01:22:33
Johnny Dice
Honestly, costs. And like you kind of discussed, it's hard to find a shop out here. A lot of these warehouse places are like, yeah, no automotive repair, things of that nature. And I'll be honest with you, I'm in a little small town. I mean, I say small, small on the map, large in population.
01:22:51
Johnny Dice
ah we have one too many shops out here. I mean, we got a bunch of chain shops, mom and pop shops out here.
01:22:54
BEN DELLARIA
thank
01:22:58
Johnny Dice
i mean, you know, we got Midas and some Napa Auto Care Centers, but it came to a point where I was like, I gotta be different, you know, to go in on full force on a shop competing with 10, 15, 20 different shops would be a tough go.
01:23:12
BEN DELLARIA
With no client base and wasting a hundred grand in freaking cashflow or financing.
01:23:14
Johnny Dice
Exactly. So,
01:23:17
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:23:18
Johnny Dice
I thought in the moment I was doing something great. I was like, I don't know. As soon as I hit the market with it full time, there's like 15 other mobile mechanics in my local area. um Some of them are coming from North Texas area, Fort Worth, Dallas. They're pushing into my area a little bit. And it's...
01:23:36
Johnny Dice
Kind of nerve wracking. It's like, hey, brother, like you got a lot more clientele ability up there. Can we stay up there? You know, but I try to be supportive. I follow all these guys. I get a couple of those guys that follow me back. They chime in. They're like, hey, man, you know, you're doing time and change out on the side. That's that's great, man. I'm glad to see you're out there, you know, doing a little bit heavy line, which that was a one off scenario for my local Napa store. But.
01:24:01
Johnny Dice
you know I try to be cordial. I want all of us to succeed, but it's like there's just one too many guys with a wrench in their hand in the local area right now.
01:24:04
BEN DELLARIA
Oh yeah. Hell yeah.
01:24:11
BEN DELLARIA
So what's the comparison of that? what what setup are you running?
01:24:15
Johnny Dice
As in like ah for my truck, I literally have my truck with my snap-on roll cart strapped in the backfield from the top.
01:24:17
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:24:22
BEN DELLARIA
Okay. um And obviously plans will change for that. you won You're only three months in, but um but what are these guys bringing around that are impeding in your area versus what you've got?
01:24:36
Johnny Dice
Uh, you know, some of them, I don't really know what all the other guys have. I know two of the local mobile guys, they have just a service truck, you know, so they come out, they've, you know, got their logo all over it, the whole shebang.
01:24:43
BEN DELLARIA
Okay. Okay.
01:24:48
Johnny Dice
Uh, so presentation there is a little bit better than what I'm offering at the moment. i mean, I got company shirts, uh, haven't gotten any details for the truck, but you know, we started real low.
01:24:53
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:24:59
Johnny Dice
Um, And it's picked up a lot. I've got ah a lot of great customers now.
01:25:04
BEN DELLARIA
Mm-hmm.
01:25:04
Johnny Dice
you know So my push is I put the customer as as number one over their vehicle basically is what I do.
01:25:11
BEN DELLARIA
yeah
01:25:11
Johnny Dice
i go, you know what can I do to assist? is it Do you need a breakdown of what's most important to what's least important? you know What can I do? And I think the the customer interaction has gotten me where I am right now in the first three months.
01:25:28
BEN DELLARIA
ah Yeah, of course. I mean, you ain't going to get customers
01:25:31
Johnny Dice
No. Well, I don't know. There's a couple out here. Dude, we have a guy out here. God bless him. he He seems like a great guy based off of what I can see from his page. But I don't know if he's using AI or if he's just.
01:25:46
Johnny Dice
I don't even know what the word would be, but he can't spell anything on his Facebook page. Everything is spelled incorrectly. There's no professionalism look to his Facebook.
01:25:57
Johnny Dice
um
01:25:57
BEN DELLARIA
There's a customer for everybody though.
01:25:58
Johnny Dice
a There is there that there is. And he may be a fantastic, you know, mobile mechanic, but my view is, is if I give the proper professional experience right off the jump, when you come to my Facebook, you're going to be more inclined to go, you know what?
01:26:03
BEN DELLARIA
Might be a great tech, yeah.
01:26:16
Johnny Dice
This guy's professional. He's labeled his work. He's making what he does known. All of those things will lead me where I want to be. Um,
01:26:26
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:26:27
Johnny Dice
you know And I try to listen to your videos. you know We're in the school thing, and i listen to what some of those guys say. There's a lot of guys always in there like, hey, it's slow. What do I do to generate work? um And I found really it's consistency but not overly consistent on the Facebook.
01:26:43
Johnny Dice
If you get overly consistent, you become – somewhat in the desperate look.
01:26:47
BEN DELLARIA
Complacent. Yeah.
01:26:48
Johnny Dice
Well, you you you start to look desperate, like your inability to attract work is there. And you don't want to provide that outlook to the customer as much as you could have a full week and still be advertising, and that's fine.
01:27:00
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah.
01:27:00
Johnny Dice
But to the customer, that may give a negative look. So it becomes, man, it's it's no longer, I can just fix the car. You have to play the mind game of the customer and understand there is so much more beyond that nut and bolt and the wrench in your hand.
01:27:11
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
01:27:17
BEN DELLARIA
There's a lot of psychology with understanding what the customers are thinking when there it's coming to choosing you and stuff like that. And that's, it's not easy to do, but again, that comes with all that experience and
Aspirations Beyond Traditional Education
01:27:29
BEN DELLARIA
everything else. But yeah, but going back to like the Facebook thing, yeah, if you're too, that's why I don't suggest posting in more than like, you know, 10, 15 groups and no more than once a week.
01:27:42
BEN DELLARIA
Cause if you start doing that all the time, First of all, the groups are going to kick you out. And then second, the custom the people in the group like, can you stop posting the same freaking thing over and over again, please?
01:27:52
BEN DELLARIA
um So like even once a week, once every two weeks, just as a reminder of who you are. And they're you're not going to get a lot of likes. You're not going to get a lot of you know comments. And that's not what it's for.
01:28:04
BEN DELLARIA
It's just about the visual representation. Same with when someone asks for a mechanic. I don't care if they're trying to supply their own starter and you don't want to do it. That's not the point.
01:28:16
BEN DELLARIA
The group that you're posting in, if that person asks for it and there's 20 other mobile mechanics, 30 other mobile mechanics posting in there, I don't care. Stand out above the rest. That's why I tell people like you know the things that we put in there, we you know we talk about our warranty, license insured, our hours, our cell phone number, and that we bring the whole shop right to the front door. Then my picture is always a real picture. It's the trailer.
01:28:41
BEN DELLARIA
It's a setup, not those AI-generated thumbnails of your company name and everything else because it doesn't get you anywhere.
01:28:48
Johnny Dice
Cannot stand those.
01:28:51
BEN DELLARIA
Because the thing is, is that group has got 20,000 people in it And even if it's just 10% of that, which is 2,000 people, even 1%, 2,000 people are looking in the comments section of that post. I don't care if that person doesn't choose me.
01:29:12
BEN DELLARIA
It's all the other people that saw me different than every other one, and they click on my page because I tagged my page in it. And that allows them to go see my page. And if my Facebook page is updated with quality new pictures and new videos, they're going be like oh he's active all the time.
01:29:32
BEN DELLARIA
I'm going to pay attention to him. And that's usually every job that I get or how I have built my customer base was from there. They're like, we see that you are much different than everyone else. We clicked your link. We saw all of your good reviews.
01:29:44
BEN DELLARIA
We decided to go with you instead of, you know Joe Schmo. And then what usually happens is when someone does pick the other guy, they go post again and be like, well, this guy came out and now my car's in a million pieces. Who can help?
01:29:57
BEN DELLARIA
And then they're, you know, and people are always saying, call, they tag me and they say, call Ben, could you know, or if they're asking for mechanic, you usually get, you know, anywhere between two to five people that are requesting us and, you know, you know, recommending us to that, to those people, make sure you always go in there and write back. Thank you. We appreciate you, you know, blah, blah, blah. So that way people, cause when they see that they're like, Holy shit, that's different.
01:30:23
BEN DELLARIA
You know, it's not, I get this one guy in my area, him, his wife and then their business page, they post it three times acting like it's more people recommending that you guys got the same fucking last name. Like we know it's you just posting your name over and over again. Like we don't want the guy coming to your house, smoking a cigarette and flip flops in a wife beater while your wife sits in the truck, smoking a cigarette out the window. We don't want that at our house. Like that's how their pictures look online. I'm like, holy shit. Like and you guys are like actually ordering parts from places and shit.
01:30:57
Johnny Dice
Some people are paying those people.
01:30:59
BEN DELLARIA
And that's the epitome of what we're trying to change the way we look. And eventually it will.
01:31:03
Johnny Dice
Agreed.
01:31:04
BEN DELLARIA
So one last question for you, man.
01:31:07
Johnny Dice
Yeah.
01:31:07
BEN DELLARIA
Where do you see yourself in five years?
01:31:11
Johnny Dice
Probably in a shop. That could change.
01:31:12
BEN DELLARIA
Probably in a shop.
01:31:15
Johnny Dice
My goal has always been to have shop, but I've got that old 1970s vibe in my head all the time.
01:31:17
BEN DELLARIA
Yep.
01:31:23
Johnny Dice
I want the the old 1970 looking shop. you know I know that's not the go-to. I would have a you know professional front store shop, but there's a vibe about those 1970 days that I wish I was a part of.
01:31:28
BEN DELLARIA
I don't care. I still love it.
01:31:35
Johnny Dice
ah So I think end goal, five years, I want a shop. I want my name
01:31:39
BEN DELLARIA
That's cool, man.
01:31:40
Johnny Dice
plastered up on a front window somewhere and know that I can say I made it. I did it.
01:31:46
BEN DELLARIA
Hell yeah, dude. i You know, and this is the dumbest thing in the world to say, but it's only because AI does it. But I did it the other day. i said, who is three t's mobile mechanic?
01:31:57
BEN DELLARIA
And Google's AI thing pulls up and says, talks about me, talks about my wife, our channels, what we do for our community and things like that. I'm like, that's fucking cool.
01:32:08
BEN DELLARIA
Granted, it's Google AI. I get it. It's pulling everything that I'm, but that just means I have, that means I have a place online. That means I, people see me and it made me feel good. But the same thing with what you said That has always been my dream as well as like being able to... I would love to just stand outside, throw a lawn chair there, and sit back, look at that building for 20 minutes and drink a beer and just be like, that's mine.
01:32:33
BEN DELLARIA
I did that. And everybody told me I couldn't because I was a two-time high school dropout. Yes, twice. like I dropped out of high school, I went back, and I fucking dropped out again. like That's double failure right there. and Just to, you know, even my family in general, they got mad at me for dropping out and, you know, brothers, sisters, everybody, so you know, said that's the wrong idea.
01:32:56
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah. Now look, you know, I'm doing things that most people thought I could never do.
01:32:58
Johnny Dice
Thank you.
01:33:00
BEN DELLARIA
And no offense to my family if they're listening. Like, you know, I get it. You don't want to see your brother and and son fucking drop out and do all these things. But look at where I am today. Right. And I think I'm doing pretty freaking good.
01:33:12
BEN DELLARIA
But
01:33:13
Johnny Dice
Just to note on that, school's not for everybody.
01:33:15
BEN DELLARIA
no, it's not.
01:33:16
Johnny Dice
It's a very specific system. And I'll tell you, the number one thing, school and a mechanic have never been a mix.
01:33:22
BEN DELLARIA
No, they have not.
01:33:23
Johnny Dice
Most of them, do not ah they're not A on a roll, you know valedictorian or anything like that. They are dropouts just scooting by.
01:33:33
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, but no one had really seen that in my family.
01:33:33
Johnny Dice
you know
01:33:35
BEN DELLARIA
they you know Everyone graduated high school. They went on to college to be teachers and this and that and the other. and you know I encouraged my kids to go to school, but them, you don't have to go to college. Our youngest now, he just graduated the other day, or his graduation next week, but his last day was the other day of high school.
01:33:52
Johnny Dice
Congrats on that.
01:33:52
BEN DELLARIA
And yeah yeah, the last one, last that's the third one. I'm paying for a fucking wedding this year. That one's expensive. My first my oldest got married a year ago. And i don't remember if we talked about this or if this was the other podcast. I've been recording so many today. But oldest got married year just over a year ago.
01:34:12
BEN DELLARIA
He's 23. My daughter's 21. She gets married in December this year. And our youngest just did that, but they went off to do stuff like my oldest. He went to college. He went to college to become a teacher, loves working with kids. He is a his he's a self-taught musician for his church.
01:34:31
BEN DELLARIA
um He ended up leaving school and now he's, of all things, he's he works for a company doing electrical work on homes. Like, what? Like, that kid used to not even be able to handle a drill when he was younger and now he pulls meters out of boxes and puts surge protectors in. Not, for me, not overly advanced work, but for him, I'm like, you're going to electrocuted and die, bro. Like, you need to not touch that. Like, that was my first scare when he was touching stuff.
01:34:58
BEN DELLARIA
But he's doing fucking awesome doing that stuff. It's great. My daughter... Same thing. She went to school to become a teacher, just like all my brothers and sisters and their spouses. like Literally, everyone's a teacher almost. and She ended up leaving the school industry. She has two ah younger siblings on her mom from her mom and her her current husband.
01:35:21
BEN DELLARIA
that are One has autism, one has Down syndrome. so she She works as an ABA eight therapist, a with autistic kids.
01:35:31
BEN DELLARIA
So she's a behavioral analysis, a BA, a a yeah behavioral analysis teacher for ah some company.
01:35:32
Johnny Dice
Okay.
01:35:39
BEN DELLARIA
um So she loves that. That's what she does. And my youngest graduate high school, he doesn't want to do nothing. He wants to be a streamer. Okay, go, go get a job and stream, dude, do what you want. Like you don't need to go to college unless I don't think college is for anybody unless you're going to like,
01:35:54
BEN DELLARIA
really like need to like be a lawyer, be a doctor, like, you know, engineer architect, you know, like really like insane jobs. Like, I don't think you need to go to college to go do more math and more science and more English. Like, I think that's stupid.
01:36:08
BEN DELLARIA
I mean, I'm not telling people don't do it.
01:36:08
Johnny Dice
I can agree with that.
01:36:10
BEN DELLARIA
I just don't believe in it. i don't think it's what you need to do. So anyway, yeah, man, that was a really good ah conversation. I really appreciate you being on. Thanks for, thanks for doing this.
01:36:21
Johnny Dice
Of course, I appreciate you having on me or having me on here, and I appreciate what you do in that school community, man. It's it's fantastic.
01:36:26
BEN DELLARIA
I'm trying.
01:36:28
Johnny Dice
it's It's coming together. You've got a lot of interaction on there.
01:36:31
BEN DELLARIA
Yeah, I wanted to change a little bit. like I just posted the other day, we're going to start doing some school games in June. um so like it's going to I just want to encourage people to not sit in the background so much. I want them to talk and like hang out, like be part of it a little bit more.
01:36:47
BEN DELLARIA
um I want to start doing the live calls again, because the live calls were going pretty good. And then when I tried to do that one recently in the garage... It just, you know, people got to realize that like sometimes like this is what they want. They want to ask questions. They want to learn. We don't need someone that's just, you know, loud and, you know, cutting everybody off and stuff like that. Need to learn a little bit of respect. So we'll probably get doing those again. But the the school games, because I mean, we got 1,350 members in there right now.
01:37:17
BEN DELLARIA
Like it's growing like mad, but I want people to be on it more.
01:37:17
Johnny Dice
It's growing.
01:37:21
BEN DELLARIA
So like we're going to do the encouragement so I can watch the leaderboards with how much people contribute and the points they earn. I could do seven day, 30 day lifetime. um So we're going to do some like short games, like a weekly thing.
01:37:34
BEN DELLARIA
And whoever's at the leaderboard at the seven days, we're going to send them some tools. Just go over to Harbor Freight and, you know, pick up some stuff or like order some things from like ASE Wave or Joe's Auto Electric and stuff like that.
01:37:47
BEN DELLARIA
and, ah you know, send some stuff out, you know, just simple things. And then we're going to have a bigger one, like a 30-day leaderboard one, and that'll be, like, more encouraging, like, you know, ah a scan tool, you know, like the $500 scan tools, you know, AutoFix or a MooCar or a ThinkCar, you know just something just neat to send to you guys um and kind of go from there. Because now that I make a couple of bucks from, like, some collaborations and things, I want to use that to give back,
01:38:15
BEN DELLARIA
to the community from everybody following me and, and everything else. That's my way of like helping, you know, do something for it. So, but anyway, like I said before, man, thanks. Appreciate it. And everybody listening, i ah appreciate you all. Thanks for following us here and go check out everything out on all the other platforms and all that cool stuff, man, especially YouTube. We appreciate you guys and we'll talk to you later. Thanks for listening.