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Ep 9 - Josh Coomes, A New King Of The Trolls?
307 Plays3 months ago
Bryan is now considering the switch to Tekmetric, are you? Learn more HERE
Shop coaching has helped me stay on course managing my business. Elite will help you too. Try them HERE
In this episode, Josh Coomes comes on to talk about his troll game and how he runs his business as a former service advisor. The guys talk about how important a strong team is and how constructing it can take a while.
00:00 Choosing Tekmetric Over Shop Boss
09:29 Goal-Setting System for Success
15:44 Army Career Path in Power Jobs
17:51 Degenerative Disc Surgery Experience
23:04 Custom Brake Service Promotion
32:49 Generous Gesture and Donation Plan
38:20 Staying Profitable in Business
43:45 Fault Diagnosis and Cost Confusion
45:27 Adjusting Labor Rates for Profitability
54:21 Efficient Dealership Work Flow Strategy
56:48 "Ensuring Technician Safety First"
01:05:47 "Confessions of a Shop Owner"
01:06:25 "Shop Ownership Journey"
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Transcript
Introduction and Program Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
What's up, everybody? um Tonight, we got a chance to sit down and talk with maybe one of the most promising young trolls in all of automotive aftermarket internet, and also um a fresh young shop owner just over a year into his brick and mortar business, and he's doing incredible things. ah He's one of these guys who takes Uh, takes in all the information utilizes the part that's of use to him and and takes action immediately. I'm excited to see where he's going. I think you're going to enjoy getting to know a little bit more about Josh Coombs. Let's do it.
00:00:37
Speaker
The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we, or our guests might say, do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along.
Techmetric Software and Staff Management
00:00:59
Speaker
So without further ado, it's time for Confessions of a Shop Owner, with your host, Mike Allen.
00:01:15
Speaker
was like, this is an absolute mess. And I told him, I was like, well, now that ShopWear is owned by the same company, you may be able to get ShopWear to buy out the same contract that's the same company. But I'm like, if you go to ShopWear, like try, if they don't buy the contract out,
00:01:31
Speaker
try tech because it's between those two companies and it's whatever one you like more in my opinion. And he ended up ultimately choosing Techmetric. He's like, I'm just going to ride the contract out until March and then he chose tech. Well, he chose tech because it's the far superior software in every way, shape or form. You might not be aware, but we've started recording. We are. um We give you guys a notification that we started recording. I'm curious. It did. It gave us a countdown.
00:02:01
Speaker
We, are we've been looking at tech metrics since last year. We've been kind of kind of looking slowly poking and prodding. So I don't know. We'll see. What is the limiting factor that's keeping you from what used to be the limiting factor is um one of the service writers up front is real hesitant to change. And he is a key player. I would not want to do this without him.
00:02:30
Speaker
Um, so, but we've had some conversations and we've, we, we've spent more time, you know, we moved him. He was at our Lockport shop. We really needed, we got a great manager for a Lockport shop and we just needed a really strong service writer for our Sanborn shop. And Justin was the one that fit the bill. We already had the guy. So we moved him from Lockport. So him and I were apart for.
00:02:56
Speaker
Oh, I think we moved him out to Lockport and maybe like 2016 or 2017, maybe something like that. And we just brought him back at the end of 2023. So it took us a little bit to get acclimated to each other again. But I feel like he's got the trust factor.
Adapting to Change and Personal Anecdotes
00:03:14
Speaker
And it's like, you know, I'm just It's one of those things he's like, he's understanding that the reason I'm saying that we should probably do this is because I do believe it'll make his life easier. So he's starting to understand that. So I think the, I think the winds of change are blowing. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to beat you into submission with this over the next few months. And when you switch over, your dude's going to complain and bitch and moan about it for like a week.
00:03:40
Speaker
Well, I mean, we're out the covered wagon yeah so i mean we might know now we're on the covered wagon right now. So we So when we could die of dysentery, uh, at any given moment, at any given moment, especially when I mess around with the covered wagon settings, it's not good. You try to, you try to afford that river of a, of a complex estimate. Yes. Yeah. We're going to, the ground we're going, and we're going to write a complex estimate. You have died of dysentery.
00:04:07
Speaker
All right, so I have, I have, and I don't know if it's a confession or an observation, but um realize that I've gotten older that I'm slowly turning into Mr. Rogers. um Not in all the good ways, like, because he's like a good human being, right? I'm still an evil shop owner. But when I get home now, I take off my sweater, my nice shirt, my nice coat, whatever I'm wearing, and I put on a house sweater.
00:04:34
Speaker
I'm wearing right now. yeah yeah I've got to take off my shoes, my socks, and I put on house slippers. Oh shit, you're old. yeah i've so ah and I've upgraded my house slipper game recently because for Christmas in our family gift exchange, there was a set of uug furlined slippers. So I'm wearing uggs right now. So they're not like up my leg. They're just like slippers. Whatever. Even if they were, even they were up here like who frickin cares? That's frickin baller shit.
00:05:09
Speaker
But
Josh Coombs' Career Journey
00:05:10
Speaker
yeah, I feel like when I come in the house and I switch into my house sweater and my house slippers that. Yeah. i admit Mr. Rogers never poured a whiskey immediately after doing that there, right? He thought about it. and I don't know if that guy ever drank. I know he was a Presbyterian. I think he was Presbyterian minister, I believe. Was he really? I think so. There's a movie like about him though ah from a few years ago that's supposed to be great. I haven't haven't seen it. Really? We might have. I might have checked that out. That sounds awesome.
00:05:40
Speaker
Anyway, I feel like we're like four or five minutes into this and we haven't even introduced our guests. That's ah some shit that Lucas and David would do. um It's identical. Josh Coombs, all OK auto repair, Fayetteville, North Carolina. Also, let's be honest, ah one of the most promising young talents in the world of online trolling, um yeah the content that you're putting out right now is simply beautiful. It's absolutely superior compared to the other content. Definitely want to talk about your, your troll skills and where you think it came from. But, uh, first let's, I guess, learn a little bit about your business and yourself and bridge your mountain, bridge your mountain troll. Give me the 10,000 foot view. What's, what's the, uh, what's the story? So, uh, I guess I started, um,
00:06:34
Speaker
uh, UTI in 1999, Volkswagen school, very similar to the humble mechanic. We went to the same program just about a year and a half apart from each other. We had really good experiences in the Volkswagen dealership. Um, and it really worked well. Um, and then I branched off and did my own thing for about three years, 2006, 2009, and realized that I can't turn it off. And I basically, um,
00:07:04
Speaker
moved to Chicago where my wife's from, sold all my equipment, and I'm like, um I'm never going to be able to like just work on a nine to five right oh as a shop owner. So I went back to ah the VW dealer, and in that time, it took me to sell them all of my equipment and move. That all fell through. um I had three jobs lined up, and it was right at like that when the industry kind of shut down.
00:07:31
Speaker
um So I joined the army and I did 12 years in the army. Uh, I got hurt and I ended up medically retiring. So I, uh, I kind of figured that was going to happen. I ended up, um, starting a mobile mechanic business. I was the breaks and water pump guy. And, uh, I did that for a few years. Body was still not really recovering. So I took an office job doing a high voltage work, which is what I did in the army and, um,
00:08:02
Speaker
I realized that white collar clean fingernails are not for me. So we took the took the plunge and went brick and mortar. So now we are in Fayetteville. We are one year into our brick and mortar business.
00:08:17
Speaker
um I'm really happy with where we are right now. I've got, it's a seven bay shop. um I've got four two posts. Yeah, for yeah it's it's pretty good. I got four two post lifts, one drive on and a mid rise.
Coaching and Business Goals
00:08:34
Speaker
Just hired my second technician. um We ended up in the net, a good net number last year. So like we're already profitable.
00:08:43
Speaker
um you know Thanks to some decent coaching ah from a few different people and industry leaders alike. so That's kind of where we are right now. I'm looking for you know extreme growth this year and I think I might have a really good team to do so.
00:09:05
Speaker
so Um, so did you go through a goal setting exercise with your coach for the year? Yes. Um, it's actually, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to sugarcoat it, right? My coach is Rick white and I what yeah i had a different coach when I first started when actually before I went full time, I hired a different coaching company.
00:09:26
Speaker
And it just wasn't a good fit. Um, and after about six months, I kind of just parted ways. Now I'll say this though, that coaching company absolutely set me up for profit. There's no doubt. And that's what allowed us to be where we are today for sure. But I brought Rick in, um, at the end of the year. And that program that he has is way better fit for, for where we are. So, um, uh,
00:09:58
Speaker
I'm sorry, Mike. I miss where we answering the question. No, we're talking about 25 goals. like Yeah, so that's what I was getting at. so So Rick has a setup where it's three-year destination and one-year goal, and then there's 90-day um pushes in in there. And then there's two-week targets. So it's it's set up that way on purpose to make sure you kind of stay focused. So yeah, I have a three-year goal and I want property.
00:10:23
Speaker
So like we break that down and say, I need to save this much money per year in order to do so. In order to do that, I need to know how many hours I need to sell. you know like you know i'll It's just funny when you talk about that kind of stuff. it's like yeah He wants very specific goals and they have to be attainable.
00:10:40
Speaker
right but you know We did like $600,000 the first year in business with a technician for six months. and I hired my first tech in July. It's like, oh, I want a million dollars. but Why? That's not good enough. You need to know why you want a million dollars. well because it's a cool number you know and then it's then you actually do the math and it's like wait a minute my shop capacity is actually like 2.3 million dollars so like if i said a million dollars that's like i'm selling my myself capacity yeah and it's just like crazy right and you're like
00:11:14
Speaker
So now, like really honestly, my goal is just to be the best shop in the area. Like I want to be better than the dealer fixing cars that the dealer can't fix, right? And, you know, it takes a really good, talented team to do that. And I think my new technician is really going to help us get there. My first technician is very good, very capable, just not quite as trained as where I need him to be.
00:11:37
Speaker
And you know I have a good person, so I'm looking hopefully to train everybody the same. But um yeah, definitely goal setting is ah extremely important.
00:11:50
Speaker
Well, I like what you said about ah your first coach set you up to be profitable. um And Rick is the right coach for you right now. And I think that's like, obviously I'm with Elite. They sponsor the podcast. I've been with them for 20 plus years. I love them. um But finding the right coach for you, super important. um And not every coaching company is the right coach for every shop.
00:12:17
Speaker
um you know We have specialists in the industry. We have generalists and we have specialists. and um you know There guys out there who work on exotics. There are guys out there who work on you know diesel stuff all the time, that kind of thing. I think Rick is He might take offense to this and I apologize if he does. it I think he's a specialist on small growing shops, taking them from that 600,000 point to that $2 million dollar point. I think that's his sweet spot. He's really good at that.
00:12:49
Speaker
um Yeah, there are other coaches out there that can do that too. but And then there are coaches that they don't even want to hear from you unless you're at a million dollars. you know
00:13:01
Speaker
The cool thing about how you got your relationships started with Rick, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you bought one year of coaching from him at a charity auction for hurricane relief, right? After Hurricane Helene, is that right?
00:13:14
Speaker
ah Yes, I did meet him before actually at the ASTA convention. Maybe it was ASTE e then right um for 2023. I think that's the first time I met Rick with one of his classes and then after that um Lucas put on event at his shop and checking out the local vote tech over there and Rick was invited to speak at the college um and I met with him and you know It was just like a really good interaction. like You can tell that he does not – I mean, he's there to make money. Don't get me wrong, but that's not what his driving force is. His driving force is to fix you, right? And you know not every – he's not the kind of guy that's like, yeah, if you got the money, you can hire me. No, no, no. no
00:14:02
Speaker
if you're If it's not a good fit, he doesn't want your money. right it's like that's That's the kind of person he is. like I know that he is helping a friend of mine right now for $0 because he wants to get him profitable enough to where he's not going out of business, he has a better home life, and then we can pay for coaching once you're able to afford it. and um It's really good like that. so Regarding um the payout, yes, it was when the ASTA this past year,
00:14:29
Speaker
um you know It was like, I got a good deal, right? But that's not really what it was about. um you know It was like, it felt good to be able to donate that. Obviously, Rick donated his time that's worth a lot more than what the auction sold for. um And like we cut a check and it was like, it was really emotional for for me. I'm sure it was for others. earth I know it was for you, Mike. It was a beautiful night. I mean, we raised almost $100,000 in 30 minutes.
00:15:01
Speaker
It was was unbelievable. It was crazy. So it feels good to do that. But like, yes, I got a good price on it. I mean, it was a pretty big nut to cover all at once. I had to move some money around, but you know, but we we did it. And um you know, I have no desire to take advantage of that one year and leave either. I think this is more of a two to three year endeavor to try to get more my ducks in a row. But yeah, like I'm grateful for Rick offering that.
00:15:29
Speaker
And I'm grateful to make a donation to help a lot of those people. Like I'm just, I'm lucky that my stuff didn't wash away. You know, like that's pretty, that's pretty like bad. Yeah. Yeah. Did
Military Background and Impact on Career
00:15:42
Speaker
you imagine? Oh my gosh. You're like, when he said it, one guy lost his house and his business. So he has no place to live. He has no means of income. Like what are you supposed to do? And it's a thousand year flood. So there's no flood insurance, right?
00:15:58
Speaker
So you just, you just start over from scratch and depend on the, yeah, anyway, we should move on from that. So, um,
00:16:08
Speaker
so anyway, that's, that's kind of your story. Um, you said you were in the army for how many years? 12 years. And what was your, uh, MOS, what were you doing? So I first came in as a 91 Delta, which is a generator mechanic. Um, my initial plan was not to make the army a career.
00:16:26
Speaker
So there was another program or MOS called 12P and that's ah prime power. And that is basically um medium voltage production distribution and transformation or transformation and distribution. Our our main mission was to support FEMA and also um we would support the infrastructure in the United States for different projects.
00:16:50
Speaker
and We would also supply power to ah for army assets like we can do a 2000 man base camp with our organic equipment that each platoon basically has or a small hospital and that kind of stuff. um So to get into that job.
00:17:09
Speaker
when it, when it was first there, you couldn't just go into it right off the street. So I took ah like the baby version of a generator mechanic, knowing that I was going to go into that program, get my skillset and then move on. I was going to get out of the industry, right? As like, you know, our buddy Jeff Compton always, you know, you know, and you and a bunch of other people like talk about, that's what I was, my plant, my plan was flower shop, baby. I'm building a flower shop. Yeah. So, so so like that,
00:17:38
Speaker
Once you get comfortable and I did a lot of cool stuff, like I love deploying you know airborne operations. like the whole It was awesome. I got lucky enough to be selected for like special operations and then I kind of came out of that back into that that prime power role. Then I got back into se special operations again and then I got hurt and it was like that was it.
00:17:58
Speaker
So 12 years, generator mechanic, obviously i so I excelled as the mechanical part and then I learned the AC voltage, which helped me a lot. And then, um, I got into like some electronics training in that school and then, uh, it helped me a little bit more, uh, applying some of that theory to, um, automotive.
Humor and Online Presence
00:18:20
Speaker
Awesome. Awesome. Um, can you tell us what happened with your injury or is that like an, uh, Oh, no, it doesn't matter. I had, well, I had two discs that were gone on my neck. So, uh, I had degenerative disc disease and then I had herniated discs and the first.
00:18:39
Speaker
I started walking around like this, you know, for those guys who listening, I'm like standing up off to the side, right? So um after a few MRIs and stuff, they're like, yeah, dude, you need surgery. And I had really bad nerve damage and I lost my muscles in my right tricep.
00:18:54
Speaker
So like trying to do physical stuff and the last job I had was very physically demanding. It just it wasn't in the cards anymore. So um I ended up having the first doctor wanted to do three vertebrae fusions and I was like, yeah, I'm only 40 years old. How about we talk to somebody else? And then um I ended up getting arthroplasty done. So they have like I'm kind of a cyborg, I guess. So I have metal in my spine. So, um, and got really well, so I still have like really good movement in my neck, but I can't look up, uh, like for a long time. So if I'm in a class, I usually have to stand up or stretch my neck a lot, or if I'm stuck underneath the car, doing a transmission on the lift, like I can't really do that kind of stuff anymore. And when I do, I'm reminded why I'm not in the army anymore.
00:19:41
Speaker
So you have titanium in your neck is what you're saying, right? um the best man Six million dollar man, right? My, uh, our one service writer has seven plates in his forehead because him and his brother were hitting golf balls at each other. I guess his brother won that game. Yeah. Yeah. They had to fold his face down and put plates in his forehead. So yeah. Oops. Well, you know, play stupid games.
00:20:06
Speaker
yeah
00:20:11
Speaker
So one of the things that we got to figure out from a post production and editing perspective is how do we splice into our conversation images from forum posts because. Oh, this is our image of the heater core. Oh, man. That so a few weeks ago, just organically, a large group of us almost accidentally broke one of the major Facebook, uh, automotive groups. Yeah. Yeah. Not intentionally. just We just yeah all had really funny ideas all within a 24 hour period. And the thing almost burnt to the ground. Yeah. We turned it into a shitposting group. but Yeah. I'm like, they might be able to save the foundation of this place, but that's about it. She's burning up.
00:21:03
Speaker
I was starting to feel bad. I was like, man, somebody worked hard to build this group and we've just fucking destroyed it for our shits and giggles by accident. Not even in touch. And so.
00:21:14
Speaker
ah And so I was like, hey, guys, hey, guys, hey, guys, look, look, look, can we all just agree that like Friday afternoon through Sunday night, this is a shitposting group. And then Monday through Friday at lunchtime, it's like a legitimate automotive group. And then this past Friday at 12 0 2 p.m., here comes Josh. Marching into the office. The best satire fools half the people, right?
00:21:46
Speaker
And you made this post and you were, when we were online Friday night, it was at 190 comments and I'm sure it's still going. I haven't checked on it recently. I don't know where it's at, but slow down it's we only had like five comments since then. Okay. The best satire posts fool half the people. Josh fooled 95% of the people.
00:22:08
Speaker
Like there was like three people out of 200 that understood that this was messing around. I got dudes that I really respect that are very rarely ones to fall for that. And they were commenting, this is a joke, right? this but He's not serious, right? They weren't sure. And then I got people texting screenshots and my group chats are like,
00:22:29
Speaker
This whole thing is a shit show and they didn't realize that it was troll. But does this guy really think the waiver protects him? You're wrong. Waivers don't protect you. Blah, blah, blah. Oh, my gosh. It was. So if you're if you're listening and you're wondering what the hell we're talking about, I need you to go to auto shop owners hang out and ah join the group if you're not a member. um But if you scroll to Friday,
00:22:57
Speaker
January 31, Joshua Coombs posted, there's a picture of a car with standing water and the driver's side floorboard. And it's obviously had a fire and the dash yeah melted down and everything else.
00:23:11
Speaker
um It's magical. You need to read that post and you need it. It is so magical. I didn't think the individual corner break service. I didn't think he was able to top that one because the week before he was doing individual corners of the car, right? No. That was two weeks prior, the week before he had a video, a panning video of the back lot that was like half junkyard. What was that? What was that one? So all right. So it started with.
00:23:40
Speaker
The first one it started with, we were slow on a schedule. So I offered a custom break job and I made sure that I posted in all of the yard sale pages in the Tennessee. So you always get the best clientele from that.
00:23:57
Speaker
and then And I offered custom brake service where we only put the pad on that's needed, right? So we can put one brake pad on your car and get you rolling, right? And then at the end I was like, and if you buy all you know all four brake pads per axle, I might throw in an oil change. or um And then the other one is like, if you pay for, you know like I discount the labor and you can upgrade the service to like grease in the slide pins. you know So it was like, and it just blew up. That was like the first one. I just thought it was funny to try to do that. There are people that were raging at you. You're the problem with this industry. You're why we have a bad reputation.
00:24:37
Speaker
and but what What started all of it was that for a while, for like a few weeks, there was real posts in there. Well, maybe I was trolled. I don't know. But there was real posts in there. No, we weren't trolled. Those were real. Yeah. And it's like and it's sad, right? like That's the part that's scary is that there's so many owners out there that are making these like horrible mistakes. And there's so many people out there that want to help. And it's like,
00:25:03
Speaker
Dude you know we're yeah like I'm not saying you don't deserve to be an owner but like holy cow man there's like certain things that like everyone starts somewhere but I mean you're started underground at this point my view like get yourself up to where least you're on a level playing field you know. and I think I asked I think at one point I asked I did a post how how can I bill the customer for hitting my hand with a hammer?
00:25:28
Speaker
yeah
00:25:30
Speaker
so started it And then from there, it was like, I got a good one. you know And I was actually in in training. I was a Rick Live event in Tucson. I made my service advisor go out to the the back lot, just so you know, like none of those cars are mine. My landlord, his dad died two years ago. And this this guy was like, yeah, bring it in. I'll get to it when I get to it. Well, they had like 100 cars here. There's still like 42 cars left.
00:25:54
Speaker
And you know I'm trying to get on the landlord to get this stuff out of here because it makes my shop look junky. It's behind a fence, but it still looks bad. And my goal is to have my shop look like you can't afford to come in here. So like that doesn't help, right? but So um I made her get on a ladder and take that panning shot of like ah you know all of the junk that's here. And I was like, oh, it worked out great. you know We made so much money on our brake job that we can now We signed a lease on our bigger building and it came with 42 cars that are already sitting here ready to go and like half the engines already out The labors like use the brake pads for your brake special you can use to Use brake pads So I was like, yeah, it works out awesome because now I have like 42 cars here and like half the labors done so I can save money and it's like a huge cost boost and That's like dude, what are you doing? Then you know, it's just like
00:26:46
Speaker
You're just fun and it with the best part is that I only do that stuff on Friday, right? And then like even when I'm responding to people I still don't usually troll and there's an occasional one in there smart ass comment, but for the most part That's it. That's it. Now. I'll troll hard on that post And I felt bad because I corrected someone's grammar. You know, I'm like, Hey man, I'm going to, I'm going to go and like, Oh, you apostrophe RE. Yeah. And ill that's what it was. And I was like, Oh man, he, and he was all mad and butter. I'm trying to help you. And I was like, I actually DM them. I was like, Hey dude, I'm just, I'm just messing around, dude. It's, it's Friday. You know what I mean?
Shop Improvements and Customer Service Lessons
00:27:21
Speaker
So, um, for anybody that listens to this podcast and goes in there, and if you figure it out on Friday, keep your mouth shut, dude. Yeah. really did We'll tell everybody there's a troll post. so Let it cook. but that Let it simmer. Let it simmer for a little while. Well, to your point of your goal is to make this place look like they can't afford it. um If you look at the historical pictures of Google Maps Street View, of what it looked like before you moved in versus what you've got it looking like right now, man, you you're a year in and you're doing an incredible job.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate that. It's definitely a lot of hard work and it's a balancing act of how much money do I want to put it in a building I don't own. And then it's like, well, how much more is the property worth after I did all this remodeling? I just spent $3,000 on a freaking heater I don't own. You know what I mean? And it's like, that kind of sucks, but you need heat. You know, so it's like, and it was nice to have that thing settle 60 degrees and you're out there like, it's perfect. You're going to pop off, you know, a little over 2 million this year, 3,000 will be all right. You'll be okay.
00:28:24
Speaker
I think so. It's a good investment. yeah know That's what it takes to hire good talent. you I mean, I don't have AC and I probably never will until I own it. I don't want to get insulated, stick frame it and see that, but until then, he it's a pretty good step in the right direction, I think. you know One of the funniest things that I've realized in the last couple of years traveling around the country and talking to shop owners all over the place is, if you're in Phoenix, Arizona, you got to have AC.
00:28:52
Speaker
right is It just kind of is what it is. But there's a bunch of dudes across Texas and Florida, up to North Carolina, everything else that do not have air conditioning in their shops. um Two of my shops have air conditioning. In one of the shops, the air conditioning works. In my original big shop, there's no AC. um yeah ESO action. Yeah.
00:29:15
Speaker
yeah i mean We'll get there. If you're hot, work faster. Here's the thing. That's not how that works. And you get out from like the Northeast and where Brian is and in like the Midwest, like, oh my God, you have to have air conditioning. It's such a killer. I know. I guess up to like 88 degrees where you guys are for like three days. I know a guy in New ham Hampshire that like in the summertime, he sets his air conditioning. It's like 64 degrees in his shop.
00:29:43
Speaker
Whereas my buddy Harrison, like he did a major remodel on a shovel. I was like, bro, are you going to put some air conditioning in? I was like, motherfucker, do you know how much that would cost in this 60 year old building that was like an airplane hangar? The minute they have waste oil air conditioning, I am I'm going all out where we're doing it.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah. Well, AC maybe. Yeah. Then we, yeah, they make waste oil AC. I'm doing it, man. Like that's, that's how technology would work. I need, yeah. Well, I mean, RV fridges run off of propane because it heats up ammonia. Why can't they just do the same thing with the air conditioning? Should I shut up? That's how, yeah, that's how you become an absorption refrigerator, and but air conditioning, waste oil air conditioners for shops. Heck yeah.
00:30:37
Speaker
So much cancer. Um, so anyway, so, um, real quick, Josh, one of the things that we do on this, uh, is I always ask, you know, it's confessions of a shop owner, right? And so I guess technically you've stepped into the confessional at this point. So, you know, bless me shop owner for, I have send, um, what, what did you fuck up in 2024 and what are you going to do differently to to change that?
00:31:07
Speaker
um
00:31:10
Speaker
I think there's a couple things that come to mind, right? I'll mention all two of them. We definitely had a ah ah problem um in the shop where we had a wheel fall off and that's spread's a pretty big one.
00:31:24
Speaker
now We'll dive into that one just for a few minutes, but like I pulled up my security footage. We hand-torqued wheels here, right? And and like to be all honest, um my footage dropped out while the hand-torquing was done. But I have the footage is my tech with the torque wrench in the hand, the footage drops out, and then the tech puts the torque wrench back on the like on his cart. So I'm like, we hand-torqued the wheels, OK?
00:31:53
Speaker
and um So here's here's how like here's how that kind of transpired. The the the customer came from Florida. um We absolutely blew him away with quality of service. But he obviously works for the CIA because he hacked your cameras.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, quality of service, the entire inspection process, all of the documentation, the pictures and everything. He didn't even want to tell us that the wheel fell off. Okay. And I had to twist his arm to at least allow me to pay for his own deductible on his car. And then he was getting it repaired. The, uh, the insurance company was giving him a hard time and on on a rental. So I was like, take a loaner car.
00:32:39
Speaker
you know It's not a problem until your car gets fixed. Here's a loaner car." So he had that for like two weeks. Then he comes back and the car is not driving right. um He had it aligned. He called the insurance company. Insurance companies like said that this this shop is top rate. There's no way there's anything wrong. It's pre-existing. Now, I drove this car before the brakes were done and there was no problem. um It ended up having basically a combination of worn control arm bushings.
00:33:05
Speaker
And it had some subframe bushings. It's an Infinity SUV. It had worn subframe bushings. And the car was self-steering on acceleration and deceleration. So we made it better. We put matching control arms in the car. ah It was safe to drive, but still wasn't right. um And he insisted on paying the bill for that.
00:33:27
Speaker
And I was like, what? I said, if you pay this bill, I am going to keep the money aside and we're going to donate it back to somebody that needs it. So like I given, I've given $600. His bill was $1,600 is what it costs to put these control arms in. And, um, I, I basically gave $600 of it away already. I have some stuff lined up with like the army, uh,
00:33:51
Speaker
community service, like they have a thing called an AER loan and they help guys, it's it's a loan to themselves at 0% interest. So I'm in talking with them trying to find some of these like junior enlisted guys to be able to like, hey, don't borrow any money. We still have money I can give you.
00:34:07
Speaker
you know, free repair, you know what I mean? So we still have like $1,000 to give away. um I wanted it gone before the end of the year because I totally forgot like if the IRS is listening, no, I don't have a separate account set up for that. I'm just giving it away. So it is what it is.
00:34:22
Speaker
so IRS, if you're listening, stop listening to this and go listen to David Roman and go after him. He's hiding lots of money. David Roman. Yes. R-O-M-A-N. Yes, R-O-M-A-N, bald. Kansas City. Small, actually regular size. I call them small.
00:34:42
Speaker
but So, that that was like a pretty big folly. Now, what changed? ah The reason why it happened, I think, is it was aftermarket wheels, aftermarket lug nuts. No hub centering rings on the wheels, right? So, now, anytime we pull a car in, the wheels get torqued, period. Anytime we pull a wheel, it gets torqued on service, and then seven-mile test drive gets torqued again.
00:35:04
Speaker
So that's the first time my tech or myself has ever lost a wheel in 25 plus years of working on a car. So it's like, hey, normally we would always blast them on with an impact while we're trying to be the better shop and it ended up biting us, right?
Managing Ambitions and Business Focus
00:35:20
Speaker
So um that was one thing that kind of changed and that's a pretty big mistake. The other one is, here's a big one that's kind of deeper, is ah setting too high of goals for yourself, right?
00:35:34
Speaker
I want everything all at once right now. All right. And, you know, I'm not afraid to work a hundred hours a week. It's not a problem. But when it ends up happening, I started losing focus because I'm not seeing progression. And then I get bored and it's a problem where I start basically not caring anymore. Like I'm definitely not looking at my numbers as much as I used to six months ago. And it's because like, I'm not moving far enough ahead. I feel like instead of walking forward,
00:36:03
Speaker
I'm just going sideways. Like I'm not going backwards, but I'm like, there's, you know, there's motion, but it's not forward and it's bad. So, um, I actually talked to Rick at the Rick live event. I actually asked him, I was like, did I let you down? You know, we've only been working together for like two or three months, right? And he's like, absolutely not. And he told me like, dude, you have to slow down. You it's, it's, you have to work on one thing at a time. And for me,
00:36:30
Speaker
We were so busy. It's like the one thing that I need to work on is hiring a technician. Every ounce of my bean has to be in hiring somebody to bring them in the shop so I can focus on running the business because the shop's got to eat, right? It's got to eat four cars a day, four days a week um at minimum to be able to meet our goals. we and Mike's looking at me crazy. We don't schedule on Friday typically until Wednesday afternoon because we usually sell, we have a pretty high average repair order for a general service and a pretty high average hour per RO.
00:37:05
Speaker
Um, the last I checked were close to like $900 in between 3.8 and five hours, um, a month on hours per ticket. So, um, that's really good. Yeah. So like we have a really good process and it works, you know, like you always talk about decreasing liability, like really good inspections and don't overload the shop. Yeah. The shops got to make hours, but they come when you like take your time and do it right.
00:37:33
Speaker
And then you don't have to worry about comebacks and a bunch of other stuff. So it really works well, you know, the process that, and honestly, some of that was set up from my coach, the ASOC mastermind for those that are listening and you're kind of getting started or not even started, but you're looking to try to like fix yourself and your business.
00:37:53
Speaker
get ahold of Adam Rath and talk to him. He's like the leader, I guess, of the ASOG Mastermind Group, and it's like a little hidden gem that's part of ASOG that can really get you squared away for free dollars a month. Free dollars and free cents. Yep, and it's really, really good. I'm surprised how many people don't know about the ASOG Mastermind Group, and I know that They don't have the capacity for thousands of shop owners, but if you're a, a startup shop owner and and you, you're trying to go from dollar zero to dollar one, that's the place you need to be. You know, if you don't have the budget for professional coach, you can get incredible information and credit. It seems like there's a ton of really, really sharp people in there.
00:38:38
Speaker
Yeah, and it's and they care too. If you're not putting forth the effort, i think they're goingnna they're I haven't been in the part of that group for a few months, but they're probably going to lay down the hammer. I hope they do, to be honest, because there a lot of people that aren't participating and the group doesn't work unless you have group participation. participation and It kind of sucks because like you want that, right? You were there for a reason, well, most of us are. and yeah but That's a really good asset to do like to have and then you know rely on.
00:39:05
Speaker
so knowing that I have to step back and relax a little bit, of breathe, and then move forward with ah with taking it easy, working on one thing at a time. The biggest problem that most shops have probably is whether or not they're like closing doors because they're not profitable, right? So if you can stay profitable, at least then you can start working on your your business, right? And at least I have that Like, hey, we're we're doing okay. Let's try to fix this and get to that 2.3 million. um And it's a reasonable goal. It's 50 hours a week ah per technician. It's not 100. It's 50 hours a week, 3 techs. The numbers work.
00:39:50
Speaker
um right look i I fucking nerd out about numbers. right When you say the numbers work, it's like when Brian talks about scoping a reverse camera or some shit. I don't know what that video was. We don't scope per reverse cameras.
00:40:06
Speaker
Oh, well, actually I kind of did, but from the DLC was different. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Can see boss Mike. 2.3 million divided by 52 weeks. That's 44,000 a week. That's that's balling for a seven bay shop. Um, yeah, depending on the shop, especially a five day shop. So divided by five days, that's 8,800 a day. What's you, do you know what your parts and labor sales per build hour or tip roughly?
00:40:36
Speaker
If I had tech metric, I'd probably i tell you a lot faster. Yeah, I can tell you really fast. What's your ARO? Right now we're floating at about 800. Okay, hundred that's is really good for general repair. And what's your hours per hour? Last I checked, it was 3.8.
00:40:55
Speaker
All right. So we got, we got some room for growth there on you. So that's $210 per hour build parts and labor. Uh, so 8,800 divided by 210 means you need 42 hours a day. That's four texts.
00:41:12
Speaker
again right Yeah, I'd have to do my math again. I but i would believe you with 20 something years more than I have in the industry. But when I did my math, um I thought I did it at 50 hours times three texts ah at 48 weeks um instead of 52 for time off.
00:41:38
Speaker
um
00:41:41
Speaker
With a 7,200 hours a year with a 50, with a 50 50 split of labor ratio, uh, departs. And then what's your effective parts, parts, right? Effective labor rate. Sorry. Right. Uh, I just raised my labor rate. Um, I'm my, I believe my effective labor rate is one 35.
00:42:05
Speaker
um Good. About 10% off. We just but went up to 150 an hour. Well, so 7,200 hours with 135 as your effective labor rate and a one-to-one partial labor ratio is going to get you almost a 2 million right there.
00:42:20
Speaker
And so I'll tell you, you're a name in a challenging market, right? You're not in an affluent market. um It's a medium-sized city, heavily dependent upon the military. There's a lot of low income. ah and But still, there are operators in your market that are getting $250 to $260 per hour when you consider ports and labor. Build, right? Yep.
00:42:48
Speaker
That didn't mean that you're there right now, but you're at 210 right now. So you're not far off, right? Yeah. Because if you're at 210, you want to get to 250.
00:43:00
Speaker
$40, that's not $40 on your labor rate. That's $20 on your labor rate. Maybe it's a little bit on your parts matrix and maybe it's a little bit more effective at your estimate building process so that you don't accidentally give away coolant or you don't forget to add that gasket or whatever it might be.
Pricing Strategies and Investment Priorities
00:43:16
Speaker
That's actually, I've worked out on my whiteboard today. I have a spot on the whiteboard. I think it's It's written up as, what did we miss? like There's labor that's missing. Labor and unbilled parts. The unbilled parts, I'm pretty sure that's that's pretty good with the the way we have our system set up. but The issue is, and a great example, ah we have a Mercedes in here right now for an intake flap actuator that's broken. right Now, my service writer
00:43:47
Speaker
brought like we We gave the estimate over the phone, which usually is not what we want to do, but we were battling a little bit of a car count issue. so um The customer sounded like they were serious. They sound like they have money. um and It was worth it for us to invest that op into that opportunity. right and At work, they came in. so Here's the problem. The car shows up. It's got lean condition faults that may or may not be related to the intake flaps. Mike's falling asleep.
00:44:15
Speaker
Yeah. So I can get there this far. and So now we have an issue where we have a lean condition fault that may or may not be related to the intake flap breaking. And there's no evaluation time on this whatsoever. They came in with someone else's diagnosis and it's like, this is what it costs. If you need to do an intake manifold, this is what it costs. If we can fix it, um, this is, and it's like, okay, they pre-approved everything.
00:44:42
Speaker
And now we have to worry about whether or not we're going to charge them to go after the ah lean fault after an extensive test drive. Of course I'm going to charge them, but the the problem is. Well, we already did the estimates and you it's just a mess. This is why you don't do, um, estimates over the phone, which is why you always have an evaluation anyway that comes in. So it's like, uh, whether or not we know we add 25% to the Mitchell times and that's how we do it. And then, um, that kind of pads a little bit, but at the same time, it's not really meant to be a pad, but it can be a buffer.
00:45:17
Speaker
but I want to charge for test driving. I want to charge for all these other things that that it's not being billed appropriately. If it costs the text time, I'm going to bill for it. so I think it's easier to add a 10th for the test drive and add a half hour for readiness monitors and add and add, or is it easier to just add 30 bucks to your labor rate across the board?
00:45:45
Speaker
so and can so consume those items. Okay, so my techs are on a hybrid plan, right? So if I'm adding to the labor rate, I'm not paying the technician for their time. And that's that's the that's the problem with that. yeah Now, I will ah raise the labor rate. So my GP per hour, last time I calculated it with my expenses, we need to be at about 155 an hour to be profitable.
00:46:11
Speaker
And if I do something that if I build an estimate and the technician, if I feel a technician can smash the time that's being sold, then I might be okay with it lower because I know that it's not really accurate because I know the tech is going to be able to bang it out fast. okay So I have a little bit of leeway, but if we're doing other things like heavy labor jobs, they're always way below our goal of 155 to stay in business. So I'm just adding to the labor rate at that point.
00:46:39
Speaker
So um it's not uncommon for us. Our door rate is 150. It's not uncommon for me to bump it up to 190 an hour just to make sure that I'm maintaining profitability on the job. so But I don't want to take advantage of the tech. If it's going to take longer, I'm charging more hours. If it's not more hours, then I'm going to raise a labor rate to make up for like profitability.
00:47:04
Speaker
Well, you're also allowed to take really good care of the tech and take really good care of yourself, uh, and charge the customer for the incredible service that you're given, right? Yeah. So for sure.
00:47:15
Speaker
And i look, I say that not for you, I say that for people that may be listening that don't yet have the confidence in themselves to demand what they're worth, right? You of of all of the startup kind of ah early on in the progression shop owners that I've met over the years, you have your shit together and know your numbers better than 99% of them. I'm gonna be totally honest with you.
00:47:42
Speaker
The fact that you could rattle off your ARO and hours per ARO and your... What you need to be profitable. Yeah, gross profit you understand why gross profit per hour matters. That already puts you way above the large majority of startup shops. So ah you're a year in and you're already doing remarkable stuff. Five year stuff, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You're already doing the, I'm about to go out of business package. You're already starting to look at the things that guys don't look at until they're like, why am I poor and why do I owe a hundred grand?
00:48:20
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it It felt good to have like an end of year spending spree, so I don't have to pay somebody taxes. And it's like now um I was looking at buying a new alignment rack for the shop and it's like, wait a minute. um In my opinion, alignment racks,
00:48:37
Speaker
they're They're not money makers. They're not, right? But they offer the ah the quality of service that you want to do. I want the alignment, right? So I'm going to do it myself. Now, you can do an alignment and then get all the work sold because it needs all this stuff for an alignment. Like you can look at it that way. But if I have a shop that I swear to God, my shop charges me $67 for an alignment.
00:48:59
Speaker
Like, and it's right. So why? I don't own this building. I do not want to put forth that much effort into putting an alignment rack in my shop right now. And I'd rather put that $70,000 into the bank so I can buy property and put the alignment rack. I want it surface mounted.
00:49:19
Speaker
like really nice stuff. So do you think when it's time? I think your priorities are right. And I think if you can sublet quality alignments for $67, not counting calibrations, which are going to become bigger and bigger of a problem. Um, and I think you're not wrong, but once you get to a position where your car count is more than four to six a day, an alignment machine will pay for itself.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yeah, that is true. And for those that are listening, make sure you look up dutch's information because the actual true cost of paying for the that alignment rack is nowhere near what you think it is. Yeah, don't use the calculator that the equipment salesman gives you to determine your breakeven point. The one that says if you do two and a half alignments a month, this thing will make you 300,000 the first year. That one, I don't know what kind of math they're using. I'm like, I was looking at one one day.
00:50:12
Speaker
Uh, snap on's got a nice one on their website where it tells you that you'll like, you can't, you can't afford not to buy their flagship tool. You will literally, yeah it literally pays for itself sitting in the drawer somehow.
00:50:28
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know how you afford not to buy it. So Josh, how big of a difference your, how many remind me, are you a week or two weeks into your new technician? you hired We are four days into him. Four days. Okay. Yep. So Monday, and yeah yeah, he chose to bring a on Monday instead of this weekend, which is fine. Um, so I paid for his toolbox to get moved. ah Nice. Yep. And, uh, we brought it in here and he's four days in. Now we sold a bunch of work and to ask me what, uh, what my open, our open ticket is right now. I couldn't tell you.
00:51:06
Speaker
But I can tell you that he built only billed like nine hours in his first week, but we sold 50, I think. um So we just have to get parts and get it done.
Shop Management and Efficiency
00:51:17
Speaker
So um we're still have a car count issue. It was kind of like really bad timing. We were ah balls on the wall for like three or four months, ah six months. And then as soon as I finally got this guy in, I've been dragging him along or he's been dragging me along for like um a month and a half.
00:51:35
Speaker
And it's like, Oh, we got a car count issue, but I know it's coming and yeah it picked up this week. At least there's a lot of, there's a lot of people this, this time you're talking about being slow. Um, I think shops that haven't seen an impact. I mean, we, we run so overbooked, um, like everybody still worked overtime, but, um, we certainly don't have the a hundred plus cars on the lot. It was more like 60. Um, yeah.
00:52:02
Speaker
at the Sanborn shop. But um yeah, everybody everybody still had to work from seven to six. So, you know, it's not like we're out of cars, but, you know, to say that nobody's slowing down. I mean, if we didn't, you know, we are slowing down. We're just not running out of work. Instead of having, you know, 80 grand on the lot sold, we have 20 grand on the lot sold. You know what I mean?
00:52:25
Speaker
So yeah. Well, i'm I'm in a position where two of my shops are almost caught up. ah And yes i nervous was go jerky yeah, but one of my shops has $60,000 of sold work that we're trying to get pushed out. It's like
00:52:47
Speaker
Why can't I just, why can't everyone just have like 30,000 carrying over from week to week? That would be good. you know So anyway, I would love a 30,000 week. like you're I mean, you're going to be there. You're going to be 30,000 a week is going to be the average week for you. Especially when you know what you have to do. I mean, that's, that's huge knowing exactly what you have to do and having a plan, right? Plan, do check act, right? Is that how that goes? PDCA? Yeah. Plan, do check act.
00:53:18
Speaker
Yep. So you have a plan and now you're doing 10,000 per week per tech is a very reasonable number. If you're still counting yourself as a tech, a number will go down. I don't want to be, I think the way I see 2025 going, there's a possibility. I haven't talked to my service advisor now, but I have a feeling that she may be.
00:53:39
Speaker
better as a CSR ah primary and a backup advisor and then me being the advisor. so But the the problem I have right now, if I do that, I'm still in the business and I i kind of don't want to. but I mean, i maybe I'm wrong, but I feel as though I can sell ketchup popsicles, right? It happens. you know So it's like, I think that we can do that. But um when I'm trying to run the business at the same time, the estimates are still taking too long. And it's like, when he gets into the afternoon to sell the work, you're like, holy cow, this is a problem. you know So our first week, it's kind of hard to say with our first week with the other tech.
00:54:24
Speaker
so um But I feel as though my next hire may be an advisor and not a third technician. So. So who do you have? So the service writers building the estimates now, just walk me through this. Cause I'm, I'm, I'm thinking about, I've got this idea running through my head on something where we could be a little bit more efficient. And I think most of that idea at our shop is the technicians adding the parts and the labor. So.
00:54:56
Speaker
Here's – when I was a flat rate tech, I did my own estimates. um Labor – no, I did my own labor times. I did the own my own parts cost. Now, I never worked at an independent.
00:55:09
Speaker
um So it's a lot different at a dealership because you have a huge asset of people that can rely on to make things more efficient, right? But ah the shops that I worked at when I was a flat rate dealer tech, we did that part of it. And then they did the the numbers, they sold the work, everything went well. The way that we do it here, um and the way that I suggest most shops do it, because I know it works, is Whatever you have on the schedule for the day, those cars get pulled in in the morning. Ideally, I i want three cars per technician per day evaluated, DVI done before lunch.
00:55:50
Speaker
The work gets sold immediately as soon as we can. um My cutoff time for my my goal is 130 for my service advisor to update all the customers with estimates, right? um we weve We struggled to meet that, you know, I'm not going to lie. And then after that, we can we work on the work that can be done that day from the stuff that's being sold. um If we have carryover work from the from the day before,
00:56:19
Speaker
ah That does not get priority necessarily over top of the stuff that's here for that day. um It's a balancing act. It's not black and white. It is definitely shades of gray. Occasionally I'll have my technician actually do work first thing in the morning at eight o'clock.
00:56:36
Speaker
um If that's the case, then I'll go out in the shop and I'll start to do some evaluations and you know diagnostic work or whatever the case may be. like I view myself as the grease of the shop. like I just want to keep things moving nice and easy. There's some balancing act to that. like I really like your approach where you have a strong diagnostician.
00:56:57
Speaker
and then you have the guys hanging parts right and you have to look at the shop foreman is usually going to be your diagnostician and you have to balance out his pay is like you can't really say that his technician pays. So if you look at like your labor GP, you have some leeway on inverting some of his into admin stuff. you know and So it's like, I really like that if I have the right setup, but- Yeah. My goal is to not having one of our techs dying on a job, whether it's whether it's a bolt broke off, whether it's a diagnostic, whether it's, you know, they can't, I've but i've had guys not be able to pry a ah coil spring into place. And I say, leave that there, go up front, grab another one, and I'll just, I'll just finish it. You know what I mean? That's my goal. My goal is to not have our guys dying on a job. And whether that's diagnostic or whether it's mechanical or whether it's something on sideways, a bolt stuck or a hole needs to be tapped or, or you name it, like that's the goal, you know? And that that's kind of how we run.
00:58:03
Speaker
I think that's a really good way to do it. I mean, you know, on your, I don't know how big your three shops are like individually, right? That might be a 47 technicians. Not true. They might scale where he has pretty large three shops, you know, like might be a little bit more of a challenge where you might actually need two of those people to do it. Not just one, right? We have, we have one for mechanical stuff in each building. I've got, I've got a guy,
00:58:31
Speaker
that can get a bolt unstuck or just make something happen mechanically in every building. um the The same guy, um they there they're not what I would, I wouldn't call them weak diagnostic wise, I'd say they're probably average diagnostic wise in the other two buildings and ah they can they can be the guy over there that handles that and Um, you know, we got, we got one guy in each building that does that kind of, um, and it works pretty good.
Future Plans and Closing Remarks
00:58:59
Speaker
So, so to go back to your question about like trying to look at processes and make things work. If you get off the covered wagon, right. And join the bandwagon, you know, and get one of these other systems, right.
00:59:11
Speaker
My service advisor, shes as soon as the car comes in, she's looking at the car facts for maintenance history and we start um estimating immediately when the car is here. So she's building estimates before the car is even pulled in the shop. And that's the part that I'm trying to streamline because that that takes too long, right? and you can go to a I have something I want to add to that. So um not a sponsor of the podcast. They probably should be. I'll i'll talk to them about that. Detect Auto is an integration with Tech Metric right now. And it's a one button click. And it searches Carfax service history and your local service ah internal service history of that vehicle. And you can set up what your standards are for maintenance and intervals and
01:00:04
Speaker
you We want to do a transmission service every 50,000 miles on these vehicles. right so It'll check Carfax and your service history for that, and then it will give you a list of the the shit that you don't have service history done. In one click, you can add all that to the estimate. It's pretty fucking slick. it, and maybe it works better for tech metric.
01:00:25
Speaker
um It did not work well for us at the time that we used it. Now it was pretty darn new. So, you know, we basically opted out after like a month. Was it detect auto you were using? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I don't want to like bridges with detect auto sponsorship in like the next couple of months, but no, it's because you're using an antiquated software. Guaranteed. You're using, you've gone from the covered wagon and now you have a horseless carriage.
01:00:55
Speaker
That's cool. That's cool. So ah the service advisor, like she knows that she's doing his other things. And then with, I don't know how well Mitchell can do this, right? But we're able to go into the ticket. cannot It's terrible.
01:01:09
Speaker
So she's able to to look at, like our art technicians, I said, I want you to do the DVI first, right? So the DVI gets completed, anything that's marked amber or red on shop where we're already building an estimates. Amber, that's nice. Yeah, so then, um so we're doing that while the technician is still, we're looking at the car, so we're building estimates. So that really helps a lot to be able to like get data information started and then be able to present the customer after their evaluation of their concern is completed.
01:01:38
Speaker
And then, of course, we go through the you know the process with them. um We're working on some better ways to do it, ah whether or not we want to show prices you know when we you send it all over. But we have a really good discovery conversation like, hey, know we're this is how we do things that's a little bit different than other shops. You're going to get a list of things that are wrong with your car. And the I tell them straight up,
01:02:01
Speaker
The goal is to not sell you all of this stuff. We just want you to be aware of it so you can make the most educated decision on you know repairs and maintenance. It never fails. like The last one we did was $12,000 worth of work on an 04 Highlander. and it's like you know They bought a catalytic converter and four tires.
01:02:20
Speaker
and we we actually call them to make sure they wanted to buy the tires because there is a bunch of other things that were in the priority list that were above it. They said, nope, it's what we want. I said, okay, you know we're good. ah We did our job. They understand what where they're at and um and I'm okay with it. Now, if it's something crazy, I'm gonna like i'm not saying I'm going to deny it, but there's a chance that I will deny to do some other work. It's on the bottom of the list.
01:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, if it would have you liable for something. Yeah, so for sure. For sure. like That really helps when you have a ah system um that they can pull stuff in and start doing estimating while they're still looking at the car. You know, and that's a pretty big increase on that so like i don't know how you do things the cars don't sit in the base right now they they i have the ability to do so because i have approximately two lifts per tech um so that does help some but if you look at the numbers game you know some shops would be like well two lifts per tech You can get 55 or 60 hours a week out of that one guy, whereas if you put a tech on each bay, you can get 40 hours out of each and it makes you more money. It's like, yeah, but then I have more techs, more like liability. I have to definitely get more advisors. And it's like I have a toolbox storage problem because the bays aren't built correctly. And it's like there's a lot of moving pieces of that. And I'm comfortable. I'm not in it to make the absolute most money that I can make. That's not what I'm trying to do here.
01:03:46
Speaker
And, you know, it's like, this is, I'm okay. That's where he lost me. Yeah. You know, and I, I estimate the yellow or the amber, you know, and I know that oh we'll do that. With the covered wagon, we call it yeller. Yeller. you other So it's like, we're allowed to have differences of way to run the business. I know you're 10%. I still consider you both, you guys, my friends, I guess, even though Mike doesn't do it right.
01:04:14
Speaker
Uh, Brian less so ah he's less of a friend and more of an associate. i really and it's so shit Hey, all right. So here's the reality. I got to go cook dinner for my kids. It's a breakfast for dinner night and I got to make scrambled eggs because nobody else in the family makes scrambled eggs. Like I do. Do you use milk and cheese in there too? ah and ah I just spit in a little bit. That is freaking gross as shit. Like.
01:04:42
Speaker
Good night. ah but This has been really fun, Josh. I knew it would be because you're always fun to talk to. Absolutely. I'm excited to see your growth over the next year. I think um yeah i don't think it's going to be a $2.3 million 2025, but I think you're going to take a huge jump from where 2024 was.
01:05:04
Speaker
Uh, and that's going to be awesome to watch and, and kind of, uh, live vicariously through you as you do that. You don't know, man, if he hired, if that man, if that a tech, he hired, if that's the right guy, sometimes, sometimes you get the right person that's feeling it. And that's the secret sauce, you know, you need like three right persons in a shop and it can be a dynamite operation. Right. Yeah. I think.
01:05:31
Speaker
from what I can see right now, like Lucas warned me. Oh man, I tell you about the honeymoon phase. It's like, yeah, I had of the hires that I got the honeymoon phase turned into like an Adam Sandler movie where it was like, it was the train wreck. And you know, it's like that's, there's truth to that. Um, I hired this guy basically in his reputation. We did not have, you cannot start a new story. I have to cook dinner.
01:05:54
Speaker
All right. your He has to spit the eggs. Yeah. Oh my God. Josh, this is awesome. Can we do it again? Like six months and get an update? Yeah. Why don't we do it after dinner though? Or when it's not my night to cook.
01:06:13
Speaker
Okay, is that the deal? We're doing chocolate chip pancakes, maple bacon, and scrambled eggs. Spitty eggs. All right, I'll see you guys later. Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out. The good, and the bad, and sometimes the super messed up. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes, so why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink.
01:06:39
Speaker
You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover, or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email Mike at confessions of a shop owner dot com or call and leave a message. The number is 704 confess. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode.