Bonus Episode - Emily Oliver On Keeping It in the Family While Facing Challenges and Growth at a Small Auto Shop

0:00For years, the automotive industry has been plagued with the perception of shady business practices, greedy owners, and incompetent technicians. It's time we flip the script. Good clap, David. I'm very proud of you. I don't know if you know this, but this is not a standard podcast, David. We started this podcast in order to bring everyone together to have the tough conversations everyone's been avoiding.

0:31Instead of endless complaining and pointing out the problems, we seek to get everything out in the open and look for real solutions. To do that, we bring on industry experts, vendors that are changing the game, multi-million dollar shop owners, as well as those that are struggling every single day to pay the bills, and everything in between. We're not professional podcasters pretending to know how it is.

0:56We're in the trenches every single day trying to pay the bills and hopefully achieving some success. So if you're tired of overly polished scripted conversations, it's time to tune in to the Changing the Industry podcast. Lucas and I are proud to partner with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence as a means to help shops, whether they're getting off the ground, hiring their first technician, or looking to pass along their business to a new generation.

1:29So jump down to the show notes and check the link in the description, which will take you to their events page. The Institute is committed to bringing world-class training to shops all over the country, including their Leadership Intensive, their MARS Intensive, and the Service Advisor 3-Day Intensive. Some of these events take place all over the country, so jump down to the show notes, click the link, find an event near you, and experience world-class training unlike anything else you've seen.

2:03And now on to the episode. So that's where we're headed. I'm all for it. Bet. Emily, introduce yourself. How are you this morning? I am good. My name is Emily Oliver, uh, I own a shop with my husband in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Um, it's a small 2-man, 2-mechanic shop. Me, my husband, his father, and we got one other guy. Very cool, very cool.

2:28How did y'all get into automotive? Is it— no, hold on, hold on. Where's the accent? It's coming. It's got to come naturally. Okay, you said Gloucester. Yeah, we're, we're a little bit north of Boston, so It'll come. The accent's all the way into Maine. Have you heard these people from Maine? Gloucester. There you go. There you go. Ruining things here. It's a Gloucester.

2:57Gloucester. Yep. Um, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, she was trying to be professional is what was happening. She was like, I'm going to keep this professional. I'm not going to get— I'm going to get the old accent out. Listen, kid. Listen, kid. Not gonna get the accent out. It's gonna be wicked bad later. Okay, wicked bad. It's gonna be wicked bad later. Wicked bad.

3:18I swear to God, I'm gonna quit. I'm just gonna leave. Y'all just go ahead and do your thing. Okay, coming from the guy that says y'all. So yeah, okay. Deep South. Deep South. All right. Yeah, it'd be like getting on up against here. No, I'm just saying, like, you— like, it wouldn't be the same if we didn't get a y'all or Appalachia or whatever the hell it is.

3:38Like, We need all of that. Where is Appalachia? I don't know. It's the Appalachian Mountains, honey. No way. These people come in here and they're like, it's Appalachia, it's Appalachian. What the fuck are you talking about? My husband and I drove to— we drove to Tennessee one time and we're in a gas station. He's like, can you understand anything that anybody is saying?

4:03And I was like, no. They were so sweet. This Oh, it was great. So Scott Palava, who was one of the, the, the guy who actually started the ASOG group, right? He, um, he was on the phone with me one time and RD that works for us is talking in the background and I was talking back and forth with RD and he said, y'all just had a conversation and I didn't understand a single word out of the entire conversation.

4:30He's like, I heard some of what you said, but I couldn't understand anything that dude said. And I'm like, To me, it sounds like plain English. So I mean, I guess I get it, right? Like, so we talk wicked fast up here. And when I was doing like a work from home job, I'd have to call places all across the country. And when I call somebody in the South, I'd have to be like, hi, my name is Emily.

4:54And when I called the hospital in Boston, I said like, my name is Emily, I'm calling from such and such company, I need this information. And it was just such a relief to talk normal. You've offended half the listener base at this point. I'm not doing anything wrong. Look, I wish we could slow things down up here. That's not my choice. It freaks people out from the Northeast when they leave the Northeast and they go to normal parts of the country where people aren't going 110 miles an hour for everything.

5:24And they're like, everything's so slow here. It's like, yeah, like we used to go to truck shows in Pennsylvania. You go to the grocery store and you just have to like slow down because the people in front of you are moving slowly. I mean, it's— it applies to everything. Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. And, and look, I think that we just enjoy the finer things in life, especially in the South, right?

5:47As you should, as you should. It's fast-paced up here. It is, it is. So tell us, how did you guys get into automotive? What's the story? What's the Yeah, so it's an interesting one. So my husband and his father have been doing this since the early '90s. They opened up their own shop, J&B Auto. In the early 2000s, they fell upon some hard times and they had a longtime customer that bought the shop and he was essentially a silent owner.

6:16He handled the business, the finances, but the day-to-day, the shop stuff was run as my husband and his father always have. My husband has always been a mechanic. He's never talked to customers. He's never dealt with people. He's never done the business side of it. So in 2022, the owner of the shop was like, hey, I don't want to do this anymore.

6:38I'm going to either shut the doors or you can buy it. So that's when my husband found himself having to talk to people, make decisions, and learn the business side of it. Um, well, being his wife, uh, that meant that I also had to make decisions, talk to people, and learn the business side of it. And I'm a veterinary technician. I am— I can barely drive my car down the road without hitting something.

7:04I am not the person you want to be fixing your car. Um, that's the typical New England driver, just so you know. Yeah, it's bumper cars up there. We go fast, what can I say? Fortunately, when we took the shop over, it was successful, profitable. We were able to keep things running the same, but I knew that we had a long ways to go.

7:26I knew that we were a little bit behind the times, what we were charging, what we were paying employees. That was not exactly aligned with the times. I found myself trying to learn how to do QuickBooks and learn KPIs and benchmarks and try to figure out what is profitable. Um, so for the first year, year and a half, we just kind of did good, um, just tried to stay afloat.

7:54But I wanted to learn more. I wanted to know what am I looking for, where should we be going, and how should we be getting there. And that was a huge struggle because I didn't know where to look. Um, so I was fortunate enough to come across the ASOG group, Changing the Industry. I found the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence, Shop Fix Academy.

8:16I just, I dove headfirst into all of that. Um, and I was, yeah, it was like finding the jackpot when I found all of this information. Um, and I love to learn, so I learned as much as I could. And there is no one-size-fits-all, as we all know. And we do things a little bit differently here. We charge hourly for our jobs.

8:37We pay our employees hourly. So not everything that I was finding in the automotive world could apply to us, but I was able to take some of those concepts and apply it to us and make some changes here. That's— sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say it's been a little bit hard because my husband and his father have been doing this forever and I'm kind of the odd man out.

9:01I don't know anything about cars. I don't know anything about business. So, um, when you say you charge— Shopware is the modern cloud-based shop management system that keeps your repair shop organized, profitable, and calm even when you're slammed with work and the phones won't stop ringing. With built-in DVIs, real-time customer communication, and seamless parts ordering directly from your approved estimate, your team spends less time chasing paperwork and more time turning bays.

9:27Shopware also gives you powerful reporting and analytics showing you exactly where your shop is winning and where to improve, so every technician hour and every part sold counts. Now here's a special offer just for our listeners. For a limited time, you can get your first month of Shopware free plus a complimentary onboarding session when you sign up using the link in the show notes or mentioning this podcast.

9:50So quit procrastinating, listen, it's free, there's no risk to you, and get Shopware today, making this summer your most profitable summer yet. Hourly What does, what does that mean? So the minute your car comes in the shop, whether we are diagnosing, fixing, test driving, we charge you for the time that it takes. Um, we do make adjustments, um, you know, if we break apart, you know, something happens and it's our fault, we do make adjustments for that.

10:20But we— it's, it's wicked rusty here, so, you know, we're dealing with a lot of rusty bolts, we're dealing with seized parts. We also do a lot of, um, custom work. We'll sometimes do exhaust, we'll sometimes do— we'll do lift kits, we've done four-wheel drive conversions, we do a lot of plow work, and there's not usually book time available for that stuff.

10:41So, um, we have— this was part of what the last owner did, and he found that it was a successful way to do it, um, and we have pretty much maintained that since. That's, that's really cool because I think that's something that I wish the industry would go to, is because like You know, we're not working on cars that book time necessarily applies to.

11:01Right. And so like we can use it for estimating and we can add buffers and put things on top of it. But, but it's not a, it's not like the law. It's not what we have to charge. Right. And so it, it's wholly irrelevant in a lot of cases, especially here. Right. Because we deal with a lot of rust too. And, you know, some demographics have much older cars and you take something apart and put it back together 10 times.

11:24Guess what? The 11th time it is not gonna go the way you expect it to, right? Like it's worn out. Right. And so I, I think that that's something that our industry needs to move to. Um, so tell me a little bit about how do you, like, tell me about the process of doing that because that's something that I think a lot of shops struggle with because, you know, for me, I like go look up the book time and I add a specific multiplier to it and I add the time that I need to make things do what they're supposed to do.

11:49Yeah. What are you guys doing to be able to say, how am I gonna track this? How do I make sure that I get the right time on the ticket? How does that work? Yeah. So the labor multiplier thing amongst my diving into all this information, I came across that recently and I looked and I was like, this is too complicated. I want straightforward, I want easy to explain to customers.

12:11So we have a very simple system. We're probably a little bit different. Our service writer, he's the one that's ordering parts, he's the one that's dealing with all the computer stuff. Um, so there's a time clock in his office and each job gets a time card. And when you start working on that vehicle, either himself or the mechanic will punch in, and when you stop working on it, you punch out.

12:37And so we add up that time and that is what gets billed to the customer. Gotcha. That's pretty interesting. And so like, they're, they're good at clocking on and off at that? Yep. So it's, it's oftentimes it ends up being our service writer because you know, they come to get the keys from him, so he just punches them in and out. Uh, sometimes, like, if they're working late and our service writer has gone home, they just punch out for that.

13:01Um, we have talked about getting, like, time clocks for each of their toolboxes. Um, you know, so we've kind of explored different options with that, but that seems to be the most straightforward and simple way to do it. So when we've done it Right. Because we have jobs that we have to do that with. We have them clock in in Shopware. And so they clock in and then I've got a running track of that.

13:25And that's one of our hardest things to get accountability and buy-in on is clocking in and out because I get busy and I'm a fixer. Right. And so if I'm fixing things, I go to that car and I'm head down and all I can think about is solving that problem, working through that situation. Figuring out what's going on, right? I've become enamored with the problem.

13:47And so if you ask me to like, hey, I'm going to go take a lunch break and clock out, all I'm focused on is that problem. Okay, I'm going to go get me some food. I'm going to come back. But I'm thinking about the car. And so I don't ever think about— and it may just be the ADHD brain, right? I'm not thinking about the clock in and clock out process.

14:05So I think that's probably the biggest challenge. And if, you know, because BayIQ, which was something that, uh, Chris from AutoFlow had looked into or was working on at one point, would like track the technician in the bay. Not so much to be like, are you working? Are you not working? That kind of thing. It was like, hey, this car's in the bay and I see he's working on that car.

14:27He's at his computer or whatever it is. I know how long he's been in there and it can track and, and accumulate that data. And so things like that, and I think that has the potential to change the face of our industry if we move in that direction. And I think, you know, because that's one thing that I hear shops talk about all the time is, hey, book hour was 4 hours, my guy did an hour, they pulled the car out, they really upset the client because, you know, we don't talk about hours to clients, we talk about the cost of a repaired car.

14:56But, you know, if, if a shop is sharing hours and things of that nature, I can see how that can become problematic. Um, and, and again, I don't dis— I don't agree with, with sharing hours. I think you talk about the total price to fix the car. Um, but it just makes me curious if a piece of software like that with AI could improve our industry in a sense that we could create more transparency in some sense and bill what we need to bill for those jobs.

15:24Yeah. And so I have looked like I am the youngest person here, you know, I'm dealing with my father-in-law who's very good at what he does, but just given his generation, our generation differences, we think very differently. Yeah. Um, so we recently switched to software so we could get with the 21st century, and I've explored those options, but I try to think about what's gonna work, you know?

15:49Like, I know that our mechanics, they're not gonna be thinking to go to their computer or tablet punch in and out of a job. You know, it's going to be easier they just take that time clock off the wall and throw it in the time machine. Um, same thing with my— with our service writer. You know, he, he's on the computer, he's got it all there, but those extra steps are going to be a hindrance.

16:08So I've explored those options. I've yet to find a, uh, you know, more streamlined way to do it. I think just keeping it simple has worked best for us, but, um, we are always Yeah, we're always trying to think about, you know, that's why I said maybe we should put time clocks on, on your toolboxes so that they're right there in front of you.

16:28Um, because the ADHD thing, know all about that, you know, you need it right in front of you and you need it to be simple for sure. I've explored some time clocks a while back that you had a card, right? And you had a time, like just a plastic, like RFID card. And when you were, you know, working on a car, you would stick it into the time clock or you would set it next to the time clock and it detect it was there.

16:50So you would just know like, hey, when I start working on this car, I set this card over here and it does its thing. And our other business uses geofencing. So you can turn on geofencing if you want that person to be clocked in, they have to be within this space to be clocked in. And so those are interesting ways to look at that.

17:06Now, you said you kind of took this business over, your husband took it over from the guy who owned it, bought it. Tell me a little bit about how you guys purchased the shop. Um, so we were lucky to get it at a very good price. Um, so we did an SBA loan through a local bank, um, and that was a pretty straightforward thing.

17:28Um, we— and it included all the equipment and everything, you know, we didn't really have to make any major investments. Uh, it's been 4, 4 and a half years. We haven't had to really, you know, make anything major yet, just kind of more optional stuff or upgrades when we need to. Um, but going with a local bank would definitely work out in our favor.

17:49Um, because they also, they were the ones who did business with the previous owner. So they saw what the business could do. They knew what we were getting into. So they, the only thing they had to trust was that we could keep it afloat. Did, did the relationship with the previous owner help in the purchase? Was that, was that a component of what made it easy to navigate this and the deal, the price that you got?

18:12Yeah, definitely. Because knowing him and being comfortable with him and saying, hey, we're waiting for the lawyers, but this is— we're moving forward. He was very understanding of it. He knew the bank. He knows how this process works. So he was very good to work with in that sense. That definitely made a huge difference. And that made it easier for us because we had no idea what we were doing.

18:36And he kind of helped us along the way when we had questions for him. Why did he want to sell it? I know you said he said he was done with it. So he was, he was a plumber and he was kind of reaching retirement age, and so he was just kind of winding down in life and just didn't want that responsibility anymore.

18:53Got it. Okay, so I'm curious how you're— when you're, when you're charging the customer, you're telling the customer, hey, we're going to do this wheel bearing on the front of a Liberty. Those things are just giant balls of rust right here in Kansas, so I can't imagine the Northeast. How do you actually quote or estimate the repair? Because you don't know how long it's going to take.

19:16The book time may say 3 hours, but like that— so that's, that's honestly what we start with. We say, you know, this is what it in theory should take for us to do it, give them a quote for, and say it's going to start there. And say, you know, if they express concerns for cost or if they have a limit, we try to work with them from there.

19:36But, um, that's kind of one thing, one reason we switched to Shopware was to get better at communicating with clients the estimates for their vehicles. A lot of people that come to us know that we're doing big jobs, we're doing engines, we're doing, um, you know, all these odds and ends things that nobody else wants to do in our town, so they send it to us.

19:56So they know they're in for usually a pretty big bill when in those situations, and we just do the best we can and just make it clear that this is an estimate and we don't know what we're going to find, um, and then try to go from there. And that's where— have you inspected the vehicle before you do the estimate? Depends. It depends on what they're coming in for.

20:17It also kind of depends on who the client is because we have some clients who come in and they're like, please just fix my car, take my credit card. You know, their business vehicles, they need them. And then we have the people who are very conscious about money. And so sometimes, yeah, we do— we will inspect them beforehand and then let them know.

20:33Um, but sometimes they say before they even drop their car off, they say, what am I in for? You know, and we try to not do those ones, but sometimes you're put in that position. So I would be very careful about being open about that price in that case. Right? Yeah. And it never, it never occurred to me until my first business coach, when I was talking with him, he said, you can't give them a price over the phone.

20:58And I said, why can't you give them a price over the phone? He said, because you're lying to them. And I'm like, what do you mean? I'm not lying to them. I'm just telling them the price that is. He said, right. But until you see that car, you don't know that that's the price. Right. He said, it doesn't make two craps if you say to them, oh, this is an estimate and it may change, it may be different.

21:15He said, you already gave them that price. Yeah, they've got that thing spent that much in their head. Yeah, he said you're not getting around. And he said, so you just don't give a price over the phone. And so we got in the habit of telling folks when they'd call and they'd ask for an estimate, man, I would love to tell you that, but let me tell you right now, I have been doing this for over 20 years at this point, and the number of times that I've given somebody an estimate over the phone and then the car get here and me have to change it, and, and it caused problems and it caused hurt

21:41feelings when that's the last thing that I want to do is unbelievable. And so I just stopped doing it because it's not fair to you and it's not fair to me and it's not fair to my staff. I'm sorry, I'm just not gonna do it. Yeah. And they, you know, the, the thing is, is they can't accept that answer. Is that somebody I want in my shop anyway?

21:57No, probably not. No. You know, no. And so like that. But at the same time, it's all the way you present it too, because if you tell them like, hey, let me just put Because there's no obligation. Like, I'm not going to charge you for the inspection, but we just need to put our eyeballs on it. So just we're all on the same page because I don't want to give you a price and then have you come in and it ends up being twice as much or 3 times as much because there's some variable that we just can't take into account because I haven't seen the vehicle.

22:23I've never seen this vehicle. The other thing too is like, I, I try to systemize everything. Like, how do I break this into a system that I can then teach to somebody else that then they can do Because if it's like, well, if the answer is it depends, it's like, okay, we're playing it by ear then, which internally for you, it just makes sense because you're just doing it intuitively.

22:45But if you then try to bring somebody in to replace you because you want to be there anymore and you're like, well, it just depends. That's not an answer that they can, they can work on or around because it's just that their intuition is going to be different from your intuition. Hey y'all, Lucas here. It's story time. Over the past 6 months to a year, I've actually been working more and more in the family business.

23:07Now, the family business is not an automotive business, it's a tourist attraction. And one of the things that was happening in that family business is we were doing all of the marketing internally, be it social media ads, be it Google, all of it. We were handling all of it— website building, the whole 9 yards. And here's the deal: it became very clear our marketing efforts were ineffective.

23:27Now, we could see that we weren't getting return on investment, we could see that we weren't getting good conversions, and that's when we stepped in and hired someone. We hired a professional that knew what they were doing, and for the first time in years our parking lot's full when it's typically empty. And that's why I'm going to recommend you pick up the phone today and call Shop Marketing Pros or click the link down in the comments below, because you shouldn't be learning how to do marketing.

23:49Your marketing machine should be working for you right here, right now, making sure your bays are full. So go into the link in the comments and click on the Shop Marketing Pros link for your free marketing analysis today. So then like, how do you break it down and systemize the process In a manner that you can then teach to somebody else that, hey, these are the rules we follow.

24:11This is step 1, this is step 2, this is step 3, this is step 4. And Shopware, at least, like when I'm estimating, when I was doing estimating, uh, in Shopware, I would just go back to the last job for that particular year, make a model and look and see, hey, what did I charge? Because a perfect example just in my head is the oil pump slash timing belt water pump job on a V6 Honda.

24:42Those oil pump O-rings, they leak. And so it looks like a timing cover seal that's leaking. It's not, it's the oil pump seals that are. So you got to take the whole oil pump off. So that, that whole repair requires a bunch of little parts. That if I don't know what I'm doing, if I've never done it before, I'm, I'm not going to quote accurately.

25:03I'm going to miss something in there because there's like some silicone that you need to have in there as well. It's going to be Honda Bond. You have to have so many O-rings. You got to have a little VTEC thing. Then you have to have the timing belt and the tensioner. And the tensioner doesn't come in the kits. You got to buy the tensioner separate, but it has to be an NTN tensioner because otherwise the stupid thing doesn't work.

25:22And then yada, yada, and so on and so forth. Okay. So I have all these little variables. Well, if I'm teaching that to somebody, there's all these like little nuances that they're not going to know that I've just been screwed on so many times that I know I've got to have all these things on there where like the systemized version is, hey, when you go to do this ticket, well, you can just turn it into a canned job, which is what we ended up doing.

25:44But like when you go to do this ticket, look at the last job that we did. Look at all of the parts on there. Just dump it over and just make sure the part numbers are correct. Super quick and easy. I wonder if there's some way that you could do that within Shopware Go. Hey, whatever, um, hub, uh, wheel bearing on a, on the back of a Subaru.

26:07Like those are absolute nightmares. Just any kind of rust turns it into a 10-hour job or whatever. You could see, hey, the last one we got in was a 2007 rear hub. These are the parts that we needed. We needed all these bolts, we needed this control arm, and it ended up being 6.2 hours. So then you can then say, hey, the estimate is this much.

26:31Now you can end up coming under— it wasn't as rusty as what we thought, we were able to save you some money— or that's just the price of the job. Because I, I think that's where they're In, in my mind, you're gonna end up screwing yourself. Just in my mind. Now, I may be wrong, but in my mind, I'm looking at it going, I've got 2 technicians that have been doing it for 20-plus years, right?

26:54They know what they're doing. They know like what they need to heat up, what they don't need to heat up. They know what bolt to break off. I need to cut this, but this one I can heat and extract. Like, they know. And so they're going to do that job so much more efficiently than when it's time to replace your father-in-law You're going to bring in this technician who's not going to know all these nuances, and all of a sudden that same job that was $1,100 for your father-in-law, because this guy doesn't know what the hell he's doing, turns into a $2,000 job.

27:27And then the customer's looking at me going, why is this $2,000 and not $1,100? I've brought it here, it's always been $1,100. And you know, you can say, well, inflation to a certain degree, but not double. And it's like, oh, well, it's because he took twice as long. It's like, okay, you're penalizing the customer for not knowing what the— or the job should just be $2,000 regardless of the fact that the father-in-law can do it in much less time because he knows what he's doing.

27:55You see what I'm saying? You're almost penalizing yourself for their knowledge and experience, and you're not thinking about the replacement guy. That brings up something really interesting. I think that's a really great point because right now it's family, right? And so if they need more money, they say, hey, we need to put more money on my paycheck. And we say, okay, we're gonna raise your paycheck.

28:16And that means we have to raise our rates. And that just is what it is. But if you grow into more production, you grow into hiring people, well now all of a sudden that becomes problematic, right? Because it's either the tech taking a screwing or it's the customer. And it's like, well, now all of a sudden I have to figure out how to balance this out.

28:35Oh, he's taking too long. Okay. Well, but I mean, maybe it's a hard job and he doesn't have experience with it. Well, he has to learn somehow. I can't just not give him that job because he does have to learn it eventually. So like, it, it comes down to like breaking parts. Well, I eat those broken parts because I have to let him learn.

28:55That's cost of doing business. That's the self-insurance that we put on every single job. But it does after a time become problematic. And so right now it's like, I know I can trust my father-in-law. I know I can trust my husband. But if we ever got to a point that one of them couldn't work, does this model work anymore? Have you considered that?

29:15Yeah. So we do have one guy who is not family. And so he's great. He does a lot of good work, but there are certain things, you know, just like everybody, it's his first time doing it. And so, um, You know, in keeping track of the time it actually takes to do it, there was— we had something recently and it ended up— he ended up making a mistake.

29:38He had to go in, redo it, something to do with the timing chain. Again, I can barely drive my own car. So we kind of make notes on that. We make adjustments to the hours in the bill accordingly. You know, like at what point did he finish that job before he realized there was a mistake made. Um, so we do take that into consideration, and that is definitely like— our system isn't perfect.

30:02Um, it's— but it's definitely something that we consider and try to constantly assess to make sure we're doing the right thing. You know, I'll tell you this, after years of running a shop, I've learned that I watch for patterns. I'm not necessarily looking for the, the singular event. And so I watch for patterns and I know the particular technicians, like I'll never forget, I was talking about a crew that we still have some of that crew here now, but we had certain staff members.

30:34And when the manager came on, I said, now this one, if he tells you it's going to be 4 hours, you can guarantee it's going to be 10. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It's going to be 10. It's going to be a fight the whole way. If give him this kind of job, he's not going to want to do that.

30:48He's going to complain about that. And this one over here, if he tells you 4 hours, he's going to have it done in 2. It's going to be right. You're not going to have to worry about it. But he only wants to do this kind of job. And so I began to see patterns, and I hadn't even realized that until I vocalized it to that manager.

31:04Hey, there's a pattern here. And so it's like this guy over here, he would, he would take 10 hours to do a 4-hour job all day long. And if If you aren't careful and if you aren't aware of those patterns, then all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, how much time is this going to take you? Well, it'll take me 4 hours.

31:21Well, we write a ticket for 4 hours, we write an estimate for 4 hours, and then we're 10 hours into it. Now that's a really odd feeling. Like how, Mr. Client, by the way, this is a little more expensive than we thought. So I think that it takes a very special balance. Right. And I just, I worry that moving forward that it may become complex if you need to grow.

31:45If father-in-law says, hey, it's time for me to retire. If husband says, hey, I don't want to turn wrenches anymore. The business has grown to the point that, that I can't be in the bays every day and be as supportive as I need to be for you. Um, and so I think that that's something to consider what model works. If that shift happens.

32:05Yeah. And, and how can I move to that? You know, you also mentioned, um, the evaluation of the vehicles when they come in. Like, hey, are we evaluating vehicles? I, I'll tell you this, I stopped a long time ago evaluating vehicles trying to sell service. Does it sell service? Yeah, it sells service. But I started evaluating vehicles because I got so tired of these jackasses coming into my shop saying, ever since you worked on my car, my tail lights No, it was like that before.

32:33And I'll never forget, I tell people all the time, I will never forget this. When I first started doing them, this lady came in, she said, Lucas, I don't want you to look at anything else on my vehicle. I just want you to do this. I don't want you to tell me if anything's wrong with it. And I said, yes, ma'am. And I went out there and I fixed that car and it needed a rear differential.

32:53And I was like, I'm looking at it and, and I'm, I'm telling you, First gear, fine. Second gear slips like crazy. Third gear slips like crazy. Hits overdrive and it locks back up and it goes, right? And, and I said, well, she said not to tell her anything about it. And then she comes back 2 weeks later and she said the transmission came out of my car.

33:13And I said, yeah, I noticed there was something wrong with it. She said, you noticed? You didn't tell me. I never would have spent that money on it if you'd have told me that. And I said, well, right here on the ticket it says this. She said, yeah, but I didn't mean like that. I just didn't want one of those lists of all the things that was wrong with the car.

33:33So we have that— this problem all the time, and we work on older cars. Yeah, they're not meant to last forever. You're going— you're gonna, you know, do one thing, you're gonna find another. And so, um, when we first took over the shop I didn't even know about vehicle inspections. That was like not even on my mind. And then as I learned about them, I was like, oh my gosh, guys, we gotta start doing this.

33:59We gotta take pictures, we have to do that. And they're like, we've never done that and we've been fine for 30+ years. And I come from a background like cover your ass, like, you know, take those steps now to prevent that horror show later. And I'm also, I'm the odd man out here. I'm not the mechanic in the family, you know? So to try to convince my husband about these things, these changes is hard because he's done this for years and he's never had this problem.

34:25But I look at it as like a what-if situation. Um, so trying to get, you know, just do an inspection, you know, I bring up all these situations that happen. I'm like, hey, if you took a picture of this beforehand, or if you just documented it somewhere, we wouldn't have to be dealing with this right now. And so these are some things that are kind of slowly, they're coming around to, and I think that they're understanding the value of it and I mean, we get to the point where we take a picture, we put a note of how we discussed it with the customer, and then we attach the phone call of the customer acknowledging

35:00that we told them onto Shopware. So then, and every time we do that, no problems. The customer doesn't, and we tell them, hey, just so you know, we record every phone call. We're going to attach this to the ticket just so everybody's on the same page. And they go, okay. Guess what? No issues. And the one time we don't do it, or the one time we didn't take a picture, or the one time— I just, I just, I just had this happen.

35:24And I don't know why we never get away with it. It pisses me off because we never get away with it. Customer comes in, tail lights are like going crazy. Like they're not— they work sometimes, sometimes they don't work. So what the customer's saying, and then the suspension light is on. It's a Tahoe. Suspension lights on. Okay, fine. Vehicle has a lift kit.

35:46They didn't do a proper lift kit with the little resistors in there to turn the light off. They didn't do any of that. And the tail lights were all working perfectly fine. So we tell the customer, hey, you've got some concerns. Here's the list of issues that's going on with vehicles. We couldn't duplicate the problem with the tail lights. In order to fix the, uh, the suspension lights, we're gonna have to put this, this kit in there.

36:09You know, this is part of the suspension kit. And he's like, well, I don't want to mess with that. Don't, don't bother with the suspension kit. I, I understand about the headlights. Go ahead and do this other work. He ends up spending like $1,100 with us. Great, fantastic. He leaves. We call, do the follow-up phone call. Guess what he tells the follow-up phone call?

36:30I spent $1,100. It didn't address any of the problems that I brought the vehicle in. I can see David unraveling. And so tail lights are still not working. Suspension lights still on. Okay, fine. Car vehicle comes back in and I tell my shop manager, it's like, hey, whatever you do with the vehicle, we're going to have to eat it. In his mind, he spent $1,100 to fix it.

36:56Did you take pictures? Did you acknowledge? Did you put the phone call? Did you list out the acknowledgement that, hey, this isn't going to fix any of your original concerns? These are separate problems. No, I had that conversation, but I didn't note it on the ticket. Guess what? We're eating all of it now. So now we're fixing the tail lights. And again, we had to go back and go, hey, remember the kit?

37:17You didn't buy the kit. If you don't buy the kit, we can't put it in. You got to bring the kit in. And he's like, nah, don't mess with it. We ended up fixing the tail lights. I think we put bulbs in there or some nonsense like that. But it's every time. If you don't make a fix, like it's not even just like, hey, Uh, told customer about XYZ.

37:35No, no, no, that's not enough. It's like, if you— very detailed notes, and then the flipping phone call. Yeah, the phone call has to be on there too, of them going, uh-huh, I understand. It's like, okay, great, just put that in a loop. Oh, I understand. I would not operate a shop that did not record telephone calls. I wouldn't do it. You couldn't.

37:56And see, like, here's the difference in experience that people are having right now, Emily. Is that it's you guys, right? So y'all are on the front and A, it's like, okay, well, if a customer's upset, I had an intimate conversation with them. I know my husband was the tech. My father-in-law was the tech. I know we're good. We're like, this wasn't us.

38:18And sometimes we'll give ourselves excuses that we wouldn't give a staff member. So if it was an advisor on the front counter, we may give ourselves an excuse we wouldn't give that advisor. You're like, nah, dude, that's not okay. And we don't see it that way because we were there and we perceived the interaction a certain way. Right. And, and so if you go to grow the shop, all of a sudden this whole dynamic changes and you're sitting here saying crap because they're not putting in the same effort to communicate.

38:45They're not putting in the same effort to be clear. They don't have that same level of connection and you don't have that same level of forgiveness for them. And so it shifts things. And I'm going to tell you right now, like when it comes to these clients, they say, well, we've never done that. We've never had that type of experience. Okay, I understand.

39:05But what you need to understand, father-in-law, husband, is that you've never worked for this type of consumer. Right. And we're seeing the consumer shift in a way that they've never shifted before. Yeah. It's not— for me, it's not even an employee thing. Like, yeah, the employees, like I, I make sure to hire good employees though. That's the most important thing. But if you do have hired, people are crazy, like plum nuts.

39:29And so they invent this whole reality in their heads, like out of left field. And you're like, none of that happened. None of that happened. What are you talking about? But they have it and they're like, they are set in stone. Like, this is how this happened. Yeah. And you're like, no, good thing I record my phone calls. We, we don't record our phone calls yet, but I will tell you that tomorrow it's coming because so earlier this year we had a customer with a 2005, uh, Honda, 21-year-old car, and she brought it in for one problem.

40:07We explained to her it's an older car. We can't find the part to fix this problem. We found some other things. She said, okay. She brings the car back. She says, I need it to pass inspection for state vehicle inspection. We do that. She comes back. She says, you never fixed the original problem and I've spent $5,000 here. And it's like, well, we told you we couldn't fix the original problem.

40:31So amnesia. Yes. Yes. So After that, we recently had a customer who my father-in-law was going to go communicate something to, and I said, I'm happy to call her and talk to her about it if you want. He's like, no, I'm going to email it to her because I found that when you say things on the phone, it just doesn't always click with them, and at least we have it in writing.

40:54And I was like, I literally skipped around the shop singing words of joy and happiness because I was like, great. Um, but also I think, uh, what Dave said earlier about how you present it to the customers. I don't know anything about cars, so when my husband starts talking to me about stuff, I'm like, if I was a customer, I'd have no idea what you're saying.

41:18And so I think that like what you said, you know, in your head you're like, yeah, like it depends on all these things. In your head you know what those things are, but the customer doesn't. And so, you know, I have found that even if the customer is not going to know what you're talking about, if you just present it to them in the right way, they're going to trust that this truly is something that depends on the outcome of an inspection or of a repair.

41:42And I think that my perspective kind of shifts things around here because I can say like, I don't know what you're talking about, so the customer is not going to know what you're talking about. So how can we present it better to them so that, you know, we have to sell our services, we have to convince them their card needs this, so let's work on that.

42:01It's almost every day that I hear shop owners talk about credit card processing and credit card processing fees. And I'm gonna tell you right now, if you're that worried, you're stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. What do I mean by that? When it comes to credit card processing, it's all about the service. It's all about the support and the great rates at the same time.

42:24And that is exactly why I use 360 Payments for all of my payment processing needs. They are the best payment processor in the automotive space. So don't wait, go to the link in the show notes and get set up with 360 Payments. They're integrated with all of your favorite shop management softwares, and it makes your life so much easier. Well, and I mean, like, when we, when we talked about, um, the 5 C's with Cecil the other day, you know, that was one of the things that we talked about is they don't understand Like your, your job, right?

42:58The technician's job is to be the advocate for the consumer because they're the person looking at that automobile. They know what's wrong with it. They know what it needs. And if they were going to put their wife and kids in this car and send them to California, here's what this car would need for me to feel good about that. And it's their job to communicate that clearly to the service advisor in such a way the service advisor can then digest that information and communicate that to the consumer, right?

43:23But the reality of it is, if it's not on paper, it doesn't matter how beautifully you present it. It's a lie, right? Because it has to be documented. And, and see, so many shops miss that. I, I'm gonna tell you, one of my biggest pet peeves is the shop owners and the technicians and the service advisors say, no, no, you don't want to put it on paper because then it means that you knew about it.

43:45So if you disclaim all that stuff by putting it on paper, you could you could absolve more liability. I'm like, nah, dude, it has to be on paper. You're just covering your ass. Yeah, exactly. It's a legally binding document. That's your contract with your consumer. And so people ask all the time, why do you make them sign their estimates? Why do you, you know, why do you make them authorize their own repairs?

44:09Why do you put all of this on the document? Well, because I don't want them coming back on me saying I did, I didn't, I this, I whatever. Now, like, the volume that you see in your shop right now because of the, the size of the shop is probably not high enough that you get a large percentage of these people. The problem is, is if you grow, now all of a sudden that percentage feels a lot bigger.

44:31Yeah, you start attracting a whole new subset of crazies. Yeah, but our volume is not super high, but, um, we are at the end of an industrial park, so we have what we call end of the road syndrome. So these cars go from shop to shop to shop and about us at the end of the road. So we're now dealing with cars that went to another mechanic.

44:54Customer comes and says, well, my mechanic diagnosed it with this, or my mechanic did this and it didn't fix it. So now we're dealing with everybody else's problems. And these people are usually first-time customers that you don't know and you don't have that relationship with. And those are the people that make me the most nervous. Those are the ones that I really want, you know, let's document everything, let's have them sign this, or let's, you know, let's just cover all of our bases here.

45:19Because those are the ones that you don't know what the outcome is going to be, and you don't know their car, you don't know them, you don't know anything about the situation. So to me, those are the ones that we should pay extra close attention. And you hate to, to have to treat like longtime customers that way, customers that you've had there for 20 years that They throw you the keys and it's like, hey, just let me know.

45:39And those are great, but, and, and those are the ones sometimes you have to end up training and being like, look, we've had too many crazies. We don't want any more issues. Like, so we're just standardizing our process across the board. Everybody has to sign their estimate. Everybody has to approve their own repairs. That's, I mean, pictures were a huge factor for us because You get a brand new customer in the door and the customer doesn't know what the hell they're looking at.

46:06They don't. Right. Yeah. They just see metal. But at the same time, the willingness to take pictures, date and timestamped, put little arrows, put notes on there, shows them that, hey, I'm not trying to hide anything from you. You can show those pictures to anybody, run them through AI. I don't know. All I'm saying is this is proof. That what I'm saying is true.

46:30And it immediately establishes a level of trust unless they are completely off the rocker. That's what I was trying to say. There are some people that are like, he's just taking pictures of broken cars and trying to pass them off as mine. It's like, dude, okay. So it's funny because like I had an experience in the family business the other day that resonates with that in a way that Like, there's been a lot of parallels that have connected between those 2 things, and it's taught me a lot about the experiences that I've had in the shop, right?

47:01Because when I was on the front counter, man, I would get so upset when those people came in and got just unhinged, right? And David, you're very different because they don't— people don't bother you anyway. You don't care what they think. You don't care if they're happy. That doesn't bother you. I mean, you want them to be happy. I'm not saying it like that, but like, deep down, you're not connected to their emotions in the way that I am.

47:21I'm a people pleaser. I want people to be happy. And so it was always very emotionally heavy for me when those people came in. It's like, dude, I have done everything I can to make this person happy and they can't be made happy. There's nothing I can do. What is going on here? Right? And so about 2 weeks ago, I was on the front counter.

47:40We— or I guess it was last week, actually. And we had 2 managers that went on vacation. They're a couple and they went on vacation together. And so I was having to step in and help. And this guy came in, he starts screaming at one of the staff members. And so I just told him really politely, I said, bud, we don't speak to our staff that way here.

47:55Right? Like, I'm not— I don't talk to them that way, and I'm not going to let you talk to them that way. That's not going to happen. Right? Like, not happening. And so we talked for a few minutes, and he goes out and he does the thing that he's supposed to do, was supposed to have done in the first place. He comes back and he slams his stuff down on the counter and he starts yelling and screaming at me.

48:14And I said, bud, I'm not selling you any tickets. I'm sorry. I'm just not doing it. It ain't gonna happen. And he said, why not? And I said, because you're already unhappy and there's nothing that I'm gonna do that's gonna change the outcome here. You're already disappointed in the entire experience. And so then he leaves and then he comes back asking for me after he leaves a 1-star review standing in the lobby screaming at me the whole time.

48:39And he comes back and he's like, you're trying to send me out into this forest and there's nothing there and blah, all this. I mean, just running his mouth. And so then I talk him through it and I said, here's what I was talking about. Let me show you this brochure. And I think your daughter would love this and all these things.

48:54And he leaves and then he deletes his review and he leaves a 5-star review later. And I'm like, well, that was interesting. And the staff said, well, why did you handle it that way? And I said, because I recognize that this person is unhinged. This person isn't normal. People don't behave that way if they're normal. People don't behave that way if they don't have something going on.

49:14And so I'm not going to subject myself to the torture and torment for a crazy person, right? Like, he was going to be crazy no matter what. There was nothing anyone was going to do to change the outcome. And so I've just learned, like, I protect myself. I build a wall around myself. And then if you act crazy with my wall, I know it's a you problem, not a me problem, because I built a wall, right?

49:37I built a process, a policy, and a procedure that protects us from the mess. And I, I'm going to tell you, if we break that process, if we break that procedure, every single time it blows up in our face. Every single time. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Just like David said, the one time we don't put that call on the RO, or the one time that we don't document something is when it blows up in our face.

49:58And I, I think that as you begin to see more volume in your shop, because ultimately you have to grow— and, and I mean this with zero disrespect, okay? I don't want you to take what I'm getting ready to say as a disrespect. This is going to sound disrespectful though. Right now you guys have a job, right? Because if it wasn't for your husband and your father-in-law and you, would the shop produce income?

50:24And so that means you've got a job, and that means you got 2 pathways forward. We either build up a system through insurance, disability, you know, business income replacement insurance, whatever it is, that if something happens, we can still take care of our family, or we grow the business to the point that the business can take care of our family without us being the primary producers within the business.

50:47And so those are the 2 options. Yeah, and if you get into a situation that you have to grow, you're not going to be able to use the systems that got you to where you're at right now and the business do what it's supposed to do. So, and this is where, um, like finding all these resources online have been crucial because like I said, not everything's going to fit into every shop.

51:12But yeah, for sure, having taken those ideas, taking those concepts, but also keeping them on hand. You know, if some things are going to change all the time and things are going to come up, so I now know where to look for the answers to my questions. I now know where to look for inspiration on how to make some changes. But also, when we started, I, like I said earlier, I had no idea what I was looking for.

51:37I had no idea where we were going or how to get there. And so to have these like backup funds, have these— you're gonna have mistakes, you're going to take a hit at some point. And to be better prepared for those and to anticipate them has been super helpful. Um, so yeah, having all that information has just been incredible because I know we're not going to be able to stay where we are.

52:01We've already grown and made changes in the past 4 years that, you know, have been beneficial. And I know that we're gonna keep going from there. I know we're not going to sit still. So, um, so having those— finding those resources has been amazing. I've got a question about something, and, and I know we're kind of shifting gears here a little bit, but I'm, I'm curious about something because this is— this has come up in some discussions I've had lately where folks have bought shops and there was no financials, no financial data anywhere.

52:34And so I'm curious When you bought the shop, did you have good clean financials from the previous owner that you took over? And are they like, they're clean, they're good financials? Um, the short answer is yes. So we had to get— this was terrible. Uh, we had to get financial reports to give to the bank, and we also had to make some projections.

52:57Yeah, we had to make projections for our business to— in order to get the loan. Um, that was a nightmare. Now, how clean they were, I mean, they were pretty straightforward, but there were some questionable things on it. Um, there was like a shift in bookkeepers in those 3 years, so they were not perfect, but they were acceptable, able to work with them.

53:22Um, and I have all, you know, I used those to measure where we were going and how we were doing. Um, but that was also just from the past. That's, you know, that included COVID, that included, yeah, um, you know, not great times. So they were helpful, but they were, they're a good place to start from, basically. Um, they were helpful, but yeah, we did have access to them.

53:48And so then when you came in, did you hire a new bookkeeper? Are you doing everything yourself? What does that I'm doing everything myself. Um, we have an accountant that, you know, I will ask certain questions for. He does our taxes and whatnot. Um, but the day-to-day daily bookkeeping I do myself. Gotcha. Okay. I was just curious because I, you know, I've been working with the guys over at Kaizen and they took over the shop's books and, and like we were doing a lot of the shop's books ourselves.

54:18And, and initially it wasn't that big of a deal because the shop was fairly small and there wasn't a ton of transactions. But then when we grew and the shop got bigger, the transaction volume had to go up. Yeah. And then the, the amount of time and effort to sit down and do those things properly, like especially if you're going to reconcile part statements.

54:40And for us, it's like, that's a 50-page statement right there. It's a nightmare. That's terrible. That's not an easy thing to do. Right. And so when we hired them, like it was in a little bit of a disarray. We had hired one bookkeeper that didn't go so well. And then we hired them and they came in and they said, hey, look, we're just going to rebuild your file.

54:56We're going to start fresh. We're going to get you a new file. It's going to be clean. And then within a month, right? Like we're seeing data we had never seen before. And they're saying, hey, like I'm concerned about this interest expense on this loan. I'm concerned about this. And by the way, we're coming up on taxes and like, shouldn't we think about doing this over here?

55:17Because that might save you some money. And hey, all that money that you paid out over here, that's not tax deductible, But if you did this, it would be. And it was little conversations like that that I started to realize, ah, there's not a lot of transparency in the way that I'd been doing this because I didn't have the knowledge. I didn't know.

55:33I didn't know what to look out for. Now, when we were smaller, it was a small amount of money. It was probably $5,000 or $6,000 I was costing myself on top of the time, right? Which was valuable too. But then like I started talking to them and they said, all these people go buy these shops. And they just assume and take over a QuickBooks file and they just keep doing what they were doing and they never truly know the health of the business.

55:57They never truly know, is that balance sheet accurate? Yeah. And they make these little mistakes and nobody's there to watch and say, hey, I need to clean this up. And so I was just curious, like how you process through that and, and, you know, how you're handling that. That's a, that's a big feat and a big task taking over. Have you had like an industry coach look at the, the financials and the numbers and say, is this set up?

56:21No. So we, when we took over, we started, we technically like started our own business. So we had a clean slate when it came to our file. Um, we had, I had a friend who had done this before. She helped like set it up, get us started. Um, We are into off-roading. We were off-roading in the woods one night and one of the kids we were with is an accountant.

56:45And I said, hey, do you want to be our accountant for our shop? He said, sure. It's been great ever since then. So he will like look at our books every couple months, make sure that everything looks okay, gives us recommendations for the tax deductible stuff and whatnot. I didn't know coaches existed until probably like a year or two ago, and I have considered it.

57:06Um, but it's also one of the things, it's like, where do you draw the line? You know, we have so many things to worry about that I feel like I need to put before that, but also that's going to help benefit us in the long run. So I've always— what kind of things are you worrying before the coach? Um, like just switching to Shopware and making sure that we're using that right, getting the father-in-law settled in with it, you know.

57:28Um, there's just— there's kind of some things that have popped up like that. Um, and I'm sure a coach would help. I'm sure it's something I should consider. Um, well, I, I just think that like, especially when it comes to the financials of the business and like, hey, are they configured for an auto repair shop? Right? Because there's a difference between auto repair shop and any other kind of business.

57:50And so getting them set up properly and somebody that understands auto repair and somebody that understands what the margins are supposed to be. Yeah. The other thing is like somebody to help you see where you're going because it like we can get mired down in the day to day and it's like I'm just showing up trying to keep this effing place from burning to the ground.

58:11Yeah. Or maybe I'm not trying to keep it from burning to the ground, as David would say. Let it burn. Trying to figure out the pathway to the end of the day. And I think as owners, we slowly adopt more of that mentality and we don't realize that we've adopted that mentality, right? We become task-focused. And so it's like, I just need to get through this task, I need to get through this task, I need to get through this task.

58:34Yes. And, and, you know, I've talked a lot about the stuff that happened with the family business and all that, but like, that taught me some valuable lessons because now I've got all these attorneys and these accountants and all these legal people and all this stuff happening all around me, and they're not giving me the option to not be focused on the end goal of like getting out of the mess.

58:54And so it's like every week I'm talking to somebody and they're saying, hey, what about, hey, what about? I can't be focused on the task anymore. Somebody else has got to focus on the task. I got to be focused on the outcome. Right. And as we, like, as I've worked with Kaizen, you know, I've got Eric coming to me and saying, hey, I'm concerned about this.

59:15Now, because I was doing bookkeeping and my wife was doing bookkeeping and we can look at the data and we can see all the stuff on the computer. I can pull up my P&L and I'm like, hey, Eric, this looks off. Hang on just a second. I'm gonna check on that. Okay, here's why that's like that. That makes sense, right? Because I have the knowledge, I have the data, I have the ability to look at it.

59:35But so many owners, they get mired down in the day-to-day task that they lose sight of growing the business. And if you don't have somebody in your corner saying, hey dude, like, it's great that you helped that customer today. Where are we going? Where are we going to be in 5 years? Because the time evaporates, right? I remember, like, I started this place in 2007, and I, like, at the time I was just fixing the cars.

59:59And until I hired a business coach, it was like I was just sailing through car after car after car. The desired outcome was fixing the car, right? And now I'm like, holy crap, I'm 41. What? Like, where's my retirement at? Where's my money at? Where am I going? What am I gonna do with this place when I get old? And can't work anymore?

1:00:18What am I going to do when I die? What am I going to do? You know, what are my kids going to do with this mess? How am I like— I've watched my parents refinance the business over and over and over and over again and end up with more debt and more things. And it's like, now Eric's looking at it saying, okay guys, what's the plan?

1:00:36Where are we going? Right. And Henry, his brother's a CFO, and he's like, okay, we need a target. We need an idea if we're going to Like we can stay in debt, that's great. But what, how much debt are we gonna stay in and where's the money gonna come from to service the debt? Where's the profit gonna go? How's that gonna be distributed?

1:00:52How's that gonna be set up? And they're questions that my family's never asked. Right. And that, so yeah. Um, so again, like the old school way of doing things around here is parts had a markup across the board. And then I learned about the parts markup matrix and I was like, well, this makes a lot of sense, you know? And so then I started looking at like breakdowns of our profit?

1:01:14Where is our money going to? And how— and, you know, like, there's always that debate. Do you increase your, um, parts and your labor incrementally? Do you just do it all at once? You know, and so then it's— you— the nice thing about being removed from the customer-facing part of this business is that I'm not looking at the emotional side of it.

1:01:35But then I have to sell the idea to my father-in-law and be like, we got to go up on our prices because this is where we need to be. Um, but then he's the one that has to deal with the blowback when it comes. So there's maybe— is he talking to the customers? Yeah, he's, he's our service writer. He's the one that is dealing with all of our customers, um, which is nice.

1:01:58I don't have to do it, neither does my husband. But, um, but maybe a coach, like having that outside source that's not family, that's, you know, not involved in anything here, might be what we need to kind of just push us a little bit further. For sure. He's, he's gonna have to, he's gonna have to want the coach because trust me, you can hire the coach and the coach can go, hey, you're 75% too cheap.

1:02:21And then the guy's gonna go, what? It's like, yeah. And then when you run off half your customers because you're going to raise your prices, how are you going to backfill? And like, so what does that marketing look like, right? And then he's like, we've never had to market before. It's like, well, yeah, you're the cheapest place in town by miles. That's why you take on jobs with anything.

1:02:44You'd fix things that nobody else would fix because they knew it didn't make any money. You know, when we started, you said, oh, we do a lot of engines and transmission jobs. Yeah. All I can think about is your poor GP per hour. Like, this is— and so these are the things that I'm learning about, and I am watching. And, you know, my husband is half of the part, you know, he's doing half the work out there and he's like, I don't wanna do engines anymore.

1:03:10That's, you know, it's physically demanding. There's a reason that they all end up at our shop. So these are kind of the changes that, you know, I like to take things by step. I like to, let's, you know, make one change, get used to it, let's take another step forward, you know? And so we have been cutting back on engines in the bigger jobs, but there are also times when, middle of winter, they're not a bad job to have because, yeah, your lots looking kind of— and you don't have to say no, you just price them properly.

1:03:41Yeah, it's like, yeah, $20,000 to do that engine swap, sure. And knowing your value, like I try to say, like, look, there's a reason this has ended up at our shop. It's, you know, been through every other shop in town. Why are we not charging more for it? You know, because now we're doing a job that nobody else wants to do that makes our work more valuable And these other guys who have tried to fix it and have failed, they're making our job more difficult, which is making our work more valuable.

1:04:07So definitely there's just, you know, a lot of— I've learned so many times, if you knew how many people walked into this shop and said, Lucas, you're the only person that can fix this thing, nobody else can fix it, nobody else has the knowledge and ability that you have to fix this car. And I have learned to look at them I say, you're a damn liar.

1:04:26And they say, what? And I say, you just didn't want to pay anybody else to fix it when they told you how much it was gonna cost. Yeah, right. Yeah, like, well, kinda. Yep, yep. And that, like, you know, we have, you know, pretty decent diagnostic tools, and when other shops on our street come asking to borrow them because they don't have them, that makes our work more valuable.

1:04:49You know, when we have tools that nobody else has, that makes us— you were talking about Um, removing difficult parts, those little odds and ends tools that you get to make your job easier, you know, that makes our work more valuable. So, well, I, I think it's awesome. I love the shop. I know we've had a lot of hard discussions today and talked about stuff that, that makes it more complex and makes it seem like, man, maybe we're not hitting the mark.

1:05:12I don't want you to walk away from this with that at all. I hope you walk away from it saying those 2 idiots have already failed at done it miserably. They're just trying to say like, hey, we done done that. It doesn't work. But the way I look at it is having these discussions, you know, some of the things that you guys have said, I think like, I don't know if it'll work for us, but I'm gonna write it down and consider it because it might, or I might be able to take that and make it work for us one way or another.

1:05:36And I think that that's having an open mind and, you know, learning as much as you can is the most important part of this. You know, I think, uh, I'll tell you this. I think if you called somebody like an Aaron Woods from the Institute, somebody that's a shop owner, somebody that's made their way up, because I'm going to tell you, the most value in this industry comes from somebody who was the consumer, became the technician, turned into the service advisor, became the shop manager, became the shop owner.

1:06:05And somebody like Aaron Woods has done that, right? Like they've been all the way through it. They've gone from one step of it to the next step. And, and having somebody like an Aaron Woods come to your shop for a day and just watch your process, you would not believe after— or, you know, there's some of these groups where they have the group meetings and they bring all the shop owners to your shop and they watch your shop operate and the feedback and the data and the information that you get from them.

1:06:30And it's, you know, it's kind of like there's an Andy Andrews video and he says, you know, sometimes I ask myself, what would other people change about me if they could. And he said, yeah, but I like that. I don't want to change that. He said, that wasn't the question, was it? Like, hearing some of that sucks because it's like, I like the way we do this and I don't want to change the way we do this.

1:06:52But sometimes the pathway to a better life, the pathway to something that, man, like, gets you the, the revenue and the peace and the, the ability to do the things that you want to do in life, may not be through the window and the lens that you saw it in initially. Yeah. Yeah. So keep an open mind and think outside the box a little bit and say, I know we've always done it this way, but maybe there's a better way.

1:07:17Maybe we could just try this because, you know, when I first started raising my prices, for instance, I was terrified. Rick White screamed at me. He's gonna kill me for saying that. But he, he talked assertively to me quite a bit saying, hey, Why aren't you doing this? And over and over and over again, I would, I would hold off and I wouldn't do it.

1:07:39And finally, like, he said, dude, you're gonna do this or I'm not gonna coach you anymore. We're not gonna keep doing this. Yeah. And so I started raising my prices and, and he came to me and said, I just need you to understand that one change in your business is not gonna cause the business to fail overnight. You're gonna be okay. And if it doesn't work, we can always go back to the way we did it before, but you're going to have to to trust the process at some point.

1:08:02Yes. And so I'm just going to encourage you, trust the process. Yeah. David's gone black and white. I think we've bored him to death over here. I don't know what happened. He ran out of color time. Thank you for listening to the Changing the Industry podcast. If you enjoyed the show, do us a favor and leave us a review on your favorite podcast player.

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