Episode 271 - Training New Technicians and Building a Lasting Automotive Business With Charles Mitchell

Hey folks, David here, and I'd like to thank you for joining us for the Changing the Industry podcast. Lucas and I started this podcast with the goal of capturing the frank and open conversations you typically have at industry events. Those conversations cover the challenges we face in our business and lives, as well as difficult repairs, new products and services, and everything in between. We hoped that these recordings would spur our listeners to enact the change they'd like to see in their own lives and businesses. That's also why we've partnered with the Institute for Automotive Business Excellence. My first management class was with Cecil Bullard, and his genuine passion for helping others in an honest and ethical manner permeates his entire organization. And if you need some of the Institute's help, they have a special offer for our listeners. Click the link in the show notes and get signed up for a free business analysis. They'll go over your current situation and give you advice on your next steps. And they have everything from free resources and online classes to peer groups, one-on-one coaching, and specific help for MSOs. So don't miss out on this great offer. Click the link in the show notes. And now on to the podcast. It's gonna be me talking to myself. Yeah, I think that'd be good. That would be good. What are you doing? Playing on your phone? Yeah. The Odyssey Battery sent us a message on there. They tagged you. I can't get into the Instagram. I don't know why. I don't really use Instagram. They made me mad. Why? Huh? Why Instagram? Because they like shadow banned my account. Oh man, it's pretty tough to operate with a gimpan, huh? His hand's all gimped up. Poor guy. How you doing? Good. Very good. So, uh, introduce yourself. Okay, uh, so my name is Charles Chuck Mitchell. Uh, I own, uh, Ten Pin Motors in Port Atkinson, Wisconsin. Uh, we're Ten Pin Tire Pros. We're a Tire Pros dealer. Very cool. Small car dealership. Um, we got 3 service bays, 3 technicians, plus myself, who bounces around. Okay, very good, very good. And so, uh, tell me a little bit. We, we were able to get you here, right? We worked it out. Uh, the good folks at Apex, yeah, really worked hard to create some opportunity. I, I don't know if I'd say good folks, the fantastic. Amen. They went, they went above and beyond what we expected, you know. Um, yes sir. When you reached out and we're like, hey, you know, we'll get you down here, we're like Okay, so we were dumb enough to say, hey, we win, we'll take your techs with us. And then our techs were like, you taking us now? Um, you know, we reached out to the Apex and Mark was like, oh, send me all the information, we'll coordinate everything for you, make sure you guys got rooms together so you're not across the city from each other. And they handled it all. Yeah, it was fantastic. That's amazing, dude. Yeah, they did awesome. Well, and they are such good people, such phenomenal human beings, and what they've done for us and what they've done for our show is— words can't even explain how much they've done for us. Tell us a little bit about the shop. Tell us a little bit about who you are, where you came from, how you got here. All right, so the shop— I purchased this job 2 and a half years ago from a gentleman from friend of mine. And, uh, to kind of get into that story, I guess I'll jump way back. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I started in the automotive industry back in high school in the '90s, which now dates me and tells you how old I am. Yep, yep. Uh, started quick lube, um, went to UTI, got bored halfway through the program and decided I could do better, and I, I dropped out, um, and ended up in school buses and diesel maintenance. Worked my way up. After almost 15 years, I was running a 200-bus fleet, had 9 mechanics working for me for one of the largest school bus companies in the nation. Holy cow, dude. And emissions really got to me. I just— all the new emissions in diesels, that was about the time DEF was coming out. We struggled with that, and I decided I was gonna hop into retail, get out of working on stuff. Yeah, I hated it. So I went and managed Napa Auto Parts stores in our area, which is where I met the owner I bought the shop from. He was a customer of mine, uh, Napa Auto Care Center. Worked with him back and forth, uh, for almost 6 years, and Napa transferred me to another store, which they often do. They'll move store managers around just to kind of see how things go. And right, uh, he called me up and said, hey, I heard you got transferred. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? And I'm like, I'm not happy driving 45 minutes past two stores to get there, right? Um, and he's like, well, you looking? Because I need someone to help me run the repair side of the shop. Yeah, I'll come down. Uh, so after working for him for a year, he starts nudging me and joking around, you need to buy the shop, you need to buy the dealership. And we joked about it for almost another year before he sent me a number, and I went, I think I can do something. I think we can go. So, uh, you know, talk to my wife about it. She's like, this is scary. This is— it's scary, you know, because when you're jumping into something like that, uh, right, it's intimidating. And she'd never been in that industry. She's a photographer, owned her own photography business. Okay, so we, uh, with her help and support, we decided to jump in 2 and a half years ago, bought the dealership. Oh, very cool. That, uh, definitely had some struggles at first, uh, right, right before we got the okay to buy the place, one of the techs decided he was going to move to a big dealership and we didn't have an okay yet, so we didn't want to stop him, uh, so we, okay, you know, Good luck, hope everything works out. So we're like, all right, we're down one tech. Yeah, we still decided to go ahead, bought the dealership, and, uh, within a month my tire lube guy threw his back out again. So here we are. Yeah, all the loans, brand new dealership, and I have one tech who's been there since 1989, and that's it. Oh my gosh, dude. So, uh, that summer we brought my son in who is 15 and a half at the time, said, hey, you want to do some oil changes and stuff? Yeah. We started looking, trying to find technicians, trying to figure out how we were going to move forward. I was doing a lot of work on the floor and running the shop, and my wife, being as amazing as she is, jumped in and was like, all right, we're just gonna run the counter, we'll figure it out, build the plane as we go. Yep, exactly. So up to current point, now we're— we still have the old, uh, the old vet tech. He's, he's been there for, you know, like I said, since '89. Yeah. Um, and then I have 2 apprentices because, you know, why not go full in and make the mistake of trying to mentor 2 people at once when you can't find anyone, right? Right. So, uh, we've got, uh, we got 2 apprentices. One, he's 19, he's going through the Napa Auto, uh, Auto Care Apprentice program. Yeah, the apprentice program they've got where they've got the tools and everything. Yeah, they got the tools and everything. Yep. Uh, so he's learning on his way. He loves the heavy work. He loves the tires. He loves suspension. He loves just getting at it. Um, and then we have a female who came in. She's in her early 20s. Uh, farm girl, wanted to learn, learn how to work on cars and do it for a living. And, uh, you know, a lot of the truck pickup truck tires and stuff we do are bigger than her. So that's not her thing. Yeah, I'd say so. But she has a fantastic brain. She— yeah. Lucas and I have been telling you about PartsTech for a while now and how it gives you access to unlimited parts and tire vendors and direct integration with over 35 shop management systems. And now they've just launched a new referral program. All you have to do is open your PartsTech account, go to My Shop, and click on the Rewards tab. There you'll find your referral URL, which you can share via email, text message, or on your social media. If your referral signs up for a new account and places 5 orders in the first 30 days, PartsTech will send you a $100 gift card. That's it, nothing else is needed. Your referrals can get you $100 just for using PartsTech, which by the way is absolutely free to get started with. So if you're using PartsTech already, start sharing that referral link. And if you haven't signed up for PartsTech yet, what are you waiting for? Click on the link in the description or go to partstech.com/podcast. That's partstech.com/podcast. Hey, one more thing. If you find out that your shop management system doesn't integrate with PartsTech, it's time to upgrade. David and I use what we believe to be the very best system on the market, Shopware. With unmatched features like Parts GP Optimizer and DVX, which is their digital vehicle experience, Shopware really is way more than just a shop management software. With it, you'll be able to create an immersive and interactive experience for your client, setting you apart from everyone else using run-of-the-mill software. Are you ready to upgrade? Click the link in the show notes to get started. She jumps in, she can figure things out. She loves working on, on the engine stuff and, and learning that way. Attention to details great. So yeah, it's, it's been an interesting couple years for sure. Well, you know, the, the Tire Pro team reached out and said, hey, we don't know if you know this, but you could not have picked a better shop to win this. And, and I said, well, that's really cool. Like, you know, and he's like, no, no, I don't think you understand. I mean, these, these are legit people. These are good human beings. And I thought, man, that's so cool. Yeah, right, that their corporate team recognized Sure, sure. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's a, that's a huge thing. We appreciate them. They have treated us very well, uh, through, through everything that, uh, everything that's gone on the past couple years with ATD and stuff like that. You hear a lot of horror stories. I, I have not had any. They have been fantastic for us, very supportive, um, you know, helped us out. Keep us supplied with tires, training, whatever we need, they're right there for us. That's pretty cool. That has been— that's phenomenal. And so where is the shop going from here? What's your vision? What does this look like in 5 or 10 years? Um, so, you know, that's the thing we bump against. We're in a small town, uh, we're about 20,000 people in our city. Uh, there's a couple, couple small towns that are within 10 miles of us that house another, you know, 8,000 to 10,000 people each. So in our town, I think, you know, we know there's a couple places that, uh, you know, have talked about moving on, kind of doing their thing. So we don't know if it's a second location thing or, or more bays, but it's definitely an expansion. We definitely want to grow from here. Okay. Um, one big thing I learned working in school buses. You had a lot of veteran techs come in, a lot of older guys that would come in, kind of had their way, set their way, and I really kind of grew a passion for, hey, let's bring people up, let's start them in and teach them the right way to do things. For sure. You know, I had a conversation with Jeff the other day, Jaded Mechanic, and we talked about how much different it was growing up and learning to be a tech in our world. Yeah. Versus the new techs. Um, you know, back when we were growing up, it was, you know, get this done here, do it, figure it out, you know, yelling at you, screaming at you, resources, no. Yeah, no resources, just, just turn the wrench and just get it done because it needs to go back out on the road, you know. Um, and now technicians don't take to that that burden. You know, the younger, the younger group, I hear a lot of people call them lazy. I don't think they're lazy. I think I compared them, compared them to vehicles, you know. Yeah. Back in the day, you could take a 300 straight-6 Ford, you could run that thing out of oil, you could beat the snot out of it, the thing would run forever. Yeah. It just did what it needed to do. Resilience. Yes. And you just had to, you just had to push it harder if it didn't do what it was supposed to. Yeah. And newer cars you can't do that. You gotta make sure the oil's changed, you gotta make sure they're maintained. But the 300 straight-6 didn't get 30 miles a gallon. Right, right. The 300 straight-6 wasn't fast, you know? Yeah. Vehicles today are so much more efficient, they're so much more sensitive, there's so much more engineering that goes into 'em. And I think our techs are the same way. You know, I think new techs, the new group growing up, You can't abuse them and push them like you used to, but when they get good, they are so much more refined and so much efficient. More efficient. More spoken and handle technology better. Yes, and they can grab it, you know, my young tech Caitlin, when she learns things, I'll be like, hey, I got a 3.6 Pentastar, I'm going to teach you how to do an oil cooler on it, you know, because tons of them. 'Bring it in, grab ProDemand, pull it up. I want you to start reading through, you know, tell me what it is.' Okay, she goes out there, she comes in, 'I have a question.' Like, 'All right, let me handle this customer, let me do this thing, I'll be right out there to help you out,' you know. Half hour goes by and I'm like, 'Oh shoot, I gotta get out there.' I get out to the shop and she's like, 'I don't need you, I'm good, I figured it out,' you know. I love that. And I think it took her 2 2 oil coolers, and she is well under book time on them. Yeah, very thorough. Everything's clean, everything's torqued the way it's supposed to be. She does a fantastic job, but she's way more efficient than even I can be. Yeah, um, Cade's the same way, you know. He's a little less on 'I'll look it up in the book,' but yeah, he finds ways to do things faster than techs that I've worked with 10, 15 years. For sure. For sure. So I think the new upcoming techs need to be handled a little different. Yeah. But it's fun. It's a challenge trying to bring fun. I've watched my dad and, you know, I talk about Dutch a little bit too because Dutch said, you know, this new world is something that I have to grin and bear it. I have to swallow this and I don't like it, but this just is. And he said, you know, we had a thing for years that was that you did a job and you got a paycheck and that was your thank you. And here you go. And he said it does not work the same way anymore. It just doesn't. They don't respond to it. And you know, my dad, we had a situation a couple weeks ago where he was teaching somebody how to use a mop bucket, and they were offended because he was like, here's how I want you to do this, this is what I want, this is what I want it to be like. Was not received well by that person. Well, I can't believe he doesn't think I know how to mop. And, and he was very direct, and he was this, and he was that. Well, but I mean, that, that's how they live. Blair, right? Like they don't, they've not been exposed to the same things that that older generation had been exposed to. Right. It just seemed normal. And, you know, I've got a reel out there and it's of Dutch talking about the fact that when he was a pilot, like if you had to land the plane in 100 mile an hour winds and it was snowing and you couldn't see where you were going and yet all of your requirements were still met, you didn't get a pat on the back that said good job. No, that was your damn job. That's what you were supposed to do. Yeah, right. You don't get some reward for that. No, that just is. Yeah. And, and I think that that is something that's lost on society today. Now tell me a little bit about the transition from technician to owner, right? Was that a, was that a challenge for you? Um, I think, uh, there's a lot, there's, there's a lot of different things between technician owner. And I think I was very fortunate to become a shop manager first, you know. It went from being a technician to a lead tech to then a shop manager. And I think that's where a lot of the struggle came in, was being the shop manager. And that was, uh, that was interesting. Um, definitely, I can definitely see a hang-up if you're technician-minded and you're like, I'm going to come in and I'm going to this thing. Yeah, you know, the way I want to run it. Because as a shop manager or an owner, the world's different and you look at things completely different, right? Um, I think a lot of, a lot of that struggle I had, I had some mentors that helped me through that in the bus company, um, that, uh, you know, were able to point things out You know, when you're like, I'm a technician, I don't know why we do this this way, or we organize this this way, right? They're like, hey, step back for a second, come over here, look at it from over here. Yes, this water perspective. Yep, this is why we do it this way. Um, so I was able to, in that instance where I'm right there with the technicians kind of working and kind of managing a budget, not having to be responsible for the entire company, I was able to take that step, you know. Yeah, um, that step into, okay, let's look at it from this view, let's, let's help the technicians this way, let's help them do this because this is our final goal. And then jumping into the retail space where then you get to jump into the business management end because it's like, hey, you got this store that is $2.5 million in inventory and you need to make sure you're making profit. Go, you know, right? Um, so I was able to be pulled out of the technician space and go, okay, this is how you run a business, this is how we do this. Um, so when I jumped into running my own business with technicians, uh, I think I kind of had that advantage because I had been pulled out of the technician space and I wasn't still 100% connected to how do I— I'm a tech I can run this business and I can do this, right? Because they are two separate— absolutely, yeah, completely different job. Yeah. Well, I've seen you really engaged and involved in the groups and, and seen you kind of developing some educational type things for yourself in that way, asking questions, trying to get some details, trying to get some data. Yeah. To start moving forward with that. What type of training are you doing as a shop owner? Uh, Everything. Anything I can get my hands on. You know, this is really my wife and I— I'm not going to say her, I was a very poor planner, right? I didn't, I didn't plan for being old. I didn't plan for anything. So when we bought this shop, it was really a wake-up call as to I need to spend my energy not so much trying to feed my kids on a day-to-day, but I need to build something that we can all enjoy, right, and live better on, and then have life, have a good life, and then have something at the end of that. So I don't have to do this until I'm— I pass away, you know, right? Um, I need to build something. So it's really kind of become a passion of not only me, but my wife's been there the whole time making sure I don't make dumb mistakes and do the dumb stuff that I want to do. Um, so any kind of information I can get, you know, we came here to Apex And it was like, hey, we have the opportunity, we need to go to classes. Last month I had the opportunity to go down to North Carolina where, you know, where I met you for the first time and just, sure, you know, take some classes there. It's really, uh, you know, and then, and then the podcast and Facebook groups, you know, the owner's hangouts and things like that. Anywhere that I can find some information and see if it applies to my shop if it could help make it better, or, you know, right, and then help anyone else. What's the biggest takeaways you've had so far in that journey? Have there been any aha moments? Yes, a lot of them. Um, we had one yesterday where, uh, I was in a class, um, where we were talking about operating shop, how you operate, and you know, the customer perspective of how, how it looks from the outside. Yeah, helping your shop operate to give the customer the best, uh, the best, uh, experience. Correct. It's something that we've been working on over the past year. Our shop was very basic. Make a phone call, you schedule an appointment, we get you in, you know, when we're done we text you if you're not waiting for it. Kind of that thing. And I went, you know what, we need a better experience for the customers. I want to be able to text us, and I want to be able to, you know, schedule online, because so many people are doing that. Hop in, say, hey, I want an appointment. So we started doing that a little, but yesterday when I saw how the shop operated, all the things they did that were integral to a customer experience, it was like, holy cow, like, right, that's we can take a lot of these pieces and really improve, step up our game, right? Um, you know, and really make us stand out in our area. Yeah, well, I mean, that, that's my competitive advantage in my shop is, is the experience. That's everything I've built my shop to be, right? Everything I do. It's like why I use Shopware, because I created an experience around that for my consumer that gives them a very unique that nobody else can duplicate because I put work into creating the experience, right? I see so many shop owners, and, you know, Rick White, I watched him for years, and he would go out and he would say, okay, why would somebody drive past 50 shops to come to yours? And they said, well, I can fix the car. And he would say, oh. And they would say, I can fix the car better than anybody else. And he would say, You understand fixing the car is the core competency, right? Like, that's not enough. That's the landing gear. That's the landing gear. That's the landing gear. Right, exactly. That's something basic. Like, how do we build upon that? How do we grow outside of just that core experience? And so I think so— We're finally getting into a good roll and here comes Lucas interrupting the episode. Folks, now you know exactly why I hire Shop Marketing Pros to do my shop marketing. It's that I am spastic and all over the place and I lack consistency. But here's the thing, that doesn't work in marketing. You see, marketing takes 30, 60, sometimes 90 days to be effective. And I was all over the place with my marketing. There was no consistency at all. Caused these waves in my business because I was so inconsistent. And that's why I am so happy to refer Shop Marketing Pros. They bring consistency. They are true professionals. I'm going to encourage you, go down to the link below and get your free digital marketing inspection. Just like we do digital vehicle evaluations for automobiles, they're doing the same thing about your marketing, and they will help you get your business turned around. So many shops have been stuck in core experience, right? And we've continued to offer the same thing. Well, that creates an opportunity for shops who are really forward-thinking and try to do something very different is if we can get into a groove where we offer extreme customer service, right? I don't know if you've ever read, um, is it Unreasonable Hospitality? Such a, such a good book. Okay. Because one of the things he talks about is he was— they, they had like 5 Michelin star restaurants. How hard is it to get a Michelin star? I mean, it's a deal, right? Like, you, you're world class to get a Michelin star restaurant. And he said, you know, it was little things like, hey, he would be bussing tables in this busy restaurant and he would hear somebody talk about the fact that, man, you know, this is an awesome meal, but I've always wanted a New York City hot dog. And he's like, so we went over to the Surwater Cart and got hot dogs. He's like, I carry them into the chef and he's like, I'm telling this Michelin star chef, I need you to cut this hot dog up. I'm going to take it out and serve it. I'm gonna serve it to this table. And he's like, the hell you are. He's like, so he goes out and he creates something unique around it, but he takes it and he takes it to the table. And that's that unreasonable hospitality. Or they would get a call and they'd say, hey, you know, I'm bringing my dad in, but my dad only drinks Budweiser. And he said, we don't— we serve champagne and caviar, we don't even have beer. Come on now. And he said, so we would go and we'd get a, you know, a wine cart, and we would stack it full of Budweiser and ice. And so we brought that to the table, and it's about going above and beyond. And to go above and beyond, it takes us listening and hearing what they want. And I don't think we very often listen to what they want. We try to build the experience around what we want, right? Yeah, I think that's true. And I think, I think a lot of what times the, the thing that we hear and we believe is going to bring them in is price. And it seems so much like it's race to the bottom, you know, let's, let's try and, let's try and charge less, charge less, I'm cheaper than you. One thing that we're really fortunate is the previous owner grew up in the town, knew a lot of people, developed a lot of relationships. So I worked for him for 2 years before buying the place, and I developed a lot of those relationships. And right now, when I looked at my numbers last, I think we were about 89% of our daily customers coming in are repeat and have been there more than 3 times in the last year. Wow. They're all people that we know by name. They come in and we try to make it feel like family there. So when you're coming in saying, hey, my car quit on me, I had to tow it in, we're like, hey, come sit down, like, it's cool, we'll handle it, we got this. We try to make them feel comfortable and relaxed in a situation that's normally extremely stressful. For sure. And I think the next thing definitely— how do you, how do you do that for people that you've never met before? How do you make them more comfortable? And that's right, that's kind of what that class yesterday definitely helped me to see, is we need to make sure, looking from the outside in, that the customer's seeing a nice, you know, comfortable, easy way to, to deal with us. Absolutely. Well, you know, we talk a lot about finances on the show. How are we as far as finances go? And I'm not trying to pry into your business, but I think shop owners need to hear and, yeah, and, and hear the experiences of other people. What have you learned financially about the business and how are you as far as that goes? Um, I think a big takeaway, uh, actually from ASTA that I saw is, you know, it was kind of, okay, I need to make sure I'm making money, what does the bottom line look like, you know, where are we labor-wise and stuff. And, and, um, ASTA taught me, hey, Every shop's different, you know. Every shop— you can't blanket this. This is what you need to charge. This is what your markup needs to be. This is what it needs to be. Um, you need to look at how much it costs you to run your shop, how much it costs you to pay your mechanics well, make sure they're taken care of and happy. Figure out that expense, and then you need to charge enough to be able to pay that and pay yourself for being there and owning it. And the risk that is involved in buying. So, you know, over the last year we've definitely done some price adjustments. We've kind of moved our prices around. We went to, instead of being a standard markup on parts, we now have a matrix. Awesome. Moved our labor rate up, which is still very low, but we didn't want to just, hey, we're new owners, let's just jack the prices through the roof because You don't want to hurt people. You don't want to scare them away. So we've had to massage that up to a point where we're now, you know, making a decent profit. I wouldn't say a great profit, but we're paying bills. We're walking away with a little bit extra at the end, and we're just looking for small opportunities to make things a little better and train technicians and offer other services. So, right, how much of a challenge have you found in training apprentices, right? Because that's one of the things that, that I tried to do for a while. Yeah. Now, in, in 3 bays, it was manageable. Yeah, it wasn't great and it wasn't fun, but it was manageable. But when we grew into 10 bays, it, it is no longer an option for me to be able to do that. Sure. And I, I think that a lot of guys go out because because they can't find somebody else, they go out and they hire an apprentice and they say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get to where I grow them and they're going to be efficient and proficient and this is how we're going to make money. And the problem is, is it can take a lot of time to get them there. Sounds like yours caught on fairly fast. We've— we have. Um, so you're correct, it is time consuming to bring a technician up. Now usually if they have any kind of experience, they jump the first part pretty quick, right? You know, didn't take them long to be decent at oil changes, finding issues, suspension checks, brake checks, understanding brake systems, uh, and the normal day-to-day stuff— tires, tire repairs, all that fun stuff, uh, maintenance. They got that pretty quick. The next step of, okay, let's get into which systems you're good at. Yeah, teach you to diagnose, teach you to, you know, figure out, uh, driveline vibrations and things that we run into on day to day. That has been a— that, that's— it's been challenging when there's two of them, you know. Yeah. Um, especially when, you know, we're small. So as in any small, small shop, you wear multiple hats. We're a car sale, so I'm the car salesman, I'm the owner, I'm the general manager, I'm the service manager, and some days I'm diagnostic, you know, right? Uh, so yeah, it could, it could be very, very time-consuming, very, a lot of pressure, you know. Um, in hindsight, I don't know that I would have changed it, okay, because it's, it's definitely, it's been a learning experience, right? Um, we did have to change on our, you know, what we offer to the public. The one technician that left, he did a lot of electrical diagnosis, you know, he would be able to find the driveline vibration, stuff like that. He did a lot of heavy work, suspensions, transmission, rear main seals, stuff like that. So we did lose that ability because our other tech can do some of that, but he's not, you know, as proficient at the big jobs. So we had to change what we offered, which is kind of why we went with Tire Pros. So we went like, okay, we need to do some more tires, we need to do some more, you know, things on suspension and kind of move up from there. And then now, you know, looking forward, we're actively talking about adding on to our building or getting a second building. And our planning is, okay, we need to look forward and how we move it back into diagnostics and things like that. So for sure. Be able to offer the full, full spectrum? I don't know that you do. And here's why I say that is because we've been having a lot of conversations that diagnostics is the least profitable service offered in auto repair shops. Sure. Right. They don't make money. And we often get this hero syndrome that we're going to fix cars nobody else can fix. But the really profitable shops aren't even trying to diagnose cars. Right? They're not even making an effort. Now, I'm not saying that's right. Okay, I don't want you to take it as me saying that's what's right. I'm just saying that the shops that are super profitable have stopped doing diag, and they'll change parts all day long. Now, that— is that what I believe? No, that's not what I believe about the industry. It's not what I believe we need to do. But it is very common for them to step back on the level of complexity of the work and do the work that you're doing, because that's where they make money at. Sure, right? And if anything gets complex, they just said, sorry, I'm not interested, send it out, right? And so I built my business completely on that diagnostic ability, and now I have to have a very advanced technician that's capable of handling that. And the problem with that is, is that I, I was the one doing the testing, right? Yeah. And so in a lot of ways, I was responsible for holding them accountable, making sure it was done right, reviewing the process, reviewing the testing notes, making sure we were doing a good job for the, the guest, right? Yeah. That is really hard to duplicate, right? And, and how do you take somebody who has no automotive knowledge— let's say we just take your wife, she's the service advisor and we have this diagnostician, he goes out and he looks at the car and you're not looking at the ticket and he makes a wrong call or he has the wrong information on there. It's a very big repair. It's a $5,000 repair. And I could have caught that, looked at it. You could have caught it and looked at it and said, that's the wrong call. I don't see enough data. I don't see enough information to make that call. Right now we just sold a $5,000 job and it doesn't fix the car. Now what? Yeah. It hurts. Really uncomfortable. Because I know, you know, I've heard horror stories in our industry about how that's taken care of. Yeah. But I know from our point, you know, if I, if I do a $5,000 repair and I find out that, you know, it's wrong, I'm eating $5,000. Yeah, yeah. I'm fed for a week because, uh, because I'm eating that and I'm making sure that the customer gets taken care of properly. Yep, absolutely. And, and, you know, imagine this, these guys aren't even doing testing, right? Oh yeah. And they're still doing that, and they're still like, oops, that didn't fix it, sorry, here, uh, also recommend this too. Yeah. You know, and, and I, I don't think that's right for our industry, but I do believe that's where the majority of our industry is going right now. Yeah. I don't agree with it, but I mean, they're also not charging for testing, right? They're wrapping it up into the, the repair cost, and they're saying, well, I didn't charge you to test it. I just told you what I thought it was. Sorry, man. Yeah, right. Yeah. And how can you— how can they come back on you for something you didn't charge them for? Yeah, exactly. And, and I don't know, you know, it's, it's been a little bit of a hard lesson for different people to handle that, you know. Um, the way we do it is, uh, you come in with a check engine light, we scan it for free. Okay. Now we don't diagnose it, we just— why don't you come in, let's scan it, see how serious Yeah, if it's an EVAP code, we're like, hey, okay, so you got an evaporator emissions code, you know, we're gonna have to get that taken care of. Let's get you on the schedule. We know that for, you know, an EVAP leak and a purge during an on-purge event, we know kind of the area it's going to be. We're probably going to need your car for a couple hours. You're looking at this much to diagnose the problem. Yeah. Um, if it's a purge valve, kind of throw out a number. Hey, this is going to be a repair for the purge purge valve, but we won't know until we do this part. Yeah. Um, to kind of prepare the customer so they understand the complete scope of what they'd be looking at. Yeah. The best we can. Um, and then we tell them, so we're going to schedule you for the, the testing and everything. If it's the purge valve, you want us to take care of it because it's going to be X amount. Um, and they come in and that's what we do. We do the testing, find out it's a purge valve, put a purge valve on. Yeah. Charge them for the testing charging for the purge valve because that's what we quoted them and all. If we get into the testing, find out that it's actually the canister and it's going to be way above what we, you know, let them know, then we stop and go, hey, call them up, hey, you know, this is what we found. It's not the purge valve, it's the canister. You're going to be $150 above what we initially quoted, you know. Yeah. Are you good 'Good with that,' um, 9.5 times out of 10 they're like, 'Yep, go ahead and take care of it,' because we've tried to prepare them for the worst the best we can. Yeah, we've communicated with them. Um, but I don't know how shops can come in and be like, 'Oh yeah, it's this, I'm gonna wrap that in,' because yeah, there's such a loss of money. I mean, there's so much time you spend looking and trying to make sure you made the right call. Yeah, but I mean, they're not trying. They're not trying to make sure they made the right call. What they're doing is, is they're trying to turn the bay as fast as they can. Yeah. And they're trying to sell parts and labor, right? Because you got to think, diagnostic labor is the least profitable thing an auto repair shop does, right? There's no money in it, right? Because if you look at the gross profit per hour and you say, hey, if I typically sell, you know, 0.85 parts to every dollar of labor or $1 of part to every dollar of labor, then if I'm not selling parts, half my profit's gone, right? Yeah. Or roughly half. And so they look at it and they say, hey, this is, this is a no-win situation. So I'm going to give the tech $0.50. I'm going to give the tech an hour. Make the best call you can. Tell me what you think we might need. I'll sell it. Hopefully we can hit it with the shotgun. Maybe the cannon. And if we can hit it with something broad enough, surely we can take care of it. Yeah, it's true. They're probably going to pay for more than what they needed to pay for. But, you know, for us, this is a win financially. Right. And in my opinion, that's part of the reason we are where we are with automotive industry and the trust aspect. I was going to say, I think, I think that's the problem. I think, I think what you just described is the problem. With our industry. Um, because whether, whether you like it or not, chucking a part at a car and missing, being like, oh, that's not it, and then chucking the correct part at the car and hitting it that time, you, you diagnosed it. Yeah, it cost you a part. Exactly. And your time to figure out that wasn't it. Yeah. Or you could have taken your tester figured it out, right, and fixed it properly the first time. And I think as an industry, what's going to help to make us better is that if you come in and, and remember that every customer that walks through the door, your whole goal as an automotive shop is to take care of their concern, help them get back on the road for a reasonable, a reasonable amount of money. Not the most amount of money, not I'm gonna chuck parts at it, figure it out. Like, those people are now spending, you know, if you're not doing maintenance, take out maintenance, but when their car breaks down, they're spending money that they didn't plan on spending. They got to take that away from their family to keep going. Yeah, it's, it's our job to help them keep that as a low amount, and that's what we're there for. How do we, when, when Because I agree with you, right? How do we turn that corner? You agree with them? Huh? You agree with them? Why? Sorry about it. I completely disagree with you. Okay. I completely disagree with you. The repair has to be worth X amount of dollars. The repair costs what it costs. Yeah, 100%. Oh yeah. So like, well, you're saying the opposite is what I'm saying though. Like, it's not my job to make it as cheap as possible for you because I took that a different way. So yeah, and maybe I didn't explain it right. So because I, I see what you're saying, it's going to cost me a certain amount of money to figure this out and repair it. Well, even if it does, like, that's it. I'll give you an example. Timing chains on a Mercedes-Benz needs to carry a price. Yeah. Okay, the— let's say it's $12,000. Okay, I don't care that you can do it for $7,500 and still be profitable. The price should be $12,000. Does that make sense? Yeah, so, so then that's what the price should be, is $12,000. What I'm trying to, to differentiate from is, like he said, you got a customer that comes in and says, hey, you know, I got a check engine light on, and we're gonna go small, we're gonna say purge valve, you know, and you go, okay, chuck a purge valve at it. There's, you know, a $250 repair. Boom. Oh, that didn't fix it. Shoot. Okay, let me test a little further. Oh, it's actually the canister. So, you know, now we're going to be $700. Yeah. Plus I need to keep $250. I call that wasteful, right? Yeah. So you're wasteful. Not just, not the price of the repair. The price of the repair is the price of the repair. Repair. Yeah, but, but we shouldn't be wasteful and just be willing to take their money and spend it willy-nilly like that because it's not our money we're spending. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, because I know in my area I have, I have shops that'll do that. They'll throw a purge valve on it and be like, oops, not the purge valve. Then they'll throw a canister at it and be like, oh yeah, with the canister you're paying for all of this. When if they would have just done the testing, you could have diagnosed it for way less than a purge valve costs and then put a canister Yeah, so it's our, it's our job to try and make it a proper amount for the repair, not an exorbitant amount, because we don't want to do the job of actually diagnosing. That makes sense. I guess maybe that's a better way to put it. Yeah, I agree with you. If I'm not, I'm not going to cut down, you know, if we do, if we have to do an engine job and, you know, I'm not going to try and make it less because I can just skim by on this less amount. It's really the repair should should be a repair. With the repairs, the repair. Yeah. And you use the proper parts and technicians that are trained and being paid for it. Yeah, that's the other one. But I mean, like, we have people in the industry, we have Coach's, we have, uh, other shops, and they are literally teaching the other method. They're teaching people to do that, and they're saying, well, it makes money, so it can't be wrong. Well, if it fixes the car 70% of the time, that's the problem. It fixes the car 70% of the time. I guess, I guess at that point, what, what's your goal? Is, is your goal just to take away your bit of the money and run away, or is your goal to make this industry better? I think their goal is to take the money and run away. I think you're right. I think you're right. And that's tough for people like us who, you know, want to make a decent living at what we're doing. It's not an easy job, you know, but still want our industry to be thriving, be decent, and not where we're at where we're, you know, nobody wants to do it. They don't make enough and stuff and everybody hates us. For sure. Well, I mean, you see it all the time and you see the feedback from guests and you see the, the way that they act about about having to come in and work with a new repair shop. Yeah, you said something earlier, you said like 89% of your clients were repeat clients. Yeah. How do you diversify that and protect yourself against a shift, right? Because you, you have attrition in the client base, right? And so folks age out, folks may get mad at some point and go somewhere else. How do you go ahead and prepare ahead of time to make sure you're bringing in enough new clients? What's your strategy for marketing? Um, so we've, we've just started doing a little bit more marketing, um, you know, through, through different tech areas. Tire Pros has put on— they have a marketing team that helps us with our stuff, so they do a lot of like, um, geofencing and things like that to bring in customers. Customers to us, uh, to try and move the way the types of customers will come in. Okay. Uh, we're not looking for the, the people with European cars. Yeah, we're great at European stuff, but we're trying to pinpoint customers that are good to us. And then, um, between that, internet, then it's, like you said, the customer experience. When they do come in and give us a try or whatever, we try to give them the best feeling. You know, we try to treat everybody like family, talk to them on a normal basis. You know, we try not to be too distant in how we deal with them. Usually, hey, come on in, let's, you know, this is what we found on your car. Just a real relaxed, laid-back, laid-back chill kind of, yep. Um, you know, we do things like, hey, you know, found an oil leak on your car, we'd like to show you, you know, come on, let you make a decision based on what you see. Exactly, exactly. Um, right now that's, that's kind of what we're doing is just trying to treat them with respect, trying to treat them kindly. If, you know, if we goof something up, that's kind of the other big thing is when you have a new customer and you mess something up We're the first to be like, hey, we goofed up. We're human. We made a mess of it. Let's— we'd like to make it right. And then the other thing is just we're very fortunate to have a great base of customers, a lot of Facebook community groups in our area. We don't self-promote, which I hear a lot of people, they're initially like, whoa, you don't, you know, When someone says, hey, I have a car, I need a brake job, where should I go? My wife and I don't jump on and say, hey, give us a call down here, come on, you know, we'll— we just sit back and we watch other shops do that. And then we watch about 20 or 30 of our customers go, hey, go to Ten Pin, go to Ten Pin, Ten Pin's fantastic, I go to Ten Pin. After a while, just so you know, yep, like that becomes heavy. Yeah, right, because then people are recommending you. Yeah. And then somebody comes in and says they charge an an arm and a leg. And in Facebook Marketplace, an arm and a leg's not okay. Oh yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah. And arm and a leg's anything above what you paid for the stuff, okay? Right. Like, we can't charge any more than that. Yeah. So I just want to warn you, like, eventually that will get heavy. Just don't look. Oh yeah, just ignore it. Oh yeah, no, no, we don't— we— if you see it tagged, you don't go. I can't tell you how, how much it hurts when you hop on there and you see someone as, oh, 10-pin this, And they're— and I'm like, oh, it eats me up. Oh yeah, yeah, for days I'm like, what do we do wrong? Why do we mess this up? What do we do? Yeah, yeah, it is— you can't watch it. You can't. Yeah, for sure. No, David finds himself hating the client. I end up finding myself hating myself. So yeah, like, you know, yeah, I— David just doesn't care. We do both. My, my wife is— she's the protector of us too. I'm like I'm like, oh man, what do we do wrong? How do we mess it up? She's like, they were rude. And I'm like, yeah, but, but like, now they're mad at us and now they're— she's like, no, they were rude and I told them they were rude, you know. Oh, that's awesome, man. She's like, I told them, hey, this is the way it is, this is what you're paying. If you want to badmouth us, whatever, you're not going to treat us that way. Goodbye. Goodbye. You know, and I think, I think that, that's the other part that comes down to it, is you need to know your You need to know who you want coming in, who you're dealing with. Yeah, yeah. Um, we don't, we don't race to the bottom. Um, I think we're on the low end pricing. I do think that in our community we need to come up with pricing, uh, kind of as we talked. It's a slow progression. Why not just raise it all at once? Why not? Yeah. Um, it definitely, you know, when we bought the place we saw a huge surge of people leaving because it gave them a reason just not to come back. Okay. Um, you know, the old owner, like I said, he had a lot of connections, a lot of people he knew. And I can definitely look back in my book, in my numbers, and see there are a lot of customers we haven't seen since a few months before we bought the business. Um, so At first we were really scared of just kind of making any changes, like, hey, I want to make sure we keep our customer base, keep sure, make sure everything's on. So now what we do is, you know, if you, if you jump from, we'll say, $100 an hour to $175 an hour, right? Definitely in our town it's going to be like, oh, they just, they just raised our prices. Do you think they would even know? You don't think they know? No, I, I'm not— I, because you got to look at it from a repair order standpoint, because even if you jump up, let's say, $50, like, so hours per hour, it's probably less than that. So I mean, maybe like $75 more on a ticket. Sure. Like, they won't notice. Yeah, we've just kind of taken a progressive approach. You know, we brought our labor rate up a little, brought our matrix up a little, which definitely brought, you know, not to get too much into numbers, but on our bottom line, I look back over the last 2 years, you know, we started out at about 9% bottom line profit. And the last 2 quarters we've been up over 15% just by kind of bringing things up slowly. And our expenses have increased. You know, our techs, we brought them in and as they progressed we've given them raises. Yeah, we do spiffs and stuff, so we spent more on, hey, throw $150 on the tool truck, go get it for sure, you know. So our expenses have gone up and we've still been able to bring that, that profit up. Yeah, so, um, yeah, I think, I think probably if, if I had to answer that question with a quick short sentence, fear. Yeah, we haven't made that jump from here. Gotcha. I understand, and that, that's a, that's completely rational answer. And I think that's the large majority of the reason that nobody does. Yeah, right. There's a lot of people who are really afraid of that concept and that idea of like, hey, this could be a big deal for me. And, and typically it's not, right? I think in, in maybe one or two shops I've talked to out of the hundreds, it's been a big deal. Yeah. But it was like they were $50 an hour and they had to make a massive increase, and so they had to do it all at once or they were going to go bankrupt, they were going to close the doors. And so they lost some of the bottom feeders that they had attracted. And I think that's what a lot of shop owners miss, is because it's— the price is the dictator of the type of clientele that come through the door, right? Yeah. And if you're the cheapest, you've got a cheapest client, and the cheapest client's the hardest to work with, right? They don't have any money. If something goes wrong with that car after you fix it, they always have to come back to you because they don't have any more money. Yeah. And so it has to be your fault. Whereas if you're working with a more high-end tier, somebody who has financial freedom, well, what you find with them is that they're like, hey, you know, look, I understand there's no way that could be related. Tell you what, we'll get it taken care of, not a big deal. Yeah, right. I know it wasn't you, you know what I'm saying? Um, let me ask you where you're going from here? I know we've talked a little bit about this, but what's your vision, you know, 10 years from now? Are we talking about multiple shops? Are we talking about just this one shop? Like, what— where would you see yourself 10 years from now? What would be the dream of where you want to be? So give you a little idea of the progression. When I bought the shop, the goal was get the money, let's get the loan, let's buy the shop, let's have the shop pay off the loans, and at the end have an asset that you know, when I hit 60 years old, 55, 60 years old, we can sell the shop. Yeah. Move the money and I can retire and live okay, you know. Right. Um, I think over the past 6 months, uh, we've definitely moved to, you know, hey, we've got enough clientele, we need to, we need to build a bigger shop. You know, I have people reach out that, uh, have a little bit bigger trucks, you know, dually. We can't fit a dually in our shop right now. We can squeeze it in But yeah, I'm very limited on what I can do. So, you know, we talked about building a couple bigger bays with bigger lifts, right? Some, some maintenance on dually stuff. Um, and over the last 6 months, I think we've really moved to, okay, how does this look for us to pull ourselves out? So my wife and I have both decided that by 2028, we would like to not be in our business— have to be in our business running the day-to-day, right? I want to have someone doing that, and then we can focus on running the business as an owner's perspective and start another location. Um, I don't know how big I want to get in the next 10 years. I'm not sure because I don't think I have the belief yet that, yeah, we'll have 10 locations. Yeah. Um, but it's definitely something that we're both talking about. It's okay, how do we, how do we get to the next step, get the second location? And then now when I'm 55, 60 years old, how do I have locations that I could be the owner and not have to be at any of them every day and just run from an owner? Right. So I think, you know, I know in the back of my mind the little excited kids like, I want to have a full brand of myself and have 50 locations and Everybody knows who we are. You know, how feasible that is, I'm not sure yet. I don't know what I believe, but, uh, but yeah, definitely 5, 10 years down the road we're gonna have multiple locations and some sort of program to help bring techs up into the industry and create. Well, I am really excited to come back and revisit this in a few years and see if you still feel the same way and see if you, you know, the What are you laughing about? We've been making it, we've been debating this all weekend, right? Yeah. Because there are those who recognize to go to the level that you're talking about, they want the 50 stores, they understand the quality can't be 100%, they understand it can't it can't be about the people anymore. They understand it can't be about what I want anymore. It has to be that I'm going to find people, I'm going to develop people, I'm going to hire the best people I can hire, I'm going to give them a target, and I'm going to let them go, and I'm going to let them do their thing. I am going to build financial freedom, or financial— I guess you call it generational wealth, by consistently developing systems. And I'm going to hopscotch, right? I'm going to use my financials from the shop to buy the second shop, and then I'm gonna buy the third shop, I'm gonna buy the fourth shop, and it doesn't get easy until the fifth shop, right? And that's a heck of a slog to get there. Sure. And what was it they said, that one store last night had added 39 locations? 39 locations in a year? Was it a year, right? Yeah. You're talking about some massive growth to get there. But, but I want you to think about that. Yeah, right. Like, and here's where I come to on this is how hard was it for you to find technicians? It's difficult. Okay, so it was difficult when it was— it was, it was almost impossible in my area to find a good technician that we could afford at our, at our size. Okay, so it wasn't gonna do that. It wasn't our terror. It wasn't terrible to find people that were interested and eager because they haven't been jaded by, yeah, what goes on in our industry. There's, you know, my two apprentices and I— every, every few months I hear about another apprentice at the high school level. It's like, hey, I want to be a mechanic, you know. Um, so I know there's some, some eagerness out there, right? But I mean, how, how are you going to run a shop like that if I've got multiple locations? And I, I I can't be there. Yeah, it has to do what it has to do without me. And now I need skilled staff. So, so really, I'm just thinking here as we're talking, so really we need to, we need to figure out how to create a system to bring technicians up in a way that's not going to— you won't ever do it in a multi-story shop. You won't ever do it. I don't think it's possible. I think you get to like a Mark Ponds, okay, you get to a Doug Grill's, 16+ locations, you can hire people, you got enough profit, you can build a system then. Sure, I would want to try. 1 to 7, not possible. I don't think you'll ever do it. I think you will have to hire people and you will have to lower your quality standards to such a degree that you probably would not be comfortable if, if, if we could paint a mental picture for you. Sure. Of what fixing a car looks like now with one shop compared to what it would look like in 5 years with you having 5 shops. I don't think— I know I would not be comfortable, right? Like, if I went back, I, I could not be comfortable with the concept of what that would look like for myself. If I wanted to have that many locations, right? Because the quality's got to go downhill. There's no way you can maintain the quality standards. I, I know that plenty of shop owners say they do. I get to work that comes from those shops. They don't. All they care about is turning enough cars to hit the numbers they have to hit so eventually they can get bought up by private equity or venture capital. That these people that are talking multi-shops, 90% of them that that's what they're interested in doing. They're either going to become the venture capital or private equity, or they are going to sell the shop to venture capital, right? Yeah, they, they don't care about the path. The only thing they care about is maintaining the, the fuel— in other words, the cars coming in— until somebody buys the shop. That's all they care about. So what, what do you think it is that, that loses them? What do you, what do you think it Do you think it's just because it becomes too much for them to manage all that? It's impossible to manage it. You can't, yeah, right? You can't manage it at that level. You see, I mean, once you grow up to a certain size, that's all that matters. Yeah. Is it, is it because, is it because you can't manage it as a person, or is it because you don't have the team that has the buy-in and drive? Like, there's not— right, there's not enough people that have the drive and the buy-in to staff a machine of that size. So, so when I— and it can't be scaled and replicated. Yeah. So when— so if I jump back to when I worked at the bus company, um, we started out and I had some techs that worked for me that definitely had— they were eager, they were young, they were eager. We started teaching them, and I was able to move them up into positions of a lead tech or this and that. I, I had one that moved over. He got promoted to another shop manager that had the drive. And so that's what I'm asking is like, I was able to build in that shift leads that had the drive, right? But what was the common denominator? It was that you worked with the shift leads. You were the common denominator. Yeah, yeah. Remove yourself completely, right? So you're saying at that kind of level you wouldn't be able to move yourself completely, you'd have to, you'd have to have a really solid team under you then? Exactly. And, and look, I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to say any names, like some of my really close friends that have multiple shops, we've had a discussion this week that says like, dude, I got so focused on the numbers that I almost tanked my shop. And I put a team in place and they were aggressive and they were all about the money and it all fell apart, right? And now I'm right back where I started. And so like, this is a, this is a common thing. Sure, right? And so if you care at all, like this person said, we have a, we have a core value that states that we will not compromise our ethical and moral obligation to the client. And when I was talking to my team about what had happened, my one of my lead techs that had left said, everybody thinks you're a fucking joke, man. And he's like, what are you talking about? He's like, nobody believes you even have ethics. Nobody in your shops trusts you. They would not trust you farther than they could throw you because they don't see that. They don't see that in your actions, in your beliefs. Now, this person has that. Yeah, but nobody believed it because they didn't see him every day. And didn't engage with them every day, it becomes dog eat dog. It becomes ruthless. And so I just don't know how to find that balance in that, right? Because I aspired to that. I aspired to have multiple shops. Yeah. And now I'm looking at it and saying, I don't, I don't think I can do that. True. I, I can barely manage one, right? And so it just makes me wonder, like, where do we go? And if, you know, two, sure. But you talk to Doug Grylls and Doug will tell you, hey, life with 2 shops is miserable. Life with 3 shops is miserable. Life starts to get a little bit better at 5 and you can breathe again. Okay, right. You get above 5 shops, now you can put middle management in place that runs all the other shops. But that's where you start to lose some of that quality to have this different experience. Now, you talk to Michael Smith from the Institute, well, What he's going to tell you is, is that's the world you're going to compete in in 10 years because you're going to be surrounded by venture capital. He told— I've told this story a couple times on the show, but he talks about the fact that he was involved in funeral home consolidation years ago because he did a bunch of consolidations, a bunch of mergers and acquisitions. And he talks about the fact that we were buying caskets. For $100 apiece in containers. We were taking those caskets and we were selling them for the $2,000 or $2,500 that our competitors were selling them for, but they were paying $1,250 for them. And so they couldn't ever compete with us no matter what they did. They would lower their price to try and race us to the bottom. They could sell it for what they had in it and we still made more profit than they did. No matter what. We were making a fortune and they were dying. And so eventually it became impossible for them to compete with us. And Michael says, what you're getting ready to see is you're getting ready to see that surround every shop in the nation in metro areas. He said then eventually it'll happen in smaller metro areas, and then eventually it'll happen in rural areas, just like it's happened to collision. And I'm telling you right now, the collision industry is, is eating itself. And all that you're gonna see is a Caliber Collision and these big corporate corporate chains and they eat up the small ones, and the small ones can't compete. And if they weren't prepared for it ahead of time and say, okay, I'm gonna sell, okay, I'm gonna roll into this, okay, I'm gonna build a system that they can't compete with, they just get pushed into the ground. And they did, because they didn't prepare. It ate them alive, right? There was no money left. It just devoured them. They couldn't sell it for anything because there was no value left because they weren't competitive in their marketplace. And so I think that it leaves us with a really difficult question to ask of where is this industry going to be in 10 years if we don't do something different? Sure. So I'm not trying to kill your, uh, I feel bad now. I just realized how bad that was. You just destroyed me completely. No. So like I said before, I try to learn every step I can. So what What you just said didn't kill the dream. It went, these are the things that you're going to run into when you start to do that, instead of letting me go ahead and figure it out on my own. I appreciate that. Yes, sir. I will learn from you. Um, but then I think it becomes, uh, okay, so how do we, how do we combat that? How do we— so if, if that's what happens when you grow big to multi-locations. But we have so many shop owners, independent shop owners, that are, are really passionate and want to help, you know, the community, want to help our industry, want to build things here, here, here, and here. How do we— you could duplicate that with all shop owners that all have passion. How do you, how do you build that? How do you grow that to help push the negative out of the because, yeah, I don't— you get, you get a lot of industries where it's, you know, dog eat dog, you fight each other, you're always kind of, how do I, how do I combat, go after that, how do I beat that? And I don't, I don't think that's the proper way to solidly win a fight. I think you have to be able to figure out how to grow something that attracts, yeah, more of what you want. So we, we keep asking the same question, and we keep trying to figure out how do we do that, and people keep telling us it's a pipe dream. So when we figure it out, we'll let you know. I'll, I'll keep, I'll keep going through it and try and figure out what I could figure out, and if I find anything, I will let you know, because I, I, I'd hate for that to become our industry. Yeah, I would, I would much rather have it in a holistic way. Yeah, in a holistic way, and a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of people that truly want industry to be a good industry and not— Amen. Not that guy that's just ripping me off on the street. Amen, buddy. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Yes, sir. Thank you for listening to the Changing the Industry podcast. If you enjoy the show, do us a favor and leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to set it to automatically download the latest episode. Our efforts with this podcast, the YouTube channel, and the Facebook group wouldn't be possible without the support of our awesome sponsors. So please take a moment, check them out by clicking on the links in the show notes.