Episode 277 - Building Better Workflows and Navigating AI With Ash Kaplan of Golden Hour Garage

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. Um, for all of the ASTA recordings, I had to like rotate them all. Yeah. 1.8 degrees. 1.8 degrees. Exactly 1.8 degrees. Just popped them all exactly. Yeah, you're gonna have to move that over just a hair. Other way. There you go. There you go. That's it. You got this. Okay. Young lady, how are you? I am so good.

2:42Are we recording? Yeah. Oh, good. Hi. Yeah, we've been recording audio the whole time. Oh no. Oh yeah, make sure there's not a camera in the view of that one, right? No, it's good. I just canceled myself already. Yes, absolutely. Don't worry, we're definitely putting that part on the internet. That's definitely— what you said about Mike Allen was beautiful. I just thought that was so true and so honest.

3:01Um, you know what we're gonna have to do is, uh, I'm gonna have to go into witness protection after this. No, Mike's not a dangerous man. It's his brother that you really have to watch out for. He's the dangerous one. He really is. Oh gosh. How you doing? You're a little late. Better late than never. 20 minutes, but I'm normally 20 minutes late to everything, so I'm on time.

3:23Exactly on time. Okay, so here's, here's where we take a bet. Okay. How long is the stress ball gonna last? So every show now, David gets a stress ball. My wife sends a stress ball every single time. Okay. The hope is, is eventually Ava, David's daughter, actually gets to see them before he destroys them. Okay. Now, we were at a Shopware event and I look over at David and he's got this like mortified look on his face.

3:55And I look over and I look at his hands and they're covered in this like gooey, nasty mess. I will say, though, it washed right off. It like right off with some soap and water. It came right off. You had a very nervous look on your face. Because it was so sticky. And I'm like, this is never coming off. How stressed are you?

4:15It is that— oh, trust me, it's bad. I, um, I, I had— I hadn't touched anything that sticky that I can think of because it was like, uh, it was like paste. Yeah, sticky paste. On your hand and it wasn't like rubbing off or anything. And so you ever see somebody like start to panic? Like the, the initial onset of panic when they're like— so like he started moving his fingers faster.

4:44It's like, that's what I actually like would have paid to see that because I feel like you're like so stoic all the time. I would have actually paid to see you panic a little bit. Yeah. Oh no, I go, you don't watch the podcast enough. Yeah, you're probably right. Introduce yourself. Yeah, I'm Ash Kaplan, owner of Golden Hour Garage, and I do a lot of things outside of Golden Hour Garage that are a lot of fun.

5:10Right. So wear a lot of hats. We focus on remote service for shops, so assisting with estimate building, extended warranties, fleets and beyond. This year is going to be quite the turning point for us. So you'll be seeing my face in a lot of places, training and teaching and very cool doing some more projects. So I'm very excited to give more to them.

5:31So tell me about how we got here. Who is Ash? Where did Ash come from? Like, you came on the scene all of a sudden. Yeah, but you've been in the industry a while. So tell us kind of like, where did you get your start and how did we end up here? Yeah, um, I grew up in it, um, not as professionally.

5:51So my father, he was a contractor first, and then recession and trying to make money, worked on cars, got me introduced. I hung around a lot of adults as a kid. And so I was in a room with a lot of adults all the time, a lot of car people, a lot of mechanics, salespeople. Yeah. I realized I loved sales really early as a kid because I loved talking to people and solving problems.

6:15And I felt like that's what sales was to me, was just solving people's problems. And then I was really grateful or just like blessed that I was basically my father's son because he didn't have any boys. And so anything he was doing that was hands-on that traditionally girls should not have been doing, I was doing. Okay. Um, like you could not take a drill or saw out of my hand.

6:36I loved power tools. I loved tinkering and building things with him. Um, and so that just translated later in life to cars. Um, and so he taught me everything. Like anytime he was working on our cars, because we were We were broke, so he had to do everything himself. I was there right with him and he didn't do a lot of things great, but he was a good teacher at things like that because he would just let me do it instead of telling me how to, like, here, take this tool and do this with it rather than watch me do it and then try it.

7:06And so that's how I learn now. I do just do it. Hands-on. Yeah, hands-on learning. If I make a mistake, I'll learn from it or have some guidance and coaching. But Um, yeah, so as I got older, I saw the struggle he went through with being in the trade, and I thought, I'm gonna get a stable, secure job. So in high school, I did, um, I did dual enrollment where you're in college and high school at the same time, and I graduated early.

7:33So I graduated at 16, and I had 2 years of college done by that point, um, and I was focused on accounting because I was like, oh well, that's secure, and stable. And I did accounting for 6 months post-school and hated my life. Yeah, dude, I couldn't imagine that. No, I hate it. I don't even do our own accounting now because I hate it.

7:53But it was at a car dealership and I noticed how much more enjoyment I got like during my lunch break when I would go hang out on the sales floor, go pop into the shop. So I went to the owner and I was like, hey, is there a path for me to explore something different here? So they gave me a shot and I did sales and I sold cars and I enjoyed it.

8:12But there's so much sleaziness in the car business on that side. So I went back to the shop and I never left. That was 11 years ago. So yeah, and then I went through just independent shops, found my niche was like going into struggling shops and kind of building them up. I'm pretty, pretty good at process. And making workflow like a dance.

8:37And so that's what I would do is I'd go into a shop, put in processes and create like each step of it where it ties into the next step. And it literally flowed like a dance and it was a lot of fun and it made shops a lot of money. But then I'd get bored. And so I'd go to the next. Early in though, like a couple years into being independent shops, I had this like come to Jesus moment where I had a technician that, you know, I was pretty hands-on and articulate enough to understand most of it.

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10:00But there— somebody had said something to me. I was managing a technician and they said something like, how are you going to tell me how to do it when you can't do it yourself? I was like, you're right. Yeah. So I went through tech school twice now. Wow. Yeah, I was really close to getting through to finish and go into the master technician program, but I didn't finish.

10:21But I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed having more of the traditional technical knowledge. Yeah, on top of what I already knew. And then like unlearning some of the bad habits that I did just from learning along the way and backyard mechanic stuff. Um, and so yeah, I've been a certified technician for 9 years. Okay. Um, and my ASEs are not current, but you know, I did have them at one point.

10:46And I love tinkering and I love working on my own stuff. I haven't in the last few years. Life's been busy with business. But yeah, that's my heart is cars, racing, drifting. If anyone knows me personally, drifting is my life. And so yeah, now all of that translated into I love automotive repair shops, I love people, I love fixing problems. But there was just this consistent problem year after year, shop after shop that estimates took a long time.

11:14We could have with 6 locations and at 6 locations each advisor could write the same thing 6 different ways. And so I was like, there has to be a better way to do this. My process was good, but when life is busy and the phone's ringing a million times and the vendor's walking in and the technician says the part's wrong and your phone's ringing, you have to go to the bathroom.

11:34Like all the things are happening. It's like impossible to have consistent output. Yeah. And so it came out of a need from the shops I was in at the time, built it out, noticed it was a huge need for other shops. And then the impact that it started to make was like telling that I was doing the right thing, even though this isn't what I wanted to be doing.

11:55Right. I could give 2 craps about estimates. Like, let me be honest, they're important and the process is important, but like, that's not what Ashley wants to be doing all the time. Um, so it's been a great stepping stone to get in, to get Golden Hour started. And now I have a team of advisors that work remote that do this for shops so that I can go focus on what I actually love, which is going back to fixing shops.

12:16Nice. I love it. I love it. So let me ask you this. One of the things you bring up, because I think a lot of shops struggle with this. I've got a video in the queue that I have not released yet, but workflow is a massive struggle for shops. Right. And I think that A lot of folks get in, especially like managers that were once advisors or managers that were once technicians.

12:39They get into a shop and they begin to look at it and they say, oh, you just make the estimate and you call the client and you just go through this process, right? So simple, right? Exactly. There's a nuance to it. Yeah. And one of the things as I started stepping out of my shop was, is like I had a workflow and it was fairly complex, but I could move cars through the shop.

12:58Yeah. And then when I stepped out, it's like, why can you guys not do this? Yeah, why can't you just take this and do this? There is a talent associated with it. There is an ability associated with it. And that, that kind of presence to be able to watch it and move all the pieces and play Tetris with it to get it where it needs to go is not something that comes naturally to a lot of people.

13:19Right. How big of a deal is workflow in a shop? I mean, you've mentioned imperative and, you know, this is where I struggle. Your shop's not broken because the workflow is not perfect. Like, it's almost not— it's natural for your workflow not to be perfect. There are so many moving pieces. Um, but yeah, once it, once it is flowing extremely smooth, and like I said, like a dance, what I love the most about that is like you can pick up where anybody left off.

13:43Yeah. So if somebody's out sick, okay, that's fine. Yeah, we've got a process, we know the next part of it, and you can go out of process and get back in much quicker than If you are drowning in the chaos, trying to get caught up is like impossible. And I think that's what a lot of shops struggle with and get burnt out really easily.

14:01Shop owners especially, like what it finding like you're losing your why, because like, why can't I get control of this? Right. Well, I mean, you, you constantly just go in this giant circle and it's just one problem right after another. When we talk about workflow, what are the big things that people are missing in their workflow? Um, people. So not missing the basics that we are in the business for relationships and fixing problems for people.

14:26Um, and so we tend to like overcomplicate the parts of the process that don't impact the people. So going back to the basics and having good phone skills and being personable and respectful and professional and using the sales process as a chance to build a relationship instead of getting a sale. Um, like if you could just nail that one part, the rest of the nitty-gritty workflow stuff can be worked on later and it'll be easier because you'll feel better about what you're doing.

14:54Okay. All right. Um, do you feel like, because I have sat in presentations from probably 25 or 30 software products over the past 6 months and all of them are saying, oh, we're bringing AI, we're bringing AI, we're going to have AI estimating. We're going to have AI DVIs. What impact do you think long-term that's going to have on somebody like you and Golden Hour Garage?

15:21It's a great question. It's coming, um, and I think it's amazing. I love AI. We love automation. We're working through some automation on our end as well, so I'm very excited for that as well. I think the big thing for me is early on I invested in, or worked through and invested through, some AI tools And what I found was it was really difficult.

15:43It's very difficult to just make it 100% perfect, right? Same with like any AI tool you use, you're gonna have to train it. There's gonna be things that you have to do. It has to have human checks for sure, right? Quality checks. And so that part is something that's always gonna be needed. There's going to be a shift with Golden Hour at some point where we pivot from right now, it's, I would say, 80% human labor, eventually probably 20% human labor.

16:07Yeah. But always having the professional industry knowledge person checking it over and ensuring quality. There's some more tools that we'll come out with this year as well that are going to help shops have more tools back to them when the estimate's ready to like prepare them. But yeah, I mean, I welcome it and I encourage it. And Golden Hour is going to continue pivoting because what I'm building is essentially an an entire empire.

16:35The name of the company is kind of funny. Okay. I get a lot of confusion about it not being a brick-and-mortar shop. Right, right. And I did think through that when I named it, but I was like, you know what, I'd rather explain it a million times because I love what it stands for. Um, so when I was training advisors or teaching, I always used to say the moment the customer hands you the keys to that first phone call you make is your golden hour.

16:56And so if you nail that time and you make sure you call them as promptly as you can, you're going to have the highest chance of success. So my goal is just to create tools for shops to own that golden hour. And then Garage is because we are going to house those tools. It's so tacky, but for me it works. It's like this whole encompassing system of tools to help shops just work on cars better.

17:22Right. Well, fix your shop. You know, so the AI that I've seen, we said in a presentation a while back where They literally, because they're using large language models and they're using an existing database, and what they'll do is they go in and they find out what parts you used that was associated with a name or whatever in the past. Right. And so they would come in and they compare it to the car and then all of a sudden it populates.

17:46And so now we've built an estimate in no time at all. And for me, especially if I'm following the 300% rule, like estimates take a long time to build, right? Like they take time and You know, I see a lot of flaws in that process right now. I don't think that we're close to having that nailed down and having it right. I've seen like 16 presentations at this point.

18:06Yeah. And none of them are there yet. I have as well. I, I've seen a lot of presentations and I've been asked to contribute to a lot of their development. Right. The expertise and stuff. It's needed. And unfortunately, it's— there's very few of us that are in the industry working on those tools. So a lot of it is outside tech people coming into the industry that don't know the industry well.

18:29And so that's what I'm seeing that breaking point on is like there's just small nuances that you have to know or be able to train the system to know. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've, I've seen it from both sides and I think that's a really interesting point because I've seen people within the industry think that they're going to find this silver bullet and it's going to make them billionaires.

18:46Yeah, right. And then I've seen people on the other side from outside the industry come in and like the The two, if they could align and work together, you could really accomplish something. And that's where I'm at. I'm like, I'm not a tech wizard by any means. I can barely reset my computer on my own. Clear cookies or cache or whatever it's called.

19:03I'm just a girl. Listen, you don't clear cookies because then you have to put all of your information back in. You clear the cache. Okay. Thanks, Lucas. You don't do this. Clear the cache. See, I'm just a girl. I need an adult sometimes, but there's things I'm really good at. There's things that I'm not good at. Yeah. But those things that I'm not good at, someone else is good at.

19:20So it's just working together. And I think that's the biggest thing. Like, I don't know if it's this year or just recent that I felt such a shift of like, we need to unify a little bit better as an industry because there's no competition, there's no scarcity. There's so many shops. We all have somebody we can help. So, and you're gonna be able to help someone differently than someone else can help them.

19:39So yeah, that's very true. I, you know, I think that when we look at, at the market as a whole, I think there's a— there's absolutely plenty of opportunity. I've done the numbers for my community, and if every car were to need service one time a year. Yeah, right. Like there's more than all the shops in my community could handle. And so I think that we have to be working towards that.

20:00And there's been a lot of like trash talk about other shops and the way that advisors talk to shops. And I have a real beef with that. I do too. You know, just the other day we got thrown under the bus and I didn't understand that it happened a year ago. And this person's been seething over it the whole time. We had a Volkswagen come in.

20:16We had done timing chains on it, right? And so the Volkswagen is coming back. They'd gone to a local shop and they said, yeah, the work they did is leaking oil. Well, it was right after they changed the oil that they said it was leaking oil, based on what we were told. The car comes in, the technician takes and puts UV dye in it, runs it for 15, 20 minutes, takes it and drives it, comes back, and the whole oil cap is covered in UV dye, right?

20:39Now we know it was clean when he put it in, right? There was no chance that he spilled it. It was obvious, you could see it was spraying out. And so he, he said, hey, we need to replace the oil cap and we need to reevaluate and see. They drove it— the technician drove it 5 miles and then quality control drove it another 10 miles.

20:54No drips, nothing leaking, nothing like that. It was a Volkswagen, a 4-cylinder Volkswagen, needed a PCV valve. Yeah, probably did. I think you're probably exactly right. Um, that's one thing I get frustrated with. Okay, we have an oil leak, but what What caused the oil leak? Well, usually it's Ford goodness, but on Volkswagens in particular, for an oil leak to develop around the oil cap.

21:21I was trying to avoid that situation because of the technician that it was and the whole complexity of that. So I wasn't trying to rub salt in the wound. Come on, David, read the room. Yeah, David. You don't know him very well. David doesn't read the room. David thinks he is the room. He is the room. Yes, exactly. Hey, you've not ripped it yet.

21:45I'm proud of you. I know. I'm working on it. I'm fascinated by your distraction with this trust tool. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. Just as long as Ava gets to see it before you completely destroy it. Well, she still has the other one. That's fine. I love that. So your response to the review wasn't, well, it's a good flagging. Was this a Google review?

22:08Yes, that's what sparked it. But long story short, this client comes in, we deal with that, the paperwork, the documentation, everything says. Now, whether the advisor at the time conveyed effectively and clearly, I don't know. But either way, it left with notes on the ticket that said, we need to recheck this. In a few miles, there's a potential that there's other causes.

22:31Right. But at the time it wasn't leaking. They rechecked it. It still had dye in it. Right. It wasn't leaking when it left. Well, they got a drip at some point in the future and it goes to a dealership and that dealership says they cost you $6,700. Now let's think about what we took apart on this car. Right. There's very few— So it didn't need timing chains?

22:53Well, I mean, that just is like we don't know what was wrong with it because they won't speak to us. They won't give us the information. But they automatically said it was— 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. Now, the family business is not an automotive business.

23:09It'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. Now we could see that we weren't getting return on investment.

23:29We 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.

23:50Your 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. Our work that caused their oil leak. Okay. And here's the deal is I have a warranty, right? And if we had done something wrong, regardless of the amount, right, it would have been taken care of.

24:11Like if we had done something wrong, we would have made it right. But guess who didn't come back to my shop? The customer. Guess who didn't call us? Guess who didn't communicate with us? Guess who didn't? Right? And, and it's like, okay, well, I didn't trust you guys. Great, there's a 1-800 number you could have called. You could have called and said, I don't trust you guys, I don't want you working on my car, and I would have done something to make it right.

24:29But the other shop took liberty to throw us under the bus. Absolutely. Yeah. Now look, I'm gonna tell you who this shop is. It's Paramount Volkswagen in Hickory, North Carolina. And this shop throws everybody under the bus, every single person that calls down there. You can call down there And you can pretend to be somebody else and they will throw you slap under the bus.

24:47There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They will throw every— are they hurting for business that bad? Oh no, it's the culture in the business. It's the belief system in the business. It's everything that they do. They, they— jobs that they won't make money on. It's like Kia engines. If they couldn't get a Kia engine— I have had a client and I have this all documented.

25:06I have a complete Google file on this particular case where they sent her down the road and said no. They were wrong. They didn't know what they were talking about. That car doesn't need an engine and it's not under recall. And we have documented and highlighted and shown— we sent the paperwork with her and they refuted it and said, no, it's not recalled.

25:25We know for a fact it was. As a matter of fact, it went to a different shop after it blew up going down the road and she had to get her fire extinguisher out and put the fire out. Right after that, it got towed to another shop and got fixed under recall. All because they wouldn't. And initially she was really upset with us and said we gave her the wrong information.

25:45And then she got towed to a different Kia, and that other Kia dealer said, you don't go to Paramount, you just don't do that because their culture is frustrating. But, but I mean, that's the thing is that's what this industry— there are factions of this industry that behave and act that way, right? I, I think that's one of the big things we have to fix and we have to change about the industry.

26:03Because I mean, I don't personally believe that human beings go around in this world trying to make other human beings' lives hard. No, right? I don't think it's inherently that way. No, I mean, we make mistakes, right? We're human beings, but we're not trying to fuck somebody's life up, right? So you blame the shop, I blame the customer. They shouldn't have bought a terrible truck, right?

26:23Like, no, it's like, why, why is the shop dogging on you instead of, hey, you know what, things happen, let's give them the benefit of the doubt? There's a warranty on what you had done, right? Like, personally, if, if you were my customer that came in, you're in this situation, I would call your shop for the customer and say, hey, exactly, I'm Ashley with Golden Hour Garage.

26:43I have this customer here right now. Here's the situation. I believe you did some work on it. Is it under warranty? And how can I help you take care of the customer? Exactly. How can we work together for the common goal? This customer is either going to be my customer or they're going to go back to you. But now if there's ever a situation where you need help, you know that our shop is integral and we can help each other 100%.

27:04And that, that's what we do in our shop. No. The problem is the customer automatically assumes that what the dealership is saying is gospel. This is true. And so if they go to the— that was the common theme here of this particular nonsense story that Lucas decided to tell us for 20 minutes. He's timing you. He is. It was a long story.

27:32The problem is that they went to dealerships and they just— whatever the dealership just said was 100% correct. Yeah, I struggled. I went— I worked at Lexus for some time. I took a break from aftermarket and went to Lexus, and I went back to aftermarket, uh, because I was so bored. There's nothing to teach people. You just show the customer the main and they're like, okay, all right, let's get it done.

27:54I'm like, but I want to tell you, like, I'm, I'm ready to explain explain to you and teach you, and I'm excited about this, but they just don't care, right? They just take your word for it and go for it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I know. I don't, I don't really— um, that's, that's what needs to be fixed. I'm just telling you, that's what needs to be fixed.

28:12Yeah, I don't disagree. Many people realize that these dealerships— I mean, I, I tell everybody the dealerships are all on commission, and because they're all on commission, they are incentivized. The, the technicians, the managers, the service advisors, everybody's on commission. And I'm sorry, it's just human nature. There's nothing you can do to avoid it other than just change the payment plan. It's subconscious even.

28:37Like, you don't even have to be intentional about it. But when it— when you're fighting for your paycheck, yeah, you're going to compromise. You're not going to— you're not going to have a good living if you're not selling. And so every single non-sale is not, oh, well, we'll get them next time or it wasn't for— it wasn't what was best for the customer, right?

28:57And so we move on. It's, I didn't get that sale, I'm not gonna eat. Yeah, well, and I guess my beef with that is, is, I mean, you know what I went through with the manager situation. I had somebody tell me, hey, look, the way I see this is, is that this is a game and I'm trying to win it, and I'm going to try and get every single thing I can from them.

29:17If they leave with less money in their wallet than I have in mine, I'm happy. And I'm like, no, see, that's not what I believe. That's not who we are. No. Right. And I can't tolerate that culture and that belief system. And I think that if you take care of people, the money's always going to follow. You're right. And I guess I wish that were true.

29:36That's not been reality. You know, you're right, David. It's not an absolute statement, right? Like, there are just terrible people. There are selfish people. Um, I think it was Rick White that talked about— I learned through somebody else that's in his coaching that they were giving out all these big discounts to help this person, and that person was at Disney World the next week.

29:58Yeah, it's like you're like, yeah, everyone has their own incentive and motive. That is exactly right. And it's bitten me in the butt too, but I'm trying really hard to not become cold because of— yeah, we're not trying to make you jaded here. Yeah, you're gonna have to Yeah, that's a different show. No, I want to see the good in people. I want to believe that, like, if someone says they need help, they need help.

30:21And if they don't, then that's on them to answer for later. The money, the money comes from longevity, right? Because you, you can maintain a longstanding business with honesty and integrity. The, the problem that we see— and I don't mean to interrupt you, David, I want you to continue your, your comments— but I, I think the problem that we're seeing is Man, I walked in and there was this conversation happening between Liz Perkins and David.

30:45And I stood behind them for a second, not trying to eavesdrop, but David said, you don't understand that trying to give to the level that you're giving to the employees and trying to give to the level where you're just paying them hourly and believing they're going to do the right thing and they're going to be motivated and they're going to push leads to an environment where they don't.

31:05Right. And that really stung because I've spent a lot of years trying to say, okay, we need to do away with flat rate. We need to do away with this commission model because it causes them to do things that are unethical and aren't right. But there also has to be motivation somewhere, right? There has to be some sweat equity somewhere, right? Or else people just don't perform at the same level.

31:26I have had a situation and I have been over this situation 1,000 times in my head. Of saying, why does this keep happening? Where I have overcompensated somebody to the point that they were comfortable and they said, nah, I don't really have to try hard. I don't have to work for the bonus. I don't have to work for the next level. I'm a, you know, there's no consequence if I don't build 40 hours this week.

31:48And if given that opportunity, there are people who will take it. And so if we live in a world of sharks, we've at least got to be in a shark cage or do something to defend ourselves. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or else we get eaten alive. And so we want to be honest, we want to be moral, we want to be ethical, we want to do the right thing.

32:08But there's also a consequence of doing that too, right? Now, I, I think that you can build a longstanding business. You look at my family's business, it's been there for 70-some years because they've always done their best to take care of people and treat people right, make sure people had a good time. But there's also a consequence of being somebody that is I used to say that it was just being honest, ethical, and moral, but no, it's gullible, right?

32:34You got to be careful about being gullible. I'm guilty of it. Do you have a system for you that works where you can sleep at night but still— I do. My problem is I tend to overbelieve in people, right? And so people come in and they tell me about all the things that they are and all the things that they know. And I want to believe that they are good people.

33:01I've watched this shift, right? In Jeff Compton, he's like one of my best friends, and I've watched this shift. And same with Brian Pollack. I've watched both of these guys go from, they really believed that the technician was treated unfairly and was taken advantage of and didn't receive the benefits and the things that they thought they should. And that it was the majority of technicians.

33:23And I've watched this shift happen where these two have gone from saying, I don't think it's the majority of technicians that deserve that. I think the majority of technicians are trying to manipulate the system. Now, look, I believe that the reason it is that way is because of what the automotive industry built. But there's a lot of technicians who don't have the ability that they think they have.

33:43Right. There's a lot of technicians who don't have the capabilities they think they have. It's all talk, it's no action, and they've not invested in themselves. And so now they're in this situation where, like, Brian and Jeff are looking at them saying, hold up now, you're asking me to be out here lobbying for you and you can't even do basic testing. You won't even go to a free class.

34:04That's exactly— yeah. And, and so, like, we can't lobby for you if you're not going to put the work in, right? So I think it's a balancing act. Yeah. To directly answer your question, I guess he didn't directly answer your question. Yeah, I got off topic, sorry. Is you have to be comfortable holding people accountable. Yes. And very specific things. So you can give them leeway and you can give them as much stuff as you want and you can have like all of the pizza parties and extra vacation time and whatever, whatever, whatever.

34:40You're going to have to determine as a business owner the specific metrics that will make or break your business. And if people are unwilling or due to complacency or incompetence, whatever ends up being, it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if they cannot hit those metrics. Yeah. You have to be willing to immediately fire them. Yes. Yeah, that's it.

35:06100%. And if you're not cold and ruthless, but it's not. Well, no, it's not. If you can't be that level of, of callous on those particular things, it doesn't have to be everything. Like you have, you can be, you can bend over backwards for them and whatever you want to do. But there has to be something that you can measure them on that says, if you don't do this, The business will go under.

35:33Right. And if they don't hit that, that number or that metric or whatever that the level of performance that you're trying to measure, you have to be able to, to willing to sit down, sit them down and go, hey, if this happens again, I'm going to have to let you go. Right. Because it's either you do this or the business goes under and I can't have the business go under because you're not hitting this number or whatever happens to be.

35:58So, you know, and if you want to talk to somebody that has mastered this to the nth degree, it's, it's Brian and Kim Walker. Yes. Like 100%. Talk to them and ask them 1,000 questions about their system. They run the EOS system, but I'm learning specifically. Yeah. Specifically, they will— they have, they have no problem if that person is not performing to what they want them to.

36:26They will just let them go. And it makes perfect sense, right? Like, I didn't start a business for it to fail, right? Nobody started a business for it to fail. You know what you need to operate. And yeah, it's, it's just being human, I think. And it's very hard to be firm in, in what you're building and your why and then all— and not want to hurt people.

36:46Yeah, well, it's only— it— I mean, you're gonna hurt them because you're gonna fire them. But at the same time, if they're unwilling to make the changes that they need to, and I'm not saying you don't sit down with them and ask them, am I not giving you the resources? Do you not have the skills, knowledge, and ability? I wouldn't have hired you if I didn't think you had the skills, knowledge, and ability to perform.

37:13Am I not giving you the resources? And if they say, yeah, you're giving me the resources, Okay, then I need you to perform. But if you can't perform, look, I understand this job won't be for you. I'll have to find somebody else. And then that's it. Yeah, that's just the line you have to draw. And that's the difference between a good business owner and me.

37:35I— because I keep kicking that line to whatever feels comfortable, not wanting to— I don't know, not wanting to feel bad for somebody and then think about like, oh man, I feel bad for that person. I'm going to have trouble sleeping tonight. Yeah. Because how are they going to feed their families? But we, we fix cars based on data, right? We fake— we fix cars based on fact, right?

37:57That's what we use to fix the car. We use information that we have in front of us to do that. Why don't we run our businesses like that? Yeah, that's what Tanika says. Yeah, feelings don't fix cars, right? EOS, right? Like, think about that. Get it, want it, have the capacity, right? That's all there is to it. And, and so those meetings that they have I just want you to think about the fact that that system has been so powerful for so many people.

38:22That system has been taught all over the world at this point, and there's one main premise. We're gonna sit in the room, we're all gonna sit down, and we're gonna say, do you get it? Do you want it? Do you have the capacity for it? We're gonna judge each other honestly and openly. We're gonna have the hard conversation, and you're gonna be sitting right here for it.

38:40We're not gonna talk about you behind your back. We're going to sit down and we're going to do it right here. And if you don't have the capacity, like, great, fine. Say you don't have the capacity, right? But your peers are going to judge you. And so you either get your shit together and make it happen or like, we're going to say, hey, I'm sorry, this just isn't going to work.

38:58Right. That's really hard for us. But it's the same thing. It's facts. It's data. Yeah. And I think that's the thing I struggle the most with in business. Now, I'm going to tell you something. After what I've seen my dad go through, I have learned some valuable lessons about being gullible. Just because you love people, just because you care about people, just because you think people are doing what's right for you and you don't want to hurt their feelings, the people that should matter most to you in your life, your wife, your kids, the people who are in your core circle, the people you're providing for.

39:30Now, my dad did not, I don't want it to sound like I'm saying my dad didn't take care of us or something like that. Like that. It's not that at all. It's that I've seen what being gullible has done to him because he believed in those people and wanted to do what was best for them. But he didn't take the facts into account.

39:47He didn't look at the writing on the wall and say, no, I need to take care of home base first. Right. You know, I talked to— it's been quite a few years back. And I talked to a gentleman and he was talking about the fact that, look, if you want your business to give back, great. Make your business profitable so you can fucking give back.

40:13Yeah. Don't, don't give back with the profit that you've not earned yet by subsidizing people's poor performance with your money. Right. That sounded really harsh at the time to me. But now I look at it and I say, Man, he was right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but you can get overly data-driven. Yeah, you can get overly data-driven for sure. Look at that interview that Josh just released, uh, with Todd Hayes.

40:40Yeah, that's like spicy. Poor Josh. That, that guy is, is 100% data-driven, and his, his goal is like, this is the number, everybody has to hit it. You don't hit it, you're gone. 'Cause, you know, and he looks at the larger picture, the overall goal of the company, the organization, we're all going to win. Everybody has to be driving towards this thing.

41:05And if you're not there, you know, you're our weakest player, we're gonna have to drop you off and just keep constantly improving. And you see the same sentiment from a lot of people that will say, you have to be constantly looking for your weakest performer and replacing them with better performers so you can keep constantly improving the team. I just can't do that.

41:29I can't do that and sleep at night. I can't. Yeah. If I, if I hire somebody, at no point do I go, oh, this person is now my weakest performer because I've ended up, I ended up hiring better people. They need to go or I need to replace them with somebody better. So I can improve over it. Like, I just think that's a human being.

41:50They've got a family, they got kids. Like, I want them to succeed with the organization. And that's where you have to be really careful. And that's why I say there has to be something very specific you can look at and say, this is it. This is my make or break. And if you can determine what that make or break is for your company, then you can at least measure everybody up against that make or break in their particular role.

42:15Right. And say that, hey, this is, this is the biggest thing here. All of these other little things, I want you to do what you feel is best for the company. And that being everybody else around you, like what's best for the customer, what's best for your fellow employees. You don't want somebody calling in sick because it ends up screwing everybody else.

42:35Right. So they have to have that mindset and go, hey, I'm going to show up for everybody else. It's not just, I'm going to show up, otherwise I'll get fired. I'm going to show up because if I don't show up, I'm not going to be able to pull my weight. Everybody else is going to have to pick up the slack. I don't want to do that to them.

42:50So they, so if they at least have that mindset and they show up for each other and they show up to do what's best for the, for the organization, then the organization overall should be fine. But people get complacent. People get lazy. I mean, at the end of the day, and And so you have to have something that you can go, when you go to do your weekly or whatever, biweekly, you really shouldn't be doing them less than that.

43:18But performance reviews, you have to at least be able to sit down and go, this is what I'm going to measure you against. Because this is what will determine whether the company stays solvent or not. And if you can at least outline that and sort of let everything else you know, play it by ear, you'll be okay. At least in my mind, like, I can— I would be able to sleep at night and go, everything's fine because, you know, they're doing the right things and they're at least hitting these particular metrics.

43:48Yeah. And anything past that though, and you start to— yeah, it becomes a slippery slope. And I'm just telling you, I agree, it's a really fine line and it's, it's easy to slip in either direction. Like, I've It'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.

44:13What 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. And 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.

44:39They're integrated with all of your favorite shop management softwares, and it makes your life so much easier. I know what I expect, and I've been clear on what I expect when we onboard people. And obviously I hired you for a reason. I see something in you. I see what you could bring to our organization. Um, you know, and maybe I'm— I, I think I'm a little bit more self-critical before I'm critical on my team.

45:03That's my problem. When I do one-on-ones and performance reviews, if there's something that they're struggling with, my first thought is, what have I not provided that has gotten to where they can't perform here? That's a good question to ask, but they, they have to answer that for you. It can't be— it can't be just self-reflection, because if you're thinking You will, you will go down this weird rabbit hole going, well, I didn't tell them this or I didn't give them this or I didn't.

45:28And you start to think. And the whole time, if you sit down and talk to them, like they didn't need any of that to do their job. And that's why when I say you need to sit down and ask them, am I giving you the resources to do your job? And if I'm not, like, what can I do to help you? Because I want you to succeed.

45:47And because it has to be tailored to the person, whatever they need. You're highlighting perfectly why EOS works. Right? Because you have a scorecard and on the scorecard there's measurables. And so you define the measurables and it's things that you can determine who was in control of that measurable. And if it doesn't meet our standard, then we know what's responsible, right? Like, is the owner responsible?

46:09We didn't have enough cars. Okay, well, that's an owner problem. Well, we had the cars, but we didn't have enough sales. We didn't have enough ARO. We didn't have enough whatever. Well, that's an advisor problem. Instead of guessing. Exactly. Or we get over here to the other side and it's like, well, we had, we had the approvals and the cars were sitting here and we were backlogged, but we didn't have the production or the throughput, right?

46:28Okay, well, that— is that a technician or is that, or is that a parts problem? And so I think it would be so much easier to manage putting out fires that way. Exactly. Well, so it has IDS, right? Identify, discuss, and solve. So if you have IDS now, how much time have you spent studying EOS and not implemented a bunch. Oh, I'm so bad.

46:47It's bad. It's terrible, man. I've tried and I just don't do it. I'm just getting my feet wet and learning into it. Well, so IDS, right? Like we have IDS implemented in the family business and it's like, okay, great. There's a problem. We've identified it and we put it on the board. You can't use that once you've put it on the board, right?

47:04Like once it's in your IDS sheet, this is no longer an excuse you can use. This is, we're going to talk about it. And we're going to solve the problem. This is going to get dealt with because it's not going to be an excuse you can use. It's on the sheet. So if there's ever anything— we meet as a team— if there's ever anything that's keeping you from hitting your 8 hours a day as a technician when there's 8 hours a day of work there, this is your responsibility.

47:29You own this. We've talked about it. We came up with a solution that didn't work. Great. Bring it back to the table and we'll do something else. But you can't keep making excuses. We've got an issue where we've had a situation where it's like one excuse after another. Well, it doesn't work because of this. Well, it doesn't work because of that. Well, this doesn't happen because of that.

47:48That doesn't happen because of that. IDS shuts that down. It's not an option anymore. You have to fix this or you're not going to be here. Do you take like a collaborative approach when formulating the solution? Yeah. Oh yeah. Because it's a meeting, right? You do a weekly meeting. That has IDS, and then you do a quarterly meeting with an implementer who's going over and holding you accountable, making you sit down with everybody and have these hard discussions that everybody hates, right?

48:15Because being honest and blunt like that sucks. Rick White told me years ago, he said, listen, you are going to make me throw up. And this was in the middle of a one-on-one. And he's like, I need you to shut up. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, you just gave him every excuse he could use for why he's not accomplished what he wanted.

48:35Hey, I have a question for you, Bob. Why are you not accomplishing this? Not listening to what he says. And it wasn't even what was on my mind. Right. And so I think that IDS has a real place in the automotive workspace, but implementing it and finding an integrator or an implementer is expensive. Yeah. Who's teaching shops this? I know the Institute is working on classes for EOS.

49:00I know I've asked for a scorecard. Cecil told me the other day that they've got a scorecard that they're implementing. And so I think that's kind of one of the things I'm going to do. You know, that's something that they would absolutely corner the market on if they were like, hey, we are certified EOS implementers. They would kill it. We should talk to them about that.

49:19We should. Don't release this episode until we do, and then it can be their fault, right? But I mean, like, I— for me especially in the family business, that's been huge. And we've— we— the problem is, is you need accountability in following the process. If you don't follow the process, it does not work. We've not been following the process because life happens, you get busy, and you don't come back to it, and you don't have a planned meeting.

49:43I think after this discussion, I'm going to go back and I'm going to put in place a meeting. He's not going to do it. I'm going to set a meeting on the schedule, and we're going to meet in each business each week, and we're gonna we're gonna do this. Are you gonna implement it or what? I am, yeah. I'm learning about that.

49:57And then I just was introduced to, uh, the Radical Candor. Have you heard of that? Um, I'm not— I can't like speak totally, uh, intellectual about it because I'm still listening to it, but it's like a balance of caring but, um, challenging people at the same time. Yeah. Um, so I'm learning that because I think I lean a lot more on the care side.

50:17Yeah. And you're not challenging, or I lean more on the— I go either direction. I'm either too harsh and I forget they're human, or I'm way too involved in them being a human and forget to challenge. So I'm learning that balance. And yeah, last night I went, I got a haircut, and she was telling me about the organization she worked for. And she said, we've got 25 stores and most of them are in the Midwest or in this area, right?

50:43And she said, the 2 people who own the stores that I work for, this part of the franchise, they own 10 or 15 stores just locally right here, like Kansas in this area. And she said, so the way it's laid out is you obviously have your C-suite, so your CEO, your COO, CFO, whatever they call themselves, up at the top. And then you have a district manager who manages all those stores for them.

51:07And then you have a general manager over each store, and the general manager is responsible for culture and operations, right? The assistant general manager, one is responsible for culture, one is responsible for operations. Okay. They flip every 3 months. And then, okay, and so they meet together, they manage the store together. The general manager has to be knowledgeable and understanding of all systems for that business— ordering, managing the workflow, managing the schedule, managing the culture.

51:39And they set the tone that's been given to them from the district manager, from the, the C-suite. This is what we believe, this is what we want to accomplish. This is our vision. This is our dream. It's what we're trying to do here, right? And then they communicate that down and they switch them back and forth teaching them. Okay. And I said, well, why were— why are they doing that?

51:57Like, what's the purpose of that? And she said, well, she said, they're building a bench. And I said, what do you mean? She said, well, if they want to take this franchise and go to a much larger organization, what they're going to have to do is they have to build a bench of people who have been taught on both sides of this, and they have to be taught in a way that they can manage the information they're given.

52:16So they've told us they want to train us on culture, they want to train us on this, and we want to make them responsible for each aspect of that for a certain period of time to make sure they nail that in the business. That's impressive. I thought it was. I thought that was a really cool way to look at it. Now it seems like a lot to manage, right?

52:33I'm sure it's not going to happen overnight, right? But that's a really cool concept. I thought it was an interesting way of looking at it. Well, that was like, for me, I was in a service manager role for so long. I was never— and I was not interested in a general manager position for a really long time because I said, I know operations.

52:50Yeah, I know dispatching. I know workflow. I know managing product. I don't know managing people. Yeah. So that would have been interesting had there been an opportunity to— okay, for 3 months my focus is becoming better at managing people and culture. Exactly. Yeah. I think that that could really help a lot of problems in our industry. Well, so that's what she laid out is she said, look, during that 3-month period or whatever it is, you do the one-on-ones and you go over the culture protocols and you review the experiences that the customer has and you review all of these things.

53:21When you're in operations, you're managing your inventory, you're managing your schedule, you're managing those things. And so it's divided workload on each of the managers and it creates this general manager And then that moves up. And so they're constantly promoting people and growing the organization bigger and bigger from internal people that are already trained on that. Now, I asked the question, I said, you realize this is the perfect model to sell this to venture capital or private equity, right?

53:50This is building the bench to sell it, right? She did not say— Is that their intent? I have no idea. I mean, I asked. That's a very— She was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, no. 100%, that's what they're saying. Yeah, right. I'm like, that's a very strategic process to scale intentionally for you not to be pursuing venture capital? Yeah, this is the haircut place.

54:07Yeah, that's interesting. You know the problem with those haircut places? There's so many of them, they end up going under. Yeah, it's the cost. The minute, the minute the economy gets a little weird, I mean, people are gonna— at least guys, yeah, they go, I'm going to Great Clips. You know, well, you're not supporting their business, David, so What's that? So you're not supporting their business.

54:31Yeah. So they hate— I've been, I've been to places like that. You know, you go in and they'll shave your head and they'll trim your beard up and stuff like that. It's just the— I'm just telling you, there was a— the place that he used to go to isn't open anymore. And oh, but do you know why? They were bought by private equity and they closed to what, an underperforming store?

54:49They, uh, they closed an underperforming store, but they expanded elsewhere and got bigger. She was telling me the whole story about it. It's kind of interesting. The book is called Traction, by the way, if you wanna— Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that was recommended to me recently. Well, that's the— It's a good book. That's the basis of EOS. So they'll tell the story behind it and then they'll kind of go through the whole process.

55:11You'll hear everything he's babbled about in the book. The other thing too is to what you were saying earlier, I would not worry about AI too much. I think AI is going to go down the route of EVs. If you go back, you know, 5 years, everybody was just going nuts over EVs and it's the future and everybody's going to be driving an EV.

55:42As an EV owner, I can tell you it sucks. Well, it's, you know, the incoming administration wanted X amount of cars sold to be EVs. They had a very specific agenda they wanted to push. And the government has quite a bit of sway on something like that. If they overly incentivize one direction for the market to go and de-incentivize everything else, Yeah, the market is going to kind of sort of push towards that.

56:15But it did so very begrudgingly. And the minute that that went away, it went hard the other way. And people have just completely stopped buying EVs. Yeah. And to the point that they're just— I mean, it looks like a complete and total disaster. Look at Ford. In their EV truck. And they bailed on it completely. Same thing with GM because they had put in a whole bunch of people that had very similar agendas to the incumbent administration.

56:51They had the same type of ideology and they're like, hey, nobody's buying our shit EVs. Yeah. What do we do? What happened to me? I'm leasing one, but it was in the weird timeframe of when they still had value to now it doesn't. So I'm like, well, stuck with it. Well, you know, it's really interesting. Brian Walker and I were talking about that, and he's a big AI guy, loves AI.

57:15Um, one of the things that, that I feel like, based on the research that I've done, is, you know, a lot of them don't have a sustainable model and existing client base to continue to charge for the product, right? Well, it's not, it's not, it's not even that. It's that they don't have any business model at all, at all. Okay, because the, the assumption is it's just Google.

57:41That, that's what everybody treats it as. They don't realize that that is going through a data center that is sucking up some communities' water and electricity at a rate that is completely unsustainable without them charging an absolute arm and a leg. Now, if you have a company like You have a company like Google or Amazon or Apple, their AI is being subsidized by stuff that they're actually selling.

58:13Google selling advertising, Apple selling their junk. And so that's the only reason why they've got AI that's sustainable. Same thing with Microsoft too. And yeah, they might push it to the point that, hey, this is going to differentiate our product. Because it's going to work so much better. But all of these 8 million smaller companies, including ChatGPT, which is the most well-known, they don't have any way to sustainably— Yeah, there's no structure.

58:41Who the F is going to pay for it? Yeah. You know, you can, you can make it a premium this or premium that, but the prices they're going to have to pay the minute the local community that ends up propping them up says, hey, We don't want you using our water and electricity anymore without charging you market rates. Yeah, it won't be sustainable.

59:01Yeah, they're going to be like, oh well, we're going to have to charge $5,000 a year for you to use our product. And so the investment that's been made up to this point in just electricity is just insane. Propped up by VCs and local governments that are getting paid off to like, yeah, put in the data center here, no problem. Nobody needs water.

59:23Let it all run into the, into the AI center. And I'm just telling you, community after community after community is going, hell no. If you saw how many people are showing up to local board meetings, just freaking out, raging, going, do not put this AI center in our community. We want our water. We want our electricity. We don't want to be paying $8 million You're, uh, for, for our electricity because all of it is getting ran to the, to the AI.

59:52Your, your winners, I think you're going to find winners like Big Bear AI. You're going to find winners like Google. Um, I think it's going to be the big companies, that, right? And that's it. I think they're going to use it as a gimmick. I'm just telling you, they're going to end up using it. Well, I do think that especially when it comes to writing code and developing systems, I think there is a risk for some of these companies, some of the You think about cybersecurity, you think about the whole Anthropic thing.

1:00:19I don't know if y'all saw a few weeks ago, the market crashed on Anthropic saying, hey, we can take 30 to 40% of the jobs and do them with this. Now, whether it's true or not doesn't matter. The point is, is the market lost something like $2.2 trillion in a day because Anthropic said, and it looks like it's possibly feasible. I mean, we've seen CEOs come out and say we've cut 30% of our workforce.

1:00:42Now, as somebody who uses AI, I don't feel like we're there yet with AI. I don't think that that technology is fully there yet. The problem though is that you're— that they might have been able to cut 30% of that, but I, I guarantee you, I guarantee you that those were superfluous jobs. Yeah, the AI didn't actually— isn't doing the work that they used to do.

1:01:06Yeah, they just didn't need that work done at all, right? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, for sure. Because I mean, like, even if it does the work, somebody has to be there to check it. Yeah, we have a guy supervising the guy that sweeps the floor. It's like, well, why do we need that guy? We need the floor sweeper. We don't need the guy supervising the floor sweeper.

1:01:23Cut them out and then blame AI for it, because it doesn't look— it looks less— it looks more humane to say that, oh, we've implemented AI and therefore we've been able to cut back and than versus like, hey, all you deadbeats, we didn't need to pay you $100,000 a year to play on your computer for 3 or 4 hours a day on remote jobs.

1:01:43Like that, that— I'm just telling you, that's what it is. My, my wife works, uh, at the Federal Reserve, and when the Trump administration came in and they started going— especially early on when they started going nuts, just cutting jobs and stuff like that. By the way, IRS, like 30% of the workforce Gone, right? It's not enough. Um, they did a firing freeze at, at the Federal Reserve, and over the last year, year and a half, or whatever it's been, I don't think at any point has she gone, man, we're just ridiculously understaffed at XYZ.

1:02:21Wow. And it might be true and she's just not telling me, but There's a certain sentiment, you know, when you're understaffed in a department, in a, you know, when we're understaffed and we don't have, we're missing a tech or 2 techs and we need, we need 4, we only have 2. Like you are absolutely up against the wall and you are getting beat up every single day.

1:02:42And I'm just telling you, like these companies look for opportunities for expansion and whether they even have the capacity or they have like the revenue to to, to support it. They go, hey, this is an opportunity, let's jump on it. They'll hire in the department, realize this isn't going to work out, and then they, they've got these jobs, like especially in government.

1:03:07What do you do with these people? And it takes somebody coming in going, hey, cut 30% of the workforce. Yeah, we don't need them here. Yeah, just pick the people you don't need and get them out of here and then just blame AI for it. It's not AI. AI ain't doing jack. It makes funny memes. The memes are hilarious. I think I'm in a tough spot with AI, right?

1:03:27Like, I see it as a really helpful tool, but I'm, I'm with you on like, it's not sustainable to automate everything. And I keep saying this too, like, it goes back to what, what I built. When I started this, it wasn't even with the thought of AI. AI was around very— it was very little. But as things have developed, like, I literally like went through a Taco Bell drive-through and there's a robot talking Oh dude, I can't wait.

1:03:50And so I thought about it and I was like, you know, the more AI infiltrates the workspaces, we are gonna crave human connections so much more. And so I think there's a really cool opportunity for us in the automotive repair industry not to replace service. And that's like what we're big on. We're not replacing service advisors, but if you're not spending 70% of your time doing things that aren't contributing to the person, I mean, just managing a warranty.

1:04:16Right? Like, if you guys could manage a warranty and us not have to handle that warranty on the front counter, that's life-changing right there. Oh, it is. It is. Why spend an hour on the phone and the stress level that comes with it, then spend that time with your customers? Yeah. Or sharpening your skills, right? I just need to point out to you, I, I have— I love AI in fast food restaurants, okay?

1:04:40It's my favorite thing ever. You know why? I think it is awesome when you pull up and you order. And I have learned some valuable lessons. I have sat at the window of our local Bojangles and listened to the old people talk to that thing, not realizing that you can hear what they're saying and hear them like cuss that thing out and scream and holler and tell it how stupid it is.

1:05:00And oh, that's funny. Yeah. And then the people who think it's actually a human. Oh man, that is— yeah. A lot of people get fooled. But but here's the thing: like, you think that that's getting that's replacing. You know what's actually replacing the the fast food person sitting there? Let's take the orders. Freaking app. Yeah. Like, you know how much easier it is to just click click click click click?

1:05:23Which I'm not mad about. Honestly. No, like if you want to go to McDonald's, it's more efficient. You get the order right. You just you order on the app. You pull up. They bring the food out to you. And you bail. Yeah, I'm not sitting in line with all the other plebs waiting to go order to some air, to some computer. Like, I'm gonna click a couple things on my, on my phone.

1:05:45Yeah. And have it ready in like so much faster. Yeah, so much faster. That's what's replacing the, the, uh, the person. I do love that at restaurants when they have the little thing you can just pay when you're ready. I'm like, oh, I can just leave. Yeah. Oh, that— yeah, I do like that. Yeah. Yeah, they started bringing out receipts with the QR code.

1:06:05Oh, I saw that at the airport. So they don't have— what airport? I was like, the, the box. I'm good with the box. I like the box too. The, the Texas Roadhouse box. Yeah, you put your credit card in, you get the hell out. But they also now they bring the receipt there, and rather than take the credit card and walk away, you just take a picture of the thing, click a couple buttons, and then bail out of there.

1:06:23About it? No, instead of, hey, can I have my check please? I'm ready to go. Yeah. When you're done eating, I'm ready to go. Yeah, yeah, 100%. That's my big thing. And, and like, we'll go out to eat as a team for lunch, or, you know, from the shop or from Mystery Hill 1 all the time. One of my biggest beefs is like, hey, we need to get back.

1:06:41Like, we, we're getting ready to reopen the doors. I need to get back. And they just don't ever show up. Oh my God, that makes me mad. Well, it's a cool thing. It's like we're talking about with service advisors. If you're not doing this task, you can do something else. Same with the waitresses. If you're not running around printing receipts, handing them off to tables, you can make sure orders are right.

1:06:58You can be more attentive to your tables. Yeah, 100%. Texas Roadhouse has got— they're a machine. It is. They've got a process to everything because you can tell the manager comes by, they pick up the little tickets and make sure that they've talked to the Chick-fil-A. They're doing something right. Yep, very specific stuff. And they're not replacing the front person with an AI whatever.

1:07:19Like there, there are opportunities to, to make the business more efficient using something like AI. But I'm just telling you, like you, you and your particular business might see this giant influx of businesses that open up and go, hey, have AI write your, or make AI have AI. How many, how many shops started announcing that, hey, AI is going to start answering the phones for us now?

1:07:45Let me tell you, I have an AI receptionist and I'm ready for the day I can hire a human. Because I hate it. I try to take it over as much as I can. I can't imagine the shop, not, you know, switching 100% to it. And these shops are like crazy busy, just pumping cars through the shop. And I get that's their business model.

1:08:04But if you can hold out past whatever that dip's going to be, because there's going to be something, everybody's going to want to implement it. There's going to be a wave, all these companies coming in going, hey, we've got the replace your service advisor with this AI whatever nonsense. If you can just get past that dip and come out on the other side and go, hey, we have real humans actually looking at your ticket, right, and building it for you to make sure that it's accurate and profitable, right?

1:08:30Not some AI nonsense just throwing whatever in there. That's big on our end too. And that's why I said we are working on automation because so much of our process is human labor. Yeah. So if we can automate parts of it, our team can be more intentional on the, on the quality control checks. Um, but yeah, I mean, to your point, if, if you're having AI, if you're having AI answer your phone, that customer's not getting that personal experience.

1:08:55Yeah. So instead of building an estimate, answer the phone. Amen. Ash, thank you for being here. How do they get in touch with you? Uh, I'm on Facebook, Ashley Kaplan, or go to goldenhourgarage.com. Very cool. Thank you for being here, ma'am. Thank you. Let me hit the button here. 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.

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