Ep 104 - Jordan Mosely | The Truth About Scaling an Auto Repair Business

0:00Brian Pollack calls Mitchell the covered wagon. The old school people love it though, like, they got to get the way they've always done, they got to get with times. And you know what they love is they love the 27 add-ons they're paying a subscription for, yeah, to be able to make it work the way they want it to work. Well, I think that's part of the conversation with the AI company was he's like, what are you doing for this?

0:18I'm like, I got this company. He's like, what are you doing over here? I got this company. Like all these logins. He's like, my God, Jordan, you have like 19 subscriptions. I said, I know, because They don't all do it great. It's a pain in the ass. The following program features a bunch of doofuses talking about the automotive aftermarket. The stuff we, or our guests may say, do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of our peers, our sponsors, or any other associations we may have.

0:46There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along. So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen with Confessions of a Shop Owner presented by TechMetric, the best software in the history of ever. Let's be honest, in this business everything needs your attention all at once. A customer's waiting on an update, a vehicle's ready for pickup, there's a payment question at the counter, the phone's ringing, another estimate needs approval.

1:16Everybody needs something and it all seems to hit at the same time. That's why having everything in one place matters. TechMetric brings your shop management, your payment processing, and your marketing all together in one platform so you're not bouncing back and forth between systems and losing time chasing updates. It keeps your team aligned and gives your customers a better experience from drop-off to checkout.

1:36Learn more at techmetric.com, tap the link in the show notes, or scan the QR code below. It's lunchtime, day 2 at Matt Curry and Craftman's Autocare Level Up. Yes, sir. And I'm here with Jordan Mosley out of the Fort Worth area. Thanks, you. Day 1 in the morning was interesting. In the afternoon, we had Josh Parnell and Mike De La Cruz. And then we had happy hour at one of Matt's shops.

2:06Yep. And then we came back to the bar and drank more than we should have. Absolutely. And we came up here and tried to record drunk podcast, and it was just too much of a shit show. There's no way that that can ever be released. Not you and I, though, it was other people. But yeah, yeah, we were totally in control. It was the other ones that were out of control.

2:26Yeah, herding cats. It was definitely an ADD-fueled rage fest. Um, so maybe we'll get a couple of short clips out of it, but I don't know. But today, um, you know, Josh talked about leadership yesterday. Uh, De La Cruz talked about managing your marketing and utilizing new AI tools. Um, and the tour of the shops, we— I think we saw 3 shops.

2:513 shops, yep. Um, and that was all good, but today has really been kind of, uh, Matt opening the Curry's playbook and their processes. And not unlike how Auto Shop Answers started, it was essentially inviting other people into their Service Advisor onboarding program. Correct. And so it's their sales process, it's their phone skills, uh, training. There's role-playing, you know, there's more stuff going on right now.

3:22They're going to be going for another 4 hours at least. Yep, yep. Um, and you know, I think I might have said this yesterday when I was talking to Adam Rath, but I really expected this to be just like a rebranded not rebranded, just a, a different version of the same stuff that you get at Auto Shop Answers. And there are some similarities for sure.

3:43Absolutely. Yep. But there's some stuff that, uh, is significantly different. And so you can see that there's some real variances in the way that they do it. And both of them have very successful businesses. And so for me, it just reinforces that drive that no one playbook is required to how to do this business. It's just find the playbook that works for you.

4:08And I think stick with it is the key that I've been talking to a few people here, newer, younger guys, is find a playbook that you like and enjoy, that you think is replicable, replicatable, and stick with that. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Pick one guy that you like and, and kind of stick to that is what is, is the advice I would give on that.

4:29So And that's where we met, was, uh, the first time we met each other was, uh, at an Auto Shop Answers thing a couple years ago down in Houston. So here we are. Um, most, most of your business is not full-service auto repair, correct? Most of your business is the quick lube industry, right? Yeah, quick lube. Yep. Fast lube, quick lube. Yep.

4:51So, uh, has things like Auto Shop Answers and Level Up opened your eyes to automotive repair and made you more interested in automotive repair? Are you like, this is fucking stupid, I'm going back to quick lube? Uh, quick lube is definitely easier than auto repair. So we do have auto repair in— so we have 12 locations. Uh, one is a straight auto repair shop, just like Matt Curry's stuff, Auto Shop Answers.

5:17Um, the others are a mixture of quick lube and auto repair combined into one location. So we were high car counts. So I've taken what I've learned from Matt, learned from Auto Shop Answers. I've had to modify it a little bit based on some of our locations just because it's a different model, but ultimately it works out great. Have you been exposed to any of the other kind of gurus in the industry?

5:46Yeah, I mean, I kind of always keep my, my eyes open and my ears and see what everybody else is doing. But honestly, I think just doing the rack attack, the rack and go, whatever you want to name it, I don't give a shit. Yeah, pit crew, pit crew. I mean, there's a ton of variations out there, and I think they all sat in a room probably one day and were like, okay, we're all gonna do the same thing, and you call it this and you call it that.

6:13I don't really give a shit, but yeah. I think they're all, they all will make you money if you have to do some variation of it. So yeah. Um, so, uh, one of the things that was interesting that at happy hour last night before we left, uh, Craftsman and came back to the, to the bar here at the hotel, um, I'm always interested to learn about other business models and how they do.

6:40And so you've got quick lubes and you've also got car washes. Um, and I've been enamored with car washes for a while because they're popping up everywhere, the tunnel, tunnel washes with the subscription-based plans. And they've got to be highly profitable or they wouldn't be popping up all over the place in high-traffic, high-visibility areas. It feels like it's like storage unit, mini storage from 15 years ago, right?

7:06They're popping up everywhere, right? Yeah. Um, how does that compare in your experience? Like, do you go to training events that are car wash training events? Yeah. Yeah. So there was just one last week. It was in Nashville. Um, I can't remember the name of it, but it's a, it's the huge ICA trade show, International Car Wash Show. That's what it is.

7:28So yeah, I mean, I didn't go to it this year, but I try to go every couple of years. Um, they're getting heavily into AI currently. I mean, everybody is. The, the. The equipment fluctuates, but ultimately it's soap, it's friction. You got a chain or you got a conveyor. They're high volume models. I mean, you have to wash 10, 15, 20,000 cars a month to make some money.

7:55So yeah, I mean, they're— 10,000 a month? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holy fuck. Yeah. And I would say that's probably on a lower end for a newer location. I mean, those things are $4,000 to $6,000 $7 million to build at a nice one. You have the pay stations. And yeah, so you have to be washing about 15,000 cars a month to— So if you run, if you ran 15,000 cars a month through your car wash, given the expense structure, what type of net does it drop?

8:26Oh, well, we don't. So it's highly competitive, just like you mentioned earlier. We have a lot of big names around us and we're on a side street, so we wash about half that. But our cost is right. We bought it low, put some money into it. So yeah, I mean, we'll drop— I mean, you can drop 20%. The higher volume ones, obviously it's economy of scale.

8:52Your employees are the same, but your chemical costs— so now you're penny-pinching. You're really looking at pennies when you're washing cars. So yeah, I believe that. And kind of like the oil change business, the lube stuff, so oil prices have gone up with this Trump-Iran thing. So when we're changing oil on 150,000 cars a year, a dollar increase on a gallon, that's $150,000 off the bottom line.

9:18So we, we watch our costs very carefully, and I think that's something that I've brought over to in my group of locations is the, the, the small changes in automotive that put a lot of net to the bottom line.. And so I'm— we're used to counting our pennies on our oil filters, packing our dollars on our oil. So moving that over into the automotive game, and it's been, it's been huge for us.

9:45I think maybe I was talking with you, or maybe I was talking with Richard, uh, the VP of Operations at Craftsman, uh, yesterday. We were walking back from lunch and I was talking to you about my expense structure, and it was like I could see— whichever one of you I was talking to, I apologize— cringing at how out of control my expenses are.

10:03And oh yeah, the labor thing. Yeah, yeah, your labor. Yeah, yeah, about 10 points off. It's all good. It's all good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been told that for years, my payroll's way out of whack. Yeah, so in a lube game, so most, most of our guys are hourly. I mean, our— we have our technicians, they're flag hour, just like most shops are.

10:22Um, that's a whole different conversation. I'm sure you have 19,000 podcasts about flag hours. Um, but yeah, I mean, all of our guys are hourly, so if we're not changing oil in a car, I mean, that, that clock is just burning. So we have bad weather back at home right now, so if we had 6 guys scheduled, we need to probably cut 1 or 2 to get our labor margins where it needs to be.

10:44So in our game, 2%, I think we did the numbers, it was about $600,000 extra labor dollars that we would spend just on 2%. Well, difference. So we, we monitor that a lot. So yeah, it kind of draws a connection to something that I wrote down that we were talking about in class earlier this morning, was how important— how much money we spend to make the phone ring and how important every inbound phone call is.

11:13You think if your average repair order is $800 and your organization, your store is, is fumbling 2 calls a day Maybe one call a day, call it two, whatever. Uh, well, that's $1,600 a day, and you're open 210 days a year if you're 5 days a week, or whatever the number is. So that's $360,000, $320,000 a year in lost revenue because— well, I mean, we do pretty good on the phones.

11:40We only probably drop the ball once or twice a day. Yeah, it's $300,000 a year, man. Yeah, so big numbers, big dollars. If you think about it, it really does make an impact, the simple things. And, uh, You know, as one of my guys always says, it's just blocking and tackling, man. You just got to stick to the basics. Yeah. And it's hard for me, uh, doing team meetings.

12:01I kind of think it's like, it was like 15 things that we need to talk about, uh, during morning team meetings. And it gets repetitive, and it gets— to me, it's like, I feel like we talk about, you know, sense of urgency all the time. I feel like we talk about Yeah, saying yes all the time. I feel like we talk about— well, we do, because those are the things that are most important.

12:23Absolutely. And if you don't talk about it all the time, it starts to slip, by the way. So yeah, and we're the same thing. And we— that's something we could probably get better at is the morning huddle things. And, uh, but again, it goes back to that labor thing. So, um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it, it's the small things that add up to a big thing.

12:39And it's— hey everybody, I'm going to take just a quick minute out of our show to talk to you about one of the favorite tools that we have in my company to help streamline and make our guys as efficient as possible. And that's Detect Auto. I've been talking about Detect Auto for almost a year at this point, and my team still loves it.

12:57And if you listen to the show, you know that I love the idea of bringing in skilled individuals from outside of the industry to add to our shortage within our trade, right? But one of the problems that you run into sometimes with that is that these guys and gals might not have a full automotive knowledge just yet. And as a technician, if you've ever gotten a repair order that says check noise, you know how infuriating that can be.

13:21Well, this tool, the customer concern tool, is designed specifically for that. The advisor can put in 1 or 2 or 3 words about what the complaint is, and then it's gonna prompt them all the questions that they need to ask that customer. And then it puts that into a paragraph form that's easy to understand for the technician. So that technician's not getting check noise, check vibration.

13:44They're getting all the information that they would like to have from the customer. It just makes things more efficient. It makes guys in the back happier, and it just makes the business run more smoothly. If you want to find out more about this and the other tools available on Detect Auto, just reach out to us through the link in the show notes.

14:08We, we have AI cameras, we have sensors in our bays. We have, we're working on a lot of AI projects right now on our whole dashboard. We're listening to our AI calls. So we have an AI call agent on call. What software are you using to monitor and grade your calls? So we have Rilla and then I have another AI company that we are using to kind of modify certain things.

14:39And so we're going to build our We're building our own, basically. I think there's a lot of folks that are just building their own. Yeah. How has your experience been with Rilla? Rilla's been great. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been, it's not cheap. It's expensive, I think. But I think overall, if you use the tool like you should, I think it's going to, it's going to add benefit to it, to any shop.

15:00Honestly, we had a lot of pain with the onboarding. It was painful process. It was painful. I have a great guy. I have a great rep. Um, but yeah, the, the front, the front end, I thought it was going to be a lot smoother than what it was. Even the transition to getting it hooked up with Techmetric— it's hooked up, it's not hooked up, now it's finally hooked up.

15:20So, um, I don't know whose fault that was, but, uh, yeah, a lot of passing of blame around. We're waiting on this, we're waiting on that. Yeah, that's any vendor, I think. It's not my fault. I ended up giving up and waving the flag and canceling the service after launch because I couldn't get— you put in a service ticket and be like 2 weeks later and you're doing the follow-up.

15:41Hey, oh yeah, that's never happened with me. Yeah, no, my guys, my rep's been great, so that's, that's, it seems like an awesome tool. So yeah, it is awesome. You just got to use it, um, like anything else. Yeah, multi-shop owners, I mean, it's a little harder to, um, so we— it's keeping my manager requiring a certain amount of hours or time for our advisors to use it, and that comes off their compensation plan.

16:05So if they don't put a certain amount of hours into it, you're getting docked because I'm paying this to make you a better advisor. You need to use the tool. And it reports how much time they've actively been using the guidance and stuff. Yep. And you can also see like how many people are answering the phone, who's your number one like phone answer.

16:24So So I have a lady at one of our stores, she's murdering it. She kills it. She answers the phone 75% of the time. And so she is of more value to the company than the one who's answering it 25% of the time. Right. Yeah. Or we just stick the best person to answer. It's a lady, so most of our customer base is female.

16:43So I think having that female voice on the phone versus our manly voices, right, kind of sets the tone for the shop. So it, it, It works out well. Well, you're the fourth person I've talked to in the last month who said that I'm using this tool, but I'm building my own. Yeah, when I mean own, I hired a company. They're out of Canada.

17:05It's Trillix is who we're using. Great guy, Mohammed. They can build out anything. It started out just automating some reports. And then I was like, hey, can you do this? He's like, absolutely. And then it was just one more thing. I'm like, can you do this? He's like, absolutely. Like, can you do this? He's been to some training and was told to say yes.

17:23Yeah, so he's definitely, uh, I've got a long list on our Kanban board, so it's, uh, it's exciting stuff. So, um, some of the other folks, yeah, it's definitely exciting. It's something the other folks don't want their name said that they're doing these kind of things because I think, um, maybe they're hoping to, to build a business out of it once they've executed on it themselves.

17:48Yeah. But it will be interesting to see how some of these vendors that have been serving our space pivot because the use of things like Clogcode and other tools that are out there are allowing non-tech savvy or entry-level only tech savvy individuals to go out and build tools that would have required a much higher skill set Yeah, a year, 2 years ago.

18:17And, you know, I think the conversation that I had the other day was Wicked File is a great service. Yep. But how do they maintain relevancy when you can, you can build your own agent to do what Wicked File does? Yeah. Are you using Wicked File? No. Were you using Wicked File? No. No. I've, I've, I've sat down and talked with them a couple of times.

18:41Yeah, but I feel like I'm going to be able to do that internally. Yeah, we did the trial for 30 days and it was a little clunky on my end. I don't know, that's probably my error, but I just canceled it. Yeah. And they didn't really call me either. Like right after, usually you have the 30-day, like, I need— I want to get sold too, right?

19:05Yeah. So I mean, we work for our customers' money, so I need somebody to work for my money. Otherwise I'm gonna spend them on other stuff. Yeah, it's like, damn, you could at least gave me a call. I'm gonna go get a boat. Yeah, shit, that's where I'm going next. So, um, well, so, you know, you are— you have contracted with, uh, somebody that, that you trust to build out the tools that you want the way that you want them.

19:31I think that's going to become more and more common. Yep. Uh, either contracting out with people who can build the tools you want or learning somebody in your company or you personally learning to build the tools that you want. I think it's going to change the landscape of the support vendors in our industry. Now, if you talk like Seth Thorson, he says that people are going to be building their own SMS.

19:53He thinks that SMS— Well, so that was one thing I did. I said, hey, I need this software. I run two softwares. I have TechMetric and I use LubeSoft ISI for the lube center stuff because it's just quicker. Faster, and we've already looked at replacing that with another company. They really need to just merge together, and my AI guy is like, "Yeah, I can do that.

20:15It's easy." So we're currently working on a little workaround where you can build it within TechMetric, and then it'll shoot it over to my other automatically, because right now we're having to do double entry, so it's a little cumbersome. It's a pain in the ass. Yeah, very pain in the ass. It's not fun. In an industry when you want to turn a car every 10 minutes, that's— Yeah, well, on the lube side it's fine, but when you have auto repair and you're trying to do that and we bill out everything in one system, build all of our estimates in TechMetric.

20:45TechMetric's by far the superior of everything I've tried. We had RORider for the days. Got fucked on that deal. Had to pay $15,000, what, 10 years ago when you had to buy it? And then 6 months later they started doing the software thing, so I got screwed on that bill. Yeah, well, I mean, you didn't have to switch. Did they force you to switch to subscription?

21:08Well, so, well, I complained about it and they're like, well, you can roll on this program for a while, but once everything gets caught up— yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a year later and that money was just poof. Yeah, that's some bullshit. Yeah, it was. And then for a new startup for one store. That was a lot of money for us.

21:27Well, R.R. Ryder was the bee's knees. It was in the day. Yep. Until it wasn't. And they just— I mean, the same thing for Mitchell, you know. Uh, Brian Pollack calls Mitchell the covered wagon, you know, uh, because it's just so old and rickety. And but the old school people love it though. Like, they gotta get the way they've always done. They got to get with times.

21:46And you know what they love is they love the 27 add-ons that they're paying a subscription for to be able to make it work the way they want it to work. Well, I think that's part of the conversation with the AI company was he's like, what are you doing for this? I'm like, I got this company. He's like, what are you doing over here?

22:02I got this company. Like all these logins. He's like, my God, Jordan, you have like 19 subscriptions. I said, I know because they don't all do it great. They might have text messaging, but they don't do it really good. So I don't use it. So I use this guy. And these guys do postcards and this guy has this thing. It's a pain in the ass.

22:20A truly unified— and I think that's what Techmetric and Tennille are working towards is trying to become one platform for everything. Yeah, I'm just not sure that's possible. Yeah, I mean, well, it's because what's perfect in everything for you is not perfect in everything for me. So, you know, if they have Techmetric Marketing and it checks all the right boxes for me, and there's a couple things that it doesn't do right, but I don't care about those two things.

22:48Somebody else, those are the two most important things. So I think there's still got to be some functionality for whatever that dude needs to be able to work with, with that. Absolutely. And I think there will be. Yeah. Um, but you know, I don't see anyone developing as quickly as what Tekmetric is doing right now. I can't wait for their DVI updates that they teased at Tektonik to be released.

23:16Yeah, I've heard about it. I think we mentioned that, talked about it a little bit last night. So hopefully by the time we release this episode, it's live. It's live. That'd be sweet. Yeah, that'd be pretty awesome. I'm excited that Tektonik went well. I'm sad that I missed it, but like I told you last night, I usually film when someone's first event's a shit show, and I wasn't about to be a part of that.

23:36So, uh, I was pleasantly surprised that it went off without a hitch. It was the most professionally executed trade show event I've ever been to. That's exciting. Counting Apex and SEMA. Yeah. Uh, so it just shows what possible— what's possible when you go full bore on everything. And that's what they did. I mean, um, and you cheap out on one part of it and everybody knows, so yeah, um, it's Gotta be A+.

24:00Food and beverage, entertainment, logistical quality. The signage was on point. Nobody was lost wondering where they needed to go. The communications were good. The sign-up website was good. I mean, and all that stuff is hard to execute on for a trade show. I'm sure they had some counseling maybe on it, some outside. I'm sure they went and paid a pro, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

24:27Um, that's one of the things that, uh, that we maybe can learn from is stop trying to figure out how to bootstrap everything. We just go get a pro. That kind of segue— I was going to say it earlier, but I guess I'll say it now. I don't understand, maybe like a one-shot person doing the AI stuff on their own, but like, let's stay in our own lane, right?

24:47Let's fix cars, let's sell service, let's take care of labor and control that side of it. Like, why we're trying to burn two candles on both ends and, well, learn how to code, and I'm going to do my own marketing, and I'm going to grow my own grass. The guys who do this all have a little touch of autism, and they just get hyper-focused on something.

25:06Yeah. And they're already very technically sound, right? And they're like, oh, this is a cool new thing that I'm going to get hyper-focused on. Yeah. Because that's what I do. That's why I've become an expert, right? You know. Not me. Not me either. That's what they're thinking. No, my ADD's, I'm good at about 80% of the way there, getting anything across the finish line, because I got 1,900 different lines I'm running in, as I'm sure you don't experience that at all.

25:34I am absolutely an agent of chaos within my business. Absolutely. Because I walk in and I'm like, hey guys, how's it going? Great to see you. High five, high five, high five. Let's change these 7 things and do it totally different starting now. Okay, I'll see you guys next week. Yeah, and then you pick up the broom and start sweeping the corner and straightening up the chairs and start dusting.

25:55And the guys are like, what the fuck just happened? Then it's noon, it's like, wow, what the hell did I do this morning? Nothing. Yeah, correct. Yeah, ADD for sure. You know, I think the first step in addressing the problem is admitting that there is a problem. Oh, that's why we all need therapy. Oh shit, man. Um, have you seen, uh, it's Shop Owner Therapy, Auto Shop Owner Therapy?

26:22I haven't. It's a YouTube channel. Uh, Josh Coombs, he's a, he's a small shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He's a veteran, so he's all tatted up and got the big beard and everything, but, um, just a good, good dude, but he's just living life on— he does like a video diary every evening after he closes the shop talking about what they're dealing with, employee struggles, the vendor struggles, the customer struggles, the cars that are kicking their ass.

26:49Yeah. And it's like his therapy couch is the internet, and he's just— and if one of them catches the algorithm just right and starts spreading, and then all the comments come in, and the comment— internet comment sections are the most toxic fucking place. Oh, I'm sure. If you want to feel bad about yourself, go read the internet. We got somebody, somebody left a shitty comment on a YouTube video this morning talking shit about Brian Pollock, and I was like, dude, don't respond to that.

27:24Just let it go, man. He's like, I can't. I can't not tell this person. Lost sleep on this. I can't not tell this person that they're stupid. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's always going to be somebody smarter than you, allegedly. Yeah, they're happy to tell you about it. Yeah, yeah, it's those internet keyboard warriors. I think that started back in the '90s even, or 2000s.

27:45We had like car groups and stuff and we would all just talk shit to each other. Your car's slow. And well, I mean, there was— call people out. ITN was absolutely savage in that aspect of it. Yeah, it was like, hey, I got this car in this code, what do you think it is? And they would just be eviscerated because the expectation was a certain level of competency and that you've done some work already and you're not looking for a silver bullet.

28:11And they were just so fucking mean to each other. Yeah. But instead of a community trying to help and lend a hand, it's— well, if you came in and said, you know, here's what I've got, here's the test that I've done so far, here are the results of those tests, here's what I'm thinking next, open to any feedback. Yeah, then it was a constructive conversation, right, right, right.

28:31Uh, when it was obvious that this was not a dumbass looking for an answer, it was a technician who's doing the work, who's looking for help, right? Um, so, well, that's kind of like the Identifix thing, right? Like they did that for a while, or didn't— could you comment on that? I thought you could pay like $30 and they could tell you, you could call in.

28:49I don't know, on, on, uh, Identifix, like phone a friend. Yeah, basically. Yeah, it'll give you like the chart, or these are the most common issues. So we kind of go through that. If we get stuck, then I think it was like, I'll phone a friend. Great service advisors are not born, they are trained, coached, and developed. That's why Elite Worldwide created the Master Service Advisor Program, an intensive 3-day training happening September 10th through 12th in Dallas, Texas.

29:14This class is built for service advisors who want to elevate every part of their performance, from customer communication and relationship building to presenting recommendations with confidence and increasing overall sales right away. You'll learn proven strategies used by top-performing advisors across the industry while gaining practical tools you can immediately apply in your shop. Whether you're looking to improve your confidence, increase your effectiveness at the counter, or become a stronger leader for your team, this program delivers the training and support to help you succeed.

29:44Join us in Dallas this September to take the next step towards becoming a world-class service advisor. Hey guys, Carrie Lynn with Turnkey Marketing. If you are looking to increase cars and you're looking for the right demographic to go after, you want to get the right people who need auto repair right now, then give us a call. We have a service called Direct Track and it utilizes AI to find people in your area who are the great demographic that you want to go after, have raised their hand and opted in saying, I need auto repair help right now.

30:15We send them an email. As soon as they open the email, we then get their physical address, follow it up with commercial ads on all their streaming services like Hulu and YouTube and ESPN, Fox News, all those different things. And then we also get their physical address and we start sending banner ads and display ads to every single device in that house.

30:37It has been incredibly effective. It has made shops seem like they're everywhere to those people who need repairs right then. And I mean, I'm telling you guys, the return on investment has been huge. So if you want to increase car count, you want to get great people in the door, give us a call or reach out to us and ask us about DirectTrack marketing.

30:58Like, I mean, so, um, I think the new Autel Ultra S2 or whatever has effectively that you can hit a button and FaceTime with the technician. They can log into your scan tool. Nice. And like a master tech who's sitting at a desk somewhere and help you out. Well, that's a good segue. So what about, what's your thoughts on like an AI virtual like service that advisor.

31:24So we have these cameras here, right? So we have locations, uh, that aren't busy enough because we're mod— like, call it a modified version, right? Lube and automotive. You set up a camera and then you have your service or your store manager on the lube side just like press play, and then now you're talking to another service advisor from another location that knows about cars and everything, kind of gets them.

31:47So it's not an AI service advisor, it's a remote. Yeah, it's a remote. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, I wrote a remote advisor, not an AI advisor. Um, that'd be my next question though, too. AI answering for automotive repair. Also, uh, there's some banks that have made that switch locally for me. I think Coastal Federal Credit Union and Navy Federal Credit Union, both.

32:07You go in and you go to a kiosk, and the kiosk automated services can do most of what you need. But if what you need of it is beyond what the kiosk can do on its own, and the screen goes from a screen, a prompting screen, to just you're on FaceTime with somebody and they talk you through it. And, you know, they can open the window and you slide the paper through and the window closes.

32:30And there's maybe 10 kiosks and there's probably 2 people back there, you know, working when one of the kiosks needs a human, you know. Um, and I guess that helps control payroll or control overhead in that aspect. But I personally don't like it. There will be some customers, I believe, that don't like it, but there'll be a lot of customers who are fine with it.

32:54The entire generation of kids who grew up during the pandemic who are young adults now— oh yeah, that's all they know, interpersonal skills, right? They would rather talk to a fucking robot than a human. That's true. Um, So you think it's possible though? Yeah. So you have 3 stores. So let's say you had a guy call in sick and you have 1 advisor, you already have everything set up.

33:17Well, so I've, I've done that before when, uh, we were super short and I would go in and work the counter or something, which is a fucking disaster. Um, but I can greet people and write them up and check them out, but you don't want me making the sales calls. I'll be like Yeah. You know, I call over the other store and be like, hey man, you know, log in, call this customer and sell this stuff because you'll do better than me.

33:41Right, right, right. So that's not like a video conference. That's just— Yeah. So our thought was like have the technician or the mechanic then do the Rack Attack, the rack and go stuff, and then put all that information in TechMetric. You have your sales guy 20 miles away at another location. He's doing all the sales. And then everything comes through on TechMetric, parts ordered.

34:03Yeah, easy squeeze. I don't think that's a problem at all. Um, you know anybody doing that, or any— if anybody's out there doing that? Well, so there was a, uh, there was a group of 7 stores in my market that got bought by private equity a couple years ago, but their whole model was they had entry-level, low-wage personnel on the front counter, 3 or 4 for a big store, that were essentially cashiers, like cashiers at the dealership.

34:29They greeted you, took your keys, got the details, smiling faces. Hey, Billy's going to call you with the report when we know what's going on. Yep. And Billy was in the back at a desk with 4 monitors and all the tickets, and he was just the sales hammer. And all Billy does all day is pick up the phone and call and make sales calls.

34:51He doesn't take inbound calls at all. He's just outbound calls only. Interesting. And, uh, and then the smiling faces at the front counter are the ones who check it out. Wow. When the customer picks up. Yeah, that's an option too. You know, they had— these are stores that will, you know, were probably 15, 20 bays, and they'd have 3 counter dudes and 1 sales hammer.

35:14Yeah. And so that worked really well for them. And private equity came in and changed it all, right? And there's a flood of resumes of dudes who had been working for that company for 15 years or suddenly looking for a new home. Yeah. So I think if your customer base is used to being sold over the phone anyway, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

35:44Then the question becomes like, there was— so there was a shop in my market that tried to go 100% remote. How'd that work? There was no counter person, and he was living in Florida, and he had customers put keys in the Dropbox and they would pick up their keys from the lockbox. And he had— he was an early adopter, and he had an AI-generated face, voice, everything that would send videos to the customer.

36:11Wow. Like Vimeo-type videos of, hey, you know, I'm your service advisor. And, um, and that was before the technology was ready for that, and it was a disaster. And, you know, one-star review after one-star review after one-star review. Yeah, bad communication. But I don't think he backed the idea effectively. I don't think he executed well on it. Someone will do well with virtual advisors.

36:37Yeah, it's the execution part. Back to my other 80%, I think I can get most of the way there, but I think something that's going to be this, you have to do it 100%, like all the way. You got to spend the money, $10,000, $20,000, whatever it is to get it set up, do it right, do it virtually, have the lights, everything looks good, it's not dim and dark.

36:58Um, we had a— we were in a 20 group for oil changes, they were actively looking for new members as well. So if you have over 5 Lube Centers, we'd love to talk to you. Um, one of them had, uh, they pull up and they have a kiosk, but the lady's inside the, the building. It's kind of like a, like a drive-through almost.

37:19She pops up on the screen, goes through all the, the menu items and stuff, and then kind of tells you which bay to get your car in and wait and stuff like that. It It was very cool. Yeah. And are any of the members in that group executing on that yet? Well, so they got bought out by private equity. So if you're, if you're in private equity, you get bought out.

37:38You can't be in our group. Well, private— that's— I mean, private— some private equities will let people be in there. We had a group that had 215 stores. They got bought out by publicly traded company. So they instantly said no way. So that's a question that, uh, my, my 20 Group process has had this conversation, and I've not been a part of the outcome of the conversation, right, because I'm not on staff.

38:10But my trade association has also had the conversation. If we represent the independent aftermarket, how big does— how many rooftops does a company need to have before they're no longer part of the small independent aftermarket and they're just another Mavis, whatever it is? Is it you got 150 stores, you probably need— you probably have all of your own training needs being met already, and you already have all of your processes in place, you don't need us?

38:38And yeah, I think, uh, is it 10 stores? Is it 50? Is it— yeah. That's a great question. A one-shop owner has its own difficulties than a two-person and then a three-person. You have 10 stores, that you have different, different problems. So we kind of want to have like-minded and people that are dealing with the same struggles. We wouldn't have a single person or even two shops come in with, with our group just because they're having— yeah, we're just— they're at a level that they're at a different level than us.

39:08Yeah. You know, one of the things that I've noticed when I go to trade shows and they're the dudes who have 10, 15, 20 locations, right? They're coming to that trade show for different reasons than the dude with 1 or 2 or 3, right? Yep. The dude with 1 or 2 is coming for training and to learn to be better at how they do what they do.

39:31And the dude with 15 or 20 is already very confident in what they do and they're coming to look for acquisition position opportunities or to recruit for management personnel. Yeah. Or to meet with vendors and have high-level vendor conversations. Yep, absolutely. And that's what I do. I go there. I mean, obviously I like the training stuff. That's why we're here. But yeah, looking, trying to be always 1 or 2 years ahead of where I think we should be.

39:59New software, new equipment, things like that. So I think it's important as a leader of a huge company, multi-shop owner, to be looking 12 months, 18 months ahead. I feel like with you owning multiple lube centers and knowing the nature of the lube business, it's gotta be a good opportunity to get a confession in. Okay. When's the last time you had like a real train wreck oil out situation?

40:30Situation? Train wreck one, like just disaster? Yeah. Um, man, like we got a new Porsche in and we drained the transmission and double filled the oil. Oh, Subarus all day long. We have, we have big red flags that pull up on Subarus now because you get a, a new recruit underneath the, underneath the Subaru and there's 19 drain plugs. One of them's definitely for the differential, not the oil.

40:55So Yeah, we've bought a few differentials on the, on the, on those transmissions as well. So Subarus, I don't like Subarus. So if a Subaru comes over, do you got to have one of the older guys go down in the pit or one of the more experienced? Yeah, that's a manager. Just raise your hand. Man, I need a manager over here. Yeah.

41:15So we put a manager call on that and yeah, that's, it's always been fun on those. What's the turnover like? In the lube industry? I feel like us young dudes and young ladies. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's more of an entry-level stuff to get someone that may be interested in cars. So I think it's a great first step for somebody looking into getting in the cars.

41:37Um, I don't know our exact number. I should probably know that. Um, but it's definitely higher than automotive, uh, just because the The barrier of entry is less. If I had to guess, probably 30% probably leave. So you have your, just at any automotive, you have your core people and then you have your floaters is what I call them around it. So you're always training, always doing something, always recruiting.

42:08We always have ads out. So what is your onboarding and entry-level training program like? Oh, it's fucking trash right now. Is it? I was gonna say, it's gotta, you gotta have it on lockdown though, right? Yeah, I have it all. You need to have it on lockdown. Yeah, it's all on paper. That's what we're working with the dashboard. So we have over 100 employees now.

42:27So it's definitely time to just, again, I got 19 lanes and we have district managers and we have an ops director that are over them. So they do a great job. They've all been in the industry for 20+ years. So. They do a great job at hands-on training. I just want to be more strict about it. This is the process. So that's, that is my 6-month project.

42:55Onboarding process is something that I have wanted to develop for all the years and failed to develop for an equal length of time. Yeah, it's difficult. It's always ever evolving. I think you and I probably are the same on that. It's like you get it there and then you read over it again and then you change it again and then you're just always tweaking something and I'm very bad about that.

43:19So I think just need to just get it all out there and then just let it run its course and then make the changes. I think that should go with anything. So, you know, 90% and launched is better than perfect but never launched. Yeah, failure to launch. Yeah. Yeah, because, and even a product with a vendor or something, like, you just got to get it out there.

43:43Like, you could be thinking this is what the market wants, but it's completely different. And I think it's important just to throw it out there, do a beta test or something, just get it out there and get some feedback versus your internal own feedback. That's— yeah, it doesn't make any fucking sense. Yeah, for sure. So what's, uh, what's '26, '27, '28 look like?

44:03For the world of your business? More acquisitions. Hopefully oil prices go back down and oil price changes. I think oil prices will come down before the election. Yeah. Because I don't think we're going to have midterms and have $5 gas. That's— Well, we definitely need gas to go down for summertime because that's obviously our haymaking season for all of us. So people won't be traveling as much if gas is $5, $6, $8 a gallon.

44:28So hopefully that happens in the next couple of months. Um, yeah, just actively just getting better, 1% a day. That's what I tell my guys, just 1% better every day. And if you can execute that and actually live it and breathe it, I mean, you're unstoppable. Yeah, I think probably get another store or two. Are you looking for more lube centers or more auto or more— Yeah, just more hybrids or lube centers, straight lube centers.

44:56Uh, we buy on locations. We're in the Dallas-Fort Worth market heavily, and I would say I think we're probably the largest independent lube owner. What's the name of your business? It's Quick Car Lube and Tune. So some of them are franchises, some of them are not. We are not. We're independently. So, um, yeah, it's been a good business. So if you're in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and you've got a lube center and you're looking for a way out, call that guy.

45:24Call me, I will write you a check tomorrow. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on, dude. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. We'll get back down to class and pick up some more nuggets. Always pick up a nugget. See, thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out— the good, the bad, and sometimes the super messed up.

45:42I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink? You got a confession of your own or a topic you'd like me to cover, or do you just want to let me know what an idiot I am? Email mike@confessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message.

45:59The number is 704-CONFESS. That's 704-266-3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership. I'll see you on the next episode. So here's the painful truth. A lot of shops are not losing money on some giant mystery. They're losing it in the boring stuff that they keep putting off. Follow-up, declined work, customer communications, making sure people actually come back.

46:40None of that is flashy. It's not fun. It's also the stuff that keeps a shop running effectively. TechMetric helps with that by bringing shop management, payments, and marketing together in one system. So instead of stuff falling through the cracks because one tool handles one piece and another handles the rest, the whole setup ends up needing constant babysitting. Your team can actually stay at the top of what needs to be done next.

47:03That means better follow-through, a better customer experience, and fewer missed opportunities you don't notice until it's too late. Learn more at techmetric.com. Use the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on your screen now.