Ep 107 - Rich Falco | The ADAS Mistake That Could Cost You Everything

0:00But I see these posts online, and Brian Pollack and I love sharing our anger at these, where a guy has 27 channels of a scope, one watching the phase of the moon while another one's watching 17 different pressure transducers. The guy has figured out there's a misfire on cylinder number 1 because it needs a coil. It would have taken 30 seconds to swap coils.

0:20One 10mm bolt, we got it solved. But hey, you know what? Facebook and TikTok, I can show off all these channels and look impressive. 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. There may be some spicy language in this show, so if you get your feelings hurt easily, you should probably just move along.

0:51So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shop Owner, presented by TechMetric. 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. None of that is flashy. It's not fun.

1:16It'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.

1:36That 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. All right, so last time you were in this space, you were beating me in poker. I didn't take all your money. Somebody else did. I was generous in distributing my wealth to other people.

2:02So no, I— And there hasn't been a game since. That's weird. Well, we've had a couple of little pop-up games after company meetings. Oh, okay. Little penny ante stuff. But, you know, the difficulty is I was trying to do it on Thursday nights and Thursday night is only good for people that don't have commitments, right? So, uh, and I'm realizing that if you get 15 people that say they're coming, about 7 are actually coming.

2:31So I need to get about 25 that say they are coming, you know, uh, to get a couple full tables. But, um, as long as I'm in North Carolina— for entertainment purposes only, no real money exchanges hands, just moving chips back and forth. That's right. Um, I took a bunch of plastic from you. Yes, yes, exactly. Um, but we are recording again.

2:53We tried to record a Tectonic and I screwed it up because I didn't have Braxton there. Braxton's not here today either, so hopefully we actually— so we can blame him twice. Yes, we had you and, uh, David Lytle, uh, and we had— I've got all the audio for a great episode, but it feels kind of weird to not release video too. We can just move our mouths so you can play the— yeah, or we can just get AI to be like, hey, complete the video for us.

3:17We got the first 19 minutes of video and then nothing else. Ask AI to make me skinnier, please. Yeah, there you go. I've got, we're now up to like 6 episodes where I have in some way screwed up either the video or the audio, where we have video and no audio or partial or one of the mics wasn't recording or something to that effect.

3:37And actually, I was supposed to check to see how our audio is. Can I hear me? I can hear me. Can I hear you? Can you hear me? All right, super. Yeah, we're good. Darn. Look at that professionalism at the highest level. Um, but, uh, so that didn't work out, but thankfully, uh, CTI is right around the corner, right up the road from the shop.

3:59Uh, so you were able to, uh, leave the training center and head down here, and we're gonna have a— absolutely— a new conversation. I didn't ride my motorcycle. Sorry, I did not ride the bike. So it is, uh, supposed to be storming tonight, right? Yeah, it's supposed to be nasty. Thank God, we've— in this part of the country, we've had a really bad drought for the last several months, so we've had a spurt of pretty strong thunderstorms in the last week or two that are starting to refill the aquifers a little bit.

4:24You're welcome. I brought the motorcycle up 3 weeks ago. So, you know, so I've got just under half a million miles on 2 wheels in my life, and all of it was before my second child was born. And I would say 98% of it was my first child was born. Yeah. So I had, uh, I had 92,000 miles on my bike when my first was born, and 2 years later my second was born and I had 94,000 miles.

4:48Yeah. So I sold it, and now all I have is a WR250. Um, and I pulled it out of storage over the weekend because I realized I haven't started it in a year and a half. So I gotta drain the tank, clean the carb, put a new battery in it, and I'll probably sell it too, which is a little hurtful, but call me.

5:11I've got, I've got the Miata, which relieves some of that pressure, you know. Does it? I mean, top down, you have the wind in your hair a little bit, but I always wore a helmet, you know. So, um, yeah, it doesn't have any of the acceleration or handling of a motorcycle, but man, does it look fabulous. Okay, I'll take your word for that.

5:36No, my wife and I have talked. I think for sure the motorcycles are going to come back into our life when our youngest finishes high school. Yeah, that's the plan. I grew up on dirt bikes and I had a dual sport when we moved to Florida. And I thought, well, that'd be good for just running around. And 2 weeks in Florida drivers and I went, nope, we're done with motorcycles because I'd like to be here for my kids.

5:59So tell me about, you went to Florida and you were there for a while and now you're back. Um, halfway back. Tell me, yeah, tell me about your business in Florida. Uh, the mobile business now? Yeah, my, my sons are running it. Okay. Um, I started it when COVID hit and I couldn't teach, and basically CTI was shut down other than online.

6:19Yeah, on hold. Um, so, you know, a lot of those shops knew me because I had regular CTI regions, and I thought, well, this kind of makes sense, let me see if I can do mobile. And, uh, Actually, I rode around with somebody, another mobile guy, and I went, oh my God, I can't do this, because he was so quick and so fast.

6:38And I was— I had been teaching for 10 years. I had been out of it. I wasn't sure I could do it, but started the mobile business. And after about a year or two, CTI started getting a little bit busier. My one son says he was looking for a job, and I said, why don't you ride around with me? I can teach you to program and do ADAS calibrations.

6:58And He thought I was doing like brake jobs in people's driveways, and I was like, no, that's not what I do. So, uh, so one son helped and we picked up a couple of body shops, and it's just calibrations and programming. And, and now we're busy enough that both of my sons are, uh, are running the business. How often did you find that when a body shop called you out for a calibration that sensor brackets were bent or misinstalled or other problems prevented you from being able to do a proper calibration?

7:31Depending on the body shop, uh, you know, some shops it's half the time. Like, we know we are going there to find what they didn't finish or didn't catch. And did you find that it was more frequently the big national chain shops that were pressed by insurance, or was it the private shops that were cutting the corners? It was usually the smaller shops because they just don't know any better.

7:56The big— at least the big ones, you know, usually the estimate writers are experienced and, you know, they're— yeah, it's usually the little guys that struggle with it. How much of your work was, um, sublet calibration work versus programming and diagnostic assistance? Well, we're learning because my boys don't have the diagnostic capabilities that I have. That either the shops have to wait for me to get back in town, um, or they just don't take on that type of diag work, you know.

8:30So makes sense. Do you have— are there other mobile guys in the area that you have a good relationship with that you can turn them to if need be? Yeah, yeah, one or two, one or two guys we trust. So what part of Florida are they in? Uh, Bradenton, Sarasota. Okay, west coast. There's some good shops in that area. Oh yeah, absolutely.

8:48Yep. So, well, cool. So you, the boys are doing ADAS calibration primarily and a little bit of programming work and you're back in Raleigh, North Carolina at CTI. Right, in classes. I interviewed a technician last week who had been to CTI for the first time ever very recently. And he was like, dude, they've got this wall and it's like every scan tool ever.

9:11It's amazing. It's like a Toys R Us display on the wall for technicians. Yes, it is. It 100% is. Kip Noosh from Advance has just loaded us up with everything you could imagine. And every guy that I bring in there just looks at that wall and goes, wait, you, you, you have everything? And I'm like, yeah, grab one, one of each. Just, just, you know, go plug it into a car.

9:34You want to play with the tool? Go ahead. So it's, it's a great little show and tell. So if I've got a, uh, if we've got a listener or a viewer who is a general repair shop that is, uh, doesn't have the budget for all the OEM tools, are you allowed to even pitch out who you would say you would start with?

9:54Would you, would you start with a TopDon? Would you start with an Autel? Would you start with a— where would you go? I can give you my personal preference. Yeah, that's probably the best way to put it. And I, I'm writing a class, I've already written the class on it, but the Autel S2 is just amazing. It's without a doubt my first grab.

10:14Nice. And then the Topton. In my mobile vans down in Florida, we have an Autel and a Topton. And if those 2 can't do it, it's an OE tool, you know. So what is— so like a well-equipped mobile van that has the tools that you need for 90% of your calls, how much money do you have invested in the back of that van?

10:37Um, I don't even want to think about it. Um, this is probably a better question for somebody like Keith Perkins, who's much more organized than I am, or PJ Walter. Uh, I mean, conservatively— oh, let me think about that— $20,000, $25,000? Oh yeah, very conservative. I mean, easily. It's just off the top of my head. The big things that I keep in the van, it's probably more than that.

11:06Yeah, you're probably talking $30,000, $35,000. And I don't carry near the amount of diagnostic and OE tools that some of the guys do. I mean, Mercedes on its own is $35,000, so I'm not going to have that. Well, I mean, if you're a Mercedes specialty shop and you're working on that kind of work, you probably already have that tool. You better. Yeah.

11:28So I don't think that there are many general repair shops that are doing high-level Mercedes work that shit. Yeah, I mean, I think most of us know to stay the fuck away if we don't know what we're doing. You'd be surprised, to be fair. You'd be surprised at the calls I get, and I'm just looking at the phone, I'm like, you, you took in a '23 Mercedes and did what to it?

11:48Like, you want to hear about taking in cars that you shouldn't take in? Um, this is— this had to have been 7 or 8 years ago. We have, uh, a customer who is brings all of his vehicles to us other than his supercars. So the wife's, you know, minivan and his Tahoe and the pickup truck and everything else. And he's a very successful businessman and he has a McLaren.

12:15And there's not a McLaren dealer in this part of the country. The nearest McLaren dealership I think is in Atlanta. And it popped a 420. You know, and, uh, it needed a converter. And, uh, this McLaren is 3 years old, has like 18,000 miles on it, right? And he's like, hey, I want you to put a catalytic converter on my car for me.

12:38I'm like, fuck no, it's under warranty, dude. Just get the dealership to put it on for you. Yeah, for the dealership to do it, they have to ship a car hauler up here and pick it up, and then they haul it back to the dealer, and then it's 3 to 4 weeks, and then they haul it back. And I don't trust them.

12:53And I don't want to be without my car for, you know, a month or two. I'd rather you just do it. I'm like, dude, I have no idea what that would cost. And it ended up being like $42,000 or something. And he's like, okay, that's fine. I trust you. And I'm like, I really don't want to fucking do this because if something goes sideways, what do you do?

13:18I'm fucked. Yeah. Then I'm just shipping this car to Atlanta or wherever the dealer is, right? Uh, and, uh, and now you've taken it apart, which means the dealer in Atlanta has every excuse in the world to go, this isn't warranty anymore. Well, uh, we, we ordered OEM parts and we did it, and it was one of the scariest things that we've ever done.

13:37And we couldn't get a Walker converter. It went okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just took it down to the— to Joe's Muffler and had him cut and weld one in. Uh, we put a universal O2 in it. No, but, uh, you know, we like put a rope up in the bay and, uh, only the shop foreman was allowed to drive in and out.

13:56Nobody could, you know, and this is one of the stupidest jobs I've ever accepted. That's nerve-wracking. Yeah, it was stupid. I've done the same thing when I had a shop because it was the same deal. It was a, you know, we, we worked on all the customers' Toyotas and then, hey, can you work on a Countach? Yeah, sure. Wait, what? No, no.

14:16You know what that is? That was ego. That was, uh, that was ego, uh, on my part and falling in love with the big number. It's like, because it's what happens is we all have had these cars where we're like, uh, just give them a number to make them go away. Because if you give them a number to make them go away, they're gonna fucking say yes.

14:32Yeah. Don't give them a number to make them go away. If you want them to go away, tell them to go away. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's taken, it's taken me and the boys a long time to learn. Like, literally in the past 2 months, I've looked at the boys and went You guys need to tell me to shut up because body shop calls and says, well, we've got a car half ripped apart, we need you to fix the wiring.

14:52And I'm like, well, I know I can do that, and but I might not be there the whole time and they might not have— they might have to finish it up after. And you know, we're— they're finally learning. Just, just no, Dad, shut up. 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.

15:16We 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. We 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.

15:43And then we also get their physical address and we start sending banner ads and display ads to every single device in that house. It 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.

16:13All right, so you're back in Raleigh and you're writing curriculum for CTI. What's the hotness and the newness at CTI right now? Wait, everybody knows what CTI is. CarQuest Technical Institute. CarQuest Technical Institute. Yep. Big training facility here in Raleigh, North Carolina. That's where our home office is. They do on-site training. Actually, September 25th, there's going to be an all-day training event on that Saturday at CTI in the training classroom for ASTA.

16:44So go to asta.org and check it out if you're in the central North Carolina area and come get your learn on. I'll probably— it's the day after I get back from a cruise. So if I'm not— if I don't have a severe headache, I'll be there all day. Okay. So I'll be there. I'll be there. So if anybody wants to check out the the technical stuff in the back.

17:07Yeah, we'll, uh, all right, I interrupted you. That's all right, that's okay. We are working on CTI Skills, uh, which is our, uh, here's where I wish David was here because he does a much better job of pitching it. It's a technician evaluation and training platform that will give a shop owner or manager or foreman a very quick and easy way of looking at where his techs are skill-wise where their training path is, sending them to the right sections for training.

17:41It will have a way of evaluating the technicians if they were honest with themselves and answer the questions honestly. It'll put them at specific levels. We broke it out into more than just like ASE. So there's valve train and emissions and air fuel management and engine mechanical. So it's not just engines or drivability. So the technicians can really narrow in on what the training they want, what they need, and where they've got to go.

18:14How do we combat as an industry the gap between the training they want and the training they need? That's why I said the techs need to be honest with their— because there's in the questions, there is an option of saying, I don't know. And I wrote most of the questions, so if you guys hate the questions, it's 100% my fault. So like when they take ASE tests and they get Tech A, Tech B, and they're like, have I ever got a hold of that guy?

18:44I'm that guy. But, you know, if they're honest with how they answer the questions, they'll get the right training. In, in the people who have beta tested it, we've had a lot of guys go, wow, I'm amazed at how bad I did, which is good because then it puts them in the right spot. You, you might be able to fake your way through answering some of those questions, but then, then you don't get the training you truly need.

19:12So I think, um, I've seen some tools that I've been really impressed with that have the question and you select the answer and then you say how confident you are in the answer. Yes. Yeah. Um, because there you can be confidently incorrect. Yes. Uh, and that happens a lot. I love that, that, that adaptive portion of it, and I would love to apply that.

19:36We're just not there yet. Um, but, but that gives you just so— because if somebody is confidently incorrect, they're, they're grossly undereducated in that You know, and then you can answer, I'm, I'm not so confident, and you get it right and you realize, okay, he just needs a little guidance there. Yeah. So that's— those are good systems. Or at least they can say, I fucking guessed.

19:59Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you're in beta now. When do you have like a timeline for when it will be available to the general public? Fall. I don't know. I don't know if that's September 1st or October 1st, but I know I know we're close. And to have access to that, do you have to be a TechNet shop? No. Okay. No, I'm sure TechNet shops get a discount, but anybody can be a part of it.

20:26There's going to be a monthly fee which includes all of the training. I don't know the prices. I'm the worst salesman in the world. Well, if you're interested to learn more about it, just call the number on the screen. I'm just going to put Rich's cell phone on the screen. Yes, please. How would they reach out to find out? Talk to their advance rep.

20:43Okay, if you have one, talk, talk to your Advance rep. Um, if you're TechNet, I'm sure there's a discount. There's— talk to your TechNet rep, they'll, they'll get it. And what do you think are the most interesting or engaging training tools that you're seeing in the industry right now? Oh, train— what do you mean by training tools? Um, I mean, you're building the Skills Program.

21:08NAPA has just launched their Accelerator. Yeah, with the headset thing. There's— Today's Class has been pretty slick and it's been around for a couple years. Today's Class is good. I'm not a fan of the VR. Just, it feels gimmicky to me. I don't know how real-world it is, and that's just not— that's not just me badmouthing NAPA. No, but what we're trying to do with Skills is a combination of short online learning to get techs up to a certain level where they're ready for an in-person class.

21:48And, and then what we want to do is have live, either in-person or virtual classes, uh, not so much on demand, but, uh, available to the techs during work hours. So they get to a certain point in breaks, and then they have a 1-hour class on breaks with, with a live instructor who can answer their questions and go over, you know, the subject a little more in depth.

22:18WorldPAC does a Lunch and Learn every week, right? Yeah, we're gonna have that too. Yeah, I'll say that y'all are very closely tied together for a long time. For a little while, and then there was a divorce. Yeah, yeah, so we were one big— I won't say happy family— dysfunctional family. Who cheated on who there? I, I, I don't know. I'm just one of the kids.

22:35I just, I just got sent off with Mom instead bad. So, um, so one of the things that, uh, I've been entertaining is, uh, just through, you know, how fortunate, uh, I've been with the podcast being successful, um, you know, we flew Seth Thorson down and did that full-day AI class. I'm so mad I wasn't here. We did it right up here, actually.

23:00We cleared out all the furniture and put in rows of tables and everything, and And it was great. And what I realized was everybody, all of the feedback that I got was good. There might have been people that didn't like it, but they didn't leave the feedback. They didn't fill out the feedback form, right? So, and I can fit 35 or 40 people in here comfortably.

23:24And if there's something specific that I need training on in my company, I can fly the best trainer in the world or in the country here to do a class on what I need. And then my 5 or 6 guys that need it can be here and 30 other folks from around the country or around the area can also get that same class.

23:48And I can have access to some of the best training in the country. There's a lot of shops that are doing that because they look— I'm just late to the show. Yeah. I mean, If you look at what it costs to close down your shop and take everybody to Vision or Aste, that gets really expensive. Sir, it's the Asta Expo. Asta Expo.

24:05Sorry, I will screw that up forever. I don't know why, but I have a mental block about that. So even Chrissy corrects me. Benji Burris has been great about doing that. He's done a few classes like that down in Frog Pond, North Carolina, booming metropolis of. And if So if Benji can do like high-level training events in very rural North Carolina, then I think we need to be looking to do that all over the country.

24:36Yeah. If I wanted to do something like that, does CTI have the wherewithal to absolutely do things like that? So I could reach out to you or whomever is the appropriate person and say, I want a class on Well, I was talking to Keith about it. Like, it's like, I want to get— I've been subbing out to, uh, to mobile guys for programming forever.

24:59Yeah. And I feel like at least domestic programming, I need to get involved in domestic programming. Yeah, you can buy the OEM tools and get the right training. He's like, it's a 10-hour— it's a 10-hour class if you want. Yeah. And he's like, you want Tesla too? Because that's domestic. I said, no, I don't fucking want Tesla. Um, but yeah, CTI does that.

25:16And, and we can, we can do it here, we can do it at our research center, however you want. So, um, the research center— yeah, the research center is pretty cool. It's, uh, it's amazing. It's got a, it's got a classroom, it's got a full shop, and then it's, it's got a boardroom. It's got a boardroom, it's got a huge classroom, and it's got a shop that we fit 13 cars in.

25:37I think realistically it's like a 6 or 8 bay shop with an alignment rack, but it's air conditioned, it's It's clean. It's got every toy known to mankind. In 2016, I've been a CTI instructor for about a year and a half, 2 years, and just on the road all over in the Southeast. I had never been to the Research Center, and we had a summit, and I walked into that place and looked around.

26:01I called my wife and said, we're going to end up in Raleigh because if I don't get a job at that place, I said, I have to end up there. Like a playground for automotive nerds. It literally is a Toys R Us for, for, for technicians. It's amazing. Automotive nerds. Automotive nerds. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. Right now I have the new Autel scope, 4-channel scope, and the Pico scope hooked up to the same car on 2 different laptops so I can measure variance and readings.

26:31Look the difference. Yeah, how good is, how good is the new Autel scope? How does it compare to the Pico? Does it keep up? It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Listen, nothing's a Pico, but, um, what Autel's done is pretty phenomenal. It seems like they've made their nation being 90% of what you need. Yeah, yeah. And realistically, about 20% of what that Pico does, which is amazing, is, is just rarely, if ever, needed in a typical day-to-day.

27:02It's the one thing— now, I'm the last person in the world that should ever be giving any sort of advanced Pico class. It's just not what I do. But I see these posts online, and Brian Pollack and I love sharing our anger at these, where a guy has 27 channels of a scope, one watching the phase of the moon, while another one's watching 17 different pressure transducers, and the guy has figured out there's a misfire on cylinder number 1, 'cause it needs a coil.

27:33And it's like— Yeah, it would've taken 30 seconds to swap coils. Yeah, one 10mm bolt, and we got it solved. But hey, you know what, Facebook, Facebook and TikTok, I can show off all these channels and look impressive. If you have spent $10,000 on a tool, you have to use it no matter what. That's true. Yeah, that's true. So that is, um, this must have been 2010 or '11.

27:57Um, I bought the OEM tools for, uh, domestics, and, uh, I also had a deal at the time where I would buy a scan tool for the technicians. And so they had all bought Snap-on scan tools through the deal that I was doing, and then none of them would use the fucking OEM tools because they wanted to use their Snap-on. Yep, it was infuriating.

28:20You know, this is the last time that I invested in OEM tooling. You're not alone. My guys are the same way. My guys are, you know, they'll, they'll call me and like, I got that one done. Oh yeah, with, with what tool? I just topped on it, got it done. I'm like, we have WiTech. I pay a lot of money for WiTech.

28:35Car's fixed. Does it matter, Dad? Okay. All right. But the minute you don't renew your subscription or you don't get the newest tool, there's going to be one that requires it. You're not going to have it. Yeah. So, yep. Um, I think, uh, if you want to be the shop that everybody goes to that can fix anything, that can fix the thing the dealer can't fix, you've got to have all that stuff, right?

29:02Yeah. Um, I call it hero work, you know. Uh, but, you know, I'm shameless. I don't have an ego, uh, in that way. I just want to do the easy stuff. See, I, I, I can look back when I had a shop and realize, oh, I did nothing but hero. I wanted to be that guy that, oh, I can fix anything, and I wasn't half the tech when I had the shop that I am now, 'cause I, long before I was teaching it.

29:29But yeah, I'd spend 3 weeks fixing a car. I charged 2 hours labor just so I could say, yeah, feel great about it. Yeah. Now I'm like, how many brake jobs did I turn down because I was buried on that Volkswagen or whatever it was? Yeah. Hey, before we jump too much further into today's episode, I've got something I wanna talk to you about.

29:46Look, if you're serious about building a better shop and not just working harder inside the one you already have, registration is officially open for Ignite 2027. 7 by Elite Worldwide. I'll be in Vegas February 5th and 6th recording interviews with some incredible shop owners and industry experts. You should really consider going as well. What I really like about Ignite is that it's designed specifically for independent shop owners.

30:10Everything from the layout to the sessions to the conversations, it's built around helping you become a stronger leader and build a better business. You'll leave with practical strategies, stronger relationships, and a renewed confidence and where you're taking your business. The best part is you don't have to be a client of Elite yet to attend. Find out more via the link in the show notes, or you can head over to eliteworldwide.com.

30:34Use the promo code Confessions and save $100 off your registration. I'll see you there. Hey guys, I'm here again to talk to you about another awesome feature from the guys over at Detect Auto. I've been talking to you about Detect Auto for over a year at this point. Uh, you know that I'm a huge fan, but they keep rolling out new features They keep adding value.

30:54And the latest one that they've built is they built an internal chat system that goes along with the software. And it's like, if you've ever used Slack or another tool like Slack, it's very similar in format to that in that every time you open a repair order, it's gonna create a new channel within their internal chat system specific to that repair order that includes the people that need to be a part of that repair order's communications, be that technician, service advisor, shop foreman, dispatch, whatever, you know, you set The cool thing is that it also archives those chat histories and those comm histories.

31:28So in the future, you can come back and you can see all of the comms that have been had internally about Ms. Jones's Subaru, even any, any of the chat about that customer specifically. So it's just a really neat tool to one, have clearly siloed internal comms and also to archive them and save them historically. So that you can find them again in the future.

31:51I know that I've had issues in the past where we can't remember what was said about or what the comms were internally about vehicle X, and you go back into your— we use Slack— into your Slack thread and it's thousands of messages ago. This eliminates that problem. So it's just one more tool that the team at Detect Auto are putting in place to help streamline your business, make you more efficient, help you serve your customers faster and more effectively.

32:15If you want to learn more about Detect Auto and the other awesome features they have, just check the link in the show notes. Tell them I sent you. Do you know anyone who is doing hero work, diagnostic work, and charging appropriately for their time? From what I hear, Keith Perkins. I wouldn't believe that. From, from what I hear from his guys, he charges appropriately.

32:47I wonder how many people he runs off with that. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying he should. He's getting rid of the, the dead weight that we'd all take on. Yeah, absolutely. He's the exact opposite of Free Diag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, what are you gonna do? Um, so if I wanted to get serious about developing like a career path for technicians and a skills development path for technicians, I could use this tool that you're talking about to get a baseline of where their skill actually is versus where they think it is.

33:22Yeah. And does CTI or this tool that you're developing lay out that pathway for us, or do I need to get help? Because Fuck, I don't know what classes I need to take. No, it lays it out for you. And that's what we're working on now is getting all of the prerequisites and stuff in the right path to make sure that we're giving them a logical path towards where they want to go.

33:45And I, you know, not everybody's going to be the hero guy. Not everybody's going to be the superstar diagnostic guy and they don't need to be. So if they want to take that path towards, like my guys, They can do ADAS, they can do 10 ADAS calibrations a day, no problem. Um, I wouldn't, I wouldn't trust them to change spark plugs. Um, so, you know, yeah, you know, you can, you can take that path and be that technology specialist.

34:16Uh, and, and, you know, maybe another guy wants to do the nuts and bolts, and there's lots of guys making really good living doing brakes and steering and suspension all day long. You're writing curriculum now. How frequently are you in a classroom full of technicians or students? Not as often as I'd like to be. I try to get to all the big events, but back when I started with CTI, I had 24 regions and I was there 6 times a year, every other month.

34:51So I was— it was 4 nights a week, 100 and 180, 190 nights a year in shops or in classrooms with techs. So, so this question— so I had a— I just recorded an episode with Matt Lofton, and the entire episode was a conversation based on an email that I got from a technician who was asking about what technicians can do to make themselves the best possible candidate for the best possible job in the best shop, and what shops need to do to be able to attract and retain the best possible guys.

35:37So the root of my question about how often are you in a classroom full of technicians is the conversations that happen during the breaks. Oh yeah. And before and after, because I can get on my high horse and say what technicians want, or I can preach about what technicians are, how, you know, ego or whatever else it might be. I don't fucking know.

35:57Yeah. Because I don't have the real lived life experience of what it's like to be a technician in today's marketplace. Yeah. I'd love to hear from you without naming names, obviously, kind of what the temperature check is on the technicians, because the technicians that are attending training classes are already probably better than average. Yeah. Or they're working at shops that are willing to invest in them, or they're investing in themselves.

36:24Yeah. So I would say that you're on the leading edge of the bell curve, the people that are in the, in the classrooms that you're in. Yeah. What are you hearing? You're right. I, I'm— with, with being in those classrooms, I don't know if I'm hearing real world. Like, we are talking to the leading edge, and it's one of the frustrations with these big events is it's the same group of people over and over and over.

36:55I don't know if we're seeing what really needs to be taught out there. Um, and that's why why I said unfortunately I'm not in those classrooms as much because being in the regular regions out there away from the events, I think I heard a little bit more real world and I'm not there as much as I'd like to be. Way to not answer the question.

37:19Do you like that? It's a good way of avoiding it. I don't have an answer for you on that one. Well, I mean, the flip side of that is, you know, when we talk to technicians in the interview and hiring process. One of the questions that we ask and that a lot of shop owners ask is, you know, how much training have you been to in the last year?

37:41What are you doing outside of work to, you know, develop your skills and learn more? And if you go into some of these forums, like, they're militant responses about, I shouldn't have to do that shit, I work hard enough all day. I mean, and you know, I don't need to be doing case studies out, uh, at night or whatever. And look, you don't have to, but you're not ever going to be a great technician.

38:05You're not ever going to be great at what you do, regardless of what it is that you do, if you only put 40 hours a week into it. Yeah, and I think that applies to anything you do. It is, is— and I— there's a part of me that gets that. Like, I get that you paid me for 40 hours, I'm working 40 hours.

38:21Like, I— the work I'm talking about has nothing to do with today's job. It has to do with my next job, right? If I'm putting, if I'm, if I'm putting an extra 20 hours a weekend studying, doing ScannerDanner Premium or case studies or doing CTI courses online or whatever else it might be, that's to make me better so that I'm worth more so that I can demand more from my current job or the next job.

38:47Yeah, yeah. And I also think, like, you know, when I was younger and working in a shop, I didn't have YouTube or any of that. The only way I got better was by accidentally breaking something and have to figuring it out, or having a broken car coming in, or yeah, yeah, IATN or whatever. Um, so I mean, with, with the amount of information that's out there, there's no excuse for a tech to have an unbelievable grasp of what's out there, even on a basic level.

39:19And the speed at which the technology is coming at us, if you're not doing that, you're gonna get left behind. There's a, there's a pretty big survey. I don't know where it came from. It's in, it's, but it's in one of my classes where 90% of the techs say training is not keeping up with the technology. 90%. I think there is training out there that is relevant to the technology that's a year or 2 old because we're not dealing with brand new release technology very often, right?

39:50We're typically dealing with 3 or 4-year-old technology. Yeah, it's got to get out of warranty. The problem is not that the training doesn't exist. The problem is that a negligible portion of ownership is willing to invest in that training. Oh yeah. And so, you know, the best techs in the world are out there spending their own money for training because their company won't do it at all or enough.

40:15Yeah. Every time I'm at Vision, every time I'm at ASTA Expo, every time I've been to Tools, there are technicians there that are there on their own dime. Yeah. That just want to learn. Yep. And they're networking. And they're getting recruited because they're there and they tell somebody, no, my boss won't pay for it. I took time off to come do this.

40:37I mean, you talk to a technician who says, I'm here on my own dime. I had to take unpaid time off. I'm gonna try to hire that guy. Where are you located? Do you wanna live in Raleigh? I mean, that's a great place to live, dog. 2 hours to the beach, 2 hours to the mountains. Great education. Decent education. It's better than Florida, trust me.

41:00That I believe, that I believe. Um, so, you know, I, I'm hesitant to talk about recruiting at those events because the other shop owners at those events are my friends. Because just like it's the same 5,000 techs, it's the same 1,000 shop owners. Yeah, they go to all these events. But if there's a tech there who's there on their own, you're damn right I'm going after that individual.

41:22Every, every All 1,000 of those shop owners should be, should be shooting for that guy. Absolutely. Yeah. So, um, the, uh, the really rare scenario is I've actually met one service advisor at ASTA Expo who was there taking personal time off to go— wow— and do their own training. But I think, I think that he was shooting at owning a shop one day, and that's— that, that was there for management.

41:47But you know what, he was thinking about his future and his goals, and so seeking out learning opportunities. Doing the right thing. Yeah, imagine that. Yeah, it took me 5 years of ownership to realize I needed some training. So, um, one of my early episodes was, uh, with a couple of guys who, uh, opened a shop in Durham called Inconceivable Automotive, um, and they're now 1 year into their business.

42:13And I was trying to record— actually, last weekend I was trying to record a 1-year follow-up with them But one of the dudes is getting married next week, and he was like, dude, we gotta wait until after my wedding's over. I was like, that's bullshit, man. Get your priorities straight. Exactly. Um, but, uh, they joined ASTA and they came to the expo before they opened their shop.

42:34Wow. And they interviewed different coaches and found a coach that they wanted. And I mean, I was super impressed with how forward-thinking they were. And then, and so their financials were straight. They— yeah, inconceivable. There we go. Um, I think it was, uh, an homage to The Princess Bride. Nice. The, the name of their, their shop. So I support that. Me too.

42:59Me too. And they also always bring cocktails with them wherever they go. They bring like a little martini mixer bag. All right, we have to find these guys. Yeah, they're good dudes. So, um, But I think if you think long-term and you think about, you know, what are my 1, 3, 5, 10-year goals and what do I need to do today to move toward those goals, it can't just be punch clock 9 to 5.

43:26No, not at all. You know, 7 to 5 as it is in our industry typically. And you have to be willing to put in above-average effort if you want above-average results. Absolutely. Yeah. So there it is. Yeah. Do you guys have a catalog of pre-recorded online training courses? Yes, I'm sure you do. We do. We have, we have virtual classes, we have our online learning, we have a lot of stuff that Dave's gonna yell at me that I don't remember right now.

44:01But yeah, we have that. And If you are— you go to ctionline.com. If you attend one of our classes, the book is yours to keep. You can download it. The class recording is yours to keep. So 6 months from now, you're saying to yourself, what the heck was Rich talking about? You can go back and watch a recording of the class. So you have access to that.

44:28So is that database one that's like, you know, hey, I'm I don't know shit about fuel trim. I wanna learn about fuel trim. Can I, is there a database I can search and find the classes that cover that topic? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So if you are a technician sitting at home and you've kind of, why are you listening to this podcast first?

44:47He's doing research for owning a shop. Yeah. Maybe you wanna own a shop one day. Wants to know everything not to do. Well, if you wanna, if you're a technician sitting at home and you wanna own a shop one day, you need to get Shop Coach. Training. But, but, you know, there are resources available and you need to be putting in the effort.

45:03Oh yeah, outside the normal 40. Yeah, absolutely. Our goal is to, is to break it down into— if somebody wants fuel trim, there's a 5 or 10 minute quick description that they can, while they're on break at work, take that. And then they can expand on that with other modules to add to it. And once they get to a certain point where they're like, yeah, I really understand fuel trim, take a live class where we go deeper and share some live examples.

45:28And I, I love the concept of short, easily consumable, because we've been trained in 90-second intervals now, right? Our brain is trained. Oh, absolutely. You ask any, anybody to sit in a 4-hour class, they're going to lose their minds, especially if it's virtual. Tomorrow. So we've been working for— I can't. I go to events I cannot sit— I'll list my favorite instructors, I still can't sit in their class for 4 hours.

45:56I'm like, I, I gotta get out. Um, I'm not really teaching a class, I'm hosting a class for the first time ever at the Expo this year. Oh, all right. Lucas and Tanika and I are doing an owners-only, no coaches, uh, no techs No vendors, just owners. Uh, it's— I think it should be pretty fun. That'll be interesting. But, uh, it will not be 4 hours of Sage on a stage talking at you, that's for damn sure.

46:31Um, I'm trying to figure out, is it— it's a morning class, so the cooler's probably got to be full like Gatorade and water and orange juice, Monsters or something at least. Yeah. I wanted an afternoon class. I wanted that. I wanted to have some input on scheduling. I am so right now, right? Because I mean, it's the current administration is doing a far superior job than I ever did.

46:59So, um, but I was going to tell you tomorrow, we've been struggling for 5 years to get our company policies and procedures online into a web portal accessible for everybody. They can just go in and search, you know, who does our garage door repairs because we had a spring break or whatever. And so they can find it without having to track me down.

47:18Okay. Um, but one of them, it's all the way down to the company employee handbook and like training videos. And my office manager's been after me for months to sit down and go over some of these training videos that she's generated for the bookkeeping and office processes. And I was like, yes, great. We've got a company-wide meeting tomorrow night up here actually.

47:44And we're gonna be talking about— she says, I'll just come in early and we can spend the day Tuesday going over this stuff. And so she's coming at 1 o'clock and the meeting here doesn't start until 6. So we've got like a 5 and a half hour window, right? She was like, well, we can get through 2 of the videos because they're 2 hours apiece.

48:05So are you fucking kidding me? You're expecting me to sit and watch two-hour videos about bookkeeping and office processes? Ah, triple speed, triple speed. She's gonna sound like she's gonna sound like a fucking chipmunk. You know. Just just hey AI, listen to this video. Give me a summary. Yeah, give me. Give me a 90-second version of this. So we'll see how that goes.

48:32I might be, uh, I might be looking for a new office manager, uh, after tomorrow night. You need to find one of those ADHD dudes. She gets so angry at me that she just quits. I don't know, we'll see. Um, but I need to delegate shit like that out because I just can't do it, man. I might— my attention span is like, it's bad.

48:51Me too. Um, how do you write curriculum if you You got an attention span. I write 3 classes at once. I was literally— I get 3 screens, and one has the prerequisites when I was supposed to be doing, one has the Autel Ultra class, and the other one has a service information class. And, and when the— when, you know, it's just sometimes I'll go look up something and get sidetracked to service information and go, oh, that's a good thing to put in this class.

49:17So you don't need service information. Don't worry about reading the service information. Nothing good ever comes from that. Oh no, it's just my whole business down in Florida is based on people reading service information. That was one of the classes at Tectonic that I did. One of the 45-minute ones was just RTFM. Yeah, literally, here's 6 examples of shops that either bricked a module, ruined a car, didn't fix it correctly, or sent a car out incompletely repaired, um, because they didn't RTFM.

49:50How do we as an industry combat the very high frequency of cars not being repaired properly. Like, and I think like it's the worst around ADAS because there's not a warning light. No. So you ship it with the sensors aimed incorrectly or whatever else, nobody knows until the accident. That's— and only if the accident can be forensically analyzed to determine that that's what caused it, right?

50:16Yeah, you won't— I mean, you know, it would be be tough, difficult to know if it truly was a result of that. And that's— I've been in cars that weren't calibrated properly and the, uh, emergency braking activates. Yeah, inappropriately. Oh, absolutely. I've had cars rip the steering wheel out of my hand because the camera was not calibrated correctly and, and, you know, tries to do a lane adjust and, and it's not even close to right.

50:42So, so That's got to lead to like landmark lawsuits at some point. I would think. I have been saying it for 10 years. Somebody either really famous or connected to a politician has to— this is horrible to say, but has to die in an accident where, where somebody finally goes, well, wait a minute, this, this whole system can take complete control of the car And just anybody can— you wait, you can just— anyone can go anywhere and they can work on this car and it goes out onto the road with other people?

51:20Yeah, yeah. If you can fog a mirror, you got a job in this business. And I don't, I don't know if certification is the answer, but there has to be. Every state right now in Canada is working on— yeah, yeah. I mean, so the right certification might be an answer, but who's to say what the right certification certification is. Yeah, I don't know.

51:38And then who's going to enforce it? Yeah. And what's going to be the punishment if you don't have it, right? So, um, you heard it here first, Rich Falco supports government intervention in automotive repair. Um, oh no. Yeah, let's move on now. Get myself in trouble there. I gotta be careful when I have guests on who are employed by, uh, big corporations.

52:01Yeah. Who's, who's, who the shadow of their main office is literally right there. I know, right? I know. But I mean, it's a concern for me because I have not invested heavily in ADAS calibration equipment. But there are larger and larger portion of vehicles, if you read the service information, require calibration when you're doing alignment or after you've replaced suspension components or whatever it might be.

52:28Even a brake, even something as simple as a brake job might, might require it. What, so like what type of vehicle? Um, God, I'm blanking out on it. Um, I mean, definitely alignment, and it's different vehicle to vehicle. Um, with brakes No, I guess I misspoke there. Can we take that out? Rich is a dirty liar. Fearmonger. I had— yeah, yeah, you're gonna kill somebody.

53:05No, um, no, I'm thinking in my service information class I had a case study on, on, on, you know, a tech that says brakes are brakes and it needed an ABS module because he didn't disconnect the battery like he's supposed to. But we have We have dispatched a brake job to lower-skilled technicians before and ended up buying an ABS module because just fucked it up, didn't follow procedure, you know.

53:33Yeah. So, and unfortunately, you know, there's guys my age still in shops that learned how to work on cars in 1985, and, and, and they're applying that— well, brakes are brakes, what's the big deal? And I have a technician who is 2 years from retirement. And when I sat down and did my review process with him, I was like, hey, what kind of training can I seek out?

54:00He's like, I got 2 years to go, man. I'm just coasting to the finish line. I know enough. I don't need to know anything else. And like, if you give him hard metal parts to change, he's going to crank 60, 70 hours a week and be happy doing it. Yeah, but the list of hard metal parts that he can change is getting shorter and shorter.

54:18Yeah, because of what we're describing, right? Yep. Um, so I don't know, man. I think it's an— it's— I'm a late adopter. I'm not a late adopter. I'm probably— the early adopters understand what's up and they're doing it, but the large majority of our trade is not yet. No, and it's only been in the past 6 months that we have noticed an uptick in mechanical shops calling us and going, you guys do those ADAS things?

54:49Yeah, why? We just did an alignment and now every light on the dash is on. It's like, yeah, we can, we can take care of that. So I don't think that, uh, we'll ever be able to get to Level 5 ADAS unless we have some type of like monitoring system built in to alert and disable the vehicle if it's not calibrated appropriately, right?

55:13You can't take the steering wheel out of the car and have a car that's not calibrated, right? Yeah, no, there has to be something. Yeah. So then, because I think what's my belief is that what's going to happen is eventually there will be a large enough data set to show that the preponderance of highway fatalities is a result of human error. Oh, 100%.

55:35And once that becomes too big of a problem to ignore, you know, at least on interstate highways, it will be— you're only allowed on there if the car is driving itself. I think it's going to get there eventually. When, I don't know. Secondary and tertiary roads, maybe that will be a holdout, but major highways, you're going to have to hit the button and it's going to merge, and, and you don't get to drive again until you get off the highway.

55:59Yeah, or whatever it might be. So if that's going to be the case, they've all got to be interconnected. I think the data is— I think the way these sensors on today's cars share data and confirm each other's information is already at a level that is— maybe we're not at level 5, but I think that the technology isn't too far away from being able to, to self-check itself.

56:26How far are we from vehicles being able to reach out and handshake and say, okay, I'm here and I'm here and I'm here and I'm here, and they all know where each other— so they can tighten up and we can be going down I-40 during rush hour like it's Daytona and we're stacked 3 wide, 6 inches apart? I don't— timeline, I don't know.

56:46Uh, I mean, the, the— that's going to make the highway system more efficient if we can stack them in that much tighter and Yes. No human error, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, and it prevents that, you know, rubbernecker where it backs everybody up for 10 months. Oh yeah, absolutely. It'll, it'll get there eventually. I, you know, some of the technology shows and podcasts that I've watched, you know, you have guys that say, oh, we're 50 years from that.

57:10And then they come back in 2 years and go, we're 5 years from that. Um, exponential growth in technology, right? Yeah. So, well, I don't think that we're actually ever going to get there because the robots are going to kill us first. Let's hope so. So if one can dare to dream. Exactly. Dare to dream. I for one welcome our robot overlords.

57:28All right, how may I be of assistance? Every time I talk to the AI on the Autel tool Max, I'm very nice to him because I want him to remember. Do you say please and thank you when you're talking to your AIs? Uh, no. No, I, I do. It's just habit because I'm talking. I— if I'm typing, I don't say please and thank you, but if I'm talking, it does change.

57:52Because like, my wife uses AI way more than I do, and she will yell at it. She will say, no, that is wrong, I want you to find something better. And I'm like, easy there, hon, you're talking to the machine like you're talking to me. I found that if you require it to show its source— sources And, you know, that's been effective in eliminating— You almost have to like gaslight it into, you know, you're not doing a good enough job, find me better employees.

58:17You're stupid, try harder. Yeah. Yeah. Work for my dad. Oh, that's great. Parenting advice from Confessions of a Shop Owner. To be fair, my dad never called me stupid. He called me lazy, uh, and I'm not sure that he was wrong. Yeah, I was gonna say, probably mine would probably would have been accurate on both accounts. Well, dude, thanks for coming out and, uh, thanks for having me again.

58:49And, uh, we got to get another, uh, for entertainment purposes only card game going. Of course, a fun money game. We'll definitely have one at the expo in the hospitality suite again. Oh, okay. So, uh, the, the, the podcast is sponsoring the Hospitality Suite again. We're actually over, uh, if you were there last year, we're not gonna be in the same room that we were last year.

59:09We've got a bigger space. Oh nice. Uh, if you remember, if you go to the bar and bear to the left, that whole back wing behind the bar is going to be us. Oh nice. Um, so, uh, it should be a good time. We're gonna have a, um, CTI is gonna have an open house Wednesday night, so if anybody gets in to Raleigh early.

59:29Come on over there. What time is that going to be? Like 4 to 8. I think we should go 4 to 8 at CTI, and then after 8 we'll go to the, uh, go-kart track and, uh, okay, race. Is that when they're doing that, or, uh, I don't know what we're doing, uh, that whatever their opening party is gonna be, it's probably gonna be at the convention center like it was last year.

59:47Okay, I want to have something that doesn't interfere with their schedule. Yeah, so, but like Wednesday night last year, a bunch of listeners got together and went to Rush Hour and raced and had a good time. And so that was when I unveiled the Miata. Top down, baby. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd rather ride the go-kart. It is a go-kart.

1:00:08It's just slower. So what better way to end the episode than that? Perfect. Thanks, man. No problem. Thank you. 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. I'm your host, Mike Allen, here to remind you that even the pros screw it up sometimes. So why not laugh a little bit, learn a little bit, and maybe have another drink?

1:00:30You 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. The number is 704-CONFESS. That's 704-266- 3377. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, or follow. Join us on this crazy journey that is shop ownership.

1:00:53I'll see you on the next episode. If you're still thinking about the shop at 10 PM, you're not alone. You're replaying the day, wondering what got missed. What still needs follow-up, how the numbers look, and whether anything is waiting for you first thing tomorrow morning. That part of being a shop owner gets old really quick. TechMetric is built to take some of that off your plate.

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1:01:44That's T-E-K-M-E-T-R-I-C dot com, or tap the link in the show notes.