Ep 91 - Greg Buckley & Dan Thieken | Repair Shops That Sell Tires and Use A.I. Are Winning

0:00Do you sell a lot of suspension off of your tire work? I wouldn't say we sell any more because we're looking at them anyway. But yes, you would argue that window to the car is sole, right? So you're obviously going to have the brakes in front of your face. You're obviously going to have the front wheels to shake. Again, it's all about the opportunity.

0:17It gives you the opportunity to shake down that front end. 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.

0:43So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shoplifter, presented by TechMetric, the best software ever invented for any purpose ever. I think Well, I don't know if AI is a dead horse, you know, but you got that. You got— Jesus, what else are we gonna talk about? Flat rate or the technician shortage? I'd rather talk about AI.

1:11Yeah, yeah, um, yeah. Or, I mean, um, what is AI going to do to all of the third-party folks. Fuck them up. Yeah, I mean, that's a serious thing that I think it should be brought out. And to no offense to any of the vendors that are involved with that, can't help what we're hearing and seeing. I mean, it's, it's real world, you know.

1:47So, so I'm sitting here eating food actively while I'm— we all are. So I recorded earlier with, um, Rochelle and Ashley, and all this candy was laid out in front of them, and they were both so self-controlled and they didn't eat any of it. And so I felt obligated that I wasn't allowed to eat it either because that would be unprofessional. But since you guys are— and we come in and we just like grab it.

2:17Look, diabetes. All right, great. I got to have chocolate. So yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I eat dark chocolate, but that was milk chocolate. I'm going like, I don't care. I have some chocolate. All right. So I recorded an episode at Vision with Seth and Keith and released a couple of weeks ago. And I thought we were going to talk about Nasdaq stuff, right?

2:37Because they're both on the board of Nasdaq. Yeah. And the conversation never got around to it because we started talking about AI and because Seth had just taught a class about building AI agents. Yeah. Did, did you go to that class or no? Um, everybody that I heard talk about it, about that class, was like, holy shit. Yeah. Uh, and so I'm— shameless plug— Confessions of a Shop Owner podcast is having Seth, uh, at least if not Seth and Keith, come down on Saturday, June 13th to North Carolina, and we're going to do another full day.

3:12We're going to do a full day class on building your own AI agents and the different things that you can do, that you can streamline, that you can make more efficient, that you can make savings internally. Yeah. And it's from estimate creation processes, DVI streamline, HR, bookkeeping, your train— your training manual, your book. Yeah. All of it, right? And so, uh, if you guys are bored, uh, I'm going to do Friday Night Shenanigans live at, uh, the Car Fix Bar and Lounge.

3:51Say it's in June. Yep. Yeah, I put it in my calendar. Second Saturday in June. You come down Friday night, uh, we'll hang out and play video games and poker and, and drink and, and be merry. Um, and then all day class on Saturday in Raleigh. Uh, I have no idea what it's going to cost yet because I got to get a final picture on the total expenses, but I hope to have registration open end of next week.

4:13So you said it's the 13th? Yep. Yeah. So, um, are you going to be at Tools? Can't make it to Tools. I've got a commitment. I'm going to be, uh, on a Napa trip with my bride. If I went to Tools, uh, my bride would go to Mexico without me, and that wouldn't be fun. Yeah, I— she might think it would be way better, you know.

4:32She might. But, um, you know, Patty— Patty went to Aruba on her own because she was pissed off at me because we couldn't go to, uh, Punta Cana. And she— and then she goes, you're going to Ireland for golf, I'm going to Aruba. So I go, my buddies are going to, um, yeah, what's that course over there in Ireland? In Ireland? Yeah, what's many of them?

4:55No, what's the— what's the original? Help me out here. Oh geez, where the British Open is played occasionally. Yeah, St. Andrews. Yeah, St. Andrews. Yeah, they're playing. Yeah, they didn't invite me. I said, you mother Fuckers. Yeah, are they really your buddies? Not now. Yeah, those guys, they're two of my best friends. They said they're the camera and tell them to go.

5:13They claim that they invited me, but they did not. Well, we keep ratcheting up the cost of this thing, and, and, you know, we started off, well, how can we do this? And then I said, look, just screw it, we're in deep, just keep going. So we got e-carts because you, you, and you have to have a caddy. So we hired a caddy, uh, of what they call a 4-man caddy.

5:36He just really looks for your ball, doesn't really walk with you. Now, for caddy— yeah, for caddy, there you go. And, um, got the e-carts, we've got a tour of the Guinness factory, nice brewery, right? And then we got a, uh, hired a driver. So all these little things are racking up, and you know, the cost of this thing, I know it's going to be about $6,000 to fly.

6:02Smash Brothers are going? No, no, no. He's not going with me now. He wouldn't. He doesn't like going overseas, man. So it's me and 3 others. In fact, one of them was a software developer who developed CRM. 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.

6:27Then 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 wanna 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.

6:54And 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.

7:24Running a shop for 20 years teaches you a lot, like how outdated systems can make your job a lot harder than it needs to be. I used to deal with slow check-ins, clunky estimates, wasted time chasing down updates. Then I switched to TechMetric. It's an all-in-one cloud-based SMS that lets me run my shop from anywhere. It streamlines my estimating process, keeps customers in a loop with real-time updates.

7:47I'm not telling you that it was all TechMetric, but I'm telling you that TechMetric was a big part of it. Since I switched, To Tekmetric, my average repair order 4 years ago was $293, and right now it's $916. That's not luck. It's better processes, faster workflow, speed of service that's facilitated by this technology helps me get higher and better authorizations from my customers.

8:10If you're ready for a shop management system that actually works for you, tap the link in the show notes and check out Tekmetric. You're gonna like what you see. For nonprofits. I found that, and he sold his company, uh, about 3 years ago to a bigger, a bigger company, of course. And, um, we hit it off. We were at a bar, was drinking one night down— we had the wives out down Rehoboth.

8:33And, uh, this guy's funny as hell, Frank Beer— Beer— Beasley, something like that. But really good guy, really good guy. So you're international traveling with a dude whose name you don't even know. The last name, I don't know, he's probably gonna go wrong. That's the most Greg Buckley shit I've ever heard in my life. I can't remember the guy's last name, but he's funny as hell.

8:56Um, and, and unfortunately he likes to drink, so I mean, we don't know how this is gonna— we don't know how it's gonna turn out. So one of my— one of the guests that I recorded with earlier Rochelle Richland. She's got a shop in Richland, Texas. Hang on, I got to name the shop. It would be rude not to. Northridge Automotive in Richardson, Texas.

9:24Her father is here with her and he sat off camera, but he brought a bottle of bourbon to share. So nice. I've got an appointment in an hour and a half to go Share some bourbon, put a, put a big hurt on a bottle of bourbon. There you go. So I'm looking forward to that. It'll be a good time. Um, all right, just like, I assume that everybody knows you guys because who doesn't, but in case someone doesn't know you guys, introductions all around.

9:50Greg Buckley, Buckley's Auto Care, two locations, one in Wilmington, Delaware, and one in Millsboro, Delaware, from the Brixton Beaches. Dan Teeken, Craigar Tire and Service, Millersport, Ohio. Been in the industry 30 years now-ish. Doesn't feel like a day over 90, right? I don't even know anymore. Um, real quick, uh, totally off subject, uh, how far is your, uh, Down at the Coast store from Lewis?

10:2085 miles. Okay, so I was a long way away then. I was in Lewis last weekend. Oh, from Lewis to the shop? Oh no, no, you're about 10 miles. Okay, I thought— I felt like I was close, man. Yeah, so Historic downtown Lewis was gorgeous. Yeah, like it was like a tulip festival or something. There were like tulips blooming everywhere and every possible crevice where a plant could be was tulips.

10:42And it's a historic town with lots of museums and cannon ramparts and stuff like that. So yeah, it was great and really good bars. Really good. But you saw the Lewis Oyster House. I wanted to go to the speakeasy in the back. Okay. But we got too drunk early in the day and ended up— it can happen. Yeah. Yeah, well, at this point it's like if I have 3 strong margaritas, I got to go to bed.

11:08So, and the, the, the Mexican place on Main Street there, um, Agave. Yeah, yeah, got a little shit-faced in the afternoon sometimes. It happens. Yeah. Um, so anyway, I hate that we couldn't link up and, and— when did you go home? Uh, we drove home Sunday morning. Ah, damn. Yeah. Because I was going to make it down early Monday to see if you had lunch or anything like that.

11:31So what are you going to do? Yeah, now I guess we got to hang out today. Um, so we are at Tectonic 2026. It is, uh, the tail end of day one. Dan, you just finished teaching your class. Yeah, um, trying to bring, uh, the light of the world of tires to the dirty maintenance and repair side of the industry. All these Dumb sons of bitches who think you can't make any money on tires, uh, need to get a little learning on.

12:01They do. But surprisingly, like I mentioned, uh, we were assuming we were going to be teaching to a lot of people that didn't sell tires, and, uh, all but two had already implemented tire sales. So they were looking more for a strategy, which wasn't quite where our presentation was lined with. So we had to kind of ad-lib some and help shed some light.

12:23But it's, it was very well received and they— 45 minutes, just, it was rough. Yeah, I wish we had more time. That's all. What, what percentage of revenue at Gregor is tires? So we used to run about 60% tires, 40% service, but that's flipped, which is the, the path I want. I want— that's about right. I want 65% service, 35% tires. Ultimately, you want to maintain the same volume of tires and grow service until it's 65%.

12:51Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I'm going to ask like typical rookie, uh, questions for shop owners that are thinking about tires. Um, what kind of margin can you realistically expect on tires? Uh, I think in the passenger light truck market, because we handle everything from golf cart to big ag tires, right? So, but for the passenger and light truck, um, I like to see a combined with labor in there around a 35% GP.

13:20Okay. Overall, we don't charge— we don't do a separate line item for labor on the tires in our shop. We have a tire tech. He's paid sourly to be there. We just say sourly. Is that a mixture of salary and hourly? Salary. Salary. Salary. Salary. Salary. So we pay him in produce. We pay him in produce. Yeah. But at the end of the day, It's just about making that sure that people have that option to buy them.

13:48You don't want them going somewhere else. That's my big thing. You don't want them, right? You don't want to give up the opportunity to your client, period. Yeah, period. And you're giving another shop multiple chances a year to win your business, to win, win the business away from you. Yeah, uh, because I assume they're going back for free tire rotations to that shop that put the tires on or anything else, right?

14:09Um, Is there anything that you do in your business that generates a better gross profit per hour than tires? No, not really. I mean, it's astronomical. I mean, I mean, there may be, there may be a one-off whatever exhaust job or AC job, catalytic converter that's a half hour to bolt. Yeah, but no, overall no. The GP per hour, um, is better with tires as a rule of thumb.

14:33And the skill level and labor cost of a tire installer, if they've got good equipment, is so much lower than it is for that other job. That— yeah, whatever that other job is. That's fair. Um, that's the reason that tire stores have big beautiful buildings on the corner, and high-level technical shops a lot of times are in industrial complexes. They might still be beautiful shops, yeah, but, uh, there's a reason they can afford the, the fancy real estate.

14:59Yeah, they, they're better at making money if they're run right. Um, it feels like, uh, Hunter is the gold standard on tire equipment to a lot of people. But let's say that there's a listener who is, you know, a little 3-4 bay shop that they're just trying to get into tires and they don't want to drop $30,000 or $40,000 on an installer and a balancer.

15:23Yep. Uh, what equipment should they be looking at, can you say? Well, I can't speak to like some of the cheap off-brand stuff I see people getting online, and those are probably effective. T-Mu tire changers, whatever that looks like, that's probably effective. But my go-to for the last several years has been Coats, um, specifically a Coats refurbished machine. There's a lot of Coats service reps likely in many people's areas that deal in the used equipment.

15:50So I have two Coats tire changers. One was brand new, one was one year old refurbished, came with a year warranty, and I got it for like $4,000 or $5,000, and it was an $8,000 machine new. Yeah. Um, I think Coats is the best value, especially if you can find them refurbished or gently used. Yeah. And I'm sure like the Ranger products or whatever the case may be, we've all seen— I'm sure they're fine for, you know, 4 or 5 sets of tires a week if you're just getting into it.

16:18100%. Is, uh, is Korgi a good brand or is that just European crap? I, I mean, I think they're quality. I've never personally used one. I've seen them and demoed them. Yeah, but I don't know much about them in my shop. So if you, if you want to get a refurbished Coats tire machine that can do most passenger and light truck and wheel balancer, is it possible to be in the business of doing tires in-house for under $10,000?

16:45I think that'd be, I think that'd be fair to say. $10,000 to maybe $12,000 top end. But yeah, $10,000, $10,000 is fair. With used. Yeah, with used equipment, I think. Yeah, with used, even if you found good used coat stuff, you could be in that 10-gram figure. Um, you keeping a dozen different styles and types of wheel weights, or using all stick-ons, or, uh, we now have two color stick-ons.

17:07It's still a 50-50 split, I would say. We have the coated clip-ons for a lot of wheels. Okay. Um, the stick-on get used more on the oversized truck stuff. Yeah, for sure. The deep dish offset wheels. Do you— so like, I grew up in my dad's shop and he was probably 60% tires at the time. He was a big Goodyear dealer in the area.

17:29We would unload an 18-wheeler of Goodyears a week, right? We had the— it was truck day, back that you'd back the truck up and you spend 3 hours sweating your balls off putting tires in the warehouse, right? Um, and, uh, it was profitable and it was very low skill labor. I mean, I could do it, so it had to be low skill, right?

17:51But also he could keep a good, better, best option in tires for 80% of the cars that came through the bay. Mm-hmm. The need to order tires from the distribution center was almost negligible. It feels like to have 4— not even good, better, best, but one option to cover 80% of the tires in a general repair shop, you'd need a couple hundred SKUs at this point.

18:21So how do you manage inventory, or do you have inventory and just get it off in the warehouse? Um, I manage it by not having it. Yeah. Um, and that's obviously going to, uh, differ by your geographic location. Um, the closer you are to a city center, the better off you're going to be. So we're We're about 35 to 40 minutes from the east side of Columbus, and we have 3, 3, maybe 4 distributors that will deliver to us twice a day.

18:51Yeah, that's great. So that doesn't mean you don't have— like, if you're out in the country and can only get deliveries next day, you might have to stock maybe a handful. But at the end of the day, you don't need inventory, mostly speaking, to be successful. Very few people walk in the door and they need to buy tires right now, right? Those are the only ones that have, uh, non-repairable tire damage, right?

19:14Uh, and those instances, maybe you run a shuttle van to the warehouse and grab one, or maybe put them in a loaner car or whatever. Which I've done. Yeah, yeah, that's what we do. Yeah, I mean, well, Tire Rack is 20 minutes away from the shop, and, uh, in Millsboro, ATD will hotshot for an extra $20. What's up guys, I was just coming to talk to you about one of my favorite, uh, pieces of software that we use in line with Techmetric, that our point of sale system, uh, platform that we're using, and that is Detect Auto.

19:44And you've heard me talk about Detect Auto for almost a year at this point. My team loves it. I enjoy it. It makes life easier. And I just want to talk to you about one of those features, and that is just their maintenance tool. If you know how time-consuming and tiring it can be to go back and search history one by one by one by one to get a picture of a vehicle service history before you make your maintenance recommendations.

20:03This is going to save an enormous amount of time. In 30 seconds or less, it's checking CARFAX service history, it's checking OEM service interval recommendations, and it's checking your own internal customized service interval recommendations. And it combines all that information to give you a picture of the maintenance that has been missed or is not known on that vehicle and adds those recommendations automatically to your inspection process.

20:27With just a couple clicks of buttons, that can be added also directly into your repair order and your estimate. I think it's a great tool. It's a great time saver. I love it, and I think you will too. You should give it a shot. If you want to find out more, check out the link to Detect Auto in our show notes. So I remember, uh, the first time somebody told me about ChatGPT, and I got really geeked out about it, and I used it to write a poem for my wife, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

20:58And it's evolved a little bit in the last 18 months, and now I, for for one, welcome our new AI overlords and can't wait to see how I can help them out. All kidding aside, Confessions is hosting a class on Saturday, June 13th. If you come down a night early, you can come to Friday Night Shenanigans on Friday the 12th. But it's a full-day class taught by Seth Thorson about how you can build your own AI agents and your own— build your own AI tools within your business to help make your business more efficient, more effective, more profitable.

21:26This is an owner and manager only class. There are limited seats available for this class because it's very hands-on. You're going to need your laptop, you're going to need an active subscription to the AI of your choice. I recommend ChatGPT and Claude AI. Early sign-up discount, it's $8.99. If you sign up after May 17th, it's $12.99. Tap the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on your screen to learn more.

21:49It's going to be awesome. Salisbury. And so we've been quite doing pretty good with tires. I'm really shocked, you know. Um, one of the things I, I'd ask you, and this What do you— how do you sell, or I should say, do you sell a lot of suspension off of your tire work? I wouldn't say we sell any more because we're looking at them anyway.

22:13Um, but yes, you would argue that, like I've said, window to the car, soul, right? So you're, you're obviously going to have the brakes in front of your face, you're obviously going to have the front wheels to shake. So yes, you would be selling more work, especially if you're offering an incentive with like a free alignment inspection or whatever you do when you buy 4 tires, you're going to be inspecting that front end in that moment too.

22:36But, um, again, it's all about the opportunity. It gives you the opportunity to shake down that front end, right? Right. Do you do a tire protection plan? So we are in-house free tire repairs at no additional to the customer. They, they can buy a tire protection plan that covers nationwide. Um, I just don't want my tires going anywhere else, so you're coming back to me and I'm going to fix them and rotate them and balance them.

23:02And so, but you don't have a line item? Okay. Nope. Feels like a lot of big tire dealers, that's a big profit driver for them, is having a tire protection plan program that they drive. Yeah. Um, I'm trying to think about the other things that I hear tire dealers talking about. Um, TPMS rebuild packages, you do that on every install? Or no, we, we have it if we need it.

23:23Uh, we do a good inspection. Now if it's really old TPMS, we may consider it, but the older they are the more likely they're going to break. And we're in Ohio, so rust— a lot of them break. Yeah, yeah. So we spray the valve stems down first, make sure the seals aren't leaking if they're older. Do you pre-sell them with the customer and say, hey, if these break, they're going to be this much?

23:42And we address it if we need to. Um, we actually have a bucket of, um, I forget where I got them. Someone gave me a bucket, or I bought a bucket of, uh, just TPMS kits. So I got like nothing in them So if we do need them, we just take care of it. Okay. Interesting. You do much tires? I do a fair amount for not being a tire shop.

24:05And we were growing that every day or every week, you know, and we're competitive. It's funny how we don't promote tires per se, but I think just because of the area that we're in, especially in Millsboro, where it's void of anybody else. There might be— there's a Goodyear store, uh, male, 24, maybe about 3 or 4 miles away from me, but that's it.

24:34And then, um, you know, we're— we sell them. We, you know, I do feel like I've got to change the subject real quick. I just recalled this, um, the reason I was in Delaware was to visit my father-in-law who was in the hospital. He had a health issue pop up. And went in. And while we were in the hospital room, my wife said to me, hey, are you going to go visit your buddy Greg?

25:00And I was like, no, I called him. He's out of town right now. And my father-in-law said, oh, is that Buckley's Auto Care? And I was like, yeah, I go there. And he said, I always get his marketing, man. And I hear, I hear him on the radio and I see it. And I was like, well, he's kind of, he's kind of a big deal.

25:22He's known in our industry as a marketing genius. I don't know about genius, but I don't think there's any risk of him hearing this episode. He's probably— is he a bad customer? No, no, no, no, no. He was a dealership customer for like all of the time that we were dating. And Troy, I forgot, he was like, he was always going— I was like, I can't believe you go to the dealer.

25:45And he was like, I can't believe my daughter, my princess, married a dirty mechanic, you know. Oh yeah. Oh nice. It's pretty good. I have to give credit to my team down in Millsboro. My nephew Jackson, who we're grooming to be actually the manager— my son and him are down there operating that one. They really are a great pair. They're very cool, calm, collected.

26:10Jackson, he's a tall, dark-haired— he's got all the tools. And so we always get— good comments on how, you know, the customer service end of things are all, you know, they're grade A. All the Tools is tall and dark hair, so I'm short, fat with white hair. I got nothing, right? Yeah, you know, some bullshit right there, man. Yeah, he, uh, he, he presents really well.

26:35And, and the demographics being what it is, it's, uh, what he— it's like the silver tsunami, right? So they're all retirees and they're all like fairly well. There's a lot of wealthy people up there. I just picked up— this is before I came here— a gentleman from Bayside, um, came over. Not Bayside, Baywoods, where the golf course is. And this neighborhood is like affluent times 10.

27:02He comes over and he goes, hey, do you want to be part of our newsletter? And we've got 375 homes, we're building another 300, and you know, we— you're the only game in town. I go, where do I sign them? Yeah, sure. And I said, in fact, I gotta go back Monday and put the whole, uh, the, the whole, whole ad together.

27:23Because I said, look, I just bought this '26 Honda Odyssey, right? We're getting it stickered up Monday when I get back. I said, I want pictures of that in the ad. He goes, no problem, no problem. And we talked for about 40 minutes. And we're talking about what we can do and all this. And this guy's like my marketing agent within the— in this development, right?

27:46And we got that, we got Liberty. So, you know, we're— the boys were going, do we really need to spend money on a van? I go, let me tell you something, this van is going to be the rolling billboard in all of these communities. So, uh, yeah, we're looking forward to that. But, uh, when it comes down to just getting your name out And we've done a credible job, you know, of, of marketing, you know, and getting the word out and building the business up the way it should.

28:12Um, where I go back and I gotta talk to contractors, we're in the middle of getting at least 4 bays. All depends on how the engineering comes out, you know, behind the building. We got to keep it tucked in, can't go outside the wings of the building. Got all this stuff we got to do. And that's what, uh, the big goal is, is to get that shop, uh, built for volume.

28:32So, you know, get it prepared. Very cool. Well, you bought the lot next door too, right? So the house and the lot next door, you got unlimited parking. I do. I do. And Patty, she goes, I don't know if I want to be in a community. So you're asking me to sell the property that we just bought in April, right? So, you know, so I'm trying to remember his name.

28:56He's in western North Carolina.— he was a big-time tire dealer, um, Shelby, North Carolina, maybe. Um, he bought the house next door and the lot for parking and then turned the house into his waiting room. That's what— okay, bingo. From the lobby, you go into the lobby of the store and you drop off your keys, and then there are painted footprints on the sidewalk.

29:20Yeah, take you to turn up and go down. And like, the local Chamber of Commerce would have meetings in there for their committees. Really? And he had like in the living room, he had two big massage chairs, like the automatic massage chairs. The kitchen was stocked with like snack foods and drinks and stuff. That's crazy. And that's— I'm telling you, that's spot on, you know.

29:41I mean, I just had all the trees cut down that interfered with the, with the walkways. And it's— now it looks like it's connected 100%. So I go, all right, well, I'll sell the property or rent the property to the company, right? And we'll go buy a house in the community that she wanted. So I don't know. Yeah, the only thing out there is, uh, $750,000 and up subdivisions and beautiful picturesque farms.

30:07Yes, it's— until you get to the beach and then it's million-dollar, you know, huts. So it sucks. Yeah. So, well, you know, you live in a good market. I live in a good market. I don't know anything about your market. I love my market. Yeah, it's a good market. Good. Yeah. All right. So one of the things that you guys said you really wanted to talk about a lot is AI.

30:33So we talked briefly off the record about how AI is coming for a lot of these third-party vendors that have extensions and integrations and everything else, and they're going to have to really pivot and really be aggressive in their feature growth, I think, to maintain competitiveness from just the, the little in-house apps that can be built and everything else. How are you utilizing, utilizing AI tools in the business, or are you yet?

31:07So I really wasn't outside of just, you know, ChatGPT, right, doing— helping me make some images and whatnot. And then all that changed just a few weeks ago when I went to visit my brother, who had started on a huge AI project, which is going to turn out to be a very big endeavor and a big infrastructure. And then, you know, I sent— I think both of you that sent that survey, I'm trying to develop some AI platform that starts with an autonomous agent that it's going to be able to send emails on your behalf and schedule Zoom calls.

31:50And, um, I think AI personal assistants are absolutely a thing in their infancy right now, and they're just going to continue to get more. So we're gonna— we're building that. I'm building that with, um, persistent memory. And then I just kept me going my train of thought, and I'm like, well, let's— what else can we offer in this with different tiers? And The platform is going to be called Ethness, but I don't know where it's going to end up.

32:14I have a fully functioning version locally on my laptop. I'm just fine-tuning some things, but it's going to be pretty impressive. And if it never comes to market, I have a, I have a really cool product on my laptop. Yeah, that's the cool thing. There are a lot of people that are sitting at home at night and working on development of projects like this that And the limit— the limiting factor is just your imagination and your willingness to learn how to use the tool, correct?

32:44Right. Yeah. I mean, being a genius prompt writer is the next thing, knowing how to get it to do what you want it to do. And the interesting thing is, uh, I think it was, uh, maybe Nathan Bryant pointed this out to me, um, whatever you're doing across this industry, or any for that matter, if you're going to be building a product, it has to it has to solve a problem.

33:07And as he pointed out, it just can't be another monthly expense. So I've been off, I've not been working on it for about a week. My mind was on overload. So I just sit back and I showed it to a few people. I'm like, listen, I gotta make certain that you guys potentially see the value in this, 'cause I might be jaded by looking at it, right?

33:27I might be biased. So the feedback's been pretty cool. I'm excited. Like I said, if it never makes it anywhere, I'll have a really cool something on my computer. And some of the information I've been gathering from owners and other roles, it's, it's pretty interesting. It was that 20-page survey. Yeah. Like I said, there's a follow-up one if you want. Yeah. Open-ended questions.

33:48Oh my God. That was— that would— if I use ChatGPT to write the responses to the open-ended questions. Doesn't matter. Yeah. So for us, we're, we're building really a complete platform Um, my son has developed quite a few incredible, uh, options already for us. I mean, look, when I first opened my shop, I thought my old systems would keep up. The software that I had would continue to evolve.

34:19But as we grew, the slow estimates, scattered workflow, increasing downtime, it really just— it was becoming a real problem. That's why I switched to TechMetric. It's not just software. It's a complete shop management system that makes my life easier. SmartJobs, instant estimates, integrated payments, integrated financing options. I mean, it allows me to focus on the work that actually makes me money and not get bogged down in the other details.

34:45My shop's repair orders have jumped over 300% since switching to TechMetric. And when I need help, their support team responds in real time. I actually was online with them asking questions just this week, and I got answers in minutes rather than having to wait for callbacks and emails days later. If your system is holding you back, it's time for a change. Tap the link in the show notes and see how TechMetric can help you move your shop forward.

35:07As I told Mike on the plane ride out to Ignite, he, he built Rilla. Yeah, 80% done. And, you know, we have a complete scoring system, a phone, um, and we're using APIs. We're not using Chrome extensions over top of anything. So we're into the roots of everything. And we can pretty much do everything that, like you said, whatever your imagination can build, he's building it.

35:35And I'm fortunate because that was his background. I mean, he had computer science as his major. He interned at Apple in Cupertino. He stayed on top of tech. He can do minor coding, but with the help of Claude and we're on Claude. We're really creating functional, on-point platform and options for us that, again, like you said, we don't have to pay for that third party.

36:09And that's going to be a big— there's a lot of questions these third parties have got to— they're going to have to come to Jesus with it. Continue, what happens? I mean, I would be afraid. I would be afraid. Yeah, something's definitely changed on the landscape that's lighting some fires under a lot of people with this stuff. Well, I think there'll be a lot of user cases in our industry where people are not willing to build their own tools and they just want somebody to build it for them.

36:40Yeah, I mean, that's what we make our living off of is not the DIY customers, but the do-it-for-me customers. So a lot of shop owners are going to be do-it-for-me. Right? And the DIYers will be early adopters, and they'll— some of them will fail spectacularly, and some of them will have incredible success with them. I'm still trying to decide where I'm going to fall on that spectrum.

37:02That's why I'm having Seth come down so I can sit through that. That instead of 2 or 3 hours, make it a full day, you know, 9 to 5. And, um, if my dumbass can be taught through it in a day, then, uh, and that shows what's possible. I'll probably bring my oldest kid with me too. Yeah. And have him, uh, sit through it, and a couple of my key players.

37:24Uh, well, that's the thing that I look at. I, I mean, the future, does it hold where you'll have an accountant, a bookkeeper, and a prompt writer, you know, as part of your— Are you going to need an accountant and a bookkeeper? Well, that's true. Where do you go? Because you could have the prompt writer— prompt writer needs to write through all the code for your accountant and your bookkeeper.

37:42Correct. So you pay— let's say you pay figure to a prompt writer, but he's got every— they've got everything all managed for you, or whatever. HR, you name it. Training. I mean, we have that now. We have a schedule. We, you know, our employees can go ahead and, you know, uh, type in their date that they want. It gets, uh, checked off whether it's yes or no based upon everybody else's schedule, clock, estimated, uh, workload.

38:07All that is in to say, okay, we think you're okay to go to take vacation day on this day, that kind of thing. It's, it's insane. I was talking to Ashley Butler early today, earlier today, ice cold air in Florida, and they have used AI because there's— they're all in on training up young technicians. And they say, well, some people learn audibly, some people learn visually, some people need infographics, some people need video content, right?

38:36So they're using AI to generate infographics for all of their onboarding and handbook and training material and to generate podcasts for each of the subjects in there. And it's like, so I just send them the playlist and they can listen to it while they're in the car and learn all of our processes and procedures and everything else that way, if that's how they choose to learn.

38:58Yeah. Or they're creating videos. And I would imagine you can You don't have to produce videos. You can say, you can prompt it and it will make the video for you. Like right now you might get some hallucinations and some drift, but it gets better every day. Well, on stage Cody mentioned Replit, R-E-P-L-I-T. Fantastic. You can give it your transcripts, right? It'll create the whole video with a storyline to it.

39:29And so I think I told you I was working with Cliff Ravenscraft, which is— he's a 20-year veteran in podcasting. So I hired him as a coach, right? And he was giving me all kinds of great software to actually use and take advantage of because he builds his audience internally. He's really not out doing all kinds of shorts and all this stuff.

39:57He builds Storybook and he said, you got to try Replit. So we had a session where he was showing me what he's doing and I go, oh my God, he just complete 2-minute video that described the whole podcast, but it drew you in. He says, I don't sell my podcast, I draw you into it. And I go, not me, I'm a whore.

40:18I just know there's all kinds of ways, right? But, you know, Cliff, I was following Cliff for like almost 15 years and he's got a coaching program for podcasting and all that. But he turned me on a lot of good software, Replit. And when she mentioned it, I go, holy smokes. I mean, that's a, that's a good outfit or a good, good program.

40:43I think it's, it's kind of expensive. I said sometimes I think it's like $40. Where some is $79 a month or something like that. But it does amazing stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So from a perspective of not adding any value to the conversation at all, I do want you to know that my middle child, 13 years old, has reached his angsty teen phase.

41:04Yeah. And he's decided that his outlet for his angst and frustration is going to be songwriting. Okay. And okay, that's poetry, right? And he's found Suno and he's creating like high production value, high vocal songs. So he, he puts in his lyrics that he's written and then names the genre and the tonality and the voice characteristics of the, of the vocalist and then creates the song and edits it.

41:37And then he publishes it and shares it with the family. Oh, that's nice. And so typically it's, you know, unrequited love or love or I've been treated unfairly or I'm mad. Right. And so the first thing that he did was, I mean, it was really good. And I wanted him to show me the paper where he wrote the lyrics first. I was like, there's no way you wrote this.

42:08This is This is way above. Yeah, yeah. And he actually wrote the lyrics and then typed them. So I was like, okay, good job, dude. Um, but, uh, I was like, what, what woman is this about, man? This sounds like somebody has just shredded your heart. And he looks at me and he goes, no one, but the next girl says no, I'm gonna send this to her.

42:26Oh man, that's good, that's good. I was like, holy shit, dude, are you a psychopath? Yeah. But I did get my first song Thursday. Okay. I was already gone, but he— it was about how unfair it is that I always side with Mom in arguments when he's— I was like, dude, you just don't fucking know. I mean, they want to be like, bro, if I side with you, it's worse for everybody.

42:57Exactly. And she's more important than you are. I love you, bro. You're going to grow up and leave, and I'm living with her for the next 50 years. Exactly. But I felt Amanda, I think, was pretty amused that I finally got my first song in Jack's playlist because she's got like 3 already. So hilarious. Yeah. So anyway, soon it was great. Yeah.

43:21Yeah. I mean, I love it, you know, to write and he could probably put— well, I know that. Is that what you use for the confession songs? Everything. I wrote a whole album. I got a whole album on iTunes with songs. Well, your song. Yeah, right. And then I wrote one for the wedding for my son and daughter-in-law. I got one about missing an oil change called Missed Opportunity, which is about a young woman who couldn't find time to get her oil changed.

43:49Her engine blew up, but she turned the radio up and out came white smoke. And it's kind of like a Miranda Lambert type. That's hilarious. That's hilarious. So I have fun with it. I love AI. I mean, it's like it's art to me. And, um, I'd be pretty nervous if I was a creative artist right now, if I wanted to make my living as a creative artist.

44:10Like, you can't stop creativity. People are still going to want to doodle on a guitar and, and sing and— well, here's— paint. And here's a simple analogy. When I get— when I— like, for, you know, what I'm doing with radio and all that stuff, um, musically, you know, you hear the argument, well, it's not real music and, and you're not making it.

44:29And I go, well, I'm writing the lyrics. So if I'm Bernie Taupin and I hand the lyrics to Elton John, Elton John is the AI agent for Bernie Taupin. I mean, there's just simple logic there that Bernie wouldn't know what Elton's going to write until he writes it, until he plays the music to it. So when I write the lyrics and I hand it over to Suno and I pick the— I pick the tonality, like you said, and everything, the structure of the music.

44:54And it comes out with, you know, after 4 or 5 attempts to get it right, the right voice. All of that. It's a song and you publish it and you can get it ranked. I mean, there are, there are AI artists that are outranking traditional artists right now, and it might be a shame. You might say, well, music is dead. Oh, you think I'm hearing on, like, on my Spotify playlist?

45:19Oh, absolutely. Music. Oh, without doubt. Yeah. In fact, Spotify is the, uh, the, the villain in all this because they are allowing AI music to come through where a lot of them are now saying that there's a code or something where they're letting you know that it's AI and not real. You know, if it makes me feel good, if it makes you feel good, that's the thing.

45:45Gets my toe tapping. Yeah. You know, so, but I guess that's why the Screen Actors Guild went on strike for so long a couple of years ago is because they saw the writing on the wall. About, uh, yeah, Tom Cruise is going to be starring in Mission: Impossible 317, 50 years after he's dead. Why do you think Oracle bought, uh, uh, Warner Bros.?

46:08You know, because that's exactly what they're going to do. They're the actors and all that. They're going to be, you know, you sign, you sign your image away. That's what it's going to be. Well, you know that there are Instagram thoughts with over a million followers now that are not actual people. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. Never underestimate the thirst of the internet.

46:28Yeah. So how's that going to relate to automotive? How do we— how can we take advantage? Oh, are we supposed to be talking about that? How could— no, no. How can we take advantage of all of that, right? Can I make an Instagram picture of, uh, or an AI picture of the car repaired? And no, that doesn't work. I know, right? Because I still got to drive it home.

46:48Um, so I don't know. It's all kinds of stuff. Yeah, well, it's not going anywhere. So I'm ready for AI estimating. Mm-hmm. I want— I want to take the picture and I want the model to recognize what it's a picture of, identify what's wrong, know what car it's attached to because I'm doing it through the DVI and TechMetric. And I want it to build the estimate using the vendor I prefer and the part line I prefer.

47:19And the margin I prefer and understanding my availability metrics and preferences. And by the time I'm done doing the DVI, the estimate's built because you know what that does is that makes Rack Attack available for everybody without 5 employees running a Rack Attack. It makes one person doing a DVI, having the DVI done and the estimate done in 20 minutes. Yep. 'Cause you don't have to write up the details either and the findings.

47:48Like there will be some front load errors as it learns and gets better, right? But I really think that that's a reality in 6 months, 8 months, 12 months. Yeah, it's quick. Well, I'd like to see, 'cause you know, right now between the two shops we have, we have, we have, AutoIQ in Millsboro to help with DVIs because we had a— we hired a crew that great, groomed them well, but they just were not capable of writing a good, a good DVI, right?

48:26Okay. Um, whereas Wilmington, they're superior and their AROs show it, you know, they do a real deep thing on it. Um, I said, well, let's get, let's get this, let's get Uwe's program down into Millsboro and let's find out how we're going to work with it. Because I said, it's, it helps. I said, why, why aren't we helping them succeed? So we finally did, and it's proven itself that it does build a better DVI, but not as good as Wilmington's.

48:58Yeah, you know, and we don't know if it's because The guys are letting AI take over more than actually structuring a good DVI. Um, how are you, how are you determining that the DVIs are good but not as good as Wilmington? Are you auditing them manually or— Yeah, we're looking at them manually. Then we're looking at the sales, the AROs versus, and cart count.

49:22Like, Millsboro is off the charts for us. You gotta look at tech average quote and closing rate. Yeah, service advisor thing, or is it— That's what this is where we're really learning on what's going on between the two because Wilmington is, you know, mature. It's got 3 pretty much ATECs, right? And they write great DVIs from content to pictures. It's all there.

49:44And the advisors are more mature. It's just a mature operation. Whereas in Millsboro, still growing, 3 years old, you know, we've had to hire a crew that was never used to this. So we're learning, is it something that, uh, is it service writers and not selling, or was it the techs not putting it on the DVI? Yeah, um, we're getting better at it.

50:11Uh, now estimating, when he came out with the fact that you can have an estimate all done up, I said, why don't we introduce that? I got a pushback on that, you know, for now. But when you talk about speed of service, like we— like you just talked about, you know, you get it down to one person doing this completely and having it ready to go for the advisor to make the call.

50:37How many more customers can one advisor help in a day if they don't have to spend any time fucking around with estimates? That's what I'm trying to get to. Look, your job is relationship building, you know. It's exactly— everything else is a distraction. Everything is a distraction. I go Come on, why do you want to write these things out? Like, you know, if they can come out 95% complete, right, that's still— that's something that you don't have to do.

51:02You can then— you can learn the client, you can do— you can build a relationship. It's what it's all about. So, you know, I think it's gonna take some time, but like you said, in about a year it'll be there without a doubt. I've had 3 or 4 people at least, uh, in the last couple of weeks mentioned that exact same thing.

51:19I'm waiting for AI estimating to be efficient. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, there's a, there's a race. There are a lot of people working hard to get there. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I'm ready for it to be built into Tekmetrics so that I think I'll see that real, real soon. Yeah. So do I. Real soon. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe in the next 48 hours.

51:42Yeah. Yeah. I'm almost sure. So, uh, it is one of the things that I've been feeling the crunch of is there's so many integration partners and Chrome extension overlays and everything else. It's just, um, I'm ready, I'm ready for a single source solution. And that's one of the things that Sunil is pressing for. Um, now what'll, what'll happen is they'll have it and then there Everybody else will just say, well, my solution is better than their solution.

52:18So you should still pay me a monthly fee to have a Chrome extension laying over it because look, I have 3 colors instead of 2 or whatever it might be. So there will always be that. Yeah, but I'm excited for this next evolution coming. Oh yeah. Big things. I can't wait. So tell me about Super Radio. Yeah, we're moving along. It's, it's getting better and better as soon as I get some time to actually dedicate to programming.

52:46You know, I'm doing it much more on 302, you know, for the state. Um, but as long as I keep continue to learn and the program— the programming is there, uh, I've got all the software now, that's in check. I must have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on building— everywhere I have a seat, I now have a studio of some sort, you know, one in Millsboro, one in Wilmington, one in the house.

53:13Uh, I just bought a duo, um, for my little small office. So I could— I got all the tunes, got all licensed, all that's good. I, I think the next step now is to actually get into true programming and structure it so that I have sections available, like, you know, at 10 AM we'll have your show or my show or a show, and then music, and then live uh, interviews.

53:43So that's just going to take me to the point where, you know, it's going to be more than a part-time job. Can you simulcast the live content across social media platforms? Yeah, yes, I, I, if I wanted to, I could have broadcast it today, um, throughout the whole network. And it's getting better, uh, the platform that I'm using will allow me to do everything with an RMTP feed to it, you know, and then that way I'll get out to wherever, whoever.

54:16So if people are curious about Soup Radio, how do they find it? soupradio.fm. soupradio.fm. Gentlemen, it's about beer 30. Okay. I like that idea. All right. Yeah, I need something. I need something. I need to, man. You know what? Sitting on that panel earlier, if they had brought beer in and let the panelists drink beer, it would have been— I mean, oh, it would have been unchained.

54:40It would have been great. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna lobby for that for tomorrow morning's panel. 9 AM. Bloody Marys. Yeah, Bloody Marys and mimosas. All the coaches. For the coaches. Can you see like Cecil and Bill Haas up there having mimosas and throwing shade? Yeah, I'm there for it. All right, I'll see you guys. All right, man, see you. Thanks for listening to Confessions of a Shop Owner, where we lay it all out.

55:02The 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? 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?

55:17Email mike@confessionsofashopowner.com or call and leave a message. The number is 704-CONFESS. That's 704-266-7000. 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. All right guys, AI class. Learn how to use AI so that you can make it your bitch and you don't become its bitch.

55:54Saturday, June 13th, Seth Thorson's teaching a full-day class in Raleigh, North Carolina. Tap the link in the show notes or scan the QR code on your screen to learn more. It's gonna be awesome.