Ep 99 - Adam Rath | What Works in One Shop Could Kill Another

0:00Why not build the estimate for the thing that Miss Jones came in for, and if Miss Jones buys that thing and we tell her about all the other things, then we estimate the other things too once she's— is that an efficient use of your advisor's time to have them spend 45 minutes building an estimate when they're not gonna buy anything? Correct. Yeah, 100% agree with you.

0:20The 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 or sponsors. 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. So without further ado, here's your host, Mike Allen, with Confessions of a Shop Owner, presented by TechMetric, the best software ever invented for any purpose ever.

0:57Just like that, we're recording. So, um, this is my first time. Uh, there's less stuff now than there's ever been with our travel kit. Okay. So I bought the dinky little Amazon, uh, tripods for the cameras because they're half the weight and they pack down in smaller form. I'm trying to get everything into one 50-pound case and protected. I, I will— this is what I'm going to say.

1:23All this has convinced me that I never want to have to do podcasts or So, you know, I, I— Well, it's— More power to you. It's way less than it used to be, right? Because it used to be we had those big pod mics on a stand and cables run to here. So this is my first time doing the wireless mic setup.

1:42And if this works well, I can have up to 4 channels going wireless with gain adjustment. And we'll see if that works because I tried Lucas's wireless mics at Vision. And they weren't adjustable gain. And you end up with, yeah, yeah, somebody way louder than— yeah. And also because it wasn't equipment that I was used to using and Braxton wasn't there, I screwed up a couple of recordings.

2:11Like, I had, uh, Tanika in one and her mic was off. And so, but we could hear her in the background of the mic of the person next to her. So Brexan had to go through and manually jack up the volume every time she was talking and then turn it back down to normal to try to get it functional. And it sounded terrible, but it was at least usable.

2:31Um, yeah, Tanika's loud anyway, so it's probably— it— yeah, she needs to turn it down a little bit anyway. I think we can all agree that she needs to turn it down. That was the subliminal signal to her right there. I don't do subliminal. I'm very— I don't do subtle. It's not in my wheelhouse. I think we've established that. All right, so here we are.

2:50It's, uh, we're towards the trailing end of day 1 of Level Up, and we're in Fairfax, Virginia. We spent the morning touring around some of the Craftsman Auto Care facilities. This is an event being put on by Matt Curry. I think this is like the third time they've done it, he said. And I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna record with him later, and I'm just gonna ask him What's the motivation behind doing this?

3:19Because I can't figure it out. I know that originally it started off as just onboarding for new hires and, and, and that kind of thing, talking about company culture and kind of what they do and how they differentiate themselves, that kind of thing. And it feels— have you been to Houston to see AutoShop Answers key-to-key class? I have not. I've taken some of Todd's classes just at various industry events.

3:44But yeah, so it feels like there are some similarities there, but some very diff— definite and very clear differences. Uh, but in any concept, there's going to be overlap, right? Do DVIs, try to go fast, you know. Um, well, I, I think one of the interesting things is if you look at the— whatever we want to call it— the coaching companies that push a similar model to this most of the origins all seem to kind of— they were all in the same room together and, and then split up, and each of them kind of took their own little twist on it, which I think is cool.

4:23I mean, it's, it's a— it's the same perspective that we've heard but done just a little bit differently, and there's just so many little neat things that we can walk away from it with. So, well, it seems to me like, um, ShopFix and— well, ShopFix is like a full spectrum coaching organization, right? And then AutoShop Answers is kind of a concept and all the ancillary services that they offer that can support that concept, right?

4:52And I think they have some other things in play too, right? Um, and then this I feel like is— I mean, I, I feel like a conversation I should have with Matt. I feel like Matt is just a genuinely nice guy and hopefully wants to help the industry, and that, that really It seems like what he's doing. I think his business is kind of running on autopilot and he doesn't have a lot that he has to do on it.

5:16He was like, you know what, fuck it, let's just invite people over and show them what we're doing and maybe we can help them out. I'm assuming you know this as owners, when we get bored in our business and like we run out of things to fix and everything else, we just go around and break things so then we have things to fix.

5:32Guilty. So no, I totally, you know, this is probably better use of his energy than, you know, micromanaging. I think he got his shit much more in a row than I ever had mine before he's just— I just started breaking shit because I was tired of doing the things that I was doing poorly already. So, um, but anyway, do some more things poorly then.

5:52Well, and here we are. So, um, all right, introduce yourself, tell me about your shop, where, where are you from? So I'm Adam Rath, um, I own a— it's a 7-bay, 6-bay plus an alignment rack in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Hey there, I'm going to tell you about something that has completely transformed how I run my shop— TechMetric. As a 20-year shop owner, outdated systems used to slow us down.

6:18Everything was clunky, from check-in to estimate building to customer updates. It all felt just super inefficient. Switching to TechMetric has changed everything. With TechMetric, you get a powerful shop management system that includes DVI, quick and easy estimate building, inventory management, real-time reporting, amazing amazing customer communication, and it's really easy for your employees to learn how to use the software. I'm talking like a 1-day learning curve.

6:44On top of that, TechMetric has tons of other tools to make you an even better operator. Stuff like integrated payments with buy now, pay later options is a huge asset. Ask me how I know. And recently they've added a CRM component with their partnership with ShopGenie, which I'm a happy ShopGenie customer already. So I'm super excited about that. Obviously there are a lot of factors at play here, but I want to give you some facts about my business since I made the change to TechMetric.

7:10In September of 2020, when I switched to TechMetric, my ARO was $293. In September of 2024, we were $916. That's over 300% growth. Now I'm not saying that TechMetric created all of that change, but I'm 100% saying that I couldn't have come this far without TechMetric. It's a key factor in our growth and success. If you're ready to level up your shop, TechMetric has everything you need.

7:34Productivity, revenue, customer experience. Measure up by every measure with TechMetric. Tap the link in the show notes to learn more. Hey guys, Kari Lynn with Turnkey Marketing. If you are looking to increase cars and you're looking for the right demographic to go after, you want to get the right people who need auto repair right now, then give us a call. We have a service called Direct Track and it utilizes AI to find people in your area who are the great demographic that you wanna go after, have raised their hand and opted in saying, I need auto repair help right now.

8:06We send them an email. As soon as they open the email, we then get their physical address, follow it up with commercial ads on all their streaming services like Hulu and YouTube and ESPN, Fox News, all those different things. And then we also get their physical address and we start sending banner ads and display ads to every single device in that house.

8:28It 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.

8:49Um, best town in the country. It's Allentown. Debatable. We are the third largest town, or third largest whatever metropolitan area in Pennsylvania. So it's Philly, Pittsburgh, Allentown. So you hesitated a lot there when I tried to compliment your town. It was a stupid joke about my name, but still. Oh, I missed the whole joke then. That's— I see, normally the joke with Allentown goes back to Billy Joel, and then we're like, he's— it was actually about a It's a whole different town.

9:21It's— and— but yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I missed the joke. Is Allentown— It's much more hilarious. Is Allentown like a shithole? I don't know. I've never been there. It depends. Where we are now is phenomenal. We're $100,000, $110,000 median income. I mean, it's a really, really nice area. Where we started, I think we were— $24,000 median income. It was, it was very difficult, let's put it that way.

9:52But we figured things out, we figured out how to make things work, and then moved into a much nicer facility that we own, that on the, on the right side of town. Yes. Yeah, yeah, with the right clients. And you know, the neighborhood matters a lot, right? Yeah, that's— so that is actually, uh One of my biggest beefs with coaching companies or concept pitching organizations that say you have to do it this way, you have to do it this way, you have to do it this way, and it works, and all the coaches will say, "I hear it every day.

10:28I've been hearing it for 20 years. That won't work in my town." And look, to a degree, there is excuse-making about how that won't work in my town. But to say what will work in your community of $110,000 average household income versus in your own location of $24,000 household income, those are not the same businesses, they're not the same customers, the same methodologies don't work and don't create the same outcomes.

10:54And so I do get beef with people who say you have to do it this way. I think there's a piece to this, and we can talk a little bit more about what I do that I know we had talked about before, but I think there's a piece to this where early on it really helps to know like, okay, this is the right way.

11:12Or there, you know, there's, there's not 20 different ways like we know there really is to do things. It's, hey, this is the best way to do it, do it this way. Because I think a lot of us, we especially come to an event like this and you're like, oh wow, when, you know, this piece here and this one, but then I'm going to take this from over here.

11:30And all of a sudden you end up with all this stuff, and then instead of taking action on it, it's like, well, maybe that's not the right combination, maybe I should do it this And so I think there's a place in time for that, hey, this is, this is the way to do it. And then at some point we need to step back and kind of take a look at what's reality.

11:48And I, I think it's more recently that I've kind of realized, like, you know, we, we preach this 60% GP and that's great, but there's other ways to get there and it doesn't have to be 60% GP and, and in a really poor or really rural area, that's probably not gonna fly, so. Not as easily, at least. Right. Yeah. I think if you think about like a musician learning and developing their skill with an instrument, they need to learn the base level of the music and need to learn how to play the instrument and how to read the music effectively before they start riffing and trying to— Right.

12:31You know, just go. 100%, yes. And so, like the 300% rule I think is a great example of that. If you've never been to a coaching organization or been a part of a coaching organization or been to a training event, the first time you hear about the 300% rule and internalize it and start practicing it truly, it changes your business. Oh, absolutely.

12:56100%. Overnight. And it can change your life. And so it is natural that I went from a $250 ARO to a $750 ARO in 3 months because I implemented this, then that is the gospel forever. I get that. That's human nature. But when all of your other systems come up and you start going to all the training events and all the coaching classes and you get Raise your rates, and you hear that 100 times, and you raise your rates until they're maybe a little bit too high for your market, I don't know, or maybe you've outpaced the value that you're offering, and you've got this, and you've got that, and you're doing all these different

13:37gimmicks, and suddenly, all of a sudden, 300% rule equals a tech average quote of $4,500, and you're totaling cars that are in perfectly good condition. I thought that's where you were gonna go with this, 'cause it's funny that you've, and I've heard you guys talk about this on your podcast, I've only got like 3 things to talk about. But it's— but this has become— and so recently in my own business, I— we run on EOS.

14:03We probably won't— whatever, that's like a whole whatever. But I have some fractional integrators that are doing just work for me, like specifically just on certain— like working with my sales team, working with our ops team. So they're just, you know, really focused on specific pieces of the process. That was brought up, and the lady who brought it up, who is doing work for us, non-automotive background, her background is in franchising, but she looked at what we were doing, looked at our average quote, and said, "Holy crap, you're sticker-shocking all your new clients.

14:38No wonder we don't get as much repeat back out of them." And so it just probably, I would pass 3, 4 months, I've kind of started to shift my, you know, what really makes sense here. Should we 100% of the time go in with a, your car needs this $2,000 worth of maintenance and brakes and, you know, or— Well, you give them a $7,000 estimate.

15:03Write the estimate for what's really important right now, make them aware of the whole situation, and just focus it down to what has to happen right now. And that's— I think your obligation to the customer is to inform and educate, right? Um, so yes, we need— I believe that we should go hard in the paint on the red items, and the yellow items we're informing and educating.

15:27They need to know about all of the things on the checklist before they do any of the things, correct? But giving somebody a $7,000 estimate because their shocks and struts are old but not blown out. And right, you know, if it— and if $5,000 of it is maintenance and they say $7,000, either I'm getting rid of it and getting a new vehicle, or I'm going to go get a second opinion and the next guy says you need $2,000 for the stuff, he's ripping you off, right?

15:56And then we end up looking foolish. So yeah, there is a absolute— the other piece of it too is, and I think a lot of us skip it, is, you know, we're Most of us say, hey, we're a relationship-based shop. We take in a new client, we have no idea what the goal is with the vehicle, how long they want to keep it, do they actually— we don't have a relationship yet, do they, you know, what, whatever, whatever that whole picture needs to look like.

16:19And I think that's something just, you know, I know in my own organization we're working on getting better at that, really understanding before we present a $7,000 estimate, is this a customer who loves the vehicle, wants to keep it for the next 10 years, or are we looking at they want to get 6 months out of this thing? Yeah, the lease is up in 4 months.

16:38We're still going to do the DVI, right? But the DVI gets done the same way no matter what. Nothing ever changes. But the way we present it is going to change depending on what we, what we learn ahead of time. Well, and how much time— I mean, obviously this is a rapidly evolving subject too, is the process of doing a DVI and building an estimate.

16:57Is getting more and more efficient with the tools that are being developed right now, right? But how much time does it take you or your advisor or your technician and advisor together to build a $4,500 ticket on average? Well, sometimes it's one part, right? I get that, but on average there's a lot of stuff being built on there. So why not build the estimate for the thing that Miss Jones came in for, and if Miss Jones buys that thing and we tell her about all the other things, then we estimate the other things too once she's— because I mean, are you— is that an efficient use of your advisor's time to have them spend 45

17:32minutes building an estimate when they're not going to buy anything? Correct. Yeah, no, and I would 100% agree with you. I mean, it just— I mean, it's— it comes back to that, that education and everything else. And yeah, if we know they're not— so 100% vehicles get inspected. 50 to 75% of the items found on the inspection are estimated. 100% of the findings are reported to the customer.

18:00So I say that we're like 250, 275. So what— and we've— we're doing— we're— because we're looking at this, does this make sense, we are still estimating 100% of everything. We're just going into TechMetric and just deselecting and just not showing that piece of the estimate to the customer. Showing that part, you're showing the entire DBI. Oh yeah. But you're just not showing, yeah, but I mean.

18:25If we know that, A, we know it's a lease, so there's no reason to do maintenance on it, or we know the customer's trying to trade this thing in in 2 weeks, they need to get it through a Pennsylvania state inspection. What's up guys? So if you know me at all, you know that I think I'm pretty awesome at everything. Right? But the reality is I get so busy that a lot of things fall by the wayside.

18:46And one of the things that I've always really enjoyed is actually the process of hiring and recruiting. But as the business grew and as the podcast has grown, I just don't have time to react quickly like you have to, to be competitive in the recruiting market that we have right now. That's why I've partnered with Promotive. I've used their full-service recruiting process also to great effect for technicians that were like immediate culture fits.

19:08That was awesome and useful. But what I'm really excited about is their new tool, Page. If somebody applies to one of my job listings, Paige contacts them immediately and has an interview with them. By the time I get the information, I already know if they're worth the time and effort to jump on that applicant quickly or not. It saved me a ton of time with bad applicants.

19:28It's prepped me really well for good applicants. It's just a super effective, super useful, super efficient tool to help me stay on top of my hiring and staffing needs. If you want to learn more about their full-service recruiting process or about their new tool page, go to info.gopromotive.com/confessions or scan the QR code below. I'm not going to show them a whole bunch of maintenance things, like, and then I would just tell them, yeah, it's $2,000, but I don't recommend doing any.

19:57Why even have that conversation? You're not going to give them the full BG enema? It just— let's do what makes the most sense for the client. I mean, our value proposition is to be convenient and painless. And I think part of that painless experience is, yeah, if we're showing them an incredibly uncomfortable estimate that we don't believe they should actually do, it just becomes a painful interaction every time.

20:25So the big thing that I see here at Craftsman, uh, so far— and I might be wrong because I'm only, you know, we're a half day of time spending with them— yeah. Between this and what I've tried and frankly failed to execute on with the Auto Shop Solutions concept, Auto Shop Answers concept, so many fucking all the names, Auto Shop Answers, the Todd Hayes concept down in Houston, right?

20:55They all do their speed of service concept and they're all trying to find the thing that Miss Jones came in for, find the answer to her primary question as quickly as possible, and get approval for that item as quickly as possible. And I'm probably oversimplifying, and I'm sure they'll come in the comments to correct me where I'm wrong, but at Adams Automotive, the Todd Hayes thing, AutoShop Answers, just one thing.

21:28They're gonna sell the first thing that Ms. Jones came in for, or the most visually compelling safety-related need that they find on a maintenance service, and they call it the ISO. They're gonna sell that, they're gonna get Ms. Jones packed up and in a loaner car or in an Uber or back home or whatever and tell her that they're gonna call her with the remainder of the findings shortly.

21:54And then they call in an hour or whatever, 45 minutes or an hour. And sell the other red items on the DVI. And then they call a third time to say, "Hey, all the parts are here. We're getting ready to get started." Right. Also, while we're here, there's some maintenance items that are due or coming up, and then that's when they try to sell the yellow items.

22:20So they're breaking the sale up into 3 different conversations. It's painful. That is, I mean, a lot of heartburn there. So I never got to that point. We tried to do ISO and PMI, and we're still trying to do ISO. ISO is call number 1, PMI is what they call call number 2. We're still trying to do that to varying levels of success, and speed of service for that is one of the things that we struggle with, is getting back on the phone in a timely fashion because we're just doing too many things, right?

22:51Or maybe we're too inefficient with our time. But what I saw here is they have the ISO conversation and the PMI conversation as two different approvals in the same conversation. Right. It's, hey, Miss Jones, you know, we found out what's going on with your check engine light on. It needs a muffler slide bearing and a headlight fluid exchange, and that's going to be, you know, $900.

23:17I can get that done for for you by the end of the day today. Would you like me to move forward with that? Okay, great. I'm gonna get the parts on the way and we'll get started with that. By the way, we've completed our vehicle inspection that we always do to make sure that your car is safe and reliable, like we've always done for you every time you're in.

23:32There's a couple other things I wanna review with you. Right. So they get the yes to the first number, and then in the next breath on the same conversation, they talk about the other red item —right— and then they educate and inform about the yellows. So I mean, and something— I mean, even I, I really like what we saw with the— well, he calls it the— what is it— the rack and roll, but the rack attack.

23:55It's just him not saying rack attack because he doesn't want to, you know, get into a pissing match with the guys in Texas. But that's my— that's my opinion. I could be totally wrong. I don't know, I feel like everybody needs their own— their own little name for the same process. Process. But I mean, and everybody takes their own twist on it, but you know, there's a— I think there's a couple coaching companies who really preach that, that one thing, that whatever.

24:20And ShopFix does too, right? It's— yes, it's very similar. Um, they, they call it just the one thing, find the one thing, right? Yeah. Um, we, we have tried to implement it a couple times, and I said— and, and every time we've tried to implement it, let's just try this for a couple weeks and see how it goes. And the immediate pushback I get from technicians, advisors, everybody else is, "This just feels slimy.

24:41It doesn't feel right." And maybe that's on us. Maybe we're not doing it the right way. But we're not educating our customer. We're educating the customer about one little thing and then trying to like sell that with the bait and switch that, "Oh, there's going to be a whole bunch more behind it. Surprise." And it just didn't exactly follow our Of course, I don't think the spirit behind it is bait and switch, or at least gotta— if that is the spirit behind it, I hope that they're never dumb enough to say that out loud, right?

25:11And I don't think that's the spirit behind it. But like, so the show and sell concept I think is what ShopFix teaches, correct? And it's a— and it is a— it's like a little play, you know. Miss Jones comes out under the car and you've got your clean-cut technician with his gloves on, and your service advisor introduces him, and the technician takes his glove off shakes hand and— you know the whole thing.

25:31And well, the flashlight. Yeah, you gotta have a flashlight. And, uh, you can get a flashlight that has the red laser pointer too, so you can do that as well. Super nice. That's the advanced method. Um, but, uh, you know, that is theater to get the sale. And then it's, well, you know, and, and technician Timmy is going to be telling Miss Jones about all these things, and then Miss Jones is going to say, oh gosh, well, I definitely need to take care of that.

25:56How much does that cost? Well, I'm not sure, but Service Advisor Billy will let you know. And Service Advisor Billy then takes it back over and ushers them back up front and says, Timmy's going to complete his inspection. I'll let you know if we see anything else, right? And so they're, they're setting the table for further conversation, and I don't have a lot of heartburn from that as long as they never start the work on the car until Miss Jones knows about everything they're going to recommend, because then it's just a different way of presenting it.

26:24To make her more comfortable and have less sticker shock. Yes, I, yeah, I mean, I think, I think for us, or my shop's issue has really been we're just not very good actors. So when it's, you know, oh, hey, Miss, it just doesn't come across the way we're expecting it should. It's— and well, the only way it's acting is if you've already, you've already completed the DVI and you know everything you're going to estimate.

26:52Same acting, right? It's, you know, my sales team, once a week, we do a sales training meeting for them. They go over phone calls, they, whatever. Do you role play? We role play. Is it the most awkward thing ever? Well, there's a reason that I'm not involved with it, because I wanted to do that, and then I couldn't get myself to it.

27:11So I have a sales team integrator that just handles that every week. We can see the results with that. The more and more we do it, the better we are on the phone, the more rehearsed it sounds. And we did not do that when we've tried to roll out something like that to the guys in the shop. And it's probably— yeah, we, we probably should have practiced it more and had, you know, and, and— well, that's something that, uh, Josh Parnell was just talking about downstairs was the J-curve of implementation.

27:43You know, you've got I think it's a chart, you know, you've got— I'm trying to think— reverse. Okay, so this is company performance on this axis and this is time on this axis. And right now you're running along at this level and you implement a new process and there's going to be a dip because it's new and you're breaking away from old habits before it comes back up and you actually see a performance improvement.

28:04But what happens is a lot of people never make it out of the dip because this is uncomfortable, this is new, this is This is not working, numbers are down, this is terrible. Let's go back to the old way. And then you just maintain. And all you have from that is the loss during the upset of the change, and you never realize the benefit of the increase.

28:24And I think it's, you know, our employees are always gonna be the first ones that anytime we implement something new, it's not working, it's just made everything worse. And I think the real key there has been quantifying with them, You know, you're saying it's worse. Show me it's worse. Why is it worse? And then if it is worse, but we still believe in what we're doing, what do we need to change so that this is not continuing?

28:50Well, invariably it's because they're not using the tool or technology or process to the intent or appropriately, right? I had exactly this with, um, Detect Auto has this badass new app assistant for the DVI process, right? And you can just start the recording and go through and talk your way through it, and it's going to take your words and put it on the correct line item in the DVI and check the green, yellow, red.

29:17Is it perfect? No, but it's getting better every day. And it's significant— like, it cuts down the need to type in your DVI or to create packaged line items that you drop down menu and select the ones that that you've got, and it's putting the pictures in. And I mean, it is a tool that will make you significantly faster in filling out the DVI.

29:38And I get, ah, it's fucking terrible. How many times you try it? Once. How many times have you done it the other way? 10,000. I wonder why it's not as good. So I, I will say the key— and it's funny that this, this exact example comes up. We're literally rolling this out right now. So we— I'm not a fan. I'm not a huge fan of the TechMetric DVI because it And, and this is going back many, many years, just when we switched— do not besmirch the name of the best software in the history of all softwares.

30:06Continue. Besides the DVI piece, we just weren't a fan of it. We loved everything else. We used another DVI software, Autovitals, or what? AutoFlow. AutoFlow. And very happy with it, had the layout we wanted. Just takes a lot of time to do, and speed of service, important. Like, we've really been trying to increase car count, so we need to cut time down somewhere.

30:33We also had kind of had the issue of like recommending services that had already been done, so we had gone to Detect Auto mainly for that piece of it. And then we're like, well, you know, we want to see the DVI tool. But I had my manager on the call with me. He actually scheduled it, and I was more like, I'm just gonna hang out in the background, he's the one that immediately was— so he's like, this is how we're gonna increase— we, we can do a DVI in 10 minutes with this tool.

31:00This is incredible. Like, this is what we need to be doing. It's almost like you don't need 37 people swarming on a car to do a DVI, right? You can do it with 2 in 5 minutes, right? 10 minutes, right? So I'm excited about it. And do you use the Service Advisor Assistant, the write-up that Detect Auto has? So every technician in America has wanted to murder their service advisor at least once because they got a ticket that said check noise, right?

31:27Oh, oh, for the symptoms. Yeah, at the beginning. So the questions to ask, and then it puts it into a cogent paragraph and puts it in. So my advisors who are not super tech savvy, it's a really useful tool for them in that capacity. So how many— you've got one advisor, two advisors? Two advisors. Well, we had three, but are they technically sound?

31:45Not, no. So a little bit, I would encourage you to use that. Yeah, no, that's— I mean, we— and so we've always done what we were doing with literally sheets of paper. Yeah, like, so I mean, it just, yeah, really is— again, it's just, it's gaining efficiencies, right? That's what all this new technology is doing for us. It's going to change the name of the game for advisors first and technicians a little bit later.

32:08I think, uh, it's just making us better at what we do and more efficient. So I think one advisor will be able to do what 1.5 or 2 could do because so many of the monotonous tasks that they've spent their time on in the past are going to be taken off their hands and they can just build relationships and have conversations and, you know, educate and inform and talk.

32:33So it's funny, funny you say, and I'll throw this out there if anyone else is considering this, I've shared this with many people already We had at one point hired a remote estimator in the Philippines. We found somebody who was literally a mechanic in the Philippines and just was— and it's— I don't know what it cost us, $1,500 a month. I mean, it was nothing.

32:54Yeah. And their schedule, same as our schedule. They're— I mean, they're 12 hours opposite of us, but literally they stay up all night just so they can— when we just have months— the whole industry that does that, right? We— they'd be on Slack with us on the video chat thing during the day, and they'd just would handle most of the estimates. Yeah, yeah.

33:12We ended up parting ways for other reasons. I think overall we didn't, we just didn't find the right person when we did it. It worked, it didn't work as well as it could have. Look, when I first opened my shop, I thought my old systems would keep up, the software that I had would continue to evolve. But as we grew, the slow estimates, scattered workflow, increasing downtime, really just, it was becoming a real problem.

33:37That'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. My shop's repair orders have jumped over 300% since switching to TechMetric, and when I need help, their support team responds in real time.

34:01I 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. Had we tried a little bit harder to get the right person to do that, so I think it could have been a very viable option.

34:24And the whole idea is great if my advisors don't have to waste that 40 minutes writing an estimate and they can spend that time working with a client, let somebody else handle that piece of it. So early on in the podcast, one of our early sponsors was Hubshop Solutions. Okay. Which was a remote estimating service. And, um, a couple of things happened with that.

34:45First, they were great. And then, um, the, the controlling forces in the background, the money in the background, said we're gonna ship all the estimators over to Philippine outsourced, and the quality and accuracy of the estimates tanked, and then the turn time on the estimates skyrocketed. And then either they terminated or quit all their North American estimators, were either terminated or quit, I don't know all the details.

35:13But so I ended up parting ways with that relationship from a business perspective and from a podcast perspective, just because I couldn't be like, hey, right, you you should use this service when I didn't believe in the service anymore, right? Um, one of the early, um, managers for that organization, uh, was Ash Kaplan. She's been on a couple times and she now has a Golden Hour Garage.

35:33Well, here we can, we can lead right into the, the other piece of this if you want. So yeah, we've actually had, uh, Ash came to the ASOG Mastermind as a guest speaker maybe February this year. It was just recently. So yeah, I mean, they do And we've talked with them a little bit about this because we definitely recognize there is something to be said for remote estimating.

35:54Yeah, yeah. And so I have, like, when we have our company-wide meetings and we go through all the different, you know, vendors that we're using, we're like, you know, how are they doing, points of improvement, what's going right, what's going wrong, that kind of thing. And we get to golden hour, and invariably there's some guys that want to, uh, bitch about Estimates being wrong.

36:14Well, how often were estimates wrong when we were doing them in-house? And, you know, how often are you having to go in and adjust something on an estimate or correct something that's wrong on an estimate? Probably 20% of the time. So 80% of the time you're not having to do that. Okay, so you want me to fire them and you go back to doing 100% of the estimates?

36:36No, no, that's not what I'm saying. So my— my favorite was it's your team getting down into the bottom of that J curve and now coming back out. Oh, it's— this is terrible. Oh, maybe it's not too bad. But anyway, I want to go back to something you said. You referenced it twice now. I think you call them fractional implementers. Integrators. Integrators.

37:01So you're talking about EOS, which is, for some of our listeners who might not know, The Entrepreneurial Operating System is based around— or the book Traction is based around that system. And there are visionaries who set the— we're the visionary for the company that, yeah, we set the, the objective, plan the, you know, plot the course and where we're going, what we're doing.

37:28And then the, the As we probably well know that sometimes we have 50 ideas in a week and we're like, these are all gonna be great. Let's just, let's get everything implemented and we're gonna make it happen. Now the other piece of that is we are horrible at getting new ideas actually implemented. So we're like, here's the 50 new things that we're doing this week, guys.

37:52I've made some notes over here on this piece of note paper here. I'm gonna give that to you and that's how I want you to make this happen. I'm going back to the house. And, uh, yeah, so the integrator, the fractional integrator, is that missing link there. So they're taking my ideas and filtering them and saying, that's great, that's great, uh, the rest of these are horrible, I don't know what you were thinking with these other 48 ideas, we're not going to be doing any of that.

38:16And then they're going to take the 2 good ideas and they're going to work the plan, and I'll work it with them, but on here's how we're going to put this into play. So how long have you been trying to work the EOS system? We have— we— so we worked with a— and this is where it'll get really interesting— worked with a professional implementer, which is the person who teaches us the EOS system, for 2 years now.

38:41I have, for the past year— and this was actually, actually it was right after Tools last year— I hired a fractional integrator. So for anybody that doesn't know, shop marketing pros. I don't know if we can say them here, but they're not a sponsor, but Brian Walker, good, good personal friend of mine, and they run on EOS. They ran their shop on EOS.

39:03So we had a ton of conversations at Tools just about EOS, and I'm like, you know, I do this, and then he's like, what, what's going on with your integrator? I'm like, why, I don't really have an integrator. I'm sitting in both seats. And he's like, right, you need an Integrator. I'm like, Brian, I'm a pretty good Integrator. And there's a test for this.

39:23So there's a Crystalizer assessment. If you just Google Crystalizer assessment, you take a 40-question test and it tells you where you are, like Visionary, Integrator. I think I'm a 93 Visionary and like a 42 Integrator. Like, it's very clear which seat I should be sitting in. So came back from Tools and I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna hire a part-time, a fractional integrator, and let's just see what happens.

39:49And so we kind of hired somebody, I didn't know what to expect, and it was just all the little stuff that had previously been falling through the cracks, it just stopped. And things got completed and— So did the listing for this part-time fractional integrator, did it say fractional integrator? Or did it say, parts manager. No, this literally— it isn't it. So they, they do nothing in my business.

40:17So the, the gentleman that we hired there— and there's thousands of— maybe not thousands, there's probably is— fractional integrators. There's a— yeah, there's a very large community of people that— I mean, they'll, they'll work for multiple different companies at the same time often. So I needed somebody 10 to 15 hours a week. There was a local guy here. Turns out that he was like multiple connections, went to church with my sister and just so, you know, real good feel for him.

40:47He used to own his own foundry, but very high integrator score, not super high visionary score. And he was kind of like, I'm just getting ready to retire. I got a couple of months left, but, you know, I really like it. I've never worked in the automotive industry. Yeah, let's do it. And so I think he was with us from June till January of this past year.

41:09And yeah, it was just eye-opening what can happen when you start getting the right people, well, doing the right things. There's so many really high-performing organizations that I've gotten to know over the last few years, and one of the consistent drumbeats that I hear is EOS. One of my good friends through Elite, that I met through Elite but he's just a really good friend now, is Harrison Rusk out of Houston, and he's just, on Cinco de Mayo he closed on his 5th store, so Cinco on Cinco.

41:44And he's all in with EOS. And then 2 of the best players in the North Carolina market, Chapel Tire Group. I think they've got like 15 stores or something, and they have like just, they're beautiful facilities and their teams seem to be very happy and they got a great training organization built into their company. EOS, about it, right? Harold Tire and Automotive in Eastern North Carolina, I think they've got 12 stores.

42:13EOS. So I just keep hearing it. And here's, I mean, this all, pretty much Josh just hit on it. This downstairs when he was talking about, you know, kind of driving the vision, driving the core values. I mean, that's all EOS stuff. Like, we live by our core values. We, we're constantly talking about where we're going. So once a quarter, as it just— if you're following like true EOS the way you're supposed to do it, we have a state of the company address, which is what happened last quarter, what did we learn, where are we at right now?

42:45And then where are we going next quarter? And that is like just religiously something that the more we have just stuck to, that meeting happens every quarter. We actually have now gone to the point where I, I make slides, we record it on Loom, we go through, you know, welcome new team members, but we go over all the financials. What do we do?

43:07What was the gross profit? You know, where are we headed as a company? What's, what's changing? What can we all expect to see? And it is just so much clarity for everybody. I mean, our employees will say, our team members say, like, I've never worked somewhere that, like, we knew this much about the company. Like, we feel like we're, we're just a part of it.

43:29I had shared last week, I shared with a bunch of guys last week, my— we had a record week. We did about $65,000. Nice. My manager was off. And on Monday, our new service advisor, who really wasn't fitting in, basically just decided this wasn't for him. And it was no hard feelings. And that was the end of that. So my manager, who normally backs up the service writers, not there.

43:54So I'm down to just 2 writers and 5 techs. And we kind of said, like, hey, guys, it's going to be a rough week. Week, whatever. And they're like— They crushed it. They said, you know what? We're going to show Scott how to do this while he's off on vacation this week. So end of the day, we use a whiteboard to track everything.

44:11And then it's, what do we do today? Where are we at for the week? So Friday, obviously, end of the week. Where are we at for the week? And we take a picture of the whiteboard after we write everything on it. And then we have an end-of-day channel in Slack. So I open it up because I knew we were going to have a really good week.

44:27I knew where we were at. Like I kind of was getting all the, you know, hey, just what do you see, what do you see, what do you see? And so not only is it a picture of the whiteboard, two of my techs standing there pointing at it, and then also kind of there's a middle finger, which I'm assuming was going to our manager who they knew was going to open it up to see what we did that week.

44:47But the clear thing was they knew that was a win. They knew what we had to do. They knew what the goal was. They knew why the goal was what it was because our daily, our daily goal equals the weekly, the weekly equals the projection for the quarter, and if we don't hit our projection, then we can't do certain things. Everything is built around the projection.

45:07So, you know, they knew this is where we have to get to, and they knew it was a win. That's awesome. But, and so I think that has really just been the key with EOS is just everybody's on the same page. Everybody knows where we're going. They know what a win looks like. They know what we have to do to get there.

45:24And when we make changes, there's typical resistance, but it's, hey, we know why we're making this change. We're switching to Detech Auto because it's speed of service, because we want to start servicing more cars, because we have a pretty big goal for the year. So, you know, it just— everything kind of makes sense to everybody. So Monday morning team huddle where they're like, hey man, you need to go on vacation again, just get out of here.

45:52There was some talk about that, but you know what, it was— I was really proud of Scott, our manager. So long story short, and I guess be a little plug for Josh here, but, um, Scott, our manager, a lot of stuff going on in his personal life. He was part of our leadership team just as our general like shop manager, not manager manager.

46:15And we asked him to take a step down from the leadership team. We actually demoted him. And the only thing I had done at that time is I've been talking with Josh Purnell. I bought his Blueprint program. And Scott, my— who's now our— and this is, this is last summer, so a couple months ago— took like, watched the first 2 or 3 modules.

46:37We can't— he came in, we We talked about it and I'm like, "Scott, this is great. I can see you're really growing from this." I said, "You know what? Why don't we plan, we'll do 2 modules a week and then you and I will sit down and we'll talk and we'll kind of coach each other a little bit." We sat down a week later, he had finished the whole stupid thing.

46:58He's like, "Dude, it was awesome. I want more. I emailed Josh." I'm like, "What? Who is this guy?" just kind of leaning into him, realizing we hadn't given him the leadership skills to do what we were asking him to do. And I think both of us being humble enough to say, like, I screwed up, and here's what we're going to do to try and fix this.

47:20And I think he recognized, like, yeah, I'm in over my head, but I appreciate— I want to be here, and I appreciate that they're going to give me that whatever to make it happen. Happen. So credit EOS to that too. But I mean, again, that was shortly after I'd hired the first fractional integrator, and it was a conversation. I would have left him on the leadership team probably forever.

47:44I didn't just— well, he's not quite doing what we want. But it was a conversation with the fractional integrator. I'm like, right person, wrong seat. Exactly. And we made the seat change. We kept working on him and then made basically, well, actually, he really kind of skipped the seat. He went from, well, he went from managing the shop to kind of just like our lead tech to manager of the store.

48:08So great. Yeah, great. Um, I do want to be cognizant of the time. 40 minutes has already gone by. Oh goodness, look at that. See, it's not that hard. Um, I want to talk about, uh, your work with ASOG and with the Mastermind. I've had a bunch of guests on in the last year and a half. We're coming up on 100 episodes.

48:31Wow. By the time this is published, it'll be over 100 episodes that have been through the ASOG Mastermind. And you're— you have a title? Are you the director? You're the chief bottle washer? I kind of hate titles. So if anybody ever— I don't know, I, I'm, I'm me. Maybe I'm too much of a team player. I don't know what it is. I just call myself one of the facilitators there.

48:52You're the big dick in charge. But yeah, um, I pay for the Zoom license every year, so I guess that means I'm in charge. $179 a year, I own this bitch. Uh, so for anybody that doesn't know, I guess little known secret, uh, ASOG has a free mastermind group. Um, it— and the Origins, we could whatever, go back years and years. Basically, David Roman started it, probably referring him to him as he who shall not be named.

49:22He shall— he who shall not be named. Perfect. Started this maybe 2016, somewhere in there, and it was just kind of this informal, hey, let's get together on a Sunday night and chat and see where this thing goes. That really led into just a very close group of friends who have stayed in contact and, and just whatever throughout the years. Come about like COVID time, we all still in contact, had Messenger chat groups, we were still meeting some, and Lucas kind of called all of us and said, hey guys, like, we've got a lot of really struggling shop owners that need help and they can't afford to pay for coaching, which is what most of

50:05us had. You know, we kind of got it together a little bit as a part of this group, and then everybody went and hired whatever coaching company they were going to hire. Um, but, you know, we're seeing this influx of people who, I mean, like, just in bad shape, not knowing what to do, just missing all the core fundamentals. And, you know, Lucas kind of had this, and I guess in true leadership fashion, Lucas had this idea and, uh, called all of us together to see who was going to take this thing over so he could just delegate it and walk away from his ideas.

50:35Lucas loves— I call that a conversational hand grenade. He'll stick his head in the room and say, "Hey, how about this, that, and this, and that, and hey, I'm busy, I gotta go, love you, call me if you need me, click." Yeah, that's pretty much how this went down. I will say he's been a supporter. He's in one of our chats, so he does chime in every now and then, but it's— and at the end of the day, he was right.

50:56It was a good call. There are so many people that we've been able to help over— I mean, it's, I don't know, probably almost 6 years now since we've kind of restarted it. So we had initially a bunch of members that were part of the original mastermind group, and I had actually taken a step away from it for about a year. I had— we had moved the shop, I'd done a huge renovation, came back to it, and now that's probably 4 and a half years ago almost.

51:22And since Since then, it's turned into— I think I am the only guy now from the original group that's still there. How many facilitators do you have right now? Oh boy, 8, 9, something like that. Oh wow. The way we are hoping, and we're currently making some changes to this group, but basically our goal is we run people through the group in about 12 to 18 months, get them all the core fundamentals so they can get to a point where they can go pay for coaching and kind of get to that level up since we're here.

51:58All, you know, take care of all that low-hanging fruit stuff, the 300% rule, knowing your numbers, understanding gross profit, all the, you know, the stuff that is gonna move the needle in a big way very quickly. And then at that point, you know, if these people are in a good spot, they can help other people. Try and bring them into our coaching program, encourage them then to, you know, give back, give back to the group, go get their own coaching, or we'll work with them.

52:25We have years of experience now as a part of our leadership team. Um, the, the shift that we're kind of currently making to the group is we would just bring people in. Like, there, there's on— there, there's a website for ASOG. So if anyone does not know, uh, the Facebook Auto Shop Owners Mastermind Group is actually a— what is it, a 401?

52:47413. Yeah, something nonprofit. There's a Facebook— or there's the Facebook page, but there is a website, asog.site, and there's a page on there all about the Mastermind Group and applying for it. Of course, we don't really mention it anywhere in the Facebook group except for just recently. But yeah, if you're out looking for it, that's where you can find it. So somebody would go there, they would apply, or somebody would mention Hey, there's the ASOG Mastermind.

53:12We'd bring them into the group first night. They'd meet with me. We try and triage everything, figure out, you know, what do we got to do? We throw them into the mix and then we work in small groups. And then once a month we have a guest speaker come in, but they would just go into random small group and topics will vary.

53:31There's no real set format. It's whatever people need the most that night. And what we found is like pretty effective for a lot of people, but then we also have people who've been in the group for 6 months, a year, and something comes up and they're like, "Oh, I didn't know about that." Like, how did they not get taught this already? Nobody's mentioned this?

53:53And— So there wasn't a core curriculum checklist. So the change that we're making is we're gonna— we had our members make a whole bunch of videos, post them in ASOG. Say, hey, we're, we're taking new members right now. We're going to be— once we get up to 10 max, we're going to be capped for the next 4 months. We're going to take those 10 people, run them through basically 3 different rooms, so 4 months in each one, with just specific topics of, you know, understanding financials, um, building estimates, um, DVIs, you know, what is 300%, just all those those little things.

54:30We'll do just the foundation. Our favorite is we'll do live invoice audits and have people share their tech metrics with us. And that's painful. We'll just see what's going on. You want to make it even more uncomfortable, just pull up the VoIP system and do live phone call audits. That's, uh, it's a, it's a thought. I think that'll be a Room 2 thing.

54:48But yeah, we're thinking about something like that. Could be a, uh, if you want to ruin my fucking day, make me listen to my own phone calls. Oh my God, so bad. So I'm sorry, I don't listen to mine ever. Occasionally I knew I had a really bad phone call and I pulled it and sent it to somebody and said, I don't want to listen to this, but just tell me what I did wrong.

55:13The bad part is I do, I do pretty well when we roleplay in our, in our team meetings. I know all of our, all of our scripts. And our point is, like, with a musician, you need to learn the script really well before you're allowed to riff and go off, off, right? Because you can bring it back in when you need to, right?

55:31And then in the heat of the moment, when it's time to actually talk to a customer, I'm just like, yeah, sounds great, bring it in, you know? Which we should be saying in its own way, but, you know, I just, I circumvent all the rules and policies that we put in place that I know the reason we put those rules and policies in place, and the reasons are fucking good, and I just, I just fail.

55:53Anyway, that's why they don't want me answering the phone. I was gonna say, this is why I'm not— can we talk about, uh, no, not, uh, Call Inbound? Uh, I'm not familiar with them. They're the AI automotive, whatever. There's a dozen of them right now. There's Rilla and there's, uh, AIX, which which is just rebranded Rilla, I think. Okay, well, so we— whatever, that's who we use.

56:17I'm gonna keep scrolling up. Yeah, yeah. Um, every day we get a daily email with the best call and the worst call in. And anytime I have answered the phone at my shop, when we get that daily email the next day, it— I'm the worst call every single time. So yes, I don't Don't answer the phones. We're done. We did a phone call audit 2 weeks ago and 20% of the inbound calls at one of my stores were customers calling asking for status updates.

56:55I was like— Yeah. Well, at least you know what to coach on right now. Man, I don't know. I think I talked about this last week with Bryan. It's just the loss of efficiency by not following our— like, we know what the processes are, we know why they're there, and yet we still choose not to follow them and it makes life harder for us.

57:21So does that mean that we're dumbasses or we're lazy or— what was the Chris Voss quote they have in there? When the pressure's on, we, we fall to our base level of training, not our level of attention or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I don't— I sometimes wonder, does it go back to people just not understanding why we're doing a certain thing?

57:47And, you know, have we just not shared enough of that why, whatever? But whether that— I, and I can't tell you that's the answer, but I think that's where my brain goes to with it every time. And then you're just trying to beat that into everybody's head and hoping they're listening and understanding. What are you gonna do? That's what we have integrators for.

58:09So what is the next step for ASOC Mastermind? You're gonna have formatted 3 rooms, 4 months per room, and then after the 12th month, it's like, get the fuck out and go get your own coach, or? So, and I tolerate a little bit of that. People being in places like my own business longer than they should be. But so realistically, it's a home for wayward boys.

58:30But we'll, we'll allow people to stay up to 18 months unless my leadership team starts pushing back on that, then maybe we'll go back to 12. Um, but so realistically, that's the, the format change that we're gonna— we're sort of making there. Um, what will happen is basically once a month, or I'm sorry, twice a month, we do small groups. So we meet 3 times a month on Zoom for— it's supposed to be an hour and a half meeting, it's always 2 hours.

58:52But, um, so we do small groups and then we do a once a month guest speaker. And we've had all sorts of different industry guest speakers and just various people coming in to just try and give us some different perspective. We've kind of focused down now more onto just bringing in various coaches because our hope is, hey, we get people through our program, they've resonated with the coach somewhere along the way here, or maybe they've stayed in contact with one and then they've moved on to that.

59:24We alluded to this earlier on the bus. So there is a very interesting thing that we have found has happened with the— specifically the ASOG mastermind. So we, we know there is a bit of a divide between shop ShopFix and ASOG. There's whatever that has gone on there. I think it's all Dutch and Lucas. I have no other comment on it. And David.

59:53The thou who shall not be named? Is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, something, so I, whatever. Not to say I've spoken negatively about ShopFix, but I've not always said like, hey, they're, you know, they're the best, go there. But, um, I try and leave things very neutral, and I don't push people in a certain direction. Switzerland, I— right, I teach— like, if I'm teaching to them, here's, here's what we do at our shop that works, and here's what doesn't work.

1:00:22One of the interesting things that never occurred to me though is, like, years and years ago, I bought the original Driving Growth program from ShopFix, and we use a lot of of that stuff that is in that. That's just great, part of our core program. Yeah, so that's a lot of what we teach to the ASOG Mastermind. Now I've coached with Rick White, Transformers, Ron Ipax, you know, I've had several whatever and got great things from all of them.

1:00:53And, and sort of was like, you know, this shop fix thing, like, yeah, sure, half my business practices probably came from those, but I don't think that's a group, you know, that's not the right group for me. Yeah, we talked about this earlier. I think there was a lab somewhere in like 1997 that just had some wild shop guys that they were injecting serums into, and it birthed Auto Shop Answers and ShopFix and a couple of the others.

1:01:21So here's the really strange thing that I— we started to observe is we'd have members leave our program and they would go for coaching. Like, that's awesome, it's, you know, anybody I connect you with, where do you— and they're like, oh, I'm going to talk with this guy, that guy. Almost all of them were ending up at ShopFix, which I'm like, this is a little bit strange.

1:01:42Like, we've never even had a guest speaker in from ShopFix, so how is this even happening? Well, I think they're so much larger than every other coaching organization. I would venture to guess that all other coaching organizations combined are smaller than Shopfix. Could be. I believe 1,500 shops right now. Yeah, maybe ATI. I don't know what ATI's numbers are like, but, but for, I mean, the last 6, 7 years since the pandemic, the majority of people that got coaches for the first time got Shopfix because they had the most visibility and the most online hype.

1:02:19So it's natural that if they were graduating through the ASOG program and they were looking for their first coach, they probably went to Rick White or Shopfix, right? Yeah, no, I, I, and I, I almost wonder if a piece of so many people ending up with Shopfix was like, it's elusive and hidden and we don't talk about it in ASOG, and you know, it's— and the people who ended up at 180 Biz was because of Lucas.

1:02:47It was because of Lucas and Rick was why they went to 180 Biz. Right. But yeah, somebody that clearly this worked, it's, you know, yeah. So nothing wrong with that. It's just how it worked out. The— I don't remember exactly when this was, but we— I talked with our leadership team and I'm like, hey guys, like, I don't normally ask, but who are you guys using for coaching?

1:03:06Like, what, what, what are you guys doing? Like, I know sometimes we'll have dialogue about stuff in our one chat, but I know most the guys had gone and got— turns out that over half of our leadership team was also coaching with ShopFix. I didn't even realize. So time— they're actively coaching for ShopFix also, or they were coaching clients of ShopFix? Coaching clients of ShopFix, yes.

1:03:28So you heard it here first, folks. ASOG officially endorses ShopFix Academy. And that'll be the end of the mastermind group. Um, Dutch is gonna I'm gonna murder you. The piece of it, and the piece that I love with our leadership team, and something I've always shared with the group, is you're gonna hear all these perspectives as you grow, and you need to take what's gonna work in your shop and leave the rest behind.

1:03:53And the guys on our leadership team who had gone there, you know, embraced that. They took what was gonna work and implemented it, and it worked, and it just look, there are a dozen different ways to skin this cat in this industry. You've heard me say it before if you've ever listened to this show, but Becky Wett drew a picture at Fuel Connections.

1:04:17It was like, look, this is a buffet. So think about coaching and talking heads and fucking podcasts and everything else in the automotive space. All the guys who know all the answers, right? All the gurus. Think of it as a buffet. You cannot eat it all. You have to pick the pieces that are good for you. Right. And you can't eat too much because it'll make you sick.

1:04:41So get the pieces that you like and get just enough to be full and don't overeat and don't try to eat everything or it's gonna make you throw up everywhere. Right. So every one of these coaching organizations has content that that I can learn from and that I can improve my business with. And a lot of them have content that I'm like, that's not right for me.

1:05:03And that's okay too. I mean, in all honesty, it's one of the reasons that I've been with Elite as long as I have been. One, they're not territorial. They don't get all pissy if I want to go check out this guy or that event or whatever else, right? I like that. And they don't have a fixed concept that they coach. They get to know what your business is and what you're trying to do, and as long as your and as long as you take care of your people and take care of your customers, they just want to help you make money, right, and reach your goals.

1:05:31So, and this is— so, and I'll— not that we're officially endorsing anyone, anything, whatever. I'm endorsing Elite. We have now had several coaches from ShopFix come in, including Michael Rosenberger, who's now the CEO there, and When we first did this, there was a lot, even amongst the leadership team who's mainly already all with ShopFix, like, boy, I hope that it doesn't, you know, this doesn't blow up in our face.

1:06:00And the beauty is it's, you know, yes, here is the core way that ShopFix believes this should be done. However, we're not going to shove that down anybody's throat. And even Berg, when he came and talked to us, I mean, it was just, it literally probably one of the best guest speakers meetings we've had. I have great share, and actually we have a member here at this conference who said he was rewatching it on the way here.

1:06:24But I— we recorded that Zoom and then we shared it with the group. Well, and there are a couple of ShopFix coaches that are here today. Yes. Yep. Yeah, we won't name any names, um, but it's just, you know, we got just such great information perspective. And, you know, hey, this may not flat rate may not work for you, and that's okay.

1:06:45And we'll explain why, and we'll explain how to build a pay plan that will work correctly for you. And, you know, it's— I think we, we sometimes will— we hear something from a coaching company and then we put them in a certain box, and there's just so much more going on. There's so many more perspectives there. You mean that there should be space for nuance and thoughtful discourse?

1:07:08Rather than 30-second sound bites that make for good rage bait. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, well, not on this podcast. So, um, we're over an hour already. This is super easy. I feel like we could do a part 2 and just keep going, probably. Um, but, uh, I think we gotta go downstairs and sample the beer at the hotel bar to make sure that it's cold enough before I'm on board with this plan.

1:07:32So, um, Thanks for coming on, dude. Are you still doing the confession thing? Are we supposed to confess to something? Because I'm going to tell you, I spent at least 40 minutes thinking about it, Braxton, actively. But Braxton wants to thank you for this because he's like, dude, the name of the fucking podcast is Confessions and you don't do that anymore. So this is what I wanted to confess, and I felt like it's— and there's a— I'm gonna— we're gonna do this quick so this doesn't get too long, but I was a very lazy leader in my business and used to hang on for people people that I knew deep down, not even deep down,

1:08:02just like they were the wrong fit, they shouldn't be there, whatever. I had an employee like that and I was, I'd come in, I was going to get rid of him. I'm like, no, you know what, he's, he's not that bad, but he's a nice guy, right? So he, we, we have a waiting customer there that day and my technicians are not supposed to come through the waiting area, they're supposed to go out the back door.

1:08:21But this guy, again someone I needed to get rid of, decides he's going to come through the waiting area. The customer says to him, or says to my technician, "Oh, are you going to work on my car?" And he says, "Is your name whatever?" And she says, "Oh yeah, it is." And she looks at him and says, "Do a good job." And he looks back and he says, "Boy, I'm glad you said something 'cause I was about to go fuck shit up," and walked out the door.

1:08:47And I went, "Ahaha! Why am I doing this to myself?" I mean, I've thought that to myself. That's awesome. But to verbalize it— yeah, yeah, he— I did let him keep working the rest of that day and then got rid of him at the end of the day. What did the customer say? Did she have a good attitude about it or just a little shocked?

1:09:09No, that was the last time she came in. I wasn't sure what to say to her. I was at that point just kind of like, oh my God. I think at some point there I just considered that maybe I had gone gone into the wrong field and I just needed to go home. But I'm just gonna crawl under a rock and not come out.

1:09:24Oh my God. So I, um, I am learning to go ahead and take action when I start realizing that something's not right. So I have a long history of, uh, a lot, a lot of different things, like, uh, failing to equip and train and support properly and then letting let somebody hang on a vine until they wither and fail, right? So that's 100% my fault.

1:09:49But I've also brought in people into the company that were not good fits for the company and not done anything about it for extended periods of time until it had a negative effect on culture. But recently I've had one come through and, like, a good person, great work ethic, wants to succeed, but just wasn't the right culture fit for the company. And, you know, that's part of EOS is right person, right seat.

1:10:18Absolutely. And it became immediately— not immediately, it became quickly obvious this is not the right person. And so rather than just let it drag out and be unhealthy and unhappy, I just like, it's not working, man. Here's the next level of all this, and this is what, this is what we found probably in past, I don't know, 6 months. When you get to that point, especially with EOS, that you have that much culture in the company that every single person has to be all headed in that same direction, and then you bring in that new person who's the wrong fit, they'll push them out.

1:10:51They quit. The rest of my team will push them out because they're not getting on the bus, and they'll just come in and quit. And it's— it's— we haven't had to fire anybody in forever. I mean, they just— it's And they don't last long. It's maybe a month and they're like, I made a bad decision, this isn't the right environment. I need to get an automotive experienced EOS implementer to come on the show and talk about EOS and traction and getting it fired up in shops.

1:11:19And every one of the guys that I just named and you have all had implementers that helped you get it started, so I'm sure there's no shortage of— I can connect you with Tim, who we work with now. He's actually looking— he's had— used to own shops, never worked with this shop, or maybe worked with one or two here or there, started working with us now since January, has enjoyed it so much he's like, I would rather shift all just back to automotive.

1:11:46So there we go. Maybe he'll be a podcast sponsor. I think that's a great idea. All right, thanks, man. I appreciate it. 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.

1:12:08You 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.

1:12:31I'll see you on the next episode.