99.08% Diagnostic Accuracy: Inside a Master Tech’s Playbook

0:00What's up players? It's Joe Adams with Adams Automotive. This is Master Tech to Millionaire. Uh, we're coming from Adams Automotive, the number one shop in the country. Uh, my name's Joe. We are here today with none other than Josh Gerbrecht. Say hi to the people, Josh. Hey, what up Josh? So Josh is, you know, I've been really excited about this podcast because he is our, you know, probably number one diagnostic level technician.

0:28I'll introduce him real quick. He is, He has an automotive technology degree from Houston Community College. He is a master technician and L1 master certified for 10+ years, and he's been working on flat rate for 13 years. He actually has a spreadsheet, which is hilarious. I love this. He has a spreadsheet of every job that he's worked on this entire year, what it came in for, how he diagnosed it, and whether or not the vehicle came back.

0:54He's very proud to say that he's at a 99.08 diagnostic accuracy, uh, which is sick. And he just went through Key to Key to Callbacks this weekend in August of 2026, and we are here to debrief all the amazing, uh, you know, takeaways that we had from this weekend working together. So Josh, how you feeling? I'm feeling great. It's, uh, super cool to do this.

1:21It's an awesome opportunity as a technician, you know, to be able to do something like this. And, uh, Thank you for that intro and sharing my spreadsheet. I'm a little bit nutty doing something like that, but I enjoy it. You know, you get what you track. And yes, key to key. What can I say? It was— I say what you just said right before we came on the air about the symbiosis working together.

1:45Absolutely. So as a technician, I see myself as half of getting the job done, the other half being my service advisor. And you've got a service advisor and a technician. They need to be in sync. And I kind of look at it as, you know, if we're one body trying to get one job done, which is outstanding service and then an outstanding repair, you know, the service advisor would be kind of like the brain of the body.

2:14And as a technician, I'm the body. I'm the, I'm the work. You're like producing the actual product, you know, like it has to be sold, but you have to actually like cook the food. You're the chef, you know? Absolutely. And as, as the body, you know, how can I do a great job if I don't completely understand what's going on in the brain?

2:36So that, that was my biggest takeaway is now having a much better understanding of the brain, of the playbook, of what's being executed in the front of the house. I can now better complement that in the back of the house. So the analogy that I'm kind of— we were exploring is the NFL and we're the NFL of car repair. And I believe that the front of the house, the service advisors, are the offense.

3:02So at the end of the day, you can't win games if you don't score points. I have to score points in the form of Moneyball. I have to sell jobs. I have to drive revenue. I have to score points. And I believe that the technicians are the defense. You know, you guys keep, you know, defense wins championships. And I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but it's kind of like a recheck is pretty much when we score a touchdown and it gets called back because of a penalty or something, it's like I just threw— I just threw a 70-yard touchdown or I just had a— I drove down the field, I moved the ball

3:36down the field for 2 days and key-to-key callbacks. I sold the job to the customer for $6,500. They're happy. 5-star Google review. If the car comes back the next day because we didn't fix the car right, it literally like does not matter. It's like turning the ball over. And so if I just, you know, if you guys are the defense from— and the ball just keeps getting turned over, or, uh, maybe, maybe the analogy is not perfect.

4:00If the car keeps coming back over and over again, the defense wins championships. Like, we're gonna lose those customers no matter how good our offense is. So I think it's a decent analogy, but, you know, let's get into it. I want to get your background before you, um, came to Adams, uh, and then I want to kind of go into your time at Adams, your thoughts.

4:22Yep. And then let's talk about key-to-key this weekend and now your perspective after Key to Key. So where did you start your career? Um, I started my career at, uh, a shop in Stafford, Colony One Auto Center. And like a lot of shops, there's nothing totally wrong with it. It wasn't a bad shop, but it was like every other shop out there.

4:44Um, I kind of grew up there as a technician and enjoyed my time there. Um, but I was, you know, I was making what I was making after about 10 years there, and there was really nowhere else to go, um, job-wise. 10 years, you were there 10 years? I was there for 10 years. So you're loyal, you're making, you know, you're putting good work out, you're learning.

5:06Are you training yourself to become a good technician, or how— what did that look like? So I was actually fortunate enough, um, to have them, as a young guy fresh out of school, um, make me an apprentice. So they actually paired me with one of the master techs that was there at the time, uh, which was outstanding, um, for my career. Um, and then got put on fly rate, became a big boy technician and struggled for a little while.

5:28And there was a lot of self-learning, like most techs, right? Most techs out there, especially the young guys, and if there's any technicians listening, they know what I'm talking about. They just kind of bang their head against the wall until something's fixed. And the next time they have to bang one less time. Um, and so, you know, here the, there's support. Everywhere.

5:52And, um, it's just a totally different feeling. So, okay, so you came over here in February of 2024, correct? And, um, how did we get you? Oh, that's great. So like I was saying, the shop I was at wasn't necessarily bad, but it was an average shop. And, um, we, uh, y'all, I guess at that time, were hiring a general service tech.

6:15Yeah. And When y'all were interviewing him, I guess he was asked the question, hey, do you know any master techs? Well, he handed y'all my phone number. I get a phone call and, you know, I was a little— wasn't too interested at first. I thought I was at a good shop. I didn't know how great it could be. And took the phone call, came up here, did a shop tour one day.

6:40And you were hooked. I was blown away. And we sent you that shop tour video. It's like you're seeing the floors. Yeah. Yes, I was blown away. It was an eye-opener. Wow, look at what else is out there. The next day I came in, sat down with Glenn Piccolo, stud, and, um, I don't think he would have let me out of there without taking a job, without closing you, without closing me.

7:02Absolutely. And I am— I'm so grateful that y'all found me, that y'all recruited me. Well, hold on, let's use the word that we poached you. You poached— yeah, we poached you hard. So we got issues, you know, every month in training with people are like, man, you guys are poaching people. Wow, you're stealing. And I say I say it pretty aggressively now, kind of just to make a point.

7:22I'm not really that aggressive in terms of recruiting. Like, I'm not like, you know, there are some pretty crazy strategies that I've heard that are, they're like over the line. Um, sure. And catch me offline if you want to talk about what is considered over the line, but that's neither here nor there. We, you know, Todd, I've been with Todd when he's walked into stores and literally grabbed people.

7:43We are very aggressive in terms of what I like to call operating, offering humans, offering people an opportunity that can change their life. And people say it all the time. I'm like, you know, we go through this long section in recruiting and in Key to Key and about how important it is and how you need great people to run the playbook and run the offense.

8:05And then I'm like, all right, where do we get these people? And every month people are like, well, you recruit them. And I'm like, okay, where, where do I get them? And they're like, well, you staff, you go find talent, you go offer people opportunities. And I'm like, no, no, no. Say it like you poach them, you steal them, because it can feel that way.

8:24It can feel like as a person with empathy running a business, you want people to like you and you want to make sure in your community that your reputation is as an upstanding member of the community. And I totally understand that and I dealt with it for a long time, but I try to paint a picture every month that You know, like the person that you are quote unquote poaching wants to be poached.

8:53They just don't know it yet. And 95% of the shops are good old boy. You know, I know the shop that you used to work at and it's 4.8 on Google, 1,000 stars, you know, 1,000 5-star reviews. It's got a great reputation, great people. However, they did not have the skill set to get you an environment to allow you to make the kind of money that you make now versus what you made working for them.

9:16They just don't know. And that doesn't make them a bad person. So it doesn't make me a bad person to, quote unquote, poach you, to take you out of that environment and put you in our environment. So it can feel like you're taking technicians. But what it sounds like I'm hearing from you, Josh, is that you're grateful that we, quote unquote, poached you because you had no idea that shops like ours even existed.

9:37Is that right? That's, uh, that's exactly how I would say it myself. I did not know what was out there. Yes, I'm very grateful y'all found me and poached me. I'm here now. Um, my income is more than doubled, almost tripled. Let's go. And I thought, I thought I was about at the top of what a technician in Houston could make, and I just had no idea.

10:00That gives me chills, dude. Sick. Like, that's sick. So if I It just gives me more and more conviction every year. Like every year that goes by, it's like there are real people that really get to work in my family's business. And if I'm nervous to call somebody and talk to them and recruit them and poach them, like I'm potentially withholding the opportunity for them to double or triple their income and more importantly, work in an environment— not that the old environment was bad, but work in an environment where it's like, wow, this is the NFL.

10:29Everybody is freaking rowing in the same direction. We're winning hard. We're a faith-based business. You know, we're pouring into people, we're training people, and we're winning. So recruiting, man, if you are not convicted by hearing that and you work in our company, I need our recruiting department to be listening to this. Like, no, dude, this will change your life because it will.

10:48So let's get back on the narrative structure here. You worked for us for the last 2 and a half years kind of observing all the— we don't send technicians through Key2Key to callbacks because we've never really I guess made the connection of how important it might be. Right. Because, you know, it's more important to know how to fix a car as a technician than it is to like understand how marketing works and how phone skills works in key-to-key.

11:14But you opened our eyes to how much you really didn't know. But I want to back up for, for what, what, what were you able to observe and what was your perspective of your first 2 years or so working here? And then we'll go into debriefing the actual weekend. Yeah. So the first 2 years here, you know, I like to think I pay attention and pick up on things.

11:35And that's what it was. It was 2 years of picking up on little things here and there. You know, it doesn't take long to realize, um, as your service advisors are on the phones and you're in the office for whatever reason as a technician, that boy, that service advisor and that service advisor and that service advisor all sound very similar. Pro. They sound pro.

11:56They're, they're executing on the phones and it's like, That's okay, that's, that's different. Um, you know, doesn't take long to notice the take 5s happening in the morning. Get here a few minutes early and it's like, wait, every morning all these guys are here early just training, practicing? And it's like, okay, these, these guys are doing something different. And then you connect that to it's turning into hours for me, right?

12:25Hours that, you know, I'm not having to do, you know, vehicle inspections and stuff on my own. It's, it's quite literally handed to me on a platter. Yeah. We talk about Sundays, you know, we talk about like, you come in, Josh, Josh comes in Monday morning and there's a ticket with 13 hours on it. Mm-hmm. And like, you don't, you may see all this stuff, you see us sweating, you see us staying late, you see us early and you start to put together like, okay, this is not the same as the place that I was.

12:54These people, right? Like, it's hard to look at Glenn Piccolo and work with him for a year and be like, not be aware of how freaking amazing he is, you know? And then the rest of our team as well. But, you know, it takes a while to put it together because you don't see all the work that goes into it when you see just a ticket with 13 hours.

13:12And I want to address something here. You said it, I don't have to inspect cars. Oh yeah, because Technicians literally hate inspecting cars. They like fixing cars and diagnosing cars. And you fall into a category of somebody who you need a little bit of challenge in your life. You don't want to just, you don't want to just R&R control arms 10 times in a row just because it pays the most.

13:35You need a— I mean, you literally have a spreadsheet of 99.808%, you know, so you need a little bit of that in your life, but you still got to pay your bills. And so we You know, we're open on the weekends and we call it like the emergency room and we're open on the weekends, we're open on Sundays, but the doctor doesn't come in till Monday morning.

13:53But I can still check out a ton of cars and check out people that need to see the doctor on the weekend or need to see at least the emergency room, or at least they think they need to go see the doctor. And they just know— they just— they don't actually understand that they just need to get their car checked. So we will get cars all day Sunday because we're the only game in town.

14:14And people say, hey, I got a noise coming from my brakes. Can you check it out? I don't need an L1 master certified technician to take the wheels off that car and see red brakes, right? Like, I just don't. If it's a check engine light and I can't diagnose it at the speed rack, our current process is pull the codes, communicate to the customer, hey, I'm going to need some more time with a master technician to diagnose this.

14:38Can I get you a shuttle home? And then we're going to call you first thing in the morning when he gets here. It's that simple. And people on LinkedIn and on Facebook, they're like, oh, so you guys— and every training they're like, oh, so you guys aren't diagnosing cars, right? Like, so master techs aren't diagnosing cars. It's like, no, like we're, we're inspecting the car for gravy, the technical term for gravy, for rear, you know, for rear shock, for everything.

14:59And if we can't figure it out, we don't need to because it's Sunday and nobody else is open anyway. We can wait for Josh. And so for the— by the time Josh gets here on Monday, we've sold $40,000 or $20,000 or $70,000 on a weekend. And they're in a shuttle and they're not going to pick up their car till Tuesday after Josh is done working on it.

15:19And it'll be check engine light plus all the rear shocks plus all the fluids. And that's a 13-hour ticket for Josh to freaking knock out in 3 hours on Monday morning. So give me your thoughts. You want to know one of the scenarios I love is, right, vehicle's been in, customer's transportation issues solved, and y'all have spotted all that stuff. You've spotted brakes, motor mounts, struts, whatever.

15:40It's all the gravy. You know, but right, we have to address the customer's ISO first. What brought them in? So then it gets to me and it's, hey Josh, we need you to diagnose this. And I know that as soon as I get that diagnosis and y'all can get it back and back in touch with the customer, sell them the, you know, we can take care of why they're here.

16:02There's all that gravy waiting right behind it. So it incentivizes— talk about a motivator to get that check engine light diagnosed quickly and accurately, because when I do, there's 10 hours of gravy waiting behind it. Yeah, it's almost like you are being incentivized to diagnose it the right way fast because it's like you're getting paid, maybe not in the form of— that's so fascinating.

16:24You're not getting paid in the form of like 0.5 diagnostic time. You're getting paid in the form of 10 hours of gravy if you diagnose it fast. Yes. And I don't have to— I don't have to worry that you guys are going to get that gravy sold after we handle the customer's complaint. What brought them in? Because you guys don't miss. We're gonna— yeah, yeah, we're gonna try as hard as we possibly can.

16:46Yeah. So speaking of— oh yeah, one other thing. Um, I had this, um, happened with, uh, one of our superstar service advisors, Cliffhanger. Stud. Last week, um, I had a Ram truck in here, needed, uh, ball joints, control arms, and it didn't sell. The truck did leave, left at about 4:30 or 5 o'clock. I get to work the next day and I don't remember exactly the time, 8:00, 8:30.

17:11Cliff comes pulling the truck back into my bay, sold. And it's like, as a technician, that's all I know. You know, I'm thinking, I don't know, maybe the customer brought it back after all, whatever. But after being through key-to-key, yeah, now I know what kind of execution and work and effort went on even after that truck left to get it back in my bay and, and hours back on my paycheck.

17:36Like, Cliff probably called that customer after hours to he got it home okay. And then Glenn probably called him first thing in the morning and was like, hey, we're doing a— you know, he didn't say it like this, but he's probably like, hey, we are doing a reopen missed sale next day satisfaction callback, right, to call you and check on you to make sure that you're okay.

17:53But really, we're just asking to see if you— I mean, we want to know, we want to make sure, you know, that you're happy with the service and that everything went good. But also it's an opportunity for Glenn. That's what we train on, to talk to that customer and see if they have gotten it fixed somewhere else or if we still have an opportunity to earn the business because we say that the business is not— it's not a missed sale.

18:13See, most people classify that as a missed sale, right? But it's not. It's a missed sale when the car gets fixed by us or someone else. And so you going through key to key, you know, speaking of being able to identify all the work that goes into it, now you know that that ball joint, the guy didn't just go home, Google it, and then decide to come back, right?

18:33Like, we had to work and the offense had to huddle and they had to run some plays and they had to get sacked on 3rd down, punt, get the ball back, re-strategize, and drive down the field to like score that touchdown. And now you get to freaking— it's like you got to watch the offense. It's like if you're on the D— it's like if you're on the sidelines for the NFL and you just went into the locker room every single time and didn't like appreciate the quarterback getting slammed.

18:59Like, it literally fires me up when I'm watching the NFL and I see the quarterback get slammed, like Baker Mayfield take a hit and just get right back up, right? And freaking score, right? And it's like you got to watch it, and that fires me up. So I'm, I, I'm, I need to chill out. I'm gonna start screaming into this microphone. So, okay, it, it fires me up too.

19:17And again, you know, I keep having this, this tendency to want to talk to any technicians that may be listening. Yeah, but it's like, as a tech, to know, to have that knowledge back there— you're talking about getting fired up, it fires me up too. It's like, I'm on a winning team. I am, in fact. In the NFL now, 100%. And, and you guys are there.

19:37Y'all have that mentality as a technician to also bring that kind of intensity. You know, it ups the quality of my work. Yeah, it ups my attitude all day in the shop. I'm happy and proud to be here. It's something else. That's sick, dude. So let's talk about this concept. So there's this concept of, um, you know, being around A-players. So that— so you're— it's more like it's less that you're not around you weren't around A-players.

20:03It's more you're just aware of how high level the players are on the field. And Elon talks about this concept of A-players hate being around fuzzy thinkers, you know, and there's this idea that you did a deep sigh. You're like, oh, because, because look, you know, I call it advanced common sense customer service. You know, as a technician internally who the hammer is like, you know, working at your old shop.

20:28And if you're a technician listening to this, driving to work, You know who you hope is talking to the customer for your tickets. Like, hey, I just diagnosed this car, Service Advisor A, can you make sure Service Advisor B sells it? You know, like, it's like, hey, you've probably done that where you walk into the office and you hand the ticket and you see the one— oh no, I'm going to hand it to you because that person's going to sell.

20:46You just didn't maybe externalize. You didn't like know why you did that. You just know like, that's the, that's the salesman, that's the, that's the one. So being around a fuzzy thinker it actually has this cognitive effect where it drags you down. It's like, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. When you're around people that don't— and I'm not saying dumb, that's not what I'm saying.

21:05I'm saying people who like aren't motivated, aren't trying, aren't trying to be in the NFL. It drags you down like 30% or some crazy— I don't know if that's an exact number, but like, it feels, it feels accurate. It sounds about right. You know, like if I'm like, it's like I'm fighting through the fuzziness of thinking and it makes me want to think less and it just sucks.

21:22The inverse is also true when you're with an A-player. Like, I was so tired coming into this podcast, but I'm like jacked up now because you're an A-player and I'm like, oh my God, dude, he's understanding and now I'm understanding him and now we're working even better. It's not, it's not 1 1 2. It's 1 1 like 10. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

21:40Like, it's like, oh sweet. And now I've got the idea in my head of like, oh my God, I need to send all of our freaking techs and our A-player techs through Key2Key so they can get riled up and be like, oh my God, dude, I need to fix these cars right because it's freaking hard to sell these jobs. Like, oh, it's so good.

21:55I'll get off my soapbox. That's— that was my thought. I mean, I've come back and I've already been talking to some of the other guys and it's like, hey, do you— do you know— do you have any idea, right, what— what level of execution is happening up there? Because I— I got it now. Well, I had all the pieces and now the puzzle's been put together.

22:11And in the same way, I don't know what it's like to put that kind of work in to fix the freaking car. Like, I kind of do through my dad, you know? My dad, like, actually— he roasts you guys, by the way. Like, not you specifically, but he's like, the way the work has changed. Yeah, yeah. He's like, back in my day, we had— sorry, Dad, if you're listening— we had to actually fix cars.

22:33Like, he's like, radiator, you had to actually fix the radiator and put it back in the car. Now all the old heads are going to be listening to this being like, yeah, they're gonna be messaging Perry and being like, you're right, now you just put a new radiator in there. That's It's easy. He's like, I had a workbench. I had to actually fix stuff.

22:51So funny. Anyway, he, you know, he was a technician that came into the business. Master Tech to Millionaire is the name of our podcast. Todd was not a technician. I am not a technician. And I love Todd to death, but he never really experienced the pain of not being successful as a business owner, whereas my dad experienced the pain. He experienced the pain of like, dude, it's hard work on your body and on your hands and on your feet for years to freaking fix these cars.

23:24And then it's even harder work to try and figure out how to run the business, you know, and like actually take care of the customers. And so I can kind of relate through my dad how hard it is to be a technician and how hard it is to fix cars 12 hours a day and how hard it is on your body. Right.

23:40I mean, he literally can't hear. At dinner, you know. Like, I see young guys shooting air guns by their ears, uh, at this Rack Attack and ripping, you know, whatever they're called. What is it, lug nuts? Like, uh, like, like, no, like under the splash shield. Those are the loudest ones on the Range Rovers. Oh yeah, when you've got a metal skid plate.

23:59A metal skid plate. And it just blasts their eardrums. And I'm like, dude, like, my dad literally cannot hear, uh, at the dinner table when there's too many voices. And so I can just feel maybe, maybe like through him, the wear and tear that it puts on a technician's body and how hard it is to fix these cars over and over and over again, day in, day out.

24:20But it makes me want to kind of get in y'all's world and have a better understanding of like how your brain works and how the work is, because it's— I'm seeing how effective it was for you. So we're kind of, we're kind of talking. I'm talking a lot. I need to hear— the people want to hear more from you. They want to hear Your thoughts.

24:36So it's 2 days. Try to communicate to a technician who's listening to this or to a service advisor who's never been, um, from your perspective, kind of just what you saw this weekend. What, what was it? What did we do? Um, it was more than I expected. It was, um, I mean, let me back up. One awesome thing I saw that's, um, I think pretty unique is to watch watch yourself and Glenn up there, and this kind of ties back to in the wrenches with the trenches.

25:06To be a technician, just like you were talking about, it's hot, our bodies hurt, it wears you out. And to see my leaders, the leadership in this company, to see you guys in the shop all day— I mean, Glenn puts on gloves and takes tires on and off. He's, he's outside, he's got sweat on his forehead too. So to see To see my leadership out in the shop, very literally in the trenches.

25:34You might not actually have a wrench in your hand, right? You're out here with us talking to us every day. And boy, that's motivating. Yeah. It's like Elon Musk was sleeping on the factory floor, you know? You think— seriously, it's like Napoleon back in history. He— you think he ran the army from an office, right? Or do you think he was at the front?

25:53You know, like, that's it. And Todd, shout out Todd, taught us this. He's like, look, check out my— it's in the movie. You saw the movie. He goes, yeah. He goes, the cool thing about this is check out my office. Here's my office right here. And he just walks into the speed rack. Yeah, he walks to the speed rack. It's like, that's sick.

26:08Because he's like, we scaled this whole business from my phone in Bay 1. Like, I don't need to be freaking in an ivory tower. And the ivory tower has to happen sometimes, like behind closed doors. We got to have a management team. We got to grow the business. We got to think about marketing. We got to think about recruiting. We got to think about training.

26:23You know, me and you have talked behind closed stores about training and like what stuff could look like. We're doing a podcast right now, we're not in the trenches right now, right? Stuff has to happen. But at the end of the day, if you're an individual unit leader, you know, if you're— if you have multi-unit, if you only have a couple stores— or not only a couple stores, that's not what I meant— if you're at a level where you're running an individual unit, you do not— you can run the whole business from within the business.

26:52And like, there are times where you have to step out to kind of work on the business, not in the business. But the feeling from your entire team watching you and you're Baker Mayfield and you just took a sack and they just saw you get up and freaking like run the next play, it's just, it's just sick. That's just so sick. So thank you, Todd, for teaching us.

27:12Glenn, shout out, number one guy in the world. Jose, the whole team, everybody. Mike Quinn. I mean, there's too many people to list. There is. We have to work outside. Like, we have to work in the trenches. We have to watch the defense kill themselves for us and do it alongside with them. And it's 1 1 10. It's like so, so cool.

27:31It is. It's so motivating, you know? I mean, yeah, one of the things, you know, you— there's shop talk, right? And one of them is when you got a shop and a manager that's in the air conditioning all day. Yeah, boy, that's one of the things technicians talk about. Manager might come out for a minute, say something, go back in the air conditioning, and the comments amongst the technicians are You know, I won't say them here, but everyone can use their imagination.

27:54Yeah, you can use it. But so we're— you guys are out here with us. We're investing in air conditioning at the other locations and we're working on this location. Can you talk as a technician what that would mean to you guys? So, oh gosh, what, what does that mean? It's everything. It means everything. I think you mentioned it and I joked with you, you know, if you put air conditioning, I'll never leave.

28:16I expect I'll never leave anyways, but, but that gives you a sense of what that means to a technician. And, um, yeah, the, the comfort that could bring, the productivity that would increase. I have a, uh, a, a image I want to paint to you, okay? It's 1980. My dad worked in a gas station across the street, up the street. I've never actually showed you.

28:37I should show you. And it's a convenience store now, but he was telling me the story one time. He goes, Joe, Because we're talking about air conditioning the shop. He told me this recently. He goes, Joe, it was an oven. And I go, yeah, it was hot. No. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think you understand. He goes, it's so hot in Houston.

28:56And at Blaylock, we have big doors, so the air flows through at least, and we have giant fans. At least it's like, you know, there's some airflow. He goes, Joe, I worked in a cinder block backed oven. Like, the back of the garage was cinder blocks and it was west-facing. He's so funny how he thinks. I love my dad. He— it's west-facing.

29:20And so the sunset and the heat of the day from 3, you know, 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 p.m. And as instead of getting cooler, the sun is hitting this, the cinder blocks directly and baking me in that freaking box in the early 1980s. So yes, air conditioning would make our guys fix the cars faster. And I'm like, Wow, I just have— I have so much respect for y'all because it is— it's tough, man.

29:46It's hot out there. And it is too. Other than just like, wow, that would be awesome to see my company make that kind of— I don't know what it's going to cost, but I'm sure that is a like $100,000. Yeah, right, like a lot of money. Like, you know, that, that, that investment, that's for us. You guys are doing that for us.

30:02And but you do it— but you do it for us. For— that's right, for a few reasons. One, you like to win, but one, you like to make money. And we talk about this in training. It's like, pay your people what they're worth. Pay them, pay them what they're worth. Get people that are worth it and pay them what they're worth. And I can't— you know, we talk about this in training.

30:19I'm going to dovetail here, but it's like, is it low integrity to charge a super high price? No, it's not. Low integrity is doing something or saying something that you are not doing, something that you said you would, or vice versa. Lying to a customer, that's low integrity. It is high integrity. It is. I think it's low integrity to charge your customers half of what you should be because you are having somebody else pay for it.

30:43And the person that's paying for it is the technicians and the people in the front of the house. And they don't have benefits. They don't have 401. They don't have insurance. You know, they don't get to work in an air-conditioned shop. They get paid, you know, no offense, the place that you were working previously probably paid you less per hour and they probably didn't have as good of a retirement program and so on and so forth that when your uniform wore out, it was probably harder to get a new one.

31:04You know, we've got equipment and clean floors and amazing service advisors that get paid what they're worth. And we invest in payroll because it's the players on the field. It is literally the players on the field. And how can you expect to have a Super Bowl outcome with people that you're getting a good deal on? And so I'm, you know, like, I'm so— it's like, hey, Patrick Mahomes, dude, I know you just threw 37 touchdowns last year, but like, dude, we're going to pay you like $20K this year.

31:29Like, it just doesn't— like, it doesn't work that he's getting paid $50 million a year. To freaking throw bombs and hit bombs. So anyway, you heard it from directly from Josh, like your prices are— if you're not charging the right price, like you may feel like you're ripping off your customers by continuing to raise the price. It's— you're ripping off your people if you're not charging the right prices, because that money, in my opinion, is— we need to be profitable.

31:58We need to make money so that we can stay around and everybody is money motivated and deserves to make a profit. You deserve to make money. My mom deserves to make money. However, that money has to be distributed to your team members. Yep. Uh, so that they can go buy houses and freaking take care of their families. And I'm just so— if that doesn't give you conviction to charge the right price, I don't know what does.

32:18Yep. Oh yeah. And, and it'll, at least amongst technicians, paying technicians more generally— there's exceptions to everything— it will improve the quality of their work. Yeah, when you as a technician, when you feel like you're underpaid and, and this and that, your service advisors aren't selling work, you know that all those things compound into bad attitude and you don't care about the car anymore.

32:44You don't care about the customer anymore, right? You know, you, you fix an oil leak, are you going to clean up the oil that was leaking? No, I'm not getting paid for that. Yeah, that's what you hear in a shop. But when you when you can pay techs what they're worth and, and create an environment where they're proud and they, they know— not feel like, they know they're on the winning team.

33:06Yeah, man, I'm gonna clean up that oil. Yeah, it feels— it goes from feeling like a chore, I'm not getting paid to do that, to something you're— I'm proud to do. I mean, it feels great to put out super high quality work, and it, and it, it's this system that builds on itself. If I can pump out that quality of work, my service advisors can, can, can— whoa— can continue to execute what they're doing at a high level with confidence that the product they're selling is worth every penny we're charging.

33:39No, it's so, it's so true because I have always— I'm a salesman, I'm a service advisor by nature. You do not want me fixing your car. I've always thought that, like, no offense, I've always thought that the service advisor matters more than the technician because nothing happens unless something gets sold and the technician has to fix the car. And so like it's kind of chicken and the egg, but the chicken has to get first to the egg.

34:01It's always in my head. The more I— man, the more I'm doing this, it's like, okay, but try having no defense and like winning the Super Bowl. It just doesn't— like it's not a fair comparison. They're two different things. And Dude, a stud technician, like the sales go up. Like when Michael Felix— shout out Mike Felix, stud— is about to throw the ball 50 yards down the field and he knows that the person catching the ball is like an ace or whatever the analogy is, he's sending it.

34:31Like he is selling it with confidence. When you are, man, when you know, you know that tech, when it's like, hey, will it be done today? Like, what's Michael Felix's thought process? Like, either, man, like, he's like, I don't know if it's going to be done today, right? Done the right way. But if it's you, he's like, yep, it'll be done today.

34:50We'll get started on it right now. And he's going to sell more because you're going to produce— our other guys are going to produce and you need more hours. And so he is going to in turn feel that confidence of like, yes, Josh told me this is what it needs. This is exactly what he needs. What it needs. It's 99.08% accurate and he's going to fix it right and it's going to be quality.

35:13So absolutely total investment, $1,286. I'm going to get started on right now versus dude, if technician sucks and they're freaking stripping anyway, it's like you just don't feel as convicted that they're telling you the right information, that you're selling the right stuff, and that you're charging $1,200 for I'm sorry, an entry-level, lower-paid technician who's probably like, it's, it's maybe 70% chance that the car doesn't come back, you know?

35:43Right. Right. And so it all works together. It all works together. Let's move on to, I don't know, just some other core pillars of the concept, any that you want to touch on. So we talk about answering the phones, we talk about marketing, we talk about recruiting, we talk about shop tours, we talk about the Rack Attack. Um, you pick, what, what do you want to focus in on?

36:04Let's see. I mean, that, that's a lot of it. I mean, it really— the technician understanding the service advisors, the playbook, it, it's really that simple. It's, it's— I keep thinking about the body and the brain analogy. I mean, it's, it's 2 halves to one goal, and when one side knows what the other side is doing now something can happen. So let me— I'm going to interject here.

36:29I think we should talk about the Rack Attack because I get— oh yeah, I get questions. Most people in the crowd that are owners used to be a technician. It's like 2/3 of the industry that's an owner started as a tech. My dad, Bill Broussard, Charlie, you know. I didn't know it was that high. Yeah, it's like most people started as a technician.

36:44AJ Neely, shout out, uh, started as a technician. Some like me, like Rob Esq, like some of you other guys out there didn't start as a technician, but most did. So every month we're having to like unwind some of their bad habits in the inspection process. So I think we should talk about Rack Attack, um, from a technician's perspective that utilizes the Rack Attack.

37:04So we inspect the cars in 15 minutes, we take pictures and videos, and we send it to a technician. And then the technician diagnoses what the customer came in for or just fixes the car if it was all gravy, they came in for an oil change. For some reason, every single month, it's like really hard for people to like just totally go away from the technicians are all individually diagnosing the cars, right, to we're gonna let the service advisors like start that process and then give it to the technician.

37:31So can you just give your perspective as a tech, what it's like on your end, uh, the whole inspection slash diagnostic process, right? It's, um, it's outstanding. I mean, they're good answers. Yeah, it's, it's, it's all— it's almost like, where was this Where has this been? Because you, you made a comment earlier. It doesn't take a master technician to pull a wheel off and go, yep, it needs brakes.

37:57Yeah. Or look at that strut. All the fluid is blown out of it and leaking down the body of the strut. Um, and you know, you guys, you guys, whenever there's something you're not— an advisor is not sure about, or whoever's running the speed rack, I get a call on the radio. Hey, come look at this real quick. I get to put my eyes on it and then it's real quick for me.

38:16It's either Yep, this is what it is. Or, hey, this is something a technician needs to spend some time with. And then it's that simple. And then we communicate with the customer. See, like, I'm not then going into the waiting area and being like, hey, it needs $2,000 and we're just guessing. I'm saying, hey, a technician needs to look at it. You know, I'm going to hold it over on Sunday afternoon until Monday when he gets here and I'll update you in the morning.

38:39And that's it. And like, usually if their car has some complicated issue, They're not like worried about having to wait, you know, like they want it done right. Like if it's an oil change, there's nothing to diagnose. There's no check engine light. We're not going to pull codes. So if I communicate that your car needs tires, it's very easy for me to just tell you your car needs tires or your car needs rear shocks, right?

39:02If you come in with a check engine light or a noise concern or an air conditioning concern that has been finicky, you are not like expecting to leave the shop within 5 to 10 minutes. Like you would at a fast lane oil change place. So it's very easy for me to basically talk a customer into holding over until the technician can further diagnose it.

39:21So the story we tell in training, and Glenn made a great analogy this weekend, is give the same ticket to 5 different technicians and have them write it up, and you're gonna get 5 different write-ups. Oh, you know, when he said that, I, I almost couldn't keep myself quiet. Yeah, back there, because It is 100% true. Again, any technicians listening, you guys know what I'm talking about.

39:45You, you see oil leaking from somewhere. If it's an oil leak repair you're familiar with, you know about what it pays, you know how long it's going to take you. You're writing it up. You're telling your service advisor about it. Vice versa, when it's a pain in the rear end job, electrical, if it's not dripping on the floor, you know, you might not bring it up to anyone, which, because it's not gravy work and it creates inconsistency.

40:10Bad, you know, that's not good service for the customer. It's not honoring them. Yeah. So it's sketchy. Like it is. And I'm seeing it in your body language right now. Like, I understand it as a technician that works in a negative industry where you're literally just trying to make an income, how you can have biases that impact your decision-making. And that doesn't make you a bad person if you're a technician listening to this and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I've totally let my biases influence, you know, the safety of the customer.

40:40I'm not here to condemn you, but I'm here to tell you a story of, from my perspective as a service advisor and business owner, uh, is I was underneath a car one time. I don't, I don't even remember this story exactly right. I've told it so many times, but it's— I, I'm losing the details, but it generally goes something like this. You know, I'm underneath the car and, uh, you know, I do the— I'm at the Rack Attack and I pull a technician over and I'm like, You know, what do you think?

41:07Oil pan leaking, something like that. Okay. And I don't know the, you know, schematics of the how hard it is and how many— I'm not familiar with how many hours it pays or how many hours it is. I'm just like, hey, oil coming out of the oil pan, borderline between seep and leak. What do you think? And if you have to ask, by the way, it's probably not leaking.

41:25But, you know, I pull him over and he says— he looks at me and he goes— I'm going to overexaggerate the accent here. Okay. He goes, 4:00 on a Friday, keep an eye on it. It's like, dude, and it's like a light bulb moment. It's like, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, so we're the emergency room and customer just came in with some sort of mass on their MRI or X-ray.

41:51And it's 4:00 on a Friday and the doctor's like, you know what, dude, I'm trying to get out of here. So just go ahead and keep an eye on it and come back Monday or like, or whatever. I'll see you next oil change. You're crazy. Like, dude, what do you mean keep an eye on it, dude? I'm not trying to get to the Red Sox game after work.

42:09Like, I'm trying to make sure my customers are taken care of. And so you are leaving the safety of your customers' vehicles up to the mood and time of week for the technician writing up the car. And so that's why we inspect the cars on the front end. I mean, I'm over here just laughing and grinning because it is, it is so true.

42:28So, so true. And yeah, so by having By having the speed rack process, by having one guy running it, some GSs up there, service advisors involved with the car that they're going to be selling it, um, yeah, it's, it's, um, it creates consistency, it holds up integrity, it's, um, it's all around a great process. And as a technician, it's, it's beautiful. I'll never be able to work in another shop that doesn't have the Rack Attack process.

42:58Process. Yeah, I mean, to think of going back to customer drops off a car and a service advisor writes something down on a piece of paper. Yep. And then it goes straight to a technician. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense anymore. And you're putting an iPad underneath the car and taking 57 pictures. See, it just doesn't make sense. So to, to anybody who's not familiar with the Rack Tech, it's very simple.

43:19The car comes in, we look under the hood, inspect it. We take, you know, just like the doctor at the emergency room, like the, the people at the front before the doctor comes in, they're going to take your blood pressure, they're going to weigh you, put their, you know, stethoscope on you, make you go, ah, get your history. Yeah, they're gonna— yeah, exactly like Carfax.

43:36They're gonna look at your history, your charts, and then the doctor comes in and he looks at your little PMI and he's like, so you broke your wrist today? Like, what, you know, what happened? And then he starts to like basically diagnose you, and then he orders the x-ray or you know, puts his hands on your wrist and tries to figure it out, whatever.

43:53It's the same way with the car. We look under the hood, we take a picture of the filters and the battery, whatever. We look at the belt, no leaks, great, nothing's probably wrong. Check engine mounts. If they didn't come in for anything, I'm just going to like scan under the hood to see if I can find something that's unsafe. And guess what?

44:10Most cars— like, most cars have something that is broken on them, but most of the things on cars are generally in good shape. Like these cars have 100,000 parts on them and I'm looking for like 1 or 2 bad parts. Yeah, like most of it is solid. Okay. Next, I'm going to lift the car up. I'm going to shake it down and check the brakes.

44:29I'm going to go all the way up. I'm going to go front to back. I'm going to look for any unsafe items on the vehicle and then I'm going to keep it moving. I'm going to identify all the broken things on the car. That's going to be tires, brakes, and hypothetically rear shocks. I'm going to take pictures of all of them. And in 15 minutes, I've inspected the whole car visually and I get to dispatch the car to the parking lot.

44:48Then I called the customer and I settled the 3 things. And let's say that's a 13-hour ticket with all the fluids, maintenance stuff against the history for Josh. You know, on Monday I order all the parts. Monday when he gets here, Josh is working on other stuff. I push the parts over to his bay and I say, hey, go ahead and knock this out.

45:06And let me interrupt. That's it. All of that until he said my name, Josh, I wasn't involved. Yeah. With any of it. And you don't have to be distracted from another job that you're currently working on. Yeah. Like, hey, I know you're working on this gravy job and your hands are literally in the— like you're underneath the hood right now, but can I pull you off of that job and have you do a DVI?

45:28And I'm also not going to pay you for the DVI unless the job sells. It's like, no wonder my LinkedIn is just covered in should techs get paid for DVIs. What we do is the car is only tied up on a bay for 15 minutes or it's being worked on. In the industry, car gets dispatched immediately to a technician, check the brakes, pull the wheels off.

45:47Yep, it needs brakes. Okay, time's ticking. And then Josh goes back to whatever he was already working on. Service advisor comes out, they bought the brakes. Okay, Josh goes ahead with the rest of the DVI that takes 45 minutes. Yeah, he waits on the parts to get there, he puts the brakes on the car, he, you know, gives the DVI to the service advisor.

46:06Car's still sitting on the rack. Still sitting on the rack. The service advisor maybe sells all the rest of it. Let's say he does. Waits on the parts, waits on the parts, starts fixing it, waits on more parts, starts fixing it. The 13-hour job was on the rack for 13 hours. Yep. The other important thing for anyone listening that, that might not have put this together yet, these speed racks are on dedicated racks.

46:27Yeah, they're, they're their own dedicated racks. So when vehicles come to my bays as a technician there's no checkout time, right? I've got a cart with parts on it. I'm pulling cars in, fixing, pulling them out, um, diagnosing too, pulling stuff in, diagnosing. But there's no, there's no checkout happening in any of my bays. There's just work. Work is all that's happening in my bays.

46:52Like, imagine if you're listening to this, if you're listening to this and you work for another shop in Houston and you would like to work at our shop, Come work for our shop, apply online. No, that's a shameless plug. Auto shop recruiting. But seriously, imagine working in a shop where like literally all you do is fix the car, like, and for 10 hours a day, like 10 hours a day you're working on gravy.

47:11How many hours could you produce in a day? 30, you know, like 20 or 30, like versus 10. And that's how you get a shop like Charlie's got 4 bays, 2 lifts— excuse me, 2 bays, 4 lifts in Watertown, Massachusetts. And they did $460,000, which I don't know how many in a month, which I don't know how many technician hours that is, but I bet he can feed more techs than your average 2-bay, 4- Lift Shop.

47:32So let's keep moving. Other core pillars of the concept, shop tour, you know, let's talk about that. So what's your perspective as a technician? Um, you experience shop tour every day, you've seen it now. Give me your thoughts. Let's debrief. Well, I can tell you, before being here, customers in the shop as a technician is not— that's not something most technicians want, correct?

47:52You know, we, we don't want customers in the shop. It's just, it doesn't feel good. Get them out. Here now at Adams Automotive, you know, my bays are right near the office door where the shop tour starts. And I am excited, almost certainly proud when shop tours happen because that customer is coming out with a service advisor. I can hear the service advisor telling them about our warranty and showing them our shop.

48:20And you can see these customers' faces are looking around. They're looking at our beautiful blue, clean floors. And, and they're just, they're caught off guard and surprised. They've never seen anything like it. And then the tour continues a little and they get to my toolbox and service advisor will, you know, if I'm not completely buried in something, will introduce me and I get to see some of my customers.

48:43I get to smile at them and, and they see my workspace that it's clean and orderly and something I take pride in. Can I interrupt you? Everybody asks all the time. They're like, how do you get the tech to keep their place clean. Like, and I'm like, dude, get techs that take pride in their work, you know? Yeah. So give me your thoughts on how important it is to keep the shop clean, especially during the shop tour, and how you think about your office.

49:05So I mean, I've always been someone that was pretty proud of my work, but what happens is— and I can see because the pride I take in my work, the base level of pride I have didn't change too much from my last shop to here, but the environment I stepped into did change. Right, right. So, you know, it's like, you know, it's easier to keep your room clean if you always keep your room clean.

49:30So there's, there's kind of a standard here, an expectation. And you step into that, you see it, and it's like, all right, let's go back to the idea of winning team. This is what a winning shop looks like. I get to be a part of it and I'm going to, I'm going to be a part of it. And you're like, I don't want to be the weakest link, you know?

49:49Yes. Yeah, right. Who wants to show up to an environment like this and have a sloppy mess around their bays. It— you stick out like a sore thumb. The last part of it is understanding that that shop tour gets me hours. Yeah, I'm getting paid to be clean. It puts money in my paycheck. And same thing with being accurate with diagnosing. Now my service advisors can sell with so much more confidence if I'm keeping my part of the shop clean.

50:20These service advisors can pull our customers out on a shop tour with so much confidence, and it's just, it's a special thing to see. And as technicians, again, I'll talk to the technicians out there, it's really easy for us to— we separate the car from the person, right? We don't— a lot of times we don't see the customer, we don't know their name.

50:42It's just a car and some hours. So Those shop tours give me a little bit of putting faces, all kinds of different people and faces and people, families on shop tours. And so given it that, given what I do, that bit of personal connection, and it's not a lot, it's just a little bit, but that's all it takes to have that little bit of personal connection.

51:07You know, there's a real human with a family and a job and their own hobbies and stuff they do for fun. That's going to get in this car when I'm done with it. And, um, like, I want to take care of them. There's like a car seat in the back. Yeah. Like, you know, like, oh my God, there's gonna be a kid in this car.

51:23Like, I need to, you know, lock in here, you know? Yeah. Not, not that you have to lock in. It's like just a sense of pride. Like, I'm gonna take care of this guy's car. Yeah. You know, makes it— helps you go the extra mile and, and at the end of the day, enjoy your work more. I enjoy my work more. What about Sunday?

51:38You know, the, the Sunday day of Key to Key is mostly about auto shop callbacks, calling the customers to get them back in. You know, we talked a lot about this new concept we're thinking about, hospitality marketing. Just take care of the customer, you know, retain them. We talked about Carfax and looking at their history and using MotoVisuals and pictures and videos.

52:00Did you enjoy the technician videos from the dealership? Oh, that was so funny, right? It's crazy. I mean, you have no idea. It's so funny out there. Yeah. Like, because that's— it's not the technician's fault. I mean, you see that it goes back to what we've been talking about the whole time, is it's some technician who's like, F my manager who's sitting in the AC— excuse my language— or my whatever.

52:23And he's like, whatever, I'm just gonna do this because my boss wants me to. I'm not getting paid. I'm not getting paid. Yeah, this is not— and I think you said it too, technicians, we did not get into this to take videos, to be videographers. Yeah, we got in this we like being— you like getting our hands dirty and the challenge and getting something fixed, you know.

52:42And so when someone, you know, you might go to school or not, or you learn from an uncle or something, you're like, yeah, I could do this. And then you show up and they're like, yeah, here's an iPad. Yeah. And a 57-point inspection. We need you to do this on every car. And it's like, it's gonna take an hour. We're not paying you for it.

52:59And you're like, what? Yeah. So, you know, Putting together a really good presentation for the customer. It is the sale. It is the way that you communicate. And ultimately technicians like fixing cars. Like you said it. And also touch on this because the next section was margin. You know, we talk about RepairPal, gross profit, charging the right price. And I spoke on that earlier, so I'll move quickly through this.

53:23But my dad's got this rule and he's a technician. And he— you said it, technicians like the challenge. So I'll transition out of MotoVisuals and videos. Obviously we do a great job in the front of the house. Glenn and the team, they train so well to take good quality videos for the technicians. Sometimes we have to protect technicians from themselves, and I truly believe this because my dad's got this rule.

53:51He says emotional satisfaction as a tech Emotional satisfaction is fine, but it doesn't show up on the bottom line. And what that means is avoid non-gravy work. And it's like basically, you know, it might feel good to win the challenge and win the battle, but it doesn't show up on the bottom line. It doesn't pay because scratching your head and going back and asking, you know, being the shop that fixes the car that's been in 6 other shops for a year and they've been chasing this whatever And you know, it's a cannibalized car is what Glenn call— or, uh, what Todd calls it.

54:27We call it TNG. It's like a car, it's really a repair that you shouldn't be doing. TNG. Yeah. Or cars that are highly modified or like rebuilding a transmission or like, yeah, exactly. Like non-gravy garbage work. It might feel good to conquer that as a technician, but we're not selling. This is what I want you, I haven't even talked to you about this.

54:47Outside the podcast, we are, we are literally not even selling car repair. Like we are selling the feeling of hospitality to the customer. Like we're called the Auto Hospitality Group. So what are they paying for? They are literally not paying for the car to be fixed. They're paying for the car to be fixed plus the feeling of peace of mind that no matter what, 365 days a year, they're covered by amazing people who are gonna stand behind their warranty.

55:17They won't even need the warranty because it's quality work. But at the end of the day, like, that's not even our product. Our product is not car repair. Our car— our product is auto hospitality. And it might feel good to like be 15 hours into this car and like finally figure it out. And I've watched you kind of like, yeah, like it's exciting and satisfying to finally figure it out, but it's frustrating too because you're like, dude, my my paycheck's like not— it's going to be affected by this.

55:47So do you want to, um, do you have any thoughts on that? Like working on the right stuff as a shop and that it's okay to be— I heard somebody this weekend, he goes, well, how do you defend about— he goes, how do you defend against people being— people calling you a soft shop? That's what he said. And I was like, like he was joking.

56:05Yeah. But I knew what he meant because it's like, oh, you're, you're money motivated. Like it's all about the money to you. And I'm like, yeah, it is all about the money because at the end of the day, I need money to freaking buy AC for techs to work in. Yeah, like, I— it might feel good for the techs in the moment to be emotionally satisfied in solving this crazy problem, but 2 weeks later when payroll's coming around, they're gonna be like, hey man, I didn't get any hours this week.

56:30And it's like almost like— I'm not saying I have to protect you, I'm not in charge of you, but you gotta keep you— yeah, I do. You, you, Mr. Perry, couldn't have been more right. I fall victim to it. Yeah. And Since I've been here and that's been pointed out to me, I mean, I've heard you say that quote before. Um, I see it in myself and it's something I've been working on.

56:51Um, because it is 100% true. And, um, yeah, it's, it's not about being a soft shop. It's about, it's about being able to identify, you know, a vehicle or a problem where it just Just doesn't make sense to pursue it. If it's your project vehicle, that's different, go for it. But yeah, if it's a customer's actual vehicle and they have to actually pay for the diagnostic time in addition, and they have to actually pay for the expensive repair, and it's TNG and it could come back and they could have to spend more on it— like, we're not selling the repair, we're selling that customer and their experience.

57:35And so what I mean by that is like sometimes the vehicle is worth getting rid of and sometimes as a technician it's hard to know when that time is because you're like, oh, I could fix it. Yeah. You know, like I could keep this thing running forever. And it's like, that's kind of like your best quality is I can fix anything. But also because you're not seeing the customer experience sometimes, like you can kind of become callous to like, oh, this I can keep it running forever.

58:02But retail, a retail customer is going to have to pay like $11,000 to get it to keep it going. And it's pretty highly likely that it's just going to come back in 6 months and they're going to need another $7,000. You know what analogy it makes me think of? And we use it for parts, right? You don't, you don't bring your own steak to the steakhouse, right?

58:18Right. But it could almost— same analogy could be used here, not with the customer bringing their own steak, but sometimes chasing, you know, these kinds of problems. You could compare it to cooking a bad cheap steak. Yeah, right. If you start with a cheap steak, no matter how you cook it, you're not going to end up with a 5-star steak. Yeah, like it's just not gonna happen, not gonna work out.

58:43And, and, um, yeah, we put out 5-star steaks here. Yeah, that's right. And customers pay, you know, and like we don't want customers to pay for 1-star steaks. And yeah, okay, so I have one more topic I want to cover. We're, we're supposed to be up on time, but I don't care, we're gonna go a little long. Sure. Um, flat rate. Yeah, this is a debate in the industry that we kind of just ignore typically because we're not really on Facebook, we're not really on LinkedIn as much as we should be.

59:06I'm not in the comments, you know, but there's this big debate on like flat rate being stupid, and I, I just generally haven't messed with it in our company because there's so many other things that I think are just like more pressing, you know, like, like air conditioning the shops, like training service advisors, recruiting, all that. Marketing to get more leads and getting better at the phones, accounting.

59:28Um, but, and flat rate's like just kind of the incumbent, like it's always been that way. And yep, you know, so why change it? It would be a big, it would be a big, uh, ask to kind of rewire all of the technicians in our company's mind to like kind of think about the way they get paid differently. But flat rate commission pay, give me your thoughts.

59:49Well, it's what we've talked about before outside of here is it, um, it very clearly incentivizes one thing, and it's banging out as many hours as you can. And, you know, in some shops they'll backflag guys, but, you know, we don't, we don't do that here. And so, and a lot of shops don't, and that's a whole nother conversation. But it, it doesn't incentivize financially, doesn't incentivize that quality, the kind of quality we've been talking about.

1:00:17Um, so you end up with the only thing you're banking on, um, to get quality work out of your techs is what we've been talking about— the pride and feeling good and wanting to be a winning superstar all-star technician. But, you know, that stuff can fade and, you know, go up and go down. So what we've been talking about is figuring out some way to measure, monitor, track rechecks, comebacks, and then create some sort of scorecard.

1:00:49Some sort of scorecard. Yep. And then how do you score yourself? Like when you go to 99.08%? Yeah. Like what do you— how do you define terms? So I have a tick box for recheck. It's a spreadsheet. It's just so— so, okay. Yeah. So you have— you've had 2 all year? I've had 2 so far since January. But how do you define recheck?

1:01:11Like it could be the part. So it gets— yep. So my spreadsheet, after clicking the recheck box, then there's 3 categories a recheck can go into. Either parts, meaning there was a part failure. Okay. And, um, that's really uncommon. Neither one of my rechecks are due to parts failure because we use quality parts, which also, as a technician and technicians out there, we all know how good it feels when the shop gets you a good quality part and how bad it feels when they get you a low-quality part.

1:01:40Yeah, other new different topic. It's not worth it. Pay extra for the good part. Charge for it. Yeah, so it's either a parts failure, um, a misdiagnosis, meaning I looked into a problem, I said replacing this part will fix it and it didn't, or a labor issue, meaning the diagnosis was correct, had the right part, but the actual job, the actual replacement of the part somehow went wrong.

1:02:06Both— sorry, I know, go ahead. So do you think most technicians, um, they struggle with diagnosis or execution? Because it's basically you, you diagnose it but you put the part on wrong, or you misdiagnose it and you put the part on right, right? Or it's the part, but it's rarely the part if we're using— if we're using quality parts. Yeah, we can almost eliminate that one.

1:02:25You know, Joe, I would say across the industry, I, I bet it's close to 50/50. Really? Yep. Okay, lack of training on actually how to execute the repair. Well, and lack of training on how— let me clarify that a little bit. The labor rechecks are not necessarily going to be, okay, so diagnose a bad ABS module. It's not going to be that you didn't install the ABS module correctly.

1:02:49It's going to be that, you know, you didn't tighten, retighten one of the brake lines enough and it comes back leaking brake fluid. Okay, does that make sense? Or or leaving something loose, um, some scenario like that. You know what's crazy? I— when you say ABS module, I don't even know what that looks like. Computer that controls the brakes. We were talking before, uh, we were talking before about this story, uh, my dad had.

1:03:11Like, I was— we have a treadmill at our house, and, um, I was— I am not a mechanical person. I like just literally do not understand it. And I'm a salesperson. Like, I can, I can like maneuver my way through a conversation. Like, more effortlessly than I can some other areas of my life, like fixing stuff around the house. And I was trying to fix this treadmill, dude, and I just couldn't figure it out for like an hour.

1:03:33Like literally an hour. I'm like taking pictures of it, putting it in ChatGPT. I'm like, dude, how do I fix the belt? Keeps sliding to the left. Like, you know what I'm talking about? Yep. And I just gave up. My ego finally— I was like, Dad, can you help me, man? This is like 6 months ago. And he puts the little wrench thing on, he puts his hands on it.

1:03:51The little adjuster. And it's like he could see through the entire machine and he instantly— it's like he had see-through vision. He could see how it worked mechanically in his head and he was just like, oh, you just do this. And it was crazy. It was like literally 15 seconds, dude. It was like instantaneous. So anyway, you were saying earlier, your brain thinks like that, right?

1:04:13I'm 100% with your dad there. You know, everyone's probably seen at some point like a a cross-sectional diagram of something in a textbook or whatever. Um, yeah, as technicians, we kind of— at least myself, I know some other guys I've talked to also— we look at stuff in the world around us and it's like my brain can cross-section something. Yeah. And see— no way.

1:04:37Yes. Wait, that's crazy. And as I'm, as I'm driving a vehicle, like, if I'm listening for a noise, you're thinking in pictures in my head. I've got a visual model, like Moto Visuals. Yeah, I've got Moto Visuals in my head and I can see the pieces moving. And okay, I hit a bump in that way, what piece would have moved? How? Dude, okay, this is crazy.

1:04:57We're side-noting into like psychology, but I've heard of stories of people who don't have like an internal narrator, right? Or they see in pictures. I've heard of, uh, uh, people that are mute or something, they dream in pictures of sign language visually. Like, it's pictures of hands doing sign language. Wow. Like, that's so crazy. So you're telling me that my brain— my brain is wired for like— I think it's literally just words coming across my screen, and I'm just like talking faster than my mouth can like keep up sometimes.

1:05:28I'm a talker, and it gets me in trouble sometimes. Uh, but you're saying your brain literally is like more like pictures of schematics when you're trying to like But it's the data that you've ingested into your brain's model for the last 10 years is like you've been staring at schematics of on all data or whatever for that. That's so crazy. So you can literally see it.

1:05:49It's like a picture in your head. It does. Yeah. Whoa. Okay, so 50% of the time they can't see the picture in their head, so they misdiagnose it. And 50% of the time they put the part on the car, but some other downstream effect, like a brake line being tight, kind of sloppy, sloppy work. That would be the kind of the labor category of a recheck is someone was sloppy.

1:06:09That's usually what it is. So what I think is valuable for the people is you have managed to be accurate 99.08% of the time. So you have a step-by-step process that you use to diagnose cars. Walk me through that. Yeah, so the first step is, um, it's really about information gathering, right? We work on pretty much every make and model here, so it's not like I'm a dealership guy where I can learn and tell you off the top of my head that GM LAN systems use a green wire.

1:06:41I think that is true, but besides the point. I knew what some of those words— so yeah, right. So, so a lot of what I'm doing, especially the diagnosing side, the first thing I'm doing is gathering information, right? I'm, I'm looking at wiring diagrams, I'm understanding if I have codes exactly what the set criteria is It's, it's essentially the idea that you can't fix something if you don't know how it's supposed to work in the first place.

1:07:07So we've got our information gathering step, uh, that also would include scanning the vehicle, searching for TSBs, talking to the service advisor, talking to the service advisor, making sure I understand the complaint, exactly what's going on. From there, it's— if it's not something that's like a vehicle won't start Um, I must replicate the customer's concern, right? Whether it's a noise or runs rough sometimes, I have to experience the customer's complaint.

1:07:39Without that step— and a lot of guys skip it— without it, you, you're guessing. Yeah, you're throwing a part at it. Yep, you're throwing a part at it. So verify concern would be the next step. Okay, so step 1 is gather information, step 2 is verify concern. Verify concern. Okay. Yep. From there, you know, you could, you could list some steps, but from there with experience, you kind of start— it's build a test plan, right?

1:08:05So like triage, like if it's doing this, it's not that, X that off the list. If it's doing this, it might be this, then you do the— it's like basically if this, do that. Yeah, that's, that's the point where you're going to say, you know, I've, I experienced the concern, I've done my research, the next best step is to go ahead and throw a fuel pressure gauge on it.

1:08:22Yeah, right. And that comes with experience and, and whatnot. So now you're, you're testing, and now we're looking for a test that can demonstrate pinpoint failure. So here's what I get excited about. How long does the, um, gathering of the information take? Oh, it can take anywhere from a few minutes to 30 minutes. And where do you gather the information? Like, let's be very first principles in our thinking.

1:08:52So where do you look first? My main sources are going to be all data. No, no, before that, like what it would probably be that it would be the service advisor, whatever's written. So the line on the customer concerns line, and if you're a technician, you're listening to this, it's like CEL. That's what it says on the customer concerns line. But there was like a 10-minute conversation.

1:09:12Yes. And the service advisor took terrible notes. So, so number one is like, like try to find the source of truth basically from the customer through the service advisor, through TechMetric. Yep. Into your brain. Yep. Okay. So that's step one, gathering information. Where else do you look? History. Our internal history. Correct. Yeah. Carfax. So what parts have we put on the car?

1:09:36What parts other people have put on? Or anyone else has put on. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The number of times that you can connect a, you know, someone left the ground loose, whatever. We've seen plenty of that. Um, then from there I'm moving towards the vehicle. Yeah, scanning for codes. Oh yeah, yep, sources. I'm searching through TSBs, recalls, that kind of low— your own brain.

1:09:59That— yep, my own brain. That kind of low-hanging fruit stuff, right? Um, I mean, boy, there's nothing better than having some weird codes and a weird issue and Boom, a TSB for the exact symptoms pops right up and we can just start moving forward. But that research takes time and not every source, TechMetric, AllData, they don't seem to all perfectly have all the TSBs.

1:10:22So you're, you're searching each one of these databases. Yeah. IATN, Mitchell. Yep. So I'm going to try, I've been literally talking Mike Quinn and Michael Floyd and your, Josh's ear off for the last week about helping technicians diagnose cars with AI. And I do not just mean— I do not just mean come to our AI class. You have to come to it if you're listening to this.

1:10:46It's literally going to take your job if you don't start using it. It's crazy. Or somebody who uses it is going to take your job. And that's kind of scary to think about. It's really like crazy, but I believe it. It's so transformational. And I'm about to walk you through a use case for how intense this technology is. So those things that Josh is determining, talking about, like checking vehicle history, is actually just him moving a mouse around on TechMetric and clicking a bunch of buttons and like clicking summary and then clicking the customer's like name in the hyper blue hyperlink.

1:11:19And then it takes him to the profile and then clicking to the repair order from 4 months ago and then the one from 9 months ago. And then your brain ingesting the data on those tabs into your mental model for like, okay, it was here 6 months ago and we put a fuel pressure switch switch, whatever that is. I don't know what that is, uh, on the car, and it didn't check— fix the check engine light, or they came back and now they're with this symptom.

1:11:40Like, that's just you clicking buttons on a screen to extract data out of the computer and put it in your brain. And there's a lot of data that's not useful, so there's a lot of just sifting and filtering for what matters. Going to this— okay, now let's go to the front counter. Going to talk to a service advisor is like a game of telephone.

1:12:00It's like, hey, I know you were talking to 50 other people in the last 5 hours, and this car in 4 hours ago and I just got to it and I'm diagnosing it and it says on the ticket that we have till the end of the week, but whatever. Can you go ahead and remember exactly? Yeah. Could you either take notes or remember exactly what the customer said, like verbatim?

1:12:18And that's— and then you have to get that information out of the, out of the service advisor's brain and put it in your brain and or in your process. And then you have to go click around on TSBs on all data. I think it could take 30 minutes. Like in my head, easily in my head, it's like 30 minutes. On average in order to properly diagnose the car if you do not have a lot of experience.

1:12:40Like, you probably get to skip a lot of steps because you're 10, 15 years into this and you just like, you're like, oh, I've been here before and you can do it. But if you had to follow all the steps every single time and like go down the TSB, like you don't need to go into a TSB rabbit hole if it's like leaking rear shocks, which is why we love Gravy.

1:12:55But if it's a check engine light, you know, you, you might like The first time I heard about a TSB was my dad had a stutter in his transmission on the CTS-V. Do you know, do you know what, you know what, you know about this? He, uh, torque converter? I don't know. He, he did 3 transmission flushes in a row and it fixed it, and there was a TSB on it.

1:13:14So crazy. So anyway, all of those things, that collecting of information is— there's a bottleneck of friction from the human getting that information from the multiple sources, which is going to be The human's brain at the front counter, the customer's brain, the TSBs, TechMetric history, CARFAX history, and so on and so forth, and their own brain. So there's like 6 data sources there, and AI can do all of it, dude.

1:13:39It's crazy. AI can extract all that information immediately. And so what do I mean by that? You know, we've got API connectors. If you don't know what an API connector is, it's software. It's a software API key. It's a key that makes one software talk to another. Okay, so we've got APIs from our phone system. So I've got all the transcripts. This is sick, dude.

1:13:59All the transcripts of everything that Mr.— I'm not going to say his last name— the Cadillac, you know what car I'm talking about. Yep. Mr. Jones. I'm gonna call Mr. Jones. He's had his Cadillac in the shop and we're the only shop that's worked on it since like 2015. I was looking at his profile the other day. Yep. So I have all the history internally.

1:14:18Rather than, rather than click around and try to play telephone and get that information out of Glenn Pickle's brain. I can, I can literally listen to all the transcripts from that phone number in our system for the last million years, and it's remembered perfectly. And I can store that in his customer profile, and then I can record the conversation at the front counter and do the exact same thing.

1:14:42And then I can get the API from TechMetric and I can pull the data out of TechMetric and summarize it in front of Josh's face. And basically it'll, it'll recognize patterns and it'll sift through it all instantly. And then I can have the API from the TSB boards and I can have my agents go look through all that stuff. And essentially you've got agents via API connectors and ChatGPT or whatever you use going into the world of phones and pulling all the transcripts, going into the world of front counter transcripts and pulling information, going into the world of TechMetric and the agents scrub the data and pull it back, and then going into the world

1:15:21of TSBs and scrub it back and processing it with basically your process for how you diagnose cars. Yep. And, and I remember showing you this. Yeah. And you put your hands on your head and you were like, you were like, oh my God. You were like, you're telling me I just have to fix cars now? Right. You can't stop smiling because it's This whole first— it's the pain.

1:15:42This whole first step of process can just kind of be wrapped up with a bow on a silver platter, just kind of handed to me. Like, can you imagine a world immediately? Can you imagine a world where the car comes into the bay, we PMI at 15 minutes and we do the whole thing, all the pictures are taken, and by the time it gets to you, there has been a ChatGPT deep research that has looked in the phones, looked at the front counter transcript, looked at all the history, looked at Carfax, looked online for all the TSBs, the entire internet.

1:16:09Cross-reference all of it with some rando pattern thing that you'd have to sift through all— oh, the check engine light is on because of this thing that we put on their car 8 months ago. Oh, we didn't tighten that one thing and that led to this. Can you tell I don't know about cars? I don't. I'm just like, you're doing fine, keep going.

1:16:30But anyway, the other thing, give me your thoughts. If there's— throw on top of that too Y'all are pulling codes, taking pictures of the scanner and putting that in TechMetric. So if there's any codes or anything, it's also got that. So by the time the vehicle gets to me and I'm just, yeah, I get this nice little information blurb handed to me with the ticket, all of that, all of that pulled together, sifted through, no pieces missed.

1:16:57Yeah, because boy, I mean, I'm not perfect. I've definitely missed some information and started testing and gone down a rabbit hole and been like, wait, things don't make sense. Go back to the research phase, catch something. Oh, there it is. Wasted hours. An AI model wouldn't do that. Yeah, it's crazy, bro. And, and to have all that just kind of handed to me.

1:17:17Yeah. To get started testing would be— and then phenomenal tool you could track at scale because the only reason I trust your 99.08% accuracy rate is because I'm not saying other people don't have high integrity, but I know that you are like, in your own words, nutty about this kind of thing. Like you are. You're not doing it to brag. You're doing it to like like know your level and compete against yourself.

1:17:41And I trust that you are like, you would have integrity to be like, nah, I missed that one. Whereas maybe some guys wouldn't. And so the idea is flat rate. This is the whole point of the conversation before I started nerding out about AI. Flat rate only incentivizes speed. And let's do math. You have a 99% rate. There's probably a lot of good technicians that are 3 times as fast as you that have like an 80% rate, right?

1:18:08They make more money because they're just like, even if they backflag those hours, it's like, oh, well, I can produce 3 times 80, that's 240%, and he can produce 99% because I'm literally just— it's going to make me more money to just throw the part at the car. And 8 or 9 times out of 10, I can just go on to the next one and the car is not going to come back.

1:18:30And even if I have to come back, and fix the recheck. It doesn't really bother me because it doesn't affect me and the company's going to pay for it. And the customer, I don't know the customer, so I don't care about them. One of the other things too is a lot of shops, vehicle comes back, they don't give it back to the same guy.

1:18:44The thinking is he got it wrong the first time. Yes. Who's better than him? Let's move it up. So now you've really reinforced to a technician that they don't need to get it right the first time. It doesn't matter. Yes. And so the idea is how do you incentivize accuracy? And previously, pre-AI, I don't think there was a way to do it.

1:19:00Like you would have to— not without huge resources. You'd need to make it someone's full-time job. You'd have to trust the tech. You'd have to trust what he actually— oh no, I didn't diagnose it that, I did this. Or trust the part— no, it was the part, it was a bad part, you guys put a bad part in the car. Or the service advisor misremembering it.

1:19:14Oh, you didn't tell me that, you know. But now AI is like a million armies of bots that are just like listening. It's like a police state. It's kind of sketchy, honestly. But it's like a— it's so cool, dude. And Matt, if the data is all clean, that's the thing. Like, if the data is clean will know. We, like, if the data is clean, and the data for diagnosing a car is pretty much customer's experience, historical, you know, database of what we've done and what other shops have done, your brain, and then what's online about this.

1:19:45And with AI, I'm pretty sure we can just get all that clean data into our model, which is, you know, what we run over the car, you know, before you even look at it. And then it gives you the information before you even diagnose it. And then Now, if you misdiagnose it, it's you. It's like you didn't use the information or you got lazy or you threw a part at it or you didn't execute the, the repair.

1:20:09And so I could stand behind this guy's got an 84.6, uh, you know, recheck rate or not recheck rate. Mm-hmm. And so therefore I would incentivize him like either quarterly or via his flat rate, like, hey man, if you take these little modules that, or if you listen to our If you don't go and get your certifications and you can get to an 85 or a 90% recheck rate or lack thereof, lack of recheck rate, right?

1:20:35You can get a raise or you can get a quarterly bonus because you crushed it this quarter. You did 97%. You deserve an incentive. And in my head, that's the dude, the customer getting a 99.08% fixed car. I'm never getting a pen. It's like never having any penalties. That's what it is. Yeah, the recheck is a penalty. It's like everything went great, you know, customers happy, 5-star review, and you see the yellow flag on the bottom of the screen and you're watching.

1:21:06For those of you who are playing fantasy football this fall, it's like, oh my God, my player just scored 13 points. And then it's like holding, 15-yard penalty. We're back where we started and it's actually even worse. Like, that's the analogy, right? The recheck is offensive pass interference or defensive pass interference. It's like the worst possible thing that can happen for your team.

1:21:28Um, and so anyway, we've been talking for a long time, but I have— I am dreaming of a world where technicians get compensated for speed, but also accuracy. And I believe AI can take us there. The other thing too is technicians are generally competitive. So, you know, there's, there's an option there to, you know, you know, have it, have a board, post everyone's rates.

1:21:52How sick would that be? And now you got guys, you know, competing to be as accurate as possible for, yeah, financial incentive. Absolutely. But bragging rights, man. Yeah. I mean, who doesn't want to say, yeah, look at me, top of the board. I'm the most accurate technician for this quarter. Dude, imagine like having Duolingo on your app, on your phone. It's like, hey, Like you're at an 84.6.

1:22:15Take these classes. Like it's like you're learning Spanish. Yeah. You know, it's like hey, you need to do this, this, and this to like get better at diagnosing this, this, and this. Like da da da. Anyway, I think we're up on time by 22 minutes. This has been another episode of Master Detective Millionaire. Josh, you're the man. Do you have any closing thoughts about just like the concept?

1:22:33Auto Shop Answers, Key to Key, working at Adams. If not, that's fine. I can just take us home. I mean. I'm super proud to be here. Let's go. And shop owners and managers, bring your technicians into the full circle. Yeah, bring everyone into the playbook and let it feel like a, like a team effort. That's what I would say. Well, that's the pod.

1:22:55Hey, come check us out on, you know, in Houston, Texas. Come see the operation. We're running a million-dollar-a-month shop. You know, we did— I think we did $3.5 million last month in July with some, with some really good net. And we use that net to take care of people and feed technicians. We're having a whole lot of fun. So that's the pod.

1:23:11We'll see you next time. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerland at 925-980-8012 or visit autoshopanswers.com. You can get more information about Key to Key to Callbacks, uh, Courtside. We have a VIP Rack Attack Day where you spend an entire day in the trenches with our team learning this perfected business model. We offer leadership classes. We have an AI Academy. And also get more information about Auto Shop Callbacks.

1:23:37Uh, we have auto tech training. We are literally your one-stop shop. Once again, that number for Todd Westerland is 925-980-8012.