Burn the Boats: AJ Nealey’s Multi-Unit Breakthrough - Bonus Zoom Episode 6

0:00Good morning. Glenn Piccolo here with Adams Automotive bringing you another episode of Master Tech to Millionaire brought to you by Auto Shop Answers. Man, today we've got a very special guest on the line. We've got AJ Neely, multi-unit operator out of Maryland. He is an absolute stud. He's been coming through the program now for probably about a year or so. He's just doing amazing things out there and we just love AJ so much.

0:25So hope you guys enjoy this. Thank you so much for listening. Let's dive in. Good morning, superstars! Hey, good morning, guys. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Man, I'm so excited. We got AJ Neely on the line this morning. This is gonna be so fun. Thank you so much, AJ, for jumping on this morning. Absolutely. Thanks for reaching out. I'm like, who's this number?

0:55Who was this last night? New phone, who dis? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry for the short notice. I, man, I've just been wanting to get you on and, you know, ever since we met you, you've been just an absolute rock star. And we're so excited to have you. Always excited when you come down to Houston, which you've been down a bunch of times. And so I was like, man, I can't wait to get AJ on.

1:23And so The timing was great. And so thank you so much for jumping on, man. Absolutely. Yeah. So I know you've got multi-unit in Maryland and you're right near JJ, is that right? Yeah, I'm probably 45 minutes to an hour away from him. He's in Waldorf. So yeah, Charles County. And we're— most of our locations are in Anne Arundel County, so near Annapolis area.

1:50But yeah, about 45 minutes to an hour away. Got it. Got it. Now, did you know— did you know JJ before Key2Key? I did not. No, no, I did not. So I was— it was funny, like, as before I came down and did and attended my first event, I kind of watched some of the reels and videos you guys kind of had online.

2:08I saw that he was on there, but actually at the time I didn't really have an idea that he was in Waldorf. But yeah, I met him at my first training event and yeah, who doesn't love JJ, man? Wow. What a— what a special, special person. So yeah. And he again, just just like the rest of the family, right? Arms wide open, you know, allowed me to come visit his shop.

2:28I brought my new manager there and just to witness it in action after that first training weekend. But yeah, man. Yeah. Great, great soul. Awesome, man. Well, man, you're lucky you get to be 45 minutes away from JJ. Yeah. We're a plane ride away. But that's really cool. So, man, so tell us a little bit about AJ and kind of how you got started and a little bit about your journey to, you know, where you are now.

3:00Yeah, absolutely. When I always talk about the origin story, I always start off with Legos. You know, I was 5 years old. Legos were my thing. I felt like I had a knack working with my hands, kind of transitioned into RC cars in school, and then I got my license. And once I got my license, I was really just fascinated with vehicles.

3:18You know, I didn't come from a family of technicians or anything of that sort, just kind of self-taught. And there was actually a vocational program that I had no idea about. And quite honestly, when I was in high school, if I had known about the automotive program, would've just been all in on it. But I thought I wanted to be an engineer.

3:38I actually had tried college for one year for mechanical engineering, but I went to University of Delaware and I was involved in their Formula SAE program. So Society of Automotive Engineers, and I pretty much was skipping class every day to be in the machine shop. Machine shop, building the car. We competed out at Pontiac, Michigan, out there with that vehicle. So, you know, and what was funny is, and this is when I realized I was going to go down a different path, because prior to me going to college, I worked as a technician.

4:07I got a job right out of high school wrenching on cars in Pasadena, Maryland, called Honda Man's Auto Service. I worked, worked there for that summer. My boss at the time was telling me like, AJ, you don't want to go to college, man. It's going to be a waste of time. I was like, nah, man, I want to. I want to try this.

4:22So I went in again. I did college for a year, but man, I came home because all of my friends were seniors and they graduated college and they got jobs like designing toilets for a living, you know, behind a desk. I'm like, no, there's no way. So I dropped out of college. I had the support of my family to do that, and I just, I just started wrenching immediately.

4:43So I, I worked at this shop for about 10 years. I bought a house in Edgewater, Maryland, where I still live in Edgewater, Maryland today, but the first two words in the home description was mechanic's dream. So I realized, all right, I gotta check this out. Had an awesome one-bay garage behind the house. So I was moonlighting as a technician and it's a very similar story that you guys kind of talk about in Key2Key.

5:07You know, all the good technicians are taking their tools home on the weekends and they're working on cars. And that's what I was doing. I was working during the week and then at night, weekends, I'd work on other vehicles for some side money. And so then I had enough work to kind of quit my day job. So I did that in 2011, and that's really when I started the company technically.

5:28I got my LLC. I was working out of my house, you know, which really wasn't technically legal, but it got me by. I did that for about 3 or 4 years before I decided to kind of take this seriously. I actually, I knew everything about working on cars. I knew nothing about running a business. I was a Master ASE certified technician, had my A1 through A8.

5:52I had my A9, my L1 Advanced Cert as well. And so then I took a business management course and it's funny, I like look back on it all and look, you know, honestly, I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for these things that I did to kind of work on myself, right? And so I took a business management course, it was called the Gorilla Shop Management course from RLO Training back in the day.

6:16And that was a bootcamp that I took about learning about how to run an automotive repair shop, right? And so I guess you can say I was classically trained in auto repair. And so that was in 2010. 2015. And then there was a, you know, to go from one bay behind your house to go to, which is our current flagship store where I'm at today.

6:38This is a 9-bay shop. And, you know, the story in which we were able to acquire this, I mean, there's so much divine intervention throughout this entire journey, but to go from one bay to a 9-bay facility and purchasing a location, man, just, you know, so many things had to go right. And like I said, Divine intervention was definitely there, but we purchased this location in 2015.

7:07And again, that could be its own podcast and just how that all went. But we opened our doors in April of 2016, and that was our first store. You have so many firsts along the way, right? You hire your first person, you fire your first person. I had to learn to take my toolbox home. I had to kind of get out of that technician mindset.

7:31I had to kind of become that service advisor. And as Todd Hayes says, right? So it's the law of the lid. I realized that I'm going to be the biggest constraint in the company and in the business. So I had to continuously work on myself to get better. So there was a point in time, this was probably in like 2019 where I had kind of spent 2 or 3 years kind of building this store up.

7:53We're doing really well, had multiple technicians, I had multiple service advisors and I mean, it was kind of running on its own. I was shuttling a customer home. I'll never forget it. And I realized, I just like asked myself like, man, is this it? Like, I could just like, just cruise at this point and make a pretty decent living. But you know, I still have so much fire in the belly and I want to take us to the next level.

8:17So I got into multi-store ownership and that started in 2021 outside of, you know, on the aftermath of COVID access to capital was, relatively easy. It was pretty cheap to borrow money. So I was involved in a group as well, kind of like a, almost like a 20 group. It was kind of like a merger and acquisition group that actually a few of those friends of mine, you know, as a result of that started Straightaway Auto.

8:46So I know some of those friends from that, but being in that group, you know, I, again, we added 4 stores in 18 months. And I'll tell you what, along that journey, I can definitely tell you what not to do. I'll say this, don't buy dumpster fires, 'cause that's what we had done. And so it was, man, what a journey in doing that.

9:10And so I was at my breaking point, man. I can really relate to Rob Eskew's episode, you know, and as he was on the brink of tears in that episode, because man, I know exactly what he's talking about. I could feel those heartstrings because, you know, we had 5 stores at this point. And we were just draining money. You know, my one store was really supporting my golden goose, Edgewater.

9:36My Edgewater location was paying for all these other locations. And so just starting to see that bank account dwindle and dwindle and dwindle and just start to just deteriorate and erode. And, you know, there was a point, and it was a little over a year ago, I didn't have enough money to make payroll, you know? And so, you know, you are at a breaking point at the— and I had insulated everybody from this as well.

10:00Like, no one even knew this. I don't even think my wife really knew what was happening as well. And, you know, I had heard about Auto Shop Answers. I talked to— I'm also part of another 20 group of tire store owners, and someone had told me about Auto Shop Answers and this Rack Attack concept. And I started watching videos online, like, man, I gotta check this out.

10:22And I'll tell you what, the Lord called me to go to Texas, you know, in February of last year. And I asked my wife too, like, hey, you want to go to Texas? This weekend, check out this training. And I got to say like that, that, that, that, that weekend, you know, that 4 days I was there, I was there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, did the ride-along with Todd Hayes the next day.

10:45It's, you know, it's life-changing, it's transformational. And it was the jumpstart. It was, as Todd Hayes says, it was the violent injection of change that we needed to get, get us to the next level. And so I know that's a long-winded story, but man, it's just a little bit of the journey about about where we've come from, where we are, where we're headed, and just so happy to be here, man.

11:09So blessed. Man, that's awesome. It's a very similar story. We hear that story all the time where, well, first of all, being able to just go out on your own, start your own shop. You had Charlie beat, you know, 2 bay, 4 lifts, man. You have him beat with 1 bay, 1 lift. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like the book, The E-Myth. If you've read that book, or I'm sure you have, or most people listening probably have, and it's the entrepreneur that just, there's just going to be that ceiling.

11:43And you said it right there. You had to go and put your toolbox away and become a CEO of your company, which is probably very, very hard to do. Matter of fact, a lot of people just, they can't do that because they can't give up that control of just You know, the thing that they're great at, what they specialize in, what got them where they are is the reason they started the business to begin with.

12:04But then you have to go and you have to put on a different hat if you want to go to a different level. And a lot of people, they just struggle to do that. We talk about it all the time where technicians are, you know, they're leaving on Friday night and they're taking their tools with them because they're going to go do side work because they have to make ends meet.

12:23Now, these are the same technicians that will say, I don't work weekends. Okay. But they're actually going to work the weekend. And so what happens is they end up starting to work on cars and, you know, next thing you know, they're like, man, I can do this. Uh, except I get to take all the money and I don't have to give any money to the owner of my company.

12:42So I can actually go and start my own business. And, uh, and most people start it just like that, like a one-bay deal or just a little place that they lease out or whatever. And they're next thing you know, man, they're in business. They're a technician. And what ends up happening is they don't understand business. Now you obviously went and learned business.

13:00You're obviously an extremely, extremely sharp guy. I mean, I knew that the moment I met you. And so you are definitely different than what we typically see out there. And a lot of people, they just don't understand. Todd talks about it all the time. If I go buy I have all the Snap-on tools in the big box, that doesn't make me a technician.

13:25But in our industry, it's been basically, you know, just a repetitive cycle where technicians will go and start their own business, but they just don't understand business. And a lot of them unfortunately don't make it. And I'm so thankful that you were able to come through and go through Key2Key, you know, before maybe you hit that rock bottom, you know, because Man, it's a tough deal.

13:50And yeah, Rob's story, very similar, great story. But man, it's great to see you guys both just absolutely thriving right now. So let me ask you this. You come through Key2Key, at this point you have, is it 5 locations? Yes, 5 stores. Yep. So you got 5 stores. And so you've got to go back and implement this process in 5 stores. How do you start?

14:14With when you have— I can understand one store, you know, just going leading from the front, being in the trenches, but how do you do it with 5? Yeah, and, and, man, like, uh, again, I have so many one-liners I've got from Todd I use all the time, so, you know, you probably heard all this before, but, uh, yeah, you can't unsee it.

14:33That was the one thing I remember, like, literally I couldn't sleep over the weekend during that first training weekend because he just said you can't unsee this. And I remember just like literally saying that in my sleep, I can't unsee this. So I, I just like could not wait to get back the shop. I was, again, I had stayed through the weekend.

14:50I stayed on a Monday as well. I did a ride along with Joe Adams and Todd Hayes. I looked at, went and visited all their stores. And then I was really excited about getting back, flying home Monday night. We're going to have an all-company meeting on Tuesday. And man, I ended up getting like food poisoning, man. It was so bad. I'll say this, there's a burrito joint at that Houston airport.

15:12Don't go there, man. Like, that was bad. So I'll just say that right there. But anyway, so I I had to, I was sick as a dog all day Tuesday. So then I had to wait another day to like, guys, like just get them all pumped up about what we saw, you know, what we witnessed, what we're going to be doing. And also too, you know, I do want to touch on this because, you know, there's a common theme that we talk about.

15:39Jim Rohn says this, like motivational speaker I listened to a lot. Jim Rohn says this all the time. Look, the math doesn't change, but the faces do. And what that means is that, you know, there's only going to be 3% of the attendees that are really just going to take this stuff and implement it. And I have to touch on this because I think that there's certain people, they have to be, you know, man, like, well, then also I think of someone like Mark Ponds out there, right?

16:09So Chapel Hill Tire, right? Like he's got a good thing going, right? But I like what he says, like, man, if there's a new mousetrap out there, like, I want to implement that. So that was something that Mark had said about this, but there's also a subset, and I'll put myself into this category where, you know, we will, we like to say like, oh, there we're going to burn the ships because this is the way that we're going to go.

16:31Well, I joke and I say, well, I didn't even have any ships to burn. Like, that's how bad it was. But, you know, You almost kind of need to be at a breaking point to go all in on implementing this. I think that there's different levels at which you can implement the change and it might be slow and steady, but man, there was no choice.

16:50We had to, as Todd Hay says, that violent injection of change. We had to go all in on this very, very quickly. And so it started with that location leaders meeting that we had, that manager's meeting with everyone just to get them on board. And also too, we knew going into this, just from what we learned in training, you're going to go through a lot of turnover, right?

17:13Not everyone's going to be bought into this. So we just knew that. And I got to say this, like, I am just blessed to have my wife in my life because she has an executive search background. Like she was a recruiter, she used to hire CEOs and CFOs and executive level individuals for C-suites. And now I got her looking for like lube technicians.

17:35So anyway, she had to kind of make a transition out of that to help us out in the business. But with her help, she was able to identify, wow, we need to get some great people in the door, right? Because again, a great process is nothing. Like you said, you can have all the tools in the world, but if you don't have the people to execute, what good is it?

17:51So as far as how we implemented it, it was just that all group meeting. And then we did, we just, we took one store. We had had a relatively new manager at that point, David Keys. He was the first one, I'm pretty sure that one of the first ones I took out there to training as we started rotating our employees. Is through training in Houston.

18:12And so I immediately got him on board. And that's actually when we visited JJ's shops, because I visited JJ and then my manager David and I, we went immediately like that week to Waldorf to watch it in action and just to see it. And David had not been to Key2Key in Houston, but he saw and witnessed this whole thing in action. He's like, okay, we can do this.

18:33And so we would just come in, you know, 6 a.m. at the shop, we'd start rack attacking cars, we do the videos, we would just kind of go through that process. And David's a hammer. He'd get on the phone and we would just turn, you know, drop off oil changes into $2,000 tickets. It's like boom, boom, boom. So we just started proving the concept that it does work and we started gaining traction pretty quickly.

18:53So, you know, it's funny, I got some graphs of like, you know, our revenue and our cash in banks figures. And so, you know, it took about 6 weeks before we started to really see that spike in that exponential, you know, improvement, you know, from the numbers is like, again, a byproduct of the process. And so yeah, we did, we just had to focus on one while at the same time educating everyone about the concept, right?

19:19And so we really just had to get that buy-in. And if people weren't on board, they had to go. We, you know, we just, we did, we went through so much change. We were actually, my wife and I were just talking about this last night. And since my wife kind of came on board, I think that of all the employees, there's only 3 people that are still on that original team from before.

19:41And we're at 47 people right now. And so, So that just goes to show you, like, you know, when you do this, you know, it's going to be a trial. You're going to go through a lot of people. You got to level up your staff. And so, but, you know, quite honestly, it's just the baby steps, right? As I say, just do the Take 5.

19:58Just start there. You know, just do the Take 5, pick, do the videos, you know? And so, and then just say yes, right? Say yes on the phones. Like, there's just a couple things that, like, it can be really overwhelming when you look at the entire list, but It's just, it's baby steps, right? Just a couple items on there. Just focus on that, get relentless.

20:16And as you guys say in training, I love this, right? Amateurs practice so they get it right, pros practice so they can't get it wrong. It's just the fundamentals. You just gotta go through it every day. Yeah, and with 5 stores, I would imagine that could be a little bit challenging being that you can't spread yourself across 5 different locations, right? Now, I know you've been to Kea Kea a bunch of times You brought your team back.

20:41How many times have you been through? I mean, do you even know? That's a good question. I don't know how many times I've been down there. I've been in pretty much all the classes. So yeah, AIX, the fraud prevention class, Key2Key a bunch of times, Courtside, you know, let's see, the hiring class, you know, the recruiting class. So we've been through it all.

21:04I can't, I don't even remember. I've kind of lost count, but it seems like just about every month we're sending people down there. Down. And yeah, so that's the thing, right? You're just trying to empower your crew and that's one way of doing it. Like, yeah, if I didn't send anyone down, we wouldn't be anywhere close to where we would be today.

21:25Right? So you do, and I love the analogy again that you guys talk about. It's like watching a movie, right? Watching a really good movie. I've been down there so many times and I'm still taking notes, man. I'm still taking copious amount of notes. I'm picking stuff up. You guys are continuously tweaking the process. So we're just reaping from those, you know, the benefits of that.

21:48And so you just got to keep going down. You're going to pick little things up. And that's the thing, like the first time you go, you might come back and just implement maybe the Anytime script and maybe the videos, right? Well, now we're kind of at a point where it's like, you know, we're really focused on actually like the callbacks, right? That's what we're doing right now.

22:05Like that's our big key thing. We're making sure we're doing the calls the next day. So it's, you know, everyone's at a different stage of the process as far as that implementation, but when you start, it's the low-hanging fruit, and then you're really trying to fine-tune. Now you're just trying to get those, you know, if you're, you know, from racing at all, you're just trying to get those last tenths, last, you know, hundredths of a second on your lap times.

22:26You're just trying to eke that out. So that's kind of, kind of where we're at. But it just never ends, man. It's just like, as they say, it's blocking and tackling. It's the fundamentals. It's every day. You got to do this stuff. Yeah. And you're right about the 3%, right? We can look in a room 'cause we get to see all the faces looking back at us.

22:45And I can tell, Joe can tell, Todd, Charlie, whoever's teaching can tell like who's going to do this. And I know when you came down, you were originally planning on coming down for I think Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the Rack Attack and then going through Key2Key. And then I think you told your wife, hey, I'm going to stay another day. Is that cool with you?

23:07I want to stay one more day. 'Cause you wanted to do the whistle stop tour with Todd and go see all the stores. And man, that whistle stop tour is like so impactful. We have so many people that come through now, it's hard for Todd to do that anymore. But I've seen just people's lives get changed before the program even starts, just doing the whistle stop tour, going to the shops, just taking a tour around the shops and just seeing that, wow, there's something different out there, can literally change the way that you look at this business.

23:38Man, I'm so glad that you got to do that. And we knew right away, like, you know, you are going to take this back and you're going to do it. You know, there's 3 types of people that come through training, right? There's the vacationer, right? There's the sponge, and then there's the hostage, right? And the vacationer's just there, their boss sent them there, and you know, they're just going for a weekend trip and they're going to just go through the process.

24:00And then you've got the hostage, right? Which, you know, those are typically going to be the people that don't have the buy-in from the owner, but the owner is trying to move the needle without actually going in the trenches. And so what they're going to do is they're going to send people down and they're going to say, you need to learn this concept and come back and implement it.

24:17But then they're not bought in and they're not all in. And so then what happens is you just have people that aren't going to do it. I mean, that's just the reality of it. And then you've got the sponges, which, you know, there's just a few, a handful of them in, in those classes. And we can tell exactly who they are. So you having the buy-in in and you being able to say, look, I'm going all in, I believe in this, burn the boats like you said.

24:42And then your team is going to buy in because man, the leader is bought in and they will follow the leader. Right. So man, that's just so cool. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. No, no, no. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, like, you know, really the big thing was, you know, Todd and you guys and the whole crew, it gave me permission to stop tolerating mediocrity.

25:07Right. And so, you know, I felt like it's really sad, but like, I felt like we were held hostage, you know, by our employees that we couldn't let someone go because we actually needed that person, that warm body in there. And, you know, and Todd Hayes in the early days of some of the training, he'd come in and he'd pretend like he had guns and start, start just capping people like, are you— you know, I felt like I was actually coming back kind of like that, you know.

25:32And it was, I mean, I fired a guy right on the spot, you know, from just, just, it just, you know, it, it's, it gave, he gave me permission to stop tolerating mediocrity, to start acting like a professional business athlete, start acting like the head coach that I need to be. And the fact that, you know, that is what's required if you want greatness, man, how could you ever expect to get there with a mediocre crew?

25:55Right? So really, like, it just clicked, you know, I, I, you always have heard that phrase, it's all about the people, but man, it Finally, it really was starting to ring true. It's like, man, when you get— when you find those studs, when you get those amazing players on your team, man, it— you know, you, you don't have— you get to invest your time in people instead of expensing your time in people, right?

26:19They become fountains. They're not drains, right? You're not exhausting your energy. You're actually— you actually get— you get energy by investing in those right people. So when you do coach those A these people, like you said, are the sponges that are receptive to the feedback to being great, right? And so, man, that is like, that is just, again, it just gave me permission to stop tolerating mediocrity, find the amazing players.

26:44And as you guys say time and time again, you know, you might, you're gonna pay a guy a lot more, right? But you're just, just, but the ROI you get from that, I mean, oh my gosh, like that's, that's how you, you're gonna move mountains. And so I just really want to touch on that. It's just giving you permission to stop tolerating the mediocrity.

27:00That was the big culture shift for us as well. Yeah, it's one of the hardest things to do. We talk about it all the time as those, those B players. And I was reading something last night and it was like hire talent and, you know, get rid of the tenants in your business. And, you know, the people that are just living in your business versus like the talented people that will absolutely take you to the next level.

27:25And yeah, they cost more, but man, they, like you said, the ROI on an A player is just like 10x what you're going to get out of a B player, probably more than that. And once you learn how to hire great people, well, what happens is your team understands that you know how to hire great people. And one of the most important things as the owner of a business or, you know, managing a business or whatever that is, is the team has to know and understand that you know how to hire and retain great people.

27:53Otherwise, they will hold you hostage. In most companies out there, their people are holding them hostage. And you're just never gonna get to the next level if you've got people holding you hostage. But it's hard, you know, it's hard. It's hard to have a B player that you like because B players are, you know, they're good, right? Everybody likes them. They show up on time.

28:17They're reliable. They're the most dependable people. They get along with everybody, but they're not the people that are gonna absolutely move that needle. And it's really hard to do. But there's, like Todd says, there's only so many seats on the bus. And, you know, you're responsible for all the other people on that bus. So yeah, that's a really, really good takeaway from that.

28:40Now you've said you went through the accounting. I know you went through all the deals, but accounting, the fraud and prevention, what takeaways do you have from that? 'Cause I think that is probably one of the most underrated classes that we do have. And I think it's because a lot of people might be a little bit intimidated by that class, but it's one of the most impactful classes to not, you know, to not leak, you know, from the bottom.

29:09So can you tell me some takeaways or maybe something you even discovered in your own business? Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's funny. So my first ever training weekend, again, it was February of last year, 2025. And so I went all in on that weekend, right? So Friday, I took that Friday class. They had a half day. It was a fraud prevention class. And so, and Todd was in that room talking about it.

29:34And, you know, oh my gosh, like, Oh, I'm so glad TechMetric has fixed this, but the save for later, people are stealing from you. And it was so, it was so relevant to me because we had just fired somebody for stealing from the company. And so the huge takeaway is that, you know, you are going to learn processes and controls and making sure that, as Todd Hay says, we know how to count our money really well.

30:02Right. And so when you do that, when you put up those systems, put up those controls and you learn the best practices of that, it creates that deterrent to prevent others from stealing from you. Right. And as they also talk about the 10-80-10 rule, right, 10% will always steal from you. 10% will never steal from you. But 80%, if the conditions are just right, they're going to steal from you, whether it's a paperclip or, you know, embezzling tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

30:28Right. They're going to steal from you. Right. So you got to make sure that you're creating the environment to where they can't steal from you, you know. And so, and man, we were just so blessed in implementing this this concept that we were having an immediate impact on our numbers. And then we got to a point last year we were able to actually hire a controller.

30:47And so we brought Pete, our controller, out. That was a few months ago, actually, with the last, I think that was also in just this past February, you had another accounting class, which was an all day, and that was with Matt Keys. That was your CFO from HPP that put that on, man. And Nick Paparikos, the CPA, we've got him, you know, on board with us as well.

31:11As well. And shout out to him because, man, you know, when you've got— when you're surrounding yourself with great people, man, it is— it's like that board of directors and those advisors that you've got around you and making sure that you're making the right decisions. But yeah, as far as that accounting and fraud prevention class, man, there's just— you learn so much, like I said, about best practices, but also too, you can uncover and identify who's stealing from you, right?

31:38And so, man, it's Definitely, you know, it was, it's a little bit sad to uncover, you know, the money that's been lost as a result of that. But man, it's just, hey, let's tighten this stuff up and it adds money straight to the bottom line as a result. Yeah. When you start doing big numbers, you know, they say sales fixes everything and big numbers are great and you're doing big numbers and you're making big profit, but you definitely become way more exposed, especially having multi-unit and you have to have these things in place to be able to identify how people can steal from you.

32:15And it's almost like those, you know, like those FBI people that, you know, when they hire like criminals to come into the organization to like to go and like figure out how people are doing stuff. Like you've seen that before, like somebody that's really good at these, you know, these people that know exactly how to do it and they bring them in.

32:38Well, you Unfortunately and fortunately, over the course of my 20, I guess going on 28 years of doing this, I've seen so much. So I start to think the way that these people think because I have to be able to think like that to protect the business, right? I've seen the craziest things in the world. I've seen, I had a guy that would come in and he would, now this might seem crazy, but what an easy way for someone to deal.

33:07He would come in and he would go to the computer and he would go and change the time on the computer. Now, how crazy is this? He'd go, he'd change the time on the computer. Now, like in our company, you can't change the time on the computer, but most companies out there, and probably people listening to this right now, you could probably click on the bottom right on your computer and you could change the time on your computer.

33:27And then he would clock in and then he would go and he would change the time back. Well, this guy, he's running all these hours. He's a clock hour guy at the time. Time. And, uh, it's like, wow, he's always here early. This is, man, what a stud. And multi-unit, you know, you're not in all these stores, and so like you don't necessarily know when, you know, all everybody's comings and goings and whatnot.

33:52And so when this guy's always on time, and then one day on camera, uh, it's like he showed up late, like he was there late. And, uh, it's like, wow, but his time clock showed he got here like 20 minutes early. Well, come to find out, this guy was changing the time on the computer and he was clocking in and he was doing the same thing when you clock out.

34:11And that was the way he was stealing, you know, through his time clock. I've seen people take credit cards from extended warranty companies and run a refund on their own credit card, okay? Or from a customer for that matter. So somebody, if they have access to be able to refund a customer, they could actually go in and they could refund their own credit card by taking a credit card from somebody else.

34:33I've seen, we've seen multiple, we've seen credit card, somebody had their own credit card machine processing. Point of sale machine. We have seen everything. And so no matter how tight you are, people can still steal from you. We've had people steal from us and we're very, very tight on it. And so if somebody's out there and they think, well, nobody's stealing from me, I can tell you, you are wrong.

35:00People are stealing from you. At what level? I don't know. We've uncovered anything from, like you said, little small things things to, uh, to hundreds of thousands of dollars to where people end up in prison for it. And so the more you, uh, do in revenue and the bigger you grow, the more exposed you become because you have more people. And it's just a math equation.

35:22So if it's 10-80-10 and you have 10 people, well, your exposure is a lot less than if you have 100 people because now how many people did that just open up the opportunity to steal from, it's way more people. And so just like recruiting, your people have to know that you know how to hire great people and can't hold you hostage. Your people also have to know that you know how to, you know, investigate and go through the ins and the outs of your business to make sure that people are not stealing from you.

35:57And so that's a very, very powerful class to go through. And I encourage everybody to sign up for that because, man, you will make your money back. Oh yeah. That day for sure. Probably way more than you would even think. Just like all these classes, they're an investment. And, you know, people, I can't tell you how many people say, "I've already made my money back."

36:23And we've barely even started the program if we've even started it. So. Yeah. Yeah, so awesome, man. So, you know, during this whole change, resistance to the change, you know, like, did you have, I know you didn't end up with a lot of the same people. You've obviously turned over a lot of people. Like, what type of resistance did you get at the beginning when trying to change?

36:48Yeah, you know, when it comes to change, I heard someone say this once and it's really true. It's people don't fear change, they fear the unknown. And so, and And really, I think unfortunately there's a lot of people in this industry that are kind of stuck in their ways. And so, and as you said, right? Like you're really trying to find the sponges, right?

37:16You're really trying to find the people that are going to buy in and get on the bus. And so there will always be individuals that just have a hardened heart, you know, that just aren't receptive to a new way of doing things because, uh, for, or for whatever reason. But, you know, look, if you want to play for my team, this is the way, right?

37:39Like, this is the playbook, right? And I just, we, we use the heck out of sports analogies now, right? So, you know, uh, and so like Belichick has the plays, right? You're gonna run these, right? Um, and so, but to make my team, you have to have these skill sets, right? And the, these, this, this is, this is what it looks like.

37:58This is what a win looks like when you execute these plays, right? And so, uh, it's just, At the end of the day, like you said, you know, we've kind of alluded to earlier, when you're in a position where you know how to hire good talent, you no longer are— our employees kind of holding you hostage right now. Again, I use a lot of one-liners from training that you guys use, but like when LeBron James comes on the market, you hire that guy, right?

38:23And so, you know, we have to look at someone internally and their skill set as far as like what their output is and what they're doing. And then we also have to look at what's out there on the market, right? Do I— is it worth investing into this person, my time and energy to try to build them up and get their skill set up to where they need to be?

38:40Or is it easier just to find someone outside of the organization, hire them, bring them on the team, and start running up the score? And so we have to look at that all the time. And so if someone, you know, just is not, is not able to execute the fundamentals to this concept, that then they can't play for my team, right? Like, you imagine if somebody was playing for the Patriots and they're like, no, no, no, I'm going to run my own plays, you know, I'm going to do my own thing.

39:07It's not going to work. You're not going to put numbers on the board. I guarantee that. So, yeah. So as a result, you got to be all in. And we've had people that were probably like 85% in, 90% in. That's not good enough. You can't, you can't say, I'll do X, Y, Z and this, this, this and this. But you know what?

39:24I'm not going to go to third base with that customer. Well, that's a problem. This is, this is the concept. You, you have to— it's there. We are inflexible as far as the execution of these fundamentals. They must be done. Or else, or else you don't put numbers on the board. You don't get to where you're trying to go. So we've run into that.

39:45And so as we're, and that's the thing that I would say is our biggest constraint right now. It is, it's just talent. It's just continuously trying to find great people. And so we've just continued to kind of level up our staff. And so, and we're still continuously trying to either develop the people that we have, or we've just gotta level up, you know, those individuals.

40:04And so we're always like ABR, man, always be recruiting, you know. And again, also too, just a shout out to Brian Rhodes. If you haven't, you know, I know he's doing webinars now, hiring webinars, man. You're going to learn so much about how to find that great talent, you know, where they eat, sleep, where they live, you know, where they're working. Because they're not on Indeed, they're not perusing the job postings, they're not doing any of that.

40:31So you got to go out, you got to, you you gotta attract, you gotta, one, you gotta be the company that's gonna attract them. So that's really step one. You gotta really kind of internally rebuild the culture and work towards, again, just setting that message that you're gonna, you know, bring them in. So yeah, so anyway, that's what's required. You gotta build that culture that's gonna attract the A talent.

40:55And once you get them on the team, they're gonna, um, you know, you're, you're gonna, you're, you're gonna start to attract more of that talent. You're gonna start running those numbers up. But man, that's just required. That's just, again, you can't, you can't cherry-pick the, the process or the, or run your own plays. And so yeah, we went through a lot of turnover, and, and that's just it.

41:16We're, like I said, we're— when before we started the training, I think we had like 27, 28 employees, same 5 locations. Today I think we're at 40 7, and we still have so many slots to fill, right? And so, and especially if we want to get to weekends, because that's part of our long-term growth strategy, you know, that we added 50% more employees, same 5 stores, you know, same 5 working days right now.

41:42But again, our plan is to build up the team, get to 6 days a week, get to 7 days a week. So all that kind of needs to be in place to get where we want to go. Yeah. Great points on all that. You know, I tell people all the time, especially multi-unit, when we go through the class and I ask, hey, how many people are multi-unit?

42:02Whether it's 5, 8, 10, 12, whatever the store count is. And I always ask the question, well, I don't really ask the question. I just kind of tell them what I know. And I say, hey, so let me guess, you have 2 stores that are really good. You have 2 stores that are really bad. And the good stores pay for the bad stores.

42:19And everybody starts laughing, right? They're like, oh my gosh, how does he know that? Well, I just know it because one, I've been there, done that, and it's just so predictable. But the one thing I would say to anybody multi-unit out there is if you have a store that's struggling, you know, we always ask the question, well, what if we took all the best people that you have in your entire company and you put them in that store?

42:40How would that store do? And they go, oh my gosh, we would crush it, right? Like these are stores that people say, uh, I'm thinking about shutting this store down. Like we're gonna, we're gonna close the store down. And then we ask that question, like what if you had the best people in that store? And they go, oh my gosh, I would absolutely, we would Crush it.

42:56Well, see, that's the answer. You just got to find the best people, and when you do that, then you're not going to be talking about closing stores down. But it gets harder as you get multi-unit, right? Because you can't spread yourself, um, you know, the way you once could. So, um, don't ever think that because you have a struggling store, it's the store.

43:13I mean, in most cases, it's not. It's going to be the people. It's always the biggest bottleneck, no matter, no matter what AI we have, no matter what technology, no No matter what demographic you're in, it doesn't matter. It's always going to be the people. The people will always be the bottleneck. So, well, we're about up on time, but let me ask you this real quick.

43:33We got a couple minutes, but somebody that's listening that hasn't been before, that's never heard of us or maybe has heard of us, what could you tell somebody listening right now about Endo? Yeah, it's, man, it will change your life. But, you know, you, I got to say this, don't come if you have a hardened heart. Don't come if you're not that sponge, because at the end of the day, you can come in and listen and learn and soak up all this information.

44:05But if you don't put it into action, it, it, it, it, it's a waste of your time. Right. And so it requires that mindset. And you do, you just, it is, I guess Todd Hay says, it's the law of the lid, you know, and you have got to be that person that sets the tone, that sets the culture, that sets the expectation, that raises the bar.

44:30And so, you know, look in the mirror, that's the biggest thing at the end of the day, look in the mirror. So man, I've just having come to Auto Shop Answers hanging out with people like yourself, like Glenn, Joe Adams, you know, Charlie Zalacos, you know, Todd Hayes, you know, I mean, like the list goes on and on. When you start hanging out with people like that and you start understanding, you know, the vocabulary that they use, the podcasts that they listen to, the books that they read, you know, the physical workouts that they, that they like, you know, I look at that like I got to become that person, right?

45:07I got to be the best version of myself if I'm going going to be putting this and implementing this into action across the entire organization. So I can't be the person, I can't be the absentee owner, I can't be in the ivory tower. You know, none of that's going to happen. You know, you're not going to get that violent injection of change if you can't be in the trenches with the wrenches.

45:28So, man, where are you going to find me? Bay 1, rack attacking cars on the front lines, man. Just in this concept gave me permission to get back into the shop. And that's why I love— that's where I love being. I've been using a phrase lately, I'm kind of like the Gordon Ramsay of auto repair, but without all the obscenities, right? And so we're, you know, Gordon Ramsay's in it, right?

45:49He's in the kitchen, he's on the front lines, he's with the customers, he's there, he witnesses it, and he gives that feedback instantaneously as he sees it. So man, come out here, but then at the end of the day, gotta look in the mirror. Can you become that person? Because that's what your business needs, that's what it requires. And the violent injection that your company needs, it's gotta come from you.

46:11So look in the mirror. If you If you are that person, get your butt down to Houston and it will change your life. Awesome, man. Well, this was awesome. Thank you so much for getting on this morning. This was a blast. Always enjoy seeing you. Love talking with you. This was great, man. Thank you so much, AJ. Keep crushing it and I hope to see you here in Houston soon.

46:35Absolutely. Thanks, Glenn. Love you guys. Thank you so much. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerland at 925-980-8017. 2, or visit autoshopanswers.com. Get more information about key-to-key callbacks, courtside VIP racket tag day where you spend a full day in the trenches with our teams. We have leadership classes, an AI academy, accounting first fraud and prevention, as well as auto tech training.

47:03We are literally your one-stop shop. Please don't hesitate, reach out to Todd Westerland, 925-980-8012.