EVERYTHING You Need to Know about Master Tech to Millionaire + Autoshop Answers

0:01All right, what's up players? This is Joe Adams with Adams Automotive. This is Master Tech to Millionaire, and this is a very special episode. Um, we— this has been a long time coming. We had a great idea from our most previous, uh, Key to Key to Callbacks weekend. Somebody was like, man, I come into Key to Key and this is my first time, and y'all are using all these terms that I've never heard of.

0:26In my life, and I feel like I'm drinking through a fire hose and I've got to catch up. So I'm here with none other than— what's up, Glenn Piccolo? Hey, how we doing today? And we are going to defer— we're basically going to define, uh, all of the context that you need to know about our company, uh, our platform, AutoShop Answers, the whole operating model, and some key terms that may— part of our language, if you will, to help you give— think of this as think about this as orientation.

0:55Uh, when you sign up for Key2Key and you don't know what to expect, uh, hopefully you're listening to this right now and you, you are getting, uh, just some context for what to expect from the weekend and, uh, a little bit of the history of the backstory of who the people that are going to be talking to you. So first and, uh, foremost, we've got Glenn Piccolo.

1:13Uh, Glenn Piccolo is the general managing partner, but so much more than that, of the flagship location in the platform Adams Automotive, and he assists in so many other things with a strategic focus on training. Glenn, what else do you do around here, man? Uh, pretty much, uh, anything. I love being in the trenches, love training, love training our team. Um, you know, obviously being able to train the Key to Key concept, uh, once a month there.

1:43We do Zoom calls, we do podcasts. I love doing the Monday podcast where Right now I'm going through a series where just basically interviewing our team, uh, just kind of getting the backstory, which you did with Josh, which was, which was amazing. Uh, so just being able to like just kind of, kind of bring, you know, people hear about us and there's a lot of people that are on Moneyball that are kind of following us and they come through Key to Key and they hear a lot of the names and they hear the nicknames and they see the posts.

2:12But, uh, the most recent thing is doing this podcast where we're just kind of like introducing our, our team to the world. And so that's been a lot of fun. Uh, we do a lot of training, obviously before hours, Zoom calls. Uh, some of those get posted here on the, uh, on the podcast. So that's a lot of fun too. And pretty much, man, whatever, whatever it takes, you know, to just, just keep the, keep the ship moving.

2:35So I'm, I'm down for whatever. And, uh, just, just love, uh, just love doing it. I'm gonna interject. He's being humble. He's the number one general manager in the country. He's the number one trainer in the country and he's up there with me talking about the concept for 2 days at Key to Key to Callbacks and he's the best, he's a brother of mine.

2:53So, I'm going to go through some high-level definitions, number one being auto hospitality versus auto repair. So, we kind of define that as the customer experience operating model built on trust, transparency, and discipline. Todd Hayes, our chairman and CEO of the Auto Hospitality Group, created the concept, which is a key term, of auto hospitality back at his original company, Mobile One— excuse me, Mobile Car Care— in 1986.

3:24This is pretty much the business model that focuses on driving revenue and sales in our industry. So the Auto Hospitality Group was born almost 40 years after he founded his original company, which I'll define, Todd, later. And the Auto Hospitality Group is our national platform of independent shops that are executing upon the Auto Hospitality concept. So, the Auto Hospitality concept, we train the concept through our national onboarding company called Auto Shop Answers, which is, if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard of us, where we distribute training and shared services like callbacks, like recruiting, like AI training, so on and so forth.

4:12Auto Shop Answers is a training company with the primary, you know, product, if you will, of the training company is going to be a class that you are now coming to if you're listening to this called Key to Key to Callbacks: Complete Customer Journey from First Contact Through Future Follow-Up. Todd created it, his business model, over 40 years, and now we get to run it every day.

4:36So Did I miss anything there? What the organizations are, uh, Glenn, key to key to callbacks, uh, and yeah, just feel free to chime in on any thoughts for the operating model in general. Yeah, so, uh, if you are coming down, it's, it's obviously gonna be just an amazing time. We know that because, uh, pretty much everybody that comes down just has, you know, just such a great time and, uh, just getting to get into our world and learn our language, which I think you're gonna get to do today.

5:03Sometimes we just take for granted that The language that we speak and that we've been taught, and we speak so fluently in it that people understand what we're saying. And so when you're doing something for so long and it's like just part of your everyday, you know, like it's like breathing for us, that sometimes we take for granted that people understand what we're saying.

5:21We've had a lot of people on the podcast too, by the way, or that have listened to the podcast and listened to our Zoom meetings that we post and that have changed their business without even coming down, right? Um, which was, which was amazing. Like, we had some people that came down and they were like, man, we've been listening to your podcast.

5:39And we actually were able to listen to the podcast and be able to kind of get us to a level where we were able to afford to come down to, to see the program live, which was amazing. But then when they came down, they saw it live, it really, really transformed their business. So for us to be able to kind of give this, you know, like, um, you know, just set up, if you will, to help people when they come down.

6:03It's kind of like VIP Rack Attack Day Friday, uh, or Friday night. We have an open house here at, uh, at 1010, our flagship store. And that night we have, I mean, like 60, 70 people, you know, like most of the people that are going to be in the class on Saturday and Sunday come and we do a live Rack Attack at 6:30 PM.

6:24Here at 1010 Blaylock in Houston, and they get to see that rack attack, which has made it so much better when they come through the class to have already been, uh, been through that kind of experience, because it really helps them understand the concept as we're doing it. Because a lot of people are like, what do you mean you inspect a car in 15 minutes?

6:43That doesn't make any sense to me. That— right. And if you're sitting through a 2-day class and you've already seen that, you're like, it kind of clicks a little bit better. Right, right, right. So let's go through the characters. That's going to be me and Glenn. You guys know us. So I am Joe Adams, Adams Automotive CEO. I am pretty much same boat as Glenn, just do whatever it takes.

7:03I'm being mentored by our CEO, uh, Todd Hayes, and I have a particular, uh, focus or emphasis on primarily technology and growth and training. I love training. I'm going to be running the class with Glenn Piccolo. I talked about him, he's sitting right here beside me, he's the general managing partner of 1010 Blaylock, which is going to be our Adams Automotive Blaylock location in Houston, Texas.

7:28It's the number 1 shop in America, we believe, in terms of annual revenue, annual profitability, so on and so forth. Our record year is $12.25 million in revenue, our record month is $289,000 in net operating income. We have a lot of corporate overhead on top of that, and we run the business model that we're about to get into. Todd Hayes is our CEO of the overall platform.

7:53He architected the model and growth strategy of the platform. And now I'll get into a little bit of story time. So how did this all come together is— let's rewind to 1997. Basically, Todd Hayes sells his company for $25 million and retires and he spends the next subsequent, I don't know, 20+ years and obviously I'm skipping a lot of context here, kind of being in and out of the industry, being a consultant, he launched the Repair One brand, he kind of had a training company, he had a media career but he never really grew another platform after he sold his first one.

8:32So in 2020, my father Perry Adams and my mother Patty Adams invited Todd into their business to be a consultant to help them solve an accounting problem. And Todd came into our facility, which you guys will be coming to on Friday for the open house Rack Attack, and he saw the facility and he was like, oh boy, I could do something out of this.

8:55I'm gonna take this to the number one store in the country. And he believes God told him that, which I believe too. And fast forward a few months, I graduate from college, I'm slowly getting involved in the business, but I don't really like it. You know, you'll hear more about my story when you get to training. Todd doubles our revenue from— I gotta give that context too.

9:13We were open for 40+ years doing $2 to $3 million a month, and Todd doubled our revenue in 4 months to $500,000 and then recruited Glen, and the rest is history. Glen, do you have any notes that I'm missing from that story when Todd Basically came into the business, recruited you, and scaled it to 2021. The first full 12 months 2021, we did $8 million.

9:39So he basically quadrupled the revenue in the first year during COVID Glenn, do you have any thoughts from that memory? Yeah. So what was it per month? I think you said— I think you misspoke there. It was $200,000 to $300,000 a month? It was— I've done the— I've had Codex do the deep research. Basically, our record year all time was 2016, $3.2 million.

9:56But we really were in the $2.5 to $3 million range. And it was $225,000 to $250,000 average month for pretty much 20 years straight. Okay, got it. Yep. Okay, got it. You said $2-3 million a month. I was like thinking, oh man, that'd be nice. I kind of went, yeah, I was like, wow, what would that be like? That would be amazing.

10:11Well, it is amazing. We're doing that now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, yeah, so he like 2020, um, you know, I come over to the company, we already had Jose Garcia here, stud, and there was like 4, I mean, it was just 4 of us at the time. So Uh, Taba is basically like the GM, basically. And, um, you know, we're going to implement his concept.

10:33Now, I'd heard of his concept. I thought I actually knew his concept for many years. If you listen to my podcast, you know, on my story, uh, you'll be able to kind of hear a little bit about that. But I thought I knew his concept. I thought I was teaching his concept for a long, long time. And then when I came over, he's like, I'm going to teach you my concept, like 100% of my concept.

10:51I'm going to teach you. And, and, and you're gonna learn it and we're gonna just do some amazing things. So I came over here, there was 4 advisors. A lot of people kind of hear about Adams and they're like, oh my gosh, they have 50 bays. I could do $1 million if I had 50 bays. That's not true. Uh, or at least I would— okay, let me back up.

11:09I'm sorry. I would challenge you. I would challenge you. No tires, 5% or less tire. Yeah, I would challenge you. Yes. You know, I would challenge you to say it's not a— it's not the bays, right? So we know that it's It's everything happens in Bay 1. Charlie's shop's a perfect example. 2 bays, 4 lifts, doing $400K. It's not the bays, right?

11:29And so back then we actually didn't have 50 bays. We had, I think, like 30 bays maybe. Uh, we had 30 bays. We had 1 iPhone. We had, you know, 4 advisors and we were PMIing cars all over the place. We did not have a speed rack. And, um, you know, we evolved into what you will see when you come down here.

11:48And I think that's the biggest takeaway is people are like, oh my gosh, yes, 50 bays. And You know, it's this huge, you know, operation, but it just wasn't that before. Yeah. And we have 50 bays that are like, most of them we're not even using, by the way. Yeah. I mean, you can walk around the shop, you'll see there's empty bays everywhere because we don't have 50 technicians, right?

12:07And so, uh, yeah, we just kind of started, we hit the ground running. I think the biggest thing is we were really committed to it. We're really committed to the concept and just following Todd. Probably the biggest difference I'd say is, you know, like here is there was no pushback to the concept. To Todd, yeah. Like, if, like, people that are coming down, the one thing I would say is you really have to surrender to the, to the concept.

12:34Like, he figured it out, he's perfected it, he's gone through all of the, like, trial and error with everything. And so, uh, anybody that gives pushback, I feel like eventually comes around. But like, we didn't give pushback, right? Like, me and Jose were all in, 100% all in. Uh, the 2 other team members that weren't didn't make it very long just because they weren't committed.

12:54And he is not going to just invest his time. Like you said, he retired a long time ago. Yeah, there's no— he doesn't have to do this. There's no way he's going to say, let me go and invest my time and fly all over the country and, and do this with people who aren't committed to it. And so me and Jose were just committed like day one, and the rest is history.

13:14Yeah. So I'll define Jose Garcia. He was the previous assistant general manager to Glenn Piccolo at Adams Automotive Blaylock along this journey of growth, and he is now overseeing 2 locations in Houston, the Now Auto Care brand. He is the president of Now Auto Care. So I'll go back, I'll back up. 2021, we launched the Now Auto Care brand in Houston. It's our second store in Houston, and Todd is opening a store with people from Houston and Boston, and he forms what's called the Houston-Boston Partnership with partners Charlie Zlatkos, Bill Broussard, and Perry Adams and the Adams family.

13:50So now Auto Care is a store that was opened by people, you know, Charlie and Bill, Todd knew from his basically consulting days. Like, he's known, he's well known in the industry, he's been training for many, many years, and so he you know, has a deep relationship with both Charlie and Bill. So we all decided to open up a store together in January of 2021.

14:14So I'll fast forward to October of 2021. The same 3 partners open Adam's Automotive of The Woodlands. The revenue doubles in, in 1 month. The store went from doing $130,000 to $280,000 instantly. The original Now Autocare store was from zero. It had been closed for 18 months. And we start opening stores, you know, the history of the Houston market is, you know, in 2021 we opened 2 stores, 2022 we didn't open a store, 2023 we opened Adams Automotive Barker Cypress in February, and then 2024 we open Now Auto Care in Sienna.

14:50So we've, we grow the Houston market and in 2023 as we were growing and as Bill and Charlie were growing their 3 stores in Boston, that's gonna be Pleasant Car Care, which is Charlie's 2 stores, which by the way includes Charlie's 2-bay, 4-lift Pleasant Car Care Watertown location with an all-time record of $460,000 a month. I think pound for pound, he's got the championship belt for most productive per square foot shop in the, in the world, and especially in the platform.

15:20Um, you know, Bill's got his store JB Auto Care in Boston, but a Along the way of building the 5 stores in Houston and the 3 stores in Boston, in 2023 we launched publicly again Auto Shop Answers, which was our national onboarding program, uh, for our actual company. And the first public Auto Shop Answers class was actually in January of 2023 at Adam's Automotive Blaylock.

15:46We invited people from outside of our company to basically onboarded alongside our service advisors and front of the house employees. So Glenn, do you kind of remember, do you remember in 2023 or the journey like from, I skipped a lot of context there from 2020 through COVID to you become the GM in 2021 and then in 2023, you know, we're cranking $10 to $12 million a month or a year, 2022, $10 million, 2023, $12 million.

16:13We launch Auto Shop Answers, you become a trainer, I eventually become a trainer. Walk me through your thoughts of that era of the, of the platforms, you know, being put together. Man, it's like a blur, honestly. It all happened so fast. It's crazy how much happened. So much happened. Like, it just, man, it happened so fast. So basically we were doing onboarding.

16:33Like, we built this training facility upstairs here at 1010. And, uh, you know, you know Perry, anybody that knows Perry Adams, like, if you want something done, he gets it done. Done so fast, right? We PMI cars so fast. Perry gets the thing fixed and built fast. So boom, a training center is built upstairs, and it was basically for our internal, uh, like new hires in our team to come through and onboard.

16:58And so, you know, Todd obviously knows a lot of people and has some good relationships with, with some people here in Houston. And so we're doing some onboarding, and, you know, it started out like 2 or 3 people upstairs. And, you know, and then we would do like our own little kind of personal trainings or like, you know, um, you know, company trainings up there or whatever.

17:16And so a couple different people that Todd knew were kind of like, hey, would it be okay if I came and, you know, like onboarded with your guys or whatever? And, uh, because, you know, he's been teaching the concept for, for so long. So he, you know, allows a couple people to come in. And I remember like for me thinking back, like obviously we're here, we're running the store.

17:36I mean, back then it's me, it's Jose, it's, you know, it's, it's Mike Quinn, it's David, like all these guys that are out, you know, like Lewis, and then they're out like, you know, they've grown obviously. Um, and so he's upstairs training and it started out with just Todd. Yeah. Like he was kind of up there 2 days straight, man. That's a lot of work.

17:55Yeah. Like 2 days straight and then going for it, running the training. Right, right, right. And then so, um, yeah, like a few people were coming through or whatever and then it was like he was going to kind of open this up to, you know, some other, uh, other shops to kind of come through. And so for me, Uh, it was, you know, I didn't even realize I was like becoming a trainer, honestly.

18:15Yeah, me neither. Yeah. So I have this book. It's funny. If you, if you look at my Key to Key book, I don't know if you, I remember it. Yeah. If you've seen it, I have it in my desk and, um, it's like so unorganized, but it's organized in my brain, but it's like the book opened up and have all these Post-it notes and like RO numbers and stories and like checkpoints.

18:36And so he would bring me upstairs to kind of go through the technology side of it, because the technology obviously evolved since his first company, right? He had Polaroid cameras. Are you calling Todd old? No, no, no, not at all. Okay, because I am. Sorry, Todd. 1896. I mean, sorry, 1986. Had to throw that in there. I know he's listening. If he gives me a text, that's gonna be hilarious.

18:55So anyway, we're updating the technology. He always says that. He says the concept hasn't changed, it's just been updated with technology. So you're kind of walking him through those versions of the concept and we're kind of, and one thing I'll say, Todd says no pushback until you learn the concept. And then once you're fluent in the concept, then I'll take your feedback on how to improve the concept.

19:12So we're kind of creating the new training manuals in 2023. I'll hand it back. Yeah. And it's, nothing's really changed except for, like you said, like the, the technology in, and, and everything that has changed has just been enhanced. And so I was up there just teaching. Like the MotoVisuals and the digital inspections and how we sent those different than the industry sends it and things like that.

19:36And so it was just like, I would go up there usually for probably like, I don't know, 2, 3 hours. Oh, so I didn't even remember that. So it was Todd doing this training, then you would just kind of like chime in for your little section. Oh, I got you. He would actually call me up when it was my, when it was my time.

19:51And so I would come up and I would just, you know, speak to the group. Yeah. And, you know, I'd have— I had the, the big screen up and I would just kind of— I was kind of like walking a lot through, uh, TechMetric and just kind of showing them, you know, different things and telling different stories and whatnot. And it was, it was kind of unorganized in that sense.

20:11Yeah. But I— it's kind of like some of the same stuff we're putting in slideshows now, except it was just on the fly, right? And so, um, you know, I obviously started becoming more comfortable like teaching it And I didn't really realize that it was gonna be what it was gonna be then. I just was like, oh, hey, come up here and just like show them, you know, the, the process that, that you guys do downstairs.

20:34And that was pretty much it. And then like, I'm trying to remember when it like shifted into like moving over there, I guess. Did we ever train up there, you and I together? No, my first one was October 2023. And I think it was just my first one. I just let it rip. Normally at the hotel? Yeah, at the hotel. Normally in the upstairs trainings, I would just sit on the side and like, I felt confident enough eventually to just chime in when people Didn't know how to do the roleplay or stuff like that.

20:57And then, yeah, I think we just let it rip at the hotel. So did you and I did the hotel for the first time together? Yeah. October of 2023. So that was your first time and it was at the hotel? Yes, correct. Okay. Got it. About a year into me taking it seriously. 3 years in, in total. So. Okay, so let me back up.

21:15So you mentioned his name. You mentioned a couple of people's name, but one in particular that I'm going to focus on is Mike Quinn. So Mike Quinn comes in 2023. We're gonna define him, you know, he oversees the Houston market now and handles a lot of things operationally for Auto Shop Answers, or excuse me, for the Auto Hospitality Group and Auto Shop Answers in the form of Courtside training, which is kind of our advanced in the— it's even more in the trenches.

21:39Like you come through and you learn key-to-key, that's kind of like the first thing you learn. And then when you've been in our ecosystem for a while, you go to Courtside, which is at The Woodlands location, which, um, you know, all-time record month last month. They did $910,000 in revenue in July of 2026, $289,000 to the bottom line. We have big rent, big expenses, big corporate overhead, and they're playing the game at— along with Blaylock— at the, at the highest level in the world.

22:06So Courtside is going to be our advanced— kind of like if Key2Key is Business Model 101 fire hose of information, Courtside is gonna be Business Model 301, like kind of the next level class. And Mike Quinn runs that. But let me back up. He came in 2023 with no experience in the auto repair industry. And the story goes, he didn't know anything.

22:29If I'm the one teaching you what a control arm bushing is, you probably know nothing about cars. I remember showing him MotoVisuals. He gets a Tesla, he self-drives from The Woodlands to Houston, which is about an hour. And he learns MotoVisuals, he learns about cars, and he actually had a successful landscaping business. Part of the reason why we recruited him, and shout out Todd for identifying Mike's talent and capacity.

22:53And he works at 1010 Blaylock for a year, and in what I believe was December of 2023, so he came in February, in December he takes over as general manager of the Woodlands location and kind of earned his stripes for the last 2 years. And in 2025, they did $7 million. They're on pace for $7.4 million this year with way more net.

23:15And in March of 2026, he got promoted, if you will, to oversee the entire Houston market and handle a lot of things operationally for Auto Hospitality Group. So that is a key person we talk about and we call him Q Pine. Like, do you remember the story for Q Pine? Pork Q Pine? I gave him the name. Yeah, a lot of people may not even know that, or remember that, because we had 2 Q's here.

23:39Oh yeah, yeah. So we had Q, and his name was Q, and I believe Mike used to be called Q also. Yeah, I think is what it had. So, um, you know, I've given a lot of the nicknames around here. Yeah, believe it or not. And people may not even realize that, but I'm always trying to think of a nickname like when they first start, which is, you know, because everybody loves to have a nickname.

24:00Yeah. And so Um, yeah, it's from the Steve Harvey from the Family Feud. I'm gonna— it's worth it. I'm gonna explain it. It— there's basically Family Feud and, uh, it's like words that come after pork and the answers are like pork belly, pork rinds, and somebody gets up there and he goes, Q-pine. And Steve Harvey goes to his face and he's like, are you trying to say porcupine?

24:24And then it's just so funny. And so we started calling Q Q-pine. That's the origin of the nickname. I'll keep it moving, but Mike, key player in the concept, oversees a lot of the operations and also has a deep, deep knowledge for the business. So moving on, I already mentioned Charlie Zlacos and Bill Broussard, founding partners of the Auto Hospitality Group, shop owners, but so much more than that.

24:46Um, you know, Charlie Zlacos is going to be the future COO. He owns Pleasant Car Care. He has an emphasis and specialty on back-of-the-house operations, rack attack, inspecting cars. He is a master technician. Listen to his podcast episode for his story. Greek immigrant turned Master Tech to Millionaire. So amazing story. Bill Broussard, also a founding member along with my parents. All 3, Perry Adams, Bill Broussard, and Charlie Zlatkos are master technicians by trade.

25:14That is the whole point of the podcast is master technicians being transformed by Todd Hayes' Auto Hospitality concept into millionaires. Master Tech to Millionaire. So Bill Broussard, Chief Growth Officer, he founded JB Auto Care. He is, you know, has a special emphasis on acquisitions, banking, lending, real estate growth. You know, the story on him is he was a Bible study partner for Todd and got Todd out of retirement to relaunch his consulting career, and none of us would be here without Bill, so shout out Bill.

25:42I already talked about Jose Garcia. He is a stud. I mean, can't— I can't just glaze over Jose. What a freaking rock star. He's a machine, heart and soul of now AutoCare and formerly Adams Automotive, but he's still part of the same team. He is a machine, horsepower. Love you, Jose, shout out. And then fast forward, so we grow AutoShop Answers, I become a trainer, you become a trainer, we start iterating on the process and kind of like the framework for how Todd, you know, it was a lot of work to distill Todd's 40 years of experience into like words and thoughts and ideas and then put them into a slideshow and then for us

26:18to figure out how to train on that accurately and sort of give a presentation that is energetic and passionate and also clearly communicates what Todd has been training for the last 40 years in a way that sort of, you know, we try to do our best to preempt the most common questions and frameworks and we try to communicate it to single-unit operators, multi-unit operators, you know, organization presidents, so on and so forth.

26:43And we are where we're at today. So, I'll go to a couple more key players. In 2025, the business grew or continued to grow, had grown, and we decided to expand our business. So we did some— I don't know if acquisition is the right way to call it, but we merged with some of our platform partners. That's going to be the Bartel family, which is in the Chicago market.

27:09Shout out Amy and Adam and Pat. The Massengill family, which is going to be Lynn and the team at Premier Auto. They've got 2 stores. They are rocking and rolling. All-time record, $780,000 out of the Oodawa location. Shout out. That's crazy. Crazy net. And then JJ Montt, which we met JJ at ASTA in September of 2023, and in 2025 he came into the Auto Hospitality Group platform.

27:33He has an all-time record month of $616,000 in April of 2026, $237,000 at the bottom. He's an animal. And we had a very large business and now it was time to integrate that business financially, which is extraordinarily difficult. Um, and we brought on a CFO, and his name is Matt Keys. He is in charge of our back office and reporting function. Um, he alongside me runs the Back Office Blueprint, which is another offering that we have through Auto Shop Answers.

28:01We learn how to set up our P&L, or we share how we set up our P&L, how we run our back office, recruiting for the back office, AI in the back office, all things back office, what to look at at a P&L, where the money's leaking. Front of house, loaded cost, gross profit, how to track gross profit. It goes on forever, but it's a tremendously difficult job.

28:20Matt has done a great job, um, you know, taking the ball and running with it for consolidating 14 different P&Ls across our platform. It's actually even more, um, but I can't talk about the back office without talking about a partner in the Auto Hospitality Group, Sadie Nguyen. Shout out Sadie. She, uh, doesn't get— you know, we don't talk about her much in Key to Key because she's Uh, in the trenches in the back office, but she is our controller for the platform.

28:45She's a partner in the business. We couldn't do it without her. She handles the day-to-day oversight of the back office when it comes to, you know, controlling who gets paid and putting the P&Ls together and all that. Um, can't go without talking about her. Next, we've got Michael Floyd, key character. He oversees our AI department, Chief AI Officer. Um, he came on board in 2025 as well.

29:08Man, technology, data, internal systems. I think AI is taking over the world. Come to our AIX class. It's another offering that we have for AutoShop Answers. It's the Friday before training, like whatever, 2 or 3 months or so. It's very popular right now. Michael's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. He's like talking to a robot. Everything you say to him, he's putting through ChatGPT.

29:27He's the GOAT. Next, and I'm going so fast here, it's not a typical episode. Todd Westerland, shout out Todd Westerland. He is the president of Auto Shop Answers, and I'm actually gonna hand it off to you, Glenn. Do you want to walk the people through Todd, Brian, Gary, the whole Auto Shop Answers team, and kind of what those different businesses are— retail, internal— and how it serves the, uh, the overall auto hospitality platform?

29:51Yeah, so, um, so Todd Westerland, I mean, really just, man, does such an amazing job of just kind of organizing and coordinating everything from Uh, from Key2Key to like courtside and getting that all set up for us, uh, you know, alongside with Dr. Dana, obviously, uh, stud, you know, and just getting that all done. So like just thinking about like we show up.

30:13Yeah, I— all I do is run the company with Glenn and Mike and the amazing team and then show up to Key2Key. I don't do anything for Key2Key anymore, hardly. Yeah, so, so everybody having like their own skill sets, like what they do, and that, that makes it just very easy for us because like you know, we just get the list like, okay, boom, here's who's coming, and we show up and then we get to, you know, do our thing.

30:33Uh, so Todd does, you know, a phenomenal job. Uh, as far as Brian, so we got Brian Rhodes Auto Shop Recruiting. Um, that is, you know, just another amazing, uh, you know, company that we have and an offering out there where when you come through Key2Key, you're going to learn that, you know, most of what we talk about is people. Okay, it's having enough people and having the right people.

30:56And so, uh, Brian is, you know, uh, the head of the recruiting department and a partner in Auto Shop Recruiting. And so, um, you know, that's also available not just to our company but also to everybody that comes through. And beyond that, really, for anybody that needs, you know, recruiting in automotive, like, we've got you covered there. Uh, Gary Walker, superstar, uh, Auto Shop Callbacks.

31:21Love Auto Shop Callbacks. Um, you know, you got to probably listen to my story to hear my aha moment on callbacks. I could just go on for days about callbacks. Uh, but Gary and his team, um, you know, handle all of the, uh, pre-booking, which is part of Todd's original concept. Uh, for those of you, uh, you know, that have heard of that, uh, key, you know, key to key to callbacks, you know, the callbacks part of it, it's like, like the biggest thing a lot of companies miss that, like getting them back, like basically outbound marketing.

31:51How do I get customers to come back? The flywheel is what Todd says. So Gary, he's just, uh, I'll hand it back off. Yeah, and people, you know, they misunderstand that. Like for instance, um, when I was— when we were going through Gary's numbers, like we did what, $1.8 million in a month? Yeah, in a month in pre-booked callback revenue. Okay, and so, you know, I've been talking to people about this over the years, and one thing they're like, oh yeah, like man, that's a lot of uh, you know, sales that you guys generate off of declined services.

32:20I'm like, no, no, it's not declined services. That's where people get it wrong. They think it's, uh, declined services that we're calling back. It's not declined services. It's us pre-booking the next visit for their next oil change, for their next state inspection, for their fluid exchanges, for their warranty inspection. And so we can capture, uh, you know, 6 visits, like, you know, off of one visit.

32:43And we have, I mean, man, I could go on for days about that. I get very passionate and excited about Auto Shop Callbacks because, man, Gary does such an amazing job and it is such a huge part of what we do every day and how we book our schedules. And, and so that's available to everybody out there, whether it be next day satisfaction callbacks, whether it be, you know, deeper into, you know, those, you know, pre-book callbacks.

33:10So, um, yeah, I mean, just absolutely love all those people. Who else did you mention? Yeah, well, last one is, uh, I hope I didn't miss anybody, but we've got 2 more. Josh Byers, excuse me, Auto Shop Media. Uh, he handles all things media. All things media. If you heard about this on, um, a Facebook post or on LinkedIn or on a shop tour or YouTube video, or maybe even this podcast just popped up in your feed, uh, he's the one producing all the shop tours and media across our company.

33:35He's amazing at storytelling, we love having him on the team. And then I believe last but not least is gonna be Josh Northup, what a stud. He handles our inbound kind of arm of Auto Shop Callbacks, he oversees all things inbound. You know, we talk a lot about phones and booking rates and, you know, what do we do when the phone rings?

33:52We say yes, we use the Anytime Presentation. Josh has an entire team of people that just say yes on the phones and utilize the Anytime Presentation, but he's so much more, he's like an AI super nerd. That's a compliment, Josh, if you're listening to this. We're really happy to have him on the team. So I think I covered all the key players that we refer to throughout our key to key to callbacks.

34:12Now I'm going to go through the entities one more time. We've got the various brands. Adams Automotive has 3 locations in Houston. Now Auto Care has 2 locations in Houston. Pleasant Car Care, 2 locations in Boston. JB Auto Care, 1 location in Boston. Bartell's has 3 locations in Chicago. Premier Tire and Auto, 2 locations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and JJ's Auto Service, 1 location in Waldorf, Maryland, outside of Washington, DC.

34:37We've got Auto Shop Answers training, Auto Shop Callbacks, all things calls. We've got Auto Shop Recruiting, all things recruiting. We've got Auto Shop Media, all things shop tour, media, commercials, so on and so forth. We've got AI training, back office training. We've got our accounting department. That's pretty much it. That's pretty much the whole company. Uh, you know, there's real estate companies in there.

34:57There's a whole bunch of stuff that you're gonna come out to see in person. Um, but that is pretty much the entities and the people who run the entities. And now we're gonna go through some of our key terms in our— we're gonna do rapid fire. We're gonna do our key terms in the language of, uh, auto hospitality and what they mean.

35:15So key to key to callbacks, that's number 1. And Courtside, I already talked about that. National Onboarding Program 101 and National Onboarding Program 301. Advanced. Next we've got VIP Rack Attack. Um, first let's define Rack Attack. Rack Attack is going to be our inspection process. Every car that comes in, we inspect it in 15 minutes on a speed rack. It's called a Rack Attack.

35:38On the speed rack, we get all the pictures and videos, we put them in TechMetric, and we take pictures and videos, we send them to the customer, and then we push the car in the parking lot. Then when the parts get there, the technician can fix the car all at once. On Friday night for our training weekends, you get to see an in-person rack attack.

35:57And at courtside, you get to basically participate in the trenches while they are rack attacking cars all day. And we also have a VIP rack attack day, which is a full day, which Glenn, I wanna tell you, I want you to talk about. Yeah. So VIP rack attack day is gonna be the Friday before the key-to-key weekend. Mm-hmm. Um, We start with the Take 5, which we do every single day.

36:17So you get to participate in the Take 5. And then after that, we get to go straight in the trenches and we work all day long in the trenches with our team. Yeah, I tell people, you know, it's, it's more of an unstructured event. Like, like Courtside is a very structured event. It's, it's key-to-key classroom mixed with you know, breakout groups and kind of these different rotating deals.

36:46Uh, VIP Rack Attack Day is like— I, I tell people it's like, you know, it's like going on a safari. Oh yeah, you know, it's like you're going, you don't know what's going to happen. It's very— it's unstructured in that sense because I want everybody to see like what really happens on an everyday, uh, an everyday basis at 10/10 with our team, and you're just basically in the trenches now.

37:07On that one, we don't have— we can't have a lot of people, right? Because it's, you know, just right outside in Bay 1. We have a lot of show and sell, a lot of show sales happening with customers that are waiting there. But it's definitely just a more intimate experience in terms of like we get to spend more time with people individually, uh, being a smaller group.

37:27And you just get to get right there in the trenches with us and do it. And, you know, we've been running some massive days I think we did what, 45,000 this last one? This last one, yeah. Uh, they're always— and stay the whole time. We had somebody leave, we had a group leave one time at noon to catch a flight or something or go eat lunch, and then they just— we were at 5,000 by noon and we ended the day at 40, and it's like they left.

37:49It's so crazy. I was like, man, what'd you pay for? You know, they thought we sucked or something. Yeah, well, there's different, you know, there's different, uh, types of people that are coming through, right? So, um, you know, we talk about the vacationer We talk about the hostage and we talk about the sponge. And so like the vacationer, you know, the owner sent me down, I'm going to Houston for the weekend, I'm gonna go like hang out and just go through the motions, right?

38:13And so that's a vacationer, right? Gonna have a good time, gonna have some fun, right? You got the hostage, which is like, okay, I have to go or I'm gonna get fired, or like you need to go or you're gonna get fired, which is never good. And then you have the sponge, the ones that are there to learn. And so we know, we can tell, pretty quick in the trenches.

38:30Like, they have gloves on, they're racking and stacking cars, like they're ready to go. And so they're in there with us, uh, and we can really tell a big difference. But yeah, if somebody's leaving, man, you're gonna miss a lot because a lot of things happen around here between 4 and 6 PM. Yeah, because we're saying horsepower. Yeah, people getting off work, noises, need an oil change, whatever it is, we're saying yes all the way till, till we leave.

38:52And so sometimes we have $30,000, you know, between 4 and 6 PM. I've seen it. Yeah, it's crazy. And so we never know what that's going to be. So, um, a little long-winded there, but I think it's super important, you know, because, um, you know, I think everybody should experience that, especially, uh, if you've been to the— like, you know, you're going to come Friday night and we're going to do the kind of the 30-minute little intro to Key to Key.

39:18But after you go to Key to Key, I think it's best to come back and do the whole day with us and like see the safari. Yeah, it's great. Okay, so next we've got 1010. We've been talking about that a lot. That's the address for the Blaylock 50-bay location, 1010 Blaylock. My dad just wrote that down on a piece of paper back in the '80s.

39:36It's crazy, just 1010 Blaylock. That's the address. We call it 1010. Bay 1, this is a hot topic. So Bay 1 is the first bay that's going to be where you inspect the cars, but it has evolved into a colloquial term for undesirable customer. And be very careful. We talk about Bay Ones, but do not get it twisted. Do not utilize it as an excuse, um, that we don't work on cars for undesirable customers.

40:03And when you go back from training, Blaylock and 1010 and the A-Team, Adams, they don't work on Bay Ones either. We, we do business with undesirable customers just like everybody else, and we have to fight for it. But we are gonna run the process and only the general manager, the decision maker of the location can make a decision on whether to do what we call punting and undesirable does not mean bad customer, like not a bad person but at the end of the day, we are a business and I have to run the business efficiently in order to take care of our people and in my head, my mental model, I think it's like 8%,

40:40I heard Tommy Mello say he's got 8% of customers that are guaranteed 1-star reviews if they come in and run through the whole process. And so whatever that number is for you and your market, you know what I'm talking about. It's a customer that comes in just very aggressive, company car is a million years old, it's been worked on by a million different technicians, it's not a customer you want to work on their car, their car is not worth investing in, and they're an unreasonable person.

41:03And that's okay. It's okay that some customers are unreasonable and might not like us, and that's totally fine. We call them a Bay 1, and that means, hey, I need the manager to make a decision here. Are we going to do business with this customer? And are we going to keep it or are we going to punt it? Do you have any thoughts on Bay 1?

41:18Yeah, so it's very important, don't use it as an excuse. Button it up, they're a Bay 1. Do not do that. But we use the term all the time. Well, that's why I actually came up with the term Bay 1, is because we can't be a no company, correct? We have to be a yes company. We can't qualify customers, we don't do that.

41:33We have to get the vehicle in the shop and then we're going to inspect it and we're going to move very fast on it. And so yeah, I was trying to figure out a way, like, how can we identify like a name, right? We don't want to you know, you know, I don't know, we just want to have something to where we can kind of have our own code word.

41:49Um, and so I was like, all right, how about Bay 1? We're gonna pull it in really fast in Bay 1. And the initial thought was that little outside bay. It actually wasn't the bay— Bay 0. Yeah, it's like Bay 0. It wasn't the actual bay that we PMI the cars out of. It was that first bay in that corner there. I was like, we'll just pull them in right there, Bay 1.

42:06We'll inspect it. We're gonna find out really quick, you know, kind of what we're working with. If it's vehicle's not worth investing in, we can let them know really quick, and then we can help point them in a direction that might be better suited for them if they're not the customer that's going to kind of fit into our model. And so that's where the term came, came from.

42:20Now you have to be like, like Joe said, you have to be very careful. We can't just qualify customer, and people will use that term loosely, and people will kind of throw that out there. A car— I mean, you got to be careful with this. I remember a car pulled on the drive one time and somebody looked out there and they're like, uh, Bay 1.

42:35Yeah, just by looking at it, shut up. Exactly. Like, you can't do that. This customer was the son of one of our VIP superstar customers. For sure, yeah. And the car didn't look great, right? You see, sometimes the car's not great, but the customer's great. There you go. It's the— my dad says it's the nut behind the wheel. It's the customer that you're dealing with, not the car sometimes.

42:57It's exactly, you know, it really comes down to the customer because we all know and everybody listening knows sometimes you have a really bad car and a great customer. And sometimes you have a great car and a not so great customer. Yeah, I've been there too. Range Rover, freaking jewelry everywhere. You probably know the customer I'm talking about. And it's like, bad customer.

43:15Like, it was, it was hard, you know, it didn't work out. So we're trying to, like you say, we're trying to diagnose the customer. Yep. Not the car. Yes. So Bay 1, we throw that around a lot. Um, so that's good context. Next, speed rack. I already defined this. It's where we inspect the cars really fast. PMI, that's stands for preventative maintenance inspection.

43:34It basically means the work that we're going to find on the car that they didn't come in for. If I say I'm PMIing the car, that's synonymous with I'm rack attacking the car, but it just means I'm looking for additional, you know, preventative maintenance inspection, looking for additional items on the vehicle. Rack attack, we talked about that. ISO, this stands for isolate, but we call it an ISO.

43:54That's what the customer came in for, so I've got to know If it says check brakes, that means the ISO is their brakes. If it says, hey, the rear window is not going up and down the right way, then the rear window is going to be their ISO, and then the rest of it is what we're going to PMI the car for.

44:09Next, additional concern. This is also synonymous with PMI. Moving around the bases. So this is good. So the ISO is going to be first base, what they came in for. Part of our concept, Todd's Auto Hospitality concept, is when they come in for breaks, you talk to them about your breaks, and then you get permission to do what's called moving them around the bases, moving them to second base and third base.

44:31He watched the movie Moneyball in whenever that came out with Brad Pitt. And he was like, oh my gosh, that's my concept. I don't need home run hitters. I just got to get on first base. Billy Beane, Oakland Athletics, Brad Pitt. So he was like, man, I just need to get on first base, and then I can move them around the bases.

44:47So that is what Moving Around the Bases, and Moneyball is, which is gonna be our group chat, which is open to the public, anybody's allowed on there, where we basically race every single day to $5,000, $10,000, $20,000. It's all authorized sales, it's company culture, it's keeping an eye on everybody, it's having fun, competition. Yeah, that's the concept, is Moneyball. Do you have any thoughts on that?

45:10I'm thinking IsoPlay here. That's what I'm thinking. I'm sorry. That's an inside joke. I did not expect that. That's for my team. I'm thinking. Okay, let's move around. Moving on. Well, let's continue to move around the bases. So next is gonna be the gotta have. There's 2 definitions here, so one is the gotta have on the car. Clint's still laughing, that's so funny.

45:35One is gonna be the gotta have on the car. If they come in for an oil change or a state inspection, we are trying to get on first base and identify the most unsafe thing on the car and communicate that with the customer and then get them a ride home and then move them around the bases. So if that is metal-to-metal brakes and the rest of their car is good, then great, the gotta-have is going to be the metal-to-metal brakes.

45:56Now, key distinction here, if they have a bunch of unsafe things on their car, I'm not gonna— like, that's all in the strategy. People think we withhold information and, you know, trap customers into working on their car. That is absolutely not what we were doing. Total integrity. We are a faith-based business. Um, but we are trying to identify the unsafe concerns or the gotta-haves, and sometimes there's more than one that we are going to communicate with the customer in order to convert them from an oil change or a state inspection to an ISO, which is first base.

46:26Get them on first base and then move them around the bases for the maintenance and so on and so forth. And let me, let me touch on that real quick. It actually helps for customers to digest it. Well, digest it, but trust you more, honestly. Yeah. Because our industry is saying, hey, you came in for an oil change and you need $10,000 worth of work or $5,000 worth.

46:46So, so people that look at it the other way around, like you guys are inspecting the car the way that you do, if they look at that like it's an integrity issue, I would, you know, I would challenge that it's actually the other way around. And so The important part for everybody to understand is we don't ever, ever start working on a customer's car until they know everything.

47:09Until they know everything, yeah. That is wrong with their car. We just don't necessarily give all the information at once because that's what our industry does. And so before the customer makes their final decision on the repairs, they know everything that's going on with their car. That's a very, very important part of it because people don't understand that. They think even— and this is another part We teach this all the time and we go through and like you said, it's a, it's a, you know, 2 days of drinking through a fire hose.

47:37And sometimes we take for granted that people catch it all and they don't because we'll go through and we'll explain this sometimes multiple times. And at the end of it all, they still don't get that. So it's a very, very important part. I got to say it one more time. We don't start working on the car until the customer knows everything. So as an example, if they come in and I'm going to get a little deeper into this because I really want to.

47:57It's really important. Yeah. If a customer comes in and they've got an issue with their right rear window doesn't go up and down, right? Okay, not a safety concern necessarily. And we inspect the car and we see that the tire is showing steel. Okay, we're going to diagnose the window issue and then we're going to present that to the customer first. Yeah, even though we saw that there's a tire showing steel.

48:23Okay, the reason is we have to build trust with the customer. They didn't tell me to check their tires. So if we say, hey, you're in here for your window and we saw that your tire is showing steel and you need to replace it, that's exactly what the customer is like afraid of. Afraid of. I'm going to bring it in for a window and they're going to tell me I need tires or whatever, right?

48:46So we're going to tell them about the window, but we're not going to— we're going to present that to them. And if they approve that, we're still going to call them back and talk to them about any other safety concerns on that next call. Before we touch their window so that we can move that money to the safety concern if need be.

49:02That's a very important part of it. Yes. And what do you think about what if there's— I just hit the mic there. What if it's— because I think people have this question and it's an important question and there's so many variables that it depends on the situation. But what if it's metal-to-metal brakes and a torn axle and really bad leaking rear shocks?

49:23Do you present one of them and kind of withhold the other ones that are unsafe, or do you present them all, or does it just depend on the strategy of the car? Because it's always with integrity, but we are trying to earn the customer's business because we believe that honestly, you know, Todd believes this, we've got to keep the customers out of low-integrity shops that are going to keep— that are going to put garbage parts on the car by a low-paid technician who may not have as much experience as ours.

49:49So It's all in the strategy to earn the customer for life because that's how you drive a business, but there's always, there's no real one rule to it. It's kind of just, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, I'm answering my own question, but it's kind of like, what is the strategy for this particular customer to convert them from an oil change and get them on First Phase?

50:08Give me your thoughts. Yeah, so it does depend a lot. So one thing that we also do is called an emotional call or emotional conversation. I think that's super important. Important part of this. And look, at the end of the day, customer goes on an emotional roller coaster when they bring their car into the shop. It's like, how long is it going to take?

50:26How much are they going to charge me? Like, all the anxiety that goes with that. If I have to leave it, how long is it going to take? So they already have that on their plate aside from having to deal with whatever it is you're going to tell. So we're going to get the car in, we're going to get it inspected, and if it's a waiter, um, it kind of depends.

50:43First, we're gonna do a shop tour. Obviously, right? So we do a shop tour and, and that allows us to really break down some barriers, barriers with the customer. And we get a lot of data from the customer. We learn about them, we learn about their car, we're diagnosing the customer. Um, and then we're going to take them over to the vehicle.

50:58So if it needed brakes and needed an axle and it needed rear shocks, is that what you're asking me? Um, I mean, brakes and axle I'd probably talk to him about in that same conversation, but the part of the emotional uh, you know, conversation is I don't necessarily have to give a price on everything at once, right? So I get— I mean, brakes are metal to metal, number one.

51:20That's number one concern. That's what I would call the number one safety concern. So yeah, so I would take the customer out and we would show sell the brakes. Okay, now the axle's right there, so I would have a conversation. Look, these brakes need your immediate attention. We have the caliper back, by the way, for— that's part of our inspection process, probably another podcast.

51:39You know, we have that caliper back, we've got the brake measuring tool, we're gonna give an amazing presentation, MotoVisuals up on the screen, we're ready. We are ready and dialed to have this presentation. And so I'm gonna take the customer out, show them the brakes. Now these brakes need your immediate attention. And we're gonna go ahead and get you a ride home, we'll go ahead and get started on it.

51:57I'm gonna look over the rest of the vehicle while it's here. I did see this axle, if you look at this axle right here, you see how it's torn right there? That definitely needs your immediate attention as well. Why don't I go ahead and get you a ride home and I'll give you a call with an update here in just a little bit.

52:08Now sometimes that's with no price. Yeah, sometimes it's just right there. And if they want a price, they're probably gonna say, well, how much is that gonna cost? Yeah, but if they're like, oh wow, yeah, give me a ride home, I don't even need to give them a price because they're buying it. Yeah, right, they need it, why wouldn't they? Um, but they might say, hey, I need— let me get a price on that.

52:25Maybe we, we might give an estimate on the brakes right there and, hey, look, let me get an estimate on the axle. We need to get the brakes done, I got to get you a ride home, I'll call you back with the price on the axle. That might be another way of doing it. A lot of it just comes down to the feel of the customer.

52:37You know, um, so yeah, there's no one way to do it, but I think when you have, um, you know, a team that understands how to strategize— and we have a lot, I mean, it's just, it's just too much to cover in here or on here. Yeah. When you learn how to strategize with the team and understand how to read the defense, like we like to call it, um, it really helps to kind of set that up.

53:00So it's kind of like, it's kind of like a Mexican restaurant, you know. They first, they sit you down and they're like, you want a margarita? You know, and then it's like they move you around the bases. They do the same thing. They know, there's a pro at least, maybe most people aren't doing this, they'd be strategizing exactly the timing of when they're gonna drop the second margarita and then when the appetizers are gonna come and the queso and the entree.

53:17You know, we liken it to, you know, if you come in for fajitas, like you're gonna get fajitas but we're gonna walk you through the process. You know, like it's maybe not a perfect analogy but, you know, when you sit down at the Mexican restaurant for a family of 4, they're not like, hey, by the way, It's gonna be a minimum diagnostic fee of $650 to eat for your family of 4.

53:37Well, that'd be a lot of money for 4 people but you see what I'm saying like they don't just give you the bill upfront for the entire thing. They slowly walk you through the menu and through the process of communicating everything that you're gonna be paying for. So I'll move on, that is a very— we should do a whole podcast on that one because I almost like a webinar or like a Q&A because we always get a ton of questions about that.

53:57Next, is going to be— this is a technical term— gravy. Most of the industry probably already knows what this is. Everybody knows gravy is going to be— it's probably definable. It's probably over 70% gross profit, easy work. Like, that's probably like the definition. Work that technicians like to do that makes some money, that's easy and low recheck rate. Gravy is going to be rear shocks, brakes, axle, tires.

54:19It's not going to be, hey, check engine light goes on and off when I'm going up and down hills when I was out of town, and only when it's cold outside, and you have to chase that down forever. That stinks. That would be called TNG. That's called totally not gravy. That's a technical term for you probably don't want to work in this car because, you know, we had some guy at training this weekend.

54:39They were like, wow. So what do you do for the people who think you guys are soft? A soft shop? Oh, wow. Oh yeah. So funny. I was like, hold on, hold on. One, I'll unpack that big time in Key to Key. I have to prioritize the business and earnings in order to take care of the people and pay the people the money that they're worth with benefits and uniforms and a winning culture.

54:57And my dad's rule is emotional satisfaction from fixing the car that's really hard to fix is fine, but it doesn't show up on the bottom line. And what that means is the only person that you can help by fixing cars and being the best possible technician in the world that fixes the most difficult cars, the only person that you can help really is yourself through the form of emotional satisfaction.

55:18And that's how my dad started in business. He, uh, I'm gonna go a little deeper here, is he started by he didn't know how to market and get customers, so he called all the other shops and he said, hey, all the cars that you do not want to work on, send them my way and I can fix anything. And he got customers.

55:33But watching the TechMetric documentary, uh, you know, actually wait to watch that during the training, but if you've seen it, you've heard him say, I got a bunch of crap cars and crap customers. That's my dad's cowboy, uh, in him translating to they just don't make any money for the business. The customer doesn't want to spend that money to invest in their vehicle.

55:52Just because you can fix it doesn't mean you should. And ultimately, you're not selling auto repair, you are selling auto hospitality. And if you start selling that product, then you have no competition in the industry and you can pay people what they're worth. And you don't have to, you know, we don't beat our chest, we don't beat our chest that we're the best technicians in town, but we do have the best technicians in town because we could pay them, uh, what they're worth for their knowledge and their expertise.

56:19So TNG, Totally Not Gravy, it's a pretty funny one but had to focus on that. Um, Moto Visuals, this is going to be our animations that we use through, um, what's the vendor that produces those, do you know? Uh, Advance. Advance. So we use those Moto Visuals, you're going to learn about that in training. It's going to be animations that we send to customers that explain the functionality of parts in their car.

56:39Next, um, shop tour, That's our physical tour around the shop, the new customer introduction, where we are trying to identify the person's buying habits and build a relationship, identify why they fired their last shop, what's their pain, and how can I fix that pain in order to earn their business. Remember, you are diagnosing the person, not the vehicle, and introducing them to the company.

57:02Next is going to be Moneyball. I talked about that. Boom is going to be— we use that all the time. That means like Let's go, basically. Like boom, like that's a boom, like I got a boom, that's going to be a customer approving a sale. Uh, next is going to be a hammer. What's a hammer, Glenn? And it's all facets of a hammer, you can be a hammer in any department.

57:19What's a hammer, Glenn? Yeah, so that's one of the ones that I think people do get mixed up on. True, good point. I've heard people like, whoa, hang on a second, we're not trying to hammer customers. So they, they use the word in the wrong— aggressive. Yeah, it doesn't mean aggressive, it just like stud, like stud, Superstar, like just like an A-player is how we define hammer.

57:39So just, you know, because I think, you know, in other industries, maybe it's car dealer industry or whatever, I don't know, like a hammer is somebody that's just gonna like apply pressure and just beat people up. And so it's not that we use the word as basically a superstar, A-player. A-player is a hammer for us, man. A hammer is what you want to be.

57:57If you're not a hammer, can't work here. Sorry. Sorry, not sorry. Okay, next is Take 5. A Take 5 is going to be our morning huddle for 15 minutes plus. We show up 15 minutes before operating hours at all of our locations and a Take 5 is we talk about the business model, exactly what we're talking about today. What did we do wrong yesterday?

58:18How can we improve? What did we do right? How are we doing on our videos, our pictures? How are we doing on our inspection process? Recruiting, do you know anybody? You know, here's how we answer the phones, so on and so forth. We're gonna talk about the concept for 2 days in Key2Key, and it's your job to go have a morning meeting to train on that concept, to basically distill all that knowledge that you tried to learn in 2 days back into your team.

58:41And you're gonna find out that it's really hard because you haven't learned the language. And I had no idea this podcast would go for this long with all these key terms. It's like crazy how much there is to the language. So it takes a while to learn it, but you learn it by doing take 5. You know, there's an analogy, you don't, You know, if you've got a bunch of cavities in your teeth, you don't just brush your teeth for 48 hours straight.

59:00You have to brush your teeth every day for 5 minutes or 2 minutes every day for a long time and then you have clean teeth. Like it's not, you don't get in shape by working out for 48 hours straight. You get in shape by working out for 15, 20 minutes every day for a long time and then you learn the language of getting in shape and so on and so forth.

59:16So take 5 is gonna be our morning meeting. We don't focus on parts and what we're, you know, what parts are we waiting on and technician hours. We have to do that sometimes but I've noticed that a lot of times in take 5s, it kind of deteriorates into shop talk, you know, how you guys doing, you know, what do you guys think?

59:32No, it is a planned and recorded and documented playbook. It is planned by a professional. Glen has the best take 5s in the world, you know. Our team is very focused on the take 5 because it is, you know, think about training, like 15 minutes times 361 or whatever days a year that we're open, how many hours of training is that per year?

59:55That's 100+ hours of training. That's how valuable that time is. And so make sure it doesn't deteriorate into, you know, how was y'all's weekend? You know, that's fine. There's time for that. But we're focused. It's the NFL. It's the huddle before we go and run the plays. Next. It's like Super Bowl Sunday. You know, Tom Brady's in the huddle. He's like, hey, so, hey, Gronk, like, how was your weekend?

1:00:16You know, it doesn't work like that. Like, we're intense. Okay, next, a couple more. I'll breeze through these. Second voice tag team. If a service advisor misses a sale, generally the general manager or a hammer or somebody else on the team will, you know, introduce themselves to the customers, talk to the customers, they'll try again. You know, we don't believe the car, the sale is missed until the car is fixed by us or somebody else.

1:00:39Next, you know, we've got a couple more, but those are, those make sense, you'll understand those in the context. Okay, last section, man. What to expect at Key2Key. Glenn, I've been talking for a while. What can these people expect from Key to Key? What kind of energy are we looking for out of the weekend? Well, we're gonna have a lot of fun.

1:00:57We're gonna clap a lot. Yeah, I know that. What's the record? Uh, I think Courtside has the record now. It's like 350 plus. 350. We clap a lot. Um, well, I would say this. I think the biggest thing is I want to really encourage everybody to come in with an open mind. Um, you're coming. Don't be the hostage, you know. Don't be the vacationer.

1:01:16Just like come in and try and be the sponge because, you know, sometimes it starts out on that Rack Attack night when I've got a group of people there and we're trying to kind of explain the concept in 15 minutes, like to kind of set up the next day. And a lot of people just, you know, they want to kind of poke holes.

1:01:34Okay, so I can tell you this. Todd has been teaching this concept since 1986. It is a perfected model. We have watched shops double, triple, quadruple in revenue. Amazing culture. If you're listening to this podcast, you're going to hear from a lot of the people that are in our organization, and you'll get to kind of just listen to it. And it's— and this is real.

1:01:53And so it works. And so I— the biggest thing is not necessarily what to expect. I think come in with an open mind, but like what we already can expect sometimes from some people and kind of how to like reframe your brain on this. Because look, we had somebody in, in, in the, in the class that was really poking holes And this was probably, I don't know, 6 months ago.

1:02:13And they just weren't getting it. And Charlie basically came and he, and he noticed that. And we kind of already knew this. They were kind of poking holes that night, that Friday night. And, um, Charlie was like, man, can you guys take a ride with me? And they came over to, uh, 1010. He took them over here. He's like, take a ride with me.

1:02:28He pulled them out of the class and they weren't getting it. And he took them over there and they were here for like an hour, I think, with Jose. And the team, and they were like, we get it. Yeah, I saw it. Yeah, I— oh my gosh, I see it. And they came back and the rest of the weekend was great. So, uh, as far as what to expect, it's, you know, man, it's just— there's so much, you know, to expect, you know.

1:02:53So it's hard for me to really get into all that, but I just think more of like how to kind of mentally prepare to come in. It's going to be something completely different than, you know, And be open to that, I think, is the biggest thing. Yeah, be open to it. And we're gonna talk about the business model. You know, the introduction is that, you know, there's 3 stages to the business.

1:03:12One, you are the business. Charlie, when he started in the business, he was the entire business. It was all— the business model was his mental model of how he understood the business, and it was all trapped inside his head. And the same thing happened to my dad. And you have got to figure out how to distill that knowledge in your brain into other people and go ahead and build the business.

1:03:30And then once you've distilled it into enough people's brains, they can distill that information into their direct reports and the business starts to build itself. So, what most people in the auto repair industry, it's the classic E-myth and it's, I'm really good at fixing cars so I should go open a business and fix cars for other customers instead of working for my boss so I can have all the money.

1:03:52And the thing that got you to the dance was your ability to fix cars and most people, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, hopefully, This isn't you, but most people think the better I get at fixing cars, the more customers I'll get. Well, that's not true, 'cause there's a lot of people who fix cars a lot better than us, you know, like performance shops and like build race cars.

1:04:09Shout out Hollywood, David Gann, you know, he's one of our amazing superstars. He built race cars. That is not why he had an $1,800 ticket average and sold $2.25 million in 2023. That's not why he's a general manager for us, because the better you fix the car is not the commodity really on the open market that is valuable for customers to pay money.

1:04:30Fixing cars is auto repair and that is a highly competitive race to the bottom, whoever's got the cheapest price is going to win the customer and when you have the cheapest price, you can't do anything for people, you can't do anything for your people in your business, you have to pay people less than what they're worth, you have to pay yourself less than what you're worth and you're probably working 100 hours a week because you haven't been able to communicate the business model that's in your head to all the people on your team.

1:04:56So, what do you do in Key to Key? We identify that the hospitality is what we're selling, the concept is what we are asking the customers to pay for, and the concept is what you can distill into your team members so that everybody operates in our business at Blaylock, for example, is Matt Keyes called it a hive mind. It's like everybody knows the plays, they all run the plays, and it's because they've practiced it over and over and over again.

1:05:21And we try to do our very best to cover almost all of it in 2 days, but it's very difficult. The core pillars of the concept are going to be, you know, predictability of customers, it's going to be advertising, it's going to be the phones, it's going to be the shop tour, meet and greet, introducing the customer to our business, it's going to be the recruiting journey of our business, we need amazing people, it's going to be the Rack Attack, it's going to be pictures and videos and utilizing technology and charging the right prices.

1:05:48And then it's gonna be scripting, what do we say to customers when they say this, we do that. What do we do in this situation, what do we do in that situation? And it's gonna be 2 days of nonstop, step by step, exactly what we do. Some trainings that I've been to, it's kind of conceptual, it's kind of, you know, kumbaya, and it's kind of like, you know, like, I love our training because we're in the game.

1:06:09We are in the game every day, I'm literally in my family shop recording this right now, and we've been here for 46 years, and Glen's been here for 6 going on 7 years. And we're in the game and we're literally communicating while we're winning the football games. It's like Tom Brady, wow, and I'm not comparing myself to Tom Brady, but man, like, it's the number one shop in the country, in the history of the country in my opinion, and we've got 14 for 14, you know, shops freaking running the concept, doing great numbers.

1:06:36Actually, you know, we got one store that we're working on right now, but I guarantee you that we're gonna fix it and we're gonna be, we're gonna have a royal flush of stores that are printing money and that money gets distributed not to us, some of it comes to us and that's great, but that's really just the scorecard of what we get to do to take care of our people, for them to go buy houses and them to take care of their family and have a retirement and a 401.

1:06:57So none of that can happen, kinda lost my train of thought there, but none of that can happen if you're selling auto repair. You have to be selling auto hospitality and we talk not about conceptual like, You know, it's not what you read in a book because people write a book and they have to apply it to like 50 different industries. This is our industry and if you're a shop owner listening to this, you have been grinding in a shop for a long time and so have we and we are communicating exactly what to do in dang near every situation that can happen in a shop from a customer service perspective and if you learn

1:07:31how to execute on auto hospitality, I can guarantee you it will change your life. It changed mine, changed Glen's, changed dang near every single person that's a partner in our company, employees in our company, technicians, service advisors, every single person. If you can learn the language of auto hospitality, I can promise you it will change your life. And Key to Key to Callbacks is really just the first 2-day boot camp of, of, of learning the language.

1:07:52So we can't wait to see you there. I think that's it. Glen, do you have anything else for the people or will you see them next time? Hey, I'm ready to see you next time. Come on down to 1010. I look forward to seeing everybody soon. All right, well, that was sick. That's the pod. Boom.