Profit Panel: How 3 Shops Put $750K+ to the Bottom Line in One Month - Bonus Zoom Episode 7

Good morning. Glenn Piccolo here with Adams Automotive bringing you another episode of Master Tech to Millionaire presented by Auto Shop Answers. Man, today we are kicking off the Profit Panel series. We are bringing together some of our amazing HPP partners to discuss the transformation in the profit in their businesses and just how much that has changed and what that looks like today versus a couple years ago. It's absolutely life-changing. Changing. More importantly, just sharing how this concept works across multiple markets, multiple demographics, uh, it will really change your perception on, uh, on our industry. Uh, it's absolutely incredible. So joining me today, man, we've got the amazing Charlie Zlatkos, uh, out of Massachusetts. We've got JJ Mont out of Waldorf, Maryland, and we've got Lynn Massengill out of Tennessee. Man, this is going to be absolutely amazing. Thank you guys so much for joining. Let's dive in. Man, what a great group of people we have on for the Profit Panel, man. We've got Charlie Zlatkos, we've got Lynn Massengill, we've got JJ Mont. And when you talk about the Profit Panel, man, what a perfect group of people to come on this morning and talk. If I add up the record net profits for these 3 guys out of a total, I guess it'd be a total of 5 stores, we're talking about a net profit of $750,000 to the bottom line in 1 month, by the way, in 1 month. JJ just had a record net profit. JJ, you online? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. What's going on, brother? Let's go. Record net? So record net was in, um, this is, it was 2 months ago, $236,000. Oh, $236,000 net. You know, we're talking a lot about, we're talking a lot about, um, you know, there, there's a lot of training companies out there that are teaching people how to make, you know, $10,000 that are making no money or moving from $10,000 to $15,000. And we're literally talking about making more net than you were grossing before you started. And we have stores that are you making more to the bottom? Are you putting more money to the bottom line than what you were doing in revenue several years ago? Absolutely. Absolutely. Man, it's crazy. It's crazy. And, and you know, another part of it is the market. You know, we hear a lot about, uh, the different markets and demographics and what, what a, you know, perfect group to be able to say, look, uh, let's look at some different demographics, some different markets because man, um, rural Tennessee, Lynn, Massingale. You're in rural Tennessee, huh? Oh yeah. Yeah. You get rural very fast when you drive in this from either shop for sure. Yeah. So we, so we'll hear that. We'll hear, man, I'm in a rural area. You can't do that in my market. We'll hear about rust when we do our rack attack. I show people how we do the rack attack. We hear that you can't do that with rust. And we've got obviously rust up in Boston with Charlie and some rust in Maryland, I would imagine. Yeah, not as much, definitely not as much as Charlie. But hey, man, but there's definitely some rust up there. And so, you know, looking at all 3 companies, they're, you know, just different shapes and sizes and they all end up with the same result,, which is obviously putting big money to the bottom line. So I actually wanted to start with Lynn this morning, who's doing $1 million out of 2 stores. I know you, I don't know exactly your record. I think $1.1 million out of 2 stores in a month, right? Putting big net to the bottom line and going back before you got through or came through Key2Key, what kind of revenue were you doing? Yeah, our record before Key2Key was $456,000 combined for 2 slots. $456,000 combined, two shops. And now you guys are putting a couple hundred thousand dollars to the bottom line, which is just absolutely incredible. Changed your business, changed your life. I've seen your, obviously your story and, you know, it's just so incredible. So what really changed, Lynn, for you? I wanted to start with you on this. What really changed Um, and how'd you get a better kind of understanding of, you know, kind of the numbers and how auto hospitality could really drive big net for you? Yeah, for us it was basically, Glenn, just a huge mindset shift or mindset shift because before we were so focused on profit and the car, and then all of a sudden we started focusing on the people, hospitality. Always saying yes and really creating that experience and building the relationships with the customers to add value instead of managing from the bottom line, cutting expenses. We learned very fast auto hospitality increases value, which pays huge dividends from the customers and customers will spend. They love you. They will buy from you. And that's really how that we got started, just focusing on the customer, always saying yes and creating that experience and the sales and profits followed. Yeah. I mean, a lot of companies, they manage kind of backwards. They manage from the bottom up. And, you know, one thing that we do way different is we manage from a staffing perspective. Like I've gotta be able to staff my stores for success to be able to provide auto hospitality so that I can, charge accordingly to be able to give the level of service that the customer, uh, needs and wants. And the only way I can do that is I have to really, I have to pay good people to do that. And so if I do all those things and then it really doesn't matter what I charge, uh, if they're getting great service, they don't really care about, uh, you know, what the person down the street is charging. Price actually just becomes, I mean, it's not that it's not an issue, but it's may, it's just way less of an issue. Well, that's true. You know, once you give them a level of service that, you know, just exceeds their expectation, which in today's, I mean, in today's world, it doesn't even take much to do that, right? To actually exceed their expectation is doing probably what would be considered like subpar or par customer service like 30, 40 years ago. Uh, but today it's like completely, uh, it's completely different. And so the bar's been lowered and so it makes it even that much easier. And so yeah, you hit it there. It's like focus on the process, the concept first, and then the rest will, the rest will just take care of itself. The number's always the byproduct of amazing service and executing the concept. And you guys have obviously done, man, an incredible job. On that. Charlie. What's up, man? Got another stud in the house. He's not in the office right now. He's still on the Take Five. Mike Quinn is visiting me today. Oh, Mike Quinn, man. Mike Quinn knows how to put money to the bottom line. Uh, he, he put major money to the bottom line. Uh, I mean, last year, $1.2 million to the bottom line out of the Woodlands store, a store that was doing $135,000 a month. By the way, back in, I guess, I don't even remember what year it is. It flies by so fast, but probably like 3 years ago or something. Who knows? Yeah. 3 years ago, 4 years ago, whatever it was when we took over that store, $135,000 gross sales per month. And now a print, you know, I mean, I think it's record printing. It's 100,000, 150,000, 158,000 record print for the month. Yeah. So like, it's like JJ's story. You know, that store now nets more than it used to gross, which is, it seems to be very common theme here. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a pretty common theme. So Charlie, you know, we talk a lot about rust. I always laugh when people talk to me about rust because, man, how could you make profit and how could you put big money to the bottom line in a, you know, in a shop that just has all these rusty cars coming in? I mean, How is that possible, man, in your market, man? How can you even do that? So I gotta tell you, it's all in your mind. 100% of it. Uh, you just have to change your mindset. And not only we have rust in Boston, and you know, people listening from the Northeast, they know what I'm talking about. So we actually put the system to the test last week. So Mike and myself flew up to Canada, Toronto area, and they You know what they have? More rust. It's heavier up north. They use way more salt on the roads. So we walked in a store. We do a lot of work for— I mean, most of you guys know we do a lot of work with Midas. And they wanted us to go and train. We had a weekend of Key2Key up in Canada. But what we did on Friday, we rack attacked in one of their stores up there. And guess what they have? A lot of rust. And it was really a big mindset deal because when you talk to people about, like Glenn, you're a master on flipping calipers. You teach it. I've heard you. You talk about it so many times and it's such an easy process, right? 4 on the floor when you inspect the car. If there's any questions on the brakes, just flip the caliper, right? And most people will come up to me in the northern areas and be like, oh, how about us? How about it? If a bolt breaks. And I say, you know what, how many cars did we do last year, let's say in the Boston area between the two Pleasant Car Care locations? I think we had like 10,000 cars. And out of those 10,000 cars that I did this process to, what do we damage? Maybe one. Like it's not even a measurable number to think of, right? But in the brain, we always think worst case scenario. Versus thinking the 9,999 times that it actually worked. So I said, we're not even going to think about this. We're just going to run the process. And guess what? We walked in a whole new market, a whole new shop. We never been— I never been in that shop before. And we had a record day because we changed our mindset. That is really what it stands for. When you start learning the process, I always say it's for people that had my podcast and all this stuff. I always say the biggest hurdle I had to overcome when I started learning Todd's concept was me. Up until I changed my mind, it didn't work. Once I started believing it and just did it, then it 100% worked. Yeah. And, you know, I know you're kind of prepared for what could happen if it's going to happen. And, you know, one thing that I was noticing when we were at your store, when I was up there a few months ago, racket attacking with you, is you have a whole drawer in one of your you know, your toolboxes for your, your inspection area, which is a bunch of bolts that you're going to probably need because you're going to break some bolts, right? And so, so you've got all the bolts and you've got everything you need to fix it right there. So it's not a, you know, it's not a problem. It's just a minor inconvenience. And then you can just kind of keep on going. And if it's going to happen, you might as well be prepared for it. So Uh, you guys, you know, obviously do that really well. You don't use the excuse of, well, in my market you can't do that. It's not the first time that we've come into a store. Uh, it's been done many times where we'll go into a store, execute our concept, and we're not even executing our concept at really full throttle in terms of technology because we don't have necessarily all the tools that we need there because most shops aren't quite set up the way we are., yet, but we'll go into a store and we will absolutely go and break a record. And the all-time record day gets broken and you think it's by coincidence. Well, of course not. I mean, it's just, we're doing the concept and it works the same across all markets. So, you know, a lot of people, they don't quite understand, uh, you know, just 100% about what we do. And we're trying to get that message out and teach people. Uh, because if they don't know it and they're getting secondhand information or they think they know, or they heard something from somebody and they don't actually understand and don't know it, then it really just won't make sense to them. But once you see it and once you do it, like there is no other way. There's nothing. Todd always says, what could you take away from this? And it's like nothing. You can't take anything away from it. It's a perfected business model. And so, man, I'm just so thankful., that, uh, we get to operate with it because man, it sure does make it easy. Uh, you know, one thing I wanna talk about was kind of customer's threshold of pain. Uh, a lot of people are, uh, you know, scared to raise their prices because they're, you know, they're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm just gonna start, you know, start losing customers. And, and I'll have to tell you this too. I'll start this by saying, uh, a lot of training companies do teach, oh, you just need to go back and raise your labor rate. Well, that's a really good, easy way for any shop to just get an immediate lift or tick up in their gross profit. I mean, obviously if you just do nothing different and you raise the labor rate just a little bit, you know, obviously the revenue is going to go up, but you can't really do that without adding and delivering excellent service to go along with that rate. And so, you know, Todd always talks about trying to find that customer's threshold of pain and you, and you can't do that by listening to the feedback. Like you said, uh, you, you know, the, the 1%, uh, one person complains about a price. Well, you don't build your business on, uh, the exception. You build your business on the rule, but everybody does seem to focus on the, you know, the one customer that gives any kind of pushback on it. But, you know, you gotta kind of find that customer's threshold of pain in terms of, man, what can I charge, right? And am I leaving money on the table? So I did want to talk a little bit about that this morning as far as customer threshold of pain and, you know, kind of where you guys were and where you're at now in terms of— Who do you want to start with? Yeah. So, uh, JJ, let's get JJ back. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, that's such a major point because I remember I was at one point, particularly at my last shop, at my first shop that I started, I was the cheapest guy probably in the state of Maryland. Okay. And that wasn't even cheap enough. You know what I'm saying? Like I was, it was so many jobs I did for free and that, and that wasn't even cheap enough. It was, it was very weird. Right.. And I did not enjoy that. So I remember hearing you talk about that and, and Todd talking about, you know, finding that customer's threshold of pain. Um, but just to circle back, I remember like, like kind of being hesitant to, to raise the prices and, and it's because I didn't have the, the foundation of being able to deliver superior customer service. Okay. So this whole thing, everything we're talking about Once you put it all together and you start putting these major pieces together, man, your prices are justified because if you look at it, you can, the person down the street can change the alternator just as good as you can. Okay. So the, everybody can, you know, put a new starter on the car. Okay. Completely understand. But what is the difference? What separates, you know, us or Charlie's store from the guy next door, right down the street? What separates it? And that's the world-class service. So the key to key concept is, um, not teaching you how to change an alternator, because I have never changed an alternator or a starter, never busted a bead on a tire. I don't want to do none of that. I don't like it. It's dangerous to me, right? So I want qualified people to do that. So I was the cheapest, uh, Glenn, and it was not fun. So when I heard you guys talk about finding the customer's threshold of pain, I was like, wow, this is very interesting. Okay. So I'm no longer looking at what my market dictates. Okay. What everybody else is charging. I'll tell you a funny story, man. You know how you say when somebody calls you and they ask you what your labor rate is, you know it's another shop, right? It's funny. It's so funny you said that because you know what I had even before I came down to the class, man, I had my mom. I said, mom, look, here's a list of 25 stores. I need you to call all of them, get their labor rates. Ain't that funny, man? So, so she could, yeah, she called like a, you know, a damsel in distress. Yeah, what's your labor rate? And when they would tell her, right? So, so that's how I came up with my $170. Okay. So that's how I came up with my $170. And, and that was kind of at the, at the upper tier. There's people charging $110, $115, $150. Dealership was right around $180, you know, $190 max. So I said, let me, let me come in at $170. So anyway, I heard what you guys said is that you, you, you raise the prices, you know, and you kind of figure out or find out when that customer starts saying no, when they, when do they start kind of objecting, you know, a lot, you know, and that's when you start seeing that, that price point where it starts to be a little bit more difficult to justify, that, that particular price, so to speak, for, for lack of better terms. And when you guys found it, you guys, uh, what, what was yours, Glenn? Like, where did you find yours? Uh, $350, high $350. Yeah. And, and we came down obviously. And, and here's an important part of this. Uh, it's, you know, if you have to make sure that you're executing this concept, you're coming through training and you understand and you're doing everything and you're not missing any plays. And here's why, because just because you started getting objections, doesn't mean you found the customer's threshold of pain. It could mean that you're not executing the concept right and you don't have the right people. So don't get those two confused. You have to make sure you have the absolute superstar studs executing the concept, and then you can start to make that decision. But a lot of people are— sorry, a lot of people are already getting objections, guys. I mean, at $110 an hour, there's shops out there that are getting the same exact objections that we get every single day., right? We all know the objections, they're all the same. So whether you're at $110,000 or you're at $210,000 or you're at $310,000, you're gonna get the exact same objections. So, uh, that doesn't mean it's the price. That could mean it's the execution. Now, once you start executing, then you can start determining, okay, we're getting— I mean, some of my really good customers start to say things like, man, it seems like it's getting a little bit high, or the prices seem like they've gone up. And you have to get a good sample size of that, right? Because you can't, One, you don't find that out immediately. You find that out over, you know, a period of time. Because if you raise your labor rate today, and me and Charlie, and he could probably touch on this, if I raise the labor rate today, well, you know, there's gonna be 6 months worth of customers that don't ever even feel that if they don't come in during that time. And so that's why we talk a lot about don't raise your labor rate $10 an hour over the next 6 months, or $10 a month over the next 6 months. Go ahead and just raise it. If you're gonna end up getting there, right, just do it now because Ms. Jones that came in today isn't coming back for 6 months. She's not gonna see and feel the incremental increases. It's like, just rip the bandaid off. Let's find that threshold of pain and then we'll come and we'll find a soft landing once we get there, which is what we did. And we adjusted it down and we've been comfortable where we're at right now. But Charlie is a good example. Uh, you know, he was wanting to raise his labor rate, well, these little increments. And, uh, we had a conversation one day and I learned when you want to get Charlie to do something, all I got to do is put a camera on him and tell him, all right, Charlie, you said you're going to do this. I got you being recorded. Everybody's watching. So let's go get it done. So tell that story, Charlie, and what that's done for your business. Sure. But before we get there, I have to bring up some other points because a lot of people that are listening to this, they might just think, oh, these guys just charge more, right? See, it could sound like that. Oh, they just charge more money. That's why they make money. And this, and so there is, this couldn't be further than the truth. So I want to clarify a couple of things first before we get to that story. Okay. So first of all, years ago when I started, you know, charging, because I was kind of like you, JJ, I was. I wasn't cheap enough, probably. I was so cheap because I thought that's what drove the business, right? So I thought that if I raise my price, the customers will walk away. And it is not, that couldn't be further than the truth. That is not how business works. As long as you provide good value, and Glenn, you do a very good job saying that, if you just go ahead and charge more today without upping your quality of service, you could be running to the potential of being an overpriced shop. So you have to give them better service. So in our take five that we had today, right before I jumped into this call, we were talking now of our videos. So obviously we do the videos before and we send to the customer and we do meta videos on occasions. I have to be honest, we don't do it all the time of after we finish the repairs. How about process videos? So do you think if a customer came in, we presented a nice job and they said yes, and I would do work on the car for $3,000 or whatever the number is, and I take a video of my technician, superstar technician working on the car and what happened, like a timing belt job. Today we're going to do a timing belt job on a Honda, right? So how about if I took that video so they can see what's involved in the job? Does the customer still think I'm overpriced? I think I'll take that away. So what value can I build to be able to charge a fair price? You see, it becomes a fair price. You're not overpriced anymore. What else? Man, I had so many notes here. So it was really, again, a mind thing. And the biggest pushback you're going to get on price is going to be from the people inside the organization. So if you guys went to your shop today and you say, hey, we're going to change the price, $40 an hour, your people are going to give you a lot of pushback. And that's a confidence level thing if they don't believe in themselves. But if you do provide better service, if you train your people every day on the Take Five, on the auto hospitality, not just fixing cars, what can they do? Are they there? To provide value to the customer. How about this story, JJ? You remember this very clearly. So it was a Saturday, you were in my shop in Newton, and we had a Honda Pilot here that I can never forget because it's such a good story. And the only reason that Pilot was here that day because Gary Walker had called that customer on a warranty. We had done axles on the car previously, Gary or his team called the customer and say, hey, it's been a while since we did these repairs for you. We would like to inspect our work, make sure everything is going great. Do you think there is value to that? So we inspect our car. He came in for a warranty check. Well, obviously cars wear out over time. So we have the car on the lift, we inspect the axles. What else we notice? We notice the brakes are worn out. So as I'm taking that video on the axles, because I still want to show them that I did inspect our work. See, there is value to that. Mr. Customer, thank you for coming in. Here is the axles we previously did. Everything looks great. There's no problem at all. We appreciate your business. However, while I'm under here and the wheels are off the car, I noticed that the brakes are worn out. We sold those brakes. And then the next day we sold that vehicle, we presented him that the struts were leaking. By the time we were done with that car, it was over $4,000. And that is because Gary and his team provided value by following up on that customer. So you see, price becomes irrelevant because that customer doesn't have to think anymore, right? Man, these people will call me to thank me for the business. These people will call me to check on my car before the warranty runs out. So long as you build all these value-added items, then the price doesn't become a problem anymore and your team will believe it because they see the value. Would you guys agree with that? 100% on that. Well, a lot of people say that they're going to get— the biggest pushback they get when they change their labor rate is they get pushback from the technicians is what they tell us. And I'm like, huh? It took me a second to— okay, I'll be honest with you. Like the first time I heard that, it kind of just like took me back a little bit. I'm like, I don't understand. Like, what do you mean the technicians? I mean, because I'm thinking differently. I'm thinking I'm literally serving hours on a platter. They can't even keep up. I have unlimited hours and they have access to whatever they want to do with their career. And so I don't understand why they're giving pushback. It doesn't make sense. We just wrapped up, we just did 700 hours last week. Okay. 700 build hours last week, okay? And I've got technicians that are backed up and wow, last week. Yeah, yeah, we did 700 build hours last week, okay? To wrap up our month, okay? And so I've got technicians, they're just slammed and blown out and I just like roll, we just roll over a part full of cart or a cart full of parts to them. Like, here you go, here's 15 hours. And so, and then people are saying they're giving pushback, I don't understand. Well, I understand. Because in a 50% close ratio world or less, okay, and you have technicians that are checking out all these cars and the cars are leaving, well, of course they're going to complain about the price because they think the price directly ties to the decline sales that they are not getting and they want to blame the price. Or they say, hey, you guys are going up, but you're not giving me any more. You know, like I should be making more money if you guys are making more money. And so that's a technician that doesn't understand how a business works and how business runs. We want to give our technicians more money, obviously, but we have to do that once we can be profitable and be able to provide, you know, consistent, you know, high profitability and, you know, and obviously growth. We want all of our technicians and our technicians do make big money so they don't complain about labor rate. They don't. And then never— I've never had a technician in our company ever mention the Labor Rate to me. Not one time. One, they don't even know what it is or care what it is, right? All they care about is, I'm just, man, I'm just flagging a ton of hours. And so that is a tail wagging the dog situation. And a lot of people fall into that trap. So, uh, yes, you have to provide, and you can't forget, like, okay, I provide amazing service. I'm on a Zoom call at 6 AM. We had a meeting before the Zoom call. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be working all day. I'm gonna deliver amazing hospitality. I'm gonna deliver cars, pick up cars. I'm gonna train my team. I'm gonna send my team down to Houston. They're gonna train. I'm gonna do all these things. And that makes me worth so much more. And it gives the confidence, uh, level to your team so much more when they believe that they're worth it because we put in so much time, effort, and energy to deliver the world-class service that were worth it. But if you just change your prices and go up and you're just like the auto guy down the street, well, guess what? Now you're just an overpriced repair shop. Okay. We're not comparing apples to apples. We sell oranges and the industry is selling apples. So you've got businesses that are basically competing. Okay. And they're comparing their prices to the person down the street that is, you know, in a lot of cases on their way out of business. And I know that's sad to say, but that's the truth. And, and these people are competing with each other and they're basically racing to the bottom. Okay. So we do it completely different. So, you know, obviously all of this is taught in all the programs and you guys have obviously been through a ton of them. But I definitely want to ask Lynn on this. We haven't heard much from Lynn yet this morning. So I really want to just kind of hear from that. And your thoughts on this, uh, Lynn, and kind of how this has changed your business. Oh yeah, it's definitely changed a lot for us, uh, getting the labor rate where it should be. Uh, again, rural Southeast Tennessee, we are at the high end of the market, but implementing the concept, like outrageous world-class service, the, the best people training every day, uh, with our tech files. Phone training, company take-fives, like all the focus on people and getting better and creating that experience. Uh, what I found is we do not have pushback on pricing. Customers are looking for extreme value, uh, and being taken care of and just that great world-class experience that we offer. The last thing a customer wants is a bad experience. And so many customers have been in bad shops before. That they're so happy to be out of now, and they come somewhere that is implementing world-class service through Auto Hospitality, their whole mindset changes. They're no longer looking for the cheapest price in town, uh, or a shop that may be a little bit less than us. They're looking for world-class service, a great experience, a know my car is being taken care of. And the transparency we provide and just the wonderful people that are serving them, we just do not have the pushback on price. And it's been a game changer for our business for sure. Yeah. And you know, you know, another part of it, and we're talking about price going up, but, you know, a lot of people also miss a very, very big part of this, which is how can my costs go down? You know, and talking specifically about gross profit and parts cost. You know, yesterday, good example, there's some control arms. A lot of people are quick to click and there's some control arms we get sold and I got to order them. And, you know, these particular control arms were $90. And so I could— now that was $90 was the best price across all my, you know, vendors that I could see online. Now I have an option there. I can either click that button and those parts are on the way and boom, it's done fast. Or I pick up the phone. So I pick up the phone, I call the guy, I said, look, man, I had to make a deal on this job and these control arms are $90 each and I need them for $69.99. Can you do them for $69.99? Not price match. I'm just saying, look, I had to make a deal because we did. We had to make a deal to save a deal, which is another part of like having hammers. Okay. I'm like, man, I need them for $69.99. And he's like, Let me see. He's like, I can't do that. He's like, the best I can do is $70.50. And I'm like, okay. I said, I'm like, here's the PO, send them over. Okay. Now that's $60. Okay. That is $60. That is a lot of money. Okay. When you're talking about running big car counts, when you're talking about, you know, over the course of a month, over the course of a year, that is, that is big money. That is $60 that somebody would just— it's either they're going to keep it or we're going to get it, you know? And all I had to do was pick up the phone and it literally took me 1 minute to do it. And so that's another part of it, right? I mean, a huge part. Yeah. So I, yeah. So tell me a little bit about that and kind of like what you've learned coming through on, on that side of it, on managing, not necessarily the price increase,, right? But on the managing of the actual, you know, estimating and parts purchasing. Yeah, purchasing, we are obsessed with that. Like our team, we talk about it all day long, V-E-V-E, value engineer. So we are constantly working on getting those parts prices down. And it's crazy the money you can put to the bottom line just by shopping those parts, picking up the phone and say, hey, I need it for this. And when you have a team that is, has an incentive based off of gross profit, they're very eager to do that for sure. Uh, everyone wins when we're saving $60 on a part, $100 on a part. And it is just crazy the amount of money that is just sitting there. And just like you said, it's either gonna be a win for the parts store. They're gonna keep that $60, that $100, or it can go to our bottom line. And once you train your team to do that every time, every car, every day, it just adds so much money to the bottom line. And, and it's so fun. It, it's a game for our, uh, people to do that. They love like calling up who, who's calling? Oh, I've got it. No, I'll call. They're just obsessed with buying those parts down. And it's a, it's a huge impact for sure. And then, you know, what's this job worth? What can I sell this for? If we get a set of control arms and it's estimated and it's $1,000, and then RepairPal says, okay, I can sell this $1,500 to $2,000, you know, that's a whole nother opportunity there. Uh, where can I charge more? Absolutely, I can charge more. I have world-class service, the best warranty in town, the best people, the best technicians. Loaners, cars, et cetera. For sure, there's a huge opportunity there where I can take care of this for the customer and deliver world-class service and get paid the fair market, or just above what the range is. And it is super fair for the customer. And we feel great about doing that all day long because we can provide more than anyone else to that customer. Yes, man. I know, so Lynn hit something so, so critical because first of all, I know I went down to Lynn's too, man, because I just had to see what in the world they had going on, man. And it's just, it's just phenomenal what, what they are doing down there. You, you can imagine just the culture that, that Lynn has built down there. It's amazing. Glenn, uh, Lynn knows that as soon as I, I left out of there, I was filled up. I said, oh my God, I mean, there's so many things. That's why I say like everybody that, that's all in, oh my God, you can just, you could just pull so much from. So let's go back real quick about the, the parts shopping, right? Let's, I remember Todd said this and this, this opened my eyes hugely. Okay. He said, if you save $100 on, on, let's say on parts, you shop, you shop the parts and, and like Glenn, like you said, don't be quick to click, you know, but if you save $100 on this part, then it's the exact same thing as a $1,000 boom. It's the exact same thing, you know? So that's what I said, oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. So then it, it started, it, it started really growing in my mind how important it is to make sure that we getting deals on these parts because it's just the exact same thing as getting booms. Yeah. So, um, well, well for you it's more like about a $500 boom based on your net, uh, percentage. But just so everybody understands, you know, just so everybody understands, or probably, uh, uh, less than that. But just so everybody understands what we're saying here is if the average shop in America puts 10% to the bottom line, okay, and the guys we're talking to, we're talking about 25 to 30 plus percent, okay? But the average shop is 10%. That means every, you know, it takes $1,000 sale to make that $100. And so when you save that $100, it's essentially the same thing as $1,000 sale with no effort, with no extra energy. We do an exercise in Key2Key that says, okay, we're going to go back last week and I want you to re-estimate all these jobs by looking at RepairPal. Go and get the parts price. See who has that parts price, um, at a, at a better price. What could you get it for? And we do this little exercise. And when we come back from the breakout group, people's tell us that they have nausea in their stomach because they're like, I can't believe how much money I'm leaving on the table. So I tell them, well, go back for the whole year last year and do nothing different except just re-estimate all your jobs and shop your parts. How much money would you make? And people are like, I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't, no, I can't do that. Because they understand, right? If you estimated every job, all over again, like today, if you're listening to this call, go into your shop, pull up your repair orders from yesterday, the day before, and look at the estimates and look at the parts and go on. Just do— even if you just did the parts, not even talking about an increase, just parts alone. And you get those part numbers and you start calling around and you start shopping those parts and you are going to find out that you left a lot of money on the table. Every single person, every single time, doesn't matter. We find a ton of money. And so our goal is to make the spread obviously as big as possible. I've got to sell it for the best possible price that I can sell it for. And then I have to be able to buy the parts, quality parts still. We're not talking about using cheap parts, right, in place of quality parts, but we can get quality parts and get them at a good price. And then we increase that spread. So if it's a $1,000 ticket as an example, and, you know, the average shop out there, not our average shop, but the average shop in America is charging $1,000 and they're buying all the parts and the labor for probably like $500. Like people are running 50% gross profits out there. So it's costing them $500 to do this $1,000 job. Well, if they look at it and they say, wow, RepairPal was $1,400. I could have sold that for $1,400 and then my $500, I could have bought those control arms that were $100 apiece and I could have gotten them for, for $70 apiece. And so now I've just made $60 and I've just made $400. So I've just made $460 on that exact same job. And I did nothing different except just be smart about my business. And then all of a sudden you start having insane net profit numbers, um, you know, like, like you guys do. And you're not, you know, you're just giving great service, but you're charging the right price for it. We are allowed to make a profit in this business. Now, the parts vendors, uh, straight from a parts vendor, okay, he tells me, and I don't know the exact number, but it's something along these lines, it's 44% of shops out there pay their bill late. That is, uh, that's almost half. They pay their bill late. And then 20, I think 27% or 24% don't pay their bill at all. Okay. Complete write-off. Okay. So think about that from a parts vendor standpoint, right? We pay our bills on time. Okay. We want to pay our bills on time. I need to get my bills paid on time. And that gives me the upper hand with my vendor. And we spend a lot of money with them, which means they'll do whatever they want. We are a TIAB. This is a buyer. We are a VIP customer. Therefore, our vendors want to sell us parts. And so they will work with us and they will help us out. And so, um, super important to remember that, right? If you pay your bills, see, a lot of these things that we take for granted, paying your bills on time, uh, all those things that we do, amazing training, all of that wrapped together separates us from the competition. And when that happens, it allows for you to be able to charge the right price and your customers want to pay it because they want you to exist and be there and they want you to make money and they will continue to take care of the business. Um, wow, this one, guys, it went by so fast. We need like one more thing. So cool. So Todd started this accounting class years ago and he used to do it one-to-one with us. Then we did it as a class. Now the accounting class developed from, you know, where people come in, it's accounting and it's fraud prevention. That's another league. We should have another podcast because for that alone. And it starts very basic and now Matt Keys teaches it and he goes to pretty high-level stuff. So any level, anywhere you are in between, you're gonna learn a lot. But there's this exercise that Paul does and everybody, I'm gonna assume, has seen a P&L, right? So on your P&L, you have all these line items. You have your rent, your software, your dumpster, your insurance, your payroll, blah, blah, blah. There's 100 items. Now next to each line item, there's a percentage. So I want you in your mind to take this part, visualize of a water pump or an alternator, wherever that part is. And I want you to take your profit and take the percentage off that profit. Take 1% away, take 2% away, take 5% away for advertising, whatever the line item is. I want you to deduct the percentage that you made off of that part. And at the end of the day, at the end of the bottom of the line, Todd asked me the first time he did this exercise, like, how much you have left? And I said, not enough. That was my answer. That was my answer. So that will make you price yourself to where you should be. So a lot of times we use our feelings versus using real data of what's happening. Yes, you nailed it 100% right there. It's like, and that's And there's a perfect example of when the technician says you're charging too much or, or, um, you know, where's my part of that? It's like if you go through and you do this open book financials with your team and they understand what it takes to actually run the business, right? It's like it gives them a completely different perspective because yes, when you break it down, a $2,000 job will, and, and, and even an advisor may If they don't know this, they're gonna look at that and they're gonna go, wow, we, you know, we're making $1,200 profit or we're making $1,400 profit. Look at that right there. Okay. And then you break it down and you strip all that out of it and it's like, wow, we, okay. We did not make nearly as much. So I'll say this, I'll end it with this. Um, we're going to have a part 2 of this. We have to, there's just, it just wasn't enough time. This is just too good. For sure. So, um, Go back with your team and, uh, do an exercise. And here's what you do. You grab your team and you get them individually and you say, all right, if the, if our store does whatever that number is, whatever your revenue number is for your month, okay. Uh, write down on a piece of paper how much money you, you think that the company makes. How much money does the owner take home? Okay. Do this exercise with your team. Okay. And here's what's going to happen. You are gonna find out that your team— see, people are scared to let their team know how much money the business makes, but the average person— now this is, this is real data, okay? The average person believes that you make 6 times more than you actually make. Okay? So if you're worried about your employee thinking you're making X amount of dollars per month or per year, Just remember, they believe or think in their mind that you make 6 times what you're actually making. Okay. So get them to write down a piece of paper. If our store does this much in revenue, how much money do we make in profit? And what you're going to find out is your team thinks that you are making insane amount of money and you may not even be making any money. So those of you that are listening, I'm going to tell you, you really need to teach and educate your team on this. I know we're up on time today, guys. Thank you guys so much for being on here. We will do a part 2. For those of you listening, be ready for that. This is going to be great. We'll get deeper into it. But thank you guys so much for jumping on this morning. Thank you, guys. For more information, reach out to Todd Westerland at 925-980-8012 or visit autoshopanswers.com. Get more information about Key2Key callbacks, courtside VIP Rack Attack Day, where you spend a full day in the trenches with our teams. We have leadership classes and AI Academy, accounting first, fraud and prevention, as well as auto tech training. We are literally your one-stop shop. Please don't hesitate. Reach out to Todd Westerland, 925-980-8012.