Chaos Starts At The Front Counter...Take Control Before It Costs You

0:00Welcome to Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Because too many shops today are running on chaos. Phones ringing, technicians frustrated, front counters overwhelmed, owners buried in problems with nobody to call. Kevin Brown has spent over 30 years in the trenches learning how to take that chaos and turn it into control. Shop owner, operator, consultant, leader. Through industry shifts, insurance games, bad hires, great hires, and lessons learned the hard way, This isn't theory.

0:29This isn't corporate training fluff. This is real shop experience, unfiltered. On this show, Kevin breaks down what actually works: running profitable shops, front counter control, training technicians, negotiating with insurance companies, building systems that make your shop run instead of burn, and the mistakes that quietly bankrupt shop owners every single day. No corporate scripts, no sugarcoating. And yeah, somebody might get offended. That's okay.

0:58Disney's 2 doors down. But if you want the truth about this industry, buckle up. This is Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Let's get started. All right, welcome back. So hopefully everybody had a great 4th of July. I did. I went up last Thursday and we were up at the house up north and finally this year the weather was like great.

1:17I mean, Thursday, let's face it, it was like 96. It was just too hot. So hot. Um, but then it cooled down Friday and then we did some stuff and then everybody got there Friday and then the party started and the kids and grandkids and Noah, my 2-year-old, not even 2 yet, uh, grandson threw the, uh, my other son-in-law's keys over the boat.

1:38And that was drama. And he threw the keys over the side of the boat and then turned around and looked at us like, hey fuckers, you're not clapping. You know, our little kids kind of like looked at us. It was, it was fun. It was a fun weekend. We got home yesterday, which is, I keep thinking I was off a day when I'm like, why isn't the new podcast going up?

1:54You're like, dude, it's only Thursday. It's only Thursday. I panicked for, I would've panicked for half a second if I didn't just get done doing some editing on it. So I was like, ugh. So we have, now I'm a day off again. 'Cause I'm like, why? What? Jim's like, I called the guy, I left a message yesterday. I'm like, why are you calling him on Sunday?

2:09He's like, yesterday was Monday. Some of us had to work. I'm like, yeah, true. Yeah. I just don't like the 5-hour ride from up north home. Oh, it's brutal. On the holiday weekend. So we always go up there and wait till Monday. Morning to come home. So we went and had breakfast, went to the creamery and Amish creamery where they make all the pies and all that stuff.

2:26My wife's like their cinnamon butter. And then we came home. But so today we are going to talk about something we talked about the week before last when we were talking about how important it is to build value into your repair orders, covering your ass with the, you know, with the disclaimers on here and everything like that. And I had one today come in, a customer came today and this is his writing.

2:51On the repair order. Okay, this isn't me. He wrote all this stuff. Okay, and I don't really want to tell you. It's a chain, so I don't want to get myself in trouble, even though their repair orders suck ass. So this looks Techmetric. Okay, so the interesting thing is this guy brought his truck in because he was having a hard time starting it.

3:15Well, come to find out, one of the batteries has a crack in it, and they're, they're not testing They're testing okay, marginally. So they sold him batteries and he drove it home and then it wouldn't start. So he had to jump it. Then he took it back and they said, could not verify no-start concern. Both batteries tested good. Suspect faulty alternator under load.

3:42Charging at 14.2 is fully loaded and under acceleration dipped down to 12.8. No codes pertaining to charging system, but did find a code for the starter. We recommend replacing starter and alternator and retest. Well, any of you guys that know out there know that sounds weird. That sounds like we're going to pull out the old parts cannon out of the back of the shop and go ahead and shoot at it.

4:07So the guy got all mad. He wrote here, second attempt. He wrote in here, ripoff, question mark, customer satisfaction discount, $50 for no reason whatsoever. So what's an automatic discount? Automatic customer satisfaction? Yeah. And the thing that I found really weird about this repair order is if you look at it, none of the boxes for the, for the undercar vehicle on lift inspection, nothing was filled out.

4:38So they gave the guy this, nothing filled out on the back of it. I'm going to hide the name, nothing filled out. So, but you go to it. What I found interesting on this, was it came in for electrical diagnosis, determine repairs needed to return vehicle to operated state, checks full electrical system, $180. Okay. Then right on it says remove and replace batteries, DieHard Platinum AGM battery, 2 of them.

5:10Okay. Then there's labor. They didn't say anything but what it was, what happened. What did this guy pay $180 for? Basically it says, state checks full electrical system. Okay. I don't understand the verbiage in here either, right? I would call it electrical system testing, diagnostic testing, electric, you know, whatever. But nevertheless, with that, in my shop, you know how I always talk about we got to build value into it, right?

5:39Right here, it looks like we just charge them $180 for a one-liner. Determine repairs needed to return vehicle to operating state, checks full electrical system. With no punctuation. So it's a run-on sentence. So when I read it, just hear how loud it sounds. States, right? Yeah, no punctuation whatsoever. That makes you look really professional, right? Then remove and replace battery. Okay, they forgot to drop the Y and add IES.

6:09There's 2 batteries. They're selling them 2 batteries. Okay, so labor on that was $200. But it doesn't say, it just says $200. Okay, but the electrical test was $180. So the guy's got a question mark there, why? And then the shop supply fee, $5,880. Okay, we all got shop supplies, whatever. Then a customer satisfaction discount, minus $50. So my thing is, how do you consider yourself professional when you do a courtesy inspection But you don't do the courtesy inspections there.

6:46I got to keep hiding it, but it's not filled out. You know what I'm saying? They never— it's a wasted sheet. They didn't even do anything with it. Right. So then it goes to, you know, the diagnostic sheet. We just charge them, right? So here's everything they did and charge them $1,000. Okay. Now, then here's the last page. It was a little itty-bitty disclaimer.

7:09Work authorization. Make sure you recheck your wheels after 50, your lug nuts after 50 miles and your payment history. Right? I don't see a warranty sheet or anything. That's it. That's the whole repair order. 1, 2, not filled out. We're a professional company, but we don't fill anything out. There's the payment. But what we did is this big, what we did. And here is the lug nut sheet and all that stuff, retoric.

7:43And there's the payment and all that, right? This is just his other history. This one's even worse, but whatever. So basically you got 3 pages of pretty much no information. I mean, how would you feel if you took it in and they're just like, we checked your electrical system. $180. We didn't give you, hey, your one battery is bad. We recommend replacing the other one because they're the same age.

8:07One's failing, one's not. Da da da da. It's hard on your alternator. Nothing, right? No value. No value. And then it says rip off the labor rate. Well, that's easy to be justified. This is a transit, and the front seat has to come out of it to take the battery out of it. The battery's out of it. You could have justified it by writing it up instead.

8:29I didn't write this. He wrote it. Ripoff. Yep. Okay. So he's already pissed because there's nothing built into this repair order for value. All right. So he got so pissed at him when he took it back after it wouldn't start. I said to him, I said, when you went home, what happened? He said, well, I went home, shut it off, and I went to start it to move it and it wouldn't start.

8:55Nothing happened. I said, okay, what'd you do? He said, nothing, I just, uh, jump-started it and it started right back up. When I touched the battery cables, it fired right back up. I think they left something loose because he went back and he's so pissed after they told him, hey, let's go ahead and put a starter on and an alternator. And it says here in this, uh, finding, could not verify start concern, both batteries tested good.

9:21They're brand new batteries. Of course they're going to be good. I mean, I've seen one battery go bad at one time, but chances— come on. Yeah, right. They talked about the voltage, which I already read. Uh, no codes pertaining to charging system, but did find a code for the starter. Recommend replacing starter and alternator and retest for charging and starting. Okay, if they would have left something loose, which is really easy to do with all these battery cables nowadays, and the starter didn't work it would have set a starter code.

9:52I don't know what code. It was already cleared when we got it. This is— I'm just reading their work order. Yep, yep. So this guy flips his shit, says, you guys are clowns, we just put a new starter in it. Uh, just put a new starter in it because I want to make sure this is all— oh yeah, lined up. And January, uh, February 1st, they just put a new starter in it, an OE starter.

10:19So they're like, you need another starter and an alternator, but that you just said the alternator test— like, the whole thing doesn't make sense, right? So the guy flips his shoes, like, put my old batteries back in, I want my money back, you guys are ass wipes. They did, and guess what? The thing started completely fine from there on out when they put the old batteries back in it.

10:38So they tightened everything up. So they must have tightened everything up is what we could say, because there's nothing intermittent. We've tested it all day. So here comes us. He shows up. First thing we do is we print a key tag for him. We tag his keys. He's like, wow, that's pretty cool. We're like, yeah, whatever, right? We put his name in there.

11:00We do— here's our check-in. Our repair order is 15 pages. Now people are going to be like, that's ridiculous. That's not ridiculous. That's information. I am a firm believer if you can't afford ink and paper, you shouldn't be in business. I'm okay burning ink and paper giving people value for their dollar. So here, right here, free courtesy inspection. Ours will show up on the third thing.

11:25Check in. Terms of service they have to agree to, and I'll show you. Diagnose intermittent no-start. Peace of mind. Click here to read. So here is the write-up. Okay. What the customer told us was happening, right? Here's what we charged him for. Recommend replacing primary battery, starting battery due to visibility, visibly cracked battery case, marginal terminals results. So terminals are all corroded and nasty on this battery.

11:58It's cracked on the top. It's not leaking yet, but it's got a big crack. We don't know if he did it. When they're putting it in and out, whatever. Yeah, we can't blame that, you know. Um, leakage, internal damage, reduce, uh, reliability, increasing likelihood. Driver's seat— remove driver's seat as necessary to gain access to under-seat battery compartment. Disconnect negative battery clip, follow positive cable, hold down hardware.

12:24We did this whole big thing, right? We charged him an hour for that. But you see what you did. What we see, what we did, right? So we start here and we finished up here, right? And then here's what we did. So boom, boom, boom. Then here's our terms of service that we talk about, guys. These are all the rules laid out.

12:48This is where we tell the customer, this is what's going on. Here's all of our rules that you're going to agree to, right? And here's the final page of our terms of service, right? And here's the rest of it when they approve it. Here is the link of the post and pre-scan, which I printed out just so you can see. So the customer, when his truck shows up here, we plug a scan tool in and we scan it.

13:12Check engine lights, check all the systems, what codes are in the truck before we start working on it, right? Here's a transcript. Of the guy calling. Oh, that's amazing. So here we put that in there, what he said when he called. Yeah, we put it in there, right? As you can see, the greens are his authorizations. The one thing these people did not tell this guy at all about— his whole engine compartment and, uh, his engine, everything is full of, uh, walnuts and everything.

13:41For— it's a motorhome, so it sits around from a squirrel. Squirrels. Up beneath his hood. They never mentioned any of that to him. Um, oh my God, no. Yes, we put pictures in here of the intake, we put pictures of the battery test, and we put pictures of his air cleaner. Okay, all the air box and everything, all the squirrel nuts and everything, right?

14:10His original estimate with his All of his authorizations when he authorized the approval with his signatures and everything. The intake pictures are easy because we take the oil change stickers, we take the— see that? We got it running. So if it's that check engine light, we cover it. Yeah, all that stuff, right? We get all the miles and everything like that, right?

14:31Last page of our repair order is, guess what? Our warranty. It's written out. What's your warranty? Our warranty is the last page of our repair order, sir. Okay, great. What is this? That's that link I told you about. That's the full diagnostic report of all the systems on your van or your vehicle when you come in, passed or failed. We check it all.

14:50So after we got all done, ours was a couple hundred dollars more than the other guy. And after we explained everything that went on to him, he read our work order. He said, man, I'll tell you what, I feel completely comfortable. You guys explained to the T about what you were going to do. So I kind of jumped around a little bit.

15:12I don't want to sit here and read everything on repair order because it just— whatever. Yeah, but you got 15 pages plus a 4-page top-down scan versus 3 pages. He literally wrote on here that $200 ripoff, the batteries was a ripoff. Ripoff. He's happy with us. We charge more money. And it's so cool. And that's what I was telling the guys the other day when we were doing the coaching is like, when you, when you control the process from top to bottom, it's a big difference.

15:49People don't mind spending the extra money. Cost doesn't matter when they feel like they're taken care of. I agree totally. And you know what? We Are you like— I don't understand how it's even allowed at a company that's a franchise. And I know this franchise has pretty been around for a long time. How to— how can the store manager even let this piece of shit repair order go out the door?

16:26Without any of the courtesy inspections even filled out. Yeah. If I found, if say I was on vacation or one of my service advisors, I came back, something was happening. Say Phil went on, Lincoln went on vacation. I was sitting at the front desk and a customer brought this back to me. I would have a freaking heart attack. I'd be so pissed.

16:45The mechanics would be in trouble. Everybody's going to— I pay these guys to do this inspection. Yep. Number one, I want to make sure the customer's taken care of. And number two, I want to sell them everything they need the first time they're there. I don't want them to have to come back. So it's no secret that we're in, in business to make money, guys.

17:02Um, so we do these courtesy inspections and stuff like that, but you can call them courtesy, but half of it's safety too. When you're looking at tires that the, the cords are hanging out of and everything else like that, I mean, come on, if you're— you're not doing anybody justice by not telling them that that's happening because you're setting them up for failure.

17:21Yeah, and you know, our labor on this, uh, by the time we got an hour diag to re-diag it, and we spent the hour testing on it, make sure did all the testing and stuff like that, and then we got, you know, an hour to take the seat out and, you know, switch the batteries. Our batteries were like $6 cheaper. Um, besides that, I mean, he spent more money and he was completely 100% happy with what we did.

17:46Once again, like There's going to be guys on our, um, video, they're going to be like, you know, that's a waste of paper, that's a waste of this. Okay, that's the mind— if that's the mindset you have that you're worried about paper or ink, um, I have a color printer up front because I, I do not— I, if I'm going to be the most expensive guy around, I'm going to have the badass-ass work orders.

18:08And I have compliments all the time for my repair order, all the time. They're like, holy shit, I just finished one for, uh, a paint job last week, it was 49 pages long. Because all the pictures all through the repaint were in there because this company's very particular. So any questions, all at every stage of that job, there was pictures in there.

18:28The doors off it, the guts out of the doors, the belt moldings off. Like we do it and people are like, you waste your time. We don't get paid to take pictures. That was gonna be my question for those people that ask that question. Yeah. Well, my guys are all hourly. So if I ask 'em to take pictures, that's what I want 'em to do.

18:41That's what they need to do. And they will, my guys will happily do it. 'Cause my guys are seeing the value in the CYA. We have one that's been, and I talked about it a few weeks ago, it's a local garbage company around here. One garbage company hit the other garbage company. I told you it's got $25,000, right? Yeah. Me and him got in an argument today.

18:59I said, you have, he's like, I'm just going to pick my truck up because I don't have the money to fix it. I said, it's been here since October and you're suing the other guy for over, over, we'll just say over $100,000. And you're sitting there giving me a hard time about, storage that you agreed to. I didn't agree to anything. Actually, you agreed to it on this date, and here's your signature, and here it is, and here's the green, blah blah blah blah blah.

19:22So, oh, okay, that's fine. I said, so let me go ahead. I transcribed all the phone calls all the way back to February. We have all the phone calls now. I had Lincoln transcribe. We have them all in a PDF. You could read the conversations back and forth. Okay, I'm telling you guys, sooner or later you're going to get bit. You have to put this shit in place.

19:45GoTo Connect is cheap. The phone system is cheap. It's got a soft program so you can put it on your cell phone. Um, the cell phone recording doesn't work good, so if we know we're going to have one that's a problem or we need to do it, we always try to go to the desk phone. That way it's recorded both ways. Yeah.

19:59In Michigan, you have to have one party has to know you're being recorded. Yeah. You know, that's from what I can understand the law unless they changed it, but nothing's came up. But we 100% have our ass covered there. He admitted there's storage charges. He admitted he agreed to a while ago. I have it several times through all them phone calls with their storage.

20:18And he said, I never said anything. He agreed to it several times. And it's just like, you were told about it last time. You said you're going to call me back in a couple hours. You never call me back. 3 weeks later, I call you and go, what's the deal? You offered to make me payments. The repair's $7,000. I'm like, yeah, I take payments.

20:35Absolutely. One payment. And half of it when we start and the other half of the payment, I guess 2 payments. What, you're down? Well, I don't have the down payment money. Can I make payments? No. But my point to this is, guys, a lot of you guys can't even afford to hire a coach, but you're too lazy to even spend or research or anything when you're sitting there.

20:58You always have time to be on TikTok commenting on my freaking videos, how stupid I am. You know, there's a lot of guys that hate me. Once again, a lady told me, uh, the other day, she said, uh, I think you meant— I said adjuster because I call them adjusters because they adjust the bill. That's the old school terminology. She said, no, uh, I forget what they call them now.

21:17Um, appraisers. She's like, uh, you mean appraiser? No, actually I mean adjuster. It's an old man term. That's what we all call them still. Um, whatever. But they're not going to the PC, the PC term. Like, well, people, but you'd like to be called appraisers. Yeah, well, people are giving me a hard time about swearing. Yes. My wife got pissed off and she's like, that's the time she did this whole thing about intelligence and usually blah, blah, blah, whatever.

21:43I've always had a potty mouth, but here's the thing. How many people that own shops that are in our business walk around? Well, Jason, how do you feel today? Oh, what? Oh, I'm angry at you. By golly. By golly. Or, oh my goodness, you broke that. The words are, What the fuck, you broke that? Or are you fucking kidding me? Let's, let's be completely honest here.

22:06Let's, let's not put this fake facade up like who we're not. Yeah, like these other guys get on their podcast and want to use those big words and stuff like that. I'm me. What you see is what you get. If you don't like it, you can just scroll by. You're going— I don't really fucking care. That's the beauty of having my own podcast and having my own channel.

22:22That's why I always ask, well, what's the name of your channel? Let's go over there and argue. Can I be on your podcast? Oh, that's right. You don't have a podcast. Do you know what I'm saying? Like everybody's a critic. Oh yeah. And, uh, that Dale Carnegie book, he's like, you know, people don't kick dead horses. Yep. That's a good thing, right?

22:41That's a great way to put it. Yeah. They're like, if you're doing something that everybody else wants to do, they're going to criticize you. Yep. And Dave Ramsey says, would you take criticism from a person you wouldn't take advice from? No. Nope. And Isaac, I forgot the term is the only ship that doesn't sail is a partnership. Ah, yeah. I always say that.

22:59I called a blank the other day on it. But you know, the one thing I want to talk to you about, because 2 things here, a lot of people don't realize we do coaching. Yeah. Even though it's like, it's subliminal messaging. Do you notice that? They're like, they call me. I had somebody call me yesterday. Uh, when I called you on the way home, I talked to him for an hour.

23:20He's in New York. He's an MSO, multi-shop owner. And he's like, I was just like, fuck it. I don't know if he does, doesn't coaching or consulting. I'll just call him. He, he found the number underneath where it said consulting. Yeah, I love it. So I just think people don't pay attention to our logo, but yes, we do. And we've, we've straightened out lots of shops.

23:39That's why we put Isaac on last week. I want to talk to you because I always do the talking. We need to talk to you about firsthand. Let's talk about some of these people we've tried to, we've called. Okay, wait, let's start at the very beginning because I'm going fast. Yep. Let's slow down. Take a deep breath. Deep breath. We decided we were going to do repair shop reckoning schooling videos, training videos.

24:01So the very first one we came up with is, what's the first thing that has to happen at your business? You put all this money out in advertising, you pay all these people to get your phone to ring. Your phone rings, it can cost you upwards of $25 to make your phone ring one time, depending on the keywording and stuff, right? And then your service advisor blows it.

24:20And I'm going to tell you something right now, people. If you don't believe that your service advisors are blowing it, in the next few weeks we're going to be putting out videos of us live calling these people. We're not going to put their shop names in it or anything like that. We're going to start playing this shit to you. Yeah, it's, it's insane.

24:36And I'm going to tell you something right now, you know I call a spade a spade. One of my service advisors got a D-. He sucked on the phone. He was horrible on the phone. Yeah. Okay. And I was like, yeah, Who— because what, what, when, what, when did you train him, Jason? This morning. Jason started training him with our program. Listen to me, our service advisors are going through our program, the program me and Jason wrote, okay?

25:03We came up with this kind of clever thing how we broke down the word control, but it's the way I talk on the phone, the way I always take control of the phone calls, anything in my life I always take control of, like I don't wanna say I'm a control freak, but I just take control of shit. That's just the kind of guy I am.

25:19Right. Well, it's like what you talked about yesterday when you go to the restaurant and somebody is like, can I get, can I please get, like, you're in a restaurant, they're there to serve you. Yeah. You can get anything that you can afford on that menu. And then, but like, instead of going and be like, I'm gonna take, I want, can I get, you know?

25:36And it's, it's that command and it's a, it's the same thing. And I talk about, I've been talking about with all of our clients, like, It's offense versus defense. And I asked, I asked, I asked Lincoln today, like, when you're on the call, can you tell me when are you on offense and when are you on defense? And Lincoln, you know, he's your son, so he's, you know, he's heard you.

25:55He's been in your household. He's also an entrepreneur. So he thinks like sales. And so I knew we were going to have a really good call because a lot of these guys, when they're answering the phone, they're not thinking in the sense of like being like sales or— and I'm not talking about being salesy, but you got to think about like We want this person to come in and do business with us, right?

26:12Like we want— what's the end game? What do you want to happen here? You don't want to spend 30 minutes on the phone call, right? You want to get them into the, into the store, get them in the queue. Yeah, absolutely. What I'm noticing from all these calls and what I've done, like 8 calls, 9 calls, we're going to do a bunch more because we had a bunch of, a bunch of responses yesterday.

26:30So we've got a bunch of calls to make. What I'm noticing is, is nobody's taking control. They're all waiting for the customer to lead them and take them through the direction. And what I mean by that is like, if I'm calling in and I'm saying, hey, I have this problem, people are like, there's dead silence on the phone. I could hang up right there.

26:48Like, I have to, I have to keep on going. Like, hey, do you handle that? Yep. I know. Okay, what do I do next? Do I bring it in? When do I bring it in? Like, if I didn't want to do business or I didn't have an investment to be on that call, I could just easily hang up. I told Phil the same thing.

27:04Like you said, yep. And there's a long pause. I'm responsible now to keep that conversation going. And if I was a customer, I don't like your attitude or anything, I could just hang up and there's no problem. And how many, how many of those $25 calls are you throwing away like that? What I'm seeing is every single one of those calls that I made, all 8 of them would have been thrown away.

27:25My dollars. Yeah. You called me the other day and I was driving my black truck, not my Cybertruck. So I'm driving myself, which is like foreign to me right now, so I'm not used to it. And you actually were talking to me and you could hear the phone call where I paused. And the reason I paused, a lady came across and almost hit me.

27:40So I'm driving, you know, I'm like, yeah, uh, after we got done on the phone call, I called you back. I'm like, I was freaking driving, a lady almost hit me, and I still sold you freaking 8 glow plugs. Yeah, instead of 7. Yes. And what most people don't realize is how many of you guys went out on a date and you just don't jive with the girl, and you're always trying to carry the conversation, and they're giving you one-word answers, and you're really like digging this chick or whatever— dude, if you're a chick, whatever— and you're like, hey, what about this?

28:09And they're like, I don't know. And you're like carrying the conversation. We've all been in that, that whole thing. That's no different than selling. Yep. Okay, the only time you should stop and shut your fucking mouth is you say, that'll be $999, how do you want to pay for it? And then you look at them. Don't keep going. You don't do the on-sell.

28:27Steve Garrett used to do that. He used to drive me freaking crazy. Okay. Like I'd be sitting there watching the person shaking their head yes. And him keep talking. And by the time he oversells it, they're shaking their head no. Like you literally sold them into it, then unsold them. Okay. I do a trick on people too when they're like, hey, will you take offers on it?

28:45Sure. What do you offer? Well, you go first. I go, he who speaks first loses. Right? Yep. So I don't. I stop when I tell them the price and here it is. But here's the problem with most people. And I told, um, I told the one guy yesterday I was talking to that we're going to call his shops. I go, tell me some of the things you hear your people say.

29:05He's like, I just want to call my office and scream and yell. And he's telling him this. He says the one guy is like, why are we going to mark this up this much? And what— why would it— I said, they don't believe what they're selling. I said, the number one thing you have to believe in is what you're selling. If you do not believe it, people sense that.

29:21Yeah. It's kind of like Hal told me, when you're broke, people sense you're broke. It's selling out of your pocket. Yeah. This guy asked me for a discount. He said, I'm 68 years old. Will you give me a discount? I said, damn. He said, what? I go, you got to be 70 to get a discount here. He started laughing. You know what I'm saying?

29:41But people, you have to have the answers, but you don't have to oversell it. But you have to be confident. I cannot tell you the number one start of our program, the seed control. Yeah. Is the number one thing. Control. Yeah. The fricking narrative. Yep. Right. Yeah. And it's command, commanding, having the command. Yeah. Right outta the gates, you're answering the phone with confidence.

30:02I, I know who I'm calling. I know what shop I'm calling. I know what person I'm talking to. And like when I was talking to Phil today, you know, it's the little things I might not be thinking as the customer. Oh, that's nice. He introduced himself. I know his name now. But like as I'm going through and I, if I call another shop and I get a, Hey, can you please hold?

30:20And it's on fire. There's a difference between those 2 places also. And I said this to Phil, like, have you ever heard, like, if you get abducted, like, you want to get— you want to let that person— you want to have a conversation. You want that person to know as many things about you as possible. You want to make yourself human to them because it's harder for them to kill you if they see you as a person.

30:38And that's the same thing when somebody is calling you on the phone. You want to— you want to get as much dialogue and understanding from them. Like, even typing up this report, and having a, hey, here's the transcript and the customer's diagnosis. How do you get that if you're not asking them questions? Totally agree. And you know, one thing I do when somebody calls and they're like, you could tell their tone.

31:01Yeah. They're exasperated. They're just pissed off, whatever. You know, hello, Motor City Truck Collision. It's Kevin. How can I speak to you? Yeah, I need an estimate on axle. Where are you located? I'm standing in front of the microwave right now, sir, heating up my Danish. I'm hungry. What? I said, I'm standing in front of the microwave. You asked where I'm located.

31:18Not— then they start laughing. I've had a couple fuck yous and hang up on me. Really, I have. But a lot of times I kind of make it a little bit lighter. Yep. Okay, it's not the end of the world. Let's go ahead and talk about it. And I do that to make myself human. I'll crack a joke here or there. Now, not everybody gets— like, Phil tries to crack jokes and he's just not— he's got a very dry sense.

31:40It was like Jerry Seinfeld cracking a joke. You're like, what? Yeah. You know, like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David, them guys. I, I think he's got that fucking funny, but he's fucking funny. If you've seen the episode with him, he's super funny, but he's got that creeper, like you got to really think about it, right? But I think that you're 100% right when we need to be human.

31:58Yep. We're on the phone with these customers, they have a problem, we are here to solve it. We're here to say, take a deep breath, okay? Because here's the problem with They back up. Here's the problem with— I was telling Jason and Jim the other day, um, like when you call your lawyer, say I'm in, I'm in trouble for whatever, I got a parking ticket I didn't pay and they have a warrant out for my whatever, I'm just making something up.

32:24Now everybody's like, you're a criminal, whatever. Yeah, but you call your lawyer and he's like, don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. Okay, peace of mind, peace of mind, right? He says, don't worry, yeah, this is not a problem, we'll take care of it, just have a good weekend. Don't worry. Yep. Okay. That's no different than us calling somebody calling us and going, my car's leaking coolant.

32:45Da da da da. And we say, don't worry about it because we it does. It's what we do. We do. Right? Yep. But to them, think about it. That could be the the deciding factor of them breaking a child support order or you know custody order, getting their kids somewhere, going to baseball, going to work. There's a lot of different variables. So there's emotions in people's cars.

33:09They say a car's the second biggest investment. Cars are not an investment, just like houses are not an investment. They're depreciating. We rent our house. Think about it. Yeah, even when we own it, we don't own it. They fucking— don't pay your taxes, you think you own it. They'll come and take your— you don't own nothing. Even— yeah, yeah, yeah, you have silent partners living in your back room.

33:25State of Michigan, you know, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. But you guys, there's emotion hooked to these phone calls, okay? They could not have the money to fix a car, so they're already emotional. So at the very least, you could vet the phone call so you're not wasting their time and your time by being— it's being nice is free. Yep. And here's the problem with these service advisors at the dealerships and stuff like that.

33:48They're held down to such a standard. They want to get you in the door because they're on commission. If they don't get you in the door and sell you something, they're going to get in trouble for not selling you their trans flush quota. They're not going to have a paycheck. So quite frankly, the humanity gets left aside and you're just a freaking— they're looking at you as a wallet, right?

34:07Yep. Within the independent world, you have a family-owned business. You're not owned by a corporation. You can be human. Okay. At the dealerships, guys, I'm sorry. It's really hard to operate like we operate and people are going to flame out because you're held to such stringent— yeah. Nobody gives a fuck. Yep. You're number 1,336. Yep. If you don't sell the trans flushes and everything else that you're supposed to, to hit your quota, you're going to lose your job.

34:40And if you piss the customer off by trying to sell them that so much and you give them— they give you a bad review, that takes away from your money. You're gonna get taken away from your money. So think about it. Sell, sell, sell, but you better do it to be clever enough not to piss the person off to the point where they nick you.

34:58So the whole sales thing is a balance. Absolutely. You know what I mean? Like, I think ask for that sale is a good thing. That's towards the end. Yep. I've given you everything, but you don't talk about the sale on the phone call to get them in the door. You know, in sales, I've always laughed because you always hear always be closing, ABC, always be closing.

35:17And honestly, the close at the very end is like, you're gonna bring it by tomorrow? You know, like, uh, when you're gonna bring it by? Let's get you in tomorrow. You know, like, that's That's the close. If you've done a good enough job through this whole entire process, the close is like, let's just get you set up. You know what? Money is the byproduct of a good salesman.

35:35Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Right? Yeah. Okay. It's no different than freaking leather is a byproduct of a cow. Yeah. I don't agree with always be closing. Okay. We're not trying to sell anybody to get them in the door. We shouldn't be talking dollars and cents to get them in the door. Yep. We should be saying, hey, You have a problem. You called the right place.

35:55Let me tell you why you held— called the right place. Here we go. We line 'em right down into setting up the appointment, telling 'em our process, telling 'em it's gonna be okay. Be human. Be human. And I'm glad you brought up the point about like being nice is just kind of the entry. I think a lot of times people don't know how they're, how bad their, their people that are answering the phone are because they sound friendly.

36:20And I learned a long time ago in sales, like, it doesn't matter if you're friendly or you're nice or whatever. You got to be able to command and control that conversation because you could answer the phone really friendly and be nice. But then I'm still, as a customer, I don't feel safe and taken care of. You could be a nice lawyer. You could be like, oh, don't worry about it, Kevin.

36:38But like, you've burnt me so many times because you've never followed up. I'm worrying about it. I'm not sleeping at night still. Right. And you know as well as I do, you have to have a track record. Record with people to get them to trust you. You know, people look at me that know me, and when I say I'm going to do this, a lot of the people that have done business with me or know me, my employees, they know it's done.

36:57It'll be done in 5 minutes. Here's another problem I have. I'll call you back. We've talked about this. I'll call you back. They don't call you back. I have called the people that take care of my pool cover bullshit that I bought the house with 3 times. They'd never call me back. Why even have a business? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you suck. And I'm gonna send them— I'm gonna let them— I left them last message.

37:21Wow, you know, I'm glad you have an answering machine because it must be fucking broken because you don't call anybody back. Like, I'd imagine that comp— that owner of that company doesn't even know that. Yep, absolutely. Or he obviously trusts his employee that's not doing their job, and eventually he'll find out, and that customer— that employee won't be there much longer. Yep, right.

37:39It's just, you know You have to— when you have whoever you have on your front desk, that is a gatekeeper of the kingdom. A service advisor can make you or break you. You people don't seem to understand, and you technicians don't seem to understand that that's the front, that's the face of the company. They don't walk in to the back shop and walk next to Bob's toolbox and go, what you doing, Bob?

38:02They walk in the front door, right? And they, they want to be greeted. The service advisor answers the phone. I tell my mechanics, don't answer the phone, let it ring. That's not your job to answer the phone because I don't want it blown. Yeah. I called Garrison, I had some guy on the phone, he didn't even know what was going on. Well, no, he was walking by the phone, happened to pick it up.

38:20He really didn't know what to say. And that just sets the tone for like, okay, that was the first time a fleet manager calls. I got 60 trucks and he calls there and the mechanic's walking by and grabs the phone and is not trained and doesn't know what to say and blows it, right? Everybody has their role. Your service advisor isn't going out there and wrenching on the vehicles.

38:37You know, like everybody has their role and their specialty. Right. And I'm going to tell you something else. People are starving for the human touch. Everywhere you go, people are starving for the human touch. And I'm going to tell you this right now. You guys that say kiosks are going to replace service advisors are wrong. 100% wrong. People want a guy. We've talked about this before.

38:58Here, here's my guy's number. Everybody wants a guy. The problem is we're running out of guys. There's not skilled people out there. To deal with this type of stuff. And it goes right with the service advisors. But guess what that means? It's all opportunity for you. Absolutely. Who gives a fuck what everybody else is doing? Let them sink their ship. All you gotta do, and I was telling the guys yesterday, everybody I've called is a D.

39:18I haven't had anybody that's scored over a D+, I think. And so if you think about like the average out there, out there is a D. If you are a C, you're gonna beat them and land more business than, than them. If you're an A, it doesn't matter what your price is. You could be $300 more. And, and like, we, I love this stuff cuz we get into little tiny details and we open this show and this, it, the, the calls tie into the same exact thing.

39:42Are you feeling taken care of? It's these little tiny details. All those inches matter, uh, add up to make a ginormous, a mild difference between you and your competitors. And you know, you don't know as a service advisor when somebody calls you and says, hey, Okay, here's a perfect example. I have my 2018 Ford Transit. You're like, oh God, a Transit, what a piece of shit.

40:03They're almost as bad as a Promaster, right? You don't know the story of that. You don't know how they feel about it. Yeah, they could have willed to them from their dad who died, and the dad— and they went fishing together with it every year for the last 5 years, and their sentimental value. So that guy will spend whatever he needs to to keep that, that memory alive.

40:23Yeah. Okay. And that's what people don't seem to understand. Like my guys, I'm like, listen, sell them everything, quote everything they need and give it to them. The price is the price. If they want to do it, they can do it. If they don't want to do it, they don't have to do it. We're not ripping anybody off. This is what we have to charge to get the vehicle back to where it needs to be.

40:40Yep. It's not your job to say, wow, that's really expensive. You're not selling out of your own pockets. Now, if you want to lower our prices, not a problem. Go ahead and work for free this week. We'll give them a discount. Well, I'm not doing that. Then sell them what we need to do to be in business. We have these numbers figured out for a reason.

40:55Yep. Okay. A lot of these service advisors we talk to, Jay, they don't even know what they're supposed to be freaking marking stuff up to. They don't even know. And they blow it. We started training with one person and what happened? They got mad and walked out. I asked her the same thing I've asked everybody I've talked to. Where do you think you could get better on your calls?

41:15Where do you think you struggle at the most? And she was like, I can't handle this. And walked out. Okay. That's a problem in your business. It's a problem if you have a sell-through rate of 40 or 50% and your other coach is telling you that's great. He's lying. You're a shitty salesman if you're selling 5 out of 10 jobs. Make all the excuses in the world, you suck.

41:37Yep. Okay, right now we're at 83 at, uh, Garrett's and Motor City. Since we started— I started training the guys and started selling these jobs and stuff like that, we're in the 80s at Motor City. We were in the 50s. Some people are just not salesmen. Yeah. Well, and, and this is a good example. The guys I was working with yesterday, they, they literally are just making assumptions on the customer.

42:00There are some assuming that they want, if they're calling in, they want their thing fixed right now, or they're assuming their timeline. And so if somebody calls in and they're busy, they're, they're literally referring them out to other places. They're literally telling them to go somewhere else without even knowing that their timeline is acceptable. So I was like, ask a question, find out like, hey, we can get you in on Monday, we can get you in next week.

42:20Well, how's that look for you? As opposed to like just automatically assuming that you're, you can't get their job done and like, and get their business. You're automatically sending them down the road without asking any questions. We have a client that goes to both shops. They're pretty much a pain in the ass every year. They scrutinize everything. You're this, you're that, you're expensive, you're this, you're that, blah, blah, blah.

42:41This year we didn't see 'em. I'm like, good. You're a pain in my fucking ass, right? So on my way home Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, and, uh, the phone rings. I answer it. I don't know why Jim didn't answer, but whatever. They called Motor City. They're like, hey, we need our bumper on our one 53-foot trailer, our ICC bumper, raised 2.5 inches. I'm like, okay, first of all, did you check the law?

43:10Where's it measuring out at? Blah, blah, blah, from the ground. Yep, we're good. We have 6 inches to play with. Perfect. I said, all right. Well, she said, I need to drop it off Monday and I need it Monday afternoon. I'm like, yeah, that's not going to happen. I said, I can get it done next week, but I can't get it done Monday.

43:27Well, I just won't bring it to you. I said, that's fine. I said, I told you I would get it done next week. I said, but think about this. What about all the other customers that have been waiting for me? And you call me and you're like, if you don't do this right now, I'm not going to let you do it. And you're jumping up and down having a temper tantrum.

43:42I said, then you know what? Don't. I told you what I could do for you. If you can't make that work. Sorry. Yeah, there's a long pause and I sat there and I held my— well, how about I just let the client have it for the week and then I'll have it back, then I'll have it for 4 days the following week and you can get it done?

43:58That would be great. I controlled that whole phone call to the point where like, no matter what you say, you're not running my company. At the point of losing the business, but I was very nice. I said, you say Monday afternoon, I'm saying I can get it done next week for you, no problem. But you can't call me and demand you're gonna drop it off Monday morning and you're gonna, you're gonna have it back Monday afternoon.

44:21There's a lot of things that could happen between there and I'm not gonna get it done. And that I'm gonna set you up for disappointment and throw my shop into chaos. We already have our schedule set for Monday. It's the weekend. The guys are tired. It was hot as shit last week. So I told them Thursday, I said, we finished a big job, that repaint Thursday.

44:37I said, listen, it's 3 o'clock, go home an hour early. We're closing. I'll answer the phone. That's why I was answering the phone. And I said, tomorrow, come in, clean up the shop, sweep up, take all the garbage, and freaking close it down at 2 o'clock and go home. It's not worth killing you guys. It's been in the 90s. Everybody's dead-ass tired.

44:56Yeah, right. So we're a little bit behind. They already had their scheduled plans of vehicles to work on Monday, right? Yep. So I'd be a complete asshole if I let somebody call me and control my business about what I'm gonna do. It, it fucks your customers that are waiting in line. It fucks your guys that already had a plan. Like, and you're just, uh, you're, you're causing chaos, right?

45:20So I don't do stuff like that. But my point to that whole thing, I controlled the whole thing. Once she realized that no matter what, she's talking to the big guy and it ain't happening. Yep. And that's what I keep training my people. This is what's going to happen. We're more than happy to accommodate you. Yep. But we're going to accommodate you on our terms on this particular case.

45:39Now, if somebody calls in and says, if I drop off my truck truck Monday for a fender, and I know you have one in stock, whatever, can you have it done Friday? We'll say yes or no. But here's the problem we tell people: if you want us to give you a commitment, you need to start by showing us you're serious. Let's get your name, get you on a schedule, get you to come in, okay?

46:01And then at that point, we'll estimate everything, and then we'll talk timelines, right? How can I talk a timeline when they're not even there? Absolutely. And I haven't seen it. Yeah, because, you know, everybody can understand this that owns a repair shop. They never tell you the whole story because if they tell you the whole story, it's going to be more expensive.

46:18Absolutely. So they lied to you. It's just a little— I hit— I had a guy call me. I'm not even shitting. I wish I had the, uh, Jim's phone. He called, he sent Jim pictures. I just hit a little bridge and, and the corner of my box is just a little bent. This thing looked like a can opener. The can, it looked like freaking— it was peeled all the way back, like I'm like, little my ass.

46:39They ripped the whole top of the— but his, in his mind thinking to himself, if I lie to him and say it's just a, it's just a little bent, they might tell me it's $800 or something on the phone. I don't know. So you drop it off and you can see the whole top fried off. So back to, you know, these service advisors, we listened to these guys talk and stuff like that.

46:59Guys, I can't tell you how important I believe that you're spending all this money marketing. Think about this. You have the marketing companies, the cuckoos, and all these keywords. You're doing Facebook ads, you're doing Google ads, you have geofencing going on, all the bullshit everybody sells you to make your phone ring. And then the phone rings and you blow it, right? Yeah.

47:20How many times have we seen this? It's happening over and over again. My company the other day. Yeah. My God. Like, I got Lincoln on phone. I want Lincoln to answer the phone the whole time because, you know, I ran the front desk the other day. Out of 7 calls, I got 6 people in the next day. Yeah. Yeah, you start to wonder like, what's going on here?

47:38Why? Because you have to call somewhere and you have to get the place where you feel like they could take care of it. Yep. I went yesterday on the way home in, in, uh, from up north on M-33, Exit 202. There's a tractor dealership and I'm looking for a different type of grapple. I walked in there, you could tell the dealership's been around for a while and you could tell they're not hurting for money.

48:03There's a lot of implements there, so that means they made money in their second, third gen, whatever, right? When I walked in, they were fucking dicks. They don't say hi, they don't acknowledge you. They're, they're so arrogant and they're so untrained. And here's the problem, what I've seen is the owner— the employees follow the owner's lead. How many times have I said this?

48:27Like, the owner's a little bit of a prick, his employees act like pricks. Absolutely. The employee's nice, Or the owner's nice, the employees aren't nice to the customers. That guy was an asshole. I go, so I want to— I explained to him, I want a dual cylinder grapple, I want a brush grapple, this and that. He looks at me, he goes, we should probably just walk out there and look at it.

48:46Do you know what size tractor you have? You have a YT359C. It's a 59 horsepower tractor. I could use a 72-inch grapple. I have live hydraulics on the front of it. He's just like looking at me like— I wanted to like, you know what, buddy, fuck you. And leave. Like, yeah, I gave him all the information he had. He could have pulled the sheet out and goes, yeah, you could probably do this Land Pride, you could probably do this right here.

49:08Do you want to walk out there and check, see what it looks like? They're pretty well built, right? And change the whole thing, right? Thing. I won't go buy anything from that dick. Yep. And I like the grapple he has, so I know what model I want. Now I'm gonna go buy it from somebody else because he acted like an asshole. Like, guys, when customers come in, you'd pay good money for these guys to come in the door.

49:26How much is it to buy that? What, $4,700? $4,700. You just lost $4,700. You're guaranteed 100% you're gonna buy that, but not from him. Yeah. 'Cause you know, my trailer was hooked to my truck. Yeah. And Marilyn's like, why didn't you buy it? I'm like, the guy was a dick. She's like, of course he was. 'Cause I walk into these places all the time and I wanna do business with them.

49:44And I'm not the kind of guy that walks in and sits there and kicks the tire. If I walk in, I'm like, I did my— I want that right there, load it up and we'll do it. Right. You're an easy customer. I'm an easy customer. 'Cause I'm usually, I'm up to speed. I, I research it. Right. And I started, this journey a long time ago, watching how this stuff happens with that book, uh, The Power of Body Language, that, uh, Navarro is his last name.

50:05This guy was an FBI profiler, and he's the guy that I learned about how people ask by food. And start watching, guys, of some people with personalities that are leaders, they'll go, I'll have, I'll have, or give me. Yeah. Other people like, can I? Yep. Alpha, beta. Like, that's just the way it is, right? And I started watching all this stuff, and I started really thinking to myself years ago about my sales game when we weren't doing very good.

50:29How do I get all the— how do I sell people big ticket items? Like for instance, I got a customer that put DEF in his diesel fuel, so it killed his fuel system. Oh my God. Yeah. And it's an expensive-ass job on a Dodge, uh, with a Cummins in it, because what ends up happening, you can't— if it's a Dodge pickup with a Cummins engine, you can't just call Cummins and get the parts.

50:53You could buy aftermarket stuff. It's a whole big story. People are going to flame me, but it's expensive. So I told Phil, I said, first, before you send the estimate, call them and go, hey, this is the situation. This is what's going on. I'm just prepping you right now. This shit's expensive. Yeah. As opposed to just sending them a super expensive— and yeah, Phil calls him.

51:12He goes, yep, I've dealt with it before, Phil. Thanks for the phone call. Thanks for the warning. He approved it in 5 minutes and away we went. Yep. But I think a lot of people in our— this is a whole nother thing I really talk about— a lot of these younger people aren't used to talking. They text. How many people that you're— now that you're doing— yeah, now that you're doing what we do, how many people you call on the phone, you're like, yo Jason, give me a call, and you're like, hang up the phone, hey, what's up?

51:39Yeah, yeah, especially younger kids, younger— the younger kids. And that was what I— the first time I— the first interaction I had with Lincoln when he was on my podcast, he was talking talking about. That was like, I walked away, this was the first thing he said that was like super impressive when he was like, because he was 17 at the time and he was like, I learned in my business that I can't text people or email people.

51:57I got to give them a call because I can understand, I can hear their voice, I can hear their tone, and I can, you know, understand their body language. It's like, boom. Yeah. When you can see somebody, when you can hear somebody, it's so much different than sending that text back and forth. You have so much more control over the phone than you do on a text message.

52:14Right. And I believe that the shop management programs are absolutely wonderful to send people a link to see the pictures, You get to pick, but we send it, or if it's a big one, we call first. Yeah. I'm still a firm believer you need to pick up the phone and have the personal touch. Hey Jason, I just want to tell you, we're going to go ahead.

52:30We checked it all out. Yes, there was DEF in your fuel system. Your fuel system is compromised. You're going to need this. And this is why, you know, blah, blah, blah. Do you ever think about calling your insurance company? Because the insurance company a lot of time will pay for this. Da, da, da, da. Just so you know, here it is, it's going to come and blah blah blah, here's the pictures and everything, and then you hang up versus just do a full send.

52:54They open the thing up, $20,000 or $15,000 or whatever, they're like, they're laying there, blood running out of their ears. You kind of give them a little bit of warning that I personally believe that's the human touch. Yep. And I think that's what the USA and the world is missing right now is customer service sucks ass. These corporations have pared it down to the point now where some of these stores you go into, there's 2 employees.

53:16Yeah. Do you notice that? Their idea, they wanted— they, they held all these people to a standard. They're worried about Google, uh, reviews and stuff like that, but they keep cutting their staff to make their shareholders happy and to compromising the customer experience. Yeah. Like, do you remember years ago when Home Depot and Lowe's, you'd walk in, every time you turn the corner, hey, can I help you?

53:39Hey, can I help you? Like there's, you know, now they just keep cutting it back and cutting it back because they just shrinking it, shrinking it. I always wonder how these people get to like high-ranking officials because there's a cause and effect. You're not going to have the level of customer service when you cut these people, you know, like it's just not going to happen.

53:55And you're probably cutting your good people too, and you— because you're cutting your wages and you're hiring people who can barely, you know, barely form a sentence. No, and that's the one thing that, um, I, I think that these guys just don't have no clue that years of problems and experience bring wisdom. And they think, well, that guy makes, we'll just say $100,000 a year.

54:16I could replace him with 2 guys at $50,000 a year. Or we'll just get rid of one guy that has all these answers and all the experience and everything. We'll hire him for a guy for half the money and put him in there and nobody will know the difference. And then you go somewhere and there's nothing more frustrating than somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.

54:33Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. And especially in today's world, you know, you're sitting there trying to go to a store and buy something. And like, there's a guy at Best Buy in Brighton that's the manager there. He's, um, he's always, hey, Mr. Brown, how you doing? He's awesome. Yeah. He knows his shit. He always goes out of his way and helps you.

54:48That's why I keep going to that store. When he's not there, I'm not going back there. Yeah. It's, you know, people are wondering why brick and mortars are failing because Amazon has made it so easy to pick what you want, press a button, it shows up. Amazon has got the customer experience nailed. Yeah. Why don't people want to go to the store?

55:08Number one, the stock is not there. And number two, they don't want to be treated like shit by some little punk-ass teenager that doesn't know what the hell they're talking about with an attitude. I made a whole career in retail based off of that, knowing that people like— the standard is a D. The standard is a D. If you can get it to be a B or an A, you're kicking everybody's ass.

55:27Like, they'll refer friends to you. Like, you can grow. Business is not hard if you can just understand that people want the personal touch and people just don't. So that going back to this, guys, you get a repair order that's 3 pages long with a bunch of bullshit that you don't even know what the hell even happened. 'Cause I, I own a shop and I really don't understand what happened with this thing.

55:47When you said you couldn't decipher it, I was thinking like, and you own a shop, you've been in this industry for over 30 years. Like, can you imagine if you were the customer? Yeah. And so we go ahead and we do the extra mile for people. I spend a lot of money on ink and paper, but that's okay. And I do it all in color.

56:02Professional shop. We charge a lot of money. We're not for everybody. But if you want to save money, go to the guy who doesn't fix it and charges you $300 less, and your vehicle's still not fixed. Mhm. And they didn't even talk to you about your air cleaner. They didn't even talk to you because they, they spent all this time building this courtesy inspection only not to do it.

56:20Let's look. Front tires, front suspension, front brakes, pads, rotors, calipers, steering fluid leaks, rear tires, suspension, rear brakes, rear rotors, rear calipers, Drivetrain leaks, exhaust alignment check. I don't know why they would do an alignment check for free. I didn't do it, they did, you know what I mean? I don't know. Um, and here's the other thing that I thought was really stupid on this.

56:43You got a smiley face, a caution triangle, then an X. Like, some of this shit that these people put out, and it's just like, it's horrible. And, you know, Let's go back, keep it simple stupid. Go back to the basics. Like, let's go ahead and make the customer feel welcome when they call. Yes. Not like they're bothering you. This, as we're sitting here talking, made me think about the episode we did a few, maybe a month or so ago, and the customer's not always right.

57:12Yeah. And I, I, that's something that's been thrown around. And, but I would, I would beg to differ that customers don't even want to be right. Like they want to be taken care of. As many times as I've called up and somebody's asked me like, Do you want us to replace all of them? Like, do you want us to do this? Like, what do you think?

57:27They're asking my opinion. If I, if I knew, I wouldn't be calling you, you know? Like, I wanna be led. In that phone call with you, when you called me, I said, listen, yes, you have an L5P. We're having all kinds of problems with the glow plugs. If you're going to bring it in and want one, chances are you're gonna be back the next week for the next one and the next week for— I said, if you wanna go through that and make me miserable and yourself miserable and you hate me by the end, we'll do one at a time.

57:51Or do you want to do all 8 and just get them all done and be done at once? You're like, I want to get them done. Yeah. How many people have the balls to even say you want to just do all 8? Nobody. I told you, hey, we'll put one in, but there's still going to be another problem because in our experience is what I said.

58:05We've had the next one go bad, the next one go bad, the next one go bad. And right now we're having a hard time even getting them. You did. You added the value to that to make me think I've got to get on the list right now. And it's just those little nuances. And like, as you sit and think about it, If you're calling up places of business, think about those things and what words mean to you.

58:22You, you said, hey, we're having a hard time getting them. I'm thinking like, I want to get on the list right now. Like, there's a supply and demand issue. I need to get this moving. I can't hem and haw about it because now I'm going to be even out further to get this thing fixed. Right. And speaking of and talking about the experience, you know, like, oh yeah, we handle it all the time.

58:40Here's the experience. Oh, and this is happening. Like you're speaking of somebody like without saying I'm knowledgeable and I can handle this. You're telling me you're knowledgeable and you can handle this. And you know, last time we had this problem, um, Phil's on vacation and we were doing a knock sensor. We got done with it on an L5P and then it came up with a glow plug code.

58:57And I called the guy, I go, hey, uh, you got a glow plug code. Do you want me to put a glow plug in it? He goes, yeah. I go, do you want me to put all 8 in? 'Cause you're gonna be back next week. He's like, no, this was expensive. Let me just do one. I said, okay. He called me 2 days later.

59:08He's like, fucking check engine light's back on. A little bit mad. I said, bring it by here real quick. I'm at the front desk. He brought it by. I scanned it. I said, yeah, it's a different glow plug. Look, it's number 7. We did number 3. He goes, fuck, you told me this. I go, I told you that. I go, do you want me to order the rest of them so we can just get this over with?

59:22He's like, yeah, I'll just put it on my credit card. Go ahead. He's like, you told me this was gonna happen. I'm like, not a problem. I go, listen, I go, I'll order 'em. When they're all in, I'll call you, drop it off. We'll get it done in a day. He's like, man, this was so easy. He's like, and you told me this was gonna happen.

59:35I go, I know I'm fucking awesome. Yeah. He started laughing. But how about another shop? They would sold one more, then he would have been— he'd be getting madder every time. Yep. But I told him, I said, you can get mad all you want, but keep in mind, I'm telling you, this is going to keep happening over and over again. Yep. If you're okay with that, I'm okay with that, because every time I see you, I get to charge you more.

59:55I said, well, you know, why don't we just do it all at once and be done with you? We don't see each other till next recurring invoice, right? And then he's like, yeah, you're right, let's just do it. And it was cool with him. Yes. Yeah. You know, but it's being human and it's breaking the news. You know, here's the news. You might not like it, but it's just the fact of the matter.

1:00:13Yeah. I don't know what to tell you. And, you know, and I don't lie to people and we just tell them the truth. And that's what I try to tell Phil and Lincoln. And, you know, Lincoln, he just has the sales. He's salesy. Yeah. He is good. But he had to sell. He was kicking people's ass in his business at 16 years old.

1:00:31These guys are calling him, like saying, hey, what do you think? And they're in their 20s, you know, they have blown out old jacked up trucks and this and that. Colin, go, you want to buy my business? She's like, no, I'm going to wait till you go out of business. I'm just going to take your customers because you're not going to be there anymore.

1:00:46Your customers have to go somewhere. They're going to come to me because I'm top of Google. Yeah. I'm like, that's kind of arrogant. He's like, it's the fucking truth. And I'm like, good for you. But you know what? How many people that are good at business and made their way in the world— we can be arrogant a little bit. People are like, you're arrogant.

1:00:59They say it all the time on my podcast, you're arrogant. So fucking what? Why? Nobody kicks a dead horse. 5,000%. And you know what? Like, we shouldn't be humble about our experience. You're the best, right? Like, and, and if you're like, if you were to apologize for that, then you're not gonna land the business and you shouldn't. Yeah. Let's think about this as, did, you know, um, I don't know, did, what's some of the NASCAR guys, did they ever win the race and go, yeah, hey, I'm really sorry.

1:01:26Dale Earnhardt, you ever hear him say he's sorry for winning the race and running somebody into a wall or anything? Yeah. There's other shop owners. I'm sure they're better than me, make way more money than me, have way more shops. Usually a business can only expand to the chaos the owner can handle, they say. Yeah. Yep. I put systems in place. Like I'm kind of like on the downward slope of a mediocre career.

1:01:47Like I've made money and stuff like that, but I'm to the point now where I want to chill. I don't want to keep pushing. I'm 55 years old. I'm just getting tired. I don't want to say burnout because I still get up every day. I like going to work and It's exciting, new problems. We got this, you know, we got all these clients now and there's all kinds of different personalities.

1:02:04So I still like what I do, but I don't want to keep scaling this thing to the point where I can't control it. Because let's face facts here, at the end of the day, it all, the buck stops here. Yeah. If there's a problem in my shops, any of my shops or something, I go sit in that chair and figure it out and fix it.

1:02:22Right. Um, sometimes I'm my own worst enemy. I think it has to be fixed in 5 minutes. You've seen it. Yep. But the one thing is I get it fixed in 5 minutes, and that's where I came up with the stop-loss thing. Yeah, no, that's killer. I like it. I love the stop-loss. I did it today. He's like, this guy has been on the phone 5 times, I'm just gonna stop-loss him.

1:02:38I wrote him his estimate, said, here, it's gonna be $29,000, I'm not talking anymore about it, here it is. He declined it. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, at one time I consider a stop-loss time, money, right? Because one thing people don't realize that you only have so much of is time. Yes. And don't let people waste it. There's so much time being given away for free, for sure.

1:02:59Yeah, we figured it out last month with all the clusterfuckery around here and everything we gave away with diagnosing stuff, not doing, checking out, the insurance companies holding up, customers holding up— about 160 hours, we figured, of just jobs that all hit this month. Yeah, I looked at it, I said, guys, the labor hours were terrible. We went through the list and said, look, look how much time I have on this one.

1:03:20Look how much time I have this one. It hasn't came to fruition yet. That's why some of these guys are on flat rate. It's out of their control. Yeah. That's why I switched my guys to hourly. Back to the customer experience though, the service advisors need to learn how to get people in the door and tell 'em, you have a problem, here I am to solve it.

1:03:40You don't freaking give somebody, honestly, like, do you even consider this? This is a fucking joke. As a joke, especially since, uh, 2 of the pages are not even done— anything done with. You shouldn't even give them that page. Yeah, let's see if the miles are on here. Color, no mileage in, no mileage out. Wow. So again, yeah, talking about just liability.

1:04:05Yeah, don't know what color it is, no odometer in, no odometer out. Let's look at mine here. Eat my own shit, right? Odometer in was 55,936. It's blue. Jody, mechanic's number. Let's look here. There is no— there's not even a mechanic's name on here or mechanic's number or nothing. Wow. I think it's this little personal thing. Facility number right there. Who's working on my vehicle?

1:04:53Yeah. And the mechanic's number should be on there to see if they're certified Michigan. The number's not even on there. No, it's not even on there. Wow. Yeah, ours are mechanic numbers around here and everything. I kind of follow state law. Yeah. I kind of follow state law. Right? I just, wow, you know, and I can even say like another thing, by signing this estimate, you are giving Garrett Auto and Truck Service and its employees permission to email, text for sales communications.

1:05:24That's a big thing that you can get sued for. We have all that stuff. We had a lawyer write all this stuff up to be in compliance with everything. You know, and you got guys that— this is a big corp, this is a big branch or a big MSO franchise that you get this bullshit. Second attempt, and just the customer's pissed off writing it all over it, like rip-off, question mark, you know, refunded.

1:05:52Like, they end up giving us money all back. Oh wow. So on top of it, they lost all that money because You're losing the time from the technician and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. By just not following standard operating procedure like that, I would be furious. You could understand this one for the guy because he was in an RV park. This guy is a mobile truck repair.

1:06:15Oh, okay. They showed up, secure service call for no start. Battery has 12.5. Starter spinning but not engaging. Needs starter, uh, tow to shop, R&R starter, starter labor, tax, no shop supplies and everything, um, $735. Like, I can completely understand that. Yeah, because they towed the guy in or whatever. Uh, license plate number, stuff, RV. So even written out is better than the one that they did.

1:06:52Yeah. Pretty much. I just— that blows my mind. And I told the guy I'd give that thing back. He told me he needed toilet paper. I mean, he was— he's a pretty cool old guy, but, you know, when I called him and told him all the things, he's just like, wow, like, you guys are thorough. It's like, well, you know, we're going to charge you a lot of money, but we're going to give you all the answers and make you feel comfortable with it.

1:07:13And when you call us, we're gonna— we're gonna have us— you can hear our smile through the phone. Yep. Right? That's kind of— you ever notice, like, you're at Auto and Truck, like, you know, hey, how you doing? Like, it doesn't hurt to be nice, guys. Yeah. So it's gonna be interesting for the next few weeks. We're gonna be putting our phone calls up there.

1:07:34We're gonna start here. When do you think we're starting? Uh, I'm starting to make calls in the morning. So we have a good list of people. We still have open slots if you want to get in. If you're listening to this this week and, uh, just shoot a message Yeah. And guys, you'll start to learn what the situation is as far as what's really going on in your shop.

1:07:50And you're like, man, we're slow. Maybe because your service advisor's blowing it every time. And that's it. So not only do we do that call, but you get a report back and suggestions on what you can do and how you can help your service advisor get better. Right. And you know, my thing is we get bigger and bigger. We're only 2 people.

1:08:07I'm not going to keep taking on a ton of clients. I'm not going to have 40 or 50 clients. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like some of these people that are coaching firms, they're freaking talk to their clients once a month. Well, and it's working with the right people too, because we talked about the client that came on and, you know, spent a couple of weeks of money and didn't want to do anything.

1:08:26Things got hard and then disappeared. Those aren't the right people. Right. And so when you're talking about only working with 40, 50 clients, it's like the cream of the cream, right? The ones that actually The Isaacs and the guys that are, are actually gonna go out there and make movement. Absolutely. Even if you tell, tell 'em off a couple times. I totally agree with that.

1:08:43Well, thanks for watching. Hopefully you'll listen to what your service advisors are saying on the phone and you wonder why your marketing's not working. My marketing's not working. Your marketing's working just fine. Your phone's ringing. Your people are blowing it when they're calling, so you're wasting money. Little dollars are flying out. Have a great day. All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of Repair Shop Reckoning.

1:09:05If this helped you, please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. We drop real conversations, real systems, and real solutions every week. We'll see you back here next time on Repair Shop Reckoning.