Chaos Starts In The Shop When Communication Stops

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0:23Call 1-800-GRANGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. This is the story of the one. The one who keeps multiple buildings running smoothly day after day. Plumbing that flows, HVAC that hums, cleaning supplies that keep surfaces sparkling. That's why she counts on Grainger. With easy reordering online and 24/7 support, Grainger helps her keep the products she needs on hand.

0:49So shelves stay stocked and buildings stay ready. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. Welcome 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.

1:18Shop owner, operator, consultant, leader through industry shifts, insurance games, bad hires, great hires, and lessons learned the hard way. This isn't theory. This 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.

1:52No corporate scripts, no sugarcoating. And yeah, somebody might get offended. That's okay. Disney's two 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 to Repair Shop Reckoning. Last week was, uh, I moved and I'll tell you what, it feels good to get back into the studio and run my mouth because My family about had it with me 'cause they stayed with me last week of work.

2:21Lincoln stayed home from the shop and Marilyn stayed home from the shop and we started Monday. So the weekend before Saturday, or Saturday, all the guys came over and we loaded a 30-foot trailer and a 12-foot trailer, as crowded as we can get it. And Monday morning when I closed on the house, I drove home and drove the 30-foot trailer over there and my son and 4 guys were waiting for us.

2:42We unloaded the trailer and the guys at the shop, when they got done, went back and we reloaded it. So we did, In one day, we did 3 30-foot loads and 2 12-foot loads. Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah, my guys were like, "Oh my God, you're fucking insane." But we got everything moved pretty much in one day, except for like the little tidbit stuff, like my gun room and all that shit we had to do later.

3:02But it was pretty crazy. So we're all done and moved in and everything. Now we're just waiting for them to open the pool next week. So then summertime frolicking starts, right? So the grandkids can come over and stuff. Interesting, last week we were moving, Lincoln had to go pick up a bed frame from down in Warren, which is about 40 miles from our house.

3:26And he took my 2025 Sierra 1500 with a 3-liter diesel in it. So he calls me, or I call him, I go, "Where are you at, dude? Like, you've been gone like way longer than you should." He's like, "The truck went into reduced power mode, and I called the shop and Jason came over with a scan tool. It's got no oil pressure.

3:44We pulled the stick, it's got, it's—" Not even on the stick. So we're like, holy shit. So we put oil in it, cleared the code. It had oil pressure for a minute, then it went away again. So we limped it over to the dealer. The thrust bearing went out in the motor. Apparently late 2025 and 2026 3-liter diesels are killing motors, killing engines.

4:03The thrust bearing went out. So the motor blew up, the engine blew up. So now they're putting an engine under warranty because it's only got 17,000 miles on it. Wow. So that leads me into today's podcast. Talking to the service advisors over at the dealer, I was horrified. And I get that they're busy and it's a lot of stuff going on, but the communication, the way everything was presented to me, and I'll call you back and they don't call you back.

4:35And then before she even called me back, I just get this basic video from the dealer. Hey, this is so-and-so, master tech. Great video. He did a really good job. Very well spoken. Basically, we're going to go ahead and get an engine ordered up for you because your engine failed. The thrust bearing went out and kind of explained a little bit what a thrust bearing was, blah, blah, blah.

4:55For a normal customer, that'd be great. I already know what a thrust bearing is. You had no idea. Yeah. And so he sends me this video. So what does that prompt me to do? I already think to myself, oh my God, backorder. How long am I not going to have this truck in my fleet to use? Because we use all of our trucks.

5:12So I call. Oh, I don't know. I don't even think it's been checked out yet. I said, well, he sent me a video and it says it needs an engine. Oh, okay. I'll call you back. Okay. No callback. Next morning I call. Hey, you know, just want to check to see what's going on. Uh, yeah, I don't know. Uh, I talked to you yesterday about this.

5:39I told you what's going on. Oh man, no, you told me you'd call me back, which you didn't. And I understand, I'm in the same business you are, I understand stuff gets hectic. Why don't you go ahead and look it up in the computer and tell me what's going on? Got a little, a little irritated with me because I was kind of talking to her like she's a kindergartner, because that's what she was acting like.

5:59And, uh She basically said, yeah, looks like they might have to— I don't even know if they ordered an engine yet. I said, okay, thanks. And she never called me back. Yeah, she called me back again. So on my way in yesterday, I just stopped by— Monday, I stopped by the dealer. I know the parts manager, like, yo, what's up with this?

6:22He's like, yeah, they're ordered. It's shipped already. The parts are coming. You should have it back in a week. But why should I, as a customer, because right now I'm a customer, yeah, have to go to the parts department to find out where my engine is because the service advisor can't do his job? Now, that leads into the service advisor screwing over the technicians.

6:42Think about it, on time and everything else. I mean, there's a whole big thing that goes on. The service advisor is not on their game. The problem I think the dealerships are running into, nobody wants to work at the dealership anymore. So they're pretty much putting any fricking ass in any chair to try to get it pushed along. And I find it interesting, the interaction that I got from that lady, and I know what I'm doing.

7:05So it didn't really like rattle me. Like, okay, I knew a thrust bearing, I knew it was gonna need an engine. My only question is like, okay, how many weeks is this gonna take to get an engine? Because everybody's engines are going bad. So if there's gonna be a backorder, it could be weeks. You know, sometimes they come in a week, sometimes they come in 8 weeks.

7:20That was my question. And I couldn't even get that simple question answered. I kind of thought like, what the fuck is up with that? So think about me being a regular customer. That's my only vehicle and I'm making payments on it. And I go to work with that vehicle. I bring it into the dealer. They can't even tell me. I have to call 4 or 5 times.

7:43Then finally I might get an answer, right? Maybe not, maybe I do, but think about how irritated that customer would be. And God, you know what, at that point, that person does need a fucking bad review and does need to get money taken out of their paycheck because pull your head out of your ass. Okay. The bottom line is if you fricking give the customer the information, you can kind of cool the whole situation down and say, hey, I agree with you.

8:07This is horrible that this failed, that you have to make payments and stuff like that. Maybe you should call GM customer service. Whatever. And that's where training comes in. Training the service advisor, training them to say, hey, this is a problem. I agree with you. Maybe you should call GM and vent to them. I did everything I could. I did the estimate, I submitted the warranty, the parts are on order.

8:29My hands are tied. I'm with you though. It's horrible that your brand new vehicle blew up. It's horrible you have to make payments on it. It's horrible you have to rent a car. Like, how could somebody disagree with you if you give them all the information about what's going on in their vehicle and And then agree with them that it's bullshit. Yeah.

8:43What's going on? You kind of take the fire out of them and take the limelight off you. It's not your fault. You didn't build it. You're the support service advisor that's gotta give 'em the bad news. So today's podcast, my notes are communication and expectation management. This is something that we do at our shop and we use buffers, I call 'em. You use a buffer on 'em if you think you're gonna have a little bit of a parts hangup or something.

9:09Like today we had a guy that had a glow plug code and we replaced one glow plug and we drove it and another glow plug code came up. Well, they're on back order. We called the guy like, listen, here's 3 went away, but now 6 is on. We're gonna order it. Go ahead and pick up the truck, pay us for what we did, bring it back next week.

9:29We'll pop the glow plug in it when it comes in. There's no sense of your truck sitting here for a week. The guy was completely like, yeah, that's awesome. Great. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? So that's management managing him. Expectation management. Right. Absolutely. Cause I didn't want to keep the guy's truck sitting there for a week when he could drive it, quite frankly.

9:48It just starts, it still starts fine. It's not like it's below zero right now in Michigan. Thank God. Maybe tomorrow. Yeah. But who knows? So I kind of went through it, did some bullet points again, and I, and I just want to start, you know, kind of give people some ideas. Like one of the things you don't ever say, you know, stop giving exact completion times up.

10:07Front. Meaning if the guy comes in this morning and says, okay, uh, when can I have my vehicle back? You don't go with them 3 o'clock. Cause you literally just put the time in his head, 3 o'clock. It's no different than somebody saying, give me a ballpark on a job. And you say $800. You come in at $1,000. Wait a second. You said $800.

10:27Cause that's what they remember. You hear you saying, and regardless of you said, listen to me very carefully. This is a ballpark. It could be higher. It could be lower. Does not matter. The $800 is stuck in their head. Yeah. And that's something that I think a lot of shops do. We don't give estimates over the phone. People get pissed, but I can't give you a ballpark.

10:47There's just a lot of variations in a job that I don't even give them. I'm not— I'm not there for people to price shop like, hey, can you give me an estimate? That means I have to start to do a quick estimate, give them a price, then we have to negotiate. We're not getting into all that. If you want to bring it in, we're more than glad to check it out.

11:01Pay us the diag. At that point, we can give you a timeline when the repair is going to be done. You know what I'm saying? That's kind of how we do it at our shop. So I'm going to go through these lists and give examples of stuff like that. So I remember them all because I have a lot of stuff going on.

11:15Stop giving exact completion times up front instead of promising the completion times. Like I said, listen, tell them, listen, we're going to provide an inspection. We should be calling you in a few hours. With what the mechanic found, the technician found. At that point, we can give you timelines and set the expectations to the customer. We're managing it, right? Because it's a lot easier to do that versus going, hey, dropping it off for front brakes, no problem.

11:43We'll have you done at 3. Then all of a sudden, you know, the guy thinks, okay, tomorrow I have a ride to work. I got the car back. I could pick the car up tonight. He gets his wife, hey, you need to juggle with my mother-in-law or my mom to pick up the kids from dance because you're going to drive me to get the car.

11:57So you got all this stuff going on behind the background. In the background. And guess what happens? You can't get one part that you promised this car at 3, and the customer's pissed at you, even though it might not be your fault. But you really, with today's world, some of this stuff is a little bit harder to get. Some stuff's starting to, for some reason, go back on backorder a little bit.

12:16It's really weird lately. Again, like I see a lot of GM parts and Ford parts going on backorder. It kind of fixed itself, but it's kind of coming back in our area, which is really weird if you think about it, because we're the home of the Big Three. That's insane. We're the Motor City. Yeah. So you can imagine guys in other states, you know, it seems to me that the distribution seems to be taking a bruise, a beating right now.

12:36It just seems like distribution is bad. So, you know, I think trucking companies are going out of business because the fuel costs raised and stuff like that. That makes sense. So, you know, we always separate the diagnostic time from the repair time. So you bring the vehicle in, hey, we need to diagnose these problems. You know, you got 3 problems here. That's 3 hours of diagnosis right now.

12:57So you'll, you'll be hearing from us probably this afternoon or tomorrow, no later than tomorrow morning. We won't say you'll hear by us by 1 o'clock, we'll have it done by 3. Yeah. Yeah. Don't guess. And don't also, when they say, well, how much is it? Say, don't throw 'em a price. Do not throw 'em a price. Let's go ahead and get it checked out properly.

13:15That way we can set the expectation for the customer right there. Okay. Once the technician, you know, does all the diagnostic work on it and stuff like that, we write the estimate and stuff like that. We find the parts, we make sure the parts are in stock. When we send you the estimate of repair, at that point we could talk timeline, 'cause we know the parts are already secured, they're already there, or if they're not secured, if it's something maybe you can drive, maybe we can get the parts ordered, that way we won't keep your vehicle off the road then longer than it needs to be.

13:45And what we do a lot of times in that particular case, we'll get an approval, we'll get half down, that way we know when we order them parts, the customer, you know, is, is in on it, they're gonna come back because they got skin in the game, you know. Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? At a playground?

14:03Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers. Wow, your search can really get that specific. Really. And you just put in your info and boom, cars in your budget. Mom needs a second, honey. You can really have it delivered? Really. Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car. Mommy, look! Uh, I think your kid is walking up the slide.

14:23Kyle, again? Really? AutoTrader. Buy your car online. Really? So that's one thing I think that, you know, shops overpromise, they overbook. You guys always want your service advisor sell, sell, sell, sell. And I think a lot of the things nowadays, the way all these businesses are structured with all the flat rates and the commission-based bonuses and stuff like that, The service advisors are sell, sell, sell.

14:51And the technicians will all be clapping here when I say this. They don't understand what goes on in the back. They don't understand workflow. They don't understand rusty bolts. They don't understand struggles. Okay. There's been days that you go to work on a job and everything you touch on the job, it breaks. Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. It just never stops. Then you get almost all done with it.

15:10Back in my day, you're putting the air cleaner back on and you break one of the fricking vacuum switches. Which were almost impossible to do. So you're trying to glue it. And so there's just a lot of things that can happen that a service advisor really doesn't understand how the shop works. So they go, they promise all this stuff. And how can I promise something for you, Jason?

15:30You gotta go do all this work to this car and I'm gonna promise it's gonna be done at 3 o'clock. And a lot of times if you really stop and think about it, some of these big, bigger things, how can the service advisor promise something? Maybe the guy's leaving early. 'Cause he's got a baseball game. So all of a sudden you set these expectations 'cause you didn't talk to the technician, the customer's automatically pissed.

15:50You as a service advisor gets busy and Jason's supposed to be doing the brakes on Mrs. Smith's car. You go out there, check on it at 2 o'clock 'cause you had a promise at 3. Jason's gone. You ask Bob next to Jason, where Jason? This kid had soccer. He left early today. The manager knew it, but everybody knew it but the service advisor.

16:08That's why communication is key between service advisors in technicians. In our shop, they talk. Phil or Lincoln walk out to 'em when they push a job to 'em and they say, hey, this is what's going on today. You know, or in the morning they say, this is what's going on today. What can you get done? Or what are your plans today? Where are you at on your jobs?

16:29So they know. And a lot of times we do, we set a time, we try to update the customers halfway through the day. We start just calling and that way we we negate them calling us. Hey, just want to let you know the parts didn't show up. We're still waiting for them. I don't think we're going to get done today, but we're waiting for the parts.

16:47You know, we ordered them, they said they'd be here this morning. Here it is the afternoon. We had it happen last week to a truck. We're waiting for a front axle on it. It was supposed to be there first thing in the morning. Guy's like, I got to have the truck. We're like, no problem. They said the axle's going to be delivered tomorrow morning.

17:01If it gets delivered at 10, that's no problem because they're right down the street. If we have to, we could always go pick it up. Well, guess what happened? They never put it on the truck in Grand Rapids to ship it to Farmington. So we call at 10:30. Hey, that didn't get put on the truck last night. So instead of us waiting for the customer to call and say, hey, it's 2 o'clock, is my truck done or whatever?

17:25We called, hey, we got a problem here. Here's what happened. We did what we were supposed to do. They did what they were supposed to do at the branch. Shipping department in Grand Rapids did not put your axle on the truck. Oh, goddamn, I know, tell me about it. We don't want this truck on our shelf, on our toys either. You know, it's the last day of the pay period, the technician's getting screwed.

17:45Whatever we got to say, we agree with you, Mr. Customer, but we only can control so much. If people are not putting the parts on this truck to ship them to us, what can we do? Yeah. And, uh, so we end up, you know, they're not mad at you, you know. Don't lie to them. Tell them the truth. And I think a lot of shop owners and a lot of shops, you know, they're starting to get the— because you got to learn how to deal with these customers because everybody's got the man Amazon mentality now, and me included.

18:14Like last night, okay, this— the motherfuckers Amazon, now they have the thing you want in 3 hours, it's $4. I wanted Roku last night because my freaking remote on my other one went bad. I'm like, I want a Roku so I can set it up in the office and watch TV. And I'm like looking, I'm like I could have this thing by 8:40 tonight for $4 more.

18:32That's insane. So I'm like, click. Yeah. You know, here comes a lady. It's like the FastPass. There you go. Amazon. She shows up, like Jeep comes down the road, like pulls in. Here she comes. And I think that's what the problem is. Regardless of what I think Amazon is training the general public. Look, I don't even have to go to the store anymore.

18:52I could hit a button and it's done. And it's in 3 hours. It's yeah, it's changing everything. Okay. Some of these jobs pay 6, 7, 8 hours if everything goes— the book time is— that's if everything goes absolutely 100% perfect. Okay. So I don't understand some of these customers and we have run into this too. You know, they'll drop it off, you know, and we'll check it out in a few hours or whatever.

19:13And we're like, okay, um, here it is. We send you the estimate. They approve and they call and they go, is it gonna be done today? And be like, you just approved 14 hours worth of labor. No, it's not going to be done today. Well, I have to have my car. Well, what do you want us to do? Like that, that's a problem we're going through right now.

19:32So we have to kind of manage that. Like, I think the service advisor should be trained. Like we send the link. If we don't hear from them, if they approve it, we go on with it. Right. But if we don't hear from them in a few minutes, we call them up and explain it to them. Okay. You do realize that this is what's going on.

19:48Do you understand this? Do you understand these pictures? Because Think about a customer nowadays gets a video and a bunch of pictures. It's like somebody speaking Greek to them. Yeah, they don't know. Okay. In their trade, I'm sure they can make you look silly if they sent you an inspection and they're a civil engineer and they're talking about angles and lows in mixing mortar and concrete and re-rod and how much fiberglass to put in for reinforcement.

20:12And they're like, okay, Kevin, here's your video. We're getting ready to build a bridge over here. This is what we're going to do. I'd be like, And here's pictures. I'd be like, what the fuck does this even mean to me? So sometimes you have to call and maybe educate your customers a little bit. Say, hey, you see picture number 1, that's your brake rotor.

20:27You see how it's really rusty or it's grind, you know, that helps you sell the job and stuff like that. And that speeds up the process, you know, because last thing you want them to do is go to their coworker and be like, look at these pictures. And I go, oh, my brother-in-law can do that a lot easier. They're ripping you off.

20:41It just opens a can of worms. Yep. So I think, you know, in our shops, like I said, we give them about a half an hour, then we call, do you have any questions? 9 times outta 10, a lot of our customers have been around for a long time. They approve it, they trust us, we get on with the job. You know, they might call and go, hey, when can you have it done?

20:57Now these are the over-the-counter customers. These are people that one-offs, I work on their pickups and stuff. We're gonna get into commercial trucks here, here in a minute. 'Cause commercial trucks is not about money or anything, it's about time. If they're not out there turning, delivering their widget, whatever they do, that's costing them money. So money is not necessarily an issue with commercial vehicles, it's the timeline.

21:20So they like to be up to date. So with our commercial customers, when we do an estimate, we send a link, we call 'em right away. Let's go over this link, this is what's going on. Freightliner part, this part's on back order, this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's gonna be X, Y, or Z when we can get this truck done. That way they can manage their rental and stuff like that.

21:38Communication is key to all these customers. If they're over-the-counter customer, non-commercial customer, or they're commercial customer, what is the two things you need to do? You need to communicate with them. You could stop so many fights and pissing customers off by just communicating with them. Okay? Can you over-communicate? I've told some— somebody told me I over-communicated one time because we had a job that was really giving us a problem.

22:02I would— I said, I'm going to call you every step of the way. And they said, is it necessary for you to call me every step of the way? I said, I said, I was going to call you. This has been a problem job. And I want to keep you completely 100% up to speed. That's why I'm saying, hey, we got to this point.

22:16This is what we found. We need you to authorize this. I said, because when I come to the end of this and it's a huge bill, I want you to understand what happened all the steps of the way with your initials. Yeah. Yeah. Because I ran into a long time ago and how I came up with that policy was a guy named Johnny West.

22:31He bought a truck in Texas that was deleted. He did not know anything about diesel trucks. He was going to get into the business of hauling campers. This is when my son-in-law Jonathan worked for us. He buys this truck, it's deleted, it's got a trans problem, it's got several other problems. Well, we're like, it's deleted, it's given us bad code, it won't even— our scan tool won't even read it.

22:55Then we got the IDS working, but it's giving us the wrong codes of the IDS. It had a bad programming on it. We didn't know who programmed it. We don't do programming, we don't do deletions. So we're like, listen, he's like, well, I just want the truck back to stock because I go across state lines and stuff like that. I'm like, we could put it back to stock, but it's going to be really super expensive.

23:14You're going to buy a PCM. We're going to have to look at, do all this stuff. So we, I said, but it's going to be super expensive, but we want to go step by step with you because he tried to get ahold of the dealer that he bought it from and they wouldn't help him. It just was a whole big mess. So This guy, we went through it in every step of the way.

23:32We'd have him sign. Back then we didn't have Shopware, or we had Mitchell, so we would have— we would print it out, we would have him read it to him, we'd have him come in and sign it. Yeah. He started signing towards the end, signing under duress. The problem we had is like, I knew this guy was going to be a problem because he was a dipshit.

23:54He went and bought a deleted truck because, you know, diesel truck, I'm going to haul campers. And, you know, he bought some hacked-ass piece of shit. Yeah. So he wants us to put it back to stock, not even knowing what that's even going to mean. We tried to tell him, you don't really need to. Maybe you should just sell this truck. Well, I can't sell it.

24:08I got a huge loan on it from the dealer. So we went through this whole thing, and by the end he had a stack of papers. We had it around for a while and we got the truck back to stock and back to normal and got it running and everything. And, you know, the guy came in to pick the truck up after everything.

24:24You know what he fucking said to us? These aren't my seats. We're like, what? He's like, them are not my seats in my truck. We're like, they say King Ranch. You have a King Ranch truck. We did not switch your seats. You switched my seats. I'm going to call my lawyer. What? We didn't switch your seats. You need to fucking pay us.

24:44Go to the bank, get a cashier's check. You need to pay us. You need to fucking go away. So it was a big, huge thing. And that went on for like 3 months. Wow. My whole point to that whole thing is think about this. People get amnesia. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Especially when they're spending that kind of money. And I think that bill is north of $20,000 back then.

25:02Yeah, right. Yeah. They get amnesia. 3 months later, you had to have everything in writing. In today's world, guys, you have to have everything in writing. You have to communicate and you have to have initials and sign stuff. If this starts— so if it starts to go sideways, you could pull it out in court, God forbid, and say, Here's what happened. Here's all the stuff that's initialed and all that like that.

25:24Well, here's the guys that, I don't have time to do that in my shop. I'm too busy. You're the same guys that don't have time to give the customers a ride home. You're the same guy that can't give them an estimate. You're the same guy that just get nothing signed. You're the same guy that can't do a lot of shit. Well, you're the problem in our industry.

25:40Okay? You have to get a system together. You have to get authorizations to spend other people's money. Number 1. And number 2, state laws. There are all these state laws, okay, that you have to do certain things when the customer shows up at your door. You just can't do whatever you want. Okay. That goes hand in hand with all the fricking lawyers that say, well, you know, when somebody brings their own parts, I write up a nice thing and I'm like, dude, you're not a lawyer.

26:06Shut the fuck up. Yeah. I had my contract, my service contract written by a lawyer. That does Michigan law, automotive law, on my repair order. I am not qualified to do that, nor is he qualified to work on his car. He's a lawyer, so he's qualified to write lawyer stuff, right? I'm a guy that fixes trucks, cars, trailers, motorcycles, whatever. I'm qualified to do that, right?

26:30So these guys that say, oh, well, I don't need to do this, I don't need to do that, you, you really do. And that goes hand in hand with communication. Right? If you set the expectations for your customer when they walk in the door, this is what's gonna happen. We're gonna go ahead and get you written up for an hour diagnostic on your problem.

26:47The technician will bring it in, he'll check it all out. At that point, he'll write what he found. We will send you an estimate. At that time, we could talk about timeline and stuff like that. Was it gonna be done today? Well, I don't know. We don't even know what's wrong with it yet. We're hoping it'll be done today, but I will be calling you this afternoon to talk timelines.

27:04And everything like that, right? Versus, yeah, it should be done by 3 o'clock. Okay, can I get a ballpark? Yeah, it's gonna be like $800. Okay. Or going back to the example of the— at the dealership, they didn't even tell you, right? They didn't even— they didn't even know. She was like, I don't know, they don't even know if it's been ordered yet, right?

27:21Yeah. I mean, and that's just a lady that just doesn't know. Yeah. And she's probably not qualified. I could probably go and do that job, or, you know, it's just I think that right now every business, including auto repair, the dealers, Walmart, Lowe's, Home Depot, is short-staffed. How many places do you walk around and turn around, look for somebody to help you just because you're like, I don't want to walk up down the hallways in Home Depot or Lowe's looking for fucking something.

27:49I was like, uh, excuse me, can you tell me where the fricking X is? Or the aisle 4. It makes your life easier, right? Yep. They don't even do that now. And now it's even getting worse. Now they're putting all these registers in so you don't even talk to one person because they don't have enough help. That's no different than the dealers.

28:05That's no different than our shops. I mean, I could love to have two more techs, you know what I mean? But you can't find people. Okay. I honestly think I was at Fox yesterday. I was talking to John Masi. He says, man, if you want to ask me, I said, you know, We were talking about the technicians online, how they all cry on TikTok, how they're just getting screwed, you know, and how terrible it is and everything like that.

28:28He's like, they have it so made nowadays. He said, compared to what me and you used to have to do when we were out in the shop, these guys have it made. They whine and they get catered to in most shops. Back when we were, they'd be like, go, go, go get another job. There's 4 more guys that'll take your job. And you were broke.

28:47You had a family or whatever. You couldn't have the choice to walk away. You stay there and tough it out. It's not like that nowadays. I mean, people are coddled. Okay. I think that it's only going to get worse. And I don't think, once again, I try to keep this positive and give people solutions. I don't ever want people to think that I'm on this podcast going, oh, I'm the end-all be-all.

29:09I have all the answers. I know exactly what to do in every situation. Probably most of them I do. I've been, cause it's called wisdom. I've been in it for 35 years. Right. But these people that just sit there and trash our industry over and over again, if it's so bad, go the fuck out of it. Okay. Just cause you have a podcast and a voice.

29:27Okay. There's podcasters out there that sit there and trash our industry. They have never been a shop owner. Okay. And I'm going to tell you, you could talk to 100 shop owners if you're a podcast guy or 100 technicians. Okay. You're never going to feel the stress of worrying about a payroll because you don't have enough money in the bank, worried about a tax bill, worried about your employees quitting, worrying about a lot of different stuff.

29:55You're not, you don't, you just, cause you talk about it does not mean you have the emotional attachment to doing it. Okay. Any business owner, I was talking to one of my guys today, Eric, and he says, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes at 3 o'clock and don't go back to sleep. I go, I was up at, I wake up usually at 4.

30:11I wake up at 4 and I don't get on my phone or something. I just lay there and stare at the wall and think about stuff I have to do and all that stuff. I said, it's called stress. I go, we care about what we do. We care about our business. We don't wanna fail. So you wake up in the middle of the night and you sit there and you think about this.

30:24Okay. So you having a podcast talking about how shop owners are big bad wolves and everything like that, you don't understand some of the stress shop owners are under now. Are all shop owners great to their technicians? No, but I will tell you this. All of my clients right now treat every one of their technicians like gold. So I got 6 shops right now and all them guys are great to their techs.

30:52Yeah. So these other guys are already just saying, oh my God, these guys are so terrible to their technicians. They're this or that. Like what drove them to that point? You know, I'm getting off the beaten path of communication, but what drove these guys to that point? You know what I mean? Uh, so, so, okay, let's go back to communication. So the technician out back is in a bad mood, which most days technicians are in bad moods, and the service advisor wants to talk to them and say, hey, can I get a timeline?

31:22Don't fucking worry about when it's done, it's done. Like, how can that— how can they service advisor be professional and go convey that to the customer. So there has to be a good synergy back and forth. And you know, my suggestion in this, I will say this, these guys are online going, service advisors, I could do a service advisor job. So my suggestion to all you technicians out there that say the industry is so bad far as being a technician, why don't you go be a service advisor?

31:53They make more money according to the technicians. They get gift cards according to the technicians. They get bonuses according to the technicians off the technicians' backs. So if you're a technician and it's so bad and you're getting screwed so bad on flat rate, why don't you go become a service advisor? Because of the shortage. There's roles open, right? There's a shortage of service advisors.

32:13It's a shortage of techs, right? So you can't make enough money as a tech and you hate it. You're getting screwed on flat rate or warranty and stuff like that. And you're saying that you could do the service advisor job better than the service advisor, and they make more money. Once again, they get bonuses, they get tire Goodyear cards and everything. Go be a service advisor.

32:29It's not that hard, right? Instead of sitting there crying, just go become a service advisor. Then you don't have to worry about it. Yeah, these guys won't. Yeah, they just want to fucking cry to cry about it. Absolutely. I'd never seen such a bunch of fucking crybabies in my life. When I grew up, technicians, mechanics, we were called mechanics. We didn't cry.

32:50We just kind of did what we do. And all the guys that work for me, we get up, we go to work. We were all talking about it the other day at lunch. You're like, doesn't it feel weird when you're at home? Like last week, didn't you feel guilty? I'm like, absolutely. I own the fucking place. I'm like, I should be at the shop helping the guys.

33:04I go, that's because we grew up that way. That way. Yeah. Okay. We went to work and after work because you had fun, but you had money, right? Nowadays they seem to got it backwards. They think work is supposed to be easy. You know what I mean? It's like, really, they really think it's supposed to be easy. And you know, when you guys think you have it that bad, I watch the show Little House on the Prairie.

33:26The reason I watch it, it's simple. Yeah, I look at it, it's got cute storylines or whatever. We started watching it with the kids and stuff like that, and I started to keep watching it, right? But I sit there and I watch the shit these guys have to do by hand. They're out there fricking behind the fricking horses, fricking pulling, walking behind a plow.

33:43And I'm sitting here thinking, you know, we cry about, you know, having to walk to the bathroom to piss. Like, these guys, like, it's amazing the shit they had to go through back in the day, but we take it all for granted. Yep. You know? Yep. Marilyn's like, last night we're like lunch, she's like, Laurel Ingalls runs fucking everywhere. Every time she runs out of the freaking house and she's like, I'm running to town, then I'm running over to so-and-so.

34:06I'm like, she's fucking running the whole show. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, we have to ride scooters and shit and we don't even know what, You know, or e-bikes, or e-bikes. So many fucking kids these days are on fucking e-bikes, like riding around, like, fucking pedal the bike, right? And you know, these guys, if you don't want to be a mechanic, don't be a mechanic.

34:23But whatever you do, put 100% into it, and efforts equals results, okay? I remember when I got in this trade, I wanted to be a mechanic so bad because I like fixing shit. I was so fucking happy when I got my first job, and I've still always like loved fixing shit. Don't get me wrong, I had my days in the shop where I would like, ready to fucking slit my own wrists over jobs that just wouldn't leave, right?

34:45But I never ever said, oh my God, this is the most horrible industry, I need to quit and go do something else. Okay. And I'm going to go back to the thing of the water bottle. Know your value. If you're not being treated good at the dealership, go somewhere else. The independent Curtis looks like he left. Yeah, you saw that? I saw the truck pulling out with his tools.

35:04Yeah. So he left Audi and he went to Honda. They gave him a bunch of promises apparently they didn't fulfill. Now he went to a European independent shop. He's like, wow, this is a lot different. Yeah, because maybe somebody cares about you that owns that shop. Maybe there's a guy like me. Yeah, you know, you guys got to remember something. The guys on these other podcasts and, and TikTok, for every bad shop owner, there's a good shop owner.

35:27Yeah. Okay, you cannot just paint a whole industry and say the whole industry is terrible, every technician is getting screwed, every service advisor makes all the money. It's not like that, guys. Like, be positive. Well, and even going to your clients, they're, you know, um, they're good guys, they want to take care of their people, but maybe they're not running their shop right.

35:50Maybe they don't know how to take care of their people. It's not necessarily that they want to dick their people over. You know, two of the guys that I started— when I started, uh, consulting with them, their technicians made more than they did. Yeah, they said, I'd rather pay them. Yeah. So I have them and treat them good, then pay myself. Two of them told me that.

36:09Okay. Yep. Not all shop owners are bad. You're 100% right. They just didn't know what to do. They're paying themselves now that we got everything fixed and their guys are happy. The one guy has a service advisor now. Yeah. Eric has a service advisor now. He's like, this is— I got a service advisor, the guys are happy, stuff's flowing through the shop, everything's going good now.

36:26I'm happy. I'm going to ask him to be on the podcast because he'll be a testament. Oh yeah. Because he was, you know, It was pretty rough for him. He was a little small town. A data center came in and the guy is killing it now. And like, legitimately, I'm proud of the guy. Like, with the guy that I have a problem, I have money in my bank account.

36:40Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, yeah, I can pay my bills and stuff now. And he's just happy. And he's like, it changed his life. All it did is by just changing his life by just moving his needles and knowing how to write his estimates and where to mark this stuff up and how to do it. And his customers are happy, his guys are happy, he's happy.

36:54His life has changed. Okay. What is the downside to paying somebody to freaking come there because you just don't know. Yeah, I did it years ago with Management Success. We did it. Okay, so medium truck shops and diesel shops really are our bread and butter. That's what I do. And it seems like there's a big gap. And you guys think— you crybaby automotive shops think that business is so hard?

37:18Try to get in the medium heavy-duty truck business when every truck's got a different power plant, different transmission, different brake system. You could have a Freightliner with a frickin Cummins in it or Detroit Diesel. Like you have all kinds of different flavors sprinkled in, different axles, different transmissions, different brake system, different ABS system, air brakes, juice brakes, like auto shift transmissions, manual shift transmissions, like 18 speeds, 10 speed.

37:41Like it just goes on and on and on. So you have to know a lot more stuff to do it, you know? So you want to be a service advisor that makes a lot of money, get into the medium truck. Business, you in the heavy truck business, you can make bank because service advisors in the medium and heavy truck business do not exist.

37:58They are a rare cat. You're like seeing, like seeing a guy like me that can slide in behind a desk and write service on medium and heavies is like seeing a Sasquatch. It's just really hard. There's no computer programs. It's not like you can just pull it up if you're not the dealer, like you can on ShopWares and, and, you know, Mitchell and TechMetric and all them are geared towards cars.

38:20Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not geared towards Kenworths, Peterbilts, and all that stuff. And a lot of the big truck dealers won't give you part numbers because they don't want you to take the part number and shopping it. So it's a whole different animal. So communication is key, and service advising is key in that. And that's why we came up with a lot of these different types of systems to put in place to manage expectations of customers because Time is of the essence in the commercial world.

38:50Okay. And I'm going to tell you guys how to deal with the fleet companies, the Holmans, anything on Auto Integrate. You got Wheels, you got a bunch of them, you got Element, you got Enterprise and all them people. They take percentages of what you do. So you have to think about this, guys. You go into your shop management program and you write— the technician writes the estimate.

39:11You go ahead and write that estimate. Now you're expected to put it into, into Auto Integrate. So you have to rebuild that estimate again in their system. So Holman is not on Auto Integrate. They have their own system. A lot of the other guys are on Auto Integrate, which is the same platform, but you still have to rebuild that estimate into their system.

39:32Then you got a guy on the other end of this computer screen in the fleets telling you that you should only be charging for list price on parts. You always should charge this for labor. They don't really ever give you a hard time about your labor rate per se, but they'll say, well, your parts are above list. Well, fuck yeah, they're above list.

39:51Number one, we don't sell parts at list unless you want to lose money because you can't afford it with the overhead nowadays. Number two, you take 13% of each repair order. So some of these fleets like Element, they take 13%. Off your bill. They take a 13% discount. So not only do you have to do the bill, your estimate in your system, then you have to do it in their system.

40:15Then they take 13%. Then they tell you that you only should charge dealer list. And I'm out here. I'm here to tell you guys, number one, you mark your stuff up an extra 13% on top of whatever you normally would. And when they say, no, that's too expensive, you submit it again. Say, this is what our price is. I don't know what to tell you.

40:35They will buy it. You just have to keep submitting it or tell them we do not give discounts. How about this? How about you give them, your customer, 13% discount and I'll give them 13% discount together. They'll save 26% and your customer will be happy. They'll approve it. You just have to push back on these fleets. You have to push back. Okay.

40:55The problem with these fleets are they take time. They give you an out. What do you mean they give you an out? Jason Tracy brings his delivery truck in. I get it all checked out. I write the estimate. It takes me 2 or 3 hours. I have to do the estimate again in their system. I copy and paste it back and forth.

41:11I submit it to the fleet. A day goes by. I don't get an answer from the fleet. They call you screaming, hey, you know, what the hell? I need my delivery truck. I agree with you 100%. I'd love to fix it, but your fleet company Element, ARI, Holman. ARI is Holman now. Enterprise, it says waiting for fleet. There's boxes that says submitted, waiting for Element, you know, whatever.

41:38And then it says waiting for client approval. So it's got to go 3 spots. It gets submitted, then it goes, they look at it, then they send it to the customer for authorization. A lot of them have a threshold. You could spend, the fleet company could approve like $600 right away. But a lot of them don't. So it has to go to the fleet manager.

41:56The fleet manager gets busy because he's got X amount of trucks and he might be in a different state, different time zone. That slows everything down. So how do you manage that? We always call, communicate with the fleet manager. Hey Bob, we submitted to the fleet. We have not heard anything back. We submitted it 3 hours ago. Just so you know, truck's not going to be done today.

42:19Not because we couldn't do the oil change, the fuel filter, stuff like that, like we promised you. We can't get authorization. We're not allowed to work on any of your trucks per our agreement with that fleet company, your fleet company, that we have to have authorization to do this. And they did not authorize it. So your oil change that you dropped off at 3:00, we're going to have done at 5-ish.

42:38Like, we don't ever give them time. 5-ish, you know, by the end of the day, we can't get it done because they won't give us the okay. Well, that shit happens all the time. Yeah. So that's how you manage all that type of stuff. And, you know, I had another fleet, another one of my clients, they said they can't get DIAG. I'm like, what?

42:57I go, write it up for DIAG, submit it for DIAG on these fleet companies. Well, they don't pay DIAG. They'll pay DIAG. Guess what? They pay us DIAG. So if you guys don't think they'll pay DIAG, they'll pay DIAG. You just have to submit it. You just have to submit it, wait for them to approve it, say, okay, You know, the customer states horn does not work.

43:151 hour check and advise. Marker lights don't work. 1 hour check and advise. You know, hey, it's here for an oil change too. Do you want us to do the oil change right now? Give us the authorization on the oil change, the diag. We'll get the oil change done unless it's a blown motor or something, you know what I mean? Engine noise and stuff like that.

43:32Obviously we wouldn't do an oil change. Yeah, but you know, we do stuff like that. It's just a lot of different things going on with these fleets that you don't even think about.. And it's a lot different than dealing with a home budget. Cause think about a fleet company. The guy with 20 trucks has one personality. You have 20 ladies with 20 vehicles, you got 20 different personalities and you also have 20 different budgets and you have 20 different soccer games, dances.

43:55Think about how much busier everybody's kids are nowadays. Oh my fucking God. These people run their kids ragged. Like they have this thing going on in their mind. Like if they're not a good parent, unless their kid is in 75 different sports. You ever noticed that now? Oh yeah. They go from dance to fricking ballet or dance to fricking swimming lessons, a piano lesson.

44:13And then they have their private coaches to work on soccer in the off times. Yeah, it's just like, these kids don't, I don't, and these are the people we're dealing with trying to get their cars back to them in a timely manner. You know, I don't get it. So here's how we handle another aspect of the communication and managing expectations would be, Can I set an appointment?

44:37How many times over the years have you called the dealership and go, hey, I need to set an appointment for my car because it's under warranty? They're like, oh, drop it off next Thursday at 2 o'clock. In your mind, you're thinking next Thursday at 2 o'clock, they're looking at it. They're looking at it. Yeah. No, it's just you're dropping it off and they'll look at it later on.

44:54Maybe tomorrow. Yeah. You call them like my neighbor was telling me he had water in his taillight on his Ford truck and a couple other things. And, uh,. He goes up north a lot and he said to them, you know, I need an appointment to get my truck fixed. Like, okay, you could drop it off Monday. So he dropped it off Monday thinking they'll be calling him sometimes Monday.

45:12And he called them and said, hey, what's going on? My truck is here today. I didn't hear nothing. We didn't get it. We didn't check it out. What do you mean you didn't check it out? I had an appointment. Oh, that was a drop-off appointment. We're not probably not going to get to it till like Friday. So you probably won't have your truck back next week till next week.

45:26So let me get this straight. You had me drop my vehicle off at the dealership to sit there for a fucking week. Well, that's the only way we could do it. The only thing I could think to come up with, and I'd be greatly— anybody got any other ideas, let me know. We set drop— we don't set drop-off appointments. We tell them, bring it in.

45:44We're first come, first serve. We'll get you in line. We have 4 technicians. We have their boards are stacked. We take people in the order they come. Now, if you set an appointment, say, can you drop off— can you bring your vehicle in for an oil change at 3:00 Tuesday? We have a lube tech. Absolutely right. But it's got to go through a technician.

46:03We first come, first serve. You drop it off. Was that appointment? No, we're not setting an appointment. We're not saying if you drop it off tomorrow morning at 7:00, tomorrow morning at 7:01, we're working on it. Yeah, we got you. We'll get you in line. But your problem seems to be smaller than some of us. So if we could get a little bit of downtime where we could pop it in and take a look at it, we'll, we'll do that for you.

46:23But we never say, yep, bring it in, drop it off at 12 Monday, and then leave it like the dealers do. It's almost like they do that on purpose to get the vehicle there. Yeah. Then people are like, fuck it, I'll just leave it. Yeah. What are you going to do? Come pick it up? What are you going to do? Come pick it up?

46:36Well, a lot of times they do, right? Yeah. I wonder if that's by design that way. Well, that really, that little rattle really isn't that bad. So you don't have that warranty on it. Kind of makes you wonder on that too. That does. You, yep. It goes back to that communication though. And even caring. When you were talking about that experience earlier and you were talking about like, if I needed my truck or my car tomorrow, or like how, when you're waiting on it and they don't even care.

47:00Like they don't even care that what your concerns are. No, they don't. It's kind of crazy. And you know, if they're trying to give you the best customer experience, like why wouldn't the lady like write a note? Like I believe that lady was not malicious. I don't believe she meant to have a bad day. I think she's overwhelmed. She probably has too many cars to deal with, but she, the number one thing in my mind, it's a training issue.

47:26By the way she talked to me on the phone and the things she said to me on the phone, my mind right away is a training issue. And you know, the funny thing is I've learned over the years now, we have a problem in our shop, we have a training on it. We had a problem, I told you a couple weeks about front alignments.

47:40We did an hour training. We had a trailer, surge brakes on a trailer, bleeding surge brakes. We had a problem with a guy spending too much time. We did training. We teach them all, let's all get together, let's show you what we're going to do, how to do this. We train them. I mean, how can you expect people to keep growing if you don't give them training?

48:01Well, and then you like, there's all the stuff that you've been talking about, even the systems, right? Like you talk about like the technician sent you a video. Why is that not in the system? Why does she not know that he's like communicating with you? Right. And I bet you she probably does. She probably hasn't been at her computer because she's probably been running around, uh, probably trying to put out fires, right?

48:22Yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking of the process. Yeah, I'm sure there's probably a process for that. Like, we are— I personally think the way the process should work, and I'm sure we'll get all the pros on here that use it, but the process should work as I would believe that that video should have went to the service advisor. The service advisor should have watched the video and read the notes and got ready for that phone call.

48:49Yep. Hey, Mr. Brown, your truck needs an engine. Gets a video. Why would you send a customer a video? Hey, I'm world-class technician, blah, blah, blah. Your engine's fucked. You need a new engine on your new truck. And he's standing underneath the truck. How is that not going to prompt the customer to call? Because you think about me, an engine in a truck is no big deal.

49:13Like, okay, we do it all the time, right? But think about a guy that doesn't do what we do. Oh my God. And you're like, yeah, your engine's fucked. Your engine's fucked in your brand new truck. And, you know, we're going to unfuck it. Don't worry. Yeah, but don't worry, we'll unfuck it for you. But we don't know why we're going to unfuck it.

49:29We don't know. Service advisor doesn't know when you call her when we're going on. Fuck it. It's just fucked. Like, that's what literally what she's here. He would have been better off sending me, hi, Mr. Brown, I got a big question mark for you. Don't ask any questions because I have questions too. We all have questions. You know, call the service advisor so she doesn't know either.

49:48Like, you know what I'm saying? That's kind of what they conveyed. Like, he knew what was going on with the vehicle. The technician did, but nobody else did. Yeah. Like, and I'm sure there's protocol. I'm sure that— I'm sure something got short-circuited there, or something happened in my mind that, that just didn't— I think something got dropped. I'm sure something in the process got dropped.

50:11But when you were talking about it, that was my first thing, is like, do they not have a process, or did it just— the process not get dropped? Yeah, because once you think that, like I said, if few seconds ago, wouldn't you think that video should have went to the service advisor? Service advisor should have said, okay, let me look at this, pick up the phone.

50:29Hey, Mr. Brown, we're gonna send you a video with the technician file. I read through the notes, it looks like we're gonna have to get you an engine ordered. And wouldn't that service advisor walk over to the frickin'— put it all in there and get it approved? As soon as we get the warranty approved, or whatever they have to do on their end, the codes or whatever they have to do, I'll shoot you a text or an email or whatever, let you know What's going on?

50:49Nothing. I did not get an update till I actually went to the parts department. The only reason I went there, 'cause I know all them people. I dropped. Remember this? That's the same dealership that I had to take my Yukon back 3 times. 'Cause after they put the engine in that, they fucked it up. It's so funny 'cause when you started talking about this truck, I'm like, didn't you have a Yukon that was brand new that just had the same problem?

51:08Yeah, I'm driving it today. Man. Yeah, 'cause guess what? My fricking PCS module on my Tesla Cybertruck went bad so it won't charge at home. I have to charge at the Superchargers now. And that part's on back order. Elon let me down. Elon, fucking Elon. So now I got Elon let me down, GM freaking on its— you know, my 3-liter's getting a new engine, my 6.2 just got new engines 4 months ago.

51:31Like, everything out there is junk nowadays and breaks, and it's overpriced. And then it's on backorder once it breaks. Then it's on backorder. They're saying that module won't be available till like June for my Cybertruck. But you know what Tesla did? They said anybody had a failure gets free supercharging. Oh, so Tesla, at least Tesla thinks outside the box, says, hey, we're going to inconvenience you, but at least we're going to pay for it.

51:55Yeah. GM, they haven't even put— they had not even put a recall out on these 3.0L yet. There's a bulletin, a service bulletin, but there's not a recall. That's $100,000, $80,000 truck, whatever we paid for it. But 17,000 miles, it's fucking blown up. Not to mention that thing's been in the dealership for a rearview camera, rearview camera. It's been in their dealership for a wheel bearing, and it's been in the dealership for the shutters on the front.

52:24So every time my son says, every time I drive that piece of shit, something happens. It's true. Yeah. Brand new truck, 17,000 miles on it. Like, how can this keep going on? And then you think about it, if they're so bogged down with engine failures and recalls and warranties, right? And it's only getting worse, right? The warranties are getting worse. In my opinion.

52:47Like Ford beat everybody in warranties. What's it doing to the dealerships? There's no more customer pay. So these guys are all working under warranty time. Oh, shit. You know what I mean? So are they making less money? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, we should get a dealer tech on here. Yeah. Any dealer techs that work at a dealership want to come on, we'll blur your face or put a bag over your head so you don't get in trouble.

53:11But let's talk about this shit. We can change your voice too. Yeah, let's talk about this. Witness protection program. Yeah, witness protection program. Let's talk about this and maybe we can get you a bay with $125,000 salary like the Ford CEO said. Because I, you know, I do think there needs to be some changes in this industry. And I think the technicians need to push back, like I've said on my, you know, podcast a lot of the time.

53:34But communication would make everything better for the technicians too. If the customer expectations were set, you could line up the guy's jobs. And say, here's your timelines. But I think about it, if they're not communicating with the technicians going, hey Jason, what do you got going on? I know you're supposed to have this. Yeah, I know this job's giving me a hell of a time.

53:57It's taking me 2 hours longer than it should. So now I'm backed up. Well, wait a second, I got this job, you know, promised for 3. There's no communications. I walk out when I'm doing service at my shops. I don't do it anymore. I used to walk out every 15, 20 minutes to see where the guys were at on jobs. You need anything?

54:14How's this thing going? They used to love it. Yeah. You know, I preach to my service advisors now, you got to go out and check on these guys. You're checking the pulse. See what's going on. Yeah. What's gone sideways in the shop. And as a service advisor, you should do that. You should get up off your ass and walk out there. Another thing you should do as a service advisor, if you don't know, go on— if you're independent, go on RepairLink, print the diagram for the parts.

54:35If they— if you have Ford, GM, Chrysler, whatever, International now, Go out there and say to the guy, hey, I'm not sure what you wrote on this repair ticket. Is this the part you need? Have him circle it. That way you don't order the wrong parts. Okay? We cannot expect these technicians to perform and have their efficiency up high, up into the stars if we're not getting them the right parts.

54:57We're not billing enough on the jobs. My guys pick their own labor times. Both, all my shops, my guys pick their own labor times. We look at the book, go, yeah, that's cute. Nice suggestion, but the thing's a rusted piece of shit. Let's triple that. Yeah, it pays 3 hours. We're gonna try to get 9 because it's gonna take us every bit of 9 hours to get this rusted piece of shit apart.

55:15We're gonna also tell the customer, hey, this is what's going on. With communication, we're going to set the expectation. We're going to do the very best we can not to do X, Y, and Z, but it's taking us this long, going to take us this long. Yep, yep. Well, the book time says 3 hours. That's great. Maybe you should take it down the street where they'll do it for 3 hours because nobody's doing this job for 3 hours.

55:33Yep. Yep. Once again, it's communication. If you communicate to customers, most people are reasonable. What pisses them off is non-communication. Yep. They leave you voicemails. We don't have voicemails at our shop. The only person has a voicemail in the shop is me and my wife. And guess what? They're full. Because my thing is, if, if somebody's calling me on my voicemail, they know my— they know who I am.

55:55They can call my cell phone. Yeah, same with my wife. Right. But we don't have Voicemail. How do you feel when you call somebody and voicemail picks up? You're hoping someone's gonna call back. You think you're throwing something in the abyss. Yeah. And that's the way it is when you go to these dealerships and you call the service advisor and they just don't call you back.

56:16And it's not that they don't wanna call you back. They're doing everything they can to hold on with both hands. You know, and that's where the chaos happens. You know, that's why we go chaos to control. We believe in communication in our shop. You cannot call somebody too much. Now, final before we close, how long we been doing this? Uh, the last thing I was gonna say is I forgot.

56:43What was it? Time check. Shit. Yeah, shit. Um, I don't remember now. It'll come to my thing. But you know, in closing, I think if the technicians communicated with the service advisors, service advisors communicate with the technicians, the service advisors communicate with the customers, we would have, it would be a lot easier. Let me make sure I did, uh, yeah, build in buffer times.

57:05I just wanna make sure I just build in buffer times into every promise. I don't promise a professional shop, leave room for unexpected, you know, interruptions. I've used the old parts, parts didn't come. That happens all the time now. Or you get the part and it's been reboxed. It's been re— they return it and somebody at the auto parts store just put it back on the shelf.

57:27You take it out, it's all greasy. It's been on a vehicle already. We've been there, you know, road testing and quality control. You know, make sure you guys are getting paid. You're writing down time to get road test time. Make time. You're getting time for burnishing brakes. Now burnishing brakes is a labor operation you can get nowadays. You know, don't let your customers be your quality control.

57:48I always preach that. Test drive your vehicles when you're done with them. Make sure you wipe them down. Make sure you write the mileage in and out. Why do we write mileage in and out? That way the customer says, well, did you even drive when you got done with it? Actually, yes, it came with 900 miles, it left with 920. We drove it 20 miles, it didn't act up.

58:04You have proof versus like what came with this, you had no mileage out. Mileage in and mileage out is a good thing. You need to have a system, a checkout system for your service advisors when they go to close a job. You have a list. You know, I make it on my program so they have to do it. It won't go any further until they put something in there and then they put something fictitious in there.

58:24You catch them. Yep. Yep. Because it's not going to let you put a lower mileage than the mileage in. You can't come up 9,000 miles and come out with 1 mile. It's not Ferris Bueller's Day Off where they put the car in reverse. Yeah. And take the miles off it. You know, no surprise policy. Anybody that's a professional, I don't know if you've ever heard this, I don't like surprises.

58:43Do you like surprises as you get older? No, I do not like surprises. I fucking hate surprises. I've been in the surprise business my whole life. Surprise, it's fucking broke. Surprise, you know, we misdiagnosed it. Surprise, wrong part. Okay, surprise anxiety at this point. Yes, exactly. So we're not in the surprise business. So customers like to be surprised. If you're going to have a problem or you think there's going to be a problem, Write it down, explain it to the customer, prep them.

59:09That way, if it does happen, they're already prepped. If it doesn't happen, you're a hero. Hero, absolutely. Okay, there's no better way than to turn somebody off than to not communicate with. I cannot say that enough. Nobody likes silence. I just bought my new house and the guy that was the mortgage guy, this fucking guy answers his phone. I sent him a text, it was like me, boomerang.

59:31I would get an answer. I said, this motherfucker must walk around with his phone in his hand. Yeah. But you know what that did? It put my mind at ease. I call the guy, ask him a question, every time, never, oh, answer the phone irritated. Any, hey Kevin, what's going on? Hey Aaron, what about this? No problem, this is what's going on with that.

59:48This was, or he would call me and say, hey, guess what? Got the appraisal back, we're good. Check the portal, it's gonna be coming through. He was always communicating with me and that made the process so much easier for me. I wasn't sitting there wondering, 'cause I don't care who you are, Getting a mortgage is tedious. It's irritating. They always need that extra piece of fucking paper.

1:00:05Yeah. Okay. His communication was so great. I was so impressed. Like, that's the way it should be. And that's why I want my shops to be— we communicate, text, we leave phone messages. We do a lot of things to communicate with the customer. And I think that's important. I think that's where the big dogs are falling off. They're not training their people because they don't give a fuck.

1:00:25They care about the money. Private equity groups and dealer principals do not give a fuck about the employees, the customers, or anything. Let me go ahead and prove that to you. Look what they do to people when they get them in the finance office by design. Yeah, $6 more, we can get that tire warranty package on there. Yeah. What happens if you pull out the dealer parking lot right now, hit a pothole, and your $900 rim smash?

1:00:49You can't even drive your new car home. It's only $6. You know what I mean? And they just sit there and ratchet and ratchet and ratchet. Okay. They don't give a fuck. They give a fuck about the numbers. Okay. So these people on the back end, some of this stuff that I think the problems they run into, and I'm talking dealers, is by the people upstairs.

1:01:09They look at me and go, we don't give a fuck how you get it done. You better get it done for the most amount of money and you better not fucking piss them off. Yep. Or it's coming out of your paycheck. And by the way, you're not getting fucking trained. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if they did training and train them how to, how to fuck people?

1:01:25At least the people wouldn't be mad. At least they trained. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I think these shop owners would train people if they knew how to train people. I think right now they're running around like maniacs and they are the problem in their shop. They probably didn't get trained. They didn't get trained. They went from being a technician to a freaking owner.

1:01:43Yeah, does not— it's not the same thing, guys. It's two different jobs. It takes a long time to figure it out. And a lot of times I'm going to tell you, a lot of guys might not be cut out for it. You don't have the balls. So you go up there, you're broke. So you're up there giving discounts. You're better off back in the back fixing cars because every time you go up front, you're giving fucking discounts because your old buddy, old pal came from school or this or that, or you feel bad, this and that.

1:02:06I'm not saying not to give a discount ever, but you can't give everybody a discount. No. I've had clients that are giving discounts. I look, I go, you guys like gave like $3,000 worth of discounts last month. What the fuck? Well, you know, I just feel bad for these people. Then you need to stay the fuck in the back. Okay. You didn't design the car.

1:02:23You didn't buy the car. You didn't break the car. You didn't make the parts. You didn't write the labor time. So you're going to give the guy, you're going to give, you're going to, technician's going to write it all up and do it. He's on flat rate. You're going to discount his bank account. Cause you're going to give a discount on the hours.

1:02:37Well, that's 5 hours. You know what? He got it done in 3. So let's go ahead and take that off his time. But the job that he got paid 3 hours, it took him 8 hours. You didn't give him 8 hours. So you just took it right out of his pocket. These are the shop owners that aren't trained. They don't communicate. They don't know what to do.

1:02:54So you have to communicate with your people. And that goes for the shop owners. You need to go out there and check your people's pulse. Remember a while ago I got flamed because I said I go out there and I talk to these guys and I check their pulse. Like, Hey, what's going on with you? Well, my dad died. Okay, I can understand.

1:03:09I'll give him a few days. I understand. That's one thing, right? If a technician is out there having a temper tantrum, being a little bitch, you just ignore him. I'm like, I don't want to hear it, okay? I don't give a fuck that you're being a bitch. Like, that's a temper tantrum. It's no different than your kid throwing himself on the ground and jumping up and down.

1:03:26What all the books back in the day— not nowadays, but back in the day— they're like, let him. A freaking clown. Out there. He doesn't have a circus to perform in front of. Nobody cares. Dies it down. It dies it down. Have you ever watched— like, my grandson flamed out the other day. I'm like watching him flame out. Yeah, he's sitting there screaming and yelling, and he stops and he looks like, what the fuck?

1:03:46You guys are supposed to be doing something. I'm over there just staring at him. I'm not doing shit. Because that's the way my mom and dad did me, right? And that's the same with your technicians. They're being— they want you. It's no different. Let's go have the reaction. Let's— everybody's done this if they have a wife or a girlfriend. What's wrong with you?

1:04:03Nothing. Really? Nothing's wrong. Then why you been a bitch to me for the last 3 hours? Right. Yeah. But they're always like, nothing's wrong. So I don't even ask my wife. Don't even ask. I just quit years ago. Like, if you want to be pissed off, be pissed off. I'm sure it's me. You know? And I can understand like a technician getting mad if, you know, somebody short sheets him and he rates it for 5 and the owner comes out and goes, hey, You know, like book time's only 2.2.

1:04:31I got you 2.2. What are you trying to do? Well, it's all rusted. It's this and that. That would be a communication thing, right? And your paperwork, write it up. Yep. Book time is 2.2, but somebody's been in here, did this, bent this bracket, this bolt is rounded. It's going to take me a couple extra hours to get this job done. That's communication.

1:04:47And the service advisor can let the customer know, hey, this is what's going on. And now they have the expectation set, right? And I think a lot of the things on flat rate, why these guys on flat rate, I'm not talking the dealer guys. I could give a shit about them because they're, they're in a, they're in a mousetrap. They're in a mousetrap game, right?

1:05:03Yeah, they're fucked. Independent guys are crying about not making money on flat rate. Did you ever stop and look in the fucking mirror? Because that might be the guy causing you all your money problems, because you have never been trained to write a proper repair order. I can show these guys how to write a proper repair order by not cheating anybody but getting what paid for what you're doing.

1:05:23A lot of these guys don't do it. They don't know how. They're not being trained. So all of a sudden they look at it and go, well, book times 1.7, that's all I fucking get. You know, it cost me 4— I worked 4 hours, I got paid 1.7. You fucking looked at it and seen that it was a rusted piece of shit.

1:05:39The bolts are rounded off and stuff like that. You got to remember, it's not your bolts, it's not your car. You're the guy that's contracted to do it. Does a dentist, when he opens your mouth and starts drilling one tooth, and drills it a little bit and goes, oh fuck, look at the other tooth right next to it, it's decayed. Do you think he just says fuck it?

1:05:54I'll give you a discount. Buy one tooth, get the other tooth for free? No. So start looking at the jobs, guys, and going, okay, I need to get paid to test drive this. I need to get paid to do this. I need to communicate upfront going, hey, this needs a transmission service. Hey, it needs a coolant flush. Hey, this is leaking. This is going to break.

1:06:15Okay. Start saying this stuff to get extra money. You're not cheating anybody, you're getting paid for what you're doing. And I'll say that's a really good analogy with the dentist because you know what he does? He gives you, uh, he does an x-ray, it's a diagnostic that he charges you an assload of money for. Yeah. And then he gives you a full proposal of everything that needs to be done.

1:06:35And then fucking goes in there and the, the lady, the dental hygienist takes it, takes the thing, and then he comes in with the fucking Explorer. Yeah. Hey, look at that one. Uh, let's look at bilingual number 62. Oh, that one's awful soft. We're gonna have to get in there. Oh, you know, and they call it the teeth. He's going around poking.

1:06:54You're like, ah, you're like, oh yeah, this is going to be expensive. Yeah, yeah, right. Yep. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And what's the difference between a mechanic? You're like, I did today, um, I did a new truck inspection because Jason was gone and the guys are backed up. I'm like, I'll do a new truck inspection. I went upside down this truck and down the other, took pictures and everything, did a whole write-up and everything.

1:07:13Guys like, this is the thorough write-up ever. But you know what? He's like, this is great. The communication was great. Everything's written down here. You even put that as a reman engine and put a picture of the tag in there. I'm like, yeah, that's a plus when you're buying a used truck. It's got a newer Ford motor in it, right? New engine in it.

1:07:30But I communicated to them, he's gonna bring it back after he buys it for all the repairs. Because I sat down and I wrote it all up and I communicate, I'm like, hey, this truck's in really good shape, but it needs X, Y, and Z. We'll go ahead and get it fixed. Not a big deal. Give the, uh, U-Haul the list. They'll probably discount the money, bring it back.

1:07:45We'll get it taken care of. You'll do that? Absolutely. Okay. I communicate. I walked up front and communicated with the guy. Yep. Okay. How do you think that would have went at the dealer? Ah, man, he would have never got an answer. No. And I'm not saying the technician is supposed to walk up at the dealership on flat rate. My guys would have walked up front.

1:08:03Yeah. They're hourly now. Even on flat rate, my guys would have walked up front because they know I expect Communication. I want the customers to know what's going on. It's their car, it's their money. Tell them what's going on. You know, don't be that guy that's like, yeah, it's a fucking needs it. Cause I'm the guy, I know I'm a mechanic, whatever, bro.

1:08:21Like, cool story, right? Whatever they say. It's like communication is key. And I think training is lacking. I want to go back to earlier. You were talking about when you're padding the hours for the diagnostic time, right? Or you're padding the hours for the time for the job to get get it done and you're like, hey, the bolts are rusted, you're painting the picture of what's going on and you say this is going to be 9 hours to do, and then you get it done in 4, what happens?

1:08:47What's that? How does the customer feel? You tell them it's 9 hours, we got this difficult job, the bolts are rusted, all this stuff is going on, it's going to be about 9 hours to get it done. You gain their trust. You gain their trust and then you get it done in 5 hours. Yep. Now you, you underpromised, overdelivered. Absolutely right. Yeah.

1:09:03And then the story they go out and tell is not, oh, the shop, I took it to the shop, they didn't communicate. They, then they took 9 hours and blah, blah. Instead they're like, oh, I had a really difficult job. I had some rusted bolts. Yeah. And they told me it was gonna be, and they got it done in half the time.

1:09:18Yeah. They're out telling a whole different story. Yeah. You know, that goes back to that story when I told the, about the Triton exhaust manifold studs. Remember that one podcast? And I was like, oh, you know, I call the customer up and we tell 'em, hey, It's got X amount of bolts broken. We're gonna try our best to get the rest out, the studs out.

1:09:34And you know, but if not, it's gonna be an hour more. And our guys are like, oh no, we just go ahead and tell 'em it's gonna be 10 hours right up front. I'm like, no, I go, we call 'em back and go, okay, we got it apart. It's a, it's a touchpoint for me. Like, okay, we got the manifolds off. They're thinking about, you call 'em up and go, studs are, you send 'em the paperwork and you're like, okay, the studs possibly could break.

1:09:53They are notorious for breaking, right? Call 'em back up the next day after you, all right, we got it all apart. Outta 16, outta 10, outta 4, whatever job engine we're doing, 4 broke. So it's 4 more extra hours. So we did a really good job getting the rest all out. So there's no more surprises, but you got 4 we have to drill and it's gonna be $400 more.

1:10:13Not only you told them where you're at at the job, you told 'em you got it apart so they know you're halfway, you're apart. So they kind of have a timeline. When do you think you can be done? If everything goes done, hopefully tomorrow we'll have it done. Next, whatever. Timeline you're at, right? So you kind of call them halfway through the job, say, this is what we came up with.

1:10:30Think about a shop that's broke and needs the money to do payroll, and they're like, they get that job in there, they're like, yep, it's all these bolts are going to break. Just call them up and tell them it's going to be $3,800 to do this job because all the bolts are going to break. Do you think, and I'm not saying everybody's a crook, but do you think that guy that needs that money might be like, well, we got lucky, we got 6 of them out, we charge them for 10.

1:10:55Fuck it, they'll never know. We need the money. Yeah, absolutely. And that goes back to knowing your numbers, what I always say, and running your shop profitably so you don't have to do that shit to people. Okay. We've never— any shop I've ever worked in, we've never been dishonest. We'll sell you everything you need, but we don't sell you stuff just to sell you stuff.

1:11:14Yeah. You know, and I think that happens a lot in our business and You know, closing— this is what I was going to say. The dealerships have quotas. You have to set— you have to sell 10 alignments, you have to sell 10 coolant flushes. I'm just making these numbers up. 10 alignments, 10 coolant flushes, 10 brake flushes, and 10 SRAM flushes this week, or you're in trouble, Mr.

1:11:36Service Advisor. Yeah, these are your quotas, or you don't get paid, or you don't get paid, whatever. Yeah, your bonuses. Yeah, so you're taking your service advisors and basically turn them into crooks. What if you got cars in there that didn't need any of them. I would have quota. Such would be your last day of the month. Yeah, you're going to get— the customer's going to get screwed.

1:11:56Yeah, but they don't care. They do not care. They want that freaking money. They, they do not care about the dealerships. Independent shops, I would like to think that they're a lot better, but I'm sure there's a lot of crooked independent shops. I deal with a lot of different shops though, and I'm telling you, a lot of the guys are just like me.

1:12:12They're good guys. They treat their guys good. The only problem a lot of these guys have, they're just not charging enough 'cause they don't really know what to do. They went mechanic to business owner and they just don't know what to do. And we're fixing that and, you know, over and over again with the consulting, it's growing to the point now where I, I have to cut it off and have a waitlist because I can't take care of everybody, um, as much as we can.

1:12:32Um, you know, and I always tell these guys, you know, once you start mark or start estimating your jobs correctly and all that stuff, Things change. You have a different outlook on something. A warranty comes back, it's not the end of the world. You could afford to spend $400 or $500. Yeah, yeah. But you know, now that comes to another point, communication.

1:12:52Well, you're really expensive. Yes, we are, but you communicate to them why you're expensive. We have warranties, we would tow it back on our dime. We have our parts, you know, we put our parts on it 'cause they're quality parts. They're known quality parts, they're not from Amazon. You know, you hear war stories all the time on Amazon, on TikTok. Oh, these guys are like, yeah, we put this Amazon part on, it caused this problem.

1:13:12The speedometer was jumping up and down, all kinds of crazy shit. You know, we had cheap coils on the Tritons when they came out. The coilover plugs were really expensive and they had cheap-ass coilover plug coil packs. I don't remember where they were. We had a truck come in and the speedometer was jumping all over and I was out in the shop at that point and we ended up tracing it all the way back to the fucking coil packs.

1:13:35Wow. Yeah, changed one of the coil packs that was leaking. This phenomenon went away, problem went away. So crazy. That's interesting. Cheap parts cause all kinds of problems. Anybody says they don't, they're nuts. Now, cheap brake pads, yes, they'll wear out quicker, but they're okay. They still stop, you know, you know what I'm saying? I'm sure they had braking powers different and everything like that, but I'm sure they have some kind of, you know, guide where they can— the manufacturer can't go past or whatever.

1:13:59I'm not an engineer, but You know, yeah, communication, communication, communication is, you know, it goes both ways. It goes from the owner to the employees, the service advisor, technician, technician to the service advisor, service advisor to the customer, customer back to the service advisor. Your service advisor is the face of your business. They should be trained to talk to the customers and set the expectations up front so you don't have all kinds of crazy shit going on in your shop and people not mad.

1:14:27We very seldom do we have people super pissed off about their trucks not being done. If they do, they're usually unreasonable because they're already told up front and we have the phone calls recorded, the front office recorded. We have their transcript with AI recorded in the repair order. We have it all. Yeah. So when they start acting all crazy and said, you told me this, we literally— I had the guy scrub the video and said, send the video with you telling them the expectation.

1:14:53I've done that several times. And they're like, oh, I misunderstood you. That's how serious I am about it because this is very important. Yeah. Because this goes to show you what happened with me at the dealer. And I'm sure some fixed ops guy right now is going to watch this video and go, what the fuck? Because I know the service managers at all the dealerships, they all know me.

1:15:11I walk in, they're like, hey, what's up? Watch your clip yesterday was hilarious. They all know me. They're going to see the clip. They're like, are they talking about us? Yeah, that's why I didn't say the lady's name. All right, thanks for watching. Have a good day.