RSR Feeling Stressed Pod

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 to another exciting episode of Repair Shop Reckoning. Today we're going to talk about something that I don't think a lot of people talk about, but it keeps coming up over and over again when I'm talking to clients.

1:20Stress as a business owner. So I have to like really kind of break this whole thing down for mindsets and everything else like this. Usually people that are business owners are usually high performers. Statistically, it's guys that— the guys in the hall. Yeah, we were guys that always had to have something going on, so we worry a lot. I don't want to use the word anxiety because we're not fucking liberal snowflakes on this show, um, but stress is the number one killer of freaking middle-aged men.

1:49I actually went to Dr. News several years ago when we were talking about blood pressure and stress and everything like that. Obviously, weight is a factor, but he says stress. He said you're better off having one drink of alcohol to relieve stress. He said, I'm not saying become an alcoholic, he says, but stress is the number one silent killer. Yeah. And having a business, most people sit here on social media and run their mouth.

2:15All these people that are technicians and stuff like that, you know, the owner's doing this, the owner's doing that. I agree the owners make a lot more money, but the owners are taking the risk. Okay. The owners worry about a lot of stuff that people don't talk about. Like, let's just go down the list of stuff I worry about. Like right now, say the shop's slow.

2:33Okay. How much money do I have in reserves in my head? Okay. I think I can go maybe 6 weeks, 4 weeks, whatever. Yep. As a business owner with payroll. Okay. Then I think to myself, okay, I don't want to fail because I have a bunch of families. That are counting on me. You know, I got a bunch of families, you know, between all these companies I have, we're responsible for a lot of people, kids and everything.

2:56So that stress on you, you worry about, you know, paying your bills, not looking like an asswipe to your vendors. You worry about that. You worry about the customers. You know, what did— did so-and-so get pissed off? I haven't seen them in a while. Or maybe their cars are just broke, but you worry about that. And there's so much stuff going on as a business owner, it can literally drive you nuts.

3:20It's an emotional roller coaster if you really stop and think about it, because I've said this before, when you're really doing good in business and the shop's full, the money's coming in, cars are getting fixed, everything's going great, how do you feel if somebody says, hey, are you a business owner? Fuck yeah, I'm a business owner. I got this shit, making money, everything's going great, right?

3:41Then it's so true that you're literally on an emotional roller coaster. All of a sudden it's slow. Like right now, last month at the shop down in Farmington, it was slow, slower than normal. And this month we have some jobs. You know, I think we have like 26 vehicles there right now, which is, that's light for us, right? We're usually in the high 30s, 40s.

3:59And you start thinking, okay, what's going on? Was our pricing not right? Was our pricing too high? Do we make everybody mad? What do we do? Why are we slow? Okay. You always think, what did we do? When sometimes you only can take care of what's inside the gates. You know, you gotta keep the enemy at the gates as they say. Well, there's stuff going on that's, you know, unforeseen to us that we can't control.

4:23You know, the gas prices, regardless of what anybody says, the gas prices are killing us. And just so everybody knows, I'll just say this. The president does not control gas prices. Now he could do it by wars and everything else. But the reason I say this, they're like, well, Joe Biden didn't control gas prices. Donald Trump doesn't control gas prices. Now wars and stuff like that obviously drive, Yeah, we're not political here.

4:42Yeah, I just want to throw that out there because I don't want to fucking hear it in the— on either side. On either side. Okay. Yeah, but it's just the fact of the matter, gas prices are high, right? And, you know, in the Motor City here, we are heavily tied to the automotive industry. We have the Big 3 in our backyard. You know, we have a lot of, you know, UAW workers.

5:00Okay. A lot of these companies around us, you know, they are suppliers to the Big 3. And most people don't know it, that stuff's really getting slow. Yep. Uh, the Big 3 is getting slow. There's a lot of different things going on right now, in my opinion, that are causing all kinds of mitigating factors of why business is slow. Um, you could up your marketing.

5:21We don't obviously slow down our marketing. That'd be the dumbest thing you can do. You know, we had storms come through last week, you know, that killed the power for a couple days. We didn't care because I closed Friday and Monday because the guys are tired. I'm just like, peace out. Well, we'll deal with this shit next week. Um, you know, but we could do stuff like that because it always goes back to our pricing is right.

5:41So we have money in our savings account. So I came to Thursday, we weren't crazy busy, everything was kind of done. Like, you know what guys, we're just going to take Friday off at both places. You guys have a 4-day weekend, enjoy life, you know. Um, I think there's a lot of things that we'll get into today, um, as far as what, what's a driver of stress and how do we deal with it.

6:02You know, and how do I got on this topic is I was talking to one of our, my clients. I really liked the guy. He owns 2 shops and, uh, he reminds me a lot of me. He's just always going, going, going. And he's, you know, he's like, you know, I got this going on. I got, I got money in the bank.

6:18I got this, but I always worry about failing. And I'm like, man, this'll be a good topic. You know, being an overachiever and worrying about failure and the stress that having a business is all in one. Yep. 'Cause you think about it, if everything's going great in the business and you got money coming in and all this stuff and the bank account's full, you think I'm winning, right?

6:36But the minute something happens, it drops out. The money's not coming in, but I'm spending money. We're slow. You know, the guys are doing this. Okay, it's stressful. Okay, and I know these guys are like, yeah, you guys make all the money. You're making 70% on labor and this and that, whatever. Okay. The bottom line is a business has to have built-in, uh, profits on the gross on the front end so we can pay for the stuff on the back end, the benefits, all kinds of different stuff.

7:05And, you know, I don't think that a lot of these guys that work in the back, nor do I expect them to, have the mindset of a business owner, the things we deal with on a daily basis as a business owner. Well, and that's where Yeah, at the beginning you said something of like people, employees say all the time, oh, it must be nice.

7:26Oh, like they start doing the math and like they see what they're paid and they're paid like 20 to 30% of the job. And they're like, well, what's that other 70%? Well, that other 70% is the stress. It's the expenses. It's the, you know, worrying about insurance and all the backend costs. And, you know, there's so many different things that go into that they don't see until they go to start a business.

7:46And then they're like, Oh shit, this is much harder than what I thought it was. Oh, the owner is taking on all this stuff that he protected me from. And then some people are just gonna always bitch. They're never meant to be business owners. There's only a few select people that are even meant to go start their own thing. I would totally agree with that.

8:01And the funny thing about that is you're 100% right because we don't expect these guys to know what we go through on a daily basis. But here, let's put this in perspective. If you're paid to be a technician, service advisor, manager or whatever, and you have to come to the owner because you're being lazy and you're not wanting to do that. Number one, it puts stress on the owner, right?

8:21But number two, if the owner's doing your job, what about the owner's duties? And I talk to a lot of people, guys, like we're getting really, really super busy with consulting. And I talk to a lot of guys and people always ask me, they're like, what does all the other shops have problems with? It's a mixed bag of dicks, meaning Like, okay, you got people that are making great— have great production and their technicians are killing it and doing great hours every week, but they're not marking up their parts enough.

8:50Yeah. Then I have guys that their parts markup is perfect, but they're not producing any money. Then I have guys that just don't do neither. I have people that don't write bills. I have guys that I talk to and I say, you know, what happened last week, man? I was a guy down. I was just— I worked till 1, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock in the morning.

9:07And I'm back here again at 8 or 9 the next day. Okay, you guys remember something. When you're an employee of a company and you go home at 5 o'clock, you go home at 5 o'clock. We eat, breathe, and sleep our businesses. Okay, if you really think about it, we have no safety net. We're on commission too. The commission is all the, all the, uh, you know, the loans are— if you have them or whatever, lines of credit— your name is on the line.

9:34You have a personal guarantee. All assets guarantee on a lot of stuff for the real estate. The banks aren't stupid. They'll, they'll times 5 your shit. If you buy a $300,000 building, they want $1.7 million in collateral. So they take your kids, your house, you know what I mean? Anything that they could possibly go, they'll take it all and sell it and they'll give you the change after they collect their money.

9:52Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And people don't stop to realize how real that is. And if you really stop and think about it, guys, Stop and think about companies that over the years you thought were big ballers, and all of a sudden, you know, something changes in the market. Um, let's think about some businesses that are just getting killed. Staples. Okay, here's a perfect example.

10:14So we've gotten so busy with the accounting matrix accounting now, or metrics accounting, my wife's new company with our consulting clients, she needs her own office. So Lincoln moving out, we took his bedroom he was using because it has a bathroom on and everything. We set her up an office there. So I went yesterday, uh, when I left here, I was going to Garrett's.

10:38I said, I'll stop and grab a printer and a monitor and a desk at Staples because I like to shop local even though they're corporate, whatever. I went into Staples and I thought, motherfucker, this place looks like a bomb went off. And there's that like an Amazon line to Amazon returns. And I'm like looking around the store and I'm not joking, it's like ghetto.

10:57Yeah, it looked terrible, like dirty. And there's like totes for like inventory not put— like this, the place is fucked. Yeah. And I go in the back, there's no desks, there's no chairs. I'm like, wow. So I end up buying a printer. So I leave and, uh, I'm sitting there thinking, man, what's going on? So I just go to work and on the way home, I stop at Best Buy and I go in Best Buy and I'm like, okay, after I bitched to you about this, right?

11:23I pictured you trying to get in that spot. It's horrible. It's horrible. Yeah. So I'm sitting here looking at Best Buy and I'm like, okay, that place is clean, it's organized. The manager Jeff is awesome over there. He was like, hey, Mr. Brown, what do you need today? I'm like, I need these monitors, blah blah blah blah. He had it all. And I'm like, okay.

11:40So I was leaving there and I'm like, shit, I could need a desk. Nobody has desks. So I, I My side job, Grok, who sells office furniture where I can go get a raisable table? They said Farmington. I'm like, fuck, I was just in Farmington. I said, well, take me there. So we drive down to Farmington, I buy the desk. You go into that place, that place is recycled, some recycled office furniture, but they sell new.

12:00Place is booming, right? Yeah. And I got a, I got a whole punchline to this whole thing. So we go home and she doesn't know what kind of chair she wants. We set up the whole office. So it's like 5:30. I'm like, let's go get a chair and a runner for the chair to put in there so you can roll on the carpet, you know, that plastic So I'm like looking, I'm like, well, Brighton Staples, or there's Grand Blanc, Grand Blanc, Michigan Staples, which is farther away but less traffic going that way.

12:29We're going to be there faster. We go in that store, it's blown up. We get a chair, the last one. We get all the mats are broken, chunks missing. We find one mat that's finally good. I'm like, I got my Cybertruck. I'm like, so Grok, Tell me about Staples. It's like Staples is swirling the drain. Wow. And I'm like, why? I love Kroc.

12:49Yeah. Kroc is so fucking honest. That's amazing. Yeah. Swirling the drain. Yeah. And I'm like, why? And they say, because Amazon has eaten its lunch. Amazon has changed. Amazon is with the times. Amazon has better prices. And Staples has taken all of its focus on being an Amazon return center. So it's like literally Grok says this: Staples has become Amazon's side piece.

13:17He does all Amazon's bitch work. And online the employees are saying, how stupid could the corporate powers that be helping the company that's putting us out of business with returns, getting pennies on the dollar? Wow, wow. That would have been like Best Buy— or not Best Buy, Blockbuster— lining up, uh, Netflix vendor booths in their, uh, in their, in their shop, right?

13:43So my thing is, if you're not doing your job like they're not doing their job, somebody— you're doing somebody else's job, they're doing Amazon's job, Amazon's eating their lunch. Is that not crazy? That is crazy. I never thought about until I walked into Staples. It's a— man, I used to love going to Staples. I used to love going. I love all the office stuff.

14:00Yeah, absolutely. I love going in there and yeah. That's sad. So when you're sitting there thinking about businesses, you know, you have to always be working on the business, not working in the business, like I said 1,000 times. So what you have to do is have standard operating procedures in place. You have to have all this stuff in place so your people do their job so you can work on the business and roll with the times.

14:20Yep. You should be able to sit in your office as a business owner. Okay, is my pricing right? Is there, is there a retraction in the market? So do I need to do something with my prices? Do I need to do maintenance prices for my oil changes so I could be competitive? If you're always running around with your hair on fire because you won't take the time to get people to do their job, the stress is just unbelievable.

14:42You're working into the middle of the night because you're doing other people's jobs during the day. What is it going to do? You're going to end up having a fucking heart attack and die, and then nobody's going to win. And that's what these guys don't understand, how bad the stress really does become on an everyday basis. I mean, Let's just think about the problems I ran into today.

15:01Let me think about the problems. I know I was— I had a couple appointments this morning, but I had emails, you know, so-and-so didn't get paid. You know, I get to the shop, I look, and they got paid. The check got mailed. It got lost. You know, we got your renewals for your medical. Your insurance is going up. Okay, then you're figuring about that.

15:18It's just nonstop stuff on a daily basis that you just deal with. You don't even think about it. Well, and you think like from a business owner's standpoint, you've got to, you got to go, you got to do the hard things. You got to be in a certain mindset and all day long you're getting uncontrollable things like your rates are going up and stuff like that.

15:36And so it's adding to that stress. Like you have already the day stress on you and then you have these other things that are like the surprises. And I know you have, you say, I hate surprises. You know, you get the surprises in the mail. Yeah. When you become, when you become a business owner, you don't like surprises and you don't like the mail.

15:51Yeah. Yeah. Because I will tell you what, it always seems like always somebody's got their hand out. Yeah. They $500 you to death. They used to use $100 you to death. Now it's $500 you to death. Yeah. Everybody's charging. You have to fight. I mean, you got your insurance companies. Think about the time suck some of these people put on you as a business, just trying to defend your bank account.

16:11Like, for instance, you know, workman's comp audit, workman's comp insurance audit, your liability, all your insurance audits. You know, some of them are hooked to your sales, some are hooked to your people, whatever flavor insurance you have. But at the end of the day, your wife has to go, or your bookkeeper has to compile a bunch of information to give that to the insurance company to stop you from getting a freaking bill like, oh, we charged you $40 grand last year, we fucked up, you did better, now you owe us another $5 grand.

16:41They audit you. They literally audit you and say, oh, we didn't charge you enough last year, so let's charge you some more this year because you did better than we thought. That's what these insurance audits are. They're just more money, taking more money out of you. So if you're not playing the game, you know, by their rules, and you did better because you, you're a smart business owner, whatever, it costs you more money.

17:01Wow. It's, it's just kind of crazy, you know. And it's kind of like you go back to the thing where State Farm comes out and says, yo, hey, uh, we have to lower all the labor rates so we pay the shops. And then you tell all the people that are, you know, all the people that are insured by them, hey, we need to raise the rates because, you know, times are tough, getting more expensive to fix cars.

17:17On the other hand, on the other side of their mouth, they're saying, ah, Guess what? Labor rates are going down. It's not as expensive to fix a car. Like, that's the dumbest shit ever, but they get away with it. But that's shit you have to do is to defend yourself as a business owner. How can you even make an argument that labor rates are going down?

17:32Everything around us is up. We all see it. You talk about gaslighting, like, no, you don't see this. Yeah, exactly. And then you run into the situation where, you know, uh, we had a medical insurance increase go up. You know, you sit there and you have to say, okay, we need to go through the plans. And what I'm trying to depict to you guys is the time suck on a daily basis.

17:49You You as a business owner say, okay, today I'm going to get up and I'm going to do this, this, and this. And none of that shit even gets done till the end of the day because you had all this stuff thrown in front of you. Yeah. You know, my latest one I spent, you know, last night it was 8:00 at night.

18:06I had to read an NDA that, you know, a company that has some autonomous vehicles want us to work on. They sent us an NDA. So I go through the NDA and I'm like, okay, I put it, I read it, then I'm like, okay, then I'm like, What did I miss here? Obviously the venue clause. I'm not going to California if there's a problem.

18:22It's going to happen in Michigan, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I have to sit there and redo that. Thank God for ChatGPT, because now I'm like, I don't like this, this, and this. Write me an email, you know, telling them I don't want this. Boom. I don't have to sit there and write emails, you know? Yeah. But, you know, I'm sitting here thinking about like stress, you know, as a business owner.

18:38Last night it was 10:03. I was working in my office on a program called Protractor for one of our clients, pulling all his financials. My wife was upstairs at her office working on bank reconciliations, and Lincoln calls me, hey, Dad, I'm doing quotes for Beeler Young, one of the customers, for detailing and stuff like that. You know, can you help me with this?

19:00What do you think about this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I'm sitting there thinking to myself, you know, if I was an employee of a company, I wouldn't have to do any of this shit. Yeah. And the stress would not be there, right? Yeah. Because if you're a technician nowadays and there's a shortage Okay, you could just— if something happens, you can go get a job somewhere else.

19:18What happens is a business owner doesn't do his job, you know, or doesn't run it right, he goes out of business, he loses everything he has. Number one, the shame alone. The shame alone. The shame alone, right? Absolutely. The stress of owing all these people money. If your chances are, if your business fails at the magnitude of having a repair shop, you're going to have a lot of money into that whole situation.

19:38You're going to have to go bankrupt, or you're gonna have to go get a job being a wrench somewhere else, working flat rate or whatever, not making the kind of money you were even making to live. Now you have to pay the bills for that shop, you know, because they're going to start attaching you if you don't go bankrupt. There's a lot of different things that people don't know that business owners go through.

19:58And I'm not here to sit there and flame the technicians, say, oh, they don't know what they're talking about. This is a stress about stress. This podcast is about how people deal with stress and how shop owners have to deal with all the different things that people never take into account. And it's not just shop owners, every owner, but we're a shop owner.

20:18We, we talk about shops here, you know, repair shops. Yep. But you don't see— and you know, when you get like, you know, I, I was talking to Jeff Compton, the Jada Mechanic, the other day. He's like, hey, you took a shot at me about you didn't— I don't own a shop, so I don't have emotion. I'm like, no, Jeff, I really don't have a problem with you not owning a shop and having emotions.

20:35But I will tell you, it is an emotional thing when you have to start worrying about paychecks and stuff like that. A lot of these guys worry about paying their people, okay? It's one thing for me to sit there and talk about something I, I never had to be 100% in charge of, like a payroll and stuff like that. And I'm not knocking anybody, but there's a lot of emotion in here.

20:58And, and I don't give a fuck who you are or what you have to say. We're all human and we all have emotions. Do you know what I'm saying? So you sit there and wake up and worry about, okay, do I not have enough money in the bank for payroll? What am I going to do for Jason, Tracy, Bob, Fred, and Mike that sat there all week and worked their dick off for me?

21:16And I'm looking at them and go, guys, I can't pay you this week. Okay, you're going to feel like such a failure. You don't want that to happen. And you know, like Mark Twain said, 90% of the stuff you worry about never even happens. And I, you know, Pam Garrett used to always say, you know, we're not going to borrow tomorrow's problems for today.

21:32And that's true. As business owners, we borrow tomorrow's problems, the next day's problems, push it off, right? We need to sit there and go, okay, let's worry about today's problems. You know, give us— what is it, that prayer? Give us today our daily bread. That's like, let us deal with our problems today. Yep, yep. So what I started doing after I read that book, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, I started the stop-loss thing.

21:55So, what is the stop-loss thing? We never really talked about it. We just started using it, right? So, my stop-loss is anything that wastes time or energy in me that I can't control, I stop-loss it. Meaning, okay, if I have a meeting with you and you're 10 minutes late, I leave. It was a stop-loss. I'm stop losing time. It's stressful for me to sit there when somebody doesn't show up for an appointment.

22:18Number one, they don't respect you. Okay? They can call you and say, hey, I'm in Brighton. I'm stuck in traffic. Understandable. Yep. But if they just flat ass come up 10 minutes late, 15 minutes late, fuck that. Yeah, they, they don't respect you. They're wasting your time. Stop loss them, right? We do customers that, uh, uh, my wife's telling me he's transferring, whatever.

22:39Um, let me just tell her something real quick. Um, the stop-loss thing. And once I started explaining to you, like, you read that book too, it's fucking brilliant. It is, it is. Time, time for me is a big trigger of like having your time wasted and that kind of thing. And so that's a big one. And like, they use that example of the guy that was going to lunch in like the— every week he'd go to lunch with his friend, and every week his friend would show up like minimum 10 minutes late.

23:17And you get so frustrated, it would ruin his day. And instead he just decided I'm stop-lossing it and moving on. Yeah, we do that with customers now. We run into situations with customers when they started giving us a hard time. There's this guy that came here probably about 5 years ago. We did trailers and this guy was just the biggest time waster.

23:34Finally, Steve Garrett blew up at the guy because he was wasting our guys' time. So where we were going to position some lights, he just told the guy, you know what, figure it the fuck out. You've been here for an hour wasting my guys' time. We're not going to sit here and do it. We did the lights or whatever. Well, Yesterday I walked in, I'm like, man, that guy looks familiar.

23:51He's like, I remember you did my trailers at your other place. I'm like, huh? I went in my office, I'm like, why does that guy give me the creeps? So I looked up the name, like, I know exactly who this fucking guy is. So I walk up front, sure as shit, he start— he's already giving Lincoln a hard time. Well, you know, Lincoln's like, do you want a fuel filter with your oil change?

24:09Well, fuel filter comes with an oil change. Lincoln's like, a fuel filter does not come with an oil change in no world. Yeah, the guy's like, you're wrong. You know, you didn't tell me it's going to be an hour to check out my brakes and my front end and all this stuff. Lincoln's like, it says it right there. We are— I was like, you know what, I remember you.

24:23I'm not gonna say his name. I said, I remember you. I said, we're not gonna— here's your keys, you have a nice life. And they don't know what's going on. Yeah, they're like, what was that? What is going on? I just stop-lossed that fucking guy because he's been nothing but a pain in our ass. Now he came back and I had to think about I walked in my office.

24:40Link's like, I thought it was weird how you walked in your office, then you came right back here for a few minutes and kind of like basically stopped the guy from giving me a hard time. I'm like, yeah, it's a stop loss. We don't have enough energy as business owners or people in general to stop, to just put up with people's shit nowadays.

24:58And if you think about it, how many companies right now are short-staffed? Yeah. Yep. Okay. So you think about it. Number one, the employees are under a lot of stress because, with corporate employees, because you have like yesterday, from what I could tell at both Staples stores, I'm not even exaggerating, there's 2 people in both stores. Oh my God. And they were both running around.

25:19The guy in the Novi store was literally taking the Amazon, nice guy, he was great, by the way, taking the Amazon returns, turning around, cash register, ringing me out. Thank you. I was watching him because I was sitting there in line. Watching him do this. And like, he was literally going back and forth. And the Graham Blank one was the same way.

25:37I'm sitting there thinking, man, at least he had 2 people, right? And hear me now, guys, as shop owners right now, I cannot tell you nobody has too many technicians nowadays. Nobody, nobody, nobody I ever talked to says, yeah, my shop, I have too many technicians. Okay. A lot of times these guys are running a skeleton crew. I run my shops on a skeleton crew.

25:59We're way more efficient. I figured it out. We're 93% efficient at my shop as far as production, as far as labor production. I figured it out Thursday before I left. The thing is, we do it with less people. We've had to figure out how to be more efficient. So, but you also create a longevity with your team. Like your guys have been here for a while.

26:21Yeah. You know, and, and what I'm noticing with our clients is that is not a standard. That's not a, you know, there are some people that, Their teams are— their highest, longest guy that's been there has been there for a year. Yeah. And you know, you hear it a lot of that type of situation. These guys are struggling because we're fixing a lot of them.

26:39They're having money problems. They're having, you know, they don't have benefits. They just have— they have not got to that point yet. They've got to the point now where they're paying their bills and paying themselves a paycheck and paying their employees on time. Yep. I'm not saying all of them were, but some of them were having a little bit of trouble. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:52Okay, we had guys that didn't even have time to write bills. That blows my mind. Like, you have time to fix the cars, order the parts, the parts, but you don't have time to write them an invoice and have them pay you. Well, and going back, I, you know, at the beginning you talked about how like with clients, there's not, people will ask you, you know, what's the most common problem?

27:09And, and every, every problem is different. Every, every, there's every flavor that's different. I, I would say the one thing that every single person or every single shop, every single person we've worked with has in common is what's between your 2 ears. What you're, and you said it so many times, like look in the mirror, you're the problem, right? Because it's, and it's not saying they're dumb or anything else, it's their experience.

27:29You had to go to Management of Success in order to get a different education and a view on the finances in the backend. And then you had to go through the experience with Jordan where you're going through the books. All your experiences led you and part of who you are, a big part of who you are, plus your experiences. So many guys have not been through that experience yet.

27:48They're just learning how to become business owners. All this stuff we're talking about and all the things you're stressing about, that's the things that they're struggling with. So when we're talking about this stuff, it's not saying that any of these people are dumb or anything else. It's just, You can only perform— it's the law of the lid that John C. Maxwell talks about.

28:03You can only outperform your highest level. Yep. And so it's like, if you haven't been to this point before in your life, how can you get past there if you don't have somebody helping you? Yeah. What do they always say? A business can only grow to the level where the owner's chaos is capped. Like you just said, just in different terms. But yes, 100%.

28:20You know, my thing is now You know, first of all, everybody's stress is different, right? Like, you know how when you get up in the morning, you don't even know things stress you out? What if you get in a fight with your wife? The worst thing in the morning is to get in a fight with your wife, right? Yeah. Have them words with your wife and you leave the house pissed off, right?

28:39That sets the day how you're going to be. Yep. Then you get to the shop and you're in a pissed-off mood, so you bark at somebody else. Then what does it do to the tone level in the shop? It drops the tone level down, right? Yep. Just because the stress started at home and you bring it with you. Okay, you can see it on people's faces.

28:54You know, my stress might be different than something that stresses you out. My wife has no, uh, outward stress. Like, you can't tell my wife's stressed, but she's got ulcers. Oh, so I know she fucks— she's internalizing it. And my wife is like that. We call her the honey badger. She don't give a fuck. She gives a fuck, she just doesn't display it like we do.

29:13I'll bite people's heads off when I get stressed. Like last week— was it not last week? The week before last, like I think Wednesday I had like a bunch of shit hit me. I had some really big decisions, like 5 of them all to make, and I'm not going to get into it, but I like— I don't usually get to the point where I'm overwhelmed because I'm so used to making them decisions like that.

29:29But these weren't decisions that I could take lightly. Yeah, they were going to affect a lot of different pieces. Yep. So I sat there, man, I just told my wife, I said, man, I can hardly fucking take today. So I just got on my tractor and I sat there and graded the road and shit like that, and I, and I did stuff just to cope with it and think about it.

29:43But I've had to learn that Yeah, because a lot of people will come home and sit there and open the tequila and get fucking drunk every night or whatever. You know, I have a few beers pretty much every night. It kind of chills me out, whatever. And I like to taste a beer. But you know, people's stress, it can ruin your life.

30:00Yeah. And it makes you make poor decisions. You can't— when you're under a lot of stress, like they teach stress management in the military, okay? You got to be able to think when somebody's fucking shooting at you. Absolutely. It's called stress, right? Well, because it's proven if your emotion— if you're running on high emotion, you're not making good decisions. You think about as an owner of a company, you have that fight with your wife, and then you come to work as the owner of the company.

30:24If you have an employee of the company that's having a fight with his wife, and he comes in and he's in a bad mood, it changes the shop. If you're the owner coming in with that, you're now in a bad mood because you had the fight with your wife, you're changing the lives of everybody in the shop because everybody has to deal with you.

30:39You know, and so, and think about it, you're doing that every single day. What reality are you creating? Oh, really? And, you know, the thing is about it, I— now you've heard me say this too, I have a 24-hour rule. Like, a lot of the decisions I would make, like knee-jerk decisions, because I was pissed off, emotional, stressed out or something, I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna wait till tomorrow and deal with that.

30:57Yeah. And a lot of times what you'll realize is your outlook is a lot different, you know what I'm saying? Like, um, you know, business is, you know, as much as we hate to say that there is emotion as business owners Business has to be cut and dry, meaning the decisions you make with employees and everything else have to be cut and dry and you have to do stop loss on employees.

31:16Like, for instance, I have a client that he called me, he's like, yo, I had this guy that we let go of, you know, a few months ago, remember? I'm like, yep. He's like, he came to me and he said, I've changed. Everything's fucking better in my life. This is where I was at. These are the problems I had. He's like, what should I do?

31:30He's like, I'm so behind because I don't have that guy that did that kind of work all the time. I said, bring them back, but keep in mind, nothing's going to change here. This is a business decision. You don't have to love them, hate them, or anything. You can say, okay, I'm going to bring you back at what you were making, or even a little bit less, because I had to fix a lot of shit you screwed up.

31:50I'll give you your job back, but just keep in your mind, as mean as this is to say, chances are this is going to be a rinse and repeat situation. I said, but the devil you know, Right now, you know what he's capable of. Think about if you had to try to find somebody to bring them into your organization to train them on how everything is, how everything works.

32:09This guy already knows, so you're kind of ahead, but you have to make this as a cold, calculated decision. If he comes in and does a great job, causes you no stress, does what he's paid to do and goes home, that's the best you could hope for. Absolutely. And he can get you out of the hole you're in, and he keeps going great, and he learned his lesson.

32:24He ends up being a great model employee for the rest of Great. But in my experience, when you do a repeat on these people, we call them reruns. Yeah, I used to call them rerun all the time for the first couple weeks. What's up, rerun? Because you know that they really didn't change. They're just changed for that particular moment. Yep, yep. But you get a good month out of them, right?

32:43So my thing is the whole stress thing, you know, comes— that come— that all this has added stress to a business owner. These are decisions that they're maybe not thinking they're going to have to make that particular day. And here comes homeboy walking in the door going, here, you know, I found Jesus Christ. I've quit drinking. I'm here to save the day.

33:01And you're like, okay, do I need to make a decision? I look over here, my customers are pissed off. I can't get the stuff done. Homeboy's found Jesus, even though Jesus has never been lost. We all know that, right? He stopped drinking or whatever. You can put it into a business plan with him and say, okay, here you are. We'll give you all this.

33:19You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You don't have to be that cold. Sometimes as a business owner, you have to do what's best. For you as a business. And that's where a lot of these guys, I believe, get tripped up on emotion. Okay. Sometimes my wife's like, you're really cold and calculating. I really am in a lot of cases because I had to learn to be.

33:36You have to. Yeah. Because I'm going to tell you something right now. Your employees are not going to come and lay in the ditch with you, nor the casket. Okay. And your customers are— your customers will throw you over for $0.50. If a guy will do something cheaper, they will throw you over. Most of your customers, they do have not no fucking loyalty.

33:52Especially it's getting worse in today's world. Would you agree? Absolutely. Okay. You know, you could— you back in the day, like you would have the Mark MC Cartages and the, you know, the Craig's Cabin and all them guys that retired, moved away. They would stay with me because you had a relationship with you and they trusted you and stuff like that. So even if you were more expensive than the other guy down the street, they would say, hey, he's always taking care of me.

34:15So there was more of a personal connection, right? So the stress of maintaining customers as business owners was not there. Now, we do have stress as business owners now 'cause we have Google, we have that. Think about just the advertising stress alone, guys, for business owners. We used to have Yellow Pages. Remember when the big book would come out? Yellow Pages was fucking ridiculous what they would charge you for these ads.

34:38Oh yeah. Right? That's where everybody came with the AAAs and everybody wanted their business names to be in the alphabet. At the start, right? Because that would be at the start of the Yellow Pages. If you look at a plumbing company, you would start at the A's, right? All that stuff is gone now. So think how much stress that has came out from business owner— more on business owners.

35:00And keep in mind, guys, I'm not blowing other business owners here, but this is just a stress talk on owning a business, and it goes across all businesses. We used to meet with the Yellow Pages lady, and a lot of times they had blonde hair, blue eyes, and big boobs. Okay, because sex sells. Let's just— let's be completely fucking honest, right? Yeah, yeah.

35:16Okay, so she would come in, she'd bat her eyes and stuff at you, touch you on your shoulder, whatever. You spent up for a $3,500 a month Yellow Pages ad, and you didn't have to worry about it for a year. Think about now, the stress of advertising. I'm slow, I don't know what to do, let me look online. Okay, I see Kukui or one of these marketing companies, let me call them.

35:37They come here, they Don't worry, we got you. You know, you need to do this, you need to do that. And they talk about impressions and they dazzle you with all these freaking buzzwords that mean fucking nothing, as we all know, right? But you're sitting there going, oh my God, right? And then, you know, you get a bad review, which we didn't have bad reviews back in the day, for something that's not your fault.

35:56And I'm trying to paint the picture. So you're dealing with all the marketing, right? And then your service advisor does something, or one of your techs, and you get a bad review. So you're— now you're dealing with that. Right? So then you call the person, you're like, hey, you know what happened? They're shitty with you. So that adds stress to you as a business owner.

36:10Like, that's just one piece of it, dude. Then you don't— you, uh, don't mix in the scams of like— have you ever seen Better Business Bureau? They turn into a marketing company where like they, they send you like, oh, we've done all those research about you, people are talking about you. And then you call and then it's like they try to, uh, run a marketing ad with you.

36:28It's so crazy. Yeah. Basically said because they used to have power and they don't anymore. Yeah, you know, so now they use this whole prestige fear tactic type thing to go out and sell. It's insane. No, it, it isn't, you know. So, you know, you guys sit there, think about, you know, your technicians, but you're sitting here looking at the owner going, he doesn't really do nothing when he's sitting in his office with his freaking head in his hand, or he's looking at his phone or whatever.

36:52He's probably reading an email or doing something. Or there's a lot of jerk-off owners out there, let's face it. Right? Yep. Uh, and there's a lot of guys that don't really give a shit. They got put in, they're second or third generation, they didn't have to build it, so they're just basically milking the thing and going to kill it. Yep. Let's, let's just face facts here.

37:06A lot of these guys you talk to are not necessarily shop owner material, but their dad owned the shop and they got put in place and now they own a shop. Yep. So yeah, you know, I don't get a lot of that. I worry about stuff all the time. I worry about making sure I'm doing a good enough job for our consulting clients.

37:27Me and you've had our conversation, you know, and once I realize that there's so many people out there that do minimal and charge people way more than we charge them, and we do a lot for them, you know, I stress about that because I'd never want to be in the situation where I was in a few months ago where I trusted somebody to do some something for me and I paid them for years and years and years and found out they're fucking me.

37:51Didn't do anything. Okay, so that's on my mind. That's an added stress. I'm just talking about this thing that stress, right? Yep. You know, talk about if you have a line of credit, you have to deal with the bank. You know, the, the banks want you to fill out all this paperwork. They want your personal financial statements. They want this, they want that.

38:06That's added stress. So as a business owner, you have all this stuff to do over here, and then you have your employees not doing what they're supposed to over here. So then you're like, okay, if these guys aren't doing what they're supposed to over here because they really don't have no direction, no procedures, policies in place, I haven't trained them much. How can I be doing stuff over here when I still got to keep going over here and doing it?

38:25Yeah. So now I end up working till 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm not making any money because I'm tired and I'm being irrational. I'm stressed to the max. Right. And then so I'm not even making— I'm making $40,000 a year out of a $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, $4 million company. And I would be better off going into a job, not having any stress.

38:45Well, because everything you're describing is so true. And the podcast I was just on, whether we were talking about like that, the work-life balance as a business owner, right? And it's one of those things, as an employee, you work your hours, you work your 9 to 5 or whatever it is hours, you go home at 5 o'clock and you do whatever it is that you, that you do, you know, like you don't think probably about work unless you're like, as an employee, I thought about work.

39:06I thought, uh, but it was just, I think it's why we got to where we are as far as being business owners and stuff like that, because I was constantly, I was, it was constantly in my head. Right. But most people, when they leave work, they don't think about it. For, as a business owner, like you don't shut it off. And then to your point, if a customer calls up and they need something or, uh, there's something you forgot to do or something, um, you talked about ruminating before.

39:29And like, for me, like if I get a call or I get a message, like, or, and I gotta make a callback, I, if I need to do it, I need to do it right now because if not, I'll sit and think about it. Anyways, and I've just spent that time. You know, like if there's something like, if you message me, I'm like, oh hey, this is wrong.

39:44I've gotta go do that and fix it. Yeah. And get it taken care of. 'Cause if not, I'm sitting and thinking about it the whole entire time. And like, I'm just spending my time anyways. I might as well go get it done. No, and you're right. And I had to learn some, I had some new types of situations come up when Lincoln started working at the shops because a lot of times the guys wouldn't, they would handle stuff like Jason would handle it or Jim would handle it, and I really wouldn't really know about it.

40:10Yeah, it would never rise up to my level where I would need to deal with it, right? Because I'm a guy that handles shit. If it comes up across my desk, I'm like, I nail it and move on with my day, right? Well, Lincoln would just come home and start, in general, start talking about stuff going on at the shop. So-and-so did this, so-and-so did that.

40:28What I started to realize, it was stressing me out. Yeah, because I'm like, okay, shit, I, I'm not there, so what the fuck happened? How'd this outcome— what? So it went on for about a week, and I finally told him, I said, dude, don't come home, bring the shop home. The shop is at the shop. Tomorrow morning, if the problem is— the problems will still be there, I guarantee it.

40:46So if you need me tomorrow, if them guys can't handle it, let me know. I understand what he was trying to do. He was trying to basically depict to me that he is paying attention to everything that's going on. Dad, this happened. I was— I— yep, yep, yep, yep. In turn, what it's doing is raising my level, stressing you out. And you know, the thing about it is, you know, I can sit here and talk on my podcast like this shit isn't happening to me.

41:06I'm human just like everybody else. I don't give— if I wasn't, you would have to worry if I didn't give a fuck. If I got on this podcast, said I don't give a fuck about my people, I don't give a fuck about— and there's a lot of guys out there that, that do not give a fuck. Yep. They will cut your throat for a dollar.

41:19I'm not that guy. I'd rather make a little bit less and make all my people have good— make a good living. So we're coming across, we're coming down our driveway the other day and my wife was at the shop and I wasn't. And she starts, you know, hey, you know, Mr. So-and-so was back and he was not very happy. You see the, you know, the note said that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

41:39And I'm like, huh? Then she's like, and so-and-so had a problem with a check. And I'm like, I'm getting like pissed off. So immediately I pick up the phone. I'm like, you know, what happened with this? And he's like, Dad, we handled it. The guy was a fucking asshole. But it wasn't our fault. We already showed him what we told him on the work order.

41:54This could possibly happen again. And he's fine. I'm like, okay, what happened with that check? What about the check? I'm like, well, mom said this. And I'm like, he's like, no, that's not even what she— so she was talking about one company versus another company and she wasn't really wrong, but it's a whole long story. And he's like, no, don't worry about it.

42:12I'm like, okay. But my point was she started to start to get me wound up. I was getting spun out. My mind all of a sudden hits overdrive. I'm pulling in our driveway to go get in the pool with the grandkids and shit. And I'm, what the fuck? The place is burning down. This is going on. And I'll tell you another thing business owners do.

42:31And I did this for years and years and years. Okay? The end of the world is here. We're slow. I have no fucking money in the bank. I can't pay my bills is what you're thinking. You're at home, you're sitting here laying in bed, you're thinking, yeah, I don't have no fucking money, it's slow, this and that, right? This is what your mind's doing to you.

42:52Yeah, it's an evil, evil thing. It is. You go the next day, you look, the bank accounts are just fine. Yeah, they all have money in them, plenty of it, and your bills aren't past due, and you can pay all today's bills that were due and still have plenty of money left over, and there's still money in your savings account. But you're at home all night torturing yourself by Because you basically said, I'm slow and I'm struggling, but it's all made-up fiction in your fucking head.

43:16Yeah, it's not even reality. Yeah, perception is reality. And it's just like what I was perceiving in my mind was not matching. Yep, it's crazy. And I will tell you, guys go through this shit all the time. Now, I'm sure there's plenty of guys out there with their— they're dead-ass right. I'm broke, I don't have the money, I have no business. Absolutely.

43:34Yeah, but what I'm saying is like a higher achievers run into this thing. And I was talking to a guy last week, one of our clients. He said the same exact thing. I said, let me tell you what my situation is, blah blah blah blah blah. And I told him what pretty much— I know these guys' financial situation, so I told him where we were at.

43:49Yeah. He's like, holy fuck, you worry? I said, I still worry. I said— he's like, my wife said— he said to me, my wife says, what the fuck is wrong with you? He's like, I don't want to fail. Yeah, that's a million-dollar— that's the answer to the million-dollar question. We all worry about failing. Yeah. This isn't about— we don't want to be failures.

44:07Yeah, somewhere in our life something triggered us, so we stress ourselves out all the time. And these businesses are just going just fine without us when we're not there working, because we have all the— like my case, everything's going just fine, but I'm guilty. I'm stressing out that I'm not there. I have to go do this. I'm stressed out. Like today, I had an appointment this morning, I'm doing the podcast with you, I have to go to the lawyer at 3 o'clock, so I won't even be at the shops today, right?

44:30But I'm torturing myself. I should be at the shop. The shop's gonna burn down. We're not gonna make no money. What are they gonna do today, right? And guys, guess what? Everything's fine. Everything's just fine. I haven't been— I wasn't even there last week. Yeah, I was there for an hour last week to freaking go grab some checks so we could print checks at home.

44:46Like, I've literally beat myself to death over the years to get these shops to run by themselves. And you know who my worst fucking critic is? The guy in the mirror. Yep. I literally stress myself out when I'm not there. And if I didn't, that means I didn't care, right? Absolutely. And I worry about the employees and stuff like that. And this is all heartfelt stuff.

45:07Like, that's one thing about me, uh, what you see is what you get. I don't fucking sugarcoat it. It's like, I run into all this stuff and I'm pretty freaking well off as far as like, I don't have money problems at any of my companies. At home, I have a nice house. Like, my shit's all paid for, most of it. But here I am torturing myself.

45:23Is that not fucking nuts? There is, uh, I don't know, there's a book called Driven, uh, written by Douglas Brackmann, and he talks— it talks about this is 10% of the people in the world, 10% of people in the world are driven, like on this driven path. And it's, it's a mutation of your genes, and it's usually caused by like trauma through like childhood or something that, that mutates a gene.

45:47But it feels like you're never enough and you're just driving, driving, driving, driving, driving. It's just spectrum bullshit. Yes. It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, so like if you think about 10% of the people in the world create 99% of everything that is in our world. Isn't that nuts? 99%. Yeah. And out of those 10%, 6% of those people are entrepreneurs.

46:08There you go. Yeah. And you know that, let's go back to the freaking Kids in the Hall. Yes. Did you realize that YouTube turned off the ads on that? Yeah, I saw that. I'm like, what the hell? That was one of our better episodes. I got people call me and said that was a great episode. Yeah. So it means I hit, nerves.

46:23Like, a lot of people thought— think the same way what I talked about in that thing, you know. And the thing that we're talking about right now is like, you know, my wife, I'm like, man, I think so-and-so is kind of lazy. She's compared to you, everybody's fucking lazy. Because, you know, we talked about, you know, I'm always going, going, going. And lately I've been trying to— ever since I found out when I started that AI thing, I started talking about all that stuff and I did that podcast and stuff.

46:49I tried to change the thing. I tried to say goodbye on the telephone. And one of my clients said, hey, you just said goodbye to me earlier. I'm like, I've been working on it. I've been getting up in the morning, not setting alarm clock, getting up and sitting down at the kitchen counter and sitting there and having coffee before I get dressed.

47:05Like, I've been trying to slow down. Yeah. And try to get to even, you know, get my day started later. Um, and I'll tell you what, it's a struggle. I feel like I'm lazy. And if you really stop and think about it, you want to talk about lazy, corporate America has fucking ruined our world. And COVID made it worse. When these fucking people got to start working at home, it just got lazier and lazier.

47:28And my wife told me some stuff that made sense to me. She's like, listen, she's like, you always have your employees that always are in the hole on their vacation time, their sick days. They're always borrowing ahead from their sick days. She said, do you realize that since they're allowed to work from home, these people don't use any of their vacation days?

47:46They don't use any of their sick days or personal days. Yeah. She's like, but you try to get a hold of them to ask them a question because you're at work. They're like whispering, hey, I'm at the doctor's office. I can't call you back. Well, that's fucking funny. I didn't see a vacation slip or a personal sick day slip or anything like that.

48:02And what it's done is corporate America has taken the urgency out of anything. 1,000%. Listen, it's hard enough. We know it's hard enough to get people to perform at work. What do you think they're doing in the comfort of their own home with no supervision? I'm not telling you all people are bad, but most people are inherently lazy. And when they've got distractions in front of them, when I first came home, like I left my job and started my business and I'm at home, I was like, I had to like make sure that I got up in the morning and got dressed because if I didn't, like if I, if I just wore like sweatpants

48:35throughout the day, like I felt like I was like sitting at home on welfare, like, you know, like eating my Cheerios while drinking Kool-Aid, you know? You know, it's kind of funny. Mondays is the day I start basically start calls with all the clients at 8 o'clock. And I usually get done late in the afternoon. That's fucking torture. But I sit home, there's no TV on.

48:57I get up and I get dressed like you said. I sit there, I have everything together. And I just, every half an hour, I'm talking to a new client. We go all through the day and we get all of the calls done. At the end of the day, I'm exhausted. Okay. But what if nobody was watching me? It didn't matter. Their credit cards auto got auto hit.

49:15I sent a few emails, and then I don't answer the emails. Yeah, you see how much people hide behind email. Voicemail and email are horrible. You know, you know, right? Absolutely. I mean, these insurance companies we try to deal with at the body shop, it might take a week before these people answer an email. You mean to tell me you have so many emails when you're dealing with a shop on a claim, you don't see that claim come through with a shop name and go, oh, I need— I can just deal with it?

49:40They just say fuck it, don't deal with it. Yep. It's crazy. It's just kind of like, you know, when you talk to these people, like, okay, here's a perfect example. You ever go to cancel— like, just say you buy extended warranty on your car and you sell the car, you could get a refund. Yeah. How the fuck does it take 4 to 6 weeks in today's world to fucking get a refund?

50:01It didn't take 4 to 6 weeks to sign up for that motherfucker. Did you ever notice that? No, the whole like, it takes time for us to give you our money back, that your money back is Crazy. Yeah. And it's just like, so, you know, the whole stress thing, there's so much stuff going on for shop owners, business owners and stuff with stress.

50:18And then you're sitting there trying to get people to work. That's a whole nother stressor in itself because you can't say something to so-and-so because she's a girl and she might, you know, say you're sexually harassing her. And then you worry about this and all this is added stress. Like, you ever have that headache that's right here? Oh, right there. Oh my God.

50:37You know, it's just like, oh my God, it's just, you're ready to jump out of your own skin. Yeah. There's been times it's like so stressful on certain situations, just like it's going to kill you. And, you know, I got one guy that's going through some stuff right now. He's lost like 30 fucking pounds from stress. Can't eat, stomach, you know, problems and stuff like that.

50:54And stress is doing it. Yep. Number one killer. Freaking killer. Yeah. Is stress. You know, we have to learn to let it go. And how can you do that? You know, like Friday I looked at it as like, okay, the guys have been working a lot, and do I really need the aggravation of them guys freaking, you know, uh, staying around Friday when everybody else is, you know, I'm at the lake house?

51:19Like, just close the place. Yep. Drop the stress level for everybody. Just not worry about Friday and just close the place. And it's kind of like, but here's the problem. Greed is another problem that leads to stress because we're so stressed out about money, and greed feeds that way. And then greed, you know, being greedy, you start pushing and pushing, it causes stress for money on your guys.

51:43So it kind of goes back and forth, you know. You see these shop owners that are so greedy and want so much money so they can buy this one more sports car, one more of this, or one more of that, they just, they just ride their people like Seabiscuit, and it puts stress, stress across the whole all the employees. Yeah. And nobody wants to go to work at a place where it's so stressful and you're worrying about what the owner's going to do because he's stressed out because they're not making any money.

52:09And how can this all be fixed? With a few mindsets. Number one, read the Dale Carnegie book. What is it called again? I just forgot. How to Relieve Stress. Yeah. Let me— I can look too. Right. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. That was probably one of the better books I've ever read.

52:38Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, I'm trying to think of who he was talking about where he was talking about like the guy like stressed constantly that he's gonna constantly fail, and he basically ran— like he lost all that weight, he was losing his hair in clumps. Like all that. They said JPMorgan. Yeah, that's who it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he owns— that is the founder of Chase Bank, guys.

52:57Yeah. One of the biggest institutions now, right? Financial institutions in the world. It's huge. But they said that they— he— the people hated him so much because he was so greedy. They talked about the insurance, remember? They hated him so much they were actually going to exhume bodies out of the family plot because nobody wanted to be buried next to him. Yes.

53:18He was such a fucking asshole. He was so greedy and had— it would stress everybody out so bad. They hated him. Then he got alopecia, started losing his hair, got sick. They said he's going to die. And then all of a sudden he changed just overnight. They said he became easy to deal with. He started giving money away and stopped worrying about stuff like that, and his whole life changed, actually got better.

53:37Yep. He was one of the people, if I remember correctly, Chicago— did some stuff with Chicago Institute of Medicine. I might— that might be wrong, but he, he was big into— well, okay, so like putting this into real life perspective, when you're talking about Lincoln coming home and talking about the different things that are going on in the shop, just think if you didn't stop your emotions and you've, you started calling up the guys, what's going on here?

53:59And you're like, and you're, you're stressed out because you're thinking you're losing money and you're doing this stuff and you're just riding them every day. And every day you're listening to the reports and you're riding them every day. What are you going to cause? Yeah. They're going to quit. They're going to quit. They're going to be like, they're going to worry about you coming in there as opposed to like the situation you have now when they call you up and they're like, hey, when you haven't been here in a while, they're like, hey, uh, just gauging to make sure you're not coming in so that they can have to be on their, on eggshells.

54:24Right. No, exactly. You know, the thing is about it, when I go there, you know, we usually bullshit and I usually interrupt. My manager's like, you really cost us a couple hours a day because the guys sit around bullshit with you in the morning. But I think that's kind of important. Like when I come to Motor City here in the morning, a lot of times we'll have a meeting and we'll spend an extra 20 minutes, 25 minutes just bullshitting.

54:40Yep. It's okay. Yeah, it's okay. You know, in my mind. But there's guys that they expect their guys there to be 10 minutes early, dressed and ready to go, and they expect them to work late and not getting— and they just dollar die, need more and more and more and more and more. I don't really give that perception off to my people.

54:57Like, yes, we need to obviously make money. Yes, I know that we're 93% efficient at my shop. 100%. Okay. Would I like to be 110? Yeah, I'm not going to lie to you, but am I going to kill people? No, because in our business, it just doesn't happen that way. It's real hard to go back and forth a lot of this type of stuff, you know, to sit there and ride people and you don't want to make people miserable to the point where they quit, number one, or number two, you don't want to ride them so much that they stay with you because of their life situation or whatever.

55:28So when at the end of the day, when you're all done with your career, you sell the shop, whatever, there's a bunch of broken people there and you're super wealthy and you walk out and say, thanks for your fucking lives. Okay? That's where I think where a lot of business owners miss it. You're dealing with other humans, you're dealing with other emotions, you're dealing with a lot of different stuff that goes on in people's lives.

55:47And you as a business owner, if you're an asshole, And we've seen a lot of them, they don't give a fuck. Absolutely. You know, and I have to sometimes watch the social cues too because I'm fucking obtuse to them, as you've seen. Yeah, with my whole situation of that Kids in the Hall podcast, like, it takes a few minutes for me to, to read social cues and click.

56:07Like, hey, I'm having a baby next week, that's great, we better get this done. You know, I don't sit there and go, oh, you know, blah blah blah blah. It's not that I don't care, it's not that I won't buy them whatever, you know. Um, but I think, you know, a lot of these business owners, they make everything stressful. And I was no different for a long time.

56:26The best thing that can happen at my shops right now is I stay away and let these guys do what they're trained by me to do. And their policies are in place. If they need me, they'll call me. Yep. And I don't need to stress myself out not being there. I need to go live my life. Like Jason told me, I'm like, I don't like being here.

56:44He's like, dude, you've been in this building for 35 fucking years. It's your time to go do what you want. We got this, Jim. If I need you, I'll call you. You know, I miss you when you're not here to bullshit with us, but if I need you, I'll call you. I have a job to do. I'll do it. But here's the thing.

56:59Guess what I have working for me? Full grown-ups. I don't have a bunch of guys that make excuses. We don't have HR problems. Believe that. We do not have guys, we do not have attendance problems. We don't have problems with guys not doing their job. Like everybody that works in my companies, they do their job. Do they do it because they're scared of me?

57:18No, they do it 'cause we treat 'em well. We say, take Friday off, have a 4-day weekend. We're not gonna do this. Let's go out to dinner for Christmas. We go out and spend $2,000 for dinner. Everybody gets bonuses. That's what you can do if you run your shop and you get everybody on the same page. Versus the guy that runs in and sits there, screams and yells because he's stressed out all the time because of money, this and that.

57:41He doesn't have trained people, so he's always a ball of stress and he's running around. He's over there trying to fix cars, yelling at them, you're not fixing these cars fast enough. Going over here, I can't fucking pay this, I can't pay that. Think about it. Like, we don't need to keep doing all this shit to ourselves as business owners. Well, I was telling you about the client that I had that I went out to their shop and the, the, his salesperson and operations person went through my bootcamp and they hired me to go out there and look and sit with her.

58:07And she's increased their year-over-year numbers 35%. This guy's gone in jail for 3 and a half years and he calls her up from jail every single day and stresses her out and throws stuff at her and is constantly like, we need to make more money. We need to make more money, just because of situations and problems he's created. And she's like, man, this is so stressful.

58:27She's like, I feel like I got it. I feel like the day goes good. And then I get this call from him and he's like ranting about all the stuff that's going wrong. And you know, like, you have somebody that's literally running your business and increasing the business, then it's running better than when you were in it, and you're calling that person up every day yelling at them.

58:45Well, my thought is, you know what you should do? You should fucking— we should run his numbers and be like, hey, you're not doing this. So wait a second, last year at this time with you fucking here, we did X. With me here and you not here, we did Y. So why are you going to call me? If you keep calling me and doing this to me, I'm going to fucking leave and then you're going to have nothing.

59:06And that was the most impressive stuff. I was sitting down with her and she was like, oh, let me show you the numbers. And she had them all printed out. She was like, this is where we're at. And she didn't have any question on— if I asked her a question, she knew exactly. She was like, oh, let me go grab that. And here's where we're at.

59:20And she was spitting it all out. She knew exactly where she was at. That's awesome. And that's right there. That's somebody that you need to keep. But instead, he's going to call and stress her out. He's going to stress her out to the point where she's like, one day he's going to take a good employee and spin her and she's going to be a bad employee and she's going to quit.

59:33He's going to be like, she fucked me, she ripped me off, she did this, she didn't do whatever, right? When she's actually treating it like it's hers. Yeah. And probably not even making the money she should be making. She should be making probably more, 5,000%. But he's going to sit there because he made poor life decisions and he's in jail now. All of what you said is absolutely true.

59:52Yeah. Yep. Yeah. You know, here's how I deal with the numbers and stuff at my shops. Every week when they do payroll, they type into the AI, the AI, all their numbers come out where their parts markup was, where their labor markup was, where their sublet marker was, how many hours were turned, the efficiency, the ELR and all that. And they all have green arrows or red arrows up or down.

1:00:17My guys can literally tell me if I walked in there today was payroll. If I walked in and said, what happened with sublets last week? They'll be like, well, this happened. They know. Yeah. So what I've done is by teaching these guys how to read the numbers, they frickin monitor their own numbers. At the end of the month, I look at the numbers like last month, nothing we could do.

1:00:38We end up having to have some weird-ass jobs and we lowered some of the prices on some of the maintenance items and stuff like that. So our numbers were artificially low and the guys knew it. And they literally said to me, yeah, well, last month we did this, this, and this, and this affected this, and this is why. Yeah, like, yep, you guys are 100%.

1:00:57So can you imagine if they didn't have the numbers and they didn't understand the numbers and I call up and start screaming, oh my God, what the fuck happened with Sublitz? They're like, what is Sublitz? Who is he? What is that, right? So they're not educated. So how can you sit there and have people have responsibility but they have no authority? Meaning the authority they would have was to go into the computer and pull the numbers out and say, hey boss, can you tell me what these numbers are?

1:01:21Well, no, you don't have the authority in the program. I don't trust you enough to even look at the numbers, right? So, but I want you to hit the numbers. Whose numbers? Whose numbers? Like, you talk to some of these shop owners and they fucking cause their own stress because they don't even tell— they don't even give their service advisors the— a list of what to work in.

1:01:40They don't give them the rules. I've seen this for years, business owners not wanting to share the numbers, like the front-end numbers, with their guys. Like, how do— how can they hit the numbers if they don't know what they are? How can they hit the goals if they don't know what it is, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's a big problem. So, okay, all this leads to what for the owner?

1:01:58Stress. And some of it's self-induced stress, guys. Like I told you, like, perception is reality. Like me torturing myself, oh my God, the business is going out of business, we have no money, we have no this, we have no that. And you go there, everything's just fine. Absolutely. So you run into this a lot where the whole— the stress is the number one silent killer, you know, heart attacks, whatever, strokes.

1:02:20Um, you know, the other thing is you could cause undue stress on your employees like we were just talking about to the point where they all quit. Yeah. Like, you can't go in there and go, you know, all guys, like, you know, I'll use Chex Engine Exchange, uh, was across the street from us for years in Farmington Hills. And anybody who's listened to this podcast is in the Farmington area, they were the premier engine builder.

1:02:42They built some fucking engines, like a lot of engines. And, uh, you know, it went really good when they were— when FE, uh, 3 to 4 mediums and stuff, the FE-style blocks were breaking. Um, uh, they were back into the loading dock and it would just shock would break the crankshaft. We were doing motors left and right, like We were doing a lot of engine remans, swaps and stuff like that.

1:03:07And they were selling a lot of engines. They were doing good. You know, he's giving, you know, hey, Jason, you and your family, free health insurance, like paying for this, paying for that, paying for this, paying for that. Right. And then, you know, he's buying snowmobiles. He has a place up north. He has all this stuff, you know, going on. I've talked about it before.

1:03:24And then, you know, business starts to taper down. Then he's like, we got to do more. We got to do more. So he starts putting stress on the people, you know, instead of pulling back. He keeps buying the snowmobiles, have the sugar beets and everything delivered to the shop. Hey, we can't pay for your health insurance anymore. We can't do this. We can't do that.

1:03:40He puts so much stress on the place. People— one of the guys' hair was falling out in clumps and shit like that. They were so stressed out about losing their jobs because think about it, they're at the Golden Goose. They worked at the premier place, right? Yeah. And he's under stress and he's smoking more and he's just like, you see this and it's like, okay, there should have been a stop loss.

1:03:58They should have stopped and said, okay, we need to reassess what's going on. Got everybody together. Hey, this is the situation. You know, engines are lasting longer. Things are going, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then kind of reined it all in. Instead, they just kind of let the thing turn into a ball of stress and people started quitting. They're doing, you know what I mean?

1:04:16It's just like, it all leads back to, you know, doing, being irrational because the stress was getting the best of them. You know, he's thinking, okay, what the hell is going on here? We were doing engines left and right. I sit at this boring bar and do these engines nonstop. And where are they all at? You know, then you got the money stress, you have the production stress, you have the business stress, you have everything has stress after it.

1:04:38Yep. And you know, here's the thing, guys, you can't control stress, but you can go ahead and handle it. Right? Right. You can, you can manage it. You know, it's, it's so crazy because as you're sitting and talking, I'm thinking of all the companies that have like eventually went out of business have probably been from like leadership that's created a lot of stress.

1:04:58You even think about like the big box retailers and You know, we were talking about the, uh, the Staples and stuff like that. Like, look at the JCPenney's. And so JCPenney's used to be like, uh, or the Sears. Sears is gone. That used to be the standard in, uh, in experiences. Good to Great, the book he had, if all the book, all the, all the companies he talks about are now like, like Walgreens, you know, they're all like bad companies, stress.

1:05:21And that created that, that corporate stress that created that. You get all these employees that are treating their customers bad. Yeah. And the thing about it, you start to stop and think about it, it's not going to get any better. No. It's like you just said it yourself. You got 10% of the freaking people in the world doing a lot of the work.

1:05:38I don't remember the statistics that you said, but it's like, how many companies do you know that 2 or 3 of the guys do all the work? And here's the other thing I've seen happening a lot now. You get older leaders, that don't want, like, change, and things start changing, so they don't start to roll with the punches. Like, one thing people always say about me, I pivot on my heel.

1:06:00Okay, we did this tomorrow, but guess what? We got to do this today. Like, I'll make decisions based on what's going on around me. Think about these guys that got college degrees, that took over companies, became the CEO. Somebody else built the company, and they came in. Okay, here's a perfect example. Look at freaking Apple, from Tim Cook's leadership, from Steve Jobs.

1:06:19They said Steve Jobs is an absolute fucking asshole, heartless a frick, whatever, but at least you knew where you stood with him. Do your fucking job. Yep. Okay, they've turned that place into a fucking romper room over there. We have software problems and all kinds of shit. Google, okay, Android— Android phones still have bugs. You mean to tell me that all these operating systems on the phones need to have these bugs in the world we're in today?

1:06:42Yeah, it's a lack of fucking leadership. These guys just get so far away from what they're doing, they start leaving the talking— the guys that are managers in charge of stuff And the managers end up doing the way they want it and feed the upstairs a bunch of bullshit. And then the stuff just doesn't work. And then the business starts going— then they don't understand why they're declining in sales.

1:07:00Like, who the fuck at Staples decided that it'd be a good idea to be an Amazon return center? It's insane, right? The people that are literally eating your lunch. When the employees see it and are commenting on it, the employees are like, yo, we're fucking Amazon side piece over here doing returns for them. The very people that can sell the office supplies cheaper and have them the next day.

1:07:20They don't have to go to the store with their fucking bullshit extended warranties and stuff like that, right? Insane, isn't it? It's insane. So you really stop and think about it, like, where do you want to be, guys, as business owners? My suggestion to you is don't work the weekends. Fucking walk out the door Friday, turn off your phone, get a different phone so your shop phone number— if people have your cell phone number, turn the motherfucker back on.

1:07:45I don't know. My phone does not bother me. My phone nonstop. Like, you can look like— yeah, but all over in here. I, I thrive on being busy, so I'm okay with that. But some people just can't handle it. Yep. You know, I take calls all day long with other shop owners talking about different stuff. It doesn't bother me, but it does not stress me out.

1:08:06But my phone at 10 o'clock at night goes to silent and turns back on, uh, 7 o'clock the next morning, usually. Yep. So I don't deal with that shit on the weekends. I don't even pay attention to my phone. I'll answer people, but I don't live it, breathe it. You know, I don't do mobile repair. Like, yep, if you're doing mobile repair and you're going to do 24-hour repair, is it really worth it for you to get out of bed in the middle of the night as a business owner to go work on the side of the road to get $400 or $500?

1:08:33What does that do to your mental well-being? Yeah, no shit. Is it really worth the stress of having your phone ring? Are you sitting there thinking before you go to bed? Sure do hope I wake up if somebody calls, or, you know, I'm going to go to sleep and, you know, I'm going to wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning. I have to go do this, this, and this.

1:08:47And like, that's not a really good idea, in my opinion. No. Now, if you get a young guy that wants to make money and do that, you probably could trust him. That'd be a good thing. But as a business owner, I don't think you should be doing that type of stuff unless you absolutely have to to keep the doors open. Absolutely. You know what I mean?

1:09:02Absolutely. So I think the stress from a lot of these companies, you know, comes from the top. And it just doesn't stop. Yeah. And then you got to remember the top has its own stresses. The top's going up, you know, he's ready to blow his lid. Then you go down and your stress goes all the way through people. And, you know, let me give you the final example.

1:09:19You know, we had a bad month last month, guys. We're behind the 8-ball on some of these jobs. And, you know, you need to do this. You need to work late. You need to do this. You need— you, you, you, you. Okay. Then you put stress all the way through your staff and then mistakes get happy. You ever notice when you start the Yeah, the term Chinese fire drill is so true.

1:09:39Yeah, like when you start running around and bitching and screaming at people, watch their body rate. They all start— like, I got a couple guys, if I start bitching, you can watch them, they like start scurrying. Yeah, like think about that. That's how shit happens. Yep. To put the stress— I'm not saying you shouldn't correct your employees, write them up and stuff like that, but start to be a little bit cognitive when you start talking to these people and say, man, I probably shouldn't yell at that guy, or you know what I'm saying?

1:10:00The stress— my stress shouldn't shouldn't rule my employees. I don't need to come in with my wand and smack people. You know, that's where the whole stressful thing comes in. This is a weird-ass episode when you really start talking about this out loud, man. I know it's the elements. And to your point, and that we've hit a couple times, is like, you, if you're stressed, you're all— your stress is being carried over to your team.

1:10:22You're seeing that in the results of your company. The stress is, is embedded in your company. Totally true. It's just, uh, I don't— you know, the funny thing is, like, my shops aren't stressful. So when Jim Gray a few months ago got to the point where he just could hardly take the stress, I said, you know what, this is not fucking worth you having a stroke over.

1:10:43The next day we had a meeting. We said, we're not fucking doing this. We're not doing this. If somebody gets mad, they have to pay for an estimate or whatever. Fucking let them leave. Okay? I will not fucking run this business to the point where it's going to kill you. Yeah, trying to find the policies. And ever since then, we do not have a high lot of stress.

1:11:01What I have done now is I've turned it— I said, you have to look— okay, here's what I'll tell him. I'll tell you guys what I told him. You need to look at business as a video game. Yep. Okay, we all want to win. Yeah, we all don't want to fail, right? Like Charlie Sheen said, I'm over here winning, drinking Tiger's Blood, bitches, right?

1:11:19Um, we all want to win. So I look at everything as a video game. I look at it, okay, how can I win on this particular thing? I don't rip people off, but I'm always trying to win. And I told Jim, I said, you got to look at the whole State Farm, Progressive, Allstate. Every insurance company gives you a hard time. You're taking it personal when they're calling me back going, you don't know what you're talking about.

1:11:40Your estimate's $9,000. Ours is $3,000. You're an idiot. I go, you're getting insulted instead of looking at that going, fucking here, hold my beer. Let me go ahead and write back. Yep. Okay, we need to push back on these people. Okay, when we started doing that, he's like, man, this is kind of getting to the point where it's fun. We used to flame out and, you know, I'd be all pissed off, he'd be all like— now we're like, fuck them.

1:12:00This is what— this is simple. Yeah, here's what we need from you. If you can't do it, the customer can pay. If the customer can't pay, you guys can go somewhere else. Guess what? The stress is out of that. Here's the thing with these insurance companies, you don't fucking think they do studies on these shop owners? They get these shop owners that several of these guys that I've done their paint materials costs, they're making 8%.

1:12:20Okay. The insurance company's freaking running them out of business. You guys don't even know it till you hired me to tell you. Okay. Now that these guys are, I got 4 or 5 of them body shops that are realizing, holy fucking shit. They're, these people are stressing me out. They're, you know, they're trying to get me to put used quarter panels on cars with 30 fucking thousand miles on it.

1:12:40They're aluminum, you know. That Ford basically says no, and they— but the insurance company says they don't prohibit it. And just all this crazy shit, right? Stressing these guys out. You guys don't need to look at it. It has to be transactional. Yeah, right. Take the stress out of it. Push back. Here's the facts. You can say whatever you want. You can spend— spin whatever web you want.

1:12:57But the bottom line, here's the facts. Here's what it's going to cost. You could say whatever you want, Mr. Insurance Adjuster. Does not matter to me. When you took that power away from him, he's fucking useless. Think about it. Yep. He is a guy that wrote an estimate you don't like. You say, yeah, I don't like it. Here's mine back. Right? Yep.

1:13:15It's negotiation. Yeah. It's the stress is gone. I'm not going to say that some things aren't going to be stressful. Sometimes customers, things happen. It gets a little bit— there's stress in the shop. Absolutely. It's how you guys handle it is how you're going to feel about the stress level of the shop. You know, we've done things to keep the stress level down.

1:13:34And this sounds really stupidly small. We take pictures of intake. We take pictures during the process. Why? That takes the stress out of them coming back when they call. Like we had the guy with the motorhome camera lens. Okay. He called and said, hey, you know, ever since I dropped that motorhome off, the camera cover has been gone. Well, we looked at the pictures.

1:13:55Well, the camera cover was gone when it pulled in. The timestamp was there. Think about how easy that was for us to defuse that situation. We did not have to do any fancy talking or anything. We said, well, sir, we're going to go ahead and send you the picture. Yep. Here it is. It was here at 7:32 this date. And look, cover was gone.

1:14:15We didn't walk out there with you and take the COVID off to take the picture. We didn't have to sit there and try to, to talk to this guy or anything. It was there. It was there. Yep. So what did that do for our stress level when that guy called? Goes way down because you're not going to win a he said, she said battle.

1:14:31Thank you. But I cannot get these— some of these guys just to understand how important this is. They always have a pushback. Well, I don't think we should do— I don't— you fucking hired me to be your consultant, and you're sitting there, I'm telling you how to cover your ass to keep the stress level down so you can actually function in your shop and make money, but you're going to argue with me?

1:14:46Then don't fucking do it. Then don't do it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But I do stuff like that. I'm definitely a forward thinker, um, but I do stuff like that, maybe overdo it a little bit, My terms of service, all that shit is so important because when something happens, I know if we follow procedure, which 99.9% of the time we do, every once in a while there's a stray wrangler.

1:15:10But when I know when so-and-so calls up or gives me a hard time and I pull it out, I go, you're covered. We're covered. Yep. But a lot of these guys won't even do that. Could you imagine running your business on a shoestring? Like, yeah, go ahead. Oh, what do you want? Brake job? Yeah, it's $462. And you're like, Go ahead and do it.

1:15:25Okay. And I throw that away. And then you come back, this happened, this happened, this happened. You're like, I have nothing. You go to court, you have nothing. So, I try to mitigate stress for my people and for me by knowing my first thing is when they say we have this problem, when it happens once, we'll get a credit card chargeback, right?

1:15:43Hey, we got a chargeback. My wife will say, we'll pull the repair order up, make sure everything for the final inspection is done. Boom, it's all done. We're good. You covered yourself. We covered ourselves. And that takes the stress level down because when that problem comes up, think about it. A lot of these guys don't have $4,000 to lose, right? Yep. We could lose $4,000.

1:16:01It would suck, but we could lose it. It wouldn't kill us. I don't care about that. Right. But what if— what happens if I couldn't lose it and I didn't have the paperwork? And you're for sure a loser at that point for the credit card company because they don't give a fuck. They don't care. It's transactional for them. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's a stop loss for them.

1:16:16Their customer got fucked. Here comes American Express, Centurion. Yep. You know nothing. No documentation. But the Centurion knocks on our door. We're like, there's everything. Well, he said, well, he initialed that. Well, he did. He initialed that. Like, we write it all up and we give it to him. We have not lost one yet because of the documentation. So I try to take all the stress out of all that.

1:16:39Yep. And not to mention, think about that would take all the stress out of a lawyer if it goes to law, the insurance company, anything. Here it all is, man. This guy's keeping it. This guy is like trying to take the stress out of all this, covering your ass too, obviously. But it all leads down to stress. Worrying causes stress, right? Would you agree with that?

1:16:575,000%. So I get a chargeback for $10,000. When I start worrying it, I don't even realize it. What does it do to me? It stresses me out. So we have to start thinking of ways, guys, how to mitigate that in our life and not be stressed out and not worrying about it. And when you're not at your shop, don't call your shop and ask how things are going.

1:17:15Trust me when I tell you this, if the place is really on fire or something really— Bob killed himself on the— with the hoist, car fell off— they'll call you. They'll call you. Don't call there and go, hey, what's going on? Well, I see there's only 6 cars here. Why is this? Don't start looking through your estimates. Don't start doing anything. If you're taking the day off, take the day off.

1:17:32If it's a Friday and a Monday, Tuesday, the shit will still be fucked up if it's fucked up. Trust me, I tell you that. Anything can go on. Anything can go on for a day at a shop or at a business. And that's what I always tell myself. We close Friday. Anything can be okay for a day. We have 8 hours. Yep.

1:17:48Yes, you might have some people that are pissed off because the phone rang and they— you didn't answer. Whatever. Put your music on hold. So, hey, we're closed today. We're giving our awesome team the fucking 4-day weekend. Talk to you Tuesday. Yep. If they're assholes about it, well, they shouldn't be your customer. Absolutely. So the bottom line is, guys, you know what?

1:18:06Most of you guys are already winning. You just don't realize it because you're so hard on yourself. You're overachievers. When you're with your family, be with your family. When your wife— be with your wife. Be present, okay? And don't worry so much about your business. I worry about mine too, just like I said earlier. But you know, I've learned to shut it off when I'm not there.

1:18:25I can't even tell you what's going on at the shop when I'm not there. Like years ago, I remember waking up in the middle of the night when I was a tech. Oh my God, did I tighten the power steering bolts? Did I do this? Did I do that? Oh my God, I tortured myself some one time on a Forza so much that I had the trans out.

1:18:41I did a flywheel. I convinced myself that I didn't tighten the flywheel bolts. I took the fucking trans out the next day. They're tight. Oh my God. So that just goes no different than sitting there torturing yourself that you have no money, you can't pay your bills. So you go there and the bank accounts are fine and everything's good. Yep. So take a deep breath, everybody, and let the stress level go down in your shop.

1:19:01Thanks for listening. All right. That's going to do it for this episode of Repair Shop Reckoning. If 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.