They Ignored the Trades...Now They Have to Pay for It

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0:30Dinnertime, it's where little moments are cherished. With Blue Cash Preferred, get 6% cash back at US supermarkets and bring everyone together. I did say everyone. Learn more at americanexpress.com/explore-bcp. Terms and cash back cap apply with Blue Cash Preferred. Welcome to Repair Shop Reckoning, from chaos to control, because too many shops today are running on chaos. Phones ringing, technicians frustrated, front counters overwhelmed, owners buried in problems with nobody to call.

0:58Kevin 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. This isn't corporate training fluff. This is real shop experience, unfiltered. On this show, Kevin breaks down what actually works. Running profitable shops, front counter control, training technicians, negotiating with insurance companies, building systems that make your shop run instead of burn, and the mistakes that quietly bankrupt shop owners every single day.

1:37No corporate scripts, no sugarcoating. And yeah, somebody might get offended. That's okay. Disney's two doors down. But if you want the truth about this industry, Buckle up. This is Repair Shop Reckoning: From Chaos to Control. Let's get started. Today's episode is going to be on how important are the trades in the next decade. We have a real problem facing us. Major. We've been telling people, okay, let me just start this very quickly.

2:04See this, people? These are bullet points. They're not my laid out. I just kind of keep myself on track. I say this every time because when I have bullet points, I do way better. I don't ramble. Public service announcement. Let's do a Rebel, what? Public service announcement. Yeah, public service announcement. So we've spent the last 30 years-ish telling our kids, you know what, you need to go, you don't need to go into the trades, you need to get an education, you know, you need to do this, you need to do that, you know.

2:28Now nobody knows how to fix anything. And how I started thinking about this episode, I was at my grandson's birthday party a few weeks ago and I talked to my uncle who was a plumber We don't really necessarily see eye to eye on a lot of stuff, but we were just talking back and forth. And he's like, "Yeah." I go, "The trades are really, really gonna be a needed commodity here really bad."

2:51And he's like, "Ah, I don't know about that." I said, "Okay, let me tell you something. You just 5 minutes ago told me your kids can't fix anything." I said, "They have money." I said, "Especially when you pass away, you leave them money, or whoever leaves, passes their kids away, they have a good job and stuff like that. So they still have to pay somebody to do some of this stuff."

3:08A lot of these kids aren't fixing their own houses. They're not doing that. They're paying— for fuck's sake, they have people bring their food. They literally bring their food. They cry that they're broke, but they have DoorDash come and bring them a Slurpee for fucking $19. Okay? And then they cry that they gotta have a plumber come over. How come this guy charged me freaking $90 to come over?

3:30Like, the reality is fucked right now. It's only going to get worse in the next decade, 10 years. Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting how the trades kind of got shadowed too. And I think a lot of guys that were like, work the trades, were like, oh, I don't want this for my kids. But now with there being a lack, it's not a job to be looked down on.

3:51No, not at all. Well, people still have that mindset. Oh, Trey, he's a garbage man. He's a plumber. He's this, he's that. Well, as far as I can tell, the trades have done really good for me and my people. Was there times that I went into the shop when I was a tech and like, fucking A, this day sucks, or this sucks?

4:06I've never once said I should go do something else. I've always liked fixing stuff. I think a lot of the guys also liked fixing stuff, but the problem we have run into is a lot of different stuff. Like, for instance, you know, we used to teach woodshop, metal shop in school. Yeah, guys like me, I used to love to go to metal shop.

4:22We learned how to spot weld, how to braise, stuff like that. Woodworking was okay. I really didn't give a shit about it. I just went to the class. Auto mechanics, we had a program called— it was SWOVA back in the day, it was Southwest Vocational Education School. So in 10th and 11th grade, you can go to AM or PM for 2.5 hours and go to diesel mechanics, electronics, drafting, welding, teaching trades.

4:46Yeah, we've shut that pipeline down in most schools. I will say Brighton has a very good school system. They have their— they have a whole garage in the back. They do the certifications. Jackson took 2 years of tech and they count it as a foreign language. No shit. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Interesting. So is he going to go into the trades? So he went through that.

5:07He decided that he didn't want to do anything with cars, but he wants to be an electrician. So he's going into the trades. Yeah. So this is like conversations right up my alley for sure. Yeah, absolutely. So instead we told every kid, you need to go to college. Remember that thing when everybody needed to go to college because the computers were coming out and all that stuff?

5:24I remember when I was a kid, oh, you need to go to college. Well, Not everybody's college material. I could pretty much tell you automatically my son, when he was in third grade, he's like, yeah, I'm fucking— as soon as I can get out of this bitch, I'm gone. I was the same way. And when he got out of high school, he started really— well, before he even got out of high school, he was always like, yeah, I'm not going to college.

5:43There's more money to be made doing what I do and do what you do, Dad, than going to college. I'm not going to go into debt. I'm not going to do this. I'm like, okay, you can do whatever you want. My one daughter went to college. She was a nurse. She did just fine. Um, her husband, you know, he came from Puerto Rico.

5:58He's a tradesman. He works at a manufacturing company. He does just fine. And you guys, people need to realize that a lot of these trades in the last 5 years alone, there's been over a 10% increase in pay. I think it's closer to 20. Yeah. Okay. So they have to pay the trades. I mean, the average tradesperson right now is 50-some years old.

6:18Okay. They're saying in the next, I think it says in the next decade, decade, about 40% of skilled trades workforce is expected to retire the next 10 years. And the problem we got going on with that is we don't have the people coming in fast enough. Yep. Your knowledge, that knowledge gap. Right. And right now there's over 400,000 on the low end, over 400,000 in the construction jobs that can't be filled right now.

6:47Okay. And our industry's even worse. Okay. More than 60% of companies are saying that they cannot find skilled workers. They can't even find basic workers right now. They're saying, let alone skilled workers. Okay. And remember the days, I'm older than you, but I remember the days when a guy would be like, yeah, I make $20 an hour. You're like, that motherfucker makes some money.

7:07Banking. Yeah. He's making bank right now. Now you see somebody at Burger King making $20 an hour. Right. Yeah. It's just like, and I get how the whole economy shift works and stuff like that, but like, If you really start to think about that, close to $30 an hour now is not even a livable wage, really. Like a lot of guys, if they have a family, you have to have dual income.

7:26You know what I mean? It's getting tougher. Gary Vee said at the end, he does not keep piece of shit people in his companies. Did you see that post I put up? Yeah. You're a piece of shit. I don't care how much money you make me. I'm going to get rid of you. Yeah. And I think a lot of companies right now are trapped with piece of shit employees because they cannot find skilled workers.

7:43So that's caused a whole nother culture problem in a lot of these companies. Okay. And you never want to be held hostage by a piece of shit person or a piece of shit employee, man, because it's that, it's, that's like cancer in your body spreading and that cancer spreads everywhere. Right. And he just sits there and goes over and over and over again, you know, and causes chaos and causes problems behind your back that you might not even know you had, or you might even had the problem if they don't bring it up, start complaining and then get the other guys complaining.

8:11And that's a true statement. There's no doubt about it. Like, Business owners, listen to me now. You're going to resonate with this. If you come into your shop in the morning, your business in the morning, you're acting like a complete asshole. The minute you get there, you start bitching and screaming at everybody and being a fucking asshole. What happens to the tone level of your shop?

8:28It is going down. Everybody's going to be on pins and needles. Everybody's going to be a bad mood instantly, right? So, you know, I think business owners right now are backed into a corner with shitty people working for them. And I'm not saying all people are shitty, but you know, there, there's people that you really wouldn't keep on, but they're kind of a necessity right now to kind of give you your life.

8:49You know, maybe they open your shop in the morning, so you might be able to do some stuff before you get there. They kind of fill that little void just to give you enough time to function. Right. And I think that this problem with— it all starts at home. Like Ronald Reagan says, it starts at home, the kitchen table. You could tell kids nowadays that their parents make them toe the line.

9:08These kids usually do what they're supposed to, usually can identify them pretty quickly. Yep. Okay, there's a lot of these parents that are too fucking busy working two jobs because of whatever. And this isn't political, I don't give a fuck if it's Biden, fucking Trump, but I don't want to hear it. I don't give a fuck, okay? Because guys would be like, it's Trump, it was never this bad with Trump.

9:25Shut the fuck up, it was bad with Biden too, only fucking worse. Shut up, okay? But the bottom line is like, these guys are— these parents are gone because everything's changed so much and they have to work more, or maybe they're Maybe they're one of the good people at work, so they're working there a lot and they're making a lot of money, so they don't pay attention to their kids.

9:43The mom's at work a lot, so this kid's kind of running wild. Maybe, you know, as they're older, somebody else is raising your kid, or he's home by himself, and that's where the video games come in, the online, all the bullshit. Then the attitudes come out and everything like that, and then they become— then they finally, your mom and dad force them.

9:59They have no— they've never been conditioned by their family. They've never been trained. They've never made— may not have had to go out and get a paper route or cut lawns. I mean, can you remember when we were kids? Like, you would want to go out and try to make $5 or $10 or go— I was hustling, delivering newspapers. That was my first job, right?

10:16Or go shovel snow. Yeah. Okay. Parents— I did roofing cleanup, like picking up shingles and, you know, all that kind of shit, right? And parents— think about it— parents don't want their kids to do that. They want their kids to— everybody thinks their kids are going to be next to fucking Mark Fidrych, you know what I mean? Like, the bird is the word, you know, the roar of '84.

10:33Like, come on. Like, Everybody's like, we're going to take Johnny to fucking travel when he gets down, or when he gets done with, you know, house ball, we're going to move him over to travel. Oh fuck, the high-dollar travel team wants him. No, they want your fucking money. And you know, it's kind of funny, they're making memes about it. All right, parents, this week we're flying to Puerto Rico.

10:50We do good in Puerto Rico, we're leaving for Haiti. This is all happening this weekend. If Haiti goes good, we're going to go to Hawaii. So get your bags packed, you know, get your checkbooks out. It's crazy. And that, like, we talk about sports. My sister was in competitive dance. In like the dance company would be like, oh, she's so good. We want her to be in this competitive dance and this competitive dance and this competitive dance.

11:11And like, I was like, great. Do they give her a scholarship? They're like, no, you got to pay for it. You got to buy these outfits, you got to buy this, you got to travel here. It's just such a racket. Like, and again, parents think their kids are going to go pro and then they won't invest in their own. Like, they won't invest in coaching for themselves and they're thinking their kids are going to go pro.

11:28They're not even going to make it to D3 school most of the time. It's insane. And you know, and that all leads back to the culture and the society we're living in now, you know, um, you know, there's memes out there and this is maybe not going to be 100% automotive, but you know, it's my podcast. I'll talk where the fuck I want.

11:43Right. But you know, there's memes out there with all kinds of different memes with, you know, I lost my train of thought now. Cause I went off, um, with different stuff going on with parents, with travel teams, with jobs. Uh, they talked about the one, this is the meme I seen the other day and I thought about it in 1950s and '60s.

12:02During the parent-teacher conferences, the teachers— from taco night in Tulum to sushi in Tokyo, make every bite rewarding with Gold from Amex. Wherever you dine, 4x Membership Rewards points at restaurants worldwide are piling up. Learn more at americanexpress.com/explore-gold. Terms and points cap apply. Dinnertime, it's where little moments are cherished. With Blue Cash Preferred, get 6% cash back at US supermarkets and bring everyone together.

12:30I did say everyone. Learn more at americanexpress.com/explore-bcp. Terms and cashback cap apply with Blue Cash Preferred. Would be looking at the parents, telling them what the parents did, and the parents— and the, the— it was depicted as the parents and the teacher would be like this to the kid. Yeah. Okay, now they say in the 2000s, now it's the kids and the parents going like this to the teacher.

12:54So when the teacher says, hey, Little Jason's being an asshole in class. And this is what he's doing. Well, no, he's not. They don't ever take the teacher's side. So we've taken all the power from teachers. And I'm not saying all teachers are great because we all know they're not. But there are some good ones that really would care. You know, there are some teachers.

13:11Roger Enyart, my diesel mechanics teacher. I mean, that guy, me and him frickin locked horns a few times. But at the end of the day, he taught me a lot of valuable stuff. Yeah. Okay. But if my mom and dad would have went in there and frickin— I was an asshole in school and sat there and argued and shit with the teacher, he would maybe turn himself off.

13:26They agreed with him. They said, yeah, we know. Someone's an asshole. I don't know about you, but the people that I've learned the most lessons for have been the hardest on me. It wasn't— it isn't the people that are like, just glow, you know, gloss it over. You know, I've learned the most from the people that might tell you what's pissed— something that pisses you off.

13:42And if you were protecting our kids from hearing those messages because we want to put little Johnny in a bubble and we'd want them to not hear the word no and that kind of shit, we're setting them up for consistent failure. Whether it's the trades or whatever kind of industry, they're going to never be coachable, they're going to never be successful, they're going to be constantly looking for the handout, they're never going to be able to fix their shit, right?

14:01And now we got these kids coming into the workforce that nobody's ever told them no. Yeah, they've told them how wonderful they are at dance, baseball, blah blah blah blah blah, right? They've never been told no. Yep. Then what happens? You start telling them no in the workplace. You tell them you have to be here at 8, leave at 5, you need to do this, you need to do that.

14:17Well, that's not my fucking job. Well, your job is whatever I tell you. If I'm paying an hourly wage and you're working for me, if I tell you to go do this, you should do that, right? And I always looked at it as like we would come up, we were coming up, I really didn't care what I did as long as I was getting paid.

14:31So whatever my boss told me to do, I just did it. Like, I didn't ever want to argue back and forth with a boss, or I'm going home, or— I've had actual, in the last 5 years, I've had people, full-grown men's mom, call them in sick. I had somebody's wife call me and say that he couldn't make it to work because the weather was bad and she didn't want him leaving the house, uh, and getting into an accident.

14:53And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, have him call me. Before my wife retired, she would say that these guys would call in sick, say, my wife's sick, I have to stay home and take care of her. She's like, are you fucking kidding me? Are you a doctor that I don't know about? Like, I don't know about you. Like, my kids were coming up, we didn't have the luxury of me affording to stay home.

15:12So my wife was sick, it was already fucking us good enough. Like, or I was sick, a lot of times we went to work sick. Uh, fuck it, I'm sick at home, I'm sick at work, I can't afford not to. Nowadays Mommy calls these kids in, or they live in mom and dad's basement so they have no responsibility. They're not paying rent.

15:28Mom and dad pay their car payment, pay their bills. What the fuck do they have to push for? Then they can't. Then they sit there and bitch, you know, my kid's a failure to launch. Take a look in the fucking mirror at the guy who made this whole disaster. Yep. Like, it's amazing the shit we go through nowadays, and it's all flowing down into this problem we have in the workplace.

15:46Yep. You know, guys don't think they need to work. Everybody thinks they need to be a manager. You know, Indian tribes would not work if there's 15 fucking chiefs and no braves. Absolutely. You know what I mean? It's just like, so, you know, then we go and look into the auto repair, the diesel repair and the collision. All these cars are getting more and more complicated.

16:05So what has to come with more and more being complex? More and more training. Training's lacking. Okay. Well, the dealers and the manufacturers think, well, they're going to do the Right to Repair Act and only the dealerships will be able to fix this shit. The other thing, one thing they underestimated, they can't keep fucking technicians. It's all over the internet. Yeah, this— I hate to say this again for the millionth time, the asswipe from Ford was on there going, we have all these empty bays and we don't know why.

16:30That's because you fuck your people. Why would they stay? Absolutely. Yes. Why would they stay? Yeah. Then you say stupid shit like, you know, there's no parts shortage. We all know in this business there's part shortages up the ass right now. You know, so, well, and what we're talking about as far as there being a shortage of trades in tying back into why, you know, if you're fucking your people, they have lots of options because the trades are wide open.

16:55There's so many, there's so many opportunities to go work as a lineman or go to HVAC or go be an electrician. Yeah. You know, we got a situation right now. America runs on trucks. Our delivery, our infrastructure, our transportation, our goods, everything has to go. Everything. Think about everything that delivers our stuff has an engine. Engine, whether it's a boat, an airplane.

17:18Okay, so what does that translate to? Blue-collar workers, skilled workers. Imagine that, right? And here's another problem that most people aren't thinking about. Private equity's coming in, buying all these little dealerships, putting them into a big lump and go, you need to squeeze the customer for every fucking nickel you could get out of them. And by the way, Mr. Technician, ooh, we gotta take a little bit of money from you, and we really can't pay you.

17:39We're gonna pay you flat rate. So they're sitting there squeezing the actual skilled workers and crying, we have a shortage, when they're squeezing them. Okay, then on top of it, I'll get to the older guys complaining to the new guys. All you fucking hear on TikTok, Facebook, and everything, all the old guys don't do it. I tell these young guys, don't come into the trade, don't be a mechanic, don't do this.

17:58Okay, some of it's right, but think about the guys that come in that really want to learn and really want to do it. They got a guy next to them all day telling them how fucking bad this is and how horrible it is and how you'll never fucking do it ever. And how do we know that guy's not a fucking drunk alcoholic that fucking gets wasted every night, who's been terrible with his family life?

18:16He's divorced 18 fucking times. He's the guy that buys all the remote control cars off the Snap-On truck. So he never has no fucking money. He's miserable. He's jaded. He's everything else on top of it. And he's sitting here going, you shouldn't get into this trade. It's horrible. Then you run into a guy like that Curtis guy who's positive, who likes it, likes what he does.

18:35Yep. Okay, there's guys like that that like what they do, but these older guys sit there and complain and bitch and piss and moan. Flat rate's a scam, flat rate's this. Now we've had other guys saying how great flat rate is. You ever notice them guys? Them are the guys that probably know how to manage your money, and I've said this before, know how to do it.

18:50Does flat rate cause problems? Absolutely. I moved my guys away from it, not because we couldn't handle it. The infrastructure outside of our shop is so fucked up, we couldn't deal with the part shortages and all that shit. Now, you know, I don't know how the guys are feeling. It's only been a couple weeks now. They seem to be okay getting a paycheck.

19:06I noticed my payroll is lower, so that means I'm making more money. I could buy a bigger house. And you know what I mean? Like, I've already made my fucking— bought my first house on the back of flat rate tax. Fucking A. Now I'm gonna do it on the back of salary tax or an hourly tax, I guess. I don't fucking know.

19:22Oh, you're coming. I got a new house because I just switched my payroll, right? It's just like, come on, guys. It's like There's so much shit going on, and it just seems like the constant complaining and whining and bitching— guys aren't men anymore. They're just not. Now, the younger generation, I'm saying all the guys that I know pretty much in my generation and your generation— what generation are you?

19:48Gen X. Gen X, same me, right? It's the best generation in my opinion. Yeah. You know, we got the millennials. I mean, a lot of my kids are millennials. They're fine. Um, but I think it's going to get worse. Yeah, I mean, we got guys that fucking sit there and say that, you know, if I sit in a garage, I'm a fucking car.

20:05You have to call me a car because I say I'm a car. Okay, it's just like, oh my fucking God, people, like, this is a fucking mental craziness shit we're going through right now. And the schools are feeding into it because if they take all the freaking training out of the schools and stuff like that, they have a dumb society. They can control a dumb society.

20:24We don't have Home metal shop. Okay, we don't have home economics. I already said that. Finance class— when we were in high school, we had to learn how to balance a checkbook and everything. All that shit's gone. Yeah, we fucking do— what are they, kind of math or whatever bullshit? You go, ah, 2 2 is, uh, you know, it's 8, but you know, if you go to the store, it could really be 6.

20:43And you look at the— you'll round up to the guy or round down. And you're at Walmart, you're like, he says $19.99, how about I pay you like $16? I looked at you like, what the fuck? That's what I learned in school. I mean, do you remember that Common Core? Common Core? I was trying to think what the name of it was called.

20:55Yeah, yeah, you know my kids are doing. And my wife has two college degrees. She's like, what in the fuck is this? Like, and these are all problems that the people above us are causing, and they're dumbing down society. And then you got the parents that are fucking weak and don't want to push back. So our kids— so a lot of these kids are assholes.

21:14And then you come into workspace, they cause problems for the trades. They don't want to come and work on in the real trades. God forbid if they get a fucking splinter, they act like they're dying. And I'm not saying all of them, but we have this problem going on. Oh yeah. It's insanity. You know? Now what's nice and hopeful about that is it doesn't take much to be better than the average, right?

21:34If this is what your generation looks like and you're seeing this, and then you're seeing all this opportunity, there's really opportunity for you to crush it. Yeah. Like Lincoln. Yeah, exactly. My 18-year-old son's had his own business since he's 15 and freaking outworks all the guys that are in business that are full-grown adults. Well, you were talking about Lincoln earlier and talking about he wasn't, you know, he wasn't college material.

21:51Like I remember him being on my podcast before he graduated high school and was like he grew past college. Like, he's got his hands on, he's already growing his business, he's already more successful in his business than what a lot of people will be 4 years after they graduate college. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. But you know what, I'm still hard on him.

22:07I still fucking yell at him. Yeah, I still bitch at him. That's my job. I don't have— my kids don't have to fucking like me. I tell them all the time, I'm not here to be your fucking cheerleader. I'm your biggest fan, but I'm not gonna fucking cheer you on when you're doing something stupid. When they do something that's probably like not the smartest, they'll be Uh, tell Dad not to call me because I know he's gonna call me and tell me I'm a fucking dumbass.

22:29Because I'll call my kids up and like yell at them and make them upset and make them fucking cry. You know, not make them cry, but my daughters, they get upset with me sometimes. But it's like, you're gonna fucking need to hear this. Somebody has to hold you accountable in your life. And my kids, the first people they call, first person they call when something catastrophic happens in their life, guess who?

22:46Dad. Because he can make a fucking decision. He knows what's up. Because that's what men are supposed to do, in my opinion. Yeah. And you know, this is kind of like a lift up the hood on how exactly I'm— not that anybody doesn't fucking know I'm blunt, right? But it's like, come on, people, wake the fuck up. If your kid's an asshole, it's probably because you're an asshole.

23:03Okay. Do you know that post we put up when I said if you're a CEO of a company, you're a bitch? Yeah. You're going to have a— you're a bitch. You're going to have what I say, bitch culture. Yeah. A lot of people didn't even— I just reposted that yesterday. People don't even understand what the fuck I was saying. If you read the comments, I'm like, what?

23:20I'm reading them going, what, what, what I'm trying to say is, yeah, you've been in the business and dealt with a lot of business people. If the owner is at the very top of a company, is a solid guy, treats people with respect, does not give everybody a hard time, doesn't do shit sideways or anything, usually his people are respectful, right? Yep.

23:37What happens usually when an owner's a complete fucking asshole to all their vendors and everything? The employees start acting the same way as the employee. That's a leadership problem. Yep. We've seen that. Let's go back to the flow. So let's talk about, go back to the whole thing where we're talking about we have this massive shortage of talent, right? But the demand is this fricking for repair and everything else in the world is going up.

24:01So then you get private equity come in here going, well, you need to sell 17 brake flushes, 26 this, 26 that. Well, these customers might not, you better fucking make your numbers fit or you're going to have a problem with your job. So the private equity, which I talked about, the hospitals and everything are making everything go crazy, right? Yeah, through the thing.

24:19Let me tell you, hear me now, people. Private equity, big corporations do not give a fuck about you. You are a number. You're better off going to work for an independent shop where you can get to know the people that own it. If they're good people, you stay with them because your job will be secure if you're not a piece of shit.

24:37Yep. I seen some guys just now that they're tied to me They rent some of my, one of my spaces. And they came in last week and fired everybody. They outsourced their jobs and they fired everybody. Here's the kicker. A couple of these guys had 25 years plus with this company. And they came in and said, you're all done. Basically it all came down to fucking numbers.

25:04We could do a lot better if we did this or we did that. So they got rid of them. I don't know the whole details, but I know at the end of the day, these guys all got fucking shitcanned. After 25 fucking years. So like, I was here that day. Did they— they had a meeting with them the whole entire day and then fired them at the end?

25:19I don't know how long the meeting was or anything, but yeah, it was fucked up because they were here for a while. The whole group was out— was out there. Yeah, I don't know, I wasn't here, but I was just like, man. And I've seen it happen. I've seen these freaking groups come in and they, they buy it. I know they bought a lot of shops around us, uh, the private equity, and they raised everybody's wages to keep all these guys but put fricking rules on them like everybody's fucking, you know, a certain percentage of cars should get air filters, a certain percentage of cars should get batteries.

25:46This, hear me now, people, this isn't about doing what's best for the company or for the customer. This is what's doing best for your shareholders when you're a private equity. They do not give a fuck about your home budget. They don't give a shit about your fleet. Right now we are in the biggest dogfight in history. Okay? They want your fucking money and they will charge you in your car your flushes, everything, you know.

26:08And a lot of these shops, okay, going off a little bit outside what we're talking about, a lot of these shops think that the golden ticket, because you can't run your fucking shop, is selling everybody a flush. And here I'm here to tell you, you're fucking smoking crack as a shop owner if you think you need to put 100 flushes on every repair order, okay?

26:25I do training every week. So last week with the guys, yesterday actually, I went in, I wrote up a repair order. Very vague, like a shitty tech repair order. I did it for two reasons. I did it, number one, so I could show the technicians when you write a repair order that's shitty, it's really hard for the service advisor to sell. Number one.

26:44Number two, I wanted to show the technician when you write 8 fucking flushes up that don't pertain to anything in a job. For instance, we did one yesterday. The one I did yesterday was a, uh, turbocharger on a 6.7. No, a 7.3. The pedestal, I said the pedestal's leaking. I don't remember what it was. It was a diesel engine. We'll just say that because I don't want people fucking bitching at me.

27:10But I basically, we said, let me break it down for you really slowly here. So when customers come in the right way at our shop, we use the AI to capture everything they're saying. Jason, what's wrong with your truck? Well, I stop at a light, I smell smoke. I stopped my driveway, there's fluid on the ground. What color is the fluid? I don't know, it's a dark color.

27:28I don't fucking know. Okay, but When does it do it? Blah, blah, blah. Right. So we have it all for the technician to read what the technicians say. That way there's no information that's, that's dropped from the front to the back. Right. So the technician goes and he writes it all up very comprehensively. Turbo. Why does it need a turbo? It's leaking out of X, Y, and Z on the turbo, right?

27:48Or the turbo pedestal, whatever. So they explain it leaking, come down the back of the engine, runs around the trans, drips down by the trans. So it's not the trans leak you maybe thought it was, Mr. Customer. It's your turbo. Something up higher, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the tech, so the service advisor can basically read what the technician says and say, Jason, your truck needs a turbo.

28:06The turbo pedestal's leaking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So they have some information. So I wrote the repair order up as customer says there's some kind of leak and it smells when he stops at a light sometimes. And then 1 hour. So then I Uh, that was Tim text me. So then I said, um, for the repair, replace turbocharger, turbocharger parts, in parts.

28:36Then I put brake flush, trans flush, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, all every fucking flush you could think of. Then I put an air filter. So I said, okay, I'm gonna go in my office where every one of you guys is gonna go up front, you're gonna call me on the phone, you're gonna sell me this. And what I wanted them to feel was the pain of not having the information.

28:57Yep. From the technician and then trying to sell somebody a wallet flush. When you're in there going, okay, Jason, you need a turbo and all the related turbo parts, you know, it's $6,800. And by the way, you need a brake flush, trans flush, coolant flush, power steering flush. Ash flush, wallet flush. And that's gonna be another $3,200. What does that customer automatically hear?

29:25This motherfucker can't even tell me what's wrong with the turbocharger. They didn't even take the time to write it up because I asked them the questions above. You know, what's leaking out of the turbo? I don't really know. It just says R&R turbo. Must need a turbo. The fucking technician says it. What I was trying to convey to these guys, when you guys write a lacking repair order from lack of training, it causes a real big problem up front.

29:43Yeah. And the reason I'm kind of saying this, I kind of threw this in here because we're going to get some of these guys going, you know, I'm a mechanic and I really like what I do, but I'm getting fucked on flat rate. And the service advisor, you know, sits up front and he gets all the gift cards and makes all the money and stuff like that.

29:57And if he would just sell my stuff, we would all just do better. And he already makes his money. Well, you have to kind of work in tandem is why I do that training. And when you get my guys on here, they're like, that was tough because I'd be like, so I need a turbo. Why do I need a turbo? Uh, well, I don't know.

30:12The technician says it. Well, that's fucking great. It's leaking. But why do I need a turbo? Well, I don't know. He really didn't write to know. So if I can get him, I don't want him to get him. You should already have that information. You can't even tell me what's wrong with my truck. You only spent $6,800. Okay, go ahead. Tell me what else I need.

30:27Well, you need an air cleaner. Okay, I'm okay with an air cleaner. It hasn't been replaced in a long time. Okay. Then he noted you need a trans flush, a brake flush, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're just like, sounds like they were just trying to get your money. Exactly. That's why I kind of went into these shops, you know, with the whole flush thing.

30:43They think that they can't run their shop or they don't have the right people in place. They can just make everything up on flushes. And it's just, you know, it's just not a bad— it's not a good idea. It's not a good business practice. Now, on the other hand, if like, for instance, we put a throttle body in a GM Yukon or something like that and we look at it, it's all gummed up underneath it and it needs to be decarbonized, you know, run BG, you know, and clean it all up because it was all a bunch of gunk underneath there and stuff like that.

31:07Absolutely. You need to R&R your throttle body. We need to do an induction cleaning, blah, blah, clean it all up. That is a warranted flush and we will put that all together in a nice box. Like, listen, we're not going to warranty it's already backfiring because it's all gummed up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's going to damage the new throttle body.

31:21You kind of have to do it for warranty's sake. Yeah. Or we're putting a water pump on or a radiator in it and the fricking, you know, your coolant's fricking rust color. We're going to go ahead and flush it before we change the radiator because we can't put a new radiator. They're not going to warranty it from the auto parts store if something happens.

31:35That, in my opinion, is logical. You could justify that. Yeah. Yeah. Versus a guy brings his truck in for a no-start, you tell him it's going to need a $3,200, you know, whatever. And then you go, by the way, you need your brake fluid flushed. You're like, what? That just does not sit right. But this is what the private equity groups want to do.

31:54And where I was going with this, this is then the guys up front fail and they're like, yeah, you didn't do it. Or another thing that happens is they try to sell them the stuff that they need. And then they, they, they're, they pretty much got them. They got them in the gate. They closed the gate. The guy's ready to say yes.

32:08And then, well, by the way, we noticed some other things. We need to sell you a battery, a fricking TransFlash. At that point, it pisses a customer off. Right? So then what happens? The customer at the dealer or wherever gives a bad review. And it's a self-made problem by the people up above that want the money. Yeah. And they're wondering why we're losing skilled workers.

32:28It's no different than, you know, The guys that sometimes come out and they charge you, you know, $150 for a house call. Um, and then they don't do nothing. At least be a little bit smart and kind of check everything out. If you're there for an hour, they paid you and it's something that maybe a shutoff switch on a furnace or something that happened.

32:46Hey, I got it working already. I've been here for 5 minutes. I'm going to check everything else. I'm going to look around and just see if, oh, look, your heat exchanger is cracked. You hear a lot of boom when your furnace starts. Look how dirty this is. Yeah. I'm not trying to upsell you, but You have me for an hour and a half.

32:58I'm not here going to take your money in 5 minutes ago. Oh, sorry about your luck. Yeah. When I moved to my first house, my second house on Carroll Lake Road, my water softener wouldn't work and I had really low water pressure and I was young and I was fucking dumb and I didn't realize that there were shutoffs higher. Well, one was shut down quite a bit and I called, uh, I think it was Douglas Water at the time.

33:22They were in Commerce. On Union Lake Road. And the guy said it's $90 for me to come out there. And back then, $90 was fucking a lot of money, right? And I'd already been fucking with this thing. I'm like, I don't know what to do. So I come out and the guy looks at it, looks around. He's a young kid. He looks up, he goes, turns the valve on, fixing.

33:40Ha! You're a fucking dumbass. That just cost you $90. Did he say that for real? Yep, sure did. I remember that. I called the fucking owner. I go, I don't have a problem paying somebody. I'm a mechanic and I fuck up too. For your guy to call me a dumbass, I didn't fucking know something, it's fucking bullshit. Oh shit. Yeah. The guy that I will say that owned the company back then, I don't know if he still does.

33:58He fucking said that. That's absolute fucking bullshit, you know? And, and I think he might have gave me my money back when I told— I don't want my money back. But like, yeah, you don't dog people. But I remember that, you know? Yeah. So would you ever forget that? Yeah, right. And, you know, my thing is that our shops, we charge you for an hour for each problem.

34:17Um, but if we could fix it in that hour, we will. If we fix it in a half an hour, we didn't mark it down. Yeah, it totally took us a half an hour. We're not here to fuck anybody, right? Yeah, that's kind of the thing, you know. I'm kind of like, put this whole rant in there because I don't think the people in private equity and these big conglomerates that buy these groups understand what they're doing to the people.

34:37You're putting a gun to their fucking head, basically. You have to sell, you have to sell, you have to sell our numbers, our numbers, our numbers. Okay, and I, I see it. I, I see when I talk to these guys, they're worried about losing their fucking jobs. They don't hit their numbers. It's like, it's a greed game. And I agree, and in our business, and, um, I think what's going to end up happening regardless of what, in the next decade, they're not going to have enough people to treat like shit and push around.

35:03Nope, they're just not. No, and it's kind of like the, uh, the course correction, like natural course course correction. You look like car dealerships, for example, and then all of a sudden the Carvanhas pop up, you know, because people don't— or Tesla, you don't even have to deal with the salesperson because people are so frustrated with that dealership aspect. And so now you can just go to this parking lot and, you know, order everything online and pick up the car.

35:25And so I wonder what that course correction is when, when they're— when you're all owned by Cullen Gallagher, these big companies that are just more for the dollar and not the person. Yeah. And regardless of how they feel, Sark, let me tell everybody this: car salesmen can be replaced. Tesla's already approved it. There's a couple other companies that have already proved it.

35:42Carvana has already proved it. You want the car, here's all the information, here's a warranty, you could buy it and pick it up. I don't know, Tesla's pretty much the same way. I know Carvana and Tesla. Yeah, I know Carvana is having problems. I'm sure there's growing pains and everything, but I tell you what, when you go buy a Tesla, it's just as expensive as every other car.

36:01But I will tell you, you don't feel like you have to take a shower when you leave We all go to the car dealership and the fricking name of the game is lock that motherfucker in the F&I office and sell them every motherfucking warranty you can. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, well, what the fuck? Like, literally, like, I used to use Fox Group.

36:22I've said this 100 times. I would buy a truck, I would go buy a fucking truck. I'd write Sam Slaughter a check, he would fucking put in the bank, he would give me my truck. I could literally call him up and go, hey, that red truck out in front there, I see, I went and looked at this morning, bring it over, I want to drive it for a couple days.

36:34If I like it, Scott, I'll just fricking write you a check. He would. Yeah, no problem. Fox Group bought them. I went to buy a Yukon, um, on a Section 179 at the end of the year. I think it was maybe— was it Section— whatever. I bought a Yukon and for some reason I financed it. I don't remember why, uh, at the end of the year.

36:54And they fucking came back. You're like, yeah, um, now keep in mind I have bought GM cars through GMAC and Now it's Ally, Ford Credit, and all them were considered tier 1. They came back at 13 fucking percent. Holy fuck. I told the lady, you lost your fucking mind. So then she comes back later and she's like, yeah, we got you down to 8%.

37:15I went to bat for you. I'm like, fucking give me a break. Don't— once again, they fucking said, hit him here, see if a bite on. If he does, we make a lot of fucking money. Holy shit. No, that's That's a markup from the dealership. I, Gracie was in F&I and like, you know, oh man, the shit that they want people to do.

37:34It's fucking, it's heartless. It should be illegal. It should be fucking illegal because it's the, the, uh, finance company is charging you this rate and then the dealership bumps it up. Yeah. It's insane. And the wheel warranty, the fricking this warranty, the glass, uh, this, the, that it's like they nickel and dime you to death and how they do it. It's only $4 on your payment.

37:53It's only $5 on your payment. Oh yeah. Payment focused. Yep. Yeah. When they do the Four Squares that they talk about, you get somebody sign right here, you know, I need to go talk to my managers. That shit even exist? They go in there and they freaking laugh and choke and run. Yeah, he ain't gonna do that. What are you doing for lunch?

38:09I don't know, McDonald's. Okay, that'd be a good way to get Gracie on her, ever talk about this shit, because the dealerships, I'm telling you, they get you in the finance office, it's slimy. Oh, it's slimy. You know, Tesla, you know that you freaking go on the app, you look at the car, you look at all the pictures, you look at this, you look at that.

38:25Or Carvana, you know, I've heard people have had problems with Carvana buying some of the shit. They're not maybe checked out as good as they can, whatever. But how many people go to the dealership and buy a car and finance it and get laid away on every fucking warranty known to man? Or how many people you see on TikTok go, you know, the dealership sold them 18 fucking warranties, it's a single mom, and they bury her in a freaking Kia Soul for fucking $900 a month.

38:48You know what I mean? It's just like, so But the one thing that can't be replaced is the fricking parts guys. They still have to have parts pull. They still have to have the parts look up. Okay. I don't know if AI could do it. I guess you could probably have it. They already have it now, like RepairLink or whatever. The technicians could look up their own parts and have one guy picking them.

39:07Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. You know, people underestimate parts even, even in a dealership. It's a hard job to try to find the parts. If they're not there, it's crossed to this number. There's a lot of moving parts in a parts department. So that's not a super easy job either. Okay, but the one person that cannot be replaced, no doubt about it, 100%, is the freaking skilled labor.

39:27Because you're not gonna be able to fix the cars. You're gonna make them throw away cars. So you're gonna buy a brand new car for $45,000, and then all of a sudden it goes bad, and they say, well, fuck it, throw it away and go buy a new one. They have to fix cars. Yep. So these guys with this, all these cars are all throwaway.

39:42Yeah, they may be designed to go 100,000 miles, right? But the way these car manufacturers are designing it It's 100,000 miles. Well, it's so expensive. You got to have that loan for 7 years to afford it. So now all of a sudden this car has got 2 years left on your loan. It's a worn out piece of shit. They take you in there.

39:59Don't worry, Mr. Tracy, we'll go ahead and fix you up. We could sell you this car. You only have a little bit of like $9,000 in negative equity because we laid you away this time. Then they bump you up to another one. Now all of a sudden you buy this car for 9 grand more. It's just like this story doesn't stop. Nope.

40:14And And once again, I'm trying to prove out the point. The people at the top, they're smarter than everybody else, apparently, right? It's kind of blatant now, are fricking down there all the way down. And who's getting fucked? The skilled worker. And then they're crying that we don't have enough skilled workers. They're all leaving the industry. Okay. And let me tell you something.

40:32It's not just the dealerships. It's every fucking business. And my motto is I make a lot of money, but I pay my people a lot of money. My thought is I want them to make a good living. I can make a good living. Could I take more money out of my companies to pay them all up? Absolutely. But I want to have pride when I look at my guys.

40:49They have new cars, fucking motorcycles, nice houses and stuff like that. And they never, ever have any animosity when I go on vacation or when I do this or I do that. Couple of them told me they fucking miss me while I was gone. It's kind of fucking boring around here without seeing you every day. That's awesome. They were like really happy to see me get back genuinely, right?

41:06That's not a bunch of guys that hate you. I was trying to picture like the whole week, like, what are you doing? Like, what is Kevin doing on vacation? Like, thinking about work? No. So I'll just give you the quick and nasty. The first day I have to act like a complete fucking asshole because you're going through traveling. Oh yeah. We stayed at the airport the night before in a hotel.

41:26We got on the plane. That was all. We get to Dominican Republic. It's a fucking zoo. And my wife said this to me. She's like, you literally go around and spread your testosterone like a fairy. You just piss everybody off. She's like, somebody— she's like, somebody cuts you off, you cut them off, you know? Like people would walk and cut us off to get in front of the— I'm like, excuse me, we were here first.

41:44Like, get them out of the elevator. I'm like, shut the fucking door. She's like, this is so uncomfortable, you know. But so the first day I'm all wound up still, right? Because I do not do very well in big crowds. That just irritates the fuck out of me. So we wake up in the morning, finally we're there and stuff like that. It's our first time in an all-inclusive.

42:01And, you know, get a beer, get this, like you just walk in and eat, then you give them a tip and you walk out. It's like, this is fucking weird. Yeah. And so then I'm like, well, I don't want to really sit in a lounge chair, so see how much some cabanas are so the guy can come back and forth and bring us our shit.

42:14We're on vacation. So I would literally sit there at either the pool bar, talk to people, and I have that guy from Canada on. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, on the edge of my seat. You texted me. I'm like, were you on vacation? Did you do Zoom? Like, what did you do? And I talked to him. I'm like, I'm out of glasses.

42:30I videotaped. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. I talked to him and then I would just literally sit there and drink beer and eat fruit. Like all day. My wife's like, this is fucking boring. Like, this is fucking great. I would sit there and chill out till about 4 o'clock. I go up the room, take a nap for a couple hours, and we go to dinner.

42:44Second day, we did a full-day excursion. We went and went to Monkeyland. I saw the monkeys. That was awesome. And then we went and did razors around the island, which I just wanted to see what it would look like different on their trails. It was fucking lame, but it was good. Then we went back Wednesday, and then Thursday we went to Catalina Island on a boat, and then we went to another— start with an S— island.

43:11That was a 14-hour excursion. That was fucking hell. But it was good. Then we came back Friday, chilled out, and Saturday we came home. So I have no problem sitting around like a lump of shit. That's awesome. It's just awesome. Which I didn't think I would, but it's definitely something. It takes me about a day or two to unwind when I wake up and I don't have nothing to do.

43:29Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's what I couldn't picture. Like, you would— nothing to do. What do you do? I literally sat there. I would watch— I started watching Ted on Peacock. Yeah. Um, Marilyn would sleep till like 9, 9:30 or whatever, and then we would just kind of go and fuck around and go to the pool or what. Like, it was just so relaxing.

43:47I would have to highly recommend, uh, you know, an all-inclusive, because if you don't want to do anything or go anywhere, it's done. I think our bill at the end was $200 for the cabanas. That's awesome. You know what I mean? So everything's prepaid, which is kind of cool. You walk into a restaurant, there's like 5 restaurants on property, Italian, a steakhouse, a buffet all the time, Mediterranean, and then just a regular restaurant.

44:08So, you just walk in, you know what I mean? It's just pretty chill. And I think, you know, going on vacation like that is good for anybody, right? So— It is. You know, some of our biggest struggles are like, what are we going to eat tonight? Or what are we going to eat? You know, like dinner and that kind of thing. It's nice when you can just go and get whatever.

44:24Yeah, it really is. So, you know, here's the other problem. Okay. So, these people that are leaving the trade. There's not nobody coming in fast enough. And this is causing problems in some of the other trades. I know for an absolute fact, a lot of these union trades, they do a payout. They say, okay, the pensions are funded X amount of money by the people that are working.

44:46So I don't know exactly the math. So people are going to be on there, you're anti-union. No, but I remember when the Mason Company was here, they would tell me that they have to pay X amount and they kind of do the thing where they're going to run out of money. Paying these people's pensions because there's nobody coming into the trades. They never took that into consideration.

45:03I'm like, oh shit. So that's a whole nother problem. These retirements aren't funded. These guys had pensions. What's going to happen if the unions go bankrupt? Wow. Which I'm not going to say they are, but that's a whole nother thing. So you don't have these people coming into any of the trades, the sheet metal trades. I know that these guys, Some of these sheet metal trades, my nephews and stuff, I think they're making $35, $40 an hour.

45:29Wow. Yeah. Yep. You know what I mean? They're making fucking bank, these young kids. And so you want to tell me that you're going to send a kid to college to get a communications degree and come out with a huge freaking college loan and then end up— you'll have to pay it back so he can never really get off his feet because the one of the biggest moneymakers for the US government is student loans.

45:52Most people don't realize that the interest in them is killer. Yep. They don't even realize that. And, you know, these kids are coming out of college that partied for 3 years and made it 4 years and made it out by the skin of their teeth just because they didn't flunk them. They come out with this huge loan, student loan, and they're going to make $40,000 a year.

46:09Yeah, well, they can come out of the trades and make $100,000, $120,000 plus. And a lot of times they can go to HVAC school or get a lot of these companies now will take you and train you. Yep. Okay. So you can hit the ground making $40 an hour. Like you said, Jackson's going to be an electrician. I guarantee fucking to you.

46:24He'll have no problem getting a job, getting an apprenticeship. Yep. Okay. Well, it's cool. Like even just telling people that what he wants to do, I've had so many people like, oh, I can get him here. I can get him there. Like he's had so many offers of, uh, of places he can go. Uh, my, my, uh, my brother-in-law, he, um, just literally went to New York.

46:43He's there for a couple months and they're, I don't know, I don't know what he's making, but he's banking. Like, so he's, he's like, it's enough for me to be able to leave, you know, leave my sister and stuff like that for 3 months or 2, 3 months and just bank. And he's like, we don't have any kids right now and stuff like that, right?

46:57Make a ton of money. He's out by Niagara Falls in New York, and, you know, but you can just bank in a short period of time. Absolutely. And that's where, when you're young, you should be hustling. Yep. Okay. And this is the thing when I talked earlier about it, okay, you get these young kids in the trade, and these tradesmen are fucking old, they're grumpy, they're whatever.

47:16There's good ones, but there's also dickheads. And they sit there and they tell the guys how bad this shit is. This trade is terrible. This is that, this is that. Okay, you ever look at a shop or even any business? You could look at these guys that work for a living and you could tell the guys that have the decent truck, the decent house, they don't really ever complain about fucking money.

47:34Gas prices go up, they don't flame out. Then there's the other guys that work for you that flame the fuck out because gas went up a dollar. This is that, their cars falling apart. Have that problem anymore because I pay my people all above scale. Why do I do that? Because I know my numbers and I'd rather make a little bit less money.

47:49Like I said earlier, and pay these guys well. But I'm not like everybody else. These private equity groups want to fucking take your soul. Yeah. And then when you're— when you're fucking empty, they throw you away. It's like a vampire. You ever see them suck them till the people are fricking gone? They throw them away and go get another one. That's what they fucking do.

48:04Yeah. And some of these independent shop owners are no different. They just do it in a different way. They do it by fucking sheer ignorance and arrogance. What do I mean by that? They don't know how to run their fucking shop, so they expect everybody to fucking sit there. This is their dream. I suck at what I'm doing, so you should work for me.

48:20You should fucking be broke. Book too. And then they won't wonder why they can't keep good talent and why people fucking leave. Yep. Okay. And you get to everybody on fucking TikTok crying and pissing and moaning how bad this fucking business is. Okay. Stand up. Okay. There's a— you guys say the very— the answer to the question is tech shortage, right? So you mean to tell me if you're this awesome tech, which most of these guys think they are, but they're really not, you can't get a fucking job if you're not getting treated right at OneShot?

48:47You can't go down the street and go, this is what I'm capable of and this is what I can do. And I'm not lying to you. Will you fucking pay me this? I will solve all these problems for you. These people don't even know how to market theirself. If you're that great of a tech, walk in and go in the job interview, what's your biggest problems in your shop?

49:03Well, I have a hard time with diagnosing vehicles. I have a hard time with this. If you're qualified, be like, I can take care of that for you. And I'm not just blowing sunshine up your ass. I could do this. Take me out and show me. Give me a test. Prove you, okay? Pay me this, but in 2 months or 3 months, if I'm fucking doing exactly what I say, pay me this.

49:21I will solve your problems, Mr. Shop Owner. You want to take Fridays off after I get to know your customers in your shop? I can fucking do that. All of a sudden, that shop owner starts thinking, hmm, okay. You'd be surprised at a good shop owner, if he had the money, what he'd pay you if you took problems off his thing. Oh, I bet.

49:38Yeah. Now let's go back to what I started this whole thing at. What about a guy who's shitty? That's a shitty shop owner. And, you know, a lot of these shop owners I talk to are— don't know their finances. They're good guys. They don't know their finances. Yeah, but the problem is they pay all their guys their money to keep them and they make no money theirself.

49:56Yeah. Yeah. Because they just won't take the time to frickin learn what they need to learn, what their job is going to be. Then I come across these guys like, yeah, I ain't fucking paying that guy over fucking this. And I say, you wonder why he doesn't fucking want to work for you. And you fucking guys are quitting you because you're a dick.

50:12I already fucking don't like you, and this is a consulting call. I'm supposed to be selling you something. I don't even want to work with you because you're a fucking asshole. Yep. Like, I had a guy a couple weeks ago call me. Yep. It went through this whole fucking bullshit about how he's a big baller and all this, and, you know, oh, you need to come down, right up till I gave him the price where I can come down and look at his 3 shops and tell him how to fix them, which I'm more than qualified to fix.

50:32His truck body shop, his heavy-duty truck repair shop, and his auto shop, right? I can fix all 3 of the problems he had. I'll get back to you. Okay. Never gets back to me. He says, I'm hiring you as a consultant. I need, I need you to answer these questions on this truck right here and give me a bill. I said, all right, I'll have Jim call him on vacation.

50:49Not a problem. He fucking doesn't even answer us. Jim calls him, leaves a message, never calls back. We're fucking done. Wow. You know, so you get guys like that that are, you know, so arrogant or so think they're so good, but they ask you for help and you go to help them, then they won't pay you. It's just like, are you fucking kidding me, dude?

51:09Really? Them are the guys who makes you wonder how they treat their employees. Well, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. And I, you know, I, uh, it's the same. I don't like working with those clients. I don't want— if you don't see your people as people, but, um, and you want the best for them, you know, you look at the clients, you said like they're, they just don't know their finances.

51:27So they're paying their guys more than them. That's an easy problem to fix. They already care about their guys. Tim. Yep. That was the first thing. You could tell how much he cared about his guys, but then you could tell how much his guys in turn cared for him. Yeah, absolutely. When you had that thing, you're like, man, everybody fucking loves this guy.

51:40Yeah, loves him. They'll do whatever they want— he wants them to do. Yeah. You know, I, I have— I, I've— all of— every one of my clients is a freaking super great person. They just don't know how to manage all the fucking chaos. Yep. That's why we do chaos and control now. Oh, my other shirt: pay your tax. So, you know, my thought, you know, the people that could actually do the work are the ones who are getting fricking penalized for it.

52:03Okay. And let's take this and let's put this in perspective. What's a, what's a good wage for a technician to make? An A-tech, $60 an hour, hourly. That doesn't seem unreasonable if your labor rate's over $200. But these fucking assholes that come on the post, they're like, the shop's making $200 and they're paying me $50. I'm getting fucking ripped off. I should be making half of that.

52:28Well, that was commission days, number one. And number two, I'd say, okay, I'll pay you half of that. But when anything goes up because of inflation right now, property taxes just went up, my liability insurance just went up, healthcare just went up, all of them. And also the risk. Yeah, not a problem when you fuck something up. If you'll eat it 100%, not a problem.

52:50I'll split it with you. Yeah. Then see how much it is. Okay. A lot of these guys— less than that. It's less than that. Right. So, you know, you're sitting there thinking to yourself, okay, these guys that make, you know, $50, $60 an hour, what do fricking engineers make? Guys with college degrees. Okay. It's already there. People, blue collar workers are already there.

53:12Okay. It's just a matter of the engineers and everybody else have educations, but the blue collar workers have caught up to them now what they can make. And it's not— it's— and let me tell you something, it's not— they're not— we're not going backwards. No, we're not going backwards. They're going to be making more money. The supply and demand, it is that they are freaking so in demand right now.

53:32That's what people need to start realizing. These technicians got to start leveraging themselves and stop being a crybaby little fucking bitch, okay? Most of you, I hate— it's a scam. It's just— if you don't fucking like your situation, change it, okay? Grant Cardone says something the other day that I thought was pretty good. Doesn't really pertain to this, Scared money doesn't make money.

53:51Okay, so scared tax because you're scared of leaving your job because you've always been at the Ford dealership. Maybe your fucking job has came to an end there. You need to go somewhere where you're valued. And it goes back to this. Yep. Okay. I go buy this at Walmart. I can buy 24 of these for $5. Yep. Right. Yep. I go to the fucking concert.

54:09It's $8 for fucking one bottle of water. Know your value. Know your value. Right. You might be worth $8 over here when you're worth $5 or a dollar over here. Oh, that's such a good point. Right? Yeah. These guys are such fucking crybabies. Okay. And I know one guy that I talk to all the time. He cries all the fucking time. He's a service advisor.

54:27And I sell them. I said, you do realize you are— were trained. And I'm not going to say who he was trained by, but you know, a lot of stuff that most people don't know. You're a bad motherfucker when it comes to selling stuff. I go, but you're too fucking scared to go and say, fuck you, Mr. Manager, I'm not doing this.

54:42And fucking go somewhere else and tell them, this is what I can do. We should start this. We should start there. Instead, you want to fucking sit there and complain, go home and get drunk every fucking night. Do something with your fucking life. Okay? There's a meme the other day. I've been seeing a lot of memes the other day that Snoopy and Linus were sitting— Snoopy and Charlie Brown were sitting on a doghouse and he said, you only live once.

55:06And Snoopy said, no, you only die once. You should live every fucking day. I thought that was awesome. I love that. That's so true. It is. These guys— listen, guys, you have one life to live. Yeah. Okay, so if I change one person's life today with this podcast, if you don't like your situation, screw your fucking balls on and tell your manager, I'm not fucking doing this.

55:24I'm not working flat rate. I'm not— I'm going to get paid for fucking DVIs. We've conditioned these guys with the systems and the fucking lackluster and the sales bullshit that, don't worry, bro, go ahead and do this DVI. Or your piece of shit service advisor, piece of shit service advisor goes out and goes, hey, go ahead and do this oil change. You know, you can miss your daughter.

55:43Birthday party. I'll catch you on the next one. Fuck you. Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part. I'm fucking going home. If you don't like it, fire me. I'll go right down the street to the other fucking dealer. They'll be glad to have me. Yep. Okay, that's what these guys need to start doing. And I saw some of them are getting tired of it, need to start doing it.

56:01But the end of the day, we're all fucking human beings. Oh, guess what? You're a fucking number that could be fucking crossed out with a fucking Sharpie on a list. Okay, they're doing it at GM. They're firing whole divisions. They're just walking in and fucking saying, this whole division is fucking done. Oh, look at that, our bonus just got bigger up at the top.

56:20They're literally getting rid of divisions at all these places. Not— you're just a number. You're no more than this. I could see these are names. Yep, let's get rid of these top lines. That'll make our fucking bottom line right there go up. We're making more money. Our problem solved. Now the people up top won't fucking bother us. Yeah. And we'll just, these people here are capable.

56:37We'll just give them their job responsibilities and not pay them anymore. Right. Or you're paying a fucking, this is killer. This is crazy. I know a dealership around here. They sell medium trucks and they had a whole sales department. They fucking got rid of the whole sales department and said to a guy, hey, we're going to pay you this if you sell trucks too.

56:59So think about it. They get rid of 4 salesmen or 3 salesmen or 2 salesmen even. They keep that fucking commission. Say them guys are making $100,000 each, that's $200,000. They look at this guy, go, we're gonna give you $20,000 more a year. You just have to work yourself to fucking death. I hope you don't fucking die. And by the way, can you go ahead and sweep some cars off and plow the snow too?

57:21Yeah, because that's apparently— that's a big thing at the dealerships too. Yeah, everybody needs to go out and sweep the car, and it's like, fuck off. Yeah, you know, you go out and do it, you know. Um, so this is dealership life. Yeah. And independents are not much different when it comes to treating people either good, bad, or whatever. How many of these guys you hear online that, you know, I'm in another dealer, I'm here, I'm there.

57:41From what I can tell, from what I said, you know, my last podcast or the podcast before was, uh, flat rate just wasn't working for me anymore. And it really, I don't know how it could be working for the dealers anymore. I really don't. Um, because I couldn't make it work anymore. It got to the point where it's just like, this is not worth it to me.

58:03I'm not gonna lose all my guys because something, you know, and progress happens whether we like it or not. As you get older, and mark my words, people, as you get older, you start to not like when the norms start changing. I don't know if you run into that yet. Yeah. Okay, like you start, people that you were close to your whole life, all of a sudden they start dying, or just the changes, the subtle changes, you know.

58:22And you start to wonder why your grandpa was all pissed off by the time he died, because you sit there and look at what happened You know what I mean? Like, you had kids that were freaking wanting to storm the beach in Normandy. The fucking— they, they were so happy, so proud to serve their country, they lied about their age. They weren't even of age to go in the military, and they lied to go in.

58:39We can't even fucking figure out for a boy or fucking girl what bathroom to use nowadays. Do you hear what I mean? We have a mental sickness that our system is feeding into. Give them more fucking drugs. Give them Prozac. Give them Ritalin. Give them this. You know, he's different, he doesn't fit the mold, so therefore he's this. That's the shit they did to me.

58:54I was going to say, that's the shit they did for you. And then look at it like they just didn't know how to handle you. They didn't know how to challenge you or keep you busy. But then look what happens when you find something that you have passion for, you're interested in. Yeah, absolutely. I got a podcast where I run my fucking mouth.

59:10And apparently if you listen to all the people on Facebook and on all them, I make like $3.2 million a week fucking talking. You know what I mean? It's like, fucking come on. You know, so, you know, even, you know, okay. So, you know, once again, I can't drive this point home. Treat the young guys with respect. If you're going to get these guys in your shop, they want to do the trade, treat them with respect.

59:32Yeah. Show them. I'm not saying, you know, if you're on flat rate and they want you to train somebody, look at them and say, yeah, I'll train them. But you fucking, if I train them and I get him functioning, I want half of what he produces. Okay. Think outside the fucking box. If you're a flat rate guy, your job is to fix cars and get paid, right?

59:48Yeah. What if they say, well, I need you to train this guy. That's fine. Make him my helper. Give me 6 months with him. You have to pay me. Yep. Give me $5 more an hour. Whatever he produces, we'll keep track of it. Then at the end of that, when I get him functioning, I want X amount of his money. Okay. What's wrong with that?

1:00:06That's great. If I'm training him, pay me. Yep. You're going to— I'm basically building you another guy that's going to have all my attributes. You like me as a tech, right? Oh yeah, you're fucking great. What if I train this guy? Yep. That's the most out of the box thinking. And, uh, you're, you're only, you're not going to get that from many people.

1:00:25No, no. It's like less than 5% of people that think like that. Yeah. But I'm trying to, you know, depict to these guys what you guys, you guys have saleable skills. Yes. You technicians are badasses right now. You have everybody by the balls. Start fucking acting like it. Okay, if your fucking service manager says, I don't know why that transmission is not rebuilt, say, why don't you fucking come and rebuild it?

1:00:49Why don't you not only come and rebuild it, come rebuild it for the fucking warranty time? And when it doesn't fucking work, you take it back in and out for free. And I'm gonna sit there with my arms fucking crossed and walk over to you every 5 fucking minutes and go, what the fuck's the problem here? You're killing my production. My bonus is fucked up because you're having a hard time.

1:01:04Like, you don't know you're having a fucking hard time, or there's a parts problem, or— you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like these guys, these guys at the top have never lived it, so they don't understand it. Okay. You cannot literally tell me. Yep. You— okay, let's think about it. Let's talk about what a cop goes on a normal day. I can pretty much tell you what a cop goes on in a normal day in most cities because it's all over TikTok with their cameras.

1:01:26Hey, can I see your light? I'm a private citizen. I'm traveling. I'm not driving. I'm traveling. Oh my God. How's the cop not rip him out of the car, beat him with his fucking billy club, right? I know, every day. Yeah, like, oh my God. So, but my point is, like, you could pretty much tell what he's doing. If you've been in the business as a technician first and you worked your way up the ladder, you have empathy.

1:01:47You've been there. So when you look at a guy and he's got fucking grease and he's sweating, you're like, goddamn, you took this trans— had to take this trans out, dude. I'm sorry, this fucking sucks. I remember, uh, Brad's fucking removal when I took his C6 out 3 times, which only to realize that the modulator where it went in the modular, it was cracked and was dumping pressure.

1:02:05I remember that, right? Nobody came over to me and go, you're fucking killing me. Yeah. Like, some of this shit is mechanical. We have to figure it out. But these managers and these people over at these dealerships or even at the independents, I had— I don't remember if it was November or October, one of the months that November was fucked. Like, every job we did was a fucking huge job that was fucked.

1:02:28We had nothing but problems all of November. Our numbers were down. The guys' fucking hours were terrible. Everything was fucked. It just was one of the months where no matter what happened, we zigged, zagged, we were fucked. Like, it was just— and, you know, my guys were getting discouraged. I'm like, guys, this has been here before. We're going to make it through it, you know?

1:02:46And if I remember correctly, I gave some of them guys some hours. It was just so fucked up. I made sure everybody was taken care of. But there's going to be months no matter what, you can't control it. But this is how they control the people with the flat rate and the commission plans from the front door of the dealership to the back door.

1:03:03I bet you 95% of the people are all on some kind of piece of the pie. Yeah, right. Yeah. So they have 100% of the pie. Yeah. Okay. They can't give it all away. So the least they pay these guys, the more they get to keep. Yep. Right. So they kind of do this shit to people. And, you know, that's kind of the same thing at dealer or at You know, independence.

1:03:24You know, I see some of these guys, you know, one of the guys that I consult with, I go, dude, I looked at like 4-year repair orders and I see that there's no diag. Well, the customer complained about it, so we didn't charge them. We didn't charge them the diag. I go, but they signed up for it, right? Yeah. I go, then fucking charge them.

1:03:42Don't fucking tell them. If they're going to complain about you diagnosing, give them a problem they don't have the money to fix it. They still have to pay you for your time. Well, he'll be mad. Who gives a fuck? He's cheap. He doesn't even want to pay for the diag. He's never going to pay you for the repair. And another thing he's learning is that when he asks for 50% down, a lot of these people won't fucking give him 50% down because they don't have the fucking money.

1:03:59I go, dude, they don't have the 50% down. They're not going to have the 100% when it's done. I said, basically, you're, basically you're, you're interviewing your fucking customer before the game starts. You know what I mean? It's kind of like watching, you know, you think honestly when these fight camps at the UFC, when they go to fight somebody, you don't think they actually look at, uh, the other fighter and film?

1:04:21You're a sports guy. Yeah. What do you do when you're gonna go play a football team? What do the coaches do? Oh, they watch film for sure. For sure. I, I've worked with salespeople where they've given me, they've, uh, sent me video of their sales call and then I watch it, I dissect it, and we sit down and go over where they lost their opportunities and where they could ask questions and found their opportunities.

1:04:41Right. It is like breaking down the film, just like an athlete. Yeah. And guys just don't do that. They don't do their homework and check stuff out. And it's just like, I role-playing, you talking about role-playing and bringing the, bringing your techs out and having them sell to you and like, that's awesome, man. That's like, that's again, one, it gives them a different perspective.

1:04:59It gets them to work together, but man, that's training. That's how you train. Well, the thing is now everybody's talking about fucking AI and training. Now it's like, I can't help to think some of the shit we talk about all of a sudden everybody's talking about it. Is it just, we talk about it first or everybody talks about it at the same time because we're all having the same problems.

1:05:17Don't fucking know. Yeah, but I know for absolute certain I was pretty much one of the first guys to start talking about using AI to write repair orders. Yeah, that was out of the box. Like, Tim Jackson told me that he's like, I showed my service advisor AI that you built me. She is like, I taught her, I showed her what FIRE was.

1:05:35He's like, she was like, oh my fucking God. That's awesome. He's like, I've changed her fucking whole world. He's like, I showed her I invented fire right in front of her. And one of my other clients, he focused last week and used AI and stuff. His sell-through rate went up 10%. Wow. 10%. Wow. Okay. Remember I told you mine? Remember mine went up 10%.

1:05:57You know, member must be a Michigan accent, by the way, because my wife says it and several people I noticed. Have you noticed that now? Ever since that video, I I hear so many people saying it. Yeah, it must be a Michigan thing. It's a Michigan thing for sure. It's how TJ, you know, Tim found you, the Michigan accent. Yeah. So we don't have a shortage of degrees.

1:06:15We have a shortage of capable people that are skilled. Okay. We have a lot of guys that can learn out of a textbook. Yep. We don't have a lot of guys that are skilled, that are capable. That's our biggest problem right now. We have too many managers. We've produced so many managers outta college with business degrees. We don't have no more room for 'em.

1:06:33Well, the problem is they come out as managers with no experience, so they're not leaders. You can't plug them in. I hired so many people that thought they were managers because they came out with a college degree and they were— or they wanted this leadership position. You can't lead shit. Like, nobody's gonna listen to you. You don't know what you're doing. Yeah, you have to fucking get your people's— yeah, you can't just walk into somewhere.

1:06:52You have to earn respect. Yeah, just give it. Yeah, you know, you know, uh, to come back in the trades, I wanted to do demand I've actually jumped ahead like 5 pages. I just have been rattling off the list. Demand's going up. Supply— okay, skilled people are actually one of the most important people in our economy. It's only getting better economy. Yep.

1:07:19That's crazy. It's crazy. Think about— good. Well, in a lot of instances, you have to think a little bit outside the box. Is everything kicks up. This is no different than the mafia. If you really stop and think about it, you get the guys up at the very top, the private equity people, right? They own the dealerships, they have the money, they put all the infrastructure apart, right?

1:07:39They get the salesmen, the techs, they get everybody. Yep. We all work. They kick up. The problem is it's fucking backwards. Pay the people that are kicking up, give them a good life. But here's the problem. They don't give a fuck. Yeah, okay. And I know plenty of independent shop owners that do not give a fuck about their employees. What can you do for me a day?

1:07:59And how many hours did you fucking turn? Oh, you're on your 100% efficiency? Why not 115? Well, my shoulder hurts. Well, next week you need to pick it up. There's a lot of guys like that. Yep. The only time I really fucking flame out on my guys and I yell at them— Phil knows this a lot— when they change the process, when he adds a fucking other step and I don't know about it, and then it causes fucking chaos.

1:08:18That just pisses me off to no end. I'm like, you don't change fucking anything. We have these processes in place. We're not filifying it, you know. Unpaid DVIs, yeah, that has literally pissed me fucking off now, like, non-stop. It pisses me fucking off to no end, okay? Chris Craig talks about it. These guys are technicians, or most of us call mechanics, us older guys, right?

1:08:45These old guys can hardly use their fucking phones. The average tradesman is in his 50s now. There's not a lot of young guys, right? We're talking average, right? They're not a photographer. They're not good at talking. Most mechanics are introverts. The dealership's like, you need to take videos, you need to do this, you need to do that with your fucking phone that you bought, right?

1:09:09Not paying for the phone. And by the way, We're stealing from you. It'd be no different than him walking into a parts store and stealing— steal— or in the parts room and stealing an oil filter, stealing some oil to change on his car. They're stealing time. What is the one thing you cannot buy no matter how much fucking money you have? And Steve Jobs proved it.

1:09:26Time. Time. Yeah. He had all the money in the fucking world. That guy was buying a fucking, uh, one of them $100,000 Mercedes every month just so he could have a temporary tag. He never wanted a fucking license plate. I didn't know that story. That's awesome. Awesome. Okay, but these fucking dealerships, or even these independents, go and tell the guys, you know what, just do the fucking inspection.

1:09:45Fuck you, pay me. Just like Jesse James says, pay me. I'm not doing this shit for free. I think we should get a fucking movement. I'm gonna get rich on you guys buying these shirts because I'll make them fucking— like, pay your guys for their techs for DBIs. Yep. Okay, but that's the thing, like My brother talks about at the dealerships, like, I am not going to get these older guys to do these fucking inspections.

1:10:09You know, these guys are freaking cranking out 60, 70 hours a week and I'm going to piss them off by telling them, hey, you got to do your DBIs, management center, you're going to have to find a new job. He's like, then I don't fucking make a living because I got all my guys cranking it. They do a good job. We all get along good.

1:10:22And all of a sudden we're going to piss them off for a fucking additional vehicle inspection that the customer doesn't even look at. Or doesn't even know what the fuck you're looking at because you got Billy Bob over there. Yeah, I'm looking at your oil leak and yeah, I think your battery might be fucked up. Oh, I didn't mean to say fucked up.

1:10:42Your battery's just dirty. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I'm almost fucking done. Yeah, I know we're going to lunch. All right, thank you very much, man. Can you imagine that? These guys can't even fucking talk to order a Big Mac most of the time because they're just— us guys are so fucking rude and crashy. Crashy. We just in your face, right? A lot of technicians are like introverts.

1:11:05Yeah, yeah. They just— or they're like me, or like my guys are like, we sit in a room, you could count how many times— my wife's like, I sit there and listen to you guys talk, you must say fuck 9,000 times. She's like, you alone say fuck 9 times in a sentence, and there's 10 words in the sentence. I'm like, yeah, that's just me.

1:11:23Well, statistics show people with high IQ say swear a lot, so thank fucking God, right? But, you know, push back on the DVIs. I firmly believe that these dealerships should be paying, or these independent shops should be paying the guys for their time. One thing that straightened itself out since I got rid of flat rate is, uh, my guys are a little bit more at ease.

1:11:46But their hours have stayed the same. Yeah. So, so far it's working just fine. Yeah. Yeah. And if it doesn't, I'll be like, hey, motherfuckers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I counted on you wanting the problem solved. I solved it, but we can't cause another problem. My guys aren't going to have that problem. I can tell you right now, they're just not. Well, and you would catch it pretty quickly because your numbers are drilled down.

1:12:06Yeah. You know, and once again, I cannot just say this private equity and it's not just dealerships because independents are getting bought up by private equities. They are squeezing the technicians. You guys are the lifeblood of the business. Think about this. Now, this is going to piss a lot of you crybabies off. I don't really fucking care. The service advisors are just as important as the technicians because the technicians can do the work, but somebody's got to sell it.

1:12:28Here we go again. Here's the old, I could sell the work with one hand tied behind my back. You're fucking pissing me off and I've been talking to you for 5 minutes. So a lot of times you need to let the salespeople do the sales things and you need to let the fixing people do the fixing thing. Yeah, you don't have to be enemies.

1:12:42You don't have to be jealous of the service advisor because he might get a gift card from Goodyear when you're doing all the work. Boo fucking hoo. You should be worried about making the money and giving him good information. And you know what? I think that every shop owner— and I don't give a fuck about the dealers— every independent shop owner, have one of your mechanics write up a fucking shitty repair order like they do and give it to them, then have them sell it to you as the owner and record the phone call and start asking the hard questions.

1:13:09Okay, when he doesn't have the right information, the right part, course, this, and he wants to sell him 85 fucking flushes. He has no idea what goes on the other end of that phone. My guy said to me yesterday, that's a fucking bitch. He said, you got the guy all worked up, he's gonna spend all that money on turbo, and you're going, by the way, let's talk about brake fluid.

1:13:25You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, you have— you can't portray yourself to have no soul. Yeah, yeah. You know, so, you know, keep your young technicians motivated, treat them with respect. Go to management, be like, listen, you want me to train a guy? I have no problem training a guy. You like what I do, you like me, I could train that guy to do what I do.

1:13:46Just pay me. Well, I can't afford it. Well, you better fucking raise your labor rate or something because I'm not training them for free. Well, you won't have a job here. That's fucking fine, I'm your lead tech. Okay, you don't have to be an asshole about it, but like, get what's yours. Stop fucking settling. If I would have settled Back in the day, I would have fucking been probably a tool man.

1:14:05Not that there's anything wrong with tool man. I probably made a fuck ton of money doing that too. I just don't have the temperament. I'd probably kill somebody. They wouldn't pay me. But if I were to just say— Steve Garrett used to always say to me, you never stop moving the fucking goalposts. You're like, we did X amount of dollars this month.

1:14:19I'm like, next month we should do this. He's like, aren't you ever happy? I said, the answer is fucking no. Okay, you've already known where I've come from since you've been with me, since you met me. I'm fucking not stopping. Yeah. You know, we've grown this, we've grown that. I got 85 things going on. Yeah, you know, um, I think people need to keep going and keep going and keep going at all costs.

1:14:39I'm not in the— here's the other thing that most people don't do: don't fuck your employees. They're your most valuable commodity. They're not toilet paper, okay? If you're a shop owner and just say hypothetically you make $400,000 a year, would fucking $350,000 be as bad if you fucking took the extra $50,000 and spread it across your people so they all made more money?

1:15:03They're gonna notice that far more than you're gonna notice that extra $50,000. Yeah, yeah. You know, I, uh, not many people know this. I went and looked at a new house and I bought it. Guess who went with me yesterday to look at it in the morning? All my fucking top guys. Like, let's go look at my new fucking house. We all fucking went over there in the morning.

1:15:22We all walked around, looked at it. They're like, this is fucking badass. We are so happy for you. They weren't fucking mad. They're like, we helped you get this, you deserve it, we know what you do, you treat us fucking good, this is great. Yeah, okay, that's awesome. A lot of guys would have hid that because their guys would have been pissed and stuff like that.

1:15:37I like to be an open fucking book, you know that. I'll just fuck— you ask me, I tell you. Yeah, it is what it is. But you know what, these guys aren't fucking— I didn't turn these guys down for this. I turned these guys down— I didn't do any of that shit to these people. I fucking treat them good. And then they treat me good.

1:15:52But that's where most people are missing the boat. Yep. Just think about if you had everybody pissed off at the fucking dealership or your independent shop and they all fucking walked out tomorrow. They all got together, said, you know what, fuck you, Jason Tracy and Tracy Tracy Ford, you're a fucking asshole. Or Jason Tracy Auto Repair, I'm fucking sick of you and your bullshit.

1:16:10You know, you couldn't give me a raise last week, but you just fucking bought a new house this week. Not that personal finances are separate than business finances, but The finances come from the businesses. I just happen to have like a fuck ton of businesses, you know, profit centers. Yeah, but you know what I'm saying? And a lot of employees have that mistake.

1:16:31They think, oh, he's making all this money just doing this. Well, you got to remember something. If a business owner doesn't do a good job, 9 times out of 10, he's got a lot of promises and guarantees on stuff. He goes out of business. You're going to go get another job right down the street. He's going to lose everything he owns. So he's on— most people don't say— business owners are on commission.

1:16:52If I do really fucking good, I can get a paycheck, right? Yep. You know, stop. If every technician refused to work for free, the system would begin to change over fucking night. So from now on, if they don't want to pay you for DVIs, put 2/10 next to your DVI and tell them this is what you want for it. And start doing it.

1:17:13Have everybody in your shop fucking do it. The dealership, the independent shop. And if the service advisor says, I can't get you 2/10, you say, you need to figure it the fuck out. Add it to my labor time somewhere else. I need to be paid for this. Well, they're going to have a management meeting. Well, they don't really think you should get paid for 2, you know, 0.2 for a TVI.

1:17:31That's fucking fine. Don't pay me and I'm not fucking doing them. I'll get the car on the hoist. You come out here and fucking do them. That's not a problem. Get out here with your fucking polo shirt, slick, and you do the fucking DVI. Use your fucking phone, upload it. Well, I have a job, that's not my job. Since when is it my fucking job to come to work for free and do shit for free?

1:17:51Yep. I'm not the Salvation fucking Army. Yep. Right? I mean, start asking for it. It's no different than when you tell the salespeople, ask for that sale. If you don't fucking try to close the sale and say, are we going to do this or not? Yep. You know, a lot of times I get confused. Some people are just like already assume they're doing it.

1:18:09They never say we had that me and you happen. Yeah. We were like, said, and we're like, what the fuck? Here you go. We're like, oh, fucking yo, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, but instead of everyone fights alone, if nobody fights, if everybody fights alone, nothing's going to change. Everybody band together. And the biggest thing we got going right now is DVIs and fair wages.

1:18:29Okay. If I'm going to work overtime, you need to pay me for overtime. I think, I'm not sure, but most states You need to look into this, guys. Ask ChatGPT or something. You should be getting time and a half for overtime, even on flat rate and commission, just so you know. So that's another thing, okay? Most people, common people, I'm gonna repeat this, cannot fix their house, their car, or anything.

1:18:52It's getting worse. They're making more money. Blue collar's going up. You can start charging for that. They're gonna have to pay you, especially when dads like me start dying. These kids won't have nobody to fix their shit. Yep. Think about it. Yeah. It's crazy. You know? So you have to rely on skilled workers. They have no choice. They have to rely on us skilled workers.

1:19:13Anybody in the trades, they have to rely on us. We are not going anywhere. AI is not replacing us. Some of the menial jobs, robots are going to fucking replace. There's just no doubt about it. When Optimus comes out, a lot of people are fucked. There's no doubt about it because they're talking about autonomous vehicles delivering and shit. We're not that far away.

1:19:30Yeah. Yeah, okay, but CDL drivers, there's a whole nother problem. You know, electronics have glitches. I don't give a fuck who you say, whatever. Electronics have glitches. You're not going to put a freaking robot in a freaking 180,000-pound freaking semi-truck with a load on it and everything like that, right? So the wages are rising for the trades. The only one that's lagging behind is technicians because you guys are putting up with this shit, whether it's hourly salary, or flat rate.

1:19:58Screw your fucking balls on and make these people pay you. Start out with DVIs, start out with diag time. I'm not diagging this shit for free. I hear over and over again these crybaby fucking guys, I do all the hardest work in the shop and they don't pay me for diag. That's because you're a fucking dumbass. If you get your first hour, you can't figure it out, you say, okay, call the customer back, say I'm on this track, I think it's gonna be this, I need 3 more hours.

1:20:23If I don't get to it in that 3 more hours, I'm going to call them back and say, this is where we're at. We might have to pull the dash out or we might have to do that. If their service advisor says I can't do that, say, then you fucking go out there and figure the car out. But listen, if you're the best guy in the shop, you say you always get the hardest jobs, get paid for them.

1:20:39We say we have a shortage of skilled people. We have enough oil change guys, enough brake guys. How many shop owners do estimate, I'm a brake specialist, I'm a front end specialist. Oh, you can't do shit besides front ends and brakes. I get it. Okay, the most talented guy in the shop should be making the most fucking money on diag and stuff like that.

1:20:57You guys don't know how to write the shit up to get paid for it. You need training. That's your owner's fucking problem. He's not training you to write this shit up to get paid, or he's no fucking balls. He doesn't know how to run a business. He's scared to piss off the customer, try to charge them. Do you think Henry Ford gave a fuck?

1:21:12The other day, here's a good one, my wife had a medical procedure. It was $1,940 was our copay. Yeah, okay. They guess what, they called her back and said you got to have it done again. Do you think that girl gave a fuck telling her she needed to pay another $1,900? No, did not give two fucks. Nope. And I actually told them when we were there, I said, you know, they said you can sit in this waiting room.

1:21:31I said, this place is a shit hole. I said, we came all the way to Troy and you don't even have a coffee maker or anything. This place is a dump. I offended them. I'm like, yeah, but you're sitting there asking me for my $1,900 3 times before you fill out the paperwork like we didn't fucking have it. But you don't even have a coffee fucking maker.

1:21:47You want to be professional? Not. But you want me to freaking whip out my debit card, you know what I mean? Because nobody fucking cares. Just bottom line is freaking charge for your time. Well, because if you need a procedure and if you don't get that procedure done, you're gonna die, but you can't afford that $1,900— I'm not saying this is Maryland, but like, you know, if you're— if you're— this procedure is life and death and you can't pay that bill, they're not going to do the procedure.

1:22:10They're not going to be like, oh, I'm sorry for you, Mr. Brown. I'm going to, I'm going to still do this for free. They're okay. Yeah. Just to be clear, my wife can't afford it. She has, she's like having a broke little Democrat follow me around. I can afford the money. She can't, she can't work. She doesn't even have a job. She's jobless.

1:22:31That pisses her off. And I say, you don't even have a job. I can imagine. She's like, I fucking retired. I'm like, hey, you're still jobless. I said, that's all right, I have 5. But you're 100% right. It's like they don't give a fuck. They wouldn't do the procedure. Yeah. And that's what these people— I think honestly a lot of these people have made such bad decisions.

1:22:52They're so broke, they're paycheck to paycheck. Just because— now I'm not saying all of them, now hear me guys, but a lot of them are broke. So you can't get them to change with the masses because they can't afford to lose their job because they made such a bad bunch of bad decisions. I know that sounds really arrogant, but it's just the way it is.

1:23:07You know, my guys, pretty much any one of them, I think, except for maybe two of the younger guys, could quit tomorrow and go get some other jobs. My other guys, they'd be fine for a few— they already told me they have 6 months in the bank, 8 months in the bank. Awesome. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because I've always preached that.

1:23:21Make sure— hey, and they're smart, you know, they're smart. Their mom and dad taught them about finances. It's amazing when your parents teach you about finances. These younger guys have savings accounts. Yep. You know, that shit. And you know, I piss a lot of people off. In closing, we piss a lot of people off by putting episode 1 out while he's on vacation.

1:23:37I saw YouTube, man. I saw the guy that was like, I'm not listening to you anymore. Like, I give a fuck. You're like, you came on here twice and both of them are rude-ass comments. Like, yeah, what the fuck? You said you're getting too big for your britches. First off, it was episode number 1, right? It said even in the description, this is episode number 1.

1:23:57Number 2, there's a reason to watch that, and, and it should relate to people that have been told they're misfits or they don't belong, or they've been given the Ritalin and the ADD and people can't figure them out, because you're sleeping on somebody. No, that was one of the reasons we put that out. I think everybody needs to hear it. Yep. You know, I mean, look where I've gone, and it's by being different, it's by pushing.

1:24:20I fucking push all the time, and I drive everybody nuts. I mean, even my dog gets fucking tired following me around. But you know what I mean? It's just like, I just push, push, push. And that's just the way I am. It's not changing. Yeah. What do you do? You know? And that's the thing. But how many other guys are out there like that and think there's something wrong with them or, you know, yeah.

1:24:39Or think that they can't succeed because the system's told them they're going to be a failure their whole entire life. And I know you've said that over and over again. Like if there's 16 horses, you'd be the 16th horse. You know, nobody expected you to be successful. 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.

1:24:57We drop real conversations, real systems, and real solutions every week. We'll see you back here next time on Repair Shop Reckoning.