ADAS and Electric Vehicles Are Changing Auto Repair | Marco Palumbo

0:06I've been in the BYD cars and they are spectacular. Yeah, absolutely spectacular. I'm a fan. I never thought I'd say that, Jeff, I swear to God. 1,400 km range, it's a game changer. The batteries are these plates and they were saying they can charge from 20% to 80% in -40 Celsius. Yeah, in 8 minutes. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaded Mechanic podcast.

0:39It's, yeah, another Canadian. You guys must be getting tired of that, aren't you? Last week you had a Newfie, and this week I'm speaking to somebody in Winnipeg, Manitoba. So somebody that we don't— I haven't had a chance to have a ton of conversation with, but He kind of came to my peripheral because a really good friend of mine, Mark Elliott, Mr.

1:02Towbotek, hired him. And some people are like, oh, that takes guts. Like, how do you feed Mark? He's a big boy. He likes to eat. But Marco from Maxim Tire and Muffler in Winnipeg, Manitoba hired Mark and reached out to me to kind of share what it was like and thank you for, you know, everything he does and we do. And I just was like, I want to hear more of Marco's story.

1:34So, Marco, how are you this afternoon, man? You were saying it's a little cold still in Winnipeg. It's still cold. Yeah, we're only at -2, so it's warmed up. So if you want to call that warmed up. But so the sun's out. So at least that gives everybody a little bit of a hope for warmer weather. Yeah. Yeah. And it's— we were comparing notes, like I'm walking around in a t-shirt here in Ontario, Canada.

1:55And so I want to say it's probably— and I'm going to do the Fahrenheit thing and that's going to frustrate some people and other people are going to be great with it. But we're around 45, 50 this morning, you know, so I think it's around 56 right now. So it's a nice day here, you know, not shorts and t-shirt weather, but it's t-shirt weather, you know, so it's nice.

2:14Nothing wrong with that. No. And you're just— we were just talking before we got on about how Winnipeg kind of has a season where it seems like it's a lot of time it's just winter and then it's bugs and construction. Yeah. See, Quebec has that too. It's winter and then construction. So tell us a little bit about what it's like in, you know, your shop and your— in your history and your story.

2:39And, you know, because I know it's kind of interesting, you You met Mark a long time ago and then he came back around. So kind of tell me how it all started for you in this wonderful industry. Well, just, I come from Italian background where both parents are just normal laborers. So I had a mechanical mind and went, did that in high school and auto shop in high school.

3:03From there, move forward into the automotive world, not thinking too much about being an entrepreneur, but it worked out that way. Whereas I had encouragement from associates that I've met. And knowing that when you're good with people, it comes a little easier. If you have mechanical mind and you're good with people, the combination works. And if you have a solid background in doing things the honest way, the good way, then people tend to come back, trust you, and, you know, put their vehicle in our hands.

3:41So we're fortunate with that. So that's, that's how it started back in 1988. Uh, I worked at Midas for a bunch of years and that's where I met Mark and at the St. Anne's location. Okay. And, uh, he was a young guy and back then he, he had dreadlocks and that's what the— I didn't really make the connection when he— I saw him on, um, Tobatech and, uh, when I just for just as a fluke, I privately messaged him and say, if you're ever looking for someplace to go, if you're not happy where you are, just give me a call.

4:14He goes, hey, Marco, don't you remember me? I'm like, not too much, I have to say. But fortunately, he had some issues going over there and we just had a little chit chat and it blossomed from there. So it's It's like, you know, is it meant to be? I don't know. Mark is just— he's phenomenal. He's got a great personality, gets along with everybody, and he has that ability to dig and not give up.

4:43And it's really great. A lot of people, they get frustrated, throw stuff around. And yeah, I'm not saying if he has done that, he hasn't done it in front of me, but he's definitely a level-headed, approachable person, and he likes to help the other techs. So the whole environment moves up a notch with him being here. So it's great. Yeah, he, you know, and that's that, that I saw in him early on, that tenacity, that, that love of understanding and being able to like, you know, always wanting to level up in his ability.

5:17And then I saw that tenacity where he'd post his mistakes, he'd post his wins, right? As we say, our wins and our losses both. And he was always reaching out to learn more and more and more. And, and I just absolutely love that. And I like You know, I want every shop owner to have a Mark in their shop because I just think it's such a pivotal role, right, in terms of being able to mentor the young people, because that's what this industry needs.

5:41Like, you know, I came up with some great mentors, but I also had to learn so much of this stuff on my own. The ones that really kicked my butt, like, it was because I, you know, really just dug in and it wouldn't let it beat me. And then you find this, you know, Eureka moment in the repair, and then you go, oh, and then you feel like such a, you know, you feel like a little win, but then you go, oh, it was right there in front of you the whole time if you'd have just done this differently, right?

6:11Hindsight is 20/20, right? So it always is. Yeah, if we can share more in this industry, like the way I'm so proud of what he does in terms of how much he's showing everybody, um, this industry has no ceiling. None. It would be so incredible what we could do. So good on— it's the dreadlock thing. I wish I had a picture to go with that.

6:32You're going to have to ask him for that. Yeah. Because Mark, if you haven't seen him, he don't have much hair now. No, he shaves it all off. He hides it with a hat. Yeah. And same— We have the same barber. And I'm going that way very soon too. I've got a hat on now too because it's just, it's getting to be— where it's, you know, it's just going to be more easy to do and shave it off.

6:53But yeah, he's such a great guy. So what's, um, he posts a lot, you know, and that's when I first saw him. It seemed like it was somebody he was always poaching, poaching, excuse me, posting the Minty Manitoba, the rust stuff. And is it, is it fair to say, Marco, that that's like the most corrosive damage, rusted cars are in Winnipeg, or is it just a What makes it so common where you guys are?

7:19Well, there's that little bit of time where it's -4 and say -4 to +4 in that area where there's a lot of sand and salt and it sits there. And what happens is that once you have that on there and it sits there for weeks because people don't wash the underneath where that water gets to or the salt gets to. So— Sorry to cut in everyone, but this is really important.

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8:36I've been in the trenches, and I know what works. TechMetric isn't just managing shops; it's transforming them. Measure up by every measure with TechMetric. Hit the link in the show notes below for more. If you were able to wash and completely remove that sitting salt, then it would definitely change things. But unfortunately, we have that time where the salt does its thing.

8:58And we find that a lot of Eastern cars, when they come here, they're actually worse. Montreal, Toronto, a lot of these places there, the rust is actually incredibly advanced. We have a car that's only 2 and 3 years old and it looks like it's a decade. Wow. So yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous. So some people buy these cars and then they ask us to check something like, how long have you had this thing?

9:21It's incredible. Where does it come from? So it's important to— and I always tell anyone who buys a car, get the underneath undercoated. Yeah. It's such a benefit. Yeah. I finally got my first car worth owning like 5 years ago that was actually worth undercoating, was my Wrangler. Wrangler. And I tell people all the time, and everybody's like, oh, it's so expensive.

9:47It's expensive until you price like a paint job, or, or, you know, you price a quarter panel job, or if it's a truck and you price like a box side or rocker panel or something. And then it's such a savings because, yeah, you know, you pay $300 a year. And I tell everybody, listen, you don't have to do it every year. You got to get those first couple years under your belt where you get like a layer and you get it into the nooks and crannies.

10:09Will it prevent all the rust? No. My mom's little— she's got an Equinox of '14 '14 that you wouldn't even know was that old. It's got one little spot where they all rust right in the front fender in front of the front door because it's an open spot there. But otherwise, it's a tiny little piece, and instead of being like the metal gone, it's just a little bit of bubbling, a little bit of, you know.

10:29So it's a, it's a cheap, easy fix even to do right now versus the whole car. Like, we see a lot of '14 Equinoxes come in where I work. We don't even try to recondition them and sell them. They're gone. They're flogged because they're, you know, if the engine's not hammered, they're rotten. And so she's been so lucky and I've been so fortunate to just— I got on the first few years of everybody and I'm the same.

10:52I tell everybody now, undercoating maintenance is almost as important as your oil change maintenance up here in Canada because it just makes such a difference in how long that car will last you. You know, we're paying $100,000 for truck now. Like, if you think you can't spend $500 a year undercoating, you're crazy and you're wasting your investment. It's nuts. Mechanically, you can always do some servicing, but if you have nothing to bolt it to, that's the bigger problem.

11:20Yeah. And then now look at this stuff, like it's not even made. You know, Mark talks about his old blue truck and everything, and those trucks were made that, yeah, if you were really emotionally attached to it and you wanted to do a frame repair like he has, you could. But I was underneath a brand new— I say brand new— 2024 Hyundai Santa Cruz yesterday.

11:39That's complete unibody. Like, would— if you decided that that was your truck and it had some rust underneath, you're not fixing it. It's not designed to be structurally repaired, you know. It's, um, it's crazy. Um, any other interesting challenges from being operating in Winnipeg? Um, being it's a smaller market, okay, word gets around really quick. Um, it's one of those things where You can ruin your reputation very, very quickly.

12:10It's not like there's, you know, I believe there's just under a million people in Winnipeg and the surrounding areas. So it doesn't, it's not, it's not small either by any means. And there is, you know, a fair amount of competition. The issue is maintaining that solid reputation. I've been here 16 years. Yeah. So I'm fortunate that we've developed some good strong roots.

12:32We have a a really good database for clients. So we're doing very well with, with that. So we're fortunate we have, uh, we have a good— we don't have a large turnaround in staff. Uh, we have— we attract new customers by means of proper customer, uh, retainment management. Yeah. Um, through Napa, through myself. I've also— I do a little bit on TikTok also.

13:00Yeah, just kind of introduced a shop in there, and we're going to do a little bit of collaborating with Mark, and you kind of mix the two a little bit. He of course does his own thing, but just, uh, he does a couple of cameos. Yeah, so it's great. He's the first technician I ever spoke to that, like, he could really show me the value of what it was bringing to his workplace, you know what I mean?

13:24His engagement. And I know lots of technicians that are like, I want to do my online thing and I don't want to ever have customers come in here because of my online thing. And he was completely the other way around. He was like, dude, it's been so good. I've had people come from all over the country to get him to look at their car.

13:41And I'm just like, you know, there might be something to that, right? So the marketing thing is just fantastic. Like, it's, you know, and I know in my branding how important and how pivotal TikTok was for me in terms of getting that next level of growth that I got. Because I don't post there a ton now live, and I never go live.

14:00I haven't gone live yet. I probably should. And now that the reels and everything are going on, I don't have to go on as much. But it was pivotal for getting another people, another demographic to find me. It was great. Are you single location, Marco? As of right now, we're single location. I'm currently developing another building right this minute, actually. Congratulations. Oh, thank you.

14:24Yeah, it's, uh, it's gonna be a 5-bay shop to start. Uh, it's 6— a little over 6,000 square feet. Uh, it was an old bookbindery that, uh, that has the, you know, really great bones, but, uh, there's no water drainage, there's no, uh, exhaust evacuation, there's, uh, a lot of things that don't meet code. So the purchase of the building was one thing, but fitting it up to be a shop is a complete different thing.

14:51Where this is an 8-bay shop, uh, with 8 bay doors. Yeah, this is going to be just one 14 by 11 foot, one big door, and we drive in and drive out of the same door. Kind of hopefully cut down on costs with between maintenance on doors and hydro and heat and all that stuff. Yeah, that's the plan. And hopefully I'm— I've also invested in, uh, the ultimate ADAS system.

15:19Okay, cool. So it's sitting there waiting to get installed. I've cut the concrete and there's a shallow pit there where the hoist gets inside and it's a flush mount, right? Yes. So, so that's what's happening right now. So we're waiting for, you know, making sure that we're doing everything in compliance to the city, make sure that the city is happy, the engineers are happy.

15:42There's some— that's a huge time delay and all those things because the paperwork unfortunately has eaten up weeks and months of time. So I've, I had the building since October last year, so I'm really hoping to have it up and running by, uh, June. I hope it's not later than that. So yeah, it's like, it can be a slow process for sure, especially like, you know, I've had so many people tell me it's faster to build a new building sometimes and get all that hurdles done.

16:11Than to try and take something that's established and get the city to approve what you want to do with it, which is— I don't want to get into a political thing, so I won't. But it's a shame sometimes that that is such a slow process because that machine you've got sitting there, it's paid and it's not earning you enough, any kind of revenue yet to start paying it off.

16:32Right. And so the bank is sitting there looking at this. Right. Yeah, it's frustrating. That's Is there anybody else in your local area that's really going after the ADAS? There's a few, some dealers, there's some mobile people. When you're a mobile, you still need floor space. And unfortunately, I don't know how they do it. I guess they do it in the parking lot somewhere because a lot of shops, once they have their two-post hoist or four-post hoist in the way, it's difficult to put their mats somewhere that way they can hit the targets..

17:08But the way I've done it, I worked closely with the Hunter rep, Raymond Roost, is actually his name. Nice. He's been phenomenal, I have to tell you. And he's been coming in and drawing out lines in the concrete. Then we cut the concrete. And then as the plans progress, he's away on holidays at the moment, but he's going to come by and just to make sure that everything is still the way it should be.

17:32That way we're not going to have any issues with the assembly, with the operation. And then most likely we're going to train out of, uh, that shop. Awesome. For other, uh, Hunter possible customers. Yeah, so, uh, there could be some training coming out of there, and we're going to attract some, uh, some local shops that need ADAS calibration and everything to do with ADAS.

17:59I'm hoping that that we can kind of be ahead of the curve. I hate following. I like to lead. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you, man. That's— that takes a bold move, right? Because a lot of it's— it's a touchy subject. The ADAS really is, because like everybody's got, you know, all I've done, like, you know, we were talking about it and I've talked about it, like I pull a lot of bumpers off to, to either replace the bumper where I'm at or, you know, I had a Durango, pull the bumper off to do the radiator, right?

18:33There's the camera. You pull it off. And after that, because we're not set up with the facility, we're a small operation, I don't have it. It gets sent out to be calibrated. I don't know what happens to it after that. You know what I mean? Like, I don't ever— it's not like I'm ever going to go and— if there's a warning light on, there's a warning light on.

18:52But I don't, as a routine, go out and sit there and still trust it that I'm going to go right up on somebody's butt cruise on and wait for it to slam the brakes on for me. Like, I'm not there yet where I'm not trusting, right? You know, so knock on wood, we've had no issues and we've never had a customer come back and say, hey, the car is changing lanes for me, or, you know, acting erratic.

19:15But I wish it was one more thing that we could, in a perfect world, keep in-house and no one control and all that kind of stuff, because there are some shady people that are just like Right, getting the— you know, you hear horror stories. The dealer guys are like, oh yeah, I just wheel it up and start pushing some buttons, and I pull down on the target a little bit and the thing is calibrated.

19:34Bang. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, wow, you know, that's, um— but it comes back to, you know, it's just like an alignment. How well do you want your alignment done? Do you want it done the way it's supposed to be done? Well, that's not a, you know, 20-minute, 15-minute, 10-minute type of thing anymore. It's a correct process. And, and, you know, we have to educate our customers on why it takes longer, why it costs more, because we're after a better result.

20:00And, and, you know, I think when we start to use verbiage like that, people understand, you know. Then it's not like you're— well, we're comparing an apple to an apple. You're comparing like— I'm comparing the absolute best possible way that this car could be repaired versus I'm giving you a repair. I think that that kind of carries some weight when we start to have it.

20:21But again, it comes down to communication. You know, it's, it's tough. We have to really delve into— that's why, you know, the people I think that are in the industry and they're having conversations like Mark and they're putting themselves out there, there is such a good future ahead of us for people that are comfortable communicating what they're actually trying to do. I think for years, you know, when you and I came up, we just fixed the car.

20:47Yeah. And we never really told the customer all the steps in the detail, and, you know, they were just happy to have a fixed car. And I think we need to going forward, because the prices are the price, we need to have a lot more conversations about why it's that what cost, because otherwise, you know, we're going to lose ground every day to people that just like, I'm not fixing it, you know.

21:09Right. So The other thing is that a lot of, um, some people I talk to saying, hey, you know, aren't you getting up in years? Like, aren't you being greedy? Why would you want to open up another shop? Your auto repair shop doesn't slow down, and neither should your tools. When diagnostics get more advanced, systems get smarter, and vehicles get more complex, one name keeps shops moving forward: Launch Tech USA.

21:32From powerful diagnostic tools to ADAS calibrations, wheel alignments, TPMS service, even heavy-duty solutions, Launch Tech USA delivers speed, accuracy and control where it matters most. Faster, smarter, more diagnostics done right the first time. Whether you're working on passenger vehicles, fleets, EVs, or advanced driver systems, Launch Tech USA gives your technicians the confidence to tackle anything that rolls into your base. Backed by constant software updates, expanding vehicle coverage, and real support from real experts, Launch Tech USA isn't just keeping up, We're pushing the industry forward.

22:10So if you're ready to work faster, diagnose better, and stay ahead of the curve, visit our website at www.launchtechusa.com. And so it's not about being greedy, it's about being relevant and keeping this store moving. And as the times change and the needs change, you don't have the floor space to deal with it. Yeah. So the, uh, another issue I have that this other shop is going to help with, first of all, it's a satellite shop.

22:43There aren't going to be customers going there. Right. So a car gets inspected. If there's 8, 10, 12, 20 hours of the work, it gets brought over there. We're currently working on an Audi that was supposed to be just a water pump. As you remove the top plenum there, we found all kinds of leaks. Now it's apart and now we have to order more parts.

23:02Now I have it down bay. Yeah. So, and these parts are not next door, they're 2, 3, 5 days away. So in the other location, I'll be able to not have the worry because, you know, it takes, you know, one down bay and you have, especially tire season, you have, you have, you know, 20, 25 cars booked that day and you have one bay, one bay that's down.

23:24Yeah. So nothing's worse. Yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating. And I know, you know, you guys do a pile of tires. I think everywhere in Canada in the wintertime does a pile of tires. Right. And it's, and it's good for the business. But I mean, you know, it's so tough when you, you, you see that car come in and it's just there for tires, and you see all that work that it needs.

23:44I have to be very careful I say this because the trolls will get on me. Um, and you see all that work that it needs, and you see that car drive away because you just can't fit it into your schedule, or you just don't have the room to be able to process it. And it's not— I have to preface this, people— we're not trying to reach into your wallet and rebuild you and, and, you know, to yank out all your disposable income before Christmas.

24:06That's not what it's about. But it's like we may have not have seen that car since last April, and then you bring it in in November and all of a sudden, you know, you didn't know that you had brakes that were that bad and you didn't know that the tires that we took off last, you know, winter in the springtime are now dry rotted and, you know, at that age where they should be replaced.

24:28So all of a sudden, what you thought was just going to be, you know, $120 tire rotation is now into the thousands of dollars to, you know, bring this car back up to a safe level. In Canada, we get labeled all the time as like it's twice a year where we're trying to really, really, you know, take advantage. And it's not that.

24:48It's just we have a very specialized climate up here that's hard on vehicles. And then it's a situation that twice a year you're going to see us and we don't want you driving around on bald tires and we don't want you driving around in with heating systems that don't work or a windshield that won't defrost, tie rods that are not going to keep the car pointed where— like we could go on and on and on, right?

25:12So we're not trying to, you know, rebuild your cars. We're trying to keep you safe for that winter because if you've never seen a Canadian winter, you don't know what it's like. It's, you know, other— yes, in the States there's lots of snow, but it's different up here. I think it's got to do with like our roads are Maybe like, how's the potholes in Winnipeg this spring?

25:32It's disgusting. Yeah. I mean, I should complain, but it does create business for us. We had a car yesterday, 3 broken coils, 3 out of 4. Unfortunately, it was on a Saturn where parts are incredibly hard to find. Like, wow. This nice old lady, she's upset that she can't get parts, but North America doesn't have it. They don't make these parts, you know, not an aftermarket anyways.

26:00No. So, you know, it becomes now a search. Look for something on eBay, look something, you know, got to find these little possible avenues of trying to source some parts. It's not easy. And it forces her to rethink, should I put that money in or should I replace that car? So yeah, it's a hard decision for someone on a fixed income. So And that's tough because Saturn's— I've met a few of those customers.

26:25And my mother's good friend Heather, God bless her, she still loves to talk about her Saturn because of the way when that Saturn came along, the way they got a hold of the customers and showed them what made Saturn so special within the industry and how they loved it and took care of the customer. A lot of those people just don't want to let go of that car.

26:47But it's— Saturn's been a, you know, an extinct brand now for a decade, right? Right. And to think now there's still one driving around is pretty cool. I can't remember the last one I've seen. It's probably been 3 or 4 years. But yeah, I can only imagine trying to find parts is just, you know, asinine. Like, it's got to be ridiculous. I know we tried to find— oh, it was an airbag for one.

27:10Um, it was a situation the horn didn't work, and I was at a shop and the horn did not work, couldn't get an airbag. Um, and The old gentleman did not want to replace the car just because of that. Right. And I'm thinking, but— and that's the situation. Like some of these people, they don't need a new car. They're going to like— the car is going to outlive them or their usable time driving it.

27:33So to just say, oh, I can't, you know, sorry, you got to scrap your car because we can't get coil springs for it. That's a tough conversation to have. It really is. So, you know, you have to get creative with, like you said, looking online, alternate sources, you know. But at the end of the day, you still have somebody with a car that they can't really use as you're trying to.

27:53It's frustrating. That's the biggest part that always tugs at my heart is when somebody needs the vehicle and we're waiting and waiting and waiting. That's the part that just always catches me, you know, offside. And I feel like really helpless. We do everything we can to find, you know, be creative in finding parts. Unfortunately, there's not always a win. Yeah. That's the problem.

28:17Yeah. Now you're with NAPA AutoPro, right? Yeah. How does that work for you? Pretty good. It's really good. They have a business development group that we as owners on a bimonthly basis get together, talk about strategies, talk about what makes, what works and what doesn't work. We talk about our advertising scheme. We talk about things that try to— what one shop is more successful at than another.

28:45So we try to do our best to encourage each other. Sometimes there's a tool one shop needs, a tool that is a little bit difficult to get or not everyone has. And so we share amongst ourselves. So even though at the end of the day we are competitors, we do support each other. Yeah. So we're not related in any other way other than the fact that we carry the AutoPro badge.

29:12And NAPA as a whole does a very good job of supporting. And it's not just about getting the parts at the right price. All that, of course, is important. You know, being in Winnipeg, it's very important. Yeah. It's the quality that they stand behind, the warranty. They just introduced a new 3-year, 36,000— no, wait, 3-year, 60,000-kilometer warranty. Nice. Which is great. I know some other suppliers also have that, but They've made that a rule now.

29:43And we get, you know, warranty labor through them, which at a decent labor rate before it was pretty bad. So they increased labor. So warranty is not so terrible. Another thing that NAPA has that I don't know who else has it is the roadside, roadside assistance, which is good across Canada, actually North America, actually. So especially coming time for holiday season, you know, you do a maintenance package, you get some NAPA roadside included.

30:10And you don't have to worry about, say, you don't have to depend on it completely. So you can have a backup, we'll say. Because I know a tenure that I did at a shop, shout out to my friend Rob. I just had breakfast with him this morning. His shop's Snap Auto Pro and he loves it. Yeah, we were just talking about the same thing.

30:27He did, him and some of the staff went to one of the annual meetings that you're talking about, like once every other month. And they literally, okay, bring in You're all going to break a brake estimate together. You know, they give the same car. Here's your brake estimate and a battery. Let's see your price breakdown and everything else. And he said it ran the gamut from like $1,200 to, you know, $3,800 depending.

30:52And he's like, and that's not to say that they were trying to say, well, you're too cheap and, well, you're too expensive, but just let's come together and have a conversation about how you actually set the matrix up. What parts of the available to you are you putting on? What's your labor looking at and all that kind of stuff. There's so many of us in this industry that like everybody wants to keep their stuff so close to their chest, you know, as if they've got something up on somebody else down the street.

31:17And I have never understood that because to me, when I walked out of the dealer, it became really obvious to me that it's like, it seemed like it was the dealer and then it was the aftermarket. It was us versus them. And then I would get into the aftermarket and like they weren't even sharing and they weren't helping one another. Whereas the dealers, like if dealer is helping dealer, it's because they're under the same owner.

31:41That's the reason that happens. And I always thought if the aftermarket could just kind of like, you know, like you said, appreciate that we're a competition, but we're out here to try and serve our community and, and help one another, we wouldn't have half the obstacles we have. But it just seems like, you know, it seems like so many, Marco, just want to be the cheapest.

32:05That's what I have to do, right? And I don't think you guys are the cheapest by any stretch, are you? No, no, we can't be. Yeah, it's a race to the bottom, and I'm not interested. You know, I have very good technicians that I want to pay, make sure I have enough money to pay for. I'm continually investing in new equipment, uh, maintaining the building, trying to stay on top of all the regulations that are imposed upon us.

32:27Yeah, it all comes with a cost— environmental costs, uh, you know, there's your city, provincial, and the federal taxes that are all there. So, you know, as a business— and we're on Portage Avenue, which is the Trans-Canada Highway. Yes. So you can't be a shady, you know, run-of-the-mill shop. You have to represent, you know, you're on a major thoroughfare. Yeah. So if you're going to be in a major thoroughfare, you have to have a building that looks like it should.

32:56It can't be a lean-to. Yeah. Wow. I mean, and that's— what's the— I'm trying to think. It's Portage and Main. What's the famous— is that like a Guess Who song or something? The lyric for my thing, and it's Portage and Main or something I heard. And I'm gonna say the Guess Who, and people are gonna be like, what? You know, if you— if you— if you're a music head, you'll know.

33:19And that's the Guess Who, you know, became Randy Bachman, Bachman-Turner Drive. Old, old Winnipeg boys from way back in the day, right? So I mean, good on them. That's kind of your musical history from Canada for this week. But I, I, that really resonates what you're saying with me because it's like we talk so much about how location is so important, you know what I mean, in this industry of being able like to get your car count where it needs to be.

33:42And right, you know, you can save on your marketing if you're in a, in a high-flow area, but you know, it's the end of the day, if you're not doing it right, it doesn't matter. You can spend all the money in the marketing in the world, have the best location, you can't survive. And I think that that's, you know, going forward, we have to have more of those conversations like, how is he able to do it versus, you know, the guys that fail, people that you've seen come and go.

34:07Marco, why did they go? Why do you think? A lot of it has to do with customer service is first and foremost. I find that even answering the phone, if you're— how can I help you? If you have a tone where you don't care, Chances are you don't. I try to tell my people, if you can say thank you for calling Maximoff for an auto with a smile, it resonates through the conversation that you're a welcoming company.

34:37Yeah. So being positive on your approach is huge. Image is another. If I just replaced part of my asphalt last year. Did I have to do it? No, but it looked terrible. I didn't like it. So, I did that for image reasons. I painted the inside of my showroom, replaced the chairs. You know, each chair was over $800. Now, it's one chair.

35:09Now, I had to make sure that it was the type of material where because it was COVID, you know, if you have a— I want to make sure it's cleanable. It's not a material that it's difficult to sanitize if I have to. So, I had to think of all these things, make sure that the furniture was sanitizable, we'll say. Yeah. Anyways, so a lot of shops you go to, they have every kind of mismatched chair out of your neighbor's kitchen.

35:34I don't like that. So, I want to make sure that the setting is approachable. I mean, a lot of dealers, they have a fireplace in there. They have these leather couches and these fancy coffee machines. I get it. You know, they have a lot of financial backing and deep pockets. I don't. So I want to make sure that it's as clean and presentable.

35:56I pay for cleaners every week. A lot of shops don't do that. I go to shops and it looks like it's— there's been dirt there that's been there for the last— since the '70s. Yeah. I've got old graphics from the '80s sitting on the table, right? Like, how long has that been in print? Like, a long time. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the big screen TVs, definitely I see it more and more where you, you need that in your, in your waiting room.

36:20And I always said like, you need at least two because you want one that's showing whatever the news or the hockey game or the, you know, the Blue Jays if they're playing. But you also want one— I said there, I saw so much power in when they had a screen and it was just showing reels and loops of repairs or services or that kind of stuff in the shop done with the— and I went, that's powerful because the people then they see, okay, this is what actually looks like when they're balancing a tire.

36:46This is what it actually looks like when they're doing alignment, like so many things. So it's almost part of your marketing again within the building on a TV screen as you're sitting there. And then if they don't look at it, they don't look at it. If they stare at their phone, they stare at their phone. But it's that little bit. If it catches their eye and they watch for a minute and a half, 2 minutes, I mean, we're all in this TikTok world now where we watch for 6 minutes and that's it, right?

37:10So why not make it where we put some of those videos that we create, you know, that Mark's doing or something and put them right in our own showroom. If the people are going to be waiting, at least give them something to watch that's going to show your value. I subscribe to AutoNet TV. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And they, uh, you, you pick the categories you want, and, uh, it also has some of your own stuff in there.

37:33So, and it rotates and it keeps it fresh and keeps it interesting. And, you know, there's customers that are waiting there for 2 and 3 hours or see the same video 5 times, but yeah, unfortunately, uh, that's the way it goes sometimes. But typically it It has some sort of informational that shows you the charging system and how it works. It shows you the benefits of a power steering flush, the benefits of a fuel injection service.

37:56All these things are on there and is done in such a way that it's very professional and informative. And it gives someone— it puts a seed in someone's mind and say, hey, I should get that done sometime. Are you stepping at all, putting your toe into the EV and HV? Or EV in a hybrid kind of mode yet? Or so there's a lot of discussion with that.

38:19Napa is focusing on NexDrive. Yeah. And because of that, they're really putting pressure on me and Maxim to get into NexDrive because a lot of our AutoPro family don't have a lot of room for. Yeah. So because I'm developing this shop, I have room for a couple of bays for EVs, but it's like anything else. I have to walk before I run.

38:48I have to make sure that the shop is successful in what I intended it to be successful on. Mm-hmm. Once it becomes a viable or workable space, then I'll move forward into something EV, into either the hybrid version or something plug-in. We'll see. It all depends on how it goes, but it's definitely not off the table. Yeah. Yeah. It's going forward. I mean, I talked about this week about like we have, we have our first Tesla since I've been at my repair center where it's that we've actually had a Tesla to sell.

39:22And that's, you know, so I've been there a year and it's the first one that we've got. And, you know, again, not to do the political thing, but if fuel prices keep the way they are, we will see more of them.. And it's just, it's a given. And I don't like them. I don't like working on them, not because I'm scared of them, I just— other reasons.

39:41And but I have to just accept that it's like, it's here and I need to step up my game and learn how to service them and how to fix them. And lucky, I'm very lucky I can reach out to people within the network that are working on a lot of them and can say, hey, like, I got a Model X here, like, what do I do?

39:59You know, how do I— because the challenge seems to be finding parts.— it really does. We needed a set of front control arms for the Model X, and Napa was the only place we could go through. And Napa, at my shop, I'll admit, is not my first call, not our first call, for whatever reason. But they had a listing for these control arms that we needed for this Model X.

40:21Now, everybody told me the Model X is the worst to get parts for. So I don't know if that's the truth or not. But I mean, I'm not looking forward to working on more of them, but we're going to have no choice. It's just here. Now, can the whole infrastructure in the country support Everybody know right now it can't. But, you know, with NAPA getting on board the way they are, like you were saying with the OneDrive, it's— I think it's whether we want it to or not, it's going to be here.

40:46And I'm going to see a lot more shops that I know in my area tackle it because their banner group wants them to, you know, invest in it. So— and the support behind NAPA is huge. Yeah. So when it comes to NextDrive, the reality is, is that there's a tremendous amount of training that has to happen. There is a— so being a single independent operator, it's difficult to invest in the equipment, invest in the education and the training and the risk becomes you spend all this money.

41:23So there's $34,000 per student or tech to get to the level you have to be to work on EVs. 34 and up. So what happens if you invest in that person and they walk? Yeah, right. So now you got to start again and you need, you need two, you need two. Um, so, you know, if someone goes on holidays, someone is sick, uh, someone gets hurt, that happens all the time.

41:53And now your EV that you're supposed to be dealing with, you say, I, I have to wait till he gets out off of WCB. You know, it doesn't work that way. You got to have a couple of guys. Yeah. And the other thing is that being modular type of work where it's not so much taking a component out and repairing it, it's taking it out and replacing it.

42:14So the issue also becomes when you have a car that comes in, that's an EV and the component is thousands and thousands of dollars between either battery, the motor, the whatever it is. The margin is very narrow. Yes. The labor isn't very high. That's right. And then going through all that and then the customer backs out. What did you do all that work for?

42:39Yeah. So, you know, the cars that come in, I saw one quote on a Volt, a GM Volt. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I saw a battery quote for $20,000. The battery was $17,000 and change, some labor and taxes over $20,000. What do you think that person is going to do? They're not going to fix it. They're just going to trade it in.

42:59So yeah, and there's no money in that job anyways. You know, batteries, there's no margin. So what ends up happening is you spent all that money in training and equipment and the customer backs out anyways. So there has to be a return on investment that makes it worthwhile, because if you're going to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars between equipment and training It's got to, you know, I don't want to spend 35 years trying to repay, trying to, you know, balance the books.

43:29It's just not right. You can't do it. No, man, you touched on some good stuff there, Marco. It's the same as like when we see every change comes along, right? And, you know, we talk about the refrigerant thing like we're still talking about 1234 like it's new, but it's not. It's been out for 10 years, you know, and phasing it out. Yeah.

43:52And, and, and, you know, people are like, I can't believe it costs, you know, $500 for an AC evaluation on a car. And it's like, have you seen the price of the refrigerant? Like, it's— and then when they bring in the next one, and that frustrates me because now they want to phase out 1234. Yeah. And bring in I don't know what's going to be next, and whether it'll, it'll come with a whole other set of challenges.

44:15And, you know, all these these equipment that just people just got the damn AC machine paid for, right? You know, they've gone through 2 oxygen sensors in their 1234 machine, and now we're going to phase that out and it's going to sit in the corner. And, and every time we go turn it on in the corner to use it, we're gonna have to put a bloody, you know, $1,000 sensor in it to make it work.

44:35Like, at some point, we in this industry have to come together and start to share. And here's the other thing, I keep saying it all the time, specialization, whether people like it or not, is going to become a very real thing because you're just not going to be afford to say, I can do it all anymore, right? If you're going to do ADAS, you might have to say, I'm going to do ADAS, but I'm not going to do heavy engine line work, or I'm not going to do, you know, a bunch of— I'm not going to be your transmission shop.

45:06Like, you know, we're just— it's going to take so much skill and equipment that you're going to have to diversify. Otherwise, the door rates are going to be $300 an hour everywhere., and people are not going to be able to afford it. And that's something that I'm all for door rates going up if it pays the tech more, but I'm on the fence about like door rates going up just because the technology forces it to go up.

45:31I'm not necessarily on board with that. It's a, it's a funny dynamic for me. So, well, I invest with, uh, like the AutoTech. Like Napa has a course, it's called AutoTech, And we just came back from an AC course on Tuesday. Yeah. And talking about a lot of those things just now, we're recovering or testing, and a lot of people don't test the AC because it's been contaminated with RedTech or some sort of chemical.

46:02They don't understand the risks we take. Yeah. And our machines that can end up being garbage— not say garbage, but needs heavy repairs. Yeah. To get it cleaned up again so that we can do the next repair. So it becomes— people don't see that side, unfortunately. No. And I have 3 AC machines in the building, and fortunately, uh, it's— they're, they're mostly well maintained.

46:25There's a couple that have to go in for servicing because it's due. But again, that's another cost. Like, to service these machines, they don't run forever. They got to be serviced, and the cost isn't cheap. And sometimes the servicing is half the price of the machine. Yeah. So if it gets to that, then I have to think, well, it's an 8, 9-year-old machine.

46:46Do I repair it or just replace it? Yeah. It's the same thing with cars. People don't want to start putting, especially with the Chinese cars that are coming. I don't know if you've seen BYD. Have you seen BYD? We've had some talk about that. And I've heard the different numbers where it said it could hit our market and be anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000.

47:08You know, and then like that low mark— well, maybe I'm wrong, maybe my numbers are a bit wrong. If you, if you know what they are, correct me. But I mean, like, I've heard $20,000 is going to get somebody a new BYD. Yeah. And it'll have like a 5-year warranty on it. And, you know, incentives. Yeah, incentives. And our government, of course, like, is going to come in and make everything like seem like it's the greatest thing in the world.

47:31But people that are listening And again, I don't want to get political, Jeff. We're going to look at that and go, that's great, until you try to take that somewhere away from where BID sold it. And all of a sudden somebody's going to say, I need this fixed. And you're going to be like, mm-mm. It's already like Tesla like that. If you're not in a major metropolis where Tesla has a dealership, like where I live, there isn't a Tesla dealer yet.

47:57We do. I'm sure they want to put one there. We have one. But it isn't there. Yeah, it's a 2-hour drive for their service tech to come from either Toronto or Ottawa to service Tesla in this, in this community that I'm in. And I'm not in a small community, I'm in Kingston. Kingston's very well established and all, we just don't have a dealer here.

48:15Probably get one. So when people say that this is the solution to, you know, repair costs, um, I can definitely tell you that I I'm a hard sell on the idea that EV is a solution to anything right now. And I'm even a harder sell that the BYD coming from, you know, Far East is the solution. I don't believe it is for a minute.

48:41The infrastructure is just not here to support the brand. Let's look at like Mitsubishi in Canada. Hard to get service and parts for Mitsubishi if you live outside of an area. 100%. Now imagine that if it's a brand new brand that's EV only, how that's going to look. It's going to be terrible. Well, I'm going to tell you, Jeff, I was blessed to visit Australia and Vietnam, and I've been in the BYD cars.

49:13Yeah. And they are spectacular. Yeah, absolutely. Spectacular. I'm a fan. And I never thought I'd say that, Jeff. I swear to God, I never thought I'd say that. But we were in Sydney and I was going on escalator and there was a kiosk there where these 3 BYD cars were. One was a half-ton and it was all electric, by the way. 1400 km range.

49:41It's a game changer. And they're plate-style batteries. They're not the typical alkaline batteries or lithium batteries, I should say. Yeah, the batteries are these plates, and they're saying they can charge from 20% to 80% in -40 Celsius. Yeah, in 8 minutes. Yeah. Now I want to see that to believe it. That's their claim, right? So they said it's been tested. Anyways, the point is they're absolutely spectacular vehicles, and they use them for taxis.

50:14Yeah. And Ubers. Yeah. So no Uber company is going to take a vehicle that they can't trust because they got to make money on it. Yeah. If an Uber is on the road, are they making money if it's laid up for one technical problem? No. So they're going to pick vehicles. So we're also in another brand called VinFast in Vietnam. A company has only been around since 2017.

50:41Wow. They're building cars that are mid, like compact, mid and larger. I couldn't believe it. And everything from hybrid to electric, gorgeous cars. I saw one little car, $10,000. Who's going to fix their used car when they can get a car for that cheap? Imagine what's going to happen to the used car sector. It's going to be in trouble. In Canada, what's the last brand new car that you can remember being sold for $10,000?

51:11No. No, I can't. Right. How many decades ago? And it's going back that far. I can remember when the first Hyundai Pony hit Canada. And I remember actually Dad posted, you know, pointing them out going— and I want to say it was probably, I don't know, whenever that came, it would have been '89 or something. I would have been like that. Yeah.

51:30'84, '85. And he was like, you could buy that car for $6,000. Yeah. And it had— it still had a points distributor in it. And it was like a very, you know, non-AC, but you could buy a brand new car with some kind of warranty for $6,000. Of course. Yeah, it's, it's crazy now what— how do I say that— what the industry has gotten itself into, where we're putting out products that most of our people now can't afford.

51:56And then we sit back and we go, um, we don't want our citizens to buy from foreign entities either. No. Well, you know, right now if you live in some of these places in Canada, there isn't a bus that goes past your house. There's not a— you know, you're not living downtown Toronto, you just jump on the subway or jump on bus, or it doesn't exist.

52:16You don't get to work that day, your kids don't get to school, right? So we are going to see, whether we like it or not, it come into this, this country. And, uh, I'm scared for what it's going to do to a lot of established, um, shops if we're not willing to tackle the technology. And I'm 50, so I kept saying, I'll be all, you know, I'll be done by the time it really comes on.

52:39And now I don't think I'm going to be done by the time it gets here. I think it's going to happen really fast. So unfortunately, that's It's going to be like, for example, there's another company called Chery is another Chinese manufacturer is coming. Another one starts with a G, escapes my mind. But there's these 3 huge Chinese companies that are looking to make a market out of Canada.

53:05And so for what I've seen with BYD and their vehicles are impressive. So I don't blame people for buying them because it's going to be worth every— you know, it's got a lot of bang for your buck. Yeah, yeah. So it all depends on how they stand up to our winters, right? And corrosion, what that gonna do to the connections and all the grounds and all the heating system.

53:32The heating system, right? It's got heating and cooling for these batteries. So it's going to be something to keep an eye open for. And, you know, even our potholes I saw one vehicle that got the pothole dented the undercarriage where the cooling system was. And MPI wouldn't cover it. Yeah. When I say MPI, it's Manitoba Public Insurance. So they wouldn't cover it as they were saying you're going too fast for the road conditions.

54:02So they blamed the customer. I mean, you can't avoid them. You can't avoid these potholes. Anyways, it's going to be pretty interesting to see what happens when these car manufacturers come in and see what it's going to do to the industry. Because in this small city, we have a handful of GM, Ford, Chrysler dealerships. Once they get here, a few of those are going to go away because they can't keep up.

54:28They're not going to have the sales that I believe these other manufacturers are going to really force. I was looking at vehicles, they don't want to step back behind sticker price. MSRP is this number and that's what we're selling it at. We're not going down a dollar. Yeah. So we'll see. Now, moving away from that topic of the technology, we'll go back around to, we're celebrating Mark and how he's one of those people in the industry right now that we want a million more of, right?

55:01If we could just snap our fingers, we'd want to get another million Tobitex. How do you find the shortage? Is it impacting you? Like, you know, were you a long time trying to find Mark or a guy like Mark? Or do you seem to— if the culture's, you know, working right, it's not all that hard. That's what some people tell me. Well, there you said it.

55:24Yeah. If the culture is solid So in this shop, besides benefits, I have a pension plan. There's all kinds of things that Maxim does offer. We have a good solid team up front. Dennis is my manager. Azim is my assistant manager. Nick, Alex is service advisors. I'm looking to get another service advisor. The point is that if you have a good solid team, it doesn't take much because when you're proud to be working somewhere, yeah, it's easy to attract others.

55:55Fortunately, that, you know, I have a little bit of history with Mark. That was my, that was my open door, we'll say. So that happened there. And then Mark reached out and one of my favorite guys is moving back to his home country in Vietnam. And so I have another spot opening, right? And so he went on TikTok and in his Toba Tech and I got a resume and I hired a guy in literally 2 days.

56:23Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. So I'm very lucky when it comes to finding people. It doesn't take too, too long. And, you know, you got to be selective, right? Because a lot of people are looking for work and they're just hopping from one place to another. And I don't have time for that. And there's a lot of people that are grossly underqualified. Yeah.

56:41And the resume doesn't tell the truth. And unfortunately, the first interview or second interview, actually, You don't really get the full picture until you're working with them on a regular basis. And now the real personality comes out. And now you have to deal with, you know, I got to, I got to find somebody else, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. And, you know, Marco, you've probably seen it in some of the conversations how shops are trying even working interviews and bringing them in for a week and to do, you know, and to try them out and see what they do a couple of days, you know, watch them, see how they tackle different diagnostic problems

57:17and what their work practices look like. And, you know, Mark's got a whole resume on his channel of him doing the work and showing, you know, what it looks like and what he found and all that kind of stuff. But would you entertain doing a working interview because of somebody that didn't have the resume that Toba has? I really am not sure how that would work for liability issues.

57:43I'm thinking more on the line of, you know, if I were to have someone temporarily and say I wanted to try them out and something goes south and then, or say he gets hurt, you know, he's not on your payroll. So who is this guy? You have to call him a contractor. You got to call him. What do you got to call him?

58:01You know, so there is a bit of a risk in there. So I'm not sure how that would work. I would like to, you know, save the amount of work it takes to hire someone new.. But unfortunately, it's not— I'm not 100% sure how it would work. That's all I could say. Yeah. Now, you talked on a lot of underqualified techs, and that's a tricky slope to kind of discuss that because there is the very real reality that a lot of us— and my good friend, he talks all the time about he'll get a guy that'll come from the dealership and like in the best case scenario, they only seem to be able to fix

58:41that one brand effectively. The real reality is, he said, they don't even fix that brand all that effectively and they have a bunch of bad work habits that come along with them that he says it's just not even worth the gamble anymore of trying to hire them. But yet the technology is so where we're at now that I think it sometimes forces that hand that we're looking at them that are trying to, you know, leave the dealership in mindset where at least they got some training, you know, or they got some— they got some exposure on cars that weren't all 10 and 12 years old.

59:14Like, it's crazy in my area how there's shops that you could go and work at and the newest car you might touch is already 10 years old, right? Like, you're not on the cutting edge of that. I mean, can you still get a process? Yes. Can you still get your— develop your basics? Yes. This stuff still works the same. But man, like, you know, you— those are the kind of shops that are like tearing the bumper off and causing ADAS problems because they don't even know what ADAS is, right?

59:41They don't even, you know, think about it. It's, it's a tough, tough thing to— and that's going forward, I'm trying to understand better is how to, how to communicate with my people when they're looking for work exactly what their abilities are, where their skills lie, where their strengths are, because I don't want to see them as everybody's going, "Oh, well, they're completely overselling themselves."

1:00:06Where they were prior yesterday, they were doing great, right? And they were maybe at the top. They topped out at the ability there and they topped out at the pay. They're not satisfied. They're putting their foot in the waters and trying to level up. But then they get somewhere and all of a sudden somebody's like, you're not what I needed. You're not.

1:00:25You're too far behind. At some point, this industry has got to take some of the responsibility for the fact that a lot of us are behind because we're not getting the training. You know, look at how Mark talked about one of the big things for him was when he was told he was going to go back to Asta, right? And then that was yanked out from underneath them.

1:00:47Yeah, well, we talked about that too. Yeah. And, and I, I point blank said, like, I'm a big proponent for, for training. Huge. If, if there's training, I, I grab it. If it's available, I make sure that everyone gets access to it. Um, with this new building that I have, that it's just difficult to orchestrate training on top of equipment that I got to buy, on top of making this shop up, uh, up and running.

1:01:17So, uh, he understands that I'm only going to do what I can. I'm not going to put myself in a position where I, you know, I'm jeopardizing bigger things because if I can't do training right now, I— and it's gonna happen 100%. And, uh, like I was mentioning, you know, we do this Auto Tech, and I try to make sure that as many people go as possible.

1:01:37Now, I don't like when guys go to these courses because there's a meal provided. Yeah, a lot of guys go there, they go to eat, and they fall asleep. Well, I get it. You worked all day and you filled your belly, and now you're looking at this guy talking at you and you've zoned out. Yeah, I get that. I don't like that.

1:02:01You know, if we're there for a reason— these courses aren't weekly, they're bimonthly again— so we want to make sure that the 3 hours that we're there, try to pay as much attention as possible. I mean, I'm guilty myself. After a long day of whatever, it's tough to— especially when the topic goes over my head, I'm not going to be want to admit I understand everything they're talking about.

1:02:21I don't. I'm an old school Red Seal. So unfortunately, a lot of the— I try to stay up on it, but because I'm not dealing with those struggles every day like Mark is, like my other lead tech Brian— these two guys, by the way, Brian Schoelenberg is another class act that I know. Maybe you haven't seen him or met him yet, but those two work great together.

1:02:44And he's another high-tech young man that really has his head on straight. I'm so proud of him. These two people, they really will advance not just Maxim, but also the industry because they're not afraid to tackle something, which is great. You need to have that going back to it. And I used to be better, and now I've come to accept that I don't want to say in the twilight of my career, but I don't have to know everything.

1:03:15I don't have to fix every car. Right. And I noticed that, and I'm— I— it brings me some peace, but I also realize that, like, I'm not as sharp as I used to be, because it used to be like I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't focus until I knew what was wrong with that car. Yeah. Now we're coming into a situation where we get cars into our shops now, and again, it's really easy to say when I was at the dealer and it was under warranty, I just had to find it, right?

1:03:43And I just would. It sometimes. Now we might be running out of the customer's budget before we can even get to the bottom of it, right? Right. Or you see these cars that have multiple problems, and that's the— going back to the communication thing— is trying to explain to the customer that like, yeah, you've got a rotten out, you know, EVAP problem, but you also have a transmission fault.

1:04:03They're not— one's not causing the other. They're not related. Like, you know, we have to be much more transparent in Yeah, you got a light on, but there's 9 codes in that car, right, that are all unrelated to— and the light's been on for 2 years, and now you're finally thinking, let's pass this down to my child and get all this resolved.

1:04:24We might have let it go too far because, you know, we're now into something that's going to be $2,000 to safety it. Hypothetically, it's probably closer to $4,000, right? And then, you know, we're trying to get the warning light off so that she can feel confident driving it to college next year. We might have missed the boat. And you know, it's tough because like, I— those cars that I never know what fixes would have fixed them because the customer just pulled the pin on the budget, right?

1:04:51Not that I'm in there going down rabbit holes and wasting people's money. Don't take that. But when we go to them with a very real thing of it's like, I'm gonna need 4 hours to dig into this, that's $150 an hour. There's "$600." People go, "Whoa." And then all of a sudden I'm genuinely curious what's causing that. But at the same time, it's like, do I ever really know?

1:05:14No. And that took a long time for me to get comfortable with. It was just saying, I'm not going to be able to fix them all. That took— You're a fisherman? Yes. So you know the term cut bait? That's right. Yeah. So that's what you got to do. Unfortunately, sometimes you got to cut bait. Bait. Yeah, it's just not, uh, it's not going to go where it's going to— you want it to go.

1:05:34It's going to be over budget for the value of the vehicle, for beyond what the customer can afford to pay. And you haven't even paid for the parts yet. You're just talking about diagnostic. So sometimes you just got to cut bait and say, look, this vehicle isn't worth it. Or, and sometimes we just don't have the information we need. So the dealer, some that they have access to their particular scanner or data that we don't have access to.

1:06:03And so they have to go there. So sometimes we as an independent, we have to cut bait to say, hey, you're going to have to go to the dealer for that one. Mark and I have a really good shared friend, Frank from 3D at Elmer Automotive. And we got talking about— because I had another former guest reach out to me about an '09 Compass.

1:06:22That he inherited as he moved into this new shop. And it's one of their own kind of loaner cars, right? So it's not dire, but when you hit the buttons for the windshield washer and you hit the button for the horn, neither work. Now when he got this car, it had a bunch of other electrical problems, LIN faults, all this kind of stuff.

1:06:41Um, and it's got a new clock spring, a new cluster, new tip-em, you know, all the new parts, and yet it still won't command the washer pump and horn on except unless you go through the scanner and turn it on. So we get talking, and Frank talks to me about he had one like that, a Caliber, way back when. And, you know, Frank determines that the cluster is bad, and so they put a cluster in it.

1:07:09It still doesn't fix it. Now Frank washes his hands of it, steps away, does the right thing, doesn't charge the customer a penny, right? And they take it to the dealership. The dealership— Frank sends all the paperwork with the car. The dealer looks at it gets his paperwork, gets theirs, and goes, well, there's your problem. You're using Identifix diagrams, which are the OE diagram.

1:07:29But Chrysler way back in the day was famous for having misprints in their wiring diagrams. Oh God. And the updated wiring diagrams showed them that there's a power wire missing to the cluster that's not there. And all they do is fix the wire and the car fixes. Now, in this industry, we hold ourselves to such a high standard, and we have all the day long the public saying The average incompetence level is disgusting.

1:07:54It's terrible. They can't fix squat. Think about that challenge for a moment right there, right? Of how what you're supposed to trust, your service information, is not factual, and you're getting it from not just one source, two source, but three sources. And then the dealer gets to come back in and look like the hero because— not because they're better technical because the software and the tech service information, excuse me, has been updated and corrected.

1:08:23That's not a level playing field, unfortunately, people. So have some grace when you don't fix the car because of insinuating situations like that. Don't beat yourself up too much because there isn't a, there isn't a top-tier tech anywhere I've ever talked to that's fixed them all. And I've talked— listen, ladies and gentlemen, I've talked to the best of the best. We're on a first name basis.

1:08:50They all have nightmares that they can tell you about. Yeah. So, you know, just based on what you were saying there, one of my— I also have a master tech. His name is Jason. He's my one of my Korean— he's a little guy, but he's a monster with a wrench. Right. And he was looking— he's chasing a wire diagram and a wire problem.

1:09:09So he took— he printed it. It. But you know how they print on the 8.5 by 11 sheet, it's hard to follow. So he taped them all together. Yes. And laid it on the hood, and then he followed the wire. And finally, and then he came to my desk and he clipped out this burnt-out wire. He goes, found it. Yeah, unreal. I went to the car and it was spaghetti.

1:09:32It was this wire harness that was unraveled and this disgusting mess. I don't know how this one particular section of wire decided to corrode and break and have pork. But anyway, is, uh, it's, it's wiring diagrams is, and it's such a hard thing to follow if you don't have, uh, the proper information. And case in point with that Chrysler schematic, if they don't give the proper schematic, you're just chasing your tail.

1:09:57And, and, and then you can't hold yourself to, you know, this level of perfection when what you're supposed to trust, like I'm going back to, isn't factual. It's not accurate, right? You know, you're just— it's only by luck or by pluck then that you're going to find it if you— what you have. Now I gotta ask you, in a scenario like that, Marco, when he's got all that time in and he finds that wiring and, and, you know, say he goes over the estimate, do you still cheer because you fixed the car, or do you get all up in your head about how much that cost as an owner and a boss and the whole

1:10:35thing? So that's mixed reaction, seriously, um, because my one of my most expensive people is going through 6, 7, 8 hours worth of time. You can't bill all that time, right? I'm super happy that he found it and was tenacious enough to deal through the winter, the whole thing, and found it, fixed it for the customer. The customer is super happy. I don't bill out all that time.

1:11:01And it's only because we want to make sure that— and I'll tell the customer, you know, it was 7.5 hours, you got billed 5.5 hours. You have a 2-hour discount. We can't do this every time. So you understand that they are getting some extra value. That way we get some loyalty and relationship built to the customer. So we want it to be a double win, but it doesn't always work that way.

1:11:28But that's the attempt. And good on you for being competent and confident enough to say, well, I'm going to charge the customer 5 hours. This is my value that I gave them. Them. I gave them a fixed car. We were so scared anymore. You know, we're still thinking like $250 is a lot of money. And listen, $250 is groceries. I get it.

1:11:52It's true. Barely. But you get Costco, you can't. But $250 in auto repair— now I put 4 tires on a CR-V the other day. It's over $1,000 easy. 4 tires, over $1,000. So So we have to stop thinking like $250 is a lot of money anymore. It's not. And if you're doing a labor thing, a lot of these problems, people, are going to be $3,000 to $5,000 fixes.

1:12:20And I hate to say that because we're not— before, look at some of these modules that we're going to have to buy. Look at some of these modules that we can't even get. Look at some of these ways now that we may be able to make the old module work. Work, what that's going to cost. Like, it is— we can't even look the customer in the face anymore and say, yeah, I can fix most things for $300, right?

1:12:43I can tune up most cars for, you know, $400. We can't do that anymore. No. And so stop holding yourself to such a live-or-die standard. Be transparent, be honest, advocate for them. And, and by God, the people that are doing the fixes for you, take care of them. And this will— a lot of this will take care of itself. But don't, don't live in your head about, you know, oh my God, like, all that profit got lost.

1:13:12That's why it's important that we are profitable, so that when something does go over, it doesn't mean that you, Marco, don't eat next week, or, you know, that your Napa bill doesn't get paid. Like, we need to be operating at a level where if we look after a customer and when we have a part failure and we have to do a warranty claim, it doesn't kill us.

1:13:35We can't have that in this industry anymore. Our customers won't tolerate it. They're not going to accept it. They are different now and they expect a certain thing. And if you're not operating to be profitable, if you're not operating to grow, you're not going to be around. I hate to tell you that. It's just, you know, bathroom break. Uh, sure. Yeah, if you wish.

1:13:55Definitely. Thank you. No, I do not mind. Completely understand. So we were talking about just before the bathroom break about, you know, profit and how it's so important and everything like that, you know, to invest it back into the business. And I gotta ask, Marco, what's the challenges? How do you build a really good tech like Toba? Can you build Well, it's unfortunately it's not something that we can— we can always encourage.

1:14:31We always recommend going through the apprenticeship program. We always encourage to, you know, there's some techs that, you know, are just happy just doing the basics, oil changes and tires and so on. But we want to kind of further their development and have them hang around those who are seasoned and know their thing. But not a lot of people have that drive.

1:14:51So people like Mark, people like Brian, I have some other techs that are juniors, like Josh wants to learn and he wants to do better. You know, he's just— it's the type of person that wants to develop that way. Unfortunately, there's some people that are happy with the status quo, and those people unfortunately aren't going to move you ahead into the next phase of the automotive world.

1:15:17World. When it comes to just— I wanted to finish up another point where I'm talking about, you know, when it comes to getting the proper diagnostic time. I just did a 2000 Corvette. Brian was working on a charging system issue, and he spent a good amount of time, and my service advisor was a little reluctant to bill that time. Yeah. So I stepped in and I had a nice conversation with the owner, and Don was gracious enough to say, hey, I want you to be here next time I need you.

1:15:53Yeah. Not a lot of people look at it that way. You know, he understood very well that, you know, his car wasn't an easy fix. He understood very well that there are costs that I got to deal with, technicians that deserve the pay they earn. Yeah. So there's a few people out there that get it. And, you know, when you have friends that come in, hey, can you give me a deal?

1:16:14Can you give me a deal? Meal. Yeah. Are they really your friends? You know, you got to wonder because getting— I go to restaurants and of friends of mine that are owners and I never ever ask for anything free. They want to give me free stuff. I pay for it because I know what it takes. That's right. The waste that in a restaurant, all the overhead, I understand.

1:16:38So, I make sure that if I'm going to be a friend, I don't ask how much. Watch. This is what it is. Perfect. Take it. You know, thank you. Thank you for the service. Thank you for the quality. All those things. Yeah, there's a lot of people that just say, hey, I know Marco, he'll give me a deal. Well, I don't get a deal at Hydro.

1:16:57Yeah, my interest rate isn't changing on my mortgage, so I'm not getting a deal from the bank. Yeah. You know, your insurance doesn't come down because, you know, you know the— your insurance dealer, your insurance broker, you don't get a break, right? Like, you might get a break for, for not having an accident, but it doesn't— like, it's not guaranteed. And yeah, you touched on something really— because let's be real, a 2000 Corvette, there's not too many jobs on one of them that's easy.

1:17:28No, right? And then you get into a charging situation, and that's going to be a seasonally used, occasional use car, which is hard on a battery, right? Which is then hard on the alternator. Right. Can you even get a, a trustworthy replacement alternator for it now? Like, that's the other option now, is that we're— where— what do you do? What are you into?

1:17:49And I, I just— my heart goes out to these people that are like trying to learn this technology, and they're learning it, but then they're saddled with somebody that just cannot grasp that we have to buy a premium part to get a successful repair. Repair, right? Because it's— nothing has kicked me more than when I do my diag and I follow my process and I put a part in and it doesn't fix the car, or it doesn't last, the repair doesn't last.

1:18:16And then I'm like, oh crap, what did I do? What happened? Was I right all along? And then when you tear it all apart and you're right all along, you're like, you know, there's that brand of part that I don't like. Or— and I'm not naming names here, I'm not trying to throw anyone on the bus because frankly Basically, they're all bad now.

1:18:33The OE parts are bad. What do you do? And it's like, you have to have made the profit on the job that you can take care of it, look after it, do the right thing, not punish your technician, not punish your customer, and not punish yourself. And that, that's going to cost money. It's just the unfortunate thing. A 2000 Caval— or how almost a Cavalier— it's going back to my days when I own one.

1:18:592000 Corvette is— I hate to be that person, but a person that owns that car can afford the proper repair. Yeah. And he could. And he was, uh, he was one of those guys where he understood that, uh, you know, he understood that there's commitments and costs. And, and that he knew that the technician by name, so he knows that Brian is a high-paid technician, and that money's got to come from nowhere.

1:19:28So what was the— what was the failure in that car? The alternator itself, or, uh, it was an alternator. It was the, uh, headlight dimmer switch that was cranked a little bit too far, and it created a parasitic draw. So it carried— yeah, so we, we replaced the alternator, and the battery was also— it passed the digital battery test. Yeah, but it didn't pass the carbon pile test.

1:19:50That's right. So, uh, he had warranty on the battery somewhere house. So he got the battery replaced, um, under warranty. It was under a year old, but I'm not going to say who the competitor was, but that's okay, you know. Yeah, yeah. And, and that, that's the real reality, right? Like, we're— and I know shops that won't even tackle parasitic drains, right?

1:20:15You know what I mean? And, and here's the thing, here's the other thing that always scares me is you see that car that comes in comes in and, you know, the battery's dead in it and it's a 4-year-old, 5-year-old battery, right? We all think about like, okay, it just needs a battery. Then you might see that car come back next week and they had to boost it, right?

1:20:36What becomes the process like? And everybody says, well, you, you missed that, it had a parasitic drain. You're right, we did. What becomes the reality now though if it takes some, some of these cars an hour and a half to go to sleep before we can accurately test a and a car comes in and it just has a discharged battery, what becomes our process in this industry that you, Mr.

1:20:56Customer, would approve? Do you want us to check every car for parasitic drain? We can certainly do that. Are you willing to now pay $400 for what could be a simple battery? No, they don't. No. And that's why we're always— I go back to it, I say, damned if you're doing, you're damned if you don't. You always have to It comes back to conversation.

1:21:20It comes back to advocacy for the customer. That's where our really strong people on the counter— and I feel like this is a good conversation because I haven't been really putting a fire to the service advisors like I have been lately, Marco, with some of my comments, because strong advisors make so many things so much easier. Right. And are they hard to find, Marco?

1:21:43Marcos, yes, I think service advisors are as big a challenge, if not more, because you can't train personality. That's a problem. You can't train a smile. If someone has an attitude, or every day is a bad day, or, you know, there's always something going on, some sort of drama, and they bring it to work, and it just brings down the team. And that becomes a problem.

1:22:12And again, when someone walks through that door, I'm sure you've heard it 1,000 times. You have 20 seconds to impress that person. Yeah, right. So if you fail in that 20 seconds, chances of making a sale is just that much harder. So you have to have a positive— and the way I look at it is if this person is a pleasant person, understands what is required, is willing to accept the challenge, and is a quick learner, Everything could be taught.

1:22:43It's just the personality part cannot. There's some people that are just downtrodden kind of people and that unfortunately is hard to mask time and time again when this customer comes in. And if that customer has a frustration and then unfortunately, it's happened here where the customer has a frustration and it's met with instead of a 'we'll take care of it,' comes in like, 'It wasn't our fault.'

1:23:12You can't have that attitude. Or that person's a B-word or a C-word. There's a lot of A, all these little words that we tend to call customers that are not understanding. Well, if you were on the other side of the counter and say, 'Hey, we were stuck on the side of the for X amount of time and tow truck took forever to get here and all these things.

1:23:38These people are frustrated and don't expect them to come in super calm and happy and go lucky. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. So it becomes a challenge for the service advisor, the manager, system manager to deal with this person in a professional way. Hey, look, we got you. We understand you're ticked off. We're going to take care of it. Here's the courtesy vehicle that we have.

1:23:59Like, fortunately, thinking I have 5 courtesy cars. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times it saved her butt. The job's supposed to be done at a certain time. The part arrived late. It didn't fit properly, whatever the reason is. So the, here's the car, go pick up your kids, go do your shopping. I'll see you tomorrow. Yeah. Thankfully that we have that option.

1:24:23But unfortunately, when it comes to dealing with customers, service advisors are key. They are the reason, like, I have— I don't know if you ever checked Maxim's reviews. We've just surpassed 900 at 4.8 stars. So very good, Marco. Very, very proud of that. I know that we've doubled most of anybody in Winnipeg, and that's not easy because people, as you know, are very willing to complain and very— yeah, they're very slow to commend.

1:24:59So when you get a review, it's high praise, right? So it's great to have those continual reviews and input. And we've— I've also just subscribed to— I don't know if you know where AutoOps is or Steer. It's a new company. Not new, but it's been around for a while. And I'm trying to get as much feedback I can from the customers because you want to maintain that solid customer base.

1:25:25Yeah. Because if you think it's solid and it's not, you don't have the feedback you think you should be getting. You think you have a false sense of security, and I don't want that. Yeah. Now, what do you feel about some of the talk in this industry, like, that we all need a coach? What do you think about that? So I'm— He's like, damn, Jeff, you bring some good questions.

1:25:50That's a really great question. Yeah, so, uh, Richard Danzero, uh, from Shop Pros— I had his pad here somewhere— super good guy. And, uh, he's just one of those guys that, uh, uh, he's in your corner, he wants you to learn, he's, uh, uh, wants you to understand the numbers. Because I come from a background, not a business background, right? I can't— I know I, I started out level 1 tech and all the way up to where I am now, but yeah, I needed the training, coaching Training is important.

1:26:20It's expensive. I'm not going to lie. It can be— it brings you out of your comfort zone. Yeah. And when you get all those things and you're forced to look at your business in another way because we're in a very analytical world and if you're not able to analyze what you're doing and how you're doing where you're lacking, where you're excelling. You have to figure that all out.

1:26:49Unfortunately, it's not easy for me. It's a task. And there's times where he's been giving me homework and I just haven't got a chance to get into it, which is very frustrating because I'm paying for this time. Or another thing that happens is an event happens. My time is 10 o'clock till 11 o'clock and I can't make it. Well, I'm still paying for that time.

1:27:15Yeah, I'm losing. Or one of my— it's famous— one of my service advisors is sick and I have to cover for him. Yeah, right. So I'm losing out on my coaching time, which I'm forced to pay for. I don't get it back. Yeah, but coaching is Jeff, seriously, it's an important part of any management or owner team. If you think it's just like staying up on the trends on vehicles as a technician, you have to.

1:27:47You have to. If you're going to rely on your own expertise, unless you're self-training, if you're taking stuff online, you're still training, but without a coach. That's right. A coach gives you a perspective that you need. And I'm grateful for Richard. I've been with him for a few years. I took a bit of a break because we're on holidays.. And again, because the cost is high and because my time is so divided, I was unable to maintain the schedule.

1:28:14So, that kind of stopped me from coaching. I'm pausing. I'm going to go back and go back with Richard because like I said, he knows his things and he can dissect a pie chart or any kind of analytics in minutes and understand, hey, you know, you're missing out on that. You're missing out on this.— some people just have that knack. I don't.

1:28:37I just need— I need help. And there's some operators in Winnipeg that are so great. Jeff Rempel and Matthew Silva, these are two guys that are really on top of stuff. Some young guys there that are super smart. I'm thankful that I have them in my AutoPro world. Yeah, because I've learned from them. And I mean, I hope to give back. I don't want to be just a taker.

1:28:59I hope that I can give someone some of that insight that they may need. But it's a— that's the nice thing about being the auto pro is that we help each other out. And I'm not sure how much DVI, uh, digital vehicle inspections you guys do. Well, so where I currently work, um, I don't have to do a DVI now because I work at a car lot where essentially we're reconditioning all these cars to be sold.

1:29:24It's— I have to do a very thorough inspection every time, right? Right, right. It just goes because we— it has to be— for the people that don't necessarily know, it's very strict guidelines how you have to safety a car in Canada to be sold as safety. Now here's the rub, okay? The air conditioning doesn't have to work to pass the safety people, you know.

1:29:42Um, I can, if I choose to, I can pass the car safety with the TPMS light on. I don't, right? There's other things that they say the ABS light can be on because it's on on. I don't do that. We don't do that where I work. I refuse to. I'm not signing it. If you choose to because you can, cool, whatever. So I have to be very thorough in my process now of how I actually evaluate a car.

1:30:05And I've always been good at that because from the dealer, when I was flat rate way back when, you had to be thorough in finding all those things because that's how you ate. That's how you got paid. That's how you made money, right? The, the DVI, from a standpoint of a lot of shops— I keep coming back to this, man— it It takes time to do a quality DBI.

1:30:24It really does. And if we follow the 300% rule, it takes a lot of time to do a very good estimate now, right, of actually being an advocate for the customer and showing under this. This is where Jeff has made it his, you know, stand and die on the mountain type thing. A lot of the weak link in this industry is people that are not taking then those two tools and implementing it into the customer car's information database of what actually is the real condition of your car at this particular moment.

1:30:55You know, we all— I joke, but I've worked for so many people that they hoped that the customer didn't have to spend any more money that day than on the tire job that they came in expecting to do, or an oil change, because it becomes a very uncomfortable conversation. Oh my God, I got to sell them more, and they always— I know their situation, and I, you know, they always give me pushback, and I don't really want to deal with that.

1:31:18I'm so tired of that as an excuse. This is real life, people, and this is a situation of we are to advocate for them, which means we're to tell them about the car. Now, I don't go and change every friggin' control arm bushing that has a crack in it. No, let's be real. Like, well, no, you got to be real. Yeah. And, and here's the thing, and I don't immediately tell the customer every engine needs a $2,000 reseal because there's a little bit of wetness around, you know, a cam cover.

1:31:45Cover. I don't do that either. Good. Because I'm about value. What does that customer car need? It needs to be safe. Now, if you have these cars that, like, the customers are— now let's talk about some of the modern stuff. It's acceptable to pour a liter of oil every 5,000 kilometers, or excuse me, every 1,000 kilometers into your Chevy Equinox. That's an acceptable amount.

1:32:13Right? Yeah. 1,000. So you're gonna pour in the amount of oil that you do for the oil change, you're gonna pour in between the next service, and that's acceptable. I don't like to see my customers have to operate a car that they're forced to do that, because let's be real, they're not thinking about it when they're stopping to get $30 worth of gas that I've got to now buy a $7 quart of oil and pour it into my car.

1:32:34They're not thinking like that. They don't have it. But every little thing that doesn't drip on the ground found as an oil leak is not an immediately halt, do not operate situation for this car for a lot of these owners. We, as people who have been telling everybody forever, we check your fluids, we top them up. That's our job, right? That is our job, to keep that car reliable.

1:32:58If it means pouring in a little bit of transmission fluid every 6 months because it weeps around, you know, a seal, we do that. You know, we don't try to always take every ticket that's an oil change and a seasonal and turn it into a $5,000 ticket. I have a real problem with that because at the dealer there was enough legit repairs that I could, I could eat well, make good hours on problem solving and doing the legit repairs.

1:33:27I did not have to try and rebuild everybody's car with this 300% DVI rule. So that's where I'm going to say, because if you don't have the advisor that can convert it, it's just a waste of flipping time. It's true. It's true. And I don't like to always go to the well so often with every time a customer comes in here, because here's where we're going to get really unpopular opinion.

1:33:51Some coaching companies teach that and it works in some areas. And I'll tell you why it works, because as you burn through those customers, other customers replace those customers. Customers, i.e., that's the dealership service model for the last 100 years in this country. It's the way it's always been. If you piss that customer off, it doesn't matter if we sold a car today in the new car department, we now have a new customer's life.

1:34:15When we are in a small area and we burn through our customer base, I don't care what marketing company tells you what can work, your Google reviews and everything, you can't get them back. Right? And your reputation carries more weight still around the coffee shop, around the church social, whatever you want to call it, that shares, oh, don't take your car to this place, it's, uh, 2 grand every time I go in, and I had to take it back 3 times to finally get the check engine light out.

1:34:45That doesn't matter how good your DBI process is, how good your 300% rule turnover is. You're not doing what we have to be doing in this industry. So that's my soapbox on that. It's tough. All valid points. All valid points. We do a digital vehicle inspection for the simple reasons for transparency. Yes. Because of the fact that we are living in a very informed world and people want to see what they are up against, even things that are recommended.

1:35:19It's kind of crack pushing. Yep. No big deal. Keep an eye on it clearly. And we've documented it. We've done our job. Someone that, for example, does an oil change and doesn't look at anything, then you can see where the value is. These people, if you haven't marked it down, can you say you've done it? Yeah. Right. So that's the whole point of this.

1:35:42And I don't know how many times a car comes in and it's got body damage somewhere or a hubcap damage. So we take pictures of that. Stuff. Yeah, because it's too often said, hey, it wasn't like that when we got there. Underbody shields that are no longer, you know, everything's got a lower valance and a fairing, and they come in with the bumper smashed off on the snow banks.

1:36:03You know this. Yes. And we don't bother to document it. And then you go try to take the— remove the lower skid plate to just change the oil and you can't get it off. That's right. Or you're having to tie strap it back on, and all of a sudden then the customer leaves and it falls off the next day because nobody bothered to tell the customer, hey, Hey, that body damage that we didn't point out to you, um, it was also causing your fairing to hang down.

1:36:24So the last time that we could get the fairing down was when we did the oil change, and guess what? We couldn't get it quite up in there because the bolts all busted off, and we tried with tie straps to put it on. That all sounds so insignificant to you or I because you know that the car's still good on the road, but all of a sudden when they're driving down the highway and that thing starts touching the pavement because the tie strap melted and fell on, and now they're dragging That is a super stressful event for them because they're like, what is dragging behind my car?

1:36:51I just had it into the shop. Is it safe to drive? Is it not? That's where they get upset, right? I saw your camera flicker there for a minute. Yeah, yeah, that's all cool. What's— so tell me, what's the, what's the process look like when you intake a car in your shop? Kind of run that through for me. So, um, if they have an appointment or not, they're greeted, uh, by by one of the service advisors or whoever's up front.

1:37:16It goes through the questionnaire. Why are you here? What are you experiencing? There are times where they— there may be a road test may be required with the tech or one of these service advisors to see if we can experience the problem they're experiencing. And then off they go. They can wait to have a waiting room or they can leave it. Road test.

1:37:38I have repair plates, it goes on the car, they go for a road test, a 5-minute road test, as long as that's all that's required. And then it, uh, take a picture of the dash with it running. If it has a check engine light on or not, it'll be revealed at that point with the mileage and everything. Because too many times, oh, check engine light, you know, is on now.

1:38:01No, it was on before. Yeah. You know, the TPMS light was on before, the battery light was on. You know, so we have that picture, uh, we go through the inspection process, um, tire, tire pressure, tire tread depth, all those things are measured. It also depends on the service. If it's here for an exhaust noise, uh, we don't go through some of that process because it goes inside.

1:38:25We don't necessarily have a road test for an exhaust noise, right? Right. But for a diagnostic, for example, or a brake inspection, a road test a requirement. Yeah. Because if it was a bearing noise that they're hearing, we're not going to find that without road testing it. So that's right. Or you, you spin the wheels, you can possibly find it, but a road test is more revealing.

1:38:50And then after the, the inspection and the pictures are taken, the, the AutoServe goes to— it's connected to our Protractor, which is our point-of-sale system. System. Yeah. And then, um, the service advisor goes through the parts process and contacts the customer and then gets to work. If we get the work, then we typically work on it at that day. If there's parts need to be ordered, we, uh, put it back together, have them come back.

1:39:19Depending on if it's a special order part or not, we take a deposit and then they come back when the parts arrive. Right. Is that what you're looking for? I wasn't sure. So I was going to ask, because you've heard sometimes where it's like the customer might come in and say they're just there for— what do I say— a check engine light, right?

1:39:40And— or, uh, this is even funnier— I've heard customers of saying they come in and they've got a light bulb that's out, maybe they want a set of wiper blades, right? The shop's policy now is to do a complete DBI. Oh, you know, uh, rack the car, inspect the brakes, inspect the suspension. —right. Now, if you have to rack the car to get the bulb out, I can understand.

1:40:05And we're going to go like, that doesn't happen. Sure there is. There are some cars that you can get the bulb out faster from underneath. So if I'm racking any car, I'm immediately just shaking at least the front wheels. That's what I'm doing. I don't road test it if it's here for a light bulb and a set of wiper blades. But this idea that some people want a complete DVI done every time, 300% rule— we just saw the car 6 weeks ago, and it's back now for— some follow-up work.

1:40:32Let's go do another DVI again. That to me is just a little bit like we're crossing that line of being an advocate for them. We're starting to look really hungry, right? And I don't believe that necessarily we should always look hungry. We should look like— it's not look like, we should be advocating for them. But it's a slippery slope sometimes. So the people that are taking some of the coaching that's out there and saying, oh, you have to inspect the car every time time.

1:41:02I'm not so sold on that. I agree with you. So I've been through multiple coaching seminars, and they say exactly that. They came to you because they don't know what to do. Yeah, they want— they're, they're not a do-it-yourselfer. So you— they're here for a bulb, they're here for a wiper blade. You bring it in, you diagnose it, you, you pay for the labor to diagnose, you pay for the labor to install, you pay for the part.

1:41:27A bulb that costs a couple of bucks is now $110 invoice. Yeah, I don't do that. I can't, I can't live with myself. There's multiple times, and I've told the coaches and the people that putting on the seminar and says, you don't live in Winnipeg. Yeah. And our market is, if a guy needs a bulb, I'll go outside, I'll pop a bulb out, I'll put it in, I'll say, see you later, you take good care.

1:41:55I don't even care about the price of the bulb because I know I've thoroughly impressed that person. And the amount of advertising I get from a $2 $3 bulb. That's right. Is unmeasurable. Yeah. And what happens and it happens a lot, we'll go in, we'll, for example, a wiper blade falls off and it's miserable outside. I'll go out or my people go out, put a wiper blade on, charging for the blade only.

1:42:18Yeah. Off they go. Yeah. So they come back and say, hey, you really looked after me. Can you please fix my brakes? And or can you please? And no questions asked. It's $600, $700, $800 for whatever. Whatever work it was. And it was an easy sell. And they talk about what you did for them at that time of need. My other thing is oil changes are never an emergency.

1:42:46No. A tire repair is. Yes. No one plans on a tire being flat on the way to work. No. If you can fix that tire, you are a hero. Yeah. Right. So I tell my people that if someone has a tire issue, let's at least— we have a really beautiful little Milwaukee tire pump and it just sits there and you set the tire pressure, off you go, and it'll fill it up for them and they're super happy.

1:43:15They'll come back, they'll get the tire fixed, and whatever you find during that tire repair event will be most likely a go ahead. I never push when it comes to something small to start doing this whole digital vehicle inspection on a small thing. You know, if it comes, it's a blade or a wiper blade or light bulb, let's get them on their way.

1:43:38Yeah. And then whatever you think you've lost, I'm 100% confident you'll gain back twice, 3, 4 times more than it is worth the price of bulb. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And you know, not every bulb is a 10-minute change anymore, unfortunately. That's just the reality of it. That's different. Some of them ones, and, and you know how they are, those— I can still remember the, the Mazdas and the Volvos with that clip on the inside that holds the bulb in.

1:44:05Like, my fingers suck anymore, I'm so old. Yeah, I got hot dog fingers, I get it. Yeah, yeah. But you know, it's a situation of, it's like, you know, if I've never seen that customer before for, and they want that bulb done, and they've already tried it, and they've already spent an hour, and they're pulling their hair out and all that kind of stuff, don't tell me that I can't charge, you know, 15 minutes or half an hour to put that bulb in for that customer, that, you know, and, and be okay with it.

1:44:32Like, they should by now, if they've tried for 2 hours and they can't do it, they should be able to appreciate, you know, a half-hour charge to install it, because they can probably stand there and watch what the guy had to do. Oh, he had to remove the coolant overflow bottle, and he had to, you know, take the airbox out of the way so he could get his fingers in there.

1:44:50He had to move some things. Maybe he had to take the whole headlamp right out. That's, you know, we used to do that. Now, and that is a whole other thing— stuff rusts and breaks. But if the car is there for $1,000 worth of work and you throw in a little side marker bulb and it's a 194 bulb and it cost you 82 cents to buy the bulb, Don't whack them for half an hour to put that in because it's your base price.

1:45:18Like, we have to be fluid in this industry. We have to really look at what the technician— and that comes again to the communication of the technician, right? You know, because whether you want to pay them flat rate, incentivize pay, hybrid, I don't care. Have the conversation with the customer. What does it look like to do that job for this? And if that technician says, uh, I can whip that out really quick, can Okay, cool.

1:45:39You know, let them do it. Do it. Get it done. Make the customer happy. If the customer— if the technician says, that's the last one of those I did, it really fought me and it's going to take me a half hour. It's a half hour. Don't sit there and go, well, this other guy used to do it. Doesn't matter. That other guy ain't doing it.

1:45:58That other guy ain't here now or isn't here today or won't be here again. We don't know. It doesn't matter what somebody claims they could do or used to do. It doesn't matter. It's the situation at hand at the very moment. We've beaten up a whole generation of technicians because they're going, I used to solve all these diagnostic problems in half an hour.

1:46:18So what we used to tell them all, right? No, 75% you solved in half an hour. There's 25% that like kicked your butt. And of that 25%, there's 15% that you never got, you never solved. If we're trying to level up, then The good old days, they don't exist. They're not relevant. We have to live in the here and the now. We have to focus on what we have in front of us.

1:46:45That's right. You know, man, I get some soapboxy sometimes. I'm not trying to do it, but Marco, I love your passion. I can feel it for this industry. And like I said, you know, when Mark was sharing with me, Toba was sharing with me, he was just, just like, he raves about you, dude. He really does. Oh, I appreciate that. And, um, you know, I, I want to thank you again for coming on and, and having— you know, I first said, well, what about, like, I said to Mark, I said, well, what about if you both come on?

1:47:16And he's like, no, I want Marco to just come on with you because I want to hear that. Um, by all means, you have a seat here anytime with me, and I would love to have, you know, uh, any of your other staff would like to be on or whatever, because like, I really like what, you know, I trust Mark when he says he's in with a good, you know, the best employer he's ever had and the place that he sees as his forever.

1:47:39Like, I trust him. And I mean, so great. It's heartwarming. I really appreciate that because, you know, a lot of people don't understand the effort it takes to make— like, I really want my people happy and their success is my success, and I'm more than willing to share share the gains of a business that does well. And like one thing I want to quickly mention, like, you know, the hard work that they put in at the end, I do my best to reward their going above and beyond.

1:48:12I spent last December, I spent over $10,000 on silver coins and gifts and watches to, you know, for no sick time, 5-year merit, 10-year merit, and so on. I want them to feel that, look, I see what you did. Thank you. And giving someone a turkey is great, but you eat it and it's gone. But if I give something tangible that they can say, oh, I got this for my year-end gift or for my 5-year service, I want them to say, hey, I'm appreciated here.

1:48:51And that's what I want. I want to show that because I was at attack. I know what it's like to be taken advantage of. Yeah. So I don't want that anymore. I want my people to know that, hey, what you do is valuable. Your input is valuable. When you go above and beyond, it's appreciated so much. It isn't something that I take for granted at all.

1:49:11Yeah, that is awesome. So, you know, in closing, because I don't want to take up any more of your time, please come back on at some point and bring your people and, yeah, you know, tell everybody about this. And, you know, I mean, because I can't, I can't wait to, to keep hearing from what Mark finds and learns and fixes and shares with you.

1:49:34Because, like, I believe, you know, that guy is going to attract more talent to you. I agree. And I believe that, like, what he has found with you is— I, I don't think it, I see it— it's invigorated him on another level that he was already leveling up. He's awesome. But now I see him, that passion back in him, that fire for this industry.

1:49:57And this is the only reason I get up every day anymore is to, you know, because I don't like feeling the pain, but I get up because I want to highlight people that are doing it right, technicians and owners like yourself. So Marco, thank you, man, for being here today. This was an awesome conversation. I knew it was going to be good.

1:50:15And I really can't wait to get to know you better and share more things with you about how you're tackling handling the business and I want to see the new facility, right? Like if I could ever get to Winnipeg, I definitely want to drop in on it and see you. Well, it's a nice place. We have a really great operation and the new place is going to be as state-of-the-art as I can afford, of course.

1:50:39And I'd love to invite you down if I ever make it down to Winnipeg and we'll have a nice steak together and hopefully you can show what we do here and why we do it. I'm not coming in the wintertime though, Marco, okay? No, no, no. All right, everybody, thank you for listening today. As always, thank you for my family, my sponsors, Promotive, Techmetric, Launch Tech USA.

1:51:04What you guys do for me is I can't say enough to thank you. So thank you for that. Everybody, just try to be 1% better today than you were yesterday. Try to be 2% better by tomorrow. And You know, love one another and be good to one another and, and be understanding. This is not easy, and it takes a lot of grit and a lot of determination.

1:51:24And just like Marco was saying, celebrate your people. You know, uh, we, we— none of us are an island anymore, no matter what anybody says. And if you feel like you are, reach out to me. Please don't suffer alone. Marco, thank you, brother. Thank you, everybody. I love you Take care, Jeff. Thanks again. Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on, and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it.

1:51:51And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise, and I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASAR Group and to the Changing the Industry Podcast. Best. Remember what I always say, in this industry you get what you pay for.

1:52:13Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10mm, and we'll see you all again next time.