Paint polishing is when you use a cleaner/polish and a machine (or hand) to smooth the paint. Detailers do it first so the coating has a better surface to stick to and look its best.
Concept
economy shift
They’re talking about how the economy affects what people can afford. When money gets tighter, it can be harder to sell expensive detailing packages like ceramic coatings.
High spots are areas where the coating ends up uneven—like it built up too thick in one place. That can make the finish look off and may need rework to correct.
A “five year coating” is a long-duration ceramic coating package marketed to provide protection for about five years. The segment frames it as something detailers used to sell more easily, but now customers are more price-sensitive.
Concept
technology leap
They mean the ceramic coating products got much better over time. Because of that, detailers need to update how they sell and apply them.
Term
stack product
“Stack” is the name of a ceramic coating product line being discussed. They’re saying it comes in options that last different lengths of time.
“One plus year” refers to a coating durability category—meaning the product is marketed to last roughly a year or more under normal use. In coating sales, these duration tiers help customers choose what fits their budget and how long they want the protection.
Term
12 to 18 month coding
They’re describing a coating option that’s meant to last about 12 to 18 months. It’s shorter than the multi-year coatings, so it can be easier to sell to customers who don’t want a long commitment.
“Uno” is another ceramic coating product name they mention. It’s part of the same general idea: offering coatings that fit different needs and timelines.
“Underwater” here means you owe more money on the car loan than the car is worth right now. That can make it harder to sell, but it also motivates people to get out of the deal.
Concept
dealership group privately held
A “privately held” dealership group means it’s not publicly traded. The owners can make decisions without public-company reporting pressures.
An abrasive is something that physically scrubs or grinds the paint to remove imperfections. The host is saying you shouldn’t use that kind of step immediately before applying ceramic coating, because the coating needs the paint prepped the right way.
Paint correction is polishing the car’s paint to remove visible defects like swirl marks and light scratches. It’s different from just adding a protective product on top.
Term
three or five year coding
They’re talking about how long the coating is supposed to last—like three or five years. The point is that longer-lasting coatings still require the right prep, not just a quick application.
Term
one step world
“One-step” means you do paint correction with one polishing step instead of multiple stages. The host is saying you shouldn’t skip prep even if you’re using a long-lasting ceramic coating.
Concept
six to 12 months
They’re talking about how long the protection is expected to last. That matters because customers decide what to buy based on which option lasts longer.
Concept
12 to 18 months
This is the longer-lasting time window they’re using to explain value. It’s part of how shops sell ceramic coatings as a longer-term protection plan rather than a short-term wax job.
Sealants are products that protect your car’s paint by forming a protective layer. They usually last longer than wax, so they’re often sold as a longer-term option.
Wax is a common product people put on car paint to make it look shiny and help water bead up. It usually doesn’t last as long as newer protection products.
“Tint” here means window tint film. It’s a film added to the windows to reduce heat and glare and give more privacy. Shops often sell it alongside other protection products.
An “aftermarket shop” is a business that adds or installs upgrades after the car leaves the factory. Here, they’re talking about shops that install products like paint protection film and window tint.
A “polisher” is the power tool that spreads and works the polish on the car’s paint. Using the right type helps you correct paint faster and more evenly.
“One step correction” means fixing the paint in a single polishing pass. It’s typically quicker, but it might not make the paint look as perfect as a multi-step process.
In this context, “efficiency” means getting the job done faster and with less wasted motion. The point is doing it quickly without ruining the final finish.
Paint restoration means fixing the paint so it looks better again. That usually involves removing scratches and dullness before adding a protective coating.
Person
Kilmer
Kilmer is mentioned as an example of a top-level expert in paint restoration. The host is saying that the best detailers have years of experience and specialized techniques.
Brand
shine doctor
“Shine Doctor” is brought up as another well-known name in the detailing world. The host is grouping it with top-tier people who have their own specialized skills.
Person
Keith
Keith is mentioned as another experienced expert in the detailing/restoration scene. The host’s point is that these people focus on a particular niche and get very good at it.
Term
paint to 80, 85
The speaker is talking about getting the paint “mostly corrected” to a high target level. They’re saying the last bit of improvement takes a lot more work than the earlier gains.
This phrase means the final small improvement is usually the hardest and takes the most time. The speaker is saying it’s important to decide if customers will pay for that extra work.
A “two step” means polishing the car in two different stages. It’s more time-consuming, and the host suggests it’s only worth it for customers who want the very best, last-level results.
The speaker means there’s a negative attitude in the detailing world about certain methods. They think it’s pushed people to do more expensive work even when it may not be necessary for most cars.
“Swirls” are tiny scratches in the car’s clear coat. They often look like faint circles and are most visible under bright light, like when you’re inspecting the paint in a garage.
Glazes are products that make paint look shinier and can hide small flaws for a short time. They’re more of a cosmetic fix than a long-lasting correction or protection.
Gloss refers to how reflective and shiny the paint surface looks after polishing or coating. The host ties “enhancement” directly to restoring gloss, which is a key selling point because customers often want a visible shine improvement.
Term
staying in the stable
“Staying in the stable” just means the car will be kept for a while. If someone plans to keep it, it makes more sense to pay for longer-lasting protection.
Term
multi year coding
“Multi year” here sounds like they’re talking about a coating meant to last for years, not just a quick shine. It’s basically a longer-lasting protection plan for your car’s paint.
“Sparta” sounds like the name of a coating package the shop sells. The host is saying it’s the premium option for customers who want the best results and are willing to pay for it.
Concept
ego perspective
The host is criticizing a mindset where the goal is to show off how good you are instead of helping the customer. They’re saying good detailing should be about the customer’s needs and expectations.
Term
color changing
“Color changing” usually means a wrap or film that looks different depending on how the light hits it. It’s a visual effect you can apply without repainting the car.
Vinyl wraps are aftermarket coverings applied over a car’s body panels to change color, add graphics, or create special finishes. They’re also used as a protective layer, though they’re different from paint protection film (PPF) in thickness and purpose.
“Basic core detailing” means the essential cleaning work—washing and cleaning the car thoroughly. Doing that prep first helps the protective products stick better and last longer.
Term
coding application like stack
“Stack” usually means applying more than one protective product in layers. The goal is to make the protection last longer and work better than just using one product.
Car washing is the regular cleaning you do to get dirt off the car. The hosts are basically saying it’s the entry point, but the upsell is the more detailed work.
In detailing, “chemicals” are the cleaning products you use on the car—like cleaners for wheels, tires, and interior surfaces. The host is saying the simplest products often sell the most because people want those results.
Term
interior spruced up
This means making the inside of the car look better—usually by cleaning and treating surfaces so they look fresh. The hosts are saying customers like that “final look” after washing.
LIVE
Welcome to the pints and polishing podcast, the most influential and listen to podcast in auto detailing. Welcome to the community.
For those of you ever wondering what it's like to have a conversation with Nick, you know, the interesting part of it is you get cool words like conundrum.
I probably even said it wrong. Listen, if you're like me, you might have to go look it up and I was looking at my notes while we were talking.
It's like I even wrote it down wrong. Like conundrum, conundrum, you know the word. We might have heard the word, but we might not exactly know what a conundrum is, right?
A conundrum is, and I looked it up, according to AI, go to the smartest of the smart today and say that massive problem with no clear answer or solution.
Huh. So Nick, he is quoted, we are smack in the middle of the biggest conundrum to ever hit detailers.
So the biggest problem with no clear answer to ever hit detailers and we're going to go over three things that you talked about that will line out together.
So number one, I love that you mentioned this and anybody that can go back to old episodes. You've been with us since then, or you're some of the people that have messaged me.
I really appreciate these messages. You get them. I get them to go. Hey, you know, I listen to the new ones, but man, I've gone back and listened to some of those old ones, you know, and you can go back to some of those old ones.
And it is a hill that we've always wanted to die on, right? The no paint polishing and applying a ceramic coating. Okay, it's still there. We're in 2026 and you're saying it's number one still the biggest conundrum for detailers.
Yeah, there's no question. As we've seen the economy shift, you know, kind of what I was talking about here is when coatings first hit the market, you and I were both there.
The conundrum then was people didn't know how to sell them, how to apply do anything, right? So that was like a probably a five to six year period, you know, where it was like early adopters got some benefits to people that could, you know, do the work and actually get the
coatings on the car without high spots and sanding and whatever they got the benefit, right? So that was the initial conundrum with ceramic coatings. And since then, the last decade has been pretty basic, polish the car, put a coating on it, move on with your life.
The problem is in that 10 years, the economy's changed. We've had booms, the biggest boom in our, in our industry ever was obviously during the pandemic, and all the stuff that went on there. And now that boom has not gone bust, I don't think that at all, but it's definitely caused people to have to go well, you know, I can't sell that two step
correction and five year coating on the level that I used to be able to, and this and that and all these different things. And it's led to another conundrum of just not staying up with technology. And that's kind of been our argument this whole time is that ceramic coating technology has taken such a leap forward.
Not only an application, but the different things you can do, right? You can do shorter term ceramic coatings. If you look at our stack product, you can do a one plus year 12 to 18 month coding, you can do a 224 to 30 month, you can do a three year, you can do a five year, you can do all these different things.
But I think it's led to a conundrum where a lot of people just don't know what to do. They don't know how to take advantage of the technology, which is where the note paint polishing products like stack and uno fit perfectly to a lot of daily drivers, you know, somebody that's driving a Mazda, or, or, you know, a family hauler of some kind of Toyota, a Honda, a Chevy, a Ford, and they're like, Hey, man, I just like to know my pain is protected.
And again, we're not introducing anything new. We talked about this all the time. We used to be a wash and wax wash and sealant business.
You know, we weren't able to do that with early coatings because the technology was so raw and new and the way things were formulated. Well, guess what? That's changed. And it changed a long time ago. I mean, you were talking about this what going back to 2016 2017.
You know, that's nine years ago, and you still have people in Facebook groups or messaging us or, or wherever you take in this stuff that are talking about ceramic coatings, as though it's 16 plus years ago.
And that's leading to this conundrum of the economy's tightening.
I can't sell that two step correction and five year coding application the way I once could.
And my business is sinking, or I don't have the time as a DIY or to do all that work anymore. My family's expanded, but I want my cars to look a certain way and I don't have all the time to put into it.
So there's a lot of these things where the conundrum I was talking about is people not understanding all of the different things you could be doing in just a ceramic coating space as a whole.
Yeah. So you mentioned, right, especially the economy. If we're July of 26, that is the word of 2026, right?
We've always said it's going to be the word and it keeps and I think recently you texted me and it was like, Hey, man, you know, we, we talked about being in this moment.
Hey, we're right in the middle of it.
You know, and you had some, some illustrations, you had some examples and it was like, Okay, you know that that that's, I'm not going to say it's cool.
You know, but what do we have to share with people is a lot of times it's one thing for somebody on the internet to tell you something.
It's another thing for somebody to book a meeting with you and sit down with you.
That's part of a major manufacturer in the PPF space or some other space and they go, Here's what we're seeing.
And that happens pretty regularly for me and for you and in this whole manufacturing world that we live in now.
And it's not just detailing, you know, it's not everyone's feeling it and it doesn't matter what part of the auto business and it doesn't matter.
You know, you're seeing a lot of dealership sell because a lot of people are either underwater or they're headed to underwater.
There were big dealerships sold out in Southern California, some some really high level names that unless you live there, you wouldn't know.
But a big dealership group privately held has gone in and bought some dealerships from a very big brand that they they are aligned with.
And, you know, when I got some text about it, it was like, Yeah, they weren't doing so well.
And, you know, they kind of needed to get out.
So I want people to understand that listen to us is we get to see it from a lot of different angles now.
We get to see it from all of you out there that share what's going on in your local area.
But we also have major manufacturers reaching out to us saying, Hey, what are you guys seeing?
And then that conversation turns into, Well, this is what we're seeing and this is the people we deal with and this is what's going on with them.
And so there's no doubt, I think you said it right.
I mean, 2026 has been defined by I think a strange economy.
I don't even know if it's something we could define.
We just go something feels off and that's okay.
I mean, a lot of you are still doing really well.
We're still doing really well.
That doesn't mean failure or you got to be, you know, like consume your life with with the economy, but you do have to be aware that things change.
I think we can all look around like a great point to say, Listen, I think some people we know in our group that that are doing just fine.
We can all just go ahead and look around and go, There's a moment going on here.
Maybe we are affected.
Maybe we aren't affected.
We know plenty of people that are affected.
I think we can all say that.
So in this moment, we're talking about not putting on even a polish, right?
We're talking about not putting on any abrasive on paint before you lay down ceramic coating.
And what we talked about, and glad you mentioned this, right?
We just talked about all the time.
You put down anything without protection.
It's been part of our industry up until ceramic coatings, right?
I mean, it was so awesome that ceramic coatings have come.
Absolutely. You know, I think any of us can appreciate that.
But if we do take a moment to take a, I guess that that upper lookout that with an eagle eye view or, you know, step back and look, we go, Hey, hey, hey.
Yeah, we've always had a base of there were services that include correction.
This is even at the dealer level. If you were doing wholesale work or dealer work, you know, there were there were cars that got corrected.
There were cars that just had protection thrown on them because that was what was was called for.
But again, early ceramic technology didn't allow that.
I mean, I was there and you were there.
I mean, you needed to correct because if you didn't and the customer was unhappy, you were in for a level of headache that nobody wanted to go under.
I understand why it was a part of it. And I think to say that you don't understand would be a lie. I definitely understand why it was a part of it.
When technology advances, it allows us to do things in a different way, do quicker way, easier ways.
It also gives us flexibility because it usually brings newer technologies like, you know, a product like stack or uno, you know, those weren't really widely available.
16 years ago, they're available now.
And so I've always told people when you start talking about putting a three or five year coding on a car, because of the robustness of the coding and the way that it is, I'd still be in the one step world at the very minimum.
Right. Just at the very minimum, that's what I would do.
But when you start talking about six to 12 months, 12 to 18 months, you're talking about dealing with a customer that goes, hey, I just want my car protected.
And they do know the words like wax or maybe they're a little bit more advanced and they remember sealants.
And you go, so I'm just not going to do business with them.
When I have the technology available to do business with them, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
But the reason I believe it's happening is because people don't know how to change their mindset for different customers.
And I think that's been a part of this the entire time.
I really do.
I think you would probably agree that the shops and the detailers that took to the change in technology, seemingly, are the people that are always doing fine now.
Right. They're just like, hey, this is a new technology.
It's available.
We're going to offer to our customers, the ones that it fits great, the ones that it don't that it doesn't will sell them something else.
They've just sort of always accepted that the technology has gotten better.
And it's gotten more flexible to serve more customers.
And then there's this other group, which I think is a very big majority now that don't know how to take in this new technology and make it work for not only their customers, but their business.
Hmm. So, you know, you're right.
To talk about it that way, I wrote down, you know, just because of its economy and you're right, technology has definitely changed.
Economy, what also changes is what we can charge for people.
So that's that's sort of where I originally thought I was like, OK, inside of 2026, I think we got to ask the question.
Well, what gets squeezed in this moment squeezed definitely from the majority is not wanting to pay as much for stuff.
Yep. There's no, there's no question.
I think. But also where you're correct is what always gets squeezed is is is when people start to run out of excess money like we've seen in the system the past, you know, four years before this or whatever.
The first thing to get squeezed is people get a little tighter with their dollar.
Right. Like that's basically to sum up what you said people are just going to get tighter with their money.
They're going to spend less. They're going to try to get a deal on stuff.
This is when we see a lot of mistakes on cars like, you know, that as well as I do.
They went to the cheaper guy, the cheaper guy butchers their butchers their car.
Now the fix is triple what it would have been just to have it done properly.
All of these things start to happen.
But the other thing that happens when money starts to tighten is you start to see the businesses that are talking to the consumer in the most simplistic, direct way continue to do well.
And when you don't understand what you're trying to sell and you've only sold one way, which was during the easiest time to be in business, which was basically what?
2020 to 2025 was probably the easiest time to do business in our industry's history.
PPF, Tint, all that kind of stuff aftermarket shops of any kind.
That was the biggest boom we'd ever seen.
People didn't have to be operationally great, which means they didn't have to have their packages organized.
They didn't have to talk to the customer in a more organized fashion.
There was so much money you could do whatever and still get some money.
You know, you could just kind of run your business loose.
We're seeing this really big in the PPF space right now.
And they thought, right?
They thought they were running a good business because so much money came in.
You could go back to the, remember the guy in Florida that I'd go do some stuff with?
You know, we've talked about, did this expansion, massive expansion and these floors and he was bragging about something like $60,000 he spent on floors.
And I'm like, God damn, like in this time, it makes sense.
There was so much happening.
There was actually that much money.
People could waste $60,000 on flooring.
On a building he didn't own, right?
And I did this whole build out and it was beautiful.
I mean, you had to say like, but very quickly when that ended and that money was spent, we saw reality with his business.
It's not a reality we wanted to see.
It's a reality that happened.
And there's a lot of people that spend a hundred grand, 150,000 building out, 200,000 building out of shop.
And I think that's great when it works, right?
When it works.
And then when money gets tight, you know, you start to realize that a lot of these shops that you see online that are putting on this show, the money titans and all of a sudden that shop's not online as much and that shop's not doing as much and you don't see as much from them.
And sooner or later you hear that shop went out of business or that shop downsized or whatever.
Or you don't hear anything.
Or you don't hear anything.
They just kind of go off into the wind.
I think you become, when you've seen these cycles in your career, you become, you have a real perspective of what people have done to last 10, 20, 30 years.
And then you see all these other people that haven't lasted that time doing all these things and you go, well, let's watch this play out.
Let's see how this goes because for some it works out gangbusters.
For those people, what you realize is they are so operationally great in their business.
What they spent, you know, on lifts and floor, they were always going to succeed because they were so organized.
They talked to the customer in a certain way.
And that's the real conundrum here is that you have to be able and I saw something recently where people were rallying or railing against packages.
It's not too, I don't want to go too far down this road.
But what it showed me was when I read the comments and read the thread, I go, this is a lot of people that have never been in a downturn.
It's a lot of people that don't understand the beauty of packages is it simplifies you talking to the customer.
And when you simplify it for the customer, they tend to buy very, very easily.
And so the real conundrum here is is not only people not getting in line with the times of technology, but also not learning from all of the sales books and sales podcasts and sales things that have been put out for decades and that the consumer needs things simplified.
If you go to Starbucks or a place like that or take a McDonald's, they could provide 30 different sizes of drink.
I mean, it's nothing for them to do that.
You always notice that they kind of stay around three to four, but they could have as many sizes as they want.
They're worth billions of dollars.
They could have any size cup they want made and it would cost them, you know, pennies to do that.
The reason they keep it simple is small, medium, large makes it very easy for the customer to make a decision.
And so the customer is not paralyzed or confused about buying from those companies.
And that is the real conundrum I think right now is I'm watching a lot of shops, detailers, whatever confused on ceramic coating and what what they should be doing.
But also they're confusing the hell out of the customer.
And so their sales are dwindling and they think it's nobody's buying and nobody and I go, but the guy down the street in your same business is crushing it.
You can't say it's the economy.
If you have people down the street doing well, that that's, you know, that's not if your city collapses, then maybe you have a point.
You go, okay, everybody in the city is going out of business.
Okay.
But if five businesses out of 100 are doing really great, then we have to ask what's the differences.
Alright, so number two.
And number one kind of pays into number two.
We'll see that these do have a domino effect and they do allow us right to understand this giant problem, giant struggle that is happening.
How can we wrapper our minds around it?
And you know, does Marnick have solutions?
Hey, Marnick Solutions is actually our company name, you know, it's actually how the government knows us.
Will we have a solution, you know, as we, you know, I've been having top, you know, what products we're going to do for 2027, you know, how can we meet these moments head on and be sort of one of the
the forefront runners of seeing the market, of seeing what's happening and being the company that not only quote unquote helps, you know, helps our installers, helps our users, but really becomes a forefront to the market of pushing an evolution of products, right?
You know, it comes to processes too as we talk online and all the different stuff that comes into it.
And this is what I love about number two is, well, one step and two step efficiency, not that we're throwing away, right?
Like you just talked about, hey, wait, you guys just said no correction before coding.
Yeah, whoa, relax.
Okay.
But we do say that, hey, you should put at least a minimum of a polisher on the paint for certain packages that you do.
So really, where is the purpose of this part?
What do we want to talk about?
If we're going to go one step and two step corrections, but it is really about the efficiency.
Efficiency is the key word there, right?
Efficiency is actually what separates people.
It can separate an athlete that you see, you know, whether they how efficient they run, their legs go up and down in a certain way.
You know, their arms going, that is what you've probably done.
Speed camps.
Speed camps. There you go.
You know, they really work with you on, you know, holding it this way.
They talk about your leg and how you can be more efficient in the up and down process, right?
Efficiency and whatever you do, well, it's a massive difference.
It's the separator.
This has gotten into, you know, and we talked to, again, manufacturers in the space of polishers or pads or abrasives,
and you want to talk about a wide spectrum of everybody talking about this.
I mean, you know, for those that don't know, most of the correction that goes on statistically is things like wholesalers, auto auctions and dealers.
And guess what they care about? How quickly can we get something done, right?
Like, that's just the nature of the beast because they know every minute, every 15 minutes especially, there's a cost to it.
Do detailers take that as seriously? No. I mean, they never have.
We've actually seen it probably go backwards in a lot of ways from when I started, you know, a long time ago, same for you.
I mean, it was talked about a lot when I was working for people about efficiency of getting through a car.
Do we see that as much today in online content? No.
We see the millions of lights and who's using a rotary and who isn't and who's using sandpaper and who isn't and who's using this tool and this pad and who's using this abrasive or that abrasive.
I want to take a moment while you're talking there and just let's all have a moment for remembering the bead.
How great it was to throw a bead across the entire car.
And then as you went, you picked up your bead and never stopped. You just kept going.
You don't do that today, right?
And to your support, you change pads, you do this, you got these guys with lights all over them.
You've got so much that the quote unquote average detailer puts in.
Listen, efficiency is way gone, way gone from just picking up a bead and keeping going.
Yeah, that's a good point. Like it's just gone and from the conversation.
And I think what has gone from the conversation is there's high level paint restoration, which has always existed.
Restoration shops and body shops that did, you know, high end restoration work.
That's always been a part of the system.
And we've always told people it's great to watch those people and learn techniques because that's the cream of the crop.
Those are the men and women that have been doing it for decades that I mean.
A guy we like Kilmer.
Yeah, Kilmer. Yeah, Kilmer is a perfect example.
Like he is the top of the top.
You got guys like shine doctor and other people that are they're the cream of the crop.
And they've they have California has got the tattoos on Keith.
Yeah, Keith, Keith's another guy, right?
These guys have carved a really specific niche.
And it's awesome to learn from those kind of people because they can teach you all kinds of tricks.
But you got to realize, unless you're going to chase what they've chased in their career, you can't do everything exactly how they do it.
Because number one, let me let the cat out of the bag.
Most people don't have the level of talent to get there.
Like it's not often the three individuals we comment.
Yeah, you got to realize something, man, they can teach you a lot.
But to get that last 235 percent, that is talent and hard work and all the things that they put in over decades.
It's not minutes or hours.
That's not how it works as decades of work.
And so I've advocated for a long time on here that most people working on most people's cars, it could be an expensive car or a daily driver.
A one step with the technology we have now is the route you should probably put 95, 97, 98 percent of your customers.
Because we have the technology to get paint to 80, 85.
Sometimes if it's, you know, soft enough or easy enough to work with 90 percent of where you'd want to be.
That last 10 percent is a lot of work.
And that's a lot of inefficiency and it's a lot of can you charge for it?
There's certain ways to be efficient with a two step.
Don't get me wrong.
But if you are not highly efficient with a complete one step getting high level results with a one step, I don't know that a two step should be in your vocabulary at that moment.
That doesn't mean don't work on it in the background and get some hoods people's cars donated to you so you can work in your garage or your shop and figure it out.
But the base result right now is a very thorough one step is going to serve 95, 96, 97 percent of the market.
There's no question.
Seriously, seriously.
Because I can show you on Lambos, on Ferraris, where those people are not interested in paying what they have to pay to get you to two step their car.
Now, can you have some of those customers that are into that? Absolutely.
But comparative to how many Ferraris we work on, they're still a small percentage that want that level of work.
So there is this stigma there inside and I think it's just grown and let's just call it what it is.
It's just something that's infiltrated us and it's, well, they should get it, right?
Like there is this heartbeat in a sense of some part of the detailing industry that they're like, well, we got to push it, right?
They have to know, right?
Like we have to do it this way.
Well, you know, like we can never allow something out of my, remember there's these talks of, well, what if the people, you know, I got somebody that comes over in the garage and they're showing this car to this and maybe that guy has a detailer that, you know, remember that?
You and I had a couple episodes.
There was this time where people really believed that.
Like they really did.
And you know, the squeeze and we talk about when happens now that that's get squeezed out.
There's no more dreaming of what somebody else might do.
It's the efficiency of what I've got to do today.
What I've got to do now and what I think too, what people really got to understand is it's that the average customer, it's not just that they won't pay.
Well, because they did.
That was customer did pay years ago when there was enough.
But in a time when there's not enough or when there's a time of less, well, they're just going to pull back because they'd never saw it in the first place.
They could get talked into it when they had enough.
But I did a training up in Colorado with your previous marketing or not marketing your previous in California.
Where were you where he serviced you?
Was it California?
No, Nevada.
No, he was Nevada.
Okay.
He was your rep and he came around and he showed you stuff.
Now he works at a different company and we were there out of training in Colorado and he was showing people and he goes 75% was his number.
I didn't necessarily want to quote him right now because he's not here to verify it.
But I guarantee you if we got him here and you got him on the phone, he would say, yep, 75% is the most.
And he's considered by everybody in the industry of being one of the most elite trainers been in the industry selling products for decades.
Decades, yeah.
And this guy believes the average person won't see beyond a 75% correction, meaning if you just paint it the way we do it, paint correct 75% of the way you see that average customer is going to believe it's 100%.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, and all of us know that most people can't see swirls.
They just don't see them the way you see them.
I mean, we all joke about it.
I mean, so it's not a joke.
It's actually what we most of us believe.
And also, we're not here to short people.
That's what a lot of people think is happening when you don't take this correction to this insane level.
It's like, no, I'm just going to give them what they're willing to pay for.
Right.
Like, if somebody pays and this word, we don't say it a lot, but it exists.
If somebody's going to pay me for an enhancement, I don't need all these lights and all of these.
They're paying me to just put some pop back in the paint.
That isn't a time to get your light out and do this and do that.
You need to check your spot.
You know, when you get going, you go, okay, this is great results and you need to get around the car.
And for what most people charge for an enhancement, you better get around the car in an hour or less.
Otherwise, you're on free time.
Right.
I mean, some people just went, what?
Oh, yeah.
Hour.
I mean, but again, I don't really think there's anything wrong with an enhancement.
That was a lot of what went on when we had glazes, you know, and glazes were popular, much less effective than what we have today.
You know, you glazed cars.
I mean, that was sort of the beginning of the enhancement, you know, way of doing things.
And, you know, you did glazes with a rotary, so you knew it wasn't.
Now, with the technology we have now, it's light years.
Like you have to understand and all of us have to understand that things change.
But the reality has always been the same in this business and it will be the same 20 years from now.
Time spent versus what is charged.
That's the name of this game.
So if I sell somebody and let's say I'm in a place where what I charge is $100 an hour and somebody pays for my five hour package.
That means my five hour package costs $500.
If I go and do that package and it takes me seven hours, I didn't do anything better for the customer.
I did work for my business.
Who did I help?
Who did I help?
I didn't help anybody.
You know, well, you know, my name is on this and it took a little longer and I go, well, you sold an enhancement package.
What took so long?
Well, you know, when I looked under my light on the door, the door took me long and I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You did an enhancement.
An enhancement is very, very light.
It's just getting the gloss back into paint.
That's basically what an enhancement is.
And that should be the definition for everybody.
That shouldn't just be the definition.
You go, well, that's what Nick called, you know, I don't really do it.
I don't do enhancement polishes.
So I'm not saying right or wrong about an enhancement.
I'm just telling you if I sold an enhancement polish and all the people you and I know that are doing lots of enhancement polishes.
Because they do dealer work.
They do mass retail work.
They do a lot of things like that.
They're going to say the same thing I'm saying, which is we're buzzing around the car.
We're not over promising of what we're delivering.
And this is where you get into kind of the biggest part of the conundrum.
If you sell with ethics and you tell people exactly what you're going to provide and that's what you provide.
You there's no chance to do anything wrong.
Period.
But if you oversold what that enhancement polish or that one step was or whatever.
Now you're getting into I see why you're so uneasy doing this because you're not really telling everybody very bluntly what you're providing.
You're not being very clear.
You're not organized in your thoughts.
Therefore they're confused.
And all of those things lead to what is now this conundrum of how do I sell these different options to customers.
You really can't if you're that disorganized mentally and in your business and you don't know how to talk to people very clearly.
There are people though that they want to stick by right stick to their guns so to speak.
We can see it nonstop on social media inside of groups.
It's not everywhere.
Right.
So there's going to be plenty of people that they want to stick to what they're doing.
And so inside of that moment and hey I got to do this and hey you know I I don't know that you would.
Right.
You could you could see that.
So let's talk about this this conversation you had with the realtor.
Right.
You know I was you I was Vinnie Vacation here the last what nine days again in a very humid state didn't find much issue just for all you humidity guys.
It is 115 when I landed here yesterday and I got to tell you felt a touch hotter than the humid south where I was for nine days.
Dude I don't know man I had to do a truck the other day and because you gave me shit that I was doing them inside.
I almost texted you like listen I'm out here because it is one of the and listen you guys can all know if I'm doing as you've already joked and Sean over at vehicle detailing services.
He sent me a text about joking about trucks like I get it.
I don't do a lot of trucks and this one I couldn't get inside.
So I had to do my nemesis black GMC outside out in the sun.
Yeah.
No worries man.
I got 99 problems.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think it wasn't one.
I I had an interesting went and looked at some property when I was I was there and and talk to a realtor that very clearly painted a picture of a very confused buyer and seller market for him.
And we talked for a long time and for those that don't know I've owned a lot of real estate and I've you know the house I'm currently in.
I've renovated the whole thing.
You know when I bought it while living there which by the way guys don't do that.
That was a big mistake.
I also did.
I think even while we were in business you did a big kitchen remodel and stuff brutal brutal like don't do that because here's the thing I did the whole house at once.
Don't do that.
That was that was stupid but live and learn.
But we started to look at properties that were listed for a pretty you know I mean a healthy number man these aren't cheap properties.
And he started to paint a picture of people putting their homes on the market and being very confused on the situation in the market today versus 2023.
And he said he goes look man I'm turning down like 10 to 15 some months up to 20 listings because I just know I can't sell the house for the price that these people want to sell it for.
And I go OK give me an example he's like well I just had a guy recently he had a $400,000 house and needed to be listed listed for 325 to 330.
And he wanted to list it for $400,000.
And I just told him hey I'm not going to do that because it's going to happen is your house is going to sit around for six months then you're going to fire me and blame me that the house didn't get sold and this and that.
But there's a flip side to this.
That house got listed for $400,000 with another real estate agent.
And the house is sitting on the market.
And so you get this very clear picture of this guy's been I think he told me 21 22 years.
He knows that market he grew up there he knows exactly what how I mean he's got his finger on the pulse right like he is exactly who you'd want to hire to sell your house he's connected you can tell you know not that guy though not that other guy.
But he said this house going to sit on the market it's been sitting on the market no offers no interest shot it to him straight shot it to him straight.
There's the biggest leverage point in business today is are you going to be the person that shoots the customer straight and yes you're going to have some people walk away.
No question.
But the people that you do business with, no matter what you sell them if you shoot them straight.
They're going to be loyal fans because in a time when like you said money got tighter the market started to change for them maybe their job has been downsized whatever you never let them astray.
You just looked them in the eye and said this is how ceramic coding works this is how this package works this is why it fits you.
And he painted a picture of.
He's just in no man's land with a lot of sellers because they don't want to hear that the world's changed.
Right.
And all of us can take from that.
I said but how's business for you.
He goes I'm doing great.
I got plenty of listings I got great customers clients.
I kind of avoid a headache when people don't want to be realistic and they're allowed to go list or house for whatever they want he goes he can go list a $400,000 house for a million dollars if somebody listed for him.
He can do whatever he wants.
He's just not going to do business with me and also I'm never going to get the reputation that I lied to that person either.
I told him exactly how it worked and what was going to work and what was going to sell his house.
And so I think this is becoming a massive leverage point for all of you out there that are listening to this and going well what should I do.
Get your thoughts organized get your packages organized have packages that serve everybody.
Pretty simply doesn't mean you do business with everybody or you're trying to do business with everyone.
But you're trying to do business with a certain type of individual that wants clear expectation set that wants to understand what they're buying and then you go provide that service on a high level.
You won't really notice the tough times business won't slow down heavily for you over the years what will happen is you will build confidence and talking to people.
And then you can go from one out of 10 people buying your package when they call to five out of 10 people buying from you and all of a sudden you go well everybody else was doing horrible and my business actually grew.
I actually grew during this time but you're only going to grow through clarity and being able to talk to people realistically about what they should do with their car, which has been the thing I've said the most on this podcast.
The way I sell is ask a bunch of questions and then say I think this is what fits you the best.
That's all that I've ever done.
So we're in the topic of efficiency and you brought up clarity right so we're trying to be efficient and one to two step corrections.
And so the clarity and sort of the reason for the story is hey you know this guy's struggling just the same as let's just say the average detailer who has somebody call asking for something and that person might not exactly understand what they're asking for.
But they just you know they just feel like oh you know I looked at this hey you know so and so told me this or I said we can fill in the blanks right there.
The average customer they watch something on YouTubers.
I saw someone say right he's the same person calling a different business confused thinking they know something but they actually do need clarity.
And clarity on on this is why we are talking about one step and two step efficiency and clarity on what are they paying for.
Yep.
Right like what are they going to get out of this package that you want to sell them the clarity of hey you know you got this you got that you don't need this you really don't need that what are you going to try and do with the car right.
What are you hoping to achieve out of here.
These are some of those questions that you talk about right like that you asked us some people.
And these are the things that we're going to have to as we evolve into this market.
There's a lot of us are going to have to start realizing hey I'm going to become efficient.
I want to be a separate.
I want to keep growing.
I want to be a separator in my area.
So then I got to be efficient.
OK that efficiency starts by actually asking the customer the correct questions.
Yeah no and we've had a podcast I think you guys can probably go back and find it it probably has what questions should you ask a customer is probably in the title somewhere.
But you know there's nothing wrong with asking 20 questions.
There's nothing nothing wrong with it at all.
That's actually what you should do.
A lot of us.
I know I was this way when I first started.
I talked a lot.
You know trying to get people to understand what I was talking about.
But the reason I talked a lot is because I didn't ask a lot of questions.
When you ask a lot of questions you get a picture of what somebody wants.
We just had a customer get a Ferrari delivered.
The first question I asked him because I know him how long is this staying in the stable because this doesn't seem like something that's probably going to stay around.
He's like I don't know six months to a year.
OK are you going to drive it a lot.
No not probably not.
OK well at this point in time.
Sparta's out probably for him unless he's just one of those customers that goes I want the best on my car and there's plenty of those.
Multi step correction and multi year coding that five years probably out.
Now I do have customers that I have a relationship with and they go do the best to it and give it back to me.
You have those people you know and I have those people you know and some of those some of you out there have those people.
But I also know this guy appreciates when I go.
Hey man what's going on with this car.
He tells me.
I go all right.
My guys don't handle it.
That's all.
I mean he's going to get a bill in the mail.
Did you ever hit him over the head one time though.
I got my guy you know the one guy I'm talking about and he just traded he got a rear ended somebody being them on his rover.
So instead of waiting for another replacement he just bought a new rover right.
Specifically what you're talking about.
He said hey I need to get some of that protection on there.
One time I beat him over the head long long time ago.
The very first when we talked about all those coatings we had to do all those layers and do all this stuff hit him over the head.
The next time he asked me do I really need to do all of that.
Yep.
And by the way I had a lot of that early encodings where you know the car was with you for a long time.
You know it wasn't it wasn't easy.
It wasn't a four hour turnaround.
You know it was expensive.
You know it was thousands upon thousands of dollars to get this stuff on there.
So sure I had that.
There's no doubt about it.
And the greatest part of being here through the whole evolution is I love the options.
I just I love the fact that I have options because I was there when there were no options.
That's why I think I appreciate it more than some others is like I'm just happy like hey man this guy wants something easy.
It's easy on my team.
It's easy on us.
It's low liability.
It really serves a great purpose for that person.
And like I I like that way more than where I was in 2010 way more.
And if you guys weren't there I'm telling you most of you wouldn't have been putting coatings on cars because nobody was.
Okay.
So I can tell you that I appreciate the options and knowing that I have tools in my tool belt that can serve the richest customers.
With something like stack because they're going to keep a car for six to 12 months.
I love being able to serve the richest customers with Sparta.
I love being able to serve a daily driver with Uno.
I love putting Trey in a one step on somebody's truck that they really love and they're going to keep for years.
I like the options but also I understand the options.
I understand that when I ask this person questions I am trying to find a place that's the best solution for them and I have these options to provide that solution.
When you look at it like you said I want to crack someone over the head because I want to talk about how great I am at doing correction and how great my result is and how great that is all done from an ego perspective and by the way I've been there.
So of you, we've talked about this.
Again, we shared three names of people that do some of the highest level work in the United States and I think it's awesome.
I love seeing what they do to cars.
I also know their level of skill is in the point 1111 percent.
That is not all of us.
That is not all of you.
And by the way, not saying I'd even want to be doing that type of work.
You know, that's stressful work.
It's very time consuming.
It's very, very nerve wracking at times.
Your body too.
And one of the things that we have to realize is a lot of the market and I want people to hear this.
I don't serve the middle part of the market.
I don't even serve the upper middle class really.
I serve the highest end of highest end customers and I still love that I have all these options to provide them to treat the car how it should be treated and treat the customer fairly.
Now, I do have those customers that go, I'm hardly going to drive it, but I want Sparta.
And that's what I provide because that's what they asked me for.
But I don't upsell them to Sparta.
That wouldn't be fair to them.
It wouldn't make me feel good about what I'm doing.
And I think a lot of people, if you just back away and put the ego aside and say, how do I do what's right for the customer in the car that's sitting in front of me?
I honestly believe you can build very simple packages.
You can speak very simply.
You can speak with incredible clarity.
You will get so many more customers that way that I don't ever think you're really going to see the downtime.
You might see a little blip here and there, a bad week here and there, maybe even a bad month.
You're not going to see bad years though.
This is not going to happen because enough people make money to want these services done to their car, to want their car protected, to want their take pride in there.
That's just part of the market.
And so I think when we say the word conundrum, the conundrum is, if you find yourself in it, how clear are you with customers?
What's the clarity of understanding what you're providing?
And also, are you utilizing all the really cool options that we have now as a ceramic coating business to provide people with a lot of really, really robust solutions that help them with their car ownership?
So there's a last point inside of this one to two step correction I want to talk about.
Something that, listen, I bet you there's, well, you and I, we've talked about this before.
We don't know what the number is.
How many people operate this way?
We're not sure.
I can tell you my dad is a solo, solo pernure.
Somebody that was somebody that only ran the business and only did his financial business by himself.
You know what?
He also had to go get some other side hustle jobs.
That's basically what it was.
It was just a one big giant side hustle.
But then he had to hustle other stuff, right?
Just because that's the way he was.
I take the side hustle look and I go, it's a massive part of our industry.
Oh, yeah.
How many people are in our industry hustling on the side?
One toe at.
It's massive, it's massive, right?
So there's a look at who the actual side hustler was back in the day.
And let's just call it what is.
There's an evolution, evolution to the side hustler.
We can all look, you can go into the community of hyper clean specialist group.
There are people there that are full time and there's people that do it on the side.
There's people that have talked to you and I and they'll go, oh man, I can really appreciate you guys.
You guys are out there doing it.
I only do it when they fill in the blank, right?
Their own cars, family and friends, you know, and they draw a line there.
I think I've always loved the idea of detailing being a side hustle.
We've talked about this because I've always thought to myself, boy, I can make a lot of money if this is a side hustle.
Now, I have a lot of years of experience.
So that's why I think that as I go, hmm, I could go get a really lucrative job.
And then on the weekends, crack people for thousands of dollars.
And I sympathize with the side hustle in this business.
And I'm the guy that and I've told you whether it's a restaurant or I've gone and listen in my retirement somewhere on a beach.
I could just also open up a little shop and clean cars.
I could do that.
Just the way I love watching some of you guys.
Some of you are listening.
That's what you are, right?
And you just, I love that.
That was never me.
Yeah, it wasn't me.
So I look at it and I go, I empathize.
Man, I kind of also would go, man, I could really appreciate that at some time.
Yeah, like, you know, trust me, it's, but here's, you know, what it means to the entire business is that if you're going to do this as a side hustle,
the thing we have to say out loud is you still want to do it with a level of professionalism.
The number one, you know, when you're doing something on the side, that means you're working a lot of days.
You know, that means there's a lot of seven days a week, you know, in a side hustle type.
We have a guy here who's just been washing cars.
I can tell you this has an unbelievable daily job by makes a lot of money.
And he has washed cars on the side in the evenings, especially in the summer and the evenings in the summer and on the weekends.
And they use all that money to go on, you know, two extravagant vacations a year.
And I mean extravagant, we're talking about big numbers.
And I've always respected them and I respect anybody that wants to work that much and put that kind of time in to take care of their family or pay bills or pay off debt or whatever the reason you're doing the side hustle.
But the side hustles turned into this thing where it's like, how little can I charge and get customers?
And I would say that the reason that I go at times I'm jealous of being able to do a side hustle is I think to myself, I'd have this job making a good living during the week.
And then on the weekends, I'd be the highest price guy in my area.
So when I worked on a car, I would be making tons of money to work on the car.
Now I get it, not everybody has my experience, not everybody has my past, I get it.
But that's the reason to do a side hustle, not to go and barely get by.
And one of the things that's happened as the economy has tightened, and this isn't really in our group, because I think a lot of you guys that are doing it on the side in our group seem to have a level of professionalism,
like just the way you build out your shop or your garages or whatever that I'm like, hey man, this guy's doing it right.
What you see is the side hustler is now lowering their price because the customers have stopped coming in.
And they almost seem like you go, hey bud, this is now becoming a liability, not a hustle anymore.
And the other thing is they're trying to make a lot of money to your point while not building out efficiencies, while not staying up with technology,
with not really trying to serve customers to the highest level that's best for them.
And I think that's becoming problematic.
And by the way, it becomes problematic for all of these businesses, pool cleaning, landscaping, plumbing, electrical, handyman work.
It's not just our industry, but it's definitely becoming this place where you go, a side hustle still means professionalism.
That's what's going to ultimately make this thing worth your effort.
And you still need clarity, and you still need to speak a certain way, and you still need to understand what you're doing.
Like I saw something recently where a guy was bragging about buying something for 20 bucks at Walmart.
And the comments were like, where do I get that? Where do I get that?
And I clicked on the guy's profile and I go watch his videos.
And he's one of those guys that's taken solvent dressing and spraying it all over the interior.
Even water-based.
Yeah, even water-based.
And then still was spraying it all over.
Yeah, and you go, look, man, that's just not professional.
It just isn't.
I don't know what to say.
I'm not trying to bash anybody or, you know, but there's just too much good information out there to be doing that.
And so I think this side hustle thing has become something that I'm glad it exists.
I don't look down on it.
Like people need to earn a little extra money or pay off something or try to buy their first house or try to buy their next house.
I think that stuff's cool.
But a side hustle is only valuable if you can earn lots of money and you're not stressing yourself to find a way to earn 100 bucks.
And I think those side hustles, some of you don't, don't get mad at me.
I'm just going to go, I think that they go with this new culture.
We had talked about this, just enough culture.
Yeah.
They'll do just enough to get what they can, not really about efficiency and doing what we would say in business, doing what's right for the customer.
They kind of just do enough so that they can have this side, quote unquote, hustle.
But if we're going to say it's a side hustle and I'm going to be somebody that looks at my dad, well, I can't anymore.
He's gone.
But I can look at what he used to do and I can look at some people like, I know that I could talk to you right now on the phone, that they truly are hustling.
I think some of us might need to go listen.
Our efficiency really isn't a hustle.
It's more of a side just enough and let me get some money coming in.
Yeah, and we've talked about this and this is what we're seeing with a lot of people that are doing it full time too.
I'm glad you brought this up is that, man, I'm just going to earn just enough to get by.
That has an expiration date.
Yeah.
And by the way, it's had an expiration date for as long as I've been in this business.
This isn't 2026.
This is going on in 2025 and 2015 and 2005 and before that.
If you think just enough to get by is going to get you by, it really doesn't long term.
The price is going to be paid somewhere and I say that as like motivation.
It's okay, man.
You're in a rut.
You've just been doing things a certain way.
But if you find yourself just enough, just doing enough and you're kind of week to week on paying the rent, paying the mortgage, getting by, getting groceries.
That time's coming to an end and it's coming to an end because the economy says it's coming to an end.
Not because I want it to or you want it to or any of us want it to.
It's just, you know, what it takes to do stuff today, you know, go out to eat, what it takes to pay an electric bill, what it takes financially to fill your gas tank.
All of that stuff is up exponentially, right?
Like just to have a normal life.
I'm not one to complain about that stuff.
I'm one to just say that's just how the shit goes.
Like I've been alive and especially an adult on my own for a long time.
The price of stuff has largely never gone back down.
So I just got to assume five years from now the shit's going to be more expensive.
Like I hope it isn't.
I'm with all of you.
Like we all root that maybe just maybe we can get some relief.
But in the last 10 years of my life, I can't remember a time I paid under $4 a gallon for gas for a decade.
And actually at one point I paid $7 or more.
And you look at it, you go, dude, the just enough stuff.
It doesn't, it works when it works.
And then when it stops working, you see a lot of sort of ants get crushed in that.
And you go, yeah, man, but when you were going, you were just doing enough.
You weren't going the extra mile to get the extra client in to get the extra detail in to price things properly to learn the new technologies and how to leverage them.
More efficient.
More efficient.
Do your one steps where maybe if you if you got a smaller car, you could do two cars on a Saturday or you could do two cars on a Wednesday.
If you were full time and pushing people off, you know, oh, well, you know, I can't get to that this week.
And then that guy goes away and you go, well, that's not a big deal in 2023 because it wasn't.
We were all there.
It wasn't a big deal.
2026 isn't 2023.
And if you have an extended period like it looks like we're going to have now, you know, everybody thought this Middle East East thing was going to get cleared up.
Turns out not really cleared up.
We're not political.
It's not in our control, but this was supposed to be a lot of stuff.
It just does.
It changes a lot.
It just does.
And, you know, gas was coming down.
I filled up today.
Gas is not down.
Gas is not down here in Las Vegas for everybody that wants to know.
I think I paid 540 or something like that.
530.
Yeah, that sucks.
I'm under four bucks here.
I mean, just, and you have, you drive a short distance to one place.
Oh yeah, I'm great.
I got trucks going all over the city 24 seven.
So, but it's not something to complain about because I do try to do more than just enough.
And by the way, do that for a decade plus at a time.
And I understand that, that, that some people will receive this message a certain way and
other people go, yeah, man, I feel you.
I need to tighten up.
And guess what?
We all need that from time to time.
Like there's no doubt about it.
All right.
So our final number three and we're over an hour.
So we really generally close this down pretty quick when we hit that.
So we'll hit the number three as quick as we can.
And if we feel like we want to chop it up inside the specialist group, if somebody wants
to go in there and like, Hey guys, can you explain this a little bit more?
We'd be happy to.
So let's just go into real quick number three.
We'll kind of hit the highlights of it.
It basically comes down to people don't know how to make money is really where it comes down to
there's, there's been this journey for a lot of detailers, which we've talked about mobile
to shop.
And then once I get a shop, okay, well, I don't just do this regular stuff anymore.
Now I got to go to 10.
Okay.
Now I do 10.
Now I go to PPF.
Now I got PPF.
I got color changing.
I got to do this.
And I got to do these wraps.
And I got it.
And there becomes this like, Hey, I got to do more and I got to do more.
Oh, whatever happened to the basics, right?
Like there's that group that goes that way.
Well, then there's the people that get into it and they're, they just want to get into
the PPF, right?
They're, they're in the PPF business, they've been in it for such great time and such great
moments.
Well, hey, how do you make money in July of 2026?
Listen, we, we got to weather whatever side of the industry you come into this moment.
We have to all come together and realize basic core detailing, cleaning somebody's car and
then putting protection on the car is where you make your money.
Yeah, there's no question.
I mean, I think this is one of the things, a huge evolution that's going to happen is
that a lot of people just abandoned simple, you know, straightforward.
And when we say doing an interior and an exterior and a coding application like stack, that
doesn't mean we're telling you to do 10 hours of work for 200 bucks.
That's not what anybody should hear, but if your shop rate is 100 bucks and you can do
an interior and exterior and, you know, get stack on the car in a short period of time
and you can charge 499, there's going to be a lot of people that take you up on that.
Now, you can sit there and say, that's not worth my time in 2023.
I can tell you what all these shops are realizing now.
We punted on the wrong things.
You're going to see, we were already seeing it because you and I are working with a lot
of these shops, they're like, yeah, I should have never punted on coatings because a lot
of them did.
And what that proves to a lot of detail.
Meaning they only put on PPF and stuff and they didn't want to stay with.
Yeah, they didn't want to decode and they didn't want to do any of that.
Now I don't understand having a protective shop and not putting coatings on cars that
never really aligned with my thought process, especially when you do the math on profit.
Oh, it's like if you're a detailer, but you don't do express or many details.
Yeah, like you go, well, I don't want to ever build out a maintenance program.
So I don't know.
There you go.
The great, the most profitable part of the automotive business as a whole, besides dealership
and manufacturing is car washing, plain and simple, like you can see it by all the $10
million washes going up all over the country.
OK, now, will that all pan out?
No, I think a few of those are going to be for sale.
OK, already have here.
Yeah, yeah.
With a with a discounted price, but they still, let's just say that you would build a two
or 3000000 dollar wash would have been a little smarter than the $10 million wash.
You have a lot of things in this business.
Coding is probably the essence of this that should have never been punted on.
Never. They should have never been punted on.
And PPF shops all around the country screwed that up.
So this is never to pick on just detailing related businesses.
There's a lot of people that have punted on a lot of things in the history of this
business that should have never been punted on.
And again, you're here, right?
Oh, yeah, I was in 2021 or so.
Now, where there's some people that got real popular.
And they were really doing a lot of social media.
By the way, if you make that work, then you get to say the I told you so.
Yeah, but we can look at them and they didn't make it work.
They've gone out of business.
Yeah, a lot of people have gone out of business.
So you look at this whole kind of thing and you go, Hey, man,
I'm never going to advocate for anybody to work on disaster details.
I think that that's largely not where the money is and take it from me.
I did enough in my career.
That's that's tough with them.
It just is. Yeah, we're not going to advocate for that.
But if you got to do them, if you got to do them, you got to do them.
Like, you got to do them.
And by the way, there's some guys that do them so well, they make tons of money doing
that was never me. OK, so I wouldn't advocate that.
But there are plenty of people who, you know, went on a beach vacation with their
family, their family's not, you know, throwing peanut butter and jellies on the
ground and things like that. But the, you know, it needs a refresh.
And they go, OK, we went on this trip and, you know, I'll pay 500 bucks.
And plus you'll put a little, you know, quick coding on the car.
Yeah, man, that's worth it for me.
You look at a highly populated areas, man, that could be a lot of cars every day.
A lot of cars.
And it's also a great place to start people in your business to get them into
Tint, to then get them into PPF, to get them into, you know, correction or whatever.
So it provides a lot to your business if you do it properly.
And you'll have to feel your way through that.
But I think it's one of these things.
There's always money in basic.
There's always money in basic.
What Walmart does is basic.
It doesn't look basic on the outside, because they got a million skews and this
and that, but it's real basic.
Make sure we buy really cheap clothes and put them on for a really cheap price.
You're not going to walk in there and see Gucci for sale.
Like they're just not going to go down that lane.
They've kept it simple for decades and for their customer
to understand what they're doing.
But they always make a profit.
They always make money.
They always keep growing.
And so there's a lot of jumping in and out of lanes.
I think a lane that everybody should have at all times is.
Who does this serve?
Does this serve a large number of people?
And by the way, don't take any of this as working on crap vehicles.
Yeah, that is not the nature of this conversation, because I know there's not
a ton of money unless you are somebody that's so great at that stuff.
And those of you out there, respect because I know you exist.
That wasn't me.
That's not what I advocate.
It's it's a it's a hard gig.
You've cleaned up dealership cars.
I've cleaned up wholesale cars.
It's miserable, but there's a lot of this middle ground of people that would
make good customers that don't have trashed vehicles, but they do want it cleaned
up and taken care of and largely don't know where to go.
That's the other part of it.
They don't actually know where to go.
I got asked a couple of questions by people that found out what I did on
the on my trip.
They're like, well, what should I pay for this?
I'm like, for what you're looking for?
I gave them a large number for some of the things.
Somebody asked me to have their truck cleaned up, basic interior, exterior.
I knew the person.
I knew they weren't a dirt ball.
I told him 500 or more.
He goes, yeah, it sounds about right.
I mean, for somebody, that's going to be an unbelievable job.
Tons of profit, easy day.
He's just a normal guy.
Yeah, because you build it out.
You go, like, I got 10 bucks on stack.
Okay.
Maybe in the different chemicals, another 10 bucks, maybe, maybe.
So I got a cost of what, electricity, a couple of dollars, dollars
of water, a couple of dollars here and there.
It doesn't matter, rent, whatever we can go into and go, listen, I'm in under
50 bucks.
Yeah.
And I just made 500.
Then it's just my time.
Then it's my labor of my guy's time.
And however you want to build it out, you go, oh, damn, you're right.
Yep.
Hey, there's a lot of money in basics.
Yep.
Absolutely.
No question.
You know, whether it's been the car washer, whether it's been the dealerships.
And no matter if somebody's been whatever part they've been, for me, I can
only talk about me, mobile, then car washing, dealerships, chemicals.
Every part of our industry and every aspect that I've been over the 20
something plus years, we've always, always loved to work on our basics.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Well, and by the way, the chemicals that sell the most are always the basic chemicals.
Always.
I mean, even for chemical businesses, the biggest chemical businesses in the world
to what we're building out here to everybody in between the basics or what sell,
you know, and they sell for a reason because people are going to eat their tires
cleaned and their wheels cleaned and they're going to want a little pop at the end
of a wash and they're going to want their interior spruced up.
And that's that's what sells.
And that's great news because we can all do it.
A conundrum though.
Yeah, it's great news, but it's conundrum if we've gone into these moments
with this hard idea that detailing is something we've we've done this evolution
over the years.
But if we can draw it all back and go detailing is still don't call it car washing.
Damn it.
Yeah, yeah.
Just call it basics, right?
Let's just go to the basics.
A lot of money, man.
All right, great discussion, guys.
We would love to hear from you more over in the hyperclean specialist group on
specifically that I think that would be an interesting topic.
Mildren or somebody go get it started.
Let's let's chop this up and let's have a discussion on that.
All right, we'll see about over there.
Hyperclean specialist on Facebook.
About this episode
Ceramic coating sales are a “conundrum” for detailers: customers are price-sensitive, shops are confused about workflows, and long-duration packages can be harder to justify. The hosts argue that modern results come from efficient paint correction, clear expectations, and organized “small, medium, large” tiers—plus ethical, honest communication. They also connect sales to broader market pressures, including PPF/tint momentum and customers being “underwater” on loans, and stress that basic detailing wins and protection add-ons are where the money is made.
Marshall and Nick break down the challenges detailers are facing in a tighter economy — from selling ceramic coatings without unnecessary correction work to improving efficiency, communicating clearly with customers, and finding real profit in the basics.
They cover why simple, well-defined packages matter more than ever, how side hustlers can stay professional and profitable, and why foundational detailing services remain essential for long-term business growth.
Chapters 00:00 — What “the conundrum” means for detailers 01:46 — Ceramic coatings, changing technology, and the economy 18:54 — One-step vs. two-step correction: efficiency matters 34:05 — Customer clarity and selling the right service 49:11 — Side hustles, professionalism, and avoiding “just enough” 61:28 — Where the money is: getting back to the basics 71:39 — Closing thoughts
