331: Gratitude for 2025 With Tomi Oliva

Welcome to the Automotive Diagnostic Podcast.

We're going to explore ways to sharpen our diagnostic skills, find learning resources, and hear from

experts in the automotive field.

This episode is brought to you by L1 Automotive Training and Keith Perkins.

If you're looking for education on module programming, J2534, eProm work, key and immobilizer,

electrical diagnostics, or drivability diagnostics, Keith has a website L1Training.com that's

got over 60 hours of training videos on all those subjects and more.

When I first started out doing mobile, I utilized Keith's videos on module programming and J2534

in order to get my head wrapped around what I would need for the tooling, the computers,

the software setups, what kind of obstacles I would be up against when I'm out there

programming modules on cars, and it was a huge benefit to me.

I continue to use the training videos that he has on his website.

I strongly recommend checking out L1Training.com.

The link is in the show notes.

I pissed about.

Dude, I'm about to punt that fucking dog to the next block, man.

I swear, dude, like he just knows how to piss me off.

How old is he?

He's 12.

Okay.

I think he's 12 or 13.

But you swear he's like 125 pounds, dude, the way he reacts to stuff.

When he barks back at me, it's like he knows that if I kick him, I'll end up with a $3,000

vet bill.

So he already knows.

He's like, go ahead, do it.

It's only going to hurt you more.

He's at all this time to know what buttons are pressed.

So yeah, my lab's 13.

And in the last six months, she's completely lost her hearing, which is fun because we

sneak up on her, not trying to all the time.

I just don't realize like, oh, she can't hear me coming up behind her.

So it's kind of changed some stuff around the house.

But yeah, she's still getting around.

This punk-ass dog likes to sit on top of my couch overlooking the window and he'll

just bark at any random thing that walks in front of him.

I moved my living room around so that couldn't happen because that was the thing.

Like, how dare you walk down my street?

I'm going to bark at you.

We had a little bench seat that was by the window.

And then when we got full furniture, this little bastard-ass dog went and sat on the

bench on the other side of the living room just staring at us, pissed off, right?

And then he figured out how to sit on top of the couch.

And now he has his own little dent where he sits right there and just sleeps and barks

at people.

I'm just like, he's a bastard.

It's the worst, too, because she would sit by the window and just watch.

Fuck an hour.

Just watch out the window and then, you know, it's relaxed.

It's peaceful in the living room.

Maybe you're watching some TV and then all of a sudden just scared the shit out of you.

He does the same thing, too.

And he has like a very high-pitched part, too.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, sometimes he gets so mad, he'll shake the damn couch.

I'm like, bro, hate small dogs.

Squirrels.

Although it's my long story, but I just moved.

But the house I was just in didn't have any trees on the lot, so no squirrels.

So for four years, I had no squirrel fits from her.

But yeah, she loved bark at squirrels.

I'm telling you, man, we miss them when they're gone, but they're a pain in the ass.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's part of it, though, right?

It's like it brings a little chaos to your life.

It's a good thing.

I wouldn't trade his little, deep down inside, I kind of like,

I like his attitude because the wife would be like, yeah, he's you.

He's just like you.

You don't give a shit.

I mean, no, no shit.

There's something to that.

I was talking about that with my girlfriend of like,

like how much of it is nature and nurture that, you know, the whole thing,

like people become like their pets or the pets become like the people.

And yeah, there's there's something to that.

Yeah, no, for sure, man, we are and they're just so different.

Like our other dog, she was polar opposite.

She was never playful.

She would play like for like two minutes and just be like, all right,

F off, leave me alone.

Like she just like to just lay down next to my wife and cuddle and eat tacos.

You know, she was just she was just like a little sidekick, man.

She was great.

We were like, we would just open the door.

She would go out, use, use the bathroom on the lawn, come right back in.

This little bastard will take off on us.

He's fast, dude.

I tried chasing the one time and I only caught up to him

because the leash was long, was long, but not I'd still be running after him.

Oh, man.

I was like, where are you running to?

Ain't nobody going to feed you.

Your food's in there.

Yeah, she she was a former athlete.

And so she would jump the fence when she was younger.

She'd like climb fences if there was something she really wanted to get

after and so I had to be like real conscious of when I'd leave her unattended.

And it's it's actually really nice knowledge.

She's 13 and can't do that anymore.

It's funny is I was talking to the wife because, you know, he's he's 12, man.

Yorkies have an expectancy of like 13, 14, maybe 15 years or 16.

You know, you never know.

Right. Yeah.

But, you know, his years are about his better years are behind him.

Right.

And so it's like, oh, you know, I think, you know, when he passes

because he hates dogs.

So there's no there's just no point in getting into the dog right now.

I'm like, we want I kind of want a bigger dog.

Like, I want to like, I love Pibbles.

And I kind of want one.

She's like, yeah, but, you know, it's not fair.

Like we have a small house.

They kind of need space.

And I was like, yeah, you're right.

Like, and then you have to like walk them and make sure that they're not,

you know, they're not anxious.

I'm just like, yeah, I'm not not not happening.

And then I started following this Belgian male.

I think you pronounce a Belgian Malinois.

Mm hmm. It's kind of like a German shepherd.

Yeah, it looks like a German shepherd, except on cocaine.

Yo, at first I'm like, oh, this is a cool ass dog.

And I started seeing all the videos how they like, they'll take a eighth.

They'll like, just they'll clear eight foot fence and all this shit.

So I turned like, yeah, this is the dog I want.

And so I sent her a video of this one dog named Sasha.

I was just like, yeah, damn, yo, this dog is on cocaine for real, dude.

Like she's like, you don't even want to walk this little bastard.

Like, what do you mean?

What do you think you're going to take care of this one?

I was just like, it'd be nice.

But yeah, there's just no way.

Like I I am not active enough for that dog.

There's just no there's just no way.

No, I just be like here, I free you to the wild and just come back

whenever you're hungry, go do whatever you want.

Don't get hit by a car.

Right. Have you seen those videos with all climb?

Like they'll they'll jump.

They'll do a couple strides up the wall and then jump out

and grab the thing that's hanging and land on a mattress

of the guy will catch him or whatever.

It's nuts. They have like a dude.

They they they are powerful.

They're smart. Yeah.

I saw a video of a German Shepherd.

Like they did a maze between a German Shepherd

and one of those things.

The German Shepherd, like ran through the tables

like in a zigzag pattern.

This damn Belgian just flew over everything.

He just crashed into the.

It was great. Oh, man.

So more than likely, we're going to end up with with a couple

because my dog is a Yorkie.

It's probably just going to put a couple of little Yorkies too.

I ended up liking her.

Our other dog was a Chihuahua, but they shed a lot, man.

And she gets old too.

Oh, yeah. Something something with short hair

at Springer Spaniel, the white hair on everything.

Like you just had to have a wind roller at the.

All the time. I find that that's the only thing

I hated about the Chihuahua.

She shed it all the time, man.

Even though she was a short hair,

but she still shed everywhere.

Cool, man.

What what else you got going on?

How's the shop? How's the?

We're getting there, man.

We're getting their tech fixes.

I had to take a little hiatus

because it was just it was one of very, very challenging years.

It was it was an extreme blessing.

It's an it was an extreme challenge.

There's a there's a lot of exciting things with within tech fix.

But I had to take a moment because it was just it was just too much.

I was not pouring myself into everything like I should.

And now that I realized that I, you know,

it was an agreement between, you know,

me, the coaches, the managers of tech fix,

everybody's like, yeah, you need to focus on the shop.

And then once your shop is good and running

and and, you know, on an official capacity, then, you know,

you can take you can come right back

and pick up where you left off.

And I was able to do some webinars for the T.A.T.

Awesome people.

I mean, there was there was so much fun waking up at 4 a.m.

was that great, but it was fine.

It was no.

Yeah, they I did a couple of those, too.

And then they do it well, for sure.

It was good experience for.

Yeah, I think a lot of the American training companies

can take a lot of notes from from the Australians

and their desire to be better technicians.

And just in general, the culture there

is is a little bit better than ours in my humble opinion

from what I from what I observed.

Yeah, a plus people down there, man, very, very, very intelligent,

man, like, I didn't know what to expect.

And so in my classes, I got challenged by some people.

I'm just like, bring it, man, like I got no ego, man.

I don't know everything.

I just I can speak on my experiences and, you know,

and teach you a couple of things you may have not known.

But I have no ego in the game.

It's all about bettering the industry, no matter where.

But yeah, TechFix has some really cool things in the works.

They bought out ATG.

Oh, OK, I didn't know that.

Yeah, they're navigating the they're navigating that.

So, you know, you will hear some exciting news in the future.

I hired another technician, a level technician, man.

OK.

Yeah, I'm super excited.

He starts in January.

I can finally become a business owner, man.

I know it's it's it's funny, right?

Because I tell Sean, I'm like, I think we need to do one final one for the year.

And the theme for me was gratitude.

And, you know, part of this journey

that I've been on as a as a shop owner,

I never knew how much of an influence

it was going to have on me, on Tommy, not not not not, you know,

the owner of San Jose Auto or Estee Auto Solutions.

No, but just Tommy and how.

The the training aspect, man, like has changed me.

Like I am not the same person I was six months ago.

I'm not the same person I was a month ago or yesterday.

I'm just I'm growing as this business grows.

I'm growing with it.

Uh, a lot of a lot of this was also like

me learning that there's just a lot of

there's a lot of things that people say that you want.

But are you really ready to receive them?

And that's just going to be depending on what your perspective is.

You can call it religion.

You can call it the universe.

You can call it karma.

Well, for me, it's like my dad used to have a saying.

My dad used to say something to the point where like

God will never give you the blessings that you're not ready for.

And, you know, and then I heard Mike Tyson say something like

God, God punishes you by giving you everything you desired.

And that's and that's regardless of what you believe in,

it's accurate, like how many how many people who are

who won the lotto became millionaires overnight lost everything.

How many how many millionaire kids

died of a drug overdose or had had horrible childhoods, right?

Yeah, how many poor people were broke as shit and were happy as fuck.

So it's it's it's it's about perspective.

I I realized that I needed to work on myself.

I realized that I had to grow as a as a as a person.

I realized I wasn't ready for for none of this.

I wasn't ready to be a leader.

I wasn't ready to be a shop owner.

I wasn't ready to to do any of this.

And, you know, throwing my I got thrown into the fire on everything.

So, you know, as I said here, I ended up, you know,

going through a lot of emotional stuff.

I ended up starting to listen.

I stopped listening to music and I started listening to more podcasts.

I started listening to self-help, like motivational stuff.

I came across a speech and the speech was basically about

perspective and gratitude.

And if you're if you sink and you are

envelop yourself and you stand on gratitude,

your life is so much better no matter what the outcome in.

And it's a chain, right?

Like it's a chain of of gratitude.

It's a chain of perspective.

Like, you know, one day I was I was really, really down and up and out.

Like it was very difficult.

You know, it's the shop is going through the

it's basically the beginning stages of a business, honestly,

even though I've been in business for forever, but, you know, I took a sledgehammer

to everything, how I did business, how I ran business.

Everything changed down from like

how I run my finances, my debt consolidate, like everything.

Like I had to change everything.

And one day I was just like, this sucks.

Why am I doing this? This was so difficult.

I could have had such an easier life.

And I was just just to that point where I was making myself angry.

And I sat there and I'm just like, man, like,

no, like I can't I can't think like that.

Like I'm sitting. I have a owner.

I have a person, a really nice personal vehicle.

We have a nice home.

It's not big. It's not it's not grand, but it's it's a nice hall.

We have a home.

And, you know, after I calm myself down a couple of days later,

I heard this this speech and it was just like so.

Perspective is that person with the three bedroom home,

which is he had a five bedroom home, the person

with that two bedroom apartment wants that three bedroom home.

The person with the one bedroom apartment

or the studio apartment wants that two bedroom apartment.

Some people say, man, I hate that I have to drive to work.

Some people say, I hate that I have to take the bus to work.

Some people say, I wish I can walk to the bus.

So it's like we get so involved in what like what society

and what everything says we're supposed to feel like

or what makes was supposed to make us feel better

that we just really forget to be grateful for what we do have.

And I think that's why we a lot of people just don't grow.

Yeah. And we're like, we're programmed to find the the wrong

and the faults and everything around us, regardless of our situation.

Right. And yeah, like you say, perspective,

there's somebody that would absolutely kill to be in your position

or my position or, you know, it's like

you may not even know how much worse it could be, maybe you do.

But some people probably don't, you know.

And I think that's a good way to think about it is, you know,

being being thankful and taking a step back to see, you know,

what you do have and the good things that that are even if it's stressful,

right, which it is.

But I don't know.

I think it's that's a good thing.

That's that's what forces you to grow, get better as a person.

Like you like you were saying, like growing as a person,

you want to grow the most start a business, run a business

that's going to force to accelerate that like crazy.

I'm going to tell you a story, a very eye opening story.

There was a so I went to the to the to the shop fix main event.

It's like it's called Shop Hackers.

Um, and I will I'll preface by saying this, that I am no way

or shape or form selling anything, but this is just my personal experience.

I went to the event and, you know, it was it was very interesting.

Like I have never been to a full blown, non diagnostic,

non technical automotive training event.

Um, I was eager to see what I can learn because, you know,

a lot of people, a lot of more success, a lot more successful people

that I met have gone and they all came back, you know, raving

and talking over over the years that I've heard.

I went, I went, matter of fact, with my wife and, you know,

I'm sitting there and nothing really struck to me like I was in these classes.

I got some really good, like the way they do things, they're called breakouts.

They do one hour classes and then they'll do like a main stage event,

which is a couple hours and then they'll have motivational speakers.

So the motivational speakers, one of, I can't remember his name right now,

but one of them was, they're pretty, they actually pay good money for these speakers.

This one gentleman, he said something very interesting.

And he said, the words you speak matter.

And I'm like, you know, I struck me.

I'm like, what the, like, why does this, why is this bothering me right now?

And it's because, you know, the way the things, the words you say,

how you say things, oh, this sucks.

Oh yeah, this is a bit challenging.

Like it's true that how you say things and how you feel about things.

When you say things, you bring them to reality.

Like regardless of what you believe in, but your brain doesn't know

a daydream from what you're seeing in front of you.

It's you that are programming your brain to respond.

So that was one, that was the first thing when I went up to

when I went up to Minnesota, I visited some shop owners

from your neck of the woods, they, they were helping me a bit.

I was struggling a little bit to understand some of the processes and procedures.

They very willingly welcome me to their, to their establishments.

I got to see stuff in action.

I understand it better, but at the same token, I had a from one

month from that event, I had a record month.

I doubled my sales.

Nice. And I'm sitting there.

Thank you. I'm sitting there and I'm looking at my, my, my, my report.

And I'm like, we did it.

And they're like, oh, man, that's awesome. Congratulations.

I said, yeah, but I just wasn't like, I wasn't super happy, man.

If I'm being honest with you, I wasn't happy.

I was just like, this, this, this isn't enough.

I got to do better. I got to do more.

I'm looking at like, I'm not enjoying the small wins.

I'm seeing it's not sufficient. It's not enough.

I got to do this. I got to do that.

So they asked me a question.

Why are you doing this?

I'm like, what do you mean?

Why? Like, why do I work on cars?

No, why are you even in business?

Like, why are you doing it?

Like you can, you can do, Tommy can do dozens of different things,

thousands of different things that your life can go whichever,

which way you want. Why are you here?

Why are you doing this? I didn't have an answer.

Nobody's ever asked me why the fuck.

I'm a man. Like, what the hell else?

I mean, I got to work. I got to, I got to feed my family.

I got to survive. I got to do this. I got to do that.

But nobody's ever asked me personally why, why, why did I follow my dad's business?

Why did I do this? Why didn't I go back to Florida when I had a chance?

Why, why, why?

I don't know. I just had to work.

So that night I get, I get to my hotel and I'm just like, fuck, dude.

Like, it really bothered me that I didn't have an answer.

Like, it's, it's almost like, you know,

you can't be happy for something if there's no purpose behind it.

And that's, that's one of the mistakes that we make. We, you know,

I heard it all the time, like, don't chase, don't chase the money.

Chase, you know, do what you like. The success will,

money will follow the success if you, if you're doing what you love

and you're doing it, you know, and you're giving it 100% you're off.

And so I get back to Chicago

and I'm like, okay,

so why am I doing this?

And I've, I've, I've, I've had to figure out that as I, as I grow.

And then the next, the next training event that I went to,

it really hit me that the shop

business is nothing, man. Like none of this, none of this,

nothing, it doesn't matter.

All of this is a tool to get you to where you need to go,

to get you to your, to your why, to why you're doing this.

There has to be some bigger purpose, a bigger power.

Because if not, you're right.

Like, like you're to a point kind of wasting your time.

We've, we've created jobs for ourselves, not businesses.

And each individual business has its challenge.

Everything is going to be, you know, there's going to be days

that are very uncomfortable and there's going to be some days

where you are going to reap the rewards of your processes and procedures.

But out of, out of all of it, I realized that nothing matters but me.

Like I have to, I have to be the leader.

I have to be the business person.

I have to be able to make the wise decisions.

I have to lead, you have to make sure my team is good.

I have to make sure that the business goes above everybody

and anybody, including my own pride and my own ego.

You know, one thing that I have been struggling with is, is Diag.

See, the shop is known for Diag, right?

And I've always been, I don't consider myself

like a top tier Diag guy, man.

I'm nowhere near guys like Pedro, Fanzlo, JT, shit you.

Like I'm nowhere near the Diag.

I'm, I consider myself more of like the, the hack guy, like the guy

who just ends up becoming lucky to figure shit out or learning

how to do stuff, um, programming.

Like that's more of my cup of tea.

And I can figure that, that out on my own for the most part.

And dude, I keep getting my ass kicked.

Um, since, since I basically took over the shop, I'm, I'm the Diag guy.

And I'm taking in, I'm taking in Diags.

I'm taking in like whatever, like, I'm not picking and choosing anymore.

Cause it's not like, I don't have a choice.

Like I'm not going to tell it cause I said, no, no, no, thank you.

No, I'm trying to build the relationships.

I'm trying to build the trust, whatever it is, it's coming through the door.

I don't care.

So dude, I, it's just, it was just like, why?

It's just like one, one L after the other and one, this and one dad.

And I sat there and I was sitting down one day.

I'm like, dude, I don't want to do this anymore.

I just don't, I don't have the like, it's, it's, you know, it's funny.

Cause Pedro told me, he's like, dude, he's like, when you stop doing

something for a while, it, it literally, like you, you get rusty.

Right?

Like your, your diet, your processes changes, your thought process change.

And I just didn't have it anymore for it.

You know, I got through them.

Thanks to guys like Corey, Pedro, you know,

my network of people will always help me out with diags.

Get me, get me out of my head.

But I sat there and thought about it.

My dude, why am I doing this?

Like this car that I got, I got my teeth kicked in.

They came from another shop.

Like I should have just told them to fuck off with it.

It was all fucked.

Bunch of cheap parts.

You know, the typical onion, dude.

Yeah, it'll peel back the layers to get to the roof.

So it's just like, and you know what it was?

It's fucking my, my ego.

I still wanted to be that fucking diag guy from the neighborhood.

Right.

Mm hmm.

And I'm just like, this doesn't pay the bills, man.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to make money off of this.

I'm not going to get to my Y if I don't fucking, I have three bays.

One's impeded.

So it's like, like basically two and a half bays.

I don't have time and it's in the winter.

I mean, in the summer, I don't care.

I'll work outside.

But in the winter, dude, I hate working outside.

I'll do it if I have to, but I can, I can avoid it, bro.

I, that, that one sucks.

So I came to realization, dude, that I'm not going to get,

I'm not going to get anywhere if I don't find a replacement and, and I did.

And then, and, and I knew who it was.

I had him in my sights.

I fucking, I fucking whined and dined him.

I, dude, I did everything in my power, dude.

And finally, like he starts in January.

So nice.

I can finally take that next step into being an actual owner.

Like, OK, you know, I'm going to still work on.

There's other projects that I'm going to work on, of course,

because now I have the financial burden of another technician.

But, you know, I, I believe I trust in the process that got me here.

Like I'm able to do it.

I'm not going to lie, dude, it is scary as fuck, dude, having two or three, three,

you know how it feels.

That's three, three dudes on payroll plus my apprentices.

And then me, my bills, like, I'm heavily in debt right now.

I'm not going to lie.

I'm just being open and honest.

It's all right.

Like I'm clawing my way out of everything.

I am working on it and I'm learning how to

everything that I'm going through right now is preparing me for my success.

Like it's, it's coming.

I just, I, I'm just not ready.

And I'm, I'm kind of getting ready now.

You got that initial period, especially right after you hire somebody where it's

like you don't see the, the, the finances are not going the way that you want.

And then, you know, depending on the person and the situation and whatever,

it takes some time and then then it eventually does shoot up.

But man, that initial is like, how am I going to pay all these bills?

Oh dude, I am, I am, it's, and it's not just that.

Like there's some crust he's made.

Then I said, I'll make it happen.

There's, there's also a promise I made him financial promise that I have to,

like I'm, there's no way around it.

So I have an interesting three months ahead of me.

I'm being honest.

Necessity, it, uh, oh yeah, when you're backs against the wall,

dude is when you become all swinging, man.

And it's, and it's all rooted in ego, right?

Like all of it, like, like, can you fail and are you willing correct to

not fail, but are you willing to also let your ego go?

Right?

Like, you know, I, I had a very terrible experience with a client and,

you know, I made a mistake.

I should have never answered that phone.

I was not in the right mindset.

I was very annoyed.

I was very angry.

I was with my, my technician quit.

I was up to my elbows and work, mechanical and diet.

And I'm running around like a chicken with a head cut off.

Answering phones because, you know, I only have one writer and,

you know, just got to answer the phone.

So, you know, I'm like, Oh yeah, I got this dude.

I did not, man.

And I was, I had gotten some bad news in the phone call.

I answered this gentleman.

We had been dealing with his son and the guy basically just said I was,

I didn't know what I was doing and, and, and I'm a ripoff.

And those are just kind of like my two, my two biggest, like you want to

pick, you can tell me anything, but call me a ripoff and then tell me,

I don't know what I'm doing.

And then it was just like to give you guys some context.

It was just on a vehicle that was in a, it was jumpstart backwards.

A bunch of modules were fried.

And I started off with a BCM and I told him, listen, man, I go, this needs a BCM.

I go, I tried to clone it.

I go, it's dead.

I can't get you a used one.

I can't program.

It needs to be new.

This is what we need to start at.

I go, you know, but once I get this online and the car running,

I can see what else it needs to do it.

It needed an alternator.

I needed an ECM.

I needed an ABS module or standard.

I do it like literally the majority, half of the, the, the high speed

can modules were dead and half of the interior bus modules were dead.

Plus other components.

Mm hmm.

So I'm like, dude, I'm like, you're going to spend eight, seven, seven,

eight thousand dollars.

I go, right now it's running.

You just need an alternator and a, and a, and a PCM, a PCM

driver was bad for the, for the alternator.

Okay.

And the guy calls me, he's like, you told my son, you're going to

charge him a, I said, I never said that sir.

I said this, I said that I go, I gave you some ideas, some

suggestions, maybe potentially calling your insurance.

Um, but unfortunately, man, there was nothing I could have done.

You needed this BCM.

I have pictures.

I try to, I try to open it up.

I opened it, took a board level, try to read.

Like, dude, I spent hours on this thing to try to save

your kid money based on the recommendation of who brought me

the vehicle and he just kept going.

He's just like, I should have taken it to four.

They have all the special tools.

You don't know what you're talking about.

They have the tool that'll tell you exactly what's

wrong with the vehicle.

I lost my shit, man.

I'm like, dude, I just fucking got flown on to the other side

of the planet to teach Ford programming.

Are you shitting me or like, I just, I told him just like that.

Mind you, this wasn't a shop owner.

This was a client.

I'm just like, I'm like, you know what, man?

If you think I'm ripping you off, come pick up your shit.

I'll take my BCM out of it.

I'll sell it somewhere else.

You can get the fuck out.

And then I, he's like, you know what?

I think we need to take a break because this conversation,

it sure ain't and he hangs up and I'm sitting there breathing.

I'm like, oh my God, what did I just do?

And then I call.

So a buddy of mine that I went to technical school with,

he works for the city now.

He actually, that's his, that's his, it was a family member of his.

And not related to the, to the father who called me and it was just like,

he's like, dude, I am so sorry, bro.

Just kick him out.

Fuck it.

I don't care.

This is what I get for trying to help.

He was very apologetic.

I was like, you know what, man?

I messed up, dude.

I should have never reacted like that.

And like, you know, and then I, I got some wise words after I cooled off.

I called, you know, one of my, one of my friends, one of my managers at

TechFix and I was telling, dude, like, I'm fucking hot.

This and this and that.

And he's just like, dude, who cares?

Listen, man, you want to be rich or you want to be right?

You can't be both.

So thankfully my manager was like, I, because I

was, I'm telling you, I was hot.

And I go up to him like, I bring in the, I'm like, how do they have one

of the kids bringing that damn, I must think I'm going to take the module

and we're pushing it outside.

We're going to, he's like, calm down.

What happened?

I was like, ah, fuck that.

Like, I'm doing, I'm just fucking, he's like, calm down, man.

Let me talk to him.

So he talks to him, diffuses it.

We still got the module.

So we still got to pay it done.

But what was my biggest takeaway?

It's ego, it's all ego.

Like, why, why, why the fuck did I, would I care about what somebody else

thinks if I know what I'm doing or not?

Yeah, this is what your, this is what your kid authorized.

If you don't want to continue more, this is what you owe me.

This is where we're at.

The card starts and runs.

It wasn't starting and running.

Unfortunately, there's more problems, but it was beyond our control.

We did things for your, your kid that the car may or may not have issues.

We don't know until we get the network back online.

It's just the nature of it.

That was, that's all I had to say.

I didn't have to say anything else.

But again, it's just those magical words.

You don't know what you're doing.

You know, it's ego.

That's just, that's, that's your ego.

Yeah.

Yeah, we had, we had to use Carl.

That guy that luckily I didn't deal with him directly very much.

My guy did, but he left us just a frigging scathing Google review.

All the same stuff.

Like, we don't know what we're doing.

A bunch of idiots don't ever let these morons touch your car, blah, blah, blah.

He wanted this, you know, used cluster in this Jetta.

And it was a complete disaster from the word go.

He's trying to spend as little money as possible.

And we didn't even end up charging him anything on the what we did

because we were just like, yeah, we can't make this happen.

Sorry, man, have fun and just just I did let it bother me for like days.

Just that it's up there on Google on our business profile.

I'm like, fuck this guy.

And then I don't know.

It just it took me a few days to just be like, you know what, it doesn't matter.

You know, we got, you know, 20 other like five stars from the people

that really have had a good experience with us and wanted to go on there

and put it on there.

Like obviously, like that's not representative of what we do.

But like that one, even though like we fix like 15, 20 cars a day

and people are happy about it, like that one bothered me

for like three days.

It's dumb. It's stupid.

But yeah, like you say, there's an ego part of it.

Well, may I ask, what was the issue?

Like you couldn't adapt to use cluster or they just had a bunch of you.

Well, so well, there's a whole lot to it.

He provided the wrong cluster to start.

And we tried mess around.

And then I was like, OK, well, we got to get the right cluster.

We got the right cluster or so that I found.

And I still wasn't able to make it happen on the technical side of things.

So, you know, a Volkswagen will make you

fill out those forms now for mobilizer parts.

Yeah, if it's used.

Yeah. So for whatever reason, at that time on my Otis,

it wouldn't fill in the VIN field.

And if the VIN field is not filled in on that with the font

and the color that they want, they'll just reject it.

And putting it in there on paint doesn't work.

They don't like that.

I couldn't get them to accept it.

So we couldn't do it the oldest way.

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That was at the point where I'm just like, amen, I'm not I'm not going to spend

any more time on this because he was dick the whole way through.

And we're like, you know, peace out, you know, sorry, I couldn't make it happen.

Have a good one.

And that's when he gave us a bad review.

Yeah, like you said, it doesn't matter.

It really doesn't matter that I didn't really care to lose him as a customer,

but I let the public facing, you know,

the comments about us get to me because like the business is a reflection

of me, right? And I mean, it is a lot of effort that I put in,

but who cares what some, you know, one dude wants to put up on Google.

It doesn't matter the end of the day.

I know what we're doing is right every day.

You can look on Google.

He's left one star reviews for like every single business he's gone to.

Yeah, I'm starting to read this.

And like the fact that this guy wrote an entire soap opera

because he spent two hundred dollars on a on a used part

to try to save a thousand dollars.

Yeah, it's like, exactly.

But you had a really good response.

And sometimes those reviews are just that, man.

Like at the end of the day, dude, like we're not going to we're not

to shop for everybody. We're not going to please everybody.

I've I've taken like the higher type of approach and I don't

I do my best to accommodate people

to make sure that they can leave with a quality repair

at the best price that I can give them without sacrificing the quality of my repair.

But they're caveats, right?

I I turned down a couple jobs

because it's just it just didn't feel comfortable.

Like I have to be happy with the repair in order for me to feel comfortable.

And and, you know, some people don't care.

Some people do.

I just at the end of the day, I can't lose who I am

because I'm because I'm trying to accomplish something, right?

No, I don't want, you know, somebody badmouthing me or my shop.

I rather just, you know, let that that company go.

And, you know, one of the difficult parts I have with retail right now

was the ungodly amount of people who are buying aftermarket warranties.

And that's fine, dude.

I'll play that game with them all day long.

The problem I have is I have a strict procedure in order to save us from

from from wasting our time.

And, you know, that becomes a battle in itself, too.

I had a gentleman reached out that had just that bought a warranty.

There was a lack of communication on my on my service writers part.

So we we ate this one.

But so what I do is, Mr.

Customer, if no work is approved or if you can't provide me

with a contract that we can read and we have to contact the company

to see what if your claim is covered.

If they deny your claim, it's one hundred and sixty five dollars.

I go, that's basically an hour of our time.

If they approve some work, you don't you don't pay this.

I go, but I go, these insurance these warranty companies

do not pay for the entire repair.

I spent ten minutes with the customers telling them, listen,

sometimes they want to use inferior parts, which is fine.

We won't we do not install them.

What we do is we'll take the money that they're paying us.

I go, and if it's a thousand dollars that they're paying us

and it's a two thousand dollar ticket, you have to pay the other two

to the other dollars.

If you're comfortable with that, great, we can help you.

If you're not comfortable with that, fine.

Your your your warranty company will point you to the direction

of a shop that works better for their budget.

And I tell them just like that.

But then we had this guy who came in for an engine concern, right?

And again, this was this was like kind of a failure on my on my guy's part.

He went right to like starting the claim, blah, blah, blah.

The guy bought this insurance two days ago.

Fuck, now they red flagged the car and gave him his money back.

Yes.

And we're like, why didn't you tell us you just bought it?

What does it matter?

I'm like, did you read the contract?

No.

Yeah, obviously.

Like I had another guy who

who who the the warranty company wanted to ship us

some eBay lower control arms.

And I said, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

The owner's like, oh, man, just install them.

I don't need any warranty.

I said, absolutely not.

I'm sorry. I draw a line.

I said, no, I if there were if it was like, look, if they would have

brought me to send me some dormant parts, I would just charge him my

my my my labor rate, my higher labor rate.

And I don't care.

Like it's not my problem.

Yeah.

But or like something that at least I know the name.

Dude, I don't even know this.

This brand's like, I've never even heard of this brand.

Like, no, I'm not Chinese.

Yeah, or whatever the hell it is, it's all Chinese.

But I don't know.

Like I'm not going to risk my future in my business

because if something happens to you, you're going to sue me.

Oh, no, I'd never do that.

OK, maybe not you.

But what if you get into an accident and kill somebody else?

They sure as fuck will.

No, I go when it comes to safety concerns, I will not bend.

I'm sorry.

If you want, we can take the money that they're offering us.

We'll apply it to the actual repair

if you want for some good quality parts

that we can warranty for two years, 24 miles.

So that's that's like my my fine line.

I have no problem adjusting value or adjusting my price

to keep my guys moving and make money.

But I am not going to sacrifice quality of my repair.

It's going to be a lot of extra spending on the phone

or back and forth with those people, though.

Well, you know what, man, with the warranty companies,

dude, we've we've I understand the game, man.

I do.

So it's not it's not really hard or not

really a big waste of time.

The problem is, honestly, the customers,

they have these grand expectations.

I had a guy who who sent me a picture of the flyer and said,

yeah, they cover this.

I'm like, sir, this isn't a contract.

I need your contract.

Oh, I don't have one.

I'm like, you need a contract.

Like they all said, oh, I don't know what you're talking about.

Call the company.

I said it's $165 if I call the company.

He's like, what?

That's ridiculous.

I said, OK, well, then you call them then.

But what am I going to tell them?

My whole point, we have to look at your vehicle.

We have to get up.

We have to get an estimate ready.

And if they don't approve it and you don't want to fix your car,

that's an hour of our time.

We need to get compensated.

I'm sorry.

It is what it's all.

But they're going to prove it.

I said, OK, if they're going to prove it,

then you don't pay $165.

But if they don't, then you pay $165.

I don't know what you don't understand.

So that's that's the hard part.

I don't even have a problem with the warranty companies

because they play the stupid game.

Now they're getting smarter.

Now they're using their own labor matrices.

So now my labor rate goes up.

I wouldn't have.

All right, cool. No problem.

And I want some extra 20 bucks.

Yeah, I'm glad I don't have to deal with that.

We did have one.

We had a car in the shop that we ended up

going back and forth with them.

But yeah, it doesn't sound like any fun.

It was a consumer or?

Yeah, the individual who owned the vehicle

and ended up coming to our shop because it was intermittent.

And we were like, hey, we're not going to do this here.

If you want, drop it off at our shop.

I've got an intern now who can babysit stuff like that.

And so that's what I did.

And we ended up finding out, OK, it needs an ECM.

But then we had to do the back and forth with them

and what they'd pay for and what they

wanted to put in there and all that stuff.

So that's fun.

Yeah, I would not do that for a diagonal like that.

I won't even waste my time.

They pay 0.3 if you can even get anything out of them

and they won't pay you anything else.

Yeah, I think that was the situation

where the customer was fronting the majority for the dyag

and then but they paid for the part or something like that.

I don't know.

Yeah, for electrical stuff, I tell my clients,

I'm like, dude, unless you have a platinum package

or a really high premium package, they don't pay for shit.

And I don't care who it is.

So again, we'll get them as much as I can.

But more than likely, you're going

to be paying for 80% of this repair.

Yeah, and trying to explain to them

this intermittent O2 sensor circuit code

and how we went about getting it, they have no clue.

I remember I had to create a write up

for one of my clients when I was mobile.

He had a sticking actuator due to a little oil pressure

and I caught it with a scope.

It was intermittent, but it was stalling out the engine.

It was just like the PCM was trying to command it back

and it wasn't physically moving.

And they kicked back my, the junkyard didn't like my claim.

Because they didn't understand,

because they didn't, I sent them away for them.

I typed it up and I did everything, the whole thing.

They're like, we don't know what this is.

What the fuck is this?

Yeah, exactly.

What testing did you do?

I'm like, you're looking at it.

He's like, what's this?

I'm like.

That's not a code.

Yeah.

Yeah, you don't have any proof.

I'm like, it's right here.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've been in that conversation

plenty of times where somebody's debating one thing

or another with you and you're getting

into the specific details.

And like, you can tell they have no fucking clue,

like any of this stuff.

Like, why am I, why am I even talking right now?

Like you don't, you have no idea what is going on here,

what we're doing.

So we can't even have this argument.

Or I had a warranty company.

Oh, this one was my favorite one.

We had a warrant.

We had a guy with a blown engine, had an extended warranty.

The company was like, no problem, man.

He's been a client, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But they played their song and dance.

Oh, we need, we need oil change.

We need your maintenance records.

I did a RC test to show the customer the,

but we told him like, we're gonna find out a claim.

So I do something else too.

That's interesting.

I, I get my Pterodon money up front, for example.

Okay.

We had this customer with this vehicle,

a K-Dip, had fucking, I need an engine.

Like it jumped timing.

Like you can hear it, whatever I did a RC test,

it was trashed.

The rear bank was wiped.

Like it was garbage, engine was trashed.

And you know, I didn't do anything, but, but that.

And then the engine, so, so he's like,

oh, you got a warranty claim.

I'm like, listen, man, I go,

we need 500 bucks up front right now.

And we'll fire a claim.

He's like, for what?

I said, okay, this is what's going to happen.

They don't know what I'm talking about.

They're going to have us disassemble either the upper half

of the engine or the tie or the,

or they're going to want me to do a manual compression test,

which requires me to pull the intake.

I go, and then if they don't,

if they deny my claim,

I have to reassemble your intake.

Plus my dyag time.

So I said, I need 500 bucks up front before we do that.

Because again, he's like, but,

but I said, if they approve the work,

you'll get your 500 bucks back

or it goes towards the job or whatever they don't pay.

He's like, this is just to cover my time

because they, they do not pay for tear down time.

Even if they approve the work, I don't get paid for it.

But I'll do you that solid.

He's like, okay, fine.

So it gives me the money.

We call it in.

I send them that.

And of course they're like,

no, we need to send an adjuster.

All right, cool.

The adjuster gets it.

Didn't tell us anything.

The adjuster shows up.

Oh, I need a compression test.

So we gave him cylinder number one.

I mean, cylinder number two front bank, zero.

He's like, okay, now I need to do the back window.

I was like, okay.

Just make sure you tell the client

that we're tearing this down.

Cause in case he doesn't believe us.

So I documented everything.

We tore it back down right in front of him.

Compression the back, one had 50.

The other one had zero.

The other one had 50.

Like it was, the engine was just junk.

He's like, yeah, I need an engine.

But yeah.

Yeah, I know.

And he couldn't, they didn't like,

this guy had his uncle do one of his oil changes.

So he's like, there gonna be a problem.

He's like, no, it's just,

where's the receipt for the oil?

That's fine.

They don't care who does it.

They just need, they need paperwork.

He had his uncle write him a receipt

that he did his oil change.

So they kicked that.

He found some shop to write him a receipt.

I don't know, it was funny,

but this entire process,

I had this car in my little parking lot

next door for like a month, dude.

No, like a month and a half.

And finally like, dude, come pick up your car, dude.

Like they're not gonna pay for this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We went back and forth with them

two, three, four times, dude,

when finally they're like,

we don't even know what we're talking to you,

they told us.

I'm like, why?

He stopped paying last month.

Bye.

So my writer was like, what the fuck?

So he calls them up.

He's like, did you stop?

I was like, yeah,

he's like, well, now they're not gonna pay

cause you're out of contract.

He's like, really?

He's like, yes, you didn't pay for a warranty period.

You're paying monthly.

Like a service, like a subscription.

You dingbat.

Cause I come pick up your car

or it's 85 bucks a day storage starting right now.

So, okay.

So did you find your why

as to why you're dealing with all this stuff

on a daily basis?

Like what is your reason to keep going back every day

and getting more and more of that?

You're gonna laugh, man,

cause this is gonna be out of left field,

but I have various why's.

I have my vision board here.

Like there's a couple of toys I want.

There's some property I'd like to purchase.

But even with that,

it was just like, it's not like to end all be all.

You're gonna, this is gonna shock the shit out you.

So when I was younger,

so you know, obviously everybody and their mama knows

that my parents are from Guatemala.

So I used to go to Guatemala as a kid

and my dad used to say,

be careful with those little kids

cause they're gonna try to rob you.

And I'm like, well, I mean, I grew up in the hood.

So I was just like, okay, no problem.

Like I never asked why or nothing.

But I also noticed something

that my dad would never give them money,

but my dad would always take cash to like the,

there's older people that sometimes would be begging

or like would be in the churches

begging for money or whatever.

He always gave them like money.

Like he'd actually take American money

and give them American money, like dollars.

And I asked him, why?

He's like, hey, pops, why,

why do you give the old people money

but not like the young or the kids?

He's like, because the young ones can work.

I'm like, and the kids usually have a parent

that is right around the corner pushing them to beg.

They're a bad influence and I don't want to feed into it.

They should be, they should be working for their kids.

The kids shouldn't be working for their parents.

They're just fucking lazy.

Cause like the old people,

they, there's no, there's no social security here.

He's like, they're old, they can't work.

They have to eat.

Whatever the story, whatever the decision is,

they're old and it's our responsibility to help them

as the older generation.

That's what he told me.

So I got the thinking.

I'm like, hey, but what about these kids, man?

Like, what are they going to end up doing?

So they end up being like thieves, gangbangers,

gang members back home, or just, just, you know,

animals or cornered people will,

they have to survive and who's fault is it, right?

Okay, cause you can sit here

and it's easy to be a saint in paradise, right?

Like it's easy to say, oh, you know,

that guy is a piece of shit.

He's a thief.

You really don't know what happened.

I'm not saying that it justifies anything, right?

It doesn't, but those are just, that's just the reality.

So a long, so a long time ago, I'm like, man,

I'm like, when I was in high school,

like it just occurred to me, like,

what if somebody gave him a chance, right?

So, so, so I thought about like,

if I were ever to be a millionaire, what would I do?

And I said, I'd open up an orphanage.

And like, all through high school and my adult life,

you know, people would ask me like,

oh, if you win the lot tomorrow, what would you do?

I'm like, I'd probably buy a business

and then open up my orphanage.

Really?

Like, and then like, well, you know,

and so over the years, I've had this grand plan, right?

Okay.

It's in my head.

Like it was in my head.

It just, it was in the back of my head

because it was just like the amount of money

that my vision takes is just, it's astronomical, man.

It's a lot of money, even though it's back home,

but it's still a lot of money.

Cause I don't want to just make a house

where people or kids can stay off the street.

No, I want to build a big house where they sleep

or they have schooling.

I want to hire teachers, but also want to teach them

trades.

So like, if you were to give somebody a chance

to be somebody, they will be somebody.

They just have to have the proper guidance.

So it would have like, it would be like this compound

with a big, you know, the main building.

And then there's like sub buildings,

kind of like a trade school, right?

Like you want to, what do you want to do?

Well, I want to work on cars.

Okay, there's a mechanic that's going to show you

how to do the basics.

Like just steps by step by step, right?

Like woodworking and it's called sewing,

but like commercial sewing, kind of like,

like making clothes and stuff like that.

There's a word for it in Spanish.

I just don't know the exact translation.

Cooking, like profession, like, you know what I'm saying?

Like giving these kids an opportunity to better themselves

so they don't have to rely on being third bags, right?

So I always said that.

That's awesome.

And, but I always never thought,

I just never thought that I can do it, right?

So at this last, this last event,

they did something cool where you're in class

and they're like right, right your wise.

And, you know, obviously like, you know,

one of my dreams is I would like for my wife

to not work anymore.

I want her to be, I want her to work for the business.

How about like, better said, I want her to work

for the business.

I don't want her working her corporate job.

You know, I want to make sure that my nephew,

I, at this point, it's very unlikely

I'm going to have children or an heir.

So it's going to be my nephew.

I want to make sure that I leave him

not only the tools, but the actual, you know,

like I want to prepare him to potentially take over

the company if it's, when it gets to where I want it.

Because I do have a vision, right?

Like I want two, six bay shops.

That's, that's what I want to do.

And those two, six bay shops should net me the money

that it's going to take for me to achieve this dream.

Because at this last event,

I was seeing everybody's dreams and stuff.

And I remembered it.

And I'm like, man, like, I don't need a lottery, man.

My vision will get me there.

Like I will, I can make enough money to do it.

And so yeah, so that's, that's, that's what I want to do.

Like hopefully by the time I'm 50,

I should be able to have enough capital.

And it's funny because when I came back from that trip,

I call my mom.

So my dad has a farm back home.

Okay.

And we basically, we don't even like the locals tend to it.

They get to grow their crops on it

and in exchange, they take care of the lands.

They keep people out of it.

We have a small little house on that,

on that little farm house, something small.

And we have somebody that, that lives next to it

and they take care of it.

And so I call my mom and I said, mom, I go like,

I don't want my inheritance money anymore

because we, we, I have a stake of all the stuff

my dad left back home.

I said, I don't want it.

If anything, whatever fair value is for, for the farm.

I said, I want the farm.

Or if I can keep the farm,

you guys can keep the houses and split that money.

She's like, why?

You know, you don't even like watermelon.

I said, no, yeah, I hate it,

but I didn't want to tell her anything

cause I didn't know what she would say.

I just told her.

So I said, I'm like, I just, I, I want the,

I want the farm.

I think they might be worth more money in the future.

She's like, yeah, I think you're right.

I really didn't want to sell them either.

She's like, but what, what changed your mind?

And then I said, you know what, man,

I'm just going to tell her.

I said, mom, I go,

I'm going to build an orphanage.

She's like, I have the plan.

I have everything in the back of my head.

I go, I've been saying it for years.

I said, I think that's the reason

why I got back into the shop.

I think that's my, my destiny is to,

to build an orphanage.

Oh, I said, she's so quiet for a little bit.

She's like, how long have you been thinking about it?

So I, so I've always had this in the back of my head.

I just never said anything about it

because I never thought I'd be able to do it.

So it's just like kind of like why even,

why even waste the mental capacity and thinking about it.

And she, so I told her the whole story

and everything else.

And she kind of starts crying a bit.

She's like, do you remember your dad,

your grandpa's house in the city?

Like, yeah, I remember the house.

He's like, do you remember why your dad never sold it

until later in life?

I said, no, I didn't, I didn't know.

And so she's like,

you know why your dad never sold that house?

And like, well, he ended up selling it

because he's like, listen, he's like,

so what you don't know

is that your father wanted to build an old folks home,

a nursing home in that house.

He already had the nurse.

He already had talked to the doctor.

He was gonna get a remodel to fit like some medical beds.

He's like, he had this big vision for it.

He's like, but your, your, your aunts kind of killed it

for him because nobody would help him.

Like in the meantime, when he was building all this stuff,

he didn't want the house empty.

So he, so one of his, one of his,

one of my aunts friends rented the house for cheap

and promised that he would take care of it.

And he wasn't paying the rent.

And, and then my, my aunts said, it's not my problem.

You figured it out.

So my dad got, and then at the same time,

my grandpa passed away and my grandpa blamed

the organization he was trying to help

because the organization wouldn't take in my grandpa.

Oh really?

Yeah.

When he needed it and they had to send them

somewhere else and he caught a, he got sick

from their carelessness and passed away

from a, from a bad infection.

That's what I was told.

So she's like, it's funny.

It's funny how, how close, how, how,

how alike you are to your father.

She's like, he wanted to build an old folks home.

I was like, yeah.

I said, yeah.

And I got the name.

I got everything I got.

I got the idea.

Will it happen?

I mean, who knows?

Maybe, maybe not.

All right.

But that's, that's, that's the ultimate goal

right now, honestly.

That's, that's what I, like everything else is just,

it's just, I don't want to say meaningless, right?

Because no, they're important to me.

Like, you know, my wife's, you know,

my wife's happiness, not having to deal

with corporate bullshit.

My, my, my, you know, I've always wanted to have a property

like with a beach view.

Like I, that's always been like on my bucket list.

A couple of toys, you know,

some things that mean, mean to have some sentimental

value to me, but I can do without all of it.

Like, but if I, if I am able to change the lives

of some kids, then, you know, that's what I was here for.

So that's, that's, that's my, my big why.

I wasn't going to share it, but you know,

we'll see maybe 10 years from now

we have a different conversation.

Yeah. That's, that's huge, man.

Wow. That's, that's really cool.

Yeah. What a thing to, I mean,

what a thing to drive you to,

like something like that changed, I mean,

tons of people's lives.

Like that's, yeah.

Yeah. People that didn't have a chance,

people that would probably end up dead from gun violence,

dead from, you know, robbing people or whatever, man.

And it's just, it's just a chance, right?

Like at the end of the day, we all deserve a chance.

That's, that's kind of where like a lot of my,

like I, I have like mixed political opinions

about stuff, right?

I have a lot of, you know, leftist views.

I have a lot of right views.

Ultimately, man, it comes down to being a,

for me, it comes down to being a good human.

I have empathy where some people think it doesn't merit it.

I don't have sympathy for some stupidity.

Like some people believe, you know, empathy should be,

I don't, but that's just, that's just who I am.

But when it comes to children,

I'm particularly like a little sentimental

because I believe, I do believe that it starts,

it starts with a person, right?

Like I've always wanted to work with kids,

but man, I just, I've never found a good organization, man.

Like I, yeah, you know, and I,

and I don't even want to share my experience here

because, you know, it can probably get out

and I don't want it, you know,

I don't want to talk bad about people

based on my experiences,

but my view is just having a line for any organization

here in Chicago, you know, to like mentor,

to be a mentor, right?

Because all of this just, it's just having, you know,

you know, I was, I would,

I said a lot of times where like I was,

I wasn't blessed, right?

Like I was just like, oh, you know, I grew up,

like it was, it was a, it was a kind of like,

you know, a hard, hard upbringing.

I had his challenges, but again, perspective, man.

You know what I'm saying?

Like I, I grew up, I consider myself poor, man.

Like I, I've said it before,

like I consider myself growing up poor.

I sat next to somebody, I won't mention his name

and we were sharing stories from childhood.

And he was telling me that one of his favorite moments

from his childhood was when his mom got him,

they got, his mom didn't pay the rent,

got kicked out of the house.

They got locked, they got locked out of the house.

So they had to sleep in the stairwell.

And to keep, to keep him like occupied,

she had bought a coloring book

and they were, they were just coloring the book.

He said that was one of his fondest memories of his mom.

And I looked at him, well, fuck me, dude.

I guess I didn't grow up or, I never experienced that.

Nobody came banging down on my door,

asking me, asking my parents where the rent money was.

I never, I never had to drag my,

my parents out from a bar.

Like I never had to do any of that.

Like, like I never slept in a car when I was a child.

You know what I'm saying?

You know, my dad, you know, he never gave me,

Tommy, anything, right?

Materialistic, like, you know,

all my, all my friends would make fun of me

for not having nice clothes or, or, or Jordans or,

or just stuff like materialistic shit.

My dad never bought himself a new car.

But thinking back on it, my dad, my dad had a house.

Like we only spent like a couple of years in an apartment

because my dad made a dumb decision to sell his house

and didn't want to buy another one.

So we were in an apartment.

But then as soon as, as soon as he felt better,

he bought a house.

Like it was always us.

Now nobody ever came knocking on the door.

I never opened the refrigerator and said,

Mom, there's no food.

I just, you know, you know, programming, right?

Marketing, mass marketing made me feel poor.

If I'm being honest with you.

Yep, yep.

But no, I had a very blessed life, man.

I had a, I had a dad, it wasn't perfect,

but you know, he instilled some of his good values

in me, some of his bad ones.

I'm working on those too.

But again, man, perspective is beautiful, man.

We just, you know, my hopes for this new year

is that a lot of our listeners can just ground themselves

in a little bit of gratitude, man.

You know, tough times come,

but better times come ahead.

Like that month and a half that I spent,

you know, wrenching by myself was grueling, man.

Dude, my feet were hurting every day.

I was not used to wrenching like that anymore.

We still had a record breaking month by myself,

like wrenching, diagnosing, like even making tickets,

like learning my process and procedures.

And I was like, dude, every fucking time

things start going good for me, man,

shit happens, my guy just up and left me.

He up and quit, told me why it was just some,

I don't know, it doesn't matter.

He up and he left, no warning, no nothing.

And now I got a guy who was just as good for my culture

and he's twice as fast.

Nice.

So every hard thing that you go through has a purpose

if you let yourself grow from it.

And I sit there and be pissed off about the situation

and blame yourself, blame God, blame the world.

No, it's just, this is what you need.

Yep, the struggles are just gonna make you better.

I mean, if it doesn't kill you,

there's a good chance you can improve from it

and gain something out of it.

And I mean, that's my thought, doing the business thing

and obviously doing what we're doing

and trying to run a business, any business,

it's just a constant shit storm.

And some days are much worse than others.

And it's like, I just accepted the fact

that that's gonna be a portion of my time doing this

is just an absurd amount of problems,

just avalanching down on top of me.

And that's what it is,

but there's gonna be another side to it.

And if I can push through it,

I'm gonna be so much better and so much more prepared.

And then also on the other side of it,

like you say in perspective, the little stuff in life

that maybe was a big deal

had I not been through all that other stuff,

it's not a big deal.

Like we've been through so much more

that, hey, the rear window on one of the vans

shattered yesterday, I don't know if a rocket

or what happened, but it's like, no, well, not a big deal.

Like, we'll figure it out.

Stuff like that happens.

I'm just like, it's really not that big of a deal

because there's so much more that it could be going wrong

but there's a time and a place

where that would have like just ruined my day though.

Like, oh shit, we gotta get this window for this van.

And it's the same, right?

Like I talked to these shop owners

and I've asked them the same question

to see if I get a different answer.

And I ask them, A, does this get easier?

Because this is hard.

Like this is one of the most,

the hardest things I've ever had to do

is restructure a business, retrain my mind

on how business is supposed to run.

The whole nine dude, like it's literally probably

would have been easier for me to blow this whole bitch up

and start a brand new business.

But I refuse to because of the name,

like the name has to carry.

And they all said the sack, same thing, no.

It doesn't get easier, you get stronger.

Like when you go to the gym,

it doesn't get any easier to wake up at 4 a.m.

to go to the gym.

You're just able to lift up more weights

the more you go.

And like to your point, right?

Like a $200 glass, now you're like nothing, right?

Well, the shop that I visited,

a technician totaled two vehicles in one week.

He left the hose loose on a Rover engine

and smoke the engine, the customer smoked the engine.

Two days later, he left the wheel loose

on a somewhat new Kia Sorento.

The tire flew off, got wedged into the quarter panel.

Our rear quarter, total, like two cars total.

And I'm like, you guys all right?

I'm like, dude, I probably sit there and cry

and they're like, man, man, okay, it's, okay.

Like, honestly, he's like, it's not that we don't care.

But if we had to write a check for those,

for those vehicles right now, we can write a check.

But that's what processes and procedures,

that's what's growing, that's what cash flow,

that's why, you know, having the proper insurance,

talking to people, getting coverage.

Like this all prepares you.

They were like five years ago,

I probably would have wanted to close the business now.

So it's the same, like you're gonna get better,

you're still gonna have problems,

what you perceive as big problems today,

but tomorrow they just might not,

they might not even affect you.

Yeah, and it's gonna be hard at every level,

just in a different way.

Like it's really hard staying by yourself

and not growing, and it's really hard growing

and having a team, it's just hard in different ways.

So like, pick which hard gives you the best opportunity

to shoot for whatever your why is,

or to get to where your goals are.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

The mobile stuff for me, I realized that for me,

what I didn't like about it was, well, two-fold, right?

Number one, I don't like being involved in something

that somebody else can influence,

i.e. remote programming has kind of taken a dent

in mobile programming, which is, to be frank,

the most profitable part of about being mobile next to eight,

well, it's eight us calibrations

if you have the right body shops, it's programming,

use module solutions in that order,

like use module solutions and then diagnostics

is like pretty much dead last.

And I don't like the fact that I have to compete

with some companies that don't name, which is fine,

like I had business as business,

but I don't think I have it in me to compete.

I can't, like the traffic won't allow me,

scaling and then the subscriptions and like,

no, it's just, it's gotten out of hand, man.

It's just, it's very expensive to program now.

And then the dyag, like dude,

I just, mobile diagnostics was just not for me.

I mean, maybe if I did it again, possibly,

but the entire amount of shops, man,

like the, no, I just, it wasn't for me, man.

You know, and then relying on that.

Yeah, it's so difficult, man.

Like there's so many factors you're dealing with,

the shops, the technicians,

the pre-Madonna A-level guys who are mad

that they called them out to fix their shit.

The shop owners who don't value what you're doing

for them, don't know how to sell dyag.

Them giving your cut, your numbers to the customers,

like dude, it was just so much, you know,

they don't, you had to,

I couldn't believe that I had to specify to a shop

why I wanted him to install an OE part

and not this Otto's own Durilas crap, right?

Like just know, like if I have to explain this to you,

I would, and I told this to a shop owner,

I do it, the more I explain this to you,

the more I realize I should go back to my shop

and explain it to somebody who's gonna pay me the full job,

where I can make money off the parts

because this is ridiculous.

Like I should not have this conversation with you.

I'm telling you what you need.

If you don't believe me, then don't, but don't call me.

Like, dude, I don't know what to tell you.

And that just seemed to be like the majority

of my business was all that.

Like just combating people every day

and telling them, you know, what they need to do

and blah, blah, blah, and more power to you do.

But I think repair for me,

I think it was a great decision.

Honestly, the tools that I have now,

I think I'm glad that I reopened it.

And again, it's been extremely difficult,

but you know, for you, that's the hard decision

that you need to make.

Cause the other thing too,

that I didn't like about Mobile Man,

like even me, dude, like I don't think

that I'm a great Diag guy, man.

But how many Diag guys are great Diag guys

that can diagnose in non-comfortable environments?

Dude, I had to diagnose cars outside

cause I drove an hour and they weren't ready for me.

So I either wait or come back and I'm like, dude,

I just rather just knock this out

in this dirty ass parking lot.

Yep.

No, I had to think about a lot and still do

when it was just me and what I would be willing to do.

And then I really have to think like,

am I gonna ask my employee to do the same thing?

I'm like, no, I can't have them out

in the like weather we have right now

diagnosing a car outside.

And I don't want them, you know,

crawling under things or using hoists

that it's questionable

if it's gonna keep the car in the air.

Dude, I had a guy who used to stick a screwdriver

for the lock.

Like, I'm like, dude, I'm not standing

underneath this shit.

Like, what's wrong with you guys?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Diage is the toughest part about that.

I mean, the mobile thing has its own challenges

and especially in the winter time,

driving and all that stuff.

But man, the diagnostic stuff,

even if it wasn't for like all the people,

stuff that you mentioned,

like that all is legit and it makes it difficult.

But even if it wasn't for that,

the cars are freaking just a battle day after day.

And again, going back to what we were saying,

like I feel like my skillset has,

and my experience has gotten so big

because of all the stuff I've done

for the number of years that I've done it.

But at the same time, man, it just never ends.

Like there's always something new.

Like you're never gonna figure out all of it.

You're never gonna see all of it.

It's always gonna be another car

that's just a two day pain in the ass,

just waiting for you.

And that's the tough part is like,

how can I, if I keep growing this,

like how do I grow the diagnostic side of it?

I just, I don't know that, I don't know there's a path.

You'd have to, here's my thought,

is you'd have to charge almost an absurd amount of money

to do so so that you could pay a person

a very healthy wage that would be able to be willing to

and be able to do it at a high level

and be willing to do it mobile.

So it's like, boy, is that, is that even realistic?

Or do you just go after the stuff

that is much more realistic?

It's not, I mean, respectfully, man,

it just really isn't a guy like that

can go work comfortably at a shop for like 120, $130.

So let's just say you match that.

Or start their own business or whatever.

Let's just say for all intents and purposes, right?

Like you offer a guy 130K insurance,

load it, he's, you're probably gonna be 185 loaded.

So you divide that by 52 weeks, divide that by every day.

Like, bro, that's, that's a lot of money.

And that's what I thought about.

Cause I'm like, to get the person you need for that,

yeah, you're gonna have to pay him something like that.

The way I think about it is like,

what would somebody have to pay me

to go out and do it as an employee?

Okay, well, that's the amount of money

you're gonna have to pay somebody to come.

Basically do, if I want to get myself replaced, right?

Then that's what I would have to pay somebody.

How many work weeks are there?

50, 52?

Yeah, 52.

But that he's costing you 700 bucks a day, right?

But then once you, once you toss in his,

his drive time, once you toss in the vehicle he's in.

Yeah, insurance and insurance and phone and,

and uniforms and training and,

A grand a day.

And how much are you charging for Diags right now?

We're anywhere between 250 and 400.

And so like, they all have to be like 400.

They would have to be 400 and you need to do,

you need to do, if you did three $400 Diags a day,

you wouldn't even be breaking even

because you're not getting the $130,000 dollars.

You'd make more money dumping it

that dumping 180, I'm sorry.

You'd make more money dumping 180K in the money market

than what he'd make you.

Right?

Yeah, it's just, it's extremely challenging, man.

It's extremely challenging.

Yeah, it's difficult for sure, man.

Like I don't know if that's something you can scale,

but the problem is eventually,

for me, my biggest takeaway was that I got tired

of going on vacation and not making money.

It costed me money to go on vacation.

Yeah, that's why having a team is so huge.

That got, that got, that got, that's old dude.

Like I have to hustle.

I had to tell all these people,

hey, I'm leaving for two weeks,

hustle or even like I'd have my nephew

or somebody fill in like for some mobile stuff.

So I'm on vacation and I'm programming shit at 3 a.m.

Cause we're also gonna do it

and I got bills to pay still.

So it's just like, that's the part that I'm like,

you know what, man, this is my only way.

No, I go back a couple of years.

I had to leave the beach that I was on

to go back to the Airbnb to hop on a laptop

and program something fucking stupid.

But so we got a team now and September,

I was gone two weeks in September

and not that it was perfect by any means.

We're, you know, the guys were overloaded,

but they handled it like I could leave.

The show kept running.

Things, the money kept flowing in

and we actually didn't even have that bad of a month.

That's where it's so worth it to go through the,

again, same thing, hardship of building a team.

There's a gazillion other things that come along

with how hard that's gonna fucking be.

And I still, I think it's worth it.

That's the path I have seen for me

to be where I want in 10 years.

I gotta have a team and I gotta,

I don't know what the cap is.

I don't know where it's gonna end up,

but I want a decent-sized team

that can run the show without me.

Yeah, that's critical, man.

If you're not overseeing your business,

you just created a job for yourself.

Yep, yep.

So that's where my, and aside from the ego stuff

for asking somebody, you're better off getting a job.

And right now, honestly, it's a great time to get a job.

There's a lot of good shops looking for good workers.

And I strongly feel that 26

is gonna be a good year for repair.

I really do.

The way that the industry is going,

the fact that all these COVID cars

are coming out of warranty,

the fact that their big piles of crap

and all these people are underwater on these loans,

they're not gonna be able to get another car.

There's just no way.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I had a poor lady with a,

I think I don't know if I told you this story or not.

If I'm repeating myself, forgive me,

but basically sunk 5K into a Buick,

one of those Korean Buick SUVs.

I forgot what it is.

Oh, the Encore or whatever.

Yeah, one of those E's, whatever.

The 1.5 liter turbo dude.

Poor lady, and she's like,

do you think I need anything else?

I'm just like, man, I right now know,

but I don't wanna tell her that you're driving

this flaming pile of shit.

But do it like, one week it was her thermostat,

one week it was her radiator.

You know, like, no, I'm sorry.

No, we did a thermostat housing one

and then the next time it was the radiator went out

and we decided to replace the other thermostat housing

on the other side.

Two weeks later, the water pump goes out

and then lastly, the oil cooler gasket starts puking,

like puking and we gotta remove the turbo.

We remove the turbo, the turbo's cracked.

Like, yeah, turbo, like, yeah, this poor lady,

she's like, oh my God, she's like,

I still owe money on this car

and I don't have a choice, I gotta fix it.

Dude, it breaks my heart, man.

Yeah.

But I didn't buy it, I didn't build it,

I didn't break it, like,

but that's the reality for a lot of the consumers.

So my job is to provide them

for what a good quality repair and get them,

get them back to work, I guess,

so they can pay off this car.

He, he, he, he.

I'm sorry, but you know, it's just the truth.

And so like, I think I've been seeing a lot of people

spending big money on their vehicles

because they just, they either don't want a note

or they can't get a note.

So that means the next year or so should be good for us.

No, sure, it's broken cars.

Yeah, 21 Silver out of the day

and they were just got done doing an engine build,

going through the engine on it

and then it had a ton of harness electrical problems

on top of it, unrelated, and it's just like, wow,

six, four years old in a pile of turds.

Yeah, all these cars built after COVID, dude,

they're, they're gonna keep us busy for a while.

Yeah.

Imagine that, paying $80,000 for a piece of shit.

That's wild to me, man.

Oh, I'd be so pissed.

I'd be so pissed.

I, I, it's, it just baffles me.

What do you daily drive?

Do you have, are you just driving

to work vans everywhere?

So I was doing that.

I have an old Ram, which my living situation

changed a little bit.

So I'm driving that back and forth to the shop now.

Did you move houses?

But it's good.

Yeah, I moved in with my girlfriend.

You sold your house?

No, I, I spent the last like month and a half

getting ready to rent.

I got a renter coming on the first.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, yeah, I've never done that before.

So that's another interesting thing

I've been learning all about.

But honestly, another thing there's just a huge demand

for is homes in that price range.

I was flabbergasted by the people that like hit me up

as soon as that thing went up on the market to rent.

I had a ton of showings immediately first week

and then just, I had my, you know, pick from,

I don't know, there's probably 10 different people

that were messaging me and coming to see it and stuff.

And so I found a real nice young couple

that's just looking to get a start.

Signed 12 month lease and let's go.

Yeah, we definitely are either going to buy

a nice vacation home, hopefully in the next few years

or we'll hold on that and buy a nicer house

in a nicer area here in Chicago that we really like.

But I told the wife, our fucking, our mortgage is so cheap.

We bought during the recession.

Oh, okay.

So yeah, this house was, yeah, no, this is super cheap.

That's why I didn't want to sell my place

because I got like 3% interest on it.

Yeah, same.

Yeah, yeah, same.

I don't want to get rid of that.

So we can make a ton of money if we rented it

because they just, I don't know if you remember

when you were coming over here,

I don't know, they were building stuff

across the street from me.

Do you remember that?

Yeah, I don't recall what was around there.

Yeah, so across the main street,

they put up townhomes and three, two

and one bedroom apartments.

A one bedroom apartment is $2,000.

Wow.

And it goes up, but three bedroom is like three grand

and so forth and so forth.

The townhomes or three bedroom townhomes, $4,500.

So I'm like, that's all in the life, man.

There's no way that we won't get $3,500 for this house.

It has a little driveway, three bedrooms.

It's great for a young couple.

Yeah, that is the wild part,

is that the amount that these people are paying me

is quite a bit more than what my mortgage cost me

amongst the torrent and I'm just like.

Yeah, and the cool thing is

you can do like one or two things, right?

But did you form a company for this?

No.

Okay, I'm gonna advise you to form a company.

Okay.

Because for starters, you have a business.

So that's a tangible asset of yours.

So in case anything happens vice versa, you're covered.

So I would strongly suggest you to start a company

and you can do one or two things.

You can either take that profit, right?

Take that revenue to pay off your house

or you can put it in a market account and keep it there

and draw money out whenever you need a repair

or stuff like that.

And then if you really enjoy doing this,

buy another property and rent it.

Yeah, I've listened to quite a bit of people

that that's their ventures.

Yeah, they use one to get into the next

and get to the next.

This is my trial run to see how it goes.

Do I hate this?

I'm saying that is, yeah, if this is just trial, it's fine

but just remember you want to lower your tax burden

because right now all of this profit

is gonna go straight to your own personals.

Yep, yep, for sure.

So you don't want that.

Yeah, and it changes the tax

because it's not homestead anymore.

There's a couple other things.

I'm getting all that sorted out right now.

Yeah, but I strongly suggest start a company

and have that handle that.

And that way that keeps that separate from your,

because what if, God forbid, one of your guys

gets into a bad wreck and your insurance cops out,

they're gonna go after everything.

At least there, you still keep that.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, no, that's legit advice.

I'll look into that.

That's awesome, man, congrats.

Yeah, thanks.

We moved to her place, it was a lot bigger.

My house is just too small,

she's got a lot of stuff in a big house,

so we're down here and it's not the nicest area.

Are you in, you're still close to by where you,

are you close to my shop?

I'm closer to my shop.

I'm a little south of there though,

we're like north of the city of Twin Cities.

Kind of bad area around there.

Yeah, it's, it's not great.

Some like a couple of months ago,

somebody was shot like down the block from here

and there's a lot of that goes on.

So we don't go outside and walk around at night.

But you're around brown people then.

It's just all kinds of different colors down there.

You can say it, man, don't be scared.

I'll say it all day long.

My daddy used to say,

my dad used to say,

Hispanic's always ruin the fucking neighborhoods.

Oh man, my old man was racist as shit, man.

There's shady people of every race down here.

So.

We moved in, we used to live up north

where all the Guatemalans were.

And my dad was like, fuck these Guatemalans,

I'm gonna go live in a nicer.

So we moved into an area called Belmont, Kraygan,

which was like 90% Polish.

But it was wild because it was like the nice spot

to buy houses because they were cheap.

Like my dad bought his first house for like 30 grand.

And it was a Chicago bungalow, like dope little house,

but like it was nothing but like old Polish people.

But then like slowly every couple of months,

there was another Hispanic and another Hispanic.

And then this is the time where Chicago had a lot

of white races gangs that were trying to keep

like the Hispanics out of their neighborhoods.

They used to throw shit at us all the time

and like make fun of us or whatever,

like the older gang, the white gang bangers and shit.

And like slowly but surely like next thing you know, bro,

boom, everybody on the neighborhood was Hispanic

and it went to shit.

So my dad, my dad, like I said,

my dad got sick when I was younger,

when I started working at the shop.

And so he sold the house because he's like,

dude, I'm dying, I'm dying in Guatemala.

I'm moving to Guatemala.

I don't know what the hell happened

that he changed his mind after he sold the damn house.

So we ended up renting an apartment a block away

further into the, to the shit, like the area started

kind of getting shittier and shittier and shittier.

My dad bought into something decent.

Nice, nice, nice, nice, nicer.

So we moved the block into the shittier neighborhood.

And then we were there for a couple of years.

My dad's like, fuck this.

He found the house for a hundred grand,

like seven blocks due west from, from where I grew up.

And that was like also all Polish people,

like they hadn't, we hadn't moved to that area, right?

We were like the first ones on the block.

And then next thing you know, man, like now it's a,

it's a fucking war zone, man.

Nothing but his, like all the Hispanic gangs

from the South side that got gentrified,

they all moved into that neighborhood.

My mom's trying to get out.

So my dad was right.

Sorry, not sorry.

Now we're gonna hang here for a little while.

Oh yeah.

And then we're looking for something a little nicer,

but we're also not in a rush to wait for a good deal

and what's going to work right.

Supposedly the interest rates might come down next year.

So.

Yeah.

Well, and we also haven't lived together before.

So this is also, I got a 12 month trial run here.

See how this goes before we go any further.

They used to being wrong again.

Oh, I was married for six years.

I know how that goes.

Yeah, but you got free afterwards.

So that's it.

That comes back quick.

Yeah.

Being able to leave the toilet seat up,

putting your clothes in a little pile somewhere

and not having to disappear or somebody talk shit.

The biggest issue so far is just the fact

that I get up so early and she is,

she's not a super early riser.

So I'm like five a.m.

That's not even that early.

Yeah.

And she's like, what are you talking about?

She doesn't get up to like seven or whatever.

So we're working through that,

but otherwise it's been pretty good.

She's going to make you sleep with a dog.

If I already do.

Does she have a dog too?

No, just mine.

Ah, okay, nice.

We were talking about getting a second one,

but that's how this happened to it.

Yeah.

That's awesome, man.

I hope it turns out good for you, my friend.

Oh yeah.

I think it will.

I'm also.

All good stuff.

I'm also grateful for you not punking out

and keeping this podcast rolling.

I know these last few months.

Yeah, it's been a fucking year.

I've been here.

I haven't been here.

I can't believe it.

A year or so I almost died too.

I am grateful for this.

I'm grateful for the opportunity.

I'm hoping to have a little bit more free time.

We can have some ideas for the next year.

Hopefully we can keep this going.

I get a lot of, I've gotten work from this podcast.

Believe you, believe you not.

I had a couple of guys bring cars.

I had a guy trailer a car from me for like three hours away

because he hears our podcast.

He actually works in,

is Mr. Brown, if you can hear me, thanks.

But he trailered a vehicle to me, man.

Cause he had a shop who couldn't get a BCM for his clean.

I'm talking about clean vehicle across dude with a 3.8.

I'm like, I was like, yeah.

I was like, yo, this thing is nice.

At first when Josh told me somebody's bringing me

a 2006 lacrosse, I was like, what for what?

I'm like, this isn't the scrap yard.

Like, what the hell's it doing here?

And then I seen this thing.

I was like, yo, this thing was mint.

I guess the shop couldn't procure a BCM

and you know, he brought it to the right place.

I was able to knock it out for him.

Nice.

So yeah, so.

Yeah, those ones will not work with TLC,

those used ones.

Negatory.

So yeah, so yeah, so it's been a great blessing, man.

I appreciate you and our friendship from all these years.

Oh, same here, man.

I appreciate you a lot coming on here

and helping me out.

Cause yeah, it was,

I don't think it was gonna come back otherwise.

Yeah, we helped too much, man.

I know for me, I'm gonna do my best

to come up with some more ideas for next year.

But yeah, you know, the shop had to come first,

unfortunately, so it's the last few months

I've been kind of like keeping to myself,

but my new guy is promising, man.

I think things are tights, the tights turning for me,

for sure.

Great to hear.

Love it.

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331: Gratitude for 2025 With Tomi Oliva

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