Ceramic Coating High Spots and A Real Business Conversation. Episode #922

All right, Nick, I guess congratulations are in order.

We got to start the show off,

tipping our hat, congratulations on the new pick up.

You got a new team member, you know,

yes, Dale's joined Nick's team, you know,

I'm not sure Wesley and, you know, Derek,

not sure what happened to our email.

He's like, hey, I didn't even want to listen, man,

maybe it was in spam box, not sure.

He didn't even want to think about it.

He's like, I didn't join that team.

I'm just going straight over to Nick's team.

I hear you, I hear you.

Crazy. Do you have a good weekend?

Drinking some non-nooners?

There was.

No, I didn't have any, any fun.

We had, we had some stuff to do, but yeah, it was a good weekend.

All right. Well, for Repubble Gang,

the original Pumpkin ale that Kevin sends the rimmers,

need a rimmer sent over to Nick.

Nick needs a rimmer.

Hey, watch how you say that, watch how you say that.

Hey, we're talking about beer here.

Interesting news.

First time in like seven or eight years, Shipyard,

they now allow me to get more than one case.

Not sure if that's good or bad

for the Fruity Pebble Gang here.

It seems to be a slowdown in pumpkin hails.

So I don't know, bad news for us, good news for you, Nick.

I gotta know, Nick, I gotta know.

Cause I was asked this this weekend,

I'm sure I gotta ask you,

do you remember your first time?

That was the first time that feeling,

that moment of going, oh crap, what is that?

We are talking high spots here, all right?

We're talking high spots, everybody, okay?

So, you know, the first moment that you saw a high spot

and you go, oh, like, were you like,

oh, this is what somebody was talking about?

And you knew what it was?

Or you were like, oh, this is brand new.

I'm not sure, I don't understand what this is.

No, it was pretty obvious back then.

I mean, you're talking about, again,

I don't think people realize how fortunate we are

to be in 2025 and not 2010 with coatings.

It was pretty damn obvious back then

that there was a problem.

The difference is, in a lot of cases,

you were sanding entire doors, entire hoods.

There was no just cutting it off.

It was, you know, invasive at that point.

I mean, to do a lot of sanding.

And I've sanded a lot of cars for damage

to the whole car done by another shop.

And it was pretty obvious.

And look today, I still think it's,

if you know what you're doing, it's pretty obvious, right?

I mean, a high spot has a certain look to it.

I mean, if you're on a black car,

you're gonna see almost a white grayish look

that looks like the coating itself.

I mean, it looks like it curing on the paint.

So, yeah, I mean, it was pretty obvious to me.

The smear, right?

Like a, sort of the way I would describe it early on

when I was training people and teaching people was like,

hey, if you see this thing that looks like a smear,

after you've wiped everything off,

that's your high spot, right?

Yeah, I mean, it looks like a white mark.

I mean, it looks like you're wiping the area.

You missed it, you didn't level it.

It sat there, you did wipe it,

you didn't wipe it well enough.

Maybe you did a variety, it's pretty obvious.

Again, it's pretty obvious if you're stepping back

and taking an assessment of the situation,

I think it's obvious.

I think when you're in the moment

and you think I couldn't have possibly done anything wrong,

then those spots tend to look a little different to you.

I mean, I know I used to say that when I would see it.

I'm like, well, not that I couldn't have done something

when I go, what did I do?

And I know there's a lot of people that go there,

what did I do?

And then they'll go, well, shit, I didn't do,

fill in the blank, right?

Whatever it is that caused it,

a lot of people, myself included,

didn't understand in the moment how I could have done that.

I think one that shows up that's interesting

isn't just a high spot from left there, right?

So there's one way you get a high spot of like,

hey, around these edges, around these corners,

where you just completely missed, right?

You just didn't get it all wiped off

and you're like, oh, okay, my bad.

I think another one that really got,

took me some learning curves,

is the water lines and the water drips

that come out randomly from anywhere and everywhere.

Now that wipe, to me, that high spot wipe

looks different than just that smear wipe

like you didn't get it all the way off,

but it's been sitting and that, you know,

you got a lot of coating that just sit there.

Now, one that got a high spot done by water

and just a little bit of drip line,

to me, it looks a little bit different,

not as thick, not as, you know, like this whole thing.

You got more of like these little streakies

and I think there was one inside of our group, right?

Like, was it a back window?

Yeah, somewhere.

Yeah, we had a high spot last week,

a high spot conversation in the group.

Well, fill us in.

Well, you know, basically, you know, again,

it was going to a problem of identifying

that it was a high spot, right?

So guy says, hey, it looks like the coating's been stained.

You know, what am I looking at?

It won't wipe off, you know, guy drove it,

then this popped up and this kind of stuff happens

and the question gets asked of what stained the coating?

As a bunch of people looked at the pictures,

it became very obvious, you know,

to the people looking at the picture go,

oh man, it's just a high spot.

You know, grab a polisher, clean it up,

reapply the coating, whatever.

And it kind of led to this interesting moment where

that wasn't being accepted as the conversation, right?

Like, well, no, it's not a high spot.

It was perfect when I coated it, you know, this and that.

And it was obviously a high spot for any of us

that have ever left a high spot or just had,

like you said, had water drip down

and activate the coating and, you know, had an issue.

It just was a simple, tiny mistake.

And it brings about a very interesting conversation of,

hey man, when you ask people a question

and there's a lot of people that use a lot of coating,

you can spot this stuff a mile away.

I mean, it's very easy to go,

hey man, that's what it is, it's all good,

kind of move on, polish it off, things happen

and that's kind of the nature of the post.

So it seems like this guy, and I don't remember his name

and it doesn't really matter about who it was, right?

Because this next question isn't about him

because you see this in groups in any group, right?

I've seen it in not just detailing groups.

I'm in other car groups where people...

It could be in anything, oh yeah.

Right, yeah, they don't understand

and they say, well, there's no way, right?

Like, and people will start listing off, hey, try this,

hey, did you try that?

Hey, it could be this.

And it's interesting where you've got somebody

that will just keep going, well, yeah, I did that.

No, that wasn't it, yeah, it wasn't this.

And they just, it's almost like an argument back of...

Yeah, very much.

Hey, I did all that, it's not me, right?

It's almost like there's this, hey, it wasn't my fault.

And I think that's the interesting part for me

because it doesn't really matter who's fault, but...

You gotta fix it.

I mean, it's gotta get fixed.

I mean, one of the things you and I would say

is probably the biggest learning lesson

through this podcast and hyper clean.

And I don't know, last five, six years

you and I have been talking on here is,

we get a lot of questions.

I mean, text messages, emails, group, whatever.

And there seems to be really a couple styles

of the way these conversations go.

Somebody's asking for advice, which is 100% of the time.

You give the advice and the person goes,

oh, okay, that makes sense, let me get it fixed.

The other way that it goes, a certain percentage of the time

is it gets very argumentative, right?

Well, that's not true.

It's like, well, you just, you asked me for my two cents.

So, that's the way I would look at it

if you go into anybody's Facebook group

or their online community, you go,

hey man, when you ask people what's going on

and 25 out of 25 people say, this is what it is,

take it or leave it.

I mean, there really isn't another piece of advice, right?

That's the way it is.

But there seems to be this asking for advice

and trying to be argumentative after getting the advice,

I think is something we see a lot for sure.

Well, dude, I wanna dive into that moment

for just a second, right?

Like we geek out on other things.

This is something like, I think I enjoy geeking out on

and you and I've talked back and forth

and we go, why?

Right?

Like, what is it in somebody to go ask for advice

and then to argue the advice?

A, could be that they don't think

that the other people are right, right?

Like, okay, bad advice, I'm not gonna agree with that.

That's definitely one.

But you did ask for the advice.

So, let's remember, you did ask for the advice

of this human being or group of human beings.

So, you went to ask for advice

and then you wanna rebuttal the advice immediately

is a very odd way of doing things.

I mean, to those of us that get asked a lot of questions,

I always say the same thing.

Like, why'd you ask the question to me?

I mean, just don't ask the question.

Just do it your way and move on with your life,

which by the way, a lot of us do.

You know, a lot of us just go, eh,

I'm not gonna ask anybody and I'm gonna figure it out myself.

And for those of us that grew up at a different time

and detailing, you didn't have a choice but to do that.

There was nobody to ask.

You weren't gonna be able to go, hey, 3M,

I just got your bottle of compounds, not working all that.

There was no like 1-800 number

of a qualified technician to call.

Yeah, you weren't asking that guy

on that white truck driving around, no way.

No, no, you were not.

No, you weren't asking where the dentist was either.

No, no, you weren't doing that either.

No, they had been smelling fumes

for usually about 20 years at that point.

This was their little retirement plan.

So, but it gets into a different,

it gets into an interesting part of the conversation is,

you know, I can only go off my experience.

I think there are people that laugh at themselves

when they make a mistake and they go,

man, I can't believe I did that.

Then there's this other set of people that go,

I don't make any mistakes.

This has to be something else.

And they're never going to take advice well

because they're right 100% of the time.

And I kind of gave you this example.

If you've ever hired somebody to do work at your home

or your business or whatever,

and they're a blue collar tradesman like an HVAC tech,

and I had this recent, not recently,

but in the last year,

where somebody had to come fix our HVAC.

Great guy, we've used him, highly recommend.

But he's one of these guys that,

I'm the best HVAC tech you ever seen.

I'm the best detailer in this group.

I'm the best detailer ever lived.

I think those people have a hard time

when things don't go right.

And I tend to go, man, I messed something up.

Let's have a laugh, let's move on.

I've made $4,500 mistakes.

I've made $200 mistakes.

I'll continue to make mistakes.

We're all human, you laugh about them.

And I think a lot of people miss out on

those mistakes you make.

Not only do you learn from them

if you have the right attitude,

but those are the funny things having a beer

with your colleagues that you laugh at,

like, hey dude, did you ever do this?

Oh man, I burnt paint on this car one.

Like, it's not this serious.

I guess that's what people don't realize.

If you're not failing or making mistakes,

you're not really doing very much.

And so the more you do,

the more you realize you're gonna make some mistakes.

You had to, well, maybe you didn't.

That's gonna be the question.

I'm gonna ask this question of,

how does somebody learn to learn to make mistakes?

This is kind of an odd,

you think we could go through trial and error?

We could definitely say,

if somebody's been in business a long time,

they've eventually learned something.

But I'll say this, you know why I learned to make mistakes?

I worked for somebody else

and they joked about the mistake,

like what the heck were you doing

and your coworkers knew that you made a mistake

and you knew when they made a mistake

and you guys all had a laugh about it.

The problem is, hold on, hold on.

The problem is, these guys that struggle

to get advice and detailing, largely learned on their own,

they never worked in an environment

where they actually learned how to do high level stuff.

So they can't ever really look at that part of it.

That when you actually learn properly,

you learn properly through working for somebody

which used to be the path into this business.

Body shop business was the same way, a painting business.

I mean, now you guys got guys painting in their backyard.

That was never really that big of a thing.

You went to a body shop, you learned how to paint.

This YouTube university thing, which is a great thing,

a lot of guys sit in their garage or in their mobile unit

and they think they're the best detailer to ever live

because they've never worked around other people.

And so they never make a mistake

because if nobody's there to point the mistake out,

you've never made it.

There's no more dislike button on YouTube, is there?

Is there?

I think there is.

Oh, I thought they took it.

I mean, most people took those things off, didn't they?

Like all the negativity around?

Your point is well-founded.

Like, yeah.

And I want to draw it back, which I was saying earlier,

and I'm glad you finished your thought

because it was a very real thought.

And I want to take it back even further to go,

listen, I think you and I have said,

we really feel there's also a divide

on people that were young athletes.

Now, whether or not we went and did anything,

that's not what I mean.

I just mean, did you compete at a young age

to try and beat somebody else's team,

to try and win the trophy at the end of the season?

Did you get your face mask grabbed by a coach?

Go on, what the hell are you doing?

Bingo, right?

There's some of us that went through some things earlier

in life where we were, in a sense, grilled into us.

I think the next group of those people went into military

and you can see how people come out of military

and they're able to handle some things certain ways.

I think there's definitely people

that were competitive younger.

We had to get scolded, in a sense.

We had to get yelled at.

You got yelled at and screamed at.

You got embarrassed in front of your team.

I mean, you made mistakes.

That's part of, I think, why some people later in life,

it shows that they have more thicker skin.

They can handle tough conversations.

They can actually engage in tough conversations

but not come out yelling and screaming.

Yeah, it's like, hey, man, it's all good.

And I think this is the thing, man, is like,

I think we can all take these kind of conversations positively

but the people that take them negatively

are always gonna be the people that take them negatively.

Right?

Like, guys, if you code enough cars,

you're gonna leave some high spots.

I mean, there's the cat out of the bag.

I don't care how many you do.

I don't care.

We know guys that do tons of coatings every week.

They'll be coating a car.

They'll send you a text message

and they'll, with some emojis going,

what the F did I just do?

I'm an idiot.

I wasn't paying attention.

The phone rang.

I got distracted.

I was changing the podcast or changing my music

and everybody on the text chain has a laugh.

And that's the part you wanna instill into people is,

buddy, if you cut enough paint,

you're gonna burn some paint.

I don't know when that's gonna be in your career,

but if you're going around telling people,

I've never burnt paint.

You've never done high level work.

That's a fact because high level work

means pushing the paint to the edge

to get the highest finish.

Now, I'm not saying that's what you have to do

to be successful, but don't go around

and tell people you never burnt paint

because that means you never really cut anything

that mattered, right?

I mean, that's just how it goes.

That's part of the game.

It's part of learning where you can push and not push.

And it's all good that we have technology now

that you go, hey, man,

I'm gonna be a little safer on paint corrections.

I'm gonna do a two step at most.

I'm always gonna use a DA.

It's gonna make, I'm never gonna burn paint, cool.

But then you have to be respectful

that there's a whole nother level that you're not in

and you're not competing in.

So don't get mad when a guy says,

hey, I burnt paint before and you go,

I've never burnt paint.

You've also never done his level of work.

That doesn't make it right or wrong,

but you gotta understand the more you push,

the more mistakes you're gonna make

and the more life lessons you're gonna learn

of what to do and what not to do.

And the more cars you coat,

the more likely it is you're gonna be a guy

that leaves a high spot.

Doesn't matter how perfect your process is

because you're human.

And I think that's the whole part of this is

I don't really understand asking people advice

and getting argumentative

because I made a ton of mistakes working on cars

because I've worked on tons of cars.

And that's just the nature of numbers.

If I do 10,000 cars in my business a year

and you do seven, who's more likely to make more mistakes?

The guy that is touching 10,000 cars, right?

Or a thousand cars or whatever the number is.

And so you get over that stuff quickly

if you realize, hey, that means you're kind of,

you don't wanna be irresponsible

where you're screwing every car up.

Let's all understand that's not what I'm saying,

but the more cars you do,

the more things you're gonna figure out.

I'm not quite on top of that.

I made a mistake here.

I should have done this differently.

If you're honest with yourself,

that's just how it all plays out.

So there's this idea that, well,

it's an idea of failing and not being a failure

that so many people,

that I think they get scared in these moments.

I wanna bring in this other idea of,

maybe people when they're argumentative on post,

it's because they don't wanna appear

that they failed at something.

It's not that they wanna appear that they were right

and the other people were right.

I think there's some people that just,

they're afraid of letting some other people know

that they failed at something.

There's this actual fear.

And that book, there was this book

I was listening to last week.

I sent you that text and I was like,

hey, they just talked about this

and it had something to do with marketing.

I don't remember what it was.

And they go, what was it?

The fear of being wrong is more powerful

than the joy of winning.

And some people, their actual fear of the wrongness

is it keeps them away from actually experiencing the moments.

And I think they don't get to those moments

off of what you just said.

Because if you're a, let's just say football,

because right now we're in football season.

If you're a starting and you fail at a play,

what does the coach do?

He says, shake it off because what's about to happen?

Yeah, there's another play.

Another play.

You gotta go.

If you're not somebody that's in all the time

and you mess up, what do you do?

You get yanked, right?

And then you're the guy sitting there going,

God damn, I failed.

I should have done this, yeah.

And then you can see it, right?

They're all pissed off.

But the guy that knows he's gotta get over it

is the guy that's going, all right, I got the next play.

I'm onto the next one.

And there's some people that need to realize that.

Hey, there actually becomes this joy of winning

once you get over failing.

Yeah, and you gotta realize,

none of this stuff is life and death, man.

We're detailing cars.

Like, God damn, dude, it isn't worth having 20 guys

tell you what they're looking at and getting argumentative,

right?

I mean, it's just, it's not worth that.

Like, just take it, grab the polisher, fix the spot,

reapply the coding, think through like,

man, what did I do right here?

And then move on.

Like, guys, every one of us makes the best decision

in the moment, executes, sometimes it works,

sometimes it doesn't, you redo the spot,

you move on with your life, right?

This isn't life and death.

And I know it's kind of hard for guys, I think,

and I kind of sympathize with this.

I think a lot of this internet culture around detailing

is like, this is a life and death, you know, thing.

Guys, we're detailing cars.

Have some fun, have a laugh, you screwed something up.

By the way, even if you burn paint,

you know what the great thing is?

They sell more paint down at the store.

The body shop can fix the panel.

It's not the best feeling in the world.

Don't get me wrong, nothing to celebrate

that day that you burn paint.

I dropped a $4,500 headlight before.

Wasn't exactly thrilled with myself

the first hour after that happened,

but they make more, told the customer, got it replaced.

And now it's a funny story I'm telling on a podcast

like I'm a dumbass to drop the headlight.

Like, at the end of the day,

everything is fixable when it comes to cars, right?

I mean, everything is fixable.

That doesn't mean you go out and act irresponsibly,

but when you are doing lots of things

and you're actually achieving lots,

you're gonna make some mistakes.

Now, this is why we always tell people

to actually charge properly,

because when you do make the mistake,

you better have the money to fix it.

And I think the real fear people have

in this business in particular,

HVAC people, plumbing people,

a lot of hardworking blue collar trades,

this is what they fear,

because they don't actually charge enough.

So they don't have the time

or the money built in to go fix a mistake.

And that should always be part of your price, right?

That's what good businesses do.

They don't just charge for what they need to make on the job,

they charge so they can save some money

for when they do make a mistake in the future,

they can cover that,

and that is all part of charging.

And we're not gonna go into that today

of what that looks mathematically,

but let's say roughly 10% of every job you charge for

should be held into an account for, quote unquote,

the mistakes your company, your team, yourself,

you may make, right?

This is what you do in real estate, okay?

So real estate has a 10% rule.

If the rent on your house you're renting out's 1,000,

you keep back 10%, there's your maintenance.

That's your maintenance account, quote unquote, right?

So you save a hundred bucks a month

towards your AC going out, your refrigerator.

That's a pretty good rule of thumb

for everybody out there that's doing a $1,000 coding job.

Take a hundred bucks, put it in a separate account

for that time that you burn that panel,

there's some money there,

but I think there is where the fear comes from.

I don't have enough money that if I do screw up,

and especially guys wanting to drive back and just fix it,

it seems like driving back is a huge fear.

Like that gas is now a problem.

You go, okay, bud, you've got another problem

in your business.

So when you talked about earlier, the fear of failing,

I'm not sure that's what we see in this business.

I think it's the fear that I don't have the money to cover it.

I don't have the time built in to cover it

because I didn't charge enough.

I think that becomes the root problem.

Oh, well, whichever the problem,

over the years, you and I have tried to solve them, right?

And like we see them pop up,

we see different people struggle with things.

You and I, by nature, we wanna come out with products,

we wanna come out with solutions,

and we also say, hey, listen, we've got a process.

To have a process, well, you kinda have to have a system.

Over the years, it's taken us, well, actually five.

We'll celebrate here in a couple months,

five years of business together.

But if people wanna go back and hear the first time

that you and I talked, I actually was looking up

some stuff for MTE because I talked about failure,

and I was gonna look back at some episodes,

and it was MTE Vegas 2019, where Nick sat down at a table,

and I was like, hey, Mr. Walters.

Hey, I wish that show was still going on.

That was, they had a foundation of something.

Well, so let's talk about what we've done

over the years, right?

Now there is a system so that,

part of the reason why you have a system is,

so if somebody has an issue,

you can actually kinda walk them back,

excuse me, through the processes,

and through what they used to see where the issue

might have happened, right?

Let's get out of whether somebody is acceptable

of a problem, you know, get all that stuff

out of our psyche now, we're going into

why we actually built the system the way we built it.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at, if you're gonna

code a vehicle, one of the things,

coding a vehicle starts all the way back at the prep

before you ever put a polisher on the car,

which a lot of people don't talk about.

How'd you strip the car down?

What work did you get done?

You know, did you get the grime out of the edges

or is that grime gonna come out, you know,

during the polishing process?

So again, while we all focus on, let's say a high spot,

there's a variety of reasons that you could get ghosting,

you could get an adverse reaction

when you start to code a panel.

A lot of that stuff isn't just as black and white

as people wanna make it.

And so the purpose of having a system,

and let's say you're gonna use, you know,

UNO or Trey or Sparta or whatever,

the reason that we did our compounds and polishes

in our one step the way we did is that we were finding

a major issue clued in by all of you using our product

on certain manufacturers paint systems.

And then when we started digging into that issue,

we go, oh, wait a minute.

These heavy oil-based, oil-heavy compounds and polishes

are causing huge issues for a lot of number one people

installing coatings of all manufacturers.

Okay, not just hyperclaim.

You've said this before,

and yet we still see many people that are using.

So let's pause for a moment and go,

I know we're not gonna call out the brand,

so to speak, but-

I don't know, yeah.

What do we know?

Like how do we know if we're using something

that's not hyperclaim?

How do we know?

Yeah, so this started, I was down in Phoenix,

one of the first trips I took for hyperclaim down to Phoenix.

And I got randomly in like the three or four days,

I got calls from different parts of the country

on the same manufacturer of a car.

And they were seeing an adverse reaction

when they started to coat the car.

They were all using different compounds and polishes.

They weren't all from the same manufacturer.

But all those manufacturer I was familiar with, okay?

We didn't have anything at the time

to sell compound and polish-wise.

So the first thing that I went to,

and I'll always go to,

because it'd be the same thing that I said to my guys,

I always ask, how'd you wipe the panel down

before you started applying the coating?

And I would get like ho-hum answers.

I did like an alcohol wipe and did it real quick.

And I'm like, okay, hey man, I'm driving right now.

I did this like three or four people.

I'm like, go and like soak a panel in 50-50 IPA wipe

as harsh as you can build it.

You don't want straight alcohol, but you know what I mean?

Let the panel kind of relax.

In like 30 minutes, give me a call back.

Go ahead and re-correct the area if you marded it all

or whatever and then do an IPA wipe

or whatever the case may be.

When they doused the panel

and took all those oils truly out of the panel,

there was no issue applying the coating.

So what we found, now years of this going on,

how freshly certain manufacturers, we see it out of Ford.

Sometimes we see it out of Chevy.

We used to see it a lot out of Tesla,

especially in their black.

Honda certain blacks can cause an issue.

Toyota certainly at times

have gone through some quality control.

But what we found is just a real time,

there's a huge problem here.

Now, when I say huge, it wasn't popping up all the time,

but we all, you and I also know

a bunch of other coating manufacturers,

they were going through it.

And my history in this business always goes back to

how did you prep the surface?

If you've done this long enough,

which you have and I have,

you always go back to what did we do

before we coated the vehicle?

Let's not just point at the coating.

And then as you started to work back,

you started to find that still to this day,

most people don't know what a real deep prep wipe looks like.

All right, so let's go over that.

I'm glad you brought it up

and I'm glad you use that certain word wipe.

Because we actually have that as our name

for those of you that use hyperclean,

you know that our panel prep is also called wipe.

Now, Adam inside the specialist group,

he was saying thanks for some feedback on a truck cover,

but he wanted us to know and he said,

first time using wipe.

Cool, man, appreciate it.

Since I just ran out of the old brand I use,

I used to use, I was blown away with wipe

within the first two passes.

Every new chemical I use from hyperclean,

I'm pretty much blown away.

And out of the, how nice it is.

It turns out if you actually have to use the products,

you know, what they should work like.

So let's talk about wipe and the unique,

what I think is unique to what we were trying to do.

Number one, you need to be able to prep the panel.

Okay, so you need to be able to use something

that's a strong, strong, strong cleaner

and really breaks through more than residue.

Guys get caught up on being able to see the residue.

Well, there's no polished residue.

There's no compound residue.

If there's pores in the paint,

there's things you can't see.

It's pretty logical, right?

Just like we can't see a coating everywhere

it's soaking into because it's soaking into the pores

of the paint system.

Very, very telling on like RVs and boats, right?

Gel coat, very, very porous.

It's gonna, you know, soak in.

So you guys understand these things are porous.

But there's also a problem with a strong cleaner

that you have to solve that many companies

that I've used in my career didn't care about solving,

which is you also don't wanna mar the hell out of the car

that you just corrected because the panel prep

is so aggressive and so dry.

And that's actually what happens.

It gets very dry and it causes your towel

to mar the surface.

Guys, I always bring up Honda S2000 paint.

Always bring that up.

You couldn't look at that stuff and it not mar.

So if you had an aggressive just alcohol and water panel

prep, you would just mar the hell out of this car

you spent forever trying to get perfect.

So ours has a combination of two things that I think you

and I talked about from the very beginning.

Your towel needs to have lubrication

so it doesn't mar the surface.

And you also still need to have that strong cutting through

oil, residue, whatever.

And that's kind of what the idea behind wipe was.

It's very, it's really that basic.

But you can use a lot of panel preps

that cause you to mar the surface up again.

Yeah, and that is the beauty of what wipe is.

Now, if we don't use wipe, what happens?

You know, is that where we go, hey, the system means,

oh, now you're screwed.

Or you go, listen guys, there's a system.

So pretty much just use the system.

Yeah, I mean, that's, I kind of understand, you know,

for everybody that maybe you're new listening to this,

but guys that have listened to this,

I wasn't always using hyper clean stuff.

Marty, you didn't always use, it didn't exist

when you were coding cars.

I now understand some of their frustration

with a guy like me because I go, yeah,

I probably should have just used your system.

So I got the result.

And if there was a problem, you could help me, right?

So for a lot of you guys using a mishmash of,

we see this a lot in the compound and polish world.

Guys will use a compound from this company.

Yeah, polish from this company.

They use a one step from this company.

They think they got the magic sauce.

Here becomes the problem.

And this would be, doesn't matter if you use our stuff

or not when it comes to coding.

You got a lot of different chemistry,

no matter what you believe.

And some of the stuff guys tell me they're using,

I'm like, buddy, that's so much oil in that.

Like you better be spending a half an hour

prepping your car before you code it with anybody's stuff.

Like, I know that product, I know why you like it

because you can work it for three hours

and nothing's gonna dust and nothing's gonna happen.

How do you think they achieve that guys?

They don't achieve it with the abrasive.

They achieve it with oil

because oil's harder to break down than anything else, right?

So it just keeps digging into the pores.

So imagine you're a guy that found out eight passes

works really well with this product and this pad.

I wouldn't do that, but I know guys do.

Imagine how much oil you're shoving in

to every pore of that panel of that car

and now to get what you need, you need to pull all of that out.

And if you don't, you may have an adverse reaction.

I'm not saying you will, but we see that happen.

And then you sit there and you're frustrated, rightfully so,

but the facts are it goes back to something earlier

in your process, not to the actual coding.

And very rarely in the history of me coding cars,

which is now 15 plus years, same for you,

is the coding the cause of most of your problems.

Most of your problems come from all of the prep,

all of the steps you did ahead of time.

And that's hard for any of us to realize is like,

man, it is so dependent on your prep.

And every step you take all the way through

compounding and polishing or whatever it is you're doing,

all of that stuff has a reaction at the end steps.

You know, the one question that some people

could ask in this moment is,

well, what if I use a primer polish?

Like I haven't used anybody else's primer polish.

I don't know, right?

Like the only one I used was the one I used to make.

So I can't tell you what other people's do,

but I know there's some people that brag

about their primer polish and you can go straight in.

Yeah, and you also have to remember

you're the one taking that risk, okay?

If you find it works for you, that's great.

But when you have a problem,

you gotta realize that it's gonna be hard

for anybody to help you troubleshoot

because you've used this company's soap,

use this company's panel prep,

use this company's primer polish,

use this company's coating.

Hey, man, we can all try to help,

but the smartest shops out there

are really actively getting away from operating that way,

especially if they're trying to build a team

or they do have a team.

They're not getting into the whole,

the way that, and again, my career has gone both ways.

I worked for a company, they were all system,

and they were all one company.

I've worked for people early in my career,

they used a mishmash of things.

I used a mishmash of things as I started my business,

but then kind of started to streamline

and use just from one company.

Let me tell you, man, if you need help troubleshooting,

but you've used 10 different companies' products

on the way to the coating, including the coating,

it's really tough to troubleshoot.

And that's where you just have to take it on yourself

and you gotta go, hey, man, I gotta figure this out.

Because you can't call the compound company,

you can't call the coating company,

because everybody's gonna say the same thing.

I don't really know everything about

the other things that you used.

That's hard to troubleshoot, man.

One thing's for sure inside our group,

more and more people are loving Velo.

Yeah, for sure.

Like, they are loving it, loving it.

And seeing some really great images come out,

even after Velo, you're using Wipe, right?

We're definitely using Wipe even after Velo.

Yeah, it's such an easy step.

You know what I mean?

That's why I never really understood

that wiping the panel was the thing that I had to fix.

Like, I could, that took so long, I had to get,

it's like, I don't know, man.

I never found it.

Or maybe some people used some stuff

that took them a long time.

Yeah, that could be.

You're wanting to get it done at the end of the job.

You're like, man, I wish I could get rid of,

I mean, I hear you, I just never,

actually by the time I'm done, you know, polishing a car,

I kind of like having the relaxing, you know, Wipe.

It's like, man, I've kind of been doing that a while.

I'll wipe some stuff around the panel.

I'll clean this thing up.

Like, I never found that to be like some kind of cumbers.

I would say washing the car thoroughly

is a worse step for me than wiping it down.

I mean, all the hard work is done.

I mean, it just wasn't the step I was all that concerned about.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know.

And as somebody who constantly always fought

the water drip lines, listen, using Wipe

and doing that final step really does help,

really does help those moments.

I mean, if you're compounding and polishing,

hasn't all the water come out?

Like, that's what I'm wondering with guys like you.

As long as it takes you to do them, yeah, but.

Oh, yeah, you're so quick.

It just, you just buzz right by the water.

I hear you.

Hey, you could be right.

I don't know.

Well, you know, there's people that have claimed

the first time they're wet sand of cars,

people that claim different things on these episodes.

One day, I'm gonna have to claim something.

Yeah, I was first one to wet sand of car.

It's like, oh yeah, Marty just sat there.

I'm like, okay, could have maybe said

that sounds a little ridiculous.

All right, I wanna talk about something

that also seems to be ridiculous to me.

Maybe this will chase some rabbits.

Maybe they'll die on the vine, I'm not sure.

But I heard this recently and I'd love to know your thoughts.

I'd actually like to know some people inside

that listen to this.

I'd actually, I'd like to know some of their thoughts

on this question.

Do you serve your business or does your business serve you?

Yeah, see, here's the thing.

Some of these like quotes,

I don't really know what do you mean?

I mean- Great question.

Yeah, let's play it out a little bit.

Like serving you or you serve it.

Do you go in every day?

You're there early and you're the one that goes late?

Or are you the one that gets there when you want to

and leave when you want to?

Are you the one that organizes things

so that other people can do it?

Because you're the boss, you're the owner.

Or do you go in and chip in and be a part

of what the team is doing?

This is sort of what that,

I think some people struggle with

when they start hiring people.

What role does the owner become in a business?

I think there's very few owners

that don't wear every hat even after you hire.

So to your point, do you go in early?

Do you get the day set up?

Do you have everything unlocked?

Do you make sure?

Do you check on things?

Sure.

Is there other times you have to jump in

and you got to pitch in?

You got to do some things

that maybe you haven't done in a while?

Sure.

I think far too many people are getting caught up in.

And I just think this is just how the internet works.

Of people going into and look,

there's all kinds of Facebook groups

where it's really popular to say,

this is how you make more money

and this is how you do this and this is how you do that.

Anybody that's been doing this long enough

will be like, hey man, I had two guys go on vacation.

I had to jump in that week and I had to do some things.

Then there's other times you go,

man, I haven't had to jump in on my business

for six, seven weeks.

I'm just kind of here making sure my guys

are taken care of, doing some meetings,

trying to get new customers,

going out and talking to new bigger customers.

I think so many people are caught up in something

that doesn't really ever happen.

When you own a business,

for a very long period of time,

you're going to be doing a lot of different things

in your business.

Sometimes that's the work,

sometimes it's the office work,

it's dealing with the accountant, it's this other stuff.

I think guys are way too caught up on this stuff.

It's gotta be, they're caught up because

maybe they don't really wanna be in business

because they had this idea that,

listen, there's gonna be this point

where I don't have to do anything.

We joke about the people that used to send us messages

about being at the bar at two o'clock.

Oh yeah.

Hey, finish with my day.

It's two o'clock.

Like, what?

And by the way, if that's what you wanna do,

I don't really think there's an issue with it,

but you can't also complain about your lot in business

if that's something that you're doing, right?

Well, I don't know that they would complain

because they're saying, my business-

Well, no, I mean, here's the thing.

No, you and I know people who directly said

they need to make more money

and were at the bar at two o'clock.

So that's more likely what happens in all of this.

And I don't really care what anybody does.

It's your business, it's your life, do what you want.

But I think if you're asking yourself right now

and you say, I wanna make double the money

I'm making right now,

the conversation is not about your business

and if it serves you or you serve it or any of that to me.

It's, if you're actively saying to yourself,

I'm not making enough money

and you're not working 10, 12, 16-hour days,

I think that's where you run into the issues.

That's my two cents,

is that everyone is having these conversations,

especially on things like business, Facebook groups

and detailing, talking about the shoulda, coulda, woulda,

if you do this, then that'll happen.

It's like, guys, when you run a business,

I'm now 15 years in,

your day really looks the same day in and day out,

but you're gonna have to wear a different hat at times.

You're gonna have to go do some work.

You're gonna have to go hire a marketing company.

You're gonna have to deal with a website company.

You're gonna have to talk to an accountant,

which maybe you didn't have to do five years ago

because you didn't have the money to do it, right?

And things change and you hire people

and then you have to fire people

and you have to rehire more people

and you gotta do, so all of this

where people are trying to find a way out,

I hear ya, I know people that are billionaires that don't,

they don't have a way out.

They're still working on their business every day.

Yeah, man, they're not cleaning the toilets

that they're building anymore,

but they sure did at one time.

They started from nothing.

You know, I imagine some people see, you know,

they maybe go to the golf course to clean some guy's car

and you know, he owns a business,

but he's at the golf course by three o'clock.

They're like, man, I'd love to have that life.

You know, like an insurance business.

Yeah, but you know what they forget though,

that guy's like 22 years in.

Sure, but they just see him and go, yeah.

And the reason why I say insurance business

is you just kept saying business.

Like, I imagine there's some insurance businesses that,

and that guy's hardly ever there.

Well, that's a different business.

That ain't ours, right?

And by the way, serving somebody with a detail.

At the golf course, that insurance agent

might land two or three or five big customers a month

out of that membership.

So him being at the golf course looks like to you,

he's goofing off at the golf course.

And maybe he is to some extent,

but if he lands three major clients a month on average

over his 10 years of being there,

did he goof off or did he get some business?

And now all of a sudden,

that membership more than pays for itself.

His family gets to enjoy it.

And again, I don't like the conversations

around business much anymore,

meaning like what I'm seeing online,

especially around service-based businesses like detailing,

because everybody's trying to tell you to scale.

Scale, scale, you gonna scale, you gonna scale?

You know, does your business pay you?

You paying your business?

It's like, what does all this shit mean, man?

Go to work, go to work.

That's what this all is.

It's just another way to work, okay?

There's too many people that think owning a business

is somehow different than going to a job.

I got news for you.

Going to a job is way easier.

It's way easier than owning a business.

There's many of you that think,

because of what you read online,

that somehow owning a business is vastly different

than a job and somehow it's superior.

I got news for you.

In a lot of ways, it's way worse.

Way worse owning a business than just working for somebody,

especially in the last five years,

where starting salaries have done nothing

but go through the roof.

You got warehouse workers starting at 25 bucks an hour.

And many of you guys don't make that at the end of the year

when you really do your numbers

about sitting up at night, doing this, goofing around,

going on social media, and you're going,

man, I put a lot of hours into this.

It's like, yeah, man, you could've pushed carts at Target

in Las Vegas for $23 an hour.

So there's people that think this is the way out.

And I hope it is for you listening.

There's other people that stay in the jail of business

because all they do is chase the next rabbit of,

what is the next terminology?

What was the one back in the day when you and I,

pay me first or what was it called?

What was that thing called?

Profit first.

Profit first, like they came up with something new, okay?

Let me tell you something.

Your business either has profit

at the end of the month or it doesn't.

It's not rocket science, okay?

But it was like, there was gonna be this new age way

of running your business.

Guys, you either profit or you don't.

So you mentioned something

which most business owners will agree with you.

You go into business to make money and find a way out, right?

Is what most do, okay?

I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you.

Most.

I think most of us think about a way out

and we're never really enjoying what we're doing.

There's one flip of the coin of a business is there

to make money, there's another part

of this self-employed people, right?

Who think of themselves as business owners

but they really should think of themselves

as self-employed, right?

Where you go, yeah, I should,

almost in a sense, start clocking in.

I should start making sure I spend enough time, right?

There's things that you should do when you are that person.

Yeah, and think about self-employment, yeah.

I was trying to get to this part of the way out.

I was just trying to get it.

And they always, I think there's a lot of people

that get it and they go, okay,

there's gonna be this thing at the end, right?

Somebody's gonna buy, somebody's gonna this.

There's gonna be a way, maybe that's a way out,

like I'm gonna have all these people doing stuff for me.

Right, I'm gonna have all these people.

That's my way out.

And I go, okay, we pause for a moment to what you said.

You know, most business owners actually have to go

and do multiple hats throughout the time.

They actually don't get to fully go all the way out.

They actually have to be a part

of different things throughout the whole process.

And you go, okay, that goes back to something

I used to say, well, then you get into business

of something that you like to do, right?

This is always the flip of the coin back to me and you.

I got into it because somebody goes,

hey man, I've seen some people cleaning some cars

down at the IGA, which was a grocery store.

Yeah, I remember IGA back in the day.

Oh, I like to clean my rodeo.

I had a white rodeo, stick shift, loved it.

Yeah, it's nice. Great car.

I like to clean it.

Okay, well, I can do that.

And even to this weekend, cleaning is something I enjoy

to get out on a Sunday and clean cars.

Like, everybody's got the reasons, everybody.

So this is gonna be one of those things I hang my hat on,

I think throughout like, go back and forth with you on.

Like, okay, if you're gonna be in it X many years,

if you wanna stay in it, the rest are like,

you better enjoy it.

Like, get some satisfaction out of what you do.

Yeah, you do have to enjoy it.

There's no doubt about it.

But then you also have to be realistic

is that can you do it until you're 60 years old?

Right?

And there's, look, man, I have a lot of respect.

Many of the people that do stuff for me in my life

that I hire, we're doing an audio visual project

at my house, they're self-employed.

They do the installation, they handle it.

They don't have helpers, you know, a handyman,

most handymans that you hire,

they're doing all the work themselves.

Most good plumbers you hire, it's like them and a helper.

You know, when I did a full renovation

on our current house years ago,

almost every tradesman, they own the company,

they were laying the floor.

If they laid the carpet, they had the carpet company, right?

Like, that's most of this stuff.

And I admire that, because like,

I do hope you enjoy your work and you take pride in it.

But also, as someone who's gone through the paces

and has talked to a lot of people out there listening,

you hit that 30 year old, 35 years old,

you look around, you go,

I don't think I can do this much longer,

but you don't wanna change your ways,

you don't wanna build something,

you don't know how to hire, you didn't save any money,

you don't have the money to hire,

you don't charge to hire,

you haven't grown your customer base.

That becomes a scary thing.

And, you know, years ago,

people loved to talk about business

in a right and wrong way.

I think you and I now go,

hey man, you're gonna own your business out there

listening how you wanna own it.

I can't make you own it any different way.

I can tell you this,

that there always becomes an end to all of this.

Whether that you hire a lot of people

and you run out of money and there's an end,

you sell, there's an end,

or your body breaks down and you go,

I gotta go get a gig.

I can't do this anymore.

So what ending you want should probably be

in a lot more people's minds than it is.

So let's go four circle then,

and based on that I go,

damn Dale, it's impressive what you do.

Yeah, Dale's still cutting paint.

Dude, look, I'll tell anybody out there,

I've had my fill of cutting paint.

I like looking at my cars and going,

I got my cars where I want them.

When a customer says it's time for Nick to step in

or my guys are busy,

I'm not that thrilled about cutting paint.

I'll do it and I have to do it.

There goes back to what I say a lot on this podcast,

about 90% of every day for me

is not the things I enjoy the most, okay?

That's what really owning a business is.

Doesn't mean I hate it, don't get me wrong.

Doesn't mean I'm miserable,

but if you think all of this is about enjoyment,

you're not gonna enjoy everything

you have to do in your business,

but you gotta do it like you enjoy it.

That's the key on the things in your business, right?

And when we have these types of conversations,

I want people to realize a lot of the things I say

is because so many people ask me questions

and I'm thrilled that they have over the years,

but the same things come up every time, okay?

If you think you have a unique situation,

I can promise you one thing, you don't.

I've heard it from a thousand people,

I've had a thousand people ask me about it,

you're not unique,

you're just gonna have to deal with it in your way,

but it really does come down to this.

There's going to be an end to your business life.

What way do you want it to end?

Do you want it to end

because physically you can't do it anymore?

Then hey man, self-employment's for you,

but there's a lot of people that get to 40, 35 years old

and go, man, my body's breaking down, I'm miserable,

now they can't like what they used to do

and I don't want to see that for people,

but if that's a choice that they make

and they're happy doing it that way,

I don't judge any of that,

but I think a lot of people would be helped

stop with the online cliche people

that try to tell you all this stuff about business.

Business is waking up every morning,

putting a lot of work into your business,

using your brain when you make a mistake

and figuring out how to not make it again

or a better decision the next time.

It is not some glamorous,

I don't know whether people think there's like

a bowl on your desk with all these quotes

that idiots say on the internet

that help you through situations,

but I got news for you, the shit doesn't work.

And most people that are trying to tell you

about business all the time,

wouldn't they just be doing that

with their business all the time,

rather than telling you all of these cliches

and this high level stuff

and they're putting up a thousand clips a month

just on business, I got news for you.

There ain't a thousand things to do

to run a successful business.

How do you put a thousand clips out

just about business every month?

You guys never asked yourself that?

Like, what's this guy even talking about?

Running a publicly traded company

doesn't have a thousand different cliches to use.

We're running a goddamn detailing business.

Like, it's just not that difficult.

It's not, it's not,

but it's fun to have some jokes about, isn't it?

100%.

All right guys, good talk.

We'll see you over in the hyperclean specialist group

where we did get quite a bit of this discussion from today.

I know guys love to see, well, results of Velo like me.

Hey, we all like seeing that.

We also like seeing what else is going on.

So not only the PLPs, some good ones lately,

haven't they been?

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, all right, we'll see everybody there.

All right, see you guys.

Ceramic Coating High Spots and A Real Business Conversation. Episode #922

Honda S2000

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