Customers Have Never Been More Misinformed? Plus Product Distribution Where Is The Opportunity? Episode #923
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Welcome to the Pights & Polishing Podcast, the most influential and listened to podcast in auto detailing. Welcome to the community. What's up everybody it's Nick. And Marty is having technical issues at HQ. So I'm going to be recording alone today. And I'm going to be doing this a little bit off the cuff. But I went back and looked at some texts and DMs and emails and questions that people have from time to time.
Almost every day. And I know many of you want to talk about business. You want to talk about all these different things. And so one of the things I'm going to do today is just kind of shoot off the cuff and talk about some things that have become apparent questions. People have things like that. So let's start somewhere.
I've talked to a lot of people recently. We're a customer. Or if you're doing this yourself, there's a lot of questions on I'm seeing this on my paint. I'm seeing this on my car. And almost 100% of the time. One of the interesting things that happens is you go out, you inspect the car and you realize the customer or the DIY or your friend or a family member did something to their car.
You specifically told them not to do. Right. And one of the interesting things about that is, is I hear this repeated all over the internet, all kinds of business gurus, all kinds of people in our industry and out of our industry that the customer has never been more informed.
I honestly don't think I could disagree with anything more than that statement. And this goes for anything inside or outside the detailing realm.
Obviously this is a detailing podcast. So we're talking about the detailing world. But I've never disagreed with something probably more in my business life because it actually makes everyone believe that the customers know what they're talking about.
And we see this on the chemical side of things where people make statements all the time. We joke about it here when people say I have a silicone free dressing and what they mean is they have a water based dressing.
And the other side of it is a solvent based dressing. So unless there's big words on the front of your gallon that says silicone free body shop use.
You don't have a silicone free dressing. It's just not a thing except for these tiny little pockets like a body shop. And we've stated before most body shops don't use silicone free they say they do they don't.
But it would say in big letters on the front like the biggest thing even above the product name would be that it's silicone free. But the person is talking like an expert.
You know, I don't like silicone in my dressing and then you see the dressing they're using and you go well that has silicone in it.
So that person that's creating that piece of content is doing what they're misinforming the audience.
That is what's true about today's consumer.
You can talk to your mechanic buddies. You can talk to any name somebody name somebody in the service business and HVC guy a plumbing guy.
Hell, your own doctor is dealing with this where somebody Googled something watched a video from somebody and it turned out the video made them believe that they go into their doctor and they tell the doctor why they're the expert now and the doctor goes, well that's not actually true.
I don't know where you got that. But again the guys out there telling you the customers never been more informed and that's not true. The customer has never been more misinformed not informed misinformed.
And I lived during a time where people didn't have the access to the level of information and I was doing detailing during that time and I talked to customers and friends and family members and the interesting thing is.
They weren't any more informed back then at all. They were probably the same level of information knowing what they're talking about as people today.
The difference is they weren't misinformed. So a lot of times they went to the professional to get informed.
They didn't go to YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. Not that any of those are bad. I don't think that at all. Obviously. But the customers never been misinformed. So what happens from that?
Well, the customer does things that could damage their car based on that misinformation. And it happens every day. We see videos and and pictures all over the internet of these damaged cars that somebody did something to.
It isn't because they're so goddamn informed. It's because they were misinformed most of the time. So how is the customer more informed today? They aren't. They're more misinformed than ever before. See, if you go back to 2005, they actually just didn't know anything.
Right. They didn't they didn't get misinformation unless it was directly from somebody who was misinforming them, but they couldn't log on to their phone.
Watch 10 pieces of content. All of them terrible information and then go screw up their car. They didn't have access to do that. So they weren't informed back then, but we never talked about how informed the customer was in 2005.
Now this has become a huge thing. People say, well, the customers never been smarter than right now. I don't know, man. I deal with both sides of it. I deal with people buying chemicals. I deal with people calling me about their cars.
I've never heard more misinformation in my life. Could be pay protection film. Could be things sprayed on the interior. Could be ceramic coatings. Could be anything. I now have to talk to more people and spend 10 to 15 minutes debunking their bad information and then getting to real education than ever in the history of me doing this.
And so what's happened the information is just not good. Most information that you and I consume on the internet is not just is just not high level information. That's all.
Think about it. Only 10% of every profession out there, plumber, HVC automotive channels, whatever. Only 10% are great at what they do. That's in the profession.
Well, how many of those people are creating high level content of very tiny percentage. So of good content out there on how to do plumbing properly, you might have one to 2% of people creating high level super informative correct information out in the marketplace.
And so when you say because people have access to the internet that the customers never been more educated, they've never been more informed. You're completely misleading people. And this is like every entrepreneur bro out there, they want to sound smart, they want to ingratiate themselves to their crowd and they go, well, the customers never been smarter, not true at all.
And I would actually rather deal with somebody that says, Hey man, I don't know what I'm talking about. Can I ask you some questions.
That is the ideal customer and that was the ideal customer in 2005 and that was the ideal customer in 1995 and that's the ideal customer in 2025.
It's okay to say you don't know. Do you know when I hear the words, I don't know the least in my career in 2025.
In 2010, when I started almost every customer would be like, Hey man, can you walk me through this in 2025.
10 20 depends on the week 50% of people will say things on a phone call or in person that I know they heard from somebody on a YouTube channel and I have to spend 10 minutes going, Hey man, I understand that I've heard that before. Let me walk you through how it actually works.
But I still don't have that many people that know what they're talking about. So if there was more informed consumers out there about their car, about how to care for it, about what products to use.
The only thing I'd be getting on here gone, it's really amazing how many people I talked to this week that knew exactly what they were talking about.
I said the same number in 2010 as I say now, a very tiny percentage and there's never been more information.
So this is why we've harped on this podcast. Since I came on, I came on this podcast for those of you that weren't around. I wasn't a part of hyper clean. I was just a guest on the podcast.
And that's how Marty and I really got started.
And I would say even back then, like, we're in a battle of the people that know how to vet information versus the people that just listen to everything.
I think that's even more true today six years later.
And I actually think it's unbelievable how much that number or that thought process has gone to the top of my brain is I go.
I can look in a Facebook group on detailing and I can see a hundred comments on a very simple post like a product post in 99 of those people say something incorrect.
So now go to the person that owns the car. If you're a DIY person out there that does things yourself, the amount of misinformation I've heard, I really feel for people.
I'm not saying this any of this as a judgment. I'm saying this as what is taking place in the world is everyone's being told that the consumers never been smarter.
They've never been more well informed. And actually, I think it's the direct opposite. They've never been more misinformed.
And that's created a whole host of problems, right? It's created all kinds of issues that we can't even really talk about because they're so hard to describe.
There's people that aren't protecting their car's paint because somehow, some way somebody on the internet tried to tell them that a ceramic coating doesn't work to protect your car's paint.
And matter of fact, I have people that have come here with burnt hoods and burnt, you know, tailgates and burnt bed covers and roofs and everything else mirrors.
And they go, what happened? I go, did you protect the car? Oh, I don't believe in that stuff. And I go, oh, okay, why don't you believe in it?
Well, you know, I watch this guy on the internet and he just debunked ceramic coatings altogether.
And I go, well, now you're headed to the body shop and ceramic coatings do work, just like wax in the day worked and sealants work.
If you constantly kept those things on your car and so I'm sorry you are misinformed, but that person's convinced themselves that they actually know that somebody's trying to get over on me.
That's part of this culture that I think has hurt all of us, has hurt the professional, it's hurt the car owner is that everyone thinks somebody's trying to get over on them.
And I understand that because I felt that as a consumer myself at times, I mean, we've all dealt with people and you go, I think this guy's trying to get over on me.
But everybody in that industry is not trying to get over on you. That's not happening.
If you look at things like ceramic coating, ceramic coating, I never thought in a million years when I started in 2010 using them that they'd ever be at this level.
Anybody that tells you they thought they would be this big 15 years later, nobody knew at the time, they're really difficult to work with.
But also the shame of it is they've never been more popular, which is a great thing, but the misinformation's never been worse.
But yet we'll keep saying the customers never been more informed. And that goes from a professional using products, a PPF shop.
I hear some crazy things coming out of people and groups that are supposedly professionals where they're convinced they're educated.
And I don't have a problem with that. I just end up feeling pretty bad for them because I go, man, you really don't know what you're talking about.
And that sucks because that shouldn't happen. But you also have to take responsibility that, you know, you have to listen to the right people.
And if you think of a customer that walks into my shop and they bought $150,000 Porsche and they've watched certain YouTube channels where other people love Porsche's.
And then those people try to act like they know about every subject around cars.
Guess what's happened to that person? They've been misinformed, not just about detailing. They've been misinformed about their center lock wheels.
They've been misinformed about mechanically things with their Porsche. This happens in the BMW world. I hear people all the time screaming about rod bearings.
They don't realize less than 5% of cars have ever really had to deal with the problem, right? But they want to act like an expert.
And that's where I feel like we have a huge divide these days is that that's really tough to overcome.
It's not something to be mad or angry about. I'm certainly not. It's just something I wanted to talk about because I talked to some people today that are going through some things with some customers on some cars.
And I certainly go through through it from time to time like many of you. But I hear the words I don't know less than I've ever heard them in my life in 2025.
Because I used to hear it all the time. When a customer would call me, they go, hey, man, I don't really know what needs to be done to my car.
And I never really in 2010 heard people call me up and go, other than like, hey, I've had my windows tinted before. I'd like to have my windows tinted.
Now somebody calls you for 10th or PPF or ceramic coating and they always add their opinion based off a TikTok video or 10 TikTok videos or five YouTube videos of what they need done to their car.
And 9 out of 10 of them are completely wrong and the other one out of 10 say like 75% of it wrong. It's not their fault. They think they did their due diligence by going and watching some clips.
And maybe that's the misleading part is that you're going to go watch a video and it's going to paint this perfect picture.
It never does. That's not the content creators vote. Now, is there some content creators that you guys look at and you go, I wish they wouldn't have done this or I wish they wouldn't have misinformed people in this direction. Sure, that happens.
I mean, that's a huge percentage of what goes on. But that doesn't really make me all that angry. I see this big picking of a fight right now about content creation.
Well, that guy doesn't say it right. And that guy isn't correct. And yeah, man, but point me to somebody that is. And in a lot of cases, nobody can do that because most people are towing some line where they're educating to their level of education.
I can tell you this. I mean, we've dealt with content creators that have lots of followers. Some of them I sat with it seem a privately over the years and tried to talk to them.
And they don't want to become educated on products. They actually have said that we haven't been writing from some people actually here at hyperclaim some people that approached us about doing business with them.
And we go, hey, we'd love to walk you through our product line. They're like, oh, I don't need to do that. It's a pretty wild thing to say.
People watch their content. I'm like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to products. And they're not even using ours. They're just using anybody. And I go, that's just not in that formula. That's an incorrect statement.
And so your customer, or if you are a DIYer, the level of you being misinformed is as high as it's ever been.
And so when I hear people say the customers never been more educated, you guys just got my opinion, I've never heard a more misinformed base of clients than I hear today.
And I don't blame them at all. And I don't blame the content creators all that much. It's just in the system and the toothpaste is never going back in the tube.
It's never going to get fixed. And that's why I don't really get all that worked up about it. And I just, I know some of you do.
And so maybe some of this is just to tell you like, yeah, man, this is in the system. This is what's happening.
We're not going to fix it. Like we put out our information the way we see it.
With 45 plus years combined experience between Marty and myself.
And we got to live with, there's other people talking that don't have one year of experience in this business. And they may get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.
Doesn't make them wrong, man, content creations of business. It's not about really informing people. And maybe that's where people have been misled.
Is that I see this all the time, you know, the Gary V type saying, hey, put out this in for me. Well, everyone shouldn't be putting out information because they actually don't know what they're talking about.
They have a right to, and that's kind of what I'm stating. I don't get worked up because that's the game.
But you have all of these like entrepreneur bros are like, hey, people should be putting out content. Well, if you have a real estate agent putting out content who's been in the business three months, no offense to that person.
I don't know how much I want to hear from them, but you are going to hear from them because some entrepreneur bro told them to put content out.
They didn't tell them to become more educated and better serve customers. They said, put content out to hack the system.
But the customers never been more educated, huh? No, I've done a lot of real estate deals. You know how much bad real estate information is out there.
There's a lot of real estate deals. I get sent clips by buddies of mine also in real that have done real estate deals and everybody who's done real estate deals just laughs.
Some of these guys are getting millions and have had billions of views on information that everyone in the real estate business knows is nonsense and it's not real.
What about detailing? This is happening everywhere with all people and we can't run from that, but you can't also live in this world where you tell yourself, well, I've never been more educated as a consumer.
Maybe if you chose the right people to listen to, which again, if you do the math is somewhere below 5% of information being put out on any subject is probably elite level.
This is a crazy number. And I thought it was just interesting to talk about it was just something on top of my mind. Obviously I told you guys, you know, Marty and I were going to record an episode yet some technical issues.
So I wanted to talk about that.
The other thing I wanted to talk about to finish the episode today is to talk about where I think the modern distribution business is going because I see a lot of stuff out there.
Maybe you're struggling in your business or you want to find a way out or you're thinking about what I should do is next steps because I don't want to leave detailing I want to be a part of this and what do I do.
And the logical thing we've always told people is to distribute product.
Number one, I think the local distributor has the biggest opportunity of anybody in the system.
The person that lives in Encino, California or you live in central Florida or you live in upstate New York or Massachusetts or the Midwest or whatever and you live in a specific city.
I think you should be really excited about distribution because distributing to your local area, I think is going to become that used to be the way the business was.
I think more of distributing product all over the US or the world through distribution companies.
I think we're going back to the local model, which I've been saying for the better part of five years, but I think it's exacerbating itself.
So we have a bunch of people in the hyper clean network that are killing it in local distribution, right, which I'm very excited about.
I'm really proud of those people in the work they've put in.
People in California in Texas and Florida and Georgia and the Gulf States and the Midwest are all adding tons of money to their business and upstate New York and New York and Boston and all these places, right.
But I'm not going to lie to anybody. It's work. I mean, anything you do that that you're trying to earn money in is it's work.
But the thing is is that the individual buyers, whether that's a professional or just somebody likes to take care of their cars, they're looking for a more personal touch than they've been getting the last five, seven, eight years.
And I start thinking about a lot of these warehouse businesses, right, they carry a bunch of products from a bunch of different brands, they don't really believe in anything.
I think those things are struggling and I got it on pretty good authority. I know a lot of people in this business that they're struggling pretty mightily and the reason is is they don't believe in anything.
If you carry a hundred product like what does Walmart believe in you go into a Walmart, they don't believe in anything. They're just selling every product and they're going to make their 2% at the end of the year and they're going to make billions of dollars.
But the only way they can make billions dollars to have a zillion locations around the world.
I just don't think that model sustainable unless you're somebody like Costco or Walmart or those types of things.
And we're seeing a lot of pressure on this part of the business and I don't think everyone's seeing it but our crowd that listens to us.
If you want to distribute product in your local market, I never, I've never thought it's a better time than right now.
I actually think people are looking for the personal touch more than ever before.
And we have people throwing up stores in local cities and those stores are struggling with detailing products.
And you want to know why because they carry like a hundred different lines of product. They don't believe in anything.
And so therefore the customer doesn't believe in them.
Therefore that customer goes, well, this product's available on Amazon. I'm just going to go pick it up there.
We talk to people in these stores all the time and they're like, yeah, guys will buy stuff from Amazon right in front of me.
Instead of buying from our store. Well, the reason is if you're not going to believe in anything, I might as well get it a little cheaper on Amazon, have a deliver to my door and all that kind of stuff.
But if you're looking to be in local distribution, you got to believe in something.
Right, you got to believe in a product line and you got to go out there and be the face of that product line in the local area.
And I never, I honestly believe that is a huge future for all the people that grab the bull by the horns and do something like that.
But if you open a local distribution and we have some here in Vegas, they carry every product that's on Amazon.
Then they'll call me complaining and I'm like, yeah, man, you're not going to beat Amazon.
It's one of the reasons we don't list our product on Amazon. We want to reward the local distributor.
We want to we want to stay out of your backyard. We want to support you.
And so you have this interesting thing is the economy starts to falter. Economy goes into recession.
Many of you are hearing that word all the time now. One of the things that I say is, if you have a detailing business,
one of the things you should be doing is developing a chemical distribution business right alongside of it.
And I've been saying that for five years. That's not news to anybody that's been listening to us.
The only regret I have about my business in the last 15 years is that I didn't start selling chemicals in 2010 when I started my business right alongside my business.
That was a big mistake. It was a big mistake.
It's one that I've rectified now being an owner hyper clean, but the fact is it was a dumb mistake looking back.
Because I had the knowledge. I just didn't think it was valuable when I was wrong.
And there's many of you that are looking at distribution now and you're just looking at it, looking at it, looking at it.
This is the time to go dominate your local market because I'm telling you all of these guys selling
detailing products on the internet from 50, 10, 5, 8 different brands.
That's not going to last in my opinion because the customer, like the modern consumer wants you to believe in stuff.
And if you have 10 product lines, what do you really believe in? You don't really believe in anything.
And so it's just an interesting thing that I'm seeing and hearing obviously we're getting closer to SEMA.
So everybody's starting to reach out and book meetings and you talk to them how their years been going and all those kinds of things.
And I wish everybody nothing but the best. I like some of those people and we're happy to be in business with some of those people.
But you got to believe in something. You can't just keep bringing in a new product every time somebody gets some buzz on the internet.
You got to back really quality companies. And then people got to know you're backing those companies.
And the fact is very few people do that if any actually that have like these warehouse, you know, internet type of stores.
But if you have a local distribution and you have another 10 or 15 product lines in your local distribution, I think it's a huge mistake.
I actually think it's like a colossal mistake because I know some of these stores have reached out to me. They're struggling.
And they sell everything that Amazon sells. It's just a weird thing that happened.
And so I want to really tell everybody if you're thinking about distribution reach out to us, it is worth a conversation.
I think as the recession hits people harder and harder, you're going to be able to build a distribution business to people that do it in their driveway and the professionals that just want somebody that can lend them a helping year.
And say, hey, this is the product I would use. I think it's a no brainer right now.
And I don't think it's a no brainer to just carry 15 different brands. I actually don't think that's the no brainer anymore.
I think that worked for the previous 10, 15 years.
I think that's been under pressure forever now.
And I think it's the pressures ramping up exponentially on those companies now.
And I wish them nothing but the best, but it's a hard business.
Share these thoughts today. Again, sorry, Marty and I couldn't chop it up.
Tommy Tech strikes again, the internet provider is causing most of our issues.
And so I hope everybody's having a great week, and we'll talk to you soon.
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