The hosts break down a widely shared detailing video that claims you must do paint correction before ceramic coating, and that shops should never offer lower-priced options. They argue the “standards” message is often ego-driven and factually wrong about how coatings work, emphasizing that coatings require clean, contaminant-free paint—not a specific correction workflow. They defend “good/better/best” packaging, say price options help match customer needs, and warn that social media rants don’t build trust. They also discuss how coating technology evolved, why mobile installs can work, and how to sharpen messaging instead of blaming the industry.
In this episode, Marshall and Nick analyze popular industry opinions, especially around paint correction, ceramic coating standards, and business practices. They tackle misconceptions, industry evolution, and the importance of factual knowledge for success.
Main Topics:
The necessity of paint correction before ceramic coating
Misconceptions about industry standards and their impact
Business strategies: pricing, value, and customer communication
Industry evolution and technological advancements in coatings
The importance of education and asking reputable sources
Paint correction isn't mandatory for a durable ceramic coating
Many industry opinions are based on outdated information
Offering low-cost options can be part of a strategic business plan
Understanding coating technology is crucial to avoid failures
Success relies on transparent communication about value and process
Social media can be both a tool and a pitfall if misused
Industry evolution has made coatings more accessible and easier to apply
Asking reputable sources is essential for technological accuracy
Timestamps:
00:00 - The myth: Paint correction is necessary before ceramic coating 02:22 - Offering lower-end options: strategic business practice or mistake? 05:16 - Why industry standards often blur the truth 07:35 - How to handle pricing objections effectively 10:04 - The importance of understanding coating vs. paint correction 14:47 - Industry evolution: Technological advancements in coatings 18:19 - The disconnect: tech knowledge and industry standards 22:24 - How local market trends affect package pricing 26:20 - Building trust with customers through transparency 30:55 - The danger of misinformation spreading on social media 34:51 - The significance of applying coatings correctly regardless of environment 38:22 - Final thoughts: continuous learning and industry evolutionResources & Links:Connect with Hosts:Note: Always verify your industry knowledge with reputable sources, continually adapt, and prioritize transparency with your clients.
"You must do paint correction before ceramic coatings, right? That's the statement, Nick."
Paint correction is polishing the car’s paint to remove visible flaws. People do it first so the coating goes on over a clean, smooth surface and looks better for longer.
Paint correction is the process of removing defects from a vehicle’s paint—like swirls, scratches, and oxidation—usually using machine polishing. It’s often discussed as a prerequisite to long-lasting protection because contaminants and surface damage can reduce how well coatings bond and look.
"You must do paint correction before ceramic coatings, right? That's the statement, Nick."
A ceramic coating is a protective layer you apply to the paint. It helps the car resist dirt and makes the finish look slick and shiny.
Ceramic coatings are liquid polymer/ceramic hybrid protective layers applied to automotive paint to improve gloss and add chemical/UV resistance. In detailing discussions, they’re often compared to waxes/sealants and debated in terms of prep requirements and durability.
"And should you be putting a polisher on the paint before you sell a ceramic coating and he starts out by going, don't even offer your customers a lower end option, right?"
A polisher is a power tool detailers use to polish paint. It helps remove scratches and swirls more evenly than doing it by hand.
A polisher is the machine used to apply polishing pads and compounds to the paint. In paint correction, the polisher’s speed, pad choice, and technique determine how effectively defects are removed without causing damage.
"A lot of very high end shops all over the country who run five, ten, twenty thousand dollars in ads a month across social media, use a low price option to do what market and get somebody to send them a lead, send them information, then they can sell them what fits them best."
A “lead” is basically someone who might want to buy something from you. They usually reach out or submit their info after seeing an ad, and then the business tries to turn that into an actual job.
In detailing and paint-correction businesses, a “lead” is a potential customer who has shown interest—often by submitting contact info after seeing an ad. The shop then follows up to qualify the customer and sell the most appropriate service package.
"And he, he does talk about, Hey, you know, and it gets into warranties.
I warranty it myself.
Sure."
A warranty is a promise that if the product or service doesn’t perform as expected, the company will fix it or replace it. In detailing, warranties usually depend on doing the prep and application the right way. So it’s not just marketing—there are real conditions behind it.
In detailing and paint-protection, warranties are promises about product performance and/or labor coverage if something goes wrong. They’re often tied to proper surface preparation, correct application, and sometimes specific maintenance requirements. The speaker is highlighting that warranty claims are part of the argument and should be evaluated against how the coating actually works.
"[531.7s] that he wanted me to use Zeno Brothers.
[535.7s] Right?
[537.4s] So this was a moment where you had a company,"
They’re talking about a specific detailing brand/company called Zeno Brothers. The customer wanted the detailer to use that brand’s products and follow their recommended steps.
“Zeno Brothers” is referenced as a specific detailing company/brand whose products and methods the customer wanted the detailer to use. In detailing, brand-specific product lines often come with recommended procedures for paint correction and coating prep.
"[550.5s] I'm just, that was, but as a young detailer, mobile,
[556.2s] you know, I wasn't sure if his stuff, this Zeno was going to work."
Mobile detailing is when the cleaner comes to your house or workplace instead of you bringing the car to a shop. It matters because they may need water and electricity to do the work.
Mobile detailing means the detailer comes to the customer’s location instead of working in a fixed shop. This affects what tools and processes are practical, especially when you need access to water and power for washing, decontamination, and paint correction steps.
"[582.3s] And it came to a point of whether or not I was going to come
[585.8s] to his house and use his products, his water, his electricity,
[592.2s] because I was that guy at that point in time and I'd run a cord."
They’re talking about the basics you need to do detailing at someone’s house: water to wash and rinse, and electricity to run tools. If you don’t have those, it can change how the job gets done.
The speaker highlights practical constraints of detailing at a customer’s home: access to water and electricity. These resources are needed for washing, rinsing, and powering tools (like polishers and vacuums), and they can influence whether a detailer can follow a specific product/process.
"they're getting no institutional knowledge
[840.1s] of how this business works from a business
[842.6s] that's actually working."
It’s the experience a business builds up over the years. Instead of learning everything from scratch, you learn from how others have done it before and what mistakes to avoid.
Institutional knowledge is the accumulated know-how a business gains over time—processes, best practices, and lessons learned. In detailing, it can mean understanding what products and techniques actually work and how to run jobs profitably, not just technically.
"They're just winging it.
[847.1s] And then now everybody's got a camera on their phone"
“Winging it” describes operating without a proven plan or repeatable process. In the detailing world, that often leads to inconsistent results because the person isn’t following a tested workflow for paint correction, coating prep, or customer expectations.
"This line in the sand mentality,
[866.2s] it most of the time you're getting
[869.6s] so much factual information wrong"
It’s when people draw a hard rule and treat it like the only way. Real results can depend on the car’s paint condition, prep quality, and how the job is done.
A “line in the sand” mentality is when people insist on rigid rules or absolute claims instead of acknowledging nuance and real-world variables. In paint correction and ceramic coating, this can cause people to overgeneralize techniques or product claims and end up with incorrect “facts.”
"Find the customer's needs, his pain point, what is exactly he wants, and then offer him the good, better, best package that fits that need."
It’s a way to offer car detailing in levels. Instead of trying to sell one expensive option to everyone, you match the service to what the customer actually wants and can afford.
“Good, better, best” is a sales structure where you offer multiple service tiers that match different customer needs and budgets. In detailing, it helps you avoid pushing unnecessary add-ons by starting with the customer’s goals and then recommending the appropriate level of paint correction or protection.
"Just because you bundle them together doesn't make that the same service."
Bundling correction and protection into one package is common in detailing marketing, but the speaker argues they remain separate services with different goals. Correction addresses surface defects; protection addresses future durability and ease of maintenance.
"if something goes wrong, you're going to have to sand entire panels. You might as well get the car perfect because that was the least of your worries."
This means if the coating goes wrong, you might have to remove it from a whole section of the car, not just a small spot. It’s a big deal because it takes a lot more time and work.
“Sanding entire panels” describes a worst-case scenario where a mistake with a coating forces the detailer to remove the coating over a whole body panel (like a door) rather than doing localized correction. This highlights how application reliability and coating chemistry improved over time.
"There's a lot of really exclusive PPF shops that I've talked to in the last 24 months that should have been running ads saying free ceramic coating with a front end paint protection package because we have stack."
PPF means clear film that you stick on the car to protect the paint. It helps prevent chips and scratches, especially on the front of the car.
PPF stands for paint protection film, a clear protective layer applied to vulnerable areas of a vehicle (like the front bumper, hood, and headlights). In detailing, it’s often sold as part of a “package” because it protects against rock chips, bug etching, and light road wear.
"that should have been running ads saying free ceramic coating with a front end paint protection package because we have stack."
“Free ceramic coating” is when a shop includes a coating upgrade at no extra cost. The goal is to get more people to book the main service by making the deal feel better.
Offering “free ceramic coating” is a common detailing sales tactic: bundle a higher-value add-on at no extra charge to increase conversion rates. The key idea is that the shop can use a low-time, low-cost promotion to bring more customers in and sell the primary service (like PPF).
"We talk about this with windshield coatings and different things you can offer that cost you minimal time, minimal effort, but you're giving some value back to the customer."
Windshield coatings are treatments for your windshield that help water bead up and clear away. They’re often added because they’re relatively quick to apply and can make a noticeable difference.
Windshield coatings are hydrophobic treatments applied to glass to improve water beading and visibility during rain. In detailing marketing, they’re often positioned as quick, low-labor add-ons that can be sold alongside paint correction, PPF, or ceramic services.
"But if you can't explain to the customer why they should pay your price, that's not an industry problem."
The speaker emphasizes that if you can’t clearly explain why the service is worth the money, the issue isn’t “the industry”—it’s your customer communication. In paint correction and ceramic coating, this typically means explaining the problem, the process, and the expected outcome.
"Let's talk about the moment that we get so built up inside that we want to go express our feelings into social media... what customer is going to go onto Facebook, onto Instagram, see this video, your polisher sitting on the ground."
They’re talking about using social media (like Facebook and Instagram) to get customers. The point is: does posting content actually make people want to hire you, or does it just create noise?
The speakers are discussing how detailing businesses use social media platforms to attract customers. They question whether posting videos—like a polisher on the ground—actually convinces viewers to buy services.
"Like, your customer really, what customer is going to go onto Facebook, onto Instagram... There are a lot of people, I think Facebook is probably the worst situation for this right now..."
They mention Facebook specifically as a place where it’s easy for things to turn negative. Their takeaway is that negativity on the platform may not help you sell detailing services.
Facebook is called out as a particularly bad environment for converting viewers into customers. The discussion implies that the platform’s tone and volume of negativity can hurt a business’s reputation and sales.
"...what customer is going to go onto Facebook, onto Instagram, see this video, your polisher sitting on the ground."
They bring up Instagram as a place people post detailing content. The question is whether those posts actually make people want to hire the business.
Instagram is referenced as another social platform where detailing videos are shared. The speaker questions whether viewers will see a post and think, “I want to buy from you.”
"...because we're using all of this technical jargon as if we're talking to another detailer"
Technical jargon is the fancy detailing language professionals use. If you don’t explain it in plain terms, customers may not understand what they’re paying for or why it matters.
In detailing, technical jargon refers to industry-specific terms used to describe processes, products, and results (e.g., polishing stages, coating chemistry, defect types). The episode’s point is that using jargon without translating it into customer benefits can prevent buyers from understanding why the service is worth it.
"That goes for every Ferrari out there, basically, every Tahoe, every Honda Civic, and everything in between, they're not this deep down the rabbit hole."
The Honda Civic is a common everyday car. In this context, it’s just an example of how most people want their car to look good without needing to know all the detailing details.
The Honda Civic is a high-volume compact car, representing the everyday end of the market. The speaker groups it with vehicles like the Tahoe and Ferrari to make the point that most customers care about outcomes and reliability of the shop more than the specific detailing process.
"And all customers want is to know that when they drop your car off, you're going to handle it. Because I get cars dropped off all the time where I don't even see the customer."
In detailing, trust is the customer’s confidence that the shop will handle the vehicle properly and deliver the promised outcome. The speaker describes how customers often drop off cars without direct supervision, relying on the shop’s reputation and communication.
"The coding doesn't know where you're putting on the coding. It doesn't know where you're applying it. It doesn't know that it's, it's a liquid you drop out of a bottle. You just need to make sure you're applying the coding correctly."
The speaker argues that coatings don’t “know” where they were applied; instead, the key variable is whether the installer applies the coating correctly. This typically includes proper cleaning/decontamination, correct wipe-down steps, and following the product’s application and curing requirements.
"But we have people that are down in Arizona when it's 115 degrees that have videos they've sent us where they're putting Uno dose on a vehicle..."
They’re using 115°F as an example of extreme heat. Heat can make coatings set too fast, so you have to adjust your process.
“115 degrees” highlights how extreme ambient temperatures can challenge coating installation. Higher temps can accelerate flash times and curing, increasing the risk of failure if the installer doesn’t adapt technique.
"...I'd cleaned it the past weekend and suddenly we had to jump it, right?"
“Jump it” means using another car (or a portable jump pack) to give your car enough power to start. It usually happens when the battery is too weak to start on its own.
“Jump it” refers to jump-starting a vehicle using another battery or a jump starter pack. It’s typically used when the battery voltage is too low to crank the engine, often due to age, parasitic drain, or poor terminal connections.
"So I'd love everybody's thought sales on this in the Opera Clean Specialist Group, right? ... So we'll see everybody inside the Opera Clean Specialist Group on Facebook."
It sounds like a Facebook group where detailers help each other. People share what they do, what products they use, and how they handle customer problems.
This refers to a Facebook group/community focused on detailing business owners and practitioners. The hosts are encouraging listeners to share opinions, ask questions, and discuss real-world detailing workflows like paint correction and coating packages.
- The myth: Paint correction is necessary before ceramic coating
- Offering lower-end options: strategic business practice or mistake?
- Why industry standards often blur the truth
- How to handle pricing objections effectively
- The importance of understanding coating vs. paint correction
- Industry evolution: Technological advancements in coatings
- The disconnect: tech knowledge and industry standards
- How local market trends affect package pricing
- Building trust with customers through transparency
- The danger of misinformation spreading on social media
- The significance of applying coatings correctly regardless of environment
- Final thoughts: continuous learning and industry evolutionResources & Links:Connect with Hosts:Note: Always verify your industry knowledge with reputable sources, continually adapt, and prioritize transparency with your clients.
Select text to request an explanation
Welcome to the pints and polishing podcast, the most influential and listen to podcast
in auto detailing.
Welcome to the community.
You must do paint correction before ceramic coatings, right?
That's the statement, Nick.
That's the loud statement coming from a video that people shared to us.
We got to talk about this video because we saw plenty of our listeners giving comments
inside of this video, so it was like, great.
Let's go over our thoughts based on his words in the video, right?
We'll just go over specifically his words and then our thoughts.
OK, you got it?
Yep. All right.
So his words, stop offering your customers a lower end option.
Oh, OK, start right there because we're going ceramic coatings.
And should you be putting a polisher on the paint before you sell a ceramic coating and
he starts out by going, don't even offer your customers a lower end option, right?
So we already get from the moment and we'll get into he's got a sort of a fictional play
back and forth where he's got a customer and he's trying to sell a thousand dollars extra
price tag on and he's competing on that.
Hey, we're not going to put a pad on the paint or we are.
So off from the start, he says, stop offering your customers a lower end option.
To me, to me, this is the evolution of know your worth back like circa 2015, right?
Like, yeah, sort of like the child that has come out of it.
Yeah, it's also and I want to be clear on something.
And we we specifically don't say people's names because nothing that he said in his
video hasn't been said a million times by people.
It's just a video that got passed on to us and we feel like it's it's one of those
educational points we probably can't talk about and speak about enough, right?
Number one, always ask yourself, first of all, this guy's talking about a business
perspective. How many team members does he have?
I can probably tell you the answer to that.
Is he where you want to be?
I probably know the answer to that.
That doesn't mean he's not a skilled person.
He's not good at what he does.
That that stuff is pretty hard to understand over the internet, right?
But let's let's have a very basic conversation.
A lot of very high end shops all over the country who run five, ten,
twenty thousand dollars in ads a month across social media, use a low price
option to do what market and get somebody to send them a lead, send them
information, then they can sell them what fits them best.
So these blank statements get said an awful lot in our industry.
And I think the thing that caught my attention was this thing that's getting
sold far too often on social media, which is somehow I'm going to be
the bearer of the standard that we hold people to.
Well, you know, he's not afraid to ruffle some feathers here.
Yeah. And you can ruffle feathers.
I mean, OK, you didn't ruffle my feathers.
You didn't ruffle any.
I mean, not that I could see.
I mean, it seems like a lot of the low end guys agreed with you.
Because again, guys, I can look at people's profile and say, who are
the people agreeing with you and where the top tier shops with five, ten,
fifteen, twenty team members commenting, then they agree with you.
And I can tell you how many it was zero.
And then I can see the people that sent us to sent this to us and they
have two, four, eight plus team members.
And they put a laughing emoji at the video to us, not on the guy's stuff
because they're not going to leave a, you know, crack head comment.
But I just think this is all based around.
You're allowed to have an opinion of how you run your business.
Nobody can tell you how to run your business.
If you say, I don't do a single ceramic coating job that I don't
offer some level of paint correction.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
But saying the rest of this video, which was just factually incorrect,
but you also want to say you're holding people to a standard.
Yet you don't know how a ceramic coating works.
It's hard to say that you're setting a standard.
Yeah, let's, let's go over what he says.
How are you willing to put your name on something that is done right?
Not done why?
Excuse me.
Let me say that again.
How are you willing to put your name on something that is not done right?
You said something.
There you go.
You know, he doesn't understand ceramic coatings.
We'll get into that here in a minute.
You know, I think he does kind of fall into you, you know, your side of the
the track in a sense of, you know, I can respect where he wants to be like,
Hey guys, I put my name on this.
My name's on the line here.
And he, he does talk about, Hey, you know, and it gets into warranties.
I warranty it myself.
Sure.
Okay, cool.
Great.
Right.
So I can, right?
I can appreciate a guy that wants to put his name down, right?
He, he's going to come out and put his name on a video and share his thoughts.
But, but is it correct?
Well, we have to say something.
This is happening in every industry.
So I really, really always want to tell our listeners, stop thinking this is just detailing.
This happens in every industry where somebody tries to give their opinion on how they do
things and say that this is somehow the right way to do it.
Uh, we all have our opinions, but when your opinions are not based on factually how something
works, you have a severely flawed opinion.
So when you talk about, when you talk about that factually does not work, right?
We're talking about what is right when he says, Hey, don't put your name on this.
If you didn't do this, don't sell your customer something just to sell them something, right?
So when we come to business, which we, this is a business conversation.
He had a business, this is all business.
Is it right to have an option for your customer that is at a lower price point
than other customers might want to pay for?
Uh, I would say every business in the world does that.
Actually, you can see one of the biggest and richest companies in the world,
Apple just released a very affordable laptop.
I think it's 500, 600 bucks.
They used to only have two to 3000 other options.
But as their business has grown and they serve more of the world market,
you can see they still have high price stuff.
They have lower price stuff.
I mean, AirPods are a couple hundred bucks.
They didn't have always have AirPods.
Now they have AirPods.
So you can have a Samsung phone and still use AirPods.
It's just not factually what smart companies do.
Smart companies have a good, better, best system.
They've always had it.
It's always existed because the customers resonate with that.
So I think I look at this and go, hey, man, opinions are great.
That's what makes everybody's business different.
You should be operating your business different than the guy down the street.
If you operate at the same, you've had no original idea of how to capture customers.
That doesn't mean you're the foremost expert on what everybody should be doing.
That's just not how the world works.
And I think sometimes we got to put ego aside and go,
I'm giving you my opinion of how I run my business.
And that's all that it is.
This is how I run things.
You can do it or not do it.
But I've never sold the way that I've run my business
as some right and wrong conversation.
This is what I've learned to do.
This is what I see as repeatable.
I share it.
If you want to run your business 180 degrees in the opposite direction,
okay, it's your call.
So I've shared this story, but I'll share it again
because I think it's a great story for this moment.
I had a customer a long time ago.
He now lives in Vegas, wished me a happy birthday type of customer,
Hasn't used me in 15 years, right?
But we had a connection long enough
so that he still wants to reach out every once in a while.
I'll still reach out to him.
And his name's Brian.
Doesn't matter his last name, right?
Shouldn't sort of one of those things like
feels odd to share his last name.
I don't know, whatever.
But he's the guy, if you guys can remember from the community pub,
that he wanted me to use Zeno Brothers.
Right?
So this was a moment where you had a company,
and this was a long time ago, I get it,
really pushing that you had to do things their way.
No issues, right?
I'm just, that was, but as a young detailer, mobile,
you know, I wasn't sure if his stuff, this Zeno was going to work.
I actually argued with them the first couple of times,
like, listen, man, okay, this is the way I do it.
You know, you've used me before because this wasn't the,
it wasn't the first time we cleaned his car.
This kind of came out later where it was sort of like,
you know, I've bought this stuff, it's sitting here.
I really believe what they're saying dot, dot, dot.
And it came to a point of whether or not I was going to come
to his house and use his products, his water, his electricity,
because I was that guy at that point in time and I'd run a cord.
Was I going to continue the business with him
and do what he asked as a customer and say, use this Zeno or go,
ah, I don't believe in that.
This is not right.
Yeah, you had to make the call, right?
And I think we need to leave it where you said you don't tell people
that don't know what your call was, but you had to make a call.
Right?
I've had to make those calls in my career.
And look, if you're struggling and you're not doing a lot of details,
I bet that conversation and how you received it is a lot different
than when you were doing well.
Because guess what?
Times change, your business change.
Yeah, yeah, he's so like your point where you say he dies on a hill, right?
He starts and he goes so hard of this is the correct way.
And what is he 25, you know, which is in a knock of his age so much,
but you just have to acknowledge it.
Well, and that's what I say.
You need to ask yourself if you want to be where he is,
which is standing all by yourself with no team members.
Right?
Maybe that's what you want to be.
There's nothing wrong with that.
We've stated that on this podcast.
If that's what you want to do, great.
Then these are the type of people you'll listen to because what they do
is they dig themselves into these opinions that don't really matter.
What matters is the customer standing in front of you.
And this is what we've lost complete sight of
with these whole standards conversations,
which by the way is a whole separate conversation.
Because most of the people screaming standards
wouldn't pass the standard test if you had a standard test.
Because if you ask this guy how ceramic coatings work,
he'd fail that entire section.
That's just a fact, right?
So you would fail the standard test of how a chemical works.
So it's to me,
how you choose to sell your customer,
as long as you're upfront with them and what you're providing,
and they go, here's my money,
and they get their car back and they go, I'm extremely happy.
That's all that matters.
The rest of this stuff of what you should or shouldn't do,
look, man, there's a lot of guys out there that go,
you know, the guy in my area, he's $900 and I'm $1,500.
There's $20 guys a street over from me.
Don't tell me about your area.
I can show you vans line up doing $20 details.
And guess what?
I never stop and judge those guys.
I don't even worry about them.
Because if they provide a $20 job
and that man or woman leaves and goes,
man, I'm glad with what they did,
then everybody's done, quote unquote, the up and up thing.
They said, this is 20 bucks.
The person pays 20 bucks.
They're thrilled with the service.
It is what it is.
Would I pay for that?
Would you guys pay for that?
Do we know the downfalls of that?
Sure we do.
But there's a reason you've never heard us crack on those guys.
You've never heard us beat down on the cheap person.
Because at the end of the day, what this is all about
is I've provided a service for a price.
If the customer comes and they're thrilled with what's been done,
the rest of my opinions doesn't really matter.
And when you try to act like you know better,
and like you said, guys,
if you're 23 years of age and you're doing this,
I'm glad you're fired up about doing this.
Absolutely.
Because I was fired up and you were fired up
and this is great.
Sitting here 20 years down the road,
I can tell you I didn't know a whole lot
of what I was doing business wise.
I didn't know a whole lot of things.
I just knew whatever was in front of me.
And part of the issue is,
as so many people are going out on their own,
so young and age, which I hope all of you succeed,
they're getting no institutional knowledge
of how this business works from a business
that's actually working.
They're just winging it.
And then now everybody's got a camera on their phone
and everybody wants to draw lines in the sand.
And I can say this from a lot of my mistakes,
no reason to draw a line in the sand.
You have customers, so your customers
do what you told them to do and move on with your life.
This line in the sand mentality,
it most of the time you're getting
so much factual information wrong
that you're going to look back and go,
I just didn't know what I was talking about.
I have to ask the question because, well, that's just me.
What makes him do this?
And he goes into that fictional conversation,
but I'm a real, real hunch.
I almost bet one of those beers on it, right?
Let's bet a beer that he actually has had
this exact conversation with somebody
that called and said, well, hey,
Johnny down the street quoted me $500 less,
or your $1,000 is another one he listed, right?
You're $1,000 higher.
And so the 500 was, hey, if you're a detailer,
don't drop your correction for 500 bucks.
And let's pause for a moment.
Let's pause for a moment because, yeah,
we're never going to say, hey, get into a point
of a phone call with a customer
and have to drop your shorts for 500 bucks
or have to sign, you know, compete
on this $1,000 difference, okay?
It's exactly if you understand,
it's exactly why we're having this conversation,
so you don't get into that place
and you actually have a good, better, best system
because then it's not a question of apples to apples
and should I drop five?
It's what does the customer's needs,
we go back to what we always say in downward selling, right?
Find the customer's needs, his pain point,
what is exactly he wants, and then offer him
the good, better, best package that fits that need.
Well, I really bet you if you did the correct questions,
well, you would have found the guy,
he didn't really want all this stuff
that came in the package that had the $500.
I don't know about you, but hell,
I go into a restaurant that I pay $50, not $500,
and I'll kind of pick through the plate and ask them,
hey, will you not put this on it?
Hey, can I put this on the side?
You know, I'd really like a little extra of this.
Yeah, so it's the world we live in.
You know, the world we live in is the reason you have
a good, better, best theory in your business
is so you can actually serve the customer in front of you better, right?
If you said this guy's doing a two-stage correction
in a five-year coding and he's charging $1,000, I charge $2,000,
there's none of us that would say drop your price $1,000.
That doesn't work because seemingly you've already done your numbers
and you know why you're charging what you charge.
But you could have a $1,000 package that this guy goes,
hey, man, I just like your business more.
You seem more professional.
You seem like this is a good package for me,
and you get the $1,000,
but you didn't do $2,000 worth of work to get there.
You just went down to your $1,000 package
that fit his budget or her budget more in line with you.
You don't mind with what they're willing to pay.
We've gotten, the other thing I want to say about this is
the reason most of these people fail a standardized test of this industry
is they don't understand that coding and paint correction are not connected.
One is a protective service and one is a restorative service.
They're not connected.
They're not the same service.
Just because you bundle them together doesn't make that the same service.
It's not.
Putting a wax on a car and paint correcting a car are not the same service.
You can link them together to make it so the car leaves protected,
but PPF and paint correction are not connected.
They're two separate services.
People can fall into camps and they do, right?
I mean, there's the big reason that correction came out,
which we went at, which I said circa 2015 to 20 a long time ago,
came from a movement.
I think there was a vast movement that changed inside of Corona.
You think of what, July to, I don't know, December of 21?
July of 2020 to December of 21 was a heyday, like a heyday special.
Let's say what changed though.
It's not just the pandemic.
The coatings that started that movement, you had to sand off if you screwed up.
So to not paint correct under the old system that if somebody was unhappy with the swirls
underneath their paint, you had to sand the coating off.
There was a real reason to have that.
What you're talking about, I think that coincides with the pandemic is
we reached about 2016, 2018, 2020.
We got to a different level of technology with ceramic coatings.
That's the paradigm shift because again, most of these people talking about standards
would have not been able to get the coating on the car competently in 2010.
I can tell you I was there and great shops were struggling to get the coating on the car.
So it made all the sense of like, hey, you're about to spend a lot of time getting this
coating on the car and if something goes wrong, you're going to have to sand entire panels.
You might as well get the car perfect because that was the least of your worries.
The biggest worry at that time was if something goes wrong with this coating,
you're going to have to sand entire door panels.
It was just a different level of technology and that's the cool thing.
Things are allowed to evolve and technology gets better and things get more friendly.
Stack was not something that was going to be available in 2010.
So what you have is to your point, you have a lot of people that weren't even around in 2010,
2012, that are still taking cues in the industry from something that's 15 years old.
And they don't realize that that's been long gone.
About 2016 to 2018, those technologies had evolved to the point where you largely didn't
have to sand a bunch of coatings off.
But I can tell you that previous six, seven, eight years, you had to sand the coating off.
So there was a reason paint correction was just done because it was such an easy step to do.
It was like, hey, just get yourself where the car looks awesome because if something
goes wrong with this install, you're going to end up there anyway and things evolve.
And then like you said, you had more things happening after the pandemic started.
You got busier than ever.
This industry got bigger than ever.
But it is okay to say where we were 15 or 16 years ago,
things had to be done a certain way because there was just bigger risk with everything.
Technology got better.
It's all good.
All right.
So something he said that I also find interesting, and we were out of April of 2026,
you know, seeing, well, seeing somebody post at an LA with almost $10 a gallon,
it was over $9.
I'm sure.
We were in Edmond, Oklahoma.
We paid a little over $3.50, got close to $4 at one point.
Yeah.
I mean, somebody in my car goes, wow, that's high.
You know, $4 a gallon.
Oklahoma is high.
Yeah, you just you get the jokes of going, hey, there's a lot going on right now economically.
People, well, they're got a lot of expenses elsewhere.
Sure.
So we got to ask the question because if he's got this situation in 2026 where he's
$1,000 higher, when do we kind of start to go, hey, maybe he doesn't have his ear to the ground.
You know, maybe he doesn't really have his pulse on really what's happening in the local market.
You know, what, what do we then take, you know, our thoughts to give into this moment for somebody
listening to go, OK, when do I when do I start looking at my big packages that maybe aren't
selling as well?
And how do I begin to tweak them?
I don't want to drop my shorts, right?
But there definitely has to be, well, we'll use this term.
Everybody can understand this term in business.
We've used it to people.
People have used it to us.
Hey, how do we sharpen our pencil?
Sure, like I'll give you an example.
There's a lot of really exclusive PPF shops that I've talked to in the last 24 months
that should have been running ads saying free ceramic coating with a
front end paint protection package because we have stack.
Takes you a competent installer on a Ferrari 488 can get that on the car in 10 to 15 minutes.
With the cost of 10 bucks.
Yeah, what do you get?
You're just you're able to offer something that gets more people in the door at a very low cost.
We talk about this with windshield coatings and different things you can offer
that cost you minimal time, minimal effort, but you're giving some value back to the customer.
I think when I see these types of videos and I do take it from a complaining point of view.
Yeah, because that's what it is to your point.
He's heard pushback.
He continues to get pushed back in his market.
So he's complaining and that's all good.
We all have times we want to air out and whether that's
complain to your friend or complain to your loved one or whatever.
You want to you want to get some frustration out.
So I understand that.
If you're struggling to get the price point you want,
are you providing the value you think you are?
Because for some reason people are talking to you
and not understanding the value and what you're trying to sell.
So instead of blaming everyone else, why are you not asking?
Why can't I get across to this person?
Why they should pay this because and we hear this a lot from people that are established.
Very rarely do I get a price pushback.
When people call my phone, they're pretty aware we're going to be at the top end of the market.
Why are they aware?
I don't know 15, 16 years of doing something.
Word gets around.
You don't call this guy for cheap work.
So if you're getting a lot of calls for cheap work,
your social media, who you are as a person,
how you walk around the world, they for some reason think you offer cheaper stuff.
I very rarely go back and forth on price.
Very rarely.
If I get 100 calls a month, maybe one or two calls, I get some type of price thing.
And that's handled and squashed in about three sentences.
Now that's not saying I got it all figured out for all of you out there.
What I'm saying is to get on the internet and complain about people not wanting to pay your price.
How's that going to make them want to pay your price?
Right?
And we see it all over the place.
And I think there's a lot of people that do great work.
I'm not even judging anybody's work.
I'm just assuming you guys are doing great work.
That's the way we should all walk through this.
But if you can't explain to the customer why they should pay your price,
that's not an industry problem.
That's not a city problem.
That's a business problem.
And we're looking for seemingly always looking out at the industry
to fix the problem you have in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Columbus, Ohio, or Atlanta, Georgia.
Nobody's going to fix that, right?
That's why we've kind of largely said you guys need to stop talking about the industry.
The industry is not coming to save you.
The industry of any industry is not coming to save that person who's running a business.
But if you're constantly running into price objections,
there is something wrong in your process of talking to a customer
or attracting a customer that's causing the entire area you're working in
to not believe they should be paying what you're asking them to pay.
So if I'm somebody that's listening, I kind of fall into the camp of going,
you know, but I do get where somebody gets so frustrated
and they just have to pop and go.
Like, I'll give the example.
I thought it was hilarious.
We've all, you know, you're driving down the highway.
You've got three lanes.
I'm in the middle lane.
You've got some mobile homeover on the left.
Just clogging it up for everybody, right?
So it's not pissing me off because I'm not getting clogged.
Well, you see this guy behind that just starts weaving back and forth, right?
And then suddenly he makes his move and he's pissed, right?
Like the kettle popped and he went.
If I'm somebody that's having, I could probably watch this video.
I could listen to what he's saying.
Go, wait, yeah, I'm kind of struggling here too with that.
Like, hey, I'm kind of like, whoa.
Why are you guys coming at him so bad?
Because I could kind of, I'm kind of getting this anxiety myself.
And I agree.
And suddenly I'm somebody that wants to pop and go share my thoughts.
Yeah.
Okay, let's talk about that moment.
Let's talk about the moment that we get so built up inside that we want to go express
our feelings into social media.
A Mildren, Mildren is what, where he hangs his hat on this.
Like, well, okay, we totally understand that you've got to a kettle point.
We've gotten to kettle points.
I think the evolution for us, right, has been seeing these videos and not blowing our kettle
that, oh, you're crying right now.
Yeah.
You know, we can now come to a moment of getting to express some things.
Mildren's comment that he always says is he goes, really, what is this for?
Like, your customer really, what customer is going to go onto Facebook, onto Instagram,
see this video, your polisher sitting on the ground.
You know, the way you're, I don't want, anyway, I'm not going to go into that
because that would be dogging him.
But he just, you just go from a customer's perspective, like,
what would make me want to buy from you now?
Yes.
Yes.
And that's all that needs to be asked.
There are a lot of people, I think Facebook is probably the worst situation for this right now,
where a lot of people are writing a lot of things on Facebook all day, every day,
whether they're using chat GPT or they're doing it themselves.
And a lot of it's negative.
I would say this, that it's not going to make anybody want to buy from you,
right?
Because it's not for them.
You know, you are calling out the industry, you are calling out other detailers,
you are calling out what's right and what's wrong.
That doesn't educate anybody on why they should be buying your package that you seem to believe
is not apples to apples.
That's the case you want to make.
Here's what we do to your cars.
Here's what the other guy does to your cars, right?
This is our difference.
This is their problem and we're solving that for you.
Social media, and I do sympathize with this, like you said,
it's real easy to turn that phone on.
It's real easy to turn that phone on when, like you said, when your tea kettle's,
you know, whistling and you're ready to go and you're pissed off, it's easy.
The comment section of this video shows a real dire situation.
And I know where this situation ends up.
And so I think I would come from this.
I've watched a lot of people not make it in this business.
And a lot of those people were really talented at doing the work.
That doesn't matter.
What matters is being able to get customers to believe in what you're doing.
How does this get them to believe in you and believe in what you believe in for their car?
And the answer is that that's what's done very poorly in this industry a lot of times,
because we're using all of this technical jargon as if we're talking to another detailer
and most customers don't care.
They don't care about what polisher you use and do you tilt your rotary or not?
Or, you know, do you sand car, they go, I got a 2025 Tahoe.
Can I just keep it looking good?
How do I accomplish that, right?
That goes for every Ferrari out there, basically, every Tahoe, every Honda Civic,
and everything in between, they're not this deep down the rabbit hole.
So as you go further down the rabbit hole to, you know, with your lid blown off,
you know, airing out your grievances, who have you helped?
And all customers want is to know that when they drop your car off, you're going to handle it.
Because I get cars dropped off all the time where I don't even see the customer.
They're like, yeah, just do what you need to do.
That level of trust is built.
And largely, I've said this, me not acting a fool on the internet on my business pages
has trumped so many businesses in Las Vegas that it gets brought up to me consistently.
Like I was going to go over to so and so, but they do these really silly things and,
you know, act kind of crazy on there.
It seems like nice guys, but what's going on over there?
I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't know them.
Can I have your keys?
Thanks.
I just move on my life.
Like as powerful as social media can be, it can be also powerful to the negative side.
And I think it's one of these things that I don't even think it's age related.
Do you understand what you're doing on social media can be positive or negative
to that person that just bought an $85,000 truck feeling like you got it handled?
And I don't think a lot of these videos make me feel like you got it handled.
All right.
Let's go into a process talk because he goes in and, you know, when he's talking to customers
and even tells them like, hey, you know, run as fast as you can, right?
Like if somebody doesn't do a correction with your coding, right?
So if I'm somebody that's listening, I'm hearing this and he goes into also then,
hey, make sure that it's a something environment.
What's it called?
He goes a controlled environment.
Right?
Okay.
You first got to then throw out the question.
Okay.
If I'm listening to this, I'm hearing somebody say it and I'm a mobile detailer.
Okay.
There are there are coding companies.
There are people that that are very, very specific on the way you have to do their coding.
Sure.
Hey, if you're one of those people and you buy from them and you fall into that camp,
hey, good news.
We got videos too.
And we got a group called a hyper clean specialist group where we've got thousands
of UNO dose tray.
You talked about stack earlier, right?
Put on as a mobile detailer, not in a controlled environment.
So you go, okay.
Well, then where's the difference?
How does one camp fall into somebody going and saying if you're a customer that you even
hear that they could come put it on as a mobile detailer, you got to run?
Yep.
All right.
Well, that has nothing to do with when he says that something's not going to last.
I think it doesn't last because the coding he's been using, right?
And he doesn't want to share what brand and he doesn't want to go out there and say, huh,
maybe it's not a reputable company like you've talked about where there are many people,
you know, they just buy whatever and then they don't understand why they don't have the results.
We have prosumers.
We have mobile guys.
We have shop guys.
The coding doesn't know where you're putting on the coding.
It doesn't, it doesn't know that it's, it's a liquid you drop out of a bottle.
It doesn't know where you're applying it.
You just need to make sure you're applying the coding correctly.
That's it.
It's not rocket science.
And for him to say mobile guys can't do it, I don't know, one month of what we do mobile,
he won't do in his entire career, most likely.
That's just a fact of the numbers.
We have used two other brands.
We never struggled with those brands on a mobile setting.
And when everybody said you can't do this stuff, how you're doing it,
those companies magically started to say, yeah, you kind of prove that that's not true.
Coding just needs to be applied properly.
That's it.
Now, we always go out of our way to say, guys, you can do a lot of things in direct sunlight.
You can even apply things like stack and Uno and those types of things.
But there's a reality around it.
Find a shaded spot is a better way of looking at it.
Okay, it's going to make your life easier.
It's going to give you more working time.
But we have people that are down in Arizona when it's 115 degrees that have videos they've
sent us where they're putting Uno dose on a vehicle and they have a great install.
And those coatings last the years they're supposed to last.
So I think it's a lack of technological understanding.
And that's what gets you to fail the standard test.
The standard we want to hold people to, if you don't know how things work,
it's better off that you don't say anything.
And the scary part is, is that people like us exist.
And there's other people in coding brands that know how technology works,
that if this guy had reached out to any of those people,
he would have been told his theory is incorrect.
And that's what scares me for all of you out there is for some reason, in my career,
I've watched where people were talking to reputable representatives of companies
and asking questions.
You've been in this boat when you were detailing full time,
where you could ask a question and get an answer, and it was a reputable answer.
But you always knew to ask the question.
If you didn't know something, you asked somebody.
Now, if we don't know the answer, we just act like our answer is correct.
But you haven't talked to anybody reputable, that's for sure.
Because I can name a bunch of big coding companies that would go through this guy's video.
Some of them texted this video to me, because we are friends in this industry,
and they go, this guy is just 100% wrong about how coding is work.
This isn't just hyper clean saying this, there was a lot of coding companies that go,
this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
That's a really scary place to be when you're trying to tell people you're setting a standard.
Okay, if you don't know how something works, guys, we have plenty of people that reach out
to us that listen to these podcasts that send in questions.
There's a lot of companies willing to tell you how things work.
Now, if they tell you how theirs works, you got to take their word for it.
But you got to ask if that fits what you're trying to do.
Is that work for me?
Did I see adverse reactions?
Is this a little bit of a pain point?
What is going on here?
I've seen other things.
I need to talk to other people.
But I think the scary thing to me is we don't seem to be reaching out to people anymore,
which I think is a very, very big negative.
All right, closing thoughts, I'll go, you can go.
So for me, I know this is something that we're both going to say, which we find is interesting.
He's a guy that feels he's right.
And I'm going to go, I can understand when somebody is so adamant about the way they feel,
and they're so passionate, he's probably one of those guys.
And you go, well, when the tail of the tape actually happens, what is going to happen?
If somebody is so right and feels so opinionated on something, as I've been,
I've also been a guy that goes, well, I realize I probably shouldn't have put my opinion out about that.
Right?
Like, there's been times you and I have learned those lessons, right?
And so I'll give that just to like, listen, I get it.
I'm empathetic, you know, that was my tea kettle experience, why I said that, you know?
It's like, I get it.
But if you're in business, you're going to have to figure out that for you.
And I don't see the path going down of you, if you continuing this way,
unless, like you said, unless you want to stay single operator.
But I don't think most of us do.
And so what happens when, when we have these moments where maybe we're getting these phone
calls when, when, hey, we're suddenly out of bounds for what seems to be going on.
I'm going to say a lesson that you and I have just learned very recently because
it is something that I guess I had to put into play very recently also was,
Houston, we have a problem, right?
We learned it in this, this other thing, but I learned it this weekend because,
well, my wife had had a problem with her battery.
It had, well, I'd cleaned it the past weekend and suddenly we had to jump it, right?
It didn't make, well, okay, but it was just one.
Well, I was loading luggage and suddenly the car doesn't start again.
Saturday morning trying to go to a game, we can all understand that anxiety.
And you go, okay, hey, we now have an actual problem here.
We're now going to have to get a jump box and then get a battery on the trip.
There's no more waiting, right?
There's no more chance of like, hey, like, we got to solve this problem.
We can't hope that it won't happen again.
So if you're somebody that's defeating in the market, you're,
you're getting these phone calls, if you fall into his camp,
I'm going to go listen, you're going to have to start making a hard choice
to either change packages, change coding companies to hyperclaim,
whatever you need to do to get yourself on the right track or, or else.
It's going to end where you and I know, I'll leave it with this.
I totally understand why these videos get made.
You know, I mean, frustration is a real thing.
Wanting to be right about things is a real thing.
It's a human way.
We all are.
If you don't know how codings work, don't speak like you do.
Because that's as damaging to all of this and yourself as almost anything, right?
You do not have to do paint correction to apply a coding or two separate services.
You do not have to do paint correction to have a coding last.
It's said years.
The only rule of ceramic coatings is you have clean naked paint to apply the coding to.
And the paint doesn't know how it got cleaned.
It just knows magically this stuff is going to bond.
So don't put a coding over contaminants.
Pretty basic.
Don't put it over dirt.
Not going to work well, right?
The basics are the basics.
Also, you need to make sure you're not falling behind technologically.
That's really, really hard to overcome.
If you're using coatings with IR lamps and you're talking about curing and you're.
I remember that in 2010.
It's 2026 flat screen TVs, cars, everything goes through an evolution where we are dead
set in an evolution of coatings in the last 16 years, which is a great thing.
It's more accessible, easier to apply.
More customers can have it applied to their cars.
More customers know about it.
So if you're struggling, maybe you're struggling technologically.
Maybe you're operating outdated.
It can happen to anybody, me, you, anybody.
That's not a judgment.
But I'm also shocked at how many elite level shops when they start using our
coding or using a coding that was like a coding I was using in 2010.
And this is not an exaggeration.
And these are elite level shops finding this out now 16 years later.
Right.
So it's okay to have an opinion.
We have opinions.
You guys all have your own opinions, but your opinions when they're
based on factually incorrect information is a recipe to have
stuff happen to you and your business personally that's not recoverable sometimes.
It's okay to change.
It's okay to evolve.
You should do those things.
I can say what, what I think you're trying to say.
Conversations we would have had on here six years ago.
We don't necessarily have those today.
Okay.
We learn, we evolve, we make mistakes.
All of you are the same.
We're the same.
It is what it is.
We got to get to a positive place in all this stuff.
And we got to calm down.
Okay.
We got to understand what great work is and all that kind of stuff.
And it's, there's a lot of people that just need a basic detail and that's what
they're going to pay for.
If you don't do those in your business, then don't worry about the people
that do those in their business, but they are serving a customer.
If you're struggling to get customers, there's something off in the marketplace.
And it's usually your messaging.
And who you are and the way people see you.
And that's okay.
Cause guess what?
You're going to go through that a million times in your business.
That's just how the world works.
But when you stand up and start to tell people how things work and you factually
don't know how the product you're talking about works,
it's, it's, it's hard to recover from that.
If you don't get out of that pretty quickly.
So again, guys, I think we have these conversations pretty rarely now,
but I think it is important when something gets passed to us so many times.
And there were a lot of you that it was a tea kettle moment because you knew it wasn't true.
I would just say this, don't be negative in the comment section.
Move on with your life.
Have a laugh about it.
Keep killing it in your business or with your own cars.
Some of this stuff needs to be blown off because it's just people giving their opinion.
But when it's factually incorrect, it does reach you a different way.
You do go, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
And I want to give him my two cents.
Hey, man, just text it to us.
Give us your two cents.
Move on with your day.
Don't go crazy in a comment section.
And I think the overall thing that I see, this is happening less.
It is happening less because, you know, people are tuning into stuff like our show
and better YouTube and people are starting to question people on YouTube
and starting to see through some of the, you know, not so professional things out there.
But it's always going to be there.
And what we have to do is just kind of rise above it, have the relevant conversations.
But I want to make sure we say this before we end the episode.
This is in no way a judgment of this guy.
It seems like he cares about his business.
Seems like, you know, he's got a reasonable business going.
But you also got to understand that sometimes,
hey, man, the internet allows anybody to speak their mind.
And you just got to kind of leave it there.
All right.
So I'd love everybody's thought sales on this in the Opera Clean Specialist Group, right?
I think it's a great place to listen.
We just say, Hey, what are your thoughts?
Like, I mean, I think this is a viable time for people to go into the specialist group
and to give their opinion, you know, share what you do in your business.
There's going to be people in the specialist group that need to talk to you about packages
they have and how you did your packages that way and what product you use in this situation.
This is a very specific time that we should now go into the specialist group and voice our opinions
because I bet you somebody's going through something
and we can solve somebody's problem for them there.
So we'll see everybody inside the Opera Clean Specialist Group on Facebook.
All right, guys.
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