Dory Carlin Says Bad Management is KILLING Good Techs

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I really believe that the only way we learn trials

and tribulations of where you can go,

man, this sucks.

How am I going to get better?

Oh my God, I fixed it.

There's no feeling.

Drugs, sex, rock and roll, they're all great.

Fix a problem.

Fix a problem that no one else can.

It's right into the veins.

You're just like, dude, I got this.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to another exciting episode

of the Jada Mechanic Podcast.

It is still hot as Hades up here in Canada.

And your guy's a little, what's the word?

It got a little swamp ass going on every day.

Like 100 consistently in the shop every afternoon.

It's a small shop, no AC, all the kind of stuff

that everybody talks about.

And yeah, it gets hot.

So if I get a little giddy, it's because of eight,

like six freezes in the afternoon.

I had an ice cream cone.

Come bought us Gatorade.

So, you know, hydration is important.

But that being said, you know, life is good.

And I'm sitting here with somebody that kind of reached out

to me and I'm reached out to them.

And I just said, hey, if you want to be honest,

always like everybody's welcome here.

And a gentleman named Dory Carlin, which I don't know,

are you related to the Carlin?

Uncle George.

In my family, we refer to him as Uncle George.

But as far as I know, there's no relation.

But man, he's got some fantastic points to ponder, right?

He was a guy that can make you think.

And hopefully you'll be a guy to make us think too.

So Dory, how are you tonight, brother?

Fantastic.

The weather is just as bad and gross down here.

I'm in Western Pennsylvania in the good old United States here.

And you know, I was always under the impression

you guys had colder weather,

but it sounds like it's just as gross up there too.

It made the headlines up here like the Loka headlines.

We were actually hotter in Kingston, Ontario

than Houston was the other day.

Oh my goodness.

I can't imagine.

We get the extremes because we're like literally

right on the shore of Lake Ontario.

And that size of water mass definitely has an effect.

Lake effect winter is really bad.

And then the humidity up here sucks terribly.

So yeah, we see traditionally like, you know, you'll see

like, so people get mad at me when I do the Celsius thing,

but you'll see lots of summer days you get up over 100 in the afternoon.

And then in the wintertime, like it's nothing to go out

and it'd be minus 30 when you go out

and I fire up my Jeep to go to work in the morning.

So I mean, we do have some pretty extreme weather up here.

And I mean, you just get used to it,

but like I have never been a person that's been bothered by cold.

You know, like the only thing my ears can be falling off.

If I can move my fingers, I'm good.

The heat, I can't do it.

I just like it has a weird effect on me.

And I feel really bad now because it's bothering me more as I'm aging.

And you say, Oh yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. It will get you.

I mean, that was that was one of the prerequisites.

We have a little two bay shop and we have air conditioning.

Right. We're old and grumpy.

And dude, you get me in heat.

Me and my business partner will fist fight.

So keeping us cool and calm works great, you know.

So you're just you're just a little operation then.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you guys do you have like ESO stations back in the 60s gas stations old school?

There was ESO, Ohio.

They were all basically ex-ons, you know, back in the days.

And we got a hold of a 60s ESO gas station that was pretty much abandoned.

And I worked with one of my childhood friends at a Lexus dealership.

And it took us a couple of years.

But one day I called him.

I was like, Hey, we need you to look at this place.

And I have a dream.

And that was it.

So yeah, we're rolling and we're a little two bay shop.

We just have our first real employee.

He's 21 and man, he's a good kid.

He's got a good head on his shoulders.

And we're figuring out how to make that jump from you're working the cars,

you're writing the orders, you're making the sales.

And then you're fixing them to, Hey, we now have an employee.

I have a front desk.

So we're like right in that little realm of I hear you talking about all the time

for business owners, you know, of making that jump.

And it's so funny, right?

Because I'm not a business owner.

It's just like I've spent a better part of 20 years.

Like that's when I first got to know Lucas online.

And then we always discuss the business.

And we discussed the business from my very limited, you know, understanding of it.

But I'd worked in a lot of different types of automotive repair from,

I started in a, in a four bay oil gas station in, in that, you know,

since been knocked down bulldozer, they've all disappeared.

They don't exist anymore.

And, you know, I've worked in the truck shop.

I've worked in, you know, a 10 bay bus garage.

I worked in, you know, road service for like lots of things.

So we would always discuss the business side of things.

And, you know, and just the industry in general.

So always from my perspective as a technician, I never wanted to own my own business.

It was something that I thought I got close to doing because I thought that was going to be

my only option because I knew I was hard to employ because, you know, I'm kind of arrogant.

And I'm kind of like, I'll ask the questions.

Obviously, look at me, right?

Like I'll ask the question.

A lot of people don't, or don't bother to ask or don't really want to know the answer to.

And I'm always going to ask it because like if, if it's different than what I think,

then I'm going to learn something.

And if it's what I think, then you're going to reaffirm it for me is the way I've always

thought. And so it makes me, you know, a challenge sometimes to employ because

it's not that I can't fix the cars, but I always knew that we as an industry were

undervaluing ourselves. I knew that from the first year in, you know, and it wasn't like my,

you know, other people around me had told me, oh, it's always going to suck because I had,

I had all the enthusiasm starting out. And a year in, I'm like, man, we're letting

these people go, you know, for too light. And I mean that from the, the kind of work

that we put in for the type of pay we were getting out. And it's just,

that's where my perspectives have always come from, from the business side.

So it's funny now when the shop owner is like, oh, your insight on business. Whoa.

Well, hey, I say, you know, I'm kind of the same ilk. I was 20 years at dealerships.

I worked for Lexus. I've worked for Nissan of Master Certified Mercedes-Benz mechanic.

And I always like to say, I've worked at places that taught me how to do it right.

And I worked at places that taught me how to do it wrong.

And they're equally valuable. Just like everything that's happened in my life,

sometimes being taught the wrong way is incredibly more valuable because you can look back on and

go, well, I don't have to waste my time doing it that way. I know that way doesn't work.

I can try something else, you know? And that's basically the root of it.

And that's such a superpower, right? Because it's like, it's like I say, the more,

because I'm a technician with, blessed with really good intuition. Like it's,

if you watch me try to go down a process. Don't the cars speak? Like, don't you,

you can almost walk up to a car and kind of just, you get a feel. Yeah. I believe in that 100%.

And smell, like I keep talking about that truck wagon that had that burning smell that was like,

you know, 104 codes in it and these intermittent thing. And I'm like, what's that smell?

Let's just go like that. And it fixes the car. Like that's not something that you'd ever

want to publish as a case study and teach it to somebody as a process. But man,

if I look back at my career, how many cars I fixed that way. Yep. And it's in the dozens

that have been that way just from instincts, instincts and eyes, ears and nose, you know?

So I, yeah, I've learned I've watched people go down rabbit holes that I didn't have to go down.

Oh yeah. That's a, that's a rough one, especially when you're flat rate

and you're watching the guy next to you just go down in flames. Yeah. And you want to go,

hey, excuse me, hey, hey, excuse, but you know, it's not going to work because they're just as

hard headed as you. So, so you know, you know, my business partner and I talk about that all the

time, leave me alone, let me go my path. I might be wrong, but it's going to be my path and

you're not going to pull me from it. That's what's tough. Most automotive conferences,

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pricing. That's very tough. And, and we've all had those cars that like all you took

from them when you were done, you didn't take profit. You just took a lesson. Yeah. And we've

had days like that in our career. Fuck, I've had weeks like that.

When you're off, there are, there are, it can go for a day. It can go for three days

because I've turned to my guys and going, I see it. You're having a rough, I see it. Don't

worry about it. We'll work through it. Let's, we'll find you something simple to get back

on track. But that one just ate you alive. I get it. It happens. Let's figure it out.

And a lot of guys don't have that kind of support. Dealerships like guys burn.

Yeah. Dory, what kicked the passion off for you then like as a, as a young person to decide

that this is what you want to do? You know what? I will be completely honest. I have come from,

you know, I have had multiple careers. Okay. And I, my dad was a mechanic. So I saw kind of

what he went through. So I almost looked down on it a little bit. When I took my first

dealership job, I came from something I had to do. I was in a place where I was married. I just

had my first kid. I was, I knew that no matter what I did, I had to make more money.

Okay. I knew I was a fantastic troubleshooter. I came from dirt bikes, motorcycle industry.

I've done audio video work. I've done content creation on the internet back before content

creation was before a buzzword. But I honestly, I remember having a very vivid conversation with

one of my childhood friends that he's like, yeah, you kind of look down on becoming a mechanic.

I was like, yeah, I felt like I gave up. I felt like I was doing what my dad did. And that was a big,

I was a big mistake. I was really pompous in that activity because I thought I was naive enough

to think that I could just come in and it's just rotating tires and changing oil.

And there was no, there was no like concept of what I was doing. I was 25 years old.

And quite honestly, I was a dick, you know, I was like, well, I can work here for $13 an hour.

And they'll pay me to get my state inspection license and my missions. And this is what I'll do.

I'll settle down and I'll make money for the family and, you know, fine, I give up.

Little did I know, man, it was the greatest decision I ever made.

Did your dad make it look simple almost like how good he was?

I just saw the wear and tear on him. I saw a beaten and battered guy that came home with

bloody hands and dirty fingernails and had to have a few drinks before you could talk to him,

you know, that kind of situation, you know, it was frustrating. And I could see that as a kid.

And I immediately married that to, oh, that's just however mechanic it's, you know,

and that's not true. You know, we come in a million different shapes and colors and flavors.

I mean, the guys that I have met working at dealerships and independent shops,

I wouldn't trade that for anybody for anything. They're great groups. I've seen

amazing talent. I've seen, you know, just guys doing the right things for the right reasons,

you know, and it's been eye-opening. Last 20 years have been incredibly eye-opening.

What I have seen, especially I've started to really appreciate in the last seven years,

is I can look now at people that are adults in my industry that I meet and I correlate them to

people that I met as children who were just a little bit different, you know what I mean?

Like they just, they were either a little bit shy or they, you know, you didn't see them in

the same kind of classes that I went to, but you always knew where they were, you know,

per se. And they, and what it is is just different places on the spectrum. Like they had

these abilities that like, and I didn't, I didn't get to know them. I kind of hung around with

like some of the jocks and I hung around with some of the gearheads in school. And I'm

seeing that like the traditional gearheads that I hung around with, like one of them,

other than myself, is still a mechanic. And the rest just went to completely different

areas, right? Yeah. Some skilled trades, but a different skilled trade.

And then these things. Problem solving. Problem solving. And then these kids that like I didn't

really hang out with, I'm seeing all in these adults now that are just like them.

And they were just a little bit wired different where they could like really did some,

they, you just knew that the wheels were always turning in their head. They're

quiet and it's incredible. Like they're, they're just, it's like you said, there's so many

different flavors that make this up. I've met some people that were like, the job was,

the job was a retreat. The job became, I know myself, I looked forward to going to the job to

get away from the, the situation at home, right? The relationship I was in, I was not happy and

that I worked six days a week, like seven in the morning till seven at night, if they'd let

me, because I didn't want to be there. And then other people that were like,

you know, they've been so much good at like, this is just my job. This doesn't define me.

This is how I earn my living. This is how I feed my family. I have no love for this,

but I come in and I fill a role and I go home at night. And I'm, I'm not either one of them

anymore, right? Like I'm somewhere in the middle. Somewhere in between. Yeah.

Weird place. So, you know, well, I mean, there's a value in knowing

nine to five or eight to four or whatever your schedule is. You know, I would joke

when I was working at say Lexis that, you know, the service manager would try to talk to me

first thing in the morning before I'd come in and he was kind of checking on, well,

is this going to be done? Is that going to be done? And I had to stop and I'm like,

listen, I don't remember what's on my list. Like it's, it's going to be as much a surprise to you

as it is to me because I leave it here. I go in the locker room. I change into my uniform.

I walk out and go, oh yeah, that's right. That GX needed an alternator and I was figuring out

why the power steering pump makes noise. You know, okay, cool. And I would jump in and

you'd get honest work out of me, but I quit taking it home very, very early on in my career

because I knew I couldn't do it. I'm one of those guys that if I come across a real problem or a real

something I can't figure solution out to, it will run right back here 24 seven in a loop

and just keep grinding and grinding and grinding. And then finally, oh, hey, you know,

but it will drive me absolutely insane as a troubleshooter, as a problem solver.

I knew that early on, even as a kid that like it's all hands. I'm not a, I think they call

them tactile learners now, right? We had to do it. I got to do it to understand what I'm doing

and why I'm doing it. Yeah. So the dealer that you spent all of that, the times with,

what did you love about that? Like what was the appeal? Like did your dad work in one and you

were or did your dad a shop like yours and you wanted to go? Yeah. Yeah. He was an independent guy,

you know, back in, you know, the seventies and, you know, you'll talk to a lot of guys,

the good old days, you know, we joke that he worked for a guy called fast Eddie.

And he had a big, a big heavy equipment, two bay garage that's gone now, just like you said,

bulldozed. And, you know, we joked because my mom is a seamstress and she made nice

Naga hide covers for the toolboxes that used to sit on the side of the toolbox. Yeah. The

records, right? So it was like a family thing. And yeah, he was an independent deal.

When I got into a dealership, my first dealership was Lexus. And I just, I liked,

I guess the machine of it all, like how all the pieces interacted. Every place of ever

work I've gone in with my eyes open. It wasn't just learning my job or knowing what I can do.

I would always ask questions. What's a service writer for? Yeah. You know, what's the service

manager watching? What is he doing? You know, you know, how does the general manager work?

Why does he get to work bank hours? And we're back here, slave it, you know, stuff like that.

You know, so I've always gone in with my eyes open, learning lessons for everything. I've

never had blinders on and the dealership just presented an environment where you could connect

the dots and understand like, oh, there's a method to this madness. You know, you'll see,

oh, the parts departments like this and, you know, the service writer works like that. And this

is, oh, okay. And then once you define kind of what the roles were, then you could quickly

pick out and go, oh, that's not working. Oh, that's not working because this and, you know,

you don't say anything because you're not one of those guys. But I would, I would note it and go,

oh, okay, that makes sense. This would be easier this way or that would be that way easier that

way. Or, you know, so yeah, that that's what interested me. It was a large mechanism that

had a multi just everywhere you look, there was craziness going on. You know, it was, you

know, I remember the transition for me from when I went from the little four bay gas station,

where it was just myself, two other mechanics, and that the guy out front who did all the

estimating, all the booking, all the scheduling, all the parts ordering, everything like that,

right? Yeah. So I go to the dealership where it's like all of a sudden, like you said,

there's a whole sales department that is, you know, wanting to be your friend because

they need favors done. And then there's a whole sale, you know, service department

which you're a part of, but within that facet that you've got like four advisors who

some days they seem to get along with each other and some days they want to kill one

another. And then, you know, you have your parts stored, like you said, that was like,

they seem to be the bane of everybody's existence, right? Like parts because parts was

always seeming to be getting stuff wrong. Now I understand that it's a very hard

job within the dealership. Like it is constant chaos in parts. And, you know, we all know,

like you click on it and it shows stock at the warehouse and you order and then you get a

notification five minutes later saying, yeah, it's been updated and it's not at the warehouse.

And, you know, it's an intergalactic back order. Good luck. Right.

Promise your customer tomorrow morning is now three weeks. What do you do?

Right. It becomes a chain. So I can understand for you that sentiment that when I got to the dealer,

it was like this big machine all of a sudden and it was like, wow, where do I fit in here?

And then I realized real quick, like I fit in fine. Like the dealer, I'll say it again,

the dealer saved me for this industry. I wouldn't have stayed. I wouldn't have lasted if I'd

have been at that little four bay gas station. I wouldn't have survived this industry because

I could not. It didn't pay enough. No, it's not just the pay. There is just something too

and independent at that time or that size. It's chaos. It depends on what the,

it's 100% on what the owner is. How organized are they? The roles aren't defined.

That's my biggest, that is my largest goal in dealing with our independent is I want to make

sure everyone knows their goals. What are you responsible for specifically? Because that's

the one thing I hated at the dealership more than anything. Well, why didn't you do that? Well,

because it's not my job. I can't force the service writer to sell. It's not my job. I

got to stop. I got to fix the cars. That's what I do. And that's tough. Independence turned off

a lot of young kids. I have young kids that stop in the shop. Hey, I want to be a mechanic.

We have a program here called Votech vocational technologies that a lot of 16, 17, 18 year olds

get into and it's kind of to get their feet wet. So I get a lot of kids that stop in. Hey,

I want to be mechanic. Listen, go to the dealership. They'll train you. You don't have to pay

for schooling. They'll say you want to be a Subaru technician? They'll send you the Subaru

so you can get certified. And then you learn real quick, is that dealership promoting within?

Are they going to send you to school? Yeah, because I've worked at dealerships that had

one master certified technician out of 14 guys. And I've worked at dealerships that had

17 master certified texts out of 17 guys. Yeah. And that makes a huge difference.

Big time. And, you know, it's funny. The young people that I've seen that like they go to the

independence store sometimes, and I have to be very careful I would say this,

sometimes it's like the, and we talk again and in these groups that we're in, we're talking

to less than 5%, right? We always have to remember that. So when I put my head up and go,

I've seen them come from the, from the aftermarket side of things with some really bad habits.

Everybody looks at me like I'm crazy. But I mean, we call it like some of them are very good at

cobbling things together because that's maybe how that was the culture of the shop. Yeah.

Yeah. Had no money, like fix it as cheap bubblegum duct tape and weld wire if need be,

you know, mechanics wire, the first guy I ever worked for that four beggar gas station,

the head guy like welded mechanics wire and two part epoxy was his like go to and

it didn't matter. It could be a side view mirror. It could be like he was

a sensor. He just JB welded it in there. Good. Good to go. Let's go.

He'd sit there and go, Oh my God, Adrian, like, but that was what literally his customers were

hoping for that level of repair, which is why he couldn't afford to pay because he wasn't

charging because I get the customer base that he, we have to remember up the road within three miles

of us was six dealerships. There was a another independent store shop literally right across

the side street, like across an alley. There was one across the street and one more one

blocked down on the same side of the street. So we were surrounded by 12 other shops in a not

particularly big part of Ottawa. So like there was a lot of customers and a lot of options.

So there was a customer for everybody as they say, we were the shop for those customers that

like didn't have a lot of money or didn't want to put a lot of money into it.

They got blown out of the dealership at $120 an hour or whatever it was at that time, right?

Oh, well, yeah. Cause I can remember the dealer was like at that time we're talking early 2000s

like a hundred bucks and we were 64. Yeah. Yeah. I don't miss those days. Yes.

When you do the math on that and it's like, okay, a 10 hour job, you're saving 300 bucks.

If you go to somebody that's, you know, $30, $2,300 was a lot of money. Sure. You know,

now it's groceries up here in Canada. Right. Gas, you know, you name it. Yeah, exactly.

I had an uncle that was like that. He had an independent shop for years and that's a little bit

where I wouldn't say I grew up there, but I'd spend a lot of time with him. He was close to

my dad at the time. So I kind of kicked around this independent shop and that's where

he was. He was right across the street from a, like a government housing kind of facility where

you had low income families. And honestly, Uncle Glenn, he had a soft heart. He was the kind of

guy that would give a shirt off his back to do it. But the double-edged sword on that is that

you set the customer level that you want. And I don't think a lot of guys understand that because

they're afraid to ask for better money and to stop using bailing wire and JB Weld and to literally go,

well, at ours in the early days, what we did is we gave people the choice. You could go

aftermarket and it's going to be this much and it's going to be, it's going to fix it,

but it's not going to be a thousand percent dealership quality or here's the price for OEM parts

done the right way with the right time. You choose. You know, and I let the customer set

that tone and what that allowed us to do was to first identify the customers right off the

bat. Hey, I want it done right. Use OEM parts. Awesome. So we would then curtail to them. We

wouldn't burn these other people out, but at least I know what the lay of the land was. Am I

getting junk walking through the door? Or am I getting legitimate customers that want a good repair

with OEM parts, but they can't find another shop that'll do it? That's right. Yeah. And I've

talked for forever. It seems like it drives me crazy when you see shop owners and they

don't even look at a OEM part as an alternative. Cheaper. They immediately go to the cheapest thing

or it's not necessarily the cheapest thing, but it's like the one that I can get my matrix to

where it's the same price as a dealer part. I can give a three-year warranty on it. Yes. Just

drive me up the wall because as you have been a dealer tech for a long time, I was a dealer

tech for a long time. I knew that when like if I had to come back, it was 99% of the time

it was mechanic error. It was never the part because you were putting on the best parts.

It frustrates the hell out of me now. How much do I have to go in and redo because the parts are so

bad? We have selectively eliminated specific aftermarket manufacturers. Porman, I'm not

naming any names. I'm not, listen, we're not talking trash. I will not use them. It's just

that simple. It's just it's frustrating for everybody because you look like an ass. It makes

you look like somebody can't do the job when I go, oh, you know that new part I put on? Yeah,

it broke. Sorry. Come on. I just, I can't afford to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And it sucks. I go

back to the vent valve situation, right? The EVAP part from the aftermarket. Like,

I just will not use them. You could tell me the OEM one's going to be three weeks away

and I'll be like, does the car run? Yep. Check ends lights on. Okay. Well, we're going to have to

wait three weeks for the for the dealer one to come in because it doesn't seem to matter if it's

been a standard or a blue streak or, you know, Wells is hard to get up here. But I'm trying to

think like, if I can't find, say it's a Denzo oxygen sensor, if I can't cross the OEM number

into the aftermarket catalog, I don't bother to even look at the catalog. I just fill the

dealer up and go, give me give me the oxygen sensor. And that's a hard lesson to learn.

You know, when you're starting out either, you know, as an independent, it's a hard lesson to

learn because you want to be Johnny on the spot. You want to be the guy, oh yeah, I can get that

today. We're buzzing out. We'll knock it out. You're fine. We'll get you going. It's hard

to go, whoa, whoa. Let's just wait for the right part. We were burned so many times in

the early days because of that specific, and it's hard, and it's all you. It's just because

you have the right drive. I want to get the customer down the road. I don't want to hold

their car for a week. Nobody can go without their car, you know. But, you know, in an EVAP sensor,

run it. You're not dying. It'll be fine. The light's going to be on, you know. But, you

know, if you have something that's more important, you know, you got an oil pressure

sensor that leaks, you know, I can't put that car back out on the road because I don't

guarantee that the customer is going to check his oil. That's right. You know, and it's those

little pitfalls that you learn and go, no, okay, I'm sorry. I have to be the bearer of bad news.

My apologies, but this is the best course of action, and I can't do anything about it. I'm

sorry. And you build good customers that way. They understand. They either understand or they

leave. You know, that's what's tough. So how did you go from Lexus to Mercedes?

Well, going through the big D, man, going to the divorce.

You know, the Lexus dealership was 20 minutes away, and the Mercedes dealership was about 35 or 40,

and no, vice versa. One was further away, and I wanted to make the change of I needed to be

home more often and better hours and better pay. And, you know, I would have been, you know, I liked,

I liked those two dealerships a lot. So there wasn't a big difference between those two.

I was set up to be a lifer at Mercedes. I kind of found, man, listen, the Germans know how to

do it. That's all I can say. You talk about a machine, and you talk about, I don't know,

there was some psychological warfare there, too. Like they had you, you were a team member, man.

You were part of us, you know, and I bought in. I was 100%. Like I got it. There was support.

They were clear about their roles. They were totally clear as to, you know,

what they expected of you, that sort of thing. What pushed me out of there was the warranty

times. The warranty times were horrendous. And it was right at that point where you're making

me fight tooth and nail at a luxury dealership. Like you guys are almost, oh man, at the time,

I want to say there were 165 or 170 an hour or something like that. You know, and I'm going,

you're making me fight for time. Where's this coming from? You know, and that's kind of what

happened there. But I loved, that was a place that showed me what you could build when you get.

I had an old boss when I worked for motorcycle stuff. He always talked about running a company

is like having 18 boat engines on the back of your boat. If you get six of them going the same

direction, you're looking pretty good. Right? Well, that's what Mercedes was. Mercedes was, man,

they had 17 techs, 16 and a half of them were going the right direction. You know,

they didn't tolerate a whole bunch of shit, you know. And, but there was also that,

hey, we're working together. It's a team. Even though it was flat rate,

old timers would cut the guys retired there. They were lifers. They would come over and show you

easier, faster, better ways to do what you're doing. That sort of environment, that doesn't exist

in a flat rate environment. I've seen fistfights in flat rate shops. You know, you know, I,

so that sort of environment, I dug, I got it. I was, I was in 100%, you know.

The luxury thing always like, and to me to this day, like when they talk about like,

and you see them post, they post the job ads and it's like, ooh, they're paying $45 an hour,

you know, flat rate. You're like, how are they selling cars that go for $150 to $200,000

at this dealership? And I, listen, the people are going to correct me again.

Exchange in Canada, right? So most of them are sitting there very close to 100K. And secondly,

like, I don't know, I don't research them. They're not my kind of car. So if you tell me that,

oh, they don't sell any of them that go for 200, I'm going to believe you. But I know that they

sell a ton for 100. Anyway, it always makes me laugh when you see these high luxury end brands,

and they still pay flat rate. Because I'm like, you would think that we're all about quality

and we're all about snobby, you know, prestigious cars that they would just be like, you think you

would walk in and it would be like this high end salon type thing, you know, pristine, clean,

guys are just paid to like have the service manual open and torquing every faster. You know,

that's not what you get with flat rate, right? It doesn't matter whether you're working on a

you go, obviously, you're getting guys that are slamming and banging as fast as possible to make

that money. And it just, I could never wrap my head around the idea that like BMW and Mercedes

locally here are still paying be our flat rate. And they still have comebacks and they still have,

you know, shoddy work because I've seen it and you're like, where does the money go?

If they like for door rate, and they're still paying texts, not that much more to work on

that those cars. And they're still flat rate. Where's the money go? Right.

Goes in the pocket. And the overhead of running that type of presentation versus, you know,

your mom and dad Chevy dealership, right? Well, that was a big part of why I left Lexus. So

the run of that was when I worked at Lexus, that was my first dealership experience.

And I got in because one of my childhood friends worked there and were actually multiple childhood

friends. So there was like four or five of us out of eight texts that all grew up together. So we

were tight. Yeah. And it was an hourly shop. And we the Lexus dealership that I worked for

probably spent 10 to 15 years, number one, regionally in their service. We crushed it.

I mean, we just because we were as tight as we were, we were 180% efficient. Five guys at least 160 to

180% efficient every month. Did we screw off? Oh, yeah. There was there were stuff like like I

saw you brought up the the television show tires, right? I mean, come on. He made they nail it.

Right. Steve and Shane nail what that experience is 100%. Right. And, you know, did we mess around?

Yeah, absolutely. But at the end of the day, we were crushing it. Well, the service manager comes

to us one day in a meeting and goes, Hey, there's a there's a payroll freeze right now. We're

having a hard time with a couple of things. I think this was this would have been like

Oh, let's see, my daughter was born 05. So yeah, oh, oh, seven, oh, eight, something like that.

And we had a pretty hard dip in car sales and stuff, but nothing Lexus was just fine. Trust

me, they were fine. But hey, there's a freeze. And we put up with that for one year.

And the next year came around. And my current business partner who I own the shop with

went to our service manager said, Hey, I understand there's a freeze, but I need a race. I don't

know what to tell you, but that's what I need. And he goes, No, there's, you know, there's no

way to have it. It's just not going to happen. He was all right. Well, thanks. And the next

day he came in and he put us two weeks in. Well, you got to give me time. I can't he

was like, No, it's, it's, it's already done. Yeah, within three months, four of us quit.

Wow. It was, we gutted the place. They went from number one regionally to last.

Did the owner care? No, he didn't care. They were fine. His company jet was fine, right?

His multiple properties were fine. Yeah, he cares. They spent the next six years digging

themselves out of the last place for regional because they just wouldn't give us a dollar more

working at a Lexus dealership. And that's, that was a, it was a hard lesson to learn,

but it definitely taught me self worth instantly because I got hired down the road for $2 more

and they were ecstatic to bring us in. Yeah. And so, you know,

they're so, that fills such a stereotype that I've seen and heard, you know, for the better part

of 20 years and lived through some of it in my career. And in, you know, when people talk about

number one in the region and CSI scores and all this kind of stuff. CSI, oh my God, CSI, my man.

CSI really made a lick of difference. You would see them, you know, really,

really, really, really make it about their culture would be the CSI. And yet we know that it's like,

it's a dangling carrot. I've said to it, it's like, if you get a score at the end of the air,

we'll write you a check. Oh, shit, you had to be at 99, you know, you hit 94.

F you guys, you get nothing. Good luck next year. Like, and how cool is that, you know?

Every dealer eventually is going to watch that and happen and get close

and then go, you know what, F this, we're going to focus on making money. And how about then fixing

all these warranty weird complaints and making the customer pat, you know, shaking. You build this,

there's too many Karen's. Yeah. I've seen dealerships bend over backwards

to save a Karen. You know, we do it our independent shop. Yeah. Hey, you know what,

I've had this conversation word for word. It just looks like we're not a good fit for you.

You know, I just don't think that this is going to work out by all means that I got,

you know, four or five other places that were more than happy to take you as a customer. I just

don't think this is going to work. I appreciate your business. It's been great. Have a nice day.

Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. I saw way back in the day when I was at Chrysler,

the first Chrysler store I worked at, arguably still one of the best technicians I ever saw

in terms of being able to take any problem that the customer had, find the solution and fix it.

And I'll give you this example. This little lady, so he comes to work at this dealership and he

had left a straight time dealer where you just fixed cars. That was it. You approach CSI

like it was everything. This little old lady comes over this neon and she says,

I have a squeak in the seat. And then it was like a boomerang. Nobody could seem to find it because

like, of course, you get in and you move the seat around and then the seat doesn't squeak and she

was a little thing. Colin spent all morning on this and he realized that the squeak that she

was hearing was the seat cover on the seat foam. Little old lady, she wouldn't have weighed

100 pounds, right? It's just squeak and hardly any miles in the car. Colin takes the seat apart,

puts a plastic bag over the foam to stop the squeak, puts, reassembles the seat. Now,

you know, two trains of thought on here, people are going to put their head up and go,

I would hire Colin in a second because Colin fixed the car. And then you're going to have the

other train of thought that have been in my experience from the dealership and they're

like, you can't get paid for that repair. Correct. The warranty won't pay for that.

So what Colin did was cost him a lot of money that day. Now, why did he do that? He was a

straight time foreman. So his job was to try and solve these problems. What I took away from that was

be somewhere in the middle, don't be Colin, but don't be like all the other guys that had

boomerang that car, if you know what I mean. So CSI for me was like, she probably filled out

a great CSI survey for us. What did I amount to, squat? How much did it cost us that day?

Couple hundred bucks by the time we paid Colin and made a claim that you can't get paid.

So what is that worth? And here's the unfortunate thing. That little old lady,

Mrs. Smith, right? Her loyalty is worth something. But is it scalable? Is it tangible?

I don't think it really is. And this is the CSI game for me is a dangling carrot. I don't tell

anybody out there. Like, if I go in and I sit down in a job interview for a dealer and they

tell me start talking about CSIs are number one priority, I know I ain't making any money here

because it's like the priority becomes, we got to chase this imaginary check that they might

write us at the end of the year versus we need to look over every car super well

and present like all the work that we can find on it and sell on it.

That's how. So I worked at a dealer that was like, when I left that first dealer,

I went to the second one, they didn't give a spit about CSI. They were all about like sell,

sell, sell, sell, sell. We fixed the cars too. Like you had to diagnose fixed cars, but like

if you went out and said it needs a break job, you had somebody selling breaks.

Yeah. You didn't have anybody worried like, oh crap, it's only got 50,000 K on it. Like,

I wonder why it needs breaks or like breaks. Yep. Let me just, you know,

complete faith in what the technicians were selling, which is sometimes a little sketchy.

Sure. Also through the service writer, that's what's tough too. How many service writers have

you met where they do a hard sell rather than a soft sell? Meaning that, hey, if you don't

do these breaks, you're going to die. Now they're at 430 seconds. They're not going to die.

Okay. I'm just saying in the next 5,000 to 10,000 miles, you're probably going to need breaks.

Yeah. Right? And that makes a huge difference. I tell my service writers that's the soft sell,

soft sell everything. That way, the learn, the customer learns that the one time,

you know, I heard you telling the stories about the caravan with the rotors into the,

you know, the metal to metal, you know, the one time you go, listen,

if you leave here, you're going to die and they believe you. It's not a, it's not an opinion,

it's a fact. And that's what we push really hard. Service writers make or break a place

because they're your contact to the customer. 100%. It's what I think of like,

you know, places that I've made a lot of money and places that I've made zip. It all

comes back to who was at that front counter. That's what all boils down to. And again,

like I've, I've talked, there was always a mix there. Like we had some guys that were,

you know, really aggressive and we had some guys that were like a little more restrained,

I guess you would say. They both were necessary. They both served a role, but it was like,

depending on where you were, you were hoping that a certain ticket was, you know,

to this guy, another guy, right? Like, it's the best. Right. Exactly.

I want him on my Saturday. I don't want him because I, you know, and, you know,

so going back to the CSI thing, we have to remember once you're at a warranty, it's not,

it's not important at all. It's not important. And it's, and it's, and it sucks. And, you know,

the people that are not in the industry that listened to this, maybe this episode,

I know we act like at the dealer, like it's really important that you fill out that survey

and whatnot, but they really don't. Like it's not that be all or end all. What they're really

thinking is that like the car leaves, you're satisfied and you keep bringing the car back.

If you don't fill out the survey, it's not the end of the world. You know? Right. Well,

then, you know, it's the old adage. If you don't want anything nice to say,

don't say anything at all. Just, you'll be fine. Is your car good? Your car's good? Okay.

You know, I'm sorry that the greeter didn't greet you with a smile on their face and

the pedicurist didn't paint your nails the right color. I'm sorry, but is your car fixed? Yes. Okay,

great. You know, that's tough. You start getting into that, start splitting hairs. And when you make

CSI, it didn't really affect, Lexus had that, Mercedes had that. When you make it a larger

part of someone's paycheck, that's where it can get ugly real quick. Yeah. Just because you had a

Karen that is complaining about wind noise. Meanwhile, they have like marbles in their cargo area.

You know, you're like, dude, I can't pick out what sound you're particular about.

Can you put the tin cans away that are in your cargo area? Please? I know we're dealing with a

squeak but on desk, like, you know, and you can't say that. They don't let you say that, you know.

Lexus have gone for test drives for noises and there's been a case of beer bottles in the back.

Right. 100%. It's happened to you. Or cans or bottles, right? Like,

up here in Canada, we were all about the bottle for a long, long time. You never

ever drank beer out of a can. It was just not something to know. It's common. But like,

all the time, it would be either like 50 wine bottles in the back or not judging. Like ladies,

if you want to cart them around for whatever reason, like, I'm not judging. I'm not judging.

It's really hard to hear like Dory saying, I got a wind noise at 70 miles an hour on the highway.

And I'm driving up to the highway and all I'm here is clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.

How did you hear that? Right. Right. And it's literally happened. Like most people that are

in this industry would go, oh, they're being facetious. They're just great. No, legitimately.

I'm not, you can't make this stuff up. That's right. Yeah.

Like between how do you listen to the radio and hear the clinking and still hear the

wind noise? Like I don't, you know, it strikes me. Right. Well, you know, on the other,

on the other side of the coin, too, I've had customers that God love them. They come in

and go, listen, I'm really sorry. It's not making it today. And I go, listen, I understand.

Our coffee isn't that good. You don't want to be here. I don't want to be here. Let's go

for a ride and see what we can find. It's not you. I understand. And once you put those

people to comfort and rest, you know, they understand at least someone's listening to them

because I've never turned to a customer and go, make it do it. They can do it right now.

I know cars suck. Right. My business partner says all the time, I hate cars. Right. I still,

I collect, I still like cars. I still have that little bit of, you know, love for them.

I've seen customers talk to Paul and Paul go, you know, I hate cars, right? Like,

I don't want to hear about your collection. I do this for a living. I'll fix it. I'll good.

But I don't, I don't care. I hate cars, you know, but we were, we were probably the top two techs

there because we would take the time with the customer. We know you're not crazy. We know

you're not making this stuff up. And it doesn't happen all the time. And that's what's

frustrating. And to, to kind of stick to this kind of thing, I don't know if you watched, um,

Royalty Auto Service on YouTube, Sherwood, they just stuck a video yesterday that was a Toyota Tacoma

squeak noise and it ended up being what he found it. And again, like this is the level that they

go to, if it necessitates this is like it ends up being, it's just, it's a shock. The strut

in the front of the Tacoma, the seal is all dirty where this piston rod is coming up down

through. So it needs struts in the front of this Tacoma. But like he's literally there with arc oil

and a stethoscope and getting two guys, the big guy Chris, right? Chris is a, is a whole vibe

himself pushing on this truck to make the noise. And there's Sherwood with the stethoscope, there's

the noise. Okay. It needs struts. They had a good, easily had a good hour into finding that.

So the customer, the diet time, the customer, and then Sherwood's like, yeah, well, with the,

the mileage on the thing and the age of it, yeah, that should have struts anyway, just based on the

why in this industry, you know,

do we, when we don't get the results we want, it's most of the time I keep saying this because

we didn't want to pay for the results we wanted to get. And that paying the time to diagnose

the car. And I love that guy because like it, and again, some of it may be for TV,

but he's in the shop, guys are around him watching how he approaches this problem.

I think where, and I don't know, I want to think that probably why this sounds

of like you were talking about your experience for everybody so tight,

that learning curve becomes like so good because you, everybody's involved,

everybody's watching, everybody's, you know, it's, it's Dory's turn to, to teach a lesson on,

you know, how I found this noise. And, you know, like you're saying, your, Paul's got one,

and so on and so forth. That's when there's really no ceiling to what a business can do.

You know, I want to think that it's like my friend Benji at Frogpond,

that that's very much how they approach it. Like everybody when they work as a team,

and when everybody is helping one another, everybody's seeing his method and that person's

method in this, like that's how we all get better, you know, right? That's the part of this industry

that I love. That's the part that I get really off on is, is seeing how somebody does something

and then learning from it. I'm all about learning, right? Like it's just the key thing

for me. Like I don't, I'm not going to break production records anymore. I'm not, I'm

old and slow and hurt. But if I still learn tricks like that, I would, I would do this till,

like I don't wake up that one morning, right? Cause I'm, I'm, it's like a drug for me.

Sure. Sure. You know, and, and, and I don't know if that happens at independence,

cause I, I've never really worked at one. I've always been a dealerships.

But, you know, that was the kind of stuff that you would see happen, you know, at Lexus or Mercedes

guys would, before it comes in the door, one of the old guys would be on you. Oh yeah,

check this, this and this. That's what I found last week. And that, you know, that is, that

cuts out so much rigmarole and guessing and testing and diagnosing, you know, but you

know, I, I also know you're a big, uh, uh, proponent of paying for diag time, you know,

cause that's so important. Diag time is not only just for the technician doing it,

it's for anyone else in the shop that wants to pay attention to how you're going about solving

a problem. And my line to any customer that questions diagnosis time, I would go either

two responses. I would go with either, you know, you're paying for my expertise,

you know, I, I can guess that you don't know how to do struts on your car. I do. I can do them in

an hour and a half rather than you can look up the YouTube video. That, that's the other thing,

power of YouTube. Anytime I have a customer that wants to know why and how it's, I'm like, here,

look, here you go. I'll send you the link. This is what I'm going to be doing.

Go nuts. Yeah. Check it out. And 99 times. Oh, I see. I understand. Thank you so much. Go ahead

and do that. You know, that's a big part of it. And then the other side is, um, the, the second

line of defense I go to, I go, well, we're a good shop for a reason. You have to pay me for what

I know because no one else is going to fix it. That's right. I'm sorry that you have to pay

me to do it, but at least I also have zero problem. If you pay for diagnosis and you want to take it

down the street by all means, I don't have that problem because if you're, you're not going to be

happy anyway. I could do that job to the best of my ability for the lowest amount of cost.

It doesn't matter. You already have it in your mind that you don't appreciate value and

experience. Thank you so much. Pay your bill. Have a wonderful day. I don't try to keep people like

that and bringing your own parts. How many times have you run into people? Well, can I bring? No,

I can't. I can't warranty it because chances are it's wrong anyway. You didn't order the right part

or it's the lowest quality part on the planet and I'll see you in three weeks

and then you're going to be unhappy. Yeah. And my job, my business model,

isn't bring your own parts. I'm sorry. It's just what it is because they still go online and say that,

Dory's shop didn't fix my car. They always, that Google review, that Testament Facebook group,

they'd leave out the part where they say, I showed up with the part I bought on T-Mu.

They always leave that part out. It's just, because in their mind, and I get it, I get it,

they're mine. They're all the same. The part is exactly the same. It's like buying,

what's the example? It's like buying a loaf of bread at Kroger's or buying a loaf of bread at

Walmart. It's still bread. It's still bread, right? It's like one friend didn't need to hold oil or

give you a good ride or stay together. It just needed to be toasted. That's it.

So the ignition coil for $10 or the ignition coil for $100 is the same. They're just

really ripping me off on the $100 one. Never mind that there's completely different

things inside. It's a $10 coil that's not us done it probably.

The $100 coil is built like the one that was under the hood when it was born.

And it was quality checked. And it went through all of those things.

So when people, that's why, and again, I worked for a shop owner that when we sat down,

we did the initial interview, he knew about me from the groups and I knew about,

I'd seen his name and I'm thinking like, they're not, they don't do these kind of shenanigans.

And then I would see a customer bring his own parts and I'm like, wow, okay, we're doing that now?

No, this guy, he's a little more difficult. And I'm like, if he's a little more difficult,

then we probably shouldn't be doing this because we're performing bad behavior.

You're teaching him to be difficult. I have broke many customers of that because

I just calmly explained it. I didn't take it personally. I didn't get all mad and frustrated.

I simply showed him the details, showed him the reasons, showed him the hows and the

whys of why I can't do that because it doesn't work for us. Do you like us being a business?

Yes. Okay. If I do that, I'm going to go out of business. So it's just tough. It's tough to hold

the line. We say, hold the line at the shop. Yeah. Do you think I'm crazy when I think that a lot of

people, the bring your own parts thing, I think there's somebody in every core time that the subject

comes up, I got to take my car in. I swear to God, when these people are sitting around,

somebody always says, well, it wasn't that expensive because I took my parts in,

my mechanic put them on. Do you think that's happening really a lot? These kind of conversations

are happening? I think it goes back to the old adage of if you keep a customer happy,

they might tell one person. Right. And then if they're unhappy, they'll tell everybody.

They'll tell people standing in the line at the grocery store. They'll tell people,

go into the doctors. They'll tell people because they don't, Mercedes taught pretty much everybody

that there's three kinds of people. There's people that appreciate value. There's people that look

for price. And then there's people that look for time. Right. Luxury cars, nobody cares about

how long it takes. These people have three or four other cars and they have a fleet of

loners. Nobody gives a shit. Right. But in the independent game, these are blue-collar people.

They got one car. Like I feel their pain. I'm sorry. I can't leave my car that long.

Well, your car is going to explode if you don't leave it. I'm sorry, but I can't.

You got to leave it. There's got to be a way around this. And I don't have loners.

I'm not that big yet. But it's the old adage of they're going to cry to everybody

or they're going to tell one person, man, they did a great job. And that's a tough

industry to be in because I think, I don't know, can you think of another industry that would follow

that? Like someone that did their nails wrong, they might complain a little, but they're still nice.

Come to the doctor's office. Bring your own parts to the doctor's office. I dare you.

The same thing when people, they talk about the deadline thing. And it's like,

if you've ever had a custom home built, right? And somebody just shared this recently on there,

like you never see it get done by the promise time. Right. I never thought of that. Yeah.

So it's like, and sometimes it's maybe a month. But like, we know that some construction projects,

we're talking a year behind schedule. Oh yeah. Because of variables that are,

they're going to say it or their control or whatever. So, and I'm not advocating saying

that we all need to lower the bar to be like the other skilled trades. That's not what I'm trying to

say. But it's not the end of the world. Like those people that are waiting for that custom home to

be built, do they sometimes stay in the home longer? Yes. Do they sometimes wind up in a

hotel waiting for the house? Yes. Do they sometimes wait in at the in-laws? Yes.

There are solutions. They didn't die in the winter because the house wasn't built on time.

That's my point. And we live in a world where, you know, and again, I forget sometimes there are

rural people in rural places, but like in my little corner of the world, we have a public transit

system. So it sucks. I get it. But if your car tomorrow is at the shop, it's a door shop because

it's waiting on an alternator and you can't beg, borrow, reschedule, whatever you had to do the next

day. Like we can take this magic thing in our pocket called our phone and we can look at the

local transit schedule and we can figure out that I got to be at the closest bus stop by

eight o'clock in the morning and I have to catch two buses and that'll get me to where I got

to go tomorrow. But my question is always, how many friends do you have on Facebook?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Make a call. Send a text. Make a message. My own brother has been without

his own vehicle now for six months. Oh my God. He had an old Ford Ranger and we scrapped it because

it was not where the tires breaks on, right? We talked about it. Now, his roommate that he

lives with, they have like, she has this little, I don't know, probably a 14 or 13 accent

Hyundai. Now, Canadian accent is not at 14, you know, at 12 years old, there ain't much life left

in that one yet either. I mean, it's alright. It's 12 years old. It's one of the good ones.

Right? So, and at first when he got rid of his truck, I was like, I was panicked. I'm like,

what is he going to do? But they're making it work. They adapt. Right. You figure it

out. I'm like, shit, when that Hyundai goes down, they need to be start planning. And

I'm already like, they need to start planning now because when that thing all of a sudden doesn't

start or the transmission like I've had the talk with them, don't call me and say, I need a training

for a 2012 accident because I'm going to say, no, you need $500 from the local wrecker and then

you need to buy some bus passes. And here's the reality, right? Like it's up to them to

figure out how they're going to make it work. And the reality is the grocery store that

they would need to buy everything they would need is two blocks from their house. They could walk.

Now he's waiting on a hip transplant. Oh my goodness. You know, she might be a walker

going up, but he could get food. He's not going to start. So we're in a very fortunate time

where, yes, there's rural places and people rely on those cars. But those rural places,

I find that most of the time they don't ever really stop driving it until it stops them.

And get another one. They're not the type that is like, I'm into the shop, you know,

for this squeak and rattle kind of thing. If it's working and doing work, they're using it.

So I can't always immediately go, well, rural people don't have public transit. Listen,

rural people don't squawk about crazy things that bring in for a car. You know, the likes

they are already independent and self-sufficient. And you know, chances are they've already put

two alternators on it already. You know, that's something to be said for that too. We're missing

a lot of that in our society. As much as there's information on YouTube, I love meeting fellow

independent problem solvers that aren't even in the industry. You know, these guys are

IT guys or they're electricians or, you know, they're steam fitters, you know, or they're union

guys, but they know how to put an alternator on. They know how to check the voltage and go,

well, is it 12 volts or is it 14.2 volts? Okay, the alternator's bad. You know,

we're missing a lot of that in our society today. Well, we're not developing it.

That's the problem, right, is where everybody is just like,

I mean, I would have never thought that I'd ever make five cents from content creation

20 years ago. And here I am making some money every month from content creation. Now,

it's like a viable employment opportunity career for these young people. And we look at that and go,

listen, here's the reality, right? But we don't even really know what the reality is,

because it could even get even bigger than the way it is.

It changes so fast. Yeah.

So like if you just said 10 years ago, like there's going to be kids that are going to

be millionaires from playing Minecraft on YouTube, I'd have told you you were nuts.

1.7 million views. Watch me play video games. I can't even comprehend it.

And now they have energy drinks that they sell and shit like that.

So I got to ask the question then, if your experience as a dealer was so

positive, like in, you know, a team effort kind of thing, why'd you ever finally leave that?

Um, so I went to go work for another flat rate shop that offered me more money in flat rate

dealership. And this is honestly, this is one of those stories that, that always makes the

hair on my arm stand up because I really feel like I was guided. I don't, I don't mean to feel

like overzealous or anything like that. But I went to go work for another shop. Again,

it was a move to be closer to my kids. I was even closer. I was like five minutes down the road,

so it was easier to take them to school, be a part of their life. Basically in my

five miles from where I lived, it was a commute. I got tired of driving 45 minutes

every morning to work and 45 minutes at home. And, and, and honestly, the general

manager at, at Mercedes was fantastic. He heard that I was contemplating about leaving.

He called me up to his office. He said, listen, you know, what can we do? And I said, well,

the bottom line is I can't move closer to you and you can't move the dealership closer to me.

And I'm sick of driving an hour and a half out of my day. I just can't do it.

I think I could make this other dealership work. You know, they, they have

frequent turnarounds. Nobody's worked there longer than three years, that kind of burnout.

But it was in my backyard. It was for the same. It might have been for a couple bucks more, honestly.

And it was just that kind of move. And the general manager was like, listen, if

anything doesn't work out, just show up with your toolbox. He's like, I will save a place

for you. You know, and they were that kind of organization. And I appreciated that.

So I went to go work for this other place. I worked there about three years. And

I was having a bad day. And it was the kind of place that

turned you into something you're not. I'm a very happy, go lucky, kind of, what do you need

help with? You know, I'll go the extra mile and work in there three years. It was the

kind of place that just drained you. They took everything and didn't give anything back.

And I was having a particularly bad day. I was throwing tools, which I never do.

That's not my style. That is absolutely not my style. I was throwing tools and I had to go,

listen, I'm stepping out for a minute. I'm going to go take a walk out the back door.

I'm going to go sit on the grass, watch cars go by and settle myself down.

And I was walking out the door and something popped up on my shoulder and said, hey, text.

It was my cousin Ronnie that owned a little abandoned 2-bay SO gas station, literally no glass,

no doors, parking lot, full of garbage. It was abandoned, no electric, nothing.

And something just popped in my head because I tried to buy it off and probably about

five years earlier and he wasn't ready to let go. He inherited it from his dad. It was special to him,

that sort of thing. And out of the blue, hey, text Ronnie. Just text him, say hi. And I texted him.

I'm walking. I remember walking up to the grass hill, texted him, you know, hey Ronnie, how's

it going? Two minutes later, he kicks back with a picture of a for sale sign in his hand.

And I go, what's that for? And he goes, you'd never guess. I was like, is that for the shop?

He goes, yeah. I said, listen, just put it back in your truck. We'll figure it out.

And at that point, I knew that it was, it was just time. I was frustrated.

I knew I worked at a place that showed you how to do it wrong. It's as simple as that.

I was frustrated. I knew I could do it better. I knew that I learned enough lessons.

I knew that no matter what I was doing here, I could do it better somewhere else. And that was

really the thing that drove me, that I could have control, start to finish from when the car comes

in the door to how we treat the customers to how we deliver it. I was all in at that point.

And I started making phone calls. I called up to my childhood friends and I said,

hey, I got a crazy idea. Why don't you meet me at this address? We need to talk.

And I'd love to hear your input. And we walked the property and we decided right then and there

of it that we were going to try to do anything we can to do it because we were already at that

point. And ironically, the dealership that Paul worked for, and the dealership that I worked

for, the common thread in our existence is we're 180 degrees opposite. I will give you this one piece

of advice. If you ever look for a business partner, look for someone 180 degrees opposite of you.

Because it's not when you're similar to someone else. It's not the big things that drive you

crazy. It's the little things. It's the little tiny things that get under your skin. So when

you get two people that are 180 degrees opposite, you're getting someone who can see problems in a

different view and a different light to go. And if you're mature enough to go, oh, I never thought

of that. Let me contemplate that. I didn't see that problem or I didn't see that solution.

And we walked the property and we decided at that point that we were all in. We were done.

We were done at dealerships. His treated them like gold when they found out he was going to leave.

I got fired. I've never been fired in my life ever. Not once. I was up front. Hey, I bought a shop.

This is what's happening. This is what's going on. I'm just giving you the guy's heads up.

I'm not going in two weeks. It's literally abandoned. Yeah. Bye.

Which is very telling of obviously why the culture was so bad in the first place, right?

Absolutely. 100%. And that's what told me I made a good move.

Yeah. So what was the first week like at the brand new building?

So my ex-girlfriend, which is my current wife, she hates it, but I call her my ex-girlfriend.

Listen, you're my wife. You're my ex-girlfriend, right? She remembers vividly of me pulling up

in my 90, my lifted 98 Dodge Dakota pickup truck with a trailer and a toolbox on the back,

pulling up in front of the house. And I pop out with the biggest dumbest smile going,

guess what I did today, honey? Right? And I immediately, I talked to her for five minutes.

We grabbed something to eat. And I flipped the U-turn, took it to the new shop.

And I had just primed all the walls in the shop. We got it cleaned out. We pressure washed it.

We just got electric. And I think the two-post lift was scheduled, I think,

three weeks before they dropped it off. So I didn't have any way to lift anything.

But I basically had three weeks there to put together what invoicing program we were going to use.

I started the process to own the location for Google. You got to remember this is a gas station

from 1965. It didn't exist on maps. It opened. It was built in 1961. It went out of business

in 1969 and was abandoned since then. So it didn't exist on maps. It didn't have a street address.

It didn't have a telephone number. So I went through all of those processes to put us on a

map quest at Google and all those places. And honestly, it gave me three weeks to get my head

together. And man, when we dropped that first lift, we put it up ourselves. And

it was like a switch. It was unreal. It was an amazing experience that I would never

want to trade in my life because it was literally the day we put it up, we started taking appointments.

And it was just a step-by-step process. Our first month was like $400, I think,

something like that. But the next month was $1,000. And the next month was $1,500.

And it's what's so cool about this industry is, of all the people that I've heard about their first

week or their first day or their first month or their first year in their own business,

not once has somebody ever said to me, nobody ever came in the first day.

There's always been such a neat a dory that it's like, it doesn't matter. I don't know

whether the pre-marketing works or there's that many broken cars just driving by all the time.

I think that's what it is. I think it's too. They see a new sign, they see a new light on,

they see a new place, and they go, I'm going to give that a shot. And I don't know whether it's

like they're trying to get one up on us where it's like, oh, I'm going to go in there and

they're going to be brand new and they're going to need me as a customer. Or is it just like

they're that optimistic? But I mean, this is the beauty of it because other businesses

you could start like a restaurant, there's lots of restaurants that open on the first day.

And if they don't do like a ton of pre-marketing, nobody walks in.

No, you don't walk in. Right.

I've never talked to a shop owner. It's like my first day, we had no customers.

I think that's just very telling about the power of what our industry still is and how

viable and necessary we are. We got to always remember that it goes back to valuing ourselves.

We are almost, well, we've pretty much proven it. We're almost recession proof.

Like I can tell you, we're COVID proof.

We're absolutely COVID proof. My business did not change at all.

Yeah.

Not once. Through any of the lockdowns or COVID or any of that BS, we did the same amount of work

from the beginning to the end. Now, we might have had like a, we might have put together some

money to maybe deal with if someone walked in our door and told us that we were going to get

shut down, that maybe we were going to have to figure out to bail out the owner because we were

kind of like waiting to knock somebody out. If someone told us we were going to close,

like we're not closing. I don't know what to tell you, but we're not closing.

But that was, it's been steady. It's been steady in growth the entire time from day one.

The lessons that we learned, the first I can tell you the exact job that I stood my ground

on a price and said, no, I'm sorry. I can't do it for that. Have a nice day. Hey, call us if anything

changes. And the next day, hey, I'm going to schedule that job. I appreciate it. I can't find it

cheap. What was that, Dory? What's that? The job was that. That was a, that was timing chains

and a Nissan Murano. And it's a big job. You have to drop the engine out of the bottom

of the car. And we stood, I said, listen, it's 14 hours. There's nothing I can do about it.

I can either put after market timing chains in it or I can put OEM ones. Guess which one I want you

to do. It's a waste of time otherwise, you know, but we stood our ground. And to this day, we

have that customer. 11 years, 11 years later, that customer, you don't have the Murano. It

rusted out a long time ago, but you know, but he appreciates what we do and how we do it.

Yeah. It isn't that cool, right? Because, I mean, it's the same. And

how many times have we dropped the ball as an industry in that where we didn't stand our ground

and we completely shift the dynamic of where it should be where, and I don't want to say, like,

we're in charge and they're not, but that's pretty much what it is, right? Because otherwise,

it's like, we're saying, here's the steering wheel, like, I'm going to let you drive,

but I'm going to correct you a little bit just so we get to where we're both happy

going. Whereas, like with you or us, when the customer says, and it's like, no, listen, I've

got it in park. My foot's on the brake. This is as far as I go. If we go together, I still drive.

You're along the ride, right? Like, you know, I'm providing you something. I know the analogy

is a little off, but listen to what I'm trying to say here is that we're not,

they don't dictate the process. That's what I keep saying. Exactly. They don't dictate it.

I do. It's my bit. I get to set the rules. When you stand up to the customer and say,

I honestly want to believe that most customers will respect you for that. Now, you have to be

then professional and you have to get the results that you fucking promise them. We can't have

that conversation the other day with Brian and it's the episode will drop there.

The amount of dyag that's being done on cars that we're all about charging for dyag and it's

not right. Like it's the dyag is wrong. Like Brian talks about she comes in. I need a cam sensor.

Okay. That's pretty straightforward. It's a Nissan needs a cam sensor. Yeah, I already have one done.

Whoa. Okay. Shoot. Now you go through the what kind of part was put in and all this. Right? Right.

Dory, they put it in the wrong fucking bank. What a surprise. It's a leader in a frontier

and they put it in the wrong bank. Like they got she got charged for repair, charged dyag for the

repair and still had to go to Brian's shop because when it didn't take, they told her it has to be

programmed. We don't program here. So that's the escape goat. Oh, it needs program. Right.

I don't know what's going on. I look over what I did or maybe I messed up. Yeah, it needs

program. It should have worked. You can remember it as I can. It always made me laugh. Oh, you got to

go to the dealer for that then. You know, you're for that got to go to the dealer for that. You

must have to go to the dealer because my scanner won't do it or right. Right. Yes, there's some

truth to that. But like, man, I fix a lot of cars with a code reader and a very basic set of

data like I still do. And it's why? Because like, cannot I'm not going to fix the one hole one DTC

that in a Nissan with a code reader because it needs. Oh, sorry about that.

But you know what I mean, but it's like I can, I can, I can't flash it with that. I can't put

software in. Right. I can do a dyag with that those pins where I need the data stream.

Yeah, I can, I can see that that wave is a mess. I can see that Oh, when it hits this temperature,

it quits reading. You know, those are all valuable tools. Most people can't.

Most people can't. I don't want to say most people. Some texts, there's a difference between

I always like to say some guys can tell you if an alternator is functioning.

Some guys can go in and tell you how an alternator functions. Yeah. Right. There's

a difference between knowing if diodes are bad or the windings are bad or if the brushes are bad.

You know, is that necessary in that scenario? Not always. I just need to know whether it's

functioning or not. But it's not. But it's not important enough. But it's damn good information

to know because sometimes you'll run into like a Nissan Murano that the gauge cluster light

isn't telling the alternator to charge. I've seen guys put two and three alternators in cars and I'm

going, did you check the gauge cluster? Because that's all part of that circuit. If you pull the

schematic up and go through your lines, that gauge cluster is actually what controls the alternator.

Is it doing its job? No. Well, bypass this and this, this wire. Oh, look, it's charging. Surprise.

It's not being told to turn on. And you just wouldn't think of that. You just, you know,

if we're grading like an A grade, a B grade, a C grade, maybe even a B grade tech wouldn't know

to go that deep into that scenario. You know, so it's important to have those basics, to have those

building blocks to understand, okay, what all is involved in this system because it's not 1970

anymore. There are way too modules. When I started working at Lexus, there were six modules in their

highline luxury vehicle. By the time I left, there was 32. Yeah. It was insane. Yeah. I scanned a 2022

Volvo X40 or whatever, whatever. Just for, I'm doing a great job and I got to back up the

car. Oh yeah. Good times. Counting at 40 some modules that the Autel showed me.

41. You're an Autel guy too. Dude, I love my Autel. I have an Autel. That's not the best piece of

equipment you've ever used. So I own my own Snap-on Zeus, not the Zeus minus, as everybody calls it.

All right. That's good. That's my own Zeus. And then the shop has a little Autel and like,

I love Snap-on Tools. I've had it on Scanners forever. But man, like I tried to do the same

process with the Zeus and it's like, no, you have to buy a secondary cable and all this

kind of stuff. The Autel and the Autel says, yep, you want to back up the caliber, here you go.

Now I like that they're putting more of the breaking stuff behind the secure gateways.

I think that's a joke. Like that should be, that's BS is what it is. That's all it is,

is locking them. Nobody wants to steal the breaking information from the fucking car.

Like say that you have to be on to, you know, like be logged in and accredited in order

to back up the caliber off. Like, can I get around it? Yes. Do I want to every time? No,

I don't want to ground to every real caliber. Are you guys fighting for the right to repair

in Canada? Do you have any kind of laws that are coming into play for that?

It's not even as bad here as it is for you guys in the States with nasty stuff.

We're going to shut down on a lot of things. I'm paying for that access,

that extra layer of access. Like I can't even clear, like if I go into a newer 2021 Jeep Wrangler,

right? I can't even go in and clear codes now without that pre-authorization and access.

Nissan's doing it, Chrysler's doing it, which means Mercedes-Benz is also going to follow suit.

There's a fight here for the right to repair. There's a lot of legislature that's coming up.

I don't know if it's going to go anywhere, but I see it. It's a problem. It's definitely a problem.

And it frustrates me because it's like, I can get their point of saying,

you know, like on a Dodge truck, let's put the wireless control module. Like,

or the, you know, let's put that behind some kind of security, because that's what

makes the car start and, you know, somebody could steal it. But the brake thing or the air

conditioning, you know, climate control doesn't need to be there. Braking doesn't need to be there.

Like we need to still make this stuff so that it's like, if somebody should go to

the local chain store and need a brake job done and it's the only place it's open and all

that kind of stuff, we should be able to provide them with the, and this is a slippery slope

because, you know, I want competent qualified people working on stuff, but they shouldn't be,

have to tell the customer, sorry, you know, it's only going to be a dealership with service

credentials that is going to be able to get your brake job done because we haven't paid the money

to service your, your calipers. I think that's bullshit. Right. They're not there to get a

key programmed. They're not there to get a security, you know, security handshake done with a new ECM.

They just want a fucking brake job done. And to lock it behind that module then to me is just,

it's just plain dirty is what it is. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get it, you're driving people

to try to go to the dealership. That's really all that mechanism is for. It's to crush the

independence. You know, it's to make one more problem to try to access another system that you

should have access to to begin with. We're dealing with this. I own it, but I don't own it. Yeah.

And that's what gets me fired up. Yeah. It's anything that BMW subscription services

for heated seats. Why are we not burning down dealerships?

But see, we can thank Tesla for that because he was the first one that I ever heard of

that was like, oh, if you want certain features on the car to be there, all you got to do is subscribe

and we turn it on. And now like everybody just like you said is adopting that where it's like

after when the warranty's up, you know, or like we'll shut those features off.

And we'll just turn them back on. It drives me absolutely asinine ridiculous that somebody

in a little room with a bunch of switches and some keyboards can turn on functions in my car

that I can't because I decide I want to pay money. I own the car. How it was conceived

and built is how it should stay right minimum. Well, that was that was the first case you brought

up Tesla. That was kind of the the first case of a Tesla was bought at an auction.

It was then repaired. Yeah. It was put back online on Tesla and Tesla eliminated features

that said, well, you didn't pay for those. Yeah. Well, I bought the car at auction. What

are you talking about? Those features are features that come with the car when I purchased it at

auction. I haven't followed up on that case. I probably need to. I wouldn't be surprised if

it's still a litigation to tell you the truth. That's insane. Like how do you not do it?

And the only like silver lining in that whole cloud is that what it's going to do

is drive the more computer literate people to go, oh, how do I crack that?

How do I communicate with the Tesla and limit its communication to Tesla servers and just tell it,

don't worry about it, turn everything on. Yeah. You know, and that's a shame because then there's

going to be legislation for that. Oh, you're stealing. Well, I'm not. I'm actually doing

everything my car is supposed to do. Like there's a whole argument there. I get that.

You know, it's really frustrating to see, honestly, because honestly, I think, you know,

I'm 47 years old. I think we're the last generation that understands, hey, when I buy

something, I have it. Yeah. I try to explain to my 15 year old son the difference between

local data being stored on his laptop and what is the cloud. Yeah. He didn't get it.

No, he did not understand what that is. The difference between, you know, I haven't turned

on vinyl, man. Right. So I have a bunch of vinyl. I'm like, dude, you have all this music to listen

to all of it. No one can tell you, oh, I'm sorry, you have to download that first or oh, I'm sorry,

that comes with ads. Yeah. You know, so it's tough. It's tough to hold that line of I own

it. I have it. I should be able to use it. That was my biggest beef with the idea of having an

iPod. I can serve my ex-girlfriend years ago, bought me an iPod. And before that, I was just rocking

an MP3 player. When somebody showed me the iPod, I was like, wait a minute. So I got to take all

the music I already have and put it on your server before I can use it on your machine.

Yeah. You already own this music. I can put it on my own laptop and put it on an MP3.

Why the fuck do I need an iPod? That's an iPod. And that was enough for me to say,

I've never owned an iPhone. I never will own a product. I'm just against that.

The idea that I have to give it to them before I can use it. No, it's mine. I bought those CDs off

of Columbia House. Columbia House, right? Got one for a penny. They're fucking. I'm not putting

them on your server to put them on your machine. And to ask for authorization to play them.

You know, it's just it's insanity to me. So you got a young person recently.

Oh, yeah. How's that going? Well, I'll tell you what, it's funny that you brought up kind of like

the end of he worked at. He's kind of had the same experience in a shorter interval. You know,

he's 21. Yeah. But he's worked at independent shops and he's worked at dealerships.

And what I'm doing a lot is deprogramming because he's had shitty management. And that's the bottom

line. You know, he's a good kid. He's got a good heart. He's very intelligent. He can definitely

read and comprehend better than me, which is which is a very valuable tool to have. But he

has been taught like, I think his line is like, Oh, I messed up, I'll pay for it. Well, it's not

paying for it. It's the lesson I want you to learn on why you messed it up. Paying for it

doesn't make everything okay. Right? It doesn't just go away. Like I want you to learn and make

the lesson of, Oh, if I slowed down, or if I looked up the proper diagnostic procedure for this,

or if, Hey, I paid attention on what I'm doing or how I'm doing it. It's that slow it down

and make everything more simple. I'm deprogramming a lot of stuff. Yeah. Because, you know,

but again, I'm a little older. I didn't believe in peanut allergies and all these other things.

But dude, I'll tell you, this kid might die. He runs into a pack of peanuts. I've seen him puff up so

fast. It's not even funny. So then we have to watch what he brings in what the customer cars.

I can't have him dig through glove boxes. You know, when you have a technician that

carries an EpiPen in his toolbox, I get it. I understand it. But he's worked for dealerships

that have treated him like garbage because of that. You know, I get it. I may have not subscribed

to it until I saw it. But it's legit. He's not making this crap up. Like I've watched him

turn pink and get welts up his arm because he touched a wrapper. Right? So I get it. It's just

a lot of deprogramming. I wouldn't keep him if he didn't have a good head on his shoulders. And

that's really what it's about. It frustrates me when I'm still engaging in the groups and

whatnot. And I see people, you know, talk about the young people and especially like,

oh, if they come from a dealership, like, I don't even want them because they're

going to have so many bad habits. And if they come from an independent, I don't want them because

like they're not going to have the level of quality that I expect, you know, for my high end. And

I'm like, man, when you don't realize, like, it's traumatic to leave a job that you've had,

whether you were fired or whether you quit, it's traumatic. So you have that to deal with

when they get in there. And then like, I know the first month at any new job, I am not me because

I am like trying so hard not to... I'm trying to really hard to remember everybody's name.

I'm trying to like clock in. What's my number now? Like I can remember my time in 2004,

but what am I now? I'm 1289. Okay, that's 3510. Right. All day long. Right. Exactly.

To remember, right? And I'm just like trying not to screw up. Right. Not to screw up. I'm trying

to get the paperwork right. Last week, you know, last month I was using TechmetricTVIs.

Now I'm back to a pad and a paper again. Like, all this stuff. So when we get these young people

in here and they go, oh my God, they're just not getting it. They're stupid or no. But you

literally have to take them and expect that you're going to have to back them up just

like you said, deprogram them, refresh that hard drive or whatever. And like pat them on the

shoulder and go, you're going to get it. You're going to... Okay, like here's what you're doing

really well. Here's what I love about what you're already doing. Like you're taken to this

like that. Perfect. Here's what I need you to do though. I need you to not make the

fucking mess. Right. Be like that. Don't be like, did you... Does everybody make a mess like

where you were? That's not productive. That's not how you do that. Right. He told me stories

of being an independent where the guy would throw stuff at him. Oh, yeah. Right? And I'm just going,

listen, first off, that doesn't happen here. We'll figure it out. And at the end of the day,

we're going to have a debrief anyway. Yeah. You know, we're going to... Because they need

that little bit of extra assistance because they've had a shit experience for the last two years

at other places. And the difference is you can tell immediately whether they have the right stuff

or not. I really do believe in that because I worked at the Nissan dealership and I went from

having two bays to one kid showing up randomly and he's like, oh, yeah, I'm working in this bay.

And I immediately went to certain, I'm like, what are you doing? Well, yeah, he's going to

work here and I'm watching him nod off, taking tests online to get Nissan certified. I'm like,

you're not going to last here. And I'm going to make sure you're not going to last here

because I'm already a dick. So, you know, but you get a feel for people. And I trust

you. Are you a legitimate person here for the right reasons? I'm going to go out of my way

to fix your training, to adapt your work style to how you troubleshoot to the knowledge that you

need. And more importantly, I'm going to show you how to find the answers. I'm not a tell you

the answers guy. Definitely. I hate that. I'm going to show you how to find your answers

and then progress down the tree of diagnosis and troubleshooting and estimates and all that fun

stuff because I want to build you. I'm not interested in just grinding you down to nothing.

There's nothing to be gained from that. And that lesson, that answer that they go find on their own,

they will always hold it more valuable than all the answers we ever give them. I can still

remember one of the best kids I ever mentored Oliver's name. He's gone on to do incredible

things. But it's these lessons we have. We had a Saturn view that they changed the engine in.

And when it was done, it didn't start. And Oliver comes over to me and he, of course,

this is not a rather toxic shithole of a shop that we both.

And it had really bad culture and I had a real, I've talked about them. The shop foreman was

the only gentleman that like, if I saw him walking on the side of the road to this day,

it would be everything I could do to not jerk the wheel towards where he's walking.

It's still that much. 20 years later, it's that, that. But anyway, sure.

Oliver, his task was swapping this engine out. And when it doesn't start,

he hooks it up and there's like 20 codes in the thing. And he goes over and he's like,

he's got 20 codes in it. And the guy's shooting his mouth off the

performance. Oh, I fucking probably needs an engine computer, probably dropped the computer

out. And I'm thinking, how does that happen from changing the engine? That doesn't make any

sense at all. But okay, whatever. So Oliver, by now, he'd been there long enough to know that like

that guy troubleshooting wasn't his strength. Right.

In one, you know, hold out the shooting parts, right? He comes to me, he goes, I go,

so what's it doing? And he goes, well, it's got a bunch of codes and it doesn't start. And

I go, um, well, what's missing? Because I don't really know yet. I go, okay, just go over

and see if you got spark. So he goes over and he comes back and says, I got no spark.

I go, so, um, what do you have at your coils? And he comes back to me and he says, um, you know,

like Thomas, he's like, uh, I'm only got five volts of the coils. And I'm like, every coil?

He's like, yeah. I'm like, so, and me, I don't know what's wrong with this car, but I go,

so Oliver, let's think for a minute. Have you ever seen a coil in your life yet that

operated on five volts? No. So I said, well, that's where I would start that is trying

to figure out why all your coils only have five volts. And I said,

don't get overwhelmed with the fact that it's got 15 codes in it. Just think about like,

pull your wire into our basics, right? Ended up being Dory that there's two connectors that will

swap on that engine. Oh my goodness. So it ended up like having an EGR swapped with a cam

sensor or something like that. Right. So he fixed it, you know, like in an hour later,

the car's running. He to this day, we talk about that and we joke about that. And we,

you know, remember when the asshole said it needed an,

thank fuck, we didn't listen to that guy, right? Right? Yeah. That's a good feeling.

That lesson, and I didn't teach him a lesson. I just like, think about this this way, Oliver.

And all of a sudden now, I know it, it, it became part of his process on how he approaches a problem.

Whereas the other guy could offer nothing, but background noise that thank God,

there was somebody else there, me to disregard that. Yeah. So this reminds us to shut off all

the other external shit. Don't let's just think about this from basics. And I am proud to be able

to say that like that guy now does troubleshooting remotely for one of the largest fleets in North

America on their death and reductant and after treatment systems on these buses. Wow. So that's

something that like, and this is not me bragging, but I mean, the little things that we think

mean nothing when we're in the shop can have such an effect on the people that are around us,

that shape their whole process. And the process, ladies and gentlemen, is what shapes your trajectory.

And your trajectory is what your life becomes. Yeah. You know, people hear me say all the time,

there is no ceiling for, for, for this person or that person. It's the truth. If you set them

up, they, they, they will, they will run out of time before they run out of potential. Right.

But you have to build that foundation with these people. So when we get these young

people in here and oh, they're no good or man, they're good. They are good. They are better

than we were. Yeah. It's just different, right? Like it is just different. And well, it's,

it's different. And I always think back on, you know, when I get frustrated with a 21 year old,

because what do I have in common with a 21 year old? You know what I mean? Like I have lots of

answers. I could give him an answer to literally every problem in his life right now. Yeah.

Is he going to listen? No. So at the end of the day, I go, okay, I'm frustrated.

What can I show him tangibly that is going to give him a building block? I could tell you,

you know, all the answers, but that's not the fun part. Humans only get better through trial

and tribulation. I really believe that the only way we learn honestly is trials and tribulations

of where you can go, man, this sucks. How am I going to get better? Oh my God, I fixed it. Oh my

God, I fixed it, right? There's no feeling. I don't care what drugs, sex, rock and roll,

they're all great. Fix a problem. Fix a problem that no one else can. It's right into the veins.

You're just like, dude, I got this, right? It's a dangerous path becomes like a drug because then

it's like, I 100% and convince some of the people that we know in our circles that are like doing

these nightmare cars that other shops couldn't get through. If you think that they're not addicted

to that, you're kidding yourself. They are certainly 100% getting off on the fact that

it's like, I did another one. My friend Brian, it frustrates him when he gets a car from somewhere

else and it seems simple to him, but I know I've known Brian a long time now and I know that he

would not be Brian if he wasn't at that level and constantly pushing himself, getting that kick.

That fix, yeah. Yeah, that fix, right? Like, I'm in my car, man. Like, you know, I'm ready for it.

Like, yeah, bragging rights alone. I mean, that's, you know, to be able to do something

like that and go, yeah, duh, you know, we've had, we've had stuff like that and here's the

double-edged sword of that. A lot of times those jobs don't hang. That's right. That's the

double-edged sword. So you get to be the hero, you get the happy ending, you get your fix.

How do you explain to a customer six hours of diagnosis? That's a tough, that's even for me,

that's a tough sell, you know? Yeah, but this is why we need to be charging the one-hour

dykes on the cars. Get up on the downside and you get, yeah, absolutely, yeah. That's going to, and,

you know, it sounds of late like I'm always trying to say nobody should be doing free dykes.

Listen, whatever you want to do in your market or whatever, it's you. Like,

there's enough to go around. We can't fix all the cars. But like for me,

that's what it pulls down to me is like, I know what the dealer,

like I had some that took me three hours and I got paid an hour. But I had ones that like,

I looked at the work order, walked out, put the key in it, hit the switch, heard it,

walked back inside, I had six minutes in it and I collected 36 minutes. That all evened out.

Right. And it's fair. Like a lot of people don't understand that, that, listen, I come across

problems that I've already had. Yeah. Right. And it takes me eight minutes to do it.

But in the long run, there's about maybe four people that would know that in the 50 mile radius

of our area, just because I've experienced it. Yeah. Should I not get paid the full amount?

No. I should get paid for what I know. Yeah. And I have the special tools in my toolbox

that makes the job easy. You know, a lot of people don't understand that. My, you know what,

our loved ones are probably the hardest on us. Right? I have that discussion with my wife

regularly. You know, well, flat rate, I don't understand flat rate. I don't understand. Well,

you didn't spend that time on it. How should, why should you get paid? Because I already lost

my ass. That's exactly it. Four other cars ago. It's time for me to make my money now

because now I know. Yeah. You know, it's difficult to explain, but at the same time,

did the car get fixed? Absolutely. Does it run like a top? Does it do everything it's supposed to

do? Absolutely. Was everybody happy? Absolutely. Then let's go with that. You know. Yeah.

And see, the thing is, like, when I explained to people the two sides of the flat-rate coin

and they go, well, I paid for two hours and you had it done in 45 minutes. That's not fair.

The other side is when I say to them, it took me three hours and only got paid one. They say,

you're crazy. So, like, this is the life we choose and this is the life we live in and we've made

our, we're at peace with it. Right? If you want to work for it, you're at peace with that.

It's not anymore. Not because I can't do it. I keep saying that again, but because it's too

much as control has been taken away now to where I have to, the kind of cars that they would give me,

like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to diagnose them for 36 minutes anymore. Even if I could,

I'm not going to. I'm going to slow down, gather even more evidence, you know, document even more

things. It's just a slower process now because I'm not trying to hit a number. I'm trying to

solve the problem and trying to fix the problem. That means collecting evidence, collecting information.

I'm trying to create lessons that I can share, case that I can pass on. That all eats into the

time. So, you know, it's not because I can't get the work done in a timely manner. I can't

diagnose the cars pretty fast. Some of them I still can. But it's, it's, I'm giving more

value now when I can do the tests above and beyond what I already know to prove it

out even more. That's value now. And that's just how I choose to go.

What's the future look like for you guys? What's your goals?

I'm trying very hard to grow our bays. We've talked about building.

The borough that we're in and the local government that we're in is going to be difficult.

I would love to go to more bays because I think we have a lot to offer. I think we have a fantastic

I think we have a fantastic storage of experience. Both me and my business partner,

we're getting older. You know, we have bad shoulders. We have bad hips. We have, you know,

physically we can't do it. But man, I think I can really teach the right people to really be a

kick-ass team. We've also talked about shifting more into used cars. You have more control over

used cars. It's not such a timeline. It's not, oh my God, they have to get this to work tomorrow.

And if you put out good quality there, again, you can crush local competition. You know, how many

times have you seen cars come from some other small independent car lot that has check engine

lights and air suspension lights and brake lights on and you're just going, what are you doing?

Why are you selling cars like this? And again, if you just

do what you say you're going to do, people are happy to pay a premium because no one else is doing it.

So, you know, we're looking at kind of a bunch of expansion models. All I know is in the future,

I'm going to work on cars less. That is like, I can't, you know, I talk about it's the mileage,

it's not the age, you know, run a slide hammer. I can't do a slide hammer. My elbow and my shoulder

are out of commission for two days. I'm not touching it, you know. I pounded spindles on,

I did a Volkswagen Geno last week and the struts where they go down into the spindle,

right? So, I'm pounding up on the bottom of the spindle to get it slide on. With a

three pound sledge like sore handle. I didn't fish this weekend because like this hurts.

That's a rod with that. Like, so, you know, in the old days, I could run an air hammer in the

morning and I could run one in the afternoon. I could knock them ball joints out and, you know,

just take the rivets right off. But the, you know, the Dodge Dakota ball joint recall,

we'd do them in 12 minutes like people, oh, you can't. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You crush it.

Did it. Now, I'm the same slide hammer. No, like I can't do tires anymore. If I do a bunch of

tires in the morning in the afternoon, I'm sitting down. Yeah. Well, I took a break from doing

tires so we didn't have tire machine at our shop for about six years. Nice. And then we had

a dealership that was updating all their equipment and I got like the Primo, like road force balancer,

like the dealer machine. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember how to do this. And I bang out my first

four and I spend the rest of the day limping. Yeah. I'm like, oh, wow, I haven't done this in

six years. There's a difference. And, you know, it's a very difficult lesson to learn

because up here, I'm still the 25 year old. Oh, I can boom, boom, boom, boom. We'll bang that out. Okay,

good. What's next? And I'm used to doing that. And when the body lags, it's not fun and it's

very humbling. And so we're making that shift to consulting, teaching, passing on our experience

because I tell you what, you know, what's really fun is showing up a 21 year old and

how to do a job. Yeah, it is. Right? Yeah, it is. And then it's like, but then I know that like,

I only have to show that 21 year old once and then like, yes, you know, he's got it. Tomorrow,

he'll blow the doors off it and be like, Oh, keep up, old man. You know, and part of me,

I smile inside, man. I'm like, All right, good, you get it. Good. Thank you. One,

I'm going to make sure I take care of you. That's a big part in this industry. And

I hear you talk about all the time I hear anybody in this industry talk about you have

to take care of your employee. You have to the days that they're evolving door. I remember working

a Nissan guys would show up in the morning with a craftsman, top load toolbox with like six tools

in it, and they would quit my lunch and go home. Yeah, those days are over. Yeah. Yeah. It

doesn't, it doesn't work. And I've seen them too. They roll in with a cart and he got some tools in

it. And you know, by Friday, they're rolling out or the second Friday, you know, the first

paycheck, right? Yeah, they got the first check in the boss is like, Yeah, I don't,

you know, we kind of, we kind of needed somebody more experienced. And we thought maybe,

you know, what they're saying is it's like, you're taking too long, or you don't have

enough experience. And both of them to me, I look at is like, we're failing them, you know, because

like they just might not have it where they can't look at that and go, okay, in order to get that

all later out of here, I have to move these, this and this and this and this and this. And I'm,

I'll tell everybody, I'm not one of those texts that can look at that and see it.

I remember the first Ford Escape all later I did, I took so long thinking that there's no

possible flippin way to take the fucking alternator out of a car.

Yeah. You know, now I do them in like 45 minutes. But like I was like three hours because I'm

convinced there's got to be a way there's got to be some mystical combination of tools and

holding your tongue right and it'll, it'll sweep through. Don't fucking, you know,

absolute. What was the big deal about taking the axel out? Like I should have just, you know,

done it. It's mental. It's mental. It's all up here, right? Because I'm not that way. I'm looking

over and that guy's like, why don't you take the axel out? And I'm like, why is that car still

not starting? Like even down, that's how I was, right? This is my strength. This is not my

strength. Yeah, strength. That's not your strength. And that's just we were and it

takes all kinds. Dora, I don't want to keep you any longer, man. This has been a long night

for you. Absolutely. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. I really appreciate coming on, man.

Dude, man, the kind words that you've been saying and all that kind of stuff, it really,

you know, it's really nice to hear. And that's the thing like, we're starting to really

feel like we're making some traction in terms of actually getting, you know, people to think

about what really this is going to take to change this. And, you know, like you said in the beginning,

you're having the conversations and asking the questions and giving the answers that nobody

wants to do. I love the tough questions. I love the issues. I just, I think that I'm

in such a comfortable place now about like, this is where we want to head as an industry.

Like it's just going to take more of these conversations. They're not that bad.

You know, they're not. And more than anything, I really wanted to give you an honest thank you

to bringing attention to suicide rates. That was something that was really heartfelt

on one of your other episodes that this is an issue. And it's something that is very close to me

for situations that I've dealt with. But thank you so much for bringing, because the more we talk

about it, and the more we bring it to light, that when you have good people being treated poorly,

causing issues like that, we got to talk about it. It shouldn't be that way. It's the bottom

line. It shouldn't be that way. So thank you very much for bringing that to light. That was

something that really touched my heart. So I appreciate it. Thank you for the time, man. I really

do. I, in closing on that, like, you know, I've never had a bay mate that's gone, you know,

that way. I had a good friend take his own life two years ago. And he didn't work in the industry.

And, you know, I had, I've got my brother who's struggled, you know, within the past

with some PTSD from his job and all that kind of stuff. And it's been in some dark places

a lot. And when I think about what he has had to go through to earn a living,

and then I think about, because he's a correctional officer, and I think about what we have to do,

like we're only dealing with cars. It shouldn't be that bad dealing with cars that we feel that

way. He's dealing with criminals, like the worst of the worst, people that would like are

trying to kill him or would kill him if they could get away with it. That is heavy on you.

You see the ugliness all day long. We are just working on cars. If we are in this blue collar

job, and it is so bad from working on cars that we see no other way out, then the industry

is broken. It's okay to say that it's broken because that means that if we acknowledge that

it's broken, we go about fixing it. And that's all there is to this. It's just that simple.

Yeah. So I kind of giggled a little bit with my background, what I have going on here, right?

My wife is a therapist. So I've commandeered her office just to do the video conference. I

thought this was good to do the podcast. So if anyone out there feels enlightened,

maybe you had a good therapy session. But she deals with drug and alcohol addiction.

She sees it every day. I have family members that went through it. And we're at a point where

I believe everyone can find somewhere along the line. You deal with it. Find the help.

Find the help. Get the therapy. Talk to somebody. I don't care if it's a therapist.

I don't care if it's a loved one. Talk to somebody. Get the help you need.

Anyone that's watching and listening, you can always reach out to me.

If you're in this industry and you're feeling that way, don't wait. Get a hold of me.

Right? And then we'll have a conversation. We'll have the talk. You will feel better,

for sure. Doris, thank you, brother, for being here. I want to see how your young

person is working out. I want to see the shop, which direction you take it.

As everybody, as always, I love you. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you again soon.

Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and like, comment on and share this episode,

I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically

download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their

perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this

journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the change in the industry

podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for.

Here's hoping everyone finds their missing 10 millimeter and we'll see you all again next time.

Dory Carlin Says Bad Management is KILLING Good Techs

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