Eric the Car Guy!! | His Story and Thoughts on Technician Burnout
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Company
Acura
Acura is the luxury brand of Honda, making more upscale and high-performance cars. They focus on comfort and advanced features in their vehicles.
Term
master technician
A master technician is a very skilled car mechanic who has special training and certification. They are experts in fixing and understanding cars.
Term
parts manager
A parts manager is the person in charge of managing car parts at a dealership or repair shop. They make sure the right parts are available when needed for repairs.
Car
Fiat Ulysses
The Fiat Ulysse is a roomy car that can fit a lot of people and their stuff, making it great for families. It's designed to be comfortable and useful for trips or daily driving.
Car
Acura Legend Coupe
The Acura Legend Coupe is a car made by Acura, a luxury division of Honda. It's known for being stylish and comfortable, popular in the late '80s and early '90s.
Term
manual transmission
A manual transmission is a type of car gearbox where you have to change gears yourself, usually using a stick and a clutch pedal. It gives you more control over how the car drives.
Term
salvage yard
A salvage yard is a place where broken or old cars are taken to be taken apart for parts. If a car is too damaged to drive, it might end up in a salvage yard.
Car
Acura Vigor
The Acura Vigor is another car made by Acura, known for being a comfortable and stylish sedan. It was produced in the early '90s and is appreciated for its performance.
Part
valve adjustment
Valve adjustment is when mechanics make sure the space between the engine's valves and the parts that push them is just right. This helps the engine run smoothly and quietly.
Part
rocker arms
Rocker arms are parts in an engine that help open and close the valves, which let air and fuel in and exhaust out. They make sure everything happens at the right time for the engine to work properly.
Term
dropping a valve
Dropping a valve happens when a part in the engine that opens and closes doesn't work right and falls out of place. This can cause big problems for the engine, sometimes even breaking it.
Term
used car department
The used car department is where a dealership sells cars that have been owned by someone else before. They are not brand new but can still be in good condition.
Car
Chevrolet Chevy II
The Chevy II is a small car made by Chevrolet, popular in the 1960s. The 1966 version had different engines, some of which were quite powerful.
Company
Garage Monkey
Garage Monkey is a company that puts together car events, like a trip to a big car show called SEMA where people show off their custom cars.
Concept
Road to SEMA
Road to SEMA is an event where car enthusiasts and influencers drive together to a big car show in Las Vegas called SEMA, where they display custom cars and parts.
Car
Dodge Hellcat
The Dodge Hellcat is a very powerful car made by Dodge, famous for its supercharged engine that makes it really fast and fun to drive.
Car
Fiat 500S
The Fiat 500 is a small car that's great for driving around the city. It's known for being cute and easy to park, which makes it a favorite among people who want a fun and practical vehicle.
Term
$1,500
This is a price estimate for fixing a car. Knowing how much repairs usually cost can help you understand what to expect when taking your car to a mechanic.
Part
timing belt
The timing belt is a part of the engine that helps keep everything moving in sync. If it breaks, it can cause serious damage to the engine, so it's important to replace it at regular intervals.
Concept
car maintenance
Car maintenance means taking care of your car so it runs well and stays safe. This can include things like changing the oil and keeping the inside clean.
Concept
EV
An EV, or electric vehicle, is a car that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. This means it doesn't produce exhaust emissions like regular cars do, which can be better for the environment.
Term
zero emissions vehicles
Zero emissions vehicles are cars that don't release any harmful gases into the air when they are being driven. This is usually because they run on electricity or hydrogen instead of gasoline.
Term
fuel injection
Fuel injection is a way to get fuel into a car's engine more accurately than older methods. It helps the engine run better and use less fuel.
Term
carburetors
Carburetors are old parts that mix air and fuel together for car engines. They were used a lot before newer systems like fuel injection took over.
Term
fuel injected
Fuel injection is a way to get fuel into a car's engine. It's more efficient than older methods and helps the engine run better.
Term
North Star headgaskets
North Star headgaskets are a problem in some Cadillac engines that can cause leaks and overheating. It's something car owners need to watch out for.
Term
steering rack
The steering rack helps you turn the car when you move the steering wheel. It's an important part of the steering system that connects the wheel movement to the wheels themselves.
Term
check engine light
The check engine light is a warning light on your car's dashboard. It means there might be something wrong with the engine or the system that controls emissions, and you should have it checked out.
Company
DRB3
DRB3 is a special tool that mechanics use to check what's wrong with Chrysler cars. It helps them find problems and fix them.
Car
Cavalier
The Chevrolet Cavalier is a small car that many people used to drive because it was cheap and reliable. It was made for a long time, from the early 80s to the mid-2000s.
Concept
hot rod
A hot rod is an old car that has been changed to make it faster and look different. People often modify these cars to make them special and unique.
Car
Studebaker pickup truck
A Studebaker pickup truck is an old type of truck made by the Studebaker company. These trucks are popular among people who like to restore and customize classic vehicles.
Brand
Tesla
Tesla is a company that makes electric cars. They are known for their high-tech features and long-range batteries, making them popular among drivers who want to go green.
LIVE
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I can be salty if I'm working hard and not being paid right. I don't think that that's a solution.
And as far as whether flat rate has anything to do with that or not, I don't think it does.
I think either way, if you're new, you're going to have trouble figuring it out. But I also
think you should be making the effort. I don't think you should be standing there on your phone
for half an hour for doing whatever. If you're looking up how to fix something, if you're watching
Eric the Car Guy videos, great. But if you're not doing your job and you're there to do the job,
and that's the business, that's what I think that you forget as a technician is that it's a business.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Jade Mechanic Podcast.
It's a little noisy here this morning. We're at Apex SEMA in Las Vegas 2025. It's my birthday,
so please feel free to send cake, cards, presents, money, whatever you have. Everybody give a little
bit. And I'm sitting here with somebody that I just happened to bump into who has been a big,
big influence, I think, a lot of our careers and a lot of our lives. And to say that he needs no
introduction is probably, you can almost say that, but I'll introduce him nonetheless. So
I'm going to say I'm sitting here with Mr. Eric Cook. And when you hear his voice,
you're going to know that I'm speaking with Eric the Car Guy. Greetings to yours or listeners.
There it is. Greetings listeners. So I bumped into you, I don't know, an hour and a bit ago,
and I was like, Eric, and I flagged him down because he was walking around kind of catching
footage for his B-rolls. And then I had a rather long conversation about who I am and he hadn't
heard the podcast before, which is cool. I will now. Yeah. But I think he's going to listen. And
you're a guy that like I have, I said to you, and he's got an amazing beard for the people
that are only listening to him watch. And it's, I can remember when it wasn't quite so gray, Eric.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So it wasn't even there. Yeah. So I can, it started out as a goatee and then
the rest filled in later. I can remember one of your first episodes was ever was you were doing
a wheel bearing in an old school Honda that's a trapped rotor. That's how far back we're going
like 14, 15 years. So I mean, you've been around a long, long time. I have. And I'm still here.
Now, how does that feel? It's, it's been a wild ride. You know, it hasn't been smooth sailing the
whole time, but I'm certainly, let's put it this way, this is the best job I've ever had if we want
to call it that, just because of the diversity, because of the people I get to meet, the people
I get to interact with. And the people that I know that happened to, I'm not sure he was,
I was getting instructions off camera. So I'm sorry about that. I'm not very good at dividing
my attention. Where was I? When you're talking about the people you've met through this,
yes, I think in my view, in my world, people are currency. And I consider that of more value than
money in many ways, because I've found that there are many times where I've, I've needed something
and money wasn't necessarily the answer. Maybe somebody I knew or something that they knew that
I could glean from them. I could say, Oh, hey, you know, do you know this or do you know so and so,
or can you help me get this? And that is valued to me as far as my world is concerned. I don't,
I don't know. I never really went after the shiny red ball kind of thing. I always felt
uncomfortable in a way in that world. Because I can say that with you, like, as long as I've
known you, so we kind of know your, kind of share a little bit of your story. You were a guy that
worked on Honda dealer. Accurate, actually. Accurate. Okay, sorry. Yes, it was almost the same thing.
I was an accurate master technician. Yeah. In fact, I achieved that status about two weeks before I
was fired. And the fire story is kind of always, because it kind of delves into what we talk a
lot in the podcast about the culture of some shops. And I kind of know the story because I
can remember it. But there was somebody in the shop that was kind of like the golden child,
you know, kind of allowed more leeway, different sets of rules necessarily. And you kind of clashed
with that. No, well, actually, the reason I was fired was because I aligned myself with the wrong
person. And the way it all went down specifically was this person was actually the parts manager.
Right. And being a technician in a dealership, let's just say side workers frowned upon.
Yes. However, I was good friends with this parts manager and say people would come in to buy parts
from them and they would say, Hey, are there any mechanics out there that do side work that can
help me install said parts? And given that he and I were friends, I sort of got preferential treatment
in that regard. Plus, I had a shop of my own, my original shop that you saw those videos from
was my side workshop. That was how I set it up. In fact, I own that building at that time.
And rented it had two apartments and a beauty salon in the front. So it was like,
and I also hear that it was the original post office for Westwood and Cincinnati that was there.
It was dedicated by Ulysses S. Grant in 1845. That's what I was told. That's what I was told.
Now, whether or not that was true or not, I'm not sure. But anyhow, where were we?
So you were talking about you were doing side work for this customer referrals?
Yes. Anyway, on this particular occasion, there was a woman who had a legend coupe,
is what it was, if I remember correctly. And I'd always had a soft spot for legend coupes,
because they just the lines and everything. And I think this one was a manual transmission as well.
So it was I have to admit that I was I was pretty excited about the car. But this was one of those
cars that you really don't want that actually probably should have been in a salvage yard kind
of a thing. She brought it in. And not only was the engine having issues, but the transmission
was having issues. She needed a new car. Yeah. Okay, she didn't need this thing fixed.
Anyhow, at the time, our work schedule, we were working and we worked on a team system,
and there were two other people on my team. One of them worked on an Acura Vigor and he did a
valve adjustment or some. No, actually, he did oil seals for the spark plug wells. So he had
to take the whole cam cage off and he put it back on somewhere in there. One of those rocker arms
wasn't aligned properly. And the sad thing is, is that engine ended up dropping a valve because
of that. Yeah. And and it was really sad because they were a good customer. In fact, they had bought
that car new and like the mid 90s or whatever. And this is like early 2000s. So they were a good
customer and we just destroyed their engine. We're in a bad place. I advocated, I said, you know what,
why don't we just take them over to the new car department and offer them a killer deal on a new
car and we'll just write this thing off. But somewhere along the line, somebody decided that
they wanted to repair this vehicle, which needed an engine. The parts department ordered the engine
from a salvage yard. It showed up and was sitting on the floor. The car with the blown engine had
been sitting outside for some time. During this period is when the legend coupe lady came along
and I said, aha. Well, okay, I should actually back up. So the engine's there. The car is there.
And then they suddenly decided to sell the guy a new car. Right. Instead of that. So now we've got
an engine in a car that are sitting there. And to me, I'm seeing a solution to a problem that
the parts guy brought me. I'll come in. I'll put the engine in the car. I even involved the dealership
with it. I said, I'll come in on a Saturday. I'll do my thing on a Saturday. You don't have to pay
me or anything. I'll put this engine in. I was going to end up with a legend coupe and a few
hundred dollars. I think what it was, like I said, I really wanted the legend coupe. Anyhow, I did
the work, put it all together. The used car department of the dealership sold that car.
They turned around, sold that car to her. What I didn't know is that the engine was on a parts
bill that was not a used car bill. So the used car department did not absorb the cost of that
engine. Yeah. What had happened was unbeknownst to me is that parts manager basically said that
that engine was paid for when she came in to pay for it, but the dealership never saw that money.
And it was about nine hundred dollars. So he pocketed the money for the engine and rather than
paying the dealership. And then he hid it in the paperwork. Halloween. On Halloween, I was fired.
So every Halloween, I have this memory 2007 of walking in that morning and they're like coming
to the office. And just because I was affiliated with the whole situation, they fired me and him.
Yeah. So it was a managerial kind of thing. It wasn't that I was causing trouble or anything
like that. It was like nine hundred dollars is missing. You two are working together on this.
You're both gone. So it was unceremonious at best. So I was like, no, I'm out. I'm not going to do
this. Then I ended up at the other Acura dealership in the city and worked there for a while. But the
whole time I'm thinking this sucks because I had built up my reputation at the original dealership.
And if you're working as a flat rate technician, you know, you got to know your service riders.
You got to know your parts guys. You got to know everybody so that you can keep things moving along
during the day. I met a really close friend of mine there. So I did walk away with that.
But I spent my time reading books on how to edit video. That whole time I was there. I was teaching
myself how to edit video. And this was back before like it was easy. Anyway. And it came to a point
where I started moonlighting and doing wedding videography and corporate work and other things.
I started my own production company on the side. I was more interested in that than doing any
mechanic work because I felt like I would pretty screwed over from the past experience.
So I worked there for a number of years and well actually not a number of years. It was like two
years. And one day came where I could either take the day off and make $800 or go to work and maybe
make $50 after sitting there all day waiting for the next oil change to come in. Because going back
to the whole flat rate thing, I wasn't necessarily in the rotation or whatever. And I didn't get along
with one of the service writers. It was not a good situation. It was just bad. So I came in
the day after taking the day off to do my video work. And I'd asked ahead of time,
can I take the day off? And they never gave me a definitive answer until the day after when they
fired me. Yeah. Which, hello, the answer was no. Which honestly was a good thing because at that
time I went bankrupt. I was also like I said, I owned that building. That building went into
foreclosure. So I wasn't able to cover my bills. And I had a series of bad tenants that also drained
my bank account and everything. So my credit cards were maxed out. I had no money. I had no
job. I had nothing. So when I started Eric the Car Guy, that's where it was. It was an act of
desperation. I said, okay, well, I've got nothing to lose. Freedom's just another word for nothing
left to lose, just like the song says, right? So I said, well, I'm going to embrace that. And then
I threw myself into making these videos. I said, you know what, screw this whole industry. I'm
going to give up all the secrets. I'm going to give away all the tricks. I'm going to give away
all the stuff that's been making me and the rest of us money all this time. And if that helps people
and they're able to game the system and not have to deal with that, that's what I want. That's my
revenge. My revenge is basically making it so the customer now has the power and the dealership
or whoever doesn't have it. And I could totally back then relate to where you're coming from because
I was in a very similar situation where I had been, you know, terminated from my dealer job,
my first main dealer job that I absolutely adored because I was the quote unquote,
I was the goal behind fixer because I was an hourly tech, but I was passed over for a pay raise,
passed over for opportunity because I was just a straight time guy. And they looked at me as like,
so I immediately, I resonated so much what you had done with like, yeah, I get it. I'm going to
start letting people in on knowing how actually I am paid and how we're paid and how little we
take versus what they get. And I could totally, you were like somebody that was like, okay,
he gets it, you know, because a lot of people out there were like, you were showing how to fix
things, but you're also talking about the industry and its infancy of what now it's very
invoked to talk about the industry. But back then, there was no other technicians that were talking
about it the way you had a platform going on. They treat us like dogs some days, you know,
and so I really, I really appreciated you back then what you were doing. And, you know, it took
guts. It took a place of, I think, I believe sometimes in divine intervention and, you know,
something just will fall into your lap when it's supposed to. You don't look back and have any
regrets of that happening. I look back and say, how fortunate was it that I taught myself video
production? How fortunate was it that I was familiar with the camera? Frankly, I never wanted to be
in front of the camera ever. That was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to record these things,
but I couldn't have anybody else's hands or something like that. So I had to be that personality
that I created called Eric the Car Guy. And I think anybody that spends time in front of a camera,
yes, it's authentic, but it's still a performance. You know what I'm saying? So it's different. When
you turn the camera on, just try it yourself. Just sit there with your phone and try to say,
hey, and try, just try to talk for a minute. Oh, it's still hard for me. It's brutal. Yeah,
sometimes I do 20, 25 takes. Point is, I pushed through that, that I was fortunate enough to
have the equipment like through the bankruptcy and everything. I filed 13 instead of chapter seven.
So I was able to keep my camera equipment and everything. And I used said camera equipment
to start Eric the Car Guy and then continue my video production business on the side a little
bit at the same time. So I was still taking in some video jobs. Some of that work that I was
doing that you were seeing in the videos, I was getting paid for some of it, not all of it. But
I'd just be in scrappy. Anything I could find, anything I could bring in.
What was the first thing that you remember doing that you said this might be an avenue
to sustainability? It was right from the get. I sat down with a notebook and I came up with a
whole concept and I said, okay, well, this is what I'm going to do because I've been in video
production. I know if you go in with a plan, you're much better off than when you just go
in blind and you just try to pick up the pieces in the edit bay. But if you have a plan going in,
then you can stay focused on task and you're much more likely to have that outcome you're looking
for at the end. Most automotive conferences, unfortunately, only focus on one side of the
shop. But Techtonic 2026 presented by Techtometric is different. It's built for the whole shop.
Owners, advisors, and technicians all have sessions designed for the work they actually do
day to day. It's three days in Houston packed with workshops, panels, and over a thousand people from
the industry are set to attend. You don't need to be a Techtometric customer to qualify. Hit up
the link in the show notes below and check out Techtonic 2026. Register now while you still
can to get the early bird pricing. So I had that going in and I said, okay, it's going to be how to
auto repair. And again, I was going to focus on all of those things that, you know, the way I could
do a timing belt in 40 minutes, the bill's four hours kind of thing. This is how you do it.
These are the steps. These are the things that I learned over doing like a few hundred of these
things. Now you take that knowledge and you just run with it and don't go to the dealership and pay
those jerks that fired me. Just here you go. Now you and you have a tie into somebody that I said
in this morning's episode has probably left the biggest footprint in the industry that we've seen
and that's Mr. Paul Danner. Oh yeah. You have a tie in with him. You're a student of his.
I wasn't a student of his. We both went to the same school. Right. In fact, he was a student
that graduated two years before me. Okay. So we went there during the same time. So I wasn't his
student. Right. But I believe I knew his brother more than him. Yes. We weren't in the same circles
at that time. Okay. But I do distinctly remember, I think it was like a 66 Nova or Chevy II,
I guess it would have been, that they had that they brought in and had like 11 to 1 compression.
And that thing just sounded amazing when it pulled into the shop. I think that engine is now in the
car that's still sitting in James's shop that you see in some of the videos of Nova pushed off in
the corner. I just I just distinctly remember just the Danners being involved with like that
killer Chevy II or something like that. That was as much as I knew of him until after the fact
when our alma mater, Rosedale Technical Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they reached out to
me and wanted to do some promotional stuff. And then that's when we reconnected and I found out more
about what he did. And I remember watching that video and I'm like, this is the coolest thing
because I was one of the first people that I can remember ever. And you know how the beauty of
the algorithm was back then, right? We talked this morning about like, well, they had a page for
like you could go to YouTube and there was an automotive page that you could go to and find
your favorite automotive YouTubers. It wasn't any algorithm kind of thing. It was just like
there's a handful of us out there doing it. And like we talked this morning, if it hadn't been
for you, I would have never known about real fixes real fast. You know, another person that
doesn't get the exposure or agree that he should because he's been around a long time and taught
a lot of people and taught them from a level of like he's never wavered in the expertise. It's
always been professional right from jump. You know what I mean? He is a fantastic instructor.
There's a thing though. There's being a fantastic instructor and there's engaging an audience.
And unfortunately, those two things don't necessarily align all the time. And I think that's
why they're lesser known. Not because their material is not good in any way shape or form.
It's just that it doesn't hook an audience in the same way that some things do. And again,
going back to when I said that Eric the Car Guy in some senses is a character, that's part of that
whole thing. And I have that in my mind. And I have to keep that in mind because that's part
of what keeps people engaged in what I'm doing. And it doesn't make what anybody else is doing
any less at all. They're just more skilled at other things than presenting in front of a camera,
which as I mentioned is not what people think. Yeah. What I've always admired about you is
it's never been like you immediately hear your name and know a product that you're aligned with.
You know what I mean? You've never written the term sell out. I don't like that. But I mean,
when people think of you, they don't think of you and immediately think to a particular brand
other than the brand you built. That's a key thing, right? Brian's Mobile One is another one
that is excellent like that. Another one of my favorite human beings. Watching forever.
He was doing it before me, actually. If I'm not mistaken, he was posting Subaru videos before
I started posting my videos. And Subaru videos. And then I would look at the stuff that he was the
first guy that I ever saw that was so Uber organized about his bolt. Like it was incredible.
Bolt's nuts. Like it was... That's Brian. But what is also Brian is he skis down mountain
shirtless in a Viking hat. Well, he did it one time anyway. That's what got me about Brian. I'm
like, that's badass. He's a guy, another one that is like completely, I'm going to make my own way.
Oh, you know, we, we had a few years back, this thing put together by a company called Garage
Monkey. It was called Road to SEMA. And it's interesting because they have that this very
year Road to SEMA and they've taken a bunch of influencers and that kind of thing. But before
their Road to SEMA, we actually had, it was me, Chris Fix, Engineering Explained, Homo Mechanic,
Busted Knuckle Films, Bleep and Jeep. I think Sob Kyle was in there too. Yeah. And Rob Dom was
also in there. But anyway, Dodge just outfitted us with a bunch of really great cars to drive from
LA to Las Vegas. And that's, I don't know, where, where a lot of those friendships and things were
forged in a way through that, through, through that experience. And the funny thing was, it's
nothing of us really knew what was expected of us. It was before all this. So we're just like, oh,
we got a bunch, we got Hellcats, we got, you know, be at 500s and stuff. Let's just go have some fun
in some mountain roads in California. I can do this. But as far as filming, somebody else should
handle that because I need to watch the road. So what, like, as you, as you, what was the end goal,
not for the channel, but what did you see yourself as like, this amount of automotive content will
be what I'm trying to get through to people? Like, did you, did you do, like, when somebody calls
up says, Eric, I have this car and it needs this repair. Did you, did that weigh into what you
wanted to put out? Well, that was everything I put out. Like, initially, whatever I was repairing
is what came out. Yeah. And it was really frustrating because people would be like, oh,
can you do this on this car? And I'm thinking, I'd love to, but in order for that to happen,
I need that car to come in with that problem and I need time to film it. So it just became
evident really early on that I was never going to be able to cover the amount of material that
needed to be covered out there. So I made friends with other people that were making other content
and I helped promote them. So in my mind, I was like, okay, I can't help you, but this person can.
Right. You know, so if, if nothing else, I can become a hub and say, okay, you go here.
So then I spent a whole lot of time developing my website because the other thing I began to notice
was the more popular I became, the more people reached out with questions of their own about,
you know, my car is doing this or that. I spent two years writing articles for my website about
how to solve a no start problem, how to deal with an overheat and, you know, added all the videos
and everything that I had with it and made these really concise, tight articles and basically built
my website around that whole thing as a way for me to copy and paste a response to all these emails
that said, okay, I can't answer this right now, but here you go. You know, go to the website. I've
done this stuff and a lot of this stuff is pretty cut and dark, cut and dried as far as what you're
doing. So I, and then as far as producing content, which I believe was your original
question and like, what was the goal? My goal was just try to hang on by my fingernails because it
got to a point, especially after I started the ETCG one channel, which was in 2010. So I started
Eric the Car Guy in 2009. I started ETCG one in 2010, mainly because I realized that there was
another voice there to Eric the Car Guy, besides just the repair stuff, as you mentioned earlier,
the connection to technicians and other DIYers and things like that. And I didn't want to muddy the
waters of Eric the Car Guy with that. I thought Eric the Car Guy should stay as a repair channel.
And then I could talk about stuff on ETCG one. So then I started doing that. And then I came
up with the idea, well, if I, if I produce exclusive content for members of my website,
I can gain another source of income. So I started that. So here I am on a weekly basis, producing
videos for Eric the Car Guy, ETCG one and anything I could to try to make premium content as well.
And I was on that hamster wheel for, I don't know how many years, but it literally broke me.
It literally came to a point to where I was sitting at the keyboard and I just could not
edit another frame of video. I just could, I physically could not do it. It was like, I quit.
I cannot do this. So I interestingly enough is it was about that time that I lost my shop.
So losing my shop gave me an excuse to sort of step back a little bit, collect myself. I actually
spent some time therapy about two years to try and get it all sorted out. And this is all on me.
It wasn't, it wasn't the situation where, you know, the videos I was making or any of that.
It was me working myself to that point, me imposing those deadlines, me doing those things
that put me in that position and recognizing that helps me stay away from it now,
but I didn't see it at that time. To me, I saw if the harder I work,
the more results I'm going to get for it, which was wrong thinking.
Sometimes it's, yeah, it takes drive, but sometimes the smarter work is what is,
gives longevity, right? There's hustle, there's muscle, and then there's, you know,
going back to the plan. I didn't have one. You asked me if I had a plan for the videos.
At the end of the day, I didn't have a plan. I just started producing content. It happened to
take off and I happened to ride that wave as far as I could because I was like,
this keeps me from a real job. I'm going to keep doing this as much as I possibly can.
In addition to all that, you get this fire hose of opportunities that comes your way.
And I was one of the first people, first channels to experience that because companies were not
used to doing YouTube or any kind of social media. So they would come to me early on and neither one
of us knew what we were doing. Right. So we were trying to figure it all out. And in addition
to me trying to produce all the content I was trying to produce, here I am trying to make
additional income through all these other opportunities that are coming in,
trying to conform to what they need. So I pulled myself in 10 different directions.
And if I'm to put any advice out there from my story, I would definitely say have a plan.
Have a plan of what you're looking for. And I think you'll have a much better outcome than just
trying to keep up with what's there. Now, I don't want to lift up a band-aid or poke anything too
sensitive, but to lose the shop, can you kind of share what happened there and why?
Oh, yeah. That was a complete poop show. So...
I love how frank you are. I got to appreciate that really.
Well, I want to be direct, you know. Anyhow, so I was renting that shop. And I was actually
in pretty tight with the owner of it who had moved to Florida. In fact, he was a diesel mechanic
most of his life. And he owned a diesel shop. And he was wore out, ready to move to Florida.
I was giving him rent money every month, no problem. I never missed a rent payment ever.
So he never bothered me, nothing. Well, funny thing is, there's a guy that owns a used car
lot and some other things in my world. Back in Ohio.
Yeah, we'll call it Westchester area in Ohio. Anyway, he bought the building that was actually
next to mine. So it was a place where they serviced tractor trailers and things like that.
And he was looking to start a business of servicing tractor trailers in addition to his used car
business. And he's going to make more money. Well, he got there. And I remember him coming
over to me one day and saying, you know, how tall are the doors on your shop? I'm like,
I think they're 16 foot or whatever. He's like, I was over here measuring and stuff like that.
And the reason he was doing it is because when he bought the building next door,
he didn't realize he couldn't fit a tractor trailer inside the building.
That's not very good planning. Again, you got to have a plan.
So he looks at my space and my space apparently was the only space that he could use for that and
asked me to sublet at that time. I'm like, dude, look around. There's no place you're
going to pull a tractor trailer in here while I'm working and I do video production. So I'm not
going to have your, you're working on the background of my stuff. It's just not going to happen.
It wasn't like a few weeks or a month later, I get a knock on the door and it's a praiser
coming in to take photographs. So nobody told me anything. I found out when the appraiser came
to take pictures of the place that it was sold. And I was like, oh, okay, you're going to be like
that. And to back this up even further, the guy that owns the used car lot, one of those
opportunities that I had coming to SEMA one year is I got involved with a company that
did cabin air filters. I produced 30 cabin air filter videos, 30 cabin air filter installation
videos at his used car lot, free of charge to him. I said, all I need is the vehicles,
because I thought to myself, where am I going to find 30 vehicles? So I went to a local used car lot,
found him, like this is long before this ever happened, found him and said, hey man,
I'll give you a bunch of free cabin air filters if you let me film here. He said, okay. So you'd
think with a guy like that, we had that kind of report, he would at least say, oh dude,
by the way, I bought the building. Yeah, none of that. So it gets worse. I said, all right, well,
I need to find a new space. I went literally up the street around the corner and there was
an industrial park kind of thing that you can rent a shop at or something like that. And I found a
space that I thought would be perfect. It was literally not a few tents of a mile from my original
shop. I was like, could it be better? But it wasn't available at that time. I had to wait a couple
months. So those couple months went by and I go in to sign the lease. And he's like, oh, by the way,
the place that I showed you that I was going to rent you is no longer available. I'm going to
rent you this place instead. And the place that he was going to rent me was the worst place in the
entire complex. Not only did it have like a split wall, so like one wall went to the other unit,
but that other unit had the breaker box in it. That other unit had the thermostat in it. And
that belonged to his landscaping people that took care of the landscaping for around the whole place
and all that. So I'm thinking, okay, they're going to have landscaping equipment next door,
really loud equipment. If you've ever heard lawn mowers, they're pretty loud. They don't really
work well with video production or anything like that. Well, I don't know what they'd be doing,
frankly. This space was barely big enough to fit anything into, including all my tools and all that.
And I said, dude, I'm out. Well, actually, I started asking him some questions and then he
got in my face about it because I'm like, okay, the lease says that you're going to jack my rent
up like 2% every year. Like, how's that going to work? Where's that going to come in? And all
these other things. And I think he was just upset by the fact that I was upset with him because he
wasn't going to give me what I'd asked for or what I thought I was getting.
Anyway, that whole thing fell through and then I moved into storage instead. Because at that
point, I was like, you know what, I give up. I didn't have time. I didn't have any more time. I
needed to move out. Yeah. So everything went into storage at that point. And yeah, it was hard.
It was really, really hard. And you just stuck to do production on other things that wasn't
your content? Well, again, again, just before this, I was at the computer and I couldn't do it
anymore. I literally stopped. I froze. I was just like, I cannot do this. And it was, it was hard.
It was really difficult to deal with. You know, my whole life, I'd been hard work, solved all my
problems. You know, I just work harder. What's your problem? Work harder. Well, that was not my
problem. My problems were with me that, you know, I'd been ignoring most of my life. And here I am
putting myself in a position to where it's all got to come to a head. It's all got to be out in the
open. So I think in some ways we're our own worst enemies. At least I have been my own worst enemy.
But I'd like to think that I've learned some things from that. And I'd like to think going
forward, I'll do a better job. Well, I think by nature, we're fixers. We believe that it's the
same thing. Like it and I equate it to, I had a guest, we talked about like the dealership
put this goal on them that they hit. I think it was like 240 hours in the month. They bonus
pretty high. That's a lot. He put himself into this like where I'm going to,
I'm going to hit this metric. Unfortunately, I also have seven days booked off that month
for other things. So I'm still going to try and hit it. And I'm like, dude, Curtis, Curtis is his
name. I can't see that happening for you, man. He's like, no, some days like I can hit over 20,
I know. But how many times do you hit 20 consecutively? Well, not that many. And
but he just was like, I'm going to knuckle down and do this. And I think that's that says a lot
about where we think we're because we're fixers. But then the flat rate mentality mechanic is like,
if I could just hustle, man, I don't eat. I come in early. I stay late. I can fix this problem,
right? Whether it's I need to pay my rent, my car blue and engine, I need to buy an engine.
I can fix this by just working harder. And life doesn't necessarily work that way.
Unfortunately, as it is. Well, at least in my case, it was things that I wasn't necessarily aware of,
or I was ignoring or putting off or just not paying attention to. So the signs may have been
there, but I was ignoring them in favor of, like you said, harder work. And I think that, as you
mentioned, comes from being a quote unquote fixer and thinking that I can fix anything. Well, it's
not necessarily the case. And I think it's pretty humbling when you find that when you when you
hit that wall, you realize that, you know, you're not all that. Yeah. And that, you know, you're
flawed and fragile and you probably need some work. So what's been kind of this trajectory
moving forward? What kind of kick started it back for you to, you know, feel revitalized, feel
ready to go again? I was broke. Okay. Desperation. Yeah. Once again, coming back to the original
theme. That's what started it to begin with. So then I came back to it. Because if you don't post
videos to your channel for three years, your income is going to go away. Yeah. And it's going
to be hard to get back. I'll tell you that right now. But I'm just happy to have the space. I'm
happy to have the opportunity. And I'm happy to be here because not everybody gets to be where
I'm at. Not everybody gets to be the success that I've become. Yeah. And that says something to me.
You know, no matter what, they can take away my shop, but that's not going away. Right. You know,
that part of me, that work that I've done is never going away. And people are still watching
those videos and still being helped by those videos. People are still being helped by my website.
People still tell me they were inspired by the stuff that I did years ago. And you know what?
That's enough for me. Yeah. You know, if that's where I am and I plateau now and the stuff that
I'm producing now doesn't, you know, do what it used to, which I don't know what to expect, frankly.
That won't matter nearly as much as the fact that I'm out there doing it. And if I'm able to pay my
bills, I'm good. I'm good. I don't need anything. Was there a big fallout when you kind of went away
and just said, okay, I'm going to step away from this? Did you get a lot of people that were like,
hey, you owe us this or hey, wait it, wait it, leave us in the high and dry.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how great my fans are because they did not.
Okay. And anybody that did was not a fan. And what I find with those quote unquote haters you find
in the comments, if you just ask the question, like, where are you coming from, man? Yeah.
Or woman or whatever. I think you'll find that there's some pain or something inside of them
that they're projecting onto that question or that statement that has absolutely nothing to do
with you. So if you talk about developing a thick skin, like you have trouble doing that,
the way I do that is I say to myself, that person is probably hurting. That person has probably
got a crap life and I'm the only outlet they have. If I come at them at the same attitude,
at the same energy, then that's not solving anything. And it's not making me feel any
better. And I'm not going to lie and say that, oh, those negative comments don't affect me.
It's just the opposite. It's funny how, like, you'll have 100 comments to talk about how great
the video is. But that one that doesn't, that one that just, and it might just sink it right,
just in that right spot. And you're like, dang it. And you don't want to give them that power.
You just don't want to. But yeah, they have it. They know it. But on the same time, I know that
they're probably hurting and they need to hurt somebody else in order to feel better about
themselves. That's the way I see it. So going back to how great the Eric the CarGuy fans are,
they've been so supportive of me over this time. Some of them have reached out to me and
encouraged me to get out and to go to car shows or just encouraged me to keep going. Just said,
you know, hey, you were what got me through tech school. Your videos are the things that actually
inspired me to start doing this in the first place. Now I own my own shop. How many people can say
that? Like, I can go back and talk about the money I made and spent. That means absolutely
nothing to me. But the fact that somebody says, you helped better my life. Yeah.
Paul Dan and I have that talk a lot, right? Where it's like, and he's such a humble,
humble man of, you know, to him. He's real. He's real. He's a jet. And I, you know, when I have,
when I first started going to these, you know, events, a lot of people didn't know who I am.
Yeah. And then now I come to them, people stop me and shake my hand and say, thank you. Like,
you inspired me, you know, your story of how you felt at a dealership made me quit the job and go
find a better job. Like that weight that puts on me is one that both is like heavy sometimes.
And then at the same time, it's very uplifting because I feel like I have a responsibility to be
real and authentic and true. But I also at the same time, it's like it lifts up when I have
some days where a car's kicking my tail or I have a someday where like I do something stupid,
I have to go back and refix it. And then I remember that it's like, you know what, all these people
that I speak for, I've all had those days and it's, it's my, just we're not on an island.
You know, we're together in this. You want to think we are, but we're not. We're not. We're not.
There's nobody, you know, out there breaking new ground that we, you know, we've all, not we've
done everything, but we've all been challenged. We've all been kicked and undervalued. And that's
the big thing with me. Like your story resonates with me still because it's like, you're a guy who
said, oh yeah, watch this and went to the, to the establishment of what we talked about
in the dealerships and say, uh-uh, I'm not going to accept that anymore. And I did. I, I walked
off of a job, out of a job over a half an hour's time on my pay that wasn't there.
And so the backstory is Stacey David from Gears had had a truck that he done years ago for a
chair bomb. And the truck came to a local part store that was local to me in Ottawa. And I went
at lunch. It was a free barbecue lunch and you get to see the truck. I come back,
the break job that I had inspected and done the inspection for was gone.
Somebody took it off. No problem. The next day I flagged my hours. I said, what happened? Oh,
somebody finished that break job. Okay, cool. They finished it. I don't even get paid for the
inspection. No, we couldn't pay for the inspection. Oh, really? Why not? I did the inspection.
Well, because you didn't finish the job. It was 1130 right before lunch and it wasn't flagged as a
waiter. Could I have not taken lunch? No, apparently she was waiting, which was again BS. I said,
okay, that's fine. This is 8.50 in the morning. I closed my toolbox. There's three cars sitting
out on the outside waiting on diagnostic parts, modules, stuff. And I went home and I took another
job. Yeah, you couldn't you couldn't sit at the keyboard any longer. Right. So and when I came
back in and my service manager, like I'm wheeling my box out and I'm there with my father got ripped
dad and he goes, we're really sorry to see him go. You know, we really like him here. He's smart.
We need more text like him and I'm going, I just can't stand the amount of a holes that are here.
That's why I said to him as he's standing in front of my father, my father's just laughing at me
grinning and wheel my toolbox into the back of the truck and away we go. And that was for me a
very powerful thing because it's like I knew at that point that I was never going to let somebody
that would have been as upset as I was, tell me that I couldn't be upset.
And I should handle it any different. Yeah, that's that's minimizing everything you're feeling,
which is so wrong. Yeah. So when I saw you, how you went out on your on your thing, I'm like,
you know what, man, like he's not out there like building one shop and then two shops and three
shops and glorifying. Oh, look at this, you know, incredible thing that I diagnosed or whatever,
you're just putting out content consistently, helping people. I'm like, that's pretty cool
that he didn't let something that would some people would say because a lot of technicians there
would leave the industry. We have a big problem right now with leave the industry. Yeah, but
leave it all together in terms of like now I do HVAC and I never even touch YouTube. Yeah.
So I did leave the industry. You can't say that I'm still a part of the industry.
I still work on cars. I still feel that pain, but I'm not doing it for a living. Right. I do
content for a living. So yes, I did leave the industry. Yeah. I can't say I didn't because I
don't I don't work as a technician like a technician works as a tech. I think that
does a disservice to them to say that that's what I do. I try to give a window into what they do.
I try to give people empathy for what they do, but that's not what I do. What I do is something
completely different and anybody that's done any kind of video production, I think would agree with
that because it's a totally different discipline. It's a totally different mindset. It's a totally
different mindset when I go to quote, unquote, fix a car because I'm thinking to myself, okay,
how can I show what I'm doing? In fact, my definition of a good video is my ability to
turn the sound off and still be able to glean the information. Right. If I can watch that video
with no sound and I know and I can get that information out of it, that's a good video.
That's pretty good. And that's in my head when I start out, when I start shooting,
it was like, okay, how am I going to share this? I'm not thinking how quickly can I fix this or
what tools am I going to use and that kind of thing so much. I'm thinking, okay, I'm my audience's
eyes right now in years and I need to take them on a journey of disrepair to repair
from broken to fixed to confidence. I often call myself a confidence builder because that's what
I want to do for people. So even if a person watched my video and they didn't go out and fix it
themselves, if they watch the video and now they understand why it's going to cost them $1,500
for that repair, they have that understanding. Because how many times does a customer come in
and said, what do you mean it's going to cost me $1,500 for that? And you're like, I'm sorry,
but the part is $1,000 and it's buried underneath the car in some place that I need to remove
everything to get to it. And it's going to take me all day and then some to do it. And I'm sorry for
that. I didn't build the car, but I'm here to fix it. And that's when it's going to cost.
How do you deal with the people when they talk about you go back to your timing belt example
and you say that it charges them four and a half hours and you do it in 45 minutes?
And the people go, you're ripping the people off, Eric, by all those people that the dealership
charges way too much. That's an absolutely fair question. First of all, I didn't set the flat rate
time. Second of all, 99% of the flat rate times that are out there are not beneficial in that sense.
Right. Timing belt jobs are few and far between. Warranty work is way more prevalent than timing
belt work. But the time you add it all up, that equates to nothing, absolutely nothing. And as
far as my ability to do something fast, if you want to piss me off, tell me I'm fast. I am not
fast. I'm efficient. If I was fast, I'd be skipping steps. Efficiency means that I did that
timing belt in 45 minutes. I didn't skip one step. In fact, I developed a process of doing
that timing belt because I did a hundred of them. I know how to do it in 40 minutes because
I'd lift goes up once, lift goes down once. That's it. Everything up and down in between,
that's time. So I took the time to say, okay, if I do this while it's down on the ground,
I don't have to do this while it's up in the air. I have all my parts ready. They're ready to go.
So it's not like that 45 minutes came just with me just going, I do that in 45 minutes. No, that
45 minutes came from the seven other jobs that I did before that that got me to that level of
efficiency that made that flat weight advantageous to me. So I worked for that 45 minutes. It didn't
just drop out of the sky. And again, when I read comments all the time online from anybody's
channel, and I always see the disgruntled people that are talking about, well, I had my car into
the dealership or I had my car into the shop six times and they couldn't fix it. That always
tugs at me because I used to be the guy that's like, oh, you're not a technician, FU. I don't
even care about your complaint. And now as I've gotten to really dig into what they're trying to
say, they're having a very dissatisfied experience with the whole industry as a whole. Right. And
that's why I'm here is to try and bringing up the technician competency and the understanding. Well,
and I tell people, what are you trying to have an intermittent electric problem? Okay, cool. Do you
know how many few technicians might actually be employed at some of these places to be able to
get to that? Do you know how they're paid? Oh, you don't know how they're paid? Okay, so they're
going to spend three hours to pull your brand new somebody talked to me about a brand new
wagon here for a parasitic drain, eight, nine hours into the car. There's like over 60 modules
on a brand new grand wagon here, four different communication lines, like networks that have
to all shut down. Just to get the car to go to in sleep mode, different levels, is like a three
hour process. Do you know what he's getting paid? Nothing until he actually fixes that car. When
you start to give these people the facts, the little nuggets about how we're actually treated,
I find it tends to quiet them down. But then others, Eric, just want to be like,
I don't care, I paid X amount for this, and it's bullshit that like it can't be fixed.
You're right, it is. But here's the reality. It's built by humans. It's worked on by humans.
And humans make mistakes. You know, that guy that assembled it who's paid way more than any
technician I know, like he might have had a cigarette in his hand when he was doing it. And
now something's not clipped in quite right, something's rubbing. Now we could create a
monster in a machine. The guy that can go in there and exercise that machine,
one in a thousand. And you're in your situation of when you want it fixed right now, Monday morning,
because I've had it three months and it's unfair and it's costing me and I have to drive my old
clunker because this thing's under warranty. It's so hard for me and Eric to reach out and feel
his empathy for that person. You know what it is? Because I've been a technician that I've never
bought a brand new car in my life. Maybe empathy is not what you're looking for. Maybe understanding
would be better. And going back to my earlier statement about the hater commenters, I think
they come from the same place. I don't think that all repair is the problem. I think that they may
have some other issue that's happening in their life and the auto repair issue is one more thing.
And you happen to be at the other end of it. So you're going to get the brunt of whatever it is
that's going on in their life that you don't, you're not necessarily connected to. But they're
using you as an opportunity to vent or what have you. I'm not saying that's fair. I'm not saying
that's good. I'm just saying that I think many times it has little to nothing to do with you or
the job or the repair or anything. In fact, I've said oftentimes people wear their cars like clothes.
If you give me somebody's car and let me go through it for 10 minutes, I could probably tell
you a whole lot about that person. And I do that inadvertently just by looking at the car. Because
if my diagnosis begins with that, I look at the car and see how it's maintained. I look and see
how they're taking care of it. I look and see the interior. Are they trashing? It is a rolling
dumpster. Perhaps that bowling ball that's rolling around in the trunk is the cause of that noise,
sir. You know what I'm saying? Empty wine bottles. Empty wine bottles, exactly. And believe me,
I've seen it. And then some. But yeah, I think people are bringing their baggage along with
them with their vehicles. Again, like they're wearing their clothes. It's an hour of projection
of who they are. Yeah. I used to say he must be going through a divorce and that's his wife's car.
And she's chewing his ass about how this thing is broken again. And he just doesn't want his
ass chewed anymore. Maybe. The spouse is always at fault. It doesn't matter who you're talking to.
The spouse is the one that did it. You know, my wife ran this whatever over or my wife hit this
whatever. She heard this noise. She's the one that forgot to do the ol' change. Yeah. The dudes
are the worst, actually, because they know the least and they want to pass it off on the ladies.
But the ladies are actually, I think, smart enough to know that they're not necessarily
knowledgeable. So they start asking questions. I like the way they approach it a little bit better.
Yeah. I don't like them when they come at me with like they come in and assuming that I'm going to
rip them off. Yes. Because I've told lots of ladies, listen, it's much easier if I wanted
to take advantage of pull a wool over a customer's eyes. I can much easier do it over a man's
and a kind of woman. Yeah. It's much easier. Oh, yeah. I just have to make him think that he has
something in common with me and he will open his wallet or just let him know he's right. Yeah.
About everything. Yeah. Whereas they are really simple creatures. Yeah. What do you want to see
about the industry change? I mean, that's might be a big question. No, no. Actually, I believe I
have an answer. Okay. I would love to see us move towards an apprenticeship program personally.
We talked about this briefly earlier. And I say that because I think our system is broken
and not working. And I'm not saying that there aren't schools out there that are excellent
teaching excellent technicians and everything else. Yeah. But as I mentioned to you earlier,
in my view, doesn't matter how good a student you are, I graduated top of my class. Okay.
But there were 13 people in the class, but I graduated top of my class. Yeah. The thing of it is,
I didn't know Jack until I started turning a wrench in a bay. When I actually started working,
actually turning a wrench, then I could see what applied from that knowledge that they were
downloading into my head, which was there. The basics were there. It was like a foundation.
You build a house. Yeah. And that's the foundation you build off of, that education.
So I feel like I got that, but I feel like a lot of people these days could use some mentorship.
And it's not just the educational aspect of it, just the guidance on how to behave as a technician,
so that we don't come off as people trying to rip people off. As we come off as professionals
that are trying to help people and do our jobs and that type of thing. And I think I got this idea
from my viewers in Europe mostly, because they're always telling me how the apprenticeship program
in Canada or Europe or other places that are not US based, how they work and that you're an
apprentice for years and years before you do this. They don't just let you go out into the
shop and do break jobs. And you think that that's an easy thing and to some it can be, but
you can, if you don't do a break job right, somebody could die. Yeah.
You know, so it needs to be taken seriously. And I think if you've got somebody there who's
got experience, can help pass on that experience and that professionalism along with it. So
it's not just an education, it's a way to act as a technician. I think that would help the industry
a lot. And as far as pay goes, obviously I think we need to be paid what we're worth,
but I think if we start acting like we are, that we, if we start acting like doctors act,
if we start acting like other professionals act, I think we will start to get more of that respect
and more pay come along with it. And especially if we're effective at what we're doing. I don't
want to hear this, I've taken this to three other shops and they can't fix it. Well, that may be on
you. You can't take your electric problem to a quick loop and expect them to take care of it
while they're doing your oil change sort of a matter. You know, we have to manage your expectations
as far as that's concerned. But if you're bringing a vehicle to us and it has this given problem,
and we say that we're going to take it on, I think it's incumbent upon us to do the best job we
can possibly do to not live up to that reputation of being, you know, people that are just out to
take your money, you know, not throwing parts at something. I've always found that the biggest
thing that was lacking in, because I did a two year college program before I ever stepped foot
in this industry, right? So, and it was like, I remember them and then even going through the
apprenticeship we used to have, you know, applied fundamentals and all this kind of stuff. There
was a lot of things that were like wasted in that. Well, here's how you braze two pieces of metal
together, right? When the big welder sitting right there. So, there's some there's some
processes that maybe we could have skipped. We should have had a class on this is how you
survive this industry. This is how you conduct yourself as a professional in this industry.
We should have been more about that and not to get into the what is morally right and what is
morally wrong. But in terms of how to survive it, you're going to come in. I can still remember
a really good friend of mine. We had an argument way back when we were both green green green.
And he's like, well, when I get to the dealership, they're going to be somebody's going to be
mentoring me and somebody's going to be watching me and teaching me. And I'm like,
no, I'm already been there. And that's not reality a lot of places. Now,
he did have some people that mentored him a little bit, but he had this idea that it was going to
be like that European thing with the old craftsman and, you know, it's quality checking your work
and all that kind of stuff. That isn't real life at a lot of shops. And I think that that's
how we have to if we're going to turn these kids loose into these dealerships that are
less free real, the OEs are pumping all the money right now into the funding of all these
college programs. You want to go get GM certified, Matt ASAP, you know, BMW training, we have all
seen the UTI and, you know, Wildtech ads, they're all funded by the OEs. They need to teach them
that when you get to the dealer, they're going to have a mark on your back and you're going to do
a lot of these recall over and over again. And the old guys over there may going to hate you
because you're going to get a gravy ticket. They will because your back is still good.
Yeah. Right. Your knees are not. You still have all your teeth and your back is good. I hate you.
But that's what we have to teach them. It's not a surprise. So that's been my platformer is always
like, listen, pour into yourself. Always do the extra learning. You want to be, I've always said,
for me, I want to be the smartest guy in the room. Now, I keep finding myself in bigger rooms as I
go in through this career and I'm not the smartest guy. And again, even back when I look back, I
probably wasn't the smartest guy then. But I had an aptitude and an ability to do one thing really
well. And I leveraged it to make it work for me. I believe that that's what they have to do. If you
are ate up with passion about something, you have to develop on that. And I think you have to pour
into it. And it means and then when you have to value it and know the value that it means, I'm
going to go and take that comeback because I'm good at diagnostics. But in turn, I want to know
like, what are you going to do for me? And I don't just mean like, oh, we're going to give you
another good ticket. I mean, it's like, what can you help me learn so I can become better at that?
Sign me up for training, sign me up for, you know, can we get this new tool that an oscilloscope is
an example that helps me do some of this stuff better. So if I'm hearing you correctly, the
apprenticeship program that I'm advocating for isn't necessarily like you've actually experienced,
isn't necessarily the fix all there's still some areas there that could use work as well.
Here's how it is in Canada. I'll give you a real nutshell. When they sign them up as an apprentice
and enroll them, they get their wage subsidies like 25%. Okay, so let me take them or bring them in
and we say, okay, that's your quick loop bay or or and when there's no more quick loops, I'll need
you to learn how to do this door latch recall. And you're going to do a lot of that and a lot of it
and a lot of it and a lot of it until you're going to be burn rated on quick loops, tires and door
latches, right? And if you hit a problem, that old guy over there, I know he's grouchy and he's
got signs on his toolbox that say, don't f with me, but I need you to go over there and ask them
very nicely to come in and help bail you out. And he's going to go into a tirade on you, Eric,
but let him and then pay attention. That's what happens a lot that I've been exposed to in this
in the thing. And then the dealerships are especially are chewing these guys up. The
independent shops are chewing their young people up right now too, because we're not laying out a
program that says, okay, you're going to start doing the basics. And then I need you to learn this
fundamental and then that fundamental, that fundamental, they kind of just throw everything
against the wall, see what it sticks and go, you're good at tires, you're going to be a tire guy,
or you're good at brakes, and you're going to be a brake guy, or you're good at front end,
you're going to be a front end guy. That's how the dealerships were. My experience was,
we had a guy that he just only did air conditioning, almost only air condition. I did a lot of
drivability because I had a knack for it. I did a lot of electrical that because I had a knack for
it. Do you think that that salty older mechanic that you're sending the young mechanic to talk to
might have an effect on that young mechanic's attitude towards the profession? Oh, 100%.
Well, maybe how do you think that older guy got that way? Did he come into it that way,
or did he become that way over time? It's called the Jada mechanic for a reason because it's like
they earned that, right? They had to sweat, bleed, and starve to sometimes get that knowledge.
And to be just to say, you're expected to give it away. Well, we call that old guy maybe a
gatekeeper. It's not a gatekeeper, in my opinion. He's protecting what he had to fight to earn.
But he might be misplacing his angst. 100% he is. Because I mean, if he would see that young
technician as the future, I think that would be more appropriate. And that's the kind of thing
that I'd like to advocate for. And I think what you're describing is just how human beings interact,
especially old guys and young guys. I think that's like, since time began. When he sees the old guy
that you were talking about earlier, you know, he's the young lad that's three hours texting on
the back of his phone in the corner of the shop with the broom, gathering brush. Is he wrong?
60 years ago, he was listening to Elvis Presley. Yeah. You know?
So, you know, what is the next phone? What is the next thing that's going to be there?
At the same time, maybe he's on the phone looking at tutorials for the work that he's doing for the
day, or she's doing for the day. I'd like to put that out there too, because I think we
spend too much time talking about he in this profession. I think we need to empower everybody,
not just the boys. I think we need to make it available to the girls also, just from a young
age. There's a lot of like, here's a wrench. Here's a welder. What do you want to do? Try it.
Try it. Just try it. Like we used to have in the United States, like home back and shop classes
and things like that, just for the exposure. Like I learned how to make a dress, not a dress. I made
a Hawaiian shirt when I was in class. Did that mean anything to the rest of my life other than
this conversation right now? No, but I did it. I had that experience. And it doesn't mean I'm
gonna become a seamstress or anything like that. It just means like, oh, okay, I know how sewing
machine works. Yeah. You know, and I'm glad to have that knowledge today. I was laughing the whole
time I was sitting in typing class. What do I do all day now? Freaking email. 100%. Yeah. So what,
when you see a young person, maybe I already know the answer, but what do you see when you see the
young people now? Where do you see like the potential lie? I see them with a lot of potential.
I'm worried more about the industry than I'm worried about the people. And I think I'm more
worried about the industry because the industry is all sky is falling at the moment, it seems.
Because I don't think anybody really knows what to do with what we are and where we're at. And
I don't know if we're doing it right personally of the kind of things we're doing and the directions
we're going. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I'm just one person. Now touch a little bit
more on that and who's doing what that you don't agree with. Well, I'll just come out and say it,
the whole EV thing. Okay. I think that's all BS personally. And the reason I say that, and I'm
not saying that zero emissions vehicles aren't great for the environment in some situations,
but I struggled to comprehend how making more stuff and throwing away a bunch of stuff solves an
environmental problem. It's just that simple for me. It doesn't. It doesn't. So if we take all
of our cars now and throw them into a landfill or wherever, and we replace them all with these
other cars, that makes somebody a whole lot of money. That's what I see. And I see dealerships,
I see manufacturers struggling right now because if you're going to switch your propulsion system
from internal combustion to electric, that's a retool of your entire process. And I don't think
people realize that's a global process. We are sitting in Apex right now. And guess what? Just
about every country is represented here. And there's a reason for that is because we get these
things from all over the place to put them together into these things that we call vehicles and we
drive and register and all that other kind of stuff. So a lot goes into that. And I think that
we just, we need to take a different look at that, I believe, if we're truly trying to solve an
environmental problem because it doesn't really seem that way to me. And it's not. And I don't want
to go down the political thing, but where I come from, they want to have a mandate by 2035,
there is no more internal combustion engine cars. I understand the push behind that because I
understand where the science is and what the science says because here's the other thing. You
can't just keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere and say that nothing's going to happen. Everything's
going to be fine. The science doesn't work. I'm a mechanic. I deal in science. To me, I use the
scientific method to solve problems. Ignoring facts is not going to make me money. Ignoring facts
is going to get me screwed. So I like to try to stick to as many facts as possible, like actual
facts, not something that somebody pulled out of some whatever, like actual facts. And then,
frankly, I spent a lot of time studying like astronomy and astrophysics, weirdly enough.
But I just, I'm fascinated by where everything comes from. I just think the grade won't support it.
And then I believe that once the grid doesn't support it, it becomes a very elite thing to own
a car. I don't know if the grid's a problem. I really don't think so. No, the grid's not the
problem in my mind. The problem is the fact that we have to get in our cars to do everything.
That, in my opinion, is the problem. If we get up our, well, some people can't walk. Some people
are elderly like that. But if we started walking more and creating situations where we didn't have
to drive to the store and maybe we could walk to the store or go or bike to it or do something else
other than use a car to do it, I think a focus on that would be much more productive than trying
to make a bunch more things to solve a problem that's a result of having too many things.
And that's my look at it anyway. But as far as the young people that are coming into this,
I think it's always been a poop show for all of us. Like me, when I started out,
it was the transition into fuel injection and all these other things. That was just getting
started. We still had a few carburetors out there that were electronically controlled,
and we had to mess with those things and all of that. And they were telling us,
oh, everything's going to be fuel injected. They'll all be computers in the future. Well,
they're right. But it didn't really solve anything. It just made, like, now I got to find that
one out of 60 computers that's in that car that's bad causing that parasitic draw. And I got to
wait for four hours for everything to shut off so I can even find out that it's doing it.
So the challenges have always been there. And maybe before that, it was North Star headgaskets.
You know, I think there's always going to be that challenge. That's the job in my mind,
because if it was easy, everybody would do it. So going back to, did you have a mentor
that you can really say formulated where your direction? That's a good question,
because I can't really point to any one mentor. And I can't say that it was really
involved with this industry, because I've done a lot of things besides fixed cars.
I made fixed trees for a while. I made scarecrows at a farm where, you know,
people came out to, like, go through a haunted pumpkin patch, and I did all the pumpkin displays
and everything and all that kind of thing. So I've done a variety of occupations,
but they all have a common theme. There's somebody making money and there's somebody
employing you. And if you're employed, then you're a drone.
Now, so kind of as car repair, somewhat self-taught, then I could, would that be fair to say?
Okay, maybe you could say born into it, because my father was not an auto mechanic,
but he worked in manufacturing on plastic molding machines. So he worked for a major toy company,
most of my life growing up. And then after that, that toy company shut down and moved away,
and then he started working for another company in plastic molding. So he was always doing that.
My grandfather on my mother's side was kind of a fabricator. He worked on things like Three
Mile Island, and maybe I shouldn't, like, share that, but that wasn't a result of any build errors,
by the way. No. Also at that house that I lived at for a while, there was only eight other houses,
eight houses on that street. And in the back was a driving range. So we had an abundance of golf
balls. And my grandfather had a workshop in the basement. I wasn't allowed to use power tools,
but I had a bucket of golf balls and a bunch of tools. So I had been, you know, nothing to do,
like there was nobody around or anything like that. So I was playing with tools and doing all
the stuff, taking things apart since as long as I could remember. So maybe I was born to it or what,
whether I was doing this, I wanted to be a doctor for a while. I'm kind of glad I'm not,
because being a flat rate doctor, I don't think would have worked out too well.
But taking things apart, I think, is where it started. How about you?
My dad was a collision auto body guy, so I grew up kind of out of his knee,
and then I never wanted to be a collision. I sanded on cars from the time I was seven until,
like, I had a summer job with him in high school standing on cars, and I said, never again.
I wanted them to go fast. I didn't give a shit if it was in primer. I didn't care if I had a
dent in every bend. How fast does that thing go? Like, do a burnout. I was one of them dumb kids,
right? I wouldn't call it dumb. Well, but yeah. Who doesn't want to see a burnout?
Getting speeding tickets is not very smart, but that just means you got caught. Yeah.
So I always was, I looked, not looked down at him, but I was just like, I'm not interested.
And now my father's gone. He's been gone a while. And I remember what he told me about this industry.
He said, don't do it. If I ever catch you with a wrench in your hand, I'm going to smack you.
And he put sandpaper in your hand. And I was lucky enough that he got to see
the level that I got at the dealership, but he was proud of what I could do because he knew that
it was like, he's not just another guy working here. He's kind of their guy. He's the guy in this
place. And that made me proud that I made him proud. And, you know, he would brag about me to
everybody. And, you know, oh, that's good. Yeah. You know, you got a car that's hard to
not run around or something. Let my son take a look at it. So I came about it, I think naturally.
I am not one of these people that I like to talk about the puzzle pieces. I'm not one of these guys
that can like take a puzzle apart and then put it back together repeatedly, Rubik's Cube, all those
kind of things. I'm not a wired that way. I'm wired of a visual reading a roadmap kind of thing.
Here's a wire diagram. Here's some papers on how something works. And then I digest it and I start
to, I'm more, I think, engineering versus, you know, you sound like an engineer. And maybe I
should have gone that way. Elon Musk went to Queens University, which is right in Kingston,
Ontario. So hey, shout out to Elon. We're linked there too. But I never thought I was smart enough
to be an engineer. And now I have an engineer friend and he'll like, he'll ask me questions about
how to fix his truck. And I'm like, that's pretty cool. Well, in my experience, that's common.
I had a job where I worked in Cincinnati just down the road from General Electric.
So we serviced a lot of the vehicles for those people that worked there as engineers.
They're very good at being engineers. And I hate to say this, but my son is also a
software engineer for a major car company as well. So I teach him stuff. Engineers
are a certain skill set. And it's not necessarily a hands-on skill set. It's a different type of
skill set, not saying that they don't have value, but they just, they're on a different,
as you pointed, a different level, a different way of thinking. And I think that's a big part of it.
Now, I got to say, I've not, I've never was a slow mechanic, but I was never the fastest
mechanic either. So that sounds to me like we're doing diagnostics. I can't see a lot of
dyke, but then like, if there was no dyke, I got right in line with the rest of the pigs at the
trough and I took whatever I could. And if it was a steering rack in a caravan, I talked about
that all the time or whatever the recall, I got her done. But if the car came back, like,
I saw guys put complete transmissions in because they were in limp mode, they wouldn't shift to
the second. It's an electrical problem. It's a rotten wire in the harness. I would fix those cars.
And then I would like, it doesn't start and it's got a new battery and new starter and I would fix
those cars. Or it just went that way because when I started out at straight time of the dealer,
they handed me everybody's comebacks. And I worked second shift at a dealer where second shift brought
in, I don't want to say less skill guys, but they weren't like Chrysler training guys, they weren't
Chrysler certified guys. They were just like, second shift was a lot of oil change, a lot of tires,
a lot of brakes. And once in a while, a check engine line will come in and they'll be like,
give it to Jeff. You know, he's straight time, these guys, I need to get this work done.
Until it was like, oh, this is a Chrysler DRB3 and I'm looking at this, I can do this with it and I
can do that with it. And then I started to learn how to navigate the service information and how
to work the scan tool. Until before long, I was doing like, not really advanced stuff, but the
guys that had worked there like five, six years were like, I didn't know that could be done that
way. Yeah, I can just reach over here with this tool and turn this on. And I just cut my diag time
down to one third. Like you would have taken it off and maybe looked at it. And I'm like, how can I
make that work with the tool? You're following the roadmap. And then I got into flashing at the
OE level with the DRB3 and then the Y tech and all that kind of stuff. And before long, I was like,
that's just what cars back again for check-ins, like give it to Jeff. And until it burnt me up,
it really did where I was so frustrated with because I felt like I was always behind trying to
hit 50 a week or 40 or whatever that the top gravy sucking guy was hitting 60 routinely. I'm just
trying to get to him because we're all paid the same per hour. So I'm trying to get that kind of
paycheck because I want that truck he drives. I don't want to drive my old Cavalier forever. I'd
like to be able to make a truck payment, right? Good point. So and it was, but I was always behind
the ball trying to get this done and behind this done, get this done. And until I had a service
manager, so retail drivability and electrical paid time and a half for every hour you're on it.
Now, if the car came back, you owed them an hour right away, unpaid. And I signed up for that.
Then my paycheck started to get on level with the guys who were producing a bunch of hours.
That was the only way they incentivized that Eric in the dealership for guys to want to go
start doing what Jeff could do. Because otherwise, why would you? They saw me. I was a gay keeper.
I was like, guys, come over here. I got a car and I'd be like, get the fuck away from me.
Like, you know, I'm not going to tell you how to fix that. Oh, you tuned it up and it only needed
a DGR valve? How much did that tune up pay? Three hours? How much does this ER pay? 0.6?
FU. You know, that was the kind of where I was at. And it wasn't a good place to be. But I defend
myself in the sense that that's what that culture made me. I agree with that. I'm not proud of it.
There's a flat rate culture, just like you said. And I think that that is probably the biggest
problem with it. But I wonder if that goes away, if you take the flat rate system away,
because you're still going to have people that are angry and not happy with their job or the work.
So that was going to lean to my next question. Do you think that flat rate really needs to go
away in the industry? Because you like there's on the fence, it's a big hot button topic about
like, yeah, it is. And with good reason, because there's two sides to it, obviously,
because on one side of it, you've got the kid on the phone that's sitting there for 45 minutes on
the phone and you're getting no work out of them. Well, how do you get work out of them? Well,
you're only going to get paid if you're doing something, right? Not standing there. You're
hourly, because if you're hourly, then you have the quote unquote privilege to stand there on your
phone forever and ever. But at the same time, if you're new and you're trying to bank flat rate
and you don't know anything, and you get into a car and you get over your head, and the guy that
can give you help says, get out of me. Get out of here. Touch me. Get out of my toolbox. So,
I mean, that's that's a really difficult environment that I think you're just going to create more
of you in that situation because that's the learned behavior. Oh, okay. Well, I can be salty if I'm
working hard and not being paid right. Yeah. And I'm just going to make another me. I don't think
that that's a solution. And as far as whether flat rate has anything to do with that or not,
I don't think it does. I think either way, if you're new, you're going to have trouble, you know,
figuring it out. And but I also think you should be making the effort. I don't think you should
be standing there on your phone for half an hour for doing whatever. If you're looking up how to
fix something, if you're watching Eric the Car Guy videos, great. Yeah. But if you're not doing your
job and you're there to do the job, and that's the business. Okay. That's what I think that
you forget as a technician is that it's a business. And that business is about customers,
ultimately, in my mind. And if you're not taking care of those customers, you're kind of just taking
their money and screwing them over. And in my mind, that's not right. So whether you're doing it at
flat rate, whether you're doing it hourly, I think the important thing is that you take care of the
customer. Now, how you handle your employees to get that done is how you handle your employees to
get that done. But technicians got to work. And owners got to respect the technicians and pay them
accordingly. How that happens. I don't know. I love that. So what, you know, we'll wrap this up.
What can we expect to see from you coming up? I would very much like to be posting regular
videos again. Now that I've got all of my tools under one roof, I really don't have an excuse
anymore. And I think I'm in a place where I've got my head right. And I really like where I live now.
And I want to stay there. So I'm motivated to keep the paycheck coming. Right. So and then,
again, my focus is always going to be on how can I help that person? How can I help that person
understand that problem? You know, it's fix the car themselves. More importantly, understand it.
If they understand it, I think they can fix it. And if they can't fix it, they understand why.
Good. That's what I'm that's what I'm doing on social media. What do you like to watch if anything?
I don't know. No, well, I okay, okay, I can't say that I don't because I do find myself scrolling
through Instagram watching people fabricate things. Okay. I want to be fabricator. I wish I was good
with metal like I see the people that I watch on some of these things like on these reels and
like that. I wish I could do some of the stuff they do with metal. I would that's what I would
aspire to. I guess I guess what I would say to that is I look for things that would inspire me.
And those things are the people that can like do things with metal that I am in awe of. And
sometimes you see them at shows like this, you see those kind of skills on display. Yeah. And I
would love to learn how to do that. I would love that. That's what I was always amazed with my
father going back. He could take a piece of flat sheet metal and form a quarter panel patch
out of that had complex curves and from a piece of tape that he might have put on the outside of
it. An old propane cylinder and you know, a sheet metal break that he bent and all this kind of
stuff. He fabricated all himself and I was just like, I didn't appreciate that at the time. And
now I wish I did because I realized now my dad, he was an artist and we're all artists in some
way. I think and I kind of have to be a little bit wired for that because you want to take something
and not, yes, sometimes we just install broken part and we have fixed car. But sometimes we
get to really do some really cool things and fabricate some cool stuff or we need to, we get
to go down a completely different path that nobody else saw to solve a problem. Not still
creation as well. And I think that's really cool. And I think we need to in the industry to get back
to that and celebrate a little bit more. So celebrating it. Yes. I just wish we had the time
for it. And there's, there's so little of that though, like say you're working on an EV. I was
talking to the guys here a little bit ago. They didn't even get dirty. Yeah. You know, so where's
the craftsmanship in that? It really is parts replacement. Do you watch Rich Rebuilds? No,
I do not. Okay, I should. You and I, you and I, when we, when we go from here, we'll share some
some links with you that I think you really enjoy. Oh, I know of him. Yeah. I just, I just haven't
watched it. Okay. He's, he's, he's one of these guys that it's like he's, he's looking at alternative
ways to, to get to the same result. A fixed EV, but he does it in some really cool ways.
And I, and I appreciate that. I cheer for the underdog, right? What do you watch?
I made up with this car stuff still. So I watch you. I watch scanner Daner. Thank you.
I watch Royalty Auto Service. I watch Eric Oh, Eric Oh and Ivan from Pine Hollow.
Yeah. They're real technicians. Brian's, you know, Brian's mobile. I, I'd be honest.
Love Brian. I haven't watched him as often as I should. I don't know how much he's putting
out these days. Yeah. Like it's, it seems to be like we're some of the old guard and some of
the new guard and we're getting some mingling, but it's tough. It really is a lot of the,
It's really tough. You know, so, and then, yeah, I enjoy watching the, the guys create stuff.
You know, I was a hot rodder. That's what got me into this. So when I see somebody at a hot rod
shop, take something, you know, like on Motor Trend TV and they dragged it out from the mud
somewhere and 27 months later, it's a, you know, a resurrected Studebaker pickup truck. And the,
you know, I'm just, I'm still eight up by that. I'm still eight up by it. Same. It, it, it doesn't
go away for me because I see that craftsmanship back in there. And that was what got me into,
that's what I wanted to do. And then the industry got ahold of me and said, no,
there's no money there. Go do this. And I went, okay, I'm going to go do that.
I think we followed similar paths in that regard. Yeah. I really do.
So the, the peach appearances and the chip foos and those kind of guys,
they were my, they were my inspiration. But I went a different way and I'm not sorry that I went
a different way. Like Stacy David, you know, we talked about him. There's so many guys that
just had a profound influence on me. And I, I wish that, I mean, they've been given a lot of
credit and they've been, they know the impact they've had, but I see that going away because I,
I don't see the young people necessarily falling in love with the EV idea of a car.
It just becomes, it's an appliance to them. It's a cell phone with wheels.
And whereas chip and all those guys have always been about the way it sounds and smells and feels
and all that, that's a different level. It's an experience. Yes. And I believe that a Tesla
is a very impressive machine. It's an experience. It's not the same experience, but it is an experience.
And that's what I, I think if we could get back to selling the experience to our young people,
we'd get some more interest in this industry. But this has been, this has been awesome.
You have a guy that I've been wanting to talk to for a really long time. You got to have a big
influence on me and an impact. And, you know, we've gone different ways, you know, and I just
want to say that like you have really shaped some people's careers. And that's, that's a testament
to you. I'm glad to have you here. I'm glad to have you back and keep doing what you're doing,
man. And, you know, if you walk away from it all tomorrow and you don't put out another video,
you have nothing to worry about or feel sorry for. You have done more than most of us ever will.
Appreciate that very much. I just want to say thank you, man. So thank you. Everybody,
thank you for listening. We'll see you all again soon. Stay dirty.
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.
About this episode
Eric the Car Guy joins Jeff on The Jaded Mechanic Podcast to discuss his journey through the automotive industry, touching on technician burnout and the challenges of flat rate pay. Eric shares his experiences from working at dealerships to creating his own successful YouTube channel, emphasizing the importance of mentorship and understanding in the trade. They explore the impact of electric vehicles on the industry and the need for a shift towards apprenticeship programs to better prepare new technicians. The conversation is both candid and insightful, offering a unique perspective on the evolving automotive landscape.
Original notes
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In this episode, Jeff Compton sits down with the one... the only.... Eric the Car Guy! His YouTube Channel has impacted millions of technicians over the years and one of those was the host of this podcast...Jeff. Today, they talk about Eric's story from dealership technician to YouTuber, highlighting the setbacks that shaped his career and his drive to empower others. They also discuss the challenges facing today's automotive industry, including the need for mentorship and apprenticeship programs, common misconceptions about flat rate pay, and the importance of valuing technicians as professionals.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction – Eric’s Early Shop Life & Pay Structures
02:05 Flat Rate, Shop Culture, and Getting Fired
07:36 The Legend Coupe Story & Being Let Go Over $900
13:00 Teaching Himself Video and Moving into YouTube
19:37 Giving Away the “Secrets” & Empowering Customers
24:13 Burnout, Losing the Shop, and Starting Over
33:35 Dealing with Haters & The Power of the Audience
39:18 Building a Community & Inspiring the Next Generation
46:05 Apprenticeships, Mentorship, and Industry Change
54:10 The Problem with Flat Rate Pay & Technician Expectations
1:02:30 Self-Taught vs. Formal Mentorship in Automotive
1:10:03 What’s Next for Eric The Car Guy? Future Content & Inspiration
1:15:54 Final Reflections and Advice for Aspiring Techs
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The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Jeff Compton
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78:13