0:00
/
0:00
Flat Rate EXPOSES Lazy Techs and that Scares the Auto Repair Industry
Flat Rate EXPOSES Lazy Techs and that Scares the Auto Repair Industry
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
About this episode
A deep dive into the automotive repair industry's challenges, focusing on the flat rate pay system and its impact on technicians' mental health and job satisfaction. Jeff and guest Curtis Gardner discuss the importance of valuing skilled technicians, the struggles of working in a dealership environment, and the need for better compensation and support. They explore the differences between good and bad technicians, the pressures of flat rate pay, and the consequences of losing experienced staff like 'Jim.' The episode emphasizes the importance of work-life balance and the need for a cultural shift within the industry to retain talent.
Topics:
flat rate pay
mental health
work-life balance
technician value
job satisfaction
dealership challenges
employee retention
training and development
career transitions
industry culture
Like the show? Show your support by using our sponsors.
Promotive can help you find your dream job. Touch HERE to see open jobs.
Need to update your shop systems and software? Try Tekmetric HERE
Wanna go to Tekmetric's first ever industry training event Tektonic? Register HERE
Curtis Gardner is an Audi Master Guild technician. Today he joins Jeff to talk about his perspective on flat-rate pay, emphasizing both its financial upsides and its negative impact on technician mental health and work-life balance. They also share stories of the challenges and drawbacks of dealer politics, as well as the undervaluing of skilled problem-solvers—known as the "Jims" of the shop—who often keep shops running but aren’t compensated accordingly.
00:00 Chrysler: Embracing Opportunity for Growth
15:41 Rear Alignment Challenges and Costs
28:59 Flat Rate vs. Guaranteed Pay Debate
39:23 Prioritize Addressing Urgent Issues
48:11 Auto Repair Estimate Dilemma
54:00 Unwanted Vehicle Inspection Alerts
01:04:53 Need for Persistent Problem Solvers
01:18:40 Entrepreneurial Journey: From Gym to Business
01:24:38 Technician Money Management Struggles
01:41:41 "Advice for Unfulfilled Tech Workers"
01:49:23 Advocating Conversations for Technicians
01:56:35 Balancing Work and Family Struggles
Follow/Subscribe to the show on social media!
TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffcompton7
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheJadedMechanic
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091347564232
Filter:
|
Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Master Tech
"...ice. Now he's an excellent mechanic as a Chrysler master tech. And he come from Toyota and he said the same thi..."
Car
Toyota Corolla
"and then I drive, I actually drive a Corolla right now, but my wife has the deal"
Chrysler: Embracing Opportunity for Growth
Rear Alignment Challenges and Costs
Flat Rate vs. Guaranteed Pay Debate
Prioritize Addressing Urgent Issues
Auto Repair Estimate Dilemma
Unwanted Vehicle Inspection Alerts
Need for Persistent Problem Solvers
Entrepreneurial Journey: From Gym to Business
Technician Money Management Struggles
"Advice for Unfulfilled Tech Workers"
Advocating Conversations for Technicians
Balancing Work and Family Struggles
Select text to request an explanation
Hey, it's Jeff here.
Let me tell you about something that's changing the game in our industry.
Promotive, automotive recruiting.
Every shop says they're the best, right?
But here's the deal.
Good isn't good enough anymore.
That's where Promotive comes in.
They're not just recruiters, they're matchmakers,
and I've seen firsthand how they're shaking things up.
For techs like us, they're the real deal.
Actually listening to what we need
and helping us find shops where we're valued, supported, and can grow.
And for shops, they just don't throw resumes at the wall to see what sticks.
They dig deep to understand the shop's culture, story, and goals.
Then help build teams that actually work.
Promotive is bridging the gaps and making this industry feel exciting again.
They're helping shops shine and they're making sure technicians thrive.
It's not just about finding a job or filling positions.
It's about creating something better for all of us.
Let Promotive match you with the perfect shop, or if you're an owner,
use Promotive to find the best tech for your shop.
Hit up the link in the show notes below, or go to gopromotive.com backslash Jeff.
I would never be in the position I'm in financially if it wasn't for flat rate.
But would I enjoy a base, or would I enjoy some hourly pay,
maybe one week or two weeks when it's slow,
or I'm not feeling like working tons of hours?
Yes, I would enjoy that.
Ultimately, I think it might be hard for some people to swallow is that
good techs will be good techs.
Bad techs will be bad techs.
And if you give incentive, a lot of places will be surprised
that their work is going to stay the same.
Those lazy techs are going to stand out and they're going to be exposed.
And I think that's what a lot of people are afraid of.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jade
Mechanic podcast. It's another hot, swultery summer night.
And I'm sitting here with again, drumroll ready, another Canadian.
I know you guys are getting so sick of that.
But I mean, hey, I mean, we got to do something in this country
to keep us all with a positive outlook with the way things are going.
But I'm sitting here with a young gentleman named Curtis Gardner
who reached out to me and did a really cool thing.
He kind of an episode we did with David Klein, he posted to his Instagram
saying that everybody is in the automotive sector needs to hear this episode.
And I thought that was really cool.
And I'd seen a little bit of Curtis before, but I hadn't seen a ton.
And now I'm a big fan.
So Curtis, thanks for coming here tonight, man.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me on.
Yeah. So how long have you been at this game?
Uh, I'm just entering my 16th year.
Wow. Wow.
And you work as an Audi tech?
Yeah, I'm nine years as an Audi technician.
Just hit Master Guild at the beginning of this year.
Congratulations.
That's that's quite an accomplishment.
So they're not a favorite brand of mine to work on by any stretch.
So my hat's off to you.
You have a lot of my respect there.
I think they're like anything else, right?
You get used to it and then it's, you know, it seems familiar and doesn't seem so.
But I mean, you know how some of the people like talk online, right?
They just Volkswagen and Audi.
They can't, they can't wrap their head around some of the engineering ideas.
So yeah, I was at Toyota for six years before and everyone told me,
Oh, you're going to hate it.
It's going to be awful.
And yeah, I mean, it was challenging for about a month or two.
And then it was, like you said, it's a car.
No, that's that's that's a funny move to make from Toyota to Audi.
Because I mean, I can remember back in the day, and as long as I've been doing this,
some guys that like our Toyota dealer technicians are, you know, work on a lot of Toyotas.
Absolutely love that.
There's like the brand used to be so good.
It made so much money.
They didn't break like the warranty times were awesome.
The retail times are even better.
Like, why would you leave Toyota and go to Audi?
I mean, Toyota is great.
I love Toyota, but I'm also trying to make some money.
And Toyotas are so good that they don't break as often.
And they're not as generous with their labor times and their warranty is not as generous.
So I, you know, it's funny.
I heard you talking about your master level pay.
And it was like, I got, I was a master at Toyota and Audi offered me the same pay to start at Audi.
Yeah.
Well, and it's so funny.
I can still remember our local Lexus dealer, which I'll call Lexus and Toyota one and the
same because in our local area, that's the same owner, same owner owns both of them.
And they were trying to find a technician and I was laid off with COVID
and they called and offered me a job.
And it was essentially the same per flat rate hour as what I was getting paid hourly
at the shop that I had been laid off from.
And I kind of laughed at the guy and I said, are you serious right now?
Like this is what you're offering to go work flat rate.
Yeah.
You make lots of hours.
And I'm like, it's Lexus.
Like it's a, it's a premier brand, you know.
And I said, that's for making lots of hours.
I said, I know your former shop foreman.
I know the guy that left.
You got none of the guys in the shop are making great hours.
So, you know, thanks for the offer, but I think I'll just pass politely.
Now that's three years ago.
I don't know if it's doing better, but I mean, I can remember, you know,
10 years ago on Facebook, everybody seemed to love working at Toyota.
And yeah, it's, I mean, I honestly love working on Toyota's.
They're great.
They're easy to work on.
They're, you have customers that will drive 300 or 400,000 miles
and you get a full life out of a car.
Right.
It's great.
But also want to make more money as a technician and kind of just
understanding that Toyota is a great brand to work for,
but Audi has a little bit more potential when it comes to making more money.
Right.
Stuff like that.
Right.
Wow.
So let's back up then.
Is that your whole kind of career so far?
You ever do a stint in the independent side or aftermarket side?
No, I started at a quick car doing oil changes.
That's about as independent as it's gotten.
And then started at Toyota, not very long after that,
maybe a six months or so and doing oil changes
and just ever since then been in dealerships.
Yeah. How'd you get into the industry?
You have like just, do you have family that's been a mechanic
or were you always taking stuff apart as a kid like all of us?
I'm always been into Legos.
I think that started with Legos for me as maybe it did
with every other mechanical technician out there.
Yeah. Legos or I used to hear a lot
like model planes and model cars, model airplanes, that kind of stuff.
I think now it's kind of the RC thing.
A lot of technicians seem to have been like RC guys.
I was an RC guy, but I put a lot of car models together as a kid
and a lot of airplane models and played with Lego too,
like Lego, Sandbox, anything that like, you know,
yeah, I could get my hands on because like I could read
and I like reading, but I always was more interested
in building something than just reading something.
You know what I mean?
Yeah. I tried college for semester
and quickly learned that it wasn't for me.
Yeah.
And then I, my mom told me I had to get a job.
So I was like, well, I'll try here doing change in oil.
And it was just, I wouldn't say it was rough,
but it was just changing oil, nothing crazy.
And one of the technicians there went to UTI.
And so I kind of heard from him, it was a good place to go.
And I was like, cool.
So I ended up going to UTI.
And kind of looking back, UTI costs a lot of money.
It's a good program, but it's expensive.
And so some school or some dealerships require you to have schooling.
So it was important for that to get into like a
premier dealership, if you will, to have that schooling.
So that kind of helped me.
However, looking back, there's probably definitely some cheaper
ways to go about getting that training.
Yeah.
Now, what campus do you go to?
I think, it's funny.
I think you said, I'm actually from Houston.
Oh, you're not Canadian.
Yeah, no, I was gonna,
I didn't want to interrupt you in the middle of that,
but I was like, oh no, I'm in Texas.
Okay, I'll get Braxton into that.
Because I was like, UTI, you'd be the first Canadian I've known
then that went to UTI.
I'm sure there's probably a couple.
But yeah, Houston, shit.
I shouldn't even talk about the heat then,
because you guys hear right in it.
Yeah, I was going to say, it's like today,
it was like 98 degrees, full humidity.
Very cool.
Well, I mean, I've heard lots of,
I've heard lots of good and bad.
I can remember, like lots of us,
I can remember watching TV as a teenager
and seeing ads for UTI and all those,
those kind of college programs and stuff.
And yet I talked to a lot of technicians now
that went through it and were like, man,
it was a lot of money.
It was really a lot of money.
And it helped me necessarily maybe get my resume looked at,
but a lot of them didn't take,
I think they come out of there going,
I thought I knew a lot.
And then when I hit the shop floor,
I really realized I didn't know a whole lot.
There was still so much more to learn.
So is that kind of what you thought?
Yeah, I think UTI does a fantastic job
of teaching you how each system works,
the basics of each system and how it works.
But they do it on a very generic level with,
I don't know, Chevy's or Nissan's,
whatever they can get into the shop.
And then when you get into a dealership,
you get that hands-on experience
of what it's really like to apply those things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you learn the nuances and the,
you know, like I always come back to evap, right?
Like when I was working at the Chrysler dealer,
like their evap system was like nothing else
that was being out at the time, you know,
like they were using a pump.
I don't say nothing else,
but in the domestic side, nothing else.
You know, everybody had a vent valve and a purge solenoid
and they had this pump.
And everybody was like, huh?
You know, and yet when we worked in it,
we knew it back, you know, forward.
And then when they go to the ESIM thing,
which is now even more common in the industry,
thanks to the influence of Chrysler
and the European stuff that's probably
really influencing Chrysler.
Now it's commonplace, right?
But I mean, I was lucky to be with Chrysler
because they were doing things that were different.
And that's what I liked about it.
And I just liked the brand,
but you know, I can remember I had a,
my actually a good friend of mine,
a good apprentice at the time he came as an apprentice.
Now he's an excellent mechanic as a Chrysler master tech.
And he come from Toyota and he said the same thing,
like they didn't hardly break, you know, they were just,
but he was held back at the Toyota store
because he was kind of held to like a C-Tech level, like,
you know, and he wanted to move up.
And there was no opportunity for him to move up.
The shop was very stuck in.
It's like, we have a guy that does this
and a guy that does that and we have a core group,
like you're going to be our old change guy.
And Dave was like trying to get, you know, to that next level.
And thankfully we were lucky that he landed in my,
you know, dealership and he's now an excellent technician.
So share that.
Yeah, I've been, thankfully I've been fortunate
to be a bumper to bumper for both Toyota and Audi.
So I've, and I don't know if Audi even does specialties.
Most automotive conferences, unfortunately,
only focus on one side of the shop.
But Tectonic 2026 presented by Tectometric 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.
And you don't need to be a Tectometric customer to qualify.
Hit up the link in the show notes below
and check out Tectonic 2026 register now
while you still can to get the early bird pricing.
But learning the whole car has helped me so much
rather than just some of the like Ford
and Chevrolet stuff out there
where they're learning just transmissions or whatever.
Yeah.
What, what, what do you remember about your first week at Audi?
The timing chains are on the back.
There's not very many inverse motors.
They're all trans, or sorry, it's like they're, they're inverse or
transverse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying.
Yep.
Now that I'm, there's no transactors.
How about that?
There we go.
Say that that way.
Everything, even the like four cylinders and stuff like
that, everything is mounted transversely.
So it's, it was a big change because when you have to
to mess with the timing chains, you take off the transmission.
And so I was definitely challenged with that.
I was also challenged with they don't require you to lift
the cars up and drain the oil with the drain plug
because they have evacuation ports.
Right.
It was strange because that Toyota, that's all you did is lift
you lift the Toyota truck up to do an oil change for 0.5
and you're like, oh, this is just the way it is.
Now you get 0.5 for just sucking it out from the top.
Yeah.
You can walk away and do something else at the same time,
right?
Yeah, where's, you know, yeah, let's put a truck up and oh,
look, it has got extra skid plates.
Well, that's not going to pay extra time, you know,
like we're going to have to like, I mean, I don't know
how many, you know, bolts you've had in the skid plates
break down in Houston.
But up here, like, it's like, oh shoot, you know,
nobody ever lubricates some bolts before they put back in.
There's no any season and all of a sudden you're doing
it all change and, you know, you're fighting to get
skid plate bolts for half an hour like it sucks.
I've been blessed to not have to deal with that.
We don't have even the cars that come down from the north
from the north are they're still in decent shape
compared to some of the horror stories that I hear.
So I'll do control arm bushings and everything just
comes out smooth and everyone on Instagram is like,
I hate you.
This is off.
I'm like, this is normal for me.
I love it.
And then so I've kind of learned is that as a technician,
it's so much about if you want to make a ton of hours
about where you're at to sound so silly.
But up north, those same control on bushings
are going to pay you this.
And but you have to get the torch out.
You have to get the rust penetrant out.
It's going to take you twice as long.
But then down here, I do the same job in 25%
of the time because of just my environment.
Right.
Now, here's a question for you.
Do you think then like that warranty should pay more
for certain climates?
And even if it's not warranty, do you feel that like
it'd be justified to say somebody up north
wants to charge six hours to do the say the control arm job?
I'm just throwing numbers around, right?
Like I don't know what the control and bushing.
And say you guys get three.
Do you think that's fair?
Do you think that's a bunch of BS?
Oh, well, I think warranty could pay more everywhere.
Right.
We have now it's not a ton, but if you run the time under warranty
and you take the proper documentation of it,
you can get paid anywhere from like five tenths
to two and a half hours extra for seized bolts, broken bolts.
So you're not making a ton of time on it.
You can't really beat the book time.
However, you can get paid for it,
at least through Audi warranty.
Right.
And I have heard of guys charging an extra hour or two
for seized bolts.
And I'm like, that's fine with me.
Because I'd rather take the lower labor rate
than have to fight that bolt.
Well, it's not it's not worth it.
It's just a pain.
And I've heard people in the shop
get like maybe one or two pinch bolts stuck
and they'll spend an all day on it.
I'm like, no, no, thank you.
You can pay me triple what I'm getting.
And no, thank you.
Yeah, we just find another one yet.
There's a different fish for sure.
We struggle the most.
I think we're up here with alignments.
That's the biggest thing like it's like,
it's really hard to do some rear tow or rear tow.
Rear adjustment period on a lot of this stuff
when it's like, I'll say five years old,
you go in to try to do the rear adjustments
and the bolts are seized right in the bushings.
So if you get in there and try to like,
you know, move it,
you're tearing the bushings right out of it.
So sure you get your numbers to come green.
But guess what?
But you know, so everybody talks about like,
you know, the tow and go thing or nobody does a,
you can open a can of worms up here,
trying to do a rear adjustment on a lot of stuff.
If it's never been done and it's five years old,
I'll tell you that right now.
And I'm talking like,
you can really, really get yourself into some problems.
Not in line that you're going to do in an hour.
I'll tell you that right now.
And you're going to cost a lot more parts
and a lot more, you know, it just,
it's the snowball, right?
Like you just, and the customer is like, well, like,
why is it so seized?
Well, we never did alignment because, you know,
you got 100,000 miles out of that set of tires
and now we're putting new tires on
and we're going to line the whole car.
Well, guess what?
Everything back there is all seized up.
So we're big proponents for rust underproving
because it does help.
It really does help.
Does it actually keep the car from rusting away?
And a little bit,
but it does help with getting some of the fasteners loose.
And that's the biggest thing.
Like, like, I hate,
hate when you go to take, like,
the Volkswagen struts, for example,
if you've ever had to do one,
the Jedis and stuff,
like where the bolts go down through
and then not as capturing them on the strut,
almost every one of them up here.
Like it just spins.
It just breaks off and you're like,
you know, now you're getting in there
with a torch and a grinder to get the,
the nut off so you can get the strutter there.
Whereas like I talked to guys and I'm like,
oh yeah, I just spray a little bit of PBD on there
and then it comes right out.
And it's like, must be nice.
Yeah, I just, I don't even,
the PV, I don't even have to use that half the time.
So it's, I hear you say that.
I'm like, whew, I dodged a bullet just happened
to end up down here in Houston.
Just some simple stuff like that.
What do you find,
do you find a difference between the Toyota customer
and the Audi customer?
Are they mostly the same for you?
I'd say there's a big difference.
The part, the price of the car is a starting point.
Yeah.
But there is plenty of Audi customers
that maybe don't expect to get some of the maintenance bills
or the repair bills.
I mean, the oil change is 200 ish dollars
depending on what motor you have.
And it's, I just, they're like, whoa, $200.
I'm like, you bought an Audi.
Sorry, I don't, I mean,
luckily I don't have to talk to them about that.
But I get it.
I mean, it's expensive.
Sure. Yeah.
And so that and then, you know,
anything from the repairs,
Audi's don't last as long.
I mean, you get an Audi over 100,000 miles.
That's a fossil.
And so you see that and you're like,
these customers don't,
like the cars are not lasting as long.
They're breaking.
The repairs get more expensive.
And so there's that.
But I will say is the cars that are between that zero
to 100,000 miles.
I mean, there's definitely customers
that will take more care of their cars
and spend the money
or they have more extended warranty.
Right.
They'll spend the money on the extended warranty
versus just, oh, I'll be fine
because the repairs are so expensive.
Yeah.
Now, what's your favorite kind of,
do you like to do Heavy Line
or do you like to do Diag?
Or you do it all and love it all or?
I've tried to be,
I focus on the things that no one else wants to do.
Okay.
Now I enjoy the gravy.
I enjoy the suspension
or the services,
but I found my sweet spot
in doing evaporators.
Okay.
Because nobody,
well now people just kind of learn from me,
but when I first started out,
he no one liked to do evaporators.
No one liked to do interior work
like center frames, all that.
So I would pride myself
in learning how to do it,
learning how to do it fast.
And the whole shop would give me
all their interior work.
And so I just be like,
Hey, do you want to do this?
I'm like, yeah, sure.
And then so I'll always find ways
to turn a bad job into a good one
if I do it enough times.
That's awesome.
Those squeaks and rattle,
Diag cars,
I mean, you're never winning on those,
but the interior work,
the timing covers.
So I spoke about the timing covers
in the rear.
People hate doing those.
So I don't want to do that.
Although I'll do it.
I'll do it.
It pays 10 to 15 hours.
I can do it in a day
or day and change.
I'll do it.
And so that's the biggest thing for me
is just Audi has a lot of jobs
that a lot of people don't want to do.
So that would be my favorite one
because it keeps me busy.
Is that paying like 15 hours under warranty?
Is that paying 15 hours retail
when the customer comes in?
Depending on the model.
Some of the ones pay 15 under warranty
and then some of the ones pay CP
about the same.
It just depends on the engine
and the model of vehicle.
Right.
Right.
We've got a,
I think it's an A4.
I don't know.
It might be a 10 year old A4
sitting at the shop right now.
And it's got the PCV system
blown out of it.
Right.
Which is common.
And then it's taken out the rear main too.
And we're not even gonna,
like,
I work at a used car lot.
And we took it in on trade from a customer.
And of course the salesman got really,
you know,
because it's,
I think it maybe has 70,000 miles on it.
So he's thinking,
oh, this is a cream puff.
This can be great.
At first I thought it was like a bell
eyler noise.
And then that whistle would set up
after about 10 minutes.
And I'm like,
they had me come out and look at it.
And they're like,
can you tell us what eyler that is?
And I'm like, it's not the eyler.
I'm like,
did anybody put this on the hoist?
Look at it.
Nope.
Well, they put it on the hoist.
And of course the rear mains just puke in oil, eh?
So that's going to auction.
They're not,
they're not fixing it.
They're not gonna put all that into it.
And then try and put it back in on the lot to sell
because they made the mistake
they didn't realize what they're getting.
So,
but that was a funny one,
which is,
you know,
everything that is seemed so different.
The Chevy Cruises do it too, right?
Like then the Chevy Equatex
and they blow the PCV system
and then blows the rear main out.
So I mean,
you know,
such as I've seen Mercedes do it now.
It seems everybody's systems now
are doing something similar.
So it's just again,
when you get into the labor,
right?
And what's it take to actually repair?
You know,
I think the Equatex is like
an eight hour job to do that repair.
Whereas the Audi is twice as much.
So, you know,
what are you driving?
You're driving an Audi?
Okay.
Should have the extra money.
No big deal.
I've seen people
that would rather spend
that type of money on a car
than have a car payment.
Yeah.
And when I see that on an Audi,
as a technician,
I'm kind of like,
Oh, cool, the hours.
But then at the same time,
it's like,
like,
I don't know if
I don't know if I would do that.
I'll tell the advisor,
maybe tell them to take that $5,000
and don't spend it on the car.
Now, unless they're like
for sure in a bind
where they can't,
you know,
get another car or something.
But if someone's trying to spend
a bunch of money on an old car,
that's not worth it.
I'll be like,
just tell them.
Just be a little honest
and just tell them,
Hey, if you can use this money
in a different place,
I would recommend it
because this car is
just going to give you a ton
more problems in the future.
Now, let me ask you about that
because
like,
do you think it's
what makes them so failure prone?
Is it just poor engineering
or is it just like
build quality?
Like what happens?
Because we hear that
whether it's like,
you know,
they'll do that repair
where they've got a PCV issue
as an example.
And then next month,
something happens
with the electrical side of it.
You know,
whatever.
Like is it just junky parts
or water leaks?
I know it's a big one
that takes out a lot
of the electronic components.
But
like, is that what it where?
I think it's
a combination of everything
you just mentioned.
Okay.
I mean, you could tell it
when you get a hold
of some of the plastic pieces
on the engines
or even in the inside.
It's just seems that
after that
10 year, 100,000 mile mark,
those plastic pieces become brittle.
The components aren't as strong.
The way that they use
their gaskets
and their seals
doesn't seem like maybe
the longest term
type of thing.
They use a lot of
sealants
versus gaskets.
So I've noticed
that the sealants
will give way
if we don't have any head gasket leaks.
I mean, you might have an engine
every now and then
rarely with a head gasket,
but it's usually like an issue
from like an overheat
overheating
or a failed thermostat.
There's not like, oh, my head gasket's leaking coolant
just because of normal
driving or leaking oil.
So anything that has a sealant
is usually where we have problems
on oil leaks.
Okay.
I think the plastic components
are just built a little bit
cheaper.
Yeah.
The cars are great.
When I always tell people
if you want to drive an Audi,
drive an Audi under warranty
because in that period of time,
it's fantastic.
It's a beautiful car.
It's super high tech.
They're fun to drive.
They feel super sporty.
But once you get out of that warranty,
it just gets a little bit more expensive
every time you come to the dealership.
And so I've noticed
as they get older,
they get more expensive
and they start to get a little bit
less reliable.
Yeah.
Do you drive one?
I drive them
because we get a good deal on them.
Okay.
All right.
I wouldn't drive one otherwise.
It's a lease deal.
So I drive one
because we get a good deal on the leases.
But if I had to own one,
I would drive a Toyota.
It's not like you got like a 12-year-old
A-series sitting at home
that you're like,
these are pride and joy.
You're not that crazy.
No, it's funny.
We actually have a Q6,
which is an electric car.
Okay.
And they give you stupid deals.
It's almost impossible to refuse.
So we get the deal
and then I drive,
I actually drive a Corolla right now,
but my wife has the deal
and she drives the Q6 around.
Right on.
Right on.
That'd be a fun car to drive, I think.
That'd be,
I think it'd be pretty neat.
It's like a,
it's like the Porsche McCons,
the little super sporty EV,
it's fast, all-wheel drive.
It's fun to drive,
but it can be,
I mean, you got the electric range.
You can't go anywhere long distance.
You're stuck.
Yeah.
I mean,
and I'm not a proponent of the EV,
it's just I drove an old boss at a Tesla Y
and I drove that thing
and I got to say it's fun to drive.
Like they really are the instant throttle
and the whole thing,
like the quiet.
I really like that.
But I mean,
yeah, he couldn't even drive,
you know, two hours
without having to pull over,
two hours on highway
without having to pull over
and charge the stupid thing.
Like it's just ridiculous.
Up here in the wintertime,
your range is cut in half.
Up here in the summertime,
if you run it with the AC on,
your range is cut in half.
Like it's just,
they're not,
Canada and Tesla don't,
you know,
we sell a lot of them up here,
but a lot of people
that really enjoy them up here
live in one of the bigger cities
where you can get to everything
you want to get to in 15 minutes.
You know,
I love working on EVs.
I just wish they paid a little bit better.
Yeah.
They're fine to work on the technologies,
cool, the high voltage stuff
is a little dangerous-ish,
but it's really the way that they work
and the way that they have everything set up
and having the batteries,
fun to take it apart.
It's a big job.
Really interesting to me,
but then you just,
it's such a specific job that you can't,
I mean,
you're just barely breaking even on it.
So it's one of those things to,
if I'm making money,
I would like to avoid.
Now, what's kind of the,
like you seem to have a very good attitude
about you'll take some of the jobs
that nobody else wants to do
and become good at it,
which is awesome.
I mean, that's the kind of technician
I used to be
when I was at a dealer
and I enjoyed that.
But what's kind of the,
because I've seen your social media content
and I know you're kind of pushing
kind of in a similar vein
to what I'm doing, right?
You want to talk about the industry
and make the young people aware
of what it is and the opportunities
that are there for them.
But what's kind of some of the drawbacks
from working at the dealer
that you don't like?
The rules.
The rules.
That's going to be maybe more
of a personal preference.
There's a lot of politics sometimes.
And that's maybe more at a high level,
I think once you've been in
for 10, 15, 20 years
and you start to understand
how the dealership works
and the requirements and the numbers.
That's maybe more, like I said,
of personal preference.
The drawbacks.
I've never worked independent.
So it's comparably, I would say,
I don't really know besides that
because for me,
working on the same brand
and the same car is easy
because it's a lot of repeat repairs,
a lot of repeat processes.
So you might see the same problem
on so many cars.
It makes it a lot easier to diagnose
because you're going to check
that one thing first.
Yeah.
Well, for sure.
The politics is probably
my least favorite thing.
Now politics in terms of
how work gets dispatched
or politics in terms of like,
because I had an interesting
conversation with a gentleman
on TikTok just an hour ago
about the flat rate
versus the guarantee thing
in the shops.
And he's in a situation where
like his exposure to a lot
of the guys that he's seen
that have a guarantee
is that they become lazy
and complacent
and don't develop
and just sit around
and never push
to surpass 40 hours, right?
And I said,
you know,
and he says,
well, I think all those guys
are on a guarantee then
should get all of the comebacks
in the shop
and all the nightmare cars
because they've got a guarantee.
And I said,
oftentimes the guys that get
the guarantee are the guys
that were already getting
all that kind of work.
Like I know when I was
and I never had a guarantee
but I know that when
they knew that I was like
just a little bit better than,
you know,
some of the other ones at
Diag or,
you know,
I would take the time
to find the problem.
It just became
nature that I got more
of those cars.
Like, you know,
it was back three times
and the manager would walk out
and say,
hey, can you look at this
because, you know,
it's been bounced around
and it's the boomerang
and blah, blah, blah.
So I mean,
I kind of had that
succession.
So it's like chicken
or the egg rich
that came first, right?
That technician
that you might see
as complacent
and, you know,
is only working on his guarantee.
It might be because
that's the only way he feels
he's going to
bring it for his employer, right?
He's only going to show up
and be guaranteed
because they're going to make
sure that
they value him enough
to look after him.
And then the other guys
it's like, oh,
you know,
he never pushed his past 40.
Pushing past 40
all depends on what
work you're getting
is my opinion.
You know,
like,
is that your
politic kind of thing
is, you know,
you get a lot of harder jobs
to more skill to become.
We see that conversation
pop up all the time.
It's good.
It's a spicy topic,
as you know.
That's what we do here, Curtis.
I think
for me,
I'm in a fortunate situation
in my dealership
and with my group leader,
who is the dispatcher
for me
that he understands
where I'm at.
And when it's slow,
it can be a little frustrating.
But I'm also more
experienced enough
to know that everyone's
needs to eat.
So while I want to
make a ton of hours,
it's a guy next to me
is at 20 for the week.
It might suck
to give that good ticket
to him.
And I might be
frustrated with it
in a moment.
But I understand
bigger picture
is he's got his own things
to take care of.
So I think
five years ago,
my answer would be different.
I'd be like,
give me all the tickets.
And now I'm like,
okay,
I still want all the tickets
but I understand
why I can't have them.
That's not a big issue
for me, thankfully.
I think the politics
that I'm talking about
is maybe more
some of the hoops
that we need to jump through
and the requirements
by management.
Okay.
Break that down for me.
Safe place here.
Don't worry.
No, no, no.
I just want to make sure
that I'm saying in a way
that's not incorrect.
So
like there's a lot of things
that they'll add to our
ways of doing things.
Do this, do that.
Some of the
instruction that we receive
is a little bit gray
and then it gets
held against us
when we don't receive
or get the proper training
or the proper guidance.
It's more of stuff like that.
I think that for me,
that causes some issues
and not necessarily
in my case,
but what I see from other
technicians
and what I see on other teams
or in other shops
that bother me
is where there's not enough
training to show technicians
how to survive
on flat rate.
Yeah.
100%.
Sorry, cut you off.
No.
So it's like a leadership thing
as well as the politics of it
is everyone
is in the dealership
to make money.
And so
I think there just needs to be
some training
involved in how that happens.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of places
that don't have that.
So when you
bring that conversation up,
the excuses
that come out
about why they can't do it
and stuff like that,
it kind of bothers me
because there's no accountability.
So I don't even know
if that's politics
at the end of the day.
That might just be accountability.
Well, I find sometimes
it's been my experience
is that oftentimes
what dealers do
is they make managers
from within.
So they promote,
say a technician
ages up
and they make him
a service manager, right?
Or he spends a tenure
as a shop foreman
and he does really good
and the customers start to
get to know him or her
and familiar
and he knows the,
he's respected by the technicians
and they make him a manager.
And then sometimes
what like,
because of the way we are
as technicians
is sometimes we're very process oriented
and we're very like
we'll do something a few times
and then we tweak it
and it works for us.
I find sometimes that
they just too often
fall in the trap of
well, I would assume
everybody would do it like me
so they should have already
picked up this process, right?
And that's not the same.
You know, like how you may pull a dash out
is different than somebody else, right?
They may do it differently.
We're all kind of slightly
different.
So I feel like sometimes they're
we're not always the best
at giving instruction
it's just we get in there
and do it ourselves.
And I find that sometimes
that's where the management
in some shops fails
is because they can't convey
exactly how I want it done
or they go,
I would just assume
that you knew to do this.
No, you know, like
DVI is a good example.
I heard you having a
you're having a conversation
with some people
on Instagram about DVI and
all that kind of stuff
but it's like,
that's where I see it right now
is it's a very funny topic
in the industry
because everybody
you know,
has different opinions
and I don't
I can't say that
I think anybody is wrong
but like you look at
how two texts do a DVI
no two texts
really do them the same
and then what somebody
might put down is like
they've heard me say
that red, you know,
yellow and green
red being fixed now
yellow can wait
and green is perfectly good.
There's always inconsistencies from that.
You know, like one cut
one tech will call that
oil seal leaking.
Another one will say
some seepage.
Well, to the customer
it's very different, right?
Licking leaking is like
I'm going to see it on my driveway.
Seepage is like
I'll never see it.
You know, it's on the belly pan.
That kind of thing.
When you say DVI
you mean did video inspections?
Good, did you know
digital video inspections
or you know, back
I'm so friggin old
we used to call them MPIs
and we used to just it was a paper
and you checked it off, right?
And they go or we all rubber stamped them
because you weren't getting paid
anything extra
and like
we were very good about
looking and inspecting the car
and knowing okay,
it needs breaks
and writing down the estimate
for breaks
but we didn't fill out the
you know, the MPI
back in the day
like, oh, they only have two mil.
You know, like
it's got a break noise.
I drove it at Pulse 8
so it's squealing and needs breaks.
Nobody tended to ask
well, what's the millimeter?
And that's a question
for example, going on this topic
that still frustrates me
because it's like
what's the friggin matter
if it's two mil or eight mil?
They're noisy.
Like they're
they have a break complaint noise.
They've got some cheap pads on there
or whatever
or you know, cheap rotor
or machine glazed over whatever
what's the matter
if they're eight or two?
They need to be replaced, right?
Or service in some regard
and everybody's like, oh
the customer wants these details
do you really think like
that they do
or they just want to know
what repair is required?
No, this is a good question.
This is a really good question
because this is something
that no one's really asked me before
and I think it's
in your when I'm filming the video
I've gone back and forth on this on
people like oh show them the good stuff
show them that their cars in great shape
and sometimes
sometimes I feel like it's a waste of time
and sometimes I feel like it's great
but I'm also not going to get on a video inspection
and tell somebody
that their car is
you know the wheels
all the wheels are going to fall
if your breaking capacity is
or your breaking ability has been compromised
you're you know you're
I mean I'll be honest to say that
your tires are unsafe to drive
to drive on
they're bald and I'll show them
but then sometimes I feel like
just talking about the stuff
in between is
for me I'm assuming that that stuff is good
if I don't talk about it
that means it's good
yeah and
I watch some dbis on youtube
from different guys
and it's you know some of them do it
really fast and introduce themselves
and say hey you know my name's Curtis
I'll be your technician today
and and you know here's all
all of they're walking under the car
and they're filming it really fast
they're going this is all good
and this is all good
and this is all good
and then they come to the point
where they're showing them like you said
this is the tires that are at
two millimeters
sorry metric you know
two thirty seconds
you know they should really be replaced
ASAP
you know
and and people are like oh okay
the the stuff that we all just kind of
pushed past
and and said it was okay
that's where it seems to be in the industry
everybody's like no you didn't
spend enough detail on that
um they don't care
right it's my opinion
they don't care about
all the rear suspension bushings
are okay
because they don't have a complaint
with the way the car rides stops
brakes you know any of that
they're not feeling like it's bouncy
they don't care
they don't know what all that is
they're here for a
you know
peace of mind
I don't think we need to spend a whole
lot like
especially with the way
the times are even paid out
I don't feel like we should be
spending a bunch of time
on the stuff that's good
when we need to focus so much
on the stuff that's bad
and convey the importance
of the bad stuff
and why it needs to be addressed
today I think that's where
and yet
you know everybody's saying
Tex are doing terrible DVIs
and it's like first of all
a lot of them are not getting paid
for it
a lot of them are only getting
a half
you know hour to do it
which again
depending on climate
condition and car
and all that kind of stuff
a half hour might be enough
or it might not be
but like
if I'm going to go up
and show the customer on my DVI
that there's a loose ball joint
and it's a worn to tires
now are regular
I'm going to spend a large part
of my DVI portion of time
that's being filmed or whatever
explaining
the severity of that
that ball joint right now
trying to do it in a manner
that's not going to sound
like hey your wheels
going to fall off
and you're going to die
in a fiery wreck
you know I don't want the
Tommy boy thing going on right
from that great scene
but it should be
a good time to have
the communication via
the customer's text
or whatever
that this is why you're
you know
this is why we're looking at the car
this is what is the urgent thing
that needs to be addressed soon
all the stuff that we glanced over
like in time
it may need to be addressed
and later on
but this whole show them
all the good stuff
to waste of time
okay yeah
I'm kind of with the same thing
like I don't pull out
spark plugs and say
hey see they're still good
you don't and
and put it back in the engine
that's
that's just asking
for a comeback
in a waste of time
they're obviously good
the check engine's lights on
on the people
well that's not it
well you know
I drove
I test drove it
it drives fine
it doesn't have a check engine light
on I'm not pulling spark plug out
of it that's just
as an example
or I'm not
I'm bad
I don't yank cabin air filters out
I don't do it
people go why
you know
well first of all
if I yank it out
and they don't want to buy it
then I got to put it back in
and they obviously don't care
and that's how much
how many tents wasted right
that that was labor
that we could have sold
because here's the thing
it's always seemed slimy to me
when you see the quick loop shops
and they come out
and they carry one out
and they show it to the customer
and they go okay
and that's going to be 60 dollars
because I'm now adding labor
to change it out
it's really hard for me
even as a customer
to go labor to change it
like you've already got it in your hand
it couldn't it couldn't possibly
have taken a long
even though we know
right you're
contorting up under a dash
you're yanking out something
you're getting a crick in your neck
just sciatic screaming at you
to get it out
for them to say
that's maybe one tenth
two tenths that you spent
for them to say no
I don't do it
I look at it
and it's like if the one
under the hood is is dirty
I'm recommending the both
that's just my thing
because I've had a lot of them
where I pull it out
it's covered in leaf litter
right or whatever
mice something
and they go I don't want that
put it back in
okay
then something falls into the blower cage
and guess what
now we have a noisy blower cage
and now we have to take the blower
cage down or
you know come up with some method
to try and get the leaf litter
out of the blower motor
that's why I don't touch it
I do not touch them
unless the customer's going to
replace it
you've seen them too
like curse you know
they'll fold out
coming out
you're not getting that back in there
straight
like
why I uh
we have a lot of customers
that are very good
with their maintenance schedules
so
for me
I'm not usually recommending it
unless it's per mileage
where
if a customer is doing their
80,000 mile service
and they've only done all changes
since 10k
I will recommend it per mileage
but like I said
I'm not going to pull it out
I just
somebody might think
oh what a bad guy I am for that
but at the same time
like for all those reasons
that you just said
is exactly why it's not worth
the few tenths that I'm going to get for it
because
for them to say no
I've just already wasted it
and most of the time for us
you take it out
you show it in the video
you put it back
you drop it at wash
for them to approve it
30 minutes later to
take it out
put a new one in
and then you just done it twice
and got paid for it once
that's right
and and to me
like it can be really simple
like the service advisor
can do a lot of that
where they can ask the customer
do you remember the last time
you had your cabin air filter done
and if the customer says
the what
it's probably do
you know what I mean
it's probably ready to be done
if they can't remember the last time
but like I just
I pulled out so many
when we do the DVI
and they had been
because like
you know
I worked at a shop
where they might be there
because their brakes are noisy
but we're doing a free DVI
so we pull the cabin air filter out
and it's like
it's pretty clean
well why is it clean
well because they go to a different shop
for their oil changes
and the oil change guys are hard
on you know
right there all the time
getting that upsell on that cabin filter
well what did I just do
I just dumped a bunch of leaf litter
in the blower motor
or you know
I folded it
increased it
trying to get it out of there
and you know
hurt myself
for nothing
pain in the ass
waste of time
right
it's better to have the conversation
with the customer and go
do you know when you did the last
oil
you know
oh I just had that done
with my last oil change
cool
I don't need to get under the dash
don't need to pull your cabin filter out
I pulled them out now
if the car's got a funk smell
like they've had a wet dog in there
or the customer's been a smoker
and I get the car in my bed
yeah I'm yanking it out
and I'm probably yanking it out
and I already have ordered the new one
that's just the way I am
you know
but I don't like this this this dbi thing of
you know
pull the wheels on every car
and measure all the brakes
and pull the cabin air filter out
and you know
grab the lower control arms with a pry bar
and try and check the deflection in the
man oh man like there's
there's value in showing them
what's not broke I agree
but there's a lot of time spent
to do a proper dbi
and in this industry right now
we're still
if it has such value
I think I commented on your video on this
if it has so much value
the dealers and everybody else
that were supposedly so behind it
would be paying their technicians to do it
and I go
I understand like some do and some don't
and some people have the conversation of
well you got to do the dbi in order to get the work
nope nope
nope you don't
I made a whole career out of selling work on cars
that I didn't have to do a dbi to get the work
now it might have been like it's not running
it didn't start
that's work I got that work
you know
I'm not looking at the brakes
when the car is being pushed in
because the fuel pump's bad
you know what I mean like I'm not
that's that's a waste of time to me
the customer doesn't even care about their brakes
when
that needs a fuel pump
know what I mean
I feel
I feel sometimes when I'm doing my
well
getting we'll get into the getting pay part of videos
because
yeah
because that's that's gonna be a good one
but I think sometimes I feel bad
when I have to tell a customer
oh your fuel pump
we'll just use fuel pump for example
and say your fuel pump's bad
here let me recommend 10 more things in your car
that are wrong
yes
and then like you're just $12,000 that car
and uh
and the training that you receive on that is
well it's not your money to spend
and I'm like well I still feel bad
I still feel bad that I recommend to that
and then at the video my inspection
what am I supposed to say
have a great day
like I say that
because it's
what else do you say
but at the same time I'm like well
I felt awful
like I just recommended that
what they came in for
sorry about all this light by the way
I don't know
oh you're good
you're good
but like they just came in for
the fuel pump
and then I recommended
oil leak suspension tires
and then it's like
well they're definitely not gonna buy that
$500 fuel pump
or whatever
because now they need
10,000 more dollars of other stuff
yeah
you know I'm just gonna get rid of the car now
yeah well and that's it
and see
I've had this conversation
I don't want to say argument
but I've had this conversation
with some really smart people
that are in training in the industry
and I see both sides of it
because they're like
you have to advocate for the customer
you have to be transparent
yeah but here's the reality
okay
a lot of customers if I say
they're there for a
$500 is not an accurate number anymore
but say they're there for a $1,000 fuel pump job
they know coming in they you know
they got a suspension
shit I need a fuel pump
and they maybe Google it
and then you know they've got prices anywhere
from $500 to $2,000
so you do the
dyague on the car
and just like you said
you give them an estimate for $2,000
and then you whack them
with a whole bunch of other stuff that
is I'm not saying shouldn't be done
but
should it be done right now
and this is where we get into that
that gray area
because or difference of opinion
even under training is like
the really aggressive coaching companies
will tell you
yeah you want that whole ticket right now
and as a technician I'm like
I would love to have that whole ticket right now
if I could turn every two hour
fuel pump job into a 10-hour ticket
hallelujah I'd be you know sitting pretty
but we know that what happens is
a lot of the time we give them
you know $5,000 estimate
for the rest of stuff
and it drives out
and somebody else does the fuel pump
and we have this now image of us
like oh my god they're aggressive
that's the struggle with me
like is you know
we don't we
and it and it seems to be Curtis
because it's like we're so scared
of having the customer call up
two months after we do an oil change
you go I'm over at you know
shop XYZ
and I'm normally at your place
get all my oil changes done
and my brakes are metal on metal
and nobody told me
okay
like part of me goes
well why are you over there
not over here
if you get all your oil changes done here
and why are you not having us look at the brakes
and then the other thing is like
well
you never asked us to look at the brakes
so I can see both sides
because they don't want unexpected stuff
yet if we tell them about the unexpected
stuff that they don't even hear about
or know about
we look like we're
Chris we're trying to rip them off
trying to oversell
we're trying to upcharge
we're trying to you know all those
shitty words right that
it's always on the
I try to be as efficient
and quick as possible
talking about those things
oh my camera's freaking out
they're talking about those things
where
like we mentioned the things they don't need
so I'll be like
I'll mention I try to mention the things that
customers think of the most about
fluids tire pressure
and maybe leaks and suspension
but I say it in like a generic manner
oh I didn't see any leaks
underneath your car
but I'm not showing them
everything on your suspensions
in great shape
or maybe your upper
control arm bushings are bad
but everything else on your vehicle is good
and just keeping it good or great
and then moving forward
with the way that I talk about
the things that are good
just keep it short and simple
like you mentioned earlier
and it's kind of backtracking a little bit
but it's more of just saying
but keep it short and sweet
because you don't want to
quote them all those things
and then also in the video
if their their leaks are coming up
you say okay I noticed
your oil pan's beginning to leak
I'll say something like
just keep an eye on it
you know we'll check it again
at your next service
we'll check it in again at your next oil change
and just see how it's coming along
you know it might need
be ready for replacement
sometimes if things are in the yellow
brinking on red
yeah
I will
I will uh
send him a quote
but I'll say in my video
I'm gonna send a quote over for this
so you can get an idea
what it looks like
as you come up on your next
10,000 mile service
right
yeah
it used to drive me crazy
the fluid check thing that you mentioned
is a good one
because like you know
more and more of these cars
don't have a dipstick for
say the transmission
as an example
then it could be a process
just to check the level
right it's got to be up to a certain
temperature
you might have to have a scan tool involved
you know pulling out a plug
watching drips
all that kind of stuff
and I can remember
writing up cars
and it'd be like transmission fluid
is leaking from
cooler lines
and you know
on the dvi
and it was understood
that that portion of the dvi
that time it was allotted
was not the additional time
wasn't allotted
and wasn't approved
to spend checking the fluid level
of that particular transmission
right like it was
it's a process
they would then come to me and say
well is the fluid level okay
no
it's not
well how do you know it's not
well it's leaking
well did you check it
did you want it checked
like it's no authorization
for additional time to do this check
because the customer wasn't aware
it needed to be checked until we told them
that the lines are leaking
so obviously
the customer has saying
well if the fluid level is okay
I don't want to do the repair
and the advisor instead of going
the repair needs to be done
is going well let me go ask the tech
if the fluid level is okay
the answer is already in your
in your should be in your
fucking inbox
that no it's
sorry I hate to curse
no it's not okay
and it needs to be done
but you see what I mean the customer
a poor advisor is going
I better go ask
and then I better give him
shit if he didn't check the fluid level
because my customer is expecting
the fluid level now
they're not setting the expectations
with the customer that
where may find something
and if we find something on the DVI
it needs to be addressed
that addressment will take
additional time and money
and even to know where the repair is going
right
everybody thinks the DVI response
I note something
that means I immediately know
what it's going to cost to do
no to do the repair right
it's like oil seepage from top of engine
where on top of engine
requires further time to check
I can tell you the problematic
things that it might be right
you know on your cars
where they're prone to leak oil
I can tell you on
you know a lot of the crisis
where they're prone to leak oil
but I don't know
has to spend time
oh well and all of a sudden
the customer my point is
is that the customer is even
irritated that we told them
about something they weren't even aware of
and then when we don't have
an answer for them
other than well gee
it's going to take more time
to look into why and where
they get even more upset
they're just there for an oil change
in a brake squeak
you know and we told them
about these oil leaks
that they don't even have
any clue about or concern
and we've lost the brake job now
because we've tried to rebuild
their car
I guess is my point
that's the
yank I have about DVI
I think it's a good tool
I think that right now
we're trying to spend
all this time and teaching
on teaching technicians to do it
and I think the really
where the teaching is
is trying to get the advisors
to convert it into sales
because if you can't convert it
into sales
there's no fucking point
in the technician doing it
and that's the big problem
that have a lot of people
is A they're not
they're not paying the tech for it
and then B your advisors
are so poor performing
that they're not converting
what we find to to sold work anyway
so who is that
who doesn't want it
the customer doesn't want the news
the advisor doesn't want to sell it
the only thing that we know
is the technician wants to do the work
that's why he
he or she wrote it down
we fail on two parts
to get it sold to the customer
why keep punishing the technician
with more unpaid time
to tell things
to the customer doesn't want to hear
and that the service advisor
doesn't really want to sell
why do we keep doing it
because some coaching company
tells everybody
this is the future of the industry
this is what everybody wants
this is the only way
we're going to ever hit the numbers
and the profit and blah, blah, blah
in this industry that we're supposed to
I could show you shops
that have never done a DVI
that are busy and profitable
because they fix the customer's concern
we do both and
we do paper MPIs
and I do video inspections
I'm sending the quotes while over the computer
so and I'm not getting paid
to do either inspection
and that's the way
whether I agree with it or not
that's the way my shop
and my company does it
and so for me
my mindset is
well let's just control the things we can control
because
I mean yeah
would I love to get paid for those inspections
of course
more money
more hours more money
but at the same time
instead of complaining about it
and being like
oh I just want to get paid
this is worthless
the customer
and bringing all these downsides to the table
I've just been like
well how can I use this to my advantage
because they want me to do it anyways
and if I don't do it
then I'm going to be
reprimanded you if you will
and so I've just
then taken the effort
to put into these video inspections
since we're talking about that
and I've
made a way that works for me
that I try to eliminate
as much of the advisor as possible
because some of our advisors are great
and some of them aren't
but we have
I have multiple advisors
so when I do my video
I'm doing everything in my capability
where the advisor
just has to send the information
and I'm hoping that that's enough
to either make the sale
or keep the customer informed
I think some of the requirements
by the like you said
the companies
and the consulting
and the industry change
I think some of that is also dealerships
trying to save face
to a point
where they've broken trust
and they've lost the transparency
and so this is them trying to
trying to get it back
and it does help
I feel like I'm able to build
way better communication
and connections with the customer
which not every tech wants
and most techs don't want
we'll be honest here
and so for me
I'm like oh I get a connect
with the customer
and I like to talk with them
and speak with them
and show them their car
and that's just something
I enjoy doing
so these video inspections
benefit me
because it helps me
do something that
I want to do
but for the people who don't
want to do that
it is more work
and they're not getting paid
and they're not getting compensated
and they're not getting the training
on how to do it
in a way that
not just benefits the dealership
but benefits them
and if it's not financially
it needs to be some other type of way
right
because a lot of these dealerships
are taking advantage of technicians
from more points
than just the video inspection
and I mean you mentioned earlier
about people on TikTok
and having these conversations
about compensation
and hourly rate versus flat rate
and I mean I would never be
in the position I'm in financially
if it wasn't for flat rate
but would I enjoy a base
or would I enjoy some hourly pay
maybe one week or two weeks
when it's slow
or I'm not feeling like
working
tons of hours
yes
I would enjoy that
but ultimately I would
I think
which might be hard
for some people to swallow
is that
good techs will be good techs
bad techs will be bad techs
and if you give
incentive
to technicians
even if they're at hourly
and you say hey you hit 50 hours
here's a bump
you hit 60 hours here's a bump
and you offer that
but you also give them a base
I think a lot of places
will be surprised that their
work is going to see
stay the same
and you're going to
those lazy techs
are going to shine
they're going to be like
hey those lazy techs
are going to stand out
and they're going to be
exposed
and I think that's what
a lot of people are afraid of
is being exposed
yeah I think and that's
like
you know
and and my
you know
my experience has been
very well documented
where it's like
my rub was that
when everybody was paid the same
you saw guys that just
picked the low hanging fruit
and they were clocking
the most hours every week
and yet they
they couldn't diagnose a tail lamp
they couldn't diagnose
you know
half the no starts
that got brought in
they couldn't diagnose
certainly if the trainee
was in the lamp or
you know
fuel trim DTC
they couldn't diagnose it
they could not
they knew the pattern failures
and when that didn't work
it had to get kicked to somebody else
and my thing was always like
that person that
was the somebody else
usually they get a steady diet
of those kind of cars
and then their true skill
is not reflected in their production
their true skill is reflected
in the being able to slow down
back up
read the fucking service information
as my friend Brian Pollock
always says
and then dissect
what's actually going on
break it down
fix it
return the car to the customer
that's what they do
the pattern failure didn't stick
they threw the dart at the wall
it didn't stick
okay good
what do we do now
well shit
not everybody knows what to do
after the pattern failure
we got one guy two guys
three guys maybe
out of whatever they do
okay they got to get it
then
those three guys
at the end of the month
end of the year
they look at them and go
like they can't produce
like that tech over there can
that tech over there
that can produce
he's not getting those kind of cars
he's just doing
you know
what he can do
and and
the real growth then
of a of a technician
I think is
we constantly evolve
to a certain point
where we get
you know we learn more
we do more
we get more comfortable
it's a lot of techs get stagnant
and just like
don't want to learn this
don't want to learn that
not going to attempt this
because the money's not there
and it just stuck to doing the money
so that was my always my rub
was that the technicians that
just kind of wanted to stay
in that middle ground of
producing
they never evolved their skillset
which if they don't evolve
their skillset
down the road
they don't necessarily become
those type of people
that we need as leaders
they're just cogs in the machine
nothing wrong with that
but the production
is not the true earmarker
for me of a value
of a technician
it's the it's the
guy or gal that goes in
and takes the hard stuff
tackles it
gets it done
you know
doesn't gripe too much about it
and goes on the next day
we have to shift this industry
away from just looking at everybody
I don't want to say all the same
but I can tell you
that most of the techs
I talked to the left
they were all the techs
that weren't the highest producing
but they were the biggest problem
solvers in their business
in the shop that they worked in
and that's why they left
because they were not valued
and value isn't always about pay
value can be like
just somebody saying thanks
or acknowledging that it's like
how do you do that now
if today it's like
you can't say you're better
than everybody else
I'm glad to have you
I mean because
I mean you could
you could say it in a way that
I mean we have a guy like that
that does all the hard stuff
and does the
really complicated jobs
and could he be compensated better
absolutely
there's ways to compensate people
who aren't just turning and burning
a bunch of hours
right
but also like you said
the recognition where it's
it's saying
hey no one else can figure that out
and you did a great job
yeah
and then
but I think too many people
get their feelings hurt too
yeah
it's like
well
Curtis you didn't fix it
so we gave it to
Jim over here
and he fixed it
so we're going to tell him great job
I think that
is maybe what you're talking about
and it doesn't mean
you know
it doesn't mean that hey Curtis
you suck
and Jim's great
it's just saying that like
I think we need to have this
conversation because
one day Curtis
you can get to where Jim is
right
if we acknowledge
that Jim went a little farther than you
see that's that's the whole thing is
like
they want to make the pay
the earmarker of who went farther
than the next person
that it's not it
the pay is not it
that guy over there
gal that's like
just killing it
on the complex stuff
that's your
that's your key player
I don't care what anybody says
they can talk the numbers all they
want
as long as you have that person
any car that comes into your
business
doesn't even have to be
dealership
we can be just any shop
your business will always be viable
because you have that one person
that will not give up
until they are through
to the root of the problem
now if you got a whole
shop full of killers like that
you've got something
but it hasn't been my experience
that you have that
you have the
the you know
the grinders that got
the get the car fixed
in and it done
routine stuff done no problem
if all you have is those texts
that's when we start to see
these customers
or these people online
say
my car went back to the dealer
five times
and nobody could solve this
you know why
because that person that they had
that could solve the problem
you may disagree with person
me seeing this happen
that person that could have
don't work there anymore
or that person that could
they didn't get that ticket
because maybe they said
FU I had a shit week last week
and I'm tired
and I'm not looking at that
and it goes to somebody else
I'm not saying that's a good attitude
but this is why when we see customers
crying all the time
about I can't get my car fixed
that's why
we're holding them to this
this
nonsense
if you don't produce enough hours
and yet you're the guy
or gal
out of 10 of us
that could have got to that problem
or would spend the time
to get to that problem
every so
you know go ahead
so on both sides of flowery
you have the people who
do a terrible job
diagnosing
all they want to do is flag hours
and they don't have a
like a bottom
like a guarantee
and then you have the guys
that would spend the time
but aren't making any money
because they're not compensated
properly
so
in your opinion
what is a way to solve that
how do you
how do you pay the experience guy
that does
quote unquote bad work
but solves all the hard problems
let's say
in a dealership setting
so here's where
I think we fail
technicians
it's too much like
they're wrapped up in
how many hours
right because to us
what hours just equates is what
what my paycheck says
at the end of the week
that's it
right
we all have a minimum
and we all have
a dream number
you're not going to hit the
dream number
all the time
but we have a minimum
and I think what
in order for these technicians
that are going to
be
steadfast
and always do
the right thing
and find the problem
within their ability
within their ability
I got to say that right
they need
their number to be
a lot closer to that
dream number
than what we have been
paying them
it shouldn't be
well what that guy did
at 60 hours of production
he's not
or she is not able
to do 60 hours of production
hypothetically
because they're in
these nightmare cars
so
but if they got 40 billable
that was all
shit work
problematic
nightmare stuff
if they got 40 billable
and the other one
got 60 billable
and it's just routine
muscle memory kind of stuff
their pain needs to be
at least the 60
I'm going to say it
that needs to be
what's the incentive
otherwise to do it
right
otherwise then
I want to be that monkey
that just hit 60
I don't mean monkey
in a disrespectful term
I just mean monkey
in the sense of like
if it's a circus
we're all monkeys
that's you know
what I mean
we're all doing different tasks
monkey's not the right term
I shouldn't use it
but it's got to be
like if 60 was the
top that week
and that person
hit 40
their pay needs to be
at a different level
per hour
to where they're
getting that kind of money
because otherwise
what's the incentive
to take the hard cars
there is not
I'd rather
I have no lots
I could show you
lots of good technicians
Curtis
that would tell me
right out when they're last
you know
when they're at the dealer
they stopped getting certified
they stopped taking the
because they didn't want
those nightmare cars
because they saw their foreman
or they saw their guy
with all the
the certs
he made less money
so
what's the incentive
if we don't
like it's
it's not
if you're going to put them
in a tech
in a shop
and say
you're all going to earn this
per hour
and you're going to flag
a bunch of hours
cool
if you're going to get all these
certs
and your certs
bump you hourly rate
cool
okay I'm good with that too
but what all comes down to
at the end of the week
is that if your guy
you're like you call them
Jim
if Jim's not the highest
paid tech in the shop
because Jim will get to the
bottom
it then the system's broken
I'm sorry
because when you walk in
into the aftermarket
sector of this industry
and you look at it
most of the time
Jim is the highest paid tech
he's also in a leadership role
he's also in a mentorship role
as I feel it should be
and I feel this is where the
dealerships
have dropped the ball
is because we've taken all the
gyms
and run them out
because we say
I would love
I love having you here
but you're not producing enough
hours Jim
go ahead
no I would say I wish I could
say that I'm the Jim of the
shop
but
I know how the system works
and I know
I'm honest enough to know that
I'm not going to make a much
of money
regardless of
I'm not going to make a
bunch of hours
if I'm the Jim of the shop
and that's maybe more of a
strategy move
than anything
because like you said
those gyms of the shops
they're not valued
because they're not turning
those hours
and the dealerships
create these incentive
programs around hours
sure
around these metrics
and while they're nice to hit
they don't incentivize
the guys who fix all the problem
cars
and keep those customers happy
and keep the dealership
running
and when those gyms leave
or they're even on vacation
for a week
you really start to see
that those cars
don't get fixed
and they wait around
and customers are unhappy
and I wish that the gyms
would get
more compensation
and they would get
recognized for
having perfect fix ride
or fixing that customer car
that's been there for two weeks
and you or I unfortunately
can only do so much about that
but I'll be the first one
to tell you that
being the Jim of the shop
stinks
yeah yeah I know
I was there
and and you know
and that's why I've kind of
made the shift in my career
that I did
where I'm not going to go back
because I'm not going to go back
and and take that
extra 10%
and apply it
and watch my pay
be you know
less than somebody
that's not putting the 10%
that I would put in
that's just
to me it just doesn't add up
and it
honestly from the first day
I ever worked in a
in a dealership
it never did make sense
because my first days
in the dealership
I was hourly
because I hadn't got my license yet
and when the hourly tech
was just a tech that did clean up
they did
and I don't mean cleaning the shop
I did that too
but all the cars
that somebody had already
been paid out for
and misdiagnosed
it just went to me
and then so it was like
I'm doing
everybody else's comebacks
I'm doing a lot of the
die eggs that
you know
didn't
there's a v10
you know
RAM
that needs an engine
that's seized up solid
you know
extended warranty
it won't even fit on a hoist
how are we going to get this
engine done
give it to the
straight time guy
that's Jeff
this car left at two
in the afternoon
for a check engine light
it's
630 at night
Jeff's on second shift
the car's back with the same
check engine line
what do we do
give it to Jeff
that was just my life
so
and then when the rays
went through the shop
this is kind of
I'm going way back in the day
the rays went to everybody
but me
and everybody said
I asked manager
why is that
well
it's just for the flat rate guys
okay
but
I fix all their fuck ups
yeah
but you don't produce enough hours
okay
because we're not taking the hours
back from them
that didn't fix the car
and crediting me with them
it stays where it stayed
so on paper
it looks like I'm not producing
anything
the reality is
is I'm going in
and
and
you know
keeping the customer satisfied
now
these conversations always sound
like me bragging
I'm not saying
it's not meant to sound like that
but you know where I'm coming from
it all depends on
how they want to play the numbers
so the gym
until we get it out of our heads
that it's all about hours
the gyms in the industry
are never going to be really valued
and this is why
gyms leave jobs
we're using a lot of jays
gyms leave jobs
and go start their own damn shops
and then they repeat the cycle
in the aftermarket
that we're facing all the time
which is they're not good
business owners
they're just incredible technicians
but they're terrible business people
we we we got to break that
we have to stop the cycle
and I
people think
I got this bone in my in my craw
and I can't get it out
it starts with that
fucking P number
that production number
it it doesn't mean shit
I can manipulate
I did manipulate
I could show you how to do
I could teach people
how to manipulate it
it doesn't mean anything
it what matters is
what you can
friggin fix
your proficiency
if you're not
becoming more proficient
you're not
you're not becoming nothing
sorry
you know you're you're right
I mean
I I mean
you're you're telling it
exactly how it is
and it's
you know it's making me
kind of realize that
my
I love what I do at the dealership
but I also know that
being there is
it's uh
exactly what you're saying is
it's a game
you have to know how to play the game
and I know how to play the game
and you know
does that hose the gyms in my shop
sometimes
but we also have a shop foreman
that's the gym in our shop
and he gets paid
off of shop production
and so he gets paid differently
but he's not the highest paid guy
in the shop
by any means
yeah
but
so why is that
well that's
I mean it's not
whose choice is that
you know who's making those
decisions
he's not turning the hours
that's that's the truth of it
I mean he's not
he's not making hours
he's helping people out
and he's valued at this level
but what the real value is here
you can flag 100 hours a week
so we're going to pay you more
because you've been more consistent
sure you can fix cars
and you flag a bunch of hours
but
your you know your shop foreman
or your gym
is not getting paid that same
because he's not turning hours
but Curtis
if we remove the gym from the shop
how long does
you think the shop stays
before that guy that used to could
turn 100
can still turn 100
and not because he can't turn it
physically
but because the customers are not there
then what happens
you're right
I mean I don't even have to say it
I mean I know it
I know that my shop
and some of the cars that I work on too
would would
I would
not be able to
to put the hours in
if he wasn't there
and I wish
you know I've advocated for him
on multiple occasions
that hey we need to appreciate this guy more
and it doesn't doesn't matter
and
I wish it did matter
because I know that
our shop would be in shambles
if it wasn't for him there
because when he goes on vacation
for a week or two weeks
sure we can manage but
our our
our online cases go up
like our our hotline cases go up
we have
I mean I don't have proof to say
that we have more comebacks
during that time
but I just see more problems in the shop
that kind of get pushed
oh we'll just wait till
Jim gets back
and it's like
whoa
all that
you know why
why can't we figure this out now
why can't we take the time
and it's like oh well you know he's
the the
like you said the compensation guy
he's not the the flat rate guy
so
that's kind of the thing is
that his job is to fix the problem
cars
and so
if Jim leaves the shop
we're host
until we get a new Jim
who's probably not the same Jim
Jim
how many gyms do you think are out there Curtis
two or three
out of how many
40
yeah that's about the right number
I think too
so do the math on that
five percent of the industry is a
Jim maybe
yeah it's not a lot I mean I'm
I'm no Jim
but I also know that to make money
in the industry you can't be a Jim
well
in in
I'll I'll counter with this
in your environment you can't be a Jim
that's true I will say that
yeah
but I see what happens and we see it
and again
you know if you watch enough of my
content and you see kind of the
people that I'm networking with
I could show you
100 gyms
that went and started their own business
right
and some of them are killers now
like they're phenomenal
phenomenal shop owners
but oftentimes what happens like
Dustin Diesel on TikTok
there's a super smart smart
check into Chuck super smart guy
what do they do they got fed up being
the gym
and they went and started their own
business
and
they're you know they're they're
doing it they're they're making a
career and they're and they're making
a business but
like if you added up the amount of
hours that Chuck spends now a week
working
not just on cars but on the other
stuff that he's constantly working
on to you know cloning and
module repair and stuff to build
his business
he's still putting in way more hours
than he ever did
and any of the shops he's ever at
but he's doing it because like
he's trying to to to go to that
next step
these guys that were like Jim and
they go start their own business
I don't know as they ever really
make any more money
until for a long time until like
the business kind of grows around
them
and if they keep their culture
right
it grows around and we start to
buck this trend
but what happens is I see too many
guys like Jim that start their own
business
and they start cheap
they take every job that they can
and they get everything
and then before long they're like
they they they don't have time to
train they don't have time to
dedicate the time to
actually going in and seeing you
know all this new technology
before you know it's left them
behind
and then they're in this place
again where they're like
they're in the shop and they
don't know what to do
I used to be a really good tech
they say
fix all the cars
now I can't hire somebody that's
as good as me
well that's again
you're one of the five percent
good luck on hiring another one like
you
and then even if you wanted to
hire another one like you
it's kind of like the conversation
that we had
that's all over my tiktok right
now about what we pay them
well how do I make that work
you're not going to make it work
trying to be the cheapest new
shop in town
and hire your replacement
you can't do it
it doesn't work
so what do you do
I have been for years saying
that like well
you're going to go out there
and it's because of your business
you're going to take a pay cut
and you're going to hire somebody
almost as good as you
and pay them probably
as much if not more than what
you were getting paid
to your previous place
and then together you guys work at
and instead they always go
fuck I'm not making any money
hardly as it is
and they go hire some young person
and they try to teach them
everything that they can
but the numbers just don't work
young person I'm producing enough hours
it doesn't you know
I can't give them everything
that I have to
and then the business
just starts that spiral
of what all these businesses do
so
the dealerships
unfortunately have been awesome
by taking some talent
and driving it right into the
the aftermarket
you know what I mean
so many technicians I know
got fed up and said
eff it I'm never working for
a dealer again
chain stores do it too
but the dealers do it even more
the dealers are turning out
a really high level of talent
into the aftermarket sector
because of this concept of production
and you know burning them out
until they don't want to be
that person anymore
because it just doesn't pay
they watch the guy
like you said
Jim watches a guy turn 60 80
whatever a week
Jim's lucky to hit 40
and and we know that
Jim's not the highest paid
and Jim's mind eventually
he knows he should be
because he can see that
when he's not there
the effect that it has
but yet the dealer says
I can't make the money work
I can't I can't pay you that
because you're not proofs enough hours
the dealer is where
they're missing the fucking point
and it my argument has always been
the dealer knows that
they can pay him
and they know that
they can find the money
they just don't want to take it
from where
that should be taken
to pay Jim
and that's a whole other
conversation for a different day
that's that's a different kind of
Curtis let me ask you then
if you're not the Jim of the shop
two questions
what makes Jim different than you
if there is anything just a choice
or do you ever want to be the Jim
and I think you've already
kind of answered that
you don't want to be
I'll start with the latter question
is saying
if I was on a pay plan
that wasn't flat rate
what I put in the time and effort
to be the Jim of the shop
absolutely
I think
for the exactly the reason
we're talking about it
I know that they're not
compensated properly
and I know that there's no
like huge ceiling
for the Jim of the shop
so I know
I just know that it's not
something that I want to do
because it would put myself
in a bind
and it would hurt me
more than help me
what I like to
and I kind of saying
that what I like to open
my own shop someday
not being the Jim of the shop
yeah
I think there's thinking
of bigger picture wise
but
I also want to be able
to spend the time
to learn those cars
to solve the hard problems
and not get hosed
and that's just not
where the dealership life
is at right now
so is the flat rate
and the hosie as you say
how do you think that's
for the mental health
of a lot of those technicians
right now
well I think
I think flat rate in general
and compensation in general
in the automotive industry
is hurting technicians
because
when you can't make those hours
and you can't make the money
to pay your bills to
I don't want to say
feed your family
because that's pretty extreme
but that does get there
to that point
where you can't make your
mortgage payment
you can't make your car payment
and you start
getting in debt
and you start losing
you know
you can't make the money
you can't make the hours
and whether it's because
you're the diagnosis
diagnostic tech
or it's because
there's no cars coming into
shop
I mean that burden
that it puts on individuals
in the shop
is something that
most of us just keep quiet
about
when no one talks about it
or if they do talk about it
it's not heard
it's just
talked about in deaf years
because everyone doesn't want it
it's such a hard conversation
to have
yeah
and and we've seen
I mean I've seen it
you might have heard it
that everybody says well
you know
it's not to feed their family
like there's too many tech
technicians are terrible with money
they're terrible management
you know money management
you know
you know they all want fast cars
and and
you know fancy boats
and a bunch of guns
and all this like
they're living above their means
I think that
what we
innately want to do
is we want kind of the same stuff
that
like what Jim wants
is the same kind of lifestyle
that the
60 80 whatever
you know the
the golden child shop
shop
tech in the shop
what
affords himself
but I think that's what we all want
I know a lot of techs
especially to get out of the aftermarket
sometimes they resent the owner
I know I was that tech
I was like
this fucking guy is not paying me squat
and you know he's got a classic car
collection and they've got a
you know
a half a million dollar yacht
down at the Kingston Harbor
like
that this was all real shit
and we resent them
because it's like
I want some of that
and I don't even want a half a
million dollar yacht in the harbor
I just want a basketball
down up you know
the corner like
in my driveway that I can go fish out of
not
you know a 14 foot with a 10 horse on the
back that's all I can afford
you know what I mean like
we want to bring the pay a little bit
closer
so I don't think that it's living
above their means so much
it's just that
they
they're starting to learn their value
and this is what's scaring a lot of
people in the industry is they're
starting to really realize that like
like I've been saying for
I've been saying online for
fucking
almost 20 years
the technician is the product
it's not Audi isn't the product
Audi can be bought other places in
Houston besides where you work
but if how do you
continues to sell well at your dealership
it's because it has a reputation for
good sales experience
and being able to take care of the car
after it sold to the customer
that's the tax
that's not the salesman
the salesman only has to make the sale
and this is the thing
we're seeing it where
it's a Hyundai or Kia now
they're going to sell cars on Amazon
if you think that the days of
the
golden children being in
the sales department of the dealership
you're crazy
the the key players are going to be
in the service department
and if you don't have them
you're not going to have a dealer
because nobody will bring the car
back
if you're known as not being able to
fix it
so if you run gyms off
and you just have a bunch of guys
that can service this
and do the recall on that
but you can't solve the car that
you know is a nightmare
do you think they're necessarily
going to trade it back into you
and buy another one
no they might
but that doesn't solve anything
right
and and eventually
the reputation gets out there
that it's like
they've got nobody to fix the cars
well then you got the people who are
sending those huge estimates in the
shop just trying to make
whether they're trying to make a
living or that's actually wrong
with the car
yeah
then you got those that deter
customers from coming back
yeah well and we talked about that
you know guys get a little
there was a conversation that came
up you know
I guess a shop owner asked it
if you have a wheel bearing go
bad on the car
do you sell both wheel bearings
and everybody kind of went excuse
me
what well and and there were some
good arguments that why you might
make well they're both the same age
you don't want to have to deal with
the comeback of it six months later
if the customer's back
they're going to feel maybe like
you know they were
we didn't do a good job
if you have to pull the spindle
off or whatever press the ball
doing it you got to ding
and for an alignment again
there's all kinds of arguments
on the side of it
but there's that kind of
conversation that was like
what's the right way to do
and it was kind of split
and the other thing is like
we see it where you take your car
in and it's like well
Audi says you should change the
fluid until whatever 100,000 miles
but then you see a bunch of techs
that are struggling for work
and they're trying to sell that
fluid recommendation at 80,000 miles
right based on oh I took a test
trip look at the color of it
right are they advocating for the
customer at that point
yeah they don't want to see the
transmission fail
but what's pushing the advocacy
the fact that they need to produce hours
you know that's my thing about this
that's why I think it's
the mental health thing is where
they're not
it's going to open a can of worms
when we really start to see
and we're already seeing it
the fall out why
because you can pick another
skilled trade and go to work
tomorrow and just install AC units
and if we all of a sudden
have a summer that ain't that hot
and nobody's AC unit breaks
or we don't like they don't buy as many
he's not going home at the end of the
year with less money
he's just having a lighter season
but in our industry we never have a
light season
never gets better for us
when we have a light season
we suffer
and that's that's the thing that
people don't want to talk about
you know
well especially full flat rate is
is those customers start
stop coming in and
or even just like a slow season
that's like for me this year has been
terribly slow
okay so it's those
you know you don't
have those cars coming in
then techs start getting a little bit
desperate or maybe
what you said over
you know trying to sell a little too
soon or being like well this
category three leak is
or this category two leak maybe
he's category three
let's maybe push it a little harder
it might not be the right thing to do
but it gets done
because
well you can't bring home 20 hours a week
you know like that ain't gonna work
no
and some people out there are
are in a position where they can
do that
and feel comfortable with their
your financial situation
but 90 percent 80 percent of the
technicians in the world
can't go from making 60 hours a
week to 20 hours a week for a year
or a few months or a month
yeah they can't
their lifestyle would change
you're gonna talk right then and there
about like if they're
well if they're lucky enough to have a
home
how do you make the mortgage payment
you know if you are
not working like not living in your
own home and you pay rent
and you have a car payment
which do you pay that month
to pay your car payment
or do you pay your rent
do you pay your tool bill
like do your kids get signed up
for you know
extracurricular sports dance lessons
right or softball or up here hockey
any of those things that cost a lot
of money to put kids in all of a
sudden it's if you like your pay
dips from 60 to 20
things sacrifices are made
and here's the thing
the generation previous i think a
lot of us that go i'll use young
kids are soft
like they don't you know
a lot of them when things got tough
they went and did a bunch of side
work
and i'm not trying to steer the
conversation to to a different
topic that's we've already been
down that road
but what that does to the industry
long term is it cheapens it
so yes you managed to grind and
hustle
and you managed to keep the roof
over your head and the lights on
and the food fed and all all that
stuff good no problems with that
but what you did was you watered
down the the the the skilled trade
in your local area
because people found you now that
would work for 200 bucks
you know you would go home and do
that
cylinder head job or that
transmission re and re
you know for half the price of what
a shop would
because dealerships
the company that i work for it's
a fireball offense to be doing
side work
and so
um i mean specific to if i were
to go work on oudie
not that i want to just because i
do it all day i i kind of want to
have my home time for my family
but is if they for some reason
catch wind that you're doing that
but well now you're out of a job
completely
wow and you can't make that extra
cash on the side
so there's that type of thing too
where these dealerships have these
these rules and i get it i mean
they they want to make sure their
customers are their customers
i understand it it's but they
make it hard when
if i'm i'm not working on any
cars because there's no cars coming
in right well what am i supposed to
do
yeah like if i can't i can't use
my trade to make more money outside
of work where there's no money to
make
what am i supposed to do
and then they get upset
when you try to do something out of
work like
you know try to create a side
business or create something on the
side like oh no
you're done
and then it's like
you're stuck
you're stuck not making any money
because they won't let you and
you're stuck not making any money
because they can't give you the
work to make the money
yeah
and that just creates like this
whole ball of like
like in your head you're like
i'm just gonna explode because you
can't do anything no matter what
and then you just like
keep all this pressure and this
stress and this inside and then
i mean
i want to talk about suicide but
people make those decisions when this
comes down to a bowling point
and it's just like
when are we gonna figure out that
we need to meet in the middle and
help these people who are
struggling when the dealerships
put them in such and not
dealerships maybe just shops in
general put these
technicians in such a tight
spot where they're not being
compensated
yeah
like
if if it's slow because i made a
mistake and i can't make the money
if it's slow because i can't
diagnose a car
sure i maybe make less money that
week but if it's slow because
there's no cars to work on and
that dealership can't provide me
with the work
why do i have to suffer from that
if i'm going crazy when it's
busy
well here's and here's the other
thing
bringing it back to our friend
jim what if the dealer can't all of
a sudden provide that because
18 months a year two years ago they
ran off jim
and now we're seeing the effect of
less cars coming in
you know
and it doesn't even have to always
be a tech and say they fire an
advisor that's really good
right
say they make a sales choice
in the sales department and all of
a sudden that's not always as good
but i mean
i saw dealers at like one salesman
would move to a different dealer
and all of a sudden their car
count for sales went way down
because everybody in the local area
he was involved
he knew a bunch of people
that's listen when i'm buying a
Chrysler i'm going to see brian
brian doesn't work at this Chrysler
store anymore he goes
and you'd see it he'd put a
sometimes an ad in the newspaper
now at facebook's wonderful thing
everybody knows
you know he puts an ad on his
facebook saying hey i'm now gone to
the other Chrysler store
or the other Audi store
all his established customers
follow him and buy it buy the
car from them because they trust him
well he just brings something to that
dealer that benefits all the other
departments within the dealer
and and there's you yeah
and jim that left
he's taking customers with him
not because he poached them
but the follow it is jim is there
people are like f this i'm not going
back to whatever binghamton
Audi
as an example of the name
i'm going to you know
jones Audi
because like bingham can't fix it
that's the kind of stuff that happens
in the dealership no matter what
i keep harping on it
they don't listen to my podcast
unfortunately a lot of them
they're not getting it
they're not
that one key figure two key three
three guys or gals in the back
that are doing those complex cars
they're bringing in everything for
everybody else
it's their reputation is is them
you burn them out
you piss them off
you drive them out do whatever
it will have repercussions
that you cannot recover from
with just running an oil change
special or doing a better dbi
or running a tire problem
you can't do it
you can't
like guarantee you can't
i've seen it it doesn't work
and and this is the thing
i'm about empowering
technicians to realize
if you're one of those
gyms
no you're worth
don't be an a-hole to your employer
but like make sure that
you have a ripple
when you leave this
that employer
you have a ripple
David Klein that we talked about
like you know
the the episode
they reached out to me
that guy has a ripple
everywhere that he goes
what he can do in a shop
right
when they don't want to lose him
because he says
when i go on a week's holidays
the shop
just like when you're talking
recurs with jim
the shop's not the same
it doesn't hit the numbers
it doesn't have
it doesn't flow smooth
all that
when you are that technician
and you know you're that technician
man
make that worse something
that's what i
that's my advice to people
and your mental health
when you know it
it becomes a lot better
for sure
yeah i think
i think that's right
is when you can
support the
support
or no
maybe not support but
well know your value
when you
you make that jump
or when you decide that
hey
shop
shop a is not
holding me to the set
the standard that i see myself at
and i want to move to shop b
but also don't let shop b
give you the run around too
because
but some people are
a lot of people are scared to make
that jump
i don't know how many people
in my dms or
hey i don't like it here
and not even gyms of the dealership
i'm talking entry level
two years three years
they'll be like
hey
i'm not happy here
i'm afraid to leave
i'm so nervous
and like
should i quit
they're like
they'll ask me for
should i do this
should i do that
and it's just like
it's insane that
there's two year technician
stealing this way
you signed up to be a technician
and you're already feeling this way
well good luck
i
hope you make the right decision
because in eight more years
you're going to feel that way
even more
so yeah
what do you tell them then
i will be as honest as i can
and say find a
find a brand that you enjoy
find a brand in a car company
you enjoy
and then find a dealership
that you enjoy
that like you've heard
good things about
and then go out
and do those things like
don't wait around
i know it's risky
i know it's scary
but most of these young guys
will tell them is
make that jump
because you're not going to regret it
if you stay where you're at
you're going to hate what you do
you're going to hate your life
and you're going to regret that
you never took that leap years ago
i mean i'm in a position now where
i'm financially stuck
at the dealership that i make
it's because the hours
the environment
the situation
i mean that's a
it's a number of things
the company i work for
puts me in a great position
to make a ton of hours
and if i see my
one day if i want to become that gym
i'm stuck
and so for me
i always tell these young guys is
don't get stuck
because once you're stuck
making a ton of money
and you're stuck making those hours
it's going to be near impossible
if you make that change
because you've put yourself in a
financial bind
and so i just tell them
take the leap
if you want to work somewhere else
do it
try it
so let's back up then
like if you
you think you're kind of stuck
right now curris
oh for sure
if you could go back
what would you do different
i would
well
i don't know if i would do it
differently
i might have learned some new skills
earlier along the way
to prepare myself to
be an entrepreneur
and do some other stuff sooner
i think
besides just
oh i'm just going to go to work every day
and
not worry about it
maybe i am
i would have gone to school
to learn something
taking some online courses
i would have put myself
in a position to learn things
outside of being a technician
so i could
own my own shop
own my own business
do something besides being in a
you know position now
where as a technician at a dealership
it's
i'm going to have to take a pay cut
and probably an hourly rate cut
to go to maybe a shop
that i feel better about
my shop is great
let's not get confused
if i wanted to be a technician forever
this place that i work is
absolutely fantastic
i just have more aspirations
right okay
you're going back to what you
were talking about
within your two-year-old tech
comes to you on your DMs
and says hey i'm thinking about quitting
i'm kind of in a different place
in you because like i kind of
i delve into each one and
talk about like
because i get those calls to
and i'm like well
what's your situation like
and what and what are you doing to
what are you doing to grow yourself
and if they say you know
i'm not really uh i'm not being
i'm not getting the growth
at the opportunities
i'm not getting i'm i'll be like
okay so what are you doing for training
they go training
they're not giving me
okay what are you doing for training
outside of
what they want to provide for you
like do you
do you take training on youtube
do you follow these people
you know are you involved
with this kind of stuff
do you know who some of the key
players are on
you know
tiktok and
you know instagram
that are in the space
if they say no i say okay
so
you have to go and find these people
and you have to start building
yourself
but i also tell a lot of them
turns i'll tell you straight out
i tell a lot of them
if you're two years in
and you're hating it
get out
because you don't have
hopefully a massive tool debt yet
you might have just a little bit
get out
because like
the last thing i want to see
i talk about all the time
is these young people
there's a snap-on toolbox
or sale right now
in facebook marketplace
in my area
that was sold to the
valued at $18,000 when the kid bought it
i say kid i don't know
he's selling it for $4,000
like you tell me
he's keeping all the tools
he just wants to get rid of the box
you tell me that's not somebody
that's probably getting out of the industry
yeah happening all the time
right
so
i tell them if you're not happy
if you've already got this realization
that like
oh crap this isn't what i thought it was
going to be
like i thought it was going to be fun
and it's not
it's a grind and it sucks
i tell them and like
you gotta
if you are sick and ahead
you want to become the next gym
then there's no hope for you
just buckle down train
and you'll become the next gym
if that's what you really want to do
but if you just thought this was going to be fun
and you were going to make $100,000 a year
and you know
play with fun cars
that's not it
and you better get out
and just like
you know
take up HVAC
or take up like
go being electric
the amount of technicians
i know that have left
to gone into becoming electricians
is crazy
crazy
because we don't
HVAC isn't as big up here
we don't you know
like
AC is like
you know
lots of houses in Canada
don't
turn it on
or don't
fucking
fix it
because it's not terrible
we only need a few months of the year but
you know
there are lots of them left to be
problemers
lots of them left to be electricians
that talked about
the local Goodyear factory here
sapped up a bunch of talent
because they all just
go and fix those machines
i've told technicians
what you said before
that if they're that
like
if
well
you know
delve into the conversation
a little bit with them
but
if they come out saying
they want to be techs
that goes the way i spoke earlier
but if they don't
like i say the same thing as you is
if
you're 20 to 25
even 30
i mean 30 is a little late but
like do what's best for you
and don't let
a
two or three dollar pay raise
convince you
because you're only going to be that
happy for a little bit
and then you're just going to be in
the same boat
and that
shop
will string you along for years
and years
hell you want to
here's a couple dollars
here's a couple dollars
and then you're 10 years in and
you're like
wow what am i doing with my life
i should have left
eight years ago
because
i really didn't like this at all
i know
i don't know maybe you meet them
i know i'm 50
and the amount of technicians
that i've met in my career
that were close to my age
that all said the same thing
i should have got out 10 years ago
like i should have
i should have never done this
like i
but a lot of them
like
they weren't going to go to college
they weren't going to go to
university
they just had a knack right
and the knack put them in a job
where
they could make a living
and you know
they
eat at a career
but now they
they've got a box full of tools
they've got
you know bum knees
bum shoulders
bum backs
and
and they're like
i should have got out of this
20 years ago
i should have went
applied myself differently
i was that guy five years ago
i was still that guy three years
but it's one of those things
where
you know
we keep in this industry talking
about why
you know the young people
are not coming in
and they're not staying
and it's
it comes right back to
what we've been talking about
tonight
the the culture of the business
has got to change
it won't
dealerships are not going to have
technicians on staff
if they don't get ahead of this
problem
i don't care what they say
oh we're going to do this
and we're going to pay them
it doesn't matter
it doesn't matter
with everything in cost going up
in every job
paying their people more
it doesn't matter
if all of a sudden every technician
starts to make 100k a year
if they could make 80k a year
doing something with way less
of the mental anguish
there's a lot of people
that will still take the 20k loss
because it's just at the end
of the day
they can go home and
and relax
and know that i go in tomorrow
rinse wash repeat
and i make the same amount of money
we're killing our people
because we're making them like
bear all the brunt
of all the other bad decision
in the business
right
if they make somebody else
makes a bad decision
makes it a management change
makes and then the numbers drop
out of the bottom
yes everybody feels it
but the technicians feel it the most
and that's why we have such the
problem with the mental health
and the technicians that we do
that's why
because it's the unsteadyness of knowing
i may not make anything tomorrow
or it's the it's the impending gloom
of knowing that like
i'm 30
and i got 20 more years of this
and i don't see it getting better for me
because i can't get to jim's level
for whatever reason
or i can't get to kurtis's level
or i'm already at that level
and i i'm bored or you know
like we made a manager change
and all of a sudden he hates my
guts because he doesn't think
i should be getting a guarantee
like this is the stuff that plays
in our head all day long
and then they wonder why we're sick
and when they wonder why we
you know some of us drink too much
and and you know
divorce is such a rampant thing
and technicians it's not even funny
they wonder why out of you you
spend a lot of time
you know if you're the more your
time you're there the more time
the more money you can make
yeah i think
i think a lot of the stuff i've
been posting online has been
conversations and where i'm
wearing a suit or talking
and you know i don't get a post
from my shop anymore
but i think that there's a right
way to go about having these
conversations with these dealerships
and these service managers
and these owners and
and i think that some of them
are interested
and i think they don't want to hear
like the
i'm gonna say complaining
but you know if you want to
have a conversation with the
people who make the higher
decisions you need to rise
to their level
and you speak to them in a way
that they understand
and i've been getting a lot of heat
from that because i'm wearing a suit
and it's like oh and
you know the things that people
say are are awful on social media
but at the end of the day
my my mission is to advocate
for technicians
and i want to help technicians
and i understand the system
enough to know
that if i just sit here and
complain on social media
and i just don't try to do
anything about like with your
you talking to people
and talking to industry leaders
and talking to technicians
and getting the voices out there
that's the type of stuff we need
we don't need people
you know
harassing in the comments
and going on to making these
videos we need people to have
conversations at the table
with the owners
and with the service managers
and talking to them in a way
that
i mean
if i were to go to have one of
these conversations and
they're talking about flat rate
which i have a conversation
coming up about that
and i'm excited because i'm
going to bring into it some of the
stuff about mental health
it says
is is if flat rate is so important
you know let's say that
fixed op manager
is making five hundred thousand
dollars more per year
on flat rate
is that worth
someone's life
i mean that's extreme
that's very extreme
but at the same time is
they don't know what's going on
with that technician
they don't know what's going on
they don't know there's
decisions in their
their livelihood
so is that
five hundred thousand dollars
worth it
because sometimes it feels like
that's more important
but if we want to have those
conversations we need to rise to the
level and rise to the occasion
and wear the suits and represent
ourselves in a professional manner
yeah
and so i
there's one thing that i hope that
this conversation does is realize
that
i'm on the technician side
and i will always be on the
technician side
even if i
become an owner become a manager
whatever well the future has for me
talking in front of people
and talking at these groups and these
tables with people
is nerve wracking
and sometimes it's hard to have
these conversations
and i get nervous
and i get anxious
but
you know maybe some of the things
i say
are
come off across as
you know
managerial or
the owners
i think of the owner's son
or something like that and
and ultimately
is
i'm nervous having these conversations
too i'm advocating for not just
myself
but for a lot of people
and
you know it's it's a tough situation
for me
and but at the end of the day
i want to help technicians
increase their value
and i want to help technicians
relieve some of that mental stress
and that mental
suffering
that flat rate brings to the table
and
flat rate is great for some people
but it needs to evolve into
something
that benefits the gyms
and the courtesies
and
the new guys
and and not just
to rush those repairs
and not to
you know get stuck on huge
dyag
but to do what's best for the customer
and do what's best for the
technician
and
in turn
if you're taking care of your people
and you're taking care of your
customers
that dealership
or that shop
will profit
we just need to be done in the right order
yeah um
going back to what we talked about
the David Klein episode that
you know kind of
helped me find you
well David
hit with me a bunch
was that like
he missed a lot of things with his children
and he
it's things he can't get back
and I don't know your situation
and that's that's fine
but
the technicians that are listening
like I have no so many techs
that are older my age that like
when they did the
the moonlighting
the shade treating stuff
they missed out on so much
and yeah maybe they did that
because like
they wanted to have a race car
you know and and and that took time
or or
you know they wanted their wife to be home
the kids to be home school
so they piled a bunch of work in
you know after hours
trying to find that balance of
being able to walk away at the end of it
hang up your head at the end of it all
and say I didn't miss
you know I'm good I didn't miss
I don't know too many that
can look back and not have a ton of regrets
on the stuff that they missed
while they were making money
and I think that that's the other thing
that we're we're we're not talking
about enough in the industry
and for 2026 I want to move forward
we're talking about it more is that it's not
the young people
it's not that like
they're lazy
but they value that time away from work
way more than my parents generation did
way more than I did
it took me a long time to really
I valued when I wasn't at work
because I loved being
I love the challenge of work
now I want to go to work
but I want to be able to leave work at work
and I want to enjoy my
I want to work for my leisure time
when we go home at night
and we hustle and we grind
and we you know
shade tree
that's all stuff you can't get back
that's hours at the end of the day
that you can't get back
Jay Cole that I had on
he talks with that right now
he is working very hard
but he's missing a lot of stuff
and he doesn't want to miss
a lot of stuff forever
and you know that's not just a problem
with our industry
it's parents all over the world
happening you know
they miss things
but our industry
because of what we could do
where our skill set would allow
we never had a shortage
if you wanted to work
from the time you got off work at five
until midnight
lots of guys did that
two in the morning
three in the morning
they made
made a killing
made a killing
they brag about that
and then you see them
and it's like
they don't have good relationships
with their children
because they don't really
they're not bonded
they don't know
like dad was always busy
my own father
I could tell you stories
so
people are listening
this isn't about flat rate
it's not about
it's about knowing your value
and knowing that
there's nothing wrong
with a technician
wanting to go to work
and only work Monday to Friday
and only you know
clock out at five
and be able to leave it at home
and make a decent enough living
that they're not stressed
to the point of where their
marriage is starting to fall apart
or they're thinking
you know
crazy suicidal thoughts
and they want to have
strong family relationships
if we just say too bad
the shop's not making money
like go home and do side work
that's not the answer
and we know it's not the answer
and this is the thing
with too many years
they just said
oh well
the younger generation is not
going to do it
and they shouldn't have to
fucking do it
that's the other thing
they should not have to
because the other ones
the other skilled trades
they don't do it
not to the level that we do it at
and this is not about
Shaitree you know
side work
it's not what this whole
conversation is about
it's just don't think of it
as the solution
because it isn't one
it's a detriment
I'm going through that
same exact thing now
as my kids are three and four
and I used to
go in early
stay late
and then
you know the technician in me
I get
excuse me
I get to four or five o'clock
and I know that I can get
that work done
I know that I can stay late
but I also know I have
kids at home that say
daddy why do you
got to go to work
stay home
yeah
night
that's one of the hardest
things is I
trust me
little buddy
I don't want to go to work
like I don't want to go there
and spend my day there
I would rather stay at home
with you
yeah
and so that's something new
for me that I'm struggling
with
as the work hard technician
but also as a father
and a husband is
is
I'm trying to be more
father husband
unless
grind my life away at work
and so
I'm struggling with exactly
what you said is
it doesn't need to be
that way
it doesn't need to be
12 plus hours a day to
make a good living
it doesn't need to be
that
yeah
I don't
I don't
I said it to
conversation earlier
my goal
when I got into this
was never to take a dealership
and make that dealer owner
another million dollars
in the next quarter
to put in their retirement fund
that was never my goal
and I think too many times
we don't want to talk about it
and you're not at the level
where I'm at
but I could sit
and have those conversations
all day long
and look at them
with a straight face and say
because that's what's expected
when you go to work
as a dealer owner
a lot of you
I understand
it's not easy
but a lot of you
are playing on
such a different level
than what the people
that work for you are
you've forgotten
and this is the
this is it
I'm not there to make you
a multi-millionaire
I'm there to provide
for my family
and if you're going to
tell me that I'm not worth
paying
what I feel I'm worth
somebody else
right now
in this
fucking industry
in this marketplace
that we're in
I guarantee you
somebody else will
and this is the people
that are listening
that's the reality
you know it
you're all running ads
you're all trying
to hire competent
qualified people
like Curtis
and you can't find them
because you've lost sight
of what somebody
like Curtis wants
for Curtis
and what he's really
truly worth
to the bottom line
and when you
pull your heads
out of your butt
and realize it
things will
the ship will
ride its way
but right now
it ain't happening
and I
I hats off to people that are
figuring out their worth
I talk to them every day
and it is
it does my heart good
to know
that the conversations
that Curtis is having
the current stations
that I'm having
they're being heard
and people are realizing
and I'm not wishing any
ill on the people
that are you know
own dealerships
or own shops
I'm not wishing you any ill
but you have to stop
thinking
that your customers
can't pay
and that's why I can't give
Curtis more money
that's all bullshit
and if you
if even if you
don't think the customers
can't pay
you just don't want to
give it out of your own pocket
see how that goes for you
I guarantee
it's not going to go well
so
Curtis
that's enough of the rant
tonight
thank you for having
on closing thoughts
where do you want to be
in five years Curtis
I want to be doing
something for myself
that allows freedom
to have my own schedule
okay
I don't want to
sit around
and be on vacation all day
that's just not who I am
but I want to do
something that's building
for my future
and essentially building
for my family's future
right now
the dealership life
suits that
but I'm definitely
in the works on some things
that I hope
in five years
are too fruition
yeah well
as always
I hope that we can have you
back on at some point
and keep in touch
with where you're headed
and what you're doing
and you know
you and I are relatively
new friends
but I mean
we need to have a lot more
of these conversations
behind the scenes
and I think you need to
keep me in the loop
of what's going on
and what you're thinking
about
and you know
some of the people that
are are reaching out to
you
if you want to give them
a slightly different
perspective
send them my way
you know
not and I don't mean
that in a bad way
but you know what I mean
right like I can kind of
give it a little more
this is
how old are you to 30
34
so this is the 50 year old
right
um
and you know
we want to see the young
people succeed
that's the
why I do this
I don't do this for
text my own age
the guys that are
already my age
and still doing it
we've figured out
how to survive it
but I do this
and you do this
I think for the young
people that are coming
after you
and that's
why I do it
and I want to thank you
for everything
you're doing for the
industry
I think it's great
and um
people
where can they find Curtis
well right now
my biggest thing is
Instagram
at
Technar
with two Rs
that's
T-E-C-H-G-N-A-R-R
it's a little hard to spell
I'm also on
LinkedIn
as well
I'm pretty becoming
pretty popular on
LinkedIn
and TicToc
TicToc is also
Technar
so
yeah
yeah
trying to get out there
yeah
I first saw him on
Instagram
um
I see him a lot
more now on TicToc
and
everybody
you know where to find me
um
I'm over on LinkedIn
but I'm not very active
they're not white people
over there
I'll just tell you that
right now
it's definitely
a different crowd
a lot of the people
that I tend to
run down
tend to hang out
in that crowd so
they don't really
get me
and that's okay
it's all right
um
you know
there's some good folks
over there
I'm not trying to say that
but I mean
that a lot of the people
like that
you know
so-and-so dealer
principal
so-and-so dealer
principal is like
they're not going to
want to hear me
yeah
it's much more business
and uh
business forward
and stuff like that
and so
it's allowed me to grow
in some other areas
that are important
to the
the bigger picture
yeah
but uh
Curtis
thanks for being here
tonight brother
um
I appreciate you
and uh
as always
all my listeners
we got
some really cool
episodes coming up
um
Asta is in six weeks
so all of yous
that are listening
if you have or on the fence
about going to Asta
go to Asta
trust me
the who's who
of the internet
automotive realm
are
going to be there
not just me
but other people that you know
and I can honestly say this
it's an amazing event
and uh
you know
we've got
four tech J. Cole
is going
Brandon Sloan
Chuck engine Chuck
like we've got some really
cool cats from
the online space
that are attending
so if you're thinking about
I only want to go one event
this year
that's the event to go to
and uh
I always say
it's a life changing event
when you go to
it changes you
you realize that
you're not alone
and
Curtis you're not alone man
I know exactly where you're
coming from
so
everybody
I love yous all
we'll talk to you soon
thank you
hey
if you could do me a favor
real quick
and like comment on
and share this episode
I'd really appreciate it
and please
most importantly
set the podcast
to automatically
download
every Tuesday morning
as always
I'd like to thank our
amazing guests
for their perspectives
and expertise
and I hope that
you'll please
join us again
next week
on this journey of change
thank you
to my partners
in the ASA group
and to the
changing the industry
podcast
remember what I always say
in this industry
you get what you pay for
Pierce hoping everyone
finds their missing
10 millimeter
and we'll see you all
again next time
Request an explanation for:
2 cars
2 cars featured
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
Help improve this episode
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark. Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
Report incorrect info
Suggest better explanations
Flag missing cars
More from The Jaded Mechanic Podcast
Why Shops Lose Technicians Overnight | Lisa Coyle and Kat Ayers from Promotive
Jun 2, 2026
Why Repair Shops are Toxic and Why Technicians Deserve More with Greg Hilliard
May 26, 2026
Derek Amodio Was a Chef but Now He’s a Technician?
May 19, 2026
Christopher Clingerman Compares Fleet Life to the Dealership
May 12, 2026