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How to Deal With Angry Customers? Also, Removing Old PPF Episode #918
How to Deal With Angry Customers? Also, Removing Old PPF Episode #918
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About this episode
Navigating customer complaints and detailing challenges takes center stage as the hosts discuss the back-to-school season's impact on detailing businesses. They share insights on handling angry customers, emphasizing the importance of face-to-face communication. The episode also dives into practical tips for maintaining vehicles, including the use of fabric protectants and the intricacies of paint protection film (PPF) removal. With anecdotes from personal experiences, the hosts highlight the balance between customer service and the realities of detailing work.
Topics:
customer complaints
back to school detailing
fabric protectants
paint protection film removal
customer communication
detailing tips
service pricing
wet sanding
In this conversation, Marshall Hill and Nick Walters discuss the impact of the back-to-school season on the detailing industry, emphasizing the importance of adapting services to meet customer needs.
They delve into the effectiveness of fabric protectants, the challenges of handling customer complaints, and the significance of face-to-face communication in resolving issues. The discussion also covers the evolution of car technology, the skills required for wet sanding, and the importance of valuing one's time in business.
Additionally, they address cleaning techniques for tires and rims, as well as the complexities involved in PPF removal.
Chapters
00:00 Back to School: A Detailing Opportunity
02:47 The Debate on Fabric Protectants
05:58 Handling Customer Complaints
08:58 The Importance of Face-to-Face Communication
11:57 Understanding Customer Expectations
14:56 The Evolution of Car Technology
17:56 Mistakes in Detailing: Learning and Fixing
20:52 Wet Sanding: A Skill to Master
23:56 Valuing Your Time in Business
27:06 Cleaning Techniques for Tires and Rims
29:56 Dealing with PPF Removal Challenges
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Tesla Model
"...t's why you kind of hear horror stories about the Tesla Model 3 customer, the same you hear about the guy that ..."
Car
Tesla Model 3
"...y you kind of hear horror stories about the Tesla Model 3 customer, the same you hear about the guy that st..."
Car
911 Porsche Gt3
"... you hear about the guy that stretched to buy the Porsche GT3 who really couldn't afford it. They become almost..."
Back to School: A Detailing Opportunity
The Debate on Fabric Protectants
Handling Customer Complaints
The Importance of Face-to-Face Communication
Understanding Customer Expectations
The Evolution of Car Technology
Mistakes in Detailing: Learning and Fixing
Wet Sanding: A Skill to Master
Valuing Your Time in Business
Cleaning Techniques for Tires and Rims
Dealing with PPF Removal Challenges
Select text to request an explanation
Welcome to the Pints and Polishing podcast, the most influential and listened to podcast
in auto detailing.
Welcome to the community.
All right, something happened last week, and it shook the industry.
Listen, we've got to talk about it.
It was massive.
Well, at least here in Oklahoma.
Back to school.
Back to school started.
It rocks detailing around here in Oklahoma.
We love back to school, right?
Today, everybody gets back on their schedules, so all those people that we always had a hard
time getting a hold of, we know their schedule again.
We know their cars are going to get dirty, and there's those events.
All those great events, soccer moms are back out, right?
Football is back after it, cars are smelling bad.
It's that time of year, Nick.
Do you celebrate it?
I celebrate it.
We always do great.
They're back to school.
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of 50-50 here.
Everybody goes back to school different times.
You've got all kinds of different people going at different times here, so for me, we'll see
a little bit of uptick probably starting in September, but yeah, it's not necessarily
right in August or anything like that.
So, yeah, you guys don't do everybody all at the same time.
It's really scattered.
Yeah.
Well, you've got as many people in your town as we have the whole state here in
Oklahoma.
Yeah, that's probably true.
Yeah.
Probably is a little different over there, but so one of the things I always like
to do with something that we want to make sure we talk about it is things that you do
around these moments, right?
This is the time that I'd always say, if you guys go back and look, every quarterly I recommend
you guys do something.
I always say it's a great time, every quarter, to put glass back on the windshield.
It's a great time.
And around back to school, people are going to remember it.
They're seeing all the bugs.
They're seeing everything that hits their windshield.
And here in Oklahoma, we start getting into a little bit of rain as it gets into
the fall.
There's a great time to get glass back on the windshield.
Sort of always one of those things that I love to do.
There's always things I like to do when it is back to school.
Maybe if you take care of cars that people use on a regular basis to haul around kids,
great time to put a little spray interior, right?
Get it freshened back up, clean.
Do you ever propose, like are you a proponent?
How big are you on fabric protectants, right?
It's something we've talked about here and there on a regular basis.
Most of us that know that, listen, they're going to go, you guys don't really believe
in it.
I guess why don't you believe in a fabric protectant?
Well, it's not like, you know, believe or not believe.
I mean, there's some probably some decent stuff on the market.
I mean, look, if you look at our complete, it has, you know, anti-skid technology
in it.
That helps from getting your carpet roughed up and things like that.
But at the end of the day, if you have something that works, you should use it.
But again, you're talking about how often does it need to be applied to be effective,
right?
Yeah.
You know, is it every six months?
Is it every three months?
Is the mom mobile different than the guy's weekend car?
Those things don't get identified as clearly as they should, in my opinion.
Because again, it's going to be, if you're looking at any fabric protectant,
it's going to be all about abrasion, getting in and out of a seat, getting in and out of
the carpet.
You know, maybe your driver's side, you're the only one in the car, so the fabric
protectant and the rest of your car, it's going to hold up forever.
But the one on your driver's side, you may have to do it, you know, every quarter or
every six months or every month or whatever the case may be.
I just think to set it and forget it of that stuff isn't really taking into account
how often you're getting in and out.
There's no doubt there's some of it that's very water repellent, stain repellent, things
like that.
But you've got to also say how long is it going to last, which I think has been just
far too inconsistent at times.
Well, because yeah, how do you judge it, right?
Because if you're going to put a time limit on it, say it lasts, you said six months,
let's say that, right?
Like soccer mom versus you gave the businessman, right?
Like somebody that only is the one person in the car, right?
It is going to last a lot longer than soccer mom with so many people getting out of
the car.
And I think that's probably why, you know, there's some people that don't believe in
them.
I guess we'd kind of say that is you really can't ever understand how long you're
supposed to quote unquote sell it or tell somebody how long it lasts.
Last thing we want is somebody that has a heavy used car coming back three weeks later
going, Hey, look at all this.
You say I said you were going to put this spray and protect it and then look
at all this all over my carpet.
Now we can see that in coatings and people do that and they say that, boy, getting that
on the interior and having like people mad about their interior stains.
That's not a fun place to be in.
Yeah.
And again, you're just, you're dealing with it becomes a very wear and tear product,
right?
It's so dependent on what someone's doing in that car.
If you're realistic and you speak about it properly, there is nothing wrong with
it.
You know, again, as we see with coatings, as we would say with something on a fabric,
you know, situation, it's going to be the exact same problem.
How are you selling it?
How are you talking about it?
This is what I found with wheel coatings that I've tested over the last 15 years.
If you talk about the wheel coating properly, which is, Hey, man, it's going to be how
you maintain it, how you keep it, you know, you got to realize it's a higher temp
area.
You know, if you just let break dust build up and get hotter and hotter, maybe this
thing's not going to last very long.
So I just think interior stuff's just like that.
To me, it's just like wheel protective and coating protectant.
If you talk about it properly, there is nothing wrong with it.
I mean, it's certainly not going to stop every stain.
I mean, we've seen people that have gone to shops with reputable brands come here
and there's a stain on the carpet, you know, and they go, well, I wasn't
supposed to.
And I go, well, I don't know how it was talked about, but this could have
also been on for a year.
I mean, I don't know when you got the stain because you've let the
stain set at this point.
So I just think it's one of those gray area places.
Like you got a good system.
It's working.
You're honest with people.
It's probably like we see with coating.
It's going to be just fine.
So you have a situation there where something didn't work for, you know,
somebody, right?
You didn't do it.
But somebody did it for their customer, right?
And that guy, he's going, hey, listen, it didn't work, right?
You can always go, something happened.
Let's just go into that moment, right?
We get those phone calls that somebody goes, hey, hey, we got
an issue here.
One of your guys, oh yeah, or one of this or last time you guys
cleaned my car or right, fill in the blank.
Not a great phone call to get.
Never fun.
Sure.
Speaking of teachers back to school, I got to have one of those
type of conversations with a teacher.
There's an interesting breed of humans.
For those of you that don't know, Nick and I both share something
in common with family members.
We both have family members who are in the education profession.
Yeah.
And both of us don't like either one of those people.
Something about teachers.
But I had this teacher and this teacher was not happy.
I was helping my wife out with one of her upset customers.
And this lady was complaining about her oven.
Now it wasn't coming on.
I just sitting there, listening to her.
I go, man, there's got to be without all these electronics,
all this stuff that goes on inside of a car.
We talk about revive.
And we had that conversation about APC.
And I'm just like, man, with all these electronics
and all the cars today, and having to sit there
and listen to this lady tell me about complaining
about everything, I just go, man, what do you do?
What is it that you do?
Now, I know you get it.
You don't have those problems, right?
But some customer calls and goes,
this is my infotainment center is not turning on properly.
I'm like, oh, crap.
Can you imagine that guy?
That's a young guy in business that know what to do.
Yeah, I think a lot of it is, first of all,
you got to slow down and say, I
need to come look at what's happening.
Far too many people want to argue over the phone.
That's a very losing proposition, because arguing over the phone,
you haven't put your eyes on it.
You haven't laid your eyes on what's going on.
You also don't know if they're telling the truth
until you put your eyes on it.
You don't really know.
We have to stop.
I don't want to say believing people,
but you have to take control of the situation
and just say, hey, great, I'm going
to be in your area on Tuesday.
What time works for you on Tuesday?
I'll be there around noon.
Does that work for you?
Sure.
And go analyze what's happening.
The arguments that I see a lot is, first of all,
people are too comfortable getting
an argument over text message.
I think that's a definitely losing proposition,
getting an argument over email, losing proposition.
And then third on that list is getting
an argument over the phone.
Again, if the person's got to come in,
if you're mobile, whatever, you
got to go analyze what's happening.
So you say argument, right?
Because, of course, the customer is going to call and say,
hey, my infotainment center was doing fine.
You guys cleaned my car.
And now it's not working.
They might be demanding, be like, I need you over here now
because I can't use my car.
Look, if you're not super busy,
you might need to get over there.
Again, your level of business is going to dictate
when you can get there.
There are some guys that are booked every day all day.
And if I go and take an hour and a half
to go over to this person's house right at this second,
I'm going to anger a customer I've already made a promise to.
But obviously, if you can get over there,
you should get over there.
Yeah, or at 7.30 at night, right?
Yeah, whatever you got to do.
Yeah, whatever you got to do.
You got to do what you got to do, right?
But so you get there into those situations
and the customer's telling you they're adamant, right?
Adamant, it wasn't like this before.
Sure.
You could go into, I know we had all these.
I kind of actually missed it.
I told my wife after the conversation,
it's like, you know, I kind of missed those.
We had a lot of them at the car wash.
I mean, almost daily, right?
I'm sure.
Almost daily.
A lot of fun, you know?
Yeah, as your volume goes, I mean, as volume goes up,
headaches go up.
I mean, it's that simple.
More money, more problems, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's just volume.
The, you know, the one,
the number one we always had there was scratches, right?
This scratch wasn't there before.
Sure.
Did you hear one back in the day
when you got started?
You know, there was always people would say about you.
Well, I mean, we just had one this week
where somebody tried to tell me
that the Mercedes dealership didn't cause a scratch
when it would just left the Mercedes dealership.
And they go, oh, they would never do that.
I'm like, I'm just telling you,
you called me saying that it was scratched.
They obviously put it through the scratch dramatic car wash
that they have at that particular dealership
that I deal with.
I'm not saying your buddy didn't, you know,
didn't make a mistake,
but they definitely put it through the car wash.
We see the signs.
My guys have already analyzed what you called us about.
Yeah, man.
I mean, probably one that we dealt with,
that everybody dealt with is, you know, glass.
You know, my glass this, my glass that,
the windshield's not perfectly clear.
I mean, I didn't deal with a bunch of like the same thing,
but glass was always the number one.
I, you know, I can't see out of it perfectly.
And, you know, this is, you know, this wasn't there.
I deal with that stuff pretty simply.
If you're pre-inspection,
especially guys getting a start,
if you're inspecting the car
before you're working on it the first time
and you're doing a thorough video
or whatever it is you're using,
whether it's a form or whatever,
then I don't really think you run into these issues.
And it's also quality of customer.
As your quality of customer rises,
you're going to have a much different experience
in business.
And it's a really like taboo thing to talk about.
But the higher you go up the food chain with your customer,
the less they don't have time
to analyze every inch of their car, right?
Like, I mean, that's why you kind of hear horror stories
about the Tesla Model 3 customer,
the same you hear about the guy that stretched
to buy the Porsche GT3 who really couldn't afford it.
They become almost the same person
because they're actually the same class of customer.
That Tesla was a big stretch for that guy
but that Porsche GT3 was also a stretch for that one guy
who's looking at every inch of his Porsche.
Then you have customers that have 10 Porsches
and they don't notice anything on anything.
Like they're just like, oh, I don't know.
Was that there?
Just fix it, right?
So I just had this situation last week.
Obviously I said to the customer,
I'm not here to like argue with you.
I mean, that's my big line.
Like I'm not arguing with you.
You asked us to analyze the car.
I'm telling you the Mercedes dealership
put this through an automatic car wash,
which they have there.
Mistakes can happen.
I'm not blaming them.
And we can fix it for you.
Like don't worry, it can be fixed.
And then she wanted to continue down the road of
this would never happen and this guy takes care
and I go, I hear you.
I'm just, you asked us to analyze that's what I'm doing.
You just tell us what you want us to do.
Would you like it fixed or would you like to call them?
What would you like us to do?
And I get off the phone as fast as possible.
If she wants to talk in person,
she's more than welcome to stop by my shop and talk to me
or we could go out to her house and talk to her face to face.
That's what calms things down.
Human beings act very different face to face.
Telephone tough guy or tough gal is a real thing.
So you gotta get off the telephone ASAP,
get in someone's face, meaning like get face to face
and then see if that energy is still there.
And what you'll find is most of the time it's not.
It was there for a brief moment, right?
Are you the owner?
Are you the owner?
I gotta talk to the owners, right?
That's how that conversation started.
And it ended with, okay, thank you so much.
Okay, okay, well I just wanted to make sure, you know, right?
And it started.
Inside of each of those conversations,
there's usually a pinnacle point.
And at that point, if you can't come to an agreement
where both sides magically feel like,
oh, okay, well I was completely wrong
and you're completely right.
That never happens, right?
It never happens.
Almost you'd have to come to a point
where you get very stern, right?
Sort of like what you said.
You said, ma'am, you asked me this or sir,
you asked me this and here's the way it was
and this was my opinion.
And you know, we had to get to that.
We had to walk her off the ledge.
And in detailing, listen, besides scratches,
you're right about windows.
I got a joke about this and this'll date me.
I had problems with, you remember those electric antennas
that would go up and down?
Oh yeah, the 100%.
Yeah, those were always,
people act like they never malfunctioned.
Yeah.
Dude, these malfunctioned all the time.
Oh, my radio was working before and now it's not.
Oh, come on.
Right?
Oh, come on.
Do you think that there are though in cars
there are actually less things that could go wrong today
than there are back in the day?
I mean, you have more, just on the exterior,
you have more sensors than ever.
We're seeing a, PPF guys will probably experience this more
than the average detailer,
but I've heard some detailing guys that are running into this
where they actually press in a sensor,
you know, in a sensitive area,
throws the whole system into haywire, you know,
this and that.
I mean, people covering sensors with PPF 99%
don't have a problem.
And then one time this one sensor
on this part of the bumpers going crazy
wouldn't really have been a thing 10, 15 years ago at all.
You know, wouldn't even have been a concern.
Now it's a huge concern.
I mean, when it goes haywire, it's a concern.
You don't think it's a concern in the moment.
So I think there comes a lot of this stuff where,
you know, look, we got a question
through one of our team members
that was pretty interesting saying
that a dealership is saying
that a certain car that they sell
when guys spray the steering wheel
that the buttons are malfunctioning now.
And, you know, we're seeing it a lot.
Well, you know, what I find is people don't know what a lot is.
If you sell a thousand of that car every month
and you see two of them that have the problem
from quote unquote, somebody spraying the steering wheel,
that's not a lot, right?
But it has happened.
But yeah, I mean, as of now,
there's just more little things that can go wrong.
Tenters out there that used to be able to tent wind shields
and not worry about it.
Now they got to worry about the liquid going behind there
and frying a module and things like that.
Like, yeah, I mean, as things get higher tech,
as there's more moving parts,
you're going to have, you know, different things happen.
But the whole thing is when you have confidence
in what you're doing,
usually you can calm almost any customer down
because they realize, hey, I'm not here to BS you.
You're not, you know, I'm not thinking you're BSing me.
I don't enter the conversation thinking
someone's trying to get over on me.
I don't think many of you should enter that way either.
That's why I always say, go talk face to face,
analyze what's going on.
And what you may find is go, yeah, you know,
when we turn the car on, this wasn't malfunctioning
and you're right, it is malfunctioning.
Let me look into it.
And maybe it's a simple fix.
Maybe it's just, hey, we did get some extra liquid,
you know, near something, but it'll dry out in a day or two.
Can you give us a week and let's see if this thing,
you know, pans itself out.
But guys just have to stop thinking
you can handle everything over a text message
or a phone call.
That's just not reality.
Yep, absolutely it's not.
Face to face is the way to go.
And yeah, the reason why,
how I found out she was a teacher is
once she walked off that ledge, she goes,
oh, I'm just, I'm so stressed
because it was my first day of school.
It's like,
Yeah, I mean, we all work five days a week.
I don't know why it'd be a big stressor,
but you know, you had the whole summer off.
I mean, I don't know, three months off
wasn't enough to get de-stressed, I guess.
Yeah, usually just after the weekend,
we come back, we're ready to go.
Gosh, they had three months off,
couldn't be ready to go on the first day.
Yeah, I can't handle it.
School's starting.
I need a vacation.
It's like, I don't know, man.
Well, then they start on Thursday.
They don't have to work two days of that week.
I mean, come on.
You know, I think it's just one of these things
that we all need to understand is that
people really do calm down face to face.
Like, I know many of you are scared of that,
but just trust me when I give you this advice
because I've made all the mistakes and trust me,
I definitely have where I got busy
and I was trying to handle something over the phone
and it just escalated more and more and more.
That telephone tough guy thing is a real thing.
Just cut that barrier and do yourself a favor.
All right, here's somebody you said
wanting to know everything.
Here's somebody who wants to know all of it,
all in one question.
What's the best way to do a wet sanding job?
I have a job coming up and needing some help.
Thanks, everybody.
Like, wow.
Like, hey, let me know what to do on the wet sanding.
I got a car coming in.
Like, hold on.
Yeah, but you and I have talked about this.
The resurgence of all of these topics,
wet sanding, rotary, all of these things
that are now kind of having a resurgence
over the last two to four years,
there's a price to be paid is that
this stuff is happening too often.
Too many people are getting into things like wet sanding.
It's a skill.
It is something that takes people a long time
and a lot of practice to become good at,
but those are always left out of the conversation.
Like, oh, you should be using a rotary.
Great, man.
The rotary is a great tool.
You also need to explain to people.
They need to take their time.
They need to practice.
Maybe they need to go see somebody
who actually knows how to use a rotary in their town
or at a training or whatever,
specific to sanding and rotary.
So all of this advocating for these things,
which are great tools in the tool belt,
don't get me wrong.
Those are the things that you and I learned
when we started in this business,
but the world changed and most guys now are holding a DA.
They're doing one steps or hybrid two steps.
And then they're like, well,
I saw these people sanding paint on Instagram
and how hard can it be?
It's like, I don't know, man.
A lot of shit ends up in the body shop that people sand.
I mean, I can tell you that much from experience
and many of you out there that have been around as well.
I just think, I mean,
can you imagine have a wet sanding job
and you don't know how to wet sand?
Can you imagine not knowing if it was, you know,
what car or how to do, I mean, what wet sand to pick out?
Yeah, when you're talking about a new paint job,
you're gonna do 800 to 3,000, 3,500.
You're gonna just do a little skim,
a little scuff and buff with 2,500 and call it good
or 3,000.
What are you doing, dude?
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
Is this the whole car?
Yeah.
The one thing is, is that, you know,
we try to explain when you guys go into
hyper clean specialists, man,
be real specific about your questions.
People are willing to help.
I mean, I'm sure the guy could have gotten some good tips
if he would have kind of included
a little bit more information,
but hey, I wanna learn how to wet sand
is probably not the most complete question in my life.
So best way though, if you're gonna offer
one best tip for somebody doing wet sanding,
I'm gonna go with something we already kind of hinted
around there, as I was gonna say anyway,
but we already got to it was,
you got, you know, picking your sandpaper
is gonna be one of your biggest challenges.
But he just, just buy the good stuff.
You're absolutely right.
So many people go, oh, I can go.
No, don't go cheap here.
No, no, no.
You definitely go.
Go TriZac 3M.
I mean, just, just don't do that.
Now, did you ever do the TriZac on the,
like put it on the little jigger,
you know, and do it like a full electric?
Or did you always do?
Yeah, I mean, I learned by hand.
I mean, so in all fairness,
I just, I didn't learn machine sanding.
I don't really have an issue doing it with an interface.
I can put it on a three inch and get around
and not really have much of a concern.
I just never learned that way.
I think, and again, if you're really
trying to do high level sanding,
you're going to be doing a lot of things by hand.
You can do the bulk of a flat panel,
probably with a machine and not,
not get, you know, grooves and dig in.
But look, man, it's tough.
Yeah, it's a highly skilled thing
that we need to speak about.
Cause again, there are guys that,
that may get past this, this, this episode
that have given 10, 20, 30 years
to doing this kind of work.
And now they're really at a high level.
And I think them speaking on social media about it
makes it seem like, well, everyone should be doing this.
This is high level work.
It's like, yeah, dude,
but you're leaving out the fact
you've been doing it 20 years.
Like that's, that's the important part of this is
if I wouldn't have been able to learn
on someone else's dime and someone else teaching me
so I could do it for their company,
I would have really had no way to learn.
Like I didn't learn on my own.
I learned working for a company.
So you think a guy like this goes into this job,
you know, goes into this post,
you know, he's got this job coming up.
It's gotta be a spot sand, right?
It's gotta be something.
I see, I'm like, I'm totally opposite of you.
I don't, I, I don't think so.
I think there are people that are quoting out
sanding a full car.
And I think those people who do it for a living
and really sand a lot will tell you,
and I've shared it on this podcast,
it is really difficult to charge as much as you need
to charge to sand an entire car.
Yeah.
Because look, there's a lot of this work
that should be in the five plus figures
and many people struggle to sell a $300 detail.
So they're gonna sand a whole car for like 1500 bucks.
Surefire way for you to burn yourself to the bone
is quote, sanding an entire car, under quote it.
Ask me how I know.
Okay, that, that's the most miserable work out there.
It's a highly skilled, very tough to charge
what you need to charge to sand an entire car.
It is, it should be, in my opinion,
very, very big boy money.
And it's very limited in the people
that should be doing it.
And then it's even more limited on the customers
that can afford to have it done, in my opinion.
I, I, you're probably right.
You're probably right.
No way he's asking if he's just got
to just do a little area.
I mean, he's just gonna do it.
I was hoping, right?
I had a little hope in detailing humanity, for instance.
Wrong hope.
Wrong hope.
Yeah.
Put your hope on something else.
All right.
Anyone have recommendations for cleaning rims
that get clogged up with car wash, tire shine?
What about hoping that?
I don't know.
What does that even mean?
Exactly.
I guarantee you that means.
So I saw a big post go go viral
on a Facebook group over the weekend.
Somebody must have sent it to me.
Do you use silicone or water-based dressing?
Yeah, yeah.
I saw that one too.
I'm like, you know, so this is another question, guys.
I don't know what the guy means.
So I think what he means, he's got a car.
It says pick for attention, but I think that's his car.
So if somebody goes through a car wash, right?
They go through a tunnel wash.
At the end, if they regularly get tire shine,
that tire shine gets put on, and it can.
It can get real thick and get real nasty in some grooves.
If they just regularly go through.
Rims that are clogged up though?
What?
I mean, rims are the metal part.
Those are the wheels.
So that's why I'm confused.
Do you think he means the rubber?
Maybe, maybe.
Either way, either way, we're gonna go TRX.
Yeah, and again, if you have a severe problem.
Yeah, this is a time for.
Go trying to be doing a 10 to one TRX, okay?
Go one to one, churn and burn, really scrub the tire,
let it sit there as long as you can,
maybe multiple applications.
And again, I've always told people,
you may get to the end and have such severe dressing
problems on your vehicle, because like you said,
they've used the junk of the junk,
and it's, they've done it a hundred times in a row.
Grab something like mineral spirits
after you've done a thorough clean
and just wipe the tire down, get everything off of there,
get back to that plain rubber, you'll be fine.
Like I, you know, it's been a long time
since I've had off-road tires
and I have them on my Lexus.
Guys, I mean, just consistently using TRX,
like I don't even have to scrub the tires.
Like just consistently keeping this stuff clean.
Like I see all of the struggle out there.
I understand.
But TRX is so good on rubber.
If you just keep it clean, you know, on a regular basis
and I'm not talking like once a week even,
but like once every three weeks,
do a nice round of TRX,
I don't think you'd run into these issues,
especially if you use something like Ultra Dress,
like Quick Shine, even our Infinite Shine,
which is solvent based.
This stuff is really not that problematic anymore.
All right, I saw this,
especially I thought it tied in perfectly
with TRX because this guy was cleaning his motorcycle.
And that's a Ducati.
I'm not a bike guy, never been,
I think I rode one bike one time, right?
I was like, this isn't for me, right?
Yeah, I went on a bike ride a couple Sundays ago
for the first time in a long time.
So yeah, I'm in.
Okay.
So Dustin and those of you that have bikes
that like to go out and ride your bikes,
this guy could have used some help
because he was cleaning his Ducati
and he sprayed degreaser on these parts, right?
You can imagine those of you that do know, right?
There's different metals, soft metals.
Yeah, yeah.
And Ducati has a history.
If you guys have never been around Ducati's
or sports bikes, you need to be real leery
around the exhaust, the finish of the exhaust.
Yep.
Yeah, I mean, I didn't even see the post.
I mean, I can tell you like that's,
it's a problematic place,
maybe in a foam cannon, a little bit more spread out,
not so much a direct spray would be my move
if I was really trying to keep my bike clean.
TRX in a foam cannon, maybe even just two
or three ounces of TRX
because most of your bikes aren't really that bad.
I mean, unless you went through some kind of like crazy,
you know, cross country bike ride
and didn't touch your bike.
I think what I see on bikes is largely people think
they need to be too aggressive.
It's actually the opposite of what we see on cars and trucks.
Most car and truck detailers are a little too gentle
with not using things like cleanse and whatnot.
But if you're unsure,
putting something like TRX in a foam cannon
gives you a little water injected
into the system more consistently
and then you don't have so much of a direct spray
on some of these sensitive parts.
That'd be my piece of advice.
Yeah, so you did a ride recently
but never have been much of a motorcycle guy?
No, no, I was big on motorcycles, but I mean,
I had a pretty serious accident
when I was like 17 years old.
I've had another buddy lost his life early on
when I was riding motorcycles.
It's not something like I've given up on
but when I get invited out,
I have a customer of mine that has some really nice bikes
that don't get used and I took them out,
took one out on a ride with some guys
and I like motorcycles.
It's just not something that's part
of my daily life at this point.
I think obviously having young kids
and you talk about I live in a crazy city,
maybe the moment has kind of passed
of riding bikes real fast on the freeway.
It might be over for me.
Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it.
I did do it.
I mean, on Sunday, I exercised it.
I had a good time but once in a while
it was a little bit more of my speed at this point.
Yeah, that's probably a good call.
All right, I saw this post from a group
and this guy says he needs help.
He did a two-step pink correction.
By the time he was done, it got cloudy.
He should have waited until today
to put on the ceramic coating but he didn't.
I checked the best I could with flashlights
and missed some holograms.
What's the best way to remove ceramic coatings
so I can correct the holograms?
Yeah, it's go ahead and grab that compound
in a wool pad and just take a run.
I really do feel for people that I think sometimes
they just do it because they want reassurance
but he knows what needs to be done.
You got to remove it down.
It's like taking a house to the studs.
Like, dude, it's time to take that coating off.
That's going to be a headache if it's a good coating
and you're going to have to start at ground zero
and all of us, we're all human.
You're going to miss stuff, man.
You're going to mess up.
One of the things that I see,
and maybe it's just the internet's made people unsure
is guys, you're going to make mistakes.
You just need to go about fixing them.
That's it.
For whatever reason, I see a lot of these types of posts
where people get very, very unsure
after they've made a mistake.
This guy obviously knows well enough
to do a two-step correction.
Now, to what level?
I don't know his skill level
but to fix it, there's only one fix.
That's to go back in there and do the surgery again.
I mean, that's the one way to fix it.
You don't need anybody's advice
but I think we all need to get,
like the wet sanding guys a little too sure of himself
quoting out a wet sanding job
and not knowing how to wet sand.
We seem to be having trouble finding the equilibrium.
Hey, if you already own a polisher
and you've already compounded and polished a car,
you know exactly how to finish,
how to fix the holograms
which is go in there with the compound
and get it out of there.
So we don't seem to do a very good job
just finding the middle ground.
There's a couple of things that he says
that I want to chop up.
He says, I should have waited until today
to put on the ceramic coating but I didn't.
That's not true.
Well, so not using our coating
was using somebody else's coating, right?
There's an interesting part,
like I guess some people are still saying that, right?
I guess that's what some people are still saying
is part of their process.
You definitely don't need to wait the next day
if you're using hyperclean ceramic coatings
right after you're done correcting,
use wipe and go straight into it.
Yep.
Yeah, no, and again, maybe he's saying that
because he would have analyzed what was going on
a little bit more thoroughly,
which is the way I took it.
If you're unsure of your skills,
is it a bad way of doing things
to just kind of give the paint a little bit of time
to go back the next day and check your work?
It's not a bad idea.
That makes you feel more comfortable
but there comes this point in time
that you don't need to wait till the next day.
I just took it as he just wishes he would have analyzed
what he, the finish that he had left behind.
And like I said, once you make a mistake guys,
just going about and fixing it,
especially when you've already compounded the car.
So you obviously know how to get holograms out.
So go ahead and get it off there.
So maybe you're right.
I guess I'm wondering then where was his lights?
Because he said he was doing it
and he got it done until it was got cloudy.
So maybe he's mobile or maybe he's a shop.
He pulls them in and out.
I don't know.
Just right as we read some posts,
sometimes we go, hmm, that's a little confusing.
I don't understand.
Yeah, and also the cloudiness he could have seen,
which is we've explained this time and again,
could actually be from a reaction
with the oil in his polish
and the coating that he used.
Oh, see, this is what I thought he was meaning.
Cloudy is in like, cloudy is in like sun and clouds.
Yeah, yeah.
He couldn't go look at it because it was cloudy.
Yeah.
Well, your lights should show you more than the sun.
That's what I'm saying.
Well, where's his lights like?
Yeah.
Yeah, no.
And look, people are, there's a large debate,
I think going online about how to have a good light
set up and things like that.
And look, this is what I mean by finding an equilibrium.
We have people quoting out wet sanding jobs
who don't know how to wet sand.
And then we have people that just made a simple mistake
or an error going into a group asking how to fix something.
They already know how to fix holograms.
Because essentially he didn't have it all over the whole car.
He said, I have some spots with holograms and whatnot.
So bud, you already know how to fix them.
Just go about fixing them.
Stop wasting your time.
And that's what I think a lot of guys,
because also guys are like,
what do you think I'm just going to tell you
to spray a chemical that's going to fix everything?
Like, at the end of the day, man,
you got to take it off there
and you just got to start over.
It happens to the best of us.
And so if you don't have lights and you see in the sun
and you got holograms, how bad are those holograms?
Just come on.
Yeah, they got to be pretty rough.
They got to be pretty rough, my guy.
Maybe you should stick with Velo
and just do the one steps.
Yeah.
Said, any issues converting an air hose retractable reel
into a pressure washer reel?
And when I read this, I immediately heard Nick Walters
and type Trevor, as a guy that made a quote,
I guess he heard Nick Walters too.
He goes, just get a pressure washer reel.
It's not worth the hassle.
I mean, my guess is you still need an air hose reel.
So why, I mean, just use it.
If you don't, I guess it could be worth.
I see a lot of people that just don't value their time
as much as they think.
They'll talk about valuing their time with customers.
You know, these are the same people are like,
you know, no, you're worth and only charge this.
But then they're like in their garage goofing off
trying to convert an air hose into a pressure washer,
you know, reel, you know, like,
I just look at this and I go,
one of the things I could pass on to people
from the millions of mistakes I've made in my business
probably value your time throughout.
And some things just aren't worth your time.
Actually, a lot of things aren't worth your time.
Way better spent just going and getting a new customer
than sitting in your garage and goofing off
with your equipment in a way that
is never probably gonna be that beneficial.
But I see a lot of guys do it.
I mean, I saw a guy like had a rigid vacuum
and he was talking about his plug broke
and they're like, hey, go to this hardware store
and get this and I'm going, damn,
you could have just bought a new rigid.
Like they're not that expensive.
Like I'm not saying, I mean, if you go do that great,
but when do you start valuing your time and your effort?
And a lot of us, especially early on in business,
don't value our time enough in my opinion.
Well, in that moment, it's not easy to do, is it?
I mean, because we're gonna have to think
about what we gotta spend and what we gotta do here.
And I've shared with you, I think that was a problem
that my dad got caught into, right?
He didn't wanna pay people to do things.
He wanna just do it himself, right?
I don't wanna go buy a new X, Y, Z
because hey, maybe I can grab these parts
and maybe I can get this from over here
and I can put them, that's a car in it.
You have to see the posts about guys spending all this time
to try to make their own detail kegs.
You know, like the, and I'm like, guys, like, okay, man,
like I'm not saying you can't do it.
You absolutely can do it,
but you've wasted more time talking to people
on the internet about how to make your own keg
than what it would have just cost you
to let the guy make 50 bucks off the keg.
Like it's not this big of a deal,
but it's, again, if you want everyone else,
i.e. your customers or other human beings
to value your time, if you don't value it,
they're never gonna value it.
Like people would be pretty astonished
at how many things I just don't do, right?
And by the way, that was pretty early on in my business
because as I got busier and busier,
I'm like, I really don't have time to do this.
If you have all of this extra time
to do all of these extracurricular activities
by building your own detail keg,
which if you know how to do it,
and you can do it quickly, it's a great thing to do.
But I watched somebody interact 52 times on their own post
trying to figure out, hey, you got this.
I went on Amazon, I bought this,
and then that didn't work.
So what should I, and I go, dude,
you could have just detailed five cars by now
and bought two kegs that were already done for you.
Now again, if you know what you're doing,
it's a good use of time
because you go, look, man,
I just clicked these three things on Amazon
and I built one for 50 bucks.
And instead of using, buying one for $400.
Okay, but that's not what I saw in your post, by the way.
You were interacting on that post for two and a half weeks.
And by the way, in that two and a half weeks,
you could have already been using the keg.
Like the keg would have already been there.
You'd have been using it for a week.
Like we've all, we've said, you and I both said it.
And we definitely, any of us can all go,
listen, we know we've been in some spots.
We needed to try and put something together to make do.
If the 400 bucks for the keg is beyond your reach,
you're right, Nick.
Probably we shouldn't be spending time
trying to figure out how to make that.
We should figure out how to make 400 bucks.
Yeah, how to sell more, right?
And it seems like, and I really don't say this
in a judgmental way,
I'm saying it openly to everybody.
Everybody will do everything except learn how to sell more work.
I very rarely see post, how do I sell more work?
But I see what wheel cleaner should I use?
What coating should I use?
How do I make my own keg?
How do I wet sand?
Because I don't know how to wet sand.
It's like, I don't know man,
just sell a whole bunch of jobs you know how to do.
Like that would be the skill I would wanna have.
And if I was gonna take time in my business today
and tell everybody from the mistakes I made,
just learn how to sell more.
Then the keg doesn't become a problem,
you just buy whatever you need.
Yep.
All right, last question.
And definitely a good one for you.
It's around PPF.
We definitely have seen the old PPF
where you're like, oh man, this has reached its limit.
You know, we need to get this off of here.
Whether that's a car that, whether we've bought
and we've got the PPF and we go, wow, right?
Or, you know, a customer.
A customer has brought it in and go,
listen, we gotta get this redone.
This guy said, you know, howdy.
I'm right in on howdy.
Hey, howdy there, buddy.
He's around my parts of the world, I think.
He says a DIYer over here took off bad PPF
and it left with all the adhesive.
I'm currently heating it up with a hairdryer,
a spray and an adhesive remover
and then using a plastic razor blade to knock it off.
Any suggestions to get it done quicker?
Yep, rapid remover and a plastic razor blade
and maybe a heat gun.
If you know how to use one responsibly
or you can make this thing a lot worse,
you could also use what's called like a trash bag trick
where you put it out in the sun
and put rapid remover underneath the trash bag
and let it heat up that adhesive.
Better be careful that you know what you're doing.
Look, this is bad work.
I mean, plain and simple, there's no great way.
Maybe if you were lucky to have a dry ice machine,
it might be a little bit better for you,
but you know, 99.9% of people don't have access to that.
So make sure that you say,
hey, however many hours this is gonna take
is you know, I'm gonna charge you $150 an hour
and start a clock and however long it takes.
But I see a lot of people asking about PPF removal
and taking on PPF removal jobs.
Boy, when it's bad, you're gonna spend some hours.
And so hopefully you didn't say,
hey, I'll do it for 200 bucks
or in some PPF shops case, they're like,
yeah, as long as you give us the replacement job,
we'll remove this 23 year old PPF.
I've seen that backfire more times
than you could ever count.
So make sure you are, you know,
I guess it's smart enough in business to realize
this is a one-off job, charge people for it.
But yeah, rapid remover, a plastic razor blade
and you probably need to be ready to polish
in a big way when this thing gets off there.
You almost always have to, right?
You almost always have to.
Yeah, you almost guarantee to polish it.
So I remember seeing removing some PPF out of a car,
pulling some paint.
Oh yeah, happens all the time.
Happens all the time.
You better be very clear.
Now in his case, the guy,
it sounds like the guy already pulled the actual,
you know, top layer,
which is where most of the attention comes from.
But yeah, if you're pulling PPF,
you need to have an agreement that says,
hey, any paint that comes off is not on me
because that is absolutely something that can happen.
So there's that question, you know,
how long should it take me, right?
Like, no, I got no estimate.
I mean, it is literally car by car,
what was used, how bad or good was the adhesive
on that PPF, you know,
your skill set to use something like rapid remover,
some heat, if you do have it,
I mean, it's all over the map.
You're not gonna be.
So this guy, this guy was using a hairdryer.
Definitely need more than a hairdryer.
Yeah, you need a heat gun.
Yeah, you need a heat gun.
Yeah, I don't know.
I feel for him, man.
This is what you call a learning lesson,
hopefully that maybe this is,
and again, I do a lot more turning away this work,
even if I get it, man, if you even,
even if you need the money,
not all money's created equal.
This might be one of those ones
that times you need to be a little bit smarter
and go, hey, man, we just don't do that.
I apologize.
And, you know, especially if you're not
in the PPF side of the business, right?
You're not getting the work of replacing it
and all these things where you can make your money back
because even if I today charge 200 bucks an hour
for PPF removal, it still wouldn't be enough.
I mean, if it's bad enough,
it's really miserable work.
Or it can be, I should say, not all the time,
but it can be pretty miserable.
All right, and so for us to get smarter,
to increase our education,
we need to go over to the hyper clean store,
YouTube channel, check out Nick
as he walks us through all the different cars
he's detailing and how to use the products
that is hyper clean store on YouTube.
All right, we'll see everybody next time.
See you guys.
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