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Norm Gieselman from TikTok on Strategies for Efficiency and Customer Service in Automotive Repair, Part 1
Norm Gieselman from TikTok on Strategies for Efficiency and Customer Service in Automotive Repair, Part 1
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About this episode
Norm Gieselman, known as the 'Mechanic of the Stars' on TikTok, shares his journey from heavy-duty mechanics to running an automotive repair shop. He discusses the challenges of customer service, the importance of social media in the industry, and the complexities of modern vehicles. Norm emphasizes the need for effective communication with customers about repair costs and the evolving landscape of automotive technology. The episode also touches on mentorship, the technician shortage, and the differences between commercial and consumer automotive services.
Topics:
customer service
social media impact
repair costs
mentorship
technician shortage
flat rate pay
modern vehicle technology
heavy-duty vs light-duty
apprenticeship experiences
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In this episode, Jeff Compton is joined by Norm Gieselman, known as the "Mechanic of the Stars" on TikTok. Norm and Jeff have a conversation about the complexities of managing a car repair business, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing customer needs through effective intake questions. Norm also shares his experiences with resource constraints, focusing on quick jobs while building capacity for more complex repairs. Additionally, they discuss the growing knowledge gap between customers and technicians due to the increasing technology in modern cars.
00:00 Discovering TikTok transformed my learning experience.
04:00 Friends engage, share challenges, and understand opinions naturally.
08:31 Business owner transitions to franchise for growth.
11:05 Got into HD due to car repair.
15:21 Contrasting attitudes towards vehicle technology in summary.
18:51 Debate on tire torque and overanalysis in automotive.
20:03 Complaining about high-end truckers and their rattle.
24:37 Transition from project management to business administration.
29:14 Qualifying customers, limitations, and concerns for acceptance.
32:25 Sent car to the tuner, unit malfunctioned, sat.
35:29 The Car part overheats, causing the insulation to melt.
38:06 Understanding leads to practical application and success.
42:10 Learning by observation and apprenticeship for mastery.
45:43 Mechanics diagnose and repair engine issues.
49:12 Consider leasing for fixed costs, not ownership.
50:01 Concerns about the longevity of modern vehicles' features.
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TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffcompton7
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@TheJadedMechanic
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091347564232
Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Toyota Corolla
"...rking on, he'd bring his wife's car or something, Corolla or whatever, I'd fix it, and. And then I could us..."
Car
Ford Capri
"... I. I got into HD just because I had a 74 mercury Capri that I bent the lower control arm as 18 year old ..."
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
"...deos you did with that. You had a pretty modified Camaro in. Yeah. Finally done. It's over. I actually. I ..."
Car
Seat Cordoba
"...uretor head. And I'm like, holy man. I had an old cordoba in with when you mentioned ballast. Ballast resis..."
Discovering TikTok transformed my learning experience.
Friends engage, share challenges, and understand opinions naturally.
Business owner transitions to franchise for growth.
Got into HD due to car repair.
Contrasting attitudes towards vehicle technology in summary.
Debate on tire torque and overanalysis in automotive.
Complaining about high-end truckers and their rattle.
Transition from project management to business administration.
Qualifying customers, limitations, and concerns for acceptance.
Sent car to the tuner, unit malfunctioned, sat.
The Car part overheats, causing the insulation to melt.
Understanding leads to practical application and success.
Learning by observation and apprenticeship for mastery.
Mechanics diagnose and repair engine issues.
Consider leasing for fixed costs, not ownership.
Concerns about the longevity of modern vehicles' features.
Select text to request an explanation
That seems really expensive. Like, based on what? Based on what? Your knowledge of the car industry? Based on a house. It's very cheap. Based on a packet of crisps. It's very expensive. You're right. You know, but what's your datum reference point on expensive? Just because you don't want to spend dollar 800. That's probably where it comes from, right?
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of the Jaded mechanic podcast. I'm sitting here with a good friend of mine from TikTok, mister Mechanic of the stars, Norm. Norm. How are you, bud?
Good, man. How are you?
I'm loving life, man. We were just getting on here. You and I connected on TikTok, though, and we got talking just before we came on here. It's the China thing. But, I mean, social media for us has been, I think, for you. You. You really. We talked about the commitment, the time commitment, you know, staying dedicated to it.
It's a lot of work to put out there, isn't it?
It is, yeah. And it's funny because it's just. It's such an innocuous start to. Like, my wife and I were talking about it because the kids obviously were on it, and.
Yeah.
And we kept seeing, what are you watching all the time? Then we start looking at it like, this is kind of funny, and, like, we should start a tick tock account. Yeah, and then we should embarrass the crap out of our kids by doing all the stupid dances and all the stupid trends. And then. So I called my son. I'm like, come here and show me how to tick tock. And his immediate response was, absolutely not. There's no way we're helping you do this at all. So I'm like, you teach me how to do this, or I'm gonna learn myself, and then you'll pay.
But then I went from there, and I started coming across, you know, mechanics and Sean, you know, diag stuff. I'm like, well, that's interesting. I could probably do that. That looks like fun. And then, like, did I have a plan? Absolutely not. Like, I just started posting things, and then certain things went. Certain things didn't. I just enjoyed it.
Like, I didn't really care. I had no intention. And then you get to meet, like, you and Chuck and all these other guys, and then. And then it's so weird that such a, like, people don't know TikTok. Oh, you mean that kids dancing app? But, yeah. Like, the amount I've learned and the amount of, like, me and BJ were just talking about it, like, the amount I've learned and the amount that I've shared, because I always found that, like, I used YouTube for things every now and again. Like, man, I should start a channel so I can give back some of that stuff that I've taken. But it's so much easier on short form media to do that.
Yeah, way simpler. And that. So, like, I'm the same way. I got so much of my training. I learned so much of what I learned on YouTube because in my job experience, I didn't always work for people that sent me on training. So, like, you know, all the guys that had a really good YouTube channel, I'm not talking Scotty Kilmer here. I'm talking the other guys. I learned so much from them, and then I brought it back to work, and then it just became so.
I became, like, addicted to social media, where it was, like, Instagram. I would follow people, like, and then when somebody got me on TikTok, I was like, you mean there's mechanics out here that are actually. And then I thought, oh, the short format. You're not gonna be able to learn anything. Boy, was I wrong. You know, I can remember seeing Chuck, Chuck engine Chuck the first time, and I was like, that guy showed, you know, a really cool case study inside of three minutes. Like, it was fantastic, you know? And then it just. It exploded.
And, I mean, you've been witness to some of the conversations and some of the. I don't want to call them the arguments of the conversations back and forth. But, I mean, that's what I love about it, is the ability to stitch and get on there and to say, okay, here's your little clip. I obviously listened to it. I heard it. Here's my re. I don't want to use the word necessarily rebuttal, but you know what I mean, my counterpoint, I just think it's fantastic. And, you know, it's good because we get so many people that don't necessarily see eye to eye on every little topic, but the fact that we keep.
It's almost like a circle of friends now, you keep engaging. You keep bringing up, this is what happened to me. This is the challenge I face. What do you think about this? And then before you know it, I don't even have to ask. I already know what a lot of people think about certain subjects without even having to ask because I watched enough the conduct. Like, you and I were just talking about flat rate, right? Like, everybody knows kind of where I stand by now. Am I 100% against it? No, but like you said, there's almost like, escape clauses when you're a manager and you use it, you know, give, give me a little more on that, because you were really rolling on there for a second.
Well, I think the whole gist of the conversation we were having before was like, like, I'm not fundamentally opposed to flat rate. If I were a dealer principal, just because the fact it gives them a perfect little bracket. Right? Because they go, something's wrong. Well, I can't do anything about it because the flat rate is set by the, by the OEM. Well, I'm not. I'm making good money. That's good, because I can only pay you this much. So that works out great.
So it's really profitable for them. And it helps the guys who are very pro flat rate, who do upper control arms all day, or swap trannies and subarus nonstop. Like, they pay twelve and he can do it in eight, and he does that twice a day and goes home and he's happy. That's fine. I have nothing against that. But I just think from the perspective of the technician is where I'm coming from. It doesn't help you develop. It doesn't help you expand your knowledge base, it doesn't organically grow you into something.
Like, you might evolve away from something. Like, you go, I did this. Like, you go, okay. I did wheels, I did trannies, I did electrical. I prefer electrical. I'm gonna form my knowledge base away from here or into something else, or. But if you're just in that hole earning money for the company while still earning a living and you're content with that, it's fine. The reason I don't like it is because I don't like that.
You know what I mean? Like, I don't operate that way. And that's not how I want to develop, and that's not how I develop the people that work with me either.
Yeah. And, and I'll say this. So for people that aren't as familiar, you're, you own a franchise for okay tire, which. Okay tires tire franchise in Canada. Um, I think they're in the states, too, but they're pretty big in Canada. Um, and I, when I first started seeing your videos, if they told me before, I kind of clued into where you worked, I would have never thought that you were working in a tire store. You know what I mean? From the typical condensation sometimes of what we make, the assumption that, you know, tires don't get, because you were getting into some pretty varied diags on some pretty interesting. Like, you had an old Grumman box truck.
Like, there was. And I'm like, this guy's pretty sharp. Like, so how did you get there?
Well, okay. It's a long career, man. I was. Give me a sec here. Like, I actually came the other way. Like, I came from the HD side. I'm actually in AGT, right. And then grew my career there.
Apprenticed at Freightliner, where I went. Like, my mentor is one of my best friends, Keith Baldwin. And then he had just come back. When I met him, he had just came back from Saudi Arabia.
Oh.
And then the stories he was telling, and this, I'm like, that's it. I keyed on that. And, like, every career progression I'm going to make from here is going to be leading me to work abroad. That's something I really wanted to do. And then it, you know, I'm not going to go through all the details, but eventually I ended up going to Mexico, and then that led to Kuwait, and that led to Dubai, and then it went on and on, and then that all, like, this is a really high level coal snow version of my life. But that all kind of collapsed inwardly on itself when the. When the oil field fell apart in 215. So we came back here, and in the absence of having no further career prospects on the path I was on, I'm like, well, let's go back to what I was doing.
And I started this little shop. It was called glacier Industrial Services. And I was more medium truck, heavy duty, and I was like, people kept bringing me their cars, and I kept, you know, shooing them away. I didn't want them. I'm like, okay, the guy I'm working on, he'd bring his wife's car or something, Corolla or whatever, I'd fix it, and. And then I could use cell tires, do this. And eventually I had to stop because I don't all the automotive guys gonna hit me, but I don't particularly like working on cars just because of my background and. But eventually I had to come to a point where I was talking to my wife and business partner.
I'm like, okay, I have to get over the fact of what norm the mechanic likes to work on versus what norm the business owner can profit from, right? And then I like shooing away tires and shoeing away alignments. You're going, why? Tires beget alignments and alignments beget tires. And, yeah, you know, and then I'm like, okay, now we have to redesign things and we got hoists and kind of this and that and that. Time marched on. I kind of went, how can I increase sales and reduce costs? That's kind of the, you know, the magic of running a business. Then you go, it just kind of seemed like a franchise sort of ticked a couple of those boxes where I don't have to do a whole lot of advertising. And then, you know, and I just. It kind of naturally, then I was farming out to, like, kal tire and a few other places, and I was getting discouraged because, like, kal tires, like, no problem.
We'd love another St. Albert presence. You cut us a check for three and a half million dollars, we'll build you a building and we'll chop it up and we'll set it all up. And I'm like, I'm one guy. I don't. I can't do that. You know? And then eventually I hit on okay tire, and they said, you know, pay us a minimal franchise fee and put our sign on the door. And every shop has its own, like, every shop has its own pricing, its own business, its own models.
So they are the least invasive, I guess, is the best way to put it.
Yeah.
So it kind of fit. It fit. And they don't have a real, like, there's certain things you need to do, obviously, so you don't embarrass them. Like, yeah, you know, like, if you're going to tag hashtag ok, tires, St. Albert, their people watch what I'm posting just so they go, you know, I'm not hosting a wet tea, a wet t shirt contest with them as a sponsor, you know, like. But it's very minimally invasive and it's been really helpful just. Just to bring my shop into the more public realm, I guess, instead of ultra word of mouth. Glacier Industrial services was just me.
Yeah.
And then it became, okay, tires. So that became a little bit more nationally recognized and a little bit easier that way. But, like, what I work on is, and it's funny because people go, do you work on things besides tires? And of course, that's a natural question. And the funniest one I get all the time is, do you sell tires? Like, guys who have known me forever, I'm like, well, it's in the. It's in the name. Like, it's literally in the. I don't say that to people. But you think, yeah, that's how that came to be.
So all that traveling abroad, that wasn't. You weren't enlisted, right? Like, you weren't a military thing. That was just job opportunities.
Yeah, yeah, it was. And I think that's, like, I didn't initially lean on this as HD. Like, I. I got into HD just because I had a 74 mercury Capri that I bent the lower control arm as 18 year old kid, and I was hacking away trying to fix it because, you know, as most people get, you like cars and you're too broke to let anybody else do it, so you figured out yourself. And then the guy my daughter, my sister was dating at the time, he worked at Freightline, and he goes, oh, you seem fairly keen. You should come work there. I'd never been closer to the high class eight highway truck than passing it on the highway at that point.
Yeah.
So it was a bit of a shocking learning curve, but I got into it. It was great. Then you kind of realized that, like, nothing against the automotive, but, like, what I tell, like, when I told Dylan and Charlie, I said, HD is a bit more branchable, if you will. Like, you're an automotive tech. You work on cars. Yeah, right. And trucks and, you know, blah, blah, blah. But I said, you own HD.
There's cars and trucks, highway, off road equipment, oil field, power generation, marine train trains. It's really wildly diverse. And you can really go. I really think that's quite keen. And my career at HD has taken me from knowledge base to oil rigs to. I've worked on every continent on earth except Antarctica at this point. You know, like, it's great. It's a great opportunity to, you know, have really weird stamps in your passport that stop you from going to Vegas with your family for long periods of time.
Yeah, you guys just go all catch up like they're going through, and it's like Kuwait and Iraq and then Ireland, and they're like, okay, you can just go sit in that room over there, right?
Yeah, we got. We got to delve in a little deeper on you.
Yeah. Oman. Uae. Like, Jesus, what is this?
So what, um. So to come back around to cars, um, like, I don't want to say there was a learning curve, but, I mean, there might a little bit been. Did you find that, the adjustment maybe from how the business works? Because, I mean, I've my own background. I've touched on both HDD. I started an HD and went to cars, and it's still 20 some years later. It's amazing how different the business is run. You know what I mean? Like, HD is so much fleet, and it's just like, I need that thing running. Get it back, and I'll worry about the bill at the end of the month, like, I just need that truck turning.
And so it seems so easy for me with the business side of it until you start to get to know a little bit more about how, like, one fleet going to different supplier completely shut your whole business down.
Well, yeah. And I think the commercial side, I'm gonna use commercial as hd, like, medium trucking up kind of thing, or the commercial side with a, like, you say, fleet or whatever, versus the private mom and pop soccer mom minivan. Normal people, let's say. Yeah, and I always, I always worked in the commercial side, and it's like, net 30, and, like, you end up carrying 40, $50,000 worth of bills that, you know, once you survive that first six months and it starts rolling in, is okay.
Yeah.
But then you're chasing bills and you're chasing payment, and it's a big pain in the ass. But the general public has no, I don't, like, they don't have any compunction. They don't have any misgivings of the fact that if they don't pay their bill, they don't get their car. Yeah, right. But everybody else in the commercial side was like, checks in the mail, I'll take my truck because I need it. And you're like, okay, I'm not your finance corporation, but okay, okay. You know, like, I didn't, I don't remember signing anything that said, I agree to net 60 or net 90 kind of thing. And it's.
That was the problem. And that's, like, why I like working with the public, I guess, is the easiest way to paraphrase it. Instead of the commercial side.
Mm hmm.
More because they didn't, you know, maybe they need to. Like, if I pay most of it now, can I pay you the rest on Wednesday? Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
But I've had guys saying, well, you're chasing money that's 120 days old, and it's like a $12,000 bill, and you're going, I'm a guy. I'm not. Yeah, spinning. Right. I'm not freightliner. Like, I can't carry you for, for that long.
Yeah, it's, and I was always amazed coming back and forth what some of the people in the commercial side, what they'll live with, versus the people that are in the, you know, mom and pop medium, like, light duty, soccer mom type stuff. Soccer mom. If the three kids phones won't link to the hotspot within the car, they're at the dealership going, there's something wrong with this because the salesman told me I could link four iPhones to this hotspot. I can only get three to link, and then the fourth one wants to drop out. Where the guy doing down the road in the truck, it might not even have a clutch left, but he doesn't even use the clutch right. So it's like, hey, it's turning. I can dump the box that, you know, the reefer is back working. Like, I don't care.
It was so, so for me, when I came over to the car side, I'm like, they're complaining about what? You're serious, right?
And I think, well, that's a. That's something I've needed to put in check a little bit as the more I got into the auto, into the automotive side, and I make fun of it, and Keith, as my mentor, we always joke back and forth about it. Like, one of the ones I reference as an example is, like, the BMW wheel torque.
Yeah.
103 foot pounds. Like, yeah. And, like, him and I have worked all over the world, and you're like, you're fixing junk in the middle of the desert with a piece of metal and a welder and, you know, what metallurgy and what stresses and what can be taken and what can't, and then you have this 103 foot pounds, or the car is going to implode. And it just is like, holy, man, you guys got to get over yourself. Take this bolt out and throw it away. Yeah, how about no? I wouldn't throw both away to save my life. Like, I don't know, it's just, it's a different mindset where you're going. You know, people, you know, they say if an all wheel drive.
So. And they go, should I change all four tires on an all wheel drive? If I. If one blows? I said, well, they're pretty new, and there's like 330 seconds difference, or three millimeter difference, it'll probably be all right. And that's not the right thing to say, but. Right, but. Or if someone goes, I've heard that needs to happen. What is your feelings on this? I said, okay, my personal feelings is if you build a car that cannot absorb 3 mm difference over 16ft of, do you really want to drive that car? I just think the heavy duty must fix at all cost mentality doesn't always translate. And I've really had to work at, like, okay, certain things, Norm, you can't just say it'll be all right.
Like, you have to do it correctly, or, you know, and that was a bit of a learning curve getting into this stuff, too. Like, it'll be all right, and then it's not all right. And then you pay and then you fix it again and go, oh, I guess they're serious. It's certain things.
We have to be flexible because the money's not there the way it is on the hd side, right. That the fleet stuff, like fleet people, I used to joke, they don't look at the bill until the end of the year. You know what I mean? Like, they pick a certain provider for service and then they look at and they go, shoot, last year we spent one, five mil. This year we're up to two, just this different provider, you know, and they break it all down. They go, well, the parts still cost the same and look at all the extra labor we're paying for. And then they go, or like you were talking about, 30, 60, 9120 days out. I've seen fleet managers pick, just based on that, I can carry the account for 120 days. It doesn't matter that that shop, you know, can't fix a truck to save their life, but all of a sudden now you're using them because, like, they don't come and get their money every 90 days.
Come on, dude. Like, I, and the 103 thing, that just cracks me up because, you know, like, we were talking about flat rate. Like, I mean, I'm going to go out a limb here and say, I can remember 15 years ago in a dealership, nobody torqued the wheel, right? Like, we ran them on with a torque stick and that was it. We didn't, you know, and I can say this, I'll say this for, and people are going to, oh, my God. We did not seem to have the amount of tires coming off 15 years ago as we do now. Now, I don't want to blame that on the fact that, you know, guys are not running them on and distorting the hub and the rotor and everything else, because it's not necessarily what. But I mean, sometimes when we overanalyze certain things in the automotive side is where things go wrong. Whereas the truck, just like you said, listen, it's on the top of a sand dune, you know, or it's on the top of a coal pile in Hamilton and in, needs to get off the top of that coal pile before the end of shift.
Go get it off the top of the coal pile and you go, yup, no problem. Get it done. It's, that's where it's, it's wonky for me.
Yeah.
You know.
Oh, yeah, the same thing. And then to their own, like, operators. Like, freightliner wasn't as bad as that because it is a dealer. And then we get the whiny babies with their $250,000 high rise cab sleeper bunks complaining of a rattle going, seriously? What we. What we would joke is we also used to work on cement mixers. Let's. Let's just take Johnny Showboat there and shove him into an 82 Mack twin steer rubber block suspension for a while and then see if he complains about that rattle anymore instead of trying to fix the rattle. But.
But, like, oil field guys, especially, like, working on rigs and stuff. And then you're going, well, how long has it been like that with a matchbook shoved in the thing to make it work? I don't know, three, four weeks. Like what? Like, they're the most adaptive people that, like, they'll overcome anything to make the thing keep working. And then by the time you get there, you're undoing haywire and all that crap.
Yeah. So I never. I'd never been to the Mac, but I've heard what you were talking about. The. They're very, you know, get in the truck and just grind the truck right into the point of no return death. And then they drop it off and they go, I need it back tomorrow. And it'd be like. I mean, tomorrow's a bit of a stretch, right? But you obviously spent some time there.
No, I've never. In Fort Mac, I was talking about old Mack trucks. The old big old ugly nightmare. Yeah, but that's one place I've actually never been. You know that?
No.
Once on a service call, I think, and then I was up, actually one of the coolest places I was. And I was doing wireline service work as was up on the cold lake air weapons range. That was okay. And then you had to go in with these call signs like Maverick and Goose, and you're working around these things. You're trying to repair a broken down wireline unit. You look at all these fake tanks and fake huts and stuff and then.
Yeah.
And you go, spitfire one to spitfire two. I'm on road twelve or whatever. And like, we're sure we got clearance for this, right? Because you're looking at the map and you're over like a laser target area. Like, am I supposed to be here? Is this. Is this good? Are we good here? Like, I don't know. It was fun. It was an interesting place to work and get into right back in the.
Old cold war days. Now it's all done.
Yeah, it's crazy. And they have like warnings, right? Like if you run into a bomb, don't take a selfie with it, don't sit on it. They've been dropping ordinance here since the fifties. You're going to find unexploded things. Don't take them home, don't kick them, you know. And these warnings came from somewhere, right? Like, somebody did this.
Yeah, we were cooking our lunch on it.
Yeah.
We never saw Johnny again. Um, so what, uh, like, what was I going to say? So what's been the biggest challenge? Um, when you started into the business, was that it was adjusting or did you find lack information or the different type of customer? What was, what was really the first thing that, when you walked in and you started doing the mama pop minivan type, you know, okay, tire stuff, what was the biggest thing that really struck you is like, you know, can I do this?
Not so much. Can I do this? One thing I really did enjoy about it was the interaction with the people and building that customer rep. Like, we get a good fleet come in and they just go fix it, send us the bill. And I really like that because you just do your job. And it took a while to get to the point where we had the general public go fix it, send me the bill. And then you've built it up to the point where they trust you're going to maybe not be the cheapest, but you are going to create the most value. You are going to try to save them money where you can. You understand their situation, you understand their driving habits.
So that was a really, I really enjoyed that. And that's what kind of drove me away from, I guess, more the commercial side and more toward the public. I guess it was a lot more enjoyable that way. And, but getting back to your question, I think the biggest challenge was the just the business side of it.
Yeah.
Like, I was going forward, I can fix anything but broken hearts, man. Don't, don't worry about that. But, like, I had to bring my wife in and go, I need help. Like, all this book stuff is just kicking my ass. Like, and that, and that when you're doing everything, you're the parts guy, you're the mechanic, you're the service writer, you're the business owner. Like, it's overwhelming and it's really inefficient. And she came in, she goes, what have you been doing?
Yeah.
And then she got it all straightened out and she kind of just keeps running in the background now and kind of, instead of having to fix everything, she just kind of corrects and steers and right jig jags and everything, like, so that's a lot better where you, then you're back to focusing on running the front end of the business. But I think that was the biggest adjustment is that is just the business admin side of everything, which I never really had to deal with other than, like, I understood it because my job evolved into project management, which was hundreds of millions of dollars, and building drilling rigs. So that was never the issue. But I was never an accountant. I was never, uh, you know what I mean? I don't know how to work quickbooks. I don't know how to, like, you know, so billing and making sure it gets billed and did I send that invoice, like, all that crap? Right? Like, it became a downward slippery slope that we recovered from thanks to her. But, but, uh, that was the biggest learning curve, I think.
I'm amazed some of the guys, Norm, get anything done in a day when they have to wear all those hats in a shop.
It's tough, you know, it almost, it almost brought me to an end for sure. Like, if she didn't step in and save it, it would have been a short story.
Yeah. Because, I mean, what are you lucky to get, what, three cars done a day maybe, right? Like if one's an oil change and the other two, or maybe a brake job and something else, like, it's because you spend so much more time looking up parts, sourcing parts, prepping the estimate, going through all the numbers twice to make sure you haven't forgot anything. Because you know, if you have, too bad you going to eat it. Because what you, the number you give to the customers, the number that they're going to pay, they're going to come with that. You know, I'm amazed the guys get when they, when you see the shop owners are like, I turn 14 hours a day still. When I was running this place, I'm like, you had help then. You weren't a lone man show. Like, no matter what anybody says, because I've never been able to do it.
Because you're trying to grow the business and you're not going to ignore the phone. Like, my wife goes, just turn the phones off. I'm like, I can't. I physically can't. I have to answer the phone. And that's how you develop things, right? Yeah, but you get stuck into a 25 minutes conversation five times a day. Okay, well, you know, there's an hour and a half that you're not earning anything, but, yeah, are you. Maybe.
Maybe you booked work for next week or whatever, but it's a lot. Then you answered the phone, then you're. I've done that before. I've looked at my phone because my cell phones linked to our shop phones. I've looked at it and was like, stop reggae for 20 minutes so I could get something done, you know, especially doing diag.
Because, I mean, I know if I was in the middle of a diag and then I ordered a part and it might be whatever, or I put it on hold because we have to get more authorization to spend more time. If I went and did a steering rack in a caravan or something like that, and I came back to it, I might as well have not left because I was like, starting over again. Okay, what did I do again? Where was I? Where was I? I had my meter lead on power and I measured this volt drop. Okay. And it, like, it wasn't efficient. You know what I mean?
A sequence. And it needs to flow and if it gets it stopped off or whatever, it's way harder, for sure.
Yeah, it's, you know, I don't miss those days. I. Sometimes it's still like that because he'll. My boss will come to me at like two and we're closing at seven. I'm supposed to go at six. And it'd be like, okay, I got two diags, you know, that you need to look at before the end of day. And I go, okay, what are they? Well, one is an intermittent for this and the other one is an intermittent for that. And I'm going.
If you said anything but the word intermittent, I probably would have agreed, but, yeah, one's an air.
Ride suspension problem and the other one's a brake light that supposedly stays on, which we haven't had. We've had it here twice and can't duplicate. Come on, dude. Like, I would have. Let's. Why didn't I start this at eight this morning? Like, that would have been better. It's just the way it goes. And they go, well, they weren't here this morning.
Like, their appointments for whatever. And I'm like, that appointment thing, man. Like, you know, take. The intake is at eight, pickup is at seven. That's how it should go.
Like I've. That was it, like, say, learning things. That's a question I've learned to ask. Do you need this car at a certain point?
Yeah.
Well, yes. I have to pick my kids up before three. Okay. This is the information I need to know. Because if you drop off at eight. I'm going to fitter you in somewhere to make sure you're ready for pickup at five.
Yeah.
Oh, but I need my car by two. And they call it one. They haven't even started it. You're like, oh, okay. You know, so I've learned to ask, you know, certain intake questions to kind of knowing that, like, I don't mind helping. I don't mind prioritizing you if the other three cars or four cars are just like, yeah, whenever it's done, give me a call.
Okay.
That makes it a lot easier.
But, yeah. What's, uh, what's some steps you take for qualifying your customer? Like, is there anything you won't take in? Like, if somebody called, I was having a good conversation, my friend today, and it's like he was telling me about a friend of his has an 85 mercedes something, and it's been sitting at one of the local shops in town here for a year now. It crested over a year. Still doesn't start, won't run. So I don't know any more than that. But is there, like, you know, because I joke, we've got an 84 ram van, B 250 van in our shop right now, carbureted. They want to drive it to British Columbia, of all places. And, like, people just look at me when I'm telling them, like, what? But is there anything you won't bring in?
If you had asked me that question three years ago? No, I'll bring on, bring it. Bring me everything. I was trying to build up everything.
Right, right.
As you learn your preferences and then you suffer through a lot of painfully expensive lessons learned as you develop and grow, you kind of go, no, I have a 2005 BMW 315, and it's an 18 year old kid, and he just bought it, and he doesn't know what's wrong with it. I'm like, thank you. No, here's the name of a good place. The euro auto house is a block away. Yeah, off you go. That kind of thing. But I like challenges. I like, I like, like, I like to.
Someone calls him with an old diesel or something like that. Great, bring that. I'll do that. But it's very situational. Like, when I had Dylan and Charlene, right? And I could. Then I could take on things that Norm thought was cool while running. You know what I mean? I could do my own thing over here. Well, still, you know, coaching and encouraging and.
But now Dylan's gone to work for CN and Charlie's in school, so now it's me and my son, like, basically tired lube guy. So I'm very particular for the next two months about what I take in, because I can't. I can't get into a B 250 van, even though I'd want to. I've turned my place, basically, into a midas, like, doing wheels and brakes and tires and nothing risk. Nothing too in depth. Just until she gets back where I can go.
Here.
You do that?
Yeah. Yeah.
And I'm gonna do this or whatever. Then we can get a little bit more like four day jobs or five day jobs. I can't tie up the whole shop on me for five days. But it's all very situational on. On things I take in and. And I've been burned on stuff where people. And it's how they describe the job.
Yeah.
Then it shows up, and you're like, this is a highly modified, highly. Every finger in the world's been in this thing. And they're going, I got a weird intermittent cam correlation. It's got a tuner, and it's got aftermarket stereo, and it's got. It's got. It's got lights, and it's got scotch locks all over it. Oh, man. You didn't sell this, right? I don't want to do this.
I saw some of the videos you did with that. You had a pretty modified Camaro in.
Yeah. Finally done. It's over. I actually. I said, you know what? It's not running awesome. And it's got that phytech.
Yes.
Fuel injection on it.
Yeah.
So I said, you know what? For the amount of time I put into this, the amount of money this guy spent on this thing here, I loaded it on a flat deck, and I sent it to some performance tuner guys. Kind of like Ben tune. Same. Same idea. Said, you make this right, you give me a call when it's right, and then we're done. But, yeah, yeah, so, yeah, it was done. And then the whole fightec unit crapped out so I could send that away, and it sat in my yard all winter. And, you know, it's just like.
It was a cool job. But that's a job where you're like, okay, once, let's say Charlie takes over the shop and we have two other techs, then norm, those almost retired happy mechanic, can go take on that, you know, resto mod or an old jeep refurbishment, or, you know, something like that. But as of right now, that was one of it was. I like it. He's a really good customer. He's a fleet guy, and he goes, can you do this? Sure. Well, a year and a half later, we're coming to the end of it. Like.
Do you find then that the pride thing sometimes, like, cost wise, the. The juice isn't worth the squeeze?
Yeah. Again, that's another lesson that I've been learning as I go through. Like, I would take on anything. Like, I would. Maybe it's hubris, or maybe it's just like, my belief in my ability to fix anything comes in the door and not saying I can't, but nothing's impossible. It just costs more. Right. And then when you're on the other side of that coin, when it's costing you, me personally, I'm like, I got to kind of winnow this down to a manageable thing of, you know, risk versus reward, right? There's nothing I can't do but it to.
Oh, God. Like, I've had jobs where I've put 15, 20 hours into it to make the 3 hours I quoted just so I didn't have a bad reputation. And it's just, I can't do that. That's a. That's a zero sum game. Like, you can't do that forever.
Yeah, that's tough. A. Like, I've seen that, you know, people joking, but I've seen case study after case study. The car comes in, it's got more than one issue, right? So they're there for a rough running and a stall. And it's two completely different avenues. You got to go down for the rough running versus the stall. You're never going to be able to explain to the customer that. Right.
They think the two are linked, and most of the time they are. But I remember Paul Danner had one. It had, like, it had bad injectors and a crank sensor fault, right, and a crank sensor. So it's like, how do you ever explain that to the customer? That, like, okay, so when it's loading up and running like crap, that's your injectors. But it also, when it wants to randomly shut off, like, you know how that goes. That process is like, you're looking at for the first while, it's not making sense, and then you just open your brain to the idea that there might be two problems.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden, you can get to the solution, but you might as well take that estimate and just chalk it because, you know, you're chasing two things at one time. It's. It's tough, man. It. This. This band, like that is. Is like that with us. We've got it, and it's like the ignition coil on the manifold, you can't.
Or on the intake, you can't even touch it. It's so hot. Like, it's gotten so hot. And the ignition module that they mount on the firewall has gotten so hot at some point in its lifetime that the insulation is melted and run out of the bottom of it. Like, you can see it dripping on the top of the engine. We're like, you know, and everyone else in the shop is kind of like, I haven't seen one of these before. And I'm like, oh, I remember at the dealer in 2000, I saw one, and then my buddy had a 77 little red express warlock. So, I mean, I kind of tinker with that a little bit.
So am I completely foreign to, you know, Chrysler carbureted ignition systems? No. But do I like them? Hell no. You know, I like an old hei. Like, that's what that, to me, was the pinnacle of perfection, of simplicity and reliability, you know? So go and ask me to try and, oh, it's got a ballast. Well, what's a ballast resistor do. Oh, like, you know, it's tough and it's. I mean, you understand what the customer wants. They want something.
I want to go on a road trip. And you're like, I don't think this is going to make it to Brampton.
Let alone this is not the vehicle for that. You almost want to say, right, I understand your needs, but this is not the solution to your needs. Maybe.
And I'm coming out of Walmart last night after grocery shopping, and if there isn't another one identical to it in the friggin parking lot at a Walmart, and then I'm like, so, you know, I'm sitting here going on about how these archaic dinosaur things, there's none left. And then you leave the local Walmart. And of course there's a Walmartian that's got one parked. And, you know, they're probably doing the summer living in it van thing. And it's like, van life, baby. And I'm like, what? Go ahead. Sorry.
Go ahead. Go ahead.
No, I was gonna ask you. So Charlie's your. She's at school right now. Charlene or Charlie, what we call her Charlie. Um, this is her final intake for apprenticeship.
1St.
1St. Wow.
First year.
Wow.
First year school. Yep.
Wow.
She's excited. She's. She's. She's absolutely killing it because she's really good at math and first year's electrical, so a lot of the guys. And she's like, some of these guys aren't. They're struggling. They're not. They're not getting it.
Yeah.
I'm like, well, a lot of these guys are mechanics because they're not good at scholastics. Right, right. Like, know, they get. They could fix it eight ways to Sunday. But, you know, when you're, when you're running Ohm's law, you know, volts equals amps over resistance, and you're just doing the math. Just don't get hung up. Understand the differences. And then it's just math and, you know, and you're going to run to that with hydraulics.
It's just math. Like, at the, at the school level sort of thing, right? Yeah.
To pass the test, you got to understand it. You know, it doesn't. I've seen so many guys that, like, we're way better at electrical diag on the school side than me, get better marks. And then you give them a car, and it's like, you know, like, they can't do it, but it's like, they can tell you what it should do. Okay, well, if it's. Why is it not doing it? I don't know. Okay, well, me, I'll get in there with, like, you know, some basic tools. I'm like, okay, well, I know what's wrong.
Like, it's got a broken wire. It's got corrosion. It. Well, how do you know it's got corrosion? Well, I don't. Like, the meter didn't even tell me. I'm just. I've eliminated two other things, so it's gonna be that. Right loaded test.
But so how is it, because we've seen the conversation that's kind of been popping off on TikTok about mentorship and so on and so forth and look lately, and then, like, you and I were talking about, you know, we. We talk about how we're gonna get ahead of the technician shortage. So this is kind of a loaded question. Are you having a hard time getting tax?
Uh, I haven't needed to in a while. But, like, when I hired Charlie, I hired her, like, off of a tick tock post where I just. I made this post, and, like, Dylan was in school, it was. Again, I was in this situation working by myself. I didn't have my son either at the time. And I was like, I'm tired. Who needs a job, man? And, like, I need somebody. And at the time, I.
I was making content, but at the time, I'd done, like, you know, uh, indeed, or whatever and put up this job posting and. And I got responses. But I got responses from knuckle dragon mouth breathers, and I. No offense to dealership people, but this guy, everybody knows this guy, the dealership princess with an 800 square foot toolbox who only works on this and wants his own bay and. And wants $45 an hour. And I'm like, okay, enough. Like, that's not. They come to the shop like, I'm four baes, man.
Like, it's small. Like, I don't have room for my toolbox. Another, you know, like, we got to meet in the middle here somewhere. But. But it was tough. And then I didn't really want to hire another greeny apprentice, but I saw her conversation with another girl saying, no one gives us a chance. No one gives women a chance. I'm like, well, come and meet me.
I don't care if you identify as an eggplant. Come here. If you can do the job. Right? So we met, and I just keened on, like, a super good work ethic and a very blue collar upbringing and a desire to do this, which is becoming more rare as you go. That I can work with. Right? I can do that. I can do.
Yeah. You know, so she seems to take input very well. She seems to be very good natured about, you know, I've heard you call her young Padawan. You know, like, I mean, it's. That's. That's important, too, right? The ability to be able to. To receive input, you know, to take criticism.
That's even funnier because she doesn't understand Star wars at all. So I'm a total Star wars nerd. She doesn't get my references at all. Like, there's a big generational problem there. Yeah, but I. And I think I made a comment on one of my. On one of the conversations about apprenticeship and learning, and I said, there is a burden on the apprentice as well, to go and ask smart questions. Take a minute.
I'm not going to walk over and go, today. We're going to learn about this.
Yeah.
If I'm working on something, she'll come up and she'll go, what is this? What are you doing? What does that mean? And I'll say it. She goes. And I. She mocks. She laughs at me. She goes, I did the face again, didn't I? I'm like, yes, you did. Because she gets this glazed over. I went too fast, too far.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's just reel this back a bit and go, where did I lose you? Kind of thing.
Yeah.
But then, like, I think that's important because it's got to be a give and take. Like, I'll show you, but you got to want to learn. I can't fill an empty cup. You know what I mean? Or I can't fill a full cup. Like, it's. If you think you know everything good on you, go for it.
Yeah.
But if you have a desire to learn and want to learn that I.
Can work with, and wouldn't that be great if every day we could just have it in that perfect world? It's like, okay, and today we are going to take this carburetor off and rebuild it as an example, right? And then you're going to get a whole three hour lesson and watch me do it. And kind of like what we were talking about, the craftsman idea of things, how, you know, probably in the old world, or maybe in Europe, they still say it gets done where, you know, you literally shadow that person and you're not necessarily getting a ticket of your own or a car your own. You're going to watch every little thing. I want to think probably how machinists used to trade each train each other, right? That. That way, if you're gonna till you can take over and do it, you're gonna be right.
That's that. You know, the old, my wife's watching pirates of the Caribbean right now, and there's that scene where, like, give my regards to your master. And he's like, you know, he's the sword maker apprentice. And, like, that's a very, very traditional master apprentice relationship. And I think there's a lot to that on the, on the craftsman side. But one thing I did tell Charlie before she went, and I told Dylan the same thing. Like, when you're at Nate and you're in industry and you've been working for a while, you're going to get the guys. Don't be this guy or girl.
Don't be this person. We'll never do that. It's like the algebra thing. I'll never use this in real life. We don't do that. We don't work with that. I said, you know what, Nate, or your trade school, where you're at, is the one time you're going to be able to go to the tool crib, get tool one six b alpha bravo and measure cam bearing, run out variances. Yeah, like, or whatever, you know, like, of course we don't do that.
But take advantage of the fact that that's the craftsman side of it. Like, do I need to hand file a c clamp? No, I don't yeah, but you should, you know, do it while you're there. Don't go, this is stupid. I'm never going to do this. No. Take advantage of every opportunity that you're there and every tool they want you to use. And the proper spanner wrenches for taking apart glad nuts on hydraulic cylinders and all that crap that you're using a pipe wrench and a snipe for in the field. Like they have it there.
Use it and embrace it and go. And then miss it because you're never going to see it again.
Well, that's two months ago. If you'd asked me if I was ever going to work on a carburetor or ever take the test light out of my basement and bring it into the shop, I'd have told you no friggin way it's there from when I was a kid. Nothing like I need now. And then here we go. 1984 ram van with a carburetor head.
And I'm like, holy man. I had an old cordoba in with when you mentioned ballast. Ballast resistors. Like, I haven't seen one of those in 25 years. Like, I've. Like, I'm 68% sure I remember what a ballast resistor does. I better go verify before I start jamming things in. But it just you, it's a.
It's a perishable skill, that stuff, right? That old tech. Because you're looking forward all the time.
Yeah. And. And we have to keep looking forward. I mean, it's just the. The technology is already. The stuff that's gonna give our kids problems has already been mapped out. We just haven't put it out on production yet. You know what I mean? It's already there.
And like, do I. Do I embrace the new stuff? I'm better at it than I like the old stuff now, the old stuff, you know, they, they wax nostalgic about it. They go, oh, it was so simple. You know, like, I mean, yeah, like our times, we didn't get the kind of times that you guys did, but. No, but you could take the carburetor off in six minutes and have it in pieces in another ten. And then everything started as probably a carb overhaul and a point set and a timing adjustment. And then that's if it still wasn't right, then you sold them a valve job, you know, like, that's how everything kind of started. We can't do it that way now.
You know, we can't go in there and go, oh, I'm going to take the injector out and put a new one in. Even though shops do, you know, this is the thing. Like, there are shops that still, oh, it's got a misfire. It's going to be one of them three things, you know, and like, this thing, it has a miss. But, I mean, we're not, we're not chasing it. We know what it is, what's causing it. It's got, you know, it's got a low cylinder, but that's not making it where it won't rev up. You know, like, they just want to be able to pull out and drive it, you know, they want to be able to get it to up to drive it down the highway, and it won't do that yet.
So I think we're getting further and further away that. I think the gap is spreading further between, like, like you were talking about, I have a bad injectors and a bad cam sensor, and you're explaining it to a dude or who knows, he turns the key and the car goes forward. And they have no concept, like it used to be that you could explain. We had to do a valve job. The guy go, oh, okay. I figured it was due for that. Like, he'd get it right. But now the gap is widely between the knowledge base of the car because they're so complex.
Like, I use my mother in law's example. She drives a wonderful brand spanking new Acadia and uses 9% of the technology. And it's available to her because I don't know. I don't know any of this stuff. Does she push his button? Things happen and have to go over and sync her phone to it, and she knows he pushed d. It goes forward, you push r goes backwards. The rest is, I don't care.
We can't.
Then you're trying to explain this complex issue that took you 6 hours to find, and you know, and they're like, well, that seems like a lot. And then you lose your mind. And I. I use her as, like, my vent because she is my mother in law, and I can do it, but she's also a customer. I'm like, that seems really expensive. Like, based on what? Based on what? Your knowledge of the car industry? Based on a house. It's very cheap. Based on a packet of crisps.
It's very expensive. You're right. You know, but what's your datum reference point on expensive? Just because you don't want to spend $800, that's probably where it comes from. Right.
But, well, their mindset is it's like, well, it's a whole payment. Yeah, sometimes it is. Sometimes for that month that suckers paid off and then congratulations, you're gonna get hit with a repair bill that is gonna be the same as what you used to make as a payment.
Yeah.
In a, in a good case scenario, sometimes it's even more. Sometimes it's several months payments. Right. This is just the reality. I tell everybody all the time when the thing is paid off, instead of just going on vacation or trading it in and getting another one or whatever, like, start putting some money in the bank, because if you're going to keep it, it's still going to cost. You know, they're, they're bottomless pits of investment or repair or money. Whatever you want to take, they just suck money out of your wallet. That's what they do.
And people just like, there's, that's bullshit. Like, you know, or I go, I want to then listen, I'm gonna go get another one to be under warranty again. Like, come on, dude. So you really want to live for the rest of your life with $800 to a thousand or whatever the number is every month that you're gonna pay just to have a car? I don't.
Well, yeah, but I also make the case to people who come in and ask my opinion on that, and I go, they go, what would you buy? I said, I would not buy a new vehicle. I would not buy it. I would borrow it. I would rent it. Yeah, lease it. And they go, what? I don't want. But then you don't own it. Like, who the hell wants to own a new vehicle nowadays? The time you paid it off in eight years at $800 a month, it's out of date, it's off warranty, the new things out.
You want something else. It's a piece of crap that no one can fix. And, you know, I, that's what I say. But I said, and I said, particular, you customer that I know who's a single mom on a pretty tight budget, you're going to have a vehicle cost applied to your life. If you go gas, insurance, and car payment is $1500, right? If you lease it, that will never change. That will be a fixed point in space forever and you won't have to worry about it. They go, well, that's interesting. I never thought of it that way.
But then you don't own it. Like, who cares? You know, it's gone. Are the days where you own a 65 Chevy for hand it down to your kids. What's out there now that you're gonna keep, right?
Like, yeah, look at a brand new Silverado that's not meant to be given to your, you know, son in 20 years.
Yeah.
Like, physically, may the engine still run that long? I'm not even sure about that anymore. You know, can the body stay together for. Well, yeah, you'll do a couple sets of fuel lines and brake lines on it, but I mean, like, that funky electric tailgate that wants to drop down in multiple steps. You think that's gonna work in 20 years? It's not gonna work in ten years from now, right? Somebody's gonna be coming up with a retrofit to put a regular old tailgate on it. Like, this is the thing we have killed the. Like somebody was talking about. The young people don't have the passion anymore. Well, we've kind of killed it with what we've done to it, where everything is just over engineered.
Everything is a problem. I look at even, like, the radio systems in these cars, and I'm like, that's great. While it's under warranty, when it's out of warranty, it's going to be a problem. Like, your best bet will be, I can still play music for it, but my phone won't link to it because the hands free module is bad. Cool, right? I'll unplug the hands free module so it doesn't drain the battery, and I'll at least get to listen to the radio. Like, all these functions that people think is so critical to what the car does. Come on. Like, get over.
It's transportation. That's it. Like you want.
Yeah, like, that's just it. And I think I always make the joke when you're working on these things, and they're wildly complex and super, like, interesting. Like, all wheel drive systems and suspension and magnetic struts, electronically controlled. And the only thing people care about is cup holders and stereo and carplay. That's Norm Gieselman or Norm G on TikTok. You can search for him and find him there at mechanic of the stars. That's mechanic of the stars on tick tock. That's going to wrap up this week's episode of the Jenny Mechanic, though, with Norm G and Jeff Compton, part two of their conversation.
We'll wrap up next week on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.
Hey, if you could do me a favor real quick and, like, comment on and share this episode, I'd really appreciate it. And please, most importantly, set the podcast to automatically download every Tuesday morning. As always, I'd like to thank our amazing guests for their perspectives and expertise. And I hope that you'll please join us again next week on this journey of change. Thank you to my partners in the ASA group and to the change in the industry podcast. Remember what I always say, in this industry, you get what you pay for. Here's hoping everyone finds their missing ten millimeter, and we'll see you all again next time.
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