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Rethinking Wealth and Success in the Automotive Repair Industry with Cody Fallon pt 2
Rethinking Wealth and Success in the Automotive Repair Industry with Cody Fallon pt 2
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About this episode
Cody Fallon continues his candid discussion about the challenges and rewards of running an automotive repair business. He reflects on the importance of valuing quality work over flat-rate billing, emphasizing the need for transparent communication with customers regarding repair costs and processes. The conversation touches on the personal struggles of balancing work and family life, especially in light of caring for a child with special needs. Cody shares insights on defining success beyond monetary wealth, focusing instead on community impact and personal fulfillment in the automotive industry.
Topics:
value of quality work
customer communication
work-life balance
defining success
community impact
flat-rate billing
digital inspections
automotive repair challenges
Cars:
Buick Lucerne
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Jeff Compton and Cody continue their discussion on the challenges Cody is facing, including managing the increasing demands of his business and the learning curve of working solo. Jeff shares insights from his experience about striking the right balance between pricing and delivering value, emphasizing the importance of effective customer communication
00:00 Provide for family, community, and customers.
07:19 Called to improve automotive service communication quality.
11:26 Old belt causes AC issues; needs tensioner change.
19:23 Shops should charge and inform about inspections.
25:28 Optimize efficiency to improve service and profits.
28:28 Customers advised against unnecessary early maintenance services.
36:20 Success isn't material, it's about helping others.
38:37 Fearless shop owner, self-belief, legacy, success.
45:02 Struggling to separate work from personal life.
50:44 It's okay to say no sometimes.
57:50 Initial business goals were impractical and unrealistic.
01:01:09 Avoid trades; industry perspectives change frequently.
01:05:36 Please share and auto-download the podcast weekly.
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Buick Lucerne
"... a front wheel drive Buick. I think it was like a Lucerne, one of the last ones that had like a 3.8 in it o..."
Provide for family, community, and customers.
Called to improve automotive service communication quality.
Old belt causes AC issues; needs tensioner change.
Shops should charge and inform about inspections.
Optimize efficiency to improve service and profits.
Customers advised against unnecessary early maintenance services.
Success isn't material, it's about helping others.
Fearless shop owner, self-belief, legacy, success.
Struggling to separate work from personal life.
It's okay to say no sometimes.
Initial business goals were impractical and unrealistic.
Avoid trades; industry perspectives change frequently.
Please share and auto-download the podcast weekly.
Select text to request an explanation
Last week on Jada mechanic with Cody Fallon. You know, I don't know how much longer I'm gonna keep doing this, but if I did get to a point where I had to have employees and stuff like that would be a struggle, I think, for me, because I think it, you know, you have to just kind of let people do their own thing to an extent. Sometimes there's. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Yeah. So, I mean, it was definitely, it was a learning curve for me, and I don't know that I necessarily learned it entirely, because I'm still working by myself right now.
Part two. It's like, I'll tell you my struggle. I come to this shop where I've been here now a year, and a lot of my background is flat rate. So, you know, when, when I see how he's one of the first owners that I've ever really had, that was like, he says the same thing. I don't care if the diag takes 2 hours, as long as it's accurately diagnosed. That's. That's the priority. I don't care if we quoted 6 hours to put that transmission in, and it took you eight, as long as it's programmed you, you know, the whole thing, everything's done perfect.
I don't have to worry about that. I don't care. And so it's a struggle for me, though, because I've been doing this so long that I'm too invested in the numbers. So when I see, you know, the quoted times, the build times, and all that kind of stuff, and I start to go like, that's ridiculous. That just doesn't make sense. Like, we should have charged more. It comes back to that conversation that we always have about value, right? Like, I feel sometimes like we're not showing the customer the value that we should be when we don't charge enough for it, right? And there's two sides to that, because sometimes it's like they'll say, you can't teach the customer. They don't care about the value they already feel.
And then the other conversation that just popped up, which was really interesting, somebody said is, I keep having customers asking me, why am I being paying for 8 hours, you know, when the job only took six? And I keep saying, and I said to them, so for us, like, for instance, everything, we're big on an engine shampoo. When we're done, we're big on a lot of quality control processes, a lot of test drives and everything. You have to itemize that. And show it to the customer that it was actually something built into the repair time of what they're paying for. Right. And then it's like you see some people in the light bulb goes off and go, oh, okay. Because that's not shown to me at the dealership. It's just implied that it was done.
But I'm comparing, comparing prices now, and you guys are saying you need, you know, you're more money than the dealer. You're quoting me more hours. Why is that? It's little things like that. Every little thing that we do, we need to be showing the customer that we do it and we're going to charge you for it. Right. Because it's, it's, that's the value. If you don't, it goes away. Assuming that all.
You should have shampooed it off. Well, no, by, if you want to just pay the straight up labor on what it is to re and reinvent a transmission, it's 6 hours. There's no shampoo involved in the, in the thing. The shampooing is because it's been leaking for a while. Right. The front pump seals shot, the tranny blew up. Now we got a mess to clean up. Well, there's nowhere in any law book that says we can't charge for that time.
So when I see people and it's like, we're not comparing apples to apples. And a lot of times in this industry when we say that shop did it and this shop did it, why is that shop $200 more? Because they've got things built into their quality control that they're going to charge for. Do you understand what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's when we have those kind of conversations that people, that's to me, is educating my customer and showing my customer where I sometimes have the struggle, because I do it so much now that I get tired of having to have that conversation, like I'm trying to justify why I cost what I cost. You know, that's, that's the frustrating part for me. You seem to like it, though.
Yeah. I mean, I, the question I, that comes to me often that I like to remind myself of, too, is which for you is different. Like you said, you're, you're working for somebody and stuff. But I. Why, why did I start my business? What, what is my, what is my end game for starting my business? And my thing is, well, for one, first and foremost, provide for my family. That's one thing. Number two, I would say I want to give back to my community if I'm not using my business to help people, not only for a profit, so I can provide for my family, but to be able to give back at the same time to be able to help people that need help. And not only that, but give the absolute best value for my customers that are supporting me in my business.
And I do enjoy that. I, you know, I used to, I've kind of gotten away from it a little bit, but some of the older vehicles I might work on, where they got the, you know, the headlights are just faded and stuff. I, I've got a really good polish. It takes me a minute to do, man. I would and I wouldn't. I never say anything to my customers about this stuff because I'm always, I'm always curious if they're notice it and say something to me about it, I guess. But, but, you know, I'd go through, polish her headlights up there, look brand new for a little bit anyway, until they get faded again a couple months down the road. But it takes me two minutes to do, man.
And the people that do notice that stuff, though, are usually pretty, pretty appreciative of it and just surprised about it, too, in the same sense. And for me, I don't know. Shortly after I started my business, I came to the conclusion, for one, that I don't think I'm ever going to get rich doing this stuff. I saw a comment there on my post in the Aceog Facebook group about somebody that said this industry has made them rich. And I don't know if he's talking about money or not, but I've never known a rich mechanic or shop owner. Now, I think you can make a good living at it if you get in the right place and stuff, but you're not going to get stupid wealthy doing this stuff. And maybe I'm wrong about that and I'm okay with that. I had a mindset for a long time that that's what I want.
But I think it, I think God's kind of called me to a little different for a different calling, man. And we provide a service and that service is taking care of people's automobiles. And I want to make sure that they're getting the absolute best value that they can for that. And I also want to be able to explain to them why they might think that they're not getting value someplace else or, or maybe that they are getting value at someplace else and they don't even realize it because there's, there just seems to be a major lack of communication between shops and customers. I mean, I'm telling you, Jeff, every day I'd say I have people coming to me tell me about how some other shops trying to screw them over or whatever, and, you know, they might show me, you know, an estimate or whatever, and it's like, well, no, like they, they need to charge that because they, they need to make a profit. Otherwise they're not going to stay in business or what. I see a lot, too. People bring stuff to me and they tell me it needs one thing and, because they just had it somewhere or whatever, and they want me to look at it because obviously I'm going to be a little bit cheaper most of the time.
Not always, but I, I look at it and it's something completely different. Maybe, maybe it's an easier fix, maybe it's a, you know, it's a bigger, more costly fix or whatever, and, you know, then they think that they might be getting screwed over, you know, that whatever shop they were at didn't communicate with them or explain to them what they did or maybe they just didn't have do stuff. I don't know. But there, there seems to be a major lack of communication between service advisors or, you know, other guys like myself that do this stuff. And I, I go above and beyond to explain stuff to my customers. Probably, I probably spent too much time doing it to an extent. In fact, I've even been told by, by some of my customers before, like, hey, don't waste your breath, because I have no clue what you're talking about. And it's like, well, that's, that's fair enough, but I still, I want to, if you do want to understand, if you do want to have a better idea on why this part failed or why we have to, you know, do so much to fix it or whatnot, like, I want to communicate that and convey that to people to help them better understand.
And I always tell my customers, too, when they do think that they're getting screwed from some other place or whatever, like, I always try and explain to them, like, I, I hope it was just a lack of communication, you know, between their mechanic and the service advisor or whatever, because I would like to believe that that's not the case most of the time that there's shops out there all over the place trying to screw people over. I don't think that's the case.
I believe I'm right there with you. I don't think most of the time it's communication or it's screwing over. There's a couple things to unwrap there. There's a lack of competence on sometimes on what people are actually paying for in terms of the diag side of things. The other side of it is like we had a conversation two weeks ago, three weeks ago, somebody had a belt shred on a cardinal. It got towed over from the dealership and then it got towed into another shop and they said, oh, it needed an idler attention, or I can't remember. And the technician that looked at it now at their shop said, I didn't find anything wrong with either, and I'm trying to rip them off. We have to remember sometimes that, like other shops sometimes have to carry more warranty or choose to offer more warranty.
So like, because if they go and just put a belt on that and then say, the customer never turns on the air conditioning until August, say we put the belt on in January, and in August, in January we didn't catch that the compressor was a little bit tight, right? So we put the new belt on and then come August that thing's had two months of just like hammering on that belt through the compressor clutch. Guess what happens? Yeah, well, the belt is off right now. They're back to that shop that put a belt on and that. They're like, hey, I want a free belt. And look what your belt did to my ac compressor or tensioner or whatever, right? It ended up behind the pulley, up into the crank seal, and blah, blah, blah. We all know the nightmare stories. So sometimes what they happen is, and I know from me, my days, I knew certain, like certain caravans, I knew that, that you never put a belt on without changing the tensioner because you could come in two months later and pull on that tensioner and the spring was seized, it wouldn't retract. So it just became part and parcel.
Now some of them, when I pulled it down, put the belt on, it wasn't seized. But I knew that within six months time it was going to be seized. It was a four year old caravan, had 200,000 km on it, right? It had a ton of miles. It was not going to last another year. There was no sense in doing that job, pardon the term, half assed. So I think this is where we get into this kind of conversation about. Because at the end of it, if I had to put the belt on without the tensioner and it comes in, I'm buying them a tow bill, I'm buying them a tensioner and I'm buying them a belt. That's just what's going to be expected to do to make the customer feel right.
Again, not every shop has the luxury of being able to offer such a, an implied warranty. So that's why sometimes we say the best way to do this, misses Smith, is I'm changing your belt and your tensioner at the same time. If you explain it like you said, properly communication is key. If I explain it properly to my customer, it should, it should be a slam dunk. It should be easy to understand why I'm doing it. I'm advocating for you, for your reliability of your vehicle, that like, you know, this is the best repair. I say it all the time, my buzz phrases. I'm not trying to get more money out of you.
I'm just trying to do the best repair that I can. That statement has got me a lot more fans than it ever has, you know, pissed people off. Some people you just can't reason with. Like why, why do I need to change it now? I might not be driving the car in two years. It doesn't matter. Every person that has ever said they don't won't be driving this in two years. I see them at year three still driving it. That's why I have to do it that way.
And I have to do it that way because if you sell the car to somebody else, I may see that customer, you know, same car, different customer. If it's a safety related thing, I don't want it on my conscience that I did a less than stellar repair for a budget when it means that safety is an issue. Safety is first, reliability second. You know, profit should be third. It. When you start to mix those three around in different, that's when things can go wrong. And that's just my own, you know, opinion on how it should be safe, reliable, profitable. Profitable.
There's, you said there's nothing wrong with profits. Not a dirty word.
No, not at all. Not at all. And, you know, safety is something that I bring up with my customers all the time. I mean, a lot of people, a lot of people don't realize just the liability and stuff that's, that goes along with our jobs and stuff. I mean, and that, that was part of my reason behind starting digital vehicle inspections and stuff. And that's something I learned from the podcast and the Acell group and whatnot. Also is, you know, if I'm the professional working on a vehicle, if I have a, if I have a car come in here and it, you know, it needs rear brakes on it and my customer tells me it needs rear brakes or grind and whatever, and I get this thing in here and I put it on my lift. Yep.
Rear brakes are shot. Sell them. Rear brakes. I don't look at anything else on this car. And here it's got a wheel bearing on the front that's about to fall off of it, and they leave out of my shop and crash and kill somebody or themselves or whatever. I'm the professional that just worked on that vehicle. Like, you know, I'm pretty sure a good lawyer could probably put me in prison and take everything I got if they, if they wanted to. Now, gosh, I hope that never happens to anybody, but, but that is the reality of it.
And I think that's something that, you know, a lot of people tend to maybe not think about sometimes. I guess, you know, we got so much other stuff going on as mechanics and shop owners and stuff. Like, you know, that's kind of the last thing on your mind. What's, what's going to happen to your customers car when they leave the shop? You know, as long as, as long as what's fixed for what, whatever the issue that they came in for is fixed when it leaves. But, but that's, that's not the case with me. If it's a safety issue and I have a customer that, that doesn't want to fix it correctly, I won't work on it. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not going to put my name on it because it's just not worth it.
I mean, and that, you know, that kind of comes back to my, you know, one of my first things for starting my business, providing for my family. So I can't provide for my family if I let something go out of here and end up in prison because somebody gets killed or crashes or whatever due to something that I missed.
It's those scenarios that keep shop owners up at night. Right? Like, that's the thing. And, you know, we get such a kickback at first. Or push back, excuse me, when we, when we start to, you know, really inspect these cars well and show all these customers they get, they get so much. I don't want to know about that. I don't want to know about that. Well, it doesn't matter that you want to know about it or nothing. I have an obligation to make you aware of it.
And I keep telling people that you don't have to fix it.
That goes back to the communication thing. Because when I have a new customer, that's when I schedule men. The very first thing I tell them, like, hey, I'm going to do a digital vehicle inspection on your vehicle. I'm just, I'm one of the dumb ones and I don't charge for it when I should, but I just check everything over and I, and I explain to them, like, this is why I do it, too, you know, the, the safety aspect of, of it. But not only that, but, you know, you should know, especially if you don't know anything about cars, you never, you know, if you just drive your car and always have somebody else do all the service to it, like, you should know what kind of condition your vehicle's in. And I explain that to them, though. I go through, I tell them everything, like, hey, you're going to get this text message. It's going to have a link to the inspection.
I did. I attached pictures, notes, everything, anything I find and, yeah, and most of the time, which probably because I don't charge for it, but most of the time nobody has any problem with that. But, yeah, I imagine, you know, it would be interesting to see, see how that would go over if I told them, well, you know, you're getting charged a half hour labor for this digital vehicle inspection. And I imagine I would probably get more pushback, more likely.
It's one of those things, one of those places where I think, and I'm not trying to advocate in this industry to be dishonest, but I think it's just we all need to step up and if the car is coming in for an oil change, as an example, I think we all need to build in another half an hour additional labor now and be doing these. And it's just build. It's just the way it is, too. Places are not. And it's, what's unfortunately holding us back is because like lots of shops, and I'm not trying to single anyone out, including yourself, when the shop just do the inspection for free, that's fine. Okay. But what happens is when you don't even tell the customer you're doing it and everybody is now doing the inspection and one shop is saying we also did an inspection and then the other shop is just doing an oil change and doing the same inspection, but not even telling the customer we inspected X, Y and Zenith, where it always ends up then is that I can't add value to the inspection because either somebody's doing it for free or it's just implied that I should do it. Well, unfortunately, with the younger technicians out there now, their brains work different.
They're given a task, change oil, and they change oil. I was coming up and probably you were coming up, you were taught to inspect the whole car, right? That's just what you did when it was racked to do an oil change. You check the ball joints, right? When it's sitting there, the oil draining, you don't stand there and watch the oil run out. You go and look at the rest of the car. You look at the tires, look at the brakes. You look at the struts, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, people. Now.
So, this is why this has become so important, is because we all have to be doing, I think, for the most part, the inspections we've always done and should have done. But now we have to tell the customer why we're doing it. Because the driver, the consumer, isn't the same either. They don't have a damn clue what a strut is or what it does or what it means. They don't care. But they want to know that, like, if I hit a bump and this thing sounds funny, why is it doing that? Okay, well, the struts leaking oil. That's what you hear. Okay.
You need a pair of struts, so on and so on. When we don't charge for it. It's really hard now to add value to that, because I've. I'm a big proponent that if it's for free, I can never. Then if I have to start charging that customer for the service, the customer will never feel like it's worth what I have to charge. The conversation came up in one of my episodes. One guy does free tire repairs all the time. It's just what they do.
Customer comes in, never been there before. Regular customer, doesn't matter. The tire needs to be repaired. They repair the tire free. That's part of his marketing. Cool. If all of a sudden now, labor rates go up to an astronomical amount and you can't get technicians. You got to hire people, and they got to pay them twice what you're paying them.
Maybe you can't do that service anymore. Maybe you can't extend that courtesy. If I can't extend it, and all of a sudden I have to charge for it, I could go from charging nothing to charging $10, and my customers that used to get it for free will go, why does it have to be $10? Do you know what I mean? Meanwhile, the other shop that's always been charging $50 to plug the tire rolls on like nothing ever happened. So that's where we've got to get this thinking in our brains in this industry that, like, free is good. Free is not good, in my opinion. Now what? I'm not trying to call you out Cody, please don't take it that way. It's just we can, we can build free into the marketing of our business or we can build free into rewarding our customer. But the end of the day, we have to still be transparent and tell the customer it's not just an oil change.
I also did this. You see what I mean? When it's, when we're not doing that, that the communication doesn't even work, then.
You know, you're absolutely right. I mean, transparency is key. And I do way more free stuff than what I should. I definitely, definitely know that. But the thing is, I think there's a lot of shops out there that aren't being transparent, though, and aren't communicating. And I think that's where the industry kind of get some of his bad rap from. And I can't say for sure what all the other shops around town here do, but I have a lot of my customers that are very surprised about techmetric as far as me being able to send them their digital vehicle inspection, send the estimates over and stuff like that, they, most of them that I talk to that, that bring it up about how they like the software and, and how I do everything, most of them tell me that they have never seen that before.
Yeah.
Which is a huge surprise to me because there is a ton of shops around town that do much more revenue than I do. And I, I have zero issue being a little guy and, and paying extra for this software to be able to do this stuff. And not only that, it, it increased my sales tremendously. Doing this stuff and being transparent. I don't understand why. I don't understand why every shop doesn't have a shop software that will do these things, or maybe they're just not doing them and sending them to the customers. I don't know. But it's a conversation I've had with many of my customers that bring it up about how they like the software and whatnot.
Or maybe they just haven't been to these places. I don't know. But certainly somebody's got to be changing the oil in their car at some point in time.
But I think what it boils down to, though, is that it's like you see so many people that we try to say, okay, if you're, if you're used to doing six cars a day, get to where you can make the same money doing only five, and then after you've got them five, try to get to where you can make the same money doing four, and everybody looks at you like you're nuts. Well, what the hell, like, because we're not necessarily. Once you can get to where you're doing four, when you used to do six, you're only going to do four. But it means that that fifth one, that money, that profit can go towards a better service to the customer. You know, whether, whatever it is you want to offer a shuttle service, you know, whatever, who cares? A car wash at the end, it's all irrelevant. It doesn't matter. It's just you're offering a better service. So I think what's happened is some of these shops have been so driven by, I have to get twelve cars through today because I'm going to have six, that they're not going to do anything.
Right. I've got six oil changes and six oil changes only. I don't have time to even write the estimate for the car. It's gone. I'm going to give a little note at the end of, hey, we noticed this. Next time you're in for an oil change, let's think about doing that. It's such a stupid way to handle it. We need to be like slowing down and going, okay, this is the car, we inspected the car.
This is all what needs to be done. You know this, right? You do it. And that's why I think when you're asked me your question, why are shops not doing it? Because they don't know. They're too scared to go from doing twelve cars a day to six. They're so terrified that they can't make the money. Now what it takes to make the money with six instead of twelve is you have to have somebody on the counter who's top notch, who can explain it, communicate it, sell it. That's what it is. It's an ugly word.
Some people don't like it in this industry. This is sales. This is sales. I have to show you why it's necessary to do the repair and then I have to get you to do the repair. That's selling.
Yeah, there's no better.
We can put different words on it. It's selling stuff and there's nothing wrong with it. Right?
Yeah, we're sales.
Sales is like when somebody comes in to want to buy a cavalier and you sell them a Cadillac. That's shady sales. We're not doing that in this industry for the most part. Now there's exceptions. Right. But I mean for the most part we're not. I've never seen, I've said it before. I've never seen a car that was over maintained.
And I've never seen a car that was overly repaired to the point of safety. Never. Right. So let's get that out of the question about what can, what's the, is it wrong to flush the transmission fluid every year if the car only sits? Yeah, but if the car goes 20,000 miles and somebody gets peace of mind out of that and they're willing to do it, I'm not going to tell somebody, you don't need to do that every 20,000. Right.
If I disagree with you a little bit there, I mean, I have a few customers that are, sometimes they want stuff done above and beyond, which I'm okay with. If they ultimately want that. Like, I'm not going to turn them away or something. But, you know, if they, if they just had their transmission flushed last year and that service interval on that things every 60,000 miles or something and they've only put 20,000 miles on it, I'm going to convey that to them. Like, hey, like the manufacturer recommends you do it every 60,000. You just had this done 20,000 miles ago. You, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. And I, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it if you don't want to.
And if they insist at that point, like, okay, well, whatever. I did my part at least to convey that. But if they just, you know, if they want their transmission flushed every year and I, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I didn't explain that to them. I feel like, and maybe I'm misunderstanding you there.
Yeah. Because I think you are. You're not, I'm not saying, don't advocate. I'm not saying that, like we just, like a slimeball advisor that we've ever, all seen the horror stories about who just immediately signs them up for it and takes, again, you have to have that conversation to say, misses Smith, it's, it's early, it's not due. You know, if it makes you have peace of mind, we'll certainly perform the service. There might be better places to spend the money on the car. But hypothetically, say, you know, he just is, it's like, Cody, do you still get people coming in and it's like they want to tune up? Right?
Yeah, yeah. I've got one scheduled next week, actually.
Well, when we know what that's like, a lot of the time when you go and look at the cardinal, really there's something else causing the issue, right. Of whatever the, if there is a drivability complaint some people still think it's like, I still get customers, that when they would drop it off in the fall, I had, God bless him, he was 82 years old. He would drop the car off in the fall and he would be like, I want to tune up them. That was just what he. Cause he'd been driving since the fifties.
Yeah.
So that's what you do. You tuned it up in the spring. You tuned it up in the fall. That's what he meant. And I had to say to him, it's like, so funny story. He drove a front wheel drive Buick. I think it was like a Lucerne, one of the last ones that had like a 3.8 in it or something like that. Right.
And he's, I want a tune up done. I want a tune up done. Cool. All right. So he had no mileage on this thing. It ran fine. So finally he talks me into it. We do a tune up.
So we get the parts and everything, and the other technician ends up doing the tune up. Well, of course, after we did the tune up, because nobody went to him and said, hey, maybe we should do ignition wires at the same time. We had a misfire caused by an ignition wire that came off. So that car would have been perfect if we'd have left it alone at the time. Right. We went in and kind of created a problem. Now, he was cool about it. We handled it.
It was fine, whatever. Right. But that's my thing. Sometimes when it's like, people come in and it's like they're still using old terminology, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So, first and foremost, you got to be the advocate. But, I mean, I'm not going to, if the customer wants a reasonable service done, I'm not going to turn around and not do it. Now, it's funny, because I used to, we used to have, like, customers that come in at the, one of the last place I worked, and they would get, they're all changed in June, right? And then they parked the car. It was like a seasonal car, and they bring it back next June.
Car hadn't gone a thousand miles while another oil changed. What do you think about that?
I don't know. I mean, if you're, we're talking about an oil change here, too. So it's, it's not like they're, it's not like a transmission service where they're going to be spending $400 or maybe even more doing it. I tell my customers when it comes to oil changes, engine oil changes, my personal preference and professional preferences. I think a lot of these manufacturers drag out some of these oil changes too long anymore. Some of these cars will go 10,000 miles but between, before your change engine light will come on or whatnot. And that's just too much I think. And I tell my customers this, I usually recommend to everybody 5000 miles but on my stuff I don't even put 5000 miles on it in a year's time.
I don't have to go a whole lot of plate. Well I shouldn't say that. My personal pickup truck, I hardly ever drive it. I probably put maybe a thousand miles on that thing a year at the most. I change the oil in it every year. So I. I would explain to them. I would say that.
Well I would probably if they put a thousand miles on any, in a year I would recommend to them that they, they should probably, if they want their oil changed I would go ahead and do. But I mean.
It'S just funny. It's funny though how in the industry we break it down to where it's like if the service that we're offering them or they want to get done even if it doesn't, is costs under this amount we just go ahead and do it. If it costs over a certain amount we try and talk them out of it. And that's, that's a funny, it's a funny paradox to me. You know what I mean? I'm not saying you're right and I'm wrong or I'm wrong and you're right. Like I'm nothing. It's something that I think about a lot in this industry because when you go back to the conversations we have about shops, talking about other shops and that's ripping this person off and that's ripping. It's all perspective.
It really is. It's whatever you have to service your customer and that's it. It's, you know, going back to what you're talking about, you're never going to be wealthy. Lucas and I have a lot of conversations about that when nobody's listening. It's. Well, how do you define wealth? Right? And I think when I listen to you, Cody, I think you've already found it. Right? Yeah.
That's been a very recent finding for me. Yeah, I. I found wealth as soon as I found Jesus. In all reality, if I'm being a hundred percent honest before that, you know, my idea of wealth was a couple million dollars in your bank account or whatever and, and that's, that's not the case anymore. Success is how you define it. I mean, there is no success that, you know, covers everybody across the board. But, I mean, I could be sitting here and be a millionaire and actually, I guarantee I'd have more frustrations than what I do right now. You know, the, the more probably the more money you got, probably the more, the more, you know, headaches and stuff you got.
But I think, I think we tend to look at success and stuff too much as a financial, a financial goal or whatnot, where, in my opinion, I think we should look more at success as what do I have that I can help somebody else with? And, you know, how do I want to explain this? We spend a whole lot of time thinking about, you know, stuff. I mean, money, our homes or our tools. You know, we gotta, gotta have bigger and better things as humans. I think most of us are pretty materialistic people and stuff. I mean, it's just kind of in our nature to an extent. And that's why success is related to that stuff. How much stuff you have or whatever, where, you know, I think you could probably be almost a homeless person and be successful in your mind if, if what you're doing is God's work anyway. But, but, um, yeah, that's an interesting thing.
That's why, you know, I, I kind of wish, wish he would have elaborated a little bit more in this comment when he, when he mentioned that this career has made him rich on that a so. Facebook group. But I don't, you know, I don't look at success as being rich anymore by any means.
I can give you some context to who that is because he's a good friend of mine and we talk quite a bit. That's Zeb.
Yeah.
And he, about his shop and he, and he's not wrong now. Like, he got a ton of debt. Like, that building is expensive as heck to build and it's like, it's a finely tuned machine with a lot of moving parts.
Yeah.
Say about him is like, he, he is the most fearless shop owner I've ever met. And now you got to realize, I've met a lot of them now. And I network and talk with a ton of shop owners. Some, some I call my friends and some, like, I talk to them, but they probably don't really like me, but you know what I mean? But I talked to them nonetheless, and they talked to me. He has got such a belief in himself and his team that he sees no ceiling to where he can go. So when he says that he's rich, I think what he means is the sense that he's already hit that point where he knows he's built something that he can leave his son and it is already because his son works with him. His son is a brilliant technician himself that he knows it's going to be in good hands. Right? He has set his son up for success.
He just had his first grandson born. He set his son, grandson up for success. If this should stay in the family. So I don't think, like, even when he says it made him rich, he had a monetary number in mind as much as, like if he had a goal. I think he's hit it and I think that's when he. What he means by his rich. When Lucas and I talk about. You made an interesting point about the homeless person.
We had a conversation once and I said, isn't it amazing sometimes how you can see people that seem to have nothing and yet they are happy to be where they are? And you can see it from two ways. You can see it as, it's like, imagine what they came from, that where they're now living under street corner somewhere or going to a hostel or something like that is better than where they were. That's a scary thing, right? And then the other part, we see it online. People like, will go and ask a homeless person for a dollar and they will give them the dollar. You know, they'll turn around and somebody gifts them a $100. They gift it back to somebody else just because that's like, we don't know the human paradox as well as we think we do think we have it all. But I mean, so that's like. And I.
Sometimes when in my conversations I have with my friends, I'm like, this guy's like a, you know, he's a jerk. You know, he's got all this, what seems like wealth. And I. And he treats his people like this. Like we were just talking about before he got on the air tonight about that one particular shop owner. I have to remember that. It's like sometimes people, when they try to fill up what's missing with material things, what can look like wealth to us, you and I, is baggage and burden and weight upon their shoulders. You know what I mean? So I think I'm already.
I know where I am in my career in this. I'm already rich. I've already done it. I made it, you know what I mean? It can all go away tomorrow, financially. And I know I'm in a good place. I know that I have made an impact and I have, like, I've steered the course on a different direction from where it was if I had not come into this. So I think for me, I'm wealthy, too. I'm rich.
That makes sense. It's kind of deep.
Hey, well, I think we could get a whole lot deeper if you wanted to, but. But, yeah, no, I. Yeah, I mean, I just don't know that I would call it. Sure, you can call it rich, but I think you're successful in your mind and. Yeah, and not that I, you know, I think I've been more successful with my business and what I deserve, for sure, but. But it seems to be, in our industry, all the mechanics and stuff. I know. I can't say I know a whole heck of a lot of shop owners because I haven't been a shop owner myself for.
For more than a couple years here, but, but it. There seems to be a pretty common thing where, you know, people. People seem to think that they are underpaid, that they, you know, it all revolves around money. And I get that the world revolves around money and stuff, but, but people are, you know, have a misunderstanding about success, I feel like. And, and it. And it does revolve around those material things and stuff. And, I mean, I guess that's just our culture. I guess it teaches us that.
But I. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've made it, too. I, you know, I don't have anything that necessarily I think I'm going to leave behind for my kids just yet. But, in fact, the whole reason we're doing this podcast here is just because I've been seriously considering closing down my shop just because of how, you know, frustrating it can be and, you know, that, that. And maybe, you know, a lot of that's probably me. A lot of that might be the, you know, the situations and stuff that we're in with our. With my family and whatnot. But, yeah, I mean, it.
It. But even without that, though, even if you're, you know, I was making 40, $41 an hour or whatever at a job. I could do whatever I wanted at before, but wasn't. Wasn't happy. Wasn't happy there. So, you know, now I work for myself, and I still don't know that I have necessarily found happiness, at least in every day, but, yeah, I don't know, man. That's weird.
Let's break it down for you then. What's the frustrating part?
Just, you know, jobs not going how you think they're gonna go, just not ever being able to get away from it to an extent for me. And a lot of that is my fault. I haven't figured out how to get away from it, and I, you know, somebody. Somebody made the comment on that post as well as. Because you got your shop at your house and stuff. That's a little bit of it. But in my situation, actually, and from the get go, from the day I started my business, I was actively looking to get out of my shop at home. I wanted my business to be in town because we're outside of town here a little ways, not very far, just a couple minutes, but wanted it in town in a decent location, and I wanted to buy something and wanted to purchase a place instead of leasing, because it's.
It's ungodly expensive. I don't know how anybody affords it, but. But, gosh, I forget where I was just going with that.
So you wanted to move out into the city, like, or into town?
Yes.
Okay.
But here, yeah, I was talking about how it actually has turned out to be a blessing, me working from home. Long story short, not the, um. Get into too many details, or I suppose we can get it into as many details as you want, but we, uh, we've got, you know, we had three kids when I started my business here. I got a vasectomy. I wasn't. We weren't having any more kids, and my sister had a baby unplanned. Um, she was going through a very tough time in her life at that point. And she was born faith.
Her baby was born eight weeks premature with down syndrome, with heart defects. And not that my sister didn't want her. She wasn't going to be allowed to have her. I'll just put it to you like that. To make a long story short, and I don't know. I don't know why my wife and I, we didn't even. We didn't think about it. We just stepped up, like, well, we're take her, you know, until my sister can get back on her feet, whatnot.
And ultimately, that didn't happen. My sister passed away two weeks after face was born, and I. That's all good. But anyway, we ended up with this baby, now that, you know, is handicapped, has already had one heart surgery. She needs a second heart surgery, has spent months in the hospital, and like I said, we've got three other kids here, too. So me being able to have the shop at home, I mean, God literally put me exactly where he needed me for my wife to be able to take care of faith. All this doctor's appointment and stuff. So it's been a lot of.
A lot of stress on us, you know, especially the business and whatnot. But literally everything has worked out exactly how it was supposed to be because I, you know, I don't know how. I don't know if it would have worked out if I had a shop in town or whatnot, but, yeah, it's strange to me how that's worked. But I just, I can't get away from it though, man. Like I told you earlier, like, you know, I got people still handing out my personal phone number and stuff and. And I don't know, maybe I just need to be a asshole about it and just stop answering people or something.
But I want you to. I want you to hear me real quick, and this is not me. Please don't take it as criticism. I want you to.
I'm all about the criticism.
Listen, I'm in no place to criticize anybody. We're just having a conversation here. I think you're right where God intends you to be, for starters. Okay? And I'm not going to get deeply religious on all this kind of stuff. It's because it's. People are going to shut it off. But I want you to understand something when I say to you, when it goes back to about value, is that you have to think as you move forward and as faith grows older, if things will become more expensive. And I want you to learn what your true value is, right.
And what your number one priority is, is to provide for the family. You already know that you've got it. You got it figured out. There's nothing wrong, but understand, there's nothing wrong with you charging a little bit more. Nobody's gonna fault you for it. Nobody that is really behind you and wants to see, you know, everything succeed is going to be mad at you if you start to charge a little bit more. And I think that's going to remove some of that frustration, because I think, I think your community needs you. I think you need this job.
And I think that you just have to, at the end of the day, you maybe look at holy. Like I ran my feet off. I was there. You know, I worked on these cars from seven in the morning until six at night, and I barely stopped. And, you know, there's this always piling up and that's always piling up. That's life, man. We never get away from what's pulling on us. But for more shop owners, when I see them and they're in there in similar situations than you, where they just, like, there isn't enough hours or there isn't enough money, or there's just enough, like, understand that it's okay to say no.
And what, sometimes it means that in order to say no, the people that we say yes to, we have to charge them a little bit more. That's it. It sounds simple, but it's a huge thing to do. So I think, you know, and I'm not saying, cody, that you're doing anything wrong. Don't. Don't take it like I. You know, that I'm trying to say you shouldn't.
You don't know me very well, man. I'm doing a lot wrong.
I don't think you are. It's just. But always keep that on the forefront of why you do it. You know, why you do it. You know, why you're working is to provide for faith in the family. But understand that, like, the natural progression will, this is. You will slow down and you won't be able to do it to the. You won't be able to go around in, you know, overdrive your whole life.
You're gonna slow down where it's like it's gonna lug. You're gonna feel like you're going uphill a lot of the time. You want to get to that point to where if you need to take a day to be away, that either the business can survive you being gone a day or you can survive without the business for a day. Do you understand what I mean?
Oh, yeah, no, I. We. Well, we haven't really been on much of a vacation at all for about three years now, but we do a family. My family has a family reunion down. Down West Virginia here every summer. And we went down there for a weekend, got a cabin stuff, and, dude, I turned my phone off, man. Like, I left my phone in the cabin. I didn't talk to anybody.
I'll tell you what, I had a lot of crap I had to catch up on come Monday when we got back home. But. But, yeah, it was nice, you know, that was the only way I feel like I was able to get away from it for just a little bit, to just, you know, get rid of my phone, just turn it off, put it away, and not. Not have it with me, which was great. I should. I need to do that more often. Maybe. Maybe every stinking weekend, actually.
But I was just.
I was just going to say that's what my goal would be for you talking with me and talking in Ashog and is get yourself to where you can do that.
Yeah. I mean, in all reality, Jeff, the money, you know, oddly enough, has never been an issue. I feel like, my labor rate is $124 an hour, which is a little bit below the average for our town and stuff from. From what I've gathered. And, I mean, I have just this year bumped it up to that. I was, when I first started out, I was $100 an hour two and two and a half years ago. But I do feel like I know my value to an extent, and I do try and charge accordingly for that. But.
And, yeah, I couldn't agree more. That is a lot of it. I think a lot of shop owners and stuff that, that, that struggle and whatnot is probably definitely due to their labor rates and whatnot. In fact, the. The advanced rep told me a couple, couple months ago now there's some shop around here still charging, like, $80 an hour, and I couldn't believe that, man. Like, that's unreal. I don't know how you stay afloat doing that, especially if you have employees to pay and all that stuff. But then again, I know of other shops around here that, you know, still do handwritten invoices and estimates and stuff, too, which blows my mind.
But knowing your value, I think, is a big thing for people. And, you know, I'm still learning it myself, but I'm getting there.
I think you're doing well, man. And I know I've sensed the frustration when we've talked a little bit, and, you know, we didn't get really big into why you're frustrated, and I just could sense that. So, you know, like I say, I want to. I want to keep in touch with how you're doing and what's. What's happening. And, you know, I want to continue to reach out to the people in the group. Think about, like, you know, I'm not saying don't be open, but think about, like, when people are sharing with them, with you, with each other, what they do, and it's different from, you continue to keep an open mind about why they do it, because, I mean, there's. We all have a lot more in common than we think.
I couldn't agree more with that.
I think what you'll find is that, like, you're gonna learn how to be able to step away a little bit more, and I think that that's gonna bring your frustration down. A good start, anyway. I'm coming down. This. Is, this a frustrating business is always gonna be. There's just no.
Well, there's. There's no other. There's no other trade like it. I mean, there's the amount of money that you have to spend in tooling, the amount of knowledge that you have to have and how quickly everything's changing. I mean, there's no other industry like it, in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe there's something. I don't know.
But. But, I mean, it's just you have to be an electrician, you have to be a plumber, you have to be a fabricator. You know, you have to be an engineer that, you know, to an extent, to. To be good in the repair industry. You know, it's not just changing parts and stuff. Like a lot of, like a lot of people think to an extent, but.
So to wrap it up, give me. Do you have a one year plan and do you have like a five year plan?
I don't have a plan at all, man.
You have goals then, like, where if I contact you a year from now and we sit down and we do another recording, where do you want to be in that year? What do you want to be able to tell me that you've done and that in five?
So when I started out with my business and everything, I definitely had goals. I don't think my goals were very practical. I, you know, one of my first goals that I thought of was, well, in five years, I wanted to be doing over a million dollars a year in revenue. Well, guess what? Something I've learned at, you know, listen to Lucas and them guys, like, well, that's kind of a stupid goal because I could be doing a million years, million dollars in revenue a year, but not making any money. Like, it's. It's a, it's a pointless goal. One of my goals I did have for this year, which is since kind of went away just because of the time and stuff we've spent at the hospital with faith and everything, I did very well last year, or at least I thought so in my mind, anyway. And I was trying to do a decent amount better than that this year as far as sales and everything.
And at the first part of the year I was on it, man, I was set to do pretty good. I was working my butt off. But then, yeah, we've just ran into issues and stuff with faith and everything since then. It's like, well, I just been trying to get by day to day, I guess, for the most part. And, yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do at this point. I, you know, a big part of me feels like I should just get out of the industry. Like move on to something else, something a little easier, less frustrations. But you know, you probably have a lot of the frustration still in any industry, but.
Yeah. I don't know.
I think. I think starting something new is always gonna be frustrating.
Yeah. And scary. Yeah.
It's not to say that you shouldn't do it. I just, you know, it's the devil, you know, versus w don't. Right. That's. That's the way I always look at it.
Yeah.
You know, I thought about. I tried to get out of this, like, five years ago, and it just. It didn't line up that I could. And now I think if. If they called me back and said, you know, there's an opening, come work at the factory, I'd probably tell them to shove it.
Yeah. Well, in all reality, you know, a lot of those guys that commented on my posts there, you know, about, like, you can't get away from it and stuff, they're probably. It's probably pretty accurate. I mean, it's what I know. I'm good at it. How do you walk away from that, you know? So it. As much as it frustrates me, I will say this. Since starting my business and stuff, I definitely have gained a lot more of a passion for the industry.
Before I started my business, I gosh, I was telling all the young guys, my nephew and stuff, like, don't, you know, don't turn wrenches for a living, man. Like, it sucks you're gonna spend a boatload of money doing it and stuff. But that is. That's a pretty common way that a lot of. A lot of guys in the industry that I talk to feel, though, and, I don't know, it's all about perspective, I guess, and sometimes my perspectives there where it's like, yeah, like, you know, I want to do everything I can to help better this industry and stuff. And then other days, like, recently, it's like, you know what? Effort, man. Like, I'm done. Like, let's go do something else.
Let's get on to the next thing. But, you know, ultimately, I didn't start this business to not try and do something with it. Mostly, like I said, I enjoy helping people. I enjoy fixing stuff. I enjoy problem solving. I think that stuff right there is the reason why a lot of guys get into this industry, and then, yeah, 100%. I mean, but it burns you out over time, so, yeah, it's tough figuring out how to get around that.
It is. Um, I'm gonna let you go. It's a late night, and, you know, I just. We'll come back and chat about this another time. Not too far away from now. And, you know, always if you're feeling like you're overwhelmed or you're feeling like you're frustrated, just. Just reach out to me. Reach out to anybody in the group and just, you know, I think I.
Need to reach out to Zeb and see about how I need to get rich.
100%. He'll tell you, you know, Zeb will be the kind of guy, he's a straight shooter. He'll tell you what, and then, and that's it. And the thing, it's like everybody else is, I tell all these people, is like, you can go to any one of the people in there and ask, how. How do I get there? But you got to be willing to hear them.
Yeah.
You can't immediately. Nobody wants to be asked donut, come and ask me how, and then argue with me that it can't work because they're going to show you that it worked. Zeb will show you that it worked because he made it work.
That's one thing amazed me about this industry. You know, starting my business and stuff. I never guess. Never would have guessed that. My idea, in my mind, I came from fleet repair, that, you know, other shops and stuff. Like, that's competition. That's not the case. Like, there's so much work to go around.
Like, it's unreal, and it's. It's been incredible to me how many people are out there that are, you know, doing the same thing, that are willing to help and stuff. And that's. The group has been amazing for that. Like I said, I've done hours and hours of reading on there, but we can't.
We can't get all the work done. There's no two ways. We can't. So, I mean, yeah, nobody is your competition. You know, other people are people you want to learn from what not to do and what to do. And that's. I don't see them as competition anymore. I just see it as.
It's like they may be doing some things that hurt the industry, but they're not my competition.
Yep.
You know, I'm my own competition, and that's it. Sorry. I appreciate the chat. I'll let you go. So it's been a long night for both of us, and absolutely all my love to faith in the family, I, you know, I think you're doing an amazing thing and just. Just keep that in mind.
Yeah.
You know, you're. You're where you're supposed to be, and we'll love you whether you move to a different avenue or whatever, but just. I think that you're. I think you're where you're supposed to be, and I think that it's. It's frustrating, but just keep reaching out, man, and we'll get you through it.
Yeah. I appreciate it, Jeff. It's great talking with you.
Yeah, for sure, buddy. We'll talk. Thanks, man. Thanks, everybody. 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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